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Natural Law in the Spiritual World

Henry Drummond

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1. Page "NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.", para. 1. NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.
2. Page "BY HENRY DRUMMOND. F.R.S.E.: F.G.S.", para. 1. BY HENRY DRUMMOND. F.R.S.E.: F.G.S. NEW YORK: HURST & CO., Publishers, 122 NASSAU ST.
3. Page "CONTENTS.", para. 1. CONTENTS.
4. Page 5. PREFACE. No class of works is received with more suspicion, I had almost said derisio
5. Page 6. It has been my privilege for some years to address regularly two very different audie
6. Page 6. Now this was not simply a scientific coloring given to Religion, the mere freshening
7. Page 7. The function of Parable in religion is to exhibit "form by form." Law undertakes the
8. Page 8. I confess that even when in the first dim vision, the organizing hand of Law moved am
9. Page 8. I have alluded to the genesis of the idea in my own mind partly for another reason—to
10. Page 9. When this presented itself to me as a method, I felt it to be due to it—were it only
11. Page 10. To the objection that even a basis in Law is no warrant for so great a trespass as th
12. Page 11. That these papers were not designed to appear in a collective form, or indeed to cour
13. Page 12. In the Introduction, which the general reader may do well to ignore, I have briefly s
14. Page 12. In what follows the Introduction, except in the setting there is nothing new. I trust
15. Page 13. I can scarcely now say whether in those moments I was more overcome with thankfulness
16. Page 14. If the removal of suspicion from Theology is of urgent moment, not less important is
17. Page 14. What I would desire especially is a thoughtful consideration of the method. The appli
18. Page 15. None but those who have passed through it can appreciate the radical nature of the ch
19. Page 16. The application of similia similibus curantur was never more in point. If this is a d
20. Page 17. To those who already find themselves fully nourished on the older forms of truth, I d
21. Page 17. FOOTNOTES: [1] Aurora Leigh. [2] "Meditationes Sacræ," x.
22. Page 19. ANALYSIS OF INTRODUCTION. [For the sake of the general reader who may desire to pass
23. Page 21. INTRODUCTION. "This method turns aside from hypotheses not to be tested by any known
24. Page 21. PART I. Natural Law is a new word. It is the last and the most magnificent discovery
25. Page 22. It is not necessary for the present to more than lightly touch on definitions of Natu
26. Page 23. The Natural Laws then are great lines running not only through the world, but, as we
27. Page 24. is now superfluous. "In our doctrine of representations and correspondences," says Sw
28. Page 25. But analogies between Phenomena bear the same relation to analogies of Law that Pheno
29. Page 26. But, fortunately, we are spared all discussion on this worn subject, for two cogent r
30. Page 27. Let us now look for a moment at the present state of the question. Can it be said tha
31. Page 28. Even those who have examined most carefully the relations of the Natural and the Spir
32. Page 28. He makes constant, admirable, and often original use of analogy; and yet, in spite of
33. Page 29. With regard to Butler's great work in this department, it is needless at this time of
34. Page 30. After all, then, the Spiritual World, as it appears at this moment, is outside Natura
35. Page 30. This is the secret of the present decadence of Religion in the world of Science. For
36. Page 30. The advent of modified uniformitarian principles all but banished the word catastroph
37. Page 32. The Botany of Linnæus, a purely artificial system, was a splendid contribution to hum
38. Page 33. It is not of course to be inferred that the scientific method will ever abolish the r
39. Page 33. What is wanted is simply a unity of conception, but not such a unity of conception as
40. Page 34. But what again is a scientific basis? What exactly is this demand of the age? "By Sci
41. Page 35. We do not say, as already hinted, that the proposal includes an attempt to prove the
42. Page 36. It is scarcely necessary to emphasize under a second head the gain in clearness. The
43. Page 37. How much of the Spiritual World is covered by Natural law we do not propose at presen
44. Page 38. But the final gain would appear in the department of Theology. The establishment of t
45. Page 39. Herbert Spencer points out further, with how much truth need not now be discussed, th
46. Page 40. It is impossible to believe that the amazing succession of revelations in the domain
47. Page 43. PART II. The Law of Continuity having been referred to already as a prominent factor
48. Page 43. The spiritual man, it is true, is to be studied in a different department of science
49. Page 44. But to the exposition. One of the most striking generalizations of recent science is
50. Page 45. There used to be a children's book which bore the fascinating title of "The Chance Wo
51. Page 46. Now this is no more than a real picture of what the world would be without Law, or th
52. Page 46. echanism of the heavens is indeed a unity which is all-embracing and complete. The st
53. Page 47. It may seem an obvious objection that many of the Natural Laws have no connection wha
54. Page 48. It is quite true that when we pass from the Inorganic to the Organic, we come upon a
55. Page 49. Attention is drawn to this, for it is a correction one will find one's self compelled
56. Page 50. The proposition is continuous for the whole world, and, doubtless, likewise for the s
57. Page 51. Two questions now remain for further consideration—one bearing on the possibility of
58. Page 51. But the objection turns upon the statement that reasoning from analogy we should expe
59. Page 52. Are there, then, no other Laws in the Spiritual World except those which are the proj
60. Page 52. ws have been explored. No doubt also there yet remain some Natural Laws to be discove
61. Page 53. With regard to the supposed new Laws of the Spiritual World—those Laws, that is, whic
62. Page 53. ere, or of one or two conspicuous departments of it. The time has come for that accou
63. Page 55. It is not necessary to reproduce here in detail the argument which has been stated re
64. Page 56. There is nothing so especially exalted therefore in the Natural Laws in themselves as
65. Page 56. se as an illimitable avenue which leads up to God, than to look upon it as a limited
66. Page 57. How the priority of the Spiritual improves the strength and meaning of the whole argu
67. Page 58. FOOTNOTES: [3] "Reign of Law," chap. ii. [4] "Animal Kingdom." [5] "Sartor Resartus,"
68. Page 58. [25] "Poetic Interpretation of Nature," p. 115. [26] 6th edition, p. 235. [27] Ibid.,
69. Page 59. BIOGENESIS. "What we require is no new Revelation, but simply an adequate conception
70. Page 59. This announcement called into the field a phalanx of observers, and the highest autho
71. Page 60. These experiments have practically closed the question. A decided and authoritative c
72. Page 61. For much more than two hundred years a similar discussion has dragged its length thro
73. Page 61. The difference between the two positions is radical. Translating from the language of
74. Page 62. Yet it has been keenly felt by those who attempt to defend this doctrine of the origi
75. Page 63. If the doctrine of the Spontaneous Generation of Spiritual Life can be met on scienti
76. Page 63. Let us first place vividly in our imagination the picture of the two great Kingdoms o
77. Page 63. here they meet, of that strange borderland between the dead and the living, Science i
78. Page 65. There is such a barrier. In the dim but not inadequate vision of the Spiritual World
79. Page 66. It is not said, in this enunciation of the law, that if the condition be not fulfille
80. Page 67. What is the evidence for this great gulf fixed at the portals of the Spiritual World?
81. Page 67. The words of Scripture which preface this inquiry contain an explicit and original st
82. Page 68. It is clear that a remarkable harmony exists here between the Organic World as arrang
83. Page 69. A moment's reflection ought now to make it clear why in the Spiritual World there had
84. Page 69. rst instance must be vouchsafed as a revelation. Similarly if those in the organic Ki
85. Page 70. We are now in a better position to follow out the more practical bearings of Biogenes
86. Page 71. What now, let us ask specifically, distinguishes a Christian man from a non-Christian
87. Page 72. The distinction between them is the same as that between the Organic and the Inorgani
88. Page 72. f so poor a quality that it is not Life at all. He that hath not the Son hath not Lif
89. Page 73. Now it is this great Law which finally distinguishes Christianity from all other reli
90. Page 74. Are we forsaking the lines of Science in saying so? Yes and No. Science has drawn for
91. Page 75. In the second place, Spiritual Life is not something outside ourselves. The idea is n
92. Page 76. This is, however, to formulate the statement of the third point, that Spiritual Life
93. Page 77. A hundred other questions now rush into the mind about this Life: How does it come? W
94. Page 77. Not that there is anything new in this. The Churches have always held that Christ was
95. Page 78. What is mystery to many men, what feeds their worship, and at the same time spoils it
96. Page 79. One question more we may look at for a moment. What can be gathered on the surface as
97. Page 80. Yet once more—and this is a point of strange and frivolous dispute—this Life comes su
98. Page 80. 's side at the solemn hour of this dread possession have been conscious sometimes of
99. Page 81. FOOTNOTES: [33] "Beginnings of Life." By H. C. Bastian, M.A., M.D., F.R.S. Macmillan,
100. Page 81. [49] Gal. ii. 20. [50] One must not be misled by popular statements in this connectio