60 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS 



succeed in their noble endeavours to shape our universities 

 towards some such ideal as this, without losing what is valu- 

 able and distinctive in their social tone ! But until they have 

 succeeded, a liberal education will be no more obtainable in 

 our Oxford and Cambridge Universities than in our public 

 schools. 



If I am justified in my conception of the ideal of a liberal 

 education; and if what I have said about the existing educa- 

 tional institutions of the country is also true, it is clear that 

 the two have no sort of relation to one another; that the 

 best of our schools and the most complete of our university 

 trainings give but a narrow, one-sided, and essentially illib- 

 eral education — while the worst give what is really next to 

 no education at all. The South London Working- Men's 

 College could not copy any of these institutions if it would; 

 I am bold enough to express the conviction that it ought not 

 if it could. 



For what is wanted is the reality and not the mere name 

 of a liberal education; and this College must steadily set 

 before itself the ambition to be able to give that education 

 sooner or later. At present we are but beginning, sharpen- 

 ing our educational tools, as it were, and, except a modicum 

 of physical science, wt are not able to offer much more than 

 is to be found in an ordinary school. 



Moral and social science — one of the greatest and most 

 fruitful of our future classes, I hope — at present lacks only 

 one thing in our programme, and that is a teacher. A con- 

 siderable want, no doubt; but it must be recollected that it 

 is much better to want a teacher than to want the desire to 

 learn. 



Further, we need what, for want of a better name, I must 

 call Physical Geography. What I mean is that which the 

 Germans call ^' Erdkunde.^' It is a description of the earth, 



