ON THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 



225 



the freedom of sons, we become more like that from which we 

 come. 



" Lo, these are parts of his ways : but how small a whisper do 

 we hear of him ? but the thunder of his power who can with- 

 stand ? " Job xxvi, 14. 



Discussion. 



The Eev. A. Irving, D.Sc, B.A., said that as no one else seemed 

 ready to start the discussion, he would venture to express his 

 gratitude to Professor Sims Woodhead, and his warmest appreciation 

 of the most useful and telling paper, to which they had just listened. 

 He thought the Victoria Institute was to be congratulated on 

 receiving such an able and thorough-going treatment of perhaps 

 the most difficult of all questions that confront the serious student 

 of science. No one could doubt that the Professor was speaking as 

 a master in his own field, and with authority second to none in his 

 own department of work and research. One great value of the 

 paper was perhaps the adchtional light thrown upon questions raised 

 by Professor Schafer's Dundee address to the British Association, 

 while it seemed to serve as a wholesome check upon some hasty 

 and rash deductions that had been drawn from that in some 

 journalistic quarters. He ventured to say that Professor Sims 

 Woodhead had in his short paper done much to restore mental 

 equilibrium in many quarters, where people's minds had been 

 rendered unsteady from the public utterances of his distinguished 

 confrere at Dundee ; and the more so since he had sternly resisted 

 the temptation, which ever besets the specialist in original work, to 

 predict what we shall know before we do know it, thus making 

 scientific faith do the duty of actual knowledge. To those who had 

 been straining towards the attainment of such an intellectual 

 standpoint as should enable them to see the teachings of theology 

 and science in one philosophical perspective, the concluding 

 paragraphs of the Professor's paper gave perhaps the most illumina- 

 ting summing up of the essential factors of this great problem, 

 which the twentieth century had yet seen. And so, thank God ! there 

 comes to us out of a Cambridge laboratory of European fame, and 

 from the heart of Cambridge academical life, a voice teaching the 

 student of science the lesson of " sincerity and truth " in his 

 studies, reminding us of those depths of human experience and 



Q 



