When Maillet first promulgated his hypothesis, many of the departments of natural history existed as mere regions of fable and romance; and, in addressing himself to the Muscadins of Paris, in a popular work as wild and amusing as a fairy tale, he could safely take the liberty, and he did take it very freely, of exaggerating the marvellous, and adding fresh fictions to the untrue. And in preparing them for his theory of the metamorphoses of a marine into a terrestrial vegetation, he set himself, in accordance with his general character, to show that really the transmutation did not amount to much. “I know you have resided a long time,” his Indian Philosopher is made to say, “at Marseilles. Now, you can bear me witness, that the fishermen there daily find in their nets, and among their fish, plants of a hundred kinds, with their fruits still upon them; and though these fruits are not so large and so well nourished as those of our earth, yet the species of these plants is in no other respect dubious. They there find clusters of white and black grapes, peach-trees, pear-trees, prune-trees, apple-trees, and all sorts of flowers. When in that city, I saw, in the cabinet of a curious gentleman, a prodigious number of those sea-productions of different qualities, especially of rose-trees, which had their roses very red when they came out of the sea. I was there presented with a cluster of black sea-grapes. It was at the time of the vintage, and there were two grapes perfectly ripe.”

Now, all this, and much more of the same nature, addressed to the Parisians of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, passed, I doubt not, wonderfully well; but it will not do now, when almost every young girl, whether in town or country, is a botanist, and works on the algæ have become popular. Since Maillet wrote, Hume promulgated his argument on Miracles, and La Place his doctrine of Probabilities. There can be no doubt that these have exerted a wholesome influence on the laws of evidence; and by these laws, as restricted and amended,—laws to which, both in science and religion, we ourselves conform,—we insist on trying the Lamarckian hypothesis, and in condemning it,—should it be found to have neither standing in experience nor support from testimony,—as a mere feverish dream, incoherent in its parts and baseless in its fabric. Give, we ask, but one well-attested instance of transmutation from the algæ to even the lower forms of terrestrial vegetation common on our sea-coasts, and we will keep the question open, in expectation of more. It will not do to tell us—as Cuvier was told, when he appealed to the fact, determined by the mummy birds and reptiles of Egypt, of the fixity of species in all, even the slightest particulars, for at least three thousand years—that immensely extended periods of time are necessary to effect specific changes, and that human observation has not been spread over a period sufficiently ample to furnish the required data regarding them. The apology is simply a confession that, in these ages of the severe inductive philosophy, you have been dreaming your dream, cut off, as if by the state of sleep, from all the tangibilities of the real waking-day world, and that you have not a vestige of testimony with which to support your ingenious vagaries.

But on another account do we refuse to sustain the excuse. It is not true that human observation has not been spread over a period sufficiently extended to furnish the necessary data for testing the development hypothesis. In one special walk,—that which bears on the supposed transmutation of algæ into terrestrial plants,—human observation has been spread over what is strictly analogous to millions of years. For extent of space in this matter is exactly correspondent with duration of time. No man, in this late period of the world’s history, attains to the age of five hundred years; and as some of our larger English oaks have been known to increase in bulk of trunk and extent of bough for five centuries together, no man can possibly have seen the same huge oak pass, according to Cowper, through its various stages of “treeship,”—

But though no man lives throughout five hundred years of time, he can trace, by passing in some of the English forests through five hundred yards of space, the history of the oak in all its stages of growth, as correctly as if he did live throughout the five hundred years. Oaks, in the space of a few hundred yards, may be seen in every stage of growth, from the newly burst acorn, that presents to the light its two fleshy lobes, with the first tender rudiments of a leaflet between, up to the giant of the forest, in the hollow of whose trunk the red deer may shelter, and find ample room for the broad spread of his antlers. The fact of the development of the oak, from the minute two-lobed seedling of a week’s growth up to the gigantic tree of five centuries, is as capable of being demonstrated by observation spread over five hundred yards of space, as by observation spread over five hundred years of time. And be it remembered, that the sea-coasts of the world are several hundred thousand miles in extent. Europe is by far the smallest of the earth’s four large divisions, and it is bounded, in proportion to its size, by a greater extent of land than any of the others. And yet the sea-coasts of Europe alone, including those of its islands, exceed twenty-five thousand miles. We have results before us, in this extent of space, identical with those of many hundred thousand years of time; and if terrestrial plants were as certainly developments of the low plants of the sea as the huge oak is a development of the immature seedling, just sprung from the acorn, so vast a stretch of sea-coast could not fail to present us with the intermediate vegetation in all its stages. But the sea-coasts fail to exhibit even a vestige of the intermediate vegetation. Experience spread over an extent of space analogous to millions of years of time, does not furnish, in this department, a single fact corroborative of the development theory, but, on the contrary, many hundreds of facts that bear directly against it.

The author of the “Vestiges” is evidently a practised and tasteful writer, and his work abounds in ingenious combinations of thought; but those powers of abstract reflection on whose vigorous exercise the origination of argument depends, nature seems to have denied him. There are two things in especial which his work wants,—original observation and abstract thought,—the power of seeing for himself and of reasoning for himself; and what we find instead is simply a vivid appreciation of the images of things, as these images exist in other minds, and a vigorous perception of the various shades of resemblance which obtain among them. There is a large amount of analogical power exhibited; but that basis of truth which correct observation can alone furnish, and that ability of nicely distinguishing differences by which the faculty of discerning similarity must be forever regulated and governed, are wanting, in what, in a mind of fine general texture and quality, must be regarded as an extraordinary degree. And hence an ingenious but very unsolid work,—full of images transferred, not from the scientific field, but from the field of scientific mind, and charged with glittering but vague resemblances, stamped in the mint of fancy; which, were they to be used as mere counters in some light literary game of story-telling or character-sketching, would be in no respect out of place, but which, when passed current as the proper coin of philosophic argument, are really frauds on the popular understanding. There are, however, not a few instances in the “Vestiges” and its “Sequel,” in which that defect of reflective power to which I refer rather enhances than diminishes the difficulty of reply, by presenting to the controversialist mere intangible clouds with which to grapple; that yet, through the existence of a certain superstition in the popular mind, as predisposed to accept as true whatever takes the form of science, as its predecessor the old superstition was inclined a century ago to reject science itself, are at least suited to blind and bewilder. Of this kind of difficulty, the following passage, in which the author of the work cashiers the Creator as such, and substitutes, instead, a mere animal-manufacturing piece of clock-work, which bears the name of natural law,[38] furnishes us with a remarkable instance.

“Admitting,” he remarks, “that we see not now any such fact as the production of new species, we at least know, that while such facts were occurring upon earth, there were associated phenomena in progress of a character perfectly ordinary. For example, when the earth received its first fishes, sandstone and limestone were forming in the manner exemplified a few years ago in the ingenious experiments of Sir James Hall; basaltic columns rose for the future wonder of man, according to the principle which Dr. Gregory Watt showed in operation before the eyes of our fathers; and hollows in the igneous rocks were filled with crystals, precisely as they could now be by virtue of electric action, as shown within the last few years by Crosse and Becquerel. The seas obeyed the impulse of gentle breezes, and rippled their sandy bottoms, as seas of the present day are doing; the trees grew as now, by favor of sun and wind, thriving in good seasons and pining in bad: this while the animals above fishes were yet to be created. The movements of the sea, the meteorological agencies, the disposition which we see in the generality of plants to thrive when heat and moisture were most abundant, were kept up in silent serenity, as matters of simply natural order, throughout the whole of the ages which saw reptiles enter in their various forms upon the sea and land. It was about the time of the first mammals that the forest of the Dirt-Bed was sinking in natural ruin amidst the sea sludge, as forests of the Plantagenets have been doing for several centuries upon the coast of England. In short all the common operations of the physical world were going on in their usual simplicity, obeying that order which we still see governing them; while the supposed extraordinary causes were in requisition for the development of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. There surely hence arises a strong presumption against any such causes. It becomes much more likely that the latter phenomena were evolved in the manner of law also, and that we only dream of extraordinary causes here, as men once dreamt of a special action of Deity in every change of wind and the results of each season, merely because they did not know the laws by which the events in question were evolved.”

How, let us suppose, would David Hume—the greatest thinker of which infidelity can boast—have greeted the auxiliary who could have brought him such an argument as a contribution to the cause? “Your objection, so far as you have stated it,” the philosopher might have said, “amounts simply to this:—Creation by direct act is a miracle; whereas all that exists is propagated and maintained by natural law. Natural laws—to vary the illustration—were in full operation at the period when the Author of the Christian religion was, it is said, engaged in working his miracles. When, according to our opponents, he walked upon the surface of the sea, Peter, through the operation of the natural law of gravitation, was sinking into it; when he withered, by a word, the barren fig-tree, there were other trees on the Mount thriving in conformity with the vegetative laws, under the influence of sun and shower; when he raised the dead Lazarus, there were corpses in the neighboring tombs passing, through the natural putrefactive fermentation, into a state of utter decomposition. In fine, at the time when he was engaged, as Reid and Campbell believe, in working miracles in violation of law, the laws of which these were a violation actually existed, and were every where actively operative; or, to employ your own words, when the New Testament miracles were, it is alleged, in the act of being wrought, ‘all the common operations of the physical world were going on in their usual simplicity, obeying that order which we still see governing them.’ Such is the portion of your statement already made; what next?” “It is surely very unlikely,” replies the auxiliary, “that in such a complex mass of phenomena there should have been two totally distinct modes of the exercise of the Divine power,—the mode by miracle and the mode by law.” “Unlikely!” rejoins the philosopher; “on what grounds?” “O, just unlikely,” says the auxiliary;—“unlikely that God should be at once operating on matter through the agency of natural laws, of which man knows much, and through the agency of miraculous acts, of the nature of which man knows nothing. But I have not thought out the subject any further: you have, in the statement already made, my entire argument.” “Ay, I see,” the author of the “Essay on Miracles” would probably have remarked; “you deem it unlikely that Deity should not only work in part, as he has always done, by means of which men,—clever fellows like you and me—think they know a great deal but that he should also work in part, as he has always done, by means of which they know nothing at all. Admirably reasoned out! You are, I make no doubt, a sound, zealous unbeliever in your private capacity, and your argument may have great weight with your own mind, and be, in consequence, worthy of encouragement in a small way; but allow me to suggest that, for the sake of the general cause, it should be kept out of reach of the enemy. There are in the Churches Militant on both sides of the Tweed shrewd combatants, who have nearly as much wit as ourselves.” I think I understand the reference of the author of the “Vestiges” to the dream “of a special action of Deity in every change of wind and the results of each season.” Taken with what immediately goes before, it means something considerably different from those fancies of the “untutored Indian,” who, according to the poet,

There is a school of infidelity, tolerably well known in the capital of Scotland as by far the most superficial which our country has yet seen, that measures mind with a tape-line and the callipers, and, albeit not Christian, laudably exemplifies, in a loudly expressed regard for science, the Christian grace of loving its enemy. And the belief in a special Providence, who watches over and orders all things, and without whose permission there falleth not even a “sparrow to the ground,” the apostles of this school set wholly aside, substituting, instead, a belief in the indiscriminating operation of natural laws; as if, with the broad fact before them that even man can work out his will merely by knowing and directing these laws, the God by whom they were instituted should lack either the power or the wisdom to make them the pliant ministers of his. It is, I fear, to the distinctive tenet in the creed of this hapless school that the author of the “Vestiges” refers. Nor is it in the least surprising, that a writer who labors through two carefully written volumes,[39] to destroy the existing belief in “God’s works of Creation,” should affect to hold that the belief in his “works of Providence” had been destroyed already. But faith in a special superintendence of Deity is not yet dead: nay, more, He who created the human mind took especial care, in its construction, that, save in a few defective specimens of the race, the belief should never die.

The author of the “Vestiges” complains of the illiberality with which he has been treated. “It has appeared to various critics,” we find him saying, “that very sacred principles are threatened by a doctrine of universal law. A natural origin of life, and a natural basis in organization for the operations of the human mind, speak to them of fatalism and materialism. And, strange to say, those who every day give views of physical cosmogony altogether discrepant in appearance with that of Moses, apply hard names to my book for suggesting an organic cosmogony in the same way, liable to inconsiderate odium. I must firmly protest against this mode of meeting speculations regarding nature. The object of my book, whatever may be said of the manner in which it is treated, is purely scientific. The views which I give of the history of organization stand exactly on the same ground upon which the geological doctrines stood fifty years ago. I am merely endeavoring to read aright another chapter of the mystic book which God has placed under the attention of his creatures.... The absence of all liberality in my reviewers is striking, and especially so in those whose geological doctrines have exposed them to similar misconstruction. If the men newly emerged from the odium which was thrown upon Newton’s theory of the planetary motions had rushed forward to turn that odium upon the patrons of the dawning science of Geology, they would have been prefiguring the conduct of several of my critics, themselves hardly escaped from the rude hands of the narrow-minded, yet eager to join that rabble against a new and equally unfriended stranger, as if such were the best means of purchasing impunity for themselves. I trust that a little time will enable the public to penetrate this policy.”

Now, there is one very important point to which the author of this complaint does not seem to have adverted. The astronomer founded his belief in the mobility of the earth and the immobility of the sun, not on a mere dream-like hypothesis, founded on nothing, but on a wide and solid base of pure induction. Galileo was no mere dreamer;—he was a discoverer of great truths, and a profound reasoner regarding them: and on his discoveries and his reasonings, compelled by the inexorable laws of his mental constitution, did he build up certain deductive beliefs, which had no previous existence in his mind. His convictions were consequents, not antecedents. Such, also, is the character of geological discovery and inference, and of the existing belief,—their joint production,—regarding the great antiquity of the globe. No geologist worthy of the name began with the belief, and then set himself to square geological phenomena with its requirements. It is a deduction,—a result;—not the starting assumption, or given sum, in a process of calculation, but its ultimate finding or answer. Clergymen of the orthodox Churches, such as the Sumners, Sedgwicks, Bucklands, Conybeares, and Pye Smiths of England, or the Chalmerses, Duncans, and Flemings of our own country, must have come to the study of this question of the world’s age with at least no bias in favor of the geological estimate. The old, and, as it has proven, erroneous reading of the Mosaic account, was by much too general a one early in the present century, not to have exerted upon them, in their character as ministers of religion, a sensible influence of a directly opposite nature. And the fact of the complete reversal of their original bias, and of the broad unhesitating finding on the subject which they ultimately substituted instead, serves to intimate to the uninitiated the strength of the evidence to which they submitted. There can be nothing more certain than that it is minds of the same calibre and class, engaged in the same inductive track, that yielded in the first instance to the astronomical evidence regarding the earth’s motion, and, in the second, to the geological evidence regarding the earth’s age.[40]

But how very different the nature and history of the development hypothesis, and the character of the intellects with whom it originated, or by whom it has been since adopted! In the first place, it existed as a wild dream ere Geology had any being as a science. It was an antecedent, not a consequent,—a starting assumption, not a result. No one will contend that Maillet was a geologist. Geology has no place among the sciences in the age in which he lived and even no name. And yet there is a translation of his Telliamed now lying before me, bearing date 1750, in which I find very nearly the same account given of the origin of animals and plants as that in the “Vestiges,” and in which the sea is described as that great and fruitful womb of nature in which organization and life first began. Lamarck, at the time when Maillet wrote, was a boy in his sixth year. He became, comparatively early in life, a skilful botanist and conchologist; but not until turned of fifty did he set himself to study general zoology; and his greater work on the invertebrate animals, on which his fame as a naturalist chiefly rests, did not begin to appear—for it was published serially—until the year 1815. But his development hypothesis, identical with that of the “Vestiges,” was given to the world long before,—in 1802; at a time when it had not been ascertained that there existed placoids during the Silurian period, or ganoids during the Old Red Sandstone period, or enaliosaurs during the Oolitic period; and when, though Smith had constructed his “Tabular View of the British Strata,” his map had not yet appeared, and there was little more known regarding the laws of superposition among the stratified rocks than was to be found in the writings of Werner. And if the presumption be strong, in the circumstances, that Lamarck originated his development hypothesis ere he became in any very great degree skilful as a zoologist, it is no mere presumption, but a demonstrable truth, that he originated it ere he became a geologist; for a geologist he never became. In common with Maillet and Buffon, he held by Leibnitz’s theory of a universal ocean; and such, as we have already seen, was his ignorance of fossils, that he erected dermal fragments of the Russian Asterolepis into a new genus of Polyparia,—an error into which the merest tyro in palæontology could not now fall. Such, in relation to these sciences, was the man who perfected the dream of development. Nor has the most distinguished of its continental assertors now living,—Professor Oken,—any higher claim to be regarded as a disciple of the inductive school of Geology than Lamarck. In the preface to the recently published translation of his “Physio-Philosophy,” we find the following curious confession:—“I wrote the first edition of 1810 in a kind of inspiration, and on that account it was not so well arranged as a systematic work ought to be. Now, though this may appear to have been amended in the second and third edition, yet still it was not possible for me to completely attain the object held in view. The book has therefore remained essentially the same as regards its fundamental principles. It is only the empirical arrangement into series of plants and animals that has been modified from time to time, in accordance with the scientific elevation of their several departments, or just as discoveries and anatomical investigations have increased, and rendered some other position of the objects a matter of necessity.” An interesting piece of evidence this; but certainly rather simple as a confession. It will be found that while whatever gives value to the “Physio-Philosophy” of the German Professor (a work which, if divested of all the inspired bits, would be really a good one) was acquired either before or since its first appearance in the ordinary way, its development hypothesis came direct from the god. Further, as I have already had occasion to state, Oken holds, like Lamarck and Maillet, by the universal ocean of Leibnitz; he holds, also, that the globe is a vast crystal, just a little flawed in the facets: and that the three granitic components—quartz, feldspar, and mica—are simply the hail-drops of heavy stone showers that shot athwart the original ocean, and accumulated into rock at the bottom, as snow or hail shoots athwart the upper atmosphere, and accumulates, in the form of ice, on the summits of high hills, or in the arctic or antarctic regions. Such, in the present day, are the geological notions of Oken! They were doubtless all promulgated in what is modestly enough termed “a kind of inspiration;” and there are few now so ignorant of Geology as not to know that the possessing agent in the case—for inspiration is not quite the proper word—must have been at least of kin to that ingenious personage who volunteered of old to be a lying spirit in the mouths of the four hundred prophets. And the well-known fact, that the most popular contemporary expounder of Oken’s hypothesis—the author of the “Vestiges”—has in every edition of his work been correcting, modifying, or altogether withdrawing his statements regarding both geological and zoological phenomena, and that his gradual development as a geologist and zoologist, from the sufficiently low type of acquirement to which his first edition bore witness, may be traced, in consequence, with a distinctness and certainty which we in vain seek in the cases of presumed development which he would so fain establish,—has in its bearing exactly the same effect. His development hypothesis was complete at a time when his geology and zoology were rudimental and imperfect. Give me your facts, said the Frenchman, that I may accommodate them to my theory. And no one can look at the progress of the Lamarckian hypothesis, with reference to the dates when, and the men by whom, it was promulgated, without recognizing in it one of perhaps the most striking embodiments of the Frenchman’s principle which the world ever saw. It is not the illiberal religionist that rejects and casts it off,—it is the inductive philosopher. Science addresses its assertors in the language of the possessed to the sons of Sceva the Jew;—“The astronomer I know, and the geologist I know; but who are ye?”

One of the strangest passages in the “Sequel to the Vestiges,” is that in which its author carries his appeal from the tribunal of science to “another tribunal,” indicated but not named, before which “this new philosophy” [remarkable chiefly for being neither philosophy nor new] “is to be truly and righteously judged.” The principle is obvious, on which, were his opponents mere theologians, wholly unable, though they saw the mischievous character and tendency of his conclusions, to disprove them scientifically, he might appeal from theology to science: “it is with scientific truth,” he might urge, “not with moral consequences, that I have aught to do.” But on what allowable principle, professing, as he does, to found his theory on scientific fact, can he appeal from science to the want of it? “After discussing,” he says, “the whole arguments on both sides in so ample a manner, it may be hardly necessary to advert to the objection arising from the mere fact, that nearly all the scientific men are opposed to the theory of the ‘Vestiges.’ As this objection, however, is likely to be of some avail with many minds, it ought not to be entirely passed over. If I did not think there were reasons, independent of judgment, for the scientific class coming so generally to this conclusion, I might feel the more embarrassed in presenting myself in direct opposition to so many men possessing talents and information. As the case really stands, the ability of this class to give at the present a true response upon such a subject appears extremely challengeable. It is no discredit to them that they are, almost without exception, engaged each in his own little department of science, and able to give little or no attention to other parts of that vast field. From year to year, and from age to age, we see them at work, adding, no doubt, much to the known, and advancing many important interests, but at the same time doing little for the establishment of comprehensive views of nature Experiments in however narrow a walk, facts of whatever minuteness, make reputations in scientific societies; all beyond is regarded with suspicion and distrust. The consequence is, that philosophy, as it exists amongst us, does nothing to raise its votaries above the common ideas of their time. There can therefore be nothing more conclusive against our hypothesis in the disfavor of the scientific class, than in that of any other section of educated men.”

This is surely a very strange statement. Waiving altogether the general fact, that great original discoverers in any department of knowledge are never men of one science or one faculty, but possess, on the contrary, breadth of mind and multiplicity of acquirement;—waiving, too, the particular fact, that the more distinguished original discoverers of the present day rank among at once its most philosophic, most elegant, and most extensively informed writers;—granting, for the argument’s sake, that our scientific men are men of narrow acquirement, and “exclusively engaged, each in his own little department of science;”—it is surely rational to hold, notwithstanding, that in at least these little departments they have a better right to be heard than any other class of persons whatever. We must surely not refuse to the man of science what we at once grant to the common mechanic. A cotton-weaver or calico-printer may be a very narrow man, “exclusively engaged in his own little department;” and yet certain it is that, in a question of cotton-weaving or calico-printing, his evidence is justly deemed more conclusive in courts of law than that of any other man, however much his superior in general breadth and intelligence. And had the author of the “Vestiges” founded his hypothesis on certain facts pertaining to the arts of cotton-weaving and calico-printing, the cotton-weaver and calico-printer would have an indisputable right to be heard on the question of their general correctness. Are we to regard the case as different because it is on facts pertaining to science, not to cotton-weaving or calico-printing, that he professes to found? His hypothesis, unless supported by scientific evidence, is a mere dream,—a fiction as baseless and wild as any in the “Fairy Tales” or the “Arabian Nights.” And, fully sensible of the fact, he calls in as witnesses the physical sciences, and professes to take down their evidence. He calls into court Astronomy, Geology, Phytology, and Zoology. “Hold!” exclaims the astronomer, as the examination goes on; “you are taking the evidence of my special science most unfairly; I challenge a right of cross-examining the witness.” “Hold!” cries the geologist; “you are putting my science to the question, and extorting from it, in its agony, a whole series of fictions: I claim the right of examining it fairly and softly, and getting from it just the sober truth, and nothing more.” And the phytologist and zoologist urge exactly similar claims. “No, gentlemen,” replies the author of the “Vestiges,” “you are narrow men, confined each of you to his own little department, and so I will not permit you to cross-examine the witnesses.” “What!” rejoin the men of science, “not permit us to examine our own witnesses!—refuse to us what you would at once concede to the cotton-weaver or the calico-printer, were the question one of cotton-weaving or of calico-printing! We are surely not much narrower men than the man of cotton or the man of calico. It is but in our own little departments that we ask to be heard.” “But you shall not be heard, gentlemen,” says the author of the “Vestiges;” “at all events, I shall not care one farthing for anything you say. For observe, gentlemen, my hypothesis is nothing without the evidence of your sciences; and you all unite, I see, in taking that evidence from me; and so I confidently raise my appeal in this matter to people who know nothing about either you or your sciences. It must be before another tribunal that the new philosophy is to be truly and righteously judged.” Alas! what can this mean? or where are we to seek for that tribunal of last resort to which this ingenious man refers with such confidence the consideration of his case? Can it mean, that he appeals from the only class of persons qualified to judge of his facts, to a class ignorant of these, but disposed by habits of previous scepticism to acquiesce in his conclusions, and take his premises for granted;—that he appeals from astronomers and geologists to low-minded materialists and shallow phrenologers,—from phytologists and zoologists to mesmerists and phreno-mesmerists?

I remember being much struck, several years ago, by a remark dropped in conversation by the late Rev. Mr. Stewart of Cromarty, one of the most original-minded men I ever knew. “In reading in my Greek New Testament this morning,” he said, “I was curiously impressed by a thought which, simple as it may seem, never occurred to me before. The portion which I perused was in the First Epistle of Peter; and as I passed from the thinking of the passage to the language in which it is expressed,—‘This Greek of the untaught Galilean fisherman,’—I said, ‘so admired by scholars and critics for its unaffected dignity and force, was not acquired, as that of Paul may have been, in the ordinary way, but formed a portion of the Pentecostal gift! Here, then, immediately under my eye, on these pages, are there embodied, not, as in many other parts of the Scriptures, the mere details of a miracle, but the direct results of a miracle. How strange! Had the old tables of stone been placed before me, with what an awe-struck feeling would I have looked on the characters traced upon them by God’s own finger! How is it that I have failed to remember that, in the language of these Epistles, miraculously impressed by the Divine power upon the mind, I possessed as significant and suggestive a relic as that which the inscription miraculously impressed by the Divine power upon the stone could possibly have furnished?” It was a striking thought; and in the course of our walk, which led us over richly fossiliferous beds of the Old Red Sandstone, to a deposit of the Eathie Lias, largely charged with the characteristic remains of that formation, I ventured to connect it with another. “In either case,” I remarked, as we seated ourselves beside a sea-cliff, sculptured over with the impressions of extinct plants and shells, “your relics, whether of the Pentecostal Greek or of the characters inscribed on the old tables of stone, could address themselves to but previously existing belief. The sceptic would see in the Sinaitic characters, were they placed before him, merely the work of an ordinary tool; and in the Greek of Peter and John, a well-known language, acquired, he would hold, in the common way. But what say you to the relics that stand out in such bold relief from the rocks beside us, in their character as the results of miracle? The perished tribes and races which they represent all began to exist. There is no truth which science can more conclusively demonstrate than that they had all a beginning. The infidel who, in this late age of the world, would attempt falling back on the fiction of an ‘infinite series,’ would be laughed to scorn. They all began to be. But how? No true geologist holds by the development hypothesis;—it has been resigned to sciolists and smatterers;—and there is but one other alternative. They began to be, through the miracle of creation. From the evidence furnished by these rocks we are shut down either to the belief in miracle, or to the belief in something else infinitely harder of reception, and as thoroughly unsupported by testimony as it is contrary to experience. Hume is at length answered by the severe truths of the stony science. He was not, according to Job, ‘in league with the stones of the field,’ and they have risen in irresistible warfare against him in the Creator’s behalf.”