26 
ORDINARY MEETING-, February 3, 1868. 
The Rey. W alter Mitchell, M.A., Vice-President, in the 
Chair. 
The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read and confirmed ; after 
which it was announced that the following hooks had been presented to the 
Institute, viz. : — - 
Plain Sermons for Perilous Times . By the Rev. W. Niven, B.D. 
From the Author. 
Thoughts on the Kingdom of God. By the same. From the Author. 
The Victory over Death. By the same. From the Author. 
The following Paper was then read : — 
LIFE: WITH SOME OBSERVATIONS ON ITS ORIGIN. 
By J. He Wheatley, Esq., M.Y.I., Hon. Loc. Sec., Sligo. 
T HE grand economy of nature is laid bare by science, to an 
extent inconceivable by our fathers. Yet by the inde- 
pendent study of organic and inorganic nature, the introduc- 
tion of life appears to be involved in impenetrable obscurity : 
and with all the skill, and all the industry, and all the talent, 
which have been applied to investigations of the heavens and 
of the earth, of the visible and of the invisible — what is the 
result but degradation, and defeat, and monstrous deductions, 
and absurdities rising above absurdities — the whole crowned 
by infidelity — if the vivifying breath of the Eternal be dis- 
allowed ? 
A proposition is very plainly put by Professor Huxley in 
expounding the development theory : — “ Given the existence 
of organic matter, its tendency to transmit its properties, and 
its tendency occasionally to vary ; and given the conditions of 
existence by which organic matter is surrounded ; that these, 
put together, are the causes of the present and of the past 
condition of organic nature.” 
This really sounds like a grim jest, at the expense of 
mathematics; — given everything to find everything; — and 
