when very young i read the bible through and through, but i, at that time, minded it no more than other histories with which my scanty library was furnished. i could not then judge of it, nor properly estimate the sublime precepts it contains. i felt, indeed, much pleased and excited by the numerous battles therein described. sober reflection, however, respecting them quite altered the bent of my inclination that way, and i began and continued to consider the political history of the israelites as very wicked; for they are so described as under the direction of moses, who, it is said, always obtained the command or sanction of the lord to set the people at work in the business of war, at which they appear to have been very ready and very expert. it is, however, evident that in the nation of the israelites there were men of great intellectual powers, and inspired with an ardent desire to trace the author of nature through his works, as well as having a foresight of their future destiny. it being clear to them that it was the intention of omnipotence that men should live in a state of civilized society, under this impression they set to work, as well as they could with an uncivilized people, to bring about such a desirable order of things, but in which they must have felt great difficulties; the first of which was to abolish paganism, and to establish the pure religion of 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 knowledge of nature, on which science is founded, could not in those early times be expected to be known, either by moses or their other governers 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: civilization seems to have been the first and perhaps 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 it may appear to thinking men, has been kept up in terrorem, with uncommon pains, for hundreds of years past, and is continued with unabating fervency to the present time. that mankind should suffer under this condemnation, for the fault of these our first parents, seems impiously to set aside the justice of an all-wise and benevolent god.
as to the time it took to create this world, and the whirling, floating, universe of which it is comparatively a speck or mote—that is beyond human comprehension; and time, eternity—a beginning and an end—are still much more beyond the reach of thought; for the powers of the mind would soon become bewildered and lost in attempting to form any conception, by figures, of what is meant by innumerable millions of centuries: and here on this subject we must rest! this sublime—this amazing—this mighty work of suns and worlds innumerable is too much for the vision of a finite, purblind, proud, little atom of the creation, strutting or crawling about in the shape of man. it is sufficient for the soul of man in this life to reverence and adore the omnipresent, and, except through his works, the unknowable god, whose wisdom, and power, and goodness, has no bounds, and who has been pleased to enable his reasoning creatures so far to see that everything is made by design, and nothing by chance; and, from the display of his infinite power, that everything in the universe is systematic; all is connection, adhesion, affinity: hence we may infer some principle of order, some moving power, some mighty agent—but all this still ends in the name of deity, and dwells awfully retired beyond the reach of mortal eye.
what moses has said about the deluge, and the destruction it occasioned to every living creature, we are led to conclude must have been handed down to him in ancient eastern traditions, and it requires no over-stretched credulity to believe that a deluge happened which destroyed every living creature on that part of the earth over which its devastations were spread; for it cannot be doubted that this globe has undergone many such deluges, convulsions, and changes, equally difficult to account for; and geologists at this day feel convinced of this, from the changes which they see matter has undergone, but of which they are still left greatly to conjecture as to the cause. they cannot, however, doubt the power of a comet (if it be the will of the mighty director) to melt the ices from the poles, and to throw the sea out of its place, or to reduce this globe instantly to a cinder—a vitrifaction—to ashes, or to dust; and that, in its near approach to this our world, it may have occasioned the various changes and phenomena which have happened, and may happen again. the marine productions found imbedded in the earth so many fathoms below its surface, supplies another source of wonder, and seems either to confirm the foregoing hypothesis, or to lead men to conclude that a great portion of the earth has once been covered by the sea; and it may, perhaps, not be carrying conjecture too far to suppose that nations have been overflowed and sunk to its bottom, while others have arisen out of it; and that, in the apparently slow changes which are continually operating upon all matter, new nations may yet arise, and be now in progress to take their turn on this globe.[39] every mountain and hill is becoming less and less, and is by little and little apparently slowly sliding away into the ocean; and the same waste may be seen in the many tons of earthy mud which every flooded river carries off, and deposits in the sea. the lakes are also continually operated upon, by the wasting or wearing away of the outlets that form the barriers by which their waters were and are at present stayed, and it is not unlikely that every valley was once a lake, till they were operated upon like those still left, preparatory to their change to dry land.
but the early history of mankind, nor the changes, the wonders, nor the mighty events which have happened to this globe, cannot be known; and we may reasonably suppose men must have long remained in darkness and ignorance till rescued from such a state first by hieroglyphics and then by letters. what they were before these enabled them to interchange their thoughts, preparatory to a social intercourse, is involved in darkness, on which conjecture may invent and exhaust itself in vain. nation after nation, in unknown ages past, may have glided away, or have been by the accumulation of their own wickedness, more suddenly hurled into oblivion, before the reasoning powers were drawn forth or men bestowed the least thought upon the duties they had to perform, or the business they had to fulfil, as the will of the creator while they sojourned here. but the providence of god is over all his creatures, and it pleased him that the reasoning powers should not remain longer dormant, and the provision made for the change, in the natural order of things, was placed in the latent intellectual powers gifted to man, and drawn forth from his inspired mind, which thus put in action, as it may be presumed, was the first effort of cause and effect that produced the bible, which, as far as we know, seems to have been the first instrument of knowledge that shed its rays over and revealed to mankind the accountable station they were destined to hold on this globe. before the religious and moral precepts of the venerable old book made their way over a more civilized world, and taught rational beings to worship one god, the father of all, and to consider each other as brethren, it does not appear that the great mass of mankind had bestowed a thought upon the astonishing miracles of creation by which they were surrounded, and which were presented to their understanding and sight in so visible and tangible a shape that it required no faith to believe in them, nor any thing to raise doubts in their minds as to their reality. the brilliantly studded canopy of suns and worlds above their heads, and, as a part of these, the equally wonderful globe of this earth and sea, which is allotted to them, they could not, with their clouded intellects and want of science see nor appreciate, till the mind by research became illumined by degrees, in the varied blaze of light spread abroad—which will in some degree enable men to see the perfection of the omnipotent author of the whole. viewing the bible as to it moral and religious contents, in this way, the good old book ought to be held in veneration and esteem, as containing the most unequivocal marks of the most exalted piety and the purest benevolence. give it therefore, my dear children, a place in your regards, to which it is entitled; and, amidst the necessary cares of life, never lose sight of your destination for another. an infinitely more important state awaits us beyond the grave. it may be presumed that this original and sacred document will continue to arrest the attention of reasoning beings as long as men continue to reason, and be an eternal stimulant—together with other stimulants so abundantly presented by the wonders of the universe—to lead the soul to rest its hopes on the source from whence it derived its existence.
