Spiritual law in the natural world : an attempt to develop, according to Scripture-truth, the interpretation of nature

Front matter

AL [AW

J W< ■

IN THE

Chap. I. — The Scripture as a Source of Knowledge. 17 II._God's Twofold Witness 32

III. — Nature in Scripture 39

IV. — Natural Mathematics 45

V. — Spiritual Mathematics 51

VI. — Tones and Undertones ; 71

VII.— The Kingdoms of Nature 92

VIII. — Animal and Human 101

IX. — Classification 114

X. — Among the Creatures 139

XI. — Life in its Lowest Circle 167

PKEFACE.

THE title of this book will assure the reader that its subject, at least, is one of great importance. It is, however brief, a connected argument in behalf of the positions, first, that Nature is, in its every detail, a witness for God ; secondly, that its teaching is symbolic, as largely the Old Testament also, the first written revelation, is known to be; thirdly, that it needs, therefore, an interpreter, as it is contrary to all rules of hermeneutics that parables should define doctrine; fourthly, that Scripture must therefore be the interpreter of Nature, and not the reverse ; fifthly, that if Nature be indeed a witness to God and yet its witness be of this character, the thought that Scripture is not intended to teach science must be very guardedly applied.

After this, the way being opened for an unprejudiced appeal to it, it is sought to show that there is in Nature, as in Scripture, a numerical system, which, as interpreted by Scripture, speaks with no uncertain sound of its true meaning, — mapping out its divisions, defining the relation of one to another and to the whole, while demonstrating that spiritual law reigns everywhere in the natural world, and that Nature not only witnesses to God, but definitely to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the truth of Scripture.

6 Preface.

As to the result, it is only so startling as on that very account to produce a feeling of incredulity in most minds. It is as if one should claim to have discovered a manuscript of Aristotle, and should produce something written in good modern English. Having myself felt the full force of this, I can sympathize with those who feel it. The cases are of course in no wise parallel, and the remedy will be found in a more thorough scrutiny of the basis of the argument. Being founded on a simple comparison of only the most familiar facts in nature with that which can be fully tested by Scripture, and where every fresh application of the one to the other is a new verification, the proof submits itself to the judgment of every ordinary mind.

May He whose law nature's law is be with all that is of Himself— which is all that is of any value — in what is now sent forth !

F. W. GRANT.

Plainfield, N. J.

AN ATTEMPT TO DEVELOP, ACCORDING TO SCRIPTURE-TRUTH,

THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE,

Introduction

THE title of the book which is before the reader will prepare him to find in it a certain sympathy with a recent one, widely known, yet at the same time with a difference of method which probably will account for a very different result. And yet Prof. Drummond has actually in his introduction anticipated that definition of the truth as to the "Natural" to which by the adoption of it I have committed myself here. " After all," he says,

" the true greatness of Law lies in its vision of the Unseen. Law in the visible is the Invisible in the visible. And to speak of Laws as natural is to define them in their application to a part of the universe, the sense-part, whereas a wider survey would lead us to regard all Law as essentially spiritual. To magnify the laws of nature, as laws of this small world of ours, is to take a provincial view of the universe. Law is great, not because the phenomenal world is great, but because these vanishing lines are the avenues into the eternal Order."

And he adds further on, —

"How the priority of the Spiritual improves the strength and meaning of the whole argument will be seen at once. The lines of the Spiritual existed first, and it was natural to expect that when ' the Intelligence resident in the Unseen ' proceeded to frame the material universe, He should go upon the lines already laid down. He would, in short, simply project the higher laws downward, so that the natural world would become an incarnation, a visible representation, a working model of the spiritual. The whole (?) function of the material world lies here."

Now this is in. the main so true and good, that one might wonder that the author should after all prefer for his book the title of "Natural Law in the Spiritual World " rather than the converse. The fact is evidently that he takes the two propositions as identical ; and why not, if natural law is but spiritual law projected downward into nature ? This really spiritual law must then, of course, exist in the spiritual world ! Yet it is no wonder if he is a little puzzled about the limits and spirituality of the law of gravitation ! Without insisting too much on this, it is evident that the title he has chosen implies a method, no less than that of following the " vanishing lines" of the seen into the unseen. An ambitious attempt certainly ! My own is humbler ; and for me at least I feel safer. His method is to take nature to interpret Scripture; and I fear we must even say, to supplement it. On my part, with no courage but such as the child's gained from the grasp of his father's hand, I can only seek in the light of Scripture to interpret nature.

Lest I should be thought to misconceive Prof. Drummond here, — a thing very possible to any r and of which I would desire to remember the possibility, — I shall let him speak for himself, and as his book is in so many hands, it will be abundantly easy to verify the quotations. At the very outset indeed he tells us in his preface expressly, that when with him "the subject-matter Religion had taken on the method of the expression of Science, and I discovered myself," he says, "enunciating Spiritual Law in the exact terms of Biology and Physics," that "this was not simply a scientific coloring given to Religion, the mere freshening of the theological air with natural facts and illustrations. It was an entire re-casting of truth. My spiritual world before was a chaos of facts. ... It was the one region still unpossessed by law. I saw then why men of science distrust theology ; why those who learn to look upon law as authority grow cold to it — it was the great Exception."

It is true that he has said just before this, "I make no charge against theology in general. I speak of my own." But he must have forgotten this before completing the paragraph : for surely it was not his theology only that he says the men of io Spiritual Law in tJie Natural World.

science distrusted, nor indeed any particular theology, but theology as a whole. And this distrust, he tells us, is chargeable, not to any thing in the men of science, but distinctly to theology itself.

While his spiritual world was thus a chaos, nature alone appeared to him firm : —

" And the reason is palpable. No man can study modern science without a change coming over his view of truth. What impresses him about nature is its solidity. He is there standing upon actual things, among fixed laws." " There is a sense of solidity about a law of nature, which belongs to nothing else in the w r orld. Here at last, amid all that is shifting, is one thing sure, . . . one thing that holds its way tome eternally, uncorrupted andundefiled." " In these laws one stands face to face with truth, solid and unchangeable. "

This is plain speaking ; and surely in the presence of authority such as this, it becomes theology to offer her neck meekly to the yoke, and accept her master : every natural law is that ! But when she asks humbly to be shown these laws, it is somewhat disappointing to be told, —

"The laws of nature are simply 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 " ! !

One would have thought that here there might be some hope of escape for theology after all, if the last be true ; but the first sentence was evidently intended to cut off the hope. A ''sufficient" number of " competent" observers have, we suppose, undertaken the government for the unseen authorities and are themselves, no doubt, authority enough. What observers are " competent," and how many of these are " sufficient," would, after all, perhaps, be relevant questions still ; but they are unanswered. Probably this reserve is to increase our respect for the authorities, a thing which proverbially, familiarity does not always do.

This government, strange to say, is a very modern one. Nature's voice, it seems, has hitherto been "muffled."

M But now that science has made the world around articulate, it speaks to religion with a twofold purpose. In the first place, it offers to corroborate theology ; in the second, to purify it."

The last should be first evidently : it must purify it first, or else in the nature of things it cannot corroborate it. It is only the revised religion that it can confirm ; and to submit to be revised is the first necessity for confirmation. Yea, —

"and while there are some departments of theology where its jurisdiction cannot be sought, there are others in which nature may have to define the contents as well as the limits of belief."

Practically, the obedient subjects of such authority

" must oppose with every energy they possess what seems to them to oppose the eternal course of things/ '

Doubtless, so taught, they will throw sufficient energy into the opposition. And no wonder if by this process there should be in result " an entire re-casting of truth." " The old ground of faith, authority," he says, "is given up." Yet what else is the testimony of a " sufficient number of competent observers " ? Is it impossible that Scripture, with its innumerable lines of proof — " many infallible proofs " (Acts i. 3,) — should be equally trustworthy ?

Note that through all these quotations Scripture is not suffered to appear. We hear of Theology and Religion, the last a term vague enough to be applied to the worship of a fetish or a crocodile, the former an extract of some kind from Scripture, or presumed to be so, but in the form given it by human minds. As such this is necessarily fallible, — as fallible as " a sufficient number of competent (natural) observers," — and being fallible, can be opposed to the solidity of laws of nature, without its being clear that in fact what represents these laws of nature is an "-ology " as much as the other, — an extract distilled through human minds. How enormous is the blunder here ! Let a man say, if he will, that Scripture is fallible, but man's science not, we know what that means : it is honest and straightforward. If it be really only theology that is in question, it is simple enough that theology may be as much at war with nature, as science so-called with Scripture. There is nothing very brilliant or calculated to provoke comment in so trite an observation. Eloquent as the Edinburgh professor is, and captivating as his book surely is, — captivating for many by the truth that undoubtedly is in it, — the error of his method manifests itself in result unmistakably. And it is not hard to judge either how far any true science is from justifying his results. We will leave now his introduction, from which we have hitherto quoted almost exclusively, and take in evidence but two or three passages from the body of the book. Here is a very positive statement from his paper on "Conformity to Type" (p. 297): —

"We should be forsaking the lines of nature were we to imagine for a moment that the new creation was to be formed out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil — nothing can be made out of nothing. Matter is uncreatable and indestructible ; nature and man can only form and transform.' '

Notice that he is talking here of new creation — of God's work in the soul. And yet in the face of this he quietly says, "matter is uncreatable." Is then this new creation one of " matter " ? If not, why speak of this ? if it be, then that which Scripture calls creation he says is not such ! And this must be held if we would not forsake the lines of nature! "Nature and man can only form and transform." Theology certainly never taught that nature could create: does science teach that God cannot ? how great, to be sufficient, must the number of observers be to prove so great a negative ? and what observers should we consider " competent " for this? Is this not a wonderful induction from the fact that it is not in man's power to z//zcreate, nor in nature's to commit suicide, that therefore God cannot create ? Is it not rather unspeakable folly and impiety, let who will be guilty of it, to force nature thus into blasphemous revolt against her Maker ? Nay, nature will not be forced : " but who art thou, O man, who repliest against God ? "

Again, in his paper on " Eternal Life," p. 236, he quotes approvingly from Reuss, as discovering in the apostle's conception of life, first, —

"The idea of a real existence, an existence such as is proper to God and to the Word ; an imperishable existence — that is to say, not subject to the vicissitudes and imperfections of this finite world. This primary idea is repeatedly expressed, at least in a negative form ; it leads to a doctrine of immortality, or, to speak more correctly, of life, far surpassing any that had been expressed in the formulas of the current philosophy or theology, and resting on conceptions altogether different. In fact it can dispense both with the philosophical thesis of the immateriality or indestructibility of the human soul, and with the theological thesis of a miraculous corporeal reconstruction of our person ; theses, the first of which is altog 'ether foreign to the religion of the Bible, and the second, absolutely opposed to reason."

Here we find at once the affirmation of the materiality of the soul, and the denial of the doctrine of the resurrection : with the last of which the apostle affirms goes overboard the entire truth of Christianity. (1 Cor. xv. 12-18.) And this confirms the worst meaning of the extract made before. Annihilation is only a lesser evil accompanying it, and this the definition of eternal life which he accepts from Herbert Spencer distinctly corroborates, for eternal life is according to it nothing but eternal material existence, and the whole question with Prof. Drummond in his essay on it is, how to escape extinction at death. That he who does not here receive eternal life must become extinct without a resurrection, is the natural corollary.

One more extract from the essay on " Environment " (p. 281) :—

" The completion of life is now a supreme question. It is important to observe how it is being answered. If we ask science or philosophy, they will refer us to evolution.' '

And he goes on to speak of struggle for life, etc., the elements of the most extreme Darwinian form.

Thus it is plain how for our author science must purify theology, and the iron yoke which we are called upon thus to receive. Yet the fascination even for Christians of a book that contains such things is a proof that it appeals to something within us which needs to be met, and that it contains also truth which must be eliminated from the error. Here as elsewhere we must, as God by Jeremiah warns us, " take forth the precious from the vile," that we may be as His mouth. (Jer. xv. 19.) The vitiation of the conclusion w T ith Prof. Drummond may be plainly traced to error in the method. That here pursued is, as will at once be seen, entirely different. I accept as truth, and have done long before his book appeared, that the natural world is, in the whole of it, as it were, an incarnation, a visible representation of spiritual things. Nature I accept as I do Scripture as a witness for God of the most precious kind. But here Scripture it is, not nature, that is decisively His revelation. By His Word alone can we rightly understand His works ; and here we have a most fruitful principle, which needs only fully to be believed and followed, to show how fruitf.ul and valuable it is. But, first, it needs — and it is strange that it should need, among any who accept Scripture as of God, — to be clearly stated, and justified from suspicion, before we look at the results to which we shall be led by it.

*7

CHAPTER I. Scripture as a Source of Knowledge

OUR method at least is a very simple one. It is to appeal to Scripture freely, and in the first place, seeking to use it according to its full value, in faith that it has the highest possible value ; in short, that upon whatever it may speak, it will give us, as the Word of God must, truth without any mixture of error, truth that will bear the utmost scrutiny, and stand every possible test. It would be a grand thing, would it not ? to have such a standard of appeal, if it could only be proved that we have such ! Yes, indeed, if it could be proved ! But has not Prof. Drummond told us, "The old ground of faith, authority, is given up"? And is not this appeal considered by many as only the refuge of weakness, a credulity which stultifies reason, and would stop the onward march of scientific achievement, even if it did not put Galileo once more into the hands of the inquisitors, and burn Giordano Bruno at the stake ? Of the last, there is perhaps no immediate danger ; but it is plain that, in opposition to the modern one, with all its glory of brilliant discovery upon it, the method we are to i3 Spiritual Laiv in the Natural World.

pursue will seem antiquated, worn out, with none of the vital energy of youth in it, and one which has been losing ground for long continually in its conflict with the scientific, — " extinguished theologians/' so it has been told us, " lying about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules/' Happily for the theologians, it is generally found that the precocious infants get to be of milder manners after they have left the cradle, or no doubt the race would be extinct.

Is the old ground of faith, authority, given up ? And have people learnt, with Prof. Huxley, for justification by faith to substitute justification by verification? Then, if the verification is meant to be, as of course it should be, personal, it will go hard with much that we have counted knowledge. How many have verified for themselves the leading facts and principles of any one of the sciences? And if, as Mr. Lewes says, and as we all know, "the psychological law that we only see what interests us, and only assimilate what is adapted to our condition, causes the mind to select its evidence," then what hope is there of attaining truth by means of evidence gathered in this way by those for whose power to see aright it is wholly impossible to answer ?

Says St. George Mivart :—

Scripture as a Source of Knozuledge. 19

" Believers have been warned, usque ad nauseam, that a wish to believe vitiates all their arguments. But what weight can we attach to conclusions such as those, e.g., of Prof. Huxley, who tells us, with regard to the doctrine of Evolution, the position of complete and irreconcilable opposition which in his opinion it occupies to the Church is 'one of Us greatest merits in my eyes.' 1 A similar, though less striking, theological prejudice is also exhibited by Mr. Darwin himself. He tells us himself, in his 'Descent of Man,' that in his 'Origin of Species' his^rs* object was 'to show that species had not been separately created;' and he consoles himself for admitted error by the reflection that ' I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.' "

If others, then, are to verify for us what certainly we cannot all verify for ourselves, what is this but the bringing back again of " authority" for the mass, and the establishment of a board of directors only instead of Scripture, — Huxley and Darwin instead of Peter and Paul ? But why, then, the refusal on the one hand of what they contend for on the other? Is it even sincere? Nay, does not the special use of this doctrine of verification appear as something " one of whose greatest merits " is that it shuts off even inquiry about heaven or hell or a future life, things which, in the way contended for, nobody can verify?

Every one that cares may know that Prof. Huxley puts inquiries of this kind on the same level with

" lunar politics," and that to make the little corner of the world in which one lives a little less miserable and ignorant, as his duty is, "it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs : the first, that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for something as a condition of the cause of events. Each of these beliefs," he says, "can be verified experimentally, as often as we like to try." Beyond this, he conceives we have but the Maya of the Buddhist — illusion. And a writer in The Westminster Review generalizes this as the conviction of the scientific man, of whom he says, "Above all things, he is silent in the presence of truths (or falsehoods) which he has ascertained to be beyond his reach. And he commands equally, in respect of these, silence on all others of mankind." Thus it is very clear how a board of such directors would extinguish the theologians. And the very ignorance as to all that it imports man most to know, and of what in general he craves most to know, that very ignorance which pleads so strongly for the need (and so the fact) of revelation, is made the all-sufficient argument against it. The learned scientists of the agnostic school — in plain English, the school of ignorance — know, by reason of their oivn ignorance, that while all other instincts are provided for, this one, as strong as any, has and can have no provision made for it. And the One whom they have decreed to be the Unknowable, by that very decree they declare they know so well as to know that He cannot (or will not) reveal Himself to man ! For if He be the Unknown, they cannot even pronounce Him the Unknowable ; and if He is not the Unknown, then the Unknowable He cannot be. Bat are faith and verification really, then, so far asunder? Is there no possibility of reconciliation between the two ? Must the most absolute faith even be credulity? or can there be no verification of authority itself, so as to justify the simplest faith in it? How, then, are we to verify the board of directors? though indeed we are ready to confess that an enigma most insoluble to the most thinking man. But in the case of revelation, if it be possible to verify this as the word of God, will any one say that God is to be trusted only so far as we can verify His word as true, — that is, not so much as one would trust a man of the most ordinary repute for veracity ?

Scripture does surely not refuse to submit itself (in this manner) to verification, — nay, it appeals to it. Who can be so credulous as to believe that it requires "blind" faith, or would be honored by it? who that has ever read it, — aye, and who that knows whereof he speaks would dare to affirm that its principal proof even is (according to Mr. Huxley's sneer,) that its " verity is testified by portents and wonders/' when its solemn attestation is, that if men " believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead"?

Scripture itself is in fact one of the very greatest "portents and wonders" to those who will give it that patient and reverent examination which its claim demands. And for this it offers itself, not merely to the trained man of science, or to the man with abundant means and leisure to investigate. Its gospel is preached to the poor. Like the light which is its emblem, it shines as directly down upon the rustic as on the philosopher. "Light is come into the world," says He who brought it. And the conviction of light is something simple and immediate for those who have eyes to see. It is not the result of a long process of reasoning, where the chain is no stronger than its weakest link, but of a true verification, by the illumination of what it shines on : " that which doth make manifest is light."(Eph.v. 13.)

Grant this, and who will protest against its authority, or deny its absoluteness? Is not light for the man of science, as for the peasant, authoritative? And here is that in which men of all color, caste, and social standing rejoice together. Light, true and beneficent autocrat as it is, is at the same time the greatest leveler : one of those free gifts of God which in their common diffusion would proclaim all men His offspring ; one of those silent witnesses against the pretension of agnostic imbecility which, as it proclaims darkness to be light, would quench the true light in darkness. How thankful beyond expression may we be to escape the board of directors, and receive our light from heaven rather than from the " Sufficient Number of Competent Observers " Gas Company advertised by Prof. Drummond ! Yes, note it, ye natural observers, ye disciples of physical science, here is a law of nature, something in which we "stand face to face with truth, solid and unchangeable,'' a veritable "spiritual law in the natural world " — all the light of the world is from heaven.

Test it, as much as you will ; put it to use, and it will light up every thing it shines on. Do not fear that it will leave you timidly groping in the dark, still less put out your eyes ffiat you may see the better. There never was a book more fully submitting itself to investigation, never a book that so looked you in the face while speaking to you, never one with the marks upon it of such absolute truthfulness. Simply and unadulterated, the priestcraft with which men would confound it dares not use it for its evil purposes. The man who does use it truly and reverently may be trusted as true and reverent. Mark out on your map of the world the regions of what even the agnostic would call the fullest light, and you will mark out the regions of an open Bible. And this is mere trite commonplace, thank God : that is to say, every one is witness that the light shines !

We are not, however, studying Scripture evidences : we are merely pointing out their nature. The evidence will come when we have to show the light that Scripture throws upon nature. But it is wise to move step by step here, planting each firmly before we take another. Every step is contested, not only from without, but, alas ! also from within professing Christianity itself ; and to move surely we must move slowly. Nature is above all that which many professed believers are yet very chary in admitting to be even very accurately represented in Scripture, and if so, of course we need not expect any light upon it from this source. The man of science is met half-way by the concessions of the theologian, who thinks to save the centre of his battle by handing over his right wing to the enemy. No wonder if even an infant science should " extinguish" such defenders. We would gladly aid it even to accomplish this, assured that it would be an immense good if Christians were made to realize the only possible conditions of successful conflict. By all means let Hercules extinguish the " snakes/' though that is Huxley's comparison, not ours, for we do not in the least insinuate falsehood or treachery in the men who do this, although it is certain they are playing Satan's game.