his path, he proves his fitness to receive more and more of its growing light. Step by step, he may rise; and still he learns the better use of his faculties and the finer qualities of his craft. If only he will learn, and not dictate; if only he will open out to the instruction of experience, and not strive to impose his own presumption on the facts as they arrive: then, the possibilities before him are inexhaustible. Through time, and through eternity, he will live according to the one law, in obedience to a single process, moving on from glory to glory, in the face of Jesus Christ. The greatness of the glory revealed will, no doubt, as it makes its immensity felt, demand of him an ever-growing recognition of the little that he can cover under his own experience, and of the limitless mystery that lies beyond, elusive and 'imperfectly comprehended'. This necessity will ever demand that his advance in knowledge should carry with it an ethical discipline, shaping a moral character which can endure the limitations incident to such exaltation. The temper that is given in and through Christ can alone suffice to the attainment of this high knowledge. Reason and Religion are, therefore, at one; moral and intellectual growth coincide.
This is Butler's Gospel. This is the optimism to which he attained through much tribulation. It is a Gospel that would have commended itself, I am sure, to him whose dear memory is honoured, and preserved to Oxford, by the title of this Lecture. Is there any intellectual Gospel that will more aptly meet our needs, under the strain of a day like our own, darkened by much depression, loaded with heavy burdens, beset with unanticipated bewilderment, and yet conscious of a great hope labouring towards its fulfilment—of a light that can be felt behind the clouds?
Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press by Horace Hart, M.A.
