246 
science the grand conclusion of the future^'Thou art worthy 
0 Lord, to receive glory and honour and powei . foi lhou 
hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and weie 
created 33 ? * 
The Chairman. — I am sure you will all agree that we ought to return 
a cordial vote of thanks to Mr. Pattison for the very able paper which he 
has put before us this evening. It is a paper which contains matter 
fruitful of discussion, and I hope it will obtain that attention which it 
deserves from this Institute. Mr. Pattison has brought forward wha 
may call the orthodox interpretation of geology, and we shall now be glad 
to hear what is to be said on the other side of the question. (Hear, hear.) 
1 need only add that we invite not only our own members, but also any 
of our friends who may happen to be present, to contobute to our discus- 
sions. What we want to get is the utmost discussion of a subject both from 
those who think with us and from those who are opposed to us, because we 
believe that a fair and honest debate is the best means of arriving at the 
truth. (Cheers.) . J , . , 
Mr. PvEDDTE.— I would like to offer a few observations, not as a geologist, 
but simply as a contributor towards the discussion of the paper, more 
especially in regard to its own propositions and in reference to what we 
have already printed in our records. I confess that, while joining with you, 
Sir in thanking Mr. Pattison for his very able statement, I think we 
might have had more unquestionable proofs of Divine action from what we 
find in geology, and I am sorry to say that a great deal that is assumed by 
Mr. Pattison appears to me to be of a somewhat ancient kind as regards 
geological theory. At all events, whether our other authors have been right 
or wrong, we have already in our printed transactions a great deal of matter 
that does not agree with the view of geology which is here laid down for us. 
I quite agree with Mr. Pattison that we must trace Divine action m con- 
templating the facts of geology, whatever theory we accept. In a paper 
which I had the pleasure of reading at our last meeting, I argued from the 
very motion of inanimate nature to the necessity of a mover, because 
inanimate or dead matter could not move of itself. So that, m any kind of 
succession, whether by cataclysms or recurrence, or continued progression or 
evolution, or what you will, we should still have progression m inanimate 
nature ; and my argument tended to show some power m the force that 
moves it, and that would not he a dead blind force, for such a force would 
he iiist as incapable of producing motion, as the dead matter itself. In ±ac , 
the whole must he guided and permeated by one really moved by mte 1 - 
gence. (Hear.) But I do not think that the proofs of Divine action to be 
found in this world and in the earth beneath us are to be aided by the 
particular theory which Mr. Pattison has put forward, and I am not at all 
clear as to what that theory in all respects is. I do not understand the word 
* Kev. iv. 11. 
