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condition as the mythologists of Greece and Rome, and, before their day, the 
mythologists of Egypt and Chaldea. We find that where they will not 
accept the doctrine of a personal Deity, they go back to an inscrutable power 
— they do not tell you what it is, but they say it is not personal, and they 
cannot attribute personality to it. They go back to fate and tendencies, to 
eternal somethings, not ourselves, which make for righteousness, and we 
know not what besides, because they will not admit a personal Deity. If we 
study the matter, we shall find nothing more intelligible in their various 
ideas on the subject than there is in the strange, sad, grotesque, but yet 
pathetic attempts of those old heathen thinkers to grapple with and 
solve the mystery of the universe. (Hear, hear.) I must add that when 
I look at the Jewish people and think of them as they were, with no greater 
advantages in many respects than others, and often even with less, and when 
I see that along their line the wonderful, the pure, the lofty, the consistent, 
the steadfast conception of a personal Deity, unalloyed, with no base mixture 
of mean and low anthropomorphism about it, but, whatever there was of it 
sublime, elevated, purified, and ennobled in a way absolutely divine,— I say, 
when I remember all this, it seems to me to be one of the strongest evidences 
of the fact and the truth of Divine revelation that could possibly be afforded, 
and a strong argument for our retaining our faith in the full and complete 
authority of the sacred Scriptures. (Cheers.) 
Rev. J. Fisiier, D.D. — I think that the writer of this paper has fully and 
clearly made out and established the point with which he started. I think 
he has made out very clearly that the monotheism of the Bible is not derived 
from the Egyptian mythology, nor from the Phoenician, Assyrian, or Chaldean 
systems, for they had no monotheism to give. I say that no twelve honest 
men would leave the jury-box after hearing the case Dr. Rule has put, till 
they had brought in a verdict in favour of the paper he has read and the 
truth it establishes. It was not necessary for the writer of the paper to go 
back to the antediluvian period. I do not agree with him that the worship 
of God ceased with the death of Abel, because in that case the Church would 
have ceased, and I think it did not. We have a great revival about the 
period of the birth of Seth, when men began to call on the name of the 
Lord ; and taking it onward from the time of Noah, who, with his sons, were 
monotheists, it was carried forward through long ages. I think the founders 
and fathers of the systems of the early Egyptians and Phoenicians, and 
Chaldeans and Assyrians were monotheists ; and I believe that the oldest 
work of magnificence in the world, the Great Pyramid, was built by 
monotheists. There is no trace of idolatry on it, and it is supposed by those 
who have examined it most closely that it was built by monotheists. We 
find at the time of Abraham a great spread of monotheism ; then we come to 
J ob, who knew the true God, and when J osepli went to Egypt there was a 
remnant of monotheism there. The further we go back into the history of 
tho nations, the nearer wo find them to monotheism. There are traces of it 
in the old Vedas, and there is the same thing in the Egyptian mythology. 
