ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
My Lord Shaftesbury- — Ladies and Gentlemen — 
A N annual meeting is in some sort a time of reckoning. 
That of such an institute as the Victoria is such a time, 
not so much in a commercial sense as in that of the navigator, 
or traveller, who observes and calculates, that he may know 
his true position and the direction in which he is tending. 
The winds and currents of contemporary thought have been 
acting upon us during another year, and it cannot but be well 
that we should, as far as possible, ascertain what their corn- 
bined effect has been. 
If I were asked to indicate the most dangerous set of the 
currents by which our course has been affected, I should refer 
at once to the doctrine of C( evolution/* so-called. A. writer in 
one of our popular magazines* lately put the question as to 
whether this doctrine “ makes it difficult to believe in im- 
mortal souls . 33 He was evidently inclined to answer in the 
affirmative, so he hoped that u some means 33 might e{ be found 
of reconciling those instincts of which the belief in immortality 
was a product 33 — that is, seeing the belief itself, at least in its 
present form, must die ! He imagines that what he calls the 
essence 33 of that belief must remain, but cannot tell what 
that “ essence 33 may be ! Should this utterance express a 
general state of mind among the most important classes in 
society, we are clearly drifting from our course, and are 
loudly called upon to inquire as to how our direction may be 
changed. 
It is, I think, because this doctrine of “ evolution 33 so 
powerfully affects men's faith in all that is truly distinctive in 
human nature, that it has become of such importance. It 
appears, therefore, specially suitable to our present reckoning 
that we should consider one, at least, of those points of diver- 
gence in which this distinction is most clearly seen. The one 
to which I have been directed specially to call your attention 
* Fraser's Magazine , for April, 1872 , 
