1867.] Testimony of the Racks. 281 



ed in both attack and defense of the Mosaic record, Hugh Miller 

 with characteristic force and earnestness disposes of at one blow, — a 

 blow as well-timed as well -aimed, — as when speakint^ of " The Two 

 Records, Mosaic and Geological," he says — "I would, in any such 

 case, at once, and without hesitation, cut the philological knot by 

 determining that that philology can not be sound which would com- 

 mit the Scriptures to a science that can not he true!'''' 



Holding with Chalmers that, while "the Mosaic writings do not 

 fix the antiquity of the globe, " he still claims that they do fix the 

 antiquity of the human species. And how majestic is his expres- 

 sion of the growing forms and crowning perfections of creation ! — 

 " The great column of being, with its base set in the sea, and inscribed 

 like some old triumphal pillar, with many a strange form, — at mice 

 Merogli/jyhic and figure, — bears, as the ornately sculptured capital 

 that imparts beauty and finish to the whole, reasoning, responsible 

 Man ! " 



Seeking to establish, as he conclusively does, that the " days " men- 

 tioned in the Mosaic record were, like the "days" of the Geologic 

 record, not natural days, but " great periods," — not diurnal hours, 

 but eons of ages ; — and that the beginning of the human race was 

 not at " the beginning " of creation, but was the beginning of a new 

 era in creation, note with what eloquence he crushes the philosophy 

 of the infidel geologists, who, contemplating the fossil cemeteries of 

 the pre-Adamic dynasties of iCarth, look upon the whole planet as 

 but a "great city of the dead," — and who, with annihilation in ex- 

 pectancy, regard creation as but " a universe of death : " 



" The appearance of man upon the scene of being constitutes a 

 new era in creation ; the operations of a new instinct come into 

 play, — that instinct which anticipates a life after the grave, and re- 

 poses in implicit faith upon a God alike just and good, who is the 

 pledged " rewarder of all who diligently seek Him." And in look- 

 ing along the long line of being, — ever rising in the scale from 

 higher to yet higher manifestations, or abroad on the lower animals, 

 whom instinct never deceives, — can we hold that man, immeasurably 

 higher in his place, and infinitely higher in his hopes and aspira- 

 tions, than all that ever went before him, should be, notwithstand- 

 ing, the one grand error in creation. — the onQ painful worker, in the 

 midst of present trouble, for a state into which he is never to en- 

 ter, — the befooled ex-pedant of a ha^^y future which he is never to see ? 

 Assuredly no. He who keeps faith with all His humbler creatures, 

 — who gives to even the bee and the dormouse the winter for which 

 they prepare, — will to a certainty not break faith with man, — with 

 man, alike the deputed lord of the present creation, and the chosen 

 heir of all the future, "—p. 139. 



