guard or defence may be applied, which, like a friendly buffer, may qualify the impact of any impinging force yet to come, and make it even serviceable to us in our onward way.

It may be surmised that initiatory remarks such as these could only have been made by one who had been subjected to some mental collision both dismaying and arousing. And even so it was. Professor Huxley's instructive volume of Lay Sermons, Addresses, &c., had been conducting me delightfully from one interesting point of view to another. I was flattering myself that I might make some real progress by its help; when my train of thought became violently interrupted. I had come suddenly upon the spot whereon had been constructed a block of hindrance well designed for the prostration of the feeble-minded and the alarm of the torpid. And on that stumbling-stone were inscribed the following very vigorous and awakening words :

The myths of Paganism are as dead as Osiris or Zeus, and the man who should revive them in opposition to the knowledge of our time would be justly laughed to scorn; but the coeval imaginations current among the rude inhabitants of Palestine, recorded by writers whose very name and age are admitted by every scholar to be unknown, have unfortunately not yet shared their fate, but even at this day are regarded by nine-tenths of the civilised world as the authoritative standard of fact, and the criterion of the justice of scientific conclusions, in all that relates to the origin of things, and among them of species. In this nineteenth century, as at the dawn of modern physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth from the days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their good name blasted by the

mistaken zeal of bibliolaters? Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonise impossibilities-whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the generous new wine of science into the old bottles of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the same strong party?

It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget; and though at present bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science; and to visit with such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to degrade nature to the level of primitive Judaism. (pp. 304, 305.)

Now I readily admit that I was bewildered on reading this. It behoved me, therefore, to see if I were not afflicted with other sad symptoms indicated in the diagnosis of orthodoxy here presented to us. But I soon began to reflect that the highest authorities differ sometimes, and that of all the varieties of animated nature existing, the only one with the constitutional habits of which Professor Huxley was likely to be imperfectly acquainted was that of the sub-family Orthodox.' He has had under inspection, it may be, two or three of its fossils armed with palæologic tusk, or horn, or hoof; but it does not accord with modern philosophy to take the relics of bygone ages as adequate illustrations of a now existing genus. Have we not been lately taught that the structure of such creatures even as alligators has demonstrably

modified itself to suit the successive eras? Of the that many a living specimen might be submitted to examination in a state of fair mental health, possessing but the merest vestiges of rudimentary weapons of offence, and showing instead very serviceable organs of activity, and freshly acquired developments of the visual orb. But whether that is so or not, it is to be trusted that the present onslaught, however fearful, may be fatal only to the ill-formed individuals unfitted for the battle of life, whilst it leaves uninjured those whose higher endowments qualify them for contributing to the permanent elevation of the race.

fluctuating circumstances of Orthodox' I firmly believe

But if we may cherish a ray of hope in this direction, we must feel that such objects as 'the rude inhabitants of Palestine' have passed altogether out of the scope of our benevolent wishes. No visions may be indulged of the improvement of the semi-barbarous Hebrew,' whose age is long gone by. All we can possibly do for aspersed men of Old Testament days is to see if by any means within our reach we can rehabilitate their fame.

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Thus much we may attempt; and I shall proceed at once to do so. Then I shall have to brace myself for an examination of the sad state of the extinguished theologian,' in the trust that a little oil may yet be found in his vessel. After that I shall be obliged to offer the considerations which a review of the whole matter will suggest.

The first thing to be done must be to come to as clear an understanding as possible on one point. Who were 'the inhabitants of Palestine' designated as rude?' Now, the Hittites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, the Gergashites, and the Perizzites were inhabitants of Palestine,

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and probably rude' enough; but it is not likely they had any cosmogony' that could be received by even the smallest section of civilised society at the present day. And none of them were 'Hebrew,' the use of which word in the passage under consideration narrows our enquiry, and directs us to the family of Abraham, the first person to whom the appellation Hebrew is applied. But that patriarch himself was originally an inhabitant of Ur of the Chaldees, and afterwards of Charran. By Divine direction he certainly went to Palestine, but he had no inheritance there; no, not so much as to set his foot on. He did but sojourn in the land as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles, as did Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of God's promise. His next successive descendants were located in Egypt for some generations. After their exodus from that country they became inhabitants of Palestine, and continued so till removed into captivity. But there is another limitation to be found in the passage; 'Judaism' is indicated. Now although, strictly speaking, there was no distinctive nation of Jews before the separation of the tribes in the time of Rehoboam (unless we except David's early and separate reign over Judah), there is no doubt that the word Judaism' is, in common parlance, applied to that which concerns the religion, the laws, and the institutions of the Jews. Everyone knows that those laws are given in the Pentateuch. But we are helped by a still further limitation. The expression primitive Judaism' is finally used. And this enables us to fix with certainty not only on the people but the period referred to. The people must have been the Israelites after leaving Egypt, and the period that in which their laws were drawn up, for then Judaism (so

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called) had its birth. In other words, we may say the people referred to were the Israelites existing about the time of the composition of the Pentateuch. And this definition fits other requirements of the passage before us, for the cosmogony' therein spoken of is found in the Pentateuch, and nowhere else.1

Now, the only notices procurable of the original state and ancient history of the Hebrews, if we except a few scattered records, which, as far as they can be deciphered, tend to confirm the Scriptural accounts, are to be found in the Bible. By a study, therefore, of that book, Professor Huxley must have reached his conclusions respecting the Hebrew people. And as, at whatever date the book was produced, the early parts of it were the work of the Hebrews, we cannot do better than go to the same source.

I propose, then, that we should look into Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers for indications of the state of the Israelites at the time those books were written. For whensoever and by whomsoever they were composed, we may fairly ask ourselves, What must have been the character of the people producing their writer? and for this reason I include Genesis, though it refers to times anterior to the range of our enquiry. And with respect to the other three books, it must, I think, be admitted that the statements and ordinances to be found therein must have had at the least a reflex influence on the nation for whose especial sake they were made and enjoined, though perhaps it would be quite as fair to say the nation was in a fit state to receive them at the time they were written.

1 Except in the writings of Josephus, who took his account therefrom.