1857.] Testimony of the Rocks. 283 



of its Divine Author, — saw also by vision the pattern of those suc- 

 cessive pre-Adamic creations, animal and vegetable, through which 

 our world was fitted up as a place of human habitation. The reason 

 why the drama of creation has been optically described seems to be, 

 that it was in reality visionally revealed. — p. 190. 



And affirms that he is " greatly mistaken if we have not in the 

 six geologic periods (noted by him) all the elements, without mis- 

 placement or exaggeration of the Mosaic drama of creation. " 



And with what grandeur of conception does our author close this 

 glowing description of the inspired vision of Moses ! He rejects 

 the idea that the Sabbath of rest that followed the six " periods " of 

 creation is to be regarded as a period of inactivity and indolence for 

 the G-odhead; but advances the sublime and soul-lifting thought 

 that the "moral elevation and final redemption of man" is the 

 appopriate work of Deity during that Sabbatic " period " in which 

 the career of humanity is destined to run. He says : 



" Again the night descends, for the fifth day has closed; and morn- 

 ing breaks on the sixth and last day of creation. Cattle and beasta 

 of the fields graze on the plains ; the thick-skinned rhinoceros wal- 

 lows in the marshes ; the squat hippopotamus rustles among the 

 reeds, or plunges sullenly into the river ; great herds of elephants 

 seek their food amid the young herbage of the woods ; while ani- 

 mals of fiercer nature, — the lion, the leopard, and the bear, — harboi 

 in deep caves till the evening, or lie in wait for their prey amid 

 tangled thickets, or beneath some broken bank. At length, as the day 

 wanes and the shadows lengthen, Man, the responsible lord of crea- 

 tion, formed in God's own image, is introduced upon the scene, and 

 the worh of creation ceases forever upon the Earth. The night falls 

 once more upon the prospect, and there dawns yet another morrow, 

 — the morroio of God's rest, — the Divine Sabbath in which there is 

 no more creative Za&or, and which, " blessed and sanctified' beyond 

 all the days that had gone before, has as its special object the moral 

 elevation and final redemption of man. And over it no evening 

 is represented in the record as falling, for its special work is not 

 yet completed.'' — p. 210. 



In the whole range of scientific writing we know of no concep- 

 tion so exalted as this. 



Hugh Miller was born at Cromarty, in 1805, and during his 

 early life worked as a laborer in the Sandstone quarries, and after- 

 ward as a stone-mason in different parts of Scotland ; and in this 

 capacity he first began to study "The Testimony of the Rocks." — 

 Though formed by nature and trained by habit to the endurance of 

 great physical labor, yet the melancholy circumstances of his recent 

 death assure us that the overtaxed mind yielded beneath the task which 



