12 
ot inconsistent with Holy Writ and with truth. This is a part which the 
Council have to perform. If they have performed it to the satisfaction of 
the Institute they feel that they have reason to be grateful, and they 
ask the members of the Institute, whom they represent in this respect, to 
excuse any inadvertency, and not to be quick to find out in that which is 
put forth, something with which they may not agree, but rather to be 
ready indulgently to accept for the better part all those truths which are 
being brought forward for discussion at the meetings of this Societ}'. 
We cannot discuss the truth without, in some degree, giving pain to those 
to whom what we discuss is new. All light when it first comes to us dazzles 
the eye ; but when the eye is accustomed to that light we very often find 
that that which only seemed to dazzle us when it first Ciiine upon us is, in 
truth, a medium by which we see more clearly, and can by it understand 
more truly and more scientifically and more religiously those great truths 
which it is the purpose of this Society to bring forward and to show that 
they are— I will not say consistent with— but that they are in truth part of 
that great body of truth of which we should desire a close understanding, 
feeling sure that all truth, whether it arises from scientific inquiry or from 
religious study, comes from one great source — that source of light witli 
whom is no shadow of turning. (Cheers.) 
The Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G. — I wull now request the Lord O’Neill to be 
good enough to deliver the Address he has kindly prepared. 
The Eight Hon. the Lord O’Neill then read the following Annual 
Address : — 
ON THE CREDIBILITY OF TEE SUPERNATURAL. 
1. A LL unbelieving writers appear to me, in so far as I am 
acquainted with their works, to assume, without any 
attempt at proof, that the supernatural is incredible. Thus, 
with some of them, the fact that a miracle is recorded in a 
passage of Scripture is alleged to be sufidcient to warrant its 
being pronounced unauthentic. Or the fact that an historical 
event coincides with an alleged prediction of it is pronounced 
a sufficient proof that the supposed prediction was written after 
the event, and therefore that the book containing that pre- 
diction falsely pretends to a prophetic character. Or, again, 
if a fact recorded by a confessedly uninspired historian is found 
