Natural law in the spiritual world / by Henry Drummond.

  • Henry Drummond
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural law in the spiritual world / by Henry Drummond. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    408/456 (page 376)
    Morality of a decline in Religious Belief,” was dis- cussed at length by writers of whom this century is justly proud, there appears scarcely so much as a recognition of the fathomless chasm separating the leading terms of debate. If beauty is the criterion of religion, this view of the relation of religion to morality is justified. But what if there be the same difference in the beauty of two separate characters that there is between the mineral and the shell ? What if there be a moral beauty and a spiritual beauty ? What answer shall we get if we demand a more scientific distinction between characters than that based on mere outward form ? It is not enough from the standpoint of biological religion to say of two characters that both are beautiful. For, again, no fundamental distinction in Science depends upon beauty. We ask an answer in terms of biology, are they flesh or spirit; are they living or dead ? If this is really a scientific question, if it is a question not of moral philosophy only, but of biology, we are compelled to repudiate beauty as the criterion of spirituality. It is not, of course, meant by this that spirituality is not morally beautiful. Spirituality must be morally very beau- tiful—so much so that popularly one is justified in judging of religion by its beauty. Nor is it meant