ARNOLD'S "GOD AND THE BIBLE."'

This book is as full of wit—in every sense of the word—as an egg is of meat. Nothing can surpass the "very gracious fooling" with which Mr. Arnold banters Professor Clifford and his

• God and the Bible: a Review of the Olgeellons to "Literature and Dogma." By Matthew Arnold. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. 1875.

"crackling fireworks of youthful paradox," and depicts him "standing by the sea of Time, and instead of listening to the solemn and rhythmical beat of its waves, choosing to fill the air with his own whoopings to start the echo ;" or anticipates a reli- gion of the future in which "a kind of tribal God of the Birming-

tam League will be worshipped, with Mr. Jesse Collings and Mr. Chamberlain dancing before his ark, and Mr. Dale and Mr. George Dawson, in the Birmingham Town Hall, offering up prayer and I sacrifice ;" or describes Dr. Colenso, and the author of Super- natural Religion, showing us that the Bible is "a document hope- Iesaly damaged," and then offering as a substitute their "prayer ,

of Ram," their " passage from Cicero's Offices," and their " own sermon," which "we must be permitted to regard as being, underl the circumstances, quite comically insufficient ;" or justifies his -censures of Bishop Wilberforce, as being "a man of a sympathetic temper, a dash of genius, a gift of speech and ardent energy," but "signally addicted to clap-trap." Nor is Mr. Arnold's graver estimate of German criticism, with its " mechanical vigour and rigour," and its imperfect capacity for weighing evidence ; his examination of that criticism as applied to the Fourth

'Gospel; his account of the Bible-canon ; or his searching ex- posure of any weak point in modern orthodoxy, less acute than his lighter wit. Though we must take exception to one part of his argument against miracles, we may say that he is justified in asserting that he has in a few pages more effectively dealt with the question than the author of Supernatural Religion in half a volume, while he has not fallen into the mistake of becoming so

absorbed in this " negative thesis " as to overlook that " the important question is, what becomes of religion, so precious, as we believe, to the human race, if miracles cannot be relied on ?"

And it is this hearty interest in religion, and enthusiasm for the Bible, as not merely the literature of one of the great races of

antiquity—the stirpes generous seu historicte—but as the chief and indispensable teacher and help in practical life, which characterises the whole book, as it did its predecessor, Literature and Dogma.

"The indispensableness of the Bible and of Christianity, therefore, can- not be exaggerated. In morals, which are, at least, three-fourths of life, to do without them is, as was said in Literature and Dogma, exactly like doing in nathetics without the art of Greece. To do with 'the common-places of morality couched in modern and congenial language,' which is what some of our Liberal friends propose, answers precisely to doing with English, French, and German art in a3stbetics. To do with the very best and finest, in the way of morello, that has outside the Bible been produced, answers to doing in esthetics with Flemish and Italian art. Every lever of art knows that perfection in art, salvation in art will, never thus be reached, will never be reached without know- ing Greece. So it is with perfection and salvation in conduct, men's -universal concern, the way of peace; they are not to be reached without the Bible and Christianity."

Mr. Arnold's object, then, is (to adopt the language of the edu- cation controvery) to uphold religion as the great instrument of human culture against the secularist and the sectarian alike, and to maintain that the Bible should and can keep its old place in -this respect, after it has been freed from all the supports of the ,old traditional orthodoxy, and tested by the severest modern science. We need not say that we are heartily with him in this his faith in the Bible, but we are not the less unable to go with him in his method of defending his position., And when we ask our- selves why this is so, we find ourselves unable to come to any other conclusion than that Mr. Arnold has not perfectly cleared his path either from the popular superstitions or the popular scepticism which he treats with equal scorn. He has consented to verify the religion of the Bible with that "mechanical vigour and rigour " which he has himself shown to be inapplicable ; and he has accepted the popular superstitions of orthodoxy at their own estimate of themselves, as being orthodoxy itself : and he has thus pulled up so much wheat with the tares, that we are almost disposed to charge him with that " toast of intellectual seriousness" which, adopting the phrase from Celsus, he has so finely and truly shown to have been a reproach "not altogether undeserved by the first Christians, while it has been abundantly deserved by Christian theology since." We will explain our- selves as fully as our space permits.

Mr. Arnold insists, with an earnestness which rises to enthu- siasm, that the Bible is indispensable to every man who cares for the higher forms of morality expressed in the word " righteous- ness ;" and the object alike of the present volume, and of that of which it is the defence, is " to restore the use of the Bible to those (and they are an increasing number) whom the popular theology, with its proof from miracles, and the learned theology, with its proof from metaphysics, so dissatisfy and repel, that they are tempted to throw aside the Bible altogether." He says that the habitual language of the Bible is that the Eternal (Jehovah) is righteous, loves righteousness, and upholds and guides those who serve him ; that this Eternal is a person who thinks and loves, and who made himself known to the man he had created, as himself " a magnified and non-natural man, who was in constant com- munication with him, walked in the garden where he was, aid worked miracle after miracle for him." This, he says, is our popular theology still, only bolstered up by metaphysical subtleties from Descartes and others as to the reality of Being, and so of a personal God. But this language in the Bible about a personal God is the language of literature, of imagination and emotion, not of accurate science, and it has been used to describe personages of the like kind in many other religions, with such ultimate results as we all know. And the thoughtfully serious student of the Bible in the present day must translate this popu- I lar language into 'such terms as are really exact and capable of verification, and then, instead of speaking of God as a person who thinks and loves, and exercises all other attributes of per- sonality, we shall find that we can only speak of God as "the Eternal, which makes for righteousness ;" and with this we may be well content, since " reading the Bible with this idea to govern us, we have here the elements for a religion more serious, potent, awe-inspiring, and profound than any which the world has yet seen." Though Mr. Arnold constantly names God with the per- sonal pronoun " he" or " him" (perhaps from some inadequacy and inaccuracy of all language, which, however, we think should not be thus submitted to without a protest and an attempt at its rectification, even if it were only made in Bentham's fashion), yet he says :—

"He who pronounces that God must be a person or a thing, and that God must be a person because persons are superior to things, talks as idly as one who should insist upon it that the law of gravitation must be either a person or a thing, and should lay down which of the two it must be. Because it is a law, is it to be pronounced a thing, and not a person, and therefore inferior to persona ? and are we sure that a bad critic, suppose, is superior to the law of gravitation ? The truth is, we are attempting an exhaustive division into things and persons, and at- tempting to affirm that the object of our thoughts is ono or the other, when wo have no 'means for doing anything of the kind, when all we can really say of our object of thought is, that it operates."

And in another place he says :-

" We do not think it can be said that there is even a low degree of probability for the assertion that God is a person who thinks and loves, properly and naturally, though we may make him such in the language of feeling."

From which and other passages we gather that Mr. Arnold would rather define God as a law, than in any other way. But whether this is so or not—whether he thinks his other definition of God, as "the stream of tendency by which all things fulfil the law of their being," is still more exact and more completely verifi- able than "the Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for righteous- ness "—there is clearly some want of " intellectual seriousness " in offering to those who desire to still enjoy and use the Bible, but who feel the difficulties which modern science raises, this definition of God as the adequate solution of those difficulties. There are men of great intellectual activity who feel no religious emotion or consciousness, and declare that they have no interest in any question about God ; there are others who, while avowing the like absence in themselves of such emotion or consciousness, declare their interest in the intellectual conception of a God, and their desire to find any proofs of the existence of a Creator and Ruler of the world : but for neither of these does Mr. Arnold write, but for those to whom religious consciousness and emotion are facts. And while we greatly doubt whether the former classes of philosophers would admit that Mr. Arnold's definition of God is " verifiable," we believe that the latter will, for the most part, say that for them it is so inadequate as to be worthless. Of the multitude of striving and suffering men and women who are now either hopefully contending with the calamities of life, or submitting to them with resignation, trusting that a personal God is with them, and will still be with them, we cannot believe that there is one in a million who, if clearly understanding all the intellectual difficulties of his faith, and Mr. Arnold's solution of them, would not say that it was of no more use or help to him in the real battle of life than is offered to him by the Comtista or any other pure secularists.

But let us examine Mr. Arnold's reasons for concluding that we must give up the old faith in God as a person who feels and thinks. He advises us not to be deluded by Descartes and the other metaphy- sicians in using the word "being," as though it had meaning which can avail us here. He says Descartes proves being from thinking, —" I think, therefore I am ;" but that there is this fallacy in the argument, that while we all know what " think " means, for we can translate it into "doubt," "understand," "deny," "affirm," and so on, we do not, unless we are philosophers, know what "to be" means ; and that, if we are wise, we shall leave the philosophers, and go with plain people, like Mr. Arnold, to the etymologists, who will tell us that " being " means nothing more than " breathing " or "growing," and thus resolves this supposed great truth, "I think, therefore I am," into the truism, "I think, therefore I breathe." The present writer can boast (if it be a boast), that he has no more capacity for metaphysics than Mr. Arnold professes to have ; but as Mr. Arnold in another chapter tells the " youthful philosopher " who appeals to Hegel that " he had much better have been reading Homer," so we would suggest that, instead of going to "Dr. Curtius the etymologist," it is better to be reading Shakespeare, where he tells us that " the old Hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorbeduc, 4 That that is, is.' " We should have considered it no less easy to define " being " than " thinking " by the sub- stitution of a number of imperfect synonyms, but easier, and much more exact to see in each word the statement of an ultimate fact ; thinking is thinking and being is being, and to say " I am " is to be " a person." We do not know whether Descartes or Hegel, or any one else, has proved metaphysically that God is a person, but we do know and say—Dr. Curtius, the Etymologist, notwithstanding—that "being" is something more and other than "breathing," "growing," and "standing forth."

But besides and anterior to these reasons from metaphysics for the belief that God is a person who thinks and loves, Mr. Arnold says there are the reasons drawn from miracles : and as he speaks of these as " the reason," and " reasons of two kinds," we conclude we are just to him in saying that he recognises no other reason greater than and independent of that of miracles for the belief in a personal God ; and then we must ask whether there is not a want of "intellectual seriousness" in such a position. We set aside the "reason from metaphysics ;" we accept, though with -a reserve, of which we will speak presently, much of Mr. Arnold's argument on miracles ; many Christian men,—though we do not _sympathise with them,—have given up the popular belief in the Bible miracles, and some who, from a more conservative temper or a humbler distrust of their own judgments, or from both together, still try to retain the old belief, not only attach no prac- tical value to them, but would, perhaps, in their heart of hearts, be thankful if the miracles were not there, and yet these men feel no corresponding necessity for giving up their faith in a per- sonal God. Though that faith was, in the days when the reasons against miracles were unknown, completely intertwined with the belief in miracles, it was never derived from nor dependent on it, in any man, Jewish or Christian, when heartily using the lan- guage which Mr. Arnold delights to quote,—" In the Lord put I my trust :" " My hope hath been in thee, 0 Lord ; I have said, Thou art my God." Always, as now still, the faith in a personal God has rested on the evidence not mainly of miracles, but of the religious consciousness of the believer. God is a person, Christ is a person,—these are axioms the truth of which is proved in and by the assertion.

But, Mr. Arnold objects, these assertions cannot be verified, we must be content with the other proposition about the Eternal, _not ourselves, which can be verified. We greatly doubt whether any of the philosophers who refuse to go beyond the region of natural phenomena would accept Mr. Arnold's verification as sound, nor can we think it worth much to those who will accept it. But we say that the verification of the ordinary Christian faith that God is a person who thinks and loves is all that the case admits of, or needs. The complete verification must, ex hypothesi, be found in another life ; but the belief of each individual that his consciousness recognises an objective fact, and not an imagination, is confirmed by the same belief existing in almost all the wisest and best men in all ages, and held by them to the last under all circumstances of misery and happiness, of life and death. It has been tested and " tortured," to use Bacon's phrase as to scientific verification, in every possible way; and with this individual consciousness, and this " cloud of wit- nesses" to the reality of its object, the Christian is content to .say with Paul, "For now we see through a glass darkly, but then Lace to face." It is strange to us how any one can read St. Paul's epistles with " intellectual seriousness," and not see that this, and not any evidence from miracles, is the ground of his faith in Christ, the Son of God. And this brings us to our reservation as to the miracles of the Gospels. We grant that these miracles, taken alone, prove nothing as to the divinity of Christ, but if his divine personality is proved in a quite other manner, the in- • d fon to Me Study of International haw. fly Theodore D. Woolsey. lately carnation, resurrection, and other miracles of the Gospels may president of Yale College. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle.

be true of one who was God as well as man, though they be no longer the chief bases of our belief in his divinity. We know that Paul held the objective fact of the resurrection to be essen- tial as a confirmation, though it was not the source, of his faith ; and whether he was right or wrong in this is being tested, and has still to be tested, like so much else of our Christian faith, by seeing what are the results of its being given up. Time will allow whether men can permanently believe in Christ the Son of God and Saviour of man, without believing in the historical accuracy of the accounts of the Resurrection.