236 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



be the collection of a Free Church minister, sedulously at- 

 tentive to the proper duties of his office, but who has yet 

 found time enough to render himself an accomplished geo- 

 logist ; and whose week-day lectures on the science attract 

 crowds, who receive from them, in many instances, their first 

 knowledge of the strange revolutions of which our globe has 

 been the subject, blent with the teachings of a wholesome 

 theology. The present age, above all that has gone before, 

 is peculiarly the age of physical science ; and of all the phy- 

 sical sciences, not excepting astronomy itself, geology, though 

 it be a fact worthy of notice, that not one of our truly ac- 

 complished geologists is an infidel, is the science of which 

 infidelity has most largely availed itself. And as the theolo- 

 gian in a metaphysical age, when scepticism, conforming to 

 the character of the time, disseminated its doctrines in the 

 form of nicely abstract speculations, had, in order that the 

 enemy might be met in his own field, to become a skilful me- 

 taphysician, he must now, in like manner, address himself to 

 the tangibilities of natural history and geology, if he would 

 avoid the danger and disgrace of having his flank turned by 

 every sciolist in these walks whom he may chance to encoun- 

 ter. It is those identical bastions and outworks that are now 

 attacked, which must be now defended ; not those which were 

 attacked some eighty or a hundred years ago. And as he 

 who succeeds in first mixing up fresh and curious truths, either 

 with the objections by which religion is assailed or the argu- 

 ments by which it is defended, imparts to his cause all the 

 interest which naturally attaches to these truths, and leaves 

 to his opponent, who passes over them after him as at second 

 hand, a subject divested of the fire-edge of novelty, I can deem 

 Mr Longmuir well and not unprofessionally employed, in con- 

 necting with a sound creed the picturesque marvels of one of 

 the most popular of the sciences, and by this means intro- 

 ducing them to his people, linked, from the first, with right 



