the one would not be desperate even if the other were unknown or abandoned, yet it is certain that by such an abandonment we should rob Christianity of that most powerful and convincing support which is afforded by the unbroken chain of prophecy; that we should relinquish the most valuable commentary which God has furnished on the religion of His Son; and that, since the first teachers of Christianity so often appeal to the authority of the law in order to establish their own Divine commission, we must, if the law be abandoned, endanger, in no small degree, their inspiration or their sincerity. When, therefore, we defend the Divine original of the Jewish creed, we are defending, in fact, our own;-and with this impression I will now submit to your consideration some few of those arguments which arise from the internal evidence of Scripture to establish the fact that Moses was really so honoured by God as is related in the third chapter of Exodus.

It may, in the first place, be maintained on grounds which will hardly be disputed or impugned by a candid unbeliever, that the account contained in the Jewish Scriptures of the parentage and education of Moses, of the authority which he acquired over the Israelitish tribes, and the religious and political system which they received from him is, in its essential points at least, and its leading and general outlines, accurate. I will not discuss the truth or falsehood of that supernatural machinery by which, if we believe the sacred historian, the

mission of Moses was announced and ratified. Those marvels which were, to their immediate witnesses, the most appropriate and convincing evidence that Moses was sent by God, are to us, in themselves, the subjects of faith alone, which cannot be brought forward as proofs of that history on whose credit we receive them. But if they cannot be adduced as proofs, neither can they be reasonably objected to as impeachments of the historic credibility of the Pentateuch, since, if we can establish by any other means the Divine commission of Moses, such wonders, as a consequence and accompaniment of that commission, become at once (if I may use the expression) natural, while much, very much will remain in the Mosaic volume from which we cannot reasonably withhold our belief, even though we should regard as exaggerated or fabulous "the ten wounds which tamed the River Dragon,"* and the mighty arm of God which was made bare in the Red Sea and in the wilderness.

In all ancient histories there is a frequent recurrence of prodigies. And it is a question which unbelievers might do well to weigh attentively, whether this prevalence, in every nation of mankind, of similar traditions or assumptions, may not be reasonably regarded as one proof of a common origin,

*

"Thus with ten wounds

The River Dragon tam'd, at length submits

To let his sojourners depart."-PAR. LOST, xii. 190. See Ezek. xxix. 3.

and as the recollection of some earlier age when those occurrences were real and frequent, of which the priestcraft of a latter day was no more than a spurious copy? Imposture is often the shadow of truth; nor is it easy to conceive how the idea first arose of claiming, however falsely, an intercourse with the invisible world, unless our species had been really at one time admitted to converse with angels and with God, and the fact had thus been ascertained and generally understood, that such an intercourse was not incredible. But, be this as it may, it will be granted that, in whatever histories such supernatural revelations are found (though we should regard these particular passages as, in themselves, uncertain or incredible), we do not, therefore, reject the facts which the same writers record, so far as those facts are consistent with general experience, and confirmed by external testimony. We believe that Cyrus conquered Sardis,and that Romulus founded the city which bears his name, though we reject as fabulous the miraculous deliverance of Croesus from the flames, and the wolf by which the Italian chief is said to have been fostered. And (to select a more modern example, and one which so far resembles the case of Moses, as it involves, like his, a claim to celestial inspiration,) we believe the circumstances contained in what may be called the civil biography of Mahomet, though we deny that his nightly solitude was visited by the Angel Gabriel; that he hid the moon in his sleeve, and was carried on a winged mule to Paradise. And, in

like manner, the most suspicious sceptic may admit, (however his belief be, for the present, withheld from the supernatural parts of the Mosaic narrative) that Moses was born of Hebrew parents; that he was brought up by an Egyptian princess among the priests and sages of her country; that he remained during many years an exile in Arabia, from whence he returned, at an advanced age, as the teacher of a new religion; that he conducted a mighty multitude of oppressed peasants from Egypt to the borders of Palestine; and on their way delivered to them, amid the valleys of Mount Sinai, those laws which, in after ages, distinguished the Israelites from the rest of mankind.

To such an assent, indeed, every rational inquirer will be guided by the consistency of the account here given with the current traditions of the heathen world, no less than by the demonstrable antiquity of the Pentateuch, and its candour and simplicity. All heathen authors with whom I have met agree that the Jews went forth from Egypt to Palestine, and that they received from Moses the ritual of their solitary God. That this Moses was a priest or learned man of Heliopolis, and that his departure from Egypt was preceded by circumstances of great distress to the Egyptian nation, were recorded or admitted by all the chroniclers to whom Josephus and Eusebius refer; while even the learned and indefatigable hostility of Apion was able to elicit no other tradition from the native

authorities which he consulted.* That by these last some important circumstances were forgotten or suppressed, and many odious and improbable particulars engrafted on the simple Mosaic history, we shall not think strange if we consider the lapse of ages which had intervened, and the mutual irritation under which the Israelites had parted with their task-masters. But that Moses really existed, and was nearly such a person as is described in the Sacred Volume, is as strongly confirmed by external and even by hostile evidence, as can be reasonably expected in transactions of such extreme antiquity.

But the demonstrable antiquity of the work in which this account is given affords a yet stronger presumption of its general and historic accuracy. Even if we should take the latest date which infidelity has assigned for the composition of the Pentateuch, and grant (which can only be granted for the purposes of temporary argument) that Ezra was its compiler, we have still a compilation coeval with the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus, and older, by some years at least, than the oldest heathen historian. And since it is certain that, from very high antiquity, the art of alphabetical writing was known to the nations of Phoenicia and Palestine; since experience proves that, wherever men can write at all, they begin with writing down the

*Tacitus, Hist. iv. 3. Justin. Hist. 1. xxxvi. Joseph. contra Apion, 1. i. § 26. ii.§.2. See also Eusebius, Præpar. Evang.ix.8.