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land of Canaan. This region derived its name from Ham, of 
the household of Noah, lying between the Mediterranean on 
the west ; the wilderness of Paran, Idumsea, and Egypt on 
the sooth ; Arabia on the east ; and Lebanon and Phoenicia on 
the north. Its length from Dan to Beersheba is about 200 
miles, and its breadth across, from the Mediterranean to its 
eastern frontier, about 90 miles. The course of his journey 
lay through the country then peopled by the Canaanites, 
where the Lord appeared to him in Shechem, and said, “ Unto 
thy seed will I give this land.” He there built an altar, call- 
ing on the name of the Lord. And as there was a famine in 
the land of Canaan at the time, he journeyed southward into 
Egypt, where the great chronological monuments continue to 
determine, not only the age of the Hebrew patriarch and the 
human race from which he sprang, but also to evidence that 
the other families of the earth were derived from a much more 
ancient chronology. 
It will be necessary at this stage to return to a view of 
earlier chronology, in order to trace the tide of population as 
it passes the current of the Sabbatic race, and in order 
to an intelligent comprehension of all the races of mankind 
till the Adamic and pre-Sabbatic families unite in the stream 
of the early population of the earth, it would be necessaiy to 
consider the different chronologies of China, India, and the 
northern regions of America,- as well as their systems of 
astronomy, which have been greatly dwarfed by the prejudice 
that all mankind have been derived from the Adam of Eden ; 
but as this would lead to a vast extension of the present 
communication, already too long, I must leave that out of con- 
sideration. 
The Chairman. — I now call upon you to thank Professor Macdonald for 
the paper he has read upon an important subject : and I now invite the 
fullest discussion, which the paper, indeed, seems to require. 
Rev. C. A. Row. — I cannot allow this paper to go forth from this Society 
without uttering a strong protest against it from one end to the other. When 
I read a paper once and cannot understand it, I am willing to attribute my 
want of comprehension to my own stupidity. When I read it a second time 
and cannot understand it, I question whether the fault lies wholly with me ; 
and when I read it a third time and find, though I know something of the 
subject, that I am equally unable to understand the paper, then I lay the 
blame on it, and not on myself. Now, this has been the result in the present 
case. I cannot see the point of the paper at all, nor can I understand one 
single argument it contains, or one single position laid down in it. (Hear, 
hear.) There are in the paper a number of curious words which I fail to find 
