s ours, which will
take nothing for granted, but must verify everything, Christianity, in
the old form of authoritative belief in supernatural beings and
miraculous events, is no longer tenable. We must confine ourselves to
such ethical truths as can be verified by experience. We must reject
everything which goes beyond these. Religion has no more to do with
supernatural dogma than with metaphysical philosophy. It has nothing to
do with either. It has to do with conduct. It is folly to make religion
depend upon the conviction of the existence of an intelligent and moral
governor of the universe, as the theologians have done. For the object
of faith in the ethical sense Arnold coined the phrase: 'The Eternal not
ourselves which makes for righteousness.' So soon as we go beyond this,
we enter upon the region of fanciful anthropomorphism, of extra belief,
_aberglaube_, which always revenges itself. These are the main
contentions of his book, _Literature and Dogma_, 1875.

One feels the value of Arnold's recall to the sense of the literary
character of the Scriptural documents, as urged in his book, _Saint Paul
and Protestantism_, 1870, and again to the sense of the influence which
the imagination of mankind has had upon religion. One feels the truth of
his assertion of our ignorance. One feels Arnold's own deep earnestness.
It was his concern that reason and the will of God should prevail.
Though he was primarily a literary man, yet his great interest was in
religion. One feels so sincerely that his main conclusion is sound, that
it is the more trying that his statement of it should be often so
perverse and his method of sustaining it so precarious. It is quite
certain that the idea of the Eternal not ourselves which makes for
righteousness is far from being the clear idea which Arnold claims. It
is far from being an idea derived from experience or verifiable in
experience, in the sense which he asserts. It seems positively
incredible that Arnold did not know that with this conception he passed
the boundary of the realm of science and entered the realm of
metaphysics, which he so abhorred.

He was the eldest son of Thomas Arnold of Rugby. He was educated at
Winchester and Rugby and at Balliol College. He was Professor of Poetry
in Oxford from 1857 to 1867. He was an inspector of schools. The years
of his best literary labour were much taken up in ways which were
wasteful of his rare powers. He came by literary intuition t