ing of our highest thoughts, but we must disown them altogether. We must unclothe ourselves of our spiritual heritage, and turn into the bleak open tracts of nature with no future before us and only superstition behind us. As the prospect is miserable, the necessity is unreasonable. There can be no true progress in cutting ourselves adrift from the highest results of former progress. For as a great if sometimes erratic writer of our own time has well said in a recent volume "The knowledge of mankind, though continually increasing, is built pinnacle after pinnacle on the foundation of those adamant stories of ancient soul" -the scriptures of past ages. "It is the law of progressive human life that we shall not build in the air, but in the already high-storied temple of the thoughts of our ancestors: in the crannies and under the eaves we are meant for the most part to nest ourselves like swallows, though the stronger of us sometimes may bring for increase of height some small white stone, and on the stone a new name written, which is, indeed, done by those ordered to such masonry, but never without modest submission to the Eternal Wisdom; nor ever in any great degree except by persons trained reverently in some large portion of the wisdom of the past.' 1 Ruskin's Bibliotheca Pastorum, vol. i., Economist of Xenophon, Editor's Preface, pp. x, xi. S AUTHORITIES. 1. Literature and Dogma: an Essay towards a better Apprehension of the Bible. By Matthew Arnold, D.C.L. 1873. Smith, Elder, & Co. 2. Godsdienst zonder Metafysica. A. G. van Hamel. Theologisch Tijdschrift. 1874. 3. Literature and Dogma, &c. Popular Edition. 1883. RELIGION WITHOUT METAPHYSIC; OR, THE MODERN RELIGION OF EXPERIENCE. HE modern religion of experience has repeatedly THE come before us in these papers. Religion is not denied, nor morality, but only the spiritual or metaphysical ground on which they have rested during the past course of religious thought. We have looked at the moral question in the light of the new theory. Let us look at the religious question in the same light. And we cannot do this better than in connection with the writings of Mr Matthew Arnold, especially with what he considers his "most important" book, a popular edition of which has lately been issued. Mr Arnold is so significant a figure in our modern literature, and has treated religion on the basis of experience at such length, and with such emphasis, that he may well claim a paper to himself. It must be conceded to him that he has always professed to write in the interest of religion. He has recognised how great a subject religion is, how largely it touches life, and how poor human civilisation would be apart from |