ii The longing of the Soul for God. 17 



spiritual faculty a development from germs which 

 have always existed in the natural instincts of 

 man. 



Professor Drummond is not unaware of this. He 

 says : " The chamber is not only ready to receive 

 the new life, but the Guest is expected, and till He 

 comes is missed. Till then the soul longs and 

 yearns, wastes and pines, feeling after God, if so be 

 that it may find Him. In every land and in every 

 age there have been altars to the known or unknown 

 God. It is now agreed, as a mere question of an- 

 thropology, that the universal language of the human 

 soul has always been, * I perish with hunger.' This is 

 what fits it for Christ. There is a grandeur in this 

 cry from the depths which makes its very unhappi- 

 ness sublime." * This is true, and most forcibly and 

 admirably said, but it appears quite inconsistent 

 with all the rest of the book. Unvitalised matter, 

 to which, as we have seen, he elsewhere compares 

 the unregenerate soul, does not long for life or 

 aspire after it. 



To a being watching the evolution of worlds from 

 without, Life would seem altogether new. Let us 

 imagine a spirit dwelling in space, with vision at 

 once telescopic and microscopic, watching the 

 evolution of worlds by the condensation of a nebula, 

 "the gathering together of waters to form seas" on 

 the surface of the planets, the channelling of their 

 river-beds and the flow of their rivers, their currents 



1 Natural Law in the Spiritual World, p. 300. 

 C 



