Harbinger, Feb. 2, '62. CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PENTATEUCH. 59 rationalistic minds. He hopes to accomplish conclusion, but for the purpose of exhithis by a complete examination of the in- biting the harmony of the divine communspired testimony-a full induction-entered ications concerning the work of the Holy upon and finished without regard to the Spirit. establishment of any previously-formed CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PENTATEUCH. may WHEN it was announced that Isaac Taylor would reply to Bishop Colenso the anxieties of many were put to rest. Now his "Considerations on the Pentateuch" are before the public it be said that Colenso is answered to the satisfaction of at least one class. We did not expect the author to follow the Bishop through his long lanes of figures, nor did we expect a reply that would satisfy the thousands who, by the help of the sceptical platform and press, are kept down to the mere arithmetic of the matter. What we expected is a pamphlet calculated to convince the thinking and refined that the Bishop must be wrong, because, by argument, outside of his data, the opposite is shewn to be right. To the masses the pages under notice will be of little service, and for them it was not intended, otherwise, with an extensive sale certain, words, fewer than the number contained in our monthly Harbinger, would have been published at something less than two shillings and six before us pence. The kind of handling the Bishop obtains may be estimated by the author's comment upon the alleged impossibility of gathering the people before the door of the Tabernacle. BY ISAAC TAYLOR. | ments of error, infirmity, passion, and ig. norance. Neither miracle, nor arithmetic, nor nonsense, needs to be brought in to solve a problem of this sort. I should think it a folly to enter upon counter calculations intended to show how many men might possibly be brought in front of the door of the Tabernacle. Or I might argue on the probable suggestion that the hangings of the court of the Tabernacle-called fine twined linen,' were in fact a net-work, allowing the outstanding people to be spectators of whatever was enacted within the court. But I should think time and pains ill-spent in any such wiry argumentation. If just now some quite new suggestion ficient and complete, there is no doubt I were to turn up, and were spoken of as sufshould be glad to listen to it; but I should not eagerly listen to it with any sort of rether this mountain is moved out of my path ligious anxiety. I don't much care whe or not. If at last I should be persuaded to throw away my Bible, or should come to think of it after Dr. Colenso's fashion, it will not be at the bidding of arguments, which I resent as not more irreligious than they are frivolous, nugatory, absurd, and preposterous." The chief and well sustained argument of the pamphlet grasps a leading characteristic of the Jewish nation, and shews that the Israelites were adapted to accomplish, in such circumstances as would attend their Exodus from Egypt and their wanderings in the Desert, things most difficult, if not impossible, to a people like ourselves, and that the very things attributed to them in the Bible history, are so in keeping with their national traits, and so in harmony with what is known of the mind and condition of the Hebrew race, that their existence in the record makes for, and not against, the historic truthfulness of the Five Books. "The painstaking author then goes on to calculate the area of the court of the Tabernacle, and gravely asks how we can make standing room for so many myriads of men in this court, who in truth, in any mode of packing, must have reached nearly four miles! The area of the court, he says, was 1,800 square yards, but the whole congregation would have covered an area of 201,180 square yards! He thus concludes this unanswerable demonstration and says -'It is inconceivable how, under such circumstances, all the assembly, the whole congregation could have been summoned to "It is trite also to say that the Roman attend at the door of the tabernacle by the stock-whencesoever derived- signalized express command of Almighty God! It fol- itself in a wholly different manner. The lows therefore-so Bishop Colenso thinks rare endowment of the Roman people was -that the so called Books of Moses are of the instinct of ORDER-order dynamic, and no historic value, and that the Bible, as he this distinction evolved itself in the sevesays, 'is largely infused with human ele-ral modes of administrative ability. The , outspeak of this gift was command - its passion was power-its means was military organization, and its result was extended empire. Thus following the method of comparison, the distinctive characteristic of the Hebrew race- the stock out of which the nation at length rose was the instinct of ORDER, not dynamic, as the Roman, but STATICAL ORDER; and, as such, it has suffused itself in different degrees among the modern European nations. The instinct of order statical, as the endowment of the Hebrew race, of which the evidences are marked and unquestionable, evolved itself in its clanship, carried out with a vigorous adherence to its principle, and in adjustments, and in administrative encouragements, and in fitnesses, either among natural objects, or in the constantly recurrent operations of life ecclesiastical, or life secular. Order in position, order in daily observances: order was the law of a tranquil, a peaceful, a regulated and unambitious perpetuity. Thus it stood contrasted with the Roman dynamic order, the law of which was restlessness, onward movement, and progress. * * This or that narrative of events is, he says, incred ible; this or that institution, or mode of proceeding, must have been 'impossible'; and therefore, the writings affirming such things must be rejected as fabulous. Not so; or not so to those who have freshness and freedom of thought enough to look at the Mosaic institutions, and generally at the Hebrew writings, under the open sky of universal history; not so, if we have philosophic grasp enough to apprehend the national quality of this one people; not so, if, in our habits of study, we have pushed enquiry beyond the biblical enclosure, and have learned whatever may be learned, or may be gathered, either from contiguous fields, or from sources of information of a later date. You confidently tell us that certain operations, ecclesiastical or civil, must be rejected as impossible, or as insufferable if possible. I cannot consent to think of things in this small and bookish manner, for I am not uninformed concerning Oriental modes of life. I have conversed with those who well know Egypt, and Palestine, and the East. I have come to understand that, in a hundred instances, the very thing which we might pronounce to be 'demonstrably impossible,' is nevertheless actually done; theory, and arithmetic, and prejudice in heaps, disappear as the chaff of the threshing floor when the morning breeze sets every thing in motion. * * This people-and we need not now care to ask whether, with its camp-followers, it was a million strong, or two millions, or was not nearly so many-this people had become wealthy, not in herds only, but in all kinds of personal appointments. It possessed the costumes and the decorations of superfluous wealth. The mechanical and the decorative arts had long been in practice among them. Quite familar were they with the business of an advanced matinal civilization, and they were adepts in the laborious arts of common life. The moveable wealth of the people, and the appurtenances of rank, they had brought with them. As to the wealth they had created upon the soil, they received from their masters a bare tithe in jewellery. These were the visible or exterior conditions of this ousted multitude. But the people had also their inner habitudes, and these got expression in the tone and purport of those ordinances—in those regulations, mixed, religious, and secular-in those forecasting appointments, which were to be carried out years later in a land of rest. In all these legal elements, whether sacred or civil, the race-instinct makes itself manifest. And thus also was it in the specialities, and the measure. ments, and in the fitting of every hook to its eye, and every cord to its pole, and of every vessel to its use, and of every movement to its moment everything was in harmony with, and was an expression of stated orders. This might be proved at large if space and time were just now at command. But now read the Book of Numbers with this key in your hand, and while keeping in view analagous instances occurring in later histories, give license for a moment to the imagination, while you bring before you, by the various aids of modern travel and pictorial illustration, first, the Sinaitic scenery which the people were at this moment leaving; and then the broad expanse of the Northward tableland-the Wilderness of Paran. I see, as if I were carried back through the forty centuries-I see the host, for it is just now pushing its upward way through the passes of Jabel et Tih, and it is fanning itself out in the predetermined order upon the flats of this upland. It is not a rout, it is not a rabble, it is not a promiscuous crowd or horde, it is not a deluge of struggling, countless human forms; but it is a sample of what may be done in marshalling the millions of a people whose native instinct is order, and whose daily habitudes render conformity thereto far more easy to them than confusion could be. * ask any of my lay brethren to turn to the third chapter of the Book of Nehemiah, and to say whether we are not rightly interpreting the various documents of this people-the memorials of their welfare, and the memorials of their woe-in the sense I am now affirming it was a people instinct with the feeling and habituated to * I Harbinger, Feb. 2, '63. OVERTHROW OF ECCLESIASTICAL DESPOTISM. the practice of fitness-it was a people which, refractory and obdurate as it might be in its moods, conformed itself always with a natural ease to every arrangement, the end of which was to secure a silent decorum in ceremonies, and a good issue in the most arduous and hazardous operations. * * We open the New Testament, and with this same idea in view, we look to the manner of action and to the demeanor, on peculiar occasions, of HIM of whom it is said, not only that he became man and dwelt among us, but also that he took on him the seed of Abraham.' The Saviour of all nations was the man of his own people, and while full of that spirit of order which prevails in the highest heaven, he gave evidence also, whenever the occasion called for it, of the national tact which was his as a Jew. When about to act as CREATOR in the fullest sense, even as when the worlds were made, this JESUS was not unmindful of method. One Evangelist says,He commanded the men to sit down, and there was much grass in the place. Another adds this word, 'to sit down by companies;' and says, moreover, that the people sat down in ranks, by hundreds, and by fifties, upon the green grass. Another adds, 'He said to his disciples, Make them to sit down by fifties in a company.' In these instances there was 61 present not only a certain mode of action in the PRINCIPAL, for there were also the ready and native habitudes of the twelve assistants, and moreover there were the national habitudes of this hungry multitude. All things here shew the same colour-all is properly Jewish. One may easily think of crowds or mobs, a hungry eight or ten thousand men, women, and children, as to whom the mere endeavor to marshal them in companies-the tell. ing them off in bands-the making them all sit in line-the preserving of clear passages-these adjustments would demand a miracle almost as great as the feeding them to the full: but it was not so in this Jewish multitude. And were not the fragments of food carefully gathered up and counted, and stowed away?" The closing section brings into view "The Giving of the Law from Sinai," the history of which is shewn to depend upon their exodus and wanderings. The Bishop does not let us know whether he holds the Law to have been thus given, but the author grasps him with a strong hand and shews, that the Law and the Gospel stand or fall together, and that if they stand, then the Pentateuch must be historically true. THE APPROACHING OVERTHROW OF ECCLESIASTICAL DESPOTISM AND RETURN TO PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY, AS INDICATED BY THE TERMINATION OF THE 2300 YEARS OF DANIEL. London: Stevenson, Paternoster-row. AN introductory "glance at the 1260, 1290, and 1335 year-days of Daniel" will better bring out the author's position than any description we could give. "And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be 1290 days, before the putting down of the abomination that maketh desolate, and before the restoration of the daily sacrifice]" (Daniel xii. 11.) "These 1290 days, as well as the succeeding 1335 days, commence at the same date as the time, times, and a half,' or 1260 days of Daniel (vii. 25, and xii. 7). No commentator has ever interpreted the 1290 days. The daily sacrifice' stands here for the true ordinances of Christianity, as laid down in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. See pp. 5-12. "The taking away of the daily sacrifice,' signifies the abolition of Christian ordi The setting up' of the abomination that maketh desolate, signifies the establishment of the Papacy by law, the legal exaltation of the high and haughty Lord-bishop of Rome. See Luke xxii. 24-27, and page 8 concerning bishops. The legal, overt, and permanent abolition of the ordinances of the New Covenant, by the setting up' of the abominable and desolating Papacy, took place in the Jewish civil year which commenced September, 532 A.D., when the bigoted and persecuting emperor Justinian addressed an edict to John II. bishop of Rome, wherein he says, We have hastened to bring your Holiness, all the priests of the whole into subjection and to unite to the see of Eastern church-YOUR HOLINESS THE HEAD OF ALL THE HOLY CHURCH.'* ments of men,' were abolished from the congregation of God, and the ordinances of Christ with the New Testament order of things were restored, in the United States of America by the instrumentality of Alexander Campbell, between Sept. 1822 and Sept. 1823. This was exactly 1290 years from A.D. 532, the time when the Papacy —the abomination that maketh desolate was set up, and when the ordinances of Christ were legally abolished by the Pope and the emperor Justinian. The congregation now formed after the apostolic model, number about 400,000 members, all immersed believers. They call themselves The Disciples,' i.e. the disciples of Christ, and Christians.' Thus the saints were given into the hands of the little horn,' or Lord-bishop of Rome (as predicted Daniel vii. 25) in the Jewish civil year which commenced Sept. 532 A.D. for a time, times, and a half,' i. e. 1260 days or years. These 1260 years ter. minated between September 1791 and Sep. tember 1792, when the French government (as predicted, Daniel vii. 26) began to sit in judgment,' terrible judgment on the Pa pacy. The next year they took away the Pope's dominion entirely from themselves, and afterward from the Pope himself. The Pope's temporal power has been 'consuming and destroying' ever since. The 1290 days terminated in 1822, and accord. ing to the Hebrew computation of the civil year we shall 'touch' or come to (the last of) the 1335 days,' on the 9th of September 1866, or the new moon before or after. Stupendous events, awaiting all God's people, living and dead, will then transpire. See Daniel xii. 12-13." assumption that the "daily sacrifice' stands for the true ordinances of Christianity, as laid down in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. But this the author should have demonstrated. On page 5 he says 14. "And he said unto me, Unto 2,300 days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed,” and persecution cease. These 2,300 prophetic days or solar years refer to the Mosaic economy, so long as it lasted, but that being abolished they apply to the Christian temple This sanctuary shall be cleansed, or purified, from all the corruptions and 'commandments of men' of every sect and name. For what saith the Lord? In vain do ye worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men: Matt. xv. 9. And what say the apostles of our Lord? Peter says, 'Be mindful of the commandments OF US THE APOSTLES of the Lord and Saviour: 2 Pet. iii. 2. Our Lord also said, 'He that heareth you [the apostles] heareth me.' The apostle Jude says, 'Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to urite unto you and exhort you THAT YE SHOULD EARNESTLY CONTEND FOR THE FAITH SAINTS:' Jude, verse 3. The apostle John writes, 'We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. HEREBY hnow we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error:' 1 John iv. 6. Paul affirms, 'The things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord:' 1 Cor. xiv. 37. The Son of God himself affirms, 'Ye make the word of God of none effect by your traditions,' ' teaching for doctrines the commandments of men: Mark vii. 7—13. We proceed to mention some of these COMMANDMENTS OF MEN. immersing believers. 2. The substitution of sprinkling or pour 3. The promising of faith and repentance in baptism instead of the possession of them. These three propositions are more fully developed on pages 9 to 12. It may be well here to say, that we know not who has written this pamphlet. A. Campbell is referred to in its pages, the B. M. H. quoted, and the author has evidently read and considered much that "The Disciples" have published, but he is pleased to write to us anonymously, and upon the questioning for immersion. whether he is in fellowship with those who seek to restore the old ways, the reader's information is equal to our own. It may also be well to say to those whose acquaintance with the B. M. H. is not of long standing, that though the author finds for A. Campbell a place in his outline of fulfilled prophecy, he writes for himself only-the Churches, Mr. Campbell, and the Harbinger, all speak for themselves, and neither the one nor the other is to be considered as advocating the conclusions of the pamphlet, which mainly rest upon the 4. Another gross corruption of the present day, borrowed from the man of sin,' is the one-man system,' or the setting up of one man within four walls to teach monopolize all the speaking.' On the 14th page we read "If the desecration of the sanctuary, recorded in Neh. xiii., occurred as soon as Nehemiah left Jerusalem, that is in the British Millennial Harbinger, Feb. 2, '63. OVERTHROW OF ECCLESIASTICAL DESPOTISM. 32nd year of Artaxerxes: then the 'cleansing of the sanctuary,' and the ceasing 'to tread underfoot the sanctuary and its host' of worshippers, will take place within the twelve lunar months between the 4th of Oct., 1861, and Sep. 23rd, 1862, A.D. Sept. B.C. 439 (the 32nd year of Artaxerxes)=4384 years to A.D.; Sept. 1862, A.D, is 18613 full years from A.D., and 43818612-2,300. When the 2,300 days terminate, then will be 'the time of harvest or end of the age, when the Son of Man will send forth his angels, and will gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them that work iniquity, and will cast them unto a furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father: Matt. xiii. 38-43. So will the sanctuary be cleansed from a disobedient, persecuting, corrupt, and covetous priesthood. On the other hand if that desecration did not occur till four years after Nehemiah left Jerusalem, then the cleansing of the sanctuary, &c. will take place in 1866, A.D. Then will Christianity in its purity be restored, and righteousness reign on the earth for 1,000 years: Rev. xx. But if this desecration partly commenced in the year that Nehemiah left Jerusalem, and was completed in about four years after, by the treading underfoot of the sanctuary and its host,' then the cleansing of the sanctuary' may commence within the next twelve months, and be completed in 1866. Whenever the treading under foot of the sanctuary and its host ceases, Popery will be destroyed, and Christ will come; for we are told in Daniel vii. 21-22, that the 'little horn'—that is, the Pope of Rome'made war with the saints, and prevailed against them UNTIL the Ancient of Days came,' &c. The Man of Sin' will be 'consumed and destroyed in the appearing of Christ's coming,' or the beginning of his advent (2 Thess. ii. 8.) No man knows the precise day and hour' when the Son of Man will come, but if the Redeemer is to come in the year 1866, at the latest, according to this and five other prophetic dates, the 'ten horns,' or kings, within the bounds of the ancient Roman Empire, must either destroy Rome, Popery, or the temporal power of the Pope, before that time. It is predicted (Rev. xvii. 16-18) that The ten horns [or kings, ver. 12] shall hate the harlot, and shall make her deso. late and naked-strip the Pope of his temporal power, and Rome of her surrounding territory-and shall eat her flesh'-consume her children—' and burn her with fire' -the fire of musketry and cannon For 63 God hath put it into their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree and give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. And,' adds the angel, the woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth.' That is Rome, which ruled the whole world when John wrote. Unless this interpretation of the angel is to receive another interpretation (as meaning Popery), Rome itself will be shortly de stroyed. This would for ever put an end to the monstrous dogma of the succession of Peter." Upon page 6 there is certainly an error, but so far as the main points of the writer are concerned it is unimportant, yet in other matters it may work confusion. Paul upon prophecy (1 Cor. xiv.) is cited and the pamphlet ob serves "Now the Apostle Paul in 1 Cor. xiv. 31, says, 'Ye may all prophesy [or speak forth] one by one.' The Greek is propheteuo-from pro, before, or in presence of, and phemi, to say or speak-and signifies, to speak before an audience, or before the time. To prophesy does not mean in the above text to speak miraculously with tongues, or foreign languages; for Paul says (ver. 5), 'Greater is he that prophe. sieth than he that speaketh with tongues.' Nor does it here mean to predict. But Paul defines his meaning (ver. 3), 'He that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edi fication, and exhortation, and comfort.' This any Christian man can do, if he be in earnest and have any degree of fluency. Speaketh unto men' does not mean preaching to sinners, nor speaking to worldly men, nor to a mixed congregation of unimmersed worldlings and Christians, but speaking to Christians only; for in the next verse it is written, He that prophesieth edifieth the church'-i.e. the congregation of immersed penitent believers (see Gal. iii. 26-17, and Col. ii 12-13, &c.) Prophesying includes giving out a psalm, prayer, doctrine, exhortation, and interpretation." The word prophecy is never used in the New Testament in the general, or lower, signification attributed to it in the above lines. True, Paul makes a distinction between speaking in foreign languages and prophecy, but it follows not that prophecy is anything short of miraculous speaking. It primarily denotes to speak before, or to foretell, and in its enlarged signification stands for any kind of inspired speaking, but never |