554T1I OKDINAKY GENERAL MEETING, 



HELD (BY KIND PERMISSION) IN THE JIOOMS OF THE 

 ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS, ON MONDAY, APRIL Gtii, 1914, 



AT 4.30 P.M. 



Mr. David Howard, Y.i\, took the Chair. 



The Minutes of tlie jDreceding Meeting were read and confirmed. 



The Secretary announced that Mr. Martin H. F. Sutton and 

 Mr. Charles Barnard Wigg had been elected Associates of the Institute. 



The Chairman then called upon Mr. E. Walter Maunder to read his 

 paper. 



THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS. By E. Walter 

 Maunder, F.Pt.A.S., late Superintendent of the Solar 

 Department, Eoyal Observatory, Greenwich. 



UP subject this afternoon is the First Chapter of 

 Genesis.* 



I take it that all here are agreed upon two points : — 

 First : — We believe that God is. 



NText :— We believe tliat He made the world ; that is the 

 entire material universe. 

 There is a third proposition w^hich we must also accept 

 absolutely, if we are to discuss our chosen subject to any profit. 

 That third proposition is : — God is Himself tlie Author of this 

 chapter which tells us how He made the world. 



I. — Genesis I is a Kevelation from God. 



F'or there are only two possible sources for the chapter : God 

 Himself, the Creator, Who knew the mode and order of creation, 

 or man, who did not know, but imagined it. 



It is manifest that the act of creation cannot have come under 

 human observation ; it predated man, it escaped his experience 

 entirely. Nor could he learn of it by tradition ; there was no 



* In the first chapter of Genesis I desire to include the first three 

 verses of the second chapter, which in the division of the Bible have 

 obviously been detached from. their proper connection. 



