27 G 
intended to be serious, is perfectly futile” (p.228). But I 
need not multiply instances. From the beginning to the 
end, Mr. Arnold’s book is full of unproved assertion, and 
this, I would beg my hearers to remark, is a common charac- 
teristic of the works which are directed against “ dogma.” 
But surely the least we have a right to demand from writers 
who write against dogma is, that they should be carefully 
undogmatic themselves ; that they should call upon us to 
accept nothing on their own authority, but prove every posi- 
tion they take up with the strictest logic. If they fail to do 
this, their objection to dogma falls to the ground, and the 
only question that remains is, whether we will accept the 
dogmas of Christ and His Apostles, which have stood the 
test of time, or those of some very confident, but not 
of necessity very trustworthy writers in the nineteenth 
century. 
9. The next point to which I shall invite attention is Mr. 
Arnold’s definition of religion. He is ingenious in de- 
finitions, and his book abounds with them. Whether he 
is as successful as he is ingenious I cannot now stop to 
inquire. Those who are curious in such matters can study 
his definition of God.* But his definition of Religion can hardly 
be accepted. He describes it as “ morality touched by 
emotion.” f If we are to be as strict in our attention to 
the derivation of words as Mr. Arnold is, this definition 
will hardly serve. For religion is surely that which binds 
us back; keeps us, that is, from following the bent of our 
natural will, in deference to what we inwardly feel to be due 
to a Being, or beings, of a higher order than ourselves. And 
surely the idea of emotion is singularly misleading in connec- 
tion with morality. For emotion is essentially fitful, irregular, 
transient, varying with our physical health and external circurn- 
* Pp. 41, 43, 57. “ God is simply the stream of tendency whereby 
we fulfil the law of our being.” He is “ the not ourselves which makes for 
righteousness.” His brief abstract of the Creeds (p. 229) is undoubtedly 
witty, but it may be a question whether in subjects so solemn the wit is 
not a little out of place. 
t Literature and Dogma, p. 21. The “ religion ” of which Mr. Arnold 
speaks in God and the Bible, p. 135, does not seem to answer to his defini- 
tion, though he declares there that he uses the word “ in the only sense 
which our race can now attach to the word religion.” In the next page he 
speaks of “ the as yet irreligious religions.” This is really very perplexing. 
Were they “moralities touched by emotion,” which were nevertheless 
immoral, and which no “ emotion ” had touched ? At all events ho goes on 
to say that the “ ceremonial and rite ” they “ banded down ” had “ their 
proper origin not in the moral springs of man’s nature at all.” 
