Page:A review of the state of the question respecting the admission of dissenters to the universities.djvu/12

10 Let us then see what is the nature of the education given in this university—how it is carried on—and how it would be affected by the admission of Dissenters.

It is surely enough to say, without going into details, that the character of the education given here is essentially religious;—that our statutes require, and that our sense of duty constrains us to make instruction in the doctrines of our faith an integral part of our whole system. I am aware that this obligation was formerly but very imperfectly fulfilled; nor will I assert that it is even now discharged to its full extent. But during the last thirty years, there has been a progressive increase in the amount of attention paid to this subject; the tone of feeling now prevailing in the university tends strongly to the further extension of the same principle; and it seems no unreasonable expectation, that, not a bigoted nor fanatic, but a well-ordered, systematic, and serious endeavour to give instruction in the principles, and to enforce the motives of religion, will, at no distant day, be universal in this place. Sure I am, that it is very much to be desired that this should be the case; nor will I conceal my own opinion that a heavy arrear of neglect remains to be discharged; and that much of the laxity of opinion, and imperfect sense of religious obligation, which prevails in the upper classes of society in this