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looking at the character of those addresses, and I confess that my self-con- 
gratulation, I was almost about to say, has been somewhat saddened by the 
recollection that some of those mighty minds (for it is legitimate to say so 
now that those to whom I refer are gone) will no longer help to guide those 
of us who do not understand as thoroughly as they did some of the sublimer 
mysteries of science. From the very christening of this society we have 
been very much favoured indeed with regard to our annual addresses. I do 
not know whether I should be strictly logical if I were to talk of the Scientia 
Scientiarum, whose authorship no one knew, although everybody could guess 
it, or of that magnificent inaugural address without a title, to which we all 
listened with so much profit and pleasure when it was delivered by Mr. 
Mitchell, who has since gone to his reward. From that time to the present 
it has been shown and understood that the attitude of this society has entirely 
changed. When we began— I may say this now— we were somewhat of a 
feeble Hock. Wo then thought that if we could hold our own on the defen- 
sive principle that was as much as we could do. It is amusing now to see 
how at first the inaugural and the annual addresses partook of a defensive 
character. Take the Scientia Scientiarum of Mr. Reddie, the inaugural ad- 
dress of Mr. Mitchell, the next address by Mr. Reddie, and then come to the 
period when Mr. Brooke launched out and gave us the first lecture on physical 
science. It was not till 1869 that we felt ourselves so thoroughly established 
and well groundod that we might at last fairly make a deliberate attack on 
the enemy’s territory ; and then Dr. Thornton came out with “ The Credulity 
of Scepticism.” Since then the tendencies of our addresses has been more 
on the side of the offensive than the defensive ; for Dr. Irons turned round 
with his paper on the “ Darwinian Theory,” Professor Kirk let them have 
one on the “ Origin of the Moral Sense,” and Dr. Boultbee was down upon 
them with his essay on “ The Moral and Social Anarchy of Modern Unbelief.” 
Dr. Thornton was hard upon them with “ The Varying Tactics of Scepticism,” 
and the Radcliffe Observer was by no means more merciful with “ Modern 
Philosophic Scepticism Examined.” And I do not think they will find more 
pity and mercy in the address we have heard to-night on “ The Uncertainties 
of Modern Physical Science.” (Hear, hear.) Now, I will be bold to say 
that if we were to take these lectures as they are, and put them together 
in a volume we should have such a body of science— earnest Christian 
science, or scientific divinity, I do not know which would be the best way 
to put it— as has never before been issued ; and if this society had existed 
for no other purpose than that of giving these annual addresses to the 
v orld, it would have wrought to a very noble and a very good pur- 
pose. (Hear, hear.) But our thanks are not only due to Professor Birks for 
the annual address delivered to-night, of which I will say no more than that 
it is extremely well worthy to rank with those which have gone before, but 
they are also claimed for those who have read the papers we have heard 
during the session. I will not read out to you the names or titles of those 
papers; it is sufficient to say that there is no one who has heard them, 
