UNIVERSITY TESTS.
go THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTITOR:] SIR,—In a recent number of the Spectator you considered the evil effects of such a test as Sir Roundell Palmer proposes to substitute for our present tests on the teachers in our Universities. Your correspondent, "H. P.," complains that you have not dwelt on its probable advantages to the taught. I hope I shall not hinder the completion of your article which be asks for, if I make a few remarks specially on that subject.
I will speak first of the direct theological teaching. In our Universities there are Divinity Professors whose minds are penetrated with reverence for the Scriptures, who unite with that reverence the most accurate scholarship and the greatest industry. No tests which exist now, none which may be imposed on them hereafter, can, I believe, in the slightest degree increase their reverence or diminish the sense of their obligation to the God of Truth to use every faculty which He has given them for the purpose of entering into the meaning of the Scriptures. But I am convinced also that the tests which exist now weaken very greatly the confidence of the students in the fidelity of their teaching,
thoroughly earnest and sincere as I hold it to be. I believe Sir R. Palmer's test being a new one, and bearing directly upon the Scriptures, would enfeeble the influence of these exegetical Professors still more. "You hold a brief for the Bible," "You dare not look the controversies of the day in the face ;" "You are bound to furnish us with answers before we have fairly heard the questions,"—these sayings are rife enough among young men ; they are increased by every sign of timidity in Churchmen and statesmen ; they are working mightily in the direction which "H. P." considers so dangerous.
Look, again, at the Professors of History and Philology. Many of them feel that the Bible, honestly studied, is the greatest help to the understanding of all the thought and movements of the world in different periods. They might impart that feeling to their class. But "it is their business to speak as they speak." "They must not do anything else." What power that impression takes from them ! What power it gives to any who do not share their convictions, who either honestly say or clearly indicate that they do not ! The first may by private intercourse overcome the prejudice that their language is merely professional ; young men of thoughtful and courageous minds start with a prejudice in favour of the latter.
With the teachers of physical science the case will be far stronger. "Who doubts that that fellow would have a fling at the Scriptures, if he was not tongue-tied ?" The man of whom that is said may not feel the least inclination to have this fling. The Scriptures may be the consolation of his private hours. He maY not be the least troubled by his inability, supposing he is conscious of inability, to reconcile them with what he knows or believes about the external Cosmos. But he suffers morally from that reputation ; his pupils suffer far more ; there is sown in their minds a far deeper dislike to the Scriptures as the enemies of scientific truth, than they would have acquired by listening to the most outspoken utterances of Huxley or Tyndale.
That remark suggests the last case to which I will refer, that of the possible invaders of the Academic sanctity, supposing Sir
J. Coleridge's Bill is passed in its original form. "11. P." imagines Henan to appear in Oxford and to deliver lectures there, not on Oriental literature, but expressly, if I understand him, on the life of Jesus. 'Well, I do not deny that if such a plienotneuon occurred mar, I might look at it with sonic alarm. I do not know what Renan's attractions as a lecturer are, but if there are the same learning, the same romance, the same graces in his orations as in his books, I should think he might exercise rather more influence in Oxford by his speech than he does exercise there by his writings. I think that he and Strauss have an immense advantage over those who write and argue against them in England, because it is supposed, by young men especially, that the latter are retained for the defence, that the former are honest men, who could say "more, much more, than they unfold," if we were not all pledged not to hear them fairly. 'Whereas, if those who believe in their inmost hearts that Jesus is the Son of God could speak out that conviction, not as advocates pleading a cause, but as human beings addressing human beings, "II. P.'s" son might be as safely trusted as his father to hear Renan's reasons for preferring a sentimental Galilean cheat to Him who, we suppose, has revealed the true God to mankind.
You will perceive that I. as much as Sir Roundell Palmer, recognize theology not only as a study, but as the characteriatical study of our Universities. I once thought that subscription to theological Articles was a check on the anarchy which threatens all studies in this day by determining what is the centre of them. Like the admirable lawyer and statesman to whom I have referred, I have been compelled by the experience of the last forty years to abandon that notion. But I still cling, perhaps even more tenaciously than he does, to the principle from which it was, wrongly, I think, deduced. There is just the difference between Sir Roundell Palmer's view of the case and mine which might be expected from our different professions. He holds that the University should protect theology. I hold that theology may be the protector of the University from the tyranny of public opinion, from the fever of competition, from the cowardice which evades a fact, distorts evidence, or misrepresents an opponent. The acknowledgment of a living and true God, a Searcher of Hearts, if inwardly cherished, has, it seems to me, that power: I know not where else it is to be sought. I do not mean for a moment that I would disturb the effort of the London University, or any of its dependent colleges, to dispense with theology. I should be very sorry if the experiment were not fairly worked out. I anticipate the highest advantages from it to divine as well as human studies. But Oxford and Cambridge have confessedly a theological basis ; I am most anxious that they should feel how firm a basis it is, how little it needs the wood, hay, and stubble of formal declarations to make it more firm.
There is nothing in the College history of the nineteenth century to justify the Positivist notion that theology has less power in learned bodies than in other days. There have been no influences in Cambridge and Oxford to be compared with those which were exerted by Simeon and by Newman. But each of these teachers derived a great portion of his power from the conviction in the minds of their juniors that he was not repeating a lemon which he had learnt from others, but one that he had realized for himself. That power will always compel recognition, even if it is accompanied, as in one of these cases, with little that is strictly intellectual. Because I believe that Sir Roundell Palmer's new teat would check the full and free manifestation of this power in the teacher, the apprehension of it in the taught, I desire earnestly, for the sake of both, but of the latter most, that no such teat may be imposed.—I am, Sir, &c.,
AN KNGLISH CLERGYMAN.
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