The spirit of the age is truth-seeking. We speak often of the eagerness for wealth that marks the age. I think that when, from the distant future, men shall look back upon this period of the world's history, the search for wealth will not be seen to fill the place that to us it seems to occupy. The age will be seen to be animated by a nobler quest than this. The search for truth will be seen to be the quest by which it is marked most really. We speak of the corruption of the age, of the trickeries of trade, of the unscrupulousness of speculation, of the pretence and display of fashion, of the venality of politics. All this is true. These things deserve the denunciation of the moralist and the preacher. But behind all this is the life which truly marks the age. It is the life of patient, earnest, honest search for truth. I believe that never and nowhere has there been manifested, to so great extent, such conscientious and self-forgetful love of truth for its own sake as may be found in the scientific investigations of the present day. Such accuracy of research, such microscopic delicacy of measurement, such patient and unprejudiced examination, I believe to be unequalled in the history of man. This proves that, in spite of the frauds and falseness of which I spoke, the age is really sound at heart. Theologians sometimes speak of the flippancy and conceit of the science of the day. The terms would be more true applied in the opposite direction. Theology is more open to such charges than science. A love of truth that would fling away even the highest glory of the earth and the hope of heaven, if so be truth may stand pure and perfect, has something sublime about it. Well might the theologian take a lesson from the man of science in regard to this consecration to truth. For theology, with its presumption, its prejudice, its pretence, its glossing over of difficulties, its leaning upon authority which it feels at heart is not authority, its saying what it does not exactly believe, that it may not contradict those who perhaps do not believe exactly what they say, may well stand ashamed in the presence of the science of the day that has left all to follow truth. Theology should give to science not tolerance, not patronage, but reverence. While it utters fearlessly the truth that is given it to speak, it should in its turn seat itself as a learner at the feet of science, and seek not only to gather the facts which it has to teach, but to catch something of its spirit, the spirit that loves truth, and that will suffer nothing to take the place of this.