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of polytheism, and the very names that are thus shown to be connected 
with the attributes of the divine power, seem to confirm what we 
learn from the Biblical source. We know very well, as the author of the 
paper has mentioned, that at one time, at a later stage of pantheism, 
it was the custom to worship the moral virtues, such as were symbolised 
in the well-known Temple of Concord, and in the other temples and 
altars which we find in the later periods of Boman idolatry erected to 
Pietas and Fides, and so forth — the moral attributes in that later stage 
being personified and made into deities. This is an illustration of the same 
kind of process ; and, as the author of the jDaper remarked, there are one 
or two traces of this in remote antiquity, which shows that the attributes 
of virtue and strength were by the pagans identified with separate beings 
by whom they were supposed to be personified — those beings being consti- 
tuted into distinct divinities, representing what really from the first were 
revealed as the attributes of the one true God. (Hear, hear.) These few 
thoughts have occurred to me in considering this paper ; but it is one that is 
so fruitful of subjects for reflection, that I am sure those who have heard it 
read must have had many other thoughts suggested to them, and it is now 
open to any one wishing to do so, to express liis opinions upon any of the 
points that have been touched on. 
Mr. W. Griffith. — The learned lecturer has traced many of the words he 
has mentioned to an Egyptian origin. He referred to the word “ Asir,” 
and connected it with “ Osiris,” another form of the Hebrew the 
enricher. The readers of our great epic poet may remember the lines ; — 
“ Nor did Israel ’scape 
The infection, when their borrow’d gold composed 
The calf in Oreb ; and the rebel king 
Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan.” — Milton, b. i. 
The calf. Apis, was the emblem of, or sacred to (Diodorus, and 
Strabo, b. xvii.), Osiris, and Egyptian worship was repeated in after- 
times in Jewish history. Another etymology quoted by the learned 
lecturer was that of “ Bath-Sheba.” Here I differ from him and agree 
with Mr. Girdlestone that the word “ Sheba ” is derived from “ Sheba,” 
an oath, rather than from the words Sbat ” and “ Seb,” and for this 
reason we find “ Beer-Sheba,” the well of the oath — the well at which 
Abraham entered into covenant with some of the surrounding tribes. If, 
then, we have “Sheba,” signifying oath, and “Beer- Sheba” meaning the 
well of the oath, it seems that we have ground to say that “ Sheba ” in 
“ Bath-Sheba” would also be of the same origin. Another interesting word 
that has been cited is the word “ Sekhem,” which means “ possession.” 
Being a barrister, I have been struck with the appropriateness to time 
and place of the juristical ideas which occur in the Book of Genesis. 
There is no doubt that that history does to a legal mind recall the period 
of what we may call the law of Nature when possession seems to have 
been, to use a homely phrase, nine parts of the law— before society was 
