We have reserved for the last place a difficulty on which Dr. Colenso has expended all his powers of persuasion and all his skill in figures--"the number of the Israelites at the time of the Exodus". Here is his argument in a few words:--Jacob and his family numbered seventy persons when they came down into Egypt. His descendants sojourned in that country 215 years, and they went out with Moses in the fourth generation. According to the Scripture narrative, when they were leaving Egypt they numbered 600,000 men of twenty years old and upwards, representing a population of about 2,000,000: but this is absolutely impossible. Dr. Colenso assures us that "the multiplied impossibilities introduced by this number alone, independent of all other considerations, are enough to throw discredit upon the historical character of the whole narrative" (part i. p. 143.) This bold assertion he endeavours to establish by an elaborate argument extending over several chapters. We must be content to present it in a condensed form to our readers; but, in doing so, we shall adhere as closely as possible to the language of the author. As the groundwork of his objection he lays down:-- "That it is an indisputable fact, that the story as told in the Pentateuch intends it to be understood--(i.) that they came out of the land of Egypt about 215 years after they went down thither in the time of Jacob; (ii.) that they came out in the _fourth_ generation from the adults in the prime of life, who went down with Jacob" (p. 100). He next proceeds to estimate the average number of children in each family: "In the first place, it must be observed, that we nowhere read of any _very large families_ among the children of Jacob or their descendants to the time of the Exodus.... We have no reason whatever, from the data furnished by the Sacred Books themselves, to assume that they had families materially larger than those of the present day.... The twelve sons of Jacob had between them fifty-three sons, that is, on the average, 4-1/2 each. Let us suppose that they increased in this way from generation to generation. Then, in the _first_ generation there would be 53 males (or rather only 51, since Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan, _Gen._, xlvi. 12, without issue); in the _second_, 243; in the _third_, 1,094; and in the _fourth_, 4,923; that is to say, instead of 600,000 warriors in the prime of life, there could not have been 5,000.... "The narrative itself requires us to suppose that the Hebrew families intermarried, and that girls, as well as boys, were born to them freely in Egypt, though not, it would seem, in the land of Canaan.