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laid his hand on all the most difficult questions, but there is one he has not 
mentioned, where we find in the Chronicles that one of the kings of Judah 
was older than his father by two years. (Laughter.) To those who find mira- 
cles in all things that occurrence does not present much difficulty (laughter), 
but I own I cannot believe it even on the statement of the book of Chro- 
nicles. There is another matter in the same book of Chronicles which 
Dr. Thornton has not alluded to — I mean the numbers of those who fought 
between Abijah and Jeroboam, when the men of Judah, 400,000 strong, 
fought the Israelites, who mustered 800,000 men, and killed 500,000 of them. 
Now these are numbers in our present version of the Bible which I cannot 
accept. They have got into the text somehow, and if we are really asked 
to defend these numbers as part of revelation, I say that our common sense 
will not allow us to do so ; because it is impossible that those numbers can 
be taken as authentic. The greatest of all the difficulties is the one which 
Dr. Thornton has given the most space to — the numbers of the Exodus — and 
I have always felt that difficulty to be enormous. I have read Dr. Payne 
Smith’s Bampton Lectures, and every one should do so. Dr. Payne Smith 
disagrees with Dr. Thornton in thinking that the average number of the 
families of the Israelites might have been ten children. Dr. Payne Smith 
expressly says that the families were decidedly small. I cannot go 
through the evidence of this, but any impartial person who reads Dr. Payne 
Smith’s lectures will be satisfied that the commonly received numbers 
cannot be taken as correct, and no man can say that Dr. Payne Smith is 
not an eminently orthodox man. You cannot cry out, “ infidelity ! ” — 
— and yet Dr. Payne Smith says that the number of the descendants of 
Jacob did not exceed 80,000, and he goes onto show that in the families 
there were incorporated all the slaves. In Genesis there is the number of 
Abraham’s servants, 318. They went on increasing very materially, and 
the goods and servants of Abraham descended to Isaac, and the family of 
Isaac was subsequently divided between Jacob and Esau. Jacob’s share 
increased very largely, and Dr. Payne Smith is of opinion that many 
persons who had certainly not descended from the loins of Jacob became 
incorporated with the Israelites. He considers that the Israelites contained 
a body analogous to the Roman clients and plebs, and that they formed the 
deleterious element which we meet with so extensively in the Scriptures. The 
whole question, as commonly received, is involved in great and extreme diffi- 
culty. There is another thing I should like to refer to as presenting a great 
difficulty when one has to defend divine revelation. There are many pro- 
fessed Christians who are fond of introducing an exceptional and vast amount 
of miracles beyond those which are mentioned in the sacred page, and this 
is one of the most difficult things we have to encounter in the way of de- 
fending Christianity against infidelity. There is an old Greek proverb which 
is worthy of attention. It used to be said that it was very easy to praise 
Athenians in the presence of Athenians, but not so easy to praise them in 
the presence of Lacedemonians. (Laughter.) No doubt it is easy to make out 
a case in favour of a certain view when people are strongly biassed in its 
