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LETTER This is the foundation of all Religion, whether popular or philosophical. The intellectual world possesses an invaluable treasure in this simple, but emphatic, information. It deserves the epithet invaluable, because it is a fact which could be certainly known to us only from revelation, as no human eye could have witnessed the event; and because the greatest minds of antiquity were in doubt and darkness, and in opposition to each other; on this subject, as we should still be, if the book of Genesis had not descended to us. Instead of deriving the World from GOD, it was more common among the classical nations to derive their gods from the world. Hesiod, as well as Epicurus, makes his Divinities to be an order of beings springing out of the material universe. Several Pagan nations, even in our own times, thus account for their existence. Few have thought the Deity to be the Creator of the Earth or of the heavens; and the mind had become so confused on this point, that it was more generally supposed, that either these were eternally what they are, or that they were united into what we see them to be, by a fortuitous concourse of self-moving atoms. Such ideas were highly patronized in ancient times; and until the prevalence of Christianity diffused the knowlege and authenticity of the Mosaic record as to the origin of things, nothing was positively known or rationally believed about it. The more we investigate the conflicting and chimerical opinions of mankind on this great topic, the more we shall appreciate the first chapter of Genesis. On no subject of its thought has the human mind been more fantastic, than in its suppositions on the origin of the gods whom it chose to worship, and of the material world

in which it was residing. Revelation has banished LETTER these, by giving to us the desirable certainty.

The theory, that the component atoms or particles of things could have moved themselves into the beautiful forms and scientific arrangements and motions of visible nature, was felt to be incredible by some of the finest minds of antiquity, and finds no patronage now from the true philosopher. Design, contriving thought, the adaptation of things to each other, and the skilful production of important ends by the application and co-operation of the fittest means, are so manifest in the structure of the earth, in the formations of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and in all the astronomical phenomena, that no judicious inquirer will attempt to support the Lucretian reveries. The more favored opinion of some, who desire to remove the Creator from the material universe, is the arbitrary assumption, that the system and course of things which we admire, has had no origin at all, but has been eternally what we see it to be. This is no new conception of the human mind, but it is that to which those, who are adverse to Religion, and who discredit Revelation, seem to be now most inclined to adopt. For this reason, it may be useful to suggest an observation, which seems to prove it to be an impossible hypothesis.

If the material world had been one uniform homogeneous mass, its eternal existence would have been always a possibility. It would then not have contained any evidence in itself to contradict the supposition. But the actual fact is, that all visible nature is a multifarious association of very compounded substances. Nothing is simple-nothing is uncompounded. Every thing we see, feel, or handle, is a composition, a mixture or union of more particles or of more elements

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Not merely the grosser earthly bodies are so, but even the water, the air, and the light, are in this compounded state. Now, it is impossible that any compound can have been eternally a compound. Composition and eternity are as incompatible, as to be and not to be. The particles of which compounds consist, must have been in some other state before they were compounded together. The single condition of the elements must have preceded their union in the composition; and thus it is physically impossible that a compound can have been eternal. The school-boy perceives at once that his plum-cake cannot have been eternal. The plums, the flour, the butter, the eggs, and the sugar, of which it is composed, must have been in some other places and state, before they were brought together to make the substance which gratifies him. So the mighty World we live on, the rocks, the mountains, the minerals-so every substance around us, animate and inanimate,-cannot have been eternal, because every one is a combination of numerous particles, usually very heterogeneous, and the primary elements of each must have been in their elementary state, and in some other position, before they moved and joined into their compound one.

The process of Creation, in the primitive construction of our earthly fabric, has not been detailed by the Hebrew Legislator. He mentions no more of its massive composition than this short sentence:

The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of ELOHIM moved upon the face of the waters.'

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'Gen. ch. i. ver. 2. The fact recorded by Moses, that darkness accompanied the primeval state of things, appears to have been preserved in the traditions of most nations. It is an opinion as universal as it is ancient.

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'The earth was without form.' It had therefore to LETTER be put into form. Its material substance had been created, but had not been arranged into any specific formation. It was also void;' it was therefore empty; vacant of all that now adorns its surface, or that was afterwards made within it. It had to receive and to be replenished, both internally and externally, with all those additional and organized things and beings, or more specific metals and minerals, which were intended to be within it and upon it. As Darkness was upon the face of the deep,' there was in its primeval state a deeper abyss -- a vast obscure concavity; and as 'the Spirit of God

The OTAHEITEANS and the contiguous islanders 'refer the first existence of their principal deities to the state of darkness, which they make the origin of all things. These are said to be fanau Po,' born of night. Po, the world of darkness.' Ellis, Polyn. Researches, v. 2. p. 191. The ANGLO-SAXONS began their computation of time from Night, and their year from that day in winter corresponding with our Christmas, which they called Mother night,' as if the parent of all things. The ANCIENT EGYPTIANS thought Night older than Day. Plut. Sym. 1. 4. p. 95. They made 'unknown darkness' the first principle of nature. Damascius περ àρxñs MS. quoted by Bryant, p. 153. The ORPHEAN fragments say, 'I will sing of Night, the genitor of Gods and Men. Night, the genesis of all things.' Orph. Gesn. p. 377.

The Theologi say, that

ARISTOTLE thus recognises the opinion. all things are born from night. The Physici, that all things were mingled together.' Metaph. 1. 14. c. 6. Sanchoniathon mentions the same from the PHENICIAN accounts. He places as the beginning of all things, a dark air and a turbid Chaos.' Euseb. Rep. 1. 1. c. 10. HESIOD makes a Chaos the origin of all things from which Erebus and Night arose. Theog. And ARISTOPHANES, in his drama of the Birds, expresses the same notion, as if it was the common idea of the intelligent men of Greece.

'First of all was Chaos and Night. Dark Erebus and gloomy Tartarus. There was no earth, nor air, nor heaven, till obscure Night by the power of the wind on the wide Erebus brought forth an egg.' Quoted by Lucian in Philop. and by Suidas.

OVID shows that the belief had been retained by the Romans, for he derives all nature from a Chaos, in which there was neither light nor form. Metamorph. 1. 1.

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LETTER moved upon the face of the waters,' its surface must have been covered with the aqueous fluid. Thus the first state of our Earth which is noticed to us after the general creation, is that of a dark mass, unformed and void, with an abyss within, and whose surface was covered with moving waters, but on which the Divine Spirit was operating. The effects of this operation are not stated, but we may presume them to have been to produce those formative arrangements which constitute its present structure,its great masses of rocks and strata—its geological system and construction.3

This primeval condition is thus mentioned in the ancient Scandinavian VOLUSPA :

In the era of the Ages

There was no land nor sea;

Nor winds on a vast ocean.

Earth yet was not: nor the heaven above,

Only the abyss of Chaos, and no grass.

Hist. Angl. Sax. vol. i. p. 242.

Diodorus Siculus thus represents the notions of the old Egyptians, to the same purport: 'In the establishment of all things from the beginning, heaven and earth had one form, their nature being mingled together: but afterwards, the bodies separating from each other, the world received all that ar. angement which is now seen in it. The air acquired a continual movement, and the fiery particles ascended to the most meteoric or highest regions.' l. 1. p. 7. But the notions of the CHIPPEWYAN Indians in North America, approach the Hebrew statement with a curious poetry of conception. Mackenzie thus heard them related, when among them: 'They believe that at first the globe was one vast and entire ocean, inhabited by no creature, except a mighty Bird, whose eyes were fire and whose glances were lightning, and the clapping of whose wings was thunder. On his descent to the ocean, and on his approaching it, the Earth instantly rose up and remained on the surface of the water.' Mack. Travels, cxvI.-Strabo mentions, from Megasthenes, that the Brahmans of India, at that time taught that the world was spherical, and had arisen from Water, and the Divinity had made it, and pervaded the whole of it. Lib. 15. p. 1040.-So Thales declared Water to have been the beginning of things, and that God was the mind which had out of that formed every thing. Cic. de Nat. Deor. 1. 1.

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