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CLEMENT C. J. WE£B. ESQ., M.A., ON 



sake gladly. Some years after\vards St. Paul was at Philippi, and 

 the military authorities seized him and Silas, and had them cruelly 

 scourged, and thrust into prison, without any form of trial, hut 

 simply to please the mob. Against this act of tyranny St. Paul 

 protested strongly, and not without success. So far as I know, the 

 Quakers have themselves always observed the same kind of distinc- 

 tion. The Quakers, as Miss Hodgkin has reminded us, helped 

 many slaves to escape when slavery existed in the United States. 

 They protested against slavery, but when they were sent to prison 

 or were fined for helping slaves to escape, they submitted to the 

 authority of the State peaceably and went to gaol and paid the fines 

 without a protest. That is a consistent attitude. 



I think some points raised by other speakers were due to want of 

 time for the careful reading which this most careful paper demanded, 

 a paper for which I feel that we are much indebted to the lecturer. 

 Two statements which I have marked as being of first importance 

 are on page Hi : 



" In the last resort we must see for ourselves that a proposition 

 is true or an action right. We must see it, I say, for ourselves ; but 

 we can only see it for ourselves because it is so indeiDeudently of our 

 seeing it." 



I think those sentences are well worth our keeping in constant 

 memory. 



Mr. Joseph Graham : T should like to add a tribute to the excel- 

 lence of the paper. Mr. Collett got near the line of thought which 

 I Avish to emphasize. That is, concerning the conscience that is 

 misleading. We know men do very extraordinary things in the 

 name of Conscience ; and so far as the definitions I have heard have 

 gone, I see no reason to suppose that men are not quite conscientious 

 in doing those things. There seems to me, therefore, to be some 

 other quality coming in. Conscience, no doubt, is an inward voice 

 speaking to everyone, and if that voice is listened to in a regenerate 

 heart it will lead right, but not necessarily with the majority. How, 

 then, to reconcile the majority to the individual ? That is a point 

 I should have liked Mr. Webb to deal with. 



Mr. M. L. KorsE, B.A., B.L. : Professor Orchard, I think, criticised 

 Mr. Webb a little needlessly in saying that, when he spoke of 

 liberty of conscience, he associated Conscience alwa^'s with action. 



