brought a few pages back, concerng the inextinguishable desire of congeniality and close drawn ties in worship. The negroes must to some extent participate in the social service of God; and the talents that are always to be found in the possesion of some of them for counselling, guiding, and leading in worship, must be drawn out and employed, under the careful supervision of the established officers of the church. "If all things done in the church should be done decently and in order," so especially should the gifts of the "gifted" be exercised under and within the limits of well defined and absolute regulations. The truly gifted and the right minded, the zealous and the modest, will rejoice to submit themselves to such restraints which will at once sustain them against their own timidity and misgivings, and defend them against the jostlings of independent competitors."* The third axiom to which we appeal is, that in order to the healthy condition of the church, there must be constant interac tion of all the parts. This has been so abundantly illustrated by Paul that we shall not venture an argument upon it. It is not without significance that more than one Apostle has confounded our logical deductions from the temple-like character of the Christian Church, by calling it a "living" temple. Returning thus to its best analogon, the human frame, we see that it is not permitted the blood to curdle in slow assimilation within this or the other member; it must fly from the heart with a swift largess to every limb, and back to the deep and central shrine, there to be interfused, and poured out in the endless commerce of life upon the whole body. Our application here is not far to seek; every church must jealously guard against the resolution of its mass into different congregations worshipping within the same walls. One of the sorest evils under the sun is doubtless the inevitable gravitation of custom into routine and thence to formalism. Another is, the tendency of churches formed out of originally various elements to dissimilate them, and settle back into those elements. And one indispensable mode of warding off these dangers is found in the suggestion just made-to take up into the body materials from every side, and hold them in unity by the might of Christian life; that is, by the inworking grace of God. But we are most unwillingly driven to the conclusion that this subject cannot be justly dealt with in the closing paragraphs of an article. Yet we linger, with a feeling near of kin to tenderness, upon the beautiful hope that has risen upon our thoughts-the hope of a Church of the Future that shall be indeed the Garden of God; where the lofty and lowly, the fruit and blosom of many *Isaac Taylor. climes, the wild vines and olive trees reclaimed and grafted, shall blend their several gifts in perfect tribute to the Heavenly Husbandman-where those whom He hath "joined together" in faith and holiness, and in daily life, shall not be "put asunder" in worship-where the "rich and the poor" shall yet more happily ""meet together," before the Lord who is "the Father of them all." This is Utopian, no doubt, there is Utopia in all things good-that sweet faint perfume from the Paradise so far away! But what then? THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS. BY HUGH MILLLER. The world has scarcely yet recovered from the shock experienced by the news of Hugh Miller's decease. For the Stone Mason of Crodmarty had hewn out for himself by the diligent culture of magnificent endowments a fame wide as the world. Rude and ignorant laborers had ceased to be his companions and the wise and learned had welcomed him as a peer to their brotherhood; the bleak hill-side and quarry had been exchanged for the studythe mason's hammer for the pen-poverty for comparative afluence and obscurity for a renown honorably won and undimmed by a stain. Master of a style which for pictorial vigor and accuracy, is under the cirsumstances of his early life absolutely marvellous; endowed with a native sense which preserved him even in his loftiest flights from extravagance and exaggeration; vigorous and powerful in argument; subtle in analysis; keen in observation; of a lively and graceful fancy, he added yet one crowning charm to manifold accomplishments, by which to endear himself to the wise and good, namely, the consecration of his powers to the noblest work for which an immortal being can live-the glory of the Almighty Maker. It must be long ere the thoughtful student of God's provideñce, can recover from the sorrow and alarm with which he sees such a man cut down in the strength of his years and the maturity of his powers, "when his eye was not dim" nor his natural strength abated and by means so inscrutable and sorrowful. But whilst we render most heartily this tribute-whilst we admit the genius and power of the writer-whilst we readily confess that in this last work of his hands which comes to us sanctified by death and can be read only with tears of sorrowing love and reverence there are passages altogether equal to any which he has ever written, we are yet constrained to say that in its exposition and application of geological facts it is marred by the most extraordinary inaccuracies, in its exegesis of the Saered Text blurred by the most fanciful, forced and unnatural devices, that it is wanting in logical unity and coherence and that viewed in relation to its main topic, namely, the reconciliation of so-called geological science with the Mosaic Record, it is a total and most lamentable failure. That portion of the book which specially deals with the topic under discussion, is comprised in the Third and Fourth Lectures, entitled "The Two Records, Mosaic and Geological "—in the Fifth and Sixth, entitled "Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies," and in the Seventh and Eighth, entitled "The Noachian Deluge." It is scarcely necessary to premise that Mr. Miller takes for granted the certainty of that hypothesis adopted almost universally by Geologists, by which the formation of the earth's crust and the entombment in its strata of organic remains whether vegetable or animal, are referred to the operation of causes now in existence, essentially the same in energy, number and extent of area ever which their force is felt and consequently involving the lapse of an almost immeasurable period of time for the accomplishment of the result in question-and his controversy is with those Biblical critics and interpreters of the sacred text who hold that the Mosaic Record fixes the creation of the "earth and all things therein " at near six thousand years ago, and within the space of six ordinary days of twenty-four hours. Now in this state of the case Mr. Miller affirms, 1. That the only part of the Mosaic Record with which Geolohas to do is the work of the Third, Fifth and Sixth days-which we grant. gy 2. That the days of the Mosaic Record are to be regarded as indefinitely prolonged periods, which let us for the pesent also grant. 3. That the Mosaic Record is not a history of literal events as they occurred but a vision which appeard-as a moving panorama -a great spectacle exhibited to the tranced and illuminated seer, the salient points of which alone he seized and described, which for the present also let us grant. 4. That admitting these propositions the Geological Record is precisely one with the Mosaic Record, which we emphatically deny-here and now let us introduce Mr. Miller's own representation of this coincidence. "The Geologist," he says, "in his attempts to collate the Divine with the geological record I repeat has only three of the six periods of creation to account for the period of plants-the period of great sea monsters and creeping things and the period of cattle and the beasts of the earth. He is called on to question his sys tems and formations regarding the remains of these three great periods and of these only. And the question once fairly stated, what, I ask, is the reply? All geologists agree in holding that the vast geological scale naturally divides into three great parts. There are many lesser divisions-divisions into systems, formations, deposits, beds, strata; but the master division in each of which we find a type of life so unlike that of the others, that even the unpractised eye can detect the difference are simply threethe Paleozoic or oldest fossiliferous division; the Secondary or middle fossiliferous division; and the Tertiary or latest fossiliferous division. In the first or Palæozoic division we find coralscrustaceous molluscs, fishes, and in the later formations a few reptiles. But none of these classes of organisins give the leading character to the Palæozoic; they do not constitute the prominent feature or render it more remarkable as a scene of life than any of the divisions which followed. That which chiefly distinguished the Paleozoic from the Secondary and Tertiary periods was its gorgeous flora. It was emphatically the period of plants, of herbs yielding seed after their kind. In no other did the world ever witness such a flora, and once more. geologic evidence is so complete as to be patent to all that the first great period of organized being was, as described in the Mosaic Record peculiarly a period of herbs and trees yielding seed after their kind." age * * * * * The It may seem a harsh averment, but truth requires us to say that these are here almost as many inaccuracies as statements. It is far from being correct to say that all Geologists are agreed as to this trinal division of fossiliferous strata, as can readily be seen by inspection of their tables of classification prefixed to the last edition of Hitchcock's Geology and given though not so fully in all the manuals, and exhibiting such a diversity as must make the reader, especially if he remembers the object and abstract worth of these classifications, pause in astonishment at such an assertion. These tables are from the highest authorities, and it is very certain that if Geologists were called upon in the present state of Palæontological knowledge to make a classification of the fossiliferous strata, based upon peculiar forms of animal and vegetable life they would all agree with Sir Chas. Lyell in his affirmation that " if we were disposed on palæontological grounds, to divide the entire fossiliferous series into a few groups less numerous than those in the above table (corresponding to Mr. Miller's) and more nearly co-ordinate in value than the sections called primary, secondary, and tertiary, we might perhaps adopt the six groups given in the next table" which are. 1. Post Pleiocene & Tertiary. 2. Cretaceous. 3. Oolitic. 4. Triassic. 5. Permian, Carboniferous, & Devonian. 6. Silurian & Cambrian. And he adds that even this would be liable to change and could only be provisional, so little have the fossils been studied and so constant is the accessions of palæontological facts by virtue of which all our division as yet, are premature and unreliable. So baseless is the dream of Mr. Miller, that there is any such palæontological day as his "Paleozoic "so unfounded and contradictory of geological fact is the notion that we have in this group from the Cambrian to the Permian a great palæontological unity, and yet let the reader notice that, for the argument of Mr. Miller, this is an indispensable requirement. Nor is there the smallest ground for asserting even if we were to grant the existence of this day, that it was pre-eminently "a day of plants of herb yielding seed after its kind." The boldest theorizer would not dare to af firm this of any part of this Palæozoic day-nor does Mr. Miller, when he comes to apply it in so many words, except the Carboniferous, and now what is the proportion which this bears to that whole paleozoic day which Mr. Miller speaks? Let the reader cast his eye upon the following latest estimate of the thicknesses of the respective members of this group. Permian, 1,000 ft. 10,000" Old Redsandstone, 10,000 " Carboniferous, Silurian, Cambrian, Cumbrian, 7,500" 20,000" 10,000" Here we have, for it is confessedly true only of the Carboniferous rocks, if of them, a statement which it applicable only to about one-fifth of this paleozoic day. So far as mere negative evidence is concerned, in the Cumbrian, Cambrian and Silurian strata, we have only a few fucoid impressions-in the Old Red in addition to these, a specimen of coniferous wood extremely important as we shall presently see, and in the Permian, a flora diminished in quantity but allied in character to the carboniferous rocks, and we ask now if it be fair or just in this state of the facts to use as an argument in relation to this whole palæozoic day what is true only of a very small fraction of it? But it may be objected, that as we have accepted the hypothesis that this creative day was presented to Moses in the form of vision, we may reasonably infer that the seer would be arrested by and describe this sudden outburst of floral life which characterized the carboniferous era to the exclusion of all else all else being so insignificant as not to awaken an emotion and therefore passed by. Now there is not on record a more singular evidence of the obliquity of vision that a foregone conclusion can effect, than this objection manifests in the case of Mr. Miller, and he shall himself give us a picture of the ages pre |