Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. For the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you, until ye were passed over; as the Lord your God did to the Red sea, which he dried up from before us until we were gone over that all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever.'

Thus it appears, that, in express remembrance of the miraculous passage, twelve stones were set up at Gilgal not far from the banks of Jordan ; and that twelve other stones, apparently of much larger dimensions, were erected in the channel of the river, so that they might be visible above the surface of its waters. With these monuments therefore was associated the occurrence of a fact, which they were said to commemorate and the fact, from generation to generation, was declared to have taken place at the very time when the monuments were erected. Nor was the memory of the event solely intrusted to the stream of tradition it was also preserved in a book, purporting to have been written synchronically with the entrance of the Israelites into Palestine across the exhausted bed of the Jordan. Such being the case, it is plainly impossible, that a belief of this nature could ever have been attached to the monumental stones, unless the belief itself had been originally founded upon absolute matter of fact. For, if, from the very first erection of the stones,

the eye-witnesses of the alleged transit carefully taught their children the import of the commemorative monument; and if these children again taught their children the same, and so onward from generation to generation it is manifest, that the belief, associated with the stones, must have been as old as the erection of the stones themselves. This belief, from the very mode in which it was communicated, could never have sprung up at an era subsequent to the erection of the stones. For, if we suppose its origin to be posterior to their erection, the man, who first introduced it, must not only have persuaded the Israelites, that the stones were simply commemorative of the allegedfact; but he must additionally have persuaded them, that they themselves already knew the stones to be thus commemorative, having universally received that knowledge in uninterrupted succession from their fathers and from their fathers fathers up to the very time of the fact commemorated. Now the Israelites of any later period could be no more induced to admit such a self-contradicting falsehood; than the English of the present day could be brought to believe, both that Stonehenge was reared to commemorate a miraculous passage of the Normans across the dry bed of the British channel, and that they themselves had received this account of its origin and import in unbroken succession from father to son ever since the occurrence of that stupendous miracle. In each case, the ground of the impossibility is the very same no man can be persuaded to believe, that he always

previously knew a matter, which is now for the first time communicated to him.

III. The important consequences, which necessarily flow from the point now established, are abundantly obvious.

1. If the Pentateuch were the production of Moses, and if therefore it were written synchronically with the exodus of Israel and with their journey to Palestine; every miracle, recorded as having taken place during that period, must inevitably be received as a real matter of fact.

The reason of this is so plain, that it need scarcely be pointed out. If the recorded miracles were ever performed; thousands must have been eye-witnesses of them, as well as Moses himself: if, on the other hand, they were never performed; they never could have been introduced into a history written at the very time when they are alleged to have taken place. Suppose none of the plagues of Egypt to have actually occurred; suppose the channel of the Red sea to have never been laid bare to the bottom; suppose the Israelites never to have been preternaturally fed during their abode in the wilderness; suppose the awful transactions of mount Sinai to be a mere fiction; suppose the sudden and predicted destruction of Korah and his company to be an idle tale; suppose no water to have been ever brought out of the arid rock; suppose the healing of the Israelites by a mere look upon the brazen serpent to be wholly devoid of truth; suppose the perpetually accompanying pillar of fire to be a gross and pal

pable falsehood: suppose all this, and add various other parallel suppositions for which the Pentateuch will copiously furnish an ample basis; and what will be the consequence, now that we have established the history to have been written by Moses synchronically with the alleged events? If we deem every recorded miracle to be a fiction; we shall in effect pledge ourselves to account, both for its insertion in the history, and for the zealous reception of that history by the contemporaneous Israelites though every individual of at the least a million of adults must have been satisfied by the direct evidence of his or her senses that the whole work was a tissue of impudent falsehoods. The admission of a supernatural interference necessarily follows the proof, that the Pentateuch was written in the days of Moses: nor can the admission be avoided, except by a demonstration that the Pentateuch was written long subsequent to that period.

In short, on the supposition that no miracles were performed, while yet it is found impossible to ascribe the uninterpolated Pentateuch to any author save Moses himself; we may judge, how immeasurable must have been the astonishment of the Israelites, when they heard their lawgiver gravely address them out of his Epinomis in the following most extraordinary terins.

The Lord your God, which goeth before you, he shall fight for you, according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes; and in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the Lord thy God bare thee as a man doth bear his son, in all the

way that ye went, until ye came into this place: who went in the way before you to search you out a place to pitch your tents in, in fire by night to shew you by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by day. Take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons and thy sons sons. Specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me; Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children. And ye came near, and stood under the mountain : and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone." Ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire as thou hast heard, and live?

Deut. i. 30-33.

2 Deut. iv. 9-13.