even for you, that the life of five hundred boys congregated 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

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 than 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 individuality 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 wholly 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 hell. 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 wholesome grain whereby man can live, but only the poisonous flowers of evil passion, or only things rank and gross in nature-weeds, and thistles, and nettles; the miserable, starved, ignoble growth of vices with which we will not

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. Rather 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 knowledge, 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 wilful 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?

Let us, then, all ask God our Father 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.

"Lord, shall we come, come yet again?
Thy children ask one blessing more :
To come, not now alone, but then,

When life and death and time are o'er.
Then, then to come, oh Lord! and be
Confirmed in heaven, confirmed by Thee."

June 16, 1872.

SERMON XII.

SELF-CONQUEST

EPH. v. 15.

"See then that ye walk circumspectly."

I Do not purpose to speak to you to-day about those two least-known apostles to whom the day is consecrated. 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 the 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