opinion of the evanescent officer before you, remains for the
institution to do, and not to do. As Mr. Carlyle has it towards
the closing pages of his grand history of the French Revolution,
“This we are now with due brevity to glance at; and then courage,
oh listener, I see land!” I earnestly hope – and I firmly believe
– that your institution will do henceforth as it has done hitherto;
it can hardly do better. I hope and believe that it will know
among its members no distinction of persons, creed, or party, but
that it will conserve its place of assemblage as a high, pure
ground, on which all such considerations shall merge into the one
universal, heaven-sent aspiration of the human soul to be wiser and
better. I hope and believe that it will always be expansive and
elastic; for ever seeking to devise new means of enlarging the
circle of its members, of attracting to itself the confidence of
still greater and greater numbers, and never evincing any more
disposition to stand still than time does, or life does, or the
seasons do. And above all things, I hope, and I feel confident
from its antecedents, that it will never allow any consideration on
the face of the earth to induce it to patronise or to be
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patronised, for I verily believe that the bestowal and receipt of
patronage in such wise has been a curse in England, and that it has
done more to prevent really good objects, and to lower really high
character, than the utmost efforts of the narrowest antagonism
could have effected in twice the time.
I have no fear that the walls of the Birmingham and Midland
Institute will ever tremble responsive to the croakings of the
timid opponents of intellectual progress; but in this connexion
generally I cannot forbear from offering a remark which is much
upon my mind. It is commonly assumed – much too commonly – that
this age is a material age, and that a material age is an
irreligious age. I have been pained lately to see this assumption
repeated in certain influential quarters for which I have a high
respect, and desire to have a higher. I am afraid that by dint of
constantly being reiterated, and reiterated without protest, this
assumption – which I take leave altogether to deny – may be
accepted by the more unthinking part of the public as
unquestionably true; just as caricaturists and painters,
professedly making a portrait of some public man, which was not in
the least like him to begin with, have gone on repeating and
repeating it until the public came to believe that it must be
exactly like him, simply because it was like itself, and really
have at last, in the fulness of time, grown almost disposed to
resent upon him their tardy discovery – really to resent upon him
their late discovery – that he was not like it. I confess,
standing here in this responsible situation, that I do not
understand this much-used and much-abused phrase – the “material
age.” I cannot comprehend – if anybody can I very much doubt – its
logical signification. For instance, has electricity become more
material in the mind of any sane or moderately insane man, woman,
or child, because of the discovery that in the good providence of
God it could be made available for the service and use of man to an
immeasurably greater extent than for his destruction? Do I make a
more material journey to the bed-side of my dying parent or my
dying child when I travel there at the rate of sixty miles an hour,
than when I travel thither at the rate of six? Rather, in the
swiftest case, does not my agonised heart become over-fraught with
gratitude to that Supreme Beneficence from whom alone could have
proceeded the wonderful means of shortening my suspense? What is
the materiality of the cable or the wire compared with the
materiality of the spark? What is the materiality of certain
chemical substances that we can weigh or measure, imprison or
release, compared with the materiality of their appointed