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 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 
 
 C^n Commemoration ^untra^, 
 JUNE II, 1882, 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM INCE, D.D. 
 
 CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY. 
 
 parser an^ Co. 
 
 OXFORD, AND 6 SOUTHAMPTON-STREET, 
 STRAND, LONDON.
 
 ^ ^txman, ^c. 
 
 MALACHI ii. 7. 
 
 J^or the priesfs lips should keep knowledge^ and they should seek the 
 law at his i?iouth : for he is the messefiger of the Lord of hosts. 
 
 A N old ordinance of the University prescribed that the 
 ■^ *■ sermons on the Sunday preceding the first Tuesday 
 in July should be preached by two Doctors of Divinity, 
 with a special preference for those who, during the year, 
 had been admitted to that degree. A change made some 
 ten years ago adapted the letter of that ordinance to its 
 spirit by fixing as the date of this special nomination of 
 preachers that Sunday which has practically become the 
 last in our academic year of residence, the Sunday before 
 Commemoration. However much all the old ceremonies 
 and formalities connected with taking degrees in the 
 higher faculties have been modified and discontinued, I 
 imagine that there still survives in the arrangements of 
 the present day a suggestion that on this occasion there 
 should be some exhibition of the relation in which Theo- 
 logy stands to other studies of the University, or some 
 discussion of its method, condition, and contemporary 
 aspects. And therefore, having been called upon by the 
 Vice-Chancellor this year to perform this public function, 
 I have thought it not inappropriate to bring before the 
 notice of the University the subject of the education of 
 the future clergy of the Church of England in the Uni- 
 versities under existing circumstances. 
 
 We cannot disguise from ourselves that we are entering 
 upon a transition era in our academic history. When we 
 assemble again to continue our several duties of study 
 
 B 2
 
 4 The Education of the 
 
 and education next term, we shall come under the opera- 
 tion of a new legislation, which in many important parti- 
 culars will change the conditions under which we have 
 hitherto worked. Our social, educational, economic, and 
 religious system will be governed by new enactments, the 
 full force of which none of us, perhaps, can accurately esti- 
 mate. But in none of these departments of our common 
 life is the alteration introduced more significant than in 
 the religious. The links which bound together the na- 
 tional Church and the University have been almost en- 
 tirely severed. Headships of Colleges, which have hitherto 
 been held exclusively by clergymen, are now thrown open 
 not only to lay members of the Church of England, but to 
 men of any phase of religious creed, positive or negative. 
 Fellowships of Colleges are in the same way set free from 
 any clerical restrictions, with some slight reservations, in 
 pursuance of which, in some cases one, and in one or two 
 of the larger colleges three, of the Fellows must be per- 
 sons in Holy Orders, qualified to conduct the services in 
 the College Chapel, and give theological instruction. 
 
 The Faculty of Theology alone is in its Professoriate 
 limited to the Church of England, but that is rather owing 
 to the circumstance that the endowment of almost all the 
 theological Professors is supplied by the Canonries of that 
 unique foundation which is at once a Cathedral and a 
 College. So far as endowment is concerned, the Church 
 of England is, with few exceptions, disestablished in the 
 University. For some years past we have had among our 
 students both Churchmen and Dissenters, Christians and 
 non- Christians, such as Jews, Mahomedans, Buddhists. 
 The probability is that in the coming time there may be 
 the same diversity of religious belief in the educating and 
 governing bodies of our different academical societies. It 
 must be admitted, without offence, that an Atheist will 
 have as legal a right as a Theist to hold office as Tutor, 
 or Lecturer, or Professor.
 
 Clergy at the Universities. 5 
 
 It cannot, therefore, be a subject of surprise that those 
 who are deeply interested in the welfare of the Church of 
 England, and in the success of her mission to supply the 
 spiritual and moral wants of our countrymen, have been 
 profoundly moved by searchings of heart as to whether, 
 under the new order of things, the University will con- 
 tinue to be a fit training-place for the young men who 
 are hereafter to be ordained to be the ministers of that 
 Church. Ever since the Reformation the vast majority 
 of those who have been ordained in the Church of Eng- 
 land have been graduates of one of the ancient Univer- 
 sities. There was no absolute legal restriction in Eng- 
 land compelling the bishops to confine ordination to those 
 who had pursued a course of University study, as there 
 is in some Continental countries, but as a matter of fact, 
 most Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge became pre- 
 dominantly seminaries for the clergy, the students in law 
 or medicine being comparatively few. The growing ne- 
 cessities of the Church, and the urgent demand for a 
 larger supply of living agents in the work of the ministry 
 taken from among those who had not the means to incur 
 the expense of University education, have led, within the 
 last century, to the erection of many Theological Colleges 
 and clerical training-schools elsewhere ; but still, at the 
 present time, about fifty-eight per cent, of those who are 
 ordained in the Church of England have been educated 
 at the ancient Universities, and I think that without for- 
 getting the warning of the old saying, that it is easy to 
 praise Athenians before an Athenian audience, it is not un- 
 true to say that among these are found the most learned, 
 the most accomplished, the most persuasive, the most in- 
 fluential of the clergy. But now men grave, earnest, 
 thoughtful, devout, are asking, with anxious heart. Is the 
 University in its changed form a suitable atmosphere for 
 the education of the future clergyman } Ought he to be 
 trained in a place where the predominant influence around
 
 6 The Education of the 
 
 him is likely to be secular ? where there is a chance that 
 he may be brought under the influence of teachers who 
 may, by indirect allusion, if not by avowed assertions, 
 undermine faith in such primary truths as the existence 
 of God the Creator, or the Deity of Christ ? Will his 
 devotional life be nurtured and developed, if he is brought 
 under a system where his attendance in the services of 
 his College Chapel is left purely optional, and is practi- 
 cally discouraged by the conspicuous absence of many of 
 his instructors ? Will the society in which he moves foster 
 in him the feelings and habits and principles and con- 
 victions of the sincere Christian layman, and so secure 
 those moral qualifications which are sought as essential 
 for a good clergyman ? How will he fare amid the Babel 
 of religious tongues ? How will he become hereafter a 
 loyal office-bearer in the Church of England, if all around 
 he hears her fundamental doctrines questioned, or her 
 ceremonial contemned ? How will he stand stedfast in 
 his purpose, if he is accustomed to hear clerical scornfully 
 employed as a synonym for unintellectual, and clericalism 
 gibbeted as an irreconcilable antithesis to liberalism ? 
 
 Can we wonder that some, standing face to face with 
 these questions, take the darkest, gloom.iest, most melan- 
 choly view of the situation, and are tempted to say, All 
 is lost ? With a bitter retrospect at the ancient system 
 they cry out. Religion is vanished, Secularism is trium- 
 phant, these old Colleges, glorious in historic memories, 
 founded mostly by bishops and ecclesiastics, can no longer 
 be schools of the prophets. Let us depart hence, let us 
 leave the anti-ecclesiastical party in full possession, let 
 us abandon our fair heritage to the spoiler, let us seek 
 a retreat for ourselves elsewhere. Let the Church found 
 for herself new educational institutions, where she may 
 train her children apart from these alien influences. Let 
 the Church, as represented by the clergy, part company 
 with the University.
 
 Clergy at the Universities. y 
 
 In the full consciousness of all the difficulties of the 
 present emergency, with the ready acknowledgment that 
 some of the perplexities pressing upon us are no vain 
 phantoms of hysterical alarmists but real dangers, I for 
 one emphatically dissent from the practical conclusions 
 of ecclesiastical pessimism. I do not thus despair of the 
 academic republic. I will not yield to an exaggerated 
 estimate of danger, nor attribute an imaginary perfection 
 and faultlessness to the system which is passing away. 
 When I read of the internal social state of the Universi- 
 ties in the last century and in the beginning of this, I 
 cannot but perceive that there were many agencies at 
 work which exposed the future candidates for Ordination 
 to serious perils, though these were rather moral than 
 intellectual. The University very much reflected the 
 moral and spiritual condition of society without ; and 
 with shame we must confess that when the Church at 
 large was dead and conventional in its religion, the Col- 
 leges, though intensely ecclesiastical in their constitution, 
 were far from being schools of holiness. Fifty years ago, 
 when a great religious movement began in this Univer- 
 sity, the educating body came under a powerful impulse, 
 and a deeper spirit of piety and devotion was kindled, 
 which told mightily on those brought within its range, 
 and has certainly issued in sending forth into the Church 
 a more godly, more intelligent, more energetic race of 
 clergy. We have passed at present into a different era. 
 The University now is only a representation in miniature 
 of the religious disruptions and intellectual disintegration 
 of the world without. Whole communities of Christian 
 people have separated themselves into organisations ex- 
 ternal to the National Church ; philosophy and science 
 have broken loose from the control of Christian faith ; 
 literary and scientific scepticism have called in question 
 the received doctrine of the Church ; and it is inevitable 
 that these intellectual tendencies should force themselves
 
 8 The Education of the 
 
 into the University, and claim a right of existence and 
 expression. How they will ultimately harmonise with 
 the domestic educational system of the Colleges, which 
 has been hitherto the distinctive feature of English Uni- 
 versity life, I fail to see. But the perils to faith involved 
 in modern University life are, if I read the signs of the 
 times correctly, only the perils of modern society in gene- 
 ral. In public schools, in drawing-rooms, in scientific in- 
 stitutes, in periodical literature, we are compelled to meet 
 with open attacks and secret insinuations against Chris- 
 tian doctrine. Unless we close our ears and eyes, we 
 must be exposed to the conflicts of faith. We must sub- 
 mit to the terrible trials of our own day. But, on the 
 fullest consideration of the difficulty, I must confess that 
 it appears to me that it would be a most disastrous thing 
 alike for our Church and our nation, if the future clergy 
 of the Church of England were to be withdrawn from our 
 old Universities. I cannot imagine a more certain way 
 for alienating all the political and social and moral forces 
 of the nation from the wholesome and legitimate influence 
 of the Church as the great organisation of religious life, 
 than the education of the clergy from their childhood in 
 exclusively ecclesiastical seminaries, apart from all asso- 
 ciation with their lay brethren. They would inevitably 
 grow up narrow, intolerant, one-sided, out of sympathy 
 with the heart and life of the nation, anti-patriotic, dis- 
 posed to regard the State as a heathen power external 
 to the Church, instead of attempting to leaven it with 
 Christian principles of action. I should dread for our 
 own country the curse of that Ultramontanistic spirit 
 which in Continental Europe has been the most prolific 
 parent of infidelity, and has given birth to that public 
 policy which, under the guise of anti-clericalism, is in 
 reality war against all religion, and is developing an in- 
 tolerance which, carried to its full issues, would leave no 
 room for freedom of religious thought, or worship, or edu-
 
 Clergy at the Utiiversities. ^ 
 
 cation. It would be most disastrous if the English clergy- 
 man were withdrawn in his boyhood and youth from the 
 schools and colleges where he can mingle freely with his 
 fellows, and know the thoughts which are moving all 
 around him, and learn the things which are interesting 
 the nation at large, and enjoy the advantage of a general 
 liberal culture, and be led to appreciate that the sacred 
 literature, to the study of which his life is to be specially 
 devoted, stands in close connexion with other forms of 
 ancient literature, and cannot be understood except in 
 relation to them. If the priest's lips are to keep know- 
 ledge, and men are to seek the law at his mouth, then 
 to interpret the law of God, of which he is^ the messenger, 
 and shew its application to the actual needs of living, 
 struggling men, he must know something of their intel- 
 lectual, social, political, moral, spiritual questionings ; and 
 this knowledge can only be gained by converse with the 
 masters of thought in their writings, and by the expe- 
 rience of actual contemporary life. It will be poor and 
 stunted knowledge if he is in his period of training re- 
 stricted to one phase of thought, and one class of men, 
 and one department of study. The English clergyman 
 of past days may have failed in many points, because 
 he has had too little of a distinctively professional edu- 
 cation, but at least he has understood, and been in sym- 
 pathy with, his countrymen. 
 
 There has probably been much injustice and harshness 
 inflicted upon the Roman Catholic Church in the German 
 Empire during the struggle between Church and State, 
 which, after raging during the last ten years, now hap- 
 pily shews some sign of abatement and mutual conces- 
 sion ; but at least we may sympathise with the desire of 
 the State, that none shall be appointed to ecclesiastical 
 offices who do not give guarantee of having received some 
 liberal culture at a University. Such a restriction has 
 been in operation in the National Churches of such Pro-
 
 lO The Education of the 
 
 testant countries as Scotland and Sweden for many ge- 
 nerations. 
 
 But while we hold it to be conducive to the best inter- 
 ests alike of the Church and the Nation that the clergy 
 should continue to be educated at the University, we 
 think it more than ever needful to emphasise the recog- 
 nition of the fact that the particular form of training 
 which the student receives during the earlier part of his 
 career at the University is not, and was never intended 
 to be, distinctly clerical. It is not in any sense of the 
 term professional. It is wholly inadequate as a prepa- 
 ration for the distinctive duties of the ministry. It is 
 only preparatory and introductory. It is necessarily ge- 
 neral and disciplinary in its character. It deals with 
 language as the general instrument of thought, or with 
 those abstract principles of number and magnitude which 
 enable us to ascertain the laws of the material universe. 
 So far as theological knowledge goes, our system here 
 only seeks to impart the very scantiest outline of the 
 rudiments of faith and religion. Both the matter and 
 the quality of our present examination would probably 
 admit of considerable improvement. But all who are 
 interested in the well-being of the Church as so intimately 
 dependent upon the efficiency of her ministers, must use 
 every endeavour to impress upon the minds of future 
 candidates for Holy Orders that Classical and Mathe- 
 matical and Physical studies, though they may minister 
 to, are yet not identical with. Theology ; and must urge 
 upon them that before they present themselves for ap- 
 pointment as the religious teachers of their brethren, they 
 must study Christian doctrine systematically, and en- 
 deavour to equip themselves for their high office. There 
 must be an earnest reiteration that it is absolutely neces- 
 sary for the general to be succeeded by the special edu- 
 cation, and a full recognition of the fact that it is lament- 
 ably presumptuous to suppose that a few weeks will
 
 Clergy at the Universities. 1 1 
 
 suffice for the special study. We must recur to the spirit, 
 if not the letter, of the old rule of University studies, that 
 after a course in Arts has been finished, Theology shall 
 be undertaken as a grave and serious department of study. 
 How this shall be secured in the University is a problem 
 which must be faced. It is obvious that not one plan 
 alone will be suitable to our present imperfectly-organised 
 constitution. As our First Public Examination has prac- 
 tically taken the place of the earlier form of the Final 
 Examination for the ordinary degree of B.A., it may in 
 many cases be desirable that young men intended for 
 ordination should then discontinue their more general 
 line of study, and betake themselves to the studies 
 required in the Honour School of Theology. 
 
 But then, on the mere principles of fair play and equal 
 toleration, the young men themselves, and their parents, 
 and the Church at large, have a right to demand that the 
 Colleges shall offer all reasonable facilities to those who 
 wish to present themselves in the School of Theology, 
 that they shall put it on the same footing, to say the least, 
 as other non-classical schools, such as Modern History 
 or Mathematics, and so provide adequate Tutors and 
 Lecturers in that department of knowledge, and shall not 
 discourage it by disparagement, or innuendo, or contemp- 
 tuous comparisons. Others again, — and these it may be 
 hoped will be multiplied, — after pursuing their more gene- 
 ral studies for a longer period in relation to other Honour 
 Schools, will betake themselves to the School of Theology 
 as closely connected with their future profession ; and no 
 more profitable use could be made of the moneys which, 
 under the new statutable arrangements, are placed at the 
 disposal of the governing bodies of the Colleges than the 
 devotion of a portion of them to Exhibitions, enabling 
 theological students to remain in the University to pursue 
 their special study. Financial difficulties are often the 
 greatest hindrance to those who wish thus to prepare
 
 12 The Education of the 
 
 themselves more effectively for their future profession. 
 I do not, I confess, think it all an improvement that where- 
 as those who attended the lectures of the Professors of 
 Divinity were thirty years ago almost entirely graduates, 
 now nine-tenths of the attendants are undergraduates, 
 most of whom are chiefly engaged on other subjects. 
 
 The organised system of the University and the Col- 
 leges may do much towards what may be called the more 
 purely intellectual training of the clergy in Theology. The 
 work would be done more efficiently if in each Col- 
 lege there were some one Tutor charged with the more 
 special superintendence of those who were destined for 
 ordination, from whom they might derive guidance, sug- 
 gestion, and encouragement. This would appropriately 
 become the duty of those Fellows or Chaplains who, under 
 the new Statutes, are to be charged with the obligation of 
 giving religious and theological instruction to those under- 
 graduates who belong to the Church of England. It will 
 be a painful abdication of higher opportunities of useful- 
 ness if they content themselves with being merely readers 
 of Prayers, or Elementary Lecturers on the Greek Gospels. 
 There rises up before my mind also the vision of the pos- 
 sibility of a larger union of Professors and Tutors who 
 might be brought into more direct personal intercourse 
 with those who are designed for ordination, and might 
 inspire them with a more vivid corporate sense of respon- 
 sibility, and of the needfulness of adequate preparation for 
 their future life. 
 
 I venture further to think that the University need not 
 now feel any jealousy of the Theological Colleges which 
 have been established in various parts of the country 
 during the last forty years. I see no reason why those 
 Colleges should not be regarded as supplementary and 
 auxiliary, rather than as antagonistic. The objections 
 which apply to ecclesiastical seminaries where the whole 
 course of education of young men destined for the ministry
 
 Clergy at the Universities. 13 
 
 is completed do not hold in regard to those institutions 
 which receive students who have previously graduated at 
 the Universities, in order to give them more definite pro- 
 fessional training in the theoretical and practical duties 
 of the Christian ministry. The tendency to adopt the 
 precise and possibly one-sided views of the one or two 
 teachers with whom they are brought into the closest 
 personal relation, and even to ape their little peculiarities 
 of manner, and voice, and gesture, are considerably neu- 
 tralised for those who have been brought up in the wider, 
 freer, more varied life and surroundings of a Public School 
 and a University, whilst signal advantages are gained by 
 many in the formation of a more devout and spiritual 
 frame of mind, and in the realisation of the solemn re- 
 sponsibilities of the office of the Christian pastor, as in- 
 volving very many more gifts, and graces, and forms of 
 discipline than are required from one who is simply 
 a teacher of Christian doctrine. We are in danger some- 
 times of forgetting that it is not the most learned theo- 
 logian who proves the most effective minister of Christ 
 and His Church. Holiness, love of God, love of human 
 souls, are no less requisite than learning ; and these, 
 equally with learning, need training and development. 
 The Church will not convert the world from sin to right- 
 eousness, which is its main function in a fallen world, 
 except its ministers have been formed by a spiritual 
 as well as an intellectual discipline. And though this 
 spiritual and moral discipline may be attained in the 
 University by those who have a will to profit by many 
 influences around them, which, if honestly sought for, 
 may be found, yet it would be a flagrant disregard of 
 plain facts of experience to deny that Theological Col- 
 leges outside the University have contributed largely 
 towards this part of the training of the clergy, and have 
 imparted a rudimentary knowledge of the practical duties 
 of clerical life, which others have had to gain by many
 
 14 The Education of the 
 
 stumblings and humbling failures in their first years of 
 pastoral work. 
 
 Those of us who are resident here are, however, more 
 concerned with the consideration of the conditions which 
 shall best secure that the future candidates for Holy- 
 Orders who are sent to the University shall be placed 
 under the circumstances most favourable to their destined 
 career, and be supported by the wisest precautions against 
 the dangers which will inevitably assail them. And this 
 will not be accomplished without the co-operation and 
 good will of all who hold office in the several Colleges. 
 The clerical Fellows are bound to see that the services 
 in the College Chapels shall be so decent and reverent 
 that they shall not repel men of real piety, and shall 
 not by their frigidity or perfunctory performance deaden 
 all devotion, or drive men out to seek more congenial 
 places of worship in some of the neighbouring parish 
 churches. Nor ought opportunities of frequent participa- 
 tion in Holy Communion and of instruction by sermons 
 and addresses to be denied. And in this provision for 
 the spiritual wants of undergraduates, which the clerical 
 Fellows and Chaplains are more particularly bound to 
 make, they ought not in equity to be thwarted and 
 checked by their lay colleagues, even on the supposition 
 that their colleagues are indifferent or alien to the faith 
 and discipline of the English Church. The College Chapel 
 ought at least to be allowed its legitimate functions, and 
 the freest toleration of nonconformity to the old national 
 Church does not carry with it as a corollary an intolerant 
 suppression of the free play of the Church's system in 
 the great homes of education. We may be sure that we 
 shall be acting in iccordance with the general sentiment 
 of the great mass of the parents who send their children 
 to Oxford, by allowing free scope for the development 
 of religious beliefs and affections on the basis of a definite 
 Christianity.
 
 Clergy at the Universities. 15 
 
 All of us also must be prepared fully to recognise the 
 principle that we must rely on free and voluntary organ- 
 isations of religious influence, as well as on more settled 
 and prescribed forms of discipline. Encouragement in the 
 prosecution of these may be derived from the success 
 which has already crowned efforts in this direction. The 
 wonderful way in which audiences have been attracted 
 to the special Sunday evening sermons addressed to Un- 
 dergraduates in this church during the two winter terms, 
 the initiation and constant superintendence of which we 
 owe to the energy of one of our Heads of Houses, is 
 a proof that a real want has been satisfied. Informal 
 gatherings for the study of the Greek Testament, which 
 some tutors and parochial incumbents have originated, 
 happily bear witness to the same fact, that voluntary 
 efforts for the religious improvement of young men do 
 not go unrewarded. Amid many causes for gloomy fore- 
 bodings and despondency there arises up light in the 
 darkness. There is a vigorous life in various charitable 
 and devotional societies ; a spirit of missionary zeal, which 
 must rest on sincere convictions of Christian faith, has 
 been kindled, and is manifested in such a fact as that 
 several men have gone out from our midst to preach the 
 faith of Christ to the educated natives of India, or the 
 less civilised tribes of central Africa, under the auspices 
 of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta, or the Universities' 
 Mission to the countries bordering on the Zambesi and 
 the Lake Nyassa ; and the cry for help from some of 
 our great centres of semi-civilised heathendom at home 
 is beginning to be answered by the self-sacrificing heroism 
 of some who are willing to endure hardness as good 
 soldiers of Jesus Christ. Faith cannot be dead in a so- 
 ciety which can chronicle such phenomena in its com- 
 plex life. 
 
 Grave difficulties await all those in the University who 
 love the work and influence of the Church of England,
 
 1 6 The Education of the Clergy y &c. 
 
 regarding her as the purest, most comprehensive, and 
 most effective representative of Christianity, and who 
 desire to see her foremost in the development of the 
 rehgion both of the nation and of the individual. How 
 shall these difficulties be encountered ? Not by flying 
 from them, not by abdicating our position and means 
 of usefulness here, not by the wail of despair paralysing 
 action ; but by patient, brave, personal effort to leaven 
 the thoughts and studies of those who are brought within 
 the sphere of our influence and teaching with steady 
 Christian principles, equally removed from the silliness 
 of superstition and the cheerless uncertainties of scep- 
 ticism. 
 
 And for the interest of the whole academical society, 
 for the sincere investigation of truth, for the promotion 
 of a general and harmonious increase of knowledge, it 
 were much to be wished that there were no jealousy 
 among the various studies which are pursued in the 
 University. Let each keep to its proper province. Let 
 not Theology look askance on Philology, or Philosophy, 
 or Natural Science; but let these in turn not deny the 
 rightful claim of Theology to interpret the problems con- 
 nected with the existence of God and the spiritual life 
 of man. Let life and knowledge each react on the other. 
 So in the midst of a changed outward organisation, and 
 with a liberty which rash and inconsiderate men may 
 pervert into licence, the University may continue to send 
 forth a due supply of persons qualified to serve God 
 in Church and State, the twin societies designed for 
 the perfection of man's earthly life. 
 
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