so 
CIRCULAR, MAY 24, 1865. 
PROPOSED VICTORIA INSTITUTE, OR PHILO- 
SOPHICAL SOCIETY OP GREAT BRITAIN. 
London, 24 th May, 1865. 
It is proposed to found a new Philosophical Society for Great Britain, to 
he composed of Members or Fellows and Associates who are professedly 
Christians, and the great object of which will be to defend revealed truth 
from “the oppositions of science, falsely so called.” r . 
In the words of a recent author, “those who believe the Christian religion 
to be true and to rest upon rational grounds, and who consider that the only 
proper mode of propagating the truth is by proving it to be true, and of 
opposing error by disproving it, cannot help the burden tins places upon 
them.”— “ We are suffering from the consequences of a culpable stagnation 
thought, or from having failed to investigate fully and fairly, but ngi y, a 
the facts and arguments from time to time put forth as truths newly dis- 
covered by science and as being contradictory to the Scriptures. _ 
It is in order that this may now be done thoroughly, that the institution o 
a new Society for this express purpose is proposed. _ It will be of grea 
advantage to real Science, and has become a necessity for the Christian 
re] iHriil therefore be the duty of this Society to enter upon controversies of 
the day, and to give a hearing and encouragement to all who are . wlU ™ i ® ° 
battle with the “ oppositions of science,” in order to reduce its pretensions to 
th The r re ^ existing scientific body that fulfils these ends. At the present 
time, the only thing almost that is considered a fair subject for question an 
free opposition from every quarter, in all such societies, is Revealed Tr t . 
There is by no means an equal freedom allowed in questioning what is 
called “ Established Science.” 
At the Anthropological Society of London, on May 16th, Bishop Colenso 
spoke of “ the facts of Geology” as disproving the Scriptures ; as if he ha 
really not been aware, that at the last meeting of the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science (at which he was present), all these late y 
assumed foundation “facts” of Geology were publicly given up 
and disproved by Sir Charles Lyell in his Address which Bishop Co enso 
actually heard delivered. Along with this now abandoned Geology, all the 
cosmological notions which Mr. C. W. Goodwin, in “ Essays and Review 
boasted of as being “ certainly established science, contrary to the Mosa 
Cosmogony,” have vanished like a dream. , 
It will be the business of the new Philosophical Institution to recogniz 
no human science as “ established,” but to examine philosophically and freely, 
all that has passed as science, or is put forward as science, by individuals or 
