478 MERTON COLLEGE AND CANADA. 



follow that the modern Caesar is indifferent to the things of God. 

 For the things of God, so far as man may therein co-operate, Cjesar 

 may be held to believe that other agencies more direct than his own 

 have been ordained ; and that for him it remains solely to approve 

 and to encourage, without dictating. Walter de Merton worked out 

 his reform in the national education of England by quietly ascending 

 to a sphere above that occupied by " eremites and friars, black, white 

 and gray," who sought to assert themselves in an exaggerated degree. 

 Somewhat similarly now, in an era of intellectual and spiritual 

 ferment, governments find it essential to just action in respect of 

 many mundane matters, to maintain themselves at an altitude where 

 the air is, comparatively, serene. 



We have an utterance of Lord Elgin's, containing words of most 

 wholesome drift, educationally, in a lecture to the Mercantile Library 

 Association at Montreal, in 1848. He said : " The advantages of know- 

 ledge, in a utilitarian point of view, the titter hopelessness of a successful, 

 attempt on the part either of individuals or classes to maintain their 

 position in society if they neglect the means of self-improvement, are 

 truths too obvious to call for elucidation. I must say that it seems 

 to me that there is less risk, therefore, of our declining to avail our- 

 selves of our opportunities than there is of our misusing or abusing 

 them ; that there is less likelihood of our refusing to gi-asp the trea- 

 sures spread out before us, than of our laying upon them rash and 

 irrevei'ent hands, and neglecting to cultivate those habits of patient 

 investigation, humility and moral self-control, without which we have 

 no sufficient security that even the possession of knowledge itself will 

 be a blessing to us." . . . . And again, in the same strain : 

 " God has planted within the mind of man the lights of i-eason and 

 of conscience, and without it [i. e., outside of it] He has placed those 

 of revelation and experience ; and if man wilfully extinguishes those 

 lights, in order that, under cover of the darkness v/hich he has 

 himself made, he may install in the sanctuary of his understarLding 

 and heart, where the image of truth alone should dwell, a vain idol, 

 a creature of his own fond imaginings, it will, I fear, but little avail 

 him, raore especially in that day when the secrets of all hearts shall 

 be revealed, he if shall plead, in extenuation of his guilt, that he did 

 not invite others to worship the idol until he had himself fallen 

 prostrate before it." 



In a note on the above lecture. Sir F. Bruce thus writes : "A 

 knowledge of what he [Lord Elgin] was, and of the results which he 



