and when, in the words of our Litany, we ask God to show His pity on all prisoners and captives, we will remember Matamoros and his brethren.

BISHOP COLENSO ON THE PENTATEUCH.

The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, critically examined. By the Right Rev. John William Colenso, D.D., Bishop of Natal. London: Longman and Co. 1862.

THERE is an important note added to the new edition of Mr. Birks's volume,* on "The Human Element in Scripture;" from which we shall сору a few sentences. It is Mr. Birks's object to insist on "the importance of recognizing fully" this element, without which we have, in reality, no testimony of men like ourselves to the historical truth of the Old and New Testament. It is one great fact, that throughout the whole Bible, in every part, GoD speaks to us. It is another great fact, that throughout the whole and in every part, men like ourselves speak to us, and bear testimony to the things, the words and actions, on which our salvation depends. The first of these facts assures us that the Bible is all true. The second apprises us that, mingled with its Divine attribute of Truth, there will always be the human attribute of errability, and even of trivial error. We must take the two together; just as, in the person of the living WORD OF GOD, CHRIST JESUS, we had at once the Mighty God, the Creator, He who "is before all things, and by whom all things consist;" and yet, a poor little infant in a manger-a child learning his lessons, and finally, a man who was wearied, hungry, athirst, who groaned, and wept, and died.

Coleridge was unable to grasp this double truth; and as he shrank from making David and Moses "mere organ-pipes through which an Invisible Spirit "discoursed celestial music,' he went to the other extreme, and desired to regard their books as mere human writings, except in those passages in which it was distinctly recorded that "God said," &c. &c. But Coleridge was wrong, both in what he assumed to be the usual theory of Inspiration, and in what he tried to substitute for it.

The sacred writers are, to use archbishop Ussher's illustration, "God's secretaries." He leaves them real men, capable of giving honest and reliable testimony, like any other men ;

*The Bible and Modern Thought. By the Rev. T. R. Birks, M.A. New edition, with an Appendix. 1862.

but He carefully watches over them, so that not one untrue or improper word shall be given forth in His name. When an earthly sovereign desires his secretary to write a letter in his name, will he not take care that the letter, when written, shall faithfully express his meaning? Yet there may be one or two immaterial inaccuracies in the document, of which he does not care to take notice. Thus, to return to the Bible, Matthew and Mark tell us, that the women at the sepulchre saw an angel; while Luke and John, with equal explicitness, state that there were two. Why were these discrepancies permitted? Most assuredly, because if the four evangelists had been divinely overruled to describe every event with precisely the same particulars, we should have had no four human witnesses at all, but four "organ-pipes" through which one Divine Spirit played one and the same tune. Thus writes Mr. Birks:

"In the history of our blessed Lord four testimonies have been provided; and though each is distinct, they have been closely woven together into one seamless robe of historical truth. One evident purpose, fulfilled by this peculiar structure of the narrative, is to secure, by the concurrence of four human witnesses, so strong and clear a proof of reality in the Divine portraiture, as to force conviction upon every thoughtful and candid mind. To neglect the human authorship, in this case, is thus to run counter to the plain design of the Holy Spirit, in choosing this particular form for the message. It turns the pledges of truth and sincerity, in the voice of the four Evangelists, into stumbling-blocks and paradoxes; and robs the Gospel of one main element in their moral power." (pp. 479, 480.)

Of that which forms the topic of bishop Colenso's volume, Mr. Birks thus speaks :

"The Pentateuch is the first main portion of the sacred history,the basement or pedestal on which all the later books repose. The human element, in the doctrine of its inspiration, consists in its being the genuine work of Moses; the Divine, in its being a real gift from the Spirit of God, and composed under His heavenly teaching and guidance. Experience and reason prove alike that these two elementa are so closely united, as to be virtually inseparable. Once deny the Mosaic authorship, and the strongest pledge for the Divine authority of the book disappears, and is replaced by a presumption of its merely human character; and indeed, that it is nothing better than a skilful and successful forgery. How can we possibly believe that a series of Divine messages have begun with an open fraud on the credulity of mankind? . . . The genuineness of the Pentateuch, the human element in its composition, is thus the logical starting-point, by which alone we are guided into an apprehension of its true character, as the word of the living God, the pure and holy fountain-head of all later revelations to mankind." (p. 479.)

Bishop Colenso admits his inability, resembling that of Coleridge, to grasp this double truth. He says:

"God is my witness! what hours of wretchedness have I spent at times, while reading the Bible devoutly from day to day, and reverencing every word of it as the Word of God, when petty contradictions met me, which seemed to my reason to conflict with the notion of the absolute historical veracity of every part of Scripture, and which, as I felt, in the study of any other book, we should honestly treat as errors or misstatements, without in the least detracting from the real value of the book! But, in those days, I was taught that it was my duty to fling the suggestion from me at once, 'as if it were a loaded shell, shot into the fortress of my soul,' or to stamp out despe rately, as with an iron heel, each spark of honest doubt, which God's own gift, the love of Truth, had kindled in my bosom. And by many a painful effort I succeeded in doing so for a season.” (p. 6.)

But where was the occasion for all this "wretchedness" and "desperation"? Had he but honestly and thoughtfully adopted archbishop Ussher's view, every real difficulty would have quickly disappeared. Matthew and Mark, inspired and caused to write their two gospels, honestly said that which they believed—that the women saw an angel at the sepulchre. This was truth from their pens, and it was also true in fact. Luke and John, with equal sincerity, wrote, that the women saw two angels. And this also was a fact. How frequently, in common life, do we see two persons or two things, at one moment, and only one person or thing, in the same place, a few moments after! This sort of discrepancy is an inseparable feature in human testimony. In our own history, we find three of the chief actors or cotemporaries giving three different dates for such an event as the raising of king Charles's standard at Nottingham; while the king's own private secretary gives a wrong date, by a whole month, for Charles's departure from Oxford. And if four men had witnessed the murder of Mr. Perceval in the House of Commons, and had, separately and apart, written four narratives of the occurrence, there would have been like discrepancies, and yet probably no untruth. This is universally found to be the case. We see, as a fact, that it did not seem good unto the HOLY GHOST to exclude all such immaterial discrepancies from the Gospels. And we may easily discern, as a probable reason, what would have been the inevitable result of making all the four gospels alike in every particular. Men would have reasonably objected, that never, since books and writing were known, had four independent witnesses been found to give precisely the same account of any transaction. This narrative, therefore, they would have argued, or rather, these four narratives, all so marvellously alike, were evidently concocted,—the whole was a concerted story, and the pretence of four genuine and separate witnesses was a fiction and a fraud.

For want of accurate ideas, therefore, of the nature and

boundaries of inspiration,-in short, for want of theological knowledge,-did bishop Colenso venture into the field of sceptical criticism without the needed armour, and he soon received some fearful wounds. But we cannot stop to go into his personal history; his forty-eight pages of preface and introduction must be passed over without further remark: for the substance of his book consists of about 130 pages of "insuperable difficulties," designed to lead the reader to conclude, first, that the Pentateuch was never written by Moses; and secondly, that it is in many parts untrue, and, as a whole, a monstrous and incredible fable! To these 130 pages we must now address ourselves; for if they should prove to be worthless, then the prefatory" and "concluding" remarks can have no kind of value or importance.

The bishop's theses, then, are these two: "That the Pentateuch, as a whole, cannot possibly have been written by Moses, or by any one acquainted personally with the facts which it professes to describe;" and, secondly, "that the (so-called) Mosaic narrative, by whomsoever written, cannot be regarded as historically true." (p. 8.) Let us see, then, what are the criticisms by which he hopes to establish these two fearful charges.

1. That with which he opens his attack, astonishes us by its narrowness of view, and its carping spirit. It turns upon this verse, in the account of the migration of Jacob's family into Egypt:

"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, Hezron, and Hamul." (Gen. xlvi. 12.)*

Bishop Colenso then sets to work to prove, that Hezron and Hamul could not have been born at the time of the migration; and hence, that the whole narrative is untrue, and unhistorical. Does he deal with other historians after this fashion? Is there nothing in Herodotus or Xenophon but exact, literal truth? Or, when he finds an incorrect statement in these writers, does he throw their works aside, as "not historical, because not true"? If so, then he can have no history at all, and is in perfect darkness as to all the past.

"Aye, but we are dealing with 'inspired writings' now, and have a right to look for absolute truth."

It is rather unfortunate that bishop Colenso's very first quotation from Scripture should be a misquotation. The pas sage, as it stands in all our Bibles, is this:

"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."

Here the writer first sets down all Judah's sons. Then he corrects himself by two after-thoughts: 1. That Er and Onan had died in Canaan: 2. That Pharez had two sons, who filled their places.

Has bishop Colenso never considered the question of inspi ration in its various bearings? Does he not know that no writer of any authority supposes that the Holy Spirit inspired men with the knowledge of the commonest facts, or of things which passed under their own observation? Scott's definition of inspiration runs thus :

"Such a complete and immediate communication, by the Holy Spirit, to the minds of the sacred writers, of those things which colud not otherwise have been known; and such an effectual superintendeney, as to those particulars concerning which they might otherwise obtain information, as sufficed absolutely to preserve them from every degree of error in all things which could in the least degree affect any of the doctrines or precepts contained in their writings."

This distinction is obvious, reasonable, and important. For instance: The details of the creation of the world would, in all probability, be immediately imparted by the Creator to the mind of Moses; for these were events which occurred when no human being was present to record them. But when Moses himself had a conference with Pharaoh, he would be able to describe what had passed without any special aid from the Holy Spirit. And when we meet with genealogies and familylists, such as this in Genesis xlvi., and in Chronicles, and in Matthew i. and Luke iii., the most rational supposition is, that they were copied from the public records then extant.

This list, then, in Genesis xlvi., was not given by Moses on his own personal knowledge; for it concerned an event which happened long before his time. It was not given to him by an immediate communication from the Holy Spirit;" for had it been so, it would have been perfect, and liable to no criticism. It was, there can be no doubt, an old record, written in Jacob's or Joseph's days, and handed down to the times of Moses. It could not have been written in the year of the migration, for it (probably) contains the names of some who were not then born. Or perhaps we may say, that it might have been written at that time, and have received additions and corrections afterwards. Thus the verse before us may have stood at first:

"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 subsequently, the brief sentence may have been added: "And the sons of Pharez were Hezron and Hamul."

In this form the document would come into the hands of Moses, and thus would it be transferred into his history.

We ought not to forget, however, that there is another solution of the whole difficulty. In Genesis xxvi. 34, we learn that Esau (twin with Jacob) was forty years old when he took to wife the Hittites' daughters. This gave Rebekah the excuse for