Professor Owen's Address. 3 73 



is no light matter, therefore, the work that we are here assembled 

 to do. God has given to man a capacity to discover and compre- 

 hend the laws by which His universe is governed ; and man is im- 

 pelled by a healthy and natural impulse to exercise the faculties 

 by which that knowledge can be acquired. Agreeably with the 

 relations which have been instituted between our finite faculties and 

 the phenomena that affect them, we arrive at demonstrations and 

 convictions which are the most certain that our present state of 

 being can have or act upon. JSTor let anyone, against whose pre- 

 possessions a scientific truth may jar, confound such demonstrations 

 with the speculative philosophies condemned by the Apostle ; or 

 ascribe to arrogant intellect, soaring to regions of forbidden 

 mysteries, the acquisition of such truths as have been or may be 

 established by patient and inductive research. For the most part, 

 the discoverer has been so placed by circumstances, — rather than 

 by predetermined selection, — as to have his work of investigation 

 allotted to him as his daily duty; in the fulfilment of which he is 

 brought face to face with phenomena into which he must inquire, 

 and the result of which inquiry he must faithfully impart. The 

 advance of natural as of moral truth has been and is progressive : 

 but it has pleased the author of all truth to vary the fashion of the 

 imparting of such parcels thereof as He has allotted, from time to 

 time, for the behoof and guidance of mankind. Those who are 

 privileged with the faculties of discovery are, therefore, to be re- 

 garded as pre-ordained instruments in making known the power 

 of God, without a knowledge of which, as well as of Scripture, we 

 are told that we shall err. Great and marvellous have been the 

 manifestations of this power imparted to us of late times, not only 

 in respect of the shape, motions and solar relations of the earth, 

 but also of its age and inhabitants. 



AGE OF THE WORLD. 



In regard to the period during which the globe allotted to man 

 has revolved on its orbit, present evidence strains the mind to 

 grasp such sum of past time with an effort like that by which it 

 tries to realize the space dividing that orbit from the fixed stars 

 and remoter nebulae. Yet, during all those eras that have passed 

 since the Cambrian rocks were deposited which bear the impressed 

 record of creative power, as it was then manifested, we know, 

 through the interpreters of these " writings on stone," that the 



