156 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



by one of the greatest scholars Great Britain produced in our own 

 time. He yields the lore he learned, the dead language he mastered 

 because he felt the interests of religion may sijfter. We feel more 

 inclined to think he supposed the older inscription was a clerical 

 error and he imagined he had a perfect right to correct- it. He 

 made a mistake in doing so, that was all. 



Now take the statistics of Dr. Talmage's own country, the 

 United States, and what do we find recorded regarding religion 

 there in this falsely styled Anglo-Saxon country? 23 per cent, only of 

 its population are Christian, real and nominal ; most part even of 

 these are women. If the reverend gentleman canfind such a state of 

 things a subject for congratulation he must be rather easily satisfied 

 with the progress of religion. Not long since a Catholic prelate 

 regretted, " while we are winning back to the fold so many educated 

 Americans, what of the 12,000,000 Irish immigrants and their 

 descendants ? Consider this, far more than half have fallen away 

 from the faith." I believe some little time since Dr. Talmage 

 preached a sermon in defence of the chronology of the Bible. He 

 may not be aware of some recent translations of Egyptian and 

 Assyrian records in the British museum which seem calculated to 

 throw a little light on that very obscure subject, namely, the origin 

 of the Bible stories. Extract No. i follows : " Early in the last de- 

 cade of the nineteenth century it was noised abroad that the Rev. 

 Prof. Sayce, of Oxford, the most eminent Assyriologist and Egypto- 

 logist was about to publish a work in which what is known as the 

 higher criticism was to be very vigorously and destructively dealt 

 with in the light afforded by recent research among the monuments 

 of Egypt and Assyria. The book was looked for with the m6st 

 eager expectation by the supporters of the traditional view of 

 Scripture, but when it appeared the exultation of the traditionalists 

 was speedily changed to dismay. For Prof. Sayce while showing 

 some severity towards sundry minor assumptions and assertions of 

 biblical critics, confirmed all their more important conclusions which 

 properly fell within his province. A few of the statements of this 

 champion of orthodoxy may be noted. He allowed that the week 

 of seven days and the Sabbath rest are of Babylonian origin, indeed 

 the word Sabbath itself is Babylonian. That there are two narratives 

 of creation on the Babylonian tablets wonderfully like the two 



