“Your letter has reached me here (Ottery St. Mary), where I am staying with Lord Coleridge, the Lord Chief Justice, who is a grand-nephew of the poet.  He loves literature, and, being a great deal richer than his grand-uncle, or than poets in general, has built a library from which I now write, and on which I wish that you could feast your eyes with me....  The Church Congress has just been held, and shows as usual that the clergy have no idea of the real situation; but indeed the conservatism and routine in religion are such in England that the line taken by the clergy cannot be wondered at.  Nor are the conservatism and routine a bad thing, perhaps, in such a matter; but the awakening will one day come, and there will be much confusion.  Have you looked at Tolstoi’s books on religion:  in French they have the titles Ma Religion, Ma Confession, Que Faire? The first of these has been well translated, and has excited much attention over here; perhaps it is from this side, the socialist side that the change is likely to come:  the Bible will be retained, but it will be said, as Tolstoi says, that its true, socialistic teaching has been overlooked, and attention has been fixed on metaphysical dogmas deduced from it, which are at any rate, says Tolstoi, secondary.  He does not provoke discussion by denying or combating them; he merely relegates them to a secondary position.

[Illustration:  The Grave in Laleham Churchyard

Where Matthew Arnold, his wife, and three sons are buried

Photo Ralph Lane]

And now that we have enquired into Arnold’s influence on theology, it is, perhaps, proper to ask what he himself believed.  His faith seems to have been, by a curious paradox, far stronger on the Christian than on the Theistic side.  “A Stream of Tendency” can never satisfy the idea of God, as ordinary humanity conceives it.  It is not in human nature to love a stream of tendency, or worship it, or ask boons of it; or to credit it with powers of design, volition, or creation.  A prayer beginning “Stream” would sound as odd as Wordsworth’s ode beginning “Spade."[57]

But he had, as we have already seen, an unending admiration—­a homage which did not stop far short of worship—­for the character and teaching of Jesus Christ; and he placed salvation in conformity to that teaching, as it is explained by St. Paul.  And this meant death to sin; the abrogation and annulment of bad habits and tendencies; resurrection with Christ to the higher life which He taught us to pursue. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. He would have allowed no antithesis between the two halves of the text, but would have taught that the eternal welfare of man consisted in obeying the Law, receiving the Grace, and pursuing the Truth.