297 
what is the caput mortuum that remains but only the sterner 
features of humanity, exhibited in repulsive nakedness ? The 
God who listens to prayer, we are told, appears in the 
likeness of human mutability. Bo it so. What is the 
God that does not listen, but the likeness of human obsti- 
nacy ?*.... Our rational philosopher stops short in the 
middle of his reasoning. He strips off from humanity just so 
much as suits his purpose, and the residue thereof he maketh 
a god — less pious in his idolatry than the carver of the 
graven image, in that he does not fall down unto it and pray 
unto it, but is content to stand afar off and reason con- 
cerning it.” 
82. I have selected Mr. Arnold’s work for animadversion, 
because it is an admirable specimen of the manner in which 
modern culture, so far as modern culture is opposed to re- 
vealed religion, is accustomed to deal with that which it 
opposes. In the scientific sceptic, religion has an antagonist 
with which it is possible to deal. His arguments are definite, 
and, so far as they go, logical. Either Scripture, as he inter- 
prets it, is irreconcilable with the discoveries of modern science, 
or his inferences from those discoveries conflict with Chris- 
tianity. But the man of culture is an opponent altogether 
intangible. He does not argue, he speculates ; he gives, not 
his reasons for disbelieving revealed religion, but his impres- 
sions concerning it. From his point of view, nothing more is 
required to justify unbelief than that it is widespread ; whether 
it ought to be widespread or not is a question he never thinks 
* God is found not “ to be a person as man conceives of a person, nor 
moral, as man conceives of moral, nor intelligent, as man conceives of intelli- 
gent, nor a governor, as man conceives ofgovernors .” — Literature and Dogma, 
p. 39. It might with equal truth be said that God canuot be conceived of as 
not a person, as man conceives of not a person ; nor as not moral, in the 
sense in which we understand the word, and so on. But, in truth, the sen- 
tence refutes itself. Nothing could be more genial than the ridicule Mr. 
Arnold heaps upon Bishops and Archbishops for saying that God is 
“ a Person,” the “ Moral and Intelligent Governor of the Universe ” ; 
nothing more emphatic than the language in which he asserts that He or it 
makes for righteousness. But were Mr. Arnold to assert that God is not 
moral as decidedly as he does that He is not a Person, not a Governor, and 
the like, the only conclusion his readers could come to would be that God 
most certainly did not “ make for righteousness.” All which leads to the very 
earnest wish that, in writing on subjects so deep and so solemn, Mr. Arnold 
had taken some very good advice, which was given to the world more than 
two thousand years ago, even according to his own computation (p. 69), in 
Eccl. vi. : “ Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thy heart be hasty to 
utter anything before God : for God is in heaven and thou upon earth, there- 
fore let thy words be few.” 
