L 1 B R.ARY OF THL U N I VERS ITY or 1 LLl NOIS OUR FOUNDER'S VOW: A SERMON, PREACHED BEFORE THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER, AT Zin IDcturation OP THE CHAPEL OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, HURSTPIERPOINT, ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1SC5. BY H. P. LIDDON, M.A. PREBENDARY OF SAETTM, EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF SALISBtTET, AND STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, PRINTED 1?Y REQUEST. lUVINGTONS, Eoiitfou, (!i5i>(oitf, tints Canifcritrje. G. WAKELING. Urigfjton. 1865. LONDON : GILBERT AND RITINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. John's square. SERMON, 8fc. " I will not come within the tahernacle of mine hoi;se : noi* climb up into my bed ; I will not suffer mine eyes to sleep, nor mine eye-lids to slumber : neither the temples of my head to take any rest ; until I find out a place for the temple of the Lord : an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob." — Psalm exxxii. 3 — 5. This Psalm would seem to have been uttered by Solomon when the Ark was removed from the Taber- nacle on Zion hito the newly-built Temple on Mount Moriah^ Solomon pleads before God the trouble or ''pams"- of David; that is, his varied efforts to establish the Sanctuary, and to introduce order and beauty into its worship. He refers especially to David's anxiety that a worthy resting-place should be provided for the Sacred Ark. This anxiet}' found ' So Tholuck, and apparently Delitzsch (Psalmen ii. 2G1). He remarks the relation of this Psalm to Psalm Ixxii. in support of the opinion. Compare also vv. 8 — 10 and 2 Chron. vi. 41, 42. ^ r\^^V V. 1, " Die Sorge und Miihe, welche David um Be- schafFung einer wiirdigcn blcibenden Stiitte filr Jehova's Heiligthum hatte." — Delitzsch in loc. A 2 4 OUR FOUNDER S VOW. expression iu the vow which is quoted at length by Solomon : — " Siuvly I will not come into the tabernacle of mine house, Nor go up into my bed : 1 will not give sleep to mine eyes, — Slumber to mine eyelids. Until I find out a place for the Lord, An habitation for the Mighty One of Jacob." Did this vow refer to the building of the Temple, and are these words an expansion of the language ^ which David used to the Prophet Nathan when the Ai'k had been brought to the Holy City ? Or does this vow simply express a determination'* to find a permanent resting-place for the Ark on Mount Zion ? However tliis question may be decided, there is no room for doubt as to the general purport of such a vow. Clearly it was the natural expression of that tender piety, of that deep devotion to the Name, and Honour, and Truth of God, which illuminates the whole character of the Son of Jesse, and which raises him, in spite of deep falls, to an extraordinary height of per- sonal sanctity. Here, as often elsewhere in the Psalter, we observe how all considerations are postponed by the Psalmist to that one which had a first claim on his intelligence and on his heart. He was an earthly mon- arch, and his throne was by no means secure from dan- ger ; he was a statesman, and his people were in urgent need of an active and fatherly government; he had a large family, and we know that he was attached by an affection of no common strength to its individual mem- bers ; he was a poet, and he might have felt that such hymns as his were a worthy if not a sufficient cultiva- tion to the intellectual and spiritual life of his country ; ^ 2 Sam. vii. 2. ■* As seems to be suggested by verse 6. .<*""% o OUR FOUNDER S VOW. 5 he was continually in battle, and continually in council, and his untiring activity craved for some adequate op- portunities of rest. But it could not be. One com- manding obligation, one absorbing object, one capital resolution, dwarfed all else in this fervid soul. What were pohtics, statesmanship, war, letters, nay his own very flesh and blood to him, while the Ark of God was still dishonoured by the neglect of Israel ? Had he not himself publicly complained to the captains of Israel that the Ark had been forgotten in the days of Saul * ? What was it to him that he could point to a ro^^al palace and a couch of state, while no site had as yet been fixed upon for a Home in which the Mighty One of Jacob would hold His court, and receive the worship and allegiance of His subjects ? Was not the Theocratic system itself incomplete while the Temple was yet unbuilt, or at any rate while the Ark was un- provided mtli a fitting shrine ? Had not the Great Lawgiver spoken in no doubtful terms of "the place which the Lord would choose to set His Name there ^ " as the crowning feature, if not as the essential comple- ment of the Sinaitic dispensation ? Would not all else be in peril while God's honour was neglected ? Would not all else be safe if God's honour was secure ? Would not David's sword, his sceptre, his house, his lyre, alike be prospered, if all were reckoned of less import than the task of finding a temple for the Lord, an habitation for the Mighty God of Jacob ? David's piety was clearly disinterested ; but it met with a reward which he did not seek. It was acknowledged by the promise alluded to in this very psalm, by the * 1 Chron. xiii. 3. « Deut. xii. 5. 11. 14 ; xiv. 23 ; xv. 20 ; xvi. 2. 6. 11 ; xvii. 8 ; xviii. 6 ; xxvi. 2 ; xxxi. 11. 6 OUR founder's vow. promise of a perpetual kingdom in his family. This promise was intleed conditioned, and in the event forfeited, as far as his sinful descendants who wore the earthly crown of Judah were concerned. But it was a promise absolute and unconditioned in its ap- plication to and in its fulfilment through Him Wlio, in His spotless righteousness, is to ** reign over the House of Jacob for ever," and " of whose Kingdom there will be no end." David's piety, moreover, was acknow- ledged by a series of loving Providences which saved him from the enmity of foreign and domestic foes, and which enabled him to bequeath to his son Solomon an empire stretching fi'om the Euphrates to the Mediterranean. David's seiwice — let me repeat it — was disinterested in its motive ; but, as a matter of fact, it met ^dth its reward. Plainly, my brethren, the vow of David implies a resolution which, in the usage and sense of the Church, is of much larger range than its original, historical, application. We must have felt this in our daily use of the Psalter, here as in other in- stances. It is impossible for us Christians to confine our thoughts within the narrow range of a long-past Jemsh history, when the page before us has been brightened by the hght which has fallen on it from Bethlehem and from Calvary. David's vow is the legal equivalent of the Christian soul's answer to such a precept as ' ' Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness." It expresses that which at sometime or other must be the recognized and defined resolution of every regenerate will. It says in effect, that mtliin the precincts of the soul, God's Presence, God's Honour, God's Truth, must be first of all promled for. Since He deigns even to dwell within us, since He sheds with OUR FOUNDER S VOW. 7 no niggard hand a bright reflection of His essential Glory upon our intellectual and moral life, can we do less than welcome His condescension by making provision for this His inward Presence ? To " find a place for the Temple of the Lord, an habitation for the Mighty God of Jacob," within the soul, is at once our high privilege and our indispensable obligation. To throne our Heavenly Lord at the very summit of thought ; to embrace Him, if it may be, within the deepest folds of affection ; to lay open to Him and to offer to Him without reserve the original springs of will : — this is to find an habitation for Him within us ; this is to detain Him ; this is to win from Him larger measures of grace and bounty ; this is assuredly to flood our souls with rays of love and of light which stream from the Source of all perfections and which enable us to consecrate our sin-stained and feeble faculties as His servants and His courtiers. Surely, brethren, nothing less than this is the signifi- cance of the Life of Grace. "If a man love me . . . My Father will love liim, and We will come unto him and make Our abode with, him^" " Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you^" The Christian soul is the temple of the Most Holy Trinity. Brethren, move reverently within the temple of your souls. Cleanse by penitence all that offends Him Who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Offer Him the best that He has given you. Litelligence, heart, memory, resolve ; one after another, let them defile before His searching Eye. One after another, like the Creatures above, let them cast down their crowns before His Majesty. Let them ' S. John xiv. 23. ' 1 Cor. iii. 16 : vi. 19. 2 Cor. vi. 10. iS Ol'U FOUNDER S VOW. pass forth invigorated by His Presence to ' ' the daily round and common task" ofHfe. Let them brighten thouglit and hxugiiage, and tcnl, with a hght so shining before men, that the Father in heaven may be glorified in this tlie greatest of His gifts, in this His own Blessed Presence. Be sure that this Presence grows clearer and more majestic by each act of sacrifice, by each heartfelt prayer, by each communion of the Body and Blood of the Incarnate Lord. Be sure that it wanes and grows dim in an atmosphere of encouraged doubts, of moral weakness, of unresisted sin. And until the Christian soul has worthily enshrined this most precious Presence, it were indeed well not to suffer the eyes to sleep nor the eyelids to slumber ; for, in truth, the most important work that a living soul can do is left undone. But another application of the words, not less legitimate, and more immediately in keeping with our thought and purpose on this occasion, vrill, I doubt not, have been already anticipated by many who are gathered within the walls of this Chapel on this day of high and thankful joj. May we not say, without exegetical fancifulness, without irreverence, without disloyalty to literal fact, that this noble pile is itself the product of a resolution such as was that of the king of Israel ? Years ago, as you know, provision w^as made upon this spot for an Educational Institution on a scale which may be fairly termed magnificent. A school was planned such as to redress in some measure the injustice which was felt to press upon a largo and most important class of the English people. All the necessaries and not a few of the embellislmieuts of intellectual life were secured to it. All the apparatus of an education which should at once stimulate mental faculties and should impart solid and useful know- OUR founder's vow. 9 ledge was placed under the control of an intelligence which could economize and expand it. All was done that could be effected by highly cultivated minds, by large and genial hearts, by indomitable wills. All that could be won from adverse circumstances, from adverse prejudices, from the vis inertke of ignorance and of indifference, has been won by the Fellows and Masters of this College. It has been won by labours among the most persevering, the most enthu- siastic, the most disinterested, of any which, even in this day of educational enthusiasms, are to be found in England. Yet, although much had been achieved, all till now seemed imperfect. Provision has been made during many years past, for such worship as was possible in a crypt beneath; the Church in this College was a little copy of the Church of the Catacombs. For years the unfinished aspect of these walls has witnessed to the fact that the founder's intention was still unrealized ; and the delays and hindrances which have attended tlie completion of this Chapel are a measure of the value which has been attached to completing it. To-day long- cherished hopes are at length fulfilled ; and a sense of shortcom- ing, long experienced, is so far surmounted. To-day this College is endowed with that which it has so long desired. Our eyes behold that which is in very deed '' a worthy place for the Temple of the Lord, an habitation for the Mighty God of Jacob," meet to illustrate the dignity and the love of His more complete revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ. David had to bequeath his unrealized intentions to his son and suc- cessor; but the bold genius of a Piety which dared to assert that a Chapel no less splendid than that in which we are assembled was necessary to its full design in 10 OUR founder's vow. Ibimdiiig a middle -class College, has happily been spared to witness the fultilinent of its desire and the justi- fication of its foresight. If, my brethren, one who is a stranger might pre- sume to interpret the far-sighted and generous mind which has given this noble pile to our Church and country, I would unhesitatingly say, that to promote our dear Kedeemer's glory has been its first, its master motive. To raise a monument (however unworthy our best must be of Him) to His glory Who died for us ; to offer at His Feet a measure of that earthly wealth which He has placed at our disposal; to thank Him thus \asibly, thus palpably, for His loving care of tliis Institution from its youth up until now; this was the object. Even if nought else came of tliis act of gratitude, even if such thankfulness were refracted upon ourselves in no new blessings, this grateful adoration is the mo- tive which has found so beautiful, so splendid an expres- sion in a building which from to-day and henceforth is dedicated to the glory and service of Jesus Christ. But here we may reflect with St. Augustine, that while God would have us serve Him for His o^mi sake, and not for that which we may gain by serv^ing Him, His ser\'ice does, in point of fact, promote our own best interests. They who serve God, glorify Him by doing so, and save their own souls into the bargain. For although it often happens that His service brings with it in this world no temporal reward, nay, rather, much of tem2)oral discomfort and suffering ; yet it is not always so. And on the present occasion we may observe how the demands of God's honour and those of the immediate work of education are ahnost equally consulted in the erection of a chapel, as the crowning feature of this College. OUR founder's vow. 11 This may appear from a few simple considerations. What, let it be asked, will be the educational services which this Chapel may be expected to render ? 1. It will be an intellectual landmark. As it towers in conspicuous beauty liigh above the surrounding buildings, it is a natural representation in stone of an intellectual truth. May we not say that it illustrates, upon a small scale, Bishop Butler's argument upon the necessity of a visible Church ? It is a silent but most eloquent preacher of the first and highest of all truths. For it ^all suggest to the eye, to the imagi- nation, to the thought of many a boy the supre- macy, the greatness, the solitary magnificence of God. There are many currents in the thought of this one day, wliich tend to obscure or to obliterate this primal truth. Men are tempted to merge the self-sufficient God in the material or the intellectual world, to identify Him with the work of His hands, to deny His existence by imphcation or point blank. The great questions which are debated around us, such as the reality of Creation and of Providence and the possibility of miracle, touch the truth of Theism itself, and not merely the truth of Christianity. And although sceptical influences may exist in a developed and philosophical form only among the highly educated classes, yet they are being perpetually infiltrated, and that on a very considerable and alarming scale, into the thought of the less educated and of the young, through the manifold channels of a popular literature. Now this Chapel takes such impugned truths and a great deal else for granted. It stands, and justifiably, to a boy's mind in the place of an argument. It represents in a ma- terial form the settled faith of the Church. It tacitly forces the truth of God's majestic separation from and 12 OUR founder's vow. utter superiority to His creatures tairly in upon the boy's apprehension. In the same way, in a school where very various kinds of knowledge are being con- stantly imparted, a Chapel speaks of the place and claims of Revealed Truth in a well-ordered Christian understanding. Cannot some of us, my elder bretlu-en, call to mind how, when our minds were first opening upon the world of thought, and distracted by the cross- Hghts and conflicting claims of an education less em- phatically Christian, it may be, than that of tliis College, we were groping our way, in the t^^'ihght as it were, towards a higher and more settled knowledge ? Into this mental confusion and mist, how would not a material symbol of the truth which we were seeking, such as this Chapel, have helped to introduce the welcome reign of light and order! Tell a child that revealed religion is the highest of all truths, that all lower truth leads up to it or radiates from it ; tell him that formal Theology is the Queen of the Sciences ; and he will faintly, if at all, guess at your meaning. He has not yet climbed high enough to understand the terms in which you describe your intellectual panorama: liis thought has not yet shaped itself to follow those useful and famihar abstractions, which, while they economize j'our ot\ti mental processes, ren- der you unintelligible to him. But throw your doctrine into a concrete form, whereby it may command the attention of a boy's sense and take his imagination captive ; render your abstraction into a solid visible building of stone or marble, which shall challenge his curiosity or win his admiration each time that he looks at it ; and you will speedily make your way to his thought ; you will revolutionize it, if need be ; you will give to it a lasting form and impress. He, indeed. OUR founder's vow. 13 will not at the time analyze the depth and extent of the impression which you create within him. He will receive it miconsciously, and therefore in its perfection and its beauty. He will receive the impression un- consciously, and it mil form part of that esprit de corps, of that life-long loyalty with which he will look back to the scene of his education. But the time may come, when he will bless the wisdom and the charity which endowed him in boyhood with this instinctive sense of the claims of God. As the years pass over him, and, full of service, with the peace of his God and Saviour in his soul, he feels that he is sinking towards his grave, he will look back to this Chapel which first clearly mapped out before the eye of his spirit the relative insignificance of all else in presence of that One Highest Truth which came from heaven, and which alone can sustain the soul of a dying man. He wdll remember how in the home of his youth, and when a formal demonstration would have been lost upon Mm, there was one building among many, noblest in its proportions and richest in its ornamen- tation, wliich pointed to a Truth, unlike any of the lower truths which presented themselves to his under- standing, in that to know It was Life Eternal. And his gratitude will justify the wisdom of a Founder who would not, he remembers, suffer his eyes to sleep, or his eyehds to slumber, or the temples of his head to take any rest, until he had endowed his foundation vdth a " Temple of the Lord," until he had thus set forth, in a language which all could understand, the preciousness, the unapproached preciousness, of our Di\dne Redeemer's Gospel. But moreover, a religious interest is not unfrequently the first which really stimulates intellectual move- 14 OUR founder's vow. ment at all. There are to be found boys and young men whose one subject of interest is religion, and who exhibit upon all that bears upon religion a degree of intelligence which they altogether lack when dealing with other subjects. In these cases the avenue to a general movement and fertility of thought lies strictly through the employment of a religious interest; and since God cannot be excluded from any branch of human knowledge, however indirect may be its apparent relation to Him, this interest will in time diffuse itself. God forbid that I should insinuate that an earnest Christian life is chiefly valuable on account of its effect upon a boy's natural intelligence. But the improvement of thinking power by means of a religious conviction, in not a few cases, is simply a matter of fact. The case of a young man " seeking first the kingdom of God," and finding that other unsought educational advan- tages result from this concentration of his mind upon a religious object, is by no means an uncommon one. And such cases may illustrate the direct influence which this Chapel will probably exercise not unfrequently upon the work of the adjoining school-rooms. 2. But still more is a Chapel such as the present calculated to promote the essential work of education by becoming a moral stimulus. This in several ways. It fosters reverence ; it assists the growth of conscience ; it helps to simplify motives, to strengthen moral purpose, by setting before those Avho are educated here a single aim in life. a. Of this, brethren, let us be well assured, that reverence is an essential feature of a well- developed mind, and therefore an indispensable ingredient of a true education. Reverence is not merely a virtue which is to find its exercise when we go to church. It is, or it OUR founder's vow. 15 ought to be, a permanent habit of thought and feehng. The superficial view of reverence is, that it prostrates mental activity before an authority or an ideal ; and therefore that it is hostile to the design of the educator, whose aim it is to stimulate rather tlian to overawe. But what, brethren, is reverence ? It is the free recognition of real greatness ; in other words, it is the recognition of God, since all true greatness even here below is really a ray or a reflection of His Life. Rever- ence is the soul recognizing a higher greatness than its own. It is the soul seeing in institutions, or in persons, in Church services, or in human characters, that which tells of or which represents God ; and, as a consequence, expanding while it admires, or rising while it attempts to grasp or to imitate. Reverence, indeed, bows down before Him who has a right to the prostrate acknowledgment of His creatures ; but, on that account, it actively pro- motes mental and moral improvement. Woe indeed to the boy who has no enthusiasms, and therefore no rever- ence, whose motto is " nil admirari," who sees nothing higher than himself, who believes in good faith that there is no greatness before which it should be his happiness to lie in conscious insignificance, or towards which he should aspire with passionate effort. Nothing is more certain than the moral degradation of the boy or of the man who looks beyond the precincts of his own soul, if not only to feel contempt, yet never to experience love and reverence. The sneer which he complacently lavishes on all around, is refracted with fatal accuracy upon his own moral life ; you mark his degradation in the insolent banter which characterizes his address ; you trace it in the very lines of his countenance ; and you may predict for him with cer- tainty a career in which the verdict of the Word of 10 OUR founder's vow. God will soouor or later be ratified by the iiidiguation or by the compassiou of his fellow-men. So deeply was this felt by one who combined with a feeble faith in Religious Truth a profound insight into the conditions of an effective education, that he is reported to have observed that, if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him for the use of the educator. God it is, the sight of Whom creates rever- ence. Certain, moreover, it is, that the Church of Christ, and she alone, is the school of reverence. For the Church of Christ, by her dogmatic creeds, and by her majestic ritual, and by her persuasive and reiterated proclama- tion of unchanging truth, alone brings God home to the human soul. Natural rehgion is too abstract ; it knows too little of a personal living God, to be equal to its oppor- tunity. It speaks of Nature, as if Nature were God. It at times surrenders itself feebly to the suspicion that Nature's Author haunts the beauties which impress its imagination or which fascinate its sense. For a moment it seems to detect Him in the starry heavens, or in the tempestuous sea, or in the fragrant fi'eshness of the morning air, or in the calm brilliancy of simset. But it admires only, it has no heart for any thing beyond. It has no heart for reverence, because it has no heart for adoration ; it reflects, and He is gone ; and it pre- sently cowers before some materiahst, who would banish God l3cliind the system of laws and causes w^hich his fancy has erected as a barrier against what it deems God's too intimate and too importunate Pre- sence in His own world. The Gospel, on the other hand, is the religion of Emmanuel. God is with us Christians in His unrevealed Majesty and in the full- ness of His condescensions. He is with us in His Providences, in His Omnipotence, in His Wisdom, OUR founder's vow. 17 chiefly is He with us in His Love. He is with us in His Nativity, in His Temptation, in His Ministry, in His Passion, in His Risen Life, in His Sacramental Gifts. With the Evangehst we Christians have heard from heaven the truth that, since the Incarnation, "the tabernacle of God is with men^." This endearing nearness of our Saviour-God does not prevent our apprehension of His majestic awfulness. But it does render Him sufficiently close to our souls to prevent our thoughts about Him from evaporating in the shape of a vague admiration. We know that He is not far from every one of us ; and we express this knowledge not merely when we speak of Him, not merely when we read His Holy Word elsewhere, but also and especially when we enter His Temples. It is in the Church that a boy learns reverence by precept and example. Adora- tion is the concrete, the liighest expression of reverence. The silence which is only broken that man may speak of God or speak to God ; the prostrate forms of devout worshippers ; the chant which raises the soul above the world; the penitential confession which opens upon it, through flashes of moral light, the true sight of the Most Holy; the mysterious awe which is rightly inseparable from the great crises of a sacramental ritual, such as that of the Eucharist ; these things do suggest, day by day, week by week, year by year, a sympathetic attitude of soul. They insensibly persuade us to bend before Him who is the object and the explanation of what is thus going forward around us. They cry out as if with one voice to the soul, and their voice does not die away when the hour of adoration has past, " come let us worship and fall do^\^l and kneel before the Lord our Maker." And thus it is ' Kev. xxi. 3. 18 OUR founder's vow. that in Chapel a boy learns an inward habit which is the safe^'uard of active intellect, and the charm and lustre of social intercourse, aye, and a needful element in political and national life — the habit of reverence. He leanis the sincere, the hearty recognition of each ray of greatness around him, as being in truth a ray of His Beauty Who is worthy at once of all honour and of all love. ^. But not merely ^nll this Chapel create and foster reverence : it will, we may confidently hope, assist in that which, if possible, is yet more precious in the years when a boy is approaching manliood ; it T\ill assist the gi'owth of conscience. How much depends upon the full, free development of conscience, upon the breadth and accm-acy of its judgments, and upon the sensitive obedience of the will to its clearly-ai-ticulated voice, none know better than you, my reverend brethren, who are devoting yom*selves here to this work of education. Conscience is the heart of the moral life. And the soul suffers from notliing less than an organic disease when conscience has been stifled or silenced, or fatally misinformed or persistently tam- pered 'VN-ith. That disease, unless cured, must issue in spiritual death ; it must of course ^^tiate the whole educational progi-ess of the boy who is its victim. Now, doubtless. Conscience is roused, trained, in- formed, invigorated, by personal intercourse ^itli those to whom we look up A\ith love and respect. Doubtless the history of every conscience is simply co- extensive with the history of conscious life ; and in a boy's school-life, each lesson, each game of play, each temptation to evil, each opportunity for good, is a step, whether for good or evil, in its development. But especially will this Chapel aid in this momentous OUR founder's vow. 10 feature of moral education. It is not merely that the informal advice and encouragement, given elsewhere is to be echoed and solemnized by the well-weighed in- structions which will be dispensed, in the name and by the authority of Our Lord, from this pulpit. It is not merely that the preached word of God is now, as of old, " Quick and powerful, and sharper than a two- edged sword, piercing, even to the dividing asunder of soul and si)irit, and of the joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart','' and thus quickening the life of Conscience. It is, that prayer, day by day, if it is not to be a perpetual hypocrisy, brings the soul, with all its secret struggles, face to face with Him Who has made it, and Who knows its whole history. Public prayer does this not less continually than private prayer ; and in some re- spects more emphatically. In public prayer the soul is conscious at once of its utter solitude before God, and yet of the sympathy and assistance of a great company of worshippers around it. Each Communion is a challenge to the whole moral nature, and especially to the Conscience. There are seasons in a young man's life, when he first finds himself face to face with forms of evil, upon resistance to which his whole eternity may depend. For many a falterer such a refuge as this Chapel may first strike the trembling balance in his favour. The struggle of which his soul is the scene — a struggle unsuspected by any human eye — may here be laid bare before the All Holy and the All Merciful. The temptation to lust, or to sloth, or to cruelty, or to untruthfulness, or to moral cowardice, which is so powerful, so nearly in-esistible in the playground, or in the school-room, or in ' Heb. iv. 12. B 2 20 OUR founder's vow. the dormitoiy, is exorcised, or at least loses half its force in the Chapel. When all has seemed to he nearly lost, and a thick darkness has well-nigh settled down upon a soul that once had been robed in light, God here " turns Himself again, and looks down from heaven, and beholds and visits" in mercy. There are indeed souls to whose conscience a chapel says nothing, to whom it is from first to last a mean- ingless form. Such, we must fear, are given over to the dull insensibility of moral death. But with the great majority of boys and young men it is not so ; and we • may recognize in this building nothing less than a moral power. Its services, its ministers, nay the very lines and beauties of its archi- tecture, are destined to be intertwined with the deep secrets of many a predestined spirit, and to have their place in a chequered narrative of thought, and hope, and fear, and passion, and suffering, and joy, which will be revealed in all its intricacy and in its sur- passing interest by the light of another world. And among the spiritual mysteries which will hereafter be recognized as belonging to these sacred walls, as- suredly not the least "wdll be their silent contribution to the growth of Conscience. y. Closely connected with the growth of Conscience is that of shaping an aim and strengthening purpose in hfe. After all, education is a preparation for the coming duties of life ; and the value of a particular education must be measured by the degree in which it secures that preparation. A large mass of informa- tion may be imparted to a boy with no beneficial result whatever, either to himself or to his fellow-men, if the education of liis will have been overlooked ; since it is the will which gives effect to the achievements of the OUR founder's vow. 21 understanding or of the memory. What can be expected of a well-instructed boy who deliberately looks forward to the future as to a game of chance, in which he is to be the sport of events which he cannot control, and the author of actions for which he cannot be held responsible ? A future of feebleness, of caprice, of ac- cessibility to every, even the most unattractive tempta- tions ; of disbelief in high principle, whether in others or in himself; a future of progressive selfishness, and of progressive degradation. And what wonder, when the very anticipation has a tendency to work out its own fulfilment ? Beyond a doubt, the sooner the will is strengthened and directed upon a legitimate end, the better. The sooner a boy believes that, by the Grace of God, he holds his destiny completely in his own hands, the better. And where can such an education of the will be more surely pursued than on the floor of this Chapel ? The mere act of obedience which is implied in a regular attendance at the Church's services, is worth much, since obedience, beyond anything else, strengthens and braces the will. But, further, the services of this Chapel will open the heart of many a boy to a larger view of life and destiny than would have been possible without them. An open heart — that wonderful creation of a mother's love, so imperilled in the later years of life, — what means it ? It means not merely a bright countenance and an unclouded brow ; it means a generous love of self-sacrifice; it implies a spontaneity of affection and of effort, aye, and of resolve. And, as it is love which is the only key that ever unlocks the heart of man, so it is the love of Jesus Christ which perfectly opens it, and which alone, in the chilling atmosphere of the world, can keep it open. As our Divine Ke- deemer shines in His Glory upon the soul which 22 OUR founder's vow. approaclies Him, tlie soul spreads itself before Him as tlie liower before the morning suu ; and He endows it with strength and with beauty ; He enriches what was before a coarse or a feeble nature, with the refinement of unselfishness and with the heroism of self sacrifice. One who spent his days as a missionary of no common power, used as a boy, whenever he entered church, to say, " Show Thou me the way that I should walk in, for I lift up my soul unto Thee ^" My younger brethren, let that be your prayer in this Chapel, not merely on the 29tli evening of the month, but often and earnestly besides. I do not say look forward to being missionaries ; God may or may not call some of you to such high service. But let your pm-poses for the future take their shape Jwre, beneath the Eye of your God ; and, at least, you will live hereafter, not as men who saunter tlu'ough hfe, feebly, uselessly, aim- lessly, selfishly, but with an earnest and a noble purpose. To consecrate a life to God, a man need not become a clerg^Tiian. Do not suppose that, for those who are not going to be clergymen, attendance in this Chapel is lost time. Here your hearts may be best opened and kept open. Here your Vv-ills may be strengthened and directed more and more persistently on a single object. Here your whole inward life may acquire, if you be willing in the day of God's power, a unity and a force which ^^ill assuredly tell both in time and in eternity. Here provision may be laid up in your secret spirits against the dark days wliicli, sooner or later, come, in mercy or in judgment, to all. " One thing have I desired of the Lord which I will require, even that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the fair ' Ps. exliii. 8. OUR founder's vow. 23 beauty of the Lord, and to visit His Temple ; for in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His Tabernacle, yea, in the secret place of His dwelhng shall He hide me, and set me up upon a rock of stone "^ Therefore, my Lord Bishop, in dedicating this Chapel, you are not gratifying a mere artistic or aesthetic sentiment. You are not inaugurating a monument which the economy of common-sense might have deemed superfluous. For this Chapel, in all its lofty beauty, embodies and gives shape to an essential feature of the work which is conducted within the walls of this College. The ministrations, the associations, the very roof and windows of this building are des- tined to mould most intimately and practically the daily routine of those who are to be the hope of our country a few years hence, and who will here learn to face the battle of life as men and as Christians should face it. Such a Chapel, we humbly trust, besides more directly promoting our Master's glory, ^A\\ really assist the intellectual growth of the students of this College by forming those habits of reverence, of conscientiousness, and of determination, which are not less essential to the prosecution of early studies than to the work of later life. For these reasons, my Lord, you have been petitioned to grant us on the present solemn occasion, if not at once that full consecration of the Church which sets a building apart forever to the ser- vice of God, yet the high, and, for us Churchmen, the in- dispensable sanction of your presence and your blessing. And you, my brethren, who, at great cost of time and labour, have come from afar to bear your part in this day's festival, be sure that this work of your hands will be prospered upon you. One day, 3'ou shall trace in ^ Ps. xxvii. 4, 5. 24 OUR founder's vow. the history of mauy a redeemed soul the manifold in- fluences of this building. Hereafter you shall know how these lines of beauty, on which your eye rests now with tranquil pleasure or with curious admiration, have been graven deejD in many a memory, how they have been linked for ever with the earliest and truest sense of contact between many a soul's inmost life and the Eye and Hand of its Creator. One who should un- ha2)i)ily believe neither in Grace, nor in Redemption, nor in prayer, nor in an endless world beyond the grave, nor in a hviug God of earth and heaven, might yet envy this institution the educational advantages w^hich it must incidentally derive from its possession of this noble Chapel. But you look beyond such ad- vantages ; your aim is higher. A single soul here really guided into and trained in the way of Eternal Peace would be, you know it, your ample recompense. What remains but that you should perfect your work ? Your eyes behold what has already been done for the honour of your God and for the highest good of the children of your countrymen. Something, how- ever, must yet be attempted, if this building is to be more than an outline of possible but unrealized magni- ficence. He who dwells at once in the highest heavens and in the hearts of the lowliest of His servants, deigns also to vouchsafe His especial presence in the temples of Christendom ; and Christians cannot do better than resolve by one generous effort to bring to its comple- tion a noble undertaking which has so nearly realized the design of its projector. THE END. GILBEKT AND BIVINOTON, PRINTEKS, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE, LONDON. m