JNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Received iZ^OCC ,1890. 
 
 ^Accessions No. Y /tJ*6ttd Class No. 
 
STUDIES 
 
 SUBSIDIARY TO THE WORKS 
 OF BISHOP BUTLER 
 
£onvon 
 
 HENRY FROWDE 
 
 Oxford University Press Warehouse 
 
 Amen Corner, E.C. 
 
 Qtero 2)orft 
 macmillan & CO., 66 fifth avenue 
 
STUDIES 
 
 SUBSIDIARY TO THE WORKS 
 OF BISHOP BUTLER 
 
 BY 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE 
 
 1/ 
 
 ADDITIONAL VOLUME 
 UNIFORM WITH THE WORKS 
 
 £>xforfc 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 
 1896 
 
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 OXFORD : PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 BY HORACK HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PART I: BUTLER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGF. 
 
 Hutler's Method i 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Its application to the Scriptures 16 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 His Censors . . . . . . . . . . .21 
 
 L Mr. Bagehot . . 22 
 
 II. Miss Hennell 29 
 
 III. Mr. Leslie Stephen 45 
 
 IV. Mr. Matthew Arnold . 55 
 
 V. Minor Strictures , • 7 ' 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Comparison with the Ancients 77 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Mental Qualities 85 
 
 I. Measure 85 
 
 II. Strength of Tissue 86 
 
 III. Courage 87 
 
 IV. Questionable Theses 90 
 
 V. Imagination 92 
 
 VI. Originality 93 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAOK 
 
 Points of his Positive Teaching 99 
 
 I. On Human Nature 99 
 
 II. Doctrine of Habits 102 
 
 III. On our Ignorance 104 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 His Theology 107 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 Points of Metaphysics raised by the text . . . .115 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 The Butler-Clarke Correspondence 122 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Celebrity and Influence 129 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 Conclusion 139 
 
 PART II : SUBSIDIARY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 A Future Life 14 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Our Condition therein: History of Opinion . . • 173 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Schemes in Vogue J99 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 Concluding Statements 229 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Summary of Theses 260 
 
CONTENTS vii 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Necessity, or Determinism 268 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Teleology 293 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MlRACLE 311 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 The Mediation ok Christ 327 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Probability as the Guide of Life 334 
 
SUBSIDIARY STUDIES 
 
 PART I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE METHOD OF BUTLER 1 
 
 |"T is important, in any attempt at a thorough examination 
 -*- of Butler, to dwell upon the method of the author, as well 
 as upon the arguments of his principal works: upon those 
 characteristics of his work and working, which lie outside 
 the express indications of the text. I have here particularly 
 in view the relation of his form of argument to subjects 
 lying beyond his declared, perhaps even his conscious, 
 purpose. 
 
 In offering to the world essays which are meant to be 
 supplementary to the works of Butler, I assign the foremost 
 place to the consideration of his method, for the following 
 reason. While maintaining the direct value of the argument 
 of his largest work, the Analogy, to be unabated, I hold 
 that the value of his method is greater still. If so, it 
 constitutes the weightiest among the reasons which may 
 be adduced to show that this is no obsolete or antiquated 
 treatise ; and it therefore provides a principal part of the 
 warrant for endeavouring, in a new edition of his works, 
 to supply an increase of facilities for their study. 
 
 The first feature of Butler's method which we have to 
 note is, that It was an inductiv e meth od. Butler was a col- 
 lector of facts, and a reasoner upon them. Herein he departed 
 from the more common practice of his age, which had been 
 given to argumentation in the abstract, and to speculative 
 
 1 Some chapters of Part I, and principal parts of others, have already 
 been printed in Good Words, and are now reprinted, with corrections. 
 
 B 
 
2 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Pt. I. 
 
 castle-building. He notices, in the A nalogy, his having for- 
 gone the advantages which he might have drawn from 
 a procedure resembling that of Clarke in his Demonstration 
 of the Being and Attributes of God. 
 
 The main thing, however, to be here considered, is not the 
 mere question between induction and deduction, but that 
 Butler chose for his whole argument the sure and immovable 
 basis of human experience, from his earliest tracings of 
 natural government, up to his final development of the scheme 
 of revealed religion. It is probable that this great feature of 
 Butler's method supplies the explanation of the singular fact 
 that a work, rarely presenting to us the graces of style, not 
 produced in connexion with any academic institution or 
 learned class, singularly difficult to master from the nature 
 of the subject, and running directly counter to the fashionable 
 currents of opinion, should at once have taken hold upon the 
 educated mind of the country, and should, as will appear 
 from the language of Hume, very rapidly have acquired for 
 its author a high position in the literary and philosophic 
 world. 
 
 I shall submit, in the most succinct manner, a variety 
 of features which appear to me to characterize the method of 
 Butler, and to recommend his works, in conjunction with 
 what has been already stated, for permanent and classical 
 study by the more thoughtful minds. 
 
 It would be difficult to name a writer who in the prose- 
 cution of his work has aimed at, and effected, a more absolute 
 self-suppression. His use of the first person singular is rare, 
 and whenever it occurs, we at once perceive that it is a gram- 
 matical vehicle, and not the entrance of a caparisoned figure 
 on the stage for presentation to an audience. We attain 
 indeed a solid and rather comprehensive knowledge of the 
 man through his works ; but this is owing, if I may so speak, 
 to their moral transparency, which is conspicuous amidst all 
 the difficulties of gaining and keeping a continuous grasp 
 of his meaning. 
 
 From beginning to end the Analogy, and the Sermons to 
 some extent, are avowedly controversial : and the prosecu- 
 tion of such work powerfully tends to cast the mind into 
 a controversial mould. But in Butler this tendency is 
 
Ch.L] ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER 3 
 
 effectually neutralized by his native ingenuousness, by the 
 sense that his pen moves under the very eye of God, and 
 by the knowledge that the sacred interests of truth must 
 be eventually compromised by over-statement. In any case 
 the result is that his concessions to the presumed opponent 
 are not niggardly, but such as may sometimes excite the 
 surprise of the friendly reader; the discounts from the full 
 breadth of his propositions are so large, that it seems as if 
 they were always tendered in ready and cheerful deference 
 to the supreme calls of justice and of candour. This brave 
 adherence to the principles, which can alone establish 
 mental honesty in its highest sense, has exhibited itself in 
 the fearlessness which has led this habitually circumspect 
 writer into collateral observations of a boldness such as is 
 shown in his strong statements of the ruin of the world 
 through sin, of the rarity of real care for the public interest, 
 of the wide range of waste in creation at large, and of 
 the capacities of progress which may possibly be latent 
 in the animals inferior to man. 
 
 But there is one broader and deeper result of the method 
 of Butler, which must be stated at somewhat greater length. 
 He exhibits in himself, and he powerfully tends to create 
 in his reader, a certain habit of mind which is usually far 
 from common, and which at the present day, and amidst the 
 present tendencies, both of the average and even of the more 
 active mind, may justly be termed rare. The politician, the 
 lawyer, the scientist, the theologian, are all of them, apart 
 from any strong controlling action due to individual char- 
 acter, marked by a certain habit of mind incidental to the 
 profession or pursuit. Butler's pursuit, and the labours of 
 those who study him, are incessantly conversant with the 
 relation between the lower and the higher world, between 
 all the shapes of human character and experience on the one 
 side, and a great governing agency on the other. Such 
 a pursuit will not fail to build up its own habit of mind : 
 and it does not coincide with the habit of mind belonging 
 to any of the professions, as such, that have been mentioned. 
 He does not write like a person addicted to any profession 
 or pursuit ; his mind is essentially free. He is the votary of 
 truth, and is bound to no other allegiance. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Pt. I. 
 
 In these matters we see through a glass darkly ; and the 
 propositions appropriate to them will rarely take a sharp 
 edge. To pass from the work of the mathematician to the 
 proper work of those who graze in Butler's pastures, has 
 some resemblance to the transition from the primitive forms 
 of painting without atmosphere or perspective, to the modern 
 chiaroscuro, the subtle art of light and shade. Butler himself 
 supplies us with some guidance on this subject. When he 
 speaks of ' morals, considered as a science, concerning which 
 speculative difficulties are daily raised/ he comes strictly upon 
 his own ground, that aspect, namely, of morals which they 
 present to us in their relations with the unseen world. And 
 he proceeds, ' For here ideas never are in themselves deter- 
 minate, but become so by the train of reasoning and the 
 place they stand in V His readers know that these ideas, 
 after they have been thus handled and their relative positions 
 ascertained, become determinate only in a qualified sense, 
 and that at every step we feel how truly he has told us both 
 that probable evidence is the guide of life 2 , and that proba- 
 bility has this for its essential note, that it is matter of 
 degree 3 . In truth, the general rule for inquiry in this 
 department cannot be better put than as it has been stated 
 by Aristotle, who takes it for the distinctive note of a culti- 
 vated mind to estimate with accuracy, in each kind of mental 
 exercise, the degree in which its propositions can be made 
 determinate. 
 
 Yleiraibevptvov yap kvTiv kir\ touovtov rdK/H/3e? tirifjqTa.v icaO' 
 tKCUTTOV yivos, e$' oaov r] tov irpdyfxaTos (pv<ris e7rioexerai 4 - 
 
 The philosopher takes for his example of determinate 
 science that of mathematics ; for the indeterminate, the 
 business of the rhetorician. The vast extension of the sphere 
 of politics since his time has greatly enhanced its aptitude to 
 be treated as an example in this region. But Aristotle's view 
 of morals was barred, so to speak, on the spiritual and im- 
 material side. His powerful insight enabled him to connect 
 them with the constitution of our natures 5 ; but the light in 
 
 ' Preface to the Sermons, § 3. 5 Eth. 1. ii. 4, where TIoXtTiKf, is 
 
 2 Analogy, Introd. § 4. said to be KvpKOTaTr] Ka\ paXiara 
 
 * Ibid. § I. apxlTfKTOViKr]. 
 
 * Eth. Nic. I. iii. 3. 
 
Ch. I.] ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER 5 
 
 the beginning, and now again adequately thrown on the 
 dependence of both upon the Creator and Moral Governor 
 of the world had become darkness for him, as it had also 
 become darkness for the otherwise marvellously illuminated 
 intellect of Greece in general. We visit actions with praise 
 and blame, but we ought to do it under the conviction that 
 Kuch a judgement is only partial, superficial, and provisional. 
 Greece did not know of the sovereign rule by which every 
 action must principally be judged ; and we, who do know and 
 can in a measure apply it, yet ought to be aware that the 
 roots of action are manifold, and lie too deep down in our 
 nature for human eyes to follow them. To give their merits 
 or demerits — nay, those of any one among them. — with an 
 absolute exactitude, as they will be fixed in the scales of 
 the Almighty Judge, is a process transcending the powers 
 of any or of all human intellects. And it would be, not 
 indeed a definition but a true indication of the science of 
 morals, as it lies opened out before us in the Butlerian field, 
 if we were to call it the science of the indeterminate. I have 
 already spoken of his chief works as an intellectual exercise : 
 but let us also consider them as a guide to belief and to 
 conduct. The mental habit which he forms in us is that 
 mental habit which, in all questions lying within the scope 
 of Butler's arguments, suits and adapts itself with gradually 
 increasing precision to the degree of evidence adapted to the 
 subject-matter; where that is much, thankfully rejoices in 
 the abundance; where it is scanty, recognizes the absolute 
 duty of accepting the limitation ; backed by the consciousness 
 that, in each and every case, it is sufficient. For in each and 
 every case it is an award of supreme wisdom, adjusted to that 
 case by a sure if a hidden process ; and we are enjoined to 
 entertain and follow it upon rules which, if they are magis- 
 terially those of religion, are also those of reason, and of the 
 common sense which we rightly accept as our guide in all 
 the interests and incidents of life. 
 
 The student of Butler will, unless it be his own fault, learn 
 candour in all its breadth, and not to tamper with the truth ; 
 will neither grudge admissions nor fret under even cumbrous 
 reserves. But to know what kinds and degrees of evidence 
 to expect or to ask in matters of belief and conduct, and to be 
 
6 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Pt. I. 
 
 in possession of an habitual presence of mind built upon that 
 knowledge, is, in my view, the master gift which the works 
 of Butler are calculated to impart. It can, however, only be 
 imparted to those who approach the study of them as in itself 
 an undertaking ; who know that it requires them to pursue 
 it with a whole heart and mind, if they would pursue it 
 profitably ; that it demands of them collectedness, concentra- 
 tion, and the cheerful resolve not to be abashed or deterred 
 by difficulty. 
 
 To conclude ; if it be true that this mental habit is produced 
 in that field of thought which above all others is occupied by 
 the science of the indeterminate, the study receives an impor- 
 tant though secondary recommendation from the applicability 
 of that habit to those other pursuits, in which also the inde- 
 terminate largely prevails. When Lord Bacon said that of 
 all sciences that of politics was the most deeply immersed 
 in matter, this was, I conceive, his meaning, that it was the 
 branch of knowledge in which it was hardest to sever the 
 true idea from environments not properly belonging to it, and 
 necessary therefore to be detached in order that, relieved thus 
 in mere dimension, but refined and consolidated in its essence, 
 it might be brought as near to the truth as our weakness, 
 our passions, and the urgency of circumstances will allow. 
 Undoubtedly, if my counsel were asked, I should advise the 
 intending politician, if of masculine and serious mind, to give 
 to Butler's works, and especially to the Analogy, a high place 
 among the apparatus of his mental training. 
 
 But the scope of these remarks on the method of Butler 
 requires to be yet further widened. When Bacon said that 
 politics were the most deeply immersed in matter, he meant 
 that they were the most closely kneaded up with human 
 action. Let us set out from this point to consider where is 
 the real breadth of subject-matter involved in Butler's 
 argument, and therefore contributory to the habit of mind 
 which the study of his works is calculated to foster. I proceed 
 by reference to his own text. When he has made his profuse 
 admissions as to the insufficient character of his own argu- 
 ment, he turns from the sphere of speculation to that of life ; 
 and says with pathetic correctness : 
 
 'Indeed the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, with 
 
Ch. L] ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER 7 
 
 which we are obliged to take up, in the daily course of life, 
 is scarce to be expressed V 
 
 He institutes this reference as a bulwark of his argument : 
 it proves, as has been elsewhere observed, that what is given 
 us as the guide to belief, is already, and has ever been, the 
 guide of practice. As though he said to us, this argument of 
 mine, which I am offering to you on behalf of belief, ought 
 not to startle you as a novelty ; for it is the staff on which, 
 whether you have observed the fact or not, you are leaning 
 morn, noon, and night, in the course of your daily life. Let 
 us now consider whether this undeniable statement has not 
 another aspect and one relevant to the present contention. 
 If Butler's argument on his own subject of belief fosters 
 a particular habit of mind, most precious in its nature ; and 
 if the evidence which he gathers is evidence of the same nature 
 with the evidence on which we act, and that not occasionally, 
 but habitually, nay incessantly, in the daily course of life, 
 a most important inference must be drawn, and to the 
 following effect: Since the evidences, or experience, of life, 
 and the evidences of belief, are the same in character, He, 
 who forms in us a habit of mind engendered by the study of 
 the first, is, ex vl terminorum, also forming in us a habit 
 of mind equally appropriate to the evidences, that is to say 
 the experience of life : a habit well broken into all forms of 
 difficulty ; not easily inflated, not easily abashed ; able to 
 encounter every contingency, to extract from it the solution 
 of which it may be capable ; or if it yields none, then to 
 accept the inevitable, and to live and act accordingly. The 
 supreme excellence of this habit does not lie in its intellectual 
 triumphs, but in its radical hostility to exaggeration, in its 
 generating a profound and invincible a-oo^poavi/rj. For, as 
 probability is the guide, so exaggeration is the mental bane 
 of conduct. When we err in thought, word, or act, it is not 
 usually that there is nothing to be said for the alternative to 
 which we incline, but it is that we so exaggerate as to trans- 
 form it, and by transforming it we bewilder and befool 
 ourselves. To my eye, the several stages of this reasoning 
 are continuous and inseparable. If it be sound, it at once 
 
 1 Analogt/, II. viii. 17. 
 
8 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Pt. I. 
 
 disposes of every cavil, of every misgiving which may have 
 beset some with the idea that Butler's philosophy was great 
 in his day and for his purpose, but is now antiquated and 
 obsolete. For in this view he is no longer, in a particular 
 form, the philosopher of belief; he is also, and that apart 
 from all form, the philosopher of life. For probability is its 
 guide, and here we have the archididaskalos of probability. 
 While he professes, and while at first sight he seems, to be 
 dealing with the sceptic, he is really dealing with us all. 
 The man of weak faith, or of strong ; the man of the most 
 questioning, or of the most docile temperament; the man 
 of the most determinate, or the most indeterminate, pursuit ; 
 all are alike his scholars, and in modes far beyond the im- 
 mediate purpose of the Analogy, great as that purpose is, 
 should turn his lessons to account. 
 
 The reader, therefore, will not be surprised at the large 
 proportionate weight and moment which I have assigned to 
 the method of Butler. 
 
 In the upshot, I think it may be fairly said that Butler 
 achieves more than he promises. For his engagement is 
 only to show that the truth of the Christian religion is so 
 well worthy of inquiry as to impose a moral obligation to 
 inquire. But he does more than he professes to do. For 
 only let a man be a genuine student of Butler, and, like 
 every genuine student in every case, he will try to contract 
 a sympathy with his author, which means in the case of 
 Butler a sympathy with candour, courage, faith, a deference 
 to the Eternal, a sense of the largeness of the unseen, and 
 a reverential sentiment always healthful for the soul towards 
 the majestic shadows with which it is encompassed. In these 
 there is no small gain. 
 
 Although this is not a controversial work, yet I feel it 
 incumbent upon me, bearing, in my advanced old age, my 
 latest testimonies to the world upon matter that touches the 
 deepest interests, to add a few words for the purpose of 
 bringing home what I have thus written respecting the 
 method of Bishop Butler. 
 
 The argument of the Analogy is an argument perhaps even 
 greater than Butler himself was aware. In its first aspect 
 it was an argument for religion at large, drawn from the 
 
Ch. I.] ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER 9 
 
 course of natural government at large. But in opening up 
 this argument, which in my judgement stands among the 
 masterpieces of the human mind, Butler has unfolded to us 
 the entire method of God's dealings with His creatures ; and 
 in this way the argument which he offers is as wide as those 
 dealings themselves. 
 
 Our Almighty Father is continually, aye every day and 
 hour, calling upon us, almost compelling us, to act. Now 
 acting is not the mere discharge of an outward function. 
 It is a continuing process, in which we are responsible 
 throughout. What is meant by being responsible? It is 
 meant that we expose ourselves to consequences flowing from 
 our actions. These are (say) of two kinds. First, there is 
 alteration of environment : which implies that in the future 
 actings, which cannot be escaped, we shall have to cast our 
 account anew with circumstances. The second cuts deeper 
 still. It is that our action modifies, that is to say progres- 
 sively but silently alters, from time to time, and eventually 
 shapes, our own mind and character. 
 
 These being the weighty, and from one point of view the 
 terrible, consequences of action, they impart a piercing force 
 to the question, how has the Almighty Father equipped us 
 that we may encounter it 1 And this question really involves 
 the entire issue of His Government ; His Fatherhood ; His 
 essential Character, as we cannot help judging it when He 
 condescends (and He does condescend) to plead with us. The 
 first step towards answering it is taken when we note, as 
 we cannot help noting, that He equips us for action by 
 supplying us with evidence to throw light upon the issues 
 which it raises ; which, be it borne in mind, it raises con- 
 tinually, every day and every hour of our lives. Next comes 
 a more searching inquiry. What is the law or rule which the 
 Almighty has prescribed to Himself for meting out this 
 evidence to us, and thereby, in the last resort, determining 
 our destinies ? 
 
 The answer is supplied by Butler — 'Probability is the 
 guide of life.' And life is divisible into two great depart- 
 ments, those of thought and of action. Butler has had 
 occasion to show that the provision of evidence for each is 
 one and the same. When he has made his confession that 
 
io ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Pt. I. 
 
 the evidence supplied by his argument for belief is far from 
 satisfactory, he turns in vindication of it to the region of 
 life, and is not afraid to impress upon us that the evidence on 
 which we have to act in the course of life is very far indeed 
 from giving us satisfaction l , and when he comes to practical 
 applications he points out, that in this graduation and this 
 imperfection of the evidence may lie a part, and even a large 
 part, first of our trial, and then of our reward, when ' this 
 tyranny is overpast.' 
 
 Now these propositions, be they demonstrative or not, are 
 certainly comprehensive. They are comprehensive in the 
 same sense as the rules of arithmetic are comprehensive. 
 When we say twice one makes two, we propound a law which 
 governs and (as far as it goes) disposes of every quantitative 
 relation, whether it be of miles, or pounds, or acres, or worlds. 
 
 And so the conclusions of Butler, if they be sound, override 
 and rule the entire range of human life in the twin spheres 
 of thought and action. If conduct is in twilight, can we 
 suppose that belief is in the blaze of midday? Belief 
 indeed is important ; but is it more important than conduct ? 
 Nay, does it not derive its importance, some would even say 
 its whole importance, from its influence on conduct ? 
 
 Now what is the law, by which the Almighty rules Himself, 
 in furnishing us with evidence to govern conduct 1 It is the 
 law of graduation : of variety, not capricious but doubtless 
 adjusted by the all-seeing Eye to every variation and every 
 need of circumstance. It is, above all, the law not of per- 
 fection, but of sufficiency. How different are these from one 
 another ! Perfection is self-attested : sufficiency is ascertained 
 upon examination. Perfection dispenses with labour: suffi- 
 ciency requires, nay depends upon it. In labour there is 
 effort, growth, development, advance: in the absence of 
 labour there is remission, poverty, stagnation. The first is 
 the making of that great and noble product, which we term 
 manhood : with the second it languishes, dwindles, dies ; or 
 remains only in outward form, like those functional organs, 
 which are smitten by atrophy when they have no office to 
 discharge. 
 
 1 Analogy, II. viii. 17. 
 
Ch. I.] ON THE METHOD OE BUTLER n 
 
 I say then that this relation, which Butler has once for all 
 unfolded, between natural and Providential government, is 
 an universal relation. We have to trace it backwards, if 
 we enter upon the great controversy, which Butler was 
 allowed by the conditions of his times to waive, respecting 
 the being of a God ; as to which, however, it is interesting 
 to remember that he has put upon record the admission that 
 he had not succeeded in finding a demonstrative proof of 
 the affirmative proposition. If on the other hand we travel 
 downwards, and find ourselves, on the field of religious con- 
 troversy, called to determine, for our own guidance, between 
 the claims of conflicting religious professions, are we not 
 subjected to this comprehensive law of sufficiency in the 
 evidence, of probability in the conclusion 1 
 
 I know that this idea of guidance by probability is revolting 
 to human pride ; is truly a stumbling-stone and a rock of 
 offence. But is it the law of life 1 Only the most superficial 
 minds can dream that probability means only fluctuation and 
 wavering, together with the weakness which results from 
 them. For lo ! the courage, the indefatigable and even too 
 absorbing energy, with which in common matters of business, 
 with only temporal advantages in view, men labour for their 
 end. Is it then, I say again, the law of life, of life including 
 both action and belief ? Or is it our duty to partition off one 
 selected part of life from the rest, and to hold that within this 
 consecrated precinct all is knowledge, light, and certitude, in 
 their most absolute forms, while outside the paling all is the 
 reverse ? So that upon this theory our life is cut in two, 
 and the two parts (both alike due to God and responsible to 
 God) are governed by laws radically different. For the being 
 of God, the basis of all religion, no demonstrative proof has 
 been supplied ; but the convert from (say) the Anglican Church 
 to the Roman Church, as modelled by Pope Pius IX and 
 his coadjutors, is taught to believe that he possesses one. 
 
 In the remarkable and profoundly interesting Life of 
 Cardinal Manning, by Mr. Purcell, I find the following 
 passage l , extracted from a sermon preached by Manning 
 while he was moving down the slope : 
 
 Purcell's Manning, i. 702. 
 
12 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Ft. I. 
 
 ' Is it possible to believe that this scheme of probabilities 
 (that is, of uncertainty) in doctrine, and imperfection (that 
 is, of doubt) in evidence, is a part of the probation of the 
 regenerate within the revelation of the faith 1 ' 
 
 Now it seems quite plain that this passage never could have 
 been written by a follower of Butler, or by any one into whom 
 his teaching had entered more than skin deep. I say nothing 
 of the passage or passages l in which Butler glances, it might 
 almost be said rails, at ' Popery ' ; or of any form of Latin 
 belief except that which the modern Roman Church seems to 
 have adopted in its despair of finding a modus vivendi between 
 the Syllabus and the thought of mankind. These are meant 
 to be words of help and duty. If the spirit of insolence, of 
 wrath, of insubordination, have crept into them, I lament the 
 error, and would gladly see it exorcised. 
 
 In sum : all duty, then, is to be regarded from a religious 
 point of view, and all human life is charged with duty. 
 Every movement which takes place in this unmeasured uni- 
 verse, from the least to the greatest, from the falling of the 
 sparrow to the eclipses of the sun and the precipitation into 
 space of the fragments of some shattered world, have the Ruler 
 of this universe behind them. It is Butler who, more than 
 any other writer, opens to us the one pervading scheme, upon 
 which He deals with His creatures. Of their existence this 
 method is a governing, daily, and indeed never-ceasing law. 
 In all its occasions, both great and small, life is ever presenting 
 to us problems of duty. In his Sermons Butler has exhibited 
 to us that equipment of faculty with which we have been 
 endowed in order that we may face these problems. In 
 the Analogy he presents to us the general character of the 
 problems themselves. It is, then, no exaggeration to say that 
 if there be the power of truth in its lessons, they provide 
 us with the key of life. 
 
 And now one word as to the alleged superannuation of 
 Butler in respect to the direct argument of the Analogy. 
 
 The contention of the present essay is that the highest 
 importance of Bishop Butler's works, and of the Analogy in 
 
 1 See Sermons, V. 8. In some exist, is inferential only, and open 
 other cases the reference, if it to question. 
 
Ch. I.] on THE METHOD OF BUTLER 13 
 
 particular, is to be found, not in his argument, but in his 
 method; which is so comprehensive as to embrace every 
 question belonging to the relations between the Deity and 
 man, including therefore every question of conduct. 
 
 Those, who make such an admission as against the argu- 
 ment, are not thereby driven to the conclusion that the reason- 
 ing of this great writer has become useless for the needs 
 of the present day and of the coming time. It has great 
 value through the robust exercise derivable by the human 
 intellect from thorough acquaintance with the most power- 
 fully constructed among the models which that intellect 
 has from time to time produced, since this is a mode of 
 acquiring power that is not to be had in other ways, and 
 since the works I have referred to are entitled as models 
 to the praise of extraordinary cohesiveness in their tissue, 
 be it from powerfulness in the mason's hand, or be it from 
 tenacity, like that of the old Neronian brick, in the mortar 
 he employs. 
 
 But is there no claim in advance of this which the followers 
 of Butler are entitled to urge on behalf of his argument 1 
 Yes: for first they may plainly press this point, that there 
 is and can be no superannuation in the Sermons, which deal 
 with human nature as it is, and the most important parts of 
 which might evidently have been written, to a large extent, 
 independently of that belief in God which Butler everywhere 
 presupposes. From this point of view it may be doubted 
 whether the atheistical reasoner has ever done as much for 
 himself, as Butler has done for him, not in abetting his 
 denials, but in constructing on his behalf something in the, 
 nature of a religion founded upon the constitution of man. \ 
 
 The principal step in advance, for the present stage of our 
 inquiry, has, however, still to be made. The contention of 
 those, who maintain that Butler is antiquated, seems to be 
 of this kind. They allow that in his day there were two 
 champions in the lists, of whom he was one, and that he 
 overthrew and disabled his adversary, who appeared there no 
 more. But, if the adversary is virtually extinct like the 
 dodo, what is Butler's title still to parade the arena ? Since 
 the istues of the present day go to the root of the matter, 
 and bring directly into question that belief in an intelligent 
 
14 ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER [Pt. I. 
 
 Author of nature, which Butler's antagonists are found to 
 have compromised themselves by admitting, the cause, it 
 may be said, is disposed of, and the next step simply is to 
 remove it, with the winner's as well as the loser's pleadings, 
 from the list. 
 
 The reply seems to be this. The cause is not disposed of : 
 only the issue has been widened. Not only the righteous 
 character of our Governor, not only His special communica- 
 tion with His creatures by Divine Revelation, but His existence 
 is in question ; and, unless and until it can be placed beyond 
 question, it is waste of time to discuss other issues, which 
 can only be legitimately raised after it has been affirmed. 
 
 So far so good. But what if the arguments of Butler for 
 a moral and righteous, and for a self-revealing Governor, 
 are also, in their essence, arguments which, so far as they are 
 good, go to prove that such a Governor exists? Now this 
 is exactly what we may and ought to hold concerning the 
 reasonings by which the Analogy is built up. Of course there 
 is here involved the assumption that they are good and sound 
 for their immediate aim ; and the contention, now advanced 
 as an outgrowth from that assumption, is that, being good 
 and sound for their immediate aim, they are good and sound 
 for an ulterior (but logically antecedent) aim in addition. 
 That is to say, he has not simply dealt with the case of the 
 Deist, but has, in dealing with that case, furnished materials 
 available in the controversies now in hand against the several 
 opposing systems which seek to abolish the idea of a personal 
 and righteous Governor of the universe. 
 
 As the subject now placed before the reader is im- 
 portant I shall endeavour to make it clear by pointing, 
 more definitely than Butler required to do, to the difference 
 between the arguments of the Deist, or Theist, and those 
 of the Analogy. 
 
 The Theist may, we will suppose, claim a locus standi for 
 such pleas as the following: the physical order established 
 among the heavenly bodies ; the tendency, and indeed ability, 
 of reason to acquire superiority over brute force ; the climatic 
 arrangements in the world, which suggest that exchange of 
 material commodities, between countries, which so manifestly 
 aims at social no less than physical advantages; even the 
 
Ch. I.] ON THE METHOD OF BUTLER 15 
 
 wonderful monetary system of civilized countries, which 
 exhibits the balance of forces in a manner more curious and 
 striking than any merely physical ponderation can do it ; 
 and again, in connexion with these, the whole intelligent 
 quality of man, as distinguished from those qualities which 
 are moral. These, and other such pleas, may be set down 
 among the 7riVreis, or arguments of belief, for an intelligent 
 Author of nature. 
 
 Now we come to the argument of the Analogy that the 
 intelligent Author of nature is also moral, for He takes sides 
 in that conflict between virtue and vice, which incessantly 
 prevails in the world l . But a Being who, besides establish- 
 ing wonderful counterpoises, both physical and social, for the 
 advantage of His creatures, thus takes sides in such a conflict, 
 not only as against the Deist gives evidence on behalf of the 
 probability that He is a moral Governor : He also applies 
 a fresh and additional supply of argument to show that He 
 is an intelligent Governor, or a Governor at large. 
 
 So again, if Butler has adduced good evidence towards 
 proving that the Intelligent Governor has acted wisely and 
 justly in meeting a manifest need of His creatures by Divine 
 Revelation, then in the very act of doing this he has fur- 
 nished a new element of evidence in support of the purely 
 theistic argument. 
 
 In other words, speaking of the Analogy as a whole, he 
 has superadded to all the purely rational, but not moral, 
 arguments for the existence of God, a mass of truly moral 
 arguments, available for that purpose exactly in the same 
 measure as that in which they were available for Butler's 
 avowed and immediate aim. Without doubt they are no 
 more than probable reasonings ; but then we must remember 
 that, from Butler's point of view, the whole theistic argument 
 lies within, and not beyond, the precinct of probability. 
 
 1 Analogy, I. iii. 21, 34. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 ON THE APPLICATION OF BUTLER'S METHOD TO 
 THE HOLY BIBLE 
 
 f |^HE supreme value of Butler will probably be found in the 
 -*- future, as it has been in the past, to lie in this; that 
 the works of the Bishop are singularly adapted to produce 
 that mental attitude required for treating the questions which 
 concern the dealings of God with man. But, as it seems to me, 
 there is much that we here inclusively assert with regard 
 to a variety of questions which have sprung into great 
 prominence and activity since his time. I propose now to 
 touch upon one of them. It is the manner of God's dealing 
 with man through the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 On the one hand, it is probable that a greater number of 
 copies of the Sacred Volume have been circulated among the 
 different nations during the nineteenth century than in all 
 the preceding centuries put together. On the other hand, is it 
 not also probably true that the assaults upon the inspiration, 
 authority, and historical trustworthiness of that volume have 
 within the same period exceeded in number, in breadth of 
 scope, in currency, and in some sort of acceptance or tolerance 
 among Christians, those of all previous ages combined ? 
 
 The old, and what may be called the stereotyped, method of 
 treating this subject, within the orthodox precinct, was to 
 assume what is called the verbal inspiration of the Bible. The 
 prevalence of this theory shows how unsafe it is to place im- 
 plicit reliance upon any authority, which has acquired its title 
 simply through its having been allowed to remain undisturbed 
 through long periods of time. Of what avail is the verbal 
 inspiration, if such there were, of the original books of Scrip- 
 ture available for us, unless, by a perpetual miracle, provision 
 has been made against the errors of copyists, printers, com- 
 mentators, whose notes may find their way into the text, and 
 
ITS APPLICATION TO HOLY SCRIPTURE 17 
 
 of translators into hundreds of languages ? But the existence 
 of such a miraculous provision is, I suppose, asserted by none. 
 The chief mischief resulting from these usurpations of right, 
 and this facile adoption of controversial positions which in 
 the day of conflict prove untenable, is great and manifold. 
 Reaction one day comes ; and such reactions are commonly 
 vindictive. The discovery of error is formidable not only 
 in proportion as the error is grave, but also in proportion 
 as the interests involved in the subject are weighty. And 
 the discredit of any one favourite argument, however small its 
 intrinsic importance, infects all the other arguments legiti- 
 mately available to support the same contention. For argument 
 is propelled by impetus as well as weight. 
 
 Again, it seems undeniable that the indolence of human 
 nature would be greatly flattered by a scheme such as that 
 of the verbal inspiration of Holy Scripture. In this view it 
 might be a great convenience that there should be put into 
 the hands of each of us, as we grow up in succession, a volume 
 which should operate as an Act of Parliament operates, to the 
 last and farthest extremity of its letter. It is essential to 
 such an idea of the Bible that it should be alike applicable to 
 every portion of the volume. If any development of Divine 
 Revelation be acknowledged, if any distinction of authority 
 between different portions of the text be allowed, then, in 
 order to deal with subjects so vast and difficult, we are at 
 once compelled to assume so large a liberty as will enable us 
 to meet all the consequences which follow from abandoning 
 the theory of a purely verbal inspiration. 
 
 But the issue raised is not one of convenience or inconveni- 
 ence ; it is strictly one of fact. Has the Almighty given us, 
 or has He not, a volume verbally inspired 1 And that question 
 is sufficiently answered by two brief observations : first, there 
 is no absolute security for identity with the original record ; 
 and, secondly, there is no verbal inspiration of translators. 
 
 Now the teaching of Butler has the most direct bearing 
 upon everything that is fundamental in the great inquiry, 
 What is the character of the Holy Scriptures as a Divine 
 record 1 Let us try a little to develop the argument he quotes 
 from Origen. If nature and Scripture have the same source, 
 then we may expect to find in Scripture somewhat of the 
 
 C 
 
18 ON ITS APPLICATION TO [Pt. I. 
 
 same difficulties that we find in the constitution of nature. 
 It seems obvious this rule applies not only to this and that 
 detail in the system of natural government, but to any 
 characteristics which we may find attaching to the scheme 
 of nature as a whole. Now there is one such characteristic 
 which overrides and is antecedent to every other: it is that 
 of the general method in which the evidence supplied by it is 
 conveyed to us. And here we find it is not conveyed by 
 precise and easy rules ; we cannot lay hold of it in rough and 
 ready forms. It requires observation and watchfulness at 
 every step, to pick out from the mass of material which life 
 places before us, what is available for our purpose, and care- 
 fully to put aside the rest. We know, indeed, that the whole 
 of life is providentially ordered on our behalf; and yet we 
 also know how readily we may be misled when we attempt to 
 read the will of God in the particular facts of life. His hand 
 is in them all ; but it does not follow that that hand and its 
 working is at every point to be made visible to us. On the 
 contrary, while we can clearly discern the general rules of 
 Divine government in nature, as Butler gives them, we find 
 that these rules are neither absolute, nor to our eyes uniform ; 
 that they are attended all along with qualification and excep- 
 tion, and that liberal interpretations are rarely given. Most 
 of the judgements we can safely form upon them are after the 
 fact, and are not therefore available in definite form for the 
 determination off-hand of the issues of conduct. 
 
 The statutes of the realm may admit any amount of contest 
 on the meaning of their text, but the text itself is of absolute 
 authority throughout. If this were the case with Scripture, it 
 would in the first place be not a little difficult to account for 
 its fragmentary, unsystematic form, and for the informal and 
 incomplete manner in which it most commonly deals with 
 its subjects. A further and most formidable difficulty arises 
 from the fact that it gives no definition of itself, and that the 
 canon has been formed by agency not inspired, and by judge- 
 ments which were unrecorded. But, when we turn to Butler, 
 we find that as to the whole of these characteristics the work 
 of God in Scripture corresponds with the work of God in 
 nature. The moral law, and its application to justice, veracity, 
 fortitude, benevolence, and the like, do not rest upon deter- 
 
Ch.IL] HOLY SCRIPTURE 19 
 
 minate and formal judgements that can be quoted in a court 
 or controversy, and all the instruction which we receive on 
 these great subjects is fragmentary, occasional, and incomplete 
 in its particulars. The instruction it conveys is also mixed : 
 it requires secretion and severance of material, that we may 
 not be misled by premature or unwarrantable inference, and 
 may by the removal of what is inappropriate turn all that is 
 available to account. If therefore we had in Scripture, as we 
 have in the statutes of the realm, an uniform code, absolute 
 and inflexible down to its last letter, should we not be obliged 
 to say that the Author of Scripture had in the delivery of His 
 revealed word followed a method somewhat broadly severed 
 from that which he had pursued as the Author also of nature, 
 in the method of communicating His will ? 
 
 Let us not, however, allow ourselves to be driven too far by 
 logic. We seem to verge towards certain propositions that 
 God's methods of conveying His will are not absolute but 
 variously conditioned, and that this rule of supply for us, 
 in faculty, in knowledge, in the adjustment of life, and in all 
 beside, is not perfection, but sufficiency. But in matters of 
 moral action, if we have not mathematical assurance, we may 
 have, and we very commonly have, such conviction as dis- 
 penses with all need of doubt. In the government of life, 
 occasions of doubt, and even of doubt that refuses to bend, 
 will arise from time to time ; but the everyday life of right- 
 minded people is not troubled with them as regards conduct. 
 If they speculate on the constitution of nature, they find them- 
 selves in a region of labyrinthine difficulties ; but the mass of 
 mankind may well be content with their mental food from 
 day to day, and this, by the merciful ordinance of God, is 
 ready to hand. Nature indeed offers us with profusion at 
 every point of her surface a combination of knowledge, 
 delight, and mental training, which we do not sufficiently 
 appreciate. All these are to be had by a kind and degree 
 of mental application which are open to multitudes of men ; 
 and they will encounter little or no provocation to entangle 
 themselves in the many and unsolved problems, which are 
 opened by a philosophical contemplation of this comprehen- 
 sive subject. And so with regard to the Holy Scriptures, 
 which are appointed to be the daily food of the people of 
 
 c 2 
 
20 ITS APPLICATION TO HOLY SCRIPTURE 
 
 God. Those who with simplicity of mind accept them in 
 that character, will surely find in them an increasing instruc- 
 tion as well as comfort, but need fear little perplexity, 
 however grave the scientific questions concerning the Bible 
 (so to call them) which, in another order of thought and 
 experience, have to be dealt with only by a few. 
 
 There is in this great matter, as in the whole adjustment 
 of the supply divinely ordained for our mental aliment, 
 a pervading application of the rule which adapts the back 
 to the burden, the ordinary human soul to its environment. 
 The teaching supplied by the words and actions of the great 
 Exemplar, as it comes to the common eye, is in the highest 
 degree simple, effective, and majestic, and finds its way with 
 penetrating force to the mind and heart of man. Each dis- 
 pensation of the Almighty works in alliance with His other 
 dispensations ; and we must look at them, as Butler teaches, 
 not in isolation, but as a whole. If we are told that the 
 apparatus for setting forth the Divine Word in Scripture, 
 and for conveying it to our minds, is not one of mathematical 
 precision, we have to bear in mind that it does not stand 
 alone. The art, history, institutions, and life of Christendom 
 are all based upon that, the record and the propagation of 
 which were solemnly entrusted by our Lord at the close 
 of His earthly career to human hands. In the period when 
 there was no written Word beyond that of the older covenant, 
 and when Christians as a scattered few scarcely dotted the 
 surface of a hostile world, the abundance of miracle and 
 of extraordinary gifts came in aid of the weakness inherent 
 in the individual mind. As the canon was gradually con- 
 structed, and the world so far at least reclaimed as to bear 
 historic witness to Christ with ever-increasing force, miracles 
 and extraordinary gifts ceased by degrees to form part of 
 the stated sustenance of the Church, and the central verities 
 enshrined in the creeds became axioms, from infancy onwards, 
 for us all. It is in his method of gathering and combining 
 evidence that Butler supplies us with an instrumentality most 
 valuable for the safe handling of this and of many other 
 questions ; and, being dead, yet speaks upon matters of which 
 there was not a whisper in his day, but which are now 
 echoing so loudly through the world. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CENSORS OF BISHOP BUTLER ' 
 
 I. Mr. BAGEHOT. 
 II. Miss HENNELL. 
 
 III. Mr. LESLIE STEPHEN. 
 
 IV. Mr. MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 V. MINOR STRICTURES : Mr. MAURICE, Mr. PATTISON, 
 Mr. GOLDWIN SMITH. 
 
 UNTIL the present century, and indeed until more than halt' 
 of it had passed away, Butler, as represented in his most 
 conspicuous production, had no censors ; that is to say, none 
 of any note, none who were themselves entitled to be noticed. 
 His works, both before and after they had been published 
 collectively in Oxford and in London, were received, as they 
 issued in successive editions from the press, with an almost 
 unbroken concert of applause. During the second portion of 
 the century, while it does not appear that their circulation 
 has declined, and we cannot affirm that their hold on the 
 confidence of the Christian world has diminished, various 
 writers of ability and even eminence have pointed out what 
 they considered to be flaws in these remarkable productions ; 
 while some among them, without denying the great powers 
 and high moral as well as philosophic rank of the author, 
 have taken objection — mostly, but not exclusively, in the case 
 of the Analogy — to some of his main positions, or even to the 
 general scope of his argument. 
 
 1 This chapter (now slightly teenth Century, for November and 
 changed) was printed in the Nine- December, 1895. 
 
22 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 I propose to undertake a close examination of the criticisms 
 of four writers who form or belong to the last-named class, 
 and to take them in their chronological order. These are 
 Mr. Bagehot (1854), Miss S. S. Hennell 1 (1859), Mr. Leslie 
 Stephen (1876), and Mr. Matthew Arnold (1877). Of these, 
 one — namely Miss Hennell — incorporates an important criti- 
 cism by Dr. Martineau, which was first published about 1840, 
 and which may in no vulgar sense be said to have been in the 
 van of the attack. 
 
 There have been other comments in the nature of censure, 
 sometimes accompanied by preponderating praise. Among 
 these are Mr. Maurice, Mr. Mark Pattison, and Mr. Goldwin 
 Smith. But these comments are on specific points, and have 
 not been carried into detail. 
 
 Among the censures passed upon Butler, we may include 
 the comments of a class of writers who, adopting uniformly 
 a kindly tone, have expressed their regret that the works of 
 Bishop Butler should, as in their judgement they do, fall, 
 in sentiment or phraseology, beneath the true evangelical 
 standard. I have offered, in discussing the theology of 
 Butler, a vindication which appears to me to be sufficient. 
 
 I. Mr. BAGEHOT. 
 
 In his essay 2 on Butler, which I do not regard as one of 
 the best specimens of his literary handiwork, Mr. Bagehot 
 refers, in terms which appear to be far too disparaging, to 
 the subject of style. 'In some places the mode of statement is 
 even stupid'; and 'it is curious that so great a thinker should 
 be so poor a writer.' Again, in graver matter, he thinks 
 that Plato saw the truth ; but Butler only groped for it. It 
 was not difficult for Plato to see a truth, which in the main 
 he moulded at his pleasure ; but if Butler did but grope, 
 his case was not wholly different from that of St. Paul, 
 
 1 A member of a family of dis- and Writings ' in his Modern Guides 
 
 tinguished talents, which is known of English Thought in matters of 
 
 to have exercised a powerful in- Faith, p. 270. 
 
 fluence on the mind and career ' Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. 
 
 of George Eliot. See Mr. R. H. pp. 74, 75. 
 Hutton on ' George Eliot's Life 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 23 
 
 who only saw through a glass darkly. Plato's assiette was 
 of and on the earth; Butler had all along to bind together 
 earth and heaven. Mr. Bagehot's criticism 1 strikes also at 
 Aristotle, who, like Butler, worked in rigid subserviency to 
 facts, and not as master over them. The style of Butler, too, 
 has been made largely responsible for the difficulties of his 
 subject 2 ; but those who might rewrite one of his pages 
 would find it more difficult than they may suppose to im- 
 prove the style without impairing the substance. In his 
 illustrations Butler is particularly happy; and, upon the 
 whole, in his case, and also in that of Aristotle, it may be 
 that the style and the substance cannot be parted. 
 
 Taking it at large, I think the following passage, extracted 
 from the very able preface of the late Bishop Steere to his 
 edition of the Analogy, presents no unjust view of the 
 question of Bishop Butler's style: 
 
 la truth, the greatest beauty of an author's style consists in its 
 appropriateness to express his meaning. There is a rough likeness 
 between the style of the Analogy and that of a legal document ; and it 
 goes deeper than might have been expected. For what makes a deed 
 obscure to the uninitiated ? Chiefly the attempt on the part of the 
 framer to exclude all ambiguity. It looks like irony, but it is true, that 
 no written thing, when examined, is clearer than a legal document ; and 
 the object, the attained object, of all those obscure phrases is to avoid 
 the possibility of being misunderstood. Therefore it is that, the more 
 one examines into possible meanings of what seemed clearer (sic) 
 expressions, the more we shall realise and admire the sound judgment 
 which has preferred what we, at first sight, thought ill-chosen and 
 obscure. Thus it is that careful students of Butler's works generally 
 come, in the end, to have a sort of relish for his peculiar style 3 . 
 
 Granted fully that Butler's style is difficult. But it does 
 
 not in any degree follow that it is, properly speaking, obscure. 
 
 It is needless to dwell on the judgement of Mr. Bagehot 
 
 1 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. the Style in some parts simplified. 
 p. 76. By the Rev. Edward Bushby, D.D., 
 
 2 One, however, of Butler's editors Fellow and Tutor of St. John's 
 has had the courage to undertake College, Cambridge. London, 1842. 
 the reformation of his style. See 3 Butler's Analogy, with analyti- 
 Bishop Butler's Treatise on the cal preface and index, by the late 
 Analogy of Religion to the Constitu- Right Rev. Edward Steere, LL.D., 
 tion and Course of Nature ; with Bishop in Central Africa. London, 
 a Summary of the Argument, and Bell, 1886, page v. 
 
24 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 concerning the great argument of Conscience in the Sermons ; 
 for it is in a strain of nearly unbroken approval. But, when 
 we come to the Analogy, Mr. Bagehot propounds grave 
 objections to its reasoning. 
 
 Firstly, he denies it to have been ' probable ' that revela- 
 tion would contain difficulties of a like kind with nature, 
 and subjoins, ' we should have expected that it would explain 
 those difficulties 1 .' The rational likelihood was that the 
 revelation ' would be one affecting our daily life and welfare ; 
 would communicate truths either on the one hand conducing 
 to our temporal happiness in the present world, or removing 
 the many doubts and difficulties, which surround the general 
 plan of Providence, the entire universe, and our particular 
 destiny.' 
 
 There is no doubt that this objection strikes at the very 
 heart of the Analogy. If the objection stands, the Treatise 
 must fall. On the other hand, every reviewer of Mr. Bagehot's 
 criticisms must feel how cautiously he ought to deal with the 
 views and arguments of a writer who is not less modest than 
 he is able and acute, and who himself deals so tenderly with 
 all that appertains to the religious belief of his fellow-Chris- 
 tians, and regards it with so deep and genuine an interest. 
 
 I must nevertheless express a conviction that Mr. Bagehot 
 mistakes the seat of that evil, which he does not fail to see. 
 No doubt we are entitled, and indeed bound, to anticipate 
 that a Divine Kevelation will be aimed at the heart of a great 
 mischief, and will be designed and adapted to remove it. But 
 the case of human nature is not a case of mere difficulty ; it 
 is a case of disease ; and the mischief lies not in the darkness 
 of the understanding, but in the perversion of the Will. 
 Darkened without doubt the understanding is, but darkened 
 by those fumes of passion, which rise so densely from the fur- 
 nace of our desires. These cloud the atmosphere within us, 
 and thicken what ought to be a translucent medium to convey 
 in their purity the authoritative sentences of conscience. Had 
 want of knowledge been the capital difficulty of our state, 
 fishermen would not have been the chief ministers of the 
 Gospel, nor would babes and sucklings have perfected its 
 
 1 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. pp. 86, 87. 
 
UN 
 
 Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 25 
 
 praise. Not from an upper chamber in Jerusalem, not from 
 the stable, offering to the Redeemer of the world the shelter 
 denied Him by the inn, but rather from Pnyx and Theatre, 
 from Portico and Academe of Athens, would the notes of 
 salvation have been sounded forth. 
 
 If we proceed upon the narrative of Genesis, it was not for 
 want of knowledge that mankind fell from a peaceful into 
 a troubled existence, but from the unauthorized and prema- 
 ture pursuit of it. If Butler is right in referring for the 
 origin of what he terms natural religion to a primitive 
 revelation, yet the historic traces of that revelation became 
 with the lapse of years faint and imperceptible. There were 
 indeed times, such for instance as the Achaian period de- 
 scribed by Homer, when belief in a Divine government of the 
 world was still sustained, and the foundations of right and 
 duty still remained visible, in virtue of the law written in the 
 heart. Generations passed away, and knowledge increased in 
 the world ; and, together with this increase of knowledge, the 
 conditions of social order came to be better understood ; but 
 in other respects virtue diminished, and the idea of sin, except 
 among the Jews, was virtually lost. 
 
 Mr. Bagehot rightly observes that the argument of Butler 
 is one dealing with our religious difficulties : and ' this is the 
 exact class of difficulty which it is most likely a revelation if 
 given would explain V But the view of Butler is so different 
 that his critic will be found here to challenge one of his main 
 and deliberately assumed positions. As his teaching runs, 
 there is no absurdity in supposing that the speculative diffi- 
 culties, in which the evidence of religion is involved, may 
 constitute even the principal and most fruitful part of the 
 trial of some among us. The generality have to contend 
 with more vulgar temptations; but 'there are persons of 
 a higher stamp, without this shallowness of temper, persons 
 endowed with a deeper sense of what is invisible and future.' 
 Had such persons no doubts to contend with, the practice of 
 religion would be to them, as Butler thinks, unavoidable ; and 
 at least it seems clear that they would stand in no such need 
 of effort as to brace the mind and train the character in the 
 
 1 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. p. 87. 
 
26 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 manner of what we term a discipline ; which discipline 
 nevertheless may be very needful for their perfection 1 . 
 Objections to the truths of Christianity, apart from its evi- 
 dence, Butler holds to be mostly frivolous : and it may 
 be presumed that, had he thought them worthy of more 
 consideration, he would have treated them as he has treated 
 objections to the evidence. 
 
 With his habitual sincerity, Mr. Bagehot falls back upon 
 first principles; and holds that 'the supposition and idea of 
 a miraculous revelation rest on the ignorance of man ' : and 
 that God, if He should speak, ' would shed abundant light on 
 all doubts, would take the weight from our minds, would 
 remove the gnawing anguish from our hearts 2 .' He an- 
 ticipates, however, a form of reply to his argument. It is 
 that there may be facts impossible for us at present to 
 appreciate, but most important for us to know. His answer 
 is that there is no advantage in the revelation of an inex- 
 plicable fact : that such a revelation is extremely improbable : 
 that the revelation we might properly expect is one throwing 
 light on the world in which we live ; and in which ' poverty 
 and sin, pain and sorrow, fear and anger, press on us with 
 a heavy weight V But this, as Butler truly teaches, is asking 
 to be acquainted with the whole counsel of Providence : a task 
 which he renounces, finding that he undertakes enough in 
 endeavouring, not to explain the conduct of the Almighty, 
 but to point out to man his duty 4 . 
 
 Mr. Bagehot thinks also that a revelation of rites and 
 ordinances, as compared with duties, is antecedently most 
 improbable. But, in this large and sweeping proposition, 
 does he not forget the exigencies of our complex and com- 
 pound nature 1 ? It would be strange, without doubt, if 
 external prescriptions were to form the substance or main 
 bulk of a revelation. But it may seem that a revelation may 
 naturally comprehend what provides for the discipline of the 
 body; what corresponds with the large office of the senses 
 in the business of human life ; and even what satisfies the 
 imagination. The lofty doctrine of the Gospel, which con- 
 
 1 Analogy, II. vi. 18. 3 Ibid. pp. 88, 89. 
 
 2 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. p. 88. 4 Analogy, II. viii. 10. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 27 
 
 secrates the body as an inseparable portion of our nature, 
 and at the same time propounds our reunion with the Divine 
 Nature in the person of the Redeemer, as the one thing 
 needful, shows that there is here an unfilled gap in the 
 teaching of Mr. Bagehot which deals with us as pure in- 
 telligences; and may well justify Bishop Butler when he 
 teaches that the exterior part of Christianity belongs to its 
 essence l . 
 
 Mr. Bagehot contends 2 that the argument of the Analogy 
 * may be used in the defence of any revelation, the Maho- 
 metan as well as the Christian'; and it has appeared to 
 some that herein lies an objection to the Treatise. But let 
 us suppose, though the supposition may be an extreme one, 
 the case of a Mahometan philosopher arguing, as Butler 
 has argued in his first Part, and substituting in a second 
 Part the Koran for the Gospel, each of them as illustrated 
 by the course of history ; suppose that he could establish the 
 claim of his religion to a serious examination : such a claim, 
 on such a basis, constitutes no objection to the argument of 
 Butler. The Koran then presents itself, according to Butler's 
 method, at the bar of reason for scrutiny : inasmuch as reason , 
 is the judge both of the proofs of the religion, and even of its 
 character. When the proofs of the Gospel are opened, we 
 find that it alleges, taken roughly: (1) Prophecy, (2) Miracle, 
 (3) History, (4) Moral adaptation. And of these the first two 
 appear especially to have been vital to its first acceptance. 
 But when we turn to Mahometanism, these two great 
 subjects are presented to us as an absolute blank. If we 
 come to the third, we find anterior history in the narrative 
 of the Old Testament leading up to Christianity, but having 
 no point of contact whatever with Mahometanism. If we 
 pass to posterior records, we find that the history of Christi- 
 anity, down to the time when it had conclusively established 
 its hold on the greatest races and ruling intellects of the 
 world, was a history of suasion. But the history of Maho- 
 metanism, as a religion systematically propagated by violence 
 and bloodshed, seems to renounce the appeal to reasoning 
 altogether, and to make the whole inquiry ridiculous. It is 
 
 1 Analogy, II. i. 19. 2 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. p. 90. 
 
28 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 hardly necessary, after this, to enter on the question of moral 
 adaptation, or an efficacious remedy for the disease of human 
 nature. Perhaps from this brief review we may sufficiently 
 judge what is the practical upshot of Butler's argument, when 
 applied to religions other than the Gospel. And this without 
 our being bound to deny that the Mahometan and other 
 religions may, in virtue of such elements of truth as they 
 contain, have acted for special purposes, and may still operate 
 upon humble and simple souls, in conjunction with purely 
 natural affections, for purposes of real good. It is but too 
 easy to show, on the one hand, how the results of Christianity 
 are intercepted and marred by our corruption of nature : and 
 we should not really mend our own case by grudging to 
 those, who live under other systems, every acknowledgement 
 that truth demands. If it be the fact, then, that Butler's 
 argument is available for religions other than our own, it can 
 only be made available for them in so far as they are true ; 
 just as, in the case of Christianity, it does nothing to accredit 
 those corruptions which he admits and deplores. In so far 
 as it tends to support such elements of truth as may not 
 have been stifled in other religions, this surely is not a defect, 
 but a recommendation of the reasoning he has employed. 
 
 Mr. Bagehot sums up the first chapter of his argument by 
 declaring it to be monstrous that there should be a Divine 
 Revelation which enumerates the difficulties of natural govern- 
 ment and yet casts no light upon them ; and so, instead of 
 relieving doubt or anxiety, should ' proclaim every fact which 
 can give a base to them both V As regards the first of these, 
 it is simply a misconception to suppose that yv&o-Ls and not 
 Trpa£is was the purpose for which our necessities demanded 
 a provision. As regards the second, it will be more con- 
 veniently considered in connexion with the objection as it 
 has been taken by another of the censors of Bishop Butler. 
 
 Thus far Mr. Bagehot has been clear and explicit in urging 
 his exceptions against the Treatise of Butler. But now he 
 announces 2 that he has a second objection to the argument 
 of the Analogy on which he is inclined to lay nearly equal 
 stress. I must own that I have failed, in this portion of his 
 
 1 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. p. 90. 2 Ibid. p. 90. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 29 
 
 Essay, to gather his meaning. He nowhere cites a passage 
 from the work ; he nowhere even describes one. Instead of 
 this, he cites passages from Professor Rogers l , and perhaps 
 makes good certain points against them ; but for Professor 
 Rogers, Butler certainly cannot be held responsible. At one 
 moment 2 he seems to admit Butler's argument within certain 
 limits, and allows that the ' style of Providence ' would 
 probably be the same in revelation as in nature ; but neither 
 here nor elsewhere does he collect evidence from the text. 
 And he somewhat strangely winds up his article by tracing 
 to deficiencies in Butler's mental constitution faults in the 
 Treatise, as to which he does not supply a particle of evidence 
 to exhibit or make good their existence. Those who would 
 either condemn Butler or defend him with effect must be pre- 
 pared to deal with their subject at much closer quarters. 
 
 II. Miss HENNELL. 
 
 In 1859, Miss S. S. Hennell widened the ground of the 
 attack by publishing her essay ' On the Sceptical Tendency of 
 Butler's Analogy.' Without doubt she begs a very large 
 question in her title ; but no critic can surpass her either 
 in reverence or in candour ; and she records this judgement 
 upon Butler's position as it has been generally estimated : 
 ' By the main body of Christian believers he is still considered 
 unanswered and unanswerable, strong as a giant against all 
 the puny attacks of infidelity 3 .' 
 
 She considers, indeed, that the Treatise ' engenders a deep 
 spirit of scepticism,' and supplies no principle capable of 
 effectually combating it. But of this anon. 
 
 Following many others, but quite innocently, she quotes 
 a reported remark of Mr. Pitt on Butler's Analogy, to the 
 effect that it suggested to him more doubts than it solved. 
 From the eminence of the names concerned, this remark may 
 have circulated widely ; but I have never had the means of 
 verifying the statement until within a few days ago, when 
 I found Wilberforce's Diary quoted as the source. 
 
 1 Literary Studies, vol. ii. essay ii. p. 98. 2 Ibid. pp. 95, 96. 
 
 3 Essaij, p. 2. 
 
30 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 The Life of Wilberforce was published nearly sixty years 
 ago, and was allowed to run to the inordinate length of 
 five volumes. The public has avenged itself by suffering the 
 book to pass into literary oblivion. I have, however, an 
 original copy, and I will give from it first the statements, 
 and then the authority on which they rest. 
 
 In November, 1785, Mr. Wilberforce was much agitated by 
 deep religious convictions, leading to a great elevation in his 
 tone of life. He was in a correspondence with Mr. Pitt, to 
 whom he had not, at the date I have first cited, opened his 
 whole mind. Still it must have contained references to 
 his serious course of thought, for he records under the date 
 of November 24, the following : — 
 
 ' Pitt called, and commended Butler's Analogy : resolved to 
 write to him, and discover to him what I am occupied about.' 
 
 And accordingly on Sunday, the 27th, he read Butler for 
 three-quarters of an hour \ He fulfilled his resolution to write 
 to Pitt in very explicit terms. Pitt promptly announced to him 
 his intention to call on the following day 2 . He came accord- 
 ingly and pressed on the discussion. As Wilberforce says : — 
 
 ' He tried to reason me out of my convictions. . . . The fact 
 is that he was so absorbed in politics, that he had never 
 given himself time for due reflection on religion. But 
 amongst other things he declared to me, that Bishop Butler's 
 work raised in his mind more doubts than it had answered V 
 
 Considering Butler's extreme candour, nay scrupulosity, 
 in stating the objections to his own case, there is nothing 
 wonderful in this passage, taken by itself : for, if Pitt's mind 
 was not fully prepared, he might be struck with the diffi- 
 culties of the case more vividly than by the solutions of 
 those difficulties. But we have these curious facts before 
 us. On the 3rd of December (which appears to have been 
 the date), in a conversation controversial though friendly, 
 he condemns the tendency of the very book which he 
 had spontaneously, and not in disputation, recommended 
 to Wilberforce nine days before. This really amounts to 
 a contradiction. But Pitt was a man not likely to contradict 
 
 1 Life of Wilberforce (Murray, 1838), i. pp. 89, 90. 2 Ibid. p. 94. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 95. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 31 
 
 himself. How are we to reconcile the two passages ? and are 
 they of equal authority? 
 
 The answer is that they are not of equal, but indeed of 
 most unequal authority. In their Preface, the editors of the 
 Life carefully explain the different sources of the material 
 which they have woven into one continuous narrative; and 
 they have for the most part, in the body of the work, noticed 
 them at the foot of the page. 
 
 The first of these sources was from manuscript books, or 
 detached sheets, in which Mr. Wilberforce was accustomed 
 himself to note down daily occurrences. These will be found 
 referred to under the head of ' Diary.' 
 
 The commendation of Butler is quoted from a series of 
 extracts reaching continuously from the 24th of November, 
 day by day, to the 30th; and these are apparently among 
 the first fruits of his private ' Diary,' which he began now, 
 'whilst this struggle was at its height,' with a view to 
 spiritual uses. So the commendation of Butler by Mr. Pitt 
 comes to us (1) at first hand, (2) in a contemporary record. 
 
 But the sources of materials are five l , and the fifth is 
 neither contemporary, nor first hand. It represented partly 
 conversations of this venerable man; some of them taken 
 down when uttered, but at times never specified, by members 
 of his family. At the dates we have been dealing with, 
 Mr. Wilberforce was twenty-five and a bachelor; so that all 
 the materials of this class, if written at all, were written 
 (say) at periods later by from twenty to forty-eight years 
 (he died in 1833), when he had sons full-grown. Another 
 portion was supplied by the editors from their own vivid 
 recollections, apparently after his death, when they came to 
 execute their task as biographers. And a third portion was 
 furnished by certain friends. It is to this last class of material 
 that the condemnation of Butler belongs ; or, as we are in- 
 formed by a footnote, to ' conversational memoranda V 
 
 It appears, then, that the condemnation, on which a good 
 deal of stress has been laid, stands in a category of information 
 which is at best only doubtful ; but in this case it comes at 
 once into conflict with another account of a directly opposite 
 
 1 Preface, pp. v, ix. ' Ibid. p. x. 
 
32 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 tenor, and recorded under circumstances which give it the 
 highest degree of authenticity. In other words, it is not, as 
 it stands, entitled to credit. 
 
 The reader will, I am sure, excuse the minuteness of this 
 detail. [I must now add to it my own conjectural, but I think 
 not irrational interpretation. Once only, as it appears upon 
 the evidence, was Wilberforce tempted, even by the recom- 
 mendation of Pitt, to spend less than one hour in reading the 
 Analogy. He also had it read to him for two hours ! a proof 
 I think that he never girded up his loins to it at all, or gave 
 it more than a perfunctory attention. Any one, who thus 
 trifles with the work, is likely enough to be struck with the 
 objections raised rather than with the answers to them. 
 Upon the whole, seeing that the remark assigned to Pitt 
 cannot well be true, it seems possible, if not probable, that 
 Wilberforce (if the reporting friends have made no mistake), 
 a generation after the facts, put into the mouth of Pitt a 
 distant and shadowy recollection of an impression of his 
 own *.] 
 
 It would be unwarrantable to resort to any such plea with 
 a view to excluding Miss Hennell from this arena. Her 
 thoughts on Butler are palpably serious and earnest; and 
 side by side with her ingenuous statement as to the ruling 
 Christian opinion on the subject, we must register the 
 admission that, in one, and possibly in more than one, 
 intelligent and upright critic, Butler leaves a ' permanent 
 feeling of unsatisfactoriness rankling in the mind,' and 
 transfers from himself to his reader ' a sympathetic gloom,' 
 which the great ' intellectual and moral power ' of the work 
 heightens into ' a kind of paralyzing awe V Into the recesses 
 of emotion we cannot penetrate ; but it is permitted to deal 
 with arguments ; and it is a task of something better than 
 a combative interest to inquire into their reality and weight 
 in the case of Miss Hennell. 
 
 Butler, in every instance without exception, reduces his 
 demands upon the antagonist whom he always sees before 
 him to their minimum. There is not in the Analogy, from 
 beginning to end, a word of rhetoric, of declamation, of either 
 
 1 Added to the text, March 17, 1896. 2 Essay, p. 5. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 33 
 
 wilful or neglectful over-statement. It is a purely dry light 
 which he seeks to cast upon his theme. He opens a path 
 before us, and the whole purpose of his book is summed up 
 in the word ' ought ' ; while to this ' ought ' there is no other 
 sequel than the words ' to inquire.' For all those whose 
 temperament is warm, whose imagination is lively, this 
 seems but a jejune result ; they have spent much labour and 
 much patience in toiling up the steep road of the Treatise 
 itself, and then they find themselves simply introduced into 
 a new field of arduous investigation. They are tired, and 
 demand refreshment ; he offers them only a recommencement 
 of work. After a hot and hard day, it seems a scanty wage. 
 It is no wonder if some are disappointed ; it is well that so 
 many are not. To my mind, there is no preparation for 
 a satisfactory study of Butler so good as to have been widely 
 conversant with the disappointing character of human affairs. 
 With touching simplicity he says : 
 
 'Indeed the unsatisfactory nature of the evidence, with 
 which we are obliged to take up, in the daily course of life, 
 is scarce to be expressed V 
 
 Yet such evidence suffices for those whose one habitual 
 endeavour it is to discern and follow the way of duty. So 
 it comes to this; that the method of guidance given us for 
 practice is one with the method of guidance given us for 
 belief. And of these two, the first is perhaps the very best 
 Trpoiraibevo-is for what is to follow it in the palaestra to which 
 Butler introduces us. So viewing the matter, are we entitled 
 at once to complain of a ' sceptical tendency ' in the Analogy ? 
 
 I proceed to consider Miss Hennell's arguments. 
 
 Some twenty years before the Essay of Miss Hennell, 
 Dr. Martineau had published a Sermon, in which he was, 
 I believe, the first to object broadly 2 to Butler's mode of using 
 the argument from analogy. Miss Hennell adopts and presses 
 the criticism of Dr. Martineau. I sum up the passage as 
 follows. Vicarious suffering is admitted to be found in 
 nature. But it is the exception, not the rule. If we make 
 it the rule, if it be a key to unlock the whole problem of 
 Divine government, then we place creation under a tyrant's 
 
 1 Analogy, II. viii. 17. 2 Essay, p. 11. 
 
 D 
 
34 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 sway. Again: 'We pass through the great infirmary of 
 God's creation ' ; and Butler is said to say that • it is all the 
 same in the other world, and wherever the same rule extends.' 
 And so the question arises whether this victory is won in 
 favour of revelation, or against Natural Religion. 
 
 The argument is alike intelligible and forcible. If we 
 represent disease and wrong as the characteristic features 
 of creation, we clearly administer a terrible persuasive to 
 Atheism. But is this a true representation of the language 
 of Butler 3 I know of no other case in which a great author 
 has been so largely misapprehended, and consequently mis- 
 stated, and that by critics who cordially respected him. 
 Butler has nowhere drawn for us such a picture. He has, 
 indeed, said that the difficulties which are alleged against 
 religion are found in nature, and yet do not displace belief 
 in an Author of nature. But he is so far from representing 
 this as a normal state of things, that he takes his stand 
 throughout upon the proposition that this world, in which 
 our lot is cast, is in a state of apostasy and ruin. For this 
 condition, religion professes to supply remedial provisions. 
 The question is then raised upon the credibility of the scheme 
 it offers. And Butler supports it, as to credibility, by showing 
 that it presents to view no difficulties, unless such as have 
 their counterpart in nature, and as, when urged against 
 believing in a supreme Author of nature, have been found 
 not to warrant that negation. They cannot, therefore, be 
 more effective when urged against religion. He first marks 
 our entire condition here as exceptional by showing us to be 
 in a state of apostasy and ruin. He then points out that, 
 even in this disordered and impaired position of things, 
 virtue or good makes a partial but intelligible assertion of 
 its prerogatives, and visibly promises one more unequivocal 
 and complete. He urges that even here the bad man has 
 small satisfaction in what he enjoys, and the good man large 
 compensations for what he suffers ; that in indirect forms — 
 for example, in those of civil government — a law of right is 
 to some extent proclaimed : that God even here and now 
 takes part in the controversy, and proclaims Himself to be 
 on the side of virtue. In anticipation of criticism, Butler has 
 girt himself about with precautions which ought to have 
 
Ch.HL] ON HIS CENSORS 35 
 
 shielded him against these serious and strange mistakes of 
 the reasoning he actually uses. But I proceed. 
 
 Miss Hennell next supposes the case of an inquirer into the 
 truth of Christianity who finds himself x brought face to face 
 in Scripture with representations of the actions of Deity that 
 shock his moral sense. Repairing to Butler for aid, he is 
 instructed that like infractions of right occur in nature, and 
 that as we nevertheless believe in a supreme Author of 
 nature, so we may still believe in the authenticity of revela- 
 tion. But as revelation, she thinks, gives a sanction to such 
 infractions, her inquirer is in a painful dilemma. 
 
 Now I am not considering objections to religion founded on 
 any moral anomaly which may seem to be presented by the 
 Old Testament histories, but am dealing simply with objec- 
 tions to the argument of Butler. Butler has nowhere so much 
 as touched in detail any of these moral difficulties. They did 
 not lie in the main line of his argument. To consider how far 
 a revelation, because Divine, is tied to conditions of absolute 
 perfection in the manner of its communication, is a subject at 
 once large, and distinct from that of Butler. It is true that 
 this may be held to be included in the parent-suggestion 
 of Origen, which presents to us the Scriptures as the ground- 
 work of the proposed comparison with nature. But, probably 
 for the purpose of avoiding an extension of his field which 
 would have made his subject unmanageable, Butler in his 
 title alters the description, and takes not the Scriptures, but 
 religion, as the subject which he is to compare with nature. 
 He was surely entitled to hold that the subjects of discussion 
 which he thus escaped are not directly presented to us by the 
 religion which he teaches, and which relies on the Scriptures 
 of the Old Testament in proof of the Advent, but does not 
 directly or essentially associate itself with every particular of 
 government over men ; any more than the arguments of our 
 Lord and of Saint Paul from providential action in the world 
 bind them to account for all the difficulties which may offer to 
 our view. How true this is we may the better perceive if we 
 bear in mind that, in the centuries immediately succeeding 
 the age of our Lord, the general contents of the Old Testa- 
 
 Essay, p. 6. 
 
 1> 2 
 
36 ON HIS CENSORS [Pp. I. 
 
 ment were far from being either formally or largely presented 
 to the acceptance or to the eyes of converts to Christianity. 
 
 It is true, however, that while Butler avoids the discussion 
 in detail on the difficulties of Old Testament history, he lays 
 down principles applicable to them ; and this, too, in one of 
 the most assailable passages of the Analogy, which, if it allows 
 of defence, may fairly be said to invite and tempt attack. 
 Miss Hennell here finds him guilty of sophistry, and of open 
 defiance of natural principles. She conceives that the best 
 apology which can be made for him lies in the 'noble straight- 
 forward candour with which, casting aside all disguises, he 
 lays bare to every reader the nature of his contentions.' 
 
 What he contends for is as follows : He lays it down in the 
 first place l that reason is a judge, not indeed of things con- 
 tained in Scripture and at variance with our expectations of 
 what a revelation would convey to us, but yet (first) of the 
 evidence, and (secondly) of the morality of what is offered for 
 our acceptance. It is to judge whether the matter propounded 
 to us is ' plainly contradictory to wisdom, justice or good- 
 ness ; to what the light of nature teaches us of God,' or, again, 
 it cannot accept what is contrary to ' immutable morality 2 ' ; 
 or ' the principles and spirit of treachery, ingratitude, cruelty.' 
 
 But, as he contends, the case is different with external 
 action ; ' for instance, taking away the property or life of 
 any ' ; the title to hold these proceeding from the Divine Will, 
 and being revocable by those who gave them. In these cases, 
 actions, which without command would be immoral, cease 
 to bear that character when commanded. They are indeed 
 'offences' — that is to say, they are liable to be perverted 
 ' to serve the most horrid purposes,' and possibly they may 
 mislead the weak 3 . They belong also to a course of things 
 liable to create an immoral habit : but this will not follow 
 if the occasions of them be only few and detached. 
 
 Upon this passage at least three questions appear to arise, 
 (i) Is it consistent with itself ? (2) Can it be defended in all 
 its parts 1 (3) What was the probable intention of the author, 
 and what is the equitable interpretation to be placed upon it 
 as a whole ? 
 
 Analogy^ II. iii. 26. 2 Ibid. 27. 3 Ibid. 28. 
 
Ch. Ill] ON HIS CENSORS 37 
 
 First, if reason is to judge whether matter propounded to us 
 in the name of religion is, or is not, plainly contradictory to 
 wisdom, justice, and goodness — is, or is not, tainted with 
 ' treachery, ingratitude, cruelty ' — it seems impossible to ex- 
 clude from the province of judgement by reason ' the whole 
 of external action ' : such as the cruel murder of Abel by 
 Cain, or the treachery of Rachel and Jacob against Esau. 
 Yet such exclusion seems to be conveyed in the words which 
 here describe external action ; and therefore the language of 
 the passage does not appear to be consistent throughout. 
 
 Nor is it possible, secondly, to defend a statement which, 
 taken in its letter, asserts by implication that no breach of 
 wisdom, justice, or goodness can be involved in an external 
 act. Nor can I undertake to support the assertion that in 
 cases where ' a course ' of acts would create an immoral habit, 
 a few detached instances have no ' natural tendency ' in the 
 same direction. 
 
 So far Butler seems to lie open to the animadversions of 
 the severer critics : and, without doubt, every shortcoming in 
 point of accuracy in a Treatise dealing with subjects of the 
 first moment is to be lamented. 
 
 But the third question is the most weighty. Suppose, for 
 argument's sake, it were the intention of Butler, not to lay 
 down an universal proposition denying that an essential 
 morality or the reverse may attach to external action, but 
 only to assert this, that there are large provinces of external 
 action, within which the character of the things done essen- 
 tially depends on the authority under which they are done, 
 not upon the nature of the action as it stands apart from 
 such authority : this, I think, we may defend both as clearly 
 true and also as important. 
 
 It seems to me probable that Butler, whose age was not an 
 age of minute Scripture criticism, had before his mind nothing 
 more than the general severity of punishments recorded in 
 the Old Testament, such as the large, though by no means 
 universal, extirpation of the Canaanitish nations, or the sum- 
 mary judgement executed upon the partakers in the schism of 
 Korah, where, however, no human agency was employed. 
 
 And again with reference to the formation of habits in the 
 individual mind. The Bible presents to us the case of Samuel, 
 
38 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I. 
 
 who conveys to us the idea of a character alike wise and 
 gentle ; but who was the appointed instrument for destroying 
 with his own hand King Agag, in requital for his cruelties *. 
 To be the mere minister of lawful but bloody sentences is an 
 occupation tending to form some kinds of immoral habit. 
 But surely all must so far agree with Butler as to say that 
 there is a wide difference between the habitual performance 
 of such acts, and such a performance on a single and separate 
 occasion. It is such a difference as we may recognize between 
 the effect on the character of a soldier who has, once or upon 
 rare occasions, wounded or slain in battle the enemies of his 
 country, and the case of a public executioner, addicted, before 
 the recent mitigation of manners, to the constant launching of 
 his fellow-creatures into eternity ; one marked in the tradition 
 of the Christian nations as having been placed, by the public 
 instinct of the community, under a kind of moral proscription, 
 which lays the office under a sort of traditional discredit. 
 Confining ourselves to the assertion of a difference, and that 
 a w£de one, we stand on ground that is unassailable. It must 
 indeed be acknowledged that the single act, such as that of 
 Samuel, is the first step towards the formation of a habit ; 
 but is it not like the first step of the foot over a series of 
 stepping-stones, which may be drawn back? Even so the 
 deed, remaining without sequel of any kind, is as if it were 
 retracted ; for in the course of nature the habitual tone and 
 bias of the character resume their sway. 
 
 The question is, are we, with Miss Hennell, utterly to con- 
 demn the whole doctrine conveyed by Butler in this passage, 
 or are we, while admitting that his language at one or two 
 points falls short of -his usual accuracy, and requires quali- 
 fication, to accord to him the benefit of such qualification, 
 and admit that he in no degree intentionally tampered with 
 the moral law ? It seems to me that the latter is not 
 only the more equitable, but the more rational, process ; and 
 for the reason which, plain as it appears to be, Miss Hennell 
 has entirely overlooked. It is this. Butler has laid down 
 emphatically in this very passage that there is an immutable 
 morality, which no positive command can change; and has 
 
 1 i Sam. xv. 33. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 39 
 
 made a strict adherence to wisdom, justice, goodness, and the 
 inflexible rejection of treachery, ingratitude, and cruelty, the 
 governing idea of the entire passage. With this he combines 
 the unquestionable truth, that a multitude of acts, such (say) 
 as the levying of taxes, the invasion of liberty by incarcera- 
 tion, and executing the forfeiture of life for crime, which 
 would be immoral if the agent be unauthorized, are habitually 
 made moral, and even obligatory, by public authority. Even 
 more, then, in an age and under a dispensation of more direct 
 and palpable relations between the Almighty and His crea- 
 tures, might devolution, similar in principle, but of yet higher 
 authority, lead to acts, such as the terrible penalty upon 
 Canaan, which may not in their whole grounds be compre- 
 hensible by us, but which it would be the extreme of audacity 
 on our part to condemn. 
 
 In no case can Miss Hennell be warranted, as it seems to 
 me, in drawing inferences from the passages to support the 
 general doctrine that the Analogy favours scepticism ; because 
 any corrections or limitations which the writer's phraseology 
 in this instance may require can in no way interfere with 
 the general course of his argument, or impair its force. If the 
 system under which the world is actually governed inspires 
 the conviction that it has a righteous aim, while presenting inci- 
 dents for which that righteousness of aim does not always give 
 account to us, the very same rule must serve us in our dealings 
 with moral anomalies in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. 
 
 But Miss Hennell is occasionally so carried off her balance 
 by emotion that she too deviates into inaccurate representation 
 of Butler. She says Butler charges us ' not to be disturbed by 
 exceptional interruption of the law of morality 1 .' It is no 
 wonder that she has no citation in proof of this grave state- 
 ment ; for none can be found. Butl er trea ts morality as 
 immutable, and emphatically holds that it is not based upon 
 the mere consequences of acts 2 , that moral fitness resides in 
 them of themselves, and that the will of God is thereby deter- 
 mined 3 . There can be no interruption, then, of the moral law 
 in the Divine government. Instances there may be which we 
 cannot demonstrate to be in conformity with it ; but on these 
 
 1 Essay, p. 18. 2 Analogy, I. vii. 21. s Ibid. vi. 16 n. 
 
40 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 we are to suspend our judgement for the very sufficient reason 
 that our ignorance prevents us from giving a full and perfect 
 account of any one thing whatever \ and especially of such 
 things as give no explanation of themselves. With this 
 misconception of Butler, Miss Hennell's declamation against 
 orthodoxy of itself falls to the ground. 
 
 Miss Hennell states with moderation 2 , that the work of 
 Butler, faithfully adjusted as it was to the needs of his own 
 day, is inadequate to the needs of ours. This is indeed indis- 
 putable. His argument does not of itself confute the Agnostic, 
 the Positivist, the Materialist ; and it is also true that, the 
 argument against miracles not having been fully developed 
 when he wrote, his observations upon the point, as they 
 stand, are incomplete. But these facts in no way sustain 
 the purpose or the title of Miss Hennell's tract. Butler 
 cannot minister to scepticism merely because he does not 
 conclusively dispose of questions that were not before him. 
 To supply the missing link between them, Miss Hennell 
 resorts to assumption. She assumes that he had examined 
 what she called the positive question, meaning apparently 
 the argument on the being and attributes of God handled 
 by Clarke, and had found it wanting. This assumption is 
 in the first place altogether gratuitous ; in the second highly 
 improbable. The works of Butler are limited in bulk, but 
 the immense amount of substance they contain furnishes 
 a very adequate outcome in the philosophical region for a life 
 like his, not over long, and for a mind so circumspect and 
 profound that, upon subjects of such difficulty, its operations 
 may of necessity have been slow. But also upon moral 
 grounds the supposition is one dishonouring to Butler. He 
 had, as we know, solemnly devoted his life to the search for 
 truth. Yet Miss Hennell can suppose that in theology he 
 accepted and argued from the important concessions of Deists, 
 without being within himself persuaded of their truth. This 
 too although she has herself warmly eulogized his high mental 
 integrity. But in truth he has on his own behalf settled 
 and de jure if not de facto closed this question. For he tells 
 us in the correspondence with Clarke that he had long hoped 
 
 Analogy, I. vii. 6. 2 Essay, pp. 20, 21. 
 
Ch. Ill] ON HIS CENSORS 41 
 
 and looked for a demonstrative proof of the being and attri- 
 butes of God, but had felt himself obliged to recede from this 
 extreme demand and to rest content with ' very probable 
 arguments,' which, as we know, in his mind carried with them 
 the full weight of practical assent, and also imposed all the 
 stringency of high moral obligation. 
 
 Why Miss Hennell should term Butler's method negative, 
 while it consists simply in the search for facts and in positive 
 deduction from them ; or why she should describe it as of 
 that ' metaphysical kind ' which is' very fruitful in delusion 1 ,' 
 while it is purely experimental throughout, it may be hardly 
 worth while to inquire. But she now proceeds to a ground 
 of argument both broad and relevant. Butler alleges that 
 there is a scheme of Providence. But we know only ' a most 
 insignificant portion of the whole order of things.' How, 
 then, can he be justified in attempting to make it into 
 a system, and put it forward for acceptance ? The answer 
 is plain from Butler's point of view. It is just because the 
 known facts, though their amount be insignificant in com- 
 parison with the facts unknown, yet afford sufficient proof 
 that there is a scheme, and that it is righteous, though the 
 evidence of it, like almost all the evidence on which we have 
 to found our conduct, is far from giving ' satisfaction ' : that 
 is, from being what we could desire 2 . Confute him on his 
 facts if you can : but his reasoning is perfectly consecutive ; 
 and, being based on human experience at large, is as durable 
 now as in his own day. 
 
 Miss Hennell proposes to make Butler responsible for setting 
 up a conflict between reason and faith. Reason is purposely 
 checked by obstacles arbitrarily interposed, in order that faith 
 may have space for cultivation 3 . 
 
 There is no other ground for saying reason is checked, than 
 the fact that our knowledge is limited. Our bounded powers 
 have a bounded field for their exercise and development. 
 This is not to check but to train them. Reason is only 
 checked, in any proper sense of the word, when it is for- 
 bidden to judge, according to the nature and degree of the 
 evidence supplied, upon matters presented for its acceptance. 
 
 1 Essay, p. 22. z Analogy, II. viii. 18. 3 Essay, p. 25. 
 
42 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 But this prerogative of reason is one which Butler has been 
 beyond most other writers solicitous to enforce. And as for 
 the doctrine that our struggles with obstacles may be good 
 and fruitful provided we do not believe that God designed 
 them l , it neither admits of support, nor deserves confutation. 
 Again, in making war on the idea that Duty is ' conformity 
 to the will of a Divine Moral Governor,' our critic is not 
 showing the sceptical tendency of Butler's Analogy, but 
 simply putting in question both the method and the basis 
 of instruction under the Gospel. 
 
 Miss Hennell proceeds to ascribe to Butler all the following 
 propositions 2 ; which she holds to be false : 
 
 i. That exceptions to a supposed moral rule are better 
 not regarded. There is not a word in Butler's Analogy to 
 this effect. 
 
 2. That it is desirable for man to content himself with 
 probabilities. What Butler says is, that the provision with 
 which we are furnished in order to the guidance of life is 
 a provision of probabilities. But the spirit alike of his life 
 and of his works is a spirit which must, on the one hand, 
 stimulate every sympathizing student to obtain in every case 
 the best evidence he can before forming his judgement, and, 
 on the other hand, warn him against mistaking the character 
 or overstating the value of that evidence. 
 
 3. That the effect of this reliance upon probabilities should 
 be little different from that of acting upon ascertained truth. 
 Now, Butler places the obligation to act, imposed by probable 
 evidence, very near that which ascertained truth would 
 impose. But he nowhere states or implies that the action 
 is to be the same. The possibilities of error, which remain in 
 the one case and not in the other, may have to be carefully 
 watched for, and therefore entail an important difference 
 in the mode of action. 
 
 4. That nature suggests a Governor who commands strict 
 obedience ; ' a Father best pleased with uninquiring filial 
 love.' There is not a word to this effect in the works of 
 Butler. They do not contain a single highly-coloured 
 passage in favour of authority, and their spirit throughout 
 is surely favourable to intelligent and unflinching scrutiny. 
 
 1 Essay, p. 26. 2 Ibid. p. 31. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 43 
 
 5. That perplexities have been contrived for us by the 
 Creator in order to prevent our reason from mastering our 
 faith. Not a word is, or can be, cited to support this ' aver- 
 ment.' The purpose suggested by Butler for these perplexities 
 is the training and hardening of faith as a moral principle, 
 without the smallest inkling of an aggression upon reason, 
 which Butler never places in conflict with faith. 
 
 Criticism of this kind can only be met by a challenge for 
 proof ; and, till proof is forthcoming, it is null and void. 
 Miss Hennell herself happens to agree with Butler in his 
 main contention that there is proof of a natural and moral 
 government with a ' preponderating tendency towards good * ' ; 
 and it is difficult to understand why she should labour to set 
 up a factitious opposition between the Bishop and herself, 
 by imputing to ,him, without a shadow of evidence, and really 
 in contradiction to the whole groundwork of his Treatise, that 
 he encourages a ' forced attempt to believe that all is good ! ' 
 Again, it is not a little singular that here 2 he should be 
 censured for efforts to produce a forced content with his case, 
 while we shall find Mr. Arnold making it his capital boast 
 against the Analogy that Butler himself has so loudly ex- 
 pressed his own discontent with it 3 . 
 
 I have now gone through all the material allegations which 
 Miss Hennell sets forth in fulfilment of the great promise 
 conveyed in her title-page, and have endeavoured to exhibit 
 them in their fullest breadth. In the large portion of it, from 
 p. 35 to the close, she abandons the attempt to prove her 
 thesis from his text, or from vague descriptions of it, or even 
 through the strange expedient of quotations from Professor 
 Rogers 4 and of holding Butler responsible for his language. 
 
 She now launches into pure speculation on his interior 
 state, and into theories, evidently dictated by prepossession, 
 on the tendencies of his works, which she conceives to be, 
 without doubt, on paper, towards unbelief, and in religious 
 practice towards the Church of Rome ; while she retains for 
 him a reverent and even affectionate admiration. She calls 
 him * our great ecclesiastical thinker ' ; she plainly intends 
 to crown him with honour when she places him in company 
 
 Essay, p. 32. 2 Ibid. p. 34. 3 See inf. p. 69. 4 As in pp. 27, 28. 
 
44 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 with Locke, and declares the two to be the 'legitimate 
 precursors of the positive philosophers of the present day.' 
 But I pass onward from some amiable inconsistencies, to 
 observe that it still remains to notice one more topic directly 
 connected with the announcement of the title-page, and indeed 
 the most important of them all, which has not been developed 
 in the tract, but which is glanced at by Dr. Martineau, when 
 he asks whether consummation of Butler's argument is indeed 
 a triumph for revelation, or against Natural Religion. 
 
 It is alleged with truth that, when Butler defends Religion, 
 Natural and Revealed, by the contention that they only 
 reproduce difficulties with which we are already familiar 
 in ' the constitution and course of nature,' he casts a weight 
 upon the back of nature itself, and raises the question 
 whether nature is adequate to sustain it. At the date of 
 the Analogy, and in dealing with the Deists, it might have 
 sufficed as a defence for controversial purposes, though it 
 hardly would have satisfied a mind like that of Butler, to 
 reply ' that is a closed question ; it is already disposed 
 of by your own admissions.' But their admissions bound 
 only themselves : and it would indeed be a heavy blow to 
 the general argument for belief, if Butler had left us in doubt 
 on the vital question whether the argument suggested by 
 these difficulties against the constitution and course of nature 
 themselves had any validity. 
 
 But upon this subject Butler is perfectly explicit. Pursuing 
 his usual method, he himself puts l the objection to his argu- 
 ment as strongly as it could be put by the most adverse critic. 
 He knows the gravity of the demand which he makes 
 upon the system of nature, and he asserts plainly that in 
 his judgement it can adequately meet that demand. In his 
 concluding chapter he declares that the general objections 
 against the moral system of nature have been obviated 2 . 
 So, upon the threshold of the work, he had declared that 
 the objections against religion were those similarly alleged 
 against nature, ' where they are found in fact to be incon- 
 clusive 3 .' Again : that a more distinct observation of certain 
 things ' contained in God's scheme of natural government ' 
 
 1 Analogy, II. viii. 2. 2 Ibid. II. ix. 7. 3 Ibid. Introduction. 
 
Ch.HL] ON HIS CENSORS 45 
 
 • will further show how little weight is to be laid upon these 
 objections 1 .' And further still, in a very bold passage, Butler 
 declares it has been proved (meaning, proved by himself), as 
 to the things which have been objected to in nature, that 
 it is not only possible but credible that they may be con- 
 sistent with wisdom, justice, and goodness ; that they may 
 be instances of them ; and that the constitution and govern- 
 ment of nature may be perfect in the highest possible 
 degree 2 . He does not, therefore, refer us to the constitution 
 and course of nature as our fulcrum, without having first 
 ascertained, in his own conviction at least, that the ground is, 
 and will remain firm under our feet. 
 
 
 III. Mr. LESLIE STEPHEN. 
 
 Mr. Stephen introduces Butler to our notice as 'the most 
 patient, original, and candid of philosophical theologians 3 .' 
 His special claim lies in moral earnestness. I must not pass 
 by in silence his ascription to Butler of a ' strangely cautious 
 understanding 4 .' Like the other censors, he does not with- 
 hold his admiration. The bulk of his remarks, however, 
 are adverse. Not unfrequently the censures are those of 
 a skirmisher rather than a combatant at close quarters. In 
 some cases, vague and general statements occur, which slide 
 unawares into unfairness. For example, 'That is the last 
 effort to represent doubt as a ground for action 5 .' Butler 
 nowhere represents doubt as a ground for action. Only 
 it may not be a sufficient reason against it ; there may be 
 good ground for action, doubt notwithstanding. These 
 remarks are offered to the reader by way of caveat. With all 
 Mr. Stephen's main contentions I shall attempt to deal ; . 
 passing by what is remote or secondary, or what has been 
 answered already 6 . What I may call the licence of misappre- 
 hension is once 7 , if not more than once, carried to heights 
 hardly credible in serious literature. Yet Mr. Stephen also 
 
 1 Analogy, I. vii. 3. 6 Ibid. v. 25. 
 
 2 Ibid. II. iv. 1. 6 For example, the objections 
 
 3 English Thought in the Eighteenth taken in his ch. v. 24. 
 
 Century, ch. ii. 11. 7 English Thought, §c, at the 
 
 4 Ibid. v. 9. close of ch. v. 26. 
 
46 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 abounds in generous admissions; and seems to feel, as an 
 opponent, not without discomfort, that, even for him, there 
 are two sides to the critical case. I proceed to particulars. 
 
 Mr. Stephen states in an ingenious form an objection, which 
 he applies first to the chapter on a Future Life x , and then to 
 the whole method. Butler, he says, avails himself of the 
 absence of contradiction, and passes by the absence of con- 
 firmation ; and so converts absolute ignorance into the likeness 
 of some degree of positive knowledge. As a foundation for 
 this censure, he states that Butler, in his first Chapter, leaves 
 it to be inferred that, because parts of the human organism 
 are not essential to life, therefore the whole organism is 
 superfluous. Had Butler done what Mr. Stephen imputes to 
 him, he would in truth have circumvented and trepanned his 
 reader: would have obtained from him an assent, or some 
 portion of an assent, without his knowledge. There is no 
 charge to which he is less open. Ho seems continually to be 
 warning us to keep our eyes open, to be always on our guard. 
 And, in the case before us, he is not advancing an argument, 
 but rebutting an objection 2 . His positions are these: (i) Our 
 gross organized bodies are no part of ourselves ; (2) for large 
 portions of them may be lost, while (the ego), the self, remains 
 exactly the same ; (3) as they are not part of ourselves, you 
 cannot from their dissolution infer ours. But the question 
 of dispensing with the whole organism is in no way raised or 
 touched; and the stratagem ascribed to Butler, which if 
 proved would shake our confidence, forms no part of his 
 tactics. Of two processes essentially distinct, he is following 
 the one. He is rebutting, not proving ; and he really leaves 
 no shadow of excuse for those who confound the one with the 
 other, and charge on him a confusion which is their own 
 exclusive property. 
 
 Mr. Stephen 3 truly describes Butler as teaching that, ac- 
 cording to his view, virtue is ' a plant intended to flourish 
 more vigorously in another world.' He allows that if we 
 could prove that the discipline of this life tended to develop 
 qualities fitted for another life, Butler's ' argument would be 
 forcible.' What does Mr. Stephen mean by proving 1 Butler 
 
 1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, v. 3. 2 Analogy, I. i. 12. 
 s English Thought, <9 c, v. 15. 
 
Ch.HL] ON HIS CENSORS 47 
 
 professes no more than to show that his contentions are 
 credible or probable ; and we must not ask him for a kind of 
 proof which he does not profess to give. But, in his fifth 
 chapter, he shows from observation that our condition here is 
 intended to be progressive ; one intended for our improve- 
 ment in virtue and piety; and it is from the progressive 
 character, which our experience exhibits to us in the various 
 stages of the present life, and the capacity of virtue for 
 further development 1 , that he draws a probable proof of 
 a further existence beyond the grave. Our life is a process : 
 and it is also an incomplete process. The qualities fitted for 
 this life will, it is probable, be fitted for the same creatures 
 in another life, and it is likely that the environment which 
 corresponds here will correspond there also. What is the flaw 
 in this argument ? Mr. Stephen sets up his own contention 
 on the matter at issue. 
 
 'If he could point to some quality, encouraged by the 
 existing conditions, and yet not useful under present con- 
 ditions, his case would have a certain support.' 
 
 But as it is, continues Mr. Stephen, he is in a hopeless 
 dilemma. Now, what colour of justice is there in the demand, 
 which alone places him in this dilemma? He is said to fail 
 in one of Mr. Stephen's conditions: he does not show that 
 the qualities, which are being formed in us, are useless in the 
 present life. Nor is there any reason why he should. What 
 his argument requires is to show a state of progress through 
 discipline. This he shows from experience as to this life, 
 and from likelihood as to the life to come. It is not that 
 we are busied with things useless here and useful there ; 
 but we are busied with things useful here and more useful 
 there ; more useful, because they will have grown by training, 
 and because the environment may be more favourable to their 
 expansion. If there be a flaw in this reasoning, Mr. Stephen 
 does not succeed in showing it. 
 
 Mr. Stephen next proceeds 2 to give what he says is Butler's 
 account of the scheme of redemption. In a single portion of 
 one of his chapters, Butler, who usually speaks of mediation 
 as causing the suffering of one man for another, uses the 
 
 Analogy, I. v. i, 2. 2 English Tlwught in the Eighteenth Century, v. 23. 
 
48 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 phrase ' vicarious punishment 1 ,' and observes that it is a provi- 
 dential appointment of every day's experience. This appears 
 to me to be one of the very rare instances, in which Butler's 
 language comes short of exact adaptation to his thought ; for 
 his ' vicarious punishment ' seems really to mean no more than 
 vicarious suffering. He, who suffers for another, may himself 
 receive in that suffering the very best means of progress, so 
 that it may be a sign not of God's wrath but of His favour. 
 Punishment, on the other hand, involves the element of some 
 judicial condemnation. Mr. Stephen adroitly avails himself 
 of this slip, and builds his statement upon it. But what right 
 have we to regard it as a slip 1 ? First, because it does not 
 harmonize with Butler's usual phraseology; for vicarious 
 suffering is his ordinary phrase. But secondly and princi- 
 pally because he nowhere employs it when treating of his 
 central subject, namely, the mediation of our Lord. Mr. 
 Stephen, however, in order to bring his argument to bear in 
 full force against Divine government, puts into Butler's 
 mouth, as if part of the mediatory scheme, the words ' Divine 
 punishments sometimes strike the virtuous person on account 
 of his virtue ; they often miss (striking T) the vicious person 
 on account of his vice.' But it seems that here Butler could 
 only be saddled with an assailable argument by making him 
 use words which are in direct contradiction to his actual 
 teaching. Listen to his own language 2 . 
 
 ' Good actions are never punished, considered as beneficial 
 to society, nor ill actions rewarded under the view of their 
 being hurtful to it. . . . 
 
 ' In the natural course of things, virtue as such is actually 
 rewarded, and vice as such punished.' 
 
 So the critic readily and safely contends that punishment 
 inflicted in his manner is no punishment at all. But, inflicted 
 in Butler's manner, it is punishment, and is both perceptible 
 and righteous, though not perfect nor uniform. To sum up, 
 then, on this particular objection ; in a particular case, where 
 Butler's usual language is careful and accurate, but he has in 
 a particular .passage twice used a lax expression, that lax 
 expression is treated as if it had been the normal exposition 
 
 1 Analogy, II. v. 22. 2 Ibid. I. iii. 12, 13. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 49 
 
 of his doctrine ; and then the doctrine itself is set out in 
 terms not only varying from but contradictory of what Butler 
 has emphatically stated to be the law of punishment and 
 reward, as it now subsists in living experience. 
 
 Mr. Stephen does not omit to reproduce the charge that the 
 real tendency of Butlers work is to unbelief; and this in 
 a form apparently more crude and more shallow, than that 
 which it elsewhere assumes. 
 
 ' No evasion can blind us to the true bearing of Butler's 
 statements : God made men liable to sin. He placed them 
 where they were certain to sin. He damns them everlastingly 
 for sinning. This is the road by which the Analogy leads to 
 Atheism 1 .' 
 
 This charge acquires a momentary colour of plausibility, 
 when we allow ourselves to dwell in a manner exceeding due 
 measure on the many and complex difficulties, which press 
 upon us as we contemplate the natural government of the 
 world. By gazing on them they multiply, like the stars to 
 the eye of one contemplating them by night ; and we may 
 thus come so to enlarge their number and exaggerate their 
 intricacy as to blind ourselves to the preponderating evidences 
 of righteous government, and to forget that of the huge 
 mass of evil in the world an overwhelming proportion is due 
 to our abuse of that free agency with which we have been en- 
 trusted. But it is not from this point of view that Mr. Stephen 
 is censuring the A nalogy. The recitals which introduce the 
 passage cited above simply exhibit Butler as a teacher of free 
 will and of probation. In construing Mr. Stephen's passage, 
 for ' Butler ' we may reasonably read ' Belief.' The charge of 
 opening a road to Atheism is not shown to lie against any- 
 thing in the Analogy, but (if at all) presumably to lie against 
 the dispensation and the world of which the Analogy under- 
 takes to treat. If the Almighty be chargeable with the 
 offences here laid at His door, it is not upon evidence drawn 
 from any matter peculiar to the works of Butler. Not 
 a word has any specific application to him. The application 
 is to the whole body of Christian theology, and to the Holy 
 Scriptures from their first page to their last. Nor may we 
 
 1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, v. 22. 
 E 
 
5 o ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I. 
 
 stop here. It. strikes at the whole body of theistic belief. 
 Both the charge and the answer are recorded with childlike 
 simplicity in the Odyssey. ' Mortals,' says Zeus in the Olym- 
 pian Assembly l , ' hold us responsible for the prevailing evils : 
 but it is themselves, apart from destiny, who by their sins 
 afflict themselves ' : , * . , , v 
 
 01 0€ K(ll avroi 
 
 acprjaiv aracrGaXirjaiv virtppopov oXye' e\ovaiv. 
 
 Mr. Stephen appropriates a section to Butler's ' Chapter on 
 Necessity 2 '; which he thinks 'probably the weakest part of 
 his argument,' and gives proof that in pure metaphysics he is 
 but a child when compared with Hume, Hobbes, or Jonathan 
 Edwards. For Butler, he says, confounds two theories, which 
 are ' really contradictory.' One of these is a fate, ' which deter- 
 mines certain points in the chain of events, and does not 
 determine the intermediate points ' ; whereas Necessity, a 
 doctrine of which Mr. Stephen speaks with much appearance 
 of sympathy, determines all things alike. This confusion of 
 the two things is the sole ground on which Butler is con- 
 demned as no adept in pure metaphysics ; which it appears to 
 me that he may have mistrusted as a somewhat barren study. 
 But the ground of Mr. Stephen's verdict is no better than 
 a quicksand, and the supposed confusion is a pure misappre- 
 hension, unaccountably engendered in the mind of Mr. Stephen. 
 For the first paragraph of Butler's sixth Chapter says a fatalist 
 must, as such, assert ' that the opinion of universal Necessity ' 
 is reconcileable with the facts of human experience 3 . So that 
 the fatalist as defined by Butler is one who as such believes 
 that necessity is universal, and the eclectic necessitarian, who 
 holds only an intermittent necessity, is nowhere to be found 
 in Butler's treatise. It is hard to comprehend how an acute 
 critic and conscientious reporter of his author, such as 
 Mr. Stephen, can have fallen into so palpable an error. As 
 to Butler, his real offence seems to lie in the curt severity 
 with which he, without confuting it, casts aside as ' absurd 4 ' 
 the opinion apparently rather favoured by Mr. Stephen. The 
 whole of his argument in the Chapter, which is clear and 
 
 Odyssey, i. 33, 34. 
 
 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, v. 18. 
 
 Analogy, I. vi. 1. * Ibid. I. vi. 1, 8. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 51 
 
 consecutive, would be marred by the introduction of a dualism 
 in the theory he is exposing. 
 
 But Mr. Stephen deals with the subject of Necessity more 
 at large, and draws from it the reasons of his fundamental 
 objection to the argument of the Analogy. Butler's Neces- 
 sity he says 1 is an external entity, coercing God and man 
 alike. He does not impeach the conclusiveness of Butler's 
 argument as it stands ; but he alleges that there is a ' more 
 profound theology,' which teaches that Necessity dwells within 
 the will of God. He justly lays on Butler the responsibility 
 of teaching moral desert, and punishment for sin -. This 
 holds with Butler's representation of a Deity ' who leaves us 
 a certain sphere of independent action.' But then there is 
 a God ' proved by ontological reasoning,' evidently identical 
 with the God of the ' more profound theology ' to whom we 
 have already been introduced. This Being is Himself the 
 fountain-head of Necessity; and, as it appears that this Will, 
 which is also Necessity, governs all our acts, the doctrine 
 of the penal character of suffering (naturally enough) becomes 
 1 monstrous.' We can all the more readily tolerate objections 
 to Butler's argument, when we thoroughly comprehend the 
 standing-point of the objector. In this instance, his ttov <ttS> 
 appears to be supplied by the philosophical system which 
 effaces from the universe free agency, responsibility, and 
 moral desert, and simply introduces us to an internecine war 
 upon first principles, with which the Analogy had here 
 nothing to do. Butler ceases to be the true object of the 
 critic's activity. He really aims his darts at the doctrine of 
 free-will, ' the device by which most theologians justify God's 
 wrath with the work of His own hands.' 
 
 In his account of Hume's Essay on Providence and a future 
 state 3 , Mr. Stephen treats the Essay as destroying Butler's 
 argument for a moral government in the world. Hume asks 
 if there are marks of distributive justice in the world. If 
 you reply that there are, then, he contends, you have nothing 
 more to expect. If there are not, you have no groundwork 
 of Divine justice to argue from. But further, 'If you say 
 
 1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, v. 19. 3 Ibid. v. 20-22. 
 
 3 Ibid. vi. 29. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 that the justice of the gods, at present, exerts itself in part 
 but not in its full intent, I answer that you have no reason 
 to give it any particular extent, but only so far as you see it 
 at present exert itself.' This argument, apparently quoted 
 by Mr. Stephen as conclusive, seems rather to deserve the 
 epithet awarded by Beattie, who calls the Essay flimsy. We 
 shall see directly that from the meshes of so poor a dilemma 
 the weakest fly might escape. What Hume tells us is, that 
 the distributive justice, which we are supposed to see in the 
 world, begins and end's with itself, and is unalterable. A 
 strange exaggeration indeed of the doctrine of continuance, 
 which Butler has perhaps over-stated, but which Hume, the 
 Hume of Mr. Stephen, absolutely caricatures. Our case is 
 this. We have a life, not uniform and homogeneous through- 
 out, but progressive. The several parts of this life exhibit 
 to us a development ; and this development represents to us 
 a plan and a purpose. But, whilst it is governed by a scheme, 
 imperfectly developed it is true but still a scheme, of distri- 
 butive justice combined with intelligence, the plan is seen 
 to be incomplete. Now, given an intelligent Author of 
 nature, who will say, with these data before him, that there 
 is no presumption in favour of the idea that this incomplete 
 scheme is on its way to completion 1 Let us suppose a case 
 of commonplace occurrence. A maker of engines is engaged 
 in constructing a complicated machine. While he is at work, 
 the dinner hour has struck, and he departs for his meal. 
 During his absence a visitor arrives, sees the work in its 
 unfinished state, and recognizes its plan and purpose. Will 
 not this visitor presume, will not nature and reason oblige 
 him to presume, that the workman means to return, and to 
 finish the task he has in hand? Childhood and boyhood 
 raise a presumption of youth and manhood to complete them. 
 And as the earlier stages of life raise a presumption of the 
 later stages to complete them, so life as a whole, by virtue of 
 the constructive features it presents, raises a presumption 
 of its continuance hereafter in order that the work, which has 
 been visibly begun, may be proceeded with, and may reach its 
 integration. 
 
 In his ninth chapter, Mr. Stephen proceeds to deal with 
 the Sermons of Butler. He rightly connects them with the 
 
Ch. ill.] ON HIS CENSORS 53 
 
 Analogy by observing that, as there lie comes at the existence 
 of God through the facts of the universe, so here he reaches 
 the same great doctrine through the facts of human nature. 
 In that nature he finds the law of virtue written, with 
 conscience at hand, as God's vicegerent, to enforce it. But 
 in setting out the facts of the case, Butler also finds that 
 ' duty and interest are perfectly coincident ; for the most part 
 in this world, but entirely and in every instance if we take in 
 the future V Hereupon Mr. Stephen observes, • Butler is 
 bowing the knee in the house of Rimmon ; and ... is con- 
 senting to make virtue a question of profit and loss 2 ' ; and 
 thus ' is endangering the very core of his teaching.' Now 
 Butler nowhere makes the authority of virtue dependent on 
 its utility. He goes so far as to teach that our obligation to 
 follow virtue remains, even if we are not convinced of its 
 utility. Is not, then, this criticism pointless? Nay, might 
 it not be called captious 1 But the critic proceeds to a • more 
 vital ' objection. For, as Butler has taught that, in disobeying 
 conscience, we act wrongly, this, says Mr. Stephen, means 
 that those who disobey conscience, ' disobey conscience.' This 
 is not a correct representation of the Sermons. ' Conscience 
 must in some way derive its credentials from some other 
 authority than itself V True : but this is the very demand 
 which Butler satisfies. Our nature comes from God ; and it is 
 God, who has given to conscience its place of supremacy in 
 our nature. These are propositions sometimes asserted, always 
 implied, throughout the Sermons. And Mr. Stephen himself 
 closes by limiting his charge to this, that Butler referred the 
 promptings of conscience to a supernatural source. A charge 
 not hard for him to bear. 
 
 The remaining exceptions taken to the Sermons are meta- 
 physical, and need not therefore be noticed in this place. 
 Mr. Stephen winds up his review with a disinterested and 
 truly noble acknowledgement of Butler's moral grandeur. 
 
 ' With all his faults, Butler remains in a practical sense the 
 greatest moralist of this century. . . . Theology, in him, seems 
 
 1 Sermons, iii. 13. 2 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ix. 51. 
 
 3 Ibid. ix. 51. 
 
54 ON HIS CENSORS [Ft. I. 
 
 to utter an expiring protest against the meanness and the 
 flimsiness of the rival theories, by which men attempted to 
 replace it 1 .' 
 
 The passage, from which these few words are extracted, 
 may serve to strengthen the hope that, over and above the con- 
 viction which they carry to a large class of minds, the works 
 of Butler will always render valuable service in the mitigation 
 of controversy ; both by good example, and in assisting men 
 of upright minds, though of differing opinions, to regard 
 each other with mutual sympathy and respect. And thus 
 much is unquestionable. As Johnson said of Goldsmith 
 in his admirable epitaph, Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit, so 
 it may be safely averred of Butler, Nemo impugnavit qui 
 non laudavit. 
 
 [In the Number of the Nineteenth Century for January, 
 1896, Mr. Leslie Stephen referred to the remarks relating 
 to him in this chapter. His paper, entitled ' Bishop Butler's 
 Apologist,' refers but slightly to me. It reasons upon the 
 argument of the A nalogy at large in a manner which, as it 
 appears to me, would have been possible had Butler's position 
 been what it supposes. Butler, however, nowhere proposes 
 to offer a complete affirmative justification of the subsisting 
 scheme for the moral government of the world. He admits 
 the difficulties presented by it, and only contends that we 
 should examine it as a scheme ; and that, when so examined, 
 it warrants his conclusions and demands. 
 
 He cites James Mill as having been led, ' according to his 
 boh,' ' to Atheism by reading the A nalogy.' But Mr. Stephen's 
 memory has here strangely misled him. The testimony of 
 the son, in a most interesting passage 2 , is this. His father, 
 bred as a Presbyterian, was on the point of giving up all 
 belief in religion, Natural and Revealed, when the Analogy 
 came into his hands, and arrested for a time the downward 
 progress of his mind, by the proof it gave that the difficul- 
 ties alleged against religion were also met with in nature. 
 He eventually, however, concluded, 'doubtless after many 
 struggles,' that ' concerning the origin of things nothing what- 
 
 1 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, ix. 54. 
 
 2 Autobiography of J. S. Mill, p. 38. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 55 
 
 ever could be known.' All that can be alleged against Butler 
 is that, though the Analogy did much in sustaining Mr. Mill's 
 belief, it did not do all. 
 
 As it is one of the capital claims of Butler to draw his 
 reasonings from experience, I must notice Mr. Stephen's alle- 
 gation l that Butler ' stipulates beforehand that experience 
 in general is to be regarded as exceptional.' Now, except 
 in recording the admission of the Deists with respect to 
 a Supreme Being, Butler has no such thing as a ' stipulation 
 beforehand.' He takes the facts of experience in a body and 
 unconditionally, and draws from them all his inferences. 
 
 With regard to Mr. Stephen's argument on the Atonement 2 , 
 I am content to refer to my own reasoning in the Nineteenth 
 Century for September, 1894, as furnishing a reply. 
 
 And with regard to the closing part of his paper on 'the 
 fallacy of Free-will 3 ,' I need do no more than present as my 
 answer the chapter in this volume in which I have treated 
 of Determinism, with a brief addition which I have now 
 made.] 
 
 IV. Mr. MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 If, among the more full reviews of Bishop Butler's works, 
 Miss Hennell's was from its tone the most attractive, the 
 review by Mr. Matthew Arnold, in his Last Essays on Church 
 and Religion, is the most thoroughgoing. It consists of 
 two parts : the one attacking the Sermons, the other the 
 Analogy ; and it would be difficult to say which of the two 
 is the more condemnatory. He admits, indeed, that there 
 are ' many precious things ' contained in the works of this 
 great man 4 , and he sets forth at times with truth and force 
 some of his doctrines 5 . Further, he introduces his hostile 
 review with an admiring and sympathizing account of Butler, 
 which is of the highest interest. There is nothing petty in 
 the matter or spirit of his charges. His friends need not fear 
 that his character as a man will suffer from the publication 
 of his (I think) unfortunate essay on ' Bishop Butler and the 
 
 1 Nineteenth Century, Jan. 1896, * Last Essays on Church and 
 p. 113. Religion, pp. 121, 147. 
 
 2 Ibid. pp. 119, 120. ' Ibid. p. 117. s E. g. ibid. p. 144. 
 
 %^l r £* 
 
56 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 Zeitgeist ' ; a Zeitgeist of which we read from page to page 
 in the title, but hear very little in the text. This perhaps 
 may be accounted for by the supposition that, in the critic's 
 own view, the term is but a synonym for • Matthew Arnold,' 
 for whom it is perhaps well that the fame of his performances 
 in other fields cannot be justly disparaged on account of 
 his failure — if, indeed, he has failed — in this portion of his 
 indubitably high-minded searches after truth. 
 
 Mr. Arnold was placed by his own peculiar opinions in 
 a position far from auspicious with respect to this particular 
 undertaking. He combined a fervent zeal for the Christian 
 religion with a not less boldly avowed determination to trans- 
 form it beyond the possibility of recognition by friend or 
 foe. He was thus placed under a sort of necessity to con- 
 demn the handiwork of Bishop Butler, who in a certain sense 
 gives it a new charter. For he not only accepts that religion 
 talis qualis, but secures for it, in the opinion of his eulogists, 
 a high and secure, as well as to some extent a new, place in 
 the region of philosophy. The critic does not recognize this 
 radical difference as in any degree the cause of his hostility 
 to Butler ; but, whatever view we may take of the merits, 
 there can be no doubt that the system of Butler, and the 
 system of Matthew Arnold, cannot stand together. 
 
 So that we have little occasion for surprise when we are 
 introduced to an attack along the whole line, alike minute 
 in its details and broad in its general scope. After reciting 
 no less than five out of the multitude of the glowing pane- 
 gyrics on Butler, which have been pronounced by various 
 writers, who think he has ' firmly and impregnably established 
 his doctrine,' Mr. Arnold proposes to ascertain 'how far the 
 claim is solid V 
 
 While I am very desirous that this examination of 
 Mr. Arnold's objections should in no degree exhibit a spirit 
 of retaliation, I must frankly own that some of them seem 
 to me to be such as could only have been suggested by what 
 I must term the spirit of objection. Nor is extremism the 
 only fault which it seems necessary at once to allege against 
 Mr. Arnold's censures. There are others, which cannot be 
 
 Last Essays on Church and Religion, pp. 67, 68. 
 
Ch ill] ON HIS CENSORS 57 
 
 overlooked. One of these is that he thinks it quite enough, 
 on various occasions, to bestow hard condemnatory epithets 
 upon some of Butler's best considered and most careful 
 statements, and then to treat them as sufficiently disposed 
 of. He censures in these cases de haut en has. His ipse 
 dixit, his ava-noheiKTai (fxicrets, are to be accepted by his reader 
 as self-attested. He ascends the magisterial chair, and delivers 
 the doom which we have only to register. Another fault, 
 more elementary, and still less pardonable, is the not un- 
 frequent occurrence of palpable inaccuracy in representing 
 the doctrine which he is about to arraign. 
 
 It may be convenient at once to present some illustra- 
 tions of the magisterial method, which I have imputed to 
 Mr. Arnold. 
 
 Butler teaches that reason alone is not for man in his 
 present condition a sufficient motive to virtue ; and that 
 affections, of a mixed character, indeed, but which work 
 upon the whole for good, have been joined to it, in order 
 to supply what was lacking. And, again, Butler teaches that 
 we have a more lively sympathy with distress than with 
 prosperity, and finds the reason herein, that distress calls for 
 our intervention, while prosperity does not. The first of 
 these positions is pelted by Mr. Arnold with hard words ; 
 it is ' fanciful,' is an ' immense hypothesis,' is not ' based upon 
 observation,' cannot ' satisfy the mind '.' The second is simply 
 dismissed as 'fantastic 2 .' To take a third instance, Butler 
 regards anger in its twofold form, as sudden and as deliberate. 
 The first of these, he thinks, is given to avert pain or loss ; 
 the second, to further justice, by preventing or reducing 
 injury. And as pity is often too weak for its purpose if 
 single-handed, we are furnished with indignation against 
 wrong to reinforce it. But the Bishop's teaching on anger 
 is set forth with extreme care and fullness 3 . Mr. Arnold 
 disposes of it by saying that it will be found to be arbitrary, 
 fantastic, and unavailing, at times when facts are felt to be 
 necessary, though it may pass for being Newtonian in times 
 when everything is conventional and no man looks closely 
 
 1 Last Essays on Church and Religion, pp. 100-2. 2 Ibid. p. 103. 
 
 3 Sermons, viii. 4- 11. 
 
58 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 into himself l . To hard epithets are here joined some bald 
 generalities; but to grapple * with Butler's full and closely 
 reasoned statement there is in these cases no attempt 
 whatever. 
 
 We are next arrested by another of our critic's char- 
 acteristic faults, his want of accuracy. He complains of 
 Butler for teaching that compassion is given us 'in order 
 to lead us to public spirit,' and, again, to ' a settled, reasonable 
 principle of benevolence to mankind 2 .' But, so far as I find, 
 Butler has taught neither the one nor the other. He connects 
 public spirit 3 with the love of our neighbour, and thus with 
 charity, benevolence, and good will. It is not compassion, 
 but a form of what is now called Altruism. Nor is com- 
 passion the basis of benevolence : that is an original, distinct, 
 particular affection 4 . 
 
 Mr. Arnold may not stand alone in complaining of the 
 manner in which Butler separates self-love from the par- 
 ticular affections. Among these he places benevolence ; and 
 self-love appears to be towards ourselves what benevolence 
 is towards others. On the other hand, there is a practical 
 consideration, which may have led Butler to this mode of 
 classification. Benevolence, it may be said, is occasional, but 
 self-love has in each of us a continuous occupation ; and so 
 largely and variously does it employ the particular affections 
 in the prosecution of its aim, that there is some conveni- 
 ence in ordinarily viewing it as apart from them. There is 
 no equivalent reason for removing benevolence from the list 
 of particular affections. 
 
 Butler has observed that, were it not for the calls of 
 hunger, thirst, and weariness, we should often neglect the 
 proper means of cherishing our life, although self-love 
 steadily recommends them. Mr. Arnold replies that this 
 supposition is unsatisfactory, and absurd 5 . But he should 
 surely condescend a little to the weakness of such readers 
 as see in Butler's observation nothing but very plain good 
 sense, and inform them of the ground on which he launches 
 this anathema. 
 
 1 Last Essays on Church and 3 Sermons, vii. 1,3, 4 Ibid. v. 2. 
 
 Religion, pp. 104, 105. 5 Last Essays on Church and 
 
 - Ibid. pp. 106, 107. Religion, pp. 106, 107. 
 
Ch.HL] ON HIS CENSORS 59 
 
 Butler is next arraigned for having taught that it is as 
 unnatural to suppress compassion by turning away from the 
 wretched as it would be to attempt suppressing hunger ' by 
 keeping from the sight of food V ' Can there be anything 
 more strange/ says Mr. Arnold, ' than to pronounce compassion 
 to be a call, a demand of nature to relieve the unhappy ; 
 precisely in the same manner as hunger is a natural call for 
 food, and to say that to neglect one call is just as much 
 a violation of nature as the other 2 1 ' But the Bishop has 
 not said that it is a violation of nature ' precisely in the same 
 manner.' On the contrary, he has said expressly that, though 
 the violation of nature is equally present in both cases, yet 
 the incidents are different ; we can do one with greater success 
 than we can do the other ■"'. The manner, then, is far from 
 being ' precisely the same.' But, after all, the Bishop's sin 
 in this matter is that he compares the two as being, both 
 of them, violations of nature. In the case of hunger, the 
 idea of its being such is near and familiar. In the case of 
 compassion, the idea is remote and probably never may 
 have occurred to us. Butler, acting according to a method 
 of sound philosophy, employs the familiar to illustrate the 
 unknown. But he does more. The unknown is here closely 
 associated with a practical and urgent duty ; a duty which 
 involves more or less of self-sacrifice. He is now in the 
 pulpit; where it is his right and obligation to appeal to 
 feeling. By his comparison between hunger and compassion 
 he at once conveys knowledge and arouses right emotion. 
 In so doing he uses the hortatory method ; yet, strange to 
 say, he is taken to task by Mr. Arnold for generally avoiding 
 it. Yes ; it was Mr. Arnold who, at the outset of his article 4 , 
 found the gravest fault with Butler because his method 
 was totally unlike that adopted by true Christianity; and 
 because, instead of aiming directly at the heart and will, he 
 trusted everything to ' fair logic and fair reason.' But here, 
 as heretofore, Butler's contention stands on solid ground ; 
 the demand of compassion is as natural, in the highest sense, 
 
 1 Sermons, vi. 6. 3 Sermons, vi. 6. 
 
 2 Last Essays on Church and * Last Essays on Church and 
 lidigion, p. 108. Religion, pp. 67, 68. 
 
60 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. T. 
 
 as the demand of hunger, though compassion may not be 
 armed with equally coercive means for its enforcement. 
 
 The next charge against him is more plausible. It is his 
 teaching that man's proper aim is to escape from misery 
 rather than to pursue positive happiness. Against this rather 
 saddening doctrine, our censor quotes a French moralist, who 
 writes thus : ' The aim for man is, to augment the feeling of 
 joy.' But, further, Butler is here found guilty by Mr. Arnold 
 of contravening ' the clear voice of our religion 1 . " Rejoice 
 and give thanks" exhorts the Old Testament rejoice evermore, 
 exhorts the New.' 
 
 A more careful writer than Mr. Arnold would deserve to be 
 smartly handled for extracting words from a Psalm composed 
 for a joyful occasion, and representing them as a standing 
 maxim or precept of the Old Testament in general. . But he 
 is only acting in his too usual manner. The subject he raises 
 gives him, perhaps, a better standing-ground than is supplied 
 by most of his ill-conceived and infelicitous attempts. There 
 may be in Butler's words somewhat of a melancholic strain, 
 drawn from within himself. But they are not to be met 
 aright by simply turning them topsy-turvy, as seems to be 
 proposed. Mr. Arnold can hardly have imagined that in the 
 two words he cites from St. Paul the Apostle intended to 
 do more than supply a much-needed solace, a reactive and 
 bracing incitement, in effect a moral tonic, to enable those 
 whom he was addressing to bear up against their trials 
 and their burdens. Butler might perhaps have said, I am not 
 speaking of the temper in which we are to live. I am speak- 
 ing of the objects we are to pursue. And then his position 
 may be stated thus ; that labour in avoidance is on the whole 
 more fruitfully bestowed than labour in appetence. 
 
 The charge of contravening religion ought not to have been 
 brought. The picture of the actual face of the world pre- 
 sented in the New Testament is not a joyous one. It is rest, 
 and not felicity, which our Saviour promises to the weary 
 and heavy-laden. The world is represented as under the 
 dominion of the Evil One. St. Paul points to consolation 
 elsewhere when he describes life as ' this light affliction, which 
 
 1 Last Essays on Church, and Religion, p. no. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 61 
 
 is but for a moment.' True, the ' present distress ' lay harder 
 and heavier upon him than upon us. But the great, the 
 enduring, the fundamental sorrow of life is the conflict of 
 the soul with sin, which endures, and must endure now, even 
 as it did then. The Greek more than any other perhaps 
 enjoyed his joy, and was of all men the least pessimistic : 
 yet we find in Homer that no creature creeps upon the earth 
 more lamentable than man ; and of the two caskets, which 
 lie before the throne of Zeus, and are charged with the 
 destinies of the race, the better can only boast of mixed 
 contents, while the other is filled with unmitigated woe 1 . 
 It is probable, indeed, that from the reconstructed Christianity 
 and Scripture of Mr. Arnold there had disappeared, together 
 with (or as involved in) the ' anthropomorphic and miraculous,' 
 everything that belongs to what may be called the evangelical 
 sadness of the Gospel. In his light-hearted citation from his 
 French moralist, and his misapprehended Scripture, Mr. Arnold 
 followed too summary a method : and he probably omitted to 
 take into account that a scheme of religion such as his had 
 no room for the idea of sin in its full force and virulence, 
 and that such a scheme really disabled him from passing 
 an impartial judgement on the difficult questions raised by 
 Butler's observations 2 . 
 
 It is not surprising that Butler's account of self-love should 
 have become an object of criticism : and it is perhaps to be 
 wished that he could have found occasion to gather together 
 into one cojisjjectus all the important and leading propositions 
 on the subject of it, which are scattered about his Works. 
 But, though some difficulty arises from this sporadic method 
 of treatment, and from the want of facile reference and com- 
 parison between one part of the Works and another, it is 
 not easy to excuse Mr. Arnold for the account 8 he has given 
 of Butler's doctrine of self-love. He speaks of Butler's ' arbi- 
 trary definition ' of self-love. He says Butler describes it 
 
 1 II. xvii. 446, xxiv. 527. molishes the criticism of Mr. 
 
 2 From a different point of view, Arnold relating to joy. 
 
 but one entirely just, Mr. R. H. 3 Last Essays on Church and Re- 
 
 Hutton, in his Modern Guides of ligion, pp. ill, 114. 
 English Thought, pp. 1 19-21, de- 
 
62 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. T. 
 
 ' occasionally ' (should he not have said habitually ?) as ' a 
 general desire of one's own happiness.' But his ' constant 
 notion of the pursuit of our interest is, that it is the pur- 
 suit of our temporal good, as he calls it ; the cool consideration 
 of our own temporal advantage.' Now, there are various 
 passages, in which Butler deals somewhat at large with the 
 subject of self-love. One of these is in the fifth chapter of 
 the first part of the Analogy 1 . Another is in the eleventh 
 of the Fifteen sermons 2 . In neither of these does he connect 
 self-love in any way with the present world. Nowhere does 
 he associate it with our ' temporal ' good, which Mr. Arnold 
 seems to put forward as the favourite appellation. The 
 passages which name self-love may be reckoned in the Analogy 
 by the score; but in one only of these, or possibly two 3 (so 
 far as I know), does the phrase appear in any expressed 
 relation to our worldly interest. And here Mr. Arnold may 
 be to a certain extent upheld, but only if we content ourselves 
 with a miserably garbled quotation. For Butler names ' that 
 reasonable self-love, the end of which is our worldly interest 4 .' 
 But the sentence, taken as a whole, entirely overthrows him. 
 Butler is speaking of the way in which ' habits and passions ' 
 lead us into vice, apart from external temptations. And yet, 
 he says, this error is doubly forbidden : for 'particular passions 
 are no more coincident with prudence, or that reasonable 
 self-love, the end of which is our worldly interest, than they 
 are with the principle of virtue and religion.' 
 
 Now Butler is not here treating of our nature at large, 
 or of self-love as such. He is simply treating of a matter of 
 worldly conduct, and of the motives which ought in reason 
 to guide it. One of these is drawn from ' virtue and religion ' ; 
 the other is from interest, or ' that reasonable self-love the 
 end of which is our worldly interest.' Indicating in one 
 branch of the sentence the loftier motive for doing right, 
 he points out, in the other, the lower one. He is not defining 
 self-love. He is speaking of self-love not at large, but in 
 relation to worldly interest, when it ought undoubtedly to 
 
 1 Analogy, I. v. 24 n. 2 Sermons, xi. 4, 5. 3 Analogy, I. iv. 4. 
 
 4 There is also a passage in the Sermons where self-love is placed 
 in association with present interest. 
 
Ch.IIL] ON HIS CENSORS 63 
 
 act as an adminiculum to virtue and religion. Is it not 
 rather too bad on the part of a censor, and one, as he has 
 touchingly noted, 'past fifty years of age,' first to take this 
 particular and limited reference to self-love where it is placed 
 in a particular light, and to exalt it into a definition ; and 
 then, in still more reckless disregard of his author's text, to 
 describe this isolated use of the phrase amidst a number 
 of utterly adverse instances, as Butler's ' constant notion ' of 
 self-love "? 
 
 Then, shifting the ground of his assault, Mr. Arnold com- 
 plains that Butler ' sophisticated things ' by saying l that love 
 of our neighbour is no more distant from (Butlerian) self-love 
 than hatred of our neighbour; a mode of reasoning which, 
 he holds, will never convince or carry a serious student. It 
 is most unfortunate that, in many of his charges, Mr. Arnold, 
 probably feeling, as we have all felt, the difficulties of 
 reference to particular passages, so often fails to cite what 
 he censures. The language of Butler is this — that : 
 
 ' Benevolence is not in any respect more at variance with 
 self-love than any other particular affection whatever ; but it 
 is, in every respect, at least as friendly to it 2 .' 
 
 And again 3 , more at large, the Bishop says that there is 
 ' no peculiar inconsistence and contrariety ' between benevo- 
 lence and self-love. The whole idea of self-love being affection 
 to ourselves, it cannot exclude affection to others, otherwise 
 than by not including it. Thus we are carefully led up to 
 the broader proposition that love of our neighbour is ' no 
 more distant from self-love than hatred of our neighbour.' 
 For Butler holds all things which are distinct to be ' equally 
 distinct.' What Mr. Arnold deems sophistication appears to 
 be an accurate and studiously careful statement. 
 
 And why should we set up a factitious opposition between 
 benevolence and self-love ? The duty of doing good to others, 
 and the duty of doing good to ourselves, rest on the same 
 authority, and form in harmony portions of the work which 
 the Almighty has appointed for us to do during our sojourn 
 upon earth. True, there is a perverted and overgrown 
 
 1 Last Essays on Church and 2 Preface to the Sermons, 32. 
 
 Religion, p. 112. 8 Sermons, xi. 2, 8, 9. 
 
64 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 self-love, which is at odds with benevolence ; but it is just as 
 much at odds with sound and reasonable self-love. And to 
 shift the terms of Butler's equation by substituting another 
 self-love for his, and then making him responsible for the 
 conflict between this self-love and benevolence, would not be 
 philosophy, but quackery. 
 
 But again, perhaps from feeling uneasy on the ground he 
 has chosen, our critic alters it ; and makes it his capital 
 charge that Butler gives no account, or a fantastic account, 
 of the genesis of conscience, benevolence, compassion, and the 
 rest. ' Into this vast, dimly-lighted, primordial region 1 ' 
 Butler never enters. Now, his so-called fantastic account is 
 this : By observation he finds these powers set in human 
 nature as essential parts of it, planted there by its Author. 
 So he treats them as ultimate facts, and uses them as points 
 of departure. And it may be that the student will prefer 
 this eminently rational mode of handling to a cruise with 
 Mr. Arnold in his ' dimly-lighted and primordial regions.' 
 
 Into those regions Mr. Arnold now proceeds to introduce 
 us, by setting up a counter-philosophy 2 . Its references to 
 Bishop Butler are here for the most part inaccurate. His 
 picture is, indeed, so different in tone and colour from that of 
 his Author, as in a great degree to account for the severity of 
 his judgements. As compared with the system and method 
 of Butler, it is indeed a philosophy upon stilts. And it 
 provokes the repetition of the old dictum that what is true 
 in it is not new, and what is new is not true. He begins by 
 substituting for Butler's ' self-love ' the desire of happiness, or 
 effort to live. For the planting of conscience and affections 
 in us by the Author of nature, he substitutes a growth of 
 them, and of the practical reason, as arising out of the effort 
 to live. (This is simply putting a non-theistic in the place of 
 a theistic theory.) Such an effort, or instinct, becomes the 
 strongest, and in virtue of strength gains the right to rule. 
 But learning from experience that men are ' solidary,' it also 
 learns, by a process not explained, that private ought to give 
 way to public good. Man likewise finds in himself a higher 
 and a lower life, and Mr. Arnold unduly charges Butler with 
 
 Last Essays on Church and Religion, p. 113. 2 Ibid. pp. 1 13-21. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 65 
 
 saying that they are alike the voice of God. Experience 
 gradually established the higher life, and conscience is the 
 recognition of that experience. If we abstract the unhappily 
 numerous points in which, from want of care, he misstates 
 Butler, there does not appear to be any point in which the 
 critic makes good his hostile position. The doctrine of con- 
 science, enthroned amidst the various impelling powers of our 
 nature, and calling them to account with authority, remains 
 unshaken ; and Mr. Arnold's contention that the earnest 
 inquirer will give no heed to a rational account of human 
 nature, until he has been supplied with a theory as to the 
 genesis of all our faculties, appears as reasonable as if it 
 were contended that a traveller, terribly in earnest from 
 a sharpened appetite, arriving at his home, and finding 
 an excellent dinner prepared for him, would not dream of 
 sitting down to partake of it until he had been informed 
 of all the processes which the cook had employed to make 
 it ready. 
 
 We have now reached the close of the criticism on the 
 Sermons. 
 
 Butler published the Analogy at forty-four, and was still, 
 as Mr. Arnold thinks, too young. To read it. is, however, 
 ' a very valuable mental exercise V But it is of no value to 
 us, unless we hold the positions of the Deists, with whom it 
 dealt; 'and we do not.' Surely a strange doctrine. Few 
 readers of the present day hold either the opinions of 
 Mr. Burke, as given in his Reflections on the French Revolu- 
 tion, or the opinions of the revolutionists. Does it, therefore, 
 follow that we have nothing to learn from the book, and 
 need not care ' two straws ' about it ? Nor should any man 
 (it seems) read the Provincial Letters, unless he holds the 
 same opinions which Pascal exposed. 
 
 The argument of the Analogy, says Mr. Arnold, is an 
 argument to prove, from the reality of the laws of moral 
 government in this world, a like reality of moral government 
 in the world to come 2 . But the grave inaccuracy of this 
 statement is shown by the very title-page of Butler's work, 
 which is inscribed The Analogy of Religion, Natural and 
 
 1 Last Essays on Church and Religion, p. 122. 2 Ibid. p. 125. 
 
 F 
 
66 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 Revealed, to the constitution and course of Nature. Accord- 
 ing to Mr. Arnold, it ought to have been ' Moral Government 
 in the next world inferred by Analogy from Moral Govern- 
 ment in this.' A great subject without doubt, but not the 
 subject chosen by Butler. For moral government in this 
 world is one of the matters which Butler does not assume, 
 but sets himself to prove. Such want of care, as is here 
 shown, in laying the very foundation stones of an argument 
 is hardly conceivable; and, after such a specimen, we can 
 hardly expect to establish either the perpendicular or the 
 square in the structure which the censor is about to raise. 
 It is ' the constitution and course of nature ' on which Butler 
 builds, and not the reality of moral government in this world, 
 which he has got to prove, and spends the first part of the 
 Analogy in proving. 
 
 Butler is next found guilty of failure to satisfy the de- 
 mands, not of his own argument, but of Mr. Arnold's; who 
 naturally observes that before moral government in the here- 
 after can be proved from moral government here, it must be 
 shown that there is an hereafter. Of this, he proceeds to 
 observe, Butler has supplied no probability whatever ', Let 
 us see how he supports his contention. 
 
 The differences, says Butler, between different states of life, 
 all known to us by experience, are almost as great as can be 
 mentally conceived. Therefore an existence hereafter, differ- 
 ing from the present, but only within the measure of those 
 known differences, would not be beyond the analogy of 
 nature 2 . Since our terrestrial existence is so elastic as to 
 allow of difference x, and since we have no proof that our 
 existence hereafter would involve a difference from the 
 present exceeding x, the supposition of future existence, so 
 conditioned, is within the analogy of nature. No, replies 
 Mr. Arnold, for you have not proved that there will be such 
 an existence. He does not perceive that his arrow passes by 
 the mark, and lands in a vacuum. Butler does not here 
 pretend that his argument proves a future existence. He 
 has only rebutted an objection to it, by showing that it need 
 not transcend the present and known analogies of nature. 
 
 1 Last Essays on Church and Religion, p. 127. 2 Analogy, I. i. 3. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 67 
 
 Again, Butler has observed l thus : (dreamless) sleep, and 
 swoons, prove that our living powers may exist when there 
 is no capacity for exercising them. As we know not on 
 what their existence depends, it may depend on something 
 quite out of the reach of death. Therefore there is no sign 
 of any connexion between death and the destruction of 
 living agents. 
 
 My last paragraph is an abbreviation from Butler, and 
 gives his argument. In lieu of it Mr. Arnold prints, and 
 prints in the form of a quotation, a passage which entirely 
 omits the middle portion, while he gives the first and last. 
 That is to say, he gives Butler's conclusion, but omits the 
 reason for it, and presents this to his reader as if it were 
 a citation from the Analogy : with a want of care even more 
 gross than that which has marked some previous errors. The 
 presumption raised by Butler's argument, thus overleapt, of 
 course remains untouched. And to say, as Mr. Arnold here 
 says, that experience alone constitutes the reason of the thing 
 is to strike at the very heart of all arguments founded 011 
 analogy. For it amounts to saying that there never can be 
 any argument for the existence of anything, except experi- 
 ence of its actually existing. 
 
 He next contends that the presumption of extinction at 
 death ' goes upon the unbroken experience that living powers 
 then cease V There cannot be a more complete misconception. 
 Our experience is not of their ceasing to exist, but of their 
 ceasing to afford us sensible and constant evidence of their 
 continued existence. 
 
 Mr. Arnold appears habitually or incurably to overlook the 
 distinction between the rebuttal of an objection, and advancing 
 an affirmative argument. Thus when he finds that Butler 
 alleges our remaining the same living agents after the loss 
 of limbs, he observes 3 that our so remaining after the loss 
 of some limbs gives no proof that we can dispense with all, 
 and thinks that he has made a reply. But the Bishop has 
 never used so futile an argument. On referring to his text 4 , 
 we find that he is arguing only to show that our 'gross 
 
 ' Analogy, I. i. 6. 2 Last Essays on Church and Religion, p. 128. 
 
 3 Ibid. * Analogy, I. i. 12. 
 
 F 2 
 
68 ' ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 organized bodies ' are no part of ourselves because we can lose 
 parts of them without losing any part of ourselves. The body- 
 has become different : while the self remains the same. Here as 
 elsewhere Mr. Arnold wastes his sword-stroke upon a ghost. 
 
 Mr. Arnold then proceeds l to admit the existence of a system 
 under which we have experience of reward and punishment. 
 But he says we have no experience to show that they are 
 administered by a ' quasi-human agent ' called the Author 
 of nature. True; Bishop Butler fails to substitute for God 
 ' a stream of tendency, not ourselves, that makes for righteous- 
 ness.' This valuable discovery of a substitution for Deity 
 was almost made by Aristophanes 2 : 
 
 AIpos ftaaiXevei, tov At" c£e\r]\aKa>s. 
 
 But the critic does not perceive that the Bishop might 
 reply as follows. Your admission is all I want. Call the 
 agent an agency, or call him what you please. Let us part 
 with he and have recourse to it. It may, if you like, be 
 nothing nobler than a treadmill, which awakens by a blow 
 those who neglect to keep the proper pace. But it rewards 
 and punishes, and this according to righteousness. Therefore 
 my argument holds, and men are bound, by the rules which 
 in common life are held binding, to govern themselves ac- 
 cordingly. And this is not ' abstraction or speculation 3 ,' but 
 is in the strictest sense an argument from experience. ' Re- 
 ligion must be built on ideas, about which there is no puzzle 4 .' 
 The idea of a personal God, we are told, is a puzzle. A ' stream 
 of tendency ' then, is none ! 
 
 The long catalogue of detailed objections draws near its 
 close: but the end is not quite reached. Dealing with the 
 sad question of the apparent waste of human existences, 
 Butler refers to the profuse waste exhibited in other orders 
 of nature ; which he says does not destroy the argument of 
 design as to those seeds and bodies which come to their 
 perfection 5 . Mr. Arnold's comment is that the difficulties in 
 argument, arising from the existence of waste, are due to our 
 assuming that nature means 'an Infinite Almighty moral 
 
 1 Last Essays on Church and s Last Essays, fyc, p. 131. 
 Religion, pp. 128-31. 4 Ibid. p. 132. 
 
 2 Aristoph. N«<£. 828. 5 Analogy, I. v. 35. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 69 
 
 being ' ; and his very simple proposal is to get rid of the 
 difficulty by getting rid of reference to such a being. Yet 
 it is really most difficult to imagine that Mr. Arnold could 
 think we disposed of the difficulties of the case (such as they 
 are) by holding that nobody but Alvos is accountable 1 . I call 
 in Alvos as a fair equivalent for Mr. Arnold's favourite 'stream 
 of tendency.' 
 
 I pass over Mr. Arnold's remarks on Butler's treatment of 
 miracles, as the question is rather too large for succinct treat- 
 ment ; and I will not follow him into the field of Bible history, 
 for I have already overtaxed my reader's patience. But I must 
 say a few words on his summing up. 
 
 The most wonderful thing about the Analogy is, he thinks, 
 the poverty of its result, as estimated by Butler himself 2 . 
 He then rends from their context various brief sayings from 
 different parts of the text, some of them hard to identify, in 
 which Butler has stated, with perhaps even more than his 
 accustomed modesty and fearless candour, his admissions as 
 to the defects of the evidence he presents. These phrases 
 our critic represents as truly embodying the upshot of the 
 Analogy. He gives us the weights that are in one scale, 
 but he forgets to take account of those in the other. It 
 mounts accordingly, and leaves him exultingly to conceive 
 that he has proved his case. He has overlooked the fact 
 that they are balanced by other statements ; and that a joint 
 consideration of what is said on the two sides is especially 
 necessary in the case of a writer like Butler in order to get 
 at any true appreciation of his real judgement. Perhaps the 
 strongest of the passages in which he disparages his own 
 performance is the sentence in which he says ' the foregoing 
 treatise is by no means satisfactory ; very far indeed from it.' 
 But he presently explains : ' Those who object against it (the 
 evidence of religion) as not satisfactory, i. e. as not being what 
 they wish it, plainly forget the very condition of our being; 
 for satisfaction, in this sense, does not belong to such a creature 
 as man V He further observes that he has argued upon the 
 principles of others, not his own ; and that he has waived all 
 
 Last Essays on Church and Religion, p. 134. 2 Ibid. p. 138. 
 
 3 Analogy, II. viii. 17, 18. 
 
70 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 reference to arguments which he deems of the highest im- 
 portance, the two principles of liberty, and of moral fitness l . 
 A fairer summing up of his judgement than Mr. Arnold's 
 seems to be given in the following words concerning his 
 treatise : 
 
 ' Those who believe, will here find the scheme of Christianity 
 cleared of objections, and the evidence of it in a peculiar 
 manner strengthened : those who do not believe, will at least 
 be shown the absurdity of all attempts to prove Christianity 
 false, the plain undoubted credibility of it ; and, I hope, a good 
 deal more -.' 
 
 But Mr. Arnold does not conclude without a parting kick. 
 Butler has laid it down that, in such a matter we ought ' to 
 act upon evidence much lower than what is commonly called 
 probable.' He may mean, in the language of chances, when 
 the adverse chance is say two or three to one. No, says 
 Mr. Arnold ; I take fearlessly a given road, though a menagerie 
 is travelling it, and a tiger may break out of his van and 
 destroy me. In other words, a chance of two or three to 
 one, and .a chance of two or three thousand to one, the 
 chance of an accident in rope dancing and of one in railway 
 travelling, are for the .purposes of his argument one and the 
 same. The Analogy is ' for all real intents and purposes now 
 a failure 3 .' And we return from it to the 'boundless certitude 
 and exhilaration of .the Bible ' ; a certitude and exhilaration 
 which do not restrain Mr. Arnold from cutting out of the Scrip- 
 ture, as anthropomorphic and legendary, what nearly all its 
 readers believe to be the heart and centre of its vital force. 
 
 Various objections have been taken from various quarters 
 to this point .and that in the argument of Butler; but 
 Mr. Arnold's criticisms, as a whole, remain wholly isolated 
 and unsupported. It is impossible to acquit him of the 
 charge of a carelessness implying levity, and of an un- 
 governable bias towards finding fault. The homely fare, on 
 which Butler feeds us, cannot be so gratifying to the palate 
 as turtle, venison, and champagne. But it has been found 
 wholesome by experience: it leads to no doctors' bills; and 
 
 1 Analogy, II. viii. 23, 24. 2 Ibid. 27. 
 
 8 Last Essays on Church and Religion, pp. 140, 141. 
 
Ch.HI.] ON HIS CENSORS 71 
 
 a perusal of this ' failure ' is admitted to be ' a most valuable 
 exercise for the mind.' Mr. Arnold himself will probably 
 suffer more from his own censures than the great Christian 
 philosopher who is the object of them. And it is well for 
 him that all they can do is to effect some deduction from the 
 fame which has been earned by him in other fields, as a true 
 man, a searching and sagacious literary critic, and a poet of 
 genuine creative genius. 
 
 Upon the whole, I conceive that these four censures l , the 
 only censures in detail upon Butler which are known to me, 
 inspire respect for their authors, as well as other sentiments 
 directly due to their conspicuous talents. I trust that this 
 sentiment of respect has not disappeared from my own 
 examination of their criticisms. On the other hand, speak- 
 ing for myself, after careful endeavours to weigh each and 
 all of the objections which they have taken, I confess to 
 a sense of satisfaction upon finding that after a century and 
 a half, the latter portion of the time distinguished by an 
 unusual activity of the questioning spirit, no more for- 
 midable grounds of exception should have been discovered. 
 The catapult has beaten on the walls of the fortress ; it has 
 stood the shock. The tempest has roared around the stately 
 tree; and scarcely a leaf or twig has fallen to the ground. 
 My confidence is strengthened not only in the permanence 
 of Butler's fame, but much more in the permanence and 
 abundance of the services he has yet to render to his 
 country, to its kindred, and perhaps to Christendom, as 
 a classic of thought in the greatest of all its domains, the 
 domain of religious philosophy. 
 
 V. MINOR STRICTURES. 
 
 I proceed to the criticisms on particular points which have 
 been passed by some distinguished writers not to be reckoned 
 as objectors to the general argument either of the Analogy 
 
 1 I have not thought it necessary which have been sufficiently dealt 
 
 to defend Butler against the excep- with by Bishop Fitzgerald in his 
 
 tions taken by Tholuck, which are Life of Butler, prefixed to his edition 
 
 little known in this country, and of 1749, p. xlvii. 
 
72 ON HIS CENSORS [Px. I. 
 
 or the Sermons of Butler. But I first offer a preliminary 
 observation. While, on the one hand, no writer within my 
 knowledge who has been so largely called to account has 
 obtained, from all objectors and questioners alike, so sustained 
 a strain of eulogy and admiration, alike on intellectual and 
 on moral grounds, none I think has been so unfortunate in the 
 amount and gravity of misapprehension with which his con- 
 tentions have been stated when put upon their trial. This 
 circumstance I cannot but ascribe to the difficulty incidental 
 to the extraction of particulars from so continuous and so 
 wonderfully close a tissue of argument as he presents; and 
 yet more to the want of proper means of discharging the 
 duty of reference and cross-reference (as it has been called) 
 to his works l . 
 
 In his Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy 2 , Mr. Maurice 
 not only assigns to Butler an honoured place in Christian 
 literature, but shows that he had studied the philosopher 
 deeply, and had so drunk in his fundamental conceptions that 
 it might almost appear that he had drawn the very blood of 
 Butler into his own veins. And yet Mr. Maurice falls into 
 most serious inaccuracies in the account he gives of Butler's 
 religious opinions. The idea of human nature presented in 
 the Sermons on Human Nature is according to him the exact 
 opposite of that presented by Mr. Wesley. It raises the ques- 
 tion, what provision does human nature supply as a remedy 
 for the disorder admitted to have invaded it 1 Still more does 
 the Analogy create a necessity for an answer to this question. 
 Mr. Maurice then imagines a challenge from John Wesley to 
 Butler, on the ground that he, Wesley, held a supernatural 
 operation to be necessary for the regeneration of man 3 . 
 Mr. Maurice evidently believes that on this great subject 
 the theologies of Wesley and of Butler were at issue. As 
 regards Wesley, the fact, doubtless unknown to Maurice, is 
 
 1 The Delegates of the Clarendon reference. I have availed myself 
 
 Press have recently published a new of these sectional divisions in the 
 
 edition of Butler's works, prepared notes to the present volume, 
 
 by me, in which both the Analogy 2 London, 1862, 2 vols. ; repub- 
 
 and the other principal composi- lished with a preface, 1873. 
 
 tions are broken up into short 3 Moral and Metaphysical Philo- 
 
 sections for greater convenience of sophy, vol. ii. pp. 466-468 (ed. 1873). 
 

 «*» 
 
 Ch. III.] 
 
 ON HIS CENSORS 
 
 73 
 
 that he uses the most commendatory epithets concerning the 
 Analogy, and gives no hint of dissatisfaction on any point. 
 But what says Butler himself? No recognized theologian 
 has presented more strongly than Butler the corruption and 
 degradation of man through sin. In the Introduction, he tells 
 us that this world is in a state of ' apostasy, wickedness, and 
 ruin V And as respects the remedy he is not less unequivocal. 
 The doctrine of the new birth is that which most absolutely 
 involves a supernatural operation. The corruption of our 
 moral character, and the necessity of the assistance of the 
 Holy Spirit for the renewal of our nature, are implied, says 
 the Analogy, 'in the express though figurative declaration, 
 Except a man be bom of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the 
 kingdom of God V It is difficult to understand how so single- 
 hearted a student as Mr. Maurice could have overlooked so 
 conspicuous a declaration. I am driven to suppose that it 
 must have been owing to the extreme difficulties in the way 
 of reference to particular passages of his author, which I have 
 already noticed. This alone can explain the palpable mistakes 
 of critics, whose good faith is as unquestionable as their 
 ability 3 . 
 
 1 Analogy, Introd. § 16. 
 
 2 Ibid. II. i. 24. 
 
 3 In his Essay on Regeneration 
 {Theological Essays, 1853, p. 236) 
 Maurice laments the language used 
 by Butler as seeming to confound 
 probabilities with chances, and 
 otherwise to deal in an unsatis- 
 factory manner with the process 
 to be followed in the acceptance 
 of religious truth. Mr. Maurice 
 does not quote words or refer us 
 to passages, and in the expression 
 of these regrets it would be well 
 always to include, when we are 
 dealing with a great teacher, and 
 especially if we are teachers our- 
 selves, the means of verification. 
 It may be admitted that (1) the 
 argument from probabilities lends 
 itself to the gibes of the scoffer, 
 and provokes the sensitiveness of 
 
 over-fastidious intellects ; and (2) 
 that Butler has in a single passage 
 confounded probabilities with 
 chances {Analogy, II. ii. 11, 12). 
 But, as regards the first, it con- 
 stitutes no sufficient reason for 
 eschewing a line . of reasoning, 
 which can never be dispensed 
 with when we are challenged 
 to undertake the defence of our 
 own cause. As regards the second, 
 Butler stumbled into his error, 
 if any, not by lowering proba- 
 bilities to chances, but rather by 
 exalting chances to the rank of 
 probabilities, when, by this undue 
 promotion, they were to do duty in 
 the service of the religious argu- 
 ment. His mistake has long ago 
 been pointed out by Bishop Fitz- 
 gerald in loc. See his Analogy, 1849, 
 p. 184. 
 
74 ON HIS CENSORS [Pt. I. 
 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith, in a criticism on Mansel's Bampton 
 Lectures \ has occasion to refer to Butler as follows : 
 
 • One word more on the authority of Butler. ... In dry 
 intellect he was mighty. . . . But he was wanting in feeling, 
 the power of sympathy; and his religious philosophy is 
 grievously marked with this defect.' 
 
 The tributes of admiration which Mr. Goldwin Smith pays 
 to Butler in this passage show plainly that the animadversion 
 was extorted from him by a sense of duty to truth, such as 
 he conceived it to be. But is it just 1 
 
 With regard to dry light, it may be, not conceded, but 
 avowed and proclaimed, that the atmosphere of the Analogy 
 is one of dry light, and only dry light, throughout. Nor does 
 it seem doubtful that Butler acted with intention ; or that 
 he judged wisely in excluding from this philosophic treatise 
 anything which would have deviated from the line of strict 
 reasoning by an appeal to emotion. Even feeling, and the 
 power of sympathy, these glories of our nature, are only good 
 in their place ; and this was not their place ; because, if Butler 
 had allowed such elements to be mixed with his argument, 
 every word of the matter so intruded would have served to 
 harden and to arm the cold indifference, and the hotter preju- 
 dices, of his adversaries against the appeal which he made to 
 their reasoning faculties, and to their judicial integrity. 
 
 But surely, when Mr. Goldwin Smith penned these words, 
 he had forgotten the proof in our possession that the philo- 
 sophy of Butler reserves for the affections their proper place. 
 We find his estimate of them on every appropriate occasion 
 with which the subjects of his Sermons supply him. It is 
 known that he was given to religious retirement and to read- 
 ing the biographies of holy persons: a circumstance which, 
 perhaps, might suitably have arrested the pen of the critic. 
 But we have also the direct evidence afforded by the Sermons 
 on the Love of God. He notes with care the ascending stages 
 of this love. It should pass beyond all servile fear, and should 
 attain to ' resignation,' a phrase by which Butler means not 
 the merely passive sentiment, but an entire concurrence with 
 the Divine Will. All earthly objects, he observes, leave a void 
 in us, which only God Himself can adequately supply 2 . He 
 
 1 Bational Religion, 1861. 2 Sermons, xiv. io, n. 
 
Ch. III.] ON HIS CENSORS 75 
 
 believes that heaven will provide a happiness coming directly 
 from God Himself, and not merely as now from the inter- 
 mediate objects which He presents to our view. Butler's 
 religion undoubtedly was marked with that reserve which is 
 a marked characteristic of English piety, which may some- 
 times be carried into excess, but which is so far from implying 
 a deficiency in fervour, that it rather indicates a dread lest 
 the emotions of holy devotion should come to be mixed with 
 inferior elements, and should be chilled by exposure to the 
 rude climate of the world. He therefore takes refuge, at the 
 close of these Sermons, in those expressions of the Psalms 
 which are consecrated by the use of so many generations, and 
 raised to so high a level that no irreverence can touch them. 
 I feel persuaded that a perusal of the closing portion of the 
 two Sermons would lead Mr. Smith to withdraw or modify 
 the judgement he has given. 
 
 The writings of Mark Pattison, which touch at various 
 points upon those of Butler, bear what may be termed an 
 unbroken testimony to their power. His Essay on ' Religious 
 Thought in England ' includes a series of excellent reflections 
 respecting the Analogy l , on which he appears to have 
 bestowed much hard study. In his Memoirs 2 he bears wit- 
 ness to ' the solid structure of logical argument, in which it 
 surpasses any other book that I know in the English language.' 
 He follows up this weighty judgement with a passage for 
 which it by no means prepares us. 
 
 ' But it is not a book adapted for an educational instrument, 
 as it diverts the mind from the great outlines of scientific and 
 philosophical thought, and fastens it upon petty considera- 
 tions, being in this respect the converse of Bacon's Novum 
 Organon.' 
 
 In a later portion of the same work he records with evident 
 satisfaction that, as one of a board of liberal examiners, he 
 shared (from his great ability it may be that he largely 
 shared, or even led the way) in striking Butler off the list 
 of books which might be taken up in the Oxford schools 3 . 
 Mr. Pattison's condemnatory proceeding would have carried 
 
 1 Pattison's Essays, edited by 2 Pattison's Memoirs, p. 134. 
 
 Nettleship, vol. ii. p. 74 sqq. 3 Ibid. p. 324. 
 
76 ON HIS CENSORS 
 
 great weight, had he not, with so singular a frankness, 
 informed us of the reason by which it was governed. He 
 has just before given us one reason which went to show that 
 the Analogy was admirably suited for an educational instru- 
 ment, for it was the most solid structure of logical argument 
 known to him in the English language. It is indeed unlucky, 
 to say the least, for scientific and philosophical thought, if 
 its outlines are so tightly drawn, that they cannot include 
 ' the most solid structure of logical argument ' in the English 
 language known to this learned, able, and accomplished man. 
 But then this great performance fastened the mind upon 
 petty considerations. The issue is plainly stated, and it 
 remains only to ascertain what are the petty considerations 
 in question. They are those which form the subject of 
 the Analogy. Now the subject of the Analogy may be 
 succinctly described. It is the dealings of God with man 
 in the kingdoms of Nature, Providence, and Grace, which 
 it handles in a structure of logical argument more solid 
 than is to be readily found in any English work of 
 ' scientific and philosophical thought.' Of these three king- 
 doms, Bacon's Novum Organon introduces us only to that 
 commonly regarded as the lowest ; but if we are to interpret 
 Mr. Pattison strictly, the one alone capable of supplying us 
 with philosophical and scientific thought. We seem here 
 to be in the face of a strange dilemma. A treatise 
 consummate in logical structure is proscribed as an instru- 
 ment of education, by reason of the unworthiness of its 
 subject. For those who think it worthy, Mr. Pattison 
 has supplied a perfect demonstration that the Analogy is 
 admirably fitted to be an instrument of the most masculine 
 training. If, on the other hand, Mr. Pattison's dictum be 
 sound, Butler's Analogy may justly disappear from among 
 the instruments of education. But the thorough and impar- 
 tial application of his principle will require that much else 
 should disappear along with it: perhaps not least, that the 
 Scriptures themselves should abdicate their position as the 
 final rule and the staple food of Christendom, and should 
 remain among us to be only an object of exhibition as the 
 greatest and the strangest among the archaeological curiosi- 
 ties of the world. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ON ITEMS WHICH OUGHT TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT 
 WHEN COMPARING BUTLER WITH THE ANCIENTS 
 
 f I BURNING now to the drawbacks which may seem to 
 -*■ encumber, and to discourage the study of Butler, it 
 seems to be felt that, besides the difficulties of expression 
 which they present to us, we cannot but be deeply, perhaps 
 painfully, impressed with the higher difficulties that presented 
 themselves to him, and with the deep marks which they have 
 impressed upon the whole course of his writings. As if his 
 tread were less firm than that of many philosophers, both 
 ancient and modern, he not only does not claim the authority, 
 which even the ordinary teacher as such habitually inclines 
 to assume, but he seems to remove that claim to the greatest 
 possible distance from the path he traverses. Here, then, was 
 probably a happy adaptation of his nature to the purpose of 
 his work. The absence of such a claim tended to disarm 
 suspicion, and to procure an easier access for his arguments. 
 Yet it will be felt that this is not saying enough. It may be 
 right to deal more at large with the remark of one among 
 his kindly critics, who says that Plato sees the truth, while 
 Butler gropes for it. The nature and conditions of the work 
 which they respectively had to do were broadly different. 
 The truth, which presented itself to the mind of Plato four 
 centuries before the Advent, was not the same truth which 
 lay before the mind of Butler, seventeen centuries after it. 
 
 It is a well-known characteristic of Butler, particularly in 
 the Analogy, that after pursuing his aim through preliminary 
 argument and observation of close texture and possibly not 
 of facile comprehension, he lands his readers in conclusions 
 which are limited and reserved, and which may sometimes 
 
78 ON THE COMPARISON OF BUTLER [Pt. I. 
 
 appear clouded and indefinite. It is plain that Butler abounds 
 in reserves, such as we rarely meet with in the ancient 
 schools of philosophy. Indeed all he offers as the reward of 
 close attention and no inconsiderable mental effort, is that the 
 matter he has adduced appears to go part of the way towards 
 a solution ; or has so much at least of weight that it cannot 
 without levity be put aside before careful examination; or 
 that it will command attention from considerate men. These 
 guarded and (as against himself) niggardly conclusions are 
 offered us; and they are exactly the reverse of what is 
 required to satisfy the indolence and carelessness, or the 
 intemperance and coarse perceptions, of the ordinary reader. 
 His desire is to please the taste, not to be nourished ; to be 
 excited, not to be educated ; to have what is called loudness 
 in colouring presented to his eye, with a stimulating diet 
 provided for his palate, which shall leave the health to take 
 care of itself. To give delight to the average unsophisticated 
 man was what Homer could venture to prescribe to himself 
 as the proper office of the bard. Butler is not a bard, but 
 a philosopher. He does not conform to this condition ; and 
 man at large has in these last three thousand years travelled 
 far from the early simplicity of his nature. 
 
 Nor is it only that nature has become less simple. It has 
 also become more profound. Christianity has penetrated 
 more deeply into the essence of man than any agency 
 previously offered to his mind ; has opened up in him new 
 depths ; has added to him a new intensity. Those, who 
 believe in a Divine Incarnation, will readily believe that 
 a nature which has once had such an inhabitant as the 
 Saviour, and has even been subjected to all the resulting 
 influences, cannot in its facts, and still more in its capabilities, 
 remain just what it was before. It must, as the character of 
 man unfolds under continued, varied, and ever-enlarging 
 experience, undergo searching modifications, the aggregate of 
 which it is impossible to measure, but of which some charac- 
 teristics may be observed. The whole world, both of duty 
 and of love, has been opened out to a far wider horizon. The 
 action of man is brought into more close and constant relation 
 with the Divine dispensations. God is ever nearer us in the 
 still small voice. The thought of man too has become 
 
Ch.IV.] WITH THE ANCIENTS 79 
 
 habituated to the clearer and nearer contemplation of Deity, 
 and a new relation, mental as well as spiritual, and highly 
 fertile in results, has been established between the Creator 
 and the creature. 
 
 And if we compare the developments of character in 
 practice, as known in the ancient pre-Christian world, and 
 that which Christianity has so insufficiently but yet marvel- 
 lously permeated, we shall be astonished at the difference. 
 Every vice and every virtue has altered in its character, is 
 a larger and a deeper thing. The ancients lived more on the 
 surface ; we have dug deep into the subsoil. The cruelty of 
 Christians is more cruel. Of this fact, at first sight so 
 startling, we have recently had a very striking illustration in 
 the singular elaboration of those horrible instruments of 
 torture, of which there was a remarkable exhibition in London 
 a few years ago. To the ancients, the arts of torture were 
 little known; and the legend of Regulus holds a solitary 
 place in their popular literature. The lust of Christians is 
 more lustful, and carries with it, as to acts which may be 
 the same, the consciousness of a much deeper sinfulness; 
 for, as Butler is careful to instruct us, moral acts can only 
 be estimated aright when taken in conjunction with the 
 nature and capacity of the agent. Antiquity has displayed 
 for us in its records all the worst that it had to say of 
 itself, in this painful chapter of the experience of the race, 
 and has done it with a certain naivete. It has been of 
 a surety entirely outstripped in the performances of the 
 Satanic schools, under the earlier and the later conditions 
 respectively. The animal greed of Christians is tenfold more 
 greedy; and the pre-Christian times afford us no panorama 
 of Mammon worship to compare for a moment with our own. 
 The systematic, or, if the expression may be used, the scientific 
 use of the apparatus of life to build up a godless existence, 
 an atheism of act, which by the mere extinction of all 
 thought avoids the name, has so developed as to seem different, 
 not in degree only, but in kind. The luxury and the worldli- 
 ness of old were but child's play in relation to those of modern 
 times. 
 
 There is another subject, the further mention of which is 
 odious, but it cannot be avoided. The lust of Christians is 
 
80 ON THE COMPARISON OF BUTLER [Pt. I. 
 
 more intense, and on that as well as other grounds far more 
 wicked than was the lust of the heathen. It is indeed the fact 
 that they practised largely the worship of obscene symbols ; 
 and it is certain that this worship cannot possibly revive in 
 conjunction with that social standard of idea and common 
 judgement which has been established (but, be it observed, as 
 a social rule only) by the Christian tradition. It is also clear 
 from the plays of Aristophanes, the Roman spectacles indicated 
 by Martial, and such ideas as those proclaimed by Helio- 
 gabalus, that the sense of shame as a public sense, which had 
 been at the epoch of Homer at once delicate and strong, had 
 wellnigh ceased to exist. All this is of the past ; and a real, 
 and even perhaps a rigorous, standard of public decency has 
 been established. And the private sense of shame given us, as 
 Butler truly says, to prevent shameful actions, is doubtless of 
 a far greater average power, than in those heathen days. But 
 when the question is as to what is done, and contrived to be 
 done, far from the public eye, and when that barrier of 
 personal shame has once been overleapt, I fear the verdict 
 upon any such comparison as may conjecturally be made 
 must be that, while the acts may continue in great part the 
 same, their intensity and the pestilent devices and con- 
 trivances associated with them, have been enhanced and 
 multiplied ; and that we have here a new and crying con- 
 firmation of the profound observation of an ancient philo- 
 sopher, that if the worst is sought for, it is to be found in the 
 corruption of the best l . 
 
 And why is all this ? The explanation lies in few words. 
 If they had not had the law, they had not had sin. For the 
 heathen, the mental and practical process of obliterating the 
 law, without thought or effort carried on through so many 
 generations, came wellnigh up to its perfection. The idea of 
 sin, except in Judea, was obliterated. The practice of sensual 
 sin (if we properly understand the word) became matter of 
 course, and prevailed largely among the best. Growing to 
 be matter of course, it was, naturally enough, more nearly 
 
 1 Plato, Rep. vi. (p. 491, Ste- come pre-eminently bad.' Jowett's 
 phens). ' The most gifted minds, Translation, 
 when they are ill educated, be- . 
 
Ch.IV.] WITH THE ANCIENTS 8i 
 
 universal; but in the individual it required and hastened 
 less of obliquity, of obtusity, of hardihood, of true and 
 obstinate demoralization. 
 
 And so with regard to the virtues, and to the energies of 
 our nature capable of moral or of immoral use, and apper- 
 taining to its manhood. With the multiplied forms of torture 
 there has been developed a more tenacious and unyielding 
 product ; the faculty of endurance. A nobler cause has here 
 been at work. The heavens became open to the spiritual 
 eye through the operation of faith, which was not only the 
 substance of things hoped for, but also the evidence of things 
 unseen. The greatness and loftiness of the interests, and of 
 the entire destinies thus opened to mankind, developed new 
 powers both of action and of suffering in respect to them. 
 The resolution of Regulus was indeed sublime; but the 
 records of antiquity afford no historic proofs of resolution 
 equal, as a whole, to that of the martyrs, even if allowance 
 be made for possible exaggerations. There has in this, as 
 in many cases, been an action not only upon this or that 
 individual, but upon the race, and new developments of 
 its character. The daring of our navigators some centuries 
 ago, and their hardihood in encountering the extremities of 
 difficulty and danger, form a feature of Christian times which 
 compares in marked advantage with the energy and bravery 
 of the Phoenicians, who mainly crept along the coasts, and 
 this greatly in congenial latitudes. Let any one peruse in 
 detail the wonderful account given by General Greely of the 
 sufferings entailed by his Polar expedition, and of the heroic 
 courage with which they were borne by an assemblage of 
 men not perhaps greatly differing in physical or in moral 
 force from the average of their countrymen. Such occur- 
 rences were beyond the pale of possibility even in the great 
 days of Greece and of Rome. 
 
 There is, however, another case, collective not individual, 
 which appears to exhibit in a still more vivid light that 
 intensity of heroic endurance, up to which human character 
 may be trained under the influence of the Christian tradition. 
 Of this fortitude abundant instances may be gathered from 
 the narratives of religious persecutions. But there is no 
 parallel known to me, in records either ancient or modern, 
 
 G 
 
82 ON THE COMPARISON OF BUTLER [Pt. I. 
 
 to the history of the people of Montenegro. In the end of 
 the fifteenth century, when the awful curse of Turkish inva- 
 sion had spread like a deluge of flame over Eastern Europe, 
 this small people, numbering a very few tens of thousands, 
 abandoned their lands and homes to save their faith and their 
 freedom, and made for themselves a Noah's ark of the Black 
 Mountain. And here they maintained, with diversity of 
 fortune, but without ever succumbing, a war of four hundred 
 years against that Ottoman power which overwhelmed every- 
 thing else in the Levant. All the brightest examples of 
 courage, animated in olden times by the enthusiasm of free- 
 dom, grow pale by the side of this unequalled experience. 
 To the enthusiasm of freedom there had been added the 
 twin enthusiasm of religion. 
 
 As it is of the force engendered in our human nature, 
 without direct application to the spiritual element, that I 
 now speak, I will at once turn to the case of the man whose 
 sufferings probably exceeded any that are known ever to 
 have been inflicted by human hands. I mean the appalling 
 case of Damiens, who attempted the life of Louis XV of 
 France. Goldsmith has commemorated 
 
 Luke's iron crown, and Damiens' bed of steel. 
 
 But the bed of steel conveys only a stinted idea of the 
 tortures to which Damiens was subjected for having endea- 
 voured to rid the world of a much worse man than himself. 
 All the science of Paris was taxed by royal command to 
 determine by what processes vital power could be so hus- 
 banded under torture as to secure that Damiens should pass 
 out of this world with the greatest amount and intensity 
 of suffering that could possibly be devised. It may seem 
 strange to cite this fiendish contrivance of Louis XV or his 
 advisers in connexion with the operation of Christianity 
 upon human nature. Yet it could never, as I conceive, have 
 entered into the mind of antiquity to conceive the idea, or 
 to construct the machinery, of this terrible occasion, the 
 characteristics of which appear in truth to belong to hell 
 more properly than to earth. 
 
 It may also seem strange to some that I should introduce 
 the case of Damiens in this connexion, as if his rules of 
 
Ch. IV.] WITH THE ANCIENTS 83 
 
 action had been those of an intelligent Christian. In that 
 respect, let us leave him to his Judge : my reference is to his 
 powers of energetic endurance, as being powers not to be 
 found among mankind in the ages anterior to the Christian 
 dispensation. His environment was Christian ; he lived in 
 the atmosphere of Christian tradition. In his case, as in that 
 of others, the effects of tradition and environment may have 
 been developed in character, apart altogether from personal 
 convictions \ 
 
 I do not enter into consideration of the cases of self-torture 
 among the devotees of the East, which belong to another 
 chapter of human nature, and are hardly relevant to the 
 present remarks. 
 
 Nor do I enter upon the question how far the comparison 
 between Christian and pre-Christian periods, here partially 
 set forth, can be extended to the department of intellectual 
 or imaginative power. The province of the present discussion 
 is that of character, not of intellect. To this I do not extend 
 my affirmations as they stand. 
 
 Indeed, what I ask is to bring the whole of these con- 
 siderations to bear upon our appreciation of the work of 
 Butler, and upon such comparisons as we may be tempted 
 to make between his work, with his method of performing 
 it, and the work and method of the ancient philosophers. 
 
 My position is that he had a different human nature to 
 deal with, and a different relation between that human nature 
 and the Almighty Maker; that they speculated freely and 
 at will, while he moved with a nobleness of object indeed 
 that was unknown to them, but with a burden of responsi- 
 bility upon him at every step, which almost bore him down 
 to the ground. Even of common duty, what seems to some 
 men light, to others is a sense almost oppressive : how much 
 greater was the pressure on a quickened conscience labouring 
 under the belief of being charged with that argument, on 
 which the whole ultimate welfare of the world depends ! 
 
 After familiarizing ourselves with the secure and steady 
 steps of Aristotle, and the rarity of his resorts to doubt and 
 
 1 The particulars of this proceeding have recently been published in 
 a painfully interesting volume entitled Le Pioces de Damiens. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 BUTLER COMPARED WITH THE ANCIENTS 
 
 reservation, or even with the questionings of Socrates in the 
 Platonic Dialogue, which almost habitually lead us up to 
 a prepared conclusion, we may be tempted to feel some 
 impatience in the first stages of our acquaintance with a 
 philosophic writer who so carefully clips his own propositions, 
 who loads us, as his sentences make way, with qualifications, 
 and then so often ends with what may seem lean and stunted 
 affirmations. But no ancient philosopher had to face the 
 difficulties which beset the path of Butler. Two such repre- 
 sentatives of Christian and pre-Christian thought as Butler 
 and Aristotle are not unlike two soldiers marching along the 
 same road, the one heavily laden with his kit and military 
 equipment, the other rid of encumbrances and prepared for 
 action. But the first carries material which, though it may 
 augment his burden, means also enlarged resources and 
 a graver destiny. 
 
 None of the ancients could endeavour to exhibit in syste- 
 matic detail the methods of God's dealing with the individual 
 Greek or Roman. None of them took the world as a school, 
 and life as a discipline, in the close and searching sense, which 
 has been brought within arm's length of every competent 
 inquirer by the Christian Revelation. Only in limited por- 
 tions of the Old Testament are we introduced to a fully con- 
 stituted personal relationship between the human soul and 
 its Almighty Maker, Governor, and Judge. And as on the 
 one side it was permitted to Butler to treat of a heaven 
 unveiled, so on the other side he had perforce to contemplate 
 the human being in that more extended and diversified moral 
 development, which he has undergone through the long and 
 slow experience of Christianity, and which has so largely 
 enhanced his perils, his privileges, and his hopes. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 butler's mental qualities 
 
 i. Hie Quality of Measure. 
 
 ALTHOUGH no one would charge Butler with egotism, 
 -*-*- yet he is evidently, like Dante, a self-revealing writer. 
 As a man governed by one dominant influence, he wears his 
 heart upon his sleeve. The master passion with him is the love 
 of truth : and it is never leavened, never traversed by any 
 other feeling. He is, without doubt, a singularly circumspect 
 writer. He has even been described by Mr. Stephen as having 
 ' a strangely cautious understanding.' Few indeed are the 
 instances in which he can on this score be called in question. 
 But, while the caution of many is largely based on fear of detec- 
 tion, it seems to have been in Butler simply a steady as well as 
 an intense desire to be in exact correspondence with the truth. 
 Following in the train of this love of truth, as an outgrowth 
 or a satellite, there is an unceasing desire to keep faith with 
 his readers, a fear of committing a grave offence against the 
 student (who may be considered as in some degree giving 
 over himself to his author, as we obey a guide) by carrying 
 his mind one inch beyond what the facts of the case will 
 warrant. If there are over-statements in Butler, they are 
 commonly against himself. They are, in truth, under-state- 
 ments of the case on his own side, as when he says that the 
 evidence he presents is not indeed satisfactory — very far from 
 it *. It thus appears that, if the insect can take colour from 
 what it feeds upon, our minds can derive no colour but 
 what is genuine from assimilation with Butler. He sees the 
 
 1 Analogy, II. viii. 17. 
 
86 ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES [Pt. I. 
 
 proportion of things, and not only the things themselves ; and 
 does not thrust forward the small as if it were great, nor 
 shuffle away the great as if it were small. The one word 
 which best describes his carefulness, and its result as to 
 breadth of statement, is measure. 
 
 ii. His Strength of Tissue. 
 
 It seems quite safe to assert that Butler is among the least 
 commonplace of writers. He is always dealing with the heart, 
 never with the surface of his question. There is, if it may be 
 permitted so to speak, no outside, no mere skin, to his writings. 
 It would be difficult to name any other writer on kindred 
 subjects who altogether resembles him in the closeness of 
 the contact between the author and the argument. Had he, 
 like the ancient philosophers, been unfurnished with a strong- 
 view of providential government in the world as a law of 
 universal application, I cannot but think he would have had 
 a style like that of Aristotle, who, like Butler, is solitary in 
 his class as to the mode of conveying his thoughts. 
 
 In the march of a battalion, every forward step is itself 
 a separate exercise, with a relation to what precedes and what 
 follows it. The rambling thought of many authors may seem 
 to have no more continuity than a rope of sand : or it thins 
 itself away like a river lost in the desert. One of the greatest 
 properties of a human composition is to present to us con- 
 tinuity of tissue ; and the greatness rises in proportion as the 
 tissue, besides being continuous, is close and strong. The 
 subject of the composition will not always admit it ; but the 
 mind of the writer is more commonly in defect. This con- 
 tinuity is eminently observable in the highest works of art : 
 in a truly great statue, for example, every part is in close 
 kindred with every other part, and the union between them is 
 not merely mechanical but vital. 
 
 Pattison's account of the Analogy 1 is a just acknowledge- 
 ment of its character as a compacted logical structure from 
 end to end. Butler may in a measure be said to stand by the 
 side of Aristotle, and is perhaps excelled by no writer, unless 
 
 1 Memoirs, p. 134. 
 
Ch.V.] on his MENTAL QUALITIES 87 
 
 it be Euclid. But in Euclid, while the certainty of the 
 connexion between point and point is greater, the effort 
 required for grasping firmly the connexion between them is 
 less. When Pitt had recommended the perusal of Butler to 
 Wilberforce, he in his turn records in his diary l that he had 
 the Analogy read aloud to him for two hours: it is not, 
 I think, too much to say that we might run through many 
 thousands of educated minds before lighting upon one which 
 could take real benefit from such an exercise ; and the 
 strength of Wilberforce, not small in its own line, was 
 mainly dependent upon susceptibility and pious emotion, 
 warm but without extravagance. Butler assuredly was not 
 made for butterflies to flutter about. He demands the sur- 
 render, not to him but to his subject, of the entire man. It 
 has been well said of him that he is as much in earnest, as if 
 he were a gamester. Still better, perhaps, Fitzgerald supplies 
 us with the remark of ' an ingenious person ' who said that 
 each single sentence is, with Butler, ' like a well-considered 
 move in chess 2 ' ; a most felicitous illustration of its proper 
 subject, which may well dispense with all others, but need 
 not exclude that able writer's description of many a com- 
 pressed clause or single word of his author, as a<pvprikaTos 
 vovs (v oAtyo) oyKO>. 
 
 iii. His Courage. 
 
 With the circumspection which is one of his most marked 
 characteristics, Butler appears to unite a great boldness upon 
 occasion ; sometimes he even makes the occasion. As examples 
 of this boldness, I would refer to the following heads : 
 
 1. The possible development of the brute creation and its 
 elevation to a higher stage of existence 3 . 
 
 From the frequency and gravity of his references to the 
 lower animals, it plainly appears that Butler had thought 
 much, and with adequate care, about them. Even in our own 
 day there are many who resent any attempt to draw closer 
 the ties of relationship to our humble kindred i . But in those 
 
 Life of Wilberforce, i. pp. 89, 90. * I seem to recollect a speech of 
 
 Fitzgerald, preface, p. xci. Lord Beaconsfield, in which he was 
 
 Analog;/, I. i. 21. reported to have said that there 
 
88 ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES [Pt. I. 
 
 times, when a lady of rank reproached Lady Huntingdon for 
 applying the same doctrines concerning sin to the case of 
 her own equals as were applicable to the common people in 
 the street, it is probable that such ideas concerning the brutes 
 would be yet more repulsive than, outside the scientific 
 domain, they may still be. But he was not a man to be bound 
 by mere prepossessions, nor did he estimate opinion according 
 to the breadth of its prevalence. And besides the courage 
 which in this instance he exhibited, I cannot but admire the 
 insight of anticipation which, without a manuduction (if 
 the term may be allowed) by natural science, enabled him 
 to forecast what is now, though not a scientific truth, yet at 
 least an agreeable and widely accepted opinion. At least 
 it cannot be denied that the flint and bone discoveries, and 
 the remains of the geologic man, have been narrowing the 
 interval between the orders of creation ; for it must be borne 
 in mind that the effect of these discoveries may be to exhibit 
 our race, not at its present and known standard of faculty, 
 but in the possession of inferior powers, and only on the way 
 upwards to the more elevated plane. 
 
 2. Not less boldness did Butler exhibit when he pro- 
 pounded that the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet under- 
 stood ; and that (apart from miracle) if progress was to be 
 made in understanding it, such progress must be effected in 
 the same way as natural knowledge is come at. It may 
 contain many truths as yet undiscovered 1 . This is surely 
 a very remarkable declaration, especially as coming from 
 Butler. For his early training could hardly have been 
 altogether discharged from the narrow ideas of Scripture 
 interpretation which must have been most unfavourable to 
 such progress ; and, again, he had a most vivid sense of the 
 corruptions which, under the mask of development, and 
 through enlarged interpretations, had made their way into 
 the Christian Church. Yet he was not to be deterred, when 
 he saw his way, from enunciating ideas on this topic which 
 seem to be of considerable breadth. 
 
 were two theories of our descent. his part he preferred the descent 
 
 Some would have it that we were from the angels, 
 
 descended from the apes; others l Analog;), II. iii. 21. 
 derived us from the angels. For 
 
Cn. v.] ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES 89 
 
 3. Still more striking, perhaps, are the original conceptions 
 which Butler applied to the great subject of eschatology. He 
 nowhere dogmatizes beyond the language of the Apostles' 
 and the Nicene Creeds. He has unfolded no theory which 
 disposes of the final condition of all souls hereafter ; and his 
 subject did not require it. But his subject did suggest to 
 him the glorification of virtue ; and, with this end in view, 
 he considered not only what virtue does, but what under 
 favouring circumstances it might do. He found the pre- 
 vailing tradition, due to the biassing circumstances of the 
 Reformation, too narrow ; and he conceives that the power 
 of virtue, rising upwards in distant scenes with less of 
 hindrance, may then newly amend those who are capable 
 of amendment. I reserve for another place a fuller state- 
 ment on this subject 1 . 
 
 4. Butler has also achieved an important work with 
 regard to the respective departments of reason and faith, 
 a favourite subject for the sneers of some sceptical writers. 
 No one charges Butler with having robbed faith of its due 
 prerogatives. Yet surely none could on the other hand desire 
 a greater boldness in defining the office of reason. ' I express 
 myself with caution, lest I should be mistaken to vilify 
 reason ; which is indeed the only faculty we have where- 
 with to judge concerning any thing, even revelation itself: 
 or be misunderstood to assert, that a supposed revelation 
 cannot be proved false, from internal characters 2 .' And 
 Butler may embolden many to maintain, as he does, that 
 there is not only no contradiction, but no opposition, between 
 faith and reason ; the intellectual element in faith being 
 reason employed upon a special subject-matter. 
 
 All these are instances in which Butler's prescient courage 
 had a tendency to place him at issue with friends of his 
 own cause, less sagacious than himself. There are other 
 cases worthy of notice, in which no such likelihood was 
 before him. 
 
 5. Such is the treatment of the word 'natural' in ch. i, 
 a treatment which may involve the solution of many diffi- 
 culties. There is no absurdity, he tells us, in supposing that 
 
 1 Analogy, II. iii. 3. Inf. Part II. Chap. iii. 2 Analogy, II. iii. 3. 
 
90 ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES [Pt. I. 
 
 there may be beings in the universe so enlarged in capacity 
 and experience, as that the whole Christian dispensation may 
 to them appear natural, i.e. conformable to God's dealings 
 with other parts of His creation; as natural, as the visible 
 known course of things appears to us l . 
 
 6. Again, when confronting the objector who dwelt on 
 difficulties apparent in the scheme of providential govern- 
 ment, he is not content with defence, but betakes himself also 
 to retaliation in argument. The things to which objection 
 is commonly taken in the scheme of providential government 
 may be things good in themselves, and even indispensable 2 ; 
 and the entire scheme may prove to have been the best that 
 it could be. 
 
 7. And again, outside the contentious portion of his 
 teaching, he goes far beyond the ordinary stream of Christian 
 instruction in his suggestions respecting future bliss, which, 
 as he thinks, may include the opening up of kinds of vision 
 altogether strange to the human soul. For what we now see 
 of the goodness of God is by seeing Him in His works ; but 
 we may come to see Him, and His glorious attributes, as 
 they are in themselves 3 . 
 
 iv. His Questionable Theses. 
 
 It may seem as if eulogy of this kind stood in ill-assorted 
 companionship with the admission that in very rare instances 
 his critics appear to catch him tripping ; as when Miss Hennell 
 arraigns him for saying that one or two actions of a par- 
 ticular character have no aptitude, if few and detached, to 
 create a bad mental habit. But the fact seems to be this. 
 Circumspection is easy or difficult according to the subject- 
 matter. It is easy in copying a letter ; it is most difficult 
 in a philosophical treatise such as Butler's. And from the 
 effort required to maintain continuously such a circumspec- 
 tion as this it is inseparable from humanity that the mind 
 should occasionally and for moments recoil. Take the case 
 of two horses ; one travelling on a road absolutely smooth, 
 
 Analogy, I. i. 31. 2 Ibid. viii. 15. 
 
 3 Sermons, xiv. 15, 18. 
 
Ch.V.] on HIS MENTAL QUALITIES 91 
 
 the other happening to tread a mountain path, its surface 
 almost made of broken stones. The last may stumble once 
 in a day's work, where the first does not; and yet may be 
 by far the more sure-footed of the two. 
 
 Even in Butler, then, we may expect to find scattered 
 about cases of inconsistency, or of deviation from absolute 
 precision. Among them, not wholly without misgiving, 
 I should reckon the following instances. 
 
 1. He seems to deviate from his own doctrine when in 
 a particular passage he couples self-love with conscience ; 
 seeing that he has never ascribed to self-love a judicial or 
 magisterial faculty l . 
 
 2. In twice using the phrase ' vicarious punishment,' he 
 departs from his customary use of the better phrase ' vicarious 
 sufferings,' without any apparent recollection that he is in- 
 troducing a new and important element into his argument, 
 and indeed so as to create presumptions that this is done 
 simply through inadvertence 2 . 
 
 3. He sometimes expressly distinguishes between passion 
 and affections ; but at other times, without expressly identi- 
 fying them, he seems not to exclude the supposition that 
 the terms are interchangeable. 
 
 He makes also a different and relaxed use of the term 
 ' affections,' so as to let it include ' appetites, passions, senses.' 
 
 And just afterwards he restrains the sense, without noticing 
 the change ; but again returns to the wider sense soon after 8 . 
 
 4. Again, he says that ' any disposition, prevailing beyond 
 a certain degree, becomes somewhat wrong ' : yet the love 
 of God is a disposition, and to this he (most justly) affixes 
 no limit 4 . 
 
 5. The language of one of the Sermons seems wholly to 
 exclude self-love from the category of affections ; but can this 
 in strictness be maintained 5 ? 
 
 6. It seems difficult to sustain the proposition that our 
 bodies consist of foreign matter 6 , if the word ' body ' be taken 
 in its most comprehensive sense. 
 
 1 Sermons, iii. 13. * Ibid. 8. 
 
 2 Analogy, II. v. 22. s Ibid. 10. 
 
 3 Sermons, v. 6-9. 6 Analogy, I. i. EX. 
 
92 ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES [Pt. T. 
 
 7. Or the proposition that ' a few detached commands ' 
 have no ' natural tendency to the formation of a habit ' 
 which is surely in keeping with their subject-matter. 
 
 8. The term ' imagination ' in the first chapter would 
 appear to be a misnomer 1 . 
 
 9. We have also the well-known passage where the name 
 of Caesar occurs, and where probabilities appear to be confused 
 with chances 2 . 
 
 10. Does not it appear questionable whether Butler does 
 not venture upon hazardous ground, when he says that the 
 ideas of happiness and misery are more important to us than 
 those of virtue and religion 3 1 Some qualification appears to 
 be here required. 
 
 Unless, however, this list of seriously questionable propo- 
 sitions could be largely extended, we need not fear that the 
 fame of Butler's circumspection will seriously dwindle. 
 
 v. His Supposed Defect in Imagination. 
 
 It is sometimes said that Butler is deficient in imagination. 
 I am aware of no plausible ground for this imputation, except 
 that supplied by the passage in which, employing the actual 
 word, he has made imagination, ' that forward delusive faculty,' 
 the subject of warning and censure. ' It ever obtrudes beyond 
 its sphere.' It is ' the author of all error.' It is singular that 
 what he denounces is not ' the imagination,' but ' imagination,' 
 as if he were dealing with a process rather than a faculty. 
 But we can hardly dwell upon this, since he proceeds to 
 describe it as a faculty, and, moreover, assigns to it a ' sphere.' 
 The mischievous products of this abusive practice were, we 
 must suppose, those of which Butler was cognizant, and with 
 which he deals so largely in his work. But these, mentioned 
 almost in every page, are not, in truth, errors of the imagina- 
 tion, but of unbridled fancy and caprice ; of unbalanced, 
 ill-regulated judgement. It seems probable that this is one of 
 the rare instances in which Butler, relaxing the firmness 
 of his hold, forgets himself and assumes licence in the use of 
 
 1 Analogy, I. i. 9. 2 Ibid. II. ii. 11, 12. 
 
 3 Sermons, xi. 21. 
 
Ch.V.] ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES 93 
 
 words. Sometimes, though rarely, he deals with schemes 
 purely metaphysical ; but these, if erroneous, are not errors 
 of the imagination properly so called. 
 
 If the question be only verbal, all reason for maiming the 
 mind of Butler in this particular disappears. But it does 
 not seem hard to assign some positive reasons for asserting 
 that Butler was duly — indeed, as I think, somewhat more 
 than commonly— endowed with his share of this faculty. 
 I should assign in proof of this the felicity of his illustra- 
 tions, which, though less copious (as being indeed less germane 
 to his subject), may remind us of Macaulay. As another 
 indication of the same kind, I notice the fact that Butler 
 is a believer in beauty. He believes in it not merely as, 
 like colour, an impression on the brain ; not merely as a 
 fashion or a whim ; but as a true entity. No one would 
 describe Burke as a man void of imagination; but Butler 
 masters the conception of beauty in a way more effective 
 than Burke, when he classes it with other ideas such as all 
 admit to be definite and substantive. The ideas of happi- 
 ness and misery, he says, will and ought to prevail over 
 those of order and beauty, and harmony, and proportion, 
 if they could clash, which he thinks they cannot 1 . Yet more 
 strongly does he mark his sense of the self-consistent and 
 substantive character of beauty in his ascription of it to the 
 character of the Almighty. This, he says, possesses in per- 
 fection 'everything of grace and beauty' which is variously 
 distributed in degree among the orders of creation 2 . 
 
 vi. His Originality. 
 
 It is perhaps right to introduce the present section with the 
 inquiry, What is originality 1 Can nothing be original which 
 has already been said or suggested by another? Ruskin 3 has 
 taught us that originality ' is only genuineness.' I understand 
 this to mean that, while a mechanical appropriation is pla- 
 giarism, there is also such a thing as a vital appropriation, 
 both intellectual and moral, which is of an order essentially 
 
 Sermons, xi. 21. 2 Ibid. xiv. 14. 
 
 3 Quoted in Morley's Diderot, vol. i. p. 303. 
 
94 ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES [Ft. I. 
 
 different. Moreover, the man who creates a thought, deposits 
 a seed, which carries in it life, and which is to be sown in 
 the minds of others. It may there germinate and bear fruit : 
 and, if the second mind supplies a soil richer than the first, 
 the thought primarily borrowed may spring up anew, 
 endowed with a deeper life, with a greater force of nutritive 
 quality, than it drew from the earlier source where it first 
 received its form. Again, the hot light of the sun, transfused 
 through coloured glass, may in its disintegration supply tints 
 of beauty sought in vain from the outward glare. Or we 
 may once more turn to another side of the subject, and say 
 that, as many seeds spring from one parent seed, so it may be 
 given to an author, who begins with being no more than 
 a borrower, to embody this single thought in vast and varied 
 combinations, to which its relation may eventually become to 
 be that of the individual to the community in which he 
 moves. Such is the work of Butler in its relation to the 
 parent suggestion of Origen. May it not have been also such 
 in relation to the anticipatory productions of Cumberland 1 
 
 It is not, however, necessary to dwell at great length on the 
 originality of Bishop Butler. 
 
 The highest form of originality is ' discovery ' ; and this is 
 the phrase of eulogy which Macintosh has applied to the 
 Sermons of Butler. But it is with regard to the Analogy that 
 the question of originality has been principally raised. 
 
 This subject was opened by Hallam, the historian. His 
 History of European Literature terminates with the seven- 
 teenth century. The works of Butler, therefore, were not 
 within his subject. But he has noticed at length, and greatly 
 commended in certain portions of its argument, the treatise of 
 Bishop Cumberland, de Legibus Naturae, which was published 
 in 1679. In a brief note he takes occasion to observe that 
 the second and third chapters of the first part of the Analogy 
 are in great part to be found in it \ 
 
 But he also shows in his text how much, in using the work 
 of Cumberland, Butler had to avoid. Indeed, he had not only 
 to avoid particular arguments, but to adopt a different 
 method of reasoning; for Cumberland had an ambition to 
 
 Hallam's History of European Literature, vol. iv. p. 317 n. 
 
Ch. V.] ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES 95 
 
 put his processes of reasoning into mathematical form. But 
 he gave to ethics a basis independently of revelation, and, as 
 Butler did after him, he resorted to experience as the source 
 from which to draw his supplies of argument 1 . 
 
 Again. In the preface to his edition of the Analogy-, 
 Bishop Fitzgerald has the following observation : 
 
 'The second chapter of Foster's Reply to Tindal, for in- 
 stance, is a remarkable anticipation of Butler's reasoning, 
 in P. ii. c. vi. upon the want of universality in revelation :i ; 
 while the following passage in Bishop Berkeley's Minute 
 Philosopher clearly contains the germ of the whole argu- 
 ment.' 
 
 Then follows a long extract, of which the pith is contained 
 in a single sentence : 
 
 1 It will be sufficient, if such analogy appears between the 
 dispensations of grace and nature, as may make it probable 
 (although much should be unaccountable in both) to suppose 
 them derived from the same author, and the workmanship of 
 one and the same hand.' 
 
 This is indeed a remarkable passage. It corresponds, not 
 with the declaration of Origen, on which Butler founds 
 himself, but more nearly with Butler's own amendment of 
 that declaration 4 . It was published in the year 1 732, and it 
 contains a summary of the entire argument. For that very 
 reason, although it sets forth a grand anticipation of Butler, 
 yet we cannot suppose Butler to have been indebted to it. 
 The Analogy bears the date of 1736. It must have been 
 published early in the year, for a second and amended edition 
 appeared before the year expired. The Sermons had been 
 published in 1726. Viewing the distribution of Butler's 
 works over his, life, as well as the character of his mind, we 
 can hardly doubt that he had been working out his great 
 
 1 History of European Literature, gen (see Analogy, Introd. § 8) is be- 
 vol. iii. p. 301, et seq. tween nature and Scripture. The 
 
 2 Fitzgerald's Analogy, preface, analogy exhibited by Butler is be- 
 p. xxxviii. tween nature in its ordinary course 
 
 8 See Defence of the Usefulness, and constitution, on the one side, 
 
 Truth,andExcellency of the Christian and religion, natural and revealed, 
 
 Religion. London, 1731. on the other. Butler widens the 
 
 * The analogy suggested by Ori- field both of Origen and of Berkeley. 
 
96 ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES [Pt. I. 
 
 argument from a date considerably antecedent to 1732, and 
 not improbably prior even to 1726. The germ must have 
 been deposited, and begun to develop, long before Berkeley 
 gave his work to the world. 
 
 Once more, Dr. Bernard, a Professor of Divinity in Dublin 
 University, has printed a noteworthy paper entitled ' The 
 Predecessors of Bishop Butler 1 .' He gives a list of writers 
 to whom he thinks that Butler was variously indebted. 
 
 The first is Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, the author of 
 The Principles and Duties of Natural Religion. In his 
 third chapter he pointed out that in common life men are 
 to guide their actions by probable evidence when they cannot 
 attain to certainty. 
 
 Wilkins has also cited from Grotius the passage cited by 
 Butler in the Analogy, II. vi. 19. Butler's debt is, I think (if 
 any), to Grotius, rather than to Wilkins, as the terms of the 
 citation would seem to me to imply. 
 
 The gratification of a passion, according to Butler, would 
 not please, but for 'a prior suitableness between the object 
 and the passion.' This doctrine had been previously laid 
 down by Wilkins. 
 
 Wilkins has very clearly defined superstition. Butler has 
 not, and Dr. Bernard thinks the sense he puts upon it is not 
 immediately apparent. 
 
 Butler and Wilkins have both referred to the Jews as 
 a standing memorial and example. They both regard the cor- 
 respondence between conscience and self-love as indications 
 of the wisdom and power of God. 
 
 Dr. Bernard points out some heads under which the philo- 
 sophy of Butler coincides with that of Shaftesbury ; and also 
 thinks that Colliber's work on Natural and Revealed Religion 
 might have suggested some of the arguments used in the 
 Analogy. 
 
 It may perhaps be held that coincidences at certain points 
 in two philosophical systems cannot always be regarded as 
 proofs that the one later in date is indebted to the earlier. 
 Upon all subjects that have undergone open and repeated 
 discussion, there is gradually accumulated a common stock 
 
 1 ' The Predecessors of Bishop Butler,' Hermathena, vol. xl. No. xx. 1894. 
 
Ch.V.] on HIS MENTAL QUALITIES 97 
 
 of materials which cannot be regarded as exclusive properties, 
 but remain open to the use of all. Much of what the acute- 
 ness and research of Dr. Bernard have drawn from Bishop 
 Wilkins may fall within the scope of this remark. It is only 
 when there is something decidedly peculiar in the matter, or in 
 the form given to it, that we can safely predicate derivation 
 by the later author as probable or certain. The passages 
 from Wilkins, who was a very considerable person, on 
 probable evidence, and of the harmony between a passion 
 and its objects, appear to me to be probably of this character. 
 
 Or again, we may say the case is like that of a young man 
 beginning his career in the world of business, who receives 
 from some friend a gift or loan of capital comparatively 
 small, which by skill, courage, and assiduity he develops into 
 a magnificent fortune. 
 
 It seems to me far from unlikely that the colossal character 
 of Achilles may have been suggested to Homer by the great 
 martial figure of Rameses the Second, a figure not less excep- 
 tional than that of the Achaian hero ; but that, even if this 
 should be the fact, it in no way detracts from the paramount 
 conception presented to us in the Iliad. It may indeed be 
 a specific gift of genius to appropriate elementary material 
 for the purposes of its grand combinations, and to give them 
 an execution of which their original author had never 
 dreamed. We may, then, securely say that Butler has a 
 stock of originality amply sufficient to maintain his literary 
 credit ; and the question which has been raised, though 
 worthy of discussion on its own grounds, is not one of great 
 moment in reference to the claims of Butler and of his main 
 works on the attention of the world. 
 
 As I own, it appears to me that if a student of Butler, after 
 perusing and intelligently apprehending the Analogy, were to 
 be told that it was not a work of originality, his nature, from 
 its inmost depths, would cry out against the assertion. It 
 matters not that particular thoughts, or even that some 
 portions of the argument may have been promulgated before 
 him by others ; even if we are to suppose, and the supposition 
 might be somewhat violent if universally applied, that he was 
 in every case cognizant of the passage cited against him. 
 Surely if all this be granted, and be taken at the highest 
 
98 ON HIS MENTAL QUALITIES 
 
 value which can be assigned to it, the originality of Butler's 
 work remains indisputable. Are not these thoughts of other 
 writers, scattered and uncombined, in the main like the bricks 
 lying here and there, and from which a building may be 
 constructed 1 ? But the original mind in this case is not 
 that which moulded the bricks; it is that which raised the 
 building. Or if we go further and admit that we find here and 
 there the embryo of substantive portions of the Treatise, as 
 Origen has supplied the embryo of the entire Treatise, will 
 not the truly great work, though both may be original, be 
 that of him who discerns and develops the capacities of what 
 is still essentially inorganic, and gives to it once for all 
 a fully moulded and imperishable form 1 Till their hour 
 comes, the mere rudiments await the hand and eye of the 
 master-builder. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SOME POINTS OF BUTLER'S POSITIVE TEACHING 
 
 nnHE influence of Butler's works upon opinion; the value 
 -*- of the ethical qualities they display ; the applicability 
 of his arguments in forms never suggested, perhaps never 
 dreamed of by himself, to controversies posterior to his time ; 
 all these are topics of importance, and worthy severally of 
 independent prosecution, but they are distinct from the 
 positive teaching conveyed by his writings ; a few points of 
 which I will now proceed to consider. 
 
 i. His Elevated Vieiv of Human Nature. 
 
 The relations of man, in which his duty and his training 
 are involved, are threefold. They are relations to God, to 
 other men, and to himself. He may exercise manual arts ; 
 he may be given to civil affairs; he may be a philosopher, 
 or a divine, or a fisher of men, or a student of the visible 
 creation in one or other of its kingdoms. But all that he 
 does in any such or any other department, falls into the triad 
 of relations which has been named ; as indeed whatever he 
 does in any of those relations, is, when traced up to the sources 
 of action, comprehended in his over-reaching, all-comprehend- 
 ing, relations to God. 
 
 His relations to man may subdivide themselves as follows. 
 He has duties to his kind at large, which in certain cases may 
 be active, in other cases may be mental only, as, for example, 
 in the injunction to make supplication for all men 1 . He has 
 duties to his country, to its ruling authority, to his neighbour- 
 hood, to his friends, to his family. But he has also duties to 
 himself. These duties to himself are directly associated with 
 
 1 i Tim. ii. i. 
 H 2 
 
ioo ON HIS POSITIVE TEACHING [Pt. I. 
 
 his maintenance, with his security, with his tranquillity ; it 
 may be with his advancement, inward as well as outward. 
 But he has a further and perpetual duty to himself. For 
 covering all these, pervading every action of his life, and 
 coincident with, though distinguishable from, his duty and 
 love to God, is his duty to his own nature, the nature in 
 which God constituted and constructed him. It is largely 
 in his own nature that he sees God. Not in those faults 
 and weaknesses of his nature with which he was born into 
 the world, or which he himself has imported into it ; but 
 according to the noble scheme on which God projected it, 
 apart from the ravages of sin, and with all the vital develop- 
 ment which training and experience can give it. 
 
 This respect for our nature is a principle most of all ex- 
 hibited in his disquisition on the supremacy of conscience ; but 
 it is one with which the whole works of Butler are profoundly 
 imbued. It is a sentiment which is to accompany every act 
 of our lives, and to give to them a tacit assent and sanction. 
 The moral law comes to us in various forms. The nearest 
 of them all, for which its own proper mental habit has to 
 be formed, is the sense of reverence for our nature, and the 
 desire of conformity to it. These, duly matured and assimi- 
 lated, come to operate with the directness and certainty of an 
 instinct ; and violations of nature and its laws are put aside 
 as an unclean thing, as importing not only sin but shame. 
 
 Butler is sometimes thought to connect too closely his idea 
 of virtue with happiness. But then we must recollect what 
 is his idea of happiness. Happiness he holds to consist only 
 in the enjoyment of those objects which are 'by nature 
 adapted to our several faculties U Virtue lies in a rightly 
 conceived following of nature, vice in departing from it 2 ^ 
 The force of Butler's teaching on this subject cannot be 
 sufficiently estimated from this or that single passage : it 
 pervades the tissue of his thought. And there is no part 
 perhaps of his teaching which, as he has developed it, is so 
 peculiarly and originally his own. But our best security 
 against misunderstanding him is probably to be found in the 
 passage which sets forth that the obligation to follow virtue 
 
 1 Sermons, xi. 6-13. 2 Ibid. Preface, § 8. 
 
Ch.VL] ON HIS POSITIVE TEACHING 
 
 still subsists, even for a man, if such there be, who is no^ 
 convinced that his interest will be served thereby 1 . 
 
 It seems to me probable that the high place accorded by 
 Butler to what he terms self-love, and the favourable view he 
 has taken of it, may have been in a measure due to his lofty 
 estimate of our human nature. Not that I can find solid 
 ground for dissent from his doctrine, though it may seem 
 to grate a little upon the ear. As to the substance, I only 
 regret that self-love is not more sharply marked off by his 
 text from selfishness, which, of course, he nowhere commends, 
 and very rarely mentions. But an object so precious as is the 
 idea of humanity in Butler's conception, requires or justifies 
 the existence of an apparatus for its conservation, of a power- 
 ful faculty dedicated to the steady prosecution of its welfare. 
 In fact, the ideal concept of human nature, and the practical 
 power of self-love, almost seem to coalesce. Butler's mind 
 was incapable of harbouring an ignoble conception. And 
 surely there is nothing ignoble in conceiving of the Christian 
 world as a garden divided into plots, each of which represents 
 an individual soul, and is committed by the supreme Gar- 
 dener 2 , to the special care of that same soul. Self-love, then, 
 in the only commendable sense, is our view, taken with the 
 eye well purged from disturbance and obstruction, of what 
 God has committed to every one of us as our principal work 
 in life. 
 
 It is idle, as I conceive, to dispute Butler's doctrine of human 
 nature on account of that other doctrine of ruin through 
 sin, which he has not less emphatically set forth. The gamut 
 or register, in musical phrase, of humanity, is of enormous 
 range. Capable of contracting into littleness and meanness, 
 and of sinking into unfathomable depths of depravity, it 
 lias the correlative capacity of rising to supreme heights of 
 excellence; to moral heights bordering upon perfection, as 
 well as to lofty planes of genius. The contemplation of it 
 
 1 Sermons, Preface, §§ 20, ax. in a profound and elevating pas- 
 
 2 Dante has employed this figure sage. — Paradiso, xxvi. 64-6. 
 
 1 Le fronde onde s' infronda tutto 1' orto 
 Dell' ortolano eterno, am' io cotanto, 
 Quanto da lui a lor di bene e porto.' 
 
102 ON HIS POSITIVE TEACHING [Pt. I. 
 
 in its littleness sickens heart and mind. But the contem- 
 plation of it in its greatness, a greatness not measured by 
 rank or intellect, seems at times to give us a glimpse of those 
 profoundest counsels, which took effect in the Incarnation 
 of our Lord. 
 
 ii. His Doctrine of Habits. 
 
 This lesson, then, of human nature, if it be a true one, 
 is one of cardinal moment ; and, for a Christian country, 
 Butler may perhaps be deemed to hold the first place among 
 those by whom it has been taught. 
 
 The present notice of the positive teaching of Butler aims 
 at placing especially in clear view what is most distinctive 
 in that teaching. The Analogy is not a treatise upon 
 education ; but what treatises are there which as faithfully 
 and profoundly impress upon us the place and function of 
 training, and especially of self-training, in the destinies of 
 the human soul 1 ? The portion of the work most fully 
 developed in this respect is his doctrine of habits in 
 the first part of the Analogy 1 ', and in its whole compass 
 it might be hard to find anything either more valuable or 
 more truly his own. 
 
 Habits (after the Greek e£eis) are not in Butler's view 
 mere deo-eis., states or dispositions, but growths, and growths 
 which are ever growing. Every growth is an acquisition 
 as well as a growth. If we could conceive of a machine, 
 instinct with mind and gifted with the power of self-develop- 
 ment, we might call habits a 'going machinery.' They 
 include the acting as well as the being of the mind, and 
 cannot, like their Greek counterpart in Aristotle, be sharply 
 distinguished from, and put in antithesis to, energies 2 . They 
 form a primary factor in the human life ; and upon them 
 hangs an immense responsibility, for there can hardly be one 
 of our waking moments in which we are not contributing 
 something to the constitution of one or other among them ; 
 that is to say, to the eventual constitution of ourselves. 
 
 Such being their ground-idea, habits are divided between 
 perception and action; perception, indeed, often being itself 
 
 1 Analogy, I. v. 6-17. 2 Aristotle, Eth. Nic. II. i. 7. 
 
Ch.VI.] ON HIS POSITIVE TEACHING 103 
 
 mental action. And, again, they are divided between the 
 body and the mind. They are the product of use, or single 
 acts over and over again repeated. Thoughts which have no 
 proper regard to action, and impressions which are purely 
 passive, lose force by this repetition ; but active habits, mental 
 processes which contemplate or take effect in action, gain it. 
 It is not easy to trace the formation of habit from point 
 to point. Yet the reality of the formation is matter of certain 
 experience. It is also to be observed, on the one hand, that 
 the augmentation of true force in active habits may be 
 accompanied with a loss of force merely emotional ; and, on 
 the other, that a process, which in its inception was passive, 
 consisting of impressions on the mind, say, from admonition, 
 experience, example, may in its advance become active by 
 impelling us to a course of action. [It has been well shown 
 by Doctor John Brown that the right-minded man, on 
 becoming a surgeon, loses in passive humanity, for he becomes 
 inured to the contemplation of suffering, and is better able 
 to regard it steadily ; but he advances in active humanity, 
 for he acquires a desire to relieve the pain he witnesses, and 
 to exert his care and energy for that purpose.] 
 
 From habit we derive, when in action, supplies of readiness, 
 ease, satisfaction. It is by habit that we attain to maturity, 
 which could not be attained by mere duration. For nature 
 casts us forth into the world unfurnished, yet with a capacity 
 for furnishing. Habits may have their place in a future 
 state ; but meanwhile they provide us with a security ab intra 
 against mischiefs assailing us from without, and form the 
 fitting antidote and guarantee against our liability to lapse. 
 The evil habit is produced by repeated or continuing dis- 
 obedience, but positive advance in virtue is achieved by 
 victories over temptation, and by forming that wariness of 
 mind which baffles it. This is doctrine generally sound; 
 whether its application is limited by the law of a mean in 
 nature, or otherwise, is uncertain, and need not now be 
 inquired into 1 . Upon the whole, here lies a great instrument 
 for the bettering of our character; and to the use of this 
 instrument our nature is adapted 2 . 
 
 1 Analogy, I. v. 33. 2 Ibid. 20. 
 
104 ON HIS POSITIVE TEACHING [Pt I. 
 
 We may find the germ of this remarkable exposition in 
 the Ethics of Aristotle. They teach that the consummation 
 of energies is in the habits imparted 1 . It is by action that, 
 in our intercourse with men, we grow to be righteous or 
 unrighteous ; and habits are a gradual growth from energies 2 . 
 Seminally these declarations are of great weight. But he 
 seems to limit the formation of habits to acts done in our 
 communications with others. He does not enter on the field 
 of self-education. There is not a glance at the profound dis- 
 tinction between active and passive habits ; the idea of mental 
 habits is radically distinct in the two writers; and the full 
 development of the subject, with the great lessons it conveys, 
 seems to be due to the thought of Butler. 
 
 iii. His View of Human Ignorance. 
 
 I 
 
 A corner-stone of Butler's mental system is certainly to be 
 
 found in his strong but carefully bounded view of human 
 ignorance. There is no part of his teaching more urgently 
 required at the present day, when not only are the large 
 recent accessions to human knowledge apt to be over-valued 
 by some of those who at least have laboured hard to learn 
 and perhaps to add to them ; but when many who are totally 
 ignorant of what they are, vaingloriously boast of them as if 
 sciolism approximated to omniscience. 
 
 Butler was not a man indifferent, as some are, to know- 
 ledge outside his profession. He attached a high value to 
 natural knowledge, rje thought some parts of it were 'of 
 the greatest consequence to the ease and convenience of life V 
 He was deeply impressed with those enlargements of 'the 
 plan of Providence,' which 'late discoveries' had supplied 4 . 
 From these enlargements, indeed, he seems to have drawn 
 the suggestions he has made bold to make as to what may 
 take place after death with regard to the souls of men. For 
 it seems to him that, as the material world appears to be 
 in a manner boundless, ' there must be some scheme of 
 
 1 Aristotle, Eth. Nic. I. viii. 9, 11. s Analogy, II. iii. 22. 
 
 2 Ibid. III. vii. 6. 4 Ibid. 1. iii. 28. 
 
Ch.VI] ON HIS POSITIVE TEACHING 105 
 
 Providence vast in proportion to it 1 .' With this radically 
 sensible disposition to take account of every real gain, Butler 
 pointed out, in his admirable sermon on Human Ignorance, 
 that what we know is of effects only, not causes. We know 
 nothing of the real essence of beings, next to nothing of 
 ourselves, of our creation, and conservation ; he showed that 
 all knowledge served to raise a curiosity which it could 
 not satisfy. Every opened secret, discovery, effect, ' convinces 
 us of numberless more which remain concealed, and which 
 we had before no suspicion of V 
 
 Yes, some things are plain, and many of them tend to show 
 the multitude and vastness of those which are impenetrably 
 obscure. Sometimes we have to confess that knowledge once 
 possessed by mankind has been lost by them 3 ; sometimes 
 that the knowledge possessed by savages is inferior to our 
 own ; sometimes that, in matters open to observation, and 
 which we have a great interest in observing — such as the 
 weather — the race of man has, or had up to an exceedingly 
 recent period, accumulated nothing. But these observations 
 are of limited scope ; and it may seem both vague and trite 
 to remark on the vastness of the unknown compared with 
 the known. Let us, then, take the point suggested by Butler. 
 Every extension of our knowledge is an extension, often a far 
 wider extension, of our ignorance. When we knew of only 
 one world we also knew a good deal about its circumstances, 
 its condition, its progress. Now we are surrounded by worlds 
 innumerable, spread over spaces hardly conceivable for their 
 extent ; and yet those, who may be rapt in their wonder at 
 the grand discoveries of the spectroscope, may also be the 
 first to admit that as to the condition, purposes, and destinies 
 of all these worlds we are absolutely in the dark. Consider 
 the conditions of our civilization : disease in its multiplied 
 forms is more rife among us than in savage life, while the 
 problems of the social kind seem to gain upon us continu- 
 ally in the multitude of puzzles which they offer to our 
 
 1 Analogy, I. iii. 28. loss of the knowledge of the steam- 
 
 2 Sermons, xv. plough, invented in Scotland, and 
 
 3 For instance, the hardening of lost during many years, until it 
 copper among the ancients; the was re-imported. 
 
106 ON HIS POSITIVE TEACHING 
 
 bewildered minds. Then, in the moral world, we must be 
 still more conscious of our limitations ; for, while we are 
 continually required to pass judgement for practical purposes 
 on actions, every right-minded person will incessantly feel 
 that to form any perfect judgement on any action whatever 
 is a task wholly beyond our power. When Butler pro- 
 nounced his severe sentence on the claims of the Popes, his 
 horror was not the result of theological bigotry, but, without 
 doubt, he was shocked (with his strong, just, and humble 
 sense of our limitations in capacity) at the daring and pre- 
 sumption of the claims set up by some on their behalf. Yet 
 he keenly saw the obligation that knowledge imposes to act 
 when we know, not less than to abstain when we do not. 
 
 On this great and critical subject, he seems never to have 
 let fall a faulty word, and of all the topics he has handled 
 there is not one on which we may more safely accept him as 
 a guide. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE THEOLOGY OF BUTLER AND CHARGES 
 RELATING TO IT 
 
 |"T would appear as though the most characteristic employ - 
 -*- ment of Butler's mind lay in the exercise of reflection 
 rather than in the acquisition of learning. And, further, it 
 may perhaps be not very hazardous to suppose that the 
 knowledge which he coveted was philosophical more largely 
 than theological, if we take theology in its proper sense as 
 the science of religion. All the theology of the Analogy 
 (and it contains much theological matter) is derived straight 
 from the Holy Scriptures, and ends as well as begins with 
 them. The philosophy, however, which he affected, was 
 philosophy on its moral side. He rarely dwells on the meta- 
 physical side of philosophy. The famous youthful corre- 
 spondence with Clarke leaves on my mind the impression 
 that when the unbending integrity of his mind, by actually 
 throwing certain questions of metaphysics in his way, led 
 him to notice them, his desire was to get clear of them as 
 soon as possible. Not once in all his other works does he 
 argue a question properly metaphysical. 
 
 It may perhaps be truly said that Butler's mind turned 
 little to theology, as such, considering theology in what I have 
 already described as its true sense. Butler never but once 
 quotes a theologian, and that only in one of the notes l , which 
 he appends to his text with a just parsimony. With regard 
 to the exclusiveness of his habit of quoting from Holy Scrip- 
 ture, it seems probable that his education as a Presbyterian 
 dissenter may have done much to form the habit of his mind. 
 
 Analogy, II. i. 18 n. 
 
108 ON HIS THEOLOGY [Pt. I. 
 
 His theology was made up, so to speak, with raw material 
 drawn straight from the fountain-head. He had the deep 
 insight given by true piety ; and it was guarded not only by 
 his habitual circumspection, but by a striking soundness, so to 
 speak, of this instinct. The process might have been a dan- 
 gerous one for men of inferior scope if employed on the same 
 arduous work ; but his theological statements, properly so 
 called, have never been impugned, and have appeared to be 
 in a singular degree measured and exact. He shows no sign 
 of familiarity, or even of acquaintance, with the Anglican 
 divines of the seventeenth century. 
 
 No teacher has laid more firmly than Butler the founda- 
 tion-stones of external religion, or has more clearly set forth 
 the place of the Church in the Christian system as dating 
 from the closing charges of our Lord, and from the first 
 inception of the Apostolic mission. He has therefore done 
 a great work for churchmen as such, and the work is perhaps 
 of all the greater value because it is not, to all appearance, 
 accepted from Anglican tradition, but drawn by him out of 
 the treasures of his own thought upon the Scriptures, and 
 upon the subject which he may from time to time be bringing 
 under philosophic treatment. Indeed, meditation appears to 
 have been his special office, rather than breadth and abun- 
 dance of acquisition from the works of others. 
 
 The imputations of having favoured Popery, and even of 
 having died in the Roman communion, are charges which 
 may justly be reckoned as among the most damnatory signs 
 of the religious character of the period in which he lived. It 
 was probably the very worst period, which can be noted in 
 our whole religious history during the four centuries which 
 have now nearly completed their course since the days of 
 Wolsey and of Warham. And the fashion of defence offered by 
 his friend, Bishop Halifax, is not a highly redeeming feature 
 of the case. Bishop Butler shared this imputation with 
 Johnson, Burke, and other men alike eminent and excellent. 
 The reader of the present day will regard it as crushed by 
 the weight of its own absurdity. Were we engaged in the 
 consideration of his life at large, it might not be improper to 
 enter upon a detailed notice of the subject, since it attained 
 the undeserved honour of being treated as a matter of serious 
 
Ch.VII.] ON HIS THEOLOGY 109 
 
 importance at the time when it was made. Indeed, it led 
 Seeker, a respected Archbishop of Canterbury, for the first, 
 and I trust the last, time in the history of his illustrious See, 
 to figure as an anonymous correspondent in the columns of 
 a newspaper for the purpose of defending his friend. But 
 it cannot be necessary any longer to present the details of 
 this paltry controversy to the world in connexion with the 
 publication of his works, and I have felt no hesitation in 
 dismissing it from a place of honour which it has, for a con- 
 siderable time, rather unworthily usurped in the best known 
 editions of the Works. 
 
 Still, the charge that the tone of his writings has a ten- 
 dency to promote the Roman Catholic religion 1 , unjust and 
 indeterminate as it is, can hardly be met with summary 
 dismissal. But it seems mainly referable to the mental frame 
 of those who make it. The works certainly do not encourage 
 a negative habit of mind ; and on this account, since the Latin 
 Church is the largest and the least restrained in affirmation, 
 all persons who from nature or habit are, in matters of 
 religion, given to negation, may be readily led to impute to 
 Butler this Romanizing tendency. No less a person than the 
 historian Hallam was, I think, of opinion that any one who 
 admitted our Lord to have been the founder of a polity upon 
 earth was in the last resort bound to the admission of the 
 Roman claims. If this were so, it would be plain that the 
 Anglican divines as a body hold a very slippery position. 
 
 I offer one or two remarks. The first is that no one within 
 my knowledge has ever been stated to have been led into the 
 Church of Rome by the teaching of Butler ; and the second 
 is, that he has been studied and eulogized by men such as 
 Wesley, Chalmers, Angus, and others, whose position would 
 have made them quick to detect any such tendency, but none 
 of whom have found it. The study of him is much favoured 
 in Ireland among the members of the disestablished Church, 
 who are as a body pre-eminently anti-Roman ; and his 
 celebrity in America appears, much to their honour, to lie 
 very largely among the same religious communities which 
 in this country pass by the general name of Nonconformists. 
 
 Miss Hennell's Essay, pp. 50-2. 
 
no ON HIS THEOLOGY [Pt. I. 
 
 Finally, we cannot properly pass by without notice the 
 remarkable passage in which, so far from showing any in- 
 clination to ' Popery,' Butler condemns it in terms which 
 seem at first sight to involve a departure from his habitual 
 moderation. He denounces it as 'that great corruption of 
 Christianity, Popery V It may well be called an exceptional 
 passage, for it is not Butler's usual manner to deal out his 
 judgements of men or things in terms so broad and un- 
 qualified. Also, in some passages of the Analogy, though 
 he does not name the Church of Rome, he speaks of the 
 corruptions of religion in terms which suggest that he may 
 have had it in his mind 2 . If we try to come at his more 
 definite meaning, we do not find that he appears to have had 
 in view this or that particular doctrine or usage of the Latin 
 Church, but partly its incessant aggression, and mainly the 
 claim of the Popedom, as it was even then pushed ' at Rome ' 
 to a 'plenitude of power,' which he regards as a 'manifest, 
 open, usurpation of all human and divine authority.' Plainly 
 he is not employing the term ' Popery,' as has been common, 
 in order to vent controversial heat, but with reference to 
 those assumptions of the court of Rome, which, though 
 strongly opposed in, and long after, his day, were resolutely 
 pushed at headquarters. While, then, we need not regard 
 Butler as tinged with any form of ultraism in religion, we 
 surely must acknowledge, in the case of a man so honest and 
 so bold, the great force of his declaration in showing his 
 mental attitude to have been one removed as far as possible 
 from any disposition to accept the Roman system. His mind, 
 essentially estranged from any and every form of unlimited 
 power, probably found in such a feature of the Roman scheme 
 its central force, and hence was led to use such terms of 
 severity concerning it as require careful notice in order to 
 secure our placing upon them a just interpretation. 
 
 It now only remains to take notice of his alleged failure to 
 treat subjects of religion in a manner duly evangelical. And 
 here I offer a preliminary observation on the associations 
 belonging to his extraction. Persons familiar with the 
 methods of the more modern Nonconformity might feel 
 
 1 Sermon before the Lords, 1747, § 8. 2 Analogy, II. i. 13 ; vi. 5. 
 
CH.V1L] ON HIS THEOLOGY in 
 
 inclined, from his having been bred as a Dissenter, to be 
 specially exacting with him on this account. But, from 
 piecing together the threads of circumstance, I think it most 
 probable that his connexion was with that portion of the 
 contemporary Dissenters who, during the period of his 
 boyhood and youth, were rapidly moving away from the 
 older standard of Puritanism, and towards the system after- 
 wards known as Unitarian. There are perhaps some grounds 
 for surmising that the Tewkesbury Academy, where he was 
 trained, was passing towards the more latitudinarian side of 
 Nonconformity. His relations with Clarke, who passes for 
 an Arian, look in the same direction. The writers whom he 
 quotes do not include any among either the Nonjurors, or 
 those champions of Anglican divinity who had given it form 
 and body during the seventeenth century. If Waterland be 
 thought an exception, it must be borne in mind that Water- 
 land's commendations of preachers included the sermons of 
 Hoadly. In dealing with external religion, and with the 
 historical institution of the Church, Butler makes good 
 positions markedly conducive to the constructive process 
 which had been advancing from the time of Hooker to that 
 of Beveridge ; but these positions carry no mark of Anglican 
 tradition, and seem to have been taken up as the result of his 
 own independent thought. 
 
 The charge itself, if it were well founded, would be a serious 
 one. But I confess that it appears to me to be wholly 
 wanting in foundation. It may even have been a duty laid 
 upon Butler by the origin and purpose of the Analogy to 
 avoid, as a general rule, the warmer religious phraseology. 
 For, firstly, it is a scientific treatise on the basis of belief in 
 the Divine Government of the world ; and, in such a treatise, 
 the doctrines of grace find but a narrow place. But, further, 
 he was in part arguing against Deists, and in part dealing 
 with a state of society divided in the main between in- 
 difference and unbelief. He has himself acquainted us that, 
 doubtless with a view to the furtherance of his cause, he 
 argued * upon the principles of others, not his own l ' ; and, if 
 he argued upon their principles, it was a matter of course 
 
 1 Analogy, II. viii. 32. 
 
ii2 07V HIS THEOLOGY [Pt. I. 
 
 that he should not stand in marked contrast with the strain 
 of their language. Half a century later, the excellent work 
 of Mr. Wilberf orce adopted a different tone ; but Mr. Wilber- 
 force's work was a treatise d'occasion, and he sought not so 
 much to lay the foundations of belief, as to stir men up to 
 the practice of what they already professed. It is true there 
 is an absence of what may be termed evangelical flavour, or 
 unction, from Butler's general strain. But his plan was 
 surely the plan best calculated to secure for him that which 
 was the farthest limit of his modest wishes, an impartial 
 hearing, accorded by educated men. All colouring given, 
 beyond what necessity demanded, to the handling of his 
 topics would have seemed to them a surreptitious method 
 of drawing attention away from the merits of the case, 
 and, as I have already urged, would have supplied a plea 
 at least plausible for shutting a book which did not give 
 them fair play. 
 
 But it undoubtedly lay within the necessity of the case that 
 Butler should convey to his readers, in outline, a true idea of 
 that Gospel which he was commending to them under the 
 name of Revealed Religion. He was bound in his sphere to 
 'reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgement 1 ,' 
 by presenting to it a true picture of human nature, of its 
 actual fall, and of the means divinely provided for its 
 recovery. He depicted human nature as a thing beautiful 
 and noble, as the work of God, not of the devil : and those 
 who may be startled at his attitude might do well to note 
 what St. Augustine says on the same subject in his writings 
 against the Manicheans. Has he, then, been stinted in his 
 acknowledgement of the havoc wrought in that nature by the 
 introduction of sin into the world 1 On the contrary, he is 
 alike distinct and copious, not in merely acknowledging, but 
 in enforcing, this melancholy truth. Before we have read 
 many pages of his Introduction, we learn that this world is 
 in a state of ' apostasy, wickedness, and ruin V If training 
 be generally required for the imperfect, how much more 
 for those who have ' corrupted their natures,' for ' depraved 
 
 1 John xvi. 8. 2 Analogy, Introd. § 16; also II. i. 16; iii. 23. 
 
Ch.VII] ON HIS THEOLOGY 113 
 
 creatures ' who want to be renewed V The present state was 
 intended to be a discipline of virtue ; but the ' generality of 
 men ' ' seem to make a discipline of vice V Mankind are 
 ' corrupted and depraved,' and thus unfit for the state which 
 Christ has prepared for His disciples 3 . We are in a condition 
 of ' vice, and misery, and darkness V That the world is in 
 a condition of ruin ' seems the very ground of the Christian 
 dispensation V 
 
 In a very full and striking passage he sums up the case 6 ; 
 and here he does not stop short of avowing that 'the generality 
 grow more profligate and corrupt with age.' In truth, if 
 there be any one topic on which repetition may plausibly 
 be made a charge against Butler, it is the sad and solemn 
 topic of the misery, debasement, and corruption which 
 virulent and inveterate sin has brought about in the world. 
 The numerous passages afford abundant proof of his anxiety 
 not only to promulgate this unhappy truth, but to stamp it 
 on the minds of his readers. 
 
 The recovery of this race, to all appearance hopelessly lost, 
 is by a Priest- Victim, foreshadowed in ancient predictions, 
 who is also our Prophet or Teacher, and our King, and who 
 has made on our behalf an atonement or expiation, the mode 
 whereof is not revealed to us, but as to which we know that 
 it has an efficacy beyond that of instruction, example, or 
 government. By this Atonement we are enabled to escape 
 wrath and obtain life 7 . And He has founded a church or 
 kingdom, as the home within which this process is to be 
 carried on. But inasmuch as we are enfeebled and incapa- 
 citated by sin, there is also a provision for rectifying the 
 perverted will, and making good the energies so sadly ex- 
 hausted as concerns the pursuit of good. This is the assistance 
 of God's Spirit to effect the needful renovation, which is 
 implied in the declaration, 'figurative but express, Except 
 a man be born of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom 
 of God V 
 
 The exception taken to Butler, which I have thus en- 
 
 1 Analogy, I. v. 30. 2 Ibid. I. v. 34. s Ibid. II. i. 24. 
 
 4 Ibid. II. v. 5. 8 Ibid. II. v. 23. 6 Ibid. II. v. 12. 
 
 7 Ibid. II. v. 13-21. " Ibid. II. i. 24. 
 
ii4 ON HIS THEOLOGY 
 
 deavoured to obviate, has been taken by men both sincere 
 and eminent, and in terms of regretful sympathy and admira- 
 tion, such as show a reluctance to find faults in one whom 
 they admit to have been a great benefactor to the Christian 
 world. Still I am fain to hope it will be admitted, not only 
 that his belief is sound and strong, but that, when we 
 sufficiently consider both the purpose with which, and the 
 circumstances in which, the works themselves were com- 
 posed, it will be felt that the cast of his phraseology is capable 
 of an effectual defence. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ON SOME POINTS OP METAPHYSICS RAISED BY 
 THE TEXT OF BUTLER 
 
 "TTTHEN we are led to speak of metaphysics in relation to 
 ™ * Butler, we find ourselves obliged to draw a great dis- 
 tinction at the outset. Butler found a body of ideas truly 
 metaphysical in possession of the philosophic field. The head 
 and front of these was the abstract argument for the being of 
 a God, which purported to be demonstrative, but which Butler 
 avowed himself unable wholly to accept in that character : 
 though his statement to this effect in his correspondence 
 with Clarke 1 is accompanied with acknowledgements that 
 the abstract arguments reached a high degree of probability, 
 so that in this sense they amounted to proofs. 
 
 Butler was not born nor bound to question all opinions on 
 all subjects. He set before himself a great purpose, whic 
 was to establish the essential groundwork of an ethical 
 system, which included God together with ourselves, and 
 what lay between Him and ourselves. He sought to rectify 
 the current ideas respecting God, ourselves, and the relations 
 between God and ourselves ; and, in doing this, to establish 
 their due limitations. He conceived that these ideas, so 
 rectified, were calculated to uphold a great fabric of belief ; 
 and he rationally justified and demanded, on principles 
 acknowledged as irrefragable before the impartial tribunal of 
 common experience, the adoption of a supernatural creed. In 
 the prosecution of his great purpose, he applied himself not 
 
 1 See First Letter, and Introd. § 10. 
 I 2 
 
n6 METAPHYSICS IN BUTLER [Pr. I. 
 
 only with earnestness, but with the most vigilant circum- 
 spection, to gathering into his net whatever seemed to belong 
 to it, lest anything should be lost. But metaphysics, as 
 a whole, did not seem to belong to it ; that is to say, did not 
 seem either to promote or to cross and traverse his purpose 
 in such a way as to compromise his principles or method. It 
 was only at certain points that he found himself brought into 
 contact with them. 
 
 I am far from asserting that either his methods or his prin- 
 ciples were in conflict with the metaphysical opinions which 
 he found, and left in circulation. And I do not deny that he 
 may have largely accepted them, so that they have prima 
 facie the sanction of his authority. But I submit that they 
 are not entitled to the real weight carried by that authority. 
 It is sufficiently remarkable, considering his modesty, that he 
 struck out for himself ' a more excellent way.' They did not 
 command what I venture to call his intellectual sympathies : 
 they come over to us, his followers, as unexamined opinions, 
 traditions in some cases of recent and local philosophy, lying 
 outside his province and his subject-matter, though having 
 points of contact with them. I am so bold as to think it most 
 probable that, if Butler had applied to these opinions the 
 same patient and searching insight, which he employed with 
 much mastery in his public work, he would have seen cause 
 to withhold at certain points such countenance as he may 
 seem to have given them. 
 
 I proceed to indicate the points I have in view. 
 
 i. In a note to the first Chapter of Part I of the Analogy, 
 he explains the meaning of his phrase ' destruction of living 
 powers ' when taken in its widest sense. Stopping short of 
 any term such as extinction or annihilation, he treats it as 
 meaning that the being in whom they reside ' shall be in- 
 capable of ever perceiving or acting again at all V And he 
 goes on to say, ' We have no reason to think the destruction of 
 living powers in (this) the former sense to be possible.' 
 
 Thus, he is seemingly committed to the opinion, that to 
 extinguish or annihilate a substance not material is beyond 
 the power of God. 
 
 l. 4 n. 
 
Ch.VIII.] METAPHYSICS IN BUTLER 117 
 
 On this I observe : 
 
 a. We are dealing with possibility only, not with likelihood, 
 in the present remarks. 
 
 b. It may be difficult, if this opinion be admitted, to prevent 
 its extension to material existences. This would bring us to 
 the old heathen sentiment concerning the eternity of the 
 universe. 
 
 c. It is easy to understand how the ancients, who regarded 
 matter as uncreated and indestructible, might readily regard 
 the soul as incapable of annihilation. 
 
 d. But can it be seriously asserted that the power to destroy 
 is a greater power than the power to create 1 And unless this 
 assertion <?an be made good, surely we, who believe in the 
 creation of soul as well as body, are bound to admit the power 
 of annihilating that which has been created. 
 
 e. It seems probable that this notion, belonging to the 
 philosophic schools, had, like some other notions of kindred 
 origin, made its way unperceived within the precinct of 
 religion. Unperceived, not in the sense that notice was 
 never taken of it by individual minds, but that it never 
 was made the subject of prolonged and separate considera- 
 tion by the Church at large ; which, in the formation of the 
 Creeds, appears carefully to have eschewed the subject. 
 
 2. The next metaphysical argument I have to notice is set 
 out in the same chapter \ 
 
 'All presumption of death's being the destruction of living 
 beings, must go upon supposition that they are compounded ; 
 and so, discerptible.' 
 
 But the conscious being, so he proceeds, ' is one and indis- 
 cerptible ; and the organized body is simply so much foreign 
 matter set apart for its service.' 
 
 There may be much force as well as ingenuity in the 
 proposition that death, which seems to proceed by severance 
 of parts and dissolution, thereby seems to be an instrument 
 of no natural aptitude for putting an end to a form of 
 conscience like consciousness, which appears to be at once 
 complete and bound in an absolute unity within itself. 
 
 Admitting the inappropriateness of death, which proceeds 
 
 J Analogy, I. i. 10. 
 
n8 METAPHYSICS IN BUTLER [Pt. I. 
 
 by discerption, to deal with the soul, which supplies no 
 evidence to show that it is liable to such a process, we can- 
 not, I think, with safety rely upon indiscerptibility as a sub- 
 stantive argument for immortality. In a portion of the long 
 and wearisome controversy between Clarke and Dodwell, we 
 find a statement by Clarke on the argument from indiscerpti- 
 bility, which may enable us to appreciate the value of that 
 argument \ He writes as follows : 
 
 ' As evidently as the known properties of matter prove it 
 to be certainly a discerpible (sic) substance, whatever other 
 unknown properties it may be endued with ; so evidently the 
 known and confessed properties of immaterial beings prove 
 them to be indiscerpible, whatever other unknown properties 
 they likewise may be indued with.' 
 
 Now the state of the case appears to be this. Discerpti- 
 bility is and must be an operation in space. It is a thing 
 essentially related to space, and also to matter in space. But 
 immaterial beings have, so far as we know, no relation to 
 space; and cannot be described or indicated in terms of it, 
 any more than questions of ethics can be indicated in terms 
 of numbers. If, then, we have no right to declare the soul 
 (which is presumed to be immaterial) discerptible, so neither 
 have we any right to declare it to be indiscerptible ; neither 
 the one term nor the other touching in any material its real 
 character. So that an argument for or about the immortality 
 of the soul, founded on indiscerptibility, is wholly out of 
 place. 
 
 But is it not assuming much to place human bodies so far 
 from our true being as to hold that they ' are no more our- 
 selves, or part of ourselves, than any other matter around 
 us 2 "? For our bodies do what no other foreign matter does : 
 they enter habitually, nay unceasingly, and most intimately 
 into association with our mental and moral action, have a 
 large influence upon it, and even seem to determine what are 
 at least appreciable parts of it. 
 
 Moreover, we have to consider that religion has something 
 to say to this matter. In the Apostles' Creed we declare our 
 
 Clarke's Defence of an Argu- Mr. Dodwell, p. 101 (ed. 1731). 
 ment made use of in. a Letter to 2 Analogy, I. i. 11. 
 
Ch.VIIL] METAPHYSICS IN BUTLER 119 
 
 belief in the resurrection of the body. St. Paul beseeches the 
 Romans to present their bodies unto God as their reasonable 
 service 1 ; travelling herein immeasurably far from the hea- 
 thenism around him, which had never conceived the dedication 
 of the body to be a part of general religion. And to the Thes- 
 salonians he writes, ' I pray God your whole spirit and soul 
 and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ 2 .' So that the body is not an appendage but 
 a portion, though a separate portion, of ourselves. And that 
 spiritual body 3 in which the righteous will be presented at the 
 resurrection is a product sprung from the seed of the natural 
 body. So that, while the established relations between soul and 
 body are at the critical point placed wholly beyond the com- 
 pass of our knowledge, it seems impossible to treat the body, 
 except in connexion with its grosser accidents, as 'foreign 
 matter,' a character incompatible with such relations. 
 
 3. In his chapter on the Future Life, Butler attaches a 
 great importance to the doctrine of continuance. In § 4 of 
 this chapter he alleges that our possession of certain powers 
 and capacities before death 'is a presumption that we shall 
 retain them through and after death,' unless death supplies 
 some positive reason to the contrary. He thinks there is 
 always a probability that things will continue just as they 
 are except as to points ' in which we have some reason to 
 think they will be altered.' And further, he conceives that 
 the continuance of the world until to-day is our only reason 
 for expecting that it will subsist to-morrow; and that the 
 same may be justly affirmed as to all substances, except the 
 self-existent. And in a cautionary summation of his argu- 
 ments near the end of the Chapter 4 he seemingly gives us to 
 understand, by the reintroduction of this argument, that he 
 largely relies upon it as a positive argument for the support 
 of his claim 5 , to have brought up to a ' very considerable 
 degree of probability ' his contention, on behalf of the living 
 being, for a future state of existence. In popular phrase, 
 everything may be expected to continue except those things 
 as to which cause can be shown to anticipate their cessation. 
 
 1 Rom. xii. 1. 2 1 Thess. v. 23. s 1 Cor. xv. 
 
 4 Analogy, I. i. 30. 5 Ibid. I. i. 32. 
 
120 METAPHYSICS IN BUTLER [Pt. I. 
 
 This is an idea which must, I suppose, be termed meta- 
 physical. It is quite distinct from that of continuing existence 
 allied with, or depending upon, the fulfilment of purpose ; and 
 is in truth continuance as such, apart from any associated 
 idea of waste or change on the one side, of an end to be 
 gained or a reason to be alleged on the other. It appears 
 to be a conception not easy to grasp. Nor can I see that, 
 when it has been grasped, we can readily attach to it any 
 presumption either in favour of or against the prolongation 
 of the existence in question. 
 
 In truth, if we regard the question as believers in God — 
 and such were both Butler and his assumed antagonists — we 
 must surely find it hard to entertain, even for a moment, the 
 idea of any existence whatever without simultaneously enter- 
 taining an idea of the use to which it is appointed. If it is 
 subserving that use, then caeteris paribus a presumption will 
 arise in favour of continuance ; if it is not performing its 
 proper work, there may be some faint presumption of the 
 reverse, but this is not of itself enough to build upon. 
 
 Another element of the case will be found in the two 
 opposite conditions of exposure to change, or exemption from 
 it — the former suggesting, though not proving, the approach 
 of termination, and the latter leaning to the opposite 
 expectation. 
 
 Butler refers to the physical conditions in which we are 
 placed, and says the idea of their further continuance grows 
 out of their having thus far continued. Here we seem to be 
 drawn upon slippery ground. However it may have been 
 in Butler's time, the scientific opinion of to-day anticipates 
 an end of the world ; which seems difficult to reconcile with 
 the argument of what may be called neutral continuance, as 
 Butler presents it. 
 
 Is there not much to be said for another conception of the 
 matter, viz. that continuance cannot be duly considered at all 
 in the abstract, and apart from purpose ? If our world has 
 the appearance of half-grown corn or of unripe fruit, we may 
 suggest that there is a likelihood that it is destined, and will 
 be allowed time, to bring its processes to maturity, to establish 
 a clear issue, and, in the event of failure, to place that failure 
 visibly on record. 
 
Ch. VIII.] METAPHYSICS IN BUTLER 121 
 
 4. In the Butler-Clarke correspondence some points of 
 metaphysics have been raised, which are not in any imme- 
 diate way connected with the Analogy or the Sermons. 
 
 In his first letter Butler appears to follow Clarke in con- 
 sidering place to be a condition or incident of Divine existence. 
 It is possible that this idea may have been encouraged by the 
 declarations of Scripture and that article of the Creeds, which 
 speak of our Lord as sitting at the right hand of God ; and 
 it probably did something in the sixteenth century towards 
 perplexing Eucharistic doctrine. I suppose, however, that 
 there is nothing of presumption in treating the declaration 
 as a figure designed, like all other figures of Holy Scripture, 
 to transcend the merely symbolical reality and to elevate the 
 conception involved. We may conceive the Deity to be 
 exempt from all the limitations of space, and may take His 
 omnipresence to mean that the plenitude of Deity is alike 
 operative in each part of the entire sphere through which 
 locality extends. 
 
 In his fourth letter Butler, still submitting to the yoke of 
 a system which appears to impose physical and finite condi- 
 tions on the unseen and infinite, assumes that spirits, as 
 well as bodies, 'exist in space,' and conceives that space is 
 'absolutely self -existent, and antecedently necessary to all 
 existences, including even the self-existent.' But I presume 
 there are many who reject all physical limitations of this 
 sort as attempted to be imposed upon a nature immeasurably 
 above them. In this proposition I include limitations of time. 
 
 What may be said for Butler is that, even at this early 
 period of his life, he was less magisterial than Clarke, as 
 we see from his suspending his judgement on the Clarkian 
 figment that space and duration are properties of the Divine 
 substance ; a specimen, as I conceive, of over-bold adventure 
 into regions where it is not given to us, under the conditions 
 of present existence, to obtain a foothold. Perhaps it is not 
 too much to say of our author, that, both from original 
 inclination and from experience in thinking, he was disposed 
 to view abstract or metaphysical disquisition with a latent 
 mistrust 
 
 X* 01 
 
 UNIVEfi 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE BUTLER-CLARKE CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 T3UTLER, when a youth of twenty-one, peruses the work 
 ■*-* of Dr. Clarke on the Being and Attributes of God, 
 and would desire to acknowledge in it not merely a pro- 
 bable, but a demonstrative proof of what it seeks to establish. 
 Some part of the argument he finds himself unable to accept, 
 and he seeks from the author, with studied deference, eluci- 
 dation and satisfaction. The topics are abstruse; and they 
 require to be stated in the simplest grammatical form. 
 
 No finite being, says Clarke, can be self-existent. 
 
 For a finite being may, without 'a contradiction,' be con- 
 ceived not to exist. 
 
 Whereas what is self-existent must of necessity exist : and 
 to say it does not exist involves * a contradiction.' 
 
 But the form in which Clarke embodied the idea of 
 non-existence is ' absence ' : and this must mean absence from 
 some particular place: for if absent from one place at one 
 time, it may conceivably (he says) be absent from every place 
 at every time. This Butler questions. He does not admit 
 that the possibility of the particular absence proves the 
 possibility of the universal absence. 
 
 Both Butler and Clarke, it will be observed, agree in 
 holding that existence means existence in place : and this not 
 only for a finite, but for an infinite Being. It will be needful 
 to revert to this point. If there can be existence, which 
 is not existence in place, the whole matter thus far in dispute 
 between these champions vanishes by the withdrawal of 
 a vital condition. 
 
 There is a second issue raised. Clarke has argued that the 
 self -existent Being can be only one. It involves (he says) 
 
HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH CLARKE 123 
 
 a contradiction that there should be two Beings, both neces- 
 sary (or self-existent) and both independent. For if one be 
 independent of the other, that other may be conceived not to 
 exist, that is to say, not to be necessary. No, says Butler. 
 It does not follow because Being A is independent of Being B, 
 that therefore Being B may be conceived not to exist. 
 [I pass by a comparison, introduced by Butler, with the case 
 of ' the angles below the base in an isosceles triangle ' : for it 
 does not appear easy to see what angles there can be that 
 shall be subject to such a definition.] 
 
 Here the phrase used by Clarke is that, on the hypothesis 
 in question, either of the Beings may be supposed ' to exist 
 alone.' Butler points out that this phrase is ambiguous. 
 It may mean, to exist by its own resources only, to have 
 a self-sufficing existence : or it may mean, to have an exist- 
 ence such that nothing shall exist along with it. Clearly, if 
 independence involves this kind of existing alone, the inde- 
 pendence of A is incompatible with the self-existence of B, 
 and vice versa; but as no proof has been given that self- 
 existence involves this kind of independence, the question has 
 simply been begged, and no proof has yet been given against 
 a possible plurality of self-existences. 
 
 Dr. Clarke replies first upon the first argument, by the 
 contention that existence by necessity in space meant exist- 
 ence by necessity in all space and at all times. Were it 
 a question of existence not necessary but by command, such 
 merely commanded existence might conceivably be absent 
 from certain spaces at certain times. 
 
 On the second point, Clarke holds that any one existence 
 whatever presupposes all other necessary existences; for 
 example, presupposes space and time. 
 
 Butler, in a rejoinder, denies that 'absolutely necessary' 
 means necessary always and everywhere. Self-existence 
 means existence somewhere, not existence everywhere. So 
 much for the first head. 
 
 On the second head, he canvasses the doctrine that for 
 a particular existence all necessary existences are 'needed.' 
 He allows that space and time are thus needful, because 
 the particular existences come of course into relation with 
 them ; but he sees no universal relation between a necessary 
 
124 ON HIS CORRESPONDENCE [Ft. I. 
 
 existence, as such, and all particular existences. And, in 
 passing, he lays down the following proposition : 
 
 ' Space and duration are very abstruse in their natures, 
 and I think cannot properly be called things, but are con- 
 sidered rather as affections which belong, and in the order 
 of our thoughts are antecedently necessary, to the existence 
 of all things.' 
 
 Clarke, in his second reply, exhibits an unbroken front. 
 Self -existence, he declares, implies ubiquity ; necessity, ante-- 
 cedent in the order of nature to all existence, must exid 
 everywhere for the same reason that it is anytuhere. And on 
 the second field of battle, by the needfulness of a thing 
 self-existent for the existence of any other thing, he means 
 only needfulness as a sine qua non. In this sense he might 
 have added, the equality of the three angles of a triangle 
 to two right angles is needful for the equidistance of all the 
 parts of the circumference of a circle from the centre, and 
 vice versa. 
 
 Butler, hoping against hope, resumes his pen, and admits 
 that a necessary Being can only exist in space : but denies 
 that he need therefore be finite. 
 
 And on the second head he charges upon Clarke that his 
 propositions come to this. Space is a property of all sub- 
 stance ; if so, every substance must be self-existent, as space 
 is : but this cannot be. Ergo. 
 
 In his third reply, Clarke restates his doctrine as to the 
 universal application of necessity ; and, on the second head, 
 declares that space is a property or mode of the self-existent 
 substance, but not of any other. In this surely most arbitrary 
 and totally unproven proposition, he finds a refuge from the 
 clenching objection Butler had put before him. 
 
 In his fourth letter, Butler concedes that an absolutely 
 necessary Being must exist everywhere. He likewise admits 
 that he had been rash in assimilating the mode of the self- 
 existent Being's existence in space, to that which holds good 
 for other existences. He also admits the difficulty of forming 
 an idea of the relation between spirit and space. He thinks 
 it plain that space is ' manifestly necessary ' and ' antecedently 
 needful to the existence of all other things, not excepting 
 (as I think) even the self-existent substance.' 
 
Ch. IX.] WITH CLARKE 125 
 
 In his fourth reply, Clarke lays it down that space is not 
 substance, but necessarily infers substance : as for a blind 
 man hardness, though it is not body, necessarily infers the 
 idea of body. 
 
 The fifth pair of letters add nothing material to this 
 singular correspondence, except Butler's admission that he 
 is really ' at a loss about the nature of space and duration,' 
 and is conscious that the correspondence has turned upon 
 the question whether our ideas of them are partial, and 
 whether they presuppose the existence of something else. 
 
 Do we not in this last-named suggestion come near to the 
 truth, namely that the entire discussion hangs upon ideas 
 incapable of being treated in a satisfactory manner 1 Butler, 
 who writes all through as a simple seeker after truth, and 
 Clarke who, with a magisterial air, defends the substance 
 of every proposition he has advanced, are agreed in this 
 one proposition: that all which exists must exist in space 
 and time. Therefore space and time are uncreated, and have 
 an existence independent of the Creator. 
 
 To me it would appear an elementary proposition that 
 the universum has to be bisected or divided into two entities 
 which between them absolutely exhaust it: Creator and 
 creature. But now we are introduced to a category alto- 
 gether new. Space and time are not the Creator, but neither 
 are they creatures, for they exist independently of the Creator, 
 and are conditions antecedent to His existence. 
 
 It is no sufficient answer to contend that we can form no 
 idea of existence outside of space and time : that is to say 
 of any given mode or fashion of existence thus ejected out 
 of these two conditions. For there are other existences, with 
 regard to which we can form no conception whatever as to 
 their manner, and yet by which we firmly hold. We believe 
 in the existence of pure spirit ; but the moment we begin to 
 connect it with a manner of existence, we find that we annex 
 it in one form or another to body, that is to matter. But 
 if we say spirit cannot exist except in space, we ought also 
 to say spirit cannot exist except in body. But as we hold 
 that spirit can exist apart from body, so we ought to say, 
 spirit can exist apart from space. 
 
 I have said that Butler and Clarke were both entangled 
 
126 ON HIS CORRESPONDENCE [Pt. I. 
 
 in this untrue proposition, that space attaches of necessity 
 to all existence. The difference between them is that Clarke 
 appears to rest in it as an absolute and comfortable certainty: 
 Butler, on the other hand, only with an unquiet mind. He 
 finds them to be unmanageable conceptions. ' I am really at 
 a loss about the nature of space and duration ' (Letter V). He 
 cannot commit himself to the doctrine that the self-existent 
 Being is the substratum of time and duration, for this would 
 make them dependent upon it; and yet he seems drawn 
 and tempted towards this doctrine. He might have worked 
 his way out of the thicket, had it been a distinct and pro- 
 fessed portion of his inquiry. 
 
 And surely it is very important to get free of this doctrine, 
 for it involves strange consequences. It involves the con- 
 sequence that space and time are uncreated, and inhering 
 in the idea of things that are eternal, so that they are also 
 themselves eternal. Therefore the Creator is not the Creator 
 of all things, but only of some. Space and time are excep- 
 tions: but why should they be the only exceptions'? Why 
 should not matter at large be an exception, as the ancients, 
 with a rare unanimity, thought it was ? Why should not 
 force be also an exception 1 ? How, in fact, is any full, any 
 real, doctrine of creation to be reconciled with the doctrine 
 that space and time are outside of it ? 
 
 Then there arises the curious question, How came these 
 philosophers to be involved in the meshes of this theory ? 
 Can we say that they were bound down to it by an imme- 
 morial tradition ? No, for in the case of matter, where such 
 a tradition existed, they did not accept it. Is it then pos- 
 sible that their acceptance can have been due to the influence 
 of an opinion belonging to a local and occasional theology? 
 It seems clear that the controversies of the Reformation 
 respecting the Holy Eucharist helped to lead men upon 
 this slippery ground. According to the extreme Protestant 
 contention in those controversies, it was absolute and funda- 
 mental to provide against the supposition of a real presence 
 of the Body of the Lord upon the Christian altar. The 
 proof of its not being there was sought and found in the 
 theory that it was already elsewhere : and that Body as 
 such could not be present in two places at one and the same 
 
Ch.IX.] WITH CLARKE 127 
 
 time. It was subject to local or space-conditions. But an 
 escape might be attempted through the contention that the 
 Body of our Lord in the Sacrament of the altar is glorified 
 and Divine : and it could be pointed out that, by appearing 
 in the closed chamber, where the disciples were assembled 
 for fear of the Jews *, that Body, by transferring itself 
 through a solid obstacle, emancipated itself from space- 
 conditions. An all-covering reply was fashioned : Divine 
 or not Divine, even the essence of the self-existent could 
 not subsist, except in space and under its laws. Nothing, 
 however, can be more dangerous than a philosophical answer 
 to a theological proposition, until it has been shown that 
 the two are in pari materia. 
 
 It was, however, only by Butler's youthful and soon- 
 abandoned contention, which placed the self-existent not in 
 space at large but in some particular part of space, that 
 he could be said to satisfy the Zuinglian, or extreme 
 Protestant, contention. When he admitted, as he promptly 
 came to admit, that the omnipresence of the self-existent 
 in space essentially followed from its presence in any part 
 of space, he by implication lost hold of the doctrine that 
 a Real Presence in more than some one portion of space 
 was impossible. We have no proof, however, from the 
 correspondence that either of the authors had consciously 
 in view any connexion between it and the true doctrine 
 of the Eucharistic Presence. 
 
 If we efface from the correspondence the futile conception 
 that the self-existent must of necessity exist in space, I con- 
 ceive that nothing substantial remains. Consequently that 
 no profit, except it be incidental, can be extracted from it 
 as it stands. 
 
 I confess that, in the way of conjecture, further notions 
 present themselves to my mind. Butler's works in general 
 are very far removed from the region in which this cor- 
 respondence moves. His touching deference led him rapidly 
 enough to concessions, but did not relieve him from a sense 
 of embarrassment, in a discussion where Clarke's easy self- 
 confidence must have been taken to imply the assurance 
 
 1 John xx. 19. 
 
128 HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH CLARKE 
 
 that all was plain sailing. And this embarrassment, together 
 with the cause of it, may have helped permanently to dis- 
 incline him to traversing these rather barren heights, and 
 may happily have been among the causes which brought 
 him to apply his whole intellectual and moral force both to 
 matters and to methods severely practical and disengaged 
 from all waste appendages. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 ON THE CELEBRITY AND INFLUENCE OF BISHOP 
 butler's WORKS 
 
 npHERE were numerous editions of Butler's Analogy in 
 ■*■ the eighteenth century, but I have not been able to trace 
 them all with precision. The work appeared in a quarto 
 volume in IJ36, and an edition in octavo was published 
 before the year had expired \ a circumstance which appears 
 to show that it at once attracted much attention. Another 
 edition, with some account of the author, appeared in 1738. 
 The work was not directly challenged by any author of that 
 century; and there is abundant evidence that this absence 
 of contention respecting it in the higher regions of literature 
 was not due to its falling into oblivion or insignificance. 
 Indeed, the publication of the collected works at the Claren- 
 don Press in 1807 ought to be regarded as a sign of their 
 progressive advance in public estimation. The same may be 
 said of their still earlier publication in the Scottish metropolis 
 in 1804 2 . 
 
 He appears to have laid hold in various quarters of the 
 more hard-headed members of the labouring population. In 
 an account of a congregation of Scottish Seceders, formed 
 in 1745, at Logiealmond in Perthshire, and without doubt 
 largely composed of the labouring community, it is recorded 
 that in the early part of the present century the Analogy 
 
 1 See Watt's Bibliotheca, and the Catalogue of the British Museum 
 Library. 2 Edinburgh : Constable, 1804. 
 
 K 
 
130 ON HIS CELEBRITY AND INFLUENCE [Ft. I. 
 
 formed one of the subjects of their study \ It is still more 
 remarkable that an edition of the Analogy was published 
 at Aberdeen in 1775. It bore the title of the seventh edition 2 . 
 Thus proceeding from a press local and remote, it could 
 hardly be due to any other cause than a demand for it among 
 the students of the universities of that city. It is the glory 
 of the Scottish universities to represent the mass of the 
 people, and this glory has belonged to those of Aberdeen 3 
 even in a higher degree than to their sisters; while the 
 people of the city and county are especially distinguished 
 for force of mind and character. Over and above the con- 
 temptible charges of Romanizing, which were alleged against 
 Butler through the press, seven works of animadversion or 
 comment, dated between 1737 and 1794, are mentioned by 
 Dr. Hanna in his prefatory notice published with Chalmers's 
 Praelections on the Analogy, none of which, however, attained 
 to any sort of celebrity. Lord Karnes 4 noticed Butler with 
 praise and with general criticisms, which do not require 
 notice ; and Hume seems plainly to have had some of Butler's 
 arguments in view, but without naming him. 
 
 He may be thought to have attained the climax of his 
 power, in his own country, when, between sixty and seventy 
 years back, he took his place by the side of Aristotle, among ^f 
 the standard books for the final examinations in the University 
 of Oxford. After about a quarter of a century, he was 
 removed from it 5 . The removal was not due to any lowered 
 estimate of his power. This is clear from the language of 
 Mr. Mark Pattison, who was a main agent in procuring it. 
 It was probably due to the circumstances of the powerful reli- 
 gious movement of which the University had been the seat, and 
 of the reaction, for the moment hardly less powerful, by which 
 it was followed. There is no sign at the present moment 
 that a smaller aggregate of thought is employed upon Butler 
 in this country at the present day, than in the preceding 
 generations. It is, moreover, pretty plain from the editions 
 
 1 At the Edge of the Heather, by Museum Library, 
 
 the Rev. D. M. Forrester, p. 36. 3 Now amalgamated (1895). 
 
 Edinburgh, 1895. 4 Edinburgh, 1849. 
 
 " Catalogue of the British 6 See supra, p. 75. 
 
Ch. X.] ON HIS CELEBRITY AND INFLUENCE 131 
 
 and relative works produced in Ireland and America, that the 
 circle of his influence has been materially extended. In the 
 United States there have been nine editions of the Analogy \ 
 and scarcely fewer of the Sermons. Their influence, and the 
 influence of Butler at large, was specially imported into 
 Cambridge by Dr. Whewell, a leading spirit of the University. 
 In speaking of the Sermons, it must be understood that the 
 reference is chiefly made to the three on Human Nature, and 
 to such of the others as most resemble them in the subjects of 
 which they treat. It may probably be said of these that 
 their influence and their circulation has been only second to 
 those of the Analogy. 
 
 But criticism is a test of influence as well as circulation. 
 Criticism includes eulogy if based upon examination. And 
 of the eulogists of Butler it may be truly said that they are 
 alike remarkable for number, for eminence, and for diversity 
 of colour. The later half of the century has indeed brought 
 into view a number of critics who deal, some of them largely 
 or systematically, in animadversion. Every one of these has 
 accompanied his adverse judgements with panegyrics, often 
 of a striking kind. Of the value of their hostile criticisms, 
 and the amount of deduction which they will warrant from 
 our estimate of Butler, I have spoken elsewhere 2 . 
 
 But there is an inner and more subtle sense in which 
 I have not yet touched upon the influence of Butler. What 
 power did he exercise over British thought 1 Had he a share, 
 and, if any, what share, in causing that reaction in favour 
 of belief which marked the second half of the eighteenth 
 century ? 
 
 I say upon British thought, because it cannot be pretended 
 that he then became, or that he has yet become, an appre- 
 ciable factor in forming the thought of Continental Europe. 
 In this respect he stands in the most marked contrast with 
 Locke. Among his works, only the Analogy has been 
 translated. A German version of it appeared at Leipzig in 
 1756, and at Tubingen in 1779. A second translation Mas 
 
 1 Bearing on the title-page the an earlier date, at some place which 
 words ' A New Edition,' so that is unknown, 
 they had appeared collectively at 2 Supra, Ch. iii. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 ON HIS CELEBRITY AND INFLUENCE [Px. I. 
 
 published at Leipzig in 1787. It has received notice and 
 commendation from various writers, somewhat recently from 
 Lotze ,4 but there has been no call for any further edition. 
 In France a translation has gone forth from the press, but 
 it was the work of an Englishman or executed under English 
 influence, and appears to have been still-born 1 . Down to 
 the present day experience has assured us only of his hold 
 upon communities of British blood. The elaborate recital by 
 Zart 2 of those forty-eight British workers who influenced 
 German thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
 does not include his name. This failure to lay hold on 
 Europe is the more remarkable, because the chief part of the 
 works of Butler appears to be as clearly available for the 
 European mind at large as for that of the English-speaking 
 countries. It has however been translated into Hindoostanee, 
 in connexion with missionary purposes ; and into Welsh. The 
 most important part of the answer to that question in rela- 
 tion to his moral influence on the eighteenth century has not 
 yet been given. And as it is the most important, so also 
 it is the part most difficult to deal with. 
 
 As a general rule, it is but rarely that we can trace the 
 influence exercised by particular books upon particular minds 
 through the medium of actual record, any more than we 
 can trace by formal evidence of cause and effect the powerful 
 influences of climate upon individual health. Hooker's great 
 work on Ecclesiastical Polity first gave systematic expression 
 to what is termed Anglican thought in theology, and we are 
 told of an emphatic eulogy pronounced upon it by the contem- 
 porary reigning pontiff 3 . But it would be difficult to trace 
 even this influence in the testimonies of subsequent writers, or 
 in the moulding given to their forms of expression. Thought 
 has been powerfully affected in England within the last sixty 
 years by the successive influences of Coleridge, of Mill, and 
 (in a somewhat different sphere) of Carlyle ; and it is safe to 
 say that our country underwent great elevating influences 
 
 1 See appendix to An Academic sophie sett Bacon auf die deutsche 
 
 Sketch. Oxford : Clarendon Press, Philosophic, des 18 Jahvhunderts. 
 
 1892. Berlin, 1881. 
 
 " Einfluss der englischen Philo- 3 Walton's Life of Hooker. 
 
Ch.X.] ON HIS CELEBRITY AND INFLUENCE 133 
 
 from Scott and from Tennyson. But, excepting that New- 
 man had occasion for a personal purpose to bear strong 
 witness in the case of Scott, how far could any oi these 
 influences be adequately verified by direct evidence drawn 
 from our general literature, or from any positive record? 
 
 We may show that Butler early attained to a position in 
 which he could not fail to share in the current influences of 
 the day. And the whole inquiry relating to the ebb of the 
 sceptical tide in 1 750-1800 is so full of interest as to justify 
 illustrative remark and any attempt to gather together such 
 fragments of evidence as we possess. So early as in 1742, 
 when Hume published his Political Essays, he wrote 1 as 
 follows to Lord Karnes, who had on an earlier occasion 
 advised him to consult with Butler: 
 
   I am told that Dr. Butler has everywhere recommended 
 them, so that I hope they will have some success.' 
 
 But we must endeavour to come closer to the question. 
 What share, if any, is to be claimed for Butler with regard 
 to the religious and affirmative reaction which marked the 
 second half of the century? That the deistical movement 
 had been one of great power is sufficiently proved from the 
 single fact that Butler made it the occasion of the great 
 argument he developed in the Analogy. But the force with 
 which a stone falls into the water may not unimpressively be 
 measured by the distance which may be reached by the outer- 
 most of the resulting circles on the surface. Now I have 
 before me a pamphlet printed at Perth in the year 17 15, and 
 conceived in the interest of the Jacobite party, which aims 
 at promoting the views of that party by discrediting the 
 Legislative Union then recently formed with England, and still 
 partially unpopular among the Scotch. It is termed Scotland's 
 Lament ; and Scotland, dramatically impersonated, is made to 
 say, ' All I have got by the bargain is Slavery, Poverty, and 
 Deism.' This spread of Deism in England must have been 
 a very conspicuous fact in order to make it worth the while 
 of the pamphleteer thus to employ it as an instrument for 
 working on the popular imagination in Scotland. 
 
 1 Fitzgerald's Memoirs, p. 56. 
 
134 ON HIS CELEBRITY AND INFLUENCE [Pt. I. 
 
 We have before us the remarkable fact that, whereas in 
 the time of Hobbes, Lord Herbert, and the Deists, England 
 had exercised an influence upon France in the negative 
 direction, yet, as the century advanced, and as France travelled 
 with rapid strides towards negation under the influence of 
 Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, England not only refused 
 to follow but moved perceptibly along the old paths in the 
 opposite direction, so that no intelligent person could have 
 written towards the close of the century, as Butler had written 
 at the dates of 1736 and 1751, as to the currents of opinion 
 during its earlier moiety. 
 
 It must be borne in mind, as to both these movements of 
 affirmation and negation respectively, that they had their seat 
 in the upper classes of society, and were wholly exterior to 
 the mass of the community. There is evidence that, at the 
 date of Butler's complaints, the profession of religion, and the 
 clergy, still kept that hold upon the people, which was so 
 strong at the period of Sacheverell's condemnation. The 
 operations of Wesley belonged to the wider circle of the 
 masses, and were little felt, except sporadically by individuals, 
 within the narrower one ; though even there they may have 
 done something. The most active social influence of the period 
 was that with which the name of Johnson, and also that of 
 Burke, is associated ; and it is probable that this influence had 
 more than a trivial share in the work. The influence of 
 books, however, has also to be considered, and it was probably 
 a large one, first in the destructive, and then in the recon- 
 structive portion of the process. But that influence is a silent 
 one, and in its first stages it is formless, only taking shape, 
 and finding its way into consciousness, by reflection. I have 
 here spoken of books : but there was one among them which 
 far transcended, and almost eclipsed, all others ; for its only 
 rival in the sphere of the higher literature was Law's Serious 
 Call, and the ground taken in that remarkable work 1 is 
 wholly separate from that occupied by Butler. 
 
 1 Lately recalled to public notice the able and striking Life of 
 
 by the comments of Mr. Stephen William Law, which we owe to the 
 
 (English Thought), Mr. Lecky (His- pen of the Rev. Canon Overton. 
 tort/ of England), and especially by 
 
Ch. X.] ON HIS CELEBRITY AND INFLUENCE 135 
 
 The effect which is thus produced is real, but its visible 
 signs may be no more than the track of some great vessel in 
 the sea, with the waters closing in behind it. The field of 
 evidence, however, is not absolutely blank. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield was a man of extraordinary talents, for 
 his own day the veritable king among men of the world, of 
 whom life is built up with an infinity of care and skill 
 upon well-organized, though worldly, self-love and con- 
 summate enjoyment of the world ; with no negation of 
 religion, but with no interest in it ; with a toleration of it, 
 conditional upon its abiding peaceably in its own place, as 
 a hat abides in the hall until it is wanted for going out of 
 doors. Such is his habitual strain. 
 
 And yet when he was becoming not an old, but, according 
 to the ideas of those days, an elderly man, we find him 
 writing from Bath, under date of November 11, 1752, with 
 regard to benefit which his physician promised him from 
 the waters, in the following terms : ' As I do not expect it, 
 if I receive it, it will be the more welcome. If not, I have 
 both philosophy and religion enough to submit to my fate 
 without either melancholy or murmur. For though I can 
 by no means account why there is either moral or physical 
 evil in the world, yet, conscious of the narrow bounds of 
 human understanding, and convinced of the wisdom and 
 justice of the Eternal Divine Being who placed them here, 
 I am persuaded that it is fit and right that they should be 
 here.' 
 
 If Chesterfield, who was a great reader, had read Butler, 
 and deliberately conformed to all his conditions, he could 
 not have given a more conclusive account of the process 
 than in the terms of this passage, which represents the 
 dominant ideas of Butler's work brought together into 
 the shortest compass, stated with the terseness, closeness, 
 and seriousness of the great original, and if coming a little 
 short in point of strict accuracy, yet representing a real 
 influence exercised upon a mind of extraordinary insight 
 into all matters to which it seriously addressed itself. Such 
 a passage I think could hardly have been written in England, 
 unless by an expert, before the appearance of Butler's work. 
 
 The religious reaction in England, which marked the later 
 
136 ON HIS CELEBRITY AND INFLUENCE [Pt. I. 
 
 half of the eighteenth century, I have said, was twofold. 
 Its most patent features were popular, and are associated, 
 above every other name, with the name of Wesley. It soon 
 established itself as a salient fact in the public eyes. Con- 
 temporary with it, subsisting on a much smaller scale, 
 principally in connexion with other classes of society, yet 
 eventually of a kindred character, was the Evangelical 
 movement in the Church of England; and it is probable 
 that the nonconforming bodies were also affected by a sym- 
 pathetic action. So far as the upper classes of society 
 were concerned, the Evangelical teachers exercised on them 
 as a whole no attractive influence whatever, and possibly 
 may have repelled them. But a select and very limited 
 number of individuals, chiefly ladies, embraced their opinions 
 by an operation not wholly dissimilar to the conversions of 
 the early Christians from the world to the Church. These 
 changes of individual lives were important in themselves; 
 but they had no influence (unless a repulsive one) on the 
 general mind of what is termed society. I speak of a state 
 of things which continued to prevail as late as in the 
 period of my own youth. The Evangelical party had 
 wrought hard, and had deservedly and usefully thriven ; 
 but its members were still a small minority, extraneous to 
 the general body of society in the upper class, and not 
 very largely felt in the lower. 
 
 Quite apart from this reaction on behalf of religious 
 character and life, there had been another, a more tranquil 
 and less visible reaction. The descriptions given by Bishop 
 Butler in 1736, and again in 1752, were no longer applicable 
 in 1790 or in 1800. Of indifference, doubtless there re- 
 mained enough, but in those who were neither indifferent 
 nor fervent Christians there had been substituted for 
 a rampant scepticism a decorous acknowledgement of the 
 general truths of Christianity. This was something, though 
 not all that could be desired ; and it is with this reinstate- 
 ment of Christianity in the receipt of a general homage, that 
 the name of Butler has probably a vital connexion. If it 
 be true that his argument is in the main a defence of 
 outworks, still they are outworks, whose security is ab- 
 solutely vital to the defence of the central fortress. But 
 
Ch.X] ON HIS CELEBRITY AND INFLUENCE 137 
 
 it would be more correct to call them foundation courses ; 
 which, although out of sight, sustain the building: for he 
 deals in the Analogy with the very basis of those relations 
 between God and man which, as he truly tells us, are 
 anterior to Christianity, and but for which Christianity 
 would be without a standing-ground. 
 
 A misunderstood episode in the life of Wilberforce gave 
 rise to a confident supposition, hardly deserving the name 
 of a belief, that Mr. Pitt, in conversation with his friend, had 
 alleged against the Analogy that it had suggested to him 
 more doubts than it removed. But it now appears from the 
 account recorded by Mr. Wilberforce himself at the time, that 
 Mr. Pitt, knowing his mind to be occupied with serious 
 thoughts, had spontaneously recommended to him the perusal 
 of the Analogy. It is a remarkable fact that, absorbed as 
 Mr. Pitt was in politics, he should have read the Analogy, 
 and his recommendation and favourable judgement upon 
 the work, whether the offspring of his own thought or 
 a reflection of the public opinion, throws a happy light 
 on its influence. 
 
 We might, perhaps, have anticipated" from Johnson notices 
 of Butler. But none are to be found in Boswell. It would 
 appear, indeed, as if Johnson had no disposition to revive 
 even for a moment the extinct volcano of the deistical 
 controversy; for the elaborate index appended to Dr. Birk- 
 beck Hill's classical edition of the great biography, takes 
 no notice of the works of Tindal, Collins, or Chubb. Boswell 
 himself, however, in one passage, notices Butler's argument 
 in terms which harmonize with the idea that his reasoning 
 was generally accepted \ Wesley has, in more than one 
 place, spoken in praise of the Analogy. 
 
 I regret to have no adequate means of exhibiting, by direct 
 personal acknowledgement, the action of Butler on behalf 
 of belief in individual minds during the eighteenth century. 
 Warburton's statement of his eminence is not without value, 
 but it does not appear to own any personal obligation on his 
 own part. This negative state of things is in remarkable con- 
 trast with the glowing attestations of Macintosh, Chalmers, and 
 
 1 Birkbeck Hill's BostcelTs Life of Johnson, vol. v. p. 47. 
 
138 ON HIS CELEBRITY AND INFLUENCE 
 
 a host of eminent writers belonging to the present century. It 
 throws us back, in the main, upon the internal and statistical 
 proofs supplied by frequency of editions. Yet these are 
 sufficient for their purpose. When we embrace in our con- 
 spectus the entire period of 160 years since the publication 
 of the Analogy, we may, as I conceive, safely lay it down 
 that his works have fastened upon themselves, in the English- 
 speaking countries, a larger amount of serious and permanent 
 attention than those of any other writer on moral and mental 
 philosophy who has lived during the same period. 
 
 If the amount of attention which has been bestowed upon 
 Butler be great, we are safe in asserting that the mental 
 effort which it implied was greater still. The careless reader 
 is a being towards whom, as such, Butler seems to have felt 
 as great an antipathy as his gentle and considerate nature 
 was capable of entertaining 1 . Such a reader is effectually 
 warned off the writings of Butler by their character. To 
 read them with levity is impossible. The eye may indeed 
 run down the pages, the images of the letters may be 
 formed upon the retina ; but the living being that dwells 
 within the brain is unapproached, and either dormant or 
 elsewhere employed. The works of Butler are in this respect 
 like the works of Dante; we must make some kind of pre- 
 liminary preparation, we must gird up the loins of the mind 
 for the study. 
 
 1 See preface to the Sermons, §§ 1, 2, 5. 
 
univers; 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 UPON the whole I am content to sum up the argument for 
 the study of Butler under the following heads : 
 i. In the study of his works, the student finds himself in 
 an intellectual palaestra, where his best exertions are required 
 throughout to grapple with his teacher, and thus become 
 master of that teacher's thought. Any remission of exertion 
 will promptly convince him that, if he be content with any- 
 thing less than this, the hours he spends on Butler are likely 
 to be found pure waste of time. Manly education is a pro- 
 cess of wrestling ; and it is best to wrestle with the highest 
 masters. 
 
 2. In following the steps of Butler, which are as carefully 
 measured out as if he had been climbing the hill of the 
 Purgatorio, we breathe all along the bracing atmosphere of 
 a singularly high morality. There is this further great 
 advantage, that the Analogy is not didactic: it is morality 
 in action. The virtues, both natural and Christian, have so 
 saturated the character of our teacher, that their perfume 
 is exhaled in every line. 
 
 3. Butler deals with the Deist ; and the Deist is one who 
 has already travelled one stage on the road of full Theism. 
 Butler produces a multitude of reasonings to show him that 
 he ought in consistency at least to consider whether he shall 
 also travel all the other stages. It should be borne in mind 
 that the whole of these, besides being effective as against the 
 Deist, also form, on independent grounds, available portions 
 of the general theistic argument. 
 
140 CONCLUSION 
 
 4. By his argument he has set forth to us with remarkable 
 closeness and precision, in the Analogy the method of the 
 government of God, and in the Sermons the provision sup- 
 plied to us for the discharge of our several offices under 
 that government; taking the two together, he has here 
 supplied us with the main substance of a philosophy of life. 
 The difference between them is, however, this : that while 
 the Analogy purports to exhibit God's method in one de- 
 partment only, that which deals with religion, it is equally 
 applicable to the whole of our moral experience ; first, in every 
 study, in philosophy, history and the rest ; and secondly, in 
 conduct, in the entire weaving of that web, whereof our life 
 is made up. 
 
PART II 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A FUTURE LIFE 
 
 rtlHE teaching of Bishop Butler with respect to a life 
 -*- beyond the grave, which supplies me with a point of 
 departure, divides itself under two heads. The first of them 
 embraces the likelihoods which can be collected out of the 
 1 course of nature ' with regard to the effect of death upon 
 our existence as a whole. This is a physical or metaphy- 
 sical, and in neither aspect a moral, discussion ; it occupies 
 the first chapter of the Analogy. From its position on the 
 threshold of the Treatise, as well as from the nature of its 
 topics, it has attracted much attention, and, it is fair to add, 
 much criticism. 
 
 There is, however, a general strain of teaching on the 
 future life, which pervades the work, and which for the most 
 part is scattered piecemeal through it, as the opening up of the 
 general argument into wider spaces gives occasion for intro- 
 ducing the topic. This relates not to the question whether 
 we are barred by death from passing into another world, but 
 to the prospects of man in that other world. In a certain 
 part of the Treatise *, it opens in a pointed way a discussion 
 not metaphysical but moral ; which is also one of extreme 
 interest. With these two widely separated branches of the 
 subject it will be appropriate to deal quite separately. 
 
 And now as regards the first. 
 
 At the outset certain remarks are to be made. 
 
 1 I. iii. 28. 
 
142 A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 In the first place, the Chapter ' On a Future Life ' contains 
 a disquisition, not upon immortality, but upon survival. The 
 inquiry is simply whether we can pass the bourn into the 
 undiscovered land, and has no relation to our condition, or the 
 duration of our existence, after we have arrived there. 
 
 In the second place, as the Chapter is a plea not for immor- 
 tality, properly so called, but for persistence of life as against 
 the special occasion of death, so it is a plea not for the 
 survival of the whole man, but only of the spiritual or 
 immaterial part of man. The body of man takes no benefit 
 from the argument of this Chapter. Butler was well aware 
 that, from the only sources open to him at the first inception 
 of his work, he could offer no effectual argument on its 
 behalf : and it was enough for his purpose if he could obtain 
 an admission of some reappearance of the rational and 
 responsible human being in a future world. 
 
 In the third place, the condition of our author in this first 
 Chapter is that of a man who has to fight with one of his 
 hands tied up. His general discussion is upon analogies. 
 Analogies, considered as resemblances of ratios, require four 
 terms to complete them. Butler has before him facts of 
 nature, exhibited in our present life, and admitted to stand in 
 a certain relation to an Author of nature. He has a third 
 term in certain facts of moral government or of revealed 
 religion also placed before our eyes ; and from these three he 
 has to infer the fourth. But in his argument on a future life, 
 the third term, on which he has to build the fourth, is entirely 
 wanting ; for, being precluded from referring to any Divine 
 authority, he has no supply of experimental facts to adduce, 
 which might cast a light on the condition of the soul after 
 death. 
 
 There are those who say these two things, survival and 
 immortality, are but one : and who seem to suppose that the 
 case of surmounting death is like that of obtaining a passport 
 which will carry us over the frontier of some foreign country ; 
 where, this once done, we have no other impediment to 
 apprehend. But, on such an assumption of the identity of 
 survival with immortality, it is to be observed that it is 
 a pure assumption, and nothing more. We have no title to 
 postulate in limine that powers, which may be so adjusted or 
 
Ch. I.] A FUTURE LIFE 143 
 
 equipped as to face the contingency of death, must therefore 
 be in all respects such as to be certain of facing with a like 
 impunity every other contingency which, for aught we know, 
 the dimness of the future may enfold in its ample bosom. 
 Such questions may remain open, and without prejudice, for 
 independent discussion. 
 
 There is a fourth observation to be borne in mind, when we 
 set about the consideration of Butler's Chapter. It does not 
 form a necessary part of his general argument. He might, 
 without this Chapter, put in array all the facts experimentally 
 ascertained which prove the existence in this world of a 
 government by rewards and punishments, and the righteous 
 character of that government; and might, with this apparatus 
 of moral considerations, now made ready for use, build upon 
 them the usual and irresistible arguments for a future state. 
 But this must have been at a later stage. From the opening 
 sentences of this Chapter, he seems to enter upon it with 
 reluctance, and only because he thinks it practicable and 
 needful to clear the subject from certain metaphysical 
 difficulties as to personal identity with which it had been 
 darkened, and which, unless removed, might have barred his 
 access to the great moral argument he desired to introduce. 
 
 Addressing himself to his task under these circumstances, 
 his argument is partly negative, and partly affirmative. The 
 first goes to show the futility or insufficiency of the pre- 
 sumptions against survival, which are drawn from the 
 character of death. The second and more limited part goes 
 to show substantive likelihoods, drawn from nature or ex- 
 perience, that the soul may survive death. In the first he is 
 eminently successful. In the second we become sensible how 
 scanty is the supply of material at his command. Much of 
 the depreciation lavished on the Chapter has arisen from the 
 careless supposition that he is advancing as substantive 
 arguments what in reality he only propounds as rebuttals 
 of adverse presumptions, and with the limited view of re- 
 moving out of his way a preliminary bar. 
 
 Let us now begin by taking note of his manner of sup- 
 porting his first contention, namely, that death and the 
 incidents of death afford no presumption that we are ex- 
 tinguished by it. 
 
144 * FUTURE LIFE [p T . II. 
 
 i. It is not proved by the immense change which death 
 undoubtedly makes in us. For we know by experience that 
 vast amounts of change in ourselves, and in inferior creatures, 
 are compatible with a continuity of identical existence. We 
 have no absolute knowledge that the change effected by death 
 is greater than these changes ; and, until we do know it, the 
 presumption of our extinction by death does not arise. (True, 
 none of these changes is marked by severance of essential 
 parts : but we cannot say whether such severance constitutes 
 a greater change than the change from the state of embryo to 
 that of manhood, or from the egg, through the larva or 
 caterpillar, to the moth or butterfly 1 .) 
 
 2. There is no ground, ' from the reason of the thing,' to 
 suppose that death can destroy our ' living powers ' ; that is 
 to say, disable them from perception and action 2 . For of death 
 in itself we know nothing, but only in certain effects of it. 
 And as we know not on what our living powers depend for 
 their exercise, it is possible that they may depend on some- 
 thing wholly beyond the reach of death 3 . Death gives no 
 evidence of destroying the living powers, but only cancels the 
 sensible proof of their exercise 4 . 
 
 3. Nor is any such ground furnished by the 'analogy of 
 nature.' For in no case do we know what, at death, becomes 
 of these living powers. They simply pass from our view 5 . 
 
 4. The power of death to destroy living beings is con- 
 ditioned by their being compounded, and therefore discerp- 
 tible. For as consciousness is indivisible, so it should seem is 
 the conscious being in which it resides 6 . And, if this be so, it 
 follows that, the body being extraneous and foreign to the 
 true self, no presumption can arise out of the dissolution of 
 the body against the continued existence of the true self. 
 
 5. As we may lose limbs, organs of sense, large portions of 
 the body, and yet the true self continues entire ; and as 
 animal bodies are always in a state of flux and succession 
 of parts, with no corresponding loss or gain of the true self, 
 we again infer the distinctness of that true self from the 
 body, and its independence at the time of death 7 . 
 
 1 Analogy, I. i. 2, 3. 2 Ibid. 4. 3 Ibid. 6. 4 Ibid. 7. 
 
 8 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 10, 11. 7 Rid. 12, 13, 15. 
 
Ch. I.] A FUTURE LIFE 145 
 
 6. Even supposing the ' living being ' to be material, we 
 know not its bulk ; and, unless it be bigger than one of the 
 elementary particles which are indissoluble, and which repre- 
 sent the minimum, no presumption arises against its surviving 
 death l . 
 
 7. Much less have we to fear extinction from anything 
 happening from any system of matter other than our bodies, 
 and not so near to us as they are 2 . 
 
 8. Inasmuch as our senses do not perceive, but are carriers 
 only to the perceiving organ, as is proved by cases of losing 
 them, and by dreams, we again infer the distinctness of the 
 living powers 3 . 
 
 9. Once more we so infer, because our limbs are only 
 servants and instruments to the ' living person ' within 4 : and 
 have a relation to us like in kind to that of a staff. 
 
 10. If this argument comprehend brutes, and imply that 
 they may become rational and moral, it will still hold. But it 
 need not comprehend them. The objection taken under this 
 head rests wholly on our ignorance 5 . 
 
 11. If, even as to his state of sensation, the true self of 
 man indicate an independence of the body, much more is he 
 independent as to his state of reflection, and its accompanying 
 pains and pleasures : on which we see no effect from death 6 . 
 
 12. Certain mortal diseases, up to death, do not affect our 
 intellectual powers. Is it likely that in death they will kill 
 these powers 1 or that, in death, anything else will do it 7 ? 
 
 13. We cannot infer from anything we know about death 
 even the suspension of our reflective condition and action. 
 Nay, it may be the continuation thereof, with enlargement 8 ; 
 all this in a course which may then be found strictly 
 natural 9 . 
 
 14. The case of vegetables is irrelevant to a question on the 
 survival of faculties of perception and action; since they have 
 none 10 . 
 
 In sum ; there is sufficient proof of independence to bar 
 any presumption of simultaneous or allied destruction. All 
 
 1 Analogy, I. i. 14, 16. 2 Ibid. 15, 20. 3 Ibid. 18. 4 Ibid. 19. 
 6 Ibid. 21, 22. 6 Ibid. 24. 7 Ibid. 25. 8 Ibid. 26-28. 
 
 9 Ibid. 31. la Ibid. 29. 
 
 L 
 
146 A FUTURE LIFE [p T . II. 
 
 such presumptions have now been rebutted : and a ' credi- 
 bility,' sufficient for the purposes of religion, indeed ' a very 
 considerable degree of probability,' has been shown l . 
 
 Having thus summed up the negative arguments of Butler, 
 let us proceed to the positive, which indeed are few. 
 
 1. The fact of existence carries with it a presumption of 
 its continuance ; which presumption holds until rebutted by 
 adverse presumption or proof 2 . 
 
 2. From the fact of swoons, if not also from dreams, we 
 know that our living powers exist at times when there is no 
 capacity of exercising them in the usual way 3 . 
 
 3. From the fact that in certain mortal diseases the re- 
 flective powers remain wholly unaffected, he seems to infer 
 such an independence as supplies a positive presumption of 
 future existence 4 . 
 
 It may be worth while to ask why Butler did not employ 
 among the presumptions of a future life one from resort to 
 which it seems plain that he was not precluded by its depen- 
 dence upon religion, either natural or revealed. I mean that 
 desire for it which, altogether apart from belief, has prevailed 
 in the higher mind of man, and which may be thought to 
 have prompted the Platonic speculations. It seems possible 
 that he may have anticipated the reply which was offered by 
 D'Holbach to this argument after he was dead. D'Holbach 
 does not deny the existence of the desire ; but he says, per- 
 tinently enough, ' nous desirons la vie du corps, et cependant 
 ce dksir ed frustre ; pourquoi le de'sir de la vie de ndtre ame 
 ne seroit-il pas f rustre' comme le premier 5 1 ' 
 
 I shall presently refer to Butler's treatment of the question 
 concerning the natural immortality of the soul ; at this 
 moment it is enough to say what is indubitable, that he does 
 not make use of it as an argument. 
 
 When we put the question, What is the force, in the 
 aggregate, of the arguments which have been adduced in this 
 Chapter, and what was the author's own estimate of that 
 force 1 it will not be found altogether easy to reply : and 
 perhaps we have here felt the consequences of his having 
 
 1 Analogi/, I. i. 32. 2 Ibid. 4, 8, 30. 3 Ibid. 6. * Ibid. 25. 
 
 5 Systeme de la Nature, Part I. ch. xiii. 
 
Ch.L] A FUTURE LIFE 147 
 
 dealt with a subject extraneous to his main argument, in its 
 not being handled with the same extraordinary exactitude 
 and continuity. I will refer to two points in particular. 
 
 With respect to the argument of indiscerptibility, much 
 favoured by preceding writers from a very ancient date, it 
 ought not to escape remark that Butler does not appear to 
 place reliance upon it ; as, in his summing up, he makes no 
 allusion to it, but puts forward other topics in its stead. 
 And yet it is an argument which, if it were sound, would 
 dispense with every other, and would at once prove the whole 
 of his case, so far as the soul, apart from the body, is con- 
 cerned. But is it sound 1 To me it appears wholly valueless. 
 
 For what is discerptibility 1 Can it be defined otherwise 
 than as the severance in space of the portions of some whole, 
 which were previously united in space ? so that the parts of 
 a material substance, which necessarily exists in space, are 
 said to be discerptible. But the soul is not, according to the 
 ordinary acceptance of the term, material. It does not then 
 (as far as our knowledge goes) exist in space, and is not 
 subject to its conditions. So that the idea of discerptibility 
 is wholly foreign to it, and can have no concern in proving 
 either its mortality or its immortalit}^. 
 
 Yet Clarke has advanced a very high doctrine of indis- 
 cerptibility. ' As evidently as the known properties of matter 
 prove it to be certainly a discerpible (sic) substance, whatever 
 other unknown properties it may be endued with ; so evidently 
 the known and confessed properties of immaterial beings 
 prove them to be indiscerpible, whatever other unknown 
 properties they likewise may be indued with V 
 
 Again, Butler is evidently led to his conditional argument 
 on behalf of the immortality of brutes by the palpable fact 
 that they give evidence of living powers, some living agent, 
 some true self, within and above their corporeal organs. It 
 has been feared by some that this may lead to an inversion of 
 the argument, and a contention that if our ' living being ' be 
 like theirs, little can be inferred from it as to a likelihood of 
 independent survival. The absolute finality of death for 
 
 1 Clarke's Defence of an Argument made use of in a Letter to Mr.Dodwell, 
 p. 101. 
 
 L 2 
 
148 A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 brutes ought not, I suppose, to be taken for granted. But 
 we must carefully eschew the recognition of any full parallel- 
 ism in the application of the argument from living powers 
 as between the two orders respectively. And this on more 
 grounds than one. The living being in brutes may suffice to 
 warrant our presuming it to be possibly independent of 
 death : but it is contracted in scope, and insignificant in 
 function, when they are compared with man; who has not 
 only perception and action, but reflection ; and not only 
 reflection, but conscience ; and with conscience a sense of 
 moral right and wrong, together with an array of moral 
 powers, as to which it is to be observed that, unlike the 
 powers merely intellectual, they as a general rule lose nothing 
 with the lapse of years, but often ripen down to the very 
 hour of death. 
 
 And again, that great argument for human survival, 
 which arises from the palpable incompleteness of the work 
 of discipline for which men came into the world, not uni- 
 versally, but still in a great multitude of cases, has little or 
 no application to the case of brutes, whose life and death are 
 not similarly associated with growth, and do not suggest in 
 the same way the idea of unfulfilled purpose. Much of this, 
 however, is not within the scope of Butler's first Chapter. 
 
 In the beginning of § 32, he states that he has shown 
 the credibility of a future life : and truly may it be said 
 that a thing, against which no adverse presumption has 
 been, or presumably can be, made good, is credible. But 
 at the close of the section he says that he has proved it 
 up ' to a very considerable degree of probability ' ; which is 
 a different matter. 
 
 He seems to have been perfectly successful in the business 
 of pure rebuttal. The instrument, by which he has achieved 
 it, is giving proof of our possession of living powers, and of 
 their high character, apart from, and above, the corporeal 
 organs: and, on the whole, it seems to be his view that 
 the nature of these powers, together with the likelihood of 
 their continuance (which, in the absence of any proved power 
 of death to destroy us, he estimates highly), amounts to 
 ' a very considerable degree of probability.' 
 
 It may perhaps be thought that a rebuttal of objections, 
 
Ch.I.] A FUTURE LIFE 149 
 
 not only successful, but so comprehensive and complete, as 
 that supplied by Butler, has an importance, real though 
 indeterminate, which reaches somewhat beyond its immediate 
 aim. It may leave behind it, on a view of the whole case, 
 some amount of impression in favour of that affirmative 
 which, though not demonstrated, has been so well defended 
 against assault. 
 
 Credibility, however, as he holds, is sufficient for all the 
 purposes of religion, and this is reasonable ; for, in a matter 
 which may profoundly concern us, such credibility binds us 
 to move onwards, and to weigh all the elements of the case, 
 such as the argument of the Analogy, in the course of its 
 development, may present them. 
 
 Again, the argument of continuance based upon existence 
 is made by Butler to play a capital part. Is it strong enough 
 to sustain the whole weight so laid upon it ? 
 
 This question, as it seems to me, can hardly be answered 
 without introducing other considerations. May it not be held 
 that the likelihood of this or that entity's continuance cannot 
 be measured until after first measuring the arguments for its 
 present existence? We may presume (always proceeding 
 upon the postulate that there is an Author of nature) upon 
 the continuance of a rosebud in one way, but upon the 
 continuance of a decaying rose only in a different and much 
 more limited way. If things exist only for an end, the 
 strength of the argument for their continuance will surely 
 depend, in each case, upon the condition they have reached 
 with regard to the attainment of that end. If they have 
 upon them the mark of a design, together with marks that 
 it is not yet fulfilled, the argument of likelihood for their 
 continuance is strong. Such is the case with man. But then 
 Butler's evolution of his subject has not reached a point 
 at which he can make use of this argument. And it seems 
 open to doubt whether simple continuance, apart from pur- 
 pose, affords a solid standing-ground from which to project 
 this or that existence into the future. Butler may be right 
 in throwing the burden of proof upon those who refuse to 
 admit as probable the continuance in the future of that which 
 now exists ; but this burden need not in every case be a very 
 heavy burden. 
 
150 A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 The establishment of the apparent independence of the 
 ' living being ' upon death is, however, of itself a great result ; 
 and its greatness grows upon us in proportion as that living- 
 being is richly equipped with faculty. Every attentive 
 reader, in considering Butler's management of this subject, 
 must remark how slightly, in presenting to us his 'living 
 agent,' he puts forward the ethic and pathetic, or shall I say 
 the moral and affectional, sides of our nature. Here we have 
 an army of faculties, which greatly enhance the force of his 
 reasonings from the nature of the living agent. And 
 Dr. Eagar, a recent commentator on Butler, has well observed 
 that our moral feelings and emotions are not subject to 
 deterioration or abatement with the lapse of years, down 
 to the latest, in the same manner and degree as are the 
 powers of memory, perception, and reflection. Once only, in 
 discussing this subject, does Butler name, in connexion with 
 reason and memory, ' the affections which they excite V 
 
 A question may, I think, reasonably be put whether we ought 
 or ought not to reckon, among the presumptions in favour of 
 the survival of the soul, those preternatural or extraordinary 
 manifestations, immensely varied in form and in the manner 
 of their appeal to our percipient faculties, which from time 
 immemorial have made their appearance among the records 
 of human life and experienced During the nineteenth 
 century they have occupied a larger space in the public view 
 than perhaps at any other period, and have without doubt 
 been subjected to more systematic, prolonged, and dispas- 
 sionate examination. The Society incorporated for Psychical 
 Research has been actively at work for a series of years in 
 Cambridge, probably the greatest mathematical University 
 of the world. The Society has now a branch in the United 
 States. It is almost needless to observe that, in connexion 
 with the name of Spiritualism (for which I should much 
 desire to substitute the title of Spiritism), these phenomena 
 have obtained very great notoriety, with large and in some 
 cases weighty adhesion, in our own country and still more in 
 America. There is, and ever has been, a popular impression 
 more or less favourable to the idea of such manifestations. 
 
 1 Analogy, I. i. 26. 
 
Ch. I.] A FUTURE LIFE 151 
 
 Among the wealthier classes there is a large amount of 
 determined negation, which is also shared by many men of 
 scientific attainments. Those who are thus armed with 
 a resolute and universal preconception, have their answer 
 ready made to the question I have above propounded. The 
 body of believers whose names carry authority is probably 
 small. But there is an intermediate class of those who have 
 neither generally nor in any particular case accepted the 
 alleged occurrences as established facts, yet who, upon a view 
 of the whole case, think it hardly reasonable to consign them 
 in mass to a limbo of non-entities ; and who lean to the idea 
 that they have probably some amount of real, though as yet 
 undetermined, basis in realities. If they have any basis at 
 all, they so far testify to the reality of the immaterial and 
 spiritual world. If any portion of that basis is supplied by 
 manifestations, which are connected with our future existence, 
 they must, I suppose, be held to supply, as far as they go, 
 available evidence on its behalf. There are also those who 
 think that the antiquity and wide extension of a belief of 
 this kind may of itself reckon among the secondary evidences 
 in its favour. 
 
 Let us now turn to the argument from natural immor- 
 tality, which includes a fortiori the question of survival, and 
 with regard to which we may be naturally led to inquire how it 
 is that Butler, having said so much, has not said still more. 
 
 His references to natural immortality are found in the 
 twenty-first and thirty-first sections of his first Chapter. 
 In the first of these he speaks of a natural immortality 
 of brutes, and observes that it does not imply their being 
 endowed with any capacities of a rational or moral descrip- 
 tion. In the second, he propounds to us that there may, 
 in the future or unseen world, be a state of existence for us 
 new and yet natural ; and he conceives in general that this 
 cannot reasonably be denied. He then proceeds to designate 
 persons, or circumstances, such as in a particular manner 
 exclude the denial : speaking thus — ' especially whilst the 
 probability of a future life, or the natural immortality of the 
 soul, is admitted upon the evidence of reason.' What idea, if 
 any, does he wish to convey to his reader on the important 
 doctrine of natural immortality ? 
 
152 A FUTURE LIFE [Pr. II. 
 
 With regard to the first of these passages, touching the 
 immortality of brutes, Butler does not admit it to be a con- 
 sequence of his teaching with respect to the living powers, 
 or living being, as existing in man. With regard to the 
 second, it is to be observed that when he has occasion to refer 
 to immortality as it stands under the Christian dispensation, 
 he says that ' life and immortality are eminently brought to 
 light by the Gospel/ and that ' the great doctrine of a future 
 state ' is confirmed by the Gospel \ The whole argument of 
 the first Chapter is an argument for the survival of the soul, 
 in which no distinction is drawn between simple survival 
 and immortality. Certainly it may have been meant to serve 
 as an argument for immortality. And yet, in the passage 
 which I have quoted from the first Chapter (in § 31), his 
 language as it stands is ambiguous. It may signify only that 
 the denial cannot take place compatibly with the dogma of 
 natural immortality, and therefore not among such persons 
 as happen to hold it. Or it may mean to take for granted 
 a natural immortality, and to urge that, as this is an estab- 
 lished principle, his proposition cannot possibly be contested. 
 Which of the two is his meaning 1 I have arrived at the 
 conclusion that it is the first. If this is so, he makes no 
 assertion of natural immortality. My conclusion is that he 
 does not intend to make any positive assertion either for 
 or against it, but to hold his judgement in reserve. He may 
 have leant to it in his inner mind : he may have felt reluctant 
 to oppose himself to an opinion which may be taken to have 
 been nearly universal in his time, and for long ages before. 
 But it is plain to me, that he has stopped short of an absolute 
 categorical assertion of it : and he could, as I conceive, have 
 had no reason for stopping short of such an assertion, except 
 an unwillingness to be committed to it, either from his general 
 mistrust of propositions founded only on abstract reasoning, 
 or from his believing this particular proposition to have been 
 insufficiently established. 
 
 Had he been prepared to propound it, he would surely have 
 altered the whole argument of his first Chapter; for, if the 
 natural immortality of the soul be an established truth, it 
 
 Analogy, II. i. 9. 
 
Ch.I.] A FUTURE LIFE 153 
 
 must at once take precedence of all those elaborate pre- 
 sumptions, which he has adopted for the basis of his reasoning 
 in favour of a future life. He argues for a future life as 
 hope, as credibility, as likelihood ; but he does not venture to 
 propound it as a thing of dogma or as a certainty. Had he 
 felt himself in a condition to propound it as an established 
 truth, his whole attitude in the first Chapter must apparently 
 have been changed. That dogma would have been the head 
 and front of the discussion ; and all his rebuttals of adverse 
 presumption, and his modest pleas for favourable inference, 
 needed at most only to appear as an army of auxiliaries, 
 preparing and making straight the way for the acceptance of 
 that doctrine. 
 
 Now, if Butler has not bound himself hand and foot to the 
 metaphysical principle of the soul's essential immortality, of 
 an immortality for the soul inherent in its nature as soul, 
 plainly it was not because he lived in a world to which that 
 doctrine was in any manner new or strange. On the con- 
 trary, it was, and it had been for many ages, a standing 
 doctrine of popular, and, within certain limits it may even be 
 said, also of authoritative, theology. Nor was recognized 
 philosophy in disaccord with theology. I will quote one 
 instance which may serve to show how deeply the per- 
 suasion has been rooted in the general sentiment at least 
 of Western Christendom. At the Reformation, when so 
 much of teaching long unassailed was shaken down to its 
 foundation, and Michael Servetus was prosecuted in Geneva, 
 under the inspiration of Calvin, for heresy in respect to 
 the Trinity, this question also was brought upon the carpet. 
 Servetus was, or supposed himself to be, accused of deny- 
 ing the natural immortality of the soul. His reply was 
 given thus: 
 
 ' If ever I said that, and not only said it but published it, 
 and infected the whole world, I would condemn myself to 
 death V 
 
 At a period when there was a disposition 2 in philosophy to 
 exalt time and space almost to the dignity of the uncreated, 
 
 1 Guizot, Great Christians of France chap. xix. 
 
 1 See the volume of correspondence between Clarke and Leibnitz. 
 
 gjse LIB/* 4 , 
 
 OF THJ 
 
154 A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 it was little likely that the natural immortality of the soul, 
 supported as to a wide extent it was by the authority of 
 tradition, would be repellent to the general mind. It had 
 indeed received in England, at the epoch of Butler's activity, 
 new and weighty consecration. First, this had come from 
 the Cambridge Platonists, who set the argument very high. 
 Before proceeding to adduce proofs of the doctrine, John 
 Smith writes as follows : 
 
 ' The immortality of the soul doth not absolutely need any 
 demonstration to clear it; but might be assumed rather as 
 a principle or postulatum, seeing the notion of it is apt 
 naturally to insinuate itself into the being of the most vulgar 
 sort of men. . . . 
 
 'All nations have consented in this belief, which hath 
 almost been as vulgarly received as the belief of a Deity 1 .' 
 
 It has been more questioned by 'unskilful philosophers' 
 than by the unsophisticated mind of man : and has such 
 a consensus gentium as Cicero rightly holds ' enough to 
 conclude a law and maxim of nature by.' This stress John 
 Smith lays on the consent of the general mind, though he 
 thinks it includes an idea of the soul's materiality, and, it may 
 be, its traduction too, as wide as the belief itself. And he 
 takes as his common basis or principle this hypothesis, 'that 
 no substantial and indivisible thing ever perisheth.' For 
 a moment only, as it seems, he declares himself indeed content 
 with that idea of Plato which, in the Timaeus, introduces the 
 Deity addressing the angels (or veoi deoi) in these words, ' You 
 shall hold your immortality by a patent of mere grace from 
 myself; yet he remembers that Plato also falls back upon 
 the dictum of Plotinus, ' that no substance shall ever perish.' 
 Even mathematical considerations are pressed into the argu- 
 ment for the soul's immortality, which is enforced 2 with 
 great persistence, and in a fashion not much according to the 
 cautious and measured mind of Butler. 
 
 The doctrine of indivisibility, as precluding death and 
 entailing immortality, was commended to Butler for accep- 
 tance by an authority nearer to him alike in time and in 
 association than Smith, namely, by Dr. Samuel Clarke. The 
 
 Smith's Select Discourses, IV. ii. l In chapters iii-vii. 
 
Ch. I.] A FUTURE LIFE 155 
 
 acceptance is, however, qualified, not absolute. The claim 
 for immortality from indivisibility, he says, has been argued, 
 ' and for anything appearing to the contrary, justly.' This 
 is, at most, no more than a provisional assent. His ultimate 
 judgement on the question seems to be held in reserve. For 
 this reserve, as for all the notable inflections of his thought, 
 he must, without doubt, have had grave reasons. If Butler 
 really held himself back from the full adoption of the popular 
 and established opinion, such an abstention presents to us an 
 instance both of circumspection, and of a mental courage 
 founded on solid originality, which may be said to form 
 a landmark in the history of opinion. It may warrant an 
 attempt to map out the position of the question, as it would 
 present itself to Butler's eye. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be well to begin by reminding the reader 
 that the idea involved in the term immortality is not single, 
 but manifold. I have already referred to two of the dis- 
 tinctions which we have to keep before the mind. 
 
 1. A vitality surmounting the particular crisis of death is 
 one thing : an existence without end is another. 
 
 2. We may speak of an immortality of the disembodied 
 spirit, and may combine it with, or disjoin it from, a survival 
 or resurrection of the body. In the second case, it is of the 
 entire man ; in the first, it is of part only of the man, 
 although it be the chief part. 
 
 3. The new life to which death is to introduce the human 
 being, may be active, intelligent, moral, spiritual, and may be 
 placed in an environment accordant with all these. Or it 
 may conceivably be divested of any one of these character- 
 istics, or even of them all. 
 
 4. The life of the unseen world may be conceived as 
 projected into the future only, as it is presented to us by 
 Divine Revelation : or it may be projected also into the past, 
 and viewed there in association with a past eternity. 
 
 5. It was when Butler saw personal identity, as he thought, 
 in danger, that he undertook to deal with the question of our 
 existence in the unseen world 1 . This identity is in truth the 
 very core of the whole subject. An immortality without 
 
 1 Analogy, I. i. 1. 
 
156 A FUTURE LIFE [Pt II. 
 
 identity is of no concern to us ; and the transmigration of 
 souls is an effective denial of the doctrine. 
 
 6. We have to distinguish between a condition of deathless- 
 ness into which we grow by degrees, and an immortality 
 which, ingrained (so to speak) from birth, is already our 
 absolute possession. This distinction is a vital one for one 
 class, namely, those who do not accept any dogma of im- 
 mortality belonging to nature, but who look upon it as a 
 gift resulting from union with Christ and with God. 
 
 With these diversities before us as to the nature of immor- 
 tality, let us now consider the various ideas of the tenure on 
 which it is to be held. 
 
 We are not to suppose that those who maintain the natural 
 immortality of the human soul, of necessity intend thereby 
 a life so conditioned that it is beyond the power of the 
 Almighty to put an end to it. Clarke, in answer to Collins, 
 points out that God may have more ways of disposing of 
 His creatures after death ' than we are let into the secret of.' 
 
 He may indeed, if He please, annihilate them at the dis- 
 solution of their bodies (and so He might, if He thought fit, 
 annihilate the disembodied souls of men ; and yet it would 
 be nevertheless true that they are in their own nature 
 immortal) V 
 
 When we speak, then, of the natural immortality of the 
 soul, what is the idea that we have in view? Is it an 
 immortality like that of God Himself, and is it such that 
 the soul, having been introduced into the universe, becomes 
 inseparable from it, or must under all conditions continue 
 to form part of it? It is scarcely possible to suppose this 
 to be seriously held. 
 
 There is another conception, which Clarke includes under 
 the phrase of natural immortality, and which is radically 
 different from this. It is that the soul is framed (so to 
 speak) upon the lines of immortality, as the destination alone 
 appropriate to its nature, and to the consummation of that 
 nature ; and, further, that it will, as matter of fact, continue 
 to exist unless it shall please God to impose upon it a doom 
 
 1 Clarke's Defence of an Argument made use of in a Letter to Mr. Dodwell, 
 p. 103. 
 
Ch. I.] A FUTURE LIFE 157 
 
 which will put an end to that existence. As the body is 
 framed to die, so the soul is framed to live. This would 
 seem to be Clarke's conception. 
 
 Then there is a third conception which in so far agrees 
 with the second that it regards the soul as qualified by its 
 nature to attain to immortality; but varies from it in so 
 much as it does not hold the soul to be endowed with that 
 gift at birth, but conceives of it as a gift derived from the 
 Incarnation of our Lord, and the renovating powers which 
 it provided, to be put in exercise on behalf of our fallen 
 nature. It inverts a portion of the last-named idea. The 
 one says, ' the soul may live, but it will be by the reception 
 of a special gift.' The other says, 'the soul may die, but 
 it will be by the infliction of a special doom ' ; and if that 
 doom shall prove to be the natural consequence of inveterate 
 sin, spread like a canker over and within its entire substance, 
 the question which remains is practical rather than merely 
 theoretical. It is whether God will allow sin, as a deadly 
 disease, to accomplish its perfect work in the destruction 
 or cessation of the sinner; or whether, sin in the person of 
 the wicked, will continue, under all conditions, to deface the 
 aspect of creation, as indefeasibly as the immortality of the 
 righteous shall adorn it. 
 
 Then there remains the further question : what portion 
 of His counsels, on this mysterious and solemn question, has 
 the Almighty Wisdom deemed it meet to reveal to us ? 
 
 There is, of course, a fourth mode of dealing with the 
 subject. It simply regards the soul as subject, like the body, 
 to dissolution at death, which is for both of them without 
 hope of revocation. But with this view, that of the pure 
 negationist, and the converse of the first-named conception, 
 we have here nothing to do. 
 
 The difference between the second and the third of these 
 schemes does not appear to be great in the abstract, for the 
 first of them allows that the soul may be smitten by a doom 
 of annihilation, while the second involves the belief that it 
 may receive immortality by gift, and that it is appointed 
 so to do in the normal course of its existence. Yet room 
 is left for practical differences of the most important kind. 
 For if, while the doom of annihilation is admitted to be 
 
158 A FUTURE LIFE [Ft. II. 
 
 possible in the abstract, it is also held that the idea of such 
 a doom is excluded from the counsels of Providence, then 
 the immortality of all human souls, whether it be in the 
 abstract indefeasible or not, is absolute for every practical 
 purpose ; whereas, under the other hypothesis, it remains 
 an entirely open question except for such as attain to im- 
 mortality through union with the Divine nature. 
 
 So much with respect to the subject itself. Now with 
 regard to the evidence which seemingly caused Butler to stop 
 short of positively affirming for himself the tenet of natural 
 immortality. We may consider that tenet as derivable from 
 reasoning, from consent, or from authority. 
 
 With regard to the first head, Butler had before him all 
 the remarkable achievements of those among the ancient 
 philosophers who contended for the immortality of the 
 human soul. This conception rose to its climax with Pindar 
 among the poets, and with Plato in the ' Groves of Academe.' 
 We habitually suppose, and with reason, that this great 
 performance of the philosopher was achieved mainly by 
 reasoning in the abstract and of a metaphysical character. 
 But in a remarkable passage of the Timaeus \ Plato repre- 
 sents the Supreme God as charging the inferior gods, whom 
 he had produced, to undertake the construction of men in 
 imitation of his example. And he will himself sow the seed 
 in these beings of the part which is worthy of the name 
 immortal, and will hand it over to them for completion ~. 
 Plato may have founded this ascription to the Deity on the 
 conviction which he had worked out for himself by his 
 abstract argument. He was, however, not well supported 
 by the rival schools of philosophy. The powerful mind of 
 Aristotle did not embrace the conception of a personal and 
 practical immortality for man 3 . ' The really human in the 
 soul, that which has come into being, must also pass away.' 
 This is taken by Dollinger as the sum of the Aristotelian 
 doctrine. And the Stoics ' viewed the soul as destined to 
 
 1 Plat. Tim. 10. 1. The words de- 2 See Salmond, Christian Doctrine 
 
 scribing the productive operation of Immortality, p. 151. 
 
 of the Supreme God are rendered 3 See Dollinger, Heidenthum und 
 
 by Jowett ' the Creator of the Judenthutn. 
 Universe.' 
 
Ch. I.] A FUTURE LIFE 159 
 
 immediate reabsorption into the great world-soul after death/ 
 or, as surviving only for a time 1 . Then came the school 
 of deliberate extinctionists, headed by Epicurus; and it seems 
 probable that his following among men of the world was 
 greater than among philosophers. The doctrine of immor- 
 tality has impressed but slight footprints upon the Roman 
 literature. The letters and poetry of consolation, which 
 antiquity has bequeathed to us, are especially instructive 
 in this respect. They are miserably pale and thin, although 
 in various cases singularly touching. Nor did matters im- 
 prove with the lapse of time. Lucretius rebukes the folly of 
 those who quail before the idea of punishments after death, 
 and bends the whole force of his great genius to constructing 
 a magnificent apology for the doctrine of extinction : and the 
 grave Juvenal informs us that none in his day believed in 
 the survival of the soul, unless such as had not yet emerged 
 from boyhood % . The language of Cicero, partially quoted by 
 John Smith, is highly inconsistent. Grote declares that Plato 
 settled nothing, and agrees with Lord Macaulay that the 
 philosophers, from Plato to Franklin, who attempted to prove 
 immortality without the aid of revelation, failed deplorably 3 . 
 And Butler could not but be well aware that the question 
 of the soul's immortality, open to so much abstract discussion, 
 had been incurably apt to wander into entanglement with 
 the pre-existence and transmigration of souls, and that 
 desperate battles had to be fought, both against terminability 
 and on behalf of individuality. Nor was the abstract argu- 
 ment altogether on one side. 'Is it not contrary to all the 
 analogies of present experience,' we are asked, 'to suppose 
 that I, who lately began to be, shall never cease to be, or 
 that I shall not be refunded into unconscious existence as 
 in* the centuries before I was born ? Whatever is generable 
 must surely be perishable. My soul, if immortal, must have 
 existed before my birth : and if its existence then no way 
 concerns me now, as little will its existence after death V 
 
 1 Salmond, p. 151 ; and Grote's 4 Campbell Fraser, Philosophic 
 Plato, ii. 204. Theism, p. 16 (Gifford Lectures for 
 
 2 Juv. Sat. ii. 149. 1894-5). 
 8 Grote's Plato, ii. 203-5. 
 
160 A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 This portion of the field, the portion depending upon argu- 
 ment in the abstract, was open, I conceive, to Bishop Butler 
 as it is to us. On the argument from the general consent 
 of mankind, he had not all the sources of information that 
 we possess. The religions of Egypt, China, Persia, India, 
 Chaldea, with Assyria, had not been laid open to the world. 
 The religions of the uncivilized races had not been so largely 
 elucidated by knowledge obtained upon the paths of travel. 
 The roads, open to him among mankind at large, were prin- 
 cipally those which led to an acquaintance with the sentiments 
 of two races, the Greek and the Roman, the most powerful 
 ever known among mankind, one in the world of thought, and 
 the other in the world of action. 
 
 The first and also the fullest record supplied to us on the 
 thought of the Greeks concerning an unseen and future world 
 is that which we find in the poems of Homer. The largest 
 mass of such information continuously given is that contained 
 in the great Nekui'a, the Eleventh book of the Odyssey ; but 
 much is also to be gathered from notices dispersed throughout 
 both the Poems. The most important of the affirmative pro- 
 positions which the evidence will warrant is that everywhere 
 there seems to be a protest of nature, an instinctive shrinking 
 from the idea of simple extinction at death; nowhere is it 
 mentioned, or in any manner entertained, as fixed for any 
 particular date. The life or soul is as distinct from the bodily 
 organization as is the body of one man from the body of 
 another. The entire man is at death severed into parts, but 
 the nature of the division made, the question where lay the 
 true self, is open to dispute. Twice Homer speaks of what 
 has happened to the avros, or ego, after that last earthly crisis. 
 Once at the beginning of the Iliad, where he says the wrath 
 of Achilles prematurely dispatched many souls of heroes to 
 the Under-world, but they, the clvtovs, remain to be the prey 
 of dogs and birds '. The other where, at the close of the 
 eleventh Book of the Odyssey, we are introduced to Heracles 
 in Hades as a shade or dbaiKov only, for he himself (avros) has 
 been admitted to the banquets of the Immortals, and there has 
 Hebe for his mate 2 . But Heracles was a favoured mortal. 
 
 1 //. i 2. 2 Od. xi. 601-3. 
 
Ch.L] A FUTURE LIFE 161 
 
 The glimpses of future happiness are so rare, as hardly to 
 enter into the general account. The aspect of the future life 
 is indefinite, except in one respect, that it is profoundly over- 
 cast with gloom. 
 
 Again; the whole apparatus, so to speak, of the Homeric 
 Under-world is foreign : as much so as the framework and 
 picture of the terrestrial world is Hellenic. Olympus is 
 within Achaian limits; the entrance to Hades is by the 
 Ocean River, at the remotest border of the earth. The Egyp- 
 tian Amenti reappears in the name of Rhadamanthos, but 
 this name is not placed in connexion with any judicial func- 
 tion. True, we have Minos introduced as a judge in Hades, 
 but he has nothing to do with awarding destinies based 
 upon earthly conduct : he is a police magistrate, hearing the 
 complaints, and ordering the controversies, of the ghostly 
 community *. The questions of pre-existence and transmigra- 
 tion are nowhere touched in Homer, for whose use the ^vxfi 
 is indeed not so much the soul in its proper sense as the living 
 being or living agent treated of in Butler's work. If we 
 are asked whether the Shades of the Homeric Poems were 
 immortal, we have no means of providing a full answer to 
 the question. Except in a single passage, where he refers 
 to the rapidity with which thought (vo'os) traverses or neutra- 
 lizes space in dealing with its proper subjects 2 , he never 
 seems to have speculated upon the human spirit apart from 
 its experiences in the flesh. Much less would he, whose grasp 
 of numbers, except within narrow limits, was totally indeter- 
 minate, endeavour to realize to himself the idea of absolutely 
 deathless and endless existence. Indeed, that idea in its full 
 extent is altogether beyond the reach of human faculty, and 
 even now is only and very faintly approached by the largest 
 use of enumeration. I reserve the further consideration of 
 it for another place, in connexion with all that relates to the 
 condition of man in another world. We are here concerned 
 only with duration : and as to duration, we may safely say 
 that the early or Achaian Greeks believed in survival ; that 
 their detailed embodiment of it was not indigenous, but 
 imported; and that the conception is not either broad or 
 
 1 Od. xi. 568-71. 2 II. xv. 80. 
 
 M 
 
162 A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 definite enough to comprise the idea implied by natural 
 immortality, either for affirmation or denial. 
 
 In the great historic ages of Greece, the old Achaian or 
 Homeric conception of the future life tended rather to dwindle 
 than to grow. It nowhere assumed the character of a force 
 operative, through personal expectations, upon conduct in this 
 life. Yet the idea of extinction and death, while it was 
 argued for and against in the philosophic schools, had no 
 place in the mind or heart of humanity at large. Grote, who 
 has formed so low an estimate of the upshot of the great 
 labours of Plato, nevertheless writes as follows : • The popular 
 orthodoxy recognized some sort of posthumous existence as 
 a part of its creed, and the uninquiring multitude continued 
 in the teaching and traditions of their youth V If, however, 
 we wish to appreciate the practical attitude of the public 
 mind with reference to the world of shadows, we must look, 
 not so much to tragedians who had to deal with archaic 
 traditions and the ideals of life, as to Aristophanes, who bodied 
 forth the true form and pressure of his own time, and who 
 leaves upon us the impression that the prevailing conception 
 of the future life had been effectually stripped of all that 
 could make it either venerable in theory, or operative upon 
 conduct. The early part of the Frogs of this extraordinary 
 writer appears to supply conclusive evidence that the Under- 
 world and the future life could, in his day, with safety be 
 made the theme of pure ridicule before the most cultivated 
 and popular audiences in Greece or in the world. 
 
 The practical thought of Greece was, indeed, directed to 
 affirming the sufficiency of the earthly life ; while its freedom 
 left ample room for speculation on the future. The Latins 
 were little disposed to formulate either in the one direction 
 or the other, and practically made little or no addition to the 
 materials which Butler had before him. 
 
 The most important part of those materials has still to be 
 considered, the part, namely, which could claim the authority 
 of a Divine Revelation. Butler could not admit such a claim 
 into the argument of his first Chapter. But neither could 
 he fail to consider for himself what bearing the state of ideas 
 
 1 Grote's Plato, ii. 204. 
 
Ch. 1.] A FUTURE LIFE 163 
 
 disclosed in the Old Testament might have on the question 
 of the natural immortality of the soul. In Gen. i. 26, we read 
 thus : ' And God said, Let us make man in our image after our 
 likeness ' ; and much thought has been bestowed on the great 
 inquiry, wherein did this image of God consist 1 ? We are 
 guided up to the meaning in part by the place which the 
 passage holds in the narrative of the great First Chapter. 
 It is a narrative of ascension ; and thus we see at once that 
 the being, introduced by this majestic announcement, was 
 differentiated from the last previously-named order of crea- 
 tion by a higher intelligence. So much, however, we should 
 have inferred from the general arrangement, even in the 
 absence of the very marked introduction, and of the descrip- 
 tive phrase. So that interpreters have reasonably looked 
 for meanings which would convey the conception of a true 
 likeness to God, though not one commensurable with God, 
 nor pushing us into His province. These they have found 
 in purity and integrity of the moral nature; in wealth of 
 intellectual capability ; in freedom of the will ; and in immor- 
 tality. All this not perfect, yet in training for perfection, 
 and put in a probation which was guarded by the penalties 
 that were to follow upon sin. 
 
 St. Augustine has dealt largely with the case of Adam. He 
 appears to have felt the subject to be difficult ; for he says of 
 his own work : ' plura quaesita quam inventa sunt ; et eorum 
 quae inventa, pauciora firmata ; caetera, non ita posita, 
 quasi adhuc requirenda sint V In his work on Genesis, he 
 says that the body of Adam in his innocence was mortal, 
 because it might die; immortal, because it might escape 
 death. It was not an immortal nature like some others, 
 *ut quasdam naturas immortales creavit Deus'; but it had 
 a capacity of immortality through the tree of life ; ' quod ei 
 de ligno vitae, non de constitutione naturae.' For nothing 
 is immortal except the spiritual (body), which is only pro- 
 mised to us at the resurrection. 'Neque enim immortale, 
 quod mori omnino non posset, erit, nisi spiritale, quod nobis 
 futurum in resurrectione promittitur.' But, by the Fall, 
 this nature of ours became no longer mortal only but 
 
 1 Lib. ii., Betractationum, c. 24. 
 M 2 
 
164 A FUTURE LIFE [Pt.it. 
 
 dead. 'Factum est propter peccatum non mortale . . . sed 
 mortuum V 
 
 Besides the tree of knowledge, which was forbidden to 
 Adam, there was set in the garden the tree of life, on which, 
 in his state of innocence, he was permitted to feed. Accord- 
 ing to the plain reading of the text, this tree (as the other 
 would have given knowledge) was so endowed as to give 
 immortality. ' And now, lest he put forth his hand, and take 
 also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: therefore 
 the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden V It is 
 said that this may be an allegory. But, allegory or no allegory, 
 in this view it is all the same. By the tree of life is signified 
 something which had lain open to the access and use of man, 
 and which would, by the ordinance of God, have enabled him 
 to live for ever. St. Augustine accepts this teaching in all its 
 breadth, and elsewhere he says man was created an anima 
 vivens; his body was a corpus animate, a body with an 
 anima. He was not immortal by the necessity of nature, 
 but would have become immortal by the tree of life, had he 
 not sinned ; ' nisi in Dei praedicentis minantisque sententiam 
 delinquendo corruisset V There is nothing in these passages 
 to show a natural survival of the anima after the death of 
 the body, which was a corpus animate. 
 
 Elsewhere, however, St. Augustine teaches explicitly the 
 immortality of the soul. After having variously felt his 
 way upon the subject, he wrote a treatise, De Immortalitate 
 Animae, and with this doctrine his name is prominently 
 associated. To the last-named work is subjoined another, 
 Be Animae Quantitate, the argument of which, as might be 
 expected from its title, is far more of a metaphysical than 
 of a theological character. But he did not estimate highly 
 what had been achieved on this subject by human means. 
 The immortality of the soul was an arduous matter which 
 had been penetrated only by a very few, under the most 
 favourable circumstances (' vix pauci, magno praediti ingenio, 
 abundantes otio, dictionibusque subtilissimis eruditi '). And 
 even these either thought that the souls would after a term 
 
 1 De Genesi ad literam, bk. vi. c. 36. 2 Genesis iii. 22, 23. 
 
 De Civ. Dei, xiii. 23. 
 
Ch.I.] A FUTURE LIFE 165 
 
 return to the miseries of this life, or else believed in the 
 eternity of the world a parte ante, that is to say, disbelieved 
 in creation K For the present I pass lightly over the succeed- 
 ing centuries. When we come down to the time of St. Thomas 
 Aquinas, we find the principle of natural immortality laid 
 down broadly and without hesitation. ' Forma autem hominis 
 est anima rationalise quae est de se immortalis : ' meaning, 
 apparently, with a proper and indefeasible immortality or- 
 dained of God 2 . This appears to indicate a great clearing 
 and hardening of opinion since' the time of St. Augustine. 
 But there was as yet no declaration proceeding from an 
 authority competent in any degree to bind either $ie Uni- 
 versal or the Western Church ; and it may be that Butler did 
 not take great account of what may be regarded as no more 
 than a current of ecclesiastical opinion, philosophical rather 
 than theological in its ultimate grounds. But, without doubt, 
 he would take account of the facts presented to him by the 
 Scriptures of the Old Testament. In his mind a future state 
 was an article of natural religion ; and natural religion was 
 due to primitive revelation, for the traces of which he might 
 consistently and reasonably search through both sacred and 
 profane antiquity. 
 
 The indications there afforded, when co-ordinated one with 
 another, bear no mark of the idea of natural immortality, 
 either as distinctly revealed, or as prevalent among mankind 
 at large ; but are on the other hand as far as possible from 
 giving any direct countenance to the idea of extinction, either 
 at the moment of death or upon the lapse of any assumed 
 period after it. Some see in them a gradual ripening and 
 development of the belief as we pass, from the date of the 
 very earliest records, down the centuries 3 . I have not been 
 able to discover it : the survival of the soul presents itself to 
 me as generally held and in the abstract unquestioned, but 
 without inquiry, from- the earliest date ; in a form, however, 
 
 1 De Trinitate, xiii. 12. Han Doctrine of Immortality, bk. ii: 
 
 2 Secunda Secundae, vii. 164, Professor Cheyne, Indian Church 
 Art. 1. Quarterly Review, April, 1891, for 
 
 3 See Salmond on the Future antiquity in general. 
 Life for the Old Testament, Chris- 
 
166 A FUTURE LIFE [p T . II. 
 
 so indeterminate that it sometimes appears to border on, 
 though it never enters, the region of negation. The scrip- 
 tural tradition offers its contribution to a consent general as 
 against extinction, but refusing submission to any formal 
 statement. 
 
 The date of Enoch, the father of Methuselah, is, even 
 according to the Hebrew chronology, as far back as nearly 
 the middle of the fourth millennium before the Advent. The 
 account of his translation is, therefore, by far the oldest of 
 scriptural records indicative of the accepted belief. There 
 can be none more beautiful ; and it seems to me as if there 
 could not be a more forcible proof that the idea of survival 
 beyond the grave was both accepted and familiar among the 
 race for whom the Book of Genesis was compiled. Also it 
 seems plain that the happy destinies of the righteous could 
 appropriately be presented to them in terms which, upon any 
 other supposition, could hardly have taken this simple and 
 summary form. But it relates only to a person of distin- 
 guished righteousness. 
 
 I do not dwell on Deut. xxxii. 22, which threatens that 
 the Divine wrath shall ' burn unto the lowest hell ' ; for the 
 context appears to connect the sentiment with temporal 
 judgements l . The absence of all considerations belonging to 
 a future state from the Mosaic legislation is, however, a fact 
 not less remarkable than any of the notices of that state 
 contained in the Old Testament. It has been common to 
 believe that no scheme of religion, no system of duty and 
 obedience from man towards God, could be constructed on any 
 other system than the belief in a future state. Warburton, 
 in his once famous Divine Legation, founded himself on its 
 absence from the Mosaic system to draw a contrast between 
 Moses and other legislators ; aitd argued that, as he was able 
 to dispense with what they had found essential, he must have 
 possessed a mainstay which they had not, namely the revealed 
 authority of God. 
 
 Moses had brought the children of Israel out of a land, 
 where religion and life were closely bound up with the 
 expectation of not only prolonged existence, but also retribu- 
 
 1 So Pool in loc, and references in the Speaker's Commentary. 
 
Ch.L] A FUTURE LIFE 167 
 
 tion, in the unseen world. We may well believe it was 
 essential to keep the Hebrew worship far removed from 
 contact with Egyptian polytheism. On this account we can 
 readily suppose the Hebrew legislator to have avoided a great 
 danger by dispensing with this form of sanction for his laws. 
 But such an avoidance in no way indicates the substantive 
 means which allowed him to draw adequate strength from 
 other quarters, in lieu of that to which he was unable to 
 repair. These elements of strength, whatever their nature, 
 were such as empowered him not only to take his place among 
 legislators, but also to construct a scheme of astonishing 
 durability, which, after three thousand years and upward of 
 the most searching and violent experiences, is still alive and 
 at work within our view among many millions of our fellow- 
 men ; which is associated in them with many remarkable 
 gifts ; and which does not exhibit the smallest present likeli- 
 hood of disappearance from the face of human things. 
 
 These elements of strength are not difficult to discover. 
 
 In the first place, the unity of God was a pure and profound 
 conception engrained in the heart and mind of the race ; 
 tested, too, by the servitude in Egypt on the one hand, and by 
 the signal events of the great deliverance on the other. It is 
 true that even this race was not always firm in its resistance 
 to temptation; yet many suppose that the worship of the 
 golden calf was not the conscious setting up of a separate 
 and rival power, but only the sign of a lust for the symbolism 
 supplied by a visible form. And the same may, I suppose, be 
 said of Jeroboam l with more obvious support from the 
 narrative, since he made not one calf like Aaron but two, and 
 placed them at opposite extremities of the Northern Kingdom 
 with a view to convenience of access. And his motive was 
 quite intelligible. He sought, on political grounds, to supply 
 the people with a substitute for the journey to Jerusalem. 
 How great is the power which this doctrine of the Divine 
 Unity can exercise, even in conjunction with most faulty 
 elements, over man, we may judge from the immense develop- 
 ment of force displayed at a later period of history in 
 conjunction with the Mahometan propaganda. 
 
 1 Exod. xxxii. 4 ; 1 Kings xii. 28, 29. 
 
168 A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 Moreover, this One God, as a covenanted God, was placed 
 in a special relation to the people.   I have sworn once by 
 my holiness that I will not fail David.' Thus was the Deity 
 brought nearer to them ; and this approximation on His side 
 gave them, too, a reciprocal consciousness of nearness to Him. 
 All this was sustained by the powerful threefold combination 
 of a ritual divinely ordered and privileged, of miracle, and 
 of prophecy. And the religious machinery of the Hebrew 
 system was in its turn enforced by the alternate experiences 
 of prosperity and misfortune in association with national 
 conduct, and in accordance with the promises and threats 
 of the great Law-giver 1 . 
 
 Yet there is one vital element still to be noted in connexion 
 with this unparalleled case of a religious system founded 
 exclusively on temporal considerations. The Mosaic revela- 
 tion was not the oldest in the world ; nor had that older 
 revelation, which had descended along the line of the 
 patriarchs, become extinct. On the contrary, it was upheld 
 and transmitted in warm vitality among such of the com- 
 munity as were of spiritual minds, and it found historical 
 assertion with an extraordinary splendour in the Psalms. 
 The Mosaic narrative itself gives us glimpses of the Under- 
 world; for in various passages when our Authorized text 
 speaks of passing into the grave, this is not the mere earthly 
 grave, but Sheol, the insatiable, undiscriminating, receptacle 
 of the dead 2 . The indication of a world beyond the present 
 one, to be inhabited by man, is perfectly distinct ; while that 
 world is pointed to as something which is wholly extraneous 
 to the Mosaic precinct properly so called. But the Book 
 of Job, which nowhere refers to the Mosaic law or to the 
 history of the Israelites, may seem to represent human 
 tradition beyond the limit of the chosen people, and at 
 a period, as appears to be generally held, of great though 
 uncertain antiquity. For these reasons, its repeated refer- 
 ences to an unseen world and a future state are of special 
 interest 3 . Most of all, the remarkable anticipation of a great 
 Messianic day. The translation of Elijah to the heavens 
 
 1 As in Deut. xxx, xxxi. 2 Gen. xxxvii. 35 ; xl. 38 ; xliv. 31. 
 
 3 Job xviii. 14 ; xxvi. 8, et al., especially xix. 25, 27. 
 
Ch.L] A FUTURE LIFE 169 
 
 affords a most imposing testimony to the general acceptance 
 of belief in another world ; as, from a very different point 
 of view, does the episode of the witch of Endor 1 . Then 
 we have the marvellous anticipations found in a variety 
 of Psalms; qualified, it is true, in their recording evidence 
 by such passages as represent a transitory drooping of the 
 soul in the face of its trials and of the formidable incidents 
 of death. This seems, however, never to be without an 
 upward gaze which always involves the idea of possible 
 deliverance, as in Ps. lxxxix. 9-12, even though it is not 
 invariably followed by an instant reappearance of the sun 
 from behind the clouds. Thus we have in Ps. xxx. 
 (10, 12); ' Shall the dust give thanks unto thee, or shall 
 it declare thy truth 1 ?' followed and relieved forthwith by, 
 • Thou hast turned my heaviness into joy ; thou hast put 
 off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness.' I will not 
 follow the testimony through Ecclesiastes and the Prophets. 
 The remarkable picture of the final issue of Divine govern- 
 ment and retribution presented by the Book of Daniel 2 , near 
 its close, seems to stand by itself. Upon the whole there 
 is a more limited but a nearly consistent witness to a general 
 belief in survival ; in Sheol, or an Under- world shadowy 
 and sad, with no developed conception of immortality (in 
 the strict sense now attaching to the word) for the human 
 soul ; with no ascription of such a gift to its nature, but 
 with occasional glimpses of the blessed condition of the 
 righteous, and their vision of God after death, to which no 
 idea of further change is anywhere appended. 
 
 Such is a rude but I hope nearly true picture of the evidence 
 derivable from consent in relation to the future state, as it 
 stood in the middle period of the eighteenth century. 
 
 It was conformable to the general tone of Butler's mind, 
 and sustains our high conception of his judgement, that 
 on the one hand he should have mistrusted the abstract 
 reasonings by which it had been attempted through so many 
 ages down to the time of Clarke, to enlarge the idea of 
 survival into that of true immortality, and to lift it from 
 the region of hope into that of formulated dogma ; that he 
 
 1 2 Kings ii. ii ; 1 Sam. xxviii. 7. 2 xii. 2, 3. 
 
170 A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 should have found the evidence before him, large and weighty 
 as it was, yet wanting in the precision necessary for a creed ; 
 that he should have been content with the modest presump- 
 tions he could draw first from indications attendant upon 
 death, and then from the surer inferences supplied by the 
 experience of moral government in the world, and above 
 all by the authoritative declarations of the Christian 
 Revelation. 
 
 Since the time of Butler, there has been a great enlarge- 
 ment of our knowledge on the subject of the traditions of 
 a future life, though nothing has emerged which goes to alter 
 the fundamental conditions of the problems they present. 
 This enlargement has been due to three causes at least: 
 The study of the sacred books of the ancient religions out- 
 side the Hebrew pale ; the wonderful revelations obtained by 
 linguistic skill and archaeological research, mainly in Egypt 
 and Assyria ; and the multiplication of the opportunities 
 found by travellers for ascertaining the ideas which have 
 prevailed among the outlying and uncultivated fractions of 
 the human race. 
 
 The result, as far as I can collect it, has been as follows : — 
 i. Greatly to enlarge the proofs of a belief in some exist- 
 ence for man beyond the grave, which may fairly be called 
 primitive and universal, even if it leave room for a some- 
 what feeble doubt with respect to this belief among a few 
 of the waifs and strays of our race, and for a melancholy 
 exception among a small fraction of educated and civilized 
 mankind. 
 
 2. The conception of the state of the dead in general was 
 wholly indeterminate as to particulars, but as a whole was 
 shrouded in melancholy and gloom. 
 
 3. The duration of the new existence in the unseen world 
 came little into view, except, as history evolved itself, among 
 those capable of speculation ; and not only is there hardly 
 a trace of formulated immortality, but the whole argument 
 continues all along a matter of controversy among philo- 
 sophers, and no scheme obtains, even in the schools, either 
 general concurrence or undisputed ascendency. 
 
 4. It was this question of duration which may have led 
 men to perplex and load their idea of the future life with 
 
On. I.] A FUTURE LIFE 171 
 
 the doctrines of transmigration, pre-existence, and absorption. 
 All of these tended to displace the twin corner-stones of the 
 true doctrine, namely, individuality and responsibility ; without 
 which the whole conception wofully abates, perhaps entirely 
 loses, its dignity and interest. 
 
 5. Some think that the idea of a future state exhibited 
 advance and development with the lapse of time. And those 
 who educe religion out of an original fetishism are in 
 a manner compelled to prop the theory with this sister 
 belief. Apart from Christianity, the evidence of history 
 appears to me to teach an opposite lesson, and to present 
 a picture of religious decline in this order of ideas, with 
 no clear or certain advance in philosophical clearness or 
 consistency. This, as Grote says of the Greeks, was a belief 
 apart from inquiry. Its existence in this form goes to 
 strengthen the argument of those who, with Butler, refer 
 it to a primitive Divine teaching, or revelation. The declara- 
 tions (a) in the case of Enoch, (b) in the case of Elijah, 
 (c) in the Book of Job, and (d) in the public worship of 
 Israel through the Psalter, seem, even if taken alone, to 
 supply a larger mass of evidence as to positive and popular 
 belief than can be gathered from the testimonies available 
 for the period which divided the Exile from the Advent. 
 
 6. The state of ideas subsisting among the Jews during, 
 as w r ell as before, the lifetime of our Lord gives no con- 
 clusive evidence of advance, and even supplies indications 
 which may seem to tend, to a certain extent, in another 
 direction. Suppose it granted that the Pharisees were the 
 party dominant among educated Jews. Their general belief 
 in a future state is placed beyond dispute by Acts xxiii. 6-8. 
 But we cannot infer from the New Testament their having 
 mastered the resurrection, or embraced the doctrine of 
 a future judgement according to the prophecy of Dan. xii. 
 Let us allow, however, the existence of a large amount 
 of rabbinical belief and tradition. On the other hand, let 
 us observe that in the parable of Dives, which opened to the 
 Jews the idea of future retribution, the subject is not handled 
 as if any such idea were thoroughly planted in the general 
 belief, for the prayer of the suffering spirit is that one may 
 be sent from the dead in order to reveal or enforce it, and 
 
172 A FUTURE LIFE 
 
 the reply of Abraham is not that it is already familiar, but 
 that it might, and ought to be, known from the ancient 
 Scriptures '. This tends to limit the received opinion of the 
 Jewish people to that vague and undefined expectation of 
 survival to which we have such redundant testimony at 
 early dates. There is this also to be remarked : For the 
 first time in Hebrew history, the Sadducees present to us 
 an instance of formulated opinion adverse to survival. 
 Sheltering themselves under a professed, or even real, regard 
 to the Mosaic law, they hold their ground as a recognized 
 or tolerated, sometimes even as a dominant, party ; and 
 appear to take common ground with the Pharisees, and to 
 be admitted by them as coadjutors in attempts to oppose 
 or baffle the teaching of our Blessed Lord. 
 
 As regards the learned among our Lord's contemporaries, 
 I understand, upon the high authority of Dr. Ginsburg, that 
 the prevailing view may' be stated as follows. While the 
 Sadducees denied all continuance of personal existence 
 beyond the grave, the Essenes, who might perhaps be called 
 Ultra-Pharisees, believed in the natural immortality of the 
 soul. According to the Pharisees generally, a first judge- 
 ment followed upon death, when the righteous entered into 
 Paradise, and the wicked were condemned to an expiatory 
 suffering, with the exception of certain classes, whose 
 sentence had no limit of time. There is a second judgement 
 which precedes resurrection for the righteous, and for the 
 wicked destruction. All this appears to be in the nature 
 of speculation rather than dogma, and the Talmud can be 
 quoted on behalf either of endless punishment, or of universal 
 restoration. 
 
 I have dwelt thus at length on the opinion of natural 
 immortality, and on the absence of evidence in its favour 
 as distinguished from simple survival, because the opinion 
 itself seems to have played a most important part in the 
 general evolution of the subject of a future state. It seems, 
 moreover, to have largely contributed towards stirring and 
 fomenting the controversies, which are now so rife, as to the 
 condition of man in the world to come. 
 
 1 Luke xvi. 27-31. 
 
CHAPTEK II 
 
 OUR CONDITION THEREIN : HISTORY OF OPINION 
 
 rpHE subject of belief in a future state during the pre- 
 -*- historic and early historic ages affords a spectacle of 
 piteous interest. The race of Adam, after the lapse into sin, 
 still yearn for the fulfilment of the hopes, once bright and 
 healthful, now impaired and mangled; yet shrink back in 
 dread from a future which conscience clothes with terrors, 
 and the prospect beyond the grave is enveloped in such 
 gloom that we cling in preference to the brief but often 
 sunny days of this earthly existence. 
 
 But the abstract idea of a future life is the mere skeleton 
 of a great subject, which only becomes clothed in flesh and 
 blood, when we introduce into it all the incidents which 
 do or may belong to the condition of man. ' Unconditioned 
 possibility ' is the description which a powerful writer of our 
 own day has given ,of the unseen world. The total and 
 sudden rending asunder of the portions of our complex 
 nature, now so closely knit into one another, is a transition 
 such that a vast portion of those who have to undergo the 
 change never seriously contemplate or mentally apprehend 
 it. With them, when the vision is at last by compulsion 
 fixed upon it, there is need, in order to face it, either of 
 profound apathy, or of powerful stimulants, or of a great 
 internal strength inherent or acquired. Nature inspires the 
 love of life, cries out against being torn to pieces, and most 
 rarely can be brought to accept the idea of pure extinction. 
 The act of dying, which has to be performed by the least 
 among men, is the greatest act in the entire experience of the 
 greatest. The literature of classical antiquity nowhere makes 
 such piercing calls upon our sympathy as when it laments 
 
174 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 a beloved object, or mournfully records the inevitable destiny 
 of the race. It is not that the ancients greatly perplexed 
 themselves with the ulterior problems of our state, or what 
 we now call eschatology. It is that death is in itself horrible ; 
 and old age comes in for a share of horror, because it is 
 death's next neighbour. 
 
 But when the greatest of all events in history launched 
 the Gospel into the sphere of human life, a great change 
 was gradually brought about. In the relative importance of 
 the seen and the unseen, the existing and the coming world, 
 an alteration was wrought which amounted to a revolution, 
 and the mental compromise, which had abated speculation on 
 the future, came spontaneously to an end. On the head and 
 front of the new teaching was written the great doctrine of 
 the Resurrection. Resurrection did not solely point to some- 
 thing about to happen in a future state ; it meant also 
 a present change, an union upon earth with the Life of 
 Christ, which was to be perpetuated beyond the grave, and to 
 be consummated by the final resumption of the body. For 
 every redeemed soul a solution of the mystery of death was 
 offered, on the instant powerful, and eventually complete. 
 The aim of the new dispensation was that every soul should 
 be redeemed ; that as all had shared in the ruin through sin, 
 so all should share in the redemption through the second 
 Adam. And so, at the very first outset, it seemed to be. 
 Through the first four chapters of the Acts, in the days of 
 the three thousand and the five thousand 1 , it appears as 
 though not a single tare had been sown by the hand of the 
 enemy among the wheat. In the New Testament generally, 
 until a cloud of uncertainty envelops the episode of the 
 Seven Churches, the Christian community at large is holy, 
 and the disobedient form the rare exception. The inde- 
 feasible beatitude of believers is not only the happiest, but 
 is also by far the largest, object presented to the view. 
 What was in time to become the reverse of the picture was 
 as yet only a speck almost infinitesimal in the spiritual land- 
 scape. 
 
 From the first, as might have been expected, the happiness 
 
 1 Acts ii. 41 ; iv. 4. 
 
Ch.II.] HISTORY OF OPINION 175 
 
 without end of man redeemed in Christ, of the very beings 
 such as we see from day to day walking before us, stood as 
 an universal conviction of the Church, and found its place in 
 all the summaries of her belief. Transmigration of the soul, 
 its pre-existence, and its absorption, did not require to be 
 confuted ; for Christians these wild notions had melted away 
 of themselves like mists before the sun. Within given 
 lines of thought, Christianity from the first addressed the 
 world in language which was positive and peremptory. 
 
 But so happy a state of things could not indefinitely con- 
 tinue. With the progressive extension of the Church, the 
 proportion of branches that abode not in the Vine was con- 
 tinually raised. So early as at the date of the Apocalypse, 
 there were churches tainted in belief, and other churches 
 paralyzed by the lukewarmness which insults God by owning 
 Him while it disobeys Him. Even while the Christian 
 community had the period of persecution still lying in per- 
 spective before it, the world, the flesh, and the devil were 
 actively extending their rule within its borders. During the 
 lengthened period in which the Canon of the New Testament 
 was assuming its form, the sacred books do not appear to 
 have precipitated the mind of the Church into hasty attempts 
 at solving the entire problem of the future state for the 
 wicked in common with the righteous. We shall find that, 
 outside the great revelation of fixed beatitude for holy 
 souls, the question remained more or less an open one for 
 several generations, indeed for some centuries. It would 
 be hazardous to speak with confidence as to the causes which 
 introduced restraint. In such a case as that of the great 
 Trinitarian controversy, it is known that strictness of defini- 
 tion was resorted to as a weapon of defence (and it has 
 proved to be most effectual) against the activity of erratic 
 ideas. In the case of the immortality of the soul, there was 
 no such morbid activity to provoke the general imposition of 
 restraint, and no corresponding danger to guard against. 
 
 The conditions under which we approach the consideration 
 of this great subject are widely different from those which 
 were present to the view of the early Christians. For them 
 the question long retained a great simplicity. The positive 
 proof of a future life had indeed received authoritative and 
 
176 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 final confirmation from the mouth of our Lord. As we see 
 from the writings of the Apostolic Fathers that the redeemed 
 of Christ — that is to say, all Christians who would suffer 
 Christ to redeem them — were thenceforward placed in 
 security from all vicissitude by their vital union with Him. 
 ' He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
 live : and whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never 
 die 1 .' He made no declaration whatever as to the origin or 
 nature of the soul. The disquisitions of rabbis, the specula- 
 tions of philosophers, were quietly set aside. They remained 
 whatever they had been before, in their original impotence 
 or power. Passing by them all as naught, He proclaimed the 
 establishment of His own rule, and He desired that it should 
 not be marvelled at, for did it mean more than the establish- 
 ment of the rule of righteousness 1 ' Marvel not at this : for 
 the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves 
 shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have 
 done good, unto the resurrection of life ; and they that have 
 done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation 2 .' Large, in 
 proportion to the small volume of His recorded instructions, 
 was the eschatological teaching of our Lord, but it all went 
 straight to the most central and the simplest truths, His 
 mission to draw all men unto Him, and the beatitude of 
 those consenting to be drawn, in being one with the Father 
 and the Son 3 . For those who refuse, there remains a state 
 of darkness, exclusion, weeping and gnashing of teeth, 
 a scene of misery and affliction, on which the curtain of 
 the Gospel drops. That curtain is never lifted : and all that 
 is behind it would seem to be withheld from us, and reserved 
 for the counsels of the Most High. And surely, if the stony 
 heart of man can be moved, here is enough to move it. 
 On the one hand rescue from all our evils and all our sins, 
 restoration to a partnership with the Divine nature in the 
 image of which we were originally framed, so that human 
 destinies are in a manner linked to those not of the universe 
 at large, but of the universe at its living crown and summit. 
 For this glorious picture, there is of course a painful and 
 shameful opposite; a Sheol more gloomy than that ancient 
 
 1 John xi. 25, 26. 2 John v. 28, 29. s John xvii. 21. 
 
Ch.IL] HISTORY OF OPINION 177 
 
 conception, which so largely sufficed to daunt the mind of 
 man before the Advent. By the general declarations of 
 the Gospel, there is opened to us for persistent sinners in the 
 future state a wilderness of woe. Yet we cannot say that 
 the fate of the lost is represented to us as an exact counter- 
 part to that of the righteous. Such it would have been had 
 the final award been one of pains and pleasures distributed as 
 reward and punishment are administered to school-boys, or 
 even as in a single figure of the Gospels future retribution is 
 represented to us under the figure of stripes few and many \ 
 But this method or presentation would have thrown into 
 the background the essentially ethical character of Divine 
 government, and especially of its capital exhibition in the 
 Christian scheme. For the essence of salvation consists not 
 in any external acquisition of reward, but in vital union with 
 God, such as that of a creature with his Creator can be. 
 There is no Ahrimanes in the scheme of our religion, and 
 no corresponding existence with which the unrighteous are 
 to be united as the righteous are united with the Deity. 
 Hence there arises in the eschatology of the New Testament 
 an almost uniform distinction in the mode of handling for 
 the two. They are not logical opposites like good and evil. 
 The consumption of the chaff with unquenchable fire is 
 not the logical opposite of being gathered into the garner. 
 Repulsion of the five foolish virgins into a void undescribed 
 is not the logical opposite of a place in the procession of the 
 bridegroom, however the one may be in contrast with the 
 other. The weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outer 
 darkness represents suffering which has its seat and source 
 within the person himself, and are not the logical opposite to 
 that feast, where the master of the house supplies his chosen 
 ones with food. Union with God is not only a state, but is 
 also a law, of existence. No corresponding law is defined for 
 us by the New Testament in relation to the lost. Whether 
 or how far the duration of their sufferings is described or 
 touched, I do not at this moment inquire ; but it is not 
 merely or mainly in measures of time that the blessedness of 
 the children of God is meted out to them. ' As thou, Father, 
 
 1 Luke xii. 47, 48. 
 
 N 
 
178 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us V 
 As they do not marry, so neither need they take into their 
 reckoning, or deal with, any of the incidents of time. 
 Wherever their union with God is named, their charter is 
 given them anew, and it is couched in other terms. 
 
 ' They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that 
 world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor 
 are given in marriage : neither can they die any more : for 
 they are equal unto the angels ; and are the children of God, 
 being the children of the resurrection 2 .' With death they 
 have and can have no more concern, for ' if a man keep my 
 saying, he shall never see death V But, on the contrary, in 
 describing the condition of the wicked, death is a familiar 
 image : The wages of sin is death. The motions of sin bear 
 fruit unto death. There is a law of sin and death. Sin, 
 when finished, bringeth forth death 4 . And the only question 
 which remains is, whether the word death in these and like 
 passages retains its ordinary sense as the cessation of some 
 existence, or whether it is here modified to signify a pro- 
 longation of existence conditioned by misery. For, do what 
 we will with that word, we can hardly sever from it that idea 
 of finality which in one shape or another it is so apt to convey. 
 
 The instructions of the Apostles added no new doctrine 
 to the teaching of the Saviour in respect to death and retri- 
 bution, to the inalienable beatitude of the just, to the absence 
 of anything resembling a repeal of the sentence pronounced 
 upon the wicked. The same, as has been already pointed out. 
 was the case with those early writers termed the Apostolic 
 Fathers. 
 
 It is only with some care that we can realize the value 
 of this remarkable abstention from all license of speculation, 
 which indeed continued long after the Apostolic age and its 
 special inspiration. Even at a first glance it is easy to 
 conceive what difficulties are likely to attend human 
 attempts to map out the other world, when we consider 
 how imperfectly we succeed in our endeavours to master 
 the conditions of the world in which we live, ascertained 
 
 1 John xvii. 21. 2 Luke xx. 35, 36. s John viii. 51. 
 
 4 Rom. vi. 23 ; vii. 5 ; viii. 2 ; Jas. i. 15. 
 
Ch. II.] HISTORY OF OPINION 179 
 
 for us though they be by no small store of experience. 
 First, we have to deal with the origin and the essence of 
 the soul, and their relations to those of the body : a subject 
 of itself opening a wide field of varied controversies. Then, 
 it is not one but two future lives with which we have to 
 deal ; the one which precedes the day of judgement, and 
 the other which follows it and reaches out into the infinite. 
 Then there is the difference of the conditions under which 
 the great account is to be met by the generation summoned 
 to it directly from the activities of life, and those other 
 generations who have passed through the natural dissolution 
 of the body and the experiences of the intermediate state. 
 Here the inquirer finds his path crossed by the grave 
 consideration that many have passed into the unseen world 
 in infancy and childhood without having reached any such 
 development of the faculties as to attain responsibility, or, 
 in the case of infants, even consciousness. On the borders 
 of this region, lie two others yet more vast : What is the 
 condition of those who lived and died before the coming 
 of Christ, and again, of such as dwell beyond the Christian 
 pale and never hear ' the word of this salvation ' 1 How 
 are we to encounter the doubts which suggested to the 
 early Christian mind a division between the peccatores who 
 failed to a greater or less extent in their endeavours after 
 the true fulfilment of the great Christian law, and the 
 impii who have not so much as .dreamed of endeavouring 
 to fulfil it, but accomplish the whole work of their earthly 
 careers in stolid neglect or in audacious defiance 1 ? How 
 are to be adjusted the million-shaded gradations of penalty 
 and reward, when the books are opened and the dead are 
 judged according to their works ; when the All-seeing Eye 
 shall take its measure without fail of every act (and words 
 and thoughts are also acts) done in the body by every 
 individual human being? What is the place which birth- 
 sin, the death brought by Adam into the world, will occupy 
 in fixing the conditions of the dread account? Or again. 
 The Christian was not redeemed in loneliness : he had been 
 baptized into a community, and membership in that com- 
 munity established a relation which, under the circumstances 
 of the early Christian Church, went down to the very roots 
 
 N 2 
 
180 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [Px. II. 
 
 of his being, and appeared sometimes to obtain such a com- 
 mand, that the soul, when thoroughly vitalized by Divine 
 grace, wore such an aspect as if it had experienced an 
 absorption of all personal cares in the depth and intensity 
 of its spiritual sympathies ? As when St. Paul wrote those 
 wonderful words : ' I could wish that myself were accursed 
 from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the 
 flesh V In these subjects, and in others such as these, was 
 opened a field for inquiry and for dispute which might almost 
 be called infinite. Many portions of it I shall not venture 
 to touch. But the flights of thought were wider still when 
 two hundred years after the time of our Lord we find our- 
 selves face to face with the controversies of Origenism. 
 
 There was then a wise abstention from feverish inquiries 
 which could only tend to the premature and inordinate 
 pursuit of dogma, or the exaltation of mere opinion to 
 a plane on which it acquires an imposing though false 
 semblance of authority. A variety of influences favoured 
 this abstention. First, the early Christian writers were not 
 generally of a stamp addicted to mere theory, but were 
 eminently practical. Reality and fervour were then the 
 rule of Christian life and not as now the exception. 
 The happy consequence of such a state of things was that 
 in the contemplation of the coming world, the main object 
 presented to the view was that blessed and happy one 
 which had already received from our Lord such fullness 
 of description as was found amply to satisfy the general 
 mind, and to throw the sadder portion of the question into 
 the shade. And further, we must take into view the wide 
 prevalence among the early Christians of a belief in the 
 early return of the Saviour to the world for a victorious 
 reign there, over and with His people, for the term of a 
 thousand years. It seems evident that, as under the Mosaic 
 system the prominent place given to temporal inducements 
 and penalties tended to cast a shade over the entire question 
 of a future life, so the millennial anticipations of a public 
 and general triumph of the Lord in person upon earth, 
 together with His Church, must have operated powerfully 
 
 1 Rom. ix. 3. 
 
Ch. II] HISTORY OF OPINION 181 
 
 in neutralizing the solicitude of Christians for very large 
 solutions of the questions associated with eschatology, and 
 may have caused something approaching to the absorption 
 of any ideas concerning the particulars of individual destinies 
 in the majestic and imposing imagery of the general expecta- 
 tion thus offered to the spiritual eye. For here it should 
 be observed that the millenarian or chiliastic expectations 
 were calculated to exercise a peculiar force of attraction. 
 The grand anticipation of St. Paul in connexion with the 
 coming life was ' to be with Christ ' ; and this was the central 
 and cardinal idea of chiliasm. Again, it met the weakness 
 of human nature halfway in abating the magnitude of 
 changes entailed by death; for many would be altogether- 
 spared ; the Christian would still be in his own home, and 
 if that home was to present an altered, it was also to be 
 a happier and a nobler aspect. Further, this state adjourned 
 the sense of that awfulness which it is hard wholly to sever 
 from the great account ; for it preceded the Day of Judge- 
 ment. Along with that great day, the chiliastic expectation 
 adjourned what was to follow it; and, by interposing this 
 subject of adequate and indeed absorbing interest between 
 the present life and the ultimate determination of the fate 
 of souls, a powerful means was provided for slackening the 
 curiosity of the human mind with respect to that ultimate 
 question. Origen, as we might naturally expect, is found 
 among the opponents of chiliasm. Upon the whole, and as 
 regards the early Church at large, I submit that its mental 
 condition with regard to eschatology was a very happy con- 
 dition, and distinguished mainly by the union of these three 
 special notes : a pure faith, a modest self-restraint, and a large 
 range of freedom for modest and self -restrained opinion. 
 
 These ideas were in close conformity with all the best 
 of our natural conceptions. Through the deviation of man 
 from his original righteousness, there had been a frightful 
 rent established in the web of this earthly dispensation. 
 The teaching of our Lord, and the purpose of His incarna- 
 tion, both in His person, and in His Church which has been 
 described as its prolongation x , aimed at the reparation of this 
 
 1 Fortsetzung der Fleischwerdung. I think the expression is Mohler's. 
 
182 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [Px. IT. 
 
 rent by re-establishing the reign of righteousness ; and 
 this reign of righteousness was at once fully, clearly, and 
 simply expressed in the primitive eschatology, which set 
 aside all the nights of metaphysical abstraction, and simply 
 assigned to goodness its reward and to wickedness its less 
 defined but alarming retribution : with an adequate insistency 
 and precision as to the first, and with a becoming awe, and some 
 consequent reserve, as to all the particulars of the latter. 
 
 This description will best apply to the period which 
 extends from the apostolic age down to the time of Origen. 
 With regard to this period, the English-speaking student 
 does not, indeed, receive all the help he might desire (so far 
 as I know) from writers of his own tongue. Dr. Salmond's 
 Christian Doctrine of Immortality l is an able, truth-loving, 
 and, from many points of view, comprehensive work; but 
 it does not supply any history of the course and variation 
 of Christian opinion during the centuries since the Advent. 
 The still fuller work of Mr. Alger, which in 1878 had gone 
 through ten editions in the United States, is open to graver 
 exception in this respect, that it propounds a single patristic 
 scheme of eschatology 2 , as representing the teachings of the 
 Church from the first to the tenth century ; whereas it is 
 generally recognized, and appears indisputable, that material 
 changes in the tone of principal writers took place during that 
 lengthened period. The ' punishment of the wicked by both 
 physical and spiritual torture ' without any respite, without 
 any end 3 , was during the earlier generations denied by 
 many, but was, says Mr. Alger, from the first the orthodox 
 doctrine of the patristic Church. The common representa- 
 tions are different, and, I believe, nearer the truth. According 
 to F. Nitzsch, the immortality of the soul was the subject 
 of free and open discussion among the early Fathers. In 
 Justin Martyr 4 we find it denied ; and though the denial 
 be put into the mouth of Trypho, yet Trypho was his 
 instructor, and it is inconceivable that this could have been 
 done if Justin himself had believed that question to be closed 
 
 1 Edinburgh, Clark, 1895. 
 
 1 Alger, Doctrine of a Future Life, pp. 395- 398. s Ibid. p. 402. 
 
 4 See Kaye on Justin Martyr, pp. 99 seqq. 
 
Ch. II.] HISTORY OF OPINION 183 
 
 in a contrary sense by Divine Revelation. Tatian says in 
 express terms, the soul of man itself is not immortal but 
 mortal ; and Theophilus of Antioch, that Adam was neither 
 mortal nor immortal, but (Scktikos afx^oTepuv) capable of 
 either. And, according to Irenaeus, the soul in its own 
 nature is not life, but receives its life from God, on whom 
 therefore its continuance depends. It is in itself subject 
 to the law of death, but will owe persistency of life, as a 
 Divine gift, to God its Author. At a later date Lactantius 
 even says that the distinction between the righteous and 
 the wicked would be cancelled if all were immortal 1 : ' Ergo 
 immortalitas non sequela naturae, sed merces praemiumque 
 virtutis est.' On the other hand, Tertullian teaches that 
 the soul is indivisible and imperishable, and has an acti- 
 vity which is not suspended even during sleep. Dodwell, 
 in his work on the Soul, claims Ruffinus, Arnobius, and 
 Athenagoras as supporters of the doctrine of mortality 2 . 
 Clarke's denials of these are bold, but by no means in all cases 
 absolute or satisfactory 3 . Petavel-Olliffe, in his elaborate 
 work 4 on behalf of Conditional Immortality, boldly includes 
 in his claim Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Hermas, 
 Polycarp, and Clement of Alexandria. Fliigge, in dealing 
 with the period before Origen, points out that there was 
 as yet no dogma of the Church upon the subject ; some 
 affirmed punishments to be eternal 5 , others regarded the 
 souls of the wicked as destined to annihilation ; in general 
 writers did not go beyond the declarations of the New 
 Testament, nor venture to lift the curtain which hangs 
 over all that follows the Day of Judgement, considering 
 that there is then opened a fresh period in the history 
 
 1 F. Nitzsch, Grundriss der christ- 2 The Soul a Principle naturally 
 
 licherDogmayeschichte{Ber\in,\8']0), Mortal, pp. 55, 67, 76, 79. 
 
 Theil i. pp. 352, 353 ; quoting re- s Letter to Mr. Dodwell, pp. 24- 
 
 spectively Just. Dial. c. 4 ; Tatian, 47. 
 
 c. Graec. 13; Theophilus, ad Autol. 4 Probleme de I'lmmortalite (Paris, 
 
 ii. 27; Iren. ii. 34. 4; Lactantius, 1842), vol. ii. p. 286. 
 
 Just. Div. vii. 5. See, however, 8 But the word aiwcos cannot 
 
 Harvey's Irenaeus, ii. 358. And safely be assumed to have corre- 
 
 on Lactantius, Gfrorer, Jahrhundert sponded with the modern sense of 
 
 des Heils, i. 82. our word eternal. See inf. 
 
184 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [Px. II. 
 
 of the lost which it is beyond the prerogative of mortal 
 man to examine l . 
 
 Gibbon 2 mentions the menace of eternal tortures, as a great 
 instrument for conversion to the Christian Church ; but he 
 does not go into detail, and without doubt employs the epithet 
 in its current sense as implying a period to which no definite 
 limit was assigned. 
 
 Enough, I think, has now been said to sustain my general 
 proposition that this period was one of faith, of freedom, 
 and of personal moderation and reserve, although I have 
 not yet referred to what is the clearest and most indis- 
 putable evidence in its support, namely, the language of 
 the Creeds. That language seems to show that the general 
 characteristics, which I have assigned to the writers before 
 the time of Origen, extended beyond that period, so far 
 as the authoritative standards of the Church at large are 
 concerned. 
 
 The secret of this mental freedom, the condition which 
 made it possible, was the absence from the scene of any 
 doctrine of a natural immortality inherent in the soul. 
 Absent, it may be termed, for all practical purposes, until the 
 third century ; for, though it was taught by Tertullian in 
 connexion with the Platonic ideas, it was not given forth as 
 belonging to the doctrine of Christ or His Apostles. It was 
 held, too, by Tertullian in alliance with the contention that 
 the soul was material in its nature, an idea very unlikely to 
 recommend it to the Christian mind. And the association of 
 Tertullian with Montanism could hardly be otherwise than 
 detrimental to his influence, as indeed it seems to have left 
 him, through the long course of ages, afloat, so to speak, 
 between the opposite characters of patristic honours and the 
 brand of heresy. It seems to me as if it were from the time 
 of Origen that we are to regard the idea of natural, as 
 opposed to that of Christian, immortality as beginning to 
 gain a firm foothold in the Christian Church. 
 
 And now, indeed, in connexion with that great name, it 
 may be thought that we are no longer entitled to speak of 
 
 1 Fltigge, Geschichte des Glaubens an Vnslerblichheit (Leipzig, 1799), 
 Theil iii. Abs. i. p. 237. 2 Chap. xv. 
 
I UN1\ 
 
 Ch. ll.] HISTORY OF OPINION 185 
 
 moderation and reserve as characteristics of the prevailing 
 tone of Christian thought. The opinion, for which he is now 
 most generally known to have been finally condemned, is that 
 which is called Restorationism or Universalism ; an opinion 
 which harmonizes with, and perhaps presupposes, the natural 
 immortality of the soul. But the idea of restoration was 
 only one amidst a crowd of his notions, all of which had the 
 natural immortality of the soul for their common ground. 
 
 In the range of his reading, which largely exceeded that of 
 any among his predecessors, Origen became well acquainted 
 with the arguments of Gentile philosophy, and probably with 
 every extant branch of learning. He was a great Apologist 
 of Christianity, and it is supposed that he did not consciously 
 alienate himself from the substance of its traditionary 
 teaching. Yet he himself suspected that his eschatology was 
 one dangerous for the multitude, and it is even suggested 
 that he cherished the notion of having an exoteric theology 
 for the mass of believers, and an esoteric system for the 
 student. A curious passage is cited by Lupus from St. 
 Jerome: 'Ipse Origenes, in epistola quam scribit ad Fabianum, 
 Romanae Ecclesiae Episcopum, paenitentiam agit, cur talia 
 scripserit, et causam temeritatis in Ambrosium refert, quod 
 secreto edita in publicum protulerit V It was indeed the 
 opening of a flood-gate. I think that the importance of 
 the men who took opposite sides in the long period of Origen - 
 istic controversy lends great support to my statement I have 
 ventured to propound, that outside the strictly essential there 
 had been a large freedom allowed to eschatological opinion in 
 the early Church. On the other hand, speaking as a remote 
 and ignorant observer, I am struck with astonishment on 
 finding that this great man, so deeply immersed in practical 
 controversy, should have found mental leisure for these far- 
 travelling speculations. They seem, as to many of their 
 subjects, like balloon voyages undertaken into vacant space 
 by one who found the atmospheric ranges contiguous to the 
 earth insufficient for his expatiating energies. Fliigge views 
 him 2 as governed by a conviction that he could build out of 
 
 1 Lupus, p. 706 ; Jerom. Epist. lxv. c. 4. 
 
 2 Flugge's Geschichte, Theil iii. Abs. v. (iv. 171). 
 
t86 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. If. 
 
 philosophy, especially out of Platonism, buttresses for the 
 Christian faith and proofs of its solidity ; a view in marked 
 contrast with that chosen by the most circumspect minds, and 
 by Butler, a prince among them. 
 
 The sceptical temper may frame questions as it will : death 
 sternly refuses to give it any satisfaction. The present is 
 now louder than ever in its imperious demands ; but injured 
 nature takes upon her to reply, that the present is the life 
 of animals, and the future is the life of man. The love of 
 money may heap around us mountains of gold ; all this is 
 but to lower the ratio of that which a man is to that which 
 he possesses. The fever of self-indulgence may multiply our 
 enjoyments : but each new enjoyment is, for the common run 
 of men, a new want, and each new want is a link in the chain 
 of moral debilitation, a new deduction from our high prero- 
 gative of freedom. Schemes of negation may each for a while 
 fret and fume upon the stage of human affairs. It is Death, 
 the great auditor of accounts, that reduces them, one and all, 
 to their natural and small dimensions. In the development of 
 luxury, we are immeasurably ahead of the ancient Greek, and 
 we might have been proportionably more successful in 
 shutting off the questionings of the soul respecting that 
 which is to come, had not a new voice sounded forth in the 
 world to proclaim the word Resurrection : since which it has 
 become impossible, by any process within our resources, to 
 stifle the longings of the human spirit to obtain some command 
 over the instruments for measuring the future which expands 
 before it. 
 
 I suppose it to be an acknowledged fact that for the 
 Apostles, and for the first following teachers of Christianity, 
 the doctrine of the resurrection lay at the very threshold of 
 the Gospel. It was a salient proof of matchless force for the 
 new scheme that, whereas the great enemy to be destroyed, 
 according to the ancient promise, was Death, Death was at 
 once and visibly destroyed by the resurrection. Moreover, 
 it was the road toward the solution of that cloud of mysterious 
 problems, which lay spread all round the idea of our own 
 future life. It might have been imagined, then, that as the 
 resurrection was the first word of the Gospel, the handling 
 of these mysteries would be the next. But no. The teaching 
 
Ch. U.J HISTORY OF OPINION 187 
 
 which at once travelled so far into the darkness before us as 
 the resurrection, forthwith travelled back from it. It came 
 back, in due order, from the resurrection which lay on the 
 farther side of the grave, to the resurrection which lies on the 
 hither side. Under the Christian system, destinies depend 
 upon character ; and it is the character to be formed here 
 and at once, which will shape the destinies that are to be 
 undergone hereafter. It might almost be said without levity 
 that the early Christians set about the work of character, and 
 left destiny to take care of itself. With them, the weight 
 of interest attached to that formation of character immensely 
 fxceeded for practical purposes the interest of investigation 
 into the particulars of the future existence, and the Church 
 for some time gave an absorbing attention to the one central 
 duty which lay nearest hand. 
 
 Even those, who view with least favour the unbounded 
 .speculations of Origen, must regret that, if his works were to 
 be condemned by binding authority, they should not have 
 been brought to judgement until three centuries after his 
 death (from about a.d. 254 to 553). He was a lover of truth; 
 and, if they had been tried in his lifetime, he might in 
 deference to such authority have reconsidered his positions, 
 and have found means of greatly narrowing the interval 
 which separated him from the general mind of the Church. 
 While the question may suggest itself whether his opinions 
 might and ought to have been dealt with sooner, it should be 
 remembered, on the other hand, that during these three 
 hundred years, beginning with the time of Paul of Samosata, 
 the Church had gone through the most perilous and agitated 
 period of its whole existence, and had dealt with and settled 
 once for all the controversies, larger and more vital even than 
 those of eschatology, which concerned the nature of the 
 Object of our worship. The last echoes of those transcendent 
 controversies only died away contemporaneously with the 
 condemnation of Origenism, and in association with the name 
 of the Roman Pope Vigilius. But the point which I desire to 
 press is this. The immortality of the soul had heretofore been 
 a question open and little agitated. The complex group of 
 opinions termed Origenistic had been organically founded on 
 it. The opinions were condemned. Of the immortality of 
 
188 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 the soul there was neither condemnation nor approval. But 
 as in this way notoriety was given to it without censure, 
 the practical effect may have been largely to accredit it, and 
 this may have operated, in conjunction with other causes, to 
 promote that silent extension of the opinion which became 
 more obvious, perhaps more powerful, from the time of 
 St. Augustine. 
 
 It would be out of place were I to present these summaries 
 of Origenistic tenets or hypotheses, which may easily be 
 found on reference l . They are set out with authority in the 
 Canons of the Fifth Council from i to ix, in the last of 
 which he is named 2 and anathematized. It is enough to say 
 that, besides speculations of a peculiar kind on the nature and 
 redeeming office of our Lord, they included the pre-existence 
 of the soul, and the universal restitution to righteousness and 
 felicity of all mankind ; a proposition which, with inflexible 
 and fearless logic, he carried to its farthest bounds, and 
 included in it Satan and the fallen angels. He was con- 
 demned during his lifetime by an Alexandrian synod, and the 
 condemnation was echoed from Rome, but the grounds of it 
 are not known with clear certainty. His defenders, however, 
 were strong in number, character, and influence, so that there 
 were periods when the Church exhibited a divided mind. 
 His vast learning and ability, as well as his elevated re- 
 putation for sanctity, may have greatly contributed to the 
 amount and vivacity of the support which he received. For 
 some time after the Council of Chalcedon, there was a lull, 
 but a recrudescence followed, and Origenism became apparently 
 the occasion, as well as one of the main subjects, of the 
 General Council held at Constantinople in a.d. 553. 
 
 Even down to and after the time of Gregory the Great, 
 Fliigge finds no approach made towards the formation of 
 a Christian dogma of eschatology. There was a disposition 
 to dwell on the immateriality of the soul, but it was (he 
 thinks) still regarded as in its own nature perishable, and as 
 
 1 For example, in Messrs. Mur- developed treatise, 
 
 ray's great Dictionary of Christian 2 Lupus, Canones e Decreta, pp. 
 
 Biography, iv. 150, 154. The article 671 seqq., 693. 
 on Origen amounts to a highly 
 
Ch.N.1 HISTORY OF OPINION 189 
 
 deriving immortality only from the knowledge of God l . But 
 yet he considers, and it seems indisputable, that the materials 
 for the opinion that the soul is by nature immortal, whether 
 we call it dogma or hypothesis, were for a long period in 
 course of steady accumulation ; though this was not so from 
 the first. After some generations, however, the mental temper 
 and disposition of Christians inclined more and more to its 
 reception. Without these assumptions it would be impossible 
 to account for the wholesale change which has taken place 
 in the mind of Christendom with regard to the subject of 
 natural immortality. It would be difficult, I think, to name 
 any other subject connected with religious belief (though not 
 properly belonging to it) on which we can point to so 
 sweeping and absolute a revolution of opinion : from the period 
 before Origen, when the idea of an immortality properly 
 natural was unknown or nearly hidden, to the centuries of 
 the later Middle Ages and of the modern time, when, at least in 
 the West, it had become practically undisputed and universal. 
 Let us endeavour to obtain so much of light as we may upon 
 the causes which were auxiliary to this extraordinary change. 
 I have ventured on referring to Origenism, and nominatim 
 to its condemnation, as one among them, on the ground that 
 it brought the general mind into familiarity with the idea, 
 previously alien or remote. In the wake of Origen came 
 Platonism, of which he was a zealous champion. At the 
 period when Dante sang, Aristotle had long held that unques- 
 tioned sway which is commemorated in the line — 
 
 Vidi il Maestro di color che sanno. 
 
 But Plato had been supreme in Alexandria ; and Alexandria 
 was the parent of Christian philosophism in the persons of 
 Clement and of Origen. He had also a high place in the mind 
 of St. Augustine, and he probably did much more among 
 Christians than he had ever achieved among pagans, in estab- 
 lishing as a natural endowment that immortality of the soul 
 which was already ineradicably fixed as fact for Christian 
 souls (although upon a ground altogether different in the 
 
 1 Fliigge, Geschichte, Theil iii. Abs. v. (iv. 234-236). 
 
 2 Dante, Inf. iv. 131. 
 
190 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [Px. II. 
 
 mind of the Church), so far as it touched the destination of 
 the righteous. In all these ages, Christianity was in the 
 West a rapidly growing religion ; the extension of the Chris- 
 tian Revelation gave a powerful impetus to what I may term 
 the spirit of affirmation ; and with the spirit of affirmation, 
 the arguments and the temper of Platonism intimately coin- 
 cided. The system of Aristotle, on the other hand, was 
 distinctly negative in the matter of what is now called the 
 Beyond; but the view of immortality congenial to Platonism 
 had, before this rival system became prevalent, so hardened 
 in the Christian mind, that it took no damage from the 
 change brought about in philosophy at large. 
 
 By an unwarranted assumption, we are too much wont to 
 antedate the transition of the mass of the population of the 
 Empire from heathenism to Christianity. There is, of course, 
 an utter dearth of sound statistical information on the subject. 
 It is probable that Constantine, when he took the side of 
 Christianity, saw that the balance of the aggregate mental 
 and moral forces had altered in the same direction ; but the 
 question of mere numbers is one altogether different. Even 
 in Constantinople, a century after it had been founded ' under 
 the inspiration of anti-pagan ideas,' Beugnot shows that only 
 one-fourth of the population were Christians *. The Christian 
 policy of the great emperor was rather an anticipation of the 
 coming time, than an acknowledgement of results already 
 achieved. The world was not yet reconciled to the Church. 
 But that reconciliation was on its way ; it travelled fast ; 
 and, as it advanced, the powers proper to the world acquired 
 a growing influence within her borders. The proportion of 
 her thoughtless and godless members to those of serious mind 
 continually and rapidly grew. From the reign of Constantine 
 onwards, says Beugnot, we note the disappearance of those 
 simple and frugal manners which for three centuries had 
 been the mark and the glory of the Church 2 . So the warfare 
 of the genuine Christian preacher with large numbers of his 
 hearers waxed hotter and hotter. The question of their 
 destiny in the world to come, which had been but infinitesi- 
 
 1 Beugnot, Destruction du Paganisme en Occident, ii. 195. 
 
 2 Ibid. i. 87. 
 
Ch. II] HISTORY OF OPINION 191 
 
 mal in the first apostolic days, now came to assume grave, 
 and even vast, proportions. And here* it was that the new 
 doctrine, as I shall call it, of natural immortality played so 
 material a part. The sinner had to be persuaded. He had 
 also to be threatened ; and threatened with what ? If the 
 preacher only menaced him with the retribution which was 
 to follow the Day of Judgement, the force of the instrument 
 he employed materially depended on what he could say as to 
 the duration of that penal term, a subject which, in the earliest 
 teachings of the Church, it had been found unnecessary 
 minutely to explore. But this war was carried on from the 
 pulpit at a great advantage; for the age was an affirming 
 and believing, not a questioning or denying age. At such 
 a period, the more long-drawn the vista of the impending 
 punishment, the more effective the menaces with which the 
 preacher might reckon upon beating down the resistance of 
 the carnal mind. In an age which has reversed the ten- 
 dencies of thought, the doctrine of natural immortality may 
 have become, for many or some, an impediment or an incum- 
 brance. But, in what we term the ages of faith, ideas of 
 a natural immortality, even if rudely and indefinitely con- 
 ceived, enhanced the power of the leverage at the command 
 of the Christian preacher. It seems also indisputable that it 
 enhanced therewith the influence of the priesthood as a caste. 
 The sharper the edge which could be given to the configura- 
 tion (so to speak) of the opinion, the greater was that enhance- 
 ment : and the larger was the increment imparted to a force, 
 which in its first inception was evidently one calculated for 
 use in the cause of righteousness, although in its ulterior 
 developments, and in its association with another evolution of 
 ideas concerning the intermediate state and the power of the 
 Church to act upon it, the moral action of the tenet may 
 have come to be of a mixed and questionable character. If, 
 then, the idea of natural immortality was one thus variously 
 adapted for promoting, under the circumstances of the time, 
 both the higher and the more earthy part of the purposes of 
 the Church, we cannot doubt that this doctrinal interest 
 would have a large and efficacious operation in promoting the 
 recognition, acceptance, and habitual popular enforcement, of 
 that idea. 
 
192 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [p T . II. 
 
 It seems, however, to be generally felt that the determining 
 epoch in the history of seminal Christian thought upon this 
 subject was the life of St. Augustine, together with that 
 period, following closely upon it, when the Western Church 
 became rapidly imbued with his theology in almost its entire 
 compass. 
 
 It would be difficult, I believe, to frame from the writings 
 of this great teacher — the most powerful, the most evan- 
 gelical, and also the most comprehensive who has adorned the 
 early annals of the Western Church — an entirely self-con- 
 sistent system of eschatological opinion. Some questions, 
 such as whether suffering in the future will be physical as 
 well as spiritual, he was content expressly to leave open. It 
 has been shown, by the language already quoted from the 
 Retractationes, how he felt the difficulties of the entire theme. 
 The views, which he expressed in connexion with primitive 
 man and with the Fall, seem to be at variance with the 
 endeavours, doubtless due to his acceptance of the Platonic 
 philosophy, which he made to found the immortality of the 
 soul upon abstract and metaphysical considerations. Pro- 
 bably these arguments supplied the basis of his own con- 
 viction. His strong conception, however, of the Divine decree, 
 of birth-sin, and (in his later days) of the utter impotence of 
 the will to act rightly, may all have tended to give, in his 
 mind, more and more of fixity and permanence to the con- 
 ditions of human existence. These views did not pass without 
 some mitigation into the general teaching of the Latin 
 Church. But the conclusion as to the soul's duration by 
 mere nature met with general acceptance, and suffered no 
 abatement in its terms. Not only was there no abatement, 
 but there may even be some reason for saying that in this 
 matter Augustinianism went beyond Augustine. His varia- 
 tions, his queries, his tenderness to opinions of a shade other 
 than his own, were apparently forgotten or dropped out of 
 notice. From this time forward, we cease to look for the 
 appearance of men who, like Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth 
 century, recalled the memory of Origen with regard to the 
 escape in the future of lost spirits from their condemnation l . 
 
 1 F. Nitzsch, Dogmageschichte, i. p. 404. 
 
Ch. II.] HISTORY OF OPINION 193 
 
 For Augustine, as it was held, in the prevailing tenor of 
 his works, strongly supported the never-ceasing duration of 
 their punishment. This is not surprising ; but it may appear 
 singular that he should have recognized such a parallelism 
 between this opinion and the perpetuity of everlasting happi- 
 ness, as to suggest that the doctrine touching the redeemed 
 would be endangered, unless the other were propounded as 
 its counterpart. The eternal punishment of the wicked in 
 general for the sins of a life not finite only, but brief, is 
 thought by some to present an aspect of great severity. 
 When this proposition carried with it the notions of inability 
 to escape from sinfulness, and of adverse Divine decrees, and 
 when, further, damnation for original sin was extended to 
 infants, and the heathen were excluded wholesale from 
 salvation, we have before us in very truth an horribile 
 decretum, and it may well be said that a theology so fashioned 
 did impose burdens heavy for the human mind to bear. We 
 are now perhaps suffering, in part, from the reaction, which 
 such a scheme might be calculated in the course of time to 
 bring about. 
 
 It will not be required to say much more upon the his- 
 torical growth of this opinion. Flligge regards the ideas of 
 immateriality and immortality of the soul as accepted by 
 St. John of Damascus; but considers that, all along, the 
 Latin Church led the way in this development *. The history 
 of the formation of the ecclesiastical dogma (of eschatology), 
 he says, closes with the Schoolmen 2 . To their manipulation 
 of the subject, there is no corresponding process among the 
 divines of the Oriental Church, who remained content with 
 the older methods of presentation. It may have been a sign 
 of this distinction between Western and Eastern doctrine that 
 so late as in the Decretum pro Graecis (the words accepted by 
 the Council of Florence as a form of union in 1439), it is 
 declared that those who have died ' in actuali mortali peccato, 
 vel solo originali ' pass into punishments of various degrees ; 
 but nothing is said, even at so late an epoch, of the duration 
 of those punishments. 
 
 1 Flvigge, Geschichte, Theil iii. Abschn. viii. Abth. ii. (iv. 69). 
 
 2 Ibid. Abschn. vii. Abth. ii. (iv. 51J. 
 
 O 
 
194 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [Pt. II. 
 
 We are to regard Peter Lombard, it appears, as the person 
 who gathered together the disjecta membra ; and even from 
 him the words are quoted, ' omnibus questionibus quae de hac 
 re moveri solent, satisfacere non valeo 1 .' With the Schoolmen 
 the philosophy of Aristotle was established in full authority ; 
 but Peter Lombard found the natural immortality of the soul, 
 in possession of the field of thought, and, perhaps, accepted it 
 simply as part of the common heritage, without minute 
 investigation of the source from which it was derived. 
 Fliigge quotes him as content to set out from the resur- 
 rection, which he proves by the authority of Scripture. It 
 was his . business to give regularity and method to the 
 dispersed utterances of former writers ; and this he appears 
 to have done with a certain moderation. Yet, following 
 St. Augustine and Gregory the Great, he described the satis- 
 faction with which the sufferings of the wicked will supply 
 the elect : ' laetitia satiabuntur, agentes gratias de sua libera- 
 tione, visa impiorum ineffabili calamitate 2 .' Their utility, 
 therefore, lies in quickening the thankfulness of the blessed 
 for their own relief, though the question remains whether so 
 sad a stimulant can, under the circumstances, be required, as 
 should be gratuitously presumed. 
 
 One historical point only remains. 
 
 At length, in the year 15 13, we have a Bull of Pope 
 Leo X, which purports to be issued with the assent of 
 a Lateran Council. This, however, has been questioned. In 
 the Bull we have the following words : ' Damnamus et repro- 
 bamus omnes asserentes animam intellectivam mortalem esse, 
 aut unicam in cunctis hominibus 3 .' 
 
 I do not know how far this Bull is within the prescriptions 
 of the Council of 1870 ; but, whether it binds the Latin 
 communion or not, it is of interest as an historical document, 
 and as one which stands in isolation. 
 
 But although it was the work of the Schoolmen to supply 
 the Western Church with its formal eschatology, it seems to 
 be generally agreed that the motive force of paramount 
 efficacy in this direction was drawn from the works of 
 
 1 Fliigge, Geschichte, Theil iii. Abschn. vii. Abth. ii. (iv. 69). 
 
 2 Ibid. (iv. 69-79). 
 
 8 From the Bullarium of Sixtus V (Romae, 1586), p. 171. 
 
Oh.II] HISTORY OF OPINION 195 
 
 St. Augustine. And so we find ourselves brought down in 
 substance to the modern ideas. I mean, however, by this 
 phrase the ideas which prevailed from the Reformation 
 onwards, and reserve for a later stage whatever in the way 
 of shock or change is to be ascribed to the sceptical or nega- 
 tive movement of the present day. So the spectacle which 
 we have before us is in brief outline this: The reserve of 
 the early Church has been abandoned. Even the recollection 
 of it has faded from the popular mind. Of the immeasurable 
 field of discussion opened by the future life, not indeed the 
 whole, but a considerable part, had been virtually closed 
 against free discussion, not by ecclesiastical authority in its- 
 most formal sense, but yet by the general drift of the mind 
 of Christendom, long before the judgement of Leo X was 
 promulgated. An important section of popular beliefs, relating 
 to the intermediate state, had been largely widened. The 
 Western tone had prevailed over the Eastern ; and the East 
 had hardly refreshed its theology by reproductions since the 
 time of John of Damascus. With the departure of the ancient 
 reserve there had come a great practical limitation of the 
 liberty of thought possessed by the individual Christian. 
 The doctrine of natural, as distinguished from Christian, im- 
 mortality had not been subjected to the severer tests of wide 
 publicity and resolute controversy, but had crept into the 
 Church, by a back door as it were ; by a silent though effec- 
 tive process ; and was in course of obtaining a title by tacit 
 prescription. 
 
 The evidence of the change may perhaps be most properly 
 supplemented by the observation of the noteworthy fact 
 that, when arguments are offered for the purely natural 
 immortality of the soul, they are rarely, if ever, derived 
 from Scripture *. For it will be borne in mind that, logically 
 viewed, resurrection is one thing, and immortality another. 
 The duration of the sufferings of the wicked was universally 
 assumed to be co-extensive in time with the beatitude of the 
 righteous. But there remained one distinction on which we 
 may have to dwell at a later stage. The human mind had 
 become familiar with the name of eternity, but had dived 
 
 1 Fliigge, Geschichte, Theil iii. Abschn. i. 
 2 
 
196 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE [Px. II. 
 
 little into the idea itself. There had not yet been, in con- 
 junction with the acceptance and enfc_ cement of the phrase, 
 any corresponding attempt, by arithmetical calculation or 
 otherwise, to give it with any fullness the character which it 
 bears in recent thought. 
 
 It remains to consider with some detail the effect of these 
 great changes, and especially of the substitution in our escha- 
 tology, on a larger scale, of widened assertion for reserve. 
 
 It must not be supposed from what has been said, that 
 I seek to commit any reader to a sweeping renunciation of 
 all that has been done since apostolic days in the way of 
 amplifying statements of Christian doctrine. Such amplifica- 
 tion may in many cases have been a natural accompaniment, 
 or an essential condition, of giving it so much of form as is 
 necessary for a permanent system of instruction. On the 
 attributes of the Divine Paternity, on the Divinity of our 
 Lord, on the personality of the Holy Spirit, the Christian 
 Church has amplified the express teachings of Holy Scrip- 
 tures by bringing them into contact, and adjusting them one 
 to another. The original character of these teachings was 
 that they were occasional ; and it could not but be that, in 
 order to be suited for linking each successive generation to 
 those which have preceded it, it should undergo some ex- 
 pansion. Let me not then be interpreted as saying that 
 because the original teaching as to a future state has been 
 enlarged, therefore, and on the simple ground of that fact, it 
 should again be curtailed. We must not disallow in principle 
 the introduction of method : and it would be most hazardous 
 to deny without limitation that there are legitimate forces 
 of development inseparable even from Divine Revelation 
 when embodied in human institutions, as they prolong their 
 experience. 
 
 So that the person, who recommends restraint in any par- 
 ticular development or amplification, inasmuch as he does not 
 condemn them universally, may justly be called upon to show 
 cause for taking a distinction between one which he mistrusts 
 and another which he accepts. And I admit myself not to 
 be aware of any criterion, in its nature general and absolute, 
 by which to separate the genuine from the spurious. It is 
 true that by their fruits we shall know them. And in 
 
Ch. II.] HISTORY OF OPINION 197 
 
 matters such as this we must endeavour to deal with each 
 case according to its circumstances and merits. I shall, how- 
 ever, refer to two particulars which, if they do not carry us 
 to a full and summary solution of the problem, yet enable 
 us to travel some way towards it. 
 
 In the first place, it may be well to examine, whether the 
 amplification of doctrine, to which exception has been taken, 
 is sustained by the full weight of legitimate authority so as 
 to be certainly expressive of the mind of the Church of 
 Christ at large. This, to cite an example, is eminently the 
 case with the expositions offered by the Creeds touching 
 the Holy Trinity. In the highest degree they had to sustain 
 the ordeal of discussion ; they were submitted, to every 
 variety of manipulation ; the Church was roused and com- 
 pelled, so to speak, to a full consciousness of its own action 
 even by the fluctuations which marked it. Its final judge- 
 ment was deliberate and formal in the highest degree ; and 
 the question has been a settled one from that day to this. 
 Very different is the history of the prevailing opinion con- 
 cerning the future state. The natural immortality of the 
 soul did not become the subject of free and general discussion 
 in the Church. It crept onwards in the dark. I think 
 Dr. Pusey has stated (in his work on Future Punishment) 
 that the denial of natural immortality was condemned by the 
 Fifth General Council; but this seems to be a statement 
 made in error. It appears indisputable that the tenet never 
 was affirmed by the Councils, never by the undivided Church, 
 never by either East or West when separated, until, towards 
 the death of the Middle Age, the denial was anathematized 
 under Leo X on behalf of the Latin Church. Another im- 
 portant distinction is this. In cases like the doctrine of 
 original sin some great mind has been given at the proper 
 time to the Church to meet its needs by a full exposition of 
 the doctrine from the root upwards, such as experience might 
 thereafter show to have been a just interpretation of the true 
 Christian sense upon the subject. But no such work, as 
 St. Augustine performed in the Pelagian controversy, was 
 performed by him, or by any subsequent or preceding writer, 
 with regard to the condition of man in the future state. 
 Nor has there ever been known, with regard to any of the 
 
198 OUR CONDITION IN A FUTURE LIFE 
 
 articles defined in the creed, a state of opinion so disorganized 
 as we see now largely prevailing with regard to the subject 
 before us. 
 
 Another consideration of the highest importance is that the 
 natural immortality of the soul is a doctrine wholly unknown 
 to the Holy Scriptures, and standing on no higher plane than 
 that of an ingeniously sustained, but gravely and formidably 
 contested, philosophical opinion. And surely there is nothing, 
 as to which we ought to be more on our guard, than the 
 entrance into the precinct of Christian doctrine, either with- 
 out authority or by an abuse of authority, of philosophical 
 speculations disguised as truths of Divine Revelation. They 
 bring with them a grave restraint on mental liberty; but 
 what is worse is, that their basis is a pretension essen- 
 tially false, and productive by rational retribution of other 
 falsehoods. 
 
 Under these two heads, we may perhaps find that we have 
 ample warrant for declining to accept the tenet of natural 
 immortality as a truth of Divine Revelation. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 
 
 ALTHOUGH Butler supplies important and fruitful sug- 
 -*-•*- gestions on the condition of man in the future life, 
 which I shall endeavour in some degree to unfold, the ob- 
 servations contained in these papers range over a tract 
 reaching beyond the field he opens. It may be fairly asked 
 of me, Why enter upon a discussion so wide and difficult ? 
 My answer shall be explicit. It is not for the satisfaction 
 of speculative curiosity. It is because a portion of Divine 
 truth, which even if secondary is so needful, appears to be 
 silently passing out of view, and because the danger of losing 
 it ought at all costs to be averted ; and in the hope that even 
 the feeblest effort in a right direction will not be wholly 
 frustrate, but may, at least in some few minds, operate as 
 a warning. 
 
 There is surely a side of the Divine teaching set forth 
 in the Scriptures, which shows that the Christian dispen- 
 sation, when it fails in its grand purpose of operating as 
 a savour of life unto life, will be a savour of death unto 
 death; and this under no new or arbitrary rule, but under 
 the law, wide as the universe, that guilt deepens according 
 to the knowledge with which it is incurred, and to the 
 opportunities which it despises or neglects. Therefore, the 
 great Apostle of the grace of God sets before us this side 
 of his teaching : ' Knowing the terrors of the Lord, we 
 persuade men.' Menace as well as promise, menace for those 
 whom promise could not melt or move, formed an essential 
 part of the provision for working out the redemption of the 
 world. And I ask myself the question, what place, in the 
 ordinary range of Christian teaching, is now found for 
 'the terrors of the Lord'? This instrument of persuasion, 
 
2oo THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Pt.II. 
 
 which St. Paul thought it needful to use with the Church 
 in the stage of its first infancy, and in an environment of 
 weakness, is it used as boldly now when she is armed with 
 eighteen centuries of experience, and when social and public 
 power are still largely arrayed on her behalf ? If not, there 
 is danger lest judgement, in a matter of great moment, should 
 go against her by default. Now the Newtonian law, that 
 action and reaction are equal, and in opposite directions, has 
 its application also in the world of thought; and so often 
 as we truly observe in that world abnormal excess or defect, 
 it is salutary to inquire whether the excess is in any degree 
 due to previous deficiencies, or the defect to previous ex- 
 cesses. It is in this spirit that I submit the present obser- 
 vations to review, and, if need be, to correction. If the 
 'terrors of the Lord' had an indispensable place in the 
 Apostolic system, it can hardly be that they ought to drop 
 out of view in this or any later century, unless at the happy 
 epoch when human thought and action shall present to the 
 eye of the Judge of all nothing to which terror can attach. 
 
 It is now time to carry over our contemplation from the 
 picture presented by the teaching of the New Testament and 
 the early Church to the later fashions and later systems ; the 
 first supplying us with ideas which are few, simple, majestic, 
 and on their human side circumscribed ; the second offering 
 us a more copious presentation of deductions, and in our own 
 time also of speculations travelling over far wider spaces ; 
 sometimes, perhaps, gratuitous or fanciful, sometimes repul- 
 sive, and even irreverent. Is this enlargement of the 
 repertoire of theological discussion an acquisition of solid 
 and firm-set territory, and does it represent a real addition 
 to our wealth in objects of faith? Shall we do well to 
 cherish for our own minds, and to promote in others, the 
 hardening of these ideas and speculations or of any selected 
 from among them, or is it preferable to recommend and 
 cultivate, after a fashion now antiquated, the earlier spirit 
 of comparative abstention and reserve 1 
 
 I shall offer one general remark, which appears to me to 
 be of weight. There are two compartments, so to speak, 
 in the vast regions spread out before us, which appertain 
 to the future of the righteous and the unrighteous respec- 
 
Ch. III.] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 201 
 
 tively. With regard to the first, men have been content to 
 leave it in the main much as they received it from our Lord 
 and the Apostles, and have respected the declaration that 
 'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.' But there has been an 
 activity certainly remarkable, perhaps in part feverish and 
 morbid, in exploring the domos Dltis vacuus et inania regna, 
 and where the New Testament was sparing or silent, it has 
 been bold, eager, nay even dogmatic. This thirst for infor- 
 mation on punishments, as to their nature, the classes who 
 are to undergo them, and their duration, does not seem to 
 be founded on the persuasion that there, beyond the grave, 
 is our home, and that, as if it were an earthly home, we 
 desire to know all we can about it. Anxiety has taken the 
 same direction in dogmatic and in anti-dogmatic times, but 
 for different reasons. It is not now sought to alarm men 
 by magnifying the power of God and by exhibiting the 
 strictness and severity of the law of righteousness. The 
 anxiety now is to throw these subjects into the shade, lest 
 the fastidiousness of human judgement and feeling should 
 be so offended as to rise in rebellion against God for His 
 harshness and austerity. That this motive is entertained in 
 good faith, need not be doubted. But the result in practice 
 is that we seem to call the Almighty to account, and under- 
 take, on the foundation of our own judgement, to determine 
 what He can or cannot do, because we have concluded that 
 He ought or ought not. For those who reflect on what God 
 is and what we are, it will be evident that this is, to say the 
 least, most dangerous ground to occupy. And propositions 
 growing out of our own unwarranted assumptions are ten- 
 dered to us for acceptance with a confidence, which ought 
 only to be felt when our reason is acting within its own 
 province, and in the measure of our own powers. 
 
 A special temptation to this abusive course has been placed 
 in our way by lofty assumptions habitually made on behalf 
 of the doctrine of natural immortality, and by the presen- 
 tation of that doctrine in what I will term a doubly 
 aggravated form. Of necessity and by itself it obtrudes 
 this change upon the conditions of thought, that whereas, 
 before the acceptance of natural immortality as a tenet of 
 religion, the future state of the righteous was the grand 
 
202 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE (Pi. II 
 
 basis of affirmation touching the world to come, it defined 
 the existence of all human beings in the future world as 
 co-extensive in duration ; indeed, as apparently parallel in 
 all points except the difference between suffering and enjoy- 
 ment. Again, when the question of the future life of the 
 non- Christian world was also dragged within the terms that 
 the new covenant had laid down, and when, further, the 
 destinies of all mankind from the very first were included, 
 it is plain that the subject underwent an enormous and, as 
 I should urge, a gratuitous extension. The other aggravation 
 of the difficulties of the question is one which requires to be 
 noticed at greater length. 
 
 The word eternal is employed in the parable of the Last 
 Judgement to describe the duration both of the rewards of 
 the saved, and the retribution of lost souls. The phrase 
 employed in the original is aionios ; and this, in Greek usage, 
 is applicable according to the context never to brief, but some- 
 times to terminable, and sometimes to interminable, periods. 
 There is, however, another way of getting at the notion of 
 eternity beyond the limits of fixed period. This would be to 
 describe it by negation as time without any time limit, time 
 without end. Such was the conception which, slightly perhaps 
 from the first, and increasingly in the course of ages, took 
 possession of the Christian mind. Indeed we commonly hear 
 of the eternal punishment of the wicked in the entire literature 
 of the Church. But, while the word eternal has remained in 
 use, together with the exclusion as a general rule of a specific 
 time limit, it has carried very different meanings. It depends 
 upon numeration; and numeration is a faculty possessed in 
 enormously different degrees not only by the same human 
 person at different stages of his life, but by the race at 
 different stages of its development. I have heard a child 
 count upwards ' one, two, three, four, a hundred.' His 
 numeration was represented by the first four terms; the 
 fifth expressed his conception of infinity, and infinity applied 
 to time is the popular sense of eternity. He was not sensible 
 of its faultiness: he knew nothing of the need to establish 
 a defined agreement between phrase and fact. So it was 
 with the primitive man ; for whom arithmetic was ' fiving 1 ,' 
 
 1 Odyss. iv. 412. 
 
Cain.] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 203 
 
 and was taught by the number of fingers on the hand. The 
 needs of the world in its youth do not require the use of 
 largely extended numeration. When vast numbers have to 
 be referred to, it is never for any of the ordinary uses of 
 life, and the purpose is sufficiently served by citing at large 
 the sand of the seashore, or the stars of heaven. Very long 
 ago I had occasion to discuss this subject in detail with 
 reference to Homer's faculty of numeration. He never 
 attempts to give the totals of the Achaian and Trojan armies, 
 or even the total of the fleet. He derives some assistance 
 from the revolution of the seasons, and it appears that his 
 idea of defined number comes to a stop with the days of 
 the year }. 
 
 Beyond doubt, these ideas would gradually open out as 
 time went on. But the Scriptures nowhere, I think, deal 
 definitely with very large numbers. In the Apocalypse the 
 phrase ' Ten thousand times ten thousand ' is plainly figura- 
 tive, and the total it expresses would seem in modern 
 numeration small. We have now by slow degrees become 
 familiar with hundreds and even thousands of millions, 
 partly in connexion with money, and much more largely 
 in connexion with astronomical computations. But there is 
 a curious illustration of the mental capacity of the early 
 Christians in this department of thought. The millenarian 
 idea embraced an enormous multiplication of fruits and grains 
 upon the renovated earth. Each corn sown was to produce 
 one thousand million pounds weight of corn. But this fell far 
 behind the provision of wine, as recorded by Papias. Each 
 vine will have ten thousand arms, each arm ten thousand 
 boughs, each bough ten thousand branches, each branch ten 
 thousand bunches of grapes, each bunch ten thousand berries, 
 each berry yielding twenty thousand measures of wine. 
 Thus, to express the total, the figure 2 has to be followed 
 by twenty-four noughts, or the fourth power of a million 
 doubled at the close. But the artificial nature of the pro- 
 cess testifies to its entirely fanciful nature. Mathematical 
 methods, however, have familiarized us up to a point alto- 
 gether new, if not with the true idea of a boundless duration 
 in its strictness, yet with a duration so far extended as to 
 
 1 Studies on Homer, vol. iii. Chapter on Number. 
 
204 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Pt. II. 
 
 present to us an object alike vast and appalling in connexion 
 with pain, if not also somewhat stupefying when put in con- 
 nexion even with enjoyment. And now, when every one is 
 competent or accustomed to speculate upon everything, it is 
 little or less surprising that the average human mind should 
 instinctively recoil from opening out a volume which beats the 
 roll of Jeremiah in the wofulness of its contents, and which 
 the New Testament seems rather to aim at keeping closed. 
 Again, as to the conception itself of immortality in eternity, 
 where are we 1 With all our labour to enlarge our conception 
 relatively to its subject, it remains as small as ever. No 
 addition adds to this eternity, no subtraction reduces it. 
 In such imperfect vision of it as by the utmost effort we 
 can entertain, it is so vast as to paralyze, almost to crush, 
 our feeble intellects. Their failure would be more keenly 
 felt, were we duly grounded in the habit of pondering the 
 words we use, and measuring their true weight and force. 
 I will give one final indication of the manner in which the 
 human race has shrunk abashed for so long a time from 
 the microscopic enlargement of this conception. One of the 
 mightiest intellects it has produced was that of Dante ; and, 
 in the first division of his great work, he might seem almost 
 to have been driven upon its detailed consideration. And yet 
 he has avoided all attempts at detailed consideration of the 
 nature of eternity. He uses the word eternal in the Inferno 
 but twelve times (its derivatives making no sensible addition), 
 and uses it almost exclusively as to the region, hardly ever 
 in relation to a soul, always as a simple epithet without 
 exposition or illustration. From detail and development of 
 duration he altogether abstains ; and it is observable that 
 in the Inferno of Dante there are no infants. 
 
 But how large a space the question of man's condition 
 in a future life occupies on the field of human interests 
 cannot, I think, be more pointedly shown than by reference 
 to a remarkable bibliography lately published which (ter- 
 minating in the year 1878) contains the titles of over six 
 thousand separate works \ 
 
 1 The Literature of the Doctrine Doctrine. Tenth edition. New 
 of a Future Life, by Ezra Abbot, York, 1878. 
 in Alger's Critical History of the 
 
Ch. ill.] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 205 
 
 It may be, and is even probable that, in the days when the 
 utterance of belief was dominant and often arrogant, not only 
 was the doctrine of eternal pains often publicly announced, 
 but perhaps it may have been loaded with extravagant 
 extensions, and with details sometimes unwarranted, some- 
 times even approaching to the loathsome. This fashion has 
 continued, within narrowing limits, down to the present day, 
 and two remarkable specimens are cited by Mr. Row l which 
 may be read with regret. But, before considering excess in 
 an opposite direction, it may be well to dwell for a moment on 
 an extreme form of the provocation which has been given. 
 I therefore copy out of the work of Mr. Alger   an extract 
 which he has drawn from the work of Mr. Trapp, an English 
 clergyman : 
 
 Doomed to live death, and never to expire, 
 
 In floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, 
 
 The damned shall groan ; fire of all kinds and forms, 
 
 In rain and hail, in hurricanes and storms : 
 
 Liquid and solid, livid, red, and pale, 
 
 A flaming mountain here, and there a flaming vale ; 
 
 The liquid fire makes seas, the solid, shores ; 
 
 Arched o'er with flames, the horrid concave roars. 
 
 In bubbling eddies rolls the fiery tide, 
 
 And sulphurous surges on each other ride, 
 
 The hollow winding vaults, and dens, and caves, 
 
 Bellow like furnaces with flaming waves, 
 
 Pillars of flame in spiral volumes rise 
 
 Like flaming snakes, and lick the infernal skies. 
 
 Sulphur, the eternal fuel, unconsumed, 
 
 Vomits redounding smoke thick, unillumed. 
 
 There is no small talent in the construction of the lines. 
 But it is impossible to avoid seeing that, apart from all other 
 questions, there creeps into this kind of literature a strong 
 element of pure vulgarity. It will be a relief to turn from 
 such an unbridled effusion when we come to the temperate 
 and careful statement of Dr. Pusey 3 . What, however, would 
 be the conclusion, I do not say of any zealous champion of 
 orthodoxy, but of any capable and impartial observer, com- 
 
 1 Future Betribution, by Rev. C. 2 Alger, p. 570. 
 
 A. Row (London: Isbisters, 1887), 3 WJiat is of Faith as to Everlast- 
 
 p. 16. ing Punishment, i860. 
 
206 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Pt. II. 
 
 petently acquainted with the Scriptures and the general 
 conditions of Christianity, upon the weighty question how 
 far the present tone of the pulpit and of theological literature 
 assigns to the penal element in the Providential and Christian 
 system of the world a really operative place 1 I say an opera- 
 tive place, because among believers in the future state there 
 are no denials of the abstract proposition that punishment 
 awaits the wicked after death. But the proposition seems to 
 be relegated at present to the far-off corners of the Christian 
 mind, and there to sleep in deep shadow, as a thing needless 
 in our enlightened and progressive age. So far as my know- 
 ledge and experience go, we are in danger even of losing this 
 subject out of sight and out of mind. I am not now speaking 
 of everlasting punishments in particular, but of all and any 
 punishment intelligibly enforced ; and can it be right, can it 
 be warrantable, that the pulpit and the press should advisedly 
 fall short of the standard established by the Holy Scriptures, 
 and not less uniformly by the earliest and most artless period 
 of hortatory Christian teaching ? Is it not altogether undeni- 
 able that these authorities did so handle the subject of this 
 penal element, in the frequency of mention and in the manner 
 of treatment, that in their Christian system it had a place as 
 truly operative, as clear, palpable, and impressive, as the more 
 attractive doctrines of redeeming love? I sometimes fear 
 that we have lived into a period of intimidation in this great 
 matter. That broad and simple promulgation of the new 
 scheme which is known as the Sermon on the Mount was 
 closed with the awful presentation of the house built upon the 
 sand. But as if men were now more easy to be persuaded, and 
 there was no longer any sand to build upon, Christian teachers 
 seem largely to be possessed with an amiable fear lest the 
 delicate ear in the Church, and the still more critical eye in 
 the closet, should find their niceness repelled by any glimpse 
 of hell ; and to dwell exclusively on that grace and bounty, 
 which, alas, are as far as ever from being generally compre- 
 hended and appropriated. For, if I am right, the effects 
 wrought by this intimidation, not indeed in the distinct 
 consciousness, yet in the language of the great teaching 
 organs, is not confined to popular exhortation, but even finds 
 its way into deliberate and systematic exhibitions of thought. 
 
Ch. Ill] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 207 
 
 I must not withhold an example. Dr. Salmond, to whose 
 work I have already presumed to refer with honour, dismisses 
 the theory of universalism with decision, and that of condi- 
 tionalism almost with severity; and does not shrink from 
 showing that man determines his own immortality for weal 
 or for woe, and determines it finally not for weal only but for 
 woe \ When, however, he comes to the closing summation of 
 his teachings, he gives it in the following terms : 
 
 1 If there be at the decisive point of life, however late it 
 may come, the tremulous inclination of the soul to God, the 
 feeblest presence of that which makes for righteousness and 
 faith in heathen or in Christian, it will be recognized of the 
 Judge, and under the conditions of the new life, it will grow 
 to more, in the power and in the blessedness of good V 
 
 But from whence do we derive authority for a proposition 
 so wide 1 Readers of more insight than myself may more 
 exactly grasp than I do the meaning of these words. If they 
 signify that the determining conditions of a vital conformity 
 to the will of God may subsist, but yet may have escaped the 
 human eye, and may receive their development in a world 
 where virtue or goodness shall expatiate freely and without 
 its terrene obstructions, this, I apprehend, is the doctrine of 
 Butler, to which I shall have occasion further to refer. But if it 
 were signified that in every case where the process of destroy- 
 ing spiritual life, however far advanced, and with however 
 absolute a command of evil over conduct, and however fixed 
 the mental habits may have become, is not yet absolutely 
 completed with every spark of true life extinct, then might 
 it not be difficult to comprehend why Dives was not with 
 Lazarus in Abraham's bosom ; still more difficult to repress 
 the fear that doctrine, hung upon this pivot, would empty 
 Evangelical threatenings of their force, would sorely hinder 
 the rescuing of souls, and would, as Origen feared with regard 
 to his own speculations, be perilous to the common weal. 
 Ought we not in reason to take a distinction between a vital 
 warmth which is ascending, and one which is sinking into the 
 abyss 1 In our common experience the candle is not relumed 
 from the dying spark upon the wick ; and the movement of 
 
 1 Doctrine of Immortality, Bk. VI. ch. if. 2 Hid. p. 672. 
 
208 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Pt. II. 
 
 death has oftentimes conclusively set in while its mechanical 
 completion is still delayed ; nor can any doctrine be more at 
 variance with reason than that which teaches, or implies, that 
 no process is determined until it has been closed. 
 
 We seem now to have arrived at the juncture proper for 
 approaching the most practical side of this question ; the side 
 at which we are to consider how our own ideas may most 
 rationally and most dutifully be adjusted. And I wish 
 frankly to express my consciousness that, while I labour to 
 bring real difficulties into view, I have no grand solutions of 
 the kinds now in vogue to offer ; that I must be more forward 
 in recommending the abandonment than the adoption of 
 ideas ; that my prescriptions, so to call them, lie on the lines 
 of reserve, abstention, and thereby of escape from extremes 
 and exaggerations. And this I set about with full cognizance 
 of the fact that no mode of treatment can be more chilling 
 and repellent to the general reader. 
 
 Let me, then, endeavour to represent, with as much accuracy 
 as I may, the principal forms of eschatological opinion, which 
 at the present day actively compete for the assent of believers 
 in Christianity. They are, I believe, three in number, and 
 none of them, so far as I am able to judge, altogether corre- 
 ponds with the sense of the early Christian Church ; while 
 one at least among them not only departs from it, but seems 
 to strike at the root principles of Christian philosophy as 
 they are conceived by Butler. 
 
 There has never been any period or condition of the Church 
 in which Christian thought did not associate the future con- 
 dition of wicked men with suffering. With this suffering 
 there was associated no doctrine or prospect of relief; if 
 at least we follow a preponderance of writers so enormous 
 as to leave outside their band no more than a remnant hardly 
 appreciable or visible. It is common to use the phrase aionian, 
 or eternal, with respect to this suffering. But the idea was 
 not for a long time elaborately formulated, and the word 
 conveyed the sense of a term indefinite, rather than of one 
 properly infinite. Modern usage and experience have effected 
 a great practical change in the sense we attach to the term 
 eternal. And this change in the basis has silently made a 
 profound change also in the doctrine, combined as it has 
 
Ch.IIL] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 209 
 
 been not only with the tacit yet general, it may almost be said 
 universal, adoption of the doctrine of natural immortality, 
 but with the obtrusion of this philosophical opinion upon 
 the Christian religion as being, in the view of common 
 opinion, an article of faith. Such, indeed, is the popular 
 idea, which now takes it to have been established as an 
 article of faith, first that the wicked will have an endless 
 existence, and, secondly, that this endless existence will be 
 an existence of endless torment. The change seems due to 
 two causes: 1. The adoption from philosophy into theology 
 of the notion of natural immortality. 2. The formulation and 
 distension of the idea of eternity. Let us bear these things 
 in mind while proceeding to bring into nearer view the 
 prevailing schemes of modern thought on this great subject. 
 
 The opinion traditionally established respecting eternal 
 punishment has not had in the present generation any more 
 learned or more temperate advocate than Dr. Pusey 1 , who 
 also derived advantage from the highflown and unmeasured 
 language of the work on the future life, which he opposed. 
 He does not, I think, enter upon the question of natural 
 immortality, nor upon the gradual unlocking or unfolding 
 of the signification of the word eternal. Nor does he supply 
 a strictly definite answer to the question which is propounded 
 by the title of his work. But he contests the propositions 
 which I have cited from various writers as to the absence of 
 a strict doctrine of eternal punishment even before the time 
 of Origen. He looks upon Origenism as an isolated fact. 
 He does not admit that it was largely or weightily supported, 
 and conceives that it was condemned by the entire Church, 
 through the medium of several local councils taken together ; 
 apparently proceeding upon the maxim that a combination 
 of local councils, not contradicted by other councils of larger 
 authority, amounts to an universal acceptance, and in an 
 equal degree binds the entire Church. 
 
 He conceives that Origenism was unnecessarily brought 
 up in the Fifth General Council, through the gratuitous 
 desire of Justinian to meddle in controverted theology 2 . 
 
 What is of Faith as to Everlasting Punishment. London and Oxford, 1880. 
 2 Ibid. p. iQo. 
 
210 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Pt. II. 
 
 He makes but a limited admission, even in the case of 
 St. Gregory of Nyssa, that there was more or less of ten- 
 dency to certain ideas that leaned in the direction of Origen. 
 He says, however, after describing the final hell, that ' no one 
 who can love would be there 1 .' He commends (by implica- 
 tion) the language of Cardinal Newman, ' what we cannot 
 accept . . . is . . . that man's jirobation for his eternal destiny 
 . . . continues after this life 2 .' And he appears to sum up 
 his judgement on the whole matter in a question evidently 
 involving something of affirmation : ' How do we know that 
 Almighty God has cast into hell a single soul, of which He 
 dees not know, in His absolute knowledge, that under any 
 circumstances it would continue to resist the law, and reject 
 the love, of GodV And he adds, with tender feeling and 
 wise judgement, ' He can reconcile His own attributes, if 
 we abide His time ' ; thus evidently implying that there 
 remains somewhat of unsolved difficulty in the scheme of 
 ideas which he has been expounding. 
 
 In r728, Dr. Thomas Burnet gave to the world his Be 
 statu mortuorum ac Resurgentium tractatus ; a work of 
 great ability, published in Latin by him in or before r 728 ; 
 translated, and so republished, in English, in ^38, after his 
 death. Dr. Thomas Burnet did not possess the wide learning 
 of Dr. Pusey, but he had the advantage of producing his work 
 as an historical treatise, exempt from all immediate concern 
 with controversy. 
 
 He propounds, without arguing it, the natural immortality 
 of the soul ' dependentem quidem a Deo, sed vi et principiis 
 suae naturae originariae V His favourite statement is that 
 the pains of the lost in the world to come are neither finite 
 nor infinite, but indefinite 5 . He claims, mostly as not holding 
 the unmitigated doctrine of eternal punishment, or as treating 
 leniently deviation from it, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Irenaeus, 
 Lactantius, the two Gregories of Nyssa and Nazianzus, 
 Jerome, and even Augustine 6 . He cites these words of St. 
 Jerome: 'Sciendum quod judicium Dei non possit scire 
 
 1 What is of Faith as to Everlasting gentium tractatus. London, Ed. 2, 
 Punishment, p. 4. 1728, chap. ii. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 6. 3 Ibid. p. 281. fl Ibid. ch. x. p. 301. 
 4 De statu mortuorum ac Resur- 6 Ibid. p. 302. 
 
Ch. Ill] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 211 
 
 humana fragilitas, nee de poenarum magnitudine atque 
 mensura ferre sententiam quae Domini arbitrio derelicta est.' 
 He cites the phrase which St. Augustine applies to the milder 
 teachers, doctores misericordes. He laments the careless 
 incompleteness which many allow themselves in the process 
 of thinking. Few, he says, examine the things themselves ; 
 they look only at the images of the things which, in their 
 very selves, we shall see when God removes the veil, ' partini 
 sub occasu hujus mundi, plenius autem in futuro 1 .' He taunts 
 the omniscience of large bodies of theologians ; that is to say, 
 their ignorance of their ignorance. He recommends teachers 
 to inculcate the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the 
 dead, reward and penalty according to works and characters 
 in the future world, together with the great conflagration, and 
 the return and Kingdom of Christ. Beyond these limits, he 
 says, let us only study mutual assistance and indulgence. No 
 railing controversy upon matters 'quae nos plane et aperto 
 doceri noluit Deus in hoc statu.' Intolerance in such a matter 
 is the commission of a great offence, none the more pardonable 
 because it is done in the act of correcting a small one 2 . I 
 regret to subjoin that, apparently following Origen, he adds : 
 ' Quicquid apud te statuas, intus et in pectore, de his poenis, 
 aetemis vel non, recepta doctrina verbisque utendum est cum 
 populo, et cum peroratur ad vulgus 3 .' 
 
 He appears, however, really to have practised within 
 himself the abstinence which he recommends, and he adopts 
 neither of the relaxing theories which have their own 
 respective trains of adherents, those of universalism and of 
 conditional immortality. He severely, however, censures such 
 persons as seem to gloat over pictures of the misery of the 
 greater part of the human race, and thinks it does not well 
 comport with the character of Deity to ascribe to God the 
 formation of a scheme of things wherein so great a part of 
 reasonable nature is entirely cast away 4 . 
 
 I cannot but look upon the treatise as a noteworthy fact 
 in the history of declared opinions on this difficult subject. 
 
 1 De statu mortuorum ar. Resur- 2 Ibid. pp. 310-314. 
 
 gentium tractatus. London, Ed. 2, 3 Ibid. p. 309. 
 
 1728, chap. ii. p. 310. * Ibid. p. 307. 
 
 r 2 
 
 UNI\ 
 
212 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Px. II. 
 
 Tennyson has said that it is the best, or of the best, in our 
 nature which anxiously desires the restitution of the lost. 
 
 The wish, that of the living whole, 
 No life may fail beyond the grave, 
 Derives it not from what we have 
 The likest God within the soul? 1 
 
 This great poet adds to his fine and singularly cultivated 
 genius a great philosophical insight, with which the In 
 Memoriam is charged throughout. A declaration, then, of 
 this kind, proceeding from such an authority, calls for close 
 consideration. 
 
 Justice to him requires that, in the first place, we should 
 dismiss the idea that the thing thus to be desired in 
 compliance with the promptings of our better nature is 
 the prolongation of wicked existence in conjunction with 
 enjoyment. That dispensation, which associates sin with 
 suffering, is a supreme law of the universe, and he that 
 rebels against it rebels against the moral order. To reverse 
 that order, to associate virtue permanently with pain, and 
 wickedness with pleasure or joy, is to establish something 
 worse than moral chaos ; it is to establish that which could 
 only be established under the scheme of the Zend, were 
 Ahriman to conquer and extinguish Ormuzd. 
 
 Is then the decider andum propounded to us somewhat 
 of this fashion : That we should all long earnestly to see 
 all evil wiped out from the universe ? I suppose there 
 can be no one, whose heart is without a chord responsiv/e 
 to such a desire. But let us observe that it covers a great 
 breadth of ground ; that it seems to carry us almost beyond 
 our depth ; that hesitation and misgiving may naturally 
 arise if we, so infinitesimally puny as we are, in the face 
 of the Almighty Author, are invited to concentrate our 
 thought and also to concentrate largely our emotion, on 
 this somewhat heroic remedy for the diseases of all creation ; 
 when, in the first place, the best exercise of all our powers 
 is called for in the limitation and prevention of evil at 
 our doors and within them, aye, in the very apple of our 
 own eyes; and when, secondly, we have no outlook into 
 
 1 In Memoriam, Iv. 
 
Ch. III.] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 213 
 
 the universe at large, and no knowledge except from one 
 narrow and remote corner, of the conditions under which its 
 immense machinery is arranged and governed. 
 
 We seem to know, and to hold with some firmness of 
 grasp the knowledge, that the invasion and activity of sin 
 are not limited in their range to the race of Adam, or to 
 beings who wear the human form. Unhappily, even in the 
 lower orders of creation we perceive what, if it does not 
 fully accomplish the idea of sin, seems to correspond, under 
 the conditions of a lower nature, with what would be sin 
 in a higher one. If we admit the authority of Holy 
 Scripture, we are at once supplied with a cloud of testi- 
 monies to the destructive energy of him, or them, whose 
 name is Legion. The temperance of the Christian Church 
 has not laid upon the individual conscience the obligation, 
 as we believe in God, so also to believe in the existence 
 of God's great adversary. But I presume that most 
 Christians, who watch with any care their own mental 
 and inward experience, are but too well convinced that they 
 have to fight against ' principalities, against powers, against 
 the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual 
 wickedness in high places l ' ; that they are beset by a great 
 personal scheme of evil agency, under which method and 
 vigilance, employing whatever bad means, or even good, 
 will serve their purpose, are raised, in their work of se- 
 duction and ruin, to what seems a terrible perfection. 
 
 Now I must suppose that the words of Tennyson advisedly 
 extend to the reclamation of these unhappy beings. I do 
 not say that their pre-eminence in evil gives them a pre- 
 ferable claim to deliverance, but that what we are bound 
 by the law of our nature to desire for our own race we 
 must also desire for all those invested with a like title to 
 sympathy, as the intelligent, sinning, and suffering creatures 
 of Almighty God. Yet, from the precipitancy, shallowness, 
 and superficiality of thought, with which this most grave 
 subject is often approached, it seems probable that, unlike 
 Tennyson, many of those who have treated it have never 
 faced its broader aspects, or taken any careful measure of 
 
 1 Eph. vi. 12. 
 
214 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Pt. II. 
 
 the demands that reason inexorably binds up with those 
 principles, on which they found their argument. For 
 meagre indeed would be the scheme of thought which, 
 entertaining a keen sympathy for the fallen of our own 
 flesh and blood, had no room to spare for others, and left 
 to their fate all who beyond those narrow limits had fallen 
 into the same calamity. 
 
 The real question is not whether we should desire the 
 recovery of lost souls, for which nature, as it is represented 
 by Tennyson, cries out; but whether this should be the 
 ruling or foremost idea on which we are habitually to 
 dwell, and with which also to contemplate the great subject 
 of the final judgement. The difficulty is that it seems to 
 be like taking into our own hands the tremendous question 
 of the readjustment of a disordered world, with no know- 
 ledge except as to a very small part of the case, and 
 without capacity, so far as our experience in matters of moral 
 action and judgement informs us, for the comprehension 
 of the whole plan. Is there no preferable alternative? 
 Is it beyond a hope to find a form of thought which, 
 without shutting the door on any of our sympathies, leaves 
 to the Supreme Governor the ordering of His own govern- 
 ment 1 Those sympathies can require no apology, when we 
 recollect how they swayed the soul of the Redeemer, as He 
 reflected on the calamities that the perverseness of sin was 
 about to bring upon Jerusalem K But have we no faith in 
 His justice, in His goodness, in His power and will to 
 harmonize the two? Have we ever taken measure of our 
 own total incapacity to estimate moral actions with exacti- 
 tude 1 ? an impotence so gross, that no prudent man will, in 
 cases of this kind, ever form any beyond a provisional judge- 
 ment on the deeds of his fellow-men. The judge on the 
 bench, if he be wise, will not hold it for certain that he 
 himself stands better before God, than the criminal in the 
 dock. Let us remember that the rule for us is ' Judge not ' ; 
 and we may be helped in the observance of this rule, by 
 recollecting that there is One who judges, and who always 
 judges right. 
 
 1 Luke six. 41-44. 
 
Ch. III.] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 215 
 
 It may be proper here to offer a few words on the mode 
 now generally adopted of construing the word death in con- 
 nexion with the lot of the wicked in the future state. 
 
 In the first place, we may observe that it does not cover 
 the whole case : for other words, commonly signifying the 
 termination of an existence, are also employed in this con- 
 nexion ; as, for example, when we are enjoined to fear Him, 
 who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. This 
 double destruction is placed in contrast with a single destruc- 
 tion, that of the body, which is unquestionably absolute, and 
 which therefore must (so it may be argued) have the same 
 meaning. 
 
 In the second place, it may be noticed that this method of 
 hemneneusis is one never applied to human affairs, unless 
 it be in a sense avowedly figurative, and in cases only such 
 as imply a postponement, not a cancellation, of the final 
 catastrophe. 
 
 There is, thirdly, another incident of this method of inter- 
 pretation, which appears to have received less attention than 
 it deserves. It will not be denied that, in its primary 
 meaning, death is a word that conveys a single idea '. It 
 means the conclusion of some existence ; it may be an exist- 
 ence integral or partial, but it seems that always something 
 must conclude. It means no less than that one thing, and 
 no more. But when we examine the peculiar process to 
 which the word is submitted in connexion with eschatology, 
 we seem to find not only that the old idea of the word 
 gives place to something new, but that an old idea which 
 was single is succeeded by a new idea which is double. 
 When the souls of the wicked are declared to have 
 destruction or death for their doom, the meaning, as is 
 alleged, is firstly that they will survive, secondly that they 
 will survive for ever, and, thirdly, that they will survive 
 under a double condition : the one, that of continual persist- 
 ence in wickedness, and, the other that of a co-extensive, 
 and also never-ending, immersion in suffering. There appears 
 
 1 The argument on the meaning Independent newspaper, dated so 
 
 of the Greek dnoWvpi was very long ago as March, 1870 ; which 
 
 closely and fully examined by well deserves reprinting. 
 Dr. Weymouth, in a letter to the 
 
216 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Fr.IL 
 
 to be presented here a good deal of difficulty; so much of 
 difficulty, at least, as may serve to recommend a certain 
 amount of reserve. I do not here venture upon any asser- 
 tion. If we are told that life in like manner signifies in 
 the future state both the goodness of the righteous and the 
 enjoyment consequent upon that goodness, I demur to the 
 proposition. The life promised is union with God, which is 
 union with goodness. Enjoyment may be its inseparable 
 accident : but it is not the thing signified. Whereas, in the 
 controversy concerning the wicked, everything is made and 
 understood to turn upon their suffering, while the eternity 
 of their vice is little heard of, and certainly is not the idea 
 either primarily or prominently suggested to the mind K 
 
 We first become acquainted, not with aionios, but with 
 aion, so far back as in Homer. It is used eight times in 
 the Iliad, and five in the Odyssey ; most commonly it is the 
 simple equivalent of the Latin vita, and the English ' life ' 
 relatively to a man. Occasionally it means the heart or flower 
 of life : especially in the address of Andromache to the dead 
 Hector 2 : 
 
 Aj/«p, <i7r' alavos vtos a>Xeo. 
 
 Here the effect of cnf al&vos is that Hector (who was 
 undoubtedly in his early prime) is cut away not only from 
 life, but from the flower of life. The clause in Ps. cii. 24 
 comes near it, 'Take me not away in the midst of my 
 days.' We come next, in classical Greek, to the adjective 
 aionios. But the Homeric use of the word shows vividly 
 that the word is essentially relative rather than absolute. 
 It is the aion of somebody or something ; not abstract, also 
 not an exact counterpart of mors, or of the English • death.' 
 With lapse of time comes a modification of the sense, and 
 varied meanings are given for it 3 , lasting for an age, perpetual, 
 immortal, eternal. In the No/ioi of Plato, the Maker forms 
 the human being to be av<a\e6pov . . . akk' ovk alwviov, yfrvxyv 
 Kai a&fxa, nadairep ol Kara vofxov ovres OtoL 4 ; where the distinc- 
 
 1 Olshausen, De significations notio rarissime multiplex est.' 
 vocis (<or) in Libris N. T., shows 2 II. xxiv. 725. 
 
 that it means not happiness but s Liddell and Scott, in voc. 
 
 life ; and observes : ' Verborum * Nc5/«h, p. 904. 
 
Ch. III.] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 217 
 
 tion seems to be taken between survival and immortality ; 
 our soul survives the death we know of, but death never 
 comes at all to the publicly acknowledged gods, who have 
 an indefectible existence. But I have not seen in classical 
 Greek any use of either the adjective or the substantive 
 for eternity in the abstract, if we take the distinction 
 between an expanse of time, to which no particular limit 
 is attached, and a substantive eternity, consisting of time 
 ceaselessly prolonged. Mr. De Quincey, who was both 
 scholar and philosopher, has written a paper on this word, 
 and he says, apparently with much truth : ' The exact amount 
 of the duration expressed by our aeon depends altogether 
 upon the particular subject which yields the aeon.' It is ' the 
 duration or cycle of existence which belongs to any object . . . 
 in right of its genus 1 .' One approximate rendering of the 
 word aionios is perhaps to be found in 'life-long.' If this 
 be a sense admitted in Scripture, then the phrase as used 
 in the great parable of Matt, xxv simply throws us back 
 upon the question, what is the ordained life of the soul 1 
 Is it limited, or is it, by its nature, extended without end? 
 The adjective will lend itself either way. That to which 
 it will not bend (unless its meaning have undergone some 
 vital change in the Greek of the New Testament) is the 
 idea of a period which is affected by any particular limit, 
 unless it be that of the ordained life of the subject imme- 
 diately in question. Some change it certainly may have 
 undergone: it would be hazardous on my part to define 
 the amount. Schleusner discusses the word with care in 
 his Lexicon, but he can only say the meaning is to be 
 gathered, in each passage where it is used, from the context, 
 the intention of the writer, the things and persons placed 
 before us. De Quincey conceives that an ambiguous term 
 is purposely employed in Scripture in order to evade 2 , we 
 may rather say to veil, the question. We have before us 
 this inevitable consideration ; a punishment which was itself 
 strictly conformable to the popular conception of eternity 
 
 1 Hogg's De Quincey and his on 'The Supposed Scriptural Ex- 
 Friends, pp. 308, 312, in the essay pression for Eternity.' 2 Ibid. 
 
218 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Pt.ii. 
 
 might have been set down in terms which would have 
 precluded debate upon the meaning ; and a veiling or 
 reserving, or what may be called an open, phrase, seems to 
 have been judged more meet for the purpose with which 
 the Gospel was written. Were the doctrine of natural 
 immortality authoritatively declared in Scripture, then in- 
 deed the sense of the phrase would be one absolutely closed. 
 And, if the intention were to define eternity as lapse of time 
 prolonged beyond the reach of number and without any 
 boundary of duration, would not some other and more 
 explicit language have been employed ? This question has 
 for practical purposes been closed by the spread of a doctrine 
 not revealed but philosophic. 
 
 There are two theories, which at the present day princi- 
 pally contest the field with the widespread and once almost 
 undisputed theory sustained by an ancient and general, if 
 perhaps not a primitive, tradition. Of these, that which is 
 termed the doctrine of conditional immortality has perhaps 
 the larger number of adherents, and seems to be the better 
 entitled to claim some kindred with that usually called 
 orthodox. It begins by renouncing the opinion of natural 
 immortality, and takes firm ground when denying to it 
 authority or countenance from the Holy Scriptures. On the 
 other hand, it renounces also the conception of an existence 
 prolonged without limit in the endurance of torment. But it 
 neither teaches nor approximates to the notion of an extinc- 
 tion immediately consequent either upon death or upon the 
 Day of Judgement. It does not attempt to find a particular 
 limit for the ordained period of suffering; but holds that 
 it is bounded by the nature of the subject to which it is 
 applied, and that sin is a poison to which the vital forces 
 of the soul must in the end give way, by passing into 
 sheer extinction. It protests against the current method 
 of interpretation, which assigns to death in the New Testa- 
 ment the meaning not of a cessation of existence, but of 
 an existence prolonged without limit in a state of misery. 
 And it insists upon recovering for the word that idea of 
 a termination, which dwells in it as a central essence. 
 Ethically, the destructive nature of sin against God is taken 
 as the basis of this scheme of ideas; and it claims to work 
 
Ch. III.] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 219 
 
 according to natural laws, in propounding, as the eventual 
 solution of the problem, not suffering without any end for 
 the wicked, but the disappearance or extinction of their being 
 at such time as the providence of God shall prescribe. 
 
 For reasons which I have not been able to discover, this 
 theory of conditionalism (of which I am not recommending 
 the acceptance) is sometimes rejected by writers on the side 
 of traditional opinion with greater emphasis than the far 
 more daring doctrine of Universalism. Quite apart from 
 the comparative merits or demerits of the two schemes, it 
 seems hardly conceivable that, if a theory so clean-cut had 
 been the true mind of the revelation designed to teach and 
 to restore mankind, its discovery should have been withheld 
 until so late a period in the history of the Christian Church. 
 It can hardly be said, even by its advocates, to be clearly 
 revealed in Scripture; it certainly does not take the benefit 
 of the quod semper, quod ubique, quod ah omnibus. It 
 seems to introduce a strange anomaly in a resurrection which 
 is to be effected with a view to extinction : and, most of all, 
 it founds Christian theology upon a tenet of philosophy, 
 though it happens that in a former case the tenet was 
 affirmative, whereas here it happens to be negative. 
 
 The speculation of Origen in favour of universal restor- 
 ation, apparently intended by himself for the schools, has 
 in our day been extensively revived coram populo. The 
 revival may have been to a large extent vague and decla- 
 matory, or feeble, timid, commonplace ; and it has exhibited 
 but little evidence of masculine attempt to grapple with the 
 full conditions of the formidable problem. Yet it presents 
 to us considerable dangers by reason of the fact that it has 
 enlisted, so to speak, a suborned witness on its behalf. That 
 suborned witness is the world of to-day, which, as against 
 the unseen world, has acquired a vast increase of force from 
 the increase of wealth and the multiplication of material 
 and social wants and enjoyments, unaccompanied by any 
 countervailing stimulus to the life of faith. It has also 
 been largely favoured by the carnal spirit of division still 
 largely, though as I trust with some signs of diminution, 
 prevalent among Christians. 
 
 This theory, known by the name of Universalism, does not 
 
220 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Pt.II. 
 
 deny that punishment is due as an appropriate consequence 
 to wrongdoing. It does not even define any particular 
 measure of quantity, quality, or duration, as the limit of 
 what justice will allow to be administered. And it concedes 
 the proposition that penalty awaits the wicked after death. 
 But it seems to view retribution rather as a sentence 
 delivered, so to speak, from the bench, and administered 
 ah extra, than as an inherent effect of a cause naturally 
 producing it. So regarding the pains of the future, it 
 proceeds to argue that an infinite debt cannot be con- 
 tracted in a finite, and indeed a very narrowly bounded time. 
 It therefore protests against unlimited penal results from 
 limited offences ; and propounds that, when the debt is paid, 
 the goodness of God, finding the sole bar removed, will 
 secure the universal happiness of mankind. And some at 
 least have not failed to discover that the premises of this 
 argument are wider than its conclusion ; that, as Origen 
 so thoroughly understood, they include every creature lapsed 
 from righteousness ; that ' the devil and his angels l ' in 
 consequence have a certain prospect of escape from the lot 
 prepared as the reward of their obstinate and ruinous 
 misdoing. And, what may seem strange, it is of necessity 
 included in the scheme of these reasoners that the future fate 
 of fallen angels is thus disclosed in a revelation made to the 
 children of men. 
 
 Upon this scheme of Universalism or Restitutionism, 
 although it was at the outset the speculation of a great 
 man, I cannot but regard it as largely, though unconsciously, 
 the offspring of impatience in combination with despair ; and 
 I speak on it, as distinguished from those who propound it, 
 in terms of repugnance, on the following grounds. 
 
 First, it proceeds with a reckless disregard of the solemn 
 declarations of our Lord, who has supplied us for our greater 
 security with two declarations, which seem intended to 
 close the door upon this discussion. One of these apprises 
 us, that there is a form of sin which is called the sin 
 against the Holy Ghost, and which clearly brings home to 
 us that we have a real capacity of spiritual suicide. The 
 
 1 Matt. xxv. 41. 
 
Ch. III.] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 221 
 
 quenching of the Spirit ', the lying to the Holy Ghost 2 , which 
 are per se so terrible, lead us step by step to a yet more 
 deadly condemnation. There is a sin that cannot be par- 
 doned. This sin is formally described in each of the three 
 Synoptic Gospels, and plainly referred to by the fourth 
 Evangelist, St. John, when, in his first Epistle, he declares 
 that there is a sin unto death, which he declines to include 
 in the general rule of prayer for the pardon of sin 3 . The 
 fullest of the three synoptical notices is that of St. Matthew 4 : 
 'All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: 
 but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be 
 forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against 
 the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him : but whosoever 
 speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven 
 him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.' 
 The declaration is, as it were, cased in armour by being 
 made to reach over our whole existence. That existence 
 embraces* the two worlds ; and forgiveness can never be, 
 neither in this world, neither in the world to come 5 . The 
 ' cannot ' here presented to us is by no means, I apprehend, 
 the fulmination of an arbitrary decree, but rather the an- 
 nouncement of a law of nature. When the last prop is 
 withdrawn, the fabric falls. The manifestation of the Holy 
 Spirit is the crowning and most potent means in the Divine 
 armoury for the recovery of man : and when it is advisedly 
 repudiated, nothing more remains. 
 
 Even more stringent, if possible, is the second declaration : 
 'Better had it been for that man if he had never been 
 born V The theory before us is neither more nor less than 
 a flat contradiction of a Divine utterance clothed with pecu- 
 liar solemnity. If our existence is measured out in simple 
 duration, and if the largest conceivable amount and highest 
 quality of sin is only to be visited with a finite share of 
 that duration, beyond which lies a stretch of happy existence 
 reaching into immeasurable distance, then, as the infinite 
 exceeds the finite, the sinner who commits the sin in view 
 
 1 1 Thess. v. 19. 2 Acts v. 3. 3 1 John v. 16. 
 
 * Matt. xii. 31, 32; Mark iii. 28 (varied in phrase, but in no way 
 opening a door of escape) ; Luke xii. 10. 8 Matt. x. 28. 
 
 6 Matt. xxvi. 24 ; Mark xiv. 21. 
 
222 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Pt. II. 
 
 is not a loser, but a great gainer by having come into the 
 sphere of living entities. His future life will be a happy 
 life, though subject to a certain, possibly a large, deduction. 
 To presume upon overriding the express declarations of the 
 Lord Himself, delivered upon His own authority, is surely 
 to break up revealed religion in its very groundwork, and to 
 substitute for it a flimsy speculation, spun like the spider's 
 web by the private spirit out of its own jejune resources, and 
 about as little capable as is that web of bearing the strain 
 by which the false has, one day, to be severed from the true. 
 
 It is not surprising to find that a scheme, which prefers 
 these crude fancies to the solemn declarations of the Lord, 
 should also prefer them to the lessons of life and fact, and to 
 all true and searching philosophy of human nature. If there 
 be one fact more largely and solidly established by experience 
 than any other, it is, apart from all controversy as to the rela- 
 tive weight of environment and endowment, that conduct is 
 the instrument by which character is formed, and that habit 
 systematically pursued tends, and tends without any known 
 limit, to harden into fixity. This is testified by what is so 
 often said in the case of new ideas and methods, that it is 
 idle to teach such things to the old, and that real progress 
 is only to be made by impressing them upon the elastic and 
 malleable mind of a new generation. The settled laws of 
 our nature are the corner-stones of our education, as well 
 as the landmarks of our Creator's will concerning us. From 
 them we are enabled to comprehend the dispensation under 
 which we live, and to turn it to account. But here there 
 has arisen a tribe, it might perhaps be said, of philosophasters, 
 who tell us that the experience of mankind, tested through 
 so many generations, is an illusion, and that its lessons are 
 henceforth to be read backwards. They rely upon the 
 guidance of an inner sense vouchsafed to them after it has 
 been withheld from all their fellow-creatures; for even the 
 heathen mind, in the extremities of its bewilderment and 
 need, did not catch at a straw as if it were a prop, nor practise 
 upon itself, under the notion of a supreme enlightenment, 
 a superlative trick of self-delusion. I do not deny that there 
 are those who, having appointed themselves to the great 
 enterprise of reforming the universe, may, in the pursuit of 
 
Ch. Ill] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 223 
 
 their aim, attain even to this height of mental excess; but 
 I hold that, by destroying the foundations of our belief in 
 the observed facts of human nature, they are destroying the 
 foundations of every other belief, their own favourite scheme 
 included. 
 
 But further. Such mental errors cannot be indulged 
 without producing wider consequences than any that their 
 authors have intended. These inventions are revolutionary 
 not only as towards the dispensation we live under, but as 
 towards human nature itself, and all the modes in which it 
 is rationally impelled to action, or guided in pursuing it. 
 It is remarkable that this scheme does not present the 
 prospect of a plan for the reformation of character, with the 
 cessation of penalty as its natural consequence ; but it is 
 rather a repeal or exhaustion of penalty, with reformation of 
 character set in the shade, and playing a secondary part : at 
 the very best a reformation brought about arbitrarily, and in 
 defiance of all known laws. And those stern denunciations 
 of Holy Scripture, which on a long course of trial have been 
 found none too strong for their purpose, it is deliberately 
 sought to relax by promising to every sinner of whatever 
 inveteracy, audacity, and hardness, an endless period of 
 immunity from suffering; after a period spent in it, which 
 they have no means of defining, and which every offender 
 is therefore left to retrench at his own pleasure, on his own 
 behalf. What is this but to emasculate all the sanctions of 
 religion, and to give wickedness, already under too feeble 
 restraint, a new range of licence ? I do not dream of imputing 
 the intention : but good intentions do not suffice to coun- 
 tervail inexorable laws. The strong language, which the 
 subject leads me to employ, is altogether remote from 
 personal application ; and I use it as treating of what 
 I understand to be gravely propounded as a great article 
 of Christian belief. 
 
 The appeal to Scripture in support of these ideas seems 
 to be so ill sustained as to suggest that its chief effect is 
 to supply the weaker brethren with a handful of material 
 such as may suffice to suppress lingering scruples. There 
 is, indeed, to be a regeneration, a restitution of all things ; 
 harmony will everywhere prevail, wickedness will disappear 
 
224 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Pt. II. 
 
 from view. Christ must reign till He hath put all things 
 under His feet, and when all things are thus subdued, then 
 God shall be all in all 1 . But they receive the answer from 
 one quarter that sin will be effectually put away by being 
 reduced to impotence ; and from another school of thought, 
 not perhaps wholly out of sympathy with theirs, they are 
 reminded that its method is yet more conclusively to dispose 
 of sin by annihilation. 
 
 Upon this scheme as a whole I cannot stop short of owning 
 the impression it makes on my mind to be this. Its authors, 
 failing to take heed that the entire dealings with impenitent 
 sinners have only in a very small degree been disclosed to us, 
 and impatient of this vacuum which they think, and perhaps 
 rightly think, they have detected in the Divine Revelation, 
 undertake to fill the gap by going outside it altogether, and 
 what, when closely examined, is found to be neither more 
 nor less than constructing a revelation for themselves. 
 
 I have still one further observation to make upon this 
 theory. It embraces the other like theories ; and it relates to 
 the high ground that appears to be claimed for them by their 
 authors. They are not presented to us in the humble guise 
 of Socratic or Platonic speculations. They seem rather to be 
 regarded as supplemental portions of the Gospel. Finding 
 revelation to be incomplete, a school of thinkers hereupon 
 conclude that it is defective. It being granted that only 
 a portion of the Divine counsels is disclosed to us, the 
 assumption is made that there ought to be a more liberal 
 communication of them. In a very striking tract 2 , written 
 in promotion of these views, I find it stated that the dark 
 thoughts of God heretofore prevalent, are becoming unen- 
 durable. But instead of showing or contending that the 
 Scriptures and the Creeds disown these dark thoughts, and 
 throw us back upon a filial trust as the just attitude of the 
 believing mind, there is propounded a new philosophy which 
 teaches us to look upon sin as being largely but an incident 
 in the stupendous process of evolution, the working out of 
 the brute, the tiger and the ape from us, ' into an harmonious 
 
 1 i Cor. xv. 27. 28. p. 7, by Mr. J. Page Hoppa. 
 
 2 Is Salvation possible after Death? Williams and Norgate. 
 
Ch. III.] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 225 
 
 and beautiful life.' We insist upon raising that curtain which 
 the hand of God let fall. We obtain a view of the scenery 
 beyond it. And this view is really presented to us, less 
 a modest and tremulous human conjecture, than as a Fifth 
 Gospel. It is ' a way of escape,' and a way of escape rather 
 for our Maker than for us; since none, surely, can pretend 
 that it is a moral necessity for us to be informed not only 
 of the result of rejecting salvation, but of the entire destiny 
 of all those who so reject it. But in company with this Fifth 
 Gospel there comes also a Sixth, which is in flat contradiction 
 to it, and a new battle of life and death is at once set up 
 between two bodies of believers, who seem equally well- 
 intentioned, equally ingenious, equally confident of the truth 
 and sufficiency of the scheme they propound. Nor is this 
 all; they are severally alike determined to propound their 
 scheme as called for by a vital necessity of the case, and as 
 indispensable to the honour and security of the Gospel : 
 alike insensible to the peril of loading the Christian Faith 
 with what does not belong to the original deposit; of in- 
 vesting human speculations with the august claims of the 
 Divine Word ; of declaring that the current or ' traditional ' 
 Christianity is afflicted with a mortal disease, and of pro- 
 claiming, within earshot (so to speak) of one another two 
 infallible remedies, each of which is absolutely destructive 
 of the rival specific. Reflective speculation, if it does not 
 forget the modesty and humility that become it, may right- 
 fully claim a wide measure of toleration or of patience : but 
 these claims, marshalled abreast of the articles of the 
 Christian faith, yet loud in their mutual discord, may, it 
 is to be feared, have for their principal result neither the 
 solution of problems nor the mitigation of differences, but 
 a further addition to the diversified forces now at work in 
 the sapping of belief. 
 
 It is surely unwise to bind ourselves even to the proposition 
 that the ideas we ought to entertain of the Divine justice 
 unconditionally require us to find or assert a limit of dura- 
 tion for the punishment, or for the state of loss attaching to 
 obstinate and unrepented sin. Before advancing thus far, we 
 ought to know much more than apparently we can know in 
 the compass of this life upon many matters now hidden; 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE [Pt. II. 
 
 what may be all the possible forms of that punishment or 
 loss, whether it is an inflicted penalty or (so to speak) an 
 inborn and inbred result, and what are the essential con- 
 ditions of that future life into which we are to pass beyond 
 the grave. We should know also much more of the capacity 
 of the soul for change, and of the directions that such change 
 may be capable of taking. I may fare better, and do better, 
 on a lonely and sequestered island, than on a boundless turbid 
 ocean without chart or compass. The subject is large, and 
 many are the avenues of thought which it opens up. 
 
 It appears to be an established law of our present condition 
 that under the action of experience, and especially under that 
 of suffering, we have no choice but either to gain ground 
 or to lose it, and to attain or undergo, as the case may be, 
 the consequences of that gain or loss. But if life be for us, 
 according to experience, an onward movement from a be- 
 ginning to a consummation, and if death, when reasonably 
 contemplated, appears to be much more than a mere accident 
 of that movement, and nothing less than a great crisis, pre- 
 paratory and auxiliary to a completion, then it follows that 
 in those among departed spirits (if such there be) who are 
 not beneficially affected by the post-mortuary stages of their 
 discipline, a disintegrative power of deterioration may be 
 actively at work ; that this habitual power may be then 
 and there even more marked than now and here ; and it is 
 even difficult to exclude altogether the possibility, a mere 
 possibility without doubt, that the effect may be great losses 
 and decays of faculty, great reduction and contraction of the 
 scale, and of the sphere, of existence. 
 
 Some, who have exercised themselves in suggesting modes 
 whereby the stings of future suffering may be sharpened, 
 have included in their speculations the idea that the power 
 of anticipating the future, and of living over again the past, 
 by which we seem to be so vividly distinguished from the 
 brutes, will hereafter be enhanced, to reset continually, if the 
 expression may be used, the torture of the damned. Such 
 is not my purpose. I do not doubt that such a process is 
 among the resources of Almighty Power and Knowledge 
 should the use of them be deemed meet. But, considering 
 that sin is excess, and that the effect of excess is commonly to 
 
Ch.HI.] THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 227 
 
 depress, weaken, or exhaust, it may seem at least as legitimate 
 to contemplate the possibility that there may be in the class 
 of future existences now under view a change, but in the 
 opposite direction : a change which shall enfeeble faculty, 
 affection, even appetite, and more or less drop them out from 
 the human equipment. If it be so, these losses might, under 
 the laws of our nature, include not an increased but a reduced 
 susceptibility; a reduction of pain, analogous to that which 
 may be brought about by the amputation of some acutely 
 suffering member. It might be that, in the general depression 
 and degradation of human nature brought about by proved 
 incapacity to take profit, here or hereafter, by remedial laws, 
 we might narrow, if not efface, the interval which severs us 
 from animals, in these great particulars of realizing recol- 
 lection and corresponding anticipation, and might, without 
 having identity, or personality, in any respect impaired, 
 attain an indefinitely large relief from active penalty, at 
 the cost of a descent in the rank of being, which perhaps 
 also may be indefinitely large. 
 
 Let me repeat that my object in this strain of remark 
 is not to suggest the acceptance of doctrines, hardly even to 
 open possibilities; but to open a view, contracted perhaps, 
 and yet capable of proving highly important. It is the view 
 of showing that the issue raised against the Divine character 
 upon the point of endlessness alone is not legitimately raised : 
 and that there are several particulars, perhaps even an inde- 
 finitely large number of them, which we ought to have the 
 means of defining before we can form any judgement for 
 ourselves upon the question whether the quality of endlessness 
 is that upon which, preferably to and independently of every 
 other quality, judgement is to be solicited and taken. I open 
 one or two of the doors of mere speculation, to remind other 
 speculators that they are many; that the prospect which 
 they disclose is not inviting to the cautious and thoughtful 
 mind; and I suggest again and again the question whether 
 there is any safer course than to accept the declarations of 
 Holy Scripture, which award the just doom of suffering to 
 sin, and leave the sin and the suffering too, where alone 
 they can be safely left, in the hands of the Divine and un- 
 erring Judge. I recommend none of these speculations. But 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 
 
 THE SCHEMES IN VOGUE 
 
 I contend that there is no just title to exclude them from 
 the view of those, who are not contented with the ancient 
 reserve : and that they are less dangerous and daring than 
 some of the ideas which appear to have gained acceptance 
 of late, and even to have gained it among persons entitled 
 from other points of view to our high respect \ 
 
 I will not prosecute this line of observation farther ; and 
 I have, indeed, only gone so far on the ground indicated by 
 Clarke in his wise observation that God may have many modes 
 of dealing with His creatures which He has not disclosed 
 to us. It is one thing to open theories with a covert recom- 
 mendation of them to surreptitious favour. It is quite another 
 to support a suggestion of reserve in subjects which may be 
 so justly called transcendental, by showing that there are 
 or may be paths which in the present state of our know- 
 ledge could for us be only quicksands, but yet which, for 
 all we know, the power of the Almighty might include 
 within the bounds of possibility 2 . 
 
 1 Such, for example, as Mr. 
 Erskine of Linlathen. See his 
 recently published Remains. A list 
 might easily be framed (and doubt- 
 less it would include Origen) of 
 persons who have favoured these 
 opinions, and have exhibited, along 
 with them, lofty examples of Chris- 
 tian character. 
 
 2 In Universalis™, asserted, by the 
 Rev. T. Allin (sixth edition, London, 
 1895), that scheme is represented 
 with courage, and frequently with 
 modesty. The work appeals largely 
 to early testimony : and (p. 106) 
 claims, on the authority of two 
 early, though anonymous, writers, 
 that the last Apology of Pamphilus, 
 the joint production (mainly) of 
 Eusebius and himself, 'contained 
 very many testimonies of Fathers 
 earlier than Origen in favour of 
 restitution.' Mr. Allin quotes as 
 his authority for this important 
 
 statement Routh's Reliquiae Sacrae. 
 Dr. Routh has carefully gathered 
 the information extant respecting 
 the work. One anonymous author 
 says that Eusebius used the lan- 
 guage cited, on behalf of restitution 
 together with pre - existence. And 
 Photius quotes a second writer, as 
 citing on his own authority De- 
 metrius, Bishop of Alexandria, who 
 subsequently opposed Origen, Cle- 
 ment, and various others (trepovs 
 wXtlovt) ; relying chiefly, however, 
 on Pamphilus and Eusebius, both 
 subsequent to Origen. The effect 
 of the citation by Photius is greatly 
 to reduce the force of the statement 
 made by the other anonymous 
 author. Whatever the opinions of 
 Clement, he did not acquire no- 
 toriety in connexion with the Ori- 
 genian tenets (Routh, Rel. Sav., vol. 
 iii. pp. 258-69 and 277, ed. Oxon., 
 1815). 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 
 
 ET us now consider what are the propositions relating to 
 ■■^ the future life, which have from' the first been included 
 in the summaries of our faith, and which, upon the historical 
 principles of the Church at large, are regarded as binding 
 upon all Christians. 
 
 If we ask, what are the propositions associated with this 
 subject which ought to be considered as belonging to the 
 essence of the Christian faith, and as obligatory upon our 
 personal belief? the sacred Scriptures do not appear to 
 supply a ready answer to this question. But history informs 
 us at how early a date, how long certainly before the epoch 
 of any Council except that held at Jerusalem under tho chief 
 Apostles, the Church* or the general sense of the body of 
 Christian believers, began to build upon the first foundation, 
 and to follow the example supplied with Divine authority by 
 the baptismal formula. It proceeded to incorporate in various 
 forms the substance of the single and brief document which 
 soon, replacing at least one even older version employed in 
 Rome, became supreme throughout the entire West under 
 the name of the Apostles' Creed. In this Creed we declare 
 our belief in ' the resurrection of the body, and the life 
 everlasting.' So far we are clearly dealing with matter of 
 obligatory belief. 
 
 The Creed elaborated at Nice and Constantinople repre- 
 sents, even more than any other document, the prolonged, 
 concentrated, and most severely tested action of the mind of 
 the universal Church. In the last of these particulars it 
 stands alone. It was through the agonies of the fourth 
 century, the hardest of all the trials, the noblest of all the 
 
230 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt. II. 
 
 victories of the Church of God, that this Creed made its 
 way to a position unrivalled alike in loftiness and in solidity. 
 In the East it may be said to enjoy an exclusive dominance. 
 In the West, through the Eucharistic office, it holds the 
 grandest of all positions in Christian worship, so that it is, 
 equally with the Apostles' Creed, incessantly presented to 
 the mind of the Church. It is not necessary now to speak 
 of several additions, not relevant to the present subject, 
 which were made to it under Latin authority in much later 
 times. In this consummate document, mainly as received 
 from Nice and Constantinople, we declare that we ' look for,' 
 and of course therefore believe in, ' the resurrection of the 
 dead, and the life of the world to come.' 
 
 The Athanasian Creed, apart from its anathemas, is a great 
 and wonderful product of substantive theology concerning 
 the Trinity, and, even more, the Incarnation of our Lord ; but 
 it is not (I believe) placed, except in the Anglican Articles 
 of Religion, which do not form a Confession for the Church of 
 England at large, on a level with the two preceding Creeds ; 
 nor is it, except within the English Church, presented with 
 an equal degree of familiarity, by inclusion in the public 
 services, to the general mind of believers. It declares that 
 men shall rise again with their bodies; shall render an 
 account for their works ; and shall, if they have done good, 
 ' go into life everlasting ' ; if they have done evil, ' into ever- 
 lasting fire.' The main distinctions offered by this Creed are 
 not that it penetrates farther, as modern opinion has done, 
 into the nature of eternity and the particulars of the Divine 
 counsels, but that it presents to us expressly what, perhaps, 
 cannot be excluded from the implications of the other Creeds, 
 namely, the survival and passage into eternity of the wicked 
 as well as of the righteous. But seeing that the rank given 
 to this Creed is only (so to speak) sectional, I shall not rely 
 upon it in the examination with which we are immediately 
 concerned. On the one hand, it repeats words which were 
 solemnly delivered by our Saviour. But as those words are 
 subject to some variety of interpretation, while they have 
 a tendency to widen the demands of faith, which sufficed for 
 the earlier Creeds, we may reflect with satisfaction that this 
 Creed does not carry, in the general mind of the Church, an 
 
Ch.IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 231 
 
 equivalent authority. There is another particular of extension 
 which may even be thought accidental. For the Athanasian 
 Creed, delivering its propositions in the abstract, applies 
 them to the whole race of men, while the older and more 
 authoritative documents are content to deal, at least by 
 reasonable implication, only with professing Christians. 
 
 Concentrating, then, our attention upon the declarations 
 contained in the other two Creeds, and bearing in mind the 
 immeasurable importance of the future state under the Chris- 
 tian dispensation, we cannot but be struck alike with their 
 simplicity and their reserve. Out of four propositions, three, 
 asserting the resurrection, the 'life everlasting/ and 'the life of 
 the world to come,' may be said most rigidly to confine them- 
 selves within the limits of elementary Scripture, and to resolve 
 themselves into one, namely, that we, who recite the Creed, 
 are to pass at death into eternity. And here we find that the 
 idea vividly presented to us is the survival of the righteous, 
 whose condition is so properly conveyed under the word 
 ' life.' I do not presume to affirm it for certain that the case 
 of the wicked is excluded. It seems to remain, however, as 
 it were, in the shade. There is here neither declaration nor 
 implication as to the meaning of eternity ; as to the relative 
 numbers of those on the right hand or the left ; or as to the 
 particular conditions of the doom which awaits the sinner. 
 
 And surely it is delightful to contemplate the providential 
 wisdom which guided the mind of the early and undivided 
 Church to establish and enforce for us all the doctrine of 
 a future life, but saved it from the unnecessary and entan- 
 gling complications, into which more recent opinion seems for 
 a long period to have been betrayed. 
 
 But it may be asked, why, if a temper of reserve so largely 
 prevailed, did the Creed of the Apostles declare in express 
 terms the resurrection of the body 1 ? It is not difficult to 
 suggest the probable reason. Those schools of ancient 
 philosophy, which had laboured so honestly and well by 
 ingenious speculations to save us from the apprehension of 
 extinction at death, had founded themselves largely on meta- 
 physical arguments associated with the nature of the soul, 
 and had been unable to retain any grasp of the idea of 
 a future corporeal existence. From the time of Homer 
 
232 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pr.lt 
 
 onwards, great difficulty seems to have been felt in regard to 
 the relation between the several parts of man. Homer was 
 influenced by Egyptian ideas. But the conception of the 
 future life became less and less strong among the Greek race, 
 which supplied the great masters of philosophy ; and, whether 
 with or without any definite conception of existence purely 
 immaterial, they lost, as I suppose, the idea of any bodily 
 survival. If, when Christians were few, and the new insti- 
 tutions in their infancy, this was the established tone of 
 thought, we may well conceive that, for a practical fulfilment 
 of the great promise to bring life and immortality to light, 
 it was needful that there should be an express provision, 
 familiar to all the faithful, for securing a complete and not 
 a merely partial conception of the great human survival. 
 
 While, then, the sum of authoritative declarations on the 
 future state, by the full action and consent of the Church, 
 is thus carefully limited in the Creeds, I am aware of no 
 other bond which should restrain us from canvassing with 
 greater freedom the assumptions which I have recently 
 enumerated, provided we do not forget the reverence and 
 caution which should encircle the entire subject. It is, indeed, 
 necessary for us to be on our guard against the silent and 
 unwatched intrusion into the religious precinct of conceptions 
 which nowhere bear the sacred stamp, but belong, whether 
 their value be great or small, to the ordinary circle of secular 
 knowledge or opinion. And such we must surely admit to 
 be, among others, the popular conception of time. Be it ever 
 so true that, for us, in our present condition, the idea of time 
 may fairly be regarded as a simple idea, incapable of reso- 
 lution into parts, it does not therefore follow that we are 
 entitled to pronounce on its always continuing such, or any- 
 thing like such, in other, and, perhaps, quite differently 
 ordered states of existence. 
 
 I confess myself at a loss to see on what just ground there 
 can be constructed any claim upon the ordinary Christian to 
 concern himself with more than the propositions of the Creeds 
 as portions of his necessary faith. It would seem that if he 
 entertain other propositions he is under no obligation, and 
 has no warrant, to elevate them to so high a plane. 
 
 Of the limited service, which it is my hope and aim to 
 
I* OF 
 
 UNIVE. 
 
 -^ CA; 
 
 Ch. IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 233 
 
 render by the present examination to the combined cause of 
 truth and charity, a principal part will consist in my en- 
 deavours to remove from the field of controversy a variety 
 of assumptions which, as it appears to me, have no title to 
 a place there, and which have tended both to widen the issue 
 raised, and to perplex and embitter the dispute. 
 
 1. It is assumed that the Christian Revelation is designed 
 to convey to us the intentions of the Almighty as to the 
 condition, in the world to come, not of Christians only, but 
 of all mankind. 
 
 2. It is assumed that, when the Scriptures speak of things 
 eternal, they convey to us that eternity is a prolongation 
 without measure of what we know as time. 
 
 3. It is assumed that punishment is a thing inflicted from 
 without, Jiagellum Tisiphone quatit insultans, and is some- 
 thing additional to or distinct from the pain or dissatisfaction 
 or loss, which under the law of nature stand as the appro- 
 priate and inborn consequence of misdoing. 
 
 4. It is assumed that the traditional theory propounds, and 
 the teaching of Scripture requires us to believe that, of those 
 who are to be judged as Christians, only a small minority can 
 be saved. 
 
 5. It is assumed under the doctrine of natural immortality 
 that every human being has by Divine decree a field of 
 existence commensurate with that of Deity itself. 
 
 In all these assumptions there is expressly or tacitly in- 
 cluded a claim to be received as portions of our religion ; that 
 is to say, of the Divine Revelation to man. 
 
 I shall hazard some remarks upon them one by one. 
 
 At first as to the supposition that the Christian scheme 
 deals with the future destinies of all mankind. 
 
 The New Testament has many references to a future and 
 what seems to be a final judgement, but with one exception 
 they are marked by paucity of detail. Where argument is 
 introduced, and it is found only in one case, the unprofitable 
 servant is manifestly a typical person representative of those 
 with whom the Lord of all has already had open dealings, 
 and who have been placed in a condition to know with whom 
 it is that they have to do, and how they ought to proceed in 
 regard to the trust committed to them ; for they were aware 
 
234 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt. II. 
 
 that he was an hard man, who would rigidly exact account ; 
 while also it is plain that they began their work on a footing 
 of equality with the ' good and faithful servants V 
 
 The single instance in the Gospels which penetrates further 
 than this into the case, and exhibits the specific reasons of 
 the future doom, is the majestic recital which immediately 
 follows the parable of the talents 2 . In this profoundly im- 
 pressive passage, but one description of virtuous action and 
 of its opposite is recorded, that, namely, which includes what 
 are termed in Christian nomenclature the corporal works 
 of mercy. It may be hazardous to do even so much as 
 glance at the reasons which induced our Lord in His wisdom 
 at once to expatiate as He has here done, and also to set 
 bounds to His exposition. Can it have been that He foresaw 
 that the most conspicuous point of failure among nominal 
 believers would be in the law of mutual love, and in discern- 
 ing the connexion between that law and personal love to 
 Christ, who universally addresses us in the person of the 
 distressed? Be this as it may, we observe that both the 
 righteous, who disclaim all merit, and the unrighteous, who 
 are conscious of no defect, are alike addressed as persons 
 emerging from a temporal dispensation, under which good 
 offices toward man are directly associated with duty to God. 
 This is a conception which not only is markedly Christian, 
 but which had so faded away from, or which lay so little 
 within, heathen knowledge, that it could hardly in their case 
 have formed the basis, or entered into the terms, of an 
 equitable judgement. 
 
 What is still more to the purpose, than this noteworthy 
 representation, is the fact that St. Paul   has somewhat 
 elaborately expounded the separate case of those who remain 
 under the law of natural righteousness. In the day when 
 God shall judge the hidden things of mankind according to 
 the Gospel revelation, He will also judge the portion of 
 mankind outside the special covenant, according to the law of 
 nature written in their hearts, and according as they have 
 obeyed or disobeyed that law. Let us, therefore, wholly 
 disembarrass ourselves from the idea that those, who have 
 
 1 Matt, xviii. 24 ; xxv. 14. 2 Matt. xxv. 31-46. 
 
 3 Rom. i. xviii. 2-16. 
 
Ch. IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 235 
 
 not been supplied with the means of Christian conduct, will 
 be judged according to the demands of the Christian law. 
 
 Secondly ; it is assumed, that eternity is a prolongation of 
 time, continued without any limit. I ask myself in vain 
 whether there is any governing exposition supplied to us by 
 the Scriptures or the Creeds, or by the authentic tradition 
 of Christendom, which entitles us to make this assumption. 
 Without any suggestion that it should be met with denial, 
 or questioning that it has been much in vogue, and that 
 when indeterminate questions are determined there is a 
 seeming accession to our knowledge which we are readily 
 tempted to accept, I presume to express some hesitation as to 
 both its foundation and its utility. To say that we cannot 
 separate the idea of duration from our common conceptions 
 of future life is saying nothing to the purpose. This may be 
 a subject for metaphysical speculation : but is it a part of the 
 truths declared to us for our guidance 1 The Scripture goes 
 but a little way on this subject ; still, so far as it goes, it does 
 not seem greatly to favour the idea now before us. When it 
 tells us that with God a thousand years are but as one day, 
 it seems as if these words might mean that the being of the 
 Deity is outside the conditions of time, and that this meaning 
 is not only allowable, but may fairly compete with others 
 which can attach to them. And if the grand idea of the 
 i'uture reserved for righteous souls be, according to the 
 Gospel, a re-establishment in the original charter of our nature 
 by reunion with God, and if God have an existence outside 
 of time, who can tell whether or not an independence of time 
 may or may not be included in the conditions of this reunion 1 
 
 Look for a moment at eternity under the view of its being 
 an immeasurable expansion of time. Consider ever so briefly 
 the very large meaning involved in this proposition. The 
 contemplation even of our own narrow span of life as 
 a whole, when seriously attempted, seems to fill the mind 
 nearly up to the limit of its receptive power. A million is 
 a numerical accumulation which, if regarded at once as 
 a whole and in its units, seriously baffles us. But now we 
 are called to heap together millions, billions and quadrillions 
 without limit, and to recollect that in doing it we do nothing : 
 and that, however often we repeat the process, it is the same 
 
236 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt.II. 
 
 toties quoties: the score remains undiminished. In dealing 
 with such a conception, we pass wholly beyond our depth. If 
 all this may be so, yet it seems hard to compel every mind 
 into the belief that it must be so ; and there is something to 
 be said here also in favour of taking refuge in our ignorance. 
 
 This much we may presume to say. Had the Divine 
 Revelation been intended to convey to us that time is an 
 inseparable incident of the future life, and that eternity is no 
 more and no less than the unfolding of an immeasurable roll 
 of time, it seems probable, perhaps it might be said certain, 
 that the Bible could and would have employed some ter- 
 minology evidently adapted to that purpose. But such is not 
 the terminology actually given us. For, in dealing with the 
 condition of the righteous in the world to come, our Saviour 
 builds not upon terms of time, but upon the reunion with Deity. 
 And, in touching with greater reserve upon the condition of 
 the wicked, the image presented to us is either (1) simply 
 negative, as in the case of the five virgins ; or it is (2) one of 
 suffering without any expressed reference to duration, as in the 
 outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of 
 teeth ; or, it is (3) associated with words which etymologically 
 and by use signify the indefinite rather than the infinite. 
 And fourthly, a portion of the passages without doubt intro- 
 duce the awful image of finality. But such presentations are 
 held by some to indicate a process of extinction and total dis- 
 appearance, rather than of a miserable existence co-extensive 
 with that of Deity. They may be possibly susceptible of 
 other explanations at present hidden from our view. In any 
 case, we have to take them in connexion with the other 
 passages ; and it does not seem extravagant to suggest that 
 this great diversity of delineation may possibly indicate a 
 purpose of reserve. 
 
 On the third of the five assumptions, it will not be 
 necessary to dwell at great length. But there is a serious 
 difference between two separate methods of administering 
 justice. This man, let us suppose, has committed man- 
 slaughter: let him, according to the circumstances, be im- 
 prisoned for one year, or for ten, or for life. This forensic 
 or purely extraneous method, only with a more exact and 
 less coarse adaptation, is the favourite notion under which 
 
Ch.IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 237 
 
 the opponents of eternal punishment are prone to exhibit it. 
 It is very different from those punishments which lie in the 
 heart of the things themselves, and, in the language of Butler, 
 arrive by way of natural consequence. For, as to these, 
 nature herself is our premonitory teacher. And her lessons 
 cannot be shut out, except by the method, at once stupid and 
 audacious, of refusing to think. The drunkard, for example, 
 knows that, by the repetition of inebriety, he is losing his 
 freedom. And, if he knows this, in the later stages of his 
 downward course, but faintly and dimly, whereas he had 
 known it at the beginning well and clearly, the meaning is, 
 that his punishment ' in the way of natural consequence ' has 
 already begun ; that its initial stage is a warning mercifully 
 sent, like the first loss at a gambling table, in order that we 
 may be induced to avoid those which are to follow ; and that, 
 if the warning be neglected, we shall proceed from bad to 
 worse. As it is on this basis that the teachers of the more 
 rigid doctrine, profiting perhaps by the lessons of experience, 
 commonly build their system, it is surely on this basis that 
 they ought to be met by their opponents. 
 
 Fourthly; it is assumed that we are required by the lan- 
 guage of Holy Scripture to limit the salvation of professing 
 Christians to a very small minority of their total number. 
 
 Fairness constrains me to admit that this has commonly or 
 often been presented as an item of the ordinary teaching on 
 the subject of future punishment. It is now largely used, in 
 the adverse sense, as an aggravation of a dreadful picture. 
 My desire is to offer some considerations which tend so far at 
 least to throw doubt upon the assumption, as to make it 
 expedient and rational to hold this part also of the subject 
 in reserve. 
 
 When our Lord delivered in Galilee the Sermon on the 
 Mount, He admonished His audience that the gate of salva- 
 tion was strait, and the way narrow and found by few ; 
 while the gate and way of destruction were broad and easy, 
 and found by many '. And all the words of our Blessed 
 Lord are perfect in truth and wisdom. Yet it is our duty to 
 compare them together, and so far as may be to collect their 
 
 1 Matt. vii. 13, 14. 
 
238 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt. II. 
 
 effect as a whole. It seems indisputable that they do not 
 invariably (as, for example, in the parable of the unjust 
 steward) present to us, at each and every point, each and 
 every aspect of the case in hand; and possibly this is a 
 result, partly inherent in the conditions of human language, 
 and partly incidental to all teaching which takes advantage 
 of occasion. The Gospel of St. Matthew, it is largely agreed, 
 was composed with a special reference to the condition and 
 exigencies of the Jewish race ; that of St. Luke with a wider 
 outlook upon the Gentiles also. In those chapters of St. 
 Luke, which offer many remarkable correspondences with the 
 Sermon on the Mount, and form an echo of it, the image of 
 the strait gate reappears in connexion with the difficulty 
 of entering it, and it becomes the basis of an exhortation not 
 to seek merely, but to strive, that is to seek manfully and 
 with might, to enter it ; while the passage is immediately 
 followed by an impressive contrast between the case of Jews 
 rejected in the great account, and that of Gentiles then 
 admitted 1 , which may possibly indicate something of specialty 
 or local colour in what may be called the sister passage. It 
 is also noteworthy that the words of our Lord are a reply to 
 the inquiry, ' Lord, are there few to be saved ? ' In declining 
 a reply to this question, must we not admit that He seems to 
 close the door upon the subject and thereby to mark it for us 
 as one of rather unprofitable speculation ? 
 
 In any case, we are bound to have regard to the general 
 effect of our Lord's teaching; and in this case the more so, 
 because He so frequently deals, not with the present scene 
 and current life, but ex professo, with the final upshot of 
 human destinies. In all His teachings, by parable or other- 
 wise, we look in vain for any direct revelation of the relative 
 numbers of the accepted and the lost. It is not in the sheep 
 and the goats. It is not in the tares and the wheat. In 
 the case of the vineyard, a body of rejectors of grace are 
 dealt with exclusively. In the case of the wise and the 
 foolish virgins, where the poena damni alone seems to be 
 awarded, the numbers are equal. In the case of the talents, 
 two of the entrusted servants are mentioned for acceptance, 
 
 1 Luke xiii. 23-30. 
 
Ch.IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 239 
 
 one only for rejection. In the case of the gathering from 
 highways and hedges to replace those who had refused the 
 invitation to the banquet, there is no specification of numbers 
 or proportions. In the case of the guest-chamber, the 
 wedding-feast is eaten by a number of persons, but only 
 one is detected as not having on the wedding-garment. 
 
 It is, I presume, our duty to consider, with humble care 
 and without prepossession, the general effect of these very 
 varied indications in the discourses of our Saviour. For 
 this purpose the foregoing remarks are intended. The con- 
 clusion towards which they seem to point is that, as in 
 sundry other matters, so with regard to the comparative 
 numbers of professing Christians saved and lost, Divine 
 "Wisdom has, doubtless for the best reasons, veiled its 
 counsels with stringent limitation and reserve. 
 
 Lastly, the inclusion in religious teaching of a supposed 
 law of natural immortality has been so largely discussed in 
 prior portions of these papers, and especially in considering 
 the history of Christian opinion, that any return to the 
 subject in this place would be superfluous, except it be with 
 respect to a point properly collateral. 
 
 It is admitted that the resurrection of the body as such 
 is an exclusively Christian doctrine ; true as it may be that 
 the conception of a future life in the last resort involved 
 an approach at least to corporeal elements, such as figures 
 of some kind. But, according to Christian doctrine (1 Cor. 
 xv. 36-44), the natural or mortal body has in it a seed from 
 which shall spring the spiritual or immortal body. Let us 
 consider how much this implies. The body is now the 
 instrument and servant of the soul, while it reciprocally 
 exercises powerful influences upon it. But this body is not 
 a mere appendage or vestment to the man : it is a part of 
 him. Thus far it seems, then, to be agreed that one part 
 of our immortality is not natural, but is a gift flowing from 
 the Incarnation. This may render it all the more worth 
 our while to examine whether our immortality is likely to 
 be thus divided by the Gospel, and to be natural and inde- 
 feasible as to the soul, but only a gift of the Christian 
 system as to the body. One portion of the gap between 
 the opposite opinions would appear to be bridged over by 
 
240 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Ft. II. 
 
 these considerations, which lead towards the conclusion that, 
 with St. Paul for our guide, we shall not readily be per- 
 suaded to accept the idea that the Gospel has propounded 
 to us the natural immortality of all human souls as a portion 
 of the Christian religion l . 
 
 It remains, however, to consider some larger assumptions 
 which have been extensively made by writers taking the side 
 adverse to what they usually call the traditional theology. 
 
 i. The experience of life shows on every side that habit 
 hardens by use, that the gristle passes into the bone, that 
 under the laws of our nature we travel steadily towards 
 the unchangeable in cases where bias has been habitually 
 and permanently indulged by repetition of acts. But all 
 the lessons of this experience are to be cast aside with respect 
 to the laws which are to govern character in the world to 
 come, and we are told that the unchangeable will there 
 undergo a process of essential transformation and reversion, 
 by becoming a pliable and docile material, fashioned upon 
 new laws, which are contradictory of the old. 
 
 2. While the justice of punishing wickedness is admitted, 
 and it is held or not denied, that the measure of our punish- 
 ment will be found in the amount and character of our 
 iniquity, and it is moreover felt to be unreasonable for us 
 to impose limitations of quantity and quality on this effect 
 without any adequate power of measuring the cause, the single 
 point of duration is picked (so to speak) out of the case, 
 and it is laid down, without any question raised on severity 
 and intensity, that the prolongation without limit of suffer- 
 ing in any form, whether forensically inflicted or accruing 
 by natural laws as the fruit of character acquired in this 
 
 1 Plato teaches that the body as Socrates hopes to live wholly apart 
 
 well as the soul, though not, like from the body, and this seems to 
 
 thegodsof popular opinion, eternal, represent the summit of the Greek 
 
 yet having once come into existence, doctrine concerning the body, 
 
 is indestructible {Laws, x. 904). These are simply dreams of specu- 
 
 There are souls of the sun and lation. As to the body, we find a 
 
 stars {Tim. 41; Laws, x. 899). In metaphysical conception recorded 
 
 man death [Laws, viii. 828 J dissolves on its behalf, but a manifest lean- 
 
 the union between them. Impurity ing of the speculative intelligence 
 
 {Phaedo, 81 seqq.) will prevent the against it. 
 total escape of the soul. But 
 
Ch.IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 241 
 
 life, must be under all circumstances incompatible with the 
 justice of God. 
 
 3. That the character of the Almighty is rendered liable to 
 charges which cannot be repelled so long as the idea remains 
 that there may by His ordinance be such a thing as never- 
 ending punishment, but that it will have been sufficiently 
 vindicated at the bar of human judgement, so soon as it has 
 been established and allowed that punishment, whatever else 
 it may be, cannot be never-ending. 
 
 As regards the first of these features of the new teaching, 
 which has already been touched in part l , does it not amount 
 to a gratuitous substitution of speculation for experience, 
 and is such a substitution to be properly regarded as an act 
 of courage, or as a desperate venture of mental rashness? 
 To my mind it stands in the latter category. 
 
 It would be thought strange to teach a reversal of some 
 great law of the natural universe; for instance, a displace- 
 ment of the law of gravity in favour of a law of repulsion 
 between material substances. Yet it is conceivable that such 
 a change might be brought about, as to take small effect 
 upon the main work and purpose of our existence, since our 
 relation to them might be susceptible of large adjustments. 
 But the laws of our own constitution and growth, by which 
 our destiny is redeemed from the sport of chance and bound 
 into a whole, supply the standing-ground on and from which 
 we are to confront and act upon the universe. How can the 
 propounders of such a scheme rationally expect that future 
 inquirers will accord to their novel, we might say new- 
 fangled, notions, a respect which they have themselves with- 
 held from the most intimate and universal facts of human 
 experience 1 
 
 As respects the second and third of these assumptions, it 
 appears that those who make them are, in perfect good faith, 
 impressed with an apprehension, lest the character of the 
 Almighty should suffer in the estimation of a portion of His 
 creatures, from the currency of tenets which they deem to 
 be irreconcilable with His essential attributes. 
 
 There is something that is touching, and perhaps also 
 
 1 Sup. p. 222. 
 it 
 
242 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt. II. 
 
 something that is startling, in this enterprise. It was bold 
 on Milton's part, when he undertook 
 
 To justify the ways of God to man; 
 
 and perhaps his success was not so complete as to commend the 
 further entertainment, without much consideration, of similar 
 designs. And the first condition to be reasonably asked 
 their propounders is that they should measure at the outset 
 the scope and extent of their undertaking. Also that they 
 should weigh the question whether, in our present state of 
 clouded limitation, we are to hold ourselves bound or invited 
 to clear the present dispensation under which we live of all 
 the moral anomalies, disparities, and apparent contradictions 
 lying around us. And if so, whether it would not seem to 
 be in the more natural order that we should begin with the 
 facts and events of the present existence, concerning which 
 we are armed at least with some store of experimental know- 
 ledge, rather than launch upon a series of adjustments for the 
 world future and unseen, with our feet planted on ground 
 which we cannot firmly tread, and in an atmosphere which 
 we have no lungs to breathe. 
 
 Evil, according to this philosophy, has no right to a place 
 in this world. Its adepts, therefore, set themselves at work 
 to dislodge it, at least in hypothesis, by assuming that, at 
 some uncertain time, there shall be a reign of universal 
 happiness; while, moreover, there is also to be taken for 
 granted the accompaniment of universal goodness. The 
 reply suggests itself : ' Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but 
 who are ye 1 ' When the prophets portended a flood of 
 blessing, when the apostles proclaimed a coming triumph of 
 righteousness and peace, the first referred in vision to, and 
 the last brought into possible and visible action, a scheme 
 of means, adequately equipped with motive power, whereby 
 the results which they predicted were to be obtained. But 
 this new forecast of the future advisedly, or at least mani- 
 festly, passes by the remedial system now in action, and 
 steps out into the void that lies beyond it. Not like the 
 cautious Butler, who reckons upon nothing without a fore- 
 sight of means adequate to the end in view, they make no 
 addition to the ' going machinery ' of redemption, but boldly 
 
Ch. IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 243 
 
 anticipate results without any indication of the means to 
 produce them. Do they not truly stand as men who make 
 bricks without straw, and anticipate the flowers and fruits 
 of their garden without sowing any seed to produce them ? 
 Wickedness and suffering within the bounds of creation are, 
 as they conceive, disparaging to the Creator, and inevitably 
 bring into question either His wisdom, His goodness, or His 
 power. They therefore do not indeed provide, but suggest, 
 a sweeping scheme for their removal, thrusting out of the 
 way any established laws of our nature which would hinder 
 the consummation. Evils shall vanish ; suffering shall have 
 an end ; the Almighty shall be vindicated. The thesis is, 
 that evil may not, must not, always exist in this universe. 
 But is this a real or solid vindication 1 Does it not rather 
 include within itself the materials of a hopeless dilemma, 
 and therefore the doom of inevitable failure ? Evil is to 
 be employed or tolerated up to a certain date, and then, for 
 the honour of God, it is to cease. But before that date it has 
 ex hypothesi been employed or tolerated ; and where was the 
 honour of God then ? If it was compatible with the honour 
 of God for a time, why may it not continue similarly 
 compatible, so as to make use of it hereafter 1 If employed, 
 or tolerated, this was either with reason or without. If 
 without reason, we have no security against its continuance 
 without reason. If with reason, how can we know that the 
 reason which operated before may not also operate after ? 
 If it is wise, if there be a vindication at present veiled from 
 our view, how can we presume to say that there is a date 
 at which it must cease to be available 1 If unwise, for the 
 longer period, how shall we show that it was wise for the 
 shorter ? If wise, for the shorter, how can we tell whether 
 it may be also wise for the longer? There are special 
 dangers attending upon labour which is volunteered ; and 
 an imperfect vindication may be worse than no vindication 
 at all ; especially in the view of those who see there is open 
 to us an alternative, in the reservation of our judgement, 
 until the day when the secrets of the Divine Wisdom shall 
 be laid open, or more open, to our view. Cardinal Newman 
 has well observed that the mystery of mysteries in regard to 
 the evil now in the world is not how it is to end, but how it 
 
 K 2 
 
244 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt. II. 
 
 began. And a solution of the minor mystery, could it be 
 had, would leave us exactly where we now are with respect 
 to the greater one. 
 
 Let us endeavour still further to exhibit the perilous, and 
 totally ineffectual, nature of these doubtless well-meant 
 attempts to take into our hands the exculpation of Divine 
 Providence. As we see, the objectors of the present day, to 
 what they term the teaching of the 'traditional theology,' 
 appear to think that, when they have got rid of the single 
 element of endless duration in the matter of future punish- 
 ments, they have thereby attained to a satisfactory vindication 
 of the Divine character from the charge of inflicting excessive 
 and unnecessary suffering. 
 
 As has been said, it is a very serious matter to undertake 
 at all the vindication of the character of the Divine Being. 
 Especially is it so for us, who do so little to maintain, im- 
 prove, or repair our own. For it even seems in some degree 
 to imply, at least for the moment, the assumption of a kind of 
 superior position ; or to allow that idea, or its results at least, 
 to find their way into the mind. But, apart from any scruple 
 or difficulty on this score, it does not appear to me that 
 this vindication, however honourably sought, is or can be 
 attained by us with our present limited supply of know- 
 ledge and means of inquiry. The utmost the vindicator can 
 do seems to be to abate or cancel a single point in the indict- 
 ment, which it is the practice of negationists to bring against 
 the character of God. It is objected to the doctrine of end- 
 less punishment that there is no proportion between offences 
 committed in our narrowly bounded life, and that wide field 
 of an unlimited existence, over the whole of which the 
 expected retribution is to prevail. I do not now speak of 
 the recorded replies to this objection, which may or may not 
 be satisfactory. But let us give the objector all he asks ; and 
 then inquire whether, by expelling the element of endlessness 
 from punishment, we so alter the spectacle presented to us by 
 the conditions of human destiny, that we can then take upon 
 ourselves the burden of bringing them all into harmony (and 
 this is the purpose in view) with the character of an all-wise, 
 all-righteous, and all-powerful God. We have to meet the 
 challenge of the negationist in other and separate lists. Show 
 
Ch. IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 245 
 
 me the justice, he demands, of placing the responsibility of 
 existence upon creatures who have no choice given them in 
 the matter, and then weighing them down with tendencies 
 to mischief inherited from their ancestors : with pressure due 
 to adverse and sometimes apparently domineering environ- 
 ment ; with suggestion, attraction, menace, danger in every 
 form ; with an evil bias rooted in themselves through a de- 
 generacy of nature asserted by our highest, that is, by 
 revealed authority, and but too largely established by cor- 
 roborating experience? Is not, he asks, your free will, on 
 which you so much rely as an argument, frequently placed 
 under an amount of solicitation or pressure such as, in the 
 judgement of every equitable observer, comes indefinitely 
 near to the aspect of coercion ? I go further, and ask whether 
 the objector may not press us, his respondents, with a wider 
 question, and take such words as these into his mouth : You 
 seek shelter behind the free will of the human being, which 
 you allege enables him to deal with each action, and with 
 every situation, in detail. But you cannot deny that there 
 is a broader question, the question of existence itself. This 
 existence is admitted to be attended with danger; and yet 
 there was neither a consent obtained from us as a condition 
 of our entering on it, nor liberty granted, with a free passage 
 provided, to enable us to lay it down. What was the All- 
 goodness that called into existence free beings, with a fore- 
 knowledge that the misuse of this freedom would bring them 
 into misery? Why were they to be made examples of the 
 law which annexes misery to a failure to do right, without 
 their first being freely made parties to a trial upon that 
 issue ? Does not the title to be free upon each of the parts 
 carry with it a corresponding claim to be free upon the 
 great question of existence, which sums up the whole? To 
 his challenges I am able to make no fuller reply than this, 
 that, according to our faith, every man will be judged with 
 full allowances for every adverse incident of his lot, and that 
 God will enable all, who sincerely strive for it, to overcome 
 alike the circumjacent and the indwelling sin, or will in any 
 and every case deal with them according to the most exact 
 and largest justice. 
 
 Then he asks me, why were they solicited, and vexed, and 
 
246 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt. II. 
 
 stained with evil in any shape ? There is no such thing as 
 an universal right inherent in all who have the power to place 
 people in temptation, because it is hoped, believed, or even 
 known, that with immense effort they will overcome it. 
 
 But, I reply, this evil is for them an instrument of good, 
 and, by means of the training they receive, they attain to more 
 and higher good than they could have attained without it. 
 
 But I have not yet fully repelled my assailant ; he is again 
 upon me, and he says, What then means your sovereignty of 
 a good Power, which in the case of man is dependent upon 
 an evil principle for the best accomplishment of His design 1 
 Add to this that I am entitled to ask, how far does the 
 necessity for this ill-assorted aid extend 1 Does it go beyond 
 the case of man, and is the whole universe tainted with evil 
 as the condition of becoming good 1 If man is an exception, 
 why is he only placed under this disadvantage, and at the 
 same time told that he is an object of special if not excep- 
 tional or exemplary favour in the Divine counsels ? At any 
 rate there is one order of beings, made known to us by 
 Scripture, and as many will say, also by experience, with 
 regard to whom the question legitimately arises. These 
 are the fallen angels: are these, too, under discipline, and 
 intended to reap the harvest of the greater good 1 ? If not, 
 why not? But, if you reply affirmatively, if good is to 
 become universal, then you contemplate the loss from the 
 universe of the very Power by which this beneficial action 
 through evil is maintained ? And this runs up into the 
 final question. Evil is a thing abhorrent to the Divine 
 nature ; furnish me with an adequate reason why it came 
 into the world. I am obliged to reply that no such reason 
 is in my actual possession ; that I must look for it to 
 the region of Faith or reasonable expectation; and to some 
 province of that region which has not yet been opened, but 
 which is still enveloped in a mantle of clouds and darkness. 
 
 So then all that our objector has done is, in his own estima- 
 tion, to have effected a certain quantitative deduction from 
 the charges advanced by negationists against the character 
 of God. But the matter is one which cannot be disposed of, 
 nor essentially affected, by any merely quantitative process. 
 The vindication of the character of God is a business that 
 
Ch.1V.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 247 
 
 ought not to be undertaken by halves. If we are compelled 
 to halt in the operation before placing that character in the 
 light in which it ought to stand to the eye of some high and 
 sinless intelligence, it may after all be better to take refuge 
 in our own humble condition, and to accept the problems 
 of existence under the limited and imperfect forms, in which 
 alone God has permitted us to approach them. So that 
 I make my reply to the opponent in terms like these. Of 
 the injustice you admit to be plausibly charged, you remove 
 but half. But in a scientific vindication of God, half success 
 is in truth total failure; for what you have to re-establish 
 is the idea of an All-perfect being. But if we have reason- 
 able grounds aliunde for belief in such a Being, is it not far 
 better to stand upon those grounds in an unbounded trust, 
 than, by a half-examination of problems not referred to us, 
 to scatter over the field an array of unanswered questions 
 which testify to nothing but our headstrong readiness to 
 charge ourselves with undertakings, for which we have neither 
 commission nor capacity 1 ? 
 
 Faith and reason unite to assure us that the world to come 
 will be a world of readjustment; where the first shall be 
 last, and the last first, and where both good and evil shall 
 uniformly receive their just rewards. This answer covers the 
 whole of the adverse front. It both admits our incapacity 
 together with our ignorance, and points with the finger of 
 Divine hope to the prospect of their removal. But attempts 
 at vindication, unwarranted, precipitate, and mistaking our 
 poor twilight of knowledge for broad day, both fail of their 
 purpose, and recoil upon their projectors. 
 
 Let us now revert to another portion of the subject. 
 
 I suppose that most of us, if thinking at all upon the 
 coming condition of our companion pilgrims who precede us 
 on their passage into the shadows of death, must think, upon 
 a survey of the field of our experience, that they defy in 
 innumerable cases our feeble powers of estimation. I mean 
 those cases in which some real form of goodness seems to 
 have a real, perhaps a strong and permanent hold, but where 
 it has not taken conscious and deliberate effect in full con- 
 formity to the Divine will. Take for example the instances 
 in which, apart from any distinct self-devotion to God, life 
 
248 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt.II. 
 
 has been principally or systematically spent in the endeavour 
 to diminish human suffering; and this perhaps with the 
 exercise of much active renunciation and self-denial. Or 
 again, where it has been similarly given to that improve- 
 ment of the temporal conditions of human life, which, in 
 a greater or a less urgent degree, the majority of our fellow- 
 creatures, or at the very least a large portion of them, 
 appeared to need. Or again, where men apply their thought 
 and means not to the indulgence of their appetites, but to 
 the improvement and expansion of their own powers for 
 purposes of eventual utility. In all these schemes for better- 
 ing God's world, regard to the Lord of that world, and 
 humble dependence on His power and benediction, ought to 
 have their proper place; which by the supposition has not, 
 or not in due measure, been given to it. Or let us turn our 
 view to another and extended category of those classes who 
 embrace the Divine word with what they think to be an 
 entire willingness, nay, with a sanguine exultation. I do not 
 now speak of the modes in which this state of mind may 
 be contaminated by a self-confidence in utter antagonism to 
 the true life of the Gospel, but to the more simple, less 
 entangled case, where the broad propositions of religion are 
 accepted, but accepted too near the surface, without measur- 
 ing them against the entire thought, life, and purpose of the 
 man, so that they are but partially applied, and allow of 
 the retention of this or that habit which either falls short 
 of, or even is on its own ground in obvious conflict with, 
 the laws of the Divine life. These appear to be allowable 
 illustrations of the manner in which we shall find that 
 certain suppositions of Butler leave unimpaired all the strin- 
 gent, as well as all the soothing, life teachings of the Gospel ; 
 but yet supply the mind, in its permissible excursions beyond 
 the grave, which are so often suggested by strong motives of 
 nature and affection, with many ideas such as at once feed 
 us with hope and comfort, and widen our horizon of thought 
 upon the providential scheme, and upon the blessings and 
 eventual reach of the Incarnation, that grand remedial instru- 
 ment on which we rest all our hopes. 
 
 Following in the train of these suggestions, and in com- 
 parison and contrast with the three more formal theories or 
 
Ch.IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 249 
 
 doctrines on the condition of man in the world to come, let 
 us now turn to that larger teaching on the subject, which, 
 though only in an occasional and fragmentary shape, Butler 
 has been led to suggest after he has parted from the formal 
 but limited argumentation of his first Chapter. His sugges- 
 tions do not, indeed, ostensibly touch the lines of prevailing 
 controversies; but they tend somewhat to modify that idea 
 of an immediate and unconditional finality in the condition of 
 the human soul following upon death, which the Reformation 
 of the sixteenth century, from the particular circumstances of 
 its origin, did so much to foster in the broadest form. 
 
 Even in his first Chapter, Butler intimates that death 
 may issue in not only a continuation but an enlargement 
 of existence ; in a state where, through the widening of 
 conditions, what we now deem to be above nature, or beyond 
 it, may be found to be thoroughly natural x . And here I ask 
 leave to spend a moment in confessing the comparative 
 security and satisfaction with which I follow the steps of 
 Butler, on the rare occasions when he speculates, as comparing 
 him with other speculators. I feel like one resting on the 
 wings of a great and strong bird, when it takes an excursion 
 in mid-air, and is felt to mount as easily as it will descend. 
 
 With this notion of death, as leading to enlargement, 
 Butler's very marked views respecting habit, growth, and 
 evolution, as pertaining to our nature, are strongly in accord. 
 It was from or with these views that he was led to question 
 the philosophy, if not the theology, which with such shallow 
 wisdom seems to teach us that with death the book is closed, 
 at any rate until the resurrection and the judgement; by 
 which, indeed, it sets no great store, or at least for which it 
 leaves but little room. Such a man as Butler could not be 
 hasty to assume that, if the interval be one of conscious 
 life and action, it can pass without leaving behind it legible 
 traces of its influence upon character. 
 
 Butler, as a sedulous observer of what was going on around 
 him, was struck by the great advances which (probably 
 having Newton in his mind) he conceived to have been 
 recently effected in natural knowledge. The universe is, he 
 
 i I. i. 3 1 - 
 
 CAtlfOr 
 
250 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt. U. 
 
 finds, in a manner boundless and immense 1 . It is his inference 
 from this grand physical revelation that there must be some 
 scheme of Providence vast in proportion to it. Next, he 
 noticed 2 the essential tendencies of virtue or goodness to 
 acquire for itself augmentation of power. Such tendencies 
 may be expected to operate freely and with energy, so soon as 
 the grievous hindrances which now beset them shall have been 
 removed. These have the signs, what may be termed the air, 
 of belonging to the peculiar conditions of the present life. It 
 is therefore probable that, in the world to come, they may not 
 reappear as now. Should this be so, many souls of creatures, 
 incapable of normal evolution in the inferior state, may be 
 found to be capable of it so soon as a favourable change in the 
 balance between auxiliaries and impediments shall have been 
 effected. This may have no more the character of a paradox 
 than when we say that ten pounds, which will not outweigh 
 twenty, will outweigh five. Powers, the action of which was 
 suspended by the adverse preponderance, will conceivably 
 emerge into the open, and find scope for action, when that 
 preponderance has been removed or reversed. 
 
 The discoveries, partly effected in Butler's time, of the 
 vastness of the material universe, at once led his profound and 
 searching spirit to inquire whether, under the guidance of his 
 master principle of analogy, he found cause to draw from the 
 fact of those discoveries in the physical order any collateral 
 inferences in respect to the moral and spiritual world. He 
 did not indeed help to mislead his fellow-men by teaching, 
 as is now the fashion in some quarters, that the immense 
 enlargement of the visible kingdom of God proves the in- 
 significance of the world which we inhabit, or discredits the 
 idea that it can be the scene of an exceptional and peculiarly 
 illustrious dispensation, such as is exhibited in the Incarnation 
 of our Lord. His speculation was the very opposite of this 
 precipitate, shallow, and barren suggestion ; a suggestion of 
 which it is enough to say that, when traced home to its prin- 
 ciple, it is at once detected in the grave offence of using the 
 weights and measures of the physical universe as the criterion 
 of moral and spiritual magnitudes. On Butler's mind these 
 
 Analogy, I. iii. 28. 2 Ibid. 30, et alibi. 
 
Ch.IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 251 
 
 grand disclosures had the effect of widening his conception 
 of the possible scope of the natural and moral government 
 exhibited to us in nature and revelation. In effect, they 
 suggested to him an enlargement of the purpose and working 
 of the Incarnation itself, beyond the scope of the common 
 conception, both popular and theological. For, says Butler, 
 rising to that highest degree of confidence in which he rarely 
 allows himself to indulge, it is certain that, as the material 
 world appears to be in a manner boundless and immense, 
 there must be some scheme of Providence reaching outside 
 the material world, and vast in proportion to it l . With this 
 weighty observation he winds up a course of thought in 
 which he has pointed out that virtue, so sorely restrained and 
 hampered here, might in another state of things be relieved 
 from its impediments, and be placed under conditions favour- 
 able to its full development and corroboration. And further, 
 that, being thus in itself enlarged and enhanced, it might be 
 exhibited to, and might form a power of attraction for, others 
 who had not yet been effectually drawn to it. And this 
 might happen ' amongst one or more orders of creatures ' ; and 
 the benefit might accrue 'in any distant scenes and periods,' to 
 those among ' any orders of vicious creatures ' having among 
 them some who were ' capable of amendment, and (of) being 
 recovered to a just sense of virtue 2 .' 
 
 Thus does Butler appear to have embraced the ideas, 
 first, that the developments of character effected through the 
 Incarnation of Christ might operate upon beings subject to 
 the Creator, but not belonging to the human race ; and, 
 secondly, that, also within the limits of the human family 
 itself, persons who had not during this life in any manner 
 perceptible to us actually crossed the line which divides 
 righteousness from its opposite, might make such further 
 advances as would effect that transition, provided their 
 characters were still in such a state as to leave them capable 
 of effectual amendment. 
 
 This limitation is undoubtedly of importance. It secures 
 morality, the religious discipline of life, and the whole scheme 
 of the Christian Revelation, against that general dilution, and 
 
 1 Analogy, I. iii. 27. 2 Ibid. 28. 
 
252 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt. II. 
 
 indeed virtual dissolution of responsibility in conjunction with 
 the present life, which must result if mankind, so powerfully 
 predisposed to a relaxed belief, were instructed to assume 
 that the exercises of this life might be multiplied in (perhaps) 
 an interminable series of existences, and had no exceptional 
 character, no final and determining effect. It excludes the 
 dangerous notion which would place the central crisis of our 
 probation elsewhere, and not here. We may take it for 
 granted that Butler noticed, in common with every careful 
 observer, the equivocal condition in which so many appear to 
 quit the world. Let me again refer to some of the less diffi- 
 cult among these cases. There may be souls, which have not 
 ceased radically and in their inmost selves to desire good, but 
 they have not brought that desire, sincere yet overweak, to 
 good effect. They perform freely many acts in the service 
 of God ; they accept without murmuring every dispensation 
 administered to them from without by His will ; they even 
 exhibit much of unselfish devotion to the interests of their 
 fellow-men ; and yet they have not conformed to the supreme 
 law which, in God's own world, places the root and centre of 
 all our vital purposes not only in subjection, but in an active 
 conformity, to His sovereign will. For, where positive love 
 and service are due, mere non-resistance forms no legitimate 
 substitute for them. And yet the heart will not desist from 
 asking, Are not such fruits of partial good, such tendencies 
 towards effectual and supreme good, as mark this group, it 
 may be this multitude, of souls, worth preserving ; and is it 
 reasonable to suppose they can only be cast away as of none 
 account 1 It would be still less reasonable to imagine they 
 could be recognized as exhibiting the adequate and normal 
 fruits of the Incarnation of Christ, or represent a spiritual 
 condition which can be permitted to continue, unless in train 
 to what is better, and in vital connexion with the central Life 
 and Light of the universe. It may, then, perhaps appear that 
 Butler has found or approached the true meeting-point of 
 some contrary but not contradictory suggestions, in the note- 
 worthy Section which is probably to be regarded as the crown 
 and coping-stone of his own comprehensive and diversified 
 reflections on our condition in the future state. 
 
 But these suppositions are indeed no more than an exten- 
 
Ch.IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 253 
 
 sion of the rational and philosophical belief, which the greater 
 part of the Christian Church has always held respecting the 
 laws which govern the condition of the believing dead. The 
 Church has walked in the path opened for it by St. Paul 
 through his prayer on behalf of Onesiphorus *, It has con- 
 demned our accepting what is termed the sleep of the soul ; 
 a speculation amounting to a suspension of human existence, 
 and alike at variance with Scripture, which describes active 
 enjoyments and even sufferings of the dead, and with reason, 
 which exhibits to us our nature as constituted with a view 
 to discipline and advance through the prolongation of exist- 
 ence, and through the action it entails. The Christian dead, 
 then, are in a progressive state ; and the appointed office of 
 the interval between death and resurrection is reasonably 
 believed to be the corroboration of every good and holy habit, 
 and the effacement of all remains of human infirmity and vice. 
 The extension suggested by Butler amounts to this: that, 
 while the view of the Church in general only extends to 
 those who have before death given evidence of repentance 
 and faith such as the human eye can reasonably appreciate ; 
 still, as he suggests, where this evidence falls short, the root 
 of the matter may be there notwithstanding, and the 
 Almighty may reserve to His own jurisdiction the develop- 
 ment necessary to cover both the ground which a more 
 palpable sanctification had in other cases visibly secured 
 anterior to death, and that remainder of progress generally 
 reserved for accomplishment hereafter, even by souls of 
 a clearly manifested faithfulness to their Lord. 
 
 Under such a view as Butler's, then, of the teaching of our 
 religion as to the dead, it would appear that there may be 
 introduced, at the hour of final adjustment, to receive the 
 Divine reward, a class whose position, relatively to that of 
 the other believers, may in part be compared with that of 
 the labourers in the vineyard hired at the ninth and the 
 eleventh hours. True indeed that, according to the parable, 
 we are not entitled to say that these had known of, and had 
 refused or neglected, any earlier offer. But then it may 
 be also true of these, so to speak, belated spirits, that they, 
 
 1 a Tim. i. 16. 
 
254 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt. II. 
 
 either as a class or in particular cases, owed their back- 
 ward condition rather to the want of opportunity than to 
 a greater perverseness of the will, or a more obstinate 
 slackness to hear and to obey. Be this as it may, there 
 are two things on which we may rest with considerable, 
 if not indeed with undoubting, confidence. The first is, 
 that there will be no murmuring against the Master's 
 bounty, no grudge as towards those newly admitted to 
 a share of the reward. The second, that, in all cases 
 where the smaller degree of progress achieved has been 
 due to the man, and not to the environment of the man, 
 he will take no benefit by his delays. The aggregate of 
 whatever enjoyments he may by them have unlawfully 
 secured in this life will not in the least degree contribute 
 to his final happiness or augment its sum total ; but, on 
 the contrary, will have left behind tracks of the course 
 that has been trodden, and will have impressed tendencies, 
 or left stains upon the soul which have had to be reversed or 
 effaced by a process of discipline, happy indeed in its result, 
 but of which we have no right to assert, as indeed we have 
 no such right in other cases of departed spirits, that the 
 redeeming and consummating process will be accomplished 
 without an admixture of salutary and accepted pain. 
 
 I have slightly sketched one class of cases, by way of 
 illustrating Butler's supposition, where much good had 
 been generated by the discipline of life, but where it had 
 still remained defective in its relation to the central good, 
 and may have sorely lost thereby. There are many other 
 classes, to our eyes yet more dubious, on which there 
 would be no advantage in descanting. The fundamental 
 idea, lying at the root of his conception, is this: that the 
 appreciation of character and of moral action is a high 
 matter, in which our means of judgement are scanty and 
 feeble ; that we are therefore not competent to pronounce, 
 in the intermediate region between manifest excellence and 
 glaring sin, upon the state of souls; that, as they may be 
 worse, so they also may often be better, than the evidence 
 available for our use would warrant our declaring or 
 assuming ; that, while the determining impulse may have 
 been received during life, the direction of the resulting 
 
Ch.IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 255 
 
 movement may not as yet have been exhibited in our 
 sight ; and that this awful reckoning, which will set the 
 last first, and the first last, is not committed to us, but is 
 reserved for eyes more penetrating as well as more just. 
 
 It may be thought, and perhaps justly thought, by persons 
 of more experience and perspicacious reflection than myself, 
 that, while professing to follow the footsteps of Butler 
 into the Unseen, I have not succeeded in conforming to 
 his Christian and philosophic circumspection. Should this 
 be so, I can only regret my being unequal to discharging 
 the duty of an intelligent disciple ; and I cherish the hope 
 that my errors are not either wanton or contumacious. The 
 master himself, at least, is here open to no charge. 
 
 His speculations on behalf of departed spirits which have 
 not while in the flesh given evidence cognizable by us of 
 their reunion with God, are not loosely projected into space. 
 They are for those only who are ' capable of amendment, 
 and being recovered to a just sense of virtue.' If we have 
 no adequate means of judging who these may be, our 
 incapacity may suggest the further question : Why should 
 we have such means? The premature possession of them 
 might bring about a relaxation of the bonds of moral 
 obligation. Such is the account I should presume to give 
 of the pregnant thoughts expressed by Butler in the 
 remarkable Section we have now had before us. He avoids, 
 it will be seen, the dangerous figment of those who please 
 their imaginations by gratuitously supposing, to the grave 
 disparagement of the Scriptures and the great redemption, 
 that a new state or states of probation for us lie beyond 
 the dread barrier of the grave. The question he raises is 
 not that of a new probation, but only whether the present 
 probation may take more complete effect under circum- 
 stances more felicitous for virtue and goodness than those of 
 the terrestrial life. He does not add anything to the Incar- 
 nation, but he asks a guarded question as to the manifestation 
 of results, which in their essence have been already wrought 
 though not developed; and he gives us hope of hereafter 
 rescuing a wider domain from the sway of evil or of its 
 consequences, without weakening in the present critical state 
 the laws of righteous award. 
 
256 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt. TT. 
 
 As a general apology for the papers now about to be 
 brought to a close, I advance a proposition which, at least 
 in its general terms, will not be gravely contested. Those 
 who are conscious of their inability to solve a problem or 
 close a controversy, may, nevertheless, render a real, though 
 limited, service if they can eject from it matter gratuitously 
 imported; can draw jealous attention to conceptions by 
 which it has been both widened and perplexed; can relieve 
 it from the pressure of unwarranted assumptions; can 
 secure upon a field of doubtful speculations a temper of 
 sobriety and even reserve; and can make contributions at 
 least towards narrowing the issues, upon which men have 
 found or thought themselves to be divided. 
 
 In pursuit of this general aim, the following measures 
 have here been adopted. 
 
 1. To call into question the title of what is termed natural 
 immortality to the place which it now largely holds in the 
 religious mind of our generation ; to endeavour to strip 
 it of its acquired character as a doctrine of religion, and 
 to exhibit it as a contested and undecided matter of philo- 
 sophical speculation, upon which we do not possess material 
 sufficient to warrant the assertion of any religious duty 
 either to affirm or to deny. 
 
 2. To point out that early Christianity was not saddled 
 with the responsibilities attaching to this opinion, and 
 therein possessed a freedom which has been impaired by 
 its unauthorized encroachments, and by its tacit usurpation 
 of the field as a tenet to be accepted on the authority of the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 3. To show that the Christian religion, properly so called, 
 
 the 
 
 Bella immortal benefica 
 Fede ai trionfi avoezza 1 , 
 
 is less directly implicated in these contentions than has been 
 commonly supposed ; and thankfully to put under view the 
 wisdom and moderation of the early Christian Church in 
 the construction of its Creeds. 
 
 4. To describe the three formally developed modes now 
 
 1 Manzoni, Cinque Maggio. 
 
Ch.IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 257 
 
 chiefly prevalent in the presentation of the subject, and 
 leave it to be considered whether there is not good reason 
 sometimes firmly to eschew and condemn, and sometimes at 
 least to stop short of affirming, various propositions which 
 one or other of them has advanced. 
 
 5. To point attention to the diversities of phrase and idea, 
 with which the lot of those rejected in the world to come 
 is set forth by our Lord. My mind is swayed towards 
 the belief that the combined effect of the several declara- 
 tions is to indicate a Divine purpose of reserve as to all 
 which lies beyond the broad and solemn utterance herein- 
 before cited from St. Paul; and that the firm assertion 
 and enforcement of the truth conveyed in that utterance 
 might possibly be found more effective for the practical 
 repression of sin, than its development into more copious and 
 detailed, but less certainly authorized, expositions. 
 
 6. To bring into view the guarded and circumspect enlarge- 
 ment of the common field of view, which Butler has con- 
 jecturally supplied, and in which he abates nothing from 
 the efficacy of the Incarnation of the Saviour, but adds to 
 the sum of its beneficent results. 
 
 All this the present writer has set out as subject to 
 correction, worthy at most only of being deliberately 
 pondered, in the hope that the wheat may be duly 
 winnowed from the chaff*. A similar sense of the evils 
 and dangers of self-confidence governs him in the attempt 
 to sketch the frame of mind into which, not as a teacher 
 of religion, but as a private Christian, obliged like his 
 brethren to serve the truth as best he can, he now seeks to 
 cast his own contemplation of the subject. 
 
 The future life, says Butler \ is the foundation of all our 
 hopes and all our fears, such hopes and fears as are worthy 
 of any consideration. We are invited to assume an immense 
 inheritance, of which the portion withheld from present 
 view is of such extended range, as to throw the present 
 bounded scene, not indeed into insignificance, but into 
 comparative minuteness. In what St. Paul described as 
 the fullness of time, a Gospel was proclaimed, tidings of joy 
 
 1 Analogy, Introd. § 17. 
 S 
 
258 CONCLUDING STATEMENTS [Pt. II. 
 
 and gladness, with a background, it is true, of penal retribu- 
 tion for the obstinately disobedient, but still with joy and 
 gladness for their principle, their determining character ; 
 inasmuch as, had it been otherwise, the great gift, so long 
 detained for the maturing process in the womb of time, 
 would have not been an evangelion, but a dusangelion to 
 man. The leading office of the Gospel, in its bearing on 
 the world to come, was to make known, not misery, but 
 salvation. Its direct concern was with the moral and 
 spiritual part of man ; the part in which he had received 
 a deadly wound; the part which supplies the true enduring 
 basis of what he is, the basis of his character. To heal 
 that wound, to supply that character with a fund of endur- 
 ing vitality, it did not furnish him with particular informa- 
 tion as to the conditions of the life to come : but, leaving 
 his ignorance to be dispelled at the proper season when it 
 shall arrive, revealed the one great secret which comprised 
 in itself every other that concerned him, the mode and means 
 of his reunion with God. 
 
 But in the shadow of this glorious teaching lay another 
 inevitable question : What shall be the lot of those who 
 reject it ? This question was small and remote for the 
 hundred and twenty elect souls 1 in the upper room, set 
 upon pursuance of the truth and the right. But it gradually 
 grew large and larger still for the Church, as it spread from 
 land to land, and obtained the world's confessed, or professed, 
 allegiance. The provision for meeting this question was 
 ready to hand. It lay, in a certain sense, outside the 
 Gospel ; and was anterior to it, like the other laws of our 
 human nature, and of the government of the world by its 
 Author. But this law, like all other antecedent and perpetual 
 laws, was acknowledged by the Gospel ; it was the law of 
 ' indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every 
 soul of man that doeth evil 2 .' But it was acknowledged 
 with a sorrow which is shown by the comparatively fluctu- 
 ating or shadowy manner in which this sad reverse of the 
 picture is presented ; the inseparable but obscure under- 
 side, so to speak, of the great foundation-stone of our 
 
 1 Acts i. 15. 2 Rom. ii. 8, 9. 
 
Ch. IV.] CONCLUDING STATEMENTS 259 
 
 peace and happiness. How much do we know of the lot 
 of the perversely wicked 1 ? They disappear into pain and 
 sorrow ; the veil drops upon them in that condition. Every 
 indication of a further change is withheld ; so that, if it be 
 designed, it has not been made known, and is nowhere 
 incorporated with the Divine teaching. Whatever else 
 pertains to this sad subject is withheld from our too 
 curious and unprofitable gaze. If men cannot restrain 
 their thoughts, their affections, from further speculation, 
 let them take good heed that, as it is necessarily weak and 
 shadowy, so it be deeply tinged with modesty and awe. 
 Let there not be the presumption of assimilating hope or 
 surmise with the solid truth of the great revelation. The 
 specific and limited statements supplied to us are, after 
 all, only expressions in particular form of immovable and 
 universal laws, on the one hand, of the irrevocable union 
 between suffering and sin; on the other hand, of the per- 
 fection of the Most High ; both of them believed in full, 
 but only in part disclosed, and having elsewhere, it may 
 be, their plenary manifestation, in that day of the restitution 
 of all things, for which a groaning and travailing creation 
 yearns. 
 
 s 2 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 SUMMARY OF THESES ON A FUTURE LIFE 
 
 i. HHHAT the natural immortality of the soul is not taught 
 ■*• in Holy Scripture. 
 
 2. Neither is it commended by the moral authority of 
 the quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, even after 
 placing that comprehensive dictum under such limitations as 
 it reasonably admits. 
 
 3. Neither is it affirmed or enjoined by any of the great 
 assemblies of the undivided Church, or by any unanimity, 
 actual or moral, of Decrees and Confessions posterior to the 
 division of the Church into East and West. 
 
 4. The immortality of the soul is properly to be regarded 
 as holding its place in religion from its being a gift or 
 endowment due to the Incarnation of our Lord. 
 
 5. The survival of the soul after death is in itself distinct 
 from the immortality of the soul, and is included in the 
 doctrine of the Resurrection ; and was so treated by the 
 earlier Fathers of the Church. 
 
 6. Also, the existence of the soul after death, which was 
 so largely believed in old religions outside the Hebrew 
 revelation, was a belief in survival, and was not associated 
 with any formal examination and adoption of an absolutely 
 endless life. 
 
 7. The presumptions of the case, apart from the Gospel, 
 are favourable to a belief in this survival; but they can 
 hardly, as such, be said to amount to demonstration. 
 
 8. If we set out from the belief that Christ both reveals 
 and gives immortality, which is exemption from death, and 
 is life without an end, it is plain that the first application 
 of this doctrine is to the righteous, because the assurances 
 of their future condition do not seem to rest upon the 
 
SUMMARY OF THESES ON A FUTURE LIFE 26 r 
 
 expressions used in Scripture as to the duration of future 
 happiness, but rather upon the announcement that they are 
 restored to the image of God, in which man was originally 
 formed ; according to the announcement of our Lord in 
 a single passage, which may be taken as instar omnium : 
 ' Thou in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us V 
 
 9. So that the immortality of the righteous, habitually 
 associated in Holy Scripture with bliss, rests on no matter 
 of disputed construction, but upon the clearest, highest, and 
 surest ground conceivable ; and is by no means simply parallel 
 or identical with the declarations of the eternal punishment 
 of the wicked. 
 
 10. The declarations contained in the Scriptures of both 
 Testaments respecting the duration of the future state, either 
 generally or after the resurrection and the day of judgement, 
 do not appear to go to the extreme limit of the powers of 
 human language in describing it so as to correspond strictly 
 with the idea of a duration, or of time, prolonged continually 
 and without end. 
 
 11. In regard to future punishment, it is plain that great 
 differences of opinion have prevailed at different periods of 
 the history of the Church, the first centuries presenting 
 a view of a different colour from that which may be said 
 to have prevailed over others from about the time of St. 
 Chrysostom and St. Augustine. 
 
 12. Apart from the question of the degrees of authority 
 respectively due to the Scriptures, the Creeds, and the acknow- 
 ledged tradition of the undivided Church, it does not appear safe 
 to apply the term traditional theology to the largely developed 
 opinions of later ages on future punishment, as compared with 
 the more reserved conceptions of an earlier period. 
 
 13. In approaching the contemplation of future retribution, 
 the axioma summum, the axiom of axioms, which we should 
 not only carry with us, but keep ever ready and fresh in 
 our minds, is the conviction that God is eternally, immovably, 
 and universally just, and that every provision ordained by Him 
 is subservient to, and every conclusive adjustment is to be in 
 direct accordance with, the v\^i7ro8es 1/0/uoi, His own ethical laws. 
 
 1 John xvii. 21. 
 
262 SUMMARY OF THESES ON [Pt. II. 
 
 14. Good and evil doing are not propounded to us for 
 formal consideration unless within the limits of the Christian 
 Revelation ; inasmuch as the great law that covers all beyond 
 it, has been comprehensively and conclusively, but separately, 
 laid down for us in the clearest (though in general) terms 
 by St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans 1 . 
 
 15. It is therefore an apparent mistake to speak of the 
 disputed questions on Scripture texts concerning future 
 retribution as involving the fate of the vast majority of 
 mankind, it being plain that the large majority for any age, 
 and the enormous majority when we take all ages together, 
 are placed altogether beyond the scope of these disputes, and 
 of the parable of the Last Judgement. 
 
 16. A collateral question of great interest arises upon the 
 twofold declaration of St. Peter 2 that our Lord preached 
 to certain disembodied spirits, and that these were the 
 spirits of the men who had been disobedient in the days 
 of Noah, and whose disobedience brought upon the earth 
 the judgement of the Flood : for, since God is constant to 
 Himself, the question arises whether He may not give equi- 
 valent opportunities to the dead at large who have not upon 
 earth enjoyed the light of the Christian Revelation. 
 
 1 7. A further deduction from the scope of our controversies 
 is to be made for those who, even within the Christian 
 precinct, are placed by infancy, early childhood, or mental 
 insufficiency, or hindrances not dependent upon themselves, 
 beyond the limit of responsible action. 
 
 18. Wherever, within the bounds now established, the con- 
 dition of the wicked after death is expressly touched upon 
 in Scripture, it is described as (a), with respect to quality, 
 a condition of greater or less, and mostly of great, suffering ; 
 and as to duration (b), as a condition of death, or (c) by 
 imagery that annexes to it no idea of a termination. 
 
 19. It is rash to declare as cognizable by us that, even 
 if eternity be truly conceived in the popular idea, there can 
 be no such thing as suffering, of whatever kind, through eter- 
 nity except by God's departing from a principle of justice. 
 
 20. For, besides considering punishment as stripes inflicted 
 
 1 ii. 6-16. 2 1 Pet iii. 19, 20. 
 
Ch. V.] A FUTURE LIFE 263 
 
 from without, we have to consider the future state of the 
 unrighteous as governable by causes operating from within, 
 and therefore, possibly, self-determining by a fixed natural law. 
 
 21. And all modern thought and knowledge tend to attach 
 greater weight to the regular and fixed operation of these 
 self-determining causes. 
 
 22. In particular, we have before us the great doctrine 
 of habits, under which, even by unconscious, and yet more 
 by deliberate, use and wont, we continually approximate to 
 a condition which, when the formation of it has been pro- 
 moted or tolerated by the will up to a certain extreme point, 
 becomes finally incapable of correction by the will, and there- 
 fore, as far as we know, unchangeable. 
 
 23. Nor can it be allowable in reason to plead that this 
 condition may conceivably be terminated by some miraculous 
 agency of the Almighty, as this would be simply to suppose 
 the destruction of the freedom of the will when it had been 
 most fully used, and would be contrary to all experience and 
 to the whole analogy of nature, so far as it is placed before 
 us by our experience. We are hardly fit judges beforehand 
 when extraordinary agency, such as miracle, is proper to be 
 employed ; but we may sometimes see plainly that it is not. 
 
 24. Inasmuch as evil hath been allowed to enter the world, 
 we are bound to suppose that it has been for some exemplary 
 or other sufficient purpose : but, if there may be a sufficient 
 purpose for its being here now, our knowledge cannot suffice to 
 warrant our determining that no conditions are in the nature 
 of things possible, under which that purpose might involve 
 its presence otherwise or always. We have not competency 
 to lay it down, that evil in time limited, however long, is com- 
 patible with the Divine idea, but evil in time unlimited is not. 
 
 25. It must always be borne in mind, if we project some 
 theory which purports to have for its aim an acquittal of 
 the Almighty in respect of the presence of evil, and to turn 
 upon its perpetual duration, that we do not escape from the 
 question by means of any scheme for dealing with the future 
 condition of unrighteous men ; for this as well as other 
 reasons, that there is still before us the presence of per- 
 petuated evil in the fallen angels, inhabitants of God's 
 universe. 
 
264 SUMMARY OF THESES ON [p T . II. 
 
 26. If it be true that in this, and in any other matters, 
 there may be secrets of the Divine counsel and resource 
 possibly applicable to our future condition, they are secrets, 
 inaccessible to us, which we must suppose to be advisedly 
 withheld from us, and wherein we can neither speculate 
 nor infer. 
 
 27. The case of the fallen angels appears to establish 
 a fatal flaw in the theory commonly termed Restitutionism 
 or Universalism : whether as founded on any declaration 
 of Scripture, or as aiming at a vindication of the Divine 
 character by the expulsion of evil from the universe ; unless, 
 indeed, there be boldness enough to include all these unhappy 
 beings together with unrighteous men in the catalogue of the 
 blest. 
 
 28. This theory founds itself, so far as Scripture is con- 
 cerned, on declarations such as that of St. Paul in 1 Cor. 
 xv. 26-28, that there shall be a time when all things shall be 
 subdued unto God, that He may be all in all. To which, 
 perhaps, it may be replied, that the Apostle is speaking of 
 putting an end (ver. 26) to death, and makes no reference to 
 sin or its annihilation. And more at large these declarations 
 of a happy state of things may very conceivably be under- 
 stood of the state of things subsisting for the regenerated 
 creation, out of whose condition and environment every 
 jarring element will have been expelled. 
 
 29. On the other hand, and apart from any argument from 
 the nature of death, which the unrighteous are to undergo, it 
 seems impossible to fit this theory, which has never obtained 
 any amount of steady or responsible countenance in the 
 Christian Church, into any rational conception of religion. 
 For, as it teaches, the unrighteous are subjected to an inde- 
 finite amount of terribly demoralizing experience in evil, and 
 to a definite condemnation, as to which none can pretend that 
 it makes them better than they would have been without it, 
 and which, if so, seems to be in no way recommended by 
 reason for assumed admission into a scheme devised by 
 Divine wisdom. 
 
 30. But the fact which seems in limine to condemn Uni- 
 versalism is its flagrant contradiction to the declarations of 
 our Lord : such as that there is a sin against the Holy Ghost 
 
UNIVi. 
 
 Ch.V.] A FUTURE LIFE 265 
 
 which shall never be forgiven, either in this world or in the 
 world to come ; and especially that there has been in the world 
 a soul for which it had been preferable never to have been 
 born. The first of these is categorical, and if it can be 
 circumvented these words are powerless for their proper 
 purpose : and, as to the second, existence is manifestly a good 
 to any one whose suffering has bounds, and whose bliss has 
 none. 
 
 31. The ordinary and principal description of the future 
 state of the unrighteous is that conveyed in the word death. 
 This word in its ordinary signification bears the sense of an 
 extinction or cessation of some kind. It might mean cessa- 
 tion for the wicked of life itself. During the largest portion 
 of Christian history it has been expressly or tacitly taken to 
 mean not an extinction but a continuance for ever of exist- 
 ence, with the element of suffering superadded. These are 
 contradictory conceptions : but either of them is alike fatal 
 to Restitutionism. 
 
 32. What Restitutionism requires is to read into each and 
 all of the multitude of passages denouncing death against the 
 wicked such words as these : [death] ' which is no death but 
 a suspension of life, and of a life which is thereafter to be 
 indissolubly joined with enjoyment.' 
 
 33. The Scriptures set forth a course of discipline and 
 education for the human soul. On the supposition of Resti- 
 tution they become a riddle; and some other Bible surely 
 ought to be devised to set out what is another and totally 
 different course of training. 
 
 34. The popular definition of death, as applied to the 
 wicked in the future state, appears abstractedly liable to 
 these two objections : (1) It takes away from death that idea 
 of cessation and extinction, which its ordinary meaning 
 always in some form includes: (2) It adds an idea of suffering, 
 amounting largely to misery and torment, which the original 
 sense of the word in no manner contains. 
 
 35. Restitutionism is to be considered with reference to 
 what is matter of observation as well as to revealed truth. 
 In this light, it strikes at what all believers in a future state 
 consider as the grand and central truth of the subject, this, 
 namely, that we are living in a state of probation. Now 
 
266 SUMMARY OF THESES ON [Pt. II. 
 
 probation signifies not only discipline, but such discipline as 
 implies a decisive and conclusive test, analogous to those tests 
 of inanimate substances, which are employed in order, once 
 for all, to ascertain their essential quality. But under Resti- 
 tutionism all idea of essential quality as a distinctive mark 
 disappears, and therefore all idea of genuine probation. 
 
 36. The dictum of Paley that the worst condition in 
 heaven may be faintly distinguishable from the best con- 
 dition in hell, and that of Mr. Mivart who describes the 
 state of • Happiness in Hell,' do not harmonize with the 
 religious sentiment, or with the language or spirit of Holy 
 Scripture, and seem to recommend humble reliance on the 
 Divine justice, in preference to pushing forward into the 
 shadows of death for the production of no better results 
 than these. 
 
 37. It is not wise or safe to pronounce, as within our own 
 present knowledge, and faculty of judgement, that none but 
 a temporary punishment, whether of infliction or privation, 
 whether by decree or by natural sequel, can, without isola- 
 tion of Divine justice, ever be inflicted on the creature in 
 respect of acts done and responsibility incurred within the 
 limits of time. 
 
 38. The notion of Universal Restitution is, then, not sup- 
 ported by Scripture, or by Christian tradition, or by any 
 sound philosophy of human nature, which by its constitution 
 tends to an ever-growing fixity of habits. 
 
 39. The nature and limits, if any, of time, and the signi- 
 fication of the word eternity, have not been opened to us so 
 largely as is assumed in popular language and ideas. 
 
 40. The metaphysical doctrine of a natural indefeasible 
 immortality of the soul, as an immaterial existence, has come, 
 unawares and gradually, to reckon, or to be assumed, as a doc- 
 trine of Faith, and no longer as only a philosophical opinion. 
 
 41. The idea that existence may be worn out and finally 
 fail through depravation of its central principle seems to 
 have in it nothing at variance with the foundations of 
 philosophy, but is not taught by the Christian religion. 
 
 42. The assumption that imputations on the Divine justice 
 in connexion with future punishment are disposed of by 
 simply introducing a limit of time is unwarranted. 
 
Ch.V.] A FUTURE LIFE 267 
 
 43. This whole controversy wherein Divine justice is 
 arraigned tends to run up into the general controversy on 
 the origin of evil, which presents to the limited powers of the 
 human mind insurmountable barriers in the way of effectual 
 inquiry. 
 
 44. The central and final stronghold of believers is faith in 
 the indefeasible and universal justice of the Divine Being, 
 and to fall back upon this stronghold is more wise and safe 
 than to present imperfect solutions in matters not entrusted 
 to us to examine. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 
 
 npHE scheme of Necessity or Fatalism, though largely 
 dealt with by Butler from his own point of view, has 
 also as a scheme of thought been dismissed by him with 
 a disrespect amounting to contempt. The scheme itself, and 
 the application of it, are both of them summarily treated as 
 absurd 1 . It is very rarely that Butler allows himself to 
 employ language with respect to the propositions he resists 
 which can be taken to imply so severe a judgement. He 
 does it however in the case now before us; and we may be 
 sure that, when such a sentiment escapes from him, it is one 
 which he has strongly and advisedly entertained. In this 
 instance it is the more striking because of the respectable 
 countenance which had already been given to the necessarian 
 theory. 
 
 Not indeed by the ancients; who thought it enough to 
 body forth an overhanging Fate, which might counterwork 
 and defeat the designs of men, and indeed of Deity 2 . They 
 had not a sufficient store of supererogatory wits to devise 
 a system which, in nullifying the will and responsibility of 
 man, should deprive his nature of its dignity, and his life 
 of purpose. We can understand how such a system could 
 commend itself to the mind of Holbach and thereby furnish 
 a twin engine of destruction for all that is best in manhood. 
 He had not written when Butler constructed the Analogy. 
 But a very different person, and a fervent Christian, 
 Jonathan Edwards, had from the barren heights of Calvinism 
 planted a battery against the inward freedom of man, and 
 
 , I. vi. 1,8. 2 iEsch. Agam. 996. 
 
NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 269 
 
 had worked it with intensity of zeal and much wasted force 
 of dialectic. It may perhaps be enough, in the way of 
 reviewing past periods, if I pass by several names, famous 
 in various degrees, (such as those of Luther, Hobbes, and 
 Priestley,) and associated with the championship of the 
 ' slavery of the will,' and touch only upon the two I have 
 named, after first referring to the most artful among the 
 advocates of the necessarian system. 
 
 Hume, at the outset of his Essay on Liberty and Necessity \ 
 begins by contending that the controversy upon them is 
 purely verbal, and that all men have always been agreed 
 in upholding both according to the only reasonable sense 
 which can be put upon the terms 2 . But, in this apparently 
 equitable adjustment as between the two, the share allotted 
 to liberty is a meagre one. It means the liberty ' which is 
 universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a 
 prisoner or in chains 3 '; that is to say, it is liberty from 
 external constraint. Could so acute a man, so fond of 
 arguing as a mole burrows, namely out of sight, have sup- 
 posed that any single free-wilier would accept for grain 
 chaff such as this 1 
 
 His real argument is as follows. We know nothing of 
 causation, except by conjunction. This conjunction is always 
 found, when the whole of the case is taken into account, 
 to be uniform, so as to enable an inference to be drawn : 
 and these two, conjunction and inference, make up one idea 
 of causation ; (for which it would appear that we may safely 
 substitute sequence). In physics, this is manifest to every 
 observer. Mental operations are also seen to exhibit an 
 antecedent and a consequent. But here we have a class of 
 disputants who seek to insert between them a power which 
 they call will : whereas the antecedents of action, ! ambition, 
 avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit 4 ,' 
 have always been, and still are, the sources of action among 
 mankind. His language is not quite consistent : for presently 
 he allows the word will, and in a note 5 seems to carry over 
 
 1 'An Inquiry into the Human Understanding,' sect, viii: Philosophical 
 Works, vol. iv. p. 48. Boston and Edinburgh, 1854. 
 
 2 Page 93. s Page 109. * Page 94. 8 Page 98. 
 
270 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM [Pt. II. 
 
 his necessity from agents to observers, admits our seeming 
 to feel ' that the will itself is subject to nothing/ and seems 
 perplexed with the image of velleity. However, he returns 
 to his point, and argues thus. We admit necessity in physics, 
 because we can discover nothing that intervenes between 
 antecedent and consequent. The same incapacity attends our 
 examination of mental operations 1 ; so that we have in the 
 two cases one and the same reason for admitting the exist- 
 ence of necessity, which, he boldly states, has been universal 
 among philosophers 2 . The Essay ends with an apparent 
 endeavour to refer the direct causation of evil to the 
 Almighty Will, and with the usual artifice to avert reproach. 
 
 It is indeed self-evident, that between antecedent and 
 consequent nothing can intervene ; for if there were any 
 intervening power, they would no longer be consequent and 
 antecedent. But what Hume does, as in my citation above, 
 is to string together as motives a vitally defective list of 
 the factors which determine human action. We have, it is 
 true, convictions and emotions. But these do not of them- 
 selves govern conduct. They are liable to be summoned, and 
 are summoned, before the tribunal of the higher faculties, 
 especially of Conscience and Intellect, which are as it were 
 the right and the left hands of Will. When these have 
 acted, then the mental operation is complete ; and in every 
 true definition of that mental operation its freedom is in- 
 cluded. For of will, apart from several subsidiary questions, 
 freedom in assent or refusal, together with propelling power, 
 seem to constitute the essence. 
 
 I come now to Jonathan Edwards, who associated necessity 
 with strictness and fervour in religion, and who has left upon 
 record what may perhaps be considered the closest of all the 
 schemes of argument ever framed in support of the idea. 
 Its date is 1 754 3 . 
 
 The will, according to Edwards, is that 'by which the 
 
 1 Pages 96 seqq., 105. supposed to be essential to Moral 
 
 2 Page 105. Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward 
 
 3 A Careful and Strict Inquiry and Punishment, Praise and Blame, 
 into the Modern Prevailing Notions 1754. 
 
 of that Freedom of Will, which is 
 
Ch. VI.] NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 271 
 
 mind chooses any thing 1 ': and will can never be in dis- 
 accord with desire. In contemplating this identification of 
 the will with choice, we are reminded of the Greek Trpoaipeais, 
 and of its entire distinctness from j3ov\rj 2 and its derivatives. 
 Its determining cause is ' that motive, which, as it stands in 
 the view of the mind, is the strongest V ' The will always is 
 as the greatest apparent good/ And good, as he here uses 
 it. is what appears agreeable or pleasing 4 . The will always 
 follows ' the last dictate of the . . . whole faculty of percep- 
 tion or apprehension 5 .' Necessity is that which absolutely 
 will be, which is certain 6 . Philosophical necessity is 'the 
 full and fixed connexion between the subject and predicate 
 ... of a proposition which affirms something to be true V 
 Liberty is ' the power that any one has to do as he pleases V 
 This, he says, is true ; but he appears to speak only of external 
 liberty. The false notion, propagated by Arminians and 
 others, is 'that it consists in a self- determining power of 
 the will,' ' a certain sovereignty which the will has over itself 
 and its own acts, whereby it determines its own volitions V 
 
 He has now come fairly into sight of the enemy; and 
 availing himself, with a skill only equalled by his pertinacity, 
 of an open joint in the armour of definition, he propounds 
 what may justly be called his main and central argument ; 
 with a great redundance indeed of iteration, but such a 
 redundance as might appear more and more to shut up the 
 reader to his conclusion. In this account of will, he dis- 
 covers exactly what he wanted, a subject and a predicate, 
 indissolubly wedded by necessity. And so he goes to work. 
 
 It is plainly absurd, he contends, to suppose ' that the will 
 itself determines all the acts of the will.' ' If the will deter- 
 mines all its own free acts, then every free act of choice is 
 determined by a preceding act of choice, choosing that act.' 
 But that preceding act had, in its turn, a predecessor. So 
 every posterior act of choice, in series, is determined by 
 a prior act of choice. If not, we arrive at last at some act 
 of the will, determining all the consequent acts, but not 
 
 1 Works (London, 1817), vol. i. p. 127. 2 Horn. II. i. 5. 
 
 8 Works, i. 131. 4 Ibid. p. 133. 5 Ibid. p. 138. B Ibid. p. 139. 
 
 7 Ibid. p. 142. " Ibid. p. 152. 9 Ibid. p. 153. 
 
272 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM [Pt. II. 
 
 in itself self-determined, and therefore ex hypothesi not free. 
 The will, determining its own acts, determines them as it 
 determines other things that are under its command. But 
 that first or original act, which we suppose, not being self- 
 determined, is not free. And if it be not free, then, as it 
 governs all the rest, their freedom is tainted at its source, 
 and so the Arminian notion crumbles into dust *, 
 
 They speak, he says, of a sovereignty of the will. Be it 
 so : this will is either active or inactive in determining 
 volitions. If there be no action, there is no freedom ; but 
 if the will be active, then there is one will-act determining 
 another 2 . 
 
 Throughout, the force of his argument depends upon the 
 word ' self -determining/ and upon an illegitimate analysis of 
 that word. He will have something that determines, and 
 something that is determined, and he claims to separate 
 the one from the other. He proceeds to make them subject 
 and object, agent and patient. It amounts simply to this. 
 He does not confute self-determination ; but he denies it. 
 He declines to look at it as it is. There is no ground for 
 this arbitrary denial, unless it be the prima facie likelihood, 
 that where there is action, and a power set up by that action, 
 there is a true plurality, and we may accordingly argue from 
 the one to the other as separate entities. It is plausible to 
 say that, wherever something double is to be noted, there is 
 a double agent. But it is untrue. On the same ground all 
 spontaneity should be denied ; for, wherever spontaneity exists, 
 it is the self that sets the self in motion. The freedom of the 
 will is essentially postulated, and whatever cancels that free- 
 dom destroys the idea, and establishes one of those contradic- 
 tions, which Edwards is fond of charging upon his Arminians. 
 But the most effective answer to his contention for a plurality 
 inherent in the will itself is perhaps to be found in the 
 phenomenon of consciousness. Here there is an act of per- 
 ception, and there is a thing perceived ; but the one cannot 
 be severed from the other either in idea or in action. The 
 process of consciousness, as it exhibits itself in analysis, 
 wherein the percipient perceives itself, thus far begins and 
 
 1 Works, i. 157-159. 2 Ibid. p. 161. 
 
Ch.VI.] NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 273 
 
 ends within the same faculty, and raises metaphysically no 
 presumption of an originating action from without. If in 
 truth we substitute the word ' originating ' for the word ' self- 
 determining/ we sweep away at once that structure of 
 argument, which Edwards has reared upon the basis of 
 a fallacy. That fallacy is due to the particular form chosen 
 for the construction of a phrase apparently on account of 
 its easy significance, and it finds no prise if we employ 
 another phrase, less popular but more exact. 
 
 Edwards contends that foreknowledge implies necessity. 
 It would seem that here he is entangling himself in the 
 consequences of the relation he has arbitrarily set up be- 
 tween necessity and certainty. It appears to me that in 
 setting up this proposition he unwittingly forswears his own 
 scheme. For foreknowledge no otherwise implies certainty 
 than as it is implied by all knowledge ; and Divine know- 
 ledge carries it no more than human. A knows that B is 
 at dinner ; but this knowledge is in no manner or degree the 
 cause of his dining. Therefore we have here a necessity 
 without causation. What title therefore have we, on the 
 showing of the fatalists themselves, anywhere to draw in 
 necessity in order to supply a cause 1 Why associate necessity 
 with cause, when we find that through its relation to cer- 
 tainty it operates in full while standing in no connexion 
 with causing*? As we have seen that necessity does not 
 imply causation, it follows that, where cause is lacking, 
 necessity does not fill the gap. 
 
 In the whole of these remarks it must be steadily borne 
 in mind that will, when we speak of freedom of the will, 
 means that paramount agency which takes effect after de- 
 liberation, and has no connexion with that lax use of the 
 term in which it is made to include a multitude of impelling 
 forces such as bias, prejudice, inclination, impulse, sympathy, 
 desire, not yet co-ordinated and placed in line by the action 
 of the higher faculties. 
 
 D'Holbach, writing (1770) l after Hume (1751), reproduces 
 many of his ideas, but with inferior skill and without his 
 
 1 D'Holbach (pseudonym Mirabaud), Systeme de la Nature, Part I, chaps, 
 xi, xii. Two vols. 
 
 T 
 
274 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM [Pt. II. 
 
 subterfuges. He pleads the equality at all points of physical 
 and mental laws l . There is one idea of will, a pre'tendu 
 sens intime ; but it is totally delusive. If I have a burning 
 thirst, I am compelled to drink 2 . Mucius Scaevola, in his 
 strange action, could not help keeping his hand in the fire, 
 any more than if it had been held there by force 3 . Choice 
 is a phantom. Deliberation is only suspension. All irregu- 
 larities are explained by going up to the source, which is 
 always necessary 4 . Our acts are very various, but the spring 
 of them is uniform 5 . The source of error lies in regarding 
 will as the premier mobile 6 . Once he thinks he has found 
 a summary adjustment of the whole matter 7 . ' It is will 
 that somehow (telle quelle) makes men deliberate : delibera- 
 tion leads to choice, and choice to action. But here he makes 
 will play the part of premier mobile in the wrong place. It 
 is affection, passion, knowledge, prejudice, and the like, which 
 put the mind in motion. Will becomes the premier mobile 
 immediately before action. He employs the term fatalism 
 with freedom ; which Hume had prudently avoided. 
 
 He is most diffuse in the detailed application of his 
 arguments, without adding in the least to their force. He 
 praises, and indeed to cover the nakedness of his system he 
 is compelled to praise, virtue, experience, education. But, 
 as to everything that is to be done in this world, why does 
 he not fold his arms, and spare himself the trouble of 
 deliberation or speech or anything else ? For necessity will 
 do his work on his behalf. When the issue has been fixed 
 beforehand, why deliberate 1 There is, as Butler observes, 
 much waste in the universe: but, under the scheme of 
 fatalism, is not all deliberation waste 1 It produces no result ; 
 but ought any philosophy to acknowledge or admit opera- 
 tions which have no result, means which exercise no influence 
 over ends 1 If I am told the means are pre-appointed as 
 well as the ends, I reply that of that I am already aware ; 
 that is not the point of the objection : the objection is, that 
 the system of fatalism is loaded with a weight of what it 
 reduces to merely cumbrous and useless paraphernalia: for 
 
 1 Vol. i. pp. 186, 2ii. 2 Pages 190, 215. 3 Page 204 n. 
 
 4 Pages 192, 206. 5 Page 208. ' Page 200. ? Page 219 n. 
 
Ch. VI.] NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 275 
 
 no purpose is served by the immense apparatus which, under 
 the established system of human life, is put into play before 
 action. If I am told that deliberation trains character, 
 I reply that all training power depends on the freedom of 
 choice, which- is its basis and pre-condition at every step *. 
 
 The opinions of Mr. Leslie Stephen on the question of 
 Determinism are those of a very recent, as well as able 
 expositor. As they have been declared in his recent article 2 , 
 they may be summed up as follows : 
 
 1. Acts, done under coercion from without, are neither 
 moral nor immoral. 
 
 2. Free-will confounds causation with coercion, and breaks 
 the chain of natural causation. 
 
 3. How can man, if constantly governed by an omnipotent 
 Being, be other than a puppet ? 
 
 4. Action proceeds from character; and character is not 
 made by us, but determined by the Creator. 
 
 The first of these propositions may be admitted as to all 
 true coercion ; such as the case cited by Mr. Stephen, where 
 physical force guides the pen of an unwilling writer. 
 
 But the advocate of free-will, while admitting that it 
 works at a presumptive disadvantage owing to the de- 
 generacy of nature through sin, and to difficulties of environ- 
 ment, entirely denies that it is destroyed or vitally disabled ; 
 nay, under the Christian scheme, asserts that its infirmities 
 are repaired, and the obstacles to its action neutralized, by 
 a Divine aid, open without stint to those who ask it. 
 
 In man, character is a growth, the result of acts performed 
 in series. For the choices of those acts, and the shaping of 
 his character through them, he is provided with governing 
 faculties: with conscience to sever right from wrong by 
 internal action, and with the self -determining power of will 
 
 1 It was the method of D'Hol- is expressly ascribed to him by 
 
 bach (see Biogr. Universelle) to Grimm. It appeared in 1770 : 
 
 publish his works, when he was but he had already set out, with- 
 
 apprehensive of consequences, out publishing, its main principles 
 
 under the names of dead men, in a Catechisme dated 1765. 
 
 and with supposititious names of 2 Nineteenth Century, Jan. 1896, 
 
 place. The Systeme de la Nature pp. 111-117. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM [Px. II. 
 
 to accept or repudiate the authority of conscience, and to 
 place action in harmony or in conflict with it. 
 
 Mr. Stephen's argument assumes that a government by 
 omnipotence must be an absolute government. Not only is 
 this denied by the advocates of freedom in the will, but it 
 involves a fallacy so hopeless as to amount to a palpable 
 solecism. For it assumes that a Being, omnipotent ex hypo- 
 thesi, has not power to bring into existence any agent who 
 shall be an originating agent. 
 
 The necessarian argument belongs, in truth, to that method 
 of abstract reasoning which is in all cases so unsafe a weapon 
 in hands like ours : and uses it, too, for purposes which, as 
 I have shown, stand self-condemned. 
 
 On the other hand, the advocate of free-will stands on the 
 ground of the general experience of mankind, which attests 
 its own existence by the only kind of knowledge that in 
 general we possess; not a direct perception of essences, but 
 an experience of conditions and effects l . 
 
 The necessarian theory now most commonly passes under 
 the name of Determinism. This appellation does not appear 
 to have merits sufficient to render it preferable to the older 
 titles which the system had borne, and may therefore seem 
 as if it had been invented in order to give a certain freshness 
 and respectability to what had been heavily battered and 
 somewhat discredited. With this fact before me I offer a few 
 remarks upon it. 
 
 For persistence and tenacity in pressing the necessarian 
 argument, Jonathan Edwards may still be cited. If human 
 action be immediately dependent upon the will, the will as 
 he would urge is determined by a balance of reasons. That 
 is to say reasons are placed, like weights, in scales, and the 
 
 1 The most forcible part of Mr. transmitted from Adam to his 
 Stephen's argument appears to be descendants, Mr. Stephen contends 
 that in which he deals with another that such an ingrained fault could 
 subject, the narrative in Genesis, not be represented as the con- 
 chapter iii, of the temptation and sequence of a single act, but only 
 transgression of primitive man. of continued and habitual trans- 
 The doctrine of Christian theology gression ; and therefore that the 
 being that the fault impressed by narrative must be taken as para- 
 sin upon human nature has been bolical. 
 
Ch. VI] NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 277 
 
 overweight invariably in the last result carries the will and 
 determines action. In vain do we plead that there is in the 
 mind something extraneous to and apart from the con- 
 siderations which are compared and weighed one against 
 another, namely, the power, resulting in the act, of decision. 
 It is admitted that the mind has estimated the reasons, and 
 ultimately behaves to each of them according to this esti- 
 mate. But we are now dealing with the eventual act which 
 takes place after they have all been brought into juxta- 
 position, and have had their several ranks and values 
 assigned to them. And at this stage of the proceedings, 
 as it is urged, the final act, decisive as to result, adds 
 nothing to any of the reasons either way. They remain as 
 they were; and as the decision follows upon them without 
 having anything added, but in simple accordance with the 
 overweight, whichever way it may incline, it must be due to 
 that overweight ; and is a mere expression of it, as the hands 
 on the face of the clock exhibit the exact preponderance at 
 the moment in the action of the works, and is not a cause, 
 but only an effect. 
 
 It may perhaps even be conceded, in reply to the foregoing 
 argument, that the action of the will is in accordance with 
 the overweight or apparent overweight of reasons, and adds 
 nothing of the like kind to the weight already lodged in 
 either scale. It would be necessary, in order to its making 
 such an addition, that the thing we call will should be 
 homogeneous with the things we call reasons, so far at 
 least that they should be commensurable ; capable of being 
 described, or measured, under common terms. But the 
 reasons are the pleading power, and the will is the separate 
 sovereign and deciding power; and they may be compared 
 respectively to the advocates on one side and the judge on 
 the other, the comparison only requiring that we regard the 
 judge's decision ab extra. We do not, for the present purpose, 
 enter into the interior action of the several minds. 
 
 It is admitted that, in general, the human being as an 
 agent acts under the habitual and unquestioning impression 
 that he is free ; and so nearly does this belief approach to 
 universality that, if it be untrue, the case is without example 
 as an instance of profound and cruel fraud perpetrated by 
 
278 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM [Pt. II. 
 
 nature upon her children. But minds that are capable of 
 resting in the necessarian opinion are not likely to be 
 displaced from it by apprehension of such a consequence. 
 Nor is there any necessity for resort to this particular topic. 
 The advocate of free agency, who may be called in respect 
 to subjective impressions the advocate of the human race, 
 has only to face the facts as they stand. The will is 
 a causal agent. I will not say it is incapable of being 
 subjected to pressure, nor deny that the pressure may be 
 long, severe, and trying in the extreme. Nay more, it may 
 be that, when a character of feeble tissue has been long- 
 indulged in the habit of remissness, the will like other 
 disused and neglected organs may dwindle, and its faculty 
 may descend to a point indefinitely low. Or it may be that 
 the will requires for its normal action the support of the 
 moral faculties in whose interest it has been given, and that, 
 when these have sunk into impotence, or are perverted into 
 a wrong direction, they may become the means of paralyzing 
 or undermining its action, so that the forces of inducement, 
 deception, and intimidation may carry the man away as he 
 would be carried when not on his feet by a current which, 
 in the erect position that nature gave him, he might have 
 withstood. To admit this is to admit that through original 
 weakness, combined with evil environment, and still more 
 through the growth of depraved habit originally tolerated 
 and at length growing to be tyrannical, our humanity may 
 lapse into a condition so abnormal, as to require that even 
 the mapping out of our elementary faculties should be re- 
 adjusted. But the cases we are now considering are, from 
 the higher and more normal ranks down to those of average 
 action in average men, cases of things done not in passion 
 but with some moderate degree of reflection. This is the 
 way with ordinary human action ; we may deal separately 
 with extremes. And we may here fearlessly observe that the 
 will is the commander and the arbiter of all those cruder 
 forces by which it may be surrounded and solicited, but by 
 which, except when it has forgotten self-assertion and abdi- 
 cated supremacy, it cannot be dethroned. And only then, if 
 at all, in consequence of defects which might have been 
 supplied, or of concessions which might have been withheld. 
 
Ch.VI.] NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 279 
 
 I need not undertake metaphysically to examine the 
 nature of that heterogeneity by which the deliberative will 
 of man is exempted from the danger of forcible supersession. 
 In few words, we may say, that it is a force not homo- 
 geneous with the forces that can be brought against it. 
 Its primary and ordinary aspect is that of a difference 
 analogous to those differences of natural species which 
 disable them from intermingling. So that a will cannot 
 be coerced, as an idea cannot be burned, nor an inundation 
 confuted. Whether this is or is not so in ultimate analysis, 
 need not now be inquired. There might conceivably be 
 other adjustments by which the same end might be secured. 
 It is I suppose conceivable that, without an absolute incom- 
 mensurability between will and motives such as have usually 
 been placed in competition with it, there might be some 
 limit upon the amount of force which these might attain, 
 while the will might be so profoundly and inextricably 
 rooted in the general structure of the living agent as to 
 make it ineradicable without tearing away the life itself: 
 so that it would be as secure against violence, as the rock 
 upon the coast towering on high is secure against the 
 puny efforts of those, be they few or many, who might 
 struggle by thrusting to displace it. I do not rest upon 
 any alternative hypothesis, but revert to what I have called 
 difference of species. So the will stands as a primal cause, 
 and its freedom as an ultimate fact, neither requiring nor 
 admitting any outlying explanation except this, that thus 
 it was launched into existence by the sovereign providence 
 of God. 
 
 Romanes, in his Thoughts on Religion \ presents, without 
 adopting, the objection that if the will be causal, the multitude 
 of first causes must produce   a new and never-ending stream 
 of causality ' which sooner or later must throw the kosmos 
 into a chaos, ' through the cumulative intersection of the 
 streams.' The supposed danger seems to depend on the idea 
 that the aggregate result of these limited individual causalities 
 might be either infinite, or so great as to threaten the security 
 of the natural order. But we see man possessed of a power, 
 
 1 Page 130. 
 
280 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM [Pt. II. 
 
 to which no limit can be assigned, of evolving independent 
 forces which he marshals and organizes under his own 
 direction with a command, or grip, such as he could never 
 exercise over the consequences of his volitions generally. He 
 does this by his knowledge of existing physical antecedents, 
 or causal agencies. Yet the forces of nature remain undis- 
 turbed and supreme. Again, the effect of human volitions, 
 as a general rule, is not, like the snowball, to gather as they 
 roll, but rather, like the stone thrown into the water, to 
 produce a series of concentric circles with lengthening radius 
 but diminishing efficiency, and soon becoming imperceptible ; 
 or, like the same stone thrown upwards into the air, and 
 gradually but soon losing its upward motive force by friction 
 and the regular influence of gravitation, which brings its 
 movement to an end. And, more generally, if there be 
 a providential adjustment of the aggregate of all existing 
 forces such as to produce an equilibrium of the mundane 
 system, if the inner contents of the earth do not beyond 
 narrow limits disturb its crust, why must we apprehend the 
 insufficiency of the power which has hitherto proved sufficient, 
 both in the material and in the moral sphere, to maintain the 
 balance of forces needed for the natural order. Nay more. 
 "Whether these volitional forces be caused or uncaused, there 
 is no difference in their amount, and the admission in 
 philosophy of the freedom of the will makes no objective 
 change whatever, either in that freedom or in its force. So 
 there is nothing here to disturb the doctrine that the true 
 idea of will is that of a faculty which, in its usual condition 
 and operation, is not determined from without, and carries 
 along with it in full the consequence of moral responsibility 
 for its acts. 
 
 In the department of thought, nothing is of more vital 
 consequence than truly to apprehend the nature of volition. 
 For it is to this agency that believers in religion ascribe not 
 only the movement of the universe but the fact of its 
 existence. The will of God is the fountain-head, up to which 
 we may, but beyond which we cannot, trace any question of 
 agency or of act. The only question, which for us can lie 
 beyond it, is that of the relation between the Divine will and 
 the moral principle in accordance with which it works, it 
 
Ch.VI] NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 281 
 
 being, according to Butler l ' determined ' by the reason of the 
 case. But when our author uses that expression I do not 
 imagine that he intends to treat the morality of the Divine 
 character as to assign to the will only a position of sub- 
 ordination, or to enter upon the ground of the arguments of 
 Cudworth which may seem to have that tendency. We 
 should, I think, understand the Bishop to refer simply to the 
 absolute certainty of the accordance of the two; if so, the 
 phrase ' determined by ' means is in entire accordance or 
 harmony with, and there is no reference to any question 
 either of priority or of superiority as between these two great 
 factors : nor, I think, should either of them be regarded as 
 extraneous to the other in any sense known to us. 
 
 When we think or speak of will as it exists in the Deity, 
 we are in little danger of confusing its true nature, as being 
 in us the sovereign faculty which immediately determines 
 action, and takes cognizance of those inclinations, desires, or 
 propensions which predispose us to it. These, however jejune 
 our notions of a God may be, we exclude from all interference 
 ab extra with Divine action. But, when we come to argue 
 upon the constitution or acts of the human species, we find 
 ourselves in the midst of an almost hopeless confusion, not 
 due to the nature of the case, but arising from the habitual 
 neglect to distinguish between these subaltern impulsions, 
 and the power which is seated in a region above them, which 
 calls them to account, and rules or, if need be, overrules them. 
 
 The proper office of the will, in its proper sense, is to direct 
 thought into action, or, in other words, to direct action, both 
 mental and external, in accordance with the laws of right in 
 the spiritual and moral sphere, of truth in the region of the 
 intellect ; and of beauty, as some would add, in its own proper 
 department ; but this last we need not include in the present 
 discussion. The will, therefore, is something entirely distinct 
 from the reason as understood by Butler, which includes the 
 whole investigating faculty, in whatever province it may be 
 employed. With investigation the will has nothing to do, 
 save this, that it has rightfully to accept, or wrongfully to 
 refute and disallow its proper results. As it is the action of 
 
 1 Analogy, I. vi. 16 n. 
 
282 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM [Pt. II. 
 
 the will, whether positive by determination, or negative by the 
 abdication of its office, and handing over the reins to some 
 other directing power, which entails responsibility, so the law 
 of duty is the principal object appointed for the standing 
 cognizance of the will. Not only does will in us lie next to 
 action, but, as external action may be intercepted by over- 
 ruling power, to will is truly to act ; and no other acts than 
 those so done amount to action in its duly developed sense. 
 
 How then stands the will in relation to faith, belief, or 
 opinion 1 
 
 And I may be permitted also to disclaim at the outset even 
 the remotest shade of concurrence with those who set up an 
 opposition between faith and reason ; sometimes in a pre- 
 mature anxiety to prevent the intrusion of one faculty into 
 the province of another, but sometimes also, under cover of 
 an affected anxiety to save faith from invasion by the under- 
 standing, in such a manner as to undermine it altogether by 
 leading us to understand that there is a radical antagonism 
 between the two. It is indeed a remarkable circumstance 
 that the same age and country should have produced on the 
 one hand Bishop Butler, who perhaps of all Christian writers 
 has most boldly declared the prerogatives of reason and the 
 reasonableness of faith ; on the other hand the two men who 
 have gone such daring lengths in setting up the false and 
 mischievous idea, that faith works upon principles which will 
 not bear rational investigation. It is sad to connect with 
 such tendencies the two distinguished names of Hume and 
 Gibbon. 
 
 It is sometimes held l that there cannot be faith without 
 a strong concurrent action of the will. This proposition 
 appears to me to miss its aim through failing to distinguish 
 between the several stages or degrees, if not kinds, of faith. In 
 advancing from one of these stages to another, the composition 
 of faith comes to be enriched and enlarged by the attraction 
 of new ingredients. Initial faith is one thing, and Jules 
 furmata, faith full formed, is in this sense another, that it 
 includes what infant faith did not include. A distinction of 
 this kind is recognized in the remarkable definition furnished 
 
 Thoughts on Religion, p. 138. 
 
Ch. VI.] NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 283 
 
 by the Epistle to the Hebrews l ; ' Now faith is the substance 
 of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' By the 
 word translated evidence appears to be intended mental sight. 
 But this description of sight may surely accrue without 
 a process strictly moral : whereas when we deal in the first 
 part of the definition, which is indeed twofold, with the 
 mention of things hoped for, we at once perceive that moral 
 elements have been already introduced into the case. For 
 hope implies inclination or desire. This, however, and not 
 the sovereign action of will, the propension towards heavenly 
 things, is the moral element supplied. These things hoped for, 
 which are future and remote, faith brings into the present ; 
 this definition dealing with the matter of time, as the other 
 does, so to speak, with space. We have here the affection 
 which draws us towards certain things, and the understand- 
 ing finds it reasonable that we should thus be drawn. Action 
 is not involved, and the will as an active faculty has as yet 
 no place, except it be in so far as it may give its sanction to 
 the findings of the intellect. 
 
 But the graver branch of the question is whether there can 
 be any act of faith without the concurrence of the acting and 
 governing will. I submit that there may. I think that an 
 apt illustration of the frame of mind now in my view is 
 supplied by the remarkable words recorded of Napoleon the 
 Great, who said : ' Je ne crois pas aux religions ; mais qui est 
 ce qui a fait tout cela ? ' For here we have on the one hand 
 a full satisfaction of the intellect upon the question whether 
 there is a God ; on the other hand no recognition of any of 
 His moral titles, of any obligation to regard His word or 
 will. Thus far then we have an act of faith, but one not 
 presenting to us as it stands any element properly moral. 
 The force of the teleological argument, either from nature 
 or at any rate from the providential dispositions, with which 
 man is girt about in the ordinary government of the world, 
 may perhaps without any movement specifically moral, and 
 on grounds of pure reckoning only, lead a man, as a rational 
 being, to the conclusion that, whether he will or not, he has 
 to deal in the experience of life with a power able to control 
 
 1 Heb. xi. 1. 
 
284 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM [Pt. II. 
 
 his destinies, and actually exercising an influence upon them, 
 which seems likely to be constant throughout his present 
 existence, and at the very least to suggest the prolongations 
 of that life beyond the grave, with continued and possibly 
 much nearer relations in the future state to that power. 
 
 There is nothing, as it appears to me, either impossible or 
 strange in the supposition I am about to sketch in outline. 
 Let us suppose a person of good intelligence and education, 
 whose mind, from circumstances, has never been turned at all 
 to religion, and is a blank with regard to it. He reads that 
 part of the Analogy which refers to the natural government 
 of the world ; and he is struck by the indications of system 
 and the signs of direction to certain ends which it presents. 
 This is a consideration limited in its nature by the subject 
 of the powers it exhibits to us ; and, anterior to any con- 
 sideration of moral elements, he is struck by the question of 
 calculation, by the pros and contras, as he might with real, 
 but in no way moral, attention and concern examine the 
 risks and likelihoods of a journey by a particular route. He 
 comes, on a principle of common sense, a sense of his own 
 interest, without any religious bias, to the conclusion that the 
 matter is one which deserves further consideration. As that 
 consideration is resumed and prolonged, and as it comes to 
 include, together with the exterior facts, the balances of suffer- 
 ing or enjoyment, a pretty clear view is obtained of the moral 
 elements of the case, and the general laws under which, not 
 uniformly, but on the whole sensibly, good fortune, or at the 
 least hope and solace, appear to accompany the path of virtue, 
 and uneasiness, growing into misery, the path of sin. The 
 door into his whole mind has now been opened, and the moral 
 picture, by its affinities with the better parts of our nature, 
 assumes an aspect of beauty and attraction in his eyes, so that 
 he becomes a believer, and follows the subject onwards, even 
 to the acceptance of the entire Christian Revelation. Thus we 
 have before us one continuous growth, the character of which 
 is largely modified as it advances. When it began, and in the 
 first of its stages, there was either no moral element involved, 
 or it was so slight as to be imperceptible ; but it passed on 
 from embryo to a kind of infant consciousness, and then, 
 through many more stages, into a full-formed conviction, 
 
Ch.VI.] NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 285 
 
 backed by all the energies of heart and mind. It is hard, 
 or not even possible, to trace these stages. ' The wind bloweth 
 where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst 
 not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth : so is every 
 one that is born of the Spirit 1 .' It may be difficult to 
 pronounce whether, before emotion and desire came to be 
 excited, faith had in such a case rudimentally begun ; but 
 it is surely plain that the basis of the operation in its incep- 
 tion was, at the very least, mainly intellectual ; that conviction 
 at least of a duty to persevere in the investigation may have 
 preceded any longings for a particular conclusion, and that 
 only in its riper state is faith saturated with morality. First 
 it opens the door to Christ, then it falls down and worships 
 Him, at last it forsakes every adverse attraction and desire 
 to follow Him, with the full concurrence of the will properly 
 so called, which stamps the covenant, and sets the man free 
 for collected action. So much for faith. 
 
 Belief, in its popular use, is understood to imply faith 
 as a living knowledge, together with an harmonious will as 
 to the matters believed ; and unbelief is commonly named so 
 as to imply, in the region of the will, a flavour of aversion. 
 But if we take belief more strictly, it is defined by Bishop 
 Pearson 2 to be assent to that which is credible, as being 
 credible. This seems to be a definition requiring no moral 
 qualification, a vision without love, or even possibly with the 
 reverse of love : ' the devils also believe, and tremble 3 .' Here 
 it is evident that no moral element whatever is engaged. 
 Belief seems to be doubly related to conviction ; in that, 
 firstly, it demands less absolutely the exclusion of doubt and 
 the undisputed possession of the entire mental field : and 
 secondly, agreeing with it in being capable in the last resort 
 of complete severance from moral elements. 
 
 Opinion is a word of larger range and looser texture. As 
 belief falls, in the respect just indicated, before conviction, so 
 opinion f&ds below belief, has a larger toleration of doubt, 
 does not acknowledge in as stringent a form the obligation to 
 consequent action, is scarcely applicable with any propriety 
 to truth when at once obvious and necessary, belongs to the 
 
 1 John iii. 8. 2 On the Creed. * James ii. 19. 
 
286 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM [Pt. II. 
 
 early stages of investigations as yet but partially developed, 
 obtains no wide favour in the higher regions of philosophy, 
 and, as to theology, remains wholly (so to speak) in the 
 outer courts. 
 
 If it be said that this exposition on faith and its congeners 
 is separate from the direct issue raised by determinism, 
 I shall not contest the point ; but only observe that an 
 analysis of these mental operations, and an exhibition of the 
 active relations they exhibit between the human soul and 
 a personal Deity, place us in view of a state of things whicli 
 if touched by the hard mechanical forces of necessity seems 
 like a garden blasted into a desert by a whirlwind. If it 
 be replied that this scheme was embraced by the piety of 
 Calvinism, I answer in my turn that that acceptance cannot 
 well be appraised, without an examination of the whole 
 subsequent history of Calvinism. 
 
 The fundamental contention of this essay is, that the will 
 is a faculty not homogeneous with intellect, passion, affection, 
 or conscience ; possessed of an originating power of self- 
 action ; entitled and enabled to carry with it the whole man ; 
 the immediate precursor of his action; and eventually in- 
 commensurable with what are commonly (for example, by 
 Jonathan Edwards) called motives, and may also be called 
 inducements. 
 
 If objection be taken to my claim of incommensurability 
 between two descriptions of human faculty or energy ad- 
 mitted to have a power of interaction inherent in them, 
 I reply by what seems to me an answer conclusive. If there 
 be some other case where such interaction (or if not such 
 interaction, yet a true action, commanding or influential) is 
 undeniable, and while yet there is an incommensurability 
 that cannot be denied, then all semblance of objection to my 
 contention, drawn from this source, is done away. Now 
 nothing can be more plainly, and nothing more absolutely, 
 incommensurable than the will on one side, and the muscles 
 of the body on the other. The exertion of the muscles is the 
 immediate antecedent of our bodily actions. Behind them 
 lie the nerves, which supply a channel or vehicle for the 
 commands of the will, and transmit them to these unresisting 
 instruments. Behind the nerves we have the brain. If there 
 
Ch. VI] NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 287 
 
 be in this case any other intermediary, it is one which has 
 hitherto remained too subtle for detection. But the material 
 point is not whether the links that form the chain are more 
 or fewer : it is whether the connexion of the chain itself with 
 that to which, through universal and familiar experience, 
 we know it to be attached, is clear and indisputable. Of 
 course I do not deny that there is also involuntary opera- 
 tion of the muscles also: partly normal, as, for example, in 
 the action of the heart (which, however, may be suspended 
 or even stopped by the will), and the circulation of the blood 
 depending on it: partly abnormal, like walking in sleep. 
 But there is also a large and habitual action of the muscles in 
 obedience to the will, where the incommensurability is one 
 of the very plainest facts of psychology, and where the power 
 of command is paramount. A relation of incommensurability 
 like this in essence, though not attended with all the same 
 conditions, is exactly what I assert to exist between ordinary 
 motive or inducement, and the faculty of will sovereign in the 
 active, as that of conscience is in the judicial sphere. 
 
 If I am asked for authorities on behalf of this contention, 
 I may admit that among the ancients, as the freedom of the 
 human will, within the circuit of the faculties of man, hardly 
 ever was denied, so its attitude and office in relation to the 
 rest of those faculties may never have been strictly formulated. 
 At the same time, I am disposed to suggest that the irpoaipuns, 
 or choice, of Aristotle, even if nowhere scientifically defined, 
 seems to discharge not indeed the whole, but a part both 
 vital and the first in order of the exact office which I have 
 here treated as belonging to the will. And this TtpoaLpuns, 
 or choice, is never subjected to coercion from within. 
 Amongst the moderns it is obvious that necessarianism is 
 the opinion of a sect at most, perhaps only of individuals 
 sporadically distributed: and every one who upholds the 
 freedom of the will, asserts in substance the contention 
 now upheld, whether the assertion be formal or only im- 
 plied. I suppose the truth to be that never, or perhaps 
 never until quite lately, has necessarianism weighed so 
 sensibly in the aggregate of human thought, as to require 
 more to be done in reply than to furnish (as Butler for one 
 has furnished) the practical confutation of the doctrine. 
 
288 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM [Pt. II. 
 
 But objection may also be taken at a point nearer to the 
 source, and we may justly be called upon to specify how far 
 we demand for this incommensurable will a power of giving 
 effect to its behests without limitation, failure, or control. 
 For such is the nature of the command which the will exer- 
 cises over the muscles of the body. Do we claim for its 
 office, in regard to motives and inducements generally, 
 such prerogatives at large ? 
 
 I answer by distinguishing. So far as the empire over 
 motive and inducement are concerned, the will is absolute, 
 as in some despotic countries, given their admitted traditional 
 usages, there is absolutely no provision for resistance to the 
 orders of the sovereign. But in the sovereign himself there 
 may be something, or there may be the lack of something, 
 which defeats the sovereignty and makes it ineffective. Only, 
 the something, which disables, does not lie in any intrinsic 
 force lying outside the will in the motives and inducements. 
 
 Were the will so conditioned as in every case, or possibly 
 as in any case, to exclude the action of all disabling causes, 
 it would be out of analogy with all other human faculties 
 of the present dispensation, inasmuch as it would be perfect. 
 These disabling causes may be numerous. They are certainly 
 grave ; as will appear sufficiently from the cases of disability, 
 or reduced ability, that I shall quote. The will may be 
 subject to surprises ; subject to inertness ; subject to decay ; 
 without being subject to coercion. And so it may be that, 
 from the want of timely and sufficient action of the will, 
 it may fail to take its legitimate place between motive 
 or inducement on one side, and conduct on the other; and 
 conduct may be moved, or may be guided, by the forces 
 inherent in, or allowed to belong to, motive or inducement. 
 These impulsions upon conduct may bear a certain analogy 
 to the action of will upon muscle, as for example in this 
 that, in the absence or dormancy of the legitimate sovereign, 
 they may exercise over conduct an absolute command, limited 
 only by the amount of the forces they possess, as, in the case 
 of the muscles, the action of the will is limited by their 
 physical capacity. 
 
 Take the first of the disabling causes I have mentioned. 
 The will may be subject to surprises. It is but imperfectly 
 
Ch. VI.] NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 289 
 
 and partially that we discharge the office of rational and 
 deliberative beings. The will may be asleep, like a sentry 
 on his post, though it ought always to be awake ; even as 
 Zeus, the Olympian sovereign who, agreeably to his office, 
 is awake amid the slumbering gods in the Second Iliad, 
 but is inveigled into sleep in the Fourteenth, and befooled 
 accordingly. During this dormancy of the will, passion, 
 affection, interest, prejudice, misconception, may carry the 
 man into action without the proper warrant. 
 
 I also submit for consideration whether the will may in 
 certain cases be defeated, be in fact outrun, by mere rapidity 
 of action on the part of an inferior faculty. The most ready 
 illustration is perhaps to be found in the case of hot and 
 hasty temper, especially when it is only a question of words, 
 for words are winged in a sense, or to an effect, that blows 
 can rarely be. It is usually the function of the judgement 
 to be the immediate arbiter of temper by repressing its 
 undue action : but the suppression of judgement by temper 
 appears very commonly to be absolute, and this not upon 
 a struggle, but by anticipation and rapidity. If the same 
 thing may in fact apply to the will, we must be conscious that 
 there is here no relief from responsibility, since a standing dis- 
 cipline of temper is among the most obvious of human duties. 
 
 Again, why may we not suppose that the will is subject 
 to something in the nature of exhaustion and fatigue 1 As 
 we find a stalwart reasoner like Butler occasionally adopting 
 a bad reason, though it be with him as a black swan (for 
 example, that of the probabilities against the life of Caesar 
 as it actually was), it is conceivable that lapses of this 
 kind may be due to a fatigue of will, which has been brought 
 about by severe and long-continued coercion of choice in 
 abstruse or nicely balanced subject-matter; or, and perhaps 
 more commonly, amidst great difficulties of environment. It 
 is true that in such a case the faculty or power is not with- 
 drawn. If it is subjected to a momentary abdication, that 
 abdication is not involuntary. It might have been avoided, 
 for instance, by a summons at the moment for more strength, 
 which is among the satellites of the will, or by a better 
 adjustment beforehand between time and labour. A faculty 
 going astray is not on that account to be treated as a can- 
 
 u 
 
290 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM [Pt. II. 
 
 celled faculty: even a careful calculator will sometimes fall 
 into an error in a sum. 
 
 But further, and in a more general way, I suppose we may 
 maintain that the will is, like every other portion of the 
 human constitution, capable of being modified in connexion 
 with habit ; is capable of, and liable to, education. It may 
 become more or less prompt, more or less vigilant, more or 
 less vigorous, more or less persistent, more or less com- 
 prehensive in survey before action, more or less accurate 
 in its apprehension of the rights and wrongs presented to 
 it with authority by the conscience, though not forced upon 
 it ; of the true or false, the beautiful or deformed, the isolated 
 or the sympathetic, the pleasurable or the painful, submitted 
 to it for acceptance or rejection in all cases where they are 
 associated with conduct, or where they demand a recognition 
 other than that of simple apprehension. In a word there 
 is a discipline and probation of the will as of the other 
 faculties ; but with a case which, though it may be regarded 
 as a counterpart or reflection of theirs, also differs from 
 theirs in this that, while it presides over the whole of their 
 training, its own is self- administered. 
 
 Brief notice may be taken of another question, lying 
 between the will and all the other faculties which bring 
 as it were to the tribunal of choice all matters of motive 
 or inducement. It has been part of the hypothesis above 
 explained that there exists in the human being a separate 
 will-force which, as a superior in kind, overrules and over- 
 rides all the forces belonging to motives and inducements, con- 
 sidered in themselves. It seems also conceivable that the will 
 is concerned in the award of those forces themselves to the 
 separate faculties, and thus in the exercise of a preventive, 
 as well as an ultimate and overruling power. But if there 
 be any truth in this alternative view, I do not regard it 
 as disposing of the whole case ; for it seems an established 
 fact of experience that the will may be de facto in abeyance, 
 and that conduct is, or may be, prompted in part by passion 
 without will. It therefore follows that, when we speak 
 of the freedom of the will, we deal with that which in the 
 abstract is true universally, but which in particular and 
 exceptional cases may fail to be operative. 
 
Ch.VI.] NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 291 
 
 And, after all, we may be pressed with the extreme nature 
 of the difficulties against which will has to contend, some- 
 times under the most adverse circumstances. It is constantly 
 compelled to acknowledge that the conclusion which it rejects 
 is sustained by considerations, which are at once legitimate 
 and forcible in themselves, though they are certainly or 
 probably outweighed, in either or both respects, by the 
 reasons on the other side. Here there is a doubt in fact, 
 but none in principle. Doubts in principle arise, when the 
 reason cannot formulate a firm, even if obscure, moral judge- 
 ment upon particulars. These become more frequent as we 
 ascend into the higher circles of life. It is perhaps difficult 
 to name a case more palpable than that supplied by the case 
 of Charles the First in assenting to the Act for the attainder 
 of Strafford. Yet even such a case does not perhaps exhibit 
 at its maximum the amount of pressure which may solicit 
 the will, and may even seem in some minds to apply a force 
 majeure to its action, and wring from it a consent it declines 
 to give. Such cases may occur in the form of extreme 
 physical torture, or of the lapse of women into sensual vice 
 as an alternative to starvation. Surrender under such circum- 
 stances ought often to disarm absolutely the judgement 
 of man. They recur at their extreme point, by disabling 
 the conscience which is the informant of the will, and thus 
 by effacing for the moment the distinction of right and wrong 
 on the particular point, rather than by any invasion of the 
 general truth of the freedom of the will, which under such 
 circumstances is widowed of the material whereupon to 
 act. If there be a general collapse of the moral agent, the 
 question as to freedom of the will is hardly brought into 
 view. In many even of such cases, where repentance follows, 
 there comes with it a frank admission that, while there 
 might be plea for excuse and sense of pressure, there is 
 no absolute justification, for there was not in strictness 
 an abolition of freedom. It might perhaps be added that, 
 if there have been or might be instances in which fear or 
 weakness mounted up to a true necessity, such instances 
 would no more affect the general doctrine of free volition 
 than eclipses of the sun are taken into account in making 
 estimates of its general operation. 
 
 u 2 
 
292 NECESSITY OR DETERMINISM 
 
 Of course this particular aspect of the subject, which treats 
 of the self-action as against the bondage of the will in the 
 extremities of trial, must be held carefully apart from the 
 cognate but wholly different question which arises as to the 
 relation between the application of such trial to our frail 
 humanity, and the doctrine of a paternal Providence, govern- 
 ing the world. 
 
 So much for those extreme cases, which at the outset 
 I separated from the average or ordinary function presented 
 to the will in the common course of life. 
 
CHAPTEK VII 
 
 TELEOLOGY 
 
 T> UTLER supplies the teleologist with his text, in a manner 
 ■*-* resembling that, in which he himself had been supplied 
 by Origen. 'All observations of final causes, drawn from 
 the principles of action in the heart of man, compared with 
 the condition he is placed in, serve all the good uses which 
 instances of final causes in the material world about us do V 
 
 There is a notion, highly popular with the champions of 
 negation, that the argument from final causes, which formerly 
 held its head so high, has been effectually maimed by the 
 establishment of the doctrine of physical sequence. This 
 objection was urged by Mr. Romanes, only however in the 
 earlier period of his life ; but it may be found to admit of 
 a conclusive answer, and this singularly able champion saw 
 reason, before his much lamented death, to abandon it. 
 
 But negation, usually vigilant enough, appears to have 
 overlooked the fact that, although the argument of design 
 took its rise within the precincts of the physical order, it 
 did not end there. And Butler has here laid down for us 
 the cardinal principle on which is founded its extension 
 to the moral universe, so far as that moral universe lies 
 within our cognizance. It remains, however, to point out 
 (i) that here we at once escape from the apparent difficulty 
 which for a time was used to baffle the argument, inasmuch 
 as there is not in the moral order anything which essentially 
 corresponds with physical sequence; (2) that this extension 
 has itself two departments : one which deals with the human 
 
 1 Sermon, vi. 1 ; also Analogy, I. iii. 1. 
 
294 TELEOLOGY [Pt. II. 
 
 species as individuals; the second which regards them as 
 gathered into societies, and which is itself susceptible of 
 a subdivision between single societies, which constitute the 
 individuals of this compartment of the subject, and the grand 
 combination at large of the societies known to history and 
 forming the ' Parliament of man,' the great evolution of the 
 world. 
 
 With these prefatory observations, I pass to the question 
 of the argument of teleology as it has been commonly 
 handled, in conjunction with the dispositions of external 
 nature: that is to say, to physical antecedents known by 
 experience to be capable in each case of producing the 
 effects alleged in argument. And, accordingly, it is con- 
 tended that, wherever there is such an assemblage of physical 
 antecedents, we lose sight of the argument of design ; for 
 while their adequacy, taken individually, is indisputable, the 
 question remains whether their juxtaposition may be due 
 only to chance. 
 
 But it must be observed, before we proceed farther, that we 
 are here touching only a very small portion of the field which 
 is covered by the argument of teleology. For we are dealing 
 with inorganic nature only. But from inorganic nature we 
 ascend to organisms ; from organisms to intelligence ; from 
 intelligence to morality; and, with or beyond this, to the 
 comprehensive idea of the spiritual life, or the image of God. 
 It is plain that the argument against design in the realm of 
 inorganic nature ceases to have any corresponding force as 
 we rise into the higher divisions of created things, unless and 
 until it be shown that in those higher divisions the pheno- 
 mena, which appear in combination, and which accomplish 
 a purpose, are themselves immediately due to a concurrence 
 of antecedents as necessarily connected with the several 
 constituent items, as those which the natural inorganic world 
 supplies for the uses of the argument against design. So 
 that, if the argument of design be applicable to the inorganic 
 world, it may be applicable a fortiori to those worlds which 
 are above it. 
 
 Having this caution solidly laid down in the first instance, 
 let us proceed to examine how far design in the natural 
 world is really touched by the hostile reasoning. 
 
Ch. VII] TELEOLOGY 295 
 
 The objector succeeds in referring the combination to a set 
 of antecedents, which are adequate, when taken together, to 
 produce the result, but which are severally such as cannot be 
 referred to any special purpose ; and whose action, if taken 
 separately, conveys not so much as an inkling of a moral aim. 
 Yes : but how did the antecedents themselves come to be com- 
 bined % Does not the juxtaposition of such antecedents, as are 
 combined ly capable of producing consequents that accomplish 
 a purpose, as effectually, though more remotely, suggest the 
 argument of design? For we ask how was it that the 
 antecedents came into their admitted collocation'? A man 
 is the child of his grandfather as truly as of his father. It 
 is admitted that the antecedents have a ^»ower and a special 
 fitness to produce the combination. That fitness growing out 
 of the relation among the antecedents, regarded as a whole, in 
 its turn implies purpose ; and purpose implies a moral agent. 
 
 The set of antecedents, which thus require us to shift the 
 standing-ground backwards by a stage, has, for each of its 
 items, other sets of physical antecedents, and the great 
 argument of design, which is now most commonly described 
 by the phrase I have already employed, may be simply and 
 concisely represented by these words ; adaptation, which is 
 essentially comprehensive, implies purpose ; and purpose, in 
 its turn, implies an agent. Adaptation carries the idea of 
 something distinct from mere power or capacity. For these 
 latter may be predicated of a single and uncompounded 
 energy, whereas adaptation, in which energy may or may 
 not be included, requires that a number of parts be placed in 
 connexion with one another, and that the aggregate be en- 
 dowed with a fitness, not included in the parts if taken 
 singly, to perform a function, or produce an entity, beyond 
 itself. So the argument holds good that adaptation, thus 
 understood, implies purpose ; and purpose is the intention 
 of a moral agent to accomplish an end by the use of the 
 appropriate system of means. 
 
 We must not allow ourselves to become the sport of words. 
 Chance has no real objective existence. It simply signifies 
 events of which we cannot trace the sequence. For us, the 
 sparrow falls to the ground by chance, for we can observe no 
 purpose in connexion with the event. And so it may be with 
 
296 TELEOLOGY [Pt. IT. 
 
 cards or dice. It is conceivable that in the aggregate a series 
 of these indications may have a very serious purpose ; and 
 who shall say that any fraction of a serious purpose is not 
 serious ? But in an inquiry of this kind, we may justly say, 
 de minimis non curat lex: a certain magnitude is requisite 
 to bring the argument of design within our mental range, as 
 a physical magnitude, which the microscope might catch, 
 may be too small for the eye. 
 
 Chance, therefore, cannot be a competitor with purpose, in 
 regard to teleology or the argument from design. 
 
 But now it is contended by some, that the investigations of 
 science, or of natural science (and it is most important to 
 bear in mind that wherever the substantive is used alone, it is 
 used in regard to natural science exclusively l ), have laid open 
 the facts of physical causation ; that they have demonstrated 
 to us that there are a multitude of adaptations in nature 
 which are immediately due to what religion would call the 
 operation of second causes ; and that the same will hold as we 
 move onwards and upwards in an ascending scale. Let the 
 first set of antecedents be «, the next will be a 1 , the next 
 behind this a 1 , and so on to a n . Thus we should have before 
 us so many sets of combinations of antecedents, multiplying 
 themselves as we ascend in geometrical progressions. This 
 being so, it follows that, if our query as to the first combina- 
 tion or juxtaposition of antecedents have a solid foundation, 
 then, the farther we carry the pursuit of these combinations, 
 the more is that foundation deepened and strengthened. 
 
 Before proceeding to another stage, let me say I do not 
 proscribe the idea that even to the original and crude 
 material forces before their differentiation, on account of the 
 capacities for combination and result which, when differen- 
 tiated, their constituent parts will exhibit, the argument of 
 design might in a measure be applicable. 
 
 It is fundamental with Mr. Romanes, in the anti-teleological 
 argument which he maintained at an early period of his 
 distinguished career, rigidly to exclude the admission of 
 
 1 In obedience to an established out a term to describe knowledge 
 though (as I think) faulty usage ; in its strictest sense, 
 which has left us, I believe, with- 
 
Ch. VII.] TELEOLOGY 297 
 
 design when only a single combination is concerned : be it 
 that of the sea-bay, or that of the eye, the illustrations with 
 which he deals *. But he makes a considerable admission for 
 the adverse case when the floor is widened, and a combination 
 
 1 Thoughts on Religion, pp. 45, 
 56 seq. I will here cite the inter- 
 esting passage which serves as a 
 basis for the argument of the early 
 essay of Mr. Romanes (p. 56). He 
 introduces an observer, who walks 
 down to the sea-shore : — 
 
 ' First, he observes that there is 
 a beautiful basin hollowed out in 
 the land for the reception of a bay ; 
 that the sides of this basin whi::h, 
 from being near its opening, are 
 most exposed to the action of large 
 rolling billows, are composed of 
 rocky cliffs, evidently in order to 
 prevent the further encroachment 
 of the sea, and the consequent 
 destruction of the entire bay ; that 
 the sides of the basin, which from 
 being successively situated more 
 inland are successively less and 
 less exposed to the action of large 
 waves, are constituted successively 
 of smaller rocks, passing into 
 shingle, and eventually into the 
 finest sand : that, as the tides rise 
 and fall with as great a regularity 
 as was exhibited by the movements 
 of the watch, the stones are care- 
 fully separated out from the sand 
 to be arranged in sloping layers by 
 themselves, and this always with 
 a most beautiful reference to the 
 places round the margin of the 
 basin which are most in danger 
 of being damaged by the action of 
 the waves. He would further ob- 
 serve, upon closer inspection, that 
 this process of selective arrange- 
 ment goes into matters of the most 
 minute detail. Here, for instance, 
 he would observe a mile or two 
 of a particular kind of seaweed 
 
 artistically arranged in one long 
 sinuous line upon the beach ; there 
 he would see a wonderful deposit 
 of shells ; in another place a lovely 
 little purple heap of garnet sand, 
 the minute particles of which have 
 all been carefully picked out from 
 the surrounding acres of yellow 
 sand. Again, he would notice that 
 the streams which come down to 
 the bay are all flowing in channels 
 admirably dug out for the purpose ; 
 and, being led by curiosity to in- 
 vestigate the teleology of these 
 various streams, he would find that 
 they serve to supply the water 
 which the sea loses by evaporation, 
 and also, by a wonderful piece of 
 adjustment, to furnish fresh water 
 to those animals and plants which 
 thrive best in fresh water, and yet 
 by their combined action to carry 
 down sufficient mineral constituents 
 to give that precise degree of salt- 
 ness to the sea as a whole which is 
 required for the maintenance of 
 pelagic life. Lastly, continuing 
 his investigations along this line 
 of inquiry, he would find that a 
 thousand different habitats were 
 all thoughtfully adapted to the 
 needs of a hundred thousand dif- 
 ferent forms of life, none of which 
 could survive if these habitats were 
 reversed. Now, I think that our 
 imaginary inquirer would be a dull 
 man if, as the result of all this 
 study, he failed to conclude that 
 the evidence of design furnished 
 by the marine bay was at least as 
 cogent as that which he had pre- 
 viously found in his study of the 
 watch.' 
 
 I UNIV 
 
298 TELEOLOGY [Pt. TI. 
 
 of combinations, or a multitude of combinations, is contem- 
 plated. The bringing together of all the combinations so 
 arranged as to exhibit adaptation to an end, is with him 
 conclusive, at least prima facie, in favour of the inference of 
 agency ; that is to say, of an agent. 
 
 Thus far Mr. Romanes is led by the distinction which he 
 draws between general and special design ; between special 
 adjustments, and the general laws of nature \ It appears 
 plain, however, to me that his concession ought in consistency 
 to have been carried farther. Let us take his case of the 
 sea-bay, produced, as he has shown, by the action of 
 a number of immediate physical causes, independent one of 
 another. Now he would admit that each of these antecedents 
 has its own antecedent ; let us call it a pre-antecedent. There 
 was then a collection of these pre-antecedents, which stood in 
 the same relation to the later, and immediate or proximate 
 antecedents, as these later or more immediate antecedents 
 held to the sea-bay. And they hold, as we have seen, to that 
 sea-bay a relationship ' once removed ' but not the less real 
 because it becomes operative through one medium or through 
 more than one. For they in their turn had been due to a 
 prior set of antecedents, antecedents of a third order ; and 
 so forth until, in the upward movement, we arrive at the 
 original vXr\, or matter in its primal condition. So that here 
 we have the very thing postulated for the admission, namely, 
 a combination of combinations, although they all eventuate 
 in one result; and as the combination of combinations is 
 admitted to raise a presumption of design, it is evident that 
 the sea-bay, if not by virtue of its immediate parentage, yet by 
 virtue of its long line of ancestors, or its atavism, effectually 
 raises that presumption ; every one of the antecedents in the 
 successive stages having been in itself independent of every 
 other, by which, and by the progenitors (so to call them) of 
 which, it was accompanied, and this independence is just as 
 complete as the independence of the physical causation in 
 one department of nature can be of the physical causation 
 in another, for it is absolute and entire 2 ; and we are entitled 
 to press the physicist with his own interrogatory, ' How is it 
 
 Thoughts on Religion, p. 60. 2 Ibid. p. 67. 
 
Ch. VII.] TELEOLOGY 299 
 
 that all [these] physical causes conspire, by their united 
 action, to the production of a general order of nature? ' And 
 take again the suggestion conveyed in the following words : 
 ' The resultant is determined as to magnitude and direction 
 by the components. Yes : but what about the magnitude 
 and direction of these components 1 1 ' 
 
 So the supreme directing cause is intelligence. In fact, the 
 introduction of antecedents, intended to overset the argument 
 of design, ends by imparting to it a large accession of 
 strength. As it originally was urged, it rested on the final 
 combination only. But we now find that there is a long or 
 indefinite series of combinations : and a series of combinations 
 is in itself a new combination ; apart from the force which 
 attaches to each of them when viewed separately, and only 
 in relation to its immediate consequent. A like argument 
 applies to the final union of all the separate combinations, 
 that make up the general order of nature. 
 
 But this conclusion is followed by observations, which 
 deprive it of practical value. This intelligence, we are told, 
 is different from anything that we know of mind in ourselves. 
 Different, not in degree only, but in kind. Finding its on- 
 ward way with the aid of Mr. Herbert Spencer, the argument 
 holds that, for the purpose in view, 'Mind must be divested of 
 all attributes by which it is distinguished,' in other words, 
 • mind is a blank V Surely one of the most unfortunate of 
 arguments. We have arrived in our inquiries at a com- 
 bination which requires nothing less than what we call and 
 know by experience as mind. But, to meet the case before 
 us, we are required to postulate something still greater, and 
 much greater than our mind can be pretended to be. We 
 cannot grasp the dimensions, nor follow the operation, of this 
 great creative mind. Therefore, though we see its results, in 
 us and before us, for us it is no mind at all. A bewildering, 
 nay, a befooling conclusion. 
 
 Let us proceed to test it. Strange as it may seem, the 
 argument appears to be no other than this. Were the object 
 before us one produced by the thought and hand of man, we 
 should, it seems, be entitled, at the stage we have previously 
 
 Thoughts on Religion, p. 70. 2 Ibid. p. 74. 
 
300 TELEOLOGY [Pt. IT. 
 
 reached in the argument, to say that this must be recognized 
 as proving design : design limited in its character as proceeding 
 from a limited agent, yet still true design. In dealing, however, 
 with the order of nature, we become acquainted with products 
 which, taken in severalty and in simple forms, lead to a like 
 conclusion ; but which taken as a whole are not only more 
 large, subtle, complex, and diversified, but are all these .in 
 a way transcending all measure, and are the products of a 
 power which passes beyond comprehension. Let us view this 
 power, by way of illustration, as if it were a line projected 
 into space. Let us cut off from it some limited and moderate 
 space. Such is the productive force of the human intellect, 
 compared with that of the Unseen. What are we to conclude? 
 One should say we may reasonably cherish a devout amazement 
 at the infinite excess of the Divine over the human. But no, 
 says the adversary. The limited line is all very well and is 
 a true line, and he that drew it was capable of designing : 
 but the endless one, even though it produce what (taken 
 singly) is analogous to the products of the limited, cannot be 
 recognized as proceeding from a Power capable of purpose, 
 as acting upon design, and is, in the view of the present 
 discussion, no mind at all. If this be the cut de sac of our 
 inquiries, surely reason has abdicated her throne. 
 
 Let us next proceed to that intermediate region of nature 
 which may be termed the animal, and which lies between 
 the human and the inorganic. It appears to be admitted 
 that, within the bounds of this region, the adjustments of 
 means to ends are more numerous, nicer, and more elaborate, 
 than in the realm of inanimate nature. But it is con- 
 tended that the argument in favour of design is no stronger 
 on that account. Here, again, the phenomena presented 
 to us are said to be accounted for by their antecedents ; and, 
 whether this can be demonstrated or not, it probably cannot 
 be denied with demonstration. On the other hand, another 
 class of arguments indicating purpose can be more effectively 
 developed at the next stage of our inquiries, and is accordingly 
 reserved. 
 
 Passing onwards, then, we come to the case of man, the 
 lord of the visible creation. And here, as it seems to me, 
 the argument of the teleologist rides triumphant, I may 
 
Ch. VII.] TELEOLOGY 301 
 
 almost say unassailed, from the very first. Not as regards 
 the adaptations of his bodily constitution ; for here, I suppose, 
 no more can be said than that, as the animal adaptations 
 surpass the inorganic, so the human corporal adaptations 
 (take the wonderful case of the hand for example) transcend 
 those of the animal world at large. But whereas, for animals, 
 we were not enabled to draw our arguments from any higher 
 region, the position is now altered in its very foundation. 
 We rise from the animated to the intellectual and the 
 spiritual part of man, and from his material composition to 
 his environment, and to his condition as a whole. 
 
 And now the argument of design appears before us in 
 a shape altogether new. Man finds himself placed not in a 
 chaos of accidents, but in what he finds to be on the whole, 
 though only in partial and imperfect development, a kosmos 
 of experiences and events so ordered as to present a certain 
 character and to produce certain results. Before examining 
 the argument of design as it arises out of the relation between 
 man and his environment, or experience, let us for a few 
 moments consider it in connexion with his composition or 
 constitution. The proposition that reference of facts to 
 antecedents is, as a rule, one thing in the inorganic world 
 and another in the higher orders of being, cannot perhaps 
 be better illustrated than by observing the conditions of our 
 human lineage. I see no reason to doubt that heredity is 
 here largely traceable. But more largely in physical than 
 in mental peculiarities, and sometimes under the most singular 
 forms 1 . It is more easy to find the tradition of physical 
 beauty in particular families than continuity of mind. 
 Some are fond of referring the characters of great men to 
 their parents ; but such references commonly cover no more 
 than a very small part of the ground. Little is known of the 
 
 1 A gentleman, ratherwell known of his sons reproduced this non- 
 
 in the (still) present century, had voluntary habit, and was equally 
 
 the peculiarity, when asleep, of solitary in it. So the reproduc- 
 
 emitting breath in short and light tion of a single white lock amidst 
 
 puffs, which raised partof the upper a mass of dark hair is alleged at 
 
 lip. No one in his sphere was known this time to characterize a Roman 
 
 to do the same, or even to have family of high rank and historic 
 
 heard of any one who did. But one name. 
 
302 TELEOLOGY [Pt. II. 
 
 parents of Shakespeare ; but it seems plain that the space 
 by which his genius went in advance of ordinary mental 
 endowments was in no degree bridged over by them, and 
 was indeed nothing less than immeasurable. Napoleon had 
 a beautiful and energetic mother, and a notary of some ability 
 for his father. The former is a clear case of heredity as to 
 physical beauty : but as to mental characteristics no common 
 measure can be found between the Corsican parents and 
 this colossal man. Political ability affords, in the mental 
 order, the most marked and frequent instances of evident 
 transmission. But, as a rule, antecedence here entirely fails 
 us as an instrument for rendering account in the greater 
 cases ; and the floor is left clear and unincumbered for creative 
 power and the manifestation of design. That vacant floor 
 is at once filled by the great world-historic fact of the 
 singular and palpable adaptation between the apparition of 
 men having the highest greatness, and the demands made 
 by the order of circumstances into which they were born. 
 Indeed, I have read, in a negative treatise of great ability, 
 the remark that, were it not for our living in a time when 
 all Divine interference with the order of nature has been 
 disproved, it might almost be supposed to be established 
 by this particular class of phenomena. 
 
 Let us now turn to the other portion of the field of argu- 
 ment. Speaking generally, the position in which man finds 
 himself placed seems to be adapted to his instruction and his 
 improvement. Like the sea-bay, it presents a combination 
 of parts accommodated to particular purposes ; and, like the 
 structure of the sea-bay, so the combination of these parts 
 can be submitted to an analysis. We find from experience 
 that the human character is tested, exercised, and matured by 
 some, perhaps by all, of the combinations it presents ; for its 
 elevation and its felicity, if they are turned to account in one 
 way, for its degradation and destruction, if they are handled 
 in another. External fortunes likewise arrive not by chance, 
 but, for the most part, under the operation of certain laws 
 of sequence. Prudence and forethought issue in success, 
 extravagance and neglect in ruin or in failure. The obser- 
 vance of justice and truth brings about good repute and 
 general respect, often gratitude and the return of benefits; 
 
Ch. VII.] TELEOLOGY 303 
 
 while the opposite qualities are regarded with disfavour, and 
 create indifference or dislike, or rouse opposition. All these 
 rules, it is true, seem to fail, and even to be reversed, in par- 
 ticular cases. But Wesley predicted with justice that the effect 
 of reclaiming large bodies of men from ignorance, idleness, 
 debauchery, and irreligion to habits of sobriety and diligence, 
 and to a sense of piety, would be so fundamentally to alter 
 and improve their condition on the whole, as to bring in 
 a new set of dangers and temptations, which lurk in the 
 train of prosperity. Even amidst the dark fortunes of the 
 early Church, the Apostle gave the assurance 1 that godliness 
 had the promise of the life that now is. Through all the 
 following centuries this declaration has been echoed back 
 by the prevailing tenor of the facts of life. Christianity, born 
 in a manger, has attracted to itself, in overwhelming propor- 
 tion, the power, the wealth, and the commanding influences 
 of the world. In the battle of good and evil, Providence, 
 though it may seem to be fighting in disguise, chooses its side 
 and makes known its choice. 
 
 Here, then, is a scheme of moral adaptation, which though 
 imperfect is universal and perpetual. And here there is 
 not, as in the case of the sea-bay, any such collection of 
 physical antecedents, as can be set up by way of competitors 
 with the action of the Almighty, or can furnish some sort 
 of substitute for design. And there is no aggregate of 
 moral antecedents capable of being picked out from among 
 the threads of the tangled web of life with any approach 
 to the uniformity and clearness necessary to demonstrate 
 the relation between moral causes and their effects. In 
 regard to the most important of all the benefits to be gained, 
 the very highest are those exhibited by the formation of 
 character. But these are often indiscernible until they have 
 reached a considerable degree of ripeness, and it would be 
 impossible to establish such an analysis of them, or of the 
 experiences amidst which they were evolved, as in any toler- 
 able degree to affiliate particular effects to their particular 
 causes. The evidence is, as a rule, essentially general, but 
 the educative process is broad and undeniable. The fortress 
 
 1 1 Tim. iv. 8. 
 
304 TELEOLOGY [Pt. II. 
 
 of design is so planted in the wide expanse of human life, as 
 to . be alike unassailable by its enemies and conspicuous in 
 the eyes of every rational and impartial observer. Besides 
 the fatally enhanced difficulty, which philosophy finds in 
 assigning consequents to moral antecedents from general 
 defect of exactitude in the evidence of connexion, another 
 power intervenes to defeat the process of calculation. That 
 is the power of will. For it is often found to happen that 
 two men will, in circumstances which appear to the observer 
 identical, arrive at decisions, and follow lines of conduct, 
 absolutely contradictory. It is true that the opposition in 
 the modes of action may have regard, and may even in 
 a certain sense be due, to inward springs of character and 
 impulse. But these influences, besides being infinitely diverse, 
 manifold, and also complex, are effectually hidden, sometimes 
 wholly, sometimes in a large degree, from the eye of human 
 observation, and cannot therefore be made evidence in the 
 case. Whereas, on the other side, it is ingeniously urged 
 that in every physical adaptation, the union of conditions 
 presented to us can be finally, and unequivocally, traced up 
 to the action of the two great postulates, matter and force 1 . 
 
 The argument of design in the intelligent order may be 
 said to begin not with man, but in the sphere of the lower 
 animals, and in connexion with their instincts. It has a 
 larger and clearer application to the case of men taken 
 individually. But the chain of extension does not end here. 
 We pass from man individually into a new sphere of argu- 
 ment, when we consider man introduced to the adaptations 
 of union in the social body, and to the purposes, ever mul- 
 tiplying among progressive races, of advanced political 
 development. 
 
 Besides the difference already pointed out on behalf of 
 intelligent and moral, as compared with physical, teleology, 
 we should, I conceive, reckon this capacity of development 
 in its combinations. The adaptations in the inanimate, 
 inorganic world are, for the purposes of common observation, 
 
 1 The argument from physical Treatises, e. g. those of Whewell 
 adaptation is comprehensively and Bell. 
 stated in some of the Bridgwater 
 
Ch. VII.] TELEOLOGY 305 
 
 stationary. Even in the organic departments inferior to 
 man, the range assigned to progress is very limited. It may 
 indeed be disclosed to us hereafter that physical combination 
 may, as in the case of the earth we inhabit, or of other 
 heavenly bodies, form portions of larger and more complex 
 developments. In the case of the human being, we have them 
 already placed before us. What a marvellous thing in itself, 
 and apart from any conclusion as to the manner of its use, 
 is the development or education of a genius, like that of 
 Goethe, in his long life of fourscore years, with the marked 
 changes it included, and notwithstanding its great and 
 important deficiencies. When we contemplate many of the 
 political societies, such as the Roman, the British, the American, 
 their movement through successive stages is astonishing. 
 But each of these stages is a new presentation of the argument 
 of design ; and the combination of the stages among them- 
 selves is a new presentation of it in a new form. So that 
 besides the inference deducible from each combination by 
 itself, the combinations ascend with the force of multipli- 
 cation. We have a hierarchy of combinations. 
 
 Greatest and last of all, within the range of the intelligent 
 and moral order, is the great drama of world-history. It 
 is, indeed, not as yet placed fully within our view. But 
 Christendom perceives that it has a centre in the Incarna- 
 tion and the Advent ; and the adaptations offered us by 
 history, in preparation for these events, are so salient and 
 palpable, that it may be supposed difficult, even for non- 
 Christians, altogether to deny them. The most palpable 
 of the auxiliary arrangements which 'prepared the way 
 of the Lord, and made straight in the desert a highway 
 for our God 1 / were the general dominance of the Greek 
 language, consequent mainly, but by no means wholly, on 
 the conquests of Alexander the Great, the introduction of the 
 literary and thinking world to the Old Testament through 
 the Septuagint, and the network of facile communication 
 with all the apparatus of a dominant intelligence, which was 
 supplied by the grand itinerary of the Roman Empire. More 
 important still, if less obvious and salient than these, were the 
 
 1 Is. xl. 3. 
 x 
 
306 TELEOLOGY [Pt. II. 
 
 intellectual contributions ready to hand for the formation 
 of Christian thought and action through the Greek and 
 Roman mind respectively. A concurrence after the fact, 
 greatly subserving the purposes of revealed religion, is, as 
 I should plead, to be found in the remarkable assemblage 
 of the ancient Sacred Books, belonging to religions outside 
 the pale of the Bible, and materially sustained, as I should 
 further plead, by other manifestations of primitive religion, 
 also foreign to the geographical precinct embraced by the 
 Scriptural record. All this is of course to amass particulars, 
 not in rivalry with but in subordination to, the mighty 
 and long-lived evangelical preparation presented to us by 
 the Hebrew history. What may yet further have to be 
 made known in the complement of the great time-cycle not 
 yet filled up, it is impossible to say, and would be hazardous 
 even to conjecture. But as the plays or tales of poets and 
 romancers may indicate the essence of their plot long before 
 they have been fully exhibited or perused, so we have had 
 already submitted to our view the historic drama of the 
 human race in what are to all appearance its highest and 
 its governing sections, in a degree and on a scale of vast 
 dimension and immeasurable complication of parts, such as 
 offers to us the facts of combination, and the argument of 
 design, with an extension almost mocking the human faculty, 
 but yet with a clearness such that he who runs may read. 
 
 It is this fortress of design, as exhibited in the natural, 
 the moral, and the spiritual government of the man as such, 
 that Butler, without having it for his professed and principal 
 aim, and indeed without detailed exposition, has exhibited 
 to us more forcibly, in point of essential principle, than 
 any other writer : so that it is no exaggeration to decorate 
 him with the chieftainship of Christian Teleology. Paley, 
 as I conceive, as a sturdy wrestler, overthrows his antagonists 
 within the compass of his arm, while Butler soars high into 
 the heaven above them as an eagle on the wing. 
 
 Two other matters call for observation before bringing these 
 remarks to a close. 
 
 First, a favourite subject of discussion in the philo- 
 sophical world is that which passes by the name of evolution. 
 It is not a very convenient name, for it does not in itself 
 
Ch.VIL] TELEOLOGY 307 
 
 indicate the idea of which it is meant to be the vehicle. In 
 itself it may be said to mean the sequence of events, but it 
 really has reference to the order of causation. It might be 
 said, as it is now used, to mean the sequence of events 
 through the operation of second causes; but this language 
 may not be agreeable to those who do not accept the sugges- 
 tion it seems to make of a first cause lying behind them. 
 The evolution we have now before us would perhaps in 
 Christian terminology be called devolution, for it would 
 mean that the Almighty has entrusted to that system of 
 nature, which He has designed and put into action, the 
 production and government of effects at large : as the watch- 
 maker has entrusted to the mainspring and machinery of 
 a watch the discharge of its essential function, namely, the 
 indication of time. 
 
 In many quarters it appears to be either asserted or taken 
 for granted that this method of action, this production of 
 natural effects from natural causes, is a heavy if not a deadly 
 blow to religion, and in particular to the argument of design. 
 We are told that the theory which evolution displaces was 
 a theory of sudden or special creation : phraseology which 
 has been devised by negationists, and of which those arguing 
 from an opposite point may perhaps be allowed to say that it 
 seems unphilosophical, if not indeed almost nonsensical. For 
 an effect produced in the course of nature is no more sudden 
 and no more special if produced by the action of a force 
 flowing direct from Deity, than if it result from the action 
 of (as it were) a store of force lodged in some intermediate 
 agency. It is only the wildest spirit of assumption which can 
 suppose that government by forces coming straight from the 
 fountain-head must needs be government by fits and starts, 
 and that order and method cannot be had except by the 
 action of what are known as instrumental causes. 
 
 But such action of second causes is not a thing which 
 believers in religion ought to be inclined to view with 
 jealousy. In the history of thought, it is pre-eminently 
 they who have taught the existence and power of the will 
 in created agents, of a separate originating source of action, 
 and of many and grave effects; of an order, in short, of 
 second causes which is of the greatest force and dignity 
 
 x 2 
 
308 TELEOLOGY [Px. TT. 
 
 among them all. Take, for example, the will of Alexander 
 the Great in the invasion and conquest of Asia. In itself 
 a first cause, it was, notwithstanding, relatively to the coun- 
 sels of God, a second cause : for it was through this second 
 cause, that is, through its foreseen results, that the Almighty 
 brought about some events, which were most powerful factors 
 in the accomplishment of His counsels for the redemption of 
 the world. If, then, we see that Almighty wisdom can thus 
 make the force and independent action of man effectuate the 
 purposes of His government, why should it be imagined, by 
 either friends or foes, that devolutions of power to other 
 created agencies, not spontaneous, but working only upon 
 the lines of an order which He himself has predetermined, 
 can involve the smallest derogation from His supremacy 1 
 
 Let us take, for example, the whole upward movement of 
 organic life, from its lowest forms of mollusc or zoophyte, 
 or be they what they may, to the highest of those orders 
 which were included in the preparation of the earth for 
 the residence of man. On the one supposition, the Almighty 
 was alike and equally concerned in every one of the infini- 
 tesimal exercises of force by which the ascent was gradually 
 achieved. On the other supposition, portions of that force 
 were delegated to initial forms of natural agency, with all 
 the conditions of their advancement fore-ordained, including 
 its interruptions and its failures, and that the results were 
 achieved by a heaven-born necessity, precisely as they would 
 have been under the method first proposed. The difference 
 thus set up by us has, as it regards the Divine omnipotence, 
 not an atom of result. If the modes of operation differ, the 
 method and effect are the same. It may, however, perhaps be 
 said that in relation to us they seriously differ: that, in its 
 manifestation to us, the former method represented govern- 
 ment by occasion ; the latter method, government by scheme 
 or system. The one did not preclude the idea of change, 
 the other betokened fixity, and encouraged anticipation and 
 prediction. Be it so : the fixity being, however, one liable at 
 any moment to displacement, like that order of climatic or 
 terrestrial phenomena which, amidst marrying and giving 
 in marriage, was rudely interrupted by the deluge ; or like 
 that regulated existence of heavenly bodies which, at the 
 
Ch. VII.] TELEOLOGY 309 
 
 proper time, find its consummation in the discharge of their 
 shattered fragments through unmeasured space. But let us 
 regard the scheme or system apart from these contingent 
 changes. Ought our tracing of the widespread operation of 
 second causes to darken our conception of Deity 1 As it seems 
 to me, it should do exactly the reverse. The more we have of 
 system and fixity in nature, the better. For, in the method 
 of natural second causes, God as it were takes the map of 
 His own counsels out of the recesses of His own idea, and 
 graciously lays it near our view; condescending, as it were, 
 to make us partakers of His thought, so that, seeing more 
 and more His qualities in His acts, we may, from knowing 
 their large collocation, be more and more stirred to admiration, 
 to thankfulness, and to love. 
 
 And although the overthrow of religion by evolution has 
 been loudly proclaimed in the name of science, it would be 
 injustice no less than folly to charge this shallow con- 
 ception on men of science taken at large, or as represented 
 by their most distinguished authorities \ 
 
 Next and lastly, in connexion with the great argument 
 of design, the illustration from the instance of a watch found 
 on a heath has become famous, and has also come to be 
 closely, perhaps for this country inseparably, associated with 
 the name of Paley, a writer so well known, among other 
 qualities, for the felicity of his illustrations. 
 
 In the year 1873, however, Lord Neaves, a well-known 
 Scottish judge, delivered to an association at Carlisle a 
 lecture on Paley, in which he showed that the illustration 
 was not original, but borrowed. In announcing the circum- 
 stances, Lord Neaves is careful to state that his discovery 
 in like manner is borrowed from one or more preceding 
 inquirers. 
 
 Bernard Nieuwentyt, a Dutch philosopher, published simul- 
 taneously in Dutch and English, in the year 17 15, an able 
 and learned work, The Existence of God demonstrated by 
 the wonders of Nature, which book, a few years afterwards, 
 was translated into English by John Chamberlayne, and 
 published under the title of The Religious Philosopher. 
 
 1 See Dr. Zahm's Evolution and Dogma, Part II. chaps, vii, viii. 
 
310 TELEOLOGY 
 
 When the respective passages in the two works are com- 
 pared, they show a relationship in detail, besides the identity 
 of the general idea. Paley's apology is this ; that it was 
 his general practice, after having made his own notes on 
 a subject, to consult the works of others, and to publish 
 what he had extracted, ' commonly without the name of the 
 author 1 .' The application of his rule was in this instance 
 most unfortunate, for he seems to have been forcibly struck 
 with the force and beauty of the illustration, or he would 
 hardly have selected it, as he has done, to take its place in 
 the opening paragraph of his work. 
 
 But although the proprietary title of Nieuwentyt to the 
 illustration, as against Paley, is thus firmly established, this 
 argument itself is far older, and has been admirably set 
 forth by Cicero in the following passage 2 . ' Quis enim hunc 
 hominem dixerit, qui, cum tarn certos caeli motus, tarn ratos 
 astrorum ordines, tamque inter se omnia connexa et apta 
 viderit, neget in his ullam esse rationem, eaque casu fieri 
 dicat ; quae quanto consilio gerantur, nullo consilio assequi 
 possumus 1 ? an, cum machinatione quadam moveri aliquid 
 videmus, ut sphaeram, ut horas, ut alia permulta, non dubi- 
 tamus quin ilia opera sint rationis ? cum autem impetum caeli 
 cum admirabili celeritate moveri vertique videmus, constan- 
 tissime conficientem anniversarias vicissitudines cum summa 
 salute et conservatione rerum omnium ; dubitamus quin ea 
 non solum ratione fiant, sed etiam excellenti divinaque 
 ratione 1 licet enim iam, remota subtilitate disputandi, oculis 
 quodammodo contemplari pulchritudinem rerum earum, quas 
 divina providentia dicimus constitutas.' 
 
 1 Lord Neaves, Lecture on Paley, pp. 25-27. Blackwood, 1873. 
 
 2 €icero, de Natura Deorum, II. 38. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MIRACLE 
 
 TTUME has stated his argument against miracles in a 
 ■■■"*• variety of successive paragraphs, as if he were afraid 
 to startle and repel his reader, unless he adopted the method 
 of disguised approaches. No one, however, can complain that 
 he is not outspoken as he approaches his conclusion. Evidently 
 bearing in his mind the alliance so firmly compacted by 
 Butler between faith and reason, he begins his final assault 
 by placing the two in violent opposition ; and leaving faith 
 aside in a ve<p(\oKOKKvy(a of its own, he pronounces the verdict 
 of ' reason/ by way of example, on the miracles of the 
 Pentateuch, which he describes as follows : 
 
 ' A book, presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant 
 people, written in an age when they were still more barbarous, 
 and, in all probability, long after the facts which it relates, 
 corroborated by no concurring testimony, and resembling 
 those fabulous accounts which every nation gives of its 
 origin V 
 
 Every particular of this tirade may be at this date success- 
 fully contested, and some of them were even at Hume's date 
 marked by gross incaution. He has not, however, provided 
 us with a full synopsis of his own argument, and I cannot 
 do better, as I conceive, than present to the reader that which 
 has been framed by Cardinal Newman, in his Grammar 
 of Assent 2 . 
 
 ' It is experience only which gives authority to human 
 testimony, and it is the same experience which assures us of 
 the laws of nature. When these two kinds of experience 
 
 1 Hume on Miracles : Philoso- burgh, 1854), vol. iv. p. 149. 
 phical Works (Boston and Edin- 2 Pages 298 seqq. 
 
312 MIRACLE [Pt. II. 
 
 are contrary the one to the other, we are bound to subtract 
 the one from the other. We have no experience of the 
 violation of natural laws, and much experience of the viola- 
 tion of truths. So we may establish it as a maxim that no 
 human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, 
 and make it the foundation of a system of religion.' 
 
 I will not refer to the succinct but striking argument offered 
 by Newman in reply. But turning to the position which he 
 controverts, I find Hume's first proposition to be that ex- 
 perience, which gives authority to human testimony, also 
 assures us of the laws of nature. If we grant for a moment 
 that Hume's contention is unassailable from this point 
 forwards, it still appears to me that the proposition I have 
 cited is infected with a fatal flaw. Experience, it appears, 
 assures us of ' the laws of nature.' Does it assure us of all 
 the laws of nature? At what date did it begin to supply 
 us with this comprehensive knowledge? Clearly not, for 
 example, before the Copernican system, which, with its con- 
 sequents, has brought up new laws of nature and has reversed 
 the old, which we had previously thought ourselves assured 
 of. Now, unless we know all the laws of nature, Hume's 
 contention is of no avail ; for the alleged miracle may come 
 under some law not yet known to us. One law of nature 
 traverses and controls or reverses another. The law of capillary 
 attraction contradicts, wherever it operates in certain direc- 
 tions, the law of gravitation; for it draws matter upwards 
 which, under the force of gravitation, would pass downwards. 
 Suppose, for argument's sake, a state of things in which 
 the law of gravity was known, but capillary attraction 
 unknown. And suppose a narrative were told, which was 
 based upon capillary attraction. On the principle advanced 
 by Hume, that narrative would be condemned in limine 
 as false. And so it is that miracle is condemned. Particular 
 laws of nature we may know, but we do not always know 
 the limits of those laws ; and future experience may reveal 
 to us other laws now unknown, but (at least) bounding and 
 curtailing, nay perhaps traversing, those which we think we 
 know, so as to leave spaces open for miracle without contra- 
 vention of law, which at present appear to be closed. 
 
 The fact seems to be that, creeping on from step to step, 
 
Ch. VIII.] MIRACLE 313 
 
 we learn a little, and again a little, of natural laws; and 
 we build them into a system of knowledge, to which great 
 value may belong without its having reached the stage 
 of perfection or of infallibility. We hear much of the uni- 
 formity of nature. But does this phrase mean more than that 
 wide regions are made known to us, within which her action 
 is uniform ; and that her extremest variations may at some 
 time be reducible to some high and comprehensive rule, at 
 present hidden from our eyes ? Under what law of nature, 
 now known to us, is it that parthenogenesis has been allowed 
 to occupy a portion of the field, which was supposed to be 
 wholly given up to the ordinary law of sexual generation 
 from a pair 1 Does there not here accrue to us a lesson, which 
 seems to teach that there may be generalizations bringing 
 into methodical relations with one another all the phenomena 
 of nature : but that, for us of the present day and the present 
 conditions, what we are conversant with is not uniformity 
 of nature, but certain uniformities of nature, which, as 
 revealed to us, vary from one another ? And vary, not under 
 plainly known rules like the domesticated pigeons, but under 
 rules wholly unknown ; so that the uniformities we know are, 
 as related one to another, truly varieties ; and the rules, so far 
 as we know them at present, are rules subject to exception. 
 
 This is in truth no more than a partial unfolding, perhaps 
 an expansion, of what Butler has suggested as a possibility 
 of the future state ; when he observes to us that what is 
 here and now reckoned supernatural may hereafter be found 
 to fall into a natural order 1 . So, under our present life- 
 dispensation, things that warrant or require the introduction 
 of the supernatural in order to present them even as conceiv- 
 able, in one given state of our knowledge, may in another 
 state of our knowledge be found to fall within the range of 
 ordinary human resources. Ariosto, in the sixteenth century, 
 invokes preterhuman aid to transport a British army in 
 one day from Picardy to Paris 2 : but it is now a journey 
 of a few hours. A French engineer assured me, at the last 
 Paris Exhibition in 1891, that if the chemin de fer glissant, 
 of which he was in charge, and which was there put in action, 
 
 J Analogy, I. i. 31. * Orl. Fur. xiv. 96. 
 
3H MIRACLE [p T . II. 
 
 could be perfected it might (with all proper subsidiary 
 arrangements) conceivably reduce the time required for 
 a journey to London down to the limit of two hours. 
 
 In the proposition associated with the name of Hume, there 
 is a clear petitio principii, which entirely cancels its force. 
 ' Miracles cannot be true, because they are contrary to expe- 
 rience.' To whose, and to what, experience? On Hume's 
 own ground we are entitled to say that, until the powers and 
 bounds of natural law are exhaustively known, we never can 
 be certain that it is at any point or in any sense contravened 
 by this or that alleged miracle. Even this consideration does 
 not reach the full scope of the offence against logic, with 
 which the argument is chargeable. This experience, which 
 we are said to possess, and which shuts out miracle, is not 
 only not such an experience as draws the line with accuracy 
 between what the laws of nature in their totality allow and 
 what they prohibit, but it does not even include the whole of 
 such experience as has in the aggregate of times and places 
 fallen to the lot of man. Let A come and allege his miracle. 
 B denounces it as false, because it is contrary to experience ; 
 that is, to B's experience. But how does B know that it 
 is contrary to ^4's experience? As in the famous illustration 
 of ice asserted in the tropical plains to exist elsewhere, what 
 is impossible for the one may be familiar to the other. 
 
 There is undoubtedly much plausibility, and even a good 
 share of force, in the contrast drawn between the carelessness, 
 folly, and mendacity, which so often vitiate human testimony, 
 and the honesty and frankness with which nature reveals 
 her treasures. But even here we must be on our guard 
 against precipitate concessions to the astuteness of an adver- 
 sary. Human testimony, liable as it is to failure in so many 
 forms, is the main instrument by means of which human 
 affairs are carried on. True, it is frequently subject in many 
 cases to the check of verification; but in many cases it is 
 not so checked ; and yet, with such precautions as the circum- 
 stances may admit, it is here also received and believed, and 
 shown by experience to be rightly so received and believed. 
 The crux in Hume's case is this. He has to prove that 
 miracle as such — that is to say, an event not to be accounted 
 for by the known laws of nature — is impossible ; for in all 
 
Ch. VIII.] MIRACLE 315 
 
 things, except the impossible, human testimony is received. 
 Doubtless, when improbability exists, then it is only received 
 with an amount of care and jealousy in proportion to that 
 improbability ; yet the door is ever open to acceptance after 
 the demands of such care and jealousy have been met. But 
 the impossibility, which shuts out the testimony altogether, 
 never can be shown except by proof that every avenue is 
 blocked by which the miracle might come in. Any law of 
 nature, or created things, might open such an avenue : and 
 Hume's argument is of no avail until we have shown that 
 we know every such avenue that is now in existence, and 
 know that all of them are blocked. 
 
 Now if it be true that these miracles are anomalies in 
 nature, it may be that there exist, although at present hidden 
 from us, good reasons for such anomalies in the importance 
 of the purposes which may be served by them. I have often 
 observed in woodcutting that when a tree threw out near 
 the ground beginnings of roots unusually large, this was 
 a cautionary provision made by nature to compensate, by an 
 outward projection of unusual strength, for the weakness 
 produced by some rot latent in the interior trunk. So it is, 
 I believe, that in the case of a broken arm nature commonly 
 aims at making up, by an extension given to the ordinary 
 mass of bone, for a loss of tenacity resulting from some want 
 of the compactness originally belonging to the composition of 
 the limb. In the first of these cases, the enlargement is liable 
 to be more or less in the nature of a deformity. In the 
 second, I presume it to be always a mild example of mal- 
 formation. We shall have to ask whether compensation may 
 not atone for such deformity. It may be that for all natural 
 anomalies whatsoever there are good reasons in reserve. Let 
 us also suppose it possible that there are no such reasons, 
 when we know at least that none are within our view. But 
 this at least seems obvious, that anomalies such as those last 
 noticed, which serve purposes of marked utility, can plead 
 a justification for their admission to a place in nature, as 
 compared with any anomalies (and there are many such) 
 which can render no justifying account of themselves. 
 
 Now let it be admitted that miracles, as at present known 
 to us, are an anomaly in nature. But have they no justifying 
 
316 MIRACLE [Pt. II. 
 
 pleas, which they can exhibit on their own behalf I Surely 
 there is such a plea, and one of overwhelming importance. 
 For sin is in the world. And its ejection from the world would 
 at once cover nine-tenths of the way towards the solution of 
 the problems which most perplex and afflict humanity. And 
 the Christian, in concert with the Jewish, religion urges 
 that the miracles, which it alleges to have been performed, 
 were performed, and have operated with great and probably 
 indispensable power, towards the attainment of that very end. 
 This subject is so weighty that it may be proper to adopt 
 a fresh point of departure, and to open it more at large. 
 
 I have spoken of the laws of uniformity within the narrow 
 limits known to us. Under what law of uniformity were 
 the Siamese twins organically united so as to be insepar- 
 able, and so that they were incapable of being separated by 
 a surgical operation without the gravest danger to life ? Now 
 here was a variation from natural order, which utterly con- 
 travened utility. Think of what the world would be if it were, 
 in whole or in part, inhabited by assemblages of such twins. 
 It was a variety which might, at any rate on the surface, be 
 called freak, or absurdity ; and we know not what there was or 
 could be below the surface to make the designation improper. 
 What, again, is the law of uniformity in nature which permits 
 two trees to run organically into one another, most commonly 
 at the stages nearest the roots and next above the ground, 
 but occasionally, though very rarely l , at a higher elevation 1 
 What crook or cranny in this alleged uniformity permits an 
 infant occasionally to be born with six fingers instead of 
 five ; nay, even to be formed in embryo with two heads 
 instead of one 1 ? Farther still: we are informed this very 
 year of the birth in France of a living child with two heads, 
 which has been treated, in Holy Baptism, as involving 
 a duality of persons 2 . Or, again, while the pen of Moliere 
 was able to exhibit as the ne plus ultra of absurdity the idea 
 that the heart was by medical ordinance to be placed on the 
 right side instead of the left, how comes it that a case has 
 
 1 I happen to know of only two 2 See the public journals of Paris 
 
 cases, one of them at the place at the corresponding date, January, 
 where I myself reside. 1896. 
 
Ch. VIII.] MIRACLE 317 
 
 been known, in which an adult now alive has actually had 
 the heart so placed? and in whom, to crown the anomaly, 
 it has shifted from the one side to the other 1 . But I recur 
 to those cases which I have named first in the preceding 
 enumeration. They are in sharp contradiction to natural 
 laws. They are disbelieved by none, though they have only 
 been verified, even in the case of the Siamese twins, by 
 a small portion of mankind ; and they have now become 
 incapable of verification in any shape, now that death has put 
 in his sickle. But they bring into view an argument not 
 hitherto touched, which appears to me to be of great force 
 against Hume's negation. 
 
 The miracles of the Christian religion, not to say of the 
 Scriptures generally, are admitted to have had commonly in 
 their direct aim purposes of great utility as works of corporal 
 mercy; apart from one or two which may be regarded as 
 having been, in the main, simple indications of power in their 
 first aspect, but with a great ulterior design. If we look 
 onward to their common indirect purpose, in supplying man- 
 kind, and especially the current generation, with evidence 
 of the truth of the Gospel, we give additional breadth to the 
 reasonable allegation that these miracles were miracles of 
 purpose. On the other side we have to admit that they 
 lay outside the known laws of nature, nor are we justified, 
 under this head, in saying more than that they may have lain 
 within the scope of other laws which were, or still are, un- 
 known. That they should be unusual, and therefore startling, 
 was, we may own, even of their essence. 
 
 This foreignness to natural law is the point of objection 
 confidently urged against the Christian miracles. Now 
 I venture to urge these three propositions with reference 
 to some of the exceptional phenomena I have cited. First, 
 that these phenomena are in no less sharp conflict with the 
 established laws of nature, than the miracles of the Gospel 
 generally. Even apart from the subject of purpose, what 
 an uproar would they not have made, could we have met 
 them on the pages of the Evangelists. But secondly, while 
 
 1 My authority for this statement is an able and esteemed physician 
 now practising in London. 
 
318 MIRACLE [Pt. II. 
 
 the Gospel miracles were full of purpose readily appre- 
 ciable by us, we labour in vain to suggest any purpose 
 whatever in the case of the departures from the natural 
 sequence now before us ; and we feel that, if such purpose 
 exist, it is at any rate entirely withholden from our view. 
 And thirdly, it seems absolutely plain that the multiplica- 
 tion of such cases as two-headed children and pairs of 
 Siamese twins would not only be productive of inconvenience, 
 but would, within their spheres, derange or destroy the neces- 
 sary conditions of practical life. But a multiplication, even 
 a considerable multiplication, of the Gospel miracles might 
 conceivably have occurred, with only benefit, or let us say 
 with a large balance of benefit, to such portions of men as 
 might be within their range, while the general laws of per- 
 sonal and social life would in no way have been disturbed. 
 
 Can it for a moment be denied, if we admit the two sets of 
 phenomena (a large admission from my point of view) to be 
 fundamentally in the same relation to the known laws of 
 nature, that the Gospel miracles are clogged with a smaller 
 amount of antecedent improbability to weigh down the 
 testimony in their favour, than these recent and recurring 
 portents I And yet the recent portents are believed wholesale 
 by the very persons, who exhort us to disbelieve the Christian 
 miracles, or cast floods of ridicule upon those who believe 
 them? 
 
 It is common, among the opponents of miracle, to take very 
 high ground ; sometimes even to consign all who admit their 
 possibility to the class of intellectual impotents and imbeciles. 
 There undoubtedly have been times, when treatment equally 
 rough would have been awarded to the followers of Hume. 
 But it is unnecessary to pursue this line of thought. Have 
 these champions, bold and loud as Rodomonte, duly measured 
 the efficacy of mental force in directing, developing, and 
 releasing for action, physical force through the energy of 
 the will ? Nay, have they taken into due account the office 
 and effects of will upon and amidst physical laws, or asked 
 themselves with a sufficient persistency how and when any 
 absolute limit can be. assigned to the effects which that energy 
 of will may conceivably produce ? 
 
 Let us recommence ; and present the matter in another form. 
 
Ch. VIII.] MIRACLE 319 
 
 A book is resting on a table by my side. It is kept in 
 its position by the unfailing action of the law of gravity. 
 But I desire at some given moment to consult it ; and my 
 will issues an order to the muscular power of my arm 
 accordingly. This command is conveyed through the brain 
 to the muscle, which in the normal condition of the body 
 unfailingly obeys, and the book is accordingly lifted oft' the 
 table by a force which counteracts and overpowers the law 
 of gravity. The intermediate motor, by which gravitation 
 is thus overcome, is a force proceeding from the muscular 
 adjustment of my arm ; but the true and original motor is 
 an invisible force, wholly incommensurable with it, but acting 
 conclusively upon it. 
 
 It is recorded in the Gospel of St. Mark, that there arose 
 upon the Sea of Tiberias a violent storm when our Saviour 
 had embarked upon it in a small vessel, and had fallen 
 asleep l . Being aroused, ' He rebuked the wind, and said 
 unto the sea, Peace, be still.' And the storm abated there- 
 upon. Is this really more difficult to believe than a familiar 
 occurrence such as my lifting the book 1 The main difference 
 is that there is one factor only, the personal will of our 
 Saviour, which acts upon the passive sea without any inter- 
 mediate instrument, such as the muscles by which the book 
 is raised. But is not the substance of the matter one and 
 the same; the same in essence, if not in degree? In both 
 the cases an unseen mental force produces a visible physical 
 result so as to alter for the time being an ordinary natural 
 law. With the one form of incident we are familiar daily, 
 and, while it is brought about for some small or trivial 
 purpose, it excites no surprise. But the other is rare ; and, 
 being rare, it provokes our incredulity. It is a great exercise 
 of power instead of a small one, and the natural forces, 
 represented as passive and obedient, are of a form not subject 
 to our control. Is there, however, any real disproportion 
 between them 1 ? That can only be answered by our com- 
 paring the agent in each case with the action, and the means 
 employed with the end in view. In the one case a limited 
 ao-ent proceeds with a limited aim to an exercise of force 
 
 1 Mark iv. 37 39. 
 
3 2 ° MIRACLE [Pt. II. 
 
 suited to the nature of that aim. In the other case the agent 
 is by the supposition omnipotent instead of limited, and the 
 act (we may say) gigantic instead of small. But it forms 
 a portion of a process which is far more gigantic, for it has 
 in view the regeneration of the world. Is it not in at least 
 as just a proportion to that purpose, as the movement of the 
 arm is to the raising of the book ? The proceeding is rare, 
 and no wonder: for it is an ingredient in a vast and com- 
 prehensive plan, which is the crown of the world's history, 
 and to which all the most striking parts of that history stand 
 visibly and harmoniously related. 
 
 Let us take another very simple case. Moved by a decision 
 of the will, we mount a ladder twenty feet high, or lift a 
 weight of a hundred pounds from the ground. Here, to use 
 Hume's happy expression, we must subtract the effects of one 
 law from those of another. The energy, which antecedently 
 to the action of will had slept, is stirred into life under the 
 command of that sovereign faculty, and lifts the whole 
 weight of the body, or the hundred pounds mentioned in the 
 question, in direct defiance (so far as it goes) and active 
 contradiction of the law of gravity. Deduct the force of 
 gravity, and a true and sufficient force remains. The weight 
 I carry, combined with the distance through which it is 
 carried, forms an effective subtraction from the law of 
 gravity. True, such subtraction is often brought about under 
 the action of ordinary natural laws, as when a wind is raised 
 through some change in the atmospheric temperature, and 
 this wind raises leaves from the ground, and tosses them in 
 the air. But the essential point in the reasoning now before 
 us is that conflicts between natural laws, deductions by one 
 of them from the ordinary operation of another, can be and 
 incessantly are brought about in the sphere of our common 
 experience by the action of the human will. These conflicts 
 are prosecuted to a very wide extent. For example, every 
 building (not to say every bird's nest) on the face of the 
 earth, together with the immense preliminary operations, is 
 due to them. The entire mass of that command over external 
 nature, in which we so much boast of our progress, results 
 from the power of the human will thus exercised and applied. 
 But this power, so great in its aggregate effect, is, when 
 
Ch.VIIL] MIRACLE 321 
 
 brought into comparison with the power of the Divine will, 
 exhibited in creation, and in the laws which govern creation, 
 but infinitesimally small. Does it not then, at the very first 
 blush, appear to be an act of questionable rationality for 
 the insect-like human being to pronounce with respect to the 
 Divine will, ' Thus far it can go, and no farther ' 1 
 
 It will be alleged, and with apparent justice, that Hume's 
 reasoning does not postulate a denial of the Divine omnipo- 
 tence. But why is the pretentious argument from the 
 fallibility of human testimony employed for this particular 
 purpose, if not because miracle is alleged to impose a special 
 strain upon belief ? And what is the nature of that imagined 
 strain? Is it because miracle is alleged in order to accredit 
 an evil purpose ? Or because it is a waste of power for no 
 purpose at all? Or is it because it places in the hands of 
 Deity a power which we do not know that God possesses, 
 and which we cannot safely assume Him to possess, inasmuch 
 as there has never been any proof of its exercise? True, 
 these propositions are outside the argument of Hume. The 
 first may be dismissed at the present stage, since the purposes 
 of the Christian miracles claim to be beneficent. And the 
 second, since, aiming at the introduction of a regenerative 
 system, the aim they have in view is manifestly one of great 
 elevation. But the third ? Now this, though outside the 
 argument of Hume, is by no means outside the habit of mind 
 which the acceptance of that argument has powerfully tended 
 to engender. The true upshot of that argument is that there 
 exist no means by which miracle can be made known to man 
 at large. For, all that we know, in the world of fact, we 
 know either by experience or by testimony. Man at large, 
 that is to say each and every man, cannot know miracle by 
 experience ; for, if the experience of them were universal they 
 would cease to be miracles, and would scarcely possess that 
 evidential value which is the paramount reason of their 
 existence. So again, men in general cannot know them by 
 testimony, for testimony, which is good for all ordinary 
 purpose, is declared to be of insufficient force for establishing 
 the existence of miracle. 
 
 It is futile, then, to show that Hume's argument does not in 
 itself deny God's omnipotence. For it does all, which could 
 
 Y 
 
322 MIRACLE [Pt. II. 
 
 be done by the denial. It proves, if valid, that the Divine 
 power is a rusted weapon no longer available for use, which 
 has no practical existence for us: inasmuch as it does not 
 provide Him with any means of making Himself known to 
 us afresh, and thus of nearly operating upon us as reasonable 
 beings; He can only act on man through the existing laws 
 of nature. For anything outside of them is a miracle, and 
 subject to all the disabilities by which miracle as such is 
 affected. 
 
 The argument still gives us leave, or does not take away 
 our leave, to see God in the laws of nature themselves. But 
 this part of the work of negation has been done by coadjutors 
 whom Hume himself has done much to invite into the field. 
 His argument shut off one of the manifestations of God, that 
 which may be called extraordinary or occasional. For the 
 other, or ordinary, exhibition of God in His works, the first 
 step is to cover regularity and sequence with the name of law, 
 as a name savouring of compulsion, and excluding choice. The 
 next is to point to the origin of these laws as co-ordinate with 
 the beginning of the universe, and to remit the entire action 
 of the Creator to that date. From that time, He is a neutral 
 power. He has acted (it seems) like an incompetent Ruler, 
 who has handed over all His powers' to a regency, and has 
 from that date no farther concern in affairs. By a process 
 moderately graduated, but effectual, the Almighty is placed 
 in the condition of the sinecure gods, whom Epicurus could 
 afford to leave in heaven. Only one farther step remains to 
 land us in absolute and blank negation ; and it is plain that 
 this step is unimportant in comparison with those which we 
 have already left in our rear : for what is the difference, 
 relevant to the present subject, between deities whom the law 
 of nature binds in perpetual abeyance, and no deities at all ? 
 
 It is, therefore, material to bear proximately in mind the 
 omnipotence of God who supplies, in whatever form, the 
 forces necessary to sustain, as well as those necessary to 
 establish, in the world, the sequence and order that we term 
 natural law. And next we should recollect that miracle is not 
 disbelieved because the miraculous thing requires some greater 
 exercise of Divine power than this or that natural object or 
 process, but solely because we have not, as is alleged, the 
 
Ch. VIII.] MIRACLE 323 
 
 same power of verifying the thing asserted, and we ought 
 not to believe where we cannot verify. 
 
 Let us test this proposition by comparing with miracle all 
 the facts scientifically ascertained in connexion with what we 
 may call the two infinities, that of greatness upwards, and of 
 smallness downwards. Take the heavenly bodies and their 
 distances, with their laws of motion in the region upwards ; 
 and the particles on which the scent of dogs appears to 
 operate upon the scale running downwards. In what sense 
 is the first-named congeries of facts verified by us? The 
 disciple of Hume says, ' Miracle I disbelieve, for it is admitted 
 that at once, or in a limited time, it passes away, and leaves 
 us no means of verification. Astronomical marvels of distance 
 I believe, for they can be and have been verified.' Let us 
 suppose the disciple to be one of the common mass of men. 
 With his case in view, I ask, By whom have the}'' been 
 verified ? The answer is, by highly educated men, who have 
 mastered the secrets of the calculus. For each of that handful 
 of men, the verification avails in the particular case. But 
 how as to all the other wonders of nature ? Each class has 
 been verified by its own specialists for their own behoof, but 
 no man, unless such a prodigy as would be somewhat like a 
 miracle, can be a specialist with regard to them all, or can 
 acquire in each and every branch enough of specialism to 
 allow of a real verification. Why then does the specialist in 
 A accept all the secrets of nature in B, C, D, E, and so forth? 
 He receives them on the faith of human testimony: and if he 
 did not so receive them he would justly be regarded as a fool. 
 Therefore he does, in the wide range of natural knowledge, 
 the very thing which, in all the majestic pride of this new 
 philosophy, he is forbidden to do with regard to miracle. 
 
 The reply may be made that here the acceptance upon 
 testimony is warranted, on the ground that there is no ante- 
 cedent improbability, for the propositions accepted are within 
 the laws of nature ; or that they are experimentally attested. 
 But the reply is utterly futile. For how does the idiotes 
 know these laws of nature? It is not a knowledge born 
 with him, or with any one, but only acquired by a large 
 expenditure of time, which, under the necessities of life, he 
 cannot bestow, and by the devoted application of faculties, 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 MIRACLE [Pt. II. 
 
 which, in the overwhelming majority of cases, he does not 
 possess. 
 
 This vaunted resource, then, of verification comes to be 
 eventually convicted of being a mere pretext, for the purposes 
 of the argument before us. What, on Hume's principle, is abso- 
 lutely necessary in order to warrant the belief in all the great 
 facts of nature, hidden from mankind in general, but said to 
 be established through the possession of special knowledge, 
 is that each and every man should, for himself, possess the 
 faculties and devote the time necessary to give him an 
 original, and not merely a derived, knowledge of the particular 
 law or laws of nature by which the alleged fact is redeemed 
 from the disqualification of improbability. This being im- 
 possible, reason, within the walls of the Humian school, 
 forbids him to believe the movements of the heavenly bodies 
 throughout the universe. But the reason of mankind at 
 large, based upon the necessities of life, requires him to believe, 
 where the Humian school forbids ; and this upon pain of 
 being set down by his fellow-creatures at large as non compos. 
 Therefore the argument of Hume, being totally unsusceptible 
 of impartial application, is in direct conflict with the reason of 
 mankind at large upon the matter of verification. 
 
 As I have shown, the specialist himself, if a votary of 
 Hume, is in this lamentable condition with regard to all 
 specialisms, except those which he has made his own. And 
 the whole mass of men, if and so far as they have strayed 
 into the same error, are involved in the same unhappy 
 consequence. 
 
 And let it be observed what the nature of our reasoning 
 process has been. I have provisionally admitted Hume's 
 principle. He allows that human testimony has value. But 
 then its strength does not suffice to float us, when we swim 
 beyond the range of the known laws of nature. From that 
 point onwards we are encountered by an antecedent im- 
 probability which alters to the negative side the scale of just 
 judgement formerly verging to the affirmative. Now it has 
 been shown that the results of these propositions are absurd. 
 Therefore the propositions themselves are untenable. 
 
 On the assumed conflict with the laws of nature, and on 
 the fallibility of human testimony, it is only necessary to 
 
Ch. VIII] MIRACLE 325 
 
 observe that until Hume has met our demand upon the first 
 of these points, he is not entitled to open his case upon the 
 other. But the demand is one which cannot be met. 
 
 There are some of his subsidiary points, on which his pleas 
 are not unreasonable. For example, when he props himself by 
 the authority of Bacon in maintaining that accounts of signs 
 and miracles are especially to be suspected, when they have 
 been got up in the interest of religion. This is true : and it 
 is also true that religion has a force in generating not only 
 fanatical partisanship, but also fanatical antagonism, of which 
 the pages of Hume himself supply some striking examples, 
 notwithstanding his general calm and self-possession. 
 
 I have admitted all along in these remarks that miracles 
 are abnormal. It is no wonder that they should lie outside 
 the methods of teaching, which an all- wise Governor might 
 be expected to use in the education of innocent and docile 
 pupils. But in this case the pupils are neither innocent nor 
 docile, as we know too well from their offences, not only 
 against God, but against one another, and (without meaning 
 it) against themselves. But a miracle, if a thing foreign to 
 our ordinary experience, and so far out of the range of com- 
 parison with phenomena that fall- within it, is a specialty on 
 account of this strangeness, rather than on account of its 
 appearing to require an exercise of Divine power unusually 
 great. For it may seem on inquiry that there are other 
 phenomena in the world which, but for their commonness, we 
 might deem to be, so to speak, in themselves more arduous 
 performances. If, for example, we take the case of men lost 
 in trespasses and sins, and consider what a marvellous thing 
 it is to reverse the moral drift of a character, with its courses 
 of desire and the force of its habits, and apply this to men 
 wedded to the world, does it not seem probably or possibly 
 more difficult to furnish and apply the spiritual powers 
 necessary for the true effectuation of such a change than to 
 bid the waves of Gennesareth rise and swell, or relapse into 
 stillness 1 A character mis-set, a will misdirected, is perhaps 
 the most formidable antagonist that the Almighty, in the field 
 of providential government, ever, in ordinary and familiar 
 action, betakes Himself to overcome. 
 
 In the closing paragraph of this Essay, Hume deals with 
 
326 MIRACLE 
 
 prophecy; to which he probably remembered that Butler 
 assigned, along with miracle, the highest rank among the 
 evidences of religion \ He begins with the daring assertions 
 that every prophecy is a miracle, and that all he has said 
 against miracle may be said against prophecy, ' without any 
 variation.' Now the term miracle is used in more senses 
 than one. It has been said by Butler that the Incarnation 
 is a miracle, but a miracle that proves nothing, and that 
 requires to be proved itself. This is not the stamp of miracle 
 with which Hume's Essay deals. For him, and he follows 
 the ordinary use of the term, a miracle is an exercise of 
 Divine power not only outside of ordinary law, but also made 
 visible to the eyes or ears of men, and thereby capable of 
 being largely and generally reported by human testimony. 
 Before the miracle, I observe a man blind; after it I find 
 that he sees, and I report accordingly. Only in this form 
 can Hume bring his artillery to bear upon it. What are we 
 then to say when we find that in order to include prophecy 
 in his damnatory argument, he shifts his definition of a 
 miracle without a word of notice, and declares prophecy to 
 be miracle while knowing quite well that prophecy, as a rule 
 and on the larger scale, is entirely without that kind of 
 appeal to the individual mind, made through or with the 
 sense, which alone is obnoxious to the assault of Hume 1 
 When our Lord told the disciples He would rise from the 
 dead, this prediction was no miracle for them, until its fulfil- 
 ment. But in the great bulk of cases the prophecy is 
 delivered to one generation, and its accomplishment takes 
 place in another. It is in both cases a question of fact : 
 and neither of the alleged facts is under any semblance of 
 conflict with the laws of nature, so that while human testi- 
 mony operates in full force when prophecy has been fulfilled, 
 there is on the other side no improbability to be set against it. 
 When we consider that Hume has included all prophecy in 
 his description, it might, perhaps, be difficult to find in the 
 whole compass of polemical argument a grosser case, in a 
 famous writer, of an abuse of logic and of language, than is 
 supplied by his paragraph on prophecy. 
 
 1 On Miracles : Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 150. 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 ON THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST: AN ADDENDUM 
 
 TnnHIS short chapter may be reckoned as an Addendum to 
 *- the arguments of Butler on Mediation, which it is in 
 
 no respect intended to qualify. It bears upon a point which 
 had not been widely raised at the date of the Analogy. 
 
 Under the head marked I, the argument is like a flight in 
 an ether too thin to sustain us. The word ' Person ' is quite 
 inappropriately used. It is in truth ultra vires, or beyond 
 our office and competency, to treat of inter-personal relations 
 in the Deity, though Milton has done it : and this whether 
 the language used may tend either towards identification, or 
 towards severance. 
 
 The same phrase may be applicable to the word ' passions ' 
 used further on, for which ' affections ' ought to be sub- 
 stituted. 
 
 The general argument was suggested by Butler's Chapter, 
 and I think will hold, though the language used may require 
 some correction. The paper was written in an interleaved 
 copy of the Analogy about July, 1830, and is now printed 
 with a very few purely verbal amendments.] 
 
 I. Much of the objection to the doctrine of redemption is 
 founded upon the assumption that the Redeemer, as being an 
 innocent yet the suffering party, is treated unjustly by God. 
 
 If we consider the oneness of the Father and the Son, this 
 difficulty may perhaps be obviated. 
 
 For, if A inflicts punishment upon himself to serve B, can 
 he be said to suffer injustice 1 Surely not. 
 
 And, in Christianity, the same party suffered punishment 
 as the Victim, and inflicted it as the Judge ; His prayer in the 
 
328 ON THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST [Pt. II. 
 
 Garden being the result of superinduced feelings and pro- 
 pensities constituting His human nature. 
 
 Therefore the case is at least equally strong with that in 
 the instance quoted. Perhaps it may appear even stronger, 
 if we consider that, in this individual instance, and this 
 alone, not only the executors of the law, and the sacrifice 
 it demanded, were the same person, but also that person 
 was the very source, and sanction, and strength of the law 
 itself. 
 
 II. Even without this, however, the objection might be 
 thought to vanish from the following considerations. 
 
 i. The offering up of the Victim was in accordance with 
 His own free will. 
 
 2. If it be answered : ' Yes, but men often hurt themselves 
 willingly, and it ought to be the business of the Supreme 
 Arbiter to prevent an innocent Being's so hurting Himself : ' 
 it is to be remembered, that the whole force of this argu- 
 ment rests on the consideration that man, as an imperfect 
 being, may err in judgement, and through error, do himself 
 a mischief. If a man wishes to do himself injury avrov 
 iv€Ka, we call him mad, that is to say, one who has lost 
 his understanding. 
 
 Apply the argument, therefore, to the case of a being of 
 perfect judgement, which is the nature of the case under 
 consideration, and from the want of this essential feature 
 of imperfect judgement, the argument falls to the ground 
 at once. 
 
 III. But it does not appear to me that even this is required 
 in order to meet the objection. For it seems to presuppose 
 and assume, as the primary principle on which it is to be 
 built, the proposition that pain is essentially or at least 
 universally an evil (for pain is what our Blessed Lord 
 brought upon Himself). But this, it seems to me, ought to 
 be denied. Pain is not in its nature an evil in the proper 
 sense, nor is it universally attended with evil as a con- 
 sequence, any more than pleasure is universally a good, 
 or attended with it. 
 
 Pleasure and pain have not in themselves the nature of 
 good and evil. Properly indeed, and in perfect states of being, 
 pleasure is attached to good, and pain to evil, both of them 
 
OP ; 
 
 UNIVi 
 
 CALIFO 
 
 Ch.IX.] ON THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST 329 
 
 invariably: but, in this perturbed and unnatural state of 
 things, the alliances are broken respectively; and we are 
 rather to consider pleasure and pain, in relation to ourselves, 
 as bwafxeis, that is to say, as being contingent in reference to 
 the ends for which they will be employed, and each capable 
 of multiplying either to us. 
 
 Now, to a good being, pleasure is not an evil, for it 
 augments his gratitude to the Giver of pleasure, and thereby 
 it causes him to energize in his best and holiest feelings, and 
 by that energizing strengthens, extends, and increases them. 
 
 To a being partially good, but under the dominion of 
 a good principle, which is gradually assimilating his nature 
 to its own, upon the whole, rather than a bad one, the same 
 effects will accrue, but in an inferior degree. 
 
 To a being perfectly evil, pleasure will be a hvva^is pro- 
 ductive of evil, inasmuch as it calls forth his feelings of 
 self-love and desire of self-gratification, and will increase 
 his evil by causing him to energize these. (I say increase 
 his evil, though above he is called perfectly evil, because, 
 though the essence is perfect, or is entirely ttoitj tls, of 
 a certain character, yet its quality and intensity may admit 
 of variation.) 
 
 To a being partially evil, and on the whole under the 
 ascendency of a bad principle rather than a good one, the like 
 effects will accrue, in proportionable measure. 
 
 Pain, on the other hand, will be a bvvafxis ai^r/riK?; of evil to 
 a being perfectly evil, and in the main under an evil 
 principle, because it will cause him to energize in vindictive 
 feelings towards the inflictor of the pain, and thereby 
 augment the evil ; that is to say, make him more evil than 
 he was before. 
 
 (Thus do we assimilate the objects, with which we come in 
 contact, to our own nature, or rather operate upon our own 
 nature by them.) 
 
 Lastly, and to come to the point which concerns the present 
 question ; to a being, in the main under the direction of 
 a good principle in some degree, and to a perfectly, or en- 
 tirely, good being in a degree proportionably higher, pain 
 will be a bvvafjus avfrTinrj of good, because it will cause him 
 to energize in those feelings of self-mortification and self- 
 
330 ON THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST [Pt. II. 
 
 sacrifice, which are his best, and will thus again, by the 
 process heretofore referred to, increase his goodness. 
 
 Such a being, it is needless to say, was our Saviour in 
 His human nature. To him, therefore (if we reject the as 
 it seems to me false, fearfully prevalent, and most dangerous 
 doctrine, that pain is in itself an evil), in that human nature 
 the bitterness of His cross, the physical and the mental 
 torture, and the buffets, and the taunts, and the scorn, were 
 no evil, if we look closely at the right meaning of the term, 
 but a good ; not indeed essentially, but consequentially, as 
 good ; so that, we may well suppose, it was in reference to 
 this that our Saviour exclaimed, ' For their sakes I sanctify 
 myself l ; ' and that thus the Apostle has told us that ' the 
 Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffer- 
 ings V For it is obvious, from many passages of Scripture, 
 that our Saviour's state, in His human nature, was (i) pro- 
 bationary, and (2) progressive. So entirely was the human 
 nature, with its conditions except sin, attached to the Divine 
 Being. We are told — 
 
 in Luke ii. 52, that He grew in wisdom . . . and in favour 
 
 with God. ... 
 in Heb. v. 8, 9, ' Though he were a Son, yet learned he 
 obedience by the things which he suffered ; and being 
 made perfect, he became the Author of eternal salvation 
 unto all them that obey him.' 
 in Luke xiii. 32, ' I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the 
 
 third day I shall be perfected.' 
 in Phil. ii. 8, 9, ' And being found in fashion as a man, he 
 humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even 
 the death of the cross : wherefore God also hath highly 
 exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above 
 every name.' 
 In His human character, then, His kingdom is the reward 
 of His obedience. All this must fall, if the proposition that 
 pain is not essentially an evil, falls ; and I think it will 
 stand, if that stand. 
 
 It seems to me that most of our difficulties arise from the 
 laxity of the ordinary sen3e, in which the term evil is used ; 
 
 1 John xvii. 19. 2 Heb. ii. 10. 
 
Ch. IX.] ON THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST 331 
 
 for it is now more commonly applied to pain than to sin ; 
 and good, on the other hand, to advantage more than to 
 godliness. No doubt we may trace through this very re- 
 markable transfer of significations, that deeply rooted and 
 audacious tendency of the human heart, the desire to put 
 a veil over our eyes, to disguise the truth as we cannot 
 destroy it, to create darkness where we hate light, ignorance 
 where we cannot endure reflection. The appropriation of 
 these terms to what we like or dislike respectively, is at the 
 same time a tacit homage to the great God of good and of 
 truth, exacted by the remains of that sense of right and 
 wrong, which still bears unavailing testimony to the fact 
 that man was made in the image of God, but compromised 
 and rendered nugatory by that prevailing depravity, which 
 does indeed, while it seeks pleasure, submit to calling it by 
 the name of good, and is perhaps startled at the notion of 
 seeking nothing but its own pleasure, when this is put in 
 plain terms : but which, to make amends for its nominal 
 condescension, exercises all the realities of an iron despotism 
 over the soul. 
 
 It would appear then, if what has been urged is true, that 
 in the scheme of redemption there was, on the part of God, 
 mercy indeed and love abundant and unspeakable; incom- 
 prehensible in that Christ descended from the right hand of 
 His Father's glory, and the bosom of His love, and took upon 
 Him the passions * of humanity, lived a life of sorrow, and 
 died an ignominious and a painful death, attended with 
 mental agony far more terrible than the ignominy, or the 
 pangs of His lingering tortures or of His closing struggle ; so 
 that He atoned for our sins by His death, He gave a pattern 
 for our characters by His life, He instructed us to copy it by 
 His teaching, and He exemplified, though at a height which 
 we can only gaze upon from afar, in His own person, by the 
 attaching of a human nature to a Divine Essence, the possibi- 
 lity, a fortiori, of engrafting a Divine principle upon a human 
 soul. All this it is wonderful indeed that He did and 
 suffered, for though He need not have felt or cared for the 
 pain, yet for our sakes He put Himself in a situation to feel 
 
 See Prefatory Note. 
 
332 ON THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST [Pt. II. 
 
 and care for, as well as basely suffer it. But, in all this, 
 there was no evil done Him. We cannot say there was, any 
 more than we could say evil was done to a person, to whom 
 God should send His merciful chastisements to awaken him 
 to a sense of spiritual things. Therefore, though the mercy 
 was indeed mysterious, and incomprehensible from its vast- 
 ness, there is no injustice, nor the semblance of it. 
 
 (Pascal says, ' Let us term nothing evil, but what turns the 
 sacrifice of God into the sacrifice of Satan V) 
 
 So that I trust we may glory in the cross of Christ, un- 
 molested by any notion that there is the smallest presumption 
 or symptom of injustice connected with that wondrous sacrifice. 
 In this case there is nothing to contradict our notions of 
 justice, however much there may be to transcend them. There 
 is a mystery, deep hid in the bosom of God, but it is a mystery 
 of love, of love eternal, love unbounded, and love alone. 
 
 IV. All mental pain seems to be to the mind what medicine 
 is to the body; at least,- all mental pain in this probationary 
 state. Pain and evil seem to me to be so clearly distinguish- 
 able, that I should not call the bad taste of medicine, 
 abstractedly considered, in any degree an evil. But, waiving 
 this question, surely few would hesitate to admit that the 
 complex idea of medicine,* as an instrument working beneficial 
 ends by painful means, is that of a good. And, on the same 
 principle, surely men in general ought to admit that the 
 complex idea of pain, in a probationary state, as a similar 
 instrument applied to the mind, displays the same character. 
 
 V. There is one objection, however,- which seems likely to 
 be raised against a theory of this kind, and which, if it be 
 possible, it is also highly desirable to answer. 
 
 It is this : ' If this pain was a good to our Saviour, in any 
 sense of the term, what sacrifice did He make in coming upon 
 earth 1 ' Consequently our views of the greatness of the 
 sacrifice will be weakened ; and also our views of the occasion 
 for it, and thus of our own sinfulness. 
 
 Though we are treading upon dangerous ground in en- 
 deavouring to treat of matter which depends upon the 
 distinctions of our Saviour's two natures, thus much, I think, 
 
 Thoughts on Death. 
 
Ch. IX.] ON THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST 333 
 
 may be said. The sacrifice our Saviour made was primarily 
 His taking upon Him the human nature, and all its sym- 
 pathies and sensibilities to pain ; and when we consider Him 
 as really and truly a Man, endued with these sensibilities, and 
 think how deep and bitter was the cup of His affliction, we 
 shall not, I think, see any reason to lower our views of the 
 greatness of His love. For we are to remember — 
 
 1. That man's chief revulsion is from pain ; and 
 
 2. Very little, comparatively, from evil considered inde- 
 pendently of pain. 
 
 And though our Saviour did not take on Him this in- 
 difference to sin, yet He did take on Him in full the revulsion 
 from pain ; and here His struggle lay. 
 
 So that the question which has been touched, whether pain 
 be essentially an evil or not, has no effect either in diminishing 
 or enhancing our views of the greatness of the sacrifice, which 
 are left precisely as they may have been. The point affected 
 by the decision of this question is the notion of supposed 
 injustice done to Christ by the scheme of redemption, and 
 that alone. 
 
 Juvenal perceived, and has recorded in the most unequi- 
 vocal terms, the difference between pain and evil, considered 
 simply : 
 
 Nee poenatn sceleri invenies, nee digna parabis 
 Supplicia his populis in quorum mente pares sunt, 
 Et similes, ira atque fames 1 . 
 
 1 Juv. Sat. xv. 129- 131. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 PROBABILITY AS THE GUIDE OF LIFE ! 
 
 t. r|1HE doctrine of Bishop Butler, in the Introduction to 
 -■- his Analogy, with regard to probable evidence, lies 
 at the root of his entire argument ; for, by the analogy which 
 he seeks to establish between natural religion and that 
 which is revealed, he does not pretend to supply a demon- 
 strative proof of Christianity, but only such a kind, and 
 such an amount, of presumptions in its favour as to bind 
 human beings at the least to take its claims into their serious 
 consideration 2 . This, he urges, they must do, provided 
 only they mean to act with regard to it upon those 
 principles, which, in all other matters, are regarded as the 
 principles of common sense. It is therefore essential to his 
 purpose to show what are the obligations which, as inferred 
 from the universal practice of men, probable or presumptive 
 evidence may entail. 
 
 2. But indeed the subject-matter of this Introduction has 
 yet a far wider scope. It embraces the rule of just pro- 
 ceeding, not only in regard to the examination of the 
 pretensions of Christianity, but also in regard to the whole 
 conduct of life. The former question, great as it is, has 
 no practical existence for the vast majority, whether of the 
 Christian world, or of the world beyond the precinct of 
 the Christian profession. It is only relevant and material 
 
 1 First published in, and re- Nature. But, in the Introduction, 
 printed from, the Nineteenth Cen- § 3, the Bishop describes his 
 tury, for March, 1879. postulate in close correspondence 
 
 2 The title of Bishop Butler's with the phrase I have used in the 
 book is The Analogy of Religion text. 
 
 to the Constitution and Course of 
 
PROBABILITY AS THE GUIDE OF LIFE 335 
 
 (except as an exercise of sound philosophy) to three 
 descriptions of persons ; those whom the Gospel for the 
 first time solicits ; those who have fallen away from it ; 
 and those who are in doubt concerning its foundation. 
 Again, there are portions of these classes, to whose states 
 of mind other modes of address may be more suitable. 
 But every Christian, and indeed every man owning any 
 kind of moral obligation, who may once enter upon any 
 speculation concerning the grounds which dispose him to 
 act, or to refrain from acting, is concerned in the highest 
 degree with the subject that Bishop Butler has opened 
 incidentally for the sake of its relation to his own immediate 
 purpose. 
 
 3. The proposition of Bishop Butler, that probability is 
 the guide of life, is not one invented for the purposes of his 
 argument, nor held by believers alone. Voltaire has used 
 nearly the same words : — 
 
 Presque toute la vie humaine roule sur des probabilites. Tout ce qui 
 n'est pas demontre aux yeux, ou reconnu pour vrai par les parties 
 evidemment interessees a le nier, n'est tout au plus que probable. . . . 
 I/incertitude etant presque toujours le partage de l'bomme, vous 
 vous determineriez tres-rarement, si vous attendiez une demonstration. 
 Cependant il faut prendre un parti: et il ne faut pas le prendre au 
 hasard. II est done necessaire a notre nature faible, aveugle, toujours 
 sujette a l'erreur, d'etudier les probabilites avec autant de soin, que 
 nous apprenons l'arithmetique et la geometrie. 
 
 Voltaire wrote this passage in an Essay, not on religion, 
 but on judicial inquiries 1 : and the statement of principle 
 which it propounds is perhaps on that account even more 
 valuable. 
 
 4. If we consider subjectively the reasons, upon which 
 our judgements rest, and the motives of our practical inten- 
 tions, it may in strictness be said that absolutely in no case 
 have we more than probable evidence to proceed upon ; 
 since there is always room for the entrance of error in that 
 last operation of the percipient faculties of men, by which 
 the objective becomes subjective ; an operation antecedent, 
 of necessity, not only to action, or decision upon acting, but 
 
 1 ' Essai sur les probabilites en fait de Justice.' Works (4to, Geneva, 
 1777), vol. xxvi. p. 457. 
 
336 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. ti. 
 
 to the stage at which the perception becomes what is some- 
 times called a ' state of consciousness V 
 
 5. But, setting aside this consideration, and speaking only 
 of what is objectively presented as it is in itself, a very small 
 portion indeed of the subject-matter of practice is or can be 
 of a demonstrative, or necessary, character. Moral action 
 is conversant almost wholly with evidence, which in itself 
 is only probable. So that a right understanding of the 
 proper modes of dealing with it is the foundation of all 
 ethical studies. Without this, it must either be dry and 
 barren dogmatism, or else a mass of floating quicksands. 
 Duty may indeed be done, without having been studied in 
 the abstract ; but, if it is to be studied, it must be studied 
 under its true laws and conditions as a science. Now, 
 probability is the nearly universal form or condition, under 
 which these laws are applied: and therefore a sound view 
 of it is not indeed ethical knowledge itself, but is the 
 organon, by means of which that knowledge is to be 
 rightly handled. He who, by his reasonings, at once teaches 
 and inures men to the methods of handling probable or 
 imperfect evidence, gives them exercise, and by exercise 
 strength, in the most important of all those rules of daily 
 life, which are connected with the intellectual habits. 
 
 6. Different forms of error concerning probable evidence 
 have produced in some cases moral laxity, in others scrupu- 
 losity, in others unbelief. 
 
 To begin with the last named of these. It is a common 
 form of fallacy to suppose that imperfect evidence cannot 
 be the foundation of an obligation to religious belief, 
 inasmuch as belief, although in its infancy it may fall 
 short of intellectual conviction, tends towards that character 
 in its growth and attains it when mature. Sometimes, 
 indeed, it is assumed by the controversialist, that belief, 
 if genuine, is essentially absolute. And it is taken to be 
 a violation of the laws of the human mind that proofs 
 which do not exclude doubt should be held to warrant 
 a persuasion which does or may exclude it. Indeed, the 
 celebrated argument of Hume, against the credibility of 
 
 Nineteenth Century, for April, 1879, pp. 606, 607. 
 
Ch.X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 337 
 
 the miracles, involved the latent assumption that we have 
 a right to claim demonstrative evidence for every proposi- 
 tion which demands our assent. From this assumption it 
 proceeds to deny a demonstrative character to any proofs, 
 except those supplied by our own experience. And the 
 answer, which Paley has made to it, rests upon the proposi- 
 tion that the testimony adduced is such as, according to 
 the common judgement and practice of men, it is rational 
 to believe ; but he passes by without notice the question 
 of its title to the rank of speculative certainty. 
 
 7. Next, with regard to the danger of scrupulosity. This 
 has perhaps been less conspicuous in philosophical systems, 
 than in its effect on the practical conduct of life by 
 individuals. There are persons, certainly not among the 
 well-trained and well-informed, who would attach a suspicion 
 of dishonesty to any doctrine, which should give a warrant 
 to acts of moral choice upon evidence admitted to be less 
 than certain. Their disposition is deserving of respect, when 
 it takes its rise from that simple, unsuspecting confidence in 
 the strength and clearness of truth, which habitual obedience 
 engenders. It is less so when we see in it a timidity of mind, , 
 which shrinks from measuring the whole extent of the 
 charge that it has pleased God to lay upon us as moral 
 agents, and will not tread, even in the path of duty, upon 
 any ground that yields beneath the pressure of the foot. 
 The desire for certainty, in this form, enervates and unmans 
 the character. Persons so affected can scarcely either search 
 with effect for duties to be done, or accept them when offered, 
 and almost forced upon their notice. As a speculative 
 system, this tendency has appeared among some casuists 
 of the Church of Rome, and has been condemned by Pope 
 Innocent XI. 
 
 8. The position of many among her divines with reference 
 to the danger of moral laxity opens much graver questions. 
 The Provincial Letters of Pascal gave a universal notoriety to 
 the doctrine of Probabilism. Setting apart the extremes 
 to which it has been carried by individuals, we may safely 
 take the representation of it, as it is supplied in a Manual 1 
 
 1 Manuel des Confesseurs. 
 Z 
 
338 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 published for the use of the French clergy of the present day. 
 According to this work, it is allowable, in matters of moral 
 conduct, that if of two opposite opinions, each one be sus- 
 tained not by a slight but a solid probability, and if the 
 probability of the one be admittedly more solid than that 
 of the other, we may follow our natural liberty of choice by 
 acting upon the less probable. This doctrine, we are informed, 
 had been taught, before 1667, by 159 authors of the Roman 
 Church, and by multitudes since that date. It appears to 
 stand in the most formal contradiction to the sentiments 
 of Bishop Butler ; who lays it down without hesitation that 
 the lowest presumption, if not neutralized by a similar pre- 
 sumption on the opposite side, and the smallest real and 
 clear excess of presumption on the one side over the pre- 
 sumptions on the other side, determines the reason in matters 
 of speculation, and absolutely binds conduct in matter of 
 practice. Such being the scope of the subject, and such the 
 dangers to which it stands related, let us now proceed to 
 its examination. 
 
 9. First we have to inquire, what is probability 1 Prob- 
 ability may be predicated whenever, in answer to the 
 question whether a particular proposition be true, the 
 affirmative chances predominate over the negative, yet not 
 so as (virtually) to exclude doubt. And, on the other hand, 
 improbability may be predicated, whenever the negative 
 chances predominate over the affirmative, but subject to the 
 same reservation that doubt be not precluded. For, if doubt 
 be precluded, then certainty, affirmatively or negatively, as 
 the case may be, must be predicated. In mathematical 
 language, certainty, affirmative or negative, is the limit of 
 probability on the one side, and of improbability on the other, 
 as the circle is of the ellipse. 
 
 10. The relations of probabilities among themselves may 
 
 be most clearly expressed by mathematical symbols. Let 
 
 a represent the affirmative side of the proposition to be tried, 
 
 b the negative, and let the evidence be exactly balanced 
 
 between them. Then 
 
 a . a 
 
 a : : : 1 : 1, .. T = 1. 
 
 
 Let the evidence so preponderate on the affirmative side that 
 
Ch.X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 339 
 
 out of one hundred and one cases presenting the same 
 phenomena, in one hundred it would be true. Thus the 
 expression is 
 
 , a 100 
 
 a: 6:: 100:1, .".7= =100. 
 
 1 
 
 Again, let the evidence be such that, out of one hundred and 
 one cases presenting the same phenomena, in one hundred 
 the proposition would turn out to be false : then the ex- 
 pression becomes 
 
 a : : : 1 : 100, . . -7 = 
 
 100 
 
 And it is clear that — 
 
 (1) When the second side of this equation consists of an 
 integer or an improper fraction, the proposition is probable. 
 
 (2) As the numerator becomes indefinitely great it re- 
 presents probability approaching towards certainty. This 
 it can never adequately express : but no fixed limit can be 
 placed upon the advances which may be made towards it. 
 
 (3) When the second side of this equation consists of a 
 proper fraction, the proposition is improbable. 
 
 (4) As the denominator becomes indefinitely great, it repre- 
 sents improbability approaching towards negative certainty, 
 or, as it is sometimes, perhaps improperly, called, impossi- 
 bility. 
 
 11. But the sphere of probability, according to Bishop 
 Butler, includes not only truths but events, past and future : 
 and it likewise comprehends questions of conduct, or precepts, 
 which may be said to form a class apart, both from truths 
 and from events: whereas the definition here given turns 
 simply upon the preponderance of chances for the truth or 
 falsehood of a proposition. How shall we broaden that 
 definition ? 
 
 The answer is that truths, events past and future, and 
 questions of conduct, may all be accurately reduced into the 
 form of propositions true or false, by the use of their re- 
 spective symbols : for the first, the symbol is ; for the second, 
 has been or will be ; and for the third, ought to be. In one or 
 other of these forms, every conceivable proposition can be 
 tried in respect to its probability. 
 
 12. It is necessary also to observe upon an ambiguity in 
 
 z 2 
 
34o PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 the use of the term probable. It has been defined in the 
 sense in which it is opposed to the term improbable ; but, in 
 a discussion on the character of probable evidence, probable 
 and improbable propositions are alike included. When, for 
 this purpose, we are asked what does probability designate 1 
 the answer is, that which may or may not be. We have no 
 word exclusively appropriated to this use. In the Greek, 
 Aristotle conveniently designates it to ii-be\6^evov akXcas €\€tv, 
 as opposed to to abvvaTov aAAws ex (LV - Sometimes this is 
 called contingent, as distinguished from necessary, matter; 
 and safely so called, if it be always borne in mind that we 
 are dealing with propositions, with certain instruments 
 supplied by human language, and adapted to our thoughts, 
 but not with things as they are in themselves ; that the same 
 thing may be subjectively contingent and objectively certain, 
 as, for example, the question whether such a person as Homer 
 has existed : which to us is a subject of probable inquiry, 
 but in itself is manifestly of necessary matter, whether the 
 proposition be true or false. So, again, in speaking of future 
 events, to call them contingent in any sense except with 
 regard to the propositions in which we discuss them, is no 
 less an error ; because, whether upon the necessitarian or the 
 ordinary Christian hypothesis, future events are manifestly 
 certain and not contingent ; it remaining as a separate 
 question whether they are so fixed by necessity, or as the 
 offspring of free volition. It may be enough, then, for the 
 present to observe that the ' probable evidence ' of Bishop 
 Butler reaches over the whole sphere, of which it is common 
 to speak as that of contingent matter ; and that the element 
 of uncertainty involved in the phrase concerns not the things 
 themselves that are in question, but only the imperfection of 
 the present means of conveying them to our minds. To the 
 view of the Most High God, who knows all things, there is 
 no probability and no contingency, but ' all things are naked 
 and open unto the eyes of Him, with whom we have to do.' 
 
 13. In His case, and in every case of knowledge properly 
 and strictly so called, the existence of the thing known is 
 perceived without the intervention of any medium of proof. 
 But evidence is, according to our use of the term, essentially 
 intermediate ; something apart both from the percipient and 
 
Ch.X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 341 
 
 the thing perceived, and serving to substantiate to the former, 
 in one degree or another, the existence of the latter. Thus 
 we speak of the evidence of the senses, meaning those im- 
 pressions upon our bodily organs which are made by objects 
 visible, audible, and the like. These respectively make, as 
 it were, their assertions to us ; which we cross-examine 
 by reflection, and by comparison of the several testimonies 
 affecting the same object. And, with regard to things in- 
 corporeal, in the sphere of the probable, it seems that, in like 
 manner, the impressions they produce upon our mental 
 faculties, acting without the agency of sense, are also strictly 
 in the nature of evidence, of presumption more or less near to 
 demonstration, concerning the reality of what they represent ; 
 but subject always to a similar process of verification and 
 correction. 
 
 14. The whole notion, therefore, of evidence seems to belong 
 essentially to a being of limited powers. For no evidence 
 can prove anything except what exists, and all that exists 
 may be the object of direct perception. The necessity of 
 reaching our end through the circuitous process implies our 
 want of power to go straight to the mark. 
 
 15. And it further appears that the same idea implies not 
 only the limitation of range in the powers of the being who 
 makes use of evidence, but likewise their imperfection even 
 in the processes which they are competent to perform. The 
 assurance possessed by such a being cannot be of the highest 
 order, which the laws of the spiritual creation, so far as they 
 are known to us, would admit. However truly it may be 
 adequate, and even abundant, to sustain his mind in any par- 
 ticular conviction, it must be inferior to science in its proper 
 signification, that of simple or absolute knowledge, which 
 is the certain and exact, and also conscious, coincidence of 
 the intuitive faculty with its proper object. For it is scarcely 
 conceivable that any accumulation of proofs, each in itself 
 short of demonstration, and therefore including materials of 
 unequal degrees of solidity, should, when put together, form 
 a whole absolutely and entirely equivalent to the single 
 homogeneous act of pure knowledge. 
 
 16. The same conclusion, that imperfection pervades all 
 our mental processes, at which we have arrived by a con- 
 
342 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 sideration of their nature, we may also draw from the nature 
 of the faculties by which they are conducted. For there is 
 no one faculty of any living man of which, speaking in the 
 sense of pure and rigid abstraction, we are entitled to say 
 that it is infallible in any one of its acts. And no combina- 
 tion of fallibles can, speaking always in the same strictness, 
 make up an infallible ; however, by their independent coinci- 
 dence, they may approximate towards it, and may produce a 
 result which is for us indistinguishable from, and practically, 
 therefore, equivalent to, it. 
 
 17. Certainly that which is fallible does not therefore 
 always err. It may, in any given case, perform its duty 
 without fault, and as though it were infallible ; just as a sum 
 in arithmetic, that is rightly worked by one of us, could not 
 be more right if it were worked by an infallible intelligence. 
 The fallibility of our faculties therefore may not prevent our 
 having knowledge that in itself is absolute. But at the 
 least it prevents our separating what may be had with 
 such knowledge from what we grasp with a hold less firm. 
 In any survey, or classification, of what we have perceived 
 or concluded, since the faculty which discriminates is fallible, 
 the reservations, which its imperfection requires, must attach 
 to the results we attain by it. So that, although we might 
 have this knowledge, if we consider knowledge simply as the 
 exact correspondence of the percipient faculty with its proper 
 object, we could not make ourselves conscious of the real 
 rank of that knowledge in a given case ; we could not know 
 what things they are that we thus know, nor consequently 
 could we argue from them as known. « 
 
 18. Since, then, nothing can be known except what exists, 
 nor known otherwise than in the exact manner in which it 
 exists, knowledge, in its scientific sense, can only be predi- 
 cated — first, of perceptions which are absolutely and exactly 
 true, and secondly, by a mind which in the same sense knows 
 them to be absolutely and exactly true. It seems to follow, 
 that it is only by a licence of speech that the term knowledge 
 can be predicated by us as to any of our perceptions. Assum- 
 ing that our faculties, acting faithfully, are capable in certain 
 cases of conveying to us scientific knowledge, still no part 
 of what is so conveyed can, when it stands in review before 
 
Ch. X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 343 
 
 our consciousness, carry the certain indefectible marks of 
 what it is. And since there is no one of them, with regard 
 to which it is abstractedly impossible that the thing it 
 represents should be otherwise than as it is represented, 
 we cannot, except by such licence of speech as aforesaid, 
 categorically predicate of any one of them that precise corre- 
 spondence of the percipient faculty, with the thing perceived, 
 which constitutes knowledge pure and simple. 
 
 19. It is desirable that we should fully realize this truth, 
 in order that we may appreciate the breadth and solidity of 
 the ground on which Bishop Butler has founded his doctrine 
 of probable evidence. We ought to perceive that, observing 
 his characteristic caution, he has kept within limits narrower 
 than the basis, which the laws of the human mind, viewed 
 through a medium purely abstract, would have allowed him 
 to occupy. His habit was to encamp near to the region of 
 practice in all his philosophical inquiries; that he might 
 appease, and thus gently reclaim, the contemptuous infidelity 
 of his age. A rigid statement of the whole case concerning 
 our knowledge would probably have startled those whom 
 he sought to attract, and have given them a pretext for 
 retreating, at the very threshold, from the inquiry to which 
 he invited them. Considerations of this kind are, indeed, 
 applicable very generally to the form in which Bishop Butler 
 has propounded his profound truths for popular acceptation. 
 But it is manifest that, if he even understated the case 
 with regard to probable evidence, his argument is simply 
 corroborated by taking into view all that residue, which he 
 did not directly put into requisition. 
 
 20. He was engaged in an endeavour to show to those, 
 who demanded an absolute certainty in the proofs of religion, 
 that this demand was unreasonable ; and the method he 
 pursued in this demonstration was, to point out to them 
 how much of their own daily conduct was palpably and 
 rightly founded upon evidence less than certain. The un- 
 reasonableness of such a demand becomes still more glaring 
 in the eyes of persons not under adverse prepossession, when 
 we find by reflection that no one of our convictions, or percep- 
 tions, can in strictness be declared to possess the character 
 of scientific knowledge. Because, if such be the case, we 
 
344 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 cannot rebut this consequence : that, even if a demonstration 
 intrinsically perfect were presented to us, the possibility of 
 error would still exist in the one link remaining; namely, 
 that subjective process of our faculties by which it has to 
 be appropriated. This (so to speak) primordial element of 
 uncertainty never could be eliminated, except by the gift 
 of inerrability to the individual mind. But such a gift 
 would amount to a fundamental change in the laws of our 
 nature. Again, in the particular case of belief, such a change 
 would obviously dislocate the entire conditions of the inquiry, 
 which appears to turn upon the credibility of revealed reli- 
 gion as it is illustrated by its suitableness to — what? not to 
 an imaginable and unrealized, but to the actual, experienced 
 condition of things. 
 
 21. To the conclusion that scientific knowledge can never 
 be consciously entertained by the individual mind, it is no 
 answer, nor any valid objection, to urge that such a doctrine 
 unsettles the only secure foundation on which we can build, 
 destroys mental repose, and threatens confusion. For, even 
 if a great and grievous fault in the condition of the world 
 were thus to be exposed, we are not concerned here with the 
 question whether our state is one of abstract excellence, but 
 simply with the facts of it, such as they are. We cannot 
 enter into the question, whether it is abstractedly best that 
 our faculties should be liable to error. That is one of the 
 original conditions under which we live. No objection can 
 be drawn from it to an argument in favour of revelation, 
 unless it can be shown either, first, that, on account of 
 liability to error, they become practically useless for the 
 business of acting or of inquiring; or else, secondly, that 
 the materials to be examined in the case of Revelation are 
 not so fairly cognizable by them, as the materials of other 
 examinations which, by the common judgement and practice 
 of mankind, they are found to be competent to conduct and 
 determine. 
 
 22. But the state of things around us amply shows that 
 this want of scientific certainty is, in point of fact, no 
 reproach to our condition, no practical defect in it. Rather 
 it is a law, which associates harmoniously with the remainder 
 of its laws. The nature of our intelligence makes no demand 
 
Ch. X] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 345 
 
 for such assurance; this is evident, because we are not 
 capable of receiving it. Nay, we cannot so much as arrive 
 at the notion of it without an effort of abstraction. Our 
 moral condition appears still less to crave anything of the 
 kind. If we allow that sin is in the world (no matter, for 
 the purpose of this argument, how it came there), and that 
 we are placed under the dominion of a moral Governor who 
 seeks by discipline to improve His creatures, it is not difficult 
 to give reasons in support of the proposition that intellectual 
 inerrability is not suited to such a state. One such reason 
 we may find in the recollection, that the moral training of 
 an inferior by a superior either essentially involves, or at the 
 least suitably admits of, the element of trust. Now the region 
 of probable evidence is that which gives to such an element 
 the freest scope; because trust in another serves to supply, 
 within due limits, the shortcomings of direct argumentative 
 proof ; and when such proof is ample, but at the same time 
 deals with materials which we are not morally advanced 
 enough to appreciate, trust (as in the case of a child before 
 its parents) fulfils for us a function, which could not other- 
 wise be discharged at all. I must not, however, attempt to 
 discuss, at any rate on the present occasion, the subject, a 
 wide and deep subject, of the shares, and mutual relations, 
 of intellectual and moral forces in the work of attaining 
 truth. 
 
 23. Passing on, then, from the subject of scientific certainty, 
 let us observe that the region next below this, to which all 
 the propositions entertained in the human mind belong, is 
 divided principally into two parts. The higher of these 
 is that of what is commonly called necessary matter: and 
 certainty would, in its ordinary sense, be predicated of all 
 that lies within its range. That is to say, certainty with 
 a relation to our nature: a certainty subjectively not de- 
 fective : a certainty which fixes our perceptions, conclusions, 
 or convictions, in such a frame as to render them immovable : 
 a certainty not merely which is unattended with doubt, but 
 which excludes doubt, which leaves no available room for its 
 being speculatively entertained, which makes it on the whole 
 irrational. With this certainty we hold that bodies fall by 
 the force of gravity ; that air is rarefied at great altitudes ; 
 
346 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 that the limit of human age established by all modern expe- 
 rience is not very greatly beyond a century; that the filial 
 relation entails a duty of obedience. The certainty repudiated 
 in the antecedent argument is only that of the Stoical 
 1 perception.' In the words of the Academical philosophy, 
 ' Nihil est enim aliud, quamobrem nihil percipi mihi posse 
 videatur, nisi quod percipiendi vis ita definitur a Stoicis, ut 
 negent quidquam posse percipi, nisi tale verum, quale falsum 
 esse non possit 1 .' But certainty of an order so high, as to 
 make doubt plainly irrational, applies to various classes of 
 our ideas. 
 
 24. This is the region of the cttktttitov of Aristotle 2 , and the 
 faculties employed in it are chiefly, according to him, vovs 3 
 for principles, e7rto-rr//i»/ for inferences from them. It has 
 been defined as the region of the Vernunft in the modern 
 German philosophy, of the Reason by Coleridge. It seems to 
 be largely recognized by the most famous schools of the 
 ancients. It contains both simple ideas, and demonstrations 
 from them. It embraces moral, as well as other metaphysical, 
 entities. It had no place in the philosophy of Locke. As 
 regards the distinction of faculty between Reason and Under- 
 standing, Vernunft and Ver stand, I am not inculcating an 
 opinion of my own, but simply stating one which is widely 
 current. 
 
 25. The lower department is that in which doubt has its 
 proper place, and in which the work of the understanding is 
 to compare and to distinguish ; to elicit approximations to 
 unity from a multitude of particulars, and to certainty from 
 a combination and equipoise of presumptions. It is taken to 
 be the province of all those faculties, or habits, of which 
 Aristotle treats under the several designations of Qpovqcns, 
 T^xv-q, €vj3ov\ia, o-vveo-is, yvco^-q, and others 4 ; of the Verstand 
 of the Germans, of the Understanding according to Coleridge. 
 It embraces multitudes of questions of speculation, and almost 
 all questions of practice. Of speculation: as, for example, 
 what are the due definitions of cases in which verbal untruth 
 may be a duty, or in which it is right to appropriate a neigh- 
 
 1 Cic. De Fin. v. 26. s Ibid. vi. 6, 2. 
 
 2 Eth. Nicom. vi. 3, 2. * Ibid. vi. 4, 5, 9, 10, 11. 
 
Ch. X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 347 
 
 hour's goods. Of practice, because every question of practice 
 is embedded in details : if, for example, we admit that it is 
 right to give alms, we have to decide whether the object is 
 good, and whether we can afford the sum. Because, even 
 where the principles are ever so absolute, simple, and uncon- 
 ditioned, they can rarely be followed to conclusions, either in 
 theory or practice, without taking into view many particulars, 
 with various natures, and various degrees, of evidence. This 
 is the region of probable evidence. 
 
 26. The highest works achieved in it are those in which 
 the combinations it requires are so rapid and so perfect, that 
 they are seen, like a wheel in very rapid revolution, as 
 undivided wholes, not as assemblages of parts; in a word, 
 that they resemble the objects of intuition. Towards this, at 
 the one end of the scale, there may be indefinite approxi- 
 mation: and below these, there are innumerable descending 
 degrees of evidence, down to that in which the presumption 
 of truth in any given proposition is so faint as to be scarcely 
 perceptible. 
 
 27. From what has now been said, it is manifest that the 
 province of probable evidence, thus marked off, is a very 
 wide one. But, in fact, it is still wider than it appears to be. 
 For many truths, which are the objects of intuition to a well- 
 cultivated mind of extended scope, are by no means such to 
 one of an inferior order, or of a less advanced discipline. By 
 such, they can only be reached through circuitous processes 
 of a discursive nature, if at all. In point of fact, there 
 appear to be many who have scarcely any clear intuitions, 
 any perceptions of truths as absolute, self-dependent, and 
 unchanging. If so, then not only all the detailed or concrete 
 questions of life and practice, to which the idea of duty is 
 immediately applicable, for all minds, but likewise the entire 
 operations of some minds, are situated in the region of 
 probable evidence. 
 
 28. The mode in which the understanding performs its 
 work, within this region, is by bringing together things that 
 are like, and by separating things that are unlike. To this 
 belong its various processes of induction and discourse, of 
 abstraction and generalization, and the rest. Therefore 
 Bishop Butler teaches that the chief element of probability 
 
348 PROBABILITY AS [Vi.ll. 
 
 is that which is expressed 'in the word likely, i.e. like some 
 truth or true event.' 
 
 29. The form of assent, which belongs to the result of these 
 processes, may properly be termed belief. It is bounded, so 
 to speak, by knowledge on the one hand, where it becomes not 
 only plenary, so as to exclude doubt, but absolute and self- 
 dependent, so as not to rest upon any support extrinsic to the 
 object. It is similarly bounded on the other side by mere 
 opinion ; where the matter is very disputable, the presump- 
 tions faint and few, or the impression received by a slight 
 process and (as it were) at haphazard, without an examination 
 proportioned to the nature of the object and of the faculties 
 concerned. Of course no reference is here made to the case 
 in which, by a modest or lax form of common speech, opinion 
 is used as synonymous with judgement. Opinion, as it has 
 now been introduced, corresponds with the h6£a of the Greeks: 
 and approaches to the signification in which it is used by 
 St. Augustine, who, after commending those who know, and 
 those who rightly inquire, proceeds to say, 'tria sunt alia 
 hominum genera, profecto improbanda ac detestanda. Unum 
 est opinantium; id est eorum, qui se arbitrantur scire quod 
 nesciunt 1 .' 
 
 30. It may indeed, or may not, be convenient to attach 2 
 the name of belief to such judgements as are formed where 
 some living or moral agent, and his qualities, enter into the 
 medium of proof ; inasmuch as in such cases there is a power 
 to assume false appearances, which complicates the case : and 
 inasmuch as the process must be double, first to establish the 
 general credibility of the person, then to receive his particular 
 testimony. This seems, however, more properly to bear the 
 name of faith, with which belief is indeed identical in the 
 science of theology, but not in common speech. For faith 
 involves the element of trust, which essentially requires 
 a moral agent for its object. Apart from any technical sense 
 which the word may have acquired in theology, and more at 
 large, human language warrants and requires our applying 
 
 1 De Utilitate Credendi, c. xi. 
 
 2 With Bishop Pearson. On the Creed, Art. I. § 1. 
 
Ch.X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 349 
 
 the name of belief to all assent which is given to propositions 
 founded upon probable evidence. 
 
 31. The tastes of many, and the understandings of some, 
 will suggest that this qualified mode of statement is dis- 
 paraging to the dignity of conclusions belonging to religion 
 and to duty. But let not the suggestion be hastily enter- 
 tained. It is in this field that moral elements most largely 
 enter into the reasonings of men, and the discussion of their 
 legitimate place in such reasonings has already been waived. 
 For the present let it suffice to bear in mind that there is no 
 limit to the strength of working, as distinguished from 
 abstract, certainty, to which probable evidence may not lead 
 us along its gently ascending paths. 
 
 32. There is, therefore, a kind of knowledge of which we 
 are incapable: namely, that which necessarily implies the 
 existence .of an exactly corresponding object. 
 
 There is a kind of knowledge, less properly so called, which 
 makes doubt wholly irrational; and which may often be 
 predicated in a particular case, whether it be by an act of 
 intuition, or by a process of demonstration. 
 
 There is, thirdly, a kind of mental perception or impression, 
 to which also in common speech, but yet less properly, the 
 name of knowledge is frequently applied. It is generically 
 inferior to knowledge, but approaches and even touches it at 
 points where the evidence on which it rests is in its highest 
 degrees of force : descending below this to that point of the 
 scale, at which positive and negative presumptions are of 
 equal weight and the mind is neutral. There is a possibility 
 that the very same subject-matter which at one time lies, for 
 a particular person, in the lower of these regions, may at 
 another time reside in the higher. 
 
 33. If, then, it be allowable, and it is not only allowable 
 but inevitable, to collect the laws of the human intelligence 
 by the observation of its processes, which in fact grows to 
 be an induction from universal practice, it is manifest that 
 we are so constituted as to yield assent to propositions 
 having various kinds and degrees of evidence. We agree 
 to some as immediate, and (to our apprehensions) necessary : 
 to some as necessary but not immediate : to some as 
 originally neither necessary nor immediate, but as present- 
 
35° PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 ing subsequently a certainty and solidity not distinguishable 
 from that which appertains to the former classes. Again, 
 we yield our assent to others of a different class, which 
 falls into sub-classes. These have various degrees of likeli- 
 hood in subject-matter infinitely diversified ; some of them 
 so high as to exclude doubt, some admitting yet greatly 
 outweighing it by positive evidence, some nearly balanced 
 between the affirmative and the negative : but in all cases 
 with a preponderance on the former side. All these are 
 formed to attract legitimate assent, according to the laws of 
 our intellectual constitution ; which has universal truth for 
 its object, and affirmation and rejection for its office. With 
 other processes, such as assent given under blind prejudice 
 against probability, or purely arbitrary conjecture, or the quasi- 
 truths of the imagination, we have in this place nothing to do. 
 34. The doctrine that we are bound by the laws of our 
 nature to follow probable truth, rests upon the most secure 
 of all grounds for practical purposes, if indeed the consent 
 which accepts it is in fact so widely spread in the usual 
 doings of mankind, that it may well be termed universal. 
 The very circumstance that there are exceptions confirms 
 the rule, provided it may be maintained that the exceptions 
 are of a certain kind. For conversely, if there be a practice 
 invariably followed by those who are known to be wise in 
 kindred subject-matter, it is often doubtful whether this 
 can be said to derive any positive confirmation from the 
 concurrent course of persons who are known to be of an 
 opposite character. Again, if there be an universal agree- 
 ment concerning any proposition among those who have no 
 sinister bias, the fact that others who are known to have 
 such a bias differ from them does not impair their authority, 
 but may even appear rather to constitute an additional evi- 
 dence of their being in the right. Now this is exactly the 
 kind of consent which may justly be said to obtain among 
 men with regard to the following of probable truth. For 
 every one acts upon affirmative evidence, however inferior 
 to certainty, unless he be either extremely deficient in 
 common understanding, or so biassed the other way by his 
 desires as to be incapable of an upright view of the case 
 before him. Even the last-named class of excepted instances 
 
Ch. X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 351 
 
 would generally take the form rather of an inability, under 
 the circumstances, to perceive the evidence, than of a denial 
 of its authority. 
 
 35. But the doctrine itself appears to be as irrefragably 
 established in theoretic reasoning, as it is in the practice 
 of mankind. We may, however, distinguish those proposi- 
 tions which are abstract, from such as entail any direct 
 consequences in our conduct. With regard to the former, 
 suspension of judgement is allowable in all cases where 
 serious doubt appears before examination, or remains after 
 it. Whether Rome was built 753 years before our Lord, 
 whether King Charles the First wrote the Eilcon Basilike, 
 whether Caligula made his horse a Consul, whether St. Paul 
 visited Britain, — these are questions which present no such 
 evidence as to bind our judgement either way, and any 
 decision we may form about them has no bearing on our 
 conduct. But to doubt whether the empire of the Caesars 
 existed, or whether King Charles was beheaded, or perhaps 
 whether he said ' remember ' to Bishop Juxon on the scaffold, 
 or whether Michael Angelo painted the ' Last Judgement ' 
 in the Sistine Chapel — this, after the question had once 
 been presented fairly to our minds, would be a violation 
 of the laws of our intellectual nature. It would be in any 
 case a folly, and it would even be a sin if moral elements 
 were involved in the judgement, for instance if the disbelief 
 arose from a spirit of opposition, and self-assertion, predis- 
 posing us unfavourably to conclusions that others have 
 established, and that have obtained general acceptance. 
 
 36. At the least, I say, it would be a violation of the law 
 of our intellectual nature; if indeed the one obligation of 
 that nature is to recognize truth wheresoever it is fallen 
 in with, and to assent to it. The effect of the obligation 
 cannot be confined to cases of immediate or intuitive know- 
 ledge. For, in the first place, this would be to cast off the 
 chief subject-matter of our understanding, or discursive 
 faculty. If we admit the current definition of the term, 
 it would even be to leave all that organ, in which the mind 
 chiefly energizes, without an office, and therefore without 
 a lawful place in our nature. But, in the second place, let 
 us observe how the denial of all assent to probable con- 
 
352 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 elusions will comport with our general obligations. A great 
 mass of facts from some history are before us. There may 
 be error here and there in particulars, but their general 
 truth is unquestioned ; and upon a given point, taken at 
 random, the chances are probably a hundred to one or more 
 that it is true. Of two persons, each having a hundred 
 such facts, independent of one another, before him, one, 
 acting upon the ordinary rule, receives them ; and he has 
 the truth in ninety -nine cases conjoined with error in one : 
 the other, rejecting them, has neither the one error, nor the 
 ninety-nine truths ; his understanding has refused its work, 
 and lost its reward in the ninety -nine cases, for fear of the 
 failure in the one. And further we are to remember that 
 the error in the one is material only, not formal. It has not 
 of necessity any poisonous quality. It is more like a small 
 portion of simply innutritious food received along with the 
 mass of what is wholesome. 
 
 37. The case has indeed here been put upon the hypothesis 
 of very high probability. What shall we say to propositions, 
 of which the evidence is less certain ? The answer is, that 
 no line can be drawn in abstract argument between them : 
 that the obligation which attaches to the former attaches 
 to the latter : that it must subsist, so long as there remains 
 any preponderance of affirmative evidence, which is real, and 
 of such a magnitude as to be appreciable by our faculties. 
 But at the same time, although this be true in the cases 
 where it is necessary for us to conclude one way or the other, 
 it is not applicable to the multitude of cases where no such 
 necessity exists. Sometimes a total suspension of judgement, 
 sometimes a provisional assent, consciously subject to future 
 correction upon enlarged experience, are the remedies offered 
 to our need, and very extended indeed is their scope and 
 use for prudent minds. Of course it remains true that the 
 understanding, when it has to choose the objects of its own 
 activity, may justly select those on which a competent 
 certainty is attainable, instead of stimulating a frivolous 
 and barren curiosity, by employing itself on matters in- 
 capable of satisfactory determination by such means as are 
 ordinarily at our command. 
 
 38. Whether, then, we look to the constitution of our 
 
Ch.X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 353 
 
 nature, and the vhr\ or matter provided for it to work upon, 
 together with the inference arising from the combined view 
 of the two ; or whether we regard the actual results as 
 realized in the possession of truth ; we find it to be a "maxim 
 sustained by theory, as well as by the general consent and 
 practice of men, that the mind is not to be debarred from 
 assent to a proposition with which it may have cause to 
 deal, on account of the circumstance that the evidence for 
 it is short of that which is commonly called certain ; and 
 that to act upon an opposite principle would be to contravene 
 the law of our intellectual nature. 
 
 39. But now let us deal, so far as justly belongs to the 
 purpose of this paper, with that part of the subject-matter 
 of human inquiry where moral ingredients are essentially 
 involved. For hitherto we have spoken mainly of such 
 kind of obligation as may attach to geometrical investiga- 
 tions, in which usually the will has no concern either one 
 way or the other. 
 
 With regard to moral science properly so styled, whether 
 it be conversant with principles, when it is called ethical, 
 or whether it be concerned with their application to par- 
 ticulars, when it becomes casuistry, although the whole of 
 it is practical, as it aims to fix the practical judgements 
 and the conduct of all men, yet obviously the whole cannot 
 be said to be practical in regard to each individual. For 
 the experience of one person will only raise a part, perhaps 
 a very small part, of the questions which it involves. So 
 far, then, as moral inquiries properly belong to science and 
 not to life, they are pursued in the abstract, and they are 
 subject to the general laws of intellectual inquiry which 
 have already been considered; only with this difference, 
 that our judgements in them are much more likely to be 
 influenced by the state of our affections and the tenor of 
 our lives, by our conformity to, or alienation from, the will 
 of God, than where the matter of the propositions themselves 
 had no relation to human conduct. 
 
 40. But, for the government of life, all men, though in 
 various degrees, require to be supplied with certain practical 
 judgements. For there is no breathing man, to whom the 
 alternatives of right and wrong are not continually present. 
 
 a a 
 
354 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 To one they are less, perhaps infinitely less, complicated 
 than to another; but they pervade the whole tissue of 
 every human life. In order to meet these, we must be 
 supplied with certain practical judgements. It matters not 
 that there may have existed particular persons, as children, 
 for instance, who have never entertained these judgements 
 in the abstract at all; nor that many act blindly, and at 
 haphazard, which is simply a contempt of duty ; nor that 
 there may be another class, into whose compositions by long 
 use some of them are so ingrained, that they operate with 
 the rapidity and certainty of instinct. Setting these aside, 
 it remains true of all persons of developed understanding 
 that there are many questions bearing on practice, with 
 regard to which, in order to discharge their duty rightly, 
 they must have conclusions, and these not necessarily 
 numerous in every case, but in every case of essential im- 
 portance, so that they may be termed ' a savour of life unto 
 life, or a savour of death unto death.' 
 
 41. Now it is in this department that the argument for 
 the obligation to follow probable evidence is of the greatest 
 force and moment. It has been seen, how that obligation 
 may be qualified or suspended in the pursuit of abstract 
 truth ; so much so, that even the contravention of it need 
 not involve a breach of moral duty. But the case is very 
 different when we deal with those portions of truth that 
 supply the conditions of conduct. To avoid all detail, such 
 as may dissipate the force of the main considerations, is 
 material. Let it therefore be observed that there is one 
 proposition in which the whole matter, as it is relevant to 
 human duty, may be summed up : that all our works alike, 
 inward and outward, great and small, ought to be done in 
 obedience to God. Now this is a proposition manifestly 
 tendered to us by that system of religion which is called 
 Christianity, and which purports to be a revelation of the 
 Divine will. It is the first and great commandment of 
 the Gospel, that we shall love God with the whole heart, and 
 mind, and soul, and strength l ; and whatsoever we do, we 
 are to do all to the glory of God 2 . And as every act is, 
 
 1 Mark xii. 30 ; Luke x. 27. 2 1 Cor. x. 31. 
 
Ch.X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 355 
 
 ceteris paribus, determined, and is at the very least in all 
 cases qualified, by its motive, this proposition concerning an 
 universal obedience as the ground and rule of conduct, is of 
 all propositions the one most practical, the one most urgently 
 requiring affirmation or denial according as the evidence may 
 be in favour of or against its truth. 
 
 42. We seem, then, to have arrived at this point : the 
 evidences of religion relate to a matter not speculative, not 
 in abstract matter, which we may examine or pa3S by 
 according to our leisure. It is either time or false : this 
 on all hands will be admitted. If it be false, we are justified 
 in repudiating it, so soon as we have obtained proofs of its 
 falsity, such as the constitution of our minds entitles us to 
 admit in that behalf. But we are bound by the laws of our 
 intellectual nature not to treat it as false before examination. 
 In like manner, by the laws of our moral nature, which 
 oblige us to adjust all our acts according to our sense of some 
 standard of right and wrong, we are not less stringently 
 bound to use every effort in coming to a conclusion one way 
 or the other respecting it : inasmuch as it purports to supply 
 us with the very and original standard to which that sense is 
 to be referred, through a sufficient revelation of the will of 
 God, both in its detail, and especially in that with which 
 we are now concerned, the fundamental principle of a claim 
 to unlimited obedience, admitting no exception and no 
 qualification. 
 
 43. The maxim that Christianity is a matter not abstract, 
 but referable throughout to human action, is not an im- 
 portant only, but a vital part of the demonstration, that we 
 are bound by the laws of our nature to give a hearing to its 
 claims. We shall therefore do well to substantiate it to our 
 consciousness by some further mention of its particulars. 
 Let us then recollect that we have not merely the general 
 principle of doing all to the glory of God, declared by the 
 Bible in general terms : but this is illustrated by reference 
 to the common actions of eating and drinking 1 . ' Whether 
 ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do/ thus the passage runs, 
 1 do all to the glory of God.' Now surely, one should have 
 
 1 1 Cor. x. 31. 
 a a 2 
 
356 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 said, if any acts whatever could have been exempt from the 
 demands of this comprehensive law, they should have been 
 those functions of animal life, respecting which, as to their 
 substance, we have no free choice, since they are among 
 the absolute conditions of our physical existence. And by the 
 unbeliever it might consistently be argued that, inasmuch 
 as food and drink are thus necessary, it is impossible to 
 conceive that any question relating to the different kinds 
 of them (unless connected with their several aptitudes 
 for maintaining life and health, which is not at all in 
 the Apostle's view) can be of any moral moment. But the 
 allegation of Scripture is directly to a contrary effect : and 
 apprises us that even such a matter as eating or refraining 
 from meat, has a spiritual character. ' He that eateth, 
 eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks ; and he that 
 eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks. 
 For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to 
 himself V Not only (as the entire passage seems to mean) 
 where a special scruple may be raised by the facts of idol 
 worship ; not only in the avoidance of pampered tastes and 
 gross excesses ; but in the simple act of taking food, the 
 religious sense has a place. The maintenance of life, though 
 it is a necessity, is also a duty and a blessing. 
 
 44. And to the same effect is the declaration of our Lord : 
 ' But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall 
 speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judge- 
 ment 2 .' The 'idle word' is perhaps the very slightest and 
 earliest form of voluntary action. Consider the fertility of 
 the mind, and the rapidity of its movements: how many 
 thoughts pass over it without or against the will ; how easily 
 they find their way into the idle, that is, not the mischievous 
 or ill-intended, but merely the unconsidered word. So lightly 
 and easily is it born, that the very forms of ancient speech 
 seem to designate it as if it were self-created, and not the 
 offspring of a mental act 3 , 
 
 'Arpei'Sj/, nolov ae tiros <f)vyfv epnos obovroav ; 
 
 and as we say, such and such an expression ' escaped him.' 
 Thus then it appears that, at the very first and lowest stage 
 
 1 Eom. xiv. 6, 7. 2 Matt. xii. 36. s Iliad, iv. 350. 
 
Ch.X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 357 
 
 of scarcely voluntary action, the Almighty God puts in His 
 claim. In this way He acquaints us that everything, in which 
 our faculties can consciously be made ministers of good or 
 evil, shall become a subject of reckoning, doubtless of just 
 and fatherly reckoning, in the great account of the day of 
 judgement. 
 
 45. Further, it appears that there are many acts, of which 
 the external form must be the same, whether they are 
 done by Christians, or by others ; as for instance those very 
 acts of satisfying hunger and thirst, of which we have 
 spoken. If these, then, are capable, as has been shown, of 
 being brought under the law of duty, a different character 
 must attach to them in consequence; they must be influenced, 
 if not intrinsically, yet at least in their relation to something 
 else, by their being referred to that standard. The form of 
 the deed, the thing done, the itpayy.a, is perhaps, as we have 
 seen, the same ; but the action, the exercise of the mind in 
 ordering or doing it, the npa^is, is different. It differs, for 
 example, in the motive of obedience ; in the end, which is the 
 glory of God ; in the temper, which is that of trust, humility, 
 and thankfulness. Accordingly, it appears that Christianity 
 aims not only at adjusting our acts, but also our way of 
 acting, to a certain standard ; that it reduces the whole to 
 a certain mental habit, and imbues and pervades the whole 
 with a certain temper. 
 
 46. Not therefore at a venture, but with strict reason, 
 the assertion has been made, that the question, whether 
 Christianity be time or false, is the most practical of all 
 questions : because it is that question of practice which 
 incloses in itself, and implicitly determines, every other : it 
 supplies the fundamental rule or principle (Grundsatz) of 
 every decision in detail. And, consequently, it is of all other 
 questions the one upon which those, who have not already 
 a conclusion available for use, are most inexorably bound to 
 seek for one. And, by further consequence, it is also the 
 question to which the duty of following affirmative evidence, 
 even although it should present to the mind no more than 
 a probable character, and should not, ab initio, or even there- 
 after, extinguish doubt, has the closest and most stringent 
 application. 
 
353 PROBABILITY AS [Pt.II. 
 
 47. Now the foregoing argument, it must be observed, 
 includes and decides the question for what is commonly called 
 the doctrinal part of the Christian religion ; for those 
 objective facts, which it lays as the foundation of its system, 
 and which are set forth in the historical Creeds of the 
 Catholic Church. It is not necessary here to enter upon the 
 inquiry how far the internal evidence about suitableness to 
 our state, which the nature of those facts offers to us, may 
 constitute a part or a proof of, or an objection to, the truth 
 of the Christian Revelation. I have not in any manner 
 prejudged that question by the foregoing observations ; 
 I have shown its claims to nothing (where there is no con- 
 viction already formed) beyond a hearing and an adjudi- 
 cation. But in those claims the doctrinal part of the 
 revelation, that which is distinct from the law of duty, has 
 a full and coequal share with the moral part. The Christian 
 system neither enjoins nor permits any severance between 
 the two. Being inseparably associated, and resting upon the 
 testimony of precisely the same witnesses, they on that 
 account stand in precisely the same authoritative relation to 
 our practice. Accordingly, when we accept or reject the 
 Christian law of duty as such, we accept or reject also 
 the system in which, and as a part of which, it is revealed. 
 Whether we refer to the Scriptures, or to the collateral 
 evidence of history and of the Church, we find it to be 
 undeniable as a fact that Christianity purports to be not 
 a system of moral teaching only, but, in vital union there- 
 with, a system of revealed facts concerning the nature of 
 God, and His dispensations towards mankind. Upon these 
 facts, which centre in our Lord and Saviour, moral teaching 
 is to rest, and to these it is to be indissolubly attached. Thus 
 the part of Christianity, called doctrinal, has that claim to 
 enter into our affirmative or negative decision, which belongs 
 to a question strictly practical. It is, therefore, one, to 
 which we inevitably must daily and hourly say Aye or No 
 by our actions, even if we have given no speculative reply 
 upon it. 
 
 48. To point out more clearly this connexion of the Chris- 
 tian dogma with practice, I may remark that the principal 
 part of the matter of the Christian Creeds is a declaration of 
 
Ch.X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 359 
 
 the nature of God, who is the object of our Faith : along 
 with the main facts of that Incarnation of our Lord, which 
 is the appointed medium of our reunion with Deity. Sub- 
 joined hereto is simply a declaration of belief in the Church, 
 as the society in which we claim membership with Christ, 
 and with one another; in the Baptism, whereby we find 
 entrance into that society ; and in the Resurrection, which 
 connects the present with the eternal Kingdom of our Lord. 
 It is no paradox to suggest that a religion, which purports 
 to open the means of reunion with God, and to restore the 
 eternal life which we have lost, by means of a . spiritual 
 process wrought upon us, should propound, as essential con- 
 stituents of that process, a faith to be held concerning the 
 nature and attributes of Him whose image we are to bear ; 
 concerning the assumption of our nature by the Redeemer, 
 which makes that image approachable and attainable ; con- 
 cerning the dispensation of time for forming our union with 
 Him ; and the dispensation of eternity, in which the union 
 with Him becomes consummate and imperishable. Chris- 
 tianity is the religion of the Person of Christ ; and the 
 Creeds only tell us from whom He came, and how He came 
 and went, by what Agent we are to be incorporated into 
 Him, and what is the manner of His appointed agency, and 
 the seal of its accomplishment 
 
 49. But there is a latent notion in the minds of some 
 men, that a matter so important as Christianity ought to 
 be presented with the fullest evidence : that it would be 
 unworthy of it, and of its Author, to suppose any revelation 
 from Him imperfectly attested. But, in the first place, such 
 an objection is of no value whatever, unless it will carry us 
 so far as to warrant our holding such language as the follow- 
 ing : ' Although there be, apart from this notion, a balance 
 of evidence in favour of Christianity over anything urged 
 against it, yet I will reject it, upon the ground that I con- 
 sider it unworthy of the Almighty to propound anything 
 for acceptance without demonstrative proofs of it made 
 immediately accessible to us.' Now who, that admits the 
 general recognition of probable evidence as a guide to human 
 practice, will think that the particular subject of the evidence 
 of religion can be exempted from a law so comprehensive, 
 
360 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 on account of an assumption formed in an individual mind, 
 and by no means having, or even pretending to have, any- 
 thing like that general sanction from mankind, which belongs 
 to the law that it proposes to supersede 1 ? We need not 
 inquire into the piety, or even the decency, of setting up, 
 under any circumstances, an opinion of our own upon the 
 question what the Creator ought to have done, against a 
 communication of what He has done ; because such considera- 
 tions scarcely belong to the present stage of this inquiry. 
 The case now before us is that of setting up such an opinion, 
 founded upon a measurement which has been made, by one 
 or more individual minds, of the universal nature of things, 
 without any support from the general sense of mankind; 
 nay, against what that general sense, and what even the 
 objectors themselves, in other subject-matter, usually accept 
 as a valid law for the discovery of truth ; namely, the law of 
 probable evidence. Such a proceeding is plainly irrational. 
 It offends against the laws of the general reason of our race. 
 
 50. But unless the objection can be carried to that point, 
 it is worthless for the question at issue. For the matter 
 to be examined is not whether the revelation is in all 
 its accompaniments, or in all its particulars, such as is 
 thoroughly agreeable to us, exactly such as we approve, 
 or such as we should have anticipated; but, whether or not 
 it be a revelation from God. According to the decision of 
 this last-named question, it must be accepted or rejected ; and 
 there can be no reference to the prior topic, otherwise than 
 as it may enter into the decision in what spirit we are to 
 receive such a revelation when its proof has been supplied. 
 Such considerations might conceivably diminish the satisfac- 
 tion with which the Gospel is acknowledged to be Divine, and 
 the cheerfulness with which it is accepted. This is plainly 
 their legitimate scope when they shall have been proved, and 
 nothing beyond this. 
 
 51. The case would indeed be different if the nature of the 
 difficulty were such that the Gospel was found to present 
 contradictions to the moral law graven on the heart of man. 
 There are undoubtedly principles so universally accepted, and 
 of such authority, that a demonstration of anything, be it 
 what it may, which should overthrow them, would leave no 
 
Ch.X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 361 
 
 firm resting-place in the human mind even for its own recep- 
 tion. It would break down the stays and pillars of all truth 
 within us. But such is not the character of the objection 
 we are now considering. It has not an universal acceptance. 
 It does not relate to moral subject-matter. It is a condition 
 laid down by some few persons as being in their view 
 necessary to preserve a due dignity in that intellectual process, 
 which is to be the avenue of the truth of God to the soul. 
 
 52. It is, however, perhaps not difficult to show that the 
 objection is in itself ill-founded. It assumes that the force 
 of the proofs ought to increase with the importance of the 
 subject. But this is an assumption, which is wholly foreign 
 to the law of probable evidence. That law takes no cogni- 
 zance of the absolute magnitude of the propositions in ques- 
 tion, but only of the relative likelihood of an affirmative 
 or a negative concerning them. This proportion is equally 
 applicable to all subject-matter, however great, or however 
 small. The law, therefore, of credibility has no more depen- 
 dence upon the magnitude of the questions tried than have 
 the numbers on the arithmetical scale, which calculate for 
 motes and for mountains with exactly the same propriety. 
 At either extremity, indeed, the nature of our faculties im- 
 poses a limit. Practically numbers are bounded for us. We 
 cannot employ them to count the sands of the sea-shore ; 
 nor again by any fraction can we express the infinitesimal 
 segments, into which space is capable of being divided. And 
 just so in the case before us. If the objection be that the 
 proportion of affirmative and negative evidence upon any 
 given question approaches so nearly to equality as to be 
 indistinguishable from it, and if, when the whole elements 
 of the case are taken into view, this can be made good as 
 their general result, then in truth, but only then, the obliga- 
 tion of credibility may cease and determine. 
 
 53. But indeed the objection may even be inverted. When, 
 as here, the matter in question is very great, the evil conse- 
 quences of a contravention of the law of probability are 
 enhanced. It is not necessary to maintain that any essential 
 difference in the obligation to follow the apparent truth is 
 thus produced : but it is manifest that, the larger and more 
 serious the anticipated results, the more natural and becom- 
 
362 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. IT. 
 
 ing, to say the least, is it for us to realize beforehand our 
 position and duties with regard to the question, and by 
 a more vivid consciousness to create an enhanced and more 
 sharply defined sense of our responsibility. So that both the 
 danger and the guilt of refusing to apply to the evidences 
 of religion the same laws of investigation, which we obey 
 in all other departments of inquiry and of action, are not 
 mitigated, but aggravated, in the degree in which it may be 
 shown that the matter at issue transcends in its importance 
 all those which are ordinarily presented to us. 
 
 54. Further. The most reasonable presumptions are posi- 
 tively adverse. If we admit that man by free will and 
 a depraved affection fell away from God, which is the repre- 
 sentation addressed to us by the Gospel, nothing can be more 
 consistent with it, than that he should be brought back to 
 God by ways which give scope for the exercise of will and 
 affection, and for their restoration, through exercise, to health. 
 But surely it is plain that this scope is far more largely 
 given, where the proof of revelation involves moral elements, 
 and grows in force along with spiritual discernment, than if 
 it had the rigour of a demonstration in geometry, of which 
 the issue is accepted without any appeal, either to affection 
 or volition, in the appreciation and acceptance of the steps 
 of the process. And yet more specifically. If it be true 
 that we are to be brought back, as the Gospel says, by 
 a Divine training to the image of God, if that which is 
 crooked is to be made straight, and that which is feeble 
 strong, by the agency of a Perfect on a fallen being, nothing 
 can be more agreeable to our knowledge of our own state 
 than the belief that such a process would be best conducted 
 in the genial climate and atmosphere of a trustful mind ; that 
 reliance or faith (always being reasonable reliance or faith) 
 in another would greatly aid our weakness ; that we should 
 thus realize in the concrete Divine qualities before we can 
 comprehend them in the abstract. But this faith essentially 
 involves the idea of what we have called probable evidence : 
 for it is ' the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
 things not seen ; ' and ' what a man seeth, why doth he yet 
 hope for 1 1 ' 
 
 1 Heb. xi. 1 ; Rom. viii. 24. 
 
Ch. X] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 363 
 
 55. It may be that, despite of all reasoning, there will be 
 pain to many a pious mind in following, even under the 
 guidance of Bishop Butler, the course of an argument which 
 seems all along to grant it as possible, that the argument in 
 favour of the truth of Divine Kevelation may amount to no 
 more than a qualified and dubious likelihood. But as, when 
 the net of the fisherman is cast wide, its extremity must lie 
 far from the hand that threw it, so this argument of proba- 
 bility aims at including within the allegiance of religion 
 those who are remote from anything like a normal faith. 
 It is no mere feat of logical arms ; it is not done in vain- 
 glory, nor is it an arbitrary and gratuitous experiment, nor 
 one disparaging to the majesty and strength of the Gospel. 
 The Apostle, full of the manifold gifts of the Spirit, and 
 admitted already to the third heaven, condescended before the 
 Athenians to the elementary process of arguing from natural 
 evidences for the Providence of God 1 . The Gospel itself 
 alone can fit us to appreciate its own proofs in all their force. 
 It is addressed to beings of darkened mind and alienated 
 heart. The light of truth indeed is abundant; but the 
 clouded and almost blinded eye can admit no more than 
 a faint glimmering. But if even that faint glimmering be 
 suffered to enter, it will progressively train and fit the organ, 
 that it has entered, to receive more and more ; and although 
 at first the glory of the Lord could scarcely be discerned in 
 a twilight little short of night itself, yet by such degrees 
 as the growth of the capacity allows, it 'shineth more and 
 more unto the perfect day 2 .' 
 
 56. Moreover, it is necessary to comment upon the declara- 
 tion of Bishop Butler, that in numberless instances a man is 
 called upon to act against probability, and would be thought 
 mad if he declined it. The meaning is, that we may be 
 bound by duty, or led by prudence, in obedience to a more 
 comprehensive computation of good and evil, of benefit and 
 loss, to act in opposition to that particular likelihood which 
 lies nearest at hand. To take an example in moral subject- 
 matter. We are bound to avoid occasions of anger; and 
 yet, for the vindication of truth, it may be a duty to enter 
 
 1 Acts xvii. 24-31 . 2 Prov. iv. 18. 
 
 ~ OF TH* 
 
 UNIVi 
 
364 PROBABILITY AS [Px.IL 
 
 into debates, which we know from experience will stir 
 our passions more or less. If we look merely at the likeli- 
 hood of that excitement, we ought to refrain : but if we look 
 onwards to the purpose in view, it makes the other scale 
 descend. 
 
 57. Again, in a matter of worldly prudence. The merchant 
 hears of a valuable natural product on the coast of Africa. 
 The chances are estimated by him to be two to one against 
 his finding it on the first attempt ; but when he finds it, the 
 gain will repay tenfold the expense of the voyage. It may 
 be prudent in such a man to equip and send his vessel, though 
 the likelihood of its failure be twofold greater than the 
 chance of its success. So that cases, which apparently depart 
 from the law of probability, do in fact only, when we include 
 a greater range of calculation, illustrate its comprehensiveness 
 and universality. 
 
 58. It is a deeply important question whether, and how 
 far, the law of probable evidence governs the means by which 
 provision has been made for the determination of questions 
 touching Christian doctrine as they may arise from time to 
 time. This is a great controverted question of Theology, 
 which it could not but be advantageous to discuss in the 
 light, tranquil as it is, supplied by the philosophy of Butler. 
 It cannot now be attempted, however well it may deserve 
 a separate effort. For the present, it only remains to deal 
 with a question belonging to the region of Ethics. For the 
 doctrine of the authority of probable evidence in practical 
 subject-matter is impugned not only by those who require 
 absolute certainty in lieu of it, but likewise by those who, 
 not as just now stated, but in the wider sense of the word, 
 permit and warrant moral action against probability. These 
 are the teachers of what is called Probabilism. 
 
 59. Probabilism is by no means the universal or compulsory 
 doctrine of the Roman theologians. It has been combated 
 even by Gonzales, a Jesuit, and a General of the Order 1 . 
 It is confronted by a system called Probabiliorism : which 
 teaches that, when in doubt among several alternatives of 
 conduct, we are bound to choose that which has the greatest 
 
 1 Ravignan, De V Existence el de VInstitut des Je'suites, p. 84. 
 
Ch. X] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 365 
 
 likelihood of being right. And there is also in the Latin 
 Church a rigid school of those who pass by the name of 
 Tutiorists. These hold that even such likelihood is insuf- 
 ficient, and that certainty is required as a warrant for our 
 acts. But the popular doctrine seems to be that of Proba- 
 1 til ism. It would be wrong to assert that it is a doctrine 
 consciously held and taught for purposes adverse to morality 
 or honour. Without venting any such calumny, let us regard 
 it purely in the abstract, and not as having become parasitical 
 to a particular Church. For my own part I know not how, 
 when it is so contemplated, to escape from the impression 
 that, when closely scrutinized, it will be found to threaten 
 the very first principles of duty; or to deny that, if uni- 
 versally received and applied, it would go far to destroy 
 whatever there is of substance in moral obligation. 
 
 60. The essence of the doctrine is, the licence to choose the 
 less probable. Is it not, then, obvious in the first place that 
 it overthrows the whole authority of probable evidence? 
 No probabilist, it must be supposed, could adopt and urge the 
 argument of Bishop Butler's Analogy for the truth of revela- 
 tion. For his opponent would at once reply by the plea that 
 there are certain real and unsolved difficulties about the 
 theory of religion ; that these constituted a solid, even if an 
 inferior, probability ; and that he could not, on the principles 
 of Probabilism, be blamed for vindicating the right of his 
 natural freedom in following the negative. If the view here 
 taken of the range and title of probable evidence be correct, 
 it is fearful to think what must be the ultimate effects upon 
 human knowledge, belief, and action, of any doctrine which 
 either overthrows or saps its title to our obedience. I say 
 the ultimate effects: for, when thought moves only within 
 prescribed limits, a long time may elapse before the detail of 
 a process is evolved, and it is the ultimate effect, in moral 
 questions, which is the true effect. It would even seem as 
 if any, who are, consciously or unconsciously, impairing the 
 authority of probable evidence, must also, however uncon- 
 sciously, be clearing the ground for the fell swoop of unbelief 
 in its descent upon the earth. 
 
 61. Next, we are surely justified in being to the last degree 
 suspicious of a doctrine which sets up the liberty of man as 
 
366 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 being not only a condition of all right moral judgement, but 
 a positive ingredient in the claim of one alternative to be 
 preferred over another ; an element of such consideration, as 
 to give the preponderance to what would otherwise be the 
 lighter scale. Duty, or the beov, is that which binds. Surely, 
 if there is one idea more pointedly expressive than another of 
 the character of the ethical teaching of Christianity, if there 
 is one lesson more pointedly derivable than another from the 
 contemplation of its model in our Blessed Lord, it is the idea 
 and the lesson that we are to deny the claim of mere human 
 will to be a serious ground of moral action, and to reduce 
 it to its proper function, that of freely uniting itself with 
 the will of God. This function is one of subordination : one 
 which manifestly it never can perform, so long as it is to be 
 recognized as something entitled to operate in determining 
 moral choice, and yet extrinsic and additional to, and there- 
 fore separate from, His commands. 
 
 62. Again, what can be more unnatural, not to say more 
 revolting, than to set up any system of rights or privileges 
 in moral action, apart from duties ? How can we, without 
 departing from our integrity before God, allege the right 
 of our natural freedom as sufficing to counterbalance any, 
 even the smallest, likelihood that His will for us lies in 
 a particular direction 1 Scripture, surely, gives no warrant 
 for such a theory ; nor the sense of Christian tradition ; nor 
 the worthier schools of heathen philosophy. Is it not hard to 
 reconcile the bare statement of it with the common sense of 
 duty and of honesty, as it belongs to our race at large 1 
 
 63. And more. Is it possible to go thus far, without going 
 much further? It is granted and taught, not indeed that 
 where there is an overwhelming, yet where there is a sensible 
 and appreciable superiority of likelihood in favour of one 
 alternative against another, there, on account and in virtue of 
 our inclination for that which has the weaker evidence, we 
 may choose the latter with a safe conscience. That is to say, 
 eliminating, or excluding from the case, that portion of likeli- 
 hood which is common to both alternatives, there remains 
 behind on the one side not a great but an appreciable proba- 
 bility ; on the other a simple predilection ; and shall the latter 
 be declared by a system of Christian ethics to outweigh the 
 
Ch. X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 367 
 
 former? How is it possible, either, firstly, to establish the 
 right of mere will to be set against presumptions of duty ; 
 or, secondly, when once that right has been arrogated, to 
 limit, by any other than an arbitrary rule, the quantity 
 of such presumptions of duty, which may be thus outweighed 1 
 If an ordinary inclination may outweigh so much of adverse 
 presumption of duty, may not a bias tenfold and twentyfold 
 stronger outweigh a little, or a good deal, more ? And then, 
 where is this slippery process to terminate? Where is the 
 clue to this labyrinth 1 What will be the rights, and what 
 the assumptions, of inclination in this matter, when it has 
 been stimulated by the countenance of authority, and when 
 through indulgence it has become ungovernable ? 
 
 64. But, as our sense of the obligations of human relation- 
 ship, though lower, is also less impaired than that of our 
 duty towards God, let us illustrate the case by reference to 
 this region. Will a licence to follow the less probable 
 alternative bear examination, when it is applied to the 
 relative obligations which unite man with man 1 An enemy 
 brings me tidings that an aged parent is in prison and at the 
 point of death, without solace or support. The same person 
 has before deceived and injured me. It is probable that he 
 may be doing so again : so probable that if he had communi- 
 cated any piece of mere intelligence, not involving a question 
 of conduct, it would, upon the whole, have appeared most safe 
 not to believe the statement. Let it then even be more likely 
 that he now speaks falsehood than truth. Will that warrant 
 me in remaining where I am, or is it possible to treat with 
 neglect a call which may reveal the want and extremity of 
 a parent, without an evident, gross, and most culpable breach 
 of filial obligation ? The answer would be No ; and it would 
 be immediate and universal. And yet the case here put has 
 been one not of greater but of inferior likelihood. How then, 
 we may ask, by the argument a fortiori, is it possible to 
 apply to the regulation of our relations towards God a theory 
 which explodes at the first instant when it is tested by a case 
 of lower yet of just obligation, namely, by perhaps the deepest 
 among all the original instincts of our nature ? 
 
 65. It is indeed true that the doctrine of Probabilism is 
 guarded by two conditions. The first is, that it is to apply 
 
368 PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 only to questions of right, not to those, as I find it expressed, 
 where both fact and right are involved. The question of the 
 validity of a sacrament is not to be tried by it ; and ' de 
 meme, un me'decin est tenu de donner les remedes les plus 
 eprouves, et un juge les decisions les plus stores V But this 
 reservation appears rather to weaken, than to strengthen, 
 the foundations of the doctrjne itself. Is it not sometimes 
 difficult to decide on the validity of a sacred rite 1 Do the 
 judge and the physician never doubt 1 ? Why are the rules for 
 the investigation of truth which bind them, otherwise than 
 obligatory on other personal conduct ? Is not the foundation 
 of duty to others strictly and immutably one with the 
 foundation of duty to our own selves 1 Again, obligation to 
 a fellow-creature cannot be stronger than obligation to our 
 Father in heaven ; therefore, if the liberty of a man is a good 
 plea against a doubtful command of God, why may it not 
 equally warrant a doubtful wrong to a patient or a suitor ? 
 if it be good in that part of our relations to God, which 
 embraces the immediate communion of the soul with Him, 
 why not also in that other part, when the intercourse is 
 through the medium of holy rites ? It is not difficult to see 
 that neither the Church, nor civil society, could bear without 
 derangement the application of Probabilism to the relations 
 between them and the individual. But then it is more than 
 ever difficult to conceive how such a relaxation of the moral 
 law is to be justified ; and justified, moreover, in the depart- 
 ment of conduct which is inward, in which we are our own 
 judges, and in which therefore we may even have need to 
 be aided against temptation by a peculiar strictness of rule. 
 
 66. The other limitation of the doctrine is, that the 
 probability we are to follow, though inferior to that of the 
 competing alternative, must be intrinsically a solid one : and 
 must not be glaringly, though it may be sensibly, inferior to 
 the opposing argument. ' Quoique, comparativement a la 
 probabilite contraire, la votre soit inferieure, il faut quelle soit, 
 absolument parlant, grave, et solide, et digne d'un homme 
 prudent ; comme une montagne relativement a une autre peut 
 etre plus petite, mais neanmoins etre en soi, et absolument, une 
 
 Manuel des Confesseurs, p. 74. 
 
Ch. X.] THE GUIDE OF LIFE 369 
 
 assez grande masse pour m enter le nom de montagne V And 
 this doctrine is supported by the very strange reason 2 , that 
 it is more easy to determine whether the probability in favour 
 of a given alternative belongs to the class of solid or of faint 
 and inadmissible probabilities, than whether it be superior or 
 inferior to the probability in favour of some other alternative. 
 This proposition is one which requires to borrow support, 
 rather than one which can afford to lend it. To me it has the 
 sound of egregious paradox. However difficult it may some- 
 times be to compare the reasons adducible in support of 
 opposite alternatives, the line between them, it is evident, can 
 rarely be finer and more hair-drawn than that which is to 
 distinguish, in the technical and abstract order, the general 
 traits of a faint from those of a solid probability. 
 
 67. But upon the doctrine itself let me record, in con- 
 cluding, these three remarks. In the first place, the cases are 
 innumerable in which there is evidence in favour of a given 
 alternative, which would amount to a solid, aye a very solid 
 probability, if it stood alone : if it were not overthrown by 
 evidence on the opposite side. But if we are to regard it 
 absolutely, and not relatively, we must on this account fall 
 into constant error. Secondly : to know that our duty is to 
 follow the safest and best alternative, is at least to possess 
 a determinate rule, and one eminently acceptable to a sound 
 conscience ; one which gives us a single and intelligible end 
 for our efforts, though the path of duty is not always, even 
 for the single eye, easy to discern. It becomes a tangled path 
 indeed, if we invoke the aid of Probabilism. For this requires 
 the decision of at least two questions : first, whether the 
 alternative which it is meant to follow has a solid, not 
 a feeble, probability in its favour; secondly, whether the 
 alternative to be discarded has a notable and conspicuous, or 
 only a limited and moderate, superiority over it. For the 
 step cannot, by hypothesis, be taken, until both these questions 
 have been determined. In the third place, it is painful to 
 recollect that when we are dealing with the most difficult 
 parts of duty, namely those which we transact wholly within 
 ourselves, the appetite for self-indulgence should be pampered 
 
 ' Manuel des Confesseurs. p. 75. " Ibid. p. 86. 
 
 Bb 
 
37o PROBABILITY AS [Pt. II. 
 
 by encouragement from without. We are already apt 
 enough to conjure into solid probabilities the veriest phan- 
 tasms of the mind, provided only they present an agreeable 
 appearance. Here is a new premium set upon this process, 
 alike dangerous and alluring. The known subtlety of such 
 mental introspections excuses many failures in those who do 
 not create their own embarrassments ; but, for those who 
 do, such a system appears capable of colouring error, which 
 might have been blameless, with the darker hues of wilfulness 
 and guilt. 
 
 [In an early part of this volume \ reference has been made 
 to a supposed remark by Mr. Pitt, that the Analogy sug- 
 gested to him more doubts than it solved. I have not there 
 touched on the merits of the remark in itself. It is not to be 
 treated as frivolous or captious. No other work written to 
 promote belief, had then, or within my knowledge has now, 
 been written, which before answering objections brings them 
 so fully and clearly into view. We were then still at the 
 commencement of the critical or questioning period ; and 
 to many minds (probably, for example, to the mind of 
 Mr. Wilberforce) these objections may have been new. The 
 man who first propounded and brought home the idea that 
 the system under which the world is governed is not ideally 
 perfect, spoke, without doubt, a formidable word. So the 
 man who first propounded and brought home the idea that 
 the text of the Holy Scriptures is not absolutely exempt 
 from error, he, too, spoke a formidable word. A third case 
 may be noted ; the first promulgation of the heliocentric 
 system, and the revelation of a number of sister worlds, 
 may have disturbed the faith of many minds, though hardly 
 
 1 Page 29. 
 
Ch. X.j THE GUIDE OF LIFE 371 
 
 of any strong minds. Such disclosures can hardly fail to 
 impart a shock at the outset, unless where minds are clothed 
 in the compound panoply of faith and reason. But the 
 terror of Copernicus, we may hope, has entirely passed 
 away, and the kindred and more recent alarms should 
 now, so far as believers are concerned, be on their road to 
 extinction — 1 896.] 
 
 c c 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbot, Dr. Ezra, 204. 
 
 Aberdeen, Analogy published at, 130 ; 
 Universities of, ib. 
 
 Academical Philosophy, the, 346. 
 
 Adam, 163, 183. 
 
 Adaptation, argument from, 295 sq., 304. 
 
 Aeschylus, 268. 
 
 Ahriman, 177, 212. 
 
 alwvtos, 183, 202, 208, 216 sq. 
 
 Alexander the Great, 305, 308. 
 
 Alexandria, 189. 
 
 Alger, W. R., 182, 205. 
 
 Allin, T., 228. 
 
 Altruism, 58. 
 
 Amenti, 161. 
 
 Amplification or development of state- 
 ments of Christian doctrine, 196 sqq. 
 
 Analogies, considered as resemblances 
 of ratios, 142. 
 
 Analogy, characterized, 137 sq. ; editions 
 of, 129 ; translations, 131 sq. 
 
 Angelo, Michael, 351. 
 
 Angus, Dr., 109. 
 
 Annihilation, 157, 183, 224. 
 
 Anomalies in nature, 315 sq. 
 
 Apostolic Fathers, the, on the future 
 life, 176, 178. 
 
 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 165. 
 
 Ariosto, 313, 318. 
 
 Aristophanes, 68, 80, 162. 
 
 Aristotle, 4, 23, 83 sq., 86, 102 sqq., 130, 
 158, 189 sq., 194, 287, 340, 346. 
 
 Arithmetic, primitive, 202 sq. 
 
 Arminians, the, 271 sq. 
 
 Arnobius, 183. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 22, 43, 55-71. 
 
 Articles of Religion, the, 230. 
 
 Athanasian Creed, 230 sq. 
 
 1 Atheism of act,' 79. 
 
 Athenagoras, 183. 
 
 C C 
 
 Atonement, the, 113. 
 Augustine, St., 112, 163 sqq., 188 sq., 
 192 sq., 194, 210 sq., 348. 
 
 Bacon, Francis (Lord Verulam), 6, 75 
 sq., 325- 
 
 Bagehot, Walter, 22-29. 
 
 Barnabas, 183. 
 
 Beaconsfield, Lord, 87 sq. 
 
 Beattie, James, 52. 
 
 Beauty, conception of, 93. 
 
 Belief, 336, 344 sqq. ; — and faith, and 
 opinion, 285 sq. 
 
 Berkeley, Bishop C, 95. 
 
 Bernard, Dr. J. H., 96 sq. 
 
 Beugnot, A. A., 190. 
 
 Beve ridge, Bishop W., Ill, 
 
 Books, influence of particular, 132, 134. 
 
 Boswell, James, 137. 
 
 Bridgewater Treatises, 304. 
 
 Brown, Dr. John, 103. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, 65, 93, 108, 134. 
 
 Burnet, Dr. Thomas, 210. 
 
 Bushby, Dr. E., 23. 
 
 BUTLER, Bishop Joseph, mentioned 
 passim, and see Contents ; Atonemen t, 
 on, 113 ; beauty, conception of, 93 ; 
 caution of, 242, 343 ; death and im- 
 mortality, on, 248 sqq. ; 'dry light' in, 
 33, 74 ; errors, occasional, 289 ; future 
 life, on, 141-172, 251 sqq. ; habit, on, 
 249 sqq. ; independence of, 108, in; 
 intermediate state, on, 249 sqq. ; ne- 
 cessity, on, 268 sqq. ; opinion concern- 
 ing (in America), 109, 131 : (in Cam- 
 bridge) 131 : (in Oxford) 75, 130: (in 
 Scotland) 129 : (on the Continent) 
 131; originality of, 93; 'Popery,' 
 charged with, 12, 109, 130 ; proba- 
 bility, on, 334 sqq. ; sin, on corruption 
 
 2 
 
374 
 
 INDEX 
 
 through, 73 ; style, 23, 86; teleology, 
 on, 293sgg.; 'unction,' absence of, 112. 
 
 Caesar, 92, 289. 
 
 Caligula, 351. 
 
 Calvin, 153 ; Calvinism, 268. 
 
 Cambridge, University of, 131, 150. 
 
 ' Careless reader, the,' 138. 
 
 Carlyle, T., 132. 
 
 Chalmers, Dr. T., 109, 130, 137. 
 
 Chamberlayne, John, 309. 
 
 1 Chance,' 295 sq. 
 
 Character, destinies depend upon, 187, 
 
 222, 303, 325. 
 — of God, an, 224, 227, 241, 263 sqq., 
 
 359- 
 Charles the First and Strafford, 291 ; 
 
 Eikon Basilike, 351. 
 Chemin defer glissant, 313. 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 135. 
 Cheyne, Dr. T. K, 165. 
 Chiliasm, 181. 
 Christianity, auxiliary arrangements 
 
 which promoted the spread of, 305 ; 
 
 date of transition of the mass of the 
 
 population of the Empire to, 190 ; 
 
 effect on human virtues and vices, 
 
 79 ^q. ; 354 sqq. 
 Chubb, T., 137. 
 
 Church, the early, avoidance of specu- 
 lation in, 180 ; happiness of, 174 sq. ; 
 
 moderation of, 213, 231, 256. 
 Cicero, 154, 159, 310, 346. 
 Clarke, Samuel, 2, 40, 107,111, 115, 118, 
 
 121-128, 147, 153, 156 sq., 169, 183, 
 
 228. 
 Classes, social, as affected by religious 
 
 movements, 136. 
 Clement of Alexandria, St., 183, 189. 
 Clement of Rome, St., 183, 228. 
 Coleridge, S. T., 132, 346. 
 Colliber, Samuel, 96. 
 Collins, Anthony, 137, 156. 
 1 Conditionalism,' 207. 
 Constantine the Great, 190. 
 Constantinople, 190. 
 Copernican system, the, 312, 371. 
 1 Corporal works of mercy,' 234, 317. 
 Councils, early, 188, 197, 229 ; of 1870, 
 
 194. 
 Creeds, the Apostles', Nicene, and 
 
 Athanasian, 184, 197, 229-232, 356, 
 
 358 sq. 
 
 Cudworth, Ralph, 281. 
 Cumberland, Bishop R., 94. 
 
 Damiens' ' bed of steel,' 82 sq. 
 
 Daniel, Book of, 169. 
 
 Dante, 85, 101, 138 sq., 189, 204. 
 
 Death, ancient horror of, 173 sq. ; sense 
 of, in Scripture, 178, 218, 265; — in 
 connexion with the future state, 215 ; 
 interval between death and resurrec- 
 tion, 253. 
 
 Deism and Deists, 133, 139. 
 
 Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, 228. 
 
 De Quincey, T., 217. 
 
 Design, argument from, 294 sqq. 
 
 Determinism, 276 sqq. 
 
 Development, in human nature, 79 ; in 
 Christian doctrine, 197 sq. 
 
 Devolution ( = evolution), 307. 
 
 D'Holbach, P. H. T., 146, 268, 273-275. 
 
 Diderot, 93. 
 
 Divine Legation, The, 166. 
 
 Discerptibility, 147. 
 
 Dives and Lazarus, parable of, 171 sq., 
 207. 
 
 Dodwell, Henry, 118, 156, 183. 
 
 Dollinger, I., 158. 
 
 Duty, 366. 
 
 Dying, the act of, 173. 
 
 Eagar, Dr. A. R., 150. 
 
 Edinburgh, edition of Butler's Works 
 
 published at, 129. 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 50, 268, 270-273, 
 
 276, 286. 
 Eikon Basilike, 351. 
 Elijah, 168 sq., 171. 
 'Eliot, George,' 22. 
 Encyclopaedists, the, 134. 
 Endor, the witch of, 169. 
 Endurance, faculty of, developed by 
 
 Christianity, 81 sqq. 
 English piety, reserve of, 75. 
 Enoch, 166, 171. 
 Epicurus, 159, 32a. 
 Erskine, Thomas (of Linlathen), 328. 
 Eschatology, 89, 174 sqq., 187 sq., 192, 
 
 208. 
 Essenes, the, 172. 
 
 ' Eternal,' meaning of, 202, 204, 208. 
 ' Eternity,' 202, 209, 233, 235 sq., 262, 
 
 266 ; idea of, 194. 
 Euclid, 87. 
 
OF IHK 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 Of 
 
 INDEX 
 
 375 
 
 Eusebius, 228. 
 
 Evangelical movement in the Church 
 
 of England, 136. 
 ' Evidence,' 340 sq. 
 Evil, existence of, 242 sq., 246, 263, 
 
 267 ; personality of, 213 ; seat of, in 
 
 human nature, 24. 
 Evolution, 249, 306 sqq. 
 Extinction, 173, 265. 
 
 Faith and belief, 285 ; — and opinion, 
 ib. ; — and reason, 282, 311; — degrees 
 of, 282, 348. 
 
 Fallen angels, the, 264 sq. 
 
 Fatalism, 268 sqq. 
 
 Fate, the ancient view of, 268. 
 
 Fetishism, 17a. 
 
 Fitzgerald, Bishop W., 71, 73, 87, 95. 
 
 ' Fiving,' 202. 
 
 Fliigge, 183, 185, 188 sq., 193 sqq. 
 
 Foreknowledge and necessity, 273. 
 
 Foster, James, 95. 
 
 Franklin, B., 159. 
 
 Fraser, A. Campbell, 159. 
 
 Freedom of the will, 245, 263, 268 sqq. 
 
 Gibbon, E., 184, 282. 
 
 Ginsburg, Dr. C. D., 172. 
 
 Gon, unity of, 167 ; see Character. 
 
 Goethe, 305. 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 54, 82. 
 
 Gonzales, B., 364. 
 
 Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, 
 
 238. 
 Grammar 0/ Assent, 311. 
 Gravity, law of, 241, 312, 3x9 sq., 345. 
 Greek intellect, the, 5. 
 Greely, General A. W., 81. 
 Gregory the Great, 188, 194. 
 Gregory of Nazianzus, 210. 
 Gregory of Nyssa, St., 192, 210. 
 Grote, G., 159, 162, 171. 
 Grotius, 96. 
 Guizot, 153. 
 
 Habit hardens by use, 222, 240, 263, 
 
 266, 278, 290. 
 Halifax, Bishop S., 108. 
 Hallam, Henry, 94, 109. 
 Hanna, Dr. W., 130. 
 Hebrews, Epistle to, xi. 1 ('evidence' = 
 
 mental sight), 283 ; 330. 
 Heliogabalus, 80. 
 
 Hennell, Miss S. S., 22, 29-45, 90. 
 
 Herbert of Cherbury, Edward Lord, 1 34 . 
 
 Heredity, 301. 
 
 Hermas, 183. 
 
 Hill, Dr. G. Birkbeck, 137. 
 
 Hoadly, Bishop B., in. 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, 50, 134, 269. 
 
 Holy Ghost, sin against the, 220 sq., 
 
 264 sq. 
 Homer, 25, 50, 61, 78, 80, 97, 160 sqq., 
 
 203, 216, 231 sq., 271, 289, 340, 356. 
 Hooker, Richard, in, 132. 
 Humanity, active and passive, 104. 
 Hume, David, 2, 50 sqq., 130, 133, 269 
 
 s «-> 2 73i 282, 311 sqq., 336. 
 Huntingdon, Lady, 88. 
 Hutton, R. H., 22, 61. 
 
 ' Idle word,' 356. 
 
 Ignatius, St., 183. 
 
 ' Immortality,' conditional, 211, 218; 
 decline of belief in, 171 ; desire for, 
 146 ; — and survival, 142, i^isqq., 155, 
 161, 169, 172, 210. 
 
 — natural, doctrine of, 156, 188 sqq., 
 201, 209, 218, 233, 239sg., 256, 26osg., 
 266. 
 
 — meanings of the term, 155 sqq. 
 Incarnation, the, 78, 157, 239, 248, 251. 
 Indiscerptibility, 147, 154. 
 Innocent XI, Pope, 337. 
 Intermediate state, the, 249 sqq. 
 Intuition, 347, 349. 
 
 Ireland, Disestablished Church of, 109. 
 Irenaeus, 183, 210. 
 
 Jeremiah, Lamentations of, 204. 
 
 Jeroboam, 167. 
 
 Jerome, St., 185, 210. 
 
 Job, Book of, 168, 171. 
 
 John of Damascus, St., 193, 195. 
 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 54, 108, 134, 137. 
 
 Justin Martyr, 182, 210. 
 
 Justinian, 209. 
 
 Juvenal, 159, 333. 
 
 Juxon, Bishop W., 351. 
 
 Kames, Lord (Henry Home), 130, 133. 
 Knowledge, 348 sq. 
 Koran, the, 27. 
 
 Lactantius, 183, 210. 
 
 Law, William, 134. 
 
 ' Laws of Nature,' 312, 322 sq. 
 
3?6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 1 Legion,' 213. 
 Leibnitz, 153. 
 Leo X, Pope, 194 sq., 197. 
 1 Living being,' 150. 
 Locke, John, 44, 131, 346. 
 Logiealmond (Perthshire), congrega- 
 tion of Scottish Seceders at, 129. 
 Lotze, H., 132. 
 Lucretius, 159. 
 ' Lukewarmness,' 175. 
 Lupus, C, 185, 188. 
 Luther, 269. 
 Luxury, modern, 79, 186, 219. 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 93, 159. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 94, 137. 
 
 Mahometanism, 27 sq., 167. 
 
 Manning, Cardinal H. E., 11 sq. 
 
 Manuel des Confesseurs, 337, 368. 
 
 Manzoni quoted 256. 
 
 Martial, 80. 
 
 Martineau, Dr. James, 22, 33, 44. 
 
 Maurice, F. D., 22, 72 sq. 
 
 Mediation, 327. 
 
 Messianic day, 168. 
 
 Mill, James, 54 sq. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 54, 132. 
 
 Millennarian idea, the, 203. 
 
 Millennial anticipation, 180 sqq. 
 
 Milton, John, 242, 327. 
 
 Minos, 161. 
 
 Miracles, 311 sqq. 
 
 Mivart, St. George, 266. 
 
 Moliere. 316. 
 
 Montanism, 184. 
 
 Montenegrins, the, 82. 
 
 Moral powers, ripening up to death, 
 
 148, 150. 
 ' Morality in action,' 139. 
 Morley, J., 93. 
 Moses, 166 ; strength of the Mosaic 
 
 system, 167. 
 Motive, or inducement, 286 sqq. 
 
 Napoleon tbe Great, 283, 302. 
 Nature, compensation in, 315 ; 
 
 — human, development of, 78, 81 ; 
 
 — laws of, 312 ; 
 
 — range of, 101 ; 
 
 — variation in, 315. 
 Neaves, Lord, 309. 
 Necessarianism, 287. 
 Necessity, 268 sqq. 
 
 Newman, Cardinal J. H., 133, 210, 243, 
 
 Newton, Isaac, 200, 249. 
 Nieuwentyt, B., 309 sq. 
 Nitzsch, F., 182 sq., 192. 
 Nonconformity, 109-111. 
 ' Numeration,' 202 sq. 
 
 Olshausen, J., 216. 
 Opinion (Po£a), 348. 
 Origen and Origenism, 17, 35, 94 sq., 98, 
 
 180-185 > *&! sqq., 192, 207, 209 sqq., 
 
 219 sq., 228, 293. 
 Original sin, doctrine of, 197. 
 Originality, 93 sq. 
 Ormuzd, 212. 
 
 Overton, Canon J. H., 134. 
 Oxford, study of Butler at, 75, 129 sq. 
 
 Pain not in its nature an evil, 328-333. 
 Paley, Dr.W., 266, 306, 309 sq., 337. 
 Pamphilus, 228. 
 Papias, 203. 
 Parthenogenesis, 313. 
 Pascal, Blaise, 65, 332, 337. 
 Pattison, Mark, 22, 75 sq., 86, 130. 
 Paul, St., 22, 35, 60 sq., 119, 180 sq., 
 
 199 sq., 213, 224, 234, 239 sq., 253, 257 
 
 sq., 262, 264, 303, 351, 354 sqq., 362 sq. 
 Paul of Samosata, 187. 
 Pearson, Bishop J., 285, 348. 
 ' Pelagian Controversy,' 197. 
 'Perception,' Stoical, 346. 
 Petavel-Olliffe, 183. 
 Peter Lombard, 194. 
 Peter, St., 262. 
 Pharisees, the, 171 sq. 
 Phoenicians, the, 81. 
 Photius, 228. 
 Pindar, 158. 
 
 Pitt, William, 29 sqq., 87, 137, 370. 
 Pius IX, Pope, 1 1. 
 Plato and Platonism, 22 sq., 80, 146, 
 
 154, 158 sq., 162, 184, 186, 189 sq., 
 
 192, 216, 240. 
 Platonists, the Cambridge, 154. 
 Plotinus, 154. 
 Polycarp, St., 183. 
 ' Popery,' Butler on, no. 
 Popes, claims of the, 106. 
 Premier mobile, 274. 
 Priestley, Dr. Joseph, 269. 
 ' Probabiliorism,' 364. 
 
INDEX 
 
 377 
 
 Probabilism, 337 sqq., 364 sq., 367-370. 
 
 Probability, nature of, 334 sqq. 
 
 Probation, 210, 265 sq. 
 
 Prophecy, 326. 
 
 Psalms, the, 75, 169, 171. 
 
 Psychical Research, Society for, 150. 
 
 Punishment, future, 197, 240 sq., 244 
 
 sq., 261, 266. 
 Punishment, vicarious, 48. 
 Purcell, E. S., Life of Cardinal Manning, 1 1. 
 Pusey, Dr. E. B., 197, 205, 209 sq. 
 
 Rameses II, 97. 
 
 Ravignan, G. X. de, 364. 
 
 Reaction, at Oxford, 130; law of, 200; 
 religious, in eighteenth century, 135 
 sq. 
 
 Real Presence, the, 126 s?. 
 
 Reformation, the, 89, 126, 249. 
 
 Regulus, legend of, 79, 81. 
 
 Religion, comparative, 160, 170. 
 
 ' Reserve,' of English piety, 75, 228, 
 257 ; of the early Church, 195. 
 
 ' Restitutionism,' 220, 264 sq. 
 
 ' Restorationism,' 185. 
 
 Resurrection distinguished from im- 
 mortality, 195. 
 
 Resurrection of the body, 229 sqq., 239. 
 
 Revelation, a Divine, 162. 
 
 ' Rewards and punishments,' 177, 206. 
 
 Rhadamanthos, 161. 
 
 Rogers, J. E. T., 29, 43. 
 
 Romanes, G. J., 279, 2g% sqq. 
 
 Rome, building of, 351. 
 
 Routh, Dr. M. J., 228. 
 
 Row, C. A., 205. 
 
 Rumnus, 183. 
 
 Ruskin, John, 93. 
 
 Sacheverell, Dr. H., 134. 
 
 Sacred Books, non-Biblical, 306. 
 
 Sadducees, the, 17a. 
 
 Salmond, Dr. G., 158 sq., 165, 182, 207. 
 
 Salvation, is it confined to a minority of 
 
 professing Christians ? 233, 238 sq. 
 Scaevola, 274. 
 Schoolmen, the, 193 sq. 
 ' Science,' 341 sqq. 
 Scotland's Lament, 133. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 133. 
 Scrupulosity, 337. 
 1 Sea-bay,' design in, 297. 
 Seeker, Archbishop T., 109. 
 
 Serious Call, Tlie, 134. 
 
 Sermon on the Mount, 237 sq. 
 
 Servetus, 153. 
 
 Shaftesbury, A. A., third earl of, 96. 
 
 Shakespeare, 302. 
 
 Sheol, 168 sq., 176. 
 
 Siamese twins, the, 316-318. 
 
 Sin, the idea of, 26, 80. 
 
 Smith, Goldwin, 22, 74 sq. 
 
 Smith, John, 154, 159. 
 
 Socrates, 84, 240. 
 
 Soul, immateriality of the, 188. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 299. 
 
 'Spiritism,' 150. 
 
 Spirits in prison, the, 262. 
 
 'Spiritualism,' 150. 
 
 Steere, Bishop E., 23. 
 
 Stephen, Leslie, 22, 45-55, 85, 275 sq. 
 
 Stoics, the, 158. 
 
 Survival, see 'Immortality.' 
 
 Talmud, the, 172. 
 
 Tatian, 183, 210. 
 
 Teleological argument, the, 283, 293 sqq. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred (Lord), 133, 212 sqq. 
 
 Terror, as an instrument of persuasion, 
 199. 
 
 Tertullian, 183 sq. 
 
 Tewkesbury Academy, the, 111. 
 
 Theophilus of Antioch, 183. 
 
 Tholuck, P. A. G., 71. 
 
 Tiberias, the storm on the sea of (St. 
 Mark iv. 37-39)) 3 J 9> 3 2 5- 
 
 Time, the conception of, 232, 266. 
 
 Tindal, Matthew, 95, 137. 
 
 Torture, ancient and modern, 79, 81 sq. 
 
 ' Traditional theology,' 261. 
 
 Trapp, Joseph, 205. 
 
 Trinitarian controversy, strictness of 
 definition in, 175. 
 
 Trust, the element of, in moral train- 
 ing, 345- 
 
 Trypho, 18a. 
 
 Turks, the, 82. 
 
 ' Tutiorists,' 365. 
 
 'Unconditioned possibility ' ( = unseen 
 
 world), 173. 
 ' Unfulfilled purpose,' 148. 
 ' Uniformity of nature,' 313, 316. 
 Union of England and Scotland, 133. 
 ' Universalism,' 185, 207,211, 219 sq., 
 
 264 sqq. 
 
378 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Velleity, 270. 
 
 Verbal inspiration of the Scriptures, 
 
 theory of, 16 sqq. 
 Vernun/t, 346. 
 Verstand, 346. 
 
 Vicarious suffering, 33, 47 sqq., 91. 
 Vigilius, Pope, 187. 
 Virgil quoted, 201, 233. 
 Voltaire, 134, 335. 
 
 Warburton, Bishop W., 137, 166. 
 
 Warham, Archbishop, 108. 
 
 Watch, the illustration from a, in 
 
 connexion with the argument from 
 
 design, 309 sq. 
 Waterland, Bishop Daniel, in. 
 
 Wesley, John, 72, 109, 134, 137, 
 
 3°3- 
 Weymouth, Dr. E. F., 215. 
 Whewell, Dr. W., 131, 304. 
 Wilberforce, William, 29 sqq., 87, 112, 
 
 i37» 37o. 
 Wilkins, Bishop John, 96. 
 Will, the, 277 sqq., 320. 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, 108. 
 Women, influence of, in religious 
 
 movements, 136. 
 Woodcutting, illustration from, 315 sq. 
 
 Zart, Gr., 132. 
 
 Zend, 212. 
 
 Zuinglian view of the Eucharist, 127. 
 
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