THE CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW. No CIX. OCTOBER 1902. ART. I.-RELIGION IN OXFORD. 1. The Guardian, 'Dearth of Candidates for Holy Orders,' August 14, 1901, and the following six months. 2. The Commonwealth. 'Symposium' on the same subject, October, November, December, 1901. 3. Contentio Veritatis. Essays in Constructive Theology. By SIX OXFORD TUTORS. (London: John Murray, 1902.) 4. Atonement and Personality. By R. C. MOBERLY, D.D. (London: John Murray, 1901.) 'WHO is the great influence in Oxford?' the present writer was asked by a distinguished stranger not so long ago. The stranger explained further that he meant by his question, who now holds a position like that which Thomas Hill Green held at one time, or like that which, in a still more distant past, was held by J. H. Newman. The answer had to be, and would still have to be, 'There is no such influence in Oxford.' There are some who bade fair to attain some such position who have left the University for the great world;' some have been removed by death. But whatever the causes, there are no great influences in Oxford. This is true of the whole University, but it is especially true of the only side of it with which this article will attempt to deal the religious side. VOL. LV.-NO. CIX. B THE CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW. NO CIX. OCTOBER 1902. ART. I.-RELIGION IN OXFORD. 1. The Guardian, 'Dearth of Candidates for Holy Orders,' August 14, 1901, and the following six months. 2. The Commonwealth. 'Symposium' on the same subject, October, November, December, 1901. 3. Contentio Veritatis. Essays in Constructive Theology. By SIX OXFORD TUTORS. (London: John Murray, 1902.) 4. Atonement and Personality. By R. C. MOBERLY, D.D. (London: John Murray, 1901.) 'WHO is the great influence in Oxford?' the present writer was asked by a distinguished stranger not so long ago. The stranger explained further that he meant by his question, who now holds a position like that which Thomas Hill Green held at one time, or like that which, in a still more distant past, was held by J. H. Newman. The answer had to be, and would still have to be, 'There is no such influence in Oxford.' There are some who bade fair to attain some such position who have left the University for the great world;' some have been removed by death. But whatever the causes, there are no great influences in Oxford. This is true of the whole University, but it is especially true of the only side of it with which this article will attempt to deal the religious side. VOL. LV.-NO. CIX. B a special notice. Mr. W. R. Inge has written a really firstrate set of Bampton lectures, and he has proved himself the most original and, for the generality of readers, the most interesting of the authors of Contentio Veritatis. There are two primary qualifications for a religious teacher of young men: a deep and apparent personal concern with religion as the foundation of life and the most enthralling subject of thought, and the capacity for a sympathetic understanding of the differing views of contemporaries. Mr. Inge has both these qualifications, and we hope for much from him if the work of a Classical Tutorship does not make too great demands upon his time. There are great men in this subject of philosophical theology in Oxford who do not lecture upon it for the school. Dr. Fairbairn is by profession a theologian, and he certainly exercises an influence from the pulpit of Mansfield Chapel and the lecture-room of that college, but it is chiefly upon the Nonconformists of Oxford. The Master of Balliol is by profession a philosopher: that is to say, the subject which he teaches in the University is Philosophy; but his St. Andrews Gifford lectures have moulded, and the Gifford Lectures which he has just delivered at Glasgow will doubtless mould, the views of not a few men who read modern books on theology. Among younger men Dr. Rashdall, who teaches, as his University work, Philosophy, has shown, in various excursions into dogmatic theology, that he lives in the modern world of thought and thinks in it with great power. It is unfortunate that both his writing and his speaking are marred by an odd vein of pugnacity, and that he injures his influence by needlessly exaggerating the differences between his own and a more conventional theology. It must be repeated again and again till people believe it, that where there are intellectual doubts at all in this generation of young men, they are doubts about fundamentals. In the matter of the study of theology the great need of the University is that more men of real distinction should give themselves to the metaphysics of theology as their only, or at least their first, interest. But the typical British parent will inevitably consider that his son will never be influenced by the teaching of the |