there was any difference in the fate of these several rebellious households, I think upon

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a close inspection I do find (what answers my purpose better) some difference implied. For, in verse 27, we are told, "So they gat from the Tabernacle of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, on every side;"-i. e. from a Tabernacle which these men in their political rebellion and religious dissent (for they went together) had set up in common for themselves and their adherents, in opposition to the great Tabernacle of the congregation." And Dathan and Abiram,” it is added," came out and stood in the door of their tents; and their wives, and their sons, and their little children." Here we per

ceive that mention is made of the sons of Dathan and the sons of Abiram, but not of the sons of Korah. So that the victims of the catastrophe about to happen, it should

seem from this account too, were indeed the sons of Dathan and the sons of Abiram, but not (in all appearance) the sons of Korah. Neither is this difference difficult to account for. The Levites pitching nearer to the Tabernacle than the other tribes, forming, in fact, three sides of the inner square, whilst the others formed the four sides of the outer, it would necessarily follow that the dwelling-tent of Korah, a Levite, would be at some distance from the dwelling-tents of Dathan and Abiram, Reubenites, and, as brothers, probably contiguous; at such a distance, at least, as might serve to secure it from being involved in the destruction which overwhelmed the others; for, that the desolation was very limited in extent, seems a fact conveyed by the terms of the warning" Depart from the tents of these wicked men," (i. e.

M

the tabernacle which the three leaders had reared in common, and the two dwellingtents of Dathan and Abiram,*) as if the danger was confined to the vicinity of those

tents.

In this single event, then, the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, I discover two instances of coincidence without design, each independent of the other-the one, in the conspiracy being laid amongst parties whom I know, from information elsewhere given, to have dwelt on the same side of the Tabernacle, and therefore to have been conveniently situated for such a plot -the other, in the different lots of the families of the conspirators, a difference of which there is just hint enough in the direct history of it, to be brought out by a

* See chap. xvi. v. 27. An attention to this verse,

shows these to have been the tents meant.

casual assertion to that effect in a subsequent casual allusion to the conspiracy, and only just hint enough for this-a difference, too, which accords very remarkably with the relative situations of those several families in their respective tents.

But if the existence of a conspiracy be by this means established, above all dispute, as a matter of fact-if the death of some of the families of the conspirators, and the escape of others, be also by the same means established, above all dispute, as another matter of fact-if the testimony of Moses, after having been submitted to a test which he could never have contemplated or been provided against, turn out in these particulars at least to be quite worthy of credit-to what are we led on? Is not the historian still the same; is he not still treating of the same incident, when he in

forms us that the punishment of this rebellious spirit was a miraculous punishment? that the ground clave asunder that was under the ring-leaders, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all the men that appertained unto them, and all their goods; so that they, and all that appertained unto them, went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them, and they perished from among the congregation ?

XX.

THE arrangements of the camp suggest one point of coincidence more, not perhaps so remarkable as the last, yet enough so to be admitted amongst others as an indication of truth in the history.

In the 32d chapter of Numbers, (v. 1,) it is said, "Now the children of Reuben, and the children of Gad, had a very great