or is it popular, or is it pleasant, but Is it right?—that 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 will 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 1 George Eliot, Romola.

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 misgiving 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

deceived in you. I do not know, perhaps none of those set over you may ever know, what this or that boy iswhat a corrupt heart may lurk under the smiling countenance, 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 quivering 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; "1 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 trackless 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

1 Milton.

microscopic seed of a pestilence, the invisible blight of 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 bedsides, and all day long in the thoughts of your hearts you may seek Him, and here in this chapel you may hear His voice, and see His face. Oh! seek Him here. Oh! 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 9th, 1875.

SERMON XXI.

EXCUSES TO MAN AND TO GOD.

LUKE xiv. 18.

"I pray thee 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 impotent 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 exeuses, 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 five 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