The Classic Preachers of the English Church: Lectures Delivered at St. James ...

mony of "the cleansing blood" winged its way through his soul with all the power of a spiritual cordial. And as to the preliminary sense of awe, in the prospect of appearing before God, this was a condition of the comfort reaching him, and doubtless in such a character as his was unusually deep. The wise man after the flesh, if truly instructed in the knowledge of God and of himself, has no other hope than that which supports the rudest peasant's soul; nay, in proportion to the amount of that knowledge is the depth of his humiliation; and "he fears as he enters into the cloud," even though it be the bright cloud of God's presence and smile. And so Bishop Butler entered into rest in the comfortable faith of Christ's atonement:

"Just as I am, without one plea,

Save that Thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidd'st me trust in Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come."

A piece of information given us by the poet Coleridge in his Table-talk' summarizes in three or four lines the moral character of the man. Butler's was a strong soul, liable to strong and stormy temptations; the howling winds swept across it; the waves of passion surged over it and rose mountain-high; but the reason of the Christian Philosopher (which, as I have endeavoured to show at the end of my Lecture on his character as a preacher, is only faith in another aspect of it) held the helm, and kept the vessel true to her course. "The great Bishop Butler," says Coleridge, "was all his life struggling against the devilish suggestions of his senses, which would have maddened him if he had relaxed the stern watchfulness of his reason for a single moment."

He was buried in his first Cathedral at Bristol, near he episcopal throne, on June 20, 1752, with as little state as might be, Mr. Chapman, the Sub-dean of Bristol, reading the Office for the Burial of the Dead.

The facts and anecdotes in the above Biographical Notice' are almost all drawn from the Rev. Thomas Bartlett's Memoirs of Joseph Butler, late Lord Bishop of Durham' [London: John W. Parker, 1839]. The world is much indebted to Mr. Bartlett for having collected with great industry, and recorded with accuracy and fidelity, every reminiscence which survived of his illustrious kinsman by marriage; one who has been justly described as "not only pre-eminent in his own day, but in the foremost rank of the immortalized sages of the world."