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VI.

The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

[S. Peter's Day, 1889.]

ROMANS xiv. 17.

THIS is, I believe, the seventh year of our Annual Commemoration. The term of my episcopate has now run through its decade. Ten years ago I came into this diocese, migrating, as it seemed to me then, into a strange land, not knowing whither I went, leaving my intellectual and spiritual kindred, abandoning old pursuits, old haunts, old associations, bidding farewell to familiar faces, but believing (as God gave me the light to read His purposes) that He had truly called me, that He had another work for me to do, that henceforward I must live and labour among strangers, and that it would be mean and cowardly in me to decline the call from any personal

shrinking or reluctance, from indolence, from misgiving, from the sense of incapacity, from the fear of an unknown future.

I may be pardoned this reference to my own personal history, speaking on this anniversary, speaking as to sons, desiring (even though I should never be permitted to speak to them again) to leave behind, as the best heritage which I can bequeath them, this assurance of God's goodness, this experience of God's faithfulness, Who rewards a thousandfold any venture of faith-however small-which is indeed a venture of faith, whatever appearance it may wear to others. Abraham's history is a parable, as well as a history— a parable written in large characters by the finger of God, a parable for you and for me, if we follow at however great a distance in the traces of Abraham's footprints. The land of exile will be found a land of promise. Though we may have left home and kindred, we shall find countless sons and daughters in the years to come. Though we have quitted the parcel of ground-highly prized as it was—which we called our own, He will give us an inheritance rich and fertile and boundless, eternal in the heavens.

And may I pursue this personal history one step further? After much consultation with friends, after much self-dissection of motives and of incapacities, after much communing with my own soul and with

God (in my poor way), I determined to accept the call, for such I believed and still believe it to have been. From that time forward I have never had a moment's hesitation or misgiving, have never felt so much as a desire to look back.

But in that long wakeful night when the decision was finally made which transferred me from Cambridge to Durham, the idea of this College first took shape in my brain. It was thus identified with the work of my episcopate in its origin. It has proved, by God's grace, a very real blessing to myself (may I say to ourselves?), and, what is far more important, to this Diocese. It rests with you now that henceforward the promise of the future shall outstrip the achievements of the past.

The idea was not long delayed in the execution. From the commencement of the October Term after my arrival in the diocese the College dates its birth. Like much greater institutions, its growth has been only the healthier, because it arose from small beginnings. It is a great happiness to note that in to-day's meeting we miss none of those who were present at its first inauguration. The two chaplains, who taught the first students, are still working in the diocese and are with us to-day. The three students, who formed the nucleus of the future College, are likewise with us; they too occupy busy spheres of labour in the

diocese. For two or three years our numbers were so few, that a periodical gathering did not enter into our thoughts. At length on S. Peter's Day 1883 our first Commemoration took place. From that day forward we have held these joyful gatherings annually. The number on our lists mounts up to eighty-two. Of these God has taken three to Himself; no less than sixty still have charges in the diocese or are students preparing for ordination. Of the remaining twenty, one is on the high seas, and another in India; the rest are working in divers spheres in other parts of England.

But it seemed only too probable a few months past, that we had met together for the last time; that never again we should be permitted to hold our joyful Annual Commemoration; that this holy brotherhood would be speedily broken up, as others holier still-more noble, more beneficent, more divine -had been dissolved before it; that having served its time and having done its work, it would pass away. God has not so willed. But, even if it had been otherwise, what then? Would it not have made a vacancy, which some higher ideal might fill? Would it not, like all our 'little systems,' have ceased to be, lest stamping and stereotyping its own narrowness, it should corrupt our little world, which it was designed to elevate, and thus have thwarted God's great law

of progress, from which no human action can exempt itself without rapid decay and speedy death.

Was it in unconscious anticipation of the crisis which was fast approaching, that two years ago, speaking of the passage from life to death and from death to life, I reminded you how narrow was the stream and how easily crossed which separates the one from the other, that I told you not to look upon death as the insurmountable barrier to communion with brother and brother, that I warned you in words which recent events have invested with a fuller meaning; 'The time is short; the hour will come, come full soon, when another shall speak from this place; the hour will come when this goodliest brotherhood shall be broken up?' Was it the irony of God's providence which often suggests to the lips of the speaker words far deeper in significance than he himself dreams, when again at our last year's Commemoration I struck the same note, taking as my theme 'the citizenship in heaven,' and desiring all to remember that 'we can ill afford—least of all on a great day like this—to turn a deaf ear to the warning that this life is not our true life, that here we are strangers and pilgrims, that heaven is our only abiding home, that we are fellow-citizens with the saints.' Yes, indeed it is most true. God has taught us this lesson since, by a sharp but merciful experience. Not in our schools

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