ductive seed; the seed became an egg, bright as goldand in that egg he was born himself, in the form of Brahme, the great forefather of all spirits. (The waters are called Nara, or the Spirit of God; and since they were his first Ayana or place of motion, he thence is named NARAYANA, or moving on the waters). According to Sanchoniatho, "the wind" (To Tvεvua), whether the black air before spoken of, or some more vital principle alluded to in that intervening passage Fourmont conjectures lost, "embraces chaos and thus generates Mot or Mud, and from Mot sprang all the seed of creation and the genesis of all things." In the Lamaic creed, golden clouds clash together in space, and pour down deluges of rain, whence is produced a mighty sea. On this sea, by degrees, appears a foam; and from this foam come forth all living creatures and with them man; and from man, man's Burchan or the Gods. 6 In all these cosmogonies water' plays a principal part, and it would be no difficult matter to trace out the analogies which gave it this eminent place among so many of the olden nations; but the most striking of them would be to all superfluous, and the more hidden and subtle to the many doubtful. I therefore pass on to the religious tendencies of these cosmogonies. In the two last, the world and all things else are clearly the results of chance. There is no intelligent principle to mould into any preconceived forms the fermenting mass. * I have not omitted this verse, because the expressions it uses closely resemble those of our own Scripture. But it seems to me so little connected with the rest of the passage, such a merely parenthetical observation, that I cannot help regarding it as the addendum of some later transcriber. 5 See Fourmont, Anciens Peuples, vol. i. See Pallas, ut supra, and compare with this Lamaic cosmogony the episodes from the Mahabharat, Sun, and moon, and stars, relating to the churning of the ocean for the purpose of obtaining the Amreeta. In this way were produced the moon, and the goddess of fortune, and of wine, and the white horse, and the tree of plenty, and the cow that grants every heart's desire.-From the Bhagavad, by Wilkins, p. 148. 7 That water plays also its part in the Chinese cosmogony, see Des Guignes, Chou-king, Discours Prel. vol. i, p. 10. shine forth,-wherefore, none can discover: they are there, in the broad heaven, beautiful by accident; parts of one great scheme, and dependent one on the other, and mutually lending support to each other, and all by accident. There is no intelligent principle, and man, whose soul rises above this world and its systems, and whose history is one continuous struggle for moral excellence, is but a spawn of the teeming sea, or the offspring of wind and of night-yes, man, whose intellect is so imbued with the sense of order that it abhors all accidents, is himself but a piece of the finest and most complicated machinery, the very quintessense of dust-an accident. There is no intelligent principle, and the very gods themselves, dwarfed down into the sons of men, or of mud, are but accidents of an accident, whose will is an accident, whose law is an accident, and whose favour is an accident. They are gods; but as they have been raised to their celestial thrones only by their superior power, or for extraordinary benefits, their simpler votaries either kneel to them from fear and not from a grateful sense of love, or from cupidity, and not to rise again new creatures with higher and purer objects to struggle for; and their wiser priests, atheists at heart, hypocrites by profession, take on them the vows and offices of religion for wealth, and honour, and glory, and not in order that by precept and exhortation and example, they may lead on others in the way to Heaven. With such cosmogonies, then, religion, metaphysically speaking, is impossible. But man is not always a consequent animal, and, in his infancy, he is less consequent than in his manhood. In error, he ever stops short of any glaring absurdity; he does not fear to stand in contradiction with himself. I can believe, therefore, that even where these cosmogonies have been generally' received, 8 Vide Fourmont, § 6, ut supra. Καὶ ἐξέλαμψε Μωτ ήλιος τε καὶ σε ληνη αστέρες τε καὶ αστρα μεγάλα. That they ever formed an essen tial part of the popular creed may well admit of a doubt. They have a false air of philosophy about them, against which the common-sense the religious feelings have been in some measure developed, and the higher aims of life, though indistinctly, perceived; and that man has never been altogether without God in the world. 1 The cosmogonies of Menu and of Moses recognize, each of them, an intelligent God. In both, the Creator begins His creation, moving upon the face of the waters. In the one, however, the genesis of Moses, He is the great, the only God; in the other, He is but the first creature. In Moses too, the creation is clearly distinguished from the Creator; God works upon chaos, moulds into form already existing materials. In Menu, on the other hand, as chaos existed only in the Divine mind, so creation is but the manifestation of the creator; Brahme is the soul of all beings; he produces various beings from his own substance, and the great All is but God under another form. In the former is laid the foundations of a great and true religion; in the latter, there is a tendency to both pantheism and polytheism: whether, however, the one will keep up to its first high promise, and whether the other will save itself from the errors to which it seems to lean, are questions which we may probably be enabled to answer in the course of our enquiries. 2 We now proceed to the order of creation. On the first day God created light. "Let there be light, and there was light." What this light might be, has naturally exercised the ingenuity of those learned commentators, who are as familiar with the creation and the counsels of God, of the mass would immediately rise; they probably contain the dreams of an infidel priesthood. 1 Vide note, page 1. Longinus, in a passage, the authenticity of which is disputed, much admires the sublime grandeur of this expression. Huetius, however, in his "Demonstratio Evangelica," and later writers, have endeavoured to show that it is no way sublime, because it is idio- as though they had been present at the one and were often called upon to take a share in the other. With one party this first light is but a dim glimmering, a sort of twilight or darkness visible; with a second, it is the bright Shekinah or the glorious presence; while with a third, it is that light, allowed to run wild probably, which is hereafter to be collected together into sun, moon, and stars.3 It is a light without a sun,-so much we know; and such a light both Menu and Zoroaster tell us of. According to the one, Brahme' has but to appear, and the gloom is dispelled; and according to the other, light is the dwelling place of Ormuzd, coeternal with him; Ormuzd, in fact, himself is light. Moses held, then, on this point, certainly no singular and probably none but popular, opinions. 5 But this sunless light produces morning and evening; hence other difficulties. For without a sun, morning and evening are inconceivable to all, save commentators, and they have made the matter very clear to us. Some of them, reducing the Spirit of God to a rushing and tempestuous wind, (the αέρα ζοφώδη καὶ πνευματωδη of Sanchoniathon) have sent the world revolving about its axis, and thus alternately meeting and losing the light which God had created over half its surface: others, on the contrary, have made the light to follow the spirit of God brooding or moving over the face of the waters. To each of these conjectures there is one objection; the first, supposes a theory of the earth which was not and could not be known to Moses; and the second, such a conception of the Deity as no rational mind can a moment entertain. But how then account for this morning and evening? Let us for 3 Dr. Adam Clarke (Comment.) thinks it no light, but latent heat. Moses seemingly was a chemist of the nineteenth century. See note 1, p. 1, from the Institutes of Menu. 5" As it is written in the law of the Mehestans, that Ormuzd, who is raised above all, was with sovereign knowledge, and with purity, in the light of the world. This throne of light, this dwelling-place of Ormuzd, is called the first light, and this sovereign science, this purity, production of Ormuzd."Boun. Dehesch, § i. 6 Vide note 2, p. 10, and consult Simon, Hist. Crit. du Vieux Testament, lib. iii, c. iii. get our knowledge and our systems, let us bring to the writings of an infant people, an infantine mind, infantine trust, and the previous existence of light will quite suffice to make morning and evening very possible. "And God divided the light' from the darkness: and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night." Is this night a created, or is it the original, the chaotic, darkness? In the Persian creed, so abhorrent of darkness, night and sleep are celestial, proceeding from Ormuzd; and in Moses, God nowhere gives a name, save to his creatures. 8 Second day (v. 6 and 8): " And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." Similarly, in the cosmogony of Menu,' Brahme divides the egg into equal parts, and from its halves produces the heaven and the earth; and similarly too, in that of Berossus, Belus or Jupiter divided the darkness in the midst, and separated heaven and earth from each other, and reduced all things to order.”1 "Let there be a firmament." "Firmament," in the Hebrew "expansion," to which our "heaven-that which is heaved or thrown up" (according to Horne Tooke), pretty nearly answers. Firmament corresponds with the word used by the Septuagint, σTEPEwμa, and expresses the meaning which the Alexandrian translators attached to the heaven of Moses and, I think, the meaning of 7 So Belus is represented by Be rossus, μεσον τέμοντα το σκότος. Cory's Ancient Fragments, p. 25. 866 Qui a donné aux ténèbres la lumière protectrice? Qui a donné à la terre le sommeil pour protection? à l'esclave la nuit pour guide? trois choses qui sont célestes et grandes." In a note to this passage of the Zend, Anquetil observes, “La nuit a paru après la guerre des dieux avec les Izeds, mais elle ne vient pas du mauvais prin cipe, puisqu'elle est céleste.”Zend. vol. ii, p. 190, Ha 43. 9 Vide note 1, p. 1. 1 Τον δε Βηλον ὅν Δια μεθερμη νευουσι, μεσον τεμοντα το οκοτος χωρισαι γῆν καὶ ουρανον απ' αλληλων, καὶ διατάξαι του κόσμου. Cory, ut supra. Anaxagoras has the same notion: avта xonμara ην ὁμοῦ, ειτα νους ελθων αυτα διεкоoμηoε. 2 In Hebrew" Samaim," which Bochart (Canaan lib. ii, c. ii.) translates "heights." |