races overrunning regions inhabited by the civilized and effeminate, is in- 
variably the history of large armies and hordes like locusts, which can- 
not be resisted, from the very momentum of their numbers. If, then, we 
would have as few marvels as possible in the history of the Israelites, we 
are compelled to fall back on the belief that they must have been multi- 
tudinous. And not only multitudinous, but well trained, and hardy too. 
Even large numbers untrained would have been insufficient for the work. 
The slavish spirit was not extinct among them, when the spies came back 
from the land, and reported that * They saw giants, the sons of Anak, there 
(Numb. xiv. 1) ; but the generation that had grown up under Moses in the 
forty years of wandering, could say to Joshua, ‘ All things that thou com- 
mandest us we will do, and whithersoever thou sendest us we will go ... . 
only be strong and of a good courage’ (Josh. i. 16-18). Six hundred 
thousand men, sons though they were of the Egyptian fugitives, yet them- 
selves trained up in the hardy habits of the desert and the mountain, the 
wild herdsman and the wilder hunter of the wild goat and the antelope, 
even though wholly composed of footmen, may have been a formidable 
force to bring against the fenced cities, and the hill forts, and the horsemen, 
and the war chariots of the Canaanites, and the Amorites, and the Hittites, 
and the Perizzites, and the Hivites (?) and the Jebusites (Exod. xxiii. 2). But 
neither small numbers nor a hasty flight from the place of their captivity 
can tally with what are the undoubted phenomena of the history.” (Lect. V. 
pp. 77, 78.) 
The difficulty suggested by Dr. Thornton as to the burial of 24,000 corpses 
in the desert in the course of a few days is really no difficulty at all. How 
often have larger numbers, fallen on the field of battle, been interred in com- 
paratively small spaces without producing plague ? 
Again, as to the smallness of the dimensions of the temple. Dr. Thornton 
himself suggests the answer — it was simply a centre of worship, not a house 
for the people to assemble in. It was the palace of their king, and they 
worshipped “ toward his holy temple.” 
“ What boots it at one gate to make defence, and at another to let in 
the foe ? ” 
That errors, through the similarity of the Hebrew letters — if letters were 
originally used for numbers, as is supposed— and from the mistakes of 
copyists, &c., have crept into the numbers in the historic books of the Old 
Testament, in several instances, no student of Scripture, so far as I am 
aware, denies. But this is a different admission from the sweeping statement 
“ that there is reason for thinking the numbers as read in our text of the Old 
Testament to be corrupt.” 
