Dear Mr. Editor,
In my last letter I endeavored to show the true character of Mr. Drummond's book in a religious and doctrinal point of view. My endeavor now will be to examine it more particularly in its scientific and argumentative aspect—that is, as to the author's fundamental principle, and as to the logical consistency of his argument. The very nature and structure of the book, however, prevent its being regarded in either the religious or scientific point of view quite exclusively of the other. I shall be obliged in this letter to make rather long and frequent extracts, for which I trust no apology will be necessary. I might begin by dwelling on the contradiction in terms which its title involves, but perhaps this will be best proved as the conclusion to which the following remarks tend. Even the author himself constantly distinguishes between the Natural World and the Spiritual World. The orthodox Christian holds these to be totally distinct spheres—each with its own mode of existence and system of laws; and if anywhere tangential so to speak, yet without being mutually connected by continuity of natural law.
Before beginning my quotations it may be well to make the following statement. The notion is not uncommon (though it is very erroneous), that Adam, had he not fallen, would have been taken to heaven. I say it is erroneous for two reasons: first, because Adam was created expressly as the head of this terrestrial system; and secondly, because title to heaven comes to us only through the second Man, the last Adam, and as a consequence of His meritorious work on the cross. And here is the true answer to the question sometimes asked, If man has an immortal soul, and men are liable to everlasting punishment, why did not God forewarn him of this, when He created him, and forbade him to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Now God's purpose in creating Adam was to make him head of this terrestrial system; and though God foreknows all things, this never interferes with the responsibility of the creature and with the proper course and propriety of things It was not for God, if I may say so, to presuppose that Adam would fall—at least by dilating on the consequences. He did tell Adam all that then concerned him to know; for the rest, Adam should have reflected that no consequences of disobeying God can be too serious. In itself disobedience to God must always be ruinous to the creature; to fall from his first estate is to plunge himself into moral wreck and ruin—a ruin which, unless God intervene in grace, is irreparable.
Besides, motive arising from fear alone, or from a mere calculation of consequences, in the absence of motive arising from a sense of fealty to God, and of dutiful affection towards Him—must have proved useless, and indeed would itself imply a heart estranged from God, i.e. a fallen state. What could it have profited Adam then to have told him more than God did tell him? Simply nothing. In the order of creation, man was not intended for heaven; and so no evolution, even had there been any in this world, could have brought him there. To identify evolution with redemption, and thus to make of the latter a scientific process, one not simply analogous to the evolution which, it is asserted, has taken place in the past, but by the law of continuity one which is a continuation of it in some sort, is to evince a blindness of heart, and perversity of judgment, of which one would have thought no man with the slightest knowledge of Christianity could have been capable. Surely one who can say with the apostle, “Who loved me and gave Himself for me,” one who believes and feels the truth, “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree,” who realizes the fact that if we are saved it is in sovereign grace on God's part, that men are not saved en masse, or as a matter of course (for we see from scripture that all will not be saved), but as individuals, and that universalism is a deceptive and destructive falsehood—such will reject this scientific Christianity with horror. The moral results of divine grace in the soul, producing conviction of sin, contrition, and repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, cannot possibly be reduced to science, and therefore can have no place in this pseudo-intellectual system.
The terra “law” being so much used in this work, what I ask is the proper definition of law? Law is rule imposed by authority. I do not, deny that the term may be used in a secondary or accommodated sense, but doubtless rule imposed by authority is its primary and strict meaning. There is no “impersonal authority” in law; the authority and the power alike are in God, or in the lawgiver. On this point I may be permitted to quote J. S. Mill, who says (infidelity being generally more honest than mere nominal or corrupted Christianity), “It is the custom wherever they can trace regularity of any kind, to call the general proposition which expresses the nature of that regularity, a law; as when in mathematics we speak of the law of decrease of the successive terms of a converging series. But the expression, law of nature, is generally employed by scientific men with a sort of tacit reference to the original sense of the word law, namely the expression of the will of a superior, the superior in this instance being the Eller of the universe.”
Natural Law is simply the operation of the will of God in any particular case of nature, as carried into effect by His own power; and the whole creation is divided into two distinct departments, viz. the natural, physical or visible, and the spiritual, immaterial and invisible; in each of which there are sub-systems of law, wheel within wheel, each department forming an harmonious system within itself, and all tending towards a moral end and object, the glory of God. Our author, in a passage to be presently quoted, denies that there can be analogy between laws; he maintains that between phenomena there is analogy, between laws there is not analogy but identity (p. 11), or continuity, (p. 76). I question how far this dictum can be accepted, even when the phenomena all belong to the same order of things, i.e. when they are all physical, or all spiritual; but I am perfectly certain it cannot apply where they are of different orders, i.e. one set physical, and another set spiritual: in such a case there is neither identity nor continuity. For instance, I should not myself say that the law of magnetic attractions and repulsions is the same as that of gravitation, though, as regards the mere abstract and mathematical mode of expression, it can be expressed in the same manner. We may have attraction or repulsion in the former case, attraction only, in the latter. So, the rate at which a static charge of electricity is dissipated, resembles that at which a hot body cools, as expressed by Newton's law of cooling; yet I could not say it is the same law. There is analogy rather than identity in these cases. Take again the law of induction, as we have it in natural philosophy, or in pure mathematics. There is analogy but not identity between them. But these instances are, so to speak, generically the same, i.e. they are all of the physical order; and hence, if people choose to call these laws the same, at least no harm is done. Now unquestionably God has seen good to teach us spiritual truth by figurative language, language borrowed from the natural world (how else could we learn?). But to regard these spiritual truths simply as phenomena, to bind them together into a law, and then to assert that there is identity and continuity (not analogy) between this so-called law, and natural law, is to falsify the character of the spiritual, being a profane intrusion into the spiritual sphere, and ignores (in principle, if not intentionally) the personal will and operation of God acting in grace. The place and application which our author gives to law is logically a denial also of miracle, and here again consistency is altogether on the side of thorough-going infidelity.
“For Theology must pass through the necessary stages of progress, like any other science. The method of science-making is now fully established. In almost all cases the natural history and development are the same. Take for example the case of geology. A century ago there was none. Science went out to look for it, and brought back a geology, which, if nature were a harmony, had falsehood written almost on its face. It was the geology of catastrophism, a geology so out of line with nature as revealed by the other sciences, that, on ẚ priori grounds, a thoughtful mind might have been justified in dismissing it as a final form of any science. And its fallacy was seen and thoroughly exposed. The advent of modified uniformitarian principles all but banished the word catastrophe from science, and marked the birth of geology as we know it now. Religious doctrines, many of them at least, have been up to this time all but as catastrophic as the old geology. They are not on the lines of nature as we have learned to decipher her” (p. 19).
Now that the treatises on geology, which have appeared since the epoch of Lyell's “Principles of Geology,” exhibit the subject as treated in a totally different manner and spirit from that in which it had previously been viewed, is true. The grand object now, is to represent the whole process, by which the earth has assumed its present form, as a gradual one, effected by forces similar both in kind and degree to what we are acquainted with in historical times, the denial in short of catastrophe. That change is very gradual, and that catastrophe on a very large scale is absent during the historical period, i.e. whilst the earth is the platform on which man's history is being worked out, no one denies. Farther than this the modern theory is false; its object in representing change as always gradual and occupying immense periods is to shut out God, and to deny creation by substituting a sort of perpetual motion. But the various phenomena presented by geology and physical geography are wholly opposed to the notion of a merely gradual process. Time after time sudden and violent destruction has come upon both plants and animals. The mountain system of the globe exhibits the action of force on a prodigious scale, infinitely surpassing anything which has happened since the earth became the abode of man. The former theory such as that granite forms the substratum of all the rocks is denied—a denial which is sought to be justified by the fact that granite is found intruding and overlying as regards the super-incumbent rocks. But such action is simply local and partial, and is no disproof whatever of what Humboldt says in his Cosmos I. 305, “What we call the older Silurian strata are only the upper portions of the solid crust of the earth. The eruptive rocks which we see breaking through, pushing aside, and heaving up these, arise from depths that are inaccessible to us...I also hold it as more than probable that a primordial granite-rock is the foundation of the great systems of stratification which are filled with such variety of organic remains.” In the main this is true, though since Humboldt's time fossil indications of life have been found somewhat lower down than was then known. But geological (including paleontological) and biological theories are now made to accommodate each other. Valuable testimony on this subject is contained in D'Orbigny's Cors de Palaeontologie, Vol. II. pp. 251-258, for a quotation from which, with some sensible and important remarks, my readers should consult “Lectures on the Pentateuch,” by Mr. Kelly, Introduction, p. 29 (to be had of W. Walters, 53, Paternoster Row). The whole of that Introduction should be read, dealing as it does in a godly and able manner, with several of the errors of the present day. In fact, works of science (more especially those dealing with geology and biology) are palpably constructed on the atheistical principle of shutting out God. Past, present, and future, continuity is the grand object. There is law, but as little of God as possible; and unhappily this is the idea, not only accepted and adopted by our author, but actually sought by him to be carried into theology, and into the spiritual world. Religious doctrines, the facts and truths “revealed” not by “the other sciences,” but in Holy Scripture, are too “catastrophic” for him, and must undergo the process of “science-making” such as is exhibited in this book. Whilst infidels with more consistency deny creation and Christianity, he, whilst owning these in a certain sense, does his utmost to alter their divine character. It would be bad enough if evolution were confined to this world; to adopt the notion in reference to the next, to the spiritual world (in however modified a way), is to do despite to the Spirit of grace, and is revolting to every proper Christian thought and feeling. Ruined sinners by nature, saved through sheer grace, and in consequence of the sufferings of Another; our title to heaven, His precious blood: where can there possibly be room for evolution here?
I would add on again looking at the passage quoted in my last letter, “ex nihilo nihil, &c.” it may be, from his context, our author only denies that there can be any creation or destruction, so far as nature and man are concerned as the agents. This is of course true, and I trust his meaning is limited to it. The fundamental idea in this work being natural law, its identity and continuity whether in the natural or spiritual world, I have dwelt thus much on the general subject, and purpose (D.V.) proceeding with further extracts and remarks in a subsequent letter.
Yours in our Lord,
THETA