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(Published by the Enstitute, 1, Central Buildings, Westminster, S.W.)

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

1915.

LONDON :

HARRISON AND SONS, PRINTERS IN ORDINARY TO HIS MAJESTY,

ST. MARTIN'S LANE.

D

PREFACE.

URING the past year the shadow of the Great War has rested upon us all. To some it has meant bereavement, to others financial loss and anxiety, to everyone constant pre-occupation. The Victoria Institute could not hope to escape. Some of its supporters have found themselves obliged to diminish their subscriptions or even to withdraw them altogether.

Nevertheless, in spite of these and other hindrances, the record of the past Session is most encouraging. The removal to new quarters has resulted in a great advantage, and the rooms in the Central Hall, Westminster, available for our Meetings, have proved much more comfortable and commodious than the premises which we formerly occupied.

Thirteen Meetings were held during the Session instead of the usual twelve, and all of them have been well attended, some of them exceptionally so.

The papers read have all been of importance, and have covered a wide field of research and thought. The Theory of Evolution in its two chief aspects has been passed in review by two well-known scientific men :-Professor Ernest MacBride, F.R.S., treating of the Present Position of the Theory of Organic Evolution, while Professor Alfred Fowler, F.R.S., dealt in a similar comprehensive manner with Inorganic Evolution: the Development of Stars and Nebulæ. Two special applications of science having a bearing upon sacred and ecclesiastical history were dealt with by Professor Archibald R. S. Kennedy, and Dr. A. M. W. Downing, F.R.S., respectively; the former in his address on Weights and Measures of the Hebrews; the latter in his survey of the history and significance of the present Ecclesiastical Calendar. This last rests upon the Jewish

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Calendar, which supplied Mrs. Maunder with her chief criterion
for determining the date and place of some of the more important
pseudepigraphical books, such as the Book of Enoch, and for
establishing their dependence upon Persian rather than upon
Jewish influences. This paper was most appropriately followed
by Professor J. Hope Moulton's discussion on "The Zoroastrian
Doctrine of a Future Life," which, in its turn, admirably prepared
the way for Dr. St. Clair Tisdall's exposition of Mahâyâna Bud-
dhism. The Rev. D. Gath Whitley drew from the vestiges which
primeval man has left behind him evidence that even in the Pleisto-
cene Period man was not devoid of some kind of religious belief;
while, on the other hand, Canon McClure summarized the principal
features of the decadent attitude adopted by some in our own days,
and contended that Modernism had departed widely from primitive
Christianity. Three further papers touched in different ways on
that literary disintegration of Scripture which has been carried out
under the name of the Higher Criticism. Professor Margoliouth
dealt with this kind of analysis as it has been applied to the works
of Homer, and maintained, as against it, the unity of authorship
of the Homeric poems.
Dr. T. G. Pinches drew attention to the
Old and New Babylonian records of the Creation and the Flood,
showing a parallelism to the records in Genesis. While in the
Annual Address which concluded the Session, Professor H. Edouard
Naville demonstrated how strong was the internal evidence that the
Book of Genesis was essentially the work of a single author.

The papers, therefore, were either themselves original researches
of importance or valuable reviews of certain intellectual move-
ments; and the discussions to which they gave rise have often
usefully supplemented the papers themselves.

The Institute is greatly indebted to the distinguished Authors
who, during a time of universal strain and distress, have given
such important assistance to the objects and purpose of the
Institute.

September, 1915.

E. WALTER MAUNDER, Editor.

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