OXFORD AND GREEK 643 



will go." What Oxford itself thinks about theological Greek for 

 laymen, let " Divvers " testify, the blasphemous farce which — 

 thinly disguised in the Statute Book as a " First Public Examina- 

 tion in Holy Scripture " — still disfigures the career of Science 

 men and Greats men alike ; with its statistics about miracles and 

 its pretence of testing knowledge of Hellenistic Greek by trans- 

 lation from books of which the " Authorised Version " is in every 

 bedroom. As for the Church, " unless the universities declare 

 Greek to be imperatively necessary," says the President of 

 Corpus, " a body of clergy will grow up unable to instruct 

 their people in the interpretation of the New Testament from 

 a first-hand knowledge of the Greek text." Well, the Church 

 owes a good deal to Oxford and might fairly be asked to show a 

 little backbone, shoulder its own risks and give Oxford courage 

 in a very difficult crisis. Whether Oxford owes much to the 

 Church, particularly in the last two centuries, is open to more 

 dispute ; it seems to spectators that if the proportion of 

 clerical to lay voters in Convocation had not been (for irrelevant 

 reasons) so high, the call to " save Theology " by helping to 

 " save Greek " might not have been so loud as it was. Even so, 

 sound Churchmen like the Archdeacon of Manchester, who 

 knows the Theological Faculty of what (I fear) Mr. Stuart Jones 

 would call the " dehumanised " University on the Irwell, is 

 content to trust the Bishops to "save" the New Testament. 1 



The mere layman interposes here with a plea for common- 

 sense. " It would be just as reasonable to urge that unless 

 hydrodynamics are made a compulsory subject in Smalls, 

 Oxford will produce engineers who are ignorant of that science." 2 

 But the Oxford don knows better. Brought up himself under 

 the compulsion which he defends and fated to deal exclusively 

 with compulsorily Hellenised students who, after long appren- 

 ticeship in Philistia, can be counted on not to learn anything 

 unless they are obliged, he has a firm conviction of the natural 

 depravity of man and an implicit faith in the Letter of the Law. 

 " Surely education is irksome to the natural boy," says that 

 ardent compulsionist Mr. John Murray of Christ Church. 3 It 

 certainly is assumed to be so to the natural undergraduate. 

 But it is a strange comment on the claim of " thoroughness " 



1 Manchester Guardian, November 22, 191 1. 



1 Globe, November 16, 191 1. 



3 Manchester Guardian, December 5, 191 1, 



