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THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[September 



wholesome thought and reflection— in a 

 WO rd — for all the great purposes for which 

 mind is required, the character of their ed- 

 ucation and pursuits well adapts our South- 

 ern Planters to rightly appreciate the im- 

 portance of the subjects treated by Dr. 

 Pendleton in the work whose title heads this 

 page. We think it an advantage on- the 

 side of the Farmers of our country, that 

 their minds have not been- subjected to mere 

 professional or technical training, but that 

 things rather than words, or the names of 

 things, furnish ftie great staple of their 

 mental pabulum ; and while the mind of the 

 so-called scholar is going its round in the 

 tread-mill of academic or collegiate studies, 

 and following out the same system in the 

 more advanced stages of scholastic learning, 

 they, in more direct communion w*ith nature 

 and her laws, are engaged in the great prac- 

 tical business of life; and thus have their 

 intellectual faculties, uncramped by the 

 mere artificial systems of men. Therefore, 

 is it most appropriate that such a class — a 

 class who, under such influences, has fur- 

 nished a Washington to the world — should 

 be called to pass upon — as Judges, both of 

 the law and fact — the important questions in- 

 volved in the theories, the learned author 

 make3 the subject of his investigations, and 

 we will, now, without more preamble or 

 apology proceed to criticise — for the benefit, 

 or it may be the amusement, of your read- 

 ers — the work in question. 



Iu the last twenty-five or thirty years a 

 man appeared in Scotland, who was, in the 

 circumstances of his life and education, a 

 brilliant illustration of the idea we have 

 above endeavored to commit to paper. With 

 little, or none of the learning of the schools; 

 with no advantage of parentage or patron- 

 age, Hugh Miller, w 7 hile doing his duty in 

 that humble state of life in which it pleased 

 God to place him, and working faithfully 

 at hiff daily task as a stone-mason, displayed 

 powers which, in their operations and devel- 

 opment, have produced effects but little less 

 than those of the greatest benefactors of our 

 race. 



The Cromortie stone-mason, from his own 

 observations in the quarries in which he 

 worked, had his attention aroused towards 

 those wonderful manifestations of the Crea- 

 tor's power as declared in " the testimonies 

 of the rocks," and having, in common with 

 the youth of Scotland, been taught " to 

 know his Bible true ; if nothing more/' his 



active mind set itself to the task of recon- 

 ciling the wonders of creation, as evidenced 

 by the records of Nature, graven on the im- 

 perishable granite, and those wonders of 

 creation and redemption, as described or 

 foreshadowed in the books of Moses and the 

 other sacred writers. The great question of 

 the day was, whether, the world we inhabit, 

 as laid open by the hand of Science, is the 

 same as that whose creation is described in 

 the book of Genesis; whether it had but ex- 

 isted the 6,000 years, as commonly held by 

 Bible readers, or had existed, self-created, 

 vast ages ago, — a question which, in its pro- 

 per solution, involved the mightily issue of 

 the Scriptures being true or false, — the Bi- 

 ble being the word of God, or a cunningly 

 devised fable. 



The author of "the double record " is 

 justly entitled to the leadership in the great 

 battle of the Evidences that has been rag- 

 ing for years past on the field of physical 

 science against those falsely called philoso- 

 phers who, from a superficial observation of 

 the laws and layers of the material universe, 

 and a comparison therewith of the Mosaic 

 account of creation as understood by them- 

 selves, have made deductions tending to 

 shake the faith of some. 



This contest, however, like all that have, 

 gone before it, has resulted in the complete 

 overthrow of " the fighters against God " 

 by the establishment of the axiom, that Na- 

 ture and Revelation, proceeding from the 

 same infinite mind, must be consistent — that 

 God's words and works must agree. A con- 

 viction similar to that which put in motion 

 the mighty energies of a Hugh Miller, has 

 enlisted the vigorous pen of our author in 

 the cause of what we believe to be Divine 

 Truth. On page 18, et seq., he says : 



" It is this conviction which induces us to sub- 

 mit the views which we are about to present 

 concerning the actual relations between the dis- 

 closures of the Bible and the progress of scien- 

 tific inquiry. Of the correctness of these views 

 . we have not the slightest doubt, nor of their 

 tendency to remove prejudices which now hin- 

 der alike the material and the moral elevation 

 of our species. We would contribute our mite 

 toward the harmonious development of that 

 wisdom which makes man triumphant over na- 

 ture, and of that which fits him for heaven. * 

 * * * * t 



" That, there is, in truth, an entire harmony 

 between the moral and the material agencies 



