He
seems to have believed that a "Historic Church," that is, some
established organisation with ceremonies and sacred books, etc., could
be perpetually preserved as a sort of vessel to contain the spiritual
ideas of the age, whatever those ideas might happen to be. He clearly
seems to have contemplated a melting away of the doctrines of the Church
and even of the meaning of the words: but he thought a certain need in
man would always be best satisfied by public worship and especially by
the great religious literatures of the past. He would embalm the body
that it might often be revisited by the soul--or souls. Something of the
sort has been suggested by Dr. Coit and others of the ethical societies
in our own time. But while Arnold would loosen the theological bonds of
the Church, he would not loosen the official bonds of the State. You
must not disestablish the Church: you must not even leave the Church:
you must stop inside it and think what you choose. Enemies might say
that he was simply trying to establish and endow Agnosticism. It is
fairer and truer to say that unconsciously he was trying to restore
Paganism: for this State Ritualism without theology, and without much
belief, actually was the practice of the ancient world.
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