Logos, a Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was God; by whom all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made; and how in Him was Life, and the Life was the light of men; and that He was none other than Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yes, that is the truth. And to that truth no man can add, and from it no man can take away. And as long as we believe that-as long as we believe that in His light alone can we see light—as long as we believe that the light around us, whether physical or spiritual, is given by Him without whom nothing is made-so long we shall not fear to meet Light, so long we shall not fear to investigate Life; for we shall know, however strange or novel, beautiful or awful, the discoveries we make may be, we are only following the Word whithersoever He may lead us; and that He can never lead us amiss.

I.

THE SOIL OF THE FIELD.*

My dear readers, let me, before touching on the special subject of this paper, say a few words on that of the whole series.

It is geology: that is, the science which explains to us the rind of the earth; of what it is made; how it has been made. It tells us nothing of the mass of the earth. That is, properly speaking, an astronomical question. If I may be allowed to liken this earth to a fruit, then astronomy will tell us when it knows-how the fruit grew, and what is inside the fruit. Geology can only tell us at most how its rind, its outer covering, grew, and of what it is composed; a very small part, doubtless, of all that is to be known about this planet.

But as it happens, the mere rind of this earth-fruit which has, countless ages since, dropped, as it were, from the Bosom of God, the Eternal Fount of Lifethe mere rind of this earth-fruit, I say, is so beautiful and so complex, that it is well worth our awful and reverent study. It has been well said, indeed, that the history of it, which we call geology, would be a mag

These Lectures were delivered to the members of the Natural Science Class at Chester in 1871.

nificent epic poem, were there only any human interest in it; did it deal with creatures more like ourselves than stones, and bones, and the dead relics of plants and beasts. Whether there be no human interest in geology; whether man did not exist on the earth during ages which have seen enormous geological changes, is becoming more and more an open question. But meanwhile all must agree that there is matter enough for interest-nay, room enough for the free use of the imagination, in a science which tells of the growth and decay of whole mountain-ranges, continents, oceans, whole tribes and worlds of plants and animals.

And yet it is not so much for the vastness and grandeur of those scenes of the distant past, to which the science of geology introduces us, that I value it as a study, and wish earnestly to awaken you to its beauty and importance. It is because it is the science from which you will learn most easily a sound scientific habit of thought. I say most easily; and for these reasons. The most important facts of geology do not require, to discover them, any knowledge of mathematics or of chemical analysis; they may be studied in every bank, every grot, every quarry, every railwaycutting, by anyone who has eyes and common sense, and who chooses to copy the late illustrious Hugh Miller, who made himself a great geologist out of a poor stonemason. Next, its most important theories are not, or need not be, wrapped up in obscure Latin and Greek terms. They may be expressed in the simplest English, because they are discovered by simple common sense. And thus geology is (or ought to be), in popular parlance, the people's science—the science by studying which, the man ignorant of Latin,

Greek, mathematics, scientific chemistry, can yet become-as far as his brain enables him-a truly scientific man.

But how shall we learn science by mere common sense?

First. Always try to explain the unknown by the known. If you meet something which you have not seen before, then think of the thing most like it which you have seen before; and try if that which you know explains the one will not explain the other also. Sometimes it will; sometimes it will not. But if it will, no one has a right to ask you to try any other explanation.

دو

Suppose, for instance, that you found a dead bird on the top of a cathedral tower, and were asked how you thought it had got there. You would say, "Of course, it died up here." But if a friend said, "Not so; it dropped from a balloon, or from the clouds; and told you the prettiest tale of how the bird came to so strange an end, you would answer, "No, no; I must reason from what I know. I know that birds haunt the cathedral tower; I know that birds die; and therefore, let your story be as pretty as it may, my common sense bids me take the simplest explanation, and say—it died here." In saying that, you would be talking scientifically. You would have made a fair and sufficient induction (as it is called) from the facts about birds' habits and birds' deaths which you know.

But suppose that when you took the bird up you found that it was neither a jackdaw, nor a sparrow, nor a swallow, as you expected, but a humming-bird. Then you would be adrift again. The fact of it being a humming-bird would be a new fact which you had

not taken into account, and for which your old explanation was not sufficient; and you would have to try a new induction-to use your common sense afreshsaying, "I have not to explain merely how a dead bird got here, but how a dead humming-bird."

And now, if your imaginative friend chimed in triumphantly with: "Do you not see that I was right after all? Do you not see that it fell from the clouds? that it was swept away hither, all the way from South America, by some south-westerly storm, and wearied out at last, dropped here to find rest, as in a sacred place?" what would you answer? "My friend, that is a beautiful imagination; but I must treat it only as such, as long as I can explain the mystery more simply by facts which I do know. I do not know that humming-birds can be blown across the Atlantic alive. I do know they are actually brought across the Atlantic dead; are stuck in ladies' hats. I know that ladies visit the cathedral; and odd as the accident is, I prefer to believe, till I get a better explanation, that the humming-bird has simply dropped out of a lady's hat." There, again, you would be speaking common sense; and using, too, sound inductive method; trying to explain what you do not know from what you do know already.

Now, I ask of you to employ the same common sense when you read and think of Geology.

It is very necessary to do so. For in past times. men have tried to explain the making of the world around them, its oceans, rivers, mountains, and continents, by I know not what of fancied cataclysms and convulsions of nature; explaining the unknown by the still more unknown, till some of their geological