347 
of science ; and, feeling that there was not a full opportunity given for the 
discussion of this subject at Sion College, and regarding it as one that was 
in consonance with the subjects discussed by this Society, while believing it 
to be of the greatest importance that the matter should be fully and 
thoroughly ventilated, Mr. Reddie thought it right to bring the question 
before this Society, and wrote the paper which will form the subject of this 
evening’s discussion. I have now to invite further discussion on this paper, 
and as Dr. Gladstone told me on the last occasion that he wished to make 
some further observations on this subject, I am sure we shall be delighted 
to hear anything he has to say. 
Dr. Gladstone. — I had no expectation of being called upon to open the 
discussion, and perhaps I am hardly prepared to do so. On the previous 
occasion, what I said bore upon this point, that in his lecture at Sion 
College, Professor Huxley enunciated certain views with regard to the 
antiquity of the earth and of man upon the earth ; and he expected that he 
was introducing something that would meet with a good deal of opposition, 
but found a large portion of the audience prepared to admit his conclusions 
on these points, and to think that there was nothing in them opposed to 
revelation. I expressed my opinion that there was nothing in those conclu- 
sions that Christians might not freely accept. I do not care at the present 
moment to go more fully into that argument, and if I offer a few remarks, 
I would rather offer them upon a larger issue — an issue which bears upon 
our practice as well as upon our belief. As I understand— for I was not 
present when Professor Huxley introduced the subject— he went to Sion 
College in the belief that the clergy, or that religious people were, upon the 
whole, rather opposed to science. (Hear, hear.) I believe that there is also 
a conviction existing in the minds of some other parties that, upon the whole, 
scientific men are rather opposed to religion. These two opinions are the con- 
verse of each other— and in fact a kind of polar antagonism ; and if I had an 
electric machine here, I could illustrate what I am saying by demonstrating 
how one body would become positively when the other is negatively electrified; 
while the more strongly the one became positive the more strongly would the 
other become negative. I think that in society there is a great tendency to 
become polarized, and that the more strongly one set of opinions is insisted 
upon, the more strongly is another set of opinions enforced. I am afraid 
that sometimes we are disposed to fall into Professor Huxley’s error. He 
thought there was this sort of difference between the scientific mode of 
thought and the theological mode 
The Chairman. — That is hardly so. Professor Huxley announced that 
he intended in his lecture to “ draw attention to the difference supposed to 
exist between scientific and clerical opinion, and to inquire into the cogency 
of the arguments by which some scientific doctrines are supported.” The 
majority of his arguments he derived from geological evidence of the antiquity 
of the earth. He did not go into the question of the antiquity of man so 
much as the antiquity of the earth. He took the antiquity of man by the 
way, and then went into the general question of geological ages. 
