The next event we would advert to is the period of Abraham. There were then several large empires and populous nations. Egypt had its regular court and standing army; Nineveh was older still; China and India were certainly advanced in organisation. We read of nine kings who made war “in the vale of Siddim, which is the Salt Sea” [Gen. xiv.]; some of the Greek states, as Argos and Attica, were founded; and Etruria must have been in its hey-day. This would demand a population of some hundreds of millions at the least; but what was the fact, according to the Bible reading? Noah was scarcely dead when Abraham was born; some calculate that he had been dead two years, while others think the two lives overlapped each other. As Noah was 950 years old at death, and 600 when he entered the ark, we are not left to conjecture respecting the interval, which, of course, was 350 years. There were four men and four women when the flood ceased; and suppose the increase to be the extraordinary one of doubling five times in a century, we have 256 souls at the end of the 1st century, 8,192 at the close of the 2nd, and one-and-a-half million at the death of Noah; say two millions at the birth of Abraham, a population inferior to that of Lancashire, and only two-thirds that of London. These two millions are supposed to have furnished forth several large empires, most of which would require more than the whole number. Again we leave the subject without adding a word of comment. The number of the Exodus has already been considered in No. 8 of this series. It is given by the author of the book as 600,000 “fighting men” or adult males; and if the women equalled the men, and the children were two to one, we have 600,000 adults of each sex, and 1,200,000 children of each sex, somewhat more than three-and-a-half millions, say three millions. The increase of 70 souls in 215 years, although oppressed by taskmasters, and although for 80 years of the time the decree of Pharaoh to put to death every male infant at birth, was supposed to be in force. Taking the same rate as that given above, the 70 at the close of the first century would have been 2,240, and 124,540 at the time of the Exodus. Allowing the children to be twice as many as the adults, this would give us 6,703 as the number of “fighting men,” or, in round numbers, 6,000 instead of 600,000.