delivered by him, as Professor of Divinity, in the University of Cambridge, in the year 1863, on The Pentateuch and the Elohistic Psalms. I contented myself at the time with saying, in the Preface to my Part III.p.xiv,

I find nothing in these Lectures' requiring me to modify any of my previous conclusions.

But, as this is the only attempt, as far as I am aware, which has been made up to this time, on the part of any University Divinity Professor, to impugn publicly the truth of my conclusions, as to the composite character and unhistorical nature of the narratives in the Pentateuch, in written words that may be examined and judged by all,—by myself, and by the public to whom I have appealed, as well as by a few private hearers,—it may be right that, before leaving England, I should assist my readers to estimate at their true value the reasonings of this eminent defender of the traditionary view,-one, indeed, who has been raised to the Episcopal Bench, as is generally understood, in a great measure as a reward of his labours, in endeavouring to confute, first, the Essays and Reviews,' and last, my own Work on the Pentateuch.

I need hardly say that, from the opinion which I had myself formed of the character of Professor BROWNE, as well as from the importance of his position, I turned with the greatest interest and some expectation to the perusal of these Lectures. But I must confess that I was painfully disappointed, and saw at once how little help I could expect to obtain, towards securing a free and fair discussion of the points at issue, even from one to whom I had looked so hopefully. He has written, indeed, courteously and kindly of myself personally; and he says, p.v—

I trust I have nowhere expressed myself with the bitterness or insolence of controversy.

Very gladly do I bear witness to the absence in his work of

all that bitterness' and 'insolence,' which has disfigured the addresses and writings of many of my adversaries, lay and clerical. And I should have added that, in this respect, Bishop BROWNE's Five Lectures' were a perfect specimen of what a Christian controversial work should be, except for one grave fault, which I feel obliged to notice. Bishop BROWNE has not been able to content himself, as a Scholar, with endeavouring to refute my arguments, or, as a Divine, with recommending earnestly to his pupils what he himself believes to be the truth; but he has also (I regret to say) allowed himself to use the unfair weapon of prejudice, and sprinkled his Lectures all over very freely with the words 'forge,' 'forger,' forgery,'* with which he brands the supposition of Samuel's having been concerned in composing the Elohistic story of the Pentateuch. Nay, to my extreme surprise, he says, p.19,

You know that in the First Part of his Work he (Bishop COLENSO) devotes himself chiefly to proving that the numbers in the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, are so extravagantly large as to have been utterly impossible, and that such exaggeration stamps the whole Pentateuch with forgery!

This appears to me to be a serious departure from the course of fair and honourable criticism. I have never used such words myself, nor ever wished or thought it right to use them, with reference to such a work as I imagine that of the Elohist to have been. On the contrary, I have plainly, from the first, condemned and rejected utterly the employment of such expressions, as unmerited by anything that we can know, or have any right to conjecture, as to the circumstances or intentions of the writer. Very many, in our day, no doubt, invest the Elohistic story-or rather the composite story in the Pentateuch-with a sanctity and infallibility, which make them shrink at first from

'forgery,' p.19, 'forger,' p.46, 'forged, forgery, forged,' p.47, 'forged, forging,' p.69, 'palm off, imposture, pious fraud, forger,' p.70.

even entertaining the idea of its having been written in the way, in which the results of critical enquiry, as set forth in this volume, plainly show it to have been composed. But what right have we to suppose that Samuel-or whoever else may have written the Elohistic narrative-meant his people to receive it as divinely and infallibly true, or even as being the composition of Moses himself—that he intended, in any sense, to 'palm' a 'forgery' upon them, as an authentic veritable narrative of the past ages, or as the genuine work of their great lawgiver? Would Bishop BROWNE call the writer of the Book of Job a forger,' and those passages forgeries,' in which he records the conversations in the Court of Heaven of 'Jehovah' and 'Satan,' all expressed in excellent Hebrew, or in which he represents Jehovah as answering Job out of the whirlwind, in the same choice Hebrew, describing the habits of the wild goat and hind, the wild ass and the buffalo, the peacock, stork, and ostrich, the hare, hawk, and eagle, the hippopotamus, and the crocodile, with all the grand exaggerations of Eastern imagery?

'Out of his mouth go burning lamps, sparks of fire leap out;

Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething-pot or caldron;
His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.' xli.19-21.

-

He does not surely believe that all the things related in the Book of Job are historical facts, or that the Book of Job' was written by Job himself. And yet the details of this story, and the conversations of Jehovah with Satan and Job, are recorded in the form of history, just as much so as the conversations of Jehovah with Noah and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses and Aaron, in the 'Books of Moses.' Is there more 'dishonesty' -more deliberate 'forgery'-in a later writer ascribing to Moses the grand addresses in Deuteronomy, than in the writer of Job ascribing to Jehovah Himself the majestic poetry of xxxviii-xli?

In Chap.XXI I have found occasion to notice some portions of Bishop BROWNE'S First Lecture. I will now consider the replies which he gives in his Second Lecture, 'On the Numerical Difficulties of the Pentateuch,' to my objections to the historical truth of the Pentateuchal story.

I. The first difficulty of any consequence is, that there were but four generations from Levi to Moses, and that in those four generations seventy souls could never have grown to more than 2,000,000. Now, though from Levi to Moses there may have been but four generations, it must have been because the generations in the family of Moses were abnormally few. Eight or nine is the more probable number for the generality of the descendants of Jacob. p.20.

That is to say, Bishop BROWNE deliberately sets aside, not merely the datum in G.xv.16, 'in the fourth generation they shall come hither again,' but the evidence of all the genealogies which are given in the Pentateuch, and repeated in the statements of the first and third Gospels. For the 'abnormally few' generations are not confined to the family of Moses and Aaron. They occur in every instance which is recorded in the Pentateuch or (with one exception) anywhere else in the Bible. They occur in the line of Levi, in the case of Moses, Aaron, Mishael, Elzaphan, Korah,—in the line of Reuben, in the case of Dathan and Abiram,-again, in the line of Judah, in the case of Achan, Jair, Nahshon, Bezaleel,-and once more, in the line of Joseph, in the case of Zelophehad. The sole exception is the genealogy of Joshua as given by the Chronicler in 1Ch.vii.20-27, which I have shown to be perplexed and contradictory, and which is found only in a Book full of errors, written two centuries after the Captivity and a thousand years after the commonlyreceived date of the Exodus, and standing alone even in that Book. Yet Bishop BROWNE quietly assumes that in each line of the descendants of Jacob there must have been eight or nine generations'—thus admitting, in fact, that the Scriptural account, as it stands, is incredible.

II. Moreover, there is no reason to assume, as Bishop COLENSO has assumed, that none but pure Israelites should have been counted in the numbers mentioned in Exodus. It is certain that Abraham had a retinue of 318 followers, who tended his flocks, and could be armed against his enemies. It is almost as certain that the family of Jacob, when it went down into Egypt, must have been accompanied by a corresponding number of shepherds and herdsmen. These would, no doubt, have been circumcised, and have been reckoned with the descendants of the patriarchs. p.21.

It seems to me almost incredible that any writer should have made the above suggestion, with the facts of the Bible narrative before him. Not only have we not the slightest indication of any such a company having gone down with Jacob into Egypt, but there are the plainest signs of the direct contrary. Nay, on his return from Padan-Aram, he says himself, 'I am few in number,' xxxiv.30.

It may be said, however, that he inherited afterwards, upon the death of Isaac, the bulk of the property of his father and grandfather. But then we have to weigh the following facts:—

(i) If Jacob had so many 'shepherds and herdsmen' at his command, why did he send his darling Joseph alone, to wander about in search of his brethren, in a country where not only human foes, G.xxxiv.30, but wild beasts, G.xxxvii.20,23, were to be dreaded?

(ii) The brothers are spoken of as 'feeding their flocks,' when Joseph came to them, and apparently they were alone, without any attendants. For what sign is there, in the whole story of their dealings with him, of the presence of a multitude of 'shepherds and herdsmen,' who might have delivered him from their hands, or, at least, reported their crime to their father?

(iii) How is it that not one of these servants accompanied the ten sons of Jacob, when they went down the first time to Egypt? For the whole story shows that they had no attendants-'they took down every man his sack to the ground, and opened every man his sack,'-'then they rent their clothes, and laded every man his ass, and returned to the city,'-' we are brought in, that he may seek occasion against us, and take us for bondmen and our asses,'-not a word being said about servants. (iv) How would their ten ass-loads of corn have supplied food for these hundreds of shepherds and herdsmen for a whole year, see G.xlv.6, as well as for their own families, amounting, as we know, to seventy persons, 'besides Jacob's sons' wives,' xlvi.26,27 ?

(v) If Jacob had so many servants, and not only 'flocks and herds,' G.xlvii.1,