The Archbishop of Canterbury gave a' characteristically manly address at
a public meeting held in the Birmingham Town !Hall in connection with the Worcester Diocesan Conference. With great earnestness and conviction he challenged the popular notion that it was not necessary for a clergyman to he a learned man. Possibly he laid too much stress upon the knowledge of the languages in which the Bible is written, but his plea for general culture was excellent. He had known, he said, men who had neglected study, and who began by being very effective preachers, but who ended by being failures, as they had exhausted their knowledge and experience. "As an old schoolmaster, he said that what was wanted in a teacher was knowledge, accuracy, and fullness of knowledge. and, above everything else, fresh- ness. No man could go on long teaching who had ceased to be a student." They did not want men in the Church who had poured out all that was within them, and who had nothing to say that was not quite stale to their hearers and to themselves. The Archbishop went on to say that he sometimes felt that it would be a good thing "if they could examine ministers to see whether they retained the know- ledge and freshness that was necessary, but it would not be a very easy thing to do, and they had not made any pro- vision for it." It is not the conventional thing to say that a man can only keep his freshness of mind by study, but it is nevertheless absolutely true.
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