SPIRITUAL LAW IN
THE NATURAL WORLD:
CHAPTER VII.
THE KINGDOMS OF NATURE.
WE have as yet, however, not, entered upon the field of
science proper. We are about to do so, and to inquire what help may be gained
from Scripture for the detailed study of nature. In this numerical system, of
which both Scripture and nature are immensely fuller than has been thought, we
ought to find a wonderful help, if it be (as we have essayed to show) the same
system that pervades both. Of this too, all future applications will be a
continual test. Thus every real discovery will be verified as it is made, in
complete accordance with the not unreasonable demand of Mr. Huxley. Nay, it may
be justly doubted whether he can produce, for a large number of what he accepts
as scientific verities, any verification so complete. That it comes to him from
Scripture ought not to prejudice it in his eyes; nor can the refusal of it for
this reason be justified in the least degree under the warrant of science.
And out of how many sloughs is he saved at once who can accept
Scripture as the interpreter of nature! What light is poured in there where the
mere naturalist has to own that there is none; and how this heavenly ray
irradiates all nature! How grand a thing for the man of science to be able to
stand at the beginning of things with God, and to see, if it be "through a
glass darkly," the birth of all that exists around us! What a new and vast
field of research opens before him in Scripture itself, so little explored in
this way as it has been, even to the present time: a field in which induction
is as fully in place as any where, and where microscope and telescope will open
up new worlds, as in nature! Standing, as I do, but at the threshold of all
this, or given to enter but a little way, I dare predict to him who shall bring
together, as in a stereoscopic picture, the two worlds of Science and of
Scripture into the unity which they really have, that he shall achieve for
himself a triumph and a joy beyond utterance. For me even to lisp but a few
things is yet much; and I do it in the hope that others with better knowledge
will utter them plainly.
A general view of nature is in some sense the
easiest to accomplish; just because broad features are more easily read than
minute ones. And my hope is in this chapter to look at the kingdoms of nature,
and to define them, or rather to show how Scripture defines them; a work which
may seem quite superfluous.. But it is important to begin at the beginning; and
if some have no need, we believe there is need for many.
Classification, if it be a true one, must be of the greatest importance in
order to knowledge; if false, it must be correspondingly injurious. As putting
things in their place, and exhibiting their difference from, and their relation
to, one another, a true and all-embracing classification would be indeed, what
one has called it, "a summation of knowledge."
Even in the large and
general way in which alone we can speak of it here, it is important to know
what is the truth. Where, for instance, shall we assign man his place?
"The question of questions for mankind," says Prof. Huxley, "the problem
which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other, is
finding the place which man occupies in nature and of his relation to the
universe of things."
There are in reality two questions here instead of
one; but the second answer he takes evidently, and with some reason, to be
involved in the first. And this is shown in his conclusion: -
"The
structural differences between Man and the manlike apes certainly justify our
regarding him as constituting a family apart from them; though inasmuch as he
differs less from them than they do from other families of the same order,
there can be no justification for placing him In a distinct order . . . . It is
as if nature herself had foreseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity
had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into
prominence the slaves, admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust.
"The
facts, I believe, cannot be disputed; and if so, the conclusion appears to me
to be inevitable.
"But if Man be separated by no greater structural
barrier from the brutes than they are from one another - then it seems to
follow that if any process of physical causation can be discovered by which the
genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, that process of
causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of man."
And,
accordingly, evolution accounts for him "Mans place in nature" is thus in
the order Primates, suborder, Anthropoidea, and family, Anthropidæ, next
above (and not very far off) the apes proper; and this position of his means
blood-relationship with the beasts that perish, and the extinction of every
hope of immortality that cannot be shared with them.
If the body be
all, it is impossible to dissent from these conclusions. But although it be
admitted that the body is not all, and that psychical phenomena, as sensation,
affection, intelligence, are not the products of organization merely, still it
is in dispute as to the real difference in this respect between man and the
beast. Even De Quatrefages, who claims on behalf of man (as he says, with
continually growing conviction) that he must be referred to a human kingdom,
bases this entirely on the ground of his moral and religious faculties. On the
other hand, many now see in this respect also no difference save of degree
between them. It cannot but be of importance, then, to have the testimony of
another witness, and to see what Scripture - and with what grounds in nature -
affirms as to this.
Let us recur once more to our numbers, then, and
ask ourselves what is the number of nature, or, as Scripture usually prefers to
speak, of creation. Here there is not a moments doubt: the number 4, as
we have already seen, is the number of the creature.We have, of course, no
right to say, on this account, that there are four kingdoms in nature, instead
of three, as nearly all the world says. We have no right to predict in these
matters, but only to interpret. Yet, if there were four, we should have a right
to take it as a new witness of the harmony between nature and the Scripture
numbers.
Suppose, for a moment, there were four kingdoms; there could
not be a doubt, of course, that to the Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral we must
add the Human one. We should have, then, three organic kingdoms and one
inorganic. But here at once we have another note of harmony. For the Scripture
4 divides commonly into 3 + 1, as we have seen, the numbers speaking of
creation as manifesting the Creator. We are entitled to look further, then,
with hope.
The fourth must stand here for the Mineral kingdom: has it
the characteristics of that number? Assuredly, if weakness and passivity
characterize this, it has these fully. The inertia of matter is a well-known
attribute of it. And from matter, we call that which yields itself up to the
hand that fashions it, "material." These are strange coincidences, if they be
no more than that. But are they no more? Let us examine the organic kingdoms
and the numbers attached, and see.
These three organic kingdoms, then,
may be seen as one, in that they are pervaded by the common principle of life,
and answer to the number 3, in that they are organic. Life is the basis of
individuality in nature, as is evident. Every living thing is a unity in such
sense as a stone or a rock is not. The rock can be divided, and is not altered,
except in size. The living unit may recover itself after division, indeed; but
if it cannot do this, dies: it cannot be indifferent to it, as the rock is.
Thus the four kingdoms of nature clearly fall into two divisions - the living
and the non-living, which, according to the meaning of numbers, stand as 1 and
2. The living, though three, are one.
They are one also in that they
are all organic. Yet this organization which characterizes them, while itself
one in the harmony of its parts, is more than one in the fact that there are
parts, organs, individual, though harmonious. Life implies activity, and in
this way a various activity, a division of labour for the good of the whole.
And this we shall find really coming under the number 3, according to the
definition already given of that number.
Three is the number of
sanctification; and the idea in sanctification is that of setting apart in some
special place or to some specific office. When the Lord says, "For their sakes
I sanctify Myself" (Jno. xvii. is), He is speaking of the place He is going to
take as Man in heaven. So Jeremiah was sanctified to be the Lords
prophet, and Aaron and his sons to be His priests. All the vessels of the
tabernacle and of the temple were thus set apart or sanctified to a special use
in connection with the service of God. And here in nature, where all things
serve Him, everything filling its place and doing its work, this specializing
is but, so to speak, a natural sanctification. We shall find this thought in
various modifications under this number, as we investigate the numerical series
which are presented to us in nature.
The three organic kingdoms thus
far fill their place, then. But we have to go much further. We have to find the
place of each one as tested by the numerals also: where, if the mineral kingdom
stands as 4, the human, animal, and vegetable kingdoms stand as respectively 1,
2, 3. Let us begin once more at the lowest, the -
VEGETABLE KINGDOM.
How in this series does the number 3 specifically characterize the
vegetable kingdom?
With regard to man and beast, the vegetable kingdom has
an indispensable part to fulfill. Ultimately, it has to feed them both. For
even the carnivorous animals are sustained by the herbivorous; and did the
beasts prey simply upon each other, there would soon be of necessity an end of
all. But this place filled by the vegetable depends upon this, that it alone
has the power of taking up and transforming the inorganic material into organic
upon which alone the higher organisms can subsist. It is the price they pay for
their elevation in the scale of being, that they must be more dependent; and
this is a constant law of nature.
The vegetable is in this way the
great transforming agency in creation, - the producer, as the animal is the
consumer. Every naturalist in the world will agree to this definition of it.
And yet this, again, clearly lies within the compass of the number 3. The
Spirit of God, whose number it is, is thus the Great Producer and the Great
Transformer. Specialization implies transformation. Sanctification, when an
inward work, is the same thing. The water, the type of the Spirit, is that
which prepares the root for the soil and the soil for the root: with out its
mediation, no food could be got from the barren ground. Thus the number of its
rank in this series fully characterizes the plant in the organic creation: its
numerical stamp is completely justified.
Let us pass to the -
ANIMAL KINGDOM,
still with our guide, and see how the more complex
nature of the higher being will submit itself to the simplicity of this
arithmetical law.
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