TEE PHILOSOPHY OF BISHOP BUTLEfi. 



59 



lie knows nothing about history or science ; even though he has 

 never heard of a revelation from God ; even if he does not know 

 whether there is a God to be revealed ; vstill he is a law to him- 

 self ; a law which puts him under obhgation to act in a way that 

 is good for himself and for society at large. 



Whatever may be thought of the enduring value of Butler's 

 doctrines about analogy and probabihty, all serious persons 

 must feel the cogency of his doctrine about human nature. To 

 deny that doctrine is to lapse into internal anarchy, the parent 

 of all other anarchies. To adhere to that doctrine is to secure 

 to life personal and social the most enduring stabihty. In this 

 view Butler is a teacher of perpetual importance. 



I have thus passed in review some of the features of the 

 intellect, teaching, and influence of Bishop Butler. Imperfect 

 and cursory as that review has been, it may have sufficed to 

 stimulate curiosity in some, to refresh the memory of others, 

 and to impress all with a sense of the real greatness and excellence 

 of the man. 



It remains that I should estimate his relation to that great 

 movement in rehgion which is known as the Evangehcal Revival. 

 I do so because that revival took its rise during the episcopate of 

 Butler, and because it was directed, though by very different in- 

 strumentahties, towards the same ends which Butler had in view 

 throughout his hfe. I have often thought that a comparison 

 between the genius and work of Bishop Butler and the genius 

 and work of John Wesley would furnish a most striking and 

 suggestive lesson in Church history, and such a comparison I 

 venture now, very briefly, to indicate. A friend on whose 

 judgment and accuracy I can completely rely has told me that 

 somewhere in AVesley's Journal there is a note of an interview 

 between the great Methodist and the great Analogist, and that 

 John Wesley was not favourably impressed by the Bishop's 

 attitude towards Methodism and its distinctive tenets. I have 

 not been able to verify the quotation, and I can therefore only 

 mention the fact under reserve. 



AVe can readily understand how two men so different in 

 temperament, in situation and in work, might find it difficult to 

 appreciate one another, especially in a brief and perhaps acci- 

 dental meeting. Yet no thoughtful Christian can doubt that 

 the two men were, in fact, deeply united, however divided by 

 accidents of time. It is certain that Butler's reasoning would never 

 have aroused the nation from the torpor of those dismal years. 



