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Page 39
Now this is all very pretty and very creditable, but it will not work.
The goods, to use the vulgar but precise formula of English law, "are
not of the nature and quality demanded by the purchaser." Nobody wants
a religion of that sort. Conduct is good; poetic appreciation is
perhaps better, though not for the general. But then religion happens
to be something different from either, though no doubt closely
connected with both. Mr Arnold does not exactly offer us a stone for
bread, but he does, like the benevolent French princess in the story,
offer us pie-crust. Pie-crust is a good thing; it is a close
connection of bread; but it will not do for a substitute, and, in
addition, it is much more difficult for the general to obtain.
Moreover, there is a serious, a historical, difficulty about Conduct
_plus_ poetic appreciation, but _minus_ what we call religion. Mr
Arnold, in a stately sonnet, has told us that Sophocles was his ideal
as a life-philosopher who was also a poet. He knew, presumably, the
stories told about Sophocles in Athen�us, and though these might be
idle scandal, he knew far too much not to be aware that there is
nothing intrinsically impossible about them. It would have been rather
interesting to hear him fully on this subject. But he was too busy
with expatiating on the sweet reasonableness of Jesus and "the
_Aberglaube_ of the Second Advent" to trouble himself with awkward
matters of this kind at the moment.
It may be suspected, however, that he did trouble himself with them,
or with something like them, afterwards. The book--a deliberate
provocation--naturally found plenty of respondents, though I do not
remember that any one smashed it, as, for instance, Dean Mansel could
have done if he had been alive, or as Cardinal Newman could, had he
been still in the fold. Mr Arnold was perhaps not less really
disquieted by its comparative popularity. For he had quite enough of
Phocion in him to feel, if not to say, that he must have said
something at least ambiguous, when the multitude applauded. At any
rate, though the ill-omened series did not cease, nothing further
appeared in it which showed the tone of _Literature and Dogma_.
Indeed, of the concluding volumes, _God and the Bible_ and
_Last Essays on Church and Religion_, the first is an elaborate
and rather anxious apology, and the second a collection of diverse and
comparatively "anodyne" essays. It is significant--as showing how much
of the success of _Literature and Dogma_ had been a success of
scandal--that neither of these volumes enjoyed the least popularity.
_God and the Bible_ was never reprinted till the popular edition
of the series thus far in 1884; and _Last Essays_ was never
reprinted at all, or had not been up to the date of the invaluable
_Bibliography_ of the works. Indeed the copies now, 1899, on sale
appear to be of the first edition. This cool reception does not
discredit either Barbarians or Philistines or Populace. There are good
things in the _Last Essays_ (to which we shall return), but the
general effect of them is that of a man who is withdrawing from a
foray, not exactly beaten, but unsuccessful and disgusted, and is
trying to cover his retreat by alarums and excursions.
_God and the Bible_ tells much the same tale. It originally
appeared by instalments in the _Contemporary Review_, where it
must have been something of a choke-pear even for the readers of that
then young and thoughtful periodical. Unless the replier has the
vigour of Swift, or at least of Bentley, the adroitness in fence of
Pascal, or at least of Voltaire, "replies, duplies, quadruplies" are
apt to be wofully tedious reading, and Mr Arnold was rather a
_veles_ than a _triarius_ of controversy. He could harass,
but he did not himself stand harassing very well; and here he was not
merely the object of attacks from all sides, but was most uneasily
conscious that, in some cases at least, he did not wish his enemies to
destroy each other. He had absolutely no sympathy with the rabid
anti-Christianity of Clifford, very little with the mere agnosticism
of Huxley; he wanted to be allowed to take just so much Biblical
criticism as suited him and no more. He wished to prove, in his own
remarkable way, the truth and necessity of Christianity, and to this
wish the contradictions of sinners were too manifold. One must be
stony-hearted not to feel some pity for him, as, just when he thinks
he has evaded an orthodox brick, the tile of a disbeliever in the
Fourth Gospel whizzes at him; or as, while he is trying to patch up
his romantic reconstructions of imaginary Jewish history and religion,
the push of some aggressive reviewer bids him make good his challenge
to metaphysical theologians. But this interest is only passing.
In the Preface there is indeed some of the old attempt at liveliness.
Professor Clifford himself, then dead, is disposed of with a not
ungraceful mixture of pity and satire; Messrs Moody and Sankey are not
unpleasantly rallied; Satan and Tisiphone, Mr Ruskin and Sir Robert
Phillimore, once more remind one of the groves of Blarney or the more
doubtful chorus in the _Anti-Jacobin_. But the apologist is not
really light-hearted: he cannot keep the more solemn part of his
apologia out of the Preface itself, and assures us that the story of
Adam's fall "is all a legend. It never really happened, any of it."
Again one asks Mr Arnold, as seriously as possible, "How _do_ you
know that? On your own calculus, with your own estimate of evidence,
how is it possible for you to know that? You may, on your principles,
say that you are insufficiently persuaded that it _did_ happen;
but how can you, without preternatural revelation (the very thing you
will not admit) say that it did _not?_ Surely there is some want
of intellectual seriousness in thus lightly ignoring every rule of law
and logic, of history and of common-sense?"
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