1872,] 307 
[Price.. 
has empowered and obliged to become the artificer of his own rank ins 
the scale of beings by the improvable gift of improvable reason. ’’—Ib. 
496-7. And Lyell himself says, p. 498, ‘‘We cannot imagine this world 
to be a place of trial and discipline for any of the inferior animals, nor 
can any of them derive comfort and happiness from faith in a hereafter. 
To man alone is given this belief, so consonant to his reason, and so con- 
genial to the religious sentiments implanted by nature in his soul; a 
doctrine which tends to raise him morally and intellectually in the scale 
of being, and the fruits of which are, therefore, most opposite in character 
to those which grow out of error and delusion.” 
The tendencies of the Authors now reviewed is the most unfriendly to 
that religious faith on which human welfare essentially depends ; yet 
it is believed that good will result from the divulgence of their theories ; 
but it will be because of their failure ; because they will have compelled 
men to re-examine their faith upon the platform of Science, and thereby 
confirm their religion received by revelation. They will find in all truth 
an accord showing its source one; and in the constancy of nature the 
truthfulness of God. They will find that He who created ever rules His 
creation and compels it to obey His ordination. They will find that 
only man was made in likeness unto God, and that he was made to have 
dominion over all other living creatures. They will perceive that Science 
can erect no barrier between man and his immortal hopes ; that the being 
of an immortal soul stands elevated above all other animated beings by a 
distinction that makes him but ‘a little lower than the angels,” and a 
child of his ‘‘ Father in Heaven’’; a Father who condescends to commune 
with and be known of His children. 
Stated Meeting, January 19, 1872. 
Present 20 members. 
Vice-President Mr. Fraury in the chair. 
A letter of acknowledgment for Transactions XIV. 1. and 
Proceedings, 84, 85, was received from the Bureau des Lon- 
gitudes, dated Observatoire Nationale de Paris, Dec. 1871. 
Donations for the Library were received from the Observa- 
tories and Royal Academy at Turin, Signor Denza, the Revue 
Politique, and M. A. P. Hovelaque, of Paris, the London Na- 
ture, Dr. Freeke, of Dublin, the Montreal Natural History 
Society, the editors of Old and New, and the American Chem- 
ist, the College of Pharmacy, Franklin Institute and Acad- 
