To the sacculina Prof. Drummond likens the backslider; and he uses him as an example of all those varieties of moral delinquents who, from motives of safety or indolence, seek shelter and support rather than accept danger and service. They are punished, he shows, by the loss of the powers and advantages which a brave acceptance of the law of their being would have secured to them.

It is plain that we have here a fresh and felicitous illustration; but it scarely needs be said that even the analogy between the instances is not close: still less can it be maintained that they come under one natural law. The most that can with truth be affirmed is, that a broad, general principle, - viz., that failure to use a power or privilege results in inability to use it, covers both. But the moment we descend to details and note the laws, physical and moral, operative in the several cases, we find that unlikeness is much more common and marked than similarity.

Here we touch the fallacy of Prof. Drummond's book. He confounds two meanings of the word "law" which are entirely distinct. In scientific usage "law" means the uniform mode in which some energy or agent acts in producing certain physical results. The way in which the power works to effect the results is called the law of its action. If, for example, it is found to be a uniform result that an animal which begins to subsist on the living body of another animal, loses some of its functions, such uniform result is said to be brought about by, or in conformity to, a law of nature. Now it is quite another, looser, and unscientific use of the word law that em ploys it to denote the operation of a similar principle in a different realm. In popular language we may say that "the same law holds of mental as of physical nutrition;" but strictly speaking we know that while a similar principle obtains, entirely distinct laws are operating. The reason that

this loose, popular usage so seldom misleads any one is, that the distinction, though not formally made is mentally observed. It would be the same in Prof. Drummond's case if he did not insist on turning metaphor into literal truth. He

is the only instance we have had in recent didactic literature, of a man erecting the fallacy of equivocation into a scientific discovery.

The universe is a "single intellectual realm," as Oersted maintained. It is from one mind. The analogies and resemblances in such a system are so numerous as to suggest constant comparison; and it is not surprising that so many uniformities should sometimes lead the superficial student to confound the similar with the identical. But it deserves to be carefully noted that the only way to understand the universe as a whole is to keep discrete its several parts. A synthesis which is not preceded by a correct and complete analysis, is like a painting of a landscape in which a confused huddle of objects and scenes misrepresents the perspectives and harmonies and sharp delineations of nature. Drummond's book is peculiarly calculated to mislead those who are not trained to look beneath the surface, because it simulates analysis by curious and copious illustration, and because the transparent style beguiles one so readily into the belief that the thought is lucid.

Prof.

The merit of Mr. Drummond's work consists, then, wholly in the introduction of a number of fresh and beautiful analogies into the discussion of religious themes. These are taken, for the most part, from the interesting sciences of zoölogy and biology, with which the author's studies have made him especially familiar. If he had set up no claim for them beyond their homiletical value, his book would not have challenged criticism; except in so far as its peculiar religious theories encountered the bias of those who hold different theories. But Mr. Drummond, recognizing in the beginning the place of analogy and parable, distinctly asserts that these are not the weapons of his warfare. "The position we have been led to take up is not that the Spiritual laws are analogous to the Natural Laws, but that they are the same laws. It is not a question of analogy, but of Identity" (p. 11). By this claim the book is to be judged. If established it becomes true, as the author remarks, that "the whole region (of the

We

spiritual) falls at once within the domain of science." have seen that the claim is not supported by the facts and reasonings adduced under it. On the contrary, scrutiny of the instances given shows that Mr. Drummond has, in every case, construed an analogy, real or fancied, into an identity. Whatever there is in "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," may be found in more trustworthy propositions and more careful inferences in a much more original and valuable book, "The Unseen Universe."

Before concluding this paper it may be of service to discuss, briefly, the main question, Are there two worlds, the natural and the spiritual? These several views may be taken of the subject: (1) It may be said that there is but one world in the case, the one with which we are acquainted, the physical world. "Spiritual" is a name with no equivalent thing. (2) It may be held that there is a natural world, both physical and spiritual, and that the spiritual is in and of the natural. The proper antithesis is material and spiritual; not natural and spiritual. (3) It may be contended that there is a natural world and there is a spiritual world; that these are distinct in quality and locality; that the mark of the natural world is its visibility and tangibility, of the spiritual world its imperceptibility by sense; that the spiritual may be discerned in the natural, as an underlying cause, but is only "spiritually discerned; " that the real seat and home of the spiritual is beyond the physical, is supra-natural; that the presence of the spiritual in the natural is not proof of their fixed union, much less of their identity, but rather of the separate existence of the spiritual world, just as the presence of the spirit in the body is not to be taken as evidence that it has no other abiding-place, but rather as intimating that it has a "house eternal in the heavens."

The first of these views may be dismissed without comment, as opposed to a well-attested fact, viz., that there is a reality answering to the term "spiritual." The second merits attention. It is plausible: perhaps true. It agrees with the first view in holding that there is but one world: it differs from

that view in finding spiritual as well as physical components in the world. But any attempt to confine the spiritual facts and forces to the realm with which we are conversant by our senses, results in making the spiritual an attribute of the physical, results in materialism. Conversely, to allege that the material is an attribute or expression of the spiritual, is to concede that there is a spiritual world of which this phenomenal world is the product, or at least the correspondent. If on the other hand, it is not meant to confine the range of the spiritual to the physical domain, the only alternative is to allow it a domain of its own, a spiritual world. complexion must it come at last.

To this

It is probable that a subtle fallacy misleads most of those who say that the natural includes both the physical and the spiritual. They are apt to observe in argument: "The spiritual is just as natural as the physical: surely the spiritual is not unnatural." What they have in mind here is that every being and every realm has its own constitution and fixed mode. of procedure. This may be called its nature. To manifest its own is according to its nature, or natural to it. In this sense it may be said to be natural for a cherub to fly, for an archangel to rule, for God to be holy. But it is apparent on a moment's reflection that this is a use of nature and natural, borrowed indeed from the other use, but entirely distinct from it. When we speak of the natural world we do not mean simply a world of a certain fixed constitution, but a world characterized by phenomena of which we take cognizance in sense perception. In order to be understood, and in order not to deceive ourselves, we are required to use words in their established meaning, or to explain carefully our departures from that meaning. The phrase," the natural world," has a wellunderstood significance; so has the phrase, "the spiritual world." We are not able to see that a single thing is gained by mixing them and then confusing the meaning of these terms, unless one wishes to deny the reality of the spiritual altogether.

The third view seems to recognize the facts and to escape

all objections except such as lie against the reality of the things themselves. In this view the natural is not divorced from the spiritual and it is not identified with it. The laws, relations, meanings of natural phenomena are intimations of the existence of a spiritual realm, on which the natural is in some sort dependent. Man enjoys the unique prerogative of belonging to both realms; but while at home in the body he is absent from the true and permanent home of the spirit.

It

And what according to this view is the supernatural? is not the same thing as the spiritual, though the supernatural presupposes the spiritual. The spiritual, as we have seen, may and does appear in the natural as substratum and informing energy. But its appearance thus, so far from supervening the regular order, supports it. The supernatural is the appearance of the spiritual in the realm of the natural in a way to intercept or supervene the natural order.

Here are three distinct things and the conceptions that correspond to them:

1. The natural world, or the world of physical phenomena. In which, however, there appears on close inspection, and particularly in man, spiritual facts and forces hinting the existence of a spiritual world.

2. The spiritual world, or the world of essences and realities, of which God is the Great Reality. This is the substratum and explanation of the natural world, which it penetrates and to some extent pervades.

3. The supernatural, instances in which a spiritual per. son or a spiritual energy appears in the natural world in a way that supersedes the natural order and produces physical results by means unknown to that order.

President I. M. Atwood, D.D.