awful moment which Joshua addressed to them. Nor can it be supposed that he read them first to one party, and then to another, &c., till all the Congregation' had heard them. The day would not have sufficed for reading in this way all the blessings and the cursings' in D. xxvii, xxviii,-much less all the words of the Law,'-many times over, especially after that he had been already engaged, as the story implies, on the very same day, in writing a copy of the Law of Moses' upon the stones set up in Mount Ebal, Jo. viii. 32, 33.

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CHAPTER VI.

THE EXTENT OF THE CAMP, COMPARED WITH THE PRIEST'S DUTIES AND THE DAILY NECESSITIES OF THE PEOPLE.

43. And the skin of the bullock, and all his flesh, with his head, and with his legs, and his inwards, and his dung, even the whole bullock, shall he (the Priest) carry forth without the Camp, unto a clean place, where the ashes are poured out, and burn him on the wood with fire. Where the ashes are poured out, there shall he be burnt. L. iv. 11, 12.

We have seen (39) that the whole population of Israel at the Exodus may be reckoned at two millions. Now we cannot well allow for a living man, with room for his cooking, sleeping, and other necessaries and conveniences of life, less than three or four times the space required for a dead one in his grave. And even then the different ages and sexes would be very disagreeably crowded together. Let us allow, however, for each person on the average three times 6 feet by 2 feet, the size of a coffin for a full-grown man,—that is, let us allow for each person 36 square feet or 4 square yards. Then it follows that for two millions of people, (without making any allowance for the Tabernacle itself, and its Court, and the 44,000 Levites, male and

female, N. iii. 39, 'who pitched round about it,' N. i. 53,) the Camp must have covered, the people being crowded as thickly as possible, an area of 8,000,000 square yards, or more than 1652 acres of ground.

44. Upon this very moderate estimate, then, (which in truth is far within the mark,) we must imagine a vast encampment of this extent, swarming with people, more than a mile and a half across in each direction, with the Tabernacle in the centre; and so says JOSEPHUS, Ant. iii. 12, 5:

It was like a well-appointed market; and everything was there ready for sale in due order; and all sorts of artificers were in the shops; and it resembled nothing so much as a city, that sometimes was moveable and sometimes was fixed.

Thus the refuse of these sacrifices would have had to be carried by the Priest himself, (Aaron, Eleazar, or Ithamar,—there were no others,) a distance of threequarters of a mile. From the outside of this great Camp, wood and water would have had to be fetched for all purposes, if, indeed, such supplies of wood or water, for the wants of such a multitude as this, could have been found at all in the wilderness,-under Sinai, for instance, where they are said to have encamped for nearly twelve months together. How much wood would remain in such a neighbourhood, after a month's consumption of the city of LONDON, even at midsummer? And the ashes' of the whole Camp, with the rubbish and filth of every kind, for a population like that of LONDON, would have had to be carried out in like manner, through the midst of the crowded mass. of people. They could not surely all have gone outside the Camp for the necessities of nature, as commanded in D. xxiii. 12-14. There were the aged and

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infirm, women in childbirth, sick persons, and young children, who could not have done this. And, indeed, the command itself supposes the person to have a 'paddle' upon his weapon,' and, therefore, must be understood to apply only to the males, or, rather, only to the 600,000 warriors. But the very fact, that this direction for ensuring cleanliness,—' for Jehovah thy God walketh in the midst of thy Camp; therefore shall thy Camp be holy; that He see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee,'-would have been so limited in its application, is itself a very convincing proof of the unhistorical character of the whole narrative.

45. But how huge does this difficulty become, if, instead of taking the excessively cramped area of 1652 acres, less than three square miles, for such a Camp as this, we take the more reasonable allowance of SCOTT, who says this encampment is computed to have formed a moveable city of twelve miles square,' that is, about the size of LONDON itself,—as it might well be, considering that the population was as large as that of LONDON, and that in the Hebrew tents there were no first, second, third, and fourth stories, no crowded garrets and underground cellars. In that case, the offal of these sacrifices would have had to be carried by Aaron himself, or one of his sons, a distance of six miles; and the same difficulty would have attended each of the other transactions above-mentioned. In fact, we have to imagine the Priest having himself to carry, on his back on foot, from St. Paul's to the outskirts of the Metropolis, the 'skin, and flesh, and head, and legs, and inwards, and dung, even the whole bullock,' and the people having to carry out their rubbish in like

manner, and bring in their daily supplies of water and fuel, after first cutting down the latter where they could find it! Further, we have to imagine half a million of men going out daily-the 22,000 Levites for a distance of six miles-to the suburbs for the common necessities of nature! The supposition involves, of course, an absurdity. But it is our duty to look plain facts in the face.