CHAOS and CREATION. PASSAGE. AND THE EARTH WAS WITHOUT FORM, AND VOID, AND DARKNESS WAS UPON THE FACE OF THE DEEP; AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED UPON THE WATERS. THE HE true fublime of language opens upon us in this paffage. It is Truth arrayed in the decorations of oriental poetry. The earth was without form: it was the reign of Chaos and old Night; matter and motion were in the utmost diforder; no diftin&tion, no harmony, no regularity; all those materials, which were presently commanded to compofe an according system, were void. In this verse, as through a mirrour, methinks I fee this now delightful univerfe, in a state of anarchy I look, as it were, into the regions of the paft, and am ftruck with a view of things, before the beginning. How wide, how infinite the confufion! a promiscuous mifcellany of atoms, and all the treasures of a world tumbled together, without use or beauty. But the thick gloom obstructs my furvey, and yet I behold, or think I behold, the mighty and immortal SPIRIT, moving upon the waters. The waters hear and obey; the mighty work of wonders is begun; let fuch, therefore, as are able to feel the aweful scene exhibited in this verse, indulge their admiration by reading the next, which displays at once omnipotence and benignity! AND GOD SAID LET THERE BE LIGHT, AND THERE WAS LIGHT. There is no reading this without a tremor of veneration: there is no thinking upon it, without astonishment! It is, at once, fo amazing an inftance of power and kindness, of tenderness and authority, that, one knows not which attribute most to reverence. It is one of the shortest paffages in the whole Bible, exhibiting, at the fame time, the noblest image, with magnificence and fimplicity and, indeed, the best moderns have copied and imitated, at whatever distance, the graces of the fcriptures. Those authors relate actions which are to excite inftantaneous admiration, by a fingle line, and very frequently by a fingle expreffion. It was not to be fuppofed, that the fubject before us fhould efcape poetical imitation. Let us look at certain paffages in fome of our English bards, to fee with what fuccefs.-Milton takes the lead: Let there be light, faid God, and forthwith light Let us clear the road of criticifin, as we go along. Is not this, at beft, beating poetically, about it and about it? We confefs, we feel, the scenery of the east, the airy gloom, the radient cloud, &c. but ftill, the second verfe* is a verfe of mere epithets ; B 2 * Etherial, firft of things, quinteffence pure. it it delays the grand truth, which by fuch protraction comes, at the end of a fourth felf is in no degree laboured, The paffage it Let there be light, and there was light. On the contrary, the brevity conftitutes, Confufion heard his voice, and wild uproar "Till, at his fecond bidding, darkness fled, But this is not, however, equally concife: Cowley Cowley fays, They fung how God spoke out the world's vaft ball, From nothing, and from no where, call'd forth all. This is too quaint: it looks like a witticifm, a kind of conceited punning, upon all and nothing, everywhere and no where. Pope's famous line, God faid let Newton be, and all was light. Is evidently borrowed from the noble paffage under confideration, but is a forced compliment carried to the border of impiety; and, when compared with the original, fhrinks to nothing. What were the talents, philofophy, or difcoveries of Newton; or what his obfervations or experiments; what, indeed, the confequence of the greatest individual to the actual exiftence, œconomy, and establishment of light, of light brought inftantaneously forth at the commanding fiat of the omnipotent? Read the paffages together. |