15 Buccleuch Place,[2]
Edinburgh
3rd Jan., 1868
My Dear Father,
The budget of New Year’s letters arrived quite safely yesterday morning. I was delighted with Bertie’s which is really very well done. You must have had rather a fatiguing round of tea-givings of late, but I suppose it is nearly over now. We too have had a considerable amount of visiting to perform this week. Yesterday we were at the Rogers[3] who gave us a whole basketful of apples — 3 dozen or thereby to take home with us. [O]n Wednesday we were at the Blackadders[4], on Tuesday at the Brackenridges. Our forenoons we have had more difficulty in filling up. Ellen sometimes has gone with her friends, the Adams, and I with some of my friends especially Lindsay. I think I shall go down to McDonnell[5] today though, indeed. I have some fears lest a regular snowstorm should come on. There was snow last night and the ground is white today. The sky is clear just now but I doubt if the storm be past.
I have not been doing much this week since I got D’s essay.[6] I may perhaps modify the latter part a little still. The subject needs very nice treatment and it requires exact handling to bring out that the Prophet’s mind acting according to its natural laws was yet the origin of a supernatural Revn. My leading idea is a [parallel]ism between Prophecy and the Xn life. Man’s agency forms the connecting power by which God’s Creation is moulded into conformity with his spirit, man and the world were made by God Supernaturally and fitted for his divine purpose, but that purpose is only reached through the Free Activity of Xn men guided by the spirit of G. as a formative principle. So in Prophecy there was provided a certain supernatural matter of thought in vision &c. prob. by supern. actions on the nervous system. This fitted into the natural matter present to the Prophet’s mind and the two thus combined were moulded into a thought by the action of the Prophet’s mental powers guided by the formative influence of the divine spirit. The double divine action below and above the Prophet’s own activity sufficed perfectly to control the result without interfering in a magical manner with the laws of Human thought.
I do not know if this is intelligible but I think the thought has some apologetic and scientific value.
We are both well, though Ellen I think is rather dull in the absence of her regular work.
I am,
Your affectionate son,
Wm R. Smith
[1] CUL ADD 7449 C089 TS
[2] WRS moved from Buccleuch Place to lodgings in Duke Street at the start of the following session at New College.
[3] The Roger family (in those days generally spelled “Rodger” — cf. EPOD entries) appear to have been close friends and may be identified with the firm of photographers referred to in WRS’s letter to his mother of 1869-02-19.
[4] Blackadder, James: is recorded in FPCA, 1869, as an elder representing Alford Presbytery at the Assembly. The family lived in Abercrombie Place, Edinburgh, at that time.
[5] I.e. John Macdonell.
[6] This was the essay for Prof. Davidson referred to in B&C, pp. 96ff., which WRS also presented that same month to the Theological Club and a substantial “fragment” of which is printed in L&E, pp. 97–108, as “Prophecy and Personality”. As the comments to his father indicate, Smith was groping his way towards a rational, psychological explanation of prophecy, yet one which allowed for the workings of the supernatural in the sense of: “the operation of the divine spirit”. These ideas on prophecy look forward to WRS’s controversial EB9 article “Bible” and owe much to the teachings of Alexander Bain (1818–1903) at Aberdeen University, especially his pioneering psychological work, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) to which Smith refers in his essay.