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 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN 
 
 THE CHAPEL OF MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE, 
 On Sunday, October 2nd, 1881, 
 
 In commemoration of the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, 
 
 BEING THE 
 
 ANNIVERSAEY OF THE CONSECRATION OF THE CHAPEL, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. E. S. TALBOT, M.A., 
 
 Warden of Kehle College, Oxford. 
 
 Published at the request of the Sixth Form. 
 
 PRINTED AND SOLD BY E. AND R. A. LUCY^, 
 HIGH STREET. 
 
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 ^^ H^j^nkijinj mk §nk 
 
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 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED IN 
 
 THE CHAPEL OF MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE, 
 
 O/i Simday, October 2nd, 1881, 
 
 In commemoration of the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, 
 
 niEING THE 
 
 ANNIYERPATiY OF THE CONSECRATION OF THE CHAPEL, 
 
 KY T'lE 
 
 REV. E. S. TALBOT, M.A., 
 
 Warden of Kvhlc College, Oxford. 
 
 rithlhltcd at the request of the Sixth Furm. 
 
 rr.IXTEU AND SOLD liY E. AKD U. A. LUCY, 
 HlfiH STREET.
 
 A SEEMON 
 
 LUKE XII., 48. 
 
 " Unto ivhomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.'^ 
 
 If I began speaking to yon to-day by saying that wo 
 live in a time of enlightenment, yon would say, 'what 
 a commonplace ! ' 'Bnt have you considered,' ' I should 
 answer,' ' the use of commonplaces ?' Make it a habit 
 to get all you can out of commonplaces. Common- 
 places are the common sayings in which great numbers 
 of men have put thoughts upon which they agree, and 
 which come often into their minds. 'No doubt such say- 
 ings are often very shalloAv or very one-sided: handed on 
 fi'om one mouth to another, they go on being repeated 
 till the truth in them, like the stamp on an old coin, 
 gets rubbed away and blurred. So do not be the 
 slaves of commonplaces : they are very good servants, 
 but very bad masters : if you want to be sensible, 
 clear-headed, and honest in your thoughts make it your 
 habit to examine them, and not merely to parrot them.
 
 But yet, as I said, believe in them : attack them, not 
 to tear them to pieces and destroy them, but to get 
 out of them the truth which they contain. If they 
 had not truth in them more or less they would never 
 have become common : just as it is the beautiful parts 
 of the country which get over-run with tourists. 
 
 And now as to this commonplace of our living in a 
 time of enlightenment. It is not wholly true, but let 
 us take it for the truth there is in it. And in this we 
 cannot, I think, be wrong ; for this reason, that the 
 Bible and the world seem on this point to tell us the 
 same thing. The Bible does so, for it tells us that the 
 Gospel of Jesus Christ has turned darkness to light. 
 And the world is always saying in talk, and books, 
 and newspapers that we live in more enlightened days 
 than our forefathers. And so, if you challenge your 
 own thoughts you will find, I think, that you have 
 come youi'self to take this for granted, and though 
 possibly you may have a rqmantic feeling about this 
 or that period in the past, yet yom- real settled ordinary 
 way of thinking is that we live in much more enlight- 
 ened days than those. 
 
 Let us then assume that it is so, and ask what 
 follows ? I want you to consider whether the text 
 does not give us the true answer. If we have this 
 advantage, we ought to turn it to account : we should 
 have something to shew for it. And if you say that 
 
 , UiUC ^ 
 
 \ /
 
 this too is a commonplace, I answer first, tliat it is one 
 of the commonphices which wo owe to Christianity, 
 one of those golden trntlis which Christ has made 
 common property : and secondly, that if it is a common- 
 place, it is not a common thing, and will require no 
 common effort really to act up to it. No, do not let 
 us call this a commonplace : but rather a heart-stirring 
 call, crying aloud to all that is noble, and honourable, 
 and loyal in us; and saying you have received splendid 
 gifts, put them to splendid use : do not take them to 
 be selfishly enjoyed : do not boast of them, since you 
 owe them to no doing of your own : but let them bind 
 your heart by ever fresh ties of gratitude to God the 
 giver, and fill you with ever fresh desire to use them 
 in the way which is most to His Glory, that is by 
 using them for the good of men. 
 
 "What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits 
 towards me ?"* 
 
 What is it then that we have received? Ah! more 
 a hundredfold than we ever realize ! the splendid 
 inheritance of a young English Christian gentleman 
 is a thing so large and rich that any one whose heart 
 is thoughtful and grateful enough to begin to think of 
 it will find himself fairly unable to realise and measure 
 its wealth. Upon how many generations of experience 
 and effort it is built up I How many noble lives of 
 action and of endurance have gone to contribute to it ! 
 How many influences, political, intellectual, religious, 
 
 * Pi?, cxvi., 12.
 
 6 
 
 each yielding to it their best, have gone to make it 
 what it is ! Look at its mere outward security and 
 peace, contrasted with the long ages when with sword 
 at your side, or pistol in your belt, a time of war was 
 hardly less dangerous to you than a time of peace. 
 Look at its inherited refinement of taste and feeling : 
 at its stored-up treasures of human thought and 
 emotion and aspiration accumulated in the great 
 literatures, and distilled in quintessence by the master 
 poets. Look at its profuse and boundless knowledge, 
 such that be your interests Avhat they will you can 
 choose your field of knowledge and find abundant in- 
 formation and helpful guides, in place of a few 
 cumbrous rolls of manuscript, or the crabbed type of 
 an unwieldy folio. But I will not try to go on de- 
 scribing what we have. You can do it for yourselves : 
 and, what is more, such things are worth little except 
 as we do them for ourselves. Ehetoric and froth iu 
 the mouth of a speaker or preacher, they become real 
 and solid only when, as thoughts in the mind of any 
 one of us, they move him to wonder and to praise. 
 I ask you to carry your thoughts past all which you 
 owe to the Founders of Marlborough, the life, the 
 teaching, the traditions of your School, — past all these 
 to that great whole out of the bosom of which all such 
 particular benefits and blessings come, and to which, 
 though it is too great and manifold to be adequately
 
 expressed in language, wc give the name of our 
 Christian Civilization. Let us turn from general 
 descriptions to tAVO or three particular points. 
 
 1. — You are occupied for much of your time 
 with the classical authors. You begin by taking them 
 as a task, and construe out a passage for practice in 
 Latin or Greek. Then as you get older and know the 
 languages better, you begin perhaps to take pleasure 
 in their literary Ijeauty : the fresh morning-air of 
 Homer, the grandeur of ^schylus, the strength of 
 Thucydides, the sparkle of Horace, the grace and skill 
 of Yirgil : and moreover you find in them passages of 
 shrewd wisdom or noble thought which you admire 
 and remember. But . have you ever considered the 
 difference as regards these books between j^ourself 
 and the boy of your age in ancient times ? Ilave you 
 ever thought Avliat it would be to be dependent upon 
 these authors for your principles and your guidance ? 
 Suppose your Bible out of the way : suppose yourself 
 without the simple Christian teachings of childhood : 
 and in place of them these classical books. If you 
 believed the stories of the poets about the gods and 
 heroes Avhat strange patterns they set up for your 
 conduct : how degrading many of the thoughts which 
 they put into your mind. Do you know that the 
 philosopher Plato when he was planniug a perfect 
 state and a perfect system of education said that he
 
 8 
 
 must banish the poets because they filled the thoughts 
 of the young with false and unworthy thoughts ?* And 
 if you did not believe these stories — as was no doubt 
 the case with many in the later days of Greece and 
 Eome — in what a state of perplexity this left you. 
 For these poems and legends professed to tell of Zeus 
 and Apollo, or of Venus and Mars, the very deities to 
 whom belonged the temples in the streets and squares 
 of your own city. And if what the poets told was 
 false, what truth about the gods was there to know ? 
 And if these gods did not exist, what gods were there 
 for you to know ? How uncertain it all Avas ! How 
 little to guide you ! How little to check you from a 
 life of mere pleasure and indulgence ! How little to 
 encourage you to live for anything more than the 
 present, to put before youi'self high and noble aims. 
 Think of this when j'^ou read the classics. Let it 
 make you fairer and kinder to the men of those daj'-s : 
 let it lead you to honour more highly their efforts to 
 live nobly, with so little by which to live : to be less of 
 a Pharisee in judging their shortcomings, the dark 
 sides of their best and greatest lives. But especially 
 be thankful for the difference between their helps and 
 yours, between Homer and the Xcw Testament : 
 between a literary enjoyment of the classics, and a 
 dependence on them as guides of life. 
 
 * Pluto Kopiiblie ii., pp. 378, 383.
 
 2. — This leads lis on to a second point, akin to it. 
 Think of the things which we take for granted, of 
 which we are sure, in the matter of right and wrong. 
 We are sure, (are we not?) that to be pure is good, and 
 that impurity, filthy conversation, and the like is bad. 
 "We are sure that humility is better than conceit : we 
 are sure that unselfishness is the noblest rule of life. 
 Mind, I do not say that we show these things in our 
 lives. Alas, there is plenty of doing what we knoAV 
 we ought not to do : and leaving undone what we 
 know we ought to do. But I speak not of what Ave 
 do but of what we hold, not of our conduct but of 
 our principles. And though this blessing like any 
 other may be turned into a curse if we are unfaithfid 
 and sin against light, yet a blessing it must be that 
 the goodness of purity and humility and unselfishness 
 is taken for granted among us : that we have these 
 principles at the bottom of our hearts, deep in our 
 consciences : that they are always speaking to us and 
 pleading with us. So much are they matters of course 
 with us that we hardly realize that they were not 
 always as plain a^^ they are to us. Yet what do you 
 think were the thoughts about purity of a boy who 
 found Aphrodite or Bacchus among his country's 
 gods, and their hymns among its sacred poetry ? Do 
 you think he took it for granted that purity Avas a 
 thing for which God made us, and from which it is a
 
 10 
 
 shame aucl sin to fall? Or as to humility, do you 
 kuoAV that the greatest moral j^hilosopher in Greece, 
 drawiug what is evidently an ideal portrait,* described 
 a man, the " great-souled man," whose every gesture 
 and act betrays the spirit of self-esteem and self- 
 assertion ? Or, as to unselfishness, have you realized 
 that Christian teaching has worked nothing less than 
 a revolution in this respect : that it has created for us 
 the beautiful thought of a life lived for others : and 
 that where Ave as a matter of course put unselfishness 
 the Greek put self-culture, or (in plain English) 
 making the best of yourself, and the Oriental perhaps 
 might put a mere cruel self-destruction? So true it is 
 that these things which seem so natural to us were 
 long unrecognised or dimly seen : and among oiu' 
 highest blessings we must reckon this, that we know 
 and know certainly that purity and humility and un- 
 selfishness are good. I^o doubt these things never are 
 spoken against : and you may find it no easy part of 
 your life's battle to stand true to them : to hold fast 
 the nobleness of purity when people tell you that it is 
 not the Avay of the world, or excuse impurity as 
 natural, or even dress it up with poctr}^ and art. But 
 the inheritance is none the less ours because there are 
 men who try to rob us of it. We might as well light 
 our houses with rushlights, or travel in stage coaches, 
 as willingly go back to uncertainty about these things 
 
 * Aristotle Eth. Nicom. iv. (3).
 
 11 
 
 of wliicli the light of Christiau truth has made us 
 certain. It wouhl be travelling the road of history 
 the wrong way, from light towards darkness, from 
 true civilization towards barbarism. 
 
 Act upon the instincts and the princij^les which 
 have been won for you by the blood and sweat of the 
 moral struggles of many centuries. Eefuse to reopen 
 settled questions, to unravel finished work. Ilefuse 
 to discuss the law of purity or the law of unselfishness 
 as you would the law of gravitation. Send those who 
 would debate them to liistor}^ and their oavu consciences. 
 Act upon them : and they will prove themselves to 
 you and to others. 
 
 o. — Once more, let me take you to a very simple 
 thiug, but one which is the very centre of our Chris- 
 tian possessions. Have you ever thought sufficiently 
 wliat we possess in the example of Jesus Christ? 
 
 The most famous ancient book on moral conduct, 
 the Ethics of Aristotle, advised that to find what is 
 right 5^ou should take Avhat the good man thought 
 right.* The advice Avas good : but who and where was 
 the good man ? Since Christ's time that question has 
 had a clear and certain answer. That Avonderful 
 power for good, the power of a good example, has 
 been displayed perfectly by a Perfect Character : ideal, 
 and yet perfectly real. Here is a fact in our possessiou. 
 It is recognised by those who do not believe in Christ as 
 
 * i\i-i=itotlo Eth. Nicom. ii. (G). 15.
 
 12 
 
 we do, but "who again and again come forward to ac- 
 knoTvlcdge Him as the Perfect pattern of human 
 Character. Have you thought what a possession this 
 is, what a beacon-light for one who seeks the true path 
 on the journey of life, the way of true manliness, the 
 tnie life of a true man? The young artist seeks 
 master-pieces to copy ; the young soldier seeks a hero 
 to follow. As his master-piece to the artist, and as 
 his hero to the soldier, "so to us in om* life's work and 
 battle is the Portrait and the Figure of Jesus Christ. 
 
 If we could see things truly we should recognise, I 
 think, as the central light of our enlightenment the 
 possession of that Portrait in a book which we can all 
 buy ; which we can all read ; which in a sense we can 
 all understand ; in which any of us can make out for 
 himself if he tries what Christ was really like, what 
 the Great Example is which all agree that we ought to 
 imitate. How happy I should be if I could think 
 that my words — on this one occasion on which it is 
 given to me to speak to you — would lead any of you 
 to make a life's practice from your boyhood onward of 
 such honest and humble seeking in the Gospel for the 
 power of the example of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Such seeking will find mure than it seeks : an ex- 
 amj)lc but more than an example : an Example whose 
 beauty will grow upon you wonderfidly, while you 
 will find that in many simple common things there
 
 13 
 
 is room to copy It. But more than an example. For 
 Christ makes certain to us things which to those Avho 
 knew or know not Christ conhl be hopes at best : 
 He makes us certain what onr God is; that we live 
 in a world which a good God rules; that He cares for 
 us, since He has sent His Son for our sakes ; that it is 
 worth while to do good, and that to do evil is a horrible 
 falling away from God, and from all that is natural 
 and happy and God-like. And, in yet another sense, 
 more than an example. Eor the portrait (if I may so 
 speak) comes down out of its frame, and takes us by 
 the hand. He Whom you study in the Gospel as an 
 Example you will soon feel to be also a Living and 
 Loving Friend, secretly drawing your hearts to 
 Himself, secretly encouraging and helping you to give 
 yourself to goodness. 
 
 I have shc^vn you, bretlu'en, have I not ? that you 
 have richly received, that ' unto you has been given 
 much : ' and now I beg you do not let the thoughts 
 pass away : think of these things : realize now and often 
 your advantages : reckon up your wealth : how true is it 
 that what we most need is not to know more or to have 
 more, but to make more of what we have, and realize 
 more in what we know ! Lift your eyes to the height of 
 what is given you, for it towers high, and you must lift 
 your eyes from your own level and the level of the things 
 which amuse us and engross us in order to see it : enlavfje
 
 14 
 
 your hearts to take it iu, for our hearts are very 
 narrow chamberSj* only God has given them a wonder- 
 ful power of enlarging to take in what is good. 
 
 If you do this you will ' see youi' calling : ' you 
 will feel bound to walk "worthy of that calling" f which 
 sounds to you thi'ough every blessing that God has 
 given to you, but sounds loudest thi'ough that which 
 you have in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Standing 
 at the outset of your life with the unhewn block 
 before you which it is yours to fashion, you will grasp 
 — oh why should you not ? — what so many learn pain- 
 fully and late, the true and brilliant secret of what 
 life is, a secret which is yet plain and open for those 
 who have eyes to see ; that it is not an enjoyment of 
 self for self's sake alone, not an eating and di'inldng for 
 a few days before we die, not a strife for success, but 
 a rendering of ourselves to God for all the benefits 
 that He hath done unto us. 
 
 * 2 Cor. ^±, 12. t Epli. iv., 1.
 
 In all time of ox^r wealth 
 Good Loed, delia^eii us.
 
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