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COMMEMORATION MEETING. 



tempting to express oneself with absolute certainty, to leave out 

 little difficult and doubtful points, and then the hearers or followers 

 go a great deal further. Now, as to evolution, I am not speaking of 

 the leaders ; I am speaking of what the average person understood 

 by the theory of evolution, which was that everything came by 

 chance, that there was no guiding principle, and naturally from that 

 it followed that there was no room for a Creator. Then came 

 Weissmann, who declared that acquired characteristics could not be 

 inherited. That knocked the whole bottom out of that theory of 

 evolution as above stated. Then came that wonderful old monk, 

 Mendel, who spent a lifetime studying the variations of pea plants 

 and the constant reversion to type. Was it worth his while 1 If 

 you study the results, you think it was. Unfortunately for him he 

 came before Weissmann, and therefore people shut their e} y es to 

 what he taught them. The result is this — if I may sum it up with 

 the vulgar inaccuracy I have accused the populace of in other things 

 ■ — it seems to me that, after all these years, those who patiently 

 waited find that, whatever there be of evolution in the creation of 

 the world, it is governed, not by chance but by fixed laws, and 

 where there is a law there must be a lawgiver, and if the omnipotent 

 Lawgiver was pleased to create by evolution, all I can say is that, 

 as Kingsley wisely put it, " It is a great deal easier to make a thing 

 than to make a thing make itself." If God worked by evolution, it 

 is more marvellous than if He worked by direct creation. Another 

 example : In all the storms of criticism, higher and lower, I begin to 

 wonder whether what Lord Bacon called " the Idol of the Den " 

 must be allowed to govern all questions of history. I remember 

 very well that it is only seventy years ago when Sir Henry Layard 

 carried out excavations in Nineveh, and brought the first of those 

 great slabs to the British Museum, and then began to study the 

 inscriptions on them. It appears that, after all these years, these 

 ancient inscriptions throw the most marvellous light on the accuracy 

 of the Old Testament. They do not always agree, but do accounts 

 from Berlin always agree with those from Paris 1 Learned members 

 of the Institute have given us great enjoyment by their researches 

 in these old inscriptions, and have certainly helped many to wait 

 and see, and I think it is worth waiting and seeing before one gives 

 up belief in Moses or dreams that some romantic writer invented 

 Abraham. I want to go further. I have just touched on two points, 



