Examining a young man on the meaning of “Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?” he received as explanation, “Can you not wait upon the lunatic?” He asks whether to know the products of the combustion of wax is better than to understand Shakspere? He is sure that man’s need of beauty in truth, and of acquaintance with the general human mind demands the study of literature, and that for this study the best of all is the Greek.
Few will question, most teachers will accept, his educational doctrines.
Mr. Arnold explains that to attain perfect culture, we must be perfectly religious, and for this, we must properly understand the Bible. This brings us to look at his darkened side. He is an evolutionist in religion; that is, he holds that as the ages roll on, new religions unfold in newness of vigor and meaning, while the old decay and disappear. He tells us that to-day poetry is the true religion. In our time “every creed is shaken, every dogma questioned, every tradition dissolving.” “The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry, for poetry attaches its emotion to the idea, and all else is illusion.” Poetry has the highest truth, and the highest seriousness.
“Be ye perfect,” said the Great Teacher, and this, says Mr. Arnold, is a harmonious development of all sides of our humanity; a thing not found in our broken world. Therefore he calls the orthodox belief a failure; the working classes will have nothing to say to it. He will fix it for them. He takes out of it all its facts and leaves only its tone and its ideas—its poetry. The scheme of Christianity has never been understood until now a select few have grasped it.
“There is an enduring power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness”—that is his cloudy piety. The “method” and “secret” of Jesus were commendable; the “method” was repentance, the “secret” was peace; but the Christian religion rests on the assumption of a Personal Ruler, “this cannot be verified.” Even the resurrection St. Paul poorly understood. It is in fact “rising to that harmonious conformity with the real and the eternal which is life and peace until it becomes glory.” Even the doctrine of the Trinity Mr. Arnold can speak of as “a fairy-tale of the three Lord Shaftburys,” a phrase that Ingersoll might quote. One can see—and it is a sad sight—how his religious views have been spoiled by a vain philosophy. How reassuring to know that Mr. Moody, preaching Jesus and the Resurrection at Oxford, in Arnold’s sight, found the working classes (and others) glad to hear. Where he had said,
Resolve to be thyself! And know that he
Who finds himself, loses his misery.
Many are learning “Deny thyself” and in finding the Savior, losing their misery.
This gifted disbeliever has longings that he cannot quite conceal. He does not believe Jesus divine, yet he seems to yearn for faith in him, such as his father had, and such as was easy when
Men called from chamber, church and tent,