288 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



worshipping one God only ; thus, " Thou shalt 

 have none other gods but me," was the first 

 commandment, and which was most strenuously 

 urged upon the Israelites in every way, and in 

 every transaction of their lives, while they were 

 kept together as a nation. Science, and a know- 

 ledge of nature, on which science is founded, could 

 not in those early times be expected to be known, 

 either by Moses or their other governors and 

 teachers, who could not explain such important 

 matters to the people otherwise than they did. 

 The wonders of this world and the magnitude of 

 the universe were not then contemplated upon ; 

 neither was it perhaps necessary to attempt any 

 explanation of them in those dark ages : and, 

 besides, it appears it was not a leading object : 

 civilisation seems to have been the first and per- 

 haps the only important business they had at that 

 time in view. They therefore, in their endeavours 

 to accomplish this, and to govern and keep the 

 people in awe, attempted to personify the Deity, 

 and to prescribe the boundary of time and space, 

 as the theatre on which He acted, that they, the 

 people, might thus understand something of the 

 meaning of the commands so strenuously laid upon 

 them ; not a little of which was delivered to them 

 in allegory and fable. Moses began by telling 

 them of the beginning of the world, and the length 

 of time it took to make it, and the manner in which 

 God created Adam and Eve as the parents of the 

 whole human race ; of Paradise, or the Garden of 

 Eden ; of the disobedience of our first parents in 

 eating forbidden fruit, and that this transgression 

 entailed misery, sin, and death upon the whole 

 human race. This "Original Sin," however strange 



