hod had not been pushed
_ad absurdum_, as it was later by his friend M. Renan in the
_Histoire d'Israel_, to the dismay and confusion of no less
intelligent and unorthodox a critic than his other friend, M. Scherer.
But it is more or less the method of all Biblical criticism of this
sort, and Mr Arnold follows it blindly.

Again, the chief bent of the book is to establish that "miracles do
not happen." Alas! it is Mr Arnold's unhappy lot that if miracles
_do_ happen his argument confessedly disappears, while even if
miracles do not happen it is, for his purpose, valueless. Like almost
all critics of his class recently, especially like Professor Huxley in
another division, he appears not to comprehend what, to the believers
in the supernatural, the supernatural means. He applies, as they all
apply, the tests of the natural, and says, "Now really, you know,
these tests are destructive." He says--he cannot prove--that miracles
do not happen now; his adversaries, if they were wise, would simply
answer, "_Apres?_" Do any of them pretend to prescribe to their
God that His methods shall be always the same, or that those methods
shall stand the tests of the laboratory and the School of Charters?
that He shall give "a good title," like a man who is selling a house?
Some at least would rather not; they would feel appallingly little
interest in a Divinity after this sworn-attorney and
chartered-accountant fashion, who must produce vouchers for all His
acts. And further (to speak with reverence), the Divinity whom they
_do_ worship would be likely to answer Mr Arnold in the words of
a prophet of Mr Arnold's own--

"Du gleichst dem Geist den du begreifst,
Nicht Mir!"

But this is not all. There is not only begging of the question but
ignoring of the issue. _Literature and Dogma_, to do it strict
justice, is certainly not, in intention at any rate, a destructive
book. It is meant, and meant very seriously, to be constructive--to
provide a substitute for the effete religion of Hooker and Wilson, of
Laud and Pusey, as well as for that of Baxter and Wesley and Mr Miall.
This new religion is to have for its Jachin Literature--that is to
say, a delicate aesthetic appreciation of all that is beautiful in
Christianity and out of it; and for its Boaz Conduct--that is to say,
a morality at least as rigid as that of the purest Judaism, though
more amiable. If dogma is to be banished, so is anything like licence;
and in the very book i