Dr. Arnold, Matthew Arnold, and the Jews

Judaism, Spring, 2002 by Edward Alexander

True, Arnold does not (how could he and still remain a Christian?) entirely abandon the spirit of Christian triumphalism over the "old" law. Although genuine, the Jewish conception of righteousness was, he says, often "narrow" until the prophets brought into play the more profound elements of personal religion such as conscience. In fact, says Arnold, "Every time that the words contrition or humility drop from the lips of prophet or psalmist, Christianity appears." (32) This may remind us of Arnold's contemporary John Ruskin, an intensely Protestant figure, trying to explain his attraction to architectural ornaments on medieval Catholic buildings: he calls them budding Protestantism, trying to burst forth from the constricting formalism of Rome-thereby licentiously applying a religious label he likes to a style of art that he likes.

But for the most part Arnold's discussion is a defense lawyer's brief for the accused, indeed accursed, Jews. He insists that they had a unique sense of the natural and necessary link between conduct and happiness, and will therefore always be the signal embodiment of this endowment of human nature. Arnold's ringing declaration is one of the most amazing things in the whole body of his voluminous writings: "as long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the people who have had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest...." (33)

Perhaps Arnold is only referring to the Jews of the Bible here, but there are also hints that--whether rightly or wrongly--he was intrigued by the possibility that there was more than a thread of continuity between those jews of long ago and the politically debased jews whom his father wanted to harry out of the country. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in his Table-Talk entry for August 14, 1833: "The two images farthest removed from each other which can be comprehended under one term, are, I think, Isaiah--'Hear, O heavens, and give ear, 0 earth!'--and Levi of Holywell Street-'Old Clothes!'--both of them Jews, you'll observe." Coleridge's conclusion, rendered in a burst of Latin, was immane quantum discrepant (how dreadfully much they differ). Arnold, to his credit, could never be quite sure that it was; and he was more likely than Coleridge to know that Levi could read Isaiah in the original.

NOTES

(1.) Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill: 1812--1848, edited by F. E. Mineka (Toronto/London: University of Toronto Press, 1963), I, p. 92.

(2.) G. O. Trevelyan, Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), I, p. 148.

(3.) Montagu Frank Modder, The Jew in the Literature of England (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1960), pp. 171--172.

(4.) Arthur Peorhyn Stanley, Life of Thomas Arnold, D. D. (London: J. Murray, 1904), p. 249.

(5.) J. H. Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua (London: Loogmans, 1864), Chapter one and the Note on Liberalism.

(6.) Stanley, I, p. 341.

(7.) Stanley, II, pp. 32-33.