102 INDOOE STUDIES 



or mathematics; or, as Sir Thomas Browne said of 

 his own works, that many things are to he taken in 

 a "soft and flexible sense." 



In other words, the aim of Arnold's religious criti- 

 cism is to rescue what he calls the natural truth of 

 Christianity from the discredit and downfall which 

 he thinks he sees overtaking its unnatural truth, its 

 reliance upon miracles and the supernatural. The 

 ground, he says, is slipping from under these things; 

 the time spirit is against them ; and unless something 

 is done the very heart and core of Christianity itself, 

 as found in the teachings of Christ, will be lost to 

 the mass of mankind. Upon this phase of Arnold's 

 criticism I have this to remark : it is difficult to see 

 how Christianity, as a people's religion, can be pre- 

 served by its natural or verifiable truth alone. This 

 natural truth the world has always had; it bears 

 the same relation to Christianity that the primary 

 and mineral elements bear to a living organism: 

 what is distinctive and valuable in Christianity is 

 the incarnation of these truths in a living system of 

 beliefs and observances which not only take hold 

 of men's minds, but which move their hearts. 



We may extract the natural truth of Christianity, 

 a system of morality or of ethics, and to certain 

 minds this is enough ; but it is no more Christianity 

 than the extract of lilies or roses is a flower-garden. 

 " Eeligion, " Arnold well says, " is morality touched 

 with emotion." It is just this element of emotion 

 which we should lose if we reduced Christianity to 

 its natural truths. Show a man the natural or 



