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of high intelligence and imperfect learning that the danger is 
greatest. Every novelty has its charm, and error clothed in 
attractive language and armed with the authority of a man of 
acknowledged genius and learning, is not easily detected by 
the ardent student of the new philosophies. And here is the 
proper place for showing you that this danger is not visionary 
but real and increasing. The Bishop of Oxford, in his recent 
Charge, wherein his words are necessarily guarded, has 
exhibited a state of things as existing in the great University 
of Oxford, of a very alarming character ; and, as far as I know, 
his statement has met with no public contradiction. 
“ To speak the simple truth,” he says, “ a considerable number 
of graduates who hold office in the University, or fellowships 
in the Colleges, have ceased to be Christians in anything but 
name ; — in some cases even the name is repudiated, when ar- 
guments based upon its retention are pressed. It is not only 
that text-books in some branches of study are recognized, which 
assume a disbelief of Christian doctrine, and that some lecturers 
hint, or express, their own rejection of it; — there is something 
like an understanding that Christian teachers shall abstain from 
insisting on the truths they believe. Thirty years ago the ablest 
and most highly esteemed of Oxford tutors took it for granted, 
in their ethical teaching, that Christianity furnished the only 
certain standard in morals, and were accustomed to correct the 
shortcomings of other systems by its rule : Christians are ex- 
pected to forget the existence of such an authority, when they 
cross the threshold of their lecture-rooms now. The historical 
facts of Christianity fare no better than its precepts ; deference 
to scientific criticism (whatever that may mean) forbids them 
to be taken for true 
“ With self-complacency, which would be amusing if the sub- 
ject were less serious, they dispose of religion, natural or 
revealed, with the airy phrases they have borrowed from the 
latest sceptical review, ignorant of the Scriptures they reject, 
but, glad to be rid of the restraint which the Divine precepts 
impose, they wander this way or that, as materialism on one 
side, or some new phase of philosophy on the other, seems to 
offer an escape. The practical result of this education is a 
selfishness of character, far from attractive. Learners in the 
school of unbelief have been taught it is folly to disturb them- 
selves for the sake of others, they liavo lost all motive for serious 
action : self-restraint and self-sacrifice are discovered to bo 
‘ mere moral babble’ ; it is, at the best, an amiablo weakness 
to do good. Human life is but the interval, longer or shorter, 
which condemned mortals have to pass before they die. ‘ Our 
