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.
Footnote 39:
In my brother’s colliery at Mickley Bank, about 30 fathoms below the
surface, perfect muscles have been found imbedded in ironstone. In
appearance they differed not from those newly taken from the muscle
scarp. The shells effervesced with acid, but the insides were
ironstone, the same as that with which they were surrounded.
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.
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