LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE CLERGY AND THE CHURCH.—I.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TAR SPECTATOR."1
SIR, —Your interesting criticism of Mr. Aruold's " Literature and Dogma" handles only the question of the truth or falsehood of the theory of religion propounded iu it. But the book deserves to be looked at from another point of view. What strikes me about this and all the theological writings of the same author is that, true or false, they are so important as to mark an epoch in English thought, and also that Christians ought to weloome them as most encouraging signs of the times. Allow me to explain at some length why I think so.
You have- pronounced " Literature and Dogma" unsatisfactory —a Christianity in the air—and very possibly it is so. Most without any clear faith in a future state, without the divinity of Christians will go much further than you do. They will be of Christ, many would impatiently say there cannot even be any opinion that Mr. Arnold has simply added another to the approach worth speaking of to Christianity. I am sorry for this swarm of Antichristian books now issuing from the press, and sort of impatience. This eagerness to have all or nothing, this they will lament that the author's popularity, the grace of his determination to pronounce partial agreement to be no agreement, style, the telling force of his banter, will carry the book into every and partial belief more untenable than unbelief, this summary family, will captivate every young man, and will increase the reckoning among foes of all who will not avow themselves un- already vast number of those who are quite familiar with the reserved partisans, robs Christians of the consolation of seeing opinion, even if they do not adopt it as a matter of course, that bow strong their cause really is, even in these days of trouble. I there never was any Resurrection of the Dead, nor, properly speak- believe also that it arises from a simple mistake, .that the belief— ing, any Divine Revelation. They will hardly pay any heed to so widely spread and so inveterate, that most people think you are Mr. Arnold's professions, which nevertheless are plainly not trifling with them when you question it—the belief, namely, that hypocritical, that his book is not written against, but for Christianity not only includes supernaturalism, but is based solely Christianity. "He may persuade himself so," they will say, ou it and involved with it inextricably, is groundless. But how- " but we know by the experience of too many cases that writers ever that may be, it is evident that according as you look at against Christianity commonly adopt this style. They do not Christianity in one of two different ways, you will be hopeful or deny the Gospel, not they ! On the contrary, they love it ! their despairing about its prospects. If you confound it among systems dearest wish is to see it restored to its original vigour by the re- of philosophy, if you think of it as a set of doctrines to be inter- moval of its excrescences. But it always turns out that the pro- preted and tested as rigidly as Newton's Laws of Motion, you
cess of restoration, instead of giving it new vigour, kills it. The will say that it is rapidly falling. But you will take a surgical operation is performed with the best intentions, per- very different view of its prospects if you regard it as a vast haps with the greatest skill, but the result is always the same, institution, inheriting indeed among other things a belief which the patient dies from exhaustion." This is no doubt a common has been reduced to technical formulas, but capable of modify- case, but what we see in Mr. Arnold is something much rarer and ing itself indefinitely, capable of giving a free interpretation more significant. The Christian element in his writings is not a to this belief, capable of adding new articles and accumulating diminishing but an increasing quantity. If he had begun with new evidences, and perhaps not altogether incapable of existing professions of Christian faith, nothing would be more natural than and flourishing in some new shape, if the belief should be entirely that he should continue faintly and vaguely to profess it after he transformed. If its creed is not necessarily the foundation of the had ceased to feel it. The process has been just of the opposite great Christian institution, but only one of its possessions, and one kind. In his earliest works he was a sceptic. Few young among many similar possessions, then the age is by no means so writers have shown such a premature despondency as Mr. Matthew hostile to Christianity as it seemed before, then the question, Are Arnold. He proclaimed no Gospel of any kind, orthodox or we Christians ? which some are so eager to answer in the negative, heterodox. He declared that there was nothing for it but to becomes one which nine people out of ten would answer in the " waive all claims to bliss, and strive to bear, with close-lipped affirmative, and more than all, then we shall see that the tendency patience for our only friend." There was nothing of Christianity, of the age, so far from being steadily averse to Christianity, is of the Bible, in those early books. He was a pure Greek philo- decidedly favourable to it. As no age has witnessed more opposi- sopher. To a friend who asked him what props he found for his tion to dogmatic Christianity, so no age has witnessed more mind in those bad times, he answered, "'Three writers, Homer, striking, I might say more irresistible, testimonies to the inde- Epictetus, and Sophocles." Later he extolled Heine in what structible value of Christianity considered in the large. Atheism seemed to me the most extravagant language, and represented him itself in this age is more Christian than the very Christianity of as a sort of prophet to his age. He passed gradually from a many past ages, and the enemies of Christianity ought now in despondiug to a scoffing scepticism. He bantered the Bishops most cases rather to be called its reformers.
and the clergy generally ; he laughed at belief, argued against it, Among the irresistible testimonies I just now spoke of, surely and deliberately tried to deprive other people of it. It is absurd, these books of Mr. Arnold ought to be placed. Consider what therefore, to suppose that he is disguising his sentiments when he they prove. Among the hereditary possessions of the Church one now writes books in praise of the Bible, sets forth the merits of of the greatest is a book. The Church claims to have the Book of Paul and John, and reverentially exhibits to us the exquisite the World, the oracles of God.' One of the principal objects nobleness and wisdom of him whose life is written in the Four accordingly of the enemies of the Church has been to discredit Gospels. In truth, his sentiments are uttered with quite as much this Book, disprove its history, disparage its poetry and morality, openness in these books as in the earlier ones. His disbelief has represent it as obsolete and now mischievous. Their success has precisely the same extent that it had. He believes in no miracles, been slow, but on the whole it has been vast. They have been in no mysteries ; he does not acknowledge any personality in withstood hitherto very much by illegitimate weapons or by means God, and all these disbeliefs he avows in the plainest and most which could only for the time be effectual, by censorships, by contemptuous language. He deals in no " infidel wiles," no in- clerical influence over schools and universities, by a clerical litera- sinuations, none of the irony of Hume or Gibbon. Nor is there ture evidently to some extent made to order. When we look any vagueness, any attempt to confuse the issue. The feelings of through our own literary history since the time when unbelief gained the reader are never spared, but the most unceremonious frank- a hearing in Europe, we find very few testimonies to the value of ness, as well as the most lucid clearness, reigns from the first page the Bible, which are at once adequate, detailed, and above all to the last. However, therefore, these books may superficially suspicion of prejudice or interested bias. Coleridge indeed gave a resemble the writings of rationalising divines, of Broad-Church testimony somewhat of this kind, and we know how vast was the clergymen who are secretly Unitarian, or Unitarians who are effect of it. Still he fell on the time of the great reaction against secretly Positivists, they belong in reality to quite another class. the French Revolution, and his reverence for the Bible, as well as For in such writings the important part is that which is negative ; his dogmatic orthodoxy, might partly be explained as the ,effect the reader skips the unctuous passages as professional padding ; it of the Conservative tendency 'of his age. 1 maintain that the is in the negations that he expects to find the author's real mind. testimony now borne by Mr. Arnold is on the whole, as far as it Now, Mr. Matthew Arnold's books have their whole raison d'être goes, unique, a new fact in the history of Christianity. He has in their affirmations ; however rich they may be in negations, we undertaken to estimate the value of the Bible considered purely as may feel sure that, as the author is not a clergyman, and has no a book. Nothing, no awe, no theological prepossession, has pre- professional character to keep or lose, the negations have no vented him from discerning whatever faults were to be discerned. special significance; and, moreover, we notice that while the nega- He does not class the book apart, as others have done, either tions are of the most common-place sort, the affirmations are respectfully or contemptuously, but weighs it in the same critical fresh, striking, and peculiar, and have every appearance of con- balance that he is accustomed to weigh other books in. He has stituting the substance and stuff of the book. What I wish to no belief in anything supernatural, or in any special divine point out is, in one word, this,—that so far as Mr. Arnold can be revelation. He has a bitter contempt for the clerical methods of called a Christian, he is a convert to Christianity. He may have interpretation by which weak places might be concealed from view. arrived at the same point as some of our rationalising divines, but Ile is, moreover, trained in that classical school of literature which
he has arrived at it from the opposite extreme. has generally been most opposed to the literary models of the —a Christianity in the air—and very possibly it is so. Most without any clear faith in a future state, without the divinity of Christians will go much further than you do. They will be of Christ, many would impatiently say there cannot even be any opinion that Mr. Arnold has simply added another to the approach worth speaking of to Christianity. I am sorry for this swarm of Antichristian books now issuing from the press, and sort of impatience. This eagerness to have all or nothing, this they will lament that the author's popularity, the grace of his determination to pronounce partial agreement to be no agreement, style, the telling force of his banter, will carry the book into every and partial belief more untenable than unbelief, this summary family, will captivate every young man, and will increase the reckoning among foes of all who will not avow themselves un- already vast number of those who are quite familiar with the reserved partisans, robs Christians of the consolation of seeing opinion, even if they do not adopt it as a matter of course, that bow strong their cause really is, even in these days of trouble. I there never was any Resurrection of the Dead, nor, properly speak- believe also that it arises from a simple mistake, .that the belief— ing, any Divine Revelation. They will hardly pay any heed to so widely spread and so inveterate, that most people think you are Mr. Arnold's professions, which nevertheless are plainly not trifling with them when you question it—the belief, namely, that hypocritical, that his book is not written against, but for Christianity not only includes supernaturalism, but is based solely Christianity. "He may persuade himself so," they will say, ou it and involved with it inextricably, is groundless. But how- " but we know by the experience of too many cases that writers ever that may be, it is evident that according as you look at against Christianity commonly adopt this style. They do not Christianity in one of two different ways, you will be hopeful or deny the Gospel, not they ! On the contrary, they love it ! their despairing about its prospects. If you confound it among systems dearest wish is to see it restored to its original vigour by the re- of philosophy, if you think of it as a set of doctrines to be inter- moval of its excrescences. But it always turns out that the pro- preted and tested as rigidly as Newton's Laws of Motion, you
cess of restoration, instead of giving it new vigour, kills it. The will say that it is rapidly falling. But you will take a surgical operation is performed with the best intentions, per- very different view of its prospects if you regard it as a vast haps with the greatest skill, but the result is always the same, institution, inheriting indeed among other things a belief which the patient dies from exhaustion." This is no doubt a common has been reduced to technical formulas, but capable of modify- case, but what we see in Mr. Arnold is something much rarer and ing itself indefinitely, capable of giving a free interpretation more significant. The Christian element in his writings is not a to this belief, capable of adding new articles and accumulating diminishing but an increasing quantity. If he had begun with new evidences, and perhaps not altogether incapable of existing professions of Christian faith, nothing would be more natural than and flourishing in some new shape, if the belief should be entirely that he should continue faintly and vaguely to profess it after he transformed. If its creed is not necessarily the foundation of the had ceased to feel it. The process has been just of the opposite great Christian institution, but only one of its possessions, and one kind. In his earliest works he was a sceptic. Few young among many similar possessions, then the age is by no means so writers have shown such a premature despondency as Mr. Matthew hostile to Christianity as it seemed before, then the question, Are Arnold. He proclaimed no Gospel of any kind, orthodox or we Christians ? which some are so eager to answer in the negative, heterodox. He declared that there was nothing for it but to becomes one which nine people out of ten would answer in the " waive all claims to bliss, and strive to bear, with close-lipped affirmative, and more than all, then we shall see that the tendency patience for our only friend." There was nothing of Christianity, of the age, so far from being steadily averse to Christianity, is of the Bible, in those early books. He was a pure Greek philo- decidedly favourable to it. As no age has witnessed more opposi- sopher. To a friend who asked him what props he found for his tion to dogmatic Christianity, so no age has witnessed more mind in those bad times, he answered, "'Three writers, Homer, striking, I might say more irresistible, testimonies to the inde- Epictetus, and Sophocles." Later he extolled Heine in what structible value of Christianity considered in the large. Atheism seemed to me the most extravagant language, and represented him itself in this age is more Christian than the very Christianity of as a sort of prophet to his age. He passed gradually from a many past ages, and the enemies of Christianity ought now in despondiug to a scoffing scepticism. He bantered the Bishops most cases rather to be called its reformers.
and the clergy generally ; he laughed at belief, argued against it, Among the irresistible testimonies I just now spoke of, surely and deliberately tried to deprive other people of it. It is absurd, these books of Mr. Arnold ought to be placed. Consider what therefore, to suppose that he is disguising his sentiments when he they prove. Among the hereditary possessions of the Church one now writes books in praise of the Bible, sets forth the merits of of the greatest is a book. The Church claims to have the Book of Paul and John, and reverentially exhibits to us the exquisite the World, the oracles of God.' One of the principal objects nobleness and wisdom of him whose life is written in the Four accordingly of the enemies of the Church has been to discredit Gospels. In truth, his sentiments are uttered with quite as much this Book, disprove its history, disparage its poetry and morality, openness in these books as in the earlier ones. His disbelief has represent it as obsolete and now mischievous. Their success has precisely the same extent that it had. He believes in no miracles, been slow, but on the whole it has been vast. They have been in no mysteries ; he does not acknowledge any personality in withstood hitherto very much by illegitimate weapons or by means God, and all these disbeliefs he avows in the plainest and most which could only for the time be effectual, by censorships, by contemptuous language. He deals in no " infidel wiles," no in- clerical influence over schools and universities, by a clerical litera- sinuations, none of the irony of Hume or Gibbon. Nor is there ture evidently to some extent made to order. When we look any vagueness, any attempt to confuse the issue. The feelings of through our own literary history since the time when unbelief gained the reader are never spared, but the most unceremonious frank- a hearing in Europe, we find very few testimonies to the value of ness, as well as the most lucid clearness, reigns from the first page the Bible, which are at once adequate, detailed, and above all to the last. However, therefore, these books may superficially suspicion of prejudice or interested bias. Coleridge indeed gave a resemble the writings of rationalising divines, of Broad-Church testimony somewhat of this kind, and we know how vast was the clergymen who are secretly Unitarian, or Unitarians who are effect of it. Still he fell on the time of the great reaction against secretly Positivists, they belong in reality to quite another class. the French Revolution, and his reverence for the Bible, as well as For in such writings the important part is that which is negative ; his dogmatic orthodoxy, might partly be explained as the ,effect the reader skips the unctuous passages as professional padding ; it of the Conservative tendency 'of his age. 1 maintain that the is in the negations that he expects to find the author's real mind. testimony now borne by Mr. Arnold is on the whole, as far as it Now, Mr. Matthew Arnold's books have their whole raison d'être goes, unique, a new fact in the history of Christianity. He has in their affirmations ; however rich they may be in negations, we undertaken to estimate the value of the Bible considered purely as may feel sure that, as the author is not a clergyman, and has no a book. Nothing, no awe, no theological prepossession, has pre- professional character to keep or lose, the negations have no vented him from discerning whatever faults were to be discerned. special significance; and, moreover, we notice that while the nega- He does not class the book apart, as others have done, either tions are of the most common-place sort, the affirmations are respectfully or contemptuously, but weighs it in the same critical fresh, striking, and peculiar, and have every appearance of con- balance that he is accustomed to weigh other books in. He has stituting the substance and stuff of the book. What I wish to no belief in anything supernatural, or in any special divine point out is, in one word, this,—that so far as Mr. Arnold can be revelation. He has a bitter contempt for the clerical methods of called a Christian, he is a convert to Christianity. He may have interpretation by which weak places might be concealed from view. arrived at the same point as some of our rationalising divines, but Ile is, moreover, trained in that classical school of literature which
he has arrived at it from the opposite extreme. has generally been most opposed to the literary models of the Now, to me, this conversion, however partial, of Mr. Arnold Church. He is more eminent as a literary critic than any seems of the greatest possible importance. I do not agree at all other Englishman of this generation. When such a man after ex- with those who would say that it amounts to nothing, because he amining the Bible pronounces it to have an indestructible and has not been converted to any doctrine. Without a personal God' inestimable value, and to be destined to have even more influence in the future than it has had in the past, when he makes it evident that he takes a boundless delight in it, I say Christians ought to take much more comfort from this fact than they receive dis- comfort from his denial of the Resurrection. Mr. Arnold finds 'the Bible not only interesting or beautiful, he finds in it a mighty truth, a truth uttering itself in many different voices, in many different lives through centuries of time, a truth embodying itself in ancient politics, laying the foundation of modern history, and certain to take new embodiments through an indefinite future. This may not be what Christians wish most to hear, and yet there -could hardly be a greater triumph for the Bible than the empire it has established, gradually and in mature life, upon so sceptical and so cultivated a mind.
As you justly observe, there is nothing either new or particu- larly forcible in his negations ; but this one affirmation, so made, and by such a man, outweighs by itself half the anti-religious writing of the age. Any plain man who has been accustomed all this life to read and love his Bible, but who may have been led by 'the controversies of the last few years to be half ashamed of doing so, to doubt whether it has not been made obsolete by modern discoveries, and even whether what he has thought its grandeur is really such in the eyes of a cultivated taste, may now let his doubts rest, if they can be allayed by testimony. The best judge of books in England, thoroughly imbued with the modern sceptical spirit, a noted scourge of the clergy, supercilious by nature, and particularly disposed to ridicule whatever the middle-class English- man admires, says that the Bible is by much the most important of all books, that the highest interests of mankind depend on its retaining its influence, and that, though like other great books, it has been misunderstood and misused, it has never been over- rated, but rather under-rated, by the wildest bibliolater. But, Sir, I am led to further reflections, which I will take the liberty of sending you in another letter.—I am, Sir, &c., A.
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