Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/213

Rh army of a hundred thousand men, from the first mention of it in historical times. How was it that Moses, flying with his troops from the land of Goshen, crossed half of Egypt, instead of going straight to Canaan, and advanced as far as Memphis, between Baal-Sephon and the Red Sea? Finally, how could Pharaoh pursue him with all his cavalry when, in the fifth plague of Egypt, God had just destroyed all the horses and beasts in the country, and, moreover, Egypt, which is much broken by canals, always had very little cavalry?

22°. How shall I reconcile what is said in Exodus with the speech of St. Stephen in Acts and the passages of Jeremiah and ''Amos? Exodus'' says that they sacrificed to Jehovah for forty years in the desert; Jeremiah, Amos, and St. Stephen say that neither sacrifice nor victim was offered during all that time. Exodus says that they made the tabernacle, which contained the ark of the covenant; St. Stephen, in Acts, says that they took the tabernacle from Moloch and Remphan.

23°. I am not sufficiently versed in chemistry to deal happily with the golden calf which, Exodus says, was made in a day, and which Moses reduced to ashes. Are they two miracles, or two possibilities of human art?

24°. Was it a further miracle for the leader of a nation, in a desert, to have twenty-three thousand men of that nation slain by a single one of the twelve tribes, and for twenty-three thousand men to let themselves be massacred without making any defence?

25°. Must I again regard it as a miracle, or as