275 
the assailants of Christianity, would only give him a very 
subordinate place among its defenders.* 
8. The first thing I have to remark upon in Mr. Arnold's 
method is his dogmatism. There is nothing, apparently, to 
which he is more opposed than dogmatism (p. 45), yet 
nothing is more characteristic of his teaching. “ Hypotheses 
non jingo,” he says (p. 176), but his work bristles with hypo- 
theses from end to end. Thus, he asserts that “ the language 
of the Bible is fluid, passing, literary, not rigid, fixed, 
scientific/'’ but he never attempts to prove it. He asserts, 
again, that the language of the Bible is, as it were, “ thrown 
out at a not fully grasped object of the speaker's conscious- 
ness" ;j- but he brings no argument forward to establish his 
point. He asserts that the personification of “the Eternal" 
by Israel was the anthropomorphism of an orator and a poet, 
without the slightest attempt at scientific accuracy ; that the 
Hebrews, though “ by tradition, emotion, imagination," they 
learned to attach to the phrases of the Bible a meaning 
beyond the “ plain sense " in which Mr. Arnold tells us they 
are to be received, did yet, originally, attach to them no such 
meaning (p. 62) ; that God is only a “ deeply moved way of 
saying conduct, or righteousness," and that to this deeply 
moved way of saying conduct, or righteousness, the Israelites 
transferred all the obligations which, really, were owing to 
righteousness itself (p. 48) ; that to study with a fair miud 
the literature of Israel is the way to convince oneself that 
“ the germ of Israel's religious consciousness " was “ a con- 
sciousness of the not ourselves which makes for righteous- 
ness " (p. 51) ; that the history of creation was evolved by 
the Jewish historian from the idea of righteousness (p. 35) ; 
that “the monotheistic idea of Israel is simply seriousness"; 
that the author of the Gospel of St. John completely fails to 
apprehend one of the discourses he records (p. 174) ; that St. 
Paul is absurdly wrong in his interpretation of Scripture 
(p. 140 J) ; that St. Peter's argument in Acts ii. 25 — 35, “if 
* There are many instances in which a man who has held a high reputa- 
tion when regarded as a sceptical or semi-sceptical writer, has come to be 
thought a very ordinary person when he has been contented to accept the 
orthodox creed. 
+ P. 12. This statement is frequently repeated. 
X St. Paul’s “argument is that of a Jewish Rabbi, and is clearly both 
fanciful and false.” Is Mr. Arnold entitled to correct so great a man as 
St. Paul in so off-hand a manner ? Setting Revelation aside, St. Paul has 
largely influenced human thought for 1800 years, and his influence is hardly 
as yet on the wane. Will Mr. Arnold’s last as long ? 
