University has not, it is submitted, given any ground for reversing this a priori conclusion.

There are few, we think, who would not hail with deep satisfaction the permanent extension of the sphere of Christian thought and influence both in our Universities and in the world; many would regard with feelings of profound thankfulness the re-establishment in its full vigour of the Church militant' at Cambridge-militant, that is to say, against the many forms of evil and selfishness that ever abound in our midst―a Church that is foremost to urge us on to the accomplishment of noble deeds-a Church that is ever pointing onwards to a nobler life—but not militant in a spirit that would re-enact the Test Acts, nor militant against inquiry and research in the region of theology, nor militant against light, from whatever quarter it may be shed. Truth,' it has been well said, 'is the property of God; the pursuit of truth is what belongs to man.'

Were the subject not a grave one it would sometimes be difficult to take Mr. Deane seriously, as, for instance, when he tells us that the average undergraduate' dines expensively, poses as an authority on claret, smokes prodigiously, and accepts unlimited credit from the tradesmen. This comes as a revelation to the present writer, whose experience assures him that the average undergraduate' dines in hall for about half a crown and smokes moderately afterwards. That there are men at Cambridge who dine expensively and are authorities on wine, who smoke prodigiously, and accumulate heavy bills, no one will deny, but they are quite a minority and certainly not average undergraduates. This is in itself a very minor point, but it will, perhaps, enable us to argue from the well known to the less known, and to hazard an opinion that as Mr. Deane has somewhat misdescribed the mode of life, he has also been led astray in his account of the religion of the undergraduate.

REGINALD B. FELLOWS.

THE RELIGION OF THE UNDERGRADUATE

II

A REPLY FROM OXFORD

AN article entitled The Religion of the Undergraduate' which appeared in this Review for October has excited a certain amount of interest among University men in general, and perhaps among Oxford men in particular, some of whom have been much struck by the discovery made by a visitor from Cambridge of a state of things existing in their midst of which they were really quite unaware. Of course one cannot speak from the unprejudiced standpoint of a looker-on from outside, but a careful perusal of Mr. Deane's article and the remarks of various friends upon the subject have convinced me that a good deal of it is fair game for criticism; and, solely in the interests of what many of us believe to be the facts of the case, I venture to offer a few criticisms, adverse and otherwise, from the point of view of an Oxford man who happens to be of about the same seniority as Mr. Deane, viz. about three years from resident undergraduateship and, though not yet in Holy Orders, still in course of preparation with a view thereto.

Mr. Deane may have made a great discovery which will be of immense value to the University authorities; for to it may perhaps be traced certain outbursts of Antinomianism at the University which have of late been somewhat prominently before the public, and also, what I believe to be a fact, that something like 40 per cent. of those who sought honours in Theology last summer were ploughed. If these, and other things, could be traced to one cause-agnosticism-it would simplify the labour of Heads, Deans, and Proctors immensely, for they could deal with the devotees of this 'ism' in a way suggested later on, and the more orthodox undergraduates would, I feel convinced, cheerfully seize the opportunity offered by the coming fifth of November to dispose of the wicked young dons (who are according to Mr. Deane aiders and abettors in the heresy) in good old mediaval Christian fashion. I feel, though, that Mr. Deane has, at any rate as regards Oxford, fallen largely into error through not properly considering the conditions which govern a collection of young men gathered together with, for the first time in their lives,

a fair amount of spare cash, practically unlimited credit, and an infinite capacity for disposing of both, with unfortunately very few people who take the trouble to make a business of helping them to steer straight. They find at the 'Varsity plenty of the 'thou shalt not' type of ordinance modelled on the Ten Commandments, but of application thereof in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount they find very little indeed.

What is the religious condition of the average freshman? He has presumably had a certain amount of religious instruction at school (very indifferent, I grant, but still let it stand for what it is worth it is regular and religious), and he has probably been confirmed. His confirmation was looked upon as part of the school routine, and the preparation for it was as likely as not mainly conducted by a lay schoolmaster and was probably more or less farcical. Still the atmosphere of the school was not one in which agnostic tendencies would be developed, the religious instruction not being of sufficient weight or worth nor the age of the instructed sufficiently advanced to induce a spirit of scepticism which is surely necessary for the budding agnostic! But it was an atmosphere which was eminently suitable for the production of a being indifferent to everything in the way of serious religious thought. And of such a nature is the average freshman. He has a certain amount of inbred reverence for sacred things, but on the whole he is indifferent. He is seldom bad, he is seldom good, he is in fact very much like other young men of his age. He is certainly not one who is careful to proclaim his agnosticism (or any other ism') on every possible occasion, for, apart from his own personal inclinations, the social system of the University is hardly of a kind to encourage such proclamations in a freshman. Mr. Deane may be sure that agnosticism as a subject for general conversation has a very poor chance in the Christmas term when Rugby football holds the field, in the Easter term, when the boat-race, sports, and 'soccer,' are in most men's minds, and in the summer term, with cricket, and when the eights and the schools combine to make men's lives a burden to them. Everyone perhaps does not talk athletic 'shop,' but the different interests at Oxford (and Cambridge, too, I imagine) are so numerous and so varied that the freshman or any other man who was always on the jaw' about some pet ism' would receive scant encouragement save from a very small and insignificant set of men.

Again, who says 'agnosticism is like the measles, everyone has it and everyone recovers from it, &c.'? It is a matter of common observation that in every man's life there comes a time when he seeks for the why and the wherefore of what he has hitherto accepted without question, and it is only too true that the result is often a greater or less degree of irreligion, but this is not agnosticism

though it may eventually lead to it, or to esoteric Buddhism, or to Humanitarian Deism, or to anything else. Scepticism, using the word in its literal sense, is the proper term for it, and scepticism of a kind is a thing to be encouraged. Belief, the evidence for which a man has not at any rate attempted to verify for himself, is of little value as a guide in his own life, or as a help to others, and in this critical age everyone is sure to sound the value of what he has been taught, some to a greater, some to a lesser extent. This is the Divine will, this is the will of the Church of England, who sends men to the Scriptures and to history to verify her teaching, and it is the duty of pastors and masters at school and elsewhere to ensure that men have been properly ballasted with sound teaching on religious matters so that they can steer straight through their difficulties without capsizing. That school and 'Varsity pastors and masters do not do this, one will readily grant, consequently many a frail barque founders, but this is to be traced to a bad system of instruction and training, not to the intellectual atmosphere of undergraduate Oxford; and as a rule the result is seen late in the 'Varsity career or after it is finished.

I am sure, then, that many will feel that Mr. Deane has drawn a very erroneous picture of the young Oxford man and of his surroundings. He draws him as a freshman just up from school, where he has been under various restrictions; and then he says, 'Now by a single step he has become a man, and he glories in his liberty.' Now that is just exactly what the freshman has not done. He certainly glories in his liberty-how could one expect otherwise? think now of the joy, which one has to feel to appreciate, experienced on settling down at the 'Varsity to the life, figuratively speaking, of a chartered libertine. There is, it must be confessed, something very sweet in the way in which recognised authority at the 'Varsity is as a rule ignored and defied, and unrecognised authority like that of a captain of the boats is bowed down to without question. But this. glorying in liberty surely does not necessarily denote that the erstwhile boy has become a man. It is impossible to forget certain occasions, even subsequent to one's emergence from the condition of fresherdom,' upon which events led to painful interviews with the authority which had been ignored and defied, in which that authority represented that conduct which was suitable to a boy must be atoned for in a manner becoming a man of means-thus illustrating the kind of half and half nature of the average undergraduate who in reality is a kind of nondescript boy-man, with all the capacities for enjoying himself of both, and with either character exhibiting itself variously on various occasions. Consequently he is very difficult to deal with. His education, religious and secular, is incomplete and must still be conducted on compulsory lines, though not so much so as at school. He cannot be treated as a schoolboy nor can he be treated as a fullgrown and responsible man.

Now, does Mr. Deane with us seriously to believe that the vast mass of these beings, who have mostly been brought up at schools where religious instruction is given, and who are accustomed to go to church at home in their school holidays, does he, I say, mean us to believe that the vast majority of them are agnostics? I do not know what things are like at Cambridge, but I must honestly say, I think that Mr. Deane's various Oxford friends and his experience culled from a year's sojourn at Cuddesdon (about eight miles from Oxford, and separated by a painfully steep hill!) have led him grievously astray. I take it that agnosticism has a definite meaning though a negative one; and the notion that several hundred young men, prejudiced by long association in favour of one creed, should suddenly forsake it for another, the real meaning of which I warrant not one in a hundred of them could give, is surely exceedingly quaint. I cannot, of course, speak of Cambridge, as, though I have several Cambridge friends, yet I have not had the advantage of having lived for a year within eight miles of the place, but so far as Oxford is concerned Mr. Deane is completely in error. It takes some of our greatest men of brains years and years of laborious research before they arrive at a condition lower than that of the most degraded savage who has ever been discovered, viz. the condition of a man who does not believe in the existence of a Supreme Being of some kind or other. Can any one suppose that undergraduates of any kind have had the time to sift and weigh the evidence to the extent that is necessary before a man can bring upon himself to say that it is impossible to decide one way or another as to the existence of a God in opposition to all his former prejudices and beliefs? The only undergraduate of the kind that I ever heard of was a member of Balliol College, who, being unable to satisfy himself of the necessity for the existence of a God, went and informed the late Master of Balliol of the fact. Dr. Jowett responded that unless he had found one by chapel-time next morning he would send him down. The result was, I believe, a wonderful conversion, and the master's method is one to be commended in such cases.

Mr. Deane has made the very common mistake of confusing Indifferentism and Agnosticism. Agnosticism as related to Christianity is irreligious. Indifferentism is at its worst non-religious, though it may lead to anything. To say that the majority of Oxford and Cambridge undergraduates' are even at the worst stage. of Indifferentism, that is, are without, or at least profess to be without, any religious beliefs at all,' is a tremendous generalisation. Before making a statement like this a man must have either got an extraordinarily intimate acquaintance with more than half the undergraduates at either 'Varsity, intimate enough to enable him to form a definite judgment concerning the religious beliefs of two or three thousand reserved young Englishmen who have a dislike, and a very