pirit of watchful jealousy, may be an aim not in our day
reachable, and still it is well to level at it."

The book produced a strong and immediate effect. As _Culture and
Anarchy_ first obtained for its author a hearing from politicians and
social reformers, so _St. Paul and Protestantism_ obtained him a hearing
from clergymen, religious teachers, and amateurs of theology. Dr.
Vaughan, then just appointed Master of the Temple, was moved to preach a
sermon,[47] pointing out--what indeed was true enough--that Arnold
omitted from St. Paul's teaching all reference to the Divine Pardon of
Sin, or, as theologians would say, to the Atonement. But on the other
hand, Bishop Fraser seems to have approved. "The question is," wrote
Arnold, "is the view propounded _true_? I believe it is, and that it is
important, because it places our use of the Bible and our employment of
its language on a basis indestructibly solid. The Bishop of Manchester
told me it had been startlingly new to him, but the more he thought of
it, the more he thought it was true."[48]

He himself was delighted with this success. He hoped to exercise a
"healing and reconciling influence" in the troubled times which he saw
ahead; "and it is this which makes me glad to find--what I find more and
more--that I _have_ influence." He delighted in finding that the "May
Meetings" abounded in comments on _St. Paul and Protestantism_. "We
shall see," he exclaims gleefully, "great changes in the Dissenters
before long." "The two things--the position of the Dissenters and the
right reading of St. Paul and the New Testament--are closely connected;
and I am convinced the general line I have taken as to the latter has a
lucidity and inevitableness about it which will make it more and more
prevail." The book soon reached a second edition, and he wrote thus
about it to his friend Charles Kingsley: "I must have the pleasure of
sending you, as soon as it is reprinted, a little book called _St. Paul
and Protestantism_, which the Liberals and physicists thoroughly
dislike, but which I had great pleasure and profit in thinking out and
writing."

And now he was fairly embarked, for good or for evil, on his theological
career. He had exalted the Church of England as the historic Church in
this land: he had poured scorn on "hole-and-corner religions" of
separatism; he had advised the Dissenters to submit to Episcopal
government and return to the Church and strengthen its preaching powe