Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/172

158 a citizen, as a father, as a husband, or as a man of trust and responsibility, over and above the former? It would probably be found that both possessed "that inbred loyalty unto virtue" of Sir Thomas Browne which certainly is the main matter in this world, and more's the pity if it is not the main matter in the next.

Our professor's argument from analogy breaks down on nearly every page by his confounding the particular with the universal, and substituting the exceptional, the hypothetical, for the natural and provable. The error is the same as if Bishop Butler had sought to prove from the general course of Nature, such as the changing of worms into flies, the hatching of eggs into birds, the passage of infancy into manhood, etc., that some particular men were endowed with immortal souls and lived after the dissolution of the body. But the bishop made the two sides of his equation equal; he started with the universal and he ended with the universal, and claimed immortality for all men. Drummond, on the other hand, seeks to prove a particular and exceptional fact by its analogy to a general law of Nature. In his chapter ou "Conformity to Type," the leading idea is that every kind of organism conforms to the type of that which begat it: the oak to the oak, the bird to the bird, etc. An incontrovertible statement, certainly. Now, what is the analogy? This, namely, that all Christians conform to the Christ-type, and are not begotten by themselves, but by Christ. Where is the force of the analogy? One fails to see it, because the argument proceeds from the universal to the particular again; a principle which is true of all birds, and all oaks, is true of only some men. All men are not Christians. Moreover, Professor Drummond urges that they can not all be Christians, and that the scheme of Christianity does not require or intend that they shall all be Christians.

To give the analogy force requires that the law be as general in the one case as in the other. Every bird is a bird unconditionally; it is born a bird and dies a bird, and can be nothing else but a bird; and to show the same universal law of conformity to type, working in both cases, every man must be a Christian on the same terms: it must be shown to be the law of his being from which there is no escape. If one man fails to become a Christian, the law is broken as truly as if a bird's egg were to hatch out a mouse, or an acorn to produce a cabbage. But, in the scientific Calvinism of Professor Drummond, every bird is not a bird; only one here and there has the bird-form thrust upon it. The number of Christians is of necessity very limited. Salvation, and hence immortality, are for the few, not for the many. Our Christian philosopher is actually driven by the necessities of his argument into maintaining the truth of a special and limited immortality. Immortality is not for the whole human race, any more than the principle of life is for the whole inorganic kingdom.

"Some mineral, but not all, become vegetable; some vegetable, but not all, become animal; some animal, but not all, become human;