Augtisf 1 1 , 1 88 1] NA TURE 



333 



whose gentle care had obliterated from his mind, not only 

 all the sorrows and trials of his early life, the hatred of 

 his brothers, his slavery in Egypt, his temptations in 

 Potiphar's house, and his long imprisonment in the 

 dungeon, but had almost made him forget his dead 

 mother, the kind old father who had loved him so well, 

 and the little brother Benjamin to whom he had been so 

 deeply attached, so that he called the name of his first- 

 born son Manasseh, ' For God,' said he, ' hath made me 

 forget all my toil, and all my father's house.' . . . Let 

 us, in order to form an idea of the country, suppose 

 Joseph at this time of the year to be starting on a tour of 

 inspection, and let us in thought accompany him. 



" He has said farewell to his wife and children. His 

 chariot and horses are at the gate, he springs up, and, 

 accompanied by his attendants, drives onward towards 

 the southern point of the Delta, just where it joins the 

 Nile valley. At fir^t he proceeds amongst shady trees, 

 bounded on either side by fertile gardens ; but as he rides 

 on, his path lies through a strip of hard sandy desert, in 

 crossing which the hind legs of one of the horses ridden 

 by his attendants suddenly becomes paralysed, the animal 

 sinks upon its h.iunches, and the horseman falls back- 

 wards. The Cerastes, or horned snake, a little viper only 

 about a foot long, lying concealed in the sand, which it 

 resembles in colour, irritated by the passage of the caval- 

 cade, has bitten the horse's heel. Immediately the poison 

 spreads up the leg, paralysing it, and, when it reaches the 

 spinal cord, paralyses it also, thus destroying the power 

 of both hind legs, and causing them to give way under the 

 weight of the animal. Only within the last year or two 

 have we learned the exact manner in which such a poison 

 as this acts upon the body ; but centuries ago its general 

 effect was well known, and no more vivid description of | 

 it cculd be given than that of the dying Jacob, who com- i 

 pared his son Dan to ' an adder in the way, a serpent in 

 the path, biting the horse's heels, so that the rider falleth [ 

 backwards.' " 



In a similarly picturesque manner we are carried 

 through sundry scenes of early Egyptian life, of the 

 bondage of the Israelites, their exodus, wanderings, and 

 conquest of Palestine. In the course of this exposition, 

 which only errs from being too short, several interesting 

 suggestions are made as to the possible origin of the 

 accounts of some of the Pentateuch miracles. Thus, 

 speaking of the plagues, he says : — I 



" Amongst these was one that used to puzzle me not a 

 little, the plague of 'darkness which might be felt.' Wljy, 

 thought I, did all the people remain in the dwellings? 

 Why could they not take lanterns with them and move 

 out .'' But a day which I spent at Port Said showed me 

 what was probably the reason. On waking in the morn- 

 ing it seemed to me that everything had been turned into 

 pea-soup. Above, around, and on every side, was a thick 

 yellow mist, darkening the air like a London fog, but 

 differing from it in this respect, that it was a darkness 

 perceptible ; a darkness that might be felt, and painfully 

 felt too, for it was caused by a storm of sand, driven by 

 the wind, and every particle stinging the skin like a 

 needle." 



Again, regarding the passage of the Jordan, he 

 writes : — 



" One of the puzzles of my childhood's days was to 

 imagine the condition of the waters thus cut off, for I 

 fancied to myself the River Jordan like such streams as I 

 had been accustomed to, flowing through a small channel 

 with level meadows stretching on either side. How then, 

 I thought, did the waters stand up as in a heap? I could 

 picture to myself a steep, glassy wall of water running 

 across the channel itself, but was there likewise a level 

 wall along each bank, or did the waters flow over the 



meadows on either side? On seeing the Jordan, however, 

 I at once t'iscovered the solution of my childhood's 

 difficulty." 



Then, after describing the double channel of the river— 



" Within this larger or outer channel, confined by its 

 bank on either side, ihe waters of the river might become 

 filled up as a heap. Here was an answer to one inquiry of 

 childhood. There were no invisible or glassy walls, in- 

 deed, at the sides to prevent the waters from running over 

 the surrounding country. Was there, then, one to draw 

 them up in their channel, and thus to cut them off towards 

 the Dead Sea ? or was the dam here simply of earth ? 

 On standing at the river's brink, the whole scene appeared 

 to pass before me. The country around is highly vol- 

 canic. Earthquakes occur with great frequency, and 

 during such convulsions of nature we know that the 

 relations of land and water become greatly altered. . . . 

 Here, I thought, we have a method by which the Israel- 

 ites were able to pass over drjshod. If the bed of the 

 stream at this place underwent a sudden upheaval at the 

 time of their passage, the consequences would be exactly 

 those which are described in the Book of Joshua. The 

 waters would rise up like a heap, filling the channel far 

 up the valley, and those flowing down to the Dea-i Sea 

 would be cut off. 



"To some this explanation may seem mere fancy, but 

 it appears to be the one accepted by the psalmist, for in 

 the 114th Psalm we find, 'Jordan was driven back. The 

 mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like 

 lambs. What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddtst ? 

 thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back? Ye mountains, 

 that ye skipped like rams ; and ye little hills, like lambs .' 

 Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the 

 presence of the God of Jacob.' Here the psalmist 

 seems to ask the question why Jordan was driven back, 

 and to give us indirectly as an answer that the earth 

 trembled, or, in other words, that there was an earth- 

 quake." 



Dr. Brunton seems rather fond of this naturalistic or 

 rationalistic method of explaining the miraculous element 

 in the Old Testament records ; but it is evident that the 

 method only serves to let in miracles at the back-door 

 instead of at the front. In this case, for instance, we 

 cannot suppose Joshua to have known that an earthquake 

 was about to take place, or, if he did, that its effect would 

 be to di\ert the course of the river in the way that Dr. 

 Brunton imagines. (There is a possibility, however, in 

 the subsequent instance with which Dr. Brunton deals, of 

 Joshua commanding the sun and moon to stand still, or 

 become " dumb," that he expected an eclipse, and made 

 good capital of his knowledge.) Therefore we must 

 attribute the occurrence of the earthquake at the moment 

 when the tribes were ready to pass over the river as due 

 to a lucky coincidence which in itself would have been 

 little short of miraculous. And the multiplication of such 

 coincidences that would be required to explain all the 

 Pentateuch miracles by this method would render their 

 occurrence unaccountable save on the hypothesis of a 

 designing mind; and this would constitute them mira- 

 culous in the sense of being supernatural. Moreover, 

 many of the miracles cannot possibly be met even 

 by the hypothesis of coincidence. Thus the passage 

 through the Red Sea, which is so analogous to the 

 passage through the Jordan, cannot be thus met. Here 

 no earthquake could have produced the effect described, 

 and if we accept the record as history we are compelled 

 to " imagine the waters standing up as in a heap," with 

 all the difficulty of "picturing a steep, glassy wall of 



