But this was not all. Something more remained to be said. It was for a speaker who had travelled for thirty years on "the London road" to state as plainly as he could his own deepest obligation to the place which had decided the course and complexion of his life. And, when it was difficult to express that obligation in the pedestrian prose of an after-dinner speech, he turned for succour to the poet who sang of "the secret none discover." Wherever philosophical insight is combined with literary genius and personal charm, one says instinctively, "That man is, or ought to be, an Oxford man." Chiefest among the great names which Oxford ought to claim but cannot is the name of Edmund Burke; and the "Secret" on which we have been discoursing seems to be conveyed with luminous precision in his description of the ideal character: "It is our business ... to bring the dispositions that are lovely in private life into the service and conduct of the commonwealth; so to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen; to cultivate friendships and to incur enmities; to have both strong, but both selected--in the one to be placable, in the other immovable." Whoso has attained to that ideal has learnt the "Secret" of Oxford. XIII SCHOOLS FOR SHEPHERDS "The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed." Why not? Because the Shepherds are so imperfectly trained for their business. This, at any rate, is the testimony of a Canon (sometime Examining Chaplain to a Bishop) who at the Diocesan Conference at Ely the other day declared that the clergy were "not qualified to provide instruction in Church Doctrine for the laity because they were not properly trained"; and further testified that "Nonconformist Ministers were much better trained" than the English Clergy. This testimony from a superior Shepherd is rather startling for the Sheep, and it suggests some interesting comparisons. It is, I take it, unquestionable that Nonconformist ministers and Roman Catholic priests alike have much more of a technical education than is thought necessary for their Anglican brothers. They are, so to say, caught early, and their studies from seventeen or eighteen onwards are directed steadily towards their appointed work in life. A Roman Seminarist learns his Latin and Greek as subsidiary to higher studies; he spends, I believe, two years in Philosophy and four in Theology, and is harassed by incessant examinations. The training of the youth who aspires to the Nonconformist ministry is of much the same kind. "Moral Theology," in other words the Science of the Confessional, he naturally does not learn; but, on the other hand, he is sedulously trained for the work of public speaking and preaching. "If you can't preach," said Spurgeon to his students at Stockwell, "it is a clear proof that God doesn't mean you to be a preacher, and you must choose some other occupation."