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paper. May I suggest to the author that it is not enough to defend young 
men from scepticism ? The scepticism current now in the universities is not 
the priggish insolent thing it was years ago ; but there are men who are 
seeking earnestly and anxiously for the light, and, if they could see their 
way, anxious to do good work, and to help each other. There is no one to 
tell them the way, for wisdom is no longer crying in the streets to them. 
The results that we see around us, then, are not so much the fault of the 
ignorant young men or of the infidels ; for these so-called infidels have done 
a great good and exercised a mighty power for truth. If it had not been 
for Darwin and Herbert Spencer, how could theology cope with that heavy 
dark materialism which has been settling down upon us ever since the day 
of Locke, and which takes us back to the metaphysical difficulties concerning 
the nature of matter ? It is something to recognize in the Darwinism and 
utilitarianism of the age a power by which we can take to task the 
t materialism which now clogs the general mind of England, and which can 
prepare us for a broader theology and for a fuller expression of the truth 
which we learn from the Bible. If there is one thing needed, it is, perhaps, 
that which the learned author of the letter which has been read to 
us refers to. It is not fair and right that a man should not be allowed to 
change a dogma which he cannot reconcile with reason, without being 
compelled to take up his abode in the camp of those whom he dislikes as 
infidels. It seems to me that the Church ought to go out and find what 
there is in science that is true ; and not only what is true, but what is 
applicable to the solution of the difficulties in the Bible. There is another 
thing, also, that ought to be done. We ought to have a more clear, distinct, 
and precise formulary of faith, fully expressed and more strongly insisted on, 
so that if a young man did meet with dear friends not like himself, having 
had the opportunity of an early and careful Christian education, he might 
have in that precise education a sure refuge from difficulty, and a wider 
opportunity of putting himself into a position of sympathizing with his 
unenlightened friends. It is a poor thing when the Church confines herself 
to her own battlements and her own friends, and does not adopt the 
missionary spirit and the higher duties of the missionary life — going out to 
seek and save. (Cheers.) 
Mr. Charles Dibdin. — I should like to draw the author of the paper’s 
attention to a point, a minor one, perhaps, contained in the 12th paragraph, 
where I find the following sentences : — 
“ There may, for what we know, have been flora and fauna upon the 
earth, even in this pre-historic period ; for, as St. Augustine points out 
(Ench. ad Laur.), the text ‘ Death entered into the world through sin,’ may 
bo understood ot the human race, and may be taken to mean, simply, that 
death obtained its power over mankind through sin. This explanation 
certainly appears possible.” 
To me this “ possible ” explanation appears impossible. It is based on the 
passage in tho 5th chapter of the Epistlo to tho llomans (whore it says, 
“ For as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, 
