The Sun.
London, England, 1867-02-04 00:00:00

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confessio, any sense or with any
consistent with common honesty, wheth, berlhe S
generally received interpretation or not. (Applause.)
If all were to desert the Church who put a large
and liberal construction on its terms of communion,
or who would wish to see those terms widened, the
national provision for religious teaching and worjlip
would beleft utterly to those who take the narrowe,t,
the, moA literal, and purely textual view of the
formularies; who, though by no incni4
bigots, are under the great di2advalit age of having
the bigots for their allies, and who, however great
their merits may be—and they are often very great
—yet, if the Church is improvable, are not the
most likely persons to improve it. Therefore, if it
were not all impertinence in me to fender advice in
such a matter, I :,hould say, let all who conscien-
tiously can remain in the Church. A Church is
far more easily improved from within than from
without. Almost all the illustrious reformers of
religion began by being clergymen; but they did
not think that their profession as clergymen was in-
consistent with being reformers. They mostly, in-
deed, ended their days outside the Churches in
which they were born ; but it was because the
Churches, in an evil hour for themselves, cast them
out. They did not think it any business of theirs to
withdraw. They thought they had a better right to
remain in the fold than those had who expelled
them. (Loud applause.) After some observations
on aesthetic culture, which deserved to be regarded
in a more serious light than was the custom, the
Rector concluded iby an appeal to the students on
the use of the intellect. " You are," he said, "to
be a part of the public who are to welcome, en-
courage, and help forward the future intellectual
benefactors of humanity ; and you are, if possible,
to furnish your contingent to the number of those
benefactors." Mr. Mill, who was listened to
throughout with close and sustained attention, sat
down amid loud cheering. He again rose, and
intimated the adjudication of two prizes for the
best essays on literary subjects.
The proceedings were closed with the benediction.

2d.
ST.131V1:1) sd.

ing how to discriminate truth is not confined to the
large truths. All through life it is our most press-
ing interest to find out the truth about all the mat-
ters we are concerned with. Now, there are but
two roads by which truth can be discovered—ob-
servation and reasoning—olviervation, cf course, in-
cluding experiment. We all observe, and we all
reason, and, therefore, more or less successfully,

we all ascertain truths, but most of us do it very ill,

and could not get on at all were we not able to fall
back on others who do it better. If we could not
do it in any degree, we should be mere instruments

in the hands of those who could—they would be
able to reiuce us to slavery. Then, how shall we
best learn to do this ? By being shown the way in
which it has already been successfully done. The
processes by which truth is attained, reasoning and
observation, have been carried to their greatest
_ _

known perfection in the physical sciences. As

classical literature furnishes the most perfect types
of the art of expression, so do the physical sciences
those of the art of thinking. Mathematics, and its

application to astronomy and natural philosophy,
arc the most complete example of the discovery of
truths by reasoning ; experimental science, of

their discovery by direct observation. Mr.
Mill having given the outline of a com-
plete scientific education, went on to say :
Those branches of politics, or of the laws of social

'e in which there exists a collection of facts or

,oughts sufficiently sifted and methodised to form

the beginning of a science should be taught ex pro-

fesso. Among the chief of these is political economy;

the sources and conditions of wealth and material

prosperity for aggregate bodies of human beings.

The study approaches nearer to the rank of a science,
in the sense in which we apply that name to the
physical sciences, than anything else connected with
politics yet does. I need not enlarge on the impor-
tant lessons which it affords for the guidance of life,

and for the estimation of laws and institutions, or on

the necessity of knowing all that it can teach, in

order to have true views of the course of human

affairs, or form plans for their improvement which
will stand actual trial. The same persons who cry
down logic will generally warn you against political
economy. It is unfeeling, they will tell you. It
recognises unpleasant facts. For my part, the most
unfeeling thing I know of is the law of gravitation ;
it breaks the neck of the best and most amiable per-
son without scruple, if he forgets for asingle moment
to give heed to it. The winds and waves, too, arc
very unfeeling. Would you advise those who go to
sea to deny the winds and waves—or to make a use
of them, and find the means of guarding against
their dangers ? My advice to you is to study the
great writers on political economy, and hold firmly
by whatever in them you find true ; and depend
upon it that if you are not selfish or hardhearted
already political economy will not make you so.
(Applause.) After some observation on the im-
portance of the studies of jurisprudence, inter-
' national law, and moral philosophy, the speaker
touched on the position of the University towards
the training of religion. He said—l shall not

enter into the question which has been debated
with so much vehemence in the last and pre-
sent generation, whether religion ought to be
taught at all in Universities and public schools,
seeing that religion is the subject of all others
on which men's opinions are most widely at
variance. On neither side of this controversy
do the disputants seem to me to have sufficiently
freed their minds from the old notion of education,
that it consists in the dogmatic inculcation from
authority of what the teacher deems true. Why
should it be impossible that information of the
greatest value on subjects connected with religion
should be brought before the student's mind ; that
he should be made acquainted with so important a
part of the national thought, and of the intellectual
labours of past generations as those relating to reli-
gion, without being taught dogmatically the doc-
trines of any Church or sect ? Christianity being a
historical religion, the sort of religious instruction
which seems to me most appropriate to a University
is the study of ecclesiastic history. The teaching
should not be in the spirit of dogmatism, but iu that
of inquiry. The pupil should not be addressed as if
religion had been chosen for him, but as one who will

have to choose it for himself. The various Churches,

established and unestablished, are quite competent
to the task which is peculiarly theirs—that of teach-
ing its own doctrines, as far as necessary, to its own

rising generation. The proper business of a Uni-
versity is different, not to tell us from authority
what we ought to believe, and make us accept the
belief as a .duty,- but to give us information and
training, and help us to form our own belief in a
manner worthy of intelligent beings, who seek for
truth at all hazards, and demand to know all the
difficulties, in order that they may be better quali-
fied to find, or recognise, the most satisfactory mode
of resolving them. Ido not affirm that a Univer-
sity if it represses free thought and inquiry, must be
altogether a failure, for the freest thinkers have
often been trained in the most slavish seminaries of
learning. The great Christian reformers were
taught in Catholic Universities ; the sceptical philo-
sophers of FranQe were. mostly educated by the
Jesuits. The human mind is sometimes impelled
all the more violently in one direction by an over
zealous and demonstrative attempt to drag it in the
opposite. But this is not what Universities are ap-
pointed for—to drive men from them, even unto good,
by excess of evil. A University ought to be a place of
free speculation. The more dilgently it does its duty in
all other respects, the more certain it is to be that.
The old English Universities, in the present genera-
tion, are doing better work than they have done
within human memory in teaching the ordinary
studies of their curriculum ; and one of the conse-
citoueenxeisets
thought, and the chaining up of the individual in-
ihnaasinbleyeuf
ot that, a
tth,
ow hreerperaess
repression
ihoeuy formerly
independent
d epende seemedl:lt
in-
tellect and conscience, they are now the great foci
of free and manly inquiry to the higher and pro-
fessional classes south of the Tweed. The ruling
mind of those ancient seminaries have at last re-
membered that to place themselves in hostility to
the free use of the understanding is to abdicate their
ot
dwefnerbenescte.,Par
rity of the specially instructed is becoming in a
at
vi
leastl e g e —l3
rtohvaits
oonf
aguiding it
united. A ma
uotdheos
there is no united authority—when the spec
that almost any
a
opinion can boast of some , hih authority, and no
youthful and imperfectly formed mind; buiatllwyhienu-
structed are so divided and scattered
the (Applause.)
clericalpp l au sper.o)f e
ssTi lotno s ea
arc,
may see reason to
change his opinion—then
whatever you do,
one who uses his mind freely
kee,
all risks, your mind on ; do not barter away
opinion whatever can claim
malel—lywithuepnr,ohtahhelreeftohraet,
at
it can never be deemed extremely
no doubt, so far held to a certain number of doc-
fgolrit.
trines that if they ceased to believe them they
yyoouurwfhreoedaro
would not be justified in remaining in a position iu
which they would be required to teach insincerely.
emdeosftinthedou
But use your influence to make those doctrines as
few as possible. It is not right that men should be
bribed to hold out against conviction —to shut their
ears against objections, or, if the objections pene-
trate,
when
it confidence
that i
if
men i
honestlysl r
en.
ad
Neither
sy profess
s to to continue professing full and unfaltering
belief
have changed souse of their religious opinions their
honesty should as a matter of course exclude them
from taking a part for which they may be admir-
ably qualified in the spiritual instruction to the
nation. The tendency of the age, on both sides
of the ancient border, is towards the relation of
' formularies, and a less rigid construction of articles.
This very circumstance, by making the limits of
• orthodoxy less definite, and obliging every one to
draw the line for himself, is an embarrassment to
consciences. But I bold entirely with those clergy-
' men who elect ton emain in the National Church so
' long as they are ,t.t.t.le to accept its Articles and