Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/41

 Further than this I shall not speak of my books, except to point out how, by giving a clerical complexion to my work, I have fulfilled the auguries of the kindly critic in the Pall Mall. A kindly critic in the New York Nation, reviewing the first volume of the Constitutional History, has described the writer as entirely free from political bias, and adds that, 'what is more surprising, he appears to be scarcely influenced by ecclesiastical sentiment or prejudice.' Well, I thought, when I read that notice, here is at last a man who takes a right view of the clerical character. Here am I, steeped, as I fondly believe, in clerical and conservative principles, and yet able to take such a view of matters as scarcely to betray ecclesiastical prejudice or political bias. Seriously speaking, that is just what I wish. I understand the clerical spirit and mind to be that which regards truth and justice above all things, which believes what it believes firmly and intelligently, but with a belief that is folly convinced that truth and justice must in the end confirm the doctrine that it upholds; with a belief that party statement, and highly coloured pictures of friend and foe, are dangerous enemies of truth and justice, and damage in the long run the cause that employs them; that all sides have everything to gain and nothing to lose by full and fair knowledge of the truth. And a clerical view of professional responsibility I take to be the knowledge that I am working in God's sight and for His purposes. If such be a right view, I rejoice to have evidence of my success in realising it. If it be a mistaken one, well, I will claim credit for good intentions as well as steady work.

I wish that my conscience were equally clear as to the other branch of professorial usefulness, oral teaching or lecturing. On this topic I proposed in my inaugural lecture to set before myself two leading principles: the first was to begin at the beginning—'We must begin at the right end, work from the past forwards, not backwards from the present.' I meant, of course, not merely that I did not intend to read history backwards, which would be a difficult process in lecture, but that I should start from the beginning of the modern period and treat the course of historical progress