AXXUAL 3r>:ETIX0. 



of subject having its foundation in nature that is below the 

 dignity of a philosophical inquiry." 



Now our knowledge is necessarily derived through the 

 instruments the Creator has given us — our hearing, sight, 

 touch, are but instruments for conveying to " something 

 some^Yhere " a consciousness of external objects. The 

 memory, whatever it is, and wherever it resides, is but 

 an instrument which stores up our previous conception, 

 and that combination of faculties which we call the reason, 

 and which does more than mere memory in bringing our 

 minds to a conclusion, is but an instrument ; each and all 

 of these faculties in turn are liable to error, the lens may 

 be defective and throw the rays of light at a WTong angle, 

 and the nerves of hearing and touch may be insensible, and 

 send no message at all to the inner consciousness, or may be 

 so partially defective as to send one which is altogether 

 erroneous. The reasoning faculty may be so completely 

 out of order that even when there is no error in the memory 

 of facts previously stored up, the true conclusion is not 

 deduced. These are errors necessarily incident to the inves- 

 tigation of truth by creatures dependent on instruments for 

 the aggregate of ascertained facts which we call knowledge, 

 but what relation have the faculties of creatures so endoAved 

 with an eternal and omniscient and almighty Being who sees 

 not by the eye, hears not by the ear, who from all eternity 

 has been the same, to whom the past, present, and future 

 are one and the same, these w^ords only suggest relations 

 of time to the children of the hour, but are unmeaning as 

 applicable to one who is the same yesterday, to-day, and 

 for ever, the great I AM, throughout that eternity which is 

 part of His essential attribute as the Creator, the Everlasting 

 God, and of Avhom one of old asked "canst thou by searching 

 find out God?" 



One is not very likely in these days to undervalue the 

 services to knowledge in its widest sense of the researches 

 of scientific men. One is indeed wonderstruck at the variety 

 and width of those researches. It is absolutely bewildering 

 to think of the silent but effective additions to knowledge 

 which are being made from day to day by men who silently 

 and often without reward, except the satisfaction which suc- 

 cessful scientific research affords for its own sake, and which 

 reveal to us unknown wonders in creation. 



Major -General Dryson, for example, discovered in a region 

 Avhere all was supposed to be known, the Poles describing 



