528th OKDINAEY GENERAL MEETING. 



MONDAY, MARCH 4th, 1912. 



The Venerable Archdeacon Sinclair, D.D., in the Chair. 



The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read and signed, and the 

 Secretary announced the elections of Mr. Sidney Collett, formerly an 

 Associate, as a Member, C. H. F. Major, Esq., a life Associate, and 

 T. A. Stewart, Esq., as Associate, and the Rev. Professor Hechler as 

 a Missionary Associate. 



The Chairman, in introducing the Bishop of Down, Connor an I 

 Dromore, said that it gave him great pleasure to do so, and that 

 they all felt it a privilege to hear a paper from one who had taken 

 high honours at Trinity College, Dublin, and whose career had 

 justified his earlier successes. As examining chaplain to a former 

 Bishop of what was now his own diocese, as chaplain to the Lord 

 Lieutenant, as Donnellan Lecturer, as Bishop of Clogher, and then 

 of Ossory, he had furthered the cause of Truth and laid a burden 

 of indebtedness upon all who had studied his works. 



He then called upon him to read his paper. 



DIFFICULTIES OF BELIEF. 

 By the Right Rev, The Bishop of Down, D.D. 



THE difficulties of belief, which have so powerful an effect 

 on modern minds, may be said to be due in the main to 

 three causes : — 



First, the influence of modern science ; secondly, the tendency 

 of modern criticism ; and thirdly, the character of the modern 

 ethos. 



All these are related ; for modern criticism is very largely 

 the application of scientific methods to history and to historical 

 documents, and the modern ethos has taken shape under 

 conditions which owe their nature in a great degree to the 

 transformation of the material environment of human life by 

 the application of the discoveries of physical science. 



We shall consider our subject in the three departments which 

 liave just been outlined. 



(1) Every really thoughtful Christian believer in our day 

 has, in some way or other, found means of adjusting his 

 scientific creed so as to avoid conflict with his theology. There 

 are people who find no difficulty in such an adjustment, because 

 they think in water-tight compartments. They never dream 

 of applying in the sphere of their religion the categories which 

 dominate their science. There are some very powerful minds 



