Faith & Spirit Quote by Samuel Butler

Butler’s line doesn’t so much deny God as audit Him. The jab lands because it adopts the voice of “sensible people” - calm, bourgeois, allergic to enthusiasm - and uses that respectability to smuggle in a radical demand: if divinity expects obedience, it ought to communicate like an accountable authority, not a rumor mill. The sarcasm is polished; “sufficiently clear” is the phrase you’d use with a landlord or a bureaucracy, not an omnipotent being. That mismatch is the point.

The subtext is a critique of religious intermediaries. Butler isn’t only impatient with God; he’s impatient with the humans who claim to translate God’s “wishes” with perfect confidence, often when power, guilt, or social conformity are on the line. By proposing a pause - “wait till he has done this” - Butler turns skepticism into a moral stance. Don’t rush into reverence. Don’t let vagueness masquerade as command.

Context matters: Butler writes from a Victorian world where faith, science, and institutional religion were colliding in public life. Darwin had destabilized creation narratives; churches still carried enormous cultural authority. Butler’s poetry and essays frequently needle piety’s self-certainty, especially when it polices behavior while hiding behind mystery. This quip weaponizes reasonableness against dogma: it reframes doubt as prudence, and obedience as something that should be earned through clarity, not coerced through fear or tradition.