under his knowlege and continued existence, and therefore under His superintendence, and with His unceasing privity.

From His own nature He must be as conscious of

human affairs, as He is of any and every other world that He has framed. It is not likely that He, who has taken such minute pains in the creation of all that we are related to here, should be indifferent or disdainful to us.

The nature of our world in all its compartments is a testimony, that we have fully shared His profoundest and kindest deliberations; and is a pledge, that what He has so curiously and so benevolently planned and framed, will never be unnoticed or uncared for by Him. It is on these principles that the Sacred History of Man is founded. They assure us that there must be a sacred history attached to his existence, and that his race has been always living under the development and conduct of it.

It is a difficult subject for us to discover the Divine system which has been pursuing thro it; but not more difficult than that of material nature has been found to be. As already intimated, I do not presume to be able to accomplish more, than to place my foot upon the threshold of the sacred building which I admire, and to glance upon the awful interior and the grand avenues connected with it.

Others will in time advance farther, and discern what I desire to explore, but am not competent sufficiently to elucidate. But I shall be satisfied if I can succeed in showing, that views like these will give to the history, and transactions, and fortunes of mankind, a meaning and a philosophy which they cannot possess on any other supposition, and by which they

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LETTER will become more useful and be more permanently

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interesting to us.

But altho the cultivated mind of the present day, at least in our own enlightened country, and indeed very generally in others, where knowlege is pursued, tho, with some exceptions which we must lament, infers and maintains that our Earth and its system have been the creations of a reasoning and Omnipotent Deity; yet this truth could be known to be such by our primeval ancestors, only from a revelation and assurance of the fact by the Divine Architect, or on His authority. No human being witnessed the operation; nor could the first man, at his emerging into existence, ignorant of the very nature of being and power, and causation and effect, have then understood it, even if he had been framed before the other parts of his world, and had beheld these arising simultaneously, or successively around him. He would have only seen vast movements, as unintelligible as universal; mighty masses in conflicting agitations; figures starting up with endless diversity; and innumerable changes and phenomena of scenes and substances, that would have confused his eyesight and baffled his comprehension. He would have been terrified, rather than instructed, and have sought his shelter in the nearest cavity or penetrable forest, instead of contemplating, in order to comprehend, what would be too grand even for his vision to survey, and too alarming for him to have any wish to witness.

The first idea of a creating Deity, and that the visible world was His production, must have originated in the human mind from His express communication. It is too sublime an impression to have

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been self-formed within us; altho as soon as it was LETTER suggested, many a heart has delighted to cherish it, as most congenial with its best feelings and intellect; and in proportion as mind has increased in knowlege, it has been active and eager to trace the marks and confirmations of it, in the fabric and beauties and beneficences of surrounding nature. Yet, tho millions have felt with the Hebrew sovereign, that "the heavens declare the glory of God," and that the starry hosts display the special operation of His forming power, the deduction is not likely to have been made without the revelation that conducts us to it. Many ages at least must have first elapsed, however easy it is now to reason on it, for want of that long and patient observation of natural things, which will alone give due knowlege of them; and of that practised discernment of their several relations and connected effects, which enable so many acute thinkers in our age to support the sublime conclusion with such philosophical certainty and such great precision.

That the momentous communication was made to man of the divine origin of himself and of his abode, at the beginning of his existence, the Mosaic History narrates, and there is every reason to believe the declaration. No intelligent Creator would have concealed such a circumstance from the intellectual creature, by whom He wished to be known, and whose affection and obedience He condescended to desire. It is only surprising that the noble truth should have ever been depreciated or disregarded by any portion of mankind; and yet we find from history that it was so slighted or perverted in the most ancient times by many, that it became obsolete or forgotten by some nations; and

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LETTER that other theories of the origin of things, altho as fantastic as ignorance or folly could make them, were substituted instead. Tho some few minds at all times seem to have withstood the stream of popular extravagance, yet they could not arrest the mental deterioration on this subject.

Even in ancient Greece the creation of the world was not the opinion of the multitude, nor the public tenet of their priesthood. The cosmogony on which the ancient paganism was founded in the Grecian states, was that strange system which Hesiod has detailed in his Theogony; and which Homer seems not to have discredited.14 This represents a chaos and a night without a Deity, to have been the first state of things; and deduces thence the earth, and

13

13 Hesiod says, that the Muses, the nine daughters of Mnemosyne, or Memory, sang, First the venerated race of the Gods, whom the Earth and the spacious Ovpavog or Sky brought forth from the beginning. From these were produced the Gods, the givers of good (EYEVOVTO).' Theog. 44-6. He called upon them to celebrate the sacred race of the ever-existing immortals, who were born (ɛžɛyɛvovтO) out of the earth and the starry sky, and in the dark night, and whom the salt sea (TOVTOC) nourished.' 415–7.

After further invocations for their inspiration, he details the system, which makes chaos the first of all things. From this came Erebus and black night, and from that Ether and the day. The Earth then produced the starry sky to cover itself, and then proceeds to bring forth the mountains, sea, and long train of gods and giants, which he enumerates. Hes. Theog. v. 116–153.

14 Homer makes Somnus, or Sleep, refuse to Juno to close the eyes of Jupiter. He says, 'I could easily put into slumber any other of the ever-existing gods, even the billows of the flowing ocean that has brought them all in being; but not the son of Saturn, unless he desire it.' He gives as his reason, that having once before done so, Jupiter would have thrown me into the sea, unless Night, the tamer of gods and men, had preserved me; for tho much enraged, he was afraid of exciting the displeasure of swift Night.' Iliad, 1. xiv. v. 244–262. These ideas represent the Ocean as the parent of Homer's divinities, and Night as their master, whom even Jupiter dreaded.

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from the earth, or from the anterior confusion of LETTER matter, those divinities, whom the chief part of the active-minded men of Greece, both lay and sacerdotal, the eminent in fame and rank, and the prominent in all the business and intellect of life, chose, with few exceptions, to uphold and worship. Thus they made material nature not only to precede their gods, but also to produce them, instead of being created by them. Orpheus, in the Argonautica, which, if not his composition, was meant to represent his ideas, puts his chaos, and skies, and earth and sea, before he notices any thing like an agency of a different kind, and this he calls Eros, or Desire." Aristophanes expresses similar ideas on the origin of things, and makes his birds' in this comedy claim, on this ground, a priority of birth, before the gods, What the popular drama

as well as before men.'

16

15 Orpheus placed Chaos as the first of all things, and speaks of it with two words, αμέγαρτον αναγκην, as if to imply that it existed by an uncontrollable necessity. Argon. v. 12. He afterwards took his lyre, and chanted to his companions: I sang the obscure hymn of the ancient (or beginning) Chaos, how it changed alternately the natures of things: how the Heaven or Sky (Ouranos) came to its boundary: the generation of the wide-bosomed Earth; and the depth of the Sea.' He then adds, Eros or Love, and afterwards the miserable Kronus.' Argon. v. 419-26. In the Orphic Hymn to Night, this is called 'the genitor of gods and men ; Night the genesis of all things,' p. 188. So in another, Ocean is termed the 'genesis or producer of the immortal gods and mortal men.' Hymn 82. p. 278. Some other fragments of Orpheus express wiser ideas, as if his private and popular doctrines were not always alike.

16 First there was Chaos and Night; the black Erebus and the spacious Tartarus. There was neither earth, nor air, nor skies; but in the unbounded bosom of Erebus, black-winged Night first produced an egg below the winds, from which at the completed season the desirable Eros came forth, with golden wings like whirlwinds. He from Chaos generated a race (the birds), prior to that there was no immortals, before Eros intermingled all things, and then Ouranos (the Skies), Ocean and Earth, and the incorruptible race of the blessed Deities appeared.' Aristoph. Aves. v. 698.