The actual finale, _Last Essays on Church_ and _Religion_, was still less popular, was indeed the least popular of all his works, seeing that, as has been said above, it has never been reprinted. It is easy to understand this, for it is perhaps the only one of his books which can be definitely called dull. The apologetic tone noticeable in _God and the Bible_ continues, but the apology is illustrated and maintained in an even less attractive manner. The Preface is perhaps the least dead part of the book; but its line of argument shares, and perhaps even exaggerates, the controversial infelicity of this unfortunate series. Mr Arnold deals in it at some length with the comments of two foreign critics, M. Challemel-Lacour and Signor de Gubernatis, on _Literature and Dogma_, bringing out (what surely could have been no news to any but very ill-educated Englishmen) the fact of their surprise, not at his taking the Bible with so little seriousness, but at his taking it with any seriousness at all. And he seems never even to dream of the obvious retort: "Certainly. These men are at any rate 'thorough'; they are not dilettante dalliers between two opinions. They have got far beyond your half-way house and have arrived at their destination. We have no desire to arrive at the destination, and therefore, if you will excuse us, we decline to visit the half-way house." It is less surprising that he did not see the force of the objections of another critic, M. Maurice Vernes, to the equally illogical and unhistorical plan of arbitrarily selecting this utterance as that of "Jesus," and another, given by the same authority, as not that of "Jesus." A man, who was sensible of this paralogism, could never take Mr Arnold's views on Church and Religion at all. But when we leave the Preface, even such faint liveliness as this deserts us. The text contains four (or five, the second being divided into two parts) essays, lectures, or papers, _A Psychological Parallel_, _Bishop Butler and the Zeit-Geist_, The Church of England_, and _A Last Word on the Burials Bill_. All had appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_ or the _Contemporary Review_ during 1876, while _Bishop Butler_ had been delivered as two lectures at Edinburgh, and _The Church of England_ as an address to the London Clergy at Sion College, during the spring of that year.