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 "L I E) RA RY 
 
 OF THE 
 UNIVLR5ITY 
 or ILLI NOIS

 
 \Authe7itic Report^^ 
 
 AD D EE S S 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE 
 
 DISTKIBUTION OF PRIZES 
 
 IN THE 
 
 LIVEEPOOL COLLEGE, 
 
 DEC"- 21, 1873. 
 
 By the right HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, 
 
 FIRST LOED OF THE TEEASXJRY. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1873.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFOBD STREET, 
 AND CHAEING CROSS,
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction 
 
 Address — Eeligious Basis of the College .. 
 
 Nature op the " Higher Education " 
 
 English University and Public-school Training . 
 
 Spirit in which Education is Pursued in England 
 
 Examinations, Honours, and Prizes .. 
 
 Growth op Liverpool .. 
 
 Union op Commerce and Culture 
 
 Recent Manifestations op Unbelief 
 
 The Latest Work of Dr. Strauss .. 
 
 Suggestions on " Free Thought " 
 
 On " The Advancement of the Age " 
 
 On the Divisions among Christians 
 
 On Responsibility for Belief 
 
 Speech on Vote of Thanks .. 
 
 Illustrative Passages 
 
 Page 
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 *'«Cril*V^
 
 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 In taking so grave a step as to animadvert strongly on the 
 published opinions of men of eminence and character, I 
 think it my duty to show, by a few citations of their own 
 words, where the original is English, and in the case of 
 Dr. Strauss, by a few translated extracts, that I do not deal 
 in merely vague accusations, and that I have not overstated 
 the gravity of the case. 
 
 And by way of commencement, in order to show the 
 change in the tone of the public, or the speculative mind 
 during the last forty years, and to supply a measure of the 
 distance over or down which we have travelled within that 
 period, 1 will quote a passage from a competent and well- 
 informed writer. In the * Christian Advocate's ' publication 
 for 1829, Mr. Hugh James Kose, who then held the office at 
 Cambridge, when giving his reason for a partial deviation 
 from the usual course in the choice of his subject, observes 
 as follows : — 
 
 "As far as I have been able to collect, no persons have 
 stood forward, very recently, as the avowed opponents of 
 Christianity, whose characters or whose works give them any 
 claim to consideration or reply." * 
 
 Dr. Whe well's Bridgwater Treatise on Astronomy and 
 Physics was published in 1834 ; and the whole of that series, 
 given to the world about the same date, seemed to be a public 
 proclamation of the established harmony between Science 
 and Keligion. 
 
 * Advertisement to Rose's * Christianity Alwa^'s Progressive ' (London 
 1829).
 
 6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Neither of the Universities had, as far as I know, been 
 disturbed for a great length of time by any controversy 
 affecting the foundations of belief. Dean Milman's * History 
 of the Jews,' which appeared about 1830, was attacked with 
 severity, perhaps almost ferocity, by Dr. Faussett, then the 
 Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford. The same work was 
 republished, with a preface fully maintaining its propositions, 
 in 1863. Those, who read it now, will find some assistance 
 towards estimating the change in our position, from observing 
 the slightness of the cause which then sufficed to produce 
 an excitement not inconsiderable. 
 
 I must add that for twenty years, or thereabouts, from 
 that time, according to my observation, belief was every- 
 where, to all appearance, progressively extended and con- 
 firmed. Perhaps the first note of the coming assault was 
 the publication of the work entitled * Vestiges of Creation.' 
 It obtained a wide circulation ; but in general society it was 
 almost universally condemned. I here purposely confine 
 my references to the works of men anonymous or dead. The 
 difference of times became observable, when the fatalistic 
 book of Mr. Buckle, notwithstanding its ungainly form and 
 the portentous width of its plan, became a favourite even 
 in drawing-rooms and in boudoirs. But the spirit of class 
 with us enters into these matters among others ; and while 
 unbelief well printed, well bound, and well ushered into the 
 world — in a word, unbelief in broadcloth — seems to be held 
 perfectly " respectable," unbelief in fustian is still almost 
 savagely condemned. 
 
 I wish to add that the aim of my Address is not to 
 preach pessimism, but to point to a specific evil for a specific 
 purpose. And that purpose is to warn, I will not say 
 to prepare — for that is a much larger matter — the minds of 
 those who heard it, against that which they cannot fail to 
 meet with, warned or unwarned. I named accordingly one
 
 INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 or two of the seductive (I am almost tempted to call them 
 cant) phrases of the day, and some of the thoroughly un- 
 sound intellectual habits which, it is strange to say, are more 
 or less tolerated among those sometimes described as the 
 thinkers of the age, sometimes by other favourite and not less 
 imposing titles. I am aware that many objections may be 
 taken to my having touched the subject. One of those I 
 should feel the most lies against the necessarily crabbed 
 and partial nature of my reference to such parts of it as I 
 have named. Besides, there are other heads which I should 
 have wished to touch, and among them the strange assump- 
 tion that, because God is infinite, the finite mind of man can 
 have no points of true contact with Him ; and the grossly 
 fallacious character (as I believe) of the assumption that not 
 only for individuals but for generations, and in the long-run 
 of human history. Christian morality, or the morality \n hich 
 has hitherto been considered Christian, can bfe separated 
 from Christian dogma, and can permanently survive its 
 abandonment. 
 
 I wish to place on record my conviction that belief cannot 
 now be defended by reticence, any more than by railing, or 
 by any privileges and assumptions. Nor, again, can it be 
 defended exclusively by its "standing army" — by priests and 
 ministers of religion. To them, 1 do not doubt, will fall the 
 chief share of the burden, and of the honour, and of the 
 victory. But we commit a fatal error if we allow this to 
 become a merely professional question. It is the affair 
 of all. 
 
 It is very difficult in handling such controversies to avoid 
 the tone of assumption and denunciation. I desire, there- 
 fore, once for all, to abjure all imputations against motives 
 or characters. Equal credit for the love of truth should 
 be allowed by all to all, and the endeavour made, or at 
 least intended, to unite plain speaking with personal respect.
 
 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Yet this, though an obvious is not an easy duty ; for it is 
 impossible to view certain states of mind as other than the 
 results of strong, though honest, self-delusion. 
 
 This duty of personal respect is especially due at a time, 
 when the writers against Christian belief stand in a moral 
 position so different from that of its principal French assailants 
 during the last century. The combat is not now with the 
 authors of the ^Pucelle' and the ' Confessions ;' but with men 
 who, though they believe less than Voltaire and Kousseau, 
 yet either revere or sympathise more ; who for the most 
 part seek to avoid hard language ; who commonly confess 
 not only that Christianity has done good, but even that it 
 may still confer at least some relative benefit before the day 
 of perfect preparedness for its removal shall arrive, and even 
 the most "advanced" of whom, like the author of the 
 ' Martyrdom of Man,' appears to be touched by a lingering 
 sentiment of tenderness, while he blows his trumpet for a 
 final assault at once upon the " Syrian superstition," and on 
 the poor, pale, and semi-animate substitutes for it, which 
 Deism has devised.
 
 ADDRESS. 
 
 [^Two passages enclosed within brackets were omitted in the delivery 
 
 on account of time.^ 
 
 Mk. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, and my Younger 
 Friends ; 
 
 Thirty years have passed away since, in consequence 
 of the accidental disability of a worthier person, I was called 
 upon to deliver the Inaugural Address at the opening of 
 this Institution. In other words, the College has now lived 
 through one generation of men. 
 
 At the close of such a term, we may suitably look back, to 
 ascertain how far it has fulfilled or disappointed the ex- 
 pectations of its founders. And first I will refer to the hope 
 they entertained, that they would be able to secure for the 
 government of the Institution the services of a series of 
 learned, able, and earnest men. This expectation, I venture 
 to say, has been amply realised in the persons of Mr. 
 Conybeare, of your old friend now present. Dean Howson, 
 and of Mr. Butler. 
 
 Further, it was to be an institution having religion for 
 its centre and its base ; and that religion was to be the 
 religion of the Church of England. That the national 
 Church is not in less esteem now than it was then with 
 the nation, the immense increase, alike of her fabrics 
 and her ministrations, may sufficiently show. That those 
 who guide the fortunes of this College do not desire to 
 change the ground they have occupied from the first, can
 
 10 ADDKESS. 
 
 need no proof on an occasion, when I know from the Prin- 
 cipal how much it is desired by them to erect a Chapel 
 within tlie precincts, in order to the more solemn and 
 effectual celebration of the offices of religion. 
 
 But it was also a part of the design, that with religious 
 teaching should be combined the practice of religious 
 liberty ; that no compulsory lessons or observances should 
 be imposed, to hinder the enjoyment by the entire youth 
 of Liverpool of the general advantages of the College. 
 How has this portion of the scheme been found to fare? 
 The kindness of your old, respected, and indefatigable Secre- 
 tary enables me to answer the question. From him I learn 
 that no religious difficulty has impeded the working of the 
 plan ; that among the pupils of the College, comprehensive 
 with respect to nationality as well as to communion, there 
 were found a short time back, upon inquiries, Unitarians, 
 Wesley ans. Baptists, Koman Catholics, members of the G-reek 
 Church, Presbyterians, and Jews ; and that, of the whole 
 number of pupils in the three schools of the College, not 
 less than one-fourth were of religious professions distinct 
 from our own. 
 
 Nor have the promoters of the College been disappointed 
 in their hope to furnish the people of Liverpool with easy 
 access to the higher forms of education at their own doors, 
 and to strengthen and enlarge their connection with the 
 old Universities of the land. The seven hundred pupils 
 on its books afford ample proof of the favour of tlie com- 
 munity; and the number of able men whom it has sent 
 to those Universities indicates the wish of Liverpool to 
 secure for its sons the advantages of what has been com- 
 monly termed the higher education. 
 
 [There is, however, some difference among us as to the 
 question, what really is the higher education ? There 
 are those who think not only that our old methods of
 
 ADDKESS. 11 
 
 training the young were too exclusive, but tliat tliey were 
 fundamentally bad ; who would supplant entirely, or expel 
 from the first place in education, the study of man in its 
 various branches, and would substitute for it the study of 
 Nature as it exists otherwise than in man : and again who, 
 in so much as they would admit of the human studies into 
 the course of education, would put aside the ancient for 
 the modern, whether in philosophy, history, or language. 
 The great faults, as I believe, of the ancient educational 
 studies of this country were— first, that they were too 
 narrow ; and secondly, that they were too uniform, and did 
 not take heed enough of varieties both of condition and 
 of mind. The consequence was, in the very best men, fre- 
 quent ignorance of what every cultivated person ought to 
 know; and in all who were unequal to the favoured studies, 
 or whose turn lay in another direction, a great waste of 
 time with little fruit, if not even a confirmed habit of idle- 
 ness. Therefore it is to be admitted that much wrong was 
 done to the natural sciences. But that wrong is not to be 
 redressed by giving them prospectively more than their due. 
 Such notwithstanding appears to be the desire of some of 
 their professors; and it has been indicated by a practice 
 of claiming for them, in a pre-eminent or even an exclusive 
 sense, the name of science. So that a man who observes 
 and reasons upon plants or animals, the constituent parts of 
 the globe, or of the celestial system, is a man of science ; 
 but to observe and reason upon history, upon philosophy 
 in its older sense, or upon theology, establishes no such 
 title, though the very same process of collecting and digest- 
 ing facts, and of drawing inferences from them, is pursued 
 in the one case and in the other ; and though it seems suffi- 
 ciently absurd to hold that there is a science of the human 
 body, but that there can be no science of the mind or soul. 
 This can surelv be no better than a mere fashion of the
 
 12 ADDRESS. 
 
 hour, and with the hour it must pass away. It is the in- 
 cidental excess of a reforming movement, and we may 
 hope that while the excess will disappear the reform will 
 remain. Were it, from a mere caprice, to harden into an 
 accepted doctrine, I see not in what it could end, except in 
 a pure materialism.] 
 
 But, gentlemen, while freely admitting that what may be 
 termed utilitarian studies were in my early days too much 
 overlooked, that the knowledge of the material universe was 
 sadly neglected, that to many minds only such food was 
 offered as they were wholly unable to digest, and that the 
 upshot was a lamentable waste of power, I claim for the old 
 method of our public schools and colleges that it had merits 
 and advantages, for the loss of which no parade of univer- 
 sality, no increase of mere information, could possibly com- 
 pensate. It taught with that rigid accuracy, which is the 
 foundation of all really solid learning. It held thoroughness 
 in a few things to be better than show in many. It en- 
 throned in the seat of honour the most masculine studies. 
 I have now passed forty years of life upon an arena of com- 
 petition as sharp as is to be found anywhere in the world. 
 I have seen all forms of training, practical as well as other, 
 pretty fairly matched with one another; and all descrip- 
 tions of men, with every variety of natural gifts, bringing up 
 as it were the results of their various modes of education 
 to be tested. The best mode has to struggle with the 
 defects of nature, and the worst will not wholly neutralise 
 her bounties. Here and there, again, you may find a man 
 whose self-training power can dispense with all appliances 
 from without. But these are rare instances indeed. 
 
 " Pauci, . . . 
 Dis geniti, potuere." * 
 
 * Yh-iT. Mn. vi. 129.
 
 ADDRESS. 13 
 
 I speak, however, not of the one but of the million ; and, 
 as among the million, I affirm that there is no training for 
 the conflicts and the toils of life, so far as I have seen, which 
 does greater justice to the receiver of it than the old train- 
 ing of the English public schools and universities. I speak 
 of my own experience and observation, in the sphere in which 
 I have lived ; but probably there are few spheres, though 
 I will not say there are none, in which the whole making 
 of a man is more severely tried. And that my testimony, 
 which is of course limited, may at least be definite, I will 
 add that I speak of such training as it was at Oxford, more, 
 I am sorry to say, than forty years ago. 
 
 All this must be a paradox and a stumbling-block to 
 such as think, that the sole or main purpose of education 
 is to stock the mind with knowledge as a shop is stocked 
 with goods, and that the wants of life are to be met like 
 the wants of customers. And doubtless one of the purposes 
 of education is thus to furnish materials for future employ- 
 ment; but this is its lower, not its higher purpose. The 
 shop takes no benefit, though it may take damage, from 
 the wares which it receives ; but the greatest and best use 
 of the information, which is imported into the mind, is to 
 improve the mind itself. A more instructive comparison 
 may be drawn between education and food. As the main 
 purpose of food is to make the body strong and active, so the 
 main purpose of education is to make the mind solid, elastic, 
 and capable of enduring wear and tear. The studies which 
 are most useful, so far as utility is external to the mind, 
 though they are on that account the most popular, and 
 though they are indispensable, — such, I mean, as reading, 
 writing, arithmetic, modern languages, or geography, — are 
 those which do, not most but least, for our intellectual and 
 moral training. The studies which have it for their main 
 object to act on the composition and capacity of the man,
 
 14 ADDRESS. 
 
 will, to such as follow them with their whole heart, be found 
 to yield a richer harvest, tliough the seed may be longer in 
 the ground. Yet I fully admit that the test of a good 
 education is neither abstract nor inflexible. Such an educa- 
 tion must take account both of the capacity of the pupil and 
 of the possibilities of his future calling. All I would plead 
 for is, that where there is a choice, the highest shall be 
 preferred. In the words of our most famous living poet — 
 
 " It was our duty to have loved the highest ; " * 
 
 And our duty it must ever remain. 
 
 In this institution I trust the prerogatives of " the highest " 
 will always be admitted ; and around it there will be mar- 
 shalled, each in its due order and degree, the numerous and 
 ever multiplying studies, of which every one has an un- 
 doubted title to honour in its tendency to embellish or 
 improve the life of man. 
 
 But indeed there is much to be said and done about 
 education, besides determining the relative claims, or, as it 
 would now be called, the due co-ordination, of the different 
 kinds of knowledge. Quite apart from these claims, much, 
 my younger friends, and more than you can as yet perhaps 
 fully understand, depends upon the spirit in which those 
 kinds of knowledge are pursued. And this again depends, 
 not upon the incidental advantages of birth or wealth, but 
 upon ourselves. The favours of fortune have both their 
 value and their charm ; but there is in a man himself, if 
 he will but open out and cultivate his manhood, that which 
 will be found amply sufficient to supply their place. 
 
 Now, as to this important subject, the spirit in which we 
 pursue education, the degree in which we turn our advantages 
 to account, I must say of us here in England that we do not 
 
 * Tennyson's 'Guinevere.'
 
 ADDRESS. 1 5 
 
 stand well. Our old Universities, and the schools above the 
 rank of primary, have as a class the most magnificent endow- 
 ments in the w^orld. I am well aware that this institution is 
 far indeed from being open to such a reproach. It may, 
 however, be doubted whether the amount of these endow- 
 ments, in England alone, is not equal to their amount on 
 the whole continent of Europe taken together. Matters 
 have mended, and are, I hope, mending. We have good and 
 tliorougli workers, but not enough of them. The results 
 may be good as far as they go ; but they do not go far. But 
 in truth this " beggarly return," not of empty but of ill-filled 
 boxes, is but one among many indications of a wide-spread 
 vice ; a scepticism in the public mind, of old as well as young, 
 respecting the value of learning and of culture, and a conse- 
 quent slackness in seeking their attainment. We seem to 
 be spoiled by the very facility and abundance of the oppor- 
 tunities around us. We do not in this matter «tand well, 
 as compared with the men of the middle ages, on whom we 
 are too ready to look down. For then, when scholarships 
 and exhibitions, and fellowships and headships, were few, 
 and even before they were known, and long centuries before 
 triposes and classes had been invented, the beauty and the 
 power of Knowledge filled the hearts of men with love, and 
 they went in quest of her, even from distant lands, with 
 ardent devotion, like pilgrims to a favoured shrine. 
 
 Again, we do not stand well as compared with Scotland, 
 where, at least, the advantages of education are well under- 
 stood, and though its honours and rewards are much fewer, 
 yet self-denying labour, and unsparing energy in pursuit 
 of knowledge, are far more common than with us. And 
 once more, we do not stand well as compared with Germany ; 
 where, with means so much more slender as to be quite out 
 of comparison with ours, the results are so much more 
 abundant, that, in the ulterior prosecution of almost every
 
 16 ADDKESS. 
 
 branch of inquiry, it is to Germany, and the works of the 
 Germans, that the British student must look for assistance. 
 Yet I doubt if it can be said with truth that the German is 
 superior to the Englishman in natural gifts ; or that he has 
 greater or even equal perseverance, provided only the English- 
 man had his heart in the matter. But Germany has two 
 marked advantages : a far greater number of her educated 
 class are really in earnest about their education ; and they 
 have not yet learned, as we, I fear, have learned, to under- 
 value, or even in a great measure to despise, simplicity of 
 life. 
 
 Our honours, and our prizes, and our competitive exami- 
 nations, what for the most part are they, but palliatives 
 applied to neutralise a degenerate indifference, to the 
 existence of which they have been the most conclusive wit- 
 ness ? Far be it from me to decry them, or to seek to do 
 away with them. In my own sphere, I have laboured to ex- 
 tend them. They are, however, the medicines of our infirmity, 
 not the ornaments of our health. They supply from without 
 inducements to seek knowledge, which ought to be its own 
 reward. They do something to expel the corroding pest of 
 idleness, that special temptation to a wealthy country, that 
 deadly enemy in all countries to the body and the soul of 
 man. They get us over the first and most difficult stages 
 in the formation of habits, w^hich, in a proportion of cases at 
 least, we may hope will endure, and become in course of time 
 self-acting. 
 
 One other claim I must make on behalf of examinations. 
 It is easy to point out their inherent imperfections. Plenty 
 of critics are ready to do this ; for in the case of first employ- 
 ments under the State, they are the only tolerably efficient 
 safeguard against gross abuses, and such abuses are never with- 
 out friends. But from really searching and strong examina- 
 tions, such as the best of those in our Universities and schools,
 
 ADDRESS. 17 
 
 there arises at least one great raental benefit, difficult of 
 attainment by any other means. In early youth, while the 
 mind is still naturally supple and elastic, they teach the 
 practice, and they give the power, of concentrating all its 
 force, all its resources, at a given time, upon a given point. 
 What a pitched battle is to the commander of an army, a 
 strong examination is to an earnest student. All his faculties, 
 all his attainments must be on the alert, and wait the word 
 of command ; method is tested at the same time with strength ; 
 and over the whole movement presence of mind must preside. 
 If, in the course of his after life, he chances to be called to 
 great and concentrated efforts, he will look back with grati- 
 tude to those examinations, which more perhaps than any 
 other instrument may have taught him how to make them. 
 
 General remissness, gentlemen, is not the besetting sin of 
 our great town communities ; least among them all of Liver- 
 pool. Nowhere is the pedestrian's pace more rapid than in 
 her streets; nowhere is his countenance more charged with 
 purpose. We live, gentlemen, in a wealth-making age. It 
 may surprise you to hear, but I believe it to be unquestionably 
 true, that more wealth has, in this little island of ours, been 
 accumulated since the commencement of the present century 
 — that is, within the lifetime of many who are still among us — 
 than in all the preceding ages from the time, say, of Julius 
 Caesar ; or any other more remote date you please. And, 
 again, at least as much of this wealth has been stored within 
 the last twenty years, as in the preceding fifty. Liverpool 
 has had even more than her share in this great, this almost 
 portentous activity. Since I knew her, she has scooped four 
 miles of solitary shore into teeming docks ; and I am now 
 told she is about to add other miles to these. Fed by the 
 mere overflow of her wealth and energy, the little hamlets 
 that faced her in Cheshire have grown into great and vigorous 
 town districts, larger, I believe, in population than she her- 
 
 B
 
 18 ADDRESS. 
 
 self was at the commencement of the century. Her opulence, 
 I think, has grown in still greater proportion than her 
 numbers. If we ask. Where is this to end ? when will this 
 marvellous process be arrested ? when will this great flood- 
 tide begin to ebb ? I, for one, know not ; I am by no means 
 sure that we are as yet even near high-water. But with the 
 impetuosity of this galloping career, with the wonderful 
 development of such arts of life as bear directly upon enjoy- 
 ment, there grows up continually a correlative amount of 
 dangers and temptations. 
 
 " The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers." * 
 
 So it is. The world, in truth, becomes more worldly. 
 It ties us down to earth by more and stronger cords, and to 
 break them requires bolder and more assiduous effort. If 
 we wish to secure our freedom against the perils that environ 
 it, this is not to be done by renouncing business, or by abating 
 energy in its pursuit ; it is by balancing that activity with 
 other activities. Yes, it may be replied, we ought to live in 
 the world unseen, as well as in the world we see. And that 
 is doubtless true ; and for many, whose opportunities are 
 small, it is sufficient; but for this great community, whose 
 opportunities are large, though true, it is not the whole 
 truth. The entire nature of man is the garden, which is 
 given him to cultivate. We cannot, as a nation or as indi- 
 viduals, be well if we do not provide for the soul as well 
 as the body. But neither can we be well if we do not, 
 according to our means, provide for the mind as well as the 
 soul. That is the principle enshrined and represented in 
 this institution, as it is in every ancient university and 
 college, and as it must be in every institution which aspires 
 
 * Wordsworth's ' Miscellaneous Sonnets,' No. 33.
 
 ADDRESS. 19 
 
 to superintend anything that deserves the name of the 
 higher education. 
 
 And why should not Liverpool, why should not commerce, 
 afford a field favourable to art, literature, and science, as 
 much as to philanthropy and religion ? Half a century ago, 
 the name of this town stood high with respect to mental 
 cultivation. There is nothing in the pursuit of the merchant 
 that ought to preclude the pursuit of mental refinement. 
 The day's work is not so long, nor the anxiety so constant, 
 as to wear out the whole stock of energy that a vigorous 
 English nature can command. In Greece, the State which 
 took its place at the head of literature and philosophy and 
 art was noted for its encouragement of trade. " The best 
 products of Sicily and Italy, of Cyprus and Egypt, of Lydia 
 and Pontus, and every other country, flowed," says Xeno- 
 phon,* " into the markets of Athens, which ruled the sea." 
 " Hither," says Thucydides,t " come all the products of all the 
 earth ; " and Pericles and Alcibiades J were not ashamed of 
 superintending extensive manufactories which they owned. 
 
 In Florence, the true Athens of modern times, many of 
 the nobles were among the most conspicuous merchants.§ 
 And when Holland took the place of Italy at the head of the 
 commerce of Europe, Art and Science walked in the noble 
 train of Liberty, and the University of Leyden, founded in 
 memory of the heroic efforts of the citizens, took its place, 
 even in that little country, among the very foremost of the 
 universities of Christendom. || We now speak with deserved 
 respect and gratitude of the learned labours of Germany : 
 but those who observe the German names, and the German 
 
 * Xenophon, * De Kep. Ath.' ii. 7. f Thuc. ii. 38. 
 
 X Boeckh, ' Public Economy of Athens,' ii. 63 (Trans. London, 1828). 
 See also St. John, ' Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece,' iii. 276. 
 § Hallam's * Middle Ages ' (8th edit.), vol. i. p. 285. 
 II Motley's * United Netherlands,' vol. iv. ch. liii. p. 526, ed. 1869. 
 
 B 2
 
 20 ADDKESS. 
 
 firms, which have established themselves in the commercial 
 communities of England, will readily understand that no 
 country is making advances more marked than theirs in the 
 paths of enterprise. 
 
 If then, as I am persuaded, there are among you, my 
 younger friends, those who, though destined to the pursuits 
 which have made this great emporium famous, have in 
 tasting of the cup of knowledge acquired the desire for 
 longer and for deeper draughts; if any of you can say with 
 Virgil of his Muses, 
 
 " Quarum sacra fero ingenti perculsus amore," * 
 
 there is no reason why he should be discouraged ; no reason 
 why he should regard the beginning of business as the end 
 of culture; but let him rather resolve that, though it be 
 but in fragments of his time, he will woo his studies with a 
 lifelong love. 
 
 And now forgive me if, using the melancholy privilege of 
 age, and addressing a few words especially to you who are 
 still so young, I seem to assume that in youth you may learn 
 more readily from others some lessons, which you would 
 acquire at greater cost and more slowly for yourselves. To 
 each and all I would say, that God has sent no one of you 
 into the world without a work ready for him to do, and facili- 
 ties wherewith to do it. What this work is, reflection, or 
 parental guidance, or a kind of instinct, may have told you. 
 If it has not yet been discovered, you have only to follow 
 this oHe rule : Do your best ; try to make the most of all 
 your faculties ; " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do," says 
 the wise man,t and in like manner, whatsoever thy mind 
 findeth to do, "do it with thy might." You would with 
 justice think meanly of a boy who did not at cricket, or 
 football, or any other sport, try with all his heart to win, or 
 
 * Virg. ' Georgics,' ii, 476. f Eccles. ix. 10.
 
 ADDRESS. 21 
 
 do his part towards winning. Is there not something wrong, 
 I would almost say something base, in our standard of action, 
 of which bone and muscle are thus developed, and most 
 properly developed, to the uttermost, if the mind is allowed 
 to wither and to dwindle for want of manly exercise ? 
 
 You, who have successfully shown your disposition to excel, 
 I congratulate you on your success. But that success would 
 be a misfortune and a snare to you, if you rested in it ; if, 
 to use a homely expression, you went to sleep upon it. It 
 is like the meal which the traveller enjoys upon his way, but 
 the purpose of which is to strengthen him for his further 
 journey. The prize is good, but the efforts which are made 
 to gain the prize are far better. What is most valuable in 
 these competitions, then, the defeated share with the con- 
 querors, nay further yet, one defeated after a hard and 
 bracing struggle gains more in the true work of -education, 
 the strengthening of his mind, than some eas^ winner who 
 canters in without serious exertion. And such defeat, in a 
 mind of true British temper, only strengthens the resolution, 
 which never in the long-run fails, to try yet more manfully 
 next time. 
 
 For, do what you will, your life, because it is a human 
 life, will be, and that in many ways, a trial. 
 
 " So it is willed above, where will is power." * 
 And this world-old truth seems, as the world grows older, 
 to grow more vividly and pointedly true, with the ever- 
 growing strain and noise, and haste and waste, of life ; a 
 trial which cannot be escaped by flying from it, but which 
 may be conquered by facing it. 
 
 On an occasion like this, I should not have desired, even 
 before those of you, my younger friends, who are on the very 
 threshold of active and responsible manhood, to dwell in a 
 
 * From Dante, * Inferno,' iii. 95.
 
 22 ADDRESS. 
 
 marked manner on the particular trials you will have to 
 encounter. But the incidents of the time are no common 
 incidents; and there is one among them so obtrusive, that 
 youth cannot long enjoy its natural privilege of unacquaint- 
 ance with the mischief, and so formidable, that it really 
 requires to be forewarned against the danger. I refer to the 
 extraordinary and boastful manifestation, in this age of ours, 
 and especially perhaps in the year which is about to close, 
 of the extremest forms of unbelief. 
 
 I am not about to touch upon the differences which dis- 
 tinguish, and partially sever, the Church of England from 
 those communions by which it is surrounded ; whether they 
 be of Protestant Nonconformists, or of those who have 
 recently incorporated into the Christian faith what we must 
 suppose they think a bulwark and not a danger to religion, 
 the doctrine of Papal infallibility. For handling contro- 
 versies of such a class this is not the time, I am not the 
 person, and my office is not the proper office. It is not now 
 only the Christian Church, or only the Holy Scripture, or 
 only Christianity, which is attacked. The disposition is 
 boldly proclaimed to deal alike with root and branch, and to 
 snap utterly the ties which, under the still venerable name 
 of Eeligion, unite man with the unseen world, and lighten the 
 struggles and the woes of life by the hope of a better land. 
 
 [These things are done as the professed results, and the 
 newest triumphs, of Modern Thought and Modern Science ; 
 but I believe that neither Science nor Thought is responsible, 
 any more than Liberty is responsible, for the misdeeds com- 
 mitted in their names. Upon the ground of what is termed 
 evolution, God is relieved of the labour of creation ; in the 
 name of unchangeable laws. He is discharged from governing 
 the world ; and His function of judgment is also dispensed 
 with, as justice and benevolence are held to forbid that men 
 should hereafter be called to strict account for actions.
 
 ADDRESS. 23 
 
 which under these unchangeable laws they may have com- 
 mitted. But these are only the initial stages of the process. 
 Next, we are introduced to the doctrine of the Absolute and 
 the Unconditioned ; and, under the authority of these phrases 
 (to which, and many other phrases, in their proper places, 
 I have no objection) we are instructed that we can know 
 nothing about God, and therefore can have no practical rela- 
 tions with Him. One writer, or, as it is now termed thinker, 
 announces with pleasure that he has found the means of 
 reconciling Eeligion and Science. The mode is in principle 
 most equitable. He divides the field of thought between 
 them. To Science he awards all that of which we know, or 
 may know, something ; to Religion he leaves a far wider 
 domain, — that of which we know, and can know, nothing.* 
 This sounds like jest, but it is melancholy earnest ; and I 
 doubt whether any such noxious crop has been gathered in 
 such rank abundance from the press of England in any former 
 year of our literary history as in this present year of our 
 redemption, eighteen hundred and seventy-two.] 
 
 I will not, on this occasion, pain and weary you with a 
 multitude of details. I will only refer by name to one who 
 is not a British writer — to the learned German, Dr. Strauss. 
 He is a man of far wider fame than any British writer who 
 marches under the same banner ; and I mention him with 
 the respect which is justly due, not only to his ability, but 
 to the straightforward earnestness, and to the fairness and 
 mildness towards antagonists in argument, with which, so far 
 as I have had the opportunity of judging him from his 
 present or former works, he pursues his ill-starred and hope- 
 less enterprise. 
 
 He has published, during the present year, a volume 
 entitled ' The Old Belief and the New.' t In his Intro- 
 
 * See Illustrative Passages, A, 
 
 t ' Del- alte und der neue Glaube : cin Bekenntniss.' Von David Friedrich 
 Strauss. 2te Auflage. Leipzig, 1872.
 
 24 ADDKESS. 
 
 dnction, he frankly raises the question whether, considering 
 the progress which culture has now made, there is any 
 longer occasion to maintain religious worship* in any form 
 whatever. Why, he asks, on behalf of a party in Germany, 
 for which he speaks, and for which he claims that it answers 
 most fully to the state of Modern Thought, should there be 
 a separate religious society at all, when we have already 
 provision made for all men in the State, the School, Science, 
 and Fine Art ? In his First Chapter he puts the question, 
 " Are we still Christians ? " t and, after a detailed examina- 
 tion, he concludes, — always speaking on behalf of Modern 
 Thought, — that if we wish our yea to be yea and our nay 
 nay, — if we are to think and speak our thoughts as honour- 
 able upright men, we must reply that we are Christians no 
 longer.J This question and answer, however, he observes 
 are insufficient. The essential and fundamental inquiry is, 
 whether we are or are not still to have a Religion ? § 
 
 To this inquiry he devotes his Second Chapter. In this 
 Second Chapter, he finds that there is no personal God ; || 
 there is no future state : the dead live in the recollection 
 of survivors : this is enough for them.^ After this he has 
 little difficulty in answering the question he has put. All 
 religious worship ought to be abolished.** The very name 
 of " Divine Service " is an indignity to man. Therefore, in 
 the sense in which religion has been heretofore understood, 
 his answer is that we ought to have no religion any more. 
 But proceeding, as he always does, with commendable frank- 
 ness, he admits that he ought to fill with something the void 
 which he has made. This he accordingly proceeds to do. 
 Instead of God, he offers to us the All, or Universum.tt This 
 AH or Universum possesses, he tells us, neither consciousness 
 
 * P. 7. t P. 12 and chap. i. J P. 94. 
 
 § Chap. ii. p. 95. j] See Illustrative Passages, B. 
 
 If P. 372. ** P. 144. ft P. 146.
 
 ADDRESS. 25 
 
 nor reason. But it presents to us order and law. He thinks it 
 fitted, therefore, to be tlie object of a new and true piety, which 
 he claims for his Universum, as the devout of the old style 
 did for their God. If any one repudiates this doctrine, to 
 Dr. Strauss's reason, the repudiation is absurdity, and to his 
 feelings blasphemy.* 
 
 These are not the ravings of a maniac ; nor are they the 
 mere dreams of an imaginative high-wrought enthusiast 
 such as Comtef appears to have been ; they are the grave 
 conclusions, after elaborate reasoning, of a learned, a calm, 
 and, so far as form is concerned, a sober-minded man, who 
 in this very year has been commended to us, in England, 
 by another Apostle of Modern Thought as one of the men to 
 whose guidance we ought, if we are wise, to submit ourselves 
 in matter of religious belief.:]: 
 
 I would not, gentlemen, even if I had the capacity 
 and the time, make an attempt from this plac^ to confute 
 these astonishing assertions; for I have no fear that by 
 their exhibition they will beguile or attract you. Neither 
 do I search for the hard names of controversy to describe 
 tliem ; for they best describe themselves. Neither can I 
 profess to feel an unmixed regret at their being forced, 
 thus eagerly and thus early, into notice ; because it is to 
 be hoped that they will cause a shock and a reaction, and 
 will compel many, who may have too lightly valued the 
 inheritance so dearly bought for them, and may have 
 entered upon dangerous paths, to consider, while there is 
 yet time, whither those paths will lead them. In no part of 
 his writings, perhaps, has Strauss been so effective, as where 
 he assails the inconsistency of those who adopt his premises, 
 but decline to follow him to their conclusions. Suffice it 
 
 * P. 146. t Illustrative Passages, C. 
 
 t Willis's ' Life of Spinoza,' p. 26, note. See Illustrative Passages, D,
 
 26 ADDRESS. 
 
 to say, these opinions are by no means a merely German 
 brood ; * there are many writers of kindred sympathies in 
 England, and some of as outspoken courage. But, in pre- 
 paring yourselves for the combat of life, I beg you to take 
 this also into your account, that the spirit of denial is abroad, 
 and that it has challenged all Keligion, but especially the 
 Eeligion we profess, to the combat of life and death. 
 
 But I venture to offer you a few suggestions, in the hope 
 that they may not be wholly without their use. 
 
 You will hear in your after-life much of the duty and 
 delight of following free thought; and in truth the man, 
 who does not value the freedom of his thoughts, deserves 
 to be described as Homer describes the slave; he is but 
 half a man.t Saint Paul, I suppose, was a teacher of free 
 thought, when he bade his converts to prove all things; J 
 but it seems he went terribly astray when he proceeded to 
 bid them " hold fast that w^hich is good ; " for he evidently 
 assumed that there was something by which they could 
 hold fast. And so he bade Timothy keep that which was 
 committed to his charge ; § and another Apostle has in- 
 structed us to ** earnestly contend for the faith which was 
 once delivered unto the saints." || But the free thought, 
 of which we now hear so much, seems too often to mean 
 thought roving and vagrant more than free; like Uelos, 
 in the ancient legend, drifting on the seas of Greece, without 
 a root, a direction, or a home. 
 
 Again, you will hear incessantly of the advancement of 
 the present age, and of the backwardness of those which 
 have gone before it. And truly it has been a wonderful 
 age ; but let us not exaggerate. It has been, and it is, an 
 age of immense mental, as well as material activity ; it 
 
 * See Illustrative Passages, E. f Odyss. x. 322. J 1 Thess. v. 21. 
 § 1 Tim. vi. 20. 11 Jude 3.
 
 ADDRESS. 27 
 
 is by no means an age abounding in minds of the first 
 order, in those whom time establishes as the great immortal 
 guides and teachers of mankind. It has tapped, as it were, 
 and made disposable for man, vast natural forces ; but the 
 mental power employed is not to be measured by the 
 mere size of the results. To perfect that wonder of travel, 
 the locomotive, has perhaps not required the expenditure 
 of more mental strength and application, than to perfect that 
 wonder of music, the violin. In the material sphere, the 
 achievements of the age are splendid and unmixed. In the 
 social sphere, they are great and noble ; but seem ever to be 
 confronted by a succession of new problems, which almost 
 defy solution. In the sphere of pure intellect, I doubt 
 whether posterity will rate us as highly as we rate our- 
 selves. But that which I most wish to observe is this, that 
 it is an insufferable arrogance in the men of any age to 
 assume what I may call airs of unmeasured superiority over 
 former ages. God, who cares for us, cared for them also. 
 In the goods of this world we may advance by strides ; but 
 it is by steps only and not strides, and by slow and not 
 always steady steps, that all durable improvement of man, 
 in the higher ranges of his being, is alone to be effected. 
 
 Again, my friends, you will hear much to the effect that 
 the divisions among Christians render it impossible to say 
 what Christianity is, and so destroy all certainty as to what 
 is the true religion. But if the divisions among Christians 
 are remarkable, not less so is their unity in the greatest doc- 
 trines that they hold. Well-nigh fifteen hundred years — 
 years of a more sustained activity than the world had ever 
 before seen — have passed away, since the great controversies 
 concerning the Deity and the Person of the Kedeemer 
 were, after a long agony, determined. As before that time 
 in a manner less defined, but adequate for their day, so ever 
 since that time, amid all chance and change, more, aye
 
 28 ADDKESS. 
 
 many more, than ninety-nine in every hundred Christians 
 have with one voice confessed the Deity and Incarnation 
 of our Lord as the cardinal and central truths of our 
 Keligion. Surely there is some comfort here, some sense 
 of brotherhood ; some glory due to the past, some hope for 
 the times that are to come. 
 
 On one, and only one, more of the favourite fallacies of 
 the day I will yet presume to touch. It is the opinion and 
 the boast of some that man is not responsible for his 
 belief. Lord Brougham was at one time stated to have 
 given utterance to this opinion. Whether truly, I do not 
 remember ; but this I know, it was my privilege to hear 
 from his own lips the needful and due limitation of that 
 proposition. " Man," he said, " is not responsible to man for 
 his belief." But as before God, one and the same law 
 applies to opinions and to acts ; or rather to inward and 
 to outward acts; for opinions are inward acts. Many a 
 wrong opinion may be guiltless because formed in ignorance, 
 and because that ignorance may not be our fault. But who 
 shall presume to say that there is no mercy for wrong 
 actions also, when they, too, have been due to ignorance, 
 and that ignorance has not been guilty ? The question is 
 not whether judgments and actions are in the same degree 
 influenced by the condition of the moral motives.* It is a 
 question of the principle, on which judgment is to be based. 
 
 If it is undeniable that self-love and passion have an in- 
 fluence upon both, then, so far as that influence goes, for 
 both we must be prepared to answer. Should we, in common 
 life, ask a body of swindlers for an opinion upon swindling ? 
 or of gamblers for an opinion upon gambling ? or of misers 
 upon bounty ? And if, in matters of religion, we allow pride 
 and perverseness to raise a cloud between us and the truth 
 
 * See Illustrative Passages, F.
 
 ADDRESS. 29 
 
 SO that we see it not, the false opinion that we form is but 
 the index of that perverseness and that pride, and both for 
 them, and for it as their offspring, we shall be justly held 
 responsible. Who may be the persons, upon whom this 
 responsibility will fall, it is not ours to judge. These laws 
 are given to us, not to apply presumptuously to others; 
 it is enough if we enforce them honestly against ourselves. 
 
 Next to a Christian life, my friends, you will find your 
 best defence against reckless novelty of speculation in 
 sobriety of temper, and in sound intellectual habits. Be 
 slow to stir inquiries, which you do not mean patiently 
 to pursue to their proper end. Be not afraid oftentimes to 
 suspend your judgment ; or to feel and admit to yourselves 
 how narrow are the boimds of knowledge. Do not too 
 readily assume that to us have been opened royal roads to 
 truth, which were heretofore hidden from the whole family of 
 man ; for the opening of such roads would not be so much in 
 favour, as caprice. If it is bad to yield a blind submission 
 to authority, it is not less an error to deny to it its 
 reasonable weight. Eschewing a servile adherence to the 
 past, regard it with reverence and gratitude ; and accept 
 its accumulations, alike in the inward and in the outward 
 spheres, as the patrimony, which it is your part in life both 
 to preserve and to improve. 
 
 A vote of thanks to Mr. Grladstone for the Address having 
 been carried, 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, in reply, said : — Mr. Chairman, Ladies and 
 Gentlemen, and my Friends of the College, I acknowledge 
 with sincere gratitude the thanks you have been good enough 
 to offer in a manner so pleasing to me ; and I feel that they 
 derive an additional value, not only from the kind remarks 
 of the chairman, and his reference to former times, but also 
 from the circumstance that the proposal was seconded by one
 
 30 ADDRESS. 
 
 whose name stands so high upon the roll of the benefactors 
 of this institution as our respected friend the Dean of 
 Chester. I can truly declare, gentlemen, that when the 
 Principal was good enough to propose to me that I should 
 undertake this office, I did not look upon it as a matter of 
 mere compliment or ceremony, but as one of very serious 
 duty ; and in that light it is that I have approached it, and 
 have endeavoured to perform it. Further, I must say that 
 it is always a source of pleasure to me to be called upon to 
 perform, or to feel myself able to perform — which is not 
 always the case — some act of public duty in Liverpool. I 
 find cause for gratification in everything which refreshes my 
 memory of the place, and strengthens my connection with it. 
 It is not unnatural that I should feel a strong interest in 
 Liverpool, where I have continually before me the recollec- 
 tion of my father, and where I also rejoice to know the 
 presence of my Brother ; nor is there any portion of the pro- 
 ceedings of this day which is more gratifying to my feelings 
 than the manner in which reference has been made to my 
 Brother, and the warmth of feeling with which that re- 
 ference has been received. I trust that the connection 
 between Liverpool and our family will long continue. Liver- 
 pool is, after all, but a very young place, when considered as 
 the seat of a great community ; but I see here some whose 
 names have been well known in its history almost ever since 
 it began to have one ; and I hope that, as time goes on, 
 Liverpool will have its old families like other places, famous 
 for commerce in other times and countries, and like other 
 districts of this country now. I know not why commerce in 
 England should not have its old families, rejoicing to be 
 connected with commerce from generation to generation. 
 It has been so in other countries : I trust it will be so in 
 this country. I think it a subject of sorrow, and almost a 
 scandal, when those families, which have either acquired or
 
 ADDRESS. 31 
 
 recovered station and opulence through commerce turn their 
 backs upon it, and seem to be ashamed of it. It certainly is 
 not so with my Brother or with me. His sons are treading 
 in his steps, and one of my sons, I rejoice to say, is treading 
 in the steps of my Father and my Brother. I hope, there- 
 fore, gentlemen, you will see that we are not unfaithful to 
 the cause, and to the place with which we have been so long 
 familiar. In the task I have discharged to-day, I have not 
 studied the arts of flattery. I have endeavoured to practise 
 that plain speaking which I know is dear to Englishmen, and 
 I trust it will be given to many of you whom I see now 
 before me upon the threshold of their life, to become an 
 ornament and an honour to this place, and to give a good 
 practical demonstration to the world that the pursuit of 
 commerce and the interests of human cultivation are not 
 alien from one another, but are, on the contrary, har- 
 moniously allied. (Loud applause.)
 
 ( 33 ) 
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES. 
 
 A.— p. 23. 
 Keligion and Science. 
 
 My reference is to Mr. Herbert Spencer. See his * First 
 Principles/ and especially the cliapter on the " Keconciliation 
 of Science and Keligion." It is needless to cite particular 
 passages. It would be difficult to mistake its meaning ; 
 for it is written with great ability and clearness, as well as 
 with every indication of sincerity. Still it vividly recalls 
 to mind an old story of the man who, wishing to be rid 
 of one who was in his house, said, " Sir, there are two sides 
 to my house, and we will divide them ; you slfe,ll take the 
 outside." 
 
 I believe Mr. Spencer has been described in one of our 
 daily journals as the first thinker of the age. 
 
 B.— p. 24 
 
 The Recent Work of Dr. Strauss. 
 
 These passages are given as specimens of the work of Dr. 
 Strauss, rather than as supplying the body of proof of the 
 propositions set forth in the text of the Address ; and I would 
 remind the reader that Dr. Strauss may protest against being 
 bound by a rendering into another language for which he is 
 not responsible, although I do not think any defects in the 
 translation will be found to affect the substance. 
 
 The '•' We " of Dr. Strauss in this work is not according to 
 the common editorial use of the pronoun, but is meant, as I 
 understand it, to mark the work throughout as the manifesto 
 ^A' a party.
 
 84 ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE EESURRECTION. 
 
 *' Seldom has an incredible occurrence been worse testified ; 
 never has one ill testified been intrinsically more incredible. 
 I have, in my * Life of Jesus,' appropriated to this subject a 
 searching scrutiny, which I will not here repeat. The upshot 
 of it alone I hold it to be my duty, as well as my riglit, to 
 declare without any sort of reserve. Viewed historically, that 
 is to say, when the prodigious results of this belief are taken 
 together with its total want of foundation, the narrative of 
 the Eesurrection of Jesus can only be described as a world- 
 wide humbug (weUhistorischer Humhug)." — p. 79. 
 
 II. 
 
 RELIGIOUS WORSHIP. 
 
 *' Why is it, then, that we ought to have no worship in 
 future ? Because we have broken loose from the other con- 
 stituent part of Religion, which is also the untrue and, in re- 
 lation to the sentiment of independence, the more ignoble part 
 of it — namely, the desire and the idea that, through our 
 worship, we may be enabled co extract something from our 
 God. We need only take the expression * Divine Service,' 
 and acquire a perception of the grovelling anthropopathism 
 it involves, in order to perceive how and for what reason any- 
 thing of that kind is no longer admissible from our point of 
 view." — p. 144. 
 
 III. 
 
 PIETY TOWARDS THE UNIVERSUM. 
 
 " We have been seeking to determine, whether our point 
 of view, from which the law-governed All, full of life and 
 intelligence, is the summit of thought (die hochste Idee), can 
 still be called a religious point of view : and we have anim- 
 adverted upon Schopenhauer, who loses no opportunity of
 
 ILLUSTEATIVE PASSAGES. 35 
 
 flying in the face of this which is our Idea. As I have said, 
 such outbreaks impress our understanding as absurdities ; to 
 our feelings, they are blasphemies. It appears to us rash and 
 reckless, on the part of a mere human individual, so boldly 
 to set himself up against the All, out of which he grows, and 
 from which he has the morsel of intelligence that he 
 misuses. We see in this an abnegation of that feeling of 
 dependence, which we admit to belong to all men. We 
 demand the same Piety towards our Universum, as the 
 devout man of the old fashion did for his God." — p. 146. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE BIBLE. 
 
 " Men think they understand the Bible, because they are 
 habituated to not understanding it. Moreover, the modern 
 reader brings to it as much edifying force as he derives from 
 it. Not even to mention books like the Kevelation of John, 
 and most of the Piophets of the Old Testament, surely it is 
 not meant to say that Lessing's * Nathan,' or Goethe's 
 * Hermann und Dorothea,' is harder to understand, or con- 
 tains fewer " saving truths," fewer golden sayings, than an 
 Epistle of Paul, or a discourse of Christ according to John." 
 —p. 299. 
 
 V. 
 
 THE FUTUKE STATE. 
 
 *• As regards the substitute, which our view of things offers 
 for the Church's belief in immortality, the reader may perhaps 
 expect from me a very lengthened explanation, but will 
 have to content himself with a very short one. He who in 
 this point cannot practise self-help, is not yet ready for our 
 standing-point. He for whom, on the one hand, it is not 
 enough to be allowed to vitalise within himself the ever- 
 lasting ideas of the Universum, and of the course of develop- 
 ment {EntwicUungsgang), and the destiny, appointed for
 
 36 ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES. 
 
 humanity ; he who knows not how to create within himself, 
 for the dead whom he loves and honours, a continuation of 
 life and action in its finest form (das schbnste Fortleben und 
 Fortwirhen) ; he in whom, together with exertion for his 
 family, witli labour in his calling, with contribution to the 
 welfare of his nation, as well as to the good of his fellow- 
 men at large, and with enjoyment of the Beautiful in Nature 
 and Art — he, I say, in whom, with all this there does not on 
 the other hand arise the consciousness, that he himself can only 
 be called to be a temporary partner in it all ; he who cannot 
 prevail upon himself, finally, to bid his adieu to life with 
 thankfulness for having been permitted for a time to act, to 
 enjoy, and also to suffer in unison with all this, and at the 
 same time with a devout sense of liberation from what, in the 
 long-run is, after all, but exhausting day-labour; such a 
 man, I say, we must remit to Moses and the Prophets ; who, 
 to boot, knew nothing of an immortal life, yet Moses and 
 the Prophets still they were." — p. 372. 
 
 (I have not ventured to tamper with the syntax of this 
 passage.) 
 
 C— p. 25. 
 
 The System of Comte. 
 
 Having given Comte credit for imagination, I must confess 
 that, I did not suppose him to be of " imagination all com- 
 pact," * but rather of imagination all diffuse. I had in view 
 his width of sympathies and disposition to sympathise, his 
 avowed regard for Veneration, his priesthood, his incorpora- 
 tion of the priestly vocation with the function of the poet, 
 his calendar, and his woman-worship, as he has developed 
 them in his ' Catechism of Positivism ' [I refer to the English 
 translation by Mr. Congreve], which he put forth as a sum- 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream,' v. 1.
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES. 37 
 
 mary of his previously published volumes, and an anticipation 
 of those which were to follow. (Preface, pp. 12, 87.) Strauss 
 appears to me to be indebted, in a certain degree, to Comte, 
 but to be rather shy of owning the acquaintance. 
 
 D.— p. 25. 
 Our Eeligious Guides. 
 
 I quote this passage from Willis's ' Life of Spinoza,' p. 26, 
 note : — 
 
 *' An entirely truthful and authoritative interpretation of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures is an imperative want of the age in 
 which we live, and has now become the first condition re- 
 quired to enable the world to escape from the slough of 
 superstition on the one hand, and irreligiousness on the other, 
 in which it is helplessly sunk, and is sinking more and more 
 deeply every day, despite the well-meant efforts of the pious 
 laity and zealous ministry of all denominations. We have 
 set authoritative beside truthful in the sentence above, for we 
 are possessed of even more than one perfectly truthful and 
 exhaustive, but of no authoritative interpretation of the 
 Hebrew Scriptures and Greek Testament ; neither can the 
 world at large have any such, until the hierarchies of the 
 Christian Churches agree to associate themselves with 
 Spinoza, Semler, Lessing, De Wette, Ewald, Strauss, Baur, 
 Kuenen, Keim, Kenan, and Colenso — critics and scholars 
 all, men of noble lives, clear heads, and pious souls, who, 
 from the fulness of their hearts and depths of their under- 
 standings, have spoken to their fellow-men in terms which 
 all might understand, but which ignorance, superstition, and 
 false direction prevent them from apprehending in their in- 
 appreciable worth and importance. Authority would indeed 
 seem indispensable to the mass of mankind ; but no holy 
 reunion of cultivated men for such a purpose is possible, 
 unless it be based on acknowledgment of the common father-
 
 38 ILLUSTRATIVE PASSAGES. 
 
 hood of God, and recognise the revelation He makes of His 
 being and attributes for all time, in no mere spoken words 
 or written records, but in the mind of man, the order of the 
 universe, and the great laws that, by His fiat, rule it neces- 
 sarily, changelessly, and everlastingly." 
 
 E.— p. 20. 
 
 I have made a statement that these ideas are not a mere 
 German brood ; though I fear that we owe much of their 
 seed to Germany, as France owed to England the seed of 
 her great Voltairian movement, so far as it was a movement 
 grounded in the region of thought. This statement, as it is 
 given in the text, I will support only by extracts from a 
 single writer, Mr. Winwood Eeade. They are taken from 
 his * Martyrdom of Man.' The three first bear upon creed. 
 I quote the fourth, with reference to the last of the three 
 inventions he desires and anticipates, as an instance of what 
 seems to me a want of sobriety of mind, exhibited in a 
 region where it will be better appreciated than if it bore 
 directly upon matters of religion. 
 
 It would have been easy to quote from other writers. 
 Perhaps, in sparing myself that task, I make the reference 
 to Mr. Reade more invidious. But my purpose is informa- 
 tion, not reproach. Happily we are not now as in the days 
 of Edward YI., when Philpot, who had himself taken what 
 were deemed considerable liberties with the established 
 religion, spat in the face of an Arian, and defending himself 
 in print, said : " I would I had a quantity of spittle to spattle 
 on them." 
 
 I must add that Mr. Eeade writes with an ability amply 
 sufficient to defend him from wrong. 
 
 I. 
 " When the faith in a personal God is extinguished ; when 
 prayer and praise are no longer to be heard ; when the
 
 ILLUSTHATIVE PASSAGES. 39 
 
 belief is universal that with the body dies the soul ; then 
 the false morals of theology will no longer lead the human 
 mind astray."—' The Martyrdom of Man,' p. 535. 
 
 II. 
 
 '' We teach that the soul is immortal ; we teach that 
 there is a future life ; we teach that there is a Heaven in 
 the ages far away; but not for us single corpuscles, not 
 for us dots of animated jelly, but for the One of whom we 
 are the elements, and who though we perish never dies." — 
 p. 537. 
 
 III. 
 
 '* God is so great that He does not deign to have personal 
 relations with us human atoms that are called men. Those 
 who desire to worship their Creator must worship Him 
 through mankind. Such, it is plain, is the scheme of 
 Nature."— p. 537. 
 
 IV. 
 
 " Three inventions, which perhaps may long be delayed, 
 but which possibly are near at hand, will give to this over- 
 crowded island the prosperous conditions of the United 
 States. The first is the discovery of a motive force which 
 will take the place of steam, with its cumbrous fuel of oil 
 and coal ; secondly, the invention of aerial locomotion, which 
 will transport labour at a trifling cost of money and of time, 
 to any part of the planet, and which, by annihilating dis- 
 tance, will speedily extinguish national distinctions; and 
 thirdly, the manufacture of flesh and flour from the 
 elements, by a chemical process in the laboratory similar 
 to that which is now performed within the bodies of the 
 animals and plants." — p. 513.
 
 40 ILLUSTEATIVE PASSAGES. 
 
 F.— p. 28. 
 AUTHORITY IN ITS RELATION TO REASON. 
 
 The general subject of Authority, and its place not as an 
 antagonist of Reason, but as an instrument of Reason for the 
 attainment of Truth, is very ably handled in the opening 
 cliRpters of the work of Sir George C. Lewis, * On the In- 
 fluence of Authority in Matters of Opinion.' 
 
 Though I am not able to follow him in every one of his 
 applications of the principle, I could wish his reasonings 
 were better known to the world than, unfortunately, they 
 can now be, from the extreme scarcity of the work. 
 
 He remarks, in p. 35, "It is commonly said that the belief 
 is independent of the will," and that no man can change it 
 " by merely wishing it to be otherwise." But " the operation 
 of a personal interest may cause a man insensibly to adopt 
 prejudices or partial and unexamined opinions." In p. 38 
 he adds, " Napoleon affords a striking instance of the cor- 
 ruption of the judgment in consequence of the misdirection 
 of the moral sentiments." 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, DUKE STKEET, STAMFOKD STXEKT, 
 AND CHARING CUOS.",
 


 
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