YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

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The Spiritual Point-of-View ; or,
The Glass Reversed.

AUT ANSWEE

BISHOP COLENSO

BT
M. MAHAN, D.D.,
ST.-MABK'S-IN-THE-BOWERY PROFESSOK OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTOBY
IN THE GENEEAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINAEY.

"Spiritnal things are spiritually discerned,"

NEW YOKE :
APPLETON AND COMPANY,
443 & 445 BEOADWAT.
LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN.
1863.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by
D. APPLETON & CO.,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.

PREFACE.

A wokd as to the circumstances under which this
Tract was written may explain its general scope and
object. I read Bishop Colenso's book. In conversation
with a friend, I expressed my opinion of it, and showed
where I thought its principal fallacy lay. The diffi
culty, I thought, was not so much in the arguments
advanced by the writer, as in his habit of mind, his
point-of-view, his spirit, in short, which is intensely
infidel and materialistic. The answer to it should be
in a different spirit. It should set forth, as clearly as
possible, the opposite point-of-view. My friend was
kind enough to say, that if I would write down briefly
what I had said to him, without encumbering it with
needless learning, it would probably be useful to many
minds; and might do better service, in fact, than a
more elaborate answer.
I have endeavored to act on the advice, simply
writing down, without reference to any other book
than the Bible, such thoughts as naturally arose in
connection with the general subject. So far as Bishop

4 PBEFACE.
Colenso's fallacies arise from ignorance, I have touched
them lightly : more learned Replies, from other pens,
will do him ample justice in that respect. I have kept
myself, in the main, to an exposure of that deeper and
more subtle fallacy which underlies, not Bishop Co
lenso's argument merely, but all the objections ad
vanced by the so-called science of the day.
M. MAHAN.
Genekal Theological Skmlwaey,
December 19, 1862.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
I. — Bishop Colenso's Position,  7
II. — A Few Wobds on Inspiration,  12
III. — The Six Days of Creation ; oe, The Telescope
Keveesed, *  22
IV. — Infallibility, Common Sense, Mattee-of-Faot, . 34
V. — Moses and Joshua addeesslng all Iseael — Eight
Chaptees of Difficulties,  40
VI. — An Apology to Good Cheistians foe things New
and Old,  52
VII. — Jacob's Family List,  57
VIII. — A Few othee Difficulties,  62
IX. — Soeiptueal Arithmetic,  70
X. — Facts beaeing upon the Ntjmbee of the Iseaelites, 83
XI. — Infeeenoe with eegaed to the Histoeioal Chae-
AOTEE OF THE PENTATEUCH,  88
XII. — Concluding Eemaeks,  96
Appendix A. — The Fiest-boen compaeed with the 'Whole
Numbee of Iseaelites,  101
Appendix B. — The Numbees of Herodotus, . . . .105

I.
BISHOP COLENSO'S POSITION.
Bishop Colenso's argument against the historical
credibility of the Books of Moses is likely to make
some noise in the world : not that it contains anything
new, for his criticisms differ little in form or substance
from those of innumerable infidels before him ; but be
cause it comes from a Bishop of the Church ; and still
more, because the writer professes to hold the Faith of
Christ, while laboring to break down all belief in the
sacred records which bear witness to that Faith.
He declares, indeed, that he does not stumble at
" the miracles or supernatural revelations of Almighty
God ; " he " could believe and receive the miracles of
Scripture heartily, if only they were authenticated iy a
veracious history." Unfortunately, however, he does not
find them to be so authenticated. The inference would
seem to be, that he does not believe in " the miracles
and supernatural revelations," and consequently, that
he rejects the great mystery of the Incarnation and
Eesurrection. Yet, strange to say, the Bishop will not
acknowledge any lack of faith in the essential Truth of
Christianity. On the contrary, he seems to write and

8 bishop colenso's position.
argue as if he still received it, as if he were firm in the
true Faith of Christ, as if, in pursuing a line of argu
ment by which, in his own words, " not the Pentateuch
only, but the whole Bible," may be "removed," he
were only " discharging a present duty to God and to
the Church."
Now, we cannot enter the lists with such a writer,
without a word of protest against the scandalous un
fairness and inconsistency of the position he assumes.
It is the position of a sentinel who quietly opens
one gate, or abandons one portion of the wall, to the
enemy, protesting all the time that he is a true and
zealous defender of the fortress ; and that, though he
may find it convenient to open all the gates and aban
don the whole wall, it would yet be very harsh to sus
pect his fidelity as a watchman, or ask him to resign
his post.
For the Bishop very plainly intimates that his crit
icisms are not to stop with the five Books of Moses.
He says, Preface, p. 29 :
" Should God, in His Providence, call me to the
work, I shall not shrink from the duty of examining,
on behalf of others, into the question, in what way the
Interpretation of the New Testament is affected by the
unhistorical character of the Pentateuch."
And if, on such examination, the New Testament
also should be shown to be " unhistorical," what is to
be done then ? The Bishop answers :
" It is written on our hearts by God's own Finger,
as surely as by the hand of the Apostle in the Bible,
that God is, and is a rewarder of them that diligently
seek him. * * * The Light of God's Love did not
shine less truly on pious minds when Enoch walked

BISHOP COLENSO S POSITION. 9
with God of old, though there was then no Rible in
existence, than it does now."
It would appear, then, that na great harm will be
done, and no great loss felt, if the Bible should be found
wanting and be " removed " altogether. Nay, if we
are to credit Bishop Colenso, some good may be ex
pected from such a result : for, he says, there are certain
passages in the Bible, bearing upon slavery and the
treatment of slaves, which, to "a very intelligent
Christian native " of South Africa, are positively revolt
ing : see Introductory Remarks, p. 50. The Bible,
therefore, had better be put out of court at once. But
will the " very intelligent native " be satisfied with
that ? "When you have removed his " difficulties " with
regard to certain passages of the Scriptures, by proving
the Scriptures generally to be unhistorical and unreli
able, will he be more disposed to abide by that essen
tial Truth which is proven from the Scriptures ? The
Bishop evidently thinks, not. He sees another step,
necessary to be taken, and kindly hints to us what that
step shall be — p. 36 :
" I trust we shall not rest until the system of our
Church be reformed, and her boundaries at the same time
enlarged ; to make her what a national Church should
be, the Mother of spiritual life to all within the realm,
embracing, as far as possible, all the piety, and learn
ing, and earnestness, and goodness of the nation."
With the Bible " removed " from popular regard,
and with the Church so " enlarged " as to admit every
thing in the nation except positive belief— for the Bish
op is careful not to include faith among the things to
be embraced — we shall have a system which even the
" very intelligent native " of South Africa can approve.
1*

10 BISHOP COLENSO'S POSITION.
Indulging such a hope, it would be but natural for
the Bishop to join the ranks of those pious, learned,
earnest, and good men, patrons of the Westminster Re
view and of the Infidel Press generally, by whom the
same hope has been so long and so courageously main
tained. But no : the Bishop of Natal sees no necessity
for this. "Asa Bishop of the Church I dissent entirely from
the principle laid down by some, * * * that we are
bound by solemn obligations to maintain certain views
* * * or, at least, to resign our sacred office in the
Church, as soon as ever we feel it impossible to hold
them." He certainly puts it mildly, when he speaks of the
" principle " as " laid down by some."
It is much as if he had said, " I dissent from the
principle laid down by some, that when an officer holds
a commission in the army, he is bound to maintain the
cause to which he is sworn, or, at least, to resign."
Now, we know that there are " some " who lay down
this principle. Are there any who would venture
openly to contravene it ? Yes : the Bishop of Natal
entirely dissents from it. Yet the Bishop, it would
seem, is an honorable man. So sensitively moral is he,
that the Bible shocks him continually ; his conscience
revolts from many of its precepts ; his soul burns with
in him at the laxity and low views of those who labor
to defend it ; his Preface and Introduction fairly bristle .
with professions of " honesty " on his part, and with in
sinuations of dishonesty against the mass of his breth
ren of the Clergy. For, like the majority of his school,
he regards no man as sincere who takes pains to solve
the knotty questions of the Bible; or who, in cases

BISHOP COLENSO'S POSITION. 11
which prove too hard for him, is willing to fall back
upon simple faith. The only honest men, in the Bish
op's estimation, are those who regard all explanations
as mere evasions, unless they are satisfactory to every
body, and meet all possible objections. An ingenious
solution is, to his mind, necessarily a false one. A
learned solution is too elaborate and far-fetched. A
solution which makes allowance for habits of mind and
speech so peculiar and so remote from ours as were
those of the sacred writers is set-down at once as so
phistical and evasive.
Now, in dealing with a critic who professes so high
a standard of honesty and plain dealing, it is but fair to
ask, What is his position in reference to the great ques
tions which are involved in the discussion ? And when
we find that his position is in the highest degree equiv
ocal — that he holds his place as a Bishop in conscious
violation of his ordination vows — that he reconciles this
sacrilege to his conscience by most palpable evasion
of the meaning of plain words ; when we find, in short,
that he " dissents from " that common rule of honesty
which compels a man in office either to acknowledge
the obligations of that office, or else, at least, to resign,
we surely cannot allow much weight to his professions
of sincerity and plain dealing. Paine, in his " Age of
Reason," makes similar professions of honesty and
piety, on his part ; he makes similar appeals to the
piety and honesty of the reader.

II.
A FEW WORDS ON INSPIRATION.
I have said, the Bishop and the Infidel are alike in
their professions of piety and sincerity. If we examine
a little farther, we shall find that there is no real differ
ence in their arguments, or their object.
The object of both is to convict the Bible of so
many mistakes in matters of fact, and of so many lapses,
even in morality, that it shall lose all credit as a Divine
authority in questions of religion.
In other words, they aim to demonstrate that the
Scriptures are not inspired, in any such sense as would
entitle them to be called infallible.
To prove this proposition, the method of both writ
ers is substantially the same : the same fallacy under
lies the arguments of both.
They take the words infallible and inspired in an
absolute sense : not in any sense claimed by the Scrip
tures themselves, or admitted by the advocates of their
infallibility. Thus, to give a single instance from Bishop Colen
so : speaking of the law regulating slavery, in Exod.
xxi. 4, 20, 21, the writer observes, p. 50 :
" I shall never forget the revulsion of feeling with
which a very intelligent Christian native, with whose
help I was translating these words into the Zulu tongue,

A FEW WORDS ON INSPIRATION. 13
first heard them as words said to be uttered by the same
great and gracious Being, whom I was teaching him to
trust in and adore. His whole soul revolted, &c. . . .
I relieved his difficulty and my own for the present by
telling him that . . . such words as these were written
down by Moses, and believed by him to have been divine
ly given to him, because the thought of them arose in his
heart, as he conceived, by the inspiration of God," &c.
Here the Bishop teaches his " Christian native " to re
ject the idea of a Divine Inspiration, when a single word
from the Bible, explaining in what sense and for what
purpose God gave the Law, would have removed the
" difficulty," and would at the same time have protect
ed the doctrine of Inspiration. For the Scriptures de
clare expressly that the Mosaic code was not given as a
perfect law ; that it was not meant to be a finality ;
that it was a mere provisional dispensation for a nation
of stiff necks and hard hearts, who, if a better law had
been given, would have absolutely refused it. Apply
this truth to the enactment in Exod. xxi. 21. It was
undoubtedly hard on slaves, that a master might chas
tise them with any degree of severity, provided only
that he should not cause them to die under his hand.
But was not this proviso an improvement on the law,
or custom, that existed before ? Was it not a merciful
addition to the practice that prevailed generally among
the most enlightened nations of antiquity ? Among the
Romans, a master, if he chose, might kill his slave out
right. Indeed, a father had similar power of life and
death over his son. If Moses, therefore, reduced this
power a little in the case of the Jews, and made their
law of slavery more humane than that of other nations ;
if, in short, he made the law as good as they could bear,

14 A FEW WORDS ON INSPIRATION.
was there anything in all this to preclude the idea of
Inspiration ?
But the Bishop objects to those severities in the law
which Moses still left in it. Had it been given by God,
he thinks, it would have been freed altogether from
every objectionable feature. A slave would not have
been spoken of as mere " money." A master would not
have been allowed " to go unpunished, because the vic
tim of the brutal usage survived a few hours."
Now, there is a vast difference between saying that
a slave is his master's money, and saying that he is
" mere money ; " as much so as there is between calling
a working man an operative and calling him a mere
operative. The latter phrase, in both instances, is one
of disparagement. The former only expresses in plain
words a serviceable relation. But, to let this pass, does
Bishop Colenso think that God never speaks, without
speaking His whole mind? If so, his notion of Inspi
ration is directly the reverse of that which is laid down
in the Scriptures. Nothing is more certain than that
the Bible professes to be a gradual revelation : that
line upon line, and precept upon precept, here a little
and there a little, each later portion being an advance
upon the parts preceding, is the plan upon which its
vast system of instruction is built up. And common
sense assures us that this plan is the only rational one,
in dealing with frail men, and the only one that can be
called in any true sense Divine. Draco gave the Athe
nians a code of laws so just that no man could endure
them. Solon gave them a code which they were able
to bear. Which was the more God-like of the two lee-
islators ? Which had the larger share of that gracious
light, that light of celestial wisdom illumining but

A FEW WORDS ON INSPIRATION. 15
not confounding, which shines from the Face of the
merciful Father of Mankind ?
But to return to the main point : What has been
shown in this example is true of Bishop Colenso's
reasoning in general. He is possessed with the idea
that Inspiration, as predicated of the Scriptures, can
never inspire the utterance of half-truths, or truths
imperfectly expressed, or truths needing the light of
other truths to make them intelligible. In short, be
cause God is perfect, everything that comes from him
must needs be perfect also. Though all nature is a rid
dle, and yet comes from God ; though the human mind
is a riddle, and yet reflects His image ; though man, in
his highest illumination, can see but darkly, as through
a darkened glass : yet the Divine word — because it
comes from God, — must have no riddles in it, no seem
ing contradictions, no difficulties, no opaque spots, no
paradoxes, nothing that the unlearned and unstable can
wrest to their own destruction.
The Scriptures lay claim to no such Inspiration.
Nor does any advocate of the Scriptures contend for
anything of the kind. We claim that all Scripture is
given by Inspiration of God ; that the sacred writers
spake, " not by the will of man," but " as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost ; " that there is nothing in
the Bible which is not " profitable," if rightly under
stood; and consequently, that, though some portions
of the Word may be more edifying than others, yet
every portion has the Divine sanction, and, whether
true or not from all points of view, whether true or
not considered in itself, is infallibly true from the
spiritual point of view ; that is, considered in its bearing
upon the aim and purport of the Scriptures in general.

16 A FEW WORDS ON INSPIRATION.
But does this claim imply that there are to be no
difficulties in Scripture ? Not at all. Difficulties are
inherent in all literature : and the Bible, being not a
Book merely, but a vast literature, and a literature
belonging to an age, and people, and tongue, of which
we know little from other sources, must, in the nature
of things, present peculiar and almost insuperable
difficulties. It is enough that these difficulties occur
chiefly in questions of literary or scientific curiosity,
which may be decided this way or that, without in the
least affecting the main object for which the Scriptures
were written.
For example, there are corruptions and interpo
lations in Scripture, some known to be such, and some
(perhaps) unknown. There are also Books, such as
Job, which may be matter-of-fact history, or may be
poetry of that kind which is the spirit of history.
There are also certain narratives, evidently historical,
— the Creation, for example, or the Deluge, — which are
yet so couched in idiomatic or symbolic phrases that
wise interpreters have doubted, from Origen's day
downward, whether they mean what on the surface
they seem to mean. On this point, I shall have more
to say presently. It will be enough to say here that,
should a sound criticism eventually add to the num
ber of known interpolations ; should the Books now
thought to be sacred dramas be proved to be such ;
should it be demonstrated, by learned examination,
that the more ancient parts of the Bible need to be
translated, not merely from the Hebrew into English,
but from Hebrew popular idioms into the idioms of an
age more arithmetical and exact — still, nothing is
proved against either the Truth or the Divine Inspira-

A FEW WORDS ON INSPIRATION. 17
tion of the Scriptures. We merely learn to drop those
portions which are interpolated, and to leave them out
of the account. And as to other portions, we may
have to abandon a surface sense, which is of no par
ticular importance, and to take in its stead a deeper
and more spiritual sense.
But, it may be asked, would it not have been better
to have so inspired the Scriptures as to leave no place
for difficulties of the kinds above-mentioned ?
I answer, No. Of the two principal courses which
Inspiration might take with a view to benefit all ages,
the course that has actually been taken is decidedly the
better. Inspiration might have enabled one, two, or three
minds to write in one great book, and in language
scientifically correct, a revelation of Divine Truth in
which no contradiction, or seeming contradiction,
could possibly have been detected. In such a case, as
it would be necessary, not only to make the book per
fect, but to keep it so, a perpetual miracle would have
been needed to guard against those verbal errors,
omissions, corruptions, and interpolations to which all
writings are subject in the lapse of time. Another
perpetual miracle would have been needed to enable
translators to do their work aright. A third perpetual
miracle would have been needed in behalf of interpreters.
For it is obvious that a work scientifically accurate
may be spoiled by the least error, or blemish, or mis
interpretation. The introduction of a single iota into
the Nicene Creed, for example, would change the Truth
of God into an Arian lie. And if a great Book were
written with the scientific precision of the Nicene
Creed, nothing short of a standing miracle could keep

18 A FEW WORDS ON INSPIRATION.
it free from corruptions of the most unmanageable
kind. Besides which, such a Book, if written, would never
have been read. To the mass of men, it would have
been less intelligible, and less interesting, than Aris
totle's Ethics.
Rejecting this course, therefore, as unadapted to the
great end in view, Inspiration took another and a wiser
course. It inspired many minds, in many ages, to
write many books, in many varieties of style, the work
growing to such a bulk that the errors of copyists,
translators, and interpreters, with all the blots and
blemishes of time, are practically neutralized in the
greatness of the whole. Thus, all the sewers of earth
empty into the ocean, yet the ocean is not defiled. All
of earth's vapors steam up into the sunshine, yet the
sunshine remains pure. On the same principle, the
very bulk of the Sacred Writings, their variety, their
exuberance of hfe, their luxury of detail, their half-
truths in one place dovetailing so admirably into half-
truths in another, their broken lines here so marvel
lously pieced out by broken lines there, in short, the
wondrous harmonies that come out from so many
seeming discords — this vastness and manifoldness of
the inspired Literature secures it, without miracle,
against suffering, as a whole, from its occasional cor
ruptions. It is so inspired as to be self-adjusting, self-
purifying, and, to those who consult it on its own
principles, self-interpreting. It has salt enough in it
to sweeten, not merely its own waters, but any foreign
admixture that may accidentally flow in.
A man of moderate wealth is obliged to have his
property insured. A millionnaire has so much, and such

A FEW WORDS ON INSPIRATION. 19
varied property, that it insures itself. There is some
thing of the same principle in the riches of the Divine
Oracles. Their superabundant variety — to say nothing
of other features — constitutes, as it were, a policy of
self-insurance. To speak without metaphor, it is worthy of God,
and in consonance with all we know of the character
of God, that, if He condescends to inspire men at all,
He should inspire them as men speaking to men :
not as critics, not as word-catchers, not as grammarians,
not as arithmeticians, not as logicians ; but simply as
true men, speaking truths, which, for the most part,
were in advance of their age, but which had to be
couched in the mind and idiom of the age to which
they spoke. Men thus inspired would of course speak
imperfectly, and in a certain sense, inaccurately. This
being granted, it is again worthy of God, that He —
knowing the imperfections and inaccuracies of human
mind and human speech — should find the remedy in a
vast variety of utterances, complementing, explaining,
and guarding one another, rather than in one scien
tifically exact utterance, which nought but a perpetual
miracle could keep exact.
Besides which, an inspired book for men ought to
be a readable book — a pleasant book to read. The
Bible is such. It has been more read, oftener quoted,
better remembered, than all other books put together.
But if it had been written to suit critics and word-
catchers, nobody else would have touched it.
Besides which, again : an inspired book ought to
be a book to make men think. But no book really
serves this purpose unless it deals in hints, and half-
utterances, and seeming paradoxes, as well as in open

20 A FEW WORDS ON INSPIRATION.
manifestations of the truth. A perfectly easy book to
read is read once and no more. It is read, not studied.
The Bible is so written as to stimulate study : more so
than any other book or books known to mankind.
Besides which, once more : a book coming from
God ought to be in a certain analogy with Nature,
which is also His book. But Nature, we know,
abounds in difficulties, paradoxes, and seeming contra
dictions. Bishop Butler has demonstrated that the
difficulties of the Bible and those of Nature are in a
wonderful way analogous, and complementary to one
another. For these and like reasons, the plan of inspiring a
great literature, and of inspiring it in such a way as to
make it a catholic literature, capable of translation into
all languages without risk of serious error, seems better
and wiser than any other imaginable plan.
But a plan like this necessarily involves a theory
of Inspiration in accordance with it.
It involves not perfection in any one part, con
sidered in itself; as, for example, that the historical
books should be "historical," in the modern sense
of the word. A perfectly true history may contain
admixtures which require a sound and cautious criti
cism to determine whether they are literal facts or
symbolic representations of large groups of facts. And
we know that early historians delighted in such admix
tures. On the other hand, a history may be quite
accurate in dates and matters of fact, yet, taken as a
whole, may convey an enormous lie. We are accus
tomed in modern times to this latter style of history.
Our canon of the " historical " excludes everything but
literal facts. But mankind, in primitive times, ac-

A FEW WORDS ON INSPIRATION. 21
knowledged no such canon. "Where we philosophize in
reflections, they philosophized in symbols. This, of
course, creates a difficulty in dealing with early writers.
It renders it necessary for the interpreter to be con
stantly on his guard. We have to enter, not merely
into words, but if possible into mind, quite different in
all its habits from the mere modern mind. Our great
effort, in short, is, in dealing with ancient writings, to
put ourselves to the utmost at the ancient point-of-view.
And if those writings should be sacred, as well as
ancient, the difficulty in some points may, for a long
time at least, be absolutely insuperable.
Now, Bishop Colenso, like other skeptics, allows for
nothing of this sort. He assumes a modern, rationalis
tic, matter-of-fact point-of-view. From that he frames
his own theory of Inspiration. From that he lays down
his own canons of the " historical." What accords not
with these canons he calls " unhistorical." What he
calls "unhistorical," he therefore judges to be "unin
spired." The assumption underlies the whole of his argument.
I shall be obliged to recur to it more than once, to
make my meaning clear. For- the present, I will en
deavor to illustrate it by considering one of the first
and chief "difficulties" in the Historical Books of
Moses.

ni.

THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION; OR, THE TELESCOPE
REVERSED.
The Mosaic account of the creation of the world is
not in harmony with the results of scientific investi
gation. It is, therefore, not a true account.
It is, therefore, not entitled to be called an inspired
or infallible account.
Such is the position of the Infidel,* contemplating
the Scriptures from what he calls a scientific point-of-
view. In answering the objection, I will not question
the results of modern investigation. I will assume on
trust — for, not being a student of science, I know noth
ing about it — that the world was originally a chaos, a
huge bulk of seething mist ; that in the course of mil
lions of ages it cooled down to something approaching
to its present size and form ; that in millions of ages
more, light penetrated the opaque atmosphere, and
vast wedges - of flinty rock emerged from the heaving
* Bishop Colenso merely alludes to this and other difficulties
connected with Science. I have given a larger space to it, because
it enables me to illustrate, more fully than other instances, the
difference between a spiritual and a material point-of-view.

THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 23
waters ; that in other millions of ages the rock clothed
itself in soil, and the soil adorned itself with a rich
plumage of vegetable life ; that in millions of ages
more, other rocks formed, and other soils appeared, with
other and varied garbs, while the waters teemed with
the lower forms of animal life, and from the waters the
skies were colonized, and strange amphibious creatures
crawled out upon the land ; that finally, millions of
ages still revolving, with new layers of rock and soil,
the higher orders of animal life appeared, and among
them rose up one who was destined to be their king, a
creature not pachydermatous or strong-clawed, but thin-
skinned and defenceless, and, except for a big brain and
flexile tongue, the most helpless thing that moved.
All this, I say, I will suppose to be in substance
true. But if true, God, when He inspired Moses, knew
it to be true. Why, then, did He inspire his servant
to write for all ages an account which in matter-of-fact
points seems to differ from all this ?
I answer that, if the above account be true, God
knew it to be true. But He knew also that, in course
of time, man would find it out for himself. There was
no need then of a matter-of-fact revelation. Moreover,
if such a revelation should be made to the age of
Moses, the age would reject it, not being prepared for
it ; and the whole scheme of Inspiration would be
strangled at the birth. But, while a matter-of-fact
revelation would be needless, some revealed account
might be useful, to guard the people of God against
the false and foolish cosmogonies of the heathen.
Here, then, is reason enough at once, not for inspir
ing a false account of Creation, but for clothing the
true account in language and ideas suited to the age.

24 THE SIX DATS OF CREATION;
If I wished to give a young child a true notion of the
distance of the sun, I would not tell him the sun is
millions of miles away ; it would answer the purpose
better to say hundreds of miles. For a child has some
idea of what hundreds mean. The word millions
would only serve to bewilder and perplex him.
But further : if God knew the above account of
Creation to be the true one ; and if He knew, more
over, that man would find it out ; He also knew that
the discovery, when made, would be perilous to man's
faith. The idea of millions on millions of ages is so
vast, so far beyond all finite imagination, that it seems
almost to run into the idea of Eternity itself. Indeed,
human language can describe Eternity only by accu
mulations of terms, which really are descriptive of
Time, and Time only. We say Ssecula Sseculorum —
ages of ages — the very term that describes the geologi
cal eras. There is a danger, then, that when the finite
mind begins to contemplate Time as practically an
infinite duration, it should slide into the easy error of
regarding it as really infinite. A world so old as ours
seems, to all intents and purposes, a world without
beginning. It seems virtually eternal. The notion of
a Maker, if not absolutely banished, is at all events
put so far off, that it becomes vague and inoperative.
In short, the Creature, by being clothed in these
stupendous figures, assumes a bulk and mysterious
grandeur which effectually shuts out the view of the
Creator. Again : the notion of slow and long-continued
growth, of that growth by which continents are built
up in millions of years from the bottoms of great seas,
is one that appals and almost stupefies the mind. Of

25
course, it is not really inconsistent with the idea of
One who speaks and it is done, but practically it ren
ders that idea extremely difficult to entertam. The
more it takes hold of the mind, the more it inclines us
to put Growth for God : to adopt some theory of
development, and in the height of scientific exaltation
to relapse into the philosophy of poor Topsey, and to
say of the whole world, " It was not made but grew."
Again : the human point-of-view is always practi
cally to the mind a central point-of-view. Whichever
way we look, the horizon is equi-distant around us ;
and the ages past are necessarily the measure of the
ages yet to come. Science reveals to us billions of
years behind. How can we help expecting billions of
years before us ? The great lesson of Science is that
" all things continue now as they were from the be
ginning." The same minute shell-fish which built up
so large a portion of the land that now is, are working
in Ocean's depths as industriously as ever. Niagara,
after sawing its way up through the rock some millions
of years, has hardly yet accomplished more than half
of its day's work. The great ice rivers of the North,
which have supplied the world with boulders, are still
crawling on at the same snail's pace. " Where, then,
is the promise of His coming ? " What prospect is
there, that a world which has lasted so long, and is still
so vigorous, shall ever come to an end ?
Science, in this way, does not teach infidelity-. I
accuse it of nothing of the sort. The true man of
science is also a man of faith : and as physical ideas
loom up, in his telescope, in proportions of overwhelm
ing bulk and grandeur, he has the wisdom to reverse
the telescope, and to look at them occasionally from the
2

26 THE SIX DATS OF CREATION J
spiritual point-of-view. The glass which magnifies a
flea into an elephant, can likewise minify an elephant
into a flea. Science, therefore, is not necessarily a fos
terer of unbelief. Infidelity is the resort of mere
sciolists, of men -who look at things only from one
point-of-view, of men who (as the Wise Man says,
Eccles. iii. 11) have " the world so set in their heart "
that they cannot " find out the work that God maketh."
Still, as the mass of men are impatient and one
sided, easily satisfied with one glance at a truth,
science is unquestionably perilous to Faith. It exalts
the creature, and so far tends to disparage the Creator.
It fixes the eye upon the greatness of material things,
and so far tends to blind us to spiritual things.
Now, to return to the argument : if God, in the days
of Moses, foresaw the brilliant results of modern inves
tigation ; if He foresaw that man would make discov
eries which, contemplated from a human point-of-view,
would be perilous to his Faith, then it would not
become God, as a Father, to ante-date these dangerous
discoveries. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
The trial of the nineteenth century would come soon
enough. So far as He thought proper to teach man a
cosmogony, He would teach it in such terms as would
be the most edifying and least dangerous. He would
teach it also in terms which, if not scientifically exact,
should be found, when the time came, to be at least
true in substance : true from the spiritual, if not from
the material, point-of-view.
Hence the main features of the First Chapter of
Genesis. There is a chaos ; then breath, motion, light,
vivifying the chaos ; then waters separating from wa
ters, clouds above and the great sea beneath ; then the

OR, THE TELESCOPE REVERSED. 27
dry land emerging from the waters, and clothing itself
in grass, and herb, and fruit tree yielding fruit ; then
light holders (according to the Hebrew) in the firma
ment of the heavens ; then life in the waters, in the air,
and in the earth ; then higher types of life, not water-
bred and oval, but earth-bred and mammal, from amid
which, by a special creation and special gift, cometh
lordly man.
So far the account is true from every point-of-view.
Science may enlarge it and enrich it, but to improve it
is impossible. Moreover, there is a beautiful gradation* in these
- successive acts. " It is evening and it is morning," as
each follows each. There are no abrupt transitions. It
is not day following night, and night following clay, but
it is Day rolling into Day, as the long waves of the sea
roll into one another, following ever the line of beauty,
running down the curved slope of Evening, and up the
curved steep of Morning, a succession of teeming pe
riods continuous but distinct.
If Science teaches anything, it teaches substantially
the same lesson.
But then, to mark these periods, the word Day is
used : and a Day, scientifically, is but twenty-four
hours, a diurnal revolution of the earth upon its axis.
I wonder it never occurs to these word-catchers, that
as a pure matter of fact the earth has no axis ; and
that Science, at some future day, may catch them trip
ping in their speech even as they catch Moses. But,
* Hugh Miller, in his Testimony of the Rocks, seems to assume
a succession of catastrophes. I believe, however, that the general
drift of science favors the idea of a continuous series of ages run
ning gradually into one another.

28 THE SIX DATS OF CREATION;
to let this pass : is it not a sufficient answer that the
word Day, not only in Scripture but in all human
writings, is perfectly capable of being used in an un
scientific sense ? And if it is capable of being so used,
we are not bound in any case to confine its meaning,
unless the nature of that case should seem to require it.
Above all, is it not sufficient that an inspired writer
of the New Testament, 2 Pet. iii. 3-8, foreseeing that
there would " come in the last days scoffers," and that
the burden of their scoffing would be the great maxim
of modern science — " all things continue as they were
from the beginning of creation," — distinctly refers for
their confutation to the great act of creation, and re-.
minds them, in that connection, that " one day is with
the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as
one day " ?
The Apostle refers them, in other words, to the con
templation of Time from a Divine point-of-view.
And so I come to the main question before us. It
is simply this :
If God foreknew that man would at some day dis
cover a cosmogony such as that which Geology pro
fesses to have found ; and if He foresaw that this cos
mogony, from the vastness of its numbers and the bulk
of its physical ideas, would prove perilous to Faith ;
what, humanly speaking, would be the best mode of
guarding against this danger ?
I answer : the best way would be— of course, I
speak humanly — to furnish man beforehand with a cos
mogony, which should enable him, as it were, to re
verse the telescope, and to contemplate creation from
the Divine point-of-view.
In our eyes, a billion of years is a very great mat-

OR, THE TELESCOPE REVERSED. 29
ter. In God's eyes it is a very small matter. With us
the duration of Time seems hardly short of an eternity.
With God, it is a mere breath, a mere vapor, a passing
thought, a thing of infinitely less duration than the
word, " Let there be light." For heaven and earth
pass away, but His word passeth not away. How
ever long a time, therefore, the world was in making
or in growing, yet let the scoffer remember that a word
of God is something which endures still longer : for
" by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the
earth standing out of the water and in the water ....
and, by the same word, the heavens and the earth ....
are kept in store."
A cosmogony written from this point-of-view would
necessarily be couched in phrases opposite, though not
contradictory, to " the great swelling words " of Sci
ence. " Periods " would dwindle into " Days." The
" Ages of Transition," which link the Periods, would
appear but as " Evenings " or " Mornings." In short,
the glass being reversed, the object contemplated
through it would remain the same : only it would be
presented in miniature.
Such a picture, moreover, would not merely not con
tradict, it would modify, correct, fill up, the cosmog
onies of natural science.
And wonderfully is this end attained by the simple
narrative of the Bible.
Science puts " the beginning " so far back, that hu
man thought can hardly reach it. Revelation brings it
right up before the eyes. Science goes out in quest of
God ; but the journey is so long, through ages upon
ages, that the wings of thought flag, and she fails to
come near Him. Revelation begins with God, and, in

30

THE SIX DATS OF CREATION;

Him and His strength, finds the ages to be nothing.
Armed with the first verse of Genesis, we meet Science
face to face, and announce to her what she seeks, but
never of herself can find, that " in the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth."
In the same way: when she begins to talk to us
of the seons, or ages, tracing their weary length of
arithmetical duration, we remind her (with St. Paul,
Heb. xi. 3) that their vastness is no obstacle to Faith :
for " by Faith we understand that the Ages (seons) were
framed by the Word of God; " and in His word, and
His Life, the longest periods are mere Days, such as
Moses has described them.
So again : when she holds up an illimitable future,
we tell her that this future has an appointed end. God
worked six days, preparing the way for man. On the
seventh day God rested and commanded man to work.
" I have made the earth : do you replenish and subdue
it. I have planted a garden : do you dress it and keep
it." An eighth day is coming, in which, man's work
being accomplished, he also shall rest.
Thus, Science is not destroyed : it is simply filled up.
What it cannot reveal, Inspiration reveals for it : what
it can reveal, Inspiration substantially confirms, trans
lating it, however, from human language into Divine,
and so enabling us to contemplate it, not from a hu
man, but from a Divine, point-of-view.
Now, to go back from this digression to the subject
of the chapter immediately preceding : The infidels as
sume that the cosmogony of Moses was meant to be a
revelation. So far I agree with them. They assume
further, that it was meant to be a revelation from the
earthly, or matter-of-fact, point-of-view. There I differ

OR, THE TELESCOPE REVERSED. 31
with them. It is an assumption utterly at variance
with the whole object of Inspiration.
I will merely add, that the Divine point-of-view is
of such infinitely great importance, in comparison with
the human, that if in the sacred Books the latter were
neglected altogether, we should have no reason to com
plain. But it is a characteristic of God's works, that
they are thrifty in the use of means, and are often made
to combine objects the most diverse from one another.
Thus, to take one example out of many, the human
mouth is the organ of the divine faculty of speech, and
is at the same time the instrument of the brute faculty
of nutrition. The most spiritual act of man, and the
most sensuous, are equally well performed by one and
the same organ. The same tongue, teeth, lips, and pal
ate, which seem to be made expressly for speech and
song, are as exquisitely adapted to the uses of degluti
tion. On the same principle, I regard it as a mark of
the Divine Hand in Sacred Scripture, that while in all
cases the spiritual end comes first, and the spiritual
point-of-view is the true stand-point of interpretation,
yet incidentally all Scriptures admit of profitable inter
pretations from other points-of-view, and may be ap
plied without violence in a variety of ways.
Thus the First Chapter of Genesis was not intended,
in the first place, to teach a scientific cosmogony. But
I find that, incidentally, it does give a wonderfully cor
rect outline of that science, so far, at all events, as the
science is reliable. The geologist traces the work of
creation in substantially the same order, and same pro
gression, as that which Moses gives. He differs only
in the apparent length or number of the intervals as
signed. But even in this matter, the geologist adds no

32 THE SIX DATS OF CREATION;
definite information. Where Moses speaks of Days, he
speaks of Periods. And if I ask what a Period is, I
find that it is substantially what a Day is, in its larger
Scriptural sense, namely any duration of time that has
a beginning, a middle, and an end. In all essentials,
then, Moses agrees with the Geologist.
But furthermore I find that, incidentally, the six
Days of Moses have a wonderful correspondence with
the six Days or Periods of sacred History that preced
ed the Christian era. There was the Adamic Day, ter
minating with the judgment upon the Serpent ; the
Noachic Day, with the judgment of the Flood ; the
Abrahamic Day, with the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah ; the Mosaic Day, with the ruin of the
Egyptians ; the Prophetic Day, with the Captivity in
Babylon ; the Evangelic Day, with the appearing of
the Second Man, and the destruction of Jerusalem.
Last, of all comes the seventh Day, the Day of Chris
tianity, in which God rests from His work " finished "
on the Cross, and having secured man his inheritance,
commands him to " dress and keep it."
Now a skeptic, I dare say, would laugh at such
maniloldness of meaning attributed to one passage.
He laughs because his stand-point is different from
mine. But I submit that if I, from my stand-point,
can see in this noble chapter, in the first place a high
Theology, in the second a broad Philosophy, in the
third a true Science, and in the fourth a key to His
tory, while in all I discern the marks of a Divine In
spiration, I have decidedly the advantage of one who
sees in it nothing more than a fine old legend of the
hoar antiquity of the Jews.
At all events, I can safely say to the skeptic, your

OR, THE TELESCOPE REVERSED. 33
" difficulties " are not in the doctrine of Inspiration :
they are merely in the stand-point from which you
look. Change your stand-point, and the difficulties will
vanish.

2*

IV.
INFALLIBILITY, COMMON SENSE, MATTER-OF-FACT.
I have said so much on the fallacy connected with
Inspiration, that I may dismiss the term infallible with
a few brief remarks.
Bishop Colenso uses the word in an arbitrary sense :
in a sense which can by no possibility apply to a great
literature, such as that which is included in the Bible.
Literature is thought clothed in language ; and lan
guage, in itself, is always fallible. The most precise
phrases convey different shades of meaning to different
minds. Words, like leaves on trees, not only rise and
fall — as Horace beautifully says, — but are constantly
undergoing an imperceptible change of tint. Phrases
in one tongue can hardly ever find their equivalents in
another. In the most polished and perfect speech there
are idioms, intelligible enough to those who daily use
them, but to a stranger who takes them literally, posi
tively absurd. A Londoner will say that " everybody
is gone out of town ; " or a Parisian will remark that
" all the world is invited to somebody's reception,"
without thinking that a word-catcher of some future
age may find, in those phrases, proof positive that Lon
doners and Parisians were little better than Cretans.
Instances of the same kind will occur to every reader.

INFALLIBILITT, COMMON SENSE, MATTER-OF-FACT. 35
Now, if we consider that the Bible is popular in its
style ; that it comes to us from the most ancient of all
tongues, and the most intensely idiomatic ; that it is
the growth of many ages, each with its own peculiar
ities of thought and of expression ; that the language
from which it sprang died in giving it birth ; that, in
short, it addresses us with a modern and English look,
but with a soul profoundly ancient and Oriental, it
must be plain that such a Book can be infallible solely
on one positive and indispensable condition.
Its infallibility applies only to its meaning. But,
happily, its meaning is made clear, in all essentials of
revelation, not only by concurrent testimony in the liv
ing voice of the Church, but by that manifoldness of
expression, that line upon line, and precept upon pre
cept, of which I have already spoken in the chapter on
Inspiration. It is infallible in the spirit, not in the letter. But
to get at the spirit of any book, we must interpret the
parts of it by the whole, not the whole by parts arbi
trarily taken.
Not to dwell on considerations of this kind, it will
be enough to say, that the Bible comes to us accompa
nied by a body of living interpretation ; that interpreta
tion is necessarily a growing science, being the fruit of
the loving labor, not of one mind or one age, but of all
minds in the Church and all ages ; that its rules, prin
ciples, and safeguards, being warranted by the common
sense of Christendom, and laid down in plain terms by
the sacred Book itself, constitute as it were the spirit
ual stand-point, from which alone things spiritual can
be properly discerned.
Now Bishop Colenso chooses a stand-point of his

36 TNFALLIBrLrrT, COMMON SENSE, MATTER-OF-FACT.
own. Brought up in a School of " private interpreta
tion," with no faith in the Church, he is a victim of
that popular bibliolatry, which consists in a worship of
the letter of the Scriptures, without any corresponding
reverence for the " authority " which (Art. xx.) is the di
vinely appointed " witness and keeper of Holy Writ."
Nor is he the less a bibliolatrist, in that he now
chooses to abuse the idol to which he has hitherto
fallen down. All idolaters do the same, at times. If
their fetishes fail to help them, according to their own
wishes, the next step often is to tear the fetish in
pieces. When the Bible is used as a private oracle, a sort
of " ephod and teraphim " (Judges xvii. 5-13) for the
worship of self-will, it is naturally expected to give such
answers as the owner of it may desire. But the inspired
word is too " lively " to bend long to such demands.
The owner, perhaps, has some fanatical notion about
Slavery : but the Bible, in spite of every pressure, fails
to humor the notion. What is its votary to do ? He
concludes, with Bishop Colenso,* that on that particu
lar point the Inspiration is wanting. Or his brain is
vexed with an enthusiasm for the Total-abstinence
cause. But the Bible, on this subject, is favorable to
no extremes. On that point, then, Inspiration is " be
hind the age." Or, it may be, he has fallen into a sci
entific mania. The Bible, on the whole, does not flat
ter human science, seeming almost to consider it a spe
cies of child's play. On that point, then, Inspiration is
manifestly at fault. Or he is enamored of " facts,"
and " dates," and arithmetical " calculations." Well :
Introduction, p. 50.

LNFALLIBILITT, COMMON SENSE, MATTER-OF-FACT. 37
the Bible uses " facts " as but secondary to Truth ;
about " dates " it seems indifferent, and hardly con
scious of their importance ; and, as to arithmetic, its
" rule of three " was certainly not learned in any of our
common schools. All this is puzzling to a mere matter-
of-fact mind. It is not precisely in harmony with the
mind of our own age. It denotes a point-of-view to
which we are little accustomed. The consequence is
that if we will insist on having an answer in our own
way, and on our own terms, the oracle that we consult
disappoints us, and puts us out ; and, like Naaman the
Assyrian, we turn from it in a rage.
In such cases, feeling ourselves to be substantially*
in the right, we wonder that the Bible does not go with
us to all extremes. We forget that Inspiration may be
given for the very purpose of moderating our extremes :
teaching us, that " slavery," for example, may be a good
thing in its " time ; " that " total abstinence " may be
an excellent discipline, but pernicious if made a duty
of obligation ; that " facts " and " figures," after all, are
but the skeleton of Truth, needing flesh and blood and
life to make them endurable.
And such, I think, is the essence of Bishop Colen
so's error. Instead of consulting the Bible on its own
terms, and according to its own law, he makes a pri
vate oracle of it, and so finds it fallible. He tries it,
not by Catholic rules, but by principles and rules vehe
mently Colensic. He interprets it, not by the common
sense of the Church, but by Bishop Colenso's sense — or
by that of some " intelligent Christian native," a disci
ple of Bishop Colenso.
* I say " substantially ; " for there is generally a right feeling
even in the most fanatical notions.

38 INFALLIBILITY,
The fallacy is too common with all classes of think
ers. The appeal to the " intelligent Christian native,"
like the appeal so often made to " some plain, un
lettered farmer," is, in reality, an appeal to that
impartial personage whom we more properly call
" Self." The " farmer " will generally answer us very
much as we wish to have him answer : the " intelligent
native " is equally complaisant. The " farmer " and
" native," therefore, are peculiarly " infallible."
It is wonderful how effective such an appeal is,
even with men who ought to be able to see into the
trick. If one wishes to wrest from the letter of Scrip
ture some crotchet of his own, or if he wishes to show
that Scripture contradicts itself, there is no better plan
than to submit the question to some man of " plain
common sense." It flatters one to think that " com
mon sense " is a monopoly of his own : where Popes
have erred, and Councils have proved fallible, and
Doctors have disagreed, your "common-sense" man
sees intuitively into the whole matter. With this
unction laid to his soul, his mind reflects, as a polished
mirror, whatever is brought before it. If you want " a
weasel," * a weasel forthwith appears. If you prefer
" a whale," your " common-sense " man will swallow
the largest whale you can bring him, and will even
imagine it to be a " common-sense " whale. Hence,
the infidel and the bigot appeal vehemently to common
sense. But Bishop Colenso appeals chiefly to that variety
of the common-sense man, which he somewhat vaguely
describes as the " intelligent Englishman ; " and quotes
* Hamlet, Act III. Scene ii.

INFALLIBILITT, COMMON SENSE, MATTER-OF-FACT. 39
(Preface, p. 17) with approbation the " one great
characteristic " of this class, to wit : that they are
accustomed " to seek for matter-of-fact -truth in the first
place," and to delight in the "practical element."
Now, in answering Bishop Colenso, I am bound, in
some measure, to follow him into the court which he
has chosen. Like him, I must appeal to " common
sense," to " matter-of-fact," to the " practical element "
which enters so largely into the minds of Englishmen
and Americans. I only ask that " common sense " be
not confounded with ignorant prejudice ; that " matter-
of-fact " be subordinated to Truth ; that the " practical
element," in a question of spiritual concern, be not so
interpreted as to mean mere secularism.
The Bible is preeminently a large-minded Book. I
ask, that its " difficulties " be dealt with in a large-
minded way.
I will illustrate my meaning by considering, in the
next chapter, some of Bishop Colenso's " difficulties."

V.

MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL-
EIGHT CHAPTERS OF DIFFICULTIES.
I. It is said in Deuteronomy i. 1 and v. 1, and
Joshua viii. 34, 35, that " Moses spake unto all Israel :
he called all Israel and said unto them." So likewise
Joshua " read all the words of the Law .... there
was not a word .... which Joshua read not before
all the congregation .... with the women, and the
little ones, and the strangers that were conversant
among them."
Well : Bishop Colenso shows, and I feel no call to
question his argument or to quote it, that it was physi
cally impossible for one man to read all those words so
as to be heard by all those people.
What then? Does the writer tell a lie? The
Bishop acquits him of that charge. . Does he commit a
gross blunder ? The Bishop thinks he does.
Now, were the sacred writer alive, to be cross-
questioned on the subject, he might well begin his
answer with the emphatic Thou fool ! of another in
spired penman. For who is so stupid as not to know,
that phrases of the kind objected to are common to all
languages, and are always understood in a conventional

MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL. 41
sense ? A general draws up his whole army : does any
one imagine that he draws up the whole ? I utter my
solemn opinion in the face of the whole world : do I
expect the whole world to stand and look at me ? St.
Paul, publicly in Church, and privately from house to
house, declared to his converts the whole counsel of
God : did he deliver an exhaustive treatise on theology
to every Christian family? Our Lord said to His
Apostles, " Go ye into all the world, and preach the
Gospel to every creature : " was there ever a man silly
enough to suppose that He intended all the Apostles
actually to preach to every creature, alive or dead,
animal, vegetable, or mineral, on the face of the whole
earth ? On the Day of Pentecost, devout Jews came
up to Jerusalem out of every nation under Heaven : do
we understand from this that even a tenth of the
nations were literally represented ?
An " intelligent Englishman " may be " matter-of-
fact" enough to boggle at such phrases. An intelli
gent American cannot possibly mistake them. For,
every four years, the President of the United States
stands on the West Porch of the Capitol, and delivers
an " inaugural address " — and generally a pretty long
one — to the whole country, with perhaps some inci
dental remarks to all mankind. What seems " impos
sible," therefore, to Bishop Colenso, we regard as an
easy and natural proceeding. And even an " intelli
gent Englishman," I dare say, may meet occasionally
with a public document beginning in terms like these
— " Know all men by these presents : " if so, he will
readily enough understand that the literal meaning of
words is often a thing quite different from the sense
which they really bear.

42 MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL.
But it seems like trifling to argue on such a point.
It will be enough to remind the reader of Bishop
Colenso's book, that the whole of Chapter V. rests
solely for its support upon such verbal cavilling as
that which I have exposed.
II. The same is true of Chapter IV. wherein the
author shows, by an arithmetical calculation, that the
Court of the Tabernacle could not possibly have ac
commodated the Congregation of Israel ; and conse
quently that the command (Levit. viii. 1-4) to " gather
the Congregation together unto the door of the Taber
nacle," and the assertion that " the assembly was gath
ered unto the door," are both absurdities.
The first " absurdity" is common enough among
matter-of-fact Americans. We often see that great
Behemoth, " the Public," invited to places, into which
no effort could squeeze the thousandth part of his huge
person. And even in Church matters, things of the
same sort occur. A notice is often read in our city
Churches, announcing some special service in one place
or another, and adding, " This Congregation is respect
fully requested to attend." Now, considering that the
invitation is given simultaneously to some fifty congre
gations, and that the place to which they are invited
would be crowded to suffocation if any three of them
were to attend, we may judge how absurd such a notice
would be in the eyes of Bishop Colenso.
The second " absurdity" needs no such parallels :
for it is so worded as to give no handle to word-
catchers, however eager they may be. It merely says
that " the assembly" — however great or small — " was
gathered unto the door : " a phrase which aptly enough
describes the appearance of a great gathering — whether

MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL. 43
a " mass meeting " in this country or a religious jubi
lee in the East — when the place at which they assemble
is too strait for them. The Caaba, which to this day
is the shrine of the whole Moslem world, is an edifice
of extremely scant dimensions. Yet the immense
crowds which resort there annually manage in some
way to " gather unto the door."
HI. Again, in Chapter VI: "The extent of the
Camp, compared with the Priest's duties, and the daily
necessities of the people," is in Bishop Colenso's eyes
another egregious blunder : because the Priest is com
manded (Levit. iv. 11, 12) to " carry " all refuse " with
out the camp " and to burn it.*
The Bishop evidently supposes that, if a man should
take a contract to clean the streets of New York, he is
bound thereby to take broom and shovel in hand, and
do the whole work himself. Possibly, if the contract
were made in English, a matter-of-fact Jury, with a
Colenso to prosecute and a Shylock to expound the
law, might so interpret his bond. But the Hebrew
Priest was secured against such a mishap by the fact,
strangely overlooked by Bishop Colenso, that the com
mand to carry forth and burn is expressed in the
causative mood : Literally, he shall " cause to go forth "
— a distinction that would have saved him in the eyes
of Shylock, who knew somethmg of Hebrew, if not in
those of Bishop Colenso.
IV. The difficulty in Chapter XXI. is somewhat
greater, though evidently of the same character. The
Priests were obliged (2 Chron. xxx. 16, xxxv. 11) to
* I forbear quoting, or answering, the vile jokes of the Bishop
about the sanatory regulation in Deut. xxiii. 14. The context,
verse 9, shows that it was meant for the military camp.

44 MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL.
sprinkle the blood of the lambs slain for the Passover ;
also (Levit. xvii. 2-6) to sprinkle the blood of every ox,
or lamb, or goat, slain by any of the people for sacri
fice : which slaying, moreover, was to be done " at the
door of the Tabernacle." In the same way, in Chapter
XX, the numerous minute duties of the Priests (Levit.
i.-vi., xii.-xv., xxviii., xxix.) and the provision made
for their support (Num. xviii. 9-11, 14-18, &c.) were
enormously disproportioned to the number of the
Priests ; that is, supposing the number of Priests and
People to have been precisely that which appears on
the face of the narrative.
This last supposition is open to discussion : for the
present, however, I assume it to be true.
Now, as to the nicer points involved in this con
troversy,* they have been discussed by Kurtz and other
learned commentators, times without number ; and it
has been abundantly shown that on a liberal, construc
tion the difficulties may be explained. As my object
is merely to expose the general fallacy which underlies
the cavils of Bishop Colenso, I pass by these minutiw /
and content myself with calling attention to a few
obvious considerations.
The Law, as given by the hand of Moses, was
necessarily prospective : being intended, not for the
forty years of wilderness-life merely, but for a long
period beyond, to the coming of the Messiah. This
being the case, it necessarily contained enactments
which could go into force only as circumstances admit
ted. The maxim, necessitas non habet legem, is so self-
* For example, "Whether the Priesthood, which pertained to all
the " nation of Priests," was suddenly confined in all particulars to
Aaron and his sons, or was gradually transferred.

MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL. 45
evident to man, that no law however precise can be
supposed to abrogate it, and no man of common sense
can doubt the lawfulness of its application, when the
necessity really exists.
Hence, with regard to the duties of the Priests. If
these duties were, in the wilderness, disproportioned to
their strength, the Priests had sense enough, and Moses
had sense enough, to perform them so far as they were
able, leaving the rest to be performed as their ability
increased. So, with regard to the provision of food
made for them in the Law : doubtless, they ate as
much as they wanted ; .and if anything remained over,
Moses was present, a living interpreter of the Law, who
could readily suggest to them what to do with the rest.
And that there actually was some such power of adap
tation to circumstances, is shown by the fact (Josh. v.
6, 7) that for forty years the essential rite of circum
cision was universally neglected. But if Moses could
permit so glaring an irregularity as that, we may be
sure that he had some way of suspending, or adapting,
other enactments of the Law.
A Bishop, in confirming, is strictly required by
rubric, to lay his hands upon the head of every one sev
erally, saying, &c. What can be more explicit ? Yet
what Bishop, if he has a large number to be confirmed,
ever troubles himself with the letter of such a rubric ?
The -Apostles, in like manner, were commanded to
preach to every creature, baptizing and teaching all.
Yet St. Paul, the most active of the Apostles and the
least likely to decline any portion of his duties, thanked
God that he had baptized none of his Corinthian con
verts. It is well for him that he has not fallen into
the hands of Bishop Colenso. But the Bishop may

46 MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL.
catch him yet, when he comes — as he promises — to the
examination of the New Testament.
But the Law, it may be urged — and Bishop Colenso
fails not to urge it — required obedience in every point.
So it did. And so does all law : the moral law re
quires it, as much as the ceremonial ; the Christian law,
as much as the Judaic. " Whosoever shall keep the
whole law and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of
all ? " But what is the inference from this ? Simply,
that law — as such — is far beyond the ability of man to
meet. It is a measure of his shortcomings, not of his
performances. It convicts him of sin : it does not
assure him of righteousness. It kills, but does not
quicken. Now, if God, in giving a ceremonial law to
the Jews, introduced into it that feature which per
vades all law ; if He gave ordinances of perfection, far
beyond the practical reach of any man or class of men :
it merely proves that He was consistent with Himself ;
that He did not intend to give flesh the glory of fulfil
ling — even in the smallest matters — the fulness of His
requirements. The more clearly it is proved, therefore, that the
Law, as given by Moses, presented a standard impos
sible of attainment, the more fully is Moses shown to
be in harmony with St. Paul.
But this is beyond the depth of such critics as
Bishop Colenso. He is content to stand on plain
"matter-of-fact : " with broad views of the Divine pur
pose he will not trouble himself. Well, then : as a
mere matter-of-fact, the same writer who gives us the
strict minutios of the Law informs us continually, in the
same narrative, that the Law was very indifferently
observed. In great matters and small, the Jews were

MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING AT J. ISRAEL. 47
perpetually transgressing. Even Moses (Exod. iv.
24-26) was astonishingly negligent, in some points. If
this be so, it is plain that the writer of "the Pentateuch
never intended it to be supposed that the law given by
him was literally enforced in the wilderness ; conse
quently, all argument based upon the difficulties of its
observance either goes for nothmg, or else proves (what
we knew before) that it was imperfectly carried out.
V. In Chapter XXH, the Bishop finds out by
calculation a chronological difficulty.
The death of Aaron being mentioned in Num. xx.
29, the narrative goes on with a variety of other events
summarily related, coupled (as is common in Bible his
tory) by the copulative." and."
" They mourned for Aaron thirty days."
" And when king Arad the Canaanite, which dwelt
in the south, heard tell that Israel came by the way
of the spies, then he fought against Israel."
The Bishop conveniently puts '¦'•after this" for
" and," thereby assuming that the events connected
with king Arad were strictly after the mourning for
Aaron, whereas they may have been simultaneous with
it, or partly before and partly after — nothing being
more common in history than this gathering up, as it
were, of facts which overlap one another in point of
time. But the Bishop, having assumed this strictly con
secutive, character of the events named, arbitrarily
allows a month for their transaction.
So with- the events that follow : he makes them all
strictly consecutive. For example, when " Moses sent
to spy out Jazer, and they took the villages thereof, and
drove out the Amorites that were there " (Num. xxi.

48 MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL.
32), the natural supposition would be, that said event
was what we would call in modern parlance a detached
expedition, which might be doing its work while the
main body of the people were engaged in other affairs.
But the Bishop assumes it to be a work of the whole
people, and allows for it a. fortnight more.
And so he goes on, assuming in each case that the
events related followed each other like mules along a
mountain path, the head of the one tied fast to the tail
of the other, and allowing for each a fortnight, month,
or whatever else he chooses ; and having thus dictated
his sum in arithmetic, invites us to " add up."
, I beg to be excused. Events in history are not tied
to each other's tails, in such a fashion as that. Tlie
word " and " in historical writers does not mean " after
this." A detached movement in an army is not con
secutive to the main movement ; it is more often simul
taneous with it.
And especially in early writers : any one who has
studied the style of the old historians, or even of histo
rians so modern comparatively as the four Evangelists,
knows that the copulative 'f and " is in itself no guide
to the order of the things narrated. Such writers, it is
well known, are negligent of chronology, unless there
happens to be need of exactness in that respect. And
when there is need, and they wish to be exact, they
generally signify it by such definite phrases as " then,"
" after this," " about this time," or the like. The
Bishop's assumptions, therefore, are purely gratuitous.
To add up " the sum " which he bases upon them may
be good exercise for an infant-school, but to one who
knows his right hand from his left, it would be idle in
the extreme.

MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL. 49
But the Bishop thinks otherwise. His six or seven
assumptions being duly added to about the same num
ber of allowances, and no assumptions or allowances
being credited to the other side — for the Bishop's arith
metic admits no rule of subtraction — he finds the sum-
total to be a greater amount of work done than could
possibly have been done in the " six months " which
Moses has allotted to it.
VI. One or two more examples will suffice for the
present chapter. In Chapter VIET- 0I" t^e Bishop's
work, " the Israelites dwelling in tents" and in Chap
ter IX, " the Israelites armed," are to be regarded as
manifest slips, on the part of Moses, because, by
Colenso's arithmetic, it appears impossible to have
gotten tents or arms for all the people. Especially was
this impossible, because (the Bishop decrees) their tents
must have been of " skins," and their arms must have
been — the Bishop does not say what. Besides, how
could they get beasts enough to carry all this baggage ?
Perhaps the beasts they had, carried their own
skins for awhile : a thrifty arrangement, which would
go far toward meeting three of the Bishop's difficul
ties. It would provide materials for tents, when the
beasts should be slain ; it would be an inducement to
slay most of the beasts at as early a date as possible,
thus meeting incidentally another difficulty of the
Bishop, Chapter XH — namely, that of finding food in
the wilderness for so many cattle ; it would feed the
people in the interval before the manna was sent.
And as to arms, a hardy people, engaged in making
bricks, are never without weapons of some sort or
other. But, apart from considerations of this kind, where
3

50 MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL.
does Moses say that all the Israelites had the comfort
of tents ? From what does the Bishop infer that all
the tents were of " skins." Moses says (Exod. xvi. 16),
" Take ye every man for them which are in his tents."
But this no more implies that every man had tents,
and especially skin tents, than the phrase, " Take ye
every man for them which are in his house," would
imply that every man had a house, and that a brick
house. The Israelites, in all probability, were very
indifferently provided with domestic comforts. As a
people just escaped from bondage and hard labor, they
would need but little in that way. And that they had
but little, we may infer from their oft-repeated wish to
go back into Egypt.
VII. The same general remark applies to the diffi
culty of Chapter XII, namely, that of finding food for
" the sheep and cattle in the wilderness." That the
Israelites were hard put to it, at times, the narrative
plainly enough declares. There is no necessity, how
ever, for making. so hard a case of it as Bishop Colenso
does. The wilderness, at that time, was doubtless a
desert in many parts : but not necessarily so much of
a desert as it is at the present day. As compared with
Egypt on the one side, and Canaan on the other, it
may have been quite sterile. But, as Egypt now is a
desert, compared with Egypt then ; or as Canaan now
is a desert, compared with Canaan then ; so also it may
be with the wilderness between. Though a " desert "
in ancient times, it may have been vastly less of a des
ert than it is just now. The difficulty, therefore,
though it was undoubtedly great enough to be seri
ously felt, was by no means insuperable.
But, in all these cases, covering some eight chapters

MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL ISRAEL. 51
of Bishop Colenso's book, the difficulty — save with re
gard to the precise number of the people, which I re
serve for special consideration — is occasioned almost
solely by a " matter-of-fact " determination, to treat the
Pentateuch as one would treat a sum in arithmetic.
Hence no allowance is to be made for idioms, conven
tional phrases, and the like ; none, for such omissions
of mere details as are common to all writers. The bald
and naked letter, as it is in English, interpreted by
English matter-of-fact sense as exhibited in Bishop Co
lenso, is to be pressed to the utmost against the narra
tive of Moses ; and no hypothesis, no supplying of
probable details, no allowance for the peculiarities of
ancient times, no faith in that Omnipotence which led
the people, is to be admitted in its favor.
Hypothesis, however, is to be excluded, only when
it may serve to clear up the meaning of Moses : should
it help to confound his meaning, the Bishop not only
freely admits it, but gives it a quasi-infallibility by a
liberal use of the word must. Where other writers
would say, It may have been so and so, Bishop Colenso
prefers to say, It must have been.
And it is also to be noted, that no reference is to be
made to the hundreds of minute touches, showing a
personal familiarity with Egyptian and desert life,
which to minds of the highest order have demonstrated
the historical character of the Pentateuch. Bishop Co
lenso has no notion of " a balance " of probabilities.
If he can prove ten points against Moses, the hundred
points in his favor need not be alluded to. In short,
as I have said before, the Bishop's arithmetic is all ad
dition, and no subtraction : he keeps a ledger, in which
all the columns are debit, and none credit.

AN APOLOGY TO GOOD CHRISTIANS FOR "THINGS
NEW AND OLD."
But here I foresee a possible objection, coming from
a quarter for which I have great respect.
Some good Christian may say : " Are you not con
ceding too much to these conventional, or idiomatic
phrases ? If you grant that the words ' all ' and ' every '
and ' every . . . under heaven,' and the like, express ideas
so much more limited than one at first sight would
think possible, may you not be forced into dangerous
interpretations of other passages than those which you
have so far quoted ? "
I answer, There is a danger. And I can see the ap
plication to some passages — for example, the Mosaic
account of the Deluge — which, for one, I like to receive
in the sense that has been commonly given to them.
Still, Interpretation is a science that must grow
with other sciences. While its principles are always
the same, the applications of those principles are con
tinually enlarging with the lapse of time ; because the
horizon of human thought is continually enlarging. In
the days of the Apostles, the world — the oikoumene — the
habitat of man — was virtually little more than the Ro
man Empire. In the days of Moses, it was a space still

AN APOLOGY TO GOOD CHRISTIANS. 53
more contracted. At the present day it embraces both
sides of the globe. From the Divine point-of-view, this
is a fact of little importance. God contemplates the
part in the whole, and the whole in any part. He sees
in the mustard-seed the full mustard-tree. And as with
God, so with the sacred language inspired by God. Its
words are " spirit and life," in more senses than one.
They are germinating words, words that bear fruit for
one age with seeds of other fruits for ages to come
after. The interpretation that may answer for to-day,
because it is large enough to fill the mind of to-day,
may expand to-morrow, in order to fill up the mind of
to-morrow. Thus Interpretation may grow, though it
may not change. Its principles being fixed, in the laws
of human speech, and its form being determined, in the
Faith once delivered to the Saints, and its stand-point
established, in the Church, the Pillar and Ground of
Truth, it may go on for the future, as it has gone on in
the past, re-adjusting itself from time to time, while
remaining in all essentials continually the same.
Thus, it has adjusted itself already to the Coperni-
can system of Astronomy : if other systems of science
should prove equally true, it may with equal safety to
the Scriptures adjust itself to them.
Hence, while I acknowledge some danger in any
explanations that may seem to threaten a received view
of difficult passages in Scripture, yet I am confident
that the danger is less than is imagined. And to those,
who abide by the Church, and plant their feet on that
Rock on which the Church is built, there is no danger
whatsoever. If others are in danger, it is because they
despise the safeguards of Faith which God in His good
ness hath provided.

54 AN APOLOGT TO GOOD CHRISTIANS.
At all events, the allowance we have to make for
the force of idioms involves no concession of the Di
vine word itself. It involves only a closer study of the
laws of human speech. Those laws, if examined, may
enable us, in the work of harmonizing religion and sci
ence, to go further than at first we might think it pos
sible to go. If so, let us follow, those laws.
I may add that a real belief in Inspiration, as in the
full sense Divine, almost necessarily implies a progres
sive interpretation. The Holy Ghost speaks in and
through an age, using the idioms of that age, but not
for that age alone through which He speaks. Hence,
while Interpretation as a whole is fixed, being nothing
more or less than the Creed or Rule of Faith, the in
terpretation of particular parts of Scripture may won
derfully develop. Thus, a thousand years ago, no one
thought of the heavenly lights as other than fiery span
gles ; and therefore no one cared whether they were
" set in the firmament " the first day or the fourth.
Consequently, no one troubled himself much about the
precise words of Moses on the subject. Now the case
is different. We have learned to study the stars more
closely : consequently, we study more closely what the
Divine word has to say about them. The result is that
we find out somethmg previously overlooked. Where
Moses speaks of " lights," we notice that the word (in
Hebrew) means more accurately " light-holders " — a
term that harmonizes more fitly with the latest results
of Science. Thus Science acts upon Interpretation, as the sun
light acts upon a writing in invisible ink. It does not
create a new meaning : it merely brings out to view a
hitherto hidden meaning.

AN APOLOGT TO GOOD CHRISTIANS. 55
" There is nothing hid which shall not be manifest
ed ; neither was anything kept secret, but that it
should come abroad." Science is fulfilling this prophe
cy, in reference to the secrets of Nature. Every year, a
prejudice is dispelled : every year something hidden for
ages comes out into the light. Why may we not expect
the same, in reference to things which have been " hid "
in the letter of the Scriptures ? Why can we not allow
that much may have been kept secret, by being couched
in idiomatic language, with the intention that ulti
mately it should come abroad? Discoveries result,
either from shedding some new light upon a well-
known subject, or else from contemplating the subject
from a new point-of-view. Now Science undoubtedly
sheds new lights. It unquestionably puts us in new
points-of-view. May not this lead to new interpreta
tions of the Bible, even as it has led to new interpreta
tions of Nature ? It must, if interpreters are alive to
the demands of their sacred calling. For " a scribe in
structed unto the kingdom of Heaven is like a house
holder that bringeth forth out of his treasure things
new and old."
In fact, there is an essential difference between our
Faith, which rests upon the sense of Scripture as a
whole, and what we properly call our " views " of par
ticular passages of Scripture.
The latter may be enlarged, or modified, or rendered
more clear, or may even in some cases be materially
changed, without in the slightest degree affecting the
former. And as with our views of certain texts, so also with
our views of the nature of Inspiration. Most persons
start with the matter-of-fact idea, that the soul of the

56 AN APOLOGT TO GOOD CHRISTIANS.
inspired person is, like a soul possessed, merely a pas
sive instrument in the Hand of the Inspirer. The early
Church exploded that idea. The man inspired remains
every whit a man. He is, in fact, a man intensified.
And inspired writings, too, are preeminently human
writings. There is in the Bible more flesh and blood,
if I may so speak, than in any other extant literature.
It is proper, therefore, to be cautious, not only with
regard to new views of Scripture texts, but also with
regard to old views. For if a new view to-day is sug
gested in part by the science of to-day, the old view of
yesterday may equally have been suggested by the sci
ence of yesterday. The only safe rule is to use the eyes
that God hath given us, in the light that He vouch
safes, and from that stand-point of the Church which
He hath provided for us.
I make these remarks, not for Bishop Colenso, but
with a view to critics of a much nobler type. Many
of these feel that Interpretation is cramped, and their
own hands tied, and an open field left to the infidel as
sailant, by the timorousness of those who mistake a
popular sense of Scripture for the Scripture itself ; and
who therefore start at everything that disturbs popu
lar ideas. A true faith in the Bible admits no such
alarms.

vn.
JACOB'S FAMILY LIST.
Bishop Colenso devotes his second and third chap
ters to supposed errors in the List of the Seventy Soids
who went with Jacob into Egypt.
There are four names on the List (Gen. xlvi. 12, 17)
which were evidently inserted after Jacob's arrival in
Egypt : evidently inserted, because it is obvious* that
the persons named, being grand-children of Judah and
Asher, could not have been in existence before that
event : Colenso, p. 61.
The matter has puzzled the interpreters, and various
devices for disentangling the knot have been learnedly
suggested. Bishop Colenso manages to make sport of
these devices, and by some twist of his own seems to
get the whole affair into a worse tangle than ever.
Ike fact, fairly stated from Scripture, is simply this :
Jacob's Family List, whether written in any way
or merely committed to memory, contained before he
went into Egypt precisely seventy souls : though four
of these, namely his two wivesf and two of the sons
of Judah,^ were souls of the departed. Thus, arithme-
* I concede this point : thongh good critics have disputed it.
t Gen. xlviii. 7; xlix. 81. t Gen. xxxviii. 7, 10.
3*

58 Jacob's family list.
tically, and in a matter-of-fact way, Jacob had sixty^six
in his company when he first settled in Egypt : but re
ligiously, or as some might say poetically, — in the
spirit of the little maid of Wordsworth's ballad, who
insisted so strenuously, " We are seven," — he might still
count them seventy.
To this fact may be added the following probabilities.
When Jacob arrived in Egypt, he probably gave to
his List the title or heading which it still bears — namely,
the Names of the Children of Israel which came with
him into Egypt : Exod. i. 1 : Gen. xlvi. 8-28. And
it is likely enough that he did this, without troubling
himself to erase, either from his tablets or his memory,
the names of the dear departed souls whom the kind-
hearted and faithful Patriarch still regarded as " of his
company." At a later date, however, he may have revised his
List. Affectionate heads of families are apt to do such
things. Their Family List is the solace of their old
age : and they turn it over and over, as fondly as a
miser counts over his hoarded money. The Patriarch,
then, turning his List over in this way, and counting his
seventy souls which the Lord had gi^en him, and reluc
tant to erase his four departed souls, availed himself of
the first opportunity to substitute for them four new
souls — among his great-grandchildren — whom the Lord
in His goodness had granted him in their place.*
Thus the names of the grandchildren of Judah and
Asher may easily have come in. No other names were
added, because no others were needed.
* Gen. xxx. 9, &c, shows that the idea of substitution could go
much farther then, than would be considered proper now.

Jacob's family list. 59
The mystic force of the number seventy — a well-
known sacred number — may have stimulated his desire
to keep his List up to that figure, after it had once
reached it. If he had been a matter-of-fact man, the
desire of keeping to a round number might also have
had something to do with it. For arithmetic, among
the Ancients, was very loosely taught. No Colensos
then had put forth text-books on the subject. More
over, there was not much writing done in those primi
tive times. Men carried their note-books in their brains,
rather than in their pockets. It will be readily seen,
then, that a certain preference for round numbers was
the most natural thing in the world.
However all this may be, Moses took the Family
List of Jacob, just as Jacob had left it ; and inserted it
— with all its sins against arithmetic on its head — in his
books of Genesis and Exodus.
But, as an inspired man, had he a right to overlook
or to sanction these sins against modern arithmetic ?
I answer, Yes : the Holy Ghost did not inspire him
to be a pedant, or arithmetician. He was raised up,
and inspired, for a holier and better work. As a his
torian of Truth, and not a detailer of mere facts, — as a
Prophet of the old world, not a Gradgrind of the nine
teenth century, — he concerned himself chiefly with
weightier matters of the law.
If a slight inaccuracy in figures — an inaccuracy,
that is, from one point-of-view — should turn out to be
the means of suggesting spiritual reflections, it would
be just the kind of inaccuracy that large-minded men
of all ages delight in : an inaccuracy, I may reverently
add, not alien or displeasing to the Spirit of Divine
Truth.

60

JAPOI} s family list.

And even Bishop Colenso is obliged to grant, that
some inaccuracies of the narrative can be explained, by
allowing for primitive modes of expression and of
thought. Thus Jacob himself is included among his
own sons (Gen. xlvi. 8), and among the sons of Leah
(ver. 12)— see Colenso, p. 67. But, if some inaccuracies
of this kind are manifestly idioms, resulting from hab
its of thought impossible to us, why may not the other
inaccuracies result from similar, though less obvious,
peculiarities ?
But his lordship is so reluctant to concede anything
in that way, further than he is absolutely forced to it,
that to avoid it he commits a slight, but very suspi
cious, inaccuracy himself. He speaks of Leah " and the
other wives of Jacob " (p. 67) as being omitted because
they were dead. Had he said, the other wife, the state
ment would have been strictly accurate (for the maids
of Rachel and Leah were in loco uxorum, not wives in
the proper sense), and would have gone far toward
meeting one of his difficulties. Namely, he rejects the
explanation that two of the four great-grandchildren
may have been adopted as substitutes for the two de
ceased sons of Judah, by triumphantly asking, How do
we account for the insertion of the other two ? " If
Hezron and Hamul are substituted for Er and Onan,
for whom are Heber and Malchiel .... xlvi. 17, sup
posed to be substituted ? " Now, supposing that Jacob
had two wives deceased, the answer would be easy.
Therefore, it is convenient to Bishop Colenso to speak
as if Jacob had more than two wives. In short, he con
tinually asks the question, If four names of persons
born after the arrival in Egypt were inserted in the
List, why not more than four ? But he shuffles so as

61
to conceal the obvious reply, that there were but four
deceased persons, and consequently four substitutes
were all that were needed.
There are like instances of unfairness all through
the discussion. I omit them, because I do not care to
accumulate mere points. I have shown that the pecu
liarities of Jacob's List may be accounted for. To at
tempt more, in so ancient a document, cannot be rea
sonably expected.
I may add that, in giving an explanation somewhat
different from that of Havernick, Hengstenberg, and
other learned authorities, I do not intend in any way
to disparage their solutions. I have preferred my own,
merely because it was easier for me to express. A knot
may be untied in a variety of ways. The best way of
untying it, time and many minds alone can determine*
Besides : the more ways there are of meeting a diffi
culty in Scripture, the more proof there is that the diffi
culty was intended, and provided for, in the general
plan of Inspiration. It is not God's way to save us ab
solutely from temptation : it is rather, with the temp
tation, to open a way for our escape. One way of be
friending men would be to allow no diseases. Another
way would be to allow diseases, but alongside of them
to provide sufficient remedies. Providence, on the
whole, prefers the latter plan. We have no ground for
supposing that Divine Inspiration would act otherwise,
in principle, than as Divine Providence has done.

* Moses uses round and sacred numbers so freely, that it may
well be doubted whether he meant to express himself with arith
metical precision. See Chap. IX.

VIII.
A FEW OTHER DIFFICULTIES.
Bishop Colenso has, undoubtedly, one real difficul
ty : namely, the number of the Israelites who went forth
out of Egypt. But to give effect to this, he puts it at
the head of a squad of supernumeraries ; which, like a
skilful scene-shifter, he manages to bring out again and
again, so as to give them the appearance of a formi
dable host.
Some of these supernumeraries I have already con
sidered. I must dispose of the rest, before coming to
the one which gives them whatever importance they
may seem to possess.
As in the cases noticed before, the difficulty lies
mainly in that cavilling adherence to the bald and
naked letter, that treatment of words as if they were
mere counters, that way of spelling out a meaning with
the eyes and fingers instead of reading it by the light
of a sympathetic mind, which is pardonable (perhaps)
in persons ignorant of letters, but which in a Scholar
and a Bishop is without excuse. Interpret the whole
Bible in this way, and the sacred Book becomes simply
ridiculous. Interpret any literature in this way, and it
becomes unintelligible jargon. But no writer expects

A FEW OTHER DIFFICULTIES. 63
to be treated in that way. The rough saying of Dr.
Johnson, " Sir, I am bound to furnish you arguments,
not brains," — " intelligibilia prcebeo, non intellecium"
— is a sort of implied contract between the writer and
the reader, which none but the veriest pedant will fail
to respect. And there is the less excuse for this kind of pedan
try in dealing with the Bible, because the sacred Book
condemns it, and warns against it, and in the plainest
terms shows up its stupidity and folly. For example,
the words of wisdom " are all plain to him that un-
derstandeth ; " but, "like lame legs that will not
dance," * " like a thorn in a drunkard's hand," " so is
a parable in the mouth of fools : " see Proverbs xxvi.
7, 9. And our Lord, in the New Testament, confuting
the wretched literalness of the Pharisees, invariably re
bukes them as " fools and blind." So also the warn
ing of St. Paul, " Not the letter, but the spirit." In
which and numberless other passages, in the Old Tes
tament and the New, the necessity of intelligent inter
pretation, as opposed to the merely literal and pedan
tic, is so manifestly laid down that no candid mind can
miss it.
But to come to the " difficulties : "
(1.) " And Moses said, Thus saith the Lord, About
midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt : " &c,
Exod. xi. 4-8.
(2.) " And he went out from Pharaoh in great an
ger : " xi. 8.
(3.) " And the lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in
the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto
* Literally, " the legs of the lame are not equal."

64 A FEW OTHER DIFFICULTIES.
you, &c  Speak ye unto all the congregation of
Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall
take unto them every man a lamb  for a house
 and ye shall keep it unto the fourteenth day,"
&c, xii. 1-11.
(4.) "For I will pass through the land of Egypt
this night," &c, xii. 12.
Now these four passages, running consecutively
and coupled by the word " and," might be understood
to describe events following upon one another in the
precise order given. If we strain the word and, they
must be so understood. But, if so understood, they
make downright nonsense. The writer would seem to
say, that Moses, after predicting an event which was to
take place the night immediately following, (1), then
commanded the people to spend four days at least in
preparing for that event, (3), and then added (4) that
the event was to take place immediately that same
night. Such is the meaning if we press to the utmost the
word midnight in the first passage, the word and in the
second and third, and the word this in the fourth.
Bishop Colenso does not hesitate so to press them.
About midnight, he declares, must mean the midnight
of that day on which Moses spake : this night must mean
the same — and he brings in the Hebrew word to prove
it. Therefore, though the context (3) manifestly im
plies an interval of at least four days, we must not al
low Moses the benefit of his context, but must sum
marily conclude (on the strength of Bishop Colenso's
grammar) that the writer could not remember his own
mind from one sentence to another.
Now, whether the writer of Exodus was an inspired

A FEW OTHER DIFFICULTIES. 65
man or not, all the world will grant that he was not a
simpleton. But, if Bishop Colenso's argument in Chap.
X. is good for anything, it proves him to have been
stupid to a most extraordinary degree.
And, unfortunately, if we are to trust the Bishop,
the lapse already described is but a small part of the
stupidity involved. In the twelve hours or so, to which
Moses- is arithmetically pinned down, all the people are
to receive their first intelligence of the contemplated
march ; all are to prepare their lambs — being instructed
the meanwhile in the minutiae of the Passover ; all are
to borrow jewels from their neighbors the Egyptians ;
all are to get themselves in readiness for a move ; all
are to start, with their flocks and herds, and wives and
children, marching from Goshen to Rameses, and from
Rameses to Succoth, all on a single day !
For, the Bishop says, " This is, undoubtedly, what
the story in the book of Exodus requires us to believe."
For which " undoubtedly " he refers us to Exod. xii. 31
-41, — " the children of Israel journeyed from Rameses
to Succoth," — and to ver. 51 — " it came to pass the self
same day that the Lord did bring the children of Israel
out of Egypt." But if the Bishop lays such stress on
the self-same day, why not lay an equal stress upon
the leading out of Egypt ? For the people were not
fairly " out of Egypt " till they had crossed the Red
Sea. Why not prove, then, while we are about it, that
from Goshen to Rameses, and from Rameses to Suc
coth, and from Succoth to the east shore of the Red
Sea, was all accomplished in one day's march ? To be
sure, the context might disprove it, and common sense
would revolt at it : but what is " context " or " com
mon sense " against Bishop Colenso's grammar ?

66 A FEW OTHER DIFFICULTIES.
An ordinary reader knows that the Bible, like other
history, is mind speaking to mind, and that when mind
thus speaks to mind, many details are often left to the
intelligence of the reader. An ordinary reader, there
fore, does not scruple to allow for many things, not
expressly stated in a condensed and rapid history.
Thus, when Csesar describes a great campaign in the
words, " Veni, Vidi, Vici," we feel at liberty to supply
much, which Ceesar does not express. " Veni " implies
a long journey by sea and land ; " Vidi " includes more
than the use of a single pair of eyes ; " Vici " brings up
pictures of the toil and tug of war. If we treat Moses,
as we would treat Csesar, we should not scruple to fill
up his narrative, in like manner, with suggestions of
simple details which he may not have thought it worth
while to record. Thus, if the people were to march out
of Egypt in haste, it is likely that he took proper
measures beforehand to organize* them for such a jour
ney. If they were to sacrifice lambs, it is probable
(and the narrative expressly says) he gave them notice.
in time. So with other points too numerous to men
tion. But Bishop Colenso has one answer to all such
charitable suggestions. Shylock-like, he repeats, "It
is not found in the bond." Thus Tischendorf supposes
— and it does not seem to be a violent stretch of imagi
nation — that when the people travelled some sixty
miles in three days, they took intervals of rest " be
tween the three marching days." But Bishop Colenso
allows no such daring hypothesis. " Nothing whatever
is said or implied about these days of rest. There
* The Egyptians were splendid organizers; and their slaves
were well accustomed to move rapidly in large bo'dies.

A FEW OTHER DIFFICULTIES. 67
would surely have been some reference made to them,
if they really occurred." Thus the probably of Tischen-
dorf is overwhelmed by the surely of Colenso. The
object being to prove Moses a dunce, why should the
game be spoiled by your charitable suppositions ?
His remarks on the " War on Midian," Chap. XXH,
bring out an objection of a higher kind: namely, the
cruelty of destroying so many people. This objection
is not new : and I answer, as it has always been an
swered, that the Midianites were destroyed, for their
wickedness, by the command of God. It may be cruel
in soldiers to extirpate a band of robbers. But if the
soldiers are commanded so to do by legitimate author
ity, men regard it as an act of simple justice.
So also, the Bishop objects that the Lord accepted
a tribute of " slaves " from among the captives, thus
giving a sort of Divine sanction to the custom of hold
ing slaves. That may be so. But if so, it merely
proves that God did not consider " slavery " the worst
thing that could happen to a man. Bishop Colenso
may think otherwise. But his lordship's claims to
infallibility are surely not superior to those of Moses or
St. Paul. I will not waste the time of the reader, by dwelling
on the difficulties of Chapters XI, XII, XIH They are
precisely of the same character as those already dis
cussed. The arguments employed — apart from that
which rests on the great number of the Israelites — are
invariably of the same arbitrary, technical, and hair
splitting description. If Moses is to be interpreted by
Bishop Colenso's rules, we give up Moses, and with
him we give up the best writers of all ages, as abso
lutely indefensible.

68 A FEW OTHER DIFFICULTIES.
Indeed, I am not sure but that we shall be obliged,
by the same rules of interpretation, to give up Bishop
Colenso himself. For, on p. 224, in his " concluding
remarks," he quotes as sound theology, " learned by
the direct teaching of the Spirit of God," the following
Hindoo maxim :
" Whatsoever hath been made, God made. Whatso
ever is to be made, God will make. Whatsoever is,
God maketh."
But if " God made whatsoever hath been made,"
He must have made among other things the Five Books
of Moses. So that, after all, Bishop Colenso proves
nothing against them by proving them " unhistorical."
In fact, I never could understand why a Pantheist —
and Bishop Colenso, on p. 224, fairly enrolls himself
among that number — should object in any way to the
Inspiration of the Scriptures, or should consider one
part of the sacred volume more inspired than another.
If " God is in all," why is He not in the Bible ? And
if He is in the Bible, why object to the common befief
in a Divine Inspiration ?
Nor is the Bishop quite consistent in his professed
hostility to evasions, and in his devotion to matter-of-
fact and literal interpretation.
Thus, in his Preface, he opposes the theory " that
Noah's deluge was & partial one," partly on the ground
that, " as waters must find their own level," a flood
which covered the high hills in one part of the earth,
must have covered the hills of the same height in other
parts. He ignores the fact, that Hugh Miller and other
advocates of the partial deluge theory suppose the flood
to have been caused mainly by a sinking of that region
which was overflowed : a supposition which, being an

A FEW OTHER DIFFICULTIES. 69
essential feature of the theory and answering the Bish
op's objection, he was bound in common honesty to give.
There is even a worse lack of the plain dealing
which he recommends, in his answer to the matter-of-
fact objection, that our Lord Himself refers to Moses
and evidently treats him and his writings as historical.
This he evades by a very subtle distinction between
His knowledge as God, and His ignorance as Man.
As God, He knew Moses to be "unhistorical;" as
Man, He knew nothing about it.
In the same way, because it suits the Bishop's pur
pose to do away with the most obvious meaning of St.
Stephen's declaration in Acts vii. 6, he interprets the
passage in precisely the same way that he calls " eva
sive," when it occurs in other writers. " At first sight
.... it would seem that Abraham's descendants were
to be afflicted for 400 years, in one land," &c. He then
shows that the seeming meaning is not the correct one.
Bis reasoning, in this instance, p. 153, is probably cor
rect. But if he had reasoned the same way in all other
instances, with similar allowance for the force of idioms,
most of his difficulties would easily have been removed.
Again, he declares, p. 51, that " the notion of
miraculous or supernatural interferences does not pre
sent to (his) mind the difficulties which it seems to pre
sent to some." Yet, if we appeal to the Divine Dower,
as solving the difficulties of the Exodus, the Bishop
allows no force to anything of the sort.
A writer thus careless of his own consistency, and
so subtle and evasive when it suits his purpose, would
fare badly, if judged by the rigid rules which he ap
plies to Moses.

IX.
SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC.
I come now to what I have called the " one real
difficulty " of Bishop Colenso's book.
It is the difficulty, and (perhaps) the impossibility
of ascertaining the true number of the Israelites, at the
time of the Exodus. The question with regard to it
may be briefly summed up as follows :
While the number of the entire people is nowhere
given, we are yet furnished with two kinds of data,
from which it may be inferred. These data, however,
seem intricate, confused, and not easily reconcilable
with one another. I will proceed at once to the con
sideration of the first " kind," reserving the second to
another chapter.
There are statements in numerals : as in Exod. xii.
37, which gives 600,000 men; Exod. xxxviii. 25-28,
where there are 603,550, this sum being checked more
over by the tribute paid, namely 603,550 bekahs ;
Num. i. 46, where the number of each tribe is given,
and all are added up to the sum of 603,550 ; Num.
xxvi. 51, the last year in the wilderness, where again
the tribes are given, and all come up to the amount of
601,730. These numbers stand for the fighting men.

SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC. 71
But, on the other hand, the whole number of " first
born, from a month old and upwards," which on statis
tical principles ought to be at least one-fourth of the
entire male population, is in Num. iii. 43, computed at
22,273, not much more than one-thirtieth of the adult
fighting men. This number also seems to be certified,
first, by the purpose for which the census was taken,
namely, that " all the first-born of the males " might be
redeemed ; secondly, by the exactness of the odd num
ber, 273, which would indicate a count of the closest
kind ; thirdly, by the number of the Levites (Exod. iii.
39) substituted for the first-born, to wit, 22,000 ; and
fourthly (Exod. iii. 46) by the special arrangement
made for the 273 who could not find Levite substitutes.
Now, if we allow the adult males to be one in four
of the population, and the " first-born " to be one in
seven, we shall arrive at two quite different results. By
the one, we shall get a population of about 2,500,000 :
by the other, of about 150,000.
To account for this difference, we may suppose the
word " first-born " was used in some conventional sense,
for a privileged class, and did not apply to all the eldest
sons in the nation. It may have applied only to the
eldest of certain families of purer blood : not to " the
mixed multitude," Exod. xii. 38, which came out with
them from Egypt. But this is only a guess ; and other
conjectures which have been framed seem hardly to
cover, the difficulty.*
If we could suppose, however, that " thousands "
and " ten-thousands " were but vague expressions of
multitude, like the word legions in the New Testament
or myriads among the Greeks, the difficulty would be
much diminished, if not absolutely done away. And
* See Appendix A.

72 SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC.
there is much in the Scripture style to make such a
supposition probable. Thus, when Moses speaks (Deut.
xxxiii. 17) of " the ten-thousands of Ephraim and the
thousands of Manasseh," we would infer at once, from
the modern meaning of those numbers, that Ephraim
was ten times more numerous than Manasseh : we find
actually, however — according to that later census in
Num. xxvi. 34, 37, which Moses had before him when
he spoke — that Manasseh was by far the more nume
rous of the two. In the same way, in Num. x. 36, 1
find Moses speaking of the " ten thousand thousands of
Israel : " an expression so Oriental, that our Version
very properly reduces it to " the many thousands."
Such vagueness of expression leads one to suspect
that when the census was taken (Num. i. 4, 16, &c.) by
the " heads of thousands," these " thousands " of which
they were " heads " may have been simply what we
would call " regiments " or something of the kind : a
" regiment " being the synonym of " a thousand" on
the Army List, but not by any means necessarily con
taining that number of men. This suspicion is
strengthened by the fact, that the " heads of thou
sands " are also described, in the same connection, as
heads of houses or families : see ver. 4. But it is not
probable that each " house " contained a round thou
sand, in the arithmetical sense of the word. It seems
more probable, that it was counted for a thousand, in
a purely conventional sense : so that the returns of the
census were made in " thousands," or in " hundreds "
corresponding to " companies," by the " heads of
thousands " and " captains of hundreds," according to
some rule known among themselves but not easily
ascertainable in modern times.

SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC. 73
In short, the " tens " with their " captains of tens,"
the " hundreds " with their " captains of hundreds,"*
the " thousands " with their " heads of thousands,"
may have been as indefinite, in respect of number, as
hamlets, villages, towns ; or files, companies, regiments /
or any other words of acknowledged but vague divis
ion. The military language of our times may give
some idea of the uncertainty of such expressions. But,
it is probable, that our military system is much more
exact — in a mathematical way — than was the militia
system of Moses.
At all events, whatever theory we may adopt, there
can be no doubt, that not only in the days of Moses,
but for a long time after, all the round numbers were
used in a most vague and bewildering manner. Thus,
in the New Testament, where St. James (Acts xxi. 20)
speaks of " thousands " of Jews, the original Greek
uses the word " myriads : " that is, according to the
Lexicons, " ten-thousands." So, in the Revelation, St.
John sees in vision an army of two hundred thousand
thousand : a phrase that would hardly have been used
by the most daring poet, in an arithmetical age. In
short, if we look into a Concordance for the word
" thousand," we find a few places in which it may pos
sibly be an exact expression of number ; and even the
word " ten-thousand " may be so understood in one or
two instances : but in the great majority of cases, the
meaning is so plainly vague, that to press the word
mathematically seems little less than absurd.
* England, under king Alfred, had its " tithings " and " hun
dreds," presided over by a decanus, or hundred-man. Some of
the " Hundreds " still remain.
4

74 SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC.
But Bishop Colenso saves me the trouble of enlarg
ing upon this view of the subject. After quoting a
passage of Josephus, (p. 207, note,) in which that writer
speaks of " many ten-thousands," at the same time
referring to a previous statement where the number
stands as'" above 13,000," the critic goes on to add:
" In fact, Josephus' numbers are very frequently as
extravagant and unreal as those of the Scripture writers.
.... It is impossible for us not to perceive that a j
systematic habit of exaggeration in respect of numbers
prevails among Hebrew writers of history, probably
from not realizing to their own minds the actual mean
ing and magnitude of the numbers employed."
The Bishop, states the fact correctly, though invidi
ously, and hints at the probable explanation. Not
only " the Hebrew writers," but all writers of anti
quity ; not only the " writers of history," but writers
of every kind, had " a habit in respect of numbers,"
which, however, I will not call a " habit of exaggera
tion : " at least, not of exaggeration for any purpose
of deception. It was more " probably " a habit of
" not realizing to their own minds the actual meaning
of numbers : " that is, the meaning in a modern scien
tific sense. In fact, they knew but little of arithmetic.
Their counting and calculating was a slow and tedious
and uncertain process. Men who have bound the ages
by an intellectual spell, who still reign paramount in
the world of thought, might have been gravelled by a
simple sum in the Rule of Multiplication.* Hence a
* It has been doubted, on very good grounds, whether Homer's
arithmetic extended beyond an hundred. It is certain, that he
never added up his glorious catalogue of men and ships : or, if he

SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC. 75
habit of mind and speech — for speech in all ages is
but the image of mind : — which to us, at the present
day, is well-nigh inexplicable. We see something like
it, however, in every intelligent child. To such an one
a round number is little more than a figure of speech.
It stands for a vague idea which looms up in the
imagination, but what the idea is, or what its numeri
cal value, a " non sine Diis animosus infans " never
troubles himself to ask.
Now the ancients, in some respects, were little bet
ter or worse than children. In the matter of numerals
especially, they were, to use the language of the nine
teenth century, " fanciful and puerile." A Pythagoras,
a Plato, a St. Ambrose, a St. Augustine, could value
numbers chiefly for the mysteries they contained : *
and what cyphering they ever did was solely in pursuit
of these sacred meanings. Now, can we appreciate
did, he found a sum-total which would have merited the birch in
a modern children's school, — namely,
" Myriads as are the loaves and flowers in spring."
* As I refer more than once to this mystic treatment of num
bers, I will give one example of it. St. Augustine, applying it to
the 153 " great fishes " of John xxi. 11, says (in substance) : Seven
is " the gifts of the Spirit," Ten " the number of the command
ments;" the two added together make Seventeen, the symbol of
those who through the Spirit do His Commandments. " Now, add
up" — and as soon as the Saint said this, the congregation immedi
ately began to " add up," on their fingers — " all the numerals from
one to seventeen inclusive, and you will find the sum to be one hun
dred and fifty and three. Therefore, 153 is the symbol of all who
are to be saved from the beginning to the end of time." Examples
of this kind abound in the Patristic writings ; and there are few
numbers, in the Old Testament or New, that were not subjected
to this cabalistic treatment.

76 SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC.
this ? Can we by any effort enter into such a habit of
mind \
It is hard, undoubtedly, to realize it to our minds :
but to the ancients it was so real, that for them to con
ceive of numbers precisely as we do, would have been
perhaps still harder.
At all events, the fact stares us in the face, that not
the Hebrews only, as Bishop Colenso unfairly puts it,
but the ancients generally, used numbers in a most
inexplicable way. Who believes, at the present day,
that the army of Xerxes numbered over a million ?
Who imagines that the chronology of the Egyptians,
Hindoos or Chinese, was constructed on the rules of
modern arithmetic ? Who ever reads an ancient his
tory without quietly putting the " sacred factor " ten
under most of the figures in it ? *
Bishop Colenso, then, is correct in speaking of the
ancient practice in this way, as a sort of " habit." But
what does that " habit " mean ? It may mean that the
ancients were prone to exaggerate. Or, it may mean
simply, that numbers, and especially the high round
numbers, have gradually undergone in process of time
a change of value or meaning. Because a word re
mains in a language from age to age, it does not follow
* Lee, in his learned work on Inspiration, p. 365, similarly ap
plies the factor 10 as a divisor of some of the round numbers in
the Chronicles. He does it on the ground of probable corruptions
in the text. The same divisor may be applied so widely to ancient
numbers, that I am inclined to rest its application on a broader
ground ; and to suppose that ten — the symbol of infinity — was
used very largely as a sacred multiple. Such a habit, puzzling as
it is to modern times, may have been quite intelligible to con
temporaries.

SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC.

77

that its sense remains the same. The process by which
a term assumes gradually a more exact and scientific
meaning, is extremely difficult to trace. And espe
cially is it difficult with regard to words of measure, or
weight, or number. But most of all is it difficult, when
we have to grope our way back through ages whose
habits of mind are as different from ours, with regard
to all matters of science, as the thoughts of an imagina
tive child from those of a pragmatic adult.
Besides this, numerals are more exposed, than other
signs, to accidental corruptions, or intentional altera
tions. Nor is the frequent repetition of a number any
absolute security against this danger. A corruption in
one place may easily lead to an intended correction in
another : and a later scribe may carry out the correc
tion into all other places where he may fancy it to be
needed. Especially might this take place, if the scribes
should happen to be, as most of the ancients were,
under the influence of some mystic science of numbers.
This would give to their corrections a systematic ap
pearance. Besides this, again : if numbers were used so com
monly in a vague, and perhaps mystic sense, we cannot
be certain in all cases that the sacred writers them
selves were inspired to go against the prevailing use,
or to antedate the exactness of a later age. The Proph
ets certainly used mystic numbers. If the historians
sometimes did the same, it would be natural at a time
when " statistics " were little cared for ; and might
lessen the value of their writings so far as " statistics "
are concerned ; but would weigh nothing against their
general historical character. On this point, however, I
propose to speak more fully in another place.

78 SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC.
Against such hypotheses of a vague or mystic use
of numbers, or, of corruptions of the numbers original
ly used, there seems to be one strong objection. In
Exod. xxxviii. 25, 26, the number of the men is checked
by a corresponding number of bekahs — the " bekah "
being the offering of a man — contributed to the use of
the Tabernacle. But, here again, the general principle
applies. What a " thousand " meant, at so remote a
period, when applied to " bekahs," may be as uncertain
as when the same word is applied to men. A certain
weight of bekahs, or a certain measure, may have
counted as a " thousand." A " pound sterling," in
English, might easily be imagined — especially at some
remote period when the English shall be a dead lan
guage — to mean actually a " pound " of something now
used as money. But whatever may have been its ori
ginal use, it actually means something less than one-
third of a pound. How far the same conventional use
of words may have gone, in the days of Moses, espe
cially of words relating to weight, or measure, or num
ber, is a question by no means easy to settle. This
much, however, may be safely said. If numbers were
used at all in a conventional or mystic way, either by
the original writers or by subsequent correctors of the
Bible text, the use would be made to apply to the " be
kahs," as well as to the " men," in the instance men
tioned above : so that the question of the actual num
ber would remain as open as ever.
It is certain enough, that not only the Pentateuch,
but most of the books of the Bible, down to the Apoca
lypse, give evidenceof a peculiar habit — a habit which
to our minds is but vaguely intelligible — with regard
to the use of numerals. And this habit, moreover,

SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC. 79
seems to have a method in it. The multiple ten seems
to abound. Other sacred multiples, from 2 to 10, — for
almost all the digits had well-known mystic values, —
seem to be present in places where a modern reader
would hardly think of looking for them. Thus, to take
a few instances of the larger numbers : there are armies
of Israelites, ranging from 307,500 to 400,000, and
580,000, and 800,000, and 1,000,000, and even 1,160,000
warriors ; 2 Chron. xiii. 3  xvii. 14-19. In
the same way (2 Chron. xiii. 17) " there fell down slain
500,000 chosen men." So, in other places, there are
captives and spoils in the same stupendous proportions :
all under circumstances, moreover, which would hardly
seem to require one tenth of the number given. A few
such instances are quoted by Bishop Colenso and other
skeptics to bring the Bible into contempt. A few are
quoted also by Lee and other defenders of the Bible, to
show the probability of interpolations. I do not know
that any one of recent writers has gone into the subject
thoroughly, with a view to ascertain how far there is a
system in the Bible numerals, or what that system is,
or how far a fair application of it might furnish reliable
data for the reduction of the ancient figures to modern
statistical terms. The early Christian fathers assumed
that there was a system in the sacred numerals. The
best-known moderns have assumed the contrary. I
doubt whether there has been any such thorough and
methodical investigation, as would prove which of these
assumptions is the better grounded.
Now, to bring the question to a point : In an essay
like this, which aims to Be as practical as the nature of
the subject will allow, it is not necessary to show which
of the hypotheses above suggested is most likely to be

80 SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC.
the true one. It will be enough to say, in a case of
such acknowledged difficulty, that any one of them is
far more reasonable, and far easier of belief, than the
conclusions to which we are led by Bishop Colenso's
reasoning. For, if we are to credit him, the writer of the Pen
tateuch was so careful with regard to numbers, and
so expert an arithmetician, as to check his principal
statements with the most business-like precision. At
the same time, he was so careless and inexpert, as to
commit errors, frequent, palpable, astounding, beyond
the power of the wildest imagination to conceive of, in
a man of sense.
Thus, Chapter XVIII, " Dan, in the first generation,
has one son," which in the fourth generation, Bishop Co
lenso shows, would amount to about " 27 warriors : " yet
Moses gives him an increase of " 62,700 warriors." In
the same way, " the 4 sons of Kohath increased in the
third (Aaron's) generation to 8 : " yet (according to
Bishop Colenso) the same writer who gives this moder
ate increase for three generations so multiplies the same
family in the fourth (that is, his own) generation, that
" 6 men must have had between them  2,748
sons, and we must suppose about the same number of
daughters." And there are (according to Bishop Co
lenso) other like blunders of the same gigantic dimen
sions, all accompanied by plain matter-of-fact state
ments alongside of them in the text, which effectually
expose their error.
Now the writer of the Pentateuch was undoubtedly
a man of sense. Though he may not have been a sta
tistician, in the modern sense of the word, yet he well
knew the rate at which families increase in one or two

SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC. 81
generations, and his study and observation evidently lay
much in that particular line. Could such a man, then,
make such a blunder as that which Bishop Colenso ex
poses ? Is it not more likely, that the Bishop has mis
understood him ? May it not have been that Moses,
like other historians, omitted many facts and names
which, if instead of writing history he had been dictat
ing a sum in arithmetic, he might have thought proper
to mention ?
Or, if this supposition will not answer, may it not
be that, with regard to his use of numbers, there is
something which is not understood by the modern
mind : something which scholars and interpreters have
as yet not thoroughly explored ?
This last was, in the main, the position taken by
Origen and other interpreters of the early Church.
They reasoned that if a good writer is so interpreted as
to commit him to an absurdity, the fault is more likely
to be in the mode of interpretation than in the writer
himself. Hence, as the alleged " absurdities " of Scrip
ture are always found in a too literal rendering of idi
oms, phrases or numbers, these idioms and numbers
should not be taken to the letter, except in cases where
it can be shown that it was intended they should be so
taken. From this maxim sprang that mystic interpre
tation of Scriptural numbers, so common among the
Fathers. Moderns are averse to the mystic science, and pre
fer the hypothesis of " corruptions " or " interpolations."
The Hebrew letters which stand for numerals may be
corrupted by a line or dot. Many of them, we know
from the evidence of Manuscripts, have been so cor
rupted. Where there is a real discrepancy, then, either
4*

82 SCRIPTURAL ARITHMETIC.
among the numbers themselves, or between the num
bers and the general drift of the text, it is easier to sup
pose that Manuscripts have suffered in the lapse of ages,*
than that a sensible writer, like Moses, should have
committed an egregious blunder.
I think there is room for all these hypotheses : for,
of the figures employed in Scripture, some are doubt
less corrupt ; some are vague ; some are mystic : and
to decide which is which in any given case requires all
the tact and learning that Interpretation, as a science,
can bring to bear on the subject.
How this admission affects the Pentateuch as a col
lection of inspired and historical books, I shall treat
more precisely in the Chapter after the next.
* The differences among the Hebrew, Samaritan and Septuagint
copies of the Scriptures, are most conspicuous in respect of nu
merals.

X.

FACTS BEARING ON THE NUMBER OF THE
ISRAELITES.
I proceed to say a few words on the second kind of
data, referred to in the beginning of the last Chapter :
namely, the facts or statements bearing incidentally on
the number of the Israelites, to be found here or there
through the Pentateuch.
In Deut. vii. 7, Moses declares to the Israelites, that
God did not choose them by reason of their number :
" because," says he, " ye were the fewest of all people."
In the same way, he pictures the people saying of the
Canaanites, vii. 17, " These nations are more than I."
In the same way again, vii. 22, the Canaanites were
not to be consumed at once, lest the wild beasts should
" increase upon " their destroyers. But, as Bishop Co-
'lenso shows, a population that could furnish 600,000
warriors could not be considered either few or weak,
or insufficient to expel the beasts, in so small a country
as Palestine. To this, Bishop Colenso adds a number of facts,
which he grossly exaggerates : such as " the size of the
Tabernacle compared with the number of the Congre-

84 NUMBER OF THE ISRAELITES.
gation," and other things of the same sort, which have
been already considered.
But even after all necessary deductions for the
Bishop's exaggerations, there can be no question that
these facts, taken as a whole, are of a character to in
cline us to a smaller estimate of the number of the Isra
elites than that which is inferred from the mention of
the 600,000 warriors. The Exodus, indeed, was a mirac
ulous work throughout. The greater miracles in it may
therefore seem to imply such lesser ones as might be
needed. Yet we are naturally averse to the supposition
of miracles not recorded. And so far as the Bishop's
reasoning tends merely to clear up a difficult question,
and to show what evidence there is in favor of a smaller
estimate of the Mosaic census, it is all allowable
enough. I object to it only so far as it is conducted in a nar
row, carping, one-sided frame of mind. But, unfortu
nately, such is the tone of the discussion, from the be
ginning to the end.
It is in this spirit that the Bishop urges the interest
ing inquiry as to the probable increase of JacoVs seven
ty, during the time of their sojourn in Egypt. It will
be enough to expose two of its fallacies.
First : He scornfully ignores the evidence, which is
by no means contemptible, in favor of the longer of the
two periods commonly allotted to that sojourn. The
shorter period suits his purpose. He assumes it, there
fore, as the basis of his calculations.
Secondly: He disdainfully rejects, against proba
bilities of the most natural kind, the idea that others
besides the seventy may have settled in the land of
Goshen. Abraham's " company " was at least 318 men.

NUMBER OF THE ISRAELITES. 85
Isaac moved as a prince among the princes of Canaan.
Jacob was a thrifty man, and lived certainly on good
terms with his neighbors the Canaanites. It is highly
probable, then, that Jacob, like his great forefathers,
had besides his immediate family a large circle of allies
or dependents.* The famine which drove him into
Egypt would equally touch them ; and it would have
been the strangest thing in the world if at some time
during the seven years of dearth they had not followed
him in his migration.
But Bishop Colenso does not find this in the record.
Moses does not say that any one came to Goshen, either
with or after Jacob, save the seventy only. It is a
sum in arithmetic based on the number 70, and on
the basis of 70 the sum must be cyphered out.
Moreover, these 70 and their descendants must marry
in their own family. Bishop Colenso's sum will not
suffer them to do otherwise. To be sure, Joseph had
married out of the house ; as also Simeon, Gen. xlvi. 10 :
but it is not written that any one after them ventured
to do the same. Though the daughters in Jacob's List
were not sufficient for one thirtieth of the sons, yet we
are not told that the sons looked for wives elsewhere.
It is therefore to be assumed that they did not. The
data furnished by Moses must be the terms of the cal
culation. To assume anything beyond is to be guilty
of an evasion.
Such is the iron rule,- on which Bishop Colenso
cyphers out the increase of Jacob's family. Is it to be
wondered at that he should bring it to the small
amount of less than 5,000 men ?
It would be a waste of time to argue against results
* See Gen. xxx. 43 ; xxxiv. 29 ; xxxv. 5.

86 NUMBER OF THE ISRAELITES.
based upon such assumptions.* I therefore say nothing
of the similar cyphering in Chapters XVIII-XXI. In all
such cases, the Bishop's reasoning is merely a repetition
of the well-known infidel puzzle, — Gen. iv. 17, —
" Whence did Cain get his wife ? " If, in a condensed
* Though quite unnecessary, I will mention a few more of the
assumptions made by the Bishop, in cyphering out the increase of
Jacob's family. 1. For 215 years he assumes only 4 generations, p.
180 : whereas, at the rate of 30 years, there would be 7 generations.
It is a well-known fact, that a laboring and servile population, like
that of the Israelites in Egypt, increase early and rapidly, becom
ing grandparents not unfrequently before they arrive at 40 years
of age. This is particularly the case when the means of subsist
ence are as plentiful as they would seem to have been in Goshen.
2. He assumes, for the rate of increase, the present English rate,
namely 23 per cent, in 10 years, p. 171 : whereas it is well known,
that when population begins to press upon the means of subsist
ence, as is the case in England, the rate of increase very much
diminishes. 3. He assumes 3 sons for a family, calculating from
the families mentioned in Exod. vi., and assuming that all the
children are named, p. 165 ; or, 4J- sons for a family, calculating
from the sons of Jacob, p. 163 : whereas, if he had taken a larger
basis for his calculations, namely, Abraham, Jokshan, Dedan,
Midian, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Eliphaz, Reuel, — Gen- xxv.,
xxxvi., &c, — he would have found an average of 5^ sons to a
family. 4. He assumes, against all probability, that no daughters
were born to all these numerous families, except the two or three
who are named. 5. He assumes that wherever Moses gives names
in any connection, as in genealogies and the like, he gives all the
names. To me nothing is more certain than the contrary. A
close study of " the generations " of Moses, beginning with Gen. x.,
would demonstrate (I think) that the writer was guided by some
principle of selection; and that he gives only what I may call
type names, — that is, names connected, in some way with that field
of history which he had in view. Abraham, probably, had
sons (Gen. xxv. 6) who are casually alluded to but are nowhere
named.

NUMBER OF THE ISRAELITES. 87
and summary history, covering vast intervals, and
written for other ends than to gratify curiosity,* we are
to suppose nothing to have been done beyond what the
writer may have recorded ; then, as I have said before,
it is not Moses only, but all writers of any merit, that
will have to be treated as " unhistorical."
In short, I have given examples enough to show
that Bishop Colenso's reasoning depends entirely upon
certain things which he assumes ; that his assumptions,
again, depend upon a stand-point of his own ; that,
finally, this stand-point is simply that of the infidel ;
namely, a determination, at all hazards, and in viola
tion of all rules of generous interpretation, to wrest the
letter of Scripture to the overthrow of its spirit.
Having given examples of this, I will not follow the
subject' into its minuter details: but will now go on
with the one important question, to wit, How far the
difficulties connected with Scripture numbers affect the
authority of the sacred writings, as inspired and his
torical. * To a Christian mind, the spirit of Moses, as well as " the
spirit of prophecy," is " the testimony of Jesus." That Divine
instinct which led the historian so to select his characters and
facts, as to present continually certain types or foreshadowings of
Christ, is to those who have the eyes to see it an irresistible evi
dence of the Inspiration of the Scriptures. Without studying this
feature of the Mosaic narratives, their harmony and their meaning
are in a great measure lost. And I may say in general that he
who sees not Christ everywhere in the Old Testament Writings,
misses the only proof of their Divine character that can give per
manent satisfaction. Not having the true spiritual point-of-view,
he fails to discern their spiritual meaning. On the two extremes
of interpretation, the literal and the spiritualistic, see Lee on
Inspiration, p. 310, and Appendix G.

XI.

HOW THESE FACTS AFFECT THE BD3LE AS INSPIRED
AND HISTORICAL.
If numerals were used but vaguely, in the " old
time " of the sacred writers ; if they were used in a
mystic way ; if they were peculiarly exposed to cor
ruption, whether from accident or from scribes : if, in
short, the numerals of the Bible, from one cause or
from many, are in such a confused state that we find
them inexplicable ; * — then, How does all this affect
the Bible as inspired and historical f
I. I answer, Not at all. Granting the utmost in
this way that can possibly be claimed, it merely proves
that, out of the great bulk of inspired language in
which God's Will is conveyed, there are certain parts
which convey to us an imperfect or vague meaning :
parts, which in our present state of knowledge we can
not satisfactorily explain.
As these parts relate, moreover, to the modern sci
ence of " statistics," and are matters of learned curiosity
* I wish it to be understood, that I put such admissions merely
as hypotheses: the difficulty, after all, is one that yields easily to
a liberal and spiritual system of interpretation.

HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH. 89
rather than of the Faith, we may not be quite sure that
the key to their interpretation, in a scientific way, will
ever be recovered.
But, even so, the admission does not affect the doc
trine of Inspiration. In the Bible, as in Nature, there
is a superabounding wealth : an ample provision against
such losses as may accidentally occur. God inspired
men to write with freedom, in the language of their
own times. This language, of course, may become in
part obscure, and in part unintelligible. The key to
some of its idioms may be lost irrecoverably. Yet, as
the part which remains clear is still superabundant; as
it conveys, and more than conveys, the whole counsel
of God: the great end of Inspiration is still most fully
answered. Moreover, these dark places of Scripture may have
been light to former ages, whatever they may be to us.
They were therefore not words wasted. And even to
us they have their uses, both as tokens of extreme an
tiquity, and as calls to the exercise of the graces of the
131st Psalm.
Were the Bible a clear book, from every point-of-
view ; were there no idioms in it hard to be under
stood ; were there no proofs of habits of mind, which
tax one's powers to the utmost to conceive of and enter
into ; had it none of the mystic depths of the child-soul
of that old Semitic world : then, to my mind, at least,
it would lack one of its strongest " evidences " ; it
would be hard for me to receive it as a voice of the
" old time " of plenary Inspiration.
Granting the utmost, then, with regard to the diffi
culties of some places of the Bible, I see in this admis
sion nothing that goes against its claim to be the sure

90 HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH.
Word of God. The admission merely proves the folly
of " private interpretation." The Bible not being the
mind of any individual, but being (2 Pet. i. 20, 21) the
broad mind of the Spirit of all Truth, it requires the
whole mind of the Church to interpret it with author
ity. It needs, to make it clear, the learning* of all
ages. It requires, to make it sure, the stability of that
stand-point which is provided in the Church.
II. But, if such admissions are made with regard to
the Pentateuch, will it not prove, at all events, that the
Pentateuch is " unhistorical " ?
In speaking of the Pentateuch as " historical," there
are three necessary distinctions to be constantly borne
in mind. First, it is ancient history ; secondly, it is
sacred history ; thirdly, it is a history of supernatural
events. First : As ancient history, it is not to be judged
exclusively by modern canons of " the historical ; " for
the child-like mind of the old world had habits of its
own, and for these peculiar habits a certain allowance
must be made.
To illustrate my meaning, I will suppose the case of
two witnesses in court. The first is a man of exact and
cultivated mind : of a grammatical, mathematical, and
logical education. Being such, he gives his evidence lu
cidly, methodically, with everything in its due order of
time and place and logical connection. The second man,
equally honest, has no such discipline in his thoughts.
He tells his story in bits and parcels, just as it comes
into his mind. He is somewhat dramatic in his style.
He uses words in a loose or idiomatic way. He some-
* 2 Pet. iii. 16.

HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH. 91
times transposes facts, putting them in the order in
which they start out from his memory, rather than in
the order in which they actually occur. In short, he
gives his evidence inartificially, and the necessary re
sult is somewhat of a medley. Yet, to a lawyer of any
shrewdness, this second man's testimony is not the less
valuable on that account. Nor is it a whit the less
true. On the contrary, if the object is to elicit the
whole truth, the second man, it is probable, will actually
let out more in his artless and random way, than the
utmost skill of the bench and bar can extract from the
other witness.
Now modern history is more methodical than the
ancient ; it is more philosophical, as we say : its testi
mony runs in grooves more elaborately laid out. An
cient history is, comparatively, inartificial and discur
sive. It had to run, as it could, without the help of
grooves. As a natural consequence, it is oftentimes
perplexing. It puts facts out of their place, and puz
zles the statistician with all kinds of odd omissions.
What is worse, it is often couched in a semi-poetic style,
the language of nature not yet broken to the yoke of
arithmetic. It abounds in " winged words," which till
the wings are clipped disturb the gravity of modern
Critics, in a way hardly to be endured. In short, like
Pindar's poetic " bolts," it " needs an interpreter."
Yet, no wise man will contend that ancient history, on
the whole, has less truth in it than the modern.* It
may, of course, be more difficult to ascertain the truth :
but to one who reads with his mind, and not merely
* This subject is admirably discussed by Rawlinson in his In
troduction to Herodotus.

92 HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH.
with his eyes, the elder chroniclers are, after all, the
most veracious of historians.
Secondly : The Bible is sacred history, and therein
differs materially from that style, with which the word
" history " is commonly associated. A secular historian
gives events, partly in the order of time and place,
partly in that of natural causes and effects. With him
man is the chief actor : nature and natural motives, the
principal agencies. But the sacred historian begins and
ends with God. He exhibits God working in terres
trial affairs. Everything else is strictly subordinate to
that. Matters, which from an every-day point-of-view
are of principal importance, become from this sacred
point-of-view of secondary importance. Hence, while
sacred history sometimes deals in facts and figures like
other histories, it naturally gives them with less regard
to mere statistical effect. It is, therefore, peculiarly
liable to omissions of detail. What is not to its purpose
it says nothing about. This feature, indeed, is common
to all history, and especially to ancient history. But as
sacred history involves, more than any other, a certain
distinct object and a singular point-of-view, it will na
turally for that reason be as remarkable for what it
leaves unsaid, as for what it sees fit to mention.
Thirdly: The Bible is a history of supernatural
events. Its province, therefore, is peculiar and distinct.
And as an ordinary historian touches lightly upon mira
cles, because whether true or not they come hardly
within his line, so a sacred historian deals with common
place events. So far as he mentions them, he does it for
the most part lightly and summarily. From his point-of-
view they are mere matters of course. Hence, as even
ordinary history leaves much to the intelligence of the

HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH. 93
reader, assuming either a knowledge that will supply
details, or at least a liberality that will readily account
for their omission, the same, to a far greater extent,
may in the case of sacred history be reasonably ex
pected. With due regard to considerations of this kind, it
will be seen that the peculiarities of Moses are not of a
character to impair his credit as a historian. At the
utmost, they show that like the ancients generally he
was indifferent to statistics ; that, while he gave certain
facts and certain results, he took no special pains to
give all the facts which were included in his results ;
that, in the use of numerals especially, he wrote on
some system, or in some habit of mind, unintelligible
to us ; that, in short, there are " some things " in Moses
" hard to be understood."
In other words, we are obliged in reading Moses, as
in reading Herodotus, to make certain allowances. For
example, when in Gen. iv. 17, we read of Cain's wife,
we conclude that Adam had children not mentioned by
the historian : and, having made this natural inference,
we draw from it a rule which we are obliged to apply
continually to the whole narrative that follows. We
conclude, in fact, that Moses leaves many things un
said, and a still larger number of things totally unac
counted for. But is a feature of this kind " unhistor
ical " ? By no means. A made up story generally
shows that it is made up, by accounting for everything.
If a new character comes into a novel, the novelist im
mediately stops his narrative to tell us who this new
character is. Fiction, in short, must be complete in it
self, because its facts and characters and events have
no existence outside of itself. History is never self-

91 HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH.
complete. From the great living world of facts it re
flects certain images, according to some principle of se
lection, but there is always an infinite number of other
images toward which its glass is not directed, and
which therefore it does not reflect.
Hence no particular history can be read intelligent
ly, in the full sense of the word, without either a
knowledge of all history, or at least an imagination
which will in some sort supply the defect.
But this faculty of imagination has no place in the
cyphering school of such critics as Bishop Colenso. It
suggests hypotheses. It hints at the possibility of
data other than those which are set down on the critic's
slate. It spoils the sum. Like a mischievous boy,
therefore, it is turned out of school : and Faith, unfortu
nately, is turned out with it.
To come back, then, to the lowest and most matter-
of-fact view : Bishop Colensq., finds in Moses some
twenty supposed difficulties, arising either from appa
rent contradictions, or from things improbable in them
selves. Of these, one or two are scientific: but he
does not dwell on them ; he is content to hint at them
occasionally, in order to give weight to his other
charges. Two are moral difficulties : to wit, a differ
ence of opinion between Moses and the Bishop on the
lawfulness of slavery. Some seven or eight are merely
verbal, founded on perversions of well known idioms,
which the Bishop construes on principles that would
turn all language into nonsense. The rest are cyphered
out by arithmetical calculations, the basis of each sum
being the utterly unwarrantable assumption, that the
details furnished by a historian must be sufficient to
prove his general summaries of results. Among all

HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH. 95
these, there is one which enters as an element also into
most of the others, namely, that which is connected
with the ancient names or signs of number. But does
not this difficulty pertain to all ancient history ? * Not
to go back at all to the contemporaries of Moses ; to
say nothing of the round numbers of the Egyptians,
or Hindoos or Chinese ; but to come down to as late a
day as the times of the first Emperors : Who can tell
us, within a million, the population of Rome ? Some
put it as low as one million. Others have raised the
estimate to nearly seven millions. And if most men now
incline to adopt the lower figure, it is rather from the
analogy of the census of modern cities, than from any
reliable data furnished ,us by the ancients.
The ancients, in fact, knew nothing of statistics, on
any large scale. Their histories, therefore, are unre
liable on that point. But do we conclude, for such rea
sons, that ancient histories are " unhistorical ? " Or, if
we do not, why should we condemn Moses ?
I might go on now to speak of that higher ground,
and more spiritual point-of-view, from which the early
Fathers viewed the subject of Scripture numbers. But
it would lead me too far into an abstract and intricate
discussion. I pass it by, therefore : and conclude with
a few remarks on the great and crowning fallacy of the
Skeptics in general.
* The data of Herodotus, as well as his sum-total, would make
the army of Xerxes more than 5,000,000 men : Grote's Hist, of
Greece, Vol. V. See Appendix B.

XII.
CONCLUDING REMARKS : THE CROWNING FALLACY.
The assailant of the Bible has, in one particular, a
very easy task. In a question which, like all others,
has two sides to it, he feels himself obliged to look to
one side only.
This would not be the case with a Skeptic, were he
really a Skeptic in the old sense of the word : were he
really one who is looking or inquiring for the Truth.
Such a one, of course, knowing that rational conviction
must result from the balance of probabilities, would be
anxious to weigh well the reasons on both sides : and he
would allow no force to arguments against a received
opinion, unless he had compared them with the reasons
in its favor, and carefully struck a balance between the
two. But Bishop Colenso is not a Skeptic of this kind.
He comes out simply as an assailant of the Bible, and
feels no responsibility as to what may be said in its
defence. His is the easy work of marshalling " diffi
culties." He loves the cheap triumph of drawing up
his forces where there is nothing to oppose them. In
the course of his discussion, he manages to bring out
some twenty supposed marks of the " unhistorical "
character of the Books of Moses : but of the hundreds

CONCLUSION.

97

which have been brought to prove the contrary, he
lisps not a syllable. He thus creates an illusion which
is vastly in his favor. When only a few points are
discussed, it looks as if the controversy turned solely
upon them. The reader easily falls into the error, that
the battle is between certain " difficulties " on the one
side, and on the other certain efforts of commentators
to remove or reconcile them : whereas, in fact, the
difficult passages in Scripture, even if they were all
what the critic tries to prove them, are still immensely
overmatched by a host of passages which are not diffi
cult ; which testify most plainly and unequivocally to
the truth and historical character of the sacred narra
tives. The fallacy has been exposed so often, and so ably,
that it will be enough, in this Tract, to call attention
to it. If any one desires to see the best expose of it,
let him read that wise and witty essay of Archbishop
Whately * entitled " Historic Doubts with regard to
the Emperor Napoleon." He will there see how easy
it is to disprove anything, by simply ignoring the fact
that a question has two sides.
The great controversy in Germany, relative to the
existence of a certain character known as Homer, was
an example of the same fallacy more seriously carried
out. A person of the name of Wolf, if Wolf was a
person— for when we speak of these learned Germans,
we ought not to be too certain of anything we say : — this
person, or " cycle " of persons, that goes by the name of
Wolf — a name that seems too mythic to be considered
* There are others of the Archbishop's works which exhibit
the same fallacy, in a more serious way.
5

98 CONCLUSION.
" historical : " — this person, or myth, or lupine cycle, or
whatever he may have been, undertook to prove that
the Iliad was not the work of one poet — for what poet
ever composed an epic equal to that ? — but was a kind
of joint-stock concern, the result of the accumulated
labors of a sort of poetic guild or firm, which flourished
for sundry ages under the sunny sides of Greece. The
notion was a new one, and the proof of it was easy.
Pick out from Homer everything that looks as if it
might have been said by somebody else ; catch Homer
nodding wherever he seems to wink ; cull the interpo
lated verses of which there are not a few ; expose the
actual contradictions, and add on a few imaginary ones ;
find words here or there which look too new for
Homer's age : in short, bring all the proof you can on
one side of the question, and make it appear as if that
were the only side : and your work, you may be sure,
is satisfactorily accomplished.
Of course, with ancient personages like Homer or
Herodotus or Moses, the task is much more easy, than
when a Napoleon Bonaparte is taken in hand.
Bishop Colenso's effort is entirely of this cheap and
easy character. It is not an inquiry into the claims of
the Pentateuch. That would imply some examination
of the claims. But the Bishop hardly so much as hints
that any claims of the kind exist. Nor is it an attempt
to disprove the arguments which have been framed
upon a critical examination of the whole text of the
Pentateuch. That would involve some mention of
those arguments. The Bishop encumbers himself with
nothing of the sort. His aim is not to find the armor-
of-proof in which the Bible is encased, but simply to
find, if he can, some hole in the armor.

CONCLUSION.

99

For this reason I have felt no scrapie about dealing
with the Bishop, as really an Infidel and an enemy of
Christianity. And if I had any scruples on the subject, they
would be effectually removed by that shameless avowal
of pure heathenism, with which, in his Concluding
Remarks, p. 222-226, he sums up his estimate of the
Inspiration of the Bible. So far as the Bible utters a
certain class of utterances, which " when once per
ceived by the spirit's eyes, are recognized at once as
truths," he grants it to be in some sense inspired. But
then, there is a like inspiration all through the world.
Consequently, we must " recognize the voice of God's
Spirit, in whatever way, by whatever ministry, He
vouchsafes to speak to the children of men." Where
upon he gives us, as " living truths .... learned by
the direct teaching of the Spirit of God," some three
pages of Mohammedan and Hindoo aphorisms.
A Christian man may admire what is good in Hin-
dooism, as cordially and as frankly as Bishop Colenso
does. He may firmly believe also, that whatever light
there is amid the darkness of Heathendom, comes
undoubtedly from the Father of Lights. But his con
viction is none the less sure that the only " true Light,"
" the Light of men," is He, the everlasting Word, who
was manifested, and " was made flesh, and dwelt among
us ... . full of grace and truth." Without belief in
a historic Christ, no man can be called in any sense a
Christian. And no man can believe in Christ, as an
historic Personage, without faith in Moses and the
Prophets who were inspired by the Holy Ghost to bear
testimony of Him.
This Divine Word Incarnate, this manifested. Truth,

100 CONCLUSION.
this Emmanuel, God with us, Bishop Colenso has aban
doned, or what amounts to the same thing, is ready to
abandon. And all for what ? He solemnly assures us
that it is all for the sake of " truth." But what truth
has he found ? What precious discovery does he offer
us, to supply the place of that inheritance which ho
would fain take away? A few fatalistic maxims,
Mohammedan or Hindoo, the feeble common-places of
natural theology, words true in a certain sense, but
without power, without grace, without life, the mere
roundings as it were of Ciceronian periods, the thin
veil of a religion without faith, without hope, without
God in the world. Is this a fair equivalent for that
Gospel, which is not in word only, but in power ?
I can only say, God have mercy on the soul which
can imagine it an equivalent : which can see no differ
ence between the Day-Star of Christianity, and the
vague and feeble lights which reveal, but do not illu
mine, the darkness of Heathendom !

APPENDIX A.
NUMBER OF THE FIRST-BORN, &CS.
{See p. 11.)
The best way (perhaps) of reconciling the number of the
"first-born" with that of the male adults is suggested by the
fact, that the total number of Levites was 22,300 — as the
reader will see by adding up the partial estimates in Num. iii.
22, 28, 34 — whereas only 22,000 were available as substitutes
for the first-born. What became, then, of the 300 ? It is an
swered, that they were the first-born of the Levites, and conse
quently could only redeem themselves, and not their brethren.
If so, the first-born of the Levites (born since the Passover)
would be in the proportion of 300 to 22,000, or of 1 to 74 of
the males "from a month old and upward": Num. iii. 15.
Now, supposing that the first-born of the other tribes meant
only those who had been born since the Law of Redemption
had been instituted, we may make the following calculation :
600,000 fighting men would be about \ or \ of the male popu
lation of all ages : if we allow &, the total number would be
1,200,000 ; if we allow i, it would be 1,800,000. Divide
these sums respectively by 22,000, the number of first-born,
and we get the rate of 1 to 55 in the one case, and 1 to 81 in
the other : or, if we take the warriors to be (as is probable)
somethmg more than i and less than & of the whole number
of males, we get a close approximation to the 1 in 74 which

102 APPENDIX.
has been previously 'calculated as the proportion of first-born
among the Levites.
From this coincidence arises a probability, that the first
born in Num. iii. 43, were only those who had been born since
the Law of Redemption had been given ; and that said Law
was not intended to have a retrospective force.
These hypotheses — which are certainly not more violent
than the assumptions of Bishop Colenso — would put the 22,000
first-born and the 600,000 warriors in a fairer proportion to one
another ; and so far would relieve the chief difficulty: see Poole's
Synopsis, in Num. iii. 39.
Even if we take the higher of the two rates above men
tioned, and suppose the warriors to be J the male population,
the proportion of the first-born, namely 1 to 55, would be
greater than the 1 to 74 of the Levites ; but the difference
might be accounted for by the probable supposition, that the
Levites being more restricted in marriage than the other tribes,
there would consequently have been fewer births among them.
The chief difficulty in the way of such hypotheses is that
the 22,273 in Num. iii. 43, are described as " all the first-born
males, &c.'' But the whole analogy of Scripture language
shows, that the word " all " has no absolute force, but is to be
taken always in reference to the general scope of the context
in which it is used. " All the first-born males," in this in
stance, means all who came under the Law of Redemption : and
it is probable enough, that none came under it but those who
had been "born" under it — namely, those who had been born
since the Passover.
Considerations of this kind would enable us to get rid of
the seeming discrepancy in the numbers used by Moses.
The other instances of discrepancy, cited by Bishop Colenso,
are easily enough accounted for, on general principles. For
example, the census referred to in Exod. xxxviii. 26, exactly
tallies with the census taken 6 months after in Num. i. The
Bishop asks, How could this be ? "Was there no increase of

APPENDIX. 103
population the meanwhile ? I answer, The returns of the
second census being made by the "heads of thousands" (i. 16),
with a view to the military enrolment (chap, ii.), there would
be no need of a fresh count : the numbering that had taken
place 6 months before would be sufficient to satisfy the veriest
Martinet. But why take a fresh census at all ? Why could
not Moses be content with the returns of the former number
ing ? I answer, The former returns were made in connection
with the tribute of bekahs, and were therefore made probably
by tribes. Moses wished a new return made (Num. i. 3) "by
armies": i. e. by such military divisions, thousands, hundreds,
fifties, tens, as were in vogue among them. This would re
quire not a new numbering of the people, but merely a new
arrangement of the census previously taken.
The diminished number of the last census taken, Num.
xxvi. 51, is amply accounted for by the great number who had
fallen in the wilderness.
On the whole, the difficulty arising from the seeming dis
crepancies of the numbers in the Pentateuch disappear before
a fair and liberal interpretation.
But in proportion as the discrepancies are removed, the
claims of the higher numbers seem to be strengthened ; and
the considerations which I have urged in the text, with a view
to a possible reduction of them, appear in the same ratio to lose
their force.
As to that, I am not at all solicitous : for the Israelites,
whatever their number may have been, were sustained in the
wilderness by miraculous power ; and 'a great miracle is to my
mind as easy as a small one. If G-od could send manna and
quails for 10,000 people, He could just as easily provide the
same food for 10,000,000. And if He could provide for the
people, He could as easily provide for the cattle. A super
natural act implies an absolute power to perform all that is
necessary for the completeness of that act. If the sun stood
still at Joshua's command, the same Power which arrested the

104 APPENDIX.
earth's motion — or did anything else that might be needed to
keep the sun from going down — would prevent any damage
that might ensue from such an arrest. So far as natural laws
go, they are as powerful to keep a dead body in the grave, as
to keep the planets in their spheres. And on the same prin
ciple, so far as the Divine Power manifests itself, it is as mighty
to reverse the main-wheel of the world as it is to call forth a
Lazarus from the tomb.
I do not incline to the lower numbers, therefore, for any
supposed difficulty about sustaining so great a multitude of peo
ple. The whole Pentateuch puts this on the ground of miracle.
My main reason for admitting the possibility of a smaller esti
mate is, that the whole subject of ancient numbers, and of
Scripture interpretation as connected with them, is extremely
intricate and perplexed. It is one that involves much more
than the text of Moses. Moreover, it is one which interpreters
(so far as I can find) have not studied as thoroughly and sys
tematically as its importance demands. In fact, Bible arith
metic is somewhat of a new science. It is well, therefore, not
to commit one's self to any theory on the subject, until all that
bears upon it has been subjected to that kind of analysis in
which the modern mind excels ; and which is never honestly
applied, either to Scripture or to Nature, without yielding good
fruit in the end.
Lee, in the Eighth Lecture of his learned work on Inspira
tion, gives some striking instances to show that such analysis
of the difficulties of Scripture never fails, in the long run, to
bring out something whereby the consistency of the Divine
"Word is more fully proved.
In short, I do not offer any solution of the difficulties con
nected with numbers : I merely wish to show that the question
is too difficult to be dealt with in any such summary fashion as
that of Bishop Colenso. If interpretation is a science, requir
ing both tact and learning, there is no branch of it that requires
so much of both as that of Scriptural numeration.

APPENDIX. 105

APPENDIX B.
NUMBERS IN HERODOTUS.
(See p. 95.)
It may be doubted whether the historian ever took more
pains to ascertain and record the truth, than when he compiled
the list of Xerxes's army. He not only gives the number of
each contingent, with particular accounts of the nation from
which it came, but for once in his life adds up the whole cor
rectly, to the enormous sum total of 5,283,320. As a general
rule, the arithmetic of Herodotus is very loose. " If both the
items and the total of a sum are mentioned, they are rather
more likely to disagree than to agree ; . . . . either he was
not an adept in arithmetic, or he did not take the trouble to go
through the calculations, and see that his statements tallied":
Rawlinson's Herod., vol. i. p. 84. But the account of the host
of Xerxes exhibits the utmost care in this respect.
Rawlinson, upon a careful examination of the items, and
after a heavy reduction of those numbers which Herodotus had
estimated or conjectured, manages to bring the total down to
1,531,610: vol. iii. p. 129.
Considering the immense difficulty of bringing together,
moving and feeding, large bodies of men, even with the strict
discipline and great facilities of modern times, Rawlinson's re
duced estimate seems a little less impossible, but hardly more
probable, than that of Herodotus. Napoleon, the greatest
military genius of modern times, fairly broke down in the
attempt to move an army of 500,000. Xerxes was no genius;
and his forces were a conglomeration of the mobs of all na
tions, a Babel of diverse tongues, utterly unaccustomed to act
together on any large scale. How such a host, wielded by
such a man, could have been kept together for a month, is ex.
5*

106 APPENDIX.
tremely difficult to imagine. "What is worse, I can see no
practical diminution of the difficulty, unless one should boldly
cut down the estimate to less than one-third of Rawlinson's, or
one-tenth of that which Herodotus gives. An army of half a
million would be such as a commander like Xerxes might keep
for some time in a state of retarded dissolution, but for any
other purpose it would be quite unmanageable.
Yet, of the honesty and good faith of Herodotus I have no
doubt whatever. The enormous exaggeration was due, in all
probability, to the loose way of counting that prevailed every
where, and especially in the East. When men got beyond
hundreds, imagination took the slate, and the cyphering went
on by leaps into thousands and myriads, with little or no check
from sober reason. The round numbers, in short, were used so
much as figures of speech, that their mathematical import was
almost forgotten.

APPENDIX C.
PARALLELISM IN NUMBERS.
In Browne's "Introduction" to his Ordo Sxclorum, the
"parallelisms" of Bible Chronology are pointed out; and it is
shown that while a design is apparent, the design is such as
cannot be accounted for by any theory of human contrivance.
Thus, we have : 40 years in the wilderness followed by 450
years of Judges, in all 490 years; 40 years from Samuel the
first of the Prophets, with 450 years of kings, in all 490 years;
the 70 years of captivity, in which "the land kept her Sab
baths;" then the seventy times seven years of Daniel, 490
years. Again, the length of the Mosaic Period is 1655 years ;
the sum ofthe antediluvian genealogies is 1655 years ; from the
time that Noah entered the Ark to the promise given to Abra
ham is 430 years ; from the promise to the Exodus is 430
years : or, from the Creation to the Promise is 2085 years ;

APPENDIX.

107

from the Promise to the end of the Mosaic Dispensation is
2085 years. Upon these and similar coincidences Browne
remarks : " The notion of human contrivance being excluded,
is it presumptuous to surmise that this is the Lord's doing, a
portion of His ways, who doeth all in number, weight and
measure," &c. ? His reasoning on this subject is well worth
considering, and is capable of a broader application than that
which he gives. On the mystic use of numbers, the following
from Joh. Picus Mirandula, quoted in the Bibliotheca Biblica,
vol. iv. p. 9, may be interesting to the reader. " Besides our
new method of philosophizing by numbers " — I translate freely
— " there is an ancient way, followed by the early Divines, and
more especially by Pythagoras, ... by Plato and the elder
Platonists. At present, however, like other good things, it has
so fallen into disuse through the negligence of moderns, that
hardly any traces of it can be found. Says Plato in the Epi-
menides, Among all the liberal arts and theoretic sciences, the
principal and most Divine is the science of numbers. So
again, when asked, Why is man the wisest of living things ?
he answers, Because he is acquainted with numbers. ... So
also Abunasar declares, that he knows everything who knows
the science of numbers. But by this is not to be understood
that kind of arithmetic in which men of business are skilled :
for Plato expressly warns us, that this Divine Arithmetic is not
at all the same as the arithmetic of commerce," &c. &c.

108 APPENDIX.
APPENDIX D.
GENEALOGIES OF THE SCRIPTURES.
The Genealogies of Scripture are particularly open to the.
captious criticism of such writers as Bishop Colenso : partly be
cause they are constructed, as is obvious to the most cursory
reader, on some principle of selection, and partly because names,
like numbers, are peculiarly liable to corruption. Thus, if we
suppose Moses, in Exod. vi. 16-25, to have given a complete
list of the family of Levi, the large numbers assigned to that
tribe in Num. iii. 17-39 seem as incredible as the Bishop rep
resents them : Chap. XVIII. But the list is evidently not
complete. " These be the heads of their fathers' houses 
according to their families. . . . These are the families accord
ing to their generations. . . . These the heads of the fathers of
the Levites, according to their families " : Exod. vi. 14-25. All
which expressions plainly imply that Moses gives only certain
prominent representative names : a thing so common in Scrip
ture genealogies, that we may doubt whether in any case an
entire family list is recorded. The very small proportion of
women, in all these lists, would suggest at once that a large
number of names is omitted. Thus, among all the descendants
of Esau, Gen. xxxvi., I find but one daughter, ver. 26. So, in
Gen. xlvi., there are but two daughters. In the former case
there is every reason to suppose that the one daughter men
tioned was recorded for some special reason, and that there
were plenty of others not thus honored. In the latter instance,
the two daughters may have been all that were born to Jacob
and his sons ; and the phrase, " all the souls of his sons and
daughters (were) " so and so, looks as if it were meant to in
clude all. Yet it does not say they " were " all : the verb is
not in the original ; and the sentence in which it occurs is
manifestly a mere summing up of names actually given, and has

APPENDIX. 109
no force beyond : Gen. xlvi. 15, 18, 26, 27. So, among the
hundreds of sons named in 1 Chron. vi.-ix., there are not more
than ten daughters mentioned.
Again, among all the names and genealogies in the first
eleven chapters of Genesis, there are but five names of women.
It is perfectly evident, therefore, that with regard to one sex
at least the genealogies deal only in representative names.
The variations that exist among the genealogies show that
the same applies also to the other sex : names being found in
one genealogy which are not given in others. Thus St. Mat
thew's genealogy of our Lord omits several names, which the Old
Testament enables us to supply : see Newcome's Harmony.
We have a perfect right, therefore, to conclude that, when
Moses mentions certain persons as " heads of the fathers of the
Levites," or uses other like expressions, he is giving us only
the prominent, historical, representative names. To give more
in any history, sacred or profane, would be a useless labor. It is
still more idle to attempt, as Bishop Colenso does, to calculate
from the names given the populousness of the tribes or families
that they represent. The fathers, " heads of fathers," or chief
fathers of nations, who find a place in history are very few in
deed, compared with the number of actual progenitors.

APPENDIX E.
THE GENEALOGY OF JOSHUA.
The genealogy of Joshua, 1 Chron. vii. 20-27, might seem
at first sight to involve the stupidities and absurdities which
Bishop Colenso attempts to draw out from it ; p. 158 : namely,
" that Ephraim himself, after the slaughter by the men of Gath
of his descendants in the seventh generation, ' mourned many
days,' and then married again, and had a son, Beriah, who was
the ancestor of Joshua ; " or that " Joshua will be made a
descendant in the seventeenth generation from Joseph, to asso
ciate with Eleazar in the fourth generation from Levi."

110 APPENDIX.
A critic of any modesty at all, would pause a moment be
fore charging an ancient writer with such stupidity, lest per
chance the absurdity should come home to roost in his own in
terpretation, and put the fool's cap upon his own head.
And a moment's pause would be sufficient to show that
Bishop Colenso's interpretation has not even the poor excuse of
adhering to the bare letter. He has not only failed to read with
his mind, but even his eyes, in this instance, have failed to
serve him. Ephraim's family list, as is common enough in
Scripture, contains several genealogies alongside of one another.
It begins with Shuthelah, the first-born, and then goes on with
" his son," and " his son," and so on for six generations : it
then comes back to the second and third sons of Ephraim,
" Ezer and Elead, whom tlie men of Gath slew because they
came down to take their cattle : " it then relates the birth of a
fourth son of Ephraim, Beriah, arid proceeds with " his son," and
so on : finally, as Browne ingeniously shows in his Ordo Seed-
orum, it gives (by a sudden and somewhat obscure transition)
a fifth son of Ephraim, Edan or Eran, and comes to Joshua in
the fourth generation from him : so that, really, Joshua stands
in the fifth generation from Ephraim. This the reader will
readily perceive, if he will observe that the sons of Ephraim are
connected by the copulative " and," or something equivalent,
while the grandsons and other lineal descendants are distin
guished by the phrase " and his son." I will give the whole
passage, so arranging it as to make the transitions from sons
to descendants, or the reverse, more obvious to the eye.
" And the sons of Ephraim :
" Shuthelah ; — and Bered his son,
and Tahath his son,
and Eladah his son,
and Tahath his son,
and Zabad his son,
and Shuthelah his son : —

APPENDIX. Ill
" and Ezer and Elead, whom the men of Gath that were born
in that land slew, because they came down to take away their
cattle. And Ephraim their father mourned many days, and
his brethren came to comfort him. And when he went in to his
wife, she conceived and bare a son, and he called his name
Beriah : because it went evil with his house. (And his
daughter was Sheran, who built Beth-horon the nether, and the
upper, and Uzzen-sherah.)
" And Kephah was his son, also Eesheph,
and Telah his son
and Tahan his son : " —
Here, according to the LXX, there is another transition
to Ephraim's immediate family, marked by the dative case, and
by putting the word " son " in a different order : thus, verbatim,
" To Laadan his son,
a son Ammihud,
a son Elishama,
a son Non,
a son Jehoshua, his sons.''
Browne conjectures that the " L " in the name Laadan is.
merely the Hebrew preposition, corresponding to the dative
case which is given in the Greek : so that the name should
read " to Adan " or " Edan." And as the " D " and " B " in
Hebrew are often mistaken for one another (being much alike)
this Edan is the same as Fran, or Eden according to the LXX,
one of Ephraim's sons in Num. xxvi. 3 6. Every one knows that
names, in so ancient a language as the Hebrew, are peculiarly
exposed to changes at the hands of transcribers or translators ;
and in this instance the Septuagint seems to indicate, though not
to clear up altogether, some mistake with regard to the name
that is rendered Laadan.
Browne's conjecture, therefore, is a highly reasonable one,
well supported by analogous cases ; and we may complete the
genealogy thus :

112 APPENDIX.
" To Edan or Eran (Ephraim's) son was
Ammihud his son,
Elishama his son,
Non his son,
Jehoshua his son."
(To an English reader I may illustrate the supposed change
in the name Laadan somewhat in this way. Suppose the word
to have been written originally L D N. A translator into
Greek, knowing that the L is often a mere prefix meaning To,
and guided perhaps by a traditional interpretation, would render
the name To aDaN ; and (to make all sure) would put the
original LaaDaN in the margin. Afterward the marginal read
ing would creep into the text without displacing the sign of the
dative ; and thus it would come to be, as it stands now in the
LXX, To LaaDaN. For examples of the confusion often made
between the Hebrew D and B, see 1 Chron. i. 6, 7 ; where
Eiphath reads in the margin Diphath, and Dodanim becomes
Bodanim. So, in ver. 30, Hadad in the margin reads Hadar.
For other changes of the kind, Homam into Heman, Amram
into Hemdan, Zimri into Zabdi, Chelubai into Caleb, Eliada
into Beeliada, &c, &c, see marginal readings of 1 Chron. i.-x.)
But however this may be, the special absurdities so trium
phantly paraded by Bishop Colenso, only serve to prove his
own fatuity. Take the list merely as it stands in the English
version, and it is obvious at a glance, that Shuthelah, Ezer,
Elead, Beriah are sons of Ephraim, separated only by the in
cidental mention of the lineal descendants of Shuthelah, not by
any intervention of seven generations or seventeen generations,
such as the Bishop supposes. It is also worth noticing that the
fact of the two sons being slain by some men of Gath " born in
the land " suggests at once an idea very probable in itself, but
disdainfully rejected by Bishop Colenso, namely, that some of
Jacob's former neighbors, following his example, had migrated
from Canaan to Goshen : so that the seventy who went with
him into Egypt were gradually reenforced by a numerous immi-

APPENDIX. 113
gration. The incidental mention of that " daughter, Sheran,
who built Beth-horon," &c, would indicate, that occasionally,
among the descendants of Jacob, there was a return to Canaan :
perhaps in consequence of intermarriage with settlers or visitors
from that region. So far from proving therefore any such ab
surdities as Bishop Colenso charges upon it, the genealogy in
Chronicles really throws much light upon facts which Moses, in
his brief narrative, does not see fit to explain.
The only difficulty that remains, namely, (as it appears in
our version,) the nine generations between Ephraim and Joshua,
disappears entirely, if Browne's conjecture be admitted. For
in that case, Joshua stands as the fifth from Ephraim : while in
the two other families, Shuthelah II. is the seventh and Tahan
the fourth; all which is probable and consistent.
This interpretation also enables us to reconcile the genealogy
in 1 Chron. with that which is given in Num. xxvi. 35, 36 :
but for this I refer the reader to Browne, p. 307 : * a writer, by
the way, who, if he had had the good fortune to have a diozresis
over his name, or a berg at the end of it, would be in much
higher honor among us, and would be more diligently read than
at present is the case. We, who speak the English tongue,
have a wonderful veneration for the long names and showy
learning of the Germans. The plain home-spun of sound Eng
lish good sense we care little for.
I may add, in passing, that German commentators, whom
* I will give the passage verbatim from the LXX : in which the reader
will note that the eRaN of our version reads eDeN.
" And these sons of Ephraim. To Suthala, the people Suthalai. To
Tanach, the people Tanachi : these sons of Suthala. To Eden, the people
Edeni. These sons of Ephraim by their census."
Here Eden is mentioned, like the Edan or Laadan of Chronicles, in an
abrupt way, as if he were too well known to require particular description :
which would be natural enough if he was a son of Ephraim and the ancestor
of Joshua, but would otherwise be unaccountable. The reader will also
note the exact correspondence of the words To eDeN with the Hebrew LDN
mentioned above.

114 APPENDIX.
Bishop Colenso delights to quote so far as they serve his pur
pose of making the Scriptures ridiculous, may be very learned
men, and prodigiously profound, but are by no means the best
authorities to go to, if we wish to have light shed upon a dif
ficulty in Scripture. They are critics of that kind who, if they
do not love darkness rather than light, yet undoubtedly show a
fondness for certain shades of obscurity. They are so absorbed
in remote speculations, that they seldom see what is immediate
ly before their eyes. This is the case with Kuenen, whom
Bishop Colenso cites, p. 158, in connection with the genealogy
of Joshua. The theory that he broaches is only a shade less
stupid than that of the Bishop himself. Not having his work
before me, however, I am not by any means sure that his mean
ing is correctly given. At least, in the case of others whom the
Bishop quotes and answers, he sometimes selects the point of
attack : choosing their feeble and improbable explanations, and
omitting those which shed some light on the subject. Whether
this has been done in the case of Kuenen I have not as yet
ascertained.

THE
TWO GEE AT AKSVEES
TO THE
EECENT ATTACK ON THE BIBLE.

I.— REPLIES TO "ESSAYS AND REVIEWS."
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III.— MIRACLES. By the Rev. C. A. Hetjetlet, D.D.
IV._THE IDEA OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. By the Rev. W. J.
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V.— THE CREATIVE WEEK. By the Rev. G. Rorihson, M.A.
VI.— RATIONALISM. By the Rev. A. W. Haddan.
VII— ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. By the Rev. Che.
WORDSWORTH, D.D. APPENDIX:
I.— LETTER FROM THE REV. ROBERT MAIN, M.A., Pembroke
College, Radcliffe Observer.
II.— LETTER FROM JOHN PHILLIPS, M.A, Magdalen College, Reader
in Geology in the University of Oxford.

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VI.-ON THE GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE
PENTATEUCH. By Geo. Rawlinson, M.A.
VII —INSPIRATION. By Edwaud Harold Browne, B.D.
VIII— THE DEATH OF CHRIST. By Wil. Thomson, Bishop of Gloucester
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IX.— SCRIPTURE AND ITS INTERPRETATION. By CnAS. John El-
L1C0TT, B.D.

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late Tutor and Fellow of St.
John's Coll.
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Christianity. ) D., Lord Eishop of Killaioe.
III. Prophecy  A. M'CAUL, US)., Professor of
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and Prebendary of St. Paul's.
IV. Ideology and /Subscription  F. O. COOKE, M.A., Chaplain in
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II. M. Inspectors of Schools,
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don, and Prebendary of St.
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VL On the Genuineness and Authenti- ) GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A.,
city of the Pentateuch. J Camden Professor of Ancient
History, Oxford ; and late Fel
low and Tutor of Exeter Coll.
VII. Inspiration  EDWARD HAROLD BROWNE,
B. D.. Norrisian Professor of
Divinity at Cambridge, and
Canon Residentiary of Exeter
Cathedral.
VIII. The Death of Christ.  WILLIAM THOMSON, D. D.,
Lord Bishop of Gloucester and
Bristol.
IX. Scripture and its Interpretation... CHARLES JOHN ELLICOTT,
B. D., Dean of Exeter, and Pro
fessor of Divinity, King's Col
lege, London.

EXTRACT FROM PREFACE.
This volume is humbly offered to the great Head of the Church, as one at
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Bhall stand unchangeable; and men, worn with a sense of sin, shall still find
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