Page:The optimism of Butler's 'Analogy'.djvu/41

Rh It would be good, if time allowed, in order to complete our record of Butler's optimism, to touch on his large and liberal use of the analogy of remedial medicine in order to interpret the work of man's Redemption. His fondness for this analogy is a sure indication of his temper: since Remedy is nothing, if it is not optimistic.

For, first, it starts by flinging behind it all the dark problem of 'why' and 'wherefore'. It leaves all this out of account. It will have nothing to do with the question, why this, or that, man is born blind; or why the Tower of Siloam fell on these, and not on those. It is enough for it that the pain is there, and can be healed. Nurses, doctors, leave all else aside; and are absorbed with the hope that, at any rate, they may relieve and cure.

And then, secondly, the idea of Remedy is optimistic, because it assumes that the wrong cannot be meant; cannot be natural; is intended to disappear. Its entire work is based on the conviction that the structure and intention of the organism are sound; that health is the normal condition; that, if only the inner life can be set free to perform its proper functions, the cure will have been effected. Medicine can do nothing, except on this assumption of the inherent and ineradicable rightness of things. Butler's profound confidence in the inherent goodness of things leads him to cling to this illuminating parallel throughout all his treatment of Christ's mediatorial work.

This sure and sturdy confidence in the rightness and reality of facts enables Butler to push off the board a tangle of bewildering perplexities. How can God have given a Revelation, for instance, and yet left it open to