If then the leading events of the Pentateuch were so public, so momentous, and so recent, that the history detailing them could have found no credit had it not been true; if the laws and institutions it contains, were so important, and of such a singular nature, that had they not been derived from unquestioned authority they could never have been adopted: it remains to enquire how far the relation carries with it marks of truth, even in its minutest detail.

Now in this view, the first character of the Pentateuch which strikes us, is the perfect artlessness and simplicity of its style and structure. Writers mix fiction with truth, either to form a beautiful and engaging composition, or to gratify some particular interest or passion. In either case it is impossible but the object always uppermost in the mind of the writer should frequently discover itself to the attentive reader. If to please and interest be his design, this will appear by his selecting such circumstances as are adapted to affect the passions and impress the imagination, and by his keeping out of the way, as far as is consistent with probability, every thing tediously minute and uninteresting. We shall find sometimes the sublime and sometimes the pathetic resorted to. In a word, the design will appear in the entire structure of the work, and in the effect which is evidently intended to be produced upon the mind. It is not unimportant to remark, that had this been the object of the writer of the Pentateuch, he undoubtedly might have pursued it with considerable success. In the triumphant * hymn which he has inserted on the deliverance of the terrified Israelites from the host of Pharaoh, we discover a boldness and sublimity of composition seldom excelled. In the address to the assembled nation, supposed to be delivered by Moses shortly before his death; in the blessings promised for obedience, and the curses denounced against offenders; and especially in the song he taught the people, recapitulating the wonders of God's providence which they had witnessed, and the judgments they might expect; we discover a judicious selection of striking circumstances, strong imagery, pathetic appeals to the tenderest feelings, and the authoritative language of the legislator and the prophet combined so aptly, as prove the writer fully capable of commanding most powerfully the attention, and interesting the heart.

* Exod. xv.

† Vide Deut. iv. to ix. ; also from xxviii. to xxxiii.; particularly xxxii. and xxxiii.

But nothing is more evident in the entire structure of the Pentateuch, than its being written without the least effort to form an elaborate and engaging history, an impressive and beautiful composition. A writer who had such a design, would have separated the history from the Laws; the former he would have related with such a selection of circumstances as would most interest and affect his reader; the latter he would have delivered in some regular system, and avoided minute detail and frequent repetitions. On the contrary, the author of the Pentateuch proceeds in such an order as was indeed most natural to a writer relating the different occurrences which took place, exactly as they took place; but which renders his work exceedingly irregular, and even tedious as a composition. The history in Exodus is perpetually interrupted with exact details of the laws as they were occasionally delivered; with minute and even tedious, though necessary descriptions of the materials and work of the tabernacle and its furniture, of the altar, the ark, the dress of the priests, and the mode of offering the sacrifices; these are detailed in the most inartificial manner, if we consider the book as intended for a finished or interesting composition. The description of the method* in which these things should be formed, is spread through near six chapters; then the history proceeds for five more; and then succeeds a relation of the fact, that each particular directed to be made was made according to the direction given, in most cases word for word the same as the direction, and this extended through five long chapters. The measures of the curtains, and the boards, and the borders; the number and size of the rings and the loops, of the tenons, and the pillars, and the sockets of the curtains and the hangings; are enumerated with such exactness, as proves the detail was not at all designed to display in strong and glowing colours the magnificence of the objects described; for such a purpose it is totally unfit, but it is exactly such as was necessary to instruct the workmen in the making of them. Now, I argue, that all this is just and natural, if Moses was really the author of Exodus, and if he detailed the circumstances at the time when they occurred. Because he conceived the formation of all this work according to a particular model,+ as a matter of important obligation, and worthy a peculiar record, when he tells us, that "According to all that the

Exod. from xxv. to xxx. both included; also from xxxvi. to xl. + Exod. xxv. 8, 9, and 40. Exod. xxxix. 42 and 43.

"Lord commanded Moses, so the children of Israel made all the "work; and Moses blessed them." But such an enumeration would have been utterly irrational and unnatural in any other writer, or for any other purpose.

Additional proofs, that the writer of the Pentateuch was careless of ornament, and attentive to objects which no mere inventor of a fiction would have thought of, and no compiler even of a true history, who designed to interest and amuse his readers, would have dwelt on, may be derived from the manner,* in which, the rules about sacrifices, the distinctions of meats, clean and unclean, the different modes of contracting pollution, and the rules about purification, and in particular, about the symptoms and the cure of leprosy, are detailed. We must not forget that these rules continued to be observed amongst the Jews; that they are so minute, they could scarcely have been remembered distinctly for any length of time, if they had not been written: that this account of them must therefore have been published very soon after they were first observed; that many of them are so tedious and burdensome, that they would not have been submitted to, if the authority inculcating them had been at all doubtful; in short, if they had not been inculcated by the same authority which regulated the rest of that religious and civil system of which they form a part. It follows, that they were observed from the time when the Jewish lawgiver established his code, and that they were published either by him, or immediately after him.

The frequent genealogiest which occur in the Pentateuch, form another strong presumptive proof that it was composed by a writer of a very early date, and from original materials. The genealogies of the Jewish tribes were not mere arbitrary lists of names, in which the writer might insert as many fictitious ones as he pleased, retaining only some few more conspicuous names of existing families, to preserve an appearance of their being founded in reality. But they were a complete enumeration of all the original stocks, from some one of which every family in the Jewish nation derived its origin, and in which no name was to be inserted, whose descendants or heirs did not exist 1 possession of the property which the original family had poss, sed at the first division of the promised land. The distribution. f property by trioes and

*In Deut. the first twenty-three chapters.

† Vide Numb. i. ii. and iii. and especially xxvi. and xxxiv.

families proves, some such catalogue of families as we find in the Pentateuch must have existed at the very first division of the country. These must have been carefully preserved, because the property of every family was unalienable, since, if sold, it was to return to the original family at each year of Jubilee. The genealogies of the Pentateuch, if they differed from this known and authentic register, would have been immediately rejected, and with them, the whole work. They therefore impart to the entire history all the authenticity of such a public register. For surely it is not in the slightest degree probable, that the Pentateuch should ever have been received as the original record of the settlement and division of Judea, if so important a part of it as the register of the genealogies had been known to exist long before its publication, and to have been merely copied into it from pre-existing documents.

Again, we may make a similar observation on the geographical enumerations of places in the Pentateuch ;* the accounts constantly given, of their deriving their names from particular events and particular persons; and on the details of marches and encampments which occur, first in the progress of the direct narrative, when only some few stations distinguished by remarkable facts are noticed, and afterwards at its close, where a regular list is given of all the stations of the Jewish camp. All this looks like reality. Whenever the Pentateuch was published, it would have been immediately rejected, except the account it gives of the origin of these names, and of the series of these marches, had been known to be true by the Jews in general. For the book states, that many of these names were adopted in consequence of these events, from the very time they took place; and it also states, that the entire nation was engaged in these marches Now, the memory of such circumstances as these cannot long exist without writing. If the Pentateuch was not what it pretends to be, the original detail of these circumstances, it could not have been received. For, if it was published long after the events, and there was no pre-existing document of these details, which it delivers as things well known, how could it be received as true? If it was copied from a known pre-existing document, how could it be received as being itself the original? Besides, it

* Vide Exod. xiv. 2. xv. 27. xvii. 7. And compare Numbers, xx. xxi. and xxxiii, xxxiv. xxv.; also Deut. i. ii. iii.

is natural for the spectator of events to connect every circumstance with the place where it happened. An inventor of fiction would not venture upon this, as it would facilitate the detection of his falsehood; a compiler long subsequent would not trouble himself with it, except in some remarkable cases. The very natural and artless manner in which all circumstances of this nature are introduced in the Pentateuch, increases the probability of its being the work of an eye-witness, who could introduce them with ease; while to any body else it would be extremely difficult and therefore unnatural; since it would render his work much more laborious, without making it more instructive.

All these things bespeak a writer present at the transactions, deeply interested in them, recording each object as it was suggested to his mind by facts, conscious he had such authority with the persons to whom he wrote, as to be secure of their attention, and utterly indifferent as to style or ornament, and those various arts which are employed to fix attention and engage regard; which an artful forger would probably have employed, and a compiler of even a true history would not have judged beneath his attention. Now, though it does not at all follow, that where these arts are used, falsehood must exist; yet their absence greatly increases our confidence, that we shall meet nothing but truth. When the writer has no vanity, no anxiety about the eloquence or beauty of his composition; when he writes without art, without any solicitous selection of circumstances to interest or gratify his reader; what can he design, but to instruct and inform? Must he not feel, that what he writes is true, and therefore ought to be told, and so important, that it is sure of being attended to?

But the most decisive character of truth in any history is its IMPARTIALITY. And here the author of the Pentateuch is distinguished perhaps above every historian in the world; whether we consider the manner in which he speaks of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Jewish nation in general, or of its legislator and his nearest relations. Of the patriarchs, he speaks in such a way as not only did not gratify the vanity of his countrymen, but such as must have most severely wounded their national pride. He ranks some of their ancestors very high indeed, as worshippers of the true God, and observers of his will, in the midst of a world rapidly degenerating into idolatry; yet there is not one of them (Joseph