Page:The Victorian Age.djvu/50

[46] wittily parodied by Samuel Butler: 'There lives more doubt in honest faith' etc. The sentiment in Tennyson's lines may be easily defended; but it must be confessed that 'honest doubt' was something of a pose at the time. In reading such men as Clough, or Henri Amiel, the average man becomes impatient, and is inclined to say 'Why can't the fellow make up his mind one way or the other, and get started?' They carry suspension of judgment to the verge of futility, and though they obviously suffer, one does not feel very sorry for them. It is the opposite failing from that of Macaulay, who as a historian suffers from a constitutional inability not to make up his mind on everything and everybody. Matthew Arnold is also a religious sceptic; but he has formulated a liberal Protestant creed for himself, not very unlike that of Sir John Seeley's 'Ecce Homo.' It was not a happy time for religious thinkers, unless they made themselves quite independent of organised Christianity. Intolerance was very bitter; and only the secular arm stopped a whole series of