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think that in constructing any ethical system we should have to make that 
feeling our foundation, and become indebted to the Old Testament for laying 
down the principles on which alone ethical philosophy can be raised. 
Bev. Dr. Bigg. — I am very glad to have found myself able at last to be 
present at one of these meetings. I have long been a member of this 
association, but the pressure of business has made it impossible for me to be 
here before. Perhaps I may be permitted to express some of the feelings 
which have risen in my mind as I have sat, almost as a stranger, listening 
here. I confess it was with some feeling of disappointment that I heard the 
minute criticisms given at an earlier period of the meeting. I was longing 
that we might get to some principles and points bearing on the great ques- 
tions before us, to which we might attach importance, and which might be 
discussed as principles. Still, the nature of the paper before the meeting 
was, no doubt, in itself the reason and, to a large extent, the justification for 
that minute criticism ; and probably the want in the paper of any clear 
principles which should suggest the course of argument or discussion was 
another reason why in the earlier part of the meeting we were not led to 
look at these great principles and points to which I have referred. I confess 
I almost felt tempted, as I listened to Mr. Beddie’s criticism, to a reaction in 
favour of Mr. English on one or two points. I confess it does seem to me 
that Mr. Beddie need not in his criticism have gone so far as to intimate a 
doubt as to whether each one truth does or does not involve another truth. 
I apprehend that we cannot even conceive a truth of any sort whatever 
without reference to other truths upon which it more or less depends, 
and which must be more or less inseparable from it. And I hope also that 
I may use the word “ insoluble ” in reference to a problem, and not be com- 
pelled to say “ insolvable.” With regard to “force” and “will” I think 
Mr. English is metaphysically right ; and when we come to the metaphysical 
conception of which I apprehend he was speaking, force does inevitably and 
inseparably connect itself in our own mind or consciousness with something 
like our own consciousness of power or will. At the same time it is clear 
form what has been said by Dr. Irons, Mr. Beddie, and Mr. Bow, that the 
paper to which our attention has been directed is characterized by at least 
the average preponderance of statements not very carefully sifted by the 
writer before he felt it his duty to give them to the society. As regards the 
principles which have been brought before us, there are two or three things 
which I should like to say. Mr. Mitchell has told us that only the Bible 
could have given us that grand principle of morality which in fact was the 
light of conscience in Joseph, but I could not help thinking myself — where 
did Joseph get that light from ? At the time when Joseph was put under 
his temptation, he had no Bible to illuminate him. The very man who 
himself uttered that beautiful, and touching, and sublime principle, which 
Joseph enunciated, and which is recorded in the Bible, and which there 
occurs in its original character as the record of a previous fact — that very 
man must have derived the principle, not from any Bible, for there was 
none, but he must have been a moral being, a conscientiously moral being, a 
