The same difficulty is urged by others from the present barrenness of the desert, which it is contended is substantially as it was in the time of the Exodus. This is to be met not so much by hypothesis as by the facts--(1) that the condition of the desert was very different then from its condition now. Because the country around Philadelphia cannot now support a tribe of Indians by hunting and fishing, it does not follow that it could not do this two hundred years ago. (2) God had undertaken to bring the nation out. If every miracle necessary to accomplish this end is not recorded, it does not prove that it was not wrought. As in the life of our Lord, so in the deliverance of Israel, many miracles may have been wrought of which no account has come down to us. This suggests an obvious and a very important consideration: _facts may now be missing_ which were perfectly well known at the time of the event, but the record of which has not been preserved. Hence, if a difficulty can be removed by a reasonable supposition, or even by any admissible supposition, of a missing fact, we are entitled to make that supposition. Webster (_Works_, vol. vi. p. 64) in his address to the jury on the celebrated trial of the Knapps for the murder of Captain White of Salem, Massachusetts, says: "In explaining circumstances of evidence which are apparently irreconcilable or unaccountable, if a fact be suggested which at once accounts for all and reconciles all, by whomsoever it may be stated, it is still difficult not to believe that such fact is the true fact belonging to the case." The missing fact that was wanted in this case to show a motive for the murder was the stealing of a will, or the purpose to steal a will, and this proved the true hypothesis. To illustrate by a familiar incident of the Old Testament history. The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel foretell the fate of the last king of Judah, Zedekiah. Jer. xxxii.; Ezek. xii. They declare that he shall be taken captive by the king of Babylon, that he shall go to Babylon and that he shall die in Babylon; yet Ezekiel expressly says that he shall not see Babylon. Now, here is apparently as gross a contradiction as there can be; and if our information stopped here, it would be impossible to reconcile it. Fortunately, however, the explanation is given in the history. From 2 Kings xxv. we learn that the king of Babylon, when Zedekiah was brought into his presence at Riblah, ordered his eyes to be put out and sent him blind to Babylon; so that he saw the king of Babylon, he went to Babylon, he died in Babylon, and yet he never saw Babylon. But--and this is the point of this familiar case--if this unexpected and extraordinary fact had not been stated, how absolutely impossible it would have been to give any satisfactory solution of the difficulty! It may be doubted whether any supposition as violent as this needs to be made to reconcile every alleged contradiction of the Bible.