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session, it will be necessary to trouble you with a few remarks. I think the 
words which we have heard fall from the lips of our new member, 
Mr. Masterman, are very satisfactory ; and I am sure that every member of 
the Victoria Institute must be pleased to find that the Institute is doing 
good work, and, in the opinion of one so well qualified to speak, that it is 
doing it as it should be done. For my own part I am only too well aware 
of the truth of what Mr. Masterman stated, that the principles of atheism, 
materialism, positivism, and every other kind of foul “ ism ” are being sown 
broadcast throughout the country. It is necessary that we should have an 
organization to meet these things. These secularists are themselves organized, 
and in their own newspaper they talk of “ the good cause,” write of “ the 
cause of truth,” and rejoice in stating that the people receive them where 
they go proclaiming their doctrines. Now and then their leader has 
an ovation presented to him, or got up for him, which comes to the same 
thing, when he goes lecturing on what he calls the prevalence of truth. We 
should have an organization in the interest of truth to meet theirs against it ; 
and we have this Society expressly constituted to meet those opponents of 
truth. I rejoice to hope that we have in this Institute what is so much needed, 
and I think we may well call upon all friends of Christian truth, no matter 
what their special views of that Christian truth may be, to come and help us 
in the arduous work which we had before us when we first began our 
campaign against infidelity. When we first began the work we hardly 
knew how much lay before us, nor how many were the hydra heads of that 
enemy against whom we had to array ourselves. We have now found out 
what the enemy is which we have to cope with. We know that it can only 
be met by dint of steady application to our work ; and therefore I say we may 
call upon all to aid us, because the work we have to do is not one of mere 
dilettanteism, and not one of mere amusement, but it is one which has for its 
object the greater glory of Cod and the greater happiness — because the 
eternal happiness — of man. We may well congratulate ourselves I think, 
then, that Mr. Masterman has joined our Society, and we hope to find 
in him a member whose aid will be efficient and useful. We have 
further to congratulate ourselves upon the accession — not perhaps to 
the number of our members, for the gentleman I am about to name . has 
been a member of the Institute from the first, but to our Council — of our 
new Hon. Treasurer, who has kindly allowed his name to be substituted for 
that of Admiral Fishbourne. I think he deserves our warmest thanks. 
It should be remembered that the office which Mr. West has accepted 
as Treasurer is an honorary office. It is unpaid, and he will have the 
satisfaction of knowing that he gratuitously gives much thought and labour 
to a good cause ; but we will all endeavour to make his labours as light 
as possible. We all owe our thanks too to our retiring Treasurer. Every 
member of this Institute knows what great interest Admiral Fishbourne has 
taken in it from the very first, and how much of our prosperity — for I am 
happy to say we are prosperous — is owing to his disinterested and gratuitous 
exertions. A few more words and I have done. Let us all remember that 
