CO.MMKMOK'ATIOX MKKTING. 



L63 



" ages " during which the earth was becoming prepared to be 

 the abode of man, and we may well be grateful to the science 

 which has given us this enlarged view of our Creator's past 

 purposes and works. 



Before leaving this subject let me refer to the invaluable 

 address given to us by Lord Kelvin {Transactions, Vol. XXXI ), 

 from the careful study of which we may learn that it was not 

 without reason based upon the facts themselves that in v. 2 

 two different words, Qinri and Q*]E (tehom and mayim), "deep" 

 and "waters," were used to describe the two differently con- 

 stituted liquids which in two successive periods covered the 

 surface of our globe. In that same address he quite effectively 

 disposed of the claim made by the adherents of Scripture on 

 the one hand for the limitation of the period of Creation to 

 a few hours by the clock, and to that made by the evolutionist 

 on the other for thousands of millions of years since the begin- 

 ning of the Cambrian Period. To the latter Lord Kelvin curtly 

 says in effect : " You cannot have more than from thirty to forty 

 millions of years at the most." In this branch of research 

 between Scripture and science, then, the Institute has rendered 

 invaluable service to every seeker after truth. 



In the few moments left to me let me refer to one other 

 branch of research. About the time of its formation we began 

 to be told with increasing emphasis across the North Sea that 

 Moses could not have written the Pentateuch because the art 

 of writing was not sufficiently known in his day; that the 

 prophets of Israel preceded the giving of the Law and laid the 

 moral foundations for it, and that consequently much of the 

 Old Testament history was legendary ; that many of the Psalms 

 were too highly spiritual for the time of David, and must be 

 dated in the exilic period, or later ; that the Book of Isaiah 

 was a composite work by some nine or ten different authors 

 and an unknown editor, since science forbade our belief in the 

 miracle of prophecy ; that Daniel was a fictitious work compiled 

 about 130 years B.C., of which Daniel never wrote a line, and 

 whose fictitious character was established not only by its 

 pretence to prophecy but by its reference to certain musical 

 instruments, and to a certain so-called king, Belshazzar, who 

 never existed, and so on and so on. The time would fail me to 

 tell of the discoveries of the excavators, and of the labours of the 

 decipherers of the literature of Babylonia and Assyria, Palestine 

 and Egypt. The Creation tablets, the Deluge tablets, the Tel 

 el Amarna tablets, the Hammurabi stele and tablets, the Papyri 

 of Elephantine and countless other documents which have given 



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