this particular undertaking.  He combined a fervent zeal for the Christian religion with a not less boldly avowed determination to transform it beyond the possibility of recognition by friend or foe.  He was thus placed under a sort of necessity to condemn the handiwork of Bishop Butler, who in a certain sense gives it a new charter.”  Over Butler’s grave stands a magnificent inscription, from the pen of Southey, which well illustrates the estimation in which for upwards of a century he was held by the serious mind of England—­

        Others had established
the Historical and Prophetical grounds
     of the Christian Religion,
 and that sure testimony of its truth
which is found in its perfect adaptation
        to the heart of man. 
 It was reserved for him to develop
     its analogy to the Constitution
        and Course of Nature;
 and, laying his strong foundations
in the depth of that great argument,
         there to construct
  another and irrefragable proof: 
     thus rendering Philosophy
        subservient to Faith,
and finding in outward and visible things
       the type and evidence
      of those within the veil.

In his lectures on Butler, Arnold set out to prove that the Philosophy was as unsound as the Faith to which it was subservient; and that it could not hold its own against Atheism or Agnosticism, but only against a system which conceded a Personal Governor of the Universe.  This is the argument against the Deists which he puts into Butler’s mouth:  “You all concede a Supreme Personal First Cause, the almighty and intelligent Governor of the Universe; this, you and I both agree, is the system and order of nature.  But you are offended at certain things in revelation....  Well, I will show you that in your and my admitted system of nature there are just as many difficulties as in the system of revelation.”  And on this, says Arnold, he does show it, “and by adversaries such as his, who grant what the Deist or Socinian grants, he never has been answered, he never will be answered.  The spear of Butler’s reasoning will even follow and transfix the Duke of Somerset,[53] who finds so much to condemn in the Bible, but ’retires into one unassailable fortress—­faith in God.’"[54] Butler’s method, then, is allowed to be potent enough to crush all such half-believers as still clung to the idea of a Personal God and Intelligent Ruler; but it had no force or cogency against such as, following Arnold, attenuated the idea of God into a Stream of Tendency.  This theme he elaborated with great ingenuity and characteristic dogmatism in his Bishop Butler and the Zeitgeist; and, inasmuch as no task can be more distasteful than to attack the teaching of a man whose genius and character one recognizes among the formative influences of one’s life, I will leave the upshot of this ill-starred endeavour to be summarized by Butler’s great champion, Mr. Gladstone—­