greatly learned on the deeper subjects, whether delivered in lecture-room or pulpit, or published in books. It will, therefore, be our next endeavour to try to set before the reader the general theological and religious teaching which befalls the ordinary man at Oxford.

It should be first recorded that every undergraduate who has not religious objections to the subject, is obliged to pass an examination in Holy Scripture before he can enter for any final school, ie. school qualifying for a degree. Its subjects are: one of the first three Gospels, the Gospel according to St. John, and either the Acts of the Apostles or one of the historical books of the Old Testament, such as Samuel or Kings. The papers are easy, and (with the exception of the translations from the Greek) most of the questions could be answered by a well-taught child of fourteen from a Sunday school. Yet failures are frequent in this examination: in fact, it is quite one chance in four that any given undergraduate will not pass it. This is the only opportunity offered by the University curriculum for official teaching in the ostensible religion of England. There is not much use made of this opportunity. Some colleges provide no lecturing or teaching on the subject of this examination. At many the pass-men (to whom the examination presents real difficulties) are more or less regularly coached or lectured in the books, the honour-men are not taken at all. If instruction is to be given to honour-men which will interest them, it will be superfluous for the examination. Meanwhile the getting-up of the books by the men among themselves is the occasion of much profanity. On the other hand, no teacher who has seriously attempted to teach the Gospels and the Acts, even with this examination ahead, but has found that he has been able to impart knowledge worth knowing, or awaken interest worth awakening in some at least of the men. Now consider the part which Christianity has played in the history of our country-consider the importance of that religion in the circumstances of the present day is there any proportion between these and the recognition which the University gives to the subject by this the sole examination in it generally obligatory on its members?

Read it as a Read it, and be

Yet there is not so much wrong with the system. To choose the period of the birth of Christianity is right-from it the most galling of our controversies are absent, or at least they may be kept away from it by educated men who have learned an ideal of historical impartiality. It is right enough to exclude textual criticism, for only the trained classical honour-man could follow it, and he has too much of it in moderations. It is right enough to exclude the authenticity questions, for either they have been settled by experts, or will never be settled by any man. It is splendid to put aside things which may have made Sixth Form Greek Testament lessons burdensome and dreary, and say to the youth of England, 'Take this book. It tells the story of the men who have had the most decisive influence of any upon the Western world. It is good evidence for that story. Read it once more, only as you have not read it formerly. man reads a book he wishes to understand. able to give a rough account of what it contains in the way of history and in the way of ideas.' To be able to say this with effect there must be a rearrangement of the examination. The object must be to make the knowledge demanded of those books of Holy Scripture equal in calibre to the knowledge demanded of the young man in other parts of his work. The pass-man may be left with a pass examination. The honours-man must have an examination to pass of an honours standard with questions of an honours type. No more for him of 'Who were Joanna and Ananias?' or, 'What happened at Bethesda ?' But reasonably hard questions on the great points of the subject-matter which may be worthy of his attention. Then there would be a call for good lecturing on the origins and the fundamental ideas of Christianity.

Why does not the British parent demand such a change? If he is pious and his boy is clever, surely it should be a matter of concern to him that the latter gets no regular teaching about all the foundations of his father's and mother's piety, while they are daily attacked in the magazines, and daily jested about by some, at least, of his contemporaries. But even if, unhappily, the parent is indifferent, or out of

sympathy with religion, considering he pays for his boy's university education two or three hundred a year, might he not reasonably claim to have his son taught the history of the most widespread power in Europe, just as one of the essential factors in the situation?

There is one other principle about the official teaching of a minimum of religious knowledge to all professing Christians on which it is worth while to insist before quitting the subject. The work for this examination must not be allowed to be regarded as a piece of compulsory piety, but of necessary culture.

It is time to pass from the official teaching of religious subjects to the unofficial. On this topic it is natural to take first college chapels and parish churches, then to speak of the more general religious influences. Instruction from the pulpit is almost entirely confined to Sunday. It used to be provided in the morning sermons at the University church at 10.30. By this hour the college chapels were over, and at one time many colleges compelled their undergraduates to attend. Long after this compulsion ceased, the sermons were fairly well attended. They are scarcely attended by undergraduates at all now. Instead, there are good congregations almost always at the 8.30 sermons, at which a very select number of preachers preach to members of the University only. Needless to say, these preachers are not chosen by University law or officials, but by private enterprise. There is a great deal more preaching in college chapels than was the custom even twenty years ago. Yet there is at least one college chapel in Oxford in which been preached in the last thirty years. The preaching in college chapels is done partly by the Fellows, partly by invited strangers. Most colleges compel attendance at chapel at least once each Sunday. What is the instruction given either in the 8.30 P.M. sermons or in college chapels? As a rule the 8.30 sermons are excellent examples of the single sermon. But a single sermon is fatally like a meteor or a rocket. It may raise your eyes heavenward; it may itself be of surpassing beauty; it may even startle the sleepy, the superstitious, or the ignorant, but it must be

only one sermon has

small and evanescent. The preacher knows that he must be intelligible at once, for there is no second chance for him. He cannot be re-read as a difficult chapter of a book; he is not taken down like a lecturer. He may console himself that brevity is the soul of wit: he soon finds that it is not the soul of instruction. It cramps his choice of subject, and nine times out of ten he solves his difficulties by resolving to make a moral appeal. Now the distinguished stranger may be forgiven if he yields to his conditions and abandons the attempt to instruct. But in the resident don preaching in his college chapel this is unpardonable. His opportunity is unrivalled. No children in the audience; no women but are there at their own peril; a homogeneity of age and very nearly of education; a similarity of conditions, and these intimately known to him. God forgive him if he will not try to instruct. There ought to be many more courses preached in college chapels. Some colleges have old foundations for catechetical lectures; of these some have fallen into desuetude, some are still given. Even where there are no such lectures the recurrent sermons of a head or chaplain can be composed so as to make up an informal course. The courses ought to be on the most difficult subjects. The don objects that he does not know enough to preach them-no one does-and he thinks of the pleasant little sneers of his own common room over his mistakes. But he knows more than the undergraduates. They will not read, but they will talk even about the deepest things. Their doubts, as observed before, are about fundamentals. It is a thousand times better that they should hear even his discussion of the same problems than nothing but each other's crudities and levities and the smartnesses of the magazines. So the don must preach doctrine; and if the fear of criticism which paralyses so much academical effort creeps over him, let him remember a few stern words about receiving glory one of another, or the calling of the master of the house Beelzebub, or let him remember encouraging words which tell who makes sufficient ministers of the New Testament; in short, that he is not a priest in Oxford to bow to Oxford fashion, but to be transformed himself and to aid in transforming Oxford.

But when it is said, 'The don must preach doctrine,' it must further be said how he must preach it. He must not preach sections of Pearson on the Creed, though he may have read that wonderful book with much profit for his ordination examination. He must preach as a man of the twentieth century to younger men of the twentieth century. These younger men have a keen scent for humbug, and are vehemently intolerant of it. The preacher must call things by their names; he has no time and his audience no taste for subtle periphrases. He must know what the questions are which men want help to answer. The difficulties of the present generation are with fundamentals. Can God be

known? Is prayer reasonable? or can it be supposed to alter anything? Was Jesus Christ more than man? If so, what is meant by calling Him God? In other words, what do you mean by the Incarnation? May not I take the whole of His moral teaching and leave the questions about His person? Is not sin really after all only imperfection? Is not the ordinary Christian's view of the Atonement blasphemous? Is not traditional Christian morality unscientific, obsolete, or at best partly invalid? Where there is intellectual difficulty, it is upon such subjects as these. Where there is moral collapse, it often takes refuge behind these intellectual difficulties. It is worth remembering that there is a certain amount, perhaps a large amount, of feeling abroad among young men that clergy are people who profess to believe a great deal more than they themselves actually do or any sane man can. Is it wonderful when the great questions so rarely come to public treatment by clergy?

Yet the wisdom of many older men says, 'Preach as if there were no questions. It does great harm to raise doubts.' But the younger would answer that in a college chapel the doubts are there before you, or if there are some who have never doubted, it is impossible for them to pass through life without either doubting themselves or having to hear (and heal?) the doubts of others.

The subjects of instruction, then, to which college preachers must address themselves are the fundamental truths of Christianity, and among these the most commonly doubted is the