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............