Last Essays on Church and Religion (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Arnold Matthew

This 1877 volume contains one of Arnold's most scathing attacks on the established church, "The Church of England." He berates the clergy for championing the interests of the wealthy and powerful and neglecting the poor and downtrodden.  The essay was originally delivered as an address to the London clergy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Mar 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411445987

Arnold Matthew

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) was an English poet and critic. Educated at Oxford, Arnold is primarily remembered for his verse, although his critical works are equally noteworthy.

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LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION

MATTHEW ARNOLD

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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PREFACE

THE PRESENT VOLUME closes the series of my attempts to deal directly with questions concerning religion and the Church. Indirectly such questions must often, in all serious literary work, present themselves; but in this volume I make them my direct object for the last time. Assuredly it was not for my own pleasure that I entered upon them at first, and it is with anything but reluctance that I now part from them. Neither can I be ignorant what offence my handling of them has given to many whose goodwill I value, and with what relief they will learn that the handling is now to cease. Personal considerations, however, ought not in a matter like this to bear sway; and they have not, in fact, determined me to bring to an end the work which I had been pursuing. But the thing which I proposed to myself to do has, so far as my powers enabled me to do it, been done. What I wished to say has been said. And in returning to devote to literature, more strictly so-called, what remains to me of life and strength and leisure, I am returning, after all, to a field where work of the most important kind has now to be done, though indirectly, for religion. I am persuaded that the transformation of religion, which is essential for its perpetuance, can be accomplished only by carrying the qualities of flexibility, perceptiveness, and judgment, which are the best fruits of letters, to whole classes of the community which now know next to nothing of them, and by procuring the application of those qualities to matters where they are never applied now.

A survey of the forms and tendencies which religion exhibits at the present day in England has been made lately by a man of genius, energy, and sympathy,—Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone seems disposed to fix as the test of value, for those several forms, their greater or lesser adaptedness to the mind of masses of our people. It may be admitted that religion ought to be capable of reaching the mind of masses of men. It may be admitted that a religion not plain and simple, a religion of abstractions and intellectual refinements, cannot influence masses of men. But it is an error to imagine that the mind of our masses, or even the mind of our religious world, is something which may remain just as it now is, and that religion will have to adapt itself to that mind just as it now is. At least as much change is required, and will have to take place, in that mind as in religion. Gross of perception and materialising that mind is, at present, still disposed to be. Yet at the same time it is undeniable that the old anthropomorphic and miraculous religion, suited in many respects to such a mind, no longer reaches and rules it as it once did. A check and disturbance to religion thence arises. But let us impute the disturbance to the right cause. It is not to be imputed merely to the inadequacy of the old materialising religion, and to be remedied by giving to this religion a form still materialising, but more acceptable. It is to be imputed, in at least an equal degree, to the grossness of perception and materialising habits of the popular mind, which unfit it for any religion not lending itself, like the old popular religion, to those habits; while yet, from other causes, that old religion cannot maintain its sway. And it is to be remedied by a gradual transformation of the popular mind, by slowly curing it of its grossness of perception and of its materialising habits, not by keeping religion materialistic that it may correspond to them.

The conditions of the religious question are, in truth, profoundly misapprehended in this country. In England and in America religion has retained so much hold upon the affections of the community, that the partisans of popular religion are easily led to entertain illusions; to fancy that the difficulties of their case are much less than they are, that they can make terms which they cannot make, and save things which they cannot save. A good medicine for such illusions would be the perusal of the criticisms which Literature and Dogma has encountered on the Continent. Here in England that book passes, in general, for a book revolutionary and anti-religious. In foreign critics of the liberal school it provokes a feeling of mingled astonishment and impatience; impatience, that religion should be set on new grounds when they had hoped that religion, the old ground having in the judgment of all rational persons given way, was going to ruin as fast as could fairly be expected; astonishment, that any man of liberal tendencies should not agree with them.

Particularly striking, in this respect, were the remarks upon Literature and Dogma of M. Challemel-Lacour, in France, and of Professor de Gubernatis, in Italy. Professor de Gubernatis is perhaps the most accomplished man in Italy; he is certainly one of the most intelligent. M. Challemel-Lacour is, or was, one of the best, gravest, most deeply interesting and instructive, of French writers. His admirable series of articles on Wilhelm von Humboldt, which I read a good many years ago in the Revue des Deux Mondes, still live as fresh in my memory as if I had read them yesterday. M. Challemel-Lacour has become an ardent politician. It is well known how politics, in France, govern men's treatment of the religious question. Some little temper and heat are excusable, undoubtedly, when religion raises in a man's mind simply the image of the clerical party and of his sworn political foes. Perhaps a man's view of religion, however, must necessarily in this case be somewhat warped. Professor de Gubernatis is not a politician; he is an independent friend of progress, of high studies, and of intelligence. His remarks on Literature and Dogma, therefore, and on the attempt made in that book to give a new life to religion by giving a new sense to words of the Bible, have even a greater significance than M. Challemel-Lacour's. For Italy and for Italians, says Professor de Gubernatis, such an attempt has and can have no interest whatever. 'In Italy the Bible is just this:—for priests, a sacred text; for infidels, a book full of obscurities and contradictions; for the learned, an historical document to be used with great caution; for lovers of literature, a collection of very fine specimens of Oriental poetic eloquence. But it never has been, and never will be, a fruitful inspirer of men's daily life.' 'And how wonderful,' Professor de Gubernatis adds, 'that anyone should wish to make it so, and should raise intellectual and literary discussions having this for their object!' 'It is strange that the human genius should take pleasure in combating in such narrow lists, with such treacherous ground under one's feet, with such a cloudy sky over one's head;—and all this in the name of freedom of discussion!' 'What would the author of Literature and Dogma say,' concludes Professor de Gubernatis, 'if Plato had based his republic upon a text of Hesiod;—se Platone avesse fondata la sua Repubblica sopra un testo d'Esiodo?' That is to say, the Bible has no more solidity and value, as a basis for human life, than the Theogony.

Here we have, undoubtedly, the genuine opinion of Continental liberalism concerning the religion of the Bible and its future. It is stated with unusual frankness and clearness, but it is the genuine opinion. It is not an opinion which at present prevails at all widely either in this country or in America. But when we consider the immense change which, in other matters where tradition and convention were the obstacles to change, has befallen the thought of this country since the Continent was opened at the end of the great war, we cannot doubt that in religion, too, the mere barriers of tradition and convention will finally give way, that a common European level of thought will establish itself, and will spread to America also. Of course there will be backwaters, more or less strong, of superstition and obscurantism; but I speak of the probable development of opinion in those classes which are to be called progressive and liberal. Such classes are undoubtedly the multiplying and prevailing body both here and in America. And I say that, if we judge the future from the past, these classes, in any matter where it is tradition and convention that at present isolates them from the common liberal opinion of Europe, will, with time, be drawn almost inevitably into that opinion.

The partisans of traditional religion in this country do not know, I think, how decisively the whole force of progressive and liberal opinion on the Continent has pronounced against the Christian religion. They do not know how surely the whole force of progressive and liberal opinion in this country tends to follow, so far as traditional religion is concerned, the opinion of the Continent. They dream of patching up things unmendable, of retaining what can never be retained, of stopping change at a point where it can never be stopped. The undoubted tendency of liberal opinion is to reject the whole anthropomorphic and miraculous religion of tradition, as unsound and untenable. On the Continent such opinion has rejected it already. One cannot blame the rejection. 'Things are what they are,' and the religion of tradition, Catholic or Protestant, is unsound and untenable. A greater force of tradition in favour of religion is all which now prevents the liberal opinion in this country from following Continental opinion. That force is not of a nature to be permanent, and it will not, in fact, hold out long. But a very grave question is behind.

Rejecting, henceforth, all concern with the obsolete religion of tradition, the liberalism of the Continent rejects also, and on the like grounds, all concern with the Bible and Christianity. To claim for the Bible the direction, in any way, of modern life, is, we hear, as if Plato had sought to found his ideal republic 'upon a text of Hesiod.' The real question is whether this conclusion, too, of modern liberalism is to be admitted, like the conclusion that traditionary religion is unsound and obsolete. And it does not find many gainsayers. Obscurantists are glad to see the question placed on this footing: that the cause of traditionary religion, and the cause of Christianity in general, must stand or fall together. For they see but very little way into the future; and in the immediate present this way of putting the question tells, as they clearly perceive, in their favour. In the immediate present many will be tempted to cling to the traditionary religion with their eyes shut, rather than accept the extinction of Christianity. Other friends of religion are busy with fantastic projects, which can never come to anything, but which prevent their seeing the real character of the situation. So the thesis of modern liberals on the Continent, that Christianity in general stands on the same footing as traditionary religion and must share its fate, meets with little direct discussion or opposition. And liberal opinion everywhere will at last grow accustomed to finding that thesis put forward as certain, will become familiarised with it, will suppose that no one disputes it. This in itself will tend to withhold men from any serious return upon their own minds in the matter. Meanwhile the day will most certainly arrive, when the great body of liberal opinion in this country will adhere to the first half of the doctrine of Continental liberals;—will admit that traditionary religion is utterly untenable. And the danger is, that from the habits of their minds, and from seeing the thing treated as certain, and from hearing nothing urged against it, our liberals may admit as indisputable the second half of the doctrine too: that Christianity, also, is untenable.

And therefore is it so all-important to insist on what I call the natural truth of Christianity, and to bring this out all we can. Liberal opinion tends, as we have seen, to treat traditional religion and Christianity as identical; if one is unsound, so is the other. Especially, however, does liberal opinion show this tendency among the Latin nations, on whom Protestantism did not lay hold; and it shows it most among those Latin nations of whom Protestantism laid hold least, such as Italy and Spain. For Protestantism was undoubtedly, whatever may have been its faults and miscarriages, an assertion of the natural truth of Christianity for the mind and conscience of men. The question is, whether Christianity has this natural truth or not. It is a question of fact. In the end the victory belongs to facts, and he who contradicts them finds that he runs his head against a wall. Our traditional religion turns out not to have, in fact, natural truth, the only truth which can stand. The miracles of our traditional religion, like other miracles, did not happen; its metaphysical proofs of God are mere words. Has or has not Christianity, in fact, the same want of natural truth as our traditional religion? It is a question of immense importance. Of questions about religion, it may be said to be at the present time, for a serious man, the only important one.

Now, whoever seeks to show the natural truth of a thing which professes to be for general use, ought to try to be as simple as possible. He ought not to allow himself to have any recourse either to intellectual refinements or to sentimental rhetoric. And therefore it is well to start, in bringing out the truth of Christianity, with a plain proposition such as everybody, one would think, must admit: the proposition that conduct is a very important matter. I have called conduct three-fourths of life. M. Challemel-Lacour quarrels greatly with the proposition. Certainly people in general do not behave as if they were convinced that conduct is three-fourths of life. Butler well says that even religious people are always for placing the stress of their religion anywhere other than on virtue;—virtue being simply the good direction of conduct. We know, too, that the Italians at the Renascence changed the very meaning of the word virtue altogether, and made their virtù mean a love of the fine arts and of intellectual culture. And we see the fruits of the new definition in the Italy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We will not, then, there being all this opposition, offer to settle the exact proportion of life which conduct may be said to be. But that conduct is, at any rate, a very considerable part of life, will generally be admitted.

It will generally be admitted, too, that all experience as to conduct brings us at last to the fact of two selves, or instincts, or forces,—name them how we will, and however we may suppose them to have arisen,—contending for the mastery in man: one, a movement of first impulse and more involuntary, leading us to gratify any inclination that may solicit us, and called generally a movement of man's ordinary or passing self, of sense, appetite, desire; the other, a movement of reflexion and more voluntary, leading us to submit inclination to some rule, and called generally a movement of man's higher or enduring self, of reason, spirit, will. The thing is described in different words by different nations and men relating their experience of it, but as to the thing itself they all, or all the most serious and important among them, agree. This, I think, will be admitted. Nor will it be denied that they all come to the conclusion that for a man to obey the higher self, or reason, or whatever it is to be called, is happiness and life for him; to obey the lower is death and misery. It will be allowed, again, that whatever men's minds are to fasten and rest upon, whatever is to hold their attention and to rule their practice, naturally embodies itself for them in certain examples, precepts, and sayings, to which they perpetually recur. Without a frame or body of this kind, a set of thoughts cannot abide with men and sustain them. 'If ye abide in me,' says Jesus, 'ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free;'—not if you keep skipping about all over the world for various renderings of it. 'It behoves us to know,' says Epictetus, 'that a principle can hardly establish itself with a man, unless he every day utters the same things, hears the same things, and applies them withal to his life.' And naturally the body of examples and precepts, which men should use for this purpose, ought to be those which most impressively represent the principle, or the set of thoughts, commending itself to their minds for respect and attention. And the more the precepts are used, the more will men's sentiments cluster around them, and the more dear and solemn will they be.

Now to apply this to Christianity. It is evident that to what they called righteousness,—a name which covers all that we mean by conduct,—the Jewish nation attached preeminent, unique importance. This impassioned testimony of theirs to the weight of a thing admittedly of very considerable importance, has its own value of a special kind. But it is well known how imperfectly