LctorLi 
 
 ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT NELLES 
 
 VICTORIA UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION, COBOURG, 
 
 WEDNESDAY, MAT mh, 1885. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Senate and Members of Convocation — 
 
 You will, perhaps, expect me to offer to-day some remarks on the 
 present state of higher education in the Province of Ontario, and 
 especially in relation to our own University. I shall not attempt to argue, 
 in all its bearings, what we are wont to call the University Question, but 
 content myself with touching upon some particular phases of the subject, 
 at least so far as to define my own position, and without directly contro- 
 verting what others may have said. I desire, as far as possible, to avoid a 
 controversial tone, feeling convinced that we shall make more progress 
 toward a satisfactory result, by a calm and conciliatory interchange of 
 views, than by many volumes of angry rhetoric. As the Poet- Laureate 
 says of another great educational problem : 
 
 " More soluble is this knot by gentleness than war." > 
 
 If I have the misfortune to differ from some good friends of our Univer- 
 sity, they will of course grant that this is not altogether my fault, seeing 
 that they differ as much from me as I do from them. And if I seem to 
 pi't a little strain upon sentiments and associations which our Alumni 
 naturr.lly cherish, they will remember that no one has more reason than I 
 to feel the force of those associations, and that I would not be likely in any 
 way to disturb them except from an honest regard for the educational 
 interests of the country. ^ 
 
 There is always some difficulty in discussing educational questions from 
 the fact that, while few persons study them, every one seems to think that 
 he knows all about them. I notice in our country to-day three or four 
 currents of sentiment, each of which appears to me to set in the v/rong 
 direction. First, there is the unhappy notion of those who disparage the 
 advantages of higher learning, and who as a natural consequence are 
 hostile, or at least apathetic, in regard to all appeals for the necessary 
 funds, whether those appeals be made to the Legislature or to private 
 individuals. There is, secondly, the opinion of some ill-informed people 
 who imagine that a University can be adequately sustained upon twenty- 
 five or thirty thousand dollars a year, and with such an endowment can 
 successfully compete with neighbouring Universities having a yearly 
 income of five or six times that amount. Sometimes the difference in 
 
endowment is supposed to be made up by ecclesiastical influences — 
 influences desirable enough when they secure to a seat of learning the 
 resources requisite for efficiency, but not very desirable otherwise. Thirdly, 
 there is the mistake of those who would give higher education an unduly 
 practical turn, or what they erroneously consider to be practical, throwing 
 out of doors, or at least far into the back-ground, the ancient languages 
 and literature, with those higher philosophical inquiries, in which the 
 ancients were the pioneers, and are still indispensable guides. And there 
 is lastly the error of those who, either as a matter of preference or of 
 expediency, would restrict the work of our national University to what are 
 called secular studies, leaving all religious teaching and discipline to the 
 pulpit and the Sunday-school. 
 
 I shall not now discuss these several views in detail, but the tenor of my 
 remarks will sufficiently indicate my own opinion, both on the general 
 questions, and on some particular educational measures which are now 
 before the country* I wish, however, to remark at the outset that the great 
 matter with me is neither federation of colleges, nor removal of Victoria 
 College from the town of Cobourg, but a satisfactory system of higher 
 education for the Province of Ontario, and an honourable and effective 
 relation to that system on the part of the Methodist Church. I desire, for 
 my part, to rise, as far as possible, above both local and sectarian consid- 
 erations, and to keep in view the great underlying principles which gov- 
 erned our fathers in establishing this seminary of learning, principles of a 
 very broad and patriotic cb.aracter, and which are even more sacred and 
 enduring than either Cobourg and Kingston limestone, or the inviting 
 grounds of a Toronto park. 
 
 " At the revival of learning," as some one has said, " Greece arose from 
 the grave with the New Testament in her hands." This picture of Greece 
 with the New Testament in her hands, may be taken, by an enlarged 
 interpretation, as an appropriate symbol of a true University. Greece — 
 that is, science, literature, philosophy, and art ; in a word, all human 
 culture on its secular side. The New Testament — that is, the Christian 
 religion ; human development and perfection on its spiritual or divine side. 
 Both taken together are essential to a well-rounded type of education, as 
 both are essential to individual and national welfare. It is one of the 
 glories of Christianity that it can stand unabashed and unshaken in the 
 presence of all forms of scTiolarly research, and make them all tributary to 
 its progress ; and it is one of the great facts in the history of the universi- 
 ties that they have always recognized Christianity as an indispensable 
 factor in the work of education. But the Christian Church has at length 
 so divided itself into sections, and, on the other hand, the subjects of 
 University teaching have so multiplied and extended, that the relation of 
 the Church to the University has become a difficult problem to solve. In 
 the Domini "i of Canada, and especially in this Province of Ontario, we 
 have long had a perpetual and embarrassing conflict on this great matter. 
 Every sect cannot have a genuine University, and the Legislature cannot 
 recognize the claims of one sect over another. And thus between the 
 necessities of the Stale University, and the rival necessities of a number 
 
• > 
 
 of denominational universities, we have at last reached what may be 
 called a kind of dead-lock in our educational progress. We may, there- 
 fore, well begin to inquire, and the growing spirit of Christian union enables 
 us to inquire with hopefulness, whether all the Churches of Ontario cannot 
 combine in one national University, and with advantage to the rommon 
 interests of science and religion. Those who distrust or oppose such a 
 measure seem to me to raise imaginary obstacles, and also to taii 'n estimat- 
 ing the increasing ex-^ent of University work, and the consequen ..ecessity 
 of large endowments, such endowments as we can only ecure in t:.is Pro- 
 vince by concentrating all our available resources. Such person--, seem to 
 forget that, if we keep our Universities poor, we shall have poor Universi- 
 ties in more senses than one. They also forget that in so far as any reli- 
 gious body stands aloof from the national system of education it ..ot only 
 deprives itself of advantages to which it is fairly entitled, but does what it 
 can both to weaken and unchristianize that system. " Let us beware," 
 says Mr. Gladstone, "of a Christianity of isolation." 
 
 The extension of University work arises chiefly from the progress of the 
 physical sciences ; but we have to remember that the newer sciences, or 
 departments of science, have not rendered obsolete or Lsele-^s the old 
 acar' ^mic studies, although they have deprived the latter of the monopoly 
 which they once enjoyed. We have to provide for the ancient as well as 
 the modern. Even the old classical and metaphysical departments are far 
 from being stationary, but involve both new lines and new methods of 
 research. I have no need to set up any special defence of classical studies 
 as against modern science and literature. There is no proper opposition 
 between the two forms of discipline, and no occasion for exalting the one 
 at the expense of the other ; but when the popular sentiment runs strongly 
 in one direction, as it now appears to do, it is perhaps as well for us to 
 insist a little more on that which is in danger of being unduly displaced. 
 We may, indeed, value too highly the study of ancient literature, but we 
 may also over-estimate, or mistakenly estimate, the value of physical 
 science. True culture is not one-sided, but many-sided, consisting, as 
 Butler says of human nature, " not of some one thing alone, but of many 
 other things besides." The popular current of to-day will, in all proba- 
 bility, soon go rebounding in the opposite direction, according to that salu- 
 tary law of action and reaction which governs the river of human progress, 
 as well as other flowing streams. And when men tell us that it is better to 
 study nature than literature, as the works of God are nobler than the works 
 of man, we can but use the decisive argument which I once heard employed 
 by Prof. Goldwin Smith, and say in reply, that man is also one of the works 
 of God, and the highest one known to us, and that the study of man re- 
 quires the study of his language and literature, and, among others, the 
 language and literature of Greece. It is noteworthy to find the following 
 language used by Todhunter, whose specialty is not Greek but mathe- 
 matics :— " A decline in the state of Greek scholarship implies more than 
 the failure of esteem for the most valuable and influential of all languages ; 
 it involves with it a gradual but certain decay of general culture, the 
 sacrifice of learning to science, the neglect of the history of man 
 
and of thought for the sake of facts relating to the external world." 
 We may, indeed, deny that Greece fully represents the varied wealth 
 of modern learning, but we cannot deny that Greece gave the first 
 great impulse out of which all modern culture has sprung, and be- 
 yond which, in some forms of excellence, no advancement has since 
 been made. "Earth," says Emerson, "still wears the Parthenon as 
 the best gem upon her zone." For many minds of the highest order, 
 Homeric studies and Homeric inspiration have losl none of their in- 
 terest and power. All philosophy, according to a great modern meta- 
 physician, is but Plato rightly interpreted, and the most eminent French 
 moralist of our day announces himself as the disciple and expounder of 
 Aristotle. What is good in these ancient writings agrees with the Gospel, 
 and therefore confirms it ; what is false or defective shows the need of the 
 Gospel, and therefore confirms it in another way. The spirit of the olden 
 time, whether from the plains of Marathon or the halls of the Academy, 
 still runs through the generations of men and " enriches the blood of the 
 world." There is no break, and, except by a return of barbarism, there 
 can be none, in the continuity of the world's intellectual life. Men may 
 come and men may go, but this goes on forever. The stream, as it sweeps 
 down the ages, may receive new contributions, but it will never forget or 
 lose sympathy with the primal waters upon the far-off mountain side. 
 More and more, and in all departments of learning, men are employing the 
 historical method as an instiument of progress, running backward that 
 they may the better leap forward. Not satisfied with the ordinary records 
 of history, they are turning with growing interest to the obscure relics of 
 pre-historic times, the ruins of ancient cities, and the customs and tradi- 
 tions of savage tribes, seeking everywhere to find the human footprints on 
 the sands of time — now in the wilds of America, now in the dark continent 
 of Africa, and now " where the gorgeous East showers on her kings bar- 
 baric pearl and gold." 
 
 The history of thought, not less than other forms of history, still returns 
 upon us, again and again, under new points of view, and with larger revela- 
 tions ; but the history of thought proper begins with Greece, and it can no 
 more dissever itself from that mother-wit of all the schools, than the 
 child can cease to feel the hereditary bias of natural parentage. Back to 
 Kant is the urgent cry lately set up among modern metaphysicians ; back 
 to Plato is a cry equally urgent ; if indeed it has ever been possible to get 
 wholly away from either the one or the other. Nor is it merely with a view 
 to what some would call barren speculation that men counsel thus, for our 
 eminent and orthodox theologians use the same language. It is in the 
 interests of religion that Prof. Flint and others speak, when they tell us to 
 seek in Plato an antidote against this modern monstrosity of pessimism, 
 that most melancholy of all phases of human thought, 
 
 " . . . . Whose cogitations sink as low 
 
 As, through the abysses of a joyless heart. 
 The heaviest plummet of despair can go. " 
 
6 
 
 By a diligent study of these grand old masters, with their enduring " maj- 
 esties of light," we are enabled to counterpoise a narrow materialistic 
 empiricism, which, in an age like ours, inclines to a kind of usurpation in 
 the kingdom of knowledge. The discoveries of natural science seem to 
 reach the masses sooner, and more beneficially, than philosophic specula- 
 tions ; but, sooner or later, they both alike travel down into the hearts and 
 homes of the people, interpenetrating each other for good, and sometimes, 
 as in our day, contending in their encounter for the mastery, like the fresh 
 waters and the salt, where a great river meets the rising tide of the sea. 
 All honour to those teachers of physical science who are doing such won- 
 derful things for the promotion of human comfort, and for what Bacon 
 terms " the relief of man's estate ;" but equal honour to those interpreters 
 of the spiritual order, who reveal to us the eternal realities behind the 
 shadows of time ; who teach us to remember that man does not live by 
 bread alone, and that Lazarus in his rags feeding upon crumbs may be 
 nearer to God than Dives in his palace, though clothed in fine linen and 
 faring sumptuously every day. But no regard for the old system of acade- 
 mic drill can blind our eyes to the fact that the educational problem and 
 University work have undergone an immense transformation. The physical 
 and so-called practical sciences have come to the front with multiplied 
 claims and attractions that cannot be resisted, and should not be resisted. 
 They combine with those historical researches to which 1 have already 
 refeired ; they give new and fruitful lessons in the laws of health, the 
 origin, the prevention, and the cure of disease, including many ills of a 
 moral kind ; they seek to remould the institutions of society ; they assert 
 themselves effectively in the several provinces of moral and religious truth ; 
 they throw floods of light, and sometimes very perplexing cross-lights, upon 
 the works and ways of God ; and they have become a necessary study, if 
 not for all Christian ministers, most certainly for all Christian Churches, 
 and especially for those Christian scholars who are called upon to vindicate 
 the claims of our holy religion. Every University worthy of the name must 
 not only furnish instruction in what is known of these sciences, but should, 
 if possible, make provision for original investigations. And beyond all 
 these, we must add such subjects as comparative philology and cc>...parative 
 religion, together with the study of what Macaulay calls the most splendid 
 and the most durable of the many glories of England, our own magnificent 
 English literature, now taking a new and well-deserved position in the 
 curriculum of every University. 
 
 Thus, then, between the ancient learning and the modern learning, the 
 physical sciences and the moral sciences, with the innumerable sub-divi- 
 sions of these, and with other forms of inquiry seeking to determine and 
 reconcile the relations of these provinces to each other, the range of Uni- 
 versity work widens and stretches out towards illimitable fields of study. 
 The ever-enlarging proportions of the modern University call for funds and 
 appliances commensurate with the variety and extent of the work to be 
 done. It may be said that young men at college do not need to cover all 
 this wide field of study, and are in fact not able to do so. This fact rather 
 increases than lessens the difficulty, for it necessitates many special courses 
 
6 
 
 of study, and therefore an increased number of teachers, together with a 
 greater variety of buildings, libraries, collections, and other appliances. 
 We may hold different views as to the wisdom of so much specialization, 
 and of making room for such a range of elective and optional work, but 
 the necessity is forced upon us. We cannot prevent the growth of science 
 and literature, even if we would ; and as no student can master all subjects 
 within an undergraduate — or even a post-gtaduate — curriculum, we are 
 compelled to allow a division of labour. In the days of Methuselah it 
 could have been different. Then men lived a thousand years, and had 
 ample time to cover a full symmetrical course of all known forms of learn- 
 ing. Four years could then have been given to the ancient languages, four 
 to the modern languages, four to the natural sciences, and four to meta- 
 physics, and so on for about fifty years of college life, and a graduate, even 
 at that age, would have counted for a boy. But there is no possible mathe- 
 matical formula for crowding our modern encyclopaedia into the contracted 
 space of a post-diluvian curriculum. And so we must elect and specialize, 
 as the fashion now is, and try not to know everything, but some few 
 things well. I can remember when a Canadian University could venture 
 to issue its Calendar with an announcement of a single professor for all 
 the natural sciences, and with a laboratory something similar to an ordin- 
 ary blacksmith shop, where the professor was his own assistant, and 
 compelled to blow not only his own bellows, but his own trumpet as well. 
 We can hardly be expected to go on in that style now. In a single line 
 of special research a man like Franklin or Faraday may achieve wonders 
 with very scanty appliances, but no man can do that in a college course, 
 where he has to give full lectures to large classes in half a dozen distinct 
 departments of science. 
 
 The obvious facts of the case, and even the very word University, seem 
 to rebuke us for the appropriation of the name to anything else than a 
 place where all sound means of discipline can be employe i, and all forms 
 of knowledge cultivated, with the best facilities of the age. Such a Uni- 
 versity we need for the Province of Ontario, and assurfsdiy it cannot be 
 said that we have such a University now. There is not one of those now 
 in existence, not even the Provincial University, that is not complaining 
 sorely, and with good reason, of the want of adequate resources, and the 
 case is renuered the more embarrassing from the fact that, at a distance of 
 a few hours' travel, the well-endcwed universities of a foreign country 
 present every attraction to draw away Canadian youth. Meantime the 
 several Universities which we have are so related to each other, and have 
 inherited such a stubborn old quarrel between opposing systems, that, 
 instead of working as allies, they are rather playing a game of reciprocal 
 obstruction and enfeeblement. The evil has reached a point where it must 
 be met, and the most feasible mode of meeting it is by some plan of con- 
 solidation, such as would secure for the country a stronger and worthier 
 University than is possible under the present order of things. Due regard 
 should be paid, and I trust will be paid, by our Legislature to all existinf, 
 interests, and to the reasonable plea of those who contend for variety, foi 
 competition, and for religions instruction, in the work of education. Nor 
 
should we forget the immense debt of gratitude due to those religious 
 bodies which provided in earlier days, and which still provide, a liberal 
 education for the youth of the country. But if, with proper consideration 
 for these things, and without doing violence to the great principles on 
 which Victoria College was founded, we can aid in building up a proper 
 national University, and can even he'p to supply some elements in which 
 we have felt the University of Toronto to be deficient, and can moreover 
 give the Methodist people the full advantages of this improved ccuotitu- 
 tion, then I maintain that no sectarian divisions, no undue regard for local 
 interests, no sentimental attachment to an old order of things for which 
 the occasion has largely passed away — none of these things should induce 
 us to block the way to a great public good by opposing in the Legislature 
 the improvement of a national institution which we profess to uphold, and 
 which, in a new country like ours, will at the very best fall short of the true 
 ideal. ■;',■;'■ 
 
 Repeatedly during the past thirty years the authorities of Victoria 
 University and of the Methodist Church have laboured to bring about some 
 form of University federation, but thus far without success. The present 
 scheme has valuable features not embraced in any former plan, and seems 
 to open the way, so far at least as Victoria is concerned, to a satisfactory 
 settlement of this long-continued and injurious controversy. If I thought 
 the scheme would be in any degree unfavourable to the great ends for 
 which Victoria University was founded, then I for one would have nothing 
 to do with the measure. But, as accepted by our Board of Regents on the 
 ninth of January last, I find all reasonable security both for intellectual 
 advantages and religious influences, with even greatly enlarged facilities 
 for both the one and the other. The intellectual advantages are obvious 
 enough, but as regards the religious advantages it must be evident to 
 those who look carefully at the matter that it afTords an opportunity for 
 supplying to our national University that religious teaching and influence 
 on which the Church colleges have always laid so much stress, and the 
 want of which they have deplored in Toronto University. I do not think 
 that the Senate or the Executive officers of the Provincial University can 
 be justly blamed for the secular character of that institution. They have 
 done what they could consistently with the constitution imposed upon them 
 by the Legislature. But now that the Senate and the Government pro- 
 pose to widen the basis by this scheme of federation, and to give the 
 denominational colleges scope for adding religious subjects to the curri- 
 culum, with collegiate homes and discipline for the students, then if we 
 have been honest in our former contention, why should we not rejoice at 
 this liberal and Chiistian reconstruction of our Provincial University ? 
 
 I have not agreed, and I do not no^v agree, with those who think that 
 the higher education of this country ^.lould be purely secular. I plead for 
 a national University, but such a University for a Christian people should 
 somehow employ, both in its lecture-rooms, and in the personal character 
 of its professors, the highest and most effective of all spiritual forces known 
 among men — the power of the Christian faith ; otherwise, with all her cold 
 intellectualism, she will stand, like Niobe of old, through her irreverence 
 
8 
 
 and despair, at last hardened into stone, and holding, not indeed the New 
 Testament, but "an empty urn within her withered hands." It is a pro- 
 found and eminently Christian saying of Dean Stanley's, that all high order 
 of thought seeks to unite the secular learning and the sacred, while all 
 thought of a low order seeks to separate them. Never was it more neces- 
 sary than in our day to bear this great truth in mind, and to apply it in our 
 national system of education. We have been struggling hard, and with 
 only partial success, to keep the religious element in our Public Schools. 
 Under the present Administration some furthet ^teps have been taken in 
 the right direction. And now the federation of colleges affords an oppor- 
 tunity for the Churches to join hands in giving a more positive Christian 
 character to our higher education, and apparently in the only way in which 
 it can be fully done. Why should we let the opportunity pass ? If we had 
 no Provincial University, and the denominational colleges had University 
 teaching, as a vliole, in their own hands, the case would be greatly altered. 
 But it is evident that a large part, and perhaps an increasingly large part, 
 of this academic work is to be done by the Provincial University, and the 
 question is whether the Methodist Church will do her share in the work or 
 prefer an isolated and less influential position. I have tried to forecast the 
 disastrous results to the Methodist Church which some of our friends pro- 
 phesy from this scheme, and when I have sun->med them all up, and at 
 the very worst, I can only find the following : — Fi'-st, improved intellectual 
 advantages for all the youth of the country, including of course the youth 
 of the Methodist Church ; secondly, the same religious safeguards which 
 we possess at present; thirdly, a wider rar'^e of religious influence; 
 fourthly, increased facilities for the theologies aining of our ministers ; 
 and lastly, all of these with a smaller or at least a more productive outlay 
 of money on the part of our Church than is possible under any other 
 arrangement. 
 
 It will easily be conceived that I have not arrived at my present con- 
 victions without much anxious thought, nor without a sense of personal 
 responsibility as well as sacrifice of personal feeling. I had the 
 honour of being one of thr two students who first matriculated in 
 Victoria University, in the yea>- 1842, and I have had an official relation 
 to the institution since 1850. My life's best energies have been put 
 forth in her venerable halls, and I will bear no part in doing injury 
 or dishonour to the institution. but I am a Canadian as well as a 
 Methodist, and I am a lover of all sound learning ; and finding, as I be- 
 lieve, all important interests likely to be promoted by this scheme of 
 academic federation, I am inclined to give it my support. The final 
 acceptance of the scheme on our part must, of course, lie with the General 
 Conference of the Methodist Church ; but if the conditions demanded by 
 our Board of Regents be fa rly complied with, I shall regard it as a 
 calamity to the country should the measure finally fail of going into effect. 
 
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