Tabernacle in the Wilderness 41 built for themselves; also that, as slaves, their lives had been made bitter by “all manner of service in the field,” and by “hard service in brick and in mortar,” and that they had built “store-cities,” such as Pithom and Raamses. Putting, therefore, all these experiences which the Israelites had in Egypt together, it can be easily seen how they could have learned, even from the Egyptians, sufficient wisdom to con struct and transport the Tabernacle. But if we are required yet to name any one particular achievement, ever accomplished by these people, that was great enough to warrant the belief of their being able to construct and carry with them all through the wilderness the Sinaitic Tabernacle, then, both with promptness and high appreciation, we point to that very extraordinary conquest which they made of the Holy Land, and also to the almost equally extraordinarily long march made by them through the wilderness; and we wish to say that any people who could accomplish two such prodigious deeds as were these could easily have accomplished the so much easier task of building and transporting the old Mosaic “tent of meeting.” Our conclusion, therefore, is that, all teachings of the higher critics to the contrary notwithstanding, those Israelitish people were abundantly competent, both in point of intellectual ability and of material supplies, to accomplish each and all of the works which are accredited them in the Bible. XIII. MARKS OF EGYPT AND THE DESERT But this line of argument is one that can be pursued to a much greater extent, and it can be shown that instead of the conditions surrounding the Israelites at Mt. Sinai and while they were in the wilderness being against the truthful ness of the Biblical record appertaining to those matters, such conditions are really in favor of that record’s truthfulness, as well as of the Tabernacle’s real existence. For illustra tion, we are told in the Bible that the wood out of which a
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