COM.M KJIOKA Tlt»N M H KT1 NG . 



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Those who have known him all the years I have done know of his 

 intense personality, his intense earnestness, and his marvellous 

 powers, and I should be very sorry to try and represent him 

 worthily. 1 only occupy his place,and I am sure you will join with 

 me in asking our Secretary to convey to him and also to Dr. Wace 

 our deep regret that they cannot be present at this Jubilee meeting 

 of a Society they have helped so very greatly. All I am going to 

 do is to venture to be egoistic. There are disadvantages of old age, 

 and one of them is that one is very apt to fall into what my friend- 

 call the anecdotage, and I am going to venture rather to be anecdotal 

 than philosophical. I do want to bear testimony to the wonderful 

 benefit the Victoria Institute has been to me personally. Fifty 

 years is a long time, and fifty years ago I was very much in earnest 

 about orthodoxy and science, and I profoundly believed both 

 were true, and they appeared to be fighting violently. Well, those 

 principles of the Institute we have just heard read came as a guiding 

 star to me in those times of stress. Nowadays I am much more 

 sure of the object of my orthodoxy than I was then, but perhaps not 

 quite so sure about the exact expression of it ; and as for my 

 science, well, I was cocksure then, and now I really don't know what 

 to be certain of. All the dear old theories (?) of atoms, vibrations 

 of aether, and what not, where are they 1 One is quite sure that 

 " Magna est Veritas et prsevalebit," but I suppose nowadays it is 

 pronounced in quite a different way. We pronounce things differ- 

 ently — at least, other people do — but it is the same Latin, the same 

 words. It means exactly what St. Jerome meant when he so trans- 

 lated the Greek. And so there are changes in expression, and 

 before we condemn them, although we may regret them, let us make 

 quite sure there is no change in substance. We find people some- 

 times expressing an old truth in a new way ; do not let us be in a 

 hurry to condemn them. I want to speak about two movements in 

 which the Institute took a great deal of interest, and certainly 

 helped me very much. First of all I am going to speak about 

 evolution, and may I say that the evolution theory, like a good 

 many other theories, has suffered very much by its followers running 

 a great w T ay ahead of their leaders. It is an interesting study how 

 in matters philosophical and theological and in matters scientific 

 public opinion has forced the leaders into a very awkward position 

 in the attempt to make it all quite clear and simple. It is very 



