no doubt that another was the miraculous element of Christianity,
which, it will be remembered, was the cause of grievous searchings of
heart to Ernest Pontifex in Butler's semi-autobiographical novel, The
Way of All Flesh. While Butler was in New Zealand (1859-64) he had
leisure for prosecuting his Biblical studies, the result of which he
published in 1865, after his return to England, in an anonymous
pamphlet entitled "The Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
as given by the Four Evangelists critically examined." This pamphlet
passed unnoticed; probably only a few copies were printed and it is
now extremely rare. After the publication of Erewhon in 1872, Butler
returned once more to theology, and made his anonymous pamphlet the
basis of the far more elaborate Fair Haven, which was originally
published as the posthumous work of a certain John Pickard Owen,
preceded by a memoir of the deceased author by his supposed brother,
William Bickersteth Owen. It is possible that the memoir was the
fruit of a suggestion made by Miss Savage, an able and witty woman
with whom Butler corresponded at the time. Miss Savage was so much
impressed by the narrative power displayed in Erewhon that she urged
Butler to write a novel, and we shall probably not be far wrong in
regarding the biography of John Pickard Owen as Butler's trial trip
in the art of fiction--a prelude to The Way of All Flesh, which he
began in 1873.

It has often been supposed that the elaborate paraphernalia of
mystification which Butler used in The Fair Haven was deliberately
designed in order to hoax the public. I do not believe that this was
the case. Butler, I feel convinced, provided an ironical framework
for his arguments merely that he might render them more effective
than they had been when plainly stated in the pamphlet of 1865. He
fully expected his readers to comprehend his irony, and he