352 
to set up a system of chronology as part and parcel of Divine revelation is 
entirely out of the question. No one could defend at the same moment the 
shores of an entire kingdom. Even the Duke of W ellington, if, instead of 
taking his position within the lines of Torres \ edras, had attempted to 
defend the whole Peninsula of Spain, would necessarily have been driven 
out. I, therefore, take my position in my Torres Yedras, and no one shall 
compel me to fight outside of it, and I will not consent that persons should 
imply that certain things are necessarily the subject of Divine inspiration 
which, as far as I can see, lie entirely beyond the sphere of that inspiration. 
I wish now to draw attention to the subject of the civilization of Egypt. 
Professor Huxley recites the fact of that civilization, and alludes to the cha- 
riots and horses and so forth of Pharaoh’s time, resting the fact of Egyptian 
civilization pretty much upon those trivial things. If I walk into the 
Museum I see there a great mass of evidences of Egyptian civilization, and 
that is what I wish to account for. In doing so, I am met by a difficulty as 
to the origin of man— whether he began as a savage, which I do not believe, 
or whether he was originally in a high form of civilization. I find no chro- 
nology which will account for the formation of the high state of civilization 
at that extremely early period, and in saying this, I am the more concerned 
with the system of religious worship which belonged to the Egyptians. It 
would be exceedingly difficult to account for the progress made by the Egyp- 
tians, in these few centuries, in arts and sciences. And if you go to India 
and see the early civilization evidenced there, and in China also, the difficulty 
is by no means diminished. All these things must be accounted for ; and if 
the Bible does not impose upon us the necessity of saying so, why should it 
be asserted that the whole of these things must be accounted for in the 
period of 4,000 years that has elapsed since the Flood ? 
The Chairman.— One of the lessons which Professor Huxley learnt at 
Sion College was that none of the clergy were prepared to maintain the 
infallibility of Archbishop Usher’s chronology, and that is a fact which 
Mr. Reddie carries throughout his paper. There is no doubt that there 
ought to be a large extension of the present chronology. That no one denies. 
What Mr. Reddie has taken up is the enormous period which Professor 
Huxley required — something like millions of years, instead of 6,000. 
Rev. C. A. Row*— But he does not require it as the period assigned 
to the human race. 
The Chairman. — Yes. For instance, in the case of the Nile, the little 
arithmetical sum which Professor Huxley favoured the clergy with, gave 
something like 7,000 years for the formation of the Delta by the mud of the 
Nile, and he left us to imagine how much more ancient than that man may 
have been. Professor Huxley carries man back as far as the Tertiary period , 
and from what we have got from him and other scientific men in reference 
to the chronology of the Tertiary period, there is little doubt that both he 
and Sir Charles Lyell would be prepared to maintain that the chronology 
of man extended over millions of years. 
Rev. C. A. Row.— But there is nothing of that kind in Professor Huxley’s 
