versities is useful to many different classes of minds. Some use it as a direct training for a political or administrative career, to others it gives an interest for serious reading in the intervals of a busy life; to others again it has given a genuine interest in their own locality, and has put them in the way of fruitful research.
There is yet another class which it should be the special purpose of a university to create. I mean the class of students who devote themselves to the furtherance of knowledge. While we do our utmost to train young men for active life, we must also aim at fostering learning in every branch. There are few branches of study which open a wider field than does that of ecclesiastical history, and it is a subject which an Englishman of to-day is specially qualified to treat. Much that has been done in the past is disfigured by partisanship. I think that a fair-minded English Churchman at present is more likely to take a large and sympathetic view of past problems, and is more free from those motives which lead to partisanship, than is a writer in any other country. It is in his power to sympathise with every form of religious endeavour, for the system to which he holds has elements in common with all. He lives in a State where religious tolerance is complete, and where no Christian body is regarded as a political danger. He has nothing to uphold which requires him to modify the strict application of the historical method. But the subject has not for those reasons become to him cold and dead. It is no mere question of antiquarianism, but is full of living interest. In
