Edward Stuart Talbot

“ His conscience told him that right was right, that it had in it and behind it infinite power. He heard through it the Voice divine and eternal, and he confessed and denied not, but confessed 'Righteousness and judgement are the habitation of His seat.' Righteousness, not a pale abstract fairness, but a living, burning, moving force, at work everywhere, holding all things in its hand, very awful, with a fire of judgement in it against evil—'the earth saw it and was afraid;' and yet a blessed thing, a sure help, a strength and shield for all who trusted and obeyed. ”

“ We know how to criticise them all. What have we in their place? We have gained, no doubt, in a greater use at home and in school of love rather than fear; in less censorious judgment of other men's liberty; in more naturalness and freedom of growth; in the absence of bitter re-actions against harsh or irksome restraint. But where is the right severity, the wholesome restraint, the steady method, the pruning-knife of character and spirit? ”

“ A great contrast; for here is the Christian Standard. The real strength of a religion is the height and greatness of its demands. The Greek standard was making the beautiful best of all your faculties: it was not a little true; and how it has held men fascinated! The Buddhist standard was the sacrifice of all desire. It mixed a great truth with a dark falsehood; and it had a more profound and mysterious attraction than the Greek. The Christian standard is the Life of God, and it has unique power to dignify and control and quicken. ”

“ What we need for reading it is not cleverness so much as faith; for each man there is wisdom enough and to spare, if he will gather up the knowledge that comes to him from every side, not to trade in it, nor to tickle his curiosity with it, nor to cut a figure by help of it, but for the divine meaning and value that it has: if, as life goes on, he will try to be ever learning, pressing on to get at the meaning of things, by putting together what he sees without him, and what he feels within ”

“ Goodness is obedience to a good God.
So conscience gets its first reason from religion. But then it asks for more: and there is more to come. If there is such a Being, God, can we know Him more? And is there nothing better than obedience? Slaves obey; we are made for liberty. You can obey and fear; we are made to love. And even the child when he did right felt light and free in doing it, none the less that he had to put force upon himself: and in his heart loves doing right, even though pleasure or temper or indolence leads him to do wrong. ”

“ The God so long believed in has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of His own glory in the face of Jesus Christ. To a world which sat in darkness and the shadow of death, light, the light of life, has sprung up. Conscience has met its answer, and death has yielded to the purer glory of the resurrection. The righteousness and judgement of the Psalmist's faith have, as it were, opened out to us its inner heart, and we know that God is love. ”

“ And now I ask my first question; is it certainly good for every one to be under authority and to possess knowledge? You will be inclined to say 'Yes, to be quite undisciplined, or quite ignorant must be wrong; Rule and Knowledge are sure to be good for everyone.' And yet I shall venture to answer that they are not certainly good.
Surely there are cases when subjection to power and authority brings mischief and not good; for we have about us a feeling of independence and freedom, a sense that each man or each child is given by God his own life, and belongs to himself, and not to any one else. ”

“ To do this may be the way to maintain or increase the members of a party, but not to speak home to the conscience of a generation. Even human wisdom may remind us that the strength of truth lies not a little in its wholeness, that a needed development of one sort may require only the more peremptorily some other and different element, not to supersede it, but to keep it in harmony. And, more deeply, we must not forget that God's teaching and leading ever keeps its own character of paradox: "His ways not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts." ”

“ And we begin to understand it if those who are caring for our bodies, and guiding our minds, care for us in this way too; and teach us to understand that conscience is so strong, and right is so awful and yet so lovely, because conscience and right are only names and forms for the voice and the will of a great Being, 'One God, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,' holy and immortal, just and true, before whom all creation bows, in whose service all creation is happy, in whom we "live and move and have our being [2] ." The world is His world, we are His creatures ”

“ We can come nearer God than by having a purpose; for our purpose may be like His, Be ye holy for I am Holy: the words come again from Our Lord Himself in more human tones; Be ye perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect: and another Gospel gives them in yet another form; Be ye merciful as your Father is merciful. Nature is witness of purpose in God: in Christ we learn its nature: it is a purpose of Love. Mercy, and all the actions and fruits of mercy, help, service ”

“ But if the reform has been begun within, our best care for externals will be all help, and no hurt. Of all secondary helps, the sound of each other's hearty voices, the sight of each other's reverent bearing, the sense of a common impulse of devotion stirring in confession and prayer and praise, will do incalculably much to warm our coldness, to rouse our listlessness, to refresh our weariness, to cheer our discouragements, to lift us again and again to the effort after a devouter spirit, to confirm our faith. ”

“ The clouds and darkness are not gone: the mystery is still about Him, and His ways past finding out. We have indeed seen the Father, if we know our Lord: with open face those that are His reflect as a mirror the glory of the Lord; and yet, the Apostle who wrote those words himself acknowledges, 'we see in a mirror, darkly,' in a riddle. Doubtless this is right, as it is natural and inevitable. For we are men as they were. One discipline suits us all. It could not be that they should walk by faith, and we by sight. ”

“ He chafes under it, and grows sullen: he escapes it by lying, and grows deceitful; or he breaks out against it and his temper gets spoilt and soured. This is the way in which bad schools and harsh schoolmasters, bad homes and cruel parents have ruined children, and bad kings or tyrannical governments have ruined nations. This Authority of might without right was the curse of that slavery which England in this century did away with, by the grace of God, throughout the dominions of the Queen. ”

“ You will see that the true doctrine of Christian worship sets before us as it were a two-fold Divine presence in that worship, a presence for us, and a presence in us; I had almost said a presence which we find, and a presence which we bring. We have been dwelling on the first, let us not forget the second—the presence of Christ by the Spirit in the company of faithful people, who are members of His body; in the Church on the large scale, and in each congregation as a miniature of the whole. ”

“ For a Festival-day gathers up into itself for joy and gladness the life of the place where it is kept: and you wish, somewhere in the day at least, to touch upon, and glance at, the things which lie beneath all the holiday and hospitality; which give a reason to our Festival, because they give a reason for being glad that our school should be, and flourish. And you rightly look to Chapel for this: for nothing in human life is truly explained or justified until it is explained or justified by something which can bear to be brought into God's sight, or to be spoken in the Name of God. ”

“ Only such humility must have in it no grain of apathy. On one side it must deepen into penitence. Can we doubt that we are largely to blame? Have we taken as matters of course what were really exceptional gifts of God? Are we blinder because we have seen? Have the works done among us by greater than human power left our heart as a generation or a Church harder? History has its precedents for such things to wake our alarm. ”

“ England has a great vocation to serve this world, and will be Christian in proportion as she understands and answers to it. But there is a call, of unequalled force and strength, to Englishmen to serve England, not only by fighting her battles abroad, but by service to her great populations at home. I am quite certain that a College Mission, as representing this and giving some opportunity for it, is a feature of real and inestimable value in the life of a College, more valuable perhaps than some which seem more distinctly academic. ”

“ The Christian standard of life is the imitation of God, and all forms of human excellence are summed in this: steadfastness, self-control, purity, integrity, patience, and order—but above all these love. And if I have led your thoughts rightly this morning that highest thing in the Divine life must find its reflection in every life which desires to be Christian—in an active desire to help, and serve, and bless. ”

“ I shall pass quickly by other things which a school does, other mighty powers which it wields, to train its sons, and draw out of them all that is in them to be drawn out; such, for instance, as its esprit de corps, that sense of membership in a great institution, with a history and a future and a reputation to be maintained, which has no small power to put life into both work and play: or that standard of honour and of manners, of what is courteous or upright or honourable in society, which puts a public school-boy so far on his way towards being a true and high-toned gentleman. ”

“ The doctrine that God is a Spirit could be perfectly accepted when it came from the lips of God made man. The purest truth of spiritual worship could be endured when in the light of that Incarnation it was realized that the spiritual stands in no contrast, but in the most absolute accord with the real and the human. ”

“ Is any master a good teacher who does not give the pupil an interest in his subject but only crams him for a Prize? So it should be with knowledge everywhere. A man will hardly be able to succeed with a subject of knowledge unless he cares about it; but even if he does so succeed, he himself will gain no real good from it. To do us good, knowledge must have a value of its own, and be felt by us to have it. ”

“ Happy we, if resolutely minimizing controversy by rising to what is really highest, we can unitedly lay hold upon the truth of the living Giver present to give us in His own way living gifts, parts of the one Gift which is life from Himself. Happy if we can recognize that different races, times, and strains of opinion or temperament may treat these great things of divine operation with more or less of simplicity or splendour, and mean by both alike the same purpose of doing fullest reverence to the real working of God amongst and within us. ”

“ Paget has been personally known in Oxford for fifteen years, the larger half of them spent in the Deanery of Christ Church. She threw herself with all her heart into the duty of entertaining others—from the highest to the humblest; and, so filling a great position with transparent sincerity of purpose, found, in the very unreserve of service, its own healthy gladness of spirit. The whole community knew her brightness in entertaining. ”