The Fundamentals each and all of them really are. The illustration of which we will make use is taken from Bishop Colenso’s famous attack upon the truthfulness of the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua. In that attack he puts forward the singular objection that the Tabernacle was, in its dimensions, far too small to accommodate all the vast host of the Israelites stand ing before its door, as the Scriptures seem to indicate was the case with them on a few occasions.* That vast host must have numbered, according to the data given in the Pentateuch, as many at least as some two millions of people, and now Colenso makes the objection that this great host, standing in ranks, as he would make it, of nine, one rank behind another, in front of the Tabernacle door, would have formed a procession some sixty miles long; which, surely, would have been not only a practical impossibility so far as their gath ering at the door of the Tabernacle was concerned, but would have been also a complete demonstration of the un truthfulness or unreliability of this Pentateuchal record. But there is one thing connected with this record which Bishop Colenso seems not to have understood. It is that when the author of it was speaking of the whole congregation of Israel as standing, or gathered, in front of the Tabernacle door, he was speaking only in general terms. His language then would imply, not that every individual belonging to the vast Israelitish host stood at the place mentioned, but only that a large and representative multitude of these people was thus gathered. Or the words might signify that even the whole congregation of the Israelites was, on a few occa sions, gathered about the Tabernacle, as it had been gathered around Mt. Sinai when the law was given—not all the people near the Tabernacle door, but only the leaders, while the great body of the congregation stood behind them, or around *Vid. Lev. 8:35; Num. 10:3, and 27:18-22. Also comp. Num. 16:16-19.
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