LECTURE ON TYPOLOGY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5144, 18 September 1877, Page 3

LECTURE ON TYPOLOGY.

l ast evening his Worship the Mayor delivered* an interesting and instructive lecture on “ Typology ; what it does, and what it does not suggest,” at the Congregational Church, Woodward-street. There was a good attendance. Sir George Grey occupied the chair. The Lecturer, in opening his address, spoke of the certain unity of plan and purpose everywhere discernible in nature, and of the principles of utility and order. In speaking of the latter he remax*ked: I now return to some further illustrations of typical order. Observe the Heavenly bodies. Looking in this direction at what lies nearest us, we find the prevailing rule to be that of a central orb, with a smaller orb revolving around it. The satellites circle around the planets ; the planets, with their attendant satellites, circle around the sun, and our sun himself, with all his glittering train, is sweepin”- through space— the silent immensity of the eternal —at the rate, we are told, of 422,000 miles a day ; himself, mayhap (who can tell ?) the circling attendant of some still brighter and mightier orb. The range of human observation is too limited both as regards time and space to admit of these majestic arrangements being adequately traced out. But it is, at least, a thought as well wox'th knowing as it is sublime, that although the telescope has enabled man to penetrate space to the extent of thousands of billions of miles,yet over all this inconceivable expanse we find traces of the operation of those very laws with which we are familiar in the narrow field of our daily observation. ’Those clusters of stars which lie at distances so immense that it is only by the powerful telescopes of modern times they have been recognised to he stars at all, are found to present outlines of considerable regularity : the familiar form of the circle, with increasing density towards the centre, and the spiral of somewhat irregular curvature, being apparently the most prevalent features. Even in respect of color astronomers have observed the existence of recognised laws, and if so, it is surely interesting to think that the same rule which regulates the coloring of the violet and the blossom of the bean prevails, and has for long ages prevailed in the remotest regions of space, and is exemplified on the broad scale of those stupendous worlds. Poets have spoken of the Almighty writing his name in sun syllables on the sky, may I- not add that He has written it in no unknown tongue. The lecturer then pursued his theme into the vegetable kingdom, noticing the minute structure of vegetable tissue, as revealed by the microscope, and proceeding to the forms in which plants meet the observant eye. He then referred to one of the great divisions of the animal kingdom—the vertebrate or backboned creatures,—contending that the animal skeleton has its unit, by the repetition of which, in its simple form, or with more or less modification, every skeleton is made up, no matter howsoever it may be diversified in detail, from the skeleton of the fish or the serpent to that of the bird, of the quadruped, or of man. Geology, said the lecturer, opens up to our view a number of successive cycles of time antecedent to the birth of man, of which oxxr earth has been the scene, and by which it has repeatedly been furnished afresh with its complement of vegetable and animal life. There is a manifest progress in the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. This progress consists in the increasing similarity to the living fauna, and among the vertebrate creatures, especially in their increasing resemblance to man, who is the end towards which all the animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the early Palaeozoic fishes. The modem theory of evolution the lecturer considered improved, and considered that there was a weakness in the reasoning of those who, in ancient times and at the present day, devoted themselves to the sciences of classification and homological studies. He said he censured no man for opinions honestly formed, and was in favor of the fullest investigation of the whole realm of physical and mental science; but with inquiry he urged we should also seek caution. He argued that while the world is governed by law everywhere—the life of man more especially being left neither to blind chance nor inexorable fate—above and behind this pervading law there is a Beneficent Lawgiver, and he (the lecturer) was fully persuaded that we shall never understand this law aright until we realise the fact that the Supreme Being controls all its operations—that through them all and in them all there is a living and loving ruler, whose “Dwelling is the light of setting suns And the round ocean and the living air And the blue sky; and in the mind of man A motion and a spirit.” At the conclusion of the lecture a vote of thanks, on the motion of Mr. Holdsworth, was unanimously passed to the lecturer. The Mayor suitably acknowledged the compliment. The Rev, Mr. West announced that the next lecture of the series would be delivered by Sir John Richardson on “ Modern Colonial Statesmen.” A vote of thanks to the Chairman terminated the proceedings.