to our account of the Canon of the Gospels, to our estimate of the Fourth Gospel.”  To these criticisms Arnold might have added one yet more cogent.  It was felt by many of his readers, and even by some of his most attached disciples, that the “sinuous, easy, unpolemical method” which he vaunted, and which he applied so happily to criticism of books and life, was not grave enough, or cogent enough, when applied to the criticism of Religion.  From first to last his method was arbitrary. [Greek:  Hantos hepha]—­the Master said it.  This was excellent when he criticised literature.  To say that a verse of Macaulay’s was painful, or a line of Francis Newman’s hideous, was well within his province.  To say that one author wrote in the Grand Style and that another showed the Note of Provinciality—­that also was his right.  To pronounce that a passage from Sophocles was religious poetry of the highest and most edifying type,[51] whereas the Eternal Power was displeased by “such doggerel hymns as

    Sing Glory, Glory, Glory, to the Great God Triune,”

this again was all very well; for matters of this kind do not admit of argument and proof.  But, when it comes to handling Religion, this arbitrary method—­this innate and unquestioning claim to settle what is good or bad, true or false—­provokes rebellion.  No one was more severe than Arnold on the folly of Puritanism in founding its doctrine of Justification on isolated texts borrowed from St. Paul; yet no one was more confident than he that man’s whole conception of God could be safely based on the fact that at a certain period of their history the Jews took to expressing God by a word which signifies “Eternal.”  “Rejoice and give thanks,” “Rejoice evermore,” are certainly texts of Holy Writ; but he seems to think that, by merely quoting them, he has abrogated all the sterner side of the Bible’s teaching about human life and destiny.  An even more curious instance of literary self-confidence may be cited from his treatment of the Lord’s commission to the Apostles.  “It is extremely improbable that Jesus should ever have charged his Apostles to ’baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’” But “He may perfectly well have said:  ’Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.’” The one formula seems to Arnold anachronistic and unlikely, the other perfectly natural.  This is all very interesting and may be very true; but it is too dogmatic to be convincing.  In such a case one may respectfully cry out that Letters are overstepping their province; and that one man’s sense of fitness, style, and literary likelihood is not sufficient warrant for discrediting a well-tested and established document.

[Illustration:  Matthew Arnold, 1884

Photo Elliott & Fry]