Untitled - Electric Scotland

334 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xm.
way wonderful that, proceeding from a Bishop
of the
Church, such a book should have awakened a loud outcry.
Bishop Tait, in common with others in responsible
positions, was gravely anxious, and thought it wise
to write an immediate letter of inquiry to Bishop
M Dougall of Labuan, Bishop Colenso s brother-in-law,
who replied as follows :
Bishop M Dongall of Labuan to the Bishop of London.
" MY
"
SARAWAK, June $oth, 1862.
DEAR BISHOP, Thank you very much for your kind
note about the Bishop of Natal. I almost fear, from a note I
lately had from him, that he is not only disposed to stick by what
he has written, but even to go further in the free handling of
Holy Scripture. He has in hand a work of which he sent me
the first part for my opinion, and which I could do nothing but
utterly disagree from, and entreat him not to publish ;
it is an
attack upon the Pentateuch, denying its inspiration, or that it was
written by Moses. I have only seen the Introduction and the
first chapter or two. His mathematical notions and Western mode
of viewing things have plainly led him astray. He says, in short,
that he can believe a miracle, but cannot believe in a bad sum
and false arithmetical statements, and so he falls foul of the Book
of Numbers especially, and points out what he conceives to be
no end of numerical mis-statements as regards the numbers of
the people at the Exodus, the number of priests, the im
possibility of their making the journey to the Red Sea in the
time stated, etc. etc. In fact, it is an utter denial of any truth or
authority in that part of the Bible, all owing, as it seems to me, to
his arithmetical and matter-of-fact way of looking at the Eastern
language and Oriental statements and descriptions in which these
facts have been conveyed to us. He tells me he has been lately
working up his Hebrew, and thus the thing has grown upon him.
I used, I know, to be the better Hebraist of the two, and
since then I have had a great deal to do with Arabic and the
languages of these parts, and I find that the more I know of
Eastern minds and thought, its luxuriance and inexactness in
the commonest statements, the less disposed I am to find