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As to myself, I wish I could by actual service and hard work of my own respond to your zeal, as so many of my dear and excellent friends, the Professors of the University, have done and do. They have a merit, they have a claim on you, Gentlemen, in which I have no part. If I admire the energy and bravery with which you have undertaken the work of self-improvement, be sure I do not forget their public spirit and noble free devotion to the University any more than you do. I know I should not satisfy you with any praise of this supplement of our academical arrangements which did not include those who give to it its life. It is a very pleasant and encouraging sight to see both parties, the teachers and the taught, co-operating with a pure esprit-de-corps thus voluntarily,—they as fully as you can do—for [pg 504] a great object; and I offer up my earnest prayers to the Author of all good, that He will ever bestow on you all, on Professors and on Students, as I feel sure He will bestow, Rulers and Superiors, who, by their zeal and diligence in their own place, shall prove themselves worthy both of your cause and of yourselves.
Lecture X.
Christianity And Medical Science. An Address to the Students Of Medicine.
1.
I have had so few opportunities, Gentlemen, of addressing you, and our present meeting is of so interesting and pleasing a character, by reason of the object which occasions it, that I am encouraged to speak freely to you, though I do not know you personally, on a subject which, as you may conceive, is often before my own mind: I mean, the exact relation in which your noble profession stands towards the Catholic University itself and towards Catholicism generally. Considering my own most responsible office as Rector, my vocation as an ecclesiastic, and then again my years, which increase my present claim, and diminish my future chances, of speaking to you, I need make no apology, I am sure, for a step, which will be recommended to you by my good intentions, even though it deserves no consideration on the score of the reflections and suggestions themselves which I shall bring before you. If indeed this University, and its Faculty of Medicine inclusively, were set up for the promotion of any merely secular object,—in the spirit of religious rivalry, as a measure of party politics, or as a commercial speculation,—then indeed I should [pg 506] be out of place, not only in addressing you in the tone of advice, but in being here at all; for what reason could I in that case have had for having now given some of the most valuable years of my life to this University, for having placed it foremost in my thoughts and anxieties,—(I had well nigh said) to the prejudice of prior, dearer, and more sacred ties,—except that I felt that the highest and most special religious interests were bound up in its establishment and in its success? Suffer me, then, Gentlemen, if with these views and feelings I conform my observations to the sacred building in which we find ourselves, and if I speak to you for a few minutes as if I were rather addressing you authoritatively from the pulpit than in the Rector's chair.
Now I am going to set before you, in as few words as I can, what I conceive to be the principal duty of the Medical Profession towards Religion, and some of the difficulties which are found in the observance of that duty: and in speaking on the subject I am conscious how little qualified I am to handle it in such a way as will come home to your minds, from that want of acquaintance with you personally, to which I have alluded, and from my necessary ignorance of the influences of whatever kind which actually surround you, and the points of detail which are likely to be your religious embarrassments. I can but lay down principles and maxims, which you must apply for yourselves, and which in some respects or cases you may feel have no true application at all.