ained the most dignified traditions
of academical office. Those who knew him both on the religious
and on the social side will appreciate the judgment said to have
been pronounced by Canon Mason, then Master of Pembroke: "Butler
will be saved, like Rahab, by hospitality and faith."

VIII

_BASIL WILBERFORCE_[*]

[Footnote *: A Memorial Address delivered in St. John's Church,
Westminster.]

In the House of God the praise of man should always be restrained.
I, therefore, do not propose to obey the natural instinct which
would prompt me to deliver a copious eulogy of the friend whom
we commemorate--an analysis of his character or a description of
his gifts.

But, even in church, there is nothing out of place in an attempt to
recall the particular aspects of truth which presented themselves
with special force to a particular mind. Rather, it is a dutiful
endeavour to acknowledge the gifts, whether in the way of spiritual
illumination or of practical guidance, which God gave us through
His servant; and, it is on some of those aspects as they presented
themselves to the mind of Basil Wilberforce that I propose to
speak--not, indeed, professing to treat them exhaustively, but
bearing in mind that true saying of Jeremy Taylor: "In this world
we believe in part and prophesy in part; and this imperfection
shall never be done away, till we be transplanted to a more glorious
state."

1. I cannot doubt about the point which should be put most prominently.

Wilberforce's most conspicuous characteristic was his vivid apprehension
of the Spiritual World. His eyes, like Elisha's, were always open to
see "the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire." Incorporeal
presences were to him at least as real as those which are embodied
in flesh and blood. Material phenomena were the veils of spiritual
realities; and "the powers of the world to come" were more actual
and more momentous than those which operate in time and space.
Perhaps the most important gift which God gave to the Church through
his ministry was his lifelong testimony against the darkness of
Materialism.

2. Second only to his keen sense of the Unseen World was his conviction
of God's love.

Other aspects of the Divine Nature as it is revealed to
us--Almightiness, Justice, Awfulness (though, of course, he recognized
them all)--did not colour his heart and life as they were coloured
by the sense of the Divine Love. That Love seemed to him to explain
all