oughly scientific organization and administration of all its functions through all its institutions. The ideal State by this attention is not, in the words of St. Paul, "puffed up"; for, like charity, she seeketh not her own, but the intellectual, esthetic and moral perfection of her children. Their culture-whenever she slips into the temptation to behave herself unseemly, to glorify herself and her admirable machinery-their culture and their criticism keep her from the self-satisfaction which is vulgarizing and degrading, and send her back to her task, the humanization of man in society.

CHAPTER VII

RELIGION

"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."-Preface to God and the Bible.

""This is an aspect of the truth which was lost almost as soon as it was found; and yet it has to be recovered by everyone for himself who would pass the limits of proverbial and popular philosophy. The moral and intellectual are always dividing, yet they must be reunited, and in the highest conception of them are inseparable.'”—Jowett, quoted in Preface to Last Essays on Church and Religion.

T is quite incontrovertible that Arnold was a

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friend to religion and to its public establishment. He was, however, a steadily critical friend. In the field of religion, where sensibilities are, on the whole, much more "delicate" than in the field of politics, one suspects that the majority of men prefer the deceitful kisses of an enemy to the faithful wounds of a friend. Certainly none of Arnold's other activities excited so much opposition among his contemporaries as did his writing on theology, religion, and the church. Mr. Herbert Paul quotes Gladstone as saying, "He combined a sincere devo

tion to the Christian religion with a faculty for presenting it in such a form as to be recognisable neither by friend or foe." Mr. R. H. Hutton remarks in his Contemporary Thought and Thinkers, "Mr. Matthew Arnold returns to his curiously hopeless task of convincing people that the Bible can be read, understood, enjoyed, and turned to the most fruitful moral account, without according any credence to the supernatural experience and belief of its writers." In the Posthumous Essays of John Churton Collins, published so recently as 1912, one finds a disposition to dismiss Arnold's "theology" with an epigram: "Perhaps the best criticism of it would be what Doctor Cuffe said of Bacon's Novum Organum, that 'a foolish man could not, and a wise man would not, have written it.'" Professor Saintsbury, whose works fill all the world, has striven to convey the impression that in handling the church and the Bible Arnold was attempting to decide a case beyond his jurisdiction, and that his decisions are of little interest or consequence.

Now, since Arnold's books were designed to carry persuasion to the hearts of such men as Gladstone, Hutton, Collins and Professor Saintsbury, one is constrained to admit that they did not invariably perform their errand! Having made this concession, one should hasten to add that to many men who were reluctantly drifting from their religious moorings Arnold showed a practical anchorage for the spirit;

and that such refuge as he provided more than forty years ago has lost little of its security by the lapse of time. Furthermore, one can not see Arnold whole unless one knows well St. Paul and Protestantism, Literature and Dogma, and God and the Bible; to neglect these books is to miss some of his best writing, some of his most penetrating and permanently valuable literary criticism, some of the central aspects of his character, and an integral part of his effort to civilize the world.

It is important to understand just why he entered the field of theology and religion. At first thought the attention which he devoted to these subjects appears inconsistent with his frequent assertion that they had received too much of the attention of Englishmen. A letter of March 25, 1881, written four years after the publication of his Last Essays on Church and Religion, indicates no wavering in his conviction that England's mind and thought stood in more need of critical direction than her heart and morals.

"The force which is shaping the future," he says, "is not with any of the orthodox religions, or with any of the neo-religious developments which propose to themselves to supersede them. Both the one and the other give to what they call religion, and to religious ideas and discussions, too large and absorbing a place in human life; man feels himself to be a more various and richly-endowed animal than

the old religious theory of human life allowed, and he is endeavouring to give satisfaction to the longsuppressed and still imperfectly-understood instincts of this varied nature. I think this revolution is happening everywhere; it is certainly happening in England, where the somberness and narrowness of the religious world, and the rigid hold it long had upon us, have done so much to provoke it. I think it is, like all inevitable revolutions, a salutary one, but it greatly requires watching and guiding. The growing desire, throughout the community, for amusement and pleasure; the wonderful relaxation, in the middle class, of the old strictness as to theatres, dancing, and such things, are features which alarm many people; but they have their good side. They belong to this revolution of which I speak. The awakening demand for beauty, a demand so little made in this country for the last century and more, is another sign of the revolution, and a clearly favorable sign of it. The moral is that whoever treats religion, religious discussions, questions of churches and sects, as absorbing, is not in vital sympathy with the movement of men's minds at present."

This passage partly explains why Arnold came to the discussion of religion comparatively late in life and with genuine reluctance: he wished to give the greater part of his attention to "the force which is shaping the future," and that force, he was convinced, was not in the churches. In passing, let us mark here with special emphasis his observation that all inevitable revolutions are "salutary." A

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