AND TUTOR TO FREDERICK THE NOBLE. 



229 



Discussion. 



Professor D. S. Margoliouth, Mr. M. L. Rouse, Lt.-CoL 

 Mackinlay, and the Secretary expressed their indebtedness to- 

 Professor RoCxET for his interesting address, and the CHAIRMAN, in 

 closing the proceedings, said — 



In this Institute we pronounce the name of F. Godet with 

 emphatic and grateful reverence, first because of the Entente 

 Cordiale that subsists between English and French Christians, but 

 also because the Philosophical Society of Great Britain recognises 

 the oecumenical bond of gratitude that binds it to a savant of 

 European renown. 



Our aim, like his, is to present the faith of Christ in a manner that 

 can recommend it to the sincere thought of our age. 



Among ourselves, scholars like Lyttelton and Westcott have 

 recognised the merits of the great Swiss Expositor. Westcott 

 expressed the high esteem in which he held Godet's Commentary on 

 St. John. E. G. Selwyn, a scholar of the younger generation, told 

 me last week that he still regarded Godet's book on the Eesurrection 

 Narratives as among the most useful and convincing on that 

 subject. 



I myself v/ould note by a pair of illustrations the remarkable 

 gifts which Godet possessed : the gift of speculation and the gift of 

 scientific sympathy. 



The Study on Angels in the volume of Old Testament Studies 

 illustrates very clearly the fine quality of Godet's speculative 

 mind. The study in the same volume on the first chapters of 

 Genesis illustrates his vivid interest in the questions which sometimes 

 divide, but ought really to unite, the theologian and the physical 

 philosopher. 



In this Institute, it is not our function to directly propagate 

 religion, but to make the belief in true religion more easy and more 

 secure. We are in this sense acting in the spirit of the old and 

 beautiful saying that theology is the queen of the sciences, meaning 

 that theology holds a court in which all the sciences have their 

 welcome and an honoured place. We are inspired by that dictum 

 of Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) : " Philosophia quaerit veritatem ; 

 Theologia invenit ; Religio habet." 



