[2][1] Orphaned early in life, he was for some years in the care of a great-grandmother, who used to induce the boy to mount a chair for a pulpit, and, clad in an improvised surplice, to read the lessons for the day from the Church of England prayer book.

The thoughtfulness induced by this question led to his conversion, and dedication to the Christian ministry,[3] along with being impressed deeply by a sermon preached in Dublin by Dr. John Price Durbin.

During his pastorates, he devoted much of his study to the condition of the underprivileged world, preaching missionary sermons, and publishing articles on the subject in the church periodicals.

[5][6][a] After a few years, the project of a mission in India was taken up by the missionary Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and appeals were issued to the ministry for someone to offer himself to go and begin the work.

But finally, his sense of the great need of the people of India led him to consult with the authorities, and in November 1855,[4] he was appointed by Bishop Matthew Simpson as superintendent of the new mission.

[3][2][4] On their way, they stopped in London to confer with the secretaries of the different missionary societies as to the most desirable field for the Methodist Church to enter where no other agency was at work.

[4] Upon arrival in Calcutta, the same inquiries were made as to the most needy provinces; and Oudh and Rohilcund, in the Gangetic valley, with their twenty millions inhabitants, were selected as the field of the new mission.

The people were intensely hostile to Christianity; and the feeling of unrest in the army culminated in the atrocities of the Sepoy Rebellion, only ten weeks after the Butlers began their work in Bareilly.

The first Eurasian assistant, a young woman, was killed; and the native preacher, Joel, who, with his wife, had been spared by the Presbyterian missionaries to aid in beginning the mission, escaped.

[3] The Methodist church in the U.S. believed that Dr. and Mrs. Butler had died, as no messages of their safety could reach the outside world; and an obituary was published, so certain did it seem that they had perished.

Dr. Butler's first and only experience in handling firearms was at this time, when he and 86 Englishmen held the pass up to their place of refuge against the 3,000 Sepoys who were sent to capture them.

He left for the U.S. in January, 1865 aboard a sailing-vessel around the Cape of Good Hope during the closing days of the American Civil War.

[2] In 1870, he was appointed secretary of the American and Foreign Christian Union, which had as its especial object evangelical work in the Republic of Mexico, just then opening to Protestant influences.

[4] Entering the republic soon after the troublous times which ended the so-called Empire of Maximilian of Austria, he found religious liberty in the constitution of the land, though it was as yet imperfectly understood by the masses.

Threats of violence were frequently made by the fanatical part of the population, and many times, the missionaries' lives were imperilled; but the law upheld the right of religious liberty, and only one foreigner lost his life, though many Mexicans suffered bitter persecution and death.

[2] He also revisited Mexico, where he found the work equally full of promise, even if not yet realizing the results of years of labor as fully as the older and larger mission of India.