’At the same time, no one now can do, it seems, what another Butler might do, viz., deal with the Bible as the best of the nineteenth-century men wish to hear a divine deal with it.  He would never make mere assertions.  He would never state as a proved truth, to be presented to a congregation’s acceptance, a statement or a doctrine which really equalled only an opinion of Wesley or any other human teacher.  He would never make arbitrary quotations from Scripture, and try to prove points by illogical reasoning, and unduly pressing texts which a more careful collation of MSS. has shown to be at least doubtful.  And by fairness and learning he would win or conciliate right-minded men of the critical school.  What offends these men is the cool reckless way in which so many preachers make the most audacious statements, wholly unsupported by any sound learning and logical reasoning.  A man makes a statement, quotes a text or two, which he doesn’t even know to be capable of at least one inter-pretation different from that which he gives to it; and so the critical hearer is disgusted, and no wonder.

’One gain of this critical spirit is, that it makes all of us Clergy more circumspect in what we say, and many a man looks at his Greek Testament nowadays, and at a good Commentary too, before he ventures to quote a text which formerly would have done duty in its English dress and passed muster among an uncritical congregation.  Nowadays every clergyman knows that there are probably men in his congregation who know their Bible better than he does, and as practical lawyers, men of business, &c., are more than his match at an argument.  It offends such men to have a shallow-minded preacher taking for granted the very points that he ought to prove, giving a sentence from some divine of his school as if it settled the question without further reference even to the Bible.

’This critical spirit becomes very easily captious; and a man needn’t be unbelieving because he doesn’t like to be credulous.  Campbell’s book on the Atonement is very hard, chiefly because the man writes such unintelligible English.  I think Shairp in his “Essays,” gives a good critique as far as it goes on the philosophical and religious manner of our day.

’Alexander Knox says somewhere in his correspondence with Bishop Jebb that he couldn’t understand the Protestant theory of Justification.  And it does seem to be often stated as if the terms employed in describing a mere transaction could adequately convey the true power and meaning of a Divine mystery.

’But I only puzzle you, I dare say, and certainly I am liable to the charge of not writing intelligible English.  I can tell you I am glad enough that I am not called on to preach on these subjects after the fashion that a preacher in England must go to work.

’It is a cool thing to say, but I do believe that what half our English congregations want is just the plain simple teaching that our Melanesians get, only the English congregations wouldn’t stand it.’