I must assume to-night that those of you who are present were also present at the Bishop’s discourse; but I speak with more freedom as it is my intention to print this reply together with a _verbatim_ report of the Lord Bishop’s sermon, so that they may stand side by side. I regret that the learned and eloquent advocate of Church Christianity did not think it right when talking of freedom, necessity, laws of nature, absolute freedom, and so forth, to favour us with some explanation or definition to guide us to the sense he intended to convey by their use; as I could not help fancying that he more than once used the same words with quite different meanings. Jonathan Edwards, whom I shall quote to you with slight modification, thus in effect states the doctrine of necessity:—“The whole universe exhibits a fixed, certain, and constant succession of events, which bear to each other the relation of causes and effects. This series of causes and effects, as they belong to unconscious and involuntary subjects, is the physical order of the material universe: of which order the phenomena are found by observation to take place according to certain principles, which are usually called the laws of nature. This series, as it applies to intelligent and voluntary agents, consists of the fixed and invariable conjunction of volitions and voluntary actions with antecedent motives. In every instance that we know by experience, or that we can conceive, there is an invariable and necessary conjunction of motives and volitions. We cannot conceive a change in the volition without an antecedent change in the motive; and the motives remaining the same, the volitions and the voluntary acts will be correspondent. We are conscious that we never do, and never can, perform any voluntary action without a motive.” While not adopting entirely the words of Jonathan Edwards, I have given his view of the doctrine of necessity, a view not contained in the sermon by Bishop Magee; but each used the phrase laws of nature. Now, clearly, in the mouth of the Bishop, law meant the expression of personal will. The Duke of Argyll in his “Reign of Law,” says:—“In its primary signification a ‘law’ is the authoritative expression of human will enforced by power;” but he gives five different senses in which the word “law” is used. First, “We have law as applied simply to an observed order of facts; secondly, to that order as involving the action of some force or forces of which nothing more may be known; thirdly, as applied to individual forces, the measure of whose operation has been more or less defined or ascertained; fourthly, as applied to those combinations of force which have reference to the fulfilment of purpose, or the discharge of function; fifthly, as applied to abstract conceptions of the mind, not corresponding with any actual phenomena, but deduced therefrom as axioms of thought necessary to our understanding of them. Law, in this sense,