Natural Law in the Spiritual World, Henry Drummond [best big ereader .txt] 📗

age is slowly divorcing itself from it. What is required, therefore, to draw Science and Religion together again--for they began the centuries hand in hand--is the disclosure of the naturalness of the supernatural. Then, and not till then, will men see how true it is, that to be loyal to all of Nature, they must be loyal to the part defined as Spiritual. No science contributes to another without receiving a reciprocal benefit. And even as the contribution of Science to Religion is the vindication of the naturalness of the Supernatural, so the gift of Religion to Science is the demonstration of the supernaturalness of the Natural. Thus, as the Supernatural becomes slowly Natural, will also the Natural become slowly Supernatural, until in the impersonal authority of Law men everywhere recognize the Authority of God.

To those who already find themselves fully nourished on the older forms of truth, I do not commend these pages. They will find them superfluous. Nor is there any reason why they should mingle with light which is already clear the distorting rays of a foreign expression.

But to those who are feeling their way to a Christian life, haunted now by a sense of instability in the foundation of their faith, now brought to bay by specific doubt at one point raising, as all doubt does, the question for the whole, I would hold up a light which has often been kind to me. There is a sense of solidity about a Law of Nature which belongs to nothing else in the world. Here, at last, amid all that is shifting, is one thing sure; one thing outside ourselves, unbiased, unprejudiced, uninfluenced by like or dislike, by doubt or fear; one thing that holds on its way to me eternally, incorruptible, and undefiled. This more than anything else, makes one eager to see the Reign of Law traced in the Spiritual Sphere. And should this seem to some to offer only a surer, but not a higher Faith; should the better ordering of the Spiritual World appear to satisfy the intellect at the sacrifice of reverence, simplicity, or love; especially should it seem to substitute a Reign of Law and a Lawgiver for a Kingdom of Grace and a Personal God, I will say, with Browning,--

"I spoke as I saw.
I report, as a man may of God's work--_all's love, yet all's Law_.
Now I lay down the judgeship He lent me. Each faculty tasked,
To perceive Him, has gained an abyss where a dewdrop was asked."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Aurora Leigh.

[2] "Meditationes Sacrae," x.


ANALYSIS OF INTRODUCTION.

[For the sake of the general reader who may desire to pass at once
to the practical applications, the following outline of the
Introduction--devoted rather to general principles--is here
presented.]


PART I.

NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL SPHERE.

1. The growth of the Idea of Law.

2. Its gradual extension throughout every department of Knowledge.

3. Except one. Religion hitherto the Great Exception. Why so?

4. Previous attempts to trace analogies between the Natural and Spiritual spheres. These have been limited to analogies between _Phenomena_; and are useful mainly as illustrations. Analogies of _Law_ would also have a Scientific value.

5. Wherein that value would consist. (1) The Scientific demand of the age would be met; (2) Greater clearness would be introduced into Religion practically; (3) Theology, instead of resting on Authority, would rest equally on Nature.


PART II.

THE LAW OF CONTINUITY.

_A priori_ argument for Natural Law in the spiritual world.

1. The Law Discovered.

2. " Defined.

3. " Applied.

4. The objection answered that the _material_ of the Natural and Spiritual worlds being different they must be under different Laws.

5. The existence of Laws in the Spiritual world other than the Natural Laws (1) improbable, (2) unnecessary, (3) unknown. Qualification.

6. The Spiritual not the projection upward of the Natural; but the Natural the projection downward of the Spiritual.


INTRODUCTION.

"This method turns aside from hypotheses not to be tested by any
known logical canon familiar to science, whether the hypothesis
claims support from intuition, aspiration or general plausibility.
And, again, this method turns aside from ideal standards which avow
themselves to be lawless, which profess to transcend the field of
law. We say, life and conduct shall stand for us wholly on a basis
of law, and must rest entirely in that region of science (not
physical, but moral and social science), where we are free to use
our intelligence in the methods known to us as intelligible logic,
methods which the intellect can analyze. When you confront us with
hypotheses, however sublime and however affecting, if they cannot be
stated in terms of the rest of our knowledge, if they are disparate
to that world of sequence and sensation which to us is the ultimate
base of all our real knowledge, then we shake our heads and turn
aside."--_Frederick Harrison._

"Ethical science is already forever completed, so far as her general
outline and main principles are concerned, and has been, as it were,
waiting for physical science to come up with her."--_Paradoxical
Philosophy._



PART I.

Natural Law is a new word. It is the last and the most magnificent discovery of science. No more telling proof is open to the modern world of the greatness of the idea than the greatness of the attempts which have always been made to justify it. In the earlier centuries, before the birth of science, Phenomena were studied alone. The world then was a chaos, a collection of single, isolated, and independent facts. Deeper thinkers saw, indeed, that relations must subsist between these facts, but the Reign of Law was never more to the ancients than a far-off vision. Their philosophies, conspicuously those of the Stoics and Pythagoreans, heroically sought to marshal the discrete materials of the universe into thinkable form, but from these artificial and fantastic systems nothing remains to us now but an ancient testimony to the grandeur of that harmony which they failed to reach.

With Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler the first regular lines of the universe began to be discerned. When Nature yielded to Newton her great secret, Gravitation was felt to be not greater as a fact in itself than as a revelation that Law was fact. And thenceforth the search for individual Phenomena gave way before the larger study of their relations. The pursuit of Law became the passion of science.

What that discovery of Law has done for Nature, it is impossible to estimate. As a mere spectacle the universe to-day discloses a beauty so transcendent that he who disciplines himself by scientific work finds it an overwhelming reward simply to behold it. In these Laws one stands face to face with truth, solid and unchangeable. Each single Law is an instrument of scientific research, simple in its adjustments, universal in its application, infallible in its results. And despite the limitations of its sphere on every side Law is still the largest, richest, and surest source of human knowledge.

It is not necessary for the present to more than lightly touch on definitions of Natural Law. The Duke of Argyll[3] indicates five senses in which the word is used, but we may content ourselves here by taking it in its most simple and obvious significance. The fundamental conception of Law is an ascertained working sequence or constant order among the Phenomena of Nature. This impression of Law as order it is important to receive in its simplicity, for the idea is often corrupted by having attached to it erroneous views of cause and effect. In its true sense Natural Law predicates nothing of causes. The Laws of Nature are simply statements of the orderly condition of things in Nature, what is found in Nature by a sufficient number of competent observers. What these Laws are in themselves is not agreed. That they have any absolute existence even is far from certain. They are relative to man in his many limitations, and represent for him the constant expression of what he may always expect to find in the world around him. But that they have any causal connection with the things around him is not to be conceived. The Natural Laws originate nothing, sustain nothing; they are merely responsible for uniformity in sustaining what has been originated and what is being sustained. They are modes of operation, therefore, not operators; processes, not powers. The Law of Gravitation, for instance, speaks to science only of process. It has no light to offer as to itself. Newton did not discover Gravity--that is not discovered yet. He discovered its Law, which is Gravitation, but tells us nothing of its origin, of its nature or of its cause.

The Natural Laws then are great lines running not only through the world, but, as we now know, through the universe, reducing it like parallels of latitude to intelligent order. In themselves, be it once more repeated, they may have no more absolute existence than parallels of latitude. But they exist for us. They are drawn for us to understand the part by some Hand that drew the whole; so drawn, perhaps, that, understanding the part, we too in time may learn to understand the whole. Now the inquiry we propose to ourselves resolves itself into the simple question, Do these lines stop with what we call the Natural sphere? Is it not possible that they may lead further? Is it probable that the Hand which ruled them gave up the work where most of all they were required? Did that Hand divide the world into two, a cosmos and a chaos, the higher being the chaos? With Nature as the symbol of all of harmony and beauty that is known to man, must we still talk of the super-natural, not as a convenient word, but as a different order of world, an unintelligible world, where the Reign of Mystery supersedes the Reign of Law?

This question, let it be carefully observed, applies to Laws not to Phenomena. That the Phenomena of the Spiritual World are in analogy with the Phenomena of the Natural World requires no restatement. Since Plato enunciated his doctrine of the Cave or of the twice-divided line; since Christ spake in parables; since Plotinus wrote of the world as an image; since the mysticism of Swedenborg; since Bacon and Pascal; since "Sartor Resartus" and "In Memoriam," it has been all but a commonplace with thinkers that "the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." Milton's question--

"What if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like more than on earth is thought?"

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