[ 24) J 
LI. Gn the Cosmogony of Moses. By Mr. ANDREW Horn. 
To Mr. Tilloch. 
Sir, — Tue researches of geology have at length obtained for 
the cosmogony of Moses that attention which its intrinsic merit 
always denianded. The pages of the Philosophical Magazine have 
for several months past been occupied by various disquisitions 
upon the subject, particularly respecting the meaning of the 
term duy. ut in none of them, I conceive, has the true sense 
been elicited, as designating each of the six successive periods of 
the Genesis. Dr. Prichard has indeed peinted out the tropical 
sense in the term period; but its particular application in the 
cosmogony presents a difficulty which the figurative construction 
cannot by any means remove. Your correspondent F. E——s 
has taken advantage of this, and stated his objections in lan- 
guage sufiiciently explicit to show his estimate of the Genesis and 
its author, 
After being long engaged i in a work illustrative of the Mosaic 
Cosmogony, which is nearly finished, allow me to say, that the 
results | have obtained from my investigations differ materially 
from those of all your correspondents upon this subject. How- 
ever, as I agree with Dr. Prichard in his estimation of the Ge- 
nesis, before I offer any opinion upon the import of the term 
day, as there used, I would observe, that although ‘ he does 
not’ ** place the author of the Petateuch in the rank of com- 
mon compilers of historical fragments, possessed merely of na- 
tural intelligence,’ he can have little diffculty in escaping from 
the dilemma, to which F.E s imagines he has reduced 
him, in page 180 of your last number. If certain events re- 
eorded in the Genesis are found to agree with what may be 
ealled universal tradition, and some of those events riever could 
liave been conceived in any human, mind without supernatural 
intelligence, this universal coincidence must, therefore, be re- 
ferred to some common source. But we are not to suppose 
Moses the first person to whom the communication was made, 
Obvious reasons might be urged, why this favour should have 
been granted to the great progenitor of mankind. The notion 
ofa beginning —that the universe once had no existence, most 
assuredly, is neither a dictate of reason nor a physical disco- 
very. Now there never was.a fact, left to tradition, but what 
has been corrupted. Was it possible, then, that the traditionary 
account of the origin of the world should during a progress of 
3000 years have escaped corruption? When the facts, there- 
fore, came to be recorded, they must have been so corrupted, 
© Vol, 47. No. 216. April 1816. Q that 
