DIVINITY DEGREES AT OXFORD.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:9 SIR,—From your remarks with regard to the action of Con- vocation held at Oxford on April 29th, with reference to granting the B.D. and D.D. degrees to laymen and Dissenters, I don't think that you quite realize the full meaning of the proposal submitted. A paper sent to members of Convocation
by the opposers of the proposal states: " When the statute was introduced in Congregation on December 3rd the question was asked of the mover, Whether a thesis dealing with Christian belief from a purely destructive and anti-theistic point of view would have to be accepted by the Board provided that it displayed learning and literary merit.' To this the mover, as responsible for the statute, replied with the utmost frankness in the affirmative." Could anything be more absurd? Here we should have had a faculty offering its highest recognition to a man who should write a clever thesis with the object of disproving its most vital principles. Would the faculty of medicine, or any other faculty, offer its degrees on such grounds ? Another curious point about the proposed change was this : that the thesis might be an attack on Christianity and be accepted, but if it was an endeavour to disprove Buddhism or any other creed it would be rejected. Convocation had either to accept or reject this proposal, for it was not within its power to introduce an amendment. Had it passed it Oxford would no longer have been a Christian University. If the proposal had been simply as to whether laymen and Dissenters might offer themselves for the Divinity degree, I am sure that the result would have been very different.—I am, Sir, &c., A MEMBER OF CONVOCATION.
[We cannot flog ourselves into a state of alarm over this hypothetical anti-Christian or antitheistic thesis. But even assuming its want of orthodoxy, what harm would it do P If Christianity could not stand np against such an attack, its state must indeed be desperate. Let us remember how in the past we have been told of the terrible evils that must ensue if open attacks were to be permitted on true religion. Yet the fortress temple of Faith remains, while the assailants are the deadest of all dead things—demodd hetero- doxy. The spiritual life needs open windows as much as the physical.—En. Spectator.]
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