One of his admirers points out how Dr. Arnold
'vindicated God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son and to
the Jews to exterminate the nations of Canaan', by explaining the
principles on which these commands were given, and their
reference to the moral state of those to whom they were
addressed-- thereby educing light out of darkness, unravelling
the thread of God's religious education of the human race, and
holding up God's marvellous counsels to the devout wonder and
meditation of the thoughtful believer'.
There was one of his friends, however, who did not share this
admiration for the Doctor's methods of Scriptural interpretation.
W. G. Ward, while still a young man at Oxford, had come under his
influence, and had been for some time one of his most
enthusiastic disciples. But the star of Newman was rising at the
University; Ward soon felt the attraction of that magnetic power;
and his belief in his old teacher began to waver. It was, in
particular, Dr. Arnold's treatment of the Scriptures which filled
Ward's argumentative mind, at first with distrust, and at last
with positive antagonism. To subject the Bible to free inquiry,
to exercise upon it the criticism of the individual judgment--
where might not such methods lead? Who could say that they would
not end in Socinianism?--nay, in Atheism itself? If the text of
Scripture was to be submitted to the searchings of human reason,
how could the question of its inspiration escape the same
tribunal? And the proofs of revelation, and even of the existence
of God? What human faculty was capable of deciding upon such
enormous questions? And would not the logical result be a
condition of universal doubt?
'On a very moderate computation, Ward argued, 'five times the
amount of a man's natural life might qualify a person endowed
with extraordinary genius to have some faint notion (though even
this we doubt) on which side truth lies.
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