Natural Law In The Spiritual World

by Henry Drummond

Overview

No class of works is received with more suspicion than those which deal with Science and Religion. Science is tired of reconciliations between two things which never should have been contrasted; Religion is offended by the patronage of an ally which it professes not to need; and the critics have rightly discovered that, in most cases where Science is either pitted against Religion or fused with it, there is some fatal misconception to begin with as to the scope and province of either. But although no initial protest, probably, will save this work from the unhappy reputation of its class, the thoughtful mind will perceive that the fact of its subject-matter being Law—a property peculiar neither to Science nor to Religion—at once places it on a somewhat different footing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783849644192
Publisher:	Jazzybee Verlag
Publication date:	05/12/2014
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	252
File size:	419 KB

Read an Excerpt

ANALYSIS OF INTRODUCTION. [For the sake of the general reader who may desire to pass at once to the practical applications, the following outline of the Introduction devoted rather to general principles is here presented.] PART I. Natural Law In The Spiritual Sphere. 1. The growth of the Idea of Law. 2. Its gradual extension throughout every department of Know ledge. 3. Except one. Religion hitherto the Great Exception. Why so? 4. Previous attempts to trace analogies between the Natural and Spiritual spheres. These have been limited to analogies between Phenomena; and are useful mainly as illustrations. Analogies of Law would also have a Scientific value. 5. Wherein that value would consist. (0 The Scientific de mand of the age would be met; (2) Greater clearness would be introduced into Religion practically ; (3) Theology, instead of resting on Authority, would rest equally on Nature. PART II. The Law Of Continuity. A priori argument for Natural Law in the spiritual world, 1. The Law Discovered. 2. Defined. 3. Applied. 4. The objection answered that the material of the Natural and Spiritual worlds being different they must be under different Laws. 5. The existence of Laws in the Spiritual world other than the Natural Laws (1) improbable, (2) unnecessary, (3) unknown. Qualification. 6. The Spiritual not the projection upwards of the Natural; but the Natural the projection downwards of the Spiritual. " This method turns aside from hypotheses not to be tested by any known logical canon familiar to science, whether the hypothesis claims support from intuition, aspiration or general plausibility. And, again, this method turns aside from ideal standards which avow themselves to belawless, which profess to transcend...