scientific form by the learned labours of German writers during the last hundred years. This is the answer given by Staüdlin, Tholuck, Hagenback, Guericke, Hahn, and others; this is the answer elicted by a comparison of the doctrines propounded and the objections urged in both periods; and a most important answer it is. It reveals the true nature of what is now proposed for our acceptance, and the final results to which we must come, if we accept the first principles. The objections against the Noachian deluge, the account of the rainbow, the Mosaic age of the world, are repeated over and over again in the works of Voltaire; not as now urged upon geological grounds, for although geology as a science then scarcely existed, yet such as it was, it was opposed by the seer of Fernay as being favorable to the Bible. The same too may be said of the supposed contradictions in the Gospels, so often urged in Rationalist commentaries, and last of all by Strauss.

To take a single instance. In the "Bible enfin Expliquée" we read "Racach signifies the solid, the firm, the firmament. All the ancients believed that the heavens were solid, and, since the light passed through them, they imagined them of crystal." The answer to this is that it is irrelevant. It is nothing to the purpose. Whether the ancients did really entertain such a belief or not is not the question." The question is what is the proper meaning of a word used by a writer of the Holy Scripture. On the dogmatic assertion just quoted we join issue we deny its correctness, and demand proof.

In Mr. Goodwin's Essay on the Mosaic Cosmogony the same point is touched, and in a similar manner. There is the same hardihood of assertion as to the meaning of the word, and the same attempt to give the assertion countenance by similar talk about current beliefs. But unfortunately for the success of these misrepresentations there is something more. There is an admission that the radical meaning of the word is—not solidity, but-expansion. An awkward admission this: but then it was undeniably the fact; so what was to be done? Why,

"But we do not admit the correctness of the assertion that they did. Plato, in the Timæus, denotes the ethereal heaven by τάσις,

which (from Tsivw) is of similar import to the Hebrew word (p) used by Moses.

make the admission, and then pooh-pooh it as if it amounted to nothing. Affect to believe that the word was used by Moses in a non-natural sense, and that etymology which is accepted as a guide in all other cases must be rejected in this. And why must this exceptional course be taken? Because if it be not, it will appear only too plain that Scripture and Science are not at variance; that Moses was something very different from "the first daring speculator" imagined by Mr. Goodwin; and that however popular illusions and scientific inaccuracies may be reflected in translations and commentaries, it is still true that the original Scriptures are the words which (not "man's wisdom" but) the Holy Ghost teacheth. Such a triumph of plenary Inspiration must be disputed at all hazards, and accordingly Mr. Goodwin has stooped to stigmatize the fact he cannot deny, as a "quibble" about derivation. But when he has said his worst what has he done? Has he altered any of the facts? He has shewn his wish indeed that did not signify an expanse; but he has quietly overlooked the fact that the best lexicographers-Parkhurst, Gesenius, Frey—are all against him. This simple fact remains: and Mr. Goodwin's wishing, and Mr. Goodwin's declaiming are alike unable to alter it. Whatever difficulty he finds he may charge upon his own misrepresentation; the word used by Moses presents no difficulty whatever.

Another difficulty of this class may be seen in that much misrepresented event "The spoiling of the Egyptians." It can hardly be denied that the amount of those valuables which the Israelites carried-up out of Egypt did not after all exceed the amount to which they were in equity entitled as the wages of a long and rigorous service. It is therefore not on this ground that the objection is based. The objector condemns not the amount of the acquisition, but the method of it. He points to the Israelites as having been divinely commanded to borrow what they had no intention to repay, and profanely pretends to believe that after this example there is no species of roguery which may not be justified as a mere "spoiling of the Egyptians." The answer is as simple as it is satisfactory. The objection rests entirely upon a misrepresentation of the words "borrowed" and "lent" used by our translators. We turn to the original Scriptures, and the misrepresentation is evident.

"SPOILING THE EGYPTIANS.”

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Nay more; it is evident to the mere English reader who will compare the translation of the same word in the original, by the same word in English as given in another place of the Authorized Version itself. When the pious Hannah dedicated her child of many prayers to the special service of the Most High, it was on her part a free gift, given without any thought or hope of being received back again, given for life. And yet this gift is called a loan. Eli calls it "the loan which is lent to the Lord; "" and Hannah says "As long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord." Now remembering that the very same words are used in Exodus, all is clear. The "borrowed" jewels, are simply jewels "asked for ;" and they were "lent" with as little hope or thought of re-payment as Hannah had when she too "lent" her most precious jewel "for life." The truth is that "the Egyptians were urgent upon the people," they were anxious to get rid of them at any price; and when to this it is added that "the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians," it will not be wondered at that they “freely gave unto them such things as they required."

13

From difficulties founded on misrepresentations such as these, we pass by a natural transition to those which spring from ignorance or mistake. Such, for example, is the difficulty presented by a comparison of 1 Ki. vii. 13, with 2 Ch. ii. 13. In both of these passages Hiram's father is said to have been

21 Sa. ii. 20. Marg. "The peti | [It may perhaps be contended tion which she asked." that even here, the mention of "hiring" (v. 15) may affect the character of the borrowing, and if so, the "borrowing" of the Israelites will appear all the more plainly still to be "asking for their hire." But let this pass. We build not on conjectures but on certainty.] Let us fully and candidly admit these two instances. What then? "What are they among so many?"

13 It may serve to strengthen the statement in the text if we observe that while the word in question, is used in numberless instances in the sense there given, and also in several others capable of strict definition, there are perhaps not more than two instances in the whole Bible in which it bears the meaning of our word "borrowed." The two instances to which I refer are 2 Ki. vi. 5, and Ex. xxii. 14. (Heb. 13.) |

This word signifies primarily “to ask.”

"a man of Tyre;" but with respect to his mother, the first says she was a widow "of the tribe of Naphtali," while the second calls her a woman "of the daughters of Dan."

Here apparently, we have a difficulty of the first magnitude, nothing less indeed than an absolute and final contradiction; and the many explanations of many years if they proved nothing else at least proved this-that the true explanation yet remained to be found. Now that it has been found we discover that the difficulty lay not in the Scripture history but in our ignorance of that history; and that as soon as our ignorance disappears the difficulty disappears also.

CONTRADICTIONS NOT CONTRADICTORY.

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For observe the facts. Four hundred years before Hiram was sent to Solomon, the Danites, straitened in their narrow boundaries in the south-west, sent out five valiant men as spies, with instructions to go through the whole country in search of a suitable spot for a new settlement. The desired spot was found in the remotest corner of the common territory : a secluded valley among the hills in the north of Naphtali, where, undisturbed by the resident tribe, a colony of Sidonians, long since detached from the mother country, followed their peaceful avocations, "quiet and secure." The prize was too tempting for the unscrupulous freebooters who, true to their prophetic character "-six hundred men fully armed-fell upon the unsuspecting, unresisting prey, burnt their city and changed its name from Laish to Dan, " in memory at once of their ancestry and their migration. This accounts for everything. It accounts for the marriage of a Tyrian with a Jewess. For the colony at Dan was Sidonian before it was Jewish; and Sidon is identified with Tyre in the history itself." The Tyrians and Sidonians were people of one nation. Such a marriage therefore, instead of the strangeness which at first attaches to it, has all the naturalness which belongs to a marriage at Quebec between an English colonist and a French Canadian. Similarly, that there should be a town of Dan in Naphtali, is as natural as that there should be a town of Halifax in Nova Scotia. And thus, not only does the seeming contradiction disappear, but a minute and circumstantial corroboration of the verbal accuracy of the narrative is seen in its place. It is perfectly true that Hiram's mother was "of the tribe of Naphtali," for Laish, the place of her abode, was situated in the territory of that tribe. It is equally true that she was a woman of the daughters of Dan," being descended from that little colony of six hundred sent forth in early times.

Sometimes the difficulty arises from our ignorance of peculiar modes of thought or peculiar and idiomatic expression. Of this kind is the difficulty which has been felt in the account of

"Ge. xlix. 17. "Ju. xviii. 1-29. See 1 Ki. v. 6, where Solomon sending to the king of Tyre for

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a skilled workman, assigns as a reason the eminent skill of the Sidonians.