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working in aid of God and Jesus, even the spirit of Truth." But is this Spirit, then, one with God, with "the power not themselves"? Again, Mr. Arnold gives them no help, but rather puzzles them further by calling the "paraclete" in another place the intuition of reality" in yourself; in a third place, the muse of righteousness," contrasting it with "the muse of art or science," which visited Hesiod when he was tending his sheep on the side of Helicon, and which, according to Mr. Arnold, was an "equally real" influence, equally also "a spirit of Truth."

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And now let us turn to Mr. Maurice, of whose theology Mr. Arnold speaks in such pitying, almost contemptuous, tones. He, at any rate, has never avoided the real "pinch of the matter," has indeed urged, during a long life, with never-tiring insistance, that we must at our peril know what we mean by God. He has also made, as clear as words can make it, what he means. God, for Mr. Maurice, is a perfectly loving Father, who has revealed Himself in this character, and is speaking to men by a Son. That Son has been made flesh, has taken men's nature, has dwelt among them, and "in Him is the light of men." His Spirit is in men, speaking to the conscience of each, teaching them how they may

be one with Him (namely, through His method, His secret, and sweet reasonableness, as Mr. Arnold would say). This Spirit will guide them into all truth; is the same Spirit who reveals artistic and scientific, as well as religious truth to them-irreligious truth Mr. Maurice did not recognize; is the Spirit who is leading them to search for Him in the laws of His universe; is the "Muse" of Hesiod, the "dæmon" of Socrates.

Now this belief is at any rate as clear of “metaphysical apparatus as Mr. Arnold's own. Is it not also infinitely clearer and simpler in itself? Does it leave us in any of those mists as to the Son of God, and the Spirit of God, which Mr. Arnold raises but entirely fails to dissipate?

One can understand enlightened teachers of our day, to whom the very name of Christian has become an offence, turning aside from such a belief in annoyance and anger as indeed so many of them have done-when they recognize in it simply the old creed, which every child in Christendom has been repeating these eighteen hundred years; but that any one of them who really takes the pains to read Mr. Maurice can maintain that the belief itself does not stand out on the face of all his writings, in white light, as plain as words can make it, is less easy

to understand. The only explanation (if they have read him) would seem to be that they cannot take his words in their plain natural sense, or believe that one, whom they cannot help acknowledging to be as familiar with all the philosophical systems of the world, and as thorough a master of all their shibboleths as themselves, can be really meaning what he seems to say, when he says this.

Valuable as "Literature and Dogma" will prove to many of his countrymen, the author may assure himself that no one who has learnt from Mr. Maurice will ever be able to think of, or believe in, righteousness without a righteous Being (or Person, if Mr. Arnold will allow us to use a word which offends him more than any other in the "metaphysical apparatus"), will ever be able to think of, or believe in, Providence or foresight, without One who provides, or foresees. But they will rejoice, as their master would have done, to see so cultivated a thinker as Mr. Arnold bravely and earnestly contending for righteousness, and for the "method," "secret," and "sweet reasonableness," of Christ, though unable to accept what are to them the necessary conclusions from his own premises.

And now let us turn for a moment to the apostles of our other modern Gospels, who have, in like manner,

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cast pitying or angry words at Mr. Maurice and his theology, or have misunderstood and misstated it in ways which have pained him, while living, more than any abuse would have done.

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We are asked by one clever school to write humanity with a big H, and then to fall down and worship it. This, knowing what we ourselves are, and seeing what the remaining items who make up mankind in our time are about, we must decline to do. But, learning from Mr. Maurice, we can worship with our whole hearts, a perfect man, whom we have come to know not only as made in the image of, but as one with, God; and through whom we can recognize and reverence the humanity in every man.

His own reply to an otherwise friendly reviewer of this school cannot, at any rate, be reckoned amongst sayings hard to understand. "He affirms," wrote Mr. Maurice, "that I have rendered into a theological dialect the conceptions of humanity which prevail in our age. I have affirmed that those conceptions of humanity, when separated from the old foundation, which is simply, broadly, satisfactorily announced in the formularies that are repeated by children and peasants in all parts of Christendom, are narrow, impractical, inhuman." (Preface to "Social Morality,” p. xiv.)

Mr. Morley, representing, I suppose, another school of the most advanced thinkers, denounced Mr. Maurice's Lectures on the Conscience, as outraging I know not what systems of philosophy, and lying entirely outside all orthodox methods of thought on such subjects. Those who have learnt from him to ask themselves what they mean by "I," and have found his method stand every test to which they can put it, will not be troubled about systems of philosophy, any more than Mr. Arnold is, or than Molière's servant-girl was troubled about the laws of carte and tierce. They have come to see that neither Butler nor Paley, nor any other philosopher, Christian or heathen, invented the questions about a conscience, or can set them to rest. "They do not exist," as Mr. Maurice says, "in a Volume of Sermons at the Rolls, or of Lectures on Moral Philosophy. If you have not a conscience, Butler will not give it you. If you have one, Paley cannot take it away. They can only, between them, set you on considering what it is, and what it is not."

On another side "the Revolution," writ also with a big R, is held up to us as the only object of faith for intelligent persons in the times we live in. We glory in our own time, with all its searchings, distresses, perplexities, as much as they; but prefer, with Mr.

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