president's address. 509 



increasing and national importance. Let us pursue our enquiries 

 till not a secret of Nature wliicli can be revealed is unknown. 

 Let us never tire in our search after knowledge, but let us make 

 our enquiries in that reverend and humble spirit which marks 

 always the highest and truest philosophy. Let us remember 

 that we are finite while there is One who is Infinite, and that 

 He ruleth over all. It has been well said by one of the very 

 ablest thinkers of our times, " Christianity being stationary and 

 authoritative, thought progressive and independent, the causes 

 which stimulate the restlessness of the latter interrupt the har- 

 mony which ordinarily exists between belief and knowledge, and 

 produce crises during which religion is re-examined. Disorgani- 

 zation is the temporary result : theological advance the subse- 

 quent. Whatever is evil is eliminated in the conflict ; whatever 

 is good is retained. Under the over-ruling of a beneficent Pro- 

 vidence antagonism is made the law of human progress." 



Intellect has its rights, its privileges, its duties, its triumphs. 

 But that is not, cannot be, the end of the matter. We see laws 

 acting everywhere around us — we see them in their varied 

 courses — now one link of the chain is added to another — a 

 higher and yet higher step is gained, but still, like the traveller 

 in some mountaiaous region who, when he thinks to be about 

 to surmount the highest point, yet finds some higher peaks 

 beyond where 



" Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise." 



So it is with the searcher into science. Each fresh step in ad- 

 vance only serves to show the unexplored region beyond more 

 fully. Nature has to be overcome ere she will tell us her secrets, 

 or pour out her riches before us. 



H 2 



