I shall attempt to put before you in a few simple, but I hope well-chosen words, the views of a plain man upon the great subject before us to-day. I shall attempt with the greatest care to avoid any personal offence, but I shall not hesitate to use the knife with an unsparing hand, as is indeed the duty of the Pastor whosoever he may be. I remember a late dear friend of mine [who would not wish me to make his name public but whom you will perhaps recognise in the founder and builder of the new Cathedral at Isaacsville in Canada[54]]. I remember his saying to me with a merry twinkle of the eye that looms only from the free manhood of the west: “Lambkin,” said he, “would you know how I made my large fortune in the space of but three months, and how I have attained to such dignity and honour? It was by following this simple maxim which my dear mother[55] taught me in the rough log-cabin[56] of my birth: ‘Be courteous to all strangers, but familiar with none.’”[57]
My friends, you are not strangers, nay, on the present solemn occasion I think I may call you friends—even brethren!—dear brothers and sisters! But a little bird has told me.... (Here a genial smile passed over his face and he drank a draught of pure cold water from a tumbler at his side.) A little bird has told me, I say, that some of you feared a trifle of just harshness, a reprimand perhaps, or a warning note of danger, at the best a doubtful and academic temper as to the future. Fear nothing. I shall pursue a far different course, and however courteous I may be I shall indulge in no familiarities.
“The Tertiary symptoms of Secondary Education among the Poor” is a noble phrase and expresses a noble idea. Why the very words are drawn from our Anglo-Saxon mother-tongue deftly mingled with a few expressions borrowed from the old dead language of long-past Greece and Rome.
What is Education? The derivation of the word answers this question. It is from “e” that is “out of,” “duc-o” “I lead,” from the root Duc—to lead, to govern (whence we get so many of our most important words such as “Duke”; “Duck” = a drake; etc.) and finally the termination “-tio” which corresponds to the English “-ishness.” We may then put the whole phrase in simple language thus, “The threefold Showings of twofold Led-out-of-ishness among the Needy.”
The Needy! The Poor! Terrible words! It has been truly said that we have them always with us. It is one of our peculiar glories in nineteenth century England, that we of the upper classes have fully recognised our heavy responsibility towards our weaker fellow-citizens. Not by Revolution, which is dangerous and vain, not by heroic legislation or hair-brained schemes of universal panaceas, not by frothy Utopias. No!—by solid hard work, by quiet and persistent effort, with the slow invisible tenacity that won the day at Badajoz, we have won this great social victory. And if any one should ask me for the result I should answer him—go to Bolton, go to Manchester, go to Liverpool; go to Hull or Halifax—the answer is there.
There are many ways in which this good work is proceeding. Life is a gem of many facets. Some of my friends take refuge in Prayer, others have joined the Charity Organisation Society, others again have laboured in a less brilliant but fully as useful a fashion by writing books upon social statistics which command an enormous circulation. You have turned to education, and you have done well. Show me a miner or a stevedore who attends his lectures upon Rossetti, and I will show you a man. Show me his wife or daughter at a cookery school or engaged in fretwork, and I will shew you a woman. A man and a woman—solemn thought!
A noble subject indeed and one to occupy the whole life of a man! This “Education,” this “Leading-out-of,” is the matter of all our lives here in Oxford except in the vacation.[58] And what an effect it has! Let me prove it in a short example.
At a poor lodging-house in Lafayette, Pa., U.S.A., three well-educated men from New England who had fallen upon evil times were seated at a table surrounded by a couple of ignorant and superstitious Irishmen; these poor untaught creatures, presuming upon their numbers, did not hesitate to call the silent and gentlemanly unfortunates “Dommed High-faluthing Fules”; but mark the sequel. A fire broke out in the night. The house was full of these Irishmen and of yet more repulsive Italians. Some were consumed by the devouring element, others perished in the flames, others again saved their lives by a cowardly flight.[59] But what of those three from Massachusetts whom better principles had guided in youth and with whom philosophy had replaced the bitter craft of the Priest? They were found—my dear friends—they were found still seated calmly at the table; they had not moved; no passion had blinded them, no panic disturbed: in their charred and blackened features no trace of terror was apparent. Such is the effect, such the glory of what my late master and guide, the Professor of Tautology, used to call the “Principle of the Survival of the Fittest.”
(Applause, which was only checked by a consideration for the respect due to the Sacred edifice.)
Go forth then! Again I say go forth! Go forth! Go forth! The time is coming when England will see that your claims to reverence, recognition and emolument are as great as our own. I repeat it, go forth, and when you have brought the great bulk of families to change their mental standpoint, then indeed you will have transformed the world! For without the mind the human intellect is nothing.