“Our league will be, therefore, a great _Church_ League. We shall invite every English man and woman to join it, who believes that Christ was God. This is the only way in which we can make such a society do its work and accomplish its end. Directly we begin to allow the political altruist who has no definite belief in Christianity to join us, so surely our influence and opportunity will begin to decline. Compromise is no use whatever. We shall be bitterly assailed, and for a time we shall not seem to make much headway. I say _seem_, and for this reason: people who belong to us will not advertise their membership. The press, which is not interested, as a whole, in religious affairs, will not understand our aims, nor will it be--so I imagine--in sympathy with them. And any movement that has for its object, as this will have, the improvement of sexual morality, will be fought by the methods of ridicule and contempt. But this will be but surface, and in time the influence of our work will not only be felt, but seen. The wizards of figures will be at work once more.” Is this a dream and impracticable? It is for the great middle classes of England to answer during the coming years. The middle classes really rule. They do not command public opinion, but they do what is more than that--they persuade it. They represent more than the remaining classes the austerity and also the Christianity of the United Kingdom and the Dominions beyond the seas. The question rests with them, and there are many who still hope and believe they will be faithful to their trust who are convinced--“DABIT DEUS HIS QUOQUE FINEM.” THE HISTORICIDES OF OXFORD III THE HISTORICIDES OF OXFORD “_Et quidquid Graecia mendax, Audet in historia._” JUVENAL. Sir Robert Walpole, who sometimes spoke with an eloquent crash that echoes in our ears to-day, once said, “Do not read history to me, for that, I know, must be false.” Walpole may have read the _Scienza Nuova_ of Vico probably in the French translation, and could hardly have failed to know something of Bossuet and Montesquieu. The result of his deliberations on the labours of contemporary historians is expressed thus, in a short, sudden bark of contempt. Sir Robert made history, and did not dare to attempt the far more arduous task of writing it. When he gave it, his judgment had not so much value as it has to-day. Some of us read the limpid prose of Bossuet still, nor is the _Grandeur et Décadence des Romains_ forgotten. Yet if at this moment a statesman were to repeat the opinion in reference to most of the history taught and written in Oxford, he would only be speaking the literal truth. The youth of a nation are Trustees for posterity, and it is to them in the first place, and to those who are responsible for their education in the second, that this paper is addressed.