will show me monuments towering up to the heavens: "There is a monument to such-a-one; there is a monument to another." And what do I find? That the one generation persecuted and howled at these men, crying, "Crucify them! crucify them!" and dancing round the blazing faggots that consumed them; and the next generation busied itself in gathering up the scattered ashes of the martyred heroes, and depositing them in the golden urn of a nation's history. Oh, yes! the men that fight for a great enterprise are the men that bear the brunt of the battle, and "He that seeth in secret"-seeth | the desire of His children, their steady purpose, their firm self-denial-"will reward them | openly," though they may die and see no sign of the triumphs of their enterprise.

Our cause is a progressive one. I read the first constitution of the first temperance society formed in the State of New York in 1809, and one of the by-laws stated: "Any member of this association who shall be convicted of intoxication shall be fined a quarter of a dollar, except such act of intoxication shall take place on the 4th of July, or any other regularly-appointed military muster." We laugh at that now; but it was a serious matter in those days; it was in advance of the public sentiment of the age. The very men that adopted that principle were persecuted; they were hooted and pelted through the streets, the doors of their houses were blackened, their cattle mutilated. The fire of persecution scorched some men so, that they left the work. Others worked on, and God blessed them. Some are living to-day; and I should like to stand where they stand now, and see the mighty enterprise as it rises before them. They worked hard. They lifted the first turf-prepared the bed in which to lay the corner-stone. They laid it amid persecution and storm. They worked under the surface, and then commenced another storm of persecution. Now you see the superstructure-pillar after pillar, tower after tower, column after column, with the capitals emblazoned with "Love, truth, sympathy, and goodwill to men." Old men gaze upon it as it grows up before them. They will not live to see it completed, but they see in faith the crowning copestone set upon it. Meek-eyed women weep as it grows in beauty; children strew the pathway of the workmen with flowers. We do not see its beauty yet-we do not see the magnificence of its superstructure yet-because it is in course of erection. Scaffolding, ropes, ladders, workmen ascending and descending, mar the beauty of the building; but, by-and-by, when the hosts who have laboured shall come up over a thousand battle-fields, waving with bright grain never again to be crushed in the distillery -through vineyards, under trellised vines, with grapes hanging in all their purple glory, never again to be pressed into that which can debase and degrade mankind-when they shall come

through orchards, under trees hanging thick with golden, pulpy fruit, never to be turned into that which can injure and debase-when they shall come up to the last distillery and destroy it; to the last stream of liquid death and dry it up; to the last weeping wife and wipe her tears gently away; to the last little child and lift him up to stand where God meant that man should stand; to the last drunkard and nerve him to burst the burning fetters, and make a glorious accompaniment to the song of freedom by the clanking of his broken chainsthen, ah! then, will the copestone be set upon it, the scaffolding will fall with a crash, and the building will start in its wondrous beauty before an astonished world. The last poor drunkard shall go into it and find a refuge there; loud shouts of rejoicing shall be heard, and there shall be joy in heaven, when the triumphs of a great enterprise shall usher in the day of the triumphs of the cross of Christ. I believe it; on my soul I believe it. Will you help us? That is the question. We leave it with you. Good-night.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES.

I ask you, is there not something noble and glorious in the fact of seeking out our brethren, not amid the circle of society in which we move, not looking at our visiting lists to find them, not looking around the pews in our places of worship to see them, not seeking for them among the Young Men's Christian Associations, but seeking for them in the midst of the haunts of vice and misery, making inquiries not only as to the fact of their degradation, but as to our responsibility in reference to that degradation? The most glorious men and women on the face of the earth have sought for their neighbours and their brethren out of their own circle. The poor cobbler in Portsmouth that used to go down upon the wharf to find his neighbours among the wretched, ragged, miserable children, and bribe them with two or three roasted potatoes to come into his little shop, eighteen feet by six, that he might teach them to read and mend their clothes, and cook their food-he was a noble man, and John Pounds was the founder of ragged schools. John Howard found his neighbours in the lazar-houses of Europe; William Wilberforce and his glorious compeers found their neighbours among the negroes among the West India plantations; Elizabeth Fry found her neighbours among the half-mad women of Newgate; and she, the heroine of the nineteenth century, found her neighbours among the bruised, battered soldiers of the Crimea; and many a soldier in the hospitals of Scutari died with his glazed eye fixed with love and reverence on the angel face of Florence Nightingale. These are your noble men and women-these are God's heroes. And when we would bring the matter right down to

have got to elevate the man to the house, or he will bring the house down to his level. It must be by elevating the man that the work will be done; and the working-classes of this country must elevate themselves. Oh, if we could only inspire them with that! The glory of it! To elevate themselves!

1818

EDUCATION.

and asked him if he knew it. "Yes," he answered, "I know it well. I see the steeple of

My first duty, in the observations which I am about to address to you, is to make my personal acknowledgments on the occasion which has brought me to this place. When we begin our work in this world, we value most the approbation of those older than ourselves. To be regarded favourably by those who have obtained distinction, bids us hope that we too, by-andby, may come to be distinguished in turn. As we advance in life, we learn the limits of our abilities. Our expectations for the future shrink to modest dimensions. The question with us is no longer what we shall do, but what we have done. We call ourselves to account for the time and talents which we have used or misused, and then it is that the good opinion of those who are coming after us becomes so peculiarly agreeable. If we have been roughly handled by our contemporaries, it flatters our self-conceit to have interested another generation. If we feel that we have before long to pass away, we can dream of a second future for ourselves in the thoughts of those who are about to take their turn upon the stage. Therefore it is that no recognition of efforts of mine which I have ever received has given me so much pleasure as my election by you as your rector, an honour as spontaneously and generously bestowed by you as it was unlooked for, I may say undreamt of, by me.

Many years ago, when I was first studying the history of the Reformation in Scotland, I read a story of a slave in a French galley who was one morning bending wearily over his oar. The day was breaking, and, rising out of the grey waters, a line of cliffs was visible, and the white houses of a town and a church tower. The rower was a man unused to such service, worn with toil and watching, and likely, it was thought, to die. A companion touched him, pointed to the shore,

lic to His glory; and I know, how weak soever I now appear, I shall not depart out of this life till my tongue glorify His name in the same place." Gentlemen, that town was St Andrews, that galley slave was John Knox; and we know that he came back and did "glorify God" in this place and others to some purpose.

Well, if anybody had told me, when I was reading about this, that I also should one day come to St Andrews and be called on to address the university, I should have listened with more absolute incredulity than John Knox's comrade listened to that prophecy. Yet, inconceivable as it would then have seemed, the unlikely has become fact. I am addressing the successors of that remote generation of students whom John Knox, at the end of his life, "called round him," in this very university, "and exhorted them," as James Melville tells us, "to know God and stand by the good cause, and use their time well." It will be happy for me if I too can read a few words to you out of the same lessonbook; for to make us know our duty and do it, to make us upright in act and true in thought and word, is the aim of all instruction which deserves the name, the epitome of all purposes for which education exists. Duty changes, truth expands, one age cannot teach another either the details of its obligations or the matter of its knowledge, but the principle of obligation is everlasting. The consciousness of duty, whatever its origin, is to the moral nature of man what life is in the seed-cells of all organised creatures-the condition of its coherence, the elementary force in virtue of which it grows.

Every one admits this in words. Rather it has become a cant nowadays to make a parade of noble intentions. But when we pass beyond the verbal proposition our guides fail us, and we are left in practice to grope our way or guess it as we can. So far as our special occupations

go, there is no uncertainty. Are we traders, mechanics, lawyers, doctors ? we know our work. Our duty is to do it as honestly and as well as we can. When we pass to our larger interests, to those which concern us as men-to what Knox meant "by knowing God and standing by the good cause "-I suppose there has been rarely a time in the history of the world when intelligent people have held more opposite opinions. The Scots to whom Knox was speaking knew well enough. They had their Bibles as the rule of their lives. They had broken down the tyranny of a contemptible superstition. They were growing up into yeomen, farmers, artisans, traders, scholars, or ministers, each with the business of his life clearly marked out before him. Their duty was to walk uprightly by the light of the Ten Commandments, and to fight with soul and body against the highborn scoundreldom and spiritual sorcery which were combining to make them again into slaves. I will read you a description of the leaders of the great party in Scotland against whom the Protestants and Knox were contending. I am not going to quote any fierce old Calvinist who will be set down as a bigot and a liar. My witness is M. Fontenay, brother of the secretary of Mary Stuart, who was residing here on Mary Stuart's business. The persons of whom he was speaking were the so-called Catholic lords; and the occasion was in a letter to herself: "The Sirens," wrote this M. Fontenay, "which bewitch the lords of this country are money and power. If I preach to them of their duty to their sovereign-if I talk to them of honour, of justice, of virtue, of the illustrious actions of their forefathers, and of the example which they should themselves bequeath to their posterity they think me a fool. They can talk of these things themselves-talk as well as the best philosophers in Europe. But, when it comes to action, they are like the Athenians, who knew what was good, but would not do it. The misfortune of Scotland is that the noble lords will not look beyond the points of their shoes. They care nothing for the future, and less for the past.' To free Scotland from the control of an unworthy aristocracy, to bid the dead virtues live again, and plant the eternal rules in the consciences of the people-this, as I understand it, was what Knox was working at, and it was comparatively a simple thing. It was simple, because the difficulty was not to know what to do, but how to do it. It required no special discernment to see into the fitness for government of lords like those described by Fontenay; or to see the difference as a rule of life between the New Testament and a creed that issued in Jesuitism and the massacre of St Bartholomew. The truth was plain as the sun. The thing then wanted was courage; courage in common men to risk their persons, to venture the high probability that before the work was done they might

have their throats cut, or see their houses burned over their heads. Times are changed; we are still surrounded by temptations, but they no longer appear in the shape of stake and gallows They come rather as intellectual perplexities, on the largest and gravest questions which concern us as human creatures; perplexities with regard to which self-interest is perpetually tempting us to be false to our real convictions. The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our thoughts freely; and that, after all, is but little. Experience is no more transferable in morals than in art. The drawingmaster can direct his pupil generally in the principles of art, he can teach him here and there to avoid familiar stumbling-blocks, but the pupil must himself realise every rule which his master gives him. Action is the real teacher. Instruction does but prevent waste of time or mistakes; and mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all. In every accomplishment, every mastery of truth, moral, spiritual, or mechanical. "Necesse est

Multa diu concreta modis inolescere miris:"

our acquirements must grow into us in marvellous ways-marvellous—as anything connected with man has been, is, and will be.

I have but the doubtful advantage, in speaking to you, of a few more years of life; and even whether years bring wisdom or do not bring it is far from certain. The fact of growing older teaches many of us to respect notions which we once believed to be antiquated. Our intellectual joints stiffen, and our fathers' crutches have attractions for us. You must therefore take the remarks that I am going to make at what appears to you their intrinsic value. Stranger as I am to all of you, and in a relation with you which is only transient, I can but offer you some few general conclusions which have forced themselves on me during my own experience, in the hope that you may find them not wholly useless, And as it is desirable to give form to remarks which might otherwise be desultory, I will follow the train of thought suggested by our presence at this place and the purpose which brings you here. You stand on the margin of the great world, into which you are about to be plunged, to sink or swim. You will consider the stockin-trade, the moral and mental furniture, with which you will start upon your journey. In the first place you are Scots; you come of a fine stock, and much will be expected of you. If we except the Athenians and the Jews, no people so few in number have scored so deep a mark in the world's history as you have done. No people have a juster right to be proud of their blood. I suppose, if any one of you were asked whether he would prefer to be the son of a Scotch peasant or to be the heir of an Indian rajah with twenty lacs of rupees, he would not hesitate about his answer: we should none of us

object to the rupees, but I doubt if the Scot ever breathed who would have sold his birthright for them. Well, then, Noblesse oblige; all blood is noble here, and a noble life should go along with it. It is not for nothing that you here and we in England come, both of us, of our respective races; we inherit honourable traditions and memories; we inherit qualities inherent in our bone and blood, which have been earned for us, no thanks to ourselves, by twenty generations of ancestors; our fortunes are now linked together for good and evil, never more to be divided; but when we examine our several contributions to the common stock, the account is more in your favour than ours. More than once you saved English Protestantism; you may have to save it again, for all that I know, at the rate at which our English parsons are now running. You gave us the Stuarts, but you helped us to get rid of them. Even now you are teaching us what, unless we saw it before our eyes, no Englishman would believe to be possible, that a member of Parliament can be elected without bribery. For shrewdness of head, thorough-going completeness, contempt of compromise, and moral backbone, no set of people were ever started into life more generously provided. You did not make these things; it takes many generations to breed high qualities either of mind or body; but you have them; they are a fine capital to commence business with, and, as I said, Noblesse oblige.

So much for what you bring with you into the world. And the other part of your equipment is only second in importance to it; I mean your education. There is no occasion to tell a Scotchman to value education. On this, too, you have set us an example which we are beginning to imitate: I only wish our prejudices and jealousies would let us imitate it thoroughly. In the form of your education, whether in the parish school or here at the university, there is little to be desired. It is fair all round to poor and rich alike. You have broken down, or you never permitted to rise, the enormous barrier of expense which makes the highest education in England a privilege of the wealthy. The subjectmatter is another thing. Whether the subjects to which, either with you or with us, the precious years of boyhood and youth continue to be given are the best in themselves, whether they should be altered or added to, and if so, in what direction and to what extent, are questions which all the world is busy with. Education is on everybody's lips. Our own great schools and colleges are in the middle of a revolution, which, like most revolutions, means discontent with what we have, and no clear idea of what we would have. You yourselves cannot here have wholly escaped the infection, or if you have, you will not escape it long. The causes are not far to seek. On the one hand there is the immense multiplication of the subjects of knowledge,

through the progress of science, and the investigation on all sides into the present and past condition of this planet and its inhabitants; on the other, the equally increased range of occupa tions among which the working part of mankind are now distributed, and for one or other of which our education is intended to qualify us. It is admitted by every one that we cannot any longer confine ourselves to the learned languages, to the grammar and logic and philosophy which satisfied the seventeenth century. Yet, if we try to pile on the top of these the histories and literatures of our own and other nations, with modern languages and sciences, we accumulate a load of matter which the most ardent and industrious student cannot be expected to cope with.

It may seem presumptuous in a person like myself, unconnected as I have been for many years with any educational body, to obtrude my opinion on these things. Yet outsiders, it is said, sometimes see deeper into a game than those who are engaged in playing it. In everything that we do or mean to do, the first condition of success is that we understand clearly the result which we desire to produce. The housebuilder does not gather together a mass of bricks and timber and mortar, and trust that somehow a house will shape itself out of its materials. Wheels, springs, screws, and dialplate, will not constitute a watch, unless they are shaped and fitted with the proper relations to one another. I have long thought that, to educate successfully, you should first ascertain clearly, with sharp and distinct outline, what you mean by an educated man.

Now our ancestors, whatever their other shortcomings, understood what they meant perfectly well. In their primary education and in their higher education they knew what they wanted to produce, and they suited their means to their ends. They set out with the principle that every child born into the world should be taught his duty to God and man. The majority of people had to live, as they always must, by bodily labour; therefore every boy was as early as was convenient set to labour. He was not permitted to idle about the streets or lanes. He was apprenticed to some honest industry. Either he was sent to a farm, or, if his wits were sharper, he was allotted to the village carpenter, bricklayer, tailor, shoemaker, or whatever it might be. He was instructed in some positive calling by which he could earn his bread and become a profitable member of the commonwealth. Besides this, but not, you will observe, independent of it, you had in Scotland, established by Knox, your parish schools where he was taught to read, and, if he showed special talent that way, he was made a scholar of and trained for the ministry. But neither Knox nor any one in those days thought of what we call enlarging the mind. A boy

was taught reading that he might read his Bible and learn to fear God, and be ashamed and afraid to do wrong.

An eminent American was once talking to me of the school system in the United States. The boast and glory of it, in his mind, was that every citizen born had a fair and equal start in life. Every one of them knew that he had a chance of becoming president of the republic, and was spurred to energy by the hope. Here, too, you see, is a distinct object. Young Americans are all educated alike. The aim put before them is to get on. They are like runners in a race, set to push and shoulder for the best places; never to rest contented, but to struggle forward in never-ending competition. It has answered its purpose in a new and unsettled country, where the centre of gravity has not yet determined into its place; but I cannot think that such a system as this can be permanent, or that human society, constituted on such a principle, will ultimately be found tolerable. For one thing, the prizes of life so looked at are at best but few, and the competitors many. "For myself," said the great Spinoza, "I am certain that the good of human life cannot lie in the possession of things which, for one man to possess, is for the rest to lose, but rather in things which all can possess alike, and where one man's wealth promotes his neighbour's." At any rate, it was not any such notion as this which Knox had before him when he instituted your parish schools. We had no parish schools in England for centuries after he was gone, but the object was answered by the Church catechising and the Sunday school. Our boys, like yours, were made to understand that they would have to answer for the use that they made of their lives. And, in both countries, they were put in the way of leading useful lives if they would be honest, by industrial training. The essential thing was, that every one that was willing to work should be enabled to maintain himself and his family in honour and independence.

Pass to the education of a scholar, and you find the same principle otherwise applied. There are two ways of being independent. If you require much, you must produce much. If you produce little, you must require little. Those whose studies added nothing to the material wealth of the world were taught to be content to be poor. They were a burden on others, and the burden was made as light as possible. The thirty thousand students who gathered out of Europe to Paris to listen to Abelard did not travel in carriages, and they brought no portmanteaus with them. They carried their wardrobes on their backs. They walked from Paris to Padua, from Padua to Salamanca, and they begged their way along the roads. The laws against mendicancy in all countries were suspended in favour of scholars wandering in pursuit of knowledge, and formal licences were

issued to them to ask alms. At home, at his college, the scholar's fare was the hardest, his lodging was the barest. If rich in mind, he was expected to be poor in body; and so deeply was this theory grafted into English feeling that earls and dukes, when they began to frequent universities, shared the common simplicity. The furniture of a noble earl's room at an English university at present may cost, including the pictures of opera-dancers and race-horses, and such like, perhaps five hundred pounds. When the magnificent Earl of Essex was sent to Cambridge, in Elizabeth's time, his guardians provided him with a deal table covered with green baize, a truckle bed, half-a-dozen chairs, and a wash hand basin. The cost of all, I think, was five pounds. You see what was meant. The scholar was held in high honour; but his contributions to the commonwealth were not appreciable in money, and were not rewarded with money. He went without what he could not produce, that he might keep his independence and his self-respect unharmed. Neither scholarship nor science starved under this treatment; more noble souls have been smothered in luxury than were ever killed by hunger. Your Knox was brought up in this way, Buchanan was brought up in this way, Luther was brought up in this way, and Tyndal, who translated the Bible, and Milton and Kepler and Spinoza, and your Robert Burns. Compare Burns, bred behind the plough, and our English Byron! This was the old education which formed the character of the English and Scotch nations. It is dying away at both extremities, as no longer suited to what is called modern civilisation. The apprenticeship as a system of instruction is gone. The discipline of poverty-not here as yet, I am happy to think, but in England-is gone also; and we have got instead what are called enlarged minds. I ask a modern marchof-intellect man what education is for; and he tells me it is to make educated men. I ask what an educated man is: he tells me it is a man whose intelligence has been cultivated, who knows something of the world he lives in-the different races of men, their languages, their histories, and the books that they have written; and again, modern science, astronomy, geology, physiology, political economy, mathematics, mechanics-everything, in fact, which an educated man ought to know.

Education, according to this, means instruction in everything which human beings have done, thought, or discovered; all history, all languages, all sciences. The demands which intelligent people imagine that they can make on the minds of students in this way are something amazing. I will give you a curious illus tration of it. When the competitive examination system was first set on foot, a board of examiners met to draw up their papers of questions. The scale of requirement had first to be