multitude of cattle; and when they saw the land of Jazer and the land of Gilead, that behold the place was a place for cattle, the children of Gad and the children of Reuben came and spake unto Moses, and to Eleazar the priest, and unto the princes of the congregation, saying, Ataroth, and Dibon, and Jazer, and Nimrah, and Heshbon, and Elealeh, and Shebam, and Nebo, and Beon, even the country which the Lord smote before the congregation of Israel, is a land for cattle, and thy servants have cattle; wherefore, said they, if we have received grace in thy sight, let this land be given unto thy servants for a possession, and bring us not over Jordan."

Here was a petition from the tribes of Reuben and of Gad, to have a portion assigned them on the east side of Jordan, rather than in the land of Canaan. But

how came the request to be made conjointly by the children of Reuben and the children of Gad?-Was it a mere accident? Was it the simple circumstance

that these two tribes being richer in cattle than the rest, and seeing that the pasturage was good on the east side of Jordan, desired on that account only to establish themselves there together, and to separate from their brethren? Perhaps something more than either. For I read in the 2d chapter of Numbers, (v. 10, 14,) that the camp of Reuben was on the south side of the tabernacle, and that the tribe of Gad formed a division of the camp of Reuben. It may very well be imagined, therefore, that after having shared together the perils of the long and arduous campaign through the wilderness, these two tribes, in addition to considerations about their cattle, feeling

the strong bond of well-tried companionship in hardships and in arms, were very likely to act with one common council, and to have a desire still to dwell beside one another, after the toil of battle, as quiet neighbours in a peaceful country, where they were finally to set up their rest. Here again is an incident, I think, beyond the reach of the most refined impostor in the world. What vigilance, however alive to suspicion, and prepared for it - what cunning, however bent upon giving credibility to a worthless narrative, by insidiously scattering through it marks of truth which should turn up from time to time and mislead the reader, would have suggested one so very trivial, so very far fetched, as a desire of two tribes to obtain their inheritance together on the same side of a river, simply upon the recollection that

such a desire would fall in very naturally with their having pitched their tents side by side in their previous march through the wilderness?

XXI.

SOME circumstances in the history of Balak and Balaam supply me with another argument for the veracity of the Pentateuch. But before I proceed to those which I have more immediately in my eye, I would observe, that the simple fact of a King of Moab knowing that a Prophet dwelt in Mesopotamia, in the mountains of the East, a country so distant from his own, in itself supplies a point of harmony favouring the truth and reality of the narrative. For I am led by it to remark this, that very many hints may be picked up in the writings of Moses, all concurring to establish one

position, viz. that there was a communication amongst the scattered inhabitants of the earth in those early times, a circulation of intelligence, scarcely to be expected, and not easily to be accounted for. Whether the caravans of merchants, which, as we have seen, traversed the deserts of the East-whether the unsettled and vagrant habits of the descendants of Ishmael and Esau, which singularly fitted them for being the carriers of news, and with whom the great wilderness was alive-whether the pastoral life of the Patriarchs, and of those who more immediately sprung from them, which led them to constant changes of place in search of herbage-whether the frequent petty wars which were waged amongst lawless neighbours-whether the necessary separation of families, the parent hive casting its little colony forth to settle