perfectly plain and intelligible; but if we deny it, we involve ourselves at once in the grossest absurdities.  How could the Jewish people have been induced to accept with undoubting faith such a body of laws as that contained in the Pentateuch—­so burdensome in their multiplicity, so opposed to all the beliefs and practices of the surrounding nations, and imposing such severe restraints upon their corrupt passions—­except upon the clearest evidence of their divine authority?  Such evidence they had in the stupendous miracles connected with their deliverance from Egypt and the giving of the law on Sinai.  The fact that Moses constantly appeals to these miracles, as well known to the whole body of the people, is irrefragable proof of their reality.  None but a madman would thus appeal to miracles which had no existence; and if he did, his appeal would be met only by derision.  Mohammed needed not the help of miracles, for his appeal was to the sword and to the corrupt passions of the human heart; and he never attempted to rest his pretended divine mission on the evidence of miracles.  He knew that to do so would be to overthrow at once his authority as the prophet of God.  But the Mosaic economy needed and received the seal of miracles, to which Moses continually appeals as to undeniable realities.  But if the miracles recorded in the Pentateuch are real, then it contains a revelation from God, and is entitled to our unwavering faith.  Then too we can explain how, in the providence of God, the Mosaic institutions prepared the way for the advent of “Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write.”  Thus we connect the old dispensation with the new, and see both together as one whole.

Other arguments might be adduced; but upon these two great pillars—­the authority, on the one side, of the New Testament, and, on the other, the fact that the Pentateuch contains the entire body of laws by which the Jewish nation was moulded and formed, and that its character and history can be explained only upon the assumption of its truth—­on these two great pillars the authenticity and credibility of the Pentateuch rest, as upon an immovable basis.

3.  The difficulties connected with the Pentateuch, so far as its contents are concerned, rest mainly on two grounds, scientific and historical, or moral.  The nature of the scientific difficulties forbids their discussion within the restricted limits of the present work.  It may be said, however, generally, that so far as they are real, they relate not so much to the truth of the Mosaic record, as to the manner in which certain parts of it should be understood.