Whether Lactantius was etymologically right or wrong, there is no doubt that he was right substantially when he defined Religion as that which binds the soul to God.  And religion thus conceived naturally divides itself into two parts:  duty and doctrine, practice and theory, conduct and theology.  Both elements are presented to us in the Bible.  Of the one it is written:  “The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.”  Of the other:  “Which things the angels desire to look into.”  Even the respective functions of the Synoptists and St. John seem to accommodate themselves to this natural division.  Following the line thus indicated, we shall consider Arnold’s influence on Religion under the two heads of Conduct and Theology.  The passage from Middlemarch which stands at the head of this chapter seems in a way to express his attitude towards the religious problems of his time.  It would be impossible for a convinced believer in the faith of the Christian Church, as traditionally received, to profess that Arnold “knew what was perfectly good” in the domain of religion; but beyond all question he “desired” it with an even passionate desire, and attained far more closely to it than many professors of a more orthodox theology.

Of him it might be truly said, as of his favourite poet, that he “saw life steadily and saw it whole.”  And of life he declared that Conduct was three-fourths.  For all the infinite varieties and contradictions of mere opinion he had the largest tolerance, knowing that no opinion, as such, is culpable.  For people thinking so diversely as Wordsworth, Bunsen, Clough, and Palgrave; Church and Temple, Lake and Stanley; Lord Coleridge, William Forster, and John Morley, he had equally warm regard, and, in some ways, sympathy.  It was only when the sphere of conduct was approached that his judgment became severe and his sympathy dried up.  In Politics—­levity, time-serving, mob-pleasing, the spirit which prefers partisanship to patriotism, were the faults which he could not pardon.  His imperfect sympathy with Mr. Gladstone, a deplorable but undeniable fact, was due not so much to dissent from Gladstone’s theory of the public good as to disapproval of his character.  “Respect is the very last feeling he excites in me; he has too little solidity and composure of character or mind for that.  He is brilliantly clever, of course, and he is honest enough, but he is passionate, and in no way great, I think.”  In Religion—­obscurantism, resistance to the light, the smug endeavour to make the best of both worlds, offended Arnold as much on the one hand, as insolence, violence, ignorant negation, “lightly running amuck at august things,” offended him on the other.  He loved a “free handling, in a becoming spirit, of religious matters,” and did not always find it in the writings of his Liberal friends.  It is true that he once made a signal lapse from his own canon of religious criticism, but he withdrew it with genuine regret that