14 A Dangerous Admission. CHAP. 



doctrine which we have been considering; and the 

 Psalmist long ago spoke of the Spirit of God as the 

 source of merely natural life. 1 



It may be thought that this question, arising 

 out of what looks like mere poetical symbolism, 

 cannot be of any real importance. But this is 

 not so. What we are considering is nothing less 

 than the entire subject of the relation between Nature 

 and Grace ; and speculative errors on such a subject 

 may be practically injurious. I have already re- 

 marked, that the first effect of Drummond's theory 

 on this subject if it were heartily accepted, 

 which, however, is scarcely to be feared would 

 be to deprive believers of any means of reaching 

 the minds of doubters and unbelievers. Professor 

 Drummond appears not only to accept but to 

 emphasise this consequence. He says : " The en- 

 deavours of well-meaning persons to show that the 

 agnostic's position, when he asserts his ignorance of 

 the spiritual world, is only a pretence ; the attempts 

 to prove that he really knows a great deal about it 

 if he would only admit it, are quite misplaced. He 

 really does not know. The verdict that the natural 

 man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, 

 that they are foolishness unto him, that neither can lie 



1 Psalm civ. 30. For the view stated in the foregoing 

 paragraph, the writer is indebted to the article in the British 

 Quarterly Review of July 1884, entitled " Evolution viewed in 

 relation to Theology," being a review of the second edition of 

 the present writer's work, Habit and Intelligence (Macmillan, 

 1879). 



