On the Cosmogony of Moses. il 
by Bishop Horsley: but with relation to Dr. Prichard’s argu- 
ment in its favour, drgwn from the genius of the Hebrew lan- 
guage, I would ask, whether the Hebrews ever understood the 
word day, as used in the first chapter of Genesis, to signify an 
indefinite portion of time? If they did not, is it probable that 
the true sense of this Hebrew word, as there employed, should 
always have remained unknown to them, and after a lapse of 
some thousand years, when they had long ceased to exist as a 
nation, be discovered by the ingenuity of modern criticism ? 
Acquiescing in the correctness of the remark, that the Hebrew 
word which we translate day, was often used by the Hebrews, 
and even by Moses himself, to designate an indefinite length of 
time, the just inference séems to be, that, on account of this 
usage of the term, Moses, when speaking of the Creation, thought 
it necessary to circumscribe the length of each day by its natural 
boundary. Toshow therefore that day used unrestrictedly, was 
sometimes understood by the Hebrews to signify an indefinite 
period, instead of strengthening Dr. Prichard’s conclusion, tends 
directly to its subversion; unless he can further show, that the 
word in Hebrew was ever so understood when the extent of its 
signification was expressly limited to the duration of an evening 
d a@ morning, or to the decay of light and its return, as Bishop 
‘Horsley observes the words of Moses literally import. 
An auxiliary argument of Dr. Prichard’s is, that it would be 
imputing a palpable absurdity to Moses to suppose him speaking 
of days in the literal meaning of the word, before the creation of 
the sun. But may it not be asked, whether the imputation of 
absurdity would be greatly diminished by Dr. Prichard’s al- 
ternative of making him include an indefinite period of great 
length, i an evening and a morning? In this view, there- 
fore, the assumed figurative sense does not seem to have much 
advantage over the literal. With the indulgence, however, of a 
little of the privilege of conjecture, so freely used by others on 
this subject, it will not be difficult to clear the literal sense 
from its apparent iuconsistency. 
Darkness being merely the absence of light, it is impossible 
that they could ever coexist in the same place, so as to be sub- 
ject, like substances in union, to an actual division. When, 
therefore, after the creation of light, Moses says that God di- 
vided the “ light from the darkness,’’ he cannot be literally un- 
derstood: but we may suppose the matter of light at the mo- 
ment of its creation diffused through the immensity of space 
previously occupied by darkness, and that the dividing the light 
from the darkness consisted in collecting it into one great tem- 
porary reservoir. Now after this aggregation of the matter of 
light on the first day, provided its position were not in the ie 
longe 
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