uld of course be described _as seen by man_:
like all human history, it would, to borrow from Kurtz, be founded on
eye-witnessing; and the fact that the Mosaic record of creation is
_apparently_ thus founded, affords a strong presumption that it was in
reality revealed, not by dictation, but by vision.

Nor, be it remembered, has the recognition of a purely _optical_
character in the revelation been restricted to the assertion of any one
theory of reconciliation. It was as certainly held by Chalmers and Dr.
Pye Smith, as by Dr. Kurtz and the author of this treatise; nay, it has
been recognized by not a few of their opponents also. Granville Penn,
for instance, does not scruple to avow his belief, in his elaborate
"Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaic Geologies," that both sun and moon
were created on the first day of creation, though they did not become
"_optically_ visible" until the fourth. "In truth, that the fourth day
only rendered visible the sidereal creation of the first day, is
manifested," he says, "by collating the transactions of the two days. On
the first day, we are told generally, 'God divided the light, or day,
and the darkness, or night;' but the physical agents which he employed
for that division are not there declared. On the fourth day, we are told
referentially, 'God commanded the lights [or luminaries] for dividing
day and night, to give their light upon earth.' Here, then, it is
evident from the retrospective implication of the latter description,
that the lights or luminaries for dividing day and night, which were to
give their light upon the earth for the first time on the fourth day,
were the unexpressed physical agents by which God divided the day and
night on the first day." Now, whatever may be thought of Mr. Penn's
argument here, there can be no doubt that it demonstrates at least his
own belief in the purely optical character of the Mosaic account of the
sidereal creation. It is an account, he held, not of what God wrought on
the first day in the heavens, but of what a human eye would have seen on
the fourth day from the earth. And Moses Stuart, in his philological
assault on the geologists, is scarce less explicit in his avowal of a
similar belief. "Every one sees," he says, "that to speak of the sun as
rising and setting, is to describe, in common parlance, what appears
_optically_, that is, to our sensible view, as reality. But the history
of creation is a different affair. In ONE RESPECT,