of the Prayer Book, for the practice of family prayers and private prayers, and for more careful preparation for confirmation. The Charge was taken by fanatical persons as popish in its leanings. An anonymous writer a few years after Butler's death asserted that he died in the communion of the Roman Church. Archbishop Secker demanded some proof of this. The writer answered alleging the cross in the chapel at Bristol and that "his last episcopal charge has squinted very much towards that superstition." Another writer stated that Butler had "a great fondness for the lives of Romish saints and their books of mystic piety." These attacks had the good effect of drawing from Secker an interesting account of his friend's character, but they deserved no serious consideration. The important point about the Charge is that it is delivered by the author of the Analogy, who was not in the least inclined to exaggerate the importance of external forms, but might have been expected unduly to magnify the mind and exalt the inward spiritual side of religion.

Soon after removing to Durham Butler's constitution began to break up. We have from historians of Durham some recollections of his appearance.1 Surtees says that "he conciliated all hearts; in advanced years and on the episcopal throne he retained the same genuine modesty, and natural sweetness of disposition, which had distinguished him in youth and in retirement. During the ministerial performance of the sacred office, a divine animation seemed to pervade his whole manner, and lighted up his pale, wan countenance, already marked with the progress of disease, like a torch glimmering in its socket, yet bright and useful to the last." And Hutchinson says the same: "He was of a most reverend aspect; his face thin and pale; but there was a divine placidness in his countenance which inspired veneration, and expressed the most benevolent mind. His white hair hung gracefully on his shoulders and his whole figure was patriarchal."

When the Bishop's condition became alarming he was re

1 Surtees, History of Durham, p. 122; and Hutchinson's History of Durham, i. 578.

moved to Bath where his friend, Martin Benson, Bishop of Gloucester, attended him till the end. We have several letters written by Benson and by Nathaniel Forster, Butler's chaplain, to Secker, then Bishop of Oxford, to keep him acquainted with the condition of the patient. He died on June 16 at the age of sixty, and was buried in Bristol Cathedral. Dr. Forster describes the funeral. "The hearse was followed only by two coaches-and-six, the servants in livery going before it on horseback. The pall was supported by the Chancellor, Dr. Waterland, and four others of the senior clergy, who were most known to his Lordship, and followed by myself and the rest of the family, in the same order in which we usually attended his Lordship to the cathedral at Durham." His will left legacies of friendship and respect to Mrs. Talbot and to Catherine Talbot, her daughter, as well as to Secker, and ordered "all my sermons, letters and papers, whatever," to be "burnt without being read by any one as soon as may be after my decease." In 1834 a monument was erected in the cathedral by subscription, for which a notable inscription was written by Southey. After recording the name it proceeds :

"Others had established the historical and prophetical grounds of the Christian religion, and that sure testimony of its truth which is found in its perfect adaptation to the heart of man. It was reserved for him to develope its analogy to the constitution and course of nature; and laying his strong foundations in the depth of that great argument, there to construct another and irrefragable proof: thus rendering philosophy subservient to faith; and finding in outward and visible things the type and evidence of those within the veil."

It remains now to explain very briefly the general philosophical method of the Analogy and its connection with the controversies of its time.

We have seen that Butler at the age of twenty-one was studying the Boyle Lectures of Samuel Clarke. Those lectures claimed to be a demonstrative proof of the being and attributes of God, and to establish the moral law by reasonings as irresistible as a proposition in Euclid. Clarke's

philosophy was influenced very largely by the mathematical and physical reasonings of Descartes and Newton. He aimed at using the same method in philosophical and ethical inquiry. His reasoning is therefore on the whole a priori. He deduces from fundamental axioms an elaborate system of metaphysical truth. From this method Butler instinctively recoiled. He did not question the value of Clarke's work, but his own work was different. In the Fifteen Sermons and the Analogy Butler aims at interpreting experience. He collects and arranges facts-in the Fifteen Sermons the facts of the moral experience of the individual man; in the Analogy, the facts of the experience of society -of life in the widest sense. Butler's method is therefore inductive; as Dr. Chalmers expresses it: “Butler is in theology what Bacon was in science; the reigning principle of the latter is, that it is not for man to theorise on the works of God; and of the former, that it is not for man to theorise on the ways of God. Both deferred alike to the certainty of experience as being paramount to all the plausibilities of hypothesis."

But the Analogy is written with a direct reference to the voluminous deistical controversies of the beginning of the eighteenth century. After the enthusiasms and excitements of the civil wars an age of reason succeeded-a reason that tended to be severely logical. It was a rationalism that found it easy to dispense with imagination and emotion because the spiritual vitality of the time was low. Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity, published in 1695, may be taken as a starting-point for the whole of Deism. The next step may be represented by Toland's Christianity not Mysterious. Toland called himself a follower of Locke, though Locke refused to acknowledge him. Toland's position is further developed by Tindal in Christianity as old as Creation. The very titles of these books explain the course of the controversy. The deist ignored all that was deepest and most characteristic in Christianity. He left out that part of it which was not as old as creation. He fell back upon a natural religion which he considered plain and reasonable. He accepted a Creator and Governor of the

universe Whose wisdom and power he did not deny. This moral Governor all men by their natural reason can know and obey; and there is no necessity for revelation at all. Butler's answer is directed especially to the deist who accepts God as a moral Governor, and declares that no mysteries are left in life. The Analogy urges that the deist accepts his moral Governor in the face of the same difficulties and mysteries which make him reject revelation. The deist has not got rid of the mysteries of life by denying revelation. If he will only look at life fairly, he will find that natural and revealed religion are of a piece in their mysteriousness. Man's unaided intellect does not find the world as reasonable as a proposition of Euclid.

It has been said that Butler raises more doubts than he solves. But he wrote against men who had no use for revelation because they saw nothing to doubt about in the universe. Butler's whole treatise implies that religious conviction cannot be made to depend only upon demonstrative proof. There is no effort of faith in accepting the right

answer to a sum.

"You must mix some uncertainty

With faith if you would have faith be."

JOSEPH BUTLER, 1692-1752.

Fifteen Sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel. 1726. The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (with dissertations: "Of Personal Identity," ""Of the Nature of Virtue"). 1736.

Six Sermons preached upon public occasions. Published separately, 1739, 1740, 1741, 1745, 1747, 1748.

A Charge delivered to the Clergy at the Visitation of Durham. 1871.

Collected Edition (with Life and Notes), 1804; reprinted 1807; Life, by Thomas Bartlett. 1839.

Some Remains hitherto unpublished of Bishop Butler. 1853. Edited by Bishop Steere.

ANALYSIS

THE Introduction distinguishes probable evidence from demonstration. It claims that we continually use in life and practice a method of analogy which argues from a known series of facts to a like (verisimile) series less known. The treatise that follows will attempt to prove that the doctrines of religion have such a likeness to the ordinary course of experience that the same Author is probably responsible for both. This will at least be shown to be possible. The argument assumes as its known series of facts a world made and governed by God.

CHAPTER I. The first chapter of the Analogy-"Of a Future Life"-states the argument for immortality without reference to the teachings of revelation or to those deductions from essential religious principles by which it is generally maintained. The chapter therefore disappoints most readers, who are unaware how very largely their faith in immortality depends upon considerations which Butler's method compels him to ignore. It is disconcerting to find rather the possibility than the probability of immortality proved by the inductive method which reasons from the facts of experience. The chapter is not therefore conclusive-or exhaustive. It is characteristic because it so conscientiously refrains from a priori proof. But the case for immortality cannot be fully and fairly put without a priori arguments, nor by the Christian without appeal to the revelation through Christ. Butler, then, insists only that the movement in nature from matter to mind forces us to conceive a further movement; nature's effect upon the mind of man is to persuade him of the probability of a future life. The Dissertation on Personal Identity belongs to the chapter.

CHAPTERS II. and III. In this world we observe a government by consequences; definite lines of conduct on the whole bring their reward or their punishment. In certain respects punishments appear more obvious and inevitable than rewards. But on the whole God governs as a magistrate or parent does. Present conduct has in this life future consequences; and therefore this

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