156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY. 



ago, added a new kingdom to Nature, or inaugurated a new or higher 

 order of spiritual truths impossible before that time, impossible to 

 Plato or Plutarch, he wants the fact put in harmony with the rest of 

 our knowledge of the universe. It is commonly believed that the 

 course of Nature is independent of historical events, and that the 

 ways of God to man from the beginning have been just what they 

 are to-day. 



"What perpetually irritates the disinterested reader of Drummond's 

 book is the assumption everywhere met with that the author is speak- 

 ing with the authority of science, when he is only echoing the conclu- 

 sions of theology. Hear him on the differences between the Christian 

 and the non-Christian : 



" The distinction between them is the same as that between the 

 organic and the inorganic, the living and the dead. What is the dif- 

 ference between a crystal and an organism, a stone and a plant ? They 

 have much in common. Both are made of the same atoms. Both dis- 

 play the same properties of matter. Both are subject to the same 

 physical laws. Both may be very beautiful. But, besides possessing 

 all that the crystal has, the plant possesses something more — a mys- 

 terious something called life. This life is not something which existed 

 in the crystal only in a less developed form. There is nothing at all 

 like it in the crystal. . . . When from vegetable life we rise to animal 

 life, here again w T e find something original and unique — unique at least 

 as compared with the animal. From animal life we ascend again to 

 spiritual life. And here also is something new, something still more 

 unique. He who lives the spiritual life has a distinct kind of life 

 added to all the other phases of life which he manifests — a kind of 

 life infinitely more distinct than is the active life of a plant from the 

 inertia of a stone. . . . The natural man belongs essentially to this 

 present order of things. He is endowed simply with a higher quality 

 of the natural animal life. But it is life of so poor a quality that it 

 is not life at all. 'He that hath not the Son hath not life ; but he 

 that hath the Son hath life' — a new and distinct and supernatural 

 endowment. He is not of this world, he is of the timeless state of 

 eternity. It doth not yet appear what he shall be? 



In the chapter on classification this distinction is further elaborated, 

 and a picture drawn of the merely moral or upright man, that leaves 

 him very low down indeed in the scale of life, when contrasted with 

 the Scotch Presbyterian. He is still a stone compared w T ith the plant : 

 " Here, for example, are two characters, pure and elevated, adorned 

 with conspicuous virtues, stirred by lofty impulses, and commanding 

 a spontaneous admiration from all who look upon them — may not this 

 similarity of outward form be accompanied by a total dissimilarity of 

 inward nature ? " And he adds that the difference is really as profound 

 and basal as that between the organic and the inorganic. 



As rhetoric, or as theology, one need care little for all this ; but 



