CHAPTER IV.

The first chapter of Genesis does not seem to be correctly understood either by the infidels or christians. They appear to be under the impression that Moses is to be understood as asserting that the order of creation corresponded with that of his narration. Hence, says the infidel, God did not, according to Moses, make the sun and stars till the fourth day; and then he asks, how could there have been day and night previously— and the christian cannot answer him. In the first verse, Moses lays down the general position that God made the heaven and the earth, the particulars of which creation or generation he is about to give. He then makes another general assertion in the 3d and 4th verses, respecting light and its division, in these words "And God said let there be light and there was light." "And God saw the light that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness." Into what and how many portions he divided the light, we are not told, until we arrive at the 14th verse.— After this general statement, respecting light, he proceeds to speak of the firmament and the division of the waters. The following arrangement would have been more lucid, which the christians may adopt if they please; I am indifferent about it. Commencing at the 3d verse and reading in the following order. "And God said let there be light and there was light;" then the 6 and 7. 4. 5. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. changing the word lights, in the 14th, 15th and 16th verses, to luminaries. By this arrangement God does not call the firmament, heaven, until he sets the sun, moon, and stars in it. However, as before said, I am perfectly indifferent about it, my object at present being to ascertain what Moses meant by the word day. The learned christians and Jews of ancient days understood, and the unlearned, of the present day, yet understand and believe, that the word day, in this chapter, meant what we mean by it in common parlance, viz: twenty-four hours, or the time of the apparent revolution of the sun around the earth. But the geological christians of the present day, tell us Moses meant no such thing, and that the proper translation of the Hebrew word instead of day, should be epoch or period; for by their researches, the geologists have ascertained that the earth must have existed ages and ages or epochs upon epochs before Adam is said to have been created.

In order to test the propriety of this translation, let us substitute the expression, epoch of six thousand years, for the word day, whenever it

occurs in this first chapter of Genesis, sometimes called Moses' cosmogany. Geologists agree, that each epoch may have been, at least, six thousand years.

"And God called the light an epoch of six thousand years, and the darkness he called night."

"And the evening and the morning were the first epoch of six thousand years."

"And God said let there be lights (luminaries) in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the epoch of six thousand years from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for epochs of six thousand years, and for years."

"And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the epoch of six thousand years and over the night."

"And God made two great luminaries, the greater to rule over the epoch of six thousand years."

"And God blessed the seventh epoch of six thousand years," &c.

This is enough. Can any man in his senses believe that Moses did not mean by the word "day," just what we mean by it? And if it be indubitably trục, as the christian geologists admit it is, that the earth must have existed, and vegetables and animals upon it, myriads of years before man appeared upon it, what must we think of this chapter of Moses, which represents God not only in the shape of a man, but laboring, moulding clay, wearied, and resting like him. We must pronounce it not only false, but a farago of nonsense and irreverence that would disgrace a Hotentot.

man.

I am aware of your contending that the author did not mean to be understood in Gen. 1, 26, as speaking of the corporeal, but the spiritual His words are "And God said let us make man in our image after our likeness." And he then tells us, that God created man in his own shape. And again, he gives us the particulars how and of what God created man. "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground. And he breathed into this peice of organized earth called man, and then, and not till then, this man became a living soul; or what you call a spiritual man. By what right, then, do you presume to say that the author did not mean the carnal, corporeal, physical man, when he tells us that God made him after his likeness. If all this cosmogany and homogany is mere allegory—a mere fiction—a creature of the imagination, the whole point is conceded to us. I have nothing further to say about it than to pronounce it a weak and puerile attempt to degrade the Creator of the universe. But your whole system is founded on

the supposition that all is literal-that God actually took up clay in his hands and moulded man as a potter moulds a vessel--that he puffed breath into his nostrils-that he placed him in a literal garden, although from the boundaries given, it must have been as extensive as the Assyrian or Roman empire-that he literally forbade him to eat of a literal fruit growing on a literal tree-that he (man) did literally eat it—and that God literally detected him-had a literal interview with him—and upbraided him—literally walked himself in the garden, and actually made clothes of the skins of beasts and put them on the man and his help meat -that there was a literal serpent that talked as we talk. If these are not actual facts, then the fall of man, of which you talk so much, and which is the foundation of your whole system, is all a fiction.

CHAPTER V.

In this chapter I shall call the reader's attention to the subject of prophecy or prediction. It is alleged, by all of you, that certain devout Jews actually foretold events which transpired hundreds of years after the uttering of the prediction. The position is, that they obtained this knowledge of the future by direct and immediate communications from the Almighty, or, that they spoke, as irresistibly moved by God or his Spirit, not being aware themselves, of the import of what they spoke or wrote. Let me remark, in the first place, that a prophesy cannot prove a fact, or, with propriety, be quoted to prove it. To illustrate: If I state a wonderful fact, would my quoting a prediction of another individual, that this identical fact would occur, tend in the least to confirm my statement. If, for instance, you should predict, and publish your prediction in all the papers of the day, that some man in the Mississippi valley should, in the course of ten or fifteen years, grow fifty feet high in one night, and continue so for four or five days, and then sink back to his original diminutive dimensions; and if twelve years afterwards, I should publicly declare, through our towns, that I had grown to that gigantic height, and remained so four or five days, and then sunk back; do you think the people would believe me? You will admit they would not, even if backed by four or ten of my neighbors. They would say "It is more probable that you and your backers state falsely, than that you grew fifty feet high in one night.” If, then, I should quote your prophesy to confirm my statement, could they not with propriety reply, "You asked our belief in the first instance in one miracle, now you demand it in two; for your growing to this immense height, in so short a time, and sinking back again in statu quo, we will call one, and this man's prediction must be another. Did this prediction tend in the least to prove that the fact would happen, and can it then prove or tend to prove, that it has happened? No first prove your fact, if you can, by legitimate testimony-the only testimony by which a fact can be proved—namely, by that of witnesses who saw it or other facts inconsistent with the non-happening of the fact in question. And when you have thus proved your fact, we will believe that he who foretold it is a prophet inspired of God." This is good logic, and the principle established by this argument is, that a prediction cannot prove a fact, but the fact may prove the inspiration of the prophet.

Some of you being aware of the correctness of this reasoning, assert, that one Jewish prophesy, uttered more than two thousand years ago, is

verrified before our eyes--that the present dispersed state of the Jews is its perpetual fulfilment or proof of its truth. That the Jews are dis

persed, I admit to the extent that it is asked, and that their situation is just such as you describe; but I deny that their present dispersion and miserable condition were ever foretold by any Jew called a prophet, or any other person. I go further, and assert, and will prove from the bible itself, that this dispersion and miserable condition, so far from being prophesied of, are in direct contradiction of the whole drift of the writings called prophesies. In this argument, I am willing to proceed on the supposition, that Moses wrote Leviticus and Deutreonomy, and that he actually or truly prophesied. In order that my readers may fully understand and appreciate my argument, they ought to be made acquainted with certain facts in the Jewish history, as given by---nobody knows who-in the books entitled Kings and Chronicles. I will, therefore, take up my succinct history of the Israelites where I left it, and continue it down to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.

After leaving Egypt, they (the Israelites) continued under Moses in Arabia for forty years. The major part of my readers may be aware, but I know many christians are not, that Moses told the Israelites that God had renewed to him the promise that he had made to Abraham, viz: that his (Abraham's) progeny should possess the land of Canaan, and that he (Moses) was leading them to that country, which God had promised to enable them to conquer. What a conquest this was to be! nothing that breathed was to be left alive, and this wanton destruction Moses told them, was at the command of God! What notions the author must have had of God? No other cause is pretended to be assigned, but such as the bloody saints, Cortez and Pizarro, gave for the extermination of the innocent and virtuous Aboriginies. They were of a different religion-their God had not the same name--they worshipped by different sacrifices. I will mention here, that the land of Goshen, from which the Israelites departed, was adjacent to the land of Canaan, and that it is not more than twenty days march from the banks of the Nile to Jerusalem. Bonaparte led his army the whole of this route in less time no doubt, (Jaffa formerly Joppa,) where he is said to have murdered his prisoners, being not more than forty miles from Jerusalem. Moses died before his army invaded Canaan; and Joshua became their leader in this bloody enterprize. He fulfilled the pretended commands of God to the letter. The history of this people, from this time to the crowning of Saul, a period of about four hundred years, can be read in the books entitled Joshua, Judges, and part of Samuel. Their government was a theocracy, that is. God himself was said to be their temporal sovereign or king..