336 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



ber that the Scriptures could not possibly have been 

 given to us as revelations of scientific truth, seeing that 

 a single scientific truth they never yet revealed, and the 

 geologist that it must be in vain to seek in science those 

 truths which lead to salvation, seeing that in science 

 these truths were never yet found, there would be little 

 danger even of difference among them, and none of 

 collision/ This is from the Testimony of the Rocks. 

 So also is the following, which proves that if he had 

 once leaned too strongly towards catastrophism, the 

 balance was coming right : ' What more natural to 

 expect, or rational to hold, than that the Unchange- 

 able One should have wrought in all time after one 

 general type and pattern, or than that we may seek, in 

 the hope of finding, meet correspondences and striking 

 analogies between His revealed workings during the 

 human period, and His previous workings of old during 

 the geologic* periods ? ' 



An erroneous idea, however, would be conveyed of 

 the general scope and pleasantness of Hugh Miller's 

 writings if they were regarded as constantly, or mainly, 

 controversial. The exquisite accuracy, combined with 

 imaginative beauty, of their descriptions of natural 

 scenes and objects ; the scientific fitness and poetic 

 felicity of the illustrations they present of the Divine 

 mind acting in matter ; the ethical force of their ex- 

 hibition of the mutual adaptation of man and his world, 

 the lofty conception they present of man as the tiller of 

 the Earth-garden, the fellow-worker with God in sub- 

 duing and beautifying the planet and in raising to the 

 height of spiritual and physical perfection the human 

 family ; these, and many other excellences which will 

 occur to all acquainted with those books, will render 

 them precious and fascinating when the particular con- 



