If to have an educated native ministry is one great object of the University, another great and only less important object is the creation of an intellectual Christian laity who shall form and direct Christian public opinion. The school teacher, the writer, are only one degree less important, if indeed they are so, than the Christian minister; and if as China assimilates Western civilisation, she finds in her midst a body of men conversant {311} with the best side of that civilisation, able to interpret its mysteries to her, so that it does not become subversive to all spiritual religion and morality, it is more than probable that she will take those men and put them in high positions, and the grain of mustard seed will by their means grow into a plant which shall overshadow the whole of China. The other day I was reading how St. Grimaldi and St. Neots founded the University of Oxford in 886. Theology, grammar and rhetoric, music and arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, were the subjects taught. After a thousand years we are in a position to judge of the success of the experiment. Surely every one will wish to have a hand in founding a similar undertaking. The foundation of this University cannot for two or three reasons be left to one body. In the first place, no one communion will be rich enough to undertake such a work; secondly, it might cause a certain narrowness of atmosphere; thirdly and chiefly, co-operation among Christians would afford an object-lesson to the Chinese of the real unity there is between them. We are constantly twitted with the fact that we confuse the heathen by professing the religion of love and then setting before them a mass of warring sects. If we can unite in the founding of such a University, we shall show that though we see the Christian truth in different aspects we have agreed that truth is one, and have in spite of our divisions a fundamental unity. When {312} this matter was referred to at the Shanghai Conference, considerable difficulty was felt among missionaries as to the terms on which such a University should be founded. It was agreed to refer it to the Committee on Education, and that Committee of Education has in the year 1909 welcomed the formation of such a University. Dr. Hawks Pott, who of all men in China can best speak as an authority on education, since he has organised and maintained that wonderful institution at Jessfield, warmly advocated its formation.