their way they would fritter away my time without any remorse; but I
made a regular stand against it from the beginning and so, having my
time pretty much in my own hands, work hard; I find, as I am sure you
must find, that it is next to impossible to combine what is commonly
called society and work.


But the time saved from society was not all devoted to painting. He
modified his letter to the 'Press' about "Darwin among the Machines"
and, so modified, it appeared in 1865 as "The Mechanical Creation" in
the 'Reasoner', a paper then published in London by Mr. G. J.
Holyoake. And his mind returned to the considerations which had
determined him to decline to be ordained. In 1865 he printed
anonymously a pamphlet which he had begun in New Zealand, the result
of his study of the Greek Testament, entitled 'The Evidence for the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ as given by the Four Evangelists
critically examined'. After weighing this evidence and comparing one
account with another, he came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ did
not die upon the cross. It is improbable that a man officially
executed should escape death, but the alternative, that a man
actually dead should return to life, seemed to Butler more improbable
still and unsupported by such evidence as he found in the gospels.
From this evidence he concluded that Christ swooned and recovered
consciousness after his body had passed into the keeping of Joseph of
Arimathaea. He did not suppose fraud on the part of the first
preachers of Christianity; they sincerely believed that Christ died
and rose again. Joseph and Nicodemus probably knew the truth but
kept silence. The idea of what might follow from belief in one
single supposed miracle was never hereafter absent from Butler's
mind.