old Ocean as a Builder 



workmen do manufacture articles, not indeed 

 really half-worn, but with the look of beino- 

 half-worn though actually new, for mercantile 

 purposes — to pass off the new, as if it were 

 old, when the old has greater value. But it may 

 safely and with confidence be declared that the 

 Divine Architect of Earth and Heaven never 

 so puts forth His mighty power. When we see 

 in Nature a thing worn in appearance we know 

 that it has been worn in reality. 



In his first day of quarry work Hugh Miller 

 saw more than this. He noted surfaces of 

 sandstone rock, laid bare by blasting, all 

 *' ridged and furrowed, like a bank of sand 

 that had been left by the tide an hour before." 

 He had seen the latter hundreds of times when 

 sailing over shallows near the shore. But here 

 the ridges and furrows were petrified, changeless, 

 and on dry land, where no ocean-waves could 

 reach. No wonder he was puzzled. 



Such ripple-marked sandstone is far from 

 uncommon. It gives a perfect reproduction of 

 the little sand-ripples or rounded ridges and 

 hollows, often to be found on a sandy shore, 

 either visible through a thin layer of water or 

 left bare after the tide goes down. And it shows 

 us how the sandstone rock must originally have 



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