2 The Parables of Nature. CHAP. 



is to set forth a system of religious philosophy ; and 

 though it contains much true religious philosophy, 

 yet it does not contain a system at all, but only a 

 number of detached though elaborately worked out 

 suggestions. Its eleven chapters are eleven sermons 

 from texts found in nature, all of them impressive, 

 and all of them true except where exaggerated into 

 something approaching to falsity. But a series of 

 philosophical treatises do not necessarily form a 

 philosophical system. 



In the character of the analogies that he has wrought 

 out, Professor Drummond's work reminds us of those 

 parables of Our Lord which are taken from vegetation 

 and agriculture. Perhaps the entire idea of the work 

 has been suggested by them ; and we must agree with 

 its author that such parables as those of the Sower, 1 

 the Seed growing in secret, 2 the Vine and its branches, 3 

 and the Seed dying in order to bear fruit, 4 point to a 

 real analogy between the organic life of the plant and 

 the spiritual life in the heart of man. If an eloquent 

 commentary were written on these parables, with 

 constant and emphatic assertions that the truth of 

 the parable depends, not on mere similarity but on 

 identity of law between the natural world of types 

 and the spiritual world of antitypes, such a work, 

 in its general ideas, would much resemble Professor 

 Drummond's. Some of his parables, however, though 

 quite true, throw no real light on the laws of what 



1 Matt. xiii. 3. 2 Mark iv. 26. 



3 John xv. 1. 4 John xii. 24 ; see also 1 Cor. xv. 



