The title to inherit by kin and descent in the tribal land and rights of his ancestors does not become extinct _till the ninth man_. The ninth man in descent from a banished tribesman coming home and finding his title as representative of his family seemingly extinguished, is to raise an outcry that from a proprietor he is becoming a nonproprietor, and the law will shelter him and adjudge him an equal share with the occupants he finds on the land. This is called the “outcry across the abyss.” The tenth man’s outcry cannot be heard. “Others say” that the ninth man is too late to raise the cry.(162) This is exactly parallel to the case of the stranger resident in Cymru. For _nine_ generations he is a stranger, and in _the tenth_ a Cymro. Here for _nine_ generations is the Cymro abroad a tribesman, and in _the tenth_ he is a stranger. (M82) From a passage in Deuteronomy it would appear that the qualifications for admission as a full tribesman amongst the Israelites were identical with those just mentioned. The Israelites had purified themselves of the ancestor worship, that so long survived in Greece, and had, if one may say so, amalgamated all their minor deities and tribal superstitions in their one great monotheistic religion. Even then their tribal minds could not carry back their theology behind the known history of their own ancestors. Their God was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and was in their conception the greatest of Gods—_i.e._, greater than the Gods of other peoples, the existence of which their own beliefs did not preclude. Thus where in Attic writers we have mention of the religious rites of the family (which a stranger or polluted man might not approach), and of the partaking therein as proof of the whole admission and pure blood of those present, so in Deuteronomy the expression “the Congregation of the Lord,” is used to denote that sacred precinct, forbidden to all save pure tribesmen of Israel. It may be inferred from the following passage that if a stranger resided in Israel, and his family continued to do so for nine generations, the tenth generation would in any ordinary case be admitted to the Congregation of the Lord as full Israelites. Deut. xxiii. 2 and 3. “A bastard, or an Ammonite, or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord _even to their tenth generation_, for ever.” (M83) In special cases (exactly as was the rule in Wales)—such as the Edomite who was partly akin already, and the Egyptian who was united to the Israelites by the mysterious bonds of hospitality—a shorter sojourn in the land was held to qualify for full tribal privilege. Deut. xxiii. 7 and 8. “Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy brother: thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, because thou wast a stranger in his land. The _children_ that are begotten of them shall enter into the congregation of the Lord _in their third generation_.”