Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/earlynonconformiOOgord EARLY NONCONFORMITY AND EDUCATION. Ebbress BY ... PRINCIPAL GORDON. M.A., AT THE Opening of the Session of the Unitarian Home Missionary College^ Memorial Hall, Manchester, On 8th OCTOBER, 1902. Printed by Order of the Committee of the College. SINE HIS OMNIBUS NON MDIFICATUR CIVITAS. JEanckcster : H. RAWSON AND CO., PRINTERS, NEW BROWN STREET. 1902. V Early Nonconformity and Education. FRANCIS HUTCHESON, the future philosopher, when on the threshold of his career as an ethical writer and teacher, had a friendly discussion in 1726 with his neighbour — and almost namesake — Francis Hutchinson, Bishop of Down and Connor, the subject being the question of conformity. The Bishop thus laconically stated this question from his own point of view : — " We would not sweep the house clean, and you stumbled at straws." While the candour of the former'lialf of this pronouncement has not always been imitated by episcopal advocates of Anglican claims, its latter half very well expresses the estimate of the Nonconformist conscience entertained by bishops, and by other persons, in the most modern times. And indeed something may be said for it ; if we remember that, by Nonconformists themselves, the obstacles in the way of their conformity are often and characteristically described as " scruples." A scruple, when we go back to its original and literal meaning, is indeed a tiny matter, less bulky even than a straw. Now it is the privilege and almost the prerogative of mmutise, that to them belongs much and momentous significance. The analogy of the grain of sand that blinds the eye, the spark that fires the mine, the pinprick that entails death and destruction, forbids us— in spite of Alexander Pope— to think of any causes which breed real events as trifling. To dismiss niceties as petty, is to fail to understand life. Only by securing exactitude in minimis can the stern persistent resolve, nay, the uncompromising inappeasable strife, with which wise men toil after truth, reach and attain any kind of permanent satisfaction . If, then, the starting point of Nonconformity be scruple, it must be added that the aim of Nonconformity is the complete adjustment of thoughts to things, of words to thoughts, of deeds to words. Are we not saying the same thing when we 4 affirm, with emphasis, that the very Hfe-blood of Nonconformity is Education ? This was well understood by the authorities in Church and State, when from the passing of the Uniformity Act in 1662, they employed every effort in their power to debar Nonconformists from the exercise of the teaching profession, and to break up their schools. A bishop's licence was required in the case of every Teacher ; the Teacher not so licensed was prosecuted, and subjected on conviction to fine and imprisonment. Had these prosecutions succeeded in their object, Nonconformity would have been strangled in its cradle. By hurried moves from place to place. Teachers sometimes managed to evade arrest, at least for a time. But the prosecutions continued, even after the passing of the Toleration Act ; and were not finally abandoned till (in 1734) proceedings against Doddridge were stopped by the personal order of George II. In the earliest days of Ejected Nonconformity, the scope of its Teachers went no higher in secular learning than the curriculum of the grammar school. Of set purpose they abstained from trespass upon those branches in which the Universities then held a close monopoly. This self-restriction was due to conscientious scruples, raised in the minds of ejected graduates, by the terms of their graduation oath. As far back as the reign of Edward III., disputes in the older Universities had led to migrations of tutors and students, till at Stamford the attempt was made to establish a rival university. Hence the oath ; which bound graduates not to lecture tanquam in universitate elsewhere than in Oxford or Cambridge. Many of the ejected felt this oath as a conscientious bar to the exercise of their gifts in the higher learning. Calamy has preserved for us the elaborate arguments by which, after a time, Charles Morton, of Wadham College, Oxford, and Samuel Cradock, ex-fellow of Emmanuel, convinced themselves that the oath prohibited, and was designed to prohibit, merely prelections in order to a degree ; and that, since Nonconformists did not pretend to give degrees, or to quaUfy for them, the oath did not close their lips as teachers of 5 university learning. They cited examples of conformists, including even a bishop, who had lectured in philosophy and divinity at their own abodes. These precedents, however, did not satisfy the consciences of all their brethren. In the North of England the need for some further provision for the higher learning was acutely pressing. To supply a long-felt want Cromwell had founded a college at Durham in 1657 ; but at the Restoration Cromw^ell's patent was reckoned void, the endowments went back to the Church, the college collapsed. Among its tutors had been William Pell, eminent as an orientaHst. His friends, after his ejection, repeatedly urged him to take up, as a volunteer, the tutorial work from which he had been excluded. But Pell was one of those whose scruples could not be overcome. At length the work was begun in Yorkshire by Richard Frankland, of Christ's College, Cambridge, who, it seems, had been designed for some post at Durham College, had it continued. Him we must ever revere as the Founder in this country of the Nonconformist Academy. Why Academy? The answer is interesting. In 1559 Calvin established at Geneva the first European university not fortified by powers conveyed under a Papal Bull. For this reason, in all probability, the name Universitas was not adopted as its official description. Calvin gave it the style and title of Academia. Universitas and Collegium^ though we distinguish between them in modern usage, are, in Latin, practically synonymous terms \ they simply mean a corporation. Accadeinia was, and is, in use in Italy, as the designation of a literary club, perhaps because Cicero had employed it in a somewhat similar sense. But there can be no doubt that Calvin went back to the original associations of the term, recalling the scene where Plato taught in the suburbs of Athens, " the olive grove of Academe " the Attic hero. And there may be something in the suggestion that, in thus invoking Plato, as the ruling spirit of his new foundation, Calvin as a humanist intended to emphasise his breach with the schoolmen, and with Aristotle their idol, though not, it must be confessed, their model. 6 ' Four years later the town council of the Scottish capital projected a seat of the higher learning on Calvin's lines. I am somewhat proud to think that my Alma Mater was the earliest University within the British Isles in whose establishment no Pope ever had a finger. Naturally, the Scottish hierarchy of that day put obstacles in the way, and the University did not obtain a royal charter till 1582. Its official title still runs Academia Jacobi VI. Scotorum Regis Edinensis. Thus, for our Nonconformist predecessors, the name of Academy \ (or as they called it, and as John James Tayler always continued to call it, academy) was suggestive of reminiscenses congenial with their | object and their spirit. They desired to keep alive in their land the ; solid substance of the best university learning. They did not profess to grant degrees ; though, had they done so, I suspect that a degree at Rathmell in the seventeeth century, or one at Daventry in the eighteenth, would have meant a good deal more than a contemporary degree either at Oxford or at Cambridge, if measured, not by its value for merely social purposes, but by its worth as an index of the intellectual stimulus promoted by careful and enlight- ened study. Frankland set about his work at a time and in a spirit which may entitle him to be viewed as the rescuer of Nonconformity from destruction at the hands of the oppressor. He chose the moment when, by the provisions of the second Conventicle Act (the Act of 1670), the persistent Nonconformist preacher was laid under penalties meant to be ruinous — unless, indeed, he were a peer of the realm, as the Act set forth, with subtle and delicate irony. This Act it was which, so far from inclining Frankland to feel himself crushed, roused him to action, drew him from the comfortable quiet of his private estate, and made him join for the first time the persecuted ranks of the "conventicle" preachers. He journeyed to London, gained audience of Charles II., and with a faithfulness as severe as its utterance was dignified and impressive, went straight to the mark, calling upon the pleasure-loving king, in the name of the King of kings, to reform his life, his family, his kingdom, and the Church. Charles was well aware that he was listening to no court-preacher; but not only did the transparent earnestness and sincerity of the appeal succeed for the moment in touching him ; he recognised in his reprover the man of culture and the gentleman, and his response was more marked than usual : " ' I thank you, sir,' and twice looking back before he went into the Council Chamber, said, ' I thank you, sir ; I thank you.' " Then Frankland returned to Rathmell, and the Northern Academy was opened. Partly in remembrance of its Tutor's ancient place of learning, it was sometimes known as Christ's College, Rathmell. It was no clerical seminary, either in design or in fact. Its first student was a baronet's son, an Episcopalian, though of the Puritan type, who went to Rathmell just as he would have gone to Oxford, to receive a learned education. For observe, while the Academy was Nonconformist, its alumni were not asked to commit themselves, either actually or implicitly, to the Nonconformist position. Its raison d^etre lay in the fact that the older Universities were not open to Conformists and to Nonconformists ahke. It would have been contradictory to its very principle of existence had it been closed to either party. " This securing of the key of knowledge," wrote Charles Morton, in words which seem to have a very modern significance, " and tying it fast to some men's girdles, or making it too hot and heavy for others to touch on any terms, might well enough comport with popish designs, to keep people in the dark, that they may lead them the more quietly by the nose." To maintain an open door was vital to the very being of the old Nonconformist Academy. Some of Frankland's students were intended for the legal, others for the medical profession. Though Frankland himself was a Presbyterian, his early divinity students belonged to the Independent denomination. Not till the Academy had been conducted for two years did it receive any divinity students from Presbyterian families. For, until the Indulgence of 1672, the Presbyterians (with only a rare exception here and there) were not satisfied to fall in with the separating ways of the Independents. It 8 is from 1672 (not from 1662) that Stillingfleet quite correctly dates ! " the Presbyterian Separation." Frankland was never imprisoned ; but prosecutions and excom- munications (which then were no mere brutum fulmen) dogged him all his remaining days, and it was only by constant removals from i corner to corner of Yorkshire and Lancashire that he was able to keep his Academy going during the whole of the eight-and-twenty years which intervened between its origination and his death. I hardly know which most to admire — the unflinching tenacity of the middle-aged Teacher, or the brave young courage of the students who followed him in his wanderings. In every year but one, the bitter year of 1685 (the year when Jeffreys tormented Baxter from the bench), new pupils came eagerly forward to freshen and increase the list of Frankland's scholars. It was much against the grain with Frankland's diocesan. Sharp, Archbishop of York, that he felt driven to countenance proceedings against Frankland ; for Sharp had close family connections with Nonconformists, His clergy besieged him with petitions to suppress the Academy. He resorted to Archbishop Tillotson for advice; and, with Tillotson, severity toward Nonconformists was still more against the grain, for he had been a Nonconformist himself. Tell him, he wrote, that it is not as a Nonconformist you proceed against him ; that a bishop is bound by his oath not to license anybody to give public instruction in university learning ; that will be " the fairest and softest way of ridding your hands of this business." Sharp, however, found what he thought a fairer and softer way. He invited Frankland to Bishopthorpe, and in the library there they talked matters over, not without the soothing aid of a pipe of tobacco, and the gentle stimulus of a glass of good wine. Henceforth Sharp and Frankland understood one another. But prosecutions from other quarters did not cease. Quickly was Frankland's example followed ; and in a very few years Academies sprang up in all parts of the country. It is far from my intention to go into the history of these Nonconformist PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE UF^ES ON THE HiBBERT FOUNDATION, (Delivered at Oxford, 1908. By WILLIAM JAMES. 8vo. 5/6 net. Jctures in this volume were delivered 3e title of "The Present Situation in iw In them the author vigorously! 3 the school of transcendental idealism,! sle-an at Oxford under the influence ot| 'Jeen, forty years ago ; and continues his o|vn att^pt to save e^j^irv^m and ml from tlie reproa*^' under wWch ac- Ito him, they unjustly he, ot being ^ies of irreligion and disintegration.! L the speculations of Fechner about ^ :M as ^i,,£iiI;gUiii^fi-iia^^ Sic pantheism^ of tiafi^jransgm^dfiat^l n'' according to which moments next to tlier in experience cohere and compene- in\d are in a certain sense "their own - 'to di^ieosssss-^tiii^^^ nd his,^SU££essors_ha^^ " incohesiveness_^hicJi. th^^t- Jte^^^^idd. Whereas they find ee ot union among tljings ^hort of the W Mr. James finds that tUs^coi^- ^entsinjthe_fini^ all the gu^r- requir' edr^l^^Skrm spite ot polemic "esTis intended to be conciliatory in its cy and to furnish a platform Q ||^nich ^ism and ratioaaJjsm may J^^^gF m a ''e view of life. LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 5 Paternoster Row, London, E.C. sw York, Bombay, and Calcutta Works by Professor William Jam- The Varieties of Religious Bxperi Being the Gifford Lectures on N'^'^^a/ Religion delivered at Edinburgh v 1902. 8vo. 12/- net. The Will to Believe, and other Popular Philosophy. Crown 8vc ^Sonie Pragmatism : A New Name fott. Old Ways of Thinking. 8vo. '^I^rown Talks to Teachers on Psychology 8vo. 4/6. Longmans, Green, & 39 Paternoster Row, London | New York Bombay and CaU^ j MANCHESTER. t/^'v)-/^^>^ I 9 Academies ; but I desire to direct your attention to some features of the earlier ones, those before Doddridge. I draw the hne here for a very good reason. Doddridge initiated an important change in the Nonconformist Academy, amounting to a revolution. Before his time, following the practice of the older Universities, all lectures were in Latin. Latin was the customary speech within the Academy walls ; English being only permitted on stated occasions, e.g., on Sunday evenings, when sermons were repeated. Indeed, the amount of linguistic facility which was enacted from ingenuous youth in those days may well surprise, if not shame, our modern backwardness. Thomas Hill, of Findern Academy— who died in 1720— expected his students to sing their Psalms, not merely as rendered into Latin, but in Greek verse too. A Tutor of a yet severer stamp made his pupils sing them in the original Hebrew. Mr. Manning would greatly like to follow suit ; but I fear the day for this is gone. Whether or no it was entirely for good, Doddridge changed all that ; lecturing in English, as the appropriate vesture of a more modern Science, a more modern Philosophy, a more modern Theology. The three branches just enumerated were the main items of the curriculum, and formed the staple of the old Academy courses of instruction. Prominence was given to Philosophy; which constituted, indeed, the chief intellectual interest of an age when the older forms of thought were being supplanted by the influence of Descartes, and again of Locke. In none of these old Academies was Science neglected ; and though it was the nascent Science of that age, it was pursued with a keen curiosity, and often with an apparatus as efficient as was then procurable. The weak point was the treatment— or non-treatment— of History, which rarely appears in the schemes of lectures, except under the denomination of Chronology, and this was largely Biblical. Sacred History was to some extent dealt with incidentally under the head of Jewish Antiquities. Ecclesiastical History was not touched, as such ; nor History of Doctrine. It is worth noting that the very first chair of 10 Ecclesiastical History in any Nonconformist Academy was founded here in Manchester, for John James Tayler, as late as the year 1840. Another department, much cultivated in some of the later Academies, under the name of Belles Lettres, was unrepresented in the earlier ones. At Oxford, it is true, the professor of Poetry used within living memory to lecture on English poets in the Latin tongue ; but we can quite understand that, with Latin as the sole medium of class instruction, English literature would come off badly. At Rathmell, however, as we are told by one of the students — James Clegge, in his excellent gossiping Diary — " Mr. Frankland's daughters" supplied to some extent their father's deficiencies in this respect. They " led me," he says, " to read poetry and novels ; and such like trash," he somewhat ungratefully adds. It may perhaps be thought that, when the burden of the Academy work fell upon an individual, with the assistance of one (rarely two) of his senior pupils, the multitude of subjects was felt to be quite as much as could be reasonably accomplished, without taking in the additional departments which I have specified as not represented. This criticism would hardly be appropriate. For the topics treated in the Academy actually covered the whole range of needful knowledge as then realised. From the course, which extended over five years, nothing deemed desirable was deliberately omitted. The defects were partly the defects of the educational ideas of the time ; but largely also due to the fact that a later time has witnessed the rise of new knowledges. What real grasp of History, or of Ecclesiastical History for that matter, had men's minds before Gibbon ? And as for not teaching History of Doctrine, we might as well blame the old Academies for not teaching Geology. This further we must remember, lest we suppose that their alumni were necessarily subjected to the disadvantages of a one-man system in all departments. As the Academies multiplied, it soon became apparent to students of quick parts, eager for the best 11 instruction, that each had its speciality or specialities. One Tutor had a reputation for philosophy ; another for science, and so on. The student bent on reaping in all the most profitable fields would migrate from Academy to Academy to his own advantage, and also to that of his new associates. For he would bring with him something, as well as learn something that to him was fresh. A remarkable instance of this is presented by the varied academic career of Thomas Seeker. Before he went to Oxford as a qualifica- tion for taking Anglican orders, he had been at Attercliffe under Timothy JoUie, at Tewkesbury under Samuel Jones, in London under John Eames, F.R.S.— the most learned man Isaac Watts ever knew, and the only layman who ever held a divinity chair among Nonconformists. Seeker, however, went to him for science. Then he crossed the water, and studied at Paris ; and, again crossing the water, took his M.D. at Leyden. To finish their studies abroad, or at a Scottish University, was no uncommon thing with Nonconformist students, whether lay or clerical. There was another ground of choice, deciding the reputation of Academy and Academy, apart from the special qualifications and accomplishments of Tutors. That was the question of books. There were no Academy libraries in those days. Doddridge, I think, was the first to establish one. With a generosity which I admire, without pretending to emulate, the pupils had the free run of their Tutor's often scanty shelves. And a new arrival would tell of a better store under the roof of some other Tutor, and so tempt to a migration on this ground alone. Thus, Thomas Emlyn left John Shuttlewood's Academy at Sulby, simply because Shuttlewood "had very few books, and them chiefly of one sort." It was, indeed, hardly likely that he should have many, or rejoice in a rich variety ; for he was one of the hunted Tutors. He had seen the inside of a gaol at least four times ; and Sulby was an obscure hamlet, in Northamptonshire, extra-parochial, where he kept his Academy in hiding, and held himself ready for a further flitting at a moment's notice. Eventually, Emlyn went back 12 to Shuttlewood ; for though he found more books at the Bodleian^ he did not find what he felt he could gain from Shuttlewood himself. John Chorlton, of the first Manchester Academy, had many books, yet, as Emlyn puts it, "chiefly of one sort." But, then, in Manchester there was — and is, though few people seem to be aware of the fact— the .Chetham Library. James Clegge, who became Chorlton's pupil after Frankland's death, tells us that he placed himself in Manchester for the benefit of this " library, and the conversation of other young scholars," who had previously benefited by it. Chorlton's students listened in the mornings to the exposition of a sound Calvinistic theology. In the afternoons they helped themselves to the quartos of Episcopius, and the folios of Socinus and Crellius, with the result of broadening their outlook. Clegge, who was always what is called "moderately orthodox," very significantly remarks : " The writings of Socinus and his followers made little impression on me ; only I could never after be entirely reconciled to the common doctrine of the Trinity." He became a Clarkean in this respect. Then he goes on : "I admired the clear and strong reasoning of Episcopius ; and, after that, could never well relish the doctrines of rigid Calvinism." I venture to say, that among the liberalising influences which have acted upon Lancashire Nonconformity, the Chetham Library, during the thirteen years of the life of the first Manchester Academy (1699-1712), is entitled to no mean place. It is not to be supposed that the teaching of the old Academies was in all cases consciously one-sided. This is true of some of them, but (if we except Attercliffe, where Mathematics was tabooed as " tending to scepticism ") it was not true of the best. Choice of systems was freely allowed, perhaps more freely in Philosophy than in Theology. In Frankland's Academy, we read " one Tutor was a Ramist," but Aristotle and Ramus were permitted to rival each other in their attractions for the studious mind. At Taunton, Frankland's contemporary, Matthew Warren (as one of his students. 13 ivho was afterwards a Tutor, tells us), "though bred himself in the old philosophy, and little acquainted with the improvements of the new, yet encouraged his pupils in a freedom of inquiry, and in reading those books which would better gratify a love of truth and Icnowledge, even when they differed widely from those writers on whom he had formed his own sentiments." When we recollect how ■deeply the theology of that age was rooted in its philosophy, we can appreciate the necessarily liberaHsing effect of this procedure. Of Warren, too, we read (and this is true of all the best of the earher Tutors) that he "encouraged the free and critical study of the Scriptures, as the best system of theology." Perhaps to-day we rshould be inclined to add : best, because least systematic. One other and kindred feature of the old Academies I must not omit ; that is to say, the fostering of freedom of discussion among the students themselves. Of course, the most conspicuous example of this is to be found at Daventry, at a later date; where, as Priestley tells us, at open discussions, the Tutors took different sides on every topic, Ashworth being uniformly an exponent of strictly orthodox, Clark as invariably of moderately heterodox conclusions. Just so, Mr. Manning and I differ about the Hebrew alphabet ; he, the orthodox man, maintaining that is the perfection of calligraphy ; I, heterodoxly, contending that it is a sheer abuse of the pen. But, in truth, the freedom of the students' discussions began with Frankland. Every evening, after supper, their English tongues were loosed ; the day's work was passed in review ; they were invited to canvass it freely among themselves, not hampered by any Tutor's presence. It may be said, and has been said, that this large liberty of discussing topics, forming opinions, and speaking them out, led to a sort of unrestraint, injurious to the Nonconformist temper and -training. This was the burden of the frequent attacks upon the Academies in the early part of the eighteenth century. They were represented as hotbeds of faction and revolution, political and 1-eligious. Especially was this charge brought against the London u Academies, and made an argument, even in Parliament, for their suppression. So far as it is based on any truth, it appHes to London only. I think I have studied all the evidence on the subject ; and it is true that behind their Tutors' backs the alumni of rival Academies lampooned each other; that those of Independent Academies held calves' head feasts under the rose on January 30th, and were not too respectful to the memory of the Royal Martyr and his anointed offspring ; and that religious opponents, whose weapon had been persecution, were made the subject of disparaging remarks, more pointed than polished, after the rough humour of those days. But it is equally true that, had these dangerous youths not been Nonconformists, no charge of really serious import would or could have been founded on such unauthorised effervescences of boyish spleen and displays of rude juvenile wit. The discipline within the Academies was surprisingly good ; and I simply mention what was perhaps not worth referring to, as an indication of the atmosphere of the time, and of the eagerness with which the enemies of Nonconformity sought an excuse for ignoring and suppressing its invaluable services. The immediate work of the Nonconformist Academies was to fit and equip men for public duty, not in the ministry alone, but in all the professions ; it was to make them thinkers — not closing their minds with fixed opinions, but opening their intelligences, and giving them an impetus towards the acquirement of further know- ledge ; it was to make them workers for the good of their kind, to train them for the application of knowledge in all the departments of life. Far more was this their aim than to make Nonconformists. They had to deal primarily with a class of people, Nonconformist already, expelled from the unity of the nation into Nonconformity ; and they made it their task to develop in that class the powers of thought and powers of life which would quahfy them to fill their places in the work of their country ; to do their part in forming its future, to take their share in building up on sound principles its prosperity, to advance its culture, and to ensure its progress. Small 15 wonder that many who were not Nonconformists were ready to avail themselves of an education thus conceived and thus pursued. Nor need we grudge that infusion of new blood into the older institution of religion, for which the Anglican Church stands indebted to able and conspicuous men, made what they were, in the obscurity of the Nonconformist Academy. It was not Oxford, it was Tewkesbury, that nurtured the mind of Butler. In addition to its immediate work, the Nonconformist Academy rendered a service of the first importance to the education of England. The founders of the old Academies were (to quote Charles Morton again) " willing to have knowledge increased, and not confined to the clergy or learned professions, but extended or diffused, as much as might be, to the people in general." They taught the teachers. The ministers of the old Nonconformity, not merely in some cases, but as a general rule — almost as a part of their recognised duty — were the educators in their several neigh- bourhoods. To their schools, simply because they were good schools, where real teaching was done, came pupils from outside their own flocks. They did not increase their congregations by their schoolkeeping, it is said. Quite so ; but that is not the point The point is that, up and down the country, they were the great spreaders of an education, serviceable to the people, and not other- wise supphed. Up to a time which many of us can remember, this function of the liberal Nonconformist minister, the cultured alumnus of the Nonconformist Academy, was not merely a tradition, but a reality. Your own recollection will furnish many an instance of men, never in any sense associated with Nonconformity by religious connection, but owing to Nonconformist scholarship an initial education, conducted for education's sake, and not for a sect's sake. I do not think we can easily over-estimate either the actual good thus done, or the force and value of its example. The conditions of our public education are now entirely changed, and changed, on the whole, doubtless, for the better. But let not the pioneers be 16 forgotten. With an admirable modesty, Morton expressed the hope that the work done by him, and his like, might move " a noble emulation. A poor hackney," says he, " may put a racehorse upon his brisker career." The good work of the despised and shackled Nonconformist " may stir up to greater diligence and industry in the Universities." And with the advent of greater diligence and industry, he thought that Nonconformists might be re-admitted, at least to " some of the meaner Colleges and Halls." Then the goal of his desires would be in sight. I have but touched this evening the fringe of a great subject : What Nonconformity has done for education. Had I ventured to announce this as my theme, you would reasonably have complained that whole sections of the answer to this question had been left unnoticed. I have treated it simply at the upper end ; and for this reason. Later developments of the zeal of Nonconformists for the instruction of the people — their activity, for example, in their Sunday Schools, indispensable nurseries of all useful knowledge, freely opened to the uninstructed masses during the major part of the century past — these and the like are familiar in your minds. But the memory of man is short and fitful ; and I desired especially to refresh in your imaginations the clear and patent fact that, in the art of Education and the love of Education, Nonconformists are no novices. From the very beginning of their history they have striven manfully in the sacred cause of the Educational welfare of all classes in the land. For on their hearts was inscribed indelibly the motto which of old the Franklands bore : Libera terra, liberque animus; and thus they understood it: " 'Tis no free country till the mind be free." On their work might fittingly be written that which was Cradock's chosen motto : Nec ingratus nec iniitilis videar vixisse. By rendering services to their own generation, they have sought to approve themselves grateful to their teachers in the past. Bear with me if, in concluding, I quote Morton yet once more. I suppose this eminent Cornishman is better known in America than in England, though here he educated Defoe and the father of 17 the Wesleys, But he became the first vice-president of Harvard, and is honoured as one of its benefactors. Among his writings is an " Advice to Candidates for the Ministry," from which I wish to cull a couple of brief sentences. His advice is often quaint enough, and even a little sarcastic, especially when it is of a negative character, setting forth what not to do. Thus, in giving some sermon hints, he deprecates what he is pleased to call "an impertinent filling up some interstitial time with an ill-favoured heap of superfluous words "—a practice unknown in this College; I presume that Morton encountered it in America. This, however, is what I offer to you, candidates here for the ministry, as both a wise and a kindly word of counsel from a Tutor of an older time. " I would not," says he, " have young men so personate Fathers, as to put on an affected gravity, or conceit to themselves greater authority than indeed they have; this would render them and their discourse more ridiculous than reverend. But yet they should, with a modest and humble seriousness and boldness, so address themselves to the consciences of men, that there may be perceived in them a hearty desire to do real service to God, and real good to men's souls." So speaks to you to-day, out of the past, one who made it his aim, both in the Old World and in the New, to embue those whom he was training for the ministry with a high and true sense of their spiritual calling. This week we begin another session of our College. We meet in diminished numbers ; but having just sent out four men, all of excellent promise, to labour for our common cause in far-off fields, from Bwlch to Bermondsey, from Devonport to Aberdare, we could hardly expect to have their places filled all at once. From one of our companions of last session, our late senior student, I received this morning a letter, which conveys this message : — " Please remember me to my late comrades ; and tell those who are to leave College, or expect to do so, at the end of this year, that I hope their enthusiasm for the calling will increase with the approaching prospect of the fuller service." 18 In the legal phraseology of ancient Rome, duo faciunt collegium. And this is expounded in the wise saying of the old Book : "Two are better than one ; because they have a good reward for their labour. For, if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow : but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to help him up." By earnest and conscientious co-operation, Tutors and Students together, in the work of this College, we expect from the Divine Hand a good reward for our labour, granted to our efforts and our prayers. If the Tutor droop or tremble, may the brighter hearts of the Students combine to help him up ; it being the joint resolve of all, not merely to " prove his own work," but, in comradeship, in the spirit of united endeavour, to learn that great lesson of human service and sympathy, which teaches how, in every relation of life, to bear one another's burdens, " and so fulfil the law of Christ."