Human Nature and Other Sermons | Page 4

in the Church, and became strong enough to put his friend as
well as himself in the way of worldly advancement, secured for Butler
all the patronage he had, until the Queen also became his active friend.
Joseph Butler was seven years at Stanhope, quietly devoted to his
parish duties, preaching, studying, and writing his "Analogy of
Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of
Nature." In 1727, while still at Stanhope, he was appointed to a stall in
Durham Cathedral. Secker, having become chaplain to the Queen,
encouraged her in admiration of Butler's sermons. He told her that the
author was not dead, but buried, and secured her active interest in his
behalf. From Talbot, who had become Lord Chancellor, Secker had no
difficulty in obtaining for Butler a chaplaincy which exempted him
from the necessity of residence at Stanhope. Butler, in accepting it,
stipulated for permission to live and work in his parish for six months
in every year. Next he was made chaplain to the King, and Rector of St.
James's, upon which he gave up Stanhope. In 1736 Queen Caroline
appointed him her Clerk of the Closet, an office which gave Butler the
duty of attendance upon her for two hours every evening. In that year
he published his "Analogy," of which the purpose was to meet, on its
own ground, the scepticism of his day. The Queen died in 1737, and, in
accordance with the strong desire expressed in her last days, in 1738
Butler was made a Bishop. But his Bishopric was Bristol, worth only
300 or 400 pounds a year. The King added the Deanery of St. Paul's,
when that became vacant in 1740, and in 1750, towards the close of his
life, Joseph Butler was translated to the Bishopric of Durham. He died
in 1752.
No man could be less self-seeking. He owed his rise in the Church
wholly to the intellectual power and substantial worth of character that
inspired strong friendship. Seeing how little he sought worldly
advancement for himself, while others were pressing and scrambling,

Butler's friends used their opportunities of winning for him the
advancement he deserved. He was happiest in doing his work, of which
a chief part was in his study, where he employed his philosophic mind
in strengthening the foundations of religious faith. Faith in God was
attacked by men who claimed especially to be philosophers, and they
were best met by the man who had, beyond all other divines of his
day--some might not be afraid to add, of any day--the philosophic
mind.
H.M.

HUMAN NATURE, AND OTHER SERMONS.

SERMON I. UPON HUMAN NATURE. ROMANS xii. 4, 5.

For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not
the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every
one members one of another.
The Epistles in the New Testament have all of them a particular
reference to the condition and usages of the Christian world at the time
they were written. Therefore as they cannot be thoroughly understood
unless that condition and those usages are known and attended to, so,
further, though they be known, yet if they be discontinued or changed,
exhortations, precepts, and illustrations of things, which refer to such
circumstances now ceased or altered, cannot at this time be urged in
that manner and with that force which they were to the primitive
Christians. Thus the text now before us, in its first intent and design,
relates to the decent management of those extraordinary gifts which
were then in the Church, {1} but which are now totally ceased. And
even as to the allusion that "we are one body in Christ," though what
the apostle here intends is equally true of Christians in all
circumstances, and the consideration of it is plainly still an additional
motive, over and above moral considerations, to the discharge of the

several duties and offices of a Christian, yet it is manifest this allusion
must have appeared with much greater force to those who, by the many
difficulties they went through for the sake of their religion, were led to
keep always in view the relation they stood in to their Saviour, who had
undergone the same: to those, who, from the idolatries of all around
them, and their ill-treatment, were taught to consider themselves as not
of the world in which they lived, but as a distinct society of themselves;
with laws and ends, and principles of life and action, quite contrary to
those which the world professed themselves at that time influenced by.
Hence the relation of a Christian was by them considered as nearer than
that of affinity and blood; and they almost literally esteemed
themselves as members one of another.
It cannot,