(including Jacob, himself, and Joseph, and his two sons) who came into Egypt with Jacob. He repeats the words again and again :-'These are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt,' ver. 8; 'All the souls, that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, were threescore and six,' ver. 26— which they would not be without Hezron and Hamul; 'And the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt were two souls: all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten,' ver. 27. "So again we read:-'These are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob. And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls for Joseph was in Egypt already,' Exod. i. 1-5. 'Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons; and now the Lord thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude,' Deut. x. 22. I assume, then, that it is absolutely undeniable that the narrative of the Exodus distinctly involves the statement, that the sixty-two persons, 'out of the loins of Jacob,' mentioned in Gen. xlvi., and no others, went down with him into Egypt. Now Judah was forty-two years old, according to the story, when he went down with Jacob into Egypt. But if we turn to Gen. xxxviii., we shall find 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, that is, after Joseph's being sold into Egypt, when he was 'seventeen years old,' Gen. xxxviii. 2, and when Judah, consequently, was at least 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 Jacob goes down into Egypt. The above being certainly incredible, we are obliged to conclude that one of the two accounts must be untrue. Yet the statement, that Hezron and Hamul were born in the land of Canaan, is vouched so positively by the many passages above quoted, which sum up the seventy souls," that, to give up this point is to give up an essential part of the whole story. But then this point cannot be maintained, te however essential to the narrative, without supposing that the other series of events had taken place beforehand, which we have seen to be incredible." "Those," continues Dr. Colenso, "who are satisfied that the above statements of the Bible do involve a manifest contradiction, and who are not interested in seeing how good men will 'do violence' to the plain meaning of the Scripture, in order to evade such a difficulty, may do well to omit the next chapter altogether, and pass on to the arguments which follow" (p. 20). The "next chapter" thus honoured with a sneer is entitled "The Explanations of Expositors Considered." The "explanations" are accompanied by a running comment, of which it must be said, without uncharity to the author, that its chief characteristic is that very effort to evade difficulties which he condemns in others, an effort made in a spirit which brings Coleridge's words to mind: "This soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea; Scarce seemed there to be." Indeed, there lies at the foundation of the attitude assumed by Dr. Colenso to the Bible in such views as those quoted above, the great question of inspiration itself. Is an infallible record from God to man possible? If it be, then, is the Bible such a record? There is literally no standing-ground for any, touching the future and the good hope of reaching the Father's house, if we come to hold that some parts of the Bible are true and trustworthy, while others are not. Each man will then become in himself the standard of truth. What he thinks true will to him be so, but nothing else will. There will be no infallible guide for the wayward and erring. And really there is no meaning in such words as these, under which the true state of matters is concealed:-"I believe firmly in a God of righteousness, and truth, and love." "Should all else give way beneath me, I feel that his everlasting arms are still under me. I am sure that the solid ground is there on which my feet can rest in the knowledge of him." But whence this knowledge? Whence the explanation. of this feeling? Are not both to be traced to the Scripture? Apart from revelation, no such attainments have ever been made by man. But Dr. Colenso labours to destroy the very sources of his own strength and hope; for if the Bible history is a fable, the doctrines of the Bible must be so likewise, seeing that they who taught them believed the history to be an infallible record. If we once drift away from this, nothing is left but that we "Deeper and deeper plunge in dark.'" But waving these general questions, a full discussion of which would be foreign to this work, let us examine the value of the objections embodied in the extract given above: (1) It is not "certain that the writer here means to say that Hezron and Hamul were born in the land of Canaan," but the contrary. The writer says " Judah had five sons; two of these died in the land of Canaan." Exegetically this statement is complete. He then tells us that Pharez had two sons, Hezron and Hamul; and the conclusion which every unbiassed reader has been in the habit of drawing from the introduction of the name Canaan is, that these sons were not born in the land in which their uncles died. แ (2) Much stress is laid by Dr. Colenso on the expressions, into Egypt," and " came with Jacob into Egypt." Is there anything in the context by which the writer calls our attention specially to this form of expression. We feel as strongly as Dr. Colenso can do, that the difficulty is not met by alleging that the words are used in a loose and general sense. Such a view should be far from the minds of those who receive the Scripture as the word not of man, but of God. Now, it is clear from verse 27 that the writer intended the expression "came with Jacob into Egypt" to include Joseph and his sons, who were already in Egypt (Deut. x. 22). This, of course, will not satisfy our author, who will still hold that the writer should have used other words. Nevertheless, he must be regarded as the best interpreter of his own expressions; and he has given us proof here that he wished his readers to take his statement as including some who were even then in Egypt. But even the theory of the non-historical character of the Pentateuch, and the discovery that it is full of stupid errors and ignorant blunders, in no way lessens the difficulties so far as this author is concerned. Can he by any rational hypothesis explain how a writer of such ability, penetration, and grasp of intellect as he must have been who wrote the Book of Genesis-regarding him from the human and fallible point of view-could have been capable of such gross mistakes as are here laid to his charge? It is inconceivable on any other ground than that he was ignorant of Dr. Colenso's "First Book of Arithmetic!" But, seriously, it says little for the influence of learning on our reflective powers, to find one in Dr. Colenso's position gravely assuming, that he is a better judge of the meaning of certain words than the man who used them could be. Moses tells us that in using them he intended they should include some who were already in Egypt; this author says they could not. It does not mend matters to distinguish between came with Jacob," and, as in the case of Joseph's family, "came into Egypt," because, on the bishop's view of the words, Ephraim and Manasseh did not come into Egypt. They were born there. Yet Moses in another place distinctly says-" Thy fathers went down into Egypt with (literally in) threescore and ten persons" (Deut. x. 22)—not, it will be observed, with sixty-six only, as in verse 26 of this chapter. (3) Is it "absolutely undeniable that the narrative involves the statement, that the sixty-six persons 'out of the loins of Jacob,' mentioned in Gen. xlvi., and no others, went down with him into Egypt?" The note on Hezron and Hamul indicates that it is not so certain as Dr. Colenso alleges. But more: It has been often pointed out that at the time of the second visit to Egypt, Reuben had only two sons (Gen. xlii. 37). Here four are named. Could the interval between the time of Reuben's speech and that of Jacob's migration be long enough for two more sons to have been born to him in the land of Canaan? The bishop says, "Yes." It may on the other side be as confidently answered, "No." What indications of time have we in the narrative? There were seven years of remarkable abundance before the dearth began-“ In the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls" (Gen. xli. 47). The neighbouring countries were involved with Egypt in the famine, and may be held to have shared with it in the years of plenty. It cannot be shown that they did not. After Joseph made himself known to his brethren, he said-" God did send me before you to preserve life. For these two years hath the famine been in the land" (xlv. 6). He then assumes that the continuance of the dearth would be as long in Canaan as in Egypt-"Thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen. There will I nourish thee; for yet there are five years of famine" (ver. 10, 11). The law of supply and demand in such a case implies, that the produce of a year of plenty is equal to the consumption of the first year of dearth. Besides, this is very much the state of matters even in ordinary times. The harvest of one year is held to be sufficient till that of the next year is reached. This, indeed, so naturally suggests itself to the reader, that almost any intelligent child in a Sabbath school would answer the question, "About what time of the year would this visit likely be made?" in the way we have often heard it answered-"After the next harvest was seen to have failed." The first year of the famine must thus have been drawing to a close before they set out on their long journey from Hebron to the valley of the Nile. But they had returned, had consumed the first supply, and were about to set out again when Reuben said that Jacob might slay his two sons if he brought not Benjamin back. They returned immediately to Canaan. "Haste ye, and go up to my father," said Joseph," and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord over all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not" (xlv. 9). Yet this credulous author gravely alleges, that in the interval between the time of Reuben's speech and Jacob's migration Reuben might-yea, according to his view, must-have had other two sons born to him in Canaan! It is again concluded, then, that the number given in this genealogical table includes some who were not born in Canaan. (4) The difficulty as to Judah turns on the question whether Hezron and Hamul were born to him before he went down to Egypt. This is again taken for granted by Dr. Colenso (p. 19). This, however, is a mere assumption. If any indication is given of the land of their birth, Egypt is pointed to. Judah was forty-two years old when Jacob migrated to the land of the Pharaohs. In chapter xli. 46, it is distinctly stated, that "Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh." Judah was born in the fourth year of Jacob's double marriage, Joseph in the seventh. Reckoning, then, that the years of plenty began in the season after the elevation of Joseph, he would be thirty-nine years old when his father went down to him. Now, taking the marriage of Judah as having happened in his twentieth, or even, as is often the case in the East, in his eighteenth year, we have sufficient time for all the events happening which have so perplexed our author. It has been pleaded that chapter xxxviii. 1, decides that Judah must have been twenty years old. But the expression "at that time" is not necessarily to be linked up with the sale of Joseph. It may as naturally be associated with chapter xxxvii. 1-"Jacob," says the historian, "dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan." But before proceeding farther, he goes on to narrate the incident by which "his generations" were to be ultimately led out of Canaan. This having been done, he returns to the domestic condition of the chosen seed. This is a common feature of historical writing. It is not, however, urged here; because the twenty-two years, which even Dr. Colenso admits, give time enough for the growth of the three sons and the connection of Judah with Tamar. Cases occur in the East of |