faction, he said, that "the Church of England was a mild and reasonable establishment, a guide for the ignorant, and a guard against fanaticism and extravagance, without being hard upon any." He preached in the Rolls Chapel, London, to lawyers and a cultured people for eight years, afterwards in Houghton and Stanhope, until made bishop of Bristol in his forty-seventh year. He served nearly twelve years in that office and as bishop of Durham for two years, until his death.

About the time that Butler began his ministry in London George II came to the throne. A man of loose morals, many of the upper classes followed his example. Infidelity became rife. Religion was scouted. Butler described the situation: "It seems to be taken for granted by many that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is discovered to be fictitious. Accordingly, they treat it as if it were an agreed point among people of discernment, and as if nothing remained but to set it up as a subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals for having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world." The contagion spread to the American colonies. Jonathan Edwards said, "It was a very dark time, but little faith, and a great prevalence of infidelity."

Christianity, however, was not without support from noble minds. Addison had died in these years in serenity and peace, and as he had sung of the divine goodness in his life here, he promised himself to renew the glorious theme "in distant worlds after death." Butler joined in the honors that were paid to Sir Isaac Newton at his funeral in Westminster Abbey, and afterwards in the "Analogy" referred to his "late discoveries" in enlarging our views of the material universe, as illustrating the probability that a similar enlarged view of God's moral govern-. ment would show that there is nothing absurd or extravagant in conceiving of Providence as rewarding virtue and punishing vice in a future state. Berkeley, the spiritual philosopher, who fore

saw that America was "Time's noblest offspring," and Alexander Pope, who said "Thine own Messiah reigns," were contemporaries of Butler. Pope's famous "Essay on Man" was published a few years before the "Analogy." Both agree in the authority of reason and conscience, and that "virtue alone is happiness below." For himself the poet made it his prayer:

"What conscience dictates to be done,

Or warns me not to do,

This, teach me more than hell to shun.

That, more than heaven pursue."

The defense of morality and religion was the burden that lay upon Butler's mind. With high thinking he joined plain living. His habits were so abstemious and frugal that he was called an ascetic. He expended his income upon hospitals, charities, and missions. Elevated station did not alter the personal simplicity of his character. The honors he received were unsought and were worn without vanity or pride.

The peculiar traits of his mind and his favorite principles appear in his writings. A revered American commentator upon Butler, Albert Barnes, expressed his regret that a proper biography of him is wanting, that there was no Boswell by his side to note the workings of his mind. But in truth an author's own writings reveal him, and show his habits of thought. Butler's sermons and the "Analogy" show upon their face that he was a close and patient observer of nature, of Providence, and of men, that he cared only for truth, that he possessed uncommon fairness of mind in considering different opinions and in weighing objections to his own. Furthermore they show warm sympathy with all human interests, a love of liberty, hatred of oppression, fearlessness in rebuking corruption in high places, a generous and catholic spirit, not dogmatic, partisan, controversial, or disputatious. Addressed to the reason and the conscience, persons in whom these faculties are dormant, or feebly developed,

will not appreciate his writings. They demand close and considerate attention. They consist of thought welded and concatenated, without rhetoric or verbiage, and are of no interest to those who read for the purpose of keeping themselves from thinking, or to those who read without exercising their minds in review and reflection and a judgment of their own.

Butler's books are not large ones; he ordered his unpublished manuscripts to be burnt. Always speaking conscientiously and sincerely, be never falls into ambiguity or evasion. He taxes but does not bewilder the mind. He is abstruse, but not obscure. His meaning is deep, but clear. If his opinions are not new, if they are to be found in earlier authors, if, as has been said, Socrates might have written one of his sermons, they are not secondhand, but were elaborated in his own thoughts. He followed the best lights, the discerning minds, the sages and seers of old. The style is not always facile, but they who try to improve its involved sentences usually multiply words only, without adding lucidity or grace of expression.

Butler was the teacher of Christianity as a moral and spiritual and practical religion, after the manner of the Lord Jesus. He gave no consideration to questions of theological or ecclesiastical controversy, always the bane of the Christian church. He taught that virtue and piety, that is, the love of God and the love of one another and a proper regard for ourselves, are of inviolable obligation by the constitution of human nature, that we were made for goodness, that vice and wickedness are without excuse. He taught the supremacy of conscience, and said, "Had it strength as it has right, had it power as it has authority, it would absolutely govern the world." He taught that conciliation and harmony among our different passions and powers is the art of life, that we should set one thing over against another, balance this and temper that, yield here and give there, and come to goodness and the satisfaction of life, not in a one-sided activity, nor in a

partial course, but in universal obedience to conscience and the law of right. No clearer elucidation of the whole duty of man has appeared in the English language. With pathos and tenderness Butler says: "Our province is virtue and religion, life and manners; the science of improving the temper and making the heart better. This is the field assigned us to cultivate. How much it has been neglected is indeed astonishing. Virtue is demonstrably the happiness of man. It consists in good actions, proceeding from a good principle, temper, or heart. Overt acts are entirely in our power. What remains is that we learn to keep our hearts, to govern our passions. He who should find out one rule to assist us in this work would deserve better of mankind than all the improvers of other knowledge put together. The conclusion is that in lowliness of mind we set lightly by ourselves; that we form our temper to an implicit submission to the Divine Majesty; that we beget within ourselves absolute resignation to his providence in his dealings with men; that in the deepest humility we prostrate ourselves before Him, and join in that celestial song, "Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty! just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints!"

It were to be desired that there were more teaching of this character in the modern pulpit, that preachers preached constantly and vigorously of the moral duties of life, of temperance, of purity, of honesty, and the Golden Rule, and taught the people that virtue and goodness are primary, essential, and indispensable parts of religion.

HE analogies of nature and religion are the foundation of

parables. The material and the moral order of the universe are of one origin. It is impossible to conceive of that origin otherwise than as an infinite mind, a supreme wisdom. These invisible things are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even the eternal power and Godhead. So far as man is concerned, the laws that are over his body are similar to the laws that are over his thoughts and actions. What we ought or ought not to do with the body is similar to what we ought or ought not to do with the mind. The light of nature and the light of religion shine with the same radiant beams and point in the same way to duty and obedience as the life of God in man. Jesus said, "Consider the lilies." He showed their analogy to human life. A poet calls flowers the stars of earth, not wrapped in mystery like the stars in the sky, but, as we see their tender buds expand, "emblems of our own resurrection, emblems of the better land." The immanence of God, that He has not left himself without witness, that He is Lord of heaven and earth, and equally present in both, is the ever-recurring truth in Butler's writings.

If we believe in nature we must also believe in the God of of nature. If we believe in ourselves, that we have a body and a mind, both five senses and reason and conscience and thoughts and hopes and fears, we must also believe in One in whom we live and move and have our being. Atheism is an absurdity, a