PREFACE. 
XI 
supplemented by remarks and contributions from Sir J. Risdon 
Bennett, Vice-President of tlie Royal Society; Professor 
Lionel S. Beale, M.D., F.R.S. ; Vice-Chancellor J. W. Dawson, 
LL.D., C.M.G., F.R.S. ; Sir Joseph Fayrer, M.D., K.C.S.I., 
F.R.S. ; and others. To these authors and to others who have 
taken part in the discussion of the subjects treated, the best 
thanks of the Members and Associates are due. They have 
sought to carry on their investigations strictly on the lines of the 
Institute ; searching for the actual philosophical or scientific 
truth on all questions ; and where any question has borne on 
Holy Scripture, and been used against it, the opponents of 
Revelation have been disarmed by impartial inquiry, which 
has proved the baselessness of the alleged facts which were 
relied on to support erroneous theories.* 
The mention of this subject induces a reference to a state- 
ment which has often been made of late by the opponents 
of all religious teaching, namely, that the progress of Science 
has given a death-blow to all belief in the truth of the Bible, 
and that men of Science no longer regard that book or the 
religious belief it inculcates. f So false a statement might not 
be worthy of notice, but that it has been credited even 
* That this is the true way of “ reconciling apparent discrepancies between 
Christianity and Science ” (see Object 1) was urged by the Institute’s leading 
founder, Mr. J. Reddie, in a Pamphlet, on “ The True Character of the 
Institute,” entitled Scientia Scientiarum, 1865, in which he says : — “ I 
would beg leave to adopt the prudent language employed by the Rev. 
Canon H. B. Tristram, F.R.S., before the British Association at Bath, 
in 1864, upon reading his valuable paper ‘On the Deposits in the Basin of 
the Dead Sea.’ ‘ He said he had a dread of attempting to corroborate 
Scripture by natural or physical arguments which may be refuted; for the 
objector is apt to think that, when he has refuted the weak argument, he has 
refuted the Scriptural statement.’ ” 
t In reference to this it is remarkable to find Professor Huxley, when 
lecturing at Liverpool on Education (February 16, 1883), mentioning the Bible 
as the first of the books which, in his opinion, our youth should study. “ I 
have said it before, and I repeat it here : if a man cannot get literary culture 
of the highest kind out of his [sic] Bible he cannot get it out 
of anything.” Again, he wrote in the Contemporary Review, December, 
1870, “I must confess I have been no less seriously perplexed to know by 
