orders, if in that order he does not occupy one of the first stations. He is in the order of original discoverers. His place is among the honored few, who have added to the domain of human knowledge. He accurately mapped out, as represented in his own country, one of the most interesting and least known of geographical formations, the Old Red Sandstone. He made express additions to the number of its classified organisms. His views of the science as a whole are comprehensive and philosophical, but it is on this distinctively that his fame as a geologist will repose.

In the cottage of Hugh Miller's boyhood, was that "one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and an interpreting response to whatever is deepest in him," and which is still the Word of God, whatever the author of these words may think. In Hugh Miller's education, the most important agent of all had been the Bible. For many years, the influence of early instruction had seemed to have passed away, but before the time at which he quitted manual labor, he had reflected deeply on religious subjects, had accepted Christianity as a living faith, and owned the gravitating power of that “Divine Man" whom he saw to be "the sole gravitating point of a system which owes to Him all its coherence, and which would be but a chaos were He away." This leads us to one of the most important aspects in which Hugh Miller can be viewed-that great practical aspect, namely, in which he unites the theologian and the man of science. We shall introduce our remarks upon him in this capacity by a quotation from the remarkable chapter which closes his "Footprints of the Creator:"--

"The first idea of every religion on earth which has arisen out of what may be termed the spiritual instinct of man's nature, is that of a future state; the second idea is, that in

this state men shall exist in two separate classes the one in advance of their present condition, the other far in the rear of it. It is on these two great beliefs that conscience everywhere finds the fulcrum from which it acts upon the conduct; and it is wholly inoperative as a force without them. And in that one religion among men that, instead of retiring, like the pale ghosts of the others, before the light of civilization, brightens and expands in its beams, and in favor of whose claim as a revelation from God the highest philosophy has declared, we find these two master ideas occupying a still more prominent place than in any of those merely indigenous religions that spring up in the human mind of themselves. There is not in all

revelation a single doctrine which we find oftener, or more clearly enforced, than that there shall continue to exist, through the endless cycles of the future, a race of degraded men and of degraded angels. Now it is truly wonderful how thoroughly, in its general scope, the revealed pieces on to the geologic record. We know, as geologists, that the dynasty of the fish was succeeded by that of the reptilethat the dynasty of the reptile was succeeded by that of the mammiferous quadruped — and that the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped was succeeded by that of man, as man now exists. a creature of mixed character, and subject, in all conditions, to wide alternations of enjoyment and suffering. We know, further—so far, at least, as we have yet succeeded in deciphering the record—that the several dynasties were introduced, not in their lower, but in their higher forms; that, in short, in the imposing programme of creation it was arranged, as a general rule, that in each of the great divisions of the procession the magnates should walk first. We recognize yet further the fact of degradation specially exemplified in the fish and the

reptile. And then, passing on to the revealed record, we learn that the dynasty of man in the mixed state and character is not the final one, but that there is to be yet another creation, or, more properly, re-creation, known theologically as the Resurrection, which shall be connected in its physical components, by bonds of mysterious paternity, with the dynasty which now reigns, and be bound to it mentally by the chain of identity, conscious and actual; but which, in all that constitutes superiority, shall be ast vastly its superior, as the dynasty of responsible man is superior to even the lowest of the preliminary dynasties. We are further taught, that at the commencement of this last of the dynasties there will be a re-creation of not only elevated, but also of degraded beings-a re-creation of the lost. We are taught yet further, that though the present dynasty be that of a lapsed race, which at their first introduction were placed on higher ground than that on which they now stand, and sank by their own act, it was yet part of the original design, from the beginning of all things, that they should occupy the existing platform; and that Redemption is thus no after-thought, rendered necessary by the Fall, but, on the contrary, part of a general scheme, for which provision had been made from the beginning; so that the Divine Man, through whom the work of restoration has been effected, was in reality, in reference to the purposes of the Eternal, what he is designated in the remarkable text, 'the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world: Slain from the foundations of the world ! Could the assertors of the stony science ask for language more express? By piecing the two records togetherthat revealed in Scripture, and that revealed in the rocks records which, however widely geologists may mistake the one, or commentators misunderstand the other, have

emanated from the same great. Author - we learn that in slow and solemn majesty has period succeeded period, each in succession ushering in a higher and yet higher scene of existence; that fish, reptiles, mammiferous quadrupeds, have reigned in turn; that responsible man, 'made in the image of God,' and with dominion over all creatures, ultimately entered into a world ripened for his reception: but, further, that this passing scene, in which he forms the prominent figure, is not the final one in the long series, but merely the last of the preliminary scenes; and that that period to which the by-gone ages, incalculable in amount, with all their well proportioned gradations of being, form the imposing vestibule, shall have perfection for its occupant, and eternity for its duration. I know not how it may appear to others; but, for my own part, I cannot avoid thinking that there would be a lack of proportion in the series of being, were the period of perfect and glorified humanity abruptly connected, without the introduction of an intermediate creation of responsible imperfection, with that of the dying irresponsible brute. That scene of things in which God became Man, and suffered, seems, as it no doubt is, a necessary link in the chain."

The theologian of the nineteenth century will have to know and ponder such passages as this, to scrutinize carefully the intimations they read him, to follow conscientiously the clue they put into his hand. The seventeenth century is known among the centuries as that in which the written Word of God was explored, so to speak, to its inmost recess. We say not the work was finished; but, of all ages, the most strictly biblical, that which seemed to live in and upon the simple and separate Bible, was the seventeenth. One great task of the nineteenth century seems to be, to search into and know the works of God. It stands distinguished

as the age of physical science. There was a certain danger that theologians should forget that God made the world, and that therefore it was holy. The gaze of hallowed ecstacy with which David had looked from the battlements of Zion, upon the palm-crowned mountains that stood around, as he seized his harp, and burst into a song of praise to God the Maker, seemed to have darkened and narrowed into a cold, critical, peering look, that searched for flaws in creeds, and glanced rather timorously towards the mountains, as if it might turn out that God had not made them after all. As must ever and universally be the case, partiality was error. A certain littleness was imparted to the views of the physical world, as a piece of God's workmanship; a certain glory was taken away from the Word of God, as the oracle of the moral world; by the absence of that light which they were fitted to cast on each other. Such men as Thomas Chalmers, Hugh Miller, John Pye Smith, and others, have essayed to show the inter-reflection of light and glory between the two, and the day will come when the work they have commenced will be fully accomplished. Its even partial accomplishment will mark our century. As it is, the theologian who accepts the facts of God's workmanship as not to be disputed, as facts which, if once well proved, it were irreverent, nay blasphemous, to deny, may already, we think, obtain dim but glorious glimpses into far regions of spiritual truth-into the destinies of man, into the essentials of judgment, into the meaning of death-which the lamp of science faintly indicates when hung over the Word of God. But much has yet to be done, and much must be acknowledged to lie yet unrevealed. Meanwhile the two grand perils are, on the one hand, ignoble fear, and, on the other, presumption. The man who looks over the moral world, and discerns that it is an inexplicable chaos, a stan