truth that the world is so organised that no one stands alone, and that vice and virtue respectively produce effects reaching far beyond the persons of those who practise them, he says something, which no doubt is greatly to the purpose, and which obviates most of the objections which are generally urged against the doctrine; but he does this by setting up a new doctrine, not by defending the one to which exception was taken, and which people in general, on both sides of the controversy, understood to be the true one.

What raised the objection was the theory of vicarious suffering. A sins, B suffers, and A escapes by reason of B's suffering. This, it is said, is unjust. Substantially Butler's answer is, You mistake the doctrine, which is that B suffers by reason of A's sin, and that B's suffering as a fact relieves A, and this is analogous to the order of nature. No doubt it is, but it is far from being analogous to the doctrine objected to.

Nature affords a thousand instances in which a man's faults injure his neighbour, and in which his efforts to serve his neighbour are painful to himself; but it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find one instance in which the course of nature affords a case of true expiation as objected to that is, a case in which the suffering of A, and not something accidentally connected with and caused by the suffering, relieves B from the painful consequences which would otherwise have followed his misconduct.

The debauched father transmits a scrofulous constitution to the innocent son, but he pays the penalties of his own debauchery in his own person equally whether he has a son or not. His son's sufferings put him in no better position than he would be in if his son did not suffer. They usually put him in a worse position. An anxious mother saves her child's life at the expense of ruining her own health by watching over it and nursing it; but it is the care, and not the pain, which benefits the child. If the mother's constitution were strong enough to support the same exertions without inconvenience, it would be all the better for the child.

Now, if Butler was willing to use the whole analogy of nature for the purpose of construing the doctrine of the Atonement, if he was willing to say, 'I do not ask you to believe any such doctrine except in so far as it is supported by the analogy of nature, and I admit the force of your objections to all such forms of stating it, and to all such interpretations of the texts of Scripture in which it is announced as are opposed to, or not confirmed by, the analogy of nature,' he spoke relevantly, though in a way likely to give great offence to many writers of high reputation for orthodoxy. If he meant to say that the analogy of nature confirms the ways of stating the doctrine in question which are generally objected to, he meant to say something which is not the fact.

If the whole of Butler's works, the Sermons and the Analogy together, are taken as a substantive

statement on his part, controversially and therefore imperfectly and inconveniently expressed, of his view of things human and divine, we think it must be conceded on the whole to be noble, elevated, and manly, though open to the objections which we have pointed out. The choice of a different form of expression and greater liveliness of temperament would very probably have obviated some of these objections, though they would have surrendered a good deal of popularity and some degree of fame.

There are some faults in Butler which are the

faults of his age rather than his own. For instance, his chapter on the particular evidence of Christianity, and the short general sketch which it contains of the history of the world, cannot now be considered as satisfactory. A careful study of this chapter (pt. ii. ch. vii.), and its complete silence upon a great number of the principal historical, scientific, and critical questions which at present occupy the most prominent place in theological controversy, would be of itself enough to meet the observation which is so commonly made in all such discussions, that they contain nothing new, and that all that is urged against common opinions has been answered a hundred times over.

It displays, moreover, in a strong form, another defect which Butler could hardly have avoided, and which it would not be easy to avoid even in the present day. This is the absence of clear views as to the nature of evidence, probability, and belief. The

argument about testimony in favour of miracles, the effect of enthusiasm in perverting accounts of facts, and the frequency with which miraculous stories are invented, ends with an admission that such considerations weaken the force of testimony; but, notwithstanding all this, human testimony remains still a natural ground of assent, and this assent a natural principle of action.'

Surely we can get a little farther back than this in the matter. It is not human testimony alone, but human testimony, when subjected to certain tests, referring to certain classes of facts, emitted by particular descriptions of persons, that is a natural or rather a reasonable ground of assent. Hundreds of millions of witnesses uniting in the assertion that the sun moves round the earth are liable to be outweighed by one philosopher.

It is not merely upon the question of the value of testimony that Butler's theory of evidence is unsatisfactory. The fact is, as he fairly avows, that he had no theory at all on the subject. After describing probability as the guide of life, he says: 'It is not my design to inquire further into the nature of the foundation and measure of probability, or whence it proceeds that likeness should beget that presumption, opinion, and full conviction which the human mind is formed to receive from it, and which it does necessarily produce in every one; or to guard against the errors to which reasoning from analogy is liable. This belongs to the subject of logic, and is a part of

that subject which has not yet been thoroughly considered.'

As the subject of the whole book is a discourse on the analogy between the constitution and course of nature, and natural and revealed religion, it must be admitted that the absence of any precautions against the abuses of analogical reasoning, and an avowed ignorance of the limits and value of the method itself, are considerable defects even if they were unavoidable.