VI 
PREPACK. 
from ancient monuments, information that would throw 
greater light upon the earliest days of Chaldean and Egyp- 
tian History, an inquiry including careful and systematic 
exploration in Assyria and Egypt. Two other papers 
are Geological, and have reference to the antiquity of 
man, a subject not out of place, as the Institute is “ ever 
ready to examine with respectful attention all theories 
founded on actual observation, and on cautious induction 
from observed facts : 33 and here it may not be inappropriate 
to quote some recent remarks by the Radcliffe Observer.* 
“ We need not, in accepting the Bible narratives of man’s creation, 
repudiate one fact accurately deduced from modern scientific research. 
* * * * It is only when we come to deductions unauthorised by the strict 
rules of scientific investigation * * * * that we demur. * * * * 
“ I would say in the cause of science, that we seem to be philosophizing and 
theorizing too fast in the present age. Both in the physics of astronomy 
and in the natural sciences , we seem to be leaving the cautious processes of 
induction, and rather to be trying to adapt facts to preconceived theories, 
than to frame theories which shall explain (as in the instance of gravitation) 
large multitudes of facts. 
“ In the interests of science then, as well as of religion, I would deprecate, 
not the research, not the brilliant practical successes resulting from it, but 
the incautious use, as it seems to me, which has been so frequently made of 
it under the dazzling influence of a few of its great expounders. Especially, 
too, must we be cautious when the interests of religion are, or seem to be 
affected by the recent developments of science. Truth must be preserved 
at all hazards ; and religion, which is the service which we owe to the God 
of all truth, will never ultimately be found at variance with it.” 
And Principal Dawson, LL.D., F.R.S., in his new work,f 
says : — 
“The great discoveries as to the physical constitution and probable 
origin of the universe, the doctrine of the correlation and conservation of 
forces, the new estimates of the age of the earth, the overthrow of the 
doctrine of spontaneous generation, the high bodily and mental type of the 
earliest known men, the light which philology has thrown on the unity of 
language, our growing knowledge of the uniformity of the constructive and 
* Reliij. lUst, of Man, p. 5. 
f Origin of the World. 
