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elusion I have only to point to Mr. Cooper’s closing words, in which he 
holds that Christianity is the revelation, and that all others were merely a 
degradation of that revelation which Christianity possesses in its purity. 
This is a point which we should hold most distinctly. There was a time 
when people imagined that Christianity was the only truth, and that all 
other religions were the invention of the Devil ; but that is not correct. All 
religions contain a certain amount of truth, except, perhaps, Maliommed- 
anisrn, which is an invention of later times, and I conceive that this truth 
which they contain has been derived from the primeval revelation of God to 
man. The revelation was kept in its purity by the Jews, and handed on 
by them to the Christians. The Bible, therefore, contains the truth, and all 
other religions approximate to that truth more or less. The view that 
Christianity contains some truth, but not more than Buddhism or any other 
religion, is a Republicanism in religion, and a view which this Institute does 
most decidedly repudiate and protest agaiust. 
The Meeting was then adjourned. 
MR. COOPER’S REPLY. 
I. Personality of the Deity . — How far the Supreme Being of the Egyptian 
mythology possessed a personal character is a point upon which the hiero- 
glyphic texts throw very little light. As we know from the Ritual , the 
highest and oldest form of the Deity was His manifestation under the name 
of Ra, of which being the sun was both an hypostasis and a type — a union 
of pure lire and pure spirit, something analogous to the Ahuramazda of the 
Zendavesta : this was especially the case in the period of the ancient 
empire. In the revived empire, or middle period of Egyptian history, that is 
from the XVIIth to the XXI Ind dynasties, the idea of a Supreme Being 
culminated in the nature of the god Amen Ra, a celestial rather than a purely 
solar god ; and hence he was always represented with a blue or heavenly 
body. The significance of his name was “ the hidden,” or “ the unseeable,” 
perhaps in the same way as the Psalmist writes — “ If I go up to heaven, Thou 
art there ; if I go down to hell, Thou art there also.” He was an all-per- 
vading but yet an invisible essence. This refinement of cultus led the way 
to an entirely pantheistic conception of the Deity in the third period of 
Egyptian history, viz. from the XXIInd to the XXXth dynasties, and it 
culminated in the identification of all the deities with Amen Ra, who was 
also at the same time one with Nature itself. There can be little doubt 
that these religious subtleties caused a development of anthropomorphic 
feeling in the common people, who ascribed to Ra a human personality, 
which was not supported, though at the same time it was not contra* 
