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Hon. Secretary. (Cheers.) I regret, however, to say that we have lost two 
members, through death, during the past week ; namely, Lord Harris and Sir 
Donald McLeod. 
The following paper was then read by the Author : — 
FORGE AND ENERGY. By Charles Brooke, M.A., 
F.R.S., V.P.Y.I., &c. 
T HE principle of the Conservation of Energy having been by 
some writers misapplied to the promotion of views that 
lead directly to Materialism, Pantheism, or Atheism, others 
who rightly hold it to be one of their first and highest duties 
to oppose such views and to counteract their tendency, 
appear to have held it necessary to impugn the principle 
altogether, instead of assigning a limit to the scope of its 
legitimate application. Two essays are here specially referred 
to: one by the Rev. J. Moore, entitled “ The Heresies of 
Science,” published in the London Quarterly Review for July, 
1871, in which the theories discussed are those of “ Natural 
Selection” and “ The Conservation of Energy ” ; the other bv 
the Rev. J. McCann, D.D., entitled “ Force and its Manifesta- 
tions,” and recently read before this society. 
2. Hr. M‘Cann states (§ 1) that the conservation of energy, 
if established, would “ in Biology lead to Evolution, in Theology 
to Pantheism, in Philosophy to Materialism, and in Morals to 
Necessitarianism : this cannot be conceded as a necessary 
sequence, for if it be freely admitted, as the writer most heartily 
does, that all physical laws must ever be held to be subservient 
to the far higher law of an Almighty Will, he cannot be 
supposed, in upholding the truth of this principle, to advocate 
those evil tendencies, which it is admitted must ensue, if the 
existence of that higher law be either directly or by implication 
denied. 
3. On the doctrine of “ Evolution by Natural Selection,” 
impugned by Air. Moore, it would be foreign to the subject of 
this paper to enter at any length. That the existing order of 
nature might have so arisen, had it been in accordance with the 
will of the Creator, cannot be denied; but that any such 
supposed course of events has actually happened is quite 
another question. To the mind of the writer this doctrine 
presents such grave difficulties that he is unable to accept its 
probability, and is generally in accord with what the author of 
“Heresies” has written on the subject. It will only further 
be remarked that a belief in the progressive development of 
