CHAPTER I.

GENESIS 1. 1-31; II. 1-3.

VERSE 1: "IN the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." In the beginning of what? Not of the universe certainly, for the universe yet was not; and not of God's existence, for God's existence is infinite and eternal. In the beginning then-of creation? What? Had the Elohim, as, in the Indian scheme, the great Brahme, hitherto "dwelt in some egg, Himself meditating on Himself?" and was "the first inclination of the Godhead to diversify himself by creating worlds," was the first desire,3 the first thought that gave a ripple to the calm

"The world," says Menu," was all darkness, undiscernable, undistinguishable altogether, as in a profound sleep, till the self-existent, invisible God, making it manifest with five elements and other glorious forms, perfectly dispelled the gloom (comp. Heb. xi. 30). He, desiring to raise up various creatures by an emanation from his own glory, first created the waters, and impressed them with a power of motion; by that power was produced a golden egg, in which was born Brahme, self-existing, the great Parent of all rational beings. The God having dwelt in the egg through revolving years, Himself meditating on Himself, divided it into equal parts, and from those halves framed the heaven and the earth."-Sir W. Jones On the Gods of Greece. Asiatic Researches, vol. i.

p. 244.

inclination of the Godhead to diversify Himself by creating worlds, is feigned to be the Mother of universal Nature."-Id. p. 230.

3" Then was there no entity nor nonentity; no world, nor sky, nor aught above it. Death was not, nor then was immortality, nor distinction of day or night. But THAT breathed without afflation, single, with her who is sustained within him. Other than Him, nothing existed which has since been. Darkness there was, for the universe was enveloped with darkness; but that mass which was covered by the husk was at length produced by the power of contemplation. First desire was produced in the mind, and that was the original productive seed."-From the Rig-veda, by Colebrook, A.R. viii. 404.

4" Originally this universe was indeed SOUL only; nothing else

2 "The Indian Maya, the first whatsoever existed active or inactive.

B

of an hitherto unconscious existence-was the great Words, the first-born, that broke the eternal silence, "the Beginning?" Impossible. Can God then, as, in the Persian faith, that lifeless spectre Zeruane Akerene, that terrible abstraction, Time unchequered, indefinite, uncreate, have subsisted alone? And does "in the beginning" allude to the sublime intelligences which first peopled the boundless solitudes to the creation of the Ormuzds and Ahrimans, the Sephiroths and evil angels of the Cabala?" Or is it to be referred to the first birth of the pure Honover, the powerful living word of Ormuzd, the holy Logos9 of Christianity, which afterwards called into being the heavens and the earth, and the waters, and the pure worlds of light? Again impossible. God is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever: moved by no impulses, urged by no

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HE thought," I will create worlds." Thus He created water, light, mortal beings, and the waters.”—Id. p.420. "Knowing the elements, discovering the worlds, and recognizing all quarters and regions to be Him, and worshipping speech, or revelation, who is the first-born, &c."Yajurveda, id. p. 433.

6 The two, Ormuzd and Ahriman, in the course of their existence, are the sole productions of Time without bounds. Of the productions of the pure world, Ormuzd first made the heaven, that world of light which was the pure law of the Mehestans. He then made Ardibehescht, then Schari

ver, &c." Here, the Amschaspands are the creation of Ormuzd; such also they are represented in the Jescht of Bahman Ardibehescht, v. ii. p. 152, Zend. In the xix Farg. p. 413, v. i, Zend, they are spoken of as the production of Zeruane-Akerene: "L'Etre absorbé dans l'excellence ta donné; il a aussi donné avec grandeur les Amschaspands, qui sont de pures productions et de saints rois."

7 "Before the great cause of all

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causes, the most secret of secret things, created the world; before He created objects cognizable by the intellect or produced form, He was Himself," say the Cabalists, "alone, without figure or similitude. But when creation commenced, His existence being only demonstrable by His energies, from the immensity of His own essence sprung forth the first of the divine Sephiroth or enumerations, communicating in various degrees an unceasing influx of Deity to nine others, all of which, combined, display to us a tenfold idea of the Deity."- -Book of Enoch, Prelim. History, by Laurence.

8 St. John's Gospel, c. i. v. 1. 9 Zendavesta, xix. Farg. ut supra, and Id. xix. Ha, vol.1. 139. The word of Ormuzd, the word given of God, is the pure Honover which existed before the heaven and the earth.""J'ai prononcé la parole avec grandeur, moi qui suis absorbé dans l'excellence; et tous les êtres purs qui ont été faits, ont courus dans le monde d'Ormuzd.” And again (1 Carde, vol. i. p. 186), J'invoque la parole, source de tout, sainte, pure et grande."

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wants, but following out His own beneficent laws, He has ever wrought, from all eternity. Yes, He has ever wrought, and yet in Him, the Ideal and the Real, Thought and Being, are one and the same. Yes, He ever works, and yet for Him have ever existed both this glorious spectacle the earth, and this blue heaven, in which myriads of worlds roll their predestined courses. Yes, He will work ever, and yet to Him time can bring no change; before Him, all that ever has been, all that is, all that ever will be, is continually present; in Him eternity has no past, no future, for Him it is but a moment, as a moment is for Him eternity.

For God, there is no beginning and no end of workno first and no last essay in creation: but man, as he travels back from age to age, at length grows weary of the ever-receding vista of bye-gone centuries, and he therefore closes his eyes, and stills his impatient mind, with a word, "In the beginning." And "in the beginning," when, so God had from all eternity willed it, Time began; when man first stepped into existence-man, to whom God gave much of earth, and something of Himself; man, in whom the real and the ideal are not identical, but rather antagonist principles, and who is Nature's servant or God's worshipper, as the one or the other dominates his life-in the beginning of Time and as the beginning of History, of that great race which Humanity has to run, and for which we have yet scarce girded up our loins, of that race, whose goal, after six thousand years of labour, is even now beyond our horizon,-God created Heaven, earth, and man.

But was Moses, indeed, thus impressed with God's infinity? I doubt it. All infant people reject the merely intelligible; they ask for something that appeals to their senses, something which they can comprehend. Speak to them of the self-sustained heaven, or of the round world

1 "Les Tlascalans croyoient la terre plate, et n'ayant aucune idée de la révolution des corps célestes,

ils étoient persuadés que le soleil et la lune dormoient à la fin de leurs cours." Hist. Gen. des Voy

held in its course by opposite and counteracting forces, aud they will laugh you to scorn. But place Heaven on the broad shoulders of Atlas, or on the ever-growing Albordj," or the sun-bright Meru:" rest the flat earth on marble pillars, or the tortoise-back, and you bring before them causes with which they are familiar, and which seem to them sufficient; you amuse their imaginations, and they will not enquire into the cause of your cause; and years may pass away, perhaps centuries, ere they perceive that they have got rid of one difficulty only to meet another and a greater. Similarly, speak to them of God, as He reveals Himself to rational man; insist upon His infinite, His universal nature; show them that to His spiritual existence no conceptions into which time or space enters are applicable; and will not a strong array of cherished associations and accustomed thoughts angrily rise up from their minds' depths to drive back your force of reason? Tell them, however, of a God who rules the storm and wills the earthquake, who gives corn and harvest, and dispenses light and heat to man; of one, who even framed this earth and created these heavens; and so long as you dwell merely on God's power, thus exercised the most human of his attributes, they will comprehend, and perhaps eagerly receive, your words. But from your words, can we conclude, that either you, or they whom you address, have any but very narrow conceptions of God? What, then, shall we say, when at the head of an ancient cosmogony which similarly describes the Deity, we meet with a phrase so ambiguous as this "In the beginning"? Shall we torture it into some meaning not contradictory of a rational apprehension of God? Or shall we, assuming in its author views natural to his age, give to the words their most obvious sense, and refer them to some beginning in

ages, vol. xviii. p. 597, from Herrera. The Peruvians held much the same notions, vide Hist. des Yncas, p. 106.

2

According to the Persian books. 3 According to the Vedas.

4 Seems to have been the opinion of the Jews even so late as the times of the author of the Book of Enoch. “I surveyed the stone which supports the corners of the earth.” Enoch, xviii. 2.

creation, some beginning in eternity, or some first consciousness of the Diety of Himself?"

Bnt what have I myself done? Have I not, following out the laws of the human reason, sought by them to determine the laws and character of a perfect and infinite existence? Miserable sophist! Does not a world of facts rise up to confute me? To my speculations the plain man has but to oppose this solid earth, and man's iron will; and what can I answer him? Have I not left them These and a thou

unaccounted for, and unaccountable.

sand other facts shall I now gloze over with a show of