'>V i -^ ^ rf *. %mnm . PRINCETON, N. J. '^^k^. Shelf. Farrar, Frederic William, 1831-1903. "In the days of thy youth" ¥P.-^^ 'k '"' i-*,^*"^"! -ig*'* -;^'j ■ "IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH." SERMONS PREACHED IN MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE. IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH." SERMONS ON PRACTICAL SUBJECTS, PREACHED AT MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE., From 1871 to 1876. F. W. FARKAR, D.D., F.R.S., CAiJON OF WESTMINSTER ; RECTOR OF ST. MARGAP.ET'S, WT':STM1NSTER ; CHil PLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN ; FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLttGU. CAMBRIDGE; AND LATE MASTER OF MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE. NEW EDITION. bonbon : MACMILLAN AND CO. 1880. LONDON : R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, BREAD STREET HILL, E.C. [The Eight of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.'] DEDICATION. To the Council of Marlhorovgh College ; — to the beloved memory of Bishop Cotton; — to my honoured friend and predecessor J the Master of University College, Oxford ; — to my Colleagues, whose high aims and self denying labours have secured the progress and prosperity of the College during the past six years; — to the Prefects, who have been my immediate pupils, and of whom I truest that many will henceforth be lifelong friends; — to the hundreds of Marl- borough Boys, whose diligence, goodness, and loyalty have caused me such deep> and enduring happiness — These few of the many Sermoi^s delivered in the College Chapel between January 29, 1871, and July 23, 1876. PHEFACE. The following Sermons are, almost exclusively, occupied with practical subjects bearing upon school life. The publication of them is the last proof 1 can give of the undying affec- tion which I shall always 'retain for Marlborough College, and of the deep and sacred interest which I shall always feel in those among whom, for six years, it was my privilege to live. This volume must not be regarded as repre- sentative of my entire teaching. Asked to publish some of my school sermons, I have selected those only which were more or less special in character or treatment. Hence I have excluded from this volume the many PREFACE. sermons wliicli I preached on the great doctrinal truths of Christianity ; those which were suggested by the Fasts and Festivals of our Church ; those on different Scripture characters ; those which pleaded the cause of various charities ; those that dwelt exclusively on the Life, the Parables, the Miracles, the Cross and Passion, the Kesurrection and Ascen- sion, of our Saviour Christ. Many of these might doubtless, in a literary sense, have been regarded as better and more valuable than some here published. But this volume is not pub- lished on literary grounds at all. All mj sermons were necessarily composed as they were required, in brief intervals from much labour and incessant interruption ; they were never intended for publication ; and have neither been altered nor elaborated since. Any value they may possess depends on their being left as they were written — with all their intentional repetitions, with the absence of references and authorities, which I could not always give, and in the style intended PREFACE, solely for oral delivery. I know that those who heard them, and for w^hose sake they are mainly published, will receive them kindly, and will read them with no other desire than that of reviving those good impressions which I trust that, by God's grace, they sometimes produced in faithful hearts. St, Margaret's Eectory, Westminster, October 9, 1876. CONTENTS. SERMON I. I'AGK STANDING BEFORE GOD . , 1 SERMON II. •^ LITTLE FAITHFULNESSES H SERMON III. J HUNGERING AND THIRSTING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS ... 21 SERMON IV. y THE RIGHT USR OF SPEECH 30 SERMON V. 4i SMOULDERING LAMFS . . . . SERMON VI. ASPICE, PROSPICE, RESPICE ^1 xii CONTENTS. SERMON VII. PAQiB LITTLE GIVEN, LITTLE ASKED 61 SERMON VIII. QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE 72 SERMON IX. THE GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED 80 SERMON X. INNOCENT HAPPINESS 89 SERMON XI. SCHOOL AND HOME .99 SERMON XII. X SELF-CONQUEST . 110 SERMON XIII. THE PERIL OF WASTE 119 SERMON XIV. CALLING THINGS BY THEIR WRONG NAMES 129 SERMON XV. COUNTERBALANCE EVIL WITH GOOD ...... . 139 CONTENTS. xiii SERMON XVI. PAGE THINKING OF GOD 148 SERMON XVII. THE OMNIPOTENCE OF PRATER 159 SERMON XVIII. SOWING AMONG THORNS 169 SERMON XIX. HOW TO KEEP GOOD RESOLUTIONS . , 179 SERMON XX. THE OBJECTS OF SCHOOL LIFE 189 SERMON XXI. EXCUSES TO MAN AND TO GOD 199 SERMON XXII. THE TEMPLE OF THE GOD OF TRUTH 209 SERMON XXIII. ^ DRIFTING' AWAY 219 SERMON XXIV. THE HISTORY AND HOPES OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL .... 23C XiV CONTENTS. SERMON XXV. PAGE THE NEED OF CONSTANT CLEANSING FROM CONSTANT ASSOILMENT 243 SERMON XXVI. n! sobermindedness 254 SERMON XXVII. NOT FAR FROM THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 265 SERMON XXVIII. h RUNNERS FOR A PRIZE 275 SERMON XXIX. THE CONTINUITY OF GODLINESS 285 SERMON XXX. HOW TO RESIST THE DEVIL . 297 SERMON XXXI. HOLIDAY ADVICE 307 SERMON XXXII. BLAMELESS AND HARMLESS 316 SERMON XXXIII. HANDWRITINGS ON THE WALL 325 CONTENTS. XV SERMON XXXIV. P4.GE TUE COURAGE OF THE SAINTS POSSIBLE IN BOYHOOD . . 337 SERMON XXXV. THE TRIPLE SANCTIFICATION , 349 SERMON XXXVI. TRUTHFULNESS AND HONESTY 358 SERMON XXXVII. SCHOOL GAMES 367 « SERMON XXXVIII. FROM SORROW TO REPENTANCE 376 SERMON XXXIX. LAST WORDS 389 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, ^zxmnM ^watljeb in Parlkrnitglj College. I.—STANDING BEFORE GOD, Deut. xxix. 10. " Ye stand this day all of you Lefore the Lord your God." So spake Moses, the strong and patient servant of God, in one of those powerful addresses with which the Book of Deuteronomy is filled. They were uttered at the close of the wanderings in the wilderness, when the prophet was already old ; but as the one hundred and twenty years of his marvellous life had not dimmed his eye or abated his natural force, so neither had the cares and sorrows of a dread responsibility quenched the fire of his words or the force of his convictions. Disappointed of the high reward for which his soul had longed, suf- fered only to see the Holy Land which he had once hoped that his feet should tread, he still remained faith- ful and tender, and wavered neither in his allegiance to God nor in his love to man. Unselfish to the last, the old chieftain summoned around him the children of his heart ; and as the captains of the tribes, and elders, and ofiicers, and all the men of Israel, nay, even their little M. S. B 2 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. ones, and the hewers of wood and drawers of water, sat listening at his feet, he reiterated again and again, in language which must have smitten their hearts like the thunders of Sinai, the blessings and curses, the sanctions and prohibitions of the fiery law ! And then, inviting them to bind their souls with a sacred covenant, he prefaces it with these words of solemn import : " Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord your God." Intense in their significance — fresh in their solemnity — as when Moses uttered them to the listening multi- tudes on the farther shores of Jordan, the echo of those warning words rolls to us across the centuries. They express the formative principle, the regulating concep- tion, the inspiring impulse of every greatly Christian life. The very differentia of such a life, — that is, its distinguishing feature, — is this, that it is spent always and consciously in the presence of God. ** It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Towards which Time leads us, and the will of heaven. All is if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye." And in proportion to our faith is the vividness and reality wherewith, like Moses, we see God — ^like Enoch walk, like Abraham converse, like Jacob wrestle with Him, like Elijah thrill to the inward whisper of His still small voice. There are, indeed, some eyes so dim that they catch no gleam of His Presence ; some ears so dull that they never hear the music or the thunder of His voice ; and there are moments when even to the best of men He seems silent or far off. But when the eyes are opened by prayer and penitence, when- the ear is purged by listening humbly for the revelation of His will, then all life, all nature, all history, are full of Him. STANDING BEFORE GOD. Then, Conscience, speak she never so faintly, becomes His articulate utterance. Then Experience, seem it never so perplexing, is but the unknown pattern which He is weaving into the web of our little lives. Then even amid the crash of falling dynasties, and the struggles of furious nations, we see His guiding hand. Then the great open book of the universe reveals Him on every page, while, legibly as on the tables of Moses, He engraves His name upon the rock tablets of the world ; and clearly as on the palace wall of Belshazzar, He letters it in fire amid the stars of heaven, in flowers among the fields of spring. But whether we see or see not, whether we hear or hear not, whether conscience and life be voiceful to us or silent, assuredly He is and He speaks to us ; assuredly not this day only, but every day, we stand each and all of us before the Lord our God. I. Let us first strive, my brethren, to recognise the fact, and then to consider its consequences. By recog- nising the fact I mean that we should endeavour to im- press it on our thoughts ; to make it not only theoretical, but intensely practical ; to realize it as the principle of action, to build upon it as the basis of life. Oh, on this first Sunday of a new half-year let every one of us, from the oldest to the youngest, strive to feel and know that God is ; that He is the re warder of all them that diligently seek Him ; that every sin we commit is committed in His presence ; that His eye is always upon us, never slumbering nor sleeping : in the busy scenes of day about our path ; in the silent watches of the night about our bed. Who, my brethren, whether in defiance or in terror, whether in prosperity or in despair, ever suc- ceeded in concealing himself from God ? Adam in his shame and nakedness strove to hide himself among the garden trees, and that Voice called him forth. Cain B 2 4 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. would have fled from Him into the land of exile, but even there he felt the branding finger upon his brow. Hagar despaired of Him, and lo. His angel of mercy- shone before her at the Beerlahairoi. Jonah rose to flee from Him in ships of Tarshish, and met Him in the shattered vessel, on the tempestuous sea. He flashed upon the dreams of Jacob, in a vision of forgiveness, as he slept on the rocky stairs of the steep hill-side. " Whither," sang David the guilty adulterer, David the weeping penitent, " whither shall I go then from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I go then from Thy presence ? If I climb up to heaven, Thou art there ; if I go down to hell, Thou art there also ; if I take the wings of the morning and abide in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall guide me." Yes, " Thou, God, seest me ! " And when we have felt this truth, how does the thought affect us ? what is its meaning for us ? Does it inspire us with love, or with hatred ? with comfort, or with despair ? 11. (1.) Our first lesson from it, my brethren, is a sense of warning. Surely there is a warning — for the forgetful a startling, for the guilty a terrible, even for the good man a very solemn warning, in the thought that not only our life in its every incident, but even our heart in its in- most secrets, lies naked and open before Him with whom we have to do. When we remember that He, who chargeth even His angels with folly, and in whose sight the very heavens are not clean, is always with us ; that the very loneliest solitudes are peopled with His presence ; that walls do not hide, nor inner-chambers conceal us from Him ; that the deepest curtains of secrecy and midnight are to Him transparent as the blaze of noon, — are we indeed so pure and innocent, is the 1.] STANDING BEFORE GOD. 5 white robe of our baptism so utterly unstained, that there is no warning for us in that thought ? If the Gadarenes, anxious for their swine, couhi flock to Christ to entreat that He would depart out of their coasts ; if even St. Peter, troubled by the sudden apocalypse of His tenderness and power, could fall at His feet, saying, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord ; " must there not be a similar repugnance and alarm in every willingly sinful soul ? Oh if there be such alarm in your soul, be warned in time. If you hate, if you are terrified by the thought of God's perpetual presence, then be sure that there must be some deep disharmony in your being, and be sure that, while this continues, you cannot be fulfilhng the law of your creation, you cannot be at peace with God. (2.) But we, my brethren, are Christians ; it ought not to be so, I trust that it is not so, with us, for to all who have learnt to love and to trust in God, the thought that we stand before Him involves not only a sense of warning, but, secondly, a sense of elevation, of ennoble- ment. It is a sweet and a lofty doctrine, the highest source of all the dignity and grandeur of life. It is the very thing which distinguishes us from the beasts that perish. They, so far as we know, feel no responsibility, rise to no worship, attain no knowledge, cherish no hope for the future, and but a dull, blind memory of the past; until, their unimmortal but sinless destiny being accom plished, ** Something in the darkness draws Their foreheads downwards, and they die." But man, how different a life is his ! " How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in form and moving how express and admirable ! in action how like 6 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. an angel ! in apprehension how like a god ! "^ And why ? Because He is a son of God, made in His image, an inheritor of His kingdom, conscious of His presence. In childhood how is he clothed with the charm of inno- cence ; in youth, if he be true to himself, how does the grace of Heaven take early hold of him as he grows in wisdom, and stature, and favour with God and man ; in manhood how does he ev^er become sweeter and purer, nobler and loftier ; and in old age, at last, how does the fire of his life as it wanes in lustre increase in loveliness — as the sun before his setting is gazed upon with more of admiration, if with less of awe, while he makes even the clouds around him and the waters underneath his feet flush into a softer purple and a purer gold ! (3) And besides a sense of warning aud of elevation, a third consequence of life spent consciously in God's presence is a firm, unflinching, unwavering sense of ditty. And surely this sense of duty, so marked a feature in every good man's character, is a thing of extraordinary dignity. Certainly without it life is singularly contemptible, inevitably miserable. Compare a river which has burst its banks, and whose waters, shallow, polluted, dangerous, first flood the fields with devastation, then poison them with malaria — compare it, I say, with the same river flowing in its ordered courses, majestic with its rejoicing depth, enriching the plains with fertility aud health, filling (as an Arab poet expresses it) its bosom with gold, and robing its path in emeralds : — such, my brethren, is a human life without, and a human life with, the sense of duty. Or compare, again, a vessel, rolling, waterlogged and helpless, at the mercy of the storm, — a wind-tossed, melancholy hulli on the waste of waters, or a desolate wreck upon ^ Shakspeare, Ramlet. I.] STANDING BEFORE GOV. the lonely shore, — compare it, I say, with the same vessel obeying a very small helm, and therefore cutting- through the frustrate billows in victorious career, and making the very hurricane speed it onwards toward the destined shore; — such again, my brethren, is a human life without, and a human life with, the sense of duty. A life regardful of duty is crowned with an object, directed by a purpose, inspired by an enthusiasm, till the very humblest routine, carried out conscien- tiously for the sake of God, is elevated into nioral grandeur ; and the very obscurest office, filled con- scientiously at the bidding of God, becomes an imperial stage on which all the virtues play. To one who lives thus the insignificant becomes important, the unpleasant delio-htful, the evanescent eternal. S ' ' A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine ; Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws Makes that and the action line. And do not for a moment, my brethren, suffer this idea of Duty to wear a harsh or repulsive aspect to your thoughts. Oh give your hearts to her, serve her with a manly devotion, and so far from being severe or unlovely, this " stern daughter of the voice of God," hand in hand with her sister Wisdom, shall guide you along the path of a godly and honourable life, till at the touching of their sacred feet the very wilderness, aye, the very thorns of the wilderness, shall blossom as the rose. (4.) But, as a fourth consequence, there is something loftier and lovelier than even a sense of duty, which results from a consciousness of standing in the presence of God — it is the sense of holiness. It is a solemn thought that a man may perform his duties, and yet not be a holy man; he may be apparently upright, not really « IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. innocent ; outwardly conscientious, not inwardly sincere. It is one thing to be " not far from the kingdom of God," another to be a member thereof; one thing to be near the gate of heaven, another thing to be therein. I do not mean that men are open and conscious hypocrites. These, I believe, are very rare. But it is mostly some cherished idol, some wilful reservation, some favourit-e temptation, in a word, some besetting sin, that makes men fall short of that truth in the inw^ard parts which God requires, and which, to those who seek for it and love it, He will give. For God says — tenderly indeed, yet absolutely — " My son, give Me thine heart." He says, " Be ye holy, for I am holy." He forbids us, not only to seek our own pleasure, or do our own w^ays, but even to think our own thoughts ; He requires not only duty, but holiness; He searcheth the spirits; He discernetb the very reins and hearts. (5.) Who, my brethren, is sufficient for these things ? If we have fallen far short of duty, how then shall we attain to holiness ? And yet without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Oh, who shall arm us for the dread struggle of the future ? Who shall forgive us all the sad failures, all the foolish errors, all the wilful wanderings, of the past ? My brethren, this text will give us the answer. We stand, all of us, before the Lord our God. The knowledge of this not only warns us, not only ennobles us, not only inspires us with a sense of duty, not only convinces us of the necessity for holiness, but lastly, it encourages us with a certainty of heljp and strength. That God before whom we stand is not only our Judge and our Creator, but also our Father and our Friend. Behold Him revealed to us in Christ, our elder Brother in the great family of God ! He feels for all our infirmities. He can sympathise in all our sorrows. I.] STANDING BEFORE GOD. 9 He has conquered all our temptations. .^He has borne the dread burden of all our sins. The pulse of every beating heart is known to Him. He sees every tear we shed. He considers every wish we cherish. He answers every true prayer we breathe. In the depth of humiliation He is with us. In the rough places His angels catch us by the hand. In the valley of the shadow of death — where none can accompany us — His brightness illumines^ every^ dreadful downward step. My brethren, doubtless we shall all find difficulties, troubles, temptations here, and the very worst of them will come from our own wayward, wandering hearts ; well, let us face them bravely, humbly, cheerfully ; let us remember that it was He who placed us in the midst of them, because He meant us to resist, because He will help us to conquer them. Fear not; even the youngest and weakest here He loves ; let us be true to the higher law of our nature ; let us remember that God sees us ; and then let us doubt not, but earnestly believe that He will accept us in the Beloved as His redeemed, forgiven sons. Only believe in Him, and He will lead you by the hand through a happy and uncor- rupted youth to the firm threshold of a godly manhood ; will, in the hour of death, fling open before you the gates of everlasting life ; will, in the day of judgment, pro- nounce those blessed words, for which a life of the worst agony would cheaply pay, — " Servant of God, well done !" Lessons, then, of warning, of elevation, of duty, of holiness, of help, — these are what we should set before us. Oh, my brethren, that we may learn thes ', lessons, keeping them before us consciously ; knowing ourselves to be bound by them inflexibly; feeling ourselves encouraged by them daily and hourly ! Tor in a sense yet more solemn than ordinary do we stand, all of us, on this day, on this first Sunday of a new half-year, 10 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. i. before the Lord our God. On this day He gives you the inestimable blessing of a fresh start in serving Him, a new opportunity to devote yourselves to Him. Oh may you who are new boys among us determine on this day to commit yourselves and your ways unto the Lord, sure that if you do He will be your shield and buckler. And you who are already familiar with this place, if you have by His blessing humbly striven to serve Him hitherto, oh seek by His grace to Sv^rve Him also hence- forth with yet deeper devotion, with yet sincerer earnestness ; and if you have been faithless, unholy, guilty before Him, oh let the time past suffice, and turn to Him now in this accepted time, now on this day of salvation. So may His best blessing, without which nothing is strong, nothing is holy, rest upon us all : on us who teach, inspiring us with wisdom, and self-denial, and unwearied energy, and holy purpose ; on you who learn, clothing you with the heavenly grace of reverent and earnest spirits; kindling your ardour with the certain victory of the strong in faith; crowning your efforts with the priceless beatitude of the pure in heart. And that this blessing may rest upon us, let us seek it now, out of a pure heart fervently. Brethren, pray for us. Let us, as we kneel in earnest prayer, each ask God's blessing for himself, as each also for one another, and all for this place which we all love, that it may be always a place of sound learning and religious education, and that each son of this school may rise hereafter to call it blessed, having been trained therein to be a profitable member of the Church and commonwealth, that he may be hereafter, by God's grace, a partaker of the immortal glory of the resurrection through Jesus Christ our Lord. February 12, 1871. SEEMO:^' II. LITTLE FAITHFULNESSES. Luke xvi. 10. " He that is faithful in that whicli is least is faithfal also in much : and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." You have just been listening, my brethren, to the parable of the Unjust Steward, of which these words form the sequel. Into the difficulties of that parable it is not now my purpose to enter ; but surely they have been greatly exaggerated. The master of the steward approved of his dexterity, not of his fraudulence ; he praised him, not because he had done wisely, cocpm, but prudently, (ppovl/iw^. The parable is but another illustra- tion of the warning, "Be ye prudent, (ppovi/jiol,^s serpents, yet harmless as doves." If, in the thirst for power — if, in the greed of gain — the children of this generation can show tact and zeal, imitate those qualities in a better cause, win the treasures of heaven with that toil where- with they heap up for themselves the wealth of earth. And, in doing this, neglect nothing ; — underrate no virtue because you esteem it trivial — commit no wrong because you hold it small. There is a duty and a glory in little faithfulnesses. There is a peril and a shame in little sins. You will see that there are two parts of the text, and we might dwell with profit upon either. " He that 12 IN THE DAYS OF TRY YOUTH. [serm. is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." What a world of warning lies in those words ! The little foxes that spoil the vines — the little canker that slays the oak — the little leak which ever gains upon the vessel till it sinks — the little fissure in the mountain- side, out of which the lava pours — the little rift within the lute that, slowly widening, makes the music mute — what are all these, in their ruinous influence, but a fit emblem of the sinfulness of little sins ? how do they illustrate that old proverb that the mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's wing! Yes, my brethren, small injustices are but the wet and slippery stepping- stones down into deeper waters. He who is unjust in a penny now may be so in thousands of pounds hereafter. He who is not perfectly honest in trifles now, may, if unchecked, develop, in later life, a character radically untrustworthy — fundamentally unsound. Therefore, my brethren, let us be in all our dealings transparent as the day; let us all proudly and kindly encourage each other to shun and to scorn, in all our doings, the faintest spot of suspicion and dishonour ; let us, if it occurs, put our foot firmly upon it as we would upon a spark where a magazine was near, knowing with what a monotonous and fatal echo the records of men's lives sigh back their confirmation to that solemn warning, "He that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." But, my brethren, though it may often be our duty to dwell on topics such as these — though, as we were wisely warned last Sunday, it is a dangerous and timid optimism which is afraid to call sin sin, or to ignore the shame and the sorrow wherewith God has burnt a mark upon its brow, yet it is always a happier and more hopeful thing to dwell upon the other side — on obedience rather than on transgression — on the high ri.] LITTLE FAITHFULNESSES. 13 happiness whicli ministers to virtue rather than on the retribution which dogs the heels of vice. Let us, then, this morning, passing by the sombre conclusion of the text, touch lightly — for more than this is impossible — upon its happy prophecy : let us take for our brief meditation the glory and the blessing of little faithful- nesses. 1. Little faithfulnesses : it is all the more necessary for us to contemplate them, because it is not these in general which men venerate or admire. We praise the high — the splendid — the heroic : we dwell on the great deeds — on the glorious sacrifices. When you read how the lady of the house of Douglas thrust her own arm through the bolt grooves of the door and let the murderers break it while her king had time to hide; / or how the pilot of Lake Erie stood undaunted upon the burning deck, and, reckless of the intense agony, ) steered the crew safe to the jetty, and then fell dead among the crackling flames ; or how the Eussian serf, to save his master and his master's children, sprang out from the sledge among the wolves that howled after them through the winter snow ; or, once more, how, amid the raging storm, the young girl sat with her father at the oar to save the shipwrecked sailors from the shrouds of the shattered wreck — whose soul is so leaden that it does not thrill with admiration at deeds like these ? But think you, m.y brethren, that these brave men and women sprang, as it were, full-sized into their heroic stature? Nay; but, like the gorgeous blossom of the aloe, elaborated through long years of silent and unnoticed growth, so these deeds were but the bright consummate flov/er borne by lives of quiet, faithful, unrecorded service ; and no one, be sure, has ever greatly done or gloriously dared who has not been 14 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTE. Nrm. familiar witli the grand unselfislmess of little duties ; who has not offered to God — more precious than the temple altars smoking with hecatombs of spotless lambs — the daily sacrifice of a contrite heart — the daily discipline of a chastened life. You would be like these ? Well, it is a great ambition. But if you would not be false to it, show now, in little things, of what stuff your hearts are made, and you will not then be unprepared if God should ever require of you the hero's courage or the martyr's faith. Fourteen years ago, when England had been agonised by the horrors and massacres of the great Indian mutiny, then the daring genius and inflexible will of one great soldier carried a handful of troops across flooded rivers and burning plains. He was an old man, for the fire of life may die away in the white ashes of a mean career, but it glow^s to the last in the generous and the true, and he died in the effort before he knew of the honours heaped upon him by grateful England, though not before he had saved the brightest Jewel in England's crown. To Sir Henry Havelock the opportunity for showing to all the world the moral greatness which was in him did not come till he w^as sixty-two ; but do you think that, in God's sight, that pure and unselfish life would have been one whit less beautiful if the opportunity had never come ? Had Henry Havelock died a poor struggling officer, unknown beyond the limits of his own regiment, think you that in the angel-registers the record would have been less bright ? Or may it not rather be that, — in those biographies which are written only in God's Book of Life — the quiet patience of one who had been but a neglected lieutenant till the age of forty- three — the unmurmuring simplicity with which, on the very morning of victory, he resigned the chief command II.] LITTLE FAITHFULNESSES. 15 into another's hands, — the moral courage, which, amid a godless society, made him invite his men to join with him in prayer, and not wince under the sneering title of Havelock's saints, — may it not be, I say, that these little faithfulnesses are written in brighter letters than the victory at Alumbagh, or than the salvation of India by that great march, through scorching heat and drenching rain, from Cawnpore to Lucknow ? If then you would do great deeds hereafter, prepare for them, rehearse them, show yourselves fit for them now. " He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." 2. But, secondly, remember that if the opportunity for great deeds should never come, the opportunity for good deeds is renewed for you day by day. The thing for us to long for is the goodness, not the glory, and in the words of the poet — ** One small toueh of charity Would raise us nearer godlike state, Than if the crowded orb i;hould cry- As those who cried Diana great." Do you desire that, hereafter, the world should ring with your name coupled to some heroic action, or that, in the annals of earthly goodness, it should be em- blazoned in lines of gold ? Well, as you grow older and wiser, as your eyes are enlightened to distinguish the substance from the shadow, you will learn to value and covet the spirit, not the sign of it ; the high motive, not the tangible result ; the simple faithfulness, not the echoing recognition ; the quiet lightning-deed, '*Not that applauding thunder at its heels Which men call fame." You will repeat the prayer which an unhappy queen of our own royal house inscribed with a diamond upon her 16 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. castle window, "Oh keep me innocent, make others great." Most of lis, my brethren, perhaps every one of us will but die in the round of common duties, in the fulfilment of an ordinary routine ; happy if that routine be accepted loyally ; happy if those duties be faithfully performed. For if life be a battle-field, then, like other battle-fields, it is won by the nameless multitudes, by the unrecorded hosts. The great leaders fight and fall conscious that theirs shall be the glory of the victory ; but as the thin red lines advance to battle amid the storm of shells, each peasant-soldier knows well that where he falls the poppy and the violet shall but blossom over a nameless grave, and yet they advance unflinching to the batteries whose cross-fire vomits death upon them, and so — as a generous leader once exclaimed — and so " they die by thousands those unnamed demi-gods."^ They give their lives ; and what can a king do more ? And we too — however common-place, however humble — we too can keep the ranks unbroken ; we too can be of " the faithful who were not famous ;" we too can make sure that where we stand, there at least, in the great Armageddon, by the grace of God, there shall be no swerving in the line ; and thereby shall our little service be, as has well been said, " precious as the continuity of sunbeams is precious, thoui^^h some of them fall unseen and on barren- ness ;"2 precious as the drops of rain are precious, though some of them seem to be wasted in idle dimples upon the shipless main ! 3. Little faithfulnesses then are not only the pre^ paration for great ones, but little faithfulnesses are in themselves the great ones. Observe the striking fact that our Lord does not say, " He that is faithful in that which is least will be faithful also in much," but " He * Kossuth. ^ George Eliot. II.] LITTLE FAITHFULNESSES. 17 that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much." The essential fidelity of the heart is the same whether it be exercised in two mites or in a regal treasury ; the genuine faithfulness of the life is equally beautiful whether it be displayed in governing an empire or in writing an exercise. It has been quaintly said that if God were to send two angels to earth, the one to occupy a throne, and the other to clean a road, they would each regard their employments as equally distin- guished and equally happy. In the poem of Tlieocrite, the Archangel Gabriel takes the poor boy's place : — " Then to his poor trade he turned, By which the daily bread was earned ; And ever o'er the trade he bent, And ever lived on earth content ; He did God's will : to him all one If on the earth, or in the sun," ^ Yes, the insignificance of our worldly rank affects in nowise our membership of the spiritual aristocracy. The thing really important is, not the trust committed to us, but the loyalty wherewith we fulfil it. All of us may be, in St. Paul's high language, fellow-labourers with God ; and he who is that, be he slave or angel, can be nothing better or greater. The mountains cease to be colossal, the ocean tides lose their majesty, if you see what an atom our earth is in the starry space. Even so turn the telescope of faith to heaven, and see how at once earth's grandeurs dwindle into nothingness, and Heaven's least interests dilate into eternal breadth. Yes, to be a faithful Christian is greater in God's sight than to be a triumphant statesman or a victoriouh emperor. " God's heroes may be the world's helots." *' God's prophets, best or worst, are we — there is no last or first." 1 R. Browning. M. S. C IS IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. 4. Let a very few remaining words endeavour, yet more practically, to apply to our present needs and circumstances these mighty and consoling truths. I. And first I would ask. Do any of you regard your boyhood, with its subjection to parents and masters, and its general state of discipline and tutelage, as " that which is least ? " Do you yearn for the greater day, as perhaps you think it, when you shall be free to choose in life your own path and your own pursuits, none hindering you ? Well, to you I say solemnly, " He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much ; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." What you are now the chances are that, in the main, you will be hereafter. The boy is father to the man. Be false and treacherous, be unjust or impure, be indolent and disobedient now, and you will either be saved so as by fire, or you will grow up into a useless dangerous, degraded man. And, on the other hand, be good and faithful, be pure and honest, be brave and generous now, and then be very sure that God will make you a worthy son. of the school that trained, a worthy citizen of the nation that nurtured you; nay more, a true child of God, a certain inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. The servant that used rightly his two talents was made ruler over many things. ISTo servant of God ever yet missed of his infinite reward. " Heaven," as was said by the great teacher of China,^ " heaven means principle." II. And lastly, I would say to you, not only be faith- ful in this the least part of your life, but try to be faithful in the least things which concern it. Count nothing slight, says the wise son of Sirach, whether it be great or small. Life is made up of little things, just as time at the longest is but an aggregate of seconds. ^ Confucius. 11.] LITTLE FAITHFULNESSES. 19 Be an act ever so unimportant, the principle involved in our acts is not unimportant. You say that there is very little harm in this or that ; if there is even a little harm in it then there is great harm in it. A feather will \ show you the direction of the wind ; a straw will prove the set of a current. And this is why Christ says, " Be ye perfect." It is a precept intensely practical. No day passes but what we can put it into action. Here, for instance, in this your school life, not to speak of the weightier matters of the law, little punctualities, little self-denials, little honesties, little passing words of sym- pathy, little nameless acts of kindness, little silent victories over favourite temptations — these are the little threads of gold, which, when woven together, gleam out so brightly in the pattern of a life that God approves. Let me illustrate the last only, and it shall be from a source which you will all reverence, for it is from the life of that good Bishop to whom Marlborough looks as her father and second founder. Bishop Cotton was blessed, says his biography, with a remarkably sweet and even temper, but in India a land of many irritations and smaU worries, it was often tried. A cloud would gather for a few moments on his countenance ; but ordi- narily by entire silence he checked the hasty word. Very rarely, however, an expression of annoyance escaped him ; and here comes what I would ask you to consider. Surely, you will say, a passing irritation, a momentary haste, were very small faults, hardly faults at all. Kot so, thought that noble heart. He was faithful, you see, in little things. " His self-condemna- tion afterwards," continues his biographer, "was truly that godly sorrow that worketh repentance, and could spring only from the heart and conscience of one who ^ Life of Bishop Cotton. c 2 20 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH [serm. ii. feels that he has, for the moment, failed in allegiance to Him in whom alone lies the strength for a sinner's victory." " In the most trivial temptations he sought to maintain that warfare against sin which made his whole life, as it ripened towards its close, a religion, a devotion, an act of faith." That example, my brethren, belongs especially to us ; we claim it, and we feel it to be ours ; like a sweet savour, like a precious heritage, it lingers here ; and that life was pre-eminently moulded on the principle which I have roughly striven to illustrate : " He that is faithful in the least is faithful also in much ; and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much." March 5, 1871. SEEMON III. . HUNGERING AND THIRSTING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS. Matt. v. 6. *' Blessed are they wliicli do hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they shall be filled." It was indeed a new revelation that Sermon on the Mount, to part of which you have just been listening ; — new in its method, new in its substance, new in its results. It was new in its metJiod ; — for at Sinai out of the thick darkness, amid the rolling thunder, God had spoken of old to a wandering nation as they trembled at the base of the burning hill ; but now on the green grass, among the mountain lilies, beside the limpid lake, with the infinite tenderness of sympathy and sorrow, the lips of the Son of Man spake softly the utterance of Grod. It was new in its substance ; — for there were no narrow prohibitions here, no Levitical ceremonies, no transitory concessions, no statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live, but the eternal, transcendent, unshaken law of mercy and self- denial, of tenderness and love. It was new in its results ; — for that fiery law did but curb and crush one obstinate and rebellious people with a burden which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear ; but this 22 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm. was to "be a delight for all and for ever, it was to come like a fresh youth to a diseased and decrepit world, revivifying as the summer sunliglit, beneficent as the universal air. Whichever one we selected of those divine beatitudes, with which, as with a song sweeter than ever angel sang, our Lord began His Sermon on the Mount, we should find it full of instruction, and we should find it opposed diametrically to the vulgar teaching of the world. And let us admit at once that there are aspects in which these beatitudes seem too high for your youthful age. " Blessed are the poor in spirit ; " but how impetuous and resentful, how swift and self-reliant is the heart of youth ! " Blessed are they that mourn ; " but can we dwell on this to you at an age which, as the poet-preacher expresses it, " danceth like a bubble, empty and gay, and shineth like a dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow which' hath no substance, and whose very imagery and colours are fantastical," " Blessed are the merciful ; " " Blessed are the peace-makers ; " " Blessed are the pure in heart." Yes, these, doubtless, you might learn even now to practise and to understand, but can we hope that you will see any force in this also, " Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they shall be filled ? " It was natural for David, the old worn king, for David, who, after all the buffetings of a stormy life, had learnt, even if it were by evil, that good was best — it was natural, I say, for him to exclaim, " As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, God ! " But such would be in general but exotic and artificial language for most of you. Look at the corn-fields now, and you will see only the green blade, barely struggling into the sunlight out of the frosty soil : we do not look yet for the ear, much less rir.] THIRSTING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS. 23 for the ripe corn in the ear ; nor in the inexperienced neophyte and the timid catechumen do we expect the vision of the mystic and the rapture of the saint. Some, indeed, there may be of you, of whom, in silence and in secret, the grace of God has taken such early hold that to them even such woixls as these may come of .ight ; but for most of you, as yet, it is enough if the hunger and thirst after righteousness has taken fMs form : — that you abhor that which is evil, and cleave to that which is good ; that, recognizing the blazonry of your high birth, you scorn and loathe all meanness and malice, all cruelty and lies ; that, feeling, as it were, the symbol of certain victory which was marked upon your forehead in your baptism, you turn with a certain honest haughtiness of nature from the baser and more degrading forms of vice ; that in the determination to live by God's grace lives pure, and brave, and service- able, you have, as it were, already set your feet upon the mountain and turned your eyes towards the sun. Would to God that every one of you had gone as far as this 1 It is true that righteousness, in the language of Scripture, means more than this, — more than moral culture, more than gradual improvement, more than the natural integrity of a rightly-constituted soul. It means the devoted service of God ; it means the constraining^ love of Christ ; it means the unutterable yearning of the Spirit for all that is divine. But, nevertheless, virtue, if it be not as yet righteousness, is yet the sweetest flower which blooms beside that narrow path. It has been truly said by a moralist of the eighteenth century — may you all remember that admirable definition ! — that virtue is the conquest of self for the benefit of others ; and in this aspect, at least, to disparage virtue because as yet it is not holiness, is to disparage the blossom 24 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. because it is not yet the fruit. And if you are aiming at tliis, if you have realised already the sanctity of such service, if your one main desire is that you should be yourself good and happy, in order that others may be the better and the happier for you — in one word, if you recog- nize that you are not your own, but are God's child, and must therefore by living for others do His work — then fear not ; this is at least the dawn which shall broaden and biighten into the boundless day. It shall never be yours to cry in disappointment with the dying Brutus : " Oh virtue, thou art but a name ! " Nay, more, you may fearlessly claim the gradual fulfilment of the divine beatitude, "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they shall he filled." For observe, my brethren, there are some — alas ! there are many — in the world who seem to hunger and thirst after nothing. It is a type which in this age is getting more and more common, the type of those who live as though they had no souls, as though no God had made them, no Saviour died for them, no Spirit shone in the temple of their hearts. They live but little better than the beasts that perish, the life of dead, stolid, spiritless comfort, the life without purpose, without effort, without nobility, without enthusiasm, " the dull, grey life, and apathetic end." The great sea of human misery welters around them ; but what is that to them, while the bread is given and the water sure ? Over them, vast as the blue dome of Heaven, brood the eternal realities ; before them, deeper than ever plummet sank, flows the river of death ; beyond it, in gloom unutterable or in beauty that cannot be described, is either the outer darkness or the City of our God ; but it seems as though they had neither mind to imagine, nor faith to realize, nor heart to understand. These are they whom in his awful III.] THIRSTING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS. 25 vision the great poet of the Middle Ages saw whirled like the autumn leaves, round and round the outer circle of the prison-house, aimlessly following the flutter of a giddy flag, hateful alike to God and to His enemies, whom, in his energetic language. Heaven de- spises and Hell itself rejects. These are they of whom, in language no less energetic and intense, the divine poet of the Apocalypse exclaims : " I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot : I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." It is sad, but it is true, that they are nothing, they do nothing, they learn nothing, they add nothing to the sum of human happiness — numerics etfruges consumere nati ; their lives, one had well nigh said, worthless to humanity than the very flower that grows upon their graves. Oh ! be not you like these. Be something in life, do something, aim at something ; not something great, but something good ; not something famous, but something service- able; not leaves, but fruit. You are planted in the vineyard of God, you are watered by the dews of Heaven ; let the great Husbandman not look in vain, when He looketh that ye bring forth grapes ; for if not, then lo ! even now, in the hands of the watchers and the holy ones, the lifted axe may be swinging through the parted air, even now the dread fiat be issuing forth : "Cut it down ; why cumbereth it the ground ? " 2 . But there are others who hunger and thirst indeed, but it is not for righteousness ; hunger and thirst, oh, how fiercely, oh, with what futile pain, spending their money for that which is not bread, and their labour for that which satisfieth not. Some — hundreds — like Balaam, are greedy of gain, and if they succeed, then all that they touch seems to turn to gold, and, like 26 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. the foolish king of the legend, they starve in the midst of it. Or they are greedy of sensual pleasure, they rush madly to the " scoriae river of passion," and consume their very beings with draughts of its liquid fire. Or they are greedy of power and fame, and chase those dancing bubbles till at a touch they burst, while, with the echoes of mocking langhter, they themselves fall through some sudden gap of death into the rolling waters of the prodigious tide below. Over and over again, in book after book, in age after age, does Scripture warn us of the emptiness, the unsatisfactoriness of human wishes; it compares them to the vanishing brooks dried up in the summer heat, when they are needed most ; it compares them to broken cisterns which will hold no water. A modern army was once crossing a desert, scorched with heat, agonized with thirst; suddenly before them gleamed lakes and rivers, green with their grassy margins, bright with the soft inversion of reflected trees. They pressed forward in their weary hunger, in their raging thirst ; warned in vain that it w^as but a mocking phantom, they pressed forward only to be un- deceived with double anguish ; they pressed forward to find nothing but the circle of sun-encrimsoned wilder- ness, nothing but the glare of illuminated sand. They had seen that mirage which is the truest type of the devil's promise and the worldling's hope, the false spectre of waters which are not, and of fruits that fail, — that mirage of the desert, which is but too apt to deceive us all, till death disenchants the dreaming eyes. 3. But " blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they shall be filled ; " filled with the heavenly manna of which he that gathered least had yet no lack, sated with the water which he who drink- eth shall thirst no more. There is no false glamour. III.] THIRSTING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS. 27 no raging hunger, no scorching thirst in those green pastures, beside those still waters, whither God leadeth His children's feet. The voice of Scripture, which warns us so often of the perils of being deceived by dangerous desires, tells us also again and again that the kingdom of heaven is righteousness, and joy, and peace. " Great is the peace," sang David, " which they have who love Thy law." " Her ways," said Solomon, " are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." But if any doubt, I will not ask them to believe on the testimony of Scripture only. Scripture is but one of God's revela- tions, and none of His revelations can contradict each other. But take in hand the unsuspected page of liistory ; read the rich volumes of biography ; decipher the tablets of conscience as the light of God's law falls full upon them : will they contradict the warning ? will they alter the advice ? Nay, let the best-read here find me in all the history of the dead, point to me among all the myriads of the living, but one single man, be be the most gifted, the most successful, the most superior, who has been satisfied and supported by what earth can give, or who, having eaten the fruits of sin, has not found them venomous and bitter ; or, on the other hand, one single man, be he the very poorest and most despised, who, having with his whole soul sought righteousness, has not thereby been fully satisfied, infinitely content — find me, I say, but one permanently happy worldling, but one permanently miserable Christian, and I will admit that Scripture errs. But, my brethren, you cannot, even with all the records of the ages and all the literature of the godless to aid your search. Wickedness, even exalted on the throne, even robed in the purple, even lolling at the feast, is gnawed by the secret vipei at the heart ; righteousness, even lurking in the 28 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. catacomb, even tortured in the dungeon, even quivering in the flame, rejoiceth in its deepest sorrow, and is assurance, and life, and peace. Observe, we do not pretend to offer you a life of unbroken prosperity or of undisturbed repose. Eight- eousness will give you love, joy, peace ; but it will not give you an invincible amulet against misfortune, or a continuous immunity from pain. Pain, bereavement, failure may be the needful fire to purge away the dross of your nature from the seven-times refined gold. Let Satan tempt you with the transient spasms of enjoyment or the mean baits of ease : the service of God disdains such lower allurements. Yes, the path of evil is broad, and smooth, and downwards, and near at hand ; but toil stands in the path of righteousness, and that path is narrow, and steep, and rough ; but who would ex- change its saddest sigh for the laughter of fools, which is as the crackling of thorns under a pot ? Who would exchange the tears which God's hand shall wipe away for "the troubles of the envious or the fears of the cowardly, the heaviness of the slothful, or the shame of the unclean ? " Nay, who would exchange the banquet of the prodigal at its maddest and most luxurious moment for the sternest duty and the heaviest affliction of his Father's home ? Whatever happens to you, if you hunger and thirst after righteousness, you shall be satisfied ; for then your hunger is not for the stones of the wilderness, but for the tree of life ; your thirst not for poisoned fountains, but for the river pure as crystal proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. For you that tree was planted ; for you that river flows : Christ is the river of living water ; Christ is that tree of life. "All things are yours, and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's." Young as you are, III.] THIRSTING AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS. 29 have you never thirsted for something to calm, and satisfy, and give peace to your souls? Well, he that Cometh to Christ shall never hunger, and he that believeth on Christ shall never thirst. And if you have failed to win that blessing, may there not be a special meaning for you in that appeal, " Oh that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments ; then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea " ? But if you have hearkened to God's commandments — if you have at least striven to hearken to God's commandments — then you see that what God gives He gives richly. He gives abundantly. It is no dribbling rivulet of peace which He pours into the thirsty soul, but a rejoicing river ; no transitory torrent, but an abounding tide ; rising in His children as water rises in a fountain, dwelling in them as water dwelleth in a mighty sea. This is His promise, and, if we fulfil its conditions, it can never fail ; for the mouth of God hath spoken it, and God is true. May 7, 1371. SERMON IV. THE RIGHT USE OF SPEECH. Matt. xii. 36. ' ' 1 say unto you that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." Guided by the lessons of each Sunday, we have striven to think together over the great truths of our belief ; to cleanse, to strengthen, to uplift our souls by the awful verities of death, judgment, and eternity. But such thoughts are worse than useless if they produce no effect upon our lives. The test of their reality is not the idle leafage of profession, but the rich certainty of fruit. The tree of life beside the pure river bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded lier fruit every month. What are those fruits ? They are the golden apples of Bach fair virtue. To the consideration of one such virtue our Lord's words to-day invite us ; a single virtue, ^ut manifold in its operation — that high virtue which consists in the right use of speech. Our life, like the fancies of our sleep, is blended of the intermingling realities of the unseen and the seen. All of us live two lives in one : the outward, temporal, accidental life of routine and circumstance; and that inward, invisible life, which is unlimited by time or space, which can either soar into the heaven of heavens, SERM. IV.] TEE RIGHT USE OF SPEECH. 31 gaze undazzled upon the very throne of God, and move untrembling, the Arm that moves the world ; or which, sinking downwards into the very deepest and deadliest abysses, can dwell familiarly in the evil darkness, with all monstrous and prodigious things. And this inner and outer life are often wholly disparate ; in some men they brighten and fade into alternate prominence and oblivion ; in some the outer life is all, the inner nothing; in some the inner is the awful reality, the outer but a passing and inconsiderable dream. And again, the relations between these two lives often wholly differ. In some the outer life is false — a mere hypocrisy ; a whitened sepulchre covering the deep uncleanness ; a fair face hiding the inward leprosy; the network of sunbeams over a treacherous and turbid sea. In some this outer life is not false but inadequate; it fails somehow to express and reflect the inward goodness ; it creates an unjust prejudice, like the rough robe that conceals a king, or the stained fringe of the shallow waves that are so poor an outcome of the mighty sea. And there are some again — oh happy they ! — whose two lives, the outer and the inner, are mutually expressive, exquisitely harmonious. " How sour sweet music is," sings our great poet, *' When time is broke, and no proportion kept ; So is it with the music of men's lives." And the outer lives of these of whom I speak are, as it were, a sacrament : the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto them. In them, by God's blessing, there is no painful dislocation between the. thing that they weakly approve and the thing they 32 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH [serm. basely do ; their outward life is calm and holy, because their inward life is inviolate and pure. The soul of a bad man, or a worldly man, may, I suppose, in course of time die down to the ground ; may, as it were, be eaten out of him by lusts and cares, and then he can scarcely be said to have an inner life at all ; but for all save these, the inner life is the real being, as the soul is the truest self; and this is the object of what I have been saying— our genuine words are the shadows of our souls. None can read our thoughts ; none can see our souls ; but when the lips speak, then that which is within us is revealed, revealed for ever. The pulses of articulated air may pass away from the cognisance of the senses, but as no motion can ever wholly cease, they quiver in that sensitive medium until the end ; and even were it not so, yet for every idle word we speak, we shall, for Christ's own lips have said it, be called to account upon the judgment day. " Then," says the prophet Malachi, " they that feared the Lord spake often to one another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for them that feared the Lord and thought upon His name." And is there no other book of remembrance, a book of remembrance which must also be a book of condemnation ? Do you think that those who have willingly defied God's laws, even if they die splendid and prosperous in the scarlet fruitage of their sins, do you think that they have escaped the Divine justice ? Ah no ; there is many a word of thine written on those awful pages, and by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. Evil thoughts are deadly and dangerous, but they are less guilty than evil words, less guilty than evil deeds; they are the sparks which may rv.] TEi: EIGHT USE OF SPEECH. 33 indeed, at any moment burst into flame; and the spark may be trodden out while it is yet a spark ; but who shall stay the raging conflagration ? Yet evil thoughts are full of peril, and if all our sins of thought were but written upon our foreheads, there would be dire need for us to stand with bowed heads and downcast eyes as we await the verdict before the solemn bar ; yet if we have conquered them as thoughts, then far less will be the wrong that we have done, far less damning will be the witness of our accusing consciences against our- selves. But every word we speak falls on the ears of others ; and who shall brave the vv^itness of others a^-ainst him ?• " Words, words, words," it has been exclaimed, 'good and bad, loud and soft, millions in the hour, innuLierable in the day, unimaginable in the year : — what then in the life ? What in the history of a nation ? What in that of the world ? And not one of them is ever forgotten. There is a book where they are all set down."^ Oh let the thought add dignity, add solemnity, add trutli fulness, add absolute and perfect purity, add sacred and illimitable charity to all we say! Let us then consider oriefly and imperfectly, for more is not possible in the time before us — some of our duties and some of our dangers — for the two are correlate — in the use of speech. What classes of idle words must we avoid ? You will, I think, find that they fall mainly under four heads: words that sin against truth, against reverence, against purity, against Christian love ; our duty is to see that all our words be holy words, true words, clean words, charitable words ; our effort, if herein we would live nobly, should be to avoid all impurity, all impiety, all malice, and all lies. J Deaa Alfcrrl. M. S. D 34 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm, 1. Let us take words of falsehood first. In all ages, pagan no less than heathen, from the old poet who sang *' Who dares think one thing, and another tell, My soul detests him as the gates of hell,"^ down to the livhig one who exclaims " This is a shameful thing for men to lie,"^ the best and loftiest of mankind have ever been the most incisive in branding the sin of lies. There is something specially contemptible in the cowardice, the treachery, the meanness of this sin ; the trail of the serpent is peculiarly upon it ; even men of the world are sickened by it. A man of honour could not tell a lie even if he would : in uttering it he would be unable to repress the rising gorge of self-disgust ; the blush of his indignant honesty would burn through the smooth, false visage of deceit. But though I trust that there are but very few of us who need to be warned against positive open lies, may we not all aim at more absolute and perfect accuracy ? aim never to colour any state- ment, however slight, by our interests or our wishes ? aim not only to speak the truth always, but always also the whole truth and nothing else ? And although I know that there are scarcely any of you who would tell a deliberate lie, let me warn you, my young brethren, against acting one ; against little concealments, against little dissimulations, against little dishonesties, against little deceits. In form, for instance, the surreptitious leaf, the dishonest aid, the copied exercise, the note written in school: these are the fruitful sources of temptation ; and therefore, if you would be perfectly honest, never pretend to be doing what you are not * Homer. * Tennyson, Morte d' Arthur. f 1 IV.] THE BIGHT USE OF SPEECH. 35 doing ; never pretend to have done what you have not done ; never be surprised into a concealment or startled into a falsehood ; such " manslaughter on truth " always ends in murder. Excuse develops into subterfuge ; subterfuge degenerates into equivocation ; equivocation ends in lies. If you set a stone rolling on a mountain it acquires at every moment a more and more hideous velocity and force ; and so many a boy, suddenly charged with some trivial wrong, suddenly detected in some venial fault, suddenly afraid of some insignificant punishment (oh, whenever such a thing occui^ to you, pause, and think, and keep your lips as it were with a bridle, before you speak !) — yes, even a boy of natural honour has ofteii ere now found himself landed in the shame, found himself branded with the stigma, of distinct and undeniable falsehood. We may hate lies and abhor them ; but depend upon it, only by God's gi*ace and our own careful watchfulness are any of us safe from anything. And oh, knowing that we may, in violation of our own real and truest nature, become false by carelessness, by timidity, even by a mere social assentiveness and wretched complaisance, let us draw for ourselves a deep and severe boundary line herein. "My sin, Isinenms, liatli wrought all this ill," says an old dramatist; "And I beseech thee to be warned by me, And do not lie if any man do ask thee But liow thou dost, or what it is o'clock : Be sure thou do not lie— make no excuse ; For they above (that are entirely truth) Will make the seed that thou hast sown of lies Yield miseries a hundred-thousand-fold Upon thy head, as they have done on mine. " 2. About the idle words of irreverence I shall say but little. Common as is the senseless vice of profanity — • d2 36 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. a profanity caused in the uneducated by mere brutal ignorance, and in others by an imitative weakness or petty irascibility — I venture to hope and to believe that by God's blessing it is not in its worst forms common among you. How can it be common among Christian boys ? But if any one of you is in the habit of using oaths, I rede his sleeping conscience to beware of their guilt and folly. This futile gratuitous insult against sacred names and solemn truths is nothing more or less than the mere vulgarity of guilt. It is a sign of mental imbecility and social ill-breeding, no less than of moral death. Other sins offer at least some ghastly simulacrum of a pleasure, or some poor excuse of a temptation ; this sin of swearing offers none. What ? to use the name of God, and of God's most dread judgments, in the mere riotous intemperance of brainless speech; to fling about thoughts so dread that they should be immured " like the garden of Eden with the swords of the cherubim," and to prostitute them into petulant curses or idle expletives — one hardly knows whether most to admire the stupidity of such a degradation or to detest its guilt. But remember that there are other, and alas ! far commoner ways of taking God's word in vain. You may take it in vain by the irreverent utterance of a petition, by the empty repetition of a creed, by the undevotional singing of a hymn : you may take it in vain as you read a lesson in chapel, or say a grace in hall — ay, take it in vain, though the lips move not, as you join in acts of adoration and listen to words of prayer. Oh, let there be reverence among us for sacred things ; and here in this chapel, by deep silence, by the thoughtful attention, by the reverend attitude, by the hearty and devout re^ sponse, may you learn that humble and holy fear which shall make all carelessness about the name or the rv.] THE RIGHT USE OF SPEECH. 37 thought of God impossible to you henceforth for ever. 3. But commoner by far than the idle words of false- hood, and the idle words of irreverence, are the idle words of uncharity : and though it would be impossible to dwell upon them now, whose conscience does not accuse him here ? Ill-nature, gossip, spite, malice, slander, whispering, backbiting, detraction, calumny, alas ! the multitude of the names, — and 1 have not half exhausted them,— proves the prolific danger of the thing. Tes, there are " the unknown voices that bellow in the shade and swell the language of falsehood and of hate ;" there is " the diseased noise and scandalous murmur " of petty criticism ; there is the thick scum of city loquacity, and the acrid jealousies of provincial sloth. Among you, I doubt not, there is all the petty, ignoble, seething tittle-tattle of constant and promis- cuous talk. These things do not all spring from wicked bitterness, they are not all the symptoms of the empty head and the corrupted heart ; sometimes they are simply the offspring of intellectual feebleness trying to seem clever by the attempt at satire ; sometimes a mere effort of those who are weary of themselves and envious of others, to break what has been called " the pattering monotony of life ; " sometimes a sort of disappointed egotism, and morbid self-conceit, because " It's always ringing in their ears, ' They call this man as good as me. ' " But whatever it be, it becomes a disease. It makes the mind like those looking-glasses in the temple of Smyrna which gave a false and distorted reflection even of every innocent and happy face that looked upon them. It is a great curse to the possessor — this mocking, carping, detracting, grumbling spirit; men please it not, nor 38 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. women neither ; it makes us, like that ancient satirist, the natural product of a corrupt and decadent civilisa- tion, who lets his tongue "rage like a fire among the noblest names, defaming and defacing," " Finding low motives unto noble deeds, Fixing all doubt upon the darker side, " until to him not even Helen was beautiful or Achilles brave.^ Kind words, and liberal estimates, and generous acknowledgment, and ready appreciation, and unselfish delifht in the excellences of others — these are the o truest signs of a large intellect and a noble spirit : while proncness to discover imperfection, and love of finding fault, and exultation in dwelling upon failure, and fondness for inflicting pain, are the certain marks of an unchristian temper and an ignoble heart. 4. On the fourth and last class of idle words — words of impurity — I shall scarcely even touch. More criminal even than irreverence, more degrading even than falsehood, more pestilent even than slander — oh, if there be a sin which needs " the fiery whip of an exter- minating angel," it is the sin of those who degrade one of the highest gifts of God to do the vilest office of His enemies. What should we think of one who smeared the walls of a city with the elements of plague ? what of him who on the most dangerous headlands kindled, of purpose, the wrecker's fire ? Yet even he would be doing the devil's work less obviously ?,nd less perilously than he who, into the ear of another, pours the leperous distilment of his own most evil thoughts. The influence of such words is truly baleful ; their effects often terribly permanent. They paint the soul's inmost chambers with unhallowed imagery ; they break on its 1 Lucian. .v.] TUB RIGHT USE OF SPEECH. 39 holiest memories with satanic songs. The troubled sea, when it camiot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt — raging waves, foaming out their own shame — such are the Scripture metaphors for these. And from all such — from all such, more and rather than from every other class of the sinful — from their words that eat as doth a canker, from the contagion of their presence, from the infection of their touch, from the contamination of their very look — from all such may God mercifully preserve the school we love ! Oh, then, my brethren — and above all you who are now about so soon to renew with your own lips your baptismal vow — make for yourselves, in conclusion, at least this one resolution — that you will set a watch before the door of your mouth. Let no oath, no privy slandering, no corrupt communication, no word that is not true, ever again cross or sully those lips that, more surely than with a living coal from the altar, have been hallowed by the utterance of a Christian vow. Against meanness, profanity, pollution, let there henceforth be an impassable barrier there. And let all of us strive, more earnestly and more continuously, after the dignity of severer speech. If we cannot otherwise trust our- selves, then, — from all morbid egotism, from all un- generous depreciation — let us take refuge in that silence which, under such circumstances, is a better thing than speech, being innocent as childhood, and "harmless as a breath of woodbine to the passer-by." Better to be silent, and silent for ever, than to speak words false, or uncharitable, or impure. And some there are — some still among the living — who, because their spirits are always walking like white-robed angels among the white-robed companies on high — because their eyes and their thoughts are among the stars and 40 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. iv. not upon the dust, who, because they gaze upon the golden brow of humanity and not upon its feet of clay — who, because they look upon their fellows with the larger, other eyes of sunny, genial, loving natures, speak no words now that are not pure, and sweet, and noble, and charitable, and kind. Oh, may we learn to be like them, for the Saints of God are these, though no visible aureola gleam as yet around tlieir brow ! Nay rather, may we be like Him, who, though He loved us so much that for our sakes He emptied Himself of His glory, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross, yet gave His solemn warning that for every idle word that men shall speak, shall they give account at the judgment day. 3ray, 17, 167!- SEEMON Y. SMOULDERING LAMPS. Matt. xxv. 8. "Our lamps are gone out." There is much to say, and but little time to say it in. We must feel that often ; we must feel it especially on an occasion such as this, when, besides the ordinary Sabbath quietude and Sal j bath prayer, there is triple reason why to-day we should call this Sabbath a delight, holy of the Lord, honourable. 1. In the first place it is Whit-Sunday, the White Sunday, the birthday of the Christian Churck And remember that what we commemorate to-day is not only the sound as of a rushing mighty wind, and the shaken house where th:^ Apostles were assembled, and the saintly foreheads, each mitred with its cloven flame — not only the Gift of Tongues, and the Word of God shining hke the lightning from East to West — not only the burning words of Peter and the iirst great harvest of regenerated souls : historic reminiscences like these may beoome dim with time and overshadowed with unreality — but we commemorate the deepest and greatest of Christian truths, the presence in our hearts of an in- dwelling Spirit, to be the eternal aid to an increasing 42 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm holiness, to be the eternal witness of an unshaken faith. On other days we thank God for the gift of some special blessing, to-day we thank Him for the imparting of Himself, not only into onr nature, as on Christmas Day, not only into our death as on Good Friday, but the gift of Himself into our hearts. This is the very noontide of the Christian day- -a noontide without an evening — a day on which no night need ever more descend. 2. But further, this is not only Whit-Sunday, but to many of you also the first Sunday after your confirmation. In infancy, even at the tenderest dawn of life, you were brought to the arms of Christ, and there with " a few calm words of faith and prayer," and " a few bright drops of holy dew," you were signed with the sign of the cross, in token that hereafter you should not be ashamed to fight manfully under Christ's banner, and to be His faithful soldier and servant unto your life's end. In the ancient Church, and even down to the Eeformation, another significant ceremony was added ; the child was clothed by the minister in a wdiite robe, called the chrisom robe, as a sign that he was washed from sinful defilements and had put on Christ, while the words were used, " Take this white vesture as a token of the innocency which by this Holy Sacrament of Baptism is given unto thee, and as a sign W' hereby thou art admon- ished, so long as thou livest, to innocenc]^ of living, that after this transitory life thou may est be a partaker of life everlasting." And though in no earthly vestry, yet amid the eternal treasuries, that chrisom robe of innocence is laid up as a mute w^itness against you. For then as a river rises, pure as crj^stal, among the moss of some green mountain side, even so your life began ; then were those bright and happy years in the dear old home when you were taken in the arms of God's V.J SMOULDERING LAMPS. 43 holy ones, and knelt in prayer beside His saints ; the days of every redeeming grace, of every softening virtue, of every refining and purifying influence, of every sacred and tender memory ; the days when your innocent heart was a bright temple, wholly God's, when the child folds his little white hands as he lisps out of stainless lips his holy prayers, and when as night by night he lies down in his little cot, the angels of God close to the doors of his happy heart, and weave under his curtained eye the radiant fantasies of untroubled sleep. Yes that was " Before we knew to fancy aught But a white celestial thought, Before we taught our tongiu's to wound Our conscii^nce with a guilty sound ; But felt through all this eartlily dress Bright shoots of everlastingness."^ And if indeed the river of your life have been stained since then by any of the bitter soils through which its course has run, yet now once more have you been affectionately urged, gently aided, to calm and cleanse the turbid waves. Surely on the first Sunday after your confirmation you feel, all of you, the richer, the holier, the happier. You have experienced, I trust, already that God's Holy Spirit can indeed, if you rightly seek Him, draw His sevenfold veil between you and the fires of youth ; and with the shadow upon your heads of the hand that blessed, you have been strengthened to take your stand boldy and nobly on the side of all that is great and true. Oh, that on this day He would indeed outpour upon each youthful head the crysmal fires of His sevenfold gifts ; and if, indeed, any of you have sinned and fallen and desecrated His temple ; if in any of your hearts have been the spirit of folly and 1 H. Yaughan. 44 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. blindness, the spirit of ignorance and effeminacy, the spirit of forgetfulness and self-indulgence, and the spirit of evil defiance against His law, oh, may He henceforth grant you instead, and grant you richly, according to the prayer we prayed, the spirit of wisdom and under- standing, the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, the spirit of knowledge and true godliness, and the spirit of His holy fear. 3. And once again, this, not only a Whit-Sunday, not only the first Sunday after your confirmation, is to many of you ever-memorable as the day of your first Communion, the day on which you are first admitted to the highest privilege of the Christian's life. Coming immediately after your confirmation, and henceforth continually, until it be, as it were, the very viaticum at your journey's close, what a blessing, my brethren, may this be to you : at the most solemn crisis of youth a gracious reminder of all that Christ your Saviour has done for you, and all that you have vowed for Him — at the most dangerous period of life a b'ving Sacrament, the outw^ard and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace — when the passions are strongest and pleasure wears its most falsely-destructive smile — a fresh call to repentance a.nd self-devotion, a fresh grace of strength and purity, a fresh stimulus to charity and faith and prayer. And I doubt not that, all this being so, there is some gleam of brightness in the saddest heart among you all. How shall I aid you to feel it permanently, to feel it increasingly, to feel it even until the end ? For alas ! warm feelings, though happy, are not religion ; and high hopes, though inspiring, are not holiness ; and religious excitement, though awakening, is not strength. My brethren, I cannot, for human opportunities are scanty, V.J SMOULDERING LAMPS, 45 and human words are weak ; but to the Holy Ghost the Comforter, who loveth before all temples the upright heart and pure, to Him who can send forth His seraphim with the fire of His altar to touch and hallow the lips of wliom He will, — I pray to Him that in this His house, ou this His day, He would take of the things of Christ and show them unto you ; that He would Himself make intercession for you with groaniogs that cannot be uttered. Let me then take but a single point: let me take the imagery of my text, and strive to fix it upon your hearts. ' Into your hands has been put a lighted lamp ; into the hand of every one of you the lighted lamp of conscience, of the Word of God, of the Spirit of Christ ; into the hands of many of you to-day the same lamp, indeed, but fed with an oil more fragrant, and burnished into a purer gold. And when I describe this guiding principle of life as a lamp put into your hands, you will recognise at once the imagery of Christ's parable, which you heard in the evening lesson two days ago ; you will recall that lovely and pathetic picture of the bridegroom setting forth to his bride's house to bring her home ; of the virgins, her companions, awaiting them far on into the starry cool- ness of the oriental night ; of their slumber in the midnight silence ; of the cry, " Behold, the bridegroom cometh ; " of the hurry, the alarm, the shame, the anguish, when the foolish virgins found that their oil was exhausted and their lamps had burned too low. And then you will remember how the bridal procession passed into the glorious and happy banquet, and the door was shut. In vain, with their miserable smoulder- ing lamps, they stand, terrified, remorseful, agitated, at the closed door and knock. To that wild, eager, 46 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. importunate knocking, in liis festal robes, the garlands of rose and myrtle on his brow, the bridegroom came, and over his fair presence, through the opening door, streamed the echoes of lordly music and the glow of odorous lights. But for these foolish virgins there were no words of welcome now, and upon their terror-stricken hearts sank like heavy snow-flakes the chilly words, " I know you not." It was too late. The door was shut. It was dark and cold, and the birds of night were flitting, and the thick dews fell, and in that chilly darkness their lamps were going out. Our lamps are being quenched. And, using the same metaphor, " Quench not," says the great Apostle of the Gentiles, " quench not, put not out the Spirit." Can, then, the light of God's holy Spirit be quenched within us ? If so, how can that light be quenched ? Whereby can it be kept alive ? i. Let me answer both questions as briefly and simply as I may. And first, the lamp, the light within us, can be quenched in two ways : the one active, the other passive ; the one by forgetfulness of God, the other by familiarity with vice. The bright lamp is in your hands, but it can die out if you yield to sloth; it will be extinguished if you give yourself to sin. By sloth, for instance. Oh, my brethren, set it down as a certain fact in the revelation of God's will that the life which is content without one effort after holiness must be content also without one hope of heaven. You know it is so in the physical domain: there you cannot attain to excellence without care and practice; you know that it is so in the intellectual domain — there you cannot win either knowledge or distinction without study and self-denial; and think you that it shall not be so also in the spiritual domain ? v.] SMOULDERING LAMPS. 47 Think you that there the great victory will be given to y^twning satiety and drowsy ease ? Should the young Greek athlete be content to submit to rough trainmg and eat hard fare before he could even hope for his withering garland of Isthmian pine ? And shall you dream that the crown of life, the wreath of amaranth that cannot fade, will be dropped, even unasked for, upon the glutton' j banquet or the sluggard's bed ? Nay, but believe me, "the kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." Even the heathen saw that toil is the janitor at the gate of virtue, and that he who would win must strive. You have heard that your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost ; but a temple that is not desecrated must be tended and adorned. The great city of Ephesus was proud to call herself upon her coins the Neoj/co/jo?, " the temple-sweeper" of her heathen fane; and will you make no effort to cleanse and tend that heart which is the living temple of the jne true God ? Oh, if not, beware lest the temple of a living God become the tomb of a dead soul, and the lamp which now shines peacefully within it first wane, then glimmer, then expire. ii. But more swiftly and more violently than by sloth, in yet a deadlier and yet a surer way, may the light of God's Holy Spirit be quenched by sin. Oh, thus it is that from the temple of the heart the Spirit is driven, even as the Prophet saw the rushing splendour of the Divine presence as it departed from the polluted shrine, first rise high into the air, then retire till it stood over the gate of the city, then remove to the hills beyond it, then vanish away for ever into the unutterable gloom. Oh, thus it is that, as in the doomed cities of old on the eve of their destruction, voices are heard as of offended 48 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [sERit deities, saying to each other in awful accents, Mera- /3aLV(t}fjb6v evrevOev, " Let us depart hence." Oh, my brethren, you who will go forth on the path of life to meet the bridegroom, beware but of one conscious, one admitted, one unresisted sin. Nothing quenches more surely the holy lamp. You may try to think of the sin as venial ; you may try to hold each fresh commission thereof hght; but it is even thus that, star by star, the whole heavens fade away from the human soul ; even thus that one by one its excellences vanish, its virtues faint, its graces cease to shine. As when a man descends slowly into some dark mine and carries a taper in his hand, and knows that so long as the flame of that taper burns bright and clear, so long the atmosphere he breathes is safe ; but as he gets lower the flame begins to contract and to grow pale, and then to waver, and at last, as the foul fog-damps surround and imprison it, it becomes but a faint and dwindling flicker, and finally, amid the blue and poisonous vapours, expires with a foul breath of sickening fume ; even so it is, alas ! with him who, from the sunlight of God's coun- tenance, descends deeper and deeper — with conscious self-surrender, with willing guilt, with impotent, because with unresisting will — into the deep, dark underground of a besetting sin. iii. But, my brethren, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation though we thus speak. Your lamps, I trust, some of your lamps I know, are burning brightly now : brighter from recent thoughts, and recent blessings, and recent prayers, brightly with holy purposes, brightly with hopeful efforts, brightly with strong resolves ; not yours, by the grace of God, not yours shall be the sad confession and the shameful hist-"- ■ of the downward course, the v.] SMOULDERING LAMPS. 49 gro\^dng degeneracy, the smouldering lamp ; not yours the increasing degradation, the gathering midnight, the deepening sleep ; oh, may it not be for any one of you to watch in anguish the fungous growths that clog the untrimmed wick, or its silvery lustre sinking into noxious dimness as the gloom threatens to swallow for ever the dying flame. Oh, surely you will be of the wise who took with them oil in their vessels with their lamps. Prayer, effort, watchfulness, penitence for past sin, effort to aid the souls of others : these are the means of grace which are like fresh oil and fragi^ant in the lighted lamp of a Christian's soul. Each time you kneel beside your beds, each time you meet in this chapel, each hour of quiet thought in which you go forth to meet your Lord, each Sunday spent in a calm and holy faith, above all, each Holy Sacrament at which you kneel with peace in your penitent cleansed hearts towards God and man, these shall widen around you the circle of heavenly light, these (and God grant they may !) shall so make the lamp beam in the temple of your souls that even into its darkest recesses soon no evil thing shall dare intrude. Thus shall your care be *' Fixt and zealously attent To fill your odorous lamps with deeds of light And hope, that reaps not shame." iv. And if any of you need a word of special comfort, oh, bear with me while I speak one word of comfort more. The lamp, my brethren, in this life never goes quite out. The text is mistranslated : it is not " are gone out," but " are going out ; " it is not " are quenched," but " are being quenched." Not while life lasts does God's Spirit desert utterly, finally, irrevocably, the human soul. Even the steely-hearted murderess in the splendid tragedy has yet this touch of grace, that she loves her M. s. E 50 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. v. aged father ; even the adulterous usurper has yet this hope, that he can kneel upon his knees. And therefore I bid you take courage. Even if in your slothfulness the lamp has burned too low, even if in your sinfulness it has been all but smothered, yet, oh believe that even now there is One who will not quench the smoking flax, there is a breath of God which even now, like a stream of fire, can rekindle the smouldering flame. To the very saddest and most unhopeful of you all to-day, to him who has wandered farthest from innocence, to him who has fallen deepest into sin, even to liim I say — yet not I, but the voice of God's own promises — My young brother, God's grace is sufficient for thee. His Spirit is striving with thee now. Oh despise not His gracious influence; oh reject not His offered love. Lo, for thy lost innocence, God offers thee repentance, Lo, for the cleansing of thine hidden leprosy. He stretches from heaven the finger of a healing hand. Lo, for the recovery of thy lost health He holds to thee a green leaf from the tree of life. Lo, at this great Pentecost He rekindles the dying spirit with His descending flame. Courage, my brother ; that lamp may have burnt low, but it has not yet burnt out. " Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not neither is weary ? there is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint ; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fail. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they shall mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall run and not be weary ; they shall walk and not faint." IVhitsundcxy, May 30, 1871. SERMON VI. ASFIGE, PBOSPICE, RESPICE. Phil. iii. 13. *• Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before." Next Sunday, my brethren, will find this chapel empty and silent. Now it contains the beating hearts of many worshippers, — the mysterious thoughts, the wandering fancies, the solemn hopes, the evanescent gladnesses, the sorrowful regrets of some 500 boys ; but next Sunday it will be untenanted, unless the fancy can give life to the sunbeams that play upon its floor; empty unless some of that host of God whom Jacob met at Mahanaim still find cause to linger and meditate in a place which has been, we trust, to many a house of God and a gate of heaven. The court, too, and the College buildings will be almost melancholy in their desertion and silence ; the school-rooms closed, the play- ground noiseless, the whole life of the place arrested for a time. And we, who, day after day, for more than eighteen weeks, have been worshipping here, who have strolled about these fields, who in that sunny play- ground have felt it almost *'a luxury to breathe the breath of life," — we too shall be scattered ; worshipping E 2 52 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. some of us in quiet country churches, lingering some of us for health and change by the margin of the summer sea, wandering some of us over wood and hill in the purple heather and the tall green ferns ; but all of us I trust retaining a sense of our duties here, and all of us rich in the enjoyment of a rest sweetened by innocence and earned by toil. For a time severe tasks will be laid aside, examinations over and settled ; you will be among the scenes which you have known and loved from childhood ; among the bright and happy faces of brothers, sisters, friends ; encircled by that holy and tender love of father and mother which distance cannot abate or time abolish. Oh the sunny memories of those long holidays ! Oh the unalloyed happiness of the day which welcomes back our boyhood to the threshold of its home ! I do not envy the boy who is not even now counting up the hoarded treasury of those home thoughts, enjoying, by anticipation, hours which are among the simplest and sunniest which earth shall yield. But there is a little pause to-day. To-day for the last time shall this congregation meet in this chapel ; a few weeks will pass and we shaU re-assemble, but the congregation which shall then meet here will be the same yet not the same ; the river is the same, but the wave is different ; different in its constituent elements though identical in its continuity of life. This very fact preaches to us to-day; it bids us forget those things which are behind and reach forth to those that are before ; and all that I desire is to articulate its unspoken utterance. For to-day is at once a close and a beginning. Forecast, meditation, retrospect — these are what it demands. Aspice, it seems to say, Prospice, Eesjpice ; look thoughtfully at the present, look forward VI.] ASPICE, PR08PICE, BESFICE. 53 to the future, look backward at the past ; at the present with firm and holy resolution, at the past with humble and penitent gratitude, to the future with calm and earnest hope. Have you ever, my brethren, on some sea-voyage left your companions and strolled to the stern, and there leant over the taffrail to watch the blue waves gliding under you, and the white cliffs fading into the distance, and the wastes of untrodden water lengthening in the rear ? It is a position eminently provocative of thought. Let us in imagination take it to-day. We too are voyagers on a broad sea ; some of you as yet have had but little experience save of cloudless skies above you, and the rippling of white foam about the bows ; the wind plays with the streamer and swells the sail, and under the sunlight the waves before you are flashing into gold. But others of us are farther on our way ; the placidi jpellacia 'ponti deceives us not ; we know that on that great sea there are sunken reefs and iron shores ; we know that of the ships which traverse it, some, alas, founder in the billows, and others split upon the rocks : — "And where a home hath he Whose ship is driving on the driving sea ? To the frail bark now plnnging on its way, To the Avild waters shall he turn, and say To the plunging bark or to the salt sea loam, You are my home ? " Ah no ! my brethren, the true home for us lies beyond these waters ; and oh, the rudder needs a firm hand, and the voyage a stout heart, for though short it is often perilous and always onward. So then, whatever our voyage may hitherto have been when we have gazed from the stern together on the shores that fade behind us — and afterwards as we turn away again to look 54 JJV THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. on the misty uncertainties of all that may await us in our future course, let us pray that touching prayer of the Breton mariners. " Save us, oh God 1 thine ocean is so large, and our little boat so small!" I. Bespice, look backward — thankfully, if God have been sensibly drawing you nearer and nearer to Him- self; with penitence, and resolve, if you have been wandering farther and farther from him ; but in any case, not in the vain hope, not in the futile fancy that we can regain what once is past. On this mysterious sea of time there is no rest, no retrogression. As wave after wave ripples past us, as mile after mile of water rushes by, they are gone, gone for ever, beyond the power of even Omnipotence to recall. The memory of those past days may be as a halcyon calming them under its brooding plumes, or like the petrel hurrying over them with the prophecy of storm ; they may have been tra- versed in a direction straight for heaven, or they may be separating us more and more widely from the haven where we would be, — but they are ours no longer ; they belong to eternity ; they belong to God ; they have glided into the dark backward, they have been swallowed up in the unknown abysm. These years that are past, where are they ? This half-year that we are just ending, where is it ? Dawn after dawn has broadened into noonday ; noonday after noonday has faded into even- ing ; evening after evening has deepened into night ; have they left us without a blessing ? Is their memory for any one of us a sigh ? It is not so I trust for many of us ; but is it so for any ? Is it so for one ? If so, be it so ; it cannot now be altered. You may call to them, but you will call in vain ; there will be neither voice, nor any to answer ; the wealth of empires, the VI.] ASPICE, PROSFICE, RESFICE. 55 intercession of angels could not recover one wasted hour, or recall one vanished day. And therefore, because the past is wholly irrevocable, therefore at the best there is a sadness in retrospect. That must be a very dull heart, or a very sleepy con- science, or a very shallow experience, that finds no cause for sorrow in '' thinking of the days that are no more." None of us, not even the very best, are as holy or as noble as we might have been ; many of us are not even what we were ; some of us, we must fear, are but the miserable changelings of ourselves. Yet, if even the best man must feel sorrow and shame in remembering how little worthy his life has been, how far he has fallen short of his own ideal, how often he has swerved from the high laws of duty to God and charity to man, — if, I say, even the best man may feel sorrow, let not even the lowest feel despair. Is any one of you, my brethren, troubled by the sense of a hitherto ignoble life, by sinful thoughts and sinful habits, and the re- proaches of a self-condemning heart ? — how shall you allay the misery ? St. John tells you, " if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts." St. Paul tells you, " Forgetting the things that are behind." You may have been very sinful, you may have been deplor- ably foolish, you may have been sadly tried : and the world can do nothing for you — it has neither a heart to pity, nor an arm to save ; but your God has, and in His book, and in His works, and in your consciences, you may all hear a Voice saying cheerfully, encouragingly, very tenderly, to the sinful, " Go and sin no more ; " to the foolish, " Seek the wisdom which is from above ; " to the sad, " Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest ; " and, as the sweet Voice speaks, a gracious hand holds forth to you 56 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. a cup of cold water, which is the water of Lethe, the river of oblivion of sin repented of, the true mandragora for every guilty and sleepless soul. Yes, the retrospect of a sinful man or of a sinful boy if it be long-con- tinued, if it be morbid, if it be absorbiug, becomes an evil. Let it not be an evil : let the dead past bury its dead. It is Christ's own Voice which says to us, "Let the dead bury their dead, follow thou me." Let the time past of our lives suffice for folly and for sin. " Forget- ting that which is behind," not indeed forgetting its mercies, for they may be remembered with eternal thankfulness, but forgetting its sinful allurements, because they have been displaced by nobler tho-ughts — forgetting its failures, because they may be still repaired, — forgetting its guilt, because in Christ's blood it can be washed away, — forgetting even its successes, because the goal of yesterday should be but our starting-point to-day. Whether they speak the language of reproach- ful menace, or the language of old temptation, there is nothing but peril in listening too long to the voices of the past. " Come back," they cry to us, "come back,'* when our course should be onwards : but * •■ Back flies the foam, the hoisted flag streams back, The long smoke wavers on the homeward track ; Back fly, with winds, things which the winds obey : The strong ship follows its appointed way." 11. And therefore Aspice, — having looked at the past turn your eyes to the present. Yesterday is yours no longer ; to-morrow may be never yours ; but to-day is yours, the passing hour yours, the living present yours, and in the living present you may stretch forward to the things that are before. The metaphor of St. Paul is the metaphor of a charioteer in some great mce. Tt VI.] ASF ICE, PEOSPICJJ, HE SPICK 57 may be that from his prison in the Palatine he heard the shouts that rang frijm the Circus Maximus beneath him ; it may be that looking through the grated lattice he saw the wild-eyed charioteers leaning over their steeds with twisted lash. The chariots bounded on amid dust and danger, but the racer recked neither of past accident nor present toil, while his eye was fixed on the goal that seemed to fly before him, and the prize that awaited his efforts there. And the quick imagination of the brave old prisoner found in these scenes fresh comfort for an undaunted heart. His gallant spirit could transmute even its trials into gold, as the sun- beams fire the sullen pines. Is he chained to a Eoman soldier ? — the sword and the breastplate and the helm inspire him with the immortal imagery of the armour of righteousness ; does he hear the rattle of chariots in the shouting course ? chained there by the arm in his wretched prison, a weary and decrepit prisoner, awaiting his doom of death, he yet remembers that he too is running a mighty race, at which the angels are specta- tors, and the Agonothetes is God, and in that glorious contest for a crown of amaranth he hangs over his winged and immortal steeds. Be it so with us ! Life is but one passing " now," until with one last " 7iow I " like a clap of thunder, the hour of judgment comes. And, there- fore, oh give the present moment wholly, heartily to your Father in Heaven, now, and at yonder holy table, offering yourselves, your souls, and bodies, a reasonable lively sacrifice, — now, in silent prayer consecrating your hearts to God. Oh, buy your eternity with this little hour. Ex hoc momcnto, says the famous sundial, and there is deep truth in its eloquence of warning, pendet ceternitas ! III. Aspice, Ecspice, Frospice. Besides the present, and 58 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. the past, there is a future. It is indeed a page as yet unwritten, but you may determine, every one of you, with unerring certainty, w^hat shall be written therein. Even now you can make that fair white page for you a page of the Book of Life, and, secure in the love of God, forgiven by the redemption of Christ, strong in the strength of the Spirit, you can, as it were, bid the Angel of Eecord there to inscribe your names. What external events shall happen to you in life ? how shall the divinity shape the ends that you rough-hew ? You may indeed lead happy and comfortable lives, liable only to the great danger of settling upon the lees, and so, amid the world's gross self-complacencies, suffering your dead hearts, in the scornful language of Scripture, to become fat as brawn ; or, on the other hand, calamity may burst upon you like a deluge, and in His very love to you, and in order that He may turn your thoughts to Him, God, in the shipwreck of your every earthly fortune, may vex you with all His storms. And whether it shall be so or not you cannot tell : but one thing you may certify, and that is that they shall not change you. You may, with God as your guardian, pledge yourself, with un- shaken certainty, that never of you shall it be said, in the pathetic language of the poet, Dissimiles, hie vir et ille puer. You may suffer, but they whom the love of God supports in suffering, suffer no longer ; you may fail, but for them that strive even defeat is victory. There is something sublime in this conviction. Not know the future ? Nay, we know it ; if we be Christians we know it ; not, indeed, this little future of joys that break as the bubble breaks, or of brief afflictions which are but for a moment ; not that little future of diseased egotisms and contracted selfishness which is not life ; but that great future of the single in purpose and the VI.] ASPICE, PROSPICE, RESPICE. 69 pure in heart, that great future which blooms to infinitude beyond the marge of death, — (hat, if we be children of God, we know. For we are pressing forward to the mark of the prize of our high calling, and that mark we cannot miss, and there it shines for ever before us — a crown of life, a crown of glory, a crown that fadeth not away. The true Christian need know no fear. Be true to yourselves, be true to God, be true to the kindred points of heaven and home, and then even the gay Epicurean lyrist will tell you, and tell y(ju truly : — ** Si fractiTs illabatur orbis Impavidum ferient ruince." On the steep hill of Difficulty, in the Valley of the Shadow, amid the crash of a universe smitten into indistinguishable ruin, " Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee ! " One last word. You are all going home ; may the coming weeks of holiday be very happy weeks to us all, and may those of us who return, return more faith- ful, full of vigour, full of purpose, full of self-denial, full of the spirit which recognizes only that life is not selfishness but service ; full of the determination to do our duty here, and to adorn this our Sparta with loyal, energetic, devoted toil. Let your loved ones see that the months of absence have been months of progress ; gladden their hearts by your gentleness, your honour, your modesty, your worth. And what last word shall we say to you, dear brethren, who will not return to us ? to whom this is the last Sunday ; for whom one leaf is about to be turned, one volume of their lives to be closed for ever ? Here have many of you been led — been led by wise and kind hands almost from childhood to the threshold of a strong and upright manhood. 60 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [skrm. vi. Here have you been taught and encouraged to act nobly and to think purely. You love your school, you are grateful to it, you have profited in it, you will endeavour to serve it loyally hereafter, you will not leave it without an affectionate memory and a quiet tear. Fain would you keep with us, but that may not be, and though you leave us now, yet our kneeling together at yonder Holy Table shall be our pledge that we shall continue united in the common noblenesses of life, and the common hopes of heaven. Go forth then, my brethren, pass forth into the world, and may God's best blessing go with you. By the loftiness of your purpose, by the manliness of your conduct, by the sincerity of your love to God, by the devotion of your service to men, be an honour to us in the days to come; leave to all Marlborough boys who shall follow you hereafter your good names as a legacy, your unstained character as an example. We have spoken of life as a voyage, sail forth then with the favouring gale of our affections ; we too, are sailing with you, and, swept by the same current, guided by the same compass, through light, through darkness, shall meet in the same haven at the last. " But oil, blithe breeze ! and oh, great seas ! Though ne'er — the present parting o'er — On you wide plain we meet again, Oh lead us to yon heavenly shore. " One port, niethinks, alike we seek, One purpose hold, where'er we fare : Oh, bounding breeze ! oh, rushing seas ! At last, at last, unite us there." June 23, 1871. SERMON VIL LITTLE aiVEN, LITTLE ASKED. Matt, xxv. 23. "His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things : enter thou into the joy of thy lord." Of all the glorious aspects of that holy faith which we profess — of all those points of spiritual elevation and moral beauty which, to the world's end, shall give it such infinite charm for every generous and unselfish soul — there is none more noticeable than the fact that it allied itself with the world's feebleness, not its strength. It was with " the irresistible might of weak- ness " ^ that it shook the nations. Herod sat in his golden palace at Tiberias in dissolute splendour and cruel luxury, but for him Christ had no other notice than " Go ye and tell that fox ; " the Pharisees swept through the Temple courts in their fringed robes in all the haughtiness of a sacerdotal clique ; and for them Christ had no words but to hurl on their hypocrisy the scathing flame of his indignation and rebuke. The dreaded Emperor was all-povv^erful at Rome ; the mighty legionaries were encamped on the Danube and the ^ Milton. 62 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. Ebro ; but neither to Emperor nor legionary did Christ appeal. For pride— for cruelty — for scornful laughter — for insolent lust— He had nothing but the thunder : but for all that suffers— for all that is humble— for all that is faithful— for all that is oppressed— He had an infinite, unfathomable, all-embracing love. To the one He was wrathful as the whirlwind : to the other gentle as the summer breeze. He loved those whom none had loved before ; He loved them as none had loved before. He loved the poor : He loved the sick : He loved the ignorant : He loved children : He loved sinners ; ^ and among sinners, He, the friend of sinners, loved most those who had suffered most — those who were most worthy of His divine compassion — the feebler sex and the feebler age — little ones who were tempted — women who had sinned. It is in the great Eoman poet a topic of praise that his philosophic husbandman had neither pitied the poor nor envied the rich — ♦' Nee ille Aut doluit miserans iuopem aut invidit liabeiiti." But Christ did pity the poor, for He had been poor Himself. Born in the manger of Bethlehem, his youth and manhood had found their homes in the shop of the carpenter at Nazareth, and the hut of the fisher at Bethsaida. Let the world's insolent philosophers go learn of Him. They kindled their poor faded torches at His light, and they boast that they can illuminate the world. It was not they, but Christ, who emancipated our race from the dull fascination of v/ealth, and the abject flattery of power. It was not they but He who taught the inherent dignity of man — who showed that 1 See Dupanloup, Vie de Notre Seigneur. VII.] LITTLE GIVEN, LITTLE ASKED. 63 man was to be honoured for being simply man, and that his nature, if undebased by sin, may, in the humblest child who was ever born, be great with all the greatness of virtue, and awful with all the awfulness of im- mortality. The " Tu, hoyno, tantum nomen, si te scias'' of St. Augustine, — the " We are greater than we know," of Wordsworth — are not the exultant utterance of philosophic heathens, but of humble Christians ; they were learnt not in the schools of Confucius or of Zoroaster — not in the groves of Academe, or in the monasteries of Sakya Mouni, — but at the feet of Him who did not blush to sit at the banquet of the publican — who shrank not from the white touch of the leper, and felt no pollution from the harlot's tear. The life, the teachiDg, the very incarnation of Christ were all meant to impress upon us this awful and elevat- ing truth : that " each man is as great as he is in God's sight and no greater ; " that God distributes His earthly gifts differently, yet loves His children all alike. Surely this is a thought full of consolation for you and for all the vast, obscure, nameless, insignificant mul- titude. We are not kings, or great men, or mighty men, not rich, or powerful, or renowned; no: but 'Ov TTpoawTroXii'TTir)^ 6 Geo?. God is no respecter of persons. How can He be ? before Him all mankind is but as the small dust of the balance. Is it anything to the ocean whether one foam-speck be larger or smaller, of those that float on its illimitable breast ? can there be any gradations or eminences in the infinitely little ? No. A king dies, and the great bells toll, and the long pro- cessions stream, and the gaiety of nations is eclipsed, but to the great God before whom his soul passes in all its nakedness he is of no more import than the little nameless outcast who dies in the city street without a C4 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [skrm. friend. let us thank God that He has taught us to reverence ourselves : let us thank God that in His sight all are equally great, all equally little. Be it true that we are but of the smallest consequence to the world in which we live ; that when we die few will hear of it ; and there shall be but a few tears in a few fa-ithful eyes, but not in many, and not for long, and then the unbroken ripple of human life shall flicker onward in the sunshine, and in a few years our very names be illegible, as the lichen eats out their crumbling letters on the churchyard stone. Ay so ! — but our souls shall be as safe, shall be as immortal, in God's holy keeping as though our ashes had been entombed in pyramids or inurned in gold. To God nothing is common, nothing is obscure; to God everything is sacred, everything precious, if it fulfil its appointed functions in His great design. " Each drop uncounted in a storm of raiu Hath its own mission. The very shadow of an insect's wing, For which the violet cared not while it stayed, Yet felt the lighter for it vanishing, Proves that the sun was shining by its shade." And can we — drops from the eternal fountain — shadows of the living light — can we have been made for nought ? No ; the only real, the only permanent, the only essential greatness open to man is that of duty and of goodness ; and that is as open, is as free, is as possible to every man as the sunlight that shines on us, or as the sweet air we breathe. These lessons, my brethren, spring immediately from this parable of the talents, from which our text is taken,. which you have just heard read to you in the second lesson of to-day. That parable contains of course far more than we can exhaust : is rich in many other great VII.] LITTLE GIVEN, LITTLE ASKED. 65 and important lessons on which we cannot touch; it shows that all that we have is received from God — ^Is not a thing to be haughtily valued but humbly cherished, seeing that it is not our own but given ; it shows to us that the object, the sole object, of all the talents we receive is not self-glorification, but use and service ; but it shows also the lesson on which I have hitherto dwelt, that God values us not for the splendour or amount of the gifts which He has given, but for the manner in which we use them ; — and that however mean our gifts, however small our opportunities, we may know for our consolation and encouragement that our reward will be, not great, but infinite, if we use them right. To some of His servants their Lord gave five talents, to others less gifted He gave but two ; yet mark, for surely it is worth our notice, that though they who had five talents, being faithful, had gained five more, and those who had but two, though faithful, could but add to them two more — though therefore the one had produced in their Lord's service less than half produced by the other, yet these latter, no less than the other, hear the same words of approval, E^ SovXe, dyade koI inaTe, " Well done, good and faithful servant ; " — these, no less than the other, receive the same reward, the reward of new and larger opportunities in place of the smaller faithfully employed ; these, no less than the other, experience the same beatitude, and are bidden to * enter into the joy of their Lord.' Nay, even he to whom but one talent had been given would, had he used it rightly, have been no less tenderly received. All have had something en- trusted to their care; aU, in that something, possess>means whereby they may happily serve their God, and their brother here, and enter into his joy hereafter. Is not the lesson a lesson of hopefulness and comfort ? Look M. S. jf 68 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. up to the sky this evening, and you will see some stars preeminent in magnitude, while others, set in the galaxy, are lost in one white un distinguishable haze. Yet though, as the great apostle says, one star differeth from another star in glory, all are of the same pure essence, all of the same divine origin : "All are the undying oflfspring of one sire." And, therefore, if — as is indeed the case — *' If thou indeed derive thy light from heaven," then, whether it be the most immeasurable radiance or the tiniest and feeblest gleam, still *' To the measure of that heaven-born light, Shine, Christian, in thy place and be content." i. Let me take two instances, wherein men differ very widely in the gifts they have received : and first the instance of poverty and riches. " Money," says the book of Ecclesiastes, ''is a defence," and therefore one who is poor in this world's goods has, so far, a talent — that is an opportunity, and means of service — the less. Others obtain with ease the advantages which he cannot even win by effort. "Well, my brethren, remeniber that in God's sight poverty, so far from being a disgrace, is a beautiful and hallowed lot. You have but little of this world's goods ; oh be faithful with that little, and you shall find it more than much. There are, I admit, two kinds of poverty — the one murmuring and envious, and mean, and greedy, and idle ; the other manly and noble and helpful, — possessing indeed but little save daily bread, but possessing also the lovely virtue of content- ment to make it sweet. Now it may be that some of you come from poor homes — it may be that many of you vii.] LITTLE GIVEN, LITTLE ASKED. 67 in this crowded uation and competing age mciy grow up yourselves to feel the cares and struggles which poverty entails ; and it is perfectly true that the world which is not only often coarse and cruel in its conduct, but also intensely and essentially vulgar in its estimates, is ashamed of poverty, — scorns the necessity of self-denial, blushes at the scant table and threadbare garb. My brethren, may your education here save you from that utter vulgarity of mind and heart. Say with the poet : — " Lives there for honest poverty Who hangs his head and a' that ; The coward slave, we pass him by, And dare be poor for a' that." Yes, since there is such a thing as a poverty which is rich in every element of a noble life — since many a foul, false heart has beaten under the velvet and the ermine, and many a true and royal heart been covered by the poor man's serge — nay, since Himself and all His apostles, and well nigh all His martyrs and well nigh all His saints were poor— then of poverty no man need ever be ashamed. If you come from poor homes now, hail it as a voice of God speaking to you in kindly accents, and bidding you by cheerful activity, by honest labour, to lighten the burden of those you love. If you are poor here- after, learn that a poverty which scorns luxury — which can dispense with superfluities — which can find life purest and strongest and sweetest when it is disciplined under the beneficent laws of '^high thinking and plain living," is wealthier in every element of happiness than ** Twenty seas, though all their shores were pearl, Their waters crystal, and their rocks pure gold." Do not imagine even that it will enable you to do less for God. The lips of the contemptuous Pharisee might 68 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [sjgrm. curl when the poor widow dropped her two mites into the gorgeous treasury, but in the eyes of Him on whom they were bestowed, that poor widow had given more than they all. Many a struggling curate does more for God in the way of charity than many a vulgar millionaire. The kind word spoken in His service — the cup of cold water given in His name — these are possible to the poorest, and' kings can give no more. " My most dear God," wrote Luther, " I thank Thee that Thou hast made me poor and a beggar upon earth. Therefore I can leave neither house nor fields, nor money to my w.7e and children after me. As Thou hast given them unto me I restore them to Thee again. Thou rich, faithful God, feed them, teach them, preserve them, as Thou hast fed, taught, and preserved me, Father of the fatherless and Judge of the widow." ii. Secondly and lastly, take the instance of stupidity — of deficiency in gifts of the intellect. Here again there are two kinds of stupidity. There is the wilful stupid- ity of blank, unimpressible, contented ignorance — the stupidity of the horse or the mule that have no understanding — of natures impenetrably sluggish and sensually base. There is nothing beautiful in that, for it has its root not in the appointment of God, but in the obliquity of man. But there is another kind of stupidity, if we can apply to it that name at all, which is neither ignoble nor offensive, nay, more, which has a certain calm and gentleness, a certain worth and beauty of its own. Intellectual gifts, if precious, are also perilous, and not seldom in this world's history have they been shining instruments in the hand of ambition, *' To render faults Illustrious, and give infamy renown." vu.] LITTLE GIVEN, LITTLE ASKED. 69 But when God has created one, v/ho being endowed with but small capacities, yet firmly, honesty, humbly does his best, then to the dignity and sweetness of such a character my whole heart opens, and such as these, both in boyhood and manhood I have observed to be among the noblest I have known. " If there be one thing on earth," said a great teacher, " which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers when they have been honestly and zealously cultivated. To so and so," he used to say, mentioning a good but dull boy, " I would stand hat in hand." Oh, if I am speaking to any here who are some- times vexed by the thought that they can only plod on in the paths of humble usefulness, and never compete with their more brilliant schoolfellows ; to any who sorrowfully think that the world's great successes are not for them ; to any who feel that God has given to them but the one talent, not the two or the five; I would remind them how infinitely the great are transcended by the good, I would say to them, work on without one shadow of discouragement, without one pang of self-depreciation. Do your best, assured that God loves you as though the soul of Plato or of Shakspeare were your own ; work with as manly a self- respect as though Empires would be moulded by your counsels, and Senates listen to your words ; work with as calm a certainty that he will accept and will bless and will reward that work, as though the sunbeam that falls upon you were streaming down direct from His hand of fatherly blessing, held in invisible consecration over your stooping head. Yes, my young bi'other, be thou faithful unto death, and whether rich or poor, whether dull or- intelligent, whether unknown or re- nowned, He will give thee, lor He has promised. th« 70 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. crown of life. Thou, too, with angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven, shalt enter into the joy of thy Lord ; to thee too, no less loudly, wdth no less soul- thrilling emphasis and sweetness, than to the lordliest and most glorious souls, shall peal forth from the highest empyrean, the blissful utterance of final approbation, •' Servant of God, well done ! " I have not said the half of what I meant or wished to say, and I have said it poorly and feebly, but I must conclude. Yet let me conclude wdth one allusion. The grave, my brethren, has scarcely closed over one who not long since was one of your number ; whom many of you remember as a school-fellow, w^hom still more of you saw here as a visitor during last half-year. I knew enough of him to know how simply and honourably in his short life he had used the talents which God had given him, and striven to carry out some of the lessons which I have striven to indicate to-day, and I can testify to his simplicity and modesty, to that quiet humility of the Christian, united in him with the courteous culture of the gentleman. Those who had the pleasure of knowing him better could add much more ; and one of iris friends and school- fellows pronounced upon him this high eulogy, that whether as a boy, or a youth, or as a man, no one knew harm or evil of Thomas Eagland Dumergne. Faithful over a few things, w^e know well that all such shall be rulers over many things. Tor they fulfil in their lives that one rule, which though not in so many words recorded in the gospels, is recorded by the earliest Church-tradition as having been uttered by the lips of Christ Himself, TlveaOe Bokl^ioI Tpane^irai, ' Be good VII.] LITTLE GIVEN, LITTLE ASKED. 71 exchangers ; ' — use, that is, to the very utmost the gifts which God has entrusted to you ; use them cheerfully, use them vigorously, use them humbly, use them hap- pily, use them with the certainty of God's approval, whether those gifts be great or small. Sept, 24, 1871. SERMON VIII. QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE. Is. XXX. 15. " In quietness and in confidence siicall be j'^our strength,'* The connection of this text, my brethren, with the name and life of the apostle St. Andrew is not quite mean- ingless or artificial. The very little that is known of him exhibits forcibly that quietness and confidence to which our text exhorts. It was to his calm and strong conviction — it was to that untroubled vision enjoyed by the pure in heart and hand — that he owed by God's blessing the proud pre-eminence of being among the very earliest of our Lord's disciples ; and this is the reason why his name stands first, stands in immediate connection with Advent Sunday, in the bright calendar of the Apostles and Saints of God. More than one of the few and slight notices recorded of him might furnish us with profitable thoughts ; as, for instance, the ready faith with which he called the Saviour's attention to the little lad with five barley loaves and seven small fishes ; or the brotherly love which made him first and at once find his own brother Simon and bring him to his Master's side. Let us rather, however, dwell on the quiet faith, the patient strength, the holy self-possession of soul SERM. VIII.] QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE. 73 wMcli can alone account for all that is recorded of him. There is a singular contrast between him and his more illustrious brother Simon Peter. St. Andrew seems to have been all peace and restfulness ; St. Peter all fervency and flame. St. Peter's character has been well touched in a little book called Life in Earnest, which many of you may have read. " Is Jesus encompassed," it says, " by fierce ruffians ? Peter's ardour flashes in his ready sword, and converts the Galilean boat- men into the soldier instantaneous. Is there a rumour of the resurrection ? John's nimbler foot distances his older friend, but Peter's eagerness outruns the serener love of John, and past the gazing disciple he hurries breathless into the sepulchre. Is the risen Saviour on the strand ? His comrades turn the vessel's head for shore, but Peter plunges over the vessel's^ side, and. struggling tlirough the waves falls in his dripping coat at his Master's feet. Does Jesus say * bring of the fish that ye have caught V Before anyone could antici- pate the words, Peter's brawny arm is tugging the weltering net with its glittering spoil ashore, and every eager movement unwittingly is answering beforehand the question of his Lord, ' Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?'" A noble character, my brethren, a character intensely lovable with aU its faults: and yet perhaps not nobler, and certainly less rare than the unresting duty, the unhasting calm, the unclouded conscience, the unwavering faith of that gentler and less famous brother, who first uttered to his astonished ear, that great eureka, EvprjKafiev rov Miaaiav, "We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ." 1. There are two kinds of character, my brethren, — the fervent and the contemplative — the enthusiastic and the peaceful— and each of them is admirable and each 74 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. necessary for the progress and well-being of the world. But, as the ancients said, Corruptio optimi pessima, and each of these is liable to a certain degeneracy which is very common, so that instead of fervour we find restlessness, and instead of quietude lethargy. Of the one — which as it is the least amiable and the least hopeful, is also happily the rarer — I will not speak. It is the cold, dead, lethargic, unemotional character: always contented in its self-satisfaction, always imper- turbable in its conceit. Of these I will only quote the words of Scripture to the Angel of the Laodiceans : " Thou say est I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing ; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich ; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten : be zealous therefore, and repent." 2. But the other character is fussy, and flurried, and restless — totally without repose, totally without dignity, always in extremes. There is no perspective about it, no silence, no sobriety, no self-control ; it values no blessing which it has, because it is always yearn- ing for some blessing which it has not ; it enjoys no source of happiness in the present, because it is always fretting, and if I may use the phrase fidget- ing for some source of happiness in the future. At School it is restless and dissatisfied because it is not at the University; and at the University because it is not yet in the active work of life; and in the active work of life, because the harvest of its poor VIII.] QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE. 75 endeavours is not reaped well-nigh as soon as it is sown ; and so the inevitable days slip on and the man dies or ever he has lived. Often this restless discon- tented misery is the Nemesis of a sinfal life, for St. Jude speaks of those who are like "raging waves of the sea foaming out their own shame," and the prophet Isaiah tells us, " The wicked is like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.'* But often it is not so bad as this ; it is the mere rest- lessness, and excitement, and discontent bred by a soul which has no sweet retirements of its own, and no rest in God, no anchor sure and steadfast on the rushing waves of life. It is bred by a harassed age in which we find no leisure ; in which ** The world is too much with us ; late and soon Getting and spending, we lay waste onr powers. Little we see in Nature that is ours ; We have given our souls away, a sordid boon ; " or, in which, as another expresses it, we " See all sights from pole to pole, And glance, and nod, and bustle by ; And never once possess our soul Before we die." 3. Now to both these common characters this text offers an antidote ; to the self-satisfied, a confidence which is not conceit, a quietude which is that of a glassy sea, not that of a stagnant and corrupting pool ; to the restless and anxious, a quietude and a confidence which are nothing else than a calm faith and happy trust in God. And therefore the text, beautiful in itself, has had for many a singular charm. It is, as you know, the motto of that quiet and holy book which has soothed so many 76 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. restless souls — The Christian Year. And to us in this place it ought to have a deeper and yet more real interest, because it was the favourite motto of that good and eminent man — to whom to the latest day of its existence Marlborough will owe so much, and who to some of us here present was once a beloved and living friend, and not merely a hallowed memory. When at a time of deep anxiety he came to the place it was the one thought which lie carried with him. Many would have shrunk with dread from the responsibility before him, but he did not, because to him responsibility was but the quiet, earnest, faithful fulfilment of the duty to which God had called him ; many would have been painfully anxious about the success of their work, but he was not, because he knew that duties are always in our own hands, results always and alone in the hand of God. In the very first words which he uttered in this chapel he said to the Marlborough boys at that day, " The very youngest boy in this chapel has hardly so much need to pray for God's grace in the work set before him as I who have urged you to it." And when, though the burden and heat of the day was already over, he was called to another new and arduous work in that toilsome Indian bishopric, it was again these words which consoled and encouraged him. I, my brethren, who stand where he stood, who speak from the very spot where, on these saint's day evenings, he so often spoke — I, who by a slight effort of memory, can recall the very expression of his face and very accent of his voice, and who have wandered with him so often on the terrace, and in the forest, and over the downs — know well, how earnestly, were he now here, he would at- tribute any particle of success wherewith God blessed his labours to the grace which enabled him to keep this viii.] QUIETNESS AND CONFIVENCE. 77 spirit alive in his heart, like a silver lamp shedding its quiet radiance over the darkness — know well that, if his happy spirit still linger here in a place which was so dear to him, and among the successors of those who were once his beloved children in the Lord, there is no lesson which he would urge upon you with a more fatherly gentleness than this — "Thus saith the Lord God, In returning and rest shall ye be saved ; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength." 4. The text opens many a wide vista, and it is im- possible at all adequately to illustrate and enforce it. I will, therefore, leave it with you for your own meditation, only praying that God's Holy Spirit may impress it deeply upon all our hearts. But I will merely mention the cause why it suggested itself to me to-day as likely to be profitable to some of you. It was because to many of you — I hope to the large majority of you, certainly to all the noblest and best of you, to all, in fact, except the idle and the frivolous — the two weeks of school-time which yet remain to us, must be weeks of effort and anxiety. You know how very much depends for most of you in the future upon the exertions of the present ; you know that in an age of struggle and competition and over-population it wiU requite on your parts a distinct and vigorous effort to secure those conditions which are the ordinary elements of a reasonably happy life ; you know that in this age, even as regards mere earthly success and position, the axe is at the root of the barren trees ; you know, in fact, that what is called your chance in life depends in great measure on what you do and on what you learn here now. I suppose that for the two- thirds of you the complexion of your future, its earthly prosperity, or its comparative earthly failure, turn on your ability to pass well or ill, or even to pass at all, in 78 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. certain competitions wliicli will test how far you have used the opportunities which it is the earnest and faithful endeavour of us, your teachers, to further to the uttermost. And all these are, and ought to be, powerful motives, though even these are, and ought to be, less powerful than the nobler considerations that all who love you will take a keen interest in the success or non-success of your school endeavours, and above all, far above all, that those endeavours being incumbent on you from your very position here, are in reality a part of your duty to your neighbour and your God. And all these considerations ought to produce in your minds a steady, conscious purpose, deliberately to do your best ; to waste no time ; to cultivate to the utmost, wisely, carefully, and thoughtfully the power both bodily and intellectual, as well as spiritual, which God has given you. But I cannot feel surprised, nor can I blame, a tendency to restlessness and anxiety at a time of examination, any more than I can be surprised if you even look forward with some care and misgiving to the necessary uncertainties of your future life. And, therefore, as the best remedy which I can ofter, I would say in sincere sympathy, " In quietness and in confidence shall be your rest." Bo not yield to over anxiety. Fevered work, flurried work, anxious work, restless work, is always bad work. Work all of you as if you felt and realised " the dignity of work, the innocence of work, the happiness of work, the holiness of work." Do your best loyally and cheerfully, and suffer yourself to feel no anxiety or fear. Your times are in God's hands. He has assigned you your place. He will direct your paths. He will accept your efforts if they be faithful. He will bless your aims if they be for your soul's good. Kegard your present life — the present conditions of your life — viii.] QUIETNJESS AND C02^FIDENCE. 79 as His assignment and His boon ; regard the present hours — yea, the very moments of your life — as no less real, as no less substantial, as no less important, as no less certain to enjoy God's blessing of innocent happi- ness and cheerful hope — perhaps far more so — than any of the moments which are yet to come. Do your best then in quietness, not in feverish impulse ; , do your best with confidence, — not confidence in your poor, ignorant, feeble self, but in a merciful and tender God, and be quite sure that whatever else may happen to you, or not happen, this at least will happen — which is greater than all earthly blessing — that His loving Spirit will lead you into the land of righteousness. Neither in these examinations which are immediately before you, nor in any of the competitions on which the future profession of many of you will depend, nor in the increasing labour, and struggles of your future lives — nay, not even in the hour of death or in the day of judgment will he have any cause to be unhappy or to fear who has quietly, humbly, faithfully done his best St. Andrew's Pay, N'ov. 30, 1371. SEEMON IX. TEE GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED. Matt. xiii. 21. *' The kingdom of heaveu is like to a grain of mustard seed." The parable of the grain of mustard seed must be taken in close connection with that of the leaven, and both are meant to illustrate the small beginnings, the silent growth, and the final victory of the grace of God in the human soul. But they belong to different points of view. The one is extensive the other intensive. The parable of the grain of mustard seed shows us the origin and the development of the kingdom of God, in communities and in the world ; the parable of the leaven shadows forth its unimpeded influence in the soul of each separate man. It is not, however, my object to explain either parable, but rather to touch on one or two natural thoughts which their central conception seems to suggest. May God, — ^who only can, — make even so insignificant a thing as a weekly sermon, one more barrier against evil, one more impulse to good in every heart among us. What so trivial and worthless as an atom of sand ? yet God binds even the atoms of sand together into an invincible SERM. IX.] TEE GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED. 81 barrier against the fury of the sea. What so insignificant as a grain of mustard seed ? Yet even a grain of mustard seed can grow into an overshadowing tree, and the fowls of the air — the restless haughtinesses, and hopes, and cares, and fears of men — take refuge in its branches. There are two classes of men in the world, distinctly marked indeed, but of which one contains infinitely few, the other the vast majority of mankind. To the first of these classes belong those who from the earliest dawn of their intelligence, from the first possibility of independent will, in a word, from the earliest day that they can remember, have striven to be, and have been the children and servants of God. Innocent-hearted to the last, as when they lifted their little hands to lisp to their Heavenly Father an infant's prayer, tliey have carried the sweetness and simplicity of childhood into the powers of manhood ; they have retained " the young lamb's heart amid the full-grown flocks." To them duty has always been the natural and happy law of life ; to them purity of soul and dignity of temper have oome like spontaneous growths. The temple of their hearts has not been desecrated ; the fountain of their being has not been troubled ; the white robes of their baptism have not been stained. The crown is still upon their foreheads, for they have not sinned. To them, as one of our holiest poets has said, ' ' Love is an unerring light, And joy its own security.'* Such a man, upon a throne, was St. Louis of France ; such, in a cloister, was Fra Angelico di Fiesole ; such, as a reformer, was St. Benedict of ISTursia; such, in literature, were John Milton and William Wordsworth. M.S. G 82 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm< Nay, what need of meaner examples? Such in his sweet, noble, diligent, submissive boyhood, in the shop of the carpenter at Nazareth, was the Son of God Himself. Lambs of God are these, by the still waters of His comfort, in the green pastures of His love. " It is," says one, " the most complete picture of happiness that ever was, or can be, drawn. It represents the state of mind for which all alike sigh, and the want of which makes life a failure to most. It rejDresents that Heaven which is everywhere if we could but enter it, yet almost nowhere because so few of us can." Some I trust are here who may humbly claim this happiness, — " Glad souls without reproach or blot, Who do God's work and know it not ; " yet (thanks to our own willul and wayward hearts) never and nowhere are there many. " How," asks one in the Book of Job, " how can man be justified with God ? or how can he be clean who is born of a woman ? Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight. How much less man that is a worm, and the son of man that is a worm ? " Peace, alas ! comes not to most men but by struggle : and only through bitter experience of evil is learnt the ennobling, absorbing lesson, that good is best. II. Not perfect innocence then, but humble and sincere repentance, forms the main distinction between man and man ; and if happy is he who has kept inno- ceucy, and done the thing that is right, happy also is he whose iniquity is forgiven and whose sin is covered. These have not always been God's children, but they are so now : they were afar off, they have now been made IX.] THE GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED. 83 nigh by the blood of Christ. But how ? whence sprang that desire, which became first a prayer, then an effort, until the sinner, in his pride and blindness, learnt finally that it was an evil and a bitter thing that he had forsaken the Lord his God, and that the fear of God was not in him ? My brethren, that change is conversion, beyond all comparison the most entire and awful change that can happen to any man in life. It is in fact a new life ; it brings the soul into new relationships with God. The rebel becomes the child, the haughty humble. He who hid himself from God in sliame and anger now goes fortli to meet Him in boundless joy. Once mean, he now is noble ; once passionate, he is now self-controlled ; once frivolous, now soberminded ; once unclean in every imagination, now sweet and pure ; once full of an evil spirit, he is now clothed, and in his right mind ; once a leper, his flesh has now come again like the flesh of a little child. (1.) Now this great change of conversion appears to occur in two ways-^sometimes it seems to be the work of an instant, sometimes to be diffused imper- ceptibly over many years. Though the world scoff at them, there are such things as instantaneous conversions, supreme crises and movements in the history of life, which, like the shock of an earthquake, cleave a sudden rift deep down between all that a man has been and all he is. Such was the vision of Paul on the road to Damascus ; such was the sudden arrest which happened to the soul of Bunyan ; such the revulsion of horror which changed ^ De Eance from the dissolute courtier into the devoted saint. And oh, what a change ! A man, in his petty conceit, in his «mall intellectualism, in his insolent G 2 84 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. self-will, even in his sensual ignorance, has lived iu habitual antagonism to some majestic, eternal law, and suddenly, with overwhelming force, there is flashed in upon his conscience an insight that this law which he, poor worm, has been violating and trying to ignore, is eternal, absolute, independent, not made by him, not to be altered by him, but inexorably infinite, and to be disobeyed only at his everlasting peril. And when that sublime ray of light, that lightning flash out of God's eternity, has penetrated his soul, there is an im- mense untold interval between that moment and the one which preceded it. " The man indeed is left untouched, but there is added to him the God who created him." All vain, idle, furious passions disappear. All the mere emptiness of life becomes repulsive. Things temporal vanich, things eternal dawn on him. An awful sense of reality comes over him, and joy accompanies it. It is as when the weary traveller struggles over the Alps, and a moment comes when the first soft breeze announces his approach to the Italian soil. Before him there may still be barren wastes and icy tempests, but from that moment, as though there were a new heart in him, he fears no danger before him, he forgets every peril and misery behind. (2.) And yet, even in these sudden conversions as they are caUed, it remains no less true that the kingdom of God is like a grain of mustard seed : for just as in the workings of the mystery of iniquity no crime is, in reality, what it sometimes seems to be, the fatal inspi- ration of one miserable moment, because each action is in reality influenced by all past actions — so no man ever really sprang at one bound from a sinner to a saint. The seeds of good must have long been secretly IX.] TRE GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED. 85 and silently at work. Those who are familiar with tropic forests tell us that for months they look sombre and monotonous, till suddenly on some one day they will rush into crimson blossom, and blaze in masses of floral splendour under the noonday sun ; but the glory, so seemingly instantaneous, is in reality a lengthened work, and the sun, and wind, and rain, and the rich air, and glowing sky, nay, even the lost promise and deciduous leaves of many a previous season, must have lent their influence for years together, before the issue of them can stand thus manifest in the eyes of wondering men. (3.) And more often the conversion of the heart is not even in appearance sudden, but in a long silent growth in grace and holiness, preceded by the day of small things. In the unseen world as in the seen, every man is moulded by myriads of influences, each small as a grain of mustard seed, each rich with a principle of life ; and as in nature, so in the spiritual life, but one seed, alas ! of many millions may be brought to bear. None can tell which seed shall bring forth. In one man all are hopelessly wasted, on the barren soil, in the rocky obstinacy, in the choked and thorny life ; yet, in another, a look, a word, a flower, a breath of spring, a touch of sunset, a sudden memory, the kind warning of a companion, the verse of a hymn, a prayer once uttered at the mother's knee, may make the difference between life and death. A spiritual lustre falls over forgotten or familiar words, like that which gleamed over the graven gems of Aaron's breast, and makes them awful with oracular import, a Urim and a Thummim, a revelation and a light. The beginnings then are small, and secondly the growth is silent — ^first the blade, and then the ear. 86 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. last of all the full corn in the ear. He, in whom it is working, may not at first sight seem different from others, different from what he was before ; but he is in reality an altered man. Within him all is different ; thoughts which he once harboured with complacency, he now rejects with horror ; hopes which once absorbed his energies, now shrink into nothingness ; little ser- pentine envies which once embittered his spirit, now perish or creep away. All dark things, all shameful things fly from the soul that lies open to the sunlight. A hush comes over the turbulence and the sadness of his spirit, and in that hush he hears distinctly, hears, while his heart thrills within him, the still small Voice of God. III. But thirdly and lastly, though the beginning be never so small, the development never so silent, the victory is flnal. It was so with the little seed of Christ- ianity in the world. Paganism fled vanquished before it. One abomination after another vanished ; one cruelty after another was repulsed; one high quality after another was recognised in principle ; one sweet virtue after another realised in practice. So was it in the world ; so, my brethren, wiU it be in you. If conversion have indeed begun in you (and, ^ oh, be sure that if it have not begun, your life is at this moment a sad, a sinful, and a wasted life), but if conversion have begun in you, you will be also growing in grace, you will be growing day by day purer, humbler, more loving, more temperate, more contented, more certain day by day that your life is in God's hands. The process wiU begin by the gradual but certain victory over your besetting sin. If you would examine yourself before God, if you would test whether, even but like a grain of mustard seed, the kingdom of God is within you, you may IX.] THE GRAIN OF MUSTARD SEED 87 do so simply and decisively by telling whether you feel a deepening dislike, whether you are engaged in an ever deadlier struggle, against the sin which most easily besetteth you. If you hate sin less than you did when you first were tempted, if familiarity witli sin have made it seem less sinful, then look to it, for evil is before you. He who says I will struggle against sin hereafter, instead of saying I will struggle with it now ; he who is content to fight with it in fancy " in the green avenues of the future," not in fact in the hot plains of to-day — wiJl proceed to make excuses for it, will come at last not even to feel its horror. To put off repentance is to court ruin ; to postpone the season is to perpetuate the sin. Even to hesitate is to yield ; even to deliberate is to be lost. Take any instance of sin. Take evil tlioughts, which are tlie foiis et origo of every sin. You are tormented, say, by evil thoughts, by evil thoughts of envy, of hatred, of impurity. Do you really long that God would cleanse the thoughts of your heart by the inspiration of His Holy Spirit ? AVell, number to yourself the days in which you have not yielded to this temptation. "I did not yield to evil thoughts yesterday, or the day before, or for the last week : " and if indeed a whole month have passed since you succumbed to this temptation, then thank God very humbly on your knees. '* For the habit is first loosened, then eradicated." ^ If you can say then on your knees before God, honestly, in the light of your own conscience, — if you can say, I am struggling, I have, even in part, even for a time, succeeded, — then be sure that if you continue to be in earnest, it will soon be all right with you ; be sure that then God is leading you by the hand, leading you by His loving Spirit into the land of ^ Epictetus. 88 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm. ix righteousness. Yes, be sure in tliat case that you are not far from the kingdom of heaven now, nay, more, be sure that the kingdom of heaven is wi'th you, and shall be in you. " For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field ; which is indeed the least of all seeds, but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches of it." April 14, 1872. & SEEMON X. INNOCENT HAPPINESS. EcCL. xi. 9. " Rejoice, young man, in thy youth ; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes : but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment." Theee are two ways, my brethren, in whicli this text may be read and understood. It may be read as the mocking accent of a pitiless irony ; it may be read as the sincere counsel of a noble and loving heart. According to the first view, the text would mean — Go, poor fool, and snatch such transitory enjoyment as thy youth and gaiety allow; the sea of things seen and temporal sparkles around thee, launch upon it thy little gilded bark, and spread every sail to the prosperous winds; but there, in the deep shadow of the future, hushed in grim repose, the whirlwind waits thee, and the painted shallop which now dances so gaily over the sunlit ripple shall soon be " a dismantled hull upon the troubled waters or a desolate wreck upon the lonely shore." Go then, — rejoice ; that mirth is but the fantastic prelude to disappointment and despair. No doubt, my brethren, there was a time when, sated and cloyed with luxuries, and finding his mouth filled with the ashes of such Dead Sea fruit, Solomon might 90 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [sekm. have been tempted to speak like that. Many a weary worldling, many a worn voluptuary — sick to the very heart at the sight of pleasures which he can no longer enjoy — has said the same. For selfishness always makes the heart callous and cruel, and it is the cliaracteristic of impenitent evil to find self-solace in watching the ruin of others. But though the whole book of Eccle- siastes as the deep sigh of one who was conscious of a wasted life, it is the sigh of a godly and noble penitence. The sadness of the book is a personal sadness, but it is free from all taint of envy, and it is with a sincerity which every good man will echo, that Solomon says " Eejoice, young man, in thy youth." But because he well knew the danger of unchequered prosperity and joy, therefore he adds, Eejoice, yet accept the warning, — not as though some dark hand wrote in threatening fire upon the walls of thy banquet-house, — but as though an angel voice whispered it gently in thy ears. In the midst of thy mirth remember, — ^lest it become guilty, lest it become foolish, lest it become excessive — remember in order that it may be sweet, that it may be innocent, that it may be permanent, that this, like every other portion of thy life, will come before a Divine All- seeing Judge. You see, my brethren, that two different theories of life, and as a natural consequence two different schemes of education, may depend upon the lessons drawn from words like these. Those who find in them a mockery and reprobation of all pleasure have framed their methods of training in accordance with such a belief. They have repressed harshly, they have condemned unhesitatingly, the natural elasticity and mirthfulness of early life ; by formal discipline, by ascetic practices, by incessant surveillance, by close routine they have X.] INNOCENT EAPFINESS. 01 succeeded in imposing upon boyhood itself the staid looks and frigid formality of soberer years. Those who are familiar with foreign cities will recall the natural results of a system so unnatural ; they w^ill remember with pity the boyish faces that had in them no boyhood ; the dull depression, the listless bearing, the furtive glance of those who from childhood upward have been taught to regard all play as folly and all gaiety as sin. But this repressive education is the very reverse of that which for centuries has been carried on at our public schools. The instinct and wisdom of England have led her to feel that no warm, glowing, large-hearted man- hood can follow on a soured and gloomy youth ; have led her to desire for her children an education more hearty, more manly, more liberal. There was indeed one age in which the belief seemed to waver. The Puritanism of one fiery generation achieved in England a great and glorious work, but it partly neutralised that work when it laid upon the nation that iron cramp from which the baser sort broke loose in the foul license and bacchanalian frenzy of the succeeding reigns, and by which some even of the nobler and the better have thenceforth been bound by a needless yoke. Yet surely in all nature, even if we look no further, God has shown us that He desires our happiness. The God who flings the yellow rainbow across His storms, and bids the sunset rim his very thunderclouds with golden light, — that God who gives its splendour to the flower and its pearly lustre to the shell upon the shore, — that God who makes the summer air ring with the hum of insects and the careless melody of happy birds, — surely He did not wrap round this world with sweet air and bathe it in happy sunshine that we should regard gloom as the normal aspect of our lives. Nay, He has shot many a 92 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. golden thread through the woof of life, and to darken those threads by needless sadness is an offence against His love. There is indeed a sorrow born of deep afflictions, the scathing of the flame which is meant to purge away the dross ; — there is a sorrow which springs from that divine and perfect sympathy which can know no perfect happiness while it witnesses the misery of other children in the one great family of God; — there is a sorrow which has its source in that deep penitence which the Peace of God has not yet healed, and these are forms of sorrow which are noble and not sinful : but there is also a sorrow born of sin and egotism, and the fretting of bad passions, and the weight of chance desires, and that sorrow is wholly ignoble, and when it is seen in boyhood, as it is some- times seen, it is the saddest of all omens for a wasted and miserable life. In the great Poem of the Middle Ages to which I have more than once alluded — it is a storehouse of moral wisdom — the two poets, as they traverse the gloomy circles of the Inferno, come upon a stagnant and putrid fen, and there, buried in the black mud, they see the souls of the gloomy-sluggish, who in expiation of their sinful gloom in life, are ever forced to mutter — "We were sad In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun, Now in this miry darkness are we sad." You see to be sad in the sunshine was a crime in the great poet's eyes, and the poets and prophets of Scrip- ture were herein at one with him ; for David says, " Eejoice in the Lord, oh ye righteous ;" and Isaiah, "Thou meetest him who rejoiceth, and worketh righteousness ; " and St. Paul, "Eejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice." X.] INNOCENT HAPPINESS. 93 And you know, my brethren, nor should any know better than Marlborough boys, that such are the views of those who are placed in authority over you. We are anything but out of sympathy with the mirth, the games, the victories which not unnaturally occupy a large share of your attention. We rejoice at your triumphs, we gTieve at your failures ; we feel a personal and friendly interest in your individual successes. If we ever moderate any tendency to excess or extravagance in your amusements, it is only because we would not have them incompatible with those deeper, more import- ant, more permanent, more eternal gains which we would still see yours, long after the strong arm has lost its vigour and the keen eye its light. Never forget that you are God's children, that your fear, your gratitude, your worship, your service are due to Him night and day ; and then be sure that, so far from having one happy hour the fewer, or one smile the less, the long summer days will catch a gleam of fresh brightness from the spontaneous mirth of an unsullied conscience and a fear- less heart; nay, even wet and cheerless days like these will catch the diffusive glow of an inward sunshine. Your lot is a very happy one. You have many an hour of healthy exercise and pleasurable amusement ; many a happy afternoon of relaxation and indidgence; many a valuable opportunity for intellectual progress, and for work which makes no too severe demand upon your powers. And now your holidays are rapidly approach- ing, and many sunlit months are opening before you. Some of you will be among the bracken and the heather on the hills and moors ; some of you will be spending the golden days with the laughter of the summer waves to gladden your eyesight, and their murmur to soothe your ears; others, and perhaps not the least enviable 94 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. these, will be enjoying the peace of their own innocent and quiet homes. Oh, what wealth more golden than gold is here ; what a crowd of blessings ; what a welling fountain of sweet waters, of which some memory at least should gladden even the thirstiest desert of after years I Eejoice then as our Heavenly Father wills that you should rejoice. Eejoice, — but evermore remember. Ee- member that God's eye is upon you, remember that the laws of God, like the laws of the physical world, are entirely independent of you, your likes or dislikes, your knowledge or ignorance, your belief or unbelief, and yet that you are environed by them from the cradle to the grave, and it is at your own peril that you disobey them ; yes, remember, without fear indeed yet with deep solemnity and reverence, that " for all these things God shall bring thee into judgment." Such remembrance will not make you less happy but inore. " W^iy should we think youth's draught of joy, If pure would s])arkle less ? Why should the cup the soouer cloy. Which God hath deigned to bless ? " Innocent happiness, oh what a world of beatific vision is wrapped up in those two words; what a heaven on earth they picture and signify! But if any of you seek for happiness in sin, which is the forgetfulness of God and defiance of His will ; in crime, which is some wicked offence against the welfare, the peace, the purity of man; in vice, which is some degraded tendency in your own pe: sonal life, then, my brethren, the sin, the crime, the vice leave upon the soul and conscience that dark stain of guilt which is an abiding and horrifying sense of God's wrath, and causes irretrievable shipwreck of all present happiness and all future peace. " Guilty happiness 1 " there is no X.] INNOCENT HAPPINESS. 95 such thing on earth. GuHtj pleasicre there is ; a pleasure short, envenomed, ruinous in proportion to its guilt — the sting of the fondled serpent, the poison in the wine-cup's bitter dregs. But guilty happiness I if any of you in the secret thoughts of his heart have ever fancied that there is such a thing, oh let him dismiss that false fancy now. For guilt and misery indeed walk this world hand in hand, but guilt and happiness cannot co-exist. Happy while the soul within him is full of leprosy ; happy, while his whole life is in disharmony with the will of Heaven ; happy, while the fire of remorse will ever and anon leap up within him from its unquenched embers, and the worm of conscience awake from its undying sleep ? — no, my brethren, no man can be happy thus. To wander from the safe, the narrow, the holy path of duty and virtue, — to seek in forbidden atmospheres a delusive and corroding pleasure, — is alas 1 to destroy within us not only all true happiness, hut even the capacity therefor. For happiness is hke that manna, the angel food of Israel in the wilderness, which if gathered duly and in moderation, was sweet as honey and pure as the morning dew ; hut if sought in excess and against God's com- mandments ceased to he human food at all, and stank, and hred worms, and was corrupt. Oh then learn as the most assured and the most invaluable lesson of your youth that golden rule of David's, "Keep innocency, and do the thing that is right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last." That is my lesson, that my message to you this morning. The had hoy — and you can draw the picture of the bad boy for yourselves — can you con- ceive of such a boy as happy ? If it has ever been your misfortune to know such a boy, have you not also known that he was miserable ? What is his guide in life ? Is the traveller safe when he turns his eye from the 96 TN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. northern star to follow the delusive meteor which flickers over the fields of death ? Is the ship safe whose course is steered not hy the steady lustre of the beacon, but by the wrecker's deadly fire ? My brethren, the traveller may sink in the morass and the ship be torn and shattered upon the sunken reef, yet they are safer than he who has deliberately forsaken the guide of his youth and forgotten the covenant of his God. To lose the blessing of an innocent heart is to lose all that is virtuous and honourable — all that is lovely and of good report — all that sweetens, all that ennobles, all that illuminates the life. For innocence and peace and happiness are three pearls strung together in the same jewel, and if one be lost they are lost together and can never again — never in this world even for the penitent, even for the forgiven — be recovered in their pristine lustre. I wanted, my brethren, to speak only of innocent happiness to-day, but I have been forced to digress into these harder paths, and *' To support uneasy steps Over the burning marie, not like those steps On heaven's azure." And perhaps it is best that it should so have been, since, as of old, it remains the duty of every teacher to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance. And is all that I have said needless ? I know indeed — and heartily do I thank God for it — how much there is in your lives to praise. I know that manj^ a manly and innocent, and high-minded boy is listening to me now ; but is there no danger? is every heart here indeed pure, every lip reverent and holy ? every conscience sweet and untroubled ? has no one need of that warning with which my text concludes ? There is a book, my brethren, lying ever open before God's throne, and in that book is written every evil X.] INNOCENT HAPPINESS. 97 thought we have ever thought, every idle word we have ever spoken, every wicked deed that we have ever done. Would you turn the awful pages of that book ? would you read its records ? You may, nothing hinders : that book though it lie ever open before God's throne, is near you, is with you, is within you. It is the book of your memory. The memory of man is the book of God. And its records, though they appear to be in many places obliterated, are in reality indestructible. Oh, when in after years you are called upon to turn over those folded pages of memory, may you rejoice to know that by God's grace they are clear and clean, and that there is not on them one of those damned spots which wrung even from the lips of David that bitter cry, "Oh, remember not the sins of my youth, nor my offences, but according to thy mercy think thou upon me, Lord, of thy goodness." For, in one last word, happy, my brethren, is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven, whose sin is covered; — but happier, far happier is he to whom the Lord imputeth no sin, and in whose spirit there is no guile. For though there can be no such thing on earth as a perfectly happy life — though what should be the June of life will often be chilly as its autumn and rainy as itu spring — there is a joy which is given only to the pure in tlieir purest hour, aud there is a heaven and an earth " undreamt of by the sensual and the proud ;'* and he has attained most nearly thereto of whose heart the grace of God has taken early hold, and whose spirit, amid all the stormy passions of life, has remained true to his God and Saviour — *' True to the kindred points of lieaven and home." Never out of sympathy with innocence, he is never out of sympathy with joy. As his youth has been M.S. n 98 . IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm. x. unstained, his manhood will be noble, his old age crown of glory ; and death will be to him but a shinin messenger sent to fling wide open before him the palace gates of immortality and heaven. This is innocent happiness; and not now only but through all your lives, out of a full heart, fervently I daily pray that God, — God the Loving, God the Merciful, God your God and Father, — may grant it, my brethren, to every one of you. June 9, 1S72. SEEMON XI. SCHOOL AND HOME. 1 Sam. ii. 12, 26. " Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial ; they knew not the Lord. . . . And the child Samuel grew on, and was in favour botk with tlie T.ord, and also with men." On his road from the ancient Bethel to Samaria the traveller will pass a rounded hill separated by narrow valleys from the amphitheatre of hills which surround it. At no great distance is one of those fountains which are so exquisitely dear to the imagination in the burning and thirsty East. Silence and desolation reign around. Those grey heaps of ruin seem as though they were determined to keep their secret. On this spot three thousand years ago stood the Tabernacle, which was indeed to Israel a Tabernacle of witness. Those boards of acacia wood had been hewn under the granite crags of Sinai. That gold had been molten from ancient ornaments of Egypt. That brazen altar was covered with plates beaten from the censers of Korah and his company. In that Holy of Holies was the Ark of God, overshadowed with the golden wings of the Cherubim, wherein was the golden pot of manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the two tables of the covenant. Every colour on those woven H 2 100 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH [serm hangings, every number in those symmetrical propor- tions, had its mystic significance. — It was Shiloh, God's bright sanctuary. And it was naturally a spot most solemn. Up that terraced slope wound the procession of white-robed Levites. By that clear fountain, under the glowing sunlits that fell through the shadowy leaves of the vineyards, the maidens of Israel led their sacred dances. In those courts, day by day, smoked the fumes of the morning and evening sacrifice ; and in the holy place the incense breathed its fragrant supplication, and the lamp shed its sevenfold lustre ; and into the holiest, in his robes of purple and fine linen — his breast " ardent with gems oracular," and holiness to the Lord upon his brow — entered the high priest, once a year, with the blood of atonement. That high priest was the gentle and venerable Eli; — and in such a home — which seemed to breathe the very atmosphere of holiness and prayer — he trained his sons to take part in that hallowed service. In the picture of a youth so circumstanced there is an almost idyllic charm. It has furnished to Greek tragedy one of its sweetest conceptions —the young and innocent Ion ministering in the great temple of Apollo at Delphi. And here, too, the sacred historian dwells with evident pleasure on the beautiful, noble, holy boyhood of the child who served before the Lord, wearing a linen ephod, and who, in the visitations of the night, thrilling to the Divine voice which called him by his name, answered fearlessly, ''Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth." Yet from that same tabernacle, from that same tutelage, from those same influences, came forth also the sons of Eli ; and the sons of Eli were sons of Belial ; they knew not the Lord. XI.] SCHOOL AND HOME. 101 The training tjie same, the product how different ; the school the same, the boys whom it educated how fearfully contrasted ! Such contrasts seem strange, but they are in reality matters of daily experience. Four millenniums ago two boys so unlike as Esau and Jacob played together from infancy in the same pastoral tent. Daily from the same home we see boys go forth, some to live noble self-denying lives, others to live lives that come to nothing, and do deeds as well undone. So too, often, from happy conditions come base characters ; from degraded environments strong, sweet natures struggle into the light. Are there not analogies to this in nature ? " It is a marvel," says an American writer, " whence the white pond lily derives its loveliness and perfume, sprouting as it does from the black mud over which the river sleeps, and from which the yellow lily also draws its unclean life and noisome odour." So it is with many in this world ; the same soil and circumstances may produce the good and beautiful and the wicked and ugly. Some have the faculty of assimilating to them- selves only what is evil, and they become noisome as the poisonous water-plant ; some assimilate none but good influences, and their characters become fragrant and spotless. What then is our inference from this ? It is, that only the personal devotion of the heart, the personal surrender of the individual will, can save a man or make him holy. The sons of Eli, we read in the next chapter, made themselves vile. A man's life may be infiuenced, but it is not determined, by his circumstances. No aid, save that which comes from above to every man, can help him to climb the mountain path of life, or enter the wicket-gate of righteousness ; nor, on the other hand, can anv will or power except 102 IN THE DAY^ OF THY YOUTH. [serm. his own retard his ascent or forbid his ingress. On ourselves — on the conscious exercise of our own free will — depends our eternal salvation or ruin. On the one hand, neither man nor devil can control that will if we dedicate it to God ; on the other — ** From David's lips this word did roll, 'Tis true and living yet — No man can save his brother's soul, Or pay his brother's debt." And is not this thought thus forced upon us by the first lesson of to-day, an important and profitable one at a time when, for a long interval of rest, you are about to exchange the influences of school for the influences of home ? May they not help you to understand better the meaning and purpose of your present life, and the reason why parents — even the most loving, the most tender, the most scrupulous — yet send you away from the shelter and innocence of home to the dangers and temptations of a public school ? Let us pause for a few moments on this question of school and home. Those of you who know anything of our own literatiu'e will remember hoAV, in the bad days of the last century, the poet Cowper was sent from a home of the most exquisite delicacy and refinement to a school in which reigned, unrepressed, those traditions of cruelty, tradi- tions of idleness, traditions of disobedience, traditions of every form of vice, which, thank God, have as traditions been well-nigh swept away by the reviving earnestness and decency of a better age. And you will remember the consequences. Depressed, unhinged, spirit-broken, by all he had been forced to undergo as a young and sensitive boy, a cloud of melancholy, verging at times on actual insanity, settled upon his mind, and all the XI.] SCHOOL AND HOME. 103 happiness of his life suffered au awful shipwreck. He has described that home, in all its tender sweetness, in the immortal Lines on the recdigt of his mother s picture ; he has described that school in all its repulsive vileness in the Tirocinium. He must have indeed a dull and cold heart who can read to himself that sweet picture of a mother's love to her little boy without tears in his eyes, or can wonder that long years after, in his old age. the poet could write — " that those lips had language ! Life has passed With me but roughly since 1 saw thee last ; Those lips are thine : thy own sweet smile I see, The same that oft in childhood solaced me ; Voice only fails, else how distinct they say, Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away. " And when we turn from them to the Tirocinium, and know that the stern, sad picture was yet a true one, can we wonder that he describes a good father laying his hand on his son's head and saying — " My boy, the unwelcome hour is come, And thou, transplanted from thy genial home, Must find a colder soil, a bleaker air, And trust for safety to a stranger's care." And then the poet, expostulating with the father for trusting his child to such risks, continues — " Thou could'st not, deaf to Nature's tenderest plea. Turn him adrift upon a rolling sea ; Then — only governed by the self-same rule Of natural pity — send him not to school." Now in those days there would have been very much to urge for such a conclusion ; and yet, even then, unconvinced by such arguments, many a sober. God- fearing man must have sent his sons to school, not ignorant, indeed, of the risks they ran, not even com- pelled by intellectual considerations or the necessities of modern life, but because, i\\ spite of all, he thoiighfc 104 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. that sucli a course might be morally the best. With many and many an earnest prayer, perhaps with many and many a sad misgiving, he would let his son pass from the quiet vicarage or country house to the Eton, or Harrow", or Winchester of the eighteenth century, know- ing that there he might forget to pray, knowing that he might learn there to blaspheme and break God's laws ; but knowing also that God's grace, if the boy sought it, would be sufficient for him ; knowing that no power on earth could make him go astray if he opposed to it a resisting will ; knowing that the innocence of mere ignorance, and the negative goodness which does but result from an artificial absence of temptation, is a poor thing ; knowing that however sheltered from every wind of trial, no human soul can grow up without recognising in itself the awful power to resist God's laws ; know^ing that such an impulse to disobedience must come to every soul with its complete humanity ; knowing, in a word, that God's will respecting us is this : not that we should remain wholly ignorant of the very existence of wrong, but that we should know and conquer, that we should see and pass it by. And many a sad experience of many a broken-hearted parent who followed a different course would have shown that he was right. Tor the other method almost always fails. Often a boy, the child of religious parents, kept and sheltered by them as the apple of an eye, brought up it may be by their timid love in some country parsonage or the calm shadow of some old cathedral close, going forth, as, sooner or later, he must go forth, unarmed to meet the shock of the world's temptations, has fallen with a more tragic suddenness into a completer ruin. A great writer of fiction has drawn such a picture. A youth carefully trained in a XL] • SCHOOL AND HOME. 105 religious home goes to the University, falls into bad company, and gets into habits of intemperance. " Need I," he says, " depict the line gradations by which he sank ; gradations, though fine, yet so numerous, that, in a space of time almost too brief to credit, the clear- browed boy looked a sullen, troubled, dissatisfied youth ?" And why ? because his religion had been but external, mechanical, artificial. It was a thin veneer ; there was in it no heart of oak. His life had never looked up to its source. All that was good in him was good of itself, and not of him. So it was easy to go down — over the edge of the pit. All return to the unific rectitude of a manly life must be in the face of a scorching past and a dark future, and those he could not face. My brethren, thank God schools are not now what they were when Cowper wrote his Tirocinium. I know now — may I not say it in this Holy of Holies of our spiritual temple ; may I not say it on this Sunday morning, when the sound of prayers and litanies still rings sweetly in our ears; may I not say it in this chapel, where, morning by morning and evening by evening, you kneel with bowed heads and reverent hearts in the presence of our God and Father ; may I not say it at the close of a Half, in which, by God's blessing, there has been so much for which to be thank- ful, so little to cause pain ; may I not say to Marlborough boys ? — that your school is to you a kind and gentle nurse, and that it is possible for you here — as it has been to hundreds of right-hearted Christian boys before you — to live innocent and honourable lives, amid a thousand influences for good, none hindering, and many helping you ? I know that I may say it ; not (God forbid !) in a spirit of boastfulness, but in a spirit of deep humility and gratitude ; and yet it remains true 10f5 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. even for you, that the life of five hundred boys congre- gated together — not all, it may be, from good previous influences ; not all, it may be, of good and pure dispositions — cannot be so safe a place, so free from all peril and outward temptation to do wrong, as home. Why then do your parents send you here ? Why do they not keep you at home ? Might not a wise father, in the fewest possible words, tell you in answer that herein he is but following God's appointed method in the probation of a human soul, and that that method is, not to shield it from the possibility of evil, but to encourage and strengthen it in the deliberate choice of good ; not to shelter it from all temptation, but with each temptation to provide also the way of escape ; not to stop the ears of His children against those voices which call them aside to the right hand or to the left ; — ^ but to purge those ears, so that they may listen to the high, authoritative, and tender voice, that still small voice which you hear every one of you, each in the deep of his own heart, which ever reminds you of the one straight path, and ever utters, " This is the way : walk ye in it." Now, you will be most sensible of such temptations as school life may bring — most inclined to put them forward as a complaint or an excuse — if you have indeed succumbed to them; if on returning home you find that either home is changed or you are changed — ** And, least familiar where he should be most, Feels all his happy privileges lost." Some change, of course, there must be, but it need not be wholly painful. " On a rock where we landed to fish," says a young emigrant in his journal, " I espied XI.] SCHOOL AND HOME. 107 a harebell, the first I had seen for many years, and with its meekly-hanging head it told me long and melancholy tales of times gone by, never to return ; not that old scenes may not be revisited, and the sunshine be bright as ever, and the flowers blossom as then ; but it is he who revisits them is past and gone — himself and not himself ; the heart that saw them is dead, or worse, is changed : for that change kills not the memory, the long lingering gaze after the fading past." What then is this change ? It is nothing less tlian the growth of individuality ; the full sense of the living free will ; the loneliness, the separation, the distinctness of each soul, as, " travelling daily farther from the east," it realises that, like a sphere upon a plane, a human soul can only touch other souls at one single point ; that each human soul is an island, and that it is surrounded by an unvoyageable sea. Now, the infinite importance of this growing indi- viduality is that it is ourselves, our inmost being; we carry it with us wherever we go, not as our shadow but as our substance. It is wholl}^ independent of our circumstances ; it is wholly independent of our locality. In a temple it may brand us with the guilt of felons ; in a dungeon it may ennoble us with the holiness of saints. Depraved and corrupted, it would make a hell of heaven ; cleansed and enlightened, it can make a heaven of heU. And if it be indeed an island, if it be indeed surrounded by an unvoyageable sea, must we not be necessarily miserable if, through our own fault, the soil of that island bring forth, not the rich whole- some grain whereby man can live, but only the poisonous flowers of evil passion, or only things rank and gross ir nature — weeds, and thistles, and nettles ; the miserable, starved, ignoble growth of vices with which we will not 108 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. struggle, and follies to which, without an effort, we succumb ? Is it not, then, the obvious conclusion of all that I have said that this formation of our character, this making of ourselves, is to us of importance simply infinite ; that it is, in fact, the very work of life ? Oh take that one thought with you. If you are conscious of a deteriorating life and a wavering allegiance to God, then do not throw the blame upon your circumstances ; plead no excuses before the Eternal bar ; suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to err, neither say thou before the angel, " It was an error." Think not to lay to your diseased conscience the flattering unction that your sin was the result of circumstance. The first excuse which will be crushed at the throne of judgment will be that which would lay on others the burden of your own blame. Eather recognise on your knees, and with the streaming tears of penitence, the many helps to holiness around you ; rather confess humbly that if, in spite of all His love and care for you, you wilfully choose the hard paths of sin, you do so against light and know- ledge, and the clear will and help of God. When the waves are calm, when the winds are still, when the charts are certain, when the moon is bright, when the silver mirrors of the lighthouse-beacon, shedding for miles their victorious radiance, warn you off the sunken reef, can it be aught on the pilot's part save wifful negligence or guilty purpose if the gallant ship be cast away ? So calm, so still, so certain, so bright, so full of noble and kindly circumstance is your life, whether at home or school. And if, in spite of this, it is an unholy and godless life, whence comes your danger ? Is it not from your own will ? Is it not from your own heart ? Is it not from your own selves ? XI.] SCHOOL AND HOME. 109 Let lis, then, all ask God our Fatlier to take our hearts and make them wholly His ; above all, may we pray that prayer who hope once more to kneel next Sunday, some of us it may be for the last time, at His holy table, in fresh communion with each other and fresh dedication of our hearts to God. Oh, you who were confirmed four weeks ago, have you indeed borne all this steadily in mind ? God grant that you have ; but if any impression for good has been growing faint, now and here and during the coming week you may revive it. God grant that you may. *' Lor<1, shall we come, come yet again ? Thy cliildren ask one blessing more : To come, not now alone, but then, When liie and death and time are o'er. Then, then to come, oh Lord ! and Le Confirmed in heaven, confirmed by Tlieo." Ju7ic 16, 1872. SEIIMON XII SELF-COKQUEST. Eph. v. 15. " See then that ye walk circumspectly." 1 DO not purpose to speak to you. to-day about those two least-known apostles to whom the day is conse- crated. The Saints' days of the Church are meant far less to glorify the saints by whose names they are called, than to teach us the whole principle of the saintly life — the motives which animated, the methods which trained — above all the example of their Master Christ which inspired those " humble and holy men of heart." Were I asked to give the briefest possible description of fhe saints I should say that they were " the heroes of unselfishness." Selfishness — the love of ourselves, the eager passion for our own interests, the grumbling assertion of our own rights, the sinful yielding to our own desires — is the source of nearly all the ruin and misery which devastate the world. Pride springs from it ; ambition lives for it ; anger leans on it ; lust serves it. It is the fruitful source of all disobedience, and of all disbelief; it is a sacrifice of eternal happiness for temporary gratification, — of the divinest interests of the SERM. XII.] SELF-COJSqUEST. Ill spirit to the basest instincts of the flesh. The law of God says, " Here we have no abiding city ; " selfishness says, " Make the world thy feeding-trough." The word of God says, " Be ye holy for I am holy ; " selfishness says that " Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret pleasant." The law of God says, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself;" selfishness says, "Forget God; please thyself ; despise others ; take thine ease ; eat, and drink, and be merry;" — aye! and even while the words are being uttered the unseen hand is writing its awful messages on the wall of life, and the awful voice pealing forth those dread tones which only the awakened conscience can interpret, " Thou fool, thy soul shall be required of thee." But the saints are the heroes of unselfishness ; let me on this Saints' day evening call your attention to one of that noble army ; I shall not have spoken in vain, if, by God's blessing, I teach but one soul here the lesson which his life mainly illustrates — that with- out distinct effort there can be no self-conquest. And the lesson is needed. In moral things, certainly, perhaps in all our life, perhaps most of all in boyhood, our great danger is to walk, not as wise but as fools ; to live in the most immediate present with no thought whatever of the future ; to live as if even manhood, much more as if death, judgment, or eternity w^ere an empty dream. St. Paul says, " See that ye walk circumspect!}^," or rather fiXeTrere aKpt/Soj^ ttw? TrepLiraTecre, look accurately how 5^e walk. There is corruption within us ; there is corruption without us. We are swayed by bad impulses; seduced by bad examples ; deceived by bad reasoning ; over our life hangs a thick veil of darkness which Christ only can 112 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. remove. The path of life is narrow and uphillward, and unless Heaven's light fall on it one false step may be ruin irretrievable. Wary walking therefore, — as wise, not as unwise, — is essential to our safety. Now if St. Paul's view of life be true, and it is alone true, then it must be hard to live,— I do not mean to live a living death, but to live a b'fe which is life indeed. Alas ! we do not find it so. We live care- lessly and at ease ; we live full-fed, and indolent, thougli we are called to the soldier's watchfulness and the pilgrim's toil ; we live at random, without plan, without discipline, though bidden to nothing less than the imitation of God. At the best — surrounded with danoers as we are — and often do I wish that I could really reveal, above all to you younger boys and you little boys, how beset with spiritual danger your days may be — we trust to an uncultivated notion of duty for a chance solution of difficulties. You train long for a five minutes' race ; you do not think it worth while ,to train for the race of life. You practise, and practise hard, and endure much to be successful in a game : many of you think it of no importance to practise, or to give up anything which shall enable you to play better the game even of earthly life — much less the awful game on success in which depends the future of your souls. You will be buffeted, and knocked down, and incur danger of heavy blows and broken limbs-^ (and quite right too in hardy and manly English boys), to win the praise of your house ; — why will you think all effort needless to win the praise of God — and to be profitable members of the Church and Commonwealth here, and partakers hereafter of the immortal glory of the resurrection? Do not think that I disparage the pliysical vigour at which I daily look with interest ; x!i.] SELF-CONQUEST. 113 "bat it is impossible to repress a sigh when one thinks that the same vicyour infused also into intellectual studies, which are far liigher and nobler, would carry all success and prosperity in life irresistibly before you, — and the same vigour applied also to spiritual things would make you immortal Heroes and Saints of God. I will tell you a few things about such a hero and saint to-night. You cannot imitate his external life, — any attempt to reproduce that is impossible, and would be ridiculous ; but the outward acts speak of an inward spirit, and every one of us may learn — if we care to learn — from the laws that regulated, from the discipline that ennobled, from the hopes that inspired that life. The third century after Christ was an epoch of intense misery and enormous crime. The Eoman Empire had, by its own vices, decayed into rottenness and weakness. The mass of society was degraded, and knew its degradation, and encouraged itself in its degradation ; it had reached that worst stage of depravity which willingly fosters depravity in others. Even the salt of religion had in many places lost its savour. We, after eighteen centuries of Christianity, we, for whom it is possible to live the saintly life in the commonest routine of society, can have no conception how enormous was the difficulty for any good man to live holily in that decaying and decadent society. Well, exceptional crises need an exceptional example ; and times utterly corrupt demand from the Christian soldier a vaster range of effort, an intenser heroism of endeavour. And God, when He needs such servants, sets them apart with the hands of invisible consecration for this high service of suffering. He called a young boy to the work which should awake a dead and greedy age. His name was Antony. He was born in Egypt, of M.S. I 114 IN THE DAr^ OF THY YOUTH. [serm. noble parentage. His boyhood was remarkable for its gentleness and simplicity. In early youth he was left an orphan in charge of an estate, and of a youthful sister. He did his duty faithfully to both, and one day, meditating on the simplicity of the early Christians, he entered a church, and heard in the Gospel the words, " If thou wilt be perfect, go, seU all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow me, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." Heroic souls take only heroical explanations ; and he had the courage to believe those words, and throw himself as it were on the faith of Him who uttered them. Without hesitation he sold his fair possessions; he entrusted his young sister to the care of some holy women ; he began to train him- self deliberately for a life, if possible, of sinless and devoted self-denial. What were his methods ? First he worked, for he knew the text, " If any man will not work, neither shall he eat ; " then he prayed, for he knew the command " Pray without ceasing ; " then he sought out good men, for he knew that " Evil communi- cations corrupt good manners." -And instead of going about, as we too often do, judging harshly and hardly and arrogantly of our neighbours, he tried to learn from all. He contemplated the courtesy of one, the prayerfulness of another ; another's freedom from anger ; another s ever ready sympathy. He saw how one watched, how another studied ; he admired one for his endurance ; another for his meekness ; all for their love to Christ and to each other. His fixed object in life was to pain no one needlessly ; to make all happy so far as in him lay ; above all, and more than all, to be a follower of God. This was his object, his purpose, the settled determination of his life, and, like all who make it their settled object, he succeeded. xu.] SELF-CONQUEST. 115 Don't think that the youthful Antony had no struggles, no difficulties : he had deadly struggles, super- human difficulties, long, bitter, terrible. He experienced in his own person that there are some evil spirits which go not out but by prayer and fasting. ' Now one of the conditions of Antony's mind was that the spiritual world was to him not only real, but the sole reality. What others suppose, he knew ; what others imagine, he saw ; what others saw, he felt. Whatever other men might think, he knew that he was face to face with the Eternal; words of Scripture were to him voices of God ; temptations to sin were to him assaults of devils ; and therefore never for one moment did he underrate, as we underrate, the grandeur of the conflict in which he was engaged. And so on one occasion it seemed to him that he was assaulted by every temptation at once, love of money, love of fame, love of ease, love of sensual indulgence. With every effort of his reason, with every power of his soul, with wa,tchings, with fastings, with prayers, with thoughts of Christ, he struggled and agonised, and prevailed as against an army of foul and terrible demons. And when he had prevailed, — yet not he, but the grace of God which he had sought, and which was given to him, — he seemed to see before him an Evil Being who said, " I have deceived many ; I have cast down many ; but now, as in the ease of many, so in thine I have been worsted in battle." "Who art thou ? " asked Antony. " I am," he answered in a voice of anguish, "I am the spirit of impurity." Then Antony gave thanks to God, and gaining courage said, " Thou art weak, and black of soul, and utterly despic- able; nor will I henceforth cast one thought, save a thought of loathing, upon thee." But Antony having won the victory, still found that I 2 116 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. it was only by continued effort that he could maintain it^ — and to maintain it — to teach men the awful, infinite value of the human soul — he retired wholly into the desert, there to be alone and face to face with himself and God. And there by twenty years of prayer, and tears, and abstinence, and humbleness, he learnt in his patience to subdue his body, and to possess — or rather, as it shoTild be rendered, to acquire his soul. His example was fruitful, as all sacrifice is always : and to all he taught the same lessons — " To trust in God, and to love Him ; to keep themselves wholly, sternly, determinedly, from foul thoughts and sensual pleasures ; to rule their tongues and their appetites ; not to be deceived by fulness of bread ; to watch, to pray ; rnever to let the sun go down upon their wrath." So, in the desert, he lived and died. His book was the nature of created things. He saw the great sun rise and set over the granite hills. He saw the great storm sweep the desert, and the great stars look down upon its sands. Working, praying, teaching, meditating, he lived holy and died happy ; and let the poor shallow criticism which would sneer at such as he, remember that Athanasius, the glory of the Eastern Church, counted it the highest blessing of his life to have seen him ; and that it was by hearing his story that Augustine, the glory of the Western Church, was first won to deliver himself from the trammels of a vulgar, dissolute, selfish life, to become himself a high servant and saint of God. i. Would to God that you from his life would learn two short but eternal lessons ! The one is this — that virtue is not above human nature. God has bidden us be humble, peaceful, charitable, pure ; God has not bidden us to do what we cannot do. Most of us seem to act as though the law of God could not be obeyed, or XII .] SELF- CONQ VEST. 1 1 7 not by us ; the soul not saved, or not by us. But we can obey God's holy law ; we can work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Whatever his cir- cumstances, whatever his temptations, whatever his character — aye, even whatever his habits — there is not one boy in this chapel who iniglit not be free, and noble, and calm, and pure. Antony was not older than the eldest of you when he obeyed the voice which bade him part with all for God. Benedict was j^ounger than nearly all of you when, in his mountain cave among the Sabine hills, he trained himself by stern self-denial to regenerate his age. Francis of Assisi was still a youth when the spectacle of the Passion burnt upon his soul the lesson, " If thou wilt come after Me, deny thyself, and take up thy cross, and follow Me." ii. That is one lesson, — that godliness is possible ; the other is that it is not possible without effort. Be sure of this — nothing worth anything can ever be gained without paying the price which nature, and man, and God have ordained. , If you want physical success, you must work for it. If you want intellectual success, you must work for it. ■ If you would conquer your bad habits, if you would resist your besetting sins, if you would save your souls from sin, and hell, and the death that cannot die, you must work for it. For not, as Dante says — " Not on flowery beds, or under shade Of canopy reposing, heaven is won. " iSTo man, says another poet — " No man e'er gained a happy life by chance, Or yawned it into being with a wish." It stands written in the Koran that, " Under the 118 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm. xii shadow of the crossing scimitars Paradise is pre- figured : " the prophet meant it of the sword by which he propagated his faith ; but we may understand it of the spiritual armour. Yes, under the shadow of the crossing scimitars — yes, in the battlefield against sin and death, — yes, where the fiery darts of the wicked one fly fast and thick — there, in the deadly struggle of internecine opposition against all that we know to be wicked and opposed to God, — there for us lies the only safety. " See, then, accurately how ye walk." If you would win the saint's glory, you must fight the saint's fidit : — o *'They climbed the steep ascent of heaven, 'Mid peril, toil, and pain : Oh God, to VIS may grace be given To follow in their train ! " ^ 1 For one or two thonghts in this Sermon I am indebted to an unpublished Sermon by Canon Westcott. St. Simon and St. Jude, Oct. 28, IS 72. SEEMON XIII. THE PERIL OF WASTE. John vi. 12. *' Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.' You have heard these words, my brethren, in the Gospel of to-day. Even in their most literal and obvious sense they are full of instruction. But as the miracles of Christ were more than mere acts of power, so the words of Christ reached farther than their direct sionificance. And I shall understand these words as warning us against other waste than the waste of food, — as bidding us to gather other fragments than the fragments of a feast. The half-year is nearly over. It has given us invaluable time — that time is drawing to a close ; it has been rich in priceless opportunities — those opportunities are being rapidly withdrawn. As regards that time, as regards those opportunities these words warn us against the sin of waste. To myself, and to all of you, I apply this morning the words of Christ, " Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." 1. Looking back on this half-year, may we not say that so far it has been by God's blessing a quiet and a happy one ? An ancient heathen v/onld never have ventured to speak thus. Before even hinting at any 120 IN THE DAYS OF TRY YOUTH. [serm. happiness of his own, he would have thought it neces- sary to do homage to Nemesis. He would have dreaded lest the mere mention of prosperity should provoke the anger and jealousy of Heaven. The feelings of a Christian are very different. When God has been very good to him, or to the body of which he is a*, jnember, — when God has shed the dew of His blessing either on the heart or life, — he looks up to that God, not as to an arbitrary or jealous despot, but as to a tender father, who is pleased with his happiness, who wills his salvation. And so, if, as he walks by the dusty wayside of life, he has drunk of the brook by the way, and plucked some of the sweet and simple flowers which broider it, — ^very humbly and very thankfully, desiring that God's gifts may make him neither presumptuous nor negligent, — he off'ers unto God thanksgiving, and pays his vows unto the Most Highest. Well then, thanking God, and taking courage, we may say, I trust, that God has not with- holden His blessing from us. No harm has happened to us, nor any plague come nigh our dwelling. We have not been troubled by sickness, nor had to mourn for the stroke of death ; nor have we suffered the anguish of worse sorrows than those, — worse, because they affect not the perishing body, but the immortal soul, — the bitter dread, I mean, lest there should be sin flourishing in the midst of us ; — lest boys coming among us should be subjected to ruinous perils and cruel temptations ; — lest there should be neglected roots of bitterness to spring up and trouble us ; — lest bad boys should have more influence here than good ; — lest to watch, and to pray, and to seek the love, and to obey the law of God, should be the exception here, and not the rule ; — we have had, I say, no cause to indulge such iears ; rather have we had everv reason to hope the XIII.] THE PERIL OF WASTE. 121 contrary, — to be persuaded better things of you, brethren, and things which accompany salvation. And for this cause we bow our heads, and offer up with thankful hearts our gratitude to God : — " Our vows, our prayers, we now present Be 4^r,e^,T}iy throne of grace ; God G our fathers, be the God Of their succeeding race ! " 2. But how is it when we turn from the school to ourselves, from the society to its separate members, — from the life of the body to the lives of each individual boy ? That must be answered by each for himself. But, though each heart knoweth its own bitterness, I hope — nay, more, I believe — that there are many and many of you who can look back on the past part of this half year without a blush and without a sigh ; boys who have been diligent ; who have been faithful ; who have kept a watch over the door of their lips ; who have resisted temptation in their own hearts ; who have, humbly yet zealously, done all they could for the good of others ; who, by faith, by prayer, by a sense of the eternal, by seeldng and gaining the grace of God, have had a right spirit within them ; who, being meek, have inherited the earth ; who, being pure in heart, have seen God. These need but a word of gentle and hearty encourage- ment not to be weary in well doing. Hitherto you have tried to use your time well and wisely : continue to do so, and may God bless you in it ! The closing weeks of a half year are often a time of temptation. There is a fear of relaxing vigilance ; there is a peril in natural excitement ; the moment of putting off the armour may be the moment of a wound. It is a time when all who love and fear God, and desire the welfare of their cwn souls, and the souls of others, should m-ore than 12-2 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. ever watch and pray against all temptation. It is a time to take Clirist's warning to onrselves, " Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." 3. But are there not some with whom it is far other wise? Have not the consciences of some, as they listened, burning with unrepented sins, told them that the picture which I have drawn is not for them ? Let me suppose such a one, and let each who is such take my words as addressed in all kindness and faithfulness to him and him alone. You began the term with high hopes and good resolves. You were conscious of serious failings, — but you would resist them. You were apt to yield to special temptations, but you would fight against them. You had one known besetting sin, but, God helping you, now — ere it was too late, ere that sin became inveterate — joii would conquer it. In general you had been doing badly at school, now you were determined to do better. Such were the promises you had made to those who loved you, and you meant, or half- meant, or thought that you half-meant, to fulfil them. And such were the promises which, when you came back here, you renewed to us, and at first, in spite of all past disappointments, we almost fancied you would redeem them. But, alas ! it is so easy to promise, so difficult, for the weak-hearted, to perform. Why dwell on the old sad failure ? — the resolves which proved to be but a house built on the sand, — the goodness that vanished like the early dew ? Any interruption, however trivial — any accident, however slight — any passing disappointment, however insignifi- cant — yes, any thistle-down of poor excuse was enough for natural indolence to catch at ; — and if there was not even one poor, mean, shuffling excuse to shelter you, then the miserable " I cannot help it " of a weak and enervated xiri.] TEE PERIL OF WASTE, 123 will was enough for you to drug the conscience with. You had learnt a wrong lesson, — you had been unlucky this week, — you had got interested in a novel, and it made you forget your work, — it was hardly worth trying till next week began, — and so on, and so on, — being virtuous only in the future, not in the present ; improving only in flaccid wishes, not in strong reality ; doing right only in maudlin dreams, not in manly effort ; meaning, in some dim, confused, drowsy way to be a good and noble boy, but being, indeed, a weak, feeble, unsatis- tory one, — imtil, in fact, you had ceased to care, and were content to be the poor slip-shod character which you knew you were, — always last, or nearly last in everything, never doing anything downright well, — discouraging the efforts made for you, disappointing the hopes formed of you, — even thus early in life preparing yourself to cumber the ground in God's fruitful vineyard — a barren and a blighted tree. And what is the deep moral lesson which this sad, ever-recurring history impKes ? It is one of the deepest, and one of the saddest of all lessons ; it is the moral law — aye, and the physical law too, — which is of all others, the most full of warning — viz., that our to-morrows are shaped with awful force by our yesterdays — that " our days are heritors of days gone by." N^or will it ever be known, I suppose, till the last great day how many men have spent the youth of life in making its manhood almost hopelessly miserable. You cannot learn then too early, by way of most solemn warning, — and I know not whether the lesson be most necessary for the youngest or for the eldest — that he who will but do his duty to-morrow does it too late, and is but too likely not to do it all. There is a fatal force of growth in every bad habit, — a fatal continuity in human character, — so that any sin 124 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. yielded to yesterday returns witli more virulent influence to-day, and any sin not resisted to the very uttermost to- day, will return inevitably to-morrow with added insolence to master a weakened slave ; until, if God's grace be still resisted — to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow have made up the tale of a sinful, futile, degraded life, and placed you, reprobate, before that silent, solemn bar, at which each man shall receive the things done in the body, whether they have been good, or whether they have been evil. If such be the state, — if such be even the commencing state of any one of you who hear me this day, — ^if neither physically, nor morally, nor intellectually, you have been doing your duty, — if, instead of growing better and better, you are steadily and consciously growing worse and worse, — if over your soul is beginning to creep the chill of a fatal apathy, and the past-feelingness of a miserable despair, — then must we not to you altei^ the words of the text, not saying as Christ said to His faithful ones, " Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost," — but rather alas ! with a more urgent insistency, " Gather up the fragments that remain, lest everything be lost " ? 4. For everything is not yet quite lost. If, for instance, every word of instruction which you have heard from this place has been to you but as the sound of the idle wind — if on each Sunday, or each other day, after you have heard truths which so nearly concern the welfare of your soul, — a light word, a profane sneer, a conceited criticism, a recurring temptation, a careless habit, have been to you like those birds of the air in the Saviour's parable which take away good seed of God's Word from the trodden wayside of the hard and callous heart, — if on each Sunday after hearing the truths of God, spoken by His ordinance and in His name, you have but gone to xiii.] TEE PERIL OF WASTE. 1S5 trifle, to jest, to please yourselves " without one sin brought to your remembrance, without one duty resolved upon, without one thought of your own weakness and Christ's strength," — only a little more impenetrable than before, only with the hard heart trodden a little harder — if so, then you have one more opportunity to-day. Oh, shall this fragment also be lost ? will all of you reject to-day one more appeal of God to the sinful and unrepentant soul ? will not one return to His Father ? will not one pour into His ear the confessions of a wasted boyhood ? will not one, not one, make to Him, in secrecy and in silence, the resolves of a future life ? 5. God grant His Holy Spirit to us, that it may be otherwise ! Thirteen weeks of this half-year are over ; but four still remain. Now I do not mean to conceal that the waste of past time makes all life a sad " might have been." None of you can in four remaining weeks regain the ground, whether moral and intellectual, which you may have lost in the thirteen past. There is no recalling those golden weeks that have gone neglected into the dark backward and abysm of time. The gleaning of the few ears which the hand of the reaper has dropped among the stubble cannot replace the harvest ; nor can we repair the lost vintage by gathering the scant grapes left here and there upon the topmost bough. It is the lesson that I have often taught which I must often teach again, that repentance is not inno- cence, though it is aU that stands between the guilty soul and death. And that repentance must be our w^ork, in the time that God yet gives. And when we remember what time is — how short, how uncertain, — then those words of St. Augustine acquire a deeper force, that Non progredi est regredi — that, in the spirit- ual life, non-progress is retrogression. For consider 126 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm that awful mystery of Time, — the Future not to be anticipated, the Past not to be recalled, only the Present ours ; and that Present, what is it ? An island ever encroached upon by the dark and swelling waves — a quicksand which ever swallows the place where last we trod — the flowing water of a river which is already far upon its way to the great sea. Even while we speak, it was and is not. For ever — never. It passes away with every ticking of the clock ; with every beating of the heart; with every breath of articulated air. Yet how priceless ! In it alone we live. With it alone can we purchase eternity. It perishes and is recorded. And though we waste, — nay, waste is a slight word — though we abuse, fling away, squander, kill it now, may not the hour come to us as to the great English Queen crying in her deathbed agony, " Oceans of money for one drop of time " ? Well, though we misuse, though we waste it,^- silently, and patiently, whether we will live or die, silently and patiently, to the last, — God gives it us, until (it may be) it shall be suddenly withdrawn. And then ? And then, for the sin of all waste, — wasted money, wasted hours, wasted affections, wasted health, wasted opportunities, for every wasted boyhood, for every wasted manhood, — we must give account. Then shall the Voice say, " Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward." I gave thee a body full of strength and health, — how is it enfeebled by folly and excess ? I gave thee a mind capable of making thee wise and noble, — why is it like the sluggard's garden, full of thorns? I gave thee a life which might have been a blessing to thy fellow men, — why have its powers been guiltily neglected or guiltily squandered ? Wliy is it like grass upon the housetops wherewith the mow^er tilleth not his hand, nor he that gathereth the sheaves xiii.] THJE PERIL OF WASTE. 127 liis bosom ? Oh when these questions are asked — when the books are opened — when the dead are judged — when thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting — when thou standest speechless before the All- seeing eye of God — when " Mercy has played her part, and Justice leaps upon the stage " — and many glittering faces of the holy and the pure look down upon thy degradation, — ? 6. But oh may that great and dreadful moment never be to any of us 1 In that day may we stand fearless before the adversary, penitent, redeemed, cleansed sanctified, in the white robe of Christ's righteousness. It may be so. In giving us time God gives us all. Still God makes the great sun shine upon us day by day, — still, morning, by morning, He causes another day, — a day unstained, — to dawn for us out of His eternity. Still morning by morning His hand holds forth to us a o-reen leaf from the tree of life. Such a day is this. Oh, waste it not ! Is there a good impression that you have suffered to grow faint ? Is there a holy practice which you have loDg neglected ? Have you an offended friend who is still unreconciled ? a temper still un- checked ? a besetting sin still unresisted ? oh here is work for you to-day. " Watch against that which, in your better heart, with your truer self you desire not to do ; watch for the thing which you feel you ought to do ;" go back to your life from this sermon, from this warning of God to your souls, a little thoughtfully; and if you find yourself failing in your weakest point, slipping insensibly, were it but in thought into your besetting temptation, kneel at once upon your knees, ask pardon for it, and help to shun it in the future. Make, by God's grace, now — even now and here — a higher purpose, and ask for grace to keep to that purpose ; 128 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [seem. xiii. humbly remembering that you must take the difficulty of the upward path as grave punishment to be patiently borne for going downwards. So gather up the fragments that remain, lest all be lost. Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. Who knows whether for you it may be true even to the very letter that " From this very moment hangs eternity ! " Nov. 17, 1872. SERMOX XIV. CALLING THINGS BY THEIR WRONG NAMES. Is. V. 20. ** Woe unto them tliatcall evil good, and good evil ; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness ; tliat put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter ! " I DID not seek for this text ; it comes naturally and prominently before iis in the first Lesson of the day. I did not seek it, because it is couched in the lan<>uage of denunciation and reproof, and 1 would far rather that you associated the teachings of this chapel with gentler, more soothing, more ennobling influences. It would be my wish that, in future years, Marlborough boys, if they ever recall what was said to them from this pulpit, should connect it with thoughts of peace, and joy, and hope, and the words of Him whose precepts were beatitudes, rather than with the terrors and thunderings of the liery law. When our first parents were inno- cent and happy the voice of God, in accents that made them yet happier, floated for them under the trees of Paradise upon the evening wind ; and even so would we wish God's messages to come to you. Eeproof and denunciation, distasteful as they ever must be, have indeed their office. The Word of God is something more than a very pleasant song ; it is sometimes a fire to scathe, a hammer to dash in pieces, a sword to divide M. s. K 130 IN THE DAYS OF TRY YOUTH. [serm. the soul and spirit, the joints and marrow; and we should be guilty if we were ever murmuring, Peace, Peace, were there no peace ; guilty if, when it were needed, we shrank from ever saying anything which might tend to pierce the slumbering conscience, or agitate the stagnant soul. But I believe — I say it in no conventional or flattering spirit — T feel confident that T am speaking to right-minded and Christian boys ; to those whose hearts — amid many sins doubtless, and many failings — are yet not hard, and who will accept the language of kindly warning, with no need for the stern anathema, or the prophetic woe. I would not, therefore, use this text as though I said, " Woe to some of you, for some of you call evil good, and good evil ; " but rather would I warn you to beware lest any of you should subtly and insensibly slide into the treason of those who do so, and against whom the prophet utters the dread judgment that "as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust." I. What then is this sin against which I would warn each and all of you to be, now and ever, on your guard ? It is the sin of disregarding — aye, and even of in the least degree underrating — the eternal distinctions of right and wrong; of putting darkness for light, and light for darkness, bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter ; it is, in one word, the sin of viewing things in their wrong aspects, of calling things by their wrong names. " He that saith unto the wicked ' Thou art righteous,' " says Solomon, " him shall the people curse." " He that justifieth the wicked," he says elsewhere, " and he that condemneth the just, even they both are an abomina- tion to the Lord." More even than this, there are XIV.] CALLING THINGS Bl tyuONG NAMES. 131 some things — as St. Paul tells us — which ought not so much as to be named among those who would live holy lires. To talk, otherwise than sadly and seriously of sin, is sin. " Oh, it was only a light word," you say. Yes, but there are times and states of the human soul on which even a light word may produce an effect which seems strangely and terribly disproportionate. The spark of fire which sets miles of rolling prairie in furious blaze, — the breath of wind stirring the few snow- flakes which before they reach the valley are a roaring avalanclie, — these too are light matters : even so the tongue is a little member, but, as St. James impetuously says, " it setteth on fire the whole course of nature, and is set on fire of hell." The evil word — and oh, remem- ber this — is a step, a long step beyond the evil thought; and it is a step toward the precipice's edge. It fixes, it defines, it acknowledges, it embodies, it consents to the inward wrong. The king, in the great tragedy of that our poet, who, of all men that ever lived, saw deepest into the heart of man, thinks of murder, wishes to commit murder, has his heart and conscience full of murder, yet dare not commit murder, solely because as yet he dare not utter the word. " I had a thing to say, But I will fit it with some better time. 1 had a thing to say, but let it pass." The sunlight prevents him from saying it. Evil deeds are secret, clandestine; they court concealment, they love darkness ; " Or," he continues to the man whom he is trying to corrupt, " Or, if that thou could'st see me without eyes, Hear me without thine ears, and make reply Without a tongue, using conceit alone, Without eyes, ears, or harmful sound of words ; Then would 1 in thy bosom pour my thoughts, But ah ! I will not.'" K 2 132 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. And when the deed is, as he thinks, done, and only its guilt, and hitterness, and ruin remain, — when he finds that, like all sinners, he has sold himself for no-jght, and the Furies hegin " to take their seats upon the mid- night pillow," then he complains of his accomplice, and, so far, complains of him justly, for having been weak, for having met him half-way, for having understood too easily — as weakness does — his guilty purpose. " Hadst thon hnt shook thy head omiade a jiause, Or bade me tell my tale in express words. Deep shame had struck me dumb. — But thou didst understand me by my signs, And didst in signs again parley with sin. Yea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent, And, consequently, thy rude hand to act The deed that both our tongues held vile to name." Here you see how well our great dramatist recognised the moral phenomenon that vice will always try either to get rid altogether of any verbal acknowledgment, or to hide itself in words which involve a plausible eu- phemism or a latent jest. The language of vice is twofold : — the one so cynically brutal, so irredeemably depraved, that the merest tincture of education makes it impossible, and its deformed words are heard only in "that common grey mist composed of crime, night, hunger, vice, and falsehood, which is the high noon of the wretched." But this is a kind of hideous shame- lessness, which is quenched not by religion, but by culture ; and it is perhaps even less dangerous than those viroKopio-fjiara — to use a word for which the truthful genius of the English language has no equi- valent — those false words, I mean, prankt in virtue's garb, to which sentimental corruption and cultivated vice resorts. Usually, when it has some wicked thing to utter, or some wicked action to excuse, language^ XIV.] CALLING THINGS BY WRONG NAMES. 133 lying in wait to murder truth and righteousness, " disguises itself in the vestibule." Speak of a sin in its true terms, and you strip it of its seductiveness. Call a vice by its real name, and you rob it of half its danger, by exposing all its grossness. The very guiltiest of sinners is he who paints the gates of heli with Paradise, he who supplies to wickedness the mask and the tinsel of such deceptive speech as hides its native and repulsive ugliness. It has always been the characteristic of the worst ages thus to gioze over wicked things by indifferent titles. The great Greek historian, as some of you know, points it out as the surest sign of utter degradation in his own troubled day, that men spoke of virtues as if they were vices, and of vices as if they were virtues. " They altered," he says, " at their will and pleasure the customary meaning of words in reference to actions." They branded prudent caution as mean procrastination ; they glorified reckless audacity as social courage ; if a man was calm he was taunted with cowardice, and if he were brutal he was be- lauded for manliness. Yes, strange to say, men are more ashamed of base names than they are of base deeds. And do boys at school know nothing like this ? Is there not, even here, something analogous to this ? Have you never, for instance, heard a very mild term, a term in- volving no reprobation, applied to certain forms of taking what is not our own, which a plain man would call " stealing " ? Have you never heard jesting names for forms of untruthfulness, which a plain njan would call " a lie " ? Have you never heard a base, soft, spurious, effeminate fancy arrogate to itself, and degrade by that giozing usurpation, the noble, holy name of friendship \ Have you never heard the conduct of a boy, who has acted dishonestly in an examination, described by a word 134 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. much less linpleasant, far more apologetic, than the true, sincere word, " that he has been cheating " ? — or again, in the opposite direction, have you never heard names of clear disparagement, names full of the dislike which vice feels to virtue, given to scrupulous honour, to steady diligence, to stainless purity ? Oh, beware, then, as the text bids you, beware of ever thus calling evil good, or good evil ! If you would be true to yourselves, true to your neighbour, true to God, never suffer yourselves to use one word which sneers at the dif&culty of a virtue, or slurs the odiousness of a vice. Even an honest, fear- less English boy will cease to see clearly the distinctions of right and wrong, if for the current coin of sincere and truthful language, there be palmed off upon him the false and adulterated counters of those words which come from the devil's mintage. Use true names. Let it be understood that here, and among you, — as pure- minded and honourable English boys — the liar, if such should ever obtrude among us — which God forfend — but if such should ever obtrude among us, the liar shall be the liar, and the cheat a cheat, and the thief a thief, and unclean unclean. And as a necessary part of this subject let me earnestly warn you against an error into which even good boys might fall — the error of supposing that ridicule is a proper engine wherewith to encounter sin. My brethren, you would shudder if you saw another doing what would maim his body ; will you laugh at what may be the headlong destruction of his soul ? lielieve me, it is wrong to jest at that which you should exterminate, and laugh at that which you should loathe. You who love the Lord, be sure that laughter may be the right cure for venial follies, but that it is a repro- bation not serious enough for so deadly a thing as sin. XIV.] GALLING THINGS BY WRONG NAMES. 135 If by a meaning smile, if by a passing allusion, if in mere inuendo, you betray to another your consciousness that he is doing wrong, and do not at the same time make him see your disapproval of the wrong — if need be, your hatred of the wrong, your horror of the wrong, your indignation at the wrong, — your determination, if need be, to expose and put down the wrong — then (be not deceived) you consent to the wrong. For this, if it be not treason, is the scarcely less heinous crime of misprison of treason, against God. You almost become a participator in his wrong doing. Eather abstain from every appearance of evil ; rather put away from among yourselves that wicked person : at least, let your language to all be unmistakable in its clearness ; at least remem- ber that " By thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." II. I have spoken of the sin, let me now say a few words about its cause. It is due, my brethren, to a fading appreciation of moral evil ; a tampering with it, a destruction of that healthy instinct which revolts at it. It is the very nature of sin, that the more we know of it, the less we know it ; the more we are familiar with it, the less do we understand its vileness. *' Oh ! he was innocent," says the poet, " And to be innocent is Nature's wisdom." With what marvellous power is this truth indicated in one of the oldest fragments of the world's history, the third chapter of the Book of Genesis. Our first parents are innocent, and therefore they are noble, they are happy, they hear the Call of God as they sit under the palms of Paradise. But, alas! Eve lingers near the 136 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [skiim. forbidden tree, and near the forbidden tree lurks ever the Serpent-tempter ; and then, step by step, little by little, not shocking the soul at once, but alluring it imperceptibly, comes first the subtle insinuation of the doubt, " Yea, hath God said ? " then the bold scepticism, " Thou shalt not surely die," and then the guilty ad- miration of " the fruit pleasant to the eyes," and then the guilty longing for it as " a fruit to be desired to make one wise," and then the guilt itself — the guilty stretching forth of the disobedient hand, the guilty plucking of the fruit ; and then very rapidly the worst, last, most odious, least pardonable consequence, the tempting of others to the same sin; and the^i the sin is over. Yes, the sin is over, but not the issues of it ; not the horrible glare of inward illumination ; the opening of the eyes; the agony of guilty siiame; the Awful Voice ; the vain hiding from detection ; the con- scious nakedness ; the feeble, lying excuses, and trying to throw the blame on others ; the lost Eden ; the pain, the toil, the sorrow ; the memory of life reduced to a bitter sigh ; the melancholy looking for of ashes to ashes, dust to dust. " 'Twas but a little drop of sin We saw this morning enter in, And lo ! at eventide the world is drowned ! " Oh, my brethren, now and always let it be your most earnest endeavour to keep your moral instincts rigkt and true. Never let them be disguised by sentiment ; never let them be obliterated by self-indulgence, never let them be sophisticated by lies. Do not think that liofht words and careless thoughts about them will be indifferent, and will leave you unaffected by them. " Character,'* as is said by our latest moralist, " is not X.V.] CALLING THINGS BY WRONG NAMES. 137 cat in marble — it is not something solid and unalterable, it is something living and changing, and may become diseased, as our bodies do." You learn here, in season and out of season, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, — that obedience, diligence, honesty, truth, kindness, purity, are your duties to God and man. You know that this teaching is right and true, and that, in time and in eternity, your happiness depends thereon. Oh never lose sight of it ! Say to yourselves, constantly, that this is good, and that is evil; this the noble course, that the base; this right, that wrong ; this your duty and happiness, that your ruin and curse. Oh choose your side in the battle of life, and be not found on the wrong side. Abhor that which is evil, cleave to that which is good. III. — For, lastly, as you have heard the sin, and its cause, so in very few words hear its punishment. That punishment is nothing less than the failure of all life ; — the waste, the loss, the shipwreck of the human soul; — the sapping of every moral force and every vital instinct ; — for " as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rotten- ness, and their blossom shall go up as dust : because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel." How powerful is the metaphor ! The rose is a glorious flower, yet how often have you seen a rose-tree shrivelled^ withered, blasted, producing nothing but mouldering and loathly buds ; — why ? Because there is some poison in the sap, or some canker at the root. Have you never seen it so ? Have you never seen careers that might have been very happy, very innocent, very prosperous-^cut short, blighted, in disgrace ? And that is sad enough ; but alas ! there is somethiufr much sadder: there is tlie 138 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm. xiv. paralysis of the conscience, tlie searing as with a hot iron of the very faculty whereby we discriminate between right and wrong. As the Israelites preferred the wretched slavery and reeking fleshpots of Egypt to the manna, which was angels' food ; as the pure, delicious water is loathsome to the scorched palate of the drunkard : so do these in their depraved souls learn at last, not merely to call evil good and good evil, but also to put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. " Like natural brute beasts," they have lost the distinctions between right and wrong. That is a powerful and tragic line of the Eoman satirist : — *' Virtutem videant, intabescautqiie relicta." Let them see virtue, and pine for it, now that it is beyond their reach. But it is a worse stage still not even to see, not even to pine for it ; as there is hope for the wound that throbs with agony, but none for that which has mortified to painlessness. And this is death. This is the worst woe that can befall finally those who have learnt to call things by their wrong names — to call evil good, and good evil. " How easy," says a Christian poet, and it may well sum up some of the lessons of to-day : r *' How easy to keep free from sin ; How hard that freedom to recall ! For dreadful truth it is, that men Forget the heavens from which they fall."! Dec. 8, 1872. ^ Coyentry Patmore, SEEMON XV. COUNT EBB AL AN CE EVIL WITH GOOD. Rom. xii. 21. " Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." You have heard these words in the Epistle of to-day, and you will remember that their first application is to that spirit of gentleness and brotherly kindness, that noble willingness to forget ourselves and to live for the good of others, which, in the long run, triumphs over malignity itself. Take less than your due, St. Paul says ; think lowly of yourselves ; be not resentful of injuries ; if others act wrongly or unkindly, revenge yourselves by a generosity which will win over all but the basest natures, and which, even if it does not win them, will ennoble you. But the words of my text have a wider and richer bearing, and believing that St. Paul would be the first to rejoice that they should be accepted in their very fullest significance, I urge you to-day, on this first Sunday of a new term, to take as your wise and constant motto this exhortation : " Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." 1. " Be not overcome of evil : " those words, you see, contain at once a warning of danger and an encourage- ment to resistance. They assume, as all Scripture does 140 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOtfTH. [serm. — and it is an assumption well worthy of our deepest and most serious attention — that there is such a thing as evil, that it is around us, that contact with it is inevitable, that defeat and ruin by it are not impossible. It would be a shallow and a false philosophy, it would be a treacherous and apostate religion, which should attempt to conceal this from you, or to tell you that the hard, narrow, up-hillward path to heaven is smooth, and easy, and strewn with roses. I know that this is what the worldly wisdom of this age is doing more and more. Men more and more shut their eyes against all that is danojerous and disa2;reeable, in the thouoht of riojhteous- ness, temperance, and the j udgment to come. " Speak to us smooth things," they say, " prophesy deceits." Let your teaching be as a pleasant song which shall not wake the slumber of the soul, or dispel the enchantments of the sense. Boldly bid us trust in the lying words that God will not punish, that redemption is a " boundless infinitude of mercy and reckless obliteration of the work of sin ; " or speak to us rather as if there were no sin ; as if earth were our only heaven ; as if time were the only eternity ; as if death meant annihilation ; as if pleasure were godliness ; as if the body were the soul ; as if to think our own thoughts, and speak our own words, and walk in our own ways, were lawfid and right, and to eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. And this is especially the fatal sophistry of those who have been overcome of evil. It only vexes them to be told that life, if it be true life, must be a fight, a strife, an agony, a service under a captain's banner in time of war, where carelessness is danger, and sleep is death. More gladly would they drug their consciences into stupefaction by believing that there is nothing irreconcil- able between the world and Christ, as if the promptings XV.] COUNTERBALANCE EVIL WITH GOOD. 141 of the flesh and the devil were but in reality the voice of nature and of God. But even the heathen had got beyond this ; they knew the eternal distinctions of right and wrong ; they knew that there were good and noble things for which men must struggle, and base, seductive things to which they must not yield. They knew that if man could not perish, he must by every effort, and at every hazard, refuse the evil and choose the good. Oh, learn, every one of you, even the youngest, that life is no long holiday, no sanny piaying-held. He who has learnt to look without at the fearful phenomena of nature, he who has learnt to realise what agonies of mental and physical torture he himself — aye, every one liere present — may in God's Providence be called upon to undergo before death comes ; he who from Scripture, or from conscience, or from history, or from experience, has seen what possibilities of infamy, what capacities for crime, lurk, like glaring monsters in the sunless caverns of the human heart — he knows that one of those lessons which God repeats to him with daily warning is, that, to the best and noblest, life is a serious and a difiicult thiDg; but that to the careless, the idle, the sensual, the disobedient, life is a scene of danger in which the soul may sink into present misery and everlasting death. 2. So much, my brethren, as a warning of peril which God would not have us neglect ; but now we have the command, which command is itself the most power- ful encouragement to resistance. Though physical and moral evil are closely and most mysteriously united, though sin and sorrow walk this world hand in hand, yet in one respect they are wholly separate. Physical evil may crush, but moral evil can alone contaminate. From physical evil we wicst, from moral we need not, suffer. Pain, sickness, bereavement, disappointment. 142 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm malice — tliese we must experience, but not necessarily vice, or guilt, or shame. Tliese if admitted into our nature must be admitted by our own act. The City of Mansoul, if taken, can only be taken by treachery from within. We must meet with evil, but we need not touch it — we must experience temptation, but we need not yield to it — we must be assaulted by wrong, but we need never be defeated by it. We, like our Blessed Lord before us,' must be driven into the wilderness of life to be tempted of the devil ; but, though he may alter our circumstances, he can never control our will. He can place us on the topmost pinnacle of the Temple, but there he can only say to us, " Cast thyself down." He cannot cast us down. If we fall, we fall by our own apostasy ; and if we stand, as stand we may by faith and prayer, then shall thousands of volant angels bear us down upon their wings, and sing heavenly anthems of our vietory. " Also it is written, Tempt not the Lord thy God : He said, and stood ; But Satan, smitten hy amazement, fell." 3. My brethren, this warning of danger, this encourage- ment to resistance, concerns us all very nearly this day. In coming back to school, or in coming, as many of you do, for the first time to school, you are coming to a new scene, and to one which necessarily, and inevitably, and under the very best and most favourable of circumstances, is a scene of greater and more serious temptation than that which you have left. How nearly then it concerns you to know and feel that you will meet with no danger which will really compromise your moral safety, that God will send you no temptation without sending you also the way to escape. Eemember, then, that if you fall or go astray, tlie guilt will be not in your circumstances, XV.] COUNTERBALANCE EVIL WITH GOOD. 143 but in yourselves. Never say, " If I had not left home, I should never have forgotten God," or " If I had been somewhere else, I should not have fallen into this or that sin." Perhaps not; but you would assuredly have fallen into others. This is an excuse which is never listened to even before the bar of earthly justice; think you that it will be before His bar who can read the inmost secrets of the heart? God, we may be sure, hates feeble excuses as much as the best men do. Oh, all of you, depend on this, and learn this lesson this morning, for it is as stead- fast as the throne of God, that if you, — any single boy among you, — will, in beginning the career of life. Listen to the Voice of God, if he v/ill keep himself aloof from the enticement of bad companions, if he will never suffer the inmost shrine of his heart to be darkened by removing from it that holy lamp of conscience which God has placed upon the altar there, if he will steadily, and by honest self-examination, set before him his duties and his dangers, if he wiU pray to God out of a pure heart fervently, and not walk after his own under- standing, then, amid the treacherous assaults of evil, and the fiery darts of opposition, yea, in the very midst of the burning fiery furnace of his enemies, he shall be as safe as though the Wing of God were over him. Such a boy shall not greatly faU, or if, through the weakness of his mortal nature, for a moment he ever fall, he shall say at once, " Eejoice not over me, Satan, mine enemy, for if I fall I shall rise again." Innocence is one thing, virtue is another. That innocence which is but the child's pweet ignorance of evil cannot last; but vvhen the limpid transparence of that fair and fragile crystal is sullied it may be more firmly replaced by the no less clear, but more solid adamant of virtue. Yes, on the one hand, 1 44 IN THE DA YS OF THY YO UTH. [serk. be sure of this, — that were the temptations of any school ten thousand times worse than they are, a good and God-fearing boy may stand unscathed and happy in the midst of them ; and that, on the other hand, a soul that is weak, a soul that is bad, a soul that is not sincere may be sheltered all its life long in the sweetest and purest of Christian schools, or even of Christian homes, — may be girt round with an infinitude of care and ten- derness, may be placed where the temptations to evil are few, and the incentives to good are manifold, — yet that soul will perish and be ruined, because, anywhere and everywhere, the powers of evil will find their affinities with the weakness and treachery within. To our first parents the school of evil w^as Paradise itself. Esau was bred in the noble simplicity of the Patriarch's tent ; the sons of Eli within the curtains of God's bright sanctuary ; Manasses in the pure palace of a royal saint ; Judas among the chosen ones of the heavenly kingdom, and in daily intercourse with the Son of God Himself. Yet what became of them ? Esau grew into a coarse, sensual hunter ; the sons of Eli were sons of Belial ; Manasses was a foul apostate ; and for Judas, the thief, the traitor, the son of perdition, it were better that he had not been born. So you see, it is God's will that man should be liable everywhere to the possibilities of evil ; — but " resist the devil, and he will flee from you." 4. The rest of the verse tells you how you may best do this ; it gives you the method of victory — " Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." Aim at that which is good, — cleave to that which is good, — occupy your time with that which is good, — fill your thoughts with that which is good, — and the assaults of evil will have lost half their power. An earnest em- ployment — a steady purpose in life — a diligent use of XV.] COUNTERBALANCE EVIL WITH GOOD. 145 time — tliese are an irresistible panoply against wicked- ness, these strike out of the devil's hands his worst implements of temptation. You will remember that terrible touch in one of the Lord's sternest parables, about the evil spirit returning to the house whence he came out, and finding it " empty, swept, and garnished," — then goeth he and taketh to himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Wliat does that " empty, swept, and gar- nished " mean ? It means that if your heart is not pre-occupied with good, it will be invaded by evil. Oh, beware of idleness in its every form, idle procrastina- tions, idle talk, idle habits, idle thoughts, these are the certain ruin of the soul. The labourer who stands idle in the marketplace is ever ready to be hired in the devil's service. The worm of sin gnaws deepest into the idle heart. Never will it be known, till the last great day, how many souls have been shipwrecked on the rock of an idle hour. But pre-occupy your heart with good ; pre-occupy your time with honest industry, and you are safe. Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things. Evil can as little encroach on the domain of good as darkness can force its way into the circle of radiance which a lamp flings into the night. Eemember that since all sin begins in thought, if your thoughts are safe then you are safe. " When our chalice is filled with holy oil, it will entertain none of the waters of bitterness." When the air is filled with sunlight there is no opportunity for the deeds of darkness. Where the soul has tasted of the bread of life, it cannot hunger for the stones of the wilderness. Where God is all to us, the world is nothing. If any M. s. L 116 TN THE DA^S OF THY YOUTH. [serm. of you have honestly tried, as you think, to encounter evil hand to hand, and have failed, because it has seemed to have you at a disadvantage, now try another and a better way, try now to draw into some innocent and useful channel that life which gives to evil all its strength. The sure way to overcome the evil is to develop, and f(^ed, and fortify the good. In the case of the worst boy or the worst man, there lingers, unextinguished, a spark of heavenly fire. Every one of you has a good, a God-like, an eternal element within you — oh cherish these. The freer life of but one good impulse is the death-warrant to many guilty ones. Counterbalance that which is base, and disobe- dient, and degraded within you by the opposing weight of that which is holy and divine. Israel overcame the fiery serpents, not by gazing at and struggling with them, but by averting their gaze, and fixing their eyes on the brazen serpent ; this was their true deliverance, and our true deliverance will be to consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, the life and example of our Saviour Christ. To His service you are dedi- cated ; into His name you were baptized ; to Him many of you have renewed, many will this term renew, the vow of their allegiance. Oh, all will be easy to you if you will follow in His steps. In every sense and by every influence — by creation, by preservation, by redemption, by adoption — you are the children of God. God loves you, Christ died for you, the Spirit strengthens you. It is true that without, and still more dangerously within, you, a great battle is going on; Gerizim and Ebal, blessing and cursing, good and evil, light and darkness, life and death are struggling for the possession of your souls. Oh, which shall gain them? If your heart be right wilh God, if you are humble and faithful, XV.] COUNTERBALANCE EVIL WITH GOOD. 147 if you watch and pray, you are as safe now, as safe for ever, as safe here, as safe anywhere, as though the whole blue heaven were one great shield held on the Arm of God above your heads. As we kneel down now, at the end of this sermon, let us all pray that so we may live, so die ; pray that each and all of us may be not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord, — pray that this place may grow dearer and dearer to everyone of us, because we may feel more and more that God is here, — pray that honest, simple, faithful duty may be the guiding star of all our lives, — pray that we may all be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven us. Yes, pray each for himself, and each for all — you for us, and we for you — that God may be with us ; that His love may ever glide like a fiery pillar before us through the wilderness of life ; that whether we have yielded before, or whether we have resisted, henceforth at any rate by His blessing we may not be overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. January^ 1873. L 2 SEEMON XVI. THINKING OF GOD. 1 Tim. iv. 15. *' Meditate upon these things ; give thyself wholly to them ; that thy profiting may appear to all." Although not taken from the Epistle of the day, this text sums np one of its numerous lessons. The Epistle of St. James is intensely practical. It has offended those who confine the Christian religion to a series of beliefs. Even Luther, carried away by passion and prejudice, spoke of it as "a mere epistle of straw." ^ But he who begins with contempt will never end with insight. No Scripture is of private interpretation. It needs for its study at once a large and a humble heart, a heart too large to be taken in by the empty sciolism of much that calls itself criticism ; too humble to mistake for the light of heaven the vaporous gleam of those rash and delusive judgments which rise too often from the marshes of an undisciplined intellect and an unspiritual life. No doubt St. James dwells on the value and necessity of holy works, but such works are alike the fruit and the test of faith, and St. Paul, whom St. James is supposed to controvert, would have been as glad to have subscribed to the emphatic utterance of his brother apostle, that '* faith without works is dead, being alone," as St. James would have been to adopt * '* Ein recht strohern Epistel." SERM. XVI.] THINKING OF GOD. 149 the watchword of the Epistle to the Eomans — " We are justified by faith." The Epistle of St. James is then "a noble protest against laxity of morals," a protest against imagining ourselves to hold the truths of the Gospel while we neglect its principles and violate its laws. He speaks with all the uncompromising plainness of an honest nature, and all the passionate force of a kindling indig- nation against the sins which were in his days a blot on the character of those who professed the faith. Then, as now, there was a greed of gain, a yielding to the narrow fascinations of avarice, which made men forget that the life was more than meat, and which, by robbing their characters of all ardour, of all generosity, of all nobleness, tended to give all their labours to the cater- pillar. Then, as now, was prevalent the sin and folly of the unbridled tongue, and so far from " speaking with an accent of heroic verity," men fawned, and flattered, and bit, and devoured, and wished other people dead. Then, as now, men deceived themselves into the fancy that a state of sin was a state of grace, that they could do without God, that formalism would be accepted in lieu of fruit ; or, if not, that God was a Being of such boundless facility that though He had written alike in nature, and in conscience, and in Scripture, wrath against unrepentant sin. He meant not wrath, but mercy. But all such beliefs St. James denounces as foolish alike and false, and therefore his Epistle, so far from being, as Luther said, " pland straminea," is " verd aurea." So far from finding it valueless, it seems to me so pregnant in rich truths that even in the few verses of it read to-daj^ there is far more than could be treated of in a single sermon; nor, with all its apparent simplicity, does it offer any exception to the saying of St. Augustine, 150 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. " Marvellous, God, is the depth of Thy utterances ; like a great sea their smiling surface breaks into refreshing ripples at the feet of our little ones, but into its un- fathomable depth the wisest may gaze with the shudder of amazement and the thrill of love." This much, however, we may easily see in the Epistle, viz., that every error it denounces has its immediate root in selfishness, that every good work to which it exhorts demands some form or other of self-denial. And herein it will furnish us all with an easy text for answering the infinitely important question, — Am I, or am I not, doing the will of God ? Am I, or am I not, fulfilling the purpose of my life ? Is there, or is there not, any real connection between the name I bear and the life I lead ? Much, for instance, of our life is spent in speech, so that by our words we shall be justified, and by our words condemned. Now no boy can be unaware of the general character of his speech. Is he a profane and habitual swearer ? Does he talk of sacred things lightly ? Does he love to speak of things whereof it is a shame to speak ? Is he for ever complaining, mur- muring, defacing, defaming, sneering, backbiting, wound- ing with his tongue ? If so, he is deceiving himself, his religion is vain. Is he, on the other hand, kind and gentle ? does he, as the dearest law of his life, desire innocently, wisely, humbly to make others happy ^ Has he " The love By constant watching \\dse To meet the glad with joyful smile. And to wipe the weeping eyes, • ■ And a heart, at leisure from itself To soothe and sympathise ? " If not, he is yet a forgetful hearer, not a doer of the \Vord. Or, once more, what is his aim and object in XVI.] THINKING OF GOD. 151 life ? Is it noble or ignoble ? Is it selfish or generous ? Is it to serve God, or to please himself? If it is all selfish and disobedient, then he is deceiving himself, his religion is vain. And how is it that men holding the faith can thus deceive themselves ? The apostle gives us the profound reason, on which for the remainder of our time I wish to dwell. It is because his recog- nition of God's truth is but like the careless glance which a man might give at the dim metal mirrors of those days, going away to forget immediately what manner of man he was, " But," he adds, " whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed." Now what the apostle means is clear, and what he here urges upon us is that very duty, to the neglect of which more than anything else is due the shallowness and imperfection of our lives. He means that a man's nature is insensibly but inevitably moulded by that which is in his thoughts, and that the lives, even of Christians, are often earthly and sensual because their thoughts are not with things above. Tell me about what you think most frequently and most earnestly, and I will tell you what you are. For your thoughts are the invisible influences which give its complexion to your life, even as the insect is coloured by the leaf on which it feeds. " Abeunt studia in mores'' What a man desires to be, that he will be. If his thoughts are ever of sin he wiU be possessed of sin, he wiU be the slave of sin; but if his thoughts are ever of God and the things of God, then " with open face, beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, he will be changed into the same image from glory to glory." If, then, you would live good or worthy lives, you 152 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. must not only not suffer your thoughts to become guilty thoughts, but you must not even allow them to be vacant thoughts. You must fill them with all things true, pure, honourable, lovely, of good report. How can we best do this ? ' Best by forgetting ourselves, best oy obliterating our own selfish will and pleasure, best by thinking wholly of others and of God ; for in the true life there are three factors — God, the soul, and our fellow men ; and our duty to ourselves, our duty to our own souls is best summed up in our duty to God and our duty to our fellow men. This is the lesson wliich I would desire to impress to-day, and it is a lesson for us all, from the youngest boy to the oldest man. I. Very few of us, I fear — very few even of the best of us — think enough of God. That He is our Creator, Preserver, Eedeemer, that He has the sole and absolute claim upon our love and obedience we all know ; but oh ! if we all knew this in a true and living sense, how different our lives might be ! By not thinking of it often enough, or deeply enough, how mighty a safeguard do we lose ! " Hear these three things," said a Jewish rabbi, " and thou shalt eschew transgression :— the All- seeing eye, and the All-hearing ear, and that all thy actions are written in a book.'' How many a life has been kept humble, and happy, and pure, and sweet, by the living realisation of that one truth, "Thou, God, seest me." You know how you are affected, and made better in all your hearts, by the mere presence of some one to whom you can look up as good and true. You know that there are some even among your school- fellows so upright, so innocent, so single-hearted, that to be with them is to breathe a holier and more wholesome atmosphere, fheir influence, something which seems to emanate from them and flow in upon your hearts, xvr.] THINKING OF GOD. 153 surrounds you with the air of heaven as with the perfume from the waving of angels' wings. Their divine superiority to all that is impure or sordid seems to run liquid through your soul, so that you feel that could you always be with them, you, too, would grow like them. But these, alas ! are rare in this world, nor can you often be with them; nor even, were this possible, could they save your souls, or pay your debt to God. No ; but there is a Presence which not only may be always near you, but which you cannot escape ; there is a Love always over you, which you may reject, but cannot alienate ; there is a Friend always with you, who, even in your loneliest moments, leaves you not alone. He is a Friend living and true ; nor is He weak as we are, nor is He, as we are, ignorant of all the secrets of your hearts. That Presence, that Love, that Friend is God in Christ. Oh that you would all cling to His hand ! oh that now and ever you would listen to His voice ! What would I not give to impress upon you, as I feel it, that life without God is not life, but death ; so impress it upon you, by the aid of God's Holy Spirit, that every Marlborough boy who hears me might feel, for all his after days, " Much that I learnt at Marlborough I have forgotten : by much that I might have learnt I never profited ; but this, at least, I did learn, and this lesson, I trust, has so permeated my soul, so interpenetrated my whole beings that I cannot forget it if I would, that life without God is life without joy, without peace, without happiness, without hope; and that if I would live a life which shall come to anything — a life which shall not ' be cast as rubbish in the void, when God has made the pile complete ' — then I ought daily to offer unto God myself, my soul and body, a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice. I ought daily to pray to God with all my heart that 154 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. prayer of St. Augustine, * Serva me ah homine malo, i. e. a me ijyso.' " You will go forth into the world ; your lives will be in outward circumstances very various ; some of you will be rich, some very poor; some will be eminently prosperous, some very sorrowful ; and all these things are of no real consequence or importance, because all these things are but for a moment : but the difference between the holy and the unholy life, the difference between the life with God and the life without God — that is the difference between the noon of a burning summer and a midnight without stars. II. But we can only think of God in relation to our own souls. The soul is no measure of God, and yet to us God can be reflected by the soul alone. Now we see through a glass darkly — it is only then that we shall see face to face. " Through the glass darkly," it has been beautifully said ; " but except through the glass in no wise. A tremulous crystal, waved as water, poured out on the ground ; you may defile it, despise it, pollute it, at your pleasure and at your peril ; for on the peace of these weak waves must all the heaven you shall ever gain be first seen ; and through such purity as you can win for those dark waves must all the light of the risen Sun of righteousness be bent down by faint refraction. Cleanse them and calm them as you love your life." But how shall the soul be conscious of that Sun if its own mists blot out its brightness ? A man may say, with Diagoras of old, that there is no God, or with Protagoras, that he cannot tell whether there is or not ; and for him there is no God : and he cannot tell whether there is or not. For the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will show them His covenant ; but for those who fear Him not there is no secret ; and for them whose foolish hearts are darkened XVI.] THINKING OF GOD. ise no vision ; and for those who listen not, no voice. Do you ask how you shall hear His voice ? My brethren, you have heard it often, you do hear it daily, you have heard it from your earliest years. " When I was a little boy of four years old," says one who afterwards grew up to be a good and eminent and courageous man,^ " one fine day in spring my father led me by the hand to a distant part of the farm, but soon sent me home alone, On the way I had to pass a little pond, then spreading its waters wide ; a rhodora in full bloom, a rare flower, which grew only in that locality, attracted my attention and drew me to the spot. I saw a little tortoise sunning himself in the shallow water at the root of the flaming shrub ; I lifted the stick I had in my hand to strike the harmless reptile, for though I had never killed any creature yet, I had seen other boys out of sport destroy birds and squirrels and the like, and I felt a desire to follow their wicked example. But all at once something checked my little arm, and a voice within me said loud and clear, * It is wrong !' I held my uplifted stick in wonder at the new emotion, the con- sciousness of an involuntary but inward check upon my actions, till the tortoise and the rhodora both vanished from my sight. I hastened home and told the tale to my mother, and asked what it was that told me ' It was wrong.' She wiped a tear from her eye, and taking me in her arms said, ' Some men call it conscience, but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul of nian. If you listen and obey it, then it will speak clearer and clearer, and always guide you right ; but if you turn a deaf ear, or disobey, then it wiU fade out little by little, and leave you in the dark without a friend. Your life depends on heeding that little voice.' She went her ^ Theodore Parker. 156 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. way," he adds, " careful and troubled about many things, and doubtless pondered them in her motherly heart, while I went off to ponder and think of it in my poor childish way. But I am sure no event in my life has made so deep and lasting an impresion on me." Wise mother ! happy son ! Your life, too, depends on heeding that little voice, for that little voice is the still, small voice of God. If you will heed, if you will obey it, you may never hear it but in whispers of tenderness and warning love ; but if you disobey it, oh, with what tones of scorn and menace can it speak, what thunder-crashes of wrath and fear can it roll over the troubled sea of the evil soul. Have none of you ever been guilty of mean actions, which you knew to be mean, spoken wicked words knowing them to be wicked, done that which you would fain hide from every eye ? Ah ! have you never heard it then ? Yes, tliat voice is the voice of God. You may hush it, stifle it, defy it, drown it deep under rivers of iniquity, but all that is good and dear, all that is true and holy, all in your life which can raise man above beasts that perish, depends upon heeding that little voice. III. But thirdly, and lastly, in very few words, what will it bid you do ? Think of yourself ? care only for your own soul ? No ; but think of God, think how you may make your little life a help and blessing to your fellow men. There has been but one perfect life that has ever been lived on earth, and that was the life of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And what is the briefest epitome of the working of that Life ? Is it not that " He went about doing good " ? And what was the prevailing principle of that life ? Was it not '' I must be about my Father's business" ? Was it not " My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish xvr.] THINKING OF GOD. 157 His work"? Yes ; depend upon it that the path to a righteous and eternal life lies far more in thinking of God as the living source of all our duties, and of the world as the sphere in which those duties are to be performed, than in thinking only, or even mainly, of our own souls. But observe that we cannot serve man without loving God; our duty to the one must flow from, must be aided by, must be mingled with our duty to the other. When a good and wise modern philosopher summed up the law and duty of life in Altruism — Vive pour autrui — " Live for others" — he was guided by the same conception as that of the sweet and noble Hillel, the great president of the Jewish sanhedrin. Hillel and Shammai were the two most eminent of the Jewish rabbis in the days immediately preceding the days of Christ, and there is a celebrated story that a Pagan went to Shammai and asked him to tell him the whole law in one sentence and in one minute. Shammai angrily drove the man from his presence, and he then went to Hillel with the same demand. Hillel, with calm and unruffled temper, replied: "What thou wouldest that another should do to thee, that do thou to him ; this is the whole law : the rest is but commentary." Yet both these great teachers — the ancient and the modern — said but half the truth. It is quite true that *' The high desire that others may be blest Savours of heaveu ; " but I do not believe that that high desire can either be originated, or purified, or wisely acted on, apart from God and without the aid of God's Holy Spirit, freely given to them who seek Him. To know the whole truth we must go back to the immortal wisdom of the Decalogue, of which the first table comprises the duty to God, as well as the second the duty to man, and we must go to 158 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm.xvi. ait at the feet of our Saviour and hear Him explain it, when He says, " Thou shalt love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself; on these two command- ments hang yll the law and the prophets." In that rule all is included. God is there, humanity is there ; and to love God and to love man is the completeness of life and the salvation of the soul. He to whom God is the living law, he who has no dearer hope than to suffer all and sacrifice all, if thereby he may benefit others, he to whom life is communion, he to whom heaven means principle, oh ! there is no fear but his soul will be bound up in the bundle of life, no fear that God will not cherish it in that day when He maketh up His jewels. Go from this chapel with the humble, hearty prayer to God that you may love Him more, and keep Him more in all your thoughts, and that by doing this your lives, more than ever hitherto, may be unselfish lives, and lives devoted to making all about you better and happier; and by doing this you will be looking into the perfect law of liberty, and, not being a forget- ful hearer but a doer of the word, shall be bleissed in your deed. May 18, 1873. SERMON XVII. THE OMNIPOTENCE OF PRAYER. 1 Kings iii. 5. " Ask what I shall give thee." Some of you will recognise that these words belong to the story of King Solomon. He had recently succeeded to his father's kingdom, and with royal swiftness and dauntless promptitude had crushed and swept away the guilt and opposition of dangerous schemers. Then, thp moment that his throne was established, he went with Oriental pomp to the high palace of Gibeon, and after many a prayer and many a hecatomb for the future of that realm, whose fairest fields and cities he saw from that sacred hill, he retired to rest. And in the night he dreamed a dream, and knew that this dream was a reality. The God whom he had been worshipping came before him and said, "Ask what I shall give thee ; " and Solomon, reflecting the yearnings of the day in the visions of the night, asked God to give him a wise and understanding heart. He was but a boy — according to the Jewish historian he was but fifteen years old — and yet he was king over a great nation. He prayed for God's grace that he might govern them aright. And God, approving the petition, gave more besides. Solomon had asked for wisdom, and God gave 160 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. serm. him besides riches, and long-life, and victorious success. And why was Solomon's prayer so acceptable to God ? First, because to Him every true and faithful prayer is so acceptable ; and next because of all prayers He loveth best those that are wholly unselfish, those in whom all thoughts of self are absorbed and annihilated in thoughts of Him and of our fellow men. " Ask what I shall give thee." Had any man ever so splendid an opportunity ? It is not only all the king doms of the world and the glory of them, but it is that at no price of iniquity; it is that with no concurrent sorrow ; it is that with God's peace besides. There is no commoner field for the exercise of fancy than this ; and the tales of every land and age have imagined what man would desire if the powers of good, or the powers of evil, offered him a boundless choice. And it is one universal moral of all these tales that unless the choice come immediately from God, it were far better to make no such choice at all. Over and over again, in classic in mediseval, in later stories men are supposed to sell themselves to the Evil Spirit, and it is the object of everyone of those tales to show the crushing ruin and overwhelming bitterness of such an attempt to gain earth at the cost of heaven. The story of Midas, who wished that all which he touched mioht turn to gold, and was compelled in the agony of starvation to entreat a withdrawal of the gift ; the story of Tithonus, who asks for immortality, and pines away to nothing and utter misery, till he too is relieved of his foolish prayer ; the story of Gyges, whose ring, which makes him invisi- ble, turns him from an innocent shepherd into a guilty king; the story of Faust, and all the lonely anguish and haunting dread which rise from the satiety of wrong desires — how beauty becomes the curse and ruin XVII.] THE OMNIPOTENCE OF PRAYER. 16) of one — and intellect the delusion and snare of another — and power the death and corruption of a third — all these have made a commonplace of the vanity and folly of chance desires, — all a comment on the deep words of tlie poet, *' Evertere domos totas optantibus ipsis, Di superi." Yes, all gifts, save the spontaneous gifts of heaven, are like the fairy gold that turns to dust. It is God who weaves the little thread of our destinies, and He weaves it for our best happiness, unless our rude folly mars His plan. The granting of our prayers, even when they are not granted as they sometimes are, in anger, is not always for our immediate happiness. The priestess of Juno asks the goddess to give her choicest blessing to her two duteous boys, and next morning she finds them lying in the temple with a smile upon their faces, but lying in the dreamless sleep of death. All these stories are the echoes of the same sad experience — they are the pagan forms of the Scripture lessons, " Set your affec- tions on things above." And herein too Scripture history and secular history agree. Tiberius, lord of the world, who exhausted earth to gratify his luxury and lust, is known by his own public confession to be the miserablest of men.i Abderahman the Magnificent, prosperous in peace and magnificent in war, dreaded by enemies and adored by friends, leaves it upon record that in all his life he can count but fourteen happy days. Solomon, king of Judah, the beautiful, the successful, the renowned, the loved, whose name in all the East is a synonym of magic, magnificence, and splendid ease, has nothing to say of it all, but that saddest of all weary sighs ever breathed by disappointed humanity, " Vauily 1 Plin., H. N. xxviii. 5 ; Tac. Ann. iv. 6. M. S. , M 162 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. of vanities, all is vanity." The very worldliest have come to the same confession. One of themselves, even a poet of their own, has said, *' There's not a joy the world can give like those it takes away ; " ^ and another, '* This world is but a fleeting show, For man's illusion given. The smiles of joy, the tears of woe Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, There's nothing true but heaven." ^ IT. He then whose heart is set — above all if it be inordinately and selfishly set — on earthly joys is not wise. There is, indeed, nothing wrong in praying for such earthly blessings as are simple and innocent ; and even if God, in His higher wisdom, does not grant our prayer for them, He will grant us sweeter and better things instead. " Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." God does not grudge to any of His children the loftier and nobler elements of earthly happiness. Do you think that this glorious offer made Solomon the most favoured of mankind ? Do you wish that God would do the same for you ? do you think with rapture of what you might ask if He gave to your young liA-es the same royal choice ? Are you certain that you could never neglect so enormous an opportunity ? My brethren, the offer comes to you all ; it has come in part already, is coming now, will come hereafter, but most decisively now, in these the days of your youth. We were not born assuredly for nothing : it was not for waste, or for wretchedness, or for annihilation — nay, but for happiness, for immortality, for life with Him, tliat God gave us so many grand faculties. It is true that ^ Bvron. ^ Moore. xvTi.] THi: OMNIPOTESCE OF PRAYER. i03 thousands of lives do fail, and are wasted ; but that is not of God. It was not for this sad fate that God sent us into a world of large air and abounding sunshine ; no^ for this that He encircles our infancy with tenderness, and our youth with care ; not for this that Scripture is rich with wisdom, and conscience bright with intuition ; not for this that Christ died, and the Holy Spirit came. If all men do not receive those gifts which are God's richest and most priceless blessings, it is not because God will not give them, but because men will not ask for them. St. James, whose blunt, practical directness I pointed out to you some Sundays ago, may well exclaim, "Ye ask, and have not; ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, becai^se ye ask amiss." And yet to every one of us God says, "Ask what I shall give thee." To every one of us is the promise true, •'' Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name He will give it you." Yes, he of you who wills may ransack the very treasures of heaven. The insolent and the faithless, the wilful and the disobedient, cannot enter there ; but it opens with heavenly facility to them who will use the golden keys of sincerity and prayer. III. Let us then apply these thoughts ; let us see how they are true, first of things earthly, then of tilings heavenly. 1. I say that even of things earthly God says to each of you, and most clearly now, " Ask what I shall give thee." Do you not see for your own selves the simple fact that your lives may be very much what you choose to make them ? Do you not see that what makes the chief difference between man and man, boy and boy, is not so much diversity of powers as force of purpose, clearness of aim, decision of character ? Every dciy of your life repeats the question, " Ask what I shall give M 2 IQ-L IN THE DAYS OF THY YOV TIL [si^RM. thee." Every day comes to you like the Sibyl of old to the incredulous king, offering you priceless opportunities of wisdom, and, as they are rejected, tossing them into the fiame, and passing away in sorrow or contempt. " Muffled and dumb," says a modern poet, *' The hypocritic days, And raarcliing single in an endless file, Bring diadems or fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will — Bread, kingdoms, stars, and heaven that holds them all. I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp. Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apj^les, and the day Turned and departed silent : I too late Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn." i Of course you will see at a glance that asking God for these gifts at the hands of time or opportunity does not mean me?'e asking; that he who asks must, if his. prayer is to be listened to, be sincere in his petition, and if he be sincere, will naturally and necessarily take the means which God appoints. God only helps those who help themselves. Were it not so, if vice could, with a wish, yawn into being the rewards of virtue ; if sluggishness could, at a touch, appropriate to itself the gifts of toil : then prayer would corrupt the world. But God will not listen to a prayer that is Jiot a prayer ; nor will He regard as a prayer the drawling formula of the sluggard or the sly falsehood of the hypocrite. Action, effort, perseverance: these are the touchstones that test the pure gold of sincerity. Pagans saw some- thing of the truth. " To the persevering man," says the Persian poet, " the blessed immortals are swift ; " and one of the most vigorous of the Eoman emperors died 1 Emerson. XVII.] THE OMNIPOTENCE OF PRAYER. 165 with the grand word " laborermis " on his lips. And labour may do much ; but if we add the oremus to the laboremus, then the two are simply irresistible. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to the diligent and to the prayerful. As for vulgarer and purely earthly ends, any one who chooses to obtain them can obtain them. If any of you cared to make to-day so poor a vow, as that you would die rich, there is no doubt that you could die rich. If any of you willed to-day to force your path to power and distinction, there is no doubt that you could so force on to power and distinction. Nature will give you nothing for nothing. She offers you her gifts clenched tight in a granite hand, and before you can have them you must force that hand open by sheer labour. Say what you will have, paj^ the price, and she will give it you ; she will give it you, although she warns you beforehand, that if rank, and wealth, and fame, and ease, are what you long for, these, without God's blessing, are apples of Sodom filled with bitter dust. But take a better case — the case of many of you. You are here at school ; certain studies are set before you, certain opportunities given you, certain rewards offered. Your interest and your duty coincide in urging you to use these advantages, to work^ to do your best. Your interest, — because every term wasted now may mean a year of sorrow and anxiety ; and every year wasted now may mean ten years of disappointment and hope deferred hereafter; and a school life wasted now may mean a man's life of useless mediocrity and repining struggle. And your duty, — because in this are involved the intense wish of your parents, the gratitude you owe to friends, the earnest hopes of your masters, the honour of a school you ought to love, the distinct indications of the voice of God. Now, if neither interest 166 7.V TEE DA YS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. nor duty move you, you must be of 2)oor natures. None but bad influences are on the other side. Idleness pleading the charms of sleth; conceit inflating with a silly self-satisfaction ; despair saying " I cannot ; " pride saying " I will not." It is tlie lotos-fruit, and the charmed cup, and the siren song, set in competition with the voices of heaven ; and you may think the lotos- fruit delightful, but it means exile ; and the charmed cup sv/eet, but it means degradation; and the siren soDo- enchanting, but it means death and shipwreck on the desolate and loathly shore. Oh yes, this is all more or less possible, and the outcome of it is a life wasted for Avant of humility or want of purpose. But I say — for I have often and often witnessed it, and prophesied it, and been true in my prophecy — that any boy who steadfastly resists those evil influences, any boy who works and denies himself, and prays to God to bless and help him, may win if he will. Whole-heartedness, manly determination, noble resolve, above all, the humility which always accompanies true worth, — I would rather possess these a thousand times, and I should feel certain that, even for worldly success, they are infinitely more valuable than the mere flash in die pan of a conceited cleverness. The " modesty of fearful duty" is more blessed of God, and more beloved of man, and more valued even by the world, than the raw presumption of a shallow quickness, and the crude self-confidence of an ignorance which takes itself for knowledge. I say that these things will succeed ; but even if they do not — and of success we all think far too much — they at least involve that holy self-control, that contentedness of heart, that capacity of service, which are more golden than earthly gold, and are the success of heaven itself. So that to the youncrest and most XVII.] THE OMNIPOTENCE OF PEAYEE. 167 self-distrustful boy here I say, My child, doubt not, only believe ; cast your bread on the waters, you will find it after many days. God says, "Ask what I shall give thee." Ask in faith, nothing doubting, and do your duty while you ask, and then not only have you no need to envy the gifts of any living man, but the very angels up in heaven — even those nearest to the throne, iiccentes et ardentes, the shining spirits of knowledge, tlie burning spirits of love — might, with no sigh, exchange their lot with yours. 2, And though I believe, nay, though I know, this to be true of earthly things, it is ten times more indis- putably true of the better and the heavenly. Oh, covet earnestly the best gifts, and you shall have them. Here God says to you with yet more earnest insistency, "Ask what I shall give thee." Dost thou love uprightness ? Ask it, will it, and thou shalt be upright. Dost thou love purity ? Ask it, will it, and thou shalt be pure. Dost thou feel the high ideal of moral nobleness ? Ask for it, will it, and thou shalt be noble. Were an angel to glide down upon the sunbeams, and offer you any- thing which you sincerely desired, would you not think it at once ungrateful and senseless to refuse ? Is it less senseless to refuse when God offers you an immortality of blessedness, and garlands that cannot fade ? Perhaps you have lost the wish for such blessings, as the drunkard, loving only that which is destroying him, loathes the pure water of the springs. Well, God can restore you the moral and the spiritual taste yet unde- praved. Let the " sorrow rise from beneath," and the " consolation will meet it from above." He offers it you again to-day. Pointing to the fair fruits of the Spirit wliich grow upon the Tree of Life ; pointing to the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing out of the 168 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm. xvii. throne of God aud of the Lamb ; pointing to the heaven of radiant peace which shines in every cleansed and forgiven heart ; pointing to the peace which passeth all understanding, and which man can neither give nor take away, He has said to you often from your childhood He says to you once more in this sacred place to-day, " Ask ivhat I shall give thee." He said it to Solomon in the dim visions of the night. He says it to us by the voice of His Eternal Son. " Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you : for every one that asketh receiveth ; and he that seeketh findeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." Ju.7Ui l[>.',h, 1373. SEEMON XVIII. SOWING AMONG THORNS. Jer. iv. 3. " Thus saitli the Lord, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns." Last Sunday I spoke to you of the first part of this text, and tried to urge upon you as its message that you should, with all your hearts and all your souls set yourselves to the fresh duties which now, at the begin- ning of another term, devolve upon you here. The second half of the text seems appropriate for to-day; it dwells, not on the need for labour, but on a danger which, if neglected, would render that toil unfruitful. It warns you that it is not enough to break up your fallow ground, nor even to sow good seed ; but that the ground must be a clean fallow — that it must be free from pre-occupations — that there must be room for the good seed to grow. The metaphor must be clear to the youngest boy. The field is the human heart ; the seed is the word and the will of God; the harvest is your sanctification. When the heart is simple, and innocent, and free from wrong, there are no thorns there ; it is as Paradise before Adam fell ; nothing grows in that heavenly garden but the golden fruits> of the Spirit and the fair flowers of grace. But when man fell, the ground was cursed; 170 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. thorns and thistles grew in it ; only by the sweat of liis brow could man wring from it the bread of life. Even so it is with all of us. When, in growing years, we pass forth out of the Paradise of our early innocence, the soil of the heart is more or less encumbered ; the seeds and roots of evil things are in it; those evil things must be cleared away, must, at the worst, be utterl}^ kept down, or the good seed will produce nothing but barren and blighted ears. You will all remember the Parable of the Sower. There some of the seed falls upon ground so bare that it will not grow at all, and the fowls of the air carry it away ; just as there are some natures so callous, so past i'eeling as to seem incapable of even a good impression. And other seed fell on stony grounds, on natures so thin, so shallow, so poverty-stricken, that the seed appears only to wither, scorched by the first sun, because it has no strengthening root. And other seed fell among thorns. Not, observe, on full-grown thorns — no sower would be so senseless as to sow seed there — but on thorn- roots lying under the surface, hidden, unnoticed, of which we are afterwards told that they sprang up. Yes, the soil looked good enough, but roots of bitterness were in it, and under it. The fallow had been broken up, ploughed it had been and harrowed, but not deeply, not resolutely, not faithfully enough ; and so when the sunbeams fell on it, and it was watered from above with the gracious dews of God, the seed grew indeed, but the thorns grew also, and stronger and more rapidly, and the more they grew the more they robbed the good seed of heat, and light, and moisture, and so absorbed into their own evil nature the whole strength and energy of the soil, that the green blade could never become the ripened ear, and at last, as you looked upon XVIII.] SOW'ING AMONG THOBNS. 171 the field, you could hardly tell that there had been corn in it at all ; " Tilings rank and gross in nature Possessed it merely." Now I think that in this part of the Parable, and in our text, there is a special lesson, because the facts of which it w^arns us are specially common. Hard and trodden soils — dull and heavy as the fool's heart — there are; thin and shallow soils, on which only hunger- bitten and blighted harvests grow, there are ; and, thank God, there are also soils rich, and good, and deep, which bring forth fruit to perfection ; but commoner perhaps than any of these are those soils in which the tares and wdieat grow side by side, and the crisis of time and of eternity depends on this, — wdiether we suffer the tares or tlie wheat to prevail. Do not many of you feel it to be so ? Do you not, as I speak, recognise within you this duality of nature ? Do you not at some times feel yourselves capable of sinking to almost any depth of folly and of degradation, while at other times the grace of God seems to be stirring sensibly wdthin your heart, and everything sweetest, and noblest, and even saintliest seems naturally within your reach ? Have you never felt with St. Paul, " the good which I would, I do not ; the evil which I would not, that I do " ? Yes, I am well assured that you all feel that there is an Adam., and there is a Christ within you all, that " the angel has you by the hand and the serpent by the heart," and that you, like the great King who heard the preacher dwell on the new man and the old man within us, feel ready to exchaim, " I recognise those two men." No-^s the thorns of the parable, and of the prophet's meta- phor, are that evil nature, these evil impulses; the 172 IN THE DAYS OF TRY YOUTH. [serm. wrong which struggles within yon, and which, if not suppressed, if not to the utmost of your power eradicated will render it impossible for the good to grow. This is one of the sternest, strongest, plainest lessons of life. There are in every man, said the Jewish rabbis, two impulses, the good and the evil impulse,^ and he who offers to God his evil impulse offers the best of all sacrifices. Yes, this self-sacrifice is one of the most excellent as well as one of the necessary lessons. He who has not understood the lesson which all nature tells him, " you must abstain," " you must give up," — or, as our Lord expressed it, "you must sell all that you have," *' you must deny yourself," " you must take up the cross," — has as yet learnt nothing of life's meaning. He has not yet learnt what every good man must learn, that life is a battle, a struggle, the cultivation of a stubborn soil, a service in an enemy's country in time of war, where carelessness is danger, and sleep is death. I hope then that you will understand something of what is meant by this warning, " And sow not among thorns." To sow among thorns will be to render the harvest of your lives impossible ; to make the soil of your hearts a wasted spot in God's garden ; unfruitful, rank with poisonous berries and pernicious weeds ; " the miry places thereof, and the marishes thereof shall not be healed, they shall be given to salt." If then you are in earnest, beware that there be not — hidden deep under the soil of yoar heart — any sins and tendencies, any desires or passions, any vanities or lusts, which you have not as it were stubbed up, b.ut which remain as a source of special danger ; looking diligently lest any of you fail of the grace of God ; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled. ^ Jczer tChli and Jc~cr ha-ra. xvni.] SOWING AMONG THORNS. 173 And to fix this warning more deeply in your hearts, let me ask you whether even the experience of this week since your return may not have put for you a real emphasis into the words, " Sow not among thorns V All of you I am sure returned here with the simple and sincere purpose, or at the lowest, wish, to be better and to do better than before. Has that resolution been for any of you as the morning cloud, and as the early dew? Have you found yourself slipping insensibly, and unchanged, with fatal facility, into the old faults, the old errors, tlie old sins ? Perhaps last term you had been an idle boy ; you had made no real progress ; you had wasted the term in games, in frivolities, in amusements ; you had not made it a help for you in the future; you had only grieved your parents in it and disgusted yourself: it was a year that the locust had eaten. Well, you came back prepared for one more effort: you would do better; you would avail yourself of this fresh chance; you would turn over a new leaf ; you would not be deaf to what, on this matter, conscience said. But as the old temptations begin to surround you, the old amusements to turn you aside, the old indolence to creep over you the old claims of gossip, procrastination, half-heartedness, self-indulgence, to make themselves heard, have you not already begun to succumb ? Alas ! he who has once fed on the lotos-fruili of indolence too easily craves for it again ! Or perhaps your temptation was quite different; — it was to irritability of language, violence of temper, headstrong want of consideration for ochers. a tendency to unjust hatreds and bitter words. And you had meant when you came back this time to keep a watch over the door of your lips, and some control over the passion of your heart. Yet when somethin^^ 17-1 IN TBE DAYS OF TRY YOUTH. [serm. you did not like was said or done, have you not yielded perhaps already to the old fault ? Alas, " lucerna recens extinda, levi flatu accenditur ; " when a candle is but just extinguished, how does a mere breath make it flame again ! Or, once more, your temptation — and it would be a foolish and fatal hypocrisy to assume the absence of such temptations — had been to desecrate the temple of your soul by dwelling on forbidden images and impure desires ; but, knowing the stain and the shame and the curse of this, you meant now to be more watchful, more temperate, more prayerful, that yours, by the aid of God's Holy Spirit, might be the clean heart and the right spirit within you ; but there came some wicked suggestion, some neglected prayer, and out of your heart have proceeded evil thoughts. Alas ! he who has lifted to his lips the poisoned chalice finds it hard to resist its brutalising power. And so it may be that many of you have even already experienced the truth, which must come to the unbeliever with despairing force, but which should only stimulate the Christian to more hopeful effort, that, save for God's special grace on your own efforts, your destiny has been already decided by yourselves ; you have increased your own perils, diminished your own force. If this has been so with you, — if in any way, in spite of resolutions which were all too feeble, you have realised already your own infirmity, — and if, recognising it, you have sought to find its cause, then you will know why the prophet says^ to you, " Break up your fallow ground, and sow nol among thorns." He says it because no harvests can grow on the half-cleared soil. What must you do to those hidden thorn-roots ? Fou must do what the husbandman does. Have you never seen how he deals with some hard, stubborn fibrous root which he finds in the xvin.] SOWING AMONG THORNS. 17 5 ground ? He dashes it to pieces with his pickaxe, he stubbs it up with the spade and hoe ; he tears it out with main force ; he burns the vicious weed out of the soil with iire. You must do the same ; you must — Christ Himself has said it — give up ; cut off, — rather than perish, rather than yield yourself the willing slave of sin, — you must cut off the right hand, pluck out the right eye. As the outcome, then, of all that I have said, I would urge upon you two thoughts, which, stated in simplest and plainest language, may be good for you to take to heart. I. First, then, make your choice now, and for ever. In the field of your life, which shall grow, wheat or tares ? ihat is, shall it be death or life ? shall it be good or evil ? shall it be light or darkness? shall it be shame or peace ? shall your life be pure or debased, useful or pernicious, selfish or devoted ? Some men have died, and have left the world better for them ; their goodness has fertilised the ages as with a refreshing stream, and, " having planted many a rose of Sharon, and made their little portion of the desert smile, they departed in the faith that the green margin would spread as the seasons of God came round, till earth ended with Eden as it began ; " and other men have died, whose memory and whose wickedness have been as a taint in the pure air, and a poison in the crystal stream. To which class will you belong ? The decision of that question will probably depend in large measure on these schoolboy years. Oh, make your choice now and for ever ! Make your choice ? Xay, it is made for you, — by every fact in your life from the cradle until now, — by your birth in a Christian land, by your education in a Christian school, by your baptismal admission into the Christian 176 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. Church, — ^you have been signed, and sealed, and chosen for God, you have seen His face, and His name is on your foreheads. For this He made you ; for this His Son died for you ; for this the Spirit pleads with you. I cannot say to you, How long halt ye between two opinions ? If the Lord be God, follow Him, but if Baal, then follow him. For God is your God, and every hymn you sing in His praise, and every morn and eve you meet in this chapel, and every Sunday that you worship, and every Holy Communion of which you partake, and every time you kneel " by the altar of your own bedsides," you acknowledge your allegiance to Him, you say, or profess to say, " Oh God, Thou art my God, early will I seek Thee." But the choice must not only, my brethren, be made for you, but made by you ; it must be a choice made not only with your lips, but in your lives, it must be a choice more earnest, more conscious, more determinate. Your life must be a life in earnest ; a life not from hand to mouth ; a life not of easy yesterdays and confident to-morrows ; but as a pilgrim's journey — as a soldier's battle — a toil as of the faithful husbandmen from summer to summer and from dawn to night. Oh that ere you leave this chapel there might be on some of your minds at least an inflashing of this truth, and tliat when you kneel down, as you all will do, you would offer up yourselves, your souls, and bodies to your Heavenly Father, and say, " God, my heart is ready, my heart is ready ; by the blood of Christ, oh cleanse it ; by His Spirit strengthen it; for His sake, oh accept it, make it Thine." II. And the second lesson is, Let the choice be absolute. No lukewarmness — neither cold nor hot ; no backward glance at the guilty city. Xo tampering xviir.] SOWING AMONG THORNS. 177 with the accursed thing ; no truce with Canaan ; no weak attempt to serve two masters ; no wretched and wavering wish to grow both tares and wheat. Oh do not, my brethren, fall into that fatal and desperate error which maims the usefulness and mars the peace of so many lives, — the error of supposing that you can keep your sin and your Saviour, — that there can be any compromise in your heart between good and evil, — that good and evil may dwell in that heart side by side without being forced to wrestle in deadly antagonism till one has the undisputed sway, — that you can be a child of God, and yet, each time the temptation comes upon you, can reject His mercy and break His law. " When any one says I will sin and repent afterwards," says an ancient Jewish book, " and does this a second time, and again does the same, no more strength for repentance is granted him." For this is willing sin ; it is to sell yourself to work wickedly. Therefore, as Israel was bidden to exterminate the guilty Canaanites, or they would be corrupted by them, so you must destroy the oins you best love, or they will destroy you. Take then the Cross ; as our fathers smote with sword and battle-axe to free Palestine from Paynim feet, so do you be brave and dauntless in the great crusade for the Holy Land of your soul. Fight, and fight hard ; strike, and strike home for God.. My brethren, believe me, in conclusion, that there is nothing doubtful about what I have said. It is certain. It is the truth of God. You must not sow among thorns ; and to dig out the thorns is not easy. But one word, let me add, lest any of you be discouraged. If you fall into a sin of weakness, repent indeed, and humble yourself before God, but do not despair ; say indeed it is mine own infirmity, but remember the years M. S. N 178 IS THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm. xviii. of the right hand of the Most Highest. A good man may sin, and when he sins God will not spare him ; but — when he falls, — then from the earth which his knees have touched in prayer, he rises, Antaeus-like, with tenfold strength, and says with a voice whose resolution no sobs can choke, " Eejoice not over me, Satan, mine enemy, for when I fall I shall rise again." It is said of the best riders that they know how to fall. Do not think it beneath the dignity, I had almost said the awfulness of my subject, if for the encouragement of those who are helpless because they fail so often in the effort to do right, I draw an illustration from common life. I would say then to every Christian boy, as was said by one of the most famous of modern hunters, you must expect a fall sometimes, but with a fall you may get over anything. He himself had been thrown no less than seventy times in his life, but the end was that he could ride anywhere. He rode at the most tre- mendous leaps, and never even cast a glance back at them. And what was his secret — " Fling your heart over," he used to say, "and your horse will follow." I take the everyday illustration, and I say to you, In spite of hindrances iii the present, in spite of difQcui- ties in the future, in spite of obstacles from the past, press forward in God's service, press forward in your Saviour's strength, fling your heart over, and nothing shall stop you in your heavenward course. SfipUzmhcr IZth, 1873. SERMON XIX. EOlV TO KEEP GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 2 Kings x. 15. * Is thine heart right ? " The words, my brethren, are a fragment: I have dissevered them from their context ; I have made them subserve to a meaning not quite identical with that in which they were spoken. But still they formulate a solemn question, well suited for this day. Imagine that the guardian angel of your life and destiny — nay, imagine that the God and Father who created you, the Saviour who died for you, the Holy Spirit who dwelleth in the temple of all undesecrated hearts — is asking you here and now this short question : " Is thine heart right t " and let your consciences answer in the silence, and answer clear and true. The answer of him to whom the question was addressed was, " It is." — " If it be, give me thine hand. And he gave him his hand ; and he took him up to him into the chariot. And he said. Come with me, and see my zeal for the Lord." Let the rude fragment of a cruel history serve in some sort as a symbol or allegory of nobler things. Whatever were the sins and errors of these, who thus drove forth to trample upon idolatry" N 2 ISO IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [sEixy. and deal retribution upon crime, let us at least be like them in tliis, that, with united efforts, with earnest zeal, with unswerving purpose, we set forth once more to-day to fidit, in our own heart? and in the world around us, the battle of the Lord of Hosts. Whether we can do this — whether we are on the Lord's side at all, or in the ranks, secret or open, of His enemies — depends on the truth with which we can answer this question: "Is thine heart right ? " And I do not doubt that most of you would answer with Jehonadab the son of Eechab, "It is." Sitting here in God's holy place, now on the first Sunday of a new, and what may be, I trust, please God, a happy term — now so shortly after the confirma,tion of many of you, now before the Holy Communion of the supper of the Lord — ^you would scarcely hesitate, any one of you, to answer — in different tones, indeed, and with very different degrees of earnestness and sincerity, but still to answer — " Yes, my heart is right ; my mind is set upon righteousness ; I do think, or wish to think, the thing that is right." Yes, my brethren, but what I want to make you see and feel this morning is, that there is all the difference in the world between the different ways in which this answer is spoken ; and that there is only one way, only one meaning, in which it can be indeed spoken honestly, as before God, from the ground of the neart. 1. There is, for instance, the careless, indifferent, frivolous answer ; the answer of those who have hitherto resisted the grace of God, and who, finding that they can sin as yet with but little sorrow, neither know nor really care what religion means. It is the answer of the gay young prodigal ere the famine has come, and XIX.] HOW TO KEEP GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 181 while in the genial flush of youth and pleasure he sits at the lighted, banquet, and does not dream that there lurks in the winecup a deadly poison, and that those bad friends, with their false caresses and the lie upon their smiling faces, are but a wretched company of the living dead. Untrained as yet in the meaning and discipline of life ; ignorant as yet of what may be its fatal import ; not believing as yet that the sunshine of youth is but a transient gleam, and that the blue heaven from which it falls is the heaven of eternity ; such as these would give the answer very carelessly. " Is my heart right? Yes, I suppose so. I have still some fragments of memory about things which I learnt when I was yet a child, and these serve me as a sort of religion. I have not quite forgotten what my mother taught me when once, more innocent than now, I lifted my little hands in prayer. I do not love evil for its own sake. There are some wrong things that I would not do. I am not worse than he, or he, or he. If I am not particularly good, neither am I entirely bad," and so on, and so on. One knows too well the hollow ring of words like these. Ah, my brethren, do you think that this is enough ? that this answer will do ? Alas ! such an answer means nothing, or worse than nothing. Do not deceive yourself with the notion that it implies the faintest effort. To Him indeed who readeth your heart, to Him before whose eye all your real thoughts lie naked and open, it has a meaning, but it is an evil one. In your yes He reads no. In your "My heart is right," He reads that it is "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." To Him your answer means nothing more nor less than this : " I will continue in sin," " There is no God," or " Tush ! if there be, He is far away, and careth not for it." And L82 i:^ THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. if this be indeed the real meaning of any answer, then if the word " beware " were in the thunder's mouth it could not speak too loudly ; for this is the beginning of the fatal history of every lost and ruined soul, it is the slope of the smooth bright river, as in broad, unbroken sheet it rushes in silence to the cataract. " Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth ibrth sin : and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." II. 1. Let us take another answer, not like the last, wholly hollow and insincere, but too impulsive, too confident. " Is thine heart right ? " " Yes," another will say, " I do sincerely dislike what is bad, and I do rather despise myself for the weakness with which I have yielded to it. And I mean to be quite different now. Last term I had such and such a companion, such and such an excuse, such and such a hindrance ; I began badly, and could not break off from a false start : but this is a new term, I will do better ; I will be less idle, or less passionate, or less self-indulgent," or less whatever his special fault has been. You will ? his guardian angel might say to such a one ; but for how long ? and in whose strength ? In your own strength, and only until the next temptation comes ? You will ? and do you know what this answer involves ? Do you know that it means not merely a weak wish, but a strong desire ; not only a strong desire, but a resolute effort ; not only even a resolute effort, but an intense and absorbing purpose. It means the girded loin, and the burning lamp, and the race continued though the feet totter and the breath sobs. Alas, it is so easy to be good when there is no temptatioT near. The man or the boy, for instance, who, with thankful heart and weakened frame, rises from the XLX.] ROW TO KEEP GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 183 bed of long and dangerous sickness— wlio, perhaps, in the lonely hours of imminent death has thought with shame and sorrow over his sinful life— that man or boy thinks it canuot be but that henceforth he shall be a changed character ; but is he so always ? When the voice of the siren is loud again, when the full tide of blood runs in the healthy veins, have you never known cases in which he has only risen from the bed, well-nigh of death, to be an open backslider, worse even than before ? My brethren, a weak resolve, a half resolve, a mere verbal resolve, a resolve made in your own strength, of what value is it? Have you never heard, or have you never understood, the deep-sighted proverb,' that " Hell is paved with good intentions " ? Let me take no very bad and grievous case, no case of shameful degradation or deadly sin, but a common every-day case of a life not strong in duty— a life that not a i'ew, perhaps, among you may recognise as your own especial danger— a danger to be overcome. Such a boy at the beginning of this new term has formed, or thinks he has formed, a sort of half-resolution to improve, and not to waste yet another of his few precious years of happy life and golden opportunity. He begins weU for the first few days ; he springs up cheerfully and manfully in the morning in good time, with no lazy self-indulgent lingering ; he says his prayers humbly and reverently ; he kneels punctually in chapel; his lesson has been honestly prepared ; he succeeds, and thinks that he is entering on a better state of things, and that this term at last is going to be a well-spent, and faithful, and honourable one. It goes on for a few days. But it hardly needs even a temptation to make him fall away ; if a temptation does come, however trivial, his good purpose slips into instant ashes, like tow at the very 184 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. breath of lire. But even if no special temptation comes, there is no perseverance, no solidity,, no manly con- sistence in his brief improvement. One morning all is done a little later ; the rising begins to get hurried and slovenly; the morning prayer first slurred over, then shortened, then neglected ; imprepared, he meets the temptations of the day ; the work is put off or done anyhow ; the playtime unduly lengthened ; the novel not laid aside; the duty forgotten or neglected. He sinks lower and lower, the esteem of his teachers is lost, his self-respect is wholly weakened, and so,little by little, ever little by little, the old story is renewed again, and the new term is wasted like the old ; and, like the waves of a silent river, irrevocable time flows on, and the careless boy enters the hard struggle of life an irresolute, ignorant, half-armed man. Yes, little by little, irrevocable time flows on ; the twenty-four hours of the day seem a long time, and yet it is the second hand that does it ; it is all traversed, as has well been said, by tiniest tickings of the clock. And life is but a day like this, and the days are its seconds, and the terms its hours ; and the morning of its boyhood, and its manhood's noon, soon merge, merge insensibly, into the chill grey evening and darkened close. ** To-moiTOw, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to-day To the last syllable of recorded time ; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death." 2. I have purposely chosen a minor instance ; but how is it when things are worse ? where the temptation is more serious ? the fall more heinous ? How is it when Satan, having for a time cunningly forborne to startle Jiiia victim with any great sin, with any glaring or violent XIX.] HOW TO KEEP GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 1S5 temptations, suddenly confronts his biased will and his nerveless heart, and pushes him Avith all the dead weight of reiterated weaknesses into some sin of a moment which is the curse and anguish of a life ? Has there not been a fearful answer then to the question ''Is thine heart right ? " and has not that answer been quite other than that which some of you may quite honestly think that you are giving now ? And are such warnings vain ? Would not the experience of past terms empha- sise them to some of you ? Have you not on the first Sundays of other terms meant well, and yet not done well, and the idle been idle, and the weak weak, and the unjust unjust, and the filthy filthy still ? And of the hundreds and hundreds who have sat before you on those same benches, have none gone through the same life history ? have none left the school after a career ungrateful, dis- creditable, wasted, having only pained the hearts of those who loved them ? And have not others sat on those benches as new boys, hopeful perhaps and happy, who yet grow up to be false, and treacherous, and to set shameful examples, and to do the devil's work, and to carry with them through life the extreme malediction which lights and shall light upon those who, in their selfish depravity, have wilfully led others into sin ? Few, thank God, very, very iew ; but still some ; and let those some be to some — yea, to all of you and of us — a warning deeper than death. I have seen the tears of mothers over their dead sons' grave ; but the anguish of bereavement melts soon into the golden light of a fii\ith full of immortality ; and all of you who have the spell of home affection in your hearts, remember this — that less salt and less bitter are the tears which wet a mother's cheek, and less envenomed is the agony which lacerates a father's heart, over a dying child than ovei isf) IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [ssrm. a child that eauseth shame; and many and many of your parents would echo with all their souls the saying of Queen Blanche, the mother of St. Louis of France, that she would rather see her son a corpse at her feet than know that he had committed a deadly sin. III. " Is thine heart right ? " Let us take one more answer: some may answer carelessly; some presump- tuously; but will not many of you — yes, I am very sure you will — answer in a deeper, humbler, sincerer, more serious spirit ? " Yes," you will say, " I am weak, I know, and sinful; and bitter experience has taught me that my own good resolutions are as the morning cloud and as the early dew. They have been so because at former times I have not watched enough or prayed enough, or listened enough to the voice of conscience, and of God's Holy Spirit within my soul. But I am sorry — though my life has not been always right, yet I hope, I trust, that my heart is right — it is not hard. I do hate the thing that is evil ; I am not blinded by self-conceit and sin. And God, I know has not forsaken me. Here, like a green leaf fresh-plucked from the Tree of Life, He gives me now a new term, a new hope, a new chance ; and even now will I offer to Him a silent prayer, and will cry to Him, Oh, my God, my Father, lead back to Thyself thy sinful and wander- ing child. Here is my Mdlful, sinful heart; make it humble, and strong, and faithful unto Thee. Here is my poor stained and feeble life ; take it, and make it pure and noble. My own strength, Lord, is perfect weakness ; my own wisdom is utter folly ; my own righteousness is utter sin: but I lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence coraeth my help, "Make me to do the thing that pleaseth Thee, for Thou art my XIX.] now TO KEEP GOOD RESOLUTIONS. 187 God. Let Thy loving Spirit lead me into the land of righteousness." This, my brethren, this is the tone and spirit of the answer, which, would to God we all might make ; because, if any resolve in this spirit, God w^ill help him. He will lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees. Fear not thou who canst answer thus. The ocean of life is large, and thy little boat is small, and there has been many and many a terrible and disastrous shipwreck on those rough waves ; but though the great winds blow and the angry billows roll, God shall keep fast thy feeble hand upon the guiding helm, and thou shalt reach the safe haven where thou w^ouldst be, and out of the gossamer threads of thy weak and wavering will. He will forge the iron cables which shall moor thee safe to that everlasting Hope, which is an anchor of the soul. With such thoughts, with such prayers, with such purposes, with the determination more and more ear- nestly to make our hearts right before God — humble, earnest, watchful — let us kneel at the Holy Table of the Lord. Nowhere can we better consecrate our hearts than there. Oh, let every one of us kneel there, meaning indeed to consecrate ourselves, — our souls and bodies, this term and all the rest of our lives — to Him who created and Him who died for us. Let it be to us an Eucharist, a feast of deep thankfulness to God for His many mercies to us and to our school ; let it be to us a Communion, to bind us all more and more closely to- gether in the bonds of Christian fellowship, eager to stand by one another, to wish each other prosperity, to do each other good ; above all may it be to us a memorial of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. If we follow the footsteps of His blessed life, they may lead 188 7.V THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [sehm. xix. us indeed, at times iuto sad and lonely places, and tliere may be times when we, like many of earth's noblest, may have to tread them with bleeding feet. But what matters it ? If we walk in those footsteps, we shall see God's face, and His name shall be in our foreheads, and they shall lead us at last to the realms of everlasting joy- May lOth, 1S7L SERMON XX. THE OBJECTS OF SCHOOL LIFE. 1 Kings xix. 13. *' There came a voice unto him and said, What doest thou here ?" I ISOLATE these words from their splendid context, upon which I am not going to touch. To-day the Voice comes, not to Elijah in the wilderness, but to us in this chapel ; and, in answer to its appeal, we must try to understand our position, here and now, in all its definite- ness. We lose by not reminding ourselves of our special duties ; we lose by not going up into the tribunal of our own consciences, and setting ourselves before ourselves;^ we lose by laying to our souls the flattering unction of general professions, and not rigidly bringing them to bear on daily acts. We should do our work, I think better, I am sure we should deceive ourselves less — if we asked ourselves, " Am I, day by day, doing my day's task in the little corner of the vineyard which God has given me to cultivate ? and am I doing it, not perfunc torily, but faithfully, not discontentedly, but humbly, not with eyeservice, but in singleness of heart ? " If we can put those questions to ourselves very searchingly, and still answer them with a clear conscience, it is enough. Sloth, discontent, disobedience, disloyalty to duty, — • 1 St. Augustine. 11)0 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. these torture and scourge the souls of those who yield to them ; but, whether others count a man fortunate or unfortunate, and whether the elements of eartlily happi- ness be largely or but very sparingly within his reach, yet the world, — were it " one entire and perfect chrysolite " — were all too little to give in exchange for that deep peace which God sheds into the inmost soul of that man who has simplified every other end and hope in life to this : — to do God's will from the ground of the heart, — to show that we love the Father whom we have not seen, by loving, by serving, by helping in the holy life, our brother whom we have seen. I. To-day, then, if we will hear God's voice asking us " What doest thou here ? " let us not harden our hearts. What, for instance, does the Lord require of us who are set over you ? To feed the flock of God which is among us ; to bear every labour, to make every sacrifice ; to be instant in season and out of season ; to reprove, rebuke, exhort ; to remind ourselves often how deep and wide are the interests entrusted to us, how strict and solemn is the account which we must one day give before the judgment seat of Christ : — are not these our duties ? It may be that, like all duties in any sphere of life, they may be often irksome and discouraging ; it may be that we may see the tares springing up in rank growth among the good seed which we have sown ; it may be that childish frivolity, that subtle impurity, that want of dignity, and want of loyalty, and want of gratitude, may often make us sad at heart : but results are not in our hands, efforts are ; and what God requires of all of us is effort, not result ; and the very best efforts of the very greatest and holiest men have often been exactly those which, from the Cross of Christ downwards, have often seemed to fail the most ; so that all we have to do XX.] THE OBJECTS OF SCHOOL LIFE. 191 is to work on always, Tindiscouraged, in the unalterable conviction that, in the course of duty, failure can never be more than apparent, and that to the end of time, because God is God, evil things shall perish, but " good deeds cannot die." ^ II. But if these are our duties, what are yours ? (a) In the first and most everyday sense, you are here to be taught, to learn, i.e., to store and to enlighten your minds, and to be saved from that low and dangerous ignorance which is at once a misery and a disgrace. What you are taught is not altogether a matter of choice, either for us or for you. In all its main outlines, at any rate, it is dictated to us by the wisdom of past experience in many ages, and by the exigencies of that which is immediately needful for you in this. Yet it is only the very shallow, or, which is much the same thing, the very conceited, who can fail to see that the range of subjects to which you are here introduced is sufficient to last you for a life. History, the story of nations, so inexhaustible in moral interest, so rich in spiritual lessons ; Divinity, the study of our relation to God, and of the deepest utterances of His Eternal Spirit to the heart of man ; Science in all its branches whether it deal with forms and numbers, or with those laws which God's own hand has written on the stars of heaven and the stone tablets of the earth; Language, the common instrument of every intelligent being that lives and thinks ; Antiquity, with its immortal lessons of many races, and specially of "the beauty which was Greece and the grandeur which was Rome ; " — there is not one of these studies which might not with profit occupy the intellect during a well-spent and serviceable life ; not one which may not be, to the holy and the humble, " a sunbeam from ^ Tennyson, Tlie PriTicess, 192 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. the Father of Lights." And to profit in any one of these you must begin early. There are some things which, if you have not learnt thoroughly before the age of twelve, you will hardly learn thoroughly at all ; there are many others which must, in their elements, be mastered before you are seventeen, or you can never succeed in them. You may wish hereafter that you had done so, " but it will be too late, and your wishes will not give you back the power that is gone." ^ Now even the lowest ground for diligence in these studies cannot legitimately be despised. That lowest ground is that, for by far the most of you, your future will be affected very decisively by your present; that on the w^ay in which you work now will depend largely the opportunities of earning your daily bread ; that even one year's idleness now may make to you all the dif- ference hereafter between a life reasonably prosperous, or heavily clouded by poverty and struggle. When the great Napoleon visited his old school at Brienne, he addressed these words only to the assembled boys, *'Boys, remember that every hour wasted at school means a chance of misfortune in future life." Now these considerations alone would make gross laziness and selfish sacrifice of duty to pleasure in a boy's life a flagrant folly; but the higher ground, the loftier motive, the consideration which should appeal most strongly to the clearest and noblest souls among you, is that it is not only a flagrant folly, but a dangerous sin. For the true end of knowledge is not curiosity, is not vanity, is not profit, but it is that we may build up others — and that is charity ; it is that we may be built up ourselves — and that is wisdom.^ Sursum Corda, ^ Bishop Temple. ' Sunt namque qui scire voliint eo tantum fine ut sciant ; et tui-pis XX.] TB:E objects of school life. 193 lift up your hearts. Let none of your motives fall short of the highest. Be diligent in order that by the habits in which such diligence will train you, if by nothing else, you may grow up to be, not a curse and a burden to your fellow-men, but " a profitable member of the Church and Commonwealth, and hereafter a partaker of the immortal glory of the resurrection." So then I trust that on this ground all of you — alike the little boys who have just joined our body, and the eldest of you who will have your last chance this term of paying your dpeirrpa to Marlborough by showing yourselves worthy sons of the School which has trained you — will, as part of your answer to the question " What doest thou here ? " reply distinctly, " 1 am here to be taught ; I am here to learn." (/3) For indeed teaching is but a part of the reason why you are here, and, as a higher end, you are here to he trained. It is only the few who are gifted ; only the few whose abilities and whose power of will can win them a foremost place ; only the few whose names can be recorded in our annals as having done intellectual honour to the teaching they have received. But I do hope that not the dullest boy here wUl ever think that, because he is dull — because he can never repay what he owes to Marlborough by making her name more famous — that therefore he is less dear to her, or his interests less sacred to those who love her. When I recall the memories of those Marlburians whom for their virtue and their manliness I honour most — of those who cnriositas est. Et sunt qui scire volunt, ut sciantur ipsi, et turpis vauitas est. Et sunt item qui scire volunt, ut scientiam suam vendant, . . . et turpis qusestus est. Sed sunt quoque qui scire volunt, ut sedifi- cent, et charitas est ; et item qui scire volunt ut sedificentur, et prudentia est." St. Bernard, Sermon xxxvi. Super Cantic. p. 608. M.S. O 194 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. have ever seemed to me the worthiest, the noblest, a:id the truest — of those whose names I believe to be written in heaven — it is not always of the ablest that I think, or of the most successful. The boys who leave us modest and manly, loyal and grateful, affectionate and courteous, humble and pure — and God grant that there may be always many such ! — do us infinitely more honour in its highest sense than they could have done by any amount of that cleverness which is not dignified by seriousness and by character ; and Marlborough is doing to the country a transcendently higher service if she can fill every grade and office of our national life with honourable, well-mannered, serious-minded, pure- hearted boys, than if we could be ever so pre-eminent for producing graceless capacity, conceited worthlessness, or brilliant vice. To train you to speak the truth always, to take Christ for your captain, and to do your duty to all the world ; to bring you up in the knowledge that your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost, and that those temples must be kept pure and holy ; to set before you God's will, and that this is the will of God even your sanctification ; to make you rather die than lie, rather cut off your right hand than steal, rather pass through fire than betray into vice and wickedness a soul for which Christ died ; to make you feel how divine is the blush of modesty on young human countenances,^ how sweet is humility, " that lily of the valley which blossoms only in the Christian heart ; " ^ to inspire you with an honour so sensitive that it would feel a stain like a wound f to help you so instantly ; and so con- stantly to direct your lives by the high eternal law of outy, that you should ask about every act, not is it easy, ^ Oarlyle, Frederic the Great ^ Archbishop Leigh ten. ^ Burke, XX.] TEE OBJECTS OF SCHOOL LIFE. 195 or is it popular, or is it pleasant, but Is it right? — thai is the education we most desire for you, it is in these things that you come to Marlborough to be trained. Oh try, on this first Sunday of another summer term, to set them distinctly before you in answer to the question, " What doest thou here ? " If this term passes without intellectual progress, it will so far be wasted and will be to you like an enemy in the rear ; but if it pass with no moral progress, with no strengthening of noble principles, no conquest over sinful tendencies, no subordination of the senses and the passions to law and to reason, then it will be worst than lost, worse than wasted, for then it ivill be a source of future difficulty, it may be even of future condemnation. It will be a fountain of bitter waters. It will be the creeping premonition of paralysis to come. III. So important is this period of your life. It is often spoken of as a preparation for life, but its main solemnity lies in the fact that it is not only a most momentous preparation for life, but also a most momentous part of it. Every day — we might almost say every hour, every moment of our mortal life has its own importance; for on any day of it death may come, and on any hour of it eternity may hang. But these days and hours are most important of all, because on them so many future days and hours may depend ; because the whole oak lies in the acorn ; because " fruit is seed." ^ It is a mysterious thing — one could almost weep to think of it— that the house of a young boy's soul is built as it were in the midst of enemies, on the edge of a precipice, on the ashes of a volcano ; and that the assaults upon constancy and upon character seem so often to have shaken it to the very foundation or ^ George Eliot, Roviola. 2 Um IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. sapped it at the very base before the constancy is established, before the character is formed. But we cannot alter the fixed conditions of life ; and if to parents and to teachers this thought be full of mis- givinsj and of sadness, there is another which is full of encouragement and hope, which is that God is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, even all such as call upon Him faithfully; that no one can make another do wrong ; that the life and the death of each soul is in its own power; that in the case of the youngest boy, nay even of the weakest child, God never suffers any one to be tempted above that which he is able, but will with the temptation send also the way of escape. But, oh, if you have indeed realised all that I have been saying, how awful is the responsibility which these circumstances entail! You who are Prefects and Heads of houses, oh, let these thoughts help you to feel the meaning of an office which gives you more opportunity of doing good than you may have in many after years, and which consists far more of high duties than of special privileges. And you who are in the higher forms, who are older than the majority, who know more of the dangers and difficulties of life and of school life, how much of the happiness or the misery of your fellows depends on you ! And you who are Captains of class-rooms, of dormitories, of the Upper Schoolroom, who live in the very midst of your fellows, who know — what we cannot always know — which of them are good and which bad, which weak and which strong, which trustworthy and which treacherous — you, without whose cognisance either no bad influence can be exercised at all, or at any rate not for long — oh do not betray your trust ! There is one evil which neither the eye of man nor angel can detect — it is hypocrisy. Your parents, your masters cannot even profess to be never xx.l THE OBJECTS OF SCHOOL LIFE. 197 deceived in you. I do not know, perhaps none of those set over you may ever know, what this or that boy is — what a corrupt heart may lurk under the smiling coun- tenance, under the fair semblance what a bad, mean soul. But does no one know ? does not God know ? If I could, here and now, name any thoroughly wicked boy, if such there be, by name ; if I could bid him by name stand up in his place ; step forth into the presence of this congregation ; if there I could convict him of any evil he has done ; if I could flash and brand upon his quiver- ing soul a sense of the enormity of that evil ; if I could deliver him as St. Paul did the offender of Corinth to Satan, because he has done the devil's work ; if it were given to mortal man to look on the hardened sinner with that eye, which, reading the inmost secrets of the hearts, " strook Gehazi with leprosy and Simon Magus with a curse ; " ^ if, further, as he stood there, the power of life and death were ours, and we could raise our arm, and in the uplifted hand were such thunder as could hurl him blighted to the earth ; — if we could do this, would not disobedience, would not corruption be an awful thing, and might it not be that there may be here some guilty soul which would die away within it, and shiver as the last dead leaf of autumn shivers in the frosty wind ? We have no such power. But God has ; He knows you ; His eye is ever on you ; He has witnessed the worst actions of your lives ; He hears at this very moment every thought of your imagination, and every beating of your heart. The depths of track- less forests, the curtains of blackest midnight, cannot hide you from Him ; nor does He need any lightning for the punishment of apostasy ; a touch, a breath, the germ of an animalcula,, the sporule of a lichen, the ^ jiiilion. ]i)8 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm. xx microscopic seed of a pestilence, the invisible blight oi an evening wind — these are enough to be the potent ministers of His awakened wrath ; and a child does not crush more easily the petal of a flower than He at a touch could dissolve into dust and ashes not only the insolent, guilty, polluted soul, but the very race to which we belong, the very globe we live on, the very universe which He has made. IV. Only let us remember for our comfort that this God, that this awful God, who made, who knows us, in Whose hands are the issues of life and death — that this God Whose will we may have rejected, Whose law we may have disobeyed — is also our Father. He has sent His Son to die for us, and to reconcile the world unto Himself. At morning and evening by your own Ijedsides, and all day long in the thoughts of your hearts }ou may seek Him, and here in this chapel you may hear His voice, and see His face. Oh ! seek Him here. ( )h ! seek him early ; seek Him while there yet is time ; seek Him for your own sakes ; for Christ's sake ; for your brethren and companions' sakes : and let every one of us who may, at yonder Holy Table consecrate to Him the labours and efforts of this term — consecrate to Him ourselves, our souls and bodies, a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice. May Wi, 1875. SEEMON XXI. EXCUSES TO MAN AND TO GOD. Luke xiv. IS. *' I pray tliee have me excused." The parable which you have just had read to you as the Gospel for the Day, might well be called the Parable of short-sighted folly, rendered more glaring by impo- tent excuse. Asked to the palace of a great man, the guests of course accept, — not only because they are bound by gratitude and allegiance, but because it is an honour and a delight. And yet when the hour comes, and, as is still usual in the East, the messengers go round to announce that all things are now ready, they all avail themselves of excuses, civil indeed, but as final as they are inadequate. One has bought a piece of ground, and is very sorry, but he must really go and see it. Another has just purchased iiA^e yoke of oxen, and is just starting to try them. A third has married, and thinks his narrow, absorbing, and selfish domesticity an adequate excuse for any possible neglect. Not deigning to notice their paltry excuses, in just scorn and just anger, the great man cancels his invitation, and sends for other guests. In vain, later on, haply shall these long to enter the lighted hall. Their chance is over ; other guests are seated ; the door is shut ; and 200 IN TEE DAYS OF TRY YOUTH. [serm. as they shiver without in the cold and in the darkness, their own consciences can but echo the burden of their own rejection, " Too late, too late, ye cannot enter now." I. 1. Before we consider the subject of their excuses, let us first consider the sin and folly from which these excuses were the pitiful refuge. For the behaviour of these guests may well strike you as strange, absurd, improbable. Yes, but that is one of the very points of the parable ; for yet more incredible, yet more absurd, is the conduct of which that refusal is the illustration and the antitype. What is that ? It is that God, the great King of all the earth, invites our souls to the palace of His heavens, to the banquet of His love ; — to all things that are noble and eternal ; to the heavenly manna, and the fair fruits of the Tree of Life, and river of His pleasures, and an eternal home and an unfading crown. And the soul refuses, delays, turns aside — for what ? To feed on ashes ; to eat the dust all the days of its life ; to pluck the crumbling bitterness of the Dead Sea apples ; to rusted treasures and broken cisterns; to guilty joys which, after brief madness, end in famine, and degradation, and hopeless death. Is it, then, that the soul does not believe in those good tilings which pass understanding, which God promises to His faithful children ? Yes, it does believe them ; but that faith is without works, and dead. Why ? Because of the strong sorcery of the present, the fatal fascination of the near; because, when it has once admitted the slavery of sin, to the soul — as to the beasts that perish — the here and the now are more than the eternal and the unseen. Put the future, if you will, wholly out of the question; suppose for the momeni that there is no XXI.] EXCUSES TO MAN AND TO GOD. 201 heaven, no hell, no immortality beyond the grave, but that notluDg more awaits us after this poor life save " the intolerable indignity of dust to dust." Yet even then the voices of all men in all ages — the guilty no less than the innocent — have declared aloud, — the one in their full beatitude, the other in their wild despair, — that vice is always misery and sin — always death — and that holiness is the only joy or peace. And not even the veriest and most headstrong fool can disbelieve this, for it is the unanimous experience of all the world. How is it then that men do follow vice, and live in daily disobedience to God law ? It is for the reason I have already given, and which all life illustrates. 2. Two youths once started together on a way which led over the desert to their father's house. At first their road lay by fountains, and by groves of orange and pomegranate, with which one as he passed stored his scrip and filled his water-skin, while the other, though gently warned, went forward without a thought and without a care. Together they reached the desert ; and soon the great sun was flaming over them, — and the burning heat, and the scorching thirst, and the weary toil pressed most on him who was worst provided. At last they saw more and more distinctly before them the sight w^hich many a traveller sees. A bright city seemed near them in its green oasis — with palms and palaces and runnels of silver water— while voices of strange fascination lured them there. But amid those tempting calls they heard continually a still small voice, sounding like the voice of their father from afar. " And look not,'* it whispered, " and listen not ; that enticing loveliness is the deadly mirage ; those sounds are the voices of the evil spirits in the wilderness, and they wdio listen to them return no more." And one of them knew that 202 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [seem. it was so in Ins miserable heart, but more and more after those alluring voices, and more and more towards that sfleamincf falsehood which faded and fled before him, he turned aside into those haunted solitudes. And when the twilight came with its dew and stars the one was resting in his father's happy home ; and they who with heavy hearts followed the wandering track of the other, saw only a dead body on the sands, — heard only the flapping of the vulture's wing. Alas ! what is this but the transparent allegory of ten thousand lives ; the wilderness — the temptation — the wandering — the warn- ing voices — the delusion — the self-deception — the agony of vain remorse — the despair of unrepentant death. And it all comes from the refusal of the soul to resist the influences immediately around it, and to listen to that loving call which summons it from the ruinous treacheries of the world and of the senses to the glories of its Monarch's banquet, and the holiness of its Father's home. II. But leaving this aspect of the parable, let us turn now from the refusal to the excuses that followed it. ''.They all began with one consent to make excuse." To make excuses, my brethren, seems inherent in our nature. It rises from our pride. We rarely see ourselves as others see us, or even as we see others. We are so full of self-love that it seems like a miracle of grace when a man frankly, humbly, penitently admits and confesses himself to be in the wrong. " Come now, will the doer at this last of all Dare to say I did wrong, rising in his fall ? " Xo ! in nine cases out of ten he will not. He will make excuses. No one can be placed in a position of authority without seeing daily instances of the habit; which, xxi.j EXCUSES TO MAN AND TO GOD. 203 being all but universal in little things, is yet more fatally so in great. Suffer me to illustrate it in the words of another, " Excuse-making," says one who knew boys Avell, *' is the scourge of boyhood and of school. I might venture, perhaps, to refer even in this place to a very common and familiar form of excuse in which one of you being late for a school-engagement pleads that his watch was wrong ; perhaps it w^as, and yet several things may go to make this a mere excuse; perhaps he knew beforehand that it was wrong; perhaps he might have prevented it from being wrong ; or perhaps he had other means of information within reach had he used them, but refrained from doing so that he might keep his excuse. And wdien any obvious duty is neglected, each of those who is thus failing has his excuse — his excuse to himself, to his parents, to his masters ; his excuse varying a little with the day, but substantially the same each day, capable of modification or reproduction at pleasure, and sufficient at all events to palliate self- reproach, if not to inspire confidence. And thus there are those wdio never can be surprised into a frank con- fession. They are always armed against blame. The fault w^as not theirs ; they were interrupted ; they were tired ; they thought they knew it ; they thought they should have had time ; they had meant to get up early ; they had learnt every part of the lesson but that one line ; they could liave answered everything except that one question ; they were only just late ; they forgot ; — anything in fact and everything but a frank admission of fault ; and so on througli a labyrinth of pleas and evasions — in one plain word excuses — till a miserable habit is formed, and all room for the operation of a candid self-judgment is precluded and barred. And when special pleas are exhausted they find an excuse 204 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. in their vefy failings ; they are so indolent, they say, constitutionally; they are so weak, so irresolute, so procrastinating ; in the tone it may be of regret or evasion, but still with the effect of apologising for the less fault by the greater, for the particular by the general, of escaping censure for the fault by the help of the failing."^ This is, perhaps, enough to show you, by simple instances, and mainly in the words of another, the com- monness of excuses ; but I want you now to consider with me their hoUowness, their meanness, their self- deceiving cliaracter. And this is implied by the very laDguage of my text : " I pray thee have me excused." e';^e fjue iraparriprjfiivov — hold me as an " excused " ; treat me obligingly just this once; kindly make a special exception in my case. The very phrase shows the misgiving of the speaker; and scripture — in its plain and simple narratives — will show you better than ten thousand volumes of sham philosophy and would-be profundity, the radical falsity of this self-deceiving spirit. Take one or two excuses from the Bible — how hollow they are, how mean they are. Take Eve in her sin and shame ; is there, even at that dread moment— when the awful voice speaks to her, and the sounding foot- step is heard amid the garden trees — is there any frank confession of that deadly disobedience ? No ; but the usual subterfuge — a weak laying of the blame on others. " The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." Does Adam come any more nobly out of the trial ? No ; but with ungenerous complaint and sullen recrimination. " The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." I choose cases, observe, in ^ The substance of this paragraph is borrowed from an admirable Kermon by Dr. Vaughau. XXI.] EXCUSES TO MAN AND TO GOD. jJoS which there is no chance of denying the fact. If there were, is theie not too miich cause to fear — since, there is so near an affinity, so undeniable a resemblance between excuses and lies — since, in fact, excuses are but the younger, and as yet less hardened, children in the great family of falsehood — rr.ust we not fear that the self-conscious pride which holds up against blame the wicker shield of excuses, might otherwise snatch at the sevenfold shield of lies ? " Whence comest thou Gehazi ? " asks Elisha of his servant. The man does not know that he has been seen, that he has been detected already. And how smoothly, how unblushingly, though a prophet's servant, he slides at once into the glib and blank denial. Whence cometh he ? whence should he have come ? " Thy servant went no whither," he says, looking up with a plausible air of injured and innocent surprise. For him no after excuses were possible, for on him at once, with that "went not my heart with thee ? " the white leprosy fell like blight. But in the case of the unhappy Saul we have both the prevenient falsity and the subsequent excuse. The great ban has been laid upon Amalek. False to his plighted word, he has violated and evaded it, and going to meet Samuel, smoothly says, " Blessed be thou of the Lord : I have performed the commandment of the Lord." " What meaneth then this bleating of sheep in mine ears ? " is the stern and brief reply. " Oh ! that is only what the people have done ; they have kept the best of the sheep and the oxen — forsooth — to sacrifice unto the Lord ; and the rest (yes, all the vile and all the valueless) we have utterly destroyed." And even then, when plainly reproved for his sin, his excuses are not over. " Yea, I have obeyed the Lord, and took Agag, but the people (again) took of the spoil," as though he had said (and oh 206 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH [serm. how like it is to what we often hear ! ) I did do my duty ; it was the people that did not do theirs ; and even they did do theirs, only they kept some of the oxen, and even that was to sacrifice." "Behold, to obey," says the indignant prophet, tearing away the cobwebs of his hypocrisy and emptiness, " to obey is better than sacri- fice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." Then, at last, when it is quite worthless, when there is no nobility and no manliness left in it, conies the reluctant con- fession, " I have sinned ; " but even v/hen this has been wrung from him, then once more comes the mean habi- tual recurrence to self-excuse and the blame of others. * I have sinned: because. I feared the people, and obeyed taeir voice." The scene is very instructive to show us how persistent excuses are, and how utterly selfish, and how meanly self- deceptive ; yet there is one more excuse in Scripture which in its sheer imbecile futility is even worse, and is wholly unsurpassed. Yet, perhaps, we may see our own tendencies immediately reflected in it, for it was a great man, a great priest, who made it. Moses is alone on Sinai, and in forty days the people have forgotten all, and want a visible idol, a low base idol, whom they can serve with sin and shame. Aaron, in his weak com- plicity, agrees. He carefully and elaborately makes them a gilded calf, and they serve it with vile and sensual worship. Then, in hot anger, — shattering in his wrath the granite tablets of the yet unpromulgated law, — like a messenger of doom, and with the glory of holy indignation on his countenance, comes Moses, striding down the hill, and flings into the dust their wretched idol, and stamps it to powder, and strews it on the water, and makes the children of Israel drink it, and then turns in his fury upon the trembling Aaron, and asks him, with bitter upbraiding, how he could have brought this great sin XXI.] EXCUSES TO MAN AND TO GOD. 207 upon the people. " Ob, my lord, let not thine anger wax hot : thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief/' and so on. " And I said unto them, Whoso- ever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me : then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf ! " " There came out this calf ! " Can the force of imbecile fatuity go farther? In no passage of Scripture is there a larger or more cutting irony, yet the irony is not too bitter or too broad, nor the smile on the lips of the sacred historian too entirely scornful, for the utter folly and craven feebleness alike of Aaron's excuses, and, alas ! of ours. And alas ! if these excuses do not even deceive our- selves, can we think that they deceive God ? No. God has laid down a law that cannot be broken. It is all in vain for the sinner to stammer out, " I was surprised into it," or " I did not think," or " Only this once," or " It was only just," or " I was not the only one who did it," or " It was the fault of my school, or of my companions, and not mine." No ; this is aU useless. Nature is one name for the material laws of God, and Nature may reveal to us something of His will. Does Nature take excuses ? Is there weak pity, is there relenting good nature in her ? Or does he who violates her law suffer, suffer always, suffer inevitably ? does not the fire always burn, and the water drown, and the lightning fall, and the pitch defile ? Does nature spare the drunken man ? does nature spare the dissolute youth ? or does she stamp her brand upon his forehead, and strike her paralysis through all his frame ? Stern as necessity, inexorable as death, does she not proclaim that he who trangresses her decree, be he the very favourite of the world, shall suffer for it, and that she does not swerve aside from her inevitable course ? May not Nature thus teach us to 208 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm. xxi. fear nature's God ? Excuses will never cease on earth ; never cease till we stand at the solemn bar of God. Then they will. Then " every mouth will be stopped." Then each self-deceiving apology will sound too blas- phemous, each miserable excuse too ridiculous to utter. Were it not better now to anticipate the revelations of that day ? to judge ourselves that we be not judged ? to make no excuses to ourselves, none to our fellows, none to our God now — to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God — to lay our mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope. Hope — for though in the physical world 'here be no forgiveness of sins, in the spiritual world, for the peni- tent, and only for the penitent, there is. Where can it be found ? In Christ, and in Christ alone. If we find it not in Him, we cannot find it anywhere. There is no other name under Heaven whereby we must be saved. Oh, not with excuses ; not with any fancied palliation or fancied merit, but with deep penitence, with utter self-abasement, with absolute confession to Almighty God, — so let us come to Him, for so alone can we acceptably seek Him. " Just as I am, without one plea, Save that Thy blood was shed for me, And that Thou bid'st me come to Thee, Lamb of God, I come. ' ' Just as I am, and waiting not To rid my soul of one dark blot, To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each .s])of:, Lamb of God, I come." June nth, 1874. SEEMON XXII. THE TEMPLE OF THE GOD OF TRUTH. 2 Chron. xxxvl 23. ** And he hath charged me to build him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all His people ? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up." You have just heard these words in the Second Lesson of to-day, and the thoughts which they suggest seem applicable to the present position of us all. The Israel- ites were returning to their home. Difficulties and dangers on every side encompassed them ; but whatever those difficulties and dangers might be, their one duty, their one ambition, their one purpose, their one hope, was to build a temple to the Lord their God. It was to be for them an effort, at once strenuous and sacred, at once united and individual. I. It was to be a material temple that they were to build. This is the first conception which men always form of the habitation of God — places set apart to His honour, hallowed by the associations of His worship ; places like the chapel in which we are met to-day, — the outward beauty of which we desire to make a symbol of the love and honour which we owe to God, but which, I trust, every one of you will still more earnestly desire to honour with love and reverence — to haUow by seriousness and godly fear. God may be near you in M.S. p 210 IK THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [seem. every place ; but nowhere nearer to your boyhood than in this your school-chapel. If daily, as you enter, each of you will kneel low on your knees before God's foot- stool, entreating Him to banish from your cleansed soul all low desires, all dreamy reveries, all guilty thoughts, that the words of your mouth and the meditations of your heart may be acceptable in His sight; — if you determine, from the first, faithfully to fulfil the simple duty of joining with your own lips in the hymns and responses, and by the Amen of serious hearts, making each prayer your own, — then here most assuredly, to the infinite help and blessing of your lives, will you be enabled day by day to see more and more brightly the Face of God ; and pure Faith and meek Charity and every " hovering angel girt with golden wings," will here take you by the hand and waive off each baser temptation, till, in your own earthly lives, you have found a place for the temple for the Lord, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob. II. But though you may best seek Him here, you may find God everywhere. The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands. This great glorious world is His. The sky is His, with its driving clouds, with its sunset colourings, with its overarching canopy of stainless blue. The trees of the forest are His, with every moss and lichen that inlay their gnarled boughs with silver and emerald, and the flowers that nestle at their feet, and the birds that sing among their branches. This long summer which you have all enjoyed is His, and the autumn with its raiment of gold and purple ; — and the sea is His, and He made it, and aU that moveth therein. " What you see around you is not — as the obtrusive ignorance of fancied wisdom has often so arrogantly proclaimed to us — xxii.] THE TEMPLE OF THE GOD OF TRUTH. 211 is not dull, dead matter, not blind and formless law, but the translucence of a divine energy, the work of Him who layeth the beams of His chambers upon the waters, and maketh the clouds His chariot, and walketh upon the wings of the wind. The darkened and un- spiritual intellect, wise in its own conceit, may distenant creation of its God ; but the fact that there are blind eyes does not disprove the reality of the light. The proof of that Light is simply that it shines ; nor does it need other evidence save its own existence. The materialist may proclaim to us that to him all is dark- ness, but the senses are not man's only teachers, and the humble and the spiritual-hearted shall feel in this universe of God no dead combination of chance atoms, but a '' Sense of something far more deeply interfased, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round oc^an and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; " ^ and that something is none other than the presence cf the Lord his God. III. But though to all who know and love Him God is the Soul of the visible universe, and we " climb by these sunbeams to the Father of Lights," He hath a nearer and a truer temple still. The earth hath He made, indeed, for the children of men, and it shines with His handiwork ; but it is spirit only that can know spirit, and God's truest temple is the upright Iieart and pure. I look around upon you all — upon these youthful bodies into which God lias breathed the breath of life, and v»rhich so have become living souls. I look around me, and I say — Some may be neglected, some desecrated ; in the shrines of some there may be secret idols, ^ Wordsworth, Tintern A hhey. p 2 21 y IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. worshipped with the flame of strange fires and the smoke of unhallowed incense ; but even of the most ruined it is true now — and God grant that it may be more and more true hereafter ! — that the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these ! What ? Know ye not, every one of you, that your bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost, who dwelleth in you, — temples which you ought to be raising now and to the end, — temples which God has given us all charge to build and hallow, and of which I ask you, " Who is there among you of all His people? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up." IV. Eor in striving to hallow in your own mortal bodies a house for God's habitation, you will all be joining to build yet another temple — God's last, best, truest temple, — a Church, that is, a society of God's children; — in this instance the society of a great English school, rising invisibly and silently to God's honour — a school in which God wishes and loves to dwell— a school " with Christ for its one foundation, while those for whom Christ died are the materials of which it is composed." And this is an eternal temple. The day shall come in some far-off time when our chapels and our schools shall be in ruins, and the stones of them shall have crumbled into dust; but when that day comes, we, as living stones in that spiritual and eternal structure, may long have been fitly framed togethei ana grown into a holy temple which time effaceth not, and Avhere God continually dwells. This — the temple of God in a Christian school — this is the temple which God specially charges every one of us, from the least to the greatest, to build for Him to-day. It was no easy task of old for Israel; it will be no easy task for us. They did it in anxious labour, and amid many XXII.] TEE TEMPLE OF THE GOD OF TRUTH. 213 perils, and so must we. Their enemies came scofiQng. " What do these feeble Jews ? " asked Sanballat the Horonite. " If a fox go np, he shall break down their stone wall," sneered Tobias the Ammonite. But they went on, because the people had a mind to work. And when their enemies conspired by force to hinder them, they did as we must do. They set a watch against them, day and night ; and each of the people had his spear, and sword, and bow; and each as he builded with one of his hands, with the other he held a weapon, and so, sword on thigh, toiled at the high labour from the rising of the sun till the stars appeared. And so must we build ; — all of us unitedly ; — all of us prayer- fully ; — all of us from morning till night ; — all armed and watchful ; — all working with a will. For God has charged us to build, and the work is great and large. Will even one of you be such a traitor as to join with scoffing opponent or conspiring enemy ? Will even one of you be such a caitiff as to be idle himself, and to spoil the work of his brethren ? Arise ! and build for God ! " Who is there among you of all His people ? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up." V. But what kind of a temple does God require ? On what condition will the Lord our God who is so hio-h o ' deign to dwell in the house we build ? I will mention one condition. God is essentially and before all thiugs a God of truth. If God is to be with us there must be truth here, and by truth I mean not only truthfulness, which is a part of it, but reality ; not merely that absence of falsehood which is its first element, but absolute sin- cerity. What a grand thing it is in a human life — what hope it gives that a boy will grow up worthily to that virtue which is nothing but perfect manliness — v;hen 214 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. everything that he is and does is built upon the large basis of sincerity ; when we know that, whatever his faults may be, .there is no sham about him, no thievish corners in his character, no subterranean jealousies, no smouldering malignities. He may strike the downright blow, but he will not use the poisoned dagger ; and if he smite it will be by broad daylight, and in the face, not at the back and in the dark. His character may not be perfect, but at least it is transparent ; his countenance may not be winning, but at least he does not wear a mask. If we know that w^e may trust his honesty and his straightforwardness ; if we feel that he would rather die than lie ; if his worst enemy yet might fearlessly appoint him a judge and arbiter : then I say that, having clean hands and a pure heart, he who hath not lift up his soul to vanity nor sworn to deceive his neighbour, this man shall receive the blessing of the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. a. Since, then, this school must be built up into an habitation for the God of truth, let us see to it that w^e be true. We must be true first to one another. Not one of us stands alone. We are bound together by common hopes, common interests, common duties, common affections. If we be true to one another we shall not seek our own; there can then be no treacheries, no falsities among us ; no influences that subtly corrupt, no lies that secretly undermine ; but in word and deed a nobility and a loyalty which renders all baseness impossible between man and man. We who are set in authority over you must be thoroughly loyal to you; loyal to you by never forgetting how solemn is our responsibility for those your interests which are entrusted to our care ; loyal to you by con- sidering your welfare more even than our own ; loyal to XXII.] THE TEMPLE OF THE GOV OF TRUTH. 2i5 you by seeing that, in whatever other way you may lose or fail, you shall never lose by one hour of our idleness, or fail by one carelessness of our neglect ; loyal to jqm by never allowing a like or a dislike, an offence or an impatience, to deflect for one moment the even scale of our impartial justice ; loyal to you by never allowing an impulse of anger or a thought of popularity to divert our judgment by one hairsbreadth from what is right ; loyal to you, therefore, by often doing, not what you like, but what you need, — not what might please you for the moment, but what will be best for jom in the end. God forbid that I should shrink from settinsr o before you our duties as masters no less frankly and faithfully than yours as boys ; and these are our duties — to meet all your wishes half-way when they are good or innocent, but never to indulge them when they are unwise or wrong; to make the path of labour, and of knowledge, and of self-denial as smooth before you as God permits, but to do our utmost, at any cost, to check your feet when they would stray into the paths of death, or the steps that take hold on hell. All this you know, and I feel an entire confidence that here, if any- where, the ruled and the ruling are one in heart. For as we to you, so must you be no less loyal to us; loyal to us even when we ask you to do hard things and to make great sacrifices ; loyal to us even when you do not yet see why certain restrictions are necessary, or certain studies desirable ; loyal to us, even if in all honesty, we have failed to understand your character, or failed to appreciate your efforts ; loyal to us for having tried faithfully to serve you, even when you cease to be under our authority. For your gratitude we ask not ; from the noble it will come spontaneously, from the ignoble it never comes at all, nor does it even enter into 216 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. 3UV calculations. Enough for us if, whether grateful or ungrateful, we can help you a little on life's hard and thorny road. But more than this, you must be loyal not only to us, but to one another. When you daily meet in the school, in the classroom, in the dormitory, in the playground, cherish in your hearts not only a holy charity for one another, but with it a deep reverence for the awfulness before God of your common nature and your common immortality. Yes ! be true to one another. Behold how good and pleasant a thing it is, brethren, to live together in unity. In lowliness of heart let each of you esteem others better than himself. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. Oh, you, who are elder, while you lessen each other's trials by a friendship full of manly and mutual honour, make it your highest common duty to shelter the young, the weak, the inexperienced, so that neither cruelty, nor thoughtless- ness, nor, worse than all else, the deadly curse and plague- spot of impurity inflict on their souls an irreparable harm. Build God's temple in kindness, by seeing that there be no such thing as a bully to vex, unhindered, the life of his fellows ; build it in manliness, by seeing that no one elder or younger boy be allowed, unchecked, to profane the sacred name of friendship by corrupt and spurious fancies, which, beginning in effeminacy and vanity, end in shame and degradation. Yes ; if you would build the temple of the Lord you must be true to one another. I3. But remember that you cannot be quite true to one another unless you are true to your own selves. As our great poet says : — " To thine own self be true, And it shall follow as the night the day, Thou caust not then be false to any man." And to be true to vourselves is to be true to vour XXII.] THE TEMPLE OF THE GOD OF TRUTH. 217 higher nature — trne to the aims and purposes of an immortal soul, created in God's image and redeemed into His adoption. He who degrades God's high ideal for his mortal life — he who sows to the flesh and not to the spirit — he who prefers the death of sin to the life of righteousness — he who to the impulses of his lower nature sacrifices the inspirations of his higher and eternal nature, as Adam did when he flung away his Eden of innocence for the forbidden fruit, as Esau did when for one mess of meat he sold his birthright, as Saul did when he suffered one raging envy to poison his whole existence, as David did when he debased his soul to be trampled in the mire by one evil lust — such a one is a traitor to himself. It is sometimes said of a man that he is his own worst enemy; but this, alas ' is true of many a man in a sense far deeper than that in which it is ordinarily used. An enemy might injure for a time, but what enemy, short of Satan's self, v/ould destroy another with a subtle, everlasting, irremediable destruction, as he who sells his soul for nought ? To be true to yourself you must take as the one law of your being that only which is best, and purest, and likes t God. 7. For as you cannot be true to one another without being true to yourselves, so neither can you be true to yourselves if you are not true to God. He has made your heart His dwelling-place; you must be true to Him by not defiling it with idols. He has made the fortress of your soul strong for Himself : you must be true to Him by not betraying it to devils. He has given you talents and opportunities : you must be true to Him by employing them in His service. He has entrusted to you, as a labourer, the vineyard which His right hand hath planted : you must be true to Him by yielding Him its fmits of increase. Oh ! strive to be 218 IN THE DAYS OF TRY YOUTH, [serm. xxii. true to Him by obeying His commandments ; to be true to Him in your daily prayers by bringing Him real sins to be pardoned, real wants to be supplied ; to be true to Him in this His house, coming before Him with meek heart and due reverence : by coming here not to dream, or to sleep, or to smile, or to trifle, or to look, or to be looked at, but to praise and pray ; by listening to the messages He sends you here as to words addressed to your individual souls. And one such message He is speaking to all of you now. The elder of you — the Prefects, the Heads of Houses, the Captains of Class- rooms and Dormitories — He bids you protect the weak, punish the wicked, put down with a strong hand all evil doing, support and countenance whatsoever things are pure, true, lovely, and of good report. And no less to the younger — even to the youngest new boy amongst us — He says. Be strong in the Lord, for moral weakness is very nearly akin to active wickedness. You, too, must help us to build God's temple. " Who is there among you of all His people 1 The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up." Sept. 20, 1874. SERMON XXIII. . DRIFTING AWAY. Heb, ii. 1. *' Therefore we onglit to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heaj-d, lest at any time we should let them slip." Once, in tlie safe harbour of a great bay, amid scenes not specially beautiful or circumstances wholly delight- ful, yet sheltered from every serious and fatal storm, there was anchored a little boat, which contained three youths. They were brothers, and had been bidden to wait there till towards the sunset, when a vessel would come to fetch them away ; and they had been carefully warned that the bay was less safe than it looked, and that beyond the harbour-bar the sea was perilous and vast. One of these three youths, wlio, although the youngest, had the air of an altogether nobler race, felt a deep and instinctive horror of disobeying the command. The second of the three was a twin brother, a little older than this one, — attractive, brilliant, and capable of the highest things, but so apt to be misled by self-will and blinded by delusion, that when he grew wise in his own conceit, " there was more hope of a fool than of him." The third, though in every respect inferior to his brothers and base in aspect, except only when his features reflected some family resembl-ance to theirs, yet being the eldest, and physically the strongest, was constantly trying to control and master them. Capable of admirable 220 IK TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTh.. [serm. usefulness when he submitted to their guidance, he was so violent and headstrong that there had never been any instance in their lives when he took the lead, in which aU three had not been more or less injured or disgraced: nor was it v/ithout misgiving as to the result, that a father who loved them had left them together in the boat to-day. But during the early morning hours nothing went wrong. They amused themselves innocently, each according to his own bent. Now and then, as he passed by, some passenger upon the shore, or sailor in another boat, would talk with them, and seeing tliat they were but boys, would sometimes remind them that they must be careful. To such words the youngest always listened respectfully, even when the elder brother would hear them impatiently, and the second with a conceited smile. But an hour or two had barely passed by when the eldest boy got weary. Indolent and ill-conditioned, he let the time hang heavy on his hands ; and at last, in an evil, idle moment, stepped to the boat's prow, and gazed long and earnestly towards the forbidden sea. It did not look dangerous — only the lightest breeze appeared to ruffle it ; and as he gazed on its magic sparkle, and listened to the light laugh of its waves upon the shore, a longing, yearning curiosity flowed into his heart as with a siren song. The longer he gazed the more pas- sionate grew his desire to sail away; and nothing checked him but an indefinable misgiving, as long as one brother faintly dissuaded, and the other warned and entreated him from his purpose. And soon the second, who was much under his influence, began to waver and hesitate. Perhaps after all it did not matter much. Tiie warnings of peril might be only old wives' fables, as in his selfish depravity an enemy wlio wore the mask of friendship XXIII.] DRIFTING AWAY. 221 bad subtly hinted to him. The more he wavered, the more he got to share and to support the bad longing of his brother. Under such united pressure the youngest failed to hold out; his half-remonstrances were first, imperiously overruled, then contemptuously neglected, At last he hardly checked his brother's hands when, after long handling and trying the rope, they flung to the winds all that had been told them, knit their minds to the desperate resolve, slipped the hawser from the shore, tugged up the heavy anchor from its hold, hoisted the light sail, and the boat swung free. Their course at first was not quite smooth ; though pulled up from its hold, yet the anchor was of massive iron. Here and there it dragged along the beach, giving the boat a troubled motion ; here and there it caught upon the rocks, pulling the boat up with a sudden shock. More than once they were reduced to seriousness, and half determined to listen to their younger brother and to stop ; and all the more because they did not feel quite happy or at ease. But the eldest urged that, having once slipped anchor, it was a pity to have committed that fault for nothing ; and the second was confident that no harm would come of it after all ; and even the youngest, corrupted by his brothers, began to share that guilty longing for the sea. For soon they felt a kind of deli- rious exultation as the new scenes sped by them, bathed to their imagination in the colours of enchantment. Once indeed they were imperilled on a sandbank. Once they were met by another boat, hastily returning, with frightened, outwearied rowers, and stradned and broken oars. And when they reached the harbour-bar there was a great roar of waves, and the boat was almost swamped. But they were caught just then in a sudden gust, and their sail was up. Almost unconscious of what 222 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. they did, tliey shot over the seething bar, — and then they were in the open sea. And there, when gradually the sunlight began to fade from dark and heaving expanse, and the seductive treachery of the placid waters to be flecked with angry foam, and the blackness of clouds which had been slowly gathering over them to burst into rain and storm, the youngest brother, who had often turned homewards his timid glances, did pluck up courage, and by his tears and entreaties prevail on them to strike sail, and begin to row back. But alas ! that rowing back was a desperate effort ! — the wind was against them ; the waves broke over them; their arms were weaker than once they were; their very wills seemed to have been smitten with para- lysis : and, worse than all, they found that they were now in the fatal grasp of a powerful current, against which they thought it in vain to struggle, and fear and shame would not suffer them to make signals of distress ; and in the last glimpse of them wdiich was seen from far by those who loved them, the two elder were seated in sullen de- fiance at the prow, and the face of the third was hidden in his hands, as he sat apart in stupefied despair. And what happened to them could only be conjectured by the wreck that had befallen many another boat on those fatal waves. Of these all wliich was known was that some had been seized by pirates ; and some foundered in the deep sea ; and some been shattered to pieces on rocky headlands or sunken reefs ; — but one sad hope was left — ^because some, aided by merciful change, of wind and tide, had struggled, bruised and weary, into other and bleaker harbours, where, by painful endeavour, their anchor w^ould just hold out ; and some, even at the last moment of desperation, had been saved by the lifeboat, destitute and shattered, and with the total loss of all. xxrii.] DRIFTING AWAY. 223 The youngest of you will have seen that those things are an allegory, and will perhaps guess something of those moral laws to which the allegory points; but only a few of the elder of you will know that it is simply an expansion of my text. "We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things that we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip ; " for that word " let them slip," is in the original /jbrj iroie 'jrapappvco/juev, lest perchance we should drift away from them. In the Greek usage, water, any brook that dis- appears, is said irapappelv, but anything which is borne along on the surface of that flowing w^ave — any boat, for instance, which is loose upon its current is said irapappvrivaL, to float, or drift away. And the writer bids us not drift away from the things we have heard. For he has begun by telling us that of old God spake to our fathers TToXu/xepco? Kal rrroXvTpoTrco^, "at sundry times and in divers manners " or, with more accuracy, frag- mentarily and multifariously ; fragmentarily, as in the Old Testament, now revealing God's unity, now man's immortality, finally man's redemption; and multifariously, now by dreams, now by Urim, now by prophets ; and of these prophets sometimes a king, sometimes a shepherd; now an exile, now a gatherer of sycamore leaves. But in these last days, in this new dispensation, not fragment- arily, but in one final whole ; not multifariously, but by one divine, eternal Voice, hath He spoken unto us by His Son. TereXecTTai, it is finished ; the revelation is finished now, the vision sealed, the Son Himself has come to His labourers in the vineyard ; and through all history we hear a Voice from heaven saying, " This is my beloved Son, hear Him." Never can the race of man, never can the soul of man be nearer to God than Christ has brought them: nor since Him hath there been, nor hath 224 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH [serm. there needed to be, one further ray of moral light, one brighter gleam of spiritual illumination. Yes ; the last Voice from heaven has spoken : be deaf to it, and you will hear it indeed no longer — not a whisper of it shall stir the air, not a murmur of it echo in the ear ; but you will hear no other. Hate that light, and you may then conscientiously deny it, for you will cease to see it — it will exist to you as little as if you had been born blind ; but besides its quiet shining you shall have no other. Jesus may beqome to you a peasant-prophet who died in Palestine ; God may become to you dead matter and formless law: yet, for all that, the truth remains, and it is the blood of Christ that alone cieanseth from all sin, and we must all stand before the judgment seat of God. But all of you have heard and have learnt the truth. A vow was made for you at baptism ; that vow was repeated in the sight of God at your confirmation : therefore you ought to take the more earnest heed to the things which you have heard, lest at any time you should drift away from them. Drifting away ; — try to fix that word in your minds. There is a moral and there is an intellectual drifting away of the soul from truth ; and very often the moral is the cause of the intellectual, so that a man does not know God's doctrine, because he will not do God's will ; and very often the moral is the result of the intellec- tual, so that, as St. Paul says, he who has become vain in his imaginations, and his foolish heart is darkened, professing himself to be wise becomes a fool, and giving himself up, as did the heathen world, to un clean- ness, changes the truth of God into a lie. But it is of the moral drifting away from the truth, not of the intellectual, that 1 would speak now. Drifting away ; how much there is in that mournful xxin.] JbRIFTING AWAY. 225 word ! If the very picture it involves had not led me insensibly into allegory, exactly the same moral truths might have been expressed in simplest fact. Is not your mortal life that frail shallop, in which 3^0 u must wait in the little harbour of Time, till you are summoned to that world where the eternal is also the visible ? And in that life are there not the three influences, of the body, the intellect, the spirit; and the command that all three receive, is it not the moral law ? And that anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, which, if you will not tamper with it, or tear it from its hold, will grapple you safely to the shore — is it not your con- science ? And is not the history of many human lives exactly this — by the allurements of the world, or the lusts of the flesh, or the wiles of the devil, you are tempted to loosen that anchor ; to assert a spurious freedom ; to disobey the moral law of God : and is it not the worst and eldest brother — the flesh, the body, the temporal within us — ^which first is stirred; and then the intellect is perverted ; and then, by the joint infatuation of the passionate body, and the poor, vain, darkened, perverted sophisticated intellect, the spirit youngest born of God within us, is encarnalised and depraved ; and do we not thus force conscience from its anchor-hold, and begin the bad career? At first con- science drags a little ; and the sinner, not yet quite happy in his disobedience, might then easily be saved ; but if this be neglected — if the last barriers of moral scruple be surpassed — if every spiritual instinct within us be sedulously silenced — if each faint short effort be suffered to become yet shorter and yet more faint ; — oh, then it is that we drift and drift and drift, and the shore lessens behind us, and the sunset fades from the God-forgetting soul, and the false smile vanishes from the treacherous M.S. Q 226 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH [serm temptation, and the smooth surface becomes a sweeping current, and strong tide, and roaring sea ! And when I say this, am I not tearing a page from ten thousand life histories ? from your life history, and yours, and yours ? And what remains for these ? One thing only : return, repentance — to be won at all hazards, at the cost, if need be, of the very life — repentance even through agonies and energies — or a certain fearful looking-for, and to stand naked, ashamed, guilty, speechless, before the just and inevitable bar. "Drifting away." He who wrote that expression knew something of the human heart ; he knew that the soul does not leap at once into absolute apostasy ; he knew that the beginning of sin is as the letting out of water ; he knew that, as the proverb says, the mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's wing ; he knew that by almost invisible deflections we arrive at almost infinite distances. We read of vessels separated from their consorts at evening by a few yards, which yet, caught by the stealthy flow of some invisible current, have in a single night drifted a hundred miles away. And do you ask me " How are you to know v/hether you are drifting away or not ? " — that, as your own hearts will tell you, is an idle question. You cannot walk the dim borderland between vice and virtue without knowing it. You cannot drift from heedlessness to indifference, from indifference to disobedience, from disobedience to rebellion, without being well aware of it. You cannot be swept along from the thought to the wish, from the wish to the word, from the word to the act, from the act to the habit, from the willing habit to the penal necessity, without being well conscious of it. Drifting away from the truths of God and of your fiilher to the lies of those false friends who are your XXIII.] DBIFTING AWAY. 227 worst enemies; from liome to a hungry and barren land; from innocence to a stained and evil life: oli, you cannot thus drift from the safe shelter of child- hood into the strong currents of youth, into the dangerous seas of temptation, into the awful gulf and cataract of death, without, at the first stages, being only too well and fatally aware of it. There is not one of you who does not know whether, with him, at this moment, the anchor is holding firm and fast, or wdiether it is dragging, or whether his little boat has already rushed over the harbour bar and is in the sea. It is only late in the career of impenitence that words of warning fall on the ear no longer ; that if the scorner hopes it is a hope without an effort, and if he prays it is a prayer without a change ; and the twilight becom'es the evening, and the evening the black, dark night ; and grey hairs are upon him, and he knows it not ; and "the eye of the soul has grown dull, and the heart waxed fat, and he is least afraid when most in peril," And what is the remedy ? It all lies in the one word, '' Take heed." If you take heed to that w^hich you have heard, neither man nor devil can slip the hawser or shake the anchor of your soul. How well Moses knew this when he bade the Israelites bind God's law as a token upon the hand and as frontlets between the eyes. How well David knew it when he said, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? even by taking heed thereto, according to Thy Word." How well Solomon knew it when he said vie fir) irapappvYj^ — "My son, drift not away from my com- mandments ; keep them as the apple of thine eye ; bind them upon thy fingers ; write them upon the tal)le of thine heart." My brethren, be not deceived. Attention to the moral law of God and the awful truths of religion Q 2 223 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [seiim. is an act of the will. Show me the boy who is living from hand to mouth ; in whom the impressions of holy reverence are being worn away ; whose life is frivolous, weak, thoughtless; whose nominal prayers are no prayers at all; who kneels daily in this holy place, but kneels dull, and mute, and heavy, and with wandering, and often guilty, fancies, but never kneels to praise and to worship ; who has forgotten the lessons which he learnt as a child at his mother's knee, and neglected the advice which his father taught him when he parted from his home ; show me the boy v/ho rose this morning late, and sluggish, and prayerless; who has spent the time since chapel in aimless idleness, or in frivolous gossip, or in reading his trashy novel or his sporting newspaper, without one thought of duty, or eternity, or God ; without once confessing his sins to liis Father in heaven, or making holier resolutions for the week to come ; — show me this boy, and I will show you one who is drifting away. Therefore if you would be c5afe, take heed. You, whose boat is still anchored to the shore, since the temptations of boyhood will assuredly steal upon your security and assault your inexperience, take heed to these words, that you may be faithful and watchful to the end. You who are drifting away, take heed to them, while there yet is time, as to the warning voice of one who calls to you from the shore. Let us all take heed to them, not as a subject for vain, empty criticism or fool-born jest, but as one more message of our God and Father to these souls of ours, to be despised, indeed, and rejected at our pleasure, but also at our peril. Oh, set in the midst of so many and great dangers, rarely or never do we take heed enough. Therefore, in the repeated language of Holy Scrijitare, I say to you, to all : Take heed, let the fear XXIII.] DRIFTING AWAY. 229 of the Lord be on you. To the you-nger : take heed, regard not iniquity; take heed that no man deceive you. To the elder : take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones ; take heed what thou doest. To the abler and more advanced : take heed that the light in you be not darkness; take heed of an evil heart of unbelief. To all — to every one of you : take heed how ye hear ; take heed of the things you have heard, lest perchance you drift away from them. September 4, 1874. SEKMON XXIV. TEE HISTORY AND HOPES OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL. Ps. cxxii. 8. " For my brethren aud companions' sake, T will wish thee prosperity. Yea, because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek to do thee good." Last Sunday I spoke to you of the temple of God in a Christian school, and tried to show you that it must be built on the broad foundation of truth, and that we, if we would be builders therein, must be true to our- selves, true to one another, true to God. It seems no unnatural sequel to such a subject if to-day I speak to you about our school itself. You will pardon me if, in the inadequate attempt to say even a little of what might be said on such a theme, I unwillingly detain you a moment longer than usual. I am persuaded you will not think the topic useless. Anything that raises us to the full consciousness that we are not our own, but members one of another — anything that deepens in us the conviction that God has placed us in this His world not to seek our own pleasure, or think our own thoughts, or speak our own words, but to do His work in our own hearts, and for our fellow-men — this must be good for us. Many a sin and many a baseness will be destroyed or weakened if we can thus kill within us the perverted love ot self. Since, then, on Tuesday next we keep by SERM. xxTV.] THE HOPES OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 231 a religious service that commemoration day whicli reminds us that Marlborough College has now, for thirty-one years, taken its place among the Public -Schools of England, let us to-day look backwards and forwards — backward to its past history, forward to its future hopes — in order that we may love our school still better, and the more heartily feel, and more vigorously follow our path of duty in its present circumstances. I. I need not do more than remind you of the associations which surround us in the place where our College stands, — yet even they have their deep significance. That Druidic mound which faces our chapel door is but one of the links which associate us with the past. Strange but humbling fact, that the most permanent memorial which man can rear is just a heap of the soil on Avhich he treads ! In that mound we have the most ancient monument in the possession of any English school. Once the tumulus of some great British priest or chieftain, it is the relic of a worship of which the very deities are forgotten, At Eome the stupendous ruins of the Colosseum strilce us with wonder; but that mound was reared before one stone of the Colosseum had been laid — before the herald angels sang from the midnight sky — before, over the fields of Palestine walked those blessed feet, which "Eighteen hundred years ago were nailed For our salvation to the bitter cross." it stood, in all probability as now it stands. And thus for two millenniums has it been the silent witness of that sacred light by which God " shows all things in the slow history of their ripening." When it was reared Euf^land was a countrv of waste and morass and moor, like Labrador; wolves howled in her forests, wild boars 232 IN TEE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. wallowed in her fens. Then came the "drums and tramplings " of successive conquests. Eoman discipline subjugated barbarous disunion ; Saxon, and Dane, and Norman each triumphed in turn over the enervation of their predecessors. Then our mound became the keep of a Norman castle. In the days of the Plan- tagenets English princes lived on it, and English kings have dated their charters from it. Through the long lines of Lancaster, and York, and Tudor, and Stuart, it continued. In the civil wars its castle was dismantled. Then these grounds became the home of a noble English family, and in the reign of Charles II. our old house was built by the most famous architect of his age. How in those days it became familiar to poets, nobles, and statesmen — how then it became one of the most famous inns in England, and, as a resting-place between London and the -West, was visited by many of England's greatest worthies, and among others by the most splendid and powerful of her Prime Ministers — you may read elsewhere. Then came that change which makes it so memorable to us. Thirty-one years ago, on August 25, 1843, the first Marlburians walked with considering footsteps about the place which was to be the new home of their boyhood, and to which, as time passed on, some of their sons were to follow them. Some of you who sit on these benches to-day are sons of some of those 200 who, thirty-one years ago, first entered this place as Marlborough boys ; and of their traditions, of their influences, of their characters, of the m^otives brought to bear upon them, of the manner in which they yielded to those motives — so far-reaching are the pulsations of our moral life — all of you are the heirs. The sound of their boyish laughter, the echo of their happy voices has died away, and many of them have XXIV.] THE HOPES OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 233 passed away from the life of earth. In a body so large as this many die as the years pass on. I remember the first boy who ever entered my room as a pupil here nearly twenty years ago. He lies now under the deep sea-wave. I remember the first head of my form here — ^that memorial window records his character. Yes, we die ; but not the effect of our deeds. All other sounds *' Die in yon rich sky, They faint in hill and field or river ; Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And live for ever and ever." If you be living weak, miserable, effeminate lives, then let it be a warning and an awful thought ; if you are living true, manly, righteous lives, let it be an ennobling, an inspiring thought, that your lives too will live, in their moral echoes, for coming generations of Marl- borough boys. II. And another fact reminds us that these thirty-one years, which are a generation of human life, have passed over this young school. It is that our first founders, our first benefactors, those who first worked, and toiled, and thought for us, are fast passing away. A wise impulse in this age, as in the days of Elizabeth, led to the foundation of many new schools. After the long and dreary slumber of a corrupt and atheist century, waked by the trumpet voices of "Wesley and Wliitfield, the clergy were beginning to shake off their apathy, and in every parish of England to practise those lives of stern self-denial and honoured poverty of which they now set so happy an example. There was a widespread desire to help them in furnishing their sons with an education as good as that of the proudest noble in tlie land. It was while that thought was in many minds 234 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH [serm. that a clergyman, afterwards Dean of Manchester,^ whose bust is in the hall, was walking about these grounds with a gentleman^ who then resided here; and, struck witli the prospect of the river, the valley, the forest, the downs, and with the quiet, the green fields, the healthy air of the place, he exclaimed, '' What an excellent site this would be for a great school ! " Those words, which we may well regard as a Bath K61 — a providential voice — led to the foundation of Marlborough College, He enlisted others who felt an interest in the same cause. Some were men of eminence, but most of them were simple English gentlemen, who with great zeal and self-denial carried out their noble purpose. That clergyman died last year ; — the grandsons of the gentleman to whom he spoke, and of another,^ who also died last year full of years and honours, and who has often been called the father of the College, are sitting among you now ; and he to whose well-judged munificence you owe the inestimable boon of the Adderley Library,* which adds so much to your advantages, — the most generous and the most faithful of all the friends of the College, — he too lies on the bed of sickness. And as I speak I recall the names of others, and younger men, who could not enrich Marlborough with their worldly goods — because they had them not — but who, working here as earnest, and faithful, and zealous masters, or living here as high- minded, and pure, and noble boys, enriched it with the more golden legacy of manly memories and Christian lives. I recall the names of some in past days and some in these — of Edward Lawford Brown, and Thomas Harris Burn, and Edward Colquhoun Boyle, and Herbert Edward Booth, and Walter Ernest Congreve — who being ^ L)ean Bowers. ^ Christoplier Hodgson, Esq. 2 Mr. Halcomb. ^ F. Alleyne McGeacby, Esi|. XXIV.] THE HOPES OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 235 dead, yet speak, and who have not lived in vain. Yes, year by year the old generous benefactors, the old munificent friends, the old self-denying labourers for Marlborough College are fast passing away, and leaving us only the heritage of those good deeds which cannot die. We need others to take their places ; and I trust that, by God's blessing, we shall find them in her sons. We shall find them, I trust, in some of you. You will arise and call her blessed. You will hand on undimned to others the lighted torch of bright enthusiasm and honourable tradition, which was put into your hands. You will continue and extend for others the blessings irom which you yourselves have gained. Some of you, when you grow up, may become rich and prosperous men. If you do, remember that in a greedy age you were taught at your school, as a lesson drawn from the good deeds of its founders, that, as there is nothing more absolutely vulgar and despicable than selfish and grasping riches, so you can adopt no surer means of ennobling your wealth, and thereby ennobling your own souls, than by aiding those institutions which have been founded for the welfare of mankind. And for a wealthy man I cannot think of any means of usincr gold more fruitful in usefulness, more likely to preserve an honoured memory, than to support sound learning and religious education by becomiug the benefactor of some great school. The College then was founded ; and they who had laboured and given their substance for it, won thereby a grace and a blessing which nothing else could have given them. But how did their work prosper ? At first not well. Let us bear in mind that in those days it was a great and wholly new experiment : and some hundreds of 236 IN TRE DAYS- OF THY YOUTH. [serm. boys, all strangers to one another, collected in one building — without a past, without unity, without tradi- tions — fell at first into many rough and discreditable ways, which seemed likely at one time to make the name of Marlburian a bye word and a hissing. It must have been a bitter thing for those who then worked for our school to bear ; but the}^ who sow faithfully, though it ])e in tears, shall reap in joy. Yes, lahorare et orare were (as in one way or other they always are) success- ful ; and the first master of Marlborough^ has lived to see that he was doing a work which, though different from that achieved by others, has yet been granted to few. For to those days of trial, and greatly to his work, we owe that organisation which has since been imitated in its minutest particulars by later schools. And what was S-till wanting it was granted to his successor to achieve. It is something for every Marlborough boy to know that when he looks at that portrait of Bishop Cotton which adorns our hall, he is looking at the likeness of one of the best men whom this generation has produced. It was God's special blessing to a new school that sent him here. He was not great as the world counts great- ness. When he came here he was but little known beyond a narrow circle of attached friends. Nor was it at once either in numbers, or in intellectual successes, or in improved finances, t'hat Marlborough began to flourish. Yet, undoubtedly, it was Bishop Cotton who saved the school. He was here but six years ; and great as was his work as Bishop of Calcutta and Metropolitan of India, before that disastrous fall into the waters of the ^ The Rev. Matthew Henry Willcinson, D.D., rrehendary of Salis- bury and Vicar of Melksham. [Obiit March 4, 1876.] As a slight nianiorial to the name of a good man, to whom scant justice has been l)ut tardily rendered, I venture to apjiend to this sermon some lines vvJiicli 1 wrote while returning from Ids fuiicral. XXIV.] THE HOPES OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 237 Indian river after which he was seen no more, it is yet with this place that liis n^me will be most identified. It was my own deep happiness in those days to know him, to love him, to work with him, and in daily walks and intercourse with him, as afterwards by letters, until he died, to learn what manner of man he was. And how did he save Marlborough, when it might any day have disappeared, unhonoured and unregretted, from its place among the public schools of England ? My brethren, it is w^ell for you to know — it is a valuable lesson for anyone to know : it was not by the genius of the thinker ; it was nt)t by the brilliancy of the scholar ; it was not by that burning enthusiasm, and personal ascendency with which Arnold of Eugby had done his w^ork. Such gifts w^ere not his; but it w^as by those fruits of the Spirit which are in the reach of all, and by that heavenly grace which is given in even larger mea- sure to them that seek it. The lesson of. his life for you and me is that it is a thing dearer and better in God's sight, and more fruitful to our fellow-men, to be entrusted with but one talent, and tjo use it faithfully than to have a hundred, and use them ill. A calm hopefulness, a cheerful simplicity, an exquisite equanimity of temper, a humility which made him a learner to the very end, a genuine, self-denying love for Marlborough, and for those boys whom God had here entrusted to his charge — these were what gave to his life that mysterious power which is always granted to the unselfish purpose and the single eye. And this was the type of character — God grant that it may long be stamped upon some of the sons whom this school shall train ! — which he produced among his pupils and his colleagues. I shall never forget the spectacle which the Marlborough of that day ])resented. Something was due, no doubt, to the lact 238 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm. that it was a day of adversity, which often brings out all that is noblest and sweetest in human lives. But cer- tainly the few here present who remember that time will bear me witness that it taught us all a priceless lesson. We all felt that it was a struggle, first, whether Marlborough College should live at all, next, whether it should live in honour or obscurity. We won no great successes ; we were beaten in every game ; there was much that was mean in our surroundings — much that was trying in our arrangements — much that was still coarse, and rough, and unintellectual in the habits of the place. And yet how we all loved it ! How boys and masters alike worked for it ! What a pride they felt even in its humility ! what a thrill of delight we all felt when one succeeded ! How ready they were, some of them, even to the permanent surrender of better prospects, to serve Marlborough and work for her. And verily they have their reward ; they have their reward, that is, it the highest price which life can offer is clearly to see what is best, and resolutely to do it. And is there anything better than this ? Life is not the mere living. It is worship — it is the surrender of the soul to God, and the power to see the face of God ; and it is service — it is to feel that when we die, whether praised or blamed, whether appreciated or misinterpreted, whether iionoured or ignored, whether wealthy or destitute — we liave done something to make the world we came to better and happier — we have tried to cast upon the waters some seeds which, long after we are dead, may still bring forth their flowers of Paradise. The seed dies, but the harvest lives. Sacrifice is always fruitful, and there is nothing fruitful else. Try, then, to fix in your hearts one lesson, to register in your prayers one vow, this morning — the lesson that life consisteth not XXIV.] THE HOPES OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 229 in the abundance of things that we possess, but in the good and honest work we do — the vow that you, too, will live, not to lade your soul with the thick clay of earthly riches — not to daub your lives with the un- tempered mortar of human praise — not to waste your labours on those gains of the wilderness, which can neither satisfy the soul's hunger nor quench its thirst ; but to live for what is best and greatest, to take Christ for your Captain, and do your duty to all the world. For those efforts succeeded, as such efforts always will ; they raised Marlborough from adversity. Bishop Cotton was summoned to other work ; but under a suc- cessor, whom many of you still love and remember — a pupil of Arnold, as Bishop Cotton had been his friend and colleague — the name of Marlborough rose into brilliant reputation.^ In spite of its youth, in spite of its struggles, in spite of the fact that it had neither royal founder nor rich foundation, it took its place decidedly, and unless you, its sons, degenerate, took its place permanently among the leading schools of Eng- land, striving, not unsuccessfully, to be second to none in the training it could offer, in the distinctions it could win, in the affection it could inspire, in the honour it could reflect. This prosperity you inherit ; but, my brethren, do not lose sight of that fact — which all history has shown so forcibly — that the day of prosperity is the day also of peril. The very qualities which lead to glory and eminence are but too apt, when they have produced it, to merge into the weakness, the luxury, the effeminacy, the neglect, by which it is as inevitably undermined. It has been said of nations, and it is no less true of schools, that "in their perplexities, in their 1 The Ilev. G. G. Bradley, D.D., Jlaster of University Colhffe, Oxford. 240 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [serm. struggles for existence, their infancy, their impotence, and even their disorganization, they have higher hopes and nobler passions. Out of the suffering comes the serious mind ; out of the salvation, the grateful heart ; out of the endurance, the fortitude ; out of the deliver- ance, the faith. But when the violent and external sources of suffering cease, vv^orse evils seem arising out of their rest— evils that vex less, but mortify more — that suck the blood, though they do not shed it, and ossify the heart, though they do not torture it." Yes, in every prosperous institution there is danger that " ener- vation may succed to rest, apathy to patience, and the noise of jesting words, and the foulness of dark thoughts, to the earnest purity of the girded loin and the burning lamp. About the river of human life there is a wintr}'- wind, though a heavenly simshine : the iris colours its agitation — the frost fixes on its repose. Let ns beware that our rest becomes not the rest of stones, which, so long as they are torrent-tost and thunder-riven, main- tain their majesty, but when the stream is silent and tlie storm passed, suffer the grass to cover and the lichen to feed on them, and are ploughed down into the dust." To sum np, then, in one last word — it was the duty of others to found, it is ours to build on their foundation ; of others to rescue Marlborough from adversity, it is ours to preserve and to ennoble her prosperity ; of others to mould our institutions, it is ours to see that those institutions, year by year, train every grace and virtue of boyhood into the strength of Christian manliood, and send forth, in the high service of God and man, Christian scholars and Christian gentlemen to be the hope and glory of our land. Love your school with an unselfish and loyal devotion. Feel how disgraceful it would be to wound, by worthlessness or wickedness, the rxiv.l THE HOPES OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 241 breast of that mother who thus nurses your early years. If yon work for yourselves, feel it a yet higher thing to work for her honour ; covet for Marlborough College a high career and a more and more distinguished name ; covet for her yet more earnestly the best gifts of a pure and manly tradition, a vigorous and happy life. To her, and not to anotlier, is your faithful allegiance, your chivalrous devotion due. Sparfam nactus es, hanc exorna. You are not at a tutor's to be crammed, as isolated units, for some purely selfish competition : from the necessarily vulgarising influences of such an absorption in a merely personal end you are saved by the vigorous and varied life of an English public school, which, if a boy's heart be not quite eaten out by selfishness, is enough, one would think, to ennoble the meanest nature with the thought that his life does not affect himself alone. Throw a stone into a still lake, and you will see the rings of its ruffled surface widen and widen till they die away upon the farther shore : even so, in the concentric circles of their ever-widening influences, do the lives of every one of you leave their trace in the common life of your companions. From this school many an old Marlburian has gone forth, year by year, not only with well-earned laurels, which they have won for us by manly self-denial and diligent resolve ; but — what is better still — carrying with them into the world's life high lessons which they have learnt in this place — lessons of earnest purpose, of unresting diligence, of childlike and gentlest modesty. It is these who, by the grace of God, have created for Marlborough a not ignoble past. ]\Iarlborough boys of to-day — you whom God has placed here for the most intellectually difficult, the most morally important years of all your lives — sons of Marlborough College, all of you, and, most of all II. ^. ]{ 242 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH, [serm. xxiv. you who will kneel with us in Holy Communion at the Supper of our Lord — determine, in God's name, that you too will heedfully follow the very best and truest of those who have gone before you. in the footsteps of our Master Christ ; vow that, like them, as the worthy sons of a common mother, you will strive here to be profit- able members of the Church and Commonwealth, that with them you may partake hereafter of the immortal glories of the Eesurrection. September 27, 1874. IN MEMORIAM M. M. WILKINSONS, D.D. First Master of Marlborough ColUge. Died March 4, 137(5. Aye, they are o'er — his pain and his endeavoui", Our scant acknowledgment, and frequent wrong ; Hushed are all tones of praise or blame for ever, Foi those who listen to the angels' song. He sowed the seed with sorrow and -with weeping, Barely he saw green blade or tender leaves ; Yet in meek faith, unenvious of the reaping, Blessed the glad gatherers of the golden sheaves. But we, — when reapers unto reapers calling Tell the rich harvest of the grain they bring, — Shall we forget how snow and fdeet were falling On those tired toilers of the bitter spring ? And yet of him nor word nor line remaineth, Picture nor bust, his work and worth to tell ; And though nor he nor any friend complaineth, We ask in sadness—' Marlborough, is it well ? ' Enough ! he murmured not ! — in earthly races To winners only do the heralds call ; But oh ! in yonder high and holy places Success is nothing, and the work is all. So — since ye will it — here be unrecorded The work he fa.shioned and the path he trod ; Here, but in Heaven each kind heart is rewarded, Each true name written in the books of God ! F. W. F SEKMON XXV THE NEED OF CONSTANT CLEANSING FROM CONSTANT ASSOILMENT. John xiii. 10. " He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit : and ye are clean, but not all." I. It was at the Last Supper of tlie Lord. Jesus and His apostles had taken, for the last time, the familiar walk from Bethany to Jerusalem, and had entered the upper chamber for their final gathering on earth. Even at that supreme moment the petty jealousies of life had not been exorcised, and the twelve had had an unseemly dispute which of them should be greatest. Jesus listened in pained silence, and wishing to teach them a lesson infinitely more significant and more touching; than any rebuke, knowing that His hour was come to depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own, He loved them unto the end. They had walked along the hot and dusty road over the shoulder of Olivet ; on entering the chamber they had indeed taken off their sandals and left them at the door ; but still the dust of their journey was on their unsandalled feet. To have their feet bathed before the meal was cooling, cleanly, and refreshing; but in their little mutual jealousies, no one had offered to perform the menial ofSce. And therefore, when supper was ready — R 2 244 IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH. [skrm. for so the words ouglit to be rendered, — Jesus, as the scene in all its minute details had impressed itself on the memory of the Evangelist of love, rose in perfect silence, stripped off His upper garment and tunic, took a towel, girt it round His waist, poured water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded. The example of so infinite a humility kept them dumb with deep shame, until Jesus came to Peter ; but the warm- hearted, eager apostle starts back with almost indignant surprise. " Lord," he exclaims with his usual irrepres- sible emotion, " Dost Thou mean to wash my feet ? " Thou the Son of God, the King of Israel, — Thou that hast the words of eternal life, — Thou who camest forth from God, and goest to God, perform a slave's ofi&ce for Peter's feet? It is the old strange mixture of self- conceit and self-disgust, — the self-conceit of old, which under the shadow of Hermon had called upon him so stern a rebuke when he had said " That be far from Thee, Lord ; this shall not be unto Thee ;" the self-disgust which of old, on the Lake of Galilee, had flung him to his knees with that great cry wrung from his yearnini]; heart, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, oh Lord." ** What I do," said Jesus — and His words apply to all our mortal life, in which the lamp of faith can alone fling a little rins: of illumination amid the encirclinor gloom — " What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." Unconvinced, he impetuously cries out, " Never, never, till the end of time shalt Thou wash my feet." " If I wash thee not," said Jesus gently, revealing to him the profound significance of the act, " thou hast no part in Me." " Little as thou mayest understand it, yet it is I, even I, who must wash thy feet, and no other. Thou canst not do it thyself. I A XV.] THE lyJEED OF CON;STANT CLEA^'SI^^G. 2-l:> alone can do it. Eeject it indeed thou canst, for it depends on thine own will I wash no man who prefers his stain. But to reject My cleansing is to reject Me. ThiTefore if I wash thee not, thou hast no part in Me." Then the deeper meaning of it all flashes in upon the conviction of the passionate apostle. " No part in Thee ! oh forbid it, Heaven ! Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head." " Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean ; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." But no : once more he is too impetuous ; once more he has failed to catch the meaning of Christ. This total washing was not needed. The spiritual baptism for him was over. In that laver of regeneration he had been already dipped. Nothing more was needed than the daily cleansing from minor and freshly- contracted stains. The heart, the inward being of the