The Testimony of the Rocks. 87 



— that Divine Sabbath in which there is no more creative labor, 

 and which, " blessed and sanctified" beyond all the days that had 

 gone before, has as its special object the moral elevation and final 

 redemption of man. And over it no evening is represented in the 

 record as falling, for its special work is not yet complete. Such 

 seems to have been the sublime panorama of creation exhibited 

 in vision of old to 



" The shepherd who first taught the chosen seed, 

 In the beginning how the heavens and earth 

 Rose out of chaos ;" 



and, rightly understood, I know not a single scientific truth that 

 militates against even the minutest or least prominent of its 

 details." 



In its details we believe that this view will admit of some modi- 

 fication, but we may accept the principle as the best guide to the 

 reconciliation of the two docmnents in the present state of know- 

 ledge. The two following lectures pursue this principle of expla- 

 nation into details, with many interesting and beautifully sketched 

 illustrations. The next subject is the Noachian deluge, which the 

 author with most modern interpreters, and believes to have been 

 universal, only in so far as relates to man and the region he then in- 

 habited. Eising again to general views, we have in the ninth lecture 

 a sketch of the relations that in past and darker ages have ob- 

 tained between imperfect views of religion and creation, and equal- 

 ly imperfect information on the system of nature. This natui ally 

 leads to an investigation of the errors still widely prevalent, that 

 result from such half truths and biassed reasonings ; and we have 

 much sharp criticism of the rationalistic expositors who regard 

 Genesis as a myth, and the unreasonable anti-geologists who refuse 

 to accept the Testimony of the Rocks. 



Having thus far restricted himself to a somewhat orderly inves- 

 tigation of his more immediate subject, the author desirous of giv- 

 ing to his work that scientific originality which in these days of 

 progress can alone attract the working naturalist, adds in an ex- 

 panded form the interesting paper on the less known fossil floras 

 of Scotland, read by him before the British Association in 1855. 

 Though not strictly a sequel to the previous subject, this paper forms 

 a practical illustration of the succession of fossil floras, just as in 

 the Footprints of the Creator, the Asterolepis and its allies, are the 

 text of that noble specimen of natural theology. The geologist inter- 



