30 THE LIGHT OE DAT 



It is true the world of art, the world of genius, 

 the world of literature, is a very select and limited 

 affair too ; but does anybody ever call the reality of 

 it in question ? Do we want proof that Shakespeare 

 and Milton are poets ? But science does want proof, 

 if the matter comes to that, that the typical Puritan 

 has the favor of any spiritual powers not known to 

 the rest of mankind — not known and equally acces- 

 sible to Zeno or Plutarch or Virgil or Marcus 

 Aurelius. 



It is just these exceptions, these departures from 

 the established course of nature, that the natural 

 philosopher is skeptical about. If an obscure event, 

 which happened in Judea over eighteen hundred 

 years ago, added a new kingdom to nature, or in- 

 augurated 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 in- 

 dependent 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 speaking with the au- 

 thority of science, when he is only echoing the con- 

 clusions 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 



