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audiences. It is not surprising, as from year to year lie grows 
more confident in his psychological and theological faith, and 
is more and more aware of the power which he wields, that he 
should take occasion as often as once a year to announce with 
befitting eloquence and ardour the advances by which the 
thoughtful men of the age are fast proceeding towards the 
mastery of the universe by scientific thought after truly scien- 
tific methods. On the 1st of October last he gave one of these 
confessions of his faith before the Birmingham and Midland 
Institute, of which he is President. It was characterized by 
his usual gracefulness in the introduction, and by his never- 
failing ingenuity in the development, and by more than usually 
startling frankness in the conclusion. In reading such a dis- 
course we very naturally ask, of what topic does it treat ? 
We confess that this is a question which it is not easy to 
answer. It might almost seem at first that it treats de omni 
scibili et quibusdam aliis, so wide is the range of subjects which 
it passes in review. It will be safe to say in the author’s own 
words that he begins by asserting “ that it is now generally 
admitted that the man of to-day is the child and product of 
incalculable antecedent time. His physical and intellectual 
textures have been woven for him during his passage through 
phases of history and forms of existence which lead the mind 
back to an abyssmal past,” and that he concludes with the 
equally confident assertions : “ Thus following the lead of 
physical science we are brought without solution of continuity 
into the presence of pi'oblems Avliich as usually classified lie 
entirely outside the domain of physics. To these problems 
thoughtful and penetrative minds are now applying those 
methods of research which in physical science have pi’oved 
their truth by their fruits. There is on all hands a growing 
repugnance to invoke the supernatural in accounting for the 
phenomena of human life ; and the thoughtful minds, just 
referred to, finding no trace of any other origin, are driven to 
seek in the interaction of social forces the genesis and develop- 
ment of man’s moral nature. If they succeed in their search 
— and I think they are sure to succeed — social duty will be 
raised to a higher level of significance, and the deepening 
sense of social duty will, it is to be hoped, lessen, if not 
obliterate, the strife and heart-burnings which now beset and 
disfigure our social life.” The terminus a quo is evolution as 
an admitted fact of the widest conceivable application. The 
terminus ad quern is a rounded scientific theory which excludes 
all faith in the supernatural and any possible scientific occasion 
for God ; involving as a corollary, the development from society 
of all the relations and sanctions of moral obligation. This 
