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COMMEMORATION MEETING. 



intelligent men of to-day would admit that to force this or that 

 text into the controversy, whether on one side or the other, 

 would be an act of intellectual perversity. The Psalm which 

 we read in our Thanksgiving Service this afternoon tells us 

 that " the going forth " of the sun is " from the end of the 

 heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it," but not the most 

 ardent upholder of the doctrine of Verbal Inspiration would 

 now contend that this text proved the Ptolemaic theory to be 

 correct. 



We were happily spared a repetition of this experience when 

 the Galilean theory was accepted, for no one seemed to trouble 

 to weave this into the scriptural fabric. Had it been otherwise, 

 then, two hundred years later, when Herschel demonstrated 

 that the solar system as a whole was in movement, we should 

 have had again a so-called conflict between religion and science. 

 The progress of astronomical science during the last fifty years 

 has been removed from the sphere of religious controversy. 



Nevertheless, the Council of the Victoria Institute has felt 

 that it was important to have addresses from time to time on 

 subjects of pure science, delivered by men who were themselves 

 leading workers and authorities in the several departments 

 which they expounded. In astronomy, I may mention among 

 these, Sir Eobert Ball, Sir David Gill, Dr. Andrew Crommelin, 

 Dr. Sydney Chapman, Professor Alfred Fowler, Professor A. S. 

 Eddington. That these men consented to address the Institute 

 was an evidence of real sympathy with it ; indeed the first two 

 named were pleased to join it. Nevertheless, if we examine 

 their addresses, we shall find there is no distinctively theological 

 note, however sincere their acceptance of Christianity. Their 

 business when they came to address us was not to preach a 

 sermon, but to expound scientific methods and results. 



There is profit in science. The sciences are clean and sane 

 and healthy, and in that way are of immense service to 

 mankind. But they are not religion, and the terms that are 

 appropriate to religion are not appropriate when applied to 

 science. It is inexact to speak, as some do, as to science being 

 a revelation of God. It is not so : it is an enquiry by man 

 into the handiwork of God ; but God's handiwork is not God, 

 and man's research into it is a very different thing from 

 God's revelation of His own nature and character. It is 

 inexact do speak, as some do, of the truths of science. 

 Truth, strictly speaking, is an attribute of God ; it belongs to 

 personality, to character; not to the relation of thing to thing. 

 We have a right to speak of the facts of science, the 



