The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed

Hugh Miller

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• Publié par: etto
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 20
• Langue: English

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Title: The Testimony of the Rocks
or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies,
Natural and Revealed
Author: Hugh Miller
Release Date: March 4, 2009 [eBook #28248]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Transcriber’s Note
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typographical errors have been corrected. The front
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SPHENOPTERIS AFFINIS. SPHENOPTERIS
AFFINIS.
A Fern of the Lower Coal Measures.
(Restored.)
THE
TESTIMONY OF THEROCKS;
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 theGeological 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 ereman 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 the earth
after his kind, and the cattle after their kind," at length
terminated the work by moulding a creature in his own
image, to whom he gave dominion over them all, was
not a brief period of a few hours' duration, but
extended over mayhap millenniums of centuries. No
blank chaotic gap of death and darkness separated
the creation to which man belongs from that of the old
extinct elephant, hippopotamus, and hyæna; for
familiar animals such as the red deer, the roe, the fox,
the wild cat, and the badger, lived throughout the