SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY. 15 1 



identity is not proved ; the analogy alone is apparent. In the physic- 

 al sphere science often recognizes the same laws appearing under 

 widely different conditions. For instance, the process by which ani- 

 mal life is kept up is no doubt a real combustion, identical in kind 

 with that which takes place in the consumption of fuel by fire. Lavoi- 

 sier and Laplace long ago taught us that there are not two chemistries 

 — one for dead bodies and another for living — on the contrary, one 

 system of laws, chemical, mechanical, physical, everywhere prevail. 

 Again, there are few exact terms that we apply to objective nature 

 that we do not apply upon the principle of analogy to subjective 

 nature, as high and low, interior and exterior, flexible and inflexible, 

 hard and soft, attraction and repulsion, etc. Indeed, our whole lan- 

 guage, in its higher ranges, is a perpetual application of the principle 

 of analogy. But to aver that physical laws are operative in the spir- 

 itual world, even in the spiritual world of Calvinistic theology, is quite 

 another matter, and is to take a leap where science can not follow. 

 Hard and inflexible as the Calvinistic heaven is, it is doubtful if the 

 law of gravitation reaches so far, though our professor does not flinch 

 at all at this assumption (see page 42). 



"Nature," he again says, "is not a mere image or emblem of the 

 spiritual. It is a working model of the spiritual. In the spiritual 

 world the same wheels revolve, but without the iron" (page 27). It 

 is something to be assured that the iron is left out ; the wheels are 

 enough. Though why not the iron also, since we are still within reach 

 of the same physical laws ? 



There is nothing more taking than the argument from analogy, but 

 probably no species of reasoning opens so wide a door for the admis- 

 sion of error. It is often a powerful instrument in leading and per- 

 suading the mind, because it awakens the fancy or stirs the imagina- 

 tion ; but its real scientific value, or its value as an. instrument for the 

 discovery of truth, is very little, if it has any at all. The fact of the 

 metamorphosis of the caterpillar after an apparent death into a 

 winged insect may lend plausibility to the doctrine of the soul's immor- 

 tality, but can it be said to furnish one iota of proof ? Indeed, to a 

 mind bent upon anything like scientific certitude in such matters, But- 

 ler's whole argument for a future life can hardly be of a feather's 

 weight, because he seeks to prove by reason or comparison that which 

 experience alone can settle. 



Paul reasoned from analogy when he sought to prove the doctrine 

 of the resurrection of the body. He appealed to a perfectly natural 

 and familiar phenomenon, namely, the decay and transformation of a 

 kernel of wheat in the ground before it gives birth to the stalk and 

 the new grain. But see how the doctrine which he maintained so elo- 

 quently has faded, or is fading, from the mind of even orthodox 

 Christendom ! Analogy is valuable as rhetoric, but in the serious pur- 

 suit of truth it can be of little service to us. When employed for its 



