THE FAIR HAVEN
A Work in Defence of the Miraculous Element in our Lord's Ministry
upon Earth, both as against Rationalistic Impugners and certain
Orthodox Defenders, by the late John Pickard Owen, with a Memoir of
the Author by William Bickersteth Owen.




INTRODUCTION BY R. A. STREATFEILD



The demand for a new edition of The Fair Haven gives me an
opportunity of saying a few words about the genesis of what, though
not one of the most popular of Samuel Butler's books, is certainly
one of the most characteristic. Few of his works, indeed, show more
strikingly his brilliant powers as a controversialist and his
implacable determination to get at the truth of whatever engaged his
attention.

To find the germ of The Fair Haven we should probably have to go back
to the year 1858, when Butler, after taking his degree at Cambridge,
was preparing himself for holy orders by acting as a kind of lay
curate in a London parish. Butler never took things for granted, and
he felt it to be his duty to examine independently a good many points
of Christian dogma which most candidates for ordination accept as
matters of course. The result of his investigations was that he
eventually declined to take orders at all. One of the stones upon
which he then stumbled was the efficacy of infant baptism, and I have