know in part, but when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. And as we all move along our converging lines towards the central light, we shall also be approaching one another; and we shall be animated by the same wonderful hope that the time shall come when we shall see, face to face, and know even as we are known, and when the whole fraternity of man shall be bound together, not only (as, amongst small groups of us, it is now) in the unity of the Spirit, but also in the unity of truth.

IV.-ADDRESS BY THE REV. CHARLES BEARD, B.A.*

GENTLEMEN,-

THE

fact that Manchester New College celebrates this year its hundredth anniversary may be held to justify some deviation on my part from the path of advice and suggestion usually trodden on these occasions. What I propose to do is to describe, as well as my poor powers will admit, what Alma Mater has been doing these hundred years which have now rolled away. The principles on which the College is founded, and to which it still adheres with unshaken faith, have already been clearly stated and abundantly illustrated; my task is to show how they have been carried into practice; what manner of men have taught and learned within its walls; what spirit has been infused into them for the

An Address to the Students at the close of the Hundredth Session of the College, by the Rev. Charles Beard, B.A., Visitor.

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work of the Christian Ministry; in what respect the College has reaped a large harvest of success, and, perchance, wherein it must be held to have fallen short of the highest ideal of Christian education. And if I can show you, that you, the latest born of this hundred years of modest and yet high-minded labour, have behind you a history of which you need not be ashamed, and predecessors who by their learning, their piety, their self-devotion, have earned the grateful recollection of the Churches which they have served, I shall have done something to lift you to the level of your fate, to breathe into you the true inspiration of your calling.

No echo of tradition from the first Manchester period of the College-between 1786 and 1803-has ever reached my ears. The inspection, however, of its roll of students, and the recollection of its buildings, as they stood, not without a kind of modest stateliness, in Mosley Street, unite to produce one impression,-that it was not so much a theological seminary as the forerunner of those Provincial Colleges which now exist in most of our great cities, and of which Manchester has, perhaps, the most conspicuous example to show. Only a small percentage of its students entered for the divinity course; and some even of these are noted as destined to the service of the Church of England. Law, medicine, commerce, have each of them more numerous votaries than Theology, while the chief illustration of this period of our history must be sought, less in the men whom the College trained for the pulpit, than in the roll of enlightened and public-spirited citizens, whom Manchester and the North of England have not yet forgotten to honour. You must recollect that

Oxford and Cambridge were closed to Nonconformists; that the University of London had not begun its mediating work; and that, at a time when locomotion was difficult and expensive, only comparatively rich students could find their way to Edinburgh or to Leiden. And Manchester College, in its first inception, was a bold and prescient attempt to give to a not very important town in the North, all the advantages of an ancient seat of erudition, accompanied by a liberty of teaching and learning, which hardly any ancient seat of erudition possessed. The same attempt was renewed on a larger scale, though with no more permanent result, in 1840. But the time was not ripe for such an undertaking, though, as the splendid success of Owens College has shown, almost at hand. Indeed, these two periods of College life the first Manchester epoch and the second are almost painfully similar: a scheme of education laid out on broad and noble lines, and then, high hopes gradually fading away into disappointment, but still a disappointment tempered by an inexpugnable faith in the principles of freedom. More than once in its history, Manchester College has had to content itself with performing the humble function of a pioneer: a function necessary, indeed, but apt to be overlooked, and easily forgotten. And perhaps its most conspicuous victory of that kind has still to be won.

I am almost afraid to speak of York, lest any of its surviving sons should think that I am laying rude Lancastrian hands upon the true Yorkist tradition, and a new feud spring up between the white rose and the red. But although the College at York was something more of a theological seminary than it had been at

Manchester, the lay element, at least up to the year 1830, was still amply represented. Then, or a little before, University College, London, began its work, the first of a series of events which have wholly diverted the stream of lay education. From a certain point of view, that which contemplates the desirability that the clergy and the laity of our free churches should be brought up together, indoctrinated by the same teachers in the principles of freedom, and forming friendships which will be, in after life, an inspiration and a help to both— this is the time at which the College most nearly attained its ideal. The laymen whom it then produced are a race that has almost passed away. Only one or two remain, in whom the tradition of York, in its later days, still survives; and these all but retired from the stage of active life, and unknown to you of the generation, except by name. But we, in that at least more fortunate, have a lively recollection of men who, not ashamed of their nonconformity, held the outposts of conscientious conviction stoutly, yet in all charity and courtesy; to whom the principles of civil and religious liberty were as the very breath of their nostrils ; who were the ardent advocates of every social and political reform; and full of a fine public spirit, showed themselves the salt of the communities in which they lived. It were almost invidious to choose one man to represent a class, through which those nobler qualities were equally diffused; but you will recognise the kind of man I mean, when I name the honoured name of Mark Philips.

youngest

To turn now to the theological side of the College, I would call your attention, in the first place, to the

remarkable way in which its principles have been vindicated by its history. For it is a history of continuous change and development, theological and philosophical, animated by a single spirit, and accomplished without violent transitions. If I might transfer Wordsworth's vivid phrase from the life of a man to the life of an institution, I should say that its days had been "bound each to each by natural piety." I think that the removal of the College from Manchester to York marked a change of theological climate, which was not the less real, because it was made the subject of little or no public comment. Dr. Barnes represented the older Presbyterianism, with its inclination to Arian doctrine; Mr. Wellbeloved had been much under the influence of Mr. Belsham, and formed a point of transition to Unitarianism. I shall speak presently of the scrupulous candour with which he presented the materials of theological knowledge and speculation to his students; but, during the whole period of his presidency, the colour of religious thought was what we should now call that of the older Unitarianism; fundamentally, if not quite rigidly scriptural; resting on external evidences; making much of miracles, and a closed revelation. I need not tell you how greatly all this has changed of late years, and how large a revolution of philosophical thought, carrying with it an altered conception of the grounds and evidences of religion, has taken place amongst us. Nor is there any finality in these things; another problem faces us now, to be peacefully settled, I doubt not, in good time: how to bring our religious ideas into complete harmony with the results of physical research, and in particular with that theory of evolution