The Express.
London, England, 1868-08-20 00:00:00

rol\)10 lt t•lrger\
THE I},XPRWA, :,11**Sititir• "M G. AU9ITSIE :20, 18684

THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION

THE men who minister to science most de-
votedly are the men to whom the world looks
up with confidence and respect as its true
guides and teachers in these days. Time
was when the priest was almost the sole represen-
tative of intellectual power, and when tho multi-
tude were swayed and led even in things secular
by their spiritual guides. The contrast between
the public interest taken in the proceedings of the
British Association, and, say, those of Convocation ;
between the real work performed calmly and dis-
interestedly by real men, and the make-believe yet
irritating discussions upon shadowy trivial-
ities to which our Church dignitaries are prone, is
the measure of the difference between the darkness
of the past. and the growing enlightenment of the
present. To compare the inaugural address de-
livered yesterday by Dr. HooKER, the Presi-
dent for the year of the British Association, its
range of topics and the vital human interests
they embrace, with the last great speech or
sermon of any of our ecclesiastical leaders, is to
realise almost painfully the contrast between old
forms and a new and living faith. To the bulk
of Englishmen Convocation seems a useless and
dull formality, having the forms of debate without
its power, and the right of passing laws which
mankind may and often do neglect or ignore.
But no sect or party can pass by the subjects of
discourse at Norwich, or refuse attention to those
lay preachers without suffering the penalty at-
tached to ignorance of Nature's laws. The As-
sociation, through its PRESIDENT, thus calls upon
us all :

Let each pursue the search for truth—the arclueologist
into the physical, the religious teacher into the spiritual
history and condition of mankind. It will be in vain that
each regards the other's punelts from afar, and, turning
the object-glass of his mind's telescope to his eye is con-
tent when he seee how small the other looks. To search
out the whence and whither of existence is an unquench-
able instinct of the human mind ; to satisfy it man in
every age and in every country has adopted creeds that
embrace the history of his past and future, and has eagerly
accepted scientific truths that support the creeds. And but
for this unquenchable instinct I firmly believe that neither
religion nor science would have advanced so far aa they have
in the estimation of any people. Science has never in this
search hindered the religious aspirations of good and ear-
nest men, nor have pulpit cautions, which are but ill-dis-
guised deterrents, ever turned inquiring minds from the
revelations of science. A sea of time spreads its waters
between that period to which the earliest traditions of our
ancestors point, and that far earlier period when man first
appeared upon the globe. For his track upon the sea
man vainly questions his spiritual teachers. Along its
hither shore, if not across it, science now offers to pilot
him. Each fresh discovery concerning pre-historic man
is as a pier built on some rock its tide has exposed, and
from these piers will one day spring arches that will carry
him further over its deeps. Science, it is true, may never
sound the depths of that sea, may never buoy its shallows
or span its narrowest creeks, but she will still build on
every tide-washed rock, nor will she ever deem her mis-
sion fulfilled till she has sounded its profoundest depths
and reached its further shore, or proved the one to be un-
fathomable and the other attainable only upon evidence
net yet revealed to mankind.

Science, moreover, appeals to us more familiarly
by the practical and constant benefits she confers.
The sound mind in the sound body; the ap-
pliances, the necessaries, the comforts, the
refinements of life, are hers to give. The
general community may not have the pure
motives or the lofty aims of the enthu-
siastic pioneer, but it has a keen perception of
what conduces to its own happiness, and, while
acknowledging its debts to science, it counts con-
fidently on future benefits, and in this faith turns
with profound and lively interest to such meetings
as that which is being held this week at
Norwich.