12 



ANNUAL MEETING. 



subjects ; and in a President like the late Sir Gabriel Stokes, 

 we had one, not like men who have already made up their 

 minds beforehand, but a nian who was able to discuss a subject 

 with the keen knov/ledge of an expert. He would be a bold man 

 who could come into this Society and say these difficulties had 

 passed away, and that this twentieth century had overcome the 

 difficulties in Holy Scripture. It was Bishop Butler, quoting 

 Origen, who said if we believed that the creation proceeded 

 from God in which there was so much mystery, and that the 

 Scriptures also, proceeded from God, we must expect to find 

 difficulties in the one as in the other ; and if God occupies that 

 position that Christians hold Him to occupy, they must still have 

 to endeavour to account for things that are unaccountable. 



I often wonder if those who sought to contrast Scripture 

 with the true teachings of science as they did in the past, ever 

 thought of the difficulties into which they landed themselves 

 in. Supposing the great controversy between Galileo and 

 those who urged him to retract his true notion of tlie orbit 

 of the earth had ended in their establishing that the earth did 

 not move, and all the other phenomena could be accounted ibr 

 on their hypothesis ; see what it means. It shows what 

 difficulties you get into if you do not probe things to the 

 bottom. The earth, we now know, goes round in its orbit in 

 365 days, and that orbit is calculated and the time it occupies. 

 Take the hypothesis that existed, and that Galileo should not 

 question — that the whole solar system and stars out of our 

 sight, billions of miles away, went round the earth in 24 

 hours. Which is the more marvellous — which is the more 

 extraordinary proposition to reconcile with Scripture ? That is 

 only one illustration. But as I believe and most Christians 

 believe, the further you examine the wOrks of the God of 

 Nature the more clearly do you discern the God of Providence ; 

 and it is that which this Society, as I believe, is founded to 

 investigate and determine. 



There is another class of persons I may mention in passing, 

 and those are persons (it is true they do not adopt the 

 formulary that the apostles of error, as I venture to call them 

 them, do) who adorn eveiy proposition with long words ; so 

 that if you do not agree with them, you cannot say why, for 

 you do not know exactly what they mean ! The Unknowable 

 (with a great U) is always spoken of "as if you should understand 

 it. It is only a difference of words before us : for we believe in 

 an Almighty Creator, one who, in the language of one of our 

 creeds, is " Incomprehensible " by human intelligence, because 



