grand
palladium of the country's liberties,--that while she stood an
independent and free institution, the people stood an independent
and free nation,--and that bonds to her meant slavery to them.
Therefore did he gird on the sword when he saw peril gathering
around her. The privileges,--the entire standing of the common
people, as given them by the Reformation,--he saw to be in danger:
he was "one of themselves;" and he felt and fought as if almost the
quarrel had been a personal one, and the question at issue his own
liberty or slavery. How richly equipped and nobly armed he came
into the field, we need not here state. What fulness yet precision
of ecclesiastical lore,--what strength and conclusiveness of
argument,--what flashes of humor, wit, and sarcasm,--and in what a
luminous yet profoundly philosophical light did he set the great
principles involved in the controversy, making them patent in the
very cottages of our land, and so fixing them in the understandings
of the very humblest of our people, that they never afterwards
could be either misunderstood or forgotten! It was thus that the
way was prepared for the great result of the 18th of May, 1843.

Of Mr. Miller, as a man of science and a public journalist, we
cannot speak at present at any length. In him the love of science
was deeply seated and early developed. The first arena on which he
appeared--obscure and humble as it was--afforded him special
opportunities of initiating himself into what to him was then, and
continued ever afterwards to be, a most fascinating study. The
study of geology was eagerly prosecuted amid the multifarious
duties, and during the brief pauses, of a busy life. Several
original discoveries rewarded his patient and laborious
investigations. He succeeded at length in placing his name in the
first rank of British scientific thinkers and writers. His works
are characterized by a fine union of strict science, classic
diction, and enchanting description, which rises not unfrequently
into the loftiest vein of poetry. The fruits of his researches were
ever made to bear upon the defence and elucidation of the Oracles
of Truth. Our common Christianity owes much to his pen. Viewing him
as a journalist, Mr. Miller not only excelled in article
writing,--the most diff