9 
The Rt. Rev. Bishop Short, D.D. (late Bishop of Adelaide). — My lord, 
ladies, and gentlemen. As a stranger among you — this being the first occa- 
sion upon which I have been able to attend one of the meetings of this most 
interesting Society — I desire, even if I should fail adequately to enforce the 
motion that has been placed in my hands by the Council, to express my 
regret that I have hardly had the opportunity, while working up, during a 
residence of thirty-four years, the diocese of Adelaide, of attending so much 
as I might, perhaps, otherwise have done, to the interests and extension of 
this Institute in that new and flourishing colony. If, therefore, I seem in- 
adequately to set forth its value and importance, which, I conceive, cannot 
be surpassed, you must attribute the failure to an imperfect acquaintance 
with the details of its working, and with the valuable papers which, from 
time to time, it has been enabled to issue on the important subjects that 
have been engaging the attention of the scientific and religious communities 
of this country. I was requested, in the first instance, to move a vote of 
thanks to your lordship, which I felt I might have been entitled to do, 
because I had, some sixty-two years ago, the good fortune to go up to Christ 
Church, Oxford, at the time when your lordship was entering upon your 
valuable and creditable career in that old and famous House. (Hear, hear.) 
I well remember thinking at that time that if I saw before me a fair repre- 
sentative of the English nobility in talent, diligence, and conduct, then 
this country possessed in the House of Lords an institution such as no other 
country in the world could boast. I have marked your lordship’s conduct 
through a period of more than sixty years, and I may say that, if your great 
ancestor thought fit to scoff at the characteristics of his fellow-men, the one 
prominent characteristic I have observed in your lordship is a persistent 
pursuit of the most wide and extensive charity and benevolence towards your 
poorer fellow-countrymen based on the great principles and doctrines of 
Christianity. (Applause.) I will say no more on this head, except that 
I believe this Society owes much of its prosperity, importance, 
and influence, to the character of its President. And now 
allow me to pass to the subject of the Society itself, or rather to the 
report of its progress during the past year. I am glad to remark that, 
although it has had to contend against the difficulties of the times, — and 
those difficulties are very great, — the number of its members has, nevertheless, 
increased, and it has given evidence of its powerful influence and vitality in 
a sister, less, perhaps, than a daughter, Institute which has grown up among 
our Anglo-Saxon brethren on the other side of the Atlantic in the form of a 
great American Institute of Christian philosophy. I think it a fitting subject 
for congratulation that, through your influence and by your aid and assistance 
and your example, several members of that Society belong to this, while some 
members of this Society belong to that. (Hear, hear.) I trust that this is 
an augury of fellow feeling and of united sympathy in the great objects for 
which we are assembled together in this hall to-night, and that, by means 
of mutual help, you will carry effectually to the whole Anglo-Saxon 
race, which is spread over the surface of the globe, and in the language which 
