107 
it simply signifies to saw, and thence to cliew, and that hares 
do constantly regurgitate (he’elah, cause to ascend) food and 
masticate it over again. 
4. To return to my subject. We have no right, I say, to 
maintain an untenable point, any more than we or our op- 
ponents are at liberty to select one out of several possible 
meanings of a word or passage in Scripture, and insist upon 
it, in the teeth of all arguments to the contrary, as the only 
correct one. Such a point, I confess, I consider the numbers 
of the Old Testament to be. I cannot look upon them as trust- 
worthy ; in fact, I believe many of them to be incorrect : and 
I hold that believers will be doing a service to the truth by 
surrendering them, and acknowledging that they are pro- 
bably inaccurate. Such an avowal will render nine-tenths 
of Colenso’s essays powerless, and will cut the ground from 
beneath a number of sceptical arguments. I assert it to be a 
duty of our Institute to look into this matter, and, — wnile we 
mercilessly examine the hasty conclusions and unsupported 
dicta of our scientific opponents, and show their want of true 
philosophy and rigid inductive logic, — to prevent the faithfu. 
from forcing upon the belief of doubters and waverers, as 
revelation, what was really not revealed at all. 
5. The numerical difficulty which first struck me, now some 
years ago, and before Colenso^s books were published, was not 
suggested by an intellectual Zulu, but presented itself to my 
mind when I read in the books of the Kings and Chronicles 
that Ahaz began to reign at 20 and reigned sixteen years, and 
that Hezekiah succeeded him at the age of 25. Could Ahaz 
be a father at 11 years old ? for there is no hint or appearance 
of an interregnum. The LXX., it is true, probably has twenty- 
five years instead of twenty in the passage in Chronicles \ but 
even this reading is not certain ; and the Greek in Kings, and 
the Hebrew (as we have it) in both passages, have simply 
20. The Vulgate follows the Hebrew. Here was a plain case 
of incorrectness in numbers, or rather in notation. Was it 
not possible that other instances of inaccuracy in numbers 
might occur ? 
6. Of King Josiah we read that he began to reign at the 
age of 8, and reigned thirty-one years. He was succeeded, 
not immediately, but within the year, by his son Eliakim, or 
Jehoiakim, aged 25. He must have been born when Josiah 
was only 14 : a state of things which I believe I am right in 
terming scarcely possible. 
7. Then I came to that remarkable, and to me convincing, 
passage in 1 Samuel vi. 19 : “ He smote the men of Beth-she- 
mesh, because they had looked into the Ark of the Lord, even 
