THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
17 
perpetrators of cruelty and wrong ; tears are bursting, but cannot 
quench the lightning of her eye. Then woe to the enemy ! her 
victory is sure. She marches forth "fair as the sun, clear as the 
moon, and terrible as an army with banners." 
But if Literature sometimes appears as an Angel of Light, she 
too often assumes another form, and breathes a different spirit. 
Her slain may be numbered by thousands, especially among the 
young, whose forms, once beautiful, created for religion and virtue, 
are lying at the bottom of a sea darker than Lake Asphaltites, 
while over them roll the waters of oblivion. We ask for no cen- 
sorship of the Press. Milton has rendered this for ever impossible 
by his Areopagitica ; but what inquisitors of the most Rhadaman- 
thine type cannot effect society at large may, and this Institution 
will not be true to itself unless it lends its aid. Who would not 
in pity guard the minds of those he loves from all demoralising 
books, when he sees the wretchedness of those whose spirit has 
suffered eclipse, or hears the cries that reach us from the shores of 
Kibroth Hattaavah % 
I have thus endeavoured to trace the course of Modern Litera- 
ture as illustrative of one of the chief characteristics of our age, the 
Love of Truth, though the thread may often have appeared to be 
rather concealed from view, and this love of Truth, as I observed 
at the commencement, often assumes the form of doubt, though 
not, I believe, of doubt for its own sake. But this spirit of doubt, 
which is now so rife among us, and which I believe to be only one 
phase of the enthusiasm for truth, has created in the minds of 
some of the greatest and best of men the deepest anxiety and 
alarm. When they see so many of their cherished beliefs rudely 
questioned or stoutly denied, what wonder that they should fear 
that there will be nothing left from the crucible of modern doubt, 
and tremble for the safety of the Ark of Truth itself 1 The author 
of Apologia Pro Vita Sua goes still further, and maintains that in 
all ages it has been found that no truth can stand against the 
destructive force of human reason ; that it is in fact a universal 
solvent capable of reducing even fine gold itself. With this alarm 
I have no sympathy whatever, nor, I believe, have you; your 
presence here to-night, your position as members of this Institu- 
tion disproves it. The universal uncertainty and unbelief existing 
in the Roman world in the time of Julius Csesar, and which he 
seems to have shared, has often been referred to ; but what did 
VOL. ix. c 
