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theories on their probation, for theories are apt to travel so 
fast that ordinary logic has difficulty in overtaking them. Mr. 
Herbert Spencer has an essay exposing “ illogical Geology ; 
but there are other wanderings from right reason, m the 
pursuit of which we should be glad of the powerful assistance, 
if we might have it, of so acute a writer. _ 
We must not complain of the position; for there is much 
reality in the work of our day, amidst its many insincerities. 
Earlier generations had their religious and intellectual tuals; 
and let us not be sure that those same trials may not re- 
appear, nor yet doubt that, if the spirit of Celsus and Porphyry 
revive, some Origen and Methodius will be ready in the defence 
of truth. Meanwhile, our own duty is marked out for us ; and 
our one thought must be to do it. 
II. The subject which occupies usis, as we have said, really 
the same always. Whatever may detain men s Our subject 
thoughts as they move on, they always return to is^et ihe 
inquire as to the Origin of the World and of Man. 
They may even resolve, like Comte, to have nothing to go 
with metaphysics and. scoff at theology ; but they come bac^ 
to us. Scientific or unscientific— though Comte is not ranked 
among the former by Professor Huxley, nor wholly consigned 
to the latter by us, — all find unfailing interest in musing at 
length on our Beginning and our End. It is this ever-engross- 
ing subject which gives all its importance to our Institute. 
But we do not approach it with the blank uncertainty w bich is 
unprovided with principles, or unready to affirm them. That 
distraction is not ours expressed in the earnest lines, descnp- 
tive of too many,— 
“ What is our life ? — a sense 
Of want and weariness : 
We are, and yet we know not whence ; 
We stay not, we are hurrying hence ; 
And whither ? — who can guess ? ” 
No, that is not the outset of the Christian philosophy ; and 
we shall try to be explicit in explaining what it is. 
We are precluded in this Institute, and very properly, from 
Theological disquisition or Beligious conference strictly so 
called;° though it is possible that a department of a special 
kind, limited to the criticism of fact, and some inquiries, of 
scholarship, may become a necessity. • But, without venturing 
on debatable grounds, we must aim at . some exactness of 
treatment. Men of science and theologians must alike re- 
member that if the relations of two subjects are to be com- 
pared, we must have a fair view of both. Without this there 
