The last part of Exodus, after the promulgation of the ten commandments and the precepts connected with them, is accordingly occupied with the construction of the tabernacle and its furniture, and the dress and consecration of the priests who ministered there.  In Leviticus, the central book of the Pentateuch, we have the central institution of the Mosaic economy, namely, the system of sacrifices belonging to the priesthood, and also, in general, the body of ordinances intrusted to their administration.  The theocracy having been founded at Sinai, it was necessary that arrangements should be made for the orderly march of the people to the land of Canaan.  With these the book of Numbers opens, and then proceeds to narrate the various incidents that befell the people in the wilderness, with a record of their encampments, and also the addition from time to time of new ordinances.  The book of Deuteronomy contains the grand farewell address of Moses to the Israelites, into which is woven a summary of the precepts already given which concerned particularly the people at large, with various modifications and additions suited to their new circumstances and the new duties about to be devolved upon them.  We see then that the Pentateuch constitutes a consistent whole.  Unity of design, harmony of parts, continual progress from beginning to end—­these are its grand characteristics; and they prove that it is not a heterogeneous collection of writings put together without order, but the work of a single master-spirit, writing under God’s immediate direction, according to the uniform testimony of the New Testament.

CHAPTER X.

AUTHENTICITY AND CREDIBILITY OF THE PENTATEUCH.

1.  The historic truth of the Pentateuch is everywhere assumed by the writers of the New Testament in the most absolute and unqualified manner.  They do not simply allude to it and make quotations from it, as one might do in the case of Homer’s poems, but they build upon the facts which it records arguments of the weightiest character, and pertaining to the essential doctrines and duties of religion.  This is alike true of the Mosaic laws and of the narratives that precede them or are interwoven with them.  In truth, the writers of the New Testament know no distinction, as it respects divine authority, between one part of the Pentateuch and another.  They receive the whole as an authentic and inspired record of God’s dealings with men.  A few examples, taken mostly from the book of Genesis, will set this in a clear light.

In reasoning with the Pharisees on the question of divorce, our Lord appeals to the primitive record:  “Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife:  and they twain shall be one flesh? wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.  What therefore God hath joined