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REPLY BY DR. THORNTON. 
My professional duties, joined with the unaccommodating habits of railway 
trains, having compelled me to leave before the end of the discussion, I am 
constrained to make my reply in writing. A reply I can scarcely call it ; for 
every speaker but one seems to have fully comprehended my object, and to 
be at one with me on the general principle. To that one (Admiral Halsted) 
I would say Do not mistake me ; my object is not to undermine, but to 
confirm faith. I am, and wish every one else to be, a firm and stout believer 
in the Bible, as being all of it, from beginning to end, the word of God to 
men, precious and true. But in face of objections to this written word, 
which I, as a professed teacher of it, hear made from time to time, I feel 
myself obliged to ask, Are we sure that the text we now have is the word of 
God as originally written ?— and I have ventured to lay this answer before 
the Institute, to serve as a guide to us in our mode of defending the Word . 
“ As regards facts, doctrines, moral and spiritual teaching, undoubtedly yes ; 
as regards mere numbers, no.” I cannot imagine how such an answer can 
give to any one who considers it fairly any pain, but the uneasiness which 
always accompanies more or less the reception of a suggestion contravening 
what one has been content to hold for a long time without examination. It 
was a saying, I believe, of Napoleon, that one cannot make omelettes without 
breaking eggs ; and we must in this matter think more of the omelette we 
are making than of the eggs it is our painful duty to break. Here is an 
acknowledged difficulty, which prevents some from believing as we do, and 
as we wish others to do. Ought it to remain a difficulty ? Is it a matter we 
are bound to contend for ? If not, we are leaving a removable stumbling- 
block in a brother’s way, which is the next thing to putting it there. 
For the details of my own criticism I shall not contend one moment. I am 
not wedded to them. If Mr. Edwards thinks— if any member of the Institute 
thinks — that my removal of three ciphers from the 600,000 Israelites reduced 
the number too much, let us say 6,000, or 60,000 ; but all I want is, that 
thinking believers should not hold it imperative for a wavering Christian 
to be compelled to admit that two millions of people passed through the Eed 
Sea in a night. I wish to be able to say to such a man, “ Provided you 
allow that God did miraculously bring some people out of Egypt through the 
Bed Sea, never mind about the ciphers.” So as regards the 600 chariots of 
Pharaoh, I do not think it unlikely that he had 600, and sent them all after 
the fugitives, few as they may have been. But possibly he did not ; and I 
take no objection to read sixty, or even six. 
There is one difficulty to which I have not alluded in my paper, and feel 
bound to mention here. The numbers of those who died in the matter of 
Peor are put by St. Paul at 23,000 (tiKooiTpelg x i ^ 1< *<* s q) 3 1 Cor. x. 8. I 
