TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS;
OR,
GEOLOGY IN ITS BEARINGS
ON THE
TWO THEOLOGIES, NATURAL AND REVEALED.
BY
HUGH MILLER,
AUTHOR OF "THE OLD RED SANDSTONE," "FOOTPRINTS OF THE
CREATOR," ETC., ETC.
WITH
MEMORIALS OF THE DEATH AND CHARACTER OF THE AUTHOR.
"Thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field."—Job.
BOSTON:
GOULD AND LINCOLN,
59 WASHINGTON STREET.
NEW YORK: SHELDON, BLAKEMAN & CO.
CINCINNATI: GEORGE S. BLANCHARD.
1857.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by
GOULD AND LINCOLN,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
Electro-Stereotyped
BY GEO. J. STILES,
23 Congress St., Boston.
TO
JAMES MILLER, ESQ., F.R.S.E.
PROFESSOR OF SURGERY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.
My Dear Sir,
This volume is chiefly taken up in answering, to the best of its author's knowledge and ability, the various questions which the old theology of Scotland has been asking for the last few years of the newest of the sciences. Will you pardon me the liberty I take in dedicating it to you? In compliance with the peculiar demand of the time, that what a man knows of science or of art he should freely communicate to his neighbors, we took the field nearly together as popular lecturers, and have at least so far resembled each other in our measure of success, that the same class of censors have been severe upon both. For while you have been condemned as a physiologist for asserting that the human framework, when fairly wrought during the week, is greatly the better for the rest of the Sabbath, I have been described by the same pen as one of the wretched class of persons who teach that geology, rightly understood, does not conflict with revelation. Besides, I owe it to your kindness that, when set aside by the indisposition which renders it doubtful whether I shall ever again address a popular audience, you enabled me creditably to fulfil one of my engagements by reading for me in public two of the following discourses, and by doing them an amount of justice on that occasion which could never have been done them by their author. Further, your kind attentions and advice during the crisis of my illness were certainly every way suited to remind me of those so gratefully acknowledged by the wit of the last century, when he bethought him of
"kind Arbuthnot's aid,
Who knew his art, but not his trade."
And so, though the old style of dedication has been long out of fashion, I avail myself of the opportunity it affords me of expressing my entire concurrence in your physiological views, my heartfelt gratitude for your good services and friendship, and my sincere respect for the disinterested part you have taken in the important work of elevating and informing your humbler countryfolk,—while at the same time maintaining professionally, with Simpson and with Goodsir, the reputation of that school of anatomy and medicine for which the Scottish capital has been long so famous.
I am,
My Dear Sir,
With sincere respect and regard,
Yours affectionately,
HUGH MILLER.
TO THE READER.
Of the twelve following Lectures, four (the First, Second, Fifth, and Sixth) were delivered before the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution (1852 and 1855). One (the Third) was read at Exeter Hall before the Young Men's Christian Association (1854), and the substance of two of the others (the Eleventh and Twelfth) at Glasgow, before the Geological Section of the British Association (1855). Of the five others,—written mainly to complete and impart a character of unity to the volume of which they form a part,—only three (the Fourth, Seventh, and Eighth) were addressed viva voce to popular audiences. The Third Lecture was published both in this country and America, and translated into some of the Continental languages. The rest now appear in print for the first time. Though their writer has had certainly no reason to complain of the measure of favor with which the read or spoken ones have been received, they are perhaps all better adapted for perusal in the closet than for delivery in the public hall or lecture-room; while the two concluding Lectures are mayhap suited to interest only geologists who, having already acquainted themselves with the generally ascertained facts of their science, are curious to cultivate a further knowledge with such new facts as in the course of discovery are from time to time added to the common fund. In such of the following Lectures as deal with but the established geologic phenomena, and owe whatever little merit they may possess to the inferences drawn from these, or on the conclusions based upon them, most of the figured illustrations, though not all, will be recognized as familiar: in the two concluding Lectures, on the contrary, they will be found to be almost entirely new. They are contributions, representative of the patient gleanings of years, to the geologic records of Scotland; and exhibit, in a more or less perfect state, no inconsiderable portion of all the forms yet detected in the rocks of her earlier Palæozoic and Secondary floras.
It will be seen that I adopt, in my Third and Fourth Lectures, that scheme of reconciliation between the Geologic and Mosaic Records which accepts the six days of creation as vastly extended periods; and I have been reminded by a somewhat captious critic that I once held a very different view, and twitted with what he terms inconsistency. I certainly did once believe with Chalmers and with Buckland that the six days were simply natural days of twenty-four hours each,—that they had compressed the entire work of the existing creation,—and that the latest of the geologic ages was separated by a great chaotic gap from our own. My labors at the time as a practical geologist had been very much restricted to the Palæozoic and Secondary rocks, more especially to the Old Red and Carboniferous Systems of the one division, and the Oolitic System of the other; and the long extinct organisms which I found in them certainly did not conflict with the view of Chalmers. All I found necessary at the time to the work of reconciliation was some scheme that would permit me to assign to the earth a high antiquity, and to regard it as the scene of many succeeding creations. During the last nine years, however, I have spent a few weeks every autumn in exploring the later formations, and acquainting myself with their peculiar organisms. I have traced them upwards from the raised beaches and old coast lines of the human period, to the brick clays, Clyde beds, and drift and boulder deposits of the Pleistocene era, and again from these, with the help of museums and collections, up through the mammaliferous crag of England, to its Red and its Coral crags. And the conclusion at which I have been compelled to arrive is, that for many long ages ere man was ushered into being, not a few of his humbler contemporaries of the fields and woods enjoyed life in their present haunts, and that for thousands of years anterior to even their appearance, many of the existing molluscs lived in our seas. That day during which the present creation came into being, and in which God, when he had made "the beast of
Edinburgh, December, 1856.
[The last proofs of this preface were despatched by the Author to his printer only the day before that melancholy termination of his life, the details of which will be found in the "Memorials" following.—Am. Publishers.]
CONTENTS.
List of Illustrations
MEMORIALS
OF
HUGH MILLER.
Unknown he came. He went a Mystery—
A mighty vessel foundered in the calm,
Her freight half-given to the world. To die
He longed, nor feared to meet the great "I AM."
Fret not. God's mystery is solved to him.
He quarried Truth all rough-hewn from the earth,
And chiselled it into a perfect gem—
A rounded Absolute. Twain at a birth—
Science with a celestial halo crowned,
And Heavenly Truth—God's Works by His Word illumed—
These twain he viewed in holiest concord bound.
Reason outsoared itself. His mind consumed
By its volcanic fire, and frantic driven,
He dreamed himself in hell and woke in heaven.
Edinburgh, December, 1856.
MEMORIALS
OF THE
DEATH AND CHARACTER OF HUGH MILLER,
WITH AN
ACCOUNT OF HIS FUNERAL OBSEQUIES.
Near the end of last autumn the American publishers of Hugh Miller's works received from him, through his Edinburgh publishers, the offer of a new work from his pen. The offer was accepted and a contract was at once closed. Soon the advance sheets began to come; and as successive portions were received and perused, it became more and more evident that the work was destined not only to extend his fame, but to establish for him new and special claims to the admiration and gratitude of mankind. In the midst of these anticipations, and ere more than half the sheets had been received, the publishers and the public here were startled by the news that Mr. Miller had come to a violent death. The paragraph conveying the intelligence was such as to leave the mind in a state of painful suspense. But the next steamer from Europe brought full details of the lamentable event. It appeared that in a momentary fit of mental aberration he had died by his own hand, on the night of December 23d, 1856. The cause was over much brain-work. He had been long and incessantly engaged in preparing the present work for the press, when, just as he had given the last touches to the eloquent, the immortal record, reason abandoned her throne, and in the brief interregnum, that great light of science was quenched forever.
The event caused universal lamentation throughout the British Isles. It was treated as a public calamity. The British press, from the London Times to the remotest provincial newspaper, gave expression to the general sorrow in strains of unwonted eloquence; and in so doing recounted his great services to the cause of science, and paid homage to his genius.
Some of the articles which the event thus called forth have seemed to the American publishers worthy of preservation, from the authentic facts which they embody, the judgments which they express, and the literary excellence by which they are marked. They have therefore determined to print them in connection with this work as permanent Memorials of its distinguished and lamented author.
The first piece appeared in the Edinburgh Witness of December 27th, 1856,—the paper of which Mr. Miller had been the editor from its establishment in 1840. It presents an authentic account of the circumstances attending his death, and is understood to be from the pen of the Rev. William Hanna, L.L.D., the son-in-law and biographer of Dr. Chalmers, and sometime editor of the North British Review.