Henry Drummond

Natural Law in the Spiritual World Henry Drummond

Natural Law in the Spiritual World is Henry Drummond's attempt to reconcile the scientific laws of physics, chemistry and biology with the spiritual law of the divine God.

For the author, law was divided in two fundamental parts: the first is natural law, which encompasses the sciences, from our understanding of the universe to forces such as gravity, and the composition of living organisms. The second law is spiritual law, which spans the influence of God as the creator of the universe, and His effects upon mankind as a species capable of recognizing the divine.

Communicating ideas with profound depth, Henry Drummond ranges his discussion across topics such as eternal life and our world's environment. The prolongation of life and the observation of nature hold great significance to science and religion alike; just as Christianity has the Kingdom of God, so does science speak of an animal Kingdom comprised of creatures. It is this common ground that Drummond uses for his thesis.

Drummond was prompted to author this book in the late 19th century, having observed a growing rigor and interrelated discipline between the sciences. For him, this was a natural evolution - where once science was a group of disparate facts and knowledge, so too was God obscured by polytheism and other extraneous beliefs and practices.

For Drummond, the trend points to a growth in sophistication of scientific law and spiritual law. He states that eventually, as science and spiritual beliefs advance evermore greatly, the two may merge and reconcile into a single, unified, and overarching law of the universe.