ies in the revelation as in Nature?' So that the
champion of the standard of probability ends by putting an element of
improbability as a mark of divine truth.

It was long ago pointed out that Butler's argument was thus as good for
Islam or any other religion as for Christianity. Gladstone framed a
futile rebuttal to the effect that Christianity had marks of truth, in
respect of prophecy and miracles, which Islam lacked--a mere
stultification of the Butlerian thesis. The Moslem could retort that if
his creed succeeded more rapidly than the Christian with special marks
of anomaly upon it, those were presumably the right anomalies! By the
Butlerian analogy of Nature, what sort of anomalies, pray, were to be
expected in a divine revelation? Gladstone actually made it a
disqualification of Islam that it had succeeded by the sword; this when
his own creed had slain more than ever did Islam. But on Butler's
principles, his plea was vain even if true. If a divinely ruled Nature
be red in tooth and claw, why should not the divine faith be so
likewise? What is the lesson, by deistic analogy, of the volcano?

The complete answer to Butler, of course, lies in stating the simple
fact that analogy leads rationally to the conclusion that all the
alleged revelations are alike human products. If every one in turn is
found to embody cosmological delusion, historical falsity, fabulous
narrative, barbarous ethic, and irrational sanctions, all of which are
by each believer singly admitted to be the normal marks of human
stumbling, the case is at an end. The one salient and sovereign
probability is the one that the believer ignores.

When this mountainous fact is realised, the full force of the Butlerian
argument is seen to recoil on its premiss no less than on its
conclusion. The dilemma that was to turn deists into Christians is
simply the confutation of all theism. Upon none of the tested
principles of inference now normally acted on by men of science, men of
business, and men of affairs, is it rationally to be inferred that the
universe is ruled by a superhuman Good Male Person, who loves and hates,
punishes and rewards, plans and reconsiders, injures and compensates. As
little are we entitled to infer that it is governed by a Superhuman Bad
Person, or a number of Superhuman Persons, male or female, good or bad,
or both. The polytheistic and theistic solutions are the natural ones
for unreflecting ignorance and priestly policy, and t