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Samuel Butler And The Simeonites
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4. However Church Music may raise the devotional feelings, these bring a man not one iota nearer to Christ, neither is it acceptable in His sight.
13. The ONE thing needful is Faith: Faith = 0.25 (historical faith) + 0.75 (heart-belief, or assurance, or justification) 1.25 peace; and peace=Ln Trust–care+joy^(n-r+1)
18. The Lord’s church has been always peculiarly tried at different stages of history, and each era will have its peculiar glory in eternity. . . . At the present time the trial for the church is peculiar; never before, perhaps, were the insinuations of the adversary so plausible and artful–his ingenuity so subtle–himself so much an angel of light–experience has sharpened his wit–“WHILE MEN SLEPT the enemy sowed tares”–he is now the base hypocrite–he suits his blandishments to all–the Church is lulled in the arms of the monster, rolling the sweet morsel under her tongue . . .
II.–Samuel Butler’s Parody
1. Beware! Beware! Beware! The enemy sowed tracts in the night, and the righteous men tremble.
2. There are only 10 good men in John’s; I am one; reader, calculate your chance of salvation.
3. The genuine recipe for the leaven of the Pharisees is still extant, and runs as follows: –Self-deceit 0.33 + want of charity 0.5 + outward show 0.33, humbug infinity, insert Sim or not as required. Reader, let each one who would seem to be righteous take unto himself this leaven.
4. “The University Church is a place too much neglected by the young men up here.” Thus said the learned Selwyn, {5} and he said well. How far better would it be if each man’s own heart was a little University Church, the pericardium a little University churchyard, wherein are buried the lust of the flesh, the pomps and vanities of this wicked world; the veins and arteries, little clergymen and bishops ministering therein; and the blood a stream of soberness, temperance and chastity perpetually flowing into it.
[Footnote:
{5} William Selwyn D.D., Fellow of St. John’s Lady
Margaret Professor of Divinity, died 1875.–A. T. B.]
5. The deluge went before, misery followed after, in the middle came a Puseyite playing upon an organ. Reader, flee from him, for he playeth his own soul to damnation.
6. Church music is as the whore of Babylon, or the ramping lion who sought whom he might devour; music in a church cannot be good, when St. Paul bade those who were merry to sing psalms. Music is but tinkling brass, and sounding cymbals, which is what St. Paul says he should himself be, were he without charity; he evidently then did not consider music desirable.
7. The most truly religious and only thoroughly good man in Cambridge is Clayton, {6} of Cams.
[Footnote:
{6} Charles Clayton, M.A., of Gonville and Caius, Vicar
of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, 1851-65. Died 1883.–A. T. B.]
8. “Charity is but the compassion that we feel for our own vices when we perceive their hatefulness in other people.” Charity, then, is but another name for selfishness, and must be eschewed accordingly.
9. A great French king was walking one day with the late Mr. B., when the king dropped his umbrella. Mr. B. instantly stooped down and picked it up. The king said in a very sweet tone, “Thank you.”
10. The Cam is the river Jordan. An unthinking mind may consider this a startling announcement. Let such an one pray for grace to read the mystery aright.
11. When I’ve lost a button off my trousers I go to the tailors’ and get a new one sewn on.
12. Faith and Works were walking one day on the road to Zion, when Works turned into a public-house, and said he would not go any further, at the same time telling Faith to go on by himself, and saying that “he should be only a drag upon him.” Faith accordingly left Works in the ale-house, and went on. He had not gone far before he began to feel faint, and thought he had better turn back and wait for Works. He suited the action to the word, and finding Works in an advanced state of beer, fell to, and even surpassed that worthy in his potations. They then set to work and fought lustily, and would have done each other a mortal injury had not a Policeman providentially arrived, and walked them off to the station-house. As it was they were fined Five Shillings each, and it was a long time before they fully recovered.