time; its reptiles occupy a very subordinate place; but its beasts of the field were by far the most wonderfully developed, both in size and numbers, that ever appeared upon earth. Its mammoths and its mastodons, rhinoceri and its hippopotami, its enormous dinotherium and colossal megatherium, greatly more than equalled in bulk the hugest mammals of the present time, and vastly exceeded them in number. The remains of one of its elephants (Elephas primigenius) are still so abundant amid the frozen wastes of Siberia, that what have been not inappropriately termed "ivory quarries" have been wrought among their bones for more than a hundred years. Even in our own country, of which, as I have already shown, this elephant was for long ages a native, so abundant are the skeletons and tusks, that there is scarcely a local museum in the kingdom that has not its specimens, dug out of the Pleistocene deposits of the neighbourhood. And with this ancient elephant there were meetly associated in Britain, as on the northern continents generally all around the globe, many other mammals of corresponding magnitude. 'Grand indeed,' says an English naturalist, was the fauna of the British islands in those early days. Tigers as large again as the biggest Asiatic species lurked in the ancient thickets; elephants of nearly twice the bulk of the largest individuals that now exist in Africa or Ceylon roamed in herds; at least two species of rhinoceros forced their way through the primeval forest; and the lakes and rivers were tenanted by hippopotami as bulky, and with as great tusks as those of Africa.' The massive cave-bear and large cave-hyæna belonged to the same formidable group, with at least two species of great oxen (Bos longifrons and Bos primigenius) with a horse of smaller size, and an elk (Megaceros Hibernicus), that stood ten feet four inches in height. Truly this Tertiary age-this third and last of the great geologic periods was peculiarly the age of great 'beasts of the earth after their kind, and of cattle after their kind.' (Miller, p. 136.)

If again we accept the facts thus detailed (I say the facts, for the conclusions based on them I utterly repudiate as contrary to the Word of God) what would these facts show? They would show that the same Almighty hand that, in judgment, took from the earth the perfectness of its primeval verdure and beauty, did also cause the animal world, teeming as it was with life and giant forms of strength, to share in the general ruin. Whilst man unfallen stood in honour and dignity as the head and lord of creation, it was meet that earth, and air, and seas, should abound with living forms of giant might,

for the greater the vastness of their strength, the more complete was the attestation to the superior greatness and lordship of man who was set over them all. The vastness of these creatures had in it nothing terrific when first they roamed peacefully and rejoicingly throughout a paradisiacal earth-scorched by no burning heat-withered by no cold. They preyed not one on the other: the green earth supplied them with their food. They threatened not each other; much less did they threaten man. Innocency and peace reigned. There was no need, as afterward, (see Luke x. 19.) to be guarded against the sting of the scorpion, or the fang of the bear, or any other form of "the power of the enemy," because nothing harmed,-nothing destroyed. There was nothing venomous-nothing that had in it the power of death, for death as yet was not. But when sin, and with it the power of Satan, entered, all was changed. The time allowed to manifest the alteration might have been very brief; but it was no doubt sufficient to evidence among the monsters of the land and of the sea, their change from lamb-like gentleness to satanic cruelty and fury. Fierceness had become the companion of strength: terror of weakness; and fierceness also became armed with power to destroy. What if the earth had remained full of these mighty monsters after their nature had been changed? Would not the earth have become untenable by man? The beasts of the field-" evil beasts," as they are called in Scripture, although reduced in numbers and in strength, became to man some of his fiercest and most dreaded enemies. What then would they have been if their giant size and strength, and numbers, had continued what they originally were after they had become possessed of the will and the power to destroy? On every account, therefore, it was to be expected that the hand of almighty power, without indeed making a full end, should yet be

• Respecting this I make no assertion. Whether the results of the Fall in spreading death and destruction were rapidly or more slowly developed throughout the earth-whether all traces of the Earth's paradisiacal condition instantaneously disappeared or were in measure preserved till the Flood, and then finally obliterated-whether that ordered record of death which is said to be written on the earth's strata was effected fully at the Fall, or was finally completed when creation was entombed beneath the waters of the Flood-these and such like questions being utterly beyond the scope of human cognisance, cannot be answered. All that we are concerned to maintain is that which Scripture asserts, viz. that death, destruction and ruin, did not precede but follow the Fall; and that all that the finger of God may have written on creation as a record of judgment, is subsequent to human sin.

stretched out against this part of creation also, and the earth should be made the grave of a greatness for which it was no longer the suited sphere. The same miraculous power that in one day had caused the earth to teem with these matured giant forms of life, was equally able in one day (if it so pleased) to cause them to disappear, and to entomb the memorials of them in the rock.

Hugh Miller invites us to enter the geological gallery of the British Museum, and to inspect the organic remains that are consecutively arranged in the successive rooms-the first being devoted to fossil plants chiefly of the Coal Measures. Well, we accept the invitation, and we enter. We hear his statement of the facts, but the comment shall be our own. And our comment is this, "Here we see the record of the ruin of the earth's "gorgeous flora"-a buried memorial of the strength, and verdure, and beauty, that once characterized an unfallen earth in the day when it "brought forth grass, and the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind"-all created, be it remembered, in maturity and spreading over the earth from pole to pole, for there were then no blighting consuming influences-no scorching heat-no withering cold-no wasting tempests-no undermining waters-all was peaceful, perfect, and instinct, not with the power of death but of life. It was the era of man's innocency. But he sins. The scene is suddenly changed. The reign of death begins. God puts forth His almighty power, and by a miracle changes the condition of the earth. He disrobes it of its mantle of beauty. He constitutes these black coal fields as the memorial of the bright living greenness that had been. We gaze on them, and see the record of the ruin that human sin has caused.

We pass on to a second room. We find ourselves still surrounded by memorials of death. We beheld the remains of gigantic animals, "all enormous, monstrous, vast," disinterred from the earth's next lowest strata. The hand of God has, so to speak, buried and preserved them separately, that they might be a memorial of the spectacle which the earth on the fifth day of its existence presented; when earth and seas from pole to pole teemed with these giant creaturesall harmless-all happy-all ready to own subjection to man. But man sinned; and God miraculously stretched forth His destroying hand, and the earth became well nigh denuded of the mighty creatures that tenanted it; and we see the record of what they were in the fossilized remains before us-another memorial of human sin.

We enter the third room, and the same lesson is in another form repeated. Is there anything that should surprise us in all this? Is there anything that does not seem antecedently probable to every mind that owns the power of God as almighty, and recognises that He is able to act secretly as well as miraculously, and believes what the Scripture reveals respecting the consequences of human sin and the reign of death? Indeed, I can see no difficulty in receiving these things. But if, on the contrary, I am asked to believe that the paradisiacal earth which the God of life and love "created," "formed," and "made," and pronounced "very good," was at that moment, down to its very lowest strata, the record of nothing but destruction and death, I repudiate the thought as contrary to every thing that conscience and Scripture teach.

And on what ground am I asked to give my adherence to these theories? On the ground that "IF" we regard the earth's stratification as the result of agencies analogous to those with which experience has elsewhere made us familiar, then myriads of millions of years (we might as well say at once an eternity) would be required to produce the phenomena. But that IF involves the whole question. I refuse to grant the hypothesis. I refuse to allow it to be assumed that God did not act miraculously when the earth's strata were made, as to every essential characteristic, what we now find them to be. I ask for demonstrative proof that God did not act miraculously when He smote creation at the Fall. I ask for demonstrative proof that He has not acted miraculously since, in convulsing and upheaving the earth's crust, as at the time when He brake up the fountains of the great deep at the time of the Flood, and as at the time when He descended on Sinai and shook the whole earth. If God, at the time when He miraculously smote creation, was pleased to appoint that the memorials of creation's ruin should be presented in a certain order and arrangement analogous to that which He adopted in presenting the original order of life, and if subsequently, still acting miraculously (as when He descended at Sinai, and at the Flood) he has by means unknown to us, disturbed and convulsed the earth's crust, I find in such operations of the Divine hand, a sufficient cause for every appearance, whether of order, or disorder, that the earth's strata presents. I can understand why remains that, according to the order of arrangement, should belong to the lowest strata, should be found in the highest, and the reverse. If, after the earth was stricken at the Fall, it had become the abode of humility, contrition,

and obedience, the case would have been different: but instead thereof, it became the abode of violence, rebellion, and sin. What wonder then that God should have shaken it to its very foundations as He did at Sinai, and as he will yet again shake it, in token that He recogniseth it as the habitation, not only of fallen, but of unhumbled, rebellious man.

I wish it to be observed that in saying these things I pretend to no geologic learning-I have none; nor do I profess to propose any theory that will satisfactorily account for all geologic facts, or meet every difficulty that might be, whether reasonably or captiously, urged. What I say is this. I maintain that all that Scripture has revealed, directly or indirectly, concerning the physical condition of this earth, both in its paradisiacal and its fallen state, is to be tenaciously held. Having once ascertained that Scripture does reveal certain things as true, those things we must hold as infallibly certain, and even if an angel from Heaven were to gainsay them we heed him not. If any supposed facts, the result of human research, are presented to us, we should be willing to examine and try them by the Scripture. If they bear the test—especially if they manifestly tend to corroborate or illustrate Scripture, we welcome them. If they dó not bear that test, we shall certainly find, sooner or later, either that we have hastily assumed as a fact that which is not a fact; or that we have been comparing with the Scripture, not a fact, but our deductions from, or reasonings about, a fact.

I am not here concerned to enquire into the arguments that may be urged either for or against the facts advanced by Hugh Miller. If we assume them to be, even in a general sense, true-if we admit that the fossilised remains in the earth's strata present an order of destruction closely resembling the order of creation on the third, fifth, and sixth days, as detailed in Genesis-if the work of the third day in clothing the earth with verdure and beauty, has its memorial in the stricken and mutilated remains of trees and forests that lie entombed beneath our feet; and if the works of the fifth and sixth days are also recorded by corresponding remains of ruin, I accept the attestation that such records furnish to the great truth, that the earth, once free from all corruption and all power of death, has, because of human sin, been made likewise to witness to the power of that hand which is able not only to bless, but also to destroy.

If it be contended that the remains found in the earth's strata are not only the result of distinct acts of destruction, (which may be true)