accomplished some good in its day, but it has now done its work. It has lost its hold on the masses. They are no longer found in Christian temples. Christianity has ceased to be aggressive. It is passing away; and the new Gospel of Rousseau is to take its place. It teaches that men are to labor for the good of their fellow men, so that each may enjoy his full proportion of the good things of life. Much has been already accomplished since the day of Rousseau. Immense changes have been made in the direction pointed out by him. But the goal is not yet reached. There are still multitudes everywhere who are mere pariahs, and mighty influences are at work to keep them in degradation. For examples of the distribution among the few of the privileges and delights which have been procured by the labors of the many, it is not necessary to turn to such Asiatic potentates as the Shah of Persia, surrounded by all the splendor of Oriental luxury, spending millions in an ostentatious visit to a distant land, who yet did not lift a finger or make one small contribution from his abundant treasury to save his subjects from literally dying by thousands of starvation. Even in England there are great landed proprietors who may ride for hours through their broad acres by rail, while the peasantry around are deprived of almost everything which can make life pleasant. Here, also, in the New World, which has been so long known as the paradise of the laborer, the tendency now is to roll up great estates as in older countries, and separate the rich and the poor by a wide chasm. Now Mr. Morley asks: "Is it possible that the last word of civilization has been heard in our existing arrangements?" He answers that generations will come to whom our present system "will seem just as wasteful, as morally hideous, and as scientifically indefensible, as that older system which impoverished and depopulated empires, that a despot or a caste might have no least wish ungratified, for which the lives or the treasure of others could suffice."

Here, then, say the disciples of the Brotherhood of Humanity, is abundant field for effort. They inscribe on their banners "the good causes of enlightenment and justice in all lands." Mr. Morley says "men are to be made to feel that they are not mere atoms floating independent and apart, to suck up as much

1873.]

Mr. Morley's "Voltaire" and "Rousseau."

589

more than their share of nourishment as they can seize; nor citizens of the world with no more definite duty than to keep their feelings towards all their fellows in a steady simmer of bland complacency; but soldiers in a host, citizens of a polity whose boundaries are not set down in maps, members of a church, the handwriting of whose ordinances is not in the hieroglyphs of idle mystery, nor its hope and recompense in the lands beyond death." Men are to be made to feel that "they owe a share of their energies to the great struggle which is in ceaseless progress in all societies in an endless variety of forms, between new truth and old prejudice, between love of self or class and solicitous passion for justice, between the obstructive indolence and inertia of the many and the generous mental activity of the few." "This is the church militant in which they should enrol themselves; this the true state to which they should be taught that they owe the duties of active and arduous citizenship; these the struggles with which they should associate those virtues of fortitude, tenacity, silent patience, outspoken energy, readiness to assert themselves, and readiness to efface themselves, willingness to suffer and resolution to inflict suffering, which men of old knew how to show for their sovereign or their God."

590

Notices of New Books.

[July,

66

ARTICLE IX.-NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS.

THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS.

MATTHEW ARNOLD'S LITERATURE AND DOGMA.*-Mr. Matthew Arnold is undeniably a clever writer, and a man of high cultivation, if we adopt his own definition of culture, "an acquaintance with the best things that have been thought and said." He has an unfailing vivacity, caught, perhaps, in some degree, from the best French writers of our day, who, whatever other delinquencies may be chargeable to them, are never heavy. But it is no disparagement to Mr. Matthew Arnold's fine powers to say that he has attempted a task which infinitely surpasses them. It is nothing short of an endeavor, made, we must believe, with entire seriousness, to eliminate personality from the conception of the God of the Bible, the Jehovah whom the Hebrews worshipped, whom Christ taught us to call our Father in Heaven. We have here not a professedly new religion, but a new interpretation of that old religion which constitutes the faith of Christendom; an essay toward a better apprehension" of the Scriptures. The prime secret of this new and original exegesis is contained in the discovery that the gist of the Bible representation of God,-the inmost sense and intent of the sacred writers,-is alone grasped when we drop out of our notion of the Deity the idea that he knows and perceives, loves and hates, and chooses,—in a word, that He is a Person. We must confess to a feeling of amazement that one who claims to be the apostle of a deeper and more genial style of interpretation than that by which the long array of theologians have darkened counsel by words without intelligible meaning; that one who professes to read the Book with the clarified vision derived from an expanded literary culture, should think it possible to interpret out of the old Scriptures or the New Testament the living personality of God. As far as we remember, this is the first effort to resolve, through mere interpretation, the Hebrew religion into a Pantheistic creed!

* Literature and Dogma.—An essay toward a better apprehension of the Bible. By MATTHEW ARNOLD, D.C.L., formerly Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1873.

Mr. Arnold has an abhorrence of abstract statements, and of everything that resembles metaphysics, which borders on fanaticism, and should least of all appear in one who takes care not to let the breadth and catholicity of his culture become a light hid under a bushel. This singular fanaticism betrays him into strange inconsistencies. He cannot tolerate the term "Cause," or "First Cause," as applied to God. But what is his own phraseology? God, in his view, is the enduring power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness. Here we have a "Power," and a power that "makes for" something,-that is, originates, produces something. Moreover, he very frequently uses terms-as "depend," "productive," and so forth-which are synonymous with "Cause," or imply the principle of causation. In truth, the principle of causation is present, though not in an abstract form, to the mind of every child, and comes out in his habitual language. This horror of a word, of a very good and a very familiar word, is hardly to be expected on that lofty plane of culture to which Mr. Arnold would elevate his readers.

But Mr. Arnold tells us that the personality of God is not verifiable." We answer that it is just as verifiable as is the conception of God which he offers us. It is a part of the intuition of the soul, in the light of its own sense of dependence and sense of the obligation of righteousness. We go further and say that the denial of freedom and personality to God, and the reduction of that Being to a blind power that "makes for righteousness," must end in the denial of righteousness itself, in the true and earnest meaning of the term, and in the establishment of fatalism. Pantheism and fatalism are Siamese twins. They live and die together. To affirm the reality of a power that makes for righteousness, but without having any preference of righteousness to its opposite, is preposterous as a piece of interpretation, and is in violation of the moral intuitions of a righteous soul. What is religion? It is communion with a personal being. The relation of person to person is essentially involved in religion. Pantheism is, therefore, the annihilation of religion.

Under the head of "aberglaube," or surplus beliefs, Mr. Arnold includes important parts of biblical teaching. The doctrine of judgment and immortality is placed under this rubric. Of course, to those who accept the authority of the Scriptures on such a subject, the truth of this doctrine is fully verified. But the presenti-' ment of conscience is itself a revelation, which is met and corro

borated by the written word. To limit conscience to the announcement of a law, and to ignore or deny its prophetic office, is an arbitrary proceeding.

Mr. Arnold calmly takes it for granted that all records of miracles are fictitious, and, in a somewhat oracular style, predicts the complete disappearance of all faith in miraculous narratives. We venture to say that this reign of disbelief will not prevail until Mr. Arnold's new religion, which dispenses with a personal God, and hence with prayer and rational worship, has become universally triumphant. Mr. Arnold himself allows that if there be a personal God," the data we have are possibly enough to warrant our admitting the truth of the rest of the story" (p. 260). We heartily accord with him. Theism has no real difficulty in admitting the reality of the Christian miracles. It is only Atheism which finds it impossible to credit them.

While we think poorly of the leading propositions set forth in this book, and of many of the arguments in support of them, it would be unjust not to add, that scattered throughout the volume are bright remarks and valuable passages of criticism; and that notwithstanding a sort of banter which occasionally reaches the point of flippancy and irreverence, the book is not without a certain honesty and earnestness of purpose. If there is much in it to repel orthodox Christians and to give them just offence, there are some things from which this class may derive profitable instruction.

MUSIC HALL SERMONS.*-Other volumes of Mr. Murray's sermons have before received ample notices in this Journal, and hence we need not say more of the present than that it is characteristic of the author, as a glance may show; especially in the clear, direct, and lively style which makes it no wonder that he is listened to by the masses, and, we add, in the fearless announcement of evangelical truths more timidly handled in some quarters as well as rejected in others. Eleven sermons make up this series. The first, on "Modern Scepticism and how it should be met," is less argumentative than we had expected from its title, yet it may be the more serviceable with many, as being an earnest appeal, a powerful though somewhat declamatory protest, against the ten

* Music Hall Sermons. By WILLIAM H. H. MURRAY, Pastor of Park Street Church, Boston. Second Series. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1873. pp. 207.