perly, in my opinion. I think it idle, at least, if not impious, to undertake to explain how the miracle was performed; but one who is not able to explain the mode of doing a thing, argues ill if he hence infers that the thing was not done. We are perfectly ignorant how the sun was formed, how the planets were projected at the creation, how they are still retained in their orbits by the power of gravity: but we admit, notwithstanding, that the sun was formed, that the planets were then projected, and that they are still retained in their orbits. The machine of the universe is in the hand of God; he can stop the motion of any part, or of the whole of it, with less trouble and less danger of injuring it, than you can stop your watch. In testimony of the reality of the miracle, the author of the book says-" Is not this written in the book of Jasher?" No author in his senses would have appealed, in proof of his veracity, to a book which did not exist, or in attestation of a fact, which, though it did exist, was not recorded in it; we may safely therefore conclude, that, at the time the book of Joshua was written, there was such a book as the book of Jasher, and that the miracle of the sun's standing still was recorded in that book. But this observation, you will say, does not prove the fact of the sun's having stood still. I have not produced it as a proof of that fact; but it proves, that the author of the book of Joshua believed the fact, and that the people of Israel admitted the authority of the book of Jasher. An appeal to a fabulous book would have been as senseless an insult upon their understanding, as it would have been upon ours, had Rapin appealed to the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, as a proof of the battle of Hastings.

I cannot attribute much weight to your argument against the genuineness of the book of Joshua, from its being said that-" Joshua burned Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day." Joshua lived twenty-four years after the burning of Ai: and if he wrote his history in the latter part of his life.

what absurdity is there in saying, Ai is still in ruins, or, Ai is in ruins to this very day? A young man who had seen the heads of the rebels in forty-five, when they were first stuck upon poles at Temple-bar, might, twenty years afterwards, in attestation of his veracity in speaking of the fact, have justly said—And they are there to this very day. Whoever wrote the Gospel of St. Matthew, it was written not many centuries, probably (I had almost said certainly) not a quarter of one century, after the death of Jesus; yet the author, speaking of the potter's field which had been purchased by the chief priests with the money they had given Judas to betray his Master, says, that it was therefore called the field of blood unto this day; and in another place he says, that the story of the body of Jesus being stolen out of the sepulchre, was commonly reported among the Jews until this day. Moses, in his old age, had made use of a similar expression, when he put the Israelites in mind of what the Lord had done to the Egyptians in the Red Sea. "The Lord hath destroyed them unto this day." (Deut. xi. 4.)

In the last chapter of the book of Joshua it is related, that Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel to Shechem; and there, in the presence of the elders and principal men of Israel, he recapitulated, in a short speech, all that God had done for their nation, from the calling of Abraham to that time, when they were settled in the land which God had promised to their forefathers. In finishing his speech, he said to them"Choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served, that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods." Joshua urged farther, that God would not suffer them to worship other gods in fellowship with him: they answered, that "they would

serve the Lord." Joshua then said to them, "Ye are witnesses against yourselves that ye have chosen you the Lord to serve him. And they said, We are witnesses." Here was a solemn covenant between Joshua, on the part of the Lord, and all the men of Israel, on their own part.-The text then says" So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, and set them a statute and an ordinance in Shechem, and Joshua wrote these words in the book of the Law of God." Here is a proof of two things-first, that there was then, a few years after the death of Moses, existing a book called the book of the law of God; the same, without doubt, which Moses had written, and committed to the custody of the Levites, that it might be kept in the ark of the covenant of the Lord, that it might be a witness against them :-secondly, that Joshua wrote a part at least of his own transactions in that very book, as an addition to it. It is not a proof that he wrote all his own transactions in any book; but I submit entirely to the judgement of every candid man, whether this proof of his having recorded a very material transaction, does not make it probable that he recorded other material transactions; that he wrote the chief part of the book of Joshua; and that such things as happened after his death, have been inserted in it by others, in order to render the history more complete.

The book of Joshua, chap. vi. ver. 26, is quoted in the first book of Kings, chap. xvi. ver. 34. "In his (Ahab's) days did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his first-born, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun." Here is a proof that the book of Joshua is older than the first book of Kings but that is not all which may reasonably be inferred, I do not say proved, from this quotation.It may be inferred from the phrase according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Joshua the son

of Nun-that Joshua wrote down the word which the Lord had spoken. In Baruch (which, though an apocryphal book, is authority for this purpose) there is a similar phrase-as thou spakest by thy servant Moses in the day when thou didst command him tở write thy law.

I think it unnecessary to make any observations on what you say relative to the book of Judges; but I cannot pass unnoticed your censure of the book of Ruth, which you call an idle bungling story, foolishly told, nobody knows by whom, about a strolling country girl creeping slily to bed to her cousin Boaz: pretty stuff, indeed," you exclaim, "to be called the Word of God!"-It seems to me that you do not perfectly comprehend what is meant by the expression-the Word of God—or the divine authority of the Scriptures:-I will explain it to you in the words of Dr. Law, late bishop of Carlisle, and in those of St. Austin. My first quotation is from bishop Law's Theory of Religion, a book not undeserving your notice.- The true sense then of the divine authority of the books of the Old Testament, and which perhaps is enough to denominate them in general divinely inspired, seems to be this; that as in those times God has all along, beside the inspection, or superintendency of his general providence, interfered upon particular occasions, by giving express commissions to some persons (thence called prophets) to declare his will in various manners and degrees of evidence, as best suited the occasion, time, and nature of the subject; and in all other cases, left them wholly to themselves in like manner, he has interposed his more immediate assistance (and notified it to them, as they did to the world) in the recording of these revelations; so far as that was necessary, amidst the common (but from hence termed sacred) history of those times; and mixed with various other occurrences; in which the historian's own natural qualifications were sufficient to enable him to relate things, with all the

accuracy they required."-The passage from St. Austin' is this "I am of opinion, that those men, to whom the Holy Ghost revealed what ought to be received as authoritative in religion, might write some things as men with historical diligence, and other things as prophets by divine inspiration; and that these things are so distinct, that the former may be attributed to themselves as contributing to the increase of knowledge, and the latter to God speaking by them things appertaining to the authority of religion."-Whether this opinion be right or wrong, I do not here inquire: it is the opinion of many learned men and good Christians; and, if you will adopt it as your opinion, you will see cause, perhaps, to become a Christian yourself; you will see cause to consider chronological, geographical, or genealogical errors-apparent mistakes or real contradictions as to historical factsneedless repetitions and trifling interpolations-indeed you will see cause to consider all the principal objections of your book to be absolutely without foundation. Receive but the Bible as composed by upright and well-informed, though, in some points, fallible men (for I exclude all fallibility when they profess to deliver the Word of God), and you must receive it as a book revealing to you, in many parts, the express will of God; and in other parts, relating to you the ordinary history of the times. Give but the authors of the Bible that credit which you give to other historians; believe them to deliver the Word of God, when they tell you that they do so, believe, when they relate other things as of themselves and not of the Lord, that they wrote to the best of their knowledge and capacity; and you will be in your belief something very different from a Deist: you may not be allowed to aspire to the character of an orthodox believer, but you will not be an unbeliever in the divine authority of the Bible; though you should admit human mistakes and human opinions to exist in some parts of it. This I take to be the first step towards.