lerciv

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memories.

Oxford

,1383.

I

From the
COLLECTION OF OXFORD BOOKS
made by
FALCONER MADAN
Bodley's Librarian

0nu mtmaxiw.

A SERMON
PREACHED BEFORE
THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
IN ST. MARY'S CHURCH,
O.N SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1882.

REV. J. PERCIVAL, M.A.
ui
PRESIDENT OF TRINITY.

OXFORD :
SOLD BY THE BOOKSELLERS.
1883.
Price Sixpence.

A SERMON.

Ephesians vi. 2.
" Honour thy father and mother {which is the first commandment
with promise)."
It is, of course, to the young that this text addresses
itself iu the first instance ; and it may seem at first
sight as if there were something of paradox in the
suggestion which is implied in the choice of it here
to-day, that you should let your thoughts revert to the
circle of your home life, and to those primal lessons
which are commonly learnt there, at the very moment
when, as we may presume, your mind is keenly set
and your heart beating for the free race of manhood.
And yet there is nothing paradoxical in it.
This familiar commandment, this first word about our
social duty, may not inappropriately engage our attention
for a little while at the point which many here have just
reached, because our life is not a race but a growth.
It is a growth whose roots, if the life is to have an
enduring healthiness, should be planted deep in the
memories, the associations, the rules, and the sanctities
of Lome. Every man, as age advances on him, invariably
tells us how that early life gathers importance in his esti
mate of things, and this for no merely sentimental reason.
It is not only that the distant scenes, with their vanished
forms and their voices now silent, win a new brightness ;
though this, of course, contributes an element to our
thought and feeling, as we look back over the lengthening
years ; but if this were all, it could hardly claim to arrest
your attention just now. It is because we survey our
life from a new standpoint, reading the record of early

days from the inside, as it can be read by no one else ;
tracing onwards the effects of some form of goodness
then impressed upon us, some ideal that laid its creative
grasp upon the imagination, some seed of pure affection
striking its early roots. In the light of all that these
things have involved, all the influences they have exercised
on the mysterious evolution of our personality, all the
issues, whether moral or intellectual, with which they were
pregnant, we recognise the deeper relations, and may
we not say the diviner elements, of that early life in
the home circle to which possibly we gave so little heed ;
just as we wake up perhaps long afterwards, or far away,
and under some different climate, to the beauty of hill
and dale and forest, sunshine and storm, which were
among the common and disregarded things of youth or
boyhood. In such a retrospect we feel something, at any rate,
of the force of St. Paul's comment upon this fifth com
mandment, that it is the first commandment with promise.
Because the promise was of the material sort, it is
none the less deserving of our attention. Indeed, this
might very well be felt to give it all the greater claim
on us in a time of almost universal practical materialism ;
and in any case, if we look behind the form of words,
and beyond its primary applications, its material reference
does not lower the commandment, or- in any way impair
its force. Rather, it would seem to deepen it, suggesting
its intimate connection with the root principles of our
social well-being.
Translate it into the language of your own personal
hopes and prospects, the possibilities that are around
or before you, and the conditions of their fulfilment, and
it sets forth, writing it over the threshold of all moral
teaching, the fundamental importance of the filial attitude
and sentiment as the first condition of spiritual growth.

5
It declares to us the close connection between domestic
and national virtue, between home life and life in the
world ; and it bids us, moreover, be careful at the outset
to think of the solidarity of all our years for good or
evil, thus coming with a reminder, which is surely not
altogether superfluous or unneeded by the young as they
go out into the society of their contemporaries, with
all its fresh ferment, sometimes, it must be admitted,
a drifting and chaotic society, tossed this way or that
by every new impulse of the time, — the reminder that
there should be no variableness in the moral standards
of our life. It tells us in accents whose authority we
do not question, that as is the standard of conduct in
the Christian home, where the highest and purest motives
have adjusted it through a long succession of inherited
Christian influences, as it is recognised by those you
love and honour in such homes ; so it claims to be held
sacred semper el ubique, as one of the unchangeable things,
in all the shifting and complex life of manhood.
But some men seem never to estimate these influences
at their true value, or to recognise their authoritative
character, and the binding nature of their sanctions, till
time has swept them far away and out of reach, or till
they lie buried in the graves of those they loved long
since. These late learners waste the possibilities of their life.
Their later years cannot be what their springtide might
have been to them.
That which should have come as an inspiration in
youth or early manhood, which is appealing to you
to-day, springing up in their hearts as a transforming
influence, shaping their life to new aspects of duty,
raising it to new levels and imbuing it with new tastes
— making it essentially a new life — still retains, no
doubt, its inherent beauty, and even has in it an ac-

quired pathos, when it comes late, as a sort of echo
from long past years, lingering around things that are
now irreparable ; but for the man's personal life it has
lost its invigorating and inspiring quality.
What should have laid hold upon his growing energies,
transforming them, is a thing of altogether different worth
when it has sunk into the expression of a sentimental
regret ; or when it comes to him, at the best, as a
saddening and sobering afterthought, which he may
possibly make use of as a warning for others, but hardly
for the renewal of his own life.
It is in their youth that men hear the voices and see
the visions, which, never leaving them again, are as the
guardian angels of the higher life in them, the makers
and the builders of all effective character. We hardly
need to be reminded how every great example is a
fresh witness to this. It was while his heart was still
hot with the thought of the home he had quitted that
Jacob dreamt his dream and saw the ladder, and woke
to feel his new solitude the house of God.
It was under the first fresh influences of the desert
life that Moses saw the burning bush and heard the Divine
summons, and felt that his feet were on holy ground.
So, too, Saul was still in the ferment of youth when
he stood by at the stoning of Stephen, and the words
of the dying martyr were engraven on his soul, never
to be effaced from it.
For these men, these early awakenings, these morning
visitations of the Holy Spirit, were the critical moments.
It was then that the veil was rent from their hearts
and they walked in a new presence, and something like
this is the history of every truly effective life. And it
is your happiness to feel that, however it may be with
some of us, these possibilities of faith and purpose are
still before you.

When your life is waning, long years hence, you will
be ready enough, should you by any chance wander
back here, to listen to these questionings, and consider
such like thoughts ; and you will not complain of their
simplicity ; but you may have to say, " Alas ! my life
is no longer in my hands; I stand among the ashes of
fires that are burnt out."
Therefore it becomes our duty, even at the risk of
venturing on that simplicity of subject and directness
of appeal which you may call the foolishness of preaching,
to ask of you, as we see you starting out on the solitary
personal journey, with what visions of life, what besetting
consciousness, what estimate of a man's true attitude
and aim and thought you are setting forth. Are you
inclined to fling yourself unreservedly on the present
and the future f It is a natural and generous impulse
which prompts us to do this.
Here, in the presence of all the splendid and various
beauty of new surroundings^ in a place peopled with
the memories of so many centuries of historic life and
instinct with so much of that which will help to determine
the coming time, in the enjoyment of a new liberty, amidst
new thoughts and new opinions, new and various estimates
of things, the imagination must indeed be dull, if it is not
fascinated; the new is, of course, attractive, and yet the
old may be better.
We may be unconsciously comparing the reality of
that which we have known with some unrealized ideal
of the things around and before us, some baseless promise,
some delusive and misleading light.
The reality of life here, as it is commonly lived, has
in it, by the confession of almost every one, some elements
that are very poor, judge them by whatever standard you
please. Thus the moral and spiritual phenomena which meet

us, remind us sometimes very pathetically how there
is nothing sadder to contemplate than the life of in
congruous poverty in a stately and noble home. And
this essential poverty is waiting always to lay its stealthy
and chilling grasp upon us. It is a creeping danger,
against which our best safeguard at the outset, as always,
is that equipment of the spirit which home relations
should have supplied to us, that filial attitude which
tends to keep men in loving communion with the life
higher than their own, and draws them always towards
that which is best in the life before them. I freely
acknowledge the simplicity of such a subject. Does
this, or does its apparent familiarity, incline you to turn
away from it, as hardly deserving or repaying much
attention ? Let us not be too quick to do this, for it
is the peculiarity of the most vital elements of our
spiritual life that to those who view them critically and
from the outside they seem amazingly simple ; while
they expand, and deepen, and grow in beauty and in
wonder as men feel their power, because they belong
to the, region of life and not of knowledge, and reveal
to us latent powers of insight and feeling.
So we find that this plain commandment is not merely
a word for domestic use, but keeps us very close to the
test questions of our social economy, and to the most
fundamental relations of all spiritual life. If its close
connection with our social economics seems in any
way doubtful, we may try it by a plain illustration.
The reflective life of manhood, and its various ex
periences, must very soon bring every one of us face
to face with problems of sin and shame, social standards,
social customs, social practices, which will startle and
surprise us by their curious distortions.
We have to make our choice between different codes
of life. We may see men serving, apparently, two

masters, living two inconsistent lives, tacitly acquiescing
in, it would seem, a varying law of conduct, which would
imply that the moral law is a Lesbian rule.
We turn from this back to our remembrance of home,
or, if that should unhappily fail us, to our conception
of what a home should be, with its instruction, its life, its
rooted sentiments. We think of it as the shrine of moral
purity and mutual trust.
We know that it is absolutely dependent on these
for its existence. Destroy these, and the whole edifice
crumbles. What remains is only a ruin that can afford
the soul no shelter, and mocks our thought of the reality.
So far we are all agreed ; all this is obvious ; it is one of
the axioms of Christian life. Let us then take it a step
further, and say that it furnishes a standard which should
be universal, binding men in all their various relations
and circumstances semper et ubique. And let us just
stay for a moment to give it concrete expression, applying
it to a very practical question — chastity of life, and right
conduct towards women. It will be enough to clothe
my illustration in language which any member of this
University would readily furnish, and say simply that
the rule which you would assert as that which you
are bound to vindicate for mother or sister, is the
universal and Divine rule admitting of no question
anywhere. You assert it, you vindicate it, as axiomatic and
imperative. It would be base, intolerably base, if you
acted otherwise. If you have read of or seen any society,
or looked into any of that literature in which this standard
is ignored, you feel as if you had breathed the foetid
atmosphere of some low form of life ; and the glow of
repulsion or other strong feeling which animates you is at
once the instinct of a healthy nature and a voice higher
than your own.

10
But do men sufficiently remember that these rules
and feelings, formed and nurtured in the home, are
intended to claim our allegiance through all the changes
and chances of life ?
Just now you were amidst your home associations, and
its deeply-rooted sentiments and sanctities; your thoughts
were of sister or mother; but let us suppose that you
have stepped out into the larger world, that you are
involved in its intricacies and its fashions, that you are
confronted by some or other of its shameless dogmas and
its cynicisms.
You agree that it would be base, if in respect of your
own home you recognised any lowering of that standard
of the pure life which we owe to Christian doctrine ; but is
a man less base if, in dealing with others from other
homes, he lowers that same sacred flag, or if he ac
quiesces as he sees it soiled in the mire and dirt of
depraved social traditions ?
However simple may be the accents of this primal
injunction, it is far from being a superficial lesson, if
we have truly and fully learnt that the God of our early
home is the one God, and that He is the Ruler of all our
life. It would seem sometimes as if we needed this
revival of our monotheistic faith to make us feel God's
presence in every fresh society, and amidst all the con
fusing voices of crowded communities and of scientific
and social theories; we need it in the excitements that
lay their hand upon us, and amidst views of life that whisper
so insidiously to both passion and weakness ; we feel
the need of its corrective at one time in the social or
professional coterie, at another in the moral chaos of a
city population, at another, it may be far away, on the
outskirts of new civilization, or in the dregs of the old.
" If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there ; if I make
my bed in hell, behold Thou art there. If I take the

11
wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts
of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and
Thy right hand shall hold me."
In youth or age it is a happy thing for our life, if
this crowning expression of the Psalmist's faith expresses
our unsleeping consciousness of the Fatherhood of God.
If, as is sometimes asserted, it be a right view of the
tendencies of our day that attention is fixed too ex
clusively, if not inordinately, on the critical and material
sides of life, to the neglect of the finer affections, and
the destruction of the true balance of the soul, it is all
the more incumbent on a University community like
ours to foster those aspirations and habits of thought
and feeling, those ideals and ambitions, which are the
moving and shaping power of spiritual energy.
And it can, I fear, hardly be doubted that the view
which attributes this misdirection to a great deal of the
special activity of our generation has much to allege in its
support. How else comes it that our spiritual life is so apt to be a
mere ineffective dream about ideals to which we never
approximate, or to consist mainly of visions which we
never realize in our active moments ?
How else are we to account for what seems to be
the growing divorce between sentimental approval and
practical apprehension, the ominous fact — ominous because
suggestive of moral disintegration — that while men seem
to have attained to a new appreciation of the one highest
and best type of human character, while they agree in
admiring it as never before, while they describe it with
sympathy and delight to contemplate it, they seem to
feel it less and less as the one dominant and constructive
force, claiming to rule the whole man, and making of
him a new man ? Is it possibly because we do not
sufficiently cultivate and cherish the pure affections, the

12
higher aspirations, those motions of the Spirit, that
embody themselves in filial love and trust and reverence,
as having a Divine sanction, as so many intimations of
the Divine Fatherhood ? Amidst our secularizing tendency
we leave them to the chance nurture of home, with its
influences so often feeble and imperfect, and nearly always
intermittent, or soon lost, — influences which are all too
easily swept away in the turbid currents of a passionate
and selfish world.
Where this occurs, it happens that the sentiments which
should be the guide and stimulus of practical energy,
giving unity and purpose, hope and insight to the life
of manhood, inspiring it with faith, and sending it forth to
high duties, is barely sufficient to stir the ripples of a
languid and superficial emotion.
These are some of the phenomena which seem not
only to justify our return ever and again to the simple
thought of the filial attitude and aspiration, but to render
it imperative on us to nurse and cherish it as a saving
factor of moral life.
We rely perhaps too implicitly upon the acquirement
of knowledge and the spread of secular education as
moral regenerators ; but it is a curious and suggestive
commentary on this reliance that moral energy should
be comparatively speaking so very feeble in the most
cultivated classes.
It has to be confessed that our too critical education
only paralyses some of us, whilst a training which is
too material leaves others case-hardened. Thus it
would seem that we have still to fall back upon the
training of our taste and aspirations, upon the bent
and concentration of our active powers, the growing
forces of cherished and disciplined affections, as the
only sure guarantee for any advance to the higher
levels of life.

13
Certainly the skill we need, and for which our nature
cries aloud in its doubt or weariness, is that which
shall infuse into our moral admirations some practical
dynamic ; and so re-invigorate those spiritual enthusi
asms, which are natural to the unspoilt nature of the
young, but seem to lose their vitality, to wither and become
enfeebled, in our artificial life.
Our need is not some new doctrine, but the breath
of a spirit, an awakening of the soul. And of all in
fluences to inform and inspire us, the first is that which
we feel to be the pervading consciousness of Jesus, the
shaping power of His life. Other portions of His work
or influence may crowd upon your thoughts; but this
taking up and embracing of the heart and mind of the
little child, this new appropriation of the spirit of home
life which He lifted heavenwards and transfigured, became
in a new sense the source and fountain-head of men's
moral energy, henceforth, living in us as the consciousness
of a Divine Fatherhood and the pervading thought of our
individual consecration which comes out of it.
We may acquire something of this, no doubt, apart
from Him, as a vague poetic sentiment, a casual occupant
of our minds, touching the imagination, or claiming ad
miration, but laying no grasp upon the active powers.
But the peculiar gift of Christ consists in this, that He
sheds it over our life as a revelation and a motive all
in one. Seeing it embodied in His perfect life, the
Christian feels it overflowing into his own life as a
moving enthusiasm.
In the perfection of this embodiment we are conscious
of a new creation, a living personal indestructible force
of a new kind, in the circle of things that attract and
stir the soul, and determine its life. It takes the thought
of our relationship to the sources of our being out of
the region of the vague and abstract, and so transfigures

14
human aims and conduct. Creating, as it did, and, in
its progressive influence, preserving and perpetuating the
healthy union of men's higher aspirations with all the
motions and pursuits of their common life, a union never
so effected apart from it, this consciousness has worked
underneath all outward forms in Church and State, in
public and in family life, as the regenerating force of
'all western civilization.
In society at large, or in your own separate per
sonality, its transforming influence is just the same.
As compared with any heathen or scientific type,
it gives our life a new outlook and shapes it into
new virtues.
This new revelation of our sonship in Christ is almost
too familiar to us as a sort of primal lesson. We learn it
so easily, we carry it about with us so lightly, in our
unreflecting imitative way.
All the more on this account it demands of us that kind
of thought and exercise, discipline and daily purpose,
through which alone it is inly realized, and grasped
with that embrace of the soul which transfigures the
common life.
And the life of unselfish devotion thus created, that
which, as compared with the ordinary run of lives, is
rightly called the new life, is not continuously possible,
unless it be penetrated by this Christ-like feeling that
we are living in the Fatherhood of God.
Particular virtues may, and do, flourish in men and in
communities apart from its influence ; here courage, there
uprightness ; in one love of truth, in another patriotism ;
but hardly that general habit, that pervading tone, or
hue, or quality of the higher life, which, when we see it
in our friend or companion, when we feel it near us,
and live in its company, breathes over us as with the
purifying breath of some new creation.

15
Addressing myself, as I do, to the younger portion
of those who hear me, the contribution I desire to make
to your life, as you are stepping out into new paths,
along which are lying the seductive vistas of freedom,
is some fresh spark of this feeling of sonship, first
kindled in the heart through the affections of home,
which shall touch the depths of your nature, and help
to fuse it as with chemic change. Bow your will to
this consciousness, and walk in its presence, and life
assumes a new quality.
" Society," it has been said of the life of our time ;
" society is the grave of the higher individuality."
Is this to be your experience ? You would answer,
God forbid ! and yet it is true in many lives. It is
true here as in other places, for society is a very insidious
and enervating temptress. Her material attractions lay
hold of some men and take possession of them, to toss
them about in their fancied liberty, and play with them,
till they are dead to higher possibilities. The critical
habits, which are the growth of an artificial education
and an exclusive and fastidious life, creeping over others,
dwarf and wither that which might have grown to a vigorous
and productive activity.
The irreligious cave life of this or that coterie or
tendency leaves some men the prey of all the en
tangling cobwebs which the human mind spins around
itself so quickly, when insulated from the abounding
sources of spiritual light and energy. Depraved traditions,
too, will in some quarters meet you, assuming the superior
airs of a sort of moral aristocracy, and overawing the
weak. Under any such influences as these we find it
true enough, that society is the grave of the higher
individual life.
But how different is our landscape, if it is illumined,
brightened, purified by those cherished and unchanging

16
sanctities which make the recollection of home so dear
to men in later years; and by that besetting sense of
our sonship to God in Christ, which has its earthly root
in these sanctities, so that the secret life becomes an
embodied prayer, " that His Holy Spirit may in all things
direct and rule our hearts ! "

BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.

1579

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