happen, aggravate such a loss, as one cannot but infinitely regret the good which such a mind in such a station must have done. TALBOT, CATHERINE, 1752, Letter, June 13.

His life in presence of his God consumed,

Like the bright lamps before the holy shrine.

His aspect pleasing, mind with learning fraught,

His eloquence was like a chain of gold, That the wild passions of mankind controlled.

-ANON, 1754, London Magazine, May.

He was of a most reverend aspect; his face thin and pale; but there was a divine placidness in his countenance which inspired veneration, and expressed the most benevolent mind. His white hair, hung gracefully on his shoulders, and his whole figure was patriarchal.-HUTCHINSON, WILLIAM, 1785-94, History and Antiquities of the County Palatinate of Durham, vol. I, p. 578.

During the short time that Butler held the see of Durham he conciliated all hearts. In advanced years he retained the same genuine modesty and natural sweetness of disposition which had distinguished him in youth and in retirement. During the performance of the sacred office a divine animation seemed to pervade his whole manner, and lighted up his pale, wan countenance, already marked with the progress of disease, like a torch glimmering in its socket, yet bright and useful to the last.-SURTEES, ROBERT, 181640, History of Durham.

SACRED

TO THE MEMORY OF JOSEPH BUTLER, D. C. L.,
TWELVE YEARS BISHOP OF THIS DIOCESE
AND AFTERWARDS BISHOP OF DURHAM,
WHOSE MORTAL PART IS DEPOSITED
IN THE CHOIR OF THIS CATHEDRAL.
OTHERS HAD ESTABLISHED
THE HISTORICAL AND PROPHETICAL
GROUNDS

OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, AND
THAT SURE TESTIMONY OF ITS TRUTH
WHICH IS FOUND IN ITS PERFECT
ADAPTATION

TO THE HEART OF MAN.

IT WAS RESERVED FOR HIM TO DEVELOP ITS ANALOGY TO THE CONSTITUTION AND COURSE OF NATURE,

AND LAYING HIS STRONG FOUNDATIONS

IN THE DEPTH OF THAT GREAT ARGUMENT,

THERE TO CONSTRUCT

ANOTHER AND IRREFRAGABLE PROOF:
THUS RENDERING PHILOSOPHY
SUBSERVIENT TO FAITH:
AND FINDING IN OUTWARD AND VISIBLE
THINGS

THE TYPE AND EVIDENCE

OF THOSE WITHIN THE VEIL.

BORN A. D., 1692, DIED 1752. -SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1834, Inscription on Monument, Bristol Cathedral.

One of these [nephews], John, a wealthy and eccentric bachelor, who had more taste for practical mechanics than for metaphysical research, appeared to attach but little value to his uncle's production. Having occasion to borrow an iron vice of his neighbour Mr. Thompson, a shrewd and sensible Scotch solicitor, who spoke in high terms of the “Analogy," and expressed great respect for the author, John Butler proposed that as Mr. Thompson liked the "Analogy," and he himself liked the iron vice, they should make an exchange. To this Mr. Thomp-· son cheerfully assented, and John Butler left him highly pleased, and thinking that he had turned his uncle's present to an excellent account.-BARTLETT, THOMAS, 1839, Life of Bishop Butler, p. 95.

Of Butler's personal habits nothing in the way of detail has descended to us. He was never married, and there is no evidence of his ever having spoken to any lady save Queen Caroline. We hear, however, for certain that he was commonly present at her Majesty's philosophical parties, at which all questions, religious and moral, speculative and practical, were discussed with a freedom that would astonish the present generation.-BAGEHOT, WALTER, 1854, Bishop Butler, Works, ed. Morgan, vol. II, p. 119.

The presence of one of the crowned kings of the realm of Thought haunts one among the hills, along the river bank, all over the pleasant Parish. Joseph Butler is the Rector of men's memory, when Stanhope is visited or named. The glory of his fifteen years' occupancy there never can pale from it.-GROSART, ALEXANDER B., 1875, A Visit to Stanhope, with Memorials of Bishop Butler, Leisure Hour, vol. 24, p. 250.

Underneath the meagre facts of his life, eked out by the few letters left by him or anecdotes told about him, there

can be traced the outlines of a great but somewhat severe spirit. He was an earnest and deep thinking Christian, melancholy by temperament, and grieved by what seemed to him the hopelessly irreligious condition of his age. His intellect was profound and comprehensive, thoroughly qualified to grapple with the deepest problems of metaphysics, but by natural preference occupying itself mainly with the practical and moral. Man's conduct in life, not his theory of the universe, was what interested him.-ADAMSON, ROBERT, 1875, Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, vol. 4.

His liberality to public and private charitable objects was of almost too impulsive a character (reminding us of the tradition of his being unable to refuse a beggar), if a well-known story which was current on the subject be not rather apocryphal. A gentleman is said to have called upon him to ask his aid in some benevolent scheme which he was setting on foot. The bishop approved, and having summoned his steward, asked him how much money he had in the house? "Five hundred pounds, my lord." "Five hundred pounds!" said Butler; "what a shame for a bishop to have so much! Give it away at once-give it to this gentleman, who has a good use for it." In the exercise of the large patronage attached to his new diocese he was strictly conscientious, and took all pains to acquaint himself with the characters and deserts of his clergy. Bishop Butler was a man who lived much to himself, with few intimacies, and apparently by no means a large circle of acquaintance.

But there must have been much in his

character that was very lovable, for the

two or three who had become his friends in early life seem to have been devoted to him. To Edward Talbot's warm interest he owed, instrumentally, his success in life; and Secker watched over him, from the old schooldays to his death at Bath, with more than the tenderness of a brother. His chaplain, Dr. Forster, was much attached to him.-COLLINS, W. LUCAS, 1881, Butler (Philosophical Classics), pp. 26, 27.

SERMONS

1729

It must be acknowledged that some of the following Discourses are very abstruse

and difficult; or, if you please, obscure; but I must take leave to add, that those alone are judges, whether or no and how far this is a fault, who are judges, whether or no and how far it might have been avoided; those only, who will be at the trouble to understand what is here said, and to see how far the things here insisted upon, and not other things, might have been put in a plainer manner; which yet I am very far from asserting that they could not. -BUTLER, JOSEPH, 1729, Sermons, Preface; Works, ed. Gladstone, vol. II, p. 4.

His great work on the "Analogy of Religion to the Course of Nature, "though only a commentary on the singularly original and pregnant passage of Origen, which is so honestly prefixed to it as a motto, is notwithstanding, the most original and profound work extant in any language, on the Philosophy of Religion. It is entirely beyond our present scope. His ethical discussions are contained in those deep and sometimes dark dissertations which he preached at the Chapel of the Rolls, and afterwards published under the name of "Sermons, while he was yet fresh from the schools, and full of that courage with which youth often delights to exercise its strength in abstract reasoning, and to push its faculties into the recesses of abstruse speculation. . . . In these sermons, he has taught truths more capable of being exactly distinguished from the doctrines of his predecessors, more satisfactorily established by him, more comprehensively applied to particulars, more rationally connected

with each other, and therefore more worthy of the name of discovery, than any with which we are acquainted; if we ought not, with some hesitation, to except the first steps of the Grecian philosophers towards a theory of morals.

There are few circumstances more remarkable than the small number of Butler's followers in Ethics; and it is perhaps still more observable, that his opinions were not so much rejected, as overlooked. It is an instance of the importance of style. No thinker so great was ever so bad a writer. Indeed, the ingenious apologies which have been lately attempted for this defect, amount to no more than that his power of thought was too much for his skill in language. How general must the reception have been of truths so certain