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 THE TEACHING OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.

INAUGURAL LECTURE AS DIXIE PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.

The most agreeable part of an inaugural address under ordinary circumstances is that in which a new professor pays a well-merited compliment to him whom he succeeds. No task can be more pleasant than a retrospect of past progress, a careful appreciation of the results of a careful method, an enumeration of the fruits of a life of study and a picture of its quickening influence upon the lives of others. Such a survey is gratifying to all, for it serves in some degree as a measure of the contribution of the University to the advancement of human knowledge. It is above all things useful to one who is beginning his labours as a teacher, for it enables him to estimate soberly the ground which has been already occupied, and to mark out the lines along which he proposes to advance.

In my own case such a survey is impossible. The thought that I am the first occupant of this Chair gives me an increased feeling of responsibility, because