HENRY DRUMMOND

(1851-1897)

HE "Conflict between Religion and Science," which was much discussed after the appearance of Darwin's "Origin of Species," ceased to be considered a topic of engrossing interest after the appearance of Professor Henry Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual World." Being an advanced Darwinian and at the same time a Christian evangelist of the school of Dwight L. Moody, Professor Drummond calmly assumed the impossibility of such a conflict having a real existence; and though it cannot be said that he demonstrated or attempted to demonstrate anything, his great learning and the calmness of his well-assured convictions had a decided effect. He was born at Stirling, Scotland, in 1851, and his scientific work was done chiefly while professor of Natural History and Science in the Free Church College, Glasgow. His religious addresses have had an extraordinary popular circulation both in England and America. One of them, "The Greatest Thing in the World," has been described as the "Oration on the Crown" of the modern pulpit.

NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD

HE Spiritual World as it stands is full of perplexity. One can escape doubt only by escaping thought. With regard to many important articles of religion, perhaps the best and the worse course at present open to a doubter is simply credulity. Who is to answer for this state of things? It comes as a necessary tax for improvement on the age in which we live. The old ground of faith, Authority, is given up; the new, Science, has not yet taken its place. Men did not require to see truth before; they only needed to believe it. Truth, therefore, had not been put by Theology in a seeing form-which, however, was its original form. But now they ask to see it. And when it is shown them, they start back in despair. We shall not say what they see. But we shall say what they might see. If the Natural Laws were run through the Spiritual World, they might see the great

lines of religious truth as clearly and simply as the broad lines of science. As they gazed into that Natural-Spiritual World they would say to themselves, "We have seen something like this before. This order is known to us. It is not arbitrary. This Law here is that old Law there; and this Phenomenon here, what can it be but that which stood in precisely the same relation to that Law yonder?" And so gradually from the new form everything assumes new meaning. So the Spiritual World becomes slowly Natural; and what is of all but equal moment, the Natural World becomes slowly Spiritual. Nature is not a mere image or emblem of the Spiritual. It is a working model of the Spiritual. In the Spiritual World the same wheels revolve -but without the iron. The same figures flit across the stage, the same processes of growth go on, the same functions are discharged, the same biological laws prevail-only with a different quality of Bíos. Plato's prisoner, if not out of the Cave, has at least his face to the light.

"The earth is cram'd with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God."

How much of the Spiritual world is covered by Natural law we do not propose at present to inquire. It is certain, at least, that the whole is not covered. And nothing more lends confidence to the method than this. For one thing, room is still left

for mystery. Had no place remained for mystery it had proved itself both unscientific and irreligious. A Science without mystery is unknown; a Religion without mystery is absurd. This is no attempt to reduce Religion to a question of mathematics, or demonstrate God in biological formulæ. The elimination of mystery from the universe is the elimination of Religion. However far the scientific method may penetrate the Spiritual World, there will always remain a region to be explored by a scientific faith. "I shall never rise to the point of view which wishes to 'raise' faith to knowledge. To me, the way of truth is to come through the knowledge of my ignorance to the submissiveness of faith, and then, making that my starting place, to raise my knowledge into faith."

Lest this proclamation of mystery should seem alarming, let us add that this mystery also is scientific. The one subject on which all scientific men are agreed, the one theme on which all

alike become eloquent, the one strain of pathos in all their writing and speaking and thinking concerns that final uncertainty, that utter blackness of darkness bounding their work on every side. If the light of Nature is to illuminate for us the Spiritual Sphere, there may well be a black Unknown, corresponding, at least at some points, to this zone of darkness round the Natural World.

But the final gain would appear in the department of Theology. The establishment of the Spiritual Laws on "the solid ground of Nature," to which the mind trusts "which builds for aye," would offer a new basis for certainty in Religion. It has been indicated that the authority of Authority is waning. This is a plain fact. And it was inevitable. Authority-man's Authority that is-is for children. And there necessarily comes a time when they add to the question, What shall I do? or, What shall I believe? the adult's interrogation - Why? Now this question is sacred, and must be answered.

It is impossible to believe that the amazing succession of revelations in the domain of Nature during the last few centuries, at which the world has all but grown tired wondering, are to yield nothing for the higher life. If the development of doctrine is to have any meaning for the future, Theology must draw upon the further revelation of the seen for the further revelation of the unseen. It need, and can, add nothing to fact; but as the vision of Newton rested on a clearer and richer world than that of Plato, so, though seeing the same things in the Spiritual World as our fathers, we may see them clearer and richer. With the work of the centuries upon it, the mental eye is a finer instrument, and demands a more ordered world. Had the revelation of Law been given sooner, it had been unintelligible. Revelation never volunteers anything that man could discover for himself - on the principle, probably, that it is only when he is capable of discovering it that he is capable of appreciating it. Besides, children do not need Laws, except Laws in the sense of commandments. They repose with simplicity on authority, and ask no questions. But there comes a time, as the world reaches its manhood, when they will ask questions, and stake, moreover, everything on the answers. That time is now. Hence we must exhibit our doctrines, not lying athwart the lines of the world's thinking, in a place reserved, and therefore shunned, for the Great Exception; but in

their kinship to all truth and in their Law-relation to the whole of Nature. This is, indeed, simply following out the system of teaching begun by Christ Himself. And what is the search for spiritual truth in the Laws of Nature but an attempt to utter the parables which have been hid so long in the world around without a preacher, and to tell men once more that the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto this and to that?

From the introductory essay to "Natural

Law in the Spiritual World.»

WILLIAM DRUMMOND

(1585-1649)

ILLIAM DRUMMOND, "of Hawthornden," the most noted Scottish poet of the Shakespearean age, was born at Hawthornden, near Edinburgh, December 13th, 1585. He was one of the most highly educated literary men of his day, having graduated at the University of Edinburgh in 1605, and spent several years studying on the continent. He corresponded with Drayton and Ben Jonson, and the esteem in which he was held is suggested by the fact that in 1619 Jonson made the journey to Scotland to visit him—the visit being the occasion of the celebrated impromptus exchanged between them on meeting: "Welcome, welcome, royal Ben!" "Thank ye, thank ye, Hawthornden!" Drummond died December 4th, 1649, after having been involved in the troubled politics of the struggle between Charles I. and the Puritans. His best poems are no doubt his sonnets, which keep their place in every representative collection. His "Cypress Grove," a series of essays on Death, has been called "one of the noblest prose poems in literature."

H

A REVERIE ON DEATH

AVING often and diverse times, when I had given myself to rest in the quiet solitariness of the night, found my imagination troubled with a confused fear, or sorrow, or horror, which, interrupting sleep, did astonish my senses, and rouse me all appalled, and transported in a sudden agony and amazedness; of such an unaccustomed perturbation not knowing, not being able to dive into any apparent cause, carried away with the stream of my then doubting thoughts, I began to ascribe it to that secret foreknowledge and presaging power of the prophetic mind, and to interpret such an agony to be to the spirit, as a sudden faintness and universal weariness useth to be to the body, a sign of following sickness; or as winter lightnings, earthquakes, and monsters are to commonwealths and great cities, harbingers of wretched events, and emblems of their sudden destinies.