intensified in each case by the very probable circumstance that each event came in a year which followed a Sabbath one, when there was no sowing and practically no harvest; but want of space prevents our giving the historical data to support this assumption.*

Rev. W. F. KIMM, M.A.-It has been objected against miracles that they are violations of law, and therefore inconceivable in a universe planned with perfect wisdom and foreknowledge.

The paper has shown that this is not the Scriptural idea of miracles.

Moreover all men know that there are laws and laws, and that some "laws of nature" are sometimes contravened or controlled or superseded by others.

The skylark soars upwards, beating the air with its wings, and the air presses back with a pressure due to the weight of the air, which is due to gravitation, and so the bird is pressed up and up, until suddenly it folds its wings and then it falls under the action of gravitation. The same law which serves to bring the bird to the ground, serves to raise it to the clouds when the nervous and muscular energy and the will of the bird are brought into play.

The “laws of nature" are matters of human discovery, and men are still discovering, and it is highly probable there are many laws yet to be discovered; so that the objection to miracles on the ground of the unchangeableness of law must stand aside until we know all laws and all their interactions.

But when we seek to discover the scriptural idea of miracles we find mention of laws of another kind, which are from the scriptural point of view laws indeed, being the express declaration of the mind of the Lawgiver and not mere inferences deduced from an imperfect observation of His works.

These are referred to in the paper more or less directly among the cases "which natural science is not in a position to fathom."

The "laws of nature" which are merely customary modes of procedure in nature may be compared to common law which is merely custom and often difficult to determine for lack of evidence.

The subjects briefly alluded to here will be found fully considered in a book shortly to be published entitled, The Magi; how they recognised Christ's Star.

But we have also Statute Law which supersedes common law whenever the interests of the State require it.

Such a supreme law we find set forth in the Scriptures, and miracles are always linked in with some declaration of the divine will, or they take place as answers to prayer, according to the gracious laws which regulate the intercourse of the heavenly Father with His children.

In neither case is there any violation of law, but a fulfilment.

Mr. M. L. ROUSE.-Science constantly brings us to a borderland where wholly secret forces are in operation. As I heard Lord Rayleigh say in an address to the British Association, after he had alluded to the "life-long beliefs of Newton, Faraday and Maxwell.” "In his heart the man of science knows that underneath the theories that he constructs there lie contradictions which he cannot reconcile. The higher mysteries of being, if penetrable at all by human intellect, require other weapons than those of calculation and experiment."

Chemical affinities are still a mystery; and so is the impalpable, imponderable ether, which transmits the electric current and light when air is altogether absent. But what of life, with its marvels of nutrition, growth and reproduction-the nutrient fluids, as the late Professor Beale delighted to tell us constantly working against gravity; the creature (as he showed us in the case of a caterpillar) developing day by day out of a drop of liquid in which no microscope can detect any structure at all; and every normal plant and animal having stored up within itself and one within the other a creature of like form to its parents for a thousand generations? Paley likened a living creature to a watch, and appealed to the sceptic to acknowledge that it equally required a purposeful maker; but what should we say of a watch that had stored within itself, barrel within barrel, a thousand machines ready to take its place one after another?

If the original gospel that our modern rationalists speak of really existed in the first century and the four gospels were introduced in its place, as they make out, at the beginning of the second century (when, as we gather from Tacitus and Pliny, there were about a million Christians in the Roman world), do we suppose (knowing upon what far slighter grounds Christian sects have been readily formed) that a sect would not at once have sprung up contending for the use of the original Gospel in its simplicity?

Professor ORCHARD.-All religion is based upon the supernatural, and in the case of Christianity, the supernatural involves the miraculous. Eliminate the supernatural, and (as we are reminded on p. 75) there will be no Gospel left worth preaching or believing. A miracle may, I think, be defined as an unusual manifestation of supernatural power. As pointed out by the author, Christ is Himself “the miracle of miracles." Renan has justly remarked that the character of the Lord Jesus is such that it could not have been invented—"It would require a Jesus to invent a Jesus."

The miracles which He wrought were always attestations to His mission and teaching, that men, believing in Him, might have life through His name.

The SECRETARY wished to join in his expression of gratitude to the author, not only for the paper but for the willing manner in which Canon Girdlestone had undertaken to prepare it, when it was suggested to him on the occasion of a meeting which took place at Whitby last summer. Such papers as that now before the meeting could not fail to be helpful to many anxious minds, tending to strengthen faith in the miraculous statements both of the Old and New Testaments, and particularly at a time when indifference and unbelief is unhappily prevalent in society. Knowing how full of work is Canon Girdlestone, he (the Secretary) felt it was especially kind in him to undertake a task which must have added much to his labours.*

A warm vote of thanks was then passed to the author, who replied to a few points raised in the debate, and the meeting separated.

* In reference to the miracle of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, which to us seems one of the most notable, and was certainly one of the most publicly recognised, it may be suggested that our Lord exercised his power rather to preserve the body of Lazarus from decomposition than to raise it to life after decomposition had set in. The statement, a very natural one of Martha (John xi, 39), was not assented to by the Saviour, who always adopted the simplest means in carrying out His gracious purposes. Having from the beginning determined on calling Lazarus from the grave He would in accordance with this view have adopted the simpler course above suggested.-Ed.

ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING.*

LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR H. L. GEARY, K.C.B. (VICE-PRESIDENT) IN THE CHAIR.

The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed.

THE PEDIGREE OF THE NATIONS.

THE NATIONS. No. II.

By M. L. ROUSE, Esq., B.L.

N presenting the Institute with a second paper upon the

reviewing the respective progenies of the sons of Japhet in the order wherein these are given in the Tenth of Genesis. But, when I began to investigate more seriously than I had hitherto done the parentage of the nations of Central and Eastern Asia, I met with a problem as to the distribution of the families of Magog and Tubal which I saw that I could not properly solve and set forth before the appointed day. Therefore, in preparing this paper, I have departed from the Bible order; and, since I have already dealt with the peopling of Europe by two great families of Japhet, I have examined and shall bring before you the migrations of another that has both peopled our own continent and largely stocked the adjoining regions of Asia and of Africa.

After reading my former paper, in which I determined the position of the eastern branch of the race of Ashkenaz-the earliest Saxons-as around the southern quarters of the Caspian Sea, I remembered that just north of the Ascanimian Mountains, which ran eastward from the southern coast of that sea, there had stood from a remote period the town of Askabad; and the thought struck me, might not this contain

* Monday, February 4th, 1907.

the name of Ashkenaz, worn down by the ages and prefixed to the common Persian ending -abad, or abode. A traveller, writing recently to the Daily Chronicle from the region had, however, analysed the name into Abode of Love. I wrote, therefore, to Canon Robert Bruce, the Persian scholar, and to Dr. St. Clair Tisdall, the Turkoman scholar, asking first whether the latter etymology was correct, and next whether Ask- could be a proper name. In reply, I learnt that the name could not mean Abode of Love, seeing that ishq,* the Arabic word for sexual love, which was in question, would have become ashq* in Persian and ishiq* in Turkish or Turkoman; and Turkish or Turkoman, not Persian, has always been the language of Askabad since Arabic began to spread along with Mahometanism: while Canon Bruce opined that Ask- was a proper name, and Doctor Tisdall thought that this syllable was either an old and rare Persian word meaning messenger or else a proper name. And, upon my then writing to ask the latter whether Ashkenaz might have been thus abridged, he replied that he thought it possible, just as Bedford had been cut short from Bedanford, and that again, as he might have added, from Bedcanford. In confirmation of my conclusion that the first progenitor of the Phrygians and Armenians really was Thogarmah, brother to Askenaz, the father of all the Teutons, and to Riphath, the father of all the Kelts, Doctor Tisdall further wrote that he had observed in the Armenian language a greater resemblance to Keltic than to Persian speech.

And I think that it will interest all English folk present to-day, if I tell one more discovery upon the subject of my last paper-a discovery that bears upon the migration of the Saxons across Europe. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives pedigrees for the founders of the five kingdoms of the heptarchy or octarchy -namely, Kent, Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria, in its two divisions of Bernicia and Deira; and in all five the ancestry is traced back to Woden, from whom, the Chronicle states, every royal house in England was descended.

The pedigrees are thus traced backward:

1. From Hengist and Horsa, who landed in England about 452 A.D., back to Wihtgils, Witta, Wecta and Woden.

* That is, more phonetically, ishkh, ashkh, and ishikh (here, but usually q=gh).

Their landing to help Vortigern against the Picts and Scots is placed "in the days" of Marcian and Valentinian, who reigned from 449 A.D. for "seven winters," and their defeat of Vortigern at Aylesford after they turned against him is dated in 457.