CONTENTS. III. THE TEACHING OF THEOLOGY, by ROBERT WALLACE (1840). IV. THE INTERDEPENDENCE OF PRACTICAL RELIGION AND THEOLOGICAL LEARNING, by JOHN JAMES TAYLER, IV. Address to Students, by Charles Beard, B.A. 273 V. Speech at Willis's Rooms, by James Martineau, VI. Speech at Trustees' Meeting, by James Martineau, D.D. 314 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. In the controversy which sprang up early in the present year between Dr. Wace and Professor Huxley, it was alleged by the latter that Holland and Germany are 66 'the only two countries in which, at the present time, Professors of Theology are to be found whose tenure of their posts does not depend upon the results to which their inquiries lead them." If Manchester New College can present any claim to the interest of the friends of theological learning, that claim lies in the fact that she has never attached to her professorships any such conditions. From 1786 to the present time she has upheld, in theological study, the same methods and the same temper which are regarded by every genuine student as essential in the secular field. She has declined to impose on her Professors any obligation save to seek and to speak the truth. She has refused to exact from her students any subscription to particular opinions, or any pledge to become ministers of a particular system of doctrines. The following pages sufficiently indicate the origin, the history, and the faithful Message of the College which now aspires to carry on her quiet labours within the precincts of the University of Oxford. The subsisting conditions of the University apparently still forbid Manchester New College from inscribing her name on its roll. Yet, for her also, the memories and traditions that haunt the cloisters of Oxford have a charm more than ideal; and her ambition is that, nurtured amid the same scenes as the famous scholars and divines whose names and works are a continuing glory of the University, her students may gather a richer culture, and grow to a more many-sided intellectual and spiritual life, than commonly accrues to men shut up in segregated Academies apart from the centres of national thought and feeling, and cherishing chiefly the several traditions and the outlook peculiar to seminaries. It is in a spirit of earnest loyalty, moreover, to the growing liberality of public opinion with regard to the open and faithful study of the chief amongst all branches of human learning and aspiration, and of unquestioning faith in the coming enlargement even on these subjects of the mind of Oxford itself, that the Guardians of Manchester New College and its Message are now seeking establishment at Oxford. They are not without hope that, even there, they may have a contribution of their own to make towards making straight the paths of the Truth and the Spirit that lead to the simplest and purest worship. Great as the achievements of so-called orthodox students in theological scholarship have been, few men of liberal mind will deny that they have been marred by the limitations which subscription sets upon inquiry. If, then, there be a school of theologians, however obscure, who, with adequate learning, have for successive generations freely studied religious history and opinion, and who have nursed frank and free piety uncrippled by such subscription, it is at least possible that it may have something to show not unworthy of friendly inspection by theologians who have studied under other conditions. From the closing days of Richard Baxter to the present time, English Presbyterians have resisted every attempt to proscribe "free inquiry." They have jealously guarded their Churches from Dogmatic stipulations; and in the successive "Academies," from Rathmell to Warrington, which constitute the immediate ancestry of Manchester New College, and in the College itself from 1786 to the present day, the study of the history and doctrine of Religion has been always free from foregone intellectual conditions, and on this fundamental ground Religion itself has kept something of the intense and direct personality of the Christian Ideal without form or ceremony or dogma. It is believed that these two centuries of "Free Teaching and Free Learning" have resulted in a type of religious thought and sentiment which is not without its value in the spiritual life of England. The Churches in which it prevails are neither large nor numerous, but they have long furnished forth citizens of unassuming piety, of liberal mind, and of characteristic gravity and energy, even in excess of their numerical proportion to the national life of the country. The type of theological thought and religious earnestness thus nurtured may, perhaps, best be illustrated by enumerating some of those who have, in recent years, with most marked ability, thrown it into literary form. The names of Rev. R. Brook Aspland,' Rev. John James Tayler, Dr. James Martineau, Rev. John 3 "The Christian Reformer, or Unitarian Magazine and Review." "Christian Aspects of Faith and Duty." "A Retrospect of the Religious Life of England." "Endeavours after the Christian Life." "Studies of Christianity." "Hours of Thought on Sacred Things.' Types of Ethical Theory." "A Study of Religion," &c. |