14 GLAUCUS; OE, 



mined to speak the thing which they had seen, and 

 neither more nor less, sure that God could take 

 better care than they of His own everlasting truth ; 

 and now they have conquered ; the facts which 

 were twenty years ago denounced as contrary to 

 Eevelation, are at last accepted not merely as con- 

 sonant with, but as corroborative thereof ; and sound 

 practical geologists — like Hugh Miller, in his " Foot- 

 prints of the Creator," and Professor Sedgwick, in 

 the invaluable notes to his " Discourse on the 

 Studies of Cambridge" — are wielding in defence of 

 Christianity the very science which was faithlessly 

 and cowardly expected to subvert it* 



* It is with real pain that I have seen my friend Mr. Gosse, since 

 this book was written, make a step in the direction of obscurantism, 

 which I can only call desperate, by publishing a book called " Om- 

 phalos." In it he tries to vindicate what he thinks (though very 

 few good Christians do so now) to be the teaching of Scripture about 

 Creation, by the suj)position that fossils are not the remains of 

 plants and animals which have actually existed, but may have been 

 created as they are and where they are, for the satisfaction of the 

 Divine mind ; and that therefore the whole science, not merely of 

 palaeontology, but (as he seems to forget) of geognosy also, is based 

 on a mistake, and cannot truly exist, save as a play of the fancy. 



It seems to me that such a notion is more likely to make infidels, 

 than to cure them. For what rational man, who knows even a little 



