As to Dr. Arnold (Phases, p. 111), the interesting character of whose mind and talent I need not enlarge on here, there was one characteristic trait of his mind which always furnishes a solid ground for distrust of any-that is, its very great confidence in itself. Breaking through the narrow boundaries of an Oxford education, which is more occupied with the means of knowledge than with knowledge itself, it broke forth into what was to it an unknown region, and soared out not quite aware whither. Amidst a thousand moral benevolent theories, the spiritual right-mindedness of a regenerate mind kept him safe as to what concerned moral foundation for himself. But there was no kind of moral or intellectual measure, in his own mind, of the sphere into which he got, nor of man's powers in relation to it. He knew that he had broken loose from many things that were mere trammels, which he then despised; but he never knew what the world, into which he had wandered out of the happy valley of the Isis, really was. Hence many a question started, which, to a mind not substantially kept right by spiritual instinct, as his was, became infidelity. I should say of this interesting man, that he was one of the most interesting, but unformed, I know within the little circle of my knowledge. He never was in the mature manhood of his mind, which accounted to itself for its own thoughts and real bearing. Here, for instance, drawing the juice, I doubt not, from much of scripture, he leaves the husk of infidelity to Mr. N. It was immaterial to him what the morass of difficulty was which he thus lightly tripped over, and thought thus to help others over too. To Mr. N. there was the morass of doubt, and that was all.
To Arnold "the Mosaic cosmogony" was cosmogony, and that was all. To Mr. N. it was questionable cosmogony, and that was all he found in it.