Untitled - Electric Scotland

.861-66] BISHOP COLENSO S PENTATEUCH 335
difficulties and food for doubt in the things that seem to have
dear Colenso into a sea of mental trouble and
thrown poor
difficulty. May God grant him to see his way out of it ! I love
him much as a brother and a friend. I know him to be a noble,
brave-hearted, loving man, but I can in no way agree with him in
theology. If he has published this new work you will know more
and that
of it than I do ; but as he said he wanted my opinion
of his friends in England before he published, I hope and trust
these opinions may have prevented his doing so. In that case,
please let what I have said on the subject be entre nous, but I
felt bound to let you know, after your kindness about the former
book on the Romans. Poor J. W. N., he is much in my thoughts.
I hope his coming to England will dispel the fogs Natal seems to
have generated in his mind. If he had been here in my place,
instead of in Natal, he would not have had time for encouraging
these doubts and mists, and perhaps intercourse with Eastern
people would have been a good corrective. . . .--Very sincerely
yours,
F. T. LABUAN."
When the first part of Bishop Colenso s book on the
Pentateuch appeared, it was immediately seen that there
was good ground for the alarm expressed
in the above
letter. The volume contained a series of elaborate argu
ments to show the difficulties surrounding the numerical
and other details in the Scriptural account of the Exodus.
These arguments, as Bishop M Dougall had said, were
largely arithmetical, 1 and to most readers it would appear
that they did not greatly affect the sacred or historical
character of the Pentateuch as a whole. But the import
ance of the volume lay in its Preface, in which the Bishop
proclaimed the general result to which his investigations
had led him ; namely, a conviction that the early books of
the Bible were so unhistorical that he could no longer
1
e.g. a calculation as to the number of men who could stand before
the end of the Tabernacle supposing each man to occupy a space 2 feet
wide, and the width of the Tabernacle to be 8 cubits of I 824 feet each
was solemnly elaborated to prove the unhistorical character of Lev. viii. 3,
"
Gather thou all the congregation unto the door of the tabernacle." (Part I.
PP. 3I-34-)