THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 
3.3 
door. For one penny per mile he can travel rapidly with comfort 
and enjoyment very much greater than the nobleman of a few 
years since could do. He can command better food, as good 
clothing, and superior house accommodation, and has at hand, in 
free or public libraries or cheap sources of literature, infinitely 
superior sources of enjoyment to what were obtainable by crowned 
heads less than a century since ; but the scientific man is still at 
work \ he cannot help working, opening new mines of discovery. 
Before we have had time to learn how to use the accommodations 
offered us by the electric telegraph, just as we are beginning to rest 
and be thankful, comes the sharp denouement of the discovery 
of the telegraphic voice — of the telephone ; and while we are yet 
pondering over it, wondering how it was possible for man to be so 
long an inhabitant of the earth without discovering these wonderful 
phenomena, lo and behold a little box is brought to us. We are 
told to touch a spring, and thereupon we hear a viva voce message 
delivered to us from a friend who entrusted it to the little machine 
on the other side the Atlantic. 
What next 1 Some say we shall be able to see by telegraph ; 
and why not, if by microphone our hearing capacities be magnified 
sufficiently to appreciate the ticking of a watch one hundred miles 
away, or to hear the breathing and the walking of a fly at the 
same distance ? 
And there is yet another branch of literature that has to be 
occupied. We want the aid of our theological and mental 
philosophers to aid in the interpretation of these wonderful 
manifestations. 
If when they, with us, see that we appear to be on the eve of 
discoveries which may enable us to open the ears of the deaf, to 
give sight to the blind, and to make the rough places of the earth 
smooth, surely they will not continue to tell us that religion and 
science can possibly be opposed. Will they not come forward and 
work with us, and help us to the discernment aright of the great 
First Cause ] 
We want their help. We hope they will continue to give it. 
Of their abundant kindness have they not some to spare for the 
devotees of science, in their flightiness from the effects of the new 
wine of knowledge 1 
I cannot close without a word of appeal to our younger members 
to come forward into the list of lecturing members ; or at least, if 
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