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CHAPTER II. 



SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 



SUCH is the state of progression in geological science 

 that the geologist who stands still but for a very 

 little must be content to find himself left behind.' The 

 words are Hugh Miller's, they occur in his preface to 

 the first edition of the Old Red Sandstone. Their ap- 

 plication is of course peculiarly forcible to the geologist 

 whose activity has been arrested by death. No man 

 can do more than his own piece of work in science, and 

 the question on which our estimate of the merit of a 

 scientific worker must depend is not whether he pene- 

 trated to the limits of any one province in nature, or 

 uttered the final and absolute truth as to any one of 

 nature's laws and processes, but whether he did the 

 work he professed to do faithfully, honestly, and, to the 

 point to which he carried it, thoroughly. 



As science continues to advance, the several positions 

 taken up by Hugh Miller, in prosecuting the sublime 

 enterprise of proving the existence, and illustrating the 

 character, of God from His works, may or may not 

 prove tenable. Without question some of them would 

 now be abandoned by the most eminent geologists. 

 On taking the chair as President of the Royal Phy- 



