ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. clix 



apparently in opposition to it. As ably pointed out by Professor 

 Powell, the evil was only increased by those who endeavoured to 

 escape from the difficulty by putting a constructive meaning upon 

 the words, quite opposite to their literal sense, and then to adjust 

 their theories to this new meaning. How different would have been 

 the result, and how much bickering would have been avoided, had 

 men attended only to the subject before them, and studied Geology 

 for itself alone, and not as a supposed corroboration of statements, 

 in what could never be considered a lesson in science ! "Well indeed 

 may Mr. Powell maintain that proofs of inspiration ought only to be 

 looked for in those manifestations of divine wisdom which are to be 

 found in the precepts set forth for the moral government of men : to 

 expect proofs of inspiration in other topics irrelevant to the main 

 object of prophesying, would result only in fastening upon divine wis- 

 dom the ignorance and folly of erring man. I say this preparatory 

 to making a few brief observations on the recent work of Mr. Gosse, 

 entitled " Omphalos, or an attempt to untie the Geological Knot." 

 Now, the geological knot appears to me to be the difficulty of ex- 

 plaining by what causes, and in what order, have been produced the 

 various physical and organic phenomena observed in a study of the 

 earth's crust, not in explaining the Mosaic account of Creation. Mr. 

 Gosse thinks differently, and imagines that he has discovered a new 

 law by which the observed facts of Geology can be put in harmony 

 with the account of creation, or, in other words, that everything 

 connected with the creation of organic life has been the work of 

 the first six days. This is a bold assumption, and it must be ad- 

 mitted that Mr. Gosse has shown considerable ingenuity in the 

 invention of very convenient terms, which serve instead of argu- 

 ments ; for to those who, adopting his theory, are not possessed of his 

 ability, the words prochronism and prochronic must be of immea- 

 surable advantage. But let us inquire into the nature of his argu- 

 ment. First, then, he represents the course of life as circular or 

 cyclical ; but, although such a course is real in respect to many mo- 

 tions, such as that of the earth round the sun, the horse moving in 

 a mill, and many others where the motion is necessarily, in accord- 

 ance with the laws of motion, either in a circular or in some other 

 re-entering curve (unless, indeed, we may suppose the comets some- 

 times to go beyond the limits of attraction, and be finally lost 



Line of Birth and B 

 Maturity. 



Line of Death- _ _L« L» IS \ H t _»..\ 



in interminable space), in organic life it cannot be said that the 

 true representation is a re-entering circular or other curve, as death 



