Under this heading I propose from time to time to present some of the wise sayings of the wise men who throw discredit on the Bible. They will illustrate the words quoted by Paul from the prophet, saying: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise." I shall follow no particular order in presenting them, but will take them as they occur to me, and as they suit the space which can be allotted to them.

      Kuenen, in his master work, "The Religion of Israel," insists that the host of Israel which marched out of Egypt could not have numbered six hundred thousand men; and one proof is that this number could not have lived in the wilderness. He puts the number down to sixty or seventy thousand, and the whole multitude, men, women and children, to about three hundred thousand (Vol. I., p. 126). He seems to think that this number could have subsisted in the wilderness without miraculous feeding. He forgets that there are now only about six hundred Bedawin in that peninsula, and that they would starve or be compelled to leave the country, were it not for the scanty income which they derive from escorting the tourists who annually visit Mount Sinai. His sixty thousand, then, would have starved there, just as certainly as would the six hundred thousand of Moses. He ought to have cut them down to three or four hundred, and have made them take with them a caravan of camels loaded with provisions, as modern tourists do; then sensible people might have taken his estimate to be plausible.

      But the wisdom of this wise in an is more strikingly displayed when he comes to discuss the Biblical account [90] as to how the three hundred thousand did actually subsist in the wilderness. He says: "The forty years' rain of manna, and the miracles connected with it, owe their origin to the real manna, which drops from the tarfa-shrub in the Sinaitic desert; the pillar of cloud and fire to the fire which is carried in front of the caravan to show the way" (Vol. I., P. 130, note). I suppose that the most of my readers have seen this so-called manna, for it can be bought in the drug store; and if they have never eaten any of it, I propose that they buy a nickel's worth and try it. They can then judge how long they could live and keep fat on it without a miracle. And then let us remember that it was not a half-dozen persons, but a host of three hundred thousand, who, according to this wise man of Holland, lived on the quantity which is found on the tarfa-shrub in the Sinaitic peninsula. To bring the conception nearer home, just imagine a hundred or more men, women and children turned loose in an old peach orchard to live on the gum of the old peach-trees; then stretch the old orchard through the valleys of the mountainous peninsula, and turn three hundred thousand people out there to live on the gum, and you have the idea. I wonder why those six hundred ragged and half-starved Bedawin do not live on the manna. Somebody ought to send Dr. Kuenen over there to teach the poor fellows that it is angels' food.

      But what about the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night? This is a big tale, it seems, which had no other origin than the fire that was carried before the caravan to show the way. Well, if such a fire was carried before a caravan of three hundred thousand people, a larger force than General Grant ever led, it must have been a prodigious job to carry it and keep it burning. I am glad that I was not one of the men who had to [91] carry it in that hot climate. Supposing, however, that they had a few salamander men to carry it, and plenty of fuel to keep it burning, this might be a good arrangement for the night; but I find that we are losing that pillar of cloud by day. Dr. Kuenen will have to write another foot-note, and tell us about that. He forgot it while he was following that big fire.

      Let no reader who is unfamiliar with great names, imagine that this Dr. Kuenen is some simpleton; for, next to Wellhausen, he stands at the head of the higher critics of the new school in Europe. I have marked other specimens of his great wisdom, and I hope to refresh the reader with some of them now and then.

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