Viewed as the ground-work of all future revelations, if any defect or false position were discovered in his relation of things, that would deprive his history of credibility, and decisively prove him to have been led by the sallies of a vain and heated imagination, and not the Spirit of the living God. But of this there was no danger; and, as a distinguished author pertinently observes, “from the book of Genesis, almost all the ancient philosophers, astronomers, chronologists, and historians, have taken their respective _data_: and all the modern improvements and accurate discoveries in different arts and sciences have only served to confirm the facts detailed by Moses, and to show, that all the ancient writers on these subjects, have approached to, or receded from truth, and the phenomena of nature, in the exact proportion as they have followed the Mosaic history.” As a writer, Moses does not attack other systems, formed on this or that hypothesis; but in a simple and incontrovertible narrative, acquaints us with the origin of matter, and the progressive formation and completion of the solar system. The Scriptures inform us, that Moses was privileged to converse with God “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend,” and from him received clear and manifest revelations, not by visions, ecstasies, dreams, inward inspirations, or the mediation of angels, but familiarly and with confidence, by articulate sounds, in his own language. The Lord said, “With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold.” God being a Spirit, has neither shape nor parts, consequently is invisible, and cannot be seen by eyes of flesh: he is the most simple essence. When he speaks of himself as having a face, mouth, eyes, hands, &c, he adapts his language to our capacities, designing to express by these figures the perfections of his nature; but he is really one undivided essence. That which Moses saw, was only the _Shekinah_, a glorious brightness, the symbol of the Divine presence, and not the essence, which is invisible. In giving an account of the true origin of things, he attends particularly to the _mode_, _agent_, and _time_ of their being produced. His history commences with the creation of matter, “In the beginning.” Before the creative acts mentioned by him, all was eternity. _Time_ signifies _duration_ measured by the revolutions of the heavenly bodies; but prior to the creation of these bodies, there could be no measurement of duration, and consequently no _time_; therefore, “In the beginning,” must necessarily mean the commencement of time which followed, or rather was produced by God’s creative acts, as an effect follows, or is produced by a cause.