But just as he was in politics a liberal in the truest sense (not in the narrow party definition of the word), so in the religious sphere he descried the necessity of gentle but persistent reform. “The present,” he would often say, “is inseparable from the past,” but he would add “continual modification to suit the necessities of a changing environment is a cardinal condition of vitality.” It was, therefore, his aim to keep the form of all existing institutions and merely to change their matter. Thus, he was in favour of the retention of the Regius Professorship of Greek, and even voted for a heavy increase in the salary of its occupant; but he urged and finally carried the amendment by which that dignitary is at present compelled to lecture mainly on current politics. Mathematics again was a subject whose interest he discerned, however much he doubted its value as a mental discipline; he was, therefore, a supporter of the prize fellowships occasionally offered on the subject, but, in the determination of the successful candidate he would give due weight to the minutiae of dress and good manners. It will be seen from all this that if Lambkin was essentially a modern, yet he was as essentially a wise and moderate man; cautious in action and preferring judgment to violence he would often say, “_trans_former please, not _re_former,” when his friends twitted him over the port with his innovations.[68] Religion, then, which must be a matter of grave import to all, was not neglected by such a mind. He saw that all was not lost when dogma failed, but that the great ethical side of the system could be developed in the room left by the decay of its formal character. Just as a man who has lost his fingers will sometimes grow thumbs in their place, so Lambkin foresaw that in the place of what was an atrophied function, vigorous examples of an older type might shoot up, and the organism would gain in breadth what it lost in definition. “I look forward to the time” (he would cry) “when the devotional hand of man shall be all thumbs.” The philosophy which he thus applied to formal teaching and dogma took practical effect in the no less important matter of the sermon. He retained that form or shell, but he raised it as on stepping-stones from its dead self to higher things; the success of many a man in this life has been due to the influence exerted by his simple words. The particular allocution which I have chosen as the best illustration of his method was not preached in the College Chapel, but was on the contrary a University Sermon given during eight weeks. It ran as follows: SERMON I take for my text a beautiful but little-known passage from the Talmud: “_I will arise and gird up my lions--I mean loins--and go; yea, I will get me out of the land of my fathers which is in Ben-ramon, even unto Edom and the Valley of Kush and the cities about Laban to the uttermost ends of the earth._”