SPIRITUAL INSIGHT OF MATTHEW AKNOLD 217 



remembered that these things are relative and per- 

 sonal, and not absolute and universal. It is love 

 which creates them, our own heightened feelings 

 which imparts them. They are subjective phenom- 

 ena, and not objective realities. The creed of our 

 church is not any more true that we love it and 

 find it full of meaning and beauty. There is but one 

 truth-tester, and that is the impartial, impersonal 

 intellect. 



In all his criticism Arnold aimed at disinterested- 

 ness. He does not appear as an advocate before a 

 jury whose passions and prejudices are to be moved, 

 but as a pleader before the judges in the highest 

 court, whose reason is to be convinced. Eeligion 

 as a sentiment, or as an emotion of his heart, is not 

 often present in his prose writings, but religion as 

 a conviction of his intellect is. He states the law, 

 and states it with just as much spiritual insight as 

 St. Paul does, but not with the same force of con- 

 viction, because with less passion. Paul is a pas- 

 sionate pleader and denunciator ; his words melt and 

 burn : — 



" For I delight in the law of Grod after the in- 

 ward man : but I see another law in my members, 

 warring against the law of my mind, and bringing 

 me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my 

 members. wretched man that I am ! who shall 

 deliver me from the body of this death ? " 



See how dispassionately Arnold states the same 

 law : — 



"As man advances in his development he be- 



