Henry Drummond

The argument of the held book

The chapter on biogenesis gives a concrete example of his method. After discussing nineteenth-century experiments concerning spontaneous generation, Drummond turns to Christian regeneration. As biological life comes from existing life, he argues, spiritual life must come from divine life. In his account, moral improvement alone cannot produce the new life described in the New Testament.

For Drummond, this places a boundary between moral development and Christian regeneration. Human effort cannot cross it unaided. He argues that the same law governs entry into both natural and spiritual life, while insisting that spiritual life must be received from God.

In Growth, he turns to plants unfolding without conscious effort. He uses the lilies of the Sermon on the Mount to argue against anxious striving after spiritual maturity. Good conduct, in his view, should grow from an inward life rather than be attached from outside like the parts of an artificial flower. The scientific comparisons are directed toward conversion, faith and character.

The held copy bears the New York imprint of James Pott & Co. Its title page supplies no publication year, so the work’s first appearance in 1883 should be distinguished from the date of this particular printing.

Travel, evolution and the later years

In 1883–84 Drummond travelled in the Lake Nyasa and Tanganyika region on a commission for the African Lakes Corporation. Tropical Africa, published in 1888, drew on that journey. His later Lowell lectures became The Ascent of Man in 1894, extending his religious interpretation of evolution through an emphasis on care for others and the development of love.

His later travel and evolutionary writings also placed peoples within racial hierarchies. Diarmid A. Finnegan’s research shows how Drummond represented non-European societies as stages below European civilisation. Drummond opposed the East African slave trade and condemned mistreatment of Indigenous peoples, including in Australia; these commitments coexisted with the hierarchy through which he described human development.

Drummond continued addressing students and supporting evangelical organisations, including the Boys’ Brigade. Serious illness curtailed his work in his final years. He died unmarried at Tunbridge Wells in March 1897.

Natural Law in the Spiritual World