'Such a description of the creative vision of Moses as the one given by Milton of that vision of the future which he represents as conjured up before Adam by the archangel, would be a task rather for the scientific poet than for the mere practical geologist or sober theologian. Let us suppose that it took place far from man, in an untrodden recess of the Midian desert, ere yet the vision of the burning bush had been vouchsafed; and that, as in the vision of St. John in Patmos, voices were mingled with scenes, and the ear as certainly addressed as the eye. A "great darkness" first falls upon the prophet, like that which in an earlier age fell upon Abraham, but without the "horror"; and as the Divine Spirit moves on the face of the wildly troubled waters, as a visible aurora enveloped by the pitchy cloud, the great doctrine is orally enunciated, that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Unreckoned ages, condensed in the vision to a few brief moments, pass away; the creative word is again heard, "Let there be light," and straightway a grey diffused light springs up in the east, and, casting its sickly gleam over a cloud-limited expanse of steaming, vaporous sea, journeys through the heavens towards the west. One heavy sunless day is made the representative of myriads; the faint light waxes fainter--it sinks beneath the dim undefined horizon; the first scene of the drama closes upon the seer; and he sits a while on his hill-top in darkness, solitary but not sad, in what seems to be a calm and starless night.