of Edinburgh, Session 1875-76. 
41 
human life, and meeting the evils which deface the world. I 
believe firmly in science and art, for their own purposes. I be- 
lieve in their reality, their efficacy, and their value ; I believe 
they are efficacious and valuable for the purposes for which 
they are ordained, but not for purposes for which they were not 
ordained. If I am asked what is the remedy for the deeper 
sorrows of the human heart — what a man should chiefly look to 
in his progress through life, with which to sustain him under trials 
nd affliction — I must point to something very different, to some- 
thing which in a well-known hymn is called ‘the old, old 
story/ It is this ‘ old, old story, told in a good old book, with 
the teaching to be found there, which is the greatest and best gift 
ever given to mankind, a gift carrying with it and imposing upon 
all alike, the most solemn trusts and responsibility, because arousing 
the fullest recollections of the past and the brightest hopes of the 
future. I venture upon this observation for myself, lest, in speak- 
ing of the immense value which is to be attached to the subjects 
with which we are dealing to-night, it should be supposed I was 
setting them up as having some exclusive right to allegiance upon 
your minds and hearts, or, at any rate, a right paramount to every 
other.” 
I much fear that this warning of the ex-Premier is needed. I 
fear it may be said, not merely of men of science, but of others 
also, that they often allow their hearts and minds to be so occupied 
— so engrossed with pursuits and studies, as to leave no room for 
other things which should find a place there also. 
Men of science have sometimes been charged, not merely with 
allowing their minds to be too much engrossed in this way, but 
with conceit and arrogance, engendered by the consciousness of 
possessing wisdom above the great bulk of their countrymen. The 
true man of science, is fairly amenable to no such charge. So 
far from possessing that “pride, and arrogance, and fro ward mouth,” 
which is condemned in the good old book referred to by Mr Glad- 
stone, be is , and at all events should he , the reverse of all this ; for 
whatever amount of knowledge he acquires, whatever the dis- 
coveries he achieves, no one sees so clearly the immensity of what 
still remains to be discovered. Even in our own planet, how little 
do we yet know of the composition of the earth’s interior, how 
VOL. IX. 
F 
