arithmetical school, have done good service to the cause of truth. Attention has been drawn to many obscure passages in the sacred history. Formerly counted trifling difficulties, and passed over with probable explanations, they now stand out as stumbling-blocks to faith. Traditional renderings of the narrative, first thoughts hastily gathered from a glance at the apparent meaning, can no longer satisfy the keen and searching criticism of these doubting days. A thorough sifting of old views and old solutions is unavoidable. And, as it can only lead to a fuller establishing of the truth of the sacred history, we may look on with perfect confidence in the result. Since Bishop Colenso delivered his assault, a whole host of eager workers has stepped forward to clear away the rubbish which he has heaped up over a few dark and doubtful passages. On one point they are agreed. The difficulties at which the Bishop has stumbled are not new. Several of them may have been presented of late in a new light, but, in the main, they are old acquaintances, though the uniform in which they are decked out for the assault may not be the same as of yore. "Give Tom Paine his due," writes Dr Lund, as able an algebraist as any of the arithmetical school, "he also, without borrowing from continental writers, has certainly been beforehand with the Bishop in the Age of Reason." On this point the numerous defenders of the truthfulness of Moses are at one.

Perhaps, too, it will be found that in one important respect the authors of the "Age of Reason," and the "Pentateuch Examined," were singularly disqualified for the work they undertook. Whoever assails a book which deals with the vast variety of matters discussed in the Pentateuch, matters civil and military, statistical and historical, matters of law, geography, genealogy, and language, would need to provide himself with stores of what is called general knowledge. But Bishop Colenso, like his predecessor Tom Paine, was miserably furnished in this respect. In the "Age of Reason' Paine amuses himself with Bishop Newton's powers of faith in imagining that there could have been stones in Solomon's temple weighing 503 tons. "The imposition of the bishop" furnishes matter for merriment to the ignorant scoffer; but now that we know of stones far heavier lying in the quarries and built into the ancient buildings of Palestine, we shall have no more of this kind of scoffing. In like manner, Bishop Colenso, in treating of the numbers of soldiers, and the results of battles, mentioned in Scripture, seems to be acquainted with only one battle and one campaign in more recent times. His standard is Waterloo. Twice it is dragged in to excite a fear that Moses is venturing wide of

Increase of the Hebrews in Egypt.

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the truth, or is relating downright fable. Common sense at once dismisses him and his standard with the sagacious remark of De Quincey, "We English estimate Waterloo not by its amount of killed and wounded, but as the battle which terminated a series of battles, having one common object, viz., the overthrow of a frightful tyranny." Before holding up his hands in astonishment at the destruction of the Midianites by twelve thousand Hebrews, without the loss of a man to the victors, it would have done him good to read Merivale's account of the terrible battle between Cæsar and the Germans on the banks of the Rhine; "The Romans had only a few men wounded; not one was killed, the great mass of the Germans, not less, probably, than 180,000 in number, perished, we are assured, altogether."

While the defenders of the truthfulness of Moses are agreed that there is really nothing new in the difficulties. considered by Bishop Colenso, they are far from being at one in the solutions they propose for the more important. In many respects their task was comparatively easy, for few writers have laid themselves so open to attack as Colenso. He has misquoted, he has misinterpreted, he has misunderstood, what he was bound thoroughly to have mastered before rushing into print. In exposing these disgraceful blunderings, his critics justly lay on and spare not. But when they come to really hard passages in the history, they are sometimes not more free from blame than the Bishop himself. Let us take an example or two. The increase of the Hebrews during the sojourn in Egypt was, as it is well put by Mr Birks, "constant, singular, and unusual." But, curiously enough, some of the ablest defenders of the truth in this matter, contrive to shew that it is not nearly so singular and unusual as in ordinary circumstances it might have been. Dr Lund, whose skill in calculation entitles his opinion to great weight, shews that, "by the Bishop's own method of calculation," there could have been nearly 4,000,000 of males in the first 200 years of the sojourn, instead of the 1,000,000 who went out with Moses at the end of 215 years. Mr Birks, another well-known and able writer, arrives at the same result by an elaborate computation. Feeling, however, that the number is rather high, he modifies the data so as to bring it down to 1,850,994 ablebodied men, "or just three times the number in the actual history." And Dr M'Caul, another high authority, holds that a rate of increase less than Bishop Colenso allows, and much less than Malthus shews to be common in some parts of Scotland, would make the number of Hebrews at the Exodus 6,684,672, or, "three times as many as the Mosaic

narrative requires." Will these eminent writers, then, shew us where there is in this increase the miracle, or, since Mr Birks denies that "the increase was properly miraculous," the singularity for which they contend? Jacob's descendants at the exodus might, according to them, have been three or four times more numerous than they were, without doing miraculous violence to any law of nature. Do they not see that he, who so easily proves too much, really proves nothing? and that they are bringing the truth itself into peril by calculations as absurd as those, which former generations indulged in, regarding the vast crowds who cumbered every square mile of the earth's surface before the flood? In over-earnestness to defend the faith once delivered to the saints, they would have us to believe that, in about 260 years, there sprung from one man nearly as many descendants as there are people in London or Scotland, and that there might have been as many as there were people in all England at the beginning of this century. We can have no difficulty in shewing that they themselves entertain an uneasy feeling of having gone too far.

Feeling the insecurity of the position he had been led to take up, Dr M'Caul adds: "It may be remarked, also, the number of 2,000,000 can be thus made out without referring to the number of circumcised slaves and heathens who must have been incorporated with the tribes, and reckoned in the numbering. How large or how small that number may have been, it is impossible to say, but it cannot have been inconsiderable." Mr Birks is more precise. In one of the best written chapters of his book, he shews that Jacob took a large retinue of servants down with him to Egypt, that they were evidently counted among the Hebrews, and that the existence of that household "removes the increase still farther from that limit of physical possibility, which alone could justify any suspicion against its historical truth." He believes that "the whole Hebrew household amounted, probably, to nearly a thousand." But the evidence he brings forward to warrant this conclusion leaves little room for doubt, that it may have been three or four times greater. Why, then, did not these writers keep this fact steadily in view in all their calculations? By shewing, first, that the whole Hebrew host might have sprung from the loins of Jacob; and then, bringing forward this reserve of circumcised servants and proselytes, they perhaps thought they were plaiting a twofold cord, not easily broken. It was a thorough mistake, for, on the contrary, they were doing their best to reduce much below the level of an ordinary event in

Conflicting Views regarding the "Firstborns."

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man's history, an increase which, as they believe, was "constant, singular, and unnatural."*

The blunder committed in estimating the increase of the Hebrews during the sojourn in Egypt, has led to others equally singular regarding the firstborns. Instead of passing judgment on the well meant efforts of able critics, we prefer to let the one condemn the other. Dr Lund, viewing the difficulty as "almost entirely arithmetical," comes to the conclusion that the numbered firstborns were "such as had been born in the preceding year, added to those who, probably, had been passed over by the destroying angel on the night of Egypt's visitation." Mr Birks disposes of what Dr Lund, perhaps, considers the larger half of that estimate, by the "very probable event " that "within five years of the Exodus there were few marriages of the youngest men." The "true view," according to him, "makes the numbered firstborn and the numbered Levites who replace them belong to two classes, who had not been numbered before." He means to say, that not one among the 600,000 men above twenty years of age was counted a firstborn, a supposition certainly without grounds from Scripture. On the contrary, Dr M'Caul will allow none to be reckoned firstborns but such as had the birthright, of whom not a few might, like Reuben, be the only firstborn in as many as four families. And this limitation is itself rejected by friends and foes alike, as being opposed to the words of Scripture.

On these important points, the increase of the Hebrews in Egypt, and the number of the firstborns, our ablest scholars and arithmeticians are manifestly at a loss, or deceive themselves by not keeping the facts of the case steadily before their minds. They see the difficulties, however loath they may be to own that they exist. Their attempts at a solution are often but gropings in the dark, helpless clutchings at the unreal. By no better names can we describe the elaborate attempt of Mr Birks to prove that for 600,000 men above twenty years of age, there were only 300,000 young men and boys under twenty, and only 680,000 women and girls of all ages. There is not the slightest ground in the narrative for believing that the number of men in the Hebrew host exceeded that of women by 220,000. The existence of polygamy and concubinage would rather prove the contrary. Yet Mr Birks does not hesitate to drag a dream so shadowy as this

* A decennial rate of increase of 40 per cent., such as we assumed at p. 84, continued over 215 years, satisfies these conditions fully. At that rate a household of 1000 persons would, at the Exodus, have been represented by well nigh 1,400,000 people. Dr M'Caul's lowest rate of increase would bring the number up to 65,000,000!

into his argument, for the purpose of shewing that the Hebrews who left Egypt numbered at the utmost 1,800,000 souls, instead of the 2,000,000, or the 2,400,000 at which they are usually and rightly estimated. We entirely agree with Dr Lund, that "we have no right to expect that, to every objection which perverse ingenuity may start, a positive and demonstrative answer can now be given. A probable reply is all that sometimes can fairly be demanded." But, in casting about for probable replies, let the defenders of the truthfulness of Moses proceed on the grounds of known fact and common sense. It should never be forgotten, that when men of standing and ability, in over earnestness to maintain the integrity of God's Word, think to prop up its statements by crude fancies of their own, they are only raising over the true foundations a mound of useless rubbish, which it may cost posterity much time and labour to remove.

IT

ART IV.-Historiography, Ancient and Modern.

[T was one of the suggestive sayings of Hegel, whose genius, although we utterly repudiate "Hegelianism," we are still catholic enough to respect and admire, that without historiography there is no history. The axiom is indeed, at first view, somewhat startling and paradoxical; but, while we dissent from the deeper meaning which, in strict accordance with the leading principles of his own philosophic system, the great German thinker attached to the words employed, we at the same time believe that, considered in a broad and general way, they may be held as embodying a very important truth. Historiography, or the science of history-writing, and history itself, are connected with each other in the closest possible fashion. It is through historiography that the grand facts of history first become part and parcel of our ordinary knowledge; practically they are dead for us, until roused to new life by the historian's art, and faithfully reflected from his pages. Nay, more, historiography belongs, just like everything else associated with the annals of mankind, to the facts of all history, and finds fit place, along with the entire mass of incident that forms the staple of historical research and historical delineation, in the universal record of human progress from the earliest period