Christianity and out of it; and for its Boaz Conduct--that is to say,
a morality at least as rigid as that of the purest Judaism, though
more amiable. If dogma is to be banished, so is anything like licence;
and in the very book itself Mr Arnold formulated, against his once
(and still partly) beloved France, something like that denunciation of
her worship of Lubricity which he afterwards put more plainly still.
Even Hellenism, the lauded Hellenism, is told to mend its ways (indeed
there was need for it), and the Literature-without-Dogmatist will have
to behave himself with an almost Pharisaic correctness, though in
point of belief he is to be piously Sadducee.

Now this is all very pretty and very creditable, but it will not work.
The goods, to use the vulgar but precise formula of English law, "are
not of the nature and quality demanded by the purchaser." Nobody wants
a religion of that sort. Conduct is good; poetic appreciation is
perhaps better, though not for the general. But then religion happens
to be something different from either, though no doubt closely
connected with both. Mr Arnold does not exactly offer us a stone for
bread, but he does, like the benevolent French princess in the story,
offer us pie-crust. Pie-crust is a good thing; it is a close
connection of bread; but it will not do for a substitute, and, in
addition, it is much more difficult for the general to obtain.
Moreover, there is a serious, a historical, difficulty about Conduct
_plus_ poetic appreciation, but _minus_ what we call religion. Mr
Arnold, in a stately sonnet, has told us that Sophocles was his ideal
as a life-philosopher who was also a poet. He knew, presumably, the
stories told about Sophocles in Athenæus, and though these might be
idle scandal, he knew far too much not to be aware that there is
nothing intrinsically impossible about them. It would have been rather
interesting to hear him fully on this subject. But he was too busy