brous and heavy part of the materials of which the frame-work of the Tabernacle was constructed. And hence it is easy to see why more oxen and waggons were assigned to the one family than to the other. Is chance at the bottom of all this? or, cunning contrivance? or, truth and only truth?

XVIII.

In the tenth chapter of the Book of Numbers we have a particular account of the order of march which was observed in the Camp of Israel on one remarkable occasion, viz. when they broke up from Sinai. "In the first place went the standard of the Camp of Judah according to their armies" (v. 14). Does this precedence of Judah agree with any former account of the disposition of the armies of Israel? In

the second chapter of the same book I read, "on the East side toward the rising of the Sun, shall they of the standard of the camp of Judah pitch throughout their armies” (v. 3). All that is to be gathered from this passage is, that Judah pitched East of the Tabernacle. I now turn to the tenth chapter, (v. 5,) and I there find amongst the orders given for the signals, "when ye blow an alarm, (i.e. the first alarm, for the others are mentioned successively in their turn,) then the camps that lie on the East parts shall go forward." But from the last passage it appears that Judah lay on the East parts, therefore when the first alarm was blown, Judah should be the tribe to move. Thus it is implied from two passages brought together from two chapters, separated by the intervention of eight others relating to

things indifferent, that Judah was to lead

in any march. Now we see in the account of a specific movement of the camp from Sinai, with which I introduced these remarks, that on that occasion Judah did in fact lead. This then is as it should be. The three passages agree together as three concurring witnesses-in the mouth of these is the word established. Yet there

is some little intricacy in the detailsenough at least to leave room for an inadvertant slip in the arrangements, whereby a fiction would have run a risk of being self-detected.

Pursue we this inquiry a little further, for the next article of it is perhaps rather more open to a blunder of this description than the last. It may be thought that the leading tribe, the van-guard of Israel, was an object too conspicuous to be overlooked

or misplaced.

In the 18th verse of the

same chapter of Numbers, it is said, that after the first division was gone, and the Tabernacle," the standard of the camp of Reuben set forward according to their armies."-The camp of Reuben, therefore, was that which moved second on this occasion. Does this accord with the position it was elsewhere said to have occupied? It is obvious that a mistake might here most readily have crept in; and that if the writer had not been guided by a real knowledge of the facts which he was pretending to describe, it is more than probable he would have betrayed himself. Turn we then to the 2d chapter, (v. 10,) where the order of the tribes in their tents is given, and we there find that "on the south side was to be the standard of the camp of Reuben, according to their armies." Again, let us

turn to the 10th chapter, (v. 6,) where the directions for the signals are given, and we are there told," When ye blow the alarm the second time, then the camps on the south side shall take their journey;"—but the passage last quoted, (which is far removed from this,) informs us that Reuben was on the south side of the Tabernacle; the camp of Reuben therefore it was, which was appointed to move when the alarm was blown the second time. Accordingly we see in the description of the actual breaking-up from Sinai, with which I set out, that the camp of Reuben was in fact the second to The same argument may be followed up, and the same satisfactory conclusions obtained in the other two camps of Ephraim and Dan; though here recourse must be had to the Septuagint, of which the text is more full in these two

move.