of life, acted up to it consistently, is worthy of the deepest respect,
whatever opinion may be entertained as to the real value of the tenets
which he so zealously propagated and defended.

But I am sure that I speak not only for myself, but for all this
assemblage, when I say that our purpose to-day is to do honour, not to
Priestley, the Unitarian divine, but to Priestley, the fearless
defender of rational freedom in thought and in action: to Priestley,
the philosophic thinker; to that Priestley who held a foremost place
among "the swift runners who hand over the lamp of life," [1] and
transmit from one generation to another the fire kindled,
in the childhood of the world, at the Promethean altar of Science.

The main incidents of Priestley's life are so well known that I need
dwell upon them at no great length.

Born in 1733, at Fieldhead, near Leeds, and brought up among Calvinists
of the straitest orthodoxy, the boy's striking natural ability led to
his being devoted to the profession of a minister of religion; and, in
1752, he was sent to the Dissenting Academy at Daventry--an institution
which authority left undisturbed, though its existence contravened the
law. The teachers under whose instruction and influence the young man
came at Daventry, carried out to the letter the injunction to "try all
things: hold fast that which is good," and encouraged the discussion of
every imaginable proposition with complete freedom, the leading
professors taking opposite sides; a discipline which, admirable as it
may be from a purely scientific point of view, would seem to be
calculated to make acute, rather than sound, divines. Priestley tells
us, in his "Autobiography," that he generally found himself on the
unorthodox side: and, as he grew older, and his faculties attained