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us with abundant evidence, that even he wrote his Literature 
and Dogma with anything but a full acquaintance with what 
might be said in favour of Christianity and the Bible ; or 
if he had such an acquaintance, he does not betray it, and 
still less does he condescend to intimate to those who hang 
upon his lips that anything has been or can be so said. 
Stung, however, by the criticism directed against his 
former volume from the more outspoken and extreme section 
of the opponents of Christianity, he has obviously, since writing 
it, devoted considerable time to the study of the evidence for 
the authenticity of the books of the New Testament.* The 
result is, that in his later volume he treats the Christian 
Scriptures in general, and the Gospel of St. John in particular, 
with a respect which differs in the most marked manner from 
the flippant and unjustifiable language which in his former 
volume he has permitted himself to use concerning it. It 
might possibly happen that if, at some future time, he would 
give the questions of Miracles and Prophecy, of the fact of the 
Resurrection and the theory of a Personal God, that close 
attention which they undoubtedly deserve, he might possibly 
find that it had been well to have treated “the Bishops of 
Winchester and Gloucester }> to a little less of his satire, and 
to have dispensed with a little of that freedom of assertion 
respecting the current theology of the day, which is so marked 
a characteristic of his book. 
34. It is with a view of inviting attention to this want of 
thoroughness as characteristic of the society of our own 
time that I have written this paper. That the scepticism 
of to-day is very different in its tone to the scepticism of the 
age of Butler and Gibbon, I am perfectly willing to admit ; 
but that it is always as different as some pei’sons suppose I 
do not believe. That there is such a thing as honest doubt 
I have always granted, and I have ever regarded the claims 
of the honest doubter as deserving of the truest sympathy. 
But we must remember that now, as ever, there is a kind 
* In God and the Bible Mr. Arnold appears really to have gained a 
mastery of this branch of his subject, though he can hardly be expected 
altogether to recant the opinions to which he had so rashly committed him- 
self. He makes a serious blunder, however, when he says, that “ even the 
heretics ” received the first Gospel. The early heretics received none of the 
New Testament Scriptures, Marcion only the Epistles of St. Paul and a 
mutilated gospel of St. Luke, while Basilides and Valentinus display a 
greater acquaintance with, and a much higher respect for, the Fourth Gospel 
than any other. 
