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picion — should lie against the veracity of the Pentateuch 
numbers on such a ground as this ! Why, is it not self- 
evident that even if the camp had been actually affixed to one 
spot for the entire forty years, they would have been no worse 
off for the disposal of their dead than London, which does 
manage to put its dead out of sight without pestilence, — 
“ Though its clime 
Is fickle, and its year most "part deform’d 
With dripping rains, or wither’d by a frost ; ” 
though it lacks the burning sun and the desiccating sands of 
the Arabian desert. But what are the facts ? The wilderness 
wandering (as any good map will show) covered about 
40,000 square miles. Thus, fifteen corpses had to be got rid 
of, on an average, in every square mile of such a soil and 
such a climate, in the course of forty years. 
49. And the third is like unto it. Here it is, word for word. 
“ These 620,000, strangelyenough,leave behind them a progeny 
somewhat less numerous than themselves. Instead of 603,550, 
we have, at the numbering in the plain of Jordan, only 601,730. 
Instead of five sons, each man would seem to have had, on an 
average, a fraction less than one.” What is there strange in 
this, when “ with many of them God was not well pleased ;” 
when “ forty years long He was grieved with that generation,” 
and sware in His wrath that every one of the whole number 
that came up out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, 
should die in the wilderness ; when the whole period was one 
of judgment, and its protraction was expressly and solely in 
order that the carcases of that rebellious generation should fall 
in the wilderness ? Why, I say, is it strange, with this key in 
our hand, that Israelis population did not increase during those 
forty years ? It would have contradicted the whole economv 
of God, if it had. J 
50. The strength of the assault upon the cardinal number 
we are discussing lies, I think, in the argument which is 
embodied in Dr. Oolenso’s chap, xvi., entitled, “The Exodus 
m the Fourth Generation.” His reasoning here is plausible ; 
I hesitate not to confess it is forcible ; at first reading it seems 
invulnerable. Yet, if it really cannot be answered ; if it cannot 
be logically shown to be an elaborate non sequitur ; our position 
must be untenable, his conclusion must be accepted, and, 
as a consequence, we must give up our Bible ! " For this 
is his conclusion : — “ From this it can be shown, beyond a 
doubt, that it is quite impossible that there should have been 
such a number of the people of Israel in Egypt, at the time of 
the Exodus, as to have furnished 600,000 warriors in the prime 
