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GOD AND THE BIBLE

A SEQUEL TO LITERATURE AND DOGMA'

BY

MATTHEW ARNOLD

FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
AND FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE

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SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE

1884

[The right of translation is reserved]

L

5987

WITHDRAWN

FNOW

CITY OF RESTMINATE

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THE present volume is a sequel to the popular edition of Literature and Dogma published last year. It is meant to reproduce, in a somewhat condensed and much cheaper form, a work, God and the Bible, which the objections to Literature and Dogma called forth.

Literature and Dogma had altogether for its object, and so too has the present work,-a work which clears, develops and defends the positions taken in Literature and Dogma,to show the truth and necessity of Christianity, and its charm for the heart, mind, and imagination of man, even though the preternatural, which is now its popular sanction, should have to be given up. To show this, is the end for which both books were written.

For the power of Christianity has been in the immense emotion which it has excited; in its engaging, for the government of man's conduct, the mighty forces of love, reverence, gratitude, hope, pity, and awe,—all that host of allies which Wordsworth includes under the one name of imagination, when he says that in the uprooting of old thoughts and old rules we must still always ask :

Survives imagination, to the change
Superior? Help to virtue does she give?
If not, O mortals, better cease to live!

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