138 EEV. HENKY LANSDELL^ D.D., ETC., ON 



Dr. Robertson Smith's idea appeal's to be that tithes only grew up 

 where priesthood originated, and that it was only where the latter 

 had magnificent temples that they were paid. But all the facts 

 of this paper seem to bear the other way. The question, in 

 Babylonia, is treated in detail, and this appears to be a powerful 

 argument; for, as the author says, all these people hit on one- 

 tenth. There must have been some reason for it, for it is clear 

 they would not have hit on that particular proportion merely 

 by accident. 



The Author. — I am much obliged to you, Mr. Chairman, and 

 to the audience, for the appreciation you have expressed of my 

 paper. Of course you will see that in quoting my authorities I 

 have kept strictly to sources outside the Bible. I have purposely 

 done so, for it gives a far stronger vantage ground if one can 

 show that tithes were paid in Babylonia 2100 years before Christ, 

 and if you can show that before Abraham was born tithes were in 

 vogue. We know that Abraham paid tithes, and if we can show 

 that from secular sources, you next open up the question of 

 patriarchal tithe-giving, which is enough for a paper of itself. 



We have among the Jews, under the Mosaic Law, the tithe- 

 giving of the Old Testament, and then, if you go on, you find it in 

 the Apocryphal and Talmudic records. Then you may pass on to 

 the New Testament and the early Church, and you find there the 

 custom was practised to a very large extent all through the 

 centuries from the remotest period of history. 



The Meeting was then adjourned. 



NOTE. 



On the last page of his paper the author refers to a time when 

 the evidence collected tends to show that the ancestors of the 

 nations lived together (p. 137). It is interesting to find the fact of 

 the original unity of the human race thus contended for,* urged 

 on other grounds by the Right Hon. F. Max Miiller, M.A., D.C.L. 



* Again, — " From the most widely sejmrated nationalities of the old 

 world we find proofs of the existence of primeval doctrines, theories of 

 cosmical, religious, political, and even social character, so similar in detail 

 that the hypothesis of their common oiigin in some region that had been 

 historically and geographically the centre of all their i^eoples, seems to be 

 comjitletely established." Article on " Prehistoric civilization," Biblia, 

 vol. xi, p. 195.— Ed. 



