On the Cosmogony of Moses. 289 



"must have existed long before the animal creation, in order to 

 {prepare a store for the sustenance of the latter. Physiology and 

 geology were equally unknown at the time when the Genesis was 

 written; and it is certainly a most remarkable circumstance, that 

 we find a detail of facts set down there, which accords so ex- 

 actly with the results of recent discoveries. 



But if this coincidence is surprising in itself, it appears the 

 more so when we compare the Cosmogony of the Hebrews with 

 the notions on this subject that prevailed among other nations 

 of antiquity. We find invariably that all other speculations on 

 this subject are founded on some fanciful analogy with natural 

 processes that are daily observed. Thus the Egyptians pre- 

 tended tliat the mud of rivers acted upon by the solar beams had 

 generated all animals, including men, as they assured Diodorus 

 that the mud of the Nile continued to generate rats even in his 

 time. Many of the Greeks imagined that the world and all 

 things in it grew from seeds ; and the celebrated story of the 

 mundane egg, or the egg produced spontaneously in the womb 

 of Erebus, was another childish attempt to explain the origin of 

 the universe by a loose and fanciful comparison with natural 

 processes. Just of the same character is that of Virgil : 



" Cum Pater o;i;nipotcns fcecundis iiiibiihu& astiier 

 Conjugis in ly.tie grMniuin dcsceiidit, et mnnes 

 Mag.ius alit vasto dift'usus corpore foetus." 



Nothing of this kind can be found in the Mosaic Cosmogony; 

 there is not the remotest attempt to explain the manner in which 

 any thing was produced. For the sense attributed to " the Spirit 

 of God moving on the face of the waters*' by Milton and some 

 modern paraphrasts, is altogether forced, and a pollution of the 

 simple and sublime sense of the texts. 



I will conclude by observing that one single fact seems to me 

 of more importance than all the other inferences that can be 

 collected from geology, and that is, the proof it affords that the 

 animal creation really had a beginning. Ail men naturally feel 

 a great difficulty in believing that any miracle, that is any event 

 tsontrary to the course of their experience and to the usual 

 tenour of nature, has ever taken place. In recognising, however, 

 the proof that there was a time when man had no existence' 

 .and tliat at some particular time he began to exist, or was cre- 

 ated, we receive evidence of so great a miracle that all those 

 related in the Old and New Testaments appear quite trifles in 

 €on)pari>,on with it; and it being once granted that so wonderful 

 an event as the former ever took place, the latter must be ad- 

 mitted as capable of satisfactory proof, due testimony being- 



Vol. 4G. No. 210. Oct. 1815. T afforded 



