establishment of a newspaper to advocate the views of the majority in the church. They suggested that the author of the pamphlet should be come the editor of the paper. Their proposals were accepted, and thus Hugh Miller was transferred from his desk in Cromarty to the editorship of the Witness in Edinburgh. The paper had the active support of an enthusiastic and numerous party, and is one of the very few journals that have paid their expenses from the commencement of their career. A number of able men were associated with the editor in contributing to the Witness, but his own papers always formed its principal attrac tion. They were written with great care, and their composition was often a laborious process. Thus the journal seldom referred to the topic of the day, and never in articles written by the editor. The Witness criticised its opponents in a caustic and severe style, and defended its supporters with the usual warmth, but with more than the usual talent. The first operation might have been safely neglected, and it was not useful to the party. Statements altogother indefensible were often made respecting individuals. They were more likely to alienate friends than to convert foes. The heat and passion of a great controversy may now extenuate those errors; and if the common practice of many other writers would have justified them, that justification was afforded. his character at that time. He became fully qualified for the duties of accountant in a local bank there, and he received the appointment. This period of his life embraced perhaps its happiest years; for his labours were comparatively light, his circumstances were easy, and the abundant leisure which he possessed was employed in adding to his general knowledge. He was thus engaged, and years were passing pleasantly and profitably with him; and he could have said with the Shunamite" I dwell among my own people," when the anti-patronage party in the Established Church of Scotland, and the parties who wished a compromise with "the evil thing," willing to keep the name without quite all the reality, carried the celebrated "veto law." This ecclesiastical enactment gave to communicants in a congregation the power to "veto" the patron's presentee. The reformers in the ecclesiastical courts argued that as patronage at a comparatively recent period had been imposed upon the Church of Scotland by the Imperial Parliament, against the conditions of the union between England and Scotland, they did not act harshly towards the patrons in limiting their right to present by the refusal of the people to receive. Indeed, the practice of the church, as recognised by the civil law, required two processes, unconnected with the patron, to render his presentation valid. The call of the people, and the trial of the Presbytery, were theoretically as much elements in obtaining a benefice as the presentation of the patron. The call of the people had become, indeed, in many parishes a ceremony or formality without vital influence. The ecclesiastical courts naturally supposed that the communicants would only forbid, by a solemn document and process the ordination of a presentee, in extreme cases. It was obviously a less offensive thing to choose a person unconnected with the patron of the parish than to reject his friend or protege, after the presentation had been issued. The scheme did not work agreeably. Towards the church its operations were advantageous, but to-acute and careful observer, aud he delineated what wards the patrons and their friends they were trou- he saw in clear and chaste language, but not in blesome. Therefore the civil courts endeavoured terms clearer or more eloquent than those in which to induct those presentées who were unpopular, he describes only what he imagined. and vetoed, both into the spiritualities and the temporalites of the living. A new question arose then. The Church of Scotland, unlike that of England, insisted that the civil courts had no power over its spiritual functions. The latter, however, ordered them to induct and ordain without reference to their own laws or the will of the people. These orders would have been obeyed by one party, and were resented by the majority. At an early stage of the controversy, a pamphlet was published in Edinburgh on the subject, in the form of a letter, addressed, if we correctly remember, to Lord Brougham. Among the common herd of pamphlets, it was apt to be lost; but the earnestness, and, perhaps, the sarcastic tone of the writer, rivetted the attention of some Edinburgh gentlemen, who had planned at that period the Mr. Miller was a Whig, or something more, but he never appears to have been deeply interested in political progress; although many able papers were contributed by him on sanatory and on social questions. His geological works undoubtedly occupied the greater portion of his time. His heart was more in them than in any of his other engagements. They abound with passages of sin gular beauty and eloquence, in his descriptions of fossil remains hidden for ages among the rocks, and excavated by that indomitable research which he applied to his favourite study. He was an The "Testimony of the Rocks" consists of twelve lectures of which the greater part were delivered to popular audiences, and some never have been read in public. One of these lectures is particularly devoted to a description of the manner in which Moses was inspired to write the first chapter of Genesis. The word translated "days" in that chapter is of course held to mean periods of long time, but of unequal duration. Moses is supposed in vision to have seen the changes on the earth's surface in a series of panoramic pictures, as they would have appeared to a living man stationed upon the globe. Each change of scenery is denoted by a day. We cannot doubt that the delineation of these pictures has been a weary work. It displays uncommon care, even in a volume where traces of great care SCRIPTURE AND GEOLOGY. are marked on every page. The result is not, we think, exceeded in any volume of the English language in its peculiar style. It is remarkably beautiful. With a resemblance to the descriptive matter in Rasselas, not in subject but in style only, it is superior as a specimen of artistic and finished writing. The resemblance does not cease there. It has the same foundation-in the imagination of the writer. It is not a logical deduction from any fact, but a captivating freak of fancy. A difficulty is by some persons supposed to exist in reconciling the statements of Scripture with the evidences of geology. The author of the "Testimony of the Rocks experienced no He, such difficulty, and we experience none. however, got over the apparent contradiction by a laborious process. Ours is easy, and, we think, rational. The canon of revelation is complete. Is the canon of geology complete ? On the contrary, we are told to expect more discoveries. We expect them in confidence and patience; but we refuse to decide upon incomplete and ever changing evidence. Finish the case, and then it may be examined profitably. Until then we refuse The follow to deal with it as perfect evidence. ing extract is a remarkable proof of the necessity of seeking truth without endeavouring to fit it into systems: It is a great fact, now fully established in the course of geological discovery, that between the plants which in the present time cover the earth, and the animals which inhabit it, and the animals and plants of the later extinct creations, there occurred no break or blank, but that, on the contrary, many of the existing organisms were contemporary during the morning of their being with many of the extinct ones during the evening of theirs. We know, further, that not a few of the shells which now live on our coasts, and several of even the wild animals which continue to survive amid our tracts of hill and forest, were in existence many ages ere the human age began. Instead of dating their beginning only a single natural day, or at most two natural days, in advance of man, they must have preceded him by many thousands of years. In fine, in consequence of that comparatively recent extension of geological facts, in the direction of the later systems and formations, through which we are led to know that the present creation was not cut off abruptly from the preceding one, but that, on the contrary, it dovetailed into it at a thousand different points, we are led also to know that any scheme of reconciliation which would separate between the recent and the extinct existences by a chaotic gulph of death and darkness, is a scheme which no longer meets the necessities of the case. Though perfectly adequate forty years ago, it has been greatly outgrown by the progress of geological discovery, and is, as I have said, adequate no longer, and it becomes a not unimportant matter to determine the special scheme that would bring into completest harmony the course of creation, as ascertained by the geologist, and that brief but sublime narrative of its progress which forms a meet introduction in holy writ to the history of the human family. The first question to which we must address ourselves in any such inquiry is of course a very obvious one,-What are the facts scientifically determined which now demand a new scheme of reconciliation. now In the days of Dr. Pye Smith and Dr. Chalmers, a mode of reconciliation was proposed which the advance of science renders useless now! In the days of some other personages the present, or any other scheme now devised may be set aside by new evidence. The facts now stated may be correct, and yet the inferences may be loose and useless. The periods affixed by this author to the changes in the earth which he describes, are thousands of years in some places, and myriads of ages in others. A science that leaves such margins in its chronology has yet to be reduced to order; and is chaos itself. In spite of these slight differences the lecturer felt no difficulty in dismissing Dr. Pye Smith's scheme. The scheme of reconciliation adopted by the late Dr. Pye Smith, though, save in one particular, identified as I have said with that of Dr. Chalmers, is made in virtue of its single point of difference, to steer clear of the difficulty. Both schemes exhibit the creation recorded in Genesis as aa event which took place about six thousand years ago, both describe it as begun and completed in six natural days, and both represent it as cut off from a previously existing creation by a chaotic period of death and darkness. But while, according to the scheme of Chalmers, both the Biblical creation and the previous period of death are represented as co-extensive with the globe, they are repre sented according to that of Dr. Smith, as limited and local. They may have extended, it is said, only over a few provinces of Central Asia, in which, when all was life and light in other parts of the globe, there reigned for a time only death and darkness, amid the welterings of a chaotic sea, which, at the Divine command, was penetrated by light, and occupied by dry land, and ultimately, ere the end of the creative week, became a centre in which certain plants and animals, and finally man himself, were created. And this scheme, by leaving to the geologist, in this country and elsewhere, save mishap in some unknown Asiatic district, his unbroken series, certainly does not conflict with the facts educed by geological discovery. It virtually removes Scripture altoge. ther out of the field. I must confess, however, that on this and on some other I have stumbled, too, accounts it has failed to satisfy me. at the conception of a merely local and limited chaos, in which the darkness would be so complete, that when first penetrated by the light, that penetration could be described as actually a making or creating of light; and that while life obtained all around its precincts, could yet be thoroughly void of life. A local darkness, so profound as to admit no ray of light, seems to have fallen for a time on Egypt, as one of the ten plagues; but the event was evidently miraculous, and no student of natural science is entitled to have recourse, in order to extricate himself out of a difficulty, to suppositious unrecorded miracles. Creation cannot take place without miracle; but it would be a strange reversal of all our previous conclusions on the subject, should we have to hold that the dead dark blank out of which creation arose was miraculous also. : And if, rejecting miracle, we cast ourselves on the purely natural, we find that the local darknesses dependent on known causes of which we have any record in history, were always either very imperfect, like the darkness of your London fogs, or very temporary like the darkness described by Pliny as occasioned by a cloud of volcanic ashes and so, altogether fail to meet the demands of such an hypothesis as that of Dr. Smith. And yet further, I am disposed, I must add, to look for a broader and more general meaning in that grand description of the creation of all things with which the divine record so appropriately opens, than I could recognise it as forming, were I assured it referred to but one of many existing creations-a creation restricted to mayhap a few hundred square miles of country, and to mayhap a few scores of animals and plants. What, then, is the scheme of reconciliation which I would venture to propound? We have hinted at the nature of Mr. Miller's scheme. He supposes that the past was revealed in vision to Moses, as the future was seen in vision by other prophets. If the theory were correct, it is most probable that the circumstance would not have remained to be discovered in the nineteenth century. A vision of the past anterior to the existence of mankind, would have been as miraculous as a vision of the future; and the seer backwards would have explained the sources of his knowledge, as other seers into the future have done. The subject is more curious than profitable -curious indeed it may be, whereas profitable it is not; because as yet we have no evidence from geology contradictory of the Mosaic narrative; except the assumption that more work was done, than could have been done in a day. What is a day ? Even the English word implies with the explanation given in Genesis an unequal length of time. Some of the days known on this globe from evening to morning extend to months of time. The expression day, it seems generally agreed, might be rendered epoch or period with propriety, It is the interval therefore from a morning to an evening that has to be sought, if there be any use in seeking what in no way concerns our welfare. Any ordinary reader, viewing the narrative with the light afforded by the Providential economy now existing, would perceive that a day of twelve hours was no more intended than of eighteen, or nine, or four hours, or four months, -all days extending from morning to evening, in the present state of the world; and it is clear that a day of twenty-four hours could not have been meant, because the evening and the morning are expressly mentioned, excluding the night. We should collect from the statement, therefore, that the word translated, and properly translated, 'day" meant a period of activity, followed by another without change. The commencement of the active period would be represented as the morning, and the termination as the evening. Such is the legitimate meaning of the inspired narrative, and to this meaning science has never required any scheme of reconciliation. It never stood in want of reconciliation. The plans that have been offered by Dr. Pye Smith, by Mr. Miller, and by others, are alike unnecessary to those who have no wish to be wise above what is written. The following beautiful passage describes the care with which the future abode of mankind was provided with all things necessary for their exist ence : That which chiefly distinguished the Paleozoic from the secondary and tertiary periods was its gorgeous flora. It was emphatically the period of plants," of herbs yield ing seed after their kind." In no other age did the world ever witness such a flora; the youth of the earth was peculiarly a green and umbrageous youth,-a youth of dusk and tangled forests, of huge pines and stately araucarians, of the reed-like calamite, the tall tree fern, the sculptured sigillaria, and the hirsute lepidodendron. Wherever dry land or shallow lake, or running stream appeared from where Melville Island now spreads out its ice wastes under the star of the pole, to where the arid plains of Australia lie solitary beneath the bright cross of the south, a rank and luxuriant herbage cumbered every foot-breadth of the dank and steaming soil; and even to distant planets our earth must have shone through the enveloping cloud with a green and delicate ray. Of this extraordinary age of plants we have our cheerful remembrancers and witnesses in the flames that war in our chimneys when we pile up the winter fire, -in the brilliant gas that now casts its light on this great assemblage, and that lightens up the streets and lanes of this vast city-in the glowing furnaces that smelt our metals, and give moving power to our ponderous engines,— in the long dusky trains that shrick and snort, speed dartlike athwart our landscapes,—and in the great cloud-enveloped vessels that darken the lower reaches of your noble river, and rush in foam over ocean and sea. The geologic evidence is so complete as to be patent to all, that the first great period was, as described in the Mosaic record, pecaliarly a period of herbs and trees, "yielding seed after their kind." A Mr. Miller argues through all the chapters or lectures which form this volume, that the vegetation requisite to form the coalfields could only have been produced in long period from the teeming earth. We are not certain that any demonstration of this opinion has ever been made. curious example occurs in these latter days of the formation of a substance resembling coal, by the compression of peat, and still further in the pressure of sawdust into a solid body, for which a patent was taken some years since. By either of these schemes a correct idea might be formed of the quantity of vegetable matter contained in the known coal measures. Our impression is that Mr. Miller exaggerated, of course unconsciously, the space on earth, and in time, that would have been required for their production. He supposed that the first period for which geologists have to account is the third or herb-creating day, and that this great period of the globe's history was distinguished by vast vegetable productions, such as might grow rapidly on the surface of the earth, heated by internal fires, and surrounded by an atmosphere of steam. The vegetables which are supposed to form coal are chiefly of the fern class, which grow with amazing rapidity even in the present state of the world. The extent of the known coal districts is trivial when contrasted with the earth's surface. In temperate climates we form a very inadequate idea of the rapidity wherewith herbs, plants, and trees assume magnitude in the tropics. A proposal exists for making paper out of the plaintain fibre. That fibre is deemed worthless by the planters of the West Indies, who have difficulty in consuming the quantity that they grow for the fruit. Some day we may have artificial fuel made from tropical vegetation by hydraulic compression. The fibre might be cheaply crushed into atoms. could be formed rapidly into blocks of sufficient consistence to cut and polish. Our peat certainly may be turned into blocks of that description in a few minutes. We have seen that done by a machine patented by the late Mr. Gwynne, of Essexstreet, London. The process, perhaps, has not been found profitable, and thus the creditors and shareholders of the Royal British Bank suffer They SCRIPTURE AND GEOLOGY. loss; but, Mr. Gwynne was sanguine of achieving great results from his patent, and the one to which we refer accomplished its work. A proposal was made some time since to use the bitumen of Tobago, mixed with rough vegetable matter, and one person proposed its mixture with sand-for fuel to steamers. The project is not abandoned; and thus from several sources we may hereafter have practical proof of the quantity of matter employed in the formation of coal. The Bible begins with the words, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Boothroyd, in his translation says, "the heavens," -explaining the reason thus in a note," as our language admits the plural, heavens, as well as heaven, I have uniformly adopted it as expressing both the sense and the idiom of the original." The authorised version proceeds thus: "And the earth was without form and void," qualities which we do not comprehend; but the words are rendered in Boothroyd's translation-" And the earth was desolate and waste❞—a better rendering, we believe and at least more in accordance with the structure of our language. Some form matter must always assume. The original meaning appears to be best carried out by our word "desolate," which is employed again by Boothroyd in Jeremiah iv. 23, where the translators of the authorised version have repeated the words, "without form or void." The chapter in Jeremiah, where the same words occur, with the addition that the heavens were without light, describes by them the consequences of severe judgments of the Lord upon great crimes. A comparison of the two passages in some measure sustains an idea of Mr. Miller's, expressed for poetic purposes, as he says, in another chapter or lecture, that this same earth belonged in some way to the rebellious spirits, and that it was made desolate and waste by the judgment of the Almighty, long before the creation of man. In this manner he illustrates the enmity "between thy seed and her seed." In justice to Mr. Miller, we must add that he was merely sug-gesting a companion poem to "Paradise Lost," with this idea as it subject. We may not pry too curiously into matters not revealed, but a suggestive parallelism exists between the first and second verses of the first chapter of Genesis, and the verses named in Jeremiah. The metallic period of the globe-its igneous state in which our metals were produced-and granite mountains run into their gigantic moulds, is not touched by geologists with that familiarity which they employ in describing the deposits in which they find remains of animal and vegetable life. We have no means of tracing the formation of the metals, but since they are of vital importance to mankind, it is not improbable that it preceded those developements of creative power, narrated in the first chapter of Genesis, or that passage may be confined to the creation of things visible to any eye on the globe. The professional geologist finds no difficulties in anything. Generally 265 he can find a cause, and make an explanation in any circumstances. These statements have frequently a perfect appearance, until, under a close examination, they are found to be full of cracks and flaws. The general public are, of course, in a worse position. An idea is common that coal is vegetable matter compressed; but coal crops out in many quarters of the globe in a position where compression could not have occurred. In other places these desposits of herbs and plants are practically overlaid by metallic ores, which must have experienced a degree of heat inconsistent, with the safety of anything in their vicinity. They may have been upheaved from a great depth in the earth after the deposit of several vegetable substances, and those softer rocks in which remains and traces of animal life are visible. That idea supposes a general state of volcanic eruption, inconsistent with the existence of either animal or vegetable life. So many difficulties encompass the inquiry, that men of plain common sense, for whom, as a class, Mr. Miller expresses little respect in some parts of this volume; at least, when their common sense comes in contact with science-are forced to take refuge in Genesis again, and glad to find it. They learn there that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. They do not learn when that beginning occurred. They are told that after that date the earth was without form and void, was desolate and waste; but whether that desolation was only its primal state, or the consequence of a great judgment, they are nowhere told. Therefore the greater part of the organic remains that exist under the surface of the earth may be the reft and tossed wrecks of the earth's loneliness, at a period altogether preceding the first day mentioned in Moses; and the existence of these fragments from the past may be without the pale of his inspired narrative. Five The arguments founded upon the remains of animals, evidently greater and stronger than any now existing upon the globe, or of other animals, different although not greater than any known species, are not sufficient to prove that they were extinct before the creation of man. Elephants, and lions, and the rhinoceros, abounded in the neighbourhood of Cape Town within a hundred years, and now they are never seen there. hundred years hence, if the world survives for that period without any check on its population, the larger beasts of prey will have disappeared from the earth. Future geologists would not be justified on that account, when they disinter their bones, in supposing that the carcases which they sustained were antediluvian, or pre-Adamite. They would nevertheless fall into the error, and generalise or theorise regarding it, except for those printed books that will survive to their time. we mistake not, an animal is described in the book of Job, chap. xli., as leviathan, which commentators have endeavoured to identify with the crocodile, and we think have failed; but which may have If 266 BOOTHROYD'S TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE. been one of those great formations, of which happily only now the bones remain. Miller says "could but play" with the argument against an infinite series of beings, and asked what was palpably absurd," was a man of considerable intellect. We shall do no discredit to the recent memory of Hugh Miller, if we suppose that Robert Hall was a man of equal intellect. The great preacher of England might have said probably that the geologist of Scotland had not demonstrated that all organised beings had a beginning, by tracing organised forms down into several We have already mentioned Boothroyd's translation of the Bible. It was an anticipation of a demand made since its appearance for a new translation. The translator was not only a scholar, but a man of great taste and poetic temperament. His work is in many respects valuable; especially in his rendering of the poetic books, in which he adheres closely to that Anglo-Saxon model, which the English speaking world will never lose. Booth-strata of rocks, and failing to discover organisroyd cleaves to the crocodile as the representative of the leviathan; while he renders his description in lines of which we quote a few : I will not conceal his limbs, Nor his strength and graceful proportions. The crocodile's limbs are really concealed, and as to graceful proportions, he has them not. Then Out of his mouth go firebrands, And a flame from his mouth issueth forth. The passage is not applicable to the crocodile, and we dare not consider them exaggerated. Upon earth there is not his like, He is made free from fear, He is King over all the sons of pride. The crocodile, although a cruel, is also a timid animal, and is not apparently free from fear, while he cannot certainly be classed as the king of beasts, -the first upon the earth. The description would be more applicable to the elephant or rhinoceros : but they have been passed previously by the lion; but leviathan is thus described His body is like strong shields. Closed together are the scales as with a seal. It is more probable, therefore, that the leviathan family is extinct, than that we can trace them in the crocodile, while the tradition of the American Indians, like nearly all the traditions, may be founded on fact. Many scientific men reason loosely in their favourite pursuits. Mr. Miller believed the present improvements in geology to be strong pillars of natural theology, and confirmations of the sacred narrative; while he did not consider the subtle reasoning of Bentley, or others of his school, successful. He says, page 193 :: The importance of the now demonstrated fact, that all the living organisms which exist on earth had a beginning, and that a time was when they were not, will be best appreciated by those who know how much, and, it must be added how unsuccesfully, writers on the evidences have laboured to convict of an absurdity, on this special head, the atheistic assertions of an infinite series of beings. The writers in question had probably a different opinion of their labours. Robert Hall, who Mr. ation in other strata, saying then that what he failed to discover never had an existence. The argument might have seemed still' less complete if he remembered that those other rocks, in which no such tracings exist, are believed to have been liquid with fervent heat, which necessarily would obliterate any traces of organisation. The infinite series of parts was more demonstrative reasoning, but it was not in Mr. Miller's line. To Bentley's views he refers in the following passage And as for Bentley, on the other hand, he ought surely to have known that all infinities are not equal, seeing that Newton had expressly told him so in the second of his four famous letters, but that, on the contrary, one infinity may not only be ten times greater than an other infinity, buteven infinitely greater than another infinity; and that so the conception of an infinity of men possessed of ten infinities of fingers and toes is in no respect an absurdity. Of the three infinities possible in space, the second is infinitely greater than the first, and the third infinitely greater than the second. A line infinitely produced is capable of being divided into-i. e. consists of-an infinity of given parts; a plane infinitely extended is capable of being divided into an infinity of infinitely divisible lines; and a cube-i. e. a solid infinitely expanded-is capable of being divided into an theology furnishes no argument against the infinite series of infinity of infinitely divisible planes. In fine, metaphysical the atheists." fingers and toes, may be reduced to an absurdity An infinity of men possessed of an infinity of in another way than would appear from this extract. An infinity, it is admitted, must not stop. Families and races of men, however, do stop. Families have died out. Men have lived recently who now have no descendants on the earth. The assumed infinity ended with them. Therefore it was assumed and unreal. We cannot suppose an infinite line, with a number of lines branching and breaking off. We cannot suppose an infinite capable of being finite. But in this case we have evidence that the lives of men may be finite, for that which happened to one man, and which he could not prevent, might happen to all men, for all are equally powerless to prevent the extinction of their families. If it does not happen to all, it is because an infinite Power makes provision against that result,-but that Power is not in them. A cube,-"i.e., a solid infinitely expanded"—is not capable of being divided into a series of infinitely divisible planes, or anything else. This is equally true of an infinite plane. An infinite solid, according to our notions of solidity, would of course occupy all space, and admit nothing that |