NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. [To THE Burros or
THE "SPECTATOR.") Sra.,—Your number for August 4th contains a notice of Mr. Drummond's new book, entitled "Natural Law in the Spiritual World." Your critical article is worthy of the book, -which I have read with the attention it deserves. You recognise generously the high claims of any man who, while cleaving to the most "dogmatic dogmas," shall yet believe in Darwin, Spencer, and Huxley ; and who, going beyond this, actually compels the teaching of Huxley, Spencer, and Darwin into the service of revealed religion. It is a great work, and one that must com- mand much of the effort of the current generation. Men will believe in Revelation, and are unable to refute Science ; it is much therefore to show plausibly that these do not contradict one another, how much more to prove conclusively their unity of result. Mr. Drummond has written wisely and well ; but it happens that the very same task was undertaken ten years ago by Dr. W. Woods Smyth, then of Maidstone, in a book entitled, " The Bible and Evolution," an abridgment of which was issued in 1882, and called "The Government of God" (Elliot Stock, paternoster Row). The one purpose of both these publications was to trace out and -demonstrate unity of principle and method, as well as continuity of purpose, in and through the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace. It fell to my lot to review the earlier volume, and of it I wrote thus in 1873 : —
" This is a work of unusual character. It is marked by energy,
originality, and power Dr. Smyth would teach that the doctrine of evolution of the world, and tho things that are therein, as set forth by Darwin and others, is correct ; but that the assumption that this should weaken onr belief in a personal Creator is altogether a mistake. His task is to show that, on the contrary, the footprints of the Creator, through the pro. Adamite epoch, coincide with those which lead down to the later times of human history ; that not only a Creator, but the same Creator, can be traced, by the principles, the methods, and the details of his Government, as having been God over all, both through geologic and historic times. Dr. Smyth affirms that the intercourse of God with man has harmonized accurately, mantis mutandiz, with the lines upon which be wrought out the development of bumbler pre- Adel:nits beings. He says that Christianity is not preternatural, and, therefore, contrary to reason and difficult of belief, but that it is per- natural, i.e., a consistent and complete carrying-through of the methods of Nature into the regions of Grace ; that revelation, animal sacrifice, and atonement are simply harmonious analogues in the latest volume of creative history, of Is w, succumbing of the unfit, and indirect equilibration, as found in its earlier pages. Of this, speaking critically, we simply say that it is a grand idea, deserving the most hearty
prosecution and study The whole theme is one to broaden and deepen current ideas about the actualities of religion, to interweave more closely and substantially the things of time with those of eternity, and to make men feel that the Government of God is about them now for guidance ; that a personal response to its influences is demanded at their bands, and that the penalties of ' unfitness' are irremediable and sure."
Partly as an act, of friendly justice to Dr. Smyth, partly to refer Mr. Drummond's readers to other sources of information, and still more to help in keeping alive the public interest in this important question, I take the liberty of asking the insertion of
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