Page:The optimism of Butler's 'Analogy'.djvu/15

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The Optimism of Butler's 'Analogy'
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the working of the Divine Purpose, wherever you encounter it. It retains always the same style; it displays always the same mind; it holds fast to its own identity, under every variety of condition and circumstance. Always, the like effects follow from the like causes. Always, the contrasted departments of activity reveal a strangely exact parallelism in their typical development.

So he delights in noting; and in this it is good to remember that we are on the traditional Gospel ground. We are travelling along the lines given us by Christ Himself. For we are but repeating, in a scientific form, the reality declared by all our Lord's Parables. These Parables, as we know, are not allegories. They simply interpret the law of life on the one plane by the law of life on another. It is not a matter of two laws that can be compared; but of one and the same law, acting in two directions, on different levels, through diverse material. Seen on the earthly plane, acting through physical material, the law of life manifests exactly the methods under which it works in the Kingdom of God, through spiritual instruments.

And, as with the Parables, so, also, it was with all the activities of our Lord. If He concentrated His personal pressure on the sick body of one who had faith to admit His will into action, it rose and walked. If He concentrated the same personal pressure on a receptive soul, its sins were forgiven. That which happened in the one case was the same as what happened in the other. That which accounted for the one would equally account for the other. 'For all things are double one against another.'

Such is the truth delivered to us through the Gospel Record. And Butler had won firm hold of this dominating thought; and so it is that, under his direction, we find ourselves moving along a Universe which is an organic whole from end to end; and, ever as we shift our perspective or change our level, we become aware, by his help, of one and the same underlying secret.