Matthew Arnold

“ For we have already remarked how it is the great achievement of the Israel of the Old Testament, happiness being mankind's confessed end and aim, to have more than anyone else felt, and more than anyone else succeeded in making others feel, that to righteousness belongs happiness. Now, it will be denied by no one that Jesus, in his turn, was eminently characterised by professing to bring, and by being felt to bring, happiness. All the words that belong to his mission,—gospel, kingdom of God, saviour, grace, peace, living water, bread of life,—are brimful of promise and of joy. ”

“ And this has been the fault of Protestantism generally: not its presumption in interpreting Scripture for itself,—for the Church interpreted it no better, and Jesus has thrown on each individual the duty of interpreting it for himself,—but that it has interpreted it wrong, and no better than the Church. 'Calvinism has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity,' says Mr. Froude. Surely this is but a flourish of rhetoric! for the Calvinistic doctrine is in itself, like the Lutheran doctrine, and like Catholic dogma, a false criticism of the Bible, an illusion. ”

“ And yet, when we behold the clergy and ministers of religion lament the neglect of religion and aspire to restore it, how must we feel that to restore religion as they understand it, to re-inthrone the Bible as explained by our current theology, whether learned or popular, is absolutely and for ever impossible!—as impossible as to restore the feudal system, or the belief in witches. Let us admit that the Bible cannot possibly die; but then the churches cannot even conceive the Bible without the gloss which they at present put upon it, and this gloss, as certainly, cannot possibly live. ”

“ It is so; since all history is an accumulation of experiences that what men and nations fall by is want of conduct. To call it by this plain name is often not amiss, for the thing is never more great than when it is looked at in its simplicity and reality. Yet the true name to touch the soul is the name Israel gave: righteousness. And to Israel, as the representative of this imperishable and saving idea of righteousness, all the promises come true, and the language of none of them is pitched too high. The Eternal, Israel says truly, is on my side. ”

“ Every educated man loves Greece, owes gratitude to Greece. Greece was the lifter-up to the nations of the banner of art and science, as Israel was the lifter-up of the banner of righteousness. Now, the world cannot do without art and science. And the lifter-up of the banner of art and science was naturally much occupied with them, and conduct was a homely plain matter. ”

“ In our English popular religion, for instance, the common conception of a future state of bliss is just that of the Vision of Mirza: 'Persons dressed in glorious habits with garlands on their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the fountains, or resting on beds of flowers, amid a confused harmony of singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments.' Or, even, with many, it is that of a kind of perfected middle-class home, with labour ended, the table spread, goodness all around, the lost ones restored, hymnody incessant. ”

“ Certainty and grandeur are really and truly characters of Christianity. Theologians and popular religion have given a wrong turn to it all, and present it to us in a form which is fantastic and false; but the firm foundation for human life is to be found in it, and the true source for us of strength, joy, and peace. Sine viâ non itur, and Christianity can be shown to be mankind's indispensable way. The subject of the Old Testament, Salvation by righteousness, the subject of the New, Righteousness by Jesus Christ, are, in positive strict truth, man's most momentous matters of concern. ”

“ He knows very little; but, as far as his little knowledge goes, he gives up his theory, which is, of course, palpably hollow. For indeed it is only by applying to the Bible a criticism, such as it is, that such a man makes out that criticism does not apply to the Bible.
There has grown up an irresistible sense that the belief in miracles was due to man's want of experience, to his ignorance, agitation, and helplessness. And it will not do to stake all truth and value of the Bible upon its having been put out of the sky, upon its being guaranteed by miracles, and upon their being true. ”

“ It is not for nothing that they found religion on prediction and miracle, guarantee it by preternatural interventions and the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds, consummate it by a banquet with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in a city shining with gold and precious stones. They are like people who have fed their minds on novels or their stomachs on opium; the reality of things is fiat and insipid to them, although it is in truth far grander than the phantasmagorical world of novels and of opium. ”

“ There was a time when books were read as part of the Bible which are in no Bible now; there was a time when books which are in every Bible now, were by many disallowed as genuine parts of the Bible. St. Athanasius rejected the Book of Esther, and the Greek Christianity of the East repelled the Apocalypse, and the Latin Christianity of the West repelled the Epistle to the Hebrews. And a true critical sense of relative value lay at the bottom of all these rejections. No one rejected Isaiah or the Epistle to the Romans. ”

“ But a Messiah who did not strive nor cry, who was oppressed and afflicted without opening his mouth, who worked inwardly, obscurely, and patiently, yet failed not nor was discouraged until his doctrine made its way and transformed the world,—this was the Messiah whom Israel needed, and in whom the lost greatness of Israel could be restored and culminate. For the true greatness of Israel was righteousness; and only by an inward personal religion could the sense revive of what righteousness really was,—revive in Israel and bear fruit for the world. ”

“ As well imagine a man with a sense for sculpture not cultivating it by the help of the remains of Greek art, or a man with a sense for poetry not cultivating it by the help of Homer and Shakespeare, as a man with a sense for conduct not cultivating it by the help of the Bible! And this sense, in the satisfying of which we come naturally to the Bible, is a sense which the generality of men have far more decidedly than they have the sense for art or for science. At any rate, whether this or that man has it decidedly or not, it is the sense which has to do with three-fourths of human life. ”

“ For instance, I open a book which controverts what its author thinks dangerous views about religion, and I read: 'Our sense of morality tells us so-and-so; our sense of God, on the other hand, tells us so-and-so.' And again, 'the impulse in man to seek God' is distinguished, as if the distinction were self-evident and explained itself, from 'the impulse in man to seek his highest perfection.' Now, morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea:—the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner. ”

“ And thus we come back to our old remedy of culture,—knowing the best that has been thought and known in the world; which turns out to be, in another shape, and in particular relation to the Bible, getting the power, through reading, to estimate the proportion and relation in what we read. If we read but a very little, we naturally want to press it all; if we read a great deal, we are willing not to press the whole of what we read, and we learn what ought to be pressed and what not. Now this is really the very foundation of any sane criticism. ”

“ THE PROOF FROM PROPHECY.
'Aberglaube is the poetry of life.' That men should, by help of their imagination, take short cuts to what they ardently desire, whether the triumph of Israel or the triumph of Christianity, should tell themselves fairy-tales about it, should make these fairy-tales the basis for what is far more sure and solid than the fairy-tales, the desire itself,—all this has in it, we repeat, nothing which is not natural, nothing blameable. Nay, the region of our hopes and presentiments extends, as we have also said, far beyond the region of what we can know with certainty. ”

“ Religion, if we follow the intention of human thought and human language in the use of the word, is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; the passage from morality to religion is made when to morality is applied emotion. And the true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion. And this new elevation and inspiration of morality is well marked by the word 'righteousness'. Conduct is the word of common life, morality is the word of philosophical disquisition, righteousness is the word of religion. ”

“ Like the torture for a poet to hear people laying down the law about poetry who have not the sense what poetry is,—a sense with which he was born! like the affliction to a man of science to hear people talk of things as proved who do not even know what constitutes a fact! From the Council of Nicæa down to Convocation and our two bishops 'doing something' for the Godhead of the, Eternal Son, what must thou have had to suffer! ”

“ See, on the contrary, how the words suit the secret: 'He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.' This 'secret of Jesus,' as we call it, will be found applicable to all the thousand problems which the exercise of conduct daily offers; it alone can solve them all happily, and may indeed be called 'a spring of water welling up unto everlasting life.' And, in general, wherever the words life and death are used by Jesus, we shall do well to have his 'secret' at hand for in his thoughts, on these occasions, it is never far off. ”

“ To understand that the language of the Bible is fluid, passing, and literary, not rigid, fixed, and scientific, is the first step towards a right understanding of the Bible. But to take this very first step, some experience of how men have thought and expressed themselves, and some flexibility of spirit, are necessary; and this is culture. Much fruit may be got out of the Bible without it, and with those narrow and materialised schemes of God and of a future state which we have mentioned; that we do not deny, but it is not the important point at present. ”

“ The multitudes are the same everywhere. The chief priests and elders of the people, and the scribes, are our bishops and dogmatists, with their pseudo-science of learned theology blinding their eyes, and always,—whenever simple souls are disposed to think that the method and secret of Jesus is true religion, and that the Great Personal First Cause and the Godhead of the Eternal Son have nothing to do with it,—eager to cry out: This people that knoweth not the law are cursed! ”

“ But the writers are admirable for what they are, not for what, by the nature of things, they could not be. It was superiority enough in them to attach themselves firmly to Jesus; to feel to the bottom of their hearts that power of his words, which alone held permanently,—held, when the miracles, in which the multitude believed as well as the disciples, failed to hold. The good faith of the Bible-writers is above all question, it speaks for itself; and the very same criticism, which shows us the defects of their exegesis and of their demonstrations from miracles, establishes their good faith. ”

“ Thus we hope to win for the Bible and its religion, which seem to us so indispensable to the world, an access to many of those who now neglect them. For there is this to be said against M. Burnouf's metaphysics: no one can allege that the Bible has failed to win access for want of metaphysics being applied to it. Metaphysics are just what all our theology runs up into, and our bishops, as we know, are here particularly strong. But we see every day that the making religion into metaphysics is the weakening of religion; now, M. Burnouf makes religion into metaphysics more than ever. ”

“ And now, as it disperses, we come in full view of our old point again:—that what did attest Jesus Christ, was his restoration of the intuition. Jesus Christ found Israel all astray, with an endless talk about God, the law, righteousness, the kingdom, everlasting life, and no real hold upon any one of them. Israel's old, sure proof of being in the right way, his test which anybody could at once apply,—the sanction of joy and peace,—was plainly wanting. 'O Eternal, blessed is the man that putteth his trust in thee,' [1] was a corner-stone of Israel's religion. ”

“ This, we say, is what comes of too much talent for abstract reasoning. One cannot help seeing the theory of causation and such things, when one should only see a far simpler matter: the power, the grandeur, the necessity of righteousness. To be sure, a perception of these is at the bottom of popular religion, underneath all the extravagances theologians have taught people to utter, and makes the whole value of it. For the sake of this true practical perception one might be quite content to leave at rest a matter where practice, after all, is everything, and theory nothing. ”

“ This thesis, we repeat, or that thesis, or another thesis, is maintainable, as to the construction to be put on such a document as the Bible. Absolute demonstration is impossible, and the only question is: Does experience, as it widens and deepens, make for this or that thesis, or make against it? And the great thing against any such thesis as either of the two we have just mentioned is, that the more we know of the history of the human spirit and its deliverances, the more we have reason to think such a thesis improbable, and it loses its hold on our assent more. ”

“ If they think that the three-fourths of their nature concerned with conduct are the whole of their nature, and that this is all they have to attend to, still the neglected one-fourth is there, it ferments, it breaks wildly out, it employs itself all at random and amiss. And hence no doubt, our hymns and our dogmatic theology. What is our dogmatic theology, except the mis-attribution to the Bible,—the Book of conduct,—of a science and an abstruse metaphysic which is not there, because our theologians have in themselves a faculty for science, for it makes one-eighth of them? ”

“ People who thus spoke of righteousness could not but have had their minds long and deeply engaged with it; much more than the generality of mankind, who have nevertheless, as we saw, got as far as the notion of morals or conduct. And, if they were so deeply attentive to it, one thing could not fail to strike them. It is this: the very great part in righteousness which belongs, we may say, to not ourselves. In the first place, we did not make ourselves and our nature, or conduct as the object of three-fourths of that nature ”

“ We may call art and science touched by emotion religion, if we will; as we may make the instinct of self-preservation, into which M. Littré traces up all our private affections, include the perfecting ourselves by the study of what is beautiful in art; and the reproductive instinct, into which he traces up all our social affections, include the perfecting mankind by political science. But men have not yet got to that stage, when we think much of either their private or their social affections at all, except as exercising themselves in conduct ”

“ And this, we say, is again a signal witness to Christianity. Jesus Christ came to reveal what righteousness, to which the promises belong, really is; and so long as this, though shown by Jesus, is not recognised by us, we may call ourselves Christendom as much as we please, the true character of a Christendom will be wanting to us, because the great promises of prophecy will be still without their fulfilment. Nothing will do, except righteousness; and no other conception of righteousness will do, except Jesus Christ's conception of it:—his method, his secret, and his temper. ”

“ Our mechanical and materialising theology, with its insane licence of affirmation about God, its insane licence of affirmation about a future state, is really the result of the poverty and inanition of our minds. It is because we cannot trace God in history that we stay the craving of our minds with a fancy-account of him, made up by putting scattered expressions of the Bible together, and taking them literally; it is because we have such a scanty sense of the life of humanity, that we proceed in the like manner in our scheme of a future state. ”

“ This does truly constitute for Israel a most extraordinary distinction. In spite of all which in them and in their character is unattractive, nay, repellent,—in spite of their shortcomings even in righteousness itself and their insignificance in everything else,—this petty, unsuccessful, un-amiable people, without politics, without science, without art, without charm, deserve their great place in the world's regard, and are likely to have it more, as the world goes on, rather than less. ”

“ The world goes on, nations and men arrive and depart, with varying fortune, as it appears, with time and chance happening unto all. Look a little deeper, and you will see that one strain runs through it all: nations and men, whoever is shipwrecked, is shipwrecked on conduct. It is the God of Israel steadily and irresistibly asserting himself; the Eternal that loveth righteousness. ”