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lecture. He certainly laid down the proposition that the civilization of 
Egypt implied a longer chronology than many persons admitted 
The Chairman. — Upon that I think there can be no dispute. 
Rev. C. A. Row. — But the question is a much longer one than that, 
and if we go thoroughly into it we must go into the origin of the Indian 
civilization and of their religion, and the origin also of the civilization of 
China and its religion ; the time it took to create those things, and various 
other questions. I am not prepared to say how long a time these things must 
have taken, but I use them in order to caution you against laying down a 
strong and limited Biblical chronology. I consider that there is great 
difficulty in accounting for the Egyptian religion, which must have 
grown up in the existing Nile valley, because that religion is deeply 
stamped in certain parts with the scenery of Egypt. If we assume that 
man was created as a savage, this supposition involves a more extended 
idea of the miraculous than the other. Certainly it would take a very in- 
definite period of years to raise man from a savage to anything like the 
civilization of Egypt ; but when I view the peculiar form of the civilization 
of Egypt and of the Egyptian religion, I say it is a difficult matter to state 
how long it must have taken in its elaboration. I should think — but I 
am speaking on entirely human ideas of chronology — that the growth of 
such a religion, infinitely and vastly complicated as it is, would take a 
very considerable interval ; and then we have also to account for the 
origin of the Egyptian language, and to go further, and to find the 
science of language rapidly springing up around. All of this would make a 
large demand upon time ; therefore we have to act with great caution before 
putting before the public any idea as to 6 or 10 or 20,000 years being the 
chronology of Divine revelation. At the same tune, Divine revelation was 
not given to teach chronology or science. There are one or two other points 
in Mr. Reddie’s paper which I regard as taking up a somewhat questionable 
position, but I will not enter upon them now. I cannot help saying, how- 
ever, that I think his conclusions respecting the chalk formation occupying a 
period of only something like a century is an exceedingly questionable one. 
I admit that the result might be shown by the figures he employs, but in the 
same way I might quote the old sum, showing that a farthing put out at 
compound interest at the creation of the world would become so large a sum 
that it would have made a mass of gold as big as the globe. Of course, 
every one knows that that would be impossible, for there is not enough gold 
to do it, and I am afraid that we should have to resort to an inconvertible 
mass of bank notes. 
Professor Morris. — I am sorry that I am in a worse position than either of 
the two previous speakers, inasmuch as I neither heard Professor Huxley’s 
lecture, nor have I yet read Mr. Reddie’s paper. All the advantage I have 
derived was the pleasure of attending the last meeting at which that paper 
was read, and I only recollect a few points of the subject under discussion. 
In the many observations that were made at that meeting I am glad that 
one speaker took the scientific part which was most ably defended by Dr. 
