Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1857-05-09

which will receive nothing divine that cannot be
comprehended by the human reason. Yet the two
phases of faith often meet in the same mind and
leave their united impress on the same age. Espe-
ciay is this true under the Christian dispensation,
when miracles, ceasing longer to be an ocular de-
monstration, have themselves become rational
credence That supernaturalism which originally
addressed itself to foolish and soNof heart to
believe has in these latter days become the very
thesis of rationalistic debate. As to the ettered
and philosophc Greek the very sign of the prophet
Jonas became stone of stumbling and rock of
offence, nsomuch that not only the Epicureans and
Stoics of Athens made mock of Paul Mars
Hill when " they heard of the resurrection of the
dead" but even in the Christian Church of Corinth
there were some who refused to credit the superna
tural doctrine among the intellectual and specu
lative of modern times there has grown up Chris
tianity, melting into Infdehty, which, if it has not
vet been reduced from the vagueness of nebular
hypothesis and congobated into perfected system
of religious faith, yet represents sphere of ideas
which may be sufficiently defined as having the
German Schleiermacher for its positive pole and the
German Strauss for its negative.
! Foremost among the questions raised between
the believers in the supernatural elements and origin
of the Scriptures, on the one hand, and the dsc-
pies of rationaism on the oher is that in relation
formity to the religious consciousness, the divine
cosmogony as revealed to Moses and recorded in
the opening pages of the inspired volume. The
science of geology has disclosed chasm not indeed
between the Scriptures and its discoveries but be-
tween its discoveries and the popular comprehen-
sion of the popular language employed (and natu-
rally employed0 by Moses in the first chapter of
the Book of Genesis.
/ At first timd souls among genuine Christians
stood aghast at the spectacle and trembled for the
ark lest it should be seen to fall into the hands of
the. geological Philistines, as, ages before, good
Dominican friars and pious Franciscan monks Eve
will not sneer at them, though we might quote a
Milton to keep us In countenance) shrank in awe
from the temerity of Galileo when he declared that
the earth turned round the sum- contrary to Ptolemy
and to the Bible, as they understood it.
/ Such is the tenacity with which, from pride. of
opinion men cling to their 20 idoZa speciis," that
theologians who are not geologsts sometimes find it
/, easier to ignore the existence of Pre-Adamite
world than to question the nfalibility not of the
Scriptures, but of their own Interpretation of pas
sages respecting which there has been diversity of
sentiment from the early ages of the Church And,
on the otherhand geologists who not heoogians,
accepting without examination the popular interpre-
tation of the Mosaic cosmogony and finding it in
compatible with the " testimony of the rocks, begin
at once to doubt, if not to deny the inspiration of
the Bible Between these two classes of one-sided
and halflearned critics of knowledge beyond their
province; between these Ephraims, geological and
-peologica to whom the sirnlitude of ga cake not
turned is applIcaiN with equrl jjnstire- HuGM
MILLER comes as a mediator and a reconciler.
Equally versed in the doctrines of theology and in
the facts of geology far the latter science has
advanced, reading alike the revelations of Holy
Writ and of the "Stony book" he comes to teach
that the former rightly understood so far from con-
fctng with the latter, derive from them illustration
and confirmation. And to the task, thus worthy of
his best genius as geologist, he brings the pious
zeal of simplehearted Christian, who does not pare
off the edges round off the angles of his brave old
Scottish faith to make it bear the easily sort
mechanical superpostion the system geologic
fact-a method of reconciling Christianity and
Geology which mi ght be called Procrustean, if from
the dead body into which it converts the former we
should not rather style it Mezentian For he, while
maintaining the plenary inspiration of Scripture,
and accepting the Bible in It's entiety as "proft-
able for doctrine" shows that the "munitons of
rocks" may be made rampant of defence to the two
theologies, of both natural and revealed religion,
insomuch that " the stones of Venice not
more significant and suggestive to the artistic taste
of Ruskin than to the scientific eye of HUGH
MILLER are the stones of the field"
In the descriptive passages of the book before us
the reader will find the same power and vividness
which years ago moved the admiring envy of his
brother geologist, DIR. BUCKLAND We are in
Quoted into the fossil picture gallery of creation,
where passes before eye that strange procession
of being strange that :" never yet on Egyptian
obelisk Assyrian freze, where long lines of figures
seem stalking the granite, each charged with
symbol and mystery, have our Layards or Raw
Ensons seen any thing more extraordinary" For
here reptlian whales, with slim necks and bodies
as long as the. apochryphal sea serpent of modern
times lizards bulkier than elephants flying dra-
gons (real existences of the Oolitic period more
g hideous and inform the Seven
Cbanf ever did battle; birds as
pasurous ID type, if not in bulk, as the roc which
translated Snbad from the desert island (see p 116
which all pass in review before us with the whole
tribe of uncouth ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs me-
gatheria and dinotheria rhinoceri and hippopo
potami; mammoths and mastodons; megalosaurs
and iguanodons creatures which " tempested the
deep" birds that Glove the air on " sail-broad
vans; reptiles and quadrupeds which haunted
the dismal swamps and dark savannahs of the
Liassic ages. In the desert of Sinai is found
rocky valley whose sides for miles are scrawled
with strange figures and uncouth symbols which
allure even though they defy Interpretation To
the geologist each rock and cave and miners shaft
becomes Wady Nukatteb, traced with hieroglyphs.
more wild and heterocte than any that ever task
ed the ingenuity of Pococke or a Forster
1t was amid such marvels of the Pre- -Adamite
earth that HUGH MILLER loved to dwell as though
" 'mong fays and talismans !" the passion which
in early YOUTH while yet he patiently wrought as an
humble stone-cutter, drove him. with hammer in
hand to chip among the fossil fishes of the Old Red