ge, much we may allow them to
sacrifice.--ambition, reputation, leisure, comfort, party-interests, gold;
one thing they may not sacrifice,--Knowledge itself. Knowledge being their
object, they need not of course insist on their own private views about
ancient or modern history, or national prosperity, or the balance of
power; they need not of course shrink from the co-operation of those who
hold the opposite views; but stipulate they must that Knowledge itself is
not compromised;--and as to those views, of whatever kind, which they do
allow to be dropped, it is plain they consider such to be opinions, and
nothing more, however dear, however important to themselves personally;
opinions ingenious, admirable, pleasurable, beneficial, expedient, but not
worthy the name of Knowledge or Science. Thus no one would insist on the
Malthusian teaching being a _sine qua non_ in a seat of learning, who did
not think it simply ignorance not to be a Malthusian; and no one would
consent to drop the Newtonian theory, who thought it to have been proved
true, in the same sense as the existence of the sun and moon is true. If,
then, in an Institution which professes all knowledge, nothing is
professed, nothing is taught about the Supreme Being, it is fair to infer
that every individual in the number of those who advocate that
Institution, supposing him consistent, distinctly holds that nothing is
known for certain about the Supreme Being; nothing such, as to have any
claim to be regarded as a material addition to the stock of general
knowledge existing in the world. If on the other hand it turns out that
something considerable _is_ known about the Supreme Being, whether from
Reason or Revelation, then the Institution in question professes every
science, and yet leaves out the foremost of them. In a word, strong as may
appear the assertion, I do not see how I can avoid making it, and bear
with me, Gentlemen, while I do so, viz., such an Institution cannot be
what it professes, if there be a God. I do not wish to declaim; but, by
the very force of the terms, it is very plain, that a Divine Being and a
University so circumstanced cannot co-exist.

3.

Still, however, this may seem to many an abrupt conclusion, and will not
be acquiesced in: what answer, Gentlemen, will be made to it? Perhaps
this:--It will be said, that there are different kinds or spheres of
Knowledge, human, divine, sensible, intellectual, and the like; and that a
Un