MIDLAND UNION OF NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETIES. 248 
opinions. Nor is such resistance to be deprecated unless it 
takes the form of a bigoted and blind hostility to truth. It is 
the ordeal whereby the newer teaching is sifted and purified 
from the residuum of error which must ever attach more or 
less to all human knowledge that is not absolutely demon¬ 
strative. But on the whole, the Darwinian hypothesis, as it 
is called, has been steadily gaining ground, until now, even 
in quarters where a few years ago it was denounced as 
destructive of all that men held most sacred, it is often 
admitted to be quite consistent with religion. 
1 feel that it would not be suitable to take advantage 
of the position which I have the honour to hold on 
this occasion to introduce matter which might be subject 
to a difference of opinion. What I have said has been 
with the view of emphasising what I think we shall all 
agree is the great object which societies, such as those 
which have met here this day, should place before them, 
and that is the steady search for truth, and a patient and 
reverent study of Nature, with minds unalloyed by prejudice 
or passion. And though it may be that the birth of truth, 
like that of all living things, is often accompanied with pain, 
let us endeavour to minimise and not increase the resistance 
to the reception of it, which is the cause of that pain. St. 
Augustine has somewhere said with a fine intuition, that it is 
“ impossible for science to be opposed to religion.” Let us not 
fear. It is to the free expansion of truth and the elimination 
of error that we owe all the blessings we now enjoy, as well as 
our emancipation from the bondage of ignorance and super¬ 
stition. The saying of the Hebrew prophet Micali, “ What 
doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love 
mercy, and walk humbly with thy God,” is not far in spirit 
from that of the heathen philosopher, Lucretius “ A happy 
life is not possible without a clean breast.” Sentiments like 
these are eternal, indestructible, and are independent of all 
science and all human knowledge. 
MIDLAND UNION OF NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETIES. 
A Meeting of the Management Committee was held on 
the 19th of August, at which the Malvern Field Club was 
admitted to the Union ; and the invitation from the Club for 
the Meeting of the Union for 1887, which accompanied the 
application, was accepted. 
