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.

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    contracts as we rise in the scale of being. Some mineral, but not all, becomes vegetable ; some vege- table, but not all, becomes animal; some animal, but not all, becomes human ; some human, but not all, becomes Divine. Thus the area narrows. At the base is the mineral, most broad and simple; the spiritual at the apex, smallest, but most highly differ- entiated. So form rises above form, Kingdom above Kingdom. Quantity decreases as quality increases. The gravitation of the whole system of Nature towards quality is surely a phenomenon of com- manding interest. And if among the more recent revelations of Nature there is one thing more signifi- cant for Religion than another, it is the majestic spectacle of the rise of Kingdoms towards scarcer yet nobler forms, and simpler yet diviner ends. Of the early stage, the first development of the earth from the nebulous matrix of space, Science speaks with reserve. The second, the evolution of each individual from the simple protoplasmic cell to the formed adult, is proved. The still wider evolution, not of solitary individuals, but of all the individuals within each province—in the vegetal world from the unicellular cryptogam to the highest phanerogam, in the animal world from the amorphous amceba to Man—is at least suspected, the gradual rise of types being at all events a fact. But now, at last, we