EXTRACTS FROM PRESS NOTICES OF PREVIOUS EDITIONS.
"We have no hesitation in saying that this is one of the most able and
interesting books on the relations which exist between natural science and
spiritual life that has appeared. Mr. Drummond writes perfect English - his
ideas are fresh, and expressed with admirable felicity. His book is one to
fertilize the mind, to open to it fresh fields of thought, and to stimulate
its activity."--LITERARY CHURCHMAN.
"This is one of the most impressive and suggestive books on religion
that we have read for a long time. Indeed, with the exception of Dr.
Mozley's University Sermons, we can recall no book of our time which showed
such a power of restating the moral and practical truths of religion so as
to make them take fresh hold of the mind and vividly impress the
imagination. No one who reads the papers entitled, "Biogenesis",
"Degeneration", "Eternal Life", and "Classification", to say nothing of the
others in this volume, will fail to recognise in Mr. Drummond a new and
powerful teacher, impressive both from the scientific calmness and accuracy
of his view of law, and from the deep religious earnestness with which he
traces the workings of law in the moral and spiritual sphere."--SPECTATOR.
"The reader is left with the depths of his spiritual nature stirred,
pondering upon the great foundation truths of the Gospel and illuminated
with the fresh light which only a thoughtful, reverent, and lofty mind can
pour upon the ancient message of Redemption."-- CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW.
"A most remarkable volume. It is perfectly delightful to turn to the
calm, judicial, scholarly, and pre-eminently tolerant work of Professor
Drummond. His obviously great personal familiarity with biological science
enables him to derive some of his most telling illustrations from the more
recondite phenomena of the development of life. His style is charming, his
diction essentially that of a scholar and a man of refined taste. Hence his
book is an eminently readable one."--KNOWLEDGE.
"The extraordinary success of the work is due to its merits. Its form
and its leading ideas are quite original; it is one of the most suggestive
books we have ever read; its style is admirable."--BRITISH QUARTERLY REVIEW.
"This is a remarkable and important book. The theory it enounces may
without exaggeration, be termed a discovery. It is difficult to say whether
the scientific or the religious reader will be the most surprised and
delighted as he reads a volume which must stir a new hope into the minds of
each."--ABERDEEN FREE PRESS.
"A very clever and well written book which has rapidly won a wide
reputation. There is much in this book which is striking, original,
suggestive, at once finely conceived and eloquently expressed; much, which
will be most helpful to both cleric and layman; and we strongly recommend
our readers to peruse and judge it for themselves."-- EXPOSITOR.
"This is a pioneer book. It breaks the way into a territory supposed to
be more hostile than any other to religion. It is full of the germs and
seeds of things. It will not be long before its fresh and brilliant
illustrations of the oldest truths will become the property of the religious
mind of the country, and many a minister, longing to enter fresh fields and
pastures new, will find in it a novel method and a trustworthy guide. Merely
as religious discourses, giving the fine ore of evangelical truth, adorned
with the freshest illustrations, and set forth in language of subtle and
sinewy eloquence, these chapters will take a high place in sermon
literature."--DAILY REVIEW.
"The enchantments of an unspeakably fascinating volume by Professor
Drummond have had an exhilarating effect each time we have opened its pages,
or thought over its delightful contents. It is not too much to say that of
its kind it is one of the most important books of the year."--CLERGYMAN'S
MAGAZINE.
"This is a most original and ingenious book, instructive and suggestive
in the highest degree. Its speculative subtilty is unequalled by its
extensive range of scientific knowledge, and all is permeated by the force
and validity of the religious intuitions from which the author has made its
departure. It is wholly out of our power to do justice to the many points in
this book that press for notice. It is the boldest effort yet made to turn
the tables on agnostic science, and to not a few of the arguments agnostics
will find it hard to reply."--NONCONFORMIST.
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
TROPICAL AFRICA. Twentieth Thousand. With Maps and Illustrations. Crown
8vo, cloth, price 6s.
THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD, An Address on I Corinthians xiii.
Crown 8vo, paper covers, 1s. cloth elegant, gilt edges, 2s. 6d.
NYASSALAND: Travel Sketches in our New Protectorate. Selected from
"Tropical Africa, Sewed, 1s.
LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW,
NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD
BY
HENRY DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E.; F.G.S.
Twenty Ninth Edition, Completing One Hundred Thousand
London:
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
______
MDCCCXC.
PREFACE
No class of works is received with more suspicion, I had almost said
derision, than that which deals with Science and Religion. Science is tired
of reconciliations between two things which never should have been
contrasted; Religion is offended by the patronage of an ally which it
professes not to need; and the critics have rightly discovered that, in most
cases where Science is either pitted against Religion or fused with it,
there is some fatal misconception to begin with as to the scope and province
of either. But although no initial protest, probably, will save this work
from the unhappy reputation of its class, the thoughtful mind will perceive
that the fact of its subject-matter being Law--a property peculiar neither
to Science nor to Religion--at once places it on a somewhat different
footing.
The real problem I have set myself may be stated in a sentence. Is
there not reason to believe that many of the Laws of the Spiritual World,
hitherto regarded as occupying, an entirely separate province, are simply
the Laws of the Natural World? Can we identify the Natural Laws, or any one
of them, in the Spiritual sphere? That vague lines everywhere run through
the Spiritual World is already beginning to be recognised. Is it possible to
link them with those great lines running through the visible universe which
we call the Natural Laws, or are they fundamentally distinct? In a word, Is
the Supernatural natural or unnatural?
I may, perhaps, be allowed to answer these questions in the form in
which they have answered themselves to myself. And I must apologise at the
outset for personal references which, but for the clearness they may lend to
the statement, I would surely avoid.
It has been my privilege for some years to address regularly two very
different audiences on two very different themes. On week days I have
lectured to a class of students on the Natural Sciences, and on Sundays to
an audience consisting for the most part of working men on subjects of a
moral and religious character. I cannot say that this collocation ever
appeared as a difficulty to myself, but to certain of my friends it was more
than a problem. It was solved to me, however, at first, by what then seemed
the necessities of the case-- I must keep the two departments entirely by
themselves. They lay at opposite poles of thought; and for a time I
succeeded in keeping the Science and the Religion shut off from one another
in two separate compartments of my mind. But gradually the wall of partition
showed symptoms of giving way. The two fountains of knowledge also slowly
began to overflow, and finally their waters met and mingled. The great
change was in the compartment which held the Religion. It was not that the
well there was dried; still less that the fermenting waters were washed away
by the flood of Science. The actual contents remained the same. But the
crystals of former doctrine were dissolved; and as they precipitated
themselves once more in definite forms, I observed that the Crystalline
System was changed. New channels also for outward expression opened, and
some of the old closed up; and I found the truth running out to my audience
on the Sundays by the weekday outlets. In other words, the subject-matter
Religion had taken on the method of expression of Science, and I discovered
myself enunciating Spiritual Law in the exact terms of Biology and Physics.
Now this was not simply a scientific colouring given to Religion, the
mere freshening of the theological air with natural facts and illustrations.
It was an entire re-casting of truth. And when I came seriously to consider
what it involved, I saw, or seemed to see, that it meant essentially the
introduction of Natural Law into the Spiritual World. It was not, I repeat,
that new and detailed analogies of Phenomena rose into view--although
material for Parable lies unnoticed and unused on the field of recent
Science in inexhaustible profusion. But Law has a still grander function to
discharge towards Religion than Parable. There is a deeper unity between the
two Kingdoms than the analogy of their Phenomena--a unity which the poet's
vision, more quick than the theologian's, has already dimly seen :--
"And verily many thinkers of this age,
Aye, many Christian teachers, half in heaven,
Are wrong in just my sense, who understood
Our natural world too insularly, as if
No spiritual counterpart completed it,
Consummating its meaning, rounding all
To justice and perfection, line by line,
Form by form, nothing single nor alone,
The great below clenched by the great above."[1]
The function of Parable in religion is to exhibit "form by form." Law
undertakes the profounder task of comparing "line by line." Thus Natural
Phenomena serve mainly an illustrative function in Religion. Natural Law, on
the other hand, could it be traced in the Spiritual World, would have an
important scientific value--it would offer Religion a new credential. The
effect of the introduction of Law among the scattered Phenomena of Nature
has simply been to make Science, to transform knowledge into eternal truth.
The same crystallising touch is needed in Religion. Can it be said that the
Phenomena of the Spiritual World are other than scattered? Can we shut our
eyes to the fact that the religious opinions of mankind are in a state of
flux? And when we regard the uncertainty of current beliefs, the war of
creeds, the havoc of inevitable as well as of idle doubt, the reluctant
abandonment of early faith by those who would cherish it longer if they
could, is it not plain that the one thing thinking men are waiting for is
the introduction of Law among the Phenomena of the Spiritual World? When
that comes we shall offer to such men a truly scientific theology. And the
Reign of Law will transform the whole Spiritual World as it has already
transformed the Natural World.
I confess that even when in the first dim vision, the organizing hand
of Law moved among the unordered truths of my Spiritual World, poor and
scantily-furnished as it was, there seemed to come over it the beauty of a
transfiguration. The change was as great as from the old chaotic world of
Pythagoras to the symmetrical and harmonious universe of Newton. My
Spiritual World before was a chaos of facts; my Theology, a Pythagorean
system trying to make the best of Phenomena apart from the idea of Law. I
make no charge against Theology in general. I speak of my own. And I say
that I saw it to be in many essential respects centuries behind every
department of Science I knew. It was the one region still unpossessed by
Law. I saw then why men of Science distrust Theology; why those who have
learned to look upon Law as Authority grow cold to it--it was the Great
Exception.
I have alluded to the genesis of the idea in my own mind partly for
another reason--to show its naturalness. Certainly I never premeditated
anything to myself so objectionable and so unwarrantable in itself, as
either to read Theology into Science or Science into Theology. Nothing could
be more artificial than to attempt this on the speculative side; and it has
been a substantial relief to me throughout that the idea rose up thus in the
course of practical work and shaped itself day by day unconsciously. It
might be charged, nevertheless, that I was all the time, whether consciously
or unconsciously, simply reading my Theology into my Science. And as this
would hopelessly vitiate the conclusions arrived at, I must acquit myself at
least of the intention. Of nothing have I been more fearful throughout than
of making Nature parallel with my own or with any creed. The only legitimate
questions one dare put to Nature are those which concern universal human
good and the Divine interpretation of things. These I conceive may be there
actually studied at first-hand, and before their purity is soiled by human
touch. We have Truth in Nature as it came from God. And it has to be read
with the same unbiassed mind, the same open eye, the same faith, and the
same reverence as all other Revelation. All that is found there, whatever
its place in Theology, whatever its orthodoxy or heterodoxy, whatever its
narrowness or its breadth, we are bound to accept as Doctrine from which on
the lines of Science there is no escape.
When this presented itself to me as a method, I felt it to be due to
it--were it only to secure, so far as that was possible, that no former bias
should interfere with the integrity of the results--to begin again at the
beginning and reconstruct my Spiritual World step by step. The result of
that inquiry, so far as its expression in systematic form is concerned, I
have not given in this book. To reconstruct a Spiritual Religion, or a
department of Spiritual Religion--for this is all the method can pretend
to--on the lines of Nature would be an attempt from which one better
equipped in both directions might well be pardoned if he shrank. My object
at present is the humbler one of venturing a simple contribution to
practical Religion along the lines indicated. What Bacon predicates of the
Natural World, Natura enim non nisi parendo vincitur, is also true, as
Christ had already told us, of the Spiritual World. And I present a few
samples of the religious teaching referred to formerly as having been
prepared under the influence of scientific ideas in the hope that they may
be useful first of all in this direction.
I would, however, carefully point out that though their unsystematic
arrangement here may create the impression that these papers are merely
isolated readings in Religion pointed by casual scientific truths, they are
organically connected by a single principle. Nothing could be more false
both to Science and to Religion than attempts to adjust the two spheres by
making out ingenious points of contact in detail. The solution of this great
question of conciliation, if one may still refer to a problem so gratuitous,
must be general rather than particular. The basis in a common principle--the
Continuity of Law--can alone save specific applications from ranking as mere
coincidences, or exempt them from the reproach of being a hybrid between two
things which must be related by the deepest affinities or remain for ever
separate.
To the objection that even a basis in Law is no warrant for so great a
trespass as the intrusion into another field of thought of the principles of