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 THE POSITION & RIGHTS OF TRAINING 
 COLLEGES EXPLAINED & DEFENDED. 
 
 AN 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED TO 
 
 THE STUDENTS OF THE WESTMINSTER AND 
 SOUTHLANDS TRAINING COLLEGES, 
 
 On Wednesday, February Ist, 1882, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 EEV. DE. EIGG, 
 
 PBINCIPAL OF THE WESTMINSTER TRAINING COLLEGE. 
 
 PRESENTED BY THE WESLEYAN EDUCATION COMMITTEE. 
 
 Am
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 To the Students of the Westmimter and Southlands Training Colleges, 
 delivered on February 1st, 1882, in the Bfittersea Wesleyan Chapel. 
 
 BY THE. 
 
 REV. JAMES H. RIGG, D.D., 
 
 PRINCIPAL OF THE WESTMINSTER TRAINING COLLEGE. 
 
 Former Addresses. The Past Thirty Years. 
 
 My dear YOUNG Friends, 
 The Addresses which, during the last thirty years, have been de- 
 livered by successive Principals at the opening of each year of College 
 study, have dealt with almost all points of principle affecting the Teacher's 
 character and work, and also with the gravest points relatiiTg to the aims 
 and government of these Colleges, and their connection, on the one 
 hand, with the Church that founded them, and on the other, with the 
 nation and the State for the sake of "which they were founded. We have 
 thought it desirable to take successive generations of students into our 
 confidence as to such governing questions as I have now indicated, that 
 our students might understand for what purpose and by what right they 
 are at College, and that we might also keep up, by means of these 
 gatherings, our communications with the body of teachers who have in 
 former years been trained in these Institutions, and with the Methodist 
 public also, which established them, and which has for so many yearf< 
 continued to them, not only a steadfast moral support, but that financial 
 aid without which they could not have been maintained. 
 
 Hence it has happened that the series of Inaugural Addresses to which 
 I have referred, begun thirty years ago by that wise and good man, the 
 Kev. John Scott, and in which, besides myself, Mr. Olver has taken a part 
 — as hereafter we may expect Mr. Bate to bear his share — has furnished 
 a sort of reflection, if not sometimes almost a chronicle, of the chang- 
 ing conditions under which the work of co-operating with the State in 
 the education of the people has been carried on by the Christian Churches 
 of the land. For a few years, indeed, between 1868 and 1872, the
 
 necessity of dealing with the controversial aspects of our great work 
 gave colour and character to all our public occasions. 
 
 It was a pleasing change to me when — after five anxious years — I found 
 myself able, nine years ago, to lose sight of controversies, and to select 
 as the subject of my Address that which must always be a fundamental 
 topic here — "the religious element in Christian Day-schools." Since 
 that time, in alternate years, as my turn has come to address the assembled 
 students of the Colleges, it has not only been my pride and pleasure, 
 now and again, to illustrate the eminent merits and success of our own 
 Day-schools, as a class, among the competing schools of the kingdorii, 
 but I have felt it to be especially congenial and appropriate to deal with 
 the higher and larger aspects of the educational question, sometimes in 
 its relation at once to our own Church and to the national well-being, at 
 other times in its relations to Christian principle and character, alike in 
 the College and during the College course, as respects the student, and 
 also in the actual life-work of the teacher in his school, and in connection 
 with the living Church to which he and his school belong. 
 
 In the year 1878, it was mine " a double debt to pay," by delivering 
 both the Inaugural Address, in my turn, and the Valedictory Address, 
 in my capacity of President of the Conference for the time being. In 
 the course of the Inaugural Address it became my unpleasing duty to 
 expose the injustice of two of Her Majesty's Inspectors. The unfair 
 severity of one Inspector oppressed and unjustly mulcted almost all the 
 schools of a great and wealthy and educationally advanced city, the 
 second city of the empire, reducing that city lower in its relative position 
 and in its educational grants than* any other town or almost any other 
 region in England, however poor or neglected that other town or region 
 might be. The prejudice of the other Inspector led him to libel 
 Wesleyan schools as a class, and to deal harshly with those which came 
 within the scope of his own authority. It was my good fortune to be' 
 'able in that Address to prove by undeniable evidence that Wesleyan 
 Day-schools, as a class, are superior, according to every recognized test 
 of success and superiority, to any other class of inspected elementary 
 schools in the kingdom— a conclusion which has since been confirmed 
 by the distinctly tabulated returns of results and of grants in successive 
 Government Eeports, or Blue Books, and was^ frankly and in the kind- 
 liest way recognized by the Vice-President of the Committee of Privy 
 (Council, not many weeks ago, in an interview which some of us had with 
 him. And it is a satisfaction to know that such instances of harsh-ness 
 as those to which I then had occasion to refer are rare exceptions in the 
 experience of teachers, and, in particular, that bigoted injustice to our 
 schools, as such, is a thing now almost unknown. Indeed, I cannot but 
 believe that at all times such instances of personal prejudice as that 

 
 3 
 
 unhappy one to which I have referred have been very " tew and far 
 between." The name of the Inspector particularly concerned is no longer 
 among the living, and it may be that ill health had something to do with 
 the unhappy spirit which he showed. It is, at all events, satisfactory to 
 learn that plans are being matured at the Privy Council Office which, 
 Ave may fairly hope, will in future make it impossible for any one In- 
 spector to establish anything like a reign of terror or of caprice in his 
 particular district. There can hardly be better security against any such 
 evil than the collective experience and the impartiality, as a body, of Her 
 Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. 
 
 If it was a pleasure in that Inaugural Address of 1878 to vindicate 
 the character and position of Wesleyan Schools, and to show them stand- 
 ing on an eminence from which, as yet, they have not been dislodged, it 
 was far from pleasant that so much of what I felt bound to say should 
 be of the nature of complaints respecting the conduct of individuals. 
 It was much more congenial in the Valedictory Address of the same 
 year to speak, in the highest and largest sense, of National Education, 
 as related to the condition and needs of England : and, especially, to 
 speak of the Teacher's duty at the present time to his country and to 
 Christ in this matter of National Education. And, above all, it was 
 with a feeling of special satisfaction that I was able, two years ago, in 
 my Inaugural Address, to follow throughout a purely professional — I 
 might almost say a purely Professorial— line, and to offer expositions of 
 principle and counsels in relation to College work and the proper aim 
 and spirit of the student, all of which bore directly on the studies and 
 the specific aims of students during the term of their residence within 
 the Training Colleges. That Address contains truths which seem to me 
 of primary importance for every student and ev^ery teacher to bear in 
 mind, and arrangements have been made that it may be permanently 
 available for the use of those for whose sake it was prepared. 
 
 The Threatening Question of the Moment. 
 Now, however, it becomes necessary once more to defend the bul- 
 warks of our educational position against assailants who, on the principles 
 of secularism, scarcely or not at all disguised, are renewing the attack 
 which, ten years ago and more, was so signally defeated ; but this time, 
 instead of attacking our Schools directly, as Schools of definitely Chris- 
 tian teaching, are attacking our Training Colleges. Last year Mr. Olver 
 in his Inaugural Address struck the warning note. Of the ability and 
 force of Mr. Olver's impressive argument on this subject I need not say 
 anything. I have now my own duty to perform according to my ability. 
 The attack already threatened a year ago has been formally delivered 
 during the year, especially by a powerful party on the London School 
 
 B 2
 
 Board. An opportunity for forcing open the Training Colleges to receive 
 students of any creed or of no creed was supposed to be afforded by the 
 issue from Board Schools during the last few years of pupil teachers 
 who, it appears to be presumed, because they have been trained in 
 undenominational schools, cannot profess any form of Christian faith. 
 This, at any rate, seems to be the pretext alleged ; and an agitation on 
 this basis has been zealously worked up. 
 
 I have, however, confidence enough in a cause at once so good and so 
 plain, not to have any doubt as to the issue. We have survived the 
 secularist agitation of ten years ago, with its serried ranks and its formid- 
 able revenue — its subscribed tens of thousands of pounds — and we shall 
 not be worsted in this struggle. Our case, indeed, is even plainer and 
 stronger on behalf of our Training Colleges to-day than it was against 
 the agitation of 1870 — with its claim for education, secular, compulsory, 
 and free. 
 
 The Scope of the following Argument. 
 
 Before I sit down this morning I hope to have dealt.with this subject 
 thoroughly. I shall try to cover the whole breadth of the case, and to 
 indicate the principles on which any real difficulties in the problem we 
 are to consider may be solved. I cannot, however, pretend to deal 
 discursively and particularly with every suggestion, more or less bearing 
 upon the subject, which may have been made in any quarter. I shall 
 confine myself chiefly to these lines of discussion — though not always in 
 this order — viz., the demand made by the leaders of the movement, so 
 far as it would affect these Colleges of Westminster and Southlands, the 
 general reasons alleged for seeking a fundamental change in the admin- 
 istration of Training Colleges, the actual character and dimensions of 
 that which is alleged as the present grievance, the principles of adminis- 
 tration by which alone the high character and true efficiency of our 
 Colleges can be maintained, the existing rights, both legal and 
 equitable, of the Training Colleges of the country, the relation of 
 the Colleges to the Government and to National Education, and 
 the sort of Training Colleges which would be required, logically 
 to meet the case of the class of candidates on whose behalf, at least 
 in its extreme form, the new agitation is raised. My object is 
 to go to the root of the matter, to show what is meant on the one hand, 
 and what is needed on the other, and what points of principle those are 
 which the Colleges cannot afford to give up, as well as the strength of 
 the position which our Colleges at present occupy before the Government 
 and the country. And in all this I must deal explicitly with the root- 
 principle of secularist aggression which lies really at the bottom of the 
 present agitation, and which makes it, so far as it prevails, of pernicious 
 tendency, although it is plausibly disguised under forms of statement
 
 which might easily mislead the inexperienced or the unwary. Purporting 
 to be merely unsectarian, the demand made will be seen to be really 
 secularist. And not a few have been led to lend it more or less support, 
 as set before them in general terms, who, if its true character were 
 apprehended, would have no sympathy with it. 
 
 The Demand Made. 
 
 It is difficult to put the plea of the assailants with whom we have to 
 deal into any form which bears even the semblance of an argument. We 
 know, in general, what they want us to do ; they want us to receive into 
 our Colleges, built as they have been at the cost of the respective 
 Churches— and settled as they are on Church trusts — they demand that 
 we Wesleyans should receive into these our two Colleges — which have 
 cost us, first and last, more than £100,000 — any pupil teachers who may 
 desire to resort to us for training, whatever may be their disposition, or 
 character, or creed, on the sole ground of their ha^dng passed the Govern- 
 ment examinations ; and to give them preference one over or one after 
 the other in accordance with the order in which they appear in the 
 Government lists, no other consideration, unless it be one of health, being 
 allowed to weigh — or, at all events, no religious or moral consideration 
 being allowed to weigh. These Wesley an Colleges accordingly might, 
 according to these claims, be filled up with a medley of stifdents of all 
 denominations besides our own and of no denomination — they could not 
 refuse to receive infidel or agnostic students within their walls. 
 
 The First Plea. 
 
 This is the demand. Now for the reasons, which had need be very 
 strong indeeH, on which the promoters of this new agitation rely in 
 making such a demand. They tell us — I will take one point at a time — 
 that the Board School element in the school-system of the nation, being 
 a new and leading element, a corresponding change is needed in the pro- 
 vision and management of Training Colleges. Let us look, then, at this 
 point. Board Schools, with an insignificant number of exceptions, are 
 Bible schools, and strongly resemble, in their general character as schools 
 of moral training, the schools of the British and Foreign School Society. 
 One would have thought that the Training Colleges of that Society would 
 have closely corresponded with the requirements in general of such Board 
 School pupil teachers as might not desire to enter denominational Train- 
 ing Colleges. No denominational test is required in those Colleges ; a 
 fair moral character, a general Christian profession, habitual attendance 
 at a place of worship — these are all the tests, over and above professional 
 ability, demanded from the students of these Insfitutions. Homerton
 
 6 
 
 College, alsOj answers to the same general description. Since the School 
 Board system was established, two new Colleges of this class have been 
 founded, and the accommodation afforded by the others — by those of this 
 class which had been previously established — has been increased. If it 
 can be shown that, to meet the permanent necessity of the country, and, 
 in particular, fully to satisfy the permanent requirements of the Board 
 School system, there should be a still farther enlargement of the provision 
 for training furnished by this class of Training Colleges, it would be 
 reasonable to promote a movement to secure this end. Such a movement 
 would directly meet the want complained of, while it would not involve 
 any interference with Colleges, like our own, which are greatly too small 
 to meet the immediate demands of our own denomination, and which, 
 such being the case, it would be an unexampled iniquity to compel to 
 shut out those students for whose sake they were founded, in order to let 
 in ethers for whom they were never intended, and in so doing also to 
 break down the whole original plan and purpose of the founders — and 
 that within little more than thirty years of the founding of the earlier, 
 and within scarcely ten years of the founding of the later — of the Colleges. 
 Such a movement, I say — a movement for enlarging the present provision 
 of undenominational Christian Training Colleges — would seem to be the 
 natural remedy for the deficiency complained of, if the deficiency is real 
 and is likely to be anything more than a temporary want. But what is 
 demanded on behalf of the new agitation is not that one or more addi- 
 tional undenominational Colleges shall be provided, or the existing ones 
 enlarged; it is that the Christian family character of all Training 
 Colleges shall be broken down, their trust deeds violated, and the faith 
 of the Government broken with the Churches of the land. 
 
 The Actual Characteb and Dimensions of the New Want. 
 But let us look a little more closely into the alleged reason for the 
 demand thus set up. A large number of undenominational schools have 
 been created ; it is therefore assumed that there must have been an 
 influx, in equal proportion, of pupil teachers into the profession who 
 object to denominational or to distinctively Christian Training Colleges. 
 But how surprising an assumption have we here ! Do none but the 
 children of creedless parents, brought up in a creedless home, frequent 
 Board Schools ? Are all, or are the great majority, of pupil teachers in 
 Board Schools, such children of such parents, as would reject the Apo- 
 stles' Creed, and every creed, as abhor Catechisms of every sort, whether . 
 Church of England, or Presbyterian, or Wesleyan, as would object to 
 family worship, or to public Bible reading, or to any common form of 
 prayer ? These questions need no answer. The teachers of Board Schools 
 are in the great majority of instances attached to Christian Churches, 
 although their schools are undenominational. There is reason to believe
 
 that the largest proportion of them are members of the Church of Eng- 
 land ; hundreds of them — hundreds not a few — are, we know, Methodist ; 
 very many of them are devout and consistent Nonconformists. The vast 
 majority of the parents of the pupil teachers also, there can be no doubt, 
 are either distinctly attached themselves to Christian congregations, or 
 at least desire that their children should receive distinct religious instruc- 
 tion, and should find in the Colleges to which they resort strict and well- 
 ordered Christian homes. Hence ev^ery year hundreds of Board School 
 pupil teachers are sent by preference, either through the influence of 
 their head teachers, or from the choice of their parents, or for both rea- 
 sons, to Church of England Training Colleges ; hence scores apply for 
 admission to our Colleges — to AVestminster and Southlands — besides 
 those that throng the access to the undenominational Christian Colleges 
 to which I have referred, to Borough Koad and Stock well, and Homer- 
 ton, and Darlington, and Bangor. And many of these pupil teachers 
 seek to enter these Colleges — I refer now especially to the denominational 
 Training Colleges, such as our own — to those which have a distinctive 
 Church character — precisely because they are such Colleges, because they 
 have a distinctive Church character, because they are strict and select 
 and guarded, because the College arrangements and internal life are 
 founded upon a definite basis of Christian faith and Christian influence, 
 I know the truth of this assertion so far as relates to Westminster and 
 Southlands. On the other hand, if it were possible to sift out of tte 
 multitude of candidates from all quarters who come up in successive 
 summers for examination all those whose parents would desire for them 
 a College where no basis of Christian faith was recognized, where no 
 rule of public worship was required or observed, where the internal life 
 and routine of the College were inlaid in no habit and order of family 
 consecration or religious consciousness whatever — where all, in fact, that 
 any one could see or hear in the way of College duty or routine was 
 mere secularity, I wonder what fractional proportion these unfortunate 
 students would bear to the rest. They would be absolutely insignificant 
 in number — nor can the utmost charity believe that in personal character, 
 in educational influence, in adaptation for the nation's work, these few' 
 would, on an average, possess such superiority as to require that 
 special public provision should be made to meet the needs of so small a 
 class, or that they would possess any superiority whatever. They would 
 be very few, and they would, I make bold to say, be on general grounds 
 for the most part unsuitable for the work of teaching. 
 
 And yet it is in reality for the sake of this class, and of this alone, 
 that the new demand is made of which I speak. For those who prefer 
 strictly denominational Colleges — the majority, be it remembered — such 
 Colleges are provided ; for those who, not desiring to enter Church of
 
 8 
 
 England or Wesleyan Training Colleges, nevertheless feel the need of a 
 Christian College-home, founded on the general basis of Scriptural faith 
 and worship, there are the undenominational Christian Colleges ; the 
 class at present unprovided are the deliberately non-Christian class, and 
 that alone. For the sake of this special class, and this extremely small 
 class, it is proposed to trample down the Christian character of all 
 existing institutions. 
 
 It is to dimensions so small, it is to a form so little entitled to move 
 our sympathy, that the alleged claim is reduced, the claim on behalf of 
 which it is proposed to make so fatal an inroad upon the organization 
 and management of our Training Colleges. Surely our analysis of the 
 case has shown that no such change in the character of candidates for 
 training or the relations of candidates to our Colleges has been intro- 
 duced by the creation of the Board School element as can warrant the 
 demand for a revolution in our present College system, or, indeed, for 
 any interference whatever with the existing relations between these 
 Colleges and the classes of students for the sake of whom they were 
 founded and have hitherto been maintained. 
 
 Another Form of the New Demand. 
 
 •But it is well to try every aspect of the case under which the new 
 claim is urged upon our attention. We have analysed one fallacious 
 form of the secularist plea ; let us proceed to examine another form of 
 words in which the same demand is involved which we have already ex- 
 amined under one aspect. The variation of form may appear to be 
 slight, but it will suggest another view of the matter, and our refutation 
 of the plea under this second form will disclose further reasons for 
 maintaining the existing status and rights of our Colleges. The demand, 
 then, is sometimes stated in this form. It is said, " the country has 
 decided to have undenominational Board Schools, and it is inconsistent 
 not to have correspondingly undenominational Training Colleges." 
 What is alleged here is not that certain classes of candidates must be 
 provided for. A higher ground of argument is affected — the claim is not 
 so much one of pressing need as of fundamental principle. I have, 
 indeed, already shown incidentally that, if the force of the argument 
 were admitted, a suitable and really correspondent provision of un- 
 denominational Colleges is already made, and could, if necessary, be 
 extended. Indeed, the analogy between the existing provision of public 
 3lementary schools and the existing provision of Training Colleges is 
 /ery close. The public elementary school system of the nation includes 
 lenominational schools and also undenominational schools, nearly all of 
 which are either Board Schools or British Schools. So the Training 
 College system includes denominational Training Colleges and un-
 
 denominational Training Colleges. Nor can it be pretended that, while 
 the undenominational Colleges are inadequate to meet the needs of the 
 time, the denominational Colleges are too large. On the contrary, the 
 denominational Colleges are now, and have for years past been, far too 
 small to receive the crowds who seek to enter them. If larger undenomina- 
 tional provision is needed, so is also larger denominational provision. 
 And if the denominational Colleges are likely after a while to be found 
 large enough, because of the supply of candidates falling ofE in a few 
 years, the same will equally hold good of the undenominational Colleges 
 as I shall presently show. 
 
 Essential Difference Between the Case of Day-schools 
 
 AND Training Colleges. 
 But at this point I wish to dispute altogether the claim to infer that 
 the same principles are to obtain in regard to the character, denomina- 
 tional or otherwise, of children's day-schools and of residentiary Training 
 Colleges for young men and women. The day-scholars, besides their 
 school Bible-lessons, have their homes. If their homes are such as the 
 wise and good would wish — and therefore such as Training Colleges 
 ought to be — there will be in those homes Christian influence and family 
 worship. Such, at all events, have been, and are likely still to be, the 
 homes from which the pupil-teachers of best character and influence 
 come, seeking to enter Training Colleges. There will also b*e the Sunday 
 services and the Sunday-school — all the sacred influences of the blessed 
 day. These things supplement the day-school ; they constitute the 
 surroundings of domestic and social training and influence in which the 
 Day-school and its training are inframed and come to be inwoven. 
 But the Training College is to be to the student, at the most critical and 
 most formative period of his life, all that both the Day-school and the 
 home are to the young child. If the best results are to be obtained, it 
 should be at once a higher school, and, as far as possible, a nobly-inspired 
 and perfectly-ordered home. It may be impossible to reach this ideal — 
 but this is our ideal ; it is the ideal, I do not fear to say, which we aim at 
 in these Colleges. If to some that come to them these Colleges prove to 
 be but a hard and inferior substitute for their homes, that is not the ex- 
 perience of all. Not a few have learnt in them lessons of high principle, 
 of true refinement, of Christian steadfastness and elevation, such as have 
 made the Colleges to their memories and hearts through life take ranlv 
 as true Christian homes. But can this be done — can it be even aimed 
 at — on any other basis than that of Christian faith and fellowship ? Here 
 the analogy between Day-schools and Training Colleges utterly breaks 
 down. Surely the experience of the London School Board, even in the 
 matter of industrial schools, must have taught all its members who are
 
 10 
 
 capable of learning anything, thai a boarding-school cannot be undenom- 
 inational in the same sense in which a Board Day-school may be. And 
 if religious faith and influence are necessary to reform and rightly to 
 train for after life a young rebel of nine or ten years, they are no less 
 necessary to meet the deepest needs, to satisfy the yearnings, to mould 
 and fix the character for life's best ends, to furnish guidance and inspira- 
 tion for the onset and struggle of life, in the case of young souls which, 
 at the most critical period of their existence, come to these Colleges to be 
 fitted and disciplined and piloted before they sail forth into the wide sea 
 of the future. It is singularly weak, therefore, to attempt an inference 
 from the case of undenominational Day-schools to that of non-religious 
 Training Colleges. I say non-religious, for our Colleges must be either 
 Christian homes and families, or else without worship and without re- 
 ligion. Nor is there any place for a Government Conscience Clause in a 
 Christian Training College. 
 
 The Tables Turned. The Real Demand op School Boabds. 
 
 But it is not only on the side we have been considering that the case 
 of this new secularist demand breaks down. If the pupil teachers and 
 their parents do not desire the country to be furnished with Training 
 Colleges that recognize no faith and dispense with all religious forms, on 
 the other hand, neither do the School Boards themselves seek for teachers 
 who have been trained in institutions where religion has no recognized 
 place. They do not object to such institutions as Borough Road, or 
 Stockwell, or Darlington as too religious, as not sufficiently liberal or 
 free ; on the contrary, they not seldom seek their teachers by preference 
 from among those who have been trained at denominational Training 
 Colleges. It is notorious that the Colleges of the Church of England not 
 only supply the very numerous schools of their own Church with teachers, 
 but send a very large contingent into Board Schools. No one, I think, 
 who possesses a fair share of information or experience as to this point, 
 would be surprised to learn that the largest proportion of Board School 
 teachers have been trained in Church Training Colleges, and that those 
 Colleges send every year a larger number of students into Board Schools 
 than any other class of Colleges. I do not pretend to be able to prove 
 that this is so, but I have very little doubt that it is. Then certainly Ave 
 have no reason to complain in these Colleges of a want of appreciation on 
 the part of School Boards. Southlands College was established very 
 much with a view to enable our Connexion to train teachers, not only for 
 our own schools, but for Board Schools. And our teachers and outgoing- 
 students seem to be in good request for the service of Board Schools. 
 Each year at least one-half of our number find a welcome into such 
 schools. On what ground then — may we not ask with continually
 
 11 
 
 increasing amazement — is it demanded that the existing Christian 
 Training Colleges of this comitry should be secularised ? 
 
 The Enoemity of the Demand. 
 
 So long, indeed, as our present Training Colleges, being conducted in 
 accordance with their own Trust-deeds, and with the requirements of the 
 Government, have many more candidates seeking for admission from 
 within their own respective denominations, and by the free choice and 
 preference of their parents, than can possibly be taken in, I confess my- 
 self at a loss to conceive with what slightest consciousness or pretext of 
 reason it can be demanded that the terms of entrance shall be altered in 
 order to admit candidates for the sake of whom the Colleges were not 
 built, and whose admission would be contrary to the Trust-deeds of the 
 foundations. The recorded intentions of the respective Churches in 
 making large outlays of money, the binding and solemn character of 
 deeds and covenants, I should have expected to count at least for 
 something, even in the view of secularist theorists as to national educa- 
 tion. But the demand with which I am dealing treats these things as 
 absolutely nothing. It regards all these Colleges, with all their histories, 
 with all the appeals to public beneficence which have been made on be- 
 half of them, notwithstanding the many hundreds of thousands of pounds 
 which they have cost the Christian bodies that founded them, and have 
 not only managed them for the State, but in part also supported them, 
 for so many years past, and notwithstanding the solemn deeds and 
 instruments of law by which their relations with the State have, with 
 Parliamentary approval, been defined and determined — the demand made, 
 I say, regards all these Colleges as common property, as destitute of all 
 rights or equities whatever — as belonging as much to the London School 
 Board as to t^e Christian Churches or communities, or any of them, by 
 which they were founded, to which by law they belong, and by which 
 they have hitherto been managed. 
 
 The simple fact is that no anti-denominational School Board pupil 
 teacher, objecting to all religious tests or examinations, and objecting to 
 any requirement of public worship, whether in the family or in church or 
 chapel — no such pupil teacher could — to meet the demands of this secu- 
 larist agitation — be admitted into Westminster or Southlands College 
 without excluding, to make way for him, some other candidate, being a 
 Wesleyan, and his friends beingWesleyans, who desires to enter the College 
 and conform to its rules, and who would count it a cruel hardship and 
 wrong to be obliged to find a home in any other than a distinctly religious 
 College, and without giving him precedence over other eligible Wesleyan 
 candidates for admission now unable to enter, merely for want of room. 
 What is demanded of us her is that we should exclude the children of
 
 12 
 
 our own people from these institutions, in order to admit pupil teachers 
 who will have nothing to do with Methodism — nay, in order to admit, if 
 they should demand it, pupil teachers who have no faith at all in God 
 or Christ, no faith whatever in religion or in any Divine law of morals. 
 
 If, indeed, our Colleges — I am speaking just now of our own exclu- 
 sively — could not obtain a full supply of candidates from the ranks of 
 the Church to which they belong — we have a provision in our trust-deeds 
 which enables us to fill up our vacant space by the admission of other 
 than Wesleyan students. The Managing Committee, however, in select- 
 ing eligible candidates to make up our number, would, above all things, 
 have a respect to suitableness of Christian character. Those only would 
 be admitted who could accept our fundamental conditions, as a Christian 
 institution, in respect to family and public worship and personal con- 
 duct. 
 
 The peculiarity, however, of the present agitation is that, at a time 
 when the Churches have nothing like room enough in their Colleges for 
 their own proper candidates — when they have to leave them outside by 
 hundreds year after year — it is demanded of us that we should have no 
 respect whatever to the requirements of our denominations, to the claims 
 of our own pupil teachers, to the covenants of our trust-deeds, to the 
 purposes for which hundreds of thousands of pounds have been given out 
 of voluntary funds ;x but should receive into our Colleges all candidates, 
 without respect of persons, who may think good to patronize us, giving 
 them precedence simply in accordance with the order in which their names 
 appear on the Government list after they have passed their Midsummer 
 written examinations. Their paper-work pass is to be their sole and all- 
 sufficient qualification and guarantee as candidates — is to be their 
 peremptory title as postulants — seeking, or rather demanding, admission 
 to our Colleges. 
 
 The Demand does Violence to Educational Science, as well as 
 
 TO Common Justice. 
 As to the monstrous nature of such a demand in regard to such 
 Colleges — as to the flagrant affront which it puts not only upon actual 
 law rights, but upon all considerations of equity, I can hardly have said 
 too much, but I do not need to say more. But the demand is not less 
 contrary to the principles of educational science and the lessons of expe- 
 rience than to the rights of Churches. To make the acceptance of 
 a candidate — to make his merits and claims — depend directly and solely 
 on the results of his paper- work, of his written examinations, is a sugges- 
 tion worthy only of the most inexperienced and inconsiderate sciolism ; 
 even a mere abstract theorist, of any knowledge or intellectual grasp, 
 would have been wiser than to make such a suggestion. What is wanted
 
 13 
 
 in a school teacher is not so mucli the power to write a clear and good 
 paper — it is the power to teach and influence and train — to teach and 
 influence and train young children. A candidate may be of first-rate 
 ability in paper-work, and quite wanting in all the essential gifts and in 
 the trained habits which make the genuine teacher. Mental qualities 
 are tested by the paper-work ; but moral qualities, much more than 
 mental, make the teacher — indeed, I may say that certain moral qualities 
 quite apart from any special mental brightness or force, directly define and 
 characterize the teacher. Given these qualities combined with any ordinary 
 intelligence, and you will have a teacher — one who can teach well all he 
 knows, and who can govern and mould, influence and train his scholars. 
 These, then, are the qualities by which the true teacher is marked out ; and 
 these, as I have said, are not revealed in the results of Government 
 examinations. What are these qualities P Do we not all know that they 
 are such as these — kindly patience, intellectual and moral both at 
 once, intellectual patience springing out of moral patience, true sympathy 
 with honest, humble effort, the effort of children trying to learn or to 
 do, and especially of dull, or blundering, or hasty but true-hearted 
 children, self-forgetting singleness of purpose, grudging neither time nor 
 pains to quicken and form the mind and character of the scholar, how- 
 ever much one's own intellectual studies or luxuries of scholarly enjoy- 
 ment and advancement may be interfered with ? These are some of the 
 qualities which make the true teacher. But can any 5ne of these be 
 discovered and appraised by means of paper-work ? On the contrary, is 
 not the quick, clear, rapid learner who makes the best figure in the 
 Government paper-work, sometimes far too impatient of another's slow- 
 ness, and far too eager to push forward his own studies, to make a 
 thorough or self-sacrificing — or, in short, a really good — teacher ? Onl}^ 
 those who, like the Great Teacher, are "meek and lowly of heart," belong 
 to the class of model teachers. 
 
 Our Present Mode of Examining. 
 
 Now, it is one of the responsibilities — and one of the chief cares — of 
 the Committee of Management of a Training College — I am speaking 
 now from many years' experience at Westminster — to endeavour to dis- 
 cover how far the candidates who come before them — and they have a 
 personal interview with each one — possess these more fundamental and 
 really higher qualities of a teacher of which I have spoken. The mere 
 fact that the candidate has been a pupil teacher of itself goes for very 
 little as to this question. What the Committee has to look to is — to 
 begin with — the testimony from the head teacher, the school committee, 
 and the minister as to these points. The question of his Christian 
 character and experience has also a direct and very vital bearing upon
 
 14 
 
 them. Even the books in his book-list may reveal something. The 
 answers given to the questions put by the Committee — the personal 
 bearing of the candidate, both before the Committee and at other times 
 during his stay of some days in the College and his closer intercourse 
 with the Principal and Vice-Principal — these things put together form a 
 sum of evidence which ordinarily enables the experienced Committee of 
 Examination to form a judgment as to the temper, the . disposition, the 
 general principles of the candidates. The least desirable candidates, at 
 any rate, are likely to be marked out, ahd also tha most desirable. The 
 Committee thus obtain materials of judgment, which, when taken in 
 conjunction with the results of the paper examination published in due 
 course, enable them to come to their conclusions on a comprehensive basis, 
 including temper and disposition as well as intellect. The result is that 
 sometimes they decline a candidate high in the list because they have a 
 low opinion of his temper or his moral qualifications as a teacher and 
 trainer ; or, having to choose in the end between a number of different 
 candidates, occupying nearly the same intellectual level, they are enabled 
 to determine which to prefer — attaching much more weight to an 
 appreciable superiority of moral qualification than to a slight superiority 
 of intellectual knowledge or ability. 
 
 It is thus that the Committees of these Colleges do their work of 
 selection. But they have one great advantage in their work — an advantage 
 which makes their work in some respects more easy, in others more diflicult, 
 but altogether much more satisfactory than it would otherwise be, — they 
 have no candidates before them who are not, there is reason to believe. 
 God-fearing young people. So far as can be ascertained and secured, 
 indeed, all our candidates have in them some settled earnestness of 
 religious character and fixed Christian principles. Hence the doubt as 
 to fundamental unfitness of morale and disposition arises only in regard 
 to very few of our candidates. This is an ease and a relief in our yearly 
 work of discrimination. At the same time you will see that it makes 
 the work of discrimination between the respective merits, on moral 
 grounds, or for reasons of temper and principle, of the candidates more 
 difficult. It is often very hard — painfully hard — to determine which shall 
 be received and which must be at least postponed. But our difficulty 
 arises from the moral wealth, not from the poverty of our candidate 
 supply. 
 
 How BOAED-SCHOOL CANDIDATES ARE TREATED. 
 
 In these discriminations there is, however, one thing which I may say, 
 and which I think I ought to say — and it may come in properly here — 
 that no young man or young woman is prejudiced in examination before 
 our Committee of selection because he or she comes from a Board School. 
 We give as careful and as kindly a consideration to their case as to the case
 
 15 
 
 of any who come from our own schools — and to meet their special case 
 we have arranged for a separate and justly-proportioned examination in 
 Scripture and in our clear and intelligible Catechism, suitable to their case 
 as distinguished froin that of our pupil teachers from Wesleyan Schools 
 who pass their regular yearly examinations. Less we could not require from 
 any candidates. We could not treat Board School candidates with excep- 
 tional favour by exempting them altogether from any examination 
 corresponding to those of which Wesleyan pupil teachers are expected to 
 have passed one every year. Nor do we find that our examination or our 
 conditions deter Board School pupil teachers from seeking to enter our 
 Colleges. They come each year by scores. From ^11 sources we have 
 every year three times as many applications as we have vacancies to fill, 
 and after all that we can do, by preliminary correspondence and by insist- 
 ing with all strictness on our preliminary conditions, to reduce the number 
 beforehand, we have always to examine at Midsummer twice as many 
 candidates as we can have vacancies at Christmas to fill up. 
 
 The Effect of the New Demand on Examinations. 
 
 But how different would be the position of a College Entrance Exami- 
 nation Committee, if the demand of the new secularism were conceded ! 
 What indeed would be left for such a Committee to do ? Their occupa- 
 tion would be all gone. The College would simply have to register as 
 admitted the names of all pupil teachers claiming to enter*— admitted so 
 far as the College could make room for them, in the order of the 
 Government list and on the sole ground of their place in that list ! 
 
 All this, as I have shown, is as diametrically opposed to all principles 
 of educational science and experience as it is to justice and virtue, to 
 morality and religion, to the rights of Christian communities, and the 
 pledged faith of the State. And this, all this, is demanded, as I have 
 also shown, on behalf of that almost inappreciably small class of pupil 
 teachers who can only be satisfied by some College where there is no 
 requirement of public or family worship, and no necessary recogni- 
 tion of any religious faith — pupil teachers for whom such Colleges as 
 Borough-road are not sufficiently undenominational. For the sake of this 
 special class — thank God, this very small class — pupil teachers brought 
 up as religious children, in Church of England families, are to be thrust 
 out of the Church of England Training Colleges, and the Wesleyan sons 
 and daughters of godly Wesleyan parents are to be excluded from these 
 Wesleyan Colleges ! 
 
 Plea op Numerical Pbessube. 
 No plea of numbers outside could excuse such a demand as this. But 
 I have shown that there is no pretence for any such plea. The number 
 of suitable and eligible candidates outside who at present cannot get in
 
 16 
 
 — Christian young people who would be thankful to enter the Colleges 
 as they are — are in far greater proportion than the agnostic youths — 
 surely there are no agnostic female candidates — who would prefer an 
 agnostic College. If there were likely, however, to be for many years to 
 come a large excess of pupil teachers unable to find places in Training 
 Colleges, some relief would be necessary, More colleges would have 
 somehow to be provided. But the present condition of over-supply can- 
 not be permanent. A new Infant Teacher Training College or Depart- 
 ment is, I understand, to be established by the British and Foreign 
 School Society. I am glad to hear it. Perhaps some further extension 
 in this direction nfight be desirable. But, speaking generally, I think it 
 may be shown that the present plethora of candidates is not likely to be 
 permanent. 
 
 It is, in fact, an artificial plethora. It arises not from a genuine 
 demand for certificated teachers in proportionately increased ratio, but 
 from an excessively stimulated supply of pupil teachers. This is a fact 
 of which all who hear me to-day — of which all indeed who have practi- 
 cally to do with the question of teacher-supply — must be well aware. 
 Every School Management Committee of every School Board must surely 
 have distinct knowledge of it ; most of all, I should have thought, that 
 of the London School Board, Do we not all know that, for several years 
 past, there has been much delay and often great difficulty in finding 
 places for students leaving Training Colleges, and that there is a con- 
 siderable standing army of certificated teachers who have to remain 
 afield in the bleak winter quarters of non-employment at their own 
 charges ? The supply of qualified teachers issuing Christmas after 
 Christmas from the Training Colleges is at present more than equal to 
 the demand for such teachers, and is likely to remain so for years to 
 come. It is worth while to make this point statistically clear. And it is 
 a matter of simple calculation, not difficult to be understood even by 
 those who are not educational experts. 
 
 The Probable Teacher Demand of the Future. 
 I shall assume that the vacancies in the ranks of pupil teachers 
 requiring to be filled up each year are not likely in future to number 
 more than five and a half per cent. Indeed, when it is considered that 
 an immense proportion of the teachers now at work are in their earliest 
 prime of life, owing to the large and sudden recent demand, the demand 
 of the last ten years or less, it will be seen that an average duration of 
 eighteen and a half years' service for teachers now at work is a low 
 estimate, even allowing for the marriages of female teachers, which, 
 however, are by no means so numerous, or, on an average, so early, as 
 many suppose them to be. And eighteen and a half years' service would
 
 17 
 
 mean five and two-fifths per cent, per annum of vacancies in the ranks 
 of teachers. I shall, therefore, be safe, I think, in setting down the 
 proportion of fresh teachers required each year to enter the profession in 
 order to supply all vacancies as not being more than five and a half per 
 cent, of the number of teachers actually at work. In this estimate I 
 suppose the supply of schools for the country to have been made amply 
 complete. And I take the nmnber of certificated teachers in the whole 
 country, supposing the supply to be complete, at 40,000, the present 
 number employed in all the schools being, in round figures, 82,000. No 
 one, I think, will complain that 40,000 is an under-estimate for the 
 nearer future. It will probably carry us far across the next ten years' 
 interval. With these elements of calculation, accordingly, before us, it 
 appears that fiv^e and a half per cent, on 40,000 — that is, 2,200 — may be 
 set down as, for a number of years to come, the maximum supply of 
 teachers required to meet the yearly demands of our school system. The 
 present Training Colleges provide accommodation for 3,25-5 students, and, 
 with the addition that is to be made by the British and Foreign School 
 Society, will soon provide for at least 3,350. Of the students resident in 
 the Colleges most, but not all, are trained for two years. The Colleges 
 have of late years sent out almost exactly 1,600 teachers annually. The 
 yearly number leaving Christmas by Christmas for the future may be 
 estimated at 1,650. This supply, would of itself very nearly suffice to 
 meet the yearly demand for some years to come — the present number of 
 certificated teachers in the country being 32,000 ; but it forms only one 
 item in the actual supply of teachers forthcoming for the use of schools. 
 In December, 1880, besides the outgoing 1,600 students who had com- 
 pleted their College training, 3,196 ]acting teachers were examined by 
 Her Majesty's Inspectors and obtained certificates, thus trebling the 
 supply. In several former years .a similar stroke of certification had been 
 done. And last Christmas, although the number of non-College- 
 trained teachers thus admitted to certification may have been reduced, it 
 must still have been very large. In years to come it will be still further 
 reduced, but by somewhat slow degrees. Indeed, as a permanent law, it 
 may be expected that a considerable proportion of teachers, who have 
 not been trained in College, will continue in future, as during past years, 
 to increase the yearly supply of certificated teachers available for em- 
 ployment in public elementary schools. I refer jiow to the class of pupil 
 teachers who, from whatever causes, find themselves unable to become 
 resident students in the Colleges, but who have passed the Government 
 entrance examinations for College residence. Of late years there have 
 every year been many hundreds of these ; and in years to come, the 
 number must still remain considerable. Of these pupil teachers, 
 who pass the Queen's Scholarship Examination, but do not enter College, 
 
 c
 
 18 ' 
 
 many, after having served for some years as assistants, are admitted to 
 the Certificate Examinations, and having passed, become certificated 
 teachers, competent to hold any school. Here, then, we have a per- 
 manent and legitimate source of supply for the yearly demand of teachers, 
 in addition to the 1,600 or more from the Training Colleges. It would 
 be a very moderate estimate to reckon this source of supply as yielding 
 700 teachers a year. We have, accordingly, in this source, added to the 
 existing provision of Training Colleges, the means of furnishing 2,350 
 teachers yearly, being all, and more than all, required to keep up the 
 number of 40,000 teachers in the country — there being at this moment 
 only 32,000 teachers in the country. 
 
 How THE Present Surplus of Pupil Teachers will be 
 
 Disposed of. 
 
 If it be asked what is to be done to meet the case of the present super- 
 abundant supply of pupil teachers, most of whom desire but are unable 
 to enter the Colleges, I might reply that it is not for us here to answer 
 such a question, and that, at any rate, this problem can suggest no 
 ground for disturbing our present College arrangements. Those left 
 outside belong to all classes of students. By far the smallest proportion 
 of them, we may be sure, belong to the agnostic class. But the answer 
 is that the excluded ex-pupil teachers will do in future as they have done 
 for many years past. Some will leave the profession and take their 
 education with them elsewhere. But those of them who are teachers at 
 heart and in grain, and probably some besides these, will, as I have 
 already explained, take situations as assistants. Of these some will come 
 forward again in the following year as candidates, while the remainder 
 will continue assistants until, after three or more years, they are qualified 
 to come forward, with an Inspector's sanction, and sit for a certificate at 
 the yearly Christmas examination. A large number of those acting 
 teachers who have obtained certificates on examination during recent 
 years have consisted of ex-pupil teachers of this class, — that is, such as 
 failed to obtain places in Training Colleges. Next Christmas and 
 for some years to come there must continue to be many hundreds 
 coming forward of the same class, although henceforth by degrees the 
 number must diminish. 
 
 The nmnber must diminish henceforth by degrees, because in future, 
 as we have the best reason to expect, the Government regulations will 
 tend to diminish and to keep low the number of pupil teachers compared 
 with the past, and to increase, within certain limits, the number of cer- 
 tificated teachers employed in the schools. I have made allowance, how- 
 ever, for this double operation of future Government regulations when 
 I reckon the total number of certificated teachers, some years hence,
 
 19 
 
 at 40,000, and the number of non-College-trained teachers obtaining 
 certificates yearly at 700 instead of 3,200, as it has lately been. When 
 the number of teachers shall have outgrown 40,000, we shall have 
 reached a farther stage in our educational development. Before that 
 there may have arisen several new Colleges, and other changes may have 
 taken place. That period is beyond our ken to-day. 
 
 The Weight of Secularist Reasons. 
 Thus every pretext offered for violating these foundations is not only 
 on the face of it trivial, but, when looked into, it proves to be altogether 
 hollow and unfounded. There is not even the ghost of an argument left 
 for contravening our trust deeds and outraging the religious instincts of 
 the communities which have founded and managed and largely con- 
 tributed towards sustaining these Oolleges. The argument, however, on 
 our side is by no means exhausted. We have weighed our opponents' 
 arguments in the balances and found them light and flimsy, but we have 
 not yet set forth distinctly and fully the strength of our own case as 
 possessors. I have, indeed, referred to the subject in passing, but I must 
 now insist upon it directly and particularly. What we have seen is that 
 the pleas of the secularist party for disturbing the present rights and 
 management of the Oolleges altogether break down. But it is well to 
 remind ourselves what the actual rights are of the bodies to which these 
 Colleges belong. 
 
 The Positive Rights of the Colleges. 
 
 I will deal, then, first and chiefly, with our own case — the case of these 
 Colleges — Westminster and Southlands. Westminster College and 
 Practising Schools were built between 1848 and 1851. They cost, in- 
 cluding site, building, furnishing, and all accessories, not less than £40,000; 
 towards which the Government made a grant of £7,000 — viz., £5,000 for 
 the College and £2,000 for the Practising Schools. During the thirty 
 years which have followed, this College has cost the Connexion, in direct 
 payments from its funds, not less than £60,000. One distinct enlarge- 
 ment, towards which the Government made no grant, cost upwards of 
 £8,000. And even during the last two years there has been expended 
 on structural improvements alone in the College and the Practising 
 Schools not less than £1,000. This refers to Westminster alone. I may 
 add that the Westminster property, including the College and the Prac- 
 tising Schools, the houses appurtenant, and the business offices, has now 
 for some years past stood insured for £60,000, this being, of course, in- 
 dependent of the extensive freehold site, the value of which, in such a 
 situation, it would be difficult to exaggerate. 
 
 Then there is Southlands. We have held this property for ten years. 
 We never received any grant whatever to aid in the purchase of the 
 
 c 2
 
 20 
 
 estate or the erection and alteration of buildings. The cost to the Con- 
 nexion from the beginning has been not much less than £20,000. The in- 
 sured value of the College, the Day-schools, the Principal's house, and 
 the entire property, exclusive of the site, which is freehold, is nearly 
 £21,000. 
 
 Here, then, is property — here are institutions — founded and acquired 
 by our Church for national uses and purposes, and towards which the 
 Government granted thirty years ago the modest sum of £7,000 — here 
 are properties on which our Connexion has expended, first and last, con- 
 siderably more than £100,000, and which, if we take their insurance- 
 value, and add a moderate estimate for the land — more than five acres of 
 freehold, of which two acres lie within ten minutes' walk in one direc- 
 tion of the Houses of Parliament, and in another of Victoria Station — 
 cannot be reckoned as worth less than £130,000 ; here is such property, 
 settled on trustees for the use of our Connexion, some of it only ten 
 years ago, the rest little more than thirty years ago ; and it is coolly 
 proposed to throw this property open to all the world, and to trample 
 upon the legal instruments and guarantees by which it is secured to our 
 Connexion for the purpose of training teachers for the schools of the 
 nation ! 
 
 I am aware, indeed, that those with whom we have to deal in this con- 
 troversy are accustomed to speak as if these Colleges instead of being 
 Church property, were really national property. " They were built," so 
 they would say, " with the aid of Government money, and they are 
 chiefly maintained by Government money." How far it is true that they 
 were founded and built by Government money we have already seen. As 
 to one of the Colleges there was not a farthing granted ; the grant to 
 the other was altogether insignificant, and has been compensated many 
 times over by the service which the College has rendered to the State. 
 The clear property rights of the Connexion in these Colleges cannot, as 
 I have shown, be set down at less than £130,000. And as to the 
 amount paid yearly by the Government to assist in the maintenance of 
 these Colleges, it cannot ha^^e availed to diminish the right of the 
 denomination in these institutions, but has rather, on the contrary, 
 left still due, and increasing from year to year, a surplusage of obliga- 
 tion, moral and also pecuniary, on the part of the State, towards the 
 denomination — towards the Church — to which these institutions belong. 
 For what is the true description of the relations between these Colleges 
 and the State ? What is the historical fact of the case ? It is simply 
 this, that the State, unable to provide teachers for its public schools by 
 its own separate and distinct action, unable of itself to find the means 
 of selecting and training teachers, was compelled to seek the help of the 
 Churches, taking them into partnership with itself, and was thankful to
 
 21 
 
 bear part of the expense of that training of which it gets more fully the 
 benellt than it would do of any training done by itself alone, and in 
 which no Church intervened, to bear part of the cost, on the nation's 
 behalf, of that of which the nation gets the benefit in full — viz., the 
 selection and training of teachers for the nation's use. This was unques- 
 tionably a cheap bargain for the State. That the Church finds its ends 
 answered is also true ; it is helped to do good in its own way. But yet 
 the teachers which it trains are wholly the nation's teachers ; they give 
 up their life to do the nation's work. Would they be better teachers 
 for the nation, would they do more work for it or do the work better, if, 
 instead of giving Bible lessons, with sincerity and truth, they gave them 
 without heart or faith ; if these Colleges, instead of being Wesleyan, had 
 been non-religious Colleges ? Government most justly pays a large con- 
 tribution towards the annual expenditure of these Colleges. It does not 
 contribute three-fourths ; that is the maximum which cannot be exceeded, 
 and it is calculated on Vv^hat I may call the taxed cost, the taxed expendi- 
 ture, of the Colleges. For example, as I have already intimated, not less 
 than £1,000 has been expended during the last two years on the West- 
 minster buildings and premises towards which the Government allows 
 no contribution. Every year, accordingly, as I have said, our Connexion, 
 in paying its heavy balance on account of these Colleges, is making a 
 free contribution towards the charges of the national education. These 
 Colleges, whilst belonging to the AVesleyan Church, are 'occupied and 
 used for the benefit of the nation. The whole educational power of the 
 Colleges — the entire yearly result — goes directly to feed and augment 
 the living forces of the nation for the purposes of national education. 
 Those teachers who leave our Colleges are, indeed, members of our 
 Church, but they are not, as teachers, doing any the less or less fully 
 the nation's work because they are members of our Church and attend 
 our religious services. Nor are the Wesleyan Day-schools, of w^hich 
 some of them will take charge, any less truly national schools, or an 
 integral element in our national system of education, than the Board 
 Schools into which others of them — as many, if not more — Avill take their 
 trained faculties and their consciences. 
 
 I have stated that while our original outlay at Westminster was 
 £40,000, and while the Government Grant was £7,000, our actual outlay 
 on these two Colleges has been not less than £100,000, and the actual 
 value of the properties to-day is not less than £130,000. If we bear these 
 points in mind, it will help us to understand the force of the items I am 
 about to mention. The Government Grants for all Training Colleges 
 together amounted to £110,000; the moneys raised from voluntary 
 funds to meet this amount came to £500,000. It is certain that this 
 initial outlay of half-a-million of money has been largely augmented by
 
 22 
 
 the cost of enlargements, improvements, and new erections, made during 
 the last forty years by the various voluntary educational bodies. By 
 how much it has been augmented I shall not attempt to estimate. 
 Enough, at any rate, has been said to show with what important, legally- 
 established, widely-representative bodies, with what costly interests, with 
 the results of how much sacrifice, with how much of living power and 
 living right, this new agitation proposes to deal, in defiance of all things 
 sacred, whether by Divine or human law, when it enters the field, as it 
 has done, against the Training Colleges. 
 
 The Straightforwabd Course for the Secularist Party. 
 And now, instead of conspiring and agitating for an invasion of our 
 rights, what would be the honest and straightforward course for our new 
 secularists to take ? There are, it may be, some few candidates that 
 have completed their apprenticeship and passed the College examinations 
 who are unsuitable for any existing College, who could not enter without 
 doing violence to the foundations, and who would be an altogether dis- 
 cordant element in the Colleges. Of such candidates it is possible there 
 might be as many as would fill a small College. Then let the Secularist 
 party combine to found such a College, as other people have combined to 
 found Colleges for those who hold convictions similar to their own. Or, 
 if they think they can by possibility succeed, let them ask Parliament to 
 build such a College for the reception of young men seeking to be 
 teachers who hold no form of Christian faith ; and another, if they deem 
 this necessary, for the reception of young women similarly free from any 
 doctrinal colour or bias whatever. This, at any rate, would be a straight 
 and true course to take. Their present line of enterprise is not a straight 
 or true or honest course. 
 
 A Secularist College Teacher-Supply. 
 But what sort of a College would such be as I have now spoken of ? 
 There would be a Boarding-house without any character or outline of a 
 family ; no thanks at meals, no collective worship, no public hymn or 
 prayer, or Scripture-reading. There would be no recognized standard of 
 morals, no appeal would lie in any case to God ; the law of conscience 
 would rise no higher, would hold no deeper, than the sphere of conven- 
 tional honour, or decency, or propriety. Sunday would be merely an 
 off-day. There would be no bond of unison between the routine of 
 studies, and that of domestic life. There would be no symmetry or unity 
 in the College as such ; a cluster of lecture-rooms now, a lodging-house 
 at other times, such would be the College. How false a rendering of the 
 Latin collegium ! How distinct a contradiction of the fundamental 
 idea of the word I
 
 23 
 
 And what sort of teachers would be likely to come forth from such a 
 place to take charge of our public elementary schools — to give Bible 
 lessons in Board Schools — to train the children of uncivilized parents, 
 who know nothing of the blessing of a Christian home, so that their 
 characters may become fitted, by true ' morality and refinement, for 
 the exercise of civic duties and domestic virtues ! 
 
 Would zealous secularist partisans ever be able to collect money 
 enough to open even one small College of this sort, in the presence of 
 the multitude of Colleges which have been erected by Christian zeal ? 
 or, failing success in that direction, would Parliament ever consent to 
 found, and maintain, out of national revenue, even one such College? 
 Let the secularists, however, make the experiment, if they have a mind 
 to try. The result, in any case, could hardly injure the position of 
 Christian Colleges. But let not the representatives of the ideas which 
 would be expressed by such Colleges as I have described attempt to lay 
 hands of spoliation on our sacred institutions. 
 
 Conclusion of Address. 
 
 I come now to the close of my Address, which, as you perceive, has 
 been occupied throughout with one subject. This one is fully enough 
 for the present time. It was pressing ; it touched principles of vital 
 importance. Other matters as to which I might have had something to 
 say will have to wait their time. The new proposals of the Government 
 have been well sifted ; your Committee have tried to do their duty in 
 regard to these proposals and to guard strictly and fully the rights and 
 interests of teachers. We are now awaiting the issue of the New Code. 
 I am encouraged to hope that it will disappoint many fears, although also 
 it may fail to satisfy some hopes. It will not, I feel very hopeful, 
 seriously affect the position and prospects of teachers. And, at any 
 rate, its most important proposals will not become law this year. There 
 will yet be time for renewed consideration of it in all its details. As it 
 has been inspired by the best motives — so much we cannot doubt — let us 
 hope that it will, on the whole, bring forth beneficial results. 
 
 You will proceed now to your respective studies and duties. For both 
 Colleges the curriculum is still being gradually enlarged and elevated. 
 None of us, I hope, will complain of that. I feel sure that, so far as 
 physical force and stamina will allow, my young friends of the gentler 
 sex will run as keen a race and work as diligently as those of the mascu- 
 line distinction. I congratulate Mr. Bate and you, my young friends of 
 Southlands, mutually on each other's relations. May we all have in both 
 Colleges a year of the best success ! 
 
 Half of this company, indeed, are freshmen — I use the word as of 
 common gender. You are altogether new to College life. But you
 
 24 ' 
 
 have, on the whole, better advantages and better prospects than your 
 predecessors ; your trials, too, will certainly not be any heavier or more 
 severe than those which your predecessors have surmounted. Here they 
 are, the freshmen of last year, the seniors now ; you see how they look 
 after their trials of ^last year.- So will you surmount this year's tests, 
 and be as strong and smiling, please God, twelve months hence. You 
 are, at all events, in God's hands ; and in these Colleges we are all 
 believers in God — all, I trust, His children through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord. 
 
 As for those of you who are now beginning your second year, we hope 
 much from you. We have anxiously laid our plans for your benefit. 
 We are to have a hardworking and energetic year. Do your duty day 
 by day, as in God's sight, and you will in this coming year lay the 
 foundation of a life's course of fruitful and happy Christian labour. 
 Amen ! 
 
 HAZELL, WATSON, AKD VINEY, PETNTERS, LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
 
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