Natural law in the spiritual world
Excerpt
No class of works is received with more suspicion, I had almost said derision, than those which deal with Science and Religion. Science is tired of reconciliations. two things which never should have been contrasted;
Religion is offended by the patronage of an ally which it professes not to need; and the critics have rightly discovered that, in most cases where Science is either pitted against Religion or fused with it, there is some fatal misconception, to begin with as to the scope and province of either.
But although no initial protest, probably, will save this work from the unhappy reputation of its class, the thoughtful mind will perceive that the fact of its subject- matter being Law — a property peculiar neither to Science nor to Religion — at once places it on a somewhat different footing.
The real problem I have set myself may be stated. In a sentence. Is there no reason to believe that many of the Laws of the Spiritual World, hitherto regarded as occupying an entirely separate province, are simply the Laws of the Natural World?
Can we identify the Natural Laws, or any one of them,* in the Spiritual sphere? That vague lines everywhere run through the Spiritual World is already beginning to be recognised. Is it possible to link them with those great lines running through the visible universe which we call the Natural Laws, or are they fundamentally distinct.? In a word. Is the Supernatural natural or unnatural?
I may, perhaps, be allowed to answer these questions in the form in which they have answered themselves to myself And I must apologise at the outset for personal references which, but for the clearness, they may lend to the statement, I would surely avoid. It has been my privilege for some .years to address regularly two very different audiences on two very different themes.
On weekdays I have lectured to a class of students on the Natural Sciences, and on Sundays to an audience consisting for the most part of working men on subjects of a moral and religious character.
[For the sake of the general reader who may desire to pass at once lo the practical applications, the following outline of the Introduction — devoted rather to general principles — is here presented.]
PART I.
Natural Law in the Spiritual Sphere.
1. The growth of the Idea of Law.
2. Its gradual extension throughout every department of Knowledge.
3. Except for one. Religion hitherto the Great Exception. Why so?
4. Previous attempts to trace analogies between the Natural and Spiritual spheres. These have been limited to analogies between Phenotnena j and are useful mainly as illustrations. Analogies of Law would also have a Scientific value.
5. Wherein that value v/ould consist, (i) The Scientific demand of the age would be met ;
(2) Greater clearness
would be introduced into Religion practically ; (3) Theology, instead of resting on Authority, would rest equally on Nature.
PART II.
The Law of Continuity.
A priori argument for Natural Law in the spiritual world.
The Law of Continuity.
A priori argument for Natural Law in the spiritual world.
1. The Law Discovered.
i. „ Defined.
i. „ Defined.
3- „ Applied.
4. The objection answered that the material o{ the Natural and Spiritual worlds being different they must be under different Laws.
5. The existence of Laws in the Spiritual world other than the Natural Laws (l) improbable, (2) unnecessary, (3) unknown. Qualification. fit The Spiritual not the projection upwards of the Natural, but
the Natural the projection downwards of the Spiritual
Natural Law is a new word. It is the last and the most magnificent discovery of science. No more telling proof is open to the modern world of the greatness of the idea than the greatness of the attempts which have always been made to justify it. In the earlier centuries, before the birth of science, Phenomena were studied alone.
The world then was chaos, a collection of single, isolated, and inde- pendent facts. Deeper thinkers saw, indeed, that relations must subsist between these facts, but the Reign of Law was never more to the ancients than a far-off vision. Their philosophies, conspicuously this? of the Stoics and Pythagoreans, heroically sought to marshal the discrete materials of the v.niverse into thinkable form, but from these artificial and fantastic systems, nothing remains to us now but. ancient testimony to the grandeur of that harmony which they failed to reach.
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