Exod. xxv. 18-22. xxxvii. 7-9. Lev. xvi. 2. Num. vii. 89. 1 Kings, vi. 23-28. viii. 7. 2 Chron. iii. 10-13. v. 8. Ezk. i. 5-11. x. 20-22 AN EPITOME, &c. PERIOD I. FROM THE CREATION TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. CHAPTER I. CREATION. THIS WORLD, the theatre of the most wonderful divine operations, has been in existence 5,831 years. The learned Greeks were fond of speculating upon the origin of all things. Aristotle supposed the world, in its organized form, eternal; and that the Supreme Being put it in motion. Anaxagoras, followed by Socrates and Plato, believed in a supreme mind who organized the world out of matter which always existed; yet held to an animating principle in matter which propelled and regulated the organized system. Epicurus. the father of Atheism, traced the beautiful order of the earth and all its inhabitants and productions to a fortuitous concurrence of atoms. No one in Greece or Rome ever acknowledged a Creator of the world. The old Heathen nations, ignorant of their origin, were fond of ascribing to themselves vast antiquity. The Babylonians and Egyptians boasted of their astronomical observations and counted their dynasties through thirty and forty thousand years. The nodern Chinese and Hindoos make similar pretensions. Some drill and bore The solid earth, and, from the strata there, |