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 THOMPSON 
 
 OLD THINGS AND NEW 
 
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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 OLD THINGS AND NEW.' 
 
 A SEEMON, 
 
 PREACHED IN 
 
 THE CHAPEL OF TRINITY COLLEGE, 
 
 ON WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1862, 
 
 23emg CTommemoration Bag. 
 
 BY W. H. THOMPSON, M.A., 
 
 I'ELLOW AND 'i'UTOB. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : JOHN DEIGHTON. 
 LONDON: JOHN W. PARKER AND SON. 
 
 M.DCCC.LIII.
 
 (IDambritrcjc: 
 i^ttntcl> at t|)c 2anibcv0{tg ^vegg.
 
 
 TO 
 
 THE MASTER, FELLOWS, AND SCHOLARS 
 
 or TRINITY COLLEGE, 
 
 THIS DISCOURSE 
 
 IS, WITH RESPECT AND AFFECTION, 
 
 INSCRIBED BY 
 
 THE PREACHER. 

 
 Page 16. In note, for Muir rmd Mure
 
 A SERMON, 
 
 St MATTHEW XIII. 52. 
 
 Every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is 
 like unto a man that is an householder, which bring eth forth 
 out of his treasure things new and old. 
 
 r\F the memorable sayings of our Lord, recorded by 
 ^-^ his biographers, not a few seem fairly to admit 
 of a twofold use ; as they are viewed in direct relation 
 to the circumstances which the context supplies ; or as 
 treated with reference to the more general applications 
 of which in themselves, and apart from the connexion, 
 they are susceptible. The verse before us seems one 
 in which are to be traced both this more restricted 
 and this wider meaning. Occurring after a series of 
 parables, all of which are designed, under varying images, 
 to shadow forth the nature and principles of that king- 
 dom of heaven which it was the aim of Christ's teaching 
 to proclaim and describe, and of his life and death 
 actually to establish among men, — occurring in such a 
 context, it may be not unnaturally regarded as a re- 
 commendation of his own practice of conveying old 
 truths under new and striking forms, and new truths 
 under the guise of the most familiar incidents of human 
 life. The old and the new thus mutually set off and 
 illustrate each other : and it is surely true that the 
 teacher who is able so to combine both, as to detain 
 the attention and enlighten the gradually prepared
 
 faculties of his hearers, is one " schooled " in no in- 
 considerable degree "unto the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 It does not, however, appear that the followers of 
 our Lord ventured in this respect to tread in their 
 Master's footsteps : at least we are in possession of no 
 recorded specimen of this teaching in parables, as prac- 
 tised by any of his disciples. But if this most cha- 
 racteristic feature in Christ's method of presenting di- 
 vine truths to his hearers, is not discernible in the 
 oral or written discourses of the Apostolic age, it would 
 be wrong to suppose that the true spirit of the recom- 
 mendation in our text was misunderstood or neglected 
 by the great teachers who represent that era in the 
 history of the Church. 
 
 The remarkable declaration of their Master, " Think 
 not that I am come to destroy the law and the pro- 
 phets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil," had 
 struck deep root in their convictions, and bore its fruit 
 in their practice, as ministers and expounders of the 
 new dispensation. Of the Apostles of the circumcision 
 the truth of this remark is evident at first glance. 
 How tenderly do we find them dealing with the pre- 
 judices of their Hebrew countrymen ; how loth to re- 
 linquish the forms and ritual precepts of the law ; how 
 gladly appealing to the inspiration of the prophets ; 
 how solicitous, on all occasions, that no irreverence, 
 real or apparent, for the old, should mingle with their 
 proclamation of the new. And even under the mass 
 of sensual corruption, and effete yet poisonous super- 
 stitions, with which the face of Roman heathendom 
 was encrusted, the earnest eye of the Apostle of the 
 Gentiles could discern the stirrings of a not yet ex- 
 hausted life, and the embers of truth not yet extin-
 
 guished. " Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him 
 declare I unto you," and, " as certain also of your own 
 poets have said ; For we are his offspring — " the argu- 
 ments Paul used on Mars' hill, in contending with the 
 subtle dialecticians of Athens, find their echo in that 
 brief but pregnant summary of the religious history 
 of mankind, which forms the preface to his Epistle to 
 the mixed Jewish and Gentile Church of Rome. In 
 which, though cheerfully acknowledging the advantage 
 enjoyed by the Hebrew in the possession of a definite 
 moral code, preserved in written documents, he yet 
 loudly proclaims the authority of the law of conscience, 
 unwritten save on the fleshly tables of the heart, which 
 was not less binding on the heathen, confirmed as it 
 was by the mute revelation of God's eternal power and 
 divinity which He had given them in the- things that 
 were made. 
 
 It was, indeed, this truly catholic recognition of 
 these deepest and most universal principles of our 
 common human nature, which enabled St Paul to per- 
 ceive that the divine message with which he was 
 entrusted was not a message to the descendants of 
 Abraham only, but to all who were made in the like- 
 ness of God, and partakers of that light which lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the world : but for which 
 recognition, struggled against both long and fiercely by 
 his brethren of narrower views, Christianity would have 
 been, what to the heathen it appeared, but one — 
 albeit the purest and most profound — of the numerous 
 sects of Judaism. 
 
 It was thus by his strong apprehension of the most 
 ancient facts of humanity, that St Paul was enabled 
 to introduce the greatest of all innovations in existing
 
 human creeds: to establish a religion positive yet no 
 longer national ; historical and yet spiritual ; intelligi- 
 ble to the vulgar, yet claiming the assent and obedience 
 of the philosopher. A religion, abrogating sacrifices 
 for ever, while it recognised the ideas, true in the 
 main, on which sacrifice had been founded; proclaim- 
 ing the fact of an incarnation, while it swept away 
 worships to which the idea of incarnated Divinity had 
 given their life and meaning ; raising the standard and 
 strengthening the sanctions of the moral law, while it 
 declared that by obedience to that law, should no flesh 
 be justified before God. A religion which elevated 
 while it abased ; which asserted, in one breath, the 
 responsibility and the helplessness of man, the inde- 
 feasible freedom of his will, and the necessity of abso- 
 lute submission to the will of God. Paradoxes these, 
 more startling than those of the Stoics, yet capable 
 of being reconciled and verified in the experience of 
 the most illiterate believer. 
 
 And if Christianity, as first promulgated, presents 
 this spectacle of blended old and new elements, recog- 
 nising on the one hand all the aspirations of humanity, 
 and yet satisfying them by methods which unaided hu- 
 manity could not have ventured to anticipate ; not less 
 clearly may we mark the working of those elements in 
 subsequent phases of its history. There are those, 
 indeed, who would have us behold in that history 
 nothing but a continuous process of self-development, 
 assuring us that the Romanism of the nineteenth century 
 contains nothing but what existed implicitly in the 
 Christianity of the Apostles, even as the oak is but the 
 expansion and fulfilment of the type imprisoned in the 
 acorn. It is impossible not to admire the diligence with
 
 9 
 
 which the accomplished English expounder of this doc- 
 trine has ransacked nature and history for analogies to 
 recommend it, and difficult, perhaps, altogether to resist 
 the allurements of a theory which undertakes to solve 
 so many difficulties and to explain so many phenomena. 
 But were it even true that the vast pretensions of the 
 Essay on Development had been made good, were there 
 no instances, as there are many, of" unwarrantable in- 
 
 * These may seem grave charges, but compare Essay, p. 50, where 
 an important passage of Butler is made to justify *' the doctrine of the 
 beatification of the saints being developed into their Cultus ; of the 
 QeoTOKo^^ or Mother of God, into hyperdulia ; and of the Real Presence 
 into Adoration of the Host." Butler's argument is, that the relations in 
 which the second and third persons of the Trinity stand to us being 
 clearly laid down in Scripture, the worship of the Son and Holy Ghost 
 is implicitly commanded ; " for, the relations being known, the obliga- 
 tions to such internal worship are obligations of reason, arising out of 
 those relations themselves." It is therefore tacitly assumed by Mr New- 
 man that the relations to us of the saints and of " St Mary" are known 
 from Scripture, as those of the Son and Holy Ghost are known. In 
 p. 145, a quotation from Paley's Evidences is " expanded" into an apology 
 (indirectly insinuated, but not the less real) for purgatory, the pope, 
 monachism, persecution, and many things besides. This astounding 
 passage in the Essay is well worth study. I will quote another : 
 " Revelation consists in the manifestation of the invisible Divine 
 power, or in the substitution of the voice of a Lawgiver for the voice of 
 conscience." Ih. p. 124. No statement can be more undeniable than the 
 former ; few more objectionable than the latter ; yet it is tacitly assumed 
 that they are identical, and a most mischievous use is made of the 
 assumption in the sequel. In the very next sentence, religion is used 
 twice, and, it seems to me, in a different sense each time. '' The supre- 
 macy of conscience is the essence of natural religion ; the supremacy of 
 apostle, or pope, or church, or bishop, is the essence of revealed." If 
 rdigion be taken subjectively (to use Mr Newman's own phraseology), 
 the supremacy of conscience is as much the essence of revealed as of 
 natural religion; if objectively, the supremacy of conscience is its 
 essence in neither case ; — the conscience needing both a rule and a sanc- 
 tion external to itself in either instance. These passages are taken 
 almost at random from Mr Newman's book. The misuse of the argu- 
 ment from analogy, and of Bishop Butler's principles, which is remark- 
 
 1—5
 
 10 
 
 ferences slipt in by way of corollary to undeniable 
 truths, of new meanings put on words by stealth, of 
 propositions insinuated, which to state clearly were to 
 refute; were the connexion between premisses and con- 
 clusion interrupted by no such breaches of continuity, 
 we should still be entitled to ask, What is the hypothesis 
 that gives cogency to the argument, and is it, not suffi- 
 cient only, but true ? If this test, by whose agency so 
 many brilliant fabrics of human speculation have been 
 dissolved, be applied to the Essay of which we are 
 speaking, we shall perceive that the cohesion of its parts 
 depends on a first falsehood* the assumption of an 
 infallible developing authority. The enquirer to whom 
 the existence of this virtual petitio princijni has once 
 been made clear, will find that the spell which seemed 
 to bind his understanding is at length broken, and that 
 he is once more at liberty to contemplate the history of 
 
 able in the Essay, reminds one forcibly of Socrates' warning : e'yw li 
 Toi'i Sict Tc3i/ eiKOTtoi/ Ttiv aiTodei^iv iroiovjxevoL<i Xoyoi^ avvoita oiiuiv 
 aXci^oaiv. Two qualities seem especially required in a reasoner from 
 analogy, solidity of judgment, and incorruptible integrity, both of 
 which are found in an eminent degree in Butler. When these are want- 
 ing, and their place is supplied by ingenuity, and the spirit of special 
 pleading, we must expect to be led to surprising conclusions. 
 
 * Mr Newman has no right to call the Fact or Tlieory of Develop- 
 ment a " hypothesis to account for a difficulty," Essay, p. 27. It is 
 merely a collective term for the phenomena to be explained. Nobody, 
 at any rate no Protestant, doubts i\\(i fact that Scripture statements and 
 doctrines have been "expanded" and "developed" in subsequent ages: 
 nor does the philosophical thinker deny that such developments are of 
 necessary occurrence, both in religious, philosophical, and political ideas. 
 The " hypothesis" is, the infallibility of the developing authority, which 
 accounts, not indeed for the form of the developments, but for their 
 truth, which is the real and only " difficulty." Tlie " theory of develop- 
 ment" is interesting as a theory, but of no force in an argument : the 
 hypothesis of infallibility, if conceded, settles the question, and that 
 wliether " ideas" and " doctrines" are or are not capable of expansion.
 
 11 
 
 the Church by the light of Scripture and reason — seen 
 by which not a few of the so-called developments of 
 Apostolic doctrine and Evangelic fact will appear but 
 morbid outgrowths, the fungus and lichen, which threaten 
 to strangle the plant which they deform. 
 
 Happily for the fortunes of the Church, happily, I may 
 say, for the existence of the Christian faith, our religion 
 has not been abandoned by its Founder to the workings 
 of a blind self-evolution. Another, and that a corrective 
 principle has at certain epochs of its history put forth 
 its power, to arrest the march of what may have seemed 
 development, but was rather dissolution incipient or 
 progressive. The Church has brought forth from her 
 treasure old facts in place of new fictions, old practices 
 to supplant new superstitions, old truths to combat new 
 theories. Among these critical and yet organic periods 
 in the history of Christianity, the first half of the six- 
 teenth century is of all the most memorable ; nor shall 
 we, who are this day met to do honour to the founders 
 of a Society, the existence of which is due to the Re- 
 formation, refuse to recognise in the theological leaders 
 in that mighty change, the characteristics of "scribes 
 instructed unto the kingdom of heaven." Bringing to 
 the study of the old letter the new-born spirit of free 
 yet reverent enquiry, and the newly-kindled light of a 
 sounder and wider learning, aided, too, by these purer 
 moral instincts which had been evoked in nobler natures 
 by the loud-crying corruptions of the time, these men of 
 understanding hearts were enabled to read in the Apos- 
 tolic writings more than had met the eye of Father or 
 of Schoolman, and to interpret their meaning with a 
 fulness and clearness as yet unprecedented in the history 
 of the post-apostolic church. Their reverence for the
 
 12 
 
 old was no blind antiquarian instinct, which appraises 
 the value of records or institutions by a standard chro- 
 nological rather than rational ; which counts authorities 
 instead of weighing them, and seeks to compensate the 
 want of faith and insight by a credulity exigent of 
 assent, yet restless and dissatisfied, and ever craving 
 fresh pabulum to stay the pangs of its morbid hunger. 
 Those who are possessed by this spirit of unreasoning 
 admiration of the old, are found most open to the al- 
 lurements of superstitious novelty ; and by a righteous 
 Nemesis, too often end in disguising, both from them- 
 selves and their disciples, the true lineaments of the 
 very antiquity which they idolize : like the Scribes and 
 Pharisees whom our Lord indignantly rebuked, because, 
 while they took tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, they 
 omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, 
 mercy, and faith. 
 
 It was in a spirit far other than this, that the founders 
 of the Protestant Church approached the early records 
 of Christianity. It was because they had weighed and 
 found wanting the traditions of medieval belief, and the 
 deductions of medieval logic, that they had sought to 
 invigorate their faculties by the study of a philosophy 
 at once more comprehensive and more practical, of a 
 humanity untrammelled by feudalism, and of languages 
 which were the echo of simple yet clear and vigorous 
 conceptions. What wonder if to a vision thus purged, 
 the Apostolic writings shone forth radiant with meaning 
 and instruction ? For not only was the understanding 
 of these men enlarged by frequent converse with the 
 master-thinkers of Classical Antiquity, not only had a 
 sounder knowledge of the ancient languages placed in 
 their grasp the instrument of a faithful interpretation,
 
 13 
 
 or the habit of seeking the true meaning of the authors 
 they studied, rendered them intolerant of interpretations 
 merely traditional. Such accomplishments might have 
 made them sound critics of the letter, but could not 
 have enabled them, first to penetrate and appropriate 
 the spirit of the sacred writings, and then to diffuse it 
 far and wide, until the general mind of Christendom 
 was leavened by its influence. 
 
 The heart of these " scribes" had been " schooled unto 
 the kingdom of heaven" by a discipline yet more severe 
 than that by which their faculties had been trained and 
 enlarged. The sale of indulgences, that monstrous 
 practical reductio ad dbsurdum of the doctrine of merit, 
 had wounded, and by wounding awakened the moral 
 sensibility of all in whom the "spark divine" of con- 
 science "remained unquenched." To all such it was 
 evident, that peace with God was not to be purchased 
 with silver and gold, and those who could reflect found 
 the enquiry forced upon them, by what still costlier 
 sacrifices, whether of penance or good works, the much- 
 desired reconciliation could be effected. To each succes- 
 sive proposal the now awakened conscience returned an 
 impatient negative. No nostrums, sacerdotal or scho- 
 lastic, could medicine it to that sleep it had but yester- 
 day : no merits of deified mortals ; no formula, however 
 impressive, of priestly absolution ; no torments of the 
 body, nor pangs, yet bitterer, of the remorseful soul. 
 
 In this, the hour of its sorest need, the spirit of man 
 extracted courage from despair, and putting aside the 
 traditions of centuries, dared to ascend to the primeval 
 sources of Christian life and light. In the words of 
 Paul of Tarsus was found the charm which had been 
 vainly sought amidst the laboured subtleties of the
 
 14 
 
 sainted doctor of Aquinura; and the great Christian 
 paradox, that "man is justified by faith, without the 
 deeds of the law," was welcomed with a cry of joyful 
 surprise, as a truth which had been hidden for gene- 
 rations from the consciousness of the Church. 
 
 I might pursue this subject farther than either the 
 time, or the occasion which brings us together requires 
 or warrants. I might shew how not the original doc- 
 trines only, but the most primitive formulas, symbolical 
 and sacramental, were invested with a power and sig- 
 nificance which to the men of that day were wholly new 
 and strange. But enough has been said to illustrate 
 the position, that in this, the greatest and truest refor- 
 mation of the Church, the working of two elements, 
 the enlightened critical understanding, and the primeval 
 record, may be separately traced: that neither could, 
 humanly speaking, have sufficed alone to produce the 
 result, and that both must have failed, but for that pre- 
 paration of the heart which was not the less from God, 
 because it came through the medium of an intelligible 
 historical causation. 
 
 The endeavour to read the future history of the 
 Church by the light of the past, must ever be attended 
 with difficulty and uncertainty. But if the time should 
 arrive, when the doubts that shake, and the controver- 
 sies that distract, the religious mind of our age and 
 nation, shall be brought to a solution as satisfying to 
 the earnest thinkers of the nineteenth, as was that which 
 filled with peace the hearts of learned and unlearned in 
 the sixteenth century, it is hardly too much to predict, 
 that the end will have been attained by means analogous 
 at any rate to those which we have seen in operation 
 during the earlier epoch. We, at least, are in posses-
 
 15 
 
 sion of an intellectual armoury, furnished with weapons 
 not less keen than those which Reuchlin and Erasmus 
 and Melanchthon wielded so skilfully and well. It is 
 one among the many benefits for which we are indebted 
 to the foresight of our founders, that while they appear 
 not greatly to have disturbed the cycle of traditional 
 studies, they took order that new seed should be planted 
 among the old growths, in the hope that it would strike 
 vigorous root in the yet virgin soil. The most perfect 
 of human languages and literatures was represented 
 from the first in this society by names which are still 
 cherished and had in honour by all who hold that the 
 study of classical Philology is at once an effectual disci- 
 pline of the youthful faculties, and a worthy employment 
 of the matured intellect. And that this creed has never 
 among us become wholly extinct, we have proof in the 
 not unfrequent occurrence in our Fasti, of names to 
 which those of Cheke and Aschani must yield place : 
 names of men the founders of new epochs in philological 
 science, and whose claims as originators are recognised 
 most cheerfully by those who in other lands have em- 
 ployed their methods with most surprising success. No 
 foreign votary of mathematical science has expressed 
 his veneration for the immortal name of Newton in terms 
 more emphatic than those in which the great re-creator 
 of Roman antiquity has acknowledged the claim of 
 Bentley to be considered the true father of modern 
 Philology. And in that more limited province of gram- 
 matical criticism in which Porson exercised his unri- 
 valled sagacity, — shaping his conclusions to a precision 
 not unworthy of an exact science — the soundest and 
 acutest of foreign scholars have been ever the foremost
 
 16 
 
 in their appreciation of his judgments, and those of him 
 who followed Porson with scarce unequal steps*. 
 
 That the most eminent successors of these great men 
 in their respective provinces are to be sought among the 
 learned of a kindred nation, may indeed be our fault, as 
 it does undoubtedly seem to be our misfortune. Yet, 
 when I think on the generous recognition which, upon 
 the whole, we have accorded to the master-works of 
 modern German erudition, and yet more when I lookf 
 on the enduring historical structures Avhich have been 
 reared and are rearing out of German materials, selected 
 and combined by English genius and judgment, I think 
 we may well be pardoned if, in spite of our own short- 
 comings, we refuse to despair of the future progress of 
 Philology in the English universities. Of this at least 
 I am sure, that it is well for our knowledge of antiquity, 
 that its study has been prosecuted upon German ground 
 and under German influences. At whatever rate those 
 among us who may have attempted to follow the course 
 of recent German speculation, may be disposed to value 
 its positive results, we can hardly deny that on what may 
 be called the subjective sciences, or those which contem- 
 plate man and the operations of man's spirit, the so- 
 called higher philosophy has exercised a powerful and 
 in the main a most beneficial influence. The specula- 
 
 * Professor P. P. Dobree. Sec tho elegant inscription on his monu- 
 ment in the Chapel of Trinity College. 
 
 f It is enough to mention the names of Thirlwall, Arnold, Grote, 
 Muir, and C. Merivale. The language used in the text is not intended 
 to imply the absence of originality of a very high order in the works 
 alluded to : nor, on the other hand, is it meant to insinuate that tho 
 German "materials" are mere formless matter, which would be equally 
 far from the truth.
 
 17 
 
 tions of the unaided Grecian mind on the great problems 
 of man's nature, his duties and his destiny, have en- 
 chained the interest and attention of modern thinkers of 
 no inconsiderable originality. Many a dark corner of 
 these ancient structures has been illuminated, many 
 false views of their proportions rectified ; and our 
 point of standing has been so adjusted, that we are 
 now at length in a condition to behold them in right 
 proportion, and with a truly critical eye. And this, 
 because they have been explored by men who have com- 
 bined philological exactness with philosophic insight; 
 men who have felt the work to be a labour of love, 
 sympathising heartily with every effort of humanity to 
 read its own riddles ; and to whom their own exertions 
 in parallel lines of thought have afforded the illustra- 
 tions both of similitude and of contrast. These causes 
 have combined to render the history of ancient Philo- 
 sophy, as it is now treated in Germany, one of the most 
 interesting and successful of the applications of Philo- 
 logy: and if we compare the state of this study now, 
 with the appearance it presented a century ago, we shall 
 not be loth to acknowledge how much Philology has 
 gained by her sojourn in a land of philosophers. 
 
 I will mention one other not inconsiderable fruit of 
 this alliance between independent sciences. A light has 
 been thrown upon the history of the religious mind of 
 Antiquity, not less powerful than that which has illus- 
 trated its Philosophy. Mythology, from being a source 
 of questionable entertainment for the young, or of un- 
 profitable employment to erudite dreamers, has become 
 a field of fruitful investigation for genial yet sober 
 and cultivated intellects. A chaos it may still be termed, 
 but it is one in which the instructed eye can discern
 
 18 
 
 the germs of the highest developments; inclosing in 
 its womb the living seeds of those luxuriant growths 
 of art, philosophy, and even civil and social wisdom, 
 which shaded the soil of Hellas in the period of the 
 adolescence and maturity of the nation. 
 
 Besides the intrinsic interest which those two appli- 
 cations of Philology must possess for those who are 
 endued with that true historical feeling from which 
 nothing that is human is alien, I conceive that they also 
 well deserve a place among the " new things " to be 
 stored in the treasure-house of the "scribe" who would 
 be " instructed unto the kingdom of heaven." The Pro- 
 testant Church has in late years been menaced from two 
 opposed quarters. On the one hand by the theorists of 
 development, on the other by the advocates of the 
 so-called mythical interpretation; the former bidding 
 us accept the sophistry of the schools, the legends* of 
 the cloister, and the superstitions of the semi-pagan — 
 vulgar, — the " idols of the theatre, the cavern, and the 
 tribe " — with an acquiescence as cheerful as that which 
 yve accord to the Gospel narrative : while the others 
 see, for their part, nothing objectionable in this identi- 
 fication, provided we will consent to trace in all alike 
 the threads of one great web of mythicising symbolism. 
 
 The point of meeting bewecn these seemingly oppo- 
 site extremes it is not difficult to detect; and indeed 
 the youth of this generation are told by infidel and 
 Romanist alike, that the time is come when they must 
 elect between Romanism and unbelief, between the 
 acceptance of exploded superstition and the rejection 
 of positive religion. To the temptations proftered by 
 
 * No one who is acquainted with the more recent " ileveloi)inents" 
 of Dr Newman's opinions, can consider this an overcharged statement.
 
 19 
 
 these two subtle beasts of the field the native sense 
 of the people of England has hitherto opposed, on the 
 whole, a faithful resistance ; but if those who are called 
 on by position and by natural endowments to give a 
 reason to themselves and others of the faith that is in 
 them, would meet fairly, and vanquish on their own 
 ground these theorists who dispute the empire of the 
 heart and reason of the present generation, it seems to 
 me nothing short of self-evident, that they must apply 
 themselves to the task after mature study not only of 
 the history of philosophical speculation, but of that of 
 the religious sentiment, in those phases especially of its 
 existence in which it seems spontaneously to clothe 
 itself in the forms of history. Let us not, in a spirit 
 of national prejudice or national conceit, refuse to avail 
 ourselves of the aids which our continental kinsmen offer 
 us for this purpose. Rather let the countrymen of 
 Bentley welcome back among them the science of 
 which, by the willing testimony of Germans themselves, 
 he was the intellectual father. She returns not empty- 
 handed, but bearing an ample quiver, stored with shafts 
 potent as of old to quell the banded forces of sophistry 
 and superstition. 
 
 In this most imperfect attempt to recommend to 
 the students of classical literature the claims upon their 
 attention of some of the later applications of Philology, 
 and to point out the bearing of new speculations upon 
 old and ever-recurring questions, it is impossible for me 
 to judge how far I may have succeeded in carrying 
 with me the convictions of my hearers. But I shall 
 not have spoken in vain, if I shall have conveyed or 
 confirmed a persuasion of the intrinsic dignity and
 
 20 
 
 value of these pursuits, to which so large a proportion 
 of our earnest students dedicate their best powers in 
 this ancient seat of learning. While pointing out to 
 them the capabilities of Philology, as an instrument of 
 progressive knowledge, and a key to some of the 
 subtler operations of the active spirit of man, I would 
 not be understood to disparage the more permanent 
 and fundamental portions of the science, with which 
 they are most familiar. Let them never be ashamed of 
 the pains bestowed in the acquisition of t hat nice 
 accuracy, which refuses to accept like conceptions as 
 identical, or to estimate the importance of a distinction 
 by its breadth. It is in the nature of error to " widen 
 upwards," and many a baneful confusion of thought has 
 had its root in a confusion of language. And in the 
 absence of any formal provision for teaching the science 
 of Logic, it is the more necessary to insist on the 
 rigorous study of Grammar, which is its counterpart, — 
 as speech is the counterfeit of * thought, — and which 
 alone has a fair claim f to be regarded as its equivalent, 
 
 * Which Plato happily names, ti]v ea-ta \jyv)^r]^ ^iuXcktou. It is 
 obvious that if there are laws regulating this faculty of inner discourse, 
 they must find their analoga in the laws of language. But these laws 
 constitute Grammar. Perhaps some apology is necessary for repeating 
 this sometimes forgotten theoretical truism. Practically, I am con- 
 vinced that there is no better " propanlcutic " for the study of the laws 
 of thought, than the rational investigation of the subtleties of Greek 
 construction and usage. 
 
 + The only de])artment of Logic for wliich (jeometri/ can be sup- 
 posed a substitute is Syllogisu). For of its definitions it allows no dis- 
 cussion, or at least hands over the discussion to others {nrnpal'iluyai tm 
 ha\€KTtKM, says Plato) and even of Syllogism it is only so far a sub- 
 stitute, as the practice of an art is a substitute for the science on whicli 
 it depends : e.fj. as the practice of Gymnastics for the science of Ana- 
 tomy. The disciplinary and educational uses of the higlicr Mathema- 
 tics have been pointed out with much subtlety of discrimination by
 
 21 
 
 or substitute, in the cycle of strictly disciplinary studies. 
 May the time never arrive, when we of this college 
 shall refuse to echo the prayer of the loftiest poet 
 and most observant and withal least scholastic thinker 
 of modern Germany*; that the study of the languages 
 of Greece and Rome may continue, while civilization 
 lasts, to be regarded as the basis of all liberal culture. 
 
 At so critical a period as the present in the history 
 of the University, I should hardly be deemed to have 
 fulfilled the task which has devolved upon me this day, 
 were I to conclude without any allusion to that im- 
 pending change in our academical constitution, which 
 employs the thoughts of all; filling some with hope, 
 some with fear, and the majority, probably, with a feel- 
 ing mixed of both. Far from us be that narrowness of 
 heart or dulness of brain, which should confine our 
 
 Mr R. L. Ellis, late Fellow of Trinity, in his admirable evidence sent to 
 the Cambridge Commission. I cannot but regret that the very eminent 
 members of that board should have thought it unnecessary to provide 
 us with a Logical Chair, at a time especially when so much interest has 
 been excited for the scientia scientiarum by the work of Mr Mill, by Dr 
 Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, and by some admirable 
 treatises which have appeared recently in the sister University. The 
 fellowship examination at Trinity is, so far as I know, the only Cam- 
 bridge examination, in which any knowledge of logic is required or en- 
 couraged. The Professor of Moral Philosophy occasionally introduces 
 questions on intellectual philosophy and its history in the papers he 
 proposes to the candidates for honours in the Moral Sciences Tripos. 
 Cambridge education undoubtedly gains by this liberal interpretation 
 of the term Moral Philosophy; but it is scarcely creditable to the 
 University that such portions of knowledge should be admitted into 
 its course by a side door only. 
 
 * See the collection of Maxims, &c. in the IXth Volume of Goethe's 
 Nachgelassene Werke, 1833, p. 123. Compare p. 111. I have ob- 
 served the same sentiment in other parts of his works, but am unable 
 to verify my recollections.
 
 22 
 
 sympathies to the fortunes of our own house, however 
 justly endeared to us by benefits temporal and spiritual. 
 The College which nurtured Bacon cannot look without 
 interest at the first systematic attempt that has yet been 
 made to realize Bacon's idea of a University. And ill 
 would it become us, while not unreasonably upholding 
 against modern sciolism the intellectual value of accu- 
 rate erudition and exact mathematical discipline, to 
 ignore, in a spirit of pedantic jealousy, the existence and 
 the progress of sciences which tend more immediately to 
 the benefit of the commonwealth, or to the comfort of 
 man's life, by the subjugation of nature to his uses. 
 Very different were the sentiments harboured by those 
 great men whose memory is our best palladium and 
 chief tower of strength against our enemies. It is well 
 known with what warm sympathy Bentley watched the 
 triumphs of the Newtonian philosophy, and how zealously 
 he laboured to further studies remote from his own. 
 And the eloquent preacher and profound theologian and 
 scholar who worthily filled the mathematical chair after- 
 wards occupied by Newton, in that noble Latin oration* 
 in which he commends to his hearers in the public 
 mathematical school the merits of the then new philo- 
 sophy, though he does not neglect to advert to the 
 educational uses of which it is susceptible, yet insists 
 with far more earnestness on the intrinsic beauty of its 
 methods, and the variety and magnificence of its out- 
 ward results. After recounting some of the achieve- 
 ments of this philosophy, and the names of Galileo, 
 Gilbert, Descartes and others, who, as he tells us, had 
 
 ♦ To be found in the IVth Volume of the old folio edition of 
 Barrow's works.
 
 23 
 
 extended the pomeria of natural science far beyond their 
 ancient limits. " Turn," he exclaims, " an attentive eye 
 on those sciences, clothed as we now behold them in 
 the purple of nobility, seated on the thrones of kings, 
 magnified in the opinion, explored by the studious zeal, 
 celebrated by the eulogies of almost every man of gentle 
 parentage, who in these days affects the reputation of 
 wit, or seriously devotes himself to philosophy. That 
 such men should rival you in any department of liberal 
 learning is unbecoming, that they should excel you, 
 were foul shame. Especially as you can in no other 
 way realize the name or uphold the honour of an Uni- 
 versity, which you profess yourselves to be, unless you 
 make good your claim to no vulgar skill in every kind 
 of knowledge worthy the attention of a cultivated intel- 
 lect." " Prmsertim cum Universitatis, quod projitemini, 
 nomen adimplei'e, decus sustentare, non alid ratione 
 taleatis, qiiam si 07n7iigence scientke Uberali ingenio 
 dignce, non vulgai'em vobis pe7'itiam mndlcetis." 
 
 To these weighty words of Barrow it would be pre- 
 sumption were I to add comment or application of my 
 own. With them I would gladly conclude, but I have 
 still a pious though a painful duty to perform. 
 
 It rarely happens, on these occasions, that the 
 preacher and his audience are so favoured, as to be able 
 to look back on the history of the society during the 
 year gone by, without a sigh for some one of their 
 number whom God has called away from this state of 
 mortal existence. The present is unhappily not one of 
 the years marked out for exception. We have to lament 
 the most premature removal of one* whom many of us 
 
 * James Armitage, Esq., M.A. who was elected Fellow of Trinity 
 in October 1845, and who died, after five years of suffering, in the 
 course of last summer.
 
 24 
 
 well knew, and all who knew well, loved and valued. 
 He was a man of a nature gentle yet earnest, sincere but 
 conciliating, even in temper though decided in character 
 and tenacious of purpose. An ardent lover of science 
 for its own sake, and of attainments which, used as h( 
 could use them, might have won for him a name amonj 
 successful enquirers into nature and her laws, he pre-l 
 ferred to dedicate his powers to a task humbler in the] 
 estimation of men, but haply not of less account in the 
 divine appraisal. Shortly after his election to a fellow-j 
 ship in this society, he was called to discharge a labori- 
 ous and very responsible office at the central Board oi 
 Education ; and it was the zeal with which he discharged | 
 duties which would have been irksome to one less) 
 earnestly bent on diffusing the blessings of education! 
 among hitherto most neglected classes, that laid the 
 foundation of that disease which was destined to carry 
 him to the tomb, though, alas! not till after years of| 
 pain and endurance. His sufferings under a malady too 
 evidently hopeless, were aggravated by what to the 
 imagination seems a doom worse than death, the total 
 privation of sight. But even under this .calamity his 
 heart sank not, nor was his exemplary and unvarying 
 patience spent ; and those who witnessed his Christian 
 demeanour as his life drew near its close, doubt not, but 
 earnestly and humbly believe, that the blessing pro- 
 nounced upon the pure in heart has been fulfilled to 
 him, and that death, which terminated his life of dark- 
 ness, has opened to him the door into an eternal 
 day.
 
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