the two last paragraphs, in which the author seems to be working towards a philosophical centre, from which we may be able to see the teachings of Science and Revelation in one common perspective. Communication from SYDNEY T. KLEIN, Esq. F.L.S., etc. : The Institution is to be congratulated on having such an expert as Mr. Maunder to tell us the latest phase of the old controversy as to the existence of life upon the planets; there is no astronomer living who has done more in the way of popularizing the Science of Astronomy than Mr. Maunder has done, especially in his connection with the British Astronomical Association; he is indeed a worthy successor of Richard A. Proctor, and his present paper will be highly appreciated by our members. I have been much interested in the paper and especially his remarks on the planet Mars. The writer of the paper seems to have restricted himself to the question whether the planets are inhabited now, he does not touch upon the larger question whether they may have been inhabited in the past or may in the future be the abode of sentient beings similar to ourselves; now this is rather an important point, especially when the argument tends, as it does in the paper, to suggest that one particular world only, namely the Earth, has been prepared by design to be the home of man. The planets of the solar system are all in different and distinct stages of what may be called growth in preparation for life, such giant and remote planets as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have not yet reached or are only just arriving at the stage of consolidation, a stage which the Earth went through probably fifty million years ago when the moon had its birth; whereas, on the other hand, Mars, Mercury and the moon, having small masses, have progressed faster and are probably in a stage well in advance of the Earth; whilst Venus, of practically the same mass as the Earth, although about one-fourth nearer to the sun, has so dense an atmosphere that her physical conditions are probably very like our own and her organic life similar to ours. With regard to the so-called "canals" in Mars, I think Mr. Maunder was the first to point out that if you place a number of black dots on a white card and look at it from a long distance, the eye at once forms lines of those dots, and this is probably the true explanation of what Mr. Lowell claims he saw, and that it was upon these pseudo-perceptions that he made his wonderful drawings; there were certainly no such canals shown on the photographs he brought over and which many of us examined very minutely without finding any trace of his network of canals, and as pointed out by Mr. Maunder, the larger the telescopes used the less did the markings have the appearance of straight lines; the controversy certainly took a humorons turn worthy of Punch, when the advocates for the canal theory actually propounded the extraordinary theory that "many of the telescopes were too large to show such small markings." Mr. Maunder truly points out that under certain conditions of temperature, as are found in the earlier stages of the formation of a world, the basis of living matter, as we know it, in plant and animal structures, namely protoplasm, could not exist, but he also states that among other worlds in the universe there can only be a small proportion, at best, so well favoured as our Earth for sustaining life; now we find by means of the spectroscope that each of the atoms comprising that protoplasm, namely, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen, are identically the same throughout the whole universe, whether we observe them here in our laboratories or when situated at the very limit of our perception, through the greatest telescopes; we also know that though each atom is continuously pulsating and clashing with others billions of times per second, they show absolutely no signs of wear or diminution in activity in a million years, for we can examine side by side two sets of say hydrogen atoms, one of which is a million years older than the other; the atoms we examine here are, in time, a million years in advance of those we examine through our astro-spectroscope, as we are seeing these latter atoms only as they were a million years ago, and yet wherever we turn to in space we find this hydrogen atom and all other atoms identical to those not only in the sun, but in our surroundings on this little Earth; we also see the same forces at work in the far off nebulæ as we are experiencing in this little corner. Does not this wonderful proof of unity of design throughout the whole visible universe force upon us the conviction that round each of the myriads of other stars in our star cluster, of which our sun is one, and probably round the suns in countless other star clusters, are planets in the course of preparation for sustaining life, life probably, as Mr. Maunder points out, based upon protoplasm as we know it, but possibly under conditions absolutely beyond conception from our present restricted outlook. 526TH ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5TH, 1912, 4.30 P.M. DAVID HOWARD, ESQ., VICE-PRESIDENT, IN THE CHAIR. The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed. MEMBER: Mrs. Brocklebank. ASSOCIATE J. Bancroft-Hill, Esq. (a Life Associate). Owing to the Author's inability to be present, the CHAIRMAN called upon the SECRETARY to read the paper, entitled :— THE HISTORICITY OF THE MOSAIC TABERNACLE. IT By the Rev. Professor JAMES ORR, D.D. T has come to be regarded as a truism by the newer school of Old Testament criticism that the tabernacle described in Exodus xxv ff. and xxxv ff., as set up by Moses in the wilderness, is unhistorical. It never had a real existence, but is a devout imagination spun from the brains of post-exilian scribes. It is but the Temple of Solomon "made portable," halved in dimensions, and carried back in fancy to the time of the wilderness wanderings. It belongs, critically speaking, to the document P, or Priestly Writing, which, originating after the exile, is of no authority as a picture of Mosaic times. It is not denied that there was a tent of some simple sort as a covering for the ark-rather, perhaps, a succession of tentsand evidence of this is thought to be found in the mention. of such a tent in the narrative of E, the Elohist, in Exodus xxxiii, 7 ff., with later notices in Numbers xi, 16, 24 ff.; xii, 1 ff.; and Deuteronomy xxxi, 14 f. Everything in these older descriptions, it is said, is of a simpler order. The tent is pitched outside the camp, not within it; the purpose is revelation, rather than worship; there is no ministering priesthood, but Joshua alone has charge. Outside the descriptions in P no trace of the elaborate "Tent of Meeting" is discoverable. It is hence to be dismissed as unreal. This is the view of the Mosaic tabernacle introduced by Graf, Kuenen, and Wellhausen, and now found in almost every critical text-book and Biblical Encyclopædia that is published. I need only refer as examples to the articles on the Tabernacle in Hastings' Dictionaries of the Bible (alike in four-volume and one-volume dictionaries), and in the Encyclopædia Biblica; and to the recently published Commentary on Exodus by Dr. Driver, and Introduction to the Pentateuch by Dr. Chapman, writers who would be regarded, presumably, as belonging to the moderate wing of the school. The rejection of the historicity of the tabernacle rests, as just said, in part on critical grounds-on the alleged late date of the P writing, and the supposed conflict of its descriptions with those in E-but far more on broader considerations, arising out of the conditions of the history, and the general view taken of the religious development. The tabernacle disappears as part of the total picture of the Mosaic age given in the documents JE and P, but specially in P. That picture, it is held, is late, legendary, and incredible. Religion had not, it is affirmed, then attained the stage which made the conception of such a tabernacle possible; and the narratives, when examined, show in every part their legendary and unhistorical character. To take only one point: the numbers of the Israelites who are said to have left Egypt at the Exodus600,000 fighting men, implying a population of nearly 2,000,000 -are declared to be impossible, and still less possible is the subsistence of such an immense multitude in the desert, which, at the utmost, could not have sustained more than 5,000 or 6,000. Then the amount of precious metals, and the high artistic skill, presupposed in the accounts of the making of the tabernacle, are such as a multitude of trembling fugitives cannot be conceived of as possessing. The simple weight of the massive boards, pillars, and heavy sockets of silver and bronze is beyond what the means of transport could convey. Or think of the elaborate weaving and dyeing operations and refined embroidery of fine linen implied in the production of the coverings and hangings of the structure. Putting all together, the case against the historicity of the tabernacle is claimed to be complete. It may seem then, as if, in venturing to challenge this array of reasons for setting aside the tabernacle of the Exodus account, I were undertaking an absolutely hopeless task. I do not, however, myself feel that it is so; and I shall leave you to judge, when I have presented the other side, whether a great deal more is not to be said for the historicity of this sacred structure than the critical theories allow. The purely critical question I do not discuss in detail. So far from admitting that the Levitical Code-the so-called P Code with its complex of laws, rites, and institutions, is a production of the age after the exile, I believe this to be an arbitrary and wholly preposterous conception, for which no sound reasons have been adduced, and which ere long is bound to be abandoned by thoughtful minds. Imagine Ezra producing this Code of laws-a thing unheard of before-in presence of the returned community of exiles at Jerusalem a community deeply divided, disaffected, religiously faithless, and in large measure opposed to the reforms of Ezra himself and of Nehemiah-and obtaining from them without demur the acceptance of its egregious historical statements, e.g., that the Levites, unknown before Ezekiel, had been set apart by Jehovah in the wilderness, and from time immemorial had been richly endowed with cities, pasturages, and tithes, and beyond this, the acceptance of its heavy and entirely new financial burdens. I have, however, argued this fully elsewhere, without ever seeing au answer to my argument, and do not dwell upon it further now. Much more weight, I grant, belongs to the historical difficulties, which here also I would only touch upon, as none of them are new, and they have been discussed and appraised times without number, without the rejection of the Mosaic account following as a necessary consequence. It may be observed that it is not the P document alone, but the JE histories as well, which narrate the marvellous increase of the people of Israel in Goshen, and the immense host that went out at the Exodus; they are pictured as leaving Egypt as an orderly, marshalled host, spoiling the Egyptians of their wealth, freely thrust upon them to secure their speedy departure; their marches, deliverances, and the provision made for them are not figured as natural events, but as the result of the miraculous guidance and bountiful care of Jehovah, their God and Redeemer; the entire history is penetrated by a supernatural element without which, it is freely admitted, it is not intelligible at all, but which, if granted, is in keeping with both the |