PROF. DRUMMOND AND THE TEACHING OF NATURE

"Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased," says the inspired Word :how wonderfully fulfilled none can surely doubt. Let us notice too, if we have not, that these are not independent, but strictly connected statements :the running to and fro is, and is represented to be, the cause of the increase of knowledge.

Knowledge consists, to a large extent at least, in the observing of differences, bringing out thus the essential features of each object before the mind, as well as its relation to other objects. Comparison is thus the great means of knowledge. Whatever the provocative of a running to and fro upon the earth, an age of traveling means opportunities of comparison, and the fostering of a spirit of research. Thus the present facilities of travel connect with the undeniable growth and spread of every kind of knowledge.

I say advisedly " of every kind of knowledge." Of course I do not mean by this that there will be more conversions to God, – this is in the power of the Spirit of God alone to effect ; yet I do mean that the knowledge of divine things, or (if you will,) the opening up of them to knowledge, cannot be excepted from this necessary increase. Scripture is always indeed the true and only key to every thing. Without it, there would be, as to all that is of real importance for man to know, nothing but utter darkness – a darkness that might be felt. Nay, more ; the voice of prophecy declares that upon all the present increase of knowledge shall come such an eclipse ; for "behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples," when the glory of the Lord rises upon Israel. (Isa. Ix.) Thus the pride and idolatry of intellect will yet meet its terrible rebuke from God.

And yet, I repeat that no kind of knowledge-objective knowledge-can be excepted from the prophet's statement. Indeed, if it be allowed to apply at all,* it can scarcely be doubted that the application is mainly to spiritual things. *Keil thus (in his Comm. on Dan., p. 486,) remarks:" Shut signifies . . . to go to and fro, to pass through a land in order to seek out or search, to go about spying. . . . From these renderings, there arises for this passage before us the meaning, to search through, to examine a book." But no examples are given. For my purpose here, I need not examine the application further; for it is still true, whether Daniel speak of it or not, that this has actually been fulfilled.* Nor could one suppose, surely, an increase of natural knowledge without some corresponding increase in this direction. The various departments of knowledge so depend on one another,-the world of nature, the history of men, even their sins and errors (spite of themselves) so testify for God,-Scripture touches the whole circle of knowledge in such various ways, that we may be well assured this would be impossible.

It is this connection that exposes revelation to attack also from all sides. Man being what the cross has proved him to be, it was inevitable that there would be such attacks. On the other hand, that God should use these to bring out and manifest the power of His word, we might well expect. It has been always so. Science is now the battle-field, but the foe is not science ; it is as ever the unbelief of man, driven out of other refuges, and concentrating its forces behind the shelter of forms but dimly seen as yet. In darkness, more plainly than ever, is their retreat, hypothesis, mystery, agnosticism, are their weapons. Their advocates have themselves most plainly pointed out the issue to be between revelation or despair, -the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, or the Unknowable.

Is it worth while to dispute with them the field of which they vaunt that they have secure possession? With revelation ours, need we contest the field of science? So much has this been dragged through the mire of evolutionistic infidelity, that in the mind of many it is useless to try and save it now. Why go outside of Scripture on to a doubtful ground of nature and observation and reasoning where so many stumble ?

Just this last is, no doubt, the most forcible of arguments. It is not the attacks of infidelity that we have so much cause to dread as the well-intentioned efforts of those who, seeing the ship of revelation laboring in the tempest, hastily come in to help her by throwing out her precious freight into the sea. Inspiration, creation, and other capital doctrines of the Word have been thus again and again laid hold of for destruction, and no wonder if there should be fear of any new attempt at reconciling what never was opposed with the loss of what never was in peril.

Prof. Drummond's book* is one of these late attempts, and it is certainly not one of the feeblest. It has had a very wide circulation, has been greeted with enthusiastic praise, and denounced also with special energy. " *Natural Law in the Spiritual World." By Henry Drummond, R. S. E.; F. G. S.* By Henry Drummond, This perhaps is only what might be expected in the case of a work of real talent upon so important a subject by a man not unknown. But it makes it difficult for one to speak who sympathizes with both sides, and therefore, as a matter of course, with neither.

There was real cause for alarm. Prof. Drummond tells you at the outset that science with him has brought about "an entire re-casting of truth" (p. 8:). His "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 have learned to look upon law as authority grow cold to it-it was the great exception " (p. 10:).

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" (20:). "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 that holds its way to me eternally, uncorrupted, and undefiled" (13:). "In these laws, one stands face to face with truth, solid and unchangeable" (p. 4.).

Yet it seems they are not easy to define, and must be taken on authority. " The laws of nature are simply the statements of the orderly condition of things in nature, what is found in nature by a sufficient number of competent observers. What these law's are in themselves is not agreed. That they have any absolute existence even, is far from certain"! (p. 5.)

Thus "theology" is delivered into the hands of a sufficient number of natural observers ; and science thus offers if in the first place "to corroborate theology, in the second, to purify it" (18:). "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" (21:). And "men must oppose with every energy they possess what seems to them to oppose the eternal course of things" (21:).

No wonder if by this process there should be in result "an entire re-casting of truth." No wonder rather if there be a casting out of truth. " The old ground of faith, authority, is given up" (p. 26.). Yet what 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 1:3.)-should be equally trustworthy ?

The principles of Prof. Drummond's book, then, are alarming enough for the Christian. And he carries them out consistently. All through you will find, side by side, 'quotations from the apostles of Christ and the apostles of evolution, and treated, one would think, with almost equal reverence.

The result is very much what might be anticipated from all this, although there is a certain looseness of language which allows one to hope that what is said may not after all convey his real meaning. Yet, if it be so, he has had time to disclaim what has been imputed to him, and we cannot hear that he has done so. Whatever, then, his own views, the words remain with all their mischievous effect for the many who have been captivated by the brilliancy of the presentation, as well as (I must add) the truth that they contain ; for that they contain truth is to me incontestable. And it is this mixture of what is true and valuable with what is false and evil, that is to be dreaded; for by it the enemy of our souls obtains a double victory; either he prevails upon us to reject the truth because of the falsehood mixed with it, or else to receive the two together. God's word to us, as to Jeremiah, is, " If thou shalt take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as My mouth."

Here are some of the statements in question:- "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" (p. 297).

Here there is that looseness of statement of which I have spoken. "Matter is uncreatable and indestructible; " but he is speaking of the new creation, the divine work in a soul. Is this, then, " matter " ? and cannot God create or destroy matter, if it were ? "Nature and man can only form and transform;" but what, then, is "nature"? Is it God, or what He has created ? If the latter, what marvel? if the former, did not God, then, create the world ?

Again we have (p. 236),-

"This primary idea. ..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 upon premises and 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 the miraculous corporeal reconstruction of our person:theses, the first of which is altogether foreign to the religion of the Bible, and the second, absolutely opposed to reason."

It is true that this is a quotation from a German author (Reuss), but it is quoted with approbation by Prof. Drummond, who certainly endorses here the materiality of the soul and the denial of the resurrection. And this confirms the worst meaning of the extract made before. Annihilationism naturally goes with it also, 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 receive eternal life must become extinct seems surely the inevitable conclusion.

Again we have (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 very evident that the denunciation of the book before us has not been without reason. That is denied in it which involves all Christianity in its denial; for " if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised ; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins" (i Cor. 15:16, 17.)

The denial of the resurrection, the immateriality of the soul, the creation of matter, and the advocacy of full evolution in its extreme Darwinian form, are surely enough to startle the dullest Christian into refusal of a book which deliberately proposes these for our acceptance. Yet its author was accepted at Northfield and at Chautauqua.

(To be continued.)