354 
whereby things accepted as impossible become matters of 
Met High Goa : it i. T * h»* fa ti.t 
He is “Possessor of heaven and earth All tkc la ^ ° 
moral and material being are in His hand : He needs notbe 
ever suscending ; He wields, uses, controls them. ±5irtn, 
marriage! life, death, health, longevity, puberty, fr^tfalness, 
climate! weather, daylight, darkness, sunshine, cloud m htarj 
skill, order, discipline, power of command of legation ot 
administration, the very will of man, his pride or his docility 
these, and a thousand more, are but the obedient : ^d ready 
tools with which God effects His purposes. In what I -have To say 
in reply to certain charges of untruth brought against the Penta- 
teuch, I shall ever assume and fall back upon this principle as an 
impregnable truth, however convenient it may be to ignore it. 
13. I grant to the full, and support with both my hands 
the needof uprightness in such inquiries, that Dr Colenso so 
strenuously contends for. Will a man lie for God? Yet 
having accepted, on other grounds, the fact of revelation, and 
that the Pentateuch is an integral part of the diymely-mspir 
Word, I come assuming that, being of God, it is ^ true ; 1 .w 
yield one iota of it only when absolutely compelled to do so 
I require the objector to give absolute proof _of the mm*. » 
will not do to say, as is so constantly said, I do not see ho . 
Perhaps you do not; perhaps we do not; hut is this pr 
the non ? We stand on testimony : at least you must drive u 
out • we are not going to retire at the mere gleam o weapon 
14. Dr. Colenso (§ 10) observes, “My reason for no longer 
receiving the Pentateuch as historically true, is not that 1 fine 
insuperable difficulties with regard to the miracles or super- 
natural revelations of Almighty God recorded in it but solely 
that I cannot, as a true man, consent any tongerto sh nt my 
eyes to the absolute, palpable, self-contradictions of t^ na^a 
tive.” This, at least, narrows our field of combat. AbsoMi , 
palpable, self-contradictions,” he says. Well, e ^ 
arrayed ; but let us be quite clear as to what makes a coni - 
diction. Mv ignorance in what manner such and such a resul 
was obtained as is testified, is surely no contradiction. The 
Siamese might be ignorant— “ might not see how the 
intelligence o<’ a fact could be conveyed from England to 
India, within five minutes: was this therefore an absolute 
palpable, self-contradiction? How “any of Dr Cofenso s 
“contradictions” might in a moment be dissipated by more 
knowledge, as by Ithuriel’s spear 1 , , • ; 
15. Against the principle avowed by Dr. Thornton, in h 
§ 27, I cannot too strongly protest; that the nu 
