Page:The optimism of Butler's 'Analogy'.djvu/13

Rh And Butler seemed to his fellows to belong to this company: to hold their faith; to be transfigured by their vision. In all that he wrote, he was looking at Nature with their eyes, and worked in the magnificence of their impulse. He raised his whole fabric of defence on their basic thought of a comprehensive and delicate wisdom which 'setteth all things in balance', 'double one against another.' He was fascinated by their portrayal of a world that was ordered throughout, under the secure certainties of unfailing law; in which everything was measured, placed, ordained, established, by virtue of infinite relationships that bound it up into a Whole, which was continuous, rational, coherent. The closer we look into this literature of the Wisdom, the nearer we seem to draw to the inspiration that speaks to us in phrase after phrase of the Analogy, and to the temper, the mood, the judgement, the insight, which create its characteristic atmosphere. As we ponder over the old refrains, we seem to catch Bishop Butler at work; we feel ourselves to be inside the process of thought by which he arrived at his special and dominant formulae. We can see how he absorbed their far-reaching justification of a world in which 'All the works of the Lord were good'—'good,' that is, in their place; at their season; at the last: good, if we could only understand their purpose. 'None can say, What is this? wherefore is that? for at time convenient they shall all be sought out. The Lord seeth from everlasting to everlasting; and there is nothing wonderful before Him.' So the Son of Sirach wrote of old. And can we not hear Butler repeating it after him? Did he not take on his own lips the strong resolution of this Son of Sirach: 'Therefore from the beginning I was resolved, and thought upon these things, and have left them in writing. All the works of the Lord are good: and He will give every needful thing in due season. So that a man cannot say, This is worse than that: for in time they shall all be well approved' (Ecclus. xxxix). 'All these things live and remain for ever for all uses, and they are all