42

MOSES UNCONTRADICTED.

in his Timæus, had laid it down as a maxim, that it was difficult to find the author and creator of the Universe, and if found, impossible (probably from the inveteracy of polytheism) to discover him to all the world; and yet we have an apostle of the crucified Jesus, boldly discoursing of the one true and holy God, in the very sanctuary, as it were, of polytheism; for so Athens was certainly accounted, and as St. Paul himself probably meant to insinuate, when he told them that he perceived they were, "in all things too superstitious,” δεισιδαιμονεστερους, which perhaps has been better rendered 'exceedingly addicted to the worship of invisible powers.'

Considering then, that in the judgment of most wise persons, the history of man is, as Paul represented it to be; that the Hebrew or Scripture chronology, is, at this moment, admitted to be the surest guide we have, and that after all the researches that have been made on the globe, as we are now able to affirm, nothing of authentic history has been discovered to invalidate (as far as regards man at least) the Mosaic account of the origin of things, we may well conclude; we may indeed be certain, that nothing less than divine inspiration, could have given St. Paul confidence enough to insist upon so low an era for the origin of man, or to point out ADAM as the head and progenitor of the whole human race, to the polished nations of Greece and Rome; the risk of contradiction must have been too great. The expression so often referred to, as in Adam ALL die," does so expressly carry us back to the Mosaic history, that there we are bound to make our stand. If St. Paul were right in his theology, Moses must have been correct in point of history, and both together

66

GENTILE COMPUTATIONS.

43

conspire to give us such a view of sublunary events and transactions, as will be found, I should think, to exceed in interest all that can be possibly supplied from other sources, as to the connection subsisting between heaven and earth, or in fact, between GOD and man.

We may not suppose that St. Paul knew nothing of the extravagant computations of the Gentile nations, because we have three remarkable instances of their being known to persons as nearly as possible, his contemporaries; Cicero just before him, and Diodorus Siculus, having referred to the Chaldean records for a computation of, at the least 470,000 years, and Josephus in his Tract against Apion, having cited both Manetho and Berosus, authors particularly implicated in the charge of falsification and premeditated perplexities.

It must be very evident that St. Paul as well as Moses, if uninspired, must have written at great hazard of contradiction, ignorant as he must have been of many unexplored regions of the globe; for in some of those regions, had the human race been older than he asserts, it could not but be possible, that more ancient records might come to be discovered, or some descendants of a pre-adamitical race be found: how much of the globe St. Paul might know we cannot pretend, nor is it necessary to ascertain: but it is rather remarkable, that we could nearly ascertain what he could not know, that is, what still remained to be explored. Two of the most diligent geographers of antiquity having been, as nearly as could be, the contemporaries of Paul, I speak of Strabo and Dionysius, whose works are well known, and from whom we have certainly derived as much geographical knowledge as could at that time

44

ON THE BOOK OF GENESIS.

cerned, to amount to this; the parts he describes were bounded on the north by the Baltic, on the east by the Ganges, on the south by the mouth of the river Senegal, and on the west by Spain. All the rest of the globe he seems himself to have acknowledged to be terra incognita, of which nothing but falsehoods had been reported to him.

This is sufficient to show that it must have been at very great hazard of contradiction, while so much of the globe was yet unknown, that St. Paul could have ventured to refer the most learned people of Europe, the Greeks and the Romans, to the Jewish records for the only true history of the world; and the observation would apply still more strongly to Moses; had the latter not been inspired, I do not say he could not have written what he has delivered, of the origin of the earth and of man, but this I do say, in which I have the support of Grotius and many others, that he could not have written it without such probability of contradiction and exposure, when the parts of the globe unknown to him should come to be explored, that it seems to be almost a moral impossibility, knowing all that we now know of the inhabited regions of the globe, and the absolute failure of all authentic conflicting or contradictory records, that any thing short of Divine inspiration could have supplied him with the information contained in the Book of Genesis. The most surprising, and yet the most credible book extant, all things considered, more credible certainly from the very extraordinary confirmation it received from our Saviour and his apostles, the apostle to the Gentiles particularly. For to what did this confirmation, let me ask, amount? No less than to a second inspired or Divine assurance, that the true history of

45

ST. LUKE'S AGREEMENT WITH ST. PAUL. the earth and of man, in their connection with each other, is only to be found in the Jewish records; thereby over-ruling and superseding all the fond conceits of the Egyptians, Chaldæans, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans, by revealing to them this great truth, that the progenitor of the whole human race was Adam, that Adam, by whose disobedience sin entered into this portion of the universe, and death by sin.

And as St. Paul (it may be added), thus ventured to speak of Adam, to the most polished of the Gentile nations, so did his companion, St. Luke, in the Gospel which he wrote, for the use of the Gentiles in Egypt and Greece, carry back the genealogy of the Saviour of the world to the first man; a remarkable coincidence when duly considered, whether that Gospel was written before St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians or long after, as seems to be the more general opinion. If before, it was a fit preparation for St. Paul's account of things; if after, a strong and very direct confirmation of it. St. Matthew's genealogy, designed for the Jews, ascends no higher than to the legal descent of the Messias from Abraham and David, in accordance with their prophecies and expectations; St. Luke, on the contrary, carries back the genealogy through his mother to ADAM, that the Gentiles might be sure that he was that "seed of the woman," who was to "bruise the serpent's head," and become the propitiation for the sins of the whole world.

It may still be asked, what effect had St. Paul's account of matters on the learned Greeks? for on the unlearned, impressions may be made, especially religious impressions, by statements little calculated to

46

WHITE'S BAMPTON LECTURE.

ings is very different from an appeal to facts. We see, however, that Christianity makes her appeal to both. The most enthusiastic may find in Christianity enough to satisfy their fondest expectations, while in point of history she defies contradiction.

Removed as we are from the Mosaic era of the creation by as many perhaps as six or seven thousand years, and from the commencement of the Christian era, by more than eighteen hundred, it is easy to say (though indeed these periods of time are nothing to what we shall have to speak of, when treating of the modern geological histories of the earth), but it is easy to say, that in such a lapse of years as the above amount to, so many ancient records must have perished and been lost, that it is absurd to expect, that in our days, any questions relating to the origin of the earth or of man can be satisfactorily decided. That St. Paul being a Jew, naturally adopted the chronology of the Hebrews, without overmuch inquiry or examination, and made converts only of those who were incompetent to such researches: I shall hope to be able to show that nothing could be farther from the truth.

The first answer I shall give, will be merely to copy the following eloquent description of the state of things from Professor White's very celebrated Bampton Lecture.

"At the time when Christ appeared, the Roman empire had reached the meridian of its glory. It was the illustrious period, when power and policy receiving aid from learning and science, and embellishments from the orators and the poets, gave law to the world, directed its taste, and even controlled its opinions. It was the age when inquiry was awake and