vices) which the rest of the world has adored. "The Lord our God is one God." He is infinite, perfect, alone worthy to punish crimes and reward goodness; for He only is good, or goodness itself. This description of the Almighty is extracted from the Mosaic records, and what other writings of antiquity contain such a description of the Divine Nature?

II. To follow now the history of the creation as given us by Moses, we find that the great architect, to whom the production of all nature need have cost so little labour, chose to divide and appropriate his work to a succession of days. For this there may be various reasons assigned: one probably was to lay deep in the heart of his chosen people and of man the reverence due to the Sabbath, without the observance of which a sense of true religion cannot be preserved. "And on the seventh day God ended his "work which he had made, and he rested

on the seventh day from all his work which " he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that

" in it he had rested from all his work which "God created and made "."

b

is

Another reason for thus dividing the act into several portions might be to dissipate by anticipation one of the false conclusions of philosophy, that the Deity acted by necessity, or under a blind impetuosity which he could not resist in the formation of the world. Those acts of which the progress for any cause suspended, and to which the author returns at intervals, are the purest acts of the will; and, as in creating the universe by his mere word God showed the greatness of his power, so by creating it in successive portions of time he evinced his supreme and uncontrolled liberty, and the unfettered freedom of his will. Again, philosophers have thought or argued, that earth tempered with water, and warmed by the sun, might through some natural fecundity (though still they do not say who imparted to it that nature) have produced plants and even animals. Scripture gives us to understand that the elements are

b Gen. ii. 2, 3.

barren, unless fecundated by the word of God: neither the earth, nor the water, though heated by the sun, nor the air would ever have had the plants and animals which we see in them unless God, who had previously prepared their matter, had assigned to them principles proper to engender and multiply themselves in all succeeding ages. Here, therefore, we see other reasonings and conclusions of the cold atheistic philosophy dissipated by the Mosaic history. Those who suppose heat alone, operating upon the other elements, to have been all that was wanting to the generation of plants, must suppose the sun to be in existence before the plants sprung into birth: but Scripture shows us the earth bringing forth grass, and herbs, and plants of every kind before the sun was formed, in order to prove that all depended on the will of God alone. Nay, further, it pleased the mighty Artist to create the matter of light before he reduced it to those forms which he afterwards gave it in the sun and the stars; and that probably for this purpose, that he might enable us to show to the be

nighted nations, which have so often converted those brilliant luminaries into Deities, that they possessed not of themselves either the precious and splendid matter of which they are composed, or the admirable forms to which they are reduced. But all that

The formation of light in the world, as thus described by Moses, resembles or may be elucidated by that of life in the animal creation, as discovered and described by Harvey. The matter of blood is formed, and motion imparted, before the heart, which should contain the substance and perpetuate the circulation, is constructed: "Tale quiddam evidentissime in prima animalis generatione, intra septem dies ab incubatione, in ovo gallinaceo "cernitur. Inest primum ante omnia gutta sanguinis, quæ palpitat; (quod etiam annotavit Aristoteles ;) ex qua, incre"mento facto, et pullo aliqua ex parte formato, fiunt cordis “ auriculæ ; quibus pulsantibus perpetuo inest vita. Cùm corpus postea delineari, intermissis aliquot diebus, ince"perit, tum etiam cordis corpus procreatur, &c.*."

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The last clause of this chapter is particularly curious: "In ovo gallinaceo, post quatuor vel quinque dies ab in"cubatione, primum rudimentum pulli, instar nubeculæ, "videndum exhibui, nimirum ovo cui cortex adimebatur, "in aquam limpidam tepidamque immisso; in cujus nube"culæ medio punctum sanguineum palpitans tam exiguum erat, ut in contractione dispareret, et visum aufugeret; in laxatione, instar summitatis acus, appareret

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Scripture has hitherto taught us of the creation of the world is nothing in comparison with what it teaches us respecting the creation of man. Hitherto God had made every thing by his mere command: ..." Let "there be light, and there was light!... Let "there be a firmament in the midst of the 66 waters... Let the waters under the heaven "be gathered together unto one place, and "let the dry land appear... Let the earth bring forth grass, and it was so!... Let "there be lights in the firmament of the heaven... Let the waters bring forth abund

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antly the moving creature that hath life, " and fowl that may fly above the earth " and he blessed them, saying, Be fruitful "and multiply, and fill the waters in the

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seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth ‘.

But, when the business is to produce man, Moses ascribes to his Maker a different language: "Let us make man in our image,

"rubicundum; ita ut, inter ipsum videri et non videri, "quasi inter esse et non esse, palpitationem et vitæ principium ageret*."

d Gen. i.

Harv. cap. iv. de Motu cordis.