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ND. now it is necessary to take up the argument by

which Arnold links the Old Testament with the New. The orthodox view is that the earlier Scripture foreshadows the later, that the prophetic "dispensation," though quite superseded by that which came with Jesus Christ, yet prepared for it the way, and so must be regarded as a necessary part of the Divine scheme for the redemption of humanity. Arnold accepts the orthodox view as a fact, but he places upon the fact his own interpretation. Most important for the understanding of this is his estimate of the figure of Christ and His meaning for mankind. He likewise regards Christ as the Messiah, the Anointed One, the world's Truth and Light. But He was not the Messiah upon whom the hopes of Israel centred, nor was the salvation which He offered that which orthodox Christianity has made the groundwork of faith in His person and gospel.

How came it that Israel's perception of righteousness

gradually lost in clearness and hence in its compelling power upon conduct? Arnold replies:

"Those courses of conduct which Israel's intuition of the Eternal had originally touched with emotion and made religion lay chiefly national and social duties.

in the line of And national and

social duties are peculiarly capable of a mechanical exterior performance, in which the heart has no share. One may observe rites and ceremonies, hate idolatry, abstain from murder and theft and false witness, and yet have one's inward thoughts bad, callous, and disordered. Then even the admitted duties themselves come to be ill-discharged or set at nought, because the emotion which was the only certain security for their good discharge is wanting.'

Hence the thing needed was that Israel should be thrown back upon his own mind, that to his religion should be imparted more feeling, more sincerity,—to use Arnold's favourite word, more "inwardness." To do justice, to discharge social duties, to abstain from outward irregularities of conduct, to observe a quite respectable passive, unemotional morality is possible without any genuine elevation of disposition or purity of heart. This had become the experience of Israel, and his restoration to the earlier and loftier ideal of righteousness was to come about by making religion a personal and individual rather than a social and collective service. The prophets of old had never pressed 1 Literature and Dogma, chapter iii.

home with sufficient force this duty of inwardness, of personal application; Christ, however, did it and made it the burden of His gospel. The Pharisee, who lost sight of the true essentials of religion and righteousness in the mechanical discharge of perfunctory duties, He bade cleanse first the inside of the cup that the outside may be clean also," and pointing to the zealots of the law, by way of warning rather than commendation, Christ told His disciples that unless their righteousness exceeded (or, were better than) theirs, it would not profit them. "Jesus Christ found Israel all astray, with an endless talk about God, the law, righteousness, the kingdom, everlasting lifeand no real hold upon any one of them. Israel's old sure proof of being in the right way, his test which anybody could at once apply- the sanction of joy and peace was plainly wanting." To a people which was "seething with inward unrest, irritation, and trouble," Christ brought the key to peace, joy, and blessedness. Seizing the old master-idea of righteousness, He searched, sifted, renewed it, and gave it back

1

'The reader of the Vie de Jésus will remember Renan's description of the restlessness and discontent of the age in which Christ was born, but he finds the reasons to have been more political than theological or moral. "Jesus, as soon as he began to think, entered into the burning atmosphere which was created in Palestine by the ideas we have just stated. . . Continual seditions, excited by the zealots of Mosaism, did not cease, in fact, to agitate Jerusalem during all this time. . . . Galilee was thus an immense furnace wherein the most diverse elements were seething," etc.

to Israel in a completely convincing, an incalculably inspiring form.

"Jesus made His followers first look within and examine themselves; He made them feel that they had a best and real self as opposed to their ordinary and apparent one, and that their happiness depended on saving this best self from being overborne. Then to find his own soul, his true and permanent self, became set up in man's view as his chief concern, as the secret of happiness; and so it really is.

"And by recommending, and still more by Himself exemplifying in His own practice, by showing active in Himself, with the most prepossessing pureness, clearness, and beauty, the two qualities by which our ordinary self is indeed most essentially counteracted, selfrenouncement and mildness, He made His followers feel that in these qualities lay the secret of their best selves; that to attain them was in the highest degree requisite and natural, and that a man's whole happiness depended upon it...

"He put things in such a way that His hearer was led to take each rule or fact of conduct by its inward side, its effect on the heart and character; then the reason of the thing, the meaning of what had been mere matter of blind rule, flashed upon him. The hearer could distinguish between what was only ceremony and what was conduct; and the hardest rule of conduct came to appear to him infinitely reasonable and natural, and therefore infinitely prepossessing. A

return upon themselves, and a consequent intuition of the truth and reason of the matter of conduct in question, gave to men for right action the clearness, spirit, energy, happiness they had lost." '

So while the Old Testament said, "Attend to conduct!" Christ in the New said, "Attend first to the feelings and dispositions whence conduct proceeds!" In this way the idea of righteousness which had ever dominated the Hebrew spirit derived a new inspiration and furnished a new incentive. The devout Hebrew looked for the coming of a visible kingdom of God, wherein righteousness should dwell. Christ said, "Look for it within; when the inner man is transformed all is transformed."

Again and again, with that fondness-some would perhaps say weakness-for iteration which characterises him, Arnold speaks of the "method" and the "secret of Jesus. The method we have seen: it is the method of inwardness, aiming at the transformation of conduct, that greater part of life;-" the setting up a great unceasing inward movement of attention and verification in matters which are three-fourths of life, where to see true and verify is not difficult,—the difficult thing is to care and attend. And the inducement to care and attend was because joy and peace, missed on every other line, were to be reached on this."

And the "secret" was the renunciation of self, that is, the old self, so that the new and true self might 1 Literature and Dogma, chapter iii.