MATTHEW ARNOLD'S APOSTOLATE

LEST the purpose of this essay be misunderstood, we distinctly disavow at the outset any disposition to disparage Matthew Arnold—a man of extraordinary inherited gifts, rare cultivation, pure character and unsullied life; nor are we vain enough to imagine that it is within our power to lower the estimate which the intelligent world puts upon him. Our sole purpose, now and here, is to discuss the nature and value of a particular type of culture, and especially to consider the wisdom and effect of Arnold's apostolate to those both inside and outside of the churches whom he called Philistines.

In view of his sharp attacks upon and stinging censures of the churches, it should not be regarded as illegitimate, rude, or improper for any representative of the churches to criticize his crusade while defending those whom he attacked.

To speak of Arnold as an apostle is not unwarranted. He regarded himself as an apostle-the Apostle to the Philistines. Mr. Frank Harris, one-time editor of the Fortnightly Review, called Arnold an apostle "The latest Apostle to the Gentiles."

Acolyte and thurifer before the high altar of Christianity, bearer of lights designed to shed a better illumination in the dim temple of our mod

ern worship, and swinger of a jeweled censer intended to diffuse fragrance through its malodorous air-such Matthew Arnold, self-appointed apostle of sweetness and light, supposed himself to be, in what was on the whole the most pretentious apostolate seen in intelligent circles in modern times—an apostolate, not from the church, but to it, and applying the most candid and cutting criticism that Christian churches have ever received from a culture which owed itself to Christianity.

It may be noted in passing that the favorite phrase of this imposing apostolate, the phrase "Sweetness and Light," was not original with Arnold, but was borrowed from Swift, who, in his Battle of the Books, commends the bees for their exemplary industry as producers of honey and wax, and then suggests in a moralizing way, that honey and wax-candles are fit emblems of "the two loveliest of things, sweetness and light." Spiritualizing the words, "sweetness and light," to signify beauty and intelligence, Arnold made them the text and motto of his ostentatious embassy to the churches and by incessant repetition gave wider vogue, along with higher meaning, to Swift's redolent and refulgent phrase. In particular he proclaimed that beauty and intelligence are the two elements most lacking and most needed in our current religion. Especially in one famous essay he expounded his new and better gospel of sweetness and light, Arnold's "Heav

enly Twins." That essay is in reality a study of ideals of human perfection and a setting forth of what this apostle of culture considers the true ideal. The current Christian conception of Perfection he criticizes as faulty and segmental. The perfection aimed at by the religious bodies he regards as meager and unattractive, consisting, he says, merely in conquering the faults of our animality and producing a human nature perfect only on the moral side. The true ideal, and only worthy goal of aspiration and endeavor, is, he insists, “a human nature perfect on all its sides," a manhood teres atque rotundus, a perfection many-sided, polished, and complete. For the source and sanction of this fine ideal he goes, not to the New Testament, but to the ancient pagan Greeks, with whose spiritual preeminence he seems profoundly impressed. He attributes what he calls" the immense spiritual superiority of the Greeks" to their being "inspired with a central and happy idea of Perfection"; and tells us that the finely tempered and harmonious perfection which the Greeks conceived of was produced by "subordinating all else to the formation of spirit and character." And surely, beyond dispute, that is the way to produce it. But do we need Arnold or the old Greeks to tell us that? Does not the most accessible of books, a little volume called the New Testament, a volume as modern as it is ancient, and more widely circulated in one year than Arnold's writings can be in a thou

sand years, teach exactly that? Is not that its plan for producing a finely tempered and harmonious perfection, namely, by the spiritualization and refinement of man's nature through conquering the faults of his animality and subordinating everything to the formation of spirit and character? And does not Christianity furnish what Grecian culture never had, and what Matthew Arnold's personality is far from presenting, a perfect Pattern, Christ Jesus, not to mention the addition of a divine enabling by the impartation from above of a spirit of power and love and sanity? Arnold really brings us no news whatever, increases our spiritual knowledge not one whit, adds nothing to the New Testament, but, on the contrary, as will be noted later, takes something away. When this messenger, arriving from ancient Greece by way of Rugby and Oxford, labors to impress upon Christian people the transcendent beauty of "a human life aspiring with all its organs after sweetness, light, and perfection," the Christian people wonderingly reply that they learned that long ago from a Teacher greater than Arnold-greater than all Greek sages from the one supreme authority and exemplar, the one only perfect character, living the one only perfect life, who either by his own lips or the mouth of his messengers says in substance to his disciples, "Be ye perfect, not merely in restraining your carnal nature, but in adding virtue to virtue, grace to grace, in all things lovely

and true and pure and of good report, till you attain the finished stature of perfect manhood, teres atque rotundus, and are presented faultless at last before the throne of His glory."

This self-appointed censor of the religious bodies, this disparager of their ideals, feels obliged to concede that the Christian churches have accomplished much good and produced much happiness, and that theirs was the most considerable movement toward Perfection extant until he launched his cult of culture; yet so imperfect do the churches seem to him that he marvels how cultivated persons can adhere to them and how vast multitudes of sane people can continue to believe in such faulty organizations, and can stand ready to support them, not only with money, but with their very life-blood, as he plainly sees to be the fact. His opinion of the ideals held and the fruits produced in character and life by the religious bodies requires strong language to express. He charges the members of those bodies with "hideousness and rawness." He wants to teach these raw persons to like what is really beautiful, graceful, and becoming; wants these "raw and unkindled masses to be touched with sweetness and light"; wants to take the vulgarity out of the religion of the churches so as to make it a really refined, respectable, genteel sort of faith such as cultivated and elegant persons like himself can consent to entertain.