r
address our prayers to Him with any chance of being heard. What then,
according to Arnold, is God? and here he answers with his celebrated
definition. God is a "stream of tendency, not ourselves, which makes for
Righteousness," or good conduct. Because this power works eternally and
unchangeably, it is called "The Eternal," which thus becomes a sort of
nickname for God. And as for our relations with God, called by most
people Religion, well--"Religion is morality touched by Emotion." This,
and nothing more.

For the beginnings of religious history, he goes to the House of Israel.
The Israelites, as he was always insisting, had a strong sense for
Righteousness, or Conduct; and they found happiness in pursuing it. The
idea of Righteousness was their God, and the enjoyment of Righteousness
their religion. This simple conception held its own for generations;
but, by the time of the Maccabees, the Israelites had become familiar
with the idea of a resurrection from the dead and a final judgment. "The
phantasmagories of more prodigal and wild imaginations have mingled with
the product of Israel's austere spirit."

"Israel, who originally followed righteousness because he felt that it
tended to life, might and did naturally come at last to follow it
because it would enable him to stand before the Son of Man at His
coming, and to share in the triumph of the Saints of the Most High."
This, says Arnold, was _Extra-belief_, "Aberglaube," belief beyond what
is certain and veritable. "_Extra-belief_ is the poetry of life." The
Messianic ideas were the poetry of life to Israel in the age when Jesus
Christ came. When He came, Israel was looking for a Messiah; and, when
He began to preach, the better conscience of Judaism recognized in His
teaching a new aspect of religion which it had desired. National
Righteousness had been the idea of the older Judaism. Personal
righteousness was the idea of the New Teaching. "Jesus took the
individual Israelite by himself apart, made him listen for the voice of
his conscience, and said to him in effect: 'If every _one_ would mend
_one_, we should have a new world.'" A Teacher so winning, so
acceptable, so in unison with Israel's higher aspirations must surely be
the Messiah whom earlier generations had expected; and so, in virtue of
the purity and nobility of His teaching, Jesus Christ attained His
unique position. He became, in popular acceptance, the Great, the Unique
Man, in some sense the So