RECONSTRUCTION AND RESTATEMENT. 



21 



but wo must be still learning — religion and science are progressing 

 and we must be prepared to learn more and more. Let us show we 

 are of open mind and desire to recognise the truth. 



Lieutenant-General Sir Henr\ Geary, K.C.B. — It gives me 

 great pleasure to be allowed to second this vote of thanks to 

 Professor Silvanus Thompson. I am sure we have all listened to it 

 with the greatest possible interest, and I think it has been a great 

 opportunity for us to have heard the subject handled this afternoon 

 by so high an authority. It would be quite premature to attempt 

 to make any remarks upon the paper, because when it comes to be 

 printed it will require most of us to take it home for careful study : 

 but I think an additional reason for our thanking Professor Thompson 

 for coming amongst us is the particular era at which this paper has 

 been read. Even the most careless cannot be blind and deaf to the 

 unsettled state of the minds of people at the present moment. It 

 is a time when every thinking man and woman has to go to the 

 foundation of the faith in which they have been brought up and 

 examine it by the light of modern study, and I think in a few words 

 we can sum up the Professor's teaching, and that is, that perhaps 

 the greatest crime a man can commit in the twentieth century is to 

 close his mind to any influx of light. 



Mr. Martin L. Rouse, B.L. — As one deputed to ask Professor 

 Silvanus Thompson to come to lecture before us, and who has heard 

 him most delightfully hold forth to large audiences of the British 

 Association an exposition of electric power, I should like to concur 

 in the vote of thanks that is now being given ; but I would say I 

 am most firmly convinced that the evidence that we have of the 

 truth of the holy word of God, the Bible, as it stands, is over- 

 whelming. I w r ould also like to call attention to this fact, that this 

 very age is foretold by the Bible in more than one way. 

 One way is that when Daniel was about to close up his 

 prophecy the angel said to him : " Shut up the words and seal the 

 book, even to the time of the end ; many shall run to and fro, and 

 knowledge shall be increased." There, in that very book we have 

 embodied this most distinct prophecy of the character of the age 

 just before the winding up of God's purposes and the setting up of 

 Christ's visible kingdom upon the earth. 



The Chairman. — The Resolution which has been moved, 

 seconded and now spoken to, is that we present our best thanks to 



