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of theory erected upon the smallest apex of fact, it tries our patience exceed- 
ingly. In reading many works of this description I find my patience very 
severely tried, and that is a thing which very frequently happens in regard 
to these ancient records. The real questions tor our consideration aie, 
what was the purity of this Egyptian religion l Was its God a personal Being l . 
and what was its date ? Wh en wc get these questions answered, we shall 
have arrived at matters of fact which may enable us to form some safe 
conclusion.* 
The Chairman. — There is every reason why we should not discuss this 
paper controversially or in a hostile spirit. Still there are many points in 
it upon which I should have liked to ask questions. As to the resurrection of 
the body, I confess I had always imagined that that was a purely Christian 
doctrine ; but, on consideration, I incline to Mr. Row’s view, that there are 
two ideas of the resurrection of the body. I want to know what was the idea 
held by the Egyptians ? We find on mummy-cases, those in the British Mu- 
seum, for instance, representations of the body, and always in the likeness 
of the body, but with a certain resemblance to some particular god. 
You have a little figure of the deceased with a sort of divine aspect. t 1 
rather fancy that the Egyptians, having got a primitive notion of life after 
death, distorted it into a pantheistic sense. I am rather afraid that they 
believed in the resurrection of the soul and body, as a sort of mixture of the 
two, and as being absorbed into the existence of some god ; so that they had 
no definite idea of the personal resurrection of each person, but imagined that 
the existence, after death, of each person, was brought about by his absorption 
into the essence of a certain god, and that personality was lost. It 
is remarkable that in all religions which assimilate themselves to 
the true revelation, we find an absence of definiteness with regard to 
the personality of existence after death, whether we take Buddhism 
or Hinduism, or any other religion.^ In Christianity the doctrine is a 
cardinal one, but I fancy that, in earlier times, for certain reasons, in 
the providence of God, the doctrine was not insisted on : I question much, 
for my own part, whether the Jews had a clear idea of the personal resurrec- 
tion of the body. Mr. Drach has given us some very interesting remarks on 
certain points in the paper, and one related to a point which bore apparently 
against the Sephardian Jews ; but I do not suppose the author meant that 
they had been degraded into sensualism. This is hardly the time to discuss 
derivations, but I am afraid I cannot quite agree with the learned Hebraist in 
reference to the Hebrew word for darkness. Etymology is very tempting, 
but it will lead you into a morass if you don’t take care. With reference 
to Mr. Row’s point about the god Serapis, I confess I agree with him 
in being surprised at the passage in the paper, which grated on my ears. 
The word “ Romans” must be a misprint ; it is clearly a mistake. In con- 
* See reply I. + See reply II. J See reply III. 
