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BDELLIUM, del'i-um (Hebr. bedholah): One of the products of the land of Havilah, mentioned with gold and the shoham-stone (E. V. "onyx") in Gen. ii, 11-12. In Num. xi, 7, manna is said to have resembled it. It was, therefore, something well known to the Hebrews, but the exact meaning is uncertain. Some have thought that it was a precious stone, perhaps the pearl; others identify it with myrrh or with musk. The most probable and generally accepted explanation is that it was the gum of a tree, much prized in antiquity and used in religious ceremonies. Pliny (Hist. nat., xii, 35) describes it as transparent, waxy, fragrant, oily to the touch, and bitter; the tree was black, of the size of the olive; with leaves like the ilex, and fruit like the wild fig; he designates Bactria as its home, but states that it grew also in Arabia, India, Media, and Babylonia. It probably belonged to the balsamodendra and was allied to the myrrh. I. BENZINGER.

BEACH, HARLAN PAGE: Congregationalist; b. at South Orange, N. J., Apr. 4, 1854. He was

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educated at Yale College (B.A., 1878) and Andover Theological Seminary (1883). He was instructor in Phillips Andover Academy 1878-80, and was ordained in 1883. He was missionary in China for seven years, and from 1892 to 1895 was instructor and later superintendent of the School for Christian Workers, Springfield, Mass. He was appointed educational secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions in 1895, and held this position until 1906, when he was chosen professor of the theory and practise of missions in the Yale Divinity School. He has been a corporate member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions since 1895 and of the cooperating committee of the same organization since 1906, as well as chairman of the exhibit committee and executive committee of the Ecumenical Conference in 1900, member of the Bureau of Missions Trustees since 1901, member of the executive committee of the Yale Foreign Missionary Society since 1903, member of the advisory board of Canton Christian College and trustee of the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy since 1905. In theology he is a moderate conservative. He has written The Cross in the Land of the Trident (New York, 1895); Knights of the Labarum (1896); New Testament Studies in Missions (1898); Dawn on the Hills of T'ang: or, Missions in China (1898); Protestant Missions in South America (1900); Geography and Atlas of Protestant Missions (2 vols.,1901-03); Two Hundred Years of Christian Activity in Yale (New Haven, 1902); Princely Men of the Heavenly Kingdom (New York, 1903); and India and Christian Opportunity (1904).

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