in compulsory trance to their reply, I heard them roll it up through their cloudy worlds of snow, sifting out the harsh qualities that were tearing in it as demon screams of sin, holding on upon it as if it were a hymn they were fining to the ear of the great Creator, and sending it round and round in long reduplications of sweetness, minute after minute; till finally receding and rising, it trembled, as it were, among the quick gratulations of angels, and fell into the silence of the pure empyrean. I had never any conception before of what is meant by quality in sound. There was more power upon the soul in one of those simple notes than I ever expect to feel from anything called music below, or ever can feel till I hear them again in the choirs of the angelic world. I had never such a sense of purity, or of what a simple sound may tell of purity by its own pure quality; and I could not but say, O my God, teach me this! Be this in me forever! And I can truly affirm that the experience of that hour has consciously made me better able to think of God ever since - better able to worship. All other sounds are gone; the sounds of yesterday, heard in the silence of enchanted multitudes, are gone; but that is with me still, and I hope will never cease to ring in my spirit till I go down to the slumber of silence itself.

JOSEPH BUTLER.

JOSEPH BUTLER, an English prelate and theologian, born at Wantage, Berkshire, May 18, 1692; died at Bath, June 16, 1752. His father, wishing him to enter the Presbyterian ministry, placed him in a Dissenting academy; but in 1714, having resolved to join the Church of England, he entered Oriel College, Oxford, and soon afterward took holy orders. In 1718 Butler was appointed preacher at the Chapel of the Rolls, where he delivered his remarkable sermon "On Human Nature," published with others in 1726. After eight years of retirement at the rectory of Stanhope, he became chaplain to Lord Chancellor Talbot. In 1736 he published his great work, "The Analogy of Religion Natural and Revealed to the Course and Constitution of Nature." On the appearance of the "Analogy," Butler was appointed chaplain to Queen Caroline, wife of George II., and after her death became successively bishop of Bristol, Dean of St. Paul's, Clerk of the Closet to the King, and in 1750, Bishop of Durham. He did not long survive his last promotion. He was buried in the cathedral of Bristol. In obedience to his orders all of his manuscripts were destroyed.

THE GOVERNMENT OF GOD A SCHEME INCOMPREHENSIBLE.

(From "The Analogy of Religion.")

UPON a supposition that God exercises a moral government over the world, the analogy of his natural government suggests and makes it credible that his moral government must be a scheme quite beyond our comprehension; and this affords a general answer to all objections against the justice and goodness of it. It is most obvious, analogy renders it highly credible, that, upon supposition of a moral government, it must be a scheme for the world, and the whole natural government of it, appears to be so: to be a scheme, system, or constitution whose parts correspond to each other, and to a whole, as really as any work of art, or as any particular model of a civil constitution and government. In this great scheme of the natural world, individuals have various peculiar relations to other individuals

of their own species. And whole species are, we find, variously related to other species upon this earth. Nor do we know how much further these kinds of relations may extend. And, as there is not any action or natural event, which we are acquainted with, so single and unconnected as not to have a respect to some other actions and events, so, possibly, each of them, when it has not an immediate, may yet have a remote, natural relation to other actions and events, much beyond the compass of this present world. There seems, indeed, nothing from whence we can so much as make a conjecture, whether all creatures, actions, and events, throughout the whole of nature, have relations to each other. But, as it is obvious that all events have future unknown consequences, so if we trace any, as far as we can go, into what is connected with it, we shall find that if such event were not connected with somewhat further in nature unknown to us, somewhat both past and present, such event could not possibly have been at all. Nor can we give the whole account of any one thing whatever; of all its causes, ends, and necessary adjuncts; those adjuncts, I mean, without which it could not have been. By this most astonishing connection, these reciprocal correspondences and mutual relations, everything which we see in the course of nature is actually brought about. And things seemingly the most insignificant imaginable are perpetually observed to be necessary conditions to other things of the greatest importance; so that any one thing whatever may, for aught we know to the contrary, be a necessary condition to any other.

The natural world, then, and the natural government of it, being such an incomprehensible scheme, so incomprehensible that a man must, really, in the literal sense, know nothing at all who is not sensible of his ignorance in it; this immediately suggests and strongly shows the credibility, that the moral world and government of it may be so, too. Indeed, the natural and moral constitution and government of the world are so connected as to make up together but one scheme; and it is highly probable that the first is formed and carried on merely in subserviency to the latter; as the vegetable world is for the animal, and organized bodies for minds. But the thing intended here is, without inquiring how far the administration of the natural world is subordinate to that of the moral, only to observe the credibility, that that one should be analogous or similar to the other: that therefore every act of divine justice and goodness

may be supposed to look much beyond itself and its immediate object; may have some reference to other parts of God's moral administration and to a general moral plan; and that every circumstance of this his moral government may be adjusted beforehand with a view to the whole of it. . . . And supposing this to be the case, it is most evident that we are not competent judges of this scheme, from the small parts of it which come within our view in the present life: and therefore no objections against any of these parts can be insisted upon by reasonable men.

An Author

Now, from this general observation, obvious to every one, that God has given us to understand he has appointed satisfaction and delight to be the consequence of our acting in one manner, and pain and uneasiness of our acting in another, and of our not acting at all; and that we find the consequences, which we were beforehand informed of, uniformly to follow; we may learn, that we are at present actually under his government, in the strictest and most proper sense; in such a sense, as that he rewards and punishes us for our actions. of Nature being supposed, it is not so much a deduction of reason as a matter of experience, that we are thus under his government: under his government, in the same sense as we are under the government of civil magistrates. Because the annexing pleasure to some actions, and pain to others, in our power to do or forbear, and giving notice of this appointment beforehand to those whom it concerns, is the proper formal notion of government. Whether the pleasure or pain which thus follows upon our behavior, be owing to the Author of Nature's acting upon us every moment which we feel it, or to his having at once contrived and executed his own part in the plan of the world, makes no alteration as to the matter before For, if civil magistrates could make the sanction of their laws take place, without interposing at all, after they had passed them; without a trial, and the formalities of an execution: if they were able to make their laws execute themselves, or every offender to execute them upon himself, we should be just in the same sense under their government then, as we are now; but in a much higher degree, and more perfect manner. Vain is the ridicule with which one foresees some persons will divert themselves, upon finding lesser pains considered as instances of divine punishment. There is no possibility of answering or evading

us.

the general thing here intended, without denying all final causes. For, final causes being admitted, the pleasures and pains now mentioned must be admitted too, as instances of them. And if they are, if God annexes delight to some actions; and uneasiness to others, with an apparent design to induce us to act so and so, then he not only dispenses happiness and misery, but also rewards and punishes actions. If, for example, the pain which we feel upon doing what tends to the destruction of our bodies, suppose upon too near approaches to fire, or upon wounding ourselves, be appointed by the Author of Nature to prevent our doing what thus tends to our destruction; this is altogether as much an instance of his punishing our actions, and consequently of our being under his government, as declaring, by a voice from heaven, that if we acted, so he would inflict such pain upon us, and inflicting it whether it be greater or less.

Thus we find, that the true motion or conception of the Author of Nature, is that of a master or governor, prior to the consideration of his moral attributes. The fact of our case, which we find by experience, is, that he actually exercises dominion or government over us at present, by rewarding and punishing us for our actions, in as strict and proper a sense of these words, and even in the same sense as children, servants, subjects, are rewarded and punished by those who govern them.

And thus the whole analogy of Nature, the whole present course of things, most fully shows, that there is nothing incredible in the general doctrine of religion, that God will reward and punish men for their actions hereafter; nothing incredible, I mean, arising out of the notion of rewarding and punishing, for the whole course of nature is a present instance of his exercising that government over us, which implies in it rewarding and punishing.

VOL. IV. - 26