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those of lower rank should wait upon her. Yet, if I had spoken 
not of theology, but of the Christian religion, I know not but 
that the obligation would have been on the other side. Human 
philosophy has done little to make men better Christians ; but 
had Christ never become man and suffered, or had the Holy 
Spirit never been poured out, it may be a question whether 
the race of man would not have sunk lower and lower in their 
degradation, and whether there could have been that state of 
civilization which allows of the calm pursuit of intellectual stu- 
dies, or that mutual confidence which is necessary for such 
great undertakings as the establishment of museums, the per- 
fection of large and costly machinery, or the laying of sub- 
marine telegraphic cables. But I care not to compute too 
nicely the gain on either side, but rather to remember that 
every honest student may be the servant of Him, who has 
given to us the command, “ By love serve one another.” 
The Chairman. — I am sure you all feel very much indebted to Dr. 
Gladstone for his paper ; and I may say that both Dr. Gladstone’s paper 
and the preceding one exemplify one of the canons which Dr. Gladstone has 
laid down,— namely, that the first requisite for a successful prosecution of 
any inquiry into the ways of God, either in nature or revelation, is a reverent 
spirit. I am sure you will feel that that marks both the papers we have 
heard this evening ; and I now call upon any gentleman who wishes to make 
remarks on these papers, to do so. 
Capt. Fishbourne. — There was another canon that Dr. Gladstone gave 
us, which is a very excellent one, and which, I observe in the paper, is 
marked in Italics,— That we should first ascertain all the facts upon which our 
conclusions are based. Now I observed that in the first paper all the facts 
are assumed, and I must protest against this — against taking for granted that 
all the conclusions advocated by geologists are true. It appears to me they 
are all rather in question ; and the whole argument falls to the ground, if 
that be so. Mr. Brodie argues as if the current system of deposition and 
of the stratification of the earth were quite true ; but in the paper read at 
our last meeting, we were told that Professor Ramsay had alluded to strata 
in extent equal to an English county, that had all been turned up- 
side down. In Mr. Brodie’s paper the question is begged, while we want 
proof ; and until we have that we cannot admit the order of stratification. 
Again, in the paper it is assumed that the earth was once a great many 
degrees hotter than now — that the world was at one time a globe of fire, and 
gradually cooled down ; — and that this accounted for the tropical plants, and 
evidence of tropical signs in this country and in Spitzbergen. On the con- 
trary, however, it appears that will not answer the case at all. You may 
have a hotter climate the result of internal heat, but that will not give the 
tropical rays of the sun or the plants of the tropics. In this view is wanting 
