56 



KEV. BEEEIET J. E. MABSTOX, M.A.. OK 



which Butler was writing. He had in view the Deists. This 

 body of thinkers postulated a hving God and the imniortahtv 

 of the souL but they denied the special tenets of Christianity, 

 and the claim that the Bible was a revelation from God. Indeed, 

 they denied that any revelation at all was possible. They 

 rested their specific negations on the alleged difficulties that 

 followed if we allow that Christianity is a revelation. To that 

 contention Butler replied in effect, that the difficulties aridng 

 from the belief that Christianity is a revelation supported by 

 miracles, are no greater than the difficulties arising from pain, 

 misery, and the like, if we beheve in the moral government of 

 the world by God. The Deists beheved in God, despite pain 

 and misery in the world : they ought therefore not to decline 

 to believe in Cliristianity because of the alleged difficulties 

 caused by miracles. 



This celebrated work has exercised an immense influence 

 on many minds. I have heard that it was the book which longest 

 detained the elder Mill from his ffiial rupture with Chrisrian 

 faith. It may, therefore, not improbably ha ve had some indirect 

 effects in bringing the younorer Mill to embrace that faith from 

 which for so long a period of his Kfe he was unhappily estranged. 

 It was a favourite book with Mr. Gladstone — a fact of singular 

 interest and significance to the admirers of that extraordinary 

 and versatile statesman. It has passed throuo^h many editions, 

 and is still on the hst of theological books for most Bishops' 

 ordination reading, and has a place in the philosophical syllabus 

 of the Universities. 



I have heard persons declare that Butler is out of date, by 

 which they appear to mean that his argument in the Amlogy is 

 out of dat-e : for his treatise on human nature can never be out 

 of date till human nature itself is out of date. The objection 

 deserves refutation, not so much on account of its intrinsic force, 

 as for the credit of so eminent a thinker as Bishop Butler. 



Those who profess this objection appear to argue thus. 

 Butler's Analogy is directed against Deism ; Deism does not 

 exist now, therefore Butler's Analogy is out of date. 



This objection, as I conceive, rests on two fallacies. The 

 first is this, that Deism is dead. I doubt the truth of that pro- 

 position. Deism in the exact form in which it existed in Butler's 

 day may have ceased to exist, and its death was probably due 

 in no small degree to the severe damage which it sustained at 

 the hands of its great antagonist. But Deism in forms but 



