Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 401 pages of information about Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold.

Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 401 pages of information about Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold.

[49] So sincere is my dislike to all personal attack and controversy, that I abstain from reprinting, at this distance of time from the occasion which called them forth, the essays in which I criticized Dr. Colenso’s book; I feel bound, however, after all that has passed, to make here a final declaration of my sincere impenitence for having published them.  Nay, I cannot forbear repeating yet once more, for his benefit and that of his readers, this sentence from my original remarks upon him; There is truth of science and truth of religion; truth of science does not become truth of religion till it is made religious. And I will add:  Let us have all the science there is from the men of science; from the men of religion let us have religion.[Arnold.]

John William Colenso (1814-83), Bishop of Natal, published a series of treatises on the Pentateuch, extending from 1862-1879, opposing the traditional views about the literal inspiration of the Scriptures and the actual historical character of the Mosaic story.  Arnold’s censorious criticism of the first volume of this work is entitled The Bishop and the Philosopher (Macmillan’s Magazine, January, 1863).  As an example of the Bishop’s cheap “arithmetical demonstrations” he describes him as presenting the case of Leviticus as follows:  “’If three priests have to eat 264 pigeons a day, how many must each priest eat?’ That disposes of Leviticus.”  The essay is devoted chiefly to contrasting Bishop Colenso’s unedifying methods with those of the philosopher Spinoza.  In passing, Arnold refers also to Dr. Stanley’s Sinai and Palestine (1856), quotations from which are characterized as “the refreshing spots” in the Bishop’s volume.

[50] It has been said I make it “a crime against literary criticism and the higher culture to attempt to inform the ignorant.”  Need I point out that the ignorant are not informed by being confirmed in a confusion? [Arnold.]

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[51] Joubert’s Pensees, ed. 1850, II, 102, titre 23, 54.

[52] Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-81), Dean of Westminster.  He was the author of a Life of (Thomas) Arnold, 1844.  In university politics and in religious discussions he was a Liberal and the advocate of toleration and comprehension.

[53] Frances Power Cobbe (1822-1904), a prominent English philanthropist and woman of letters.  The quotation below is from Broken Lights (1864), p. 134.  Her Religious Duty (1857), referred to on p. 46, is a book of religious and ethical instruction written from the Unitarian point of view.

[54] Ernest Renan (1823-92), French philosopher and Orientalist.  The Vie de Jesus (1863), here referred to, was begun in Syria and is filled with the atmosphere of the East, but is a work of literary rather than of scholarly importance.

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Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.