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The Fundamentals place. Next, for a brief period, it would appear to have been located at Nob, down in the Benjaminite country; and from this point being carried a little to the north and west, it was set up at Gibeon, where it seems to have remained for many years. And finally upon the erection of the temple in Jeru salem, it was transferred'to that place, and stored away there for safe-keeping; and this is the last notice which the Bible gives of it as a matter of history. It had served its purpose, and the time came now for it to be laid aside as a memorial, or to give place for another and a more imposing structure. X. INTIMATE CONNECTION OF THIS STORY WITH OTHER BIBLICAL HISTORY Speaking somewhere of the extraordinary influence exerted by Christianity in our world, Renan says that any attempt to separate this religion from the history of humanity would be like “tearing up the tree of civilization by its roots.” Very much like that, it seems to us, is the intimacy of relation exist ing between the history of the Tabernacle and all the rest of the history recorded in the Old Testament. Any attempt, therefore, such as that which is made by the critics, to remove the Tabernacle as a matter of fact from Old Testament his tory, or to turn it into a mere fiction, would necessarily result in failure. I t would do 'so because the effect of it would be really to destroy all the surrounding and connected history given in the Old Testament; which is, of course, impossible. The very extravagance, therefore, of this higher-critic theory, or the vastness of its undertaking, is a sure proof of its inherent falsity. Dr. Valpy French, considering only the peculiar construction of this Tabernacle story, how wide- reaching it is, and how it is made to conform so accurately with many details of archaeology and topography, pronounces it, if viewed as a mere fiction, “a literary impossibility;” and he suggests that a simpler method to be employed by the critics, in getting rid of this troublesome story, would be for
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