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 oh, blithe breeze! and oh, great seas! "One port, methinks, alike we seck, June 25, 1871. SERMON VII. LITTLE GIVEN, 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 weakness "1 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. dreaded Emperor was all-powerful at Rome; the mighty legionaries were encamped on the Danube and the ▲ Milton. The Ebro; but neither to Emperor nor legionary did Christ appeal. For pride-for cruelty-for scornful laughterfor 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;1 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 Roman poet a topic of praise that his philosophic husbandman had neither pitied the poor nor envied the rich "Nec ille Aut doluit miserans inopem aut invidit habenti." 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 wealth, 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. 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 immortality. The " Tu, homo, 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 teaching, the very incarnation of Christ were all meant to impress upon us this awful and elevating 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 multitude. We are not kings, or great men, or mighty men, not rich, or powerful, or renowned; no: but 'Ov προσωπολήπτης ὁ Θεὸς. 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 processions 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 friend. O 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 faithful 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 rain Hath its own mission. The very shadow of an insect's wing, For which the violet cared not while it stayed, 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 |