pecially required to be explicit as
to the origin of the earth and all things therein. Its peculiar dogma
is that of one only God, the Creator, requiring the sole homage of his
creatures. The heathen for the most part acknowledged in some form a
supreme god, but they also gave divine honors to subordinate gods, to
deceased ancestors and heroes, and to natural phenomena, in such a
manner as practically to obscure their ideas of the Creator, or
altogether to set aside his worship. The influence of such idolatry
was the chief antagonism which the Hebrew monotheism had to encounter;
and we learn from the history of the nation how often the worshippers
of Jehovah were led astray by its allurements. To guard against this
danger, it was absolutely necessary that no place should be left for
the introduction of polytheism, by placing the whole work of creation
and providence under the sole jurisdiction of the One God. Moses
consequently takes strong ground on these points. He first insists on
the creation of all things by the fiat of the Supreme. Next he
specifies the elaboration and arrangement of all the powers of
inanimate nature, and the introduction of every form of organic
existence, as the work of the same First Cause. Lastly, he insists on
the creation of a primal human pair, and on the descent from them of
all the branches of the human race, including of course those
ancestors and magnates who up to his time had been honored with
apotheosis; and on the same principle he explains the golden age of
Eden, the fall, the cherubic emblems, the deluge, and other facts in
human history interwoven by the heathen with their idolatries. He thus
grasps the whole material of ancient idolatry, reduces it within the
compass of monotheism, and shows its relation to the one true
primitive religion, which was that not only of the Hebrews, but of
right that of the whole world, whose prevailing polytheism consisted
in perversions of its truth or unity. For such reasons the early
chapters of Genesis are so far from being of the character of
digressions from the scope and intention of the book, that they form a
substratum of doctrine absolutely essential to the Hebrew faith, and
equally so to its development in Christianity.

The references to nature in the Bible, however, and especially in its
poetical books, far exceed the absolute requirements of the reasons
above stated; and this leads to another and very interesting view,
namely, the t