ands Moses and
Israel to "Sanctify to him every male that openeth the womb, both of man
and beast," from the time of the death of the first-born of the
Egyptians. The impropriety of _ex post facto_ legislation, the reason
assigned for this law, and the grammatical meaning of the language in
the present tense, all combine to show that the law is prospective; and
the number of the first-born, twenty-two thousand two hundred and
seventy-five, afterward given in Numbers, shows plainly that this is the
meaning, being about the proper increase of thirteen months. But the
bishop strangely blunders into the notion that this is the number of all
the first-born of Israel; only about one in forty-five or fifty, and
therefore argues against the historical veracity of the Pentateuch. A
good many of the bishop's blunders arise in this way from misreading his
Bible.

He makes another blunder of this kind, and as usual charges it on Moses,
in his misreading of Leviticus xxiii. 40, as if directing Israel to make
booths of palm branches and willows at the feast of tabernacles, instead
of bearing the palms of victory in triumph into the temple of God. The
son of the chief rabbi of London ridicules the bishop's Hebrew
scholarship here, saying that any Jewish child could have set him right;
but had he read even his English translation carefully he need not have
blundered here.

In connection with the subject of the numbers of the people we notice
his tacit assumption--that Moses records everything necessary for a
statistical table--in his criticisms on the numbers of the Danites and
Levites, Chapters XVIII. and XVI.; and on Judah's family, Chapter II.
He takes it for granted that because the Exodus took place in the
lifetime of the fourth generation of some of the sons of Jacob,
therefore there were none but four generations born in the two hundred
and fifteen years to which he confines the bondage, and none but those
whose names are recorded. This is a blunder of the same sort as if he
should mistake the list of the British peerage for a census of all the
families of Great Britain, and calculate the average duration of human
life by the ages of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Palmerston. But here
we have a wonderful instance of the providence which often makes
objectors refute themselves. The chapter on Judah's family (II.) shows
that in forty-two years Judah had grandchildren ten or twelve years old;
as many Syrians, Persians, and Hindo