Yours faithfully,
STAGE MANAGER.
* * * * *
THE DECLINE OF LEARNING.
DEAR SIR,--I look for your sympathy when I say that I regard the abolition
of compulsory Greek at Oxford as tantamount to the collapse of the last
bulwark of British Culture. It is idle for the advocates of this act of
vandalism to protest that the spirit of Ancient Hellas can be adequately
conveyed in the form of translations, and to illustrate this futile
argument by reference to the authorised version of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Admirable as that version may be, is it for a moment to be supposed that it
can take the place of the original as a source of spiritual education? or
that our appreciation of Holy Writ would not be a hundred-fold increased if
it were fortified by a knowledge of the first principles of Hebraic syntax
and by an elementary acquaintance with Hebraic composition. It is
impossible to estimate the influence of such knowledge in tending to endear
the Bible to our youth. To me indeed it has always been incomprehensible
that our Prelates, who presumably have the welfare of the Church at heart,
have never insisted on making Hebrew a compulsory subject for Responsions.
And now Greek has gone and Oxford is the home of one more lost cause.
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