to what he did on behalf of the church of his adoption. Dr. Chalmers did not err when, self-oblivious, he spake of Mr. Miller, as he so often did, as the greatest Scotchman alive after Sir Walter Scott's death, and as the man who had done more than all others to defend and make popular throughout the country the non-intrusion cause. We know well what the mutual love and veneration was of those two great men for one another whilst living; and now that both are gone—and hereafter we believe still more so than even now—their two names will be intertwined in the grateful and admiring remembrance of the ministers and members of the Free Church. It was die high honor of the writer of these hurried lines to record the part taken by his venerated relative in that great ecclesiastical struggle which terminated in the Disruption. At that lime it was matter to him of great regret that, as his office was that of the biographer, and not of the historian, there did not occur those natural opportunities of speaking of the part taken by Mr. Miller in that struggle, of which he gladly would have availed himself. And he almost wishes now that he had violated what appeared to him to be his duty, in order to create such an opportunity. He feels as if in this he had done some injustice to the dead—an injustice which it would gratify him beyond measure if he could now in any way repair, by expressing it as his own judgment, and the judgment of the vast body of his Church, that, next to the writings and actings of Dr. Chalmers, the leading articles of Mr. Miller in this journal did more than anything else to give the Free Church the place it holds in the affections of so many of our fellow-countrymen.
But Mr. Miller was far more than a Free Churchman, and did for the Christianity of his country and the world a far higher service than any which in that simple character and office was rendered by him. There was nothing in him of the spirit and temper of the sectarian. He breathed too broad an atmosphere to live and move within such narrow bounds. In the heat of the conflict there may have been too much occasionally of the partisan; and in the pleasure that the sweep and stroke of his intellectual tomahawk gave to him who wielded it, he may have forgotten at times the pain inflicted where it fell; but let his writings before and after the Disruption be now consulted, and it will be found that it was mainly because of his firm belief, whether right or wrong, that the interests of vital godliness were wrapped up in it, that he took his stand, and played his conspicuous part, in the ecclesiastical conflict. It is well known that for some time past—for reasons to which it would be altogether unseasonable to allude—he has ceased to take any active part in ecclesiastical affairs. He had retired even, in a great measure, from the field of general literature, to devote himself to the study of Geology. His past labors in this department—enough to give him a high and honored place among its most distinguished cultivators—he looked upon but as his training for the great life-work he had marked out for himself—the full investigation and illustration of the Geology of Scotland. He had large materials already collected for this work; and it was his intention, after completing that volume which has happily been left in so finished a state, to set himself to their arrangement. The friends of science in many lands will mourn over the incompleted project which, however ably it may hereafter be accomplished by another, it were vain to hope shall ever be so accomplished as it should have been by one who united in himself the power of accurate observation, of logical deduction, of broad generalization, and of pictorial and poetic representation. But the friends of Christianity cannot regret, that since it was the mysterious decree of Heaven that he should prematurely fall—his work as a pure Geologist not half done—he should have been led aside by the publication of the Vestiges of Creation to that track of semi-theological, semi-scientific research to which his later studies and later writings have been devoted. That, as it now seems to us, was the great work which it was given him on earth to do—to illustrate the perfect harmony of all that science tells us of the physical structure and history of our globe, with all that the Bible tells of the creation and government of this earth by and through Christ Jesus our Lord. The establishment and exhibition of that harmony was a task to which is it too much to say that there was no man living so competent as he? We leave it to the future to declare how much he has done by his writings to fulfil that task; but mourning, as we now can only do, over his sad and melancholy death—to that very death, with all the tragic circumstances that surround it, we would point as the closing sacrifice offered on the altar of our faith. His very intellect, his reason—God's most precious gift—a gift dearer than life—perished in the great endeavor to harmonize the works and word of the Eternal. A most inscrutable event, that such an intellect should have been suffered to go to wreck through too eager a prosecution of such a work. But amid the mystery, which we cannot penetrate, our love, and our veneration, and our gratitude, toward that so highly gifted and truly Christian man shall only grow the deeper because of the cloud and the whirlwind in which he has been borne off from our side.
On the 31st of December, two days after the obsequies had been performed, Dr. Hanna resumed the subject in the following elevated strain:
We have still but little heart to dilate on any political or literary topic. Our thoughts can dwell on but one thrice melancholy event. Need we name that event? Alas, no! It had occurred but a few hours when the tidings of it struck our city with stunning, stupefying, and deeply saddening blow. It has already thrilled our whole land; and is on its way, through a hundred channels, to the west, to the east, and to the south, carrying with it mourning and lamentation throughout the vast area which is covered by the language in which Hugh Miller wrote. Writing, as it were, amid the deep shadows of the funeral chamber, and brought in a manner into the very presence of the dead, we are made strongly to feel, and we daresay our readers to a large extent will feel, too, the nothingness of those discussions which usually occupy and engross men. The weightiest matter that ever occupied the wisdom of cabinet or the pen of journalist appears verily but fleeting and transitory, when brought thus into prominent contrast with the awful realities of human existence and destiny; and it is only when reflection shows us that these matters are yet parts of a grand Providential scheme, embracing man's happiness now, and entering deeply into the question of his future and eternal well-being, that we can see in them that amount of significance and importance which they really possess.
From the firmament of British literature and science a great light has departed. But yesterday we rejoiced in its beams, and now it has set all suddenly and forever; and to us there remains but the melancholy task of bewailing its departure, and tracing very hastily and imperfectly its track. The intellectual powers of Hugh Miller had certainly not declined. He was marked to the very last by that wonderful robustness of mind which had characterized him all through life. His sense was as manly, his judgment as sound and comprehensive, his penetration as discriminating and deep, his imagination as vigorous and bold, and his taste as pure and trusty, as they had ever been. The whole of his great powers were found working together up to the last week of his earthly career, with their usually calm, noiseless strength, and finely balanced and exquisitely toned harmony. We have evidence of this fact under his own hand in recent numbers of the Witness. His last two articles were, the one on Russia, and the other on our modern poets. The former—that on the resources of the Russian empire—is characterized by the same wide range of thinking, the same skill in analysis, and the same power of grouping and arranging details, and making them to throw light on some great principle, which usually marked and notified his hand when employed on such subjects. The latter—that on the poets—is rich and genial as usual, betokening a full and unclouded recollection of all his early reading in that department of our literature, abounding in the finest touches of pathos and beauty, and redolent with a most generous sympathy with kindred genius. It is not inconsistent with what we have now stated, and it is the fact, that latterly the inroads of disease, which had entrenched itself deeply in a constitution originally strong, and which kept steadily advancing upon the vital powers, had come so near the seat of the mind, that for short intervals the noble spirit was sadly beclouded, and its moral and intellectual action momentarily suspended. But, apart from this, there seemed ground to believe that there was yet before Mr. Miller much honorable and noble labor. The strong man, after all his tasks, appeared to be still strong. His powers were mellowing into richness and calm, matured strength; his conceptions of great principles were growing yet wider; his store of facts, literary as well as scientific, was accumulating with every busy and laborious year that passed over him; and there did seem ground to expect from his pen, unrivalled among his contemporaries in its exquisite purity and calm power, many a deep thoughted
