complete separation, physically, morally, and intellectually from all other peoples; the peculiarity of their national organization, and the strange peculiarities of their language. Remember, also, that in the construction of genealogical registers, in the statement of statistics, and the indication of chronological data, they were obviously governed by principles unknown or unrecognized among ourselves; and that in the publication of injunctions relating to ceremonial and other national observances, and the record of such historical events as the principal national observances were meant to commemorate, a knowledge of details is assumed, and a conciseness of style adopted, which, while perfectly intelligible to the people themselves, are a necessary source of obscurity and difficulty to us ;-call to remembrance and give due weight to such considerations as these, and you will instantly perceive that it would be much more reasonable to regard certain difficulties as a testimony to the authenticity of these venerable Books than an evidence of their want of historic truth. This being premised, let the difficulties referred to be candidly examined.

The first and only one to which I shall at present advert concerns the family of Judah; the great importance of which, in the estimation of Dr. Colenso, is declared by its occupying the fore-front of the whole host. In the enumeration of the seventy persons who came into Egypt with Jacob, we find Judah and his family thus described :— "And the sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and Zarah: but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Pharez were Hezron and Hamul." (Gen. xlvi. 12.) Now, says Dr. Colenso, Judah himself was only forty-two years of age at this period, so that "in the course of these forty-two years of Judah's life the following events are recorded to have happened-1. Judah grows up, marries a wife-' at that time,' ver. 1, (Gen. xxxviii.) that is, after Joseph's being sold into Egypt, when he was 'seventeen years old,' Gen. xxxvii. 2, and Judah consequently was

twenty years old-and has separately three sons by her. 2. The eldest of these three sons grows up, is married, and dies. The second grows to maturity (suppose in another year), marries his brother's widow, and dies. The third grows to maturity (suppose in another year still), but declines to take his brother's widow to wife. She then deceives Judah himself, conceives by him, and in due time bears him twins, Pharez and Zarah. 3. One of these twins also grows to maturity, and has two sons, Hezron and Hamul, born to him, before Judah goes down into Egypt."

Assuming this to be the only admissible representation of these events, you cannot fail to perceive that it involves a real difficulty; and I beg that you will not attempt to evade it. My desire is that you should feel it in its full force, and I have therefore taken the trouble to transcribe the painstaking ipsissima verba of the objector himself. It is "a prominent instance," says Dr. Colenso, of a "plain impossibility." Endeavour to consider it in this light, and I am much mistaken if you do not derive from it a clear and satisfactory proof of its historical veracity! It is true that Dr. Colenso maintains just the contrary. But you know Dr. Colenso has undertaken to prove that the Books of the Pentateuch are 66 not historically true;" “cannot be regarded as true narratives of actual historical matters of fact." Looking at the story under the influence of this unfortunate prejudgment, and actuated by the desire to arrive at this result, how is it to be wondered at that the difficulties he discovers are, to his apprehension, subversive of intelligent credence? But suppose Dr. Colenso could have released himself from the fetters of this wilful determination, and for once have suffered his reasoning powers to act free from mathematical restraint, -how would he then have regarded the story? Could you not imagine him in that case to have dwelt upon it in some such manner as this :-" A very singular disregard is shown in all these particulars to the laws of historical precision. What apparent anachronisms! What confusion of dates!

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How plain it is that the writer was not drawing his sketches from fancy, but from reality, and that he never suspected that the strict truth of his outlines would be called in question! How far removed is this generous confidence in the candour of the reader, this noble indifference to regular consecutive periods, to the exact order of dates, and to anything like calculations of possibility, or the most plausible form of setting things, from the style of a fabricator of history! Most assuredly a man desirous of imposing his own fancies on the world for true history, or who was attempting to draw up a narrative, invested with an air of probability, from the mere floating legends of his country, would have given special attention to those very points which this old writer has neglected! How entirely absent from this narrative is that affected intimacy with details, that evident effort to command belief,—that care and caution which always characterize fictitious history! Clearly the narrative is true, for it bears all the characters of truth, simplicity, ease, and naturalness; so that the impossibility, as it appears to me, cannot be real, but must arise out of my ignorance of facts of which the writer had a perfect knowledge." That you will feel this to be the more legitimate and reasonable inference, I am persuaded; and so also would Dr. Colenso, could he have taken a wider view of the occurrences at which he stumbles.

I hold, as you perceive, that the alleged "impossibilities" are on some principle perfectly possible and intelligible. And now what if I were to confess that I am unable to discover or to decide, to my entire satisfaction, even with the help of the best expositors, what that principle is? This would not be the first Biblical difficulty concerning which I had seen it proper to retain my judgment for a time in abeyance. About twenty years ago I laboured long and hard, yet unsuccessfully, to understand a sentence in St. Luke's account of the taxing (ii. 2.) "And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria." How was this to be reconciled with the statements of Josephus and Tacitus, according to which the

appointment of Cyrenius (Quirinus) to the governorship of Syria took place at least twelve years after the birth of Christ? To obtain a solution of this difficulty I tasked my own ingenuity, and, of course, read the elaborate, and, in some cases, plausible arguments of expositors, yet to no satisfactory purpose. What was I to do then? Decide, on Dr. Colenso's principle, against the historical truth of the whole Book? That I knew would only plunge me into still deeper and more inextricable difficulties; so, without a shadow of doubt as to the veracity of the sacred record, I resolved to come to no definite opinion whatever on this particular point, but to wait for more light. At length that light has come. It has recently been discovered to a certainty by A. W. Zumpt, of Berlin, that Quirinus was twice governor of Syria, and that the first appointment took place contemporaneously with, or a little before, the birth of Christ! With delight I thought, when this fact first came to my knowledge, surely this should teach us a lesson of modesty in the treatment of alleged discrepancies and contradictions in the statements of Scripture.

Let it not be imagined, however, that the difficulty respecting the family of Judah is quite so grave as Dr. Colenso represents it. In the first place, the data on which he calculates the age of Judah are by no means indisputable. Instead of being only forty-two, as he alleges, when Jacob went down to Egypt, many very judicious critics maintain that he must have been sixty-two; and that the indefinite expression, "at that time" (Gen. xxxviii. 1) on which Dr. Colenso lays so much stress, refers to a period considerably antecedent to that of the sale of Joseph. And, in the second place, the history does not assert, as Dr. Colenso represents, that Hezron and Hamul, the grandsons of Judah, were born in Canaan. It rather hints the contrary, by the introduction before their names of the substantive verb,-"And the sons of Pharez WERE Hezron and Hamul." If you read the whole list, you will be struck with this peculiarity; and if you read it with

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this idea before your mind, namely, that the intention was to enumerate the names of those who became heads of "families" or clans, you will see that there is nothing so extremely incongruous in the record after all. " And the sons of Judah; Er, and Onan, and Shelah, and Pharez, and Zarah: but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan. And the sons of Pharez were" (were in an emphatic sense, became in the Septuagint rendering, were eventually substituted as representatives of the house of Judah in the place of Er and Onan—)“ Hezron and Hamul." Compare with this list the enumeration of the heads of families in Num. xxvi. 19-21, and you will feel all but certain that this is the true meaning. Yet, on the ground of a difficulty that admits of so probable a solution, we are asked to abandon our faith in the Pentateuch as authentic history!

I do not know whether it has ever occurred to you to examine with the eye of a critic the entire list of names out of which Dr. Colenso has selected this case of "the family of Judah." There certainly is nothing very attractive, in itself, in a long list of hard Hebrew names; so that it is quite possible you may have looked through this one repeatedly, in the course of your Bible readings, without once pausing to investigate its peculiarities. If, however, you have ever bestowed special attention upon it, you cannot have failed to observe that these difficulties concerning Hezron and Hamul are by no means the only difficulties the list contains. Why did not Dr. Colenso enter more fully into the matter, and set all its other "impossibilities" in the same strong light in which he has exposed this? Why, for example, did he not go a few lines lower down to the summing up of Jacob's children by Leah?"All the souls of his sons and daughters were thirty and three;" and, appealing from this statement to the immediately preceding enumeration, defy any man, as he might have done, to find in it more than thirty-two? Why did he not show the impossibility of making up the required number, even including the names of Hezron