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THE PRETENSIONS 
 
 BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 IMPEACH THE WISDOM AND VERACITY 
 
 Comptins of % prig jfaqftaxtfl 
 
 CONSIDERED. 
 
 REV. JAMES R. PAGE, M.A. 
 
 Editor of 
 
 " Burnet's Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles:" 
 
 Author of 
 
 *' Position of the Church of England in the Catholic World," 
 
 &c. £c. &c. 
 
 AND FORMERLY DEPUTY CHAPLAIN OF THE CHAPEL ROYAL, HAMPTON COURT. 
 
 " For bad ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me : for be wrote of Me. 
 But if ye bebeve not bis writings, how shall ye believe My words? " 
 
 John v. 46, 47. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 KIVLNGTONS, WATEKLOO PLACE. 
 
 1863 
 
LONDON : 
 
 gilbert and rivington, printer?, 
 st. john's square. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Bishop Colenso must not be surprised or offended if 
 I Lave spoken of bis book in plain language. There 
 is not, however, any thing farther from my mind than 
 to offer him the least possible personal offence. I 
 have claimed the same mere right to speak of his 
 work which he has claimed, and used, in speaking of 
 the writings of Moses. In a few places I have treated 
 the arguments of the Bishop with irony ; which some 
 may think might have been omitted. But when I 
 came to consider, on the one hand, the great object 
 which the Bishop had in view, viz. to overthrow the 
 testimony of Moses; and then, on the other hand, the 
 most laughable arguments by which he sought to 
 accomplish his object; memory, which, like conscience, 
 is sometimes a most inconvenient friend, brought up 
 the love of wit, of which, with Horace, I thought that 
 the flying years had robbed my mind. 
 
 By Bishop Colenso's own testimony (pp. vi. vii. of 
 his Preface) he was a kind of unbeliever before he 
 accepted the office of a Bishop. 
 
 But he quieted his scruples by some specious ex- 
 planations. When the Bishop took " Holy Orders," he 
 must have known what the Church requires of her 
 clergy, before she sends them forth to " feed the Church 
 of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood." 
 To have taken Holy Orders under such circumstances 
 was very strange conduct; but to have gone further, 
 
 *a 2 
 
11 PREFACE. 
 
 and have taken the high office and emoluments of a 
 Bishop, was not, to say the least, consistent with that 
 respect which every man owes to himself, as well as to 
 society. Such conduct has too much the appearance 
 of a man voluntarily branding himself with the curse 
 on the race of Eli, — " Put me, I pray thee, into one 
 of the priest's offices, that I may eat a morsel of 
 bread." 
 
 In no other way has the Church been more injured 
 than by such practice. The manner in which too 
 many young men are set apart for the sacred ministry, 
 because they have interest with patrons, or because 
 there are family livings in reserve for them ; and with- 
 out any serious consideration on the part of friends, 
 patrons, or the youth himself, of the great end for 
 which the Church has been planted in the land, — has 
 done more to injure the Church, and to spread infi- 
 delity, than all the attacks of its worst enemies could 
 have accomplished. And while such policy and such 
 scandal continue, bishops, clergy, and laity may devise 
 one scheme after another for the regeneration of the 
 people, — but all will be in vain. Any good done, will 
 be done because the Providence of Almighty God 
 overrules all things for His own purposes. But the 
 ministrations of the Church will be void of that life 
 and power necessary to awaken a world by nature 
 " dead in trespasses and sins." But it is not my pro- 
 vince to set up as a reformer of the Church. 
 
 The Preface of Bishop Colenso does not call for 
 much notice in addition to that bestowed on it in 
 the several parts of my work. The public, for in- 
 stance, has not any thing to do with his friendship, his 
 feelings, and his experience; nor with his sympathy 
 with — in his own phraseology — "brave souls that 
 yearn for light, and battle for the truth," as if the 
 light of the Revelation of God were darkness. Nor 
 
PREFACE. Hi 
 
 have we much to do with his " sorrow-stricken souls 
 which require support" from his principles, because 
 the amazingly gracious words of Him who said — " Let 
 not your heart be troubled ;" — " In the world ye shall 
 have tribulation ; but in Me ye shall have peace ;" — 
 were mere delusion, and mockery of the afflicted race 
 of man ! 
 
 Neither need we concern ourselves much with the 
 reasons why he did not forward his letter to his friend, 
 because those matters, which had been doubts before 
 he commenced his letter, had risen to certainty before 
 its conclusion ; and he was convinced that the Pen- 
 tateuch was a fable ; and that it was his duty to come 
 forward, and teach that glorious fact to those " brave 
 minds that are yearning for light and battling for the 
 truth ! " 
 
 But there is one point in the Preface of the Bishop, 
 on which we must bestow a short notice. We read 
 with pain, and yet not with surprise, the way in which, 
 in addition to his open attack on the sacred writers, 
 the Bishop of Natal would more quietly unlearn us 
 Christianity. To the question, " Wherewith shall I 
 come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high 
 God ? " to which the sacrifices under the law gave 
 some answer, the Gospel of Christ has furnished the 
 full reply : 
 
 " Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, 
 and the life ; no man cometh unto the Father, but by 
 Me ;" " And whatsoever ye do, do all in the name of 
 the Lord Jesus;" and "There is one God and one 
 Mediator between God and men, the man Christ 
 Jesus." And we need not speak of that distinguishing 
 feature and glory of our Liturgy, that every prayer 
 contains, or concludes with, a reference to the great 
 High Priest of the Church, Jesus Christ the Right- 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 eous, — by whom, and whom alone, we and our prayers 
 can find acceptance before the throne of grace. 
 
 It is, indeed, then a melancholy spectacle to see a 
 Christian Bishop so enslaved by his infidelity that, in a 
 solemn dedication to Almighty God of his effort to 
 prove the Book of God a fable, lie makes no more 
 reference to the Redeemer and Mediator than Cicero 
 or Socrates would have done, in fact, no more than 
 if the Bishop had never heard the name of Christ. 
 
 But, indeed, from the nature of the Bishop's work? 
 we could not expect any other course to be pursued. 
 We should, we hope, be one of the last persons to do 
 what we have condemued in the Bishop, " make a 
 man an offender for a word," or deal, for a purpose, 
 in mere conventional terms. But this is too serious 
 a question to be passed over, without some remark on 
 the studied way in which Bishop Colenso endeavours 
 to banish the Lord Jesus Christ from His mediatorial 
 throne. 
 
 We would now desire the kind indulgence of our 
 readers on this our effort to prove the vanity of such 
 pretensions, as those of Bishop Colenso, to impeach the 
 wisdom and veracity of the sacred writers. And con- 
 vinced that, without the blessing of God, all human 
 exertions to do good must be in vain, and not daring 
 to come before the living God in any other way than 
 that of His own appointment, I would now commit 
 this fruit of my humble labour in the cause of His 
 truth to Him, in the name and through the mediation 
 of Jesus Christ the righteous — man's only Mediator 
 and Redeemer. And, if this effort to expose the folly 
 of the show of wisdom which would deny His Revela- 
 tion, prove of the least possible service to any of my 
 fellow-men, to "God only wise" be all the honour 
 and glory. Amen. 
 
THE PRETENSIONS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The prophecy of Bishop Colenso respecting his Book and its in- 
 fluence — Predictions of other Authors respecting the reception 
 of their Books — Doubts as to the fulfilment of the Bishop's 
 prediction— Unhappy position in which Bishop Colenso places 
 himself — To his Office his Book wholly indebted for any notice 
 — The fate of Timon in reserve for Bishop Colenso. 
 
 Bishop Colenso predicts that his Book will be care- 
 fully read by the thinking portion of the community; 
 who cannot but be influenced to such a degree as to 
 compel them to join in a vigorous effort to free the 
 Church from trammels and tyranny, and enlarge its 
 borders, so that men of every faith and no faith, many 
 of them openly " denying the Lord that bought them," 
 may dwell together within its fold, " each man sitting 
 under his vine and fig-tree, and none to make him 
 afraid." Or, if we descend from such a beautiful de- 
 scription of a state of peace and happiness to the more 
 vulgar language of our material world, each man, no 
 matter how he may cast his vows to the idle winds, 
 no matter how he may betray the truth which he has 
 voluntarily sworn to maintain pure and undefiled, 
 
 a 2 
 
4 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 each such man sitting at his most comfortable table, 
 "clothed," perhaps, "in purple and fine linen, and 
 faring sumptuously every day " on " the loaves and 
 fishes" of the Church to which he proves himself a 
 traitor, and not having before his eyes the fear of 
 the ecclesiastical tribunals ; but amidst all the storms 
 and bowlings which his degenerate conduct may create, 
 sitting "calm and unruffled as a summer sea, when 
 not a breath of wind blows o'er its surface," in the 
 full enjoyment of all the good things of time and 
 sense, obtained too by the money received from the 
 Church, which, Judas-like, he has betrayed, and be- 
 trayed with a kiss. 
 
 Would not this be a delightful state of things, if 
 only we could look forward with certainty to the 
 fulfilment of the prediction of Bishop Colenso as to 
 the effect which his volume is to produce in the 
 country ? Indeed, he predicts this result of his work 
 as the only hope of the continuance of the Church. 
 And this Right Reverend proprietor of all wisdom and 
 truth is not willing to grant the said Church a lease of 
 even five years, if his scandalous production do not 
 produce the very wonderful effect which he so con- 
 fidently predicts. 
 
 Well ! Bishop Colenso is not the first man who, 
 on sending a book into the world, sent it forth with 
 a prophecy respecting the reception which it would 
 obtain. But some men, and very great men, were, 
 we must say, much more modest than our Right 
 Reverend Author — men, too, whose writings have 
 come down to us unimpaired by "the wasting hand 
 of time." 
 
 Julius Caesar, as Lord Bacon remarks, with a mo- 
 desty well befitting true greatness, on sending forth 
 his book, called that bare commentaries, which turned 
 out to be one of the noblest histories in the world. 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 5 
 
 Horace knew the value of his writings, but, never- 
 theless, he speaks of his book as if destined merely to 
 be thumbed by school-boys, and even to be carried 
 into the back streets where pepper and all kinds of 
 spices, and whatever was wont to be wrapped up in 
 useless paper, were sold. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, this modesty, he does, we 
 admit, exclaim, — 
 
 " JSTon omnis moriar, multaque pars mei 
 Vitabit Libitiuam." 
 
 And he also wrote his 
 
 " Exegi mouumeutum sere perennius." 
 
 But, for all this, Horace did not make the existence 
 of the wisdom and philosophy of time to depend on 
 the reception which his volume was to receive. And 
 we do think, without any disrespect to Bishop Colenso, 
 that Horace will be read when the unhappy volume of 
 the Bishop will be clean forgotten, like a dead man 
 out of mind. 
 
 Now we venture to predict that the result will be 
 very different from Bishop Colenso's opinion and pro- 
 phecy of his book and its effect on society. We be- 
 lieve, nay, are as confident as if we had power not 
 only to survey the past, but to dive into the future, 
 that five years will elapse, and many times five years 
 after that the tongue and hand of Bishop Colenso 
 shall be silent and powerless in the grave, and all 
 things will go on as now in their regular course : the 
 Church will be in existence — though in the midst 
 of corruption and jobbing of preferments — even as the 
 bush though surrounded by the devouring and yet 
 harmless flame. Of her children, some will hear her 
 voice only to prove "the terrible waste of moral agents 
 by themselves;" while on the other hand, many will 
 
G THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 receive, day by day, Sabbath by Sabbath, and year by 
 year, in her ordinances and means of grace, the bread 
 of life and the water of salvation, to support them 
 in their journey through this barren wilderness of 
 time, until they reach in safety and health that land 
 of promise, where they shall hunger and thirst no 
 more. 
 
 We cannot place any faith in the prophecy of the 
 Bishop. But, rather, reasoning from the past, and 
 looking to the good hand of Providence as its defence 
 and guide, we believe that, as the Church of England 
 has survived the fiery trials of persecution from the 
 earliest times, under Pagans, Romans, Saxons, Papists, 
 and Puritans, so it will survive the Book and pro- 
 phecy of Bishop Colenso ; and so survive, as to hold 
 forth the lamp of truth, and hold fast the form of 
 sound words, and present a barrier against the efforts 
 of all those who, whether bishops, clergy, or laity, 
 would introduce into its fold the teaching of heresy, 
 schism, or infidelity of any kind, or in any degree. 
 
 But although we thus believe and conclude, yet it 
 is indeed a sad spectacle to see a servant of the Church 
 send forth from such a commanding position as the 
 Episcopal throne, a book in the least degree calcu- 
 lated to overthrow the faith of any of the family of 
 God, "of souls which were the purchase and price of 
 Christ's blood V' and yet retain the position and emolu- 
 ments of that Church which his volume has the ten- 
 dency, but, like the spear of Priam — a " telum im- 
 belle et sine ictu" — not the power to undermine and 
 destroy. 
 
 We do not desire to write in any disrespectful 
 manner of Bishop Colenso, although we should feel 
 for him some respect if he had laid aside his sacred 
 
 1 Jeremy Taylor. 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 7 
 
 robes, and had surrendered the emoluments of his 
 high office. But we cannot give flattering titles, and 
 therefore we must say, that to his position in the 
 Church, and to it alone, must this book of Bishop 
 Colenso be indebted for any notice that it may com- 
 mand. Were it not for this position, a work of such 
 ludicrous self-sufficiency in identifying his notions with 
 philosophy and truth, a work which exhibits such 
 absence of any thing original in its objections, and 
 which deals in such petty cavils, which shows the 
 littleness of seeking to discover spots on the face of 
 the Sun of Revelation, instead of admiring the blaze 
 of light and glory which that sun has shed upon a 
 dark and benighted world, — such a book, divested of 
 the accidents of the high and holy position of the 
 writer, would soon share the fate of which Timon 
 complains so bitterly in his noisy and scolding address 
 to Jupiter. 
 
 Having rated Jupiter well for allowing bad men to 
 have the upper hand, Timon instances his own case, 
 that he raised many of the Athenians from poverty to 
 great prosperity ; assisted all who were in need ; and 
 poured out his wealth in heaps for the benefit of his 
 friends. " But now, since by such means I have become 
 poor, I am not any longer known by them, nor do they 
 take the least notice of me ; fellows, who not only lately 
 trembled in my presence, but adored me, and hung 
 upon my nod. And if I chance to meet any of them 
 by the way, they pass me by as they would the fallen- 
 down tombstone of some one long dead, which has 
 been worn out by time, and without even stopping to 
 read the inscription." 
 
 Like Timon, Bishop Colenso owes to his station the 
 notice which his Book receives ; and so long as he re- 
 tains his high position he will command friends and 
 flatterers; but as the great Philosopher reminds us, 
 
8 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 many men are " much more abundantly mortal in their 
 pursuits than in their bodies." So Bishop Colenso will 
 prove to his bitter mortification : when stripped of the 
 robes which he has degraded by his infidelity, and shorn 
 of his position and its emoluments, he will experience 
 the fate of Timon ; and his friends and flatterers will 
 pass him also by as they would the fallen-down grave- 
 stone of the neglected dead, as unmindful of himself 
 and his infidel production as if he or it never had any 
 existence. And the worst of this bitter trial will be, 
 that the Church of England, whose fall was so con- 
 fidently predicted by the Bishop and his followers, un- 
 less the Bishop's philosophy were to be received as the 
 creed of the Church, will be found still alive. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Bishop's mode of arguing from words and figures to neglect 
 of the substance so signified — His method contrary to all prin- 
 ciples of sound reasoning — Vanity of such assumption of wisdom 
 as exhibited by the Bishop — Apology made for the conduct of 
 the Bishop — Flippancy of self-styled Philosophers — Improper 
 appointments of such men to the Offices of Public Instructors. 
 
 In his noble work, "The Wisdom of God in Creation," 
 the learned Mr. Ray quotes " a wise and observant Pre- 
 late " who remarks, " That learning which consists only 
 in the form and pedagogy of arts, or the critical notions 
 upon words and phrases, hath in it this intrinsical im- 
 perfection, that it is only so far to be esteemed as it con- 
 duceth to the knowledge of things, being in itself but a 
 kind of pedantry, apt to infect a man with such odd 
 humours of pride and affectation and curiosity, as will 
 render him unfit for any great employment. Words 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 9 
 
 being but the images of matter, to be wholly given up 
 to the study of these, what is it but Pygmalion's frenzy, 
 to fall in love with a picture or image ?" 
 
 Bishop Colenso, we are sorry to say, does indeed 
 labour under this Pygmalion disease; for, instead of 
 dealing with the substance or truth designed, he is 
 wholly occupied with mere signs by which that sub- 
 stance or truth is represented to the mind. 
 
 The Bishop seizes upon certain forms of speech and 
 figures and statistics, — of which last we never hear with- 
 out thinking of the remark attributed to Mr. Canning, 
 that he had the greatest horror of men who dealt in 
 statistics, — and to all these the Bishop objects; and, 
 because those forms of speech or figures or statistics 
 are not as he would have written or ordered, or else do 
 not square with his ideas, concludes that therefore the 
 work in which they are contained is pure fable, and 
 the other writings, which bear the same name, are no 
 better. 
 
 Than such a mode of arguing, for we cannot dignify 
 it with the name of reasoning, there cannot be any thing 
 more offensive to all the rules of logic, and therefore to 
 common sense, on the ground of its self-conceit as well 
 as utter emptiness. Besides, a man should show some 
 modesty when he comes into opposition with and sits 
 in judgment on the belief and testimony of the learned, 
 wise, and good of all ages and nations. " I do not see 
 this in the light in which others have done and continue 
 to do, therefore it is all pure invention, no better than 
 ' the baseless fabric of a vision.' I say this ; and 
 though all mankind should assert the contrary, yet 
 what I say must stand — for it and it only is Philo- 
 sophy and Truth." 
 
 This kind of vanity and assumption may, as it often 
 does, awe weak minds into subjection, but it is poor 
 trifling with reason. It reminds us of the excuse given 
 
10 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 by the madman to a friend, who on finding him in a 
 Lunatic Asylum asked, "What brought you here?" 
 " Well, you know that I always maintained that all 
 men were mad, and all men maintained that I was 
 mad, and they had the majority, and here I am." 
 
 If Bishop Colenso felt himself called to the special 
 mission of groping for difficulties in the mere detail, 
 and, if we may so speak, trifling parts of such a grand 
 and surpassingly glorious whole or scheme of Revela- 
 tion, before proceeding to such an extremity as to de- 
 nounce the writing a fable and the writer a fool or 
 deceiver, he might have confessed his inability to solve 
 such difficulties. If he had bethought himself, that in 
 order to fully understand all mere accidentals in which 
 that Revelation may be clothed, or even the difficulties 
 which it in common with the Book of Nature must be 
 expected to contain, he should have lived in the days of 
 the Compilers of those Sacred Writings, and have been 
 familiar with all their customs, manners, and varied use 
 of words, then he would have rendered proper homage 
 to reason and have done honour to himself. But when 
 from his difficulties as to one point, his unbelief as to 
 another, and from his ignorance of both sides, or of the 
 whole of the question, he concludes that the Pentateuch 
 is a fable, then he does violence to all principles of 
 sound reasoning, and places himself in as senseless and 
 ludicrous a light as did the poor man who worked 
 himself into the madhouse by his unceasing efforts to 
 convince mankind that he himself was the only sane 
 man. 
 
 And when, moreover, Bishop Colenso deals with not 
 the common records of time, but with records, which, 
 to obtain his position and its advantages, he has solemnly 
 pledged his faith and honour to be the Records of 
 Heaven, the writings of men " who spake as they 
 were moved by the Holy Ghost " — then we are further 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 11 
 
 of opinion that it would have been much more be- 
 coming in him to have paid attention to the words, 
 " Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place 
 whereon thou standest is holy ground." If Doctor 
 Colenso were other than a man occupying the place of 
 a Christian Bishop, — if he were a layman or an avowed 
 infidel, — we should not use such language, which would 
 be out of place, as would be even the least notice of 
 his foolish production. 
 
 We heard this apology made for the strange conduct 
 of Bishop Colenso, that the Bishop never studied the 
 learning connected with his profession ; but that his 
 mind was wholly given to mathematics and figures, 
 and that he split on the rock of expecting to find de- 
 monstrative evidence in every particular. 
 
 We give this apology as we heard it made ; but we 
 cannot admit it to have any weight. There are, it is 
 too true, men who study mathematics as if that science 
 were itself the end instead of being the mere means to 
 an end ; and who so regard the subject as if the whole 
 business of life, and all the philosophy of time, con- 
 sisted in " doing a problem :" thus making a noble 
 science no better than a Chinese puzzle. And expe- 
 rience proves that such men, as they are always the 
 most self-sufficient, so they are universally the most 
 useless members of society. They are so wrapped up 
 in their exalted opinion of themselves, and in the blind 
 and absurd notion, that their views and opinions, and 
 philosophy and truth are all one and the same, that it 
 is not possible to convince them of the truth or value 
 of any thing that does not square with their own con- 
 tracted ideas. 
 
 In the days of our youth, and at such an age when a 
 shallow speech from a "philosopher" might have sown 
 in our breast the seeds of infidelity, we heard of a 
 lecture at one of our Universities, and by a Reverend 
 
12 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 Professor. Two private gentlemen, friends of the 
 writer of these remarks, were present ; who on their 
 return from their visit to the seat of learning, related 
 the following dialogue, as having taken place after the 
 lecture. The lecture, we may state, made some refer- 
 ence to a subject on which the madness of the philo- 
 sophers of that day turned, — for those philosophers, like 
 other members of society, are mad, — and as the symp- 
 tom of madness in the people varies, showing itself 
 one day in hunting down this hobby, and another day 
 some other, so at the time in question the madness 
 of the philosophers showed its symptoms in proving 
 a wonderful fact — the discovery of a pre-Adamite 
 woman. This their advance in some of the Sciences, 
 of Geology in particular, caused them to know as a 
 fact, which of course made the account of Creation 
 given by Moses a fable, and Moses himself an igno- 
 rant fool and deceiver. 
 
 But to our narrative, — "Thank you, Mr. Professor, 
 for your excellent lecture ; but, by-the-bye, did not 
 that part," naming a certain portion, " contradict 
 Moses ?" " Oh," replied the Reverend Professor, " if 
 
 Moses contradict science " And in imitation, we 
 
 suppose, of Virgil's famous " Quos Ego" in Neptune's 
 scolding attack on iEolus, he broke off the sentence 
 with a snap of his fingers. Or, it may be, that the 
 Reverend Professor followed the rule of the true 
 sublime, as laid down by Longinus : to state so much 
 as to give the idea, and leave much to be conceived ; 
 which then, if literally translated, would stand thus : 
 " If Moses contradict," we will not say science, for 
 Moses knew more of science than did or do any of 
 such empty fools ; but " If Moses contradict my views 
 and opinions, why then he must go to the winds." 
 
 And yet such, by the just verdict of St. Paul, are 
 the fools — "professing themselves to be wise they 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 13 
 
 became fools " — who are in too many instances put 
 into the places of guides and instructors of the nation. 
 And such the men, who, in the opinion of the unthink- 
 ing and shallow of every rank and degree, are too often 
 accounted the more eminent philosophers in propor- 
 tion to their vanity, their smattering of science, and 
 empty though high-sounding pretensions. But the 
 homely proverb speaks truth, — " The empty barrel 
 sounds loudest." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The case of the Zulu — The immediate cause of the Bishop's Book 
 — The Bishop's zeal for truth at the expense of the Eedeemer 
 and Sacred Writers — No honour to the Father apart from 
 honour to the Son of God — Unsoundness of reasoning from 
 objections against positive evidence — Way in which such argu- 
 ing treated by the Eedeemer — The Bishop's fact — The method 
 adopted by such men of proving things by things themselves 
 unproved — Test of the Bishop's mode of concluding — In what 
 its fallacy consists — Example of Jeremiah. 
 
 Before we examine the several points of detail, the 
 difficulties which prove to the mind of Bishop Colenso 
 that the Pentateuch is a fable, we must consider the 
 case stated by him as the immediate cause of his coming 
 forward as the great Champion of " The Truth ;" that 
 is, his own notions. Besides, this case is the only part 
 of the Book of Bishop Colenso, which deals in any 
 principle of reasoning; the other parts being the mere 
 and minute detail of the mode of arguing which this 
 case propounds. 
 
 This case imposed on the Bishop the duty of en- 
 lightening a dark and ignorant world, which dreamt for 
 ages that it knew the truth, — but which was under a 
 
14 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 very grievous mistake ; a mistake, however, to be 
 excused, as it bad not examined these subjects with 
 any degree of attention or criticism, or with the ad- 
 vance in the knowledge of some of the sciences, which 
 the Bishop states that he made since his departure 
 from England. As therefore all the great, learned, 
 and good men, who have lived in time past, and whose 
 writings and memory we have been accustomed to 
 regard with reverence, had not such advantages, and 
 were not so accustomed to bring every thing to the 
 high standard of plus and minus, and lines and angles, — 
 and had not, we presume, the capacity to take in 
 science, more especially that of Geology, in the same 
 or any thing like the same degree as our Modern 
 Critics and Philosophers of the School of which Bishop 
 Colenso is now the Principal, — why then their igno- 
 rance and mistake may be accounted for and par- 
 doned ! 
 
 This case to which the country stands so indebted 
 for his Work is thus stated by Bishop Colenso : — 
 " While translating the story of the Flood, I have had 
 a simple-minded but intelligent native, — one with the 
 docility of a child, but the reasoning powers of mature 
 age, — look up and ask, ' Is all that true ? Do you 
 really believe that all this happened thus ; that all the 
 beasts, and birds, and creeping things upon the earth, 
 large and small, from hot countries and cold, came 
 thus by pairs and entered into the Ark with Noah ? 
 And did Noah gather food for them all, for the beasts 
 and birds of prey as well as for the rest ?' ' ; 
 
 " My heart," the Bishop writes, " answered in the 
 words of the Prophet : ' Shall a man speak lies in the 
 name of the Lord V Zech. xiii. 3. I dared not do so. 
 My own knowledge of some branches of science, of 
 Geology in particular, had been much increased since 
 I left England ; and I now know for certain, on geolo- 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 15 
 
 gical grounds, a fact, of which I had only misgivings 
 before, viz. — that a Universal Deluge, such as the 
 Bible manifestly speaks of, could not possibly have 
 taken place in the way described in the Book of 
 Genesis, not to mention other difficulties which the 
 story contains." 
 
 And so the Bishop, knowing all this history of the 
 deluge to be a fable, though the Redeemer Himself, 
 and St. Peter, St. Paul, and others of the sacred 
 writers, dealt with and quoted the history recorded 
 by Moses as truth, — yet Bishop Colenso, knowing far 
 better than even those authorities, continues, " I felt 
 that I dared not, as a servant of the God of Truth, 
 urge my brother to believe that which I did not my- 
 self believe, which I knew to be untrue, as a matter- 
 of-fact, historical narrative." 
 
 We wonder that, when the Bishop wrote thus, it 
 did not occur to his mind, that in making the Son 
 of God "a liar," — for Christ bears unqualified testi- 
 mony to the deluge as recorded by Moses, — he was 
 only mocking his Maker by professing to do such 
 honour to the God of Truth, and also by his own 
 confession to seek to make infidels of the sons of men. 
 For in our old-fashioned Christianity we have always 
 read and believed the words, — " He that honoureth 
 not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath 
 sent Him." But to return to the question. 
 
 We must confess that we should have looked for 
 a better system of reasoning, in a man who claims to 
 be a master of science, than to reason or rather cavil 
 from objections and difficulties against a fact ; for in 
 spite of the Bishop's advance in some of the sciences, 
 and his consequent certain knowledge of his fact, 
 which proves beyond doubt the whole account by 
 Moses to be a mere fable, yet we may, we humbly 
 think, conclude that the truth of the history recorded 
 
16 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 by Moses does, and will stand against the lately learned 
 fact of Bishop Colenso. Under these circumstances 
 we say, then, that this arguing, not reasoning, from 
 difficulties and objections against any statement sus- 
 tained by an overwhelming weight of positive evidence, 
 is not only contrary to all idea of sound reasoning, 
 which reverses the Bishop's mode, and makes objec- 
 tions give place to positive evidence; but, we repeat, 
 such mode of arguing is not what we should have ex- 
 pected from a man who has the reputation of being a 
 mathematician. 
 
 Such mode of treating a question is the same as 
 that adopted by Nicodemus, when our Lord laid down 
 the important truth, " Except a man be born again, 
 he cannot enter the kingdom of God." "How can 
 these things be ? Can a man enter a second time into 
 his mother's womb and be born?" But the only reply 
 of Christ was to repeat the truth, as was His custom, 
 without turning aside to discuss the objections and 
 difficulties which blinded the eyes of Nicodemus ; 
 though, on another remarkable occasion, He did ex- 
 plain difficulties to His disciples, which He would not 
 notice when used as cavils by the unbelieving Jews. 
 
 We hope that the Bishop will pardon us if, while 
 on the subject of his fact, which proves the writing by 
 Moses to be a fable, we give our view as to the cate- 
 gory in which his fact may be placed. We do not 
 then hesitate to place it in the category of Junius, 
 who, in one of his letters to Sir William Draper, 
 writes, "In the first place, Sir William, your facts are 
 false." Or, to come down from the sublime to the 
 ridiculous, in the category of the Popish priest who, 
 some thirty years ago, broke out and disturbed a 
 public meeting by repeatedly calling out, "That's a 
 false fact!" 
 
 Now, to any one who is not moved by the vain 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 17 
 
 pretensions of such philosophers, but who searches 
 into questions, it will be evident that the facts of most 
 of such men are built only on their own ignorance and 
 assumption. Did any of those men who, like Bishop 
 Colenso, would prove Moses a fool and deceiver, ever 
 yet establish their facts any other way than by things 
 themselves unproved ? — which mode at last resolves 
 all into this : " Such is my assertion, and therefore 
 it is truth;" arguing in the vicious circle, which 
 Stillingfleet, in his exposure of the reasoning in behalf 
 of Papal infallibility, describes as John giving a cha- 
 racter to Thomas, and Thomas in return giving a cha- 
 racter to John. 
 
 Thus Bishop Colenso proves his fact to be a fact, 
 because he made, since his departure from England, 
 such advance in some of the sciences as taught him 
 this for certain. And then his fact in return proves 
 that Moses was a fool or worse, and the writing which 
 bears his name a fable. And thus all is to be resolved 
 into this : that such is the fact, because Bishop Co- 
 lenso asserts that it is the fact. 
 
 And now what need was there of all the trouble 
 which the Bishop took in writing a book, which has 
 caused no little excitement, and which has exposed 
 him to such just ridicule, as we believe is on every 
 side bestowed on his poor production ? The whole 
 question could have been settled in a few words, 
 or if the Bishop desired to rush into print on the 
 subject, by a single advertisement in the " Times " to 
 this effect : — 
 
 "I, John William Colenso, D.D., Bishop of Natal, 
 hereby give notice, to all whom it may concern, that 
 the writings of Moses are a fable, and Moses a fool 
 and deceiver ! And this is the truth, because I know 
 a fact, and therefore declare that it is the truth. 
 
 "(Signed) J. W. Natal." 
 
 B 
 
18 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 Surely this would have been the shortest and easiest 
 way to have settled the question. 
 
 But let us now, as Launcelot Gobbo says, " try 
 conclusions " with Bishop Colenso, and look into his 
 mode of establishing facts by arguing from objections 
 or difficulties against what is sustained by positive 
 evidence. Suppose that we were to visit the diocese 
 of Natal, not to teach revealed religion or to sow the 
 seeds of infidelity, but solely to instruct the people 
 in the Book of Nature. And let us further suppose 
 that, in discoursing on the sun, moon, and stars, we 
 were to inform some native of their magnitude, their 
 distances, and inhabitants, that all those bodies were 
 a collection of worlds, like our earth, hanging upon 
 nothing ; and that this man — for instance the Bishop's 
 inquirer — were to look up at us and ask, " Do you 
 believe all this? Do you believe that this earth 
 hangs upon nothing, or that any such thing could take 
 place? This is contrary to a fact which I know, 
 and plain common sense proves all this to be a fable." 
 Now, would this mode of arguing be unreasonable on 
 the part of a poor untutored Zulu ? Certainly not. 
 But would this mode of objecting prove the Book of 
 Nature to be a fable? And yet such is precisely the 
 mode of reasoning by which the Bishop of Natal en- 
 deavours to overthrow the faith of men, and establish 
 infidelity by proclaiming the writings of Moses a fable, 
 and Moses himself a deceiver, for to this point we 
 must always necessarily come. 
 
 The fallacy of this wretched system of so-called 
 reasoning, lies in the vanity of measuring the infinitely 
 wise and Almighty Creator and Ruler of the Universe 
 by our standard of folly and feebleness, concluding 
 that, because we cannot see how or why such or such 
 a thing could be done, and because we could not 
 ourselves do such, therefore it could not be done, 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 19 
 
 no, not even by the All-wise and Omnipotent Him- 
 self. 
 
 We must, we suppose, take heed how we presume 
 to instruct a Bishop ; and therefore we shall not stop 
 to point out the way in which, if a believer in what 
 he professed to obtain his position, the Bishop should, 
 and in perfect harmony with philosophy could, have 
 replied to the not unreasonable question of the poor 
 Zulu — not unreasonable in a man who had to learn 
 that the Bible is the Revelation of the living- and true 
 God. But we cannot deny ourselves a reference to 
 the Prophet Jeremiah, to show the way in which he 
 sought to solve, not merely objections, but, so far as 
 man could see or act, impossibilities which surrounded 
 the path of duty. 
 
 Jerusalem was in the hands of the enemy. The 
 inhabitants were captives in a land not their own. At 
 such a crisis Jeremiah received the command to buy a 
 certain field, to invest not merely his belief in the 
 word of his Maker, but to invest that which has been 
 the fons et origo, the irritamenta malorum of the 
 human race, to invest his money in the purchase of 
 land in a city and country in a state of hopeless ruin 
 under the wasting domination of the most powerful 
 earthly monarch. Jeremiah felt the difficulty in all 
 its force, but he bought the field ; and then, in a most 
 beautiful prayer and pious remonstrance, he thus stays 
 himself on the word of his Maker : 
 
 " Ah Lord God ! behold, Thou hast made the hea- 
 ven and the earth by Thy great power and stretched 
 out arm, and there is nothing too hard for Thee : Thou 
 showest loving-kindness unto thousands, and recom- 
 pensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of 
 their children after them : the Great, the Mighty God, 
 the Lord of hosts, is His name, great in counsel, 
 and mighty in work : for Thine eyes are open upon all 
 
 15 2 
 
20 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 the ways of the sons of men : to give every one ac- 
 cording to his ways, and according to the fruit of his 
 doings : which hast set signs and wonders in the land 
 of Egypt, even unto this day, and in Israel, and among 
 other men; and hast made Thee a name, as at this 
 day ; and hast brought forth Thy people Israel out of 
 the land of Egypt with signs, and with wonders, and 
 with a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm, and 
 with great terror; and hast given them this land, 
 which Thou didst swear unto their fathers to give them, 
 aland flowing with milk and honey; and they came 
 in, and possessed it ; but they obeyed not Thy voice, 
 neither walked in Thy law; they have done nothing 
 of all that Thou commandedst them to do : therefore 
 Thou hast caused all this evil to come upon them: 
 behold the mounts, they are come into the city to 
 take it ; and the city is given into the hand of the 
 Chaldeans, that fight against it, because of the sword, 
 and of the famine, and of the pestilence : and what 
 Thou hast spoken is come to pass ; and, behold, Thou 
 seest it. And Thou hast said unto me, O Lord God, 
 Buy thee the field for money, and take witnesses ; for 
 (or though) the city is given into the hands of the 
 Chaldeans." 
 
 "Then," the Prophet continues, "came the word of 
 the Lord unto Jeremiah, saying, Behold, I am the 
 LORD, the GOD of all flesh: Is there any thing too 
 hard for Me?" This answer was enough. Jeremiah 
 flung to the winds all his difficulties and objections. 
 He believed the word of his God, though he could not 
 see the end. Having subscribed the purchase-roll, and 
 bought the field, he patiently awaited the promised 
 result. This was conduct worthy of the man, and 
 dignifying to the mind, showing it in its true light : 
 never so great, as when bowing down to and acting on 
 the word of the Infinitely Wise. 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 21 
 
 But it may be that, in the judgment of Bishop 
 Colenso, Jeremiah was a weak man who took things 
 on trust, and who certainly had not made any critical 
 examination of the sacred writings; for, had he done 
 so, he never could have adopted in such a pointed 
 manner the Mosiac account of the Exodus, and espe- 
 cially of creation, as he does in ascribing to GOD the 
 creation of His own Universe, notwithstanding the 
 many difficulties which, by the Bishop's logic, would 
 have proved such creation a mere fable ; and not- 
 withstanding the fact, that some very clever men, 
 called philosophers, had maintained the very opposite, 
 and had most clearly proved the fact — one of the 
 Bishop's facts — to the satisfaction of themselves and 
 followers, that the Universe was created and governed 
 by chance. 
 
 Well, be it so. But, without discussing this question, 
 we had rather cast in our lot with Jeremiah in the 
 dungeon than live in the palace of any Bishop on 
 earth, and have to answer for the want of candour and 
 truth, the vanity and self-sufficiency, and the fearful 
 sin of publishing a wretched work, calculated at least, 
 and that by the confession and desire of its author, to 
 make an infidel of even a solitary individual of the 
 race of Adam. 
 
22 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Difficulties in the Scriptures— The Nativity— The Death of Christ 
 — The Resurrection — Bishop Colenso proves too much — Re- 
 surrection of the body contrary to our experience, though 
 preached by Nature — Not known to the Heathen world — 
 Reception of St. Paul at Athens for preaching the Resurrec- 
 tion — On Bishop Colenso's principle the difficulty of this 
 article of faith would prove the whole Bible a fable — The 
 confession of Aristotle as to the insufficiency of the light of 
 Nature, commended as a lesson to Bishop Colenso's School 
 of Philosophers. 
 
 Should Bishop Colenso ever arrive at the end of his 
 proposed work of showing to the human race the folly 
 of past ages, and how much of the Revelation of God 
 his advance in some of the sciences will allow him to 
 authorize mankind henceforth to believe, we may 
 imagine other difficulties and objections to arise during 
 his critical examination and reform of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 And should the Bishop ever return to his diocese of 
 Natal, which for the sake of the benighted people who 
 were unhappily confided to his care, and also for the 
 sake of common decency, we trust he never will be 
 permitted to do, we might in such case picture to our 
 minds the following scene : — The Bishop translating the 
 history of the Nativity, assisted by his simple-minded 
 but intelligent Zulu, and the Zulu looking up at the 
 Bishop and asking, " Do you believe all this ? Do you 
 really think that all this is true?" On his principle of 
 arguing the Bishop could not have replied to such a 
 question, but must have joined the Zulu in concluding 
 the whole account to be a fable and a lie — a lie, too, 
 spoken in the name of the Lord. 
 
 Again : suppose the Bishop instructing his Zulu in 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. .23 
 
 the doctrine of the death of Christ ; not the death of 
 a man, with which all are so painfully familiar, but the 
 death of Christ as the Lord of life and glory ; and the 
 death of Christ, not to set us an example how to die, 
 but the death for or instead of us. Now, might not the 
 Zulu reply in a similar manner to the answer of the 
 Eastern idolater, whose religion was to prostrate him- 
 self in adoration before the glorious orb of day ? When 
 told that he was to believe in Christ, because He died 
 for us, " Died ! then I had rather believe in the sun 
 that never dies than in a God that was mortal." 
 
 We defy Bishop Colenso to give on his principles of 
 arguing any other answer in this case also than that the 
 whole account is fable and falsehood. It may be very 
 well, that insufficiency of even repentance to atone for 
 sin, and the necessity and value of mediation, are taught 
 by the daily experience of life. But the great philo- 
 sophers of old never saw this, though thus every hour 
 before their eyes, or they would not have accounted 
 the preaching of Christ crucified as the merest foolish- 
 ness. 
 
 Or, take the case of the Resurrection of the Lord 
 Jesus. " Do you believe all this ? How can this be 
 true ? Do you really believe that any thing so con- 
 trary to our experience could happen, that a man once 
 dead should ever rise again?" 
 
 Now, here too, according to the mode of arguing 
 adopted by Bishop Colenso, there could not be any 
 reply to these questions of the Zulu. All these ob- 
 jections are founded on their opposition to, and con- 
 tradiction of, the common experience of mankind ; and 
 reasoning in this way, taught by one who made such 
 advance in some of the sciences since his departure 
 from England, we must conclude that the whole 
 history of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus is mere 
 
24 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 fable, and that the Evangelists wrote "lies in the name 
 of the Lord." 
 
 It is also in this case very true that, if men were not 
 by nature so wholly blind as to spiritual things, they 
 could learn that death is the way to life, or, in other 
 words, that resurrection, though contrary to our ex- 
 perience, is not so contrary to the course of all things. 
 Nature, though a silent yet most eloquent orator, 
 preaches in several ways the doctrine of resurrection. 
 And it is equally true, that if we closely examine the 
 nature of resurrection, it cannot present any difficulties, 
 save only in reference to the agent or to the subject of 
 action ; difficulties, which in a question that presup- 
 poses the interference of Omnipotence, such being the 
 only ground for the belief of the doctrine, cannot for 
 a moment be allowed. Bishop Pearson thus states 
 both these points in his masterly and vigorous style : 
 
 " The day dies into night, and is buried in silence 
 and in darkness ; in the next morning it appeareth 
 again and reviveth, opening the grave of darkness, 
 rising- from the dead of night : this is the diurnal re- 
 surrection. As the day dies into night, so doth the 
 summer into winter : the sap is said to descend into 
 the root, and there it lies buried in the ground ; the 
 earth is covered with snow, or crusted with frost, and 
 becomes a general sepulchre: when the spring ap- 
 peareth, all begin to rise; the plants and flowers peep 
 out of their graves, revive, and grow, and flourish : this 
 is the annual resurrection. The corn by which we live, 
 and for want of which we perish with famine, is not- 
 withstanding cast upon the earth and buried in the 
 ground with a design that it may corrupt, and being 
 corrupted may revive and multiply ; our bodies are fed 
 with this constant experiment, and we continue this 
 present life by a succession of resurrections. Thus all 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 25 
 
 things are repaired by corrupting, are preserved by 
 perishing, and revive by dying. And can we think 
 that man, the Lord of all these things, which thus die 
 and revive for him, should be detained in death as 
 never to live again ? Is it imaginable that God should 
 thus restore all things to man, and not restore man to 
 Himself?" 
 
 And as to the possibility he writes: — 
 
 " Now when we say the resurrection is possible, we 
 say not it is so to men or angels, or any creature of a 
 limited knowledge or finite power, but we attribute 
 it to God, ' with whom nothing is impossible :' His un- 
 derstanding is infinite; He knoweth all the men which 
 ever lived since the foundation, or shall live unto the 
 dissolution of the world ; He knoweth whereof all 
 things are made, from what ' dust ' we came, into what 
 
 dust we shall return He which numbereth the 
 
 sands of the sea, knoweth all the scattered bones, seeth 
 into all the graves and tombs, searcheth all the reposi- 
 tories and dormitories in the earth, knoweth what dust 
 belongeth to each body, what body to each soul. 
 
 "Again : as His all-seeing eye observeth every par- 
 ticle of dissolved and corrupted man, so doth He also 
 see and know all ways and means by which these 
 scattered parts should be united, by which this ruined 
 fabric should be recomposed ; He knoweth how every 
 bone should be brought to its old neighbour bone, how 
 every sinew may be re-embroidered on it ; He under- 
 standeth what are the proper parts to be conjoined, 
 what is the proper gluten by which they may become 
 united. The resurrection, therefore, cannot be impos- 
 sible in relation to the agent upon any deficiency of 
 knowledge how to effect it. 
 
 " And as the wisdom of God is infinite, so the power 
 of this agent is illimited : for God is as much omni- 
 potent as omniscient. There can be no opposition made 
 
26 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 against Him, because all power is His ; nor can He re- 
 ceive a check against whom there is no resistance : all 
 creatures must not only suffer, but do what He will 
 have them ; they are not only passively, but actively, 
 obediential. There is no atom of the dust or ashes but 
 must be where it pleaseth God, and be applied and 
 make up what and how it seemeth good to Him. The 
 resurrection, therefore, cannot be impossible in relation 
 unto God upon any disability to effect it ; and, con- 
 sequently, there is no impossibility in reference to the 
 agent, or Him who is to raise us. 
 
 " Secondly, the resurrection is not impossible in rela- 
 tion to the patient, because where we look upon the 
 power of God, nothing can be impossible but that which 
 involveth a contradiction; and there can be no con- 
 tradiction in this, that he which was, and now is not, 
 should hereafter be what before he was. It is so far 
 from a repugnancy, that it rather containeth a rational 
 and apparent possibility, that man who was once dust, 
 becoming dust, should become man again. Whatsoever 
 we lose in death is not lost to God ; as no creature 
 could be made out of nothing but by Him, so can it 
 not be reduced into nothing but by the same : though, 
 therefore, the parts of the body of man be dissolved, 
 yet they perish not ; they lose not their own entity 
 when they part with their relation to humanity : they 
 are laid up in the secret places, and lodged in the 
 chambers of nature ; and it is no more a contradiction 
 that they should become the parts of the same body of 
 man to which they did belong, than that after his death 
 they should become the parts of any other body, as we 
 see they do. Howsoever they are scattered, and how- 
 soever lodged, they are within the knowledge and 
 
 power of God When there was no man, God 
 
 made him of the earth ; and, therefore, when he returns 
 to the earth, the same God can make him man again." 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 27 
 
 We therefore conclude, that as Christ rose from the 
 dead, so He became the first-fruits of them that slept, 
 or who shall sleep in the grave ; and that though when 
 we die we seem lost to being, we are not lost to God ; 
 but, as Pearson writes, our dust is laid up in the vast 
 dormitories of nature, in the chambers of the grave, 
 there to await the summons of Him who at first formed 
 us out of dust to awake from our sleep, and stand 
 before His great white throne of judgment. 
 
 But although all this be truth thus most clearly 
 taught in the Book of Nature, yet resurrection of the 
 body is wholly contrary to our experience ; and that 
 it is so contrary to our experience, and that it never 
 entered into the minds of the heathen philosophers, as 
 indeed it never would have entered into our minds, but 
 for the Gospel of Him who has brought life and im- 
 mortality to light, may be proved not only by the voice 
 of history, but by the reception which the preaching of 
 St. Paul experienced at the hands of the philosophers 
 of Athens. They heard him so long as he preached of 
 rewards and punishments in a future state, for all that 
 doctrine they knew in common with the Jew or the 
 Christian, and which may be known without any other 
 revelation than the light of nature. 
 
 It was only when Paul preached unto them " one 
 Jesus and the Resurrection," that they mocked and 
 denounced him as a babbler. " What will this babbler 
 say ?" " He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange 
 gods." "This babbler!" said the philosophers of the 
 great Apostle of the Gentiles ; this fool and deceiver 
 of mankind ! as Bishop Colenso proves Moses who was 
 one of the wisest and greatest of men. 
 
 Where are those philosophers now ? What were 
 their names ? Where are their writings ? And as to 
 "this babbler," what is his name? What his never- 
 dying immortal labours for the good of the human 
 
28 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 race ? And what his splendid writings ? which have 
 been the rich feast of countless millions of intelligent 
 minds, as they shall be of millions of intelligent minds 
 yet unborn, even until time itself shall be no more. 
 And yet this wonderful man was a believer in the 
 fable of Moses ! Bishop Colenso may here, in the phi- 
 losophers of Athens who denounced "this babbler," 
 read the fate of himself and his disgraceful thrusting 
 of his loathsome infidelity on the public mind. 
 
 But to return to the question. Where, moreover, 
 si) all we look ? Shall we cast up our eyes unto the 
 heavens, or look upon the earth beneath, and not find 
 difficulty upon difficulty ? Into the wisdom of this 
 state of trial it is not our business now to enter; suffice 
 it to say, that all is mystery and difficulty ; not merely 
 apart from, but even when viewed in the light of that 
 Revelation which a merciful Creator has given to the 
 sons of men. Here " we know in part," but only " in 
 part," even at our best estate ; " now we see through a 
 glass darkly," only darkly. And as to the scheme of 
 Redemption, it is a mystery which, the Apostle writes, 
 the very " angels desire to look into." And we our- 
 selves are perhaps the greatest wonder and mystery, and 
 the prime difficulty in creation. Must we then from 
 such mystery and difficulty, and from our utter igno- 
 rance of the reason and wisdom of such a state of 
 things, conclude that all this state of things, even our 
 own existence, is mere fable ? 
 
 And yet such is the very way in which Bishop 
 Colenso would overthrow the truth of the " Holy 
 Scriptures," and leave the human race without that 
 Revelation for which the good and great of the hea- 
 then world sighed ; and cast us as forlorn wanderers on 
 the earth without one ray of light or hope to guide 
 and cheer us on our journey through this dark and 
 dreary wilderness of time ; dark and dreary indeed, 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 29 
 
 without that lamp of truth, which Bishop Colenso 
 endeavours to extinguish. 
 
 Aristotle was a great man ; and it would be a happy 
 thing for themselves, if our self-styled philosophers of 
 Christian times, who usurp all wisdom to themselves, 
 would learn a lesson of humility from the reported 
 dying confession of that great man who governed the 
 world for centuries by his philosophy : — " Polluted I 
 entered into this world ; in anxiety I have lived ; full of 
 confusion I take my departure : Cause of causes, have 
 mercy upon me !" 
 
 When we read such a mournful testimony from 
 such a great mind, how forcibly we are reminded of 
 the words, — " But blessed are your eyes, for they see ; 
 and your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto 
 you, That many prophets and righteous men have 
 desired to see those things which ye see, and have not 
 seen them ; and to hear those things which ye hear, 
 and have not heard them." 
 
 But now, leaving further examination of this mode 
 of arguing from difficulties and objections by which 
 the Bishop of Natal proves the writings of Moses, and 
 consequently the Bible, a fable, — we say consequently, 
 not only because the same mode would overturn any 
 revelation, but because the other parts of the Sacred 
 Volume must stand or fall with this fable, — let us turn 
 to another view of this subject, and of the modesty 
 and philosophy of Bishop Colenso. 
 
30 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Bishop's reply to the question of the Zulu — No difficulty in 
 the question when rightly considered — Endowment of irrational 
 creatures with instinct as great a difficulty to us, but no difficulty 
 to the Creator — The Question of the Almighty on this point — 
 No difficulty to justify the conclusion of Bishop Colenso— Other 
 methods of solving his difficulty than the Bishop's charge of 
 falsehood against Moses — Moses did not invent the history of 
 the Deluge, Creation, or of Religion — Longinus's Remark on 
 Moses' account of Creation — Heathen accounts of the Deluge — 
 Ovid — Lucian — The only question — Whether Moses or Bishop 
 Colenso be " the more credible." 
 
 Bishop Colenso states, that, when the poor Zulu 
 asked him, " Is all that true ? Do you really believe 
 that all this happened thus?" &c, the Bishop asked 
 himself, " Shall a man speak lies in the name of the 
 Lord ?" and he adds, " I dared not do so." And as he 
 knew a fact which proved the statement of Moses to 
 be a fable, he resolved to so instruct the human race. 
 It is not our object to do more than our title sets forth, 
 consider the pretensions of Bishop Colenso to impeach 
 the wisdom and veracity of the inspired writer. But 
 had we been at the ear of the Bishop, we could have 
 asked him a few questions, which, if they did not make 
 those things cease to be difficulties, would at least have 
 shown that the difficulties in question did not furnish 
 ground for denouncing the narrative as pure falsehood. 
 As to difficulty, there is none, can be none what- 
 ever, so far as the mere fact recorded. Any difficulty 
 exists only in our minds, because to our minds such 
 things do naturally present difficulties; for they are 
 contrary to our common experience. But when we 
 view those questions apart from our finite minds, and 
 our contracted experience, there is not any more diffi- 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 31 
 
 culty than, to repeat the illustration already given, to 
 stretch out the north over the empty space, and to 
 hang the earth upon nothing. 
 
 Nor is there any miracle, or need of miracle, so far 
 as the account of the animals and birds seeking refuge 
 in the Ark. It was a most remarkable providential 
 arrangement ; but, after all, not any suspension of the 
 order of nature, such being that in which a miracle 
 consists; and certainly no ground of difficulty to the 
 Supreme Being, any more, as we say, than hanging the 
 earth upon nothing, or than the endowment of ani- 
 mals and birds with that unerring and astonishing 
 instinct which they exhibit. Now that instinct none 
 but the Maker of all things could bestow ; and so we 
 find the existence of that instinct referred to by the 
 Creator to show His power, and to bring down the 
 inflated pride of man : " Doth the hawk fly by thy 
 wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south V 
 
 The latter part of which question shows, on a small 
 scale, what took place in the Ark, and what takes 
 place every year; viz. the exercise of the instinct be- 
 stowed by the Creator, which causes animals and birds 
 to forsake certain places on impending changes, and 
 move to other parts of the earth for the preservation 
 of their lives. 
 
 Far be it from our mind to write as if we were 
 obliged to apologize for, or explain the acts of the 
 Creator. We examine the only question here, — " Is 
 the Bible a revelation from God to man ?" And if it 
 be, we acknowledge its truth and bow before its state- 
 ments all the time that we may in that very revela- 
 tion find scope, and it is a vast ocean, for the most 
 active exercise and enlarged operations of the mind. 
 But we state these matters by the way, to show that 
 even what took place in the Ark is only what is being 
 continually carried on in the Divine government of 
 
32 THE PRETENSIONS OP BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 the world : that there was not, could not be any 
 difficulty in the fact recorded, or difficulty in the thing 
 itself, any more than in the creation and endowment 
 of the creatures with existence or instinct; and cer- 
 tainly not any difficulty on which to found the most 
 illogical conclusions of Bishop Colenso. 
 
 But it does seem very strange that Bishop Colenso 
 should not have exercised some reflection, and have 
 shown before the public some respect for the character 
 of Moses; but that quite forgetting every considera- 
 tion, except the love of singularity and praise of men, 
 while proclaiming his own abhorrence of a lie, he 
 should have left the world to draw the conclusion, on 
 his testimony confirmed by his fact, that Moses was 
 guilty of that base conduct from which, he informs us, 
 his own mind revolted ; and that Moses did write an 
 untruth, was, in fact, guilty of a lie, and, — worse than 
 all, — a lie spoken in the name of the Lord. 
 
 We very humbly suggest, that there were other 
 courses open to our Christian Bishop to escape from 
 Ms difficulty, without leaving the charge of wilful and 
 impious falsehood at the door of such a great and 
 honoured servant of God. 
 
 Now Moses did not invent the history of Creation, 
 or of the Deluge in particular, or of religion. He only 
 wrote the history of those subjects. All these were 
 matters of fact, which he, in common with others, has 
 recorded. And we need scarcely remark that religion, 
 natural or revealed, — we do not speak of views or doc- 
 trines, but of religion itself, — does not owe its exist- 
 ence in the world to the writings of any man; all 
 writers have dealt with it as in existence, as a mere 
 fact. So much, then, as to the Mosaic history of one 
 or all of those questions. 
 
 As to the account given by Moses of Creation, and 
 to which the other sacred writings so constantly refer, 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 33 
 
 we may mention as an interesting point for the mere 
 English reader, that the author of the grand work on 
 " the Sublime," — of whom it has been said, 
 
 " So true to Nature's laws, 
 And is himself the great sublime he draws," — 
 
 Longinus, selects the account of Creation by Moses as 
 a striking instance of the true sublime. The heathen 
 writers in their accounts laboured to prove that their 
 deities could do such and such things ; " but Moses," 
 writes Longinus, " no common-place man, when he 
 would describe his God, contented himself with saying, 
 *God said, Let there be light; and there was light.'" 
 
 What rightly-directed mind cannot but be struck 
 with amazement at the sublimity, the majesty of the 
 opening sentence of the Pentateuch of Moses, in which 
 against all the doctrines of chance, and such like 
 wretched theories, Moses ascribes to God the creation 
 of His own Universe? "In the beginning God created 
 the Heavens and the Earth." 
 
 In reference to the Deluge we have two remarkable 
 accounts by heathen authors, which we shall give for 
 those of our readers who may not have access to these 
 writings, and to whom the accounts may prove interest- 
 ing. Ovid, who wrote immediately before and during 
 the first twenty years of the Christian Era, gives a 
 very full account of Creation, and of the first and 
 happy, and then of the fallen and degenerate, state of 
 man ; and thus introduces the sad history of the sin of 
 man, which caused Jupiter to destroy the earth by 
 the flood : — 
 
 " Last of all came the Iron Age. Forthwith all 
 manner of wickedness burst in upon the world. Mo- 
 desty, truth, and good faith took flight; in their place 
 came fraud, deceit, and treacherous lying in wait, and 
 violence, and the cursed love of gain." 
 
 c 
 
34 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 Ovid then describes the mode in which the very 
 bowels of the earth were searched for especially the 
 iron and the gold, the fruits of which search he thus 
 describes: "And now the destructive iron, and the 
 gold more injurious far, came forth. War making use 
 of both stalks abroad, and with bloody hand brandishes 
 the dreadful arms ; men live on plunder ; the host is not 
 safe from his guest ; nor the father-in-law from the son- 
 in-law. Love of a brother is a rare thing. The husband 
 plots the murder of the wife, and the wife that of the 
 husband ; fiendish stepmothers mix the lurid poison ; 
 and the son inquires before the time the age of his 
 father. Piety lies prostrate ; and the virgin goddess 
 of justice, the last that remained of the heavenly 
 visitors, abandoned the earth now drenched with 
 blood." 
 
 What a resemblance to not only the account of 
 Moses, but to that given by Isaiah (chap, lix.), especially 
 where he says, — "And judgment is turned away back- 
 ward, and justice standeth afar off; for truth is fallen 
 in the street, and equity cannot enter." Well, we fur- 
 ther read, that when Jupiter from the lofty citadel of 
 heaven beheld this state of things he groaned, and 
 called a council of the gods, and laid before them this 
 desperate state of things ; and then gives the dread 
 sentence, — " I must now destroy the race of man over 
 the whole surface of the earth ; I swear by the Styx 
 that all that could be done by me has been done ; but 
 the wound is incurable, and must be cut off by the 
 sword." Jupiter further states, that he had himself 
 gone clown from heaven, and travelled about in human 
 form, to see if the state of things was equal to the cry 
 which reached his ear, but he found the evil report far 
 less than the reality. Then Ovid proceeds to de- 
 scribe the manner in which the elements were col- 
 lected for the work of destruction, when at last orders 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 35 
 
 were given to open the doors and windows of heaven 
 to co-operate with the waters below, and sweep an 
 incurably guilty race from the face of the earth. 
 "And now," continues Ovid, "sea and land had no 
 longer any distinguishing feature; all was sea, and the 
 sea had no shore." He then describes the vain efforts 
 of men, animals, and birds, to save themselves ; and 
 then shows that only one spot was reserved as a resting- 
 place for the little ark in which Deucalion and his 
 wife were preserved ; and in speaking of them he bears 
 this testimony, " than whom was no better man, nor 
 a greater lover of justice ; nor any woman a more 
 pious worshipper of the gods than she was." 
 
 The other account to which we have referred is by 
 Lucian. He makes Timon rail at Jupiter in the most 
 noisy and irreverent manner; so much so, that Timon 
 thought he was a little too hard on celestial Jove ; so 
 he thus softens down the charge : " But that I may not 
 speak too reproachfully, I admit, that then, when you 
 had the vigour of youth, and especially in the time of 
 the wickedness which caused the Flood, then you did 
 act in a worthy manner against the villains — the hail 
 came clown like rocks ; the rain was impetuous and vio- 
 lent — every drop a river. So much so, that in the 
 time of Deucalion, such a wreck of nature occurred in 
 a moment, that all things having been sunk under 
 water were destroyed ; so that one little ark was saved 
 with difficulty, which rested on Lycores, preserving a 
 mere spark of human life for the propagation of greater 
 wickedness." For the propagation of greater wicked- 
 ness ! What a comment on " Why should ye be 
 stricken any more? Ye will revolt yet more and 
 more. The whole head is sick, the whole heart is 
 faint." 
 
 Though not the immediate point before us, it may 
 
 c 2 
 
36 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 amuse the reader to learn the way in which Jupiter 
 received this noisy tirade of Timon ; showing not only 
 the wit of Lucian, but his opinion of the omniscience 
 of Jove, and of the wisdom and piety of " the philoso- 
 phers" of his day. " I say, Mercury, who is that fellow 
 that is bawling at such a rate from Attica, near Hy- 
 mettus, towards the foot of the mountain ; a beggarly, 
 dirty-looking fellow, clad in a goat's-skin jerkin? The 
 fellow is stooping down as if he were digging : a very 
 talkative fellow, with a large share of self-confidence. 
 He must be a philosopher; or he would not other- 
 wise have the audacity to utter such impious speech 
 against us." 
 
 Moses then did not invent, but merely wrote the 
 history of an article of belief which was universally 
 received in the world. Moses however did more. 
 He wrote his history as the true account of Creation, 
 of the Fall of Man, and of the Deluge ; and he wrote, 
 as guided by and in the name, sometimes in the very 
 words, of the Living and True God. This is the simple 
 state of the case ; and the question is, — Whether 
 Moses or Bishop Colenso be the more credible witness 
 on this subject ; or, in other words, whether Moses is 
 to be accounted a fool and deceiver, because Bishop 
 Colenso, since his departure from England, made such 
 advance in some of the sciences, in Geology in par- 
 ticular, as taught him his famous fact, which proved to 
 his mind that the Mosaic account is pure fable. 
 
 This is the question, — Whether Moses was a mere 
 fool, who took all things on trust, as he found the 
 incidents, like fragments of wrecks on the waters of 
 time, — " tanquam naufragii tabulae ;" and Bishop Co- 
 lenso such a philosopher as to entitle him to sit in 
 judgment on the wisdom and veracity of Moses. In 
 fine, — Whether Moses was a retailer of falsehood, and 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 37 
 
 Bishop Colenso such a friend of truth, that he dared 
 not shrink from repelling the lie, and placing it on the 
 head of Moses, the time-honoured servant of God. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Character of Moses — His wisdom, greatness, and goodness — His an 
 immortal name that will outlive all his calumniators — The Phi- 
 losophy of Moses — Inconsistency of Bishop Colenso in retain- 
 ing his office and its emoluments — -Curious way in which a Pope 
 dealt with a refractory Bishop— Moses' account of light — Of the 
 blood, denied for a long time by Philosophers — Presented greater 
 difficulties than the little calculations of Bishop Colenso — Moses 
 found right on those points — Testimonies to the learning and 
 wisdom of Moses — The Egyptians — The Motto on their Libraries 
 — Moses' Code of Laws — The Pentateuch read every Sabbath — 
 Witness of Christ to Moses. 
 
 In treating the character of Moses we may, we think, 
 assume without fear of contradiction that Moses was 
 one of the greatest, wisest, and best men that ever 
 lived. His name shall endure for ever in the annals 
 of time. And in the unfading realms of light, truth, 
 and glory, mention will be made of his honoured work. 
 That eye which was not dim, and that natural force 
 which was not abated, when his spirit took its flight 
 from a world hastening to decay, has not yet set in 
 darkness. Though long dead, he yet speaketh. He 
 has survived the attacks of infidels of every class, and 
 every clime, many of them men who could have taught 
 philosophy to Bishop Colenso. And in spite of the 
 Bishop's cavils and advance in some of the sciences 
 since he left England, — and of his so great regard for 
 truth, which compelled him in a moment of ridiculous 
 folly to come before the public and proclaim the 
 
38 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 writings of Moses a fable, and Moses himself a liar — 
 Moses and the writings which bear his name shall 
 survive the cavils and carpings of infidel and little 
 minds, when the tongues of his calumniators shall 
 be silent in the grave ; and the men who, against the 
 happiness and honour of human nature, have so em- 
 ployed their wretched tongues and pens, if at all re- 
 membered, shall have passed into utter insignificance 
 and contempt. 
 
 Moses delivered to mankind philosophy which modern 
 ages have only begun to discover, and until such mo- 
 dern discoveries, — which, after all, are due not so much 
 to human wisdom as to the inevitable knowledge of facts, 
 which, as it rolls on, Time unfolds and forces on even 
 the most indolent minds, — contracted and self-sufficient 
 men were accustomed to act after the fashion now set us 
 by a Christian Bishop, and throw their filthy but harm- 
 less mud at Moses, as if he had been created and en- 
 dowed with such surpassing intellect and wisdom only 
 to be in all ages the butt of shallow-pated fools. 
 
 The fashion now set us by a Christian Bishop, and 
 in the full enjoyment of the emoluments of his office ! — 
 emoluments larger by many times than what would be 
 accounted wealth by a vast body of the Clergy who 
 follow the example of their Lord and Master, and 
 really do His work ; or by laymen of great minds and 
 extensive knowledge who toil without ceasing for their 
 daily support, as inheritors of, after all, the merciful 
 part of the curse on our race, " In the sweat of thy 
 face shalt thou eat bread until thou return unto the 
 ground." 
 
 When we write thus, as we are compelled to do, of 
 a Bishop, we, though certainly not a friend to Popery, 
 have had the desire to be a Pope flash across our mind, 
 that we might deal with this Bishop as he so richly 
 deserves. In times gone by, when the Pope was master 
 
TO IMFEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 39 
 
 of England, and the Sovereign his lawgiver or execu- 
 tioner as suited the occasion, a Bishop of Oxford very 
 much displeased the Pope ; and though quite willing 
 to trample on the laws of God, or of the country, the 
 Pope could not entertain the impious thought of offer- 
 ing the least violence to the law ecclesiastical. He 
 was therefore much perplexed as to the way of dealing 
 with the refractory Bishop. At last he hit upon this 
 plan ; he resolved to promote him, an honour which 
 the Bishop could not gainsay. So the Pope promoted 
 the Bishop to a new see " in partibus infidelium," an 
 imaginary see somewhere in the wilds of Africa, the 
 exact locality of which the best geographer would 
 have failed to discover, and where, our authority re- 
 marks, " the Bishop was like to starve for aught that 
 his diocese afforded him." 
 
 Now this is just the way in which Bishop Colenso 
 should be served, and permitted to live on his own 
 property, or to earn his bread in an honest way by the 
 resources of his mind ; but not be allowed to exist, a 
 living scandal, on money paid by Christians for the 
 promotion of that period when " the earth shall be full 
 of the knowledge of the Lord," without any exception 
 of that written by Moses, " as the waters cover the 
 sea." But to return to our argument. 
 
 Moses was for centuries multiplied by centuries an 
 object of scorn in the writings of those wise men, wise 
 at least in their own conceits, until time discovered the 
 truth of his philosophy. " What an ignorant fool !" cried 
 out one class of the philosophers ; " why, he actually 
 speaks of light as having been created some days be- 
 fore the sun, when we know that the sun gives us 
 light." " And how simple he was," cried another, " to 
 afterwards contradict himself by stating that the sun 
 was created to give light upon the earth, and to rule 
 over the day." 
 
40 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 Well ; Moses did so write, and long afterwards the 
 inspired Psalmist, in ascribing glory to God, refers to 
 this account by Moses, and exclaims, "Thou hast 
 created the light, and the sun." 
 
 It is not necessary now to discuss this question, 
 which so long proved a far greater difficulty and ground 
 of objection to the Mosaic history, than the petty 
 arithmetical calculations of Bishop Colenso could pos- 
 sibly present. But it so happened that Moses was 
 right ; and if his revilers had possessed the least por- 
 tion of the spirit of the great Newton, who, in the 
 meridian splendour of his fame, felt himself as only a 
 little child gathering pebbles on the shore of nature, 
 they would not have been so forward to have pro- 
 claimed Moses a fool, and his writings a fable, or to 
 have sought to establish their poor philosophy, not 
 merely on the ruins of the wisdom and veracity of 
 Moses, but on the ruins of philosophy itself. 
 
 "What a fool!" cried out another set of philoso- 
 phers ; " he says, ' The blood is the life.' Was ever 
 greater nonsense published, when we know that the life 
 is in the brain ?" cried one class. " In some other part 
 of the body," cried another class of them. And though 
 the body was a very small sphere for discovery of 
 their theories, they could not agree among themselves 
 as to the seat of life, yet they all knew a fact, which 
 made them unanimous in crying down Moses as a fool. 
 In this they all agreed, because Moses wrote such folly 
 and fable as " The blood is the life." 
 
 We cannot now examine the passages in the other 
 sacred books which assume the truth of the philosophy 
 laid down by Moses on this subject. Of profane 
 authors, Virgil has a passage which has always led us 
 to suppose that he had some idea of the philosophy of 
 life. And we have met, we think, passages in other 
 heathen writers which show traces, though perhaps 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 41 
 
 faint ones, of this idea, but it is not our purpose now 
 to seek them out. Suffice it to say, that in this matter, 
 too, Moses stated the truth, the philosophy of the ques- 
 tion, which like many things in nature was suffered to 
 lie hidden for ages; and, during such period of its 
 having been so hidden, Moses had to bear the scorn 
 and insults of self-styled philosophers, who, like Bishop 
 Colenso, knew for certain a fact, which proved the 
 Mosaic theory a fable, and its author a fool and de- 
 ceiver of the human race. 
 
 But one day the truth burst in like a flood of light 
 on the mind of Hunter, while he was engaged, not 
 in seeking to reconcile Moses with truth, or philosophy 
 with Moses, or in thinking of Moses at all, but while 
 merely engaged in the study of his profession. And 
 Hunter demonstrated to the world, that "the blood 
 is the life," the living circulating principle. 
 
 And now, if we could imagine an assembly in one of 
 the great halls of London wholly composed of infidels, 
 and Satan himself, — the father of lies and the accuser 
 of Moses and the brethren, — in the chair, not one man, 
 with the least pretensions to knowledge, could be 
 found possessed of courage to stand up even in such 
 a constituted assembly and deny this fact, or charge 
 Moses with folly and falsehood for having so many 
 thousand years ago made the statement, "The blood 
 is the life." 
 
 And thus, as Moses, in respect to this point also, 
 has outlived the attacks of our " philosophers," so we 
 think that he will outlive the short term of the five 
 years granted by Bishop Colenso to the Church of 
 England, to be forsaken by the people if the Church 
 do not agree with the Bishop in proclaiming the Pen- 
 tateuch of Moses a fable and a lie. 
 
 We might bring forward other points on which the 
 philosophers of Bishop Colenso's School and Moses 
 
42 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 have been at variance ; and on which it also so hap- 
 pened that Moses either wrote the truth, or did not 
 write such inconsistency with truth or true philosophy 
 as those men, so puffed up with the idea of their own 
 wisdom, have ascribed to him. But let us turn to 
 another view of the question. 
 
 We shall now glance at some of the testimonies to 
 the learning and wisdom of Moses. 
 
 It is a fine remark of Sallust, that, considering the 
 nature and shortness of human life, our desire and aim 
 should be to make the remembrance of ourselves, 
 " memoriam nostri," as lasting as possible. But accord- 
 ing to the conceit of the ancients, to which Lord Bacon 
 refers, all men when dying had small medals with 
 their names and actions hung around their necks ; and 
 as their shades were being carried across the river 
 Lethe, the medals of most men fell into that river, 
 where all things were forgotten. But around some 
 few certain birds hovered, which caught up the falling 
 medals and carried them into the region of life and 
 immortality. 
 
 Whatever has become of the medals of the host of 
 calumniators of Moses we shall not waste time in in- 
 quiring. But of one thing we are not left in doubt, 
 that Moses lives, and shows not any symptom of decay. 
 Fifteen hundred years after his departure from this 
 world the first Christian martyr, when tracing from 
 the writings of Moses the dealings of God with man, 
 thus spake : 
 
 "Now Moses was learned in all the wisdom of 
 the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in 
 deeds." 
 
 We do not propose to give even a sketch of that 
 great nation, the ancient Egyptians. Suffice it to say 
 that a greater compliment or honour could not have 
 been bestowed on any man. But we may notice one 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 43 
 
 idea of theirs worthy of their greatness. It was their 
 custom to inscribe over the doors of their libraries, 
 " The medicine of the soul." A noble sentiment ! 
 showing that true knowledge is not to be obtained by 
 looking at books, or by consulting the index, or by 
 " reading by the margin," but by its being taken into 
 the soul as medicine is into the body, so as, in the 
 same manner that medicine does, to become one with, 
 part and parcel of, the soul. 
 
 On this idea our beautiful Collect gives a good 
 commentary, when we pray that we may so "hear, 
 read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest " the words of 
 the Holy Scriptures, that we may thereby "embrace 
 and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life," 
 to confer which those sacred writings were delivered 
 
 to man. 
 
 Now this is an idea in reference to which our mo- 
 dern professors of flippancy would do well to imitate 
 the wise example of the ancient Egyptians, and learn 
 at least their own ignorance, before they volunteer to 
 carp and cavil at the productions of great minds. 
 
 Moses has left behind him in his writings a name, 
 which, as it has survived the marble and brass that 
 have been in countless instances employed, and em- 
 ployed in vain, to perpetuate the memory of men who 
 left not any thing untried to force themselves on pos- 
 terity, will survive, when all the generations who 
 have trod this earth shall have passed with earth 
 itself into their original nothingness. His code of 
 laws has not only immortalized his name, but also 
 the names of men who, by consent of mankind, have 
 been entitled great because of their having had the 
 greatness to base their laws on the code of that great 
 lawgiver. 
 
 His Pentateuch, that fable of Bishop Colenso, was 
 publicly read from his own day down to the Christian 
 
4 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 era. At the first — the Apostolic — council of the Chris- 
 tian Church it was recorded : — " For Moses of old 
 time hath in every city them that preach him, being 
 read in the synagogues every sabbath day." Nay, his 
 countrymen were ordered to engrave his writings on 
 their door-posts, and also on the borders of their 
 garments, and to teach them to their children on all 
 occasions. 
 
 And from the Christian era to the present hour, 
 the name and writings of Moses, that forger of lies 
 in the name of the Lord, have travelled hand in hand 
 with the name of the Redeemer Himself, so that it 
 might, in a sense, be said of him, "Then I said, It is a 
 light thing that thou shouldest be My servant to raise 
 up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of 
 Israel. I will also give thee to be a light of the Gen- 
 tiles, that thou mayest be My salvation unto the ends 
 of the earth." 
 
 By the " fable " of Moses the Lord Jesus convicted 
 the Sadducees who denied the resurrection, by the 
 words which God spake by Moses out of the midst of 
 the bush, — "I am the God of Abraham, and the God 
 of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." 
 
 And by the testimony of the writer of the Penta- 
 teuch the Saviour proved His own mission, by showing 
 that the proof of His mission and the writings of 
 Moses must stand or fall together. " Think not that 
 I will accuse you unto the Father. There is one that 
 accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For 
 had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me ; 
 for he wrote of Me. But if ye believe not his writings, 
 how can ye believe My words?" 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 45 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Personal character of Moses — Piety aud nobility of mind exhi- 
 bited by Moses— Offer made him — Selected by God as the man 
 who only could have turned away His wrath— Appointed to appear 
 at the Transfiguration — Moses' name remembered in Heaven — 
 Moses the man whom Bishop Colenso charges with folly and 
 falsehood — The great scandal of the Bishop's conduct — "Way in 
 which the Bishop disposes of all testimony, even that of the 
 whole Scriptures and of Christ Himself — The Mission of Christ 
 to publish truth and warn against error — According to Bishop 
 Colenso that Mission a failure — Sin of speaking for God where 
 He has not spoken — This the crowning guilt of the Papacy — 
 Bishop Colenso would represent Christ as encouraging such sin 
 — Impiety as well as vanity of such mode of argument. 
 
 As to the piety, absence of selfishness, and nobility of 
 mind, which the life of Moses exhibits, language itself 
 would fail to do him justice. Let this one instance 
 speak. When such an offer was made to Moses, as 
 before or since was never made to man, he appeared 
 as if he never heard the words in which it was con- 
 veyed, and why ? He wholly forgot himself, and never 
 bestowed a thought on the dazzling glory presented 
 to his mind, because the honour of his Creator and 
 Master was at stake. 
 
 "And the LORD said unto Moses, How long will 
 this people provoke Me ? and how long will it be ere 
 they believe Me, for all the signs which I have showed 
 among them ? I will smite them with the pestilence, 
 and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater 
 nation and mightier than they. And Moses said unto 
 the Lord, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for Thou 
 broughtest up this people in Thy might from among 
 them ;) and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this 
 
46 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 land : for they have heard that Thou LORD art among 
 this people, that Thou LORD art seen face to face, 
 and that Thy cloud standeth over them, and that Thou 
 goest before them, by day time in a pillar of a cloud, 
 and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if Thou shalt 
 kill all this people as one man, then the nations which 
 have heard the fame of Thee will speak, saying, Be- 
 cause the LORD was not able to bring this people 
 into the land which He sware unto them, therefore 
 He hath slain them in the wilderness. And now, I 
 beseech Thee, let the power of my LORD be great, 
 according as Thou hast spoken, saying, The LORD is 
 Iongsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity 
 and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, 
 visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children 
 unto the third and fourth generation. Pardon, I be- 
 seech Thee, the iniquity of this people according unto 
 the greatness of Thy mercy, and as Thou hast forgiven 
 this people, from Egypt even until now." 
 
 To add one word of comment to this speech and 
 prayer, would be to destroy the force of one of the 
 most noble specimens of writing ever recorded. 
 
 This was the man whom the Almighty selected by 
 name, to show that if any individual of the human 
 race could have turned away His anger from a wicked 
 generation, Moses would have been the man. "Then 
 said the LORD unto me, Though Moses and Samuel 
 stood before Me, yet My mind could not be toward 
 this people." 
 
 This, too, was the man appointed by Heaven to 
 appear in company with Eli as at the transfiguration of 
 the Lord of life and glory. And this is the man whose 
 name shall be heard throughout all ages in the realms 
 of glory (for, in spite of the philosophy of Bishop 
 Colenso, we assume the truth of the Holy Scriptures), 
 in concert with that of the Redeemer Himself, as 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 47 
 
 often as the heavenly choir chant " the song of Moses 
 and of the Lamb." 
 
 And this is the man whom Doctor Colenso, a Chris- 
 tian Bishop, has dared to blaspheme ; whom in his 
 self-conceit this Bishop of Natal has stigmatized as an 
 inventor of fables, and wilful deceiver of mankind ; as 
 one who wrote lies, and wrote them in the name and 
 alleged words of that High and Lofty One that in- 
 habiteth eternity, whose Omnipotence is restrained by 
 one, only one, thing, that He cannot lie, — " God that 
 cannot lie." 
 
 If, we once more say, an avowed " fool," one who 
 would openly say, " I do not believe in a God ;" or a fool 
 of another class who would say, — " I believe in God, but 
 I will not believe that He could, or, if He could, that 
 He would, make a revelation of Himself to His crea- 
 tures," though God has made a revelation of Himself 
 in the Book of Nature, which infidels cannot deny; 
 if such men were to act thus, — as men of such avowed 
 opinions have in all ages acted, — reason is that we 
 might bear with them, for we cannot gather grapes of 
 thorns, or figs of thistles ; but that a Bishop of the 
 Church of Christ, and in full enjoyment of the position 
 and revenues of his high and sacred office, should 
 volunteer to thus come forward and blaspheme such a 
 man as Moses, to whom and to whose writings such 
 commanding and unqualified testimony has been borne ; 
 this — this is a disgrace and reproach not only to the 
 Bishop himself, but to the Church and Nation that 
 could tolerate such a crying scandal. 
 
 " Pudet hscc opprobria nobis 
 Et dici potuisse ; et non potuisse refelli." 
 
 We need not, however, wonder at this, when we 
 consider that Bishop Colenso, instead of bringing, as 
 he promised and vowed, every thought into subjection 
 
48 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 to Christ, has advanced the " one step left above them 
 all," and has impeached and insulted the word of the 
 Redeemer Himself. 
 
 The Bishop quotes some of the passages above cited, 
 in which Christ bears testimony to the character and 
 writings of Moses ; but of all this positive evidence, 
 and from such authority, Bishop Colenso disposes in 
 this very easy way: that as the Redeemer was very 
 man, and was said to have increased in wisdom, He 
 had not any more knowledge of such questions as the 
 truth of the Pentateuch, than any other Jew of the 
 day might have had ; that, in fact, the Saviour took 
 on trust the traditionary testimony to the credibility 
 of the Pentateuch, which the wisdom and " fact" of 
 Bishop Colenso now prove to the world is, after all, 
 a mere fable — a lie "spoken in the name of the 
 Lord." 
 
 This is the way in which the Bishop of Natal speaks 
 of Him who knew the thoughts of man, who needed 
 not that any should testify of man, for He knew what 
 was in man ; of Him who, unless the Bible be no better 
 than the fable of Mahomet, was " the Lord from hea- 
 ven;" and who, though He charged the Jews with 
 having made void the word of God, the Old Testa- 
 ment, by their traditions, never once charged them 
 even in the least degree with having added thereto or 
 taken therefrom. Such is the way in which Bishop 
 Colenso speaks of Him, who came to deliver truth to 
 man, and who referred to the Books of Moses, as we 
 have above set forth, as writings which must stand or 
 fall with the truth of His own mission and His own 
 words, the words of Him "in whom are hid all the 
 treasures of wisdom and knowledge;" of whom His 
 enemies in all ages have confessed " never man spake 
 like this man ;" and who in these words delivered the 
 final judgment against the appeal of the rich man in 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 49 
 
 hell to have a miracle wrought to convince his brethren 
 lest they also should come down to his gloomy abode, 
 " If they believe not Moses and the Prophets, neither 
 will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." 
 
 "But all this testimony must go to the idle winds, 
 and my testimony must stand, that the Pentateuch of 
 Moses is a mere fable ; and it must be a fable because 
 I, Bishop Colenso, know for certain a fact ; and I know 
 that fact because since my departure from England 
 I made much advance in some of the sciences, in 
 geology in particular." 
 
 This is the sum and substance of Bishop Colenso's 
 reasoning, and yet the Bishop is reported to be a 
 mathematician ! This easy mode of avoiding truth, 
 and disposing of the testimony of the Saviour, reminds 
 us of an instance, given in the masterly work on the 
 Atonement by Archbishop Magee, of the way in which 
 Priestly dealt with a passage of Holy Writ which 
 much perplexed the Socinian School. 
 
 " I never yet," says Priestly, (we quote from memory, 
 but we give the substance accurately,) "met with a 
 satisfactory explanation of this verse from any of our 
 body, ' And no man hath ascended up to heaven ; but 
 He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man 
 which is in heaven.' But sooner than admit the 
 absurdity (that was, in his eyes, the deity of Christ), 
 he would resort to the old Socinian notion, that Christ 
 after His birth was taken up into heaven to be in- 
 structed as a teacher, and sent down again, or that the 
 Apostle was old when he wrote the words (or, in plain 
 language, doting), or that he dictated one thing, and 
 his amanuensis wrote another." 
 
 This is certainly a most easy and convenient mode 
 of disposing of the Word of God, when any part thereof 
 may not suit our own notions. And this is the very 
 way in which Bishop Colenso deals with the sacred 
 
 D 
 
50 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 writings, and with the words of the Redeemer Him- 
 self, when those writings and words do not square with 
 the petty notions of his mind. 
 
 The mission of the Lord Jesus Christ was to publish 
 the truth, and to warn mankind against error and 
 falsehood of every kind. But Christ not only did not 
 warn men against errors in the Pentateuch ; He did 
 not say, " Do not lay any stress on My quotations or 
 references or testimonies to Moses; for while I thus 
 refer, quote, and testify, I warn the race of man against 
 all those foolish fables in the account of the Deluge, 
 and many other parts of that foolish work ;" but He 
 gave to Moses, and Moses' writings, unqualified testi- 
 mony, as we have now proved ; whereas, if the wisdom 
 of Bishop Colenso were to take the place of the Re- 
 velation of God, the Saviour should have rebuked 
 Moses, and with the greatest severity, for writing 
 fables and speaking lies; and especially for the daring 
 impiety of sending forth those fables and lies as if they 
 were the truth — the very words of the Almighty. For 
 of what more daring impiety could any creature be 
 guilty ? 
 
 What, for instance, is the crowning sin of the 
 Papacy ? Not — though so bad — the mere teaching of 
 transubstantiation, purgatory, saint-worship, image- 
 worship, and the other false doctrines, heresies, and 
 schisms of her new creed, — but her daring and blasphe- 
 mous presumption in usurping the name and preroga- 
 tive of Almighty God, and publishing to His creatures, 
 and in His Name, and as His truth, a new religion, 
 and enforcing the same on the consciences of men, 
 as conditions of Christian communion and salvation, 
 under pain of the heaviest penalties in this life, and 
 of eternal damnation in the life beyond the grave. 
 
 To represent, then, the blessed Redeemer as giving 
 His sanction and positive testimony to such wicked- 
 
TO IMrEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 51 
 
 ness, — for this is the only light in which the argument 
 of Bishop Colenso, when properly examined, can be 
 viewed, — this is indeed a new kind of impiety, and 
 taught by a Christian Bishop ! which is revolting to 
 the mind of any man who has the least knowledge of 
 himself or of his Creator. 
 
 " I grant you," writes this Christian Bishop, " that 
 Christ did thus quote and refer to, and testify of Moses ; 
 but even He, the Christ, the Son of the living God, knew 
 no more of the matter than did any Jew of the day." 
 He took all this on trust, and as none of the Jews of 
 that day, or before or since that day, and also as none 
 of the men who have lived in Christian times had the 
 knowledge and advance in some of the sciences of 
 which the Bishop of Natal can boast, then we are not 
 to place any reliance on one or all of them ; no, not 
 even on the testimony of Christ Himself, though He 
 was " the Lord from heaven." And therefore, to con- 
 clude all, Bishop Colenso was and is right in proclaim- 
 ing the writings of Moses a mere fable, and Moses 
 himself a deceiver, — a wilful deceiver, — who was not 
 afraid to pass off his fables as truth, and as truth spoken 
 in the name and words of the LORD. 
 
 u 'l 
 
52 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Not bound to answer objections of Bishop Colenso — His fallacy of 
 reasoning from such objections — The remark of Origen adopted 
 and improved on by Butler — Those objections do not furnish any 
 ground for the conclusion of Bishop Colenso— The Bishop's re- 
 marks respecting the Pentateuch and Inspiration — The testi- 
 mony of the Kedeemer that the words of Moses and of God are 
 one and the same — The Saviour's definition of Inspiration — The 
 vanity of Bishop Colenso in supposing that men of past ages 
 never examined the grounds of belief— The superior vigour and 
 learning of former ages. 
 
 We are not bound to examine, with a view to their 
 solution, the objections which Bishop Colenso brings 
 forward as the lever by which he would overturn the 
 Christian religion, — we say the Christian religion, — 
 for in spite of all professions to the contrary, from 
 whatever motive pleaded, his work at least endeavours 
 to overthrow Christianity, and to substitute mere deism 
 in its place. We have abundantly proved in former 
 chapters the fallacy of his mode of reasoning from 
 difficulties, objections, and cavils against writings sus- 
 tained by an overwhelming weight of positive evi- 
 dence ; the rejection of which would convert the 
 history of the world into an idle tale, and put a bar in 
 the way of all belief. 
 
 We shall, however, touch on those objections ; but 
 only to discuss them in the way which we have laid 
 down, to show that those difficulties, even if we admit 
 them to be such, do not furnish any ground to justify 
 the pretensions of Bishop Colenso to impeach the 
 varacity of Moses by denouncing his writings as a fable 
 and a lie. 
 
 Even far greater grounds of objection, founded on 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 53 
 
 our ignorance or inability to comprehend all the mys- 
 teries and difficulties in the economy of our Maker, 
 would not justify such a \ery illogical conclusion as 
 that to which Bishop Colenso would lead us, that 
 the works in which those mysteries and difficulties are 
 found must be mere fable and falsehood. 
 
 There is true wisdom in the remark of Oriffen, on 
 which Bishop Butler has founded his immortal work, 
 "That he who believes the Scripture to have pro- 
 ceeded from Him who is the Author of Nature, may 
 well expect to find the same sort of difficulties in it, 
 as are found in the constitution of Nature." On which 
 remark Butler thus so well improves, "And in a like 
 way of reflection it may be added, that he who denies 
 the Scripture to have been from God upon account of 
 these difficulties, may, for the very same reason, deny 
 the world to have been formed by Him." 
 
 The Almighty Ruler of the Universe unfolds from 
 age to age many things that are true and of the 
 greatest value, and that were hidden for centuries 
 from the greatest minds, and only discovered when in 
 the exercise of His Providence He made them plain. 
 But, even while thus hidden, he would not have been 
 accounted a very wise man who would have made 
 those difficulties, and his inability to comprehend and 
 explain them, from whatever cause that inability may 
 have proceeded, a ground for denouncing the book of 
 nature as a fable and a lie. 
 
 What a pity that, before he so exposed himself, 
 Bishop Colenso did not ask his own mind the ques- 
 tion : — " Has the Creator endowed me above all men 
 with such infallible means of arriving at the know- 
 ledge and truth of all questions, that I can understand 
 and solve all mysteries and difficulties in the works of 
 nature and grace, so that what I say must rule the 
 world?" 
 
54 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 We shall then only examine the cavils of Bishop 
 Colenso to prove how very little ground they furnish 
 for such assumption on his part of that superior wisdom 
 and veracity which he is not indulgent enough to 
 concede to Moses, or, indeed, even to the Redeemer 
 Himself, who said, " I am the light of the world." 
 
 In the first section of his introductory remarks to 
 his objections, the Bishop gives a definition of the 
 word Pentateuch, as also a sketch of its history as 
 ascribed to Moses by general belief, and of the way in 
 which Moses may have obtained his information. " It 
 is believed," the Bishop writes, " he (Moses) was under 
 such constant control and superintendence of the 
 Spirit of God that he w T as kept from any serious 
 error, and certainly from writing any thing altogether 
 untrue." "It is believed," that is, such is the state- 
 ment usually made — made by men of weak minds — 
 but which we philosophers who know any thing of 
 science must reject as absurd and untrue. 
 
 There was not any necessity for all the Bishop's 
 writing and quotations to give any explanation of in- 
 spiration. The matter is very simple. It is a mere 
 question of truth or falsehood. Moses states that he 
 wrote by command of God, as instructed by God, and 
 in many places he records words as the very words and 
 commands of God. And Moses was not excepted by 
 the Apostle, when he said, " Holy men of God spake 
 as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." And Christ 
 Himself confirms the claim of Moses to have written 
 by express command of God, by making the words 
 written by Moses one and the same as the words of 
 God. 
 
 " But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have 
 ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, 
 saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of 
 Isaac, and the God of Jacob?" Again; "And as 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 55 
 
 touching the dead, that they rise ; have ye not read in 
 the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto 
 him, saying," &c. ? There is not therefore any need of 
 arguments or quotations. The question is, we say, a 
 mere matter of fact, — Which is the more credible ? 
 Bishop Colenso, who charges on Moses the sin of 
 writing folly and falsehood in the name, and as the 
 truth of God ; or Moses, who says that he did write in 
 the name of God, by the command of God, and the 
 very words of God ; or Christ Himself, who has set His 
 seal to the testimony of Moses on this very question ? 
 
 If it were our present business to discuss the posi- 
 tion, how the Eternal Spirit acts on the human mind, 
 or to give any positive instruction on this subject to 
 believers in the inspired Volume, we might produce 
 much and profitable matter. But such is not our 
 point ; nor is it the way to answer Bishop Colenso, or 
 such a specimen of vanity and science, falsely so called, 
 as his book displays. 
 
 We content ourselves with this observation, — that 
 the best mode of arriving at some idea of this ques- 
 tion (for, after all, what can we know of such a lofty 
 subject in our present imperfect condition ?) is to give 
 the words of our Lord, to show the way in which the 
 Holy Spirit may have influenced the inspired writers 
 in days before His coming, by the way in which the 
 same Spirit was to influence the Apostles of the Chris- 
 tian Church : — " Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, 
 is come, He will guide you into all truth ; for He shall 
 not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, 
 that shall He speak : and He will show you things to 
 come." 
 
 Our Almighty Creator, who wills the happiness of 
 His creatures, and who published His glorious Revela- 
 tion to give them light and joy in this dark vale of 
 tears, — who, in His own words, makes them "rejoice 
 
56 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 from their sorrow," — can select, in the exercise of that 
 Providence which " ordereth all things both in heaven 
 and in earth," any instruments to promote His bene- 
 volent and merciful ends. He not only ordains the 
 end, but appoints also the means by which that end is 
 attained. He may choose, as He has done, an Isaiah, 
 or a Jeremiah, or a St. John, or a Saul of Tarsus ; and 
 leave each without any constraint to pursue his own 
 style ; and yet guard one and all of such instruments 
 from writing: anv thing; but truth — and His truth. 
 And so with respect to the writings of Moses, to 
 which, independently of other testimony, the Lord 
 Jesus Christ has set His seal that they are the truth — 
 the very words of God ; but which, notwithstanding 
 all this evidence, Bishop Colenso has discovered and 
 proved to be a fable ! 
 
 In his next paragraph the Bishop writes, — "But 
 among the many results of that remarkable activity, in 
 scientific inquiry of every kind, which, by God's own 
 gift, distinguishes the present age, this must also be 
 reckoned, that attention and labour are now being 
 bestowed, more closely than ever before, to search into 
 the real foundations for such a belief as this." 
 
 Now, we very humbly hope that, if our volume 
 should reach Bishop Colenso or any disciples of his 
 School, they will not be displeased if we say, that all 
 this is most wretched boasting in the eyes of any one 
 who has read the productions of great minds, and of 
 great minds of ages long past. It is an astonishing 
 display of vanity on the part of Bishop Colenso, and 
 his guides and followers, to imagine that they are the 
 only wise men ; that wisdom was born or will die with 
 them ; and that the age which produced them is the 
 only age that ever made any advance in science, or 
 " any search into the real foundations for such a belief 
 as this." 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 57 
 
 This is mere " learned nonsense," or " learned ierno- 
 ranee ;" we do not now remember which of those 
 terms is used by Locke to expose such affectation of 
 learning. The reading of any man must have been 
 wonderfully contracted who can persuade himself that 
 this is the age, and that the great men of former times 
 were fools, or that they never made any search into 
 those points which, as Bishop Colenso thinks, escaped 
 the notice of other men. 
 
 We must, however, confess that we have found one 
 original objection to the Pentateuch in the book of 
 Bishop Colenso. But as we do not desire to enter on 
 that original idea of the Bishop, either to deprive him 
 of the merit so justly due to him for having thought of 
 such a point, or to discuss such a very peculiar ques- 
 tion, we shall not bestow more notice on the subject 
 than to express our wonder that Bishop Colenso should 
 have made the truth of the Revelation of God to man 
 to depend on his difficulty as to how a large encamp- 
 ment of human beings were to find means for relieving 
 the " common necessities of nature ! " Oh ! Bishop 
 Colenso ! Bishop Colenso ! " O temporal O mores !" 
 
 But to pass by this, so far as we have ever read, most 
 original argument against the truth of the writings of 
 Moses, we say, that the study of the works of former 
 days have given a distaste for modern productions, and 
 especially for the productions of too many of our phi- 
 losophers of the nineteenth century. There was, as has 
 been observed, a smell of the lamp about the works of 
 men of former ages, which is not to be found in every 
 writer of the present day. 
 
 We have great men now, and they are men who are 
 not forward on every occasion to make a loud noise to 
 attract attention ; but still we believe what we have 
 said as to the writings of men of days now numbered 
 with " the years beyond the flood," and we state our 
 
58 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 belief with the view of giving such boasting philoso- 
 phers a hint not to be so overwise in their own ignorant 
 conceit, as to conclude that there have not existed in 
 the world as deep and able critics as Bishop Colenso 
 and his " brave souls who yearn for light, and battle 
 for the truth." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Further notice of the Animals in the Ark — The design of God in this 
 — No greater difficulty than the bestowal of instinct — No more 
 difficulty to God in sustaining them than in the way in which 
 He provides for such a variety of creatures — The wonderful in- 
 stinct of animals an argument of the wisdom and power of God 
 — The Almighty not to be called to account by man — Supposed 
 case of a man for the first time seeing the difficulties in the 
 world — The conclusion to which Bishop Colenso would drive 
 such a man — The rod of Moses — The ass of Balaam — Admitted 
 folly of such things possible apart from the interference of God 
 — No room for arithmetic here — Slavery — "His money " — The 
 Quixotic attack on Moses for use of the words — Moses did not 
 establish Slavery — Laid down just laws for all classes. 
 
 We have already noticed, though merely noticed, the 
 great point of Bishop Colenso, the impossibility of 
 animals congregating and entering into the ark for the 
 preservation of their lives from the approaching ruin of 
 earth. This was the stone of stumbling to the un- 
 taught Zulu, whose very natural doubts the Bishop an- 
 swered in the way described in former chapters. This 
 point, too, furnished the Bishop one unanswerable 
 argument against the truth of the Mosaic history, and 
 in favour of his conclusion that the whole account is 
 fable, and lies spoken in the name of the Lord. 
 
 In our quotation from Ovid we have seen the 
 description, founded on tradition, of the fruitless efforts 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 59 
 
 of all not shut up in the ark to rescue themselves from 
 the fury of the waters of heaven and earth when met 
 in concord to overwhelm this lower world. Moses 
 states that the Creator, designing to keep some alive, 
 did by the actings of His Providence cause them to 
 take refuge in the ark, to be saved from the universal 
 destruction, and to be kept alive for the use of earth 
 and its inhabitants who were to survive the deluge, and 
 to be links in the great chain of His plan of trans- 
 mitting to all future generations the proof of His 
 faithfulness, Who, when building the pillar to set 
 forth His power, justice, and glory, crowns it with, 
 " Who keepeth His promise for ever." 
 
 We have shown that the endowment of the mere 
 animal creation, beasts, birds, and fishes, with the 
 astonishing instinct which they possess is as great a 
 wonder, if carefully examined, as would be their flock- 
 ing to the ark under the guidance of His Providence. 
 With the one we are so familiar that we never bestow 
 a thought on the subject. The other is of course con- 
 trary to common experience. We need not go into 
 any question of the size of the ark, or of the difficulty 
 of bringing the animals into or of supporting them in 
 the same. To the Creator the one is as easy as the 
 other. His greatness and wisdom are as much dis- 
 played in gilding the wing of the butterfly, as in the 
 regulation of the innumerable orbs which stud the 
 firmament. 
 
 Pliny was amazed at the " stupendous littleness " of 
 a gnat, as a proof of the greatness of the Creator. 
 What would have been his wonder had he known the 
 microscope, and by it have seen the multitude of 
 creatures that find a dwelling in a drop of water? 
 There could not then be in the nature of the thing 
 any derogation from His greatness on the part of the 
 Creator in an arrangement to keep alive the works of 
 
60 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 His hands ; and for His own purposes, purposes of 
 which we now can see so little. The bestowal of the 
 instinct was as great an exercise of His power and 
 wisdom, as the acting on that instinct in order to pre- 
 serve seed of His creatures for carrying out of His 
 plans then only in the womb of time. 
 
 And what greater difficulty to the Creator in sus- 
 taining them during the days that the windows of 
 heaven were open, and the fountains and foundations 
 of the earth were broken up, than in the astonishing, 
 incredible if we did not see it, way in which Almighty 
 God in His goodness now provides for the vast multi- 
 tudes of beings that inhabit the earth, the sea, and the 
 air ? " Can God furnish a table in the wilderness ?" 
 " Can He give bread also ?" was the cry of old, and may 
 be the cry of " philosophers " of our own day. But to 
 any well-regulated and reflecting mind it will be mani- 
 fest that the way in which " Our Father, who is in 
 Heaven," provides " daily bread," not merely for man, 
 but for the endless variety of His creatures that people 
 earth, sea, and sky, is a constant succession of wonders, 
 nay, almost miracle upon miracle. 
 
 The very bread by which man is fed, the way in 
 which it is produced, and in which it supports life, is as 
 great a difficulty, if we exclude the interposition and 
 appointment of the Creator, as the assembling and sup- 
 porting of His creatures in the ark. 
 
 We do not propose a dissertation on this subject. 
 Nor are we called on by the plan of our work, nor by 
 any thing in the volume of Bishop Colenso, to give any 
 solution of the difficulties in question, or of any diffi- 
 culties in the book of nature or of the book of grace ; 
 as if we were obliged or were competent to explain 
 the whole, or even the smallest part, of that amazing- 
 process by which the economy of the Creator is con- 
 ducted ; or as if we had the right or power to bring 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 61 
 
 down that wisdom and understanding which are in- 
 finite to the level of our ignorance and folly. But it 
 may profit some of our readers to have their attention 
 called to those displays of the power and wisdom of 
 God in things that, because of every-day occurrence, 
 not only might, but actually do, escape the notice of too 
 large a portion of the human race. 
 
 On the endowment of animal creatures with the 
 instinct which they exhibit, and which could be the 
 work of God alone, the learned Mr. Ray, already 
 quoted, writes : that " it is a great argument of a 
 superior Author of their and other natures, who hath 
 endued them with these instincts, whereby they are 
 as it were acted and driven to bring about ends which 
 themselves aim not at (so far as we can discern), but 
 are directed to; for (as Aristotle observes) 'they act 
 not by art, neither do they inquire, neither do they 
 deliberate about what they do.' 
 
 "And, therefore, as Dr. Cudworth saith well, they 
 are not masters of that wisdom according to which 
 they act, but only passive to the instincts and impresses 
 thereof upon them. And indeed to affirm, that brute 
 animals do all these things by a knowledge of their 
 own, and which themselves are masters of, and that 
 without deliberation and consultation, were to make 
 them to be endued with a most perfect intellect, far 
 transcending that of human reason ; whereas it is plain 
 enough that brutes are not above consultation, but 
 below it, and that these instincts of nature in them are 
 nothing but a kind of fate upon them. 
 
 " The migration of birds from an hotter to a colder 
 country, or a colder to an hotter, according to the 
 seasons of the year, as their nature is, I know not how 
 to give an account of, it is so strange and admirable. 
 What moves them to shift their quarters ? You will 
 say, the disagreeableness of the temper of the air to 
 
62 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 the constitution of their bodies, or want of food. But 
 how come they to be directed to the same place yearly, 
 though sometimes but a little island, the soland goose 
 to the Bass of Edinburgh Frith, which they could not 
 possibly see, and so it could have no influence upon 
 them that way? The cold or the heat might possibly 
 drive them in a right line from either; but that they 
 should impel land-birds to venture over a wide ocean, 
 of which they can see no end, is strange and unac- 
 countable; one would think that the sight of so much 
 water, and present fear of drowning, should overcome 
 the sense of hunger, or disagreeableness of the temper 
 of the air. 
 
 " Besides, how come they to steer their course aright 
 to their several quarters, which before the compass 
 was invented was hard for man himself to do, they 
 being not able, as I noted before, to see them at that 
 distance ? Think we that the quails, for instance, 
 could see quite across the Mediterranean sea? and 
 yet it is clear they fly out of Italy into Africa, lighting 
 many times on ships in the midst of the sea, to rest 
 themselves when tired and spent with flying. That 
 they should thus shift places, is very convenient for 
 them, and accordingly we see they do it : which seems 
 to be impossible they should, unless themselves were 
 endued with reason, or directed and acted by a superior 
 intelligent cause." 
 
 Seeing then that " God is greater than man," and 
 that He giveth not account of any of His matters, 
 " Am I," any person with proper knowledge of himself, 
 and with due reverence for his Maker, would say, " Am 
 I to challenge the Most High because He has not 
 discovered to me all His plans, and the windings of 
 His ways, which are unsearchable and past finding 
 out? and because I cannot see into those plans and 
 wavs which He has thus concealed from the range of 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 63 
 
 my finite vision, am I to turn infidel, and insult and 
 deny the truth, nay, the existence of the book of na- 
 ture in which these difficulties are thus published?" 
 
 And yet these are only a small portion of the large 
 collection of difficulties which the same book contains. 
 And the book of nature not only records such diffi- 
 culties, but we see them before our eyes every day. 
 We therefore must admit though we cannot give any 
 explanation of them, except the will of the Almighty. 
 We at least cannot from their existence deny the truth 
 of God speaking in the book of nature. 
 
 But if we imagine the case of a man brought into 
 the world without any knowledge of those subjects, 
 because without any experience of his own, and with- 
 out the advantage of "standing on the shoulders of 
 those who have gone before," and thus becoming 
 "aged in a moment;" but yet such a man endued 
 with a vigorous mind, and with all means for the ex- 
 ercise of its powers; then such a man might very 
 naturally doubt on all those points involving the 
 difficulties now named, and might, nay, must go even 
 so for as to declare, on the principle laid down by 
 Bishop Colenso, the whole book of nature a mere 
 fable. 
 
 And on the same principle are we to blaspheme the 
 God of grace, and deny the truth of His revelation, 
 because we do not every day see a flood, an ark, and 
 animals directed to it for shelter and for preservation 
 of life ? Is the one more impossible to the Creator 
 than the other ? more difficult for the exercise of His 
 power, of which His pious servant said, " I know that 
 Thou canst do all things ?" And are we to go farther, 
 and cavil at and deny the truth of His book of grace ? 
 And if we do, then, to be consistent, we must deny 
 the truth of all writings, of every thing ; because we 
 do not know the way in which the Greater exercises 
 
64 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 His Providence, and acts on the minds and instincts 
 of His creatures. Of course, as we have before said, 
 all these instances, the difficulties in the book of na- 
 ture or in the book of grace, assume the interference 
 of the Supreme Being, or else the discussion of the 
 question for even a single moment would be only 
 waste of time. 
 
 And are we to be turned from the path of wisdom — 
 that " path which no fowl knoweth, and which the 
 vulture's eye hath not seen," and which can be dis- 
 covered to us only by the God of wisdom, — by such a 
 mode of cavilling as that by which the author of the 
 wretched work in question seeks to pervert the right 
 ways of the Lord, and to turn men aside from the 
 path of light and truth ? 
 
 THE ROD OF MOSES AND THE ASS OF BALAAM. 
 
 The rod of Moses and the ass of Balaam have fur- 
 nished in all ages many a scoff to infidels of every 
 class. Bishop Colenso introduces these two incidents 
 as part of a collection of points which help to make up 
 his " fact," by which he proves the Pentateuch utterly 
 destitute of truth. And while the Bishop enters 
 largely into calculations as to population and the laws 
 of increase, the food of animals, and the exact space 
 into wdiich a given number of the human race may be 
 crowded, — or some such childish specimens of the 
 powers of a certain class of philosophers, — the rod of 
 Moses, and the ass that " speaking with man's voice 
 forbad the madness of the prophet," he seems to dis- 
 miss with the contempt becoming a great mind ; much 
 like the way adopted by the great men of old, who 
 would not condescend to even discuss the merits of 
 the mission of Christ, but settled the question with 
 " Can any thing good come out of Nazareth ?" 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 65 
 
 Now does Bishop Colenso imagine that we are all 
 fools, — or that Moses who wrote these matters was a 
 fool, — to believe that, in the ordinary course of nature, 
 a rod could become a serpent, or that an ass should 
 speak with man's voice ? There is not any room for 
 arithmetic here. No plus or minus will explain or 
 refute those two most extraordinary circumstances. 
 
 We shall not offer any explanation of such, nor 
 shall we discuss the question of the difficulty ; nor of 
 the occasion, or the grand result of the confounding 
 the sorcerers who lent themselves to practise and trade 
 upon a people, who, though then the greatest nation 
 on earth for wisdom and learning, were spell-bound by 
 the most wicked, cruel, and debasing superstition and 
 idolatry. To the peculiar belief and practices of that 
 nation the plagues, and the means by which the mis- 
 sion of Moses was established, were especially adapted. 
 The reader will find those points ably and unanswerably 
 treated in the several works written on that part of 
 the question. 
 
 To come then to our prescribed mode of examina- 
 tion of the superior wisdom and veracity of Bishop 
 Colenso over that of the inspired writers, we say, — It 
 is not necessary to prove the self-evident proposition, 
 that a rod is not, and could not of itself become, a ser- 
 pent, and that an ass could not speak ; and that daily 
 experience proves the truth of this position. The poor 
 ass can only bray ; and the bray is his prayer for food. 
 For "doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?" 
 The bray is like the young lion's prayer described in 
 the psalm, " The young lions roar after their prey, and 
 seek their meat from God." 
 
 And does Bishop Colenso imagine that we are not 
 as much startled as he can be at the idea of the " dumb 
 ass speaking with man's voice?" And to pass away 
 from ourselves to Moses, the vilified and grossly in- 
 
 E 
 
66 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 suited servant of God, and to the Apostles of our Lord, 
 who said that they did not follow " cunningly-devised 
 fables," we wonder that it did not occur to Bishop 
 Colenso, that, as Moses was one of the greatest of 
 men, he must have known the utter absurdity of 
 writing, that a dumb ass that by nature can only bray 
 should speak with man's voice ; and that his writing 
 such a statement would furnish food, in all ages, for 
 those scoffs and gibes, which are " wont to set the table 
 in a roar." We might, by the way, ask such philoso- 
 phers' empty skulls, " Where be your gibes now?" 
 
 Birds can be taught to speak, but the poor donkey 
 can only bray. And Moses knew all this. It was not 
 reserved for the nineteenth century to prove the con- 
 trary. And a man like Moses could not have written 
 such statements if they had not been true. He would 
 not have had the moral courage to have sent out such, 
 if they had not happened ; just as St. Paul never could 
 have sent out his "We preach Christ crucified," in 
 answer to the bigoted Jews and the philosophizing 
 Greeks ; or his " God forbid that I should glory, save 
 in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." To the natural 
 mind the one is as great an absurdity and stumbling- 
 block as the other, if we view the subject apart from 
 the purposes and interposition of the Creator and 
 Redeemer of the World. 
 
 With what different eyes men see ! Numbers of 
 our race, indeed an innumerable multitude of beings 
 endowed with reason, have concluded the truth of all 
 this from the fact of its having been recorded by a 
 servant of God like Moses, who was also commissioned 
 by God to deliver such striking prophecies, the fulfil- 
 ment of which are before our eyes at this present 
 day. 
 
 If we did not regard the Pentateuch as part of the 
 Revelation of God, we should not discuss this ques- 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 67 
 
 tion ; so we do not require the wisdom or veracity of 
 Bishop Colenso to teach us that, in the course of nature, 
 an ass could not speak with man's voice. And yet 
 the great and good and wise Moses so spake ; and so 
 it was believed by all the inspired writers down to the 
 Apostle Peter, who wrote — " The dumb ass, speaking 
 with man's voice, forbad the madness of the prophet." 
 But all those men lived before the days of our modern 
 philosophers ! 
 
 THE SLAVE " HIS MONEY. 
 
 There is in his preface only one more objection on 
 which Bishop Colenso founds his charge against Moses 
 as the writer of fables, with the notice of which we 
 shall trouble ourselves or our readers. We refer to 
 the question of slavery. The Bishop describes the 
 horror of his Zulu and of himself when the words 
 came before them — " For he is his money." Was that 
 the first time that the Bishop ever read or heard of 
 those words % We do not speak of the poor Zulu, for 
 he did not know any thing of the Holy Scriptures ; he 
 was not born in a Christian land ; was not educated at 
 a Christian University ; did not voluntarily enter into 
 holy orders ; was not a rector or vicar of a parish, or 
 afterwards a Bishop ; we, therefore, make every allow- 
 ance for him. 
 
 But it does seem strange that a Bishop should have 
 been, for the first time in his life, horror-struck with 
 the words " for he is his money," and should have 
 determined from that moment to go forth in the spirit 
 of Don Quixote against the book in which such wick- 
 edness was proclaimed, and prove to all men of the 
 present day, and for the benefit — indeed we suppose 
 happiness — of " generations yet unborn," that the 
 
 E 2 
 
68 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 book, in which such a dreadful sentence is recorded, 
 is not the revelation of God, but a mere medley of 
 fable, folly, falsehood, and wrong. This is not a his- 
 torical question ; this is a question, in the Bishop's 
 view of the Pentateuch, containing most fearfully cruel 
 and otherwise wicked principles. 
 
 " Master, Master," said Sancho to Don Quixote, 
 " they be but very sheep," when, having charged a 
 windmill, the knight was about to attack the unoffend- 
 ing flock as enemies to the human race. But the poor 
 Don, bent on the high resolve to root out all oppression 
 from the earth, was not to be restrained by the remon- 
 strance of Sancho. As he charged the windmill, so he 
 charged the sheep. And he has left behind him an 
 immortal name. 
 
 It appears to us as if the Bishop of Natal and the 
 Zulu had changed places, and that, instead of teaching 
 Christianity to the Zulu race, the Bishop was by 
 them confirmed in — we will not say taught — infi- 
 delity. The only difference was, that the poor Zulu 
 had not the office or emoluments of the See. We 
 certainly do feel astonished at such incidents, which 
 led to the attack by Bishop Colenso on the Inspired 
 Volume, which was not guilty of any thing, so far as 
 we can see, which could justify such determined — 
 indeed malignant — enmity on the part of a Christian 
 bishop. 
 
 Many persons in all ages have read this passage 
 again and again, and have regarded it as a most 
 righteous law. 
 
 Moses did not establish slavery; nor did he ori- 
 ginate the remarkable prophecy respecting slavery as 
 a curse on the race of Ham. Moses dealt with slavery 
 as an existing system, the abolition of which was 
 beyond his control. Any thing approaching to the 
 slave trade, the laws delivered by Moses punished with 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 69 
 
 death ; the penalty which attached to the crime of 
 man-stealing was, " He that stealeth a man shall 
 surely be put to death." 
 
 But here was a whole race of slaves ; not a few men 
 stolen from their homes and compelled to serve, but a 
 whole race under the mysterious ban of servitude, 
 which no earthly power could have, or ever has, 
 removed. Moses, then, had only to lay down laws 
 for the proper treatment of the slave ; and to lay 
 them down not merely for the slave, but also with 
 regard to the position of the master, to lay down just 
 laws ; for the slave was the property of his master — in 
 fact " his money." Slavery is a terrible curse ; but 
 the slave was then, and is now, in slave countries, the 
 property of his master. But, under the Jewish law, 
 the master had not the power of life and death. 
 
 Horace speaks of one who would crucify his slave 
 for merely gobbling up, when removing the remains 
 of the supper, the half-eaten fishes and the sauce; and 
 he says, that such a man would be counted more 
 insane than the special type of a madman whom he 
 selects. This is where Horace pleads that punishment 
 should always be dealt out in proportion to the nature 
 of the crime. And this, which Horace learned from 
 the light of nature — from those eternal and immu- 
 table laws which the Creator has written as with a 
 sunbeam — was precisely what Moses here laid down. 
 
 We have various terms for the taking away of life, 
 "wilful murder," "manslaughter," "justifiable homicide," 
 "accidental death." What would be thought of our sense 
 of justice, if we were to visit with life for life the person 
 whose act might come under the last two cases — make 
 no difference between wilful murder and justifiable 
 homicide or accidental death — but hang indiscrimi- 
 nately under all those circumstances ? 
 
 This rash mode of punishment was all that Moses 
 
70 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 forbad. And he laid down principles of justice which 
 were to rule the decisions of the judges ; and if a man 
 beat a slave, and the slave did not die under his hand, 
 but perhaps died some time afterwards, it was not a 
 case of wilful murder — where blood would be required 
 for blood ; as the presumption would be that the 
 master would not wilfully kill his slave, seeing that 
 the slave was his property — " his money." 
 
 We do not write merely to answer Bishop Colenso ; 
 and, therefore, we have in this, as in other instances, 
 enlarged on the subject of his objections, because they 
 furnish occasion for useful information ; and, chiefly, 
 to show specimens of the wretched system of arguing 
 by which Bishop Colenso endeavours to undermine 
 and destroy the credibility of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 But, some may exclaim, slavery is a cursed system, 
 and surely you would not plead for its existence. 
 Nothing can be farther from our mind, or our desire. 
 But we say to the most bitter and malignant hater of 
 the Bible, — who, like Satan in his address to the Sun, 
 would desire it to shine out " that I may tell thee 
 how I hate thy beams;" — we would say to such a man, — 
 The Bible did not invent or establish slavery : and, unless 
 you contend for the absurdity that the world was 
 created and is governed by chance, you must look 
 upon slavery as a most mysterious and painful Provi- 
 dential infliction on the human race. 
 
 And, after all, what is the worst form of slavery, and 
 its most debased and debasing effects, when compared 
 with the horrors and effects of slavery under the cursed 
 domination of vice — a slavery not confined to the 
 doomed race of Ham, but a slavery spread over all 
 nations, and the tyrant of every age, and clime, and 
 people ? This slavery robs a man of all property in 
 himself, breaks and casts to the wind every social tie, 
 brings its victims down from the image of God below 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 71 
 
 the level of the brute creation, and converts earth into 
 a den of murderers — into a very hell. 
 
 And the worst feature in this slavery is, that, whereas 
 the poor slave of the race of Ham receives daily food, 
 and like 
 
 " God's image disinherited of day, 
 Here, plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made ;" 
 
 he may, under some circumstances, forget his chain ; 
 or, even unconscious of its existence, may regard his 
 home as the " happiest spot below." 
 
 " The naked negro, panting at the line, 
 Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine, 
 Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave, 
 And thanks his Gods for all the good they gave." 
 
 There is some truth beneath those simple and beautiful 
 lines. Still, while writing thus, we fully adopt the 
 sentiments in the well-known words of another writer, 
 " Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery, thou art a 
 bitter draught ; and though thousands have, in all ages, 
 been made to drink of thee, thou art not the less bitter 
 on that account." However, what we have said holds 
 good ; but the poor slave of vice does not receive any 
 wages in return for the hard bondage with which he is 
 made to serve. " Now therefore, what have I here, 
 saith Jehovah, that My people is taken away for nought ? 
 They that rule over them make them to howl, saith 
 the Lord ; and My name continually every day is blas- 
 jmemed." 
 
 Here, then, Bishop Colenso, we have something like 
 a difficulty; a difficulty greater than Moses saying 
 that the slave was his master's money ; and a difficulty 
 that rises far above your petty difficulties founded on 
 your application of your plus and minus, your square 
 feet and square yards, your measurement of the Court 
 
72 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 of Tabernacles, to find out how many human beings 
 may be crowded into the same ! 
 
 And must we learn from you, in the exercise of your 
 functions as a Christian Bishop, to conclude, that the 
 books of Nature, of Providence, and of Grace, in which 
 these dreadful difficulties are recorded, — difficulties 
 " written with a pen of iron, and point of a diamond," 
 — are mere compilations of fables and lies ? 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Further consideration of objections — The Family of Judah— "Way 
 in which this point is viewed by others — The Bishop's mode of 
 arguing — The Bishop not to be believed, unless he prove his 
 commission to deliver a new Revelation — The size of the Taber- 
 nacle — The Bishop's ludicrous assumptions and arguments — His 
 petitio principii here as in all his writing — Moses never meant 
 any thing so absurd as that with which Bishop Colenso charges 
 him — The Bishop's wish father to his thought in this attack on 
 Moses — Moses and Joshua reading in the hearing of all the 
 people — The Bishop's laughable view of this — Common-sense 
 meaning — Arguing on the ludicrous view of the Bishop would 
 overthrow the whole Bevelation of God — The speaking-trumpet 
 — The trumpet of Alexander the Great — The littleness of such 
 objections — The extent of the Camp — The Bishop's originality 
 in this objection — Absurdity of his argument — "Will afford much 
 laughter to infidels. 
 
 FAMILY OF JUDAH. 
 
 In treating this question in such a way as to involve 
 the sacred writers in contradiction to themselves, the 
 Bishop's point is, that Hezron and Hamul, sons of 
 Pharez, " were born in the land of Canaan." This, the 
 Bishop says, " appears to me certain, that the writer 
 here means to say so much" The inspired writer 
 says, that threescore and ten persons, the family of 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 73 
 
 Jacob, went down into Egypt. And in Genesis we 
 read, threescore and six persons, besides Jacob's sons' 
 wives. And the sons of Joseph, with Jacob and 
 Joseph, would make up the threescore and ten of the 
 family, then settlers in Egypt. 
 
 When we read of the family of Jacob that went 
 down into Egypt and settled there with their father, 
 we think of the promise of God to Abraham, of which 
 that little band was the depositary ; that promise of 
 Him "who keepeth His covenant for ever," and on 
 which countless millions have in all ages suspended 
 their hopes — even in the land of captivity and afflic- 
 tion ; and without hope in which the afflictions of 
 time would drive men mad, by sending them forth as 
 wanderers upon earth, with a burden as heavy and 
 insupportable as his who cried out, " My punish- 
 ment is greater than I can bear." Such is our view. 
 But Bishop Colenso would teach us very different 
 theology ! 
 
 The Bishop finds only proof of the falsehood of the 
 history in the reference to this family ; and really we 
 must confess that we cannot see the point on which 
 the Bishop dwells with as much earnestness as if he 
 were working out a plan for the salvation of the 
 human race. 
 
 He seems to puzzle himself, and seek to perplex 
 others, as to the precise meaning of the terms, " went 
 down with Jacob into Egypt," and as to the way in 
 which the number threescore and ten is made up ; and 
 also as to whether two of the sons of Pharez were 
 born in the land of Canaan. And because he cannot 
 see all this in the light in which he decides that it 
 should be, and which he so desires, he denounces the 
 whole history as fable. 
 
 And suppose that we were to enter on such 
 wretched cavils, and go on the presumption that we 
 
74 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 know all this better than the great man who wrote 
 the facts, and who was just as careful as, and much 
 more competent to guard against any contradictions 
 to himself than, Bishop Colenso; on what grounds 
 — except that he does not, and cannot see all this 
 as plainly as Moses did who wrote the statement, 
 — on what grounds does the Bishop found his rea- 
 soning ? 
 
 " It appears to me to be certain that the writer 
 
 here means," &c "I assume, then, that it is 
 
 absolutely undeniable that the narrative of the exodus 
 distinctly involves the statement," &c. Then he gives 
 the age which he says Judah was when he went down 
 with his father Jacob. Then the sum is worked out 
 by reference to the age of Joseph, and to the differ- 
 ence between his age and the age of Judah when he 
 was born, and other points of such littleness. 
 
 Really, apart from any other consideration than the 
 mere folly and want of any result, as appears to us, we 
 must say, that we cannot make any thing of all this 
 expenditure of wisdom and ingenuity on the part of 
 the Bishop. He is not, it is true, bound to find brains 
 for his reader ; but we have looked again and again at 
 his words, and we cannot find out the least point to 
 prove that Moses could not — if we had an opportunity 
 of conversing with him — reconcile any seeming diffi- 
 culty, arising only from the Bishop's view of the 
 phrase, " going down into Egypt," and " out of his 
 loins." 
 
 It is a pitiable sight to see any man, much more a 
 Christian Bishop, make such an exhibition of himself, 
 by trying, on such contemptible grounds, to unsettle 
 the faith of men by denying and insulting the Reve- 
 lation of the Creator to the lost race of Adam ; for, 
 until the Bishop can produce a revelation, and exhibit 
 his credentials for the truth of the same, he must 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 75 
 
 excuse us if we refuse to believe one word of his 
 learned work. 
 
 Did the Bishop, when he descended to such petty 
 play on words, ever reflect on the woe denounced 
 against those " who make a man an offender for a 
 word ?" or did he ever read the beautiful words of 
 Hooker, where he expresses his gratitude, that in 
 reference to God our Judge we have to do, not with 
 a captious sophister who only seeks to find out faults, 
 but with a gracious and merciful Being who is ever 
 anxious to make the best of what, from regard for Him, 
 we endeavour to perform ? 
 
 We do not thus write as if the sacred writers, 
 whom the Bishop seeks to involve in contradictions to 
 themselves, required any consideration or apology. We 
 do not fear for them. They need not any defence. 
 
 " Non tali auxilio 
 
 Nee defensoribus istis — tempus eget." 
 
 But we do feel for Bishop Colenso, as we should for 
 any man who could by such a book so degrade that 
 spark of Deity — the reason which God, for very different 
 ends, has bestowed on the human race. 
 
 THE SIZE OF THE COURT OF THE TABERNACLE COM- 
 PARED WITH THE NUMBER OF THE CONGREGATION. 
 
 The Bishop commences this proof of the Pentateuch 
 being a fable, with the words — " And Jehovah spake 
 unto Moses, saying, .... Gather thou all the congre- 
 gation together unto the door of the tabernacle of the 
 congregation. And Moses did as Jehovah commanded 
 him. And the assembly was gathered unto the door 
 of the tabernacle of the congregation." 
 
 To build on these words an argument to prove that 
 Moses wrote fables and lies, Bishop Colenso, in his 
 
76 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 usual way of reasoniDg, begins by assuming that all 
 men, women, women on the point of bringing forth, 
 and children — even infants in the arms — must have 
 been crowded into the space which he, on his prin- 
 ciples of arithmetic, propounds. He lays great stress 
 on " adults hi the prime of lifer Sick, bed-ridden, 
 and all must have been packed into the small space 
 which the Bishop calculates was the exact size of the 
 court of the tabernacle. Or else, when Moses wrote 
 the above verse, he wrote a fable and a lie ; and, 
 therefore, his history is fable and falsehood. And 
 all the other sacred writers, and even the Re- 
 deemer Himself, were guilty of collusion with Moses 
 in seeking to impose fables and lies on the race of 
 man. 
 
 " First," writes the Bishop, " it appears to be cer- 
 tain, that by the expressions used so often, here 
 and elsewhere, — ' the assembly,' ' the whole assem- 
 bly,' ' all the congregation,' — is meant the whole 
 body of the people ; — at all events, the adult males in 
 the prime of life" (These important italics are the 
 Bishop's). And he would show that all the adult 
 males in the prime of life of a large nation could not 
 have been packed into a small courtyard; and that, 
 therefore, Moses was a liar, as well as a fool ; — a liar, 
 to say any such thing ; and a fool, to imagine that not 
 merely the Bishop, but that any man in his senses, 
 could believe such " a fact." 
 
 The Bishop then rises in his critical powers as if he 
 had a growing consciousness of his strength ; and, after 
 some quotations to prove his first assumption, he, wax- 
 ing bolder, says, " It might reasonably be inferred," 
 that is, from some of his proofs of his assumption, or, 
 if we soar into the region of science, his petitio prin- 
 cipii, or, in plain language for the English reader, his 
 begging of the question, — " It might," he says, " be 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 77 
 
 inferred," that " the women also, and children (the italics 
 here, too, are the Bishop's), would be included in the 
 whole congregation," who were to be packed and 
 squeezed into the courtyard. Poor women, and poor 
 children ! your sufferings must have been great indeed, 
 and which you could not have borne as well as " the 
 adult males in the 'prime of life;" and, indeed, the 
 " adult males " themselves must have perished by mul- 
 titudes, if Moses sought to pack them into such a 
 small space. 
 
 On the Bishop's testimony, all this packing, squeez- 
 ing, and crying of children, and groaning of adults, 
 must have taken place; for, in another place, to prove 
 the impossibility of the voice of Moses, or of Joshua, 
 reaching to the utmost extent of the people, the 
 Bishop suggests, in the spirit of a true philosopher, 
 that the crying of the infants must have hindered such 
 a result ! But tbe misfortune for the Bishop's on- 
 slaught on the wisdom and Word of God — for we are 
 not to be overawed into the belief of his infidelity by 
 such arguments as he and his school produce, and 
 therefore we continue to assume that Moses wrote 
 the truth of God ; — but, we say, the misfortune for 
 the Bishop's argument is, that Moses never wrote or 
 even imagined any such thing. 
 
 But, the Bishop would say — " does he not say, ' ga- 
 ther thou all the congregation together unto the door of 
 the tabernacle?' And I say, that means the whole 
 nation, men, adults, males in the prime of life, elders, 
 heads of people, women and children, sick and afflicted 
 included ; and therefore they must have been all, not 
 only in the court, but at the door. But as this could 
 not be the case, the whole history is a fable, and Moses 
 wrote to deceive mankind !" 
 
 Well, certainly, Moses does say, " Gather thou all the 
 congregation together unto the door of the tabernacle 
 
78 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 of the congregation ;" but as to the Bishop's second 
 position, that this meant the packing of the whole 
 nation, all ranks, all classes, and all ages, sick as well as 
 those in health, into a courtyard, we require some little 
 better proof that Moses was a fool or a liar, and we 
 think that he understood what he wrote much better 
 than does Bishop Colenso in his " First it appears to 
 be certain that by the expressions so used is meant," 
 &c. &c. ; and " From some of the above passages indeed 
 it might be reasonably inferred," &c. &c. 
 
 We do not want " It appears to be certain," or " It 
 might be reasonably inferred :" we want something far 
 more positive as the premises from which to draw such 
 a conclusion as that the writings of Moses are fables 
 and lies — lies, as we have repeatedly urged, of the 
 deepest dye, because lies spoken in the name and as 
 the very words of the Almighty. 
 
 The Bishop then applies his knowledge of arith- 
 metic, and having proved the exact size of the court, 
 the square feet and yards, &c, concludes with his 
 "must" — must, according to the words of Moses, have 
 been squeezed into the small space so learnedly cal- 
 culated by Bishop Colenso. Was ever more " learned 
 nonsense" written by any man? Surely the mind 
 that could stoop to such wretched cavilling must have 
 been first poisoned by infidelity, and then have sought 
 to find every petty excuse to blot out the Book of 
 truth and life. The wish to involve Moses in such 
 ridiculous contradictions and folly must, indeed, have 
 been " father to the thought " of the Bishop of Natal. 
 
 MOSES AND JOSHUA ADDRESSING ALL THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Another of the objections of the Bishop of Natal to 
 the truth of the Holy Scriptures is, " the reading of 
 the law in the hearing of all the people." 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 79 
 
 Here, then, was some room for calculation. So far 
 this objection differs from that founded on the " dumb 
 ass speaking with man's voice." But it must be an 
 exercise of the mind, in what degree it is not our 
 business to inquire, to find out the exact space within 
 which a man can be confined, and then to multiply 
 that space by some other quantity would give the result 
 as to the space which the whole people filled; and 
 then would arise another question to be solved — the 
 exact distance to which the air would convey sound, 
 and make the human voice to be heard. 
 
 There may be very great learning concealed beneath 
 all this, but we must confess that we cannot discover 
 the hidden store. And, so far as we can call to mind, 
 we do not think that Paine or other infidels hit upon 
 this grand idea by which the truth of Revelation is 
 overthrown by the Christian Bishop of Natal ! 
 
 We do not mean to take up our time or that of our 
 readers by an explanation of such a simple phrase, 
 which most certainly did not call for such a waste of 
 time and learning. We all know the meaning: that 
 public acts of all kingdoms are said to be done before, 
 and in the hearing of the nations. This phraseology 
 prevails in reference to courts of justice, though con- 
 fined by walls within a very small space, and a man 
 tried within those walls is tried in the face of England, 
 and the court is open to all England, and all is done 
 before all England as well as in the sight of the sun. 
 
 When Solomon dedicated the temple, it is said, 
 " The king turned his face and blessed the whole con- 
 gregation, and all the congregation of Israel stood ; " 
 and again, " And he stood before the altar of the Lord 
 in the presence of all the congregation of Israel."' 
 
 And when John the Baptist came to preach the way 
 of the Lord, it is said, " Then went out to him Jeru- 
 salem, and all Judea, and all the region round about 
 
80 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan confessing 
 their sins." 
 
 Now we suppose it unnecessary to say that some 
 did not hear the blessing of Solomon ; that all did not 
 see him when he stood in the presence of all the con- 
 gregation of Israel ; that some men, women, and chil- 
 dren, though it was open to them to come, were not 
 there at all, and that some were detained by sickness 
 or other casualties from forming part of the congrega- 
 tion on that day. And let us in like manner conclude 
 as to Jerusalem and all Judea going out to be baptized 
 of John in the river Jordan. Must we then, on the 
 principle laid clown by Bishop Colenso, conclude that 
 the whole history of these events, including the very 
 existence of Solomon and John the Baptist, is all mere 
 fable and falsehood ? 
 
 Such new principles of reasoning would not deserve 
 serious notice, but that they treat of sacred subjects, 
 and show the extent to which men may go when they 
 once break loose from the pastures where true wisdom 
 is to be found, and wander over the barren mountains 
 of pride and vanity. Can, we ask, as in former in- 
 stances, can Bishop Colenso imagine, that, if there were 
 any difficulty as to this mode of speech, it escaped the 
 inspired writers who make the statement ; or that it 
 escaped all the inspired writers who followed until the 
 canon of Scripture was complete, and all of whom 
 believed in the book which on such most contempti- 
 ble littlenesses Bishop Colenso insults and seeks to 
 overthrow ? 
 
 We will not here suppose that Moses or Joshua 
 employed agents to convey to the more distant the 
 words which they read, and on the principle of " quod 
 facit per alium facit per se," might have been said to 
 have done that which they did by others. Nor need 
 we, in order to uphold the truth of the Holy Scriptures 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 81 
 
 against such childish attacks, suggest, for we have as 
 much right to suggest as the Bishop has to assume, and 
 his work is little else than the assumption that all his 
 views are "the truth," which must in the end prevail 
 to overthrow the whole Bible — we need not then 
 suggest that perhaps Joshua used a speaking-trumpet. 
 The Bishop, were we to seriously thus argue, might 
 reply, " No ! that was not possible, for the speaking- 
 trumpet was not invented," and therefore the truth of 
 the Bishop, founded on this amazingly little objec- 
 tion, must stand against all writers, inspired or 
 uninspired. 
 
 But we might rejoin that, though the invention of 
 the speaking-trumpet be attributed to Sir Samuel 
 Morland, yet it was known and used in the Swiss 
 mountains to summon to public worship people at a 
 distance of from two to five Italian miles. And what 
 shall we say of the extraordinary trumpet of Alex- 
 ander the Great; a copy of which, from the print at 
 Rome in the Vatican, we have in Derham's Boyle 
 Lectures, by which Alexander could send his orders 
 to the distance of one hundred stadia ? 
 
 Suppose, then, that Joshua had known and used 
 such, then we suppose that in this way he might 
 have conveyed his words to the ears of all the people 
 in the most literal sense of the term, and then this one 
 very formidable arrow of Bishop Colenso against the 
 truth of Holy Scripture might have been extracted 
 from his so plentifully supplied quiver, his gravida 
 sagittis Pharetra. But all this is mere folly and idle 
 waste of time, and only to be surpassed by the folly 
 which deserves not sympathy, but the most severe 
 reproof, which could from such premises draw the 
 conclusion that inspired writings are mere fables and 
 lies. 
 
 F 
 
82 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 THE EXTENT OF THE CAMP, &C. 
 
 This is in truth the Bishop's own. In this chapter 
 he is original. His difficulty here is, that the priest 
 himself must have carried all the ashes and all the 
 filth a distance of three-quarters of a mile, on one sup- 
 position, — so wonderfully accurate is the Bishop in 
 these wise and most learned investigations — and 
 upwards of six miles, according to another of his 
 minute and yet great calculations; and that all the 
 people, including "aged and infirm, women in child- 
 birth, sick persons, and young children," must, accord- 
 ing to what Moses wrote, have gone on every occasion 
 all those so learnedly calculated distances for " the 
 common necessities of nature ! " and because they 
 could not have done this — then here is a most un- 
 answerable proof that the Pentateuch is pure fable 
 and lie ! 
 
 We could say something more on this grand part of 
 the Bishop's argument, but we pass it by as it best 
 deserves, and only remark, that we have not learned 
 philosophy to such an extent as to make not merely 
 the truth of the Pentateuch, or even of Csesar's Com- 
 mentaries, or the book of the father of history, 
 Herodotus, depend on the way which the armies of 
 Caesar, or the wonderful army of Xerxes, found to 
 cleanse their camps; whether that work was done 
 by the generals, and how the people, men, women, 
 children, "aged and infirm, women in childbirth, sick 
 persons, and young children," found to attend day by 
 day to " the common necessities of nature." 
 
 Oh, Bishop Colenso ! "O temporal O mores!" By 
 this one proof at least of Moses having written fable 
 and falsehood you have immortalized yourself; and, 
 in ages to come, when your name and book shall 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 83 
 
 have been forgotten, infidels, such as those whom you 
 now cause to rejoice over Moses and the other in- 
 spired " witnesses" whom you have slain, as you and they, 
 — but yet not Satan, for he knows better, — suppose, 
 when they spend their nights in reviling " Moses and 
 the Prophets," and Apostles, will convulse the midnight 
 assembly with laughter, when they discuss this most 
 original and yet not most refined argument of some 
 African bishop (not Cyprian or St. Augustine) of former 
 days, whose name and work the witty infidel does not 
 just then remember. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Increase of the posterity of Abraham — The consequence of a special 
 promise and blessing of Providence — Beferred to repeatedly 
 and openly on many occasions by Moses and the other Sacred 
 "Writers — By those writers, the increase so viewed — Bishop 
 Colenso would bind down the Creator by his poor standard — 
 Laplace and Napoleon — The Book of Nature's testimony — Great 
 difference in the amount of increase — The Parable of the Sower 
 — Pliny's account of fertility in some soil — The variations of 
 Nature too uncertain for such conclusions as Bishop Colenso 
 would draw— Instances of wonderful increase in some families — 
 The testimony of a Christian Philosopher to the wisdom and 
 power of God, in reference to the population of the earth. 
 
 As Bishop Colenso refers, in several chapters of his 
 objections against the Holy Scriptures, to the extra- 
 ordinary increase of the descendants of Abraham, as 
 furnishing an argument for the overthrow of Moses 
 and the writings which bear his name, we propose 
 now to examine the subject in such way as to not 
 merely test the soundness of the Bishop's mode of 
 
 f 2 
 
84 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 arguing, but at the same time to bring forward matter 
 which may be instructive and profitable to the lay 
 portion of our readers, who may not have given much 
 attention to the subjects now under discussion. 
 
 The seed of Abraham inherited the promise, that 
 they should be as the stars of heaven for multitude, 
 and as the sand of the sea innumerable ; and this 
 promise Moses has recorded as the promise of God to 
 the Father of the Faithful ; and Moses further writes, 
 that the seed of Abraham did multiply, even in the 
 land of their hard bondage, like the palm growing 
 under pressure. Moses also appealed to the people 
 on this very head, as showing the faithfulness of God 
 in keeping the promise to Abraham — " so shall thy 
 seed be." Also Gen. xiii., "And I will make thy seed 
 as the dust of the earth," &c. 
 
 When Balak sent for Balaam to curse the seed of 
 Abraham, he thus described them : " Behold, there is 
 a people come out from Egypt : behold, they cover the 
 face of the earth." And when Balaam was overruled 
 in his intention to curse them, he said, " Who can 
 count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth 
 part of Israel?" And when he took leave of the 
 children of Israel, Moses said, " The Lord your God 
 hath multiplied you ; and, behold, ye are this day as 
 the stars of heaven for multitude." And again, " Thy 
 fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and 
 ten persons, and now the Lord thy God hath made 
 thee as the stars of heaven for multitude." 
 
 Such is the account given by Moses of the promise 
 of God, and of its fulfilment to the seed of Abraham : 
 and Moses ascribes this fulfilment of the promise to 
 the exercise of God's special Providence ; for he does 
 not speak of this as the usual acting of nature. He 
 attributes the increase to the promises and to the 
 special exercise of the Providence of God, exercised in 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 85 
 
 bringing about, not any thing contrary to nature, but 
 yet a result contrary to the history and experience of 
 other nations. 
 
 Now, in all this Moses wrote mere fable and false- 
 hood in the name of God; — for Bishop Colenso has 
 applied to this question his plus and minus, and his 
 calculations from blue-books ; and he has fixed so many 
 persons born, and so many marriages, and so many 
 children as the fruit of each marriage, and so many as 
 the increase of mankind in a generation ; and, there- 
 fore, the Almighty must be bound down by the statis- 
 tics of Bishop Colenso ! And Moses must have been 
 a fool, and worse, for having published such a fable ; 
 and for having sought to impose on the credulity of 
 mankind by such falsehoods ! 
 
 Regard for our own time, and for that of our 
 readers, and for mere common sense, will not allow 
 us to trouble ourselves about these statistics, which 
 Bishop Colenso, by his knowledge of arithmetic, and 
 his application of figures, fixes as the standard which he 
 will allow. We deal with the point very differently; 
 and only to show how little competent the Bishop is to 
 lay down his standard as the unerring law of nature, and 
 to reason from such standard against the wisdom and 
 veracity of Moses, who wrote the account; and against 
 the promise of God, to which the increase of the 
 nation was and is to be attributed. 
 
 This attempt of Bishop Colenso to hedge Moses in, 
 and convict him of fable and falsehood by the Bishop's 
 lines and angles — his plus and minus — forces on our 
 mind the history of Napoleon and Laplace. But we 
 must first beg of our readers not to imagine for a 
 moment that we make light of lines and angles, plus 
 and minus, as terms of a great science, and as modes 
 of reasoning. No such thing. There is not any dif- 
 ference between reasoning by such signs and figures, 
 
86 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 and reasoning by words, as so many lines and angles, 
 and signs of the thing signified. We do not find any 
 fault with such in themselves; but we do find fault 
 with the way in which they are by some minds applied 
 to such purposes as finding out puzzles, just as we 
 should find fault with some blundering carpenter or 
 mechanic for the stupid and profitless use which he 
 would make of implements in his hands, implements 
 in themselves capable of producing grand results. 
 
 Napoleon, dazzled, in common with others, by the 
 splendour of the fame which Laplace acquired by his 
 mathematics, thought that the employment of such a 
 man in his cabinet would greatly strengthen his own 
 rule as Consul, and be no small service to the State. 
 Well, Laplace was appointed, but he made a 
 sorry minister ; so that he had to be put aside almost 
 as soon as he was appointed. Whenever Napoleon 
 had any great question before him, there was even the 
 great Laplace, with his lines and angles, his plus and 
 minus, all, as we have said, good in themselves, but 
 out of place and misapplied, measuring every question 
 by his minute calculations; seeking only objections 
 and difficulties, and impeding all business. So Napo- 
 leon, having greatness not to be thus confined, had to 
 get rid of the mathematician as the only hope of 
 having any important work done. An excuse might 
 be pleaded for Laplace, one, too, which would apply 
 to Bishop Colenso. The fault was not in mathe- 
 matics. 
 
 But, to return to the point, — the increase of the 
 people. Let us learn from nature, which is always 
 true to itself, and in whose book we find what the 
 Almighty does, and does before the eyes of the 
 greatest infidel. The wheat is cast into the ground ; 
 the produce must depend on the soil, and on the rain 
 and sunshine of heaven : for, when man has done his 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 87 
 
 part in preparing the soil, and sowing the seed, he can 
 do no more. He may follow any other occupation, or 
 he may give himself up to idleness and ease. For, if 
 he were to watch and work, and work and watch, all 
 day and night, he cannot go beyond the limit pre- 
 scribed by God. The Creator then takes the matter 
 into His own hands. But, though all increase thus 
 depends on the care of Him who does not slumber nor 
 sleep, — who giveth the former and the latter rain in 
 its season, — and who has thus challenged the preten- 
 sions of idols to make the seed to grow: "Are there 
 any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause 
 rain, or can the earth give showers?" yet, notwith- 
 standing that the produce from the seed sown has the 
 benefit of such care, how very unequal the return 
 from that seed sown in the earth, the inequality de- 
 pending on a variety of circumstances almost altogether 
 beyond the control of man ! 
 
 Thus, for instance, when the Lord Jesus delivers 
 the parable of the sower, He shows the difference to 
 be from the soil in which the seed is sown ; and that 
 difference is very great, ranging from one hundred 
 down to thirty fold. He does not assume a higher 
 standard than one hundredfold. 
 
 But Pliny gives instances of the fertility of some 
 countries, where the soil produced very much more 
 than the hundredfold mentioned in this parable. 
 Speaking of wheat, which grows in every clime, from 
 those regions which are " the courtiers of the sun, and 
 wait upon him in his chambers of the east," to those 
 countries " where Phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles," 
 he writes, "which fertility nature hath conferred upon 
 it, because it feeds man with it ; one bushel, if sown 
 in a fit and proper soil, such as is Byzachium, a field 
 in Africa, yielding one hundred and fifty of annual 
 
88 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 increase. Augustus' procurator sent him from that 
 place four hundred, within a few blades, springing 
 from the same grain ; and to Nero were sent thence 
 three hundred and sixty." " If Pliny, a heathen, could 
 make this fertility of wheat argumentative of the 
 bounty of God to man, making such plentiful pro- 
 vision for him of that which is most pleasant to taste 
 and wholesome nourishment, surely it ought not to be 
 passed over by us Christians without notice-taking and 
 thanksgiving." 
 
 But, if we adopt the Bishop of Natal's principle of 
 reasoning, instead of admiring the wonderful goodness 
 of our Creator to earth and its ungrateful inhabit- 
 ants, we should at once place our blessed Lord and 
 Pliny in direct opposition to each other, and make 
 each accuse the other of sending forth a fabulous 
 account, and thus condemn all their other sayings 
 or writings. For instance, on his method of treating 
 the question, the Bishop might urge that the whole 
 account given by Pliny of such increase was quite 
 contrary to a fact which he had learned by experi- 
 ments made in some little garden, and by some- 
 thing that he had learned from a great man for 
 statistics ; and that it was impossible that a, single 
 grain of wheat could have yielded any thing like the 
 percentage alleged ; and that, therefore, the whole 
 account must be a mere fable, and the other parts of 
 Pliny's work no better ; and that, moreover, when 
 the highest authority gave the increase of wheat when 
 sown in good soil, He stated one hundredfold as the 
 largest return. 
 
 On the other hand, a believer in Pliny might, in a 
 similar way, turn round and assert the Gospel state- 
 ment to be a mere fable, because it stated one hun- 
 dredfold as the maximum increase ; whereas he knew 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 89 
 
 a fact which proved that in Africa wheat produced 
 many times more than the return stated in the 
 Gospel. 
 
 But why do we thus notice this subject? Not to 
 prove the wisdom and truth of Moses in reply to 
 Bishop Colenso, but to show the nature of those 
 premises from which Bishop Colenso draws the con- 
 clusion that Moses was an inventor of fables and false- 
 hoods, and a wilful deceiver of mankind. 
 
 The old well-known line contains much truth : 
 
 " Naturam furca expellas, taraen usque recurret." 
 
 To seek then to force nature within our contracted 
 standard, to say of her operations, they must be ac- 
 cording to this or that rule, to Bishop Colenso's 
 standard of plus and minus, and blue-books, is the 
 very height of absurdity and presumption. Shake- 
 speare well said, "An habitation giddy and unsure 
 hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart." 
 
 No better definition of the fickleness of man was 
 ever propounded, if we except the " Hosannah to the 
 son of David, blessed is he that cometh in the name 
 of the Lord," from the very same multitude that after- 
 wards shouted, " Crucify Him, crucify Him." 
 
 And if this be true, as true it is, what are we to 
 say to a mathematician who would ask us to build 
 arguments on the shifting sands of the varieties and 
 indeed freaks of nature? We might as well conclude 
 that all men should be born without defect, because 
 God made man so perfect in form as man has been 
 made, and because we might say that it should be so, 
 as that mankind should increase only in the way pre- 
 scribed by the new lords of nature, the Bishop of 
 Natal and his followers. 
 
 We have thus given some account of the variations 
 
90 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 of nature in reference to the seed sown in the womb 
 of mother earth. Let us now come back from the 
 variations of nature, in reference to seed sown in the 
 ground, to the history of our race. 
 
 We know, as well as Bishop Colenso, the usual 
 calculations of so many births as the result of each 
 marriage ; but we shall not follow his mode of argu- 
 ing from premises as absolutely certain, which are 
 founded on the most uncertain of all things, the varia- 
 tions of nature. When Horace spoke of the St. 
 Januarius imposition of his day, he did not deny the 
 fact of wonderful things in nature, and of variations 
 from its usual course. He contented himself with 
 the idea, that if nature did exhibit those wonderful 
 departures from its usual course, the matter was to be 
 reconciled on the Epicurean system, that the gods 
 spent a very indolent and jovial life, and did not con- 
 cern themselves about such little things as the varia- 
 tions in the domain of nature, — 
 
 " Namque Deos didici securum agere sevuni ; 
 
 Nee, si quid miri faciat nafcura, Deos id 
 Tristes ex alto coeli demittere tecto." 
 
 Now, from some marriages an only child is the 
 result. On the other hand, we ourselves know of 
 three instances in which women had, two of them 
 twenty- three, and, one of them, twenty-four children 
 each ; and, to pass from our own knowledge to days 
 gone by, we will give a few facts. 
 
 We shall not dwell on the seventy sons of Ahab, or on 
 such like instances derived from Eastern nations. We 
 come to more modern times. " Babo, Earl of Abens- 
 perg, had thirty-two sons and eight daughters ; and, 
 being invited to hunt with the Emperor Henry II., 
 and bring but few servants, brought only one servant 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 91 
 
 and his thirty-two sons. To these many others might 
 be added ; but one of the most remarkable instances I 
 have any where met with, is that of Mrs. Honeywood, 
 mentioned by Hakewill, Camden, and other authors ; 
 but having now before me the names, with some 
 remarks, which I received from a pious neighbouring 
 descendant of the same Mrs. Honeywood, I shall give 
 a more particular account than they. 
 
 " Mrs. Mary Honeywood was daughter, and one of 
 the co-heiresses, of Robert Atwaters, Esq., of Lenham, 
 in Kent. She was born in 1527, married in Feb- 
 ruary 1543, at sixteen years of age, to her only hus- 
 band Robert Honeywood, of Charing in Kent, Esq. 
 She died in the ninety-third year of her age, in May, 
 1620. She had sixteen children of her own body, 
 seven sons, and nine daughters; of which one had no 
 issue. Three died young, and the youngest was slain 
 at Newport battle, June 20, 1600. Her grandchil- 
 dren, in the second generation, were 114; in the third, 
 228 ; and nine in the fourth generation (900 !). So 
 that she could say the same that the distich doth, 
 made of one of the Dalburg's family of Basil : — 
 
 1 2 3 4 
 
 Mater ait Natae, die Natse, filia Natam, 
 
 5 _ fi 
 
 Ut moueat, Natse, plangere Filiolam.' 
 
 1 2 3 
 
 ' Kise up, Daughter, aud go to thy Daughter, 
 
 4 5 fi 
 
 For her Daughtei*'s Daughter hath a Daughter.' " 
 
 We conclude these remarks with a passage from a 
 Christian philosopher, which will well repay the reader 
 for its perusal. 
 
 " The whole surface of our globe can afford room 
 
92 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 and support only to such a number of all sorts of crea- 
 tures ; and if by their doubling, trebling, or any other 
 multiplication of their kind, they should increase to 
 double or treble that number, they must starve, or 
 devour one another. The keeping, therefore, the 
 balance even, is manifestly a work of the Divine wis- 
 dom and Providence. To which end the great Author 
 of life hath determined the life of all creatures to such 
 a length, and their increase to such a number, pro- 
 portional to their use in the world. 
 
 "The life of some creatures is long, and their increase 
 but small, and by that means they do not overstock 
 the world. And the same benefit is effected where 
 the increase is great, by the brevity of such creatures' 
 lives, by their great use and the frequent occasions 
 there are of them for food to man, or other animals. 
 It is a very remarkable act of the Divine Providence 
 that useful creatures are produced in great plenty, and 
 others in less. The prodigious and frequent increase 
 of insects, both in and out of the waters, may exem- 
 plify the one ; and 'tis observable in the other that 
 creatures less useful, or by their voracity pernicious, 
 have commonly fewer young, or do seldomer bring 
 forth enough, and then only enough, to keep up the 
 species, but not to overcharge the world. 
 
 "Thus the balance of the animal world is, throughout 
 all ages, kept even ; and by a curious harmony, and 
 just proportion between the increase of all animals, 
 and the length of their lives, the world is through 
 all ages well, but not over-stored : " one generation 
 passeth away, and another generation cometh;' so 
 equally in its room to balance the stock of the terra- 
 queous globe in all ages and places, and among all 
 creatures, that it is an actual demonstration of our 
 Saviour's assertion, Matt. x. 2. 9, that the most in- 
 
TO IMFEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 93 
 
 considerable common creature, ' even a sparrow (two 
 of which are sold for a farthing), doth not fall on the 
 ground without our heavenly Father.' 
 
 " This Providence of God is remarkable in every 
 species of living creatures : but that especial manage- 
 ment of the recruits and decays of mankind, so equally 
 all the world over, deserves our especial observation. 
 In the beginning of the world, and so after Noah's 
 flood, the longevity of men, as it was of absolute ne- 
 cessity to the more speedy peopling of the new world, 
 so is a special instance of the Divine Providence in 
 this matter. And the same Providence appears in 
 the following ages, when the world was pretty well 
 peopled, in reducing the common age of man then to 
 one hundred and twenty years (Gen. vi. 3), in propor- 
 tion to the occasions of the world at that time. 
 
 "And, lastly, when the world was fully peopled, after 
 the flood (as it was in the age of Moses, and so down 
 to our present time), the lessening the common age of 
 man to seventy or eighty years (the age mentioned 
 by Moses, Ps. xc. 10), — this, I say, is manifestly an 
 appointment of the same Infinite Lord that ruleth 
 the world. For by this means, the peopled world is 
 kept at a convenient stay, neither too full nor too 
 empty. 
 
 " For, if men (the generality of them, I mean) were 
 to live now to Methuselah's age of nine hundred and 
 sixty-nine years, or only to Abraham's, long after the 
 flood, of one hundred and seventy-five years, the world 
 would be too much overrun ; or, if the age of man was 
 limited to that of diverse other animals, to ten, twenty, 
 or thirty years only, the decays then of mankind would 
 be too fast. But at the middle rate mentioned, the 
 balance is nearly even, and life and death keeps an 
 equal pace: which equality is so great and harmonious, 
 
94 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 and so manifest an instance of the Divine manage- 
 
 o 
 
 ment, that I shall spend some remarks upon it. 
 
 " It appears from our best accounts of these matters, 
 that, in our European parts, and I believe the same is 
 throughout the world, — that, I say, there is a certain 
 rate and proportion in the propagation of mankind. 
 Such a number marry ; so many are born ; such a 
 number die ; in proportion to the number of persons 
 in every nation, county, or parish. And as to births, 
 two things are very considerable : one is, the propor- 
 tion of males and females not in a wide proportion; 
 not an uncertain, accidental number at all adventures, 
 but nearly equal. Another thing is, that a few more 
 are born than appear to die in any certain place ; 
 which is an admirable provision for the extraordinary 
 emergencies and occasions of the world ; — to supply 
 unhealthful places, where death outruns life ; to make 
 up the ravages of great plagues and diseases, and the 
 depredations of war and the seas; and to afford a 
 sufficient number for colonies in the unpeopled parts 
 of the earth. 
 
 " Or, on the other hand, we may say that sometimes 
 those extraordinary expences of mankind may be not 
 only a just punishment of the sins of men, but also a 
 wise means to keep the balance of mankind even, as 
 one would be ready to conclude, by considering the 
 Asiatic, and other the more fertile countries, where 
 prodigious multitudes are yearly swept away with 
 great plagues, and sometimes Mar, and yet those 
 countries are so far from being wasted, that they 
 remain full of people. 
 
 " And now, upon the whole matter, what is all this 
 but admirable and plain management? What can the 
 maintaining, throughout all ages and places, these 
 proportions of mankind, and all other creatures, this 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 95 
 
 harmony in the generations of men, be, but the work 
 of One that ruleth the world? Is it possible that 
 every species of animals should so evenly be pre- 
 served, proportionate to the occasions of the world ; 
 that they should be so well balanced in all ages and 
 places, without the help of Almighty Wisdom and 
 Power ? How it is possible, by the bare rules, and 
 blind acts of Nature, that there should be any to- 
 lerable proportions; for instance, between males and 
 females, either of mankind or any other creature, 
 especially such as are of a fierce, not of a domestic 
 nature, and consequently out of the command and 
 management of man ? 
 
 " How could life and death keep such an even pace 
 through all the animal world, if we should take it for 
 granted, that, according to the Scripture history, the 
 world had a beginning (as who can deny it ? or, if we 
 should suppose the destruction thereof by Noah's 
 flood, how is it possible after the world was replen- 
 ished?) that in a certain number of years, by the 
 greater increases and doublings of each species of 
 animals, that, I say, this rate of doubling should 
 cease ; or, that it should be compensated by some 
 other means; that the world should be as well, or 
 better stocked, than now it is, in 1656 years (the time 
 between the creation and the flood)? This, we will 
 suppose, may be done by the natural method of each 
 species doubling or increase. But in double that 
 number of years, or at this distance from the flood, of 
 4000 years, that the world should not be overstocked, 
 can never be made out, without allowing an Infinite 
 Providence. 
 
 " I conclude, then, this observation with the Psalmist's 
 words (Ps. civ. 29, 30), ' Thou hidest Thy face, all 
 creatures are troubled ; Thou takest away their breath, 
 they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth 
 
96 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 Thy Spirit, they are created ; and Thou renewest the 
 face of the earth 1 .' " 
 
 We leave Bishop Colenso to work out this problem, 
 and to explain to any one gifted with the least portion 
 of common sense, how he can pretend to lay down as 
 " the truth," premises based on such variations and 
 inconstancies of Nature ; and then to draw from such 
 premises a conclusion by which he gives the lie direct 
 to such a writer as Moses ; — and by which he thinks, 
 poor man ! to shake the foundation of Faith, and over- 
 throw the Revelation of God to Man. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Dwelling in Tents — Bishop Colenso' s impossibilities — His childish 
 suppositions as to carriage of such by men or oxen — Nadir Shah 
 and the sacking of Delhi — Great armies not at any loss to carry 
 their baggage — The absurdity of Bishop Colenso in seeking to 
 destroy the veracity of Holy Writ by such arguments — The 
 Israelites armed — The Bishop's absurd notions on this head — 
 The Bishop's cavilling on this would have been despised by infi- 
 dels of past ages — The Passover — The Bishop's ludicrous diffi- 
 culties on this question — The Passover, notwithstanding the 
 Bishop's notions, was established and observed in all ages — The 
 march out of Egypt referred to by the Sacred Writers — The 
 Bishop's laughable proof of the impossibility of this march — His 
 fright, and sudden flight — Not a fit man for the Church militant 
 in Natal — Contrast with Nehemiah— Sheep and Cattle in the 
 Desert — The Bishop's strange notion as to the neglect of the 
 cattle — Folly of such reasoning — God's care of all His creatures 
 — Cicero and Seneca on this — The valuable remarks of Derham 
 on this subject — The Bishop would tie down the hand of the 
 Almighty to his little rules. 
 
 THE ISRAELITES DWELLING IN TENTS. 
 
 If ever the Sacred Writers put forth an absurdity and 
 
 falsehood, it is the statement that the Israelites dwelt 
 
 1 Derham's Boyle Lectures. 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 97 
 
 in tents. Bring what meaning you will, reader, out of 
 the word " tents," yet, so far as the Israelites were con- 
 cerned, the statement of Moses is pure falsehood. 
 Robinson Crusoe might, even without the help of his 
 man Friday, have built some kind of hut; and, thrown 
 upon necessity " the mother of invention," the Bishop 
 of Natal might, without the help of his Zulu, have 
 constructed some kind of tent, tabernacle, booth — or 
 any name you please, — to shelter him from the sun by 
 day, and from the cold by night. 
 
 But so far as the poor Israelites were concerned, 
 this was impossible. The gifts of reason, and the rich 
 abundance of Nature, in every age and in every clime, 
 to suppjy the wants of the creatures of God, were all 
 bestowed in vain on the people of Israel. 
 
 And though the Israelites were commanded, as the 
 Bishop allows, to take " boughs of goodly trees, branches 
 of palm-trees, aud boughs of thick trees, and willows 
 of the brooks," — yet none of these were to be con- 
 sidered as " tents." Indeed, it is — on Bishop Colenso's 
 mode of arguing — most probable that all this about 
 "goodly trees, branches of palm-trees, willows of the 
 brooks " was mere fiction ; for we have not any autho- 
 rity for it except that of the deceiver who wrote the 
 Pentateuch, and who — according to a Christian Bishop 
 — was only a forger of lies ! 
 
 But suppose that this part of the Pentateuch were 
 true, yet it is quite evident (to Bishop Colenso) that 
 the matter of the " tents," mentioned in the same 
 part of the work, was pure falsehood. How could the 
 people have had tents ? Take, we repeat, any meaning 
 you please, reader, for the term. And, if they had 
 them, how could they have carried such " cumbrous 
 articles?" especially when they had to take their dough 
 before it was leavened — " their kneading-troughs being 
 bound up in their clothes upon their shoulders ?" 
 
 G 
 
98 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 There, sacred writers, is your death-blow ! and 
 there, reader, is a problem, which, if you can solve, you 
 will throw the fame of Newton himself into the shade. 
 But you must solve it on its own merits. How could 
 the people carry such " cumbrous articles " as " tents," 
 (the italics are the Bishop's,) with kneading-troughs, 
 and all the other cumbrous articles which every man 
 carried on his shoulders? 
 
 Now, reader, it will not do to assume that the 
 people at large may have been considered as having 
 done what some of them, appointed for special purposes 
 under a division of labour, did ; as armies are said to 
 carry their baggage, guns, and many much more cum- 
 brous articles than some kind of shelter for their heads 
 from the sun by day or the clew by night. Nor will it 
 avail to assume that, as one kneading-trough w r ould 
 suffice for more than one person, the others, who were 
 not burdened with the carriage of them, might help to 
 carry those things — call them tents, or what you please 
 — wdiich would serve for a covering. 
 
 Nor need you assume that oxen might help to carry 
 any of those " cumbrous articles ;" for the Bishop has 
 settled that point. " There were the cattle certainly, 
 which might have been turned to some account." But 
 here was the difficulty — " turned to some account," 
 " if they had been trained to act as pack-oxen." "Ay, 
 there's the rub," — " if they had been trained^ How 
 were the Israelites to train them — even though the ox 
 be by nature made to serve in such way, and to be 
 most patient of toil ? 
 
 But suppose that point settled : — How do you get 
 over this ? Where were the people to find oxen 
 enough for such a purpose? Nadir Shah, without 
 any difficulty, found to hand, we think, five thousand 
 camels, and nearly three thousand horses and mules, to 
 carry away the mere plunder of Delhi, to the value of 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 99 
 
 one hundred and twenty millions sterling ; and that in 
 addition to the conveyance of all the baggage of an 
 army that covered a space of twelve miles wide, and we 
 forget how many miles deep. And even Xerxes found 
 means for the carriage of all things necessary for an 
 army which, with the camp followers, amounted to 
 several millions of human beings, not to speak of the 
 cattle. 
 
 But it will not do to cite any instances of the kind. 
 For, in order to make the writer of the Pentateuch a 
 wilful liar and deceiver, it is self-evident (to Bishop 
 Colenso), and it must be accepted as a fact by all man- 
 kind, that the Israelites could not have found means 
 to carry their tents, even if they had any to carry, 
 which, as we have allowed, was, with respect to the 
 Israelites, an utter impossibility, because the Bishop 
 of Natal says that it was an utter impossibility ! 
 
 And thus Bishop Colenso demolishes the Holy 
 Scriptures ; that Revelation on which men have sus- 
 pended all their hopes, and with feelings very different 
 from those which the Jews experienced when they 
 hanged their harps on the willows by the proud waters 
 of Babylon. But we have had enough of this wretched 
 mode of writing, and we are weary of examining such 
 poor, and, in a Bishop, most discreditable and dis- 
 honourable cavilling at the word of God. 
 
 THE ISRAELITES ARMED. 
 
 On this point it is not necessary to say more than 
 that Moses knew much better than Bishop Colenso 
 the meaning of the word which he used when he 
 wrote, " And the children of Israel went up harnessed 
 out of the land of Egypt." A variety of meanings 
 lias been given to this word " harnessed ;" which is a 
 matter of very little moment. It may interest some 
 minds to endeavour to find out the precise meaning, 
 
 g 2 
 
100 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 which must be difficult at this time, so remote from 
 the period in which the words were written. And 
 such search may have proved, and may prove, even 
 profitable to those who have occupied themselves in 
 the investigation. 
 
 It is, however, a very different question when the 
 uncertainty of its meaning is used by any man to 
 charge the writer with falsehood. 
 
 But Bishop Colenso gives his view of the word as 
 " the truth," and then charges Moses with writing 
 fables and lies, because, according to the Bishop's 
 criticism, it was quite impossible that the people of 
 Israel should have gone up " harnessed," or " armed," 
 as the Bishop writes, out of the land of Egypt. 
 
 So far as we remember, infidels of old, from the 
 days of the apostate Julian to the present time, took 
 a higher flight than this of the Bishop of Natal, and 
 never sought to deny the revelation of God on such 
 little and childish grounds. But they might have 
 learned something, if they had had the benefit of the 
 instruction of a Christian Bishop of our day ! 
 
 THE PASSOVER. 
 
 It was utterly impossible that the establishment of 
 the passover, as described in the Pentateuch, could 
 have taken place. How could Moses have conveyed 
 so quickly the orders, which he says that he received 
 from God, to a population equal to, if not greater 
 than, that of London ? And, even if that had been 
 possible, how could the people have found lambs 
 enough to take a lamb for a household ? These are 
 serious questions — further specimens of Bishop Co- 
 lenso's difficulties. 
 
 The passover would certainly have required a very 
 large number of lambs; not a doubt of this. And 
 where were the Israelites to have found such a supply ? 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 101 
 
 We shall not weary the reader with calculations as 
 to the number of years which the children of Israel 
 spent in Egypt, in the land of Goshen assigned to them 
 on their first settlement, because they were shepherds. 
 Nor shall we waste our time with calculations as to 
 the number of sheep and lambs, which in a few cen- 
 turies those patriarchs, whose wealth consisted in 
 cattle, possessed. 
 
 In answer to such ridiculous questions, which can- 
 not but overthrow the Revelation of God, at least 
 according to Bishop Colenso's opinion, we shall only 
 say, that, notwithstanding all this, it is a fact — and a 
 better fact, we think, than the " fact " of the Bishop of 
 Natal — that Moses did establish the passover, that he 
 did persuade millions of men to believe and act upon 
 what he said and commanded ; and men who, as they 
 knew the whole circumstances, could have exposed 
 the fable and gross imposture, if any, and who, in con- 
 sequence of their belief in this imposture, submitted 
 to much inconvenience and sacrifice of property. 
 
 And, moreover, it is a fact that this passover was 
 observed in all generations down to the Christian era, 
 and was most reverently kept by the Redeemer with 
 His disciples; and is most solemnly observed to this 
 day by the people of Israel with, this difference only, 
 but yet great difference, that they do not sacrifice the 
 lamb for the household, because, out of respect for 
 that deceiver, Moses, and for the portion of the in- 
 spired writings which they receive, they cannot offer 
 sacrifice on every altar or in every place, but only at 
 the place which the Lord their God should "choose to 
 place His Name there." 
 
 That place was first the tabernacle, and, after the 
 days of Solomon, the temple. And, until the destruc- 
 tion of the temple, they always sacrificed the lamb as 
 the chief part of the passover. But when " the Lamb 
 
102 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 of God, that taketh away the sin of the world," was 
 to come, and " Christ our Passover " to be " sacrificed 
 for us ;" then, as Daniel foretold, the daily sacrifice 
 and all sacrifice was to cease. Thus the children 
 of Israel labour under an impossibility ; and, though 
 they keep the week of the passover, yet they cannot 
 sacrifice. But they do observe the passover in accord- 
 ance with this very appointment by Moses. 
 
 And yet, according to Bishop Colenso, the whole 
 matter was an impossibility, and the statement of its 
 institution only proves that Moses was a very wicked 
 man for publishing any command of God for such an 
 imposture ; and that the book of Moses is fable and 
 falsehood ; and that Christianity is also an imposition 
 on the human race ; and its Founder one who gave 
 sanction to such an act of impiety and falsehood as 
 that of which Moses was guilty, in pretending to have 
 been commissioned by Almighty God to establish an 
 ordinance, which Bishop Colenso proves to have been 
 an impossibility and a lie ! 
 
 THE MARCH OUT OF EGYPT. 
 
 The march out of Egypt, as described by Moses, is 
 pure fable, and, indeed, barefaced falsehood. In the 
 first place, it would have required a master-mind to 
 have directed such a movement, and we are not to 
 suppose that Moses — who was guilty of writing such 
 folly as the Bishop of Natal has proved, to at least 
 his own satisfaction — could have been qualified for such 
 a work. 
 
 Many persons, however, have differed with the 
 Bishop of Natal on this point, and have believed that 
 Moses was capable of having directed such a move- 
 ment. And to this hour many persons are of this 
 opinion. Moreover, those who think thus in opposi- 
 tion to Bishop Colenso are encouraged in their belief 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 103 
 
 by the fact — that, from the days of Moses to the 
 closing of the Canon of Holy Scripture, the inspired 
 writers constantly referred to this march oat of Egypt 
 — and to the shepherd of the flock — to Moses — who 
 was selected by God for that great work. And the 
 Almighty knows how to not only select, but to 
 fit His instruments for the work whereunto He calls 
 them. 
 
 Nehemiah referred to this subject in his beautiful 
 prayer. The Psalms make constant reference to it, as 
 a foundation for more than common praise and thanks- 
 giving to Almighty God. And in his lofty strains 
 Isaiah breaks forth on the subject of this deliverance 
 out of Egypt by the right hand of Moses. Jeremiah, 
 too, and others of the Prophets, St. Stephen, and St. 
 Paul, — all refer in one note of praise to God for this 
 march out of Egypt under the guidance of Moses as 
 the chosen and truly great leader of such a work. But, 
 though all those sacred writers and high authorities 
 referred to the march out of Egypt, as described by 
 Moses in the selfsame words in which we read the 
 account to this day, yet Bishop Colenso pronounces 
 the statement as a fable and falsehood. 
 
 And, if there could remain a shadow of doubt as to 
 this conclusion of the Bishop, that would be dispersed 
 by this croAvning proof that Moses did write falsehood 
 on this point. These are the solemn words from 
 which the Bishop draws this his unanswerable con- 
 clusion : — 
 
 " Remembering, as I do, the confusion in my own 
 small household, of thirty or forty persons, when once 
 we were obliged to fly at dead of night, having been 
 roused from our beds with a false alarm that an invad- 
 ing Zulu force had entered the colony, had evaded the 
 English troops sent to meet them, and was making its 
 way direct for our Station, killing right and left as it 
 
104 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 came along — I do not hesitate to declare this statement 
 to be utterly incredible and impossible." All which 
 means, in plain language, that Moses wrote — for we 
 must use again the terms — fable and falsehood to 
 deceive mankind. 
 
 This must have been a very trying position in which 
 the Bishop was placed by this " false alarm " and 
 invasion — worse than our own French invasion — "and 
 this killing right and left;" and we all know that false 
 alarms, like imaginary ills, are far worse than real 
 dangers, or positive sickness, to persons of certain 
 minds, and to weak nerves. 
 
 But, allowing all this, and that Bishop Colenso, 
 losing his head and presence of mind, " took to his 
 heels," concluding with Falstaff that " discretion" was 
 " the better part of valour ;" though the Bishop might 
 justify this rapid movement after the fashion of the 
 Irishman, who, when taunted with having run away 
 from the enemy, said, " My heart was in the right 
 place, but it was those cowardly heels that made me 
 run away" — now, we say, though all this be so, and, 
 though the Bishop might thus justify the wisdom of 
 Falstaff, or plead the apology of the Irishman, yet 
 we cannot by any contrivance, or exercise of mind, 
 find out how all this proves that Moses was a fool, 
 and that he wrote fables on this subject, and that 
 all the sacred writers and authorities conspired to 
 give currency to such a tissue of absurdities and 
 impossibilities. 
 
 But, although we cannot see the force of the con- 
 clusion against Moses drawn from the fright which 
 Bishop Colenso experienced, and which made him 
 trust more to his heels than to any other protection, 
 yet there is one conclusion to which the Bishop leads, 
 — in fact, drives us, — and that is, to quote the remark 
 of George IV. in reference to a divine sent over by His 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 105 
 
 Majesty from England to an Irish See, and who was 
 said to have run away because some Romanists served 
 him with a notice to quit, headed with the sign of a 
 death's head and cross bones, " That the bishop was 
 not fit for the Church militant in Ireland." So we say 
 that, apart from all other considerations, Bishop Colenso 
 does not, by this story, prove himself to have been a 
 fit soldier of the " Church militant" in Natal. 
 
 How very different the calm and commanding self- 
 possession and courage of Nehemiah, who, when 
 warned to flee because certain persons were coming 
 down to slay him, " Yea, in the night they will come 
 to slay thee," so nobly replied, " Should such a man as 
 I flee?" 
 
 THE SHEEP AND CATTLE OF THE ISRAELITES 
 IN THE DESERT. 
 
 This chapter of his objections the Bishop of Natal 
 thus opens : — 
 
 " The people, we are told, were supplied with manna. 
 But there was no miraculous provision for the herds 
 and flocks. They were left to gather sustenance as 
 they could in that inhospitable wilderness." 
 
 We have already, in our remarks on the animals in 
 the ark, touched on the wonderful way in which a 
 bountiful Creator supplies the wants of all His crea- 
 tures. 
 
 We would now enlarge on the subject, not to reply 
 to this foolish argument of Bishop Colenso, but because 
 of the instruction which even his cavils suggest to the 
 mind. We are not "told" how the cattle were fed, 
 therefore they were left to starve ! Are we " told " 
 how the countless multitudes of the creatures of God 
 are every day fed throughout the world ? Not one 
 word is uttered in the book of nature on this subject. 
 
106 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 " The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firma- 
 ment showeth His handywork." 
 
 How? Not in language. We are not "told" any 
 thing. No. " There is neither speech nor language ;" 
 " but," for all that, " their voices are heard," — 'heard 
 by all nations. Thus, though the book of nature be 
 dumb as to our not being " told " in so many words, 
 yet is it most eloquent ; and its voice is every where 
 heard — heard in the fact that the creatures of God are 
 under all circumstances supplied with daily sustenance. 
 We may, then, justly pronounce such wretched cavil- 
 ling as unworthy of serious notice. 
 
 But the consideration of the subject in its proper 
 bearings will furnish profitable instruction, and will 
 lift up the mind far above such poor sophistry as that 
 of Bishop Colenso. We would, however, first remark, 
 that we do not require extracts from any writers on the 
 sand-storms, or such like phenomena, of those coun- 
 tries. Such subjects are very well known. And we 
 all know that the whole land of promise has been little 
 better than a waste and howling desert under the 
 grinding domination of the Turkish rule; — as indeed 
 it was foretold that the land should be desolate and 
 trodden down, so as to be an object of remark and 
 very scorn. All such quotation is, then, beside the 
 question. 
 
 Cicero observed the difficulty of Bishop Colenso as 
 to the way in which Nature sustained all creatures in 
 all places, and with the very food suited to each — "qui 
 cuique aptus erat." But Cicero observed this with 
 wonder and admiration, and not to cavil and seek to 
 prove the book of nature a fable, or to blot out from 
 its pages the Providence of God. Seneca, too, has a 
 fine sentence on this subject :— -" It is God who has 
 dispersed the herds throughout the whole world, and 
 who provides food for the flocks which in all places 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 107 
 
 roam at large." " Ille Deus est, qui per totum orbem 
 armenta dimisit, qui gregibus ubique passim vagautibus 
 pabulum prsestat." Well said, noble heathen ! 
 
 In the last great day, when the words and acts of 
 men shall be disclosed, your sentiments will rise up in 
 judgment against the flippant writings of many " philo- 
 sophers of Christian times." 
 
 The provision which God makes for His creatures 
 is thus described : — " These wait all upon Thee ; that 
 Thou mayst give them their meat in due season. That 
 Thou givest them, they gather: Thou openest Thine 
 hand, they are filled with good." And again: — " The 
 eyes of all wait upon Thee, and Thou givest them 
 their meat in due season. Thou openest Thine hand, 
 and satisfiest the desire of every living thing." There 
 may be trials for the animal creation, as well as for the 
 race of man ; but it was a great question which the 
 Redeemer asked, — " Is not the life more than meat, 
 and the body than raiment?" 
 
 Wherever the Almighty Father calls into existence 
 any creature, He does not fail to provide for its wants. 
 He, as has been beautifully said, " tenders the wind to 
 the shorn lamb." Though Israel went through a wilder- 
 ness, their great leader, at the close of his pilgrimage, 
 could appeal unto them, that their raiment waxed not 
 old, nor did their foot swell ; and that their wants 
 were all supplied. Where God gives the life, lie 
 gives what is necessary for its preservation. Where 
 He forms the body, He finds ways to provide even 
 raiment for the same. And, for the consolation of 
 believers in His word, it may also be said, that, where 
 He gives the promise of eternal life, He also provides 
 food for that life, in the rich pastures of His promises, 
 in "the means of grace," and "in the hope of glory." 
 
 " All this," as is well remarked in the words of the 
 Christian philosopher already quoted, " affords us a 
 
108 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 glorious scene of the Divine Providence and manage- 
 ment, which, as it concerns itself in lesser things, so 
 we may presume, doth exert itself particularly in so 
 grand an affair as that of food, whereby the animal 
 world subsists. 
 
 " It is a great act of the Divine Power and Wisdom, 
 as well as Goodness, to provide food for such a world 
 of animals as every where possess the terraqueous globe. 
 That the temperate climates, or at least the fertile 
 valleys, and rich and plentiful regions of the earth, 
 should afford subsistence to many animals, may appear 
 less wonderful perhaps. But that in all other, the 
 most unlikely places for supplies, sufficient food should 
 be afforded to such a prodigious number, and so great 
 variety of beasts, birds, fishes, and insects, is owing to 
 that Being who hath as wisely adapted their bodies to 
 their place and food, as well as carefully j)rovided food for 
 their subsistence there. Which Providence of God, par- 
 ticularly in the supplies afforded the ravens, is divers times 
 taken notice of in the Scriptures. ' Who provideth for 
 the raven his food 1 When his young ones cry unto God, 
 they wander for lack of meat.' And ' He giveth to 
 the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry.' 
 Thus our Saviour, too : ' Consider the ravens, for they 
 neither sow nor reap, which neither have storehouse 
 nor barn, and God feedeth them.' It is a manifest 
 argument of the Divine Care and Providence in sup- 
 plying the world with food and necessaries, that the 
 ravens, accounted as unclean and little regarded by 
 man, destitute of stores, and that live by accidents, by 
 what falleth here and there ; that such a bird, I say, 
 should be provided with sufficient food ; especially, if 
 that be true which Aristotle, Pliny, and ./Elian report 
 of their unnatural affection and cruelty to their young, 
 ' that they expel them from their nests as soon as they 
 can fly, and then drive them out of the country.' " 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 109 
 
 Our author then thus concludes : — " And from this 
 bare transient view of this branch of the great Creator's 
 Providence and Government, relating to the food of 
 His creatures, we can conclude no less than that, since 
 this grand affair hath so manifest strokes of admirable 
 and wise management ; that since this is demonstrated 
 throughout all ages and places, that, therefore, it is 
 God's handywork. For, how is it possible that so vast 
 a world of animals should be supported, such a great 
 variety equally and well supplied with proper food in 
 every place fit for habitation, without an especial super- 
 intendency and management, equal to, at least, that of 
 the most prudent Steward and Householder 1 ?" 
 
 And this Being, who thus presides over and directs 
 such an amazing economy, who "crowns the year with 
 His goodness" as with the most valuable diadem, and 
 " whose paths drop fatness " even " upon the pastures 
 of the wilderness" is the All-wise " God, The Father 
 Almighty/' whose full and bountiful hand the Bishop 
 of Natal would render so powerless by his arithmetic, 
 and his cavils, and quotations about sand-storms, that 
 that Hand should not dispense food to Its crea- 
 tures, save only according to the notions and rules 
 of Bishop Colenso ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The invading array described by the Lion — All fable, according to 
 Bishop Colenso — The Bishop's irreverent manner in speaking 
 of the Word of God — His ludicrous argument to prove his case 
 
 1 Dcrham's Boyle Lectures. 
 
110 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 — Calculation of the Eastern Counties of England — His absurd 
 mode of reasoning on this head — Only a subject for ridicule — 
 The number of Priests — The minute calculations as to the time 
 required for each duty — Many infidels would be ashamed to use 
 Bishop Colenso's arguments — The true view of the Priest's du- 
 ties — A question to the Bishop after his own way of arguing 
 — On his principle, the history of England all fable — The war 
 on Midian — The Bishop's mode of carrying off the captives 
 — The numbers slain — Alleged cruelty of the Israelites — Na- 
 ture and mystery of War — And of other elements of destruc- 
 tion — Used for the moral government of the world — The sun 
 standing still — The words of Joshua do not necessarily main- 
 tain the Earth as centre of our system — Different views of 
 Astronomers respecting even the spots on the Sun — The Crea- 
 tor, Master of His own laws — Mode in which the miracle is de- 
 scribed might be correct — And yet not assert the Ptolemaic 
 theory — Nature of the Sun — His motion and influence too 
 little understood to justify the conclusion of infidels against the 
 sacred writer. 
 
 NUMBER OF PEOPLE COMPARED WITH THE EXTENT 
 
 OF CANAAN. 
 
 " He shall come up like a lion from the swelling of 
 Jordan," is the grand imagery under which the Prophet 
 describes the invading army. 
 
 The brow of the lion is so constructed, that it does 
 not afford any protection from the glare of the sun. 
 He cannot, therefore, endure its light ; but, when " the 
 sun ariseth, they get them to their dens ; they lie down 
 together." And man may then go " forth to his work 
 and to his labour until the evening." We may then 
 picture to our minds the fury of the lion, when, driven 
 out of his lair by the swelling of Jordan, he roamed at 
 large over the surrounding country. But this is all a 
 mistake ; the whole of this imagery is founded on mere 
 fable. There were not, and could not have been, any 
 lions in the land of Judea. And this Bishop Colenso 
 proves as a fact. 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. Ill 
 
 The Bishop quotes the passage where the Almighty 
 states that He would drive out the Hivites, Canaanites, 
 and Hittites from before the seed of Abraham, to whom 
 the promise of the land was made. For the wicked- 
 ness of those nations did the Lord drive them out; 
 and such was that wickedness, that it is said that, 
 because of it, the land vomited them out. But the 
 Almighty says, by His servant Moses, in the words 
 quoted by the Bishop, " I will not drive them out 
 from before thee in one year, lest the land become 
 desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against 
 thee. By little and little I will drive them out 
 from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit 
 the land." 
 
 We shall not stop to dwell on the wisdom, and the 
 consideration for the children of Israel, which is con- 
 tained in this policy. But Bishop Colenso takes a very 
 different view of the question, and shows the whole 
 statement to be an utter impossibility, and a barefaced 
 falsehood. 
 
 This the Bishop of Natal proves by his recourse to 
 his figures — square miles, acres — statistics, and such 
 like arguments. He informs us, in the first place, that 
 the utmost extent of the land of promise was so many 
 square miles, and so many acres ; and this he proves as 
 one of his facts. 
 
 Having, then, proved all this calculation to be " the 
 truth," the Bishop adds, " and, according to this story, 
 this was occupied by more than two millions of people." 
 The " story," at which this Christian Bishop thus scoffs, 
 is the passage of Holy Scripture recorded as the very 
 words of the God of Truth ! ! ! 
 
 The Bishop then enters into another learned calcu- 
 lation, founded on the size of the counties of Norfolk, 
 Suffolk, and Essex ; and he gives the statistics of those 
 counties according to the census of 1850. And 
 
1 12 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 then, having assumed the impossibility of the land of 
 Canaan containing such a population, he proves fur- 
 ther that it was impossible, because of the aboriginal 
 Canaanites who already filled the land ; — " seven 
 nations," quotes the Bishop, "greater and mightier than 
 Israel itself." 
 
 The italics, "greater and mightier" are the property 
 of Bishop Colenso. This stress on those words is 
 merely the mode of Bishop Colenso ; a way of his 
 own to make Moses contradict himself; as if Moses 
 did not know what he wrote, but required the learned 
 instructions and petty calculations of the Bishop of 
 Natal. 
 
 The Bishop then thus rises higher and higher in 
 his sorites : "And surely it cannot be said that these 
 three Eastern Counties, with their flourishing towns, 
 Norwich, Lynn, Yarmouth," and seventeen other 
 towns, and the "&c." which the Bishop names, "and 
 their innumerable villages, are in any danger of lying 
 ' desolate,' with the beasts of the field multiplying 
 against the human inhabitants." 
 
 For the sake of the landlords, and farmers, and all 
 who are dependent on their noble toil, we most sin- 
 cerely sympathize with the Bishop's remarks, and trust 
 that there is not any danger of such "desolation." 
 And as to " the beasts of the field multiplying against 
 the human inhabitants," — and we would include the 
 cattle of those fertile counties with their flourishing 
 towns and their innumerable villages, — we most de- 
 voutly hope, for the sake of the people, that there is 
 not the least danger of such a fearful contingency. 
 And we as devoutly hope, that the inhabitants will not 
 feel any ground for alarm from the bare idea of such 
 an event as that which Bishop Colenso suggests, in 
 order to overthrow the truth of the Word of God ! 
 An invasion of the Eastern Counties by lions, wolves, 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 113 
 
 and hyenas ! the idea is dreadful, and may have a most 
 depressing effect on many important interests. 
 
 " Sed tamen amoto quseramus seria ludo." 
 
 Although, as Horace says, 
 
 " quanquam ridenteni dicere veruui 
 
 Quid vetat ?" 
 
 We may speak much truth in a merry mood. 
 
 The Bishop then proceeds to the climax of his argu- 
 ment. He shows the extent of the colony of Natal. 
 The population, he admits, is scanty. Yet the inha- 
 bitants are able to maintain their ground against the 
 beasts of the field. The lion, elephant, and other ani- 
 mals, have long ago disappeared, and in his travels the 
 Bishop never saw one. 
 
 And, therefore, all this cumulative evidence proves 
 that the statement put into the words of the Almighty 
 by His servant Moses, is all pure invention and false- 
 hood, sent abroad for some wicked purpose ; but what 
 that wicked purpose w 7 as, is not stated by Bishop 
 Colenso. 
 
 Now, reader, if you can connect the conclusion of 
 the Bishop of Natal with such extraordinary premises, 
 you will do something beyond the powers of other 
 men. 
 
 "THE NUMBER OF PRIESTS AT THE EXODUS COMPARED 
 WITH THEIR DUTIES, AND WITH THE PROVISION 
 MADE FOR THEM." 
 
 Such is the title of another of the Bishop's argu- 
 ments against the truth of the Pentateuch. The Bishop 
 gives in detail the duties of the priesthood; and then, 
 in these words, challenges the whole race of fools who 
 
 H 
 
114 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 would still persist in their belief in the Pentateuch, as 
 a part of the revelation of a merciful Creator to the 
 lost race of man : 
 
 " And now let me ask, for all those multifarious 
 duties during the forty years' sojourn in the wilderness, 
 — for all the burnt-offerings, meat-offerings, peace- 
 offerings, sin-offerings, trespass-offerings, thank-offer- 
 ings, of a population like that of the City of London, 
 besides the daily and extraordinary sacrifices — how 
 many priests were there ?" 
 
 He would be a wonderful man who, at this time of 
 day, would venture to answer this question. But the 
 Bishop does not leave us in doubt. " The answer," he 
 says, " is very simple." " There were only three, — 
 Aaron" (till his death) "and his two sons, Eleazar and 
 Ithamar." "And," the Bishop continues, " it is laid 
 down solemnly in N. iii. 10, ' Thou shalt appoint 
 Aaron and his sons, and they shall wait in the priest's 
 office, and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put 
 to death/ " And then the Bishop thus proceeds : — 
 " Yet how was it possible that these two or three men 
 should have discharged all these duties for such a vast 
 multitude? The single work, of offering the double 
 offering for women after childbirth, must have utterly 
 overpowered three priests, though engaged without 
 cessation from morning to night." 
 
 We are very sorry indeed to break the thread of 
 this learned argument of Bishop Colenso ; but we 
 feel a something within which compels us to bow to 
 truth, and express our sincere and hearty concurrence 
 with this important question. 
 
 Reader, only think of the Bishop of London's 
 position, if, in addition to his lordship's morning corre- 
 spondence, his levees, his reception of deputations, his 
 duties as a peer of the realm, his ordinations, consecra- 
 tions, confirmations, preaching, lecturing, attendance at 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 115 
 
 meetings, and the vast amount of work besides — not 
 to speak of some little allowance for taking food and 
 rest — for his lordship is, after all, only a mortal, and 
 must feed on something more than air ! — now only 
 think of the Bishop having, in addition to such work, 
 to church all the women after childbirth who may 
 happen to reside within his lordship's diocese! This 
 would, in the words of the Bishop of Natal, " utterly 
 overpower" his lordship, "though engaged without 
 cessation from morning to night." 
 
 We believe Bishop Colenso on this point at least. 
 Such work would overpower his Lordship of London. 
 And we sincerely hope that, if the Bishop of Natal 
 and his friends succeed in publishing a new Bible, 
 and in establishing a new Church, they will pause 
 before they impose on their Bishop of London 
 any such "overpowering" duties. Indeed, the mere 
 churching of the women of London after childbirth 
 would, independently of any other duty, " utterly 
 overpower him ;" not to state that in fact the light of 
 the moon would have to be as the light of the sun, and 
 the light of the sun not only sevenfold, but seventy 
 times sevenfold, for such daily work. 
 
 The Bishop then goes on to his arithmetic. " We 
 can scarcely," he writes, " allow less than five minutes 
 to each sacrifice;" — he had before proved two hundred 
 and fifty to be the number of births each day, which 
 would have involved, for the two, the burnt-offering 
 and the sin-offering, five hundred sacrifices; and those 
 sacrifices would have taken two thousand five hundred 
 minutes; and two thousand five hundred minutes 
 would be nearly forty-two hours; and, therefore, 
 " could not have been offered in a single day of twelve 
 hours, though each of the three priests had been 
 employed in the one incessant labour of offering them" 
 
 h 2 
 
116 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 (that is, the mere offerings for the women), " without a 
 moment's rest or intermission." 
 
 We can only say of this last sentence of the Bishop 
 as Juvenal said of Cicero — 
 
 " O, si sic omnia !" 
 
 If in all other points the Bishop had spoken as much 
 truth, he would have bid fair to have converted a 
 world. It is, indeed, a self-evident proposition. But 
 it was a work of mere supererogation to have gone 
 into such a display of arithmetic, for every one must 
 subscribe to the statement, that such an amount of 
 work " must have utterly overpowered three priests, 
 though engaged without cessation from morning to 
 night." 
 
 But the fact is, that, after all, though we bow with 
 much reverence to the " truth," as in this instance 
 stated by Bishop Colenso, yet we cannot see that 
 Moses was a fool, and an inventor of fables and lies; 
 and that, therefore, Christianity is itself but fable. 
 We cannot connect such self-evident premises with 
 the conclusion of the Bishop. And we are satisfied 
 that there are many infidels who would be ashamed to 
 use such despicable arguments against the Revelation 
 of God. 
 
 Now, without any reference to the Bishop of Natal, 
 we always understood the plain common-sense view of 
 the question ; — that Aaron was the head of the priest- 
 hood, and that any person not " called of God as was 
 Aaron," who attempted to usurp the sacred office, was 
 guilty of an offence, punishable with death. " The 
 stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death ;" for 
 such a person would be guilty of not only an act of 
 high treason against the law, but against the Almighty 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 117 
 
 Himself, whose direct appointment and command such 
 usurper would set at defiance. 
 
 This the history of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram 
 proved. And on this ground Moses asked Korah, the 
 ringleader in that rebellion, " And what is Aaron, that 
 ye murmur against him ?" Aaron is only the appointed 
 head of the priesthood, selected and appointed by 
 Jehovah ; therefore you are not guilty of rebellion 
 against Aaron, but against God Himself. 
 
 But Aaron had a whole tribe under him to minister 
 in the various offices of the priesthood. 
 
 " And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Bring the 
 tribe of Levi near." How — we might by the way ask, 
 on the principle of the Bishop, so curiously calculated 
 in another place — how could a whole tribe have been 
 brought near ? " And present them before Aaron the 
 priest, that they may minister unto him. And they 
 shall keep his charge, and the charge of the whole 
 congregation before the Tabernacle of the Con- 
 gregation, to do the service of the Tabernacle. And 
 thou shalt give the Levites unto Aaron and to his 
 sons : they are wholly given unto him out of the 
 children of Israel." 
 
 And when Moses blessed the tribes, he showed more 
 particularly the duties of the tribe of Levi. " They 
 shall teach Jacob Thy judgments, and Israel Thy law : 
 they shall put incense before Thee, and whole burnt 
 sacrifice upon Thine altar." 
 
 So we see that there was some provision made 
 against the alarming contingency of Bishop Colenso ; 
 and that Aaron was not abandoned to be so " utterly 
 overpowered, though engaged without cessation from 
 morning to night." And Moses, when he wrote this 
 
 © © 7 
 
 account of the duties of the priesthood, was not such 
 a fool and tyrant as the Bishop of Natal would have us 
 believe. 
 
118 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 Aaron, then, is named merely as head or sovereign 
 of the order, in whose family the high priesthood de- 
 scended as an inheritance. 
 
 St. Paul was of this mind. He puts Aaron as head 
 or representative of the Jewish priesthood, as Christ is 
 the head of the unchangeable priesthood, or the priest- 
 hood that was not to pass to others, but to remain His 
 who was the great High Priest for ever after the order 
 of Melchisedec. 
 
 And, in another place, St. Paul writes to show, that 
 the tribe, of which Aaron was the head, had the priest- 
 hood as their rig-lit and portion. "And, verily, they 
 that are of the tribe of Levi who receive the office of 
 the priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes of 
 the people according to the law." 
 
 Now, as the Bishop of Natal is so fond of assuming 
 extravagant cases in order to prove Moses a fool and 
 wilful deceiver ; and, in reference to this question, 
 asks — How was it possible that Aaron, the only high 
 priest (in his lifetime), — as the Bishop writes, — even 
 if assisted by his two sons, — how was it possible that 
 he could have performed so many duties every day, 
 when the mere daily work of the sacrifices on behalf of 
 the women alone, if performed even by three priests, 
 would have occupied very many days, and therefore 
 could not have been performed in twelve hours — 
 even if only five minutes had been allowed to each 
 sacrifice ? 
 
 Now we will put our question. Are we then to 
 suppose, or could it have been tolerated, that the 
 whole tribe of Levi, which was thus separated for the 
 work of the priesthood, should have spent their lives 
 like so many monks, or idle drones, living on the tithes, 
 and not doing any thing but looking from day to day at 
 Aaron toiling beyond endurance, if engaged only in 
 the matter of the women after childbirth, to which 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 119 
 
 the Bishop has applied his minute and learned cal- 
 culations ? 
 
 We might as well take the case of our Sovereign 
 Lady Queen Victoria, and calculate, first, the almost 
 countless millions of her glorious empire on which the 
 sun never goes down ; and then the amount of duty 
 which our Sovereign has to discharge every day, and 
 which is discharged in her name, and as her act. And, 
 we may add, that if any person were to come nigh, and 
 seek to usurp the right to discharge those duties, that 
 person would be put to death as guilty of high treason, 
 the highest crime known in law. And whereas the 
 Bishop allows that Aaron's two sons might have assisted 
 him, the law of England does not allow any partner in 
 the rights of the Sovereign. 
 
 And now to apply the Bishop's mode of arguing. 
 Yet how was it possible that one queen should dis- 
 charge all those duties for such almost countless mil- 
 lions? The single work of daily correspondence with 
 such a multitude must "utterly overpower her, though 
 engaged without cessation from morning to night." 
 Why, if you allow only one minute for each letter, the 
 work of a day would require many months, and as that 
 work which would require months could not be per- 
 formed in twelve hours, therefore, reader, the whole 
 history of England, laws, constitution and all, are mere 
 idle tales ! 
 
 THE WAR ON MIDIAN. 
 
 The last of the objections of Bishop Colenso against 
 the truth of the Pentateuch is " the war on Midian." 
 In this chapter the old arguments of infidels of past 
 days are reproduced by the Bishop, with, at the same 
 time, one very original idea as to the impossibility of 
 12,000 Israelites "having carried off 100,000 captives," 
 
120 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 which the Bishop very justly remarks would have been 
 more than eight captives to each man. 
 
 And, if by " carried off" we are to understand that 
 the Israelites actually carried the captives on their 
 backs, then we should be very much inclined to think 
 that the Bishop is right; and that eight captives and a 
 decimal point or piece of the four captives — which 
 would be the surplus over the hundred multiplied by 
 twelve, — that, we say, eight and a decimal point of four 
 captives would have been too heavy a burden for one 
 man, especially if that man had to carry a tent and 
 other " cumbrous articles " referred to in a former 
 chapter. 
 
 But yet the Irish soldier took several prisoners, and, 
 when praised by his commander for the act, and asked 
 how he managed such an exploit, replied, " Plaise 
 your honour, I surrounded them!" Well, 12,000 
 could better have surrounded the 100,000 captives 
 than one Irishman could have surrounded three or 
 four prisoners of war. This idea, on which a further 
 and grand objection against the Pentateuch is founded, 
 is, we repeat, quite original. At least, in the course 
 of our reading, we never met with it before. We 
 need not waste time in proving that large bodies have 
 laid down their arms to a mere handful of men, and 
 have marched before them as captives. 
 
 The two leading points, however, in this stale ob- 
 jection are the number reported as slain, and the 
 cruelty of the Israelites. As to the reported number 
 of slain the Bishop goes into a most minute calculation, 
 and shows that only so many were slain at Waterloo, 
 and that, therefore, no more than the exact proportion 
 which he will allow could have been slain in the war 
 on Midian. 
 
 We all know that the advance in the science of war 
 has, in a measure, humanized warfare, and made less 
 
TO IMPEACFI THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 121 
 
 the destruction of mankind. When the vultures in 
 the parable of Johnson held a consultation as to what 
 beings were their best friends, they unanimously de- 
 cided that, beyond all comparison, man was that best 
 friend. 
 
 "We read in history of a few individuals from age to 
 age having been killed by a lion, or a tiger, or a bear, 
 or a wolf; but countless millions of men have been 
 slain by their fellow-men. What comparison, then, 
 between the tribe of lions, and the race of man, as 
 friends to the vulture? Therefore George III. well 
 replied to Watson's repudiation of any compliment on 
 his improvement in gunpowder, " A sorry subject, 
 your Majesty, on which to compliment a Christian 
 bishop ;" " Not at all, sir ; any thing which tends to 
 mitigate the horrors of war is a very proper subject of 
 compliment to any man." 
 
 In former days wars were vastly more destruc- 
 tive than they are now. Read Homer, and see the 
 havoc which Diomede made where the poet describes 
 him as armed with a commission and assistance from 
 some of the gods to destroy the Trojans. Homer was 
 a poet, and some licence is given to poets as well as to 
 travellers ; but, after all, Homer's description of the 
 terrible slaughter by even one man was founded on 
 the fact that the most powerful, like, as Horace re- 
 marks, the bull in the herd, dealt out death at plea- 
 sure. 
 
 This was the natural consequence of the mode of 
 warfare in those days, when each man selected his 
 man, and when the weaker, as a matter of mere ne- 
 cessity, succumbed to the more powerful foe. And 
 when Alexander, Hannibal, and Scipio contended for 
 precedence before the bar of Minos in the lower 
 regions, Alexander, in reply to Hannibal's statement 
 of his exploits, says, "Indeed, Minos, it would appear 
 
122 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 to be useless to reply to such a self-confident man, 
 but the whole world knows what a robber he was, 
 and what a great man and conqueror I was." And in 
 reference to the number which he slew, he appeals to 
 Minos and the whole staff of officers in Hades, " I need 
 not to speak ; you all know my exploits, and how I 
 bridged up the rivers with the dead, and sent down 
 such multitudes to you in one day, that the boat of 
 Charon was utterly insufficient for its purpose, and you 
 had to construct rafts to carry over the shades of the 
 slain." 
 
 We often laughed in days gone by at the wit of the 
 writer in whose pages this account is to be found, but 
 we little thought that we should ever have had those 
 passages occur to the mind to reprove a Christian 
 bishop for his absurd writing, and wicked attack on 
 the Revelation of God. 
 
 But yet all this wit, at the expense of the folly of 
 mankind in thinking of such questions even after 
 their departure from this world, is founded on the 
 fact that in those days warfare was fearfully and 
 almost incredibly destructive in its effects; but since 
 war has become more a science, and the means of 
 destruction more terrible, the pigmy is a match for 
 the giant, and the slaughter of the human race has 
 been greatly reduced. 
 
 And yet Bishop Colenso enters into his usual cal- 
 culations, and states the number of the slain on the 
 field of Waterloo ; and, fixing on that number as the 
 standard which is to regulate all modes of warfare and 
 all ages, past, present, and to come, on such laughable 
 grounds concludes that the record of salvation is a 
 fable — for all parts of that record must stand or fall 
 together. It is not a record of Bishop Colenso's de- 
 vising; and we have yet to discover, in other ways 
 than by his pretensions, the Bishop of Natal's com- 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 123 
 
 petence, in respect to his wisdom or learning, to set 
 aside the record of salvation by any such silly applica- 
 tion of his arithmetic. 
 
 As to the cruelty of the Israelites ; " the horrors of 
 war" would be a better term. When once the 
 sword is unsheathed, who can control its destructive 
 power ? 
 
 When once men " cry havoc, and let slip the dogs 
 of war," who can regulate their infuriated passions ? 
 And, if this be the natural result of war under any 
 circumstances, how much more was it not so under 
 the old system of warfare ? 
 
 When the Almighty, after having created all things, 
 established the laws of nature, which we call " the 
 fixed laws," and which are so fixed only by His ap- 
 pointment, He reserved in His own hands certain 
 elements for the moral government of the world : 
 those elements to be, as they are to this day, used 
 for that purpose under His superintending Provi- 
 dence. 
 
 Amongst the chief of those elements are the sword, 
 the famine, and the pestilence ; we have, besides, 
 earthquakes, lightnings, and tempests doing their 
 terrible work of correction and judgment on sea and 
 land. But the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, 
 with the noisome beast mentioned in the sacred writ- 
 ings, all make up " my four sore judgments," saith 
 the Lord God Almighty. 
 
 Now, as we have said in the case of slavery, the 
 revelation of God did not create war. The very 
 heathen can inform us on this point. How is the 
 revelation of God accountable for this terrible scourge? 
 It, in common with the book of nature, only deals 
 with war as with famine, pestilence, and other de- 
 structive elements, as facts, as instruments used by 
 God for the punishment of the guilty, and not only 
 
124 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 guilty, but in too many instances actively wicked, race 
 of man. 
 
 The heathen world represented their father of gods 
 and men, Jupiter, as every moment, on the slightest 
 provocation, hurling his thunderbolt at the heads of 
 bad men. When Jupiter was sending Mercury on 
 some special message, he called him back, and said, 
 " And, when you are on your return, call in at iEtna and 
 have my thunderbolt sharpened ; for it was blunted 
 lately, when I shot it at that villain of a philosopher, 
 who was teaching the people that there were no gods, 
 but the fellow stooped his head, and the thunderbolt 
 struck on a rock, and its points were blunted ; but call 
 in and have it sharpened, and I'll have a shot at those 
 fellows who have treated Timon in such an infamous 
 way." For Mercury had told Jupiter how Timon's 
 friends had sucked the very marrow out of his 
 bones ; and then, when they had got all out of 
 him, neglected him in the most ungrateful and in- 
 solent manner. 
 
 The heathen world had not the light of that glorious 
 revelation which Bishop Colenso would, if he could, 
 cause to set in " blackness of darkness for ever," and 
 substitute his farthing rushlight in its place; and, 
 therefore, we need not wonder that even the learned 
 Greeks believed much of what their satirist thus lashes 
 with severity. 
 
 But, unlike the Jupiter of the heathen world, the 
 Almighty Creator and Ruler of the Universe is slow in 
 His proceedings against an unthankful and rebellious 
 race. " Long-suffering" is one of the parts of His 
 great and glorious name ; and, as an old divine said, 
 " it cost Him more pains to destroy Jericho than 
 create the world." He governs by established laws, 
 and not by judgments instigated by passion ; and He 
 makes sinners to chastise themselves, that they may 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 125 
 
 know in their hearts " what an evil and bitter thing it 
 is to have departed from the living God." 
 
 Thus the Creator acts in a calm and dignified man- 
 ner in all His judgments, and by this way stops every 
 mouth, and brings in the whole world as guilty before 
 Him; men being compelled to acknowledge that they 
 have brought their judgments upon themselves. 
 
 And whether we refer to the " war on Midian," or 
 any wars, it is just the same. The commission is, 
 " Sword, go through the land." Read the nature of 
 war, not in the history of the battle-field, but in the 
 consequences of the battle ; or read the history of the 
 siege of some great town, not in the mere fighting, but 
 in the letting loose the unbridled passions of an infu- 
 riated soldiery, when, after they take by storm a place 
 that has refused to surrender, and which has therefore 
 caused a vast destruction of human life, such soldiery 
 are let loose for a given number of days to sack the 
 unhappy town. " Death would be chosen rather than 
 life" by the residue of those that would survive the 
 actual siege. 
 
 Thus the result is the same, whether we read it in 
 words, as in the history of the " war on Midian," or in 
 the mere facts ; and the one as much as the other is a 
 part of the government of God. It is a sad thing that 
 the innocent should in such cases suffer, but they do in 
 all such cases suffer; and the fact that they will suffer 
 may sometimes lead men to pause, before they bring 
 about such dreadful consequences. 
 
 But innocent children to the third and fourth gene- 
 ration suffer because of the wicked lives of their fathers ; 
 and poor babes are involved in the same destruction in 
 all the accidents of "flood and field," and every day 
 numbers of innocent persons are involved in ruin — ruin 
 to descend to their latest posterity — by the designing 
 villainy of their fellow-men ; and such villains prosper 
 
126 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 for a time — often a long time. And this fact lias in 
 all ages quite perplexed the minds of most sincere 
 believers in the good Providence of God. 
 
 In the Psalms, the Prophets, and other parts of Holy 
 Writ, this state of things has been a sore trial to the 
 people of God, which they confessed themselves unable 
 to solve ; and had only to stay themselves on the word 
 of Abraham, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do 
 right?" 
 
 And even heathen writers, referring to this difficulty 
 in the government of the world, sought the explanation 
 almost in the words of the sacred writer, " Surely Thou 
 didst set them in slippery places." When speaking of 
 the prosperity of actually wicked men, Charon is made 
 to exclaim in some such words as these : " Well done, 
 noble Clotho ; lift them up the higher, that their fall 
 may be the heavier, and may afford more cause of 
 rejoicing at their deserved end." 
 
 We ask then, once again, are we, poor finite beings, 
 worms of the dust, to challenge the Almighty Ruler 
 of the Universe, and call Him to account for this His 
 mode of administration of His own affairs ; or turn 
 upon Him, and revile and blaspheme His Word — 
 whether spoken in words in the book of grace, or in 
 acts in the book of nature, because these such painful 
 trials of our faith and patience are thus recorded in 
 those volumes ? 
 
 These, as we have already said, these are the trials 
 of faith ; and not the laughable difficulties of the size 
 of court-yards, cleansing of camps, and carriage of tents 
 by oxen, " if they had been trained as pack-oxen !" 
 
 These are, indeed, the difficulties and trials in this 
 world of time, which can only be — but which will be — 
 cleared up in that future state to which we are all 
 hastening; and, we may say, difficulties, which, if they 
 were to be exhibited to our view in the morning of 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 127 
 
 life, would paralyze all exertion, and consign us to a 
 drivelling existence to the very evening of our days. 
 How Shakespeare has treated this idea — 
 
 " O heaven ! that one might read the book of fate ; 
 And see the revolution of the times 
 Make mountains level, and the continent 
 (Weary of solid firmness) melt itself 
 Into the sea ! and, other times, to see 
 The beachy girdle of the ocean 
 Too wide for Neptune's hips : how chances mock, 
 And changes fill the cup of alteration 
 With divers liquors ! O if this were seen, 
 The happiest youth, — viewing his progress through, 
 What perils past, what crosses to ensue, — 
 Would shut the book, and ait him down and die." 
 
 These, and such like dispensations, are the diffi- 
 culties which, though they do not make all men infidels, 
 are the real trials which shake faith, and which bring 
 forth from some — " Though He slay me, yet will I trust 
 in Him." 
 
 THE SUN STANDING STILL. 
 
 Having examined, with two or three exceptions, so 
 many of the worn-out objections of Bishop Colenso to 
 the Pentateuch ; objections which the Bishop and his 
 band of followers imagine will sweep the fable of 
 Moses from the land, we conclude our weary task with 
 some notice of the well-known one in the book of 
 Joshua, to which the Bishop refers in his preface. AVe 
 have said " weary task ;" for such indeed the examina- 
 tion of Bishop Colenso's volume has been. We do 
 not desire to give offence ; but we write as an inde- 
 pendent thinker : 
 
 " Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri." 
 
128 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 And as Bishop Colenso has so freely stated his 
 opinion, that the writings of Moses are fable and folly, 
 we think that we, as believers in that part and parcel of 
 the revelation of our Creator, and as of the same mind 
 with the Apostle of the Gentiles, " If in this life only 
 we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most mise- 
 rable," have also a right to state our view of his 
 book. We have, besides, now to bear every kind of 
 reproach, and vain babblings far worse than reproach, 
 wherever we go, because a number of men whose only 
 motto is — " Rem, recte si possis, sed quocunque modo 
 rem," "Money at all hazards, at the cost of heaven 
 itself," have been stirred up in a wonderful manner 
 to defend glaring infidelity, and whose God and Bible 
 are the Bishop of Natal and his infidel book. 
 
 Now we think this a very hard case. For ourselves, 
 we have never trespassed on the "loaves and fishes" of 
 the Church ; and we therefore come forward as merely 
 a solitary individual of the professing Christians of the 
 land — " unus multorum," " one of the million," — and 
 " paullo infirmior," perhaps, than our new philosophers ; 
 one of those weak persons who think that Moses was 
 not a fool or a deceiver ; and that the Revelation of God, 
 from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of 
 the book of the Revelation, has been, beyond ail com- 
 parison, the greatest blessing which a merciful Creator 
 ever bestowed upon the fallen and heavily afflicted 
 race of man. 
 
 With such feelings, then, we claim the right to use 
 as much candour in speaking of the production of 
 Bishop Colenso, as he does in speaking of the writings 
 of Moses. Therefore we repeat that the perusal of 
 his volume has been a weary work. The task reminds 
 us of the remarks of Horace, when advised not to 
 write any more, — " May I perish, my good father, but 
 your advice is good ; but I cannot sleep unless I write." 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 129 
 
 " Let those," replied his friend, " who require sound 
 sleep, anoint their bodies and swim several times across 
 the Tiber." 
 
 Well, we can prescribe a better remedy for those who 
 require sleep, and who have ever studied the questions 
 on which Bishop Colenso writes. Let them read and 
 work out the arithmetic of Bishop Colenso, by which 
 he would prove the Word of God a fable, and they 
 will not have any need of the prescription of Horace. 
 
 We now examine the objections founded on the 
 words of Joshua, '' Sun, stand thou still." We have 
 had for very many years a view of this question, which 
 has satisfied our mind that Joshua never thought of 
 contradicting the now established philosophy on this 
 subject ; and that too many persons have concluded, 
 without sufficient grounds, that Joshua spoke what was 
 philosophically untrue. We do not care to notice 
 Bishop Colenso, who serves up the old objections of 
 shallow infidels. There are two points in this question : 
 the first, whether any thing of the kind could have 
 occurred, or ever did occur ; and, secondly, the mode 
 of speech in which the fact is described. 
 
 We suppose that few persons, except those of most 
 depraved minds, those " fools " who say " in their hearts 
 there is no God ;" and the word " fools " does not 
 mean men of weak intellect, but deliberately wicked 
 men, who use hand and tongue against the Most 
 High ; now we not only suppose, but conclude that 
 none but such would assert that the Creator is so 
 bound down, or such a slave to any laws established 
 by Himself in His own universe, as that He could not, 
 without an effort, suspend, alter, or abrogate any of 
 those laws. 
 
 The heathen world believed that their deities were 
 in abject subjection to fate; but not so with Him Who 
 is the " Maker of Heaven and earth, and of all things 
 
 i 
 
1*30 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 visible and invisible." If this be admitted, then the 
 causing not merely the sun, but the universe itself, to 
 stand still would not cost an effort, and could not be 
 attended with any, even the least, inconvenience to His 
 creatures. 
 
 We know all the theories and calculations as to the 
 way in which we and all bodies on this earth, for in- 
 stance, would be hurled into space, if the earth were 
 to be suddenly stopped in its journey. But all this is 
 mere fallacy ; it has a show of reason, — but a mere 
 show, — and is only folly in the extreme. We shall 
 not, therefore, labour to prove that the Creator of the 
 universe can suspend His own laws without the per- 
 mission of Bishop Colenso ; or without making the 
 mode of suspension depend on the arithmetic of the 
 Bishop of Natal. 
 
 It may, however, be well to mention, that, as in the 
 case of the deluge, to which we have referred as not 
 having been invented by Moses, so, in this instance, 
 we may observe that the heathen world had some 
 account, — we say some, for the obscurity of the account 
 is not the question ; that would be the natural conse- 
 quence of a tradition passing down from age to age, — 
 that, we say, the heathen world had some account of 
 this very matter. We quote what is to persons of any 
 reading a well-known passage, but what may be inter- 
 esting to others, as showing that some such circum- 
 stances as those described in the history of Joshua, and 
 again in the history of Hezekiah, were not only be- 
 lieved in the heathen world, but were recorded in the 
 chronicles of the Egyptians, to whose country all men 
 repaired to obtain knowledge. 
 
 After referring to other information which he ob- 
 tained from the Egyptians, Herodotus, who wrote five 
 hundred years before the Christian Era, says, "But 
 during this time they asserted that four times the sun 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 131 
 
 had risen out of his usual seats ; and that twice he rose 
 where he now sets ; and that twice he set where he 
 now rises. They add that, in consequence of these 
 revolutions, no alterations in regard to Egypt, whether 
 land or river, occurred, nor likewise with respect to 
 diseases, or the things pertaining to death." 
 
 This statement, Herodotus says, the priests of Jupiter 
 showed him. Therefore, although we shall not insult 
 our readers with any attempt at proof that the Creator 
 can control the works of His own hands, we have given 
 this account of the tradition which obtained in the 
 world as to some very extraordinary phenomena in the 
 rising 1 and setting of the sun. 
 
 The question then is, — not as to the power of the 
 Creator to have produced such a very wonderful result, 
 as the lengthening of the day in the history of Joshua, 
 nor yet as to the fact ; for, independently of the history 
 of the fact in the Book of Joshua, we have that fact 
 referred to as known, however confusedly, to the hea- 
 then world. The only subject in debate, then, except 
 with avowed infidels, who deny the possibility, proba- 
 bility, or fact of a revelation from God to man, is the 
 way in which the miracle is described in the Book of 
 Joshua, " Sun, stand thou still." 
 
 We pass by any explanation founded on the lan- 
 guage used to this very day of the sun rising and 
 sroinsr down, which is, and must be, the common Ian- 
 guage of all mankind. We remember a quaint remark 
 of an old divine, in an explanation of some parable, 
 where, in speaking of the fanciful views which some men 
 took of the mere phraseology in which the instruction 
 was conveyed, says, " Note well, the words of a parable 
 must not be squeezed too much, or we may extract 
 blood, not milk." 
 
 And we pass by the explanation of commentatois, 
 
 i 2 
 
132 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 who plead for Joshua that he was not commissioned to 
 teach astronomy, and that, if he had spoken to the peo- 
 ple in any other words, or in strictly scientific language, 
 he would not have been understood, and that, therefore, 
 he adopted the commonly received notion that the sun 
 went round the earth, — in fact, the now exploded 
 system of Ptolemy, that the earth was the centre of 
 our system, with the sun and planets revolving around 
 this little speck in creation. But it is not said that 
 Joshua spake any thing to the people. He showed 
 them the result, — the miraculous interposition of God 
 on their behalf. Joshua spake to God, and then gave 
 his command to the sun, and also to the moon. " Then 
 spake Joshua to the Lord in the day when the Lord 
 delivered up the Amorites before the children of 
 Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand 
 thou still upon Gibeon ; and thou, Moon, in the valley 
 of Ajalon." 
 
 We have always believed that it will yet be dis- 
 covered, that, as in the case of some points of phi- 
 losophy propounded by Moses, and referred to in a 
 former chapter, Joshua did speak in more accurate 
 language than men generally suppose. Is there, we 
 ask, even at this day, an astronomer on the face of the 
 earth who can state beyond possibility of doubt, or 
 question, the nature of the sun ? or of the exact nature 
 of his influence on the whole, or on any part, of the 
 system over which he presides ? 
 
 Nay, take not merely the sun itself, but take the 
 spots on the sun, and begin with the inventor of the 
 telescope, or perhaps, rather, the first man who con- 
 structed one for practical purposes, and come down to 
 our own Sir J. Herschel, or any of our modern astrono- 
 mers, and, we boldly ask, is there one man amongst 
 them who can pretend to so explain the mere spots on 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 133 
 
 the surface of the sun, as to make the rejection of his 
 views a ground for such an unerring conclusion as that 
 any contrary view would be only a fable and a lie? 
 
 What Seneca said must be, and actually is, the con- 
 fession of all our really great men. We must confess 
 that we do not know any thing as we ought to know, 
 — not that we are inferior in intellect to men of former 
 ages, but that time is the great teacher of man. And, as 
 Seneca says, " The people of the next age shall know 
 many things unknown to us : many are reserved for 
 ages then to come, when we shall be quite forgotten. 
 The world would be a pitiful small thing, indeed, if it 
 did not contain enough for the inquiries of the whole 
 world." And again, " Much work still remains, and 
 much will remain ; neither to him that shall be born 
 after a thousand ages will matter be wanting for new 
 additions to what hath already been invented." 
 
 Now, then, if this be so, yet, if we differ from others 
 or others from us, we do not see that their view, or our 
 view, could entitle any of us to draw such a conclusion 
 as that such view was to overthrow the Revelation of 
 God. 
 
 But, if what we assert as to the readily acknowledged 
 ignorance on the part of our greatest astronomers as to 
 the nature, and the whole of the effects, or influence, of 
 the sun on any, or all, of the planets over which he 
 presides, be true, then how can any man pretend to lay 
 down his opinion as premises, from which to draw the 
 conclusion that the Book of Joshua stated what was 
 contrary to what " we know to be the truth," as our 
 self-styled philosophers would say ? " And therefore 
 it is quite evident that that portion of the so-called 
 Revelation of God is mere fable. In fact, we have 
 weighed the whole question in the balance of reason," — 
 that is, reader, their own reason, — and you must not, in 
 
134 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 the least degree, doubt that reason and their reason are 
 one and the same Divine gift. 
 
 But where, we may ask, does the Book of Joshua 
 ever assert that the earth is the centre of our system, 
 and that the sun and planets revolve around this little 
 speck in creation? 
 
 The now received idea of the sun being the centre 
 and life of our system is not new. It was declared by 
 Pythagoras 500 years before the birth of Christ. 
 And who can say what was known or even recorded 
 before the time of Pythagoras? The destruction of 
 the Alexandrian library has left the world in much 
 uncertainty as to what was written in its earlier ages. 
 
 But if Pythagoras laid down the Copernican theory 
 that the sun, and not the earth, is the centre of our 
 system, who, we repeat, can pronounce with any degree 
 of certainty, or pronounce at all, what was known on 
 this subject before the time of that philosopher? He, 
 however, appears to have thought in advance of his 
 day, and to have anticipated the discoveries of modern 
 times. So his theory fell to the ground, and, up to the 
 time of Copernicus, the notion prevailed that the earth 
 is the centre of our system, and that around it the sun 
 and planets revolve. 
 
 This notion is now exploded. Modern discoveries 
 have proved the contrary. But, because the sun does 
 not move round the earth as its centre, has not, there- 
 fore, the sun any motion of his own ? If the old idea 
 were the true view, then we believe that Joshua would 
 have spoken in a different way, and would have said 
 to earth as the centre of life and motion, " Earth, stand 
 thou still." 
 
 There is a unity of design and harmony in all the 
 works of God. Acting on this truth, the Apostle of 
 the Gentiles reasons from the nature of this microcosm, 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 135 
 
 the human body, in favour of sympathy with, and de- 
 pendency on the other, of all the members of the Church 
 of Christ. And, if we adopt the illustration, then 
 Ave say that, if we want to bring to a stand any mem- 
 ber or part of this little world, the body of man, we 
 need not trouble ourselves about dealing with such 
 member, or part, or parts, of the human system ; which 
 mode, after all, would only produce irregular and con- 
 vulsive movements; like the earth, before a volcanic 
 eruption, when it throws off every thing from its 
 surface, as with violent movement it reels " to and fro, 
 and staggers like a drunken man." 
 
 There is a much shorter way of attaining the object 
 in view, and of accomplishing it in the best manner. 
 Let us address ourselves to the centre of life and 
 motion of this little world, the heart, and all is done 
 in a moment, and in the most certain, noiseless, and 
 effective way. 
 
 Now with the sun our whole system sympathizes, if 
 we may so speak ; and on his influence the life and 
 motion of that system depends ; and, therefore, were 
 we to be commissioned, by any intimation from the 
 Almighty Creator of the Universe, to demand such a 
 result, we should have acted and spoken just as Joshua 
 did ; and we believe that thus the end desired would 
 have been brought about in the easiest way. 
 
 We give our view with all humility and deference 
 to the opinion of others, and not as "the truth," which 
 is to overthrow all else. But where all is opinion and 
 conjecture as to the nature of the sun, or even of its 
 mere accidentals, and full influence, we humbly hope 
 that we shall not be considered as if we meant to 
 dogmatize, or in any way make light of the views 
 of other men. 
 
 Our chief object is to show the impossibility of 
 
136 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 laying down as certain, premises founded on such 
 uncertainty in the world of opinion; and then, con- 
 trary to all principles of sound reasoning, drawing 
 from such uncertainties the positive conclusion, that 
 we ourselves are the only wise. We think our view 
 sustained by the fact recorded, that the Moon also 
 stood still. What had the moon to do with the 
 lengthening of day ? the moon was appointed to rule 
 over and govern the night ; and all this Joshua knew. 
 The Earth and the Sun were alone concerned in bring- 
 ing about such a result as the lengthening of the day. 
 And yet it is written, that in answer to the command 
 of Joshua to the Moon, to stand still in the valley of 
 Ajalon, " and the Moon stayed." 
 
 Who then, we recur to the question, can state the 
 exact nature of the Sun, and the full extent and 
 operations of his influence on this our system, arising 
 from merely his revolution on his own axis? And 
 who can state with unerring certainty the exact nature 
 of his work, and influence on the subjects of his world, 
 as he travels through the unbounded region of space, 
 attended by his magnificent court ; and revolving with 
 incredible speed around a far more distant Sun, his 
 Divinely appointed Sovereign Lord, and centre of life 
 and motion ? 
 
 We are, in truth, but mere children in knowledge. 
 And it is a reversal of the order of nature to put forth 
 the folly of childhood as the wisdom of age ; and, to 
 go the step farther, and attempt to correct the 
 wisdom of the Infinitely Wise — whether written in 
 the Book of Nature or of Revelation — by such folly 
 of childhood, is the climax of ignorance, impiety, and 
 vain conceit. 
 
 Therefore, to conclude. We must admit, that the 
 Creator of the Universe can do with His own creation 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 137 
 
 and laws as He will ; that, apart from His interference, 
 such an event as that under consideration would have 
 been impossible ; and that, if done by His command, 
 the event must have been done in the best and most 
 easy way. And, reasoning from analogy, we may, we 
 think, conclude that the mode of accomplishment is, 
 at least, not so improperly described ; as if, because 
 Joshua assumed that the sun has a motion of his own, 
 he therefore said that such motion is round the earth. 
 And, we may further conclude, that our imperfect 
 knowledge on this, or on any subject in the world of 
 Nature, does not justify the assumption of superior 
 wisdom and veracity on the part of Bishop Colenso; 
 and certainly not justify his poor and impious conclu- 
 sion, that the Sacred Writings — the Revelation of 
 God — are a fable and a lie. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Review of Bishop Colenso's two modes of arguing against the 
 Sacred Writers — The line which the Bishop should adopt to set 
 aside the Inspired Records — What the principles of the Bishop's 
 school would establish in place of the Bible — " Inconveniences 
 from a proposed abolition of Christianity" recommended to 
 modern reformers of the Bible — Christianity not a mere code 
 of precepts — The light of nature from God — Gives birth to 
 noble sentiments — But cannot teach the way of peace — The 
 light of nature not what the Bishop's work would substitute 
 for the Bible — The " Age of Reason" is the substitute of his 
 school — First disciple of the Age of Reason — His act and doc- 
 trine contrasted with acts and doctrines from the light of 
 nature — Terrible effects of the establishment of the Age of 
 Reason in France — Appeal to the reader. 
 
 In the preceding chapters, we have endeavoured 
 to carry out the title of our volume — " The Preten- 
 
138 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 sions of Bishop Colenso to impeach the wisdom and 
 veracity of the compilers of the Sacred Writings con- 
 sidered." We have tried by the rules of reasoning 
 and common sense his principles of arguing against 
 the inspired records, and have showed that, by proving 
 too much, the Bishop of Natal proves nothing ; or, 
 to otherwise state the question, proves that there is 
 not any thing in existence capable of being proved, if 
 objections and cavils are to take the place of positive 
 evidence, and be used to overthrow all records sacred 
 and profane, because there may be found, in such 
 records, some things which we do not understand or 
 approve. 
 
 Such a line of argument against the Inspired 
 writings, or against any writings, or any subject 
 placed before the mind, carries its own refutation ; 
 and must prove how little knowledge of the real 
 nature of mathematics or logic any man must possess 
 who could descend to, and use, such a wretched sys- 
 tem of cavilling, and then expect men to receive 
 the same as proof deduced from the sound exercise of 
 reason. 
 
 This is the first step in the mode of argument 
 adopted by Bishop Colenso to prove the inspired 
 writings folly and fable — impossible, incredible, ab- 
 surd, — and we scarcely remember what other names 
 he has used, to show how his mind soars above 
 the assumed wisdom and truth of the sacred writ- 
 ings. 
 
 The next principle of cavilling, to carry out this 
 vicious system of reasoning which the Bishop of Natal 
 adopts, is, by the consent of all honest and enlightened 
 minds, the lowest, and the most to be despised. We 
 allude to the principle of seeking to involve a man in 
 falsehood by a petty system of cavils and contradic- 
 tions extracted from his own words. 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 139 
 
 This is not to follow the path of truth. It is 
 the mode adopted by some ignorant and bullying 
 lawyers, in order to " browbeat " a witness. But it 
 is a way as far removed from all dignity of mind as 
 light is from darkness ; and, though it take with the 
 multitude, — " at saltern hoc tenet nos," — as Horace 
 said of the brawler for " civil and religious liberty " 
 of his day, whose voice could drown the noise of 
 several waggons and funerals ; or, like Goldsmith's 
 village-schoolmaster, whose 
 
 " Words of learned length, and thundering sound, 
 Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around, 
 And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, 
 That one small head could carry all he knew;" — 
 
 but though, we say, all this may take with many, and 
 especially with infidels, who catch at any thing that 
 can insult their Maker, and their Maker's Word, yet 
 it is as short-lived as the inflated bubbles forced up on 
 the surface of the stream. 
 
 This, then, is the other mode of argument adopted 
 by Bishop Colenso to sap the foundation of Faith. 
 We shall only say, that if the authors of such a 
 wretched system of arguing, and of such insults to 
 the sacred writers, were to be matched against, and 
 for only five minutes within the grasp of a man of 
 such mind as Moses possessed, there would be such 
 an exhibition made of them, and of their learned 
 sophistry, as would for ever silence their tongues, even 
 though it should not cure their vanity. 
 
 If Bishop Colenso desire to destroy all belief in the 
 Word of God, he should, in place of such a system of 
 objections and cavils, bring forward positive evidence 
 which, by its weight, would overthrow the evidence by 
 which the writings of Moses, as a prominent part of 
 
140 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 the revelation of God, have been in all ages, and are 
 to this day, sustained. 
 
 But, until the Bishop of Natal can do this, all 
 believers in the Word of God may rest in peace. And 
 in order to draw, as he seeks to do, the multitude after 
 him, Bishop Colenso should prove, or pretend, a call 
 from heaven, and a new revelation to man. But he 
 must not expect to argue men out of their common 
 sense by such cavils and sophistry as those which his 
 book displays. If the- Almighty has established His 
 Revelation by such infallible signs, and wonders, and 
 standing monuments, and testimony that grows with 
 age, and shows not any appearance of decay, then it is 
 indeed of very little consequence that any man should 
 say that the Almighty could not have spoken to His 
 creatures, or that He must have spoken only in the 
 way which Bishop Colenso would allow. 
 
 And now if we were to become converts to the 
 principles of Bishop Colenso, and reject the writings 
 of Moses as fable and falsehood, and with them the 
 whole Revelation of God ; for, as we have showed, even 
 the mission and words of Christ Himself, by His own 
 declaration, must stand or fall with the "fable" of 
 Moses ; — what, we may very naturally ask, does Bishop 
 Colenso propose to give us in the place of Christianity, 
 which he would overthrow? This is the question. 
 
 We recommend to the Bishop of Natal, and to 
 modern reformers of the Bible, the following passage 
 from the pen of the well-known wit and political 
 divine of the reign of Queen Anne : — 
 
 " INCONVENIENCES FROM A PROPOSED ABOLITION OF 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 " I am very sensible how much the gentlemen of 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 141 
 
 wit and pleasure are apt to murmur, and be shocked 
 at the sight of so many daggle-tail parsons who happen 
 to fall in their way, and offend their eyes ; but, at the 
 same time, those wise reformers do not consider what 
 an advantage and felicity it is for great wits to be 
 always provided with objects of scorn and contempt in 
 order to exercise and improve their talents, and divert 
 their spleen from falling on each other, or on them- 
 selves; especially when all this may be done without 
 the least imaginable danger to their persons. And, 
 to urge another argument of a parallel nature : — If 
 Christianity were once abolished, how could the 
 freethinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of 
 profound learning, be able to find another subject so 
 calculated in all points whereon to display their abili- 
 ties? What wonderful productions of wit should we 
 be deprived of from those whose genius by continual 
 practice hath been wholly turned upon raillery and 
 invectives against religion, and would therefore be 
 never able to shine or distinguish themselves on any 
 other subject? We are daily complaining of the 
 great decline of wit among us ; and would we take 
 away the greatest, perhaps the only topic we have 
 left ? Who would ever have suspected Asgill for a 
 wit, or Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaustible 
 stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide 
 them with materials? What other subject through all 
 art or nature could have produced Tindal for a pro- 
 found author, or furnished him with readers? It is 
 the wise choice of the subject that alone adorneth and 
 distinguisheth the writer: for, had a hundred such 
 pens as these been employed on the side of religion, 
 they would immediately have sunk into silence and 
 oblivion." 
 
 Our author then states another " inconvenience" 
 
]42 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 which might arise from the " abolition of Christianity," 
 viz. that the Church would be in clanger ! And this 
 " inconvenience " would be attended with such serious 
 results, more especially, we may add, to those who eat 
 the bread of the Church and lift up their heel against 
 it, and against the Revelation of the Church's Lord ; — 
 that these, and, above all, as our author says, the dan- 
 ger that " Presbytery might come in,'' are " considera- 
 tions to be left to the men in power !" 
 
 What, then, does the Bishop of Natal propose to 
 give us in the place of Christianity ? — for we repeat 
 again and again, this is the question — the only real 
 question at issue. 
 
 It is idle to speak of the Christian religion as con- 
 taining noble sentiments and useful precepts. Even 
 the well-known infidel of the great French revolution 
 could rebuke his friend for daring to make any com- 
 parison between Socrates and Christ; and after allow- 
 ing Socrates all due credit, could yet ask, " But where 
 could Jesus have learned amongst his competitors that 
 pure and sublime morality of which He only has given 
 us both precept and example ?" 
 
 But pure and sublime morality is not Christianity. 
 The light of nature, or Natural Religion, has given, 
 and can give, most noble sentiments. But though 
 Christ spake as " never man spake," yet Christianity 
 is not a mere republication of Natural Religion in an 
 improved edition. 
 
 Christianity is the revelation, begun in the writings 
 of Moses and perfected in the Gospel, of a plan of 
 mercy and salvation for the recovery of fallen man ; — a 
 plan which the light of nature, or Natural Religion, 
 never taught, and never can teach, to the lost and 
 wandering race of Adam. The poet well wrote, who 
 thus described our lot in this life: — 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 143 
 
 " Poor wanderers of a stormy day ! 
 From wave to wave we're driven, 
 And fancy's flash, and reason's ray, 
 Serve but to light the troubled way : 
 There's nothing calm but Heaven." 
 
 It is idle, therefore, to speak of leaving men some 
 portion of the Bible, such as our modern sages 
 would select, or to leave us the mere precepts of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 If the Bishop of Natal were to succeed in his effort 
 to overthrow the Revelation of God, — although, poor 
 man ! he might as well try, by his figures and calcula- 
 tions, to pull down the noon-day sun from the firma- 
 ment of the heavens, — yet, for the sake of argument, 
 we say, if he were to succeed to the utmost extent of 
 his efforts, what does he propose to give us in return 
 for the Revelation of God, which he would consign to 
 contempt and oblivion? 
 
 Should any reply, — The light of nature, or Natural 
 Religion ; we answer, — Most certainly not. The 
 Bishop, it is true, quotes sentiments of men who acted 
 and wrote under the light of nature, or, as taught by 
 uncorrupted Natural Religion. But the light of 
 nature, or Natural Religion, is not that which Bishop 
 Colenso would substitute in the place of the Word of 
 God. We deny this altogether. 
 
 The light of nature is from God, and can, as it does, 
 teach the noblest sentiments ; but it cannot teach the 
 way of salvation; it cannot "guide our feet into the 
 way of peace." St. Paul shows, what reason confirms, 
 that men are condemned by the light of nature, 
 not for rejection of the Gospel if not preached to 
 them, but for idolatry, — because they could know 
 enough of God from His works to leave idolatry with- 
 out excuse. 
 
 And, in the days of Job, the idolatry which consisted 
 
144 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 in the worship of even the works of God's hands, such 
 as the sun and moon, was an offence to be "punished 
 by the judge," on the ground of its denying " the God 
 that is above." St. Paul also shows that of which 
 Moses gave warning, that if men were to worship even 
 the works of God, — God, so justly insulted, would give 
 them up, as St. Paul shows the heathen world was 
 given up, to descend in the scale of idolatry, and 
 worship the works of their own hands and of their own 
 corrupt minds. And then they were to be further 
 given up to reprobate minds, " to work all unclean- 
 ness with greediness ;" and to bring forth all those 
 fruits which are the shame and disgrace of the human 
 family. 
 
 All such peculiar debasement arose from corruption 
 of the light of nature, or of Natural Religion. And 
 all the gods under this corruption of Natural Religion 
 were the personification and deification of all the 
 depravity of which fallen man is, has been, or ever can 
 be capable. 
 
 But the wisest and best of the heathen philosophers 
 soared far above the worship of those debased and 
 debasing deities. They worshipped the God of Nature, 
 the Creator of the Universe, and to the utmost of their 
 ability followed the only light which they received 
 from God. 
 
 But not such the religion which the book of Bishop 
 Colenso would propagate. His work would establish 
 another " Age of Reason ;" an accursed, brutal, and 
 brutalizing creed. This character of such a system is 
 what reason would pronounce, and what experience 
 will confirm. We repeat, accursed creed; for there is 
 not any curse that can desolate earth to a greater 
 extent, or convert the world into a den of felons, more 
 effectually than the principles of the "Age of Reason." 
 This is the righteous law of Providence. The most 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 145 
 
 terrible instruments for promotion of misery on earth 
 are the best blessings of God when perverted by man ; 
 and, as reason is the noblest gift of the Creator, so 
 perverted reason is the most terrible curse. 
 
 We judge of the book of Bishop Colenso for our- 
 selves, and apart from all questions which agitate and 
 divide the Church. And we are constrained to say 
 that we never read, or reviewed, a book which displayed 
 more bitter, though feeble, malignity against the Reve- 
 lation of God. 
 
 In answer to the wonder that Bishop Colenso, — who 
 has not, like Moses, filled the world with his fame, — 
 should be so foolish as to send forth his nerveless attack 
 on the work of such a master-mind, the apologists of 
 the Bishop reply, that the Bishop does not admit that 
 Moses was the writer of the Pentateuch. 
 
 The answer is ready. Then the Lord Jesus Christ 
 sent forth a falsehood ! This is one result of this 
 " Age of Reason !" 
 
 It is, then, infidelity, — and infidelity based on the over- 
 throw of the sacred writers, on the very ruins of Chris- 
 tianity, — which Bishop Colenso's book would propa- 
 gate. And that infidelity we cannot better describe 
 than in the words of Burke, " That foul and unnatural 
 vice, foe to all the dignity and consolation of man- 
 kind." 
 
 Infidelity is a vice, and one of the most destructive 
 vices, of the mind ; and one which, unlike the vices of 
 the body, does not afford any kind of pleasure, for 
 the slave to vice of the body does find some gratifica- 
 tion ; — but this vice of infidelity does not, cannot, 
 afford any, save the fiendish satisfaction of smiling with 
 complacency at the ruin which it makes. 
 
 And what would be the effects of this infidelity, of 
 this " Age of Reason," if not restrained by the influence 
 of that Revelation which those men of reason would 
 
 K 
 
146 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 overthrow? Let us hear the voice of nature in the 
 grand language of our immortal Shakespeare, and, 
 from his sublime description, we may form some idea 
 of the state of things if the light of heaven were to 
 be withdrawn ; as well as of the way in which that 
 light controls, and puts to shame those deeds of dark- 
 ness which would otherwise overrun and destroy the 
 land. 
 
 " Discomfortable cousin ! know'st thou not, 
 That when the searching eye of heaven is hid 
 Behind the globe, and lights the lower world, 
 Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen, 
 In murders and in outrage bloody here ; 
 But when, from under this terrestrial ball, 
 He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, 
 And darts his light through every guilty hole, 
 Then murders, treasons, and detested sins, 
 The cloak of night being pluck'd from off their backs, 
 Stand bare and naked, trembling at themselves ?" 
 
 " By their fruits ye shall know them," said Truth 
 itself. 
 
 The first professor of this religion of reason was 
 Cain. He did not consider, that reason was not be- 
 stowed on man that it might set up itself against the 
 wisdom of the Creator, but to receive His word, how- 
 ever or wherever spoken to His creatures. But Cain 
 thought the doctrine of sacrifice a very foolish thing. 
 " How can the slaying of a lamb place me in a state of 
 favour with God ? Besides, I cannot see how such a 
 thing should be necessary; I am good enough for the 
 society of even God Himself." 
 
 With such reasonings Cain darkened " counsel, by 
 words without knowledge ;" and he refused to believe, 
 and act upon, the promise of the Lamb of God that 
 was to be slain, in due time, to take away the sin of 
 the world. " If I am a sinner, God can forgive me 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 147 
 
 without any sacrifice. I am quite ready to make an 
 offering to the Creator of the fruits of the ground ; for 
 the least portion of common sense tells me that those 
 fruits could not create themselves. But beyond this I 
 will not go. I am not to be expected to cramp my 
 reasoning powers, or to be tied down to any foolish 
 opinions." 
 
 Abel was of a very different mind ; but then Abel 
 was not a philosopher of the school of reason ; but one 
 who received, with childlike submission, the Reve- 
 lation of his Maker. And Abel sacrificed "of the 
 firstlings of his flock;" "and the Lord had respect 
 unto Abel and to his offering " was the response ; and, 
 after the lapse of four thousand years, the Apostle 
 wrote, "and by it he being dead yet speaketh." "But 
 unto Cain and his offering He had not respect." 
 
 But all this was, perhaps, after all, merely a specu- 
 lative opinion, an exercise of reason, and why should 
 the mind of Cain have been chained down to any 
 dogma? And, besides, it would have been very im- 
 proper to have put any curb on "the spirit of free 
 inquiry," or to have interfered with "tender con- 
 sciences." But was this first instance of acting on 
 the principles cf "the age of reason," such a harmless 
 doctrine, the mere exercise of the spirit of inquiry, or 
 of a tender conscience ? 
 
 What were the fruits of this free inquiry ? Cain first 
 was wroth, for he envied his brother, and, at last, "Cain 
 rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him." And 
 when asked a simple question, " Where is Abel thy bro- 
 ther?" he answered, "I know not," and then sent forth the 
 doctrine, "Am I my brother's keeper?" This doctrine 
 of the age of reason has deluged the earth with crime 
 and misery. This doctrine keeps man from man, and 
 breaks the social tie; and it makes man a solitary indi- 
 vidual in the midst of millions of his fellow-creatures. 
 
 k 2 
 
148 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 Now we will not insult the Holy Scriptures by 
 contrasting their sentiments and precepts with such 
 doctrine as this ; doctrine, the natural consequence of 
 the religion of the age of reason. We propose to 
 draw our contrast from the religion of the light of 
 nature, and, though we might fill chapters with selec- 
 tions from heathen authors of the noble sentiments, 
 and acts, of men who had for their guides only the 
 light of nature, and conscience, " the deputy of God in 
 man," we shall confine ourselves to one instance, as it 
 affords a striking contrast with the doctrine and practice 
 of Cain. 
 
 When Caesar reached the gates of Utica, and found 
 that Cato had destroyed himself, rather than fall into 
 the hands of his enemy, the great conqueror is re- 
 ported to have exclaimed, " Cato has robbed me of my 
 noblest victory, for I meant to have pardoned him all 
 the wrongs that he had done me." This was the 
 religion of the light of nature, of which God is the 
 Author, but the act and doctrine of Cain were the 
 result of following the religion of the " age of reason ;" 
 of which the "devil," who was " a liar and a murderer 
 from the beginning," is the father and the founder. 
 
 It was the same religion, that of the light of nature, 
 not corrupted by the perverted reason of man, that 
 gave rise to the grand sentiments of heathen philo- 
 sophers quoted in some of our preceding chapters. We 
 now bring forward this speech of Csesar, merely be- 
 cause it bears upon the subject under review, and, as 
 a mere illustration of our argument ; and we shall 
 now conclude with a still more practical view of the 
 question. 
 
 The pages of history present an instance, in which 
 the disciples of the age of reason obtained the supreme 
 power in a mighty empire. What was the result ? A 
 dignitary of the Church, an archbishop, was found to 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 149 
 
 come forward, and, on behalf of the nation, renounce 
 the "fable" of Moses, and the sacred writings with 
 which that " fable " is inseparably connected. But it 
 is only an act of justice to say, that the largest body 
 of the clergy of that kingdom refused to follow their 
 degenerate leader, and they submitted to unheard-of 
 trials and cruel deaths. 
 
 The next step in this " unchaining of the human 
 mind," this establishing of "free inquiry" was, that a 
 wretched being styled "the Goddess of Reason" was 
 crowned, and placed on an ass, and the Bible was 
 dragged at the tail of the ass through the public 
 streets. And then the most horrible " hell-hounds of 
 savage war" were let loose upon the doomed people 
 of that unhappy country. 
 
 Language would fail to describe the fruits of the 
 curse which fell on the degraded and devoted nation. 
 Let us hear two witnesses on this subject: the first, 
 our great political philosopher; the second, an eminent 
 American divine. Let us, then, first hear the testi- 
 mony of Edmund Burke. 
 
 " In a political view, France was low indeed ; she 
 had lost every thing, even to her name : — 
 
 1 jacet ingens littore truncus, 
 
 Avolsumque humeris caput et sine nomine corpus.' 
 
 He was astonished at it; he was alarmed at it; he 
 trembled at the uncertainty of all human greatness. 
 Since the house had been prorogued in summer much 
 work had been done in France. The French had 
 shown themselves the noblest architects of ruin that 
 had hitherto existed in the world. In that short space 
 of time they had completely pulled down to the ground 
 their monarchy ; their church ; their nobility ; their 
 law ; their revenue ; their army ; their navy ; their 
 
150 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 commerce ; their arts ; and their manufacture. They 
 had done their business for us as rivals in a way in 
 which twenty Ramillies or Blenheims could never have 
 done it. Were we absolute conquerors, and France to 
 lie prostrate at our feet, we should be ashamed to send 
 a commission to settle their affairs, which could impose 
 as hard a law upon the French, and so destructive of 
 all their consequence as a nation, as that which they 
 had imposed upon themselves." 
 
 Let us now hear the testimony of D wight : — "The 
 only instance in which infidels of any description 
 have possessed the supreme power and government 
 of a country, and have attempted to dispose of human 
 happiness according to their own doctrines and wishes, 
 is that of France, since the beginning of the Revolu- 
 tion. If we consider this government as established 
 over a nation educated for ages to the belief and obe- 
 dience of many doctrines of Christianity, and retaining, 
 as to a great majority of the people, the habits formed 
 by that education, the state of that nation will evince, 
 beyond a question, that all which I have said is true 
 without exaggeration. 
 
 " France, during this period, has been a theatre of 
 crimes, which, after all preceding perpetrations, have 
 excited in the mind of every spectator amazement and 
 horror. The miseries suffered by that single nation 
 have changed all the histories of the preceding suffer- 
 ings of mankind into idle tales, and have been en- 
 hanced, and multiplied without a precedent, without 
 number, and without a name. The kingdom appeared 
 to be changed into one great prison; the inhabitants 
 converted into felons ; and the common doom of man 
 commuted for the violence of the sword and the 
 bayonet, the sucking-boat and the guillotine. 
 
 "To contemplative men it seemed for a season, as if 
 the knell of the whole nation was tolled, and the 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 151 
 
 world summoned to its execution and its funeral. 
 Within the short time of ten years, not less than three 
 millions of human beings are supposed to have perished, 
 in that single country, by the influence of Atheism. 
 Were the world to adopt and be governed by the doc- 
 trines of France, what crimes would not mankind per- 
 petrate ; what agonies would they not suffer ? " 
 
 In the eloquent and vigorous words of those two 
 great men, we have a just description of the horrors 
 which followed, and must ever follow, contempt 
 of God's Holy Word, and of the establishment of 
 "The Age of Reason." "Do men gather grapes of 
 thorns or figs of thistles?" Probably some of the 
 very actors in those dreadful scenes would have re- 
 pelled, with indignation, the idea that themselves, or 
 their principles, could have brought about such results. 
 "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" 
 may be ready on the tongue. But when men once 
 send forth principles which contain but the mere seeds 
 of infidelity, they must not wonder, if a full harvest of 
 destruction should in due time arrive. And when once 
 the evil spirit is let loose, it is not in the power of 
 man to beguile that spirit into its prison-house again. 
 
 " Let us now," in the language of the same eloquent 
 writer, Dr. Dwight, " turn our view from this prospect 
 of guilt and desolation, this dark and final abyss of sin 
 and ruin, where no solitary virtue gleams, where no 
 ray of hope or comfort trembles through profound mid- 
 night, and refresh the wearied sight by casting a 
 momentary glance over the moral world of the Chris- 
 tian. Here, at the head of the vast chain of moral 
 being, reaching like Jacob's ladder from earth to heaven, 
 sits on the throne of infinite dominion the God of 
 Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God 
 of all, who, like them, believe, worship, and obey their 
 Creator. In Him the Self-existent and Infinite Mind, 
 
152 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 the Christian beholds unceasingly an object of bound- 
 less sublimity, grandeur, beauty, and loveliness : com- 
 manding by the disclosure of His character, and ex- 
 hausting all finite admiration, complacency, love, and 
 praise ; expanding every view, refining every affection, 
 and ennobling every attribute. 
 
 " From the immediate contemplation of this glorious 
 Being, raised to a superiority and distinction, of which 
 he could otherwise have never conceived, he casts his 
 eyes abroad into the Universe which That Being has 
 created. There he beholds an endless train of intelli- 
 gent minds, reflecting with no unhappy lustre, the 
 beauty and glory of their Maker. From the pre- 
 eminent dignity of the Archangel, through the glow- 
 ing zeal of the Seraph, and the milder wisdom of the 
 Cherub ; through the high endowments of Moses, 
 Isaiah, and Paul, down to the humble but virtuous 
 inhabitant of a cottage, one spirit lives, and breathes, 
 and actuates in all ; and that spirit is divine. Each 
 wears, and exhibits, in his own manner, and that 
 manner a delightful and useful one, the image and 
 beautv of Jehovah. 
 
 J 
 
 "All, though of different magnitudes, diffuse a real 
 light ; all are stars, though one star differ eth from an- 
 other star in glory. All are the subjects of virtuous 
 affections : all are fitted to admire and adore, to glorify 
 and enjoy, their Creator; all are formed, and disposed 
 voluntarily, to fill up their existence with doing good, 
 with promoting individual enjoyment, and increasing 
 universal happiness: all are bound together as children 
 of one God, and brethren of each other, by love, the 
 bond of perfection. Every one, therefore, is lovely in 
 the sight of his Maker. 
 
 " To this universe of minds the Christian believes 
 that the Creator, who is, of course, the rightful law- 
 giver, has given laws for the direction of its members 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 153 
 
 which require perfect conduct and ensure to it perfect 
 happiness. These laws extend to all the thoughts, 
 words, and actions, alike ; and regulate each with 
 unerring propriety. Their obligation is, and is acknow- 
 ledged to be, divine ; nothing can sunder, nothing can. 
 lessen it. This, instead of being a source of regret to 
 him, is his delight; for what these laws require is 
 better than any thing else, and more fraught with self- 
 approbation, worth, and enjoyment. 
 
 " Of course, in all the relations and situations in 
 life, as a parent, or a child, a neighbour, or a friend, a 
 magistrate, or a subject, he feels himself on the one 
 hand irresistibly obliged, and on the other entirely 
 delighted to obey their dictates. As these dictates 
 reach every moral being in every situation, and with 
 respect to every action, they provide of course, and 
 universally, for that conduct in every being, which is 
 commendable and desirable. 
 
 " Here an immoveable foundation is laid for peace 
 within, for dignity of mind, for real and enduring 
 enjoyment in the recesses of solitude, and for the 
 endless train of duties and blessings necessary to the 
 happiness of society. A ruler formed in this manner 
 will govern only to bless ; subjects of the same charac- 
 ter will obey because rectitude demands their obe- 
 dience, and because their obedience will ensure the 
 happiness both of themselves and their rulers." 
 
 In the passages now quoted from those two distin- 
 guished men, you have, reader, a true picture of scenes 
 which would again follow the subjugation of the Record 
 of Mercy to the shallow wisdom of man ; and the 
 consequent establishment of the principles of an "Age 
 of Reason." The tendency of the work of Bishop 
 Colenso is to promote such dangerous and destructive 
 principles. It is of little consequence to any who 
 desire the happiness of themselves and of society, 
 
154 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO 
 
 whether Bishop Colenso intend such a result, or 
 whether he see the nature of his efforts to throw 
 discredit and contempt on the compilers of the Holy 
 Scriptures. And it would be an insult to common 
 sense to discuss the question as to the Bishop and his 
 school being amiable, or sincere, or well-meaning, or 
 conscientious, or any such-like unmeaning terms, which 
 we so constantly hear; as if the personal qualities 
 of any individual were the standard of faith and mo- 
 rality. What have we to do with such questions ? Is 
 the well-being of society to be suspended on the 
 personal feelings, or qualifications, of any of those 
 modern thinkers who set themselves up to condemn, 
 reject, alter, and amend at pleasure the Revelation of 
 God ? We have to do only with the principles which 
 those men would establish in the place of the sacred 
 writings, — principles with which those revilers of 
 Moses would deluge society, and sweep away all true 
 religion, and all happiness and peace, from the land. 
 Judge, then, reader, for yourself; and behold the 
 nature and the effects of that truly cursed system of 
 perverted reason which a Christian Bishop would 
 substitute for the " fable" of Moses, and the Reve- 
 lation of God, under the shadow of which England 
 arose from a state of moral death, and grew until 
 she became the wonder and the envy of the nations 
 of the earth. Yes ; under the light and influence of 
 that Revelation of God, England became what she is, 
 and what we pray that she may long continue — " a 
 great and free monarchy, which knows how to be 
 great without endangering its own peace at home, or 
 the internal or external peace of any of its neighbours." 
 But in the days of old, England was very different 
 from what this picture paints to the eye. Cicero, 
 Caesar, and Virgil — all describe the Britain of their 
 day as the habitation of barbarism and debasement. 
 
TO IMPEACH THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 155 
 
 It was not a system of arithmetic that made England 
 the commandingly-beautiful object — even with her 
 many faults — which she now presents to the mind — 
 the glory of all lands. 
 
 It is, therefore, contrary to nature to have an Eng- 
 lishman seek to reason any man into contempt of 
 God's Holy Word, and into belief of comfortless and 
 blighting infidelity. What Burke said on the subject 
 of our bad government of America, will well apply in 
 this place : — " We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree 
 of this fierce people, and persuade them that they are 
 not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of 
 freedom circulates. The language in which they would 
 hear you tell them this tale would detect the imposi- 
 tion. Your speech would betray you. An English- 
 man is the unfittest person on earth to argue another 
 Englishman into slavery." 
 
 And if so unnatural for an Englishman to seek to 
 argue another Englishman into slavery, how much 
 more unnatural for any Englishman — and O shame ! 
 for a Christian Bishop, — to seek to argue any English- 
 man into infidelity ? Therefore, reader, stand by the 
 old landmarks of truth and freedom, and be not 
 brought into bondage under this "Age of Reason." 
 When now called on to choose between the Revela- 
 tion of God, and the " Age of Reason," act on the 
 determination of the good king, — and, in his choice, 
 true philosopher ! — " Let us now fall into the hand of 
 the Lord; for His mercies are great: and let me not 
 fall into the hand of man." And learn to prize more 
 than ever the beauty and truth of that prayer of our 
 Church, which ascends to Almighty God every Sabbath 
 from pulpits almost beyond number, in every part of 
 the earth where our language has found an entrance : — 
 " Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scriptures 
 to be written for our learning; grant that we may in 
 
156 THE PRETENSIONS OF BISHOP COLENSO. 
 
 such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly 
 digest them ; that by patience and comfort of Thy 
 Holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast the 
 blessed hope of everlasting life, which Thou hast given 
 us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen." 
 
 the end. 
 
 GILBERT AND R1V1NGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN S SliUARE, LONDON. 
 
Febbuaby, 1863. 
 
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 A Letter to the Clergy of the Diocese of Llandaff, in reference to 
 the Critical Examination of the Pentateuch by the Bishop of Natal. By 
 Alfred Ollivant, D.D., Bishop of Llandaff. 8vo. 1*. Gd. 
 
 Plain Possible Solutions of the Objections of the Eight Rev. John 
 
 William Colenso, D.D., Bishop of Natal. By the Rev. George Vallis Gar- 
 land, M.A., Rector of Langton Matravers, Dorset. 8vo. Is. Gd. 
 
 An Answer to the Difficulties in Bishop Colenso's Book on the 
 Pentateuch. By the Rev. J. B. Turner, Vicar of Marsworth, Bucks. 8vo. 
 1*. 
 
 Letter to Bishop Colenso, wherein his Objections to the Penta- 
 teuch are Examined in Detail. By the Rev. William H. Hoare, M.A. 
 Second Edition. 8vo. Is. 
 
 Parochial Mission- Women ; their "Work and its Fruits. By the 
 Hon. Mrs. J. C. Talbot. Second Edition. Small 8vo. 2s. in limp cloth. 
 
 Five Short Letters to Sir William Heathcote, Bart., M.P. for the 
 University of Oxford, on the Studies and Discipline of Public Schools. By 
 George Moberly, D.C.L., Head Master of Winchester College. Second 
 Edition. 8vo. 2s. Gd. 
 
 Speech delivered by the Bight Hon. B. Disraeli, M.P., at a Public 
 
 Meeting in aid of the Oxford Diocesan Society for the Augmentation of 
 Small Benefices, held at High Wycombe, October 30th, 1862. Published 
 by permission. 3d., or 2s. Gd. per dozen. 
 
 Congregational Music. A Sermon, preached before the Choral 
 Association of the Diocese of Llandaff, in the Cathedral of Llandaff, on Oct. 
 16, 1862. By Alfred Ollivant, D.D., Bishop of Llandaff. 8vo. Gd. 
 
 " The Waiting Isles." A Sermon preached at the Farewell 
 
 Service of the Mission to the Sandwich Islands, in Westminster Abbey, 
 July 23, 1862. By the Right Rev. the Bishop of Honolulu. 8vo. Is. 
 
ANGLO-CONTINENTAL SOCIETY. 
 
 The BOOKS and TRACTS published by this Society may now 
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 The ANNUAL PAPER for 1862, containing a Catalogue of 
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 PERIODICALS 
 
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PSALMS AND HYMNS 
 
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 BY THE REV. W. J. HALL, M.A., 
 
 late Priest in Ordinary to Her Majesty, and Vicar of Tottenham. 
 
 From the great care bestowed upon this collection (under the immediate super- 
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