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T is but a few years ago since Mr. Matthew Arnold gave scandal to sincere men, by strictures on Bishop Colenso, whom he censured for foolishly telling to the vulgar what it was better for the wise to keep to themselves. In consequence, Mr. W. R. Greg was incited to write a tract, entitled Truth versus Edification, in favour of an honest and open avowal of one's beliefs, especially on the most fundamental and vital matters of religion. In the present book Mr. Arnold has made a clean breast of it, and in his preface declares that the time has come to speak out. He does not explain why such utterances were premature ten or twenty years ago. It is easily understood that he was not then ripe; but as the times were ripe, and other men were ripe, they did not deserve his rebuke and we must accept this book as virtually an apology to Bishop Colenso, though his name, we believe, is not found in it.

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We are glad that Mr. Arnold has assumed the open front which alone is worthy of him and the only fitting example for the present need. No man of ordinary good sense can see the chaos of opinions around us concerning religion, alike among the specially educated and among those attached to special churches, without confessing that dissimulation can do nothing but prolong confusion, mistake, and pernicious discord. Hence we welcome every sincere and complete avowal, especially when it is deep-hearted; and in spite of the much-to-beregretted weaknesses pervading this volume, we gladly proclaim that its direct aim is morally sound and noble. The stream is turbid, no doubt; but when it has run a little farther, its superfluities will subside,

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and healthful water remain. short, the book is a vehement protest for inward and outward goodness, against ecclesiasticism and false science calling itself theological. He follows unawares in the steps of a vehement, perhaps a fanatical, evangelical Irish clergyman, who cried out: 'My brethren! it is the Devil who turned religion into divinity.' Happily Mr. Arnold is not so original as he seems to think himself. Scores of voices

have for years been complaining, that, by trying to found morality upon an inspired Scripture, ecclesiastics do their worst to prepare a public wreck of morality in those who cannot accept their artificial system.

In any quotations we may have to make, we shall try to bring to a minimum the author's technicalities, such as are hidden in the words 'method,' 'secret,' 'sweet reasonableness,' 'not ourselves,' &c. A few words here may be in place. The Latin phrase Religion undoubtedly in its origin meant Reflection, afterthought, being nearly equivalent to the Greek ἐνθυμία, ἐνθύμιον, inward thought; whence it naturally came to mean a scruple, a misgiving: so that the opposite of religious was unscrupulous, reckless; hence Mr. John Stuart Mill was quite right in saying that the word 'religion' did not in itself imply any belief in a God or Gods. Nevertheless, in almost universal acceptation, it is identified with θρησκεία, as in our translation of St. James's Epistle; so as to express 'devoutness to some unseen Power.' But Mr. Arnold puts a sense of his own on religion, viz. morality touched by emotion. 'Theology' he employs to mean the sham science of religion, which he also stigmatises as theosophy

and metaphysic. For action, deeds, works, behaviour, he prefers to say Conduct, meaning generally 'good conduct, and sometimes produces harshness and obscurity by omitting the distinctive epithet. Further, he objects strongly to the proper name Jehovah, and translates it, The Eternal. We think it is so translated in a French version, and see no particular objection to it. But Hebrew Lexicons distinctly show that the accurate meaning is, He who exists; so that 'the Selfexisting' seems to be really a closer rendering. Mr. M. Arnold avoids this evidently because it sounds metaphysical; and it is his hypothesis that the Hebrew religion had nothing metaphysical in it. Moreover, he is pleased to accept the representation that Moses introduced the term; yet the Book of Genesis represents Abraham using it, and it cannot be traced historically higher than David and Samuel. On the other hand, it is known that 'Iaw (Yaho) is the name of a Syrian God, undoubtedly the same word as the Hebrew Yahwe, which was the correct pronunciation of the word which we now write Jehovah with the Hebrew vowels of Adonai, Lord. Bishop Colenso regards it as certain, that the name was borrowed from the Syrians.

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Mr. M. Arnold's book is in part a protest against the men of exterior science; who, because of their disbelief in the miraculous side of Christianity and Judaism, unduly depreciate and lay aside the Bible: indeed, he professes (p. 126) to restore the use of the Bible to such persons. But his main protest is against the recent episcopalian treatment of Trinitarian doctrine, and the creed of the Evangelicals in and out of the Anglican pale. The use of Scripture-texts by Protestants, High and Low, as a foundation for a religious science, he rejects as monstrous ignorance and absurdity. Apparently it is his in

tense disgust at these two classes which makes vinegar trickle over so very many of his pages. It is hard to understand how a man who talks so much of sweetness can have managed to steep his pen in such monotonous sourness; how one who extols seriousness can mix such excess of flippancy with the gravest topics; how one who surveys the field of thought from a loftier plane can descend into such pettinesses of jangling. It is not wonderful that in so doing he should become often unjust to his opponents. But for this, we would gladly have passed by this disagreeable side of the book unnoticed.

It has often been said that, with the Greeks and Hindoos theology was a part of physical science, rising out of the search after a First Cause, which they called God. Indeed, before any systematic science could arise, poetical fancy extravagated in this field, and held up for worship.. gods with no trustworthy moral character. Mr. Arnold does not go closely into this matter, but hints at the immoralities of religion rising out of want of earnestness, and lays great stress on the tendency of the Aryan races to pass off metaphysics' as religion (pp. 118121). This may easily be overstated; but few will deny that the tendency burst out to a baneful extent, alike in the Christian controversies concerning the Trinity and Incarnation, as also in the speculations and disputes of the European schoolmen. In this line of tradition our learned theology has descended to us. Free thought would have broken loose in the Anglican clergy long before now, in proportion as skill in criticising ancient literature advanced, and other science dawned on Europe; had not the ruthless and stupid inertia of statesmen oppressed the Church. Of that we shall have more to say. Mr. M. Arnold wishes to recall us to the nobler doctrines of the

Bible, in each Testament. He uses a right of freely selecting whatever pleases him best in the Hebrew Scriptures, and calls the author 'Israel,' who eminently developed a religion untinctured by metaphysics, and profitable for men of our time and of every time, as Greek sculpture to the students of that art everywhere. From end to end of the volume, he extols 'Israel' for his love of righteousness; which he supposes to have culminated in the golden age of David, and to have declined by the time that the 89th Psalm was written (p. 67). The true meaning of religion (says he) is morality touched with emotion (p.21). He is quite aware that such religion is by no means confined to the Hebrews, and quotes from Sophocles, Edip. Tyr. a passage which he thus translates (p. 23): 'Oh that my lot might lead me in the path of holy innocence of thought and deed, the path which august laws ordain, laws which in the highest heaven had their birth, neither did the race of mortal men beget them, nor shall oblivion ever put them to sleep. The power of God is mighty in them, and groweth not old.' It may surely be observed, that this is something more than morality touched with emotion; nay, it is touched with devoutness, touched by a reverent recognition of God who ordains holy law. Should we not rather say that morality becomes spiritual when it is loved and its opposite is passionately hated, but becomes religious when the idea of an ordaining God is superadded? To hunger and thirst after righteousness is to be spiritual; but if such emotion is possible to an Atheist, it is not religious' in the popular sense, but only in the etymological.

It would seem that all the schools derived from Socrates, whether Platonic, Peripatetic, or Stoic, maintained this inward and spiritual element of morality. Thus

Aristotle (Nic. Ethics, i. 9) says: 'The life of good men is in itself pleasant: for each man is pleased, according to his taste, and their taste is for justice and virtue. other men pleasures are in internal discord, because unnatural; but those who love nobleness have pleasure in the things pleasant by nature. Such are virtuous deeds. Hence the life of these men needs not pleasure as an appendage, but has the pleasure in itself. In fact, i no one would call a man just who did not delight in just deeds; nor liberal, who did not delight in liberal deeds; and so on. Therefore (to generalize), the man is not good who does not delight in goodness.' But without some sense of a Holy God approving or disapproving, it does not appear that the inward emotion becomes fervent. Among Epicureans, who denied all concern of the Gods for human doings, we believe that no trace of internal striving after moral excellence or grief for failure appeared, however amiable they might be.

Manifestly, to do right and to love righteousness, come earlier in time, and are higher in importance, than to form a theory or systematic view of morality. But who will say that, therefore, the latter is superfluous or unimportant? Nay, with Mr. M. Arnold, we have to ask, What is right? The 'righteousness' which is loved by its early votaries is almost necessarily partial and inadequate, precisely because they have no theory, and no systematic thought concerning it. With active and enlarging intellect, the idea of righteousness and duty expands itself; insomuch that it becomes possible for a later sciolist, who speculates without acting, justly to censure the conduct of great ancient worthies. This very thing has befallen Arnold's 'Israel,' whom the enlightened moderns censure and deride as rude, violent, and bloody. In the infancy of civilisation,

border-nations are apt to be unable to trust one another, or to look on peace as anything but a temporary armistice; and the rule of conduct to the foreigner is not the same as to one's own people. What Thucydides makes the Athenians say of the Lacedæmonians may, with more or less truth, be said of the foremost nations of Europe, especially in those dealings which are beyond the restraint of European diplomacy: Among themselves they are generally virtuous; but towards foreigners they account what is pleasant honourable, and what is convenient just.' We have no reason to think that the pious king David was aware that his ferocity against Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites was at all wrong; of course it did not hurt his conscience that he had six wives at once: but shall we, with modern censors, infer that his religion was foolish puling, fanaticism, or hypocrisy ? Mr. M. Arnold will not so judge. Rather, let us compare it to a St. Bernard or a St. Louis, who stirs up a crusade in which thousands must perish miserably, and supposes that hereby he is doing to God faithful service. Or again, compare it to an honourable English squire, a kindly and worthy man, who inflicts endless tortures on innocent animals by iron-toothed traps, and in his sport wounds beautiful birds, and destines them to lingering death. His mind is not opened to the rights of animals, as neither were ancient men to the rights of foreigners and of women. In order to correct these intellectual errors, and define 'righteousness' more accurately, intellectual and systematic thought is needful: but we must not, therefore, esteem knowledge as higher than practice. In this connection it is not amiss to adduce the testimony of the friar Carpini, ambassador from the Pope to the dynasty of Jenghiz Khan, to the morals of the Tartars. Their ferocity

was horrible. The slaughter of other people,' he says, 'is accounted a matter of nothing to them.' In his travel over the land of Comania,' a vast plain watered by four great rivers, the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga, and the Yaik, he found the whole country strewn with skulls and bones of the recently vanquished Comanians. The same melancholy spectacle continued to present itself in the land of the Kangittæ,' who had met a similar fate. He also describes the Tartars as very drunken, yet he sums up their character as follows: They are most enduring of hunger: After having spent a day or two without a morsel, they sing and are merry as if they had eaten their bellies full. They are more obedient to their lords and masters than any other clergy or lay-people in the whole world. They seldom or never fall out among themselves; and as for fightings and brawlings, they never happen among them. There be in a manner no contententions among them, and although they use commonly to be drunken, yet they do not quarrel in their drunkenness. One of them honoureth another exceedingly, and bestoweth banquets very familiarly and liberally No one of

them despiseth another, but helpeth and furthereth him as conveniently as he can. They are so honest that the doors of their huts and waggons are left constantly open, and the use of locks and bars is unknown. The rules of modesty are scarcely ever violated, even in words. Whatever is given them in charge whensoever and wheresoever, be it to fight or to lose their lives, they obey without any gainsaying. But to other nations the said Tartars be most insolent, and they scorn and they set at nought all other persons whatsoever, ignoble or noble. Towards other nations also they use profound dissimulation, &c. &c.-no doubt as the sportsman to

the salmon. Yet such a people with so narrow a range of applied morals may have sound consciences and a love of righteousness.' Systematic study of morals soon becomes essential to every advancing nation.

When we pass to religion, Mr. M. Arnold correctly observes that the human imagination colours its conception of God with various extrabeliefs (aberglaube). We are forced to speak in metaphor concerning that, which, being unique, has no human language appropriate to it; hence we throw out' phrases which do but suggest approximate views of the vast Being, whom we, as it were, touch on one side, but cannot fully know. Out of this, perhaps inevitably, a mythology or theology grows up, different in each isolated nation; and when the 'extrabeliefs' become traditional, they are revered from childhood on a par with that core or essence of religion which alone is rightfully sacred. Multiplied experience proves their tendency to supersede it; so that the more there is of theology (or mythology), the less there is of true religion. It is evidently quite innocent in pious people to revere the shell equally with the kernel of their religion; and to suppose the shell to be the roots out of which the kernel or fruit springs. This was precisely the case with the late Archbishop of Dublin (Dr. Whately), who used this very comparison: 'People want the fruits of Christian conduct without the characteristic doctrines of Christianity, which they call odious. This is just as wise, as to say you wish for the flower or fruit of a plant without its dirty roots.' It is natural for one who has never seen 'the fruits of the Spirit' separate from what he has received traditionally as fundamental doctrine, to suppose that they are inseparable. But when the case is presented, then the test

is applied to the votary, for better or worse. If we accept the accounts in the Acts of the Apostles, we have a historical instance; but if otherwise, a convenient illustration. Certain Christian Jews (it seems) believed that Gentiles could not receive the Holy Spirit without first becoming converts to their ceremonies; but when Peter attested the fact that the Spirit had fallen on them, they laid aside bigotry, and said: Then hath God granted to the Gentiles also repentance unto life.' Contrast an English reality: we must not name the respectable dignified clergyman who has printed in a sermon the following, especially as we are forced to quote from memory: My brethen (said he), we may probably often have been struck with surprise at the many apparent virtues and graces of conduct, with sentiments that seem to be spiritual, in those who are called Unitarians; and indeed it might even seem that they are on the whole better men than those who have an orthodox creed; but we must believe that Satan, the prince of liars, in order to deceive the very elect, purposely suspends and lessens his temptations in their case, so as to produce the semblance of virtue and religion, which cannot possibly exist in them while they are denying the Lord that bought them.' Here he chose to trust to the letter of his book, and his own power of interpreting it, rather than to the spiritual facts before his eyes: he saw the fruits of the Spirit, and attributed them to Satan! Might we not, in New Testament language call this a sin against the Holy Ghost? What becomes of the test, 'By their fruits ye shall know them'? We would wish to suggest to Mr. M. Arnold (what we think be, on consideration, will approve), that he should limit his censures to those who, rather than believe their own intellectual theology to be in error,