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side ; but nevertheless what is said and insisted on in the infidel halls is 
frequently published in our churches and public assemblies. How easy it 
is to get into this antagonism, and to think on the one side that scientific men 
are not disposed to be religious, and on the other side that religious men are 
not disposed to be scientific ! I do not believe the statement either on the 
one side or the other ; and I think that we should do dishonour to God and 
an injury to our fellow-man if we admitted either proposition. I assure you 
it has often pained me deeply when I have been seated in a pew, and have 
heard from the pulpit without being able to say a "word in reply, or I should 
have been brawling in church, the statement that there was this opposition 
between scientific men and revelation, and various things brought forward in 
which the preacher has shown the most lamentable ignorance as to scientific 
facts. I have heard preachers asserting that such and such things must 
be because the Bible says they are, and I have seen men listening to 
these statements, knowing very well that what the preachers have been 
inveighing against was actually true, and, of course, drawing the conclusion 
that, if the Bible is opposed to what they knew to be true, the Bible must 
be false. I have often felt that in such cases the preacher was doing the 
work of the infidel more effectually than the infidel himself. I thank you for 
the way in which you have received my remarks. You understand what I 
am striving against ; and, if I speak with warmth, it is because I feel what 
I say, knowing how apt Christian men are to fall into the error against 
which I would guard you. On the other hand, you ought to assert wherever 
you go that there is not the antagonism which has been supposed between 
scientific and clerical opinion, but that faith in the Bible and faith in 
natural science are perfectly compatible. 
Rev. C. A. Row. — I thought on the last occasion that there was danger 
of this discussion becoming a wholly personal one, and that we were too much 
engaged with Professor Huxley, and too little with the facts of science and of 
the Bible. I regret that Mr. Reddie is not present on this occasion, because 
I had intended to make some remarks on the spirit which pervades a portion 
of his paper, and with which I cannot say I feel perfectly satisfied. I am 
convinced that he has treated the matter in a manner unsuited to us as a 
philosophical society, and I am afraid that, if this is done, we shall not attain 
much credit outside of this room. I have marked some passages to which I 
must make some reference. In the fourth page, speaking of the persecution 
of Socrates, he says : — “ And who were his persecutors ? The professors of 
his day, who pretended to know everything, and went about giving lectures 
and teaching for profit their deleterious sophisms. I trust such a state of 
things is not in store for us ! ” Now, I have yet to learn that Socrates was put 
to death by the professors of his day. The persons who sought his death 
were the Sophists, and I am sorry that Mr. Reddie has sought to connect 
them with the modern professors. They were as much alike as chalk is to 
cheese. Those who have read Thirlwall’s “History of Greece,’’ and have 
studied Plato, will not draw the conclusion that the professors of his day were 
the persons who put Socrates to death. I am aware that Plato has made 
