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 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 
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SERMONS 
 
SERMONS 
 
 BY 
 
 MARK PATTISON 
 
 LATE RECTOR OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, 
 OXFORD 
 
 iLontron 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1885 
 
5a6'/-ofOX 
 
 [A// Rights reserved^ 
 
 W 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 P37 
 MAI// 
 
 With one exception, the Sermons contained In 
 the present volume have never appeared in 
 print In an authoritative form. As they have 
 not had the benefit of a final revision by the 
 writer himself, the Editors have ventured to 
 correct a few obvious clerical errors ; but they 
 have not thought themselves warranted in 
 doing anything more than this. 
 
 It will be observed that the majority of 
 these Sermons belong to the ten years from 
 1 86 1 to 1871. Four others, which do not fall 
 within these limits of time, are included, partly 
 for completeness sake, and partly because it is 
 believed that they may interest the readers of 
 the recently-published Memoirs, as Illustrating 
 the views and position of the writer at an 
 earlier period of his life. 
 
 142 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 University Sermons — 
 
 I. On Matthew xxii. 37-40 (1850) . 
 II. On I Corinthians xiii. 8 (Whit- Monday, 
 1851) 
 
 III. On 2 Corinthians xii. 14 (1861) . 
 
 IV. On Matthew vii. 14(1863) 
 V. On John i. 9 (1865) .... 
 
 VI. On I Corinthians i. 26, 27, 21 (1867) 
 
 VII. On I Corinthians i. 26 (1869) . 
 
 VIII. On Acts xvii. 27, 28 (187 1) 
 
 IX. On Acts xxiv. 25 (Assize Sermon, 1871) 
 
 College Sermons — 
 
 23 
 
 44 
 
 72 
 
 103 
 
 137 
 168 
 
 193 
 215 
 
 ^ I. On I Corinthians xii. 26 (i847)___-^i-___- 229 
 
 II. On Luke x. 42 (1850) ^<Ur^=^^J2. ^*J^^ 244 
 
 III. On Matthew XXV. 14, 15 (1861) . . 264 
 
 IV. On Hebrews xii. i (All Saints' Day, 1863) . 273 
 
,1 
 
 UNIVERSITY SERMONS 
 
 s^ 
 
[January, 1850.] 
 
 " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
 with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the 
 first and great commandment. And the second is like 
 unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On 
 these two commandments hang all the law and the pro- 
 phets." — Matthew xxii. 37-40. 
 
 A MOST surprising solution of the proposed 
 question this may well have seemed to an in- 
 telligent and reflecting auditor, and one calcu- 
 lated to draw from him the expression of wonder 
 with which the simpler uneducated population 
 of Galilee met our Lord's teaching, *' Whence 
 hath this man this wisdom ? " For let us con- 
 sider for a moment the bearings of the question 
 and the reply. 
 
 There is no reason for considering the 
 question as put in any captious spirit, or with 
 the insidious purpose with which we read of 
 some others approaching our Lord. It appears 
 
UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 to have originated rather in real admiration of 
 the wisdom of our Lord's reply to the Saddu- 
 cees — "perceiving," St. Mark says, ''that he had 
 answered them well" — and to have been put by 
 one whose own disposition and view of truth 
 earned for him the eulogy, "Thou art not far from 
 the kingdom of God." But the query, "Which 
 is the great commandment ?" was wholly in the 
 spirit of the Jewish theology of that age. It was 
 a theology not of principles but of ruled points. 
 Nature and reason, experience, human life and 
 its instincts went for nothing, and accordingly 
 revelation could not be appreciated or under- 
 stood. The books of Moses were all in all, but 
 the religion of Moses was made void. The 
 records so scrupulously preserved and studied 
 were treated as texts from which consequences 
 were to be deduced by certain laws of con- 
 sequence — all ingenuity was directed to doing 
 this in the legitimate way, and the points in con- 
 troversy between the contending sects were 
 only how much of the documents was to be 
 admitted as text-book, and what were correct 
 deductions from them. It was strictly a legal 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 spirit which prevailed, to which the Hvely oracles 
 had become but so many statute books. The 
 doctors argued with the nicest subtlety on the 
 letter of the statute, while the principles of the 
 jurisprudence lay disregarded beneath. It was, 
 in short, in the history of Judaism a period such 
 as has appeared in the progress of all nations 
 that have possessed anything like a culture and 
 a literature — periods that have been denomi- 
 nated critical as distinguished from original 
 epochs. A certain authority has possessed 
 itself of the national mind, and men, accepting 
 without question not only the authority but the 
 statements without asking the reason of those 
 statements, occupy themselves in applying the 
 given statements to the proof ancKestablishment 
 of all received facts and practices. Such an 
 age has recurred at least twice in the develop- 
 ment of Greek philosophy — in the East between 
 the second and sixth, and in the West chiefly 
 between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. 
 In the spirit, then, of a scholiast's theology, the 
 lawyer in the text puts to the new teacher, who 
 also professed to ground all his doctrine on 
 
UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 the received sacred books, a question probably 
 much mooted and variously solved in the schools 
 at that time, viz. which of the portions into which 
 these scrupulous textualists had broken up the 
 law of Moses deserved most veneration ? which 
 of the 613 precepts into which, being the number 
 of letters in the Decalogue, the whole law was 
 reduced should stand first ? Though, as they 
 said, God had more care of the letters and 
 syllables in the Law than of the stars in heaven, 
 yet as the stars were of unequal magnitude and 
 splendour, so were the precepts of unequal rank 
 and dignity. Which among them had the first 
 place ? Thus we may take the query, and the 
 full significance of the answer will be apparent, as 
 thus : — though indeed it be true that the words 
 of the Law are of such value that not one jot or 
 one tittle of a letter shall in any wise pass from it 
 all, yet there is one sentence which stands first, 
 one precept deserving to be called great, and 
 another which, to apply the term familiar in 
 your schools (Bevrepcoo-c^), is a secondary com- 
 mandment. But it is neither the ordinance of 
 circumcision, nor the law of the Sabbath, nor 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 the ritual of the Paschal festival, nor the morn- 
 ing nor the evening sacrifice ; and then quoting 
 verbally from the books of Moses the two 
 sentences in the text, — but it is this verse (of 
 Deuteronomy), " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God with all thy heart," which is the first pre- 
 cept, and that because a perfect direction of the 
 faculties towards God, an amor rite ordinatus 
 ad Deum, is the principle of all religion ; and 
 this verse (of Leviticus xix. i8), "Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself," is the second 
 precept, because the principle of all morality is 
 the due equilibrium of the selfish and disinter- 
 ested affections. 
 
 If anything like what I have now endea- 
 voured to express be the bearing of our Lord's 
 reply, it offers, I think, a position which any 
 naturalist theory of the origin of the Gospels is 
 insufficient to account for. That out of the 
 bosom of the Rabbinical school should issue an 
 utterance y which upset the principle on which 
 that school was founded, that the whole system 
 of gloss and interpretation should be at one 
 effort discarded, and from commenting on a 
 
UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 hitherto unquestioned authority men should be 
 on the spot recalled to the first principles of 
 reason on which the dicta of that authority 
 reposed, — this, if this had been an utterance of 
 merely human wisdom, would be without par- 
 allel in the history of the transmission of thought, 
 the history of religion and philosophy. It is 
 true that the natural reaction of an age of 
 criticism is to throw the mind back on first 
 principles ; that the rigorous deduction of gloss 
 and commentary practises in the end a kind 
 of redudio ad absurdum on its premisses. But 
 the process in all the instances which history 
 supplies has been slow and gradual, and the 
 simple moral axioms have been only rescued 
 from the artificial casuistry , with which they 
 have been overlaid ^ after many efforts, many 
 mistakes, an ardent controversy and vehement 
 exaggerations of them. The establishment in 
 any society of simple truths of morals is in the 
 ordinary course of the world the result of a 
 reaction and agitation of opinion. In the case 
 of Christianity these first axioms are the ante- 
 cedents and cause of the reaction which oc- 
 
SERMON I. 
 
 curred, and proceed at once in their faultless 
 purity from the first originators of the religion. 
 
 This is one aspect in which these words of 
 our Lord may be viewed ; a second must be 
 mentioned which is necessary to correct the 
 former. For it is the case with respect to the 
 whole moral teaching of the Gospel^ that /to 
 enable us to estimate it aright ,two opposite 
 characteristics which it possesses must be em- 
 braced in our mind. It possesses at once 
 novelty and antiquity. The ethics of Christianity 
 are at once the same as, and different from, the 
 ethics of the Old Testament. It is from dwell- 
 ing on one of these characteristics of them to 
 the exclusion of the other^that erroneous views 
 of the relation of the New to the Old Covenant 
 have appeared, and are from time to time re- 
 appearing in Christendom. When the surpris- 
 ing originality of the morality inculcated in the 
 discourses of our Lord is alone had regard to, 
 we find persons contrasting it with the moral 
 doctrines assumed in the Hebrew Scriptures, 
 exalting Christianity by a comparison with 
 Judaism, eulogising the religion of the New 
 
lo UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Testament, while they repudiate with abhor- 
 rence that of the Old. 
 
 On the other hand, when the fabric of the 
 Gospel history comes to be critically examined, 
 and it is found that every idea, whether of 
 morals or religion, may be traced to its germ 
 in the older Scriptures, that the facts of the 
 biography of Christ are but the realisation, 
 both in their general character and in detail, of 
 that anticipatory sentiment , which was the life 
 and substance of the old Jewish creed, and that 
 the very language and expression of the narra- 
 tives themselves are adopted from the Law and 
 the Prophets, from these observations, which 
 have been conducted by recent investigators 
 with the highest ingenuity and all the resources 
 of learning, a conclusion has been drawn that 
 the Gospel story is a product of Jewish imagina- 
 tion, that its material cause existed in the sacred 
 books of the Hebrew canon, and its efficient 
 cause in the long-cherished Messianic expecta- 
 tion and the current ideas of the Palestine 
 Jews, drawn to a head by the awful destruction 
 of their religion and nationality at the close of 
 
SERMON L n 
 
 the first century of our era. This is the theory 
 to which men have been conducted by dwelling 
 exclusively on the resemblances of the Christian 
 doctrine to the written and traditional belief of 
 the Jews of that age. The first and obvious 
 mode of encountering this mythical system is 
 by pointing out those elements of the Christian 
 scheme for which no Oriental creed furnishes a 
 type, to insist, in short, on the originality of 
 Christ's character and teaching. In answer 
 to the first-mentioned class of objectors, those 
 who, dazzled by the novel simplicity of the 
 Christian morality, profess to embrace it as 
 alone worthy of divine purity and holiness, it is 
 necessary to bring forward the identity of 
 / principle in the moral teaching of Christ and 
 ^^^ that of Moses. ^ By combining these two points 
 of view we can alene obtain a just appreciation 
 of the relation of the Old Testament to the 
 New. To the latter alone I shall confine the 
 few remarks which now remain to make. This 
 endeavour to separate the Old Testament from 
 the New, though revived of late years, not 
 without considerable popularity, is no novel 
 
12 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 effort of thought. We are familiar with it in 
 the speculations of the earlier centuries, not only 
 in the extreme and dogmatical form of Mani- 
 cheism, but as a tendency more or less pre- 
 vailing throughout the Christian body. We 
 may select from representations popular at the 
 present day one or two points of objection of 
 this character. 
 
 One especial head of objection is drawn from 
 the supposed contrast between the conception 
 of the Deity presented by the Old Scriptures 
 and the New. Instead of the Father of mercies 
 and God of consolation of the New, we have, it 
 is said, in the Old Testament an awful and 
 terrible King of the world, a jealous God, visit- 
 ing the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, 
 angry with the wicked every day, and keeping 
 His anger for ever, of purer eyes than to behold 
 iniquity. His favour is scarce less terrible than 
 His anger. He is the jealous rival of the 
 tutelary deities of Syria or Phoenicia, exacting 
 from His votaries an exclusive homage. His 
 code of laws is Draconian. He that offends in 
 one point is guilty in all. Good were it for 
 
SERMON I. 13 
 
 man that he had never been born. Much more 
 might be cited to this effect, but this will suffice 
 to indicate the nature of the objection to which 
 I now refer. We do not deny that such pic- 
 tures represent, though in exaggerated terms, 
 yet represent truly, one of the attributes of the 
 Deity of the Old Testament. But, notwith- 
 standing them, the Jehovah of the Jews is the 
 God of the Gentiles and of Christianity, and 
 the representations of His attributes in the 
 Old Testament are in harmony with His deal- 
 ings with man as presented to us in the New. 
 The following suggestions may be offered on 
 this head. If the Hebrew Scriptures pre- 
 sent to us an angry and avenging aspect of the 
 Deity, this is only what the course of nature 
 and of the world also does. Man is not the 
 object in this life only of indulgences, mercies, 
 and enjoyments. Distress and sorrow are (to 
 say the least) quite as widely dispensed in the 
 world as pleasures and satisfactions. What are 
 war, pestilence, and famine, or the more ordi- 
 nary visitations of violence, disease, and pain, 
 and the great final dissolution of our physical 
 
14 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 frame, but so many visitations of a terrible 
 and avenging nature, of the same character 
 with that aspect of Divinity portrayed in the 
 Old Testament ? It is not, then, the mere re- 
 presentation of man as a suffering and afflicted 
 being at which the objector stumbles — for in 
 this respect it seems that the Jewish prophet 
 does but echo the declarations of nature and 
 experience — it is that other and further portion 
 of this representation which speaks of this suffer- 
 ing as vindictive, as inflicted by a personal Pro- 
 vidence as a personal retribution for sin. It is 
 not t\i& fact of human woe which is questioned, 
 for to that fact experience bears its too plain 
 testimony, but the doctrine that that woe is 
 penal and judicial in its nature. But surely it 
 is the fact of nature^and not the doctrine of the 
 Scripture lin which the real difficulty consists. 
 The doctrine that all pain is penal, that physical 
 evil is a consequence of moral evil, that suffer- 
 ing is a visitation of a righteous Judge upon the 
 sinner, is but an attempt to explain this pheno- 
 menon of suffering, to find a clue to this scene 
 of misery and disorder, which, without that clue, 
 
SERMON I. 15 
 
 would be hopeless and inexplicable indeed. 
 " There is nothing in these invectives directed 
 against the Jehovah of Moses which may not 
 with equal fitness be directed against the Author 
 of the course of this world. This abounding of 
 natural evil is the effect of the divine abhor- 
 rence of moral evil, as asserted by Moses, or it 
 is not — if it be so, then the Pentateuch and 
 nature are so far in harmony ; if it be not so, 
 then nature is immeasurably more confounding 
 in its moral mystery than revelation, inasmuch 
 as it leaves us all the suffering without any ade- 
 quate recognition of sin as its cause" (Vaughan). 
 But the truth is, that this avenging aspect of 
 the Divinity which offends so much in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures is no peculiar feature of 
 Judaism. The consciousness of moral de- 
 linquency in man, and the tokens of retribution 
 and displeasure sent forth among us by the 
 power or powers regarded as governing the 
 world, have given this aspect of awfulness 
 more or less to the religions of all nations. 
 The Eumenides of Greek and the Loki of 
 Scandinavian mythology, the Sheva of the 
 
i6 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Brahminical and the Ahriman of the Magian 
 theology, all owe their origin to the imperish- 
 able operations of human thought and human 
 conscience, strengthened as these thoughts have 
 been by seeing so much physical evil pressing 
 everywhere closely on the heels of so much 
 moral disorder. This darker aspect, then, 
 of the Jehovah of the Old Testament, which is 
 so appalling to our weakness^is nothing more 
 than the Divine attribute of purity and holiness 
 dwelt upon in Its antagonism to sin. If the 
 Almighty Being be absolute justice and right- 
 eousness — i.e. if there be a God at all — the 
 regard which such righteousness must turn 
 towards sin . can only be that which the words 
 anger, hatred, and aversion convey. The God 
 of the Jews is not a mischievous spirit /whose 
 capricious personal favour is to be secured only 
 by some fortunate individuals without reference 
 to their moral character or conduct ; it Is the 
 highest conception of absolute holiness regarded 
 in relation to the aberrations of our free will. 
 If morality be a truth, if the distinction between 
 virtue and vice be anything, then in no other 
 
SERMON I. 17 
 
 colours can the Deity be represented to our 
 minds than in those in which He is represented 
 in the Old Testament ; there can be no doubt, 
 to use an expression of Butler, which side He 
 is of — that He is for virtue and against vice. 
 
 If, then, the proclamation of nature concern- 
 ing the God of nature is so awfully to this 
 effect, that every system of religion devised by 
 man presents some counterpart to the threaten- 
 ings of Jehovah against sinners, if the universal 
 instinct of mankind requires some such attribute 
 in its Moral Governor, we conclude that no 
 supposed revelation which does not so speak 
 can possibly be of divine origin. So far, then, 
 from its being a mark of superiority in the 
 Scriptures of the New Testament, that they 
 present to us the Deity divested of the terrible 
 and avenging aspect which He wears in the 
 Old, it would rather create a presumption, if 
 they did so do, against them. If Christianity 
 does offer us a Deity who can behold moral 
 iniquity without offence, Christianity is less, 
 instead of better, adapted to the circumstances of 
 man, and responds less to the demands of his 
 
 c 
 
i8 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 moral nature than the older dispensation. But 
 a very transient glance at the New Testament 
 will tell us that this is not the case. The 
 doctrine of the Gospel concerning human de- 
 pravity and its terrible consequences is not a 
 whit less awful than the threatenings of Moses 
 and the prophets. It is true that it brings life 
 and immortality to light, that it holds out hope 
 and restoration and aid ; but that is not now in 
 question. We are not now speaking of the 
 supernatural interposition to save, but of the 
 natural aspecty which the Father^who gave His 
 only begotten Son for the world's sin inevitably 
 wears towards that sin. We may measure the 
 divine wrath against erring man by the effort 
 of divine mercy to avert the consequences 
 of his error. The Incarnation, the sum of the 
 Gospel history, is itself the standing evidence 
 not more of the merpy, which prompted the in- 
 terposition; than of the dreadful doom which 
 awaited us but for that interposition. 
 
 Nay, the terrors of God's judgments are so 
 far from being absent from the Christian 
 Scriptures , that they are present there in a 
 
SERMON I. 19 
 
 more terrible shape, more terrible in proportion 
 as the punishments of the unseen world tran- 
 scend in Tearfulness the judgments of the visible. 
 None of the denunciations of the prophets can 
 thrill the soul with that awe^with which it must 
 regard its approach to Hirh/who is revealed as 
 able to destroy both soul and body in hell. If 
 the national judgments denounced by Moses 
 against national idolatry and apostasy are ap- 
 palling to read, how much more awful is the 
 thought of a personal judgment to come, of that 
 dread ordeal through which each of us in- 
 dividually has to pass, which is first distinctly 
 proclaimed in the Gospels? The doctrine of 
 the New Testament is especially the doctrine of 
 a life to come, and on this ground (it has been 
 well said) " the degree in which it ministers to 
 our hope must be the degree in which it 
 ministers to our fears. The light and the 
 shadow string these together. Responsibility 
 augments with privilege ; so it must be with 
 guilt, and so with penalty." '' He that despised 
 Moses' law died without mercy : of how much 
 sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be 
 
20 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 thought worthy who hath trodden under foot 
 the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of 
 the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an 
 unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the 
 Spirit of grace ? " Awful words these, which, 
 with whatever qualification they may be re- 
 ceived, are alone sufficient to refute the opinion 
 that the New Testament stands in contrast 
 with the Old in not presenting the Deity under 
 the aspect of an avenging sin-hating God. The 
 identity of the two systems on this point is 
 complete. Declarations of the Deity against 
 sin are found in Christianity as well as in 
 Judaism. Nay, they hold a position in the 
 latter system proportioned to the enlarged 
 scope and being of that system. If the terrors 
 of the Law were of a more temporal and secular 
 nature, so were its promises and hopes. If it 
 was Christianity which first distinctly promised 
 an immortality of bliss, it at the same time dis- 
 closed that the tendency of unassisted nature 
 was to an immortality of woe. The judgments 
 in Deuteronomy are confined to the Jews ; 
 Christianity brings all mankind to stand before 
 
SERMON I, 21 
 
 the judgment seat of Christ. This proportional 
 variation in the appHcation of the principle 
 only establishes more completely the identity 
 of the principle pn which the systems are based 
 in common. ' 
 
 We have traced this identity in that attribute 
 of God which represents Him as awarding 
 judicial penalty to sin. The same method 
 might be pursued with every other principle 
 involved in the Christian scheme. The mani- 
 festation of such principle may have been in 
 more outward and material conditions in the 
 earlier covenant, in more inward and spiritual 
 presence in the later : but the principle remains 
 the same. '* Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy strength " involves every relation of 
 the finite created dependent spirit to the infinite, 
 creating, absolute Spirit. '* Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself " involves every relation of 
 co-ordinate beings, even to the new command- 
 ment which is in so especial a manner the 
 Christian commandment of charity. Our sub- 
 limest conceptions of the majesty, beauty, and 
 blessedness possible to the spiritual universe 
 
22 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 are embodied in this language. '* The mental 
 progress of thirty centuries has added nothing 
 to the oracle delivered from that far remote 
 and shadowy past concerning the spiritual rela- 
 tions and the spiritual obligations of our race." 
 To be as this law demands, is to be as an angel 
 of God, to be as man was at first, and as the 
 capacities of man assure us^he must be againy 
 if the destiny proper to his nature is to be 
 realised. 
 
II. 
 
 [Whit-Monday, 1851.] 
 
 " Charity never faileth : but whether there be prophecies, they 
 shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; 
 whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." — 
 I Corinthians xiii. 8. 
 
 We are well accustomed to a division of the 
 education which universities profess to give 
 into professional and liberal. The one is the 
 special initiation in the matter and method 
 appropriate to any one of the learned profes- 
 sions ; the other is the general cultivation of 
 the intellectual power. Both are highly valu- 
 able, useful, and necessary for their respective 
 purposes. But if we are to institute a com- 
 parison between them as to which must rank 
 the highest in our esteem, we shall not fail 
 to perceive that the value of the professional 
 studies is a wholly relative and conventional 
 value, depending both on the worth of the end 
 
24 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 which each profession respectively seeks to, 
 and on the estimation which that profession 
 happens from time to time to hold with the 
 world. For example, in our own country the 
 profession of canonist enjoyed during several 
 centuries that pre-eminence among the branches 
 of the legal profession^ which has now passed 
 to the common lawyer — passed very arbitrarily, 
 it must be thought, - in those countries which 
 recognise the undisputed prerogative of the 
 civil law. 
 
 But the higher education is that which has 
 no professional application — which aims at no 
 other end than the improvement of the mind, 
 whose value, therefore, does not vary with the 
 shifting valuation of the occupation^ to which it 
 ministers, but is as permanent as is the worth of 
 the mental powers it cultivates. These are the 
 studies which draw forth and educe a portion of 
 our common nature, which develop the elements 
 of the humanity which is in us. Litterce human- 
 iores — the knowledge proper to man as man, 
 and not as physician or lawyer. Liberal 
 studies, for they are those which we pursue as 
 
SERMON 11. 25 
 
 free men, for so far as we are occupied in our 
 several professions we are not free, but the 
 servants of those to whom we minister. The 
 minister of the Gospel is not his own, but 
 the servant of those to whom he ministers. 
 ** Necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is unto 
 me if I evangelise not." The highest species 
 of education we thus conceive to be that which 
 serves no further purpose than disciplining the 
 mind — we have then done most for the man 
 when we have most augmented his mental 
 power; he is then best fitted for his sphere 
 when his faculties in general have been most 
 cultivated and his reason furnished with 
 general and not with special knowledge — with 
 that knowledge which is valuable for itself and 
 not for its applications. This is a position 
 which will be generally, though not universally, 
 admitted, and which has been the foundation 
 of every complete system of education in all 
 times. 
 
 Quitting for the present this position — an 
 observation founded on the nature of man — 
 let us dwell on another position, a position 
 
26 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 grounded on the Christian system. Christ- 
 ianity offers an object to the pure reason, — 
 its theology, its doctrine of the nature of God. 
 Christianity as a system of reHgion comprises a 
 theology ; but the theology is not put forward 
 as the essential part of the religion. Christ- 
 ianity is by nothing so much distinguished 
 from the other religions known to us as by 
 laying its whole weight on morality. It com- 
 municates no knowledge but what is subser- 
 vient to practice. What it discloses of the 
 divine nature and government, it discloses 
 only to ground human duty thereon. We are 
 to be saved by a faith, but it is only by such a 
 faith as is fruitful of works. Not to know, but 
 to do, the will of God is its repeated inculca- 
 tion. Compared with the more philosophical 
 religions on the one hand, and with the more 
 sensualistic and material popular religions on 
 the other, this its distinctive ethical character 
 will stand out in a clear light. The tendency 
 of the more speculative and purely spiritual 
 religions is to find employment for the reason 
 only, to place the business and the happiness of 
 
SERMON II. 27 
 
 man In the unimpeded energy of thought — 
 taking no account of the passions and of the 
 bodily framework. This is the religion of the 
 few. On the other hand, the religion of the 
 vulgar has usually tended towards a material 
 ceremonial observance — frankincense and gold 
 are offered to propitiate the ill-will of a power- 
 ful Being ,whose jealousy, satisfied by the 
 abandonment of a part, may leave his votary 
 in quiet possession of the rest of his wealth. 
 Intermediate between the religions^ which con- 
 sist in material worship and those^ which are 
 restricted to a rational contemplation , stands 
 the religion /whose essence is moral action. 
 Between the religion of the few and the many 
 is the religion of all. This professes not to 
 instruct man in that intensity of thought by 
 which he is more than man, nor does it degrade 
 his divine service into a sale and purchase of 
 divine favour. Pure and undefiled OpTja-Kela 
 before God is active charity and a pure life. 
 Other religions have in their degree comprised 
 or recommended morality. Christianity is a 
 system of practical ethics. The true descrip- 
 
28 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 tion of it is, not that it is a theology for the 
 reason, a method of action for the practical 
 powers, and a ceremonial for the senses, all in 
 a combination, in which each of the three parts 
 is equally of the essence of the thing, but it is 
 essentially a discipline of life, having indeed its 
 basis on a fixed metaphysical doctrine, and 
 embodied in a variable ceremonial. 
 
 This position as to the essential character of 
 Christianity, like our former, will, I think, be 
 generally, though far from universally, admitted. 
 For as there have been sects which, from 
 partial or perverted views of the nature of man, 
 have been led to disown and refuse all intel- 
 lectual pursuits, misapplying the expressions of 
 St. Paul as to the foolishness of human learn- 
 ing, so there have been other — often the same 
 — sects, which have conceived of Christianity 
 as something sui generis and apart, a subject re- 
 ferable to no known class of cognoscibles, an 
 action performable by no ascertained faculties 
 of the soul. But disregarding these dissidents 
 under either head, and satisfied with the assent 
 of the reasonable and instructed to our two 
 
SERMON II. 29 
 
 positions, that the best education is rightly- 
 directed to the development of the mental 
 powers, and again that Christianity is a dis- 
 cipline of holy and pure practice — let us pro- 
 ceed to put these positions in juxtaposition 
 and ask ourselves if they are quite consistent. 
 How can we, on the one hand, acquiesce in 
 that position of Christianity which establishes It 
 as a law and method of virtuous action, a perfect 
 polity for the training of its citizens to a good 
 life, and yet as members of that society maintain 
 an educational system which devotes itself exclu- 
 sively, or at least primarily, to the intellect? If 
 we believe that the business of man as man is a 
 perfect life of social virtue, an active obedience 
 for obedience' sake, would not all the endeavours 
 of education be bent in this direction, especially 
 when we know that the most that education 
 can do, goes but a little way towards realising 
 the idea of moral perfection and harmony which 
 we can form ? While, again, does not the 
 actual direction of our education point to a 
 different estimate of the intellect, to a value 
 of it independent of its ministerial function as 
 
30 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 the guide of life ? Could we bring ourselves to 
 dedicate so much time and labour, I say, not 
 to the accomplishments but to the substan- 
 tial cultivation of the intellect, if we believed 
 that our life and the purpose of our being was 
 centred in our practical energies ? We do not 
 insist on the rare and exceptional cases where 
 devotion to the higher and abstract studies is 
 found a force sufficient to countervail the uni- 
 versal attraction of the great gravitating centres 
 of life, wealth, honours, and enjoyment — we 
 would leave out of the account altogether the 
 patient few who have willingly foregone the 
 prizes of life, ''the comforts of earth and the 
 charities of home," for the sake of what Milton 
 enthusiastically describes as ** a calm and pleas- 
 ing solitariness fed with cheerful and con- 
 fident thoughts where we behold the bright 
 countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of 
 delightful studies," and we argue only from the 
 respect in which general ability as distinct from 
 special talent is held, from the regard had to 
 enlarged views, to comprehensive intellect, to 
 grasp of thought, to general information, to 
 
SERMON II. 31 
 
 knowledge as distinct from learning, would not 
 this respect and regard be excessive and pre- 
 posterous If all these things were to perish with 
 the using ? They would but be on the same 
 footing with the most frivolous and childish 
 pastimes, mere divertlsements, avocations from 
 the true and serious business of man. The 
 sentiments and the practice of men/ who prize 
 the abstract exertion of mind just In proportion 
 as they are able to apprehend it .present them- 
 selves as facts Irreconcilable with that view of life 
 which absorbs all the human energies Into 
 the one channel of moral and religious action. 
 
 But how is the Incompatibility between the 
 two positions widened when we go on to take 
 Into the account the future world, and that 
 further consequence of the Christian view no 
 less unmistakably attached to it, that not only 
 is ** knowledge not our proper happiness," but 
 action — but that further on the mode of our 
 action as right or wrong depends the whole 
 future condition of the man. A practical re- 
 ligion, as opposed to a speculative one. Involves, 
 whether It assert it or not, the doctrine of a 
 
32 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 judgment according to works. They that have 
 done good shall go into everlasting life, and they 
 that have done evil into everlasting misery. 
 We cannot escape from this as the necessary 
 consequence of a belief that duty, religious and 
 moral, is our business here. But what an awful 
 prospect this for a rational intelligence ! To 
 know that its weal and woe for ever are perilled 
 on the use it makes of a few short and fleeting 
 years, a mere point in comparison to that whole 
 existence whose colour it is to decide. The im- 
 mortal spirit, conscious of its own immortality, 
 finds itself exposed to a probation in a matter 
 and of a sort foreign to its own proper nature. 
 Its function is to think, and it finds itself tied to 
 a nature, entering as a constituent of a machine 
 where its compelled business is to choose, and 
 where it chooses at its own imminent risk. Im- 
 mortal as it is in its own being, it is, without 
 its own consent, the subject of an experiment 
 which may end in its immortality becoming 
 a curse to it. The condition of humanity as 
 a whole has often been lamented in pathetic 
 terms by the reflecting ; and yet humanity as a 
 
SERMON II. i-^, 
 
 whole may not unreasonably be held accountable 
 for its own misdoings. But with how much 
 greater severity does the condition appear when 
 we view it as that of an indestructible substance 
 having no other power than that of thought, 
 held responsible for actions of which it is only 
 a concurrent cause, only a cause to that extent 
 to which a thought determines an act,* a being 
 living on the brink of being ruined for ever by 
 errors in the conduct of an ill-understood and 
 enforced business ! If such be the unhappy 
 predicament of the reason, any cultivation of 
 itself for its own sake,' anything like an educa- 
 tion not immediately ministrant to utility; all 
 acquirement, all pursuit of knowledge, becomes 
 truly not only what the practical man esteems 
 it, an idle amusement, but a worse folly,* it is 
 time and attention diverted from an occupation 
 for which all the time and attention we have to 
 give are insufficient. Could a reason cognisant 
 of its perilous footing ever for one moment 
 abandon itself to the free and unimpeded exer- 
 cise of its power, when by so doing it is neces- 
 sarily withdrawing itself from matters of more 
 
 D 
 
34 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 vital concern to it ? Liberal education, that 
 training which has no other object beyond self- 
 improvement, would then be the most pernicious 
 folly that has ever prevailed amongst mankind. 
 The instinctive dislike and contempt which the 
 man of the world feels for the theorist and 
 speculator would be abundantly justified. The 
 maxim of the market-place and the court, ^rjTova-c 
 TO avToh a^yaOov Koi oXovTau tovto Betv Trpdaaetv, 
 would be the dictate not of worldly wisdom 
 alone, but of the truest spiritual wisdom. 
 
 But if we may not let one of these positions 
 go for the sake of securing the other, is it pos- 
 sible to hold them both consistently ? The 
 belief in a separate immaterial substance, not 
 subject to the laws of production and decay 
 that pervade the physical creation, the hypo- 
 thesis which alone seems to explain the respect 
 paid to great intellect, and our actual systems 
 of education — this belief would appear to draw 
 on conclusions adverse to another belief no less 
 general, that of the paramount importance to 
 man of practical life. An exclusive attachment 
 to the latter hypothesis is at the bottom of the 
 
SERMON 11. 35 
 
 many popular notions of religion which refuse 
 to admit any element of intelligence and exalt 
 a simple Christianity, as well as of the higher 
 efforts of the ascetic and mortified saint ; asceti- 
 cism being the culminating point of that view^ 
 which looks too exclusively at the moral to 
 the disparagement of the rational element. To 
 pursue the opposite course, and to hold up the 
 intellect as alone entitled to our cares, neces- 
 sarily conducts to some such hypothesis by way 
 of accounting for its present degraded position 
 — as those of some of the Oriental mythologies, 
 or of Plato, or of Origen — and we must sup- 
 pose that its present dependence on matter, and 
 the senses is by way of penance for some past 
 errors. But as each of these positions sepa- 
 rately appears to rest on a broad basis of fact 
 and observation, if we could find a point of 
 view from which they could be seen to be in 
 harmony, there would be a presumption created 
 that it was a just view. Christian philosophy 
 immediately felt this difificulty. It is one that 
 attaches to the system of Aristotle, but its 
 pressure was not made apparent owing to 
 
36 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 the low place occupied in that system by the 
 practical activity. It is, however, a difficulty 
 unsolved by that system how the godlike think- 
 ing substance can be at once perfect in its own 
 independence, and yet appear again in the man 
 as ministering to his well-being as a further end. 
 But as soon as Christianity brought forward the 
 further position that the reason is not only 
 under a temporal obligation for a season to 
 minister to the man's well-being, but that on its 
 discharge of this obligation hung its own well- 
 being or the contrary, when it superadded the 
 notion of moral probation to that of moral obli- 
 gation, then the unaccountable position of the 
 supernatural particle became startling and 
 loudly demanded an explanation : that whose 
 only distinction it is that it transcends nature, 
 finding itself lodged within nature, and called 
 upon at its peril to co-operate with that nature 
 to produce a new effect, — an effect to which 
 nature alone cannot rise, an effect to which 
 God, pure act of thought, cannot descend, that 
 peculiar effect of which a man alone can be the 
 cause — a moral action. 
 
SERMON II. yj 
 
 Time will only allow of our briefly indicating 
 the line of explanation^to which the Christian 
 philosophy was driven for this anomaly in the 
 physical world, the intrusion into it of a foreign 
 substance not subject to its laws. It would be 
 almost sufficient for this purpose to remind you 
 of the two sermons of Butler on the Love of 
 God, which tread closely in the footsteps of the 
 great Christian philosopher in that modification 
 of the system of Aristotle which it was found 
 necessary to introduce to fill a breach which had 
 always indeed existed in that system, but which 
 Christianity had formidably widened. 
 
 The position of Christian philosophy on this 
 subject reduced to a very general expression is 
 this. Moral obligation, or the necessity of a 
 practical activity, is not a lower, servile, and de- 
 grading business by some unaccountable power 
 imposed on the thinking principle, a coil which 
 it longs to shuffle off that it may revert to its 
 own proper energy of thought, — it flows from 
 the very nature and being of a reason. Of 
 a reason, I say, for the same is not true of 
 the Supreme Master Reason. But suppose a 
 
38 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 separate and derived intelligence .escaped from 
 the prison of sense and this complex scene, 
 relapsed to its proper occupation, the contempla- 
 tion of the Intelligible. Let it see but these two 
 objects in the universe, God and itself. It 
 must immediately enter upon a comparison 
 of these two objects, and as immediately dis- 
 cover that they are related as cause and effect. 
 Consequently arises immediately the notion of 
 a relation of dependence, and that one notion is 
 a sufficient foundation for a religion, a sense of 
 obligation necessarily springs from a conception 
 of dependence. Not, indeed, an obligation to 
 act, for in the case supposed the thinking 
 principle is not furnished with acting powers, 
 but an obligation to think of that relation, and 
 to cherish the thoughts and sentiments to which 
 the conception of that relation must lead. 
 Further, suppose it to become aware of the 
 existence of other minds^ like itself, dependent 
 on the First Mind, and its perception of their 
 being and nature gives rise to a perception of 
 relations and to a new class of sentiments. The 
 groundwork of religion and morality then lies 
 
SERMON 11. 39 
 
 in the understood relations of mind to mind — 
 to mind supreme and mind co-ordinate — results 
 immediately from the pure act of thought, from 
 the intuition, and is not the consequence of 
 the lodgment of the reason in a sensitive and 
 animated material frame. But now suppose 
 further this pure reason thus percipient of its 
 relations to the supreme and to other derived 
 reasons, to be in whatever way invested with a 
 clothing of mere powers of action and sensation, 
 with a body and an animal soul : these are not 
 the conditions which constitute his dependent 
 relation towards God, — that relation existed prior 
 to these new accidents, these are but so many 
 means and opportunities by which it can ex- 
 hibit, embody, and give a sensible shape to those 
 prior conceptions of relation subordinate and 
 co-ordinate. The obligations of religion and 
 morality do not arise from our imprisonment on 
 earth in a habitation of clay ; they are not 
 founded on our animal but on our rational part, 
 and are inseparable from the exercise of our 
 reason — where that reason happens to be 
 lodged and by what accidents to be environed . 
 
40 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 makes no difference — they only determine the 
 particular form and expression that from time 
 to time the reason may be able to give to these 
 conceptions. In this view the whole difficulty 
 of the adjustment of the demands of the 
 practical and contemplative life vanishes. It is 
 seen to be erroneous to speak of the moral as 
 opposed and inferior to the intellectual powers, 
 and to regard life upon earth , with its practical 
 obligations and duties as a sphere altogether 
 alien, from which the' mind is released by death 
 to enter on its own proper existence. Mind 
 here in the virtuous, and in them only, is acting 
 on the very conceptions ^ which will be its 
 permanent support hereafter. In the words of 
 Butler, " Recall what was said of the affection to 
 moral characters, which. in how low a degree 
 soever, is plainly natural to man and the most 
 excellent part of his nature ; suppose this im- 
 proved, as it may be improved to any degree 
 whatever, in the spirits of just men made 
 perfect ; and then suppose that they had a real 
 view of that righteousness, which is an ever- 
 lasting righteousness ; of the conformity of the 
 
SERMON 11. 41 
 
 divine will to the law of truth^ in which the 
 moral attributes of God consist ; of that good- 
 ness in the Sovereign Mind which gave birth 
 to the universe ; add to this a consciousness 
 of having an interest in what they are contem- 
 plating — suppose them able to say, This God is 
 our God for ever and ever — would they be any 
 longer to seek for what was their chief happi- 
 ness, their final good ? Could the utmost 
 stretch of their capacities look further ? Would 
 not perfect goodness be their very end, the last 
 end and object of their affections ? beyond which 
 they could neither have nor desire, beyond 
 which they could not form a wish or thought." 
 
 Grant the hypothesis of a reason in man, of 
 an intelligence which can grasp the First In- 
 telligible — this intelligence must conceive of 
 that Intelligible as either itself or as separate 
 from itself; if separate from itself, then the 
 cause of itself; and this conception by an 
 intelligence of an Intelligence^ which is the 
 cause of itself^ immediately establishes a relation 
 between them, of that intelligence which is 
 dependent to that Intelligence which is absolute. 
 
42 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 A deity who is thought without will can only 
 be conceived on that alternative which identi- 
 fies the human intellect with the divine — the 
 conclusion to which the Averroists wished to 
 push the undecided and seeming inconsistent 
 language of Aristotle. If there exist intel- 
 ligences separate from the Prime Intelligence, 
 then that Prime Intelligence must be the effi- 
 cient cause ^and not the final cause only of those 
 other intelligences. 
 
 Thus it appears that the spheres of thought 
 and action, of the speculative and practical life, 
 are not to be contrasted ; that contemplation and 
 action are not competing theories of happiness ; 
 that morality is not to be set up and intellect 
 disparaged, as if they were disparate pursuits. 
 The excellence and dignity of active life so 
 strenuously put forward by practical men is 
 only to be vindicated on a view which assigns 
 to pure reason an unapproached pre-eminence 
 among our faculties. Moral and religious ob- 
 ligation can only be established on the basis 
 of perceived relations to separate intelligents. 
 The most abstract region of speculation is that 
 
SERMON II. 43 
 
 which must bear the weight of our most homely 
 and household occupations. To profess an ex- 
 clusive admiration of and devotion to business, 
 with an implied, if not expressed, contempt 
 for theory, is irrational and inconsistent. The 
 man of theory, indeed, is too often not without 
 cause the object of the anger or contempt of 
 the man of practice. For the man of theory is 
 often he who uses theory not as the guide but 
 as the substitute for action ; he is talking 
 when he should be moving ; he has always 
 something better to propose than what you 
 would do. He deserves, indeed, the disregard 
 he usually meets with. Yet mere empirical 
 action is servile and of little worth. 
 
III. 
 
 [November 3, 1861.] 
 
 " The children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the 
 parents for the children." — 2 Corinthians xii. 14. 
 
 It is not possible to doubt, on the whole, that 
 the good of society tends towards an incom- 
 patibility with the highest development of the 
 individual man. In order to acquire civil 
 rights we part with much of our natural freedom. 
 Members of one. family have to exercise much 
 self-deniaL for which there is no call were they 
 living alone. The action of the machine de- 
 stroys its own parts, and the general course of 
 nature is founded upon the decay and reabsorp- 
 tion of individual organisms. Analysis and the 
 microscope on the other hand bringing into full 
 light the elaborate construction of single exist- 
 ences, the finish of each minutest detail of the 
 insect or the plant, lead us in the opposite 
 
SERMON III. 45 
 
 direction — lead us towards the conclusion that 
 the perfection of life is realised not in the whole 
 but in each of the parts for its separate self. 
 
 As with material organisms, so with minds 
 and characters. All the moral beauties of 
 character are personal. All that moves us to 
 respect, admiration, reverence, adoration^ is 
 individual. There is no such thing as abstract 
 merit. All our moral qualities for good or for 
 evil are not absolute properties, like the qualities 
 of matter, but tendencies to act and think in a 
 given way. The more we are ourselves^ the 
 more the individual can withdraw itself from 
 the blind mechanism of social habit, the more 
 intense our moral life. The spontaneous energy 
 of the will is the man. 
 
 Here are two distinct classes of facts, from 
 which, when observed and collected irrespec- 
 tive of each other, opposite inferences must be 
 drawn. The one class of facts leads to the 
 conclusion that moral aim terminates in the 
 utmost development of the individual. The 
 other class of facts leads to the opposite theory, 
 which would provide for the well-being of man 
 
46 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 by incorporating him as completely as is pos- 
 sible in an all-pervading social mechanism. All 
 actual governments and all known states of 
 society are conducted on one or the other of 
 these opposite principles. Not indeed that any 
 practical form of society completely realises 
 either of these ideas to the absolute exclusion 
 of its opposite. No communistic community is 
 so despotic ^as not to leave some play to the 
 individual will. Only in the poetic fiction of 
 Cyclopean times did a race of men ever exist 
 without common Oe^iia-re^, without a restraining 
 law. But all politics and forms of government 
 derive their character from the preponderance 
 of the one or the other of these two balancing 
 elements — from their tendency to favour indi- 
 vidual energy, or to enforce uniformity of type 
 upon their component units. 
 
 As governments thus fall into two separate 
 classes with opposite tendencies, so do all 
 schemes and methods of education. For edu- 
 cation is only the effort of adult society to 
 mould the new recruits, as they fall in>to such a 
 degree of uniformity to its own habits as is 
 
SERMON III. 47 
 
 necessary to its own comfort. The instinct to 
 educate on the part of society is far from being 
 a purely unselfish instinct fundamentally. It is 
 an instinct of self-preservation, a desire to main- 
 tain those habits of thought and standards of 
 value to which we have become familiarised, 
 but which would be destroyed or depreciated if 
 a new race grew up alongside of us nourished 
 in alien ideas. As education is thus only a 
 function of social life, it necessarily partakes of 
 the characteristics of that life. And so all 
 methods of education are governed by one or 
 the other of two conflicting aims. Of the one 
 method the inspiring aim is to absorb the in- 
 dividual in the extant habits and ideas of the 
 community or the class into which he is born. 
 Of the other method the proposed end will be 
 the culture and expansion of the man. The 
 one sets out from the abstract idea of the 
 whole, of the body corporate, whether universal 
 humanity, or the State, or the Church, and 
 seeks the welfare of the individual by assimi- 
 lating him to it. The other starts from the 
 concrete fact of the person, and seeks his well- 
 
48 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 being in encouraging and promoting the healthy- 
 growth of all his powers and faculties, bodily 
 and spiritual. But though all actual methods 
 of education must be referred to one or other 
 of these two types, not one presents the type 
 of either without much mixture and check from 
 the other. Not the iron rigours of Spartan 
 discipline, not the tyranny of a democratic 
 majority in a Greek republic, can wholly 
 exclude the entrance of new ideas or the 
 growth of a dissentient minority. Still less 
 does any generation, or any man, however 
 stimulated by the present, or nourished by hope 
 of the future, ever succeed in entirely divesting 
 itself of the ideas inherited from the past. But 
 the difference is unmistakable between a state 
 of society as in China, where the dead forms 
 of the past extinguish all the life of the pre- 
 sent, and that in the rising and thinly-peopled 
 Western States, where the energy and enter- 
 prise of the young efface the influence and con- 
 sideration of the generation they are superseding. 
 All society, as all nature, is sustained by the 
 conflict and balance of these two tendencies 
 
SERMON III. 49 
 
 — the tendency to perpetuate type, and the 
 tendency to deviate from it. In nature and in 
 society alike, were the balance exactly adjusted, 
 were these forces, the new and the old, in 
 equilibrium, there would never be any epochs, 
 any crises, any revolutions. Was the hereditary 
 transmission of physiological and moral pro- 
 perties governed simply by the laws of life, 
 without being crossed by other collateral 
 changes, the old world would be supplanted by 
 the new so insensibly that man at least would 
 never be conscious of the change. A change 
 may be entire, but if spread out over enormous 
 periods of time, it will escape the best means 
 which we, with our limited faculties, possess of 
 preserving the memory of the past. But we 
 find, in fact, that such liquid lapse of the cur- 
 rent of life through infinite time has not been 
 the course either of nature or society. What 
 makes political history what it is, is the occur- 
 rence of revolutions — violent efforts, some abor- 
 tive, some successful, of the new modes of social 
 existence to supersede the old, or to give them- 
 selves rights alongside of the old. Political 
 

 50 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 change is only the recognition in the exterior 
 fabric of the constitution of a social change 
 which has already occurred in the interior rela- 
 tions of classes. And this social change, or 
 alteration in the mutual relation of classes of 
 society, implies an antecedent change in the 
 character and ideas of the individuals of whom 
 those classes consist. This change of the 
 habits and thoughts of the individual takes 
 place not in the same person. With very rare 
 exceptions, the habits and notions of men are 
 formed very early in life, and remain fixed to 
 the end of it what they were. The change takes 
 place between father and son — it occurs in the 
 transmission of the nature — the same, yet with 
 a difference. It is the new generation, which, 
 even in stationary conditions of society, never 
 exactly repeats the generation that preceded it. 
 A due regard for this law of flux and change 
 in human society is one of the first principles 
 of political wisdom. We cannot, even if we 
 would, withdraw ourselves from the operation 
 of the law. To attempt to do so — and the 
 attempt has been repeatedly made — only entails 
 
SERMON III. 51 
 
 an accumulated debt on distant generations. 
 In education, no less than in political institu- 
 tions, the same law must be recognised as 
 imperative. We are too apt, in our presump- 
 tuous ambition, to forget that only the present 
 moment is our own. We must not build our 
 houses as if we were erecting eternal mansions. 
 We must not legislate for a remote posterity, 
 but for the actual conjuncture. The mutability 
 of human affairs is not* a contingent instability, 
 but an inexorable law of change. To attempt 
 to remove any portion of our secular life from 
 the operation of this law, by founding institu- 
 tions which are to last for ever, by creating 
 perpetuities, has been the fertile source of politi- 
 cal embarrassment and individual unhappiness. 
 The duty which the State owes to its 
 children, which the old owes to the new 
 generation, is defined by this consideration. 
 We can only form the young into one body, 
 one republic .with ourselves, by one of the two 
 methods indicated just now. We must enforce 
 our own ideas in the lump upon them, not 
 admitting any divergence, or the intrusion of 
 
52 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 any disturbing doubt. We must arm the State 
 with despotic powers over the heart, mind, and 
 character, and tie down every class in society 
 by severe penalties^as to how it shall think, act, 
 and live, either by a minute code of caste regu- 
 lations, or by the agency of a ubiquitous and 
 inquisitorial police. In this way we may 
 endeavour to perpetuate our own moral life, to 
 preserve the unity of our State, to feel our- 
 selves succeeded, not supplanted, by the young. 
 That is one method — the method in which we 
 set out from the idea of the State, from a given 
 type of society. The other method is that in 
 which we set out from the idea of the person, 
 and endeavour to strengthen and expand those 
 faculties of heart, mind, and soul, which the 
 individual possesses in common with the rest of 
 his species ; to discipline the intellect and the 
 character to the perfection of its powers. The 
 first of these methods is familiar to us in this 
 place as sketched in the most brilliant effort of 
 philosophical imagination extant in literature, — 
 the Ideal Polity of Plato. Recoiling from the 
 chaotic anarchy of opinion and sentiment -which 
 
SERMON III. 53 
 
 he found around him in his own country, and 
 deeply impressed with the necessity of some 
 vigorous conservative element to save society 
 from perishing of its own licentiousness, Plato 
 proposed a thorough reform of education as the 
 remedy. This reform was based on a fixed 
 system of ideas, which was to be preserved and 
 inculcated intact and unimpeached from genera- 
 tion to generation. These ideas were not re- 
 lated to truth relatively only, and to human 
 action regulatively only, they were themselves 
 the expression of absolute truth, or rather the 
 only true forms of real existence. An objective 
 moral type, existing outside of man, and the 
 compulsory conformity of the citizen to that 
 type in various degrees, according to his mental 
 capacity and his calling — that is Plato's education. 
 In the Catholic universities of the middle 
 ages the same principle of education is seen 
 reduced to practice. Growing up under the 
 shadow of a spiritual despotism, these schools 
 were framed wholly with the view of teaching, 
 of communicating useful knowledge. Mental 
 discipline, or the formation of the individual. 
 
54 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 was an idea wholly strange to them. Not only 
 the sacred truths of Revelation, but all other 
 subjects whatever were taught on the same 
 footing. We must not think of the universities 
 of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as 
 exclusively, or even primarily, seminaries of 
 theology. The curriculum culminated in theo- 
 logy, but not till it had first run through the 
 whole cycle of knowledge as then received. 
 Every part of secular science was taught in 
 them, but it was taught not as science but 
 dogmatically. Every branch of knowledge was 
 reduced to the form of a corpus doctrincB — of 
 a deductive system — of which the first prin- 
 ciples rested on the authority of some great 
 name, Aristotle or Galen. The grand idea of 
 science to which free Greek thought had at- 
 tained, as a efi? or subjective condition of the 
 individual reason, had disappeared, and know- 
 ledge had come to denote a syllabus of verbal 
 propositions which could be written in a book, 
 and inculcated by a professor. The initiation 
 into this knowledge, its passive reception by 
 the understanding, constituted education. One 
 
SERMON III. 55 
 
 active habit of the understanding, indeed, was 
 incidentally cultivated by the Middle- Age educa- 
 tion, which ought to be mentioned with praise 
 wherever the object is to do justice to that 
 system. This merit is the correct use of lan- 
 guage ; an accurate terminology, carried indeed 
 by some over-subtle scholastics to absurd excess, 
 but which In general contrasts most favourably 
 with the slipshod and intangible metaphor.which 
 the revival of classical learning has introduced 
 into modern style. 
 
 However thankful we in this country must 
 be for the religious blessings which the Refor- 
 mation movement brought to us, it will not be 
 denied that its immediate effect on the univer- 
 sities was most disastrous. Even in education, 
 however, it is to the Reformation movement^ 
 that we must trace, however remotely, the 
 origin amongst us of that other notion. which 
 has now prevailed for many years in our theory 
 and practice in this place. Among all our 
 many differences, there is probably no one 
 point pn which we are all so unanimous, as that 
 the end and aim of our academic efforts Is the 
 
56 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 cultivation of the intellect and the character, 
 and not the communication of useful knowledge. 
 In our practice, perhaps, we are hardly mindful 
 enough of our principle. But as to our prin- 
 ciple, as to the choice we make between the two 
 theories of education which I have been con- 
 trasting, we are not likely to lose our hold, for 
 some time to come, on that^to which we are now 
 committed by the whole cast of our institutions. 
 That the intellect and the character have a 
 health, a beauty, a perfection of their own, and 
 that the attainment of this perfection is the 
 scope of a liberal education, and that this 
 mental cultivation is a thing quite distinct from 
 the acquisition of information, or the inculcation 
 of truth, or the reception of certain opinions, all 
 this has been brought into clear and conscious 
 light for us by controversy and collision with 
 opposite and popular ideas of education. It 
 may be that in the course of the controversy 
 some of the disputants may have depreciated 
 unduly the value of useful knowledge, or the 
 necessity of traditive and protected opinion in 
 certain subjects, but these are passing errors — 
 
SERMON III. 57 
 
 errors which we can shake ofLiwhile we firmly 
 grasp the great principle, that not the promo- 
 tion of truth, but the cultivation of the indi- 
 vidual, is the end at which we have to aim ; that 
 our business in this place is to form the mind, 
 to enlarge, to correct, to refine it — to qualify it 
 to know, not to give it knowledge, to enable it 
 to digest, master, rule, and use its knowledge ; 
 to give it command over its own faculties ; to 
 temper it to all the flexibility, keenness, sagacity, 
 of which the raw material is capable ; to endow 
 it with method and philosophical grasp ; to set 
 it free from the dominion of prejudice, of pre- 
 conceived opinion, of early bias, of popular 
 illusion ; to teach it to know itself, its strength 
 and weakness ; to assert its just rights without 
 overstepping the limitation of its powers ; to 
 realise in its serene and balanced existence the 
 paradox . that it is at once cognisant of the 
 absolute, and fettered by the phenomenal ; to 
 purge it from the moral evils of pride and 
 self-admiration, and from the meaner vices of 
 acquiescence, servility, degradation to selfish 
 ends, ambition of place and profit ; to maintain 
 
58 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 among ourselves an intellectual republic, within 
 which nor wealth nor rank nor station may en- 
 force their vulgar claims to honour, but in which 
 every one has accorded him, without envy, with- 
 out depreciation, that consideration^ which pro- 
 perly belongs to him for that which he is in 
 himself 
 
 This, my brethren, is the noble task imposed 
 upon us — the profession to which we have the 
 honour and happiness to find ourselves called. 
 May our only rivalry among ourselves be. which 
 can be most worthy of such a calling ! Trifling, 
 indeed, seems the best contribution that the best 
 and ablest can make to so vast a field of enter- 
 prise. Yet it is one. in which every one of us 
 may do something if we will. If we cannot 
 teach, we may exhort and encourage ; if we 
 cannot exhort with effect, we may give our 
 sympathy, we may show by word and deed, on 
 which side our taste and feeling is engaged in 
 the arduous struggle . which is ever going on 
 between mind and matter ; between the spirit 
 of mental cultivation and the spirit of worldly 
 success ; between the self-denial of solitary 
 
SERMON III. 59 
 
 Study and the seductive attractions of the 
 amusements and enjoyments of youth. We 
 can all do this ; and let us not think that sym- 
 pathy is little to give. Sympathy is no substi- 
 tute for alms ; it will not clothe the naked or 
 feed the hungry. But in spiritual and intel- 
 lectual things a true sympathy is the most 
 powerful aid which one human mind can lend 
 to another ; of far greater efficacy in stimulating 
 to new effort, and in bracing to high resolve 
 than the most correct instruction, or most 
 luminous exposition of science. Hence it is 
 that the most successful teacher is not he^who 
 has the most entire command of the principles 
 of his science, or the fullest knowledge of its 
 details, but he whose feeling is most in tone 
 with its aims. There is an intellectual free- 
 masonry by which liberal minds recognise each 
 other, however widely separated they may be 
 by station in life, by age, by acquirements, by 
 extent of information. We call it intellectual 
 sympathy, but it is strictly moral, for it is the 
 love of truth which such minds have in common, 
 and which is as unmistakable in the incepting 
 
6o UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 scholar as in the consummate scientific intellect. 
 It is indeed the native condition of the young 
 and ingenuous mind, while it is as yet unwarped 
 by sinister and self-interested aims, before he 
 has learnt to conceal and to comply, to qualify 
 and to explain away, to flatter prevailing illu- 
 sions, to echo popular cries, and to put in prac- 
 tice the other arts of the phraseological market. 
 This train of reflection leads me to an objec- 
 tion which must necessarily arise in our minds, 
 whenever from dwelling in imagination upon 
 the magnificent ideal of a cultivated intellect, 
 we turn to our own practical achievement in 
 the work. We cannot but think that it is very 
 easy but very idle to be going over the theory 
 of a university in our minds, to be drawing fine 
 pictures of it, to magnify our office, and to call 
 common things by lofty names. For when 
 from these glowing visions of what might be^ 
 we turn to what is, how little correspondence 
 do we find! We look at the material upon 
 which we have to work, and our aspirations 
 become a mockery even in our own eyes ; we 
 are glad to hurry out of sight that they may 
 
SERMON J IT. 6 1 
 
 not draw upon us the deserved ridicule of 
 practical men. We step out of our studies 
 with hearts dilated with the magnificent out- 
 lines of the Temple of Knowledge in which we 
 dream we minister, and we find ourselves not 
 in an academical auditory, but among the lower 
 forms of a grammar school. Instead of a 
 liberal curiosity, intellectual tastes, studious 
 habits, and the frugal self-control of the scholar ; 
 instead of our ardour to teach being met by 
 an equal ardour to learn, we find that we have 
 to do with ignorance, stupidity, sensual tastes, 
 laziness, indifference, an effeminate passion for 
 amusement, self-indulgent habits, listless, aim- 
 less temperaments, inert rather than vicious, 
 unenergetic, unheroic, unimpassioned. When 
 to the generation of the stupid, the insensible, 
 and the frivolous is added those whose under- 
 standing is frost-bound by the prejudices of a 
 narrow sphere, or an artificial theological sys- 
 tem, and those to whom the university course 
 is a pecuniary speculation, the remnant is small 
 indeed of those with whom we can hope to 
 establish that intellectual sympathy between 
 
62 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 young and old which is the instrument of in- 
 tellectual culture. 
 
 When our duties appear to us in this humi- 
 liating light, we are not to shrink from them in 
 despair. No man in God's world is above 
 doing the work to which God has called him. 
 Still less must we sit down in a self-pleasing 
 acquiescence in our own unprofitableness, fold- 
 ing the hands and muttering, All is well, when 
 it is not well. To be above our work is to be 
 unpractical, to forget the world in which we 
 have to live. To plume ourselves upon our 
 imperfections, to acquiesce in our shortcomings, 
 is to be unspiritual, to forget God, who has 
 placed us here to train for eternity. We exist 
 in two worlds at once, we must not ignore the 
 laws and conditions of either of them. This is 
 the very distinction of liberal education, the 
 difference between the higher and the primary, 
 between what is properly education and in- 
 struction, between development and the incul- 
 cation of truth. The one regards a man so 
 far as he is a citizen of the world, and desires 
 to equip him with the knowledge that is of 
 
SERMON III. 63 
 
 most use to him upon earth, to harmonise his 
 ideas with the ideas of the community in which 
 he has to Hve. The other regards him as him- 
 self an immortal reason, capable of a perfection 
 of his own, and of at once and from the first 
 being put in training for that consummation^) 
 So far from putting away from us as visionary 
 the loftiest ideal of a cultivated reason which 
 we can form, we ought to be ever bringing it 
 forward, dwelling on it, picturing it, aspiring 
 towards it. In this thought is the very savour 
 of our profession ; as teachers, in this ideal is 
 our inspiration. Our Oxford education is re- 
 proached with being too unpractical ; with 
 being no longer adapted to the exigencies of 
 modern English life. The reproach is in- 
 telligible enough — it originates in an undeniable 
 fact — but it misstates the character of that fact. 
 It would be more true to say that what we are 
 in danger of letting slip from us is the ideal 
 transcendental aim of moral cultivation. We 
 have come too much to regard ourselves as in- 
 structors in knowledge ; we hold examinations 
 in knowledge ; we award our degrees and our 
 
64 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 honours to those who have acquired certain 
 amounts of knowledge. That which we teach 
 here when regarded as knowledge, as we our- 
 selves do in our practice regard it, the world 
 is not perhaps so very wrong in rating at a 
 very low value. Knowledge for knowledge, 
 that must be of most worth which bears most 
 immediately on life. It is idle to argue the 
 utility of the old classical curriculum. It is hope- 
 less to prove that a language is a more useful ac- 
 quirement than the laws of chemistry and physi- 
 ology ; that a dead language is an acquisition 
 better worth having than a spoken language ; 
 that geometry is on a par in its applications 
 with the four rules of arithmetic ; that the his- 
 tory and antiquities of Athens should be learnt 
 by us rather than the history and antiquities of 
 Britain. We have in practice ceased to argue 
 thus. We have succumbed to the weight of com- 
 mon-sense ; we have made concessions. But 
 in our new legislation we have not proceeded 
 upon any avowed principle, or with a clear con- 
 science. We have patched up a compromise 
 between the two rival theories of education. 
 
SERMON III, 65 
 
 in which we have gone far, I fear, to forfeit the 
 benefits of each rather than combine the advan- 
 tages of both. Had we become converts to the 
 doctrine that the communication of truth is our 
 business, we ought to have discarded our ob- 
 solete subjects, and substituted the new in their 
 room. But we have not done this. We have 
 retained our old matters, antiquated as they are, 
 and no longer able to fulfil the function they once 
 fulfilled. We have retained them, because they 
 are still to us the signs and tokens of that 
 which they once effectuated, because they serve 
 to remind us of that theory of education which 
 we have never renounced, which we all still 
 maintain in theory, and which is probably 
 destined, at no distant day, to reinform our 
 practice. Let us not faint in our practical en- 
 deavours, though our path be, for the moment, 
 somewhat obscured by the inconsistencies into 
 which we have been betrayed. The theory of 
 mental cultivation, which we in Oxford have 
 maintained (in theory) as our peculiar pride, is 
 in the most entire harmony with the progress 
 of civilisation, whatever appearances there may 
 
 F 
 
66 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 be to the contrary. If there be such a thing as 
 general progress, if knowledge is being spread 
 over Europe, and education becoming more 
 diffused, all that is good in such progress in- 
 volves the principle we contend for. Time 
 and discussion and controversy will only bring 
 this principle into clearer light, and it will come 
 to be understood that mental enlargement is not 
 the aristocratic privilege of the few but the equal 
 right of all, according to the measure of their capa- 
 city; that it is in no mystical connection with the 
 learned languages, but requires very few books, 
 and the observation of very common things. 
 
 These anticipations are, however, hazardous. 
 Confining our thoughts to our own immediate 
 practice, let us not despair if our net is cast wide 
 and yet seems to take but few. The liberal- 
 ising influences of ingenuous training extend to 
 a much wider circle, and to understandings of 
 a humbler order than is often thought. If 
 indeed a philosophical temper implied a deep 
 study of philosophical tenets, ancient and 
 modern, it must ever remain a rare privilege — 
 but to think this is to be imposed upon by a 
 
SERMON III. 67 
 
 name! Philosophy, technically so called, as 
 taught in the schools is one thing, and has a 
 very remote bearing on that philosophical balance 
 of judgment which is the end of educational 
 cultivation. Science has been well said to be 
 nothing but trained and organised common- 
 sense ; its vast results are won by no other 
 mental processes than those which are practised 
 by every individual in the humblest and com- 
 monest affairs of life. Scientific culture resides 
 not in the knowledge of certain classes of facts, 
 but in the habit of mind with which those facts 
 are regarded. The scientific man employs no 
 other methods of investigation than those which 
 we are all habitually using, only he does it 
 consciously, with exactitude and consistency. 
 Scientific investigation is not a novel and 
 peculiar art applicable only to the less obvious 
 phenomena of nature — its perfection lies in 
 its exclusion of extraneous and irrelevant evi- 
 dence. To have a scientific mind is not to 
 have observed much, but to know how to ob- 
 serve ; it is not to know in any peculiar way, 
 but simply to know, as we all know, where 
 
68 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 we do know, where the reason acts upon 
 the phenomena unimpaired and unclouded by 
 opinion, imagination, conjecture, prepossession, 
 authority, or prescription. What science is to 
 natural law and exact ratios, a liberal mind is 
 to moral law and contingent relations ; it is a 
 right judgment in all things. The philosophical 
 judgment does not differ essentially from that 
 homely useful quality which is our guide in 
 the practical relations of life — only we call it 
 ''judgment" when it is limited to the narrow 
 sphere of personal interests ; it rises into philo- 
 sophical breadth /when the same dispassionate 
 and balanced consideration is extended over 
 the whole complex of human affairs, the vast 
 and varied range of man's social interests, his 
 moral and feeling nature. As for science, so 
 for philosophy, the training is negative ; it 
 lies not in supplying the mind with any new 
 power, or suggesting a peculiar point of view, 
 but in the rigid exclusion of falsifying in- 
 fluences ; in the maintenance of a sound and 
 healthy thinking, which values men and things 
 at what they are worth, neither more nor less. 
 
SERMON in. 69 
 
 If this be our ultimate end, it follows that few, 
 if any, of our students are wholly excluded from 
 participation in the benefits of our culture. As 
 there is no individual who realises in himself 
 the perfection of the scientific and the practical 
 reason together, or even of either of them apart 
 from the other ; no one in whom cultivation is 
 carried as far as conceivable, whose intellect is 
 a pattern of what intellects should be, so there 
 is scarcely any but may gain an idea of what real 
 training is, and be at least in sympathy with 
 those who have carried it farther than himself. 
 
 Further, we should do well to remember that 
 the intellect is cultivated not by lectures only or 
 chiefly, but still more by discipline. As influ- 
 ence is more to it than law, so discipline is more 
 than teaching. The student has more to learn 
 from the environments of life than in the class- 
 room. Teaching rather tends to simplify or to 
 supersede thought ; it is the moral interests of 
 life which awaken it. The world lies every- 
 where around him ; nor is a university with- 
 drawn from the ordinary currents of social life. 
 But in the academical world there is this 
 
70 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 peculiar, that here the student is brought in 
 contact with a class of men who are not to be 
 found in the world without. A university is 
 the home and harbour of studious men — men 
 who are devoting their lives to the pursuit of 
 science with the same ardour with which others 
 are pursuing practical ends ; men who not only- 
 know more than himself, but who are also, like 
 himself, still learners. For our function here is 
 not only to teach but to learn. We can only 
 successfully teach while we are learning. And 
 this learning, for us the teachers, does not con- 
 sist in reading new books, in making fresh 
 experiments, in mastering novel fields of facts, 
 but in nourishing the intellect by the old springs 
 of wisdom, by the contemplation of the eternal 
 truths of religion, by prayer and spiritual exer- 
 cise, maintaining the thought at an habitual 
 level above earthly things. Unless our teaching 
 be seconded by the interior discipline of our 
 own life, it will be but sounding words. Only 
 so far as we ourselves are treading this heaven- 
 ward path, are reserving some portion of the 
 day for severe study, for self-communing, for 
 
SERMON III. 71 
 
 the presence of God, for bracing and healthy- 
 mental discipline, for withdrawal from the 
 trivial topics of the street and the market, only 
 so far can we hope that our teaching will 
 penetrate to the inner mind of our pupils, or 
 kindle in them congenial aspirations. We 
 must not begin by being dissatisfied with those 
 we have to teach, or be too ready to cast the 
 blame on their listlessness, till we are quite 
 sure the fault lies not in our own want of tone 
 and earnestness. But if from whatever cause 
 we fail to impress ourselves on others, this 
 living in Him who is life itself, this being en- 
 lightened by Him who is the truth itself, this 
 studious retirement, this communion of our 
 spirit with the Spirit of God, is itself its own 
 blessed occupation and reward, in which we 
 may all well be content to serve and wait.tlll 
 we reach that sphere in which we shall no 
 longer see ev alviyfiaTi, but see Him as He is. 
 What we shall be hath not yet been mani- 
 fested ; but when it shall be manifested, we 
 know that we shall be like Him, and shall see 
 Him as He is. 
 
IV. 
 
 [October i8, 1863.] 
 
 " Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto 
 life, and few there be that find it." — Matthew vii. 14. 
 
 When last I spoke from this place I ventured 
 to call your attention to some of the conditions 
 presupposed by all higher education. And 
 particularly to that condition which Is denoted 
 or implied by the term ''liberal." This con- 
 dition we then ventured to say was essential to 
 culture. Culture is not a science, or a know- 
 ledge, or an accumulation of several branches of 
 knowledge — but the habit of a mind trained to 
 know. Culture is not opinion, or right opinion 
 — it is not thought, or power over thought, or 
 power over its expression in language ; it is 
 neither logic, rhetoric, nor metaphysics. Culture 
 is not scientific — it is not literary. It is not the 
 acquisition or possession of any accomplish- 
 
SERMON IV. 73 
 
 ment by the mind ; it consists in the develop- 
 ment of a cultivated intellect itself. 
 
 In a word, liberal education is philosophical. 
 
 We saw further, that all along the annals of 
 education this conception of the nature and 
 office of education has struggled with another 
 conception, according to which education con- 
 sists in the acquisition of knowledge and ac- 
 complishment. This idea has always been 
 the more popular of the two — inasmuch as it 
 recommends itself immediately to the practical 
 sense of the average man in every community. 
 When this conception is once generally received, 
 there is still the further question. What accom- 
 plishment is likely to be most serviceable ? 
 What knowledge is most worth ? This ques- 
 tion has been variously answered in various 
 stages of the progress of society in Europe. 
 One age has considered that it was the know- 
 ledge of God as the highest essence, and has 
 placed theology at the apex of its curriculum. 
 Another age has held that the proper study is 
 human nature, and has accordingly educated 
 through literature, with the arts of rhetoric and 
 
74 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 politics which give power over the actions of 
 other men. A third age will regard a know- 
 ledge of the laws of nature and life as the most 
 valuable acquisition, and will accordingly treat 
 positive science as the sole intellectual object 
 which can claim the attention of young or 
 old. 
 
 These three opinions, that the most valuable 
 knowledge is theology, that it is literature, that 
 it is science, give rise to distinct methods of 
 practical education ; but all agree in the com- 
 mon principle that training is putting in pos- 
 session of knowledge. As standing on this 
 basis they may be contrasted with the other 
 theory, which may be called the theory of 
 liberal education — which proposes as its end 
 the cultivation of the being in itself. 
 
 This recapitulation of the argument of our 
 last discourse has seemed necessary in order to 
 place ourselves at a convenient point of view 
 for going on to touch upon some further 
 elements of that mental formation which the 
 highest education aims to produce. 
 
 Let us speak to-day of that ingredient of a 
 
SERMON IV. 75 
 
 philosophical education which may be called 
 its ascetic element. 
 
 It cannot be supposed that the University 
 has to do with the intellect only. This is the 
 very distinction between special studies and 
 liberal training, that professional preparation 
 addresses itself only to the understanding, 
 while liberal culture grasps the whole being. 
 We deal not with abstract intelligences but 
 with men. All the great men who have ever 
 moved and improved mankind have fastened 
 instinctively not upon men's reason, but upon 
 men themselves. All harmonising influences 
 are rational, but they are more ; they are 
 human. The highest of all influences which 
 has ever been brought to bear upon the spirit 
 of man, was not an influence of science or 
 knowledge, but a personal influence. So no 
 training of the young can be attempted success- 
 fully if it be confined to the mind only. We 
 may speak of forming the mind, — but we must 
 mean by it forming the character. 
 
 So much is recognised by all who have to do 
 with education, as true of it throughout every 
 
76 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 grade. Let us consider the special mode in 
 which that highest branch of education with 
 which we, in this place, are concerned, operates 
 in this concerted action upon the whole nature 
 of the individual. 
 
 All observers are agreed that there is some 
 connection between our moral and our intel- 
 lectual nature, however widely they may differ 
 in the terms in which they state that connec- 
 tion. Without involving any particular theory 
 of the nature of the relation between these two 
 sides of our nature, we all include in our idea 
 of the educated man some measure of moral 
 perception. In the lower strata of moral de- 
 velopment the connection between the under- 
 standing and the heart is hardly at all discern- 
 ible. The infant is learning its letters, and at 
 the same time is being taught to obey its 
 parents, and to fear God. There seems here 
 no relation between the two lessons — between 
 the intelligence and the will. As we grow up 
 we are put under rules of conduct, at first 
 merely arbitrary, gradually less so, till we are 
 taught in due course the foundations of obliga- 
 
SERMON IV. 77 
 
 tion — the reasons on which all rules of conduct 
 rest — and we come to see that manly virtue is 
 not conventional, but is reason applied to the 
 regulation of life. In the well-trained man — 
 the man of virtuous and religious habits — the 
 intellect and the will are brought into harmony 
 — not that he always does that which he knows 
 to be right, but that the rule of God's com- 
 mandments is seen by him to rest on the 
 intelligible relations of man to man, and of man 
 to God. 
 
 When we designate a person as an educated 
 man, the phrase is very vague, but it can 
 hardly be used without implying so much — 
 that this information of the will by the under- 
 standing has been entered upon, that the man 
 recognises the conditions of moral being, and 
 bows to them — that he is become a law to him- 
 self, and has risen above that stage in which 
 conduct is determined by habit, by custom, by 
 the pains and penalties of criminal enactment. 
 
 Education then carries with it thus much, 
 it brings a human being within the scope of 
 morality or prudential religion — a moral state 
 
78 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 of which the limits are not easily ascertainable 
 by a definition, though readily recognisable as 
 an average. It is that level of virtue at which 
 a humanised society rests after it has provided 
 for security by its police, and has given time 
 and room to all the educating influences which 
 arise of themselves as soon as violence and 
 injustice, crime and the pressure of want are 
 removed. It is not the average of human 
 nature, but the average of ordered and organ- 
 ised human nature. This moral standard fills 
 up all that interval which is above law, and is 
 below spiritual life. It is social, not individual. 
 It is the highest level of virtue to which society 
 can attain — all above this is individual effort. 
 Ordinary education furnishes the man at once 
 with the practical knowledge and with the 
 moral habits called for by the commerce of 
 society. This knowledge and those moral 
 principles have their adaptation to the ends of 
 life. 
 
 The higher education takes up its disciples 
 here. It pretends to carry them beyond this 
 sphere, which is the immediate sphere of us all ; 
 
SERMON IV. 79 
 
 it claims to introduce us to a more compre- 
 hensive vision of truth, to a knowledge which 
 is its own end, and to a sphere of moral 
 energy which designs its own perfection. 
 The highest training is philosophical and 
 ascetic. 
 
 It might be desirable to use other terms, if 
 other terms could be found, to characterise the 
 two sides, intellectual and moral, of our edu- 
 cation. Philosophy, we know, is always in 
 disrepute with the generality, nor is it only 
 contemned — its nature is misunderstood. As- 
 ceticism is a word still more unpalatable, and 
 the meaning of which is almost as vaguely 
 apprehended. So far from being praiseworthy, 
 it is commonly supposed to denote the ritual 
 mortifications and debasing superstitions of the 
 convent. 
 
 Scarcely any sentiment of the Reformation 
 has sunk deeper into the mind of this country 
 than its aversion to Monkery. The vices of 
 the English convents caused their fall — at least 
 served as its justification ; yet monkish virtue 
 is still more alien to the spirit of a pure Christ- 
 
8o UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 ianity. The idea that we can merit grace — 
 that man can co-operate with the sacrifice of 
 Christ to make atonement for guilt, and obtain 
 remission of its temporal penalties, is an error 
 against which the Reformation emphatically- 
 protested. Monachism was the embodiment 
 of this error — the sanction of it in an outward 
 and visible institution. It is matter of great 
 thankfulness to us that our Church was de- 
 livered from this powerful instrument for per- 
 verting the conscience, and spreading a cloud 
 of ecclesiasticism over the heart of the English 
 people. But the intensity with which the 
 sound religious instinct of England revolted 
 from the idea of merit, and the cedificia of 
 monasticism which had been raised upon it, 
 has perhaps led us too far. We are inclined 
 to be suspicious of moral excellence. The very 
 word virtue is misliked, it has a heathenish 
 air. Ascetic piety is not so much forgotten as 
 condemned for unevangelical. In rejecting the 
 monastic institute which is the caricature of 
 religion, we need to be careful lest we let slip 
 the reality with it. Ascetic piety is one thing, 
 
SERMON IV. 8l 
 
 mortification of the flesh is another. Mon- 
 achism came into the Church only as an 
 attempt to reahse, for the few, that high and 
 pure life which had at first been the common 
 ideal of all Christians. 
 
 Christianity entered the world as a new 
 principle of life — the life of the Spirit — the 
 renewal of the inner man. The pious Jew or 
 philosophic heathen who joined the Christ- 
 ian community in Antioch or Alexandria, with- 
 drew by that step from the pursuits of life — 
 renounced secular ambition — became dead to 
 the world — became a stranger where he had 
 been a citizen, Trapot/co? KoiX irapeTTlhr^yuo^ — he 
 became a citizen of the heavenly city — ri^iSiv to 
 iroXiTevjjLa iv ovpavol^ virdp'^ec.^ Persecution, when 
 it came, made this separation more felt, it did 
 not create it. Every Christian was a saint. 
 
 Gradually this first fervour of the spiritual 
 life withdrew into an inner circle. The mass 
 of the baptized assimilated more and more to 
 the habits of general society. The Christians 
 began to be distinguished from the Pagans, not 
 
 ^ Phil. iii. 20. 
 G 
 
82 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 by renunciation of the world, but by observ- 
 ances and opinions. Against this gradual 
 absorption of the Christian community by the 
 Roman world monasticism was the natural 
 reaction. It had indeed been preceded in 
 point of time by other protests. 
 
 The writings of Tertullian in particular offer 
 a lively picture of this strife going on between 
 the party of strict evangelical practice and the 
 laxer performance of respectable society. The 
 ordinary standard of virtue had begun to have 
 its defenders on theory. In earlier times the 
 struggle had been between Christian and 
 heathen morality — between the easy accom- 
 modating virtue, the probum atque honestum, 
 of the Roman world, and the humility and self- 
 abnegation of the Gospel. The first preachers 
 of course condemned the depraved and libidin- 
 ous practices of Roman manners — but they 
 denounced them on heathen principles. In- 
 justice, cruelty, and lust were forbidden by 
 natural conscience, were forbidden to the un- 
 believer. To his own disciples — to the elect 
 — St. Peter recommends abstinence from the 
 
SERMON IV, 83 
 
 gratifications of the body,^ airkxeaQai rmv 
 (TapKiKcov iircOvfjuLMv. The same struggle was 
 afterwards transferred to the bosom of Christ- 
 ianity itself — the struggle between the moder- 
 ate practice of the average Christian, and the 
 endeavours of the more zealous after the more 
 perfect way. In the third century it became 
 an open breach under the name of Montanism. 
 The moral protest which Montanism had 
 signified in the third century was renewed in 
 the fourth by monachism. With this differ- 
 ence : the Montanist sought to compel by 
 discipline the whole body of Christians to the 
 strictest practices ; the monk, on the other 
 hand, did not consider the Sceculum — the Age 
 with its mixed faults and virtues — to be given 
 over to perdition, but he himself fled to the 
 wilderness that he might satisfy his own long- 
 ings for devotional abandonment. The dis- 
 tinction was introduced of two grades of 
 holiness ; the lower degree of virtue was obli- 
 gatory on all the baptized ; the higher, as a 
 counsel of perfection, was recommended only 
 
 ^ I Peter ii. 11. 
 
84 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 to the few who were ripe for it — who had a 
 vocation. 
 
 It Is undeniable that Manlchean sentiment 
 as to the origin of matter, and the turpitude of 
 earthly life, of which the body Is the organ, 
 mingled with other and purer Ideas In promot- 
 ing the early spread of the monastic institute. 
 When this and other motives are withdrawn, 
 we find In the traditions of the early Fathers 
 of the Desert the purest spirit of evangelical 
 holiness, the noblest traits of moral beauty. 
 
 Two principles pervade their words and 
 practice which exemplify this moral insight at 
 once Christian and philosophic. 
 
 1. They recognise that the culture of the 
 dispositions and faculties of the soul may be pro- 
 posed to man as Itself an object of his efforts. 
 
 2. They recognise that this self-culture is a 
 spiritual work — that It lies not in formal per- 
 formances, but in the practice of virtue, and the 
 exercise of devout contemplation. 
 
 These principles are expressed In two words 
 much used in the ecclesiastical annals of the 
 fourth century, daKTja-t^i and (fnXoao^ia. 
 
SERMON IV, 85 
 
 Of these two words neither is of Christian 
 coinage. They are borrowed from the schools 
 of the Greeks — and both are used in their 
 strict and original Greek sense. Ascesis does 
 not imply mortification — self-inflicted suffering 
 or pain. It is simply exercise. Already in 
 Plato fidOrja-L^ and da-KTjaL^; are the two parts of 
 education. It implies that as the art and 
 prowess of the soldier must be acquired by 
 drill and assiduity, so we may make a study of 
 moral excellence, and exercise ourselves with a 
 view to it. ** Herein I exercise myself," St. 
 Paul says, *' iv tovto) ao-zcw — to have a con- 
 science void of offence." ^ This is the KvpiaKrj 
 d(TK7](Tc<; of which St. Clement speaks^ — the dis- 
 cipline prescribed by the Lord Jesus — the 
 ryvfJLvaa-la ek evai^ecav of the First Epistle tO 
 
 Timothy. The notion of daKrja-i^ contains 
 nothing propitiatory ; it is an idea as old as 
 that of culture, and always a part of it. It is 
 coupled with e^o?, but is not synonymous with 
 it :^ I may be habituated by others. do-Kelv 
 
 ^ Acts xxiv. 16. 2 Strom, iv. 484. 
 
 ^ els TTjv TravreX'^ ^iKaioirpayiav rpia Set <ruv8/3a/x€tr, <f)v<riv 
 
86 • UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 implies the intervention of my own will — 
 self-culture. 
 
 The tyro in Church history knows how 
 constantly the Christian writers of the fourth 
 century couple the term ascetic with that of 
 
 philosophy. <S>tXo<7o^o) TToXirela koX aaKTjcrei, Sta- 
 TTpeylraf}'^ — ** He was eminent in his day by a life 
 of devout contemplation " is almost the stereo- 
 type obituary phrase by which Eusebius com- 
 memorates a holy priest or bishop. ^iXoaoj>iav 
 acTKelv is a combination of terms equally familiar 
 to the student of Plato. The word (t>iXo<TO(j>6tv 
 alone conveyed to the Greek ear the notion of 
 a practical direction of life. Philosophy was a 
 mode of life, not of knowledge — a pursuit, not a 
 science. The heads and founders of sects from 
 Pythagoras to Epicurus and Chrysippus were 
 not setters forth of physical and cosmical 
 systems, but initiators into a new life intro- 
 ducing the soul of the disciple into a cycle of 
 loftier thoughts and purer habits. The Greek 
 
 Ktti Aoyov /cat Wos ' KaXio Sc Xoyov fxev rrjv /xddrjo-iv, Wos 5e 
 TTjv acTKYjCTLV. — Plutarch, Ve Liberis educandis, p. 2. 
 1 Euseb., De Martyr. Palaest., ii. 
 
SERMON IV. 87 
 
 philosopher's contempt of wealth and station 
 was a practical contempt to be carried into the 
 arrangements of daily life. It is true that the 
 literary men soon began to try to commit 
 philosophy to books; they composed manuals 
 of theological and metaphysical speculation 
 which they entitled '* Of Philosophy " — in the 
 words of the great encyclopaedist himself, " tak- 
 ing refuge from the severities of a life of self- 
 discipline in doctrinal discussions they persuade 
 themselves that they are philosophic men." ^ 
 
 We may thus easily understand how the 
 Latin fathers sometimes place Christianity in 
 an antithesis to philosophy — understanding by 
 Greek philosophy erroneous cosmical or meta- 
 physical hypotheses. Tertullian's well-known 
 *'Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis .-^ Quid 
 Academiae et Ecclesiae ? "^ is a challenge to the 
 Heathen Schools ; a claim for Christian revela- 
 tion to be the only and absolute solution of the 
 riddles of creation and moral providence. But 
 
 ^ €7rt T0V5 Aoyovs Kara^cvyovTCS otovrat <l>iXocro(f>€iv. — JEfht 
 Nic. ii. 3. 
 
 2 j)s Prescript, 7. 
 
UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 the Greek fathers of Alexandria and Constant- 
 inople, better acquainted with the character of 
 the Greek philosophers, though they refuted 
 their errors, recognised in them the true fore- 
 runners of the Christian teacher — the moral 
 preachers and reformers of their day, errone- 
 ous or imperfect in their notions of how the 
 world was to be overcome — combatants, but 
 with insufficient weapons, in the same warfare, 
 victory in which was reserved for the faith of 
 the Christian. 
 
 It would carry us beyond the present limits 
 to trace the descent of this notion downwards 
 from the fourth century through the Christian 
 Schools — passing from the monastic institute 
 into the university which grew out of that 
 institute — to bring up the oft-repeated struggle 
 of the disciplinal system of education against 
 the doctrinal. 
 
 To come at once to our own circumstances 
 and those of the present day. 
 
 Whatever the universities may once have 
 been they are not now monastic. They are 
 now schools of preparation for life. Shall we 
 
SERMON IV. 89 
 
 not, it will be said, adapt them to English life 
 as it is ? If we were to consult the majority of 
 those persons who take a real interest in our 
 well-being, would they not say that if they have 
 any fault to find with us, it is that we are too 
 old-fashioned ; that there is too much of the 
 Middle Ages about us ; that we do not, as the 
 phrase is, keep pace with the times ? It is 
 thought to be a great happiness that we have 
 shaken off the garb and routine of the convent ; 
 but it is hinted that we might go a little farther 
 in the same direction with advantage — we 
 might think more as the world thinks, read the 
 books it reads, and devote our studies to the 
 subjects it holds in honour. 
 
 We have, it is true, done much of late years 
 in compliance with this advice. We have con- 
 formed reluctantly but gradually. If we com- 
 pare Oxford of to-day with Oxford of a century 
 back, the change seems total. The world is 
 better satisfied with us ; but it is still calling to 
 us to come on, not to lag in the rear, to con- 
 tinue to raise ourselves to its level. When we 
 compare this attitude which the world assumes 
 
90 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 towards us, when we see it compassionating our 
 weakness, condoning our shortcomings in con- 
 sideration of our instalments of amendment, 
 just tolerating our existence in virtue of our 
 promises for the future — when we compare 
 this humiliating tenure with our own historical 
 position, with our world-wide renown, with our 
 vast material resources, with our claims, our 
 pretensions, above all, with our opportunities, it 
 must surely awaken reflection — it must compel 
 us to ask ourselves if this career of concession, 
 this waiting upon popular opinion, this slow 
 and sullen abandonment of our ground, follow- 
 ing out unwilling and unconvinced the ideas of 
 others — if this be the position we are per- 
 manently to occupy. Is it in this sense that 
 we are to adapt our education to life, to con- 
 form to the spirit of the age ? If we were 
 what we claim to be, surely it would belong to 
 us to point out the way ; to find the right road 
 and to proclaim it, to lead others along it, our- 
 selves in the van. 
 
 Yet this is not the worst. We have had 
 to suffer the bitter humiliation of having our 
 
SERMON IV, 91 
 
 intellectual studies moulded by opinion outside 
 our walls. We have had to see our languish- 
 ing and impoverished learning reinvigorated by 
 the ingrafting upon our decayed stock of new- 
 Subjects in accordance with a mere popular 
 conception of their utility — we have in reality 
 abdicated the supremacy we have a right to 
 exercise in the intellectual guidance of England. 
 But if the prevalent notions on the training of 
 the intellect are limited by a very gross con- 
 ception of life and welfare, is the moral standard 
 of public opinion more elevated ? Is our con- 
 formity to the world to be carried into this 
 department of training ? Are we, here in our 
 precious years of retirement, to know no more 
 of the spiritual life than we can hope to do 
 afterwards amid the pressure of public service, 
 the strain of professional labours, or the still 
 more distracting web of personal engagement^ 
 which weaves itself round each one of us as life 
 advances ? 
 
 For if we are not wholly satisfied with our 
 success in teaching, shall we say that we are 
 more satisfied with our training ? The two 
 
92 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 indeed are so intimately blended that, whatever 
 weak points there may be in our intellectual 
 armour, the same must be expected to show 
 themselves again in tone and temper. We all 
 gladly acknowledge the fact, of which we were 
 assured in an early part of the present year 
 by one of our officers of discipline, that the 
 academical youth are more decorous in their 
 conduct, more amenable to authority, less given 
 to outbreaks of headstrong vice and wild dis- 
 sipation, than at any recent period of our 
 history. These are matters of honest con- 
 gratulation — valuable for themselves, still more 
 valuable as tokens of a growing refinement of 
 disposition. But when we appropriate a part 
 of this credit to ourselves we ought to consider 
 how much of this happy change is due to the 
 gradual refinement of English manners — how 
 much of this moral reformation comes to us 
 from without. We now receive the young 
 man from his home and his school already 
 toned to the gentler charities of life — to 
 courtesy, to humanity, to forbearance, sym- 
 pathy, considerateness for others. He reflects, 
 
SERMON IV. 93 
 
 in fact, in these qualities, the average standard 
 of our English domestic life. He brings with 
 him too other characteristics of modern society, 
 only in a form suited to his age and circum- 
 stances. The insatiable appetite for amuse- 
 ment — the craving for variety — for constant 
 succession of excitement — labour shrunk from — 
 the restraint of attention felt as an intolerable 
 annoyance — study as an irksome drudgery — 
 pleasure itself sought with listlessness, not with 
 passion, while day after day runs down the 
 same easy round of sauntering comradeship : 
 such are some of the symptoms of the soft 
 self-indulgent spirit which attends the diffusion 
 of wealth and civilisation. On such a soil we 
 could not hope to grow the hardy fruit of 
 independent judgment, of an informed and 
 disciplined intellect. This moral weakness is 
 the evil we have to meet — such as this the 
 average student too often comes to us. Does 
 our system, as it is, offer the corrective for his 
 feebleness ? Do we send him away braced, 
 vigorous, determined, independent - minded, 
 emancipated from his class prejudices, awakened 
 
94 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 from his moral lethargy ; or more luxurious, 
 fastidious, and exclusive than he came to us, 
 his judgment crippled for life by the adoption 
 of some set of party opinions, a ready-made 
 worshipper of worldly rank or fortune ? 
 
 That we have reason not to be altogether 
 satisfied with the level of attainment to which 
 we can succeed in bringing up our students is, 
 I think, generally admitted among us. Such 
 dissatisfaction is of itself an encouraging feature 
 — it is far better than acquiescence. The next 
 thing is that we look in the right direction for 
 the remedies. Hitherto we have tried legisla- 
 tion. We have increased the number and 
 stringency of our examinations, the' number 
 and value of our rewards. These measures 
 cannot be said to have failed. They have 
 effected something — perhaps all that could have 
 been reasonably expected of them. Examina- 
 tions, we know, are not an adequate corrective of 
 idleness ; and they have a tendency to degrade 
 preparatory teaching instead of to elevate it. 
 To enforce study by examination is much on 
 a par with compelling morality by public dis- 
 
SERMON IV. 95 
 
 cipline, or restraining private extravagance by 
 sumptuary laws. The outward actions are 
 coerced by such enactments ; the disinclination 
 within remains what it was. What we wish to 
 create is the disposition to self-improvement— 
 this legislation cannot reach. The best con- 
 trived examination can only reach knowledge 
 and acquirement ; it cannot gauge character. 
 We seek knowledge not for itself, but as a 
 means for enlarging and building up the 
 character. Something is wanted for this pur- 
 pose more than the compulsion of examinations 
 to be passed, or the inducement of honours and 
 rewards which may be won. 
 
 Moral weakness in a dependent moral being 
 can only be remedied by that Being from whom 
 he originally derived all he has. But the one 
 source of spiritual strength, God's Holy Spirit, 
 operates by means, and discipline is the well- 
 proved means of this grace. The young man 
 is released from the exterior and positive dis- 
 cipline of school law. He comes to the 
 university ; there he should find offered, not 
 forced upon, him a discipline which is strictly 
 
96 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 moral, for it Is voluntary, self-imposed, self- 
 carried on. He should find Instructors who 
 are not merely ahead of him In his studies, 
 more matured in mind, ready to open to him 
 the realms of thought, but who are also desirous 
 to introduce him to the one great art of life — 
 the art of self-culture, self-discipline. In this 
 art they are at once his instructors and his 
 fellow-students ; they are carrying on their own 
 education in it, making their own experiences. 
 This life is not a thing apart from their studies ; 
 towards Its working out they all converge, and 
 in it find their unity and their explanation. 
 When the man has once entered this road, 
 once engaged in the struggle for self-formation, 
 the ambition of perfection, he soon finds that it 
 is great enough to absorb all his powers ; nay, 
 that it calls out in him energies of which he 
 never suspected the existence ; It opens to him 
 a vista which stretches far beyond the limits of 
 this stage of being, which bridges over the 
 interval between this world and the next, and 
 endows life with a purpose and a meaning^ 
 which no other pursuit can give it. He has 
 
SERMON IV, 97 
 
 found a rock beneath his feet. He is astonished 
 at the frivolous interests of those around him, 
 their want of earnestness, their superficial hold 
 on life, their apathy to the nobler objects of 
 human pursuit ; the levity, monotony, and non- 
 chalance of their conversation, betraying itself 
 even in the tones of their voice. Though he 
 does not seek diversions as they do, he finds 
 that he enjoys life more than they, and can 
 taste its pleasures with a relish which only a 
 pure mind, a clear intention, and a vigilantly 
 watched conscience can bestow. God, and the 
 human destiny to which God has called him, is 
 his presiding thought. The rule of his day is 
 to be always making the best of himself. 
 Hence his security — the confidence with which 
 he steps from his retirement into the world. 
 To use the image of St. Francis de Sales, 
 he handles the things of this world as an 
 infant reaches forward to gather flowers with 
 one hand, while with the other it grasps tight 
 the hand of its father.^ 
 
 This union or identity of mental and moral 
 
 1 Introd. ct la Vie^ iii. c. lo. 
 H 
 
98 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 improvement can only be enjoyed in its com- 
 pleteness in the highest order of studies which 
 the university presents, viz. in the philoso- 
 phical. It is by the possession of a faculty of 
 philosophy mainly that a university is dis- 
 tinguished from a school on the one hand, and 
 from an academy of science on the other. 
 School, at life's commencement, teaches the 
 elements of knowledge ; an academy of science 
 extends the bounds of knowledge. Between 
 these two lies the faculty of philosophy in a 
 university, which initiates into the principles 
 of knowledge, and into a life in conformity with 
 those principles. The precepts of the school 
 and the discoveries of the academy can be 
 committed to books — philosophy cannot, for 
 It consists wholly in the training ; in tempers 
 and dispositions, in the habit and attitude of 
 the soul. A Christian life Is the true philo- 
 sophy, and it can be communicated from 
 teacher to disciple in only one way, by the 
 contagion of example. Education Is weak ^ in 
 proportion as it detaches the matters taught 
 from religious training — strong in proportion 
 
SERMON IV. 99 
 
 as it rises to discern their true unity. If it be 
 the case that we, in this place, have let our- 
 selves slide unawares into this politician's dis- 
 tinction between matters secular and matters 
 religious ; that we teach religious matter as one 
 among many subjects — as a doctrine ; that we 
 have come to regard the secular branches as 
 preparation for life in the world, and the re- 
 ligious branch as a distinct preparation for 
 heaven, we have in this a sufficient explanation 
 of the inefficacy of our system ; we need not be 
 surprised at the feeble power it seems to exert 
 over the best minds. 
 
 Who is there indeed among us. who is not 
 at times oppressed even to sickness of heart by 
 the consciousness of his own inadequacy ? The 
 teacher has his station between two ages, be- 
 tween the young and the old, between that 
 which has been and that which is to be. In 
 the presence of the past he stands, with its 
 accumulations of fact and experience, defying 
 by their multiplicity the grasp of any single 
 memory, however capacious, with its revelations 
 of beauty and grandeur in the moral and physi- 
 
loo UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 cal worlds .transcending his utmost powers of 
 conception to fix and body forth. Books may 
 in some sort be the repository of the facts, but 
 they cannot preserve the spirit which should 
 give them life and meaning. Only the living 
 intelligence can (not contain but) represent and 
 give human expression to the magnificence, 
 grandeur, order, and harmony in the presence 
 of which he feels himself Of this sublime 
 deposit the teacher is the representative. That 
 which he has seen and known and felt he seeks 
 to declare to others. Of this vast total of all 
 his experiences, his studies, his contemplations, 
 aspirations, sufferings, prayers, under the con- 
 sciousness of which he thinks and speaks, how 
 small a part can be drawn upon in the direct 
 and technical discharge of his office as in- 
 structor ! How trivial seems what he can say 
 in a lecture, a sermon, or a conversation! He 
 feels as a man struggling to speak in his sleep, 
 making a vain but exhausting effort to compass 
 in words a meaning which is perpetually escap- 
 ing from him. If not so much what we say, as 
 the spirit in which we say it, is that which 
 
SERMON IV. loi 
 
 influences, that spirit requires to be fed and 
 supported. We cannot inspire our pupils with 
 the taste for study and self-improvement .if we 
 ourselves are destitute of that taste. AAJe have 
 to lead the way on the road in which we would 
 have them walk. Though instruction is our 
 business here, it is only part of our business. 
 We are here as teachers, but we are also here 
 as learners. We are educating not others only, 
 but ourselves also for eternity. We are all 
 fellow-students together. Of all teaching, be- 
 yond the most elementary, it must be said that 
 he best teaches who is himself learning. But 
 in the higher region of mental and spiritual 
 training the condition becomes an indispensable 
 one. Our first business is to be ourselves 
 somewhat, if we would bring up others to be 
 the same. The tutor knows that^when he has 
 taken his degree, his education, so far from 
 being completed, is but begun. If this be true 
 of the amount of knowledge which may be 
 amassed, it is still more true of the views and 
 feelings with which knowledge is to be regarded. 
 The demands of practical life increase upon us 
 
I02 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 SO fast, as we grow older, that if they be not 
 resisted, they invade not only the time, but the 
 mind itself. We get gradually the habit of 
 regarding everything from a temporal point of 
 view. Our measure of the value of knowledge 
 changes. We lose our youthful eye for poetical 
 beauty, we despise philosophy, for the tender 
 sensitiveness of the young conscience we sub- 
 stitute a barren orthodoxy and a decent con-- 
 formity. And this process we call growing 
 wiser as we grow older. 
 
 We can only escape this doom, this sentence 
 of perpetual imprisonment of the understanding, 
 and palsy of the moral feelings, by attending to 
 cherish an inner hidden life of the soul free 
 from the intrusion of the thoughts and feelings 
 of the world. The soul in all its powers and 
 faculties, the affections carried out in all their 
 strength to Him who died for us ; the under- 
 standing maintained in contemplation of the 
 truths of science, the experience of history — 
 this is the true aV/cT^o-t?, the conscious exercise 
 of all the practical energies phased upon an 
 interior cultivation of the powers of the soul. 
 
V. 
 
 [April 30, 1865.] 
 
 ■^v TO <f>o}<s TO olXyjOlvov o <^a)Tt^ct Trai/Ttt avOpiairov ip^^ofievov 
 CIS Tov Koa-fiov, 
 
 *' That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that 
 Cometh into the world." — John i. 9. 
 
 Two aspects of our education have occupied us 
 on two former occasions, — the intellectual and 
 the moral, — and we found that the quality 
 which should distinguish the highest intellectual 
 education from all the preparatory stages was 
 that it should be philosophical, and that which 
 should characterise the moral training in its 
 highest form was that it should be ascetic. Our 
 intellectual training should be a training not in 
 philosophy, but to a philosophical spirit. Our 
 intellectual aim here is not the acquisition of 
 knowledge, but the attainment of a certain 
 mental state. We learn, not to know this or 
 that, but to know. In its moral aspect, our 
 
I04 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 education here is what we have called ascetic, 
 i.e. it is a discipline of character. It grasps at 
 nothing less than the whole man ; it seeks to 
 mould him wholly not only in his thoughts but 
 in his inclinations and his will. 
 
 Resuming the subject at this point we see 
 that one feature is common to both sides of 
 such a training. Our intellectual and moral 
 cultivation alike are developments from within ; 
 they are not forms imposed from without. 
 This constitutes a distinction between the lower 
 stages of education, that education of which all 
 men do or can partake, and the superior educa- 
 tion which a university professes to administer. 
 The lower or school education is a communica- 
 tion of one or more accomplishments, rising in 
 number and complexity according to the time 
 and pains bestowed upon the pupil, from the 
 simple accomplishments of reading and writing 
 to be learnt in the village school to the Latin 
 and Greek and mathematics of the grammar- 
 school. In all this course, however far it may 
 be carried, however numerous the objects 
 studied, the learner is passive ; he submits to 
 
SERMON V. 105 
 
 be taught ; he learns by a mechanical habit ; he 
 gives nothing of his own except so far as 
 attention, memory, and application are active 
 powers ; his understanding is exercised but in 
 the way of receptivity. In one word this 
 education does not touch mind. Society has a 
 parental instinct which impels it to reproduce 
 in the rising generation an exact copy of itself. 
 It desires to communicate its own opinions, 
 practices, customs, unchanged. Social life is a 
 mould in which each successive generation is 
 cast, or a guild in which is propagated from age 
 to age the mystery of the craft. The mores 
 et instituta majoruniy that is the ideal. Con- 
 formity to an external rule is the highest virtue ; 
 the appropriation of extant knowledge and tradi- 
 tional opinion the highest attainment of wisdom. 
 In the education which imposes this rule and 
 habituates to its practice, all men can partake 
 in proportion to the amount of their under- 
 standing. Every country as it advances in 
 civilisation is gradually covered with schools 
 and teachers for this purpose. It is requisite 
 to our welfare and the continuance of society 
 
io6 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 that each of us should be brought within the 
 range of such an education. We should be in 
 a state of habitual rebellion against law and 
 usage unless we had learned to recognise and 
 submit to so much of the exterior conditions of 
 our existence as comes in contact with our daily 
 and personal life. For the different degrees in 
 which we recognise the law of the phenomena 
 around us are what chiefly constitutes the differ- 
 ent degrees of education. We do in common 
 parlance draw a distinction between an educated 
 and an uneducated man, but the distinction is 
 a vague one ; the difference is one in degree 
 only, not in kind. The most uninstructed day- 
 labourer has learned to judge correctly on some 
 part of the moral and physical phenomena of 
 the world, yet we call him uneducated. The 
 man of the completest knowledge has but 
 learned to take the measure of a greater variety 
 of sections of the same world. Artificial train- 
 ing has done for him over a wide field what 
 actual experience has done for the other over a 
 limited one. When the process is artificial we 
 call it education ; when natural we call it ex- 
 
SERMON V. 107 
 
 perience. Education is an abridged experience. 
 Education is to the facts of life what language 
 is to mental operations. It enables us to repre- 
 sent the absent as present, to see with the eye 
 of the mind circumstances and situations which 
 have never come within the scope of our per- 
 sonal observation. This faculty is capable of 
 being cultivated to a very high degree of per- 
 fection ; in a few cases it has become that pro- 
 phetic eye of the statesman, a power of seeing 
 distant consequences, which makes him the 
 oracle of his age and country — the moral 
 imagination is raised to the power of clairvoy- 
 ance. But in its widest range and its grandest 
 development, it remains the same faculty by 
 which the humblest and least enlightened 
 judges, when he does judge for himself, of the 
 propriety of the simplest action. All education 
 is directed, through its manifold degrees, to the 
 calling out of this power. 
 
 As education rises stage above stage, it passes 
 and carries the disciple through two distinct 
 phases — the passive and the active. Through 
 all the stages of the passive phase education 
 
io8 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 works with law, with custom, by authority. 
 Society, through the teacher, is labouring to 
 establish the unquestioned sway of opinion 
 over the individual. In this phase education is 
 an education in facts, and is bounded by pheno- 
 mena. It gives the knowledge of phenomena 
 according to their law, of facts in their 
 sequence. In physics it is the knowledge of 
 the laws of matter in their applications to the 
 uses of life ; in morals, the usages of society, 
 the history, laws, constitution of our country ; 
 in religion, the visible Church with its rites, 
 laws, history, and tradition. Throughout all 
 this process the man is passive ; he is the 
 recipient only of the forms which come to him 
 through, or in consequence of, sensation. He 
 learns these forms that he may submit to them, 
 that he may recombine them for any purposes 
 he may have in view. He conforms himself 
 to the conditions which he finds ; he adopts 
 opinion ; he submits implicitly to the laws of 
 social life, to the regulations of his Church. 
 His understanding is exercised in bare appre- 
 hension of given facts and relations. His will 
 
SERMON V. 109 
 
 is exercised in prompt obedience to a rule. 
 His judgment consists in testing all his actions 
 by this rule. He asks, What is customary ? 
 What does the Church say ? What will people 
 think ? What are others doing ? 
 
 In this education we must all partake to 
 some extent ; we must be incorporated into the 
 social routine. And was there nothing behind 
 phenomena, here education might end. If 
 society fixed upon an immovable base were 
 competent to provide for our secular well-being, 
 and if we could make over the management of 
 our spiritual interests to an infallible Church, if 
 the understanding were nothing beyond a 
 passive receptacle of given forms, nothing 
 further could be desired. But such is not the 
 condition of the soul. Man has an active or 
 creative power, by whatever name we are to 
 call it. Mind is a reagent against society, a 
 personality counteracting organisation, a judg- 
 ment exercising a dissolving force upon received 
 opinion. As such it presents itself at the first 
 aspect simply in the light of a dangerous enemy ; 
 it must be the interest of society to extinguish 
 
no UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 it. And it can be extinguished. All are 
 stronger than some — the many than the few. 
 Organisation is an overmatch for detached 
 effort. But the surest mode is not by force, 
 but through education. You have only to pro- 
 nounce education complete when the disciple 
 has run through its first phase .to turn out the 
 '' perinde ac cadaver'' the lifeless machine man 
 of the Jesuit schools of the seventeenth century, 
 with his varied accomplishments, his circum- 
 scribed understanding, his dead will and fanati- 
 cal temper, his literary fertility, and his barren- 
 ness of idea. 
 
 Were human societies perfect, and their 
 opinions infallible, they would be right in 
 endeavouring to extirpate personality, and to 
 seal up the intellect. But if the individual does 
 not exist for the sake of the State and the 
 Church, but the Church and the State for the 
 sake of the individual, theii it is precisely 
 through this faculty that the road to culture 
 and improvement lies. Instead of extinguish- 
 ing it, there remains the other side of the 
 alternative — to discipline it. This is the aim of 
 
SERMON V. Ill 
 
 the higher education which we look for at a 
 university. This education begins when mind 
 begins to stir within us ; to develop this faculty- 
 is the one task to which it addresses itself 
 The school education, the education in pheno- 
 mena, through some stages of which all must 
 pass, becomes a platform on which the univer- 
 sity education is reared. It is indeed only a 
 question of^ whether or no education shall be 
 carried far enough, whether or not it shall 
 include the whole man, shall be coextensive 
 with the whole domain of thought, shall recog- 
 nise philosophy and religion, or shall ignore 
 philosophy and reduce religion to a system of 
 arbitrary opinion, without a basis in the reason 
 of things. Thus to complete education Is the 
 profession of a university ; here the crown and 
 apex Is placed on all previous instruction ; all 
 the knowledge we have previously acquired, all 
 that we have been taught of science, art, or 
 accomplishment, has been preliminary, intro- 
 ductory, subordinate. Hitherto the established 
 social and material order, in which we find our- 
 selves placed y has Imposed itself upon our 
 
1 1 2 UNI VERS IT V SERMONS. 
 
 nature. On entering within the sphere of the 
 superior education we are for the first time 
 called upon to exert a force in an opposite 
 direction — a reaction of the human soul against 
 the barrier outside. A reaction — not a rebellion. 
 The understanding and the will remain as 
 before the passive instruments of society and 
 nature. But we become conscious of a personal 
 force, we obtain glimpses of a new world under- 
 lying the world of sense, law, and custom ; we 
 find ourselves members at once of two worlds, 
 worlds distinct and yet connected, one of which 
 contains the key to the other. This material 
 universe, with its beauties, its utilities, and its 
 order, receding from our ken in its present 
 immensity without limit in space, and in its past 
 history without limit in time ; those forces 
 equally real, though less patent to our concep- 
 tion, — light, heat, electricity, chemical affinity, 
 gravitation ; our own complicated relations to 
 parts of this inorganic world, to the atmosphere, 
 the waters, the superficial crust of our globe, 
 relations essential to our existence ... all this 
 offers food to our curiosity of pressing import- 
 
SERMON V. 113 
 
 ance for us to know, the material of a hundred 
 sciences, a very small part of which can be 
 exhausted in even the longest life. Turning to 
 the social existence of the race, we have the 
 prehistoric periods, whose mysteries we are just 
 beginning to obtain a glimpse of; then written 
 records from their commencement till now, a 
 series inexhaustible in its multiplicity of detail, 
 baffling in its law ; political theory and practical 
 experience rising upon this detail, the whole 
 train of social evils and necessities loudly calling 
 for aid and cure ; then art, with its thousand 
 seductions, its vistas of Elysian fields ; again, 
 the endless combinations of the imagination, 
 which make up literature — grave, gay, fantastic, 
 or sublime reflections of all the moods of the 
 ever- changing human spirit; place this, and 
 more that cannot be enumerated — the totum 
 scibile — before the mind's eye, and what human 
 intellect does not feel overwhelmed by the 
 enormity of the demand made upon it ? The 
 curiosity^ which is stimulated when but one 
 corner of the unknown is presented to it^is 
 extinguished when it surveys the map of the 
 
 I 
 
1 14 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 universe. The finite understanding is crushed^ 
 when It Is brought Into the presence of the 
 Infinite expanse of the knowable, and turns 
 aside in despair, crying, Who is sufficient for 
 these things ? Ars longa, vita brevis! Educa- 
 tion, which opens this wonderful prospect before 
 us, does but show us from the top of PIsgah 
 the land flowing with milk and honey, which we 
 can never appropriate. Education carried out 
 in superficial extent is a humbling process. It 
 Is Indeed more than humbling ; the immensity 
 of knowledge would crush the understanding ; 
 we should be compelled not to humility^ but to 
 despair if, when we reached this point in our 
 progress, relief were not afforded to us of a 
 kind till then unknown. There Is a point In 
 the career of the learner when, as objects 
 multiply around him with dazzling rapidity, and 
 what is to be learnt grows In a ratio far beyond 
 his powers of learning it, there breaks a new 
 light in upon him ; he becomes conscious of a 
 force within himself; he feels the stirring of an 
 Innate power unknown before. His position 
 with regard to things without, to other men, is 
 
SERMON V. 115 
 
 from this moment altered. His intelligence is 
 not only the passive recipient of forms from 
 without, a mere mirror in which the increas- 
 ing crowd of images confuse and threaten to 
 obliterate each other ; it becomes active and 
 throws itself out upon phenomena with a native 
 force, combining or analysing them — anyhow 
 altering them, reducing them, subjecting them, 
 imposing itself upon them. Vivida vis animi 
 pervicit ; it has broken the bonds which held it 
 captive, the spiritual principle within is born ; 
 we begin to live with a life which is above 
 nature. The point of time in our mental pro- 
 gress, at which this change takes place .cannot 
 be precisely marked ; it is a result gradually 
 reached, as every higher form of life is de- 
 veloped by insensible transition out of a lower. 
 As physical life passes into psychical life by a 
 succession of steps in which there is no break, 
 so does psychical life into spiritual. 
 
 This is the life that the higher education 
 aspires to promote, this is the power which it 
 cherishes and cultivates, this is the faculty to 
 which it appeals. From the very nature of the 
 
1 1 6 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 faculty itself it is evident what the method of 
 its education must be. From the spontaneous 
 character of this power, from the fact^that mind 
 (as we may call it) is a force and not a capacity, 
 arises the principle which must ever be the 
 guiding light of our endeavour. The business 
 of the educator in this phase must be not to 
 teach^.but to stimulate, not to inculcate truthsy> 
 but to force growth. We may awaken, we 
 cannot create, mind. It can no more be taught 
 than virtue can be taught ; but it will germinate 
 in the congenial atmosphere of sympathy and 
 example. All life is reflex action, from the 
 rudimentary organism, if organism it can be 
 called, of the one-celled zoophyte to the com- 
 plex structure of the most perfect vertebrate, 
 the life of the being is its response to stimulus, 
 invitation from the environment responded to 
 by counter-action from within. It is the same 
 with intellect. All our accumulated stores of 
 knowledge^ on which we pride ourselves, all 
 our sciences, our wealth of books, our languages, 
 literature, our traditional opinions, — these are 
 not the things for which a university exists ; 
 
SERMON V. 117 
 
 they are only means placed In our hands^with 
 which to call out and promote the life and 
 gr^ljj^ of the l^ind. Knowledge is only the 
 food of life, not the life itself; and our business 
 is not to inculcate truth, but to superintend life. 
 Our first wisdom is to recognise this limitation 
 of our power, to learn to concentrate our effort 
 on this one direction. We cannot create the 
 life ; it is supplied to us : this power, this in- 
 genium, is a light that lighteth every man ; 
 wherever there is intelligence, intelligence may 
 be raised into intellect. The germ of the future 
 plant is supplied to our hands in the intelligence 
 which our pupils bring with them ; it is ours to 
 apply the light and heat required to expand the 
 germs. The light and heat are supplied from 
 the atmosphere and the soil. The young plant 
 is transferred from the school to the university, 
 where he is to find, it may be, more finished 
 Greek scholars, better mathematicians, more ex- 
 perienced teachers in every department than he 
 has before enjoyed ; where no science is unre- 
 presented by some leading name, probably an 
 authority In his science wherever it is known ; 
 
1 1 8 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 he finds himself in a society where self-improve- 
 ment is the one absorbing aim ; among com- 
 panions in whom an ingenuous curiosity to know 
 is their ruling passion, by whom pastime and 
 amusement are reduced from a pursuit to a 
 recreation, and the time spent upon them is 
 grudged as so much lost to the work of life ; he 
 finds himself under tutors and teachers, among 
 whom is maintained a mental life quick, active, 
 and various.^ Here at least is one corner of 
 the world where the day is not divided between 
 money-making and sensual enjoyment ; where 
 a man is rated at what he is in himself, and not 
 by his position ; where the petty disputes of 
 local politics cannot establish a footing ; where 
 the religious demagogue is estimated at his 
 true value. 
 
 In such an environment the young plant 
 will not fail to expand to its full natural size. 
 The office of the educator is limited to that 
 of removing hindrances. Given the adequate 
 
 ^ " Here the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure 
 to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in 
 the tribunal of truth." — J. H. Newman, The Office and Work 
 of Utiiversities^ p. 24. 
 
SERMON V. 119 
 
 temperature in a seat of learning, i.e. let the 
 pervading Intellectual activity of the body be up 
 to a certain mark, and let artificial obstacles be 
 removed, and our work is done — the mind of 
 each student will develop itself in the proper 
 proportions of his native strength. Neither in 
 this nor in any other province can man create 
 life. He can only select out of the total of 
 concomitant conditions those which are most 
 favourable to growth, and withhold from contact 
 with the germs those of a contrary tendency. 
 Nothing does more to embarrass educative 
 action than not clearly to perceive the limit of 
 the power of mind and character in forming 
 mind and character. No one has arrived at 
 middle -life, and acquired steadiness of thought 
 and character without having as part of this 
 acquisition a mass of opinions and views on all 
 the subjects .which lie beyond the reach of 
 positive knowledge. These opinions are the 
 result and outcome of his information and 
 experience — of the whole series of his ante- 
 cedents. His interest in those opinions, or 
 probable propositions which he believes to be 
 
UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 true, is great. These opinions are not his 
 experience or his judgment ; they are modes in 
 which he endeavours to bring his experience 
 and his judgment to bear on others. We are 
 all of us, small and great, daily engaged directly 
 or indirectly, by word of mouth if not by pen, 
 by action or by innuendo, in the endeavour to 
 assert our mode of thought, to vindicate our 
 point of view, to give an impulse to that tone 
 of sentiment with which our own life is in har- 
 mony, to gain consideration for that class of 
 ideas to which we have learnt to attach im- 
 portance,^ in fact in endeavouring to impress our 
 own personality upon the social mass. What is 
 party in free states but an association among 
 men of similar stamp and tendencies^ to obtain 
 an ascendency in the world of fact for their own 
 ideas ? The direct propagation of opinion is 
 not by any means the most efficacious way for 
 bringing this influence of mind to bear. This 
 indeed is so well understood. that in the higher 
 class of party journals the art of writing con- 
 sists in seeming to say the opposite of that 
 which you wish to be understood. And this is 
 
SERMON V. 
 
 no dishonest trick of rhetoric ; it is but the 
 indispensable rule of educated society. This 
 unconscious effort to extend our mental influ- 
 ence is inseparable from our social position. 
 It is the very healthy agitation and collision 
 of the social atoms^ut of which the equilibrium 
 of the whole fabric is maintained. Now to 
 those among us who are called to the educa- 
 tional profession in its last and highest stage an 
 opportunity is opened of doing what we arfe all 
 doing, only directly instead of indirectly. In 
 the world of mixed opinionsAit is little impres- 
 sion upon the whole, that can be produced by a 
 single weak human voice. But in a university 
 in which is collected the flower of the rising 
 generation, from the teacher's chair which is a 
 monopoly of attention, with the young mind 
 taken just at its opening, in the moment of its 
 susceptibility, the temptation is doubtless great 
 to abuse the opportunity, to employ the hour of 
 influence not in their interests but in our own, 
 to give them opinions instead of education. 
 Temptation to abuse the opportunity did I say ? 
 But to many persons it seems its legitimate use. 
 
122 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 If, they argue, my opinions on life, on morals, 
 on social, political, and ecclesiastical questions 
 are true and important, what more valuable 
 service can I render to my pupil than by mak- 
 ing him my intellectual heir, by transmitting to 
 him the best result of my own long course of 
 study and experience, and thus forearming him 
 against, and abridging for him the years of toil 
 and disappointment which the acquisition has 
 cost myself? Nor is it only individuals who 
 thus argue. There is a system of education 
 widely spread and powerfully maintained, not 
 the growth of to-day, but rooted in ancient 
 precedent and established in the possession of 
 more than half the universities of Europe. In 
 this system education consists in the inculcation 
 of truth, meaning by truth true propositions 
 in probable matter. The principle cannot be 
 better expressed than in the words of one 
 whose voice, wont to be raised within these 
 walls with thrilling power, is now, alas ! heard 
 no more by us. Sketching an ideal university, 
 he says, it is a place where ''truth, a subtle, 
 nvisible, manifold spirit, is poured into the 
 
SERMON V. 123 
 
 mind of the scholar by his eyes and ears, through 
 his affections, imagination, and reason ; it is 
 poured into his mind and is sealed up there in 
 perpetuity, by propounding and repeating it, by 
 questioning and requestioning, by correcting 
 and explaining, by progressing, and then recur- 
 ring to first principles. ... It is the place 
 where the catechist makes good his ground as 
 he goes, treading in the truth day by day into 
 the ready memory, and wedging and tightening 
 it into the expanding reason." Such is the 
 catholic university system, according to its only 
 philosophical exponent in our language.^ 
 
 Identical in its educational theory with this 
 system is that of the positivist. The positivist 
 knows of no other education than indoctrination. 
 The pupil is to acquire all that order of know- 
 ledge which guides the right performance of 
 the processes ^by which civilised life is made 
 possible. Not science, strictly so called, but 
 the possession for use of truths which have 
 been established as the result of the various 
 moral and physical sciences, — the inculcation of 
 
 1 J. H. Newman, The Office and Work of Universities^ pp. :?.2, 2 5. 
 
124 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 knowledge is his ideal of education. Mental 
 discipline is not wholly overlooked, nor are 
 those miscellaneous activities disregarded which 
 make up the leisure part of life devoted to the 
 gratification of the tastes. The system of the 
 catholic university, and the system of a society 
 of positivist tendencies, differ indeed in other 
 respects. The propositions which they respect- 
 ively desire to inculcate are not only different 
 but often contrary. The catholic teacher 
 desires to imbue his pupil with the propositions 
 in morals and politics he believes to be true, 
 because he believes them to be true. The 
 objective truth is to him fully represented by 
 these propositions, which constitute the deposit 
 of tradition — in his estimate the one permanent 
 and enduring substance, each generation of 
 mankind being but the transitory medium 
 through which flows the majestic current of 
 eternal truth. The importance of the individual 
 is sunk to that of an atom ; a man's life is a 
 moment in the perennial existence of the 
 hierarchical society. Positivism too measures 
 welfare by that of the society, and its theory of 
 
SERMON V. 125 
 
 progress is the inevitable march of scientific 
 truths promoting man s control over the material 
 world. However different the objects aimed 
 at by the catholic ideal of education and that of 
 the man of science, they both meet in one 
 point. They both propose as their end the 
 exclusive supremacy of certain truths, not the 
 cultivation of the individual ; they both, for 
 opposite reasons, distrust and dislike the culti- 
 vation of the intellect. 
 
 ijThis idea, the culture of the intellect for its 
 own sake, has been the aim and inspiration of 
 that education which reformed Europe has 
 inherited from Greek civilisation. That the 
 mind can become an end to itself, that it can 
 propose to itself its own perfection as a work to 
 be wrought out by its own effort, that mental 
 illumination is an illumination within the soul, 
 by which it is enabled to see God, — this is the 
 principle of intellectual cultivation. That the 
 character can be purified, strengthened, and 
 raised to a heroic height by discipline, self- 
 denial, self-control, by a force exerted from 
 within, — this is the principle of moral education. 
 
126 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 The first of these we have inherited from the 
 Greek world ; the tradition is kept up, however 
 imperfectly, wherever classical literature is made 
 the corner-stone of education. The other, or 
 moral side of training, is exhibited to us on the 
 grandest scale in the founders of anachoretic 
 and monastic retirement in the third and fourth 
 ages of Christianity ; and the tradition, too much 
 enfeebled in the Protestant communities, is pre- 
 served encumbered with much superstition in 
 the Catholic Church. The reunion in one 
 scheme of the complete culture of the free 
 intellect arrived at in the Greek schools with 
 somewhat of the ascetic discipline and sterner 
 moral purpose of the better ages of the Church, 
 before virtue was undermined by the confes- 
 sional, is perhaps too much to hope for our own 
 university. Yet, I think, if we trace the history 
 of those who have raised themselves to any 
 distinction by their own efforts, we shall always 
 find that some such conjunction of mental 
 vigour and self-denial has been the secret of 
 success. In each of these noble efforts, Greek 
 intellect and catholic morals, we have an experi- 
 
SERMON V. 127 
 
 ment troubled with great defects and errors, by 
 the observation of which we may profit if we will. 
 Even were we to reform our education to-morrow 
 we should not have done what we wish. Ours 
 would still have been but another experiment. 
 Education is not an art by itself which can be 
 perfected within its sphere. It is but bringing 
 extant social forces to bear on the young mind. 
 Over those forces themselves the educator has 
 little or no control. Education cannot, any more 
 than life can, grasp its end. Life is a race. 
 The best education is but a tendency. The 
 utmost we can secure is that we tend in the 
 right direction. 
 
 The end, then, of education is the person. 
 If the man be turned out what he should be, 
 the units will coalesce and constitute society. 
 But, on the other hand, our only means of 
 affecting the disposition of the individual is 
 through sentiments, opinions, tendencies, which 
 we do not create. Society exists and acts and 
 moves according to laws — laws which no educa- 
 tion can counteract. When we look upon the 
 mass of mankind, upon the mass of those classes 
 
128 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 which are called the educated classes, when we 
 contemplate society in masses, the astonishing 
 phenomenon is presented to us that, though the 
 mass passes judgments, maintains opinions, holds 
 views, asserts its will, and exercises a choice, not 
 any one of the individual minds who compose 
 the aggregate does any of these things in his 
 own person. The average individual citizen 
 thinks as those with whom he lives think, acts 
 as those about him act. He has no spontaneous 
 judgment, no real free-will. His mental move- 
 ment is as inevitably determined by the move- 
 ment of the mass as are the movements of the 
 parts of the glacier by the direction of the whole 
 glacial mass. Public opinion governs the 
 world, yet public opinion is the opinion of no 
 one in particular ; it is each appealing to every 
 one else. Men lean against each other and the 
 whole community stands upright, though no 
 separate member of it is in equilibrium. Yet 
 are they quite unaware of the fictitious character 
 of their opinions and of the illusory nature of 
 their seeming free -agency. Each man is so 
 certain of the exclusive truth of his opinion that 
 
SERMON V. 129 
 
 he is ready to use force to compel the dissen- 
 tient to come in to It. It is only the philosophic 
 observer who has risen to take a survey of 
 human history as a whole ^who can trace the 
 genesis of opinion, who can see that the indi- 
 vidual Is a molecular unit, that ^what society 
 thinks and does. is determined by a law from 
 which there is no escape. 
 
 But this philosophic observer himself? Is he 
 exempt from the common necessity ? is the rest 
 of mankind strictly bound within the limits of 
 the prevailing opinion, the slave of established 
 custom, and does he only walk the earth a free 
 man ? or has he succeeded In struggling up- 
 wards to those serene regions of the heavens to 
 which gravitation does not reach ? Does edu- 
 cation open an escape into such a region ? Is 
 there any condition of Intellect which is 
 spontaneous and intuitive ? Are there such 
 mental altitudes as genius, originality, con- 
 science ? Are there any real existences be- 
 yond those of which the senses take cognis- 
 ance ? Is the human mind capable of appre- 
 hending such existences } Can education be 
 
 K 
 
I30 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 rightly directed to foster and develop such a 
 capability ? 
 
 There are at present in the civilised world 
 two considerable forms of thought very different 
 from each other, but both of which undertake 
 to answer this question, and to answer it in the 
 negative. The positive philosophy, not con- 
 siderable in the numbers of its disciples, is yet^ 
 to those who read the signs of the times /a 
 coming power in the world, making itself felt 
 more and more, year by year, not by noisily 
 rallying adherents to any party flag, but by 
 silently filtering through all branches of know- 
 ledge and all the topics of practical debate, 
 pointing triumphantly to the past history of 
 humanity as the record of its inevitable march 
 to conquest ; strong in its confidence in its 
 future ; strong too in the intellectual weakness 
 of the forces arrayed against it. To this form 
 of thought those worlds or beings of which 
 theology and metaphysics profess to treat have 
 no existence. It is not that this or that 
 theology, this or that philosophy, are in error 
 and require to be corrected. Theology and 
 
SERMON V. 131 
 
 metaphysics are to it imaginary explanations of 
 material phenomena. There is no explanation 
 of the origin or occurrence of these phenomena. 
 To control the social and physical conditions of 
 existence^is all that man can aspire to. Educa- 
 tion is the learning how to exercise this con- 
 trol. Hence education must be an education 
 in science — nay, can be in nothing else, for the 
 sciences cover the whole field of knowledge. 
 A university in a positivist country is a place 
 where all the sciences are taught. In such a 
 system of education intellect holds a subordinate 
 place. Indeed, by practical men of positivist 
 tendencies, intellect is ever regarded with 
 jealousy as a troublesome, perhaps rebellious 
 obstruction in the way of practical arrange- 
 ments. But scientific knowledge is uniform. 
 It knows neither country nor language. Human 
 beings trained on this system would become 
 exact copies of each other. All individuality 
 would be extinguished. Spontaneity would be 
 unknown. The individual vigour and manifold 
 diversity which combine themselves in origin- 
 ality ; all that is rich, diversified, and animating 
 
132 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 in human life as it now exists would disappear. 
 The understanding and the will, deprived of 
 their initiative, would become part of a great 
 social machine embracing all mankind — a state 
 of society from which much present evil would 
 be expelled, but in which virtue also would 
 become impossible. 
 
 On the opposite side is ranged a vast and 
 powerful organisation of opinion which is 
 hostile to the education of the intellect as 
 understood in free universities. This is the 
 catholic opinion of the Western Church. The 
 catholic system, no less than the positivist, 
 claims the whole man, strikes at the very head 
 of our education. It denies the possibility of 
 philosophy. It does not deny, it asserts, 
 existences and relations other than those given 
 in sensation ; but it refuses man any faculty by 
 which these existences and relations are appre- 
 hended. It pretends indeed to a philosophy, 
 but its philosophy is one in which the first prin- 
 ciples are given on authority ; and an authori- 
 tative philosophy is as much a contradiction in 
 terms as an authoritative science. Positivism 
 
SERMON V. 133 
 
 has its philosophy ; but the philosophy of 
 science is only the co-ordination and inter- 
 dependence of the most abstract propositions 
 of all the sciences. The philosophy of the 
 catholic schools is only logic, an exercitation in 
 the mental connection of propositions, into the 
 grounds of which it is not free to inquire. 
 Hence the stunted and hide-bound character 
 which is found to be the result of such an 
 education, so that an Italian university has 
 become a by-word. 
 
 Will it be said that this is very unpractical, 
 that I have been drawing a picture of imaginary 
 evils, that the advancing wave of ultramontanism 
 is still at a safe distance from British shores, 
 and that positivism is insignificant ? It may be 
 so ; the mind, when it tries to look at phases of 
 opinion in the light of the principles on which 
 they depend, is apt to forget the interval 
 between the opinions , and / the principles on 
 which those opinions rest. But if the posi- 
 tive philosophy be the possession of few, the 
 spirit of positivism is everywhere. Wherever 
 there are strong physical natures with a strong 
 
134 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 grasp of life and a keen sense of its enjoyments ; 
 wherever there is concentrated energy and 
 worldly success following it ; where wealth, the 
 getting or the spending it, becomes a paramount 
 notion ; wherever rank and fortune and social 
 position are eagerly competed for; wherever 
 dress and frivolous amusements fill the day, — 
 there, in both sexes, and through all grades, 
 there is practical positivism. 
 
 Again, if ultramontanism is at a safe dis- 
 tance, the spirit of Catholicism is among us. 
 Christianity entered the Roman world in the 
 second century as a moral reform of a corrupt 
 and enervated society. Catholicism makes its 
 insidious approach through an offer to deny 
 the conscience ; not as a reform, but as a com- 
 promise with the terrors of the world to come. 
 The principles of positivism and the doctrines 
 of Catholicism are in terms opposed ; in practical 
 life there is a fatal tendency to unite the two. 
 Crushing the intellect with its doctrine of 
 obedience, sapping the character by the luxury 
 of spiritual direction more fatal to manly inde- 
 pendence than that Sybarite luxury^ to which 
 
SERMON V. 135 
 
 the republics of old succumbed, neo-catholicism 
 achieved in less than two centuries the degra- 
 dation of Italy. Leaving the Italians their 
 vices, their positive enjoyments, their frivolous 
 pastimes, their music, mathematics, and phy- 
 sical science, — it interdicted intellect. When 
 the moment of awakening comes, whatever of 
 virtue, of intelligence, of public spirit, remains 
 among the Italian people is found unhappily 
 arrayed against the Church, and the dreadful 
 alternative Is forced upon the country of in- 
 fidelity or spiritual authority. Both parties 
 have issued upon a false and impracticable 
 position ; the Church has repudiated the intelli- 
 gence, the reason, the equity, the equality, the 
 spirit of self-improvement by efforts ^whlch are 
 now actively working to mould and refine 
 modern society, — the conduct and control of 
 all this spiritual movement the Church has lost, 
 nay, has herself renounced. 
 
 In her recent manifesto the Church of the 
 West has abdicated, in form, her right to teach 
 and guide society. She has renounced the 
 education of the world. She takes her stand 
 
136 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 henceforward upon its ignorance. She has 
 proclaimed that knowledge is against ker^ and 
 that she is against knowledge. She is to occupy 
 herself no longer with the interests of mankind, 
 but enters upon a sordid struggle for her own 
 existence ; and she has announced what we 
 feared was true, but were unwilling to believe, 
 that she stakes that existence upon a principle 
 which is incompatible with the moral well-being 
 of society. Education has passed into other 
 hands than those of the Church. 
 
 Happily for us, this is not yet the position 
 of the Church in our own country. The Church 
 of England still possesses the schools and 
 universities ; may she never forfeit them ! 
 May she never take the fatal step of standing 
 upon authority ' instead of upon reason, upon 
 intellect, upon education, upon the spiritual 
 and moral cultivation of the soul ! 
 
VI. 
 
 [February 24, 1867.] 
 
 jSXeTrere rrjv kXtJotlv v/xwv, d8eX(fiol, on ov ttoWoI cro(f)ol Kara 
 (rdpKa . . . dXXd rot fxojpa tov koo-jxov k^eXk^aTO 6 Geo?, 
 tVa rov<s (TO(f)Ovs KaTaL(T)(yvrj. 
 
 " Ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men 
 after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are 
 called : But God hath chosen the foolish things of the 
 world to confound the wise. 
 
 *' For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew 
 not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to 
 save them that believe." — i Corinthians i. 26, 27, 21. 
 
 This passage — nor this passage alone, but 
 other declarations to be found in the New 
 Testament to a similar purport — has been often 
 employed to depreciate learning. On a still 
 wider scale than its use as a weapon of con- 
 troversy, has been its general influence on the 
 Christian consciousness. The various sects, 
 whose opinions are professedly enthusiastic or 
 obscurantist, have fortified themselves by these 
 
138 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 words of the apostle in their maintenance of a 
 theory of conversion which leaves no place for 
 the understanding, in making, as is often said, 
 Christianity an affair of the heart, and not at 
 all of the head. And far beyond the pale of 
 those denominations whose tenets on this point 
 are obviously determined by their want of 
 knowledge, there is abroad, in the religious 
 world generally, an uneasy suspicion of know- 
 ledge and its results, of intellect and its cultiva- 
 tion — a suspicion not wholly due to this, or 
 any, texts, but which is kept alive by their re- 
 currence to the ear and to the memory. Quite 
 distinct from any supposed special cases of con- 
 flict between particular discoveries of science 
 and the words of revelation — such incom- 
 patibility, e.g.y as has been imagined to exist 
 between geological theory and the Mosaic 
 account of the creation — there is a disposition, 
 habitual to the average religious mind, to mis- 
 trust science — a mistrust not of any result of 
 science, but of science itself; a disaffection not 
 to this or that critical investigation, but to the 
 inquiring mind. Putting aside also all the 
 
SERMON VI. 139 
 
 pretensions of reason to interfere in matters 
 of faith, whether it claims as co-ordinate with 
 revelation, or as the interpreter of revelation, 
 or at least as its recipient, — putting aside all 
 the controversy on the lirAits of reason in its 
 application to religious matters, — may it not be 
 said that all Christian communities are per- 
 vaded by a sentiment of jealousy towards in- 
 telligence, as something not wholly good in its 
 nature ? It is thought that intelligence is not 
 only occasionally hostile to religion by reacting 
 critically on its truths, or on their evidence, 
 but that it is not in any way the instrument of 
 our religious life — that a life of intellect is in 
 its essence a looking in any other direction 
 than that of God and heaven. 
 
 This suspicion of intelligence as a secret foe 
 is a phenomenon in the religious world. the 
 existence of which, tacitly felt, if not openly 
 expressed, will hardly be denied. On the 
 other hand, we have also facts in the history 
 of the Church which are due to a conviction of 
 an opposite nature. The Catholic Church of 
 the West, though its policy has been largely 
 
I40 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 coloured by this jealous timidity, has yet always 
 professed in terms a certain amount of obliga- 
 tion in respect of science. The Church of 
 England in particular has ever prided herself 
 on being a learned Church. Our schools and 
 universities are not secular institutions founded 
 by the Civil Power for its own purposes ; they 
 originated in a view of life which, whatever 
 else it held, conceived it incumbent on a 
 Christian education to give a proper training 
 to the reason. This noble institution, the 
 atmosphere of which we breathe, our Chairs of 
 Science and Philosophy, our devotion to the 
 classics, our vocation as tutors or professors, to 
 which so many of you are giving your powers, 
 are sufficient evidence that the policy of a 
 Christian Church is not necessarily a policy of 
 repression of mind. The encouragement of 
 learning and science is the public and deliberate 
 policy of our Church, — a policy which has been 
 deliberately maintained since the Reformation, 
 through all our political changes, and all our 
 mutations of religious opinion. 
 
 This public policy, however, has been 
 
SERMON VI. 141 
 
 throughout encountered by strong currents of 
 feehng from an opposite direction — a feeling 
 suspicious of, If not hostile to, Intellect — a feel- 
 ing which has more than once attained embodi- 
 ment and utterance, but which, when not 
 uttered. Is still present beneath, more or less 
 strongly, just in proportion to the revivals of 
 the religious consciousness, whether those re- 
 vivals originate In the Puritanical or In the 
 Catholic element. 
 
 If we ask which of these two attitudes is 
 most consistent with the apparent sense of the 
 text, — the attitude of our approved ecclesiastical 
 policy, which establishes a philosophical educa- 
 tion, or the attitude of religious literature, and 
 the popular pulpit, which suspects and depre- 
 ciates it, — most people will feel themselves 
 obliged to answer that the popular Impression 
 best corresponds to the prima facie sense of 
 the words, and will think that the traditional 
 policy of our Church is In contradiction with 
 those words. This contradiction is usually re- 
 moved by the supposition that there exists a 
 heathen wisdom and a heathen philosophy, 
 
142 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 which is a different philosophy from a Christian 
 philosophy ; that St. Paul is condemning the 
 former, and is proposing to replace it by a new 
 or Christian philosophy. It is said that it is not 
 intellect, but the unregenerate intellect, which 
 is anti-Christian. The wisdom of the heathen 
 world had failed to find out God, but there is 
 a true knowledge which apprehends Divine 
 things. 
 
 Such an interpretation was the natural and 
 necessary result of time — time which originated 
 in Christendom practices and institutions which 
 could not be justified by the letter of Scripture. 
 The modern interpreter, who had himself spent 
 years in the acquisition of theological lore and of 
 this very Greek learning of which St. Paul speaks, 
 was necessarily driven, when he came to this 
 text, to some interpretative compromise. The 
 fact before the commentator s eyes — a palpable 
 one, and of too great magnitude to be over- 
 looked — was that in every Christian nation, 
 and in proportion as that nation rose in the 
 scale of humanity, it immediately had recourse 
 to, and replaced in its schools this very Greek 
 
SERMON VI. 143 
 
 learning which St. Paul repudiates — it immedi- 
 ately made, and was compelled to make, its 
 highest education philosophical, and to recog- 
 nise in the philosophical mind the highest de- 
 velopment of man. The illiterate expounder 
 of Scripture, Montanist, Wycliffite, or Puritan, 
 had no such difficulty. He appropriated at 
 once, in his own sense, the words now before 
 us, and would have been surprised if he had 
 found Scripture recognising human learning for 
 any other purpose but to denounce it. But the 
 learned expositor had to reconcile the fact and 
 the tradition of education with the words of St. 
 Paul. He mostly did this by the supposition 
 of a double philosophy — a pagan or unenlight- 
 ened philosophy, which St. Paul is supposed to 
 condemn, and another, or Christian philosophy,i 
 which is that taught in the Christian schools. 
 That even if Greek books are used in educa- 
 tion, yet the Christian Church or society being 
 the educator, the heathen ideas receive a Christ- 
 ian character, or one corrected by Christian ideas. 
 This theory has probably been widely pre- 
 valent. But it is impossible that it should be 
 
144 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 accepted, as it proceeds on an erroneous 
 notion of the nature of philosophy. Greek 
 philosophy is neither in itself, nor in its 
 employment in education, a system of doc- 
 trines inculcated on authority, but a habit of 
 thought. Truth is one. There are not two 
 philosophies. There are many applications of 
 science, but there is but one mode of scientifi- 
 cally knowing. Philosophy cannot be formul- 
 ated in propositions in such a way that there 
 can be propositions which are philosophically 
 true, but theologically wrong. Philosophy and 
 science are nothing but our ordinary human 
 faculties cultivated artificially till they acquire 
 the habit of perceiving and knowing things in 
 the most perfect way in which things can be 
 known. The acquisition of such a habit, then, 
 cannot be a matter irrelevant to religion. The 
 habit must be the very organ of religious 
 thought, as of every other kind of thinking. 
 Two questions arise upon this — 
 I. What is the position which Christianity 
 as the absolute religion assumes towards philo- 
 sophy .-^ 
 
SERMON VI. 145 
 
 2. What, historically, was the attitude as- 
 sumed by Christianity in its origin towards 
 Greek philosophy ? 
 
 It is to the second only of these inquiries 
 that I venture to-day to ask your attention for 
 a few minutes. 
 
 Our first view must be taken in the first 
 century. 
 
 The relation between Christianity and Greek 
 philosophy in the first century cannot be more 
 distinctly stated than in the passage of St, Paul 
 now before us, when the context of the passage 
 is properly understood. 
 
 The word which our language is throughout 
 this passage obliged to render Wisdom, is 
 o"0(/>ta, which, if not exactly synonymous in the 
 usage of that age with (^CKoao^La, is far more 
 akin to it than the corresponding English 
 terms, wisdom and philosophy, are to each 
 other. Both the Greek words, aoi^ia and ^CKo- 
 (To^ia, in the lax and indeterminate usage of the 
 writers of the first century, have to be taken in 
 a wide and general sense. The wisdom or 
 philosophy which is meant here is that which is 
 
 L 
 
146 UNIVERSITY SERMONS, 
 
 given by a liberal education. When it is said by 
 St. Stephen of Moses, that he was "learned in 
 all the wisdom of the Egyptians," the real im- 
 port of the words is that he was brought up in 
 all the best culture of the country, and not what 
 the Authorised Version suggests, that he was 
 initiated into some specific mysteries known 
 only to the Egyptians, iiraihevOrj iraa-fj o-o^la 
 AlyviTTLcov. The regular course of a Roman 
 youth's education in the first century was gram- 
 mar, I.e. reading and writing ; then, at fourteen, 
 he entered the school of the rhetorician. 
 Finally, at seventeen, when the powers of 
 thought begin to expand themselves, he was 
 transferred to the academy of the philosopher. 
 This pupilage did not imply that he became a 
 disciple of one of the rival sects, Stoic or 
 Academic ; it meant only that he was grounded 
 in the principles of physics, metaphysics, and 
 morals, so far as they were the common pro- 
 perty of the educated classes, and embodied in 
 classical literature. Though ^cXocrocpLa in the 
 writers of the period includes philosophy and 
 science, so far as they were known in education, 
 
SERMON VL 147 
 
 we should yet often not be far wrong if we 
 rendered it by the word Literature. When, then, 
 St. Paul here draws the sharp contrast between 
 the aocfyia tov Kocrfiov tovtov, human philosophy 
 — ''the words which man's wisdom teacheth," 
 
 ScBa/CTol dvOpcoTTLvrji; ao^ia<^ \6yoc — on the one 
 
 hand, and on the other ''the foolishness of 
 preaching," what he is pointing at is the un- 
 deniable fact that the Christian movement 
 originated wholly outside the sphere of edu- 
 cated thought. It owed nothing to classical 
 literature. The first Christians were drawn 
 mainly from the poorer and uneducated classes ; 
 there were a few exceptions, not many wise — 
 ov TToWol ao(f>oL What is more, the movement 
 itself, whatever it consisted in, did not originate 
 in the cultivation of the age, neither in its 
 general cultivation, nor in any specific and in- 
 novating school of thought. Christianity does 
 not advance in the first instance as a new 
 teaching which seeks to rival and displace ex- 
 isting schools by superior truth, superior argu- 
 ment, or greater power of satisfying curiosity 
 and solving difficulties of speculation. Its 
 
148 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 contents are not cognate to thought or know- 
 ledge. 
 
 What primitive Christianity was in its essence 
 may be best seen in martyrdom. The martyr 
 was the Christian hero, raised above his fellows 
 by the degree of his endurance, but exhibiting 
 a virtue in its essence the same as theirs. The 
 martyr is the Christian written in large char- 
 acters. The language of the apologists and 
 earliest writers, speaking of martyrdom, may be 
 reduced to two ideas. i. The exaltation of 
 the spirit above the incidents of temporal life, 
 death included. 2. Participation in the suffer- 
 ings of Christ. There is not, in their concep- 
 tion of martyrdom, the notion of bearing witness 
 to an opinion — notwithstanding the ready 
 etymology. The witness of the martyr was a 
 witness to the vivid faith he felt ; to the power 
 of the regenerate soul in realising the unseen, 
 and arriving at a conviction of the nothingness 
 of material objects ; to an ambition which was 
 dead to the world, and desired only to be with 
 Christ. Their endurance unto death was unde- 
 niable evidence of their own faith, and the most 
 
SERMON VI . 149 
 
 effective encouragement of that of others. This 
 is the contemptus mortis which attracted the 
 notice even of the supercilious Tacitus. The 
 cloud of witnesses in the Hebrews were wit- 
 nesses not to a creed, but to the victory of the 
 immortal soul over the world. From the first, 
 Christianity came forward as the religion of 
 suffering. It represented moral perfection as 
 at once desirable and unattainable. But its 
 absence was compensated for by suffering — by 
 the sufferings of Christ, and the joint sufferings 
 of His devoted followers, who filled up the 
 measure of that which was behind — to, va-reprj- 
 fiara rcov 6\L-\jr€(ov rod ^pto-Tov. 
 
 In martyrdom then, i,e. in its extraordinary, 
 no more than in its ordinary phasis, did Christi- 
 anity present itself to men as a reform of 
 thought, as an intellectual principle, as a truer 
 system of philosophy. 
 
 This is, historically, the position of Christi- 
 anity towards philosophy in the first century — 
 a relation of entire heterogeneity or of mutual 
 exclusion. For we may remind ourselves that 
 the contrast between the educated and the un- 
 
ISO UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 educated sections of society was very much 
 more marked then than now. NoWy cheap 
 literature, dally or periodic, diffuses the lan- 
 guage and opinions of cultivation far beyond 
 the circles which can be considered cultivated. 
 The Interval between the well-educated man 
 and the day-labourer In the Christian countries 
 of the West may be as wide now as then ; but 
 this interval is now filled up by graduated 
 social strata, so finely shading off Into each 
 other that it Is Impossible to say where the line 
 should be drawn. In the first century language 
 itself drew the line of demarcation sharply. 
 The language of cultivation was Greek, and 
 only over a very small area of Greece proper, 
 and In a few great cities of Macedonian founda- 
 tion, was Greek spoken by any but persons of 
 cultivation. Literature, education, language — 
 in a word, philosophy — was the exclusive privi- 
 lege of a class. 
 
 Over against this small educated class stood 
 the great mass of the provincials, populace or 
 peasantry, who were entirely excluded from the 
 ideas and the medium of education. These 
 
SERMON VI. 151 
 
 popular masses remained after their absorption 
 into the Empire, as before it, In their primitive 
 national groups. They Inherited, with the lan- 
 guage, the traditional sentiments of their re- 
 spective races. Among these sentiments the 
 most powerful was an attachment to their tradi- 
 tional mythologies. We are apt to speak as If 
 in the Roman world of the first century a.d., 
 pagan worships had died, or were dying out. 
 This Is an illusion created by literature. These 
 beliefs had disappeared from the minds of the 
 literary and educated class, but they had not 
 yet faded at all In the esteem of the public. 
 The temples were still thronged with worship- 
 pers, sacrifices still ascended from every altar, 
 there were prayers, vows, priests, processions, 
 incense, pilgrimages to favourite shrines, por- 
 tents interpreted, oracles asked and given, the 
 adoration of the trembling devotee, the proud 
 pomp of the gorgeous ceremonial. This or 
 that temple may have lost something of its 
 celebrity ; an a'yaXfjua here or there may have 
 gone out of fashion ; some of the old oracles had 
 become mute, but this was not from decay of 
 
152 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 piety, it was from excess of it. The old objects 
 of veneration were but displaced by the multi- 
 tude of new claimants. It is not too much to 
 say that the Roman world — the more civilised 
 part of it — was never more religious than it was 
 in the first century a.d. The words which St. 
 Paul addressed to the men of Athens might be 
 extended to the whole Mediterranean — KaTa 
 iravTa Beio-iBaifiovio-Tepoi^ on all sides awake to 
 religious impressions. The eyes of mankind 
 seem to have been turned in the direction of 
 the supernatural — they sought it everywhere 
 and eagerly, and the demand created the 
 supply. A crowd of unknown gods, and new 
 ritual, the prophet and the fortune-teller, magic 
 arts, omens, divination, initiations, penances, 
 and mystical commemorations occupied the 
 serious attention of men. 
 
 It was into this fermenting mass of supersti- 
 tious fever, i.e. among the bulk of mankind, 
 and not into the thin upper stratum of the 
 reading^and educated, that the Christian mes- 
 sage from heaven was launched. The conse- 
 quence was that, while it was out of all relation 
 
SERMON VL 153 
 
 to philosophy, its relation to the popular wor- 
 ships was one of sharp conflict and deadly 
 hostility. Philosophy lay outside its orbit — 
 was nowhere in contact with it. Christianity, 
 as a moral phenomenon, is unknown to the 
 classical literature of the first century. The 
 existence of Christ is barely mentioned as a 
 historical fact. The characteristic of that cen- 
 tury is the collision of the new faith with the 
 established creeds and popular worships. 
 
 It may perhaps be said that this coHision 
 was a collision with power and not with popular 
 feeling ; that it was the magistrate and not the 
 rival creed which conducted all the early perse- 
 cutions. This is so only in appearance. The 
 Empire, from its origin to the end of the 
 Flavian dynasty, from Augustus to Domitian, 
 i.e. for the whole of the century which now 
 occupies us, was popular in its origin. It be- 
 longed to the people, not to the aristocratic or 
 literary class. This class was feared and perse- 
 cuted by the first Caesars. During all this first 
 age the philosophers were against Csesarism. 
 Power shared the instincts and suspicions of 
 
154 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 the people. When Nero or Trajan punished 
 Christians, it was not from choice, but from 
 necessity. Popular feeling was too strong for 
 them. It was not merely a maxim of State 
 policy that the ancestral worships must be sus- 
 tained ; but it was under the balcony of Caesar, 
 as once before at the judgment-seat of Pilate, 
 that there was a clamorous mob which Caesar 
 dared not refuse. The early persecutions were 
 not the collision of religion with power, the first 
 shock of battle between Church and State ; 
 they were results of the jealousy of rival wor- 
 ships against a movement felt to be deeper 
 based than themselves. 
 
 In the whole of this period then, Christianity 
 is moving in a different plane from philosophy. 
 It is in the realm of facts, of devout practice, 
 of pious sentiment, of renunciation, of worship, 
 not in the realm of ideas. It encounters rude 
 opposition and violence, but not from the edu- 
 cated class, who know nothing of it, who have 
 not learnt to distinguish it from the many 
 similar phenomena which surround them. St. 
 Paul, in this epistle to the Christians of Corinth, 
 
SERMON VI. 155 
 
 notes this negative relation between Christi- 
 anity and philosophy. He passes no condem- 
 nation on philosophy — he neither anathematises 
 it as in itself anti- Christian, nor laments its 
 absence from Christian teaching. 
 
 In the second age of the Church a great 
 change has silently come into the world in this 
 respect. The relation between power and what 
 we have called philosophy, i.e. the ideal basis 
 o'f liberal culture, was totally altered. The 
 imperial power of the Julian and Flavian families 
 had represented force — the swords of the legions 
 or praetorians. Philosophy had been anti- 
 Caesarean. With Nerva, a.d. 96, philosophy 
 may be said to have ascended the im- 
 perial throne. Not that all the emperors of 
 the second century were individually men of 
 education. Trajan was not at all a philosophic 
 man in understanding or in morals. A rude 
 soldier, with a camp training, he paraded rather 
 than disguised the grossest habits of military 
 debauch. But in the consolidation of the im- 
 perial system the character of the individual 
 emperor was becoming of less importance. 
 
10 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Administration was being slowly penetrated by 
 ideas — the ideas of reason and humanity. It 
 was gradually being rationalised. Government 
 was ceasing to be the tyranny of arbitrary will. 
 The old principles of Roman municipal law 
 were being built up into a system of universal 
 jurisprudence. Power had passed over to the 
 educated class, and was becoming imbued with 
 its habits of thinking. Philosophy ceased to 
 be political, republican, or aristocratic. It was 
 resigned to have an emperor, and content to 
 wield a delegated power. Power, on its part, 
 ceased to see in the philosopher a secret enemy 
 and conspirator — a reminiscence of Republican 
 Rome. 
 
 Coincident with this change in the relation 
 between philosophy and power had occurred a 
 change in the character and aims of philosophy. 
 Greek philosophy had been speculative and 
 scientific. It was the ambition of human curi- 
 osity exploring for its own gratification the 
 causes of phenomena. After the Greek schools 
 were transplanted to Rome. they had lost their 
 intellectual colour. Before the first century 
 
SERMON VI. 157 
 
 they were transformed into schools of personal 
 morality. In an ascetic severity the aristo- 
 cratical "wise man" sought the mental inde- 
 pendence^which he could no longer find in the 
 institutions under which he had to live. Philo- 
 sophy in the first century was accepted by the 
 educated class in commutation for political 
 freedom. In the second century philosophy 
 changed its direction. It ceased altogether to 
 have political associations. It became much 
 less individual and egoistic. Its direction was 
 turned outwards upon society. It became an 
 Instrument of progress. Politics had ceased to- 
 be. Social organisation became the attractive 
 object^which employed the minds of men. At 
 no period of history, perhaps, has the outward 
 victory of moral ideas been more decisive^than 
 In the second century of the Christian era. The 
 social and administrative problems of the time 
 were taken up, discussed, and decided, on the 
 broadest principles of reason and humanity. 
 The classical conception of the rights of man 
 had been limited to the 7ro\t9 — a small corpora- 
 tion of some thirty thousand men was conceived 
 
158 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 in a state of perpetual warfare with many 
 neighbouring corporations. This condition of 
 international war was the natural condition. 
 The unity of the Orbis Romanus .vfhich. de- 
 stroyed country, introduced the conception of 
 the brotherhood of humanity. It removed the 
 basis of morals from the fact of sharing a com- 
 mon country.to the fact of sharing a common 
 nature. Philanthropy and mercy were recog- 
 nised as new elements of legal right {huKaioavvri). 
 The despotic authority of the Paterfamilias was 
 restrained. The slave, though not yet enfran- 
 chised, became the object of the law's regard. 
 Dio Chrysostom, the adviser of Trajan, is the 
 first Greek writer who has pronounced the 
 principle of slavery to be contrary to the law of 
 nature. Government occupied itself with the 
 condition of the free labourer. Enfranchise- 
 ment is encouraged. Marriage is protected and 
 raised. Human sacrifices are prohibited, though 
 they cannot be altogether prevented. 
 
 All this was the work of philosophy or edu- 
 cation. 
 
 It was impossible that philosophy should 
 
SERMON VI. 159 
 
 assume this new direction without a change 
 being wrought in its relations with Christianity. 
 
 It was in the second century that the Chris- 
 tian movement was first brought face to face 
 with Greek culture. For Greek philosophy 
 means Greek culture, and Greek culture was 
 classical and comprehensive, based on, and 
 nourishing itself by, the whole results of Greek 
 thought. The unity in the Greek mind is as 
 marked as its variety ; and the culture of the 
 second century — -whether Pythagorean with 
 Plutarch, Stoic with Epictetus and M. Aurelius, 
 or Platonist with Dio Chrysostom — was the cul- 
 ture of the great Hellenic tradition, a tradition 
 in which all the great minds were represented ; 
 where Heraclitus with Xenophanes, Plato with 
 Aristotle, Chrysippus with Carneades, found 
 their place. Christianity approaches this tradi- 
 tion ; that movement which appeared to a 
 Tacitus an insignificant superstition, born among 
 the peasantry of Syria — it recognises in it at 
 once its own features, and makes common cause 
 with it against the inhumanities of the world. 
 
 I St. It was impossible for the Christian to 
 
i6o UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 have the least tincture of Greek learning with- 
 out becoming aware . that philosophy, from its 
 origin, had been one long protest against the 
 popular mythology. Philosophers had suffered 
 persecution, even death, for not worshipping 
 the gods of their country. Others had avoided 
 the same fate by prudent reserves. The Chris- 
 tian preacher, when denouncing the vanity of 
 idols, could borrow his best arguments from the 
 Greek classics. 
 
 2d. Greek philosophy, not quite so unani- 
 mously, but still by an immense preponderance 
 of weight and numbers, had taught the unity of 
 God. *'God is one," exclaims Athenagoras, as 
 in astonishment at the mass of testimony he 
 can collect out of the classics. '' God is one ! 
 this is what every philosopher proclaims. Why 
 should it be penal for us Christians only to say 
 the same.^" At this period especially, Greek 
 philosophy was eminently religious. As Plato, 
 in his mature age, returned towards the Pytha- 
 goreanism of his early youth, so in this its 
 maturity did Greek philosophy return towards 
 the same cast of thought. The philosophic 
 
SERMON VL i6i 
 
 literature of the second century is theistic. 
 The attitude it now holds towards the Olympic 
 legend ceases to be that of satirical scorn. The 
 theogonies are now treated with respect, and 
 explained by interpretations. Symbol and 
 allegory are set to work, all the grossness of 
 the old worships is wiped out, and the thousand 
 deities of paganism are declared to be but many 
 names of the same one God. What the uni- 
 versalism of the first emperors had attempted 
 materially, philosophy attempts now metaphy- 
 sically. In their capacity of Pontifex Maximus, 
 the Caesars had made their endeavour after re- 
 ligious unity by the process of giving a home in 
 the Eternal City to all the gods of all the nations. 
 The Capitol became the Pantheon of the world. 
 Instead of fortifying the national and hered- 
 itary worships, this vast scheme of toleration 
 was fatal to them all. The hold of a national 
 superstition over the mind of its votaries de- 
 pended upon isolation. Brought into presence 
 one of another, the idols of each tribe had 
 mutually killed each other. The philosophers 
 now made their attempt at an ideal religious 
 
 M 
 
i62 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 unity. They would penetrate behind the veil of 
 the Form to the conception which lay hid beneath 
 it, to the Eternal and the True, of whom the 
 local deities were transient and phenomenal re- 
 presentations. Thus the Christian writers and 
 the philosophers were drawn together by their 
 common desire to reinstate a positive religion 
 in its hold over all. 
 
 3d. Philosophy was pre-eminently moral. 
 This reform of the pagan theology^which was 
 attempted by the philosophers^ was undertaken 
 under the pressure of moral ideas. Greek 
 philosophy in the old time had never been 
 sceptical. It ^^^ been critical. It had rejected 
 the Olympic legend because it wanted evi- 
 dence. As early as the fifth century B.C. it was 
 understood that the popular theogonies had 
 been the creation of the poets. But it was not 
 merely want of historical evidence .which had 
 condemned the Mythus in the eyes of philo- 
 sophy. It was its immorality. The canon of 
 criticism to which theology was subjected was 
 morality. The legend was despised by the 
 philosophers as a fiction. It was odious to 
 
SERMON VL " 163 
 
 theiTLbecause it was subversive of virtue. Here 
 Christianity found a point of sympathy. That 
 religion, which Tacitus only knew as exz^z- 
 abilis superstitio, was, whatever it was besides, 
 a moral reformation. Christianity, as taught 
 by Christ and His apostles, so far from colliding 
 with the morality of reason, descended into the 
 depths of the human consciousness, and elicited 
 from it a response to a morality .which the 
 schools had wished, but had not dared^to 
 teach. So far from proclaiming an unmoral 
 God, the Gospel, in its earliest form, presents 
 itself as an uncompromising appeal to the reason 
 and the moral consciousness in its most ex- 
 alted manifestations. At once rational and 
 supernatural, it is supernatural by its profound 
 rationality. On charity, on forbearance, on 
 wealth, on property, on marriage, on chastity, 
 on the most delicate problems of human con- 
 duct, Christ has left declarations of so high a 
 philosophy, that He Himself, as the Searcher of 
 hearts, assures us ** all men cannot receive this 
 saying, save he to whom it is given." 
 
 These are points in which an instant sym- 
 
i64 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 pathy was found to exist between Christianity 
 and Greek culture, when the two were brought 
 into contact. It was a sympathy, not with any 
 of the distinctive tenets of any particular school, 
 but with the broad principles of Greek cultui-e. 
 But in the second century these distinctive 
 marks, though by no means effaced, had ceased 
 to have the importance once belonging to them. 
 The Porch, the Garden, nor the Academy can 
 be considered in this second century as consti- 
 tuting distinct congregations or marking divi- 
 sional areas of thought. The prevailing tone 
 of the period was what has sometimes been 
 called "eclecticism." This eclecticism was not 
 a peculiar school basing itself upon a special 
 principle, but the general residuum of all pre- 
 vious schools^ which had become the common 
 heritage of thinking and educated men. The 
 moral character of the second century is given 
 it by this popular philosophy — a philosophy 
 eminently practical, universally applicable, of 
 the very stuff of which life itself is made. The 
 second century is the reign of common sense in 
 life and literature. The whole Greek world 
 
SERMON VI, 165 
 
 was now reaping the harvest which had been 
 sown by generations of speculative men. All 
 the wild, the imaginative, the ideal, the subtle, 
 was evaporated, and only those results left be- 
 hind which recommended themselves to every 
 one's reason and common sense. The so-called 
 eclecticism was not a system of Jelected truths, 
 but so much of the whole result of a nation's 
 thinking as had survived in the way of natural 
 selection — that which was rational and universal 
 had lived, that which was imaginative and 
 peculiar had died out. 
 
 This rational residuum of centuries of Greek 
 mental activity was the philosophy in which 
 Christianity recognised at once its own ele- 
 ments. 
 
 This surprising phenomenon — that a religi- 
 ous reform which, wherever it came from, came 
 from outside the pale of liberal culture — that 
 this religious reform was found by the philo- 
 sophic culture of the second century to be 
 identical with itself in all its chief elements — 
 this was a phenomenon which could not but 
 attract the attention of observant men, and 
 
i66 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 invite an explanation. Such an explanation 
 was soon propounded by the educated Christian 
 writers, such as Justin, Origen, and Clement of 
 Alexandria, after the middle of the second 
 century. 
 
 The bearing of the explanation given by 
 them on Christian theory is too large a topic to 
 be entered upon at present. 
 
 The fact itself, of which they sought the ex- 
 planation, is one which offers to the mind vari- 
 ous food for reflection. Confining ourselves to 
 the single point of view from which we started, 
 we find that there was one moment in the his- 
 tory of Christianity when the highest reason, 
 as independently exercised by the wise of the 
 world, was entirely coincident with the highest 
 reason, as inspiring the Church. There was 
 discovered to be, not two philosophies, but one 
 true philosophy, common to them both. What- 
 ever may be the merits of the explanation pro- 
 pounded by St. Clement, whatever may be the 
 true explanation of the fact, we learn from the 
 fact itself , that the supposed necessity of a colli- 
 sion between the intellect of man and the intel- 
 
SERMON VL 167 
 
 ligence of the Church is imaginary. If the 
 Church and reason have at later times been in 
 conflict, it must be either that reason, being a 
 falHble power of induction, has adopted for a 
 time an erroneous conclusion, or that some 
 Christian teachers have occasionally under- 
 taken the defence of unreasonable matters. 
 Such incompatibility can only really exist be- 
 tween particular and temporal conclusions. 
 Between Reason as such, and Christianity as 
 such, in their broad principles as applied to life 
 and conduct, history seems to show us in a 
 remarkable instance, that no inconsistency exists. 
 
VII. 
 
 [June 6, 1869.] 
 
 " Ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men 
 after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are 
 called." — I Corinthians i. 26. 
 
 On a previous occasion we considered the atti- 
 tude assumed by Greek philosophy towards the 
 Christian ideas, at the period when the two 
 first came Into collision. In the second and 
 third centuries of our era, the period of the 
 Antonines and Alexander Severus — a period of 
 civilisation and culture such as the world did 
 not see again till the first half of the eighteenth 
 century, after the peace of Utrecht — the edu- 
 cated classes of Greco -Roman society became 
 slowly aware that there was growing up a set 
 of moral and religious Ideas which in the dis- 
 interested self-abnegation of its standard of 
 human conduct, and the pure moral attribution 
 of its thelstic conception, offered a surprising 
 
SERMON VII. 169 
 
 coincidence with the best and wisest thoughts 
 of the best and wisest sages of the Greek 
 schools, during the five or six centuries of their 
 existence. • Greek philosophy had been all 
 along at war with the popular religions, and 
 the philosophers often in danger from the 
 devotees of those religions, not because their 
 religious ideal was laxer, but because it was 
 more refined than that of the religious world. 
 Greek philosophy had been a protest of six 
 centuries against an immoral deity, against the 
 gods of the nations — gods partial, changeful, 
 passionate, unjust, whose attributes were rage, 
 revenge, or lust. It was inevitable that, as 
 soon as there arose among the Christians 
 teachers who had any tincture of Greek litera- 
 ture, they should appropriate this protest, and 
 look with veneration upon these philosophers 
 as upon precursors of the faith. An immediate 
 amalgamation of Greek literature and Christian 
 teaching was the consequence. That small 
 judaical sect, of which it could be said in the 
 middle of the first century that not many wise, 
 not many learned, were called, became rapidly co- 
 
I70 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 extensive with the culture of the civilised world. 
 The fusion of philosophy with Christianity was 
 complete. How in the course of the two fol- 
 lowing centuries the Church, in the pursuit of a 
 hierarchical system, alienated knowledge, con- 
 temned learning, destroyed Greek books, and 
 banished the seven professors of philosophy, 
 become again anti-Christian, beyond the limits 
 of the Roman empire — all this constitutes the 
 history of the first breach between Christianity 
 and human reason. 
 
 The next epoch in the history of the rela- 
 tions between the Church and reason is formed 
 by the grand outgrowth of Latin philosophy in 
 the University of Paris in the twelfth and thir- 
 teenth centuries. In the scholastic philosophy 
 reason and faith were once again reconciled and 
 reunited. And the reunion was not by concordat, 
 but by fusion. The scholastic philosophy is 
 true to the common principle of all philosophy, 
 in that it sought not a partial account of this 
 or that class of facts, but an explanation which 
 is commensurate with the whole of the known 
 facts. The scholastic philosophy did not 
 
SERMON VII. 171 
 
 exempt any one region of knowledge from its 
 operations. It did not set aside the Christian 
 verities as a domain where it had no mission, 
 and confine itself to physics, or to logic. It 
 threw the whole of ascertained beliefs or 
 received ideas into a common alembic, and 
 proposed to itself as its problem the construction 
 of a complete and consistent exposition of the 
 knowable. 
 
 The harmony thus established between faith 
 and reason was destined to be once more dis- 
 turbed. Owing to the operation of causes well 
 known to you, the Church let go its hold upon 
 knowledge, gave itself up to the pursuit of 
 ecclesiastical power, and in the sixteenth century 
 we again find science encamped outside the 
 Church, and the new philosophy more or less 
 at war with faith. 
 
 It may be sufficient to have indicated these 
 two epochs — the second and the twelfth cen- 
 turies — as the moments when philosophy and 
 faith coincided, when the highest culture of the 
 age was in harmony with its highest religious 
 instincts. But I propose to-day to ask your 
 
172 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 attention to the modern period of philosophy, 
 that in which we now Hve, and to the peculiar 
 attitude towards faithyby which it is distin- 
 guished from former periods of philosophical 
 activity. 
 
 We hear a great deal on all sides, at the 
 present day, of what are called the sceptical 
 tendencies of the age. We are told that we are 
 living in an exceptional time — a time at which 
 the human intellect is obeying a powerful 
 Influence in a direction away from religious 
 truth. Nor is this only a vague impression 
 prevailing in circles of inferior intelligence. 
 Even influential leaders of opinion warn us 
 against false philosophy, materialism, secular- 
 ism, unbelief, and speak as if under a suspicion^ 
 that what is called the intellect of the age is 
 alienated from religion. It is surmised that a 
 war is being carried on for the destruction of 
 revealed truth. A materialist tone is said to 
 pervade all our reasonings about practical ques- 
 tions. Science, as a whole, seems to stand in 
 antithesis, if not to Christianity, at least to the 
 philosophical or speculative part of Christian 
 
SERMON VI r. 173 
 
 belief. We hear much of a crisis of the faith, 
 of the perilous errors which are abroad in 
 society, of the aggressions of science, of the 
 attempts to secularise education. These com- 
 plaints are not confined to our own country. 
 Indeed they are not so loudly accentuated 
 among us as in other parts of Western Christen- 
 dom. They are loudest, where the pressure of 
 science is the greatest. The phenomenon is a 
 European phenomenon, and is reproduced in 
 every nation with a local colouring, but with a 
 substantial identity. It is in the neighbouring 
 countries of France and Belgium that the outcry 
 and protest against the spread of irreligion is 
 most loudly heard, and is made with most 
 success. Many of my hearers are doubtless 
 familiar with the eloquent and stirring appeals 
 of eminent French prelates against the errors 
 of the day ; indeed, the manifestoes of the 
 bishops of those countries contain little else 
 beside denunciations of the rationalistic and 
 materialistic delusions of the age. The lan- 
 guage of the leaders is echoed in the pulpits 
 and the religious press. Nor is the alarm 
 
1 74 UNIVERSIT Y SERMONS. 
 
 allowed to evaporate in rhetoric. In the most 
 public and solemn form, in an encyclical letter 
 addressed to all the bishops of the Catholic 
 world, and in the syllabus which is annexed to 
 it, a large number of propositions which are 
 asserted to be current among men at this 
 moment, are condemned as philosophically false. 
 An appeal is even made to the Protestant or 
 other separated communions to unite for the 
 purpose of resisting the progress of those ideas 
 through the European community. The teach- 
 ing of the schools is moulded accordingly. 
 You cannot open any of the text- books on 
 religion, on morals, on logic, on history, as 
 compiled for the higher schools which are under 
 the influence of the clergy, without finding the 
 same apprehensions and the same suspicion 
 of knowledge. All universities are declared 
 dangerous to faith and morals ; and our own, 
 in particular, has recently been challenged in 
 direct terms^as giving an education which is 
 infidel to the core. 
 
 These cries of alarm, so solemnly promul- 
 gated, so industriously propagated, and which 
 
SERMON VII. 175 
 
 receive such publicity through the pulpit, are a 
 phenomenon which points to the divorce be- 
 tween philosophy and faith to which allusion 
 has been already made. Let us ask, Is this 
 panic justified by the facts ? What is, at this 
 moment, the relation between the popular 
 Christian belief, and the body of certified 
 knowledge which in the widest sense of the 
 word can be called science ? 
 
 First, we may distinguish in these complaints 
 against the irreligion of the day two separate 
 parts. In the general charge of religious aliena- 
 tion brought against our time there is involved 
 a censure on the low standard of practical 
 attainment, and the coldness of devotion. In 
 every society and in every age the public 
 standard and the general practice must be 
 found very far short of the ideal of Christian 
 virtue, and the entire attachment of the heart 
 to the object of the Christian's hope. The 
 minister of Christ must therefore always be in 
 his right when 4ie stands up to rebuke a 
 pleasure-seeking or care- immersed generation,, 
 and to remind them of their higher destinies. 
 
176 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 We may then dismiss the question whether in 
 its love of pleasure, or its lust of gain, or its 
 ambition for social consequence, our generation 
 is morally weaker than those which have gone 
 before. But it is quite different when the 
 Christian minister undertakes to prescribe 
 modes of thought, to condemn opinions, and to 
 pronounce certain principles of politics or 
 society true or false. It is to this narrower 
 question that it is proposed to confine ourselves. 
 Are the current principles of public thought and 
 speech, are the tendencies of science, is the tone 
 of popular speculation, are the first principles of 
 logic and philosophy as taught in our schools, in- 
 compatible with Christian or with theistic beliefs ? 
 What is, in the epoch in which we are living, 
 the attitude of philosophy towards Christianity ? 
 It may perhaps be safely asserted that there 
 exists a widespread excitability of the theologi- 
 cal curiosity — an excitability .which is stimu- 
 lating all minds that can entertain ideas, to 
 carry those ideas up to first principles, and to 
 endeavour to attain a conception of the super- 
 natural which shall be in harmony with what is 
 
SERMON VI I. 177 
 
 ascertained of the natural. This curiosity arises 
 from the unconscious instinct of the understand- 
 ing endeavouring to harmonise its own contents. 
 So far from being sceptical or blameable, it is 
 surely evidence of the deep-felt interest of the 
 soul in its own fate, a living sense of the 
 momentous issues. which depend on having a 
 valid answer to the questions which speculative 
 philosophy raises. This feverish curiosity is 
 not sceptical, but ardently desirous for satisfac- 
 tion. It is but a sign .that the intelligence of 
 the age cannot rest in that arrangement , by 
 which human life is cut into two halves — one 
 half belonging to this world, which is based on 
 a foundation of science and philosophical prin- 
 ciples, and another half belonging to religion 
 and the Church, underneath which is to be 
 postulated a different set of data. The so-called 
 scepticism is the blind and painful effort to 
 combine two separated beliefs into one whole, 
 and to require a common ground of evidence 
 for both. Intelligence is throughout of a piece 
 and uniform ; and in proportion to its activity 
 will be its struggle for consistency of thought. 
 
 N 
 
178 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 Now it is surely not to be denied that the 
 present form of intelligence is, in some of its 
 deepest principles, discrepant from the mould 
 in which the thoughts of the last generation 
 ran. Not to lose ourselves in so wide a field, 
 let us take the history of a single idea. Let us 
 take the Theodic^e, or the vindication of the 
 moral attributes of God, considered in relation 
 to the sufferings of sentient beings. The 
 Theodicee of the last century was of compara- 
 tively recent construction. The publication 
 and popularisation of Newton's calculations in 
 the early years of the eighteenth century had 
 powerfully attracted men s minds to the contem- 
 plation of the vast expanse of space and the 
 infinite scale of the universe. This enlarged 
 conception of the Cosmos required a readjust- 
 ment of the old conception of the providential 
 government of God, and broke up the narrow and 
 anthropomorphic system which had satisfied the 
 imaginations of an earlier age^ whose mental 
 horizon was bounded by the visible horizon of 
 the heavens and the earth, of which God was 
 the King. Accordingly at the beginning of the 
 
SERMON VII. 179 
 
 last century a Th6odicee came into vogue 
 adapted to the enlarged astronomical system. 
 This mode of conceiving the Supreme Governor 
 of the universe, sketched by the master-hand 
 of Leibnitz, became the common form of the 
 higher religious thought for the rest of the 
 century. According to the Leibnitzian Theo- 
 dicee God was an architect, and the universe as 
 we see it was His construction. The intricacy 
 of the machinery was the evidence and the 
 measure of the intelligence which had contrived 
 it. There was not only contrivance but design. 
 For though, in this system, man ceased to be 
 the central object of Divine care, and was 
 reduced to a comparative insignificance, yet the 
 end of the Creator was the happiness of His 
 creatures, through all the stellar worlds, this earth 
 included. Harmony, order, and law pervaded 
 all these arrangements from the epoch of their 
 creation. The will of God was free, not subject 
 to a necessity, but this free will was determined 
 by the suitable or the reasonable. Evil and 
 suffering in this fallen corner of the universe 
 were necessary ingredients of the good of the 
 
i8o UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 whole ; moral virtue being impossible without 
 freedom, and freedom being impossible without 
 choice between good and evil. The vast space 
 over which the scheme was spread was held to 
 be the solution of all apparent contradictions. 
 For though from our corner we can see enough 
 to know that perfect wisdom and perfect good- 
 ness are at work for us, we cannot see over the 
 whole scheme, and therefore cannot tell by what 
 means the harmony of the general design 
 requires to be sustained. 
 
 Such was the scheme of natural religion 
 which found general acceptance among philo- 
 sophic minds in the last age — whether Christian 
 or deist, or wavering indecisively between the 
 two. Even Voltaire, who wrote on more than 
 one occasion in ridicule of the optimist scheme, 
 yet appears to have shared in this conception 
 of the Supreme Being. It is a scheme adopted 
 into the education of our universities as em- 
 bodied in the popular manuals of Butler and 
 Paley, and far beyond the university area 
 forms part of the heritage of all cultivated men. 
 
 When, then, we who have been brought up 
 
SERMON VII. I8i 
 
 in this tradition of natural religion — natural 
 religion as the foundation and condition of all 
 religion — hear that our first principle is being 
 variously questioned ; when we find the men 
 whom we regard as leaders in science^ either 
 denying, or hesitating to affirm the ideas of cause 
 and design ; when we are first awakened from* 
 our security in a rational basis of our Christian 
 belief, it is surely not mere bigotry. if the first 
 sentiment excited be one of resistance. It is 
 but natural that men who have passed into the 
 world, whose avocations do not allow them 
 leisure, or whose practical energy has deprived 
 them of the flexibility of intellect necessary for 
 speculation, should decline to re-examine the 
 foundations of their whole mental superstructure. 
 Such a re-examination of the received prin- 
 ciples of natural religion is, however, urgently 
 necessary. For it is by no means true that the 
 attack upon the received philosophy in general, 
 and upon the Leibnitzian mechanical artificer 
 of the universe, proceeds from any peculiar 
 spirit of anti-religion abroad in our age. When 
 in the seventeenth century the mechanical philo- 
 
i82 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 sophy supplanted the old hypothesis of substan- 
 tial forms, precisely the same outcry was raised 
 against it. But no sooner had Newton's cal- 
 culations carried the new philosophy home to 
 the intellect of a new generation, than a new 
 Theodicee adapted to the new conception of 
 nature was prepared. Leibnitz abandoned the 
 a priori road, and found his way back to the 
 idea of God through the works of- creation. 
 
 There has been slowly growing up of recent 
 years a new conception of nature and natural 
 law. This new conception, which may be 
 shortly, though imperfectly, indicated by the 
 word "development," originated in the domains 
 of the naturalist and the experimental philo- 
 sopher, and has only recently begun to pene- 
 trate to the speculations of philosophy properly 
 so called. But now every science is contribut- 
 ing its share, and even those sciences^which are 
 still reluctant show signs of a tendency here- 
 after to fall under its sway. We can now no 
 longer represent to ourselves our solar system 
 as a machine having an order and harmony 
 arranged at some definite point of past time — 
 
SERMON VII. 183 
 
 an order which it will continue to obey till it is 
 as suddenly dissolved by the Creator at a 
 future point of time — which was the conception 
 to which the natural theology of the past 
 century was adapted. We are now compelled 
 to represent to ourselves the condition of our 
 solar system, of our planet, and of man upon it, 
 as it exists at this moment, as being the conse- 
 quence of an antecedent condition — that again 
 of a prior state, and so backwards far beyond 
 the scope of observation. Geology has revealed 
 to us that the extant condition of the surface of 
 our planet is the sequel of antecedent condi- 
 tions developing themselves with imperceptible 
 change through periods of time so vast as to be 
 inconceivable. The extant organic forms of 
 animal life are not fixed unalterable types, but 
 are developments from more elementary forms, 
 and are themselves transitional to other forms. 
 Physical laws now in operation are themselves 
 sufficient, with the co- efficient of time, to 
 explain the given condition of things. The 
 laws of nature are wholly unknown to us ; what 
 we call law being only a record of a momentary 
 
1 84 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 connection between phenomena. The progress 
 of science Is a continual fiHIng up of gaps In 
 theory by the discovery of new Intermediate 
 facts. Those hiatuses which the natural theo- 
 logy of the past age seized upon to occupy with 
 its theory of creation are being one after the 
 other filled up. Though a perfect continuity 
 in the succession of phenomena Is not as yet 
 ascertained over the whole field of our observa- 
 tion, the tendency of knowledge is, by the 
 constant Intercalation of new facts, to establish 
 the high probability of such a continuity. The 
 more we investigate, the more we find that in 
 existing phenomena graduation, from the like 
 to the seemingly unlike, is everywhere found ; 
 and In the changes In past phenomena gradual 
 progression is the law of universal nature. The 
 supreme Induction of modern physics, that all 
 the forces which are in operation in our solar 
 system are convertible into each other, that all 
 the phenomena known to us are produced by a 
 slow process of such conversion, that the 
 quantity of moving force in the world is being 
 gradually expended in producing light, heat, 
 
SERMON VII . 185 
 
 motion, and animal life, and is thus being irre- 
 coverably buried in the particles of matter — 
 this induction, though not yet in the position of 
 a law verified by all the facts, is still ascertained 
 to so high a degree of probability, that we 
 cannot choose but think of nature under this 
 conception of development. The theory may 
 be awaiting complete verification, but all the 
 lines of knowledge may be seen converging 
 towards this generalisation. 
 
 It is impossible that so novel a conception 
 of nature could establish itself in science with- 
 out having a powerful influence on the received 
 theory of natural theology. It is to the slow 
 infiltration of this idea of continuity and pro- 
 gression that we may attribute the perturbation 
 perceptible in recent years in the region of 
 rational theology. The established Theodicee 
 of Leibnitz was adapted to a philosophy of the 
 Cosmos, in which the universe though a vast, 
 was yet a limited, quantity, in which time was 
 compressed within the narrow limits of written 
 records, and in which phenomena lay in isolated 
 groups, with plenty of interspaces between 
 
1 86 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 them. The natural theology of the last century 
 filled, so to say, all the vacant spaces thus left 
 before and between the natural with its super- 
 natural. There was provided by the state of 
 scientific knowledge room for fiats of creation 
 and intervention. The new conception of con- 
 tinuity and progress takes away all these spaces, 
 and makes one reign of inexorable law co-exten- 
 sive with phenomena. It seems thus to banish 
 the Creator and Governor from the phenomenal 
 world where we had placed Him, and to be re- 
 moving God far away out of our sight. And as 
 the foundation of all practical religion is a sense 
 of the presence of God, and our accountability to 
 Him, we cannot wonder that science should be 
 thought to threaten religion in its vital part. 
 
 The question of causation is only one of the 
 points on which science is in conflict with the 
 received religious philosophy. There are others. 
 Yet it would seem that the first claim for a re- 
 hearing must be that of the relation in which 
 God stands to the world. For the question of 
 natural theology is not. Can we inductively infer 
 the existence of God from the works of creation ? 
 
SERMON VIL 187 
 
 but another much more Importunate and dis- 
 turbing, Is it possible to conceive the existence 
 of a first cause and providential governor ^con- 
 sistently with what is certainly known of 
 phenomena ? 
 
 The state of rational theology In this country 
 is at this moment one of utter abandonment. 
 I may remind you of what was said by one of 
 our most eminent and high-minded leaders of 
 science so lately as August last. Addressing 
 a crowded assembly of scientific men, the 
 President of the British Association bade them 
 beware of that dangerous two-edged weapon. 
 Natural Theology, a science falsely so called, 
 which seeks to weigh the infinite in the balance 
 of the finite, and shifts its ground to meet the 
 requirements of every new fact that science 
 establishes, and every old error that science 
 exposes. 
 
 Consistently with the respect due to the 
 eminent person who expressed this opinion. It 
 must be desirable that a protest should be 
 entered, and In this place, against a doctrine so 
 unphllosophlcal. Yet the opinion thus publicly 
 
1 88 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 announced may be cited as an extreme case of 
 that disturbance of first principle which I have 
 been endeavouring to illustrate. The attempt 
 to settle the apparent conflict between reason 
 and revelation by declaring revelation to be 
 non-rational is renewed from age to age. The 
 history of opinion teaches us^that the attempt 
 to erect a Christian altar to the Unknown God 
 is always made with the greatest plausibility at 
 epochs like the present, when the accumulation 
 of new knowledge is in active conflict with old 
 forms of thought. 
 
 Existence is one and uniform throughout the 
 cognoscible. The human intellect is one and 
 simple in all its cognitions. This is the hypo- 
 thesis on which must rest all scientific theology, 
 and all philosophy, if there be a philosophy, and 
 if there be a scientific theology. If the objects 
 of our religious worship are not apprehensible by 
 our reason, they are not apprehensible at all, and 
 are to us as non-existent. The positivist hypo- 
 thesis becomes then the inevitable hypothesis. 
 Then metaphysics and theology are sciences 
 falsely so called — the metaphysical and the theo- 
 
SERMON VII. ' 189 
 
 logical are then transitional modes of conceiving 
 the universe, which must now be discarded. 
 
 There is no doubt an intrinsic complexity in 
 the philosophical question of reason and faith. 
 But there are other causes which concur to the 
 entanglement. It is not that there are on one 
 side and on the other ^ truths which are irre- 
 concilable, but that there are, on one side and 
 on the other habits of thought which repel each 
 other. If scientific men are often ready to 
 relegate religion and philosophy together into 
 the region of the unintelligible, are not divines 
 often found to adopt a mode of thinking and 
 speaking from which logical and scientific 
 method is conspicuously absent ? If religious 
 men are complaining that the intellect of the 
 age is atheistic, scientific men are complaining 
 that the spirit of the clergy is against science. 
 When applied to our own country, the one 
 complaint is, I trust, not more truly founded 
 than the other. Yet it cannot be denied that 
 there are appearances which may give a colour 
 to the assertion. What we cannot see at home 
 we may see on a large scale in other countries. 
 
I90 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 The attitude of the ultramontane Church in the 
 west of Europe is one which cannot be contem- 
 plated without serious misgivings. It is not 
 only science, but society, which is threatened. 
 The actual position of the Catholic clergy in 
 some of those countries is that of an open 
 and avowed combination against the highest 
 interests of the modern state. There is a grow- 
 ing fear among the educated laity, that religion 
 and the Church are being organised to promote 
 the ends of a political party. The Church of 
 Rome has irretrievably broken with knowledge. 
 She has denied so much that is believed to be 
 true.that her position is intellectually untenable. 
 And as she can never retract, her only course is 
 to take her stand upon ignorance. The un- 
 educated in any country are always a majority 
 of the population, and if she can retain her hold 
 on them she can show a numerical preponder- 
 ance. To 'follow out this policy it is necessary 
 to keep the clergy in ignorance also. To this 
 end all the energies of the hierarchy are now 
 directed. Isolation in education is now a life 
 and death question for the Church of Rome. 
 
SERMON VIL 19] 
 
 Seminaries screened from the light of day, 
 where a sham philosophy, a shadowy science, 
 and a mutilated history may be inculcated on 
 authority, are essential to the success of the policy. 
 The tradition of our own Church of Eng- 
 land has been hitherto based, not upon the 
 ignorance of the community, but upon its best 
 knowledge. We have nothing to fear from the 
 free air and the ultimate disclosures of science. 
 What we have to fear is that the level of 
 instruction among the clergy should fall, as it 
 has in France, below that of the average of the 
 other professions and of literature. A clergy 
 undisciplined in the method and principles of 
 science, and trained only in theological casuistry, 
 are a dangerous force armed against the interests 
 of the community. Modern societies are regu- 
 lated more and more by knowledge, and less 
 by tradition. Modern politics resolve themselves 
 into the struggle between knowledge and tradi- 
 tion. The question for the English nation is. 
 On which side will It have Its clergy } This 
 University is now, after a stubborn resistance, 
 turning visibly to the side of knowledge. Will it 
 
192 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 carry the clergy along with it ? It is to be hoped 
 that from this place no voice may go forth to 
 spread the false alarm of the danger of science. 
 The true danger lies in any attempt to isolate 
 theology, to make it a mere matter of rote, and 
 memory, and tradition, while all other knowledge 
 is active, real, and in constant contact with facts. 
 We have just taken, after much deliberation 
 and discussion, the step of opening a school of 
 theology. If some among us have doubted the 
 expediency of this measure, it has not been 
 because we doubted .that theology affords the 
 materials of a true and a truly educative know- 
 ledge. What we have feared was not that our 
 youth should learn theology, but that under the 
 appearance of studying theology, they should im- 
 bibe a narrow antipathy to knowledge. There is 
 an unwholesome atmosphere floating about much 
 of our religious literature — a superstitious hos- 
 tility to science, a secret dread of active intelli- 
 gence. It ought to be our anxious care in con- 
 ducting our new experiment, that this spirit is 
 not suffered to make its way into our school of 
 theology. 
 
VIII. 
 
 [October 22, 187 1.] 
 
 " That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel 
 after him, and find him, though he be not far from every 
 one of us : for in him we live, and move, and have our 
 being." — Acts xvii. 27, 28. 
 
 It cannot have escaped the notice of any one 
 who is ever so slightly acquainted with the 
 current religious literature and preaching of our 
 day that the evidences of religion are no longer 
 a subject of general interest. 
 
 This characteristic of popular teaching 
 comes into stronger relief when we contrast 
 this century with that which immediately 
 preceded it. In the eighteenth century, or 
 during the larger part of it, no religious teacher 
 could find access to the minds of a congrega- 
 tion ^unless he started from the platform of 
 rational religion. 
 
 All the text-books and handbooks which 
 o 
 
194 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 were employed in education, which were recom- 
 mended by Bishops to candidates for orders, 
 either consisted of proof, or their contents, 
 whatever they were, were thrown into an array 
 of argument against some imaginary objector. 
 The natural sciences were treated as instru- 
 mental to the same theme. Natural philosophy 
 and anatomy, the habits and instincts of ani- 
 mals, all were turned into forms of exhibiting 
 the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. 
 
 All this has completely died out. Scarce a 
 vestige of this once popular mode of thought 
 can be traced in the language of religious 
 teachers of our day. 
 
 This is a phenomenon which, even if it stood 
 as an isolated fact in the history of our Church, 
 would be worth examination. But, if we find 
 that it is not a detached trait of manners, not a 
 mere change of the fashion of pulpit address, 
 or the discarding of a worn-out topic, but that 
 it can be traced to causes which lie deep in the 
 religious consciousness of the age, it may not 
 unfitly be propounded in this place for your 
 consideration, though the few minutes allotted 
 
SERMON VI 11. 195 
 
 me will barely suffice to indicate some of the 
 bearings of the inquiry. 
 
 About the middle of the last century there 
 came over England — Church and Dissent alike 
 — a wave of religious fervour. It is matter of 
 history how about that time the rational teacher 
 was superseded in the ordinary way of reaction 
 by a more impassioned and energetic but less 
 cultivated teacher. There went forth over the 
 land a band of preachers who started from en- 
 tirely new premisses. Instead of virtue, they 
 undertook to preach Christ. Instead of incul- 
 cating the moral law they dwelt on faith. In- 
 stead of proving the being of a God they offered 
 the gospel. They desisted from establishing 
 the possibility of miracles, but warned sinners 
 to flee from the wrath to come. Slighted by 
 the educated for their ignorance, despised by 
 the man of the world for their importunity, 
 these teachers, whether under the name of 
 Methodist or Evangelical, were received with 
 eagerness by the uneducated and unsophisticated 
 populations. Their success was not a little 
 favoured by the unmeasured contempt^ which 
 
196 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 they poured upon their predecessors. Warmth 
 was their criterion, and they denounced with 
 vehemence the cold reasoners ^who continued 
 to offer their demonstrations of revealed re- 
 ligion to still unconvinced audiences. They 
 scoffed at, or pitied these blind leaders of the 
 blind who, though ordained ministers of the 
 establishment, were themselves still uncon- 
 verted men. 
 
 This form of religious sentiment gradually 
 conquered its way, first to tolerance, then to re- 
 spect, and finally to preponderance in the Church 
 of England. It is now already matter of history, 
 though it has occurred within the experience of 
 the older among us, how, after the triumph 
 had been achieved, this has had in turn to yield 
 the platform to a new tone of religious senti- 
 ment. The new phase^ which began amid con- 
 fusion and alarm, and even cries of treason 
 to the church, and which has established itself 
 in quiet acceptance in the short space of one 
 generation over the face of England — this 
 phase is the antithesis of its predecessors. It 
 has its germ in the grand idea of the univer- 
 
SERMON VIII. 197 
 
 sality of the Church Catholic in its two sections, 
 the Church triumphant and the Church mih- 
 tant, the intimate union between Christ and 
 His people, and our incorporation by the sacra- 
 ments into this eternal and indestructible society. 
 This system is in its germ as well as its de- 
 velopment the antithesis of that which it has 
 supplanted. The evangelical system of the 
 eighteenth century had its point of departure in 
 the subjective consciousness of the individual. 
 Its criterion was in an awakened sensitiveness 
 of the ego. The revived Catholicism of the nine- 
 teenth century has its point of departure in the 
 Christian society. Its criterion is citizenship 
 or incorporation, which ipso facto conveys all 
 spiritual privilege. The two systems originated 
 too in different strata of English life. While 
 the gospel of methodism was preached to the 
 poor, and gradually made its way upwards in 
 social consideration, the catholic system ori- 
 ginated with a few academic students who read 
 the Fathers in the original, and is only now finding 
 the machinery^by which it can descend within the 
 sphere of the apprehension of the less educated. 
 
198 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 It is not my present purpose to examine the 
 contrasts presented by these successive forms of 
 the theological sentiment. The only point on 
 which I would now dwell. is a characteristic 
 which is common to them both. They both 
 adopt the same attitude towards natural re- 
 ligion. The two systems of doctrine and senti- 
 ment, though proceeding from opposite poles of 
 thought, and upon antagonistic principles, agree 
 in their alienation from, and aversion for, natural 
 theology, the evidences of Christianity, any- 
 thing of the nature of proof, or the philosophy 
 of religion. The catholic movement, no less 
 than the evangelical movement, which it has 
 superseded, joins in repudiating and contemn- 
 ing the evidence writers of the eighteenth 
 century. The whole of the theological litera- 
 ture of the last century is a dead letter, as com- 
 pletely obsolete as the predestinarian contro- 
 versies of the seventeenth century. 
 
 This being the change which time has 
 effected in the current strain of doctrinal theo- 
 logy, we have to inquire to what causes is this 
 change to be referred '^. What are the general 
 
SERMON VIII. 199 
 
 habits of thought of which this change is an 
 indication ? 
 
 The account which was commonly rendered 
 by the early leaders of the evangelical move- 
 ment of their own motives was something like 
 this : 
 
 They arraigned the whole generation of the 
 classical English pulpit of being unedifying. 
 The Tillotsons, the Barrows, the Souths, the 
 Blairs, had addressed the understanding only, 
 and did not touch the heart, whereas to 
 preach the gospel was to proclaim a Saviour. 
 The historical belief of the facts of Christianity 
 is not faith. The whole of revelation may 
 be summed up in two propositions. You are a 
 perishing sinner, and Christ is here ready to 
 save you. These propositions, however, must 
 not be merely assented to by the understanding ; 
 there must be a profound emotional conscious- 
 ness of sin, and a heartfelt appropriation by the 
 soul of Christ's merits as my personal saviour. 
 Preaching is an instrument or means of grace 
 by which this emotional conviction and pei^ 
 sonal appropriation is aided or brought about. 
 
200 UNIVERSITY SERMONS, 
 
 This was the theory of Christianity as offered 
 by the evangeHcal leaders of the last century. 
 They regarded themselves as missionaries to 
 heathens, and carrying a message or statement 
 of fact/which was not to be proved by reason, 
 but which appealed directly to the emotional 
 consciousness. 
 
 Though the preachers of the catholic move- 
 ment approached the subject from an opposite 
 point of view, it was one which no less dis- 
 tinctly repudiated reason or reasoning proof. 
 The congregations, they said, were not heathen, 
 but Christian by baptism and by education. It 
 was preposterous to be perpetually attempting 
 to prove the truth of revelation to them. They 
 come to church to worship, to pray ; the sermon 
 is but, like the creed, a memento to them of 
 doctrine ^ which they implicitly believe. A 
 church is not a collection of inquirers after a 
 truth, but an association of the faithful who are 
 united by a common belief. 
 
 Such is the explanation which the two classes 
 of teachers offer of the change now under con- 
 sideration. But though no doubt true, it goes 
 
SERMON VIII. 20I 
 
 but a little way towards explaining the pheno- 
 menon. For the change in question was not a 
 mere alteration of the form of pulpit address, 
 a substitution of exhortation for reasoning in 
 preaching merely, it has really been a transfer 
 of the whole mind of the English Church to a 
 new basis of its religious belief. Not merely 
 our preaching, but our whole theology has been 
 shifted to a new ground. And this transfer 
 has not been the work of any body or party 
 within the Church, it has been effected in de- 
 pendence upon laws of opinion which have 
 operated far beyond merely Church circles, 
 which have pervaded the whole community. 
 
 The hidden source of the change in question . 
 by which the character of English theology m 
 our day has become different from what it was 
 in the last century.must be looked for in the 
 altered relations of religious thought to the 
 other provinces of human knowledge. 
 
 The history of science in the seventeenth 
 century is the history of its struggle against 
 theological opinion and ecclesiastical power. 
 Natural knowledge did not in its origin set 
 
UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 itself up against the Church, it only contended 
 to be allowed to exist, and professed not to 
 interfere with the creed of the Church. Des- 
 cartes proclaimed his absolute submission to 
 the Church, but wished to be allowed to pro- 
 secute science as a field outside the pale of 
 theology. 
 
 Gradually there grew up^beyond the Church's 
 confines^ vast fabric of knowledge, which rested 
 neither on Church authority nor on Scripture 
 — knowledge too certain to be gainsaid, too 
 important to be overlooked. That system of 
 astronomy which the Church had striven to 
 crush in the sixteenth century as heres}^^ had, 
 before the close of the seventeenth, established 
 itself as an established truth beyond the possi- 
 bility of question, though It was still denied 
 admittance Into the schools in catholic countries. 
 A convergence of events favoured in a singular 
 degree the spring. which the human mind made 
 towards the close of the seventeenth century. 
 The intellect of man was wonderfully stimulated 
 through his imagination by the immense spaces 
 opened upon It in the disclosure of the architec- 
 
SERMON VIII. 203 
 
 ture of the heavens. This stimulus extended 
 far beyond the narrow circle of men of science. 
 The popularisation and enlargement of the 
 Copernlcan astronomy by the calculations of 
 Newton concurred with two political events, 
 which tended in no small degree to set free the 
 spirit of man, and to make him essay his powers. 
 These events were the uprising of the people 
 of England against the attempts of a catholic 
 sovereign to regain England to the catholic 
 faith, and the breaking down of the overgrown 
 fabric of ecclesiastical tyranny in France by 
 the united arms of England and Germany. 
 The effect of the general spirit of freedom 
 which sprang up in the northern countries 6f 
 Europe^upon religious ideas was, that they 
 intermingled for the first time for many cen- 
 turies with the current of philosophical ideas. 
 The movement exhibited itself at first In the 
 form of an attack. All the old traditional truth 
 was questioned . and put upon its defence from 
 the basis of the new acquisitions. The pheno- 
 menon of free thinking, which rose to the 
 surface at this period, was the abuse of the 
 
204 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 novel sense of mental emancipation, the wanton- 
 ness of the enfranchised slave, burning the gods 
 he had been compelled to worship. More 
 instructed minds, however, were at hand ' to 
 teach the proper use of the new liberty of 
 thought. Locke meditated on the reasonable- 
 ness of Christianity. But the form which was 
 finally impressed on theological speculation, 
 and which it long retained, was given it by the 
 genius of Leibnitz. The inspiring thought of 
 this speculation was — the unity of knowledge. 
 Science forms but one whole. There are not 
 two different modes of knowing, nor two inde- 
 pendent bases of thought. There is but one 
 logic of its processes — one intuition of its 
 ultimate grounds. Hence there are not two 
 parts of religion — one natural, ascertainable by 
 reason — the other belonging to a distinct order 
 of cognitions. But the domain of all the 
 knowable, lying between two fixed poles of 
 thought, between the ego — the point from 
 which all knowledge begins — and God, the 
 point in which all knowledge ends — forms 
 but one harmonious, homogeneous whole. 
 
SERMON VIII. 205 
 
 without inconsistency, contradiction, or incom- 
 patibility. 
 
 The peculiar mode in which Leibnitz de- 
 duced this uniformity, or vast chain of being, 
 which comprises all creation — the erroneous 
 conceptions or gratuitous hypotheses which he 
 mixed up with his comprehension of all- systems, 
 do not concern us at present. The impulse was 
 given ; the ideas of Leibnitz' Theodicee were 
 absorbed by a whole generation, while his pecu- 
 liar theory — his monads and pre-established 
 harmony — never acquired currency. The prin- 
 ciple of the unity of thought and being was 
 then introduced into English theology, or 
 rather became the assumption of all the leading 
 theological writers. It followed that there 
 were no contradictions between different parts 
 of knowledge ; no contrast between divine 
 truth and human truth. Truth is one. The 
 moral laws and the physical laws^by which the 
 course of nature and the actions of man are 
 governed form a consolidated system, of which 
 we see not a mere outside or phenomenal 
 show, but we have a glimpse into the interior 
 
2o6 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 of the vast machinery. That the human spec- 
 tator cannot embrace the whole plan ^ is not 
 from any imperfection in his intelligence as 
 intelligence, but from its localisation. ** His 
 time a moment, and a point his space," man 
 cannot comprehend the scheme of Providence 
 any more than his eye can take in the roll of 
 the planets round their several suns in the 
 innumerable systems which compose the world. 
 But what he cannot comprehend as a whole, he 
 can apprehend. His knowledge is real know- 
 ledge as far as it goes. There is no incom- 
 prehensible absolute beyond his view, the true 
 nature of which is sealed against his approach. 
 The moral attributes of the divine intelligence 
 which are exhibited in that corner of the uni- 
 verse which is open to his inspection^ are real 
 attributes, or laws of function, from which, as in 
 any other induction, he passes to a universal 
 conclusion. From what we see of God's deal- 
 ings in the world of nature, we may safely 
 reason as to His dealings in those other 
 worlds which are invisible to us. 
 
 For a brief period English religious thought 
 
SERMON VIII. 207 
 
 seemed to be placed upon this footing, the only- 
 footing on which a sound theology can re3t, if 
 it is to rank as co-ordinate with other branches 
 of knowledge, and to command the assent of an 
 instructed society. How the impulse gradually 
 died out, how more contracted minds reoccupied 
 the field of religious teaching, and replaced it 
 in its old isolation, has just been alluded to. 
 The Puritan school superseded the rational. 
 But a school of theology .which repudiated 
 philosophy, and knew nothing of historical 
 criticism ^and took Its stand upon the Bible as 
 interpreted by each man's religious sentiment, 
 had laid its foundation on the sand. A demand 
 necessarily arose for an interpreter. And as 
 reason had been rejected, the only alternative 
 was an authoritative Interpretation. On this 
 basis arose the High Church school. The 
 collision between these two modes of religious 
 sentiment, the clash of feeling ^ between the 
 expiring school of those who insist upon the 
 Bible and religious conviction, and the rising 
 school of those who start from Church authority 
 and sacramental union, occupies the foreground 
 
2o8 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 of the religious history of our time, and in the 
 confusion and tumult of the strife we are apt to 
 lose sight of the real character of the position 
 now occupied by religious opinion. 
 
 Let us try to recall, for a moment, the true 
 features of the situation. If we compare only 
 the two rival theologies, we see how inevitable 
 it was that Church authority should carry the 
 day against the unsubstantial theory of a self- 
 interpreted Bible. But though the theology of 
 authority has had an easy triumph over the 
 theology of sentiment, its own position is at 
 present highly critical. It is threatened by two 
 bodies of opinion. On its right flank it encoun- 
 ters the mass of ultramontane opinion. Why, 
 it is asked, if the principle of Church authority 
 is accepted in part^is it not accepted in whole '^ 
 If the Catholic Church of the fourth century 
 was an inspired source of truth, the Catholic 
 Church of the nineteenth century speaks in the 
 same name, and claims the same inspiration. 
 If Church authority is to be accepted, not sub- 
 ject to the test of criticism, it must be in 
 the form of Papal Infallibility. This objection 
 
SERMON VIII. noc^ 
 
 may be put aside for a moment, but it must 
 recur again and again, because no answer can 
 be found to it except in a criticism of the infal- 
 libilist claim, and all such criticism is ipso facto 
 a surrender of the principle of authority. On 
 the left flank menaces a danger still more seri- 
 ous. This is the side. on which the religious 
 opinion of our country is related to the other 
 parts of human knowledge. The synthesis of 
 reason and faith, of revelation and science, with 
 the promise of which the eighteenth century 
 opened, has passed away as a dream. A fright- 
 ful gulf now yawns between religion and science, 
 and a bridge between them is considered almost 
 hopeless. Far beyond the pale of science 
 proper, if we take widely the educated mind 
 and the higher literature of our day, must it not 
 be confessed that it is trained to admit laws of 
 thought, to exact rules of evidence, to enforce 
 through all its knowledge a logic of proof , which 
 it dares not apply to its own religious tenets ? 
 Especially there is a pervading suspicion of 
 physical science and scientific men, as material- 
 ists, hostile to religion, little given to belief. 
 
210 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 It is imagined that they are employed upon 
 a kind of knowledge^ which leads them away 
 from God, that they are immersed in matter, 
 in the contemplation of mere transitory truth, 
 while religion deals with the eternal verities. 
 And as their object is one which is beyond the 
 scope of religion, so their method of exact ob- 
 servation and verification is supposed to be one 
 which belongs peculiarly to their subject, and 
 of which moral truth does not admit. And 
 though physical science is thought particularly 
 dangerous, a similar attitude is adopted towards 
 all the other branches of human knowledge, 
 especially towards historical criticism, com- 
 parative mythology, ethnology ; while in the 
 practical sciences of politics, sociology, and 
 economics, the prudential path of the acting 
 statesman comes into direct collision with the 
 data of the current theology. 
 
 Thus it is that in our day the Church — and 
 not the Church of England merely as an en- 
 dowed institution, but the Christian religion in 
 whatever visible form embodied — is losing its 
 hold on the English mind. While the zeal of 
 
SERMON VIII. 211 
 
 the clergy in the cause of the Church is beyond 
 all praise, while the Church of England as 
 a political party is more efficiently organised 
 than it has been at any time since the Refor- 
 mation, there is an element of decay within^ 
 which cannot be watched without causing the 
 most serious alarm. The Church of England 
 has ceased to be an intellectual power in Eng- 
 land — it is not at the centre of intelligence. It 
 is to be feared that it is passing into a position 
 of antagonism to knowledge. 
 
 It is difficult to get this fact acknowledged, 
 it is more difficult still to get its importance 
 recognised by those who do admit its truth. 
 
 A common mode of thinking on the subject 
 is something of the following kind. It is true 
 that intellect is alienated from the Church, but 
 then it always has been so. From the Apostles' 
 days till our own, it is the poor and the ignor- 
 ant by whom the gospel has been embraced, 
 while it has been rejected by the wise and 
 prudent. In the matter of religion all man- 
 kind are on a level. The reconcilement of the 
 sinner to the Holy One can but be effected 
 
2iii UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 in one way, in finding which the most cultivated 
 intellect has no advantage over the rudest 
 peasant. Philosophy is a pastime of otiose 
 spirits, a luxury, a phantasy of the brain. It 
 may be a sad thing that the prevalent philo- 
 sophy should be materialistic. An orthodox 
 philosophy ought to be taught by authority. 
 But, after all, the evil does not reach very far. 
 It is a very limited circle which concerns itself 
 about speculative topics at all. The mass of the 
 people are untouched by them — and as for the 
 labourer and artisan, where the clergyman meets 
 with most difficulty, the resistance is due to 
 quite other causes than speculative infidelity. 
 
 So much of this line of argument, as is 
 founded upon the spread of Christianity at its 
 commencement .involves a misconception of the 
 course of opinion in the second and third cen- 
 turies which has formed the subject of a 
 previous discourse. The other position, that 
 philosophy or religious speculation is the idle 
 occupation of a few minds, and stands in no 
 relation to the condition of practical religion in 
 a given age, is an error of which I propose 
 
SERMON VIII. 213 
 
 to treat more fully on a future occasion. It 
 may be permitted me to remark in conclusion 
 that the influence of speculative theory upon 
 institutions and conditions of society is an influ- 
 ence so subtle that it is no wonder that it 
 escapes the notice of the generality of meruwho 
 are absorbed in finding proximate causes. It 
 is only when this subtle influence manifests 
 itself in the form of a revolution/that its power 
 is recognised. In such cases as the French 
 Revolution of 1788, or the spread of Christy 
 ianity in the third century, when the grain 
 mustard seed has become a tree, the transmuta- 
 tion of the idea into the political fact is recog- 
 nised by all ; it forces itself upon their attention. 
 But what is not equally capable of being placed 
 in a palpable form . is the insensible agency of 
 abstract thought unceasingly operating to mould 
 and modify civil society. It is with human 
 communities as it is with the face of the planet 
 which they inhabit. Geological catastrophes 
 are few and local. But the agencies of heat, 
 light, motion, and pressure, because they are 
 constant and universal, escape detection all the 
 
 St- ^ q 
 
214 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 while they are operating the series of never- 
 ending change. So In the spiritual world there 
 are Ideal forces which operate on so vast a scale, 
 and over such spaces of time, that their action 
 cannot be seized at any given point. 
 
 Such an insensible force has now for some 
 time been exerted by physical discovery. The 
 natural theology of the last century is no longer 
 found to be satisfactory in presence of the geo- 
 logical and biological sciences as they now 
 stand. The answer that the sciences are wrong 
 and the theologians are righjt.does not admit of 
 being discussed or refuted, for it is the answer 
 of ignorance. The answer of the Catholic 
 Church — which is, to take refuge In its own 
 authority — can only be practically tendered 
 where there is an Infallible living authority, as 
 in the chair of St. Peter. It seems to be the 
 business of the English Church especially, a 
 Church which has never yet broken with reason 
 or proscribed education, to fairly face these 
 questions, to resume the natural theology of 
 the past age, and to re-establish the synthesis 
 of science and faith. 
 
IX. 
 
 [Assize Sermon, March 2, 1871.] 
 
 " As he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment 
 to come, Felix trembled, and answered. Go thy way for this 
 time ; when I have a convenient season, I will call for 
 thee." — -Acts xxiv. 25. 
 
 There seems to be, if we look at the current 
 opinions on the subject, little agreement among 
 us as to what is the exact relation in which the 
 Christian religion stands to morality. That 
 obedience to the moral law is among the obli- 
 gations which a profession of Christianity carries 
 with it, is scarcely denied by any. But within 
 the limits of this general admission there is 
 every shade of opinion as to the nature of the 
 connection between the two. The great mass 
 of educated Englishmen who are in the habit 
 of reflecting at all on such subjects combine, I 
 suppose, an acceptance of Christian doctrine 
 with an admission of the obligations of morality ; 
 
2i6 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 but the different proportions in which the com- 
 bination takes place in their minds have a very- 
 marked influence upon their general habits of 
 thought and action. It is not possible to 
 classify men on this principle, or even to mark 
 precisely the finely -graduating shades which 
 discriminate one man's point of view from 
 another's. 
 
 Yet on the whole there are two leading types 
 of opinion, towards one or the other of which 
 all thinking men verge in their general habits 
 of thought — the type of opinion which sub- 
 ordinates religion to morality, or that which, 
 on the other hand, subordinates morality to 
 religion. 
 
 Of this latter form — that which subordinates 
 morality to religion — we find the extreme in 
 that opinion which holds that the will of God 
 is the only or ultimate foundation of the moral 
 law. When we dwell upon the thought of the 
 Infinite and Eternal God in His absolute and 
 unchanging nature, and place in the shadow of 
 His omnipotence this ephemeral creature, man, 
 whose existence is a moment in the history of 
 
SERMON IX. 217 
 
 his planet, and whose planet is a speck in the 
 ocean of the universe, we are so overwhelmed 
 by the contrast, that we may well acquiesce in a 
 blind submission to the fiat of the great Father 
 of all, not only without question, but without 
 justification. If God has commanded, that may 
 well be enough for us. The business of life is 
 the worship of God. Religion is not a code of 
 laws or prohibitions, but the devout attitude 
 of a waiting and dependent creature. In the 
 spiritual life of such a soul holiness is involved 
 not as conformity to law, not as obedience to 
 command, but as one of the necessary condi- 
 tions of that divine communion which occupies 
 all its energies. The Christian's life is con- 
 ceived as one of supernatural privilege, in 
 which he is raised above morality, — not in 
 the sense that he may dispense with its re- 
 straints, or violate its rules, but in the sense 
 that his nature responds to a higher law, — 
 he is no longer a servant, but a son. 
 
 It cannot be denied that this type of opinion 
 is founded in very noble sentiments — more than 
 this, that it rests on a reasonable basis. If 
 
2 1 8 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 there be a God, an eternal, omniscient, and 
 omnipotent Being, the relation of man to Him 
 cannot be very different from that thus ideally- 
 depicted. 
 
 At the opposite pole of thought on the sub- 
 ject is that opinion which tends to measure 
 religion by morality. This cast of thought has 
 for its starting-point the actual condition of 
 humanity. It conceives human happiness as 
 the one great object towards which man must 
 needs aspire. It observes how imperfectly all 
 human society is organised for the attainment 
 of this end. Yet it perceives that so far as 
 society does succeed in realising any measure 
 of this happiness, it is only and merely in virtue 
 of those rules^which are dictated by reason ex- 
 pounding the moral law, and by the employ- 
 ment of force to compel obedience to those 
 rules. It goes on to infer that could obedience 
 to these be secured more completely, in all those 
 details which the machinery of public order 
 cannot reach, a far higher degree of general 
 happiness would be obtained than is to be 
 met with at present in any existing community. 
 
SERMON IX. 219 
 
 Here religion, they think, comes into play. The 
 obligation in foro conscientice supplements the 
 obligation of which municipal law can take cog- 
 nisance. A church is defined, as by Dr. Arnold, 
 **a voluntary society for the putting down of 
 evil.'* As God in revealing Himself to His 
 creature could have no other object than that 
 creature's welfare, so what He has revealed is 
 merely regulative of our conduct. As the 
 Jewish revelation or old dispensation was em- 
 phatically a code of observances, ceremonial 
 and moral, so in the Christian revelation its 
 first characteristic is its lofty morality. The dis- 
 courses of Christ consist mainly, or wholly, of 
 directions for moral conduct, or the inculcation 
 of the human virtues. The Gospels are not 
 dogmatic. They relate the life of one who 
 went about doing good, and inculcating it by 
 His teaching. Creeds are the invention of a 
 later time. The very ceremonies of the Christ- 
 ian religion are a scaffolding for the building 
 tip of holiness of life — baptism is the washing 
 away of the defilement of evil, the sacrament of 
 the Supper is the food which sustains the soul 
 
220 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 in the following of Him who was without stain 
 or spot. 
 
 This class of opinion has, like the former, its 
 extreme form, and its modifications of every 
 shade and colour. Its extreme form is that 
 pure naturalism which denies to all religions any 
 real content, any valuable truth, beyond that 
 amount of morality which may be embedded 
 in their doctrines. In this view Christianity 
 is a republication of the religion of nature, 
 and Christ was an exemplar of virtue. The 
 superiority of Christianity to other religions 
 consists wholly in the superiority of its moral 
 code. But this extreme shape of naturalism is 
 not the only form in which this opinion of the 
 subordination of religion to morality is found. 
 It may be, and often is, combined with any 
 degree of belief in the supernatural character 
 of Christianity. 
 
 Having thus indicated in outline the two 
 opposed classes of opinion on this subject, I 
 may go on to remark, that though opposite and 
 irreconcilable, it is impossible to hold upon them 
 a judicial inquiry, and to pronounce the one 
 
SERMON IX. 
 
 of them false and the other true. They are 
 so far contrary views of the facts of life and 
 history, that they cannot both be held by the 
 same mind ; and therefore those ^minds which 
 have an affinity for one view, must tend with 
 equal repulsion to reject the opposite. They 
 are, in fact, alien habits of mind rather than 
 contradictory opinions. They are modes of 
 classifying mankind. Men must, when they 
 think at all of religion and morality, think under 
 one or other of these forms. But they do not 
 set about investigating this question by itself, 
 or making up their mind upon it on its sepa- 
 rate evidence — they find themselves already, 
 prior to reflection, ranged on one side or on the 
 other. Even those who have not carried re- 
 flection far enough to be able to formulate their 
 own opinion on the point -would, if subjected 
 to a skilful Socratic examination, be discovered 
 to be on one side or the other virtually. Many 
 an educated man, if asked what is his opinion 
 of the relation between religion and morality, 
 would be at a loss for an immediate answer 
 to the question, while a bystander, accustomed 
 
222 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 to apply the test, would have no difficulty In 
 gathering from the tenor of his general opinions, 
 on which side his answer ought to be. 
 
 It Is, I have said, a mode of classifying men. 
 It bisects the world of men and books. If we 
 are at a loss often to apply It to Individuals, we 
 have no difficulty In testing churches and com- 
 munities by It. If our perception of contem- 
 porary tendencies Is confused and dim, we can 
 see clearly enough the alternate prevalence of 
 the two forms of thought In the written history 
 of our race. Indeed the history of human pro- 
 gress may be summed up as the history of the 
 struggle between the two modes of viewing 
 society and law. Religion and morality have 
 not contended as enemies for mutual destruction, 
 but they have struggled with alternating suc- 
 cess for supremacy. This struggle Is traceable 
 throughout all history^ wherever we have a clue 
 to the Inner working of social change. But It 
 has never been exhibited on so great a scale 
 as In the first two centuries of our era, when 
 Christianity as the universal religion superseded 
 the old mythologies. For whatever other causes 
 
SERMON IX. 223 
 
 may have co-operated to the diffusion of Christ- 
 ianity, it cannot be doubted that it offered itself 
 as a purification of the individual conscience and 
 of family life. The Middle Ages witnessed the 
 triumph of the antagonist principle. Public law 
 and family life reverted again to the theocratic 
 basis^on which they had rested in the old Asiatic 
 monarchies, the civil law retired into a corner, 
 and the moral reason was kept in subjection to 
 the authority of an infallible hierarchy. 
 
 The gradual diffusion or re -diffusion of 
 knowledge slowly undermined this ecclesiasti- 
 cal fabric. The conscience of men revolted 
 against the crimes committed in the name of 
 the Church. The civil law, the great written 
 repertory of the social experience of Greco- 
 Roman civilisation, began to reassert itself, 
 and furnished principles .which laid the founda- 
 tion of a science of politics^in which the welfare 
 of mankind began again to form the ultimate 
 standard of appeal. From this time forward 
 Western Europe, or the whole of the civilised 
 world, has been divided into two sections by 
 this fundamental distinction. The Catholic 
 
224 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 portion seeking to organise society upon the 
 basis of religion ; all that is not Catholic em- 
 ploying religion as an instrument for the 
 amelioration of society. For it is a super- 
 ficial mode of speaking, where we speak, as 
 we sometimes do, of Catholicism as being 
 only a form of Christianity differing by certain 
 theological tenets from other forms called Pro- 
 testant. Catholicism is much more than a 
 theology or a religion ; it is much more than 
 one among the denominations of Christianity. 
 It is a whole habit of mind, founding itself 
 upon deeply-seated principles of philosophy, and 
 striving like the forms of animal and vegetable 
 life to develop itself under the given conditions 
 of air and light and warmth. In this struggle 
 for existence it meets another principle or set 
 of principles of no less vigour and vitality than 
 itself, and founded like itself on a widely- 
 extended survey of the facts of life. M iddle- Age 
 Catholicism, or the dogmatic and hierarchical 
 system of an infallible Church, finds itself face 
 to face with the principle of civilisation which 
 is also striving to mould and organise society. 
 
SERMON IX. 225 
 
 For it is no longer, as it has been in times 
 past, Protestantism, or the religion of the 
 Bible, or the Reformed Faith, which is the 
 antagonist of the Catholic Church. Its true 
 rival and competitor is the whole of that fabric 
 of science — moral, political, physical — which has 
 been slowly built up by the labour of four cen- 
 turies, and the results of which tend more and 
 more stringently to govern the conduct both of 
 individuals and of communities. 
 
 Men of piety and wide views, afflicted at the 
 sight of our unprofitable religious differences, 
 have at different times proposed schemes of 
 pacification among the churches. There seems 
 no reason why such a reconcilement might not 
 be effected, if not in the way of compromise, 
 at least in the way of comprehension, where 
 these disputes turn only on dogmatic differences. 
 But no amalgamation Is possible between two 
 organic forms of social life, which each claim 
 universality, which aspire to possess the whole 
 man, which are impelled by their inward force 
 to realise themselves in fact. Between the 
 Catholic Church and modern civilisation, the 
 
 Q 
 
226 UNIVERSITY SERMONS. 
 
 question is not one of truth and falsehood, one 
 which can be settled by any logical argumenta- 
 tion, or ventilated by an appeal to history ; it 
 is a struggle for existence — a struggle which 
 can only be settled by the survivance of the 
 stronger. 
 
COLLEGE SERMONS 
 
I. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 ON OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF A MEMBER OF LINCOLN 
 
 COLLEGE, 1 WHO WAS ACCIDENTALLY DROWNED WHILE 
 
 BATHING IN THE ISIS, MAY 3 1, 1 847. READ IN 
 
 THE COLLEGE CHAPEL ON SUNDAY, JUNE 6. 
 
 " €1 ir6jor\€L €v [xkXog^ (rvfnrda-x^t iravra to, [mcXt)" 
 
 I Corinthians xii. 26. 
 
 After the first shock of the sad event itself had 
 passed, my first anxiety, dear friends and pupils, 
 has been to communicate with you on the sub- 
 ject. And I have only deferred it till now that 
 I might have the advantage of this time and 
 place ; a time when we are all assembled, and a 
 place where we may be best assisted in calm 
 and serious reflection. Let me invite you to con- 
 template together for a few minutes, in the view 
 which as thoughtful, educated, and Christian 
 
 1 See Memoirs of Mark Pattison^ p. 262. The name of 
 the undergraduate was John George Stilwell. 
 
230 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 men we should do, this afflicting event, in which 
 the Almighty Arbiter of life and death has in- 
 terposed so visibly among us. We have thought,' 
 I know, of little else since, and even in the 
 midst of our necessary avocations a sense of 
 weight and oppression has seemed to hang over 
 us ; we spoke and moved as men do in whom 
 the impressions of sight and sense were for a 
 time overmastered by a glimpse of a world be- 
 yond. And indeed this could not have been 
 otherwise. We would not, if we could, have 
 banished this sadness and solemnity. But it is 
 time that we now remember that such bare im- 
 pression on our minds, a mere involuntary 
 emotion, the spontaneous tribute of nature, has 
 no value or use^unless it be employed to lead us 
 to something further. Our natural taste and 
 sense of propriety is gratified by such senti- 
 ments, and offended by the contrary ; as even 
 the slave in the tragedy rebukes the untimely 
 revelry of Hercules in the house of death. 
 Besides, the mere passive impression in this, as 
 in all other cases, was only designed to rouse us 
 to resolve and to act. If they do not do this, 
 
SERMON I. 231 
 
 even the emotions of grief become the mere 
 selfish indulgence of a luxurious sentiment. It 
 is worse than useless to feel rightly, if we do 
 not go on and follow up our feelings by the 
 appropriate actions. And so It Is even with 
 those rare events and visitations of Providence, 
 which are most calculated to startle and alarm 
 us. Few are so frivolous or insensible, as not 
 to be touched by the sudden death of a friend 
 or companion, and to most persons such an oc- 
 currence is the most deeply agitating that can 
 befall them. But merely to have received such 
 an impression, however profound, to have sur- 
 rendered ourselves passively to the current of 
 feeling, is not enough. We are reasonable 
 creatures, not only capable of reflection, but of 
 whom reflection is required by the very consti- 
 tution of our nature. We are bound in each 
 case as it arises to judge to the best of our 
 ability, and to act to the utmost of our power. 
 And if we could not, or if we will not, give our 
 diligent consideration .when such an occurrence 
 overtakes us, we should be borne down under 
 the mere burden and pressure of our perplexity 
 
232 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 and distress. A vague fear of God's judgments 
 would crush our hopes. We should sit still 
 and do nothing ,as persons wrapt in Egyptian 
 darkness. 
 
 There may be some who are quite aware of 
 this — who will not shrink back at the sight of 
 death, or allow the fear of it to have dominion 
 over their minds for a moment. They would 
 say, that it was quite true^that it was want of 
 thought and experience ^that made sudden 
 deaths so alarming to the generality of men ; 
 that all such exaggerated and superstitious 
 terrors were calmed and corrected by age and 
 observation ; that such events happened every 
 day without interfering with the course of the 
 world, or rendering our plans and calculations 
 for our future too insecure ; that it is perfectly 
 well known, that life depends on certain con- 
 ditions of body, and is subject to innumerable 
 casualties in the ordinary system of nature ; and 
 that the world must be taken as it is, and that 
 it is unreasonable to disquiet ourselves.because 
 we cannot render our lives wholly secure, but 
 that we must adopt the part of common pru- 
 
SERMON I. 233 
 
 dence in acting on the presumption of life, and 
 neglecting the remote contingencies which 
 might cut it short. And others, who would not 
 perhaps say so much as this, would yet en- 
 deavour to check their fear, and escape from the 
 uncomfortable thought, by the common argu- 
 ment, that they were no worse off than other 
 people, that they took their chance with the rest 
 of the world, and that as the uncertainties of life 
 did not interfere with the enjoyments of others, 
 they could not see iwhy they should with theirs. 
 
 Many speak thus ; and we are all, I fear, 
 liable to the temptation to think so, as the 
 readiest means of getting rid of the painful 
 thought^ which on occasions like the present, 
 will force themselves upon us. 
 
 But if it is an idle and unprofitable use of a 
 serious impression to receive it merely, and let 
 it melt away, this mode of reflecting upon it is 
 still worse. For to think thus^is only to think 
 of it for the purpose of getting rid of it ; to en- 
 deavour to reason ourselves out of our better 
 thoughts — to explain away the tokens of God's 
 power, and to soothe our fears of His judgment. 
 
234 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 This is the abuse of our reason to sophistry, and 
 not its use in guiding and confirming our incli- 
 nations towards good. If a dull and trembling 
 acquiescence in the Divine dispensations is less 
 than our duty, to argue them away and to en- 
 deavour to view them as ordinary occurrences, 
 and having no reference to ourselves, is wilfully 
 to shut our eyes ; to seek to be blind, and to 
 say we see. 
 
 For what is the nature of that peculiar force 
 and power. which such an occurrence is calcu- 
 lated to have in rousing our hearts, and stimu- 
 lating us to religious action ? It is not merely 
 that we are frightened, that we think that what 
 has befallen a friend to-day, may be our own 
 fate to-morrow, nor only that we are grieved 
 and mourning for his loss ; but because it seems 
 to bring us more closely and immediately into 
 God's presence — it seems to tear asunder the 
 veil which this world interposes between us and 
 the next, to be a living instance and proof that 
 God is among us and about us, though we see 
 Him not ; that He is not in heaven only, or 
 some distant part of the universe, but '' not very 
 
SERMON I. 235 
 
 far from every one of us." The world goes 
 along in its daily course, and we go with it, go 
 in and out, and find ourselves, even in spite of 
 direct efforts to the contrary, absorbed in its 
 concerns, and our belief in God remains a dry 
 tenet preserved in our creed, but left out of our 
 calculations for the day. The fixed and invari- 
 able order of nature, and the placid flow of her 
 changes on the one hand ; on the other, the 
 active strife of men's wills and passions, oppo- 
 site causes, yet tend to one effect, that God's 
 hand, and His law, which are beyond them all, 
 are pushed aside out of our view. But while 
 we are living on, sailing gaily with the flood- 
 tide of youth, health, spirits, enjoying life, and 
 grasping at its satisfactions, or contending for 
 its prizes, let a sudden fate snatch from us, not 
 by the natural and slow operation of disease the 
 work of weeks or days, but at one blow, in a 
 moment of time, one of those who moved among 
 us, whom we saw every day in the full exercise 
 of bodily and mental powers/^ and when, where 
 one minute was a living intelligence, we see 
 the next but a mass of inert and insensible 
 
236 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 matter ; does it not place before us, in a way 
 not to be mistaken or overlooked, the line which 
 separates the two worlds, the world of spirits, 
 in view of which we really now exist, towards 
 which we are continually advancing, and in 
 which we are to dwell for ever, and that other 
 world of matter in which we are now for a time 
 imprisoned ? We then see with which part of 
 the compound being man it is that we have 
 most affinity, and in which we are most in- 
 terested ; not the outward shell of his bodily 
 frame, with which we can now hold no com- 
 munion, and interchange no thought, but bury 
 it out of our sight ; but rather the invisible in- 
 mate of that tabernacle, the now disembodied 
 spirit, which cannot perish, or be destroyed, 
 though it cease for a time to be accessible to us. 
 To keep up in his own mind this perception of 
 the truth of things unseen, to maintain an abid- 
 ing sense of the near presence of God, to assert 
 the dominion and prerogative of his moral 
 nature over his animal, is the one end and aim 
 of the good man here on earth. And when we 
 have by sad experience come to know our own 
 
SERMON I. 2yj 
 
 feebleness In this respect, the weakness and 
 falntness of our spiritual powers, and the 
 strength and activity of our passions, we shall 
 thankfully embrace any opportunity, and accept 
 every chastisement, which may aid us In this 
 arduous struggle against nature. 
 
 We must regard this event, then, as a solemn 
 lesson, read in an especial manner to ourselves . 
 each one of us. We have known and hear from 
 time to time of equally awful visitations near us 
 and around us. We may, if we will, benefit by 
 them. But this has been done a77tong us — has 
 been brought home to ourselves ; we cannot, if 
 we would, close our eyes to it, or escape It. 
 God seems to have sent a message directly to 
 every one of us. His ordinary callings and 
 warnings we share with others, and we are gmXty^ 
 if we neglect them. How doubly guilty shall wie 
 not be, if we neglect Him when he speaks dis- 
 tinctly to ourselves ! To most of us here 
 present this must have been the most solemn 
 event, that has yet befallen us In the course of 
 our lives. We cannot be after this In the same 
 condition as before. If we are not better, If we 
 
238 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 do not take the warning, then we have deliber- 
 ately rejected it. We cannot plead ignorance, 
 and say we have not heard, we have not known, 
 for God has spoken to us. For every good 
 thought^ that has crossed our minds without 
 being acted upon, we shall have to give account ; 
 how much more for so express and powerful a 
 summons to repentance as the present ! 
 
 Should you ask now In what way you may 
 best turn to account the solemn lesson ; I would 
 say, first, heartily and with thankfulness accept 
 it as the voice of God ; cherish and tender your 
 impression of awe as a most valuable aid to 
 faith ; and carefully shun, as a temptation, any 
 Inclination to laugh off, or put aside, such a 
 wholesome fear, from false shame under the 
 idea that It is cowardice, weakness, want of 
 manliness and experience. Next, hasten, 
 before the first ardour of the excited feeling 
 dies away, to preserve so precious a gift, and 
 one which can hardly be repeated with equal 
 effect, to preserve It in the only way In which It 
 can be preserved, by embodying it In a distinct 
 resolution of amendment — an act of repentance, 
 
SERMON I. 239 
 
 and resolution of amendment of life. For there 
 is no fear here of acting extravagantly, by acting 
 under the influence of this feeling, as would be 
 the case in matters of this world. We think too 
 much already of worldly things, and rate them 
 too highly, and therefore any excitement of 
 mind when they are the subjects^only disturbs 
 our judgment, and exaggerates a false illusion. 
 But of heavenly things we habitually think so 
 infinitely below their real value, that the 
 strongest stimulus to the imagination must leave 
 it still short of the reality of those things, which 
 the very angels only desire to look into. Such 
 a stroke as we have now received . shows us 
 nothing new, makes known to us nothing that 
 we did not know before, but .like the flash of 
 lightning in the dark night, enables us for a 
 moment to see objects as they really are. 
 
 Consider, then, that herein the finger of God 
 has touched your heart, that He may rouse you 
 from your slumber, and start you anew in the 
 path of obedience, if you have forsaken it. 
 Avail yourself of your present warmth, as of 
 an opportunity which may never occur again, 
 
240 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 of overcoming the first difficulties of active 
 obedience, and so of fixing your conduct and 
 character. Any present fervour or strength 
 you may be conscious of^is a direct gift of grace, 
 to be laid out in immediate action. Think of 
 the relative dimensions and importance^in which 
 in your first alarm time and eternity respectively 
 appeared to you, and remember that that view 
 is only wrong in being infinitely below the 
 truth. Endeavour to maintain this standard in 
 your mind, and recur to it to right your judg- 
 mentywhen you find yourself, as you surely will 
 do, measuring by the false measures current in 
 the world. 
 
 I would wish to speak to you on this occa- 
 sion, if possible, in terms yet less general. Your 
 resolves for the future can only be rightly 
 founded on repentance for the past. And this 
 can only be effectual, when it is not merely a 
 vague sentiment of regret for general evil, but 
 a specific recantation and renunciation of the 
 individual acts of sin. And if there be any 
 one of you ..who is the prey of any one 
 particular temptation, of any guilty habit. 
 
SERMON I. 241 
 
 seize this occasion of making a stand, of free- 
 ing yourself by a vigorous effort <, before it be 
 too late. 
 
 Those whose danger lies in the attractions of 
 society, or the studies of this place, must re- 
 member that such temptation is the more 
 insidious^ as its evil is not so apparent and 
 acknowledged. But ambition is not less a vice 
 because it is the vice of noble minds ; and it 
 has this peculiar quality, that whereas other sins 
 are committed for the gratification of some one 
 passion or particular propension, he who is 
 the slave of ambition must from the nature of 
 the case be so with all his powers and facul- 
 ties, nothing less than the devotion of all his 
 days and nights and every energy^ will avail for 
 success. 
 
 Finally, this sad event may well serve to 
 remind us that. living within the same college 
 walls and in the same society, we form alto- 
 gether but one family, one household, and that 
 therefore we have duties to one another over 
 and above that common courtesy and civility, 
 which we owe to all with whom we mix in 
 
 R 
 
242 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 society. I fear we are too apt to forget this. 
 Just because we are in such close contact with 
 one another, our mutual faults and failings are 
 the more exposed to observation, and require 
 the more charity and forbearance, instead of 
 being made matter for talk and amusement. A 
 time of sorrow common to us all is a time^when 
 men draw closer together, and springs of sym- 
 pathy are touched, which ordinary events could 
 never have reached. ''If one member suffer, 
 all the members suffer with it." I have not 
 been unobservant of many little tokens of this 
 nature during the past week — a week^of which^ I 
 think and hope, the memory will not speedily 
 be effaced from our minds. For myself, I can- 
 not express how much my share of our common 
 grief, increased as it is by the sense of the im- 
 perfect way ^ in which I discharged my duty 
 towards him^whose place is now vacant among 
 us, has been mitigated by the consciousness 
 that I possessed your sympathy ; and the evi- 
 dences of good and generous feeling which have 
 been drawn forth on this occasion, not the less 
 gratefuUbecause showing themselves in little 
 
SERMON I. 243 
 
 things, will be among the most cherished recol- 
 lections of my life. 
 
 I commend you to God, and myself to your 
 prayers. 
 
II. 
 
 [May 12, 1850.] 
 €Vos Be €(TTL y^peia. — LXJKE x. 42. 
 
 These few words express an axiom or first 
 truth in morals — one received in all systems. 
 But it is one which is not only theoretically 
 true, but which is admitted and felt to be so by 
 every one in his own experience. It enters 
 into our belief, and through it into our lives. 
 Our wide differences from others, our disagree- 
 ment, even collision with them, our alien tastes, 
 our diverse paths and pursuits, even our entire 
 want of sympathy, do not prevent us from 
 seeing that through and above this dispersed- 
 ness there is one common end in view, or if 
 not in view, which all our eyes are straining 
 with more or less success to catch sight of. It 
 requires but little experience to reveal to us 
 that the things we desire, however acutely, and 
 
SERMON II. 245 
 
 pursue so ardently, do not satisfy us. There 
 is no sort of disappointment in life equal to the 
 disappointment of gaining some long-cherished 
 wish, and finding that it has not in it the sweet- 
 ness for which we nourished it. But if we 
 would benefit by such a shock, it must be not 
 by throwing up the pursuit in which our very 
 success has turned out failure, and trying some 
 other. We should suffer the first experiment 
 to convince us ,that our error lay not in a mis- 
 choice of the object we had selected to aim at, 
 but in having supposed that any present, partial, 
 single object, contained in itself the rest or stay 
 for which the mind leaned towards it. It is a 
 shadow of the thing we want, and not it. We 
 have grasped the form, and the substance is 
 still beyond us. Thus it is that we learn that 
 amid all our apparent isolation we are all trying 
 for the same thing. We gravitate on separate 
 orbits, but round a common centre. Amid all 
 the infinite diversity of our pursuits, one man does 
 not after all so much differ from another; we have 
 a common nature, and we like and dislike, when 
 we come to understand it, in the same way. 
 
246 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 Nothing seems to divide and separate men 
 more than difference of creed. Irreconcilable 
 seem the schisms that divide Roman Catholic 
 from Protestant, and the various sects of Pro- 
 testants from one another. Yet travellers in the 
 East have observed that in the presence of the 
 vast antagonist power of Islam the divisions 
 between Christians seem to sink into nothing, 
 and Christendom is felt for the first time to be 
 one. Such is the view which the traveller can 
 take of Europe when he is able to see it in 
 perspective. A similar vantage-ground or 
 standing-point should we endeavour to attain^ 
 if we would form just views of our brother-men 
 in other matters. Instead of dwelling on con- 
 tradictions of tastes, on our antipathies, we 
 should abstract from them, and we should find 
 at bottom that the whole world is kin. 
 
 But of the many lines of thought which 
 these words open out to us, the one which I 
 wish to suggest to you now is that in which it 
 bears on our own business in this place. It 
 must have occurred to many to ask, Since all 
 religion insists so strongly on the vanity of 
 
SERMON 11. 247 
 
 human life, tells us that it is a dream, a shadow, 
 a smoke, having nothing in it permanent and re- 
 liable, and experience, corroborating this, leaves 
 us at the end of life with nothing but a series 
 of disappointments, and makes us feel all 
 through, that when we get most^we get nothing 
 worth having, that none of our objects has 
 given us what we wanted, in short, that rest and 
 peace and satisfaction are to be looked for here- 
 after, but noX, now — that God alone and His 
 presence can give us the joys we vainly seek 
 here ; when, in short, the present, what we do 
 and work for here, is so entirely valueless in 
 itself, and dependent for all its worth on the 
 future, it is very natural to ask, Then why so 
 much labour and toil and trouble for these 
 husks, why do we seek so eagerly if we know 
 we cannot find ? Why all this solicitude, 
 whether in the feeble shape of fretting and 
 querulousness, or in the more manly one of 
 forethought and prudence, for what we know to 
 be trivial and transitory ? What profit is there 
 in attainments, in a careful education, in labo- 
 rious studies, in painful discipline, in forming 
 
248 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 habits of accuracy, in distinguishing and in 
 reasoning, if all these are to perish with the 
 using ? 
 
 When men are oppressed by a sense of the 
 worthlessness of life, or by the disproportion 
 between their efforts and their objects, they 
 may try to establish something like consistency 
 in their lives in two ways. They may give up 
 the world and despise its cares and pursuits, 
 devoting their lives wholly to meditation on 
 things above. That which is unseen and 
 eternal may so overbalance in their minds the 
 present and the temporal, that they contemn 
 the latter as insignificant. Religious duties 
 come to be thought the one only obligation, the 
 business of life to be altogether secular and 
 carnal, studies, literature, taste, and all that 
 cultivates the mind to have something in them 
 heathen, profane, unbecoming the Christian. 
 
 Or, on the other hand, instead of thus ex- 
 alting religious services at the expense of active 
 duties, a man may lower his religious notions to 
 the level of the necessities and the demands of 
 his social occupations. There is a certain 
 
SERMON II. 249 
 
 routine of daily duties to be gone through : we 
 may take this as the basis of our system of Hfe, 
 and then add upon this just so much religious 
 practice as is compatible with it. This mode 
 of escaping the felt inconsistency between the 
 overwhelming greatness of the Divine objects 
 and the littleness of the things in which we live 
 is a far more common, and even on that account 
 more dangerous, error than the former. For 
 neither of these methods is the right method 
 of bringing our religious belief to bear on our 
 conduct, of reconciling the future with the 
 present. What we want to bring about in our- 
 selves^is the due balance and equipoise between 
 the principle of faith and the principle of action, 
 so to pass through things temporal that we 
 finally lose not the things eternal ; to be in 
 such a way convinced that but one thing is 
 needful , as not to destroy all stimulus and in- 
 terest for the many things in which we find 
 ourselves of necessity involved. 
 
 First, then, it must be observed, that the in- 
 ward harmony of soul which is proposed , must 
 not be sought by the means of partitioning off 
 
2SO COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 the one province from the other, and fixing 
 limits between them, by concluding a peace be- 
 tween the world and God, and giving part of our 
 day to one, and part to the other. I will suppose 
 — what, however, is highly unlikely — that in 
 this bargain our time and our thoughts are fairly 
 divided, and that there is an honest purpose to 
 consecrate a considerable share of both — as 
 much as can in fairness be spared, to devotion 
 and religious exercises. Supposing even that 
 this order of our day was adhered to for a time, 
 it would very soon betray the unsoundness of 
 the system attempted, devotion would flag, 
 prayer become a formal exercise, and languor 
 and dissatisfaction creep through our whole 
 spiritual being. Religious emotion, if hoarded 
 apart and cherished for its own sake, can no 
 more than any other feeling sustain itself. Our 
 life becomes a wearisome struggle between two 
 contending aims, from which we reap the satis- 
 factions of neither. The future world is suffi- 
 ciently in sight to cast a gloomy and awful 
 shadow over the present, which prevents our 
 hearty enjoyment of it, and the daily renovated 
 
SERMON I L 251 
 
 impulse which active Hfe gives to our worldly- 
 principles is making them continually encroach 
 and threaten to overwhelm the religious per- 
 ceptions. Our life is a lame halt between two 
 opinions, between God and the world. Untrue 
 to both, so prosperous in neither. This is the 
 consequence of isolating our religious belief 
 from the other parts of our life, and treating it 
 as a thing apart and sui generis. We easily 
 get into the way of judging and thinking and 
 acting on grounds and by a standard .w^hich we 
 imbibe unconscicaisly by imitation and com- 
 munication with our companions, grounds which 
 we should find it hard to state perhaps, while 
 our cherished and most serious convictions are 
 put away in a corner of our minds, and brought 
 out only when we are alone, or at the periods 
 of devotion. We may exclude from our con- 
 duct and motives everything that is not purely 
 secular. Some men even take a pride in 
 bringing their modes of thinking as much as 
 possible to a conformity with that which pre- 
 vails at the time, or in their particular circle, 
 and allow no other rule of right for their guide. 
 
252 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 And if at the same time, and along with their 
 success in acquainting themselves with what is 
 called the ways of the world, and their capacity 
 of adapting themselves to its laws, they still 
 retain in the background a thin shadow of an 
 early impressed religious faith, it is apt to take 
 the form of a complacent persuasion .that they 
 are on that ground better persons than those 
 whom they are striving to resemble outwardly. 
 What we want, then, is a piety that shall be 
 energetic and efficacious through our whole 
 life, through every act we do, every word we 
 speak, every breath we draw. We should not 
 distinguish our day into one part given to God, 
 and the rest to ourselves, but it should be all 
 of one colour and texture. The one thing 
 needful which we want to secure is a pene- 
 trating and all-powerful motive, universal in its 
 extent, to apply to our every act, minute, special, 
 practical, to ensure its being brought out into 
 our conduct, not lodged as a dormant creed in 
 our understanding. We should not have any 
 worldly employments, for our whole life should 
 be a religious act. This is the inward and 
 
SERMON II. 253 
 
 outward harmony which constitutes a sound 
 being, when all our movements flow naturally 
 from one central governing thought. Such a 
 character is not a compound of two tendencies 
 ill at ease in one another's neighbourhood, and 
 subsisting by a forced compromise, but a uni- 
 form whole in which one pure aim informs each 
 separate impulse. Life is then not a state of 
 rest or equilibrium produced by opposite forces, 
 but a sustained motion towards a fixed point. 
 The Divine life in the soul is not a detached 
 inward feeling or belief, while our outward 
 life goes on on different rules, but is a light 
 which becomes visible through its manifestation 
 in single and trivial acts. Nay, the least acts 
 are those of the most consequence, for as the 
 external form is little, in that proportion the 
 radiance of the informing good will show the 
 brighter. 
 
 Taking, then, this as the general account of 
 the character we should aim at creating, we 
 may draw some useful conclusions home to our 
 own peculiar situation and duties. 
 
 It Is our special vocation here to form and 
 
254 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 cultivate the mind, to call out in every possible 
 direction the intellectual faculties, to give scope 
 to all varieties of taste, to follow up every 
 channel of useful knowledge. This is a task 
 which must needs require not only all our time, 
 but from its very nature, as a schooling of in- 
 tellect by itself* must absorb all its energies. 
 Now, how is such a devotion of the whole mind 
 to this so diversified a business , to be made 
 compatible with that concentration of the soul 
 on GocLas our one end^which the laws of our 
 spiritual being demand ? Not certainly by a 
 compromise between our studies as a secular, 
 and our devotions as our religious duty. Not 
 by fencing off a sacred portion of our time as 
 our soul's, and abandoning the rest to study as 
 a worldly but necessary employment. For, if 
 temporal only, how necessary ? If the object 
 of our education here were only to qualify us 
 to make a better figure in this short life, how 
 preposterous and unreasonable to bestow so 
 much time and pains on so shortlived being ! 
 We must adopt ^r studies into the religious 
 life, which must be the basis and groundwork 
 
SERMON IL 255 
 
 of our whole life. Devotion must not merely 
 enter as an essential element into our day, but 
 must occupy the whole of it, as furnishing the 
 ultimate end to which each part tends, and on 
 which the whole framework of our life is 
 settled. 
 
 To be more explicit as to the mode in which 
 this is to be done — -in which the recognition of 
 God and the world to come is to be made the 
 quickening principle , through which we are to 
 be carried forward over the single steps even of 
 our course of study. We will suppose then a 
 student entering on his course here, and pausing 
 to deliberate^which of the objects for which a 
 course of systematic reading can be carried on 
 is the object he ought to propose to himself — 
 what is the one true guiding idea of our educa- 
 tion. He will come to his deliberation with 
 two points granted, two admissions — one a very 
 general one, something to the effect that the 
 true business of man on earth is a preparation 
 for a life to come : one, on the other hand, a 
 knowledge of the special fact^that a certain 
 number of books or subjects are proposed to 
 
256 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 him to be thoroughly learnt during his resi- 
 dence here. His difficulty then will be to trace 
 the connecting link between these two admitted 
 truths, to find the middle term which shall bind 
 these two extremes together, the conductor 
 which shall enable him to bring down the 
 heavenly influence to guide and quicken his 
 steps on earth. The whole science of life may 
 be said to consist in finding middle terms to 
 bind our daily acts to our first principles. . . . 
 He resolves then to enter on the duties of the 
 place from some one of the inferior motives 
 which offer themselves abundantly on all sides 
 — from mixed motives we will suppose, some 
 better some worse — as the desire of the honours 
 of the university, the wish for self-improvement, 
 all backed up by his general wish to do what is 
 right, to do what is approved by his friends, 
 and those to whom he looks up. As he goes 
 on in his course, he is gradually and experi- 
 mentally testing the worth of these secondary 
 and mediate motives, and he finds that some of 
 them, that, e,g.y derived from the desire of dis- 
 tinction, is a personal, selfish, temporal object, 
 
SERMON II. 257 
 
 which ends in itself and will not connect with 
 his general aim — his preparation for a future 
 state of being — while on the other hand the 
 desire of self- improvement, which entered in 
 as an element into his first general confused 
 compound motive, will gradually expand and 
 advance towards his first principle, will mediate 
 and serve as a bond of union between his 
 general aim and the special duties in which he 
 finds himself engaged by his position here. 
 This is the general history of the justification 
 of motive, of the way in which secondary and 
 confined aims are by a sincere and unselfish heart 
 slowly thrown off, and opened out into abiding 
 and eternal ones. 
 
 I have selected in this supposed case the 
 desire of self-improvement as the mediating 
 idea which should gradually elevate the aim, 
 and finally lead up to the more pure and ab- 
 stract idea of simple reference to God which is 
 the highest conceivable motive. Many other 
 terms might be used to describe the general 
 purpose of the education sought in this place. 
 I selected this because even in the minds of 
 
 s 
 
258 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 those who come here with lower and less 
 worthy aims a general wish for self- improve- 
 ment is almost always mingled. It remains 
 with themselves to dwell on and give increased 
 prominence to this better motive, or neglecting 
 it to let a less pure but more exacting ambition 
 become supreme over their wills. Not indeed 
 that even this motive of improvement could, 
 unless it rested on that further and final one, 
 sustain for long the heart and whole weight of 
 action of a reflecting man. But through it^and 
 (mediately) moved by it .we may fairly look up 
 to God and hope to have His blessing and 
 assistance in our work. But unless our motive 
 will stand the test of this reference, unless we 
 can bear to contemplate the pure judgment of 
 the Divine Being as resting on our act, that 
 act is not one which we ourselves can regard 
 with any contentment. This habitual reference 
 of everything we do to a single ruling motive 
 is absolutely necessary for anything like con- 
 sistency of action and of character. See the 
 strength of will and steady power which a man 
 derives from consistent adhesion to any, even 
 
SERMON II. 259 
 
 the lowest purpose. Even obstinacy, which is 
 mere perseverance without a purpose, and is 
 more often mischievous than useful, has some- 
 thing about it respectable. Much more does 
 the steady persevering pursuit of an object of 
 importance, whatever it be, command the esteem 
 of men at large. Let the same perseverance 
 and consistency be exhibited in retaining before 
 the mental view a true, unselfish, and lofty 
 ideal of life, in enforcing on our conduct 
 through its most minute and homely details a 
 pure and comprehensive principle, and there 
 will exist one of those characters which we 
 reverence, which impress themselves with an 
 irresistible force on every other^ with which 
 they come in contact. When the '* various 
 talents" are united with the ''single mind," 
 they give their possessors a moral weight and 
 mastery .which is instantly recognised, and to 
 which alj around pay a willing homage. The 
 deeper the heart is fixed, the more wide in its 
 scope is the principle^ to which one has com- 
 mitted the guidance of his life, the greater is its 
 power of versatility, the more inexhaustible are 
 
26o COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 its applications in detail. The wider the prin- 
 ciple, the greater its flexibility of adaptation. 
 To be able to sympathise extensively with 
 others, to gain access to the secret thoughts and 
 springs of other minds, our own springs of 
 action must lie deep. 
 
 Such a pervading motive is proposed to you 
 by your very residence in college in the busi- 
 ness of self- improvement — cultivation of the 
 whole mind and character. In taking this one 
 idea as your guide, you are not making an 
 arbitrary selection of your own motive, but you 
 are taking that vwhich your circumstances pro- 
 vide for you. You come here to study in 
 apprenticeship the rules of that art of life which 
 you are to practise hereafter on your own 
 account. Start with this general intention to 
 make the best of yourself — be it general, be 
 your idea of what is best cloudy and ill-defined, 
 yet let it be but steadfastly held to, and it will 
 work itself clear, and assume shape by being 
 acted out. Approve, admire, love, whatever 
 savours of obedience to this self-imposed law, 
 listen with captivated ear for every echo of its 
 
SERMON IT. 261 
 
 harmonies. No other rule or idea than this 
 will meet all the requirements of your college 
 life. Looking upwards it alone can put you into 
 complete connection with the supreme law and 
 will of God, for it is your business here, and 
 your business at any given period of your life 
 is to you a declaration of God's will concerning 
 you. Looking downwards towards the actual 
 details of your life, this aim at self-improvement 
 is the only one ^ that can embrace all you have 
 to do. It is an infallible referee whether you 
 are going on right or no. You may object 
 amusement, and say that amusements are surely 
 the postponing the serious aims of life, ancL 
 would not amuse^were they not enjoyed without 
 any such reference. This is true, but why do 
 we in amusement deliberately put by the con- 
 scious entertainment of our guiding purpose ? 
 Only that we may be able to resume it again 
 more effectively. This gives then a safe prac- 
 tical rule — that amusement is right only so 
 long as it is relaxation, as it then, and then 
 only, subserves the general purpose. Beyond 
 this point it defeats its legitimate object^and 
 
262 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 becomes itself the serious occupation. Any 
 pastime or game, however innocent or useful 
 in itself, if it encroaches on hours that ought to 
 be devoted to work or to sleep, if it makes 
 great demands on the mind, if it begins to 
 fascinate, is wrong. You cannot then bring it 
 under your general canon, you cannot while 
 engaged in it feel that it is contributing to your 
 one purpose. Even amusement, then, is no 
 exception to the universal empire of the motive 
 of self-culture. Your endeavour should be to 
 make this motive omnipotent as it is universal, 
 to give it might as it has right. Simply allow 
 it to work, and it will of course extend its sway 
 over your whole conduct. Add to your faith 
 virtue, e'iTL')(pp7)ryrj(TaTe rrjv apeTrjv, Supply your 
 principle with the occasions for its exercise in 
 single acts, and it will exert its own supremacy. 
 This steady hold of the unum necessarium is 
 the hidden power.that can give the grace and 
 manly firmness of consistency to the most 
 multiform and diversified activity. Whatever 
 we do, let it tell towards the sum total of life. 
 Be jealous that your character be not frittered 
 
SERMON II. 263 
 
 away and enfeebled by adopting even occa- 
 sionally any lower motive. Shun above all 
 that worst of slavery, the resting your happi- 
 ness on the good opinion of others. What you 
 
 do do to God, and not to men. 
 
 J I 
 
III. 
 
 [November 24, 1861.] 
 
 " The kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far 
 country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto 
 them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to 
 another two, and to another one ; to every man according 
 to his several ability." — Matthew xxv. 14, 15. 
 
 I MAY assume, I suppose, that the fact is well 
 known to you all , that our perceptions, that 
 a man's act of perception, is of a compound 
 nature. In the judgments we are every moment 
 forming on the things around us, on the objects 
 of sight, e,g,, there is one part which is a pas- 
 sive impression on the sense — on the eye — and 
 there is another part which is an active infer- 
 ence of the intelligence — these two parts put 
 together make up what is called a perception : 
 we are said to perceive a phenomenon or 
 external thing offering itself to the senses. 
 
 This composite character of perception ex- 
 plains how it is that our power of perception 
 
SERMON III. 265 
 
 is capable of improvement by practice. The 
 trained eye can see beauty, form, proportion, 
 points, which an unskilled eye is unable to 
 discern. Not because the organ of sense in 
 one man differs so very much from the same 
 organ in another man, but because the infer- 
 ential judgment which goes to make up his 
 intuition , has been cultivated. True, there is 
 some difference in the sentient organs of 
 different men. But this native difference in 
 the organ bears a small proportion to the 
 acquired differences in the perceptive faculty 
 which attention, observation, habit, and educa- 
 tion develop. It is not only in works of art, 
 or the artificial fabrics of the manufacturer, that 
 these degrees of discernment arise, but in the 
 common everyday exercise of the senses on 
 everyday outward objects. We all know the 
 difference between eyes and no eyes. But 
 we do not all bear in mind to what a small 
 extent this difference in the power of perception 
 is native in us, and how greatly it is occasioned 
 by training and exercise. Persons not accus- 
 tomed to analyse their own minds, to reflect — 
 
266 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 uneducated persons, in short — are accustomed 
 to ascribe this quickness and fulness of per- 
 ception in those persons in whom it is found to 
 natural endowment entirely. It is only as we 
 advance in an observant study of the human 
 mind that we come to distinguish with clearness . 
 how much of it is to be attributed to natural 
 power, and how much to habit and exertion. 
 
 What has now been said of perception by 
 the senses may be extended to the whole of 
 the human soul. That whole personal power 
 and weight, that calibre of character, moral and 
 intellectual, which we feel in another man, which 
 we recognise as the person, is a result — a result 
 compounded of original forces, and of the exer- 
 cise and discipline of those forces. These two — 
 faculty and exercise — are combined to generate 
 this result ; but they combine in very unequal 
 proportions, nature being pretty much the same 
 in all men, while the degree of exertion and 
 cultivation may differ by the whole difference 
 between the savage and the civilised man. 
 Here, again, it requires reflection and experi- 
 ence to discriminate * how much in a noble 
 
SERMON III. 267 
 
 character is due to natural gift, and how much 
 to art and labour and self-improvement. The 
 inexperienced and uneducated always ascribe 
 eminent greatness of mind and character to 
 natural endowment. The savage tribes look 
 up to a civilised man as to a heaven-inspired 
 sage. The young especially are apt to attribute 
 all differences of attainment to natural clever- 
 ness. And it is impossible to .disabuse them of 
 this notion. For all the facts they see are the 
 facts of natural differences between man and 
 man, which differences do undoubtedly exist ; 
 while all the other facts, the effect, viz., of 
 strenuous and prolonged effort in the develop- 
 ment of original force, are facts which require 
 time to watch, and which therefore are unknown 
 to the young. 
 
 Young men, then, are necessarily believers in 
 and admirers of ''cleverness," and disbelievers 
 in and contemners of industrious effort. Among 
 the many, many^ impediments to complete 
 education, this persuasion is not the least. It 
 acts upon the more forward and vigorous to 
 make them neglect labour as superfluous for 
 
268 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 them — it acts upon the slothful and dull to 
 make them despair of improvement as beyond 
 their reach. It makes the first sort of men 
 falsely self-reliant ; leads them to rely on a 
 treacherous faculty, on quickness of apprehen- 
 sion — a faculty which in life is apt to betray 
 into fatal mistakes. They think they can dis- 
 pense with study, and yet make as good a 
 show as the diligent man. So perhaps they 
 can, but then it is but show they can make. 
 So long as we are children y this ambition to 
 shine may procure us the applause of our 
 comrades and playfellows ; but when we go 
 out into the world, and begin to take our place 
 in life, we find out that we have been under a 
 mistake, that this undisciplined cleverness is so 
 far from leading a man to success or esteem y 
 that it makes right-judging men mistrustful — 
 he is seen through at once — the hollowness of 
 his character is detected on the first trial ; he 
 has the mortification of seeing the men^whom 
 in his vanity he has falsely despised as plodders , 
 and drudges i)ass him in the race. 
 
 On the other side, upon another and much 
 
SERMON III. 269 
 
 larger class of men, this fallacious worship of 
 cleverness has a discouraging effect. The 
 slothful, the negligent, the frivolous, the self- 
 indulgent, take refuge in this plea of "want of 
 ability " to excuse themselves from the irksome- 
 ness of labour. The error of this sort of men 
 is as great, their fault worse, and their case 
 more hopeless than that of the other. If the 
 vain man, who thinks work beneath him, calls 
 forth our pity, the sluggard and the do-nothing 
 excite our indignation. The man who squanders 
 his five talents in the gratification of his own 
 vanity may often be awakened to his error, 
 and, though in bitterness and mortification, be 
 recalled to the humbler paths of useful labour. 
 It is far less probable that the man who has 
 once begun to hide his one talent in the earth 
 will ever be roused to disinter and to employ 
 it. Mental torpor, once indulged, steals upon 
 the soul insensibly but fatally. He who has 
 taken a wrong direction may find it out, and 
 retrace his steps and make a fresh start ; but 
 he who has refused to move at all soon stiffens 
 into a posture of immobility, and loses the 
 
270 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 power, even if he should acquire the wish, to 
 put forth an effort. 
 
 The diHgent use of our powers, whatever 
 they are, is an obligation equally incumbent on 
 us all, young and old, here and elsewhere. 
 But on you, my young friends, and in this 
 place, it is your only obligation. At an age 
 when other young men have closed their 
 education, and are already immersed in the 
 business or the profession by which they are 
 to earn their living, you are sent here with 
 no other duty than that of self- improvement. 
 Three precious years are yours in which you 
 have as your vocation, as your one sole object 
 and aim, the making yourselves better and 
 worthier men. Shall you dissipate this golden 
 time, this spring of your year, in amusements, 
 in pleasures, in idle complfiyPin boyish pas- 
 times, in indolence and lethargy ? With what 
 eyes must we stand by and see you not seizing 
 the opportunity to fit yourselves to live, but 
 slipping through it in listless indifference, un- 
 conscious where you are, unreflecting for what 
 you come here ! 
 
SERMON III. 271 
 
 But you do wish to do yourselves good, to 
 make yourselves better — all of you wish it — 
 but only in a very few of you is the wish to 
 improve strong enough to arouse the will to 
 work. Labour is so difficult, irksome to the 
 quick, hateful to the dull. Yes, there is the 
 point — the difficulty of education is not an 
 intellectual but a moral one. Therefore, the 
 discipline we have to submit ourselves to is one 
 of the will rather than of the mind. Self- 
 improvement and mental improvement are not 
 synonymous expressions. The man is ever 
 more than the mind. There is a great differ- 
 ence, and other than a mental one, between a 
 wise man and a clever fellow. He is the wise 
 man who has an instructed mind and a regulated 
 choice. Practical wisdom is the application of 
 just thoughts to good ends. Whenever you 
 begin to apply thoughts to ends that are good, 
 the thoughts themselves increase in excellency. 
 
 Let steady self- improvement be your end. 
 Propose to yourselves as your guiding aim not 
 a class, not a scholarship, not surpassing others, 
 but the cultivation of your own mind through 
 
272 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 the instrumentality of the studies of the place. 
 Be intent on the business of disciplining your 
 minds and characters. Seek knowledge. Seek 
 the power of concentrating and methodising 
 your thoughts ; strive to become of better 
 habits, of selecter tastes, of higher and more 
 comprehensive aims. Let the desire of self- 
 improvernent, steadily maintained, verify and 
 glorify all your studies. Reading that knows 
 nothing of the destinies and hopes of man s im- 
 mortal soul is a very dry and profitless pursuit. 
 And the attractiveness of what is good will 
 grow with acquaintance. Hand and heart in 
 the work, you will discover every day more 
 and more to quicken, enlarge, and rejoice you. 
 The mind is self-revealed by its own operations. 
 Your impulses will be raised by habit into 
 motives. The inward reluctancy to moral and 
 studious effort will gradually give way, and be 
 replaced by a readiness and an ease. Intellec- 
 tual movement from a painful effort will become 
 its own gratification. Your years here will not 
 be spent in laying up a store of regret for your 
 after life. 
 
IV. 
 
 [November i, 1863.] 
 
 " Seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of 
 witnesses, ... let us run with patience the race that is 
 set before us." — Hebrews xii. i. 
 
 This is the day on which the Church proposes 
 to us the commemoration of the departed saints. 
 The pubHc, solemn, and Hturgical recognition 
 of the saints by our national Church is an 
 act of great significance. It suggests to us 
 infinite matter for reflection. Who are saints ? 
 How were they, while on earth, distinguished 
 from other men ? Where are they now ? 
 What are their thoughts, their feelings, their 
 occupations, their hopes ? Do they think of 
 us, or know anything of us ? Do they care for 
 us ? The collect for the day speaks of our 
 communion and fellowship with them ; what is 
 the nature of that fellowship ? When do we 
 feel it ? — to what course of action does it lead 
 
 T 
 
274 COLLEGE SERMONS, 
 
 on our part ? — what obligations does it impose ? 
 — what privileges does it confer upon us ? 
 
 This range and direction is not merely- 
 permitted to our thoughts, it is proposed to 
 them by the solemn and regularly recurrent 
 festival of the ist of November. A spacious 
 field of speculation indeed, leading us on into 
 the sublimest mysteries of the Christian revela- 
 tion and the loftiest destinies opened to the 
 human race. As it would be vain to attempt 
 to touch all the topics suggested by the service 
 of the day in the course of one half-hour, let us 
 select one from among the rest, and let us take 
 that one which the collect already quoted 
 brings before us — the saints proposed as our 
 example — "Grant us grace so to follow thy 
 blessed saints in all virtuous and godly 
 living," etc. 
 
 It is often, I think, supposed that a Christian 
 saint is an extraordinary personage, who lived 
 long ago, in times quite different from our times, 
 passed through an altogether eccentric career, 
 and did extraordinary things — having trials far 
 beyond the trials of ordinary life, and a super- 
 
SERMON IV. 275 
 
 human strength in meeting them — a being 
 having a legend rather than a biography ; 
 whose acts we may read from curiosity, but 
 with no higher view ; in whose Hfe there is 
 probably as much of fiction as of fact, and not 
 worth our while to discriminate between the 
 two ; in a word, a wonderful being, the object 
 of admiration, not of imitation. In what they 
 were holy.it is a holiness far beyond our feeble 
 reach ; a virtue that consisted rather in defiance 
 of society, in a contempt of the customs and 
 observances of the world. We think of them 
 as flying from social engagements, as being so 
 far above this world as to be out of it, as 
 having lived in a bygone age, as being nothing 
 to us beyond an object of curiosity if we happen 
 to come across any account of them. 
 
 If we are disposed to think in this way it 
 may be useful to remind ourselves of what was 
 in fact the origin of the commemoration of the 
 saints in the Church. It originated in the 
 reverence we all pay to goodness — to superior 
 goodness. A saint was one who was eminent 
 in the society of Christians, not for rank, or 
 
276 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 birth, or power, or wealth, or knowledge, but 
 for spirituality. The honours which the Pagans 
 paid to dead emperors, to those who had the 
 rule over them, the Christians paid to those who 
 rose above them in virtue. To live above the 
 world, above its temptations, above its enjoy- 
 ments, to begin upon earth the communion of 
 the soul with God, — this was the aim of the 
 whole body of the Christians. To do this was 
 to go through the struggle proposed to us, 
 Tpexecv Tov a^wva, to run the race set before us. 
 All were engaged in this effort — young and old, 
 rich and poor ; it was a race in which all were 
 runners. But, as is always the case where 
 effort and exertion are required, the degrees of 
 attainment were infinitely varied. Some sur- 
 passed the rest, and did better than anybody 
 what everybody was trying to do. All Christ- 
 ians were at first saints — they are repeatedly 
 called so in the Epistles. The word saint 
 means holy, ariLoi — those who led a spiritual 
 and virtuous life. It was only gradually and 
 after a long time that it came to be appropriated 
 to such only as rose above the level in virtuous 
 
SERMON IV. 277 
 
 living, those who were most dead to the world, 
 those who triumphed most completely over the 
 flesh, who realised the future in the present, 
 who were most thoroughly conformed to the 
 example of Jesus. Under all circumstances, 
 and in the most corrupted periods of the 
 Church's history, goodness and virtue have 
 remained the foundation of the ideal of the 
 saintly character. It is true, indeed, that not in 
 later, but in early times as well, many corrup- 
 tions were introduced into this ideal. Pain was 
 regarded as expiatory, self-inflicted austerities 
 were held meritorious, bodily mortification 
 rather than spiritual perfection became the aim 
 of the candidate for heaven. Those who con- 
 tended for some favourite opinion of the day, 
 or for the rights of the Church, were held up 
 by the clergy as heroes ; and the want of the 
 Christian graces was too easily compensated by 
 zeal for orthodox tenets. Miracles, too, of 
 which the greater part, to say the least, are 
 fictitious, came to be ascribed to every saint, 
 because miracle was regarded as indispensable 
 to the character of a saint. 
 
278 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 These are among the principal circumstances 
 which brought discredit upon the cultus or 
 respect paid to saints in the Church of the 
 West. Mere imposture in its baser forms did 
 something, an untrained and enthtisiastic reli- 
 gious imagination did more, to make the whole 
 creation of the Catholic lives of the saints be 
 set aside by a more reasonable Christianity as 
 a pure fiction, a romance of the Middle Ages . 
 much upon a par with the tales of chivalr^ 
 which grew up along with them or out of them. 
 All the reformed churches which took their 
 origin in the sixteenth century in the great 
 religious movement of that period, except our 
 own, threw aside with the worship of saints all 
 that related to the subject. They erased the 
 holy days from their Calendar, and the topic of 
 saint from their catechisms and compendiums 
 of religion. Thus they rushed from one 
 extreme to another ; in sweeping away a fiction 
 they lost sight of much most valuable fact — 
 they desired to abolish a superstition, and they 
 rooted up with it that natural and divinely 
 implanted instinct , which leads us to respect 
 
SERMON IV. 279 
 
 superior attainment, superior goodness, to look 
 up to those who have gone before us in the 
 path of holiness/ as our pattern and our encour- 
 agement. - 
 
 Our own Church in this, as in other things, 
 acted with more moderation, more wariness, 
 and therefore with more wisdom. The Church 
 of England does not allow the saints to be 
 invoked or prayed to for their assistance, pro- 
 tection, or patronage ; but it does not neglect 
 to commemorate them. It sets apart special 
 days for the anniversary of each of the apostles 
 and evangelists, for the Virgin Mary, and the 
 first martyr, Stephen. It does not even confine 
 itself to names mentioned in Scripture. Many 
 names from later centuries, Saxon as well as 
 Roman and Greek, are retained in the Calendar, 
 and the very comprehensive festival which we 
 are this day celebrating, intended to embrace all 
 the saints, is a festival which dates no farther 
 back than the seventh or eighth century of the 
 Church's history. But while it gives God 
 thanks for His saints, the Church is careful to 
 lay principal stress on that one point in which 
 
28o COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 the saintly character is our example, viz. in 
 virtuous and godly living. We do not point to 
 any wonderful works said to have been per- 
 formed, to extraordinary endurance of penance 
 and self-inflicted suffering, to zeal in behalf of 
 the Church or its interests, as they were sup- 
 posed to be, but to godly life ; those who lack 
 this mark are not saints to us ; and the saints 
 ought to be kept in memory by us^in order that 
 their godly example may stimulate us to follow 
 in their footsteps. '' If," says St. Bernard, 
 '* the history of their lives relates of any saint^ 
 that they have done wonderful things, these 
 extraordinary works may be the effects of their 
 sanctity ; they are not its conditions or its 
 measure. They did those works, if they did 
 them, because they were holy men. They are 
 not holy men for having done the works." -^ 
 
 A saint, then, is nothing more than an 
 eminent Christian — one who in charity and 
 meekness, in gentleness, forbearance, resigna- 
 tion, patience, long-suffering, kindness, mercy, 
 benevolence, sympathy for others, self-denial, 
 
 ^ Ap. Bourdaloue, Serm. **Sur la Saintete." 
 
SERMON IV. 281 
 
 has risen above the average attainment of 
 humbler Christians. A saint is one who has 
 had the same weaknesses, temptations, trials, 
 difficulties, which we have all of us had ; and 
 who has had the same opportunities and assist- 
 ances of Divine grace to meet and resist them 
 that we may have. Saints are those who have 
 conquered themselves ; who have risen above 
 vainglory, love of the world, love of riches, love 
 of praise ; who have preferred in everything 
 conscience to interest, truth to flattery, the 
 favour of God to the favour of man ; who have 
 held fast to integrity in their dealings, sincerity in 
 their language, good faith in their engagements. 
 Saints are they who have submitted themselves 
 to the will of God for good and for evil, casting 
 themselves upon God's providence to do with 
 them as He wills, without repining, discontent, 
 envy of others' better fortune, or discontent 
 with their own lot. These are common things 
 — common to speak of, I mean. There is 
 nothing new or extraordinary or surprising 
 in such an enumeration. These qualities or 
 characteristics^ which I have been going over 
 
 / 
 
282 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 are in all our mouths — we all of us sometimes 
 try after them ourselves ; we recommend them 
 to others ; we find mention of them, or some of 
 them, In all books and discourses. We all 
 approve of them — we cannot do otherwise. A 
 saint is only one who sets himself to acquire 
 these habits ; who devotes himself to the 
 practice of these virtues ; who makes it his 
 ambition to be good ; who uses as much effort 
 to be a good man as others do to be great men ; 
 who places his joy and happiness in the daily 
 exercise of piety and holy affections ; who is 
 ready to say with George Herbert: "All 
 worldly joys seem less ^when compared with 
 showing mercy or doing kindness." 
 
 In all this there Is nothing strange or eccen- 
 tric, nothing to be wondered at and passed by. 
 The example of the saints is precisely the 
 example for all of us, for this very reason that 
 it is an excelling pattern of common, human, 
 everyday, practical goodness which is placed 
 before us. A very high and excellent pattern 
 indeed and difficult to be imitated, impossible 
 to be attained to ; but still a pattern of that 
 
SERMON IV, 283 
 
 ordinary stuff of which our daily life is made 
 up. It is an example which is at once 
 open and inviting to us all in its kind, 
 and yet transcendent in the degree of its 
 holiness. 
 
 For it may be said of true goodness that it 
 is both most common and most rare. It is 
 common, if one may say so, in respect of the 
 material and texture of which it is made. The 
 daily round, the common task, the familiar 
 relations of life, the established and regularly- 
 recurring calls of business and duty, the words 
 which every minute have to be spoken, the acts 
 which every hour have to be done or to be 
 refrained from, the average friction of the 
 machinery of life, — this is the sphere, none 
 other than these are the occasions and oppor- 
 tunities, of saintliness. They lie close indeed 
 to every one of us ; not an hour of our waking 
 life passes/but we have a choice between better 
 and worse, a call to act upon a higher motive, 
 a prompting of God's Holy Spirit, an opening 
 to the divine life, a glimpse of the world to 
 come, an invitation to rise above ourselves. 
 
284 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 Life is made up of little things ; the saintly life 
 Is so too, for the saintly life Is only one of our 
 lives perfectly arranged and conducted. On 
 the other hand true goodness is rare in that it 
 is seldom met with. Every man who is not 
 utterly abandoned does good acts, and acts 
 from religious motives sometimes. Every one 
 of us contends with himself, restrains his 
 passions, curbs his temper. Is upright, merciful, 
 benevolent, just, temperate, self-denying, con- 
 siderate for others, in some things and on some 
 occasions. We see such traits of goodness in 
 our friends and associates, and take notice of 
 them ; approving them at times, at other times, 
 alas ! disbelieving in their possibility, and trying 
 to attribute the acts to some selfish and worldly 
 motive. But though single acts and traits of 
 goodness are, God be thanked, to be found on 
 all sides of us in a Christian community, yet 
 how rare is the consistently good man ! Of 
 course I do not mean the sinless, faultless man 
 — such a man does not and never did exist. 
 But the man who is endeavouring after holi- 
 ness ; who Is making it his first and paramount 
 
SERMON IV. 285 
 
 object to walk with God ; who thinks first and 
 in all matters of what is right, and only secondly 
 what is his own interest ; who is making it the 
 business of his life to be wise, virtuous, devout, 
 spiritual. Is not our ordinary life — the average 
 life of the good sort of men — a life directed to 
 some present and material object, a life of 
 making money or of spending it, a pursuit of 
 power, influence, authority, promotion, pleasure, 
 or profit, tempered by occasional benevolence, 
 and regulated so as to avoid dishonesty and the 
 more open and gross breaches of morals and 
 propriety ? When we witness a life such as 
 this, do we not pronounce it good ? Does it 
 not pretty well satisfy all our ideas of a Christ- 
 ian's vocation ? We should often mistake such 
 a life for a Christian life, especially if it comes 
 before us disguised and recommended by a 
 zealous adoption of the opinions or phrases of 
 some party or other In the Church. But the 
 true and thoroughly good man, the man who Is 
 not satisfied to fulfil the average duties of 
 society, but is making It his first ambition, his 
 chief business, his real pleasure to live to God 
 
286 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 — how rare is such a character ! Do any of us 
 know of many such persons ? Do we know of 
 one such ? 
 
 Indeed the Hfe of the saint is a hidden life, 
 and it may be that there stands at this moment 
 one among us whom we know not ; one whom 
 we overlook and yet in whose soul God's spirit 
 is doing a precious work ; one whose occupation 
 in the world may be humble, yet who may be 
 in secret leading the saint's life of contemplation 
 and prayer. Our estimate even of goodness is 
 too apt to be a mere social estimate. There is 
 a benevolence which attracts admiration, which 
 makes a noise in the world ; a goodness of 
 heart and character, a real not a mere superficial 
 goodness, which fixes the eyes of men, and 
 whose praises they are ready to sound — that of 
 men who are useful in their generation, who take 
 the lead in public works of humanity and phil- 
 anthropy. Such men are doing God's work ; 
 yet there may be others wholly unknown to 
 fame, whose names will not pass from mouth 
 to mouth, or be mentioned in print, who are 
 yet more advanced in the way of holiness, more 
 
SERMON IV. 287 
 
 favoured by God, who will sit higher in His 
 kingdom. We are not only apt to overlook 
 goodness but to measure it by a very popular 
 standard ; our eyes are apt to be dazzled by 
 the more showy and lustrous colours ; they are 
 not trained to seek put the quiet and undemon- 
 strative signs of the heart that waiteth still upon 
 God. "If we would trace truly the hand of 
 God in human affairs, we must unlearn our 
 admiration of the powerful and distinguished, 
 our reliance on the opinion of society, our 
 respect for the decisions of the learned or the 
 multitude, and turn our eyes to private life, 
 watching jIn all we read or witness for the true 
 signs of God's presence, the graces of personal 
 holiness manifested in His elect." ^ 
 
 True saintliness, then, is rare ; and rare as 
 it is from its unobtrusive, retiring character, 
 it is more rarely still that it meets with re- 
 cognition from us. We do not value it^or 
 care enough about it^to be curious to look 
 for it ; and as it does not force itself upon our 
 notice we may easily pass it by even where it 
 
 ^ J. H. Newman, Parochial Sermons^ vol. ii. p. 5. 
 
288 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 exists without seeing it is there. When we do 
 discern it we are not unwilling to admit its 
 excellence ; we may go further, and even be 
 sensible of its beauty. But it dt)es not fix our 
 gaze. It is not the direction of our ambition ; 
 we have no thought of striving to be like- 
 minded. Or it may be that, from time to time, 
 in sickness or in our more serious moments, the 
 idea of a holy life may present itself to our 
 imagination in attractive colours ; we may even 
 go so far as to wish we could adopt it, to think 
 that we would do so if we had not got so much 
 else to do, so many more immediate claims 
 upon our time and attention. I speak now not 
 of the dissolute or hardened, not of the world- 
 ling ;who has so long denied the existence of 
 worth and goodness jthat he is no longer able 
 to discern it, but believes all mankind to be the 
 helpless slaves of their propensities and their 
 interests, incapable of a disinterested action, only 
 to be constrained to right by law and police. 
 Of these men let us not now speak. Let us 
 speak only of those who have not lost their 
 faith in goodness ; those who, themselves 
 
SERMON IV. 289 
 
 worthy and good, just, kind, humane, sympa- 
 thetic, know these quaHties when they see them 
 in others ; know, recognise, and honour them. 
 But of such men, of those who go so far as this, 
 how few there are who get beyond this ! The 
 many do not appreciate hoHness of Hfe at all, 
 have no eyes for it, do not believe it possible. 
 A few only are advanced so far as to be able 
 to see goodness ; to be conscious of generous 
 impulses themselves, and so to credit others 
 with them. Of these few how small a number 
 who go on to the study and practice of good ; 
 who are so far enlightened by God's Spirit as to 
 choose a holy life for their own portion and 
 pursuit, to give it the devotion of their lives 
 and purposes, to make all other things sub- 
 ordinate to it, finding in it alone sufficient 
 occupation for all their energies, satisfaction 
 for all the yearnings of their nature ! 
 
 Of the coldness, deadness, and spiritual 
 barrenness of our time there are various causes. 
 One, and a very influential cause, is that of 
 which this day reminds us. It is the influence 
 of example. We all know that our opinions, 
 
 u 
 
290 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 and tastes, and estimates of things depend to a 
 great degree upon those of the society in which 
 we Hve. We are far more apt to underrate 
 than to overrate the degree of this dependence. 
 It would probably surprise many of us, even of 
 those who pride themselves upon their inde- 
 pendence of mind, could they be made aware 
 how entirely, even in the most important 
 matters, their judgments are governed by the 
 public opinion of their own circle of friends and 
 associates, or those of their own age and class. 
 Now it can hardly be said that among religious 
 people (of the professedly profane and irreli- 
 gious we need not now speak), but even among 
 religious people it can hardly be said that a 
 devout and holy life holds the chief place in 
 honour and esteem. Our modern life is so 
 keen, its interests so intense, the ardour of the 
 race so exciting, that no room is left for that 
 class of thoughts which lead towards piety and 
 contemplation of divine things. The tendencies 
 of things are sure to be brought out under the 
 pressure of numbers, and a multitude or society 
 of men competing with each other in any given 
 
SERMON IV, 291 
 
 line of life will mould each other into a uniform 
 character, and intensify the predominant taste 
 and feeling whatever it may be. It is not just 
 to decry worldly pursuits and occupations ; to 
 run down our daily and public life as a struggle 
 for material objects, a selfish pursuit of gain, an 
 interested ambition, an egotistical indulgence in 
 pleasure. All these evil tempers and habits 
 are mixed up with our daily life, but they are 
 not the whole of it. There are many better 
 elements. But taking it at its best, allowing the 
 many good qualities which active life calls out 
 in those who are engaged in it, it is still true 
 that it is so quick, intense, and absorbing that 
 its successful conduct demands all the energy, 
 perseverance and concentration of which a man 
 is capable. Hence keenness, vigour, boldness, 
 skill, enterprise, readiness, hardiness, determina- 
 tion, solidity — the manly virtues of a trading 
 and speculating people, are held in first honour 
 among us. I do not say in undue honour, for 
 truly honourable qualities they are. It is by 
 their possession and exercise that our country 
 holds among the kingdoms of Europe the 
 
292 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 position of which we are all so justly proud. 
 But if not unduly honoured/ may we venture 
 to say that they are too exclusively honoured ? 
 that they tend to thrust out of sight the softer 
 evangelical virtues of humility, patience, self- 
 abnegation, prayer, devotion, charity ? Char- 
 acters are formed and estimated among us by 
 the one standard always, never by the other. 
 
 May we not go on to say that this hardiness 
 and independence of character is too often 
 carried on to an extreme ? There is a want of 
 reverence, a self-assurance, an affectation of 
 worldly knowledge, a confident tone bordering 
 on arrogance, which in an especial manner 
 marks the youth of our day. An early selfish- 
 ness, and a conviction of the constant action of 
 selfish motives, are developed in our young 
 men along with the spirit of commercial activity, 
 an undue sense of self-importance.which hides 
 from us the relative proportions of what is out 
 of self Devoid of the noble feeling which pays 
 instinctive homage to what is good, we seek 
 satisfaction in poor and arid admiration of our- 
 selves. 
 
SERMON IV. 293 
 
 The case would be reversed , if we lived in 
 a society in which the spiritual world and the 
 presence of God in it was more vividly realised 
 than it is by us, — a society in which a man was 
 estimated rather by his standing in that invisible 
 world than in this visible world of rank, position, 
 income, and expenditure ; a society in which 
 the aims and ends of life are true, abiding, 
 eternal, and that fade not away. 
 
 Such a society exists ; it is not very far from 
 every one of us — it may be that we are our- 
 selves among its members. It is called the 
 Church of Christ. The Church is such a 
 society. In this society goodness only is in 
 honour; rank, wealth, station, power, popularity, 
 count for nothing in it. Its members have only 
 one ambition, that of being like-minded to 
 Christ, to Him who came not to do His own 
 will, but the will of Him that sent Him. In 
 this free brotherhood the members know each 
 other by no outward marks or badges of party, 
 but by a spiritual resemblance, by a secret 
 sympathy of character, by a common feeling 
 and love for the good and the perfect. It is an 
 
294 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 association under the name of Christ not for 
 political purposes, }br conquest,.fof aggrandise- 
 ment, fbr party ends, for the propagation of 
 opinions, but for the purpose of leading a godly 
 life — a life of which devotion, contemplation, 
 prayer, and the practice of holiness, are the one 
 ruling end and aim. And this society compre- 
 hends not only living and breathing men now 
 actually working upon this earth ; thousands of 
 every past generation ^which has been since the 
 world began .are among its members. This is 
 the only society in the world in which the dead 
 still live, in which the spirits of the just made 
 perfect can be spoken of, not as former, but as 
 actual members. The saint who was glorified 
 a thousand years ago still lives to God — lives in 
 His Church in the plenary exercise and enjoy- 
 ment of all its rights and privileges. A nation 
 — a political society — is proud of its great men, 
 the men who have worked and fought for it, 
 who laid the foundation, and built up the fabric 
 of its greatness. It looks to them as examples, 
 it trains its youth after their pattern, it studies 
 their lives, it has their words ever in its mouth. 
 
SERMON IV. 295 
 
 it celebrates their memories as we this day are 
 here to commemorate the worthy, the pious, 
 the learned men who in the course of four 
 centuries have found a home within the walls of 
 our College. But in the Christian Church the 
 past and present are all one ; the dead yet live ; 
 death constitutes no wall of separation ; it is 
 but deliverance from the body, a welcome 
 deliverance from weakness, temptation, imper- 
 fection. The saints are among us and with us ; 
 the wise and good of all ages are of our society ; 
 they feel with us, suffer with us, sympathise 
 with us, encourage and aid us. 
 
 Surely we should do well to acquaint our- 
 selves with the histories of holy men, the saints 
 and martyrs whether of ancient or of modern 
 times, to study their lives and acts, to rouse our 
 sluggishness by the accounts of their zeal, and 
 kindle our lukewarmness by their fervour. The 
 biographies of good men have always been a 
 chief delight of pious persons, many of whom 
 have left it on record how much they owed to 
 such reading. We name certain names in 
 honour, but what virtue is there in a name to 
 
296 COLLEGE SERMONS. 
 
 those who do not know what it denotes ? It is 
 the association which is everything ; but to 
 those who do not know the true history of that 
 to which the name belongs there are no associa- 
 tions with it, or wrong ones. It is not for the 
 sake of doing honour to them only, but more 
 for the sake of improving ourselves / that we 
 should try to learn and cherish the story of the 
 lives of good men. Such reading is abundant 
 and is easily found by those who wish for it. Not 
 to speak of the Church histories, and the acts 
 of the martyrs, the lives of the primitive bishops, 
 the successors of the Apostles, and the Fathers, 
 there are within our own branch of the Church 
 instructive records of holiness and simplicity of 
 manners in the biographies of Donne, Hooker, 
 Sanderson, Hammond, Bull, Nelson. I say 
 nothing of more modern lives, as their number, 
 is so great, and it might be invidious to select. 
 Nor are we confined to members of our 
 particular Church. The communion of saints 
 spreads far beyond its limits, or the limits of any 
 visible corporation. Lives of holy men in the 
 Roman Catholic Church of the middle and 
 
SERMON IV. 297 
 
 later ages are no less applicable to our purpose, 
 which is to know how they lived, not what 
 opinions they held on controverted points. 
 
 Ours is not a state of perfection and security, 
 but one of Imperfection, of striving, probation, 
 and endeavour. We cannot do without the 
 sympathy of members, the sense of companion- 
 ship on our path. God's spirit Indeed Is ever 
 near to us, suggesting, moving, quickening, 
 supporting. But He Is In contact with our 
 nature by ordinary channels, and of these none 
 Is more efficacious than that of example. It is 
 a great thing .if we have near to us some friend 
 or teacher to whose words and acts we can look 
 as a suggestive source of goodness and wisdom. 
 We should choose to have as our friends and 
 intimates only those whom we see striving to 
 live the better life. We are not called upon to 
 shun the world, to avoid general society, to 
 have no dealings with worldlings. We must 
 live among men and act with men without 
 affecting any singularity. It Is not the so-called 
 professors of religion that we seek, nor those 
 who claim to be converted men, nor those who 
 
 u 2 
 
298 COLLEGE SERMONS, 
 
 affect a zeal for the Church or for Church 
 opinions, but the sincere and genuine man .who 
 in his everyday Hfe and outward acts Hves with 
 others^and seems to do as others do, but who is 
 all the while cherishing within his soul the 
 aspiration towards the eternal world,- who is 
 striving humbly and in the sight of God towards 
 the society of that great multitude which the 
 seer saw in vision, a multitude^which no man 
 could number^of all nations and kindreds and 
 people and tongues, standing before the throne 
 and before the Lamb. 
 
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