just as Quintus Smyrnæus and Tryphiodorus expressed the customs of a later age, that in which they lived, so the author of the Odyssey expressed the customs of a later, that is, of his

own age.

When the Alexandrine poets-of whom, though we are not. at all inclined to consider the author of the Odyssey to have been of the number, for that would be altogether inadmissible, yet we contend that his and their mode of composition had one common resemblance-set about the writing of their poems, they did not-as Lehrs informs us, and from whom we borrow these remarks-take up fables, or manners, and customs, or turns of phraseology, or even the idioms of the Greek language where Homer left them. They planted their foot on the same ground as the great poet himself; they took up incidents and persons that happened and figured in the world at about the period of the Trojan war; but they did not watch and copy Homer as closely and servilely as though they had no other precedents to follow.

As ages rolled on, Greek poetry gradually progressed, now for a time consisting in imitation as close as in the Odyssey, and now in imitation as loose as in the Halieutics; then, partly from a change of taste in the audiences, partly from an altered state of literature, partly from a bold and inventive genius springing up, it assumed fresh colours. For all that, the author of the Odyssey and the Alexandrine poets went on reproducing the colours with which Homer had provided them. Of these they wished to be not only imitators but amplifiers and innovators. Unless it had been so, we should not have the history of Greek epic poetry with its ages so distinctly marked and its limits so clearly defined. They did not want to be faithful chroniclers and historiographers, but poets. For the purposes of imitation Homer was always before their eyes. It may have been because he came the readiest to their memory; it may have been because he caught the popular taste; hence the secret of Homer permeating, as it were, the whole range of Greek poetry. The reproduction of his style was aimed at by each succeeding poet; they gathered up the little fragments of his epithets and phrases, fondly fancying that the result of their intellectual and imaginative faculties would be a product strongly suggestive of the Homeric mind and equally captivating to public audiences, just as in these modern times, for a very long while after the reigns of Elizabeth and James, all the writers of plays, who were desirous of successfully catering for the public in providing dramatic entertainment, picked up their crumbs from the banquet-table of Shakspeare.

ART. IV.-St. Paul and Protestantism; with an Introduction on Puritanism and the Church of England. By MATTHEW ARNOLD, M.A., D.C.L., formerly Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Oriel College. London: 1870.

MR. ARNOLD has done good service by this analysis of the nature and causes of religious separation, and the picture he presents in contrast with it of pure unsectarian Christianity. Not that either the one or the other was likely to be accepted as just or true by his Nonconformist readers. That, indeed, was hardly to be expected, even had he abstained from irritating language, which to one of his fine humour and keen sense of the grotesque was peculiarly difficult. But sincere and earnest men do not lightly part with cherished convictions; and besides, we cannot deny that much of his criticism is hardly fair, and much of his own positive system obviously inadequate. Still no slight impression is often made by remarks which are very indignantly resented; and so we think it is in this case. The echoes which Mr. Arnold's somewhat irreverent footsteps have awakened will not soon die away from the precincts he has invaded. Nor is it altogether a misnomer to call them echoes. For the excuses which have been poured forth so volubly from the Dissenting press have something in them, after all, of the self-accusation which excuses proverbially imply. And, certainly, there has been no lack of these since the publication of Mr. Arnold's book. Newspapers, journals, magazines, reviews, pamphlets, speeches, have been full of replies to it, ranging from gentle remonstrances and deprecatory apologies to the fiercest and most unsparing retorts. But the clearing of themselves,' with which our Nonconformist friends have been so largely occupied, the indignation, the fear, the vehement desire, yea, the revenge,' cannot but have a reactionary effect for good; leading them to abandon as well as to disclaim much of the narrowness which provokes such adverse criticism, and preparing the way for that deeper and truer union of the future which we do not despair of seeing ultimately effected.

It cannot be said that Mr. Arnold has come off unscathed from the encounters he had provoked. In many of the arguments and counter-statements of his antagonists we cordially We are glad above all to accept the account which they offer of themselves, and on the other hand we cannot but allow how insufficiently Mr. Arnold has set forth the essence

concur.

of Christian doctrine. But in all this we do not doubt that he is pretty nearly of the same mind with us; and, assuredly, we feel that we are in substantial agreement with him rather than with the best and most successful of his opponents. For his object is to open the way for all to the unity of a broader and more comprehensive Church than has ever yet been formed; theirs to defend existing divisions, and to relegate union to a future indefinitely remote, while refusing to employ for that purpose the means which the present has inherited from the past.

In the polemical portion of Mr. Arnold's book his argument is this-that the denominational bodies, placing their centre of coherence and resting their whole principle of action in some strongly defined dogmatic system, are proceeding on assumptions essentially wrong and mischievous. They are building on a basis which deliberately confines Christianity to a mere section of the ground it is designed to cover. As all human estimates of theoretical truth are necessarily defective and continually needing reconsideration, the growth of thought and knowledge must perforce undermine the foundations of such religious bodies; and their very existence, having at best but a temporary use, is one whose termination is to be desired and accelerated.

He was led to this course of argument by the observation of M. Renan, in his recent work on St. Paul, that the reign of that Apostle is manifestly drawing to a close, together with the Protestantism which is bound up with it. Mr. Arnold, on the contrary, maintains that the moral reign of the great Apostle is really only just begun, and that his fundamental 'ideas, disengaged from the elaborate misconceptions with which Protestantism has overlaid them, will have an influence in the future greater than any which they have yet had' (p. 66). M. Renan's mistake arises from his regarding sectarian bodies, and those especially of the Calvinists, as the real exponents of Protestant and Pauline doctrines, and from the wrong estimate which he has thus formed of St. Paul himself seen through the medium of his followers. A juster appreciation of the Pauline Epistles, and a truer perception of their main purpose, will lead, and is leading us even now, to far different conclusions-conclusions which will help to emancipate the Christian Church from the narrowness, hardness, and exclusiveness which cramp our religious systems.

In all this we are entirely in agreement with Mr. Arnold; and if in many points of detail we find ourselves at issue with him, we claim none the less to be fellow-workers in the same

cause; feeling as he does that our own opinions are but tentative efforts to arrive at truth-efforts in support of which we welcome every corrective aid, even if it come in the shape of refutation.

Our author with some reason divides the Protestant sects of England into the two classes of Calvinist and Lutheran. To whatever extent this classification must be modified, there can be little doubt of the truth of his statement that both of these are beginning now to shrink from the unmitigated assertion of the notions from which they started-the Calvinist from the notion of predestination, which puts an insuperable barrier of God's own decree between man and man, excluding whole masses of the human race from the mercies of their Creator and from the brotherhood of their fellows-the Lutheran (with its offshoots of Arminian and Wesleyan) from the notion of solifidianism, which establishes a barrier equally exclusive though not so impervious, and rests the sympathy of Christians not in their moral aims and common allegiance, but in persuasions and impressions which depend on individual temperament or accidental conjunctures. From both of these views the better and nobler minds which have grown up in the communion of the several denominations are now manifestly shrinking, and show an evident desire to give a new turn to their distinctive tenets, and to substitute for them something less narrow and less offensive.

But if there be a tendency to abandon these tenets, ought there not to be a readiness to abandon the separate organisations also which zeal for those tenets has created? Such would assuredly be the effect of real consistency in the separatists. But of such a result there seems little hope at present. The strength of habit, the influence of sects, the exigencies of an existing position, all strongly tend the other way. Separation will be maintained; and for the purpose of justifying it, fresh ground must be taken. What, then, will that ground be? Mr. Arnold expresses his apprehension (and we fear with only too much reason) that it will be more and more (what it is already so largely) the ground of political dissent-opposition to a National Church, on the plea that it is an institution unwarranted by Scripture-opposition enhanced by jealousy of the privileges conceded to the Church, and manifesting itself in unceasing efforts to assail and destroy it.

Such is the tendency which even now is too apparent in all denominations of Nonconformists, including those who at one time showed little inclination to the anti-State-Church theory.

Few men have had such opportunities as Mr. Arnold of observing the temper and tendency of the Dissenting bodies. For many years he has been brought, as school inspector, into contact with the more active members, both lay and clerical, of the different denominations. Going among them with no hereditary prejudice certainly, and with no predilections of his own for the exclusive pretensions of the Established Church, he is a witness, as impartial as he is competent, of the spirit which pervades their policy, a spirit which we may be sure has never been exhibited before him in an exaggerated form. A Churchman himself, and an official of the State, he has also many personal qualities which ensure that the better side of Nonconformist principles would generally be presented to him. We fear, therefore, that we must conclude from the tone of his remonstrances how largely and increasingly this violent political feeling prevails among Dissenters. To this feeling he addresses himself through a large part of his book, especially the section called Puritanism and the Church of England,' earnestly expostulating on the change of position, no less than the unreasonableness of the position itself; while in the latter half of the volume he reasons more elaborately, and with a seriousness rarely interrupted by the light raillery of which he is so consummate a master, on the difference between St. Paul's doctrines and those of the systems which are ostensibly based on it. We purpose now to cast a glance on both of these departments of controversy, not so much accompanying Mr. Arnold (whose work, indeed, we hope that all our readers know already, or will make acquaintance with) as following on the same side, and dealing especially with those points on which his antagonists have demurred to his principles or his conclusions.

I. And, first, with regard to the characteristic differences between Puritanism and the Church of England-or, more correctly speaking, between it and a National Church.

Mr. Arnold, we have seen, lays it down as an unquestionable fact that Puritanism and the Puritan sects originated in the express purpose of proclaiming and maintaining certain doctrines supposed to be insufficiently held or insufficiently inculcated by the Church, though constituting in their view the sum and substance of the Gospel. This he asserts to be the very essence of Puritanism. And now that these doctrines begin to look dubious, even in the eyes of their former advocates, so that Dissent can no longer ground itself on Puritanism proper, he charges Nonconformists with the very questionable conduct of shifting the foundation on which they build, and