LETTER VI.

Sacred History comprises the Plan, the Purposes, and the Results of the Divine System, as to Mankind-Outlines of the Great Events which have accrued in Human Affairs.

THE sacred history of the world, as it relates to mankind, may be considered under three divisions of our inquiry. The PLAN on which it has been carried on; the REASONS and PURPOSES for which that particular plan has been adopted, and its execution pursued; and the RESULTS or ends which have already been accomplished by it, or which seem evolving from it.

Our knowledge of the PLAN must be derived from a study of the events which have taken place; for it is in these that it will be indicated, as the movements of a great army, and their consequences and effects, enable the attentive observer to perceive the scheme and objects of the commander in the conduct of his campaign.

That a plan has been devised and selected by our Creator for his human world, and steadily acted upon by him in the course of its affairs, seems to be as certain as any fact that is deducible from what we know of him, and from its analogies with the certainties of his physical creations. We assume that our material world has been a reasoned production of his intelligence. But if so, then human life, and the concerns which most affect it, must be directed and governed by him, because the inorganic portions of our earthly system have been visibly made with express reference to what is living and sentient; and all that is so has been manifestly formed with a peculiar consideration of man, the most sentient and intellectual of all. But nothing was more requisite to his welfare and intellectual improvement, than that the great incidents of his social history, and of the course of his earthly life, should be such, and be from time to time so regulated, as to prevent his destruction or degenthat any ancient mathematicians, men whose leaders we are so accus tomed to revere, should seriously calculate upon it as authentic informa tion?

eration; to lead him to increasing knowledge, to counteract the errors of his own ignorance and evil excitations; and to trace and educate his moral sensibilities and mental capacity. That a deliberated plan, and a careful execution of it, has been as necessary to human nature as to the planetary system, I cannot doubt.

This is one of the conclusions which follow from our being the creation of a God of thought and knowledge; and from our perception of that omniscience, that wisdom, and that benevolence, which are so visible in what he has made.

It is impossible for my mind to believe, that man was abandoned by his Maker as soon as he was created. So much intellect as appears in the construction of the universe, could not act so capriciously nor so malevolently. We need his direction and care far more than the material world; and `nothing essential to our wellbeing can have been withheld by such a Creator. I rely upon the certainty that he always acts consistently with his own nature, and never in contradiction to it. We can already discern enough of him to be satisfied of his moral perfections and transcendent sagacity. These may assure us, that human affairs have been from their commencement a superintended subject of his foreseeing care; that he has wise designs and gracious ends in all that he directs and causes; and that the course and conduct of all that relates to human kind, have been, in due succession, justly regulated on a plan of wisdom and benignity, ever promoting and producing the appointed results. These results, like the plan, must be sought for in the actual events and consequences which have taken place.

But his REASONS and PURPOSES in the adoption and prosecutions of his plans, are more difficult of discernment. There is such a largeness of extent, such a multiplicity of operation, such a combination of minuteness with vastness, such a gradation of process, and such a reference from the present to the future, which it prepares and produces, in all that he does, that wherever he has not revealed his intentions, human inference and conjecture can but faintly and imperfectly supply the deficiency of the given information.

We can but do in this, as with the fabric of general nature. We must observe, reflect, reason, and infer. It cannot be unlawful for us thus to endeavour to trace his reasons and his meanings in his ways any more than in his works; and

it never will be either an undesirable or an improper exercise of the mind to do so, if we pursue the inquiry in a reverential and deferent spirit, and do not attempt to assert our individual notions to be unquestionable truth. Our best conclusions will still be but our own single judgment, and must be always left to the consideration of others, how far they are likely to be true. The greatest point will be to take care, that they be always in accordance with that which alone is authority on such topics. The sacred volume must be our compass and our intellectual pilot in these: nothing that is in contradiction to this, in what concerns the laws and dealings of its grand object towards mankind, ought to be regarded as entitled to our belief. It is my earnest desire that my inferences should never be at variance with it, as it is the only safe guide we can obtain on such subjects. Divested of this, we should have no criterion of any truth upon them; but every thing would be in as much doubt and obscurity, as it was in the days of Carneades and Epicurus: and our opinions on God and nature, if it had not enlightened the human mind, would have continued to be as absurd as they were, before the dissemination of divine truth had given new light to the judgment, new principles to the reason, and new motives and sympathies to the human heart.

A new form of human nature from that time began to arise, in individual after individual, which enlarged in every subsequent age, until it attained those new features which distinguished the sixteenth century, and which have been increasing in beauty, dignity, and expansion ever since. Compare now the enlightened men of Europe with those of the greatest nations of antiquity, and you will find the contrast to be most striking.*

*The Phenicians were distinguished before the Greeks, who derived their letters from them; and yet the Tyrians, when attacked by enemies, chained the images of their gods to their altars, that they might not abandon their city. Others, when they sent their divinities to be washed, or to undergo a purifying lustration, exacted sureties for their return. The Romans, as wise, are alleged by some of their historians to have had chants and incantations, by which they could draw away to themselves the gods of their enemies.-Plut. Rom. Quæst. c. 61.

Anaxagoras, Democritus, and Metrodorus, thought the sun a mass of iron, or a stone on fire.-Plut. Plac. 1. ii. c. 20. Anaximander talked of his having respiration, c. 21. The Stoics mentioned his passing through a tract for his aliment; and this was the ocean or the earth, on whose exhalations he feeds, c. 23.

On surveying the events of human history from the creation, the great outlines of what has occurred to mankind in the ages before us, may be distinguished into some general heads, of which the following shall be the first subjects of our consideration.

The geological construction of the body of the globe, as

The Pythagoreans believed the moon to be inhabited, but maintained that the living creatures in it were much larger than ours, and at least fifteen times stronger. The plants also as much more beautiful, c. 30. While Plutarch himself thought that our souls were made out of the moon, and would therefore return to it. He disclaims the imputation that he thought the moon to be dead matter, without either soul or mind, p. 1723. He also tells us that some think its inhabitants hang by the head to it, or, like Ixion, are tied fast to it, that its motions may not shake them from it; and that it ought not to seem surprising that a lion fell out of it into the Peloponnesus.--De. Fac. Lun. v. iii. p. 1728.

As to the stars, Anaxagoras supposed the sky in its revolution to catch up stones from the earth, and then setting them on fire, they became the stars While Xenophanes contended that they were inflamed clouds, quenched during the day, and lighted again like coals every night, and that this explained their setting and rising, c. 13. Archelaus made them redhot earthen plates.--Stob. Ed. c. 25. p. 53. Heraclitus insisted that they were living creatures, nourished by exhalations from the earth.Plut. 1. ii. c. 17. Aristotle asserted that celestial bodies did not require nourishment; but Plato thought the stars did receive it.-Ib.

In like manner Seneca says, "From the earth arise aliments to all animals, to all plants, and to all the stars. Hence it is that so many stars are maintained; as eager for their pasture as they are hard worked both by day and night."--Nat. Qu. ii. c. 5. Lucan says, "We believe that the sun and pole feed on the ocean." Pliny had no doubt about it. "Sidera, vero, haud dubiè, humore terreno pasci."-L. ii, c. 6. And even Ptolemy mentions that the body of the moon is moister and cooler than that of the other planets, from the vapours that are exhaled to it out of the earth. -1 Apostel.

We have arraigned the fathers and some bishops for opposing the Antipodes; but Aristotle and Pliny alike denied them. So did Lucretius. So Plutarch makes one of his speakers ask, as a great falsehood, "Do they not say that it is inhabited by Antipodes, who cling to it by the lower parts of their bodies, like worms or cats?"-De Fac. Lun. 1703.

We laugh at some modern savages who, with drums, and cymbals, and shoutings, make all the noise they can when the moon is in an eclipse, to hinder some supposed monster from devouring it. But the Romans were not more philosophical; for they thought the moon was then in maternal labour, and sounded all their brazen instruments, and presented to her all the fires they could make by torches and lamps, to ease her in her sufferings.--Plut. Vit. Emil. Propertius alludes to this. So does Ovid, Met. 1. iv.; and Pliny, 1. ii. c. 12. It must have continued almost down to Juvenal's time, as he alludes to it,

"Jam nemo tubas atque æra satiget; Una laboranti poterit succurrere Lunæ."

Sat. vi. v. 44.

it was to remain as long as the earth should last ;* and the formation of its primitive surface, and the superincumbent atmosphere, into that state which would best suit the nature and condition of mankind, as the Deity meant them to be in the first period of their existence, with a vegetation and animal system corresponding thereto, were first completed.

This completion was accompanied by the selection of a particular part of the surface to be a garden of great beauty and abundance, with every plant and tree that would most please and gratify the eye and taste, in order to be the first residence of the created pair of human beings, from whom, in due time, all others were to descend; but this place was to be their abode only so long as they should choose to obey him, and be guided by him.

The next events were, the removal of Adam and Eve, upon their disobedience, from their garden of Eden into the general world; and the descent of two races of human beings from them, one of which began with an ancestor, who, having destroyed his brother, separated from his paternal family, and became the founder of a distinct population. With these the first arts that are noticed originated. This line in time became united with the other, but the improved civilization of both led to such a relaxation of all the moral duties, that the social world became full of violence and corruption, and the termination of this state and mode of existence of human beings, was resolved upon and effected by their Creator, by the instrumentality of a universal deluge.

By the operation of this destructive revolution, the ancient surface and state of the earth were changed, and a new surface was in most parts imposed, suited to the existence of the renewed human population, for the production of which one chosen family was specially reserved.

But this new population of the earth was appointed to begin under new laws of nature, both in themselves and in external things. An essential modification of their own vitality took place in the contraction of human life to one tenth of its former duration: and great alterations in the condition and agencies of the material world must have followed the deposition and distribution of the new rocks and

Genesis ix. v. 11.