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of rules be established such as are known in all public libraries. That is 
simply the scope of the last resolution. 
The resolutions were put, and carried unanimously. 
The President. — Before the Address is read, it is customary to ask if any 
Member has anything to urge or any remarks to make in regard to the 
general management of the Institute. 
[An interval here elapsed, during which there was no response,] 
Professor Kirk then delivered the following Address 
ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
’My Lord Shaetesbury—Ladies and Gentlemen — - 
A N annual meeting is in some sort a time of reckoning. 
Tkat of such an institute as the Victoria is such a time, 
not so much in a commercial sense as in that of the navigator, 
or traveller, who observes and calculates, that he may know 
his true position and the direction in which he is tending. 
The winds and currents of contemporary thought have been 
acting upon us during another year, and it cannot but be well 
that we should, as far as possible, ascertain what their com« 
bined effect has been. 
If I were asked to indicate the most dangerous set of the 
currents by which our course has been affected, I should refer 
at once to the doctrine of evolution,” so-called. A writer in 
one of our popular magazines* lately put the question as to 
whether this doctrine “makes it difficult to believe in im- 
mortal souls.” He was evidently inclined to answer in the 
affirmative, so he hoped that “ some means ” might “ be found 
of reconciling those instincts of which the belief in immortality 
was a product ” — that is, seeing the belief itself, at least in its 
present form, must die ! He imagines that what he calls the 
cc essence ” of that belief must remain, but cannot tell what 
that “ essence ” may be ! Should this utterance express a 
general state of mind among the most important classes in 
society, we are clearly drifting from our course, and are 
loudly called upon to inquire as to how our direction may be 
changed. 
It is, I think, because this doctrine of “evolution” so 
powerfully affects meffis faith in all that is truly distinctive in 
human nature, that it has become of such importance. It 
appears, therefore, specially suitable to our present reckoning 
that we should consider one/at least, of those points of diver- 
gence in which this distinction is most clearly seen. The one 
to which I have been directed specially to call your attention 
* Fraser’s Magazine, for April, 1872. 
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