a. Price Sixpence. y^M^i JU 1 S' BISHOP COLENSO'S OBJECTIONS TO THE VERACITY or THE PENTATEUCH: AN EXAMINATION BY THE y^ REV. BOURCHIER WREY "^AVILE, M.A., CT7RATE OF TATTINGSTONE, Author of " Revelation and Science,''' in Reply to "Esftays and Reviews.^^ LONDON: WILLIAM FREEMAN, 102, FLEET STREET. 1863. :\ Price Sixpence. BISHOP COLENSO'S OBJECTIONS TO THE VERACITY or THE PENTATEUCH: AN EXAMINATION BY THB ^y REV. BOURCHIER WREY SAVILE, M.A., CURATE OF TATTING STONE, Author of " Reiielation and Science,''' in Reply io "Essays and Rei^iews." LONDON: WILLIAM FREEMAN, 102, FLEET STREET. 1863. By tlie same Author, crown 8vo, (pp. 480,) 5?., FIRST AND SECOND ADVENT, IN THE PAST AND THE FUTUKE, WITH REFERENCE TO THE JEW, THE GENTILE, AND THE CHURCH. " The object of tliis work is twofold; to show, fii'st, that the saints of old were warranted in lookin in the last,— since these words are used indifferently by later writers, such as Amos and others, to describe the temple or sanctuary long after it had been built, — the bishop will find no support for the fanciful anachronism which he has sought to adduce in his war against the Bible. § 6. Objection. — Exodus xvi. 16 represents the children of Israel dwelling in tents in the wilderness. The bishop labours hard (pp. 45, 46) to show that the flight from Egypt was too rapid to allow of their carrying tents with them. Therefore the veracity of the Pentateuch, &c. a E. D. 14 An Examination of > Answer. — As this sort of argument is used so often throughout the work, we can only conclude that he denies the miraculous nature of the Exodus as recorded in Scrip- ture ; and, to be consistent, he must deny the possibility of such a thing as a miracle, though repeatedly affirmed in God's Word."^ If this be the case, we would suggest the propriety, to say the least, of resigning his bishopric in order to enrol himself as a disciple of Celsus and Porphyry in ancient times, or of Voltaire and Hume in modern days. It will be a kindness to suppose that he has never read any work on miracles as an evidence of the truth of Scripture, and this is all that need be said in reply to the present objection. § 7. Objection. — In Exodus xiii. 18 we read that the children of Israel went out of Egypt harnessed. As they are elsewhere represented to be 600,000 full-grown men, and the bishop interprets the expression to mean armed for war (p. 48), he contends that it was impossible for them to obtain arms sufficient for such a purpose at the time of their escape from Egypt. Therefore the veracity of the Pentateuch, &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — The bishop refers to Alison's History of Europe to show the enormous expense of arming the Duke of Wellington's soldiers at Waterloo, which barely amounted to one-ninth of the number of the Israelites, in support of * The late Professor Archer Butler has justly observed, concerning the plausible attacks of the rationalists and sceptics, " they may deny the story of miracles, but can they destroy the miracle of the story ? They may dis- credit this volume of miracles, for the Spirit of God does not now descend to silence its gainsaycrs ; but can they unmiracle the obstinate fact of the miracle itself?" Blskoj) Colenso'a Objections* 15 tWs wonderful objection against the veracity of the Bible. Does the bishop know that the most expensive item in modern warfare is undoubtedly the artillery corps, and that gunpowder was not invented at the time of the Exode? To be sure, a friend told us that he had once witnessed a repre- sentation of the sacrifice of Isaac in a Romish country, in which Abraham was seen about to slay his son by means of a great horse-pistol; but possibly even the irrationalistic school, to which the bishop appears to belong, would admit this to be an anachronism. Had he referred to another chapter of Alison^s History, he would have found authority for showing that some of the Tartar tribes in the service of the Russian government appeared, in the campaign of 1813, armed with their primitive weapons of bows and arrows, and which would certainly accord more with the arms of the Israelite shepherds, besides being easier to carry than the great guns which seem to have confused the bishop^s brain. But in truth there is no need of finding " bows and arrows" for the 600,000 men of Israel, as far as the passage to which the bishop refers is concerned. The word D^li^DH translated harnessed, does not necessarily mean armed, as the bishop wastes so many pages in vainly endeavouring to prove ; but, as Onkelos and Aben Ezra have shown, it is to be understood as accincti, or girt about the loins, ready for the important journey which the Israelites were about to undertake. This is the simple, rational, and natural way of explaining a very plain passage in Scripture. § 8. Objection. — Exodus xii. 21-28. The bishop de- clares that it was impossible for Moses to communicate to all the Israelites the way by which God required them 16 A7i Examination of to keep the Passover, as their immbers, he considers, equalled the population of London (p. 54) . Therefore the veracity of the Pentateuch, &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — The population of London amounted, accord- ing to the last census, to 2,803,989. The passage to which the bishop refers reads, ^^Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said unto them. Draw out and take you a lamb according to your families, and kill the Passover/^ The bishop^s logic is somewhat as follows : The number of full-grown Israelites is stated in Scrip- ture as 600,000, therefore all the heads of the families amounted to 2,803,989 ! Had the bishop committed such an arithmetical blunder when he went in for his degree at Cambridge, probably he would not have obtained the high honours he subsequently did. § 9. Objection. — Exodus iii. 22. The bishop, by refer- ring to this passage (pp. 56, 57), hints at the usual objection of the infidels to it, without boldly avowing himself on their side, in a manner which requires to be noticed. Thereby he infers that the veracity of the Pentateuch, &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — Our translation represents the Israelites as borrowing jewels from the Egyptians, and, in place of returning them as they ought to have done, effected their escape with the spoil, thereby adding robbery to hypo- crisy. This is the infidel mode of interpreting the pas- sage in question. But the Hebrew word, ^^]^, so far from signifying to borrow, in the modern sense of the term, simply means to ask ; and the context shows that God gave the Israelites such *^ favour in the sight of the Bishop Colenso*s Objections. 17 Egyptians," that their requests were readily granted. The LXX. and the Vulgate translate this and the parallel passage in Exodus xii. 35 ask ; and the Syriac_, Chaldee, Samaritan, and Coptic versions are the same as the Hebrew. Our present authorised version is almost the only one which uses the word borrow ^ as even the Genevan Bible, which preceded the authorised version, rightly translates the word as^e. So likewise in the expression, " ye shall spoil the Egyptians," ^^^ is to be understood in the way in which the same word is used in 1 Sam. xxx. 22, to signify the recovery of spoil, which is evidently the sense in which we are to understand the passage here, as the Israelites only asked, and the Egyptians without fear freely gave. The Israelites thereby recovered from the Egyptians some portion of their wages of which they had been so long and so unjustly deprived. § 10. Objection. — Exodus xii. 5. The bishop calcu- lates, upon the authority of ^^ an experienced Natal sheep- master," that this passage implies a flock of 2,000,000 sheep (p. 58), and as there was not pasture enough in the wilderness for their support, therefore the veracity of the Pentateuch, &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — The same reply given to Objection, § 6, is sufficient here. § II. Objection. — Exodus xii. 37, 38. The bishop calling to mind the confusion manifested in his own household, consisting of between thirty and forty persons, on the occasion of a threatened invasion of the Zulus, declares it to be " utterly incredible and impossible" 18 An Ejcamination of (p. 61) that 600,000 merij '^ beside children and a mixed multitude/' could have escaped from Egypt in the way they are represented as doing. Therefore the veracity of the Pentateuch, &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — The Word of God hath said it, and notliing which Bishop Colenso hath thought, said, or done, will lead us to suppose that he is greater than God. § 12. Objection. — Exodus xvi. 35 states that the children of Israel were miraculously fed during their forty years wandering in the wilderness. But, as the Bible omits to state whether the cattle were also miraculously supported or not, the bishop observes, it were ^' idle to expend more time (he had already spent about seven pages) in discuss- ing the question whether 2,000,000 of sheep and oxen could have been supported in the wilderness by the help of such insignificant wadies (as now exist in that country), which a drove of 100 oxen would have trampled down into mud in an hour'' (p. 81). Therefore the veracity of the Pentateuch, &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — We quite agree with the bishop as to the waste of time, premising that he has already wasted somewhat more than is necessary, and that it would have been more to his reputation if he had wasted less. His argument on this and several other occasions reminds one of an occurrence which took place a few years ago amongst some members of his profession, and which will bear an application even here. A bishop of the Anglican Church, now no more, who was reputed to sympathise rather strongly with that school which has produced so many pupils with Homeward proclivities, was once arguing. Bishop Colenso's Ohjectmis. 10 amongst a circle of his clergy, that the age was not sufficiently advanced to appreciate the talents and abi- lities of his Papalising friends. To which an elderly presbyter, who was well qualified to express an opinion, immediately replied, "that he quite agreed with his lordship respecting the unlearned character of that age, in as far as they could be led astray by men who had proved themselves so devoid of learning as his friends in ques- tion/^ So we may safely assert of any who are captivated by the astounding ignorance which the rationalistic school in general, and Bishop Colenso in particular, have dis- played in their onslaught against the veracity of the Bible. § 13. Objection. — Exodus xxiii. 29 speaks of God^s intention not to destroy the inhabitants of Canaan at once on the entrance of the Israelites, " lest the land be- come desolate, and the wild beast multiply against thee." The bishop computes the size of the land of Canaan to be about double that of the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, with a population of about half what the Israelites must have had when they took possession of the promised land (p. 82). Hence he argues that since the wild beasts have not multiplied in the Eastern countries, and they have not become desolate, therefore the veracity of the Fenta- teuchj &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — The bishop's analogy does not hold good, from the simple fact that wild beasts do not now exist in England, as they existed in Canaan, when the Israelites entered the promised land, as may be shown by the fact of " lions" having increased in that part of it called Samaria on the 2,0 An Examination of deportation of the ten tribes, which took place about 800 years after the Exode. The targum of Jonathan on this passage says, "When the beasts shall come to eat the carcases of the Canaanites slain in war they may hurt thee/^ — an explanation sufficient to satisfy the mind of any rational inquirer into the story of the entrance of the Israelites into the promised land. § 14. Objection. — Numbers iii. 43 speaks of the first- born males of the Israelites as numbering 22,273 ; which the bishop says, with somewhat questionable arithmetic, implies that " every woman must have had on an average 42 sons '' (p. 84) ; which is certainly very unlikely, though an instance is known to the writer of a lady having had 36 children, of which number 22 were twins, and dying comparatively young at the age of 49. Therefore the veracity of the Pentateuchj &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — The bishop's confusion arises from having omitted to notice that the children here mentioned do not include those who were born in Egypt before the destruc- tion of " the first-born,^' as it was after that judgment that the law recorded in Exodus xiii. 2, was given, " Whosoever openeth the womb (i. e. hereafter) shall be mine.^' This Bonfrerius pointed out long ago, and had the bishop been aware of it, he might have avoided the comical blunder he has made. § 15. Objectio7i. — Exodus xii. 40 contains the famous statement respecting the length of the sojourning of the Israelites " who dwelt in Egypf as being 430 years. On this subject, which has been a fruitful theme for discus- Bishop Colenso's Objections. 21 sion^ Bishop Colenso, after an unnecessary long argument, at length for once arrives at a right conclusion, viz., that it must be computed from the time of Abraham^s going down to Egypt until the Exode ; but no sooner is he satisfied on this point, than he immediately starts the objection that, as the half of that period, or 215 years, is not sufficient to allow such an increase of Israelites from the 70, who went down to Egypt, to the 600,000 full-grown males who came out of Egypt, — and this he declares '^ can be shown beyond a doubt to be quite impossible^' (p. 101), — therefore the veracity of the Pentateuch, &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — It is curious to consider how this text has exercised the ingenuity of some of the bishop's brother sceptics in their endeavours to handle the Word of God in what they call a rational manner ; e.g., the bishop himself, thoroughly satisfied w^ith his previous criticisms on the Pentateuch, suggests that 1377 should be the recognised number of full-grown Israelites who came out of Egypt in place of the 600,000 as stated in Scripture (p. 105). Bun- sen adopts another view. Convinced, if not by the biblical record, by his beloved Manetho (who gives the figures 280,000), that the Israelites had increased during their sojourn in Egypt to somewhat more than the episcopal number of 1377, quietly prolongs their residence in that country from the time of Joseph to Moses, as being over 1400 years ;^ while his friend Dr. Lepsius, of equally great authority in the mystery of hieroglyphics, takes a directly opposite view, by asserting that ^^only about 90 years intervened from the entrance of Jacob to the Exodus of * " Egypt's Place in Universal History," vol. iv. pp. 92, 93. 22 An Examination of Moses." "^ The question tlien remains to be considered: Could the Israelites have increased as rapidly during their 215 years' residence in Egypt so as to raise their population to 2,000,000^ the probable amount to afford the number of 600^000 full-grown males as stated in Scripture? "Ac- cording to a table of Euler/' says Malthus, a very high authority on such matters^ "instances of a population doubling itself within less than thirteen years have actually occurred for short periods. Sir William Petty supposes a doubling possible in so short a time as ten years." In some states of North America the population has doubled itself within fifteen years. And if we apply this rate to the in- crease of the Israelites, a simple sum in arithmetical pro- gression will show that they would have reached 2,293,000 persons in fifteen periods of doubling ; which at fifteen years to each period would give 225 years. When, more- over, we remember the promises made to the Israelites respecting their increase, comparing it to the stars of heaven and the sand of the sea — when we remember the fecundity of the women for which Egypt was famous, as we shall pre- sently see — when we believe polygamy to have been the rule, and monogamy the exception — when we find instances of men having families of ten children at the early age of 25, as was the case with Benjamin at the time of the descent to Egypt — when we know the average duration of life was certainly longer in tliose days than it is now, — remembering all this, there can be no difficulty in accepting the statement of Scripture respecting the increase of the children of Israel during their 215 years' sojourn in the land of Egypt. * Lepsius' " Letters," translated by the Misses Horner, p. 475. BisJiop Colensd^s Ohjections. 23 § 16. Objection. — The bishop argues that Scrip- ture implies no such fecundity among Hebrew women (p. 106) as to warrant the great increase in the popula- tion stated above ; and he gives as authority for this won- derful conclusion,, Exodus i. 19^, where it is said that the Hebrew mothers gave birth before the midwives had time to wait upon them^ which implies that they could not have borne twins as Aben Ezra fairly concludes they often did ; and never bore more, as Aristotle and Pliny both declare was frequently the custom in Egypt."^ Therefore the veracity of the Pentateuch, &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — The bishop is possibly an unmarried man. We may certainly assume that he has not the privilege of being able to say with the writer, that he has the rare felicity of being father of two sets of twins, in addition to other '^ olive branches round about his table." If it will afford any satisfaction to the bishop, and help him to solve one of his Pentateuchal difficulties, the writer can state, on the best authority, that there is only a few minutes difference between the ages of his twin children respec- tively. § 17. Objection. — In one place the bishop considers the increase of the Israelites during their 215 years' sojourn in Egypt may have amounted to the number of 5000 (p. 103) ; in another place, as we have already noticed, he reduces that number to 1377 (p. 105), which * " Within the last three months," says a recent number of the Barha- does Olohe, " upon the testimony of the medical attendant in each case, three women in the parish of Christ Church, Barbadoes, were delivered of nine children, three at a birth each, and they are all doing well." 24 An Exammaiio7i of he does upon the ground that Scripture states the Is- raelites were to escape from their bondage in the fourth generation after their descent into Egypt ; and as it was utterly impossible for them to have increased in four gene- rations to such numbers as Scripture states, therefore the veracity of the Pentateuch^ &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — Though it is undoubtedly true that the four generations of Levi, Kohath, Amrara, and Moses spanned the interval of 215 years, which, as Moses was 80 years old at the time of the Exode, and Kohath (who was taken down by Levi to Egypt as an infant), by becom- ing a father at 68, and Amram at 67, might easily have been accomplished, the confusion existing in the bishop's mind is clearly owing to the way he limits the word " generation." We have already seen that there were four generations in the family of Judah when he was only 48, and that Benjamin (whose age may be com- puted from what is said respecting his sister Dinah), at 25, was the father of ten sons; and the bishop ap- pears to admit that in the family of Ephraim, the son of Joseph, there were certainly nine or more generations between him and Joshua, who was full-grown at the time of the Exode, — all which lead to prove that there were many more generations in the various lines of the patri- archs than the four to which the prophecy especially refers. In our own country we have a striking instance of such an occurrence. In the family of the well-known Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, the late Lord Leicester, there is a difference of nearly sixty years between the eldest and the youngest of his children, owing to a second marriage late in life. This will serve to explain the different way Bishop Colenso's Objections. 25 in which Scripture uses the term generation. Had the bishop remembered this^ he might have escaped committing himself in the manner he has done. § 18. Objection. — The bishop states that there were only three priests in the wilderness to minister to the Israelites,, viz.^ Aaron and his two sons^ Eleazar and Ithamar ; and as thirteen cities were said to have been allotted to the Levites at the division of the land of Canaan, it was impossible for three men to occupy thirteen cities (p. 129). Therefore the veracity of the Pentateuch, &c. Q. E. D. Answer. — The bishop evidently supposes that no one had other children besides those named in Scripture. If such were really the case, the descendants of Adam and of Noah would scarcely have peopled the world as rapidly as they must have done ; and we have sufficient evidence besides that of Scripture for affirming it was so. Besides, though the family of Aaron was undoubtedly much larger at the time of the Exode than his sons Ithamar and Eleazar, the only two mentioned, yet there is no necessity for believing that it was large enough at that time to fill the thirteen cities allotted to them. The portion divided to them is named, which in due time they would fully occupy, and this is all which it concerns us to know. After making this last objection, the bishop writes : — " We have now concluded our preliminary work of point- ing out some of the most j^'t^ominent inconsistencies and impossibilities which exist in the story of the Exodus as it is before us in the Pentateuch; and we have surely exhibited enough to relieve the mind from any superstitious 26 A7t Examination of dread in pursuing further the consideration of this ques- tion^' (p. 139). Lest it should be thought that we have avoided any of the " most prominent impossibilities '^ in the Pentateuch, we must notice one more objection, which is brought for- ward in the Preface, and which is veiled under the touching scene of a Zulu sitting at the bishop's feet, while being instructed in the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, with his whole soul in revolt against a passage of Scripture which he very naturally misunderstood, and which the bishop as unnaturally was unable to explain. Exodus xxi. 20, 21, was the passage in question, where the Hebrew master is threatened with the punishment of death (see Gen. ix. 5, 6) if he beat a slave so that he dies under his hand, while, if he survived "^a day or two,'' the master was not to be punished, because it might be presumed that the poor slave died through some other cause. The Bishop of Natal might have remembered one of the noblest characteristics of English law, that all penal laws should be construed as favourably as possible to the accused, when his '^ own heart and conscience fully sympathised " with the puzzled Zulu, The historian has drawn a graphic picture of a New Zealander in some future age seated on the broken arch of London Bridge, and contemplating the ruins of the mighty city which must once have there existed. We may be permitted to add another tableau to such a scene, and suppose this denizen of the new world recovering an ancient book of the nineteenth century, entitled '' The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua, critically examined by the Bight Bev. John William Colenso, D.D., Bishop of Natal," from which, to his amazement, he Bishop Colenso's Objections. 27 gathers, that once on a time a scene was witnessed in Southern Africa of an old Zuluander seated before a Christian bishop, perplexing him with questions respecting the veracity of the Pentateuch. The well-instructed New Zealander will doubtless pronounce the nineteenth century to have been redolent of much simplicity, much scepticism, and much ignorance, and will naturally conclude that the bishops of the English Church of that age must have held somewhat curious ideas of biblical criticism, judging from the specimen presented to him by the recovered treasure of the episcopal ruler of Natal. Such are the objections of Bishop Colenso to the veracity of the Pentateuch— objections against which little else need be urged than that they must seem rather cum- brous and fanciful to those who do not know the Bible,^ and on the whole somewhat inadequate to those who do. This might be said of objections raised by laymen who ridi- cule the pretensions of the Bible to state what is true, such as Bunsen, or Goodwin the lay interloper amongst those who have been curtly described as "Sept. Contr. Christum;'' but when it is remembered that it is a professed ruler of the Christian Church who writes—" Whatever real founda- * We must own ourselves wrong in one instance at least. For since writing the above, we have found one of the bishop's defenders. addi-essing a public journal under the signature of "Eagle Eye," upon the principle, we presume, of Lucus a non lucendo, who pronounces his arguments "powerful;" advocates the necessity of "trying to be Christians," as he expresses it, by " removing the interpolations of priests who have made Christ appeal to Moses to authenticate his mission; and who manifests his knowledge of Scripture by affirming that " the Pentateuch was not alluded to, and probably unknown to the Israelites from the time of Othniel, the first judge, to the date of the 20th chapter of Judges— a period of about 400 years, according to the uncertain chronology !" 28 An Examination of tion the Pentateuch may have had in the ancient history of the people, it is mixed up, at all events, with so great an amount of contradictory matter, that it cannot be regarded as historically true'^ (p. 141), we stand aghast at the com- plexion of the writer^ s mind, which can allow him to hold high office in the Church as a friend, when in reality he proves himself an insidious and unconscious foe. It is difficult to conceive how so learned a man as Bishop Colenso could have committed himself in the way he has done by his critical examination of a few parts of the Word of God. His objections will appear to every one, who has given attention to the subject, most puerile; his Hebrew very limited ; his arithmetic questionable ; and his reasoning of that nature which must be pronounced illogi- cal in the extreme. This melancholy position for a Chris- tian bishop owes its origin to his inability to receive the Bible as St. Paul commended the Thessalonians for doing — " not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the Word of God, which effectually worketh in them that believe.'^ Happy would it have been for the bishop had he been able to have realised Bacon's just description respecting the Scriptures, that, '' being given by inspiration, and not by human reason, they differ from all other books in the Author, which by consequence doth draw on some difference to be used by the expositor. For the Inditer of them did know four things, which no man attains to know : — which are the mysteries of the kingdom of glory ; the perfection of the laws of nature ; the secrets of the hearts of men ; and the future succession of ages,^'"^ — in place of being led astray by what lias not been inaptly termed " the dreamy * " Advancement of Learning," p. 265. Bishop Colenso^s Objections. 29 nebulosities of used-up German speculation.'^ Whether the bishop's criticisms extend so far as those of M. Earnest Renan^ who confidently declares that the grandfather of Abraham^ who is represented in the Pentateuch as having " lived twenty-nine years and begot ' Terah' was probably a town and not a person at all ;" or of Professor Hey, who has propounded a dictum that the "iva TzXripwdr] {" that it might be fulfilled^'') of Scripture is equivalent to the French apropos, or any other of the wild vagaries which the rationalistic school have recently put forth as speci- mens of its competency to examine critically the Word of God, we cannot say ; but we have no hesitation in apply- ing the language with which the ^^Edinburgh Review^' con- demned the Essay of Dr. Williams on the Biblical researches of Bunsen to the bishop himself, and which mutato no7nine v^ov\di appropriately read as follows : '^Any- thing ' more unbecoming ' than some of the Bishop of NataFs remarks we never have read in writings professing to be written seriously.'^ It would have been well if the bishop, before promul- gating his present critical examination of the Pentateuch (and if report speak truly, this book is scholarshij) itself, compared with his first attempt as originally written at Natal), had attained even to the same measure of faith on this subject as one of the seven essayists, who rightly observes, "No member of a communion or society is bound, either by public or private duty, to unsettle received opi- nions, where they may seem to be erroneous, unless he have a reasonable hope, as it appears to him, that he shall be able to supply something better in their place.''"^ We are * Rev. H. B. Wilson's " Bampton Lectures," p. 281. 30 An Exa7mnation of not aware whether the bishop has attempted to supply anything in the place of that to which he objects in the Pentateuch and the book of Joshua ; but however confident he may be in his own wisdom, he can scarcely hope, by the specimen he has already afforded the world of his critical powers, to convince devout inquirers of his competency to undertake so tremendous a responsibility. Chateaubriand, in the Introduction to his Genie du Christianisme, has well remarked that, '' ever since Christianity was first published to the world, it has been continually assailed by three kinds of enemies — heretics,^ sophists, and those apparently fri- volous characters who destroy everything with the shafts of ridicule/^ It will be no disparagement to the bishop^s in- tellectual powers if we rank him amongst the second of these, and of whom it has been written in ancient times, " I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? W^here is the disputer of this world ? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world ?^^ 1 Cor. i. 19, 20. However much, therefore, the bishop may claim a hear- ing as an earnest inquirer after that truth which he is bound by the most sacred ties to uphold and to defend, there is such palpable unfitness for the task he has as- sumed, that we cannot help fearing Chalmers' test of in- stinctive evidence is plainly applicable here. "Where," said that master spirit of the age he adorned — " where the truth-loving spirit is not, the truth itself cannot come. . . . It is the part of Christians to rise like a wall of fire around * " Criticism," as Dr. McCaul has well said, " did not exist first and produce the heretic, hut the heretic existed first and produced criticism." Bishop Colenso's Ohjections. 31 the integrity and inspiration of Scriptnre." Did Bishop Colenso know anything of " the inspiration of the Spii-it/' in the sense in which the Church, of which he is one of the chief rulers, uses the expression; had he sought for more of that " internal witness" of which St. Paul speaks, in his own heart, in place of putting forth such crude and puerile objections to the veracity of God's Word, he would have avoided the unseemly and melancholy position to which he is now reduced. The work of Him who in- spired '' holy men of God to speak" the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in the awakeninjr, renewing, sanctifying, teaching, guiding, edifying, and building up of every human being, whether clergy or laity, who is desii'ous of the inheritance amongst the spirits of the blessed above, as contrasted with anything like appealing to reason in the sense of the rationalistic school of the present day, may be truly characterised as the grand catholic and evangelical doctrine of all times. And until that fundamental verity is fully realised, there can be no true perception of the motive power which has actuated the faithful disciple of Christ in all ages. The manner and way of the Spirit's action upon the soul is truly mysterious, and we cannot attempt to unveil it. As the dew which falls from heaven in the stillness of the night is found at morning light hanging upon the leaves and enriching the arid soil, and we naturally seek to know whence it came, and who hath begotten it, so is the way of the Spirit's dealing with the soul of man. To sucli earnest seekers after Divine truth will this gracious testimony be ever borne, that " God hath given to them eternal life, and this life is in His Son." 32 BisJiop Colenso's Ohjections. Whereas^ on the other hand, he who is content with letting his religious faith rest upon the reasoning powers of his own corrupt and unsanctified mind, and who is destitute of the witness of the Spirit, from whom alone, as- our Church teaches, " all good things do come,^^ absolutely knows nothing of the power of Holy Scripture, critical or otherwise, or of its great and glorious design. Such an one may discuss its evidences, may speculate upon its doctrines, may fancy that he can reason about its truths, and even may observe its laws and institutions; but as long as he is without its immortalising principle, he can only be compared to a man amusing himself with the leaves, instead of feeding on the fruits of the tree of life. LONDON: KNIGHT, PRINTER, II ABTnoi.OMI'.W CLOSE.