I, therefore, feel it due to such persons, for the satisfaction of their scruples as well as to myself, for the justification of my method to explain my reasons for having adopted it, and for placing the fullest reliance on the results obtained from it.

The physical practicability of such an event as the passage of an immense multitude on foot across an arm of the sea, without the aid of some particular Divine interposition, may very well be doubted. The question is merely in what manner the Divine interposition was manifested. And when we discover how the operation and distribution of the elements must have been especially pre-arranged for the accomplishment of an event which was to save the visible church on earth from being absorbed in the corrupt idolatry of the oppressing power, we cannot doubt the fact of the Divine assistance having been on this occasion openly and sensibly displayed to the faithful people; especially when their historian expressly avers that it was so. But there is nothing in the narrative itself implying that the means employed on the occasion involved a suspension of the ordinary laws of nature, as some of the other miracles related by the same historian most unquestionably did. And even that learned divine, Dr. E. Robinson, who has written on this very subject, does not see any necessity for declining to take into his calculations the natural effect of the tides and the combination of this effect with that of a strong wind, to estimate the time required by the multitude to

cross.

Moses merely says that the Lord caused the sea to go out all the night, by means of a strong wind. He tells us the means, and I take him at his word. Had that means been a supernatural operation, Moses would have given the glory to God, and told us so! He does not leave us to suppose that the departure of the waters was a supernatural event, nor does he say that the wind was a supernatural phenomenon inconsistent with the meteorological conditions of the place and season. Hence, unless the structure of the place itself were such, that, when examined, it is found that no natural wind could possibly produce such an effect there, as to drive out the water and lay bare the bottom of the summit of the strait, we are not obliged to be wise above what is written, by assuming that the wind was a supernatural phenomenon, of which the probable effects are wholly beyond the reach of our calculation.

But how stand the facts? As to the season of the event, it took place a little after the spring equinox, when gales of wind are certainly no supernatural phenomena. Next, as to the effect of such a wind: strong winds blowing continuously up or down an inland sea or closed gulf, are well known to raise or depress the average level of the water. Pallas found that a difference of

seven feet was produced in the level of the Caspian Sea at one end, from this cause. And in the Red Sea, the reach of the high and low water marks, in winter, sometimes exceeds the summer limits by three to two feet respectively, owing to the constant south winds of the winter season, which change (only for a few months) as constantly to the north, in summer. Then finally, as to the joint effect of these two causes on the particular locality where the passage took place. Not only are the tidal variations at the head of the gulf very small at Suez, hardly exceeding seven feet at the spring-tides, and only half that quantity in summer; but we must further consider that the rising tidal wave, in breaking over a shoal twelve miles long, would lose, perhaps, half its height; and the tidal variations of the inner basin must therefore have been smaller, so that a greater relative difference would be caused by the wind than in parts where the power of the tidal flow remained unchecked. So that in the neck of the strait, where the passage must have taken place, the sea might have been a little too deep at low tide to be safely passable on foot, either from the natural effect of the wind alone, or from that of the tide alone. But the depth and formation of the bottom equally show that the phenomenon of laying it wholly or partly dry, at this particular place, could very well have been produced under the joint action of the wind and the tide; and that the purpose of the Almighty, to make the sea 'a highway for his ransomed to pass over,' might therefore have been effected here without suspending the ordinary course of nature.

In this instance, the visible interposition of an overruling Power consisted in the pre-ordained co-operation of the laws of nature towards a great providential end, under a very unusual concurrence of phenomena, namely: that the concurrence should take place at the precise place it did, to enable the Hebrews to cross; at the precise time it did, just as they had reached it; and the care of the Almighty in protecting his faithful people was further sensibly manifested to them, by their leader's being instructed beforehand, both as to the time and the place, and fully prepared for an event, which neither they nor their pursuers had any natural reason whatever to anticipate.

way

I feel bound to remove every stumbling-block out of the by which I propose ascertaining the astronomical details, which are the means of deciding whether the dates of Moses are Egyptian or Hebrew; and therefore must anticipate an objection which has frequently been proposed to me in conversation, as a difficulty against my view of the event, viz., the statement of Moses, that the waters were a wall to the people, on their right hand and on their left.'

VOL. VII.-NO. XIII.

D

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Such an objection assumes that the waters formed themselves into a perpendicular surface on each side. The inference is perfectly gratuitous. A perpendicular surface may be most people's idea of a wall; but it was not more that of Moses than that of Nabal's servant, in 1 Sam. xxv. 16, when, mentioning to Abigail the services that David's men had voluntarily rendered to their people, he says, they were a wall to us both by night and by day. The wall here, as in the Mosaic narrative, is a mere metaphor, implying a defence or protection against the approach of their enemies; and which the waters on either side would be, although the surface were as usual, horizontal. Besides, if the waters had really been temporarily endued with a supernatural force to support themselves upright, in a manner contrary to the laws of equilibrium imposed on fluids, the relaxation of such a force could not with propriety be called the sea's returning to its strength, but to its weakness; since more force must have been exerted in repressing their property of flowing, than in allowing them to do so. Moreover, a little consideration of the matter will soon convince any one who tries to realize the scene for a moment, by supposing himself one of the actors in it; that so astounding a prodigy as a mass of waters standing uprightwhether wrought by a supernatural power in favour of the Hebrews, or, for aught the Egyptians could know, by the magical arts of the Hebrew leader himself-must have defeated the very purpose for which the miracle was wrought; the end being as much the destruction of the pursuers as the salvation of the pursued. For, whether the Egyptian host were moved to the pursuit by force, by persuasion, or by a desire to avenge themselves for the portentous evils those Hebrews had wrought in their land, still, it is contrary to all moral probability that they would have ventured a step beyond the shore, with the recollection of what this dread people had already brought upon them fresh in their memories, and such a spectacle before their eyes as a flood of waters suspended upright on both sides, like the embankments of a railway cutting, and ready to come down and engulph them at the bidding of the people who appeared to wield so fearful a power over the elements.

Unless the special Divine agency in the deliverance of Israel, while openly manifested to them, had been veiled from the Egyptians under appearances presenting nothing particularly out of the usual course of nature, their overthrow and destruction could never have taken place in the manner Moses describes. They would have turned and gone back again to Egypt.

I trust these considerations will prove of sufficient force to sustain the principle of inquiry I have proposed to myself; and that we

may dismiss all scruples as to availing ourselves, in this instance, of the data obtainable from the well-known effects of regular and invariable natural phenomena.

We found, that if the month Abib of Moses were a Hebrew and lunar month, the account of the passage of the Red Sea on the 21st, ought to agree with the state of the tides on the 21st day of the moon, at the hours indicated by Moses. The local phenomena of the tides at certain hours, on certain days of the moon, are a simple matter of fact, ascertainable by observation; and the datum they yield will hold good for antiquity, notwithstanding the altered physical face of the country beyond Suez; for the change wrought since the time of Moses by the cutting off of the inlet leading to the upper gulf, would not cause a sensible difference as to the hour of the tide on a given day of the moon, between the phenomena at present observable at Suez, and the ancient phenomena in a part of the inlet only twelve miles higher up.

The indications of the hour at which the final catastrophe took place, although given indirectly, are too clear to allow of an error exceeding half an hour. Moses says, 'The Lord caused the sea to go back all that night by a strong (fronting or contrary) 'wind.'d Therefore the passage can only have occupied the early part of the morning, just before daybreak.

6

He further says that it was during the morning watch, that is, between three and six in the morning, that the Lord threw into confusion (1) the camp of Mizraim; it had removed the wheels of its chariots, and was dragging them along with difficulty: then said Mizraim, Let us flee from the face of Israel, for the Lord fighteth for them against Mizraim.' I have endeavoured to preserve the vivid truth of this description, by giving a very literal version of the passage, as there is a slight misunderstanding in the common translation of it, which rather obscures the sense, by making the Lord' the subject of the verb, removed, instead of the collective singular, the Egyptian host, or camp.

It seems that before the end of the morning watch, the Egyptians not only had already advanced some way over the temporarily dried-up shoal which the Hebrews had just crossed on foot, but that when they neared the middle of the pass, where, from the water being deeper, there had been less time for the surface to dry, they had found that the massive iron wheels of their chariots cut so deep into the soft wet sand, as to render proceeding with

For a full discussion of the idiomatic sense of this term, DP, see my paper entitled 'Meteorological Phenomena of the Exodus,' in the Athenæum, Jan. 24, 1852, p. 114.

them impossible. They had accordingly stopped to remove the wheels, that the horses might be able to draw the chariots like sledges over the slippery surface. We can scarcely allow less than an hour for all this to take place, between the time of their first venture beyond the shore, and their final overthrow before the end of the morning watch.

But the limit of the hour when the Egyptians were surprised in this state of confusion, by the returning waters, is further contracted by the final statement of Moses, that the sea returned to its strength when the morning appeared.'

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For although in the latitude of Suez, the sun rises a little before six in the course of the month following the equinox, the twilight precedes this by an hour; so that the appearance of the morning' may be fixed at half-past five, for the sake of getting a mean term between twilight and sunrise.

It may have been half-past four when the first faint glimmering of daybreak, before twilight, gave the Egyptians just light enough to discover that the fugitives were already beyond their reach, and were making for the opposite shore of the strait. It was not yet light enough for them to distinguish whether the tide was still out in the middle of the pass; though they might be able to see that the shore, for some way before them, was dry. Hence they ventured on as far as they could get, before it was full daylight.

We cannot be far from the mark, in allowing the lapse of an hour between this discovery and the final overthrow, whose limit is between half-past five and sunrise. This gives time for the hasty and rash attempt of the Egyptians to follow across in pursuit; for the subsequent discovery of their inability to proceed over the wet soft ground with chariots; for the vexatious delay arising from the vain endeavour to obviate the difficulty by removing the wheels; and for the dismay and confusion in which they found themselves, when, baffled in their intentions, they were brought to a dead stand in the middle of the pass, just as they had advanced far enough to render a safe retreat to the shore impossible, as the first indications of the rising tide warned them one moment of their peril, and the next the overwhelming rapidity of the flood hurled them into the depths of the gulf below.

To avail ourselves of the materials thus furnished us by Moses, it is necessary only to ascertain on what day of the moon's age the tide at Suez begins sensibly to rise at or about five in the morning, the hours of low and high water being given, and such other secondary particulars as will give the greatest attainable precision to the result, by enabling us to take all things into consideration in arriving at it; and especially, the effect of the wind.