But, though clergymen are thus put quietly out of court, a layman may still be heard; and one could almost wish that he had lived to handle, in some fresh preface to Literature and Dogma, such a confession of faith as that which Lord Salisbury gave in 1894—
"To me, the central point is the Resurrection of Christ, which I believe. Firstly, because it is testified by men who had every opportunity of seeing and knowing, and whose veracity was tested by the most tremendous trials, both of energy and endurance, during long lives. Secondly, because of the marvellous effect it had upon the world. As a moral phenomenon, the spread and mastery of Christianity is without a parallel. I can no more believe that colossal moral effects can be without a cause, than I can believe that the various motions of the magnet are without a cause, though I cannot wholly explain them. To any one who believes the Resurrection of Christ, the rest presents little difficulty. No one who has that belief will doubt that those who were commissioned by Him to speak—Paul, Peter, Mark, John—carried a Divine message. St. Matthew falls into the same category. St. Luke has the warrant of the generation of Christians who saw and heard the others."
So far the testimony of a layman. Arnold, as we know, loved and elegized one Dean of Westminster. Would he have tolerated the testimony of another?
"The Church believes to-day in the Resurrection of Christ, because she has always believed in it. If all the documents which tell the story of the first Easter Day should disappear, the Church would still shout her Easter praises, and offer her Easter sacrifice of thanksgiving; for she is older than the oldest of her documents, and from father to son all through the centuries she has passed on the message of the first Easter morning—'The Lord is risen indeed.' The Church believes in the Resurrection because she is the product of the Resurrection."[52]
But, in spite of varied criticism, Literature and Dogma was well received. Three editions were published in 1873; a fourth in 1874; a fifth in 1876, and the "popular edition" in 1883. As usual, he was serenely pleased with his handiwork. In 1874 he wrote to his sister: "It will more and more become evident how entirely religious is the work which I have done in Literature and Dogma. The enemies of religion see this well enough already." Ten years later, he wrote from Cincinnati: "What strikes me in America is the number of friends Literature and Dogma has made me, amongst ministers of religion especially—and how the effect of the book here is conservative."
To the various criticisms of the book he began replying in the Contemporary Review for October, 1874. In November of that year he wrote to Lady de Rothschild: "You must read my metaphysics in this last Contemporary. My first and last appearance in the field of metaphysics, where you, I know, are no stranger." The completed reply was published as God and the Bible in 1875. This reply, which contained, as he thought, "the best prose he had ever succeeded in writing," was a reassertion and development of the previous work, and was written, as the preface said, "for a reader who is more or less conversant with the Bible, who can feel the attraction of the Christian religion, but who has acquired habits of intellectual seriousness, has been revolted by having things presented solemnly to him for his use which will not hold water, and who will start with none of such things even to reach what he values. Come what may, he will deal with this great matter of religion fairly. It is the aim of the present volume, as it was the aim of Literature and Dogma, to show to such a man that his honesty will be rewarded.... I write to convince the lover of religion that by following habits of intellectual seriousness he need not, so far as religion is concerned, lose anything."
It was, we must suppose, with the same benign intention that in 1877 he addressed himself to the task of persuading the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution that Bishop Butler was an untrustworthy guide in that mysterious region which lies between Philosophy and Religion. For this task, as Mr. Gladstone justly observed: he "was placed, by his own peculiar opinions, in a position far from auspicious with respect to this particular undertaking. He combined a fervent zeal for the Christian religion with a not less boldly avowed determination to transform it beyond the possibility of recognition by friend or foe. He was thus placed under a sort of necessity to condemn the handiwork of Bishop Butler, who in a certain sense gives it a new charter." Over Butler's grave stands a magnificent inscription, from the pen of Southey, which well illustrates the estimation in which for upwards of a century he was held by the serious mind of England—
Others had established
the Historical and Prophetical grounds
of the Christian Religion,
and that sure testimony of its truth
which is found in its perfect adaptation
to the heart of man.
It was reserved for him to develop
its analogy to the Constitution
and Course of Nature;
and, laying his strong foundations
in the depth of that great argument,
there to construct
another and irrefragable proof:
thus rendering Philosophy
subservient to Faith,
and finding in outward and visible things
the type and evidence
of those within the veil.
In his lectures on Butler, Arnold set out to prove that the Philosophy was as unsound as the Faith to which it was subservient; and that it could not hold its own against Atheism or Agnosticism, but only against a system which conceded a Personal Governor of the Universe. This is the argument against the Deists which he puts into Butler's mouth: "You all concede a Supreme Personal First Cause, the almighty and intelligent Governor of the Universe; this, you and I both agree, is the system and order of nature. But you are offended at certain things in revelation.... Well, I will show you that in your and my admitted system of nature there are just as many difficulties as in the system of revelation." And on this, says Arnold, he does show it, "and by adversaries such as his, who grant what the Deist or Socinian grants, he never has been answered, he never will be answered. The spear of Butler's reasoning will even follow and transfix the Duke of Somerset,[53] who finds so much to condemn in the Bible, but 'retires into one unassailable fortress—faith in God.'"[54] Butler's method, then, is allowed to be potent enough to crush all such half-believers as still clung to the idea of a Personal God and Intelligent Ruler; but it had no force or cogency against such as, following Arnold, attenuated the idea of God into a Stream of Tendency. This theme he elaborated with great ingenuity and characteristic dogmatism in his Bishop Butler and the Zeitgeist; and, inasmuch as no task can be more distasteful than to attack the teaching of a man whose genius and character one recognizes among the formative influences of one's life, I will leave the upshot of this ill-starred endeavour to be summarized by Butler's great champion, Mr. Gladstone—
"Various objections have been taken from various quarters to this point and that in the argument of Butler; but Mr. Arnold's criticisms, as a whole, remain wholly isolated and unsupported. It is impossible to acquit him of the charge of a carelessness implying levity, and of an ungovernable bias towards finding fault.... Mr. Arnold himself will probably suffer more from his own censures than the great Christian philosopher who is the object of them. And it is well for him that all they can do is to effect some deduction from the fame which has been earned by him in other fields, as a true man, a searching and sagacious literary critic, and a poet of genuine creative genius."[55]