Arnold so often uses to denote the end and aim of his education, ‘moral
thoughtfulness.’ A certain considerateness is, as it were, diffused over
all his sentences. To most men conscience is an occasional, almost an
external voice; to Butler it was a daily companion, a close anxiety. In
a recent novel this disposition is skilfully delineated and delicately
contrasted with its opposite. We may quote the passage, though it is
encumbered with some detail. ‘But what was a real trouble to Charles,’
this is the person whose character is in question, ‘it got clearer
and clearer to his apprehension, that his intimacy with Sheffield
was not quite what it had been. They had indeed passed the vacation
together, and saw of each other more than ever; but their sympathies
with each other were not as strong, they had not the same likings and
dislikings; in short, they had not such congenial minds, as when they
were freshmen. There was not so much heart in their conversations, and
they more easily endured to miss each other’s company. They were both
reading for honours, reading hard; but Sheffield’s whole heart was in
his work, and religion was but a secondary matter with him. He had no
doubts, difficulties, anxieties, sorrows, which much affected him. It
was not the certainty of faith which made a sunshine in his soul, and
dried up the mists of human weakness; rather he had no perceptible
need within him of that vision of the unseen, which is the Christian’s
life. He was unblemished in his character, exemplary in his conduct,
but he was content with what the perishable world gave him. Charles’s
characteristic, perhaps more than anything else, was an habitual
sense of the Divine Presence—a sense which, of course, did not insure
uninterrupted conformity of thought and deed to itself, but still there
it was: the pillar of the cloud before him and guiding him. He felt
himself to be God’s creature, and responsible to Him; God’s possession,
not his own.’ Again the same character is brought home to us, in a part
of Walton’s delineation of Hooker, which, indeed, except perhaps for the
great quickness attributed to his intellect, might as a whole stand well
enough for a description of Butler: ‘His complexion (if we may guess by
him at the age of forty) was sanguine, with a mixture of choler; and
yet his motion was slow even in his youth, and so was his speech, never
expressing an earnestness in either of them, but an humble gravity suited
to the aged. And it is observed (so far as inquiry is able to look back
at this distance of time) that at his being a schoolboy he was an early
questionist, quietly inquisitive why this was granted and that denied;
this being mixed with a remarkable modesty and a sweet serene quietness
of nature.... It is observable that he was never known to be ... extreme
in any of his desires; never heard to repine or dispute with Providence,
but, by a quiet gentle submission and resignation of his will to the
wisdom of the Creator, bore the burden of the day with patience; ...
and by this, and a grave behaviour, which is a divine charm, he begot
an early reverence for his person even from those that, at other times
and in other companies, took a liberty to cast off that strictness of
behaviour and discourse that is required in a collegiate life.’ Something
of this is a result of disposition; yet on the whole it seems mainly the
effect of the ‘moral thoughtfulness’ which has been mentioned.
The very name of this quality reminds us of a difficulty. We cannot but
doubt, with the experience of this age, how far this can be made, or
ought to be made, the abiding sentiment of all men; how far such teaching
as that of Arnold’s tends to introduce a too stiff and anxious habit
of mind; how far the perpetual presence of a purpose will interfere
with the simple happiness of life, and how far also it can be forced
on the ‘lilies of the field;’ how far the care of anxious minds and
active thoughts is to be obtruded on the young, on the cheerful, on the
natural. Other questions, too, might be asked, if the inculcation of
this temper and habit as a daily, universal obligation, a perpetual and
general necessity for all characters, would not, or might not, impair
the sanguine energy and masculine activity which are necessary for
social action; whether it does not, in matter of fact, even now, ‘burn
and brand’ into excitable fancies a few stern truths more deeply than
a feeble reason will bear or the equilibrium of the world demands? But
whatever be the issue of such questions, on which there is perhaps now
no decided or established opinion, there can be no question of the charm
of such a character in those to whom it is natural. We may admire what
we cannot share; reverence what we do not imitate. As those who cannot
comprehend a strain of soothing music, look with interest on those who
can; as those who cannot feel the gentle glow of a quiet landscape,
yet stand aside and seem inferior to those who do; so in character the
buoyant and the bold, the harsh and the practical, may, at least for the
moment, moralise and look upwards, reverence and do homage, when they
come to a close experience of what is gentler and simpler, more anxious
and more thoughtful, kinder and more religious, than themselves. At any
rate, so thought the contemporaries of Butler. They did, as a Frenchman
would say, ‘their possible’ for a good man; at least they made him a
bishop.
We gather, however, that their kindness was scarcely successful. Butler
was very prosperous; but it does not appear that he was at all happy.
In the midst of the princely establishment of his rich episcopate, so
anxious a nature found time to be rather melancholy. The responsibilities
of so cumbrous a position were but little pleasant to an apprehensive
disposition; wealth and honour were finery and foolishness to a quiet
and shrinking man. A small room in a tranquil college, daily walks and
thoughtful talk, a little income and a few friends—these, and these
only, suit a still and meditative mind. Such, however, were denied him.
He is said to have taken much pleasure in discussion and interchange
of mind; but his life was passed in courts and country parsonages—the
one too noisy, the last too still, to think or reason. Nor were there
many people, whom we know of, that were congenial to him in that age.
Scarcely any name of a friend of his has come down to us; one, indeed,
there is—that of Bishop Secker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, the
author of a treatise on the Catechism, a serious work still used for the
purposes of tuition, with which, indeed, the name of the writer is now
with some so associated by early habit that it is difficult to fancy even
Butler on equal social terms with him; the notion of talking to him seems
like being asked to converse familiarly with the Catechism itself.
A not unremarkable circumstance, however, shows that Secker, though he
was educated at the same academy, could not have been on any terms of
extreme intimacy with Butler. Some time after Butler’s death, there
was a rumour that he had died a Papist. There is no doubt, in fact,
that Butler’s opinions, being formed on principles of evidence and
reasoning too strict to be extremely popular, were not likely to be
agreeable to those about him, and when an Englishman sees anything in
religion which he does not like, he always, _primâ facie_, imputes it
to the Pope. Besides this general and strong argument, there were two
particular ones—first, that he had erected a cross in the episcopal
chapel at Bristol; secondly, that he was of a melancholy and somewhat of
an ascetic turn; reasons which, though doubtless of force in their day
and generation, are not likely to be of avail with us, who know so much
more about crosses and fasting than they did then. We might have expected
that Secker, as Butler’s old friend and schoolfellow, would have been
able from his personal knowledge to throw a good deal of light upon the
question. He was only, however, able to advance ‘_presumptive_ arguments
that Bishop Butler did not die a Papist,’ which were no doubt valuable;
but yet give no great idea of the intimacy between the writer and the
person about whom he was writing. Such arguments may easily be found, and
have always convinced every one that there was no truth in this rumour.
The only reason for which we wish that Secker had been able to say he had
heard Butler talk on the subject, and that he was no Papist, is, that
we should then have known to whom Butler talked. There is nothing in
Butler’s writings at all showing any leaning to the peculiar tenets of
Roman Catholicism, and there is much which shows a strong opinion against
them; and it was far too extreme a doctrine to be at all agreeable to his
very English, moderate, and shrinking mind.
Calumny, however, is commonly instructive. It must be granted, that
though there is no trace or tendency in the writings of Butler to the
peculiar superstitions advocated by the Pope, there is a strong and
prevailing tinge of what may be called the principle of superstition,
that is, the religion of fear. Some may doubt, especially at the present
day, whether there be any true religion of that kind at all; yet it
seems, as Butler would have said, but a proper feeling ‘in such creatures
as we are, in such a world as the present one.’
We may reflect that there are two kinds of religion, which may for some
purposes be called, the one the natural, and the other the supernatural.
The former seems to take its rise from mere contemplation of external
beauty. We look on the world, and we see that it is good. The Greek of
former time, reclining softly in his own bright land, ‘looked up to the
whole sky and declared that the One was God.’ From the blue air and the
fair cloud, the green earth and the white sea, a presence streams upon
us. It modulates—
‘With murmurs of the air,
And motions of the forests and the sea,
And voice of living beings and woven hymns
Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.’
But the true home of the idea is in the starlight sky; we instinctively
mingle it with an admiration of infinite space, a cold purity is around
us, and the clear and steel-like words of the poet justly reflect the
doctrine of the clear and steel-like heaven:—
The magic car moved on.
Earth’s distant orb appeared
The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven;
Whilst round the chariot’s way
Innumerable systems rolled,
And countless spheres diffused
An ever-varying glory.
It was a sight of wonder: some
Were hornèd like the crescent moon;
Some shed a mild and silver beam
Like Hesperus across the western sea;
Some dashed athwart with trains of flame,
Like worlds to death and ruin driven;
Some shone like suns, and, as the chariot passed,
Eclipsed all other light.
Spirit of nature! here!
In this interminable wilderness
Of worlds, at whose immensity
Even soaring fancy staggers,
Here is thy fitting temple.
Yet not the lightest leaf
That quivers to the passing breeze
Is less instinct with thee:
Yet not——’
And so on; and so it will be as long as there are poets to look upon
the sky, or a sky to be looked at by them. The truth is, that there is
a certain expressiveness (if we may so speak) in nature which persons
of imagination naturally feel more acutely than others, and which
cannot easily be in its full degree brought home to others, except in
quotations of their writings, from which ‘smiling of the world,’ as it
has been called, more than from any other outward appearance, we infer
the existence of an immaterial and animating spirit. This expressiveness
perhaps produces its effect on the mind, by a principle analogous to,
perhaps in a severe analysis identical with, the interpretative faculty
by which we acquire a cognizance of the existence of other human minds.
There appear to be certain natural signs and tokens from which we (like
other animals) instinctively infer, or rather—for there is no conscious
reasoning—in which we silently see life and thought and mind. In this way
we interpret the detail of natural expression—the smile, the glance of
the eye, the common interjections, the universal tokens of our simplest
emotions; those signs and marks and expressions which we make in our
earliest infancy without teaching and by instinct, we appear also, by
instinct and without learning, to read off, interpret, and comprehend,
when used to us by others. The comprehension of this language is perhaps
as much an instinct as the using of it. There is no occasion, however,
for acute metaphysics; whatever was the origin of this faculty, such a
power of interpreting material phenomena, such a faculty of seeing life,
undoubtedly there is;—however we come by the power, we can distinguish
living from dead creatures. At any rate, if, like other living creatures,
we take a natural cognizance of the simple expressions of life and mind,
and without tuition comprehend the language and meaning of natural
signs, in like manner, though less clearly and forcibly, because our
attention is so much less forcibly directed to them, do we interpret the
significance of the beauty and the sublimity of outward nature. ‘In the
mountains’ do we ‘feel our faith.’ We seem to know there is something
behind. There is a perception of something—
‘Far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man—
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.’
The Greek mythology is one entire and unmixed embodiment of this religion
of nature, as we may term it, this poetic interpretation of the spirit
that speaks to us in the signs and symbols within us. Nor can any
sensitive or imaginative mind scrutinise itself without being distinctly
conscious of its teaching.
Now of the poetic religion there is nothing in Butler. No one could tell
from his writings that the universe was beautiful. If the world were a
Durham mine or an exact square, if no part of it were more expressive
than a gravel-pit or a chalk-quarry, the teaching of Butler would be as
true as it is now. A young poet, not a very wise one, once said, ‘he did
not like the Bible, there was nothing about flowers in it.’ He might
have said so of Butler with great truth; a most ugly and stupid world
one would fancy _his_ books were written in. But in return and by way of
compensation for this, there is a religion of another sort, a religion
the source of which is within the mind, as the other’s was found to be
in the world without; the religion to which we just now alluded as the
religion (by an odd yet expressive way of speaking) of _superstition_.
The source of this, as most persons are practically aware, is in the
conscience. The moral principle (whatever may be said to the contrary by
complacent thinkers) is really and to most men a principle of fear. The
delights of a good conscience may be reserved for better things, but few
men who know themselves will say that they have often felt them by vivid
and actual experience. A sensation of shame, of reproach, of remorse, of
sin (to use the word we instinctively shrink from because it expresses
the meaning), is what the moral principle really and practically thrusts
on most men. Conscience is the condemnation of ourselves. We expect
a penalty. As the Greek proverb teaches, ‘where there is shame there
is fear;’ where there is the deep and intimate anxiety of guilt—the
feeling which has driven murderers, and other than murderers, forth to
wastes, and rocks, and stones, and tempests—we see, as it were, in a
single complex and indivisible sensation, the pain and sense of guilt,
and the painful anticipation of its punishment. How to be free from
this, is the question. How to get loose from this—how to be rid of the
secret tie which binds the strong man and cramps his pride, and makes
him angry at the beauty of the universe—which will not let him go forth
like a great animal, like the king of the forest, in the glory of his
might, but restrains him with an inner fear and a secret foreboding,
that if he do but exalt himself he shall be abased; if he do but set
forth his own dignity, he will offend One who will deprive him of it.
This, as has often been pointed out, is the source of the bloody rites
of heathendom. You are going to battle, you are going out in the bright
sun with dancing plumes and glittering spear; your shield shines, and
your feathers wave, and your limbs are glad with the consciousness of
strength, and your mind is warm with glory and renown,—with coming glory
and unobtained renown,—for who are you, to hope for these—who are you,
to go forth proudly against the pride of the sun, with your secret sin
and your haunting shame, and your real fear? First lie down, and abase
yourself—strike your back with hard stripes—cut deep with a sharp knife
as if you would eradicate the consciousness—cry aloud—put ashes on your
head—bruise yourself with stones, then perhaps God may pardon you; or,
better still—so runs the incoherent feeling—give Him something—your ox,
your ass, whole hecatombs, if you are rich enough; anything, it is but a
chance—you do not know what will please Him—at any rate, what you love
best yourself—that is, most likely, your first-born son; then, after
such gifts and such humiliation, He may be appeased, He may let you
off—He may without anger let you go forth Achilles-like in the glory of
your shield—He may _not_ send you home as He would else, the victim of
rout and treachery, with broken arms and foul limbs, in weariness and
humiliation.
Of course, it is not this kind of fanaticism that we impute to a prelate
of the English Church: human sacrifices are not respectable, and Achilles
was not rector of Stanhope. But though the costume and circumstances of
life change, the human heart does not; its feelings remain. The same
anxiety, the same consciousness of personal sin, which led in barbarous
times to what has been described, show themselves in civilised life as
well. In this quieter period, their great manifestation is scrupulosity,
a care about the ritual of life, an attention to meats and drinks, and
cups and washings. Being so unworthy as we are, feeling what we feel,
abased as we are abased, who shall say that these are beneath us? In
ardent imaginative youth they may seem so, but let a few years come, let
them dull the will or contract the heart, or stain the mind—then the
consequent feeling will be, as all experience shows, not that a ritual
is too mean, too low, too degrading for human nature, but that it is a
mercy we have to do no more—that we have only to wash in Jordan—that we
have not even to go out into the unknown distance to seek for Abana and
Pharpar, rivers of Damascus. We have no right to judge, we cannot decide,
we must do what is laid down for us,—we fail daily even in this,—we must
never cease for a moment in our scrupulous anxiety to omit by no tittle
and to exceed by no iota. An accomplished divine of the present day has
written a dissertation to show that this sort of piety is that expressed
by the Greek word εὐλάβεια, ‘piety contemplated on the side on which it
is a fear of God,’ and which he derives from εὐλαμβάνεσθαι, ‘the image
underlying the word being that of the careful taking hold, the cautious
handling of some precious yet delicate vessel, which with ruder or less
anxious handling might be broken,’ and he subsequently adds, ‘The only
three places in the New Testament in which εὐλαβὴς occurs are these:—Luke
ii. 25, Acts ii. 5, viii. 2. We have uniformly rendered it “devout,”
nor could this translation be bettered. It will be observed that on all
these occasions it is used to express Jewish, and, as one might say,
Old Testament piety. On the first it is applied to Simeon (δίκαιος καὶ
εὐλαβὴς); on the second to those Jews who came from distant parts to keep
the commanded feasts at Jerusalem; and on the third there can scarcely
be a doubt that the ἄνδρες εὐλαβεῖς who carry Stephen to his burial are
not, as might at first sight appear, _Christian_ brethren, but devout
Jews, who showed by this courageous act of theirs, as by their great
lamentation over the slaughtered saints, that they abhorred this deed of
blood, that they separated themselves in spirit from it, and thus, if it
might be, from all the judgments which it would bring down on the city
of those murderers. Whether it was also further given them to believe on
the Crucified who had such witnesses as Stephen, we are not told; we may
well presume that it was.... If we keep in mind that in that mingled fear
and love which together constitute the piety of man toward God, the Old
Testament placed its emphasis on the fear, the New places it on the love
(though there was love in the fear of God’s saints then, as there must
be fear in their love now), it will at once be evident how fitly εὐλαβὴς
was chosen to set forth their piety under the old covenant, who, like
Zacharias and Elizabeth, were righteous before God, walking in all the
commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless, and leaving nothing
willingly undone which pertained to the circle of their prescribed
duties. For this sense of accurately and scrupulously performing that
which is prescribed with the consciousness of the danger of slipping
into a negligent performance of God’s service, and of the need therefore
of anxiously watching against the adding to or diminishing from, or in
any other way altering, that which is commanded, lies ever in the words
εὐλαβὴς, εὐλάβεια, when used in their religious signification. Plutarch,
in more than one instructive passage, exalts the εὐλάβεια of the old
Romans in divine matters, as contrasted with the comparative carelessness
of the Greeks. Thus, in his “Coriolanus,” after other instances in
proof, he goes on to say, “Of late times also they did renew and begin
a sacrifice thirty times one after another, because they thought still
there fell out one fault or another in the same; so holy and devout were
they to the gods” (τοιαύτη μὲν εὐλάβεια πρὸς τὸ Θεῖον Ῥωμαῖων). Elsewhere
he portrays Æmilius Paulus as eminent for his εὐλάβεια. The passage is
long, and I will only quote a portion of it, availing myself again of
old Sir Thomas North’s translation, which, though somewhat loose, is in
essentials correct:—“When he did anything belonging to his office of
priesthood, he did it with great experience, judgment, and diligence;
leaving all other thoughts, and without omitting any ancient ceremony or
adding any new; contending oftentimes with his companions in things which
seemed light and of small moment; declaring to them that, though we do
presume the gods are easy to be pacified and that they readily pardon
all faults and scapes committed by negligence, yet if it were no more
but for respect of the Commonwealth’s sake, they should not slightly or
carelessly dissemble or pass over faults committed in those matters.”’[3]
This is the view suggested by what Butler has happily called the
‘presages of conscience’ by the ‘natural fear and apprehension’ of
punishment, ‘which restrains from crimes and is a declaration of nature
against them.’ The great difficulty of religious philosophy is, to
explain how we know that these two Beings are the same—from what course
and principle of reasoning it is that we acquire our knowledge that the
_curiosus Deus_, the watchful Deity, who is ever in our secret hearts,
who seeks us out in the fairest scenes, who is apt to terrify our
hearts, whose very eyes seem to shine through nature, is the same Being
that animates the universe with its beauty and its light, smoothes the
heaviness from our brow and the weight from our hearts, pervades the
floating cloud and buoyant air,—
‘And from the breezes, whether low or loud,
And from the rain of every passing cloud,
And from the singing of the summer birds,
And from all sounds, all silence,’