366 
stand that Dr. Rule means to throw any doubt on the fact of the primeval 
unity of patriarchal faith and theology ; there are two or three phrases 
to be found on looking carefully through the paper which seem to imply the 
contrary — that Dr. Rule holds to that unity of primeval patriarchal faith and 
theology ; but it was no part of his object to dwell upon this, but rather 
to deal with the particular proposition which he desired to prove. I 
suppose that Dr. Rule not only has read, but that among the learned com- 
pany he keeps he meets with those who are in the habit very quietly and 
easily of assuming, that whatever there is of wisdom in the writings of 
Moses was borrowed from Egypt, and that whatever there is of grandeur 
and nobleness in the conceptions of the Bible was most probably obtained 
by means of some man, or men, of grand and powerful genius, by whom 
the great ideas of other nations were taken and moulded into a system, and 
that thus we have in the writings of the Old Testament the results of an 
inspiration gathered from various origins round about — partly from Chaldea, 
with which, of course, the Jews in their earlier history were very closely 
connected, partly from Phoenicia, and partly from Egypt, and that lying, as 
the Hebrew race did, in the centre of those other races — Chaldean and 
Phoenician and Egyptian — they thus gathered into a focus the rays of 
nobleness, and grandeur, and impressive speculation with regard to the 
existence of a God and the creation of the world, and that this is the natural 
history of the Books of Moses and of the foundations of our religion. Now, 
I suppose that Dr. Rule has met with all this sort of thing, and, finding it 
current in society, he has undertaken to prove, on the other hand, that 
these ancient books do not owe anything to the sources which are supposed 
to have contributed all that is precious, all that is glorious, in them. (Heai-, 
hear.) That I take to be t^e proposition which Dr. Rule has undertaken 
to establish. I agree with a good deal that our former Chairman said in 
regard to the primitive truth that is found mixed up in various forms of 
religion. I think that no one can have examined the earliest writings of the 
Hindoos without finding that it was a very different system which prevailed 
among the Aryan fathers of the Hindoo race, from that fearful and mon- 
strous growth of tales of pollution and absurdity to which Bishop Claughton 
has made reference. I think, if we refer to that sister branch of the great 
Aryan family from which the Parsee worship is derived, and to the relics 
and indications of their most ancient form of worship, from which the com- 
paratively modern Zoroastrianism is a derivative, we shall see that there has 
been a sort of unity between the Persian principles and faith and the Hindoo 
principles and faith, and that both may be traced up to the same cradle 
and the same age. Nor do I doubt that there has been a sort of identity 
between them and the earliest originals of the Egyptian faith ; but what I 
understand Dr. Rule to say is, that that being so, all that is good and pure 
in the old faiths, coming as it did from one heavenly original, has been 
perverted and corrupted by the various forms of heathenism ; that the dif- 
ferent families of heathenism invented for themselves a human cosmo- 
