FOURTH ORDINARY MEETING.

ROYAL INSTITUTION, 2nd December, 1867.

The Rev. C. D. GINSBURG, LL.D., PRESIDENT, in the Chair.

The Rev. Walton Lowe Clay, M.A,, was unanimously elected an Ordinary Member.

Mr. Morton, F.G.S., exhibited a specimen of Ammonites oxynotus, from the lias formation of Gloucester, remarkable on account of its being converted into iron pyrites, and showing the original thickness of the shell.

ON CERTAIN CONTRADICTORY OR ABNORMAL

PHENOMENA OF THE AGE.

BY THE REV. J. S. JONES.

HARDLY second in importance to the memorable precept, "know thyself," would be the counsel to "know thine age." To see, in due light and proportion, "the age and body of the time, its form and pressure," if it will not add to our knowledge of ourselves, will contribute to our power to use ourselves for the common good.

I have ventured to put together some thoughts concerning certain characteristics of this age, which, amongst others, afford matter for either simple remark, as noteworthy, speculation, as interesting, or reflection, as important.

None of these, perhaps, are more remarkable than the coincidence of Luxury and Energy. Whatever dangers are incident to a luxurious civilisation are ours in an unprecedented degree. Armies of conquest and armies of circumstance have given us empire. An unique history and education have given us power. Natural advantages, utilized by strong heads and hands, have given us wealth. A visit to an International Exhibition, or the Crystal Palace, would fill a citizen of any other age with wonder at the resources which could create, and the industry which could produce, treasures so infinite for the use and enjoyment of a multitude so vast. And, appalling as the contrast would be when he saw the darker side of the picture, the contrast itself would derive much of its suggestiveness and sad

ness from the wide diffusion of those very results of wealth, out of the want or misuse of which the misery would be seen to grow. And these material facts would be seen to be but the indices of deeper ones; of a growth of refinement in the minds of those who asked for, and the hand and brain of those who produced, these needs or adornments of home. And the observer would perhaps fear that with the special skill of the creator, and the growing comfort and complacency of the possessor, attenuation and effeminacy might come. And so has it generally been. The moralist dwells with unction, and the philanthropist with something like despair, upon the spectacle of states mounting vigorously the hill of prosperity, only to drag the device "excelsior" listlessly down the sunny slopes of the other side. Antony in the arms of Cleopatra is a type, as well as a history. The career of rude independence is run by a race in youth, and the honours of victory won in manhood, only to be followed by inglorious age. It would be, indeed, a sad decree of fate, if the stream of national life, springing from a rocky cradle, strengthening and deepening in its course, till able at length even to struggle with the sea, must disperse at last into shallows among sheltered vales, and grow stagnant, and dry away.

But if Macaulay's New Zealander is inevitable, he will not, judging by present appearances, owe his picturesque sketch to a degenerate race having lapsed into effeminacy. Fops and idlers there will always be: vices will cling to the skirts of civilisation, and lay claim, sometimes only too justly, to be its offspring. But we are proving that civilisation may be strong, and we will not believe but it may be pure. The great struggle in America has revealed an unsuspected capacity in this age for toil and sacrifice. Its history would be a hundred Iliads. It had, it is true, its hardy Western elements, and the adventurous Texan

or Kansas man contributed his part.

But the Southern fire burst the silken bonds of Southern luxury; and the studious halls and quiet homes, as well as the farms and stores, of cultivated New England sent forth the ruddy and the pale into the ranks of war; while women, tenderly cherished and delicately framed, gave themselves and not seldom their lives to the work. And though we may hope to be spared the proof of what our volunteer army is capable of, we have no reason to fear that advanced civilisation has slain the Titan within us. What may not yet be accomplished by a race which courts the toils of war, that it may enjoy the fruits of peace; which adds the vigour of Rome republican to the wealth and comfort of Rome imperial; which, having a literature and arts of which it has no cause to be ashamed, bids its students contend in manly exercises; whose aristocracy wrestle with its democracy for the prizes of faithful service of the common land? Strong and successful, industrious and refined, there is no manifest reason why it should not be Rome and Macedon, Athens and Venice in one.

Another characteristic of the age is to theologians of course of especial interest. If any one were to describe the age as an age of inquiry, few would be disposed to dispute the definition. But it would probably be almost as correct to describe it as an age of faith. Faith and enquiry are the two characteristic words. I should not call the age either a credulous or a sceptical one. Examples of egregious credulity we have undoubtedly seen, but they are partial and ephemeral, and only in an age in which there is faith are such diseases of credulity possible. The age which succeeded the Revolution was one of religious repose, but also of religious stagnation. The reaction of the tremendous struggle of two centuries, a struggle in which politics and religion were closely identified, was a languor from which for generations

E

men could not be permanently roused. Theology fell asleep in its pew, with its Tate and Brady on its knee. The sluggish acquiescence of the eighteenth century was not faith, which stands upon old foundations, not even credulity, which is easily tempted to seek new. Nor was the attitude of mind which stood apart from it, enquiry. Scepticism was at least as dogmatic as theology. Non credo was intoned in unison with a confidence, which, but for its coldness, might have challenged the name of zeal. The hesitancies of this age are better, if only because they are hesitancies. Doubt is easier than enquiry, while it implies more, for it implies that you have enquired, and have arrived at a sort of result, the result viz., of seeing reason to doubt if such and such evidence is sufficient. If a judge says he doubts, he does not mean that he has no opinion, but that he has an opinion, the consequence of diligent analysis. The difference between the scepticism-using the word conventionally- of this age, and the scepticism of that, is, I hope, and as at present advised think, that there was then a pre-disposition to disbelief, and the wish to find reasons; now, a pre-disposition to faith, with a hesitancy-for which the friends of faith may in some degree be responsible-whether the reasons for faith are adequate. And thus the source of the doubts of the age is, in a measure, its religiousness, i. e., more people doubt and express doubts, because more people desire to believe, and are asking on what grounds their belief is challenged. Those who once gave up religion as a hopeless entanglement, or superciliously acquiesced in it as a politic institution, or contemptuously left it alone, are putting forth feelers after faith. There is certainly, as might be expected, a vein of cynicism in our social geology, but happily it seems generally found in alliance with want of faith in humanity, as much as in God; regarding philanthropy as a profession, and earnestness and goodness as harmless phenomena. Most of