08 - Evidences of Revelation

8. EVIDENCES OF REVELATION In the summer of 1880, some fanatics having revived the notion that the pseudo-Tichbome impostor is an illegitimate son of Roger Tichborne’s father, I wrote some letters in my nephew’s weekly publication Facty entitled The Doctrine of Coincidences. The leading position in them is that the force of imforeseen coincidences is great, and increases in a prodigious ratio when they are multiplied and point to one conclusion; and I also there showed that fifteen independent and unforeseen coincidences all point from different points of the compass to one central fact, that this impostor is Arthur Orton, of Wapping.

I mentioned this in outline to my dear friend Apparently the notes for a farther statement of the subject. the Bev. Charles Graham, and he said that unforeseen coincidences were among the evidences of the truth of Scripture. 1Then remembered that Paley uses them in the Horse Paulinse

I was not aware they had been applied to the Old Testament also. Mr. Graham however, lent me a volume entitled Undesigned Coincidences in the Old and New Testament,’ by the Rev. J. J.

Blunt. The writer in his Preface refers to Paley as the writer who had worked this vein the most remarkably; and tQ Doddridge on 1st Thessalonians, and Biscoe’s History of the Acts of the Apostles,’ as predecessors who — to use my own phrase — had fingered the idea before him.

Dr. Blunt extends Paley’s method to the Old Testament, and observes many unstudied coincidences of statement in the books of Moses.

These he calls generally coincidences; I myself am not quite clear that they are all coincidences. Many seem to be rather subtle consistencies or statements accidentally corroborative of each other. A coincidence I should define as two indisputable facts pointing to one conclusion. If so, there are three parts in a coincidence, but only two in a corroborative statement.

If I am right in this distinction, Dr. Blunt discovers (pages 9 - 21) many coincidences which, taken in conjunction, point clearly to a Patriarchal Church long before Moses, with (1) places of worship; (2) forms consecrating such places; (3) priests, tithes, and a Sabbath, circumcision, moral enactments against murder, robbery, fornication, adultery (in the limited sense Moses himself understood it), false swearing, disobedience to parents, marriage with idolaters. Also ceremonies: purification, clean and unclean animals (Noah), sacrifices, circumcision. — (Pages 1-23.)

Incidental proofs of the promised Christ he finds in the early sacrifices. And here I would venture to throw in that Cain’s sacrifice, which could not typify Christ, was rejected; in the wild eagerness of the women for offspring — a desire that overcame jealousy defied, nature. And all this with no design on the part of

Moses to elevate those who lived before the law it was his mission to promulgate. This, says the author, is my master-key, explaining and justifying details that are trivial and even oflfensive without it. Witness the conduct of Sarah, Jacob’s wives, Onan, Tamar, etc.

Pages 24-93 are occupied with what I should not call coincidences, but undesigned consistency —one statement unobtrusively confirming another: —

Abraham’s intercession for Sodom, and his leaving oflf at ten.

Lot and his family at Sodom, and Abraham’s hope that there would be righteous in that home.

Isaac marrying into a generation below him.

Great age at which Sarah had borne Isaac.

Jochebed, daughter of Levi, marrying a grandson of Levi. Jochebed turns out to have been born in Egypt — child of Levi’s old age.

Identity of Jacob’s character in so many incidents. The freight of the camels that carried Joseph into Egypt
The sepulture of the Egyptians.
The many oflfhand indications that Egypt was a great corn-grower.
The historical fact that it was so.
The proportion of oxen and waggons assigned to the descendants of Levi.
The apparent fate of Dorah, Dathan, and Abiram and their families. The subsequent statement that Korah’s children died not.
The original account, more closely examined, admitting this solution.
Miraculous water at Horeb.
Altars of Amalekites.
Death of Zimri.
Diminution of the Tribe of Simeon.
The fondness of Joseph for his father, and the way his brothers appeal to it unconsciously. —

(Pages 24-93.) The character of Jacob, a cowed man. Its consistency. To these I beg to add:

(1) That the ark is built, or begun, more than one hundred years before the deluge; and the deluge does not come till Methuselah, the son of righteous Enoch, is just dead. Yet the writer does not observe this, and the reader only discovers it by arithmetical computation.

(2) That Rebekah’s trait, parental partiality, is found in her favourite son, yet not noticed by the author. And that Jacob, the younger son, blesses the younger son of Joseph before the elder. Yet the writer seems only to notice the bare fact.

(3) That the typical offering of Abel was accepted, but the non-typical offering of Cain rejected. Yet the writer has no theory on the matter.

Balaam slain among the Midianites. Compare with the invitation just given to him.