Edward Stuart Talbot

“ 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. ”

“ Semper agens, semper quietus. God has turned many leaves of the book of Nature for us in the last half-century, and given us a new sense of the sway and majesty of order in His work, that is in the universe. ”

“ To be steadily one's best and truest self not because it is oneself, but because it is the likeness of God; to separate oneself from defiling things; to live with singleness and sincerity. This is imitation of God Himself. It takes us above the aimless, shallow, shifting life that is according to the desires.
But if God's holiness means the perfectness of His Being, what, we ask, is that Being? ”

“ It is a duty for a man, wherever he is placed in life, to be felt as one of those sturdy servants of good causes who can be relied upon when there is good work to be done. It is a duty for us all according to our power to swell the volume—alas, all too small, of the forces which make for the bettering, and helping, and enlarging, of the life of their community—be it city, or village, or parish, or nation, or Church. ”

“ But it might be a subject for irony—a life which has for its standard the satisfaction of its own wishes—that motley and varying crew: the many desires of all sorts and kinds crossing, and clashing, and competing, some looking up, some pulling down; some innocent and instinctive, but easily running to excess ”

“ And though not every Scientist's or Artist's life is good or high, any more than every religious believer's is, yet the touch of the great Order on the man of Science and the man of Art is, in itself, a dignifying, steadying, lifting thing. ”

“ But a man's life is wider than his professional duty, and he is a poor citizen and a poor Christian who thinks of his time and thoughts and interest as divided between necessary business and leisure. These are not the men to whom the best life of a country owes most, but such as feel that they owe duties of a wider kind to the service of God and man. ”

“ This truth gives dignity to all work; but it also gives a standard by which different kinds of work may be compared. Different forms of work happily suit different men, and all are honourable. But we cannot help regarding some as higher than others, and I would venture to say that the real test of higher and lower is this, which has in it most of service, and of difficult or needed service, to human life. The great callings of the Christian Ministry, of Education, of Medicine, gain each their special honour by this test. ”

“ Drift, at first self-indulgent, then, perhaps, becoming selfish or vicious, but at any rate a feeble and enervating thing is the bane of how many lives? Perhaps our time, which presents so much to distract and occupy, makes drifting particularly easy. ”

“ I suppose that even if a man chose a wrong or low end his life would gain in consistency and force; it would be more effective for evil. But as most men don't mean to do wrong, but slide or fall into it, a real attempt to choose what Aristotle calls an end, or we may call a standard, would with most men lift as well as steady their life.
Here, in these words, are two standards. The first is very easy to understand. Fashioning yourselves according to your desires. ”

“ For it brings the touch of the great world, it adds to College life, so splendid in its opportunities of self-culture in body and mind, its reminder of the great human needs which, after all, all self-culture should help to serve. ”

“ But to call these a standard, to find any rule or guidance in them—what a mockery! We can all see that when we think; and that is one good thing which comes of thinking. But how many of us, seniors or juniors, can say that this please-yourself philosophy has not had too much hold upon our life. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. Notice how the Apostle speaks of it—"your former desires in the time of your ignorance." It had been the natural thing for them left to themselves: it was the life a man would lead till he learnt better. ”

“ He may, and ought to, get his living by it; he may hope to distinguish himself and shine in it; but if he thinks truly he will see that neither the profit nor the reputation are the bottom reasons for its being done. ”