trying to cover his retreat by alarums and excursions.

_God and the Bible_ tells much the same tale. It originally
appeared by instalments in the _Contemporary Review_, where it
must have been something of a choke-pear even for the readers of that
then young and thoughtful periodical. Unless the replier has the
vigour of Swift, or at least of Bentley, the adroitness in fence of
Pascal, or at least of Voltaire, "replies, duplies, quadruplies" are
apt to be wofully tedious reading, and Mr Arnold was rather a
_veles_ than a _triarius_ of controversy. He could harass,
but he did not himself stand harassing very well; and here he was not
merely the object of attacks from all sides, but was most uneasily
conscious that, in some cases at least, he did not wish his enemies to
destroy each other. He had absolutely no sympathy with the rabid
anti-Christianity of Clifford, very little with the mere agnosticism
of Huxley; he wanted to be allowed to take just so much Biblical
criticism as suited him and no more. He wished to prove, in his own
remarkable way, the truth and necessity of Christianity, and to this
wish the contradictions of sinners were too manifold. One must be
stony-hearted not to feel some pity for him, as, just when he thinks
he has evaded an orthodox brick, the tile of a disbeliever in the
Fourth Gospel whizzes at him; or as, while he is trying to patch up
his romantic reconstructions of imaginary Jewish history and religion,
the push of some aggressive reviewer bids him make good his challenge
to metaphysical theologians. But this interest is only passing.

In the Preface there is indeed some of the old attempt at liveliness.
Professor Clifford himself, then dead, is disposed of with a not
ungraceful mixture of pity and satire; Messrs Moody and Sankey are not
unpleasantly rallied; Satan and Tisiphone, Mr Ruskin and Sir Robert