To the wider objection to the Biblical record, with its light before the creation of the sun upon the fourth day, the vegetation on the third independent of the sun's warming rays, and to other real or supposed contradictions, Miller has a highly ingenious reply. We do not think it fully meets the necessities of the case, but it has unquestionably the merit of imaginative power, and is in full harmony with the nature of man's mind, and is therefore preferable to any theory which would assert the exact science of the Mosaic record by its anticipation of the theory of Laplace and Herschel, by which the earth existed before the sun was given as a luminary, and was independent of the sun for light. Perhaps the theory of progressive revelation will commend itself to most as the truest and the simplest explanation, though it should be noted that the extraordinary approximation of the Biblical version to the latest science does really set it far above the merely human speculation of some old Hebrew Newton or Descartes. While regarding the 'days' as ages, Miller views the record as the result of an _optical vision_ presented to the writer. He truly enough remarks that any exact revelation would have defeated its own object through an elaborate statement to man at an early stage. Man would not have believed it, as it would have contradicted his own experience. He would no more have believed that the earth revolved on its own axis than that molluscs had preceded him on the earth. The record, therefore, he regards as according to appearance rather than to physical realities: 'The sun, moon, and stars may have been created long before, though it was not until the fourth day of creation that they became visible from the earth's surface.' The six days or periods he takes to correspond with the six divisions in a successive series of the Azoic, Silurian, Carboniferous, Permian, Oolitic, and Tertiary ages. To the human eye of the seer, the second day would afford nothing to divert it from the atmospheric phenomena; on the fourth the celestial phenomena would alone be so prominent as to call for specific mention. But, familiar to most readers as the famous passage is, we here present it as the best example of his descriptive and imaginative powers. If there are to be reconciliations at all, as either necessary or desirable, it would be hard to beat this fine piece of fused strength and imagination.[4] [4] _Testimony of the Rocks_, pp. 186-191, ed. 1857.