EXTRACT

FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

OF THE LATE

REV. JOHN BAMPTON,

CANON OF SALISBURY.

"I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and singular the said Lands and Estates upon trust, and to the intents and purposes hereinafter mentioned; that is to say, I will and appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford for the time being shall take and receive all the rents, issues, and profits thereof, and (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deductions made) that he pay all the remainder to the endowment of eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, to be established for ever in the said University, and to be performed in the manner following:

"I direct and appoint that upon the first Tuesday in Easter Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room adjoining to the PrintingHouse, between the hours of ten in the morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary's in Oxford, between the commencement of the last month in Lent Term, and the end of the third week in Act Term.

"Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Subjects to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to confute all heretics and schismatics upon the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures-upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice of the primitive Church-upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ-upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghostupon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds.

"Also I direct that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lecture Sermons shall be always printed within two months after they are preached; and one copy shall be given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy to the head of every College, and one copy to the Mayor of the City of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library; and the expense of printing them shall be paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates given for establishing the Divinity Lecture Sermons; and the Preacher shall not be paid, nor entitled to the revenue, before they are printed.

"Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge; and that the same person shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons twice."

PREFACE

MY DEAR MR. VICE-CHANCELLOR,―There is something peculiarly fitting, I think, in this dedication to yourself, which you are good enough to accept. You were my first tutor in this University; and you now worthily represent to the world its authority, its traditions, its learning, its religious spirit. Your kind words of appreciation after the first lecture of the course did much to encourage me.

In

I began with a profound sense of the chasm which separates theory and practical life of the increasing difficulty we find in justifying or explaining the moral scruple, the generous venture, the religious hope. spite of our disclaimers, we are to-day 'Galileans,' betrayed by our phrase and accent; pensioners of a past tradition, a past belief, which some try in vain to adapt to the altered conditions of knowledge and the new teaching of science, some again maintain unquestioned, in illogical content, side by side with alien facts and theories of life, silent now, indeed, but none the less uncompromisingly hostile. Few seem to me to realize how far we have drifted on the downward grade, towards a purely arbitrary state, which is 'no respecter of persons'; -towards an unknowable God or Root of Being, which is after all mere Force, and gives no answer to prayer.

I find in the mouth of every one a vague word, 'democracy,' a term (whether as fact or hope or movement) to which I have hitherto repeatedly failed to attach a clear and precise meaning. I see personal liberty everywhere threatened, personal value everywhere

denied; and men set aside as an old wives' fable the Gospel-teaching of the worth of souls. Many may find wearisome my constant retrospect on the past records of thinkers or statesmen; but I must plead in excuse the gravity of the lessons I find there, the continuous, unbroken life of European development, each phase big with its future, the secret yet very real influence of academic speculation, as it gradually filters down to the level of practice.

Too many seem to-day to approach social questions with much sympathy but no genuine conviction, with but little knowledge of average human nature, and less of its past experience or discoveries. The Gospel, the People, the average man;-these to-day are the 'weaker brethren.' It is my aim to show how general welfare is bound up with the faiths and hopes of Christian belief; and again, how the general welfare can only rightly be secured by justice to the particular, by respecting the units which make up the whole: a heap composed of valueless atoms is itself without value.

In the first lecture, I deal with the function and limits of Christian Apologetic,-making it clear, I trust, that the aim is no symmetry of speculative reconstruction, no triumph of merely dialectical overthrow. In the next three, man's relations are traced to himself, to God, to the Body Politic: the second examines the simplest rudiments of his moral instinct (prior to reflection), his amazing enterprise of unselfishness,—that is, if overmuch meditation does not convince him that all effort is fruitless. In the third, he is shown in his attempts to find God,-not as Power or as Wisdom, but as personal friend: (it is this personal side in religion which is prominent throughout.) In the fourth, his social development is traced; and the conceptions contrasted of the medieval and the modern State.

Thus, in the former half of the course, we confront the ordinary man at his average level, in his simplest