bal description for
artistic purposes which must have rendered _vision_, or, in other words,
optical representation, imperative in the case of Moses. Some of our
most sober minded commentators take virtually the same view of this
necessity of vision for ensuring the production of the true pattern of
the Tabernacle. "The Lord," says Thomas Scott, "not only directed Moses
by words how to build the Tabernacle and form its sacred furniture, but
showed him a model exactly representing the form of every part, and the
proportion of each to all the rest." There must have been clear optical
vision in the case,--"vision without dark speeches." Such, too, was the
character of other of the Mosaic visions, besides that of the "pattern"
seen in the Mount. The burning bush, for instance, was a vision
addressed to the eye; and seemed to come so palpably under the ordinary
optical laws, that the prophet _drew near_ to examine the extraordinary
phenomena which it exhibited.

The visual or optical character of _some_ of the revelations made to
Moses thus established, the writer goes on to inquire whether that
special revelation which exhibits the generations of the heavens and
earth in their order was not a visual revelation also. "Were the words
that Moses wrote," he asks, "merely impressed upon his mind? Did he hold
the pen, and another dictate? Or did he see in vision the scenes that he
describes? The freshness and point of the narrative," he continues, "the
freedom of the description, and the unlikelihood that Moses was an
unthinking machine in the composition, all indicate that he saw in
vision what he has here given us in writing. _He is describing from
actual observation._" The writer remarks in an earlier portion of his
treatise, that all who have adopted the theory advocated in the previous
lecture,--the "Two Records," which was, I may state, published in a
separate form, ere the appearance of his work, and which he does me the
honor of largely quoting,--go upon the supposition that things during
the Mosaic days are described as they would appear to the eye of one
placed upon earth; and he argues that, as no man existed in those
distant ages, a reason must be assigned for this _popular_ view of
creation which the record is rightly assumed to take. And certainly, if
it was in reality a view described from actual vision, the fact would
form of itself an adequate reason. What man had actually seen, though
but in dream or picture, wo