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 THE PENTATEUCH: 
 
 AND ITS RELATION TO 
 
 THE JEWISH AND CHEISTIAN DISPENSATIONS. 
 
 BY ANDREWS NORTON, 
 
 LATE PROFESSOR OP SACRED HISTORY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, MASS. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 JOHN JAMES TAYLER, B.A. 
 
 MEMBER OF THE HISTORICO-THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LEIPSIC, AND PRINCIPAL 
 OP MANCHESTER NEW COLLEGE, LONDON. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 LONGMAN, GREEN, LONGMAN, ROBERTS, AND GREEN, 
 
 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1863.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY WOODFAIL AKD KIKDEB, 
 ANGEL COtHT SKINNKB STREET. 
 
 f.m 
 #i
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE ensiling dissertation is reprinted from a long note ap- 
 pended to the second volume of the late Mr. Norton's ela- 
 borate work on the " Genuineness of the Gospels." More than 
 twenty years ago the learned and pious author had adopted 
 and published conclusions respecting the age and authorship 
 of the Pentateuch, substantially identical with those which 
 the appearance of Bishop Colenso's book has recently made 
 the subject of so much eager discussion and hostile criticism. 
 It has been thought that service might be rendered to the 
 cause of religious truth, by bringing Mr. Norton's views once 
 more in a separate form before the public. There must be 
 some powerful reasons to recommend conclusions so much 
 at variance with the popular belief, when we find them 
 forcing themselves on the conviction of independent 
 inquirers in different theological spheres, and, as in the 
 case of the present essay, strenuously maintained by one 
 whose whole cast of mind was cautious and conservative, 
 and who had little sympathy with that German school of 
 thought which is regarded in this country as the special hot- 
 bed of critical heresies. Mr. Norton was by temperament 
 disinclined to rash and daring speculation. His mind was 
 essentially logical, and had been well disciplined by habits of 
 exact philological research. That he was not hasty in giving
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 the results of Ins inquiries to the world, appears from his 
 own confession, that he had committed to writing "the sub- 
 stance of his views contained in the following pages, and 
 kept them hy him without any essential change in his con- 
 clusions, for more than ten years before he submitted them to 
 the public eye. The opinions of such a man on a question of 
 criticism, which lies remote from the popular apprehension 
 and judgment, are entitled, it will be allowed, to a respectful 
 consideration. He has approached this inquiry altogether 
 from the religious side of his nature. His conclusion has 
 been wrung from him not only by the irresistible demands 
 of critical evidence, but even more by his profound reverence 
 for Christianity, and his desire to free it from the disabling 
 liabilities which he conceived an undue estimate of the his- 
 tory of the preceding dispensation had brought upon it. In- 
 deed his devoted attachment to the New Testament seems 
 at times to have made him almost unjust to the Old, and 
 has occasionally involved him in over-subtle and almost 
 sophistical distinctions to dissolve the bond of common ideas 
 and beliefs which are usually thought to connect the two. 
 
 On the origin and composition of the Pentateuch and 
 Joshua in the form in which we now possess those books, 
 the views of the editor are in all essential points the same 
 with those of Mr. Norton. Years ago they appeared to 
 him an inevitable inference from the recorded history of 
 the Israelitish commonwealth, and the traces which it 
 exhibits of a gradual development both in its sacerdotal 
 institutions and in the spiritual teachings of its prophets. 
 But he must not be supposed to acquiesce in all the state- 
 ments, or to sympathize with all the views, which Mr. 
 Norton has interwoven with the exposition of his general 
 theory. On one or two occasions he has ventured to ex-
 
 PREFACE. V 
 
 press his dissent in a few brief notes subjoined to the disser- 
 tation. He thinks it right to state here in general, that he 
 differs considerably from Mr. Norton in his conception of 
 the source and working of the religious principle in man. 
 He is unable to persuade himself that the whole of man's 
 religious convictions and trusts depends entirely on the 
 miraculously-attested mission of Jesus Christ, and on the 
 simple apprehension by the understanding of the facts involved 
 in that mission. With the sincerest acceptance of Christi- 
 anity as the religion designed by God for the final healing 
 of our collective humanity, he cannot believe that there 
 has never been any true religion outside its historical forms ; 
 but thinks with Paul, and some of the early fathers, that a 
 broader and more genial view of the spiritual nature bestowed 
 on us by God, and the recognition of a divine impulse in those 
 resistless aspirations after the infinite and eternal which charac- 
 terize the higher thought of man in all religions and all litera- 
 tures, are indispensable to an adequate appreciation of Chris- 
 tianity itself, and furnish no small portion of the evidence from 
 which its own divinity must be inferred. Thus much the 
 editor may have been permitted to say, to prevent misappre- 
 hension respecting himself. Mr. Norton's testimony on the 
 subject of the following treatise is the more valuable, because 
 it comes from a quarter not predisposed to conclusions which 
 it has been found impossible to resist. His essay is here 
 republished without the alteration or omission of a single 
 word. Every man's system of thought forms a whole by 
 itself. We cannot fairly judge of it without seeing it on 
 every side. It would be an unpardonable wrong to the 
 memory of the dead, to reproduce to the world a mutilated 
 image of their ideas, because some of them may appear to 
 certain individuals mistaken or injurious. Wherever the 
 
 A 2
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 original sources were readily accessible, the author's re- 
 ferences have been verified ; and the collation has furnished 
 convincing proof of his habitual accuracy and conscientious 
 thoroughness of investigation. 
 
 Although the views here avowed may seem startling and 
 offensive to numbers who passively acquiesce in the tra- 
 ditional dogmas of an authoritative Protestantism, those who 
 are at all acquainted with the history of theological opinion, 
 past and present, know perfectly well that they are no 
 novelty, and that men of undoubted piety and profound 
 learning have entertained them. No great weight attaches 
 to Gnostic theories in the second and third centuries, or to 
 the opinions of some Manichsean sectaries in the Middle 
 Ages, because their conclusions are known to have been 
 founded on doctrinal pre-suppositions, and in no sense to 
 have resulted from dispassionate criticism. But with the 
 application of philological -learning to theology after the 
 Reformation, inquiry took a new and more healthy direction, 
 and quite as freely, it must be confessed, among Catholics 
 as among Protestants. Carlstadt, a contemporary of Luther, 
 with his characteristic love of paradox, and without stating 
 his reasons at length, declared as early as 1520 that Moses 
 could not be the author of the Pentateuch. In the latter 
 half of the same century Masius, a Catholic jurist, of 
 Brussels, and the author of a commentary much esteemed 
 by the learned on Joshua, avowed, in the preface to that 
 work, his decided conviction that the Pentateuch in its pre- 
 sent form was not the production of Moses, but of Ezra oc 
 some other later writer, who had modernized some of the 
 ancient names. Hobbes, in his Leviathan, maintained that 
 the Pentateuch was a work concerning Moses, not by Moses, 
 admitting, however, that he may have been the author of
 
 PREFACE. Vll 
 
 passages of winch it is expressly said that he wrote them. 
 Isaac Peyrerius, a French Calvinist minister, who afterwards 
 conformed to the Catholic Church, and died a Jesuit in 
 167C, in his remarkable work on the Pre-adamites (in which 
 he endeavoured to show that Adam was only the ancestor of 
 the Israelites, and not of the whole human race) advanced 
 the theory that Moses had left journals of the passage from 
 Egypt and written down particular laws, and had prefixed 
 to these a history of the earlier ages, even of that which had 
 preceded Adam ; but that these Mosaic autographs had all 
 perished, and that our present books were made up of ex- 
 tracts derived not even immediately from them, and put 
 together at a much later period. Spinoza, the learned 
 philosophical Jew of Amsterdam, in his Tractatus Theo- 
 logico-Politicus, 1670, conjectured that the Pentateuch and 
 the other historical books of the Old Testament were re- 
 duced into their present form by Ezra, who first wrote 
 Deuteronomy and then the other four books of the Penta- 
 teuch, and attached Deuteronomy to them ; and that what is 
 defective and disconnected in these books, arose from the 
 fact that Ezra was prevented by death from putting his last 
 hand to the work, and that after his death it still underwent 
 many alterations. 
 
 So far the controversy had been left very much in the 
 hands of Jesuits and laymen. Towards the end of the seven- 
 teenth century appeared the celebrated Histoirc Critique du 
 vieux Testament, by the Pere Simon, which gave a new 
 impulse to critical inquiries. Simon ascribes to Moses him- 
 self the writing down of the Laws, but supposes that he 
 had appointed certain public annalists, after the manner of 
 the Egyptians, to record the contemporary history ; and that 
 out of the different memorials of these annalists, who wrote
 
 V1U PREFACE. 
 
 their respective portions without concert, as well as from 
 the Mosaic Law-book itself, our existing Pentateuch was 
 compiled, hut in a manner so confused that it is no longer 
 possible to discriminate the proper Mosaic elements from 
 foreign and later additions. Simon conceived that the nar- 
 ratives and genealogies contained in Genesis had been taken 
 by Moses from other written documents and oral traditions. 
 These bold speculations of the Pere Simon called forth 
 a corresponding movement in a section of the Protestant 
 Church. Le Clerc, then a Professor in the Academy of the 
 Eemonstrants at Amsterdam, published a series of observa- 
 tions on the work of Simon in the well-known Sentimens de 
 quelques Theologiens de Hollande, etc., which appeared 
 without his name in 1685. The heresy of the pupil much 
 exceeded that of the master. In his sixth letter Le Clerc 
 endeavoured to show that our actual Pentateuch was pro- 
 bably the \vork of the Israelitish priest, who, after the disso- 
 lution of the Northern kingdom, was sent by the King of 
 Assyria from Babylon to instruct the new colonists in the 
 worship of Jehovah ; that this priest, .either by himself or 
 with assistants, drew up an account of the Creation, and 
 put together extracts from the Israelitish histories and the 
 Mosaic Law-book ; and that in this way our Pentateuch 
 originated. Some years afterwards Le Clerc abandoned 
 these wild notions, and in a dissertation prefixed to his com- 
 mentaries on the Old Testament (1693) ascribed the whole 
 Pentateuch, with the exception of some few later interpola- 
 tions, to Moses replying to the doubts and difficulties which 
 he had himself been active in raising. After this time, 
 the question lay at rest for the greater part of the 
 eighteenth century. The high reputation of Carpzovius's 
 learned introduction to the Old Testament, in which the
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 received view of the PeDtateuch was strenuously maintained, 
 contributed to silence questionings on the subject in 
 Germany. In Holland the learned were now chiefly en- 
 gaged with classical and oriental philology. Of English 
 divines, Hody and Kennicptt had employed themselves 
 on the original texts of the Old Testament ; Lowth, and 
 Blayney, and Newcome were busy with the prophets : and 
 among the Dissenters, Lardner and Benson were exclusively 
 occupied with the New Testament and the evidences of 
 (Christianity; and Taylor, whose exact Hebrew scholarship 
 would have well qualified him for the critical investigation 
 of the subject, never ventured to question the traditional 
 theory of the Pentateuch. Far into the latter half of the 
 last century no serious doubts appear to have generally 
 pervaded the theological mind of Europe. Michaelis and 
 Eichhorn, the highest authorities, affirmed to the last the 
 antiquity and substantial authenticity of the Five Books 
 of Moses. 
 
 About the middle of the last century a work appeared at 
 Paris, which, though immediately applicable to Genesis alone, 
 exerted a great influence on the subsequent criticism of the 
 entire Pentateuch and of Joshua. Astruc, a French phy- 
 sician, had shown by a careful analysis of Genesis, that 
 Moses, whom he still supposed to be the author of the work, 
 had made use of different documents in constructing it, 
 which might be clearly traced by certain discriminative 
 marks adhering to them through all their combinations. 
 Eichhorn adopted this view, without its at all affecting his 
 belief that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. Several 
 German scholars, at the end of the last and the commence- 
 ment of the present century, gave to this discovery of 
 Astruc's a wider application, extended it beyond Genesis 
 into the following books, and began to doubt the Mosaic
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 origin of, at least, the greater part of the Pentateuch. De 
 Wette, in his Contributions to the Introduction to the Old 
 Testament, published at Jena, in 1806 and 7, when he was 
 a very young man, with a commendatary preface by Griesbach, 
 carried these new views, which had long been fermenting in 
 the minds of the learned, with extreme fearlessness to their 
 farthest extent. He supposed that the Pentateuch consisted 
 of different parts, which had been written down indepen- 
 dently of each other, and that none of these was older than 
 the time of David ; that its latest addition was Deuteronomy, 
 which he ascribed to the time of Josiah ; and that the Pen- 
 tateuch, as a whole, did not receive its final form till some- 
 what later still. The history contained in the Pentateuch, he 
 regarded as unreliable, and its primitive legislation he supposed 
 to have been transmitted from an earlier age through oral 
 tradition. 
 
 These bold views De Wette "qualified to some extent 
 in the latter years of his life; but they left behind them 
 a deep and uneffaceable effect on the ensuing criticism of 
 the Pentateuch. Meanwhile, the orthodox view was firmly 
 upheld by Jahn, Rosenmiiller, and Hug, and in England by 
 Graves and Home ; and to the present day, it still finds 
 zealous and learned representatives abroad in Hengstenberg 
 and Havernick. Nevertheless, among those who are un- 
 biassed by dogmatic considerations, and bring learning and 
 criticism to the solution of the problem, there is a remark- 
 able unanimity as to certain general results which they 
 conceive to be established beyond all reasonable doubt, 
 though they differ very considerably from each other in the 
 detail of applying them. De Wette, Stiihelin, and Lengerke, 
 Tuch, Ewald, Bertheau, and Bleek, are all obliged to admit, 
 from the unanswerable evidence of internal structure, that 
 the Pentateuch is a very composite work, consisting of
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 materials of different age and authorship, and put into the 
 form in which we now have it at a comparatively recent date, 
 towards the end of the monarchy, perhaps not before the 
 Exile. On all these points they substantially agree; they 
 are at variance with each other as to the number of the 
 primary documents which have been here combined, their 
 mutual relation, their respective age and probable author- 
 ship, and as to the amount of genuine Mosaic elements, 
 whether originally written down, or only transmitted by 
 tradition, which have been preserved in the so-called books 
 of Moses. Even the late Baron Bunsen, in his Bibelwerk, 
 while he earnestly clings to the authenticity of the Penta- 
 teuch, acknowledges that there is evidence of two distinct pe- 
 riods of legislation, marked by a different character, within the 
 limits of the life of Moses himself, the first more purely ethical, 
 embodied in the Ten Commandments at Sinai, the other 
 descending into legal and ritual enactments in the Transjor- 
 danic district, not long before his death ; and that around 
 this nucleus, essentially Mosaic, accretions continually ga- 
 thered at Shiloh, and during the whole time of the Judges 
 and the Kings the progressive accumulation not ceasing 
 till the reign of Hezekiah, about 700 B.C. Bleek and Ber- 
 theau are decidedly conservative in their theological tenden- 
 cies, and would properly be classed with the moderate Evan- 
 gelical school.* To the list of those who have occupied 
 themselves with this question, must be added the name of 
 Dr. Davidson, who, in the first volume of his Introduction to 
 the Old Testament, now in course of publication, has gone 
 into it with a freedom and copiousness of research as yet 
 unsurpassed by any English theologian. To his pages the 
 
 * See Bleek's posthumous work, Einhituny ins A . I 7 ., from which some of 
 the materials for the preceding history of the controversy have been taken.
 
 Xll PREFACE. 
 
 English reader is referred for ample information about 
 details which are nowhere else to be found. 
 
 In conclusion, it will perhaps be asked, what is the advan- 
 tage of inquiries like these ? Would it not be the wiser 
 course to abstain from unsettling the public mind by raising 
 them ? The proper answer is, that solid, healthy instruc- 
 tion can only be based on truth ; and that if such inquiries 
 honestly conducted lead to truth, to distrust them is to dis- 
 trust the God of Truth. If the Father of our Spirits has 
 led us on step by step to the truth, through the inspirations 
 and experiences of Hebrew prophets, let us gratefully and 
 reverentially acknowledge the fact, without presumptuously 
 cavilling about the way in which He has seen fit to bring 
 it to pass. The modus operandi belongs to Him, not to us. 
 A clearer insight into the actual composition of the Bible, 
 and a consequent dispersion of the mischievous error of a 
 mechanical, verbal inspiration, will help to extinguish for 
 ever those fruitless controversies which have split up the 
 Christian world into incurable feuds by inflating every little 
 sect with the fond conceit that it could claim for its own 
 particular dogmas the warrant of Divine authority. When 
 the excitement of early prejudice has subsided, it will be 
 seen, that the critical inquiries which search into the primary 
 elements, the constructive laws, and the manifold combinations 
 of a literary composition, must assist the understanding, and 
 draw out the latent significance and beauty of the Bible, as 
 of every other ancient book. Honestly pursued into their 
 natural consequences, they must exalt rather than deaden 
 the devotional sentiment of the reader, by transferring his 
 reverence from " the letter that killeth " to the " spirit which 
 maketh alive."
 
 ON THE PENTATEUCH, 
 
 AND ITS RELATION TO 
 
 THE JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN DISPENSATIONS. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 
 
 SUCH is the connection between Christianity and the Jewish 
 religion, that the divine origin of the former implies the 
 divine origin of the latter. Christianity, if I may so speak, 
 has made itself responsible for the fact, that the Jewish 
 religion, like itself, proceeded immediately from God. But 
 Christianity has not made itself responsible for the genuine- 
 ness, the authenticity, or the moral and religious teachings, 
 of that collection of books by Jewish writers, which con- 
 stitutes the Old Testament. Taken collectively, it may 
 appear, on the one hand, that those books possess a high and 
 very peculiar character, which affords strong evidence of the 
 divine origin of the Jewish religion; and it may appear, on 
 the other hand, that they also contain much that is incre- 
 dible, and much that does not approve itself to our under- 
 standing and moral feelings. But if the latter be the case, 
 it is a fact with which Christianity is not concerned. Our 
 religion is no more answerable for the genuineness, or the 
 contents, of a series of Jewish writings, dating from an un- 
 certain period, and continued till after the return of a part 
 of the nation from the Babylonish captivity, than it is re- 
 
 B
 
 sponsible for the genuineness and contents of the works 
 ascribed to Christian authors from the second century to 
 the eleventh. The truth of our religion is no more involved 
 in the truth of all that is related in the Books of Judges, 
 of Kings, and of Chronicles, or in the Pentateuch, suppos- 
 ing the Pentateuch not to he the work of Moses, than it is 
 in the truth of all that is related in the Ecclesiastical Histo- 
 ries of Eusebius, Sozomen, and Theodoret. 
 
 If these propositions be true, they go far to remove those 
 difficulties, which not only embarrassed the early Christians, 
 but which have continued to embarrass Christians in every 
 age. But if they be true, a great error has been committed 
 both by Christians and by unbelievers. The most popular 
 and effective objections of unbelievers have been directed 
 not against Christianity, but against the Old Testament, on 
 the ground that Christianity is responsible for the truth, and 
 for the moral and religious character, of all its contents ; and, 
 instead of repelling so untenable a proposition, believers 
 have likewise assumed it; or rather they have earnestly 
 affirmed its correctness, and proceeded to argue upon it 
 as they could. 
 
 Thus the books composing the Old Testament have been 
 stripped of their true character, which renders them an 
 object of the greatest curiosity and interest; and a false 
 character has been ascribed to them, which brings them into 
 perpetual collision with the moral and religious conceptions 
 of men of more enlightened times than those of their 
 writers, with the principles of rational criticism in the inter- 
 pretation of language, and even with the progress of the 
 physical sciences. Insuperable objections to the character 
 ascribed to them, objections such as presented themselves to 
 the minds of the early catholic Christians and the Gnostics, 
 lie spread over the surface of these writings. To those ob- 
 jections, thus obvious, familiarity may render us insensible 
 or indifferent. We may pass over them without regard. We 
 may rest in the notion that they admit of some explanation. 
 We may acquiesce, with more or less distrust, in theories 
 and expositions, by which it has been attempted to gloss
 
 them over. But, in proportion as these books are critically 
 examined, and as knowledge and correct modes of thinking 
 advance, new objections start up. These, from their novelty, 
 often receive a disproportioned share of notice; and much 
 is thought to be done, if the force of some one that has re- 
 cently become an object of attention can be broken ; while 
 difficulties more important are comparatively neglected. 
 
 Everyone knows for how long a time there was a struggle 
 between the authority, falsely ascribed to the Old Testament, 
 and the true system of the planetary motions. It is only 
 within the present century that it may be considered as 
 having ceased, so far as the Eoman Catholic church that is, 
 so far as the majority of Christians is concerned. In our 
 day the discoveries in geology have, in like manner, been 
 encountered by the narrative given in Genesis of the Creation. 
 Attempts, which to many seem abortive, have been made to 
 reconcile them to each other. But, in the mean time, a 
 greater difficulty, as implying greater ignorance of the true 
 constitution of the physical world, has attracted compara- 
 tively little notice, though it occurs likewise in the account 
 of the Creation. It is there taught, according to the obvious 
 meaning of language, that the blue vault of heaven is a 
 solid firmament, separating the waters which are above it 
 from the waters on the earth, and that in this firmament the 
 heavenly bodies are placed.* 
 
 The supposed necessity of maintaining the truth of all 
 that the writers of the Old Testament have said or implied 
 has operated, as might be expected, in a manner the most 
 prejudicial to a firm and rational faith in Christianity. The 
 philosopher, who cannot but regard many of the representa- 
 tions of the Deity in the Old Testament as inconsistent with 
 
 * ' ' And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under 
 the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament : and it was 
 so. And God called the firmament heaven. .... And God said, Let 
 
 there be lights in the firmament of the heaven And God set 
 
 them in the firmament of the heaven to give lighten the earth." Genesis i. 
 8, 14, 17. Compare the account of the Deluge, in which it is said, that "the 
 windows of heaven were opened ; " and Psalm cslviii. 4, where ' ' the waters 
 above the heavens" are called upon to praise the Lord. 
 
 B 2
 
 his character ; the enlightened Christian, who is unable to 
 helieve that God commanded the indiscriminate massacre of 
 men, women, and children, hy his chosen people, in order to 
 prepare them for his service ; the moralist, who perceives 
 that the principles and feelings, expressed or approved in 
 portions of these hooks, helong to an unenlightened and 
 barbarous age ; the careful inquirer, who finds that there 
 are parts of the history which he cannot receive as true, 
 because they involve contradictions, or are contrary to all 
 probability, he, in a word, who, examining without preju- 
 dice, sees the many objections to which the Old Testament 
 is exposed, when put forward as an authoritative guide in 
 religion, morals, and history, (even if such authority be not 
 claimed for it in the physical sciences,) is told that, if he 
 would be a Christian, he must renounce his objections, and 
 that it is a part of his religion to receive the Old Testament 
 as bearing such a character. The solutions of the objec- 
 tions to its supposed character, which have been offered by 
 wise and good men, are often such that it is difficult to be- 
 lieve them to have been satisfactory to the proposer. They 
 proceed on false principles, or assume facts without founda- 
 tion. They are often superficial, evasive, or incoherent. 
 They appear to result from a feeling of the necessity of say- 
 ing something. They are often such as can be regarded by 
 any one as admissible only on the ground, that there must 
 be some mode of explaining away all such objections, and, 
 therefore, that there is, in every case, a presumption in favour 
 of a particular explanation, when no other can be found so 
 plausible. Thus, then, the truth of Christianity having been 
 made to appear as implicated in the truth of a position that 
 cannot be maintained, its evidences, though their intrinsic 
 validity has not been weakened, have been deprived of much 
 of their power over the minds of men. 
 
 In expressing these opinions, one is but giving form and 
 voice to the ideas and feelings that exist in the minds of a 
 large portion of intelligent believers. There is nothing in 
 them of novelty or boldness. One is but saying what many 
 have thought before him with more or less distinctness.
 
 13 
 
 for mentioning that the substance of what folfows was 
 originally committed to writing more than ten years ago (in 
 the summer of 1831), and that I have not since found occa- 
 sion to make any essential change in my conclusions. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 ' OX THE EVIDENCES AND THE DESIGN OF THE JEWISH 
 DISPENSATION. 
 
 THE belief that Moses was an inspired messenger of God 
 follows from our belief in the divine origin of Christianity. 
 He was, we suppose, miraculously commissioned to give to 
 the Jews a knowledge of God, as the Maker and Governor 
 of all things, and such other just conceptions of Him as 
 they were capable of receiving ; and to teach them to regard 
 themselves as having been separated from the rest of men, 
 by having been called in a peculiar manner to worship and 
 serve Him. Beside the attestation to the divine origin of 
 the Jewish dispensation furnished by Christianity, there are 
 independent proofs of it, to which, without dwelling upon 
 them at length, it may be worth while to advert. 
 
 When we consider what the Jews were in other respects, 
 the simple, direct knowledge which they possessed of God, 
 as the sole Maker and Governor of the Universe, presenting 
 so striking a contrast to the mythology of the most enlight- 
 ened portion of the ancient world, affords the strongest 
 confirmation of what they asserted, that its source was a 
 divine revelation. This appears more clearly, when we 
 reflect, that the idea of God was not with them a matter 
 of speculation among a few philosophers, but formed the 
 fundamental doctrine of their popular faith. The mere 
 fact, likewise, of their most extraordinary belief, that they 
 had been separated from all other nations, by being called to 
 worship Him, admits, apparently, of no other solution than 
 that their belief was true. The high and just representa-
 
 u 
 
 tions of ihe Deity, the exalted language of piety, and the 
 noble and enlightened views of duty, which we find in the 
 Scriptures of the Jews, when compared with what appears 
 in other portions of those Scriptures, with the prevailing 
 character of the Jews themselves, and with that of other 
 ancient nations, can, as far as we are able to discern, be 
 referred only to the deep influences of a divine revelation 
 upon their minds. We perceive these influences in the 
 formation of poetical writings of a kind to which nothing 
 similar can be produced. They are compositions of the 
 most marked religious character, altogether unlike the 
 poetry of other ancient nations. The individuals addressed 
 are throughout regarded under one aspect, as distinguished 
 from all other men by the peculiar relation in which they 
 stood towards God. In the more eminent of these works, 
 in those, for example, which have been ascribed to Isaiah, 
 \ve perceive, that the powerful mind, the strong feelings, and 
 splendid imagination of the writer, had been thoroughly 
 wrought upon by religious convictions, which we cannot 
 reasonably ascribe to the unaided progress of the human 
 intellect among the Jews. Looking to the time when that 
 people were already in possession of those wonderful books, 
 we have to cast our view back to a period lighted only by a 
 few gleams of authentic history. Here, we see men collect- 
 ing in groups to listen to the poems of Homer, in which the 
 objects of their worship are pictured with the vices and 
 passions of the gross and ferocious chieftains of the age ; 
 there, we behold the gigantic monuments which Egyptian 
 superstition had raised to its monster gods ; all around is 
 the darkness and error of polytheism, in one form or other, 
 except where a small people rise distinctly to view, separate 
 from the rest of mankind ; a people of which there are jnow 
 no famous monuments, but its own continued existence and 
 its sacred writings. Among the Jews, long before Socrates 
 would have taught the Athenians the goodness and provi- 
 dence of the gods, there was a familiar conception of God ; 
 and their prophets could thus address them : 
 
 " Have ye not known ? Have ye not heard ? Jehovah is
 
 15 
 
 the eternal God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He 
 faints not, neither is weary. There is no searching of his 
 understanding." 
 
 " Thus says Jehovah, the king of Israel, I am the first, 
 and I am the last, and beside me there is no God." 
 
 "Let the wicked man forsake his way, and the un- 
 righteous man his thoughts, and let him return to Jehovah, 
 and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he 
 will abundantly pardon. 
 
 " For your thoughts are not my thoughts, nor your ways 
 my ways, says Jehovah. 
 
 " For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my 
 ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your 
 thoughts." 
 
 They who habitually expressed these and corresponding 
 conceptions of the Supreme Being, believed that they had 
 derived them from express revelation ; and there appears no 
 good reason for doubting the correctness of their belief. 
 
 But it is not merely in the more remarkable portions of 
 Hebrew poetry, that we find conceptions which we can 
 account for only by referring them to a divine revelation. 
 The Jews have left us a large collection of books, most of 
 them in existence five centuries before Christ, throughout 
 which, with the exception of* two (the Song of Solomon, so 
 called, and the Book of Esther), there runs a constant re- 
 cognition of the being, providence, and moral government 
 of God. The Old Testament, so insulated from all other 
 productions of the human mind in ancient times, presents a 
 great phenomenon in the intellectual history of our race. 
 We may explain it at once, if we admit the divine origin of 
 the Jewish religion ; and what other solution but this can 
 be offered ? 
 
 There is another striking consideration. We can discern 
 nothing but the fact, that the religion of the Jews had been 
 confirmed to them by indisputable evidence, as a revelation 
 from God, which could have wrought in their minds such 
 an invincible conviction of its truth, as to have preserved
 
 10 
 
 them a distinct people from a period beyond any connected 
 and authentic records of profane history to the present day. 
 In maintaining their faith they were for more than twenty 
 centuries exposing themselves to the outrages of Heathens 
 and Christians ; to a persecution which even now has not 
 everywhere subsided. Driven from their native soil, scat- 
 tered among enemies, insulted, trampled upon, cruelly 
 wronged, they have still clung to their religion, the cause of 
 their sufferings, with inveterate constancy. From an anti- 
 quity which would be shrouded in darkness, were not a 
 dim light cast upon it by their own history, this small people 
 has flowed down an unmingled stream amid the stormy 
 waves of the world. For a phenomenon so marvellous it is 
 idle to assign any ordinary causes. One cause alone ex- 
 plains it. We must regard it as an inexplicable wonder, or 
 we must believe, that this people were, as they profess, 
 separated from the rest of men by God, and this in a manner 
 so evident, solemn, and effectual, that the ineffaceable belief 
 of the fact has been transmitted from generation to genera- 
 tion, as an essential characteristic of the race. 
 
 Thus we perceive, that, beside the attestation of Chris- 
 tianity to its truth, the Jewish dispensation has independent 
 evidence of its own ; evidence, which, so intimate is the 
 connection between them, is reflected on Christianity itself. 
 
 If it be asked, what was the design of the Jewish dispen- 
 sation ? the answer seems to be, that its main, I do not say 
 its sole, purpose was to serve as a groundwork for Chris- 
 tianity. Supposing that no nation like the Jews had existed, 
 and that polytheism had prevailed throughout the world, a 
 messenger from God, such as Jesus Christ, must have had 
 no small difficulty to encounter on the very threshold of his 
 ministry in making his character and office understood by 
 men ignorant of God. If he had appeared, for instance, at 
 Athens or Rome, the very annunciation of his claims to 
 authority would have been a sudden and strange attack on 
 the whole established system of religion. A new and vast 
 conception, that of God, must have been formed in the
 
 But he, who discusses the errors that have been connected 
 with our religion, for the purpose of separating them from 
 it, and preventing their further hindrance to its reception 
 and influence, must prosecute his labour under a great dis- 
 advantage ; for he is liable to be altogether misunderstood 
 or misrepresented. There are two classes of writers, who, 
 with wholly opposite views, have called attention to these 
 errors. One class consists of those who have confounded 
 them with our religion, who regard them as essential parts 
 of it, who direct their reasoning or their ridicule against 
 them, and, in exposing them, consider themselves as con- 
 futing the claims of Christianity. The other class is com- 
 posed of such as, with a deep sense of the value of our 
 religion, are solicitous to remove from it all that has ob- 
 scured its character and weakened its power. The purpose 
 of one class is the very opposite of that of the other ; but 
 they agree as to the nature of the errors. By both they 
 are equally considered as indefensible ; and often this cor- 
 respondence alone is regarded ; and the most eaniest defen- 
 ders of Christianity have been confounded with its enemies, 
 by such Christians as agree with its enemies in viewing 
 those errors as essential to our faith. 
 
 It is, at the same time, not to be doubted, that he, who 
 has been compelled to renounce many prejudices respecting 
 Christianity is in danger of becoming unable to discriminate 
 between what is true and what is false, and, consequently, 
 of renouncing our religion altogether. As he relinquishes 
 one doctrine after another, which he had held as a part of 
 his faith, a sceptical turn of mind is likely to be formed ; a 
 prejudice may grow up against whatever has been received 
 as true ; his judgment may become bewildered, and he may 
 lose confidence in its decisions, except when they favour un- 
 belief; while, having been led wrong by the guides whom 
 he had trusted, he is also deprived of that reliance on the 
 judgment of others, which is so often important or necessary 
 to the strength of our convictions, and even to the formation 
 of our opinions. All this may take place in the mind of one
 
 whose intentions and feelings are wholly honest. Eeligious 
 truth, which so many have been seeking for so many cen- 
 turies, and which, amid the vast diversity and opposition of 
 opinions, it is clear that so few can have found, is not to be 
 secured by mere honesty of intention and feeling. To sepa- 
 rate from Christianity what has been erroneously connected 
 with it, and what has become incorporated with the religion 
 of many Christians I mean, to effect the separation in one's 
 own mind is not an easy task. It is not strange that some, 
 whose attention has been strongly directed to those errors, 
 should have failed to accomplish it ; that they should have 
 wanted the learning and judgment, the power of discrimina- 
 tion, the integrity of purpose, the just conception of the 
 essential character of Christianity, and the deep sense of its 
 value, which are prerequisites and sufficient safeguards in 
 the inquiry; and that, having begun as reformers, they 
 should have ended in being unbelievers. 
 
 Equally by those who consecrate the errors of Christians 
 as parts of Christianity, and by those who reject our reli- 
 gion on account of them, a rational Christian is liable to be 
 questioned, how it is that he retains his Christian faith, 
 while he puts aside so much that Christians have believed ; 
 and it may be suggested to him by both parties, that, if he 
 wiH but follow out his principles, he will become an infidel. 
 But the gross errors which a great majority cff Christians 
 have fallen into, tend in no degree to invalidate the evidences 
 of Christianity. The inquiry concerning those errors has 
 no bearing on the intrinsic weight of its evidences. That 
 the professed disciples of Christ, through eighteen centuries, 
 havo not been miraculously divested of the infirmities and 
 vices of their fellow-men, and thus secured from religious 
 error, is a fact, which, however striking or shocking are the 
 illustrations that may be given of it, cannot be brought to 
 disprove the proposition, that Christ was a teacher from God. 
 It does not follow that there is no truth, or that there is no 
 evidence sufficient to establish the truth, concerning the 
 highest objects of human thought, because a very great
 
 majority of our race has fallen into essential mistakes con- 
 cerning them. Christianity may he true, notwithstanding 
 the false doctrines that have accumulated round it ; just as 
 it is true, that the heavenly bodies exist and move, notwith- 
 standing the prevailing theories concerning them from the 
 beginning of science to the sixteenth century were wholly 
 erroneous. 
 
 It is evident from what has been said, that he who is about 
 to direct his attention to the errors which men have fallen 
 into respecting religion, should settle in his mind what re- 
 ligion is, and what Christianity is, and in what their value 
 consists. It may be said, that this should be a result of the 
 inquiry, not a preliminary to it ; that we must first ascertain 
 how far Christians have been in error, before we can deter- 
 mine what is to be received as true. But such is not the 
 case. Reasoning philosophically, we are not first to inquire 
 into what men have believed, whether correctly or not ; we 
 are to look only at the essential considerations which should 
 determine our judgment concerning religion and Christianity. 
 
 All religion is founded solely on two facts, the existence 
 of God, and the immortality of man. Our relations to the 
 Infinite Spirit and to the endless future alone constitute us 
 religious beings. If we knew, that there was no G-od and 
 Father of the Universe, and that we were to perish when we 
 die, there could be no religion. It is through faith in God 
 and immortality, that man ceases to appear as a blind, 
 suffering, short-lived creature of earth, and becomes trans- 
 formed into a being, capable of the noblest views and 
 aspirations, of unlimited progress in virtue and happiness ; 
 having a permanent tenure in the Universe, the eternal care 
 of God. 
 
 Religion must not be confounded with superstition. The 
 belief of error is not the same thing as the belief of truth. 
 The imperfection of language has in this, as in a thousand 
 other cases, led to a great mistake ; for in one sense of the 
 word religion, we apply it to the superstitions, or false 
 religions, that have existed in the world ; and men have, in
 
 consequence, classed them together with true religion, as if 
 they all possessed a character essentially alike. But true 
 religion and false religion are essentially different. 
 
 It has been vaguely and erroneously said, that all men, 
 whether enlightened by revelation or not, have a belief in 
 God ; and this belief has been represented as instinctive, or 
 intuitive, as a matter of consciousness, as a part of our 
 nature, or as necessarily resulting from our nature. The 
 proposition has no other foundation than this, that all men 
 are compelled to recognize the fact, that there are powers, 
 that is, agencies, without them, stronger than they, by which 
 their actions are controlled, and their condition essentially 
 affected. To these powers, by an act of imagination and 
 association, similar to that which leads a child to love the 
 inanimate object that pleases it, or to be angry with that 
 which hurts it, men have transferred moral qualities, and 
 thus personified them ; they have endued inanimate objects, 
 with life and worshipped them, as the sun, moon, and stars, 
 or they have ascribed the effects experienced to some 
 imaginary being, or to some being whose power had been 
 felt on earth. But the obvious recognition of an indis- 
 putable fact, accompanied by one of the most ordinary 
 operations of the mind, is not religion. It does not con- 
 stitute faith in God. The believer in the Egyptian mythology, 
 or in the fabulous gods of Greece and Rome, was not a 
 believer in God. There was nothing in his opinions or 
 imaginations to produce those sentiments, or that character, 
 which are the proper result of a Christian's faith. The 
 heathen gods were but rulers of the same essential nature 
 with earthly despots. The belief in them was not ele- 
 vating but degrading. The heathen religions consecrated 
 vice in their very solemnities, but offered no encourage- 
 ments to virtue, and no consolations or hopes to suffering 
 man. The Jewish and Christian Scriptures truly represent 
 idolatry, not as it has been conceived of in modern times, 
 as an imperfect developement of true religion, but as its. 
 opposite.
 
 9 
 
 There is no instinctive, intuitive, or direct knowledge of 
 the truths of religion ; neither of the being of God, nor of 
 our own immortality. It is scarcely a matter of dispute, if 
 indeed it be at all a matter of dispute, that of our own im- 
 mortality, the great fact which changes the aspect of all 
 things and assimilates man to the Divinity ; the fact, without 
 the belief, or, at least, without the hope of which, there can be 
 no religion, that of our own immortality we can be assured 
 only by revelation. It may indeed be the case, that a being 
 of perfect reason might, from the phenomena of the present 
 state known to man, infer not only the existence of God, but 
 our power of attaining an immortal existence. But man is 
 not a being of perfect reason ; and of the individuals who 
 compose our race there are comparatively very few who 
 have a wide acquaintance with the phenomena of the present 
 state, or who are capable of reasoning on any subject remote 
 from their common experience. It is not necessary, however, 
 to inquire, as if the question were unsettled, what the col- 
 lective wisdom of men, unassisted by revelation, can effect 
 toward producing a conviction of the essential truths of 
 religion. The question has been answered. It is answered 
 in the teachings of Socrates, and in the writings of Plato, 
 Aristotle, and Cicero. They had no distinct conception of 
 God, as God is conceived of by an enlightened Christian. 
 They had either no belief, or no confident belief, of the 
 personal immortality of individual men. If any one doubt 
 these statements, they require explanation and discussion. 
 But there is something more to be said. The question is 
 further answered and this answer requires no explanation, 
 for it admits of no controversy by the state of religion 
 among their contemporaries, by the general absence of any 
 conception of God, or of any assurance of immortality. It 
 is answered in the mythology of the Hindoos, in the adora- 
 tion of human divinities by the Buddhists, degenerating into 
 the worship of the Dalai-lama, and in the other superstitions 
 which, in ancient and modern times, have overspread the 
 earth where the light of revelation has not shone. 
 
 Undoubtedly, there are very noble conceptions of the
 
 10 
 
 Divinity, mixed, however, with much that is altogether in- 
 congruous, in the speculations of ancient sages. Such con- 
 ceptions appear, for example, in the writings of Plato, and 
 in the Vedas and other sacred books of the Hindoos. But 
 the question is not, what a few philosophers, unenlightened 
 hy revelation, have "believed or imagined, but what the gene- 
 rality of men, unenlightened by revelation, have believed or 
 imagined. However strong the evidence of religious truth 
 from the phenomena of nature may be in the abstract, and 
 very strong undoubtedly it is, yet the fact is proved by the 
 experience of the world, it is proved, I believe, by the per- 
 sonal experience of everyone who has thought and felt 
 deeply on the subject, that men, left to themselves, are in- 
 capable of grasping and estimating it, and of resting satisfied 
 in the conclusions to which it leads, conclusions, so re- 
 mote from the interests and passions of this world, so beyond 
 the sphere of our ordinary experience, and sometimes so 
 apparently contradictory to -it. Who, not instructed by re- 
 velation, can look on death, and feel assured of immortality ? 
 Upon this evidence alone religion has never been established 
 among men. This alone has never solved the difficulties 
 nor quieted the doubts of one anxious and philosophical 
 inquirer. It has never defined the idea of God, as God is 
 revealed by Christianity. It has never afforded any one a 
 conviction of his being formed for eternal progress in im- 
 provement and happiness. 
 
 Our belief in God, then, as the Father of men, and our 
 belief in our own immortality, truths, which may well seem 
 to be too vast for human comprehension, if we were left 
 to our unassisted powers, rest on our belief, that their 
 evidence is the testimony of God through the mission and 
 teachings of Jesus Christ. I say his mission; for Ms 
 mission from God to men, if that fact be established, is alone 
 a virtual revelation of the essential truths of religion. In 
 this age of scepticism and false philosophy, it may be said, 
 that such a communication from God to men is hard to be 
 conceived of or believed. Be it so, but let it be remembered, 
 that on the decision of the question, whether such a com-
 
 11 
 
 munication have been made or not, depends the existence of 
 religion among men ; I do not say of superstition ; that 
 flourishes rankly \vhen its growth is not overshadowed and 
 kept down by religion; and still less do I speak of the 
 temporary existence of religious mysticism, which is but 
 another word for feelings, the result of education and habit, 
 for which no reason can be given. Religion is either 
 identified with Christianity, or subsists in those who reject 
 Christianity, through its still remaining power; as an ever- 
 green severed from its root may for a time retain the appear- 
 ance of life. 
 
 The fundamental truths of religion, as taught by Chris- 
 tianity, necessarily imply the fact, or, in other words, involve 
 the truth, that we shall always be subject to the moral 
 government of God ; to that government which connects 
 happiness with the observance of those laws that are essen- 
 tial to the nature of every moral being, and suffering with 
 their transgression. Under this aspect the practical bearing 
 of religion appears. Thus, when assured of the truths 
 which it teaches, we know all that is necessary for our virtue 
 and happiness. We know what may inspire the most 
 glorious hopes, what may animate us in every effort for our 
 own improvement and the service of our fellow-creatures; 
 we know all that we need to strengthen us for the endless 
 course that lies before us. 
 
 With these truths settled in our minds, we may enter 
 without anxiety on the examination of the many and 
 opposite opinions, true and false, which different parties 
 among Christians have connected with their faith in Chris- 
 tianity. In rejecting far the larger number of them as un- 
 founded, an enlightened and well-informed man will perceive 
 that he is merely arriving at conclusions, to which the pro- 
 gress of the human mind in knowledge and in correct modes 
 of thinking has been gradually conducting us; and that 
 this progress, while it has undermined those errors, has 
 tended equally to confirm the evidence of the essential prin- 
 ciples of religion. He will do honour to his predecessors, 
 who, without discerning all the truth, toiled and suffered in
 
 12 
 
 opening the way to it. He will not regard himself as 
 superior to those, through whose labours his intellect has 
 been formed, because through their assistance he has ad- 
 vanced somewhat further than they had done. He will not 
 fancy that in the present age there has been a great out- 
 break of wisdom, from some hitherto unknown source, 
 which is to sweep away all that has been established and 
 revered. Nor in his mind will pernicious errors and essen- 
 tial truths be so bound together by his prejudices that he 
 cannot free himself from the former without loosening the 
 latter from their hold. 
 
 Far from it. Every truth concerning our religion and its 
 evidences is connected with and confirms every other : and 
 in removing an error we are establishing a truth. Then 
 only may we hope that the evidences of Christianity will 
 be allowed their full weight, and the efficacy of its doctrines 
 be obstructed only by the imperfections and passions essen- 
 tial to our nature, when it shall be presented as it is, 
 separate from all the erroneous opinions and false doctrines 
 that have been connected with it. As one truth confirms 
 another, so one error gives birth to another, often producing 
 a numerous brood ; and the system into which any im- 
 portant error enters, as an essential part, becomes either 
 corrupted throughout, or inconsistent with itself. 
 
 These observations will not be regarded as out of place, 
 when it is perceived that the inquiry on which we are about 
 to enter leads to conclusions, different from the opinions 
 which have been professed by the generality of Christians ; 
 though, unquestionably, the considerations on which those 
 conclusions are founded have presented themselves to the 
 minds of a great portion of intelligent believers. 
 
 I will venture to add a word or two more, having some- 
 what of a personal bearing. It seems to me a weighty 
 offence against society, to advance and maintain opinions 
 on any important subject, especially any subject connected 
 with religion, without carefully weighing them, and without 
 feeling assured, as far as may be, that we shall find no- 
 reason to change our belief. I may be excused, therefore,
 
 17 
 
 minds of men before they could have a notion of the pecu- 
 liar office of him who addressed them. When we look at 
 the state of either city, it seems scarcely possible that he 
 should have been able to collect an audience, except of such 
 as might have flocked to him as an extraordinary magician 
 or theurgist. If we imagine him to have been listened to 
 by some with deference, as a religious teacher, yet how large 
 a portion of such hearers would have confounded the idea 
 of the Supreme Being, to whom there is nothing similar or 
 second, with that of Jupiter, to whom, in a very limited sense, 
 and in the language of poetical flattery, they had been ac- 
 customed to apply such expressions ; and how many might 
 have mistaken the messenger himself for Mercury, or some 
 other god, come down in the likeness of a man.* There 
 would have been no preparation for his advent, no expecta- 
 tion of it, no previous conception of its nature. It would 
 have been an insulated, incomprehensible event, connected 
 with nothing in their history or their former belief. The 
 ground would not have been cleared for exhibiting before 
 mankind the marvellous transactions of such a ministry as 
 that of Christ. 
 
 This view of the important purpose of the Jewish dispen- 
 sation may further tend to assure us of its divine origin. 
 But to maintain that Moses was a minister of God is one 
 thing, and to maintain that he was the author of the Penta- 
 teuch is another. So far is the truth of either proposition 
 from being involved in that of the other, that in order to 
 render it evident that Moses was from God, it may be ne- 
 cessary to prove that the books which profess to contain a 
 history of his ministry were not written by him, and do not 
 afford an authentic account of it! Whether this be so or 
 not, may appear in some degree from what follows, in which 
 I shall examine the probability of the supposition that these 
 books were written by Moses. 
 
 * Actsxiv. 11, 12.
 
 18 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 ON THE HISTORICAL EVIDENCE RESPECTING THE AUTHOR- 
 SHIP OF THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 IN determining -whether an ancient work is to be ascribed 
 to a particular author, we must begin with the historical 
 evidence. 
 
 Respecting the Pentateuch we will first consider the evi- 
 dence that relates to its history subsequent to the return of 
 the Jews from, their Captivity (B.C. 536). This evidence is 
 sufficient to render it probable that it was in existence some- 
 where about a century after that event. The date that has 
 teen assigned for Ezra's reading "the Law of Moses" to 
 the people, as related in the eighth chapter of Nehemiah, is 
 the year 454 before Christ.* " Ezra," says Prideaux, " re- 
 formed the whole state of the Jewish Church according to 
 the Law of Moses, in which he was excellently learned, and 
 settled it upon that bottom, upon which it afterwards stood 
 to the time of our Saviour."f This statement expresses 
 what has been the common belief on the subject. Perhaps 
 too much agency may be ascribed in it to Ezra alone. But 
 it seems not improbable that within his lifetime the Jews, 
 who had returned to Palestine, were formed anew into a State, 
 on the basis, generally, of the Levitical Law. Ezra, it is 
 said, read the book of the Law of Moses to the people. But 
 there is nothing to identify this Book of the Law with the 
 whole five books of the Pentateuch. Admitting that the 
 Levitical Law existed in all its extent in the time of Ezra, 
 yet we cannot infer from this fact alone that it was then in- 
 corporated with the historical portion of the Pentateuch. If 
 this union, however, did not then exist, it was probably 
 effected not long after. The Septuagint translation of the 
 
 * That is, about a thousand years, as commonly reckoned, after the death 
 of Moses, B.C. 1451. [Bunsen, in his Biblische Jahrbiicher (Bibelwerk, I.), 
 places the death of Moses 1300 B.C. ; but this variation does not affect the 
 general argument. ED.] 
 
 f- Prideaux's Connection of the History of the Old and New Testament, 
 Part i. Book 5. Vol. ii. p. 460. 10th Ed. 1729.
 
 19 
 
 Pentateuch was made in the first half of the third century 
 before Christ. The origin of the Samaritan Pentateuch 
 (that which was used hy the Samaritans, written in their own 
 alphabetical characters) , we may, with Prideaux and others,* 
 refer to the time when a temple was built on Mount Gerizim, 
 and the temple-worship introduced among the Samaritans by 
 Manasseh and his associates, as related by Josephus. This, 
 according to Josephus,f was during the reign of Alexander, 
 about 330 years before Christ. Some, however, have assigned 
 to it an earlier date namely, about the beginning of the 
 fourth century before Christ.^ 
 
 But, if the Pentateuch existed in the time of Ezra, or not 
 long after, this fact alone does not afford any proof that it 
 was then ascribed to Moses as its author. To this point we 
 shall hereafter advert. But we may here observe that the 
 Pentateuch itself, while it assumes to be an authentic account 
 of the deeds and laws of Moses, puts forward no claim to 
 being considered as his work. Though he were not regarded 
 as its author in the time of Ezra, it might be readily re- 
 ceived by the Jews as bearing the character of an authentic 
 document. 
 
 The fact that " the Law " was ascribed to Moses does not 
 prove that the authorship of the Pentateuch was ascribed to 
 him. But that he was generally regarded by the Jews as its 
 author, about the commencement of our era, appears from 
 Philo, the writers of the New Testament, and Josephus. 
 The prevalence of this opinion at that time shows that it 
 was not of recent origin ; but affords no ground for deter- 
 mining its antiquity within any precise limits. 
 
 We have no further knowledge of the history of the Pen- 
 tateuch between the time of the return of the Jews to Pales- 
 
 * Prideaux's Connection, Part i. Book 6. Vol. ii. p. 597, seqq. Simon, 
 Histoire Grit, clu V. T. Liv. i. c. 10. Idem, Critique de la Bibliotheque et 
 des Prolegomenes de M. du Pin. Tome iii. p. 143, seqq. Van Dale, De 
 Origine et Progressu Idolatries, pp. 75-82. p. 681, seqq. Gesenius, De 
 Pentateucho Samaritano, 2. 
 
 t Antiq. Jud. Lib. xi. ch. 7, 8. 
 
 Compare Josephus with Nehemiah, xiii. 28, and see Piideaus's Connec- 
 tion, P. i. 13. (j. Vol. ii. p. 588, seqq. 
 
 c 2
 
 tine and the commencement of the Christian era, an interval 
 of more than five centuries, except that it was included in 
 the class of books which at the last-mentioned date we find 
 considered hy the Jews as sacred hooks, or, in other words, 
 included in the " Canon," as it is called, of the Old Testa- 
 ment. Kespecting this canon there are also some traditions 
 of the Jews which deserve notice. We will next attend, 
 therefore, to its history, and to these traditions. 
 
 From an age considerably before the time of Josephus, as 
 is evident from a passage in that writer, and from other con- 
 siderations on which our subject does not require us to dwell, 
 the books now regarded by Protestants as forming the Old 
 Testament,* have been recognized by the Jews as sacred 
 books. But this canon was not formed, or, in other words, 
 it was not settled what books should be classed together as 
 possessing in some respects a common, I do not say a sacred, 
 character, till after the return of the Jews to Palestine. This 
 is evident from the fact of its containing books, about which 
 there is no controversy, that they were not written till after 
 that event namely, the Chronicles, the books of Ezra and 
 Nehemiah, and those of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. 
 Of the history of the formation of the canon we are wholly 
 ignorant. In the reign of Josiah, a little before the com- 
 mencement of the Captivity, it appears, from a narrative in 
 the Book of Kings, that the Jews generally were ignorant of 
 the existence of a written copy of their national laws, before 
 the discovery, as represented, of such a copy in the Temple.f 
 On their return it is probable that a large majority of them, 
 taken individually, were not acquainted with all those writ- 
 ings of the Old Testament which were then extant. Some, 
 
 * To these the Council of Trent (A.D. 1546) added, as of equal authority, 
 all those books, and parts of books, which constitute the Apocrypha of our 
 English Bibles, except the two books of Esdras (Ezra), so called, and the 
 prayer of Manasseh. It is not here the place to give an account of the manner 
 in which the more intelligent Roman Catholics explain, or evade, this decree of 
 the last General Council, the last which will ever be held. 
 
 t 2 Kings xxii.
 
 21 
 
 perhaps, knew of one work and some of another. Such 
 being the case, we have no credible information respecting 
 the manner in which these books, together with the others 
 afterwards classed with them, were brought into notice, and 
 finally came to be considered as the sacred books of the 
 nation. But though we have no direct evidence on this 
 subject, we have, perhaps, ground for a probable conjecture. 
 These books are very diverse in their character. The con- 
 tents of many of them, as, for example, Ruth, the Proverbs, 
 Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, Ezra, and Nehemiah 
 (to mention no others), are such as not to afford any very 
 obvious reason or occasion for ascribing to them a sacred 
 character. The admission of these books into the canon is 
 to be viewed in connection with the fact, that no ancient 
 Hebrew work not included in it is known to have existed at 
 the time when the canon may be supposed to have been 
 completed. Hence we may infer that this class of books 
 was formed upon no principle of selection. It is probable 
 that it comprehended all the remains of the ancient litera- 
 ture of the nation ; all books that is to say, all books in- 
 tended for general use, and of any value or notoriety which 
 had escaped the ravages of war and the injuries of time. 
 They had all a common character, as, with the exception of 
 the use of the Chaldee language in portions of two of those 
 of latest date, Ezra and Daniel, they were all written in the 
 Hebrew language, a language which had become obsolete. 
 Far the greater portion of them were of the highest national 
 interest, as relating either to the religion and laws of the 
 nation, or to its history, which was so intimately connected 
 with the national religion. Others of a different kind had, 
 or were supposed to have, sufficient claims to be classed with 
 them ; as the Proverbs and the Song of Solomon, the latter 
 of which, and many of the former, were ascribed to the most 
 powerful monarch of the nation, the wisest of men. We 
 perceive at once how a sacred character might be assigned 
 to many of these books ; and it is easy to understand how 
 such a character should, in process of time, be extended to 
 all.
 
 22 
 
 We are ignorant how far the preservation of these hooks, 
 and their final reception as sacred writings, were the result 
 of a general estimate of their value, or how much was 
 effected hy the care and efforts of some leading individual 
 or individuals. One fact, however, respecting them is evi- 
 dent. Some of them must have heen compiled after the 
 composition of the parts, or writings, of which they are 
 respectively formed ; as the hook of Psalms, the book of 
 Proverhs (which consists of several collections of those 
 ascribed to Solomon, together with those ascribed to Agar, 
 and those, as is said, of the mother of a king Lemuel, who 
 is not elsewhere mentioned*), and the works of some of 
 the prophets, which consist of separate and unconnected 
 prophecies or poems. In the compilation of the latter 
 works there is little doubt that errors have been committed ; 
 and that compositions have been ascribed to some of the 
 prophets, particularly to Isaiah, of which they were not the 
 authors. The book of Nehemiah, likewise, was originally 
 united with that of Ezra, as forming together with it one 
 work, to which the name of the latter was given; and it 
 appears that Ezra was regarded as in some sense the author 
 of both. Each of these two books, moreover, appears to 
 be a compilation, inartificially put together, so as to occa- 
 sion historical and chronological difficulties. Only a por- 
 tion of each can be referred to the individual whose name it 
 bears. 
 
 It has been commonly said by modern writers, that Ezra, 
 after the return from the Captivity, revised and re-edited the 
 books of the Old Testament ; that is, as the proposition 
 must be understood, those books which were extant at the 
 time of his performing this work. The statement rests on 
 a Jewish tradition. But this tradition first appears at much 
 too late a period to be regarded as any evidence of the fact. 
 It, moreover, presents itself in a shape obviously fabulous. 
 It is not mentioned by Philo or Josephus ; nor is it found 
 
 * See Proverbs i. 1 ; x. 1 ; xxv. 1 : xxx. 1 : xxxi. 1.
 
 23 
 
 in the Talmud. There is a passage in what is called the 
 Second Book of Esdras (Ezra), a book of uncertain origin 
 and date, published among the Apocrypha of the English 
 Bible, which appears to be founded on it. In this passage 
 the Law is said to have been burnt, so that no man knew 
 the things that had been done by God ; and Ezra is repre- 
 sented as proposing, through the assistance of the Holy 
 Spirit, to write over again what had been written in the 
 Law.* The tradition in question is to be traced principally 
 in the works of the Christian fathers, who undoubtedly 
 derived it from the Jews. The earliest writer by whom it 
 is distinctly mentioned is Irenseus, who lived six centuries 
 after the time of Ezra. He says, that, " the Scriptures 
 having been destroyed " at the time of the Captivity, God 
 " inspired Ezra to put in order all the words of the prece- 
 ding prophets, and to restore to the people the Law which 
 was given by Moses."f A similar account is found in 
 Clement of Alexandria. The Scriptures being destroyed, 
 he says, Ezra was inspired to renew them, and to make 
 them known again to the people. $ Tertullian says, that 
 " it is well known that, after the destruction of Jerusalem 
 by the Babylonians, the whole body of the Jewish writings 
 was restored anew by Ezra." Chrysostom seems to have 
 been unwilling to admit the marvellous part of the story in 
 its full extent ; for, though he speaks of the books of the 
 Jewish Scriptures as having been burnt, he appears not to 
 have been disposed to believe that they were utterly de- 
 stroyed. God, he says, who had inspired Moses and the 
 prophets, " inspired another admirable man, Ezra, to set 
 them forth, and put them together from their remains."^ 
 Theodoret, on the one hand, represents the books as having 
 been entirely destroyed, and restored by Ezra, through 
 Divine inspiration.^" The tradition which appears under 
 
 * 2 Esdras xiv, 21, seqq. 
 
 t Gont. Hseres. Lib. iii. c. 21, 2, p. 216. 
 
 Stromat. i. 21, p. 392; 22, p. 410. 
 
 De Cultu Feminarum, 3, p. 151. [De Habitu Muliebri, c. 3. ED.] 
 
 || Homil. viii. in Epist. ad Hebrseos. 
 
 II Interpret, in Cant. Cantic. Opp. i. 934, 985.
 
 these forms shows, that the Jews, at the time when they 
 transmitted their ancient books to Christians, were ignorant 
 of the history of them, and had substituted fables for facts. 
 This is further made evident by a tradition preserved in 
 the Talmud concerning their canonical books.* " Moses," 
 it is there said, "wrote his book, the section concerning 
 Balaam,f and Job. Joshua wrote his book, and eight 
 verses which are in the Law.! Samuel wrote his book, the 
 book of Judges and Kuth. David wrote the book of 
 Psalms with the assistance [per manus] of ten of the Elders, 
 Adam, Melchisedec, Abraham, Moses, Heman, Jeduthan, 
 Asaph, and the three sons of Korah. Jeremiah wrote his 
 book, the book of Kings, and the Lamentations. Hezekiah 
 [the king of Judah], with his ministers, wrote\ the pro- 
 phecies of Isaiah, the Proverbs, the Canticles, and Ecclesi- 
 astes. The men of the Great Synagogue^! wrote Ezekiel, 
 
 * Tid. \Volfii Biblioth. Rabbin. Tom. ii. pp. 2, 3. 
 
 f- "The section concerning Balaam, or of Balaam." These words have 
 been differently understood by the later Jewish commentators. Some suppose, 
 that Moses wrote a separate account of Balaam, apart from the Pentateuch. 
 Others, that the account found in the Pentateuch (Numbers xxii.-xxiv.) was 
 translated by Moses from a book written by Balaam himself. See Fabricii 
 Codex Pseudepig. V. T. Tom. i. pp. 809, 810. 
 
 This seems to refer to what is said in Joshua xxiv. 26. 
 
 The Jews ascribed the ninety-second Psalm to Adam, the hundred and 
 tenth to Melchisedec, the ninetieth to Moses, whose name appears in the in- 
 scription to it in our English Bible, and others to the different individuals 
 mentioned, whose names, with the exception of that of Abraham, are likewise 
 found in the present inscriptions in the Psalms. 
 
 || This word wrote, here, and where it is again italicized, appears to be used 
 very loosely, and in different senses, in respect to the different books men- 
 tioned. It is to be understood, perhaps, in reference to some of these books, 
 as meaning that the persons spoken of committed to writing what before had 
 been orally preserved ; and, in respect to others, that they brought together 
 the different parts of which the book is formed ; that they compiled it. In 
 reference to the book of Esther, it may mean that they composed it. 
 
 The notion, that Hezekiah, with his associates, was engaged in this work, 
 was undoubtedly derived from Proverbs xxv. 1. " These are also proverbs of 
 Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Jndah, copied out." 
 
 IT The Great Synagogue, according to a fiction of the Jewish Rabbins, was a 
 council of one hundred and twenty men, over whom Ezra presided, and who 
 assisted him in the re-establishment of the polity and .relation of the nation 
 after the return of the Jews to Palestine. See Buxtorf s Tiberias, cap. i. p. 
 93, seqq.
 
 25 
 
 the twelve Minor Prophets, Daniel, and Esther. Ezra wrote 
 his book* and the Chronicles." 
 
 Thus far we have found nothing which bears the character 
 of historical evidence to show that Moses was the author of 
 the Pentateuch. We have found no proof even that such 
 was the opinion of the Jews in the time of Ezra. Nor, 
 indeed, have we found any decisive proof that the Penta- 
 teuch was in existence in his time ; for we have no good 
 reason for believing that, when the Law of Moses is spoken 
 of, the Pentateuch is necessarily intended. But, could it 
 be proved that the Pentateuch, in the time of Ezra, was 
 believed by the Jews to be the work of Moses, we should 
 still be a thousand years distant from the time of Moses ; 
 and an opinion respecting the authorship of a book, existing 
 at a period a thousand years distant from the time of its 
 supposed writer, cannot be regarded as historical evidence. 
 
 It is clear, therefore, from the nature of the case, that 
 there exists no historical evidence that Moses was the author 
 of the Pentateuch, unless it may be found in some of the 
 other books which compose the Jewish canon. No other 
 documents make such an approach toward the time of 
 Moses, as may entitle them to any weight in support of the 
 supposition, that he was the author of the Pentateuch. We 
 will, then, next consider the historical evidence which has 
 been thought to he furnished hy the Old Testament itself. 
 
 In the other books of the Old Testament there are re- 
 ferences to various narratives and laws now found in the 
 Pentateuch, and these references have been considered as 
 proving that the Pentateuch was in existence before their 
 composition, and consequently as furnishing indirect proof 
 that it was written by Moses. But such references afford 
 no ground for these conclusions; for, if the Pentateuch 
 were not the work of Moses, it was undoubtedly, in great 
 part, a compilation (derived from ancient authorities, written 
 
 * By "bis book, as already mentioned, is meant not only that which passes 
 under the name of Ezra, but likewise that ascribed to Nehemiah.
 
 20 
 
 or oral, or both), which was made for the purpose of em- 
 bodying and preserving the traditions and national laws of 
 the Jews : and there is no reason why these traditions and 
 laws should not have been referred to as well before its 
 existence as after. 
 
 In the Book of Joshua there is repeated mention of " the 
 Book of the Law of Moses ;" and hence it has been argued, 
 that we have evidence of the earliest date to justify us in 
 ascribing the Pentateuch to Moses. But such is not the 
 case. We must here, as elsewhere, keep in mind, that there 
 is nothing to identify " the Book of the Law of Moses," or, 
 in other words, a written collection of the laws ascribed to 
 Moses, with the whole Pentateuch, previously to the time 
 when it may be proved, by wholly independent evidence, 
 that those laws were to be found in the last four books of 
 the Pentateuch, and that the whole five had become so con- 
 nected together as to be designated by the common title of 
 " the Book of the Law." But, though it may be well to 
 keep this consideration in view, yet it is not important in 
 its bearing on the case before us. The main fact to be at 
 present attended to is, that there is no evidence to show, 
 when or by whom the Book of Joshua was written. Its 
 history" and age are at least as uncertain as those of the five 
 books ascribed to Moses ; and it is so connected with them, 
 and liable to so many common or similar objections, that its 
 authority must stand or fall together with that of the Pen- 
 tateuch.* 
 
 * It is remarkable, that the references in Joshua to a Book of the Law, 
 when taken together, are of such a character, as rather to throw discredit on 
 the work in which they are found, than to serve to confirm the credit of any 
 other. In the first chapter (vv. 7, 8,) Joshua is represented as being enjoined 
 by the Lord " to do according to the Law which Moses commanded," and "to 
 meditate day and night on the Book of the Law." Here, by " the Book of 
 the Law," it may seem that the writer intended either the whole Pentateuch, 
 or the book of Deuteronomy alone. I mention the last supposition, because 
 there seem to be no clear references in Joshua to any book of the Pentateuch 
 except Deuteronomy. If, however, this book alone were referred to as the 
 Book of the Law, it would prove the writer's ignorance or disregard of the four 
 other books of the Pentateuch, and afford proof, that in his day they were 
 either not in existence, or not attributed to Moses. It may be assumed, there- 
 fore, that the whole Pentateuch is meant. In the last chapter (v. 26) it is
 
 27 
 
 In the seventh verse of the fortieth Psalm, ascribed to 
 David, there is mention of a hook, which has heen supposed 
 to he the Pentateuch. The verse is thus given in the 
 Common Version. 
 
 said, that Joshua wrote "these words" (it is not clear what words, are in- 
 tended) in "the Book of the Law of God." Here again it may seem that 
 some copy either of Deuteronomy or of the whole Pentateuch is intended. In 
 the eighth chapter, after the account of the taking of Ai, on the confines of 
 Palestine, Joshua is immediately represented as proceeding, with the whole 
 nation of the Israelites, to Mount Ebal in the centre of the enemy's country, 
 (fearless of his foes, and unmolested by them,).. and there erecting an altar 
 according to the directions in " the Book of the Law of Moses " (v. 31). The 
 directions referred to are in the twenty-seventh chapter of Deuteronomy ; and 
 "the Book of the Law of Moses" must have the same meaning here as the 
 corresponding terms in the passages before quoted. But the narrative imme- 
 diately goes on to say (vv. 32, 34, 35) that Joshua wrote on the stones of the 
 altar, in the presence of the children of Israel, ' ' a copy of the Law of Moses ; " 
 and "afterwards read all the words of the Law, the blessings and cursings, 
 according to all that is written in the Book of the Law. There was not a 
 word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the con- 
 gregation of Israel." Here, as it is incredible that Joshua should have 
 engraved, or written, the whole Pentateuch on the stones of the altar, it has 
 been imagined by some, that only the book of Deuteronomy was intended ; but 
 this is also incredible. Others, therefore, have supposed, that "the Law of 
 Moses" here means only the blessings and cursings recorded in the twenty- 
 seventh and twenty-eight chapters of Deuteronomy. But this is inconsistent 
 with the use of the term, not merely elsewhere, but, as we have seen, in this 
 account itself. These blessings and curses are nowhere else called "the Law 
 of Moses," nor could they be so with propriety. They were the sanctions of 
 the Law, not the Law itself. Beside, it is evident that Joshua read to the 
 people the same which he had written on the altar. Now, according to the 
 directions in Deuteronomy (xxvii. 14), it was not his business, but that of the 
 Levites, to pronounce those blessings and curses. Others, therefore, have 
 thought, that by " the Law of Moses," as here used, the Ten Commandments 
 only are meant. But, beside that this supposition, like that last mentioned, 
 gives a meaning to the term inconsistent with its common use, and especially 
 with its use immediately before, it may be added, that, if the writer had 
 only intended to say, that Joshua read the Ten Commandments, he would 
 hardly have insisted so strongly upon his having read the whole Law, omitting 
 not a word. 
 
 The relation, therefore, appears not like the history of a real event, but 
 like the narrative of one who did not well consider what he was writing. 
 
 But this account in the Book of Joshua is to be compared with the directions 
 which Moses is represented to have given, in Deuteronomy xxvii. 2-8. On 
 these directions it is founded, and they are liable to similar objections with 
 the account itself. Moses, it is said, ordered, that after the Israelites had 
 passed the Jordan, they should "set up great stones, and plaster them with 
 plaster," "and write upon the stones all the words of this Law, very plainly."
 
 28 
 
 "Then, said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book* 
 it is written of me." 
 
 The meaning of the -words is uncertain, and they have 
 been variously rendered and explained. But the passage, 
 however understood, would, at most, prove only, that in the 
 time of David (if he were its writer), that is, according to 
 the common computation, about four centuries after the 
 death of Moses, the Jews possessed some book which they 
 believed to teach what God had prescribed to them. There 
 is no evidence that this book was the Pentateuch. On the 
 contrary, it seems altogether improbable, that it was any book 
 inculcating the ceremonial law of the Jews, as that is laid 
 down in the Pentateuch, considering how the passage is in- 
 troduced and connected. Such, on the contrary, is the un- 
 qualified manner in which it is asserted, that sacrifices were 
 not required by God, that the passage may be considered as 
 affording strong proof, that, at the time when it was written, 
 the Pentateuch did not exist. 
 
 " In sacrifice and oblation thou hast no pleasure : 
 Mine ears thou hast opened : t 
 
 By " all the words of this Law," it is clear, from a comparison of many pas- 
 sages in Deuteronomy, in which these or equivalent terms are used, that the 
 author or compiler of that book could have meant nothing less than the whole 
 body of laws contained in it. On the supposition, that the book of Deute- 
 ronomy originally formed a part of the Pentateuch, and was written by Moses 
 in connection with the other four books, the terms in question must denote 
 the whole Pentateuch. For Moses, it is said (xxxi. 24-26), " made an end of 
 writing the words of this Law in a book," and gave it to the Levites to be 
 deposited by the side of the ark of the Covenant, for a witness against the 
 nation. Had he written the whole of the Pentateuch, he would not have 
 separated the book of Deuteronomy from it to be thus preserved alone, as 
 containing the words of the Law. We cannot on that supposition believe that 
 the book, which he gave to the Levites to be thus scrupulously cared for, was 
 not the whole Pentateuch, with the exception, of course, of those portions of 
 it which he could not have written. That it was the whole Pentateuch has 
 generally been admitted, or contended for, by those who have regarded the 
 Pentateuch as the work of Moses. 
 
 * The words should be rendered; "in the scroll of the book," meaning 
 simply "the book." The periphrasis (which was perhaps used as a more 
 solemn expression) is founded on the manner in which books were anciently 
 written, in the form of a roll. 
 
 t That is, Thou hast made me hear thy voice ; Thou hast enabled me to 
 understand thy will.
 
 29 
 
 Burnt-offering and sin-offering thou dost not desire : 
 Therefore, I said, Lo, I come : 
 In the scroll of the book it is written of me : 
 Oh my God ! to do thy will is my delight, 
 And thy law dwells in my heart." * 
 
 In the scroll of the book it is written of me : this is a 
 verbal rendering ; and in these words it may seem most pro- 
 bable, that the Psalmist did nojt refer to any book, properly 
 speaking, but to that book, in which, according to an imagi- 
 nation common from his day to our own, God is conceived 
 of as recording both what He sees, and more especially what 
 He wills and purposes, the book, as it may be called, of 
 the Divine Mind.f He may be understood as saying, Lo 1 
 I come, as thou hast written, that is, as thou hast purposed, 
 concerning me. 
 
 With the exception of the passages that have been referred 
 to in the Book of Joshua, there is no express mention of a 
 Book of the Law ascribed to Moses in any writing of the 
 Old Testament, which has been supposed to be of an age 
 prior to the Captivity.! No such book is mentioned in the 
 Books, or rather Book, of Samuel. By the prophets, the 
 public teachers of religion among the Jews, such a book is 
 nowhere spoken of. No evidence can be drawn from their 
 writings of the existence of the Pentateuch, or of any book 
 ascribed to Moses as its author. The fact is important as 
 
 * This version varies a little from that of the Rev. Dr. Noyes ; whose Trans- 
 lations of the Psalms, of Job, and of the Prophets, are, I believe, well enti- 
 tled to the reputation they enjoy, among those to whom they are known, of 
 being the best in our language. 
 
 f See Psalm Ivi. 8 ; Ixix. 28 ; Ixxxvii. 6 ; cxxxix. 16. Isaiah iv. 3 ; 
 xxxiv. 16 ; IXY. 6. Daniel vii. 10; xii. 1. Exod. xxxii. 32, 33. [See note A. 
 at the end of the volume. ED.] 
 
 t The Captivity commenced, according to the common computation, in the 
 year 606 before Christ, that is, about eight centuries and a half after the 
 death of Moses. I except, in the sentence above, the book of Joshua, because 
 that has been supposed to have been written before the Captivity, and even by 
 Joshua himself. Nothing can well be more untenable than the latter supposition. 
 The fact, that it was ascribed to him by the same Jewish tradition which has 
 assigned their supposed authors to other parts of the Old Testament, serves to 
 show how little credit that tradition is entitled to. We have no knowledge by 
 whom the book of Joshua was written. Its composition was apparently sub- 
 sequent to that of Deuteronomy.
 
 30 
 
 regards our present inquiry. It amounts to more than a 
 mere absence of proof, that Moses was the author of the 
 Pentateuch. Considering that the prophets were the public 
 teachers of religion, the fact, that there is no distinct notice 
 in their writings of a book ascribed to the great Lawgiver of 
 the nation, a book which must have been the fundamental 
 document in all that concerned religion, creates a strong 
 suspicion that no such book .was in existence, or, as regards 
 the prophets after the Captivity, that no such book had been 
 handed down with the authority of antiquity. What should 
 we think of a series of Christian teachers, from whose works 
 no satisfactory evidence could be deduced of the existence of 
 the New Testament ? 
 
 We come, then, to the Books of Kings, or rather the* 
 Book of Kings, as it should be called, there being no ground 
 for the division either of Samuel, the Kings, or the Chro- 
 nicles, intcrtwo books. Each was reckoned in the Hebrew 
 Canon but as one work. The Book of Kings (to speak of 
 it in the singular number) is brought down to the thirty- 
 seventh year of the Captivity,* about nine centuries, as com- 
 monly computed, after the death of Moses. It is unim- 
 portant, as it regards our present inquiry, whether it was 
 written, or rather compiled, during the continuance, or after 
 the termination, of the Captivity. Any testimony in this 
 work, did such testimony exist, to the supposed fact, that 
 Moses wrote the Pentateuch nine hundred years before, 
 would be of no weight. But the work contains no testimony 
 to this effect. We find words ascribed to David, as his 
 dying charge to Solomon, in which he exhorts him " to 
 keep all the statutes, commands, decrees, and ordinances of 
 the Lord, as written in the Law of Moses."f The writer 
 speaks in his own person of " what is written in the Law of 
 Moses," quoting a passage to be found only in Deuteronomy.^ 
 And he gives an account of the discovery in the Temple, by 
 the high-priest Hilkiah, of " the Book of the Law," during 
 
 * 2 Kings xxv. 27. t 1 Kings ii. 3. 
 
 J 2 Kings xiv. 6. Comp. Dout. xxiv. 16.
 
 31 
 
 the reign of Josiah * (B. c. 924, as computed). These and 
 other passages in which " the Law," or " the Law of Moses," 
 is mentioned, prove that before the composition of the Book 
 of the Kings, the Jews possessed a written code of laws, 
 which bore the name of Moses. But, without supposing 
 this code to have been written by Moses, we cannot doubt 
 that, by whomsoever compiled, it included all those precepts 
 and laws which were given, or which the Jews believed to 
 have been given, by him. As many as could by any plau- 
 sible tradition, or perhaps by any plausible invention, be 
 ascribed to him, would be so ascribed. Additional laws 
 might be represented as mere deductions from those of which 
 he was the real or reputed author. Hence it is easy to un- 
 derstand, why a code of Jewish laws, whenever compiled, 
 should be called the Law of Moses. But the existence of 
 such a code does not prove that the five books of the Pen- 
 tateuch were written by Moses. 
 
 On the contrary, it seems impossible plausibly to reconcile 
 the narrative just referred to, of the discovery in the Temple' 
 of a copy of " the Book of the Law," with the supposition, 
 that this book was the Pentateuch, and that the Pentateuch 
 was written by Moses. It is plain that, according to that 
 account, the book was before unknown to Josiah, a religious 
 prince, to his secretary Shaphan, and to the high-priest 
 Hilkiah. It cannot, therefore, be supposed, that the ex- 
 istence of such a book was known to any of the higher 
 officers of the State, or to any of the principal priests ; and 
 if, during a religious reign, which had continued for eighteen 
 years, it was unknown to them, we cannot reasonably sup- 
 pose that it was known to any one, or, to say the least, that 
 it was generally known. But the Pentateuch, if written by 
 Moses, was the most venerable and valuable possession of 
 the nation, and an object of the highest interest, not only to 
 every religious man, but to every Jew not destitute of the 
 love of his country, or a sense of the true honour of his 
 people. It was the work in which the Law-giver of the 
 
 * 2 King? xxii. 8, seqq.
 
 32 
 
 nation, the messenger of God, had related the wonderful 
 events of his own ministry, and announced those ordinances 
 which God had appointed through him. It was not merely 
 the proper foundation of the religion and polity of the State ; 
 it was in itself the national code of laws, civil and ceremonial. 
 It is difficult to believe that such a book should have been 
 so forgotten. It had survived the long period (about three 
 centuries, as commonly supposed), of anarchy, barbarism, 
 and subjugation, following the death of Joshua. If it had 
 ever been recognized and honoured as the work of Moses, it 
 must have been so in the age of Solomon. From his reign 
 to that of Josiah was a period of somewhere about three 
 centuries and a half. According to the history, the kings 
 of Judah, during the larger part of this time, maintained the 
 national religion. If these kings knew and regarded an 
 express ordinance contained in the Pentateuch,* they had 
 each made a copy of it. If they knew and obeyed another 
 requisition, they had caused it to be read to the assembled 
 people every Sabbatical year.f We have, indeed, good 
 reason to believe that this had not been done ; for, as we 
 shall hereafter have occasion to remark, the Sabbatical years 
 had not been observed. But, had the Pentateuch been in 
 existence and regarded as the work of Moses, it cannot be 
 supposed, that, during the long periods when the kings of 
 Judah "did right in the sight of the Lord," they took no 
 effectual means of making known to the people the funda- 
 mental book of their religion, and the code of laws which 
 they were bound to obey, or that there were not many among 
 the priests, the prophets, and the better sort of the nation, 
 who were always interested in its study and preservation. We 
 may compare the period of less than four centuries between 
 the reigns of Solomon and Josiah, v/ith the period of four- 
 teen centuries, which intervened between the destruction of 
 Jerusalem and the first printing of the Pentateuch. During 
 this time, the Jews, though scattered among their enemies, 
 and everywhere trampled down by hatred and cruelty, pre- 
 
 * Deuteronomy xvii. IS. "f" Ibid. xxxi. 10, 11.
 
 33 
 
 served, even amid the barbarism of tbe dark ages, copies of 
 what they then considered as the work of Moses, though 
 few only of their number were able to read it. But, accord- 
 ing to the narrative in the Book of Kings, if we suppose it 
 to relate to the Pentateuch, and suppose the Pentateuch to 
 be the work of Moses, it would appear that this work, carry- 
 ing with it the authority of God, and of the highest interest 
 to the nation, had been so little valued, and had fallen into 
 such oblivion, that, but for an accident, or an interposition 
 of Providence, it might have perished from men's knowledge; 
 and this, though other works written before the Captivity 
 were preserved, and though there had been for two centuries 
 a succession of prophets in Judah and Israel, whose works 
 escaped such neglect. 
 
 It follows, therefore, as I conceive, that, whatever were 
 the book produced in the reign of Josiah, it could not have 
 been the Pentateuch, if the Pentateuch were the work of 
 Moses. But, if it were any other book, the Pentateuch was 
 not then in existence, or not considered as the work of 
 Moses ; for, had it been in existence and so considered, no 
 other book would have been entitled "the Book of the 
 Law," and produced for the regulation of the national 
 religion. 
 
 The book actually produced was, according to the narra- 
 tive concerning it, a body of laws, professedly resting on 
 divine authority. It may have been one of the documents 
 afterwards made use of in the formation of the Pentateuch. 
 Perhaps it was, as some have conjectured, the book of 
 Deuteronomy, or perhaps it was a book which afterwards 
 served for the basis of that work. It was brought forward 
 to aid the reformation from idolatry under Josiah ; and the 
 story of its being accidentally found in the Temple may be 
 thought to have been what was considered a justifiable 
 artifice, to account for tbe appearance of a book hitherto 
 unknown. 
 
 In tracing our course downward from Moses we have 
 now arrived at the period of the re-establishment of the 
 
 D
 
 34 
 
 Jews in Palestine, after the Captivity, the period to which 
 we have before ascended. It is unnecessary to examine 
 critically any supposed notices of the Pentateuch in the 
 books of the Old Testament written after that event. We 
 have seen, that, when the Book of Kings was written, a code 
 of national laws was extant, ascribed to Moses ; and those 
 supposed notices prove nothing more. 
 
 On reviewing the ground we have gone over, it may 
 appear that no direct historical evidence exists, that the 
 Pentateuch was the work of Moses. But it may be said, 
 that there is strong indirect evidence for this supposition, in 
 the fact, that from the time of Moses the Levitical Law was 
 regarded by the Jews as their national law ; that its religious 
 rites were observed by them, its festivals celebrated, and all 
 its statutes, civil and criminal, considered as binding, except 
 when the nation fell into sin and idolatry. 
 
 In such statements much is assumed which cannot be 
 proved. It appeal's, that before the Captivity there was a 
 temple at Jerusalem, and priests and Levites, and sacrifices, 
 and other religious rites ; but it does not appear, that the 
 Levitical Law had been, from the time of Moses, the na- 
 tional law of the Jews. On the contrary, there is much that 
 is inconsistent with this supposition. 
 
 In proof of it we must not argue from books written after 
 the return of the Jews to Palestine, when we may suppose 
 the Pentateuch to have been in existence, and the Levitical 
 Law to have been established. From the circumstances of 
 the case, the evidence, direct or indirect, which they may 
 seem to afford, is altogether questionable. I refer particu- 
 larly to the Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Malachi, and the 
 Chronicles. The compiler of the Chronicles, especially, 
 seems to have given a strong colouring to the ancient 
 history of his nation, derived from the feelings, customs, 
 and institutions of his own age, for the purpose of recom- 
 mending the Levitical Law to his countrymen by the sup- 
 posed example and authority of their ancestors. His work 
 appears to have been founded principally on the Books of
 
 35 
 
 Samuel and the Kings ; or,, to say the least, there is no 
 probability, that, in the portion of bis history coincident 
 with what is contained in those books, he had any otber 
 autbentic documents than what their authors possessed. 
 But in comparing the accounts in those books with the 
 accounts in the Chronicles, we see at once how much the 
 author of this later work has added concerning priests and 
 Levites, and religious ceremonies. As a single illustration 
 of the general character of his work we may take the narra- 
 tive of the removal of the ark by David to Jerusalem, in the 
 thirteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters of the first Book 
 of Chronicles, as compared with the account in the sixth 
 chapter of the second Book of Samuel. In the Chronicles 
 the priests and Levites play a principal part. In the Book 
 of Samuel they do not appear at all. The ark is not borne 
 by Levites, as it should have been, according to the Le- 
 vitical Law, and, contrary to that Law, the sacrifices are 
 offered not by priests but by David.* 
 
 Without entering into any critical inquiry, but receiving 
 the accounts of the earlier Jewish historians, as they lie 
 before us, it is evident, that, from the death of Joshua to the 
 time when David proposed to erect a national temple, (a 
 period, as computed, of about four centuries,) there could 
 have been, consistently with the accounts in the Books of 
 Judges and of Samuel, no regular observance of the Levitical 
 Law by the Jewish nation. Nor in the interval between 
 
 * The character of the Book of Chronicles, as stated above, was first, I 
 believe, distinctly pointed out and illustrated by De \Yette, in his " Critical 
 Essay on the Credibility of the Books of the Chronicles" (in German). 
 Though one may be far from assenting to all that is said by De Wette, yet what 
 is essential in his positions respecting the Chronicles seems to be satisfactorily 
 established ; and if so, this work cannot be considered as trustworthy, where 
 it varies from the earlier historians, or adds to their accounts. 
 
 In the first part of his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus could have had no 
 other good authority, than the books of the Old Testament. His work, there- 
 fore, affords an example of the licence with which a Jewish historian might 
 remodel and add to the history of his countrymen ; and we have no reason to 
 be surprised, if we find a similar character in the earlier author of the Chroni- 
 cles. [See note u at the end of the volume. ED.] 
 
 D 3
 
 30 
 
 the time \vhen Solomon fell into idolatry* and the time of 
 the Captivity could this law have heen uniformly respected 
 by the Jews as their national law ; considering the separa- 
 tion of the people into two kingdoms, which was contrary to 
 it, and the frequent occurrence of idolatrous kings, during 
 whose reigns it must, if it existed, have heen in abeyance. 
 In the time of Josiah, as we have seen, " the Book of the 
 Law" was generally unknown; and the apparently acci- 
 dental discovery of such a book (less than twenty years, as 
 computed, before the commencement of the Captivity) is 
 represented as a momentous event leading to the re-establish- 
 ment of the national religion. 
 
 It is to be observed, that these obvious facts are not 
 adduced to disprove the antiquity of the Levitical Law ; 
 they are only brought forward to show, that no proof of its 
 being derived from Moses can be founded on the supposition, 
 that it was the national law of the Jews from the time of 
 Moses. Of this supposition no satisfactory evidence exists; 
 for, as has been remarked, we cannot rely on the historical 
 books written after the Captivity, when the Levitical Law 
 was in operation ; for these books were, to all appearance, 
 conformed to the opinions and feelings of this later time. 
 But there is not only a want of satisfactory evidence in proof 
 of the supposition ; there is, beside the leading facts that 
 have been mentioned, other direct evidence to the contrary, 
 to which we will now advert. 
 
 The author of the Book of Kings relates, that after the 
 discovery of the Book of the Law, in the reign of Josiah, a 
 passover was celebrated in Jerusalem, and adds : " Such 
 a passover had not been kept from the days of the Judges, 
 who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel, 
 nor of the kings of Judah."t With the exception of what is 
 
 * Among the many similar facts, which characterize the Book of Chronicles 
 as a work adapted to the opinions and feelings of the Jews after the Csptivity, 
 xvhen the Levitical Law was established, it may be observed that it omits all 
 mention of the idolatry of Solomon. 
 
 f 2 Kings xxiii. 22.
 
 37 
 
 found in the Pentateuch itself, this is the only mention of 
 the keeping of a passover in any historical book of earlier 
 date than the Chronicles ; nor is there in the Prophets who 
 wrote before the Captivity, any distinct allusion to what 
 afterwards became the great national festival. If the writer 
 of the Book of Kings meant to say, that so splendid a pass- 
 over had not been celebrated before, not even in the days of 
 Solomon, this would be almost equivalent to saying, that no 
 passover had been celebrated at all. If his meaning were, 
 that the rites of the ceremonial Law were more strictly 
 observed than they had been before, the remark must imply, 
 that they were then for the first time fully observed since the 
 days of the Judges. 
 
 In the Book of Nehemiah, written more than a thousand 
 years after the death of Moses, there is a mention of the 
 celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles;* and, in speaking 
 of it, the writer says, " Since the days of Joshua the son of 
 Nun to that day had not the children of Israel done so." 
 " We see," says the learned Joseph Mede,f " how expressly 
 this Feast of Tabernacles was commanded yearly to be 
 observed. Nevertheless, which is past all belief, it was never 
 kept, at least in this main circumstance of dwelling in 
 booths from the time of Joshua till after their return from 
 Captivity." Lo Clerc| remarks, that "this law [the law 
 respecting the Feast of Tabernacles] was neither obscure 
 nor hard to be observed. But, as I have often said, the laws 
 of Moses were never accurately observed." The national 
 festivals, appointed by a ceremonial law, are of all its ordi- 
 nances the least likely to be neglected. 
 
 The writer of the Book of Chronicles himself gives us to 
 understand, that the seventy years of the Captivity answered 
 to seventy Sabbatical years which had not been kept. If, as 
 is implied in what is said, the Sabbatical year had not been 
 
 * Nehemiah, ch. viii. Comp. Ezra iii. 4-6, which I suppose to relate to 
 the same celebration. 
 
 f- Discourse xlviii. Works, p. 2C8. Ed. 1679. 
 
 J Comment, in loc. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21.
 
 38 
 
 observed for "between four and five centuries preceding 
 the Captivity, that is, for more than five centuries before the 
 time of the writer, there is little reason to believe that any 
 evidence then existed of its ever having been observed. 
 With the Sabbatical years, the years of Jubilee were 
 intimately connected, and if there were no Sabbatical years, 
 we cannot reasonably suppose that there were any years of 
 Jubilee. Yet the laws regarding the Sabbatical year and 
 the Jubilee are among the most important of those concerning 
 the rights of property, and, at the same time, are represented 
 to have been intimately interwoven with the theocratical 
 government of the Jews, as implying a periodical miracle. 
 
 According to a law in Leviticus,* it was enjoined under 
 a severe penalty, that sacrifices should be offered only where 
 the Tabernacle was placed. According to another law in 
 Deuteronomy, f after the Jews were established in Palestine, 
 one place of national worship was to be designated, where 
 alone sacrifices were to be offered. This one place was to be 
 considered as the habitation of Jehovah, where alone the 
 people were to seek Him and come before Him. These laws 
 are apparently fundamental among those relating to the 
 public worship. There is a narrative in the Book of 
 Joshua,J according to which their obligation was recognized. 
 But it does not appear elsewhere from the early Jewish 
 history, extending down to the building of Solomon's temple, 
 that such laws existed. On the contrary, altars were raised 
 and sacrifices offered by holy men in various places, and 
 in places where the Tabernacle was not ; and such facts are 
 related without censure by the historian. 
 
 Thus, for example. In the first chapter of the first Book 
 of Samuel, we find the Tabernacle and the Ark, with Eli 
 and his sons, at Shiloh. Here was the house of Jehovah. 
 The Ark being taken, and afterwards restored, by the Phi- 
 listines, it was left at Kirjath-jearim, where Eleazar, the son 
 of Abinadab, was consecrated to keep it. Here it appears to 
 have been suffered to remain, separated from the Tabernacle, 
 
 * Cii. xvii. 3-9. f Ch. xii. 2-14. J Ci. xxii. 10-31.
 
 39 
 
 for the greater part of the time, during nearly half a century, 
 till David removed it to Jerusalem. At one period, during 
 this interval, it appears,* that the Tabernacle, with priests, 
 was at Nob, where undoubtedly sacrifices were offered. 
 Meanwhile, Samuel, the prophet of Jehovah, called the 
 people together before the Lord at Mizpeh, and, though not 
 a priest, offered a burnt-offering, t He built an altar to 
 Jehovah at Barnah, the place of his residence.^ He assisted 
 at a sacrifice on a high place, somewhere in the land of 
 Zuph. He proposed to offer sacrifices at Gilgal. || He 
 again called the people before Jehovah at ifizpeh.^1 The 
 people, under his direction, re-acknowledged Saul as king be- 
 fore Jehovah at Gilgal, where they offered peace-offerings.** 
 Bethel was another place where Jehovah was sought, ft And, 
 not to multiply instances unnecessarily, we afterwards find 
 mention of a grandson of Eli, " the Lord's priest in Shiloh, 
 wearing an ephod."$| 
 
 The author of the Book of Kings, speaking of the state 
 of things at the commencement of Solomon's reign, says, 
 '*' The people sacrificed on high places ; because there was 
 no house built to the Lord until these days." " Although, 
 says Le Clerc,|||| "according to the law in Leviticus, sacri- 
 fices ought to have been offered only where the Tabernacle 
 was placed, yet that law had not hitherto been observed, 
 nor was this imputed to the people as an offence." Solomon 
 himself, it is related, " went to sacrifice at Gibeon ; for that 
 was the great high place ;'' and so far, according to the 
 narrative, was his conduct from being blameable, that the 
 Lord there gave him the choice of whatever blessings he 
 might desire. 
 
 It is true, that in relation to these facts, and others of 
 the same kind, it may be said, that we cannot infer that a 
 
 * 1 Samuel, ch. xxi. xxii. U 1 Sam. x. 1 7. 
 
 f Ibid. vii. 5. 9. ** Ibid. xi. 15. 
 
 J Ibid. vii. 17. ft Ibid. x. 3. 
 
 Ibid. ix. 5, 12, 13. JJ Ibid. xiv. 3. 
 
 || Ibid. x. 8. 1 Kings iii. 2. 
 
 || H Comment, in loc.
 
 40 
 
 law is not extant from the circumstance of its not being 
 obeyed ; that all laws are, more or less, disregarded and 
 transgressed; that Moses was often disobeyed in his life- 
 time, and that, therefore, the Levitical Law may have existed 
 nnd may have proceeded from Moses, though it was dis- 
 obeyed in all the instances that have been mentioned. The 
 force of these general remarks is, however, invalidated, when 
 \ve consider that the instances of supposed disobedience 
 relate to ordinances most likely to be observed, as those con- 
 cerning the celebration of festivals ; to statutes essentially 
 affecting the rights of property, and sanctioned by the 
 promise of a regular interposition of God,* as those con- 
 cerning the Sabbatical year and the Jubilee ; and to laws 
 apparently fundamental in the national worship, as those di- 
 recting a single place to be fixed upon for the celebration of 
 its rites ; and, we may add, though the fact has not been dwelt 
 upon before, those appointing the priests to be the sole minis- 
 ters in offering sacrifices. The case becomes more striking 
 when we find that these laws, supposing them in being, were 
 not only disregarded, but disregarded without censure, by 
 men who are represented as having been highly favoured by 
 the Lord. 
 
 But it is to be kept in mind, that it is not the proper 
 purpose of these remarks directly to prove that the Levitical 
 Law was not given by Moses. Perhaps the supposition, 
 that it was given by Moses, may be reconcilable with all 
 the facts that have been stated. The purpose of the prece- 
 ding remarks has merely been to show, that the supposed 
 fact, that the Levitical Law in its present state was from the 
 time of Moses the national Law of the Jews, cannot be 
 rendered probable; and, therefore, that this supposed fact 
 can afford no proof towards establishing the proposition, 
 that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. 
 
 "And if ye astc, What sliall we eat during the seventh year, seeing we 
 must not sow nor gather in our increase ? I answer, I will command my 
 blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth produce for three 
 years." Leviticus xxv. 20, 21.
 
 41 
 
 From the examination we have gone through of the books 
 of the Old Testament, it may appear that the existence of 
 the Pentateuch, as we now possess it, cannot be traced, by 
 any historical evidence, beyond the return of the Jews from 
 their Captivity. According to a Jewish tradition before 
 quoted,* they possessed on their return no copy of the 
 Pentateuch. This tradition flattered none of their prejudices 
 concerning it, and no national feeling ; and this circum- 
 stance affords some presumption, that it was founded on 
 truth. It is such a tradition as might naturally arise, if 
 the compilation and fashioning of the Pentateuch were 
 subsequent to the Captivity ; and one of which no account 
 can be given, if this were not the fact. 
 
 If, indeed, the Pentateuch were not written by Moses, 
 perhaps we cannot with probability assign to it, in its pre- 
 sent form, an earlier date than some time after the return of 
 the Jews from their Captivity. When restored to Palestine, 
 their national polity was to be re-established ; they were 
 again to be formed into a State. To effect this end, it was 
 requisite that a written code of laws should be provided. In 
 forming such a code their ancient laws would naturally be 
 revived. Some, perhaps, were inserted, of which only a 
 traditional story existed, and which, it is not probable, ever 
 had been, or ever were subsequently, observed ; such, for 
 example, as the law respecting the Sabbatical year.f New 
 
 * See pp. 22, 23. 
 
 t I, of course, attach no credit to the story of Josephus (Antiq. Jud. Lib. 
 xi. cap. 8, 5) respecting the remission of the tribute of every seventh year, 
 obtained by the Jews from Alexander, which he apparently means to imply 
 was on account of their observance of the Sabbatical years. His whole narra- 
 tive concerning Alexander's interview with the Jewish high-priest, and of his 
 favour to the Jewish nation, is unquestionably fabulous. It shows this 
 character on its very face ; and it has been made evident by Moyle, and others, 
 that it will bear no critical examination. See Moyle's Correspondence with 
 Prideaux, in the second volume of his Works, p. 26, seqq. Mitford's History 
 of Greece, ch. xlviii. 4, note 16. ilitl'ord, through some mistake, says that 
 the story is told also " in the book of Maccabees." 
 
 Josephus is not a writer to be trusted in any questionable case. It may be 
 worth while to produce a single other illustration of his character, in a matter 
 of some curiosity, which has not, so far as I know, been before brought to
 
 42 
 
 laws, we may suppose, were added to the old ; and ceremo- 
 nies, there is little doubt, were multiplied. At the same 
 time, a strong national feeling must have revived among 
 the Jews, together with a sense of their peculiar relation to 
 God. The history of that dispensation which allied them 
 to God would thus become an object of great interest. All 
 traditions concerning it, written and oral, would be sought 
 out and preserved. The laws of the nation would be ascribed, 
 as far as possible, to their divinely-commissioned Lawgiver ; 
 and for this it is not unlikely that some remaining book or 
 books of their ancient laws, as well as the current of tradition, 
 afforded abundant pretence. Thus, from written documents, 
 and oral traditions, we may suppose the Pentateuch to have 
 been compiled by some of those who held the highest 
 authority in the new State. Such a book, or rather, such a 
 collection of books, under the circumstances of the time, 
 and with the excited feelings of the people, would be readily 
 received. If some fabrications proceeded from the com- 
 pilers, we should be slow, considering the state of ancient 
 morality, and the loose notions of truth then prevailing, to 
 bring this as a very grave charge against them. That the 
 books were originally ascribed to Moses as their author is 
 highly improbable ; for, if their compilers had had any inten- 
 tion of representing him as their author, they would natu- 
 rally have made him speak in the first person, and they 
 would not have introduced the various passages which, it is 
 obvious, at the first glance, that he could not have written, 
 as, for example, the account of his own death. But the 
 
 notice. Making a computation from the number of lambs sacrificed at the 
 passover, he seems to imply, that the number of Jews who had assembled at 
 Jerusalem to celebrate the passover, and who were shut up in the city when 
 besieged by Titus, was more than two millions and a half. But, putting aside 
 this larger number, he expressly asserts, that those who perished in the siege 
 were eleven hundred thousand. (De Bello Jud. Lib. vi. c. 9.) The walls of 
 the city, he elsewhere says (Ibid. Lib. v. c. 4, 3)> were thirty-three stadia 
 in circumference. They, therefore, included less than one square mile. But 
 a square mile, if levelled, and free from buildings and thoroughfares, would 
 have afforded for each of the eleven hundred thousand persons, for himself, 
 his furniture, utensils, provisions, and arms, a place of but a little more than 
 five feet square.
 
 48 
 
 Pentateuch was called " the Book of Moses ; " and in this, 
 as in numberless other cases, the ambiguity of language 
 may have kd into error. This title, meaning a book con- 
 taing the history and laws of Moses, might easily, in process 
 of time, in an uncritical age and -nation, come to be inter- 
 preted as signifying a book written by Moses. The belief 
 that he was the author of the whole of the Pentateuch was 
 undoubtedly greatly facilitated by the fact, that he is repre- 
 sented in it as having committed much or the whole of the 
 Levitical Law to writing, and by the readiness with which 
 a supposition would be admitted, which ascribed a book of 
 such a character to the inspired Lawgiver of the nation. 
 
 Such may have been the origin of the Pentateuch, sup- 
 posing it not to be the work of Moses. But it is to be 
 recollected, that the main question before us is not, whether 
 this particular hypothesis concerning its formation be pro- 
 bable, but whether it was written by Moses. In support of 
 the proposition, that he was its author, there is, as we have 
 seen, properly speaking, no historical evidence. In all 
 common cases this fact would be decisive of the question ; 
 since it would be wholly unreasonable to ascribe a work to 
 a particular author, when we have no evidence that it was 
 ascribed to him before a thousand years after his death. 
 Whether this case be an extraordinary one, to which peculiar 
 proof is applicable, is a question to which we shall hereafter 
 attend, so far as is necessary. But it may here be recollected, 
 that in our search for historical evidence, we have not only 
 seen that such evidence is wanting, but have found reasons 
 for believing that the books in question were not written by 
 Moses. For it is not credible that these books, if written 
 by Moses, and carrying with them the authority of God, 
 should not have been appealed to by the prophets, the pub- 
 lic teachers of the religion of God, who ought to have made 
 them the basis of their instructions. Nor is it credible, 
 that they should have come so near perishing, as to be saved 
 only by a providential discovery, just before the nation fell 
 into ruin and captivity. The tradition of the Jews, that no 
 copy of them was extant on the return of the nation from
 
 44 
 
 their Captivity, favours much more the supposition, tlmt 
 they had their origin after that event, than the supposition 
 which ascribes them to Moses. And if it appear that, 
 hefore that event fundamental ordinances of the Lsvitical 
 Law were not observed, arid even that individuals specially 
 favoured by Heaven acted contrary to them without censure 
 from God or man, it affords a presumption, more or less 
 strong, that the Levitical Law had not God for its author, 
 nor Moses for the organ of its communication. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE 
 AUTHORSHIP OF THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 IT may appear, then, from what has been said, that there 
 is no historical evidence, that the Pentateuch was written by 
 Moses ; but, on the contrary, that the Jewish history affords 
 proof that he was not its author. We will now pass to 
 some general considerations by which the same conclusion 
 seems to be established. 
 
 I. According to the common computation Moses lived in 
 the fifteenth century before Christ. Such, however, I con- 
 ceive to be the uncertainty of the early Jewish history and 
 chronology, that no approach to accuracy can be made in 
 fixing the time when he lived. But, though it may have 
 been earlier, it, probably, was not much later than the period 
 just mentioned ; and in assuming this as correct we shall 
 commit no error which will affect our reasoning. 
 
 There is, then, no satisfactory evidence that alphabetical 
 writing was known at this period. If known to others, it is 
 improbable that it was known to the Hebrews. And, in any 
 case, there is no reason to suppose, that they were so familiar 
 with its use, that a book, and especially that five such books 
 as compose the Pentateuch, might have been written for
 
 45 
 
 their instruction. Such books are not written except for a 
 people among whom there are many readers. The injunctions,, 
 likewise, respecting the use of writing in the Pentateuch,* 
 imply that the Jews, at the time when they were given, were 
 familiarly acquainted with it ; and so also does the reference, 
 which it contains, to another book, " The Book of the Wars 
 of the Lord,"f as already in existence. 
 
 But it must have been long after the first rudiments of 
 alphabetical writing had been attained, before the invention 
 was brought to a state so nearly complete, as that in which 
 it appears in the Hebrew alphabet. It must have been a 
 still longer time, before an acquaintance with it had become 
 so common, as to lead to its use for the purpose of com- 
 municating instruction by books. Probably it was first 
 used in inscriptions, and in committing to writing com- 
 positions principally metrical, which had already become 
 familiar by oral tradition. In the latter case, the intended 
 significance of the newly-discovered signs being already 
 known, they would be easily deciphered, and the art of 
 reading would thus be gradually spread. Books, like those 
 which form the Pentateuch, in prose, and in a style so well 
 constructed, must have been comparatively a very late result 
 of the invention. But, if we suppose Moses to have been 
 the author of the Pentateuch, we must suppose, that before 
 his time the art of writing was in common use, and the con- 
 sequent demand for the materials employed in it so great, as 
 to render them of very easy acquisition ; for Moses mus't 
 either have provided himself prospectively with a large store 
 of them in the haste of his departure from Egypt, or have 
 afterwards obtained them in the deserts of Arabia. But for 
 a long time after the supposed date of the Pentateuch we 
 find no proof of the existence of a book, or even of an 
 inscription, in proper alphabetical characters among the 
 nations by whom the Hebrews were surrounded. | 
 
 The descendants of Jacob, according to their history, 
 resided not less than two hundred and fifteen years in Egypt. 
 
 * Deut. vi. 9 ; xi. 20 ; xxiv. 1. t Numbers xxi. 14. 
 
 J [ce note c at the end of the volume. ED.]
 
 40 
 
 During this time they could not have learned alphabetical 
 writing from the Egyptians ; for the mode of representing 
 ideas to the eye, which the Egyptians employed till a period 
 long subsequent, was widely different from the alphabetical 
 writing of the Hebrews. Nor is it probable, that the 
 descendants of Jacob, who were first shepherds and then 
 slaves in Egypt, were the inventors of the art. If they were 
 acquainted with it, they must, it would seem, have brought 
 it with them into the country. But we can hardly suppose, 
 that it was invented, or acquired except by tradition, in the 
 family of Isaac, or in that of Jacob before his residence in 
 Egypt, engaged as they both were in agriculture and the 
 care of cattle. We must then go back to Abraham at least 
 for what traditionary knowledge of it his descendants in 
 Egypt may be supposed to have possessed. But it would 
 be idle to argue against the supposition, that alphabetical 
 writing was known in the time of Abraham. 
 
 II. "We proceed to another consideration. Thevocabulary 
 and style of the Pentateuch cannot have been the vocabulary 
 and style of Moses. There is no important difference 
 between the Hebrew of the Pentateuch and that of the other 
 books of the Old Testament, written before the re-establish- 
 ment of the Jews in Palestine after their Captivity. But 
 from the time of Moses to this event was an interval of about 
 nine hundred or a thousand years. Every other language, 
 the history of which we can trace, if it have continued a 
 living language, has undergone great changes dining the 
 same or a shorter period; as, for instance, the English, 
 during the four centuries and a half since the days of \Yicliff 
 and Chaucer, and the Latin, in a still shorter interval between 
 the laws of the Twelve Tables and the time of Cicero. But 
 the language of the Israelites was peculiarly exposed to 
 change during the long period of its existence as a spoken 
 tongue after the time of Moses. Its vocabulary, never 
 copious, must have been originally barren ; accommodated 
 to the wants of a people having but a narrow sphere of 
 thought. It must not only have enlarged itself to receive
 
 -JT 
 
 the new accession of religious conceptions communicated by 
 Moses ; but must have been afterward in a state of con- 
 tinual growth, to adapt itself to the subsequent intellectual 
 development of the Hebrews, and to the most extraordinary 
 circumstances in which they were placed by the new dis- 
 pensation. After the death of Moses, they established 
 themselves in a new country, widely different in its natural 
 aspect from Egypt ; from being slaves employed in making 
 bricks, they became accustomed to the use of arms; they 
 were placed in new relations, and became familiar with new 
 objects and new customs. They were pressed upon by other 
 nations, speaking, as we have reason to believe, languages 
 or dialects different from their own, with whom they inter- 
 mingled, whose idolatrous rites, and other customs,' they 
 sometimes adopted, and to whom, in the earlier part of their 
 history, they were sometimes in servitude. Their engaging 
 in commerce in the time of Solomon must have had its 
 customary effect to give a new colouring to their speech. 
 Before the time of Samuel, they were wholly without that 
 attention to literature, and that intellectual cultivation, which 
 might have served to fix their language, and certainly had 
 no literary watchfulness to guard against its corruption ; nor 
 can we suppose that those habits of mind existed in a high 
 degree during any stage of their history. Under such cir- 
 cumstances a language cannot remain the same for nine or 
 ten centuries. The supposition, that the Pentateuch in its 
 present form was written by Moses, is as untenable as would 
 be the supposition, that some book written in modem English 
 was a composition of the age of Chaucer. The attempts 
 which have been made to point out certain archaisms of style 
 in the Pentateuch, only show that no evidence can be pro- 
 duced of sucli peculiarity of language as the case requires.* 
 
 * In treating of the perfection of the Hebrew language, Leusden, one of 
 . the most learned Hebrew scholars of his time, thus writes : " The uniformity 
 of the Hebrew language in all the books of the Old Testament contributes 
 much to its perfection. I have often wondered that there should be so great 
 a correspondence between the Hebrew of all the books of the Old Testament, 
 when we know that they Avere composed by different men (whose respective 
 styles of writing are often distinguishable), at diverse times, and in diverse 
 places. Should a book be written by different men of the s; me city, we should
 
 48 
 
 Nor is the existence of those supposed archaisms difficult to 
 be accounted for. The Pentateuch, if not the work of Moses, 
 was undoubtedly, in great part, a compilation; and from 
 the pre-existing documents or traditions which formed its 
 basis those few antiquated or peculiar forms of speech might 
 be copied or imitated. 
 
 III. In the next place, it may be observed, that the 
 Pentateuch contains passages, which, it is agreed, could not 
 have been written by Moses. Some of them are obvious to 
 every reader ; as, for instance, the account of his own death, 
 and the passage in Genesis,*" in which it is said, "These 
 are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom, before there 
 
 perceive for the most part greater differences in it, as respects style or ortho- 
 graphy, or some other circumstances, than appear in the whole Old Testament. 
 But let a book be written by a German and by a Frieslander, or let there be 
 an interval of a thousand years between the writers, as there was between 
 many of those of the Old Testament, what a difference of language would 
 appear ! He who understood the writing of one might scarcely understand 
 that of the other. Nay, the difference of time and place would render their 
 modes of speech so unlike, that it would be very difficult to apply to them the 
 same rules of grammar and syntax. But in the Old Testament there is so 
 great a uniformity, such a correspondence in orthography and construction, 
 that one might almost think that all the books were written at the same time 
 and in the same place, though by different authors." Philologus Hebneus, 
 Diss. xvii. pp. 166, 167. 
 
 It is the opinion of Gesenius, the most distinguished Hebrew scholar of our 
 day, that the antiquity of the Hebrew language, in- its present form, hardly 
 reaches higher than the age of David or Solomon. " Upon the supposition," 
 he says, " that the Pentateuch was a production of the age of Moses, we must 
 indeed carry its existence back to a period considerably more remote. But 
 notwithstanding the learned defenders which that supposition has found in 
 our own age, it can scarcely approve itself to the judgment of an unprejudiced 
 
 critic It is a fact, that the language of the Pentateuch fully 
 
 corresponds with that of the other ancient historical books, and, in the poetical 
 portions, with that of the other poetry of the first age." [Gesenius considers 
 the first age of the Hebrew language as extending to the time when it was 
 corrupted by the influence of the Chaldee in consequence of the Captivity.] 
 "If there was an interval of nearly a thousand years between these writings, 
 as there must have been on the supposition that Moses was the author of the 
 Pentateuch, a phenomenon would be presented to which there is nothing 
 parallel in the whole history of language, namely, that the living language of 
 a people, and the circle of their ideas, should remain so unaltered for such a 
 length of time." Geschichte der Hebriiischen Sprache und Schrift : i. c. 
 History of the Hebrew Language and Modes of Writini, 8. 
 
 * Ch. xxxvi. 31.
 
 49 
 
 reigned any king over the children of Israel." But such 
 passages, it is said, do not prove that the Pentateuch was 
 not his work ; they are to be regarded only as additions 
 made to it by some later hand. To this, it may be answered, 
 that there is a presumption, that a work is not to be ascribed 
 to a particular individual, when it contains a considerable 
 number of passages which he obviously could not have 
 written, though this presumption, undoubtedly, may be over- 
 borne by opposite evidence. It may be remarked, likewise, 
 that upon the supposition that Moses was the writer of the 
 Pentateuch, there would have been a natural reluctance 
 among the Hebrews to making or permitting such useless 
 interpolations ; to thus tampering with a work so venerable, 
 the composition of their inspired lawgiver, recording ;the 
 very words of God himself; their infallible directory in reli- 
 gion and morals, and the unalterable code of their civil law. 
 A book thus unique might be expected to escape corruption. 
 During the period concerning which we have satisfactory 
 evidence that the Pentateuch has been so regarded by the 
 Jews, we know that such interpolations have not been made 
 in it. But it is unnecessary to insist on these considerations ; 
 there is another to be attended to. At the time when those 
 supposed interpolations were made, no importance could 
 have been attached to the belief, that the Pentateuch was 
 written by Moses. The necessary effect of such inter- 
 polations was to incorporate into the book itself evidence, 
 false evidence, it may be said, but still evidence, and such as 
 appears at first view decisive, that the book was not written 
 by him. Those, therefore, by whom the interpolations were 
 introduced could not have attached any importance to a be- 
 lief, which they took such means to destroy. But to say that 
 no importance was attached to the belief that the Pentateuch 
 was written by Moses, is but saying in other words, that it 
 did not exist ; for it is impossible, if the belief existed, that 
 it should not have been considered as essentially affecting 
 the character and authority of the Pentateuch. 
 
 IV. There is another consideration. The books of the 
 
 E
 
 50 
 
 Pentateuch do not claim to be the work of Moses. They 
 profess to contain his history, but they are not professedly 
 written by him. 
 
 The fact has been regarded as of little weight ; because in 
 other historical works, as in those of Csesar and Clarendon, 
 the author has spoken of himself in the third person. But 
 this is a deviation from common usage and the natural mode 
 of expression, occasioned by some particular motive. It 
 may be adopted by a writer in order to avoid an air of 
 arrogance or vanity ; or to give the appearance of impartiality 
 to his history; as if it were unaffected by his personal 
 feelings ; or to place himself under the same point of view 
 with other individuals whom he introduces into his narrative. 
 It is a mode of writing which belongs not to a rude, but to 
 a refined age ; and no probable reason can be assigned why 
 it should have been adopted by Moses. Such a semblance 
 of modesty would have been wholly unsuitable to his office. 
 As the minister of God to his countrymen, it was his busi- 
 ness to speak with authority, to assert his claims to deference, 
 and to place himself without reserve before them, as one 
 whom they were bound to listen to and obey. 
 
 But the fact is of much importance under another aspect. 
 Did the Pentateuch assume to be the work of Moses, then, 
 in denying it to be his work, we should be dritffen to the 
 supposition of intentional fraud. But this would be the 
 supposition not merely of a very gross imposture, but of an 
 imposture which, as regards such books, ascribed to such an 
 author, was very unlikely to be attempted, and very unlikely 
 to be successful. On the other hand, there is no difficulty 
 in supposing that a series of books might at any time be 
 readily received by the Jews, which, without claiming to be 
 the work of Moses, embodied the traditions respecting their 
 ancient history, and those that had long been gathering 
 round his name, and which referred to him as their author 
 those laws, that had been gradually built up on the basis of 
 his institutions.
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 ON THE INTERNAL CHARACTER OF THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 THE arguments hitherto adduced do not involve the credi- 
 bility of the narratives contained in the Pentateuch, or any 
 moral or religious considerations. It is different with those 
 about to be stated. 
 
 In judging whether the Pentateuch be the work of Moses, 
 that is, of a writer deserving the highest credit, we must con- 
 sider whether the narratives it contains are in themselves 
 credible. These narratives may be divided into two classes, 
 those which relate to natural and those which relate to 
 supernatural events. As regards either class, it may be 
 sufficient to direct attention to the subject, and then leave 
 it to every one's private investigation and thought. Of 
 many examples a few may be adduced, which seem to show 
 that the history cannot be regarded as authentic, nor as the 
 work of a contemporary of the supposed events which it 
 narrates. We will first attend to those narratives which 
 concern events not miraculous. / 
 
 I. The number of fighting men among the Israelites 
 ("every male from twenty years old and upward"), immedi- 
 ately after their leaving Egypt, is said to have been more than 
 six hundred thousand ; the numbers of each tribe being par- 
 ticularly given.* This statement of the whole sum of the 
 fighting men is repeatedly made.f It included none from 
 the tribe of Levi, who did not go forth to war. The whole 
 number of the Israelites, therefore, at the time of their leav- 
 ing Egypt, cannot be estimated at less than two millions 
 and a half. More than eighty years before the time of their 
 departure, a king of Egypt is represented as saying, " Lo ! 
 the people of the children of Israel are more numerous and 
 
 * Numbers i. 19-46. 
 
 f Numbers ii. 32 ; xi. 21 ; xxri. 51. Exod. xii. 37 ; xxxviii. 26. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 
 
 stronger than we." The land of Egypt is said to have been 
 filled with them.* Let us consider this account of their 
 numbers. 
 
 The Israelites who established themselves in Egypt, that 
 is, Jacob and his descendants, are stated, in the Books of 
 Genesis and Exodus, to have been seventy in number.f To 
 these, in reckoning the progenitors of the nation, must be 
 added the wives of his sons and grandsons. Their number 
 is uncertain, but, as only two of his grandsons are mentioned 
 ns having children at this time, if we assume that the pro- 
 genitors of the Israelites amounted to two hundred, the 
 whole error in our estimate must be through excess. No 
 one who receives the accounts in Genesis and Exodus as 
 authentic, can suppose that the number was greater. 
 
 How long, then, did the Israelites remain in Egypt? 
 There are two different opinions on the subject ; according 
 to one of which, the period of their residence was two hun- 
 dred and fifteen years, and according to the other, four 
 hundred and thirty. Passing over some critical considera- 
 tions, which bear upon the question, there are others that 
 may enable us to form a judgment respecting it. It cannot 
 be believed, that the Israelites would have remained a dis- 
 tinct people among the Egyptians for four hundred and 
 thirty years. Four hundred and thirty years are a sixth 
 part of that period, beyond which darkness and uncertainty 
 settle upon the whole history of mankind. When we look 
 back to the changes that have taken place since the com- 
 mencement of the fifteenth century of our era, we may have 
 tsomo notion of what is likely to occur during such a length 
 of time. After the Jews had been separated by God from the 
 rest of the men through the ministry of Moses, their reli- 
 gion might prevent them from mixing with other nations. 
 JJut while they were in Egypt there was no permanent ob- 
 
 * Exod. i. 7, 9. 
 
 t Genesis xlvi. 5-27. Exodus i. 5. Stephen, in his speech (Acts vii. 14), 
 s?ys " seventy-five," following the Septuagint. It has been supposed, that to 
 inaka this number the five grandsons of Joseph, who were born after the estab- 
 lishment of Jacob's family in Egypt, are added.
 
 53 
 
 stacle to their becoming incorporated with the Egyptians as 
 one people ; and in the nature of things such an incor- 
 poration would have taken place in the course of four 
 centuries. 
 
 Upon their leaving Egypt, we find that all the descendants 
 of each of the twelve sons of Jacob could severally be re- 
 ferred to their respective progenitors. The nation could 
 readily be divided into twelve tribes. But we can hardly 
 suppose this to have been possible after an interval of four 
 centuries. When established in Canaan, there may have 
 been particular reasons for their preserving their family ge- 
 nealogies, but there was none before. They were in the same 
 circumstances in this respect as the generality of men in 
 other nations; and in what other nation have the individuals 
 who compose it been able to trace back their genealogy 
 for four hundred years, each to a particular son of a com- 
 mon ancestor ? 
 
 But the genealogy of Moses may alone seem decisive of 
 the question. Moses, on his mother's side, is stated to have 
 been the grandson of Levi. " The name of Amram's wife 
 was Jochebed, a daughter of Levi, whom her mother bare to 
 Levi in Egypt : and she bare unto Arnram, Aaron, and 
 Moses, and Miriam, their sister." * It has been suggested, 
 that by " a daughter of Levi" may be meant nothing more 
 than " a woman of the tribe of Levi." But the probability 
 of this interpretation may be tested by substituting the 
 latter words for the former, in the passage before us : " The 
 name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, a woman of the tribe 
 of Levi, whom her mother bore to Levi in Egypt." Accord- 
 ing to the explanation proposed, the last clause is worse than 
 a mere useless repetition. It perplexes the sense. The as- 
 sertion, that " the mother of Jochebed bore her to Levi " 
 can mean only what the writer is supposed to have just said, 
 that Jochebed was of the tribe of Levi ; and the addition, 
 that she bore her " in Egypt," becomes altogether idle. But 
 if there were any doubt about the meaning of this passage, 
 it would be settled by another in Exodus,f where it is said, 
 
 -.* Numbers xxvi. 59. f Ch. vi. 16, 20.
 
 54 
 
 that Kohath was the son of Levi, and that Amram was the 
 son of Kohath, and thus the grandson of Levi ; and that 
 " Amram took him to wife Jochebed, his father's sister," 
 who was consequently Levi's daughter, " and she hare him 
 Aaron and Moses." The statement of the same fact, 
 that Jochebed, the mother of Moses, was the daughter of 
 Levi, in these two different forms, can leave no question as 
 to the meaning of the writer. Yet ahout eighty years hefore 
 the Israelites left Egypt, Jochebed was capable of bearing 
 children ; for Moses is said to have been eighty years old 
 when he spoke to Pharaoh.* As Moses was on his mother's 
 side the grandson of Levi, so he was on his father's side the 
 grandson of Kohath, who was born before the Israelites en- 
 tered Egypt, f Upon the supposition that the Pentateuch 
 was written by him, it is to be recollected that this is his own 
 account of his progenitors. It follows from it, that the re- 
 sidence of the Israelites in Egypt could not have extended 
 to four hundred and thirty years ; and that, in choosing be- 
 tween this and two hundred and fifteen, we must take the 
 smaller number. One cannot, indeed, very plausibly recon- 
 cile the genealogy of Moses even with the shorter period. 
 . Assuming, then, the period of two hundred and fifteen 
 years, we may calculate the probable increase of two hundred 
 individuals during this time. It must be under favourable 
 circumstances that they would, through such a period, 
 double their numbers once in twenty-five years. But the 
 Israelites were, according to the account in Exodus, placed 
 in circumstances very unfavourable to their increase during 
 the last eighty years of their residence in Egypt; the king 
 having ordered their male children to be destroyed, and they 
 themselves being reduced to miserable servitude. Supposing 
 them, however, to have been originally two hundred indivi- 
 duals, and to have increased at the rate just mentioned, 
 their numbers, upon leaving Egypt, would have amounted 
 to something less than a hundred thousand, instead of two 
 millions and a half. 
 
 But whatever was the rate of increase among the Israelites, 
 
 * Exodus vii. 7. f Genesis xlvi. 11.
 
 no reason can be given why they should have multiplied 
 faster than the Egyptians. That the rate of increase of the 
 former should so vastly exceed that of the latter, as it must 
 have done according to the history in the Pentateuch, is in- 
 credible. If the Israelites, at the time of their departure, 
 amounted to two millions and a half, their original number 
 had been increased twelve thousand five hundred times ; if 
 it amounted to a hundred thousand, it had been increased 
 five hundred times. But if we suppose merely a million of 
 inhabitants in Egypt at the time when the Israelites entered 
 it, then anything approximating to the lowest rate of in- 
 crease for the whole population of which they made a part, 
 is obviously out of the question. The writer of the Penta- 
 teuch, however, represents a single family of sixty-eight 
 male members as entering one of the principal ancient king- 
 doms, and in a certain time, whether two hundred, or four 
 hundred, years, is here unimportant becoming formidable 
 through their numbers to the other inhabitants of the country, 
 of the population of which it would be unreasonable to sup- 
 pose that they originally formed a ten-thousandth part. 
 
 II. There is much in the history of the Israelites, which 
 becomes incredible on the supposition that their number 
 approached to what it is represented to have been. When, 
 according to the account, the two or three millions of Israel- 
 ites left Egypt, they were accompanied by " a mixed multi- 
 tude who went along with them, and flocks and herds, even 
 an abundance of cattle."* Yet this immense body is repre- 
 sented as having been collected, arrayed, and put in motion 
 in a single day, in consequence of a hasty command of 
 Pharaoh given the preceding night, f In what time could 
 
 * Exodus xii. 33. 
 
 i 1 Exodus xii. Numbers xxxiii. 3. The passover was skin on the four- 
 teenth day of the month, which, according to the Jewish computation, ended 
 at sunset. At midnight, that is, on the fifteenth day, the first-born of the 
 Egyptians were destroyed. The same night Pharaoh issued his order for the 
 departure of the Israelites ; and during the fifteenth day the Israelites were 
 on their march. I should not mention these particulars, which are obvious iu 
 the passages referred to, had I not observed an oversight in the valuable
 
 56 
 
 this nation of men, women, and children, with all their sick 
 and aged, with their domestic animals, and their necessary 
 baggage, have defiled, in the face of any enemy, through 
 the Red Sea ? According to the history, it was done in a 
 single night. How long must it have taken such a multitude 
 of men and cattle to quench the thirst of which they were 
 perishing at the waters of Marah, or by those which gushed 
 from the rock of Horeb ? What extent of territory must 
 have been covered by two or three millions of men encamped 
 in tents among the rocky defiles, the mountainous and broken 
 country around Sinai, or along the eastern shore of the Eed 
 Sea ? From the history we should receive the impression 
 that they were a body capable of being readily assembled, 
 and orally addressed by Moses or Aaron; a body which 
 might all be put in motion in the morning, accomplish a 
 day's journey, and at night encamp at a particular place ; 
 as at "'Elim, where there were twelve wells of water, and 
 they encamped there by the waters."* 
 
 III. The number of the Israelites, we are told, had 
 alarmed one of the kings of Egypt. Before the birth of 
 Moses, that is, about eighty years before the Israelites left 
 Egypt, or one hundred and thirty-five after the family of 
 sixty-eight males entered it, the king is represented as say- 
 ing : " Lo the people of Israel are more numerous and 
 stronger than we ; come, let us wisely prevent their multi- 
 plying.'^ Being alarmed at their numbers, he resolved to 
 provoke their most deadly and desperate hatred. He " made 
 their lives bitter " by reducing them to slavery ; and issued 
 
 " Biblical Researches " of Professor Robinson, to which he seems to have been 
 unconsciously led by an indistinct sense of the utter incredibility of the narra- 
 tive as actually given. He says (Vol. i. p. 80), " From the time when Pharaoh 
 dismissed Moses and Aaron in the night of [following] the fourteenth day of 
 the month (according to the Jewish reckoning), until the morning of the 
 fifteanth day, when the people set off, there was an interval of some thirty- 
 hours." Between some time after the midnight which followed the fourteenth 
 day of the month, and the morning of the fifteenth, there could have been an 
 interval of but a very few hours. 
 
 * Exodus xv. 27. t Exodus i. 9, 10.
 
 ,07 
 
 an order for the destruction of all their male children. After 
 an unsuccessful attempt fully to effect his latter purpose, this 
 order is said to have assumed the following horrible form : 
 " Then Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son 
 that is horn ye shall cast into the river." * To outrage to 
 the utmost a formidable nation, to exercise upon it an ex- 
 travagance of cruelty which no tribe of men, however feeble, 
 would tamely endure, virtually to declare a war of extermi- 
 nation upon the Israelites, in the most odious form which 
 war could assume, are the expedients that Pharaoh is repre- 
 sented as adopting through dread of their enmity. Nor is 
 this the most extraordinary part of the history. The Israel- 
 ites, as far as appears from it, submitted without resistance 
 to be made slaves, and to have their infants murdered as a 
 matter of common usage. The voice of human nature pro- 
 nounces this to be impossible. No people was ever so far 
 degraded below the brutes, who expose their own lives in 
 defence of their young. 
 
 IV. But the king is represented as, at the same time, in 
 dread of their power, and fearful lest they should withdraw 
 themselves from Egypt ; lest they should join his enemies, 
 and by force of arms leave the country ; "f and, according 
 to the narrative, one of his successors considered their re- 
 maining in Egypt as of so much importance that he mani- 
 fested the most insane obstinacy in refusing to permit their 
 departure. It must have been only for their value as slaves 
 that the kings of Egypt were so desirous to keep the Hebrews 
 in their land. But how is this to be reconciled with an order 
 for the destruction of their male children that is, for the 
 gradual extermination of those Hebrew slaves, who were 
 such valuable property that supernatural inflictions of the 
 most terrible kind were to be endured, or the hazard of them 
 encountered, rather than that they should be suffered to quit 
 the country ? 
 
 * Exodus i. 22. f Exodus i. 10.
 
 58 
 
 V. When at last an order for their departure was extorted, 
 we find them represented as leaving the country in such haste 
 that they " took their unleavened dough in their kneading 
 vessels, wrapped up in their garments, upon their shoulders ; " 
 and during their first day's journey " baked unleavened cakes 
 of the dough ; " " for they were thrust out of Egypt, and 
 could not tarry ; nor had they prepared for themselves any 
 provision." * As we have before remarked, however, they 
 carried with them " flocks and herds, even an abundance of 
 cattle ; " and they carried them into the desert which borders 
 the Red Sea to the west, where no supply of herbage was to 
 be found for their subsistence. Crossing the Red Sea, they 
 commenced their march toward Mount Sinai, through a 
 region of frightful sterility. In this desert they journeyed 
 for three days without water, and, as would appear from the 
 preceding account, without food. At the end of the third 
 day they were furnished with sweet water by a miracle. t 
 What number had perished in the mean time is not told. 
 During their whole journeying and residence along the coast 
 of the Red Sea and in the desert of Sinai, where water for a 
 few travellers is often difficult to be procured, we read of 
 their having a miraculous supply only in one other instance. J 
 Their sufferings from hunger, we are told, were great before 
 their arrival at Sinai ; and quails and manna were miracu- 
 lously provided for their support. Their cattle, of course, 
 had perished, or been killed. The manna was continued for 
 the whole forty years of their journey ings till they came " to 
 an inhabited land." Yet before quitting their encampment 
 around Sinai, they are again described as having an abund- 
 ance of cattle for sacrifices, and of lambs for the passover, 
 flour, oil, and wine, and a profusion of spices. |j Departing 
 from Mount Sinai to march through " a great and terrible 
 
 * Exodus xii. 34, 39. f Exod. xv. 22-25. 
 
 J At Horeb. Exod. xvii. 1, seqq. Exod. xvi. 
 
 || Exod. Ch. xxiv. 5. Ch. xxix. Ch. xxx. 23, seqq. Leviticus, Ch. 
 ix. Numbers, Ch. iii. 41, 45. Cb. vii. Ch. ix. 2-14, &c.
 
 59 
 
 wilderness,"* the people complained and wept, saying, " Who 
 will give us flesh to eat ; " and were again miraculously sup- 
 plied with quails. f After this, their sufferings from want of 
 "water return ; but their cattle are still alive ; for they thus 
 expostulate with Moses and Aaron : " Why have ye brought 
 the people of God into this wilderness, where both ourselves 
 and our cattle must die ? "| Thus the whole nation of the 
 Israelites, and not these only, but " a mixed multitude who 
 went with them," are represented as remaining forty years 
 in deserts, where they must have perished but for a constant 
 miraculous supply of food ; and as having at the same time 
 herds of cattle, which, in their longings after flesh, they re- 
 frained from eating. The food of their cattle must also have 
 been furnished by some astonishing miracle, of which the 
 historian has supplied no account. Equally for men and 
 beasts an uninterrupted miraculous supply of water was 
 necessary ; but the supposition that such an uninterrupted 
 supply was afforded, is precluded by the circumstance that 
 four particular cases are specified in which it was given. "|| 
 The Jewish Eabbis, though in general not apt to startle at 
 absurdities, perceived this deficiency in their history, and 
 endeavoured to supply it by a tradition, alluded to by St. 
 Paul,H that the rock of Horeb, or the water which gushed 
 from it, followed the Israelites in their wanderings. 
 
 VI. An incongruity, only less glaring, is found in the 
 accounts of the wealth possessed by the Israelites, while 
 encamped around Sinai, in gold, silver, brass, precious stones, 
 fine linen of different colours, boards of setim wood, aro- 
 matics, spices, and various other articles of luxury, and of 
 their skill in different arts.** They could have acquired 
 
 * Deut. i. 19. t Numbers, Ch. xi. 
 
 J Numbers xx. 4. Exod. xii. 38. Numbers xi. 4. 
 
 || At Marah, Exod. xv. 23, seqq. At Horeb, Exod. xvii. 1, seqq. At 
 Meribah, Numbers xx. 2, seqq. And at Beer, Numbers xxi. 16, seqq. 
 
 II 1 Corinthians x. 4. On wbicli passage see Wetstein's note. 
 
 ** Exod. Ch. xxv. xxviii. Ch. xxx. -xxxi. Ch. xxxiL 2-4, 20, 24. Ch. 
 xxxv. -xxxix.
 
 60 
 
 neither their wealth nor their skill by their employment as 
 slaves in Egypt in the making of bricks.* Their skill, it 
 may be said, was miraculously conferred. But this solution 
 will not apply to the casting of the golden calf by Aaron.f 
 A part of their wealth, it may be said, that they procured 
 from the Egyptians, from whom, before leaving Egypt, they 
 asked and obtained " utensils of silver, utensils of gold, and 
 raiment."| The story of " their spoiling of the Egyptians," 
 in consequence of a divine direction, presents difficulties 
 quite as serious as those which it may be brought forward to 
 remove. But, however great may have been the generosity 
 of the Egyptians in gifts of gold and silver utensils and 
 raiment, it will account only for a part of the wealth of the 
 Israelites, much of which consisted in other stores. Nor is 
 any explanation to be given why the Israelites, who were re- 
 
 * In speaking of the account of the construction of the tabernacle, Dr. 
 Priestley says (" Notes on Scripture, " Exod. xxxvi. 5), "In short, there is 
 no art known to the ancients, a thousand years after this time, with which the 
 Israelites do not appear to have been well acquainted." It is strange, that a 
 man of so much acuteness as Dr. Priestley should have written such a sentence 
 without perceiving its obvious bearing on the credibility of the history. The 
 coincidence between his mention of "a thousand years after the time" of 
 Moses, and the not improbable date of the final compilation of the Pentateuch, 
 is perhaps worthy of notice. We are told, in the Book of Samuel, that some 
 centuries after the period when the Israelites are represented as so skilful iu, 
 the arts, ' ' there was no smith in Israel, " so that they had neither swords 
 nor spears ; and " all the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen 
 every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock." 
 (1 Samuel xiii. 19-22.) 
 
 t Exodus xxxii. The opinion entertained by some commentators, that 
 Aaron carved the image in wood, and then overlaid it with gold, whi:h is 
 thought to lighten the difficulties attending the narrative, seems to be incon- 
 sistent with its being called a molten calf, and directly contrary to what Aaron 
 is made to say (v. 24), "Then I cast the gold into the fire, and there came 
 out this calf." 
 
 Exodus iii. 21, 22 ; xi. 2 ; xii. 35, 36. The common version says, that 
 the Israelites "borrowed" of the Egyptians, and the Egyptians "lent" 
 them what they asked for. If they "borrowed," it was with a promise of 
 returning, expressed or implied. But it is far from certain, that the words in 
 the original correspond to those terms, the use of which I have, therefore, 
 avoided. The one party asked as presents, it has been said, and the other 
 party gave, gold and silver utensils (not jewels), and raiment. The causes 
 which have been assigned for this extraordinary liberality of the Egyptiana 
 are such, it seems 1b me, ae will bear no discussion.
 
 01 
 
 moving such a profusion of articles of luxury into the desert, 
 and who consequently had provided means for the convey- 
 ance of them, should have borne away in the hurry of their 
 departure their yet unleavened dough in the kneading- vessels 
 upon their shoulders, and should have had no opportunity 
 to provide any store of provisions for their own sustenance. 
 If the Israelites possessed all those articles in the desert, 
 they had, as I have said, means of transporting them. But 
 such does not appear to have been the case. The camel is 
 the only beast of burden which could have been used; and 
 there is no mention of their possessing camels. 
 
 VII. Concerning the inhabitants of Palestine, the Israel- 
 ites are said to have been told by Moses, " Ye may not de- 
 stroy them at once, lest the wild beasts increase upon you." 
 They were, therefore, to be expelled " by little and little," in 
 proportion to the gradual increase of the Hebrews.* These 
 nations, however, would not have waited in peace to be extir- 
 pated at the convenience of their enemies ; and, if engaged 
 with them in a war of extermination, they would have been 
 more formidable than the wild beasts. The mention of the 
 latter is another strange circumstance. Palestine, at the 
 time when it was invaded by the Hebrews, is described as 
 being inhabited by nations greater and more powerful than 
 they (though their numbers had caused fear to the Egyptians), 
 as having in it large cities " walled up to heaven," and as 
 being highly cultivated, " flowing with milk and honey."f 
 The whole extent of Palestine is less than two hundred miles 
 in length, and a hundred in average breadth. Supposing the 
 Israelites to have been the sole inhabitants of so small a 
 territory, lately so populous, it would not have required that 
 their number should be two millions and a half, nor more 
 than a tenth part of two millions and a half, to secure them 
 from the ravages of wild beasts. 
 
 The history contained in the Pentateuch is not to be 
 
 * Deut. vii. 22. Exod. xxiii. 29, 30. 
 
 t Exod. iii. 8. Numbers xiii. 27, 28. Deut. viii. 7-9 ; ix. 1, &c.
 
 judged of only by the few examples of apparent impossibili- 
 ties, or inconsistencies, which I have specified, not selected, 
 except, indeed, with reference to their being such as might 
 be rendered obvious in a few words. The attempts to explain 
 the Pentateuch as authentic history present a constant 
 struggle with difficulties. The commentator is continually 
 called upon to soften down the features of what seems in- 
 credible, and to create hypotheses by which he may reduce 
 what looks like a fabulous tradition from a remote age to a 
 form that may appear consistent with the character of God, 
 the nature of man, and the circumstances of the individuals 
 who are brought into view. As regards this sort of explana- 
 tion, it is to be remarked, that we may sometimes admit a 
 conjecture possible, though not in itself probable, to explain 
 a difficulty in a history of established credit ; but that a 
 history cannot be trustworthy which demands a constant 
 succession of such conjectures. 
 
 Before speaking of the narratives of supernatural events, 
 there is one general characteristic of the history, its 
 representation of the conduct and character of the Israelites, 
 too important to be wholly passed over. It must strike 
 every attentive reader, that he is conversant throughout with 
 men whose characters be cannot enter into, whose states of 
 mind he cannot comprehend, who are continually acting in a 
 manner different from that in which he himself would act ; 
 men with whom he has nothing in common. The history is 
 inconsistent with human nature. We may take, as an ex- 
 ample, the conduct ascribed throughout to the Israelites in 
 relation to the Deity. According to the history, they wit- 
 nessed, for a long succession of years, displays of miraculous 
 power, the most astonishing, the most magnificent, and the ' 
 most appalling ; a power never suspending its operations, 
 but continually displaying itself in the pillar of cloud, and 
 pillar of flame, in visible descents of the Deity, and even in 
 the supply of their daily food. It was announced to them, 
 that they were selected as the peculiar objects of the favour 
 and protection of the Being whose power was thus made
 
 G3 
 
 known. Great blessings were promised as the reward of 
 obedience, and terrible punishments threatened for dis- 
 obedience. Under these circumstances the minds of any 
 human beings must have been wholly subdued. Every mo- 
 tive, from the highest to the lowest ; duty, gratitude, hope, 
 fear, pride, in their wonderful distinction; all good in pros- 
 pect on the one side, and nothing but destruction on the 
 other ; and above all, the visible presence of the Almighty, 
 must have determined them to obedience. Yet the conduct 
 of the Israelites is described to have been such, as to justify 
 the language which Moses is said to have addressed to them 
 a little before his death ; " From the day in which ye de- 
 parted from the land of Egypt, until your arrival at this 
 place, ye have been rebelling against Jehovah."* 
 
 Let us now attend to the miraculous part of the history, 
 the manner in which God is described as making Himself 
 known to his creatures by acts and words. In some of- the 
 conceptions which the Pentateuch presents of the Infinite 
 Being, we perceive, I think, very striking remains of the 
 revelation by Moses, and, as we may reasonably believe, of 
 earlier communications of God to men. The account, for 
 instance, of the Creation, contained in the first chapter of 
 Genesis, appears a monument of magnificent simplicity, 
 when compared with other ancient cosmogonies. The genius 
 of Plato, as displayed in his Timseus, shrinks before it. 
 Throughout the Pentateuch are enforced in the strongest 
 manner the fundamental truths of one Supreme Being, who 
 is God alone, of his interest in the concerns of men, and of 
 his moral government. The latter conception, indeed, is 
 obscured by the imperfect notions of morality belonging to 
 the rude ages, during which the traditions now found in the 
 Pentateuch may be supposed to have been moulded into 
 their present form. The idea of the unmingled benevolence 
 of the Deity, that God is Love, that afflictions and punish- 
 ments flow from his mercy equally with our joys, is not to be 
 found there ; but it is an idea to which the human intellect, 
 
 * Deut. Ix. 7.
 
 G4 
 
 through the aid of revelation, has attained only in its fullest 
 development. But when we compare the conceptions of 
 God presented in the Pentateuch with the representations of 
 heathen divinities in the poems of Homer, we shall perceive 
 the immeasurable superiority of the former. In the great 
 precepts, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart," and "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," we 
 find a conception of the foundations of religion and morality, 
 unknown to heathen antiquity. In coming to the Pentateuch 
 we have entered the precincts of true religion, though gro- 
 tesque shapes are around us, and the heavens are obscured 
 by clouds from which the thunder is rolling. 
 
 These remarks respecting the Pentateuch will not appear 
 incongruous with those that follow, if we recollect that its 
 books admit of being viewed in relation to two wholly 
 different standards. If we regard them as a traditionary, 
 erroneous, account of the early revelations of God to men, 
 especially of his revelation through Moses, we may compare 
 their representations of the Deity with the contemporary 
 superstition and idolatry of the heathen world. If we re- 
 gard them as the work of Moses, and consequently as con- 
 taining an authentic record of the revelation of God through 
 him, we must compare those representations with the concep- 
 tions of God which Christianity has enabled us to form. 
 Such is the comparison now to be instituted, in pursuing the 
 inquiry whether the books of the Pentateuch were written 
 by Moses. 
 
 It is not necessary to dwell on the narratives in Genesis 
 concerning the appearances and acts of God. They evi- 
 dently imply very rude conceptions of his nature. But 
 there is little doubt among those who have examined the 
 subject, that the Book of Genesis is a compilation of prior 
 accounts, oral or written ; and it may be said, that the narra- 
 tives which it contains had gradually assumed their present 
 form, and that Moses thought 'it best to retain conceptions 
 and language with which his contemporaries were familiar. 
 But it is to be observed, that when we come to the narrative
 
 65 
 
 of facts, of which, if we regard Moses as the author of the 
 Pentateuch, he had personal experience, the character of the 
 history does not improve. There is nothing more strange in 
 the book of Genesis than the narrative in the fourth chapter 
 of Exodus, in which it is related, that after Moses had been 
 solemnly commissioned and sent by God to the Israelites, 
 while " he was on his way, at a lodging-place, Jehovah met 
 him and sought to slay him," with all that follows. 
 Eespecting this branch of our subject, like the former, it 
 will be necessary to remark particularly only on a few pas- 
 sages, which may serve as representatives of many others. 
 
 I. In the twenty-fourth chapter of Exodus, there is the 
 following account. " And Jehovah said to Moses, Come up 
 unto me, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of 
 the elders of Israel, and worship afar off. . . . Then went up 
 Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the 
 elders of Israel ; and they saw the God of Israel. And 
 there was under his feet a pavement of lucid sapphire, clear 
 as the very heavens. And on the chief men of the children 
 of Israel He laid not his hand ; and they saw God ; and 
 they ate and drank. And Jehovah said to Moses, Come up 
 to me upon the mount, and there remain, and I will give you 
 tables of stone, with the law and commandments which . I 
 have written, that thou mayst teach the people. . . . And 
 the glory of Jehovah abode on Mount Sinai, and a cloud 
 covered it for six days; and the seventh day he called to 
 Moses from the midst of the cloud. And the sight of the 
 glory of Jehovah was like a devouring fire on the top of the 
 mountain in the view of the children of Israel. And Moses 
 entered into the midst of the cloud and ascended the moun- 
 tain. And Moses was upon the mountain forty days and 
 forty nights. And Jehovah spake to Moses, saying" 
 
 Before proceeding further, let us consider, that according 
 to the history, we are about to listen, as it were, to the very 
 words of God, addressed to that minister with whom He 
 " spoke as man to man." After all this tremendous solemnity 
 of preparation, after having been summoned into the visible 
 presence of the Deity, after having seen God and lived, what 
 
 F
 
 66 
 
 must have been the expectation of the elders of Israel 
 respecting the momentous import of the divine communica- 
 tion ? Let us imagine that some of their number had formed 
 just and enlarged conceptions of God, and had speculated 
 upon the condition and prospects of mankind. They must 
 have been looking earnestly for some revelation, which would 
 send a stream of light through the darkness that rested 
 upon the world ; which would disclose to their erring and 
 suffering race new relations and new hopes; which should 
 raise man in his moral nature nearer to the author of his 
 being; which should be listened to with intense interest, 
 wherever made known, by all human beings in all ages to 
 come. What, then, was the communication ? 
 
 " And Jehovah spake to Moses, saying ; Tell the children 
 of Israel to bring me an offering. From every one whose 
 heart is willing to give ye shall take my offering. And these 
 are the offerings which ye shall take from them ; gold, and 
 silver, and brass, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine 
 linen, and goats' hair, and rams' skins dyed red, and seals' 
 skins, and setim wood, oil for the lamps, aromatics for the 
 anointing oil and for the sweet incense; onyx stones and 
 other stones, to be set in the ephod and breastplate. And let 
 them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them. 
 Ye shall make it according to the pattern of the tabernacle, 
 and all its utensils, which I show thee. 
 
 " They shall make an ark of setira wood, two cubits and a 
 half in length, and a cubit and a half in breadth, and a 
 cubit and a half in height ; and thou shalt overlay it with 
 pure gold. Within and without shalt thou overlay it ; and 
 thou shalt make a moulding of gold about it." 
 
 We may stop here ; but seven chapters are filled with di- 
 rections as trivial. So wholly unconnected are they with 
 any moral or religious sentiment, or any truth important or 
 unimportant, except the melancholy fact of their having 
 been regarded as a divine communication, that it requires 
 a strong effort to read through with attention these pretended 
 words of the Infinite Being. The natural tendency of a 
 belief that such words proceeded from Him, whenever this
 
 belief prevailed, must have been to draw away the regard of 
 the Jews from all that is worthy of man as a moral and in- 
 tellectual being, and to fix it on the humblest objects of su- 
 perstition. It is not to be forgotten, however, that this 
 tendency was strongly counteracted by much of a different 
 character that is to be found in the Pentateuch. 
 
 II. But throughout the Pentateuch such accounts of the 
 Supreme Being occur, as may excuse or justify the un- 
 favourable conceptions entertained by the Gnostics of the 
 God of the Jews. It is related, for instance, that He in- 
 flicted the most terrible evils upon the Egyptians, solely on 
 account of the mad obstinacy of their despot, from whose 
 tyranny they without doubt were already suffering in common 
 with the Israelites.* But passing over every other, less 
 striking, example of the same kind, we will advert only to 
 the order for the extirpation of the Canaanites ; and to the 
 manner in which the Midianitish captives are said to have 
 been treated by the command of Moses, acting as the 
 minister of Jehovah. 
 
 The expedition sent against the Midianites, after destroy- 
 ing all the adult males, without the loss, as the history 
 relates, of an individual on the part of the Israelites, brought 
 back the women and children as captives. The history thus 
 proceeds : " And Moses was wroth with the commanders of 
 the host .... and said, Why have ye saved all the 
 women alive ? Lo ! they, by the counsel of Balaam, caused 
 the children of Israel to ofi'end Jehovah in the business of 
 Peor, so that there was a plague among the people of 
 Jehovah. Now, therefore, kill every male among the little 
 ones, and every female not a virgin ; but the female children 
 that are virgins keep for yourselves."f 
 
 If we receive the Pentateuch as authentic, the lot of the 
 female children, who were permitted, certainly not in mercy, 
 
 * It is not necessary to dwell on the narrative of the " ten plagues of 
 Egypt." Little more, perhaps, can be said than what appears at first sight, 
 to show its improbability ; and as little, it seems to me, to remove or palliate 
 this improbability. 
 
 T Numbers, Ch. xxxi. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 
 
 to survive the butchery of their mothers, and of every male 
 among the little ones, the lot, I say, of these female cap- 
 tives may he judged of by the manners of the times, by the 
 habits which the perpetration of such acts must have pro- 
 duced in the Israelites, by the law respecting female slaves, 
 given in Deuteronomy,* and by the little probability, that 
 even the conditions of this law would be respected.f 
 
 The command for the destruction of the Canaanites is 
 expressed in the following words, remarkable for their com- 
 prehensive brevity : " Of the cities of these people tliou 
 shalt save nothing alive that breathes."J Of the objections 
 to the credibility of the Pentateuch, theologians seem to 
 have particularly selected for answer this command, and to 
 have laboured to show, that it is reconcilable with the 
 character of God. It is said, that the destruction of the 
 Canaanites is analogous to those cases in which God ap- 
 points a city to be swallowed up by an earthquake, or a 
 nation to be ravaged by a pestilence, without distinction of 
 sex or age. Undoubtedly, the law of nature, that is, the 
 
 * Ch. jod. 10, seqq. 
 
 f- Bishop Watson, however, in his "Apology for the Bible" (Letter III.), 
 says; "I see nothing in this proceeding but good policy combined with, 
 mercy." This remark is followed by some ill-advised declamation. The coarse 
 writer (Paine), against whom he professes to argue, had said, that the Midian- 
 itish virgins " were consigned to debauchery by the order of Moses." "Prove 
 this," says the Bishop, "and I will allow that the Bible is what you call it, 
 a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy." The promised concession is 
 equally liberal and injudicious. As a matter of fair statement, the word 
 " debauchery " is objectionable, from its association with modern manners and 
 sentiments. But, if we receive the Pentateuch as authentic, the difference 
 between the actual lot of the Midianitish virgins, and what it is represented 
 to have been by the use of that word, is very narrow and unsafe ground on 
 which to peril the whole credibility of revealed religion. 
 
 It may be said in defence of the Jews, that their conduct toward the 
 Midianites was not more barbarous than that of other ancient nations in their 
 wars with each other. This defence might be admitted, if the massacre, 
 according to the account, had not been perpetrated by the express order of 
 Moses, in opposition to the more humane purpose of the army and its leaders. 
 As the case now stands, this apology implies the proposition, that Moses was 
 commissioned by God to sanction and perpetuate the barbarism of his age. 
 
 J Deut. rs. 16.
 
 C9 
 
 merciful law of God, that all must die, takes effect daily 
 upon many thousands of individuals, old men, women, and 
 infants, as well as those able for war. But this ohvious 
 truth does not serve to reconcile us to the present account. 
 The ordinary operations of God's providence are not to be 
 confounded with what is represented to have been a miracu- 
 lous infliction of his vengeance. According to the history, 
 the extirpation of the Canaanites was a terrible punishment 
 irom God for their abominable vices and idolatry ; but no 
 account can be given why the Deity should manifest Himself 
 to his creatures as inflicting punishment indiscriminately on 
 the innocent and guilty ; as an Oriental despot exterminates 
 a family for the offences of its head. But there is more 
 than this to be considered. 
 
 The destruction of the Canaanites is to be regarded not 
 merely as the act of God, if ordered by Him, but likewise as 
 the act of those who were the appointed instruments of his will, 
 the chosen people, the sole depositaries of true religion and 
 morals. It is said, that the object of their being appointed 
 the executioners of the decree, was to impress them with 
 the deepest horror of the idolatry and vices of the Canaan- 
 ites. It is difficult to believe, that any one can give this 
 answer without a strong suspicion of its unsoundness. The 
 effect of their appointment as executioners must have been 
 to convert them into a horde of ferocious and brutal bar- 
 barians. It cannot be imagined, that they would have any 
 feelings connected with the performance of a moral or 
 religious duty in the massacre of enemies, between whom 
 and themselves there existed the utmost hatred, that could 
 be produced by a war of extermination ; a war which must 
 have seemed to the Canaanites wholly unprovoked and un- 
 justifiable. There is no good moral discipline in the 
 butchery of women and infants. It is not thus that men 
 are to be formed to the service of God. The origin of the 
 supposed direction on which we have been remarking is 
 to be found in the traditionary enmity of the Jews to the 
 Canaanites, and to the ferocity of ancient warfare. The
 
 70 
 
 Jews, sharing in the barbarism of the world, reflected back 
 their own character upon Moses and upon God. 
 
 III. I will not enter into the detail of the various pre- 
 cepts and laws, moral, ceremonial, and civil, which are 
 blended together in the Pentateuch without arrangement 
 and with much repetition. Concerning many of them it is 
 incredible that they should have proceeded from the Deity. 
 It is painful and disgusting to associate the distinguishing 
 rite of the Jews with the idea of its having been solemnly 
 appointed by God, and of its having been enforced in 
 the manner related in the story respecting the circumcision 
 of the sons of Moses.* Nothing can render it probable 
 that a law proceeded from God, according to which a man 
 who murdered his male or female slave by beating was to 
 escape with impunity, if the slave did not die under his 
 hands, but survived for a day or two, with the reason 
 given for it : " For the slave was his property. "t Can any 
 
 * Exodus iv. 24-26. 
 
 1* Exodus xxi. 20, 21. But -with this law of the Jewish people may be 
 compared that which Plato gives in relation to the same subject in his imagi- 
 nary scheme of a perfect code of laws. " Should any man kill a slave, it" it 
 be his own, let him purify himself. ' (De Legibus, Lib. ix. p. 868.) The 
 master was to be subject to no punishment if he performed a religious expia- 
 ticn. Other laws follow respecting slaves, proposed by Plato, which are shock- 
 ing to humanity. 
 
 The Levitical Law, like the whole Pentateuch, is to be viewed under two 
 aspects. It is to be regarded, on the one hand, in reference to such a code as 
 might, in our apprehension, be worthy of God ; and, on the other hand, it is 
 to be compared with such laws, and such conceptions of justice, as actually 
 existed among heathen nations. When thus compared, there are in the laws 
 respecting persons and property, what may seem clear traces of the effects of 
 that divine dispensation which the Jews had enjoyed, appearing in a higher 
 sense of justice and humanity. The laws respecting slaves, generally, not- 
 withstanding that above quoted, provided for their security and welfare in a 
 manner \inknown among the Greeks or Romans. Among the Romans, till the 
 time of the Emperors, a master had absolute power over his slave, unchecked, 
 or rather unnoticed, by any law, so that he might put him to.death by torture ; 
 and this power, as we may readily believe, was sometimes horribly abused. 
 Nor does the condition of slaves in Greece appear, in general, to have been 
 less iinhappy. How they were regarded at Athens may be judged of by the 
 laws proposed by Plato. [See note D at the end of the volume. ED.]
 
 71 
 
 one, at the present day, persuade himself, that he is to refer 
 to the Deity Jaws such as the following? "A man or a 
 woman who has a familiar spirit, or is a divine, shall surely 
 be put to death ; "* " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to 
 live ; " t laws, which have heen the main support of one 
 of the most debasing and cruel superstitions by which the 
 Christian world has been disgraced. We have seen that 
 there is, properly speaking, no historical evidence for the 
 genuineness of the Pentateuch. What, it may be asked, is 
 the amount of evidence, which would render the question 
 worth discussing ? Whether it be true or not, that " the 
 Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, .... Of 
 birds ye shall have these in abomination ; they are not to be 
 eaten, they are an abomination, the eagle, the vulture, the 
 osprey; the falcon, kites of every kind, ravens of every 
 kind," &c. ; or that these and other similar injunctions 
 should have been thus enforced : "Ye shall not make your- 
 selves abominable by eating any creeping reptile, nor make 
 yourselves unclean and defiled thereby. For I Jehovah am 
 your God. Ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye 
 shall be holy, for I am holy." $ To teach men, in the most 
 solemn manner, that to refrain from particular kinds of food 
 is essential to holiness, must tend only to pervert all their 
 conceptions of holiness, duty, and God. The prohibition 
 becomes more strange when we find articles of food enume- 
 rated to which nothing but the extremity of hunger could 
 induce men to have recourse. It is unnecessary to observe 
 
 * Leviticus xx. 27. 
 
 t Exodus xxii. 18. See also Deuteronomy xviii. 9-12. It has been con- 
 tended by some in modern times, that these laws do not sanction the belief in 
 witchcraft, but were directed only against impostors, falsely pretending to 
 magical powers. But if such individuals had been meant, they would have 
 been designated according to their true character as impostors, not in language 
 which conveyed the idea, as plainly as any language could do, that their pre- 
 tences were well founded. The belief in magic appears to have been universal 
 in the ancient world. Such laws as we find in the Pentateuch had their origin 
 in this belief, and could not be understood but as confirming it. 
 
 Leviticus xi.
 
 72 
 
 that there are many of the Jewish laws on which delicacy 
 forbids one to comment.* 
 
 The general aspect of the Jewish religion, as it appears in 
 the hooks of the Pentateuch, may lead to the conclusion, 
 that at the time of the compilation of those books, the original 
 doctrine of Moses had been greatly corrupted. The multi- 
 plication of trifling and burdensome ceremonies has been in 
 every other case the result of low and very false notions of 
 religion. The observance of such rites has been made a 
 substitute for moral goodness, and in proportion as they have 
 been considered as important in the view of God, has the 
 regard of men being withdrawn from all that constitutes real 
 worth. The state in which our Saviour found the religion of 
 the Jews, upon his appearance on earth, seems a natural 
 consequence of the belief that the Levitical Law had been 
 ordained by God ; while, on the other hand, the tendency 
 to such a state may be supposed to have done much gradually 
 to produce and strengthen this belief. We may, perhaps, 
 compare those representations of Christianity which were 
 given during the darkest period of the Eomish superstition 
 with that which the Pentateuch affords of the religion of 
 Moses. The existence of the Gospels alone prevented the 
 history of Christ from becoming equally fabulous with that 
 of the Jewish prophet. Some of the apocryphal gospels, as 
 those of the Infancy (as they are called), show the strong 
 tendency to this result. 
 
 * No considerations of this kind, however, restrained the learned Michaelis 
 from discussing them at length. Of his " Commentaries on the Laws of 
 Moses," originally delivered in Lectures to his pupils at Gb'ttingen, it is not 
 speaking too harshly to say, that its most striking characteristics are silliness 
 and obscenity. Of the proper application of the latter term there can be no 
 doubt ; as to the former, I know of none beside so well suited to express the 
 frivolous gossip, and the wretched attempts at reasoning, with which the work 
 abounds. The historian Muller says of Michaelis, whose lectures he attended 
 when a young man, that he was "homrne d'esprit d'ailleurs et tres savant; 
 mais qui par sa maniere burlesque de traduire et de commenter les poemes des 
 sages et des inspires du peuple hebreu, en rendit pour quelque temps la lecture 
 insoutenable & son disciple." (Lettres de Jean de Muller, precedees de sa Vie, 
 p. iv.) Without doubt, such instructors were one cause of the deplorable 
 state of religious speculation that has in our day existed in Germany.
 
 73 
 
 The views just given respecting the Levitical Law, are 
 confirmed by much that is found in the Pentateuch itself, and 
 in other books of the Old Testament ; but especially by the 
 representations given in some of the Psalms, and in the earlier 
 prophetical books. The authors of those writings insist in 
 the strongest terms on moral goodness as the recommenda- 
 tion to God's favour, and dwell on the worthlessness of ritual 
 observances. They use language which is apparently irre- 
 concilable with the supposition, that they recognized the 
 Levitical Law as appointed by God, or the history contained 
 in the Pentateuch as authentic. To this subject we will next 
 attend. 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 ON THE VIEWS OF RELIGION PRESENTED IN THE WRIT- 
 INGS OF THE JEWISH PROPHETS, AND IN THE PSALMS, 
 COMPARED WITH THOSE FOUND IN THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 IT has been remarked, as affording evidence that the Pen- 
 tateuch was not the work of Moses, that its authority is not 
 appealed to by the Jewish prophets, the public teachers of 
 religion among the Jews. But the writings of the higher 
 class of prophets furnish evidence more direct to establish 
 the same conclusion. 
 
 The religion inculcated in the Pentateuch consists very 
 much in rites, and especially in offerings and sacrifices. The 
 precepts concerning rites are multiplied, reiterated, and 
 enforced in the most solemn manner. But by the prophets 
 before the Captivity, such observances are spoken of in 
 the most disparaging terms. The language in which our 
 Saviour has been supposed to have repealed the Levitical 
 Law is not more full and explicit. But those prophets had 
 no authority to repeal that Law. Their language, therefore, 
 proves that they did not recognize such observances as 
 enforced by God, and, consequently, that they knew nothing
 
 74 
 
 of the Pentateuch as the work of Moses. Their spirit is 
 wholly different from that which appears in the Levitical 
 Law. They insist in the strongest terms upon moral good- 
 ness as the sole recommendation to God's favour. 
 
 But it may be said, that the prophets are to he understood 
 as disparaging the observance of the ceremonial Law, only 
 when such observance was made a substitute for higher 
 dudes, or was practised by habitual transgressors ; and were, 
 therefore, far from teaching that a strict regard to its rites, 
 as ordained by God, was not in the highest degree obligatory. 
 This may appear at first view a plausible explanation of much 
 of their language. But it is to be recollected, that if the Law 
 proceeded from God, then the observance of the rites of the 
 Law was a most solemn duty, taking its rank, so far as the 
 Jews were concerned, with the clearest of those obligations, 
 which are imperative upon all men. The explanation given, 
 therefore, supposes that the prophets spoke contemptuously 
 of one duty in order to excite men to perform other duties ; 
 that they treated with disrespect what God had commanded 
 in order to lead men to obey his will. On the supposition, 
 that the Levitical Law was ordained by God, the Jews 
 offered sacrifices, and observed the other rites of that Law, 
 because they believed them to have been commanded by God, 
 and with the view of obtaining his favour. Thus far they 
 acted right ; and they were not to be reproved and discou- 
 raged in doing right, whatever, on the other hand, might be 
 their deficiencies and sins. But, further than this, if there 
 were no intrinsic moral worth in the ceremonies of the Law, 
 then they could have been ordained only as means of holi- 
 ness ; and the absence of holiness in the people afforded 
 no reason for repelling them from the appointed means of 
 obtaining it. According to the representations of the Jewish 
 history, they could hardly, at any time, have been a more 
 perverse and disobedient race than their ancestors on whom 
 those ceremonies were enjoined. It would, therefore, seem, 
 that those who have acquiesced in the explanation that has 
 been mentioned, can have done so only through unconsci- 
 ously transferring to the prophets their own secret and unac-
 
 75 
 
 knowledged sense, unacknowledged even to themselves, of 
 the worthlessness of the rites of the Levitical Law. The 
 observance of them, it is agreed, did not constitute holiness ; 
 nor can it appear a suitable means of attaining it, if, as the 
 explanation supposes, actual holiness was necessary to render 
 such observance anything but a matter of reprehension. 
 
 To illustrate the subject, let us imagine that the practices 
 at one time in high repute in the Komish Church, fasting, 
 the scourging of one's self, other self-inflicted sufferings, and 
 the iteration of forms of prayer, all which were supposed to 
 be conformable to the will of God, had been in fact expressly 
 and most solemnly enjoined by Him. It is evident, that no 
 preacher of true religion, under a conviction that such was 
 the fact, could, by way of reforming the Koman Catholic 
 Church, even when fallen into its most corrupt state, have 
 spoken of those practices contemptuously, or have made a 
 disparaging comparison of them with other duties which he 
 was recommending, or have ventured, through any licence of 
 rhetorical language, to represent them as not ordained and 
 not required by God. The application of this imaginary 
 case to the real case before us is too obvious to be dwelt 
 upon. 
 
 With these general views let us consider some of the 
 passages that occur in the writings of the prophets and in the 
 Psalms. 
 
 The prophet Amos ascribes these words to Jehovah.* 
 " I hate, I despise your feasts ; 
 
 I have no delight in your solemn assemblies ; 
 
 When ye offer me burnt-offerings and flour- offerings, 
 I will not accept them ; 
 
 Nor will I look on the peace-offerings of your fallings. 
 
 Away with the noise of your songs : 
 
 I will not listen to your harping : 
 
 But let justice flow as water, 
 
 And righteousness like a mighty river. 
 
 Did ye offer me sacrifices and offerings 
 
 In the wilderness, for forty years, O house of Israel ? " 
 * Ch. v. 21-25.
 
 76 
 
 Besides the general character of tliis passage, the conclud- 
 ing question may be particularly remarked. It is equivalent 
 to a strong affirmation, that the Israelites did not offer sacri- 
 fices and offerings during the forty years after their leaving 
 Egypt. But this is directly contrary to what is related in 
 the Pentateuch. 
 
 Nothing can be more striking than the following passage 
 from Micah.* 
 
 " ' With what shall I appear before Jehovah, 
 And bow myself before the Most High God ? 
 Shall I come before him with burnt- offerings, 
 With calves of a year old ? 
 
 Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams ; 
 Or ten thousand of rivers of oil ? 
 Shall I give my first-born for my transgression ; 
 The fruit of my body for my sin ? ' 
 ' O man ! he has made known to thee what is good: 
 And what does Jehovah require of thee, 
 But to do justly, and to love mercy, 
 And to walk humbly before thy God ? ' " 
 
 I pass to the prophet Isaiah.f 
 
 " Of what value are the multitude of your sacrifices to 
 
 me ? says Jehovah. 
 I am weary of the burnt- offerings of rams, and the fat 
 
 of fed beasts ; 
 And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, 
 
 or of goats. 
 Who hath required this of you, when ye come to appear 
 
 before me, to trample my courts ? 
 Bring no more vain oblations." 
 
 Ch. vi. 6-8 f Ch. i. 11-17.
 
 77 
 
 " Wash you ; make you clean ; 
 Put away your evil deeds from before iny eyes ; 
 Cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; 
 Seek to do justice ; relieve the oppressed ; 
 Do right to the fatherless; defend the cause of the 
 widow." 
 
 The following passage is from Jeremiah.* It may he 
 remarked, that it was written after the discovery, as re- 
 presented, of " the Book of the Law," in the reign of 
 Josiah, and the events immediately consequent. 
 
 " Thus says Jehovah, God of hosts, God of Israel : 
 Put your burnt-offerings with your sacrifices, and eat 
 
 the flesh ; 
 
 For I spake not to your fathers, 
 Nor commanded them, in the day when I brought them 
 
 out of Egypt, 
 
 Concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices. 
 But this did I command them, saying, 
 Obey my voice, and I will be your God, 
 And ye shall be my people." 
 
 *' I spake not to your fathers, when I brought them out 
 of Egypt, concerning burnt-offerings and sacrifices." With 
 what astonishment must this declaration have been listened 
 to by a contemporary Jew, believing the history in the Pen- 
 tateuch, and consequently believing that the ceremonial 
 Law was ordained by God. And with what feelings would 
 he have regarded the prophet, if, upon questioning him as 
 to his meaning, he had explained himself, as he has been 
 most plausibly explained by modern commentators, in words 
 like these : I did not mean to say, that God had " ap- 
 pointed no religious rites, such as sacrifices. For the most 
 particular directions are given concerning them in the books 
 of Moses." But I only intended, that God had " always 
 
 CIi. vii. 21 2?.
 
 78 
 
 laid less stress upon everything of this kind than upon 
 moral virtue." * 
 
 In the Pentateuch, Jehovah is repeatedly introduced as 
 saying, " I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of fathers 
 upon children to the third and fourth generation of them 
 that hate me."t With this declaration may he compared the 
 eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel. 
 
 " The word of Jehovah came to me again, saying ; 
 
 "What mean ye, that ye use this proverh concerning the 
 land of Israel, ' The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the 
 children's teeth are on edge.' 
 
 " As I live, saith the Lord, Jehovah, Ye shall not have 
 occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel." 
 
 " The son shall not hear the iniquity of the father, nor 
 shall the father hear the iniquity of the son. 
 
 " The righteousness of the righteous shall he upon him, 
 and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." 
 
 According to the Talmud, there was a discussion among 
 the ancient Jewish doctors about allowing the book now 
 ascribed to Ezekiel a place in the canon, and the majority 
 were at one time disposed to reject it. Their objections to 
 it were founded, it is said, upon passages contained in it, 
 which were regarded as contradictory to the Pentateuch. 
 
 It seems, from the book ascribed to him, that Ezekiel 
 wrote during the Captivity. It is a work which is not to 
 be generally referred to as presenting correct or agreeable 
 representations of religion or of the Supreme Being. It is 
 made repulsive by other characteristics beside its great 
 
 * The words marked as quoted are taken from Dr. Priestley's note on the 
 passage. I quote him only because he has expressed briefly and distinctly what 
 has been said by many others. 
 
 f Exod. xx. 5 ; xxxiv. 7. Numbers xiv. 18. Deut. v. 9. 
 
 J Bartoloccii Biblioth. Hebr. P. ii. pp. 847, 48. Wolfii Biblioth. Hebr. 
 Tom. ii. p. 156.
 
 79 
 
 obscurity. If the last nine chapters were written by him, it 
 would appear that his mind was much occupied about ritual 
 observances. But, putting aside what in these chapters it is 
 difficult or impossible to understand, one striking fact pre- 
 sents itself. It is the want of correspondence between the 
 directions for sacrifices there given and those found in the 
 Pentateuch.* 
 
 With such passages as have been adduced from the pro- 
 phets may be connected the remarkable quotation before 
 given from one of the Psalms. t And there is a special 
 reason for adding to them the declaration ascribed to God 
 by Hosea4 
 
 " I desire goodness and not sacrifices, 
 And the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." 
 
 " Go ye and learn," said our Saviour, " what this means, 
 I desire goodness and not sacrifices."^ By thus adopting 
 and sanctioning the declaration of the prophet, he bore 
 testimony that the true character and spirit of the religion 
 of Moses were not to be found in the ritual Law, but that 
 they were identical, as far as that declaration extends, with 
 the spirit and character of his own. He places the prophet 
 for a moment on a level with himself, as equally with him- 
 self rejecting the conception, that ceremonial observances 
 were a means of obtaining God's favour. 
 
 Such passages as we. have been considering may be 
 thrown into stronger relief by comparing them with what 
 appears in a later writer, who is to be referred to the same 
 general class with those from whom we have quoted. Mala- 
 chi was the last of the prophets, or, in other words, the last 
 of those public religious teachers among the Jews to whom 
 that name has been given. He lived, as is commonly 
 thought, about a century after the return of the Jews to 
 
 * Compare, for example, the forty-fifth and forth-sixth chapters of Ezekiel, 
 with the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth chapters of Numbers. 
 t See before, p. 29. J Ch. vi. 6. Matthew ix. 13.
 
 80 
 
 Palestine, that is, about four hundred years before Christ, 
 when the authority of the ceremonial Law was established. 
 His language in relation to it does not correspond with 
 that of the prophets before the Captivity, but by its con- 
 trast it brings out in a more striking manner the character 
 of those religious sentiments which they express, and serves 
 to confirm the opinion, that the Levitical Law, in its present 
 form, was not believed to be of divine authority among the 
 Jews till after their return from their Captivity. Nothing 
 answering to such passages as the following is to be found 
 in any writer before that time. 
 
 " But ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name ? 
 Ye bring polluted food to my altar. 
 Yet ye say, Wherein have we polluted thee ? 
 In that ye say, The table of Jehovah is despicable. 
 For when ye bring blind animals for sacrifice, ye say, 
 
 It is not evil. 
 
 And when ye bring lame and sick animals, ye say, It 
 is not evil." * 
 
 
 
 "Ye bring what has been plundered, and what is lame 
 
 and sick, 
 
 And present it for an offering. 
 Shall I accept it from your hands ? says Jehovah. 
 Cursed be the deceiver who has a male in his flock, 
 And vows and sacrifices to Jehovah what is marred." f 
 
 " Shall a man rob God ? 
 Yet ye rob me. 
 
 But ye say, In what have we robbed thee ? 
 In tithes and offerings. 
 Ye are cursed with a curse ; 
 For ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. 
 Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, 
 And let there be food in my house." I 
 
 * Ch. i. 6-8. f Ch. i. 13, 14. + Ch. iii. 8-10.
 
 81 
 
 With these representations of the Deity we may compare 
 those of an earlier writer, the author of the fiftieth Psalm. 
 " I will reprove thee, not for the sake of thy sacrifices, 
 
 Nor of thy hurnt- offerings, which are daily before me. 
 
 I will take no bullock from thy stalls, 
 
 Nor he-goat from thy folds ; 
 
 For all the beasts of the forest are mine, 
 
 And the cattle on a thousand hills. 
 
 I know all the birds of the mountains ; 
 
 And the wild beasts of the plains are before me. 
 
 If I were hungry, I would not tell thee : 
 
 For the world is mine, and all that is therein. 
 
 Do I eat the flesh of bulls ? 
 
 Or drink the blood of goats ? 
 
 Offer to God thanksgiving ; 
 
 And fulfil thy vows to the Most High ; 
 
 Then call upon me in the day of trouble ; 
 
 And I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me." * 
 
 In such passages appears, as I conceive, the true spirit 
 of the religion which Moses was commissioned to teach ; 
 and it is remarkable, that this spirit survived the belief that 
 the Levitical Law was ordained by God through him. 
 Eeligious sentiments, coincident with those which have been 
 
 In the next Psalm (the fifty-first), a Psalm expressing deep penitence in 
 the writer, is the following passage : 
 
 " Thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it; 
 Thou dost not delight in burnt-offerings. 
 The sacrifice which God loves is a broken spirit ; 
 A broken and a contrite heart, God, thou wilt not despise." 
 
 I notice this passage principally to observe, that there seems little doubt, 
 that the two verses which follow it are (as has been supposed) an addition by 
 a later writer, after the Captivity. They not only have no connection with 
 what precedes, but they stand in direct opposition to what has just been said 
 by the original author. The verses referred to are these : 
 " Do good to Zion according to thy mercy; 
 
 Build up the walls of Jerusalem ; 
 
 Then shalt thou be pleased with right sacrificeSj 
 
 With whole burnt-offerings ; 
 
 Then shall bullocks be offered on thine altar." 
 
 I
 
 82 
 
 quoted from the earlier prophetical writings and the Psalms, 
 are to be found in the higher class of Jewish writers of later 
 times. Thus the author of Ecclesiasticus says : * 
 
 " He who keeps the Law" (a remarkable expression as 
 defining what might be meant by "keeping the Law") 
 " He who keeps the Law abounds in offerings ; he who gives 
 heed to the commandments offers a peace-offering; he who 
 returns a favour makes an offering of fine flour ; he who gives 
 alms offers a thank-offering; he who departs from wicked- 
 ness is accepted by the Lord ; and to forsake iniquity is a 
 sin-offering." 
 
 If inserted in any part of Leviticus, what a contrast would 
 this passage form to the general tenor of that book ! It is 
 remarkable, likewise, as showing what, in the view of the 
 writer, was meant by " keeping the Law ; " that is to say, 
 the performance of duties of universal obligation, exclusively 
 of the observance of the ceremonial Law. As appears, how- 
 ever, from the passage itself, the ceremonial Law was fully 
 established in his time ; and he accordingly subjoins, " Thou 
 shalt not appear before the Lord with empty hands ; for all 
 these things are to be done for the sake of the ordinances." 
 
 The philosophical Jews of Alexandria appear to have laid 
 little stress on tbe literal observance of the ritual Law, re- 
 garding all its precepts as symbolical. " God," says Philo, 
 " rejoices in devout affections, in men striving after holiness; 
 from whom He receives, well pleased, cakes, and barley, and 
 the humblest offerings, as of greater worth than the most 
 costly ; and should they bring nothing else, yet making an 
 offering of themselves, perfect in goodness, they would make 
 the best offering, while celebrating God, the Benefactor and 
 Preserver, in hymns of thanksgiving, some uttered," as he 
 goes on to say, " and some unuttered."f 
 
 A few words may be added from another passage of Philo : 
 " True gratitude to God is not shown, as many think, in 
 buildings, gifts, and sacrifices, for not the whole world 
 
 Ch. xxxv. 1-3. 
 
 De Victimas Offerentibus. Opp. ii. 253.
 
 83 
 
 would be a worthy temple to his honour, hut in praises and 
 hymns, not such as are sung with a loud voice, but such as 
 sound forth in harmony from the invisible and most pure 
 
 mind." "To confer benefits is the proper office of 
 
 God ; to be grateful, that of the creature, who has nothing 
 but gratitude to give in return. For would he render any 
 other gift, he will find that it already belongs to the Maker 
 of All, and not to the being who brings it. Being instructed, 
 therefore, that there is but one thing for us to do in honour- 
 ing God to be grateful, about this let us, at all times and 
 everywhere, be solicitous."* 
 
 The continuance and the strength of similar sentiments, 
 among a portion of the Jews, are strikingly manifested by 
 the existence of the sect of the Essenes, and the manner in 
 which they were spoken of. They are described by Philo 
 and Josephus as the most conscientious and religious of 
 their countrymen. It may be observed, though it is not to 
 our immediate purpose, that their religion and morality were 
 of an ascetic and monastic character. Their virtues were 
 those which, in other times, have been produced among 
 Christians as the growth of strong principles in a very cor- 
 rupt state of society ; in such a state of society, as may 
 incline those who would attain the religious character to 
 separate themselves from the world, and, in renouncing its 
 pleasures, to neglect many of its duties. But the Essenes, 
 as I have said, were the most virtuous among their country- 
 men, in the view even of Philo ; and this sect, so regarded 
 by him and by Josephus, offered no sacrifices. " They send 
 gifts to the temple," says Josephus, " but offer no sacrifices ; 
 their modes of purification being different ; and hence, being 
 excluded from the common sanctuary, they offer themselves 
 as a sacrifice."t And he goes on to say, that " they deserve 
 admiration above all those who have cultivated virtue."! 
 " Among them," says Philo, " are especially to be found 
 worshippers of God, men who sacrifice no animals, but deem 
 
 * De Plantation Noe. Opp. i. 348. 
 
 f" 10' ttvtut <raf fvftz; ItriTit.ouffi, 
 
 j Ant'q. Jud. Lib. xviii. c. 1, 5. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 
 
 it their duty to sanctify their own minds." * How was it 
 that Philo and Josephus thus celebrated the religious 
 character of men, who, if the Levitical Law proceeded from 
 God, neglected his express commands ? Neither has ex- 
 pressed, nor is it prohahle that either felt, any douht, that 
 Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, and that the ritual 
 Law proceeded from God. Philo's system of allegorizing 
 might have enabled him to explain away the whole ohvious 
 meaning of its commands concerning sacrifices ; hut he has 
 not done so in his writings. The answer, therefore, it would 
 seem, is partly, at least, to he found in the general fact, 
 that prevalent errors are often acquiesced in, and even, when 
 directly called in question, zealously defended, by individuals 
 who do not attend to their necessary bearing, on whose pre- 
 vailing habits of thought and feeling they have very little 
 influence, and who hold truths wholly irreconcilable with 
 them. 
 
 There are, then, two very different aspects under which 
 the religion of Moses appears. One is that which is pre- 
 sented in the ritual Law ; the other is that which is found in 
 portions of the Pentateuch, in the higher class of writers of 
 the Old Testament, who, as we have seen reason to think, lived 
 before the belief prevailed, that the ritual Law came from 
 God, and even in the higher class of Jewish writers of after 
 times. The spirit of the Jewish religion, as represented by 
 them, is coincident with the spirit of the religion of Christ. 
 
 The general conclusion seems to be, that the revelation 
 of God through Moses was made at so remote a period, that 
 no contemporary or early historv of it remains ; though im- 
 povishable monuments of it exist in the effects which it pro- 
 duced ; and that there was nothing in this communication 
 of God to a peculiar people, I do not say contrary to the 
 spirit of the religion of Christ, for this it would be absurd to 
 suppose, but that there wa^ nothing in it, which the great 
 messenger of God to the whole world was called upon or 
 commissioned to abrogate. He came not " to annul the 
 
 * Quod liber sit quiaquis virtuti studefc. Opp. ii. 457.
 
 law and the Prophets," that is, the true religion of Moses : 
 but " to perfect." There was an opposition between his 
 religion and the contemporary religion of the Jews, that very 
 corrupt religion which had gradually been formed in their 
 nation ; but certainly no opposition between his religion 
 and that of Moses, if, as we believe, Moses was, like him, a 
 messenger from God. 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 ON THE INFERENCES RESPECTING THE LEVITICAL LAW AND 
 THE PENTATEUCH, TO BE DRAWN PROM THE TEACHING 
 AND ACTIONS OF OUR SAVIOUR. 
 
 THE ritual Law was done away by Christianity ; or, in other 
 words, it was not binding upon Jewish Christians. Of the 
 distinguishing rite of the Jews, St. Paul says to the Gala- 
 tians, " In Jesus Christ," that is, in Christianity, " neither 
 circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith, 
 showing itself by love ; "* and he reiterates the declaration, 
 at the very close of the Epistle. Philo speaks of the law 
 respecting the Jewish Sabbath as " that most holy and awful 
 law." He relates that a governor of Egypt, in his time, had 
 endeavoured to compel the Jews to violate it, thinking that 
 if this could be effected, it would lead them to abandon all 
 their peculiar customs, and neglect all the ordinances of their 
 religion.f St. Paul says, " One man regards one day more 
 than another, another man regards every day alike. Let 
 each be fully satisfied in his own mind. He who regards the 
 day regards it as a servant of the Lord ; and he who regards 
 not the day regards it not as a servant of the Lord."! He 
 is speaking of the observance of the Jewish Sabbath, as an 
 ordinance of the Levitical Law. We have seen how solemnly 
 the distinction was enforced in this Law between clean and 
 unclean food. " I know," says St. Paul, and am satisfied, 
 
 * Galatians v. 6. t De Somniis. Opp. i. 675. 
 
 Romans xiv. 5, 6.
 
 as a disciple of Christ, " that there is nothing unclean in 
 itself; but to him who thinks anything unclean it is un- 
 clean." * This is but a very small part of the evidence which 
 his Epistles afford, that he did not consider the Levitical 
 Law as binding upon Christians. 
 
 What view he himself entertained of its origin, and of the 
 authorship of the Pentateuch, would be an interesting and 
 curious inquiry, but it is foreign from our present purpose. 
 The Apostles, generally, appear to have long held the pre- 
 vailing opinions of their countrymen respecting the Law, 
 and probably their minds were always more or less affected 
 by them. It was not till many years after the death of our 
 Saviour that they were satisfied, by an express revelation, 
 that the ritual Law was not to be imposed on the Gentile 
 converts. By the great body of Jewish converts it continued 
 to be observed, and its authority to be zealously maintained. 
 St. Paul, it is evident from the New Testament, incurred 
 much odium among the Jewish believers from his assertion 
 of the truth. 
 
 But, if the ritual Law were not binding upon Christians, 
 the question arises upon what ground it was abrogated. 
 Was it, as has been represented, solemnly ordained by God 
 through Moses, and as solemnly annulled by God through 
 Christ ? Or was it a law of human growth, a system of 
 superstitious observances, opposed in character and spirit to 
 Christianity, and, therefore, a system, the error of which ^Yas 
 involved in the truth of our religion ? 
 
 Had the ritual Law been, as represented in the Penta- 
 teuch, promulgated by God, it is evident that the obligation 
 of the Jews to obey that law could not cease till it was 
 explicitly and solemnly repealed by God. But we find no- 
 where any declaration of our Saviour recognizing its divine 
 origin, and asserting his commission from God to declare it 
 no longer binding. One of two inferences necessarily fol- 
 lows; either that the law remained binding upon his followers 
 from among the Jews, contrary to what is affirmed by St. 
 Paul, and contrary, as we shall see, to what he himself 
 
 * Romans xiv. 14.
 
 87 
 
 taught by his actions and words, or that this law did not 
 proceed from God, and, therefore, that no express declara- 
 tion was necessary to invalidate its authority. 
 
 But it may be asked, on the other hand, Why did not our 
 Saviour explicitly declare the fact, if the ritual law was a 
 system of human superstition ? The question, in other 
 words, is this : Why did he not outrage to the uttermost the 
 prejudices of those whom he called upon to be his followers ? 
 Many errors connected with religion, of more or less im- 
 portance, were entertained by his hearers, which he did not 
 undertake to correct. AU truth could not be communicated 
 to men so unprepared for, or rather so opposed to, the re- 
 ception of the few great truths which it was his office to 
 communicate. The revelation from God was not given to 
 do the whole work of human reason on all subjects con- 
 nected with religion. To imagine the possibility of such a 
 revelation, man's nature and condition continuing as they are, 
 is to imagine an absurdity ; for it is to suppose a constant 
 miraculous illumination of all individual minds, extending 
 over so wide a sphere of facts and opinions as to embrace 
 all the more important objects of thought. The attention 
 of his hearers was to be fixed on those fundamental prin- 
 ciples of religion that immediately concern the essential and 
 eternal interests of man, and which it was the purpose of 
 his ministry to announce on the authority of God. From 
 those principles their minds were not to be distracted to the 
 consideration of minor topics, which, however important, 
 were incomparably less important. Had he undertaken to 
 correct all the wrong opinions of the Jews, more or less 
 connected with religion, a cloud of misrepresentations, 
 misunderstandings, and controversies, would have arisen, 
 obscuring the whole of his teaching. That in order to 
 accomplish the great purpose of his mission, it was neces- 
 sary for Jesus to refrain from directly opposing many gross 
 errors of his countrymen, is a fact to be constantly kept in 
 view in considering his history. I have elsewhere endea- 
 voured to illustrate it more fully,* 
 
 ,* "Statement of Reasons for not believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians," 
 Appendix, p. 313, seqq.
 
 88 
 
 But it may be further said, that our Saviour not only did 
 not oppose, but that he asserted and sanctioned the belief of 
 the Jews concerning the Pentateuch and the Levitical Law. 
 There are passages, fewer perhaps than is commonly thought, 
 which would support this proposition, supposing that Jesus 
 had been addressing a body of enlightened and unprejudiced 
 men, and that, moreover, we could be assured that his words 
 were reported with verbal accuracy. 
 
 The general spirit and meaning of our Saviour's teaching, 
 as recorded in the Gospels, is free from all uncertainty. If 
 we receive it as the teaching of a divine messenger, it leaves 
 no doubt concerning the fundamental truths of religion the 
 being of God, God's care for men, and man's immortality 
 and moral responsibility. But in the words ascribed to him, 
 we sometimes meet with difficulties, not affecting the clear- 
 ness with which those truths were taught, but preventing us 
 from readily or certainly ascertaining the precise purport 
 and bearing of what he said in relation to topics incidentally 
 presented. 
 
 Among the various causes by which this uncertainty is 
 produced, there is one perfectly obvious and indisputable, 
 though it has been less regarded, perhaps, than any other. 
 It is, that his words are not always given with verbal 
 accuracy by the different historians of his ministry. We 
 need not recur to any reasoning to show that this fact is 
 in the highest degree probable. The cases in which the 
 Evangelists unquestionably intended to report the same 
 words of Jesus, but in which they differ from each other in 
 their reports, render it certain. It follows that there must 
 be passages, where, to determine the exact meaning that was 
 expressed by our Saviour, we cannot take the precise words 
 of some one of the Evangelists as an infallible guide. When 
 we meet with a difficulty that cannot otherwise be fully 
 solved, the consideration that the reporter may have varied 
 the expression used by Jesus, should enter into our expla- 
 nation. 
 
 Now such unintentional errors, more or less affecting the 
 sense, were most likely to occur on subjects concerning 
 which strong prejudices existed among the Jews, that had
 
 89 
 
 moulded their forms of language, if they were prejudices 
 that Jesus did not directly oppose. Everyone easily slides 
 into the language of a popular error, or rather we may find 
 it difficult to avoid such language, when not expressly con- 
 tending against the error. But, on the supposition that the 
 Evangelists had not decidedly renounced the opinions of 
 their countrymen respecting the Pentateuch and the Levitical 
 Law, we cannot douht that they might unconsciously attri- 
 bute to Jesus incidental expressions favouring those opi- 
 nions ; that they might have done so in cases where, if his 
 precise words had been compared with their report of them, 
 they would not have recognized any important difference of 
 character or effect between his language and their own. 
 
 The unquestionable fact that the words of our Saviour 
 are not always reported with perfect correctness, is to be 
 kept in view in studying the history of his ministry. It 
 will not lead us to reject any declaration ascribed to him, 
 as not founded on what he actually said, or as not, in its 
 essential meaning, true ; but it may enter as one element 
 into our explanation of certain passages. It is sometimes 
 evident that it must enter into our explanation ; for it some- 
 times appears, from a comparison of the Evangelists with 
 one another, that the report of our Saviour's language, 
 which we find in one of them, is defective, or otherwise in- 
 correct, and therefore, that this report must be explained 
 with reference to the fact, that it is so. 
 
 The general principle of explanation just stated deserves 
 consideration, doubtless, in relation to some of the words 
 ascribed to Jesus that have been thought to express or 
 imply his opinions concerning the origin of the Pentateuch 
 and the Levitical Law. It may, as I have said, enter as 
 one element into their explanation. But we may question 
 how far it is necessary to resort to it, considering that 
 another fact is to be attended to. This is, that our Saviour, 
 on some subjects, and on some occasions, adopted the com- 
 mon language of the Jews, founded on their erroneous con- 
 ceptions, certainly without any design of sanctioning those 
 conceptions. He sometimes did so for the purpose of
 
 90 
 
 changing the meaning of the terms by giving them a new 
 application. Thus the Jews, under the name of " the king- 
 dom of Heaven," expected an earthly kingdom, of which the 
 Messiah was to be the monarch: The idea of such a king- 
 dom alone was excited in their minds, when Jesus announced 
 that the kingdom of Heaven was at hand. But he used the 
 term figuratively, in a very different sense, which was to be 
 gradually explained by subsequent events. Sometimes he 
 used such language for the purpose of rhetorical illustration, 
 which may be drawn either from fact or fable. " When an 
 unclean spirit," he said, " has gone out of a man, it passes 
 through desert places in search of rest."* No intelligent 
 reader will suppose from these words that our Saviour meant 
 to adopt and sanction the then common notion that desert 
 places were frequented by demons. At other times he is 
 reasoning upon the false conceptions of those whom he ad- 
 dressed, reasoning ad hominem, as it is called. "If I cast 
 out demons through Beelzebub," he said, " through whom 
 do your disciples cast them out ?"f There were some of 
 the school of the Pharisees, it appears, who pretended to cast 
 out demons by exorcism, and who, when they succeeded in 
 producing a real or seeming return to sanity in their patients, 
 were thought to have effected a great work. Our Saviour 
 did not mean to imply that these men possessed powers like 
 his own. The object of his question merely was to expose 
 the prejudices and gross injustice of the Pharisees, who be- 
 lieved that their disciples had, in the one particular in ques- 
 tion, similar power to that of Christ, and who, in his case 
 and theirs, regarded its exercise so differently. In such 
 reasoning from false conceptions the language of error is 
 necessarily used. The character of such reasoning may be 
 more or less obvious ; and when not perfectly obvious, he 
 who does not exercise his understanding, but looks only at 
 the naked words before him, may insist that a speaker or 
 writer means to affirm an error, which, in fact, he introduces 
 into his discourse only to show its inconsistency with some 
 
 * Matthew xii. 43. t Matthew xii. 27.
 
 91 
 
 other error, or as a temporary stepping-stone on the way to 
 truth. And, beside the occasions that have been mentioned, 
 language founded on the mistaken conceptions of the Jews 
 was employed by our Saviour, either for the sake of pro- 
 ducing an effect on the imagination and feelings of his 
 hearers, which could not have been produced, or could not 
 have been produced so powerfully, in any other way, or of 
 conveying some truth to their understandings, which they 
 could not have distinctly apprehended, if expressed in any 
 other form. Thus he spoke, for example, of moral evil, 
 under the terrific personification of Satan. In such cases 
 we must, and we may easily, distinguish his essential mean- 
 ing from the modes of expression in which it is clothed 
 modes of expression adapted to Jewish conceptions, but not 
 correspondent to our own. Some of the truths taught by 
 Jesus could not but receive an accidental colouring from the 
 medium of the language through which they were conveyed ; 
 and we must not confound this accidental colouring with 
 their essential nature.* But this subject admits some fur- 
 ther explanation. 
 
 Every language is conformed to the conceptions of those 
 who use it, and consists wholly of the signs or expressions 
 of their conceptions. The progress of knowledge makes 
 necessary the enlargement of a language. The discoveries 
 of modern chemistry, for example, have required a new 
 vocabulary, in which they may be preserved and communi- 
 cated. When, on any subject of wide extent, the concep- 
 tions of the generality of men are erroneous, their errors 
 
 * The principle involved in the preceding remarks, that in explaining the 
 words of our Lord we should consider to whom they were immediately ad- 
 dressed, is equally implied in the following passage from Tertullian, a very 
 remarkable one, considering the time when it was written, though he makes 
 a different application of it: "Omnia quidem dicta Domini omnibus posita 
 stint ; per aures Judasorum ad nos transierunt, sed pleraque in personas 
 directa, non proprietatem admonitionis nobis constituerunt, sed exemplnm." 
 " All the sayings of our Lord are meant for all ; they have passed to us 
 through the ears of the Jews ; but many of them, being addressed to indi- 
 viduals, are not, for us, literal precepts, but exemplifications of duty." De 
 Prescript. Hseretic. c. 8, p. 205. Conf. De Fuga in Persecutione, c. 13, pp. 
 542, 543.
 
 enter into the structure of their speech ; they are emhodied 
 in the words which they use. It is often necessary for him 
 who would correct such errors to introduce new terms, or to 
 give new senses, or a new application, to terms already in 
 use. When circumstances do not require, or admit, that 
 those errors should be controverted, the language in which 
 they are incorporated may he used by one fully acquainted 
 with the truth. It may often be employed with propriety 
 and advantage. There are occasions when, by its use, right 
 conceptions and feelings may be produced, which could not 
 be communicated by language more correct. I understand 
 (for it is a subject on which I am incapable of forming an 
 independent opinion) that, at the present day, many of those 
 qualified to judge, reject the theory of the emission of rays 
 from luminous bodies, and regard the sensation of light as 
 produced by the undulations of a luminous aether, as that 
 of sound is caused by undulations of the air. Supposing 
 this theory to be true, and that it should be universally re- 
 ceived, the language which has been formed upon the old 
 belief will not soon, if ever, cease to be the language of 
 common life and of poetry. Though, upon the supposition 
 just made, this language implies throughout what is con- 
 trary to the truth ; yet it is equally well adapted to the ex- 
 pression of all truths that concern the generality of men, as 
 language conformed to the correct theory. It will, at least 
 for a long time, be better adapted to this purpose, as being 
 more intelligible to the unlearned ; more conformed to the 
 appearances, if not to the reality, of things. Nor can we, 
 with our present associations, readily believe, that a similar 
 profusion of figures and imagery to that which poetry now 
 borrows from light may be effectively addressed to men's 
 imagination and feelings through the medium of other 
 forms of language than those to which we are accustomed. 
 So also in Chemistry ; however requisite the new nomencla- 
 ture may be for the purposes of science, it is unimportant, 
 except indirectly, as regards the arts or medicine. The old 
 terms might, in many cases, serve equally well for the prac- 
 tical purposes of life. We might continue to call one sub-
 
 93 
 
 stance " the Oil of Vitriol," and another " the Sugar of 
 Lead," and, notwithstanding the erroneous ideas suggested 
 by those names, we might talk of them as intelligently, and 
 explain their properties and uses as correctly, as if we de- 
 nominated them " Sulphuric Acid," and " the Acetate of 
 Lead ; " and, in speaking to those familiar only with the 
 former names, no one would hesitate to use them. Truth, 
 then, may be clearly and effectually conveyed in the lan- 
 guage of error ; that is to say, in terras having their origin 
 in erroneous conceptions, and adapted to the expression of 
 those conceptions. 
 
 In the time of our Saviour, the notions of the Jews on 
 many subjects connected with his preaching were false and 
 superstitious. These notions were necessarily ingrained in 
 their forms of speech. A philosophical language, in which 
 they should be avoided, might undoubtedly have been 
 formed by him ; and such a language might have been in- 
 telligible to the philosophers, if there were any philosophers, 
 among the Jews. But our Saviour preached to the poor, 
 he addressed multitudes, his immediate disciples were fisher- 
 men and taxgatherers, and others of no higher intellectual 
 attainments, and he could use only popular language, such 
 language as his hearers would understand and feel. He 
 might, on a certain occasion, have said, I foresee the 
 triumph of my religion over evil, moral and physical; but 
 even had he been partially understood by his hearers, if they 
 had had some notion of what was meant by " evil, moral 
 and physical," and by " The triumph of his religion," the 
 assertion would have passed over their minds as a shadowy 
 abstraction, and left no impression. He did in fact say, 
 with the same meaning, " I saw Satan falling like lightning 
 from Heaven ; " and, in so saying, he used imagery which 
 was adapted to their conceptions and feelings. The whole 
 phraseology of the Jews concerning the Pentateuch and the 
 other books of the Old Testament was moulded on their 
 erroneous opinions respecting those books. Our Saviour 
 might have avoided the use of it, and introduced new modes 
 of speech, conformed to the truth. In this case, it is pro-
 
 94 
 
 bable that he would have abundantly excited their attention. 
 Such a fundamental change in their religious language 
 would have exposed him to questioning. Pharisees would 
 have come " to try him " on the subject. What would have 
 been the effect, if he had declined to explain himself? 
 What would have been the consequences, if he had explained 
 himself ? In the latter case, unless God had seen fit to use 
 other means than He did for establishing truth among men, 
 the whole ministry of Jesus might have been wasted, and he 
 might have died a martyr to an ineffectual attempt to correct 
 the false opinions of his countrymen in relation to the Old 
 Testament and the Levitical Law. What he did do, that is, 
 what the circumstances of his ministry permitted him to do, 
 to manifest his sense of those errors, will appear hereafter. 
 
 Essential truths, then, may be clearly and effectually, 
 sometimes most effectually, conveyed in the language of 
 error. It is true, that one writing at the present day on any 
 subject of morals or religion, who may suppose himself to 
 be addressing intelligent and well-informed readers, is bound, 
 as far as possible, to avoid such language, when it may 
 occasion any mistake as to his meaning. It is his duty to 
 express himself with unequivocal distinctness. But such 
 language, in regard to many topics, constituted the popular, 
 or rather the only, language of the Jews ; and our Saviour 
 was placed in circumstances altogether different from those 
 of a philosopher of our own times. That he might not 
 distract the attention of his hearers from the great truths 
 which it was the purpose of his mission to make known, 
 that he might not uselessly alarm their prejudices and rouse 
 their passions, he sometimes adopted their common language, 
 though founded on error. We are not hence to consider 
 him as sanctioning their errors. Such language, as used 
 by him, is to be understood as we always understand the 
 language of error when used by one whom we fully believe 
 to comprehend the truth, and to have no purpose but to ex- 
 press it. We view it as an adaptation of his thoughts to 
 the conceptions of those whom he addresses ; or as the pre- 
 sentation of ideas, essentially correct, in the only forms in
 
 95 
 
 which they have been embodied in language, though these 
 forms may contain an alloy of error. In the teaching of 
 our Saviour it is the essential meaning alone that is to be 
 regarded. The form of expression may be an accident, re- 
 sulting from temporary and local circumstances, from the 
 character of those whom he immediately addressed, and, 
 especially, from the nature of their conceptions and lan- 
 guage. 
 
 The facts that have been stated, in connection with those 
 now generally recognized in the interpretation of the New 
 Testament, may serve to explain the passages in which our 
 Saviour has been thought to sanction the common opinions 
 of the Jews respecting the origin of the Levitical Law and 
 the authorship of the Pentateuch. I will notice, for the 
 sake of illustration, one of those passages, perhaps the most 
 remarkable. In the Gospel of John, our Saviour is repre- 
 sented as thus addressing his Jewish hearers : " Had ye be- 
 lieved Moses, ye would have believed me ; for he wrote 
 concerning me ; " that is, " what he wrote concerns me."* 
 
 Here, it may be said, is an express assertion of our 
 Saviour, that " Moses wrote ; " and, if we will not raise an 
 idle cavil, grounded on the supposition, that Moses may 
 have written a part, but not the whole, of the Pentateuch, 
 we must admit him to have been its author ; and consequently 
 admit that the Levitical Law proceeded from God. 
 
 But, on the other hand, it may be remarked, that to affirm 
 that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch is, obviously, 
 not the main purpose of the passage. Its essential meaning 
 is, Had ye received with true faith the religion taught by 
 Moses, and had it produced its proper effect on your minds, 
 ye would have received me ; for the dispensation by Moses 
 concerned me ; it was intended as a preparation for me. 
 
 It is, then, to be considered, that, in regard to the in- 
 cidental meaning supposed to be expressed by the passage 
 as it now stands, it rests wholly on a single word. If, 
 instead of the words, " Moses wrote concerning me," our 
 
 * Johnv. 46.
 
 90 
 
 Saviour in fact said, " Moses taught concerning me," (that 
 is, What Moses taught concerns me,) then the declaration, 
 without any change in its essential meaning, would suggest 
 no such inferences as have heen drawn from it. In order, 
 therefore, to draw those inferences from it, we should he 
 certain that St. John reported his Master's language with 
 verbal exactness. But it is not likely that he committed it 
 to writing till many years after it was uttered ; and it is 
 altogether prohahle, that if, when he committed it to 
 writing, the question had been proposed to him, whether our 
 Saviour said " Moses wrote," or " Moses taught," or " Moses 
 spoke," he would have been unable to solve the doubt. 
 Nor is it unreasonable to suppose, that of these expressions, 
 all equally suitable to the main purpose of Jesus, he might 
 not have remarked that there was reason for preferring one 
 to another. It is to be recollected, that the fact is un- 
 questionable, that the Evangelists did not always report the 
 language of their Master with verbal exactness. 
 
 But, supposing that the words before us are the very 
 words of our Saviour, how are we then to regard them? 
 We may regard them as an address ad hominem, as an 
 incidental and temporary adoption of the conceptions and 
 language of those to whom he was speaking, in relation to a 
 subject foreign from his immediate purpose. We may un- 
 derstand him as if he had said : Had ye believed Moses, ye 
 would have believed me, for the books which, as you 
 suppose, Moses wrote, concern me. If it be asked, how 
 those books concerned our Saviour, the answer is, that all 
 the truths preserved in those books derived from, or relating 
 to, the revelation by Moses, concerned him for whom this 
 dispensation was preparatory. Those books clearly taught, 
 that there was one God, the Creator of all things, ruling 
 over all things, and exercising a moral government over 
 men, loving righteousness and hating iniquity. The founda- 
 tion of all true religion was thus laid. He whose character 
 had been formed on the belief of those truths was prepared 
 to receive the truths taught by Jesus. The books preserving 
 the traditions concerning Moses likewise presented in the
 
 97 
 
 strongest light the fact, that the Jews had heen miraculously 
 separated by God from other nations. The Jews believed, 
 and reasonably believed, that this separation had been made 
 for some great end, yet unaccomplished. They were ex- 
 pecting a new messenger from God to complete the work. 
 This end was to be accomplished by Christ. He was the 
 expected Messenger, the Messiah. These, I conceive, are 
 the reasons why the books ascribed to Moses concerned him. 
 Whatever mixture of error they might contain, they still 
 preserved the traditions of that earlier dispensation, the main 
 purpose of which was to prepare for his coming. 
 
 In the wide field which is to be traversed in this investi- 
 gation, we are led to take different views of the Pentateuch, 
 but they are all perfectly reconcilable with each other. 
 We must not estimate its value to a pious Jew before the 
 coming of Christ, by the opinion which an enlightened 
 Christian may now form of its authorship and its errors. To 
 have broadly communicated such an opinion to the former, 
 by way of enlightening his mind on the subject of religion, 
 would have implied anything but wisdom in his religious 
 teacher. A pious Jew perhaps resolved its difficulties into 
 allegories, or more commonly, it may be, passed over them 
 without suffering his attention to dwell upon them, as 
 intelligent Christians have done. There are, perhaps, but 
 few men, into whose system of opinions errors do not enter, 
 irreconcilable with truths which they firmly hold, and such 
 as might have a disastrous effect upon their character. But 
 these errors often lie inert in the mind, unregarded, and 
 inoperative on the feelings and conduct. He whose inten- 
 tions are right has, at least under favourable circumstances, 
 a moral corrective in his heart for his mistakes of specula- 
 tion ; or, in the inconsistency of his opinions, the true may 
 neutralize the effects of the erroneous. 
 
 There are still other considerations to be attended to 
 respecting the relation of Christianity to the Levitical Law. 
 This Law consists of two parts. It was both the Kitual and 
 the Civil Law of the Jews. On the one hand, it regulated the 
 ceremonies of their national religion, and, on the other, it 
 
 H
 
 was their statute law concerning civil rights, crimes, and 
 punishments. Now in the simple performance of the cere- 
 monies ordained by it there was no moral harm. What it 
 prescribed might be innocently complied with. Accordingly, 
 we find that Jesus sometimes observed its ordinances, as in 
 the celebration of the Passover ; and that they were regarded 
 not only by the other Apostles, but occasionally also by 
 St. Paul, when to the Jews lie became as a Jew. But so far 
 as the Levitical was the civil law of the nation, obedience to 
 it was not merely innocent, it was a duty, binding upon the 
 followers of Christ, equally with the rest of their countrymen. 
 Thus our Saviour says : " The Teachers of the Law and the 
 Pharisees sit on the seat of Moses," that is, they expound 
 and administer the laws of the nation, they exercise an 
 authority similar to that once held by Moses ; " Whatever, 
 therefore, they bid you observe, that observe and do:"* 
 submit to their authority, as ministers of the law, whatever 
 may be their private vices. Thus, too, when reproving the 
 Teachers .of the Law and the Pharisees for their affected 
 scrupulosity in paying tithes of mint, anise and cummin, he 
 said to them ; " These ought ye to do, and not to leave the 
 other undone. "f It was a right principle, that the law was 
 to be observed even in its minor requirements. 
 
 There was, as I have said, no moral harm simply in the 
 observance of the rites of the Jewish religion by one who 
 considered them as matters of indifference. But, on the 
 supposition that these rites were not ordained by God, there 
 can be no question that the tendency of such a system of 
 ceremonies, regarded as an essential part of religion, was to 
 strengthen, more and more, gross misconceptions of religion 
 and of the religious character ; and to produce that outward 
 show of sanctity, accompanied with real depravity, which 
 marked the general character of the Pharisees in the time -of 
 Christ. When the observance of ceremonies is raised to the 
 same rank with the performance of duties, in the confusion 
 that ensues, the former usually supersedes the latter. Men 
 
 * Matthew xxiii. 2, 3. t Matthew xxiii. 23.
 
 99 
 
 find it much easier to satisfy themselves concerning their 
 religious character by doing certain definite acts, that require 
 no struggle with their evil passions, than by aiming at 
 indefinite improvement, which demands constant humility, 
 watchfulness, and self-control. 
 
 The ritual Law, as has been before remarked, was not 
 solemnly repealed by our Saviour in the name of God, as if 
 it had been solemnly promulgated by God ; it fell before his 
 teaching like a form of human superstition. The contrariety 
 thus manifested between the character and spirit of his reli- 
 gion and the character and spirit of the ritual Law ; the 
 manner, in other words, in which this law was done away 
 by Christianity, shows that the common opinion of the Jews 
 respecting its divine origin was not sanctioned by the 
 teaching of our Saviour. But in relation to this subject 
 there is more to be considered. 
 
 If Jesus had publicly and explicitly declared the error of 
 the long-cherished belief of the Jews, such a storm of preju- 
 dice and passion would have been excited in the great body 
 of the nation, and such confusion and bewilderment of mind 
 would have been produced among those best disposed to 
 listen to him, as would, to all human apprehension, have de- 
 feated the purpose of his ministry. It was a truth to be taught 
 indirectly. But he did not leave it to be inferred only from, 
 the character of his religion. He gave other intimations of 
 it, sufficiently intelligible. He went to the very limits, within 
 which a divine wisdom restrained him, in bearing his tes- 
 timony against the error of the Jews ; and this testimony, 
 though its whole effect was not understood, was yet so offen- 
 sive, that it could not be given but at the hazard of 
 his life. 
 
 I refer to that language and those actions of our Saviour, 
 which distinctly imply that the Levitical Law was not of 
 divine origin. In the investigation of this evidence an un- 
 explored subject opens upon us. 
 
 It will be recollected in what terms Philo, certainly 110 
 bigot for the literal observance of the Levitical Law, speaks 
 
 H 2
 
 100 
 
 of the Jewish Sabbath.* " Whoever does any work on the 
 Sabbath shall surely be put to death," is a law repeatedly 
 given in Exodus, f " Ye shall kindle no fire throughout 
 your dwellings on the Sabbath." J In Numbers we read, 
 that a man was found gathering sticks on the Sabbath ; 
 " and the Lord said to Moses ; This man shall surely be 
 put to death ; the whole congregation shall stone him with 
 stones without the camp." So strict, according to the 
 Levitical Law, was to be the observance of the Sabbath, 
 and so fearful a crime was any breach of the statute repre- 
 sented to be. 
 
 But Jesus repeatedly disregarded, or countenanced the 
 disregard of, the law respecting the Sabbath; and he did so 
 at the hazard of his life. But it is not to be imagined, that he 
 thus manifested his disregard for that Law wantonly ; or that 
 such hazard was encountered without the purpose of effecting 
 some important end. What, then, could this end be, except 
 to teach indirectly the superstitious character of such observ- 
 ances as the Levitical Law required, and especially of such 
 representations concerning the extreme guilt of neglecting 
 them, as that Law presented ? Let us attend to some of the 
 examples. 
 
 When, as he was passing through a field of grain on the 
 Sabbath, || his disciples gathered the ears of grain and ate 
 them, and the Pharisees said ; " Lo, thy disciples are doing 
 what the Law forbids on the Sabbath," his reply, it is to be 
 observed, did not contradict their assertion. But, for the 
 obvious reasons before given, he could no t directly tell them 
 that this Law was not from God, and was not binding upon 
 men. What, then, did he say ? He first made one of those 
 annunciations of his high character and of the sanctity of 
 his office, which were so necessary to the accomplishment of 
 his ministry. David, their great monarch, the supposed 
 type of the Messiah, had broken the Law, when himself and 
 his companions were hungry ; and what David had clone 
 
 * See before, p. 85. + Ch. xxxi. 14. Ch. xxxv. 2. 
 
 J Exodus xxxv. 3. Ch. xv. 32-36. 
 
 || Matthew xii. 1-8. Mark ii. 23-28. Luke \i. 1-5.
 
 101 
 
 without censure, he might do without censure. The priests 
 performed their work in the temple on the Sabbath notwith- 
 standing the Law ; and those who addressed him were in the 
 presence of " one greater than the temple." In such decla- 
 rations there is no recognition of the Divine authority of the 
 Law, and still less in what follows. " But, had ye known 
 what this means, / desire goodness and not sacrifices, ye 
 would not have condemned the guiltless." These words 
 imply, that such an observance of the Sabbath as the Law 
 enforced in a manner so terrific had not been reqiured by 
 God, and was not acceptable to Him. "For the Sabbath 
 was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." The 
 general truth involved in this declaration is, that what God 
 requires man to do is for the benefit of man ; He demands 
 no slavish observance of mere ceremonies. " So that the 
 Son of Man is master even of the Sabbath : " So that I, 
 the messenger of God, have a right to dispense with such 
 ceremonies. 
 
 Jesus repeatedly performed his miracles on the Sabbath, 
 twice, as is related, in a synagogue.* To meet the offence 
 of the Jews, at his thus breaking the rest of the day, he 
 presented the same essential idea in different forms of ex- 
 pression. " Who among you, that owns a sheep, if it fall 
 into a pit on the Sabbath, will not lay hold of it and lift it 
 out ? Of how much more worth is a man than a sheep ! It 
 is lawful, then, to do good on the Sabbath." If our Saviour 
 had attached any sanctity to the law respecting the ceremo- 
 nial observance of the Sabbath ; if it had not been his 
 express purpose indirectly to show that he did not regard it 
 as of divine origin, he might, and undoubtedly would, have 
 deferred the performance of his miracle till another day. In 
 justification of his conduct, he taught that all good works, 
 even those for the relief of inferior animals, as the taking of 
 a sheep from a pit, or the leading of an ox or an ass to water, 
 might be performed on the Sabbath. The licence which 
 the Pharisees allowed themselves, in regard to the actions 
 specified, precluded any ready reply to this doctrine. But 
 
 * Matthew xii. 9-14. Mark iii. 1-6. Luke vi. 6-11. Luke riii. 10-11.
 
 102 
 
 how much they were outraged by what he did and what he 
 taught, appears from the narrative : " Then the Pharisees 
 went out, and concerted means to destroy him." 
 
 Early in his ministry, at Jerusalem, hy the pool of 
 Bethesda, he restored to health one who had been a cripple 
 for thirty-eight years, and directed him to rise, take up his 
 bed and walk. This was done on the Sabbath. The Jews, 
 in consequence, pursued Jesus with the purpose of killing 
 him, "because he had done this on the Sabbath."* They 
 were acting in conformity, as doubtless they thought, to the 
 law in Exodus; " Whoever does any work on the Sabbath 
 shall surely be put to death." " After this Jesus would not, 
 for some time, sojourn in Judea, because the Jews sought to 
 kjll him." Afterward he went up to Jerusalem, at the Feast of 
 Tabernacles, and referred, in his first public discourse after 
 his arrival, to the danger to which he had exposed himself, 
 by breaking through the ceremonial observance of the 
 Sabbath. " Why do you seek to kill me ? " he asked. 
 Why, when ye allow a child to be circumcised on the Sab- 
 bath, " are ye angry with me, because I have restored 
 soundness to the whole body of a man on the Sabbath ?"f 
 
 We cannot doubt, that Jesus meant to convey some very 
 important instruction in actions which form so prominent a 
 part of his ministry. It could not have been for any light 
 purpose, that he thus repeatedly put his life in jeopardy. 
 Supposing the representations relating to the Sabbath con- 
 tained in the Pentateuch to be correct, our Saviour would 
 not have pursued the course which he did, merely for the 
 sake of correcting the over-scrupulous notions of some of 
 the more bigoted Jews concerning its observance. The end 
 would have been too trifling, and too little connected with 
 any high moral and religious object, to be aimed at by 
 means so hazardous. Nor, supposing those representations 
 of it correct, would it have been easy for the wisest and most 
 liberal-minded of the Jews to draw a line between the 
 scrupulous observance of the day, which was so solemnly 
 required, and the over- scrupulous observance of it, which, 
 
 * John v. 1-16. f John vii. 19-23.
 
 103 
 
 after all, was simply not required. Taking another view of 
 the subject, if the ritual Law were ordained by God, we 
 cannot believe that our Lord meant, by these actions, indi- 
 rectly and tacitly to repeal it. A law so solemnly promul- 
 gated by God could not be indirectly and tacitly repealed. 
 There is but one other purpose which can be ascribed to his 
 actions. It is, that they were intended, at any risk which the 
 purposes of his mission allowed, to indicate that that Law 
 was not ordained by God, but was a system of human super- 
 stition. 
 
 We must not refine, in drawing inferences from the words 
 of Jesus, as if they were those of a philosophical treatise, 
 written with great precision, and were not popular language, 
 addressed to rude, unenlightened hearers, with strong preju- 
 dices, and incapable of any accurate exercise of intellect. 
 We must regard their essential meaning, and consider the 
 effect obviously intended. But the words used by him at the 
 Feast of Tabernacles, in reference to the facts just mentioned, 
 have a bearing not obvious, perhaps, at first sight, but 
 which, without any violation of the principles just laid down, 
 we cannot well doubt was purposed by our Lord. They have 
 been partly quoted already. 
 
 " Did not Moses give you the Law, and yet no one of you 
 regards the Law ? Why do you seek to kill me ? The 
 crowd answered him ; Thou art mad : who seeks to kill thee ? 
 Jesus replied to them ; I have done one work, at which ye 
 all are astounded. Moses gave you circumcision, not that 
 it comes from Moses, but from the fathers, and ye circum- 
 cise a child on the Sabbath. If a child be circumcised on 
 the Sabbath, that the Law of Moses may not be broken,* 
 are ye angry with me for restoring soundness to the whole 
 body of a man on the Sabbath ? Judge not according to 
 appearance, but judge righteously." f 
 
 Considering the manner in which circumcision is repre- 
 
 * As a child, according to the Law, was to be circumcised on the eighth day 
 after its birth, the rite was performed on the Sabbath, if that happened to be 
 the eighth day. 
 
 t John vii. 19-24.
 
 104 
 
 sented in the Pentateuch as having been ordained and en- 
 forced, there is something -well deserving attention in the 
 words in which our Lord first refers it to Moses, and then to 
 the fathers, as if it were, at most, a mere ordinance of Moses, 
 or a traditionary rite of the Jews, sanctioned by him. He 
 does not speak of it as appointed by God. " If a child," he 
 proceeds, " be circumcised on the Sabbath, that the Law of 
 Moses may not be broken, are ye angry with me," for what 
 I have done ? The word " me" is here emphatic. The sen- 
 tence is antithetical. The question belongs to the class of 
 those passages, in which our Saviour demanded for himself 
 deference like that, or greater than that, which the Jews had 
 been accustomed to pay to those whom they most honoured 
 under their old dispensation ; as when he said, " A greater 
 than Solomon is here ; " " Before Abraham existed I was 
 He ; " " Have ye not read what David did ? " But, if we 
 follow the Pentateuch in referring the rite mentioned, not to 
 Moses, but to God, as its proper author, the language be- 
 comes altogether unsuitable. We shall, at once, perceive 
 this by substituting for " the Law of Moses " an expression 
 corresponding to that conception : " if a child be circumcised 
 on the Sabbath, that the Law of God may not be broken, 
 are ye angry with me ? " " Are ye angry with me," our 
 Saviour goes on, " for restoring soundness to the whole body 
 of a man V " In these words, the antithesis between the act 
 which he had performed, and the act performed in circum- 
 cision, represents the latter, not as a sacred and most im- 
 portant rite, but as a mere mutilation of the body. 
 
 The ordinances concerning clean and unclean food form 
 a prominent feature of the ceremonial Law.* The animals 
 enumerated as unclean were to be an abomination to the 
 Israelites. The touch of their dead bodies was pollution. 
 It rendered even inanimate things unclean. The washing 
 of men, and garments, and vessels, or the breaking of the 
 latter, is enjoined in consequence of it. Minute and extra- 
 
 * Leviticus, Ch. xi. Deuteronomy, Ch. xiv.
 
 105 
 
 ordinary directions are given concerning it.* The Jews were 
 not to " make themselves abominable " by eating unclean 
 food ; but it is said ; " Ye shall sanctify yourselves," by ab- 
 staining from such food, "and ye shall be holy, for I, the 
 Lord your God, am holy." 
 
 The Pharisees, in the time of our Saviour, attached n most 
 superstitious importance to the washing of the hands before 
 meals. f The custom, probably, originated in the purpose 
 of removing any particle of unclean food that might acci- 
 dentally adhere to them. Our Saviour was, on one occasion, 
 questioned by the Pharisees on account of the neglect of this 
 ceremony by his disciples.^ It is unnecessary to give the 
 whole of his reply. He severely reproved them for teaching 
 the commandments of men and making void the command- 
 ments of God ; with honouring God with their lips, while 
 their hearts were far from Him ; and then, turning from the 
 Pharisees, and calling upon the multitude to attend, he said 
 to them ; 
 
 " Hear and understand ! Not that which enters the mouth 
 pollutes a man, but what proceeds from the mouth ; it is 
 that which pollutes a man. 
 
 "Afterwards his disciples came to him, and said; Do you 
 know that the Pharisees were scandalized, when they heard 
 that speech ? But he answered them, Whatever my heavenly 
 Father has not planted [whatever religious doctrine or sys- 
 tem of doctrines], is to be rooted up. Leave them to them- 
 selves. They are blind leaders of the blind, but when the 
 blind lead the blind, it is to fall headlong. Then Peter said, 
 Explain to us that dark saying ; " meaning the words that 
 our Saviour addressed to the multitude. These were so 
 foreign from the conceptions that the Jews had derived 
 from the Law, that the Apostles did not know how to uuder- 
 
 * As, for example ; ' ' If any part of such dead body fall upon any sort of 
 seed to be sown, the seed shall be clean, unless, when it fell upon it, the seed 
 had been put in water ; for then it shall be unclean to you." Leviticus xi. 
 37, 38. 
 
 f See Wetstein's note on Matthew xv. 2. 
 
 J Matthew, Ch. xv. Mark, Oh. vii.
 
 100 
 
 stand them. " And Jesus said, Are ye too still without dis- 
 cernment ? Do ye not understand, that what enters the mouth 
 passes into the stomach, and is cast out ? But what pro- 
 ceeds from the mouth has its source in the mind, and is that 
 which pollutes a man. For in the mind is the source of evil 
 thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false testi- 
 mony, calumny. These .are what pollute a man. But to 
 eat with unwashed hands does not pollute a man." 
 
 Perhaps the purpose of the last sentence, in which Jesus 
 recurs to the original occasion of his discourse, was partially 
 to veil from his disciples, as yet unprepared for such full 
 instruction, the whole hearing of the truths he had declared, 
 on the authority of the Levitical Law and the Pentateuch. 
 But their bearing is ohvious. They are essential truths of 
 religion. They were uttered hy Jesus, as a teacher from 
 God ; and they show in what manner he regarded the repre- 
 sentations of the Pentateuch concerning clean and unclean 
 animals, and the pollution to he incurred by eating the one, 
 and the holiness to he attained hy eating only the other. 
 The fact, that they are in direct opposition to the Levitical 
 Law, is apparent; hut it may he made a little more striking 
 to the imagination, if we will conceive of the astounding in- 
 congruity that would he produced, were the words of Jesus 
 to he found in Leviticus or Deuteronomy, immediately after 
 the ordinances respecting clean and unclean food. 
 
 Christianity is distinguished by the indissoluble sanctity 
 that it attaches to marriage ; strikingly distinguished, when 
 we consider the general licentiousness of principle, as well 
 as practice, among Jews and Heathens, regarding the inter- 
 course of the sexes, which' prevailed before the coming of 
 our Saviour. The sacred character with which marriage is 
 invested by our religion is a necessary means of delivering 
 men from the animal selfishness of the appetites, and of 
 educating them as moral and spiritual beings. It transforms 
 the passion of the sexes into a high and generous sentiment, 
 that puts in action and invigorates whatever is noble in our 
 nature. It makes it the foundation of the most intimate
 
 107 
 
 friendship. Though the sanctity of marriage has been but 
 imperfectly regarded by Christians, yet its effects have been, 
 to raise woman from the state to which she was degraded by 
 the vices of the ancient world, and is still degraded wherever 
 the influence of Christianity is unknown, and to establish 
 her in her proper rank. It has placed the weaker and more 
 refined portion of our race on an equality with the stronger 
 and ruder, and thus caused the purifying and civilizing 
 influence of female virtue to be everywhere diffused. By 
 making the union of parents indissoluble, it secures to their 
 children care and love. It has infused a new vitality into 
 the ties of natural affection ; and these, in their numberless 
 ramifications and interfacings, become the strongest bonds 
 of civil society. It has created domestic life, the close union 
 of individuals into families, the school in which our virtues 
 are now formed in childhood, and the sphere in which our 
 best charities are exercised in maturer years. 
 
 But the sanctity of marriage was not recognized in the 
 Levitical Law. It presents in this respect a great contrast 
 with the teaching of Christ. It countenanced the widest 
 liberty of divorce on the part of the husband. If a wife 
 " had not favour in the eyes of her husband, because he had 
 found something offensive in her," he might " write her a 
 bill of divorcement, and put it into her hands, and send her 
 out of his house." * It was in direct opposition to this law 
 (which is, obviously, from the mention of writing a bill of 
 divorcement, of an age when writing had become common), 
 that is, it was in direct opposition to the Levitical Law, that 
 our Saviour thus taught; 
 
 " It has been said ; Let him who would put away his wife, 
 give her a writing of divorcement. But I say to you, Who- 
 ever puts away his wife, except for adultery, causes her to 
 commit adultery ; and whoever marries her who is put away 
 commits adultery."f 
 
 In the time of our Saviour, the majority of the Jews in- 
 ferred, as they were authorized to do, from the Levitical Law,- 
 
 * Deuteronomy, xxiv. 1. t Matthew v. 31, 32.
 
 that a man might divorce his wife for any cause of offence 
 whatever. The Pharisees, who had, doubtless, heard some- 
 thing of his teaching respecting this subject, were desirous 
 that it should be brought out in still more open opposition 
 to the Law, that it might afford them an opportunity to 
 excite against him the prejudices of the multitude. They, 
 accordingly, came to question him on the subject, and made 
 their inquiry with a show of deference. The Evangelist 
 thus relates ; 
 
 " And the Pharisees came to ensnare him, and asked ; 
 May a man lawfully divorce his wife for whatever cause he 
 will ? And he answered them ; Have ye not read, that the 
 Creator, in the beginning, made a male and a female ? And 
 it is said ; For this cause shall a man leave his father 
 and his mother, and cleave to his wife ; and they two 
 shall be one. So they are no longer two, but one. What, 
 then, God has joined together, let none put asunder. They 
 said to him, Why, then, has Moses ordained, that a man may 
 give his wife a writing of divorcement, and put her away? 
 He said to them, Moses, on account of your perversity, 
 allowed you to put away your wives ; but in the beginning 
 it was not so. And I say to you, that whoever puts away 
 his wife, except for adultery, and marries another, commits 
 adultery ; and he who marries her who has been put away 
 commits adultery."* 
 
 Here, again, our Saviour directly opposes his teaching to 
 the Levitical Law ; not, it should be observed, on the ground 
 that that Law had proceeded from God, but that he was com- 
 missioned to revoke it ; on the contrary, he declares the Law 
 itself, in the particular in question, essentially bad, and con- 
 trary to the will of God. In the words, " Moses, on account 
 of your perversity, allowed you to put away your wives," we 
 are to consider the essential idea, which is, that the law had 
 its occasion in the perversity of the Jews. The expression, 
 " Moses allowed," is merely an adaptation of his language 
 to the popular belief, concerning which any direct contro- 
 
 * Matthew xix. 3-9.
 
 109 
 
 versy would have defeated the purpose he had in view. But, 
 while using this expression, Jesus, at the same time, affords 
 decisive ground for concluding the belief to be erroneous. 
 If the law respecting divorce proceeded from Moses, it pro- 
 ceeded from God. But a law cannot have proceeded from 
 God which is contrary to the will of God, and accommodated 
 to human perversity; a law that counteracts the moral 
 civilization of men, and indulges them in selfishness, sen- 
 suality, and domestic tyranny.- It is to be recollected, that 
 the code which contained this law likewise presented a broad 
 contrast to Christianity in sanctioning polygamy and concu- 
 binage. How different the teaching of Jesus was from the 
 notions which the Jews had derived from the Levitical Law, 
 and the practice which they had founded upon it, appears 
 from the remark of his own disciples after his conversation 
 with the Pharisees : " If such is the case of a man with his 
 wife, it is better not to marry." 
 
 The first mention by Jesus of the Jewish law respecting 
 divorce is found in the Sermon on the Mount. In this dis- 
 course the manner is very striking, in which precepts, or 
 principles, derived from the Pentateuch, are introduced to 
 notice, and remarked on by him, for the purpose of extend- 
 ing or contradicting them. His words are; "Ye have 
 heard that it was said to them of old " " But I say unto 
 you." This is language which cannot be reconciled with 
 the supposition that Jesus held the common belief of his 
 countrymen, that those precepts and principles proceeded 
 immediately from God. Introduce the expression of such a 
 belief, and it would give a strange character to his words ; 
 " Ye have heard that God said to them of old " " But I 
 say to you." Had he intended to sanction the popular 
 belief, and, at the same time, to signify that he was commis- 
 sioned to enlarge or repeal the laws formerly given by God, 
 we should find some other forms of introduction than those 
 which he has used ; as for example, " God spake by Moses 
 to them of old, saying" " But my Father now says to 
 you." 
 
 The argument we are considering has, perhaps, been suffi-
 
 110 
 
 ciently elucidated. But I will add one passage more. It is 
 from the conversation of Jesus with the Samaritan woman, 
 whom he found by Jacob's well.* To her he openly pro- 
 fessed himself the Messiah, contrary to the reserve which he 
 was compelled to maintain with the Jews till the closing 
 scenes of his ministry. To her, likewise, he spoke with 
 more plainness in relation to the subject before us. She, 
 believing him to be a prophet, questioned him at once 
 respecting the fundamental point of difference between the 
 Jews and Samaritans ; whether God should be worshipped 
 on Mount Gerizim, or at Jerusalem. About the form of 
 worship, which was essentially the same in the temple of the 
 Samaritans and in that of the Jews, there was no question 
 in her mind. But it is to this form of worship that the an- 
 swer of Jesus relates. " Woman, believe me, the hour is 
 coming when ye shall worship the Father neither on this 
 mountain nor at Jerusalem." I pass over a sentence unim- 
 portant to our purpose. " The hour is coming, and now is, 
 when the true worshippers of the Father shall worship him 
 in spirit and truth ; for the father is seeking such worship- 
 pers. God is a spirit, and they who worship him must 
 worship him in spirit and truth." This passage, viewed in 
 the light in which it has been placed by the preceding 
 inquiry, hardly requires any comment. Those who wor- 
 shipped, either at Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim, according 
 to the rites of the Levitical Law, were not such worshippers 
 as God desired. Their religion of ceremonies was not the 
 religion of the heart. Their form of worship was to be 
 done away, as unacceptable to God ; and, in contradistinc- 
 tion to them, a new class of men was forming, through the 
 ministry of Christ, who, rejecting all such rites, should 
 worship God spiritually and truly. ^, 
 
 We conclude, then, that the tacit and indirect abolition of 
 the ceremonial Law by Christianity, without any claim on 
 the part of Jesus, that, though this law was of divine origin, 
 he was commissioned to repeal it; the opposition between 
 
 * John iv. 5-24.
 
 Ill 
 
 the spirit and character of our religion, and other portions 
 of the Levitical Law; and such words and acts of our 
 Saviour as have been mentioned, bearing directly against 
 that Law ; all prove that the popular notions of the Jews 
 respecting its divine origin and authority, and, consequently, 
 their notions respecting the authorship of the Pentateuch, 
 were not sanctioned by him, but were opposed by him as far 
 as a wise regard to the accomplishment of the essential pur- 
 poses of his ministry would permit. 
 
 We will now pass from a consideration of the Pentateuch 
 to some general remarks on the other books of the Old 
 Testament.* 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 ON THE OTHER BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT BESIDE 
 THOSE OF THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 IN considering the other books of the Old Testament, we 
 must divest ourselves of the Jewish notion of their divine 
 authority ; or, in other words, we must divest ourselves 
 of the belief, that the truth of all the facts which they relate, 
 and of all the sentiments which their writers express, rests 
 on the authority of God. When viewed under this aspect, 
 they excite constant objections, and present constant occa- 
 sions of scandal. But, when they are removed from the 
 false light in which they have been placed, so that their true 
 character may be discerned, we perceive them to be works of 
 the greatest curiosity and interest, coming down to us from a 
 remote antiquity ; marking the history of our race with a 
 long track of light, though broken and clouded, where all 
 would be darkness without them ; bearing, in their habitual 
 reference to God, which gives them so peculiar a character, 
 the impress of the divine dispensation in which they had 
 their origin; and uttering, with the voice of far distant 
 ages, sentiments of piety to which the heart of man still 
 responds, 
 
 * [See note E, at the end of the volume. ED.]
 
 112 
 
 In regard to the miscellaneous books of the Old Testa- 
 ment, as they may be called, to distinguish them from the 
 historical and prophetical, no further remarks seem necessary 
 with reference to our present purpose. But, respecting the 
 other historical books beside the Pentateuch, the inquiry 
 arises ; In what manner should we regard the many accounts 
 of miracles contained in them, and the language which, to a 
 modern reader, at first view, implies the frequent immediate 
 interposition of the Deity in acting upon the minds of men 
 and directing the order of events ? 
 
 In considering this question, a distinction is to be made 
 among those books. In the Books of Joshua and of 
 Judges, which relate to the period of several centuries, as 
 is commonly supposed, immediately following the settlement 
 of the Jews in Palestine, there is evidently, I conceive, a 
 great mixture of fabulous traditions, such as are found in 
 the early history of all other nations. With the Book of 
 Samuel, the history, to all appearance, assumes a more 
 authentic character; far more authentic than that of the 
 contemporary history of any other ancient nation; and it 
 continues to preserve a similar character through the Book 
 of Kings. It is these Books of Samuel and of the Kings, 
 that particularly demand attention in further considering the 
 inquiry just presented. 
 
 We will first take notice of those forms of expression to 
 be found in them, which refer so much to the immediate 
 agency of the Deity, though without supposing anything 
 properly miraculous, that is, any event not accordant with 
 the ordinary course of nature, that may be recognized as 
 such an event by man. In the occurrences of this world, 
 much, we believe, is left to the free agency of the moral 
 beings who inhabit it; while, on the other hand, religion and 
 philosophy teach us, that much is determined by the unseen 
 operation of the controlling will of God. But to settle the 
 limits of human and divine agency is a problem which no 
 philosophy can solve. However convinced we may be, that 
 man possesses, as essential to all that is excellent in his 
 nature, the power of doing good as his proper act, and con-
 
 113 
 
 sequently the power of doing evil, we are wholly ignorant 
 how far this power is limited and overruled by God's omni- 
 potence. We believe, as the necessary ground-work of 
 religion and morals, that God, though the ultimate, is not 
 the immediate, cause of all events ; and that a wide distinction 
 is to be made between what He directly ordains, and what He 
 permits. But this distinction was overlooked by the Jewish 
 historians. Accustomed to the habitual contemplation of 
 God as the author of all things, deeply penetrated by a sense 
 of the marvellous circumstances under which their nation 
 existed, and regarding it as the object of his special pro- 
 vidence, they naturally referred directly to Him whatever 
 affected its condition, and whatever seemed to them a mani- 
 festation of his pleasure or displeasure. This state of mind 
 they, of course, shared with their countrymen. We have 
 scarcely entered on the Book of Samuel, before we find it 
 related, that " the elders of Israel said, Wherefore hath the 
 Lord smitten us to-day before the Philistines ? " * The same 
 mode of conception and style of narration appear throughout 
 the history. To remark on one of the passages, by which 
 the early fathers were embarrassed, it is said, that " an evil 
 spirit, from the Lord, troubled Saul."f A modern historian 
 might express the same event by saying, that Saul became 
 subject to temporary insanity. A religious man, if he 
 wished to present the fact under a religious aspect, would 
 now say, that in the providence of God Saul was thus 
 afflicted. The last mode of expression would differ from that 
 used by the Jewish historian, not only in putting aside the 
 agency of an evil spirit, but also in not directly referring 
 the effect to God. It is to be kept in mind, that in all such 
 language throughout the Jewish history, we have only an 
 expression of the conceptions of the writer. Of the counsels 
 of God he could know nothing. 
 
 The next branch of the inquiry is ; In what manner we 
 are to regard the accounts of miracles contained in the Books 
 of Samuel and of the Kings. The Book of the Kings, as 
 
 * 1 Samuel iv. 3. f 1 Samuel xvi. 14. 
 
 I
 
 1U 
 
 has been formerly remarked, was written, or compiled, after 
 the commencement of the Babylonish Captivity. It begins 
 with an account of the last days of David. Between the 
 composition of the history and the first events related in it, 
 was an interval, therefore, of more than four centuries and a 
 half. It has been supposed by many, that the Book of 
 Samuel was originally united with that of the Kings, as 
 forming one work by the same author. But it seems to me 
 most probable, that they are different works by different 
 authors, and I shall continue to speak of them as such. The 
 Book of Samuel has been thought, from internal evidence, 
 to have been written a considerable time after the conclusion 
 of the series of historical events which it records, and these 
 events extend through a period of about a hundred and fifty 
 years. 
 
 In the Books of Samuel and of the Kings, we find many 
 accounts of supposed miracles, in the proper sense of the 
 word. In regard to such accounts, we must recollect, that 
 we are wholly ignorant of the writer of either work ; that, 
 consequently, we know nothing concerning either writer to 
 justify any peculiar confidence in his habits of investigation, 
 his judgment, or his trustworthiness ; that neither of them 
 gave his testimony under personal circumstances that might 
 tend to confirm it ; that each of them wrote so long after 
 many or most of the events which he narrates, that tradition 
 might have done her common work in introducing fables, and 
 changing natural events into marvels ; and that both of them 
 lived in that stage of civilization in which men are prone to 
 the belief of the supernatural, and among a people in whom 
 this tendency had been especially strengthened. The miracles 
 by which the dispensation of Moses was confirmed, what- 
 ever they were, must have been such as deeply to affect the 
 imaginations of the Israelites. It is the necessary con- 
 sequence of a miraculous dispensation, to render men's minds 
 familiar with the idea of the special manifestation of divine 
 power, and to dispose them for a long time to acquiesce in 
 the belief of supposed instances of such a manifestation. 
 The case may naturally have been the same with the miracles
 
 115 
 
 of Moses, as it was with those of Christ and his Apostles. 
 The former, as well as the latter, may have given occasion 
 to many accounts of false miracles, such as we find in the 
 works of the Christian fathers, particularly of the later fathers. 
 There is nothing to render it probable that the writers of the 
 Jewish nation were less likely to fall into error than those of 
 the Christian church. While no one, who puts aside the 
 notion of the divine authority of all the books of the ancient 
 Hebrews, can doubt, that extravagant fables and false pro- 
 digies are found in all those relating to that portion of their 
 history which precedes the time of Samuel, while the whole 
 history of the ancient world is full of pretended marvels, 
 there seems no reason to except the Books of Samuel and of 
 the Kings as free from this mixture. These views of the 
 subject, it may seem, will justify us in rejecting altogether 
 the accounts of miracles which they contain. 
 
 I tbink not. There is a different view to be taken. The 
 considerations suggested will, undoubtedly, justify us in 
 rejecting without hesitation all such accounts as clearly 
 appear to us to imply wrong conceptions of God, and in 
 regarding otbers, of not so marked a character, with great 
 scepticism. But those considerations have no bearing on 
 another question that arises ; Whether it were possible, that 
 the great end for which the Jews were preserved a separate 
 people could have been accomplished, had there been no 
 other miracles attesting the peculiar relation of that people 
 to God, than those which accompanied their separation by 
 Moses. When we recollect, that they were a small people 
 surrounded by an idolatrous world, and often lapsing into 
 idolatry themselves ; when we recollect, that we are looking 
 back to a period of history, when the idea of God, in its 
 rudest form, was unknown to the generality of men, we may 
 well doubt, whether a succession of miracles was not necessary 
 to preserve it among the Jews. But, were this the case, 
 there is no presumption against their occurrence. On the 
 contrary, we must believe that the necessary means were 
 used by God to effect the purpose intended by Him. I am 
 reasoning throughout, as is apparent, without reference to 
 
 i 2
 
 116 
 
 that philosophy, as shallow, in my view, as it is irreligious, 
 according to which God is bound by his own wisdom, or by 
 some other necessity of his nature, not to manifest himself 
 to men for any end whatever, except through those opera- 
 tions of his power which we call the laws of nature. 
 
 Believing, then, that God may have wrought miracles 
 among the Israelites subsequently to the time of Moses, we 
 shall find in their historical hooks some accounts which there 
 seems little reason to question, Let us turn, for example, 
 to the eighteenth chapter of the first Book of Kings. Amid 
 the general idolatry of the kingdom of Israel under Ahab, 
 after the slaughter, by Jezebel, of the prophets of the Lord, 
 Elijah appears from his retirement, to present himself before 
 the king. "And when Ahab saw Elijah he said, Art thou 
 he who troubles Israel? And Elijah answered, I have not 
 troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house, in forsaking 
 the commandments of Jehovah and following false gods." 
 The whole demeanour of the persecuted prophet corresponds 
 to this fearless expression of high and unshrinking dignity. 
 He demands an assembly of the people, before whom the 
 many hundreds of the prophets of Baal, and of the groves, 
 should meet him alone. In the presence of the assembled 
 nation, he appeals to God for his decision : "Lord ! God of 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Hear me, Lord ! hear me, 
 that this people may know, that thou the Lord art God. 
 Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the sacrifice, 
 and the wood, and the stones, and the earth, and licked up 
 the water that was in the trench." 
 
 The credibility of this account is confirmed by the essen- 
 tial importance of the occasion on which this miracle is said 
 to have been performed, when the religion of God was 
 trampled down by a persecuting idolatry. It is confirmed 
 by the extraordinary publicity asserted for it as wrought in 
 the presence of an assembled people, during a period of 
 authentic history. But the noble presentation of moral 
 grandeur in the situation and character of the prophet, 
 and the transcendent magnificence of the description, vivid 
 with all the marks of truth, are alone, perhaps, sufficient to
 
 117 
 
 create a presumption of the reality of the event, scarcely 
 less strong than their immediate effect on the imagination 
 and feelings. More, however, than all this, we have the 
 most solemn attestation to the fact, that Elijah was a special 
 messenger of God. In the Transfiguration of our Saviour, 
 Elijah appeared in company with Moses, as associated with 
 Jesus. Elijah, then, was a prophet of God ; and, as a 
 prophet of God, his mission had been sealed by miracles ; 
 and what miracle can we imagine more suited to his charac- 
 ter, as a teacher and restorer of true religion among the 
 idolatrous Israelites, than that described by the historian ? * 
 
 These considerations, however, do not prove, that all which 
 is related concerning Elijah is to be received as it is told. 
 I have before remarked, that the occurrence of real miracles 
 has a tendency to give rise to false reports of miracles, and 
 to procure credit for such stories. Counterfeit coin circu- 
 lates with the true. It is a very striking proof of the 
 authenticity and genuineness of the Gospels, that, among 
 the many narratives which they contain of miracles performed 
 by Jesus, there are none, the intrinsic character of which 
 may suggest a well-grounded doubt of their credibility. 
 It is an equally striking evidence of the authority which 
 these books obtained from the beginning, that they thoroughly 
 checked the growth of all fabulous narratives of miracles as 
 wrought by him during his ministry. It is only a confir- 
 mation of the force of this argument, that a crop of fabulous 
 marvels relating to his infancy and childhood, of which 
 some seed seems to have been early scattered, sprung up 
 after the fourth century, and flourished during the dark 
 ages. These fables are still to be found in the Gospels of 
 the Infancy, and other books of the same class, and some 
 of them in the Koran. 
 
 In regard to the history of the Jews, I believe that the 
 concerns of that nation, like those of all other nations and 
 individuals, were under the special providence of God ; by 
 which term, sometimes abused, as what term of religion 
 has not been ? I mean an agency of God that is undis- 
 
 * [See note F, at the end of the volume. ED.]
 
 J18" 
 
 cernible by man in the particular instances of its operation, 
 which is apart from, and. if I may so speak, lies behind, 
 the ordinary concatenation of causes and effects, that alone 
 falls under our cognizance, and which veils it from our 
 view; but an agency by which the condition of God's 
 creatures in this world is continually affected. Beside this 
 special providence, we have seen what reasons there are 
 for believing that miracles, subsequent to those of Moses, 
 made a part of the Jewish dispensation. This fact is not 
 only consistent with the supposition, that in the Jewish books 
 of history there are many accounts of miracles not to be 
 credited, but, considering all the circumstances under which 
 those books were composed, it would naturally lead us, 
 before examination, to anticipate that such would be the 
 case. The conclusion, that in the Jewish histories there are 
 many accounts of miracles not to be credited, has no 
 bearing whatever on our religious faith, our morals, or our 
 happiness, except one that is very important; it relieves 
 the mind from all the perplexity, confusion, and religious 
 scepticism, produced by the inconsistency of those accounts 
 with just conceptions of the Divinity. 
 
 After what has been said, it is, perhaps, scarcely necessary 
 to observe, that there is nothing in the character of the 
 Jewish historians to qualify them to be guides in religion 
 or morals. On these subjects they shared in the rude and 
 erroneous notions of their countrymen, which were far in 
 advance of those of the heathen world, but far behind 
 those of an enlightened Christian. We are not called upon 
 to adopt their moral judgments, expressed or implied, re- 
 specting characters or actions. Nor is it improbable, that 
 they, or the earlier relators whom they followed, were 
 influenced in their representations by personal or party pre- 
 judices. These remarks may seem to some too obvious to 
 be thus formally stated ; but we are not a century removed 
 from the time, when the credibility of revelation was thought 
 to be involved in the proof, that David was a man after 
 God's own heart, because the anonymous author of the 
 Book of Samuel represents Samuel as using this expression 
 concerning him.
 
 11D 
 
 We pass to the prophetical books. The prophets were 
 the public religious teachers of the Jews. This was their 
 distinguishing characteristic. The true prophets conscien- 
 tiously addressed their countrymen as ministers of God. 
 It was their business to instruct, warn, threaten, exhort, and 
 encourage the people. 
 
 These were the true prophets; but the name "prophet" 
 was equally extended to those who dishonestly, and with bad 
 purposes, assumed the character of teachers of the national 
 religion. Thus we find mention of false prophets as well 
 as true. It was' given to those also who taught the worship 
 of idols, as we read, for instance, of the prophets of Baal. 
 The leading idea to be formed of a prophet is that of a 
 public religious teacher, whether honest or dishonest, whether 
 the professed minister of the true God or of some false god. 
 In our own language the word " prophet" is now restricted 
 to denoting, in its proper sense, one miraculously commis- 
 sioned to foretell events. It is too late to change the 
 name as applied to the Jewish trachers ; but if we would 
 avoid error we must give it the additional meaning just 
 explained. It would be a great extravagance to suppose 
 that all those called prophets in the Old Testament were 
 regarded as possessing the miraculous power of foretelling 
 events, or as making pretensions to this power. 
 
 The prophets whose writings remain, in addressing the 
 Jewish people, often insisted on the certain or probable 
 consequences of their sins ; on impending dangers, which 
 could be avoided only, if at all, by a return to their duty ; 
 on the blessings which would follow reformation and good- 
 ness ; on the mercy of God as about to be displayed in 
 some approaching deliverance ; and on that constant faith 
 which the Jews, as his chosen people, might repose on his 
 providence, if obedient to his will. It is the office of every 
 teacher of religion and virtue to look to the future, and to 
 point out the consequences of conduct. The imaginations 
 of the prophets were strongly affected by a sense of the 
 connection of the Jewish nation with God. They described 
 this connection in the strongest terms. They spoke of the
 
 120 
 
 nation in a figure hardly agreeable to our ears, when we 
 suffer the mind to dwell upon it, as God's inheritance, or 
 peculiar possession. Viewing it as existing through its past 
 and anticipated history, they personified it as Israel, his 
 servant, his son, the child whom he had loved, who might 
 he chastised for the sins of a particular generation, but 
 whose enemies and oppressors were to be destroyed, and for 
 whom a future glory, as yet unknown, was in reserve. Thus 
 their writings often assumed the form of prediction. The 
 prophets, also, as ministers of God, were accustomed, with 
 the licensed boldness of oriental poetry, to introduce God as 
 through themselves addressing the people, and to represent 
 their declarations of what they believed conformable to his 
 will and purposes, as immediately suggested by him. Their 
 language in these respects, though different in the turn of 
 expression, was the same, in meaning and effect, with that 
 which has been uttered from Christian pulpits down to our 
 own time ; and that which every religious and moral teacher 
 may or must use when he believes himself to be stating 
 what is indisputably the law of God. 
 
 It is clear that there is much in the language, conceptions, 
 and sentiments of the authors of the prophetical books (so 
 called), which is not to be referred directly to God ; and so 
 far as we have proceeded in our remarks on them, we may 
 proceed with assurance. But there are good reasons for 
 entertaining the question, Whether some of their number 
 were not occasionally employed as ministers of God under 
 his immediate direction, and endued with the power of pre- 
 dicting events directly revealed to them by Him. In the 
 supposition that they were so, there is nothing intrinsically 
 incredible ; and such may have been the fact, even though 
 no conclusive evidence of it now remain. We cannot ex- 
 pect to be able to ascertain all that has taken place in the 
 extraordinary, any more than in the ordinary, manifesta- 
 tions of God. But the question, as regards our own belief, 
 is simply, Whether we have sufficient evidence of the truth 
 of this supposition, or whether the balance of probabilities 
 inclines for or against it. In the opinion which has com-
 
 121 
 
 monly prevailed relating to this subject, much hns been 
 assumed without proof; there has been a great want of 
 critical inquiry, and of logical and well-founded reasoning. 
 On the other hand, the opinion directly opposed to it has 
 been rested chiefly on a principle, destructive of any belief 
 in revelation, and of any religious sentiment toward God as 
 a personal being, or rather of any belief in the God of 
 Christianity ; I mean the principle, that rejects all extra- 
 ordinary interpositions of God, and regards the power that 
 governs the universe as capable only of a sort of mechanical 
 action; God and matter being equally controlled by certain 
 inevitable laws, the Laws of Nature. 
 
 The subject deserves a much more thorough and judicious 
 examination than it has received; an examination to be 
 carried through successfully only by one who unites the 
 qualifications of a true Christian philosopher, a wide thinker, 
 an able reasoner, an enlightened critic, and a laborious and 
 accurate scholar. Its result might, perhaps, attain a high 
 degree of probability. It might at least present us with all 
 that can now be known on the subject. But in the mean 
 time, if our opinions must remain more or less uncertain, 
 it is an uncertainty that in no way affects our virtue or 
 happiness. 
 
 The direct evidences of the divine authority of our religion 
 have been divided into miracles and prophecies. But it is 
 obvious, that a prophecy is only a miracle of a particular 
 kind, and that, however clear and satisfactory, it can carry 
 with it no particular proof, different from that afforded by 
 any other miracle. In order that a prophecy may be re- 
 ceived as evidence, its supernatural character must be un- 
 questionable. There must be no doubt respecting either 
 its meaning, or its correspondence with the event predicted, 
 or its intended reference to that event. There must be no 
 mode of accounting for the correspondence between the 
 prophecy and the event, except by referring the former to 
 the omniscience of God. These conditions are not, as I 
 conceive, fulfilled by those passages of the Old Testament 
 which have been alleged as prophecies of Jesus. The Jews,
 
 interpreting the Old Testament allegorically, had applied 
 many passages in it to their expected Messiah. A portion 
 of the disciples of Jesus (apparently not all) retained the 
 common notions of their countrymen respecting this subject, 
 and we accordingly find some of those passages applied to 
 Him in the Gospel of Matthew, the Acts of the Apostles, 
 and the Epistle to the Hehrews. In what is reported con- 
 cerning the conversations of our Saviour, there are some 
 expressions that may require explanation ;* but he never 
 appeals in evidence of his divine mission to any words of 
 a Jewish prophet, as containing a miraculous prediction. 
 
 The writers of the prophetical books undoubtedly believed, 
 that the series of God's dispensations to their nation was not 
 completed ; that something greater was in reserve for it ; 
 that all the marvellous preparation which had been made 
 was to produce other results than what had yet taken place. 
 This belief gathered strength in after times. The chosen 
 people, harassed and subjugated, could not but look forward 
 to some miraculous interposition, by which God would at 
 last manifest his purposes toward them and toward the 
 world. They were expecting the appearance of that great 
 minister, by whom those purposes would be accomplished 
 the Anointed One, the Messiah. This messenger came. 
 The object of his coming was unlike what they had antici- 
 pated ; the kingdom which he was to establish was not 
 that which they had looked for; the results, as regarded 
 their own nation, were altogether different. But he was 
 the long-expected Messiah, the Anointed One of God. He 
 had come to fulfil the purpose of the Jewish dispensation. 
 Our Saviour accomplished not any express prophecy relating 
 to him, but he came in conformity to an expectation, which 
 the whole tenor of God's providence toward their nation had 
 taught the Jews to entertain. 
 
 The main purpose of these remarks on the books treated 
 of in this Section, as well as of those on the Pentateuch, has 
 
 * I have formerly adverted to this subject in an article published in " The 
 Christian Examiner," Vol. T. for 1S2S, pp. 53-59.
 
 123 
 
 been to show, that these writings, when their character is 
 properly understood, afford no ground of objection to the 
 Jewish or Christian dispensation. But the subject suggests 
 some other reflections, to which we will attend in the next 
 Section. 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 Concluding Remarks iipon the Old Testament. 
 
 IN one of the most popular of the works introductory to 
 the books of the Old Testament, written by a late prelate 
 of the Church of England, they are spoken of as forming 
 " that consecrated canon, in which the holy oracles were 
 preserved by the Jews, which was stamped as infallible by 
 the testimony of Christ and his apostles, and which, in tbe 
 first and purest ages of the church, was reverenced (together 
 with the inspired books of the New Testament) as the only 
 source of revealed wisdom." * 
 
 Such, in conformity with the creeds of different churches 
 and sects, has been the language of many theologians re- 
 specting the Old Testament. They have represented it as 
 having proceeded miraculously from God himself, the human 
 writers being agents of the Divine Mind, in the same manner 
 as a divine origin has been ascribed by the Hindoos to 
 their Vedas and other sacred books, by the Mahometans 
 to the Koran, and by the Parsees to the Zend-Avesta. 
 They have, in consequence, received the accounts, given in 
 its different books, of the Deity, of his acts, and of his 
 communications to the Israelites, as constituting a revelation 
 which He has made of his character. They have regarded 
 the moral judgments which those writings express or imply, 
 as conformed to the highest standard of benevolence and 
 justice, and as affording the most authoritative directions 
 for our own conduct. And they have viewed all the events 
 
 * Gray's Key to tbe Old Testament, Preface.
 
 124 
 
 related, however legendary some of them may appear, as not 
 only possible but certain ; and, so far as they pretend to a 
 supernatural character, as altogether worthy of God. At 
 the same time they have rejected those expedients by which 
 the early catholic Christians modified their belief, and at- 
 tempted to reconcile it with the actual character of the books 
 of the Old Testament. 
 
 When we compare the modern, unqualified doctrine con- 
 cerning those books, with that more complex one held by 
 the generality of the early Christians, on the one hand, or 
 with the opinion of the Gnostics, on the other, it is not easy 
 to. say which of the three is most irrational. We marvel at 
 ancient errors ; for our wonder has not been deadened by 
 familiarity ; but false doctrines prevail in our own time, 
 which, if we were a little further removed from their sphere, 
 would appear to us not less amazing. The history of 
 opinions concerning religion comprehends the whole history 
 of the most portentous absurdities, and the most pernicious 
 errors, into which mankind have fallen. In the history of 
 Christian theology, we find these errors and absurdities 
 clustering round the essential truths of religion, concealing 
 them from view, and counteracting and annihilating their 
 influence. We cannot here inquire into all the causes which 
 have produced this state of things ; but we may observe, 
 that one occasion of the prevalence of error, and of the 
 obstinacy with which it has been maintained, is to be found 
 in the essential character of religion itself. 
 
 The truths of religion relate to our spiritual nature, to 
 the government of God, to the unseen world, to eternity, to 
 the Infinite Being. Now these are all subjects which, in 
 many of their aspects and relations, not only lie beyond the 
 limits of our knowledge, but transcend our power of com- 
 prehension. We cannot, for instance, grasp the idea of 
 infinity ; we can only conceive of it negatively, as the absence 
 of all limitation. Of propositions concerning it, directly 
 contradictory, we can neither affirm nor deny one nor the 
 other. Who will say, that created things may or may not 
 have existed from etemitv '? Who will affirm, that creation
 
 125 
 
 does not imply a commencement of existence ? Who will 
 maintain, that the power of creation has not always been an 
 attribute of the Deity, and may not from eternity have been 
 exercised by Him ? Who will say, that the universe does 
 or does not exist within circumscribed limits, surrounded 
 on all sides by an infinite expanse of void space? Who 
 will contend, on the one hand, that things finite and bounded 
 in their nature must not lie within definite bounds ; or, on 
 the other hand, that there are definite bounds beyond which 
 God has not manifested, and cannot manifest, his power and 
 goodness ? In attempting to answer consistently questions 
 concerning subjects like these, our reason finds a barrier 
 which it cannot pass. Nor are these the only, nor the most 
 interesting, class of questions respecting the objects of 
 religion, which require for their solution other knowledge, 
 or other powers, than what we possess. The consideration 
 of such questions may teach us, that it is an important part 
 of our wisdom, " to know how little can be known ;" to 
 
 " Wait the great teacher, Death, and God adore." 
 
 To a being of a higher order, how incongruous must it 
 appear, that man, a creature just formed; but a short 
 while ago a helpless infant, or an ignorant child ; whose im- 
 perfect faculties are the growth of a few years ; whose under- 
 standing is so liable to be deceived by the errors of others, 
 and perverted by the meaner part of his own nature ; who so 
 often errs in judgment concerning the objects immediately 
 around him ; whose knowledge of the Creation, its past 
 history through illimitable time, and its inexhaustible modes 
 of being through illimitable space, is that of a stranger just 
 introduced into it, just learning its language, and confined to 
 a circuit of a few miles, that man, so very ignorant and 
 incapable, should undertake to solve the problem of the 
 Universe, and to discuss, as if the subject lay all within his 
 comprehension, the character, counsels, and works of the 
 Infinite Being. The essential truths of religion we know, for 
 they have been taught us by God through Christ, and this 
 knowledge is of inestimable value ; but beyond and around
 
 them is a region into which we cannot penetrate. Yet this 
 region men have attempted to explore, and have returned 
 from it with their reason so baffled and confounded, as to be 
 incapable of discerning the real character of familiar objects, 
 and comprehending the true meaning of words. In this 
 state of mind they have come to the examination of subjects, 
 related to their faith, of which the human understanding is 
 fully cognizant. Finding, that in the nature of things there 
 were problems connected with religion which they could not 
 solve, they have been ready to acquiesce in verbal or moral 
 absurdities concerning it, the fictions of human folly, as if 
 the latter were of the same character with the former. But 
 true philosophy will teach us to keep in mind the limits of 
 those powers which God has given us, equally in respect to 
 what lies within our capacity, as what lies beyond it. 
 
 The error that has been committed in representing the 
 books of the Old Testament as of divine origin and au- 
 thority, or, in other words, as constituting an essential part 
 of a revelation from God, which error, of course, involves 
 the belief, that it is a fundamental doctrine of religion so 
 to regard those books, has, beyond question, been a most 
 serious hindrance to all rational belief of the fact, that God 
 has miraculously revealed Himself to man, the fact of in- 
 comparably the most interest in the history of our race. It 
 is this fact which connects man with God, and the present 
 life with the unseen and eternal. By introducing the super- 
 natural into the natural world it unites them into one 
 system, . and changes the aspect of all things around us, 
 spreading over them a light from Heaven. The immediate 
 action of the Deity intervening in the course of human 
 affairs, has brought the proofs of religion fully within the 
 scope of our comprehension and powers of reasoning. Every 
 one may understand the evidences of Christianity. And it 
 is the revelation that God has made of Himself by Chris- 
 tianity, which presents the overpowering and unfathomable 
 idea of the Infinite Spirit under those aspects in which alone 
 it may be comprehended by us. It brings God to our view 
 in his relations to man, as the Father of the Universe. To
 
 127 
 
 a Christian, religion is not a subject of " lawless and un- 
 certain thoughts," bewildered in the mazes of speculation. 
 .Revelation has given fixedness to his conceptions of God, of 
 immortality, and of responsibility. It has exhibited the 
 objects of religion in their proper relation to the things of 
 this life, and invested them with their true character, as the 
 most solemn of realities ; while without it the shadows of 
 this world, as our years pass away, assume shapes more and 
 more fearful. 
 
 It is on Christianity, as a miraculous revelation, that 
 religion must rest as its principal and only safe support. If 
 Jesus Christ spoke with authority from God, attested by 
 supernatural displays of God's power, we need look for no 
 further evidence of all that is essential to our faith, of all 
 that is essential to our happiness as spiritual and immortal 
 beings. But if we reject Christianity, we cannot fall back 
 even on the uncertainty which preceded it in the Pagan 
 world; for this uncertainty is rendered darker and more 
 gloomy by the supposition, that God (or the Power, what- 
 ever it may be, that acts throughout the Universe) has left 
 the most enlightened portion of mankind to found their 
 religious hopes on a delusion, and by the consequeot distrust, 
 which must necessarily be produced, in all the efforts of 
 man's reason to attain any satisfactory conclusions respecting 
 the objects of religion. 
 
 It is to Christianity, then, that we must look as the main 
 source of human improvement and happiness. It is in her 
 cause that the battle between good and evil is to be fought. 
 But, in order that we may successfully maintain our religion, 
 \ve must have a clear conception of what it is, and of what it 
 is not. Pure Christianity is pure religion and pure morality ; 
 but what characterizes it as Christianity is, that it rests the 
 evidence of the truths essential to the virtue and happiness of 
 man on the attestation of God ; and that in the very fact which 
 it supposes of his miraculous interposition, that in this fact 
 alone, it affords a most glorious exemplification and proof of 
 the truths which it teaches concerning his paternal character, 
 and his purposes towards us. But, under the much abused
 
 128 
 
 name of Christianity, superstition has sheltered great errors, 
 doctrines alien from its spirit, contradictory to its essential 
 truths, revolting to reason, and even doctrines utterly out- 
 raging justice and humanity, the doctrines of religious 
 tyranny and persecution. Many of these errors, embodied 
 in the creeds of churches and sects, and in the decrees of 
 councils, still burden the Christian world. It is to their 
 public renunciation, however distant the period of it may be, 
 that we must look for any great improvement in the moral 
 and religious condition of men. Then the force of the evi- 
 dences of our faith may be far more widely recognized, and 
 its proper influence, uncounteracted by those errors, may be 
 far more generally felt. But, in the mean time, there is for 
 every one a consideration which even more intimately con- 
 cerns him. The more correct are his own conceptions of 
 Christianity, and the more strong is his own conviction of its 
 truth, the greater power will it have to elevate his character; 
 to enable him to live wisely and honourably, and, if no 
 severe trials be appointed him, happily ; to make him useful 
 to those he loves, and to all whom he may serve ; and to 
 prepare him for that higher state of being, of which Chris- 
 tianity alone can give him any assurance. '
 
 NOTES, 
 
 NOTE A. PAGE 29. 
 
 Ewald (Die Psalmen, p. 230) thinks it not improbable, that in this 
 passage there is an allusion to the Pentateuch, and that the poet 
 speaks of himself as going into the Temple with this holy book in 
 his hand. But then Ewald assigns to the psalm a comparatively 
 recent date, in the time between the religious reform in the reign of 
 Josiah, on the discovery of a copy of the Law in the Temple, and the 
 Exile a period which he calls the first golden age of the written 
 law, before it was exposed to the corruptions and abuses of a later 
 day. This unknown author, to whom he ascribes several other 
 psalms, he supposes to have witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 and to have lived into the period of the Exile. The adoption, there- 
 fore, of Ewald's interpretation of these words would not materially 
 affect the argument for a late origin of the Pentateuch, though it would 
 imply its existence before the Exile. But his assumption that the 
 " Book-roll " here mentioned is the Pentateuch is wholly gratuitous, 
 and unsupported by any proof. Neither Hitzig nor De Wette adopt 
 his view. The former, who ascribes the psalm to Jeremiah, thinks 
 there is allusion to a roll of that prophet's oracles. The latter 
 paraphrases the whole verse thus : " I approach thee with the teach- 
 ings of thy law written on my heart " referring for illustration to 
 Jeremiah xxxi. 33. 
 
 NOTE B. PAGE 35. 
 
 It may be proper to state that a great authority on Hebrew history, 
 Ewald (Gesch. des Volkes Israel, i. pp. 215-254), differs in some 
 
 K
 
 130 
 
 degree from De Wette and Mr. Norton in this estimate of the Book 
 of Chronicles. He thinks that, with the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, 
 it formed part of a late Universal History, of wliich Jerusalem was 
 the central object a Jerusalem-Chronicle as he calls it written, 
 probably, at the commencement of Greek ascendancy perhaps in the 
 age of Alexander the Great; and that it contains many curious and 
 instructive notices of earlier times, derived from sources now lost, 
 and furnished nowhere else. He admits, however, that it is distin- 
 guished by a strong sacerdotal tendency throughout, and that it 
 presents, in this respect, a marked contrast to the prophetic spirit of 
 the Books of Samuel and Kings ; and from the importance wliich it 
 attaches to the Levitical musical services, he conjectures that its 
 author may have been one of the choristers attached to the Temple. 
 Some other recent critics agree with Ewald in this more favourable 
 judgment of the historical character of Chronicles, and in tliinking 
 that we are indebted to it for some valuable supplementary matter 
 derived from ancient and authentic sources, and not contained in the 
 earlier books : Bertheau (Die Biicher der Chronik erldiirt. Einleit. 
 p. xliv.1; Bleek (Einleit. A. T. p. 399); Movers (Krit. Untersuch. uber 
 bill. Chron.) quoted by Bleek. EvenDe Wette, in the last edition of 
 his Einleit. A. T., has somewhat qualified the harshness of his 
 original censure, and allows that many reliable statements may be 
 found in it ( 191). Notwithstanding these concessions. Mr. Norton's 
 main position still holds good ; that when the accounts in Chronicles 
 are at variance with those of the earlier books, especially in passages 
 which tend to the exaltation of the Levitical caste they are entitled 
 to no weight. 
 
 NOTE C. PAGE 45. 
 
 The statement in the text is put in too unqualified a form. Scholars 
 of high name have maintained that the Hebrews were acquainted 
 with alphabetical characters as early as the time of Moses. Eichhorn, 
 who regarded the Pentateuch as substantially Mosaic, has attempted 
 to show that convenient implements and materials for writing 
 existed already in that age, and this opinion he retained, in the main 
 unaltered after forty years, in the latest editions of his work (Einleit. 
 A. T., 1823, 405). Ewald, arguing from the use of the same
 
 131 
 
 terms connected with the art of writing in all the branches of the 
 Semitic tongue, thinks that some very ancient Semitic tribe had 
 acquired the use of the art before the historical age, and that from 
 their brethren of this stock, and not from the Egyptians, the 
 Hebrews learned it during their residence in Egypt : and he ventures 
 on the supposition, that the oldest historians of Israel found a mass of 
 written materials belonging to the Semitic tribes already prepared to 
 their hands (Oesch. des Volkes Israel, i. p. 66 seq.) Mr. Kenrick is of 
 opinion, that during the close union of Phoenicia with Egypt, in the 
 time of the Hyksos, the alphabetical character of the former was 
 arranged, and learned by the Israelites; but that the art, though known 
 to this latter people at the time of the Exodus, was little diffused 
 among the nation at large. He thinks that an adaptation of the 
 Egyptian phonetic system was more likely to have been made by 
 Phoenicians than by Jews, and that their use of the same alphabet is 
 best explained by their dwelling together in Egypt, before they were 
 neighbours in Canaan (Ancient Egypt, ii. p. 324). Mr. Sam. Sharpe, 
 whose eminence as an Egyptologist, entitles him to speak with autho- 
 rity, has no doubt that the Egyptians, many centimes before Moses, 
 were acquainted with the use of alphabetical characters, and that 
 consequently the Israelites could have had no difficulty in learning 
 the use of an alphabet in Egypt. Nevertheless, the remarkable 
 uniformity of character wliich marks the language of all the extant 
 literature of the ancient Hebrews, seems to show that in its actual 
 form it must have been produced within a comparatively limited 
 period, between the age of David and Solomon, or at least of Samuel, 
 and the centuries immeditaely following the Captivity ; and that if 
 earlier writings once existed, they have all perished. It is difficult 
 to meet the force of Mr. Norton's reasonings on this point. The 
 perpetuity of form in some languages, as the Greek subsequent to 
 the Alexandrine age, and the rabbinical Hebrew, is not a parallel case. 
 It was the result of a widely-diffused practice of writing among 
 classes of men devoted to literary composition, with classical models 
 constantly before their eyes, and under all the restraints of a strictly- 
 defined grammatical system suppositions which are wholly irrecon- 
 cilable with the social condition of the centuries which preceded the 
 Davidian era. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 
 
 D. PAGE 70. 
 
 Mr. Norton has anticipated on this passage (Exod. xxi. 20,21) the 
 objection which caused such a " revulsion of feeling " in the mind of 
 Dr. Colenso's intelligent Zulu convert ; and in its remoter effects 
 wrought such a change in the views of the honest bishop himself, as 
 ultimately " snapped in twain altogether the cord which had hitherto 
 bound him to the ordinary belief in the historical veracity of the 
 Pentateuch " (Pentateuch and Book ojF Joshua, ch. i. 2nd edit. p. 9). 
 
 NOTE E. PAGE 111. 
 
 In spite of the plausible reasoning employed by Mr. Norton in this 
 seventh section, many will perhaps feel it more consistent with the 
 grand simplicity and truthfulness of Christ's character, to suppose 
 that he shared the general belief of his country and his age respect- 
 ing the Mosaic origin and generally divine authority of the Law 
 deficient as that belief clearly was in precision and even in perfect 
 self-consistency than to impute to him a mental reservation which 
 left his interior conviction at variance with his habitual language. 
 The case of the retention of a popular phraseology, after science has 
 demonstrated its incorrectness, is not to the point ; for such phra- 
 seology has no connection with moral and religious ideas. It involves 
 no distinction between an esoteric and an exoteric doctrine. Whereas 
 the notions about the Law and the Prophets, demoniacal possession, 
 a personal devil and other matters, which Christ's words, taken in 
 their obvious sense, clearly favour formed a part of the popular 
 belief of Palestine, which it was Christ's special mission to act 
 iipon and kindle into a more earnest life. The divine authority of 
 the Law and the Prophets is assumed as the basis of the Sermon on 
 the Mount. They are only spiritualized into a new significance. All 
 great prophets in every age have sympathized deeply with popular 
 beliefs and feelings, except in the one point where they aimed at spe- 
 cial reformation. Such sympathy is even a condition of prophetic 
 efficiency. It brings it home to the popular heart. It distinguishes it 
 from the intellectual action of the philosophical teacher. In regard 
 to Christ, the language of the New Testament only leaves us the 
 alternative between the admission of some intellectual limitation on 
 the human side of his being, which brought him into living contact
 
 with his countrymen, or the supposition of a certain moral duplicity 
 on the side of it, which connected him with God. What he actually 
 said, we have no means of knowing, except from what is recorded. 
 To assume in Christ, a priori, intellectual completeness, and wherever 
 any statement occurs at war with that assumption, to get rid of it by 
 supposing the record defective or mistaken, is surely an abuse of the 
 rationalizing process applied to Scripture, which can only lead to the 
 most arbitrary treatment of its text. Mr. Norton has well argued that 
 we ought not to demand from the writers of the Gospel narrative the 
 clear and well-defined ideas of our modern theology and philosophy. 
 Is it reasonable, when we consider his work and the conditions of it, 
 to expect them from Christ himself ? 
 
 NOTE F. PAGE 117. 
 
 Mr. Norton's position, that God cannot be controlled by liis own 
 laws (p. 116), or rather, to speak more correctly, that there may be 
 laws in the spiritual universe deeper and broader than those which 
 govern the material world, and which we call the " Laws of Nature," 
 is undoubtedly true, and the necessary postulate of all sound religious 
 philosophy. But his selection of a passage from the history of Elijah, 
 as an illustration of the miraculous in the Old Testament, " which 
 there seems little reason to question," is singularly unfortunate and 
 destructive of the force of his own reasoning. In the whole compass 
 of the Old Testament there is hardly a narrative more obviously 
 legendary in its character than the magnificent episode of Elijah 
 and Elisha. It breaks through the ordinary prose of the accompany- 
 ing history, like a sudden outburst of the grandest religious poetry. 
 It evidently embodied a tradition from the old and fearful time, when 
 the worships of Jehovah and Baal were struggling for ascendancy in 
 the northern kingdom ; and it must be confessed, that it is darkly 
 tinged with the ferocious spirit of religious intolerance and exter- 
 mination which belonged to the age. It was hardly candid in Mr. 
 Norton to pass over so completely in silence the note which imme- 
 diately follows the account of the miracle, than which " he can 
 imagine none more suited to the character of a teacher and restorer 
 of true religion : " (1 Kings xviii. 38-40.) " And Elijah said unto 
 them, take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And
 
 they took them : and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishoii, 
 and slew them there." The massacre of four hundred and fifty men, 
 the ignorant and unconscious devotees of a false worship, was the 
 sequel of a transaction which, we are told, signalized Elijah as a true 
 prophet of God, " whose mission had been sealed by miracles." 
 Charlemagne's treatment of the recusant Saxons found a precedent 
 in this bloody and merciless deed. Mr. Norton, it is time, adds that 
 not " all which is related concerning Elijah is to be received as it is 
 told." But can anything be more unreasonable than tliis arbitrary 
 rejection of a portion of the narrative, because it contains what our 
 moral feelings do not approve ? Such a mode of interpretation would 
 hand over the text of the Bible to the uncontrolled wilfulness of 
 everyone's subjective feeling, or fancy. The narrative is a self- 
 consistent whole throughout, and the sequel is in perfect harmony 
 with its general character. But we are not left to this internal evi- 
 dence alone, for showing that the end of the transaction is as much 
 entitled to credit as what precedes it. We learn from the ensuing 
 history, that in this terrible religious war the example of Elijah was 
 not without effect on the conduct of the Jehovists against their 
 adversaries. Jehu, who subverted the idolatrous dynasty of Aliab, 
 was summoned by Elijah and anointed by Elisha to the kingly 
 office, and took a very decided part in the effort to establish the 
 worship of Jehovah. What means he thought lawful for the accom- 
 plishment of that end, we gather from 2 Kings x. 18-28. He did 
 not shrink from perjury and blasphemy. He enticed the worshippers 
 of Baal from all Israel to a solemn religious festival, and the more 
 effectually to conceal his design, offered up with his own hands a 
 sacrifice to the false god ; and then let in his emissaries whom he had 
 previously stationed in the vicinity of the temple, to slaughter the 
 unsuspecting worshippers. His order was, " If any of the men whom 
 I have brought into your hands escape, it shall be life for life." 
 " Thus," adds the historian, " did Jehu destroy Baal out of Israel." 
 It is impossible to apply the outward test of miracle, as the au- 
 thentic sign of a direct commission from God, in so mixed a history as 
 that of the Israelites, without making the All-holy and the All-merciful 
 responsible for some acts, on which we could not look without a shud- 
 dering reprobation in his creatures. Is it not at once a safer 
 and more reverent course, to let the eternal truths and sublime aspira-
 
 135 
 
 tions which are peculiar to the Hebrew prophets, and could only come 
 to them from God, shine with their own divine light in the midst of 
 the human passions and infirmities through which they reveal them- 
 selves, and cany the witness of their origin and authority with them 
 to the hearts of the pious in every age, instead of demanding as 
 the sole evidence of true prophecy, some outward and visible sign of 
 supernatural power, which extends its sanction beyond particular 
 words and acts to the whole character and agency of which they form 
 a part, and which, however we may explain their occurrence in a far 
 distant past, and whatever may have been their effect on contem- 
 poraries, have proved, as used by theologians, a constant puzzle and 
 stumbling-block to posterity, and weakened more faith than they 
 have confirmed? 
 
 Printed by Woodfall and Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street. London.
 
 WORKS BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ASPECTS OF FAITH AND DUTY. Second 
 
 Edition. 
 
 LONGMAN, GREEN, & CO. 
 
 A RETROSPECT OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF ENG- 
 LAND ; or, the Church, Puritanism, and Free Inquiry. Second 
 Edition, revised. 
 
 TRUBNER & CO., 60, Paternoster Row. 

 
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