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confident assumption that if its principles be granted, a future life-future misery, future happiness is a dream, cannot be depended on; for since men have existed, they may again ; and if in a bad condition now, in a worse hereafter. It is not, on any such hypothesis, a whit more unaccountable that man's life should be renewed or preserved, or perpetuated for ever, than that it should have been originated at all. On this point he truly says: 'That we are to live hereafter is just as reconcileable with the scheme of Atheism, and as well to be accounted for by it, as that we are now alive, is; and therefore nothing can be more absurd than to argue from that scheme, that there can be no future state.""

To any one who has not read the Analogy or the Sermons, it must be obvious by this account that it discusses problems of the greatest possible moment. It has already been said that a direct and deliberate argument for the Being of God must be sought elsewhere; but when faith in that supreme principle has once been acknowledged, there is hardly any subject connected with religion and duty which is not analysed with penetrating acumen by Butler, and placed in its proper

position in the great scheme of religious thought. Butler should be read again and again. The style is not difficult; merely the language is exceedingly concise, and the reasoning close. Butler's argument, properly understood, is not only an enormous help against difficulty and doubt, but it is also a most wholesome and invaluable check to rashness, presumption, arrogance, Pharisaism, and disproportion in religious belief. There can hardly be a more bracing exercise either in close mental application, or in the strengthening of the logical faculty, or in the discipline of religious thought, than these powerful works on the greatest of all subjects. Butler wrote specially for his own generation; but he has left for all time a treasure-house of thought, help, suggestion, and reasoning. He has cleared the dust of prejudice away from before the steps to the throne of God, and taught men the proper spirit in which to approach the awful mystery of His Being and Revelation.

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VI

WATERLAND

THE EXPOUNDER OF THE LORD'S SUPPER

ANIEL WATERLAND,' the standard

exponent of the Church of England doctrine of the Lord's Supper, and the most eminent defender in the eighteenth century of orthodox teaching on the subject of the Divinity of our Lord, was born at Walesby, in the Lindsey division of Lincolnshire, on February 14th, 1683, nine years before the birth of Bishop Butler, and two years before the death of Charles II. He died December 23rd, 1740, shortly before the close of his fifty-seventh year, twelve years before the death of Bishop Butler.

He was the second son, by a second wife, of Henry Waterland, Rector of Walesby and of the neighbouring parish of Flixborough.

1 The details of this sketch are taken from the Biographia Britannica, and from Bishop Van Mildert's Introduction to Waterland's Works.

His ability was shown early; he could read well at four. His first tutor was Mr. Sykes, curate of Flixborough; his father taught him grammar; and he went to school at Lincoln, under Samuel Garmstone and Anthony Reade. Here he displayed "uncommon diligence and talents"; besides his regular work, his masters asked him to do other exercises, which were so brilliant that they were "handed abroad for the honour of the school."

Soon after completing his sixteenth year, March 30th, 1699, he was admitted to Magdalene College, Cambridge. His tutor was Samuel Barker, "a very worthy gentleman." On December 24th, 1702, he obtained a scholarship; in the Lent term following he took his degree, B.A., and on February 15th, 1703, he was elected Fellow.

He became a "great support to the Society," took pupils, was alternately Tutor or Dean, and resided constantly in term time; the number of admissions greatly increased. In 1706 he became M.A.; and in 1713, on the death of Dr. Gabriel Quadring, the Master of the College, he was appointed his successor by Henry, sixth Earl of Suffolk and Earl of Bindon, in whose family the nomination lay. This right, on the

extinction of a branch of the House of Suffolk, subsequently passed through Lady Essex Howard, Baroness Griffin, of Braybrooke, daughter of the third Earl, to the Lords Braybrooke, with whom it now rests. Lord Suffolk also presented him. to the rectory of Ellingham in Suffolk, almost the whole income of which he gave to his curate.

He was a zealous and diligent reader; Dean Cyril Jackson, of Christ Church, Oxford, used to say how his father, when an undergraduate at Magdalene, was accustomed to see the lights in his study burning till far on in the night. His health was much impaired, and his life probably shortened, by this intense application.

In 1710 he was Public Examiner for the first time, and again next year. About the same time he was member of many important University syndicates. In 1712 he preached the University Commemoration Sermon, the first in his published works; in 1713 the Assize Sermon before the University.

On his appointment as Master of Magdalene, he did not proceed to the degree of D.D. by mandamus, as was customary for Heads of Houses, but went through the usual exercises for both divinity degrees. His thesis for that of B.D. in 1714 was his celebrated treatise

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