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difficulty I have in commenting upon his remarks, from the fact that he has 
not examined my first papers, and the grounds of my whole argument. He 
only came in at the close ; but I believe from the few 7 remarks which I heard 
him make, that he would be able to do justice to my argument as a whole. 
I would ask him and others present — Mr. Herbert Spencer, or any other 
gentleman capable of thinking and reasoning well — I would ask them in the 
interest of truth to read these papers when complete, and to examine them 
as carefully and rigidly as they would go through any proposition of 
Euclid ; and if they find anything that is a bare gratuitous assumption, 
I should like them to tell me of it. If I have assumed anything they must 
not grant, I will withdraw it at once. They cannot think that any 
human being has an interest ultimately in a lie. If these papers, written in 
substance seventeen years ago, and which I have hitherto kept back, intend- 
ing to have them published after my death —if these papers, the anxious 
result of much thought and care, are untrue, let them perish ! I should not 
care for them. I care only for truth. But I do know, as surely as I know I 
am standing here, that a reasonable being whose mind is constructed in the 
ordinary way, and who will read these papers from beginning to end, must 
come to the conclusion at which they arrive, and therefore I feel, with 
the greatest possible thankfulness, after Mr. Holyoake’s avowals to-night, 
that such a man will not be allowed to remain where he now is. (Hear, hear.) 
I have nothing to say to those specific difficulties which he has referred to, 
except the very reverse of what our kind friend Dr. Rigg has said. I do not 
at all believe that my intellect and moral convictions have the least 
antagonism, — not the least. I am a unit — an individual. I could not go 
on unless my reason and my conscience went together. It would be a long 
matter and would require many papers to go into all these things, but if it is 
the wish of the Council of this Association that I should at a future time 
apply the principles laid down here — the fundamental deontology — to any 
department of Christian theology so-called, I will do it logically and strictly, 
or I will give up my theology. But I would ask whether this is the place in 
which to hold a theological discussion ? 
Mr. Reddie. — No, it is not ; but will you be good enough to explain 
wherein you consider Dr. Rigg’s argument so adverse to your own ? 
Dr. Irons. — It was a bad argument which he used, that his intel- 
lectual convictions were on one side, and that he might say, with Mr. 
Holyoake and others, that faith in God came in collision with his moral 
inward convictions. That is what I understood him to say 
The Chairman. — I did not understand him in that sense. 
Mr. Reddie. — He only meant that there were great difficulties on both sides. 
Dr. Irons. — Every man acknowledges that there is something Higher than 
himself ; and the existence of a Divine Supreme Governor entirely corresponds 
with all that our inmost moral nature bears testimony to. There was one 
remark made by Mr. Manners, which had a sort of connection in my own 
mind with Mr. Holyoake’s difficulties. Mr. Manners spoke of the fall of 
man, and the fact of our not being in our original condition, as interfering 
