Edward Stuart Talbot

“ 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. ”

“ The mind grows and asks questions: What does conscience mean? Why is good good, and evil evil? And then we begin to make answers. "Honesty is the best policy;" "to be good brings happiness in the long run;" "see the sad consequences of what is wrong: bodies weakened, or fortunes wasted by indulgence, lives made unhappy by ill-temper, homes divided, hearts soured." ”

“ 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. ”

“ For He who teaches us to trace goodness up to God teaches us that God is love. He who brought the goodness of God down to men, did so not "to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved [16] ." He who being God became man, did so that in Him man might be lifted up to God. He in whom was revealed the perfect claim of goodness, which is God, made also the perfect answer to that claim on behalf of man: and out of the perfect offering of that Human Life which cancelled our rebellion there sprung a new life which we can share. ”

“ But now beside all that I have spoken of in the school, besides the bodily training and the teaching of the mind, there is a great deal else,—there is its Christian purpose, its chapel services: among its masters it has clergymen: out of its time something is taken to prepare you for Confirmation, to teach you the Bible, to collect you here for worship. What can we say for this? Is this right? Will this meet the same test, the test namely of providing that, and only that, which makes human nature grow as it should grow to be what it should be? ”

“ Yes, it will train these young growing bodies into strong and active men. And then their minds and wits. Here, again, the school does well for them: it has its careful system, working up from form to form, from the grammar and repetition at the bottom, to the study of the deeper laws and delicate distinctions of language, and of the great works of human thought, at the top; it has the competition for prizes and promotion which quickens zeal and brightens wits; it has the intercourse out of school of boys with boys, of masters with boys ”

“ It undertakes a great work, and a great responsibility: for it undertakes some hundred or more of those who will be men, during the years in which they grow and learn and are formed; and we cannot ask of it less than this: Does it fit them to reach their fullest manhood? does it help them to grow to their fullest growth? does it train them to fill their places in the world to the utmost of their own best? ”

“ May we possibly find in God one whom we can not only fear and obey but love, so that we may gladly do His will, and "run the way of His commandments [3] ," and find His "service perfect freedom," even as it is always happy and free to please one whom we really love? ”

“ They contribute a necessary and a magnificent part of it: that which satisfies and strengthens your conscience, that which satisfies and purifies your heart. They carry on the grammar of the first lessons of right and wrong which you had in the days of childhood, and work them out into a true science of goodness, whereby goodness in us is understood in its true light as the glad and free homage and the loving imitation, which a glorious and perfect God, a holy and loving Father, asks and receives from His children. ”

“ Truly a public schoolboy, and those of us who have been public schoolboys, have much for which to say grace and give thanks, in the fact of having belonged to places so well fitted, so carefully by the experience and growth of years and centuries and the care of wise and earnest men elaborated, to fit the young for their work in life. ”

“ YOU have not time, you have not thoughts, to spare for many words on a Festival-day. And yet, just because it is a Festival-day, you look to have some words spoken to you: and your Festival would not be complete without something of a sermon. ”

“ If so it must be because in each of us there is, besides the body to be fed and trained, and the mind to be cultivated and taught, somewhat else, which in its turn needs to be strengthened and tended and trained. ”