NATURAL LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE 'SPECTATOR')
Stn,—I hope I shall not be thought intrusive in offering some remarks suggested by the reply with which Mr. James Stalker has honoured my former letter. I can by no means admit that the view to which I ventured to call attention at all impairs the full significance of the Scriptural expressions concerning the new birth. Having this very view in my mind, I wrote in another paper, four years ago, "This mystic death and birth is the key- note of all profound religious teaching, and that which distin- guishes the ordinary religious mind from spiritual insight is just the tendency to interpret these expressions as merely figurative, or, indeed, to ignore them altogether." Surely the evolution in consciousness of a distinct prin- ciple in man is a process whereby he may with literal truth be said to be "born again." He has thus a new basis of spon- taneity, the will of another nature. Nor, looking at the express condition, a death to self, or the individual will, can we conceive this principle as other than the true being of man as such, that which constitutes the inner or spiritual solidarity of the race, mating each one with all,—distinctive individuality becoming henceforward merely functional in the univeral organism. That, if he is originally the " image of God," is his divine humanity. He is not said to be "dead" simply, but "dead in trespasses and sins." His true life can find no expression, is lost to con- sciousness, by reason of his self-assertive individual will, which, as Hinton showed, is his "death." But his humanity is a deeper fact than his individuality, albeit, according to the Christian idea, it must be organised or reorganised by a power in which it is already a voluntary consciousness. With what propriety could the word "regeneration" be used of a " conversion " similar to that effected in the physical order, where there is no pre- existing germ ? On the other hand, that we are born again "from an incorruptible seed" is expressly stated (1 Peter i., 23).
The doctrine of spiritual evolution can, of course, be pre- sented in other aspects than the Christian one. Thus, in Eastern religious systems it is supposed that the true Atmas or Universal Self, will come to consciousness in each, as the result of a radical suppression of individualism. This suppres- sion is made the condition alike in these systems and in. Christianity. But in the former it is considered all-sufficient, the sun shining out, as it were, on the dispersal of the clouds ; while the Christian, less possessed with the idea that the in- dividual Ego itself is an illusion of a false consciousness, fol- lows another analogy of nature. The Sun of Righteousness is externalised, and its operation is represented as giving vital acti7ity to the spiritual seed, which is already the individual form and preappointed functim in the divine universal life. The best expression, I think, of this idea is to be found in the writings of Hinton ; especially in the chapters on "The Self and Consciousness" and on "Holiness," in his "Philosophy and Religion."
Mr. Drummond's argument against spiritual abiogenesis is clearly directed against the usual view of evolution, which regards it as resulting from natural selection, in the sense of mere perpetuation and development of rudimentary adaptations to environment. He ignores the teleological view of it which has the authority of such distinguished naturalists as Mr. A. R. Wallace and Mr. St. George Mivart. That, in the spiritual as in the physical, would really mean a prior involution of the principles or forms to be successively manifested,—that which is most deeply and centrally buried, or involved, being the highest or most divine. What I find most admirable in Mr. Drummond's book is his elucidation of the great principle, too little familiar to even our best thought, that in physical and spiritual phenomena the very same laws of nature are at work. I may observe that this idea is also much insisted upon in the writings of Law, as in metaphysics it is the characteristic feature of Schelling's " Identity " philosophy. Whether Mr. Drummond's applications of it to theology are sus- tainable is of less importance than the principle itself, of which he is so competent an exponent. I believe his book will give a new impulse and direction to religious and philosophical thought. Only I must protest against Mr. Stalker's assumption that the opinion I tried to repre- sent, and especially the authors to whom I referred, are Pelagian, since they hold the doctrine of regeneration in as real a sense as Mr. Drummond, though not that of conversion quite as he understands it. As to myself, however, it is proper to add, not to sail under false colours, that I do not profess Christianity in any doctrinal sense which I can see to be dis- tinctive and exclusive.
Apologising for the length of this letter, and thanking Mr. Stalker for his kind mention of my former remarks, and for the notice of which he has thought them worthv,—I am, Sir. &c., C. C. M.
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