theory rests absolutely on evidence of acquired characteristics, and I believe that we have no evidence here of that kind. As we know, the Victoria Institute is a Philosophical and Scientific Association; and if we dwell upon the religious aspect at all, it is the wisdom from Scripture itself and the Divine philosophy of it that we accept. It is upon that line that I make one or two suggestions. First of all, as to time. We all know that though God works in and through time, He is in no way subject to time. The lecturer has quoted the first chapter of Genesis, but the second chapter shows another method altogether. Why should not God work by a long process of development, and why could He not act specially, as in the second chapter? There is no contradiction. Then as to the humanity of our Blessed Lord, upon which everything depends. It is stated of Him, and supported in two other statements: "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of Thine hands. They shall perish, but Thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail." That quotation, relating to Jehovah, is, as we know, by the Spirit of God, applied directly to Christ. The next is, that "all things were created by Him, whether visible or invisible, thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, all were created by Him." Again in John's gospel : "He was in the world, but the world was made through Him, but the world knew Him not." These statements affect the whole question. The present upheaval of all civilisation suggests that we should cling more closely to the Scriptures, and to Him upon whom everything depends. I see no reason whatever to thank the lecturer for all that he has said. I think those of us who accept the Bible view of the Creation, and the Divine humanity of Christ, can rise above all discussions, interesting though they may be, and go on from time to eternity. Mr. M. L. ROUSE, B.A., B.L.: I think the lecturer has dispassionately set before us two views, but I cannot agree that man is so normally fashioned, or that he is descended from an ape-man. First of all, I cannot understand exactly how people can square Darwinism with the account in Genesis. Supposing that man had "developed." and that ape-men are to be found in diverse parts of the world, from Sussex to China-quite as likely in the Far East as in the West-how is it that their descendants do not exist, and how is it that they became two distinct persons, Adam and Eve ? Dr. Walter Kidd, an eminent zoologist, has shown that, whereas on the arms the arrangement of hair is the same in the man as in the ape, yet in the monkey all the hairs go straight down the back to the tail, while in the man the hairs run upwards to the neck. Again, on the head there is a circle, and in the loins there is a diversion of the hair horizontally. Mr. SIDNEY COLLETT: I was particularly struck with the fact that (as the lecturer tells us) there is no missing link in existence; but, surely, in Evolution we should have some traces of the missing link. If there is any truth in Evolution, I cannot understand the meaning in Genesis of the words: "God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." Rev. JOHN TUCKWELL, M.R.A.S.: I think it was in 1895 that Lord Kelvin, in a lecture here, controverted the long-period claim for the existence of life upon the earth. In effect, he said to the geologist: It is no use to talk of your hundreds of thousands of millions of years. You cannot have more than 30 millions of years at the very most. The earth could not have had life upon it more than that. We are told that the whole geological strata-the part of the remains of life which are known-amount to about 30, 45, or I think the extreme limit is 50 miles. If you figure it out, you will find that, reckoning 1 foot in 100 years, this only means 26 million years. So we come pretty near to what Lord Kelvin says, and I do not think we are justified in accepting hundreds of millions of years of man's life. LECTURER'S REPLY. I am very much obliged for the way in which you have received my Paper. It is a most difficult subject; and I had qualms about tackling it at all. I will not refer to what the speakers have said, except that I have been asked to explain what the Bishop of Birmingham meant. Well, he is a gentleman whom it is difficult to explain; but the reference was to a sermon in Birmingham Cathedral, and I gathered that by "intertwining of God's creatures" he accepted the doctrine of Evolution. Then as to the evidence accumulating. If you visit the Natural History Museum, and go round with any of the leading scientists, they will show you what Evolution has taught us, and that is what I mean by the evidence of Evolution accumulating day by day. The resolution of thanks was carried with applause; and the meeting adjourned at 6.20 p.m. HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HAL THE REV. PREBENDARY H. E. Fox, M.A., in the Chair. The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed. The SECRETARY announced the Election of the Rev. E. T. SiddallJones as a Member of the Institute. The CHAIRMAN, in introducing the Lecturer, said that he was one specially qualified to speak on the important subject which they had to consider. Born in Palestine, Mr. Finn had been familiar with Oriental languages almost from infancy, and had lisped Hebrew and Arabic. He had devoted the years of his maturity to the special study of the Pentateuch, and had just published a book on The Unity of the Pentateuch of most instructive character. THE MOSAIC ORIGIN OF THE PENTATEUCH. By the Rev. A. H. FINN. Na work recently published* my aim was chiefly negative, namely, to meet the modern allegations that the Pentateuch can be proved to be composite, and to show the unsoundness of the methods by which that conclusion has been reached. Now it is my wish to take a positive and constructive line; to consider the evidences which tend to show that the Pentateuch is a single work of Mosaic origin. For the purposes of this paper, then, I must ask permission to assume that the arguments of the former work are so far valid that it will not be necessary to meet or consider the alleged proofs of the modern critics. Laying these aside, it will be my endeavour to set forth the considerations which would guide us in forming an estimate of these five books when examined fairly and without presupposition. These will fall into three divisions: I. Indications that the work is a Unity. *The Unity of the Pentateuch, Marshall Bros. § 1. INDICATIONS OF UNITY. We may begin by noticing that even those who maintain that the Pentateuch is composite have to recognize in it a certain kind of unity. They hold, indeed, that there were originally several independent "sources," but the facts of the case and of the subsequent history compel them to postulate that these have been "combined "-interwoven, welded, or fused-into a compact whole, much as the materials of an edifice, originally separate, have been united by the skill of the builder. They admit that the whole bears the impress of a single mind, only they maintain that it was the mind of a "Redactor," not that of an author. (b) External Evidence. In the nature of the case there can be little external evidence, yet there is some. (i) For centuries the custodians of the work, the Jews, have known it by a single name, "the Torah "-the Law. The other designation occasionally used,-"The Five Fifths of the Law" shows that they regarded each ,(חמשה חומשי תורה) of the divisions as a necessary part of a single whole. (ii) The testimonies of Josephus and Philo show clearly that they regarded the work as a five-fold unit; and the history of the Septuagint and the existence of the Samaritan Pentateuch further show that, as far back as we can trace it, the work was looked on as unique and separate from all other Hebrew literature. (iii) The ancient titles given to these books point in the same direction. As is well known, in Hebrew the books are distinguished by words taken from the opening verse; in Greek they have descriptive titles summarizing the subject of the volume. Whichever of these may be the more ancient usage, they point to a distinction from the other books of the Old Testament. As regards the Hebrew, the only other books distinguished by the opening word are Proverbs and Lamentations. Now Mishlay (), while being the first word in Proverbs, is also a title descriptive of the contents; and the opening phrase from which the designation of Lamentations is taken, is in itself an extended title, Aychah (7). The fact that there is an alternative title Kinoth (p, Laments), is really a confirma D |