143 
fication of Nimrod ’ before long. Whether I write or not, I can always rest 
in the assurance that the truth will be made clear by other hands, if not 
by mine. 
“D. H. Haigh.” 
Eev. S. Fisher, D.D. — The paper is a very valuable one, and is exceedingly 
interesting, especially to those who are experts in ethnology. I have some- 
times thought, when looking at those excavations and those documents and 
inscriptions from Egypt, of what our blessed Lord said when the Pharisees 
and others exclaimed, “Bid these hold their peace,” — “If these should hold 
their peace,” said He, “ the very stones would cry out.” The stones from 
Egypt and from Chaldsea, also, have been crying out for some time to good 
purpose, and many very glorious truths are borne testimony to by these 
monuments. It is very clear from what has been brought out lately, that 
Mesopotamia was the centre or cradle of the human race, and the Bible is 
very distinct on that point; and the emigration was westward, as the paper 
states. And it is clear also that man did not come upon the earth as a 
savage, as has been said by many ; by Bancroft, for instance, in his work 
on the American Indians. Man appeared at first highly civilized and 
religious. It appears that the farther we go back, religion becomes the 
simpler, and nearer the truth — the unity of the Deity. It appears again 
that the first deviation from the truth in the way of worship was the astro- 
theology, and that agrees also with what the Bible says. We seem to have 
an approach to the sentiment that raised the first temple to the moon-god in 
what Job says in the 31st chapter — “If when I beheld the sun when it 
shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my heart hath been secretly 
enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand, this also were an iniquity to be 
punished by the judge, for I should have denied the God that is above.” 
And the fact also stated in the paper, that animal-worship was the next de- 
viation from the truth, is abundantly manifested in the Bible also. 
Rev. Preb. Currey, D.D. (Master of the Charterhouse). — There is one 
point with reference to the earlier forms of religion, as set forth in this paper, 
which I am not quite clear about. It seems to be the idea, especially of the 
last speaker, that the earlier religions were more pure than perhaps the later, 
and that the later became worse and worse as time went on. To a certain 
extent I have no doubt that was true, but I do not quite gather this from 
what has been recently brought out with regard to the Accadians, that very 
remarkable people ivlio were certainly representatives of an earlier civilization 
than the civilization of the Chaldees. The religion of the Accadians does not 
seem to have been an astro-theology, but rather an elemental worship, and the 
forms of Accadian religion, as they appear on Accadian monuments, have 
reference only to magic, charms, and spirits — not at all a high type of reli- 
gion. So far therefore, as this is the case, it does not seem to me that 
the Accadian or earlier civilization in those parts of Mesopotamia had a higher 
kind of religion ; but rather that the development of religion had assumed a 
higher form iu the progress of civilization. As time went on, the number 
of the gods was increased, and the religion, and this false worship became 
