Sermons at Rugby Part 1

Sermons at Rugby.

by John Percival.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

This little group of Rugby Sermons is to be taken and read as being nothing more than a few stray chips from the workshop of a busy schoolmaster, brought together by a kindly publisher, and arranged as he thought best.

They represent no body of continuous doctrine. In one case the subject may have been suggested by the season of the Christian year; in another it was the meeting or the parting at the beginning or the end of a term that suggested it; or more frequently some incident in the school life of the moment.

Such, indeed, almost inevitably is the teaching of a schoolmaster, engrossed in the training of the boys committed to his charge and growing under his hand towards the destiny of their endless life.

To those boys, and to the masters, my colleagues, and to other fellow- labourers--some gone to their rest, some still doing their appointed work--I dedicate this brief reminder of our common life in days of happy fellowship.

J. HEREFORD.

_July_ 1905.

I. RELIGIOUS PATRIOTISM.

"Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity in itself... . O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy palaces. For my brethren and companions' sakes I will wish thee prosperity. Yea, because of the house of the Lord our G.o.d I will seek to do thee good."--PSALM cxxii. 3, 6-9.

As we draw near to the end of our summer term, when so many are about to take leave of their school life, there is sure to rise up in many minds the thought of what this life has done for them or failed to do, and of what the memory of it is likely to be in all their future years as they pa.s.s from youth to age.

And it should be our aim and desire, as need hardly be said, that from the day when each one comes amongst us as a little boy to the day when he offers his last prayer in this chapel before he goes out into the world, his life here should be of such a sort that its after taste may have no regrets, and no bitterness, and no shame in it, and the memories to be cherished may be such as add to the happiness and strength of later years. And if, as we trust, this is your case, your feeling for your school is almost certain to be in some degree like that which is expressed in this pilgrim psalm. Its language of intense patriotism, steeped in religious feeling, which is the peculiar inspiration of the Old Testament Jew, will seem somehow to express your own feelings for that life in which you grew up from childhood to manhood.

Indeed, the best evidence that your school life has not failed of its higher objects is the growth of this same sort of earnest patriotic enthusiasm. Do you feel at all for your school as that unknown Jewish pilgrim who first sung this 122nd Psalm felt for the city of his fathers and the house of G.o.d? "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. For my brethren and companions' sakes I will wish thee prosperity. Yea, because of the house of the Lord our G.o.d I will seek to do thee good."

Experience shows us that those English schools have been the best in which this feeling has been strongest and most widely diffused; and that those are the best times in any school which train up and send forth the largest proportion of men who continue to watch over its life, and to pray for it in this spirit: "For my brethren and companions' sakes I will wish thee prosperity. Yea, because of the house of the Lord our G.o.d I will seek to do thee good." On the other hand, if this feeling is weak in any school, or among the former members of it, or if it a.s.sumes debased forms, as sometimes happens, we see there a sure sign of degeneration. He who, having grown up in any society like ours, is possessed by no such love for it, and stirred by no enthusiasm for its good name, and no desire to do it good, and to see good growing in every part of it, such an one has somehow missed the chief blessing that his membership of his school should have brought to him. He may have been unfortunate, or he may have proved unworthy. The atmosphere of his school life, and the a.s.sociations amidst which he grew up, may have been such that the best thing he can do is to shake himself clear of them and forget them. To such an one his school time has been a grave and lifelong misfortune; and it is the condemnation of any society if there are many such cases in it.

It is, however, exceptional in English life for men who have grown up in a great school to be stirred by no glow of patriotic feeling for it.

Whatever their own experience of it may have been, they are not altogether blind to the things that const.i.tute its greatness, and they love to hear it well spoken of.

But the quality of their patriotism will depend very much on the quality of their own life; so that the task we have always before us is to be infusing into our community such a spirit and purpose, as shall infect each soul amongst us with those higher aims, and tastes, and motives, with that hatred of things mean or impure, and that love of things that are manly, honest, and of good report, which distinguish all n.o.bler characters from the baser, and which are produced and fostered, and made to work strongly in every society that has any claim to good influence.

Seeing, then, that a man's patriotism is to a great extent the expression of his personal life, how instructive is this picture of the patriot which the 122nd Psalm sets before us. We see thus first of all how he feels the unity of his people--their one pervading life, and himself a part of it, though possibly far away--"Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity in itself: thither the tribes go up." Those were times when Israel suffered from division of tribe against tribe, times when the pulse of common life hardly beat at all, times of isolation or of jealousy; but the true patriot in Israel, as everywhere, was always possessed by the intense feeling of the oneness of his people under one Lord; and whenever this feeling fails, we look in vain for the higher forms of common life.

But we note, too, this Psalmist's pa.s.sionate personal devotion to the object of his patriotic love--"They shall prosper that love thee"--"For my brethren and companions' sakes I will wish thee prosperity." Who can read unmoved these n.o.ble and generous outpourings?

We see, moreover, how his feeling expresses itself, as true love always does express itself in the desire to do good to its object, and, above all, how it breathes the spirit of moral and religious earnestness. "Yea, because of the house of the Lord our G.o.d I will seek to do thee good." If ever you desire to test the sincerity and the worth of any love you bear to person, place, inst.i.tution, or society, you have only to turn to this Psalm, and see if these words fit your thoughts, desires, and endeavours--"They shall prosper that love thee--For my brethren and companions' sakes I will wish thee prosperity--Yea, because of the house of the Lord our G.o.d I will seek to do thee good." Here are the notes of true patriotic feeling--personal love, public spirit, sanctified by moral and religious purpose, desire to do good. These are the qualities which are the salt of all societies, and it is by virtue of these that they win their good name, if they do win it.

In the history of our own school we can point to abundant ill.u.s.trations of this truth. I will mention one only, familiar to those who know our history. "I verily believe," wrote a School-house boy to his friend fifty-three years ago--"I verily believe my whole being is soaked through with wishing and hoping and striving to do the school good, or, rather, to hinder it from falling in this critical time, so that all my cares, and affections, and conversation, thought, words, and deeds, look to that involuntarily."

Such was one of your predecessors as he sat here Sunday by Sunday, a boy like any of you.

He was eager to follow those friends who had preceded him to Oxford as scholars of Balliol; he was keenly interested in all intellectual pursuits; he turned for his daily pleasure to literature or history; but alongside of it all, or rather through it all, underlying it all, giving earnestness and fervour, the true unselfish quality, to it all, there was burning in his heart a consuming zeal for the good of his house and school. "For my brethren and companions' sakes I will wish thee prosperity. Yea, because of the house of the Lord our G.o.d I will seek to do thee good."

It was through the spirit and the lives of such as he, growing up here, and leavening all the life around them, and then going forth in the same spirit, to live the n.o.ble and earnest type of life elsewhere, that the name of Rugby School became honoured among schools, and this chapel came to be looked upon as a sacred home of inspiring influences; and it is only through an unfailing succession of such Rugbeians--growing up here in the same spirit, and going forth endowed with the same character and the same purpose--that this honourable name, this tradition of good influences, can be perpetuated.

And, if we desire to see how close this is to the spirit and the work of our Lord, how it is, in fact, one manifestation of that spirit which is the saving influence in human life; we have only to turn from the text with which I started to that with which I may conclude, from the Psalmist meditating on the city and temple of his heart's affections, to the Saviour, as He drew near to the Cross, praying for His disciples--"Father, the hour is come... . I have glorified Thee on the earth: I have finished the work Thou gavest Me to do. I have manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest me out of the world." ... "And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word."

The only change we see as we step from the Psalms to the Gospel, from the Jewish pilgrim to the Saviour whom we worship, is that religious patriotism has expanded into the love of souls, the love of Him who laid down His life to save us from the power of sin and death.

It was for you and me that Christ was praying; and His prayer for us will be answered so soon as it inspires us to follow in His footsteps, so that we too, as we kneel before G.o.d each morning, each night, and think of our duty to those around us, may be able to say, in these words of His, which are at once a prayer and a consecrating vow--"For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified.'"

II. THE CHILD IN THE MIDST.

"And He took a child and set Him in the midst of them: and when He had taken him in His arms, He said unto them, Whosoever shall receive one of such children in My name, receiveth Me: and whosoever shall receive Me, receiveth not Me, but Him that sent Me."--ST. MARK ix. 36, 37.

It is one of the characteristics of our time, one of its most hopeful and most encouraging signs, that men are awaking to higher and purer conceptions of the Christian life and what it is that const.i.tutes such a life. We are beginning to feel, as it was not felt by former generations, that the only true religion, the only Christianity worthy of the name, is that which aims at embodying and reproducing the spirit, the thought, the ideas of the Saviour.

Through and underneath all ecclesiastical and mediaeval revivals, and all vagaries of church tradition or of ritual, this feeling seems to be growing with a steady growth, that the real test of a man's religion is the evidence which his life affords of the Christ-like spirit. And this growing feeling gives an ever-fresh interest to the words and the judgment of the Lord on all matters of individual conduct and daily intercourse; so that if we are possessed at all by it, the Saviour is becoming more of a living person to us, and we ask ourselves more frequently, more earnestly, with more of reality and more of practical meaning in the question, how He would judge this or that side of our life, whether our conduct is in harmony with His spirit, and whether the standards of our life fit at all with His teaching and injunctions.

And how full of new meaning every familiar chapter of the Gospel becomes to you, if you are once roused to this kind of feeling; if you are feeling all the time, here is the spirit which should be dominating my own life and determining it, here are the thoughts, ideas, and views of conduct which should be mine also. How does my common life fit with all this? And it is with something like this feeling in your minds that I would ask you to consider the text I have just read to you. "Jesus took a child and set him in the midst of them. He took him up in His arms and said, Whosoever shall receive one of such children in My name, receiveth Me." And while we are considering it, let us notice also that in St.

Matthew's narrative there are two other very emphatic expressions.

"Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven"; and "Whoso shall offend one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

... Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven."

Here, then, is the child taken up by Jesus and set in the midst; we know nothing more of him but this one thing, that he represents to us our Lord's Divine love of little children, and His high estimate of childhood, as the mysterious embodiment of that character and those qualities which bring us close to the Divine life.

But this is quite enough to make us listen to the lessons of thought and warning and hope, which Jesus expounds to us as He stands with the child in His arms. His words may very well set every one of us thinking about our own life and conduct. We look at this scene--the disciples standing round, their hearts occupied, as ours are apt to be, with their own ambitions, rivalries, and jealousies, and Jesus in the midst with the little child; and we cannot mistake or misinterpret the lessons He teaches us, the lessons which welled up in His heart whenever He saw, or met, or took up in His arms, and blessed a little child.

"Let every child you meet," he clearly says to us, "remind you that if you desire to be My disciple and to win a place in My kingdom, you must fling off selfishness, and put in its place the spirit of service and tenderness." "He that would be first must be servant of all." "You must humble yourself as this little child."

And then He adds the blessing and the warning:--"Whoso shall receive one such child in My name receiveth Me; but whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea."

We may pause for a moment to consider what it is in childhood, what are the gifts, qualities, characteristics of the child, that drew from our Lord this special love and care and these injunctions to His followers.

We do well to bear them in mind, because He has declared with such emphasis that we have no part in His kingdom unless we retain or recover these gifts. And we should bear them in mind, because of the blessing promised to those who help to preserve these qualities in others.

Receive, help, cherish, or protect a child, make the way of goodness easy to him, and shield him from evil, and Christ declares that inasmuch as you have done it to the least of all His little ones, you have done it unto Him.

On the other hand, offend any such child, that is to say, hinder, or mislead, spoil or degrade him in any way; do anything to rob a child of any of these Divine gifts, rob him of his innocence, or trustfulness, or his guileless heart, and sow the seeds of evil habits or tastes in their place, and you know the denunciation or curse which the Divine voice has laid upon you for your evil deed.

A child, then, is, as it were, a living symbol of that which draws to us the love of Christ, and we cannot doubt that he is so by virtue of his innocence, his obedient spirit, his guilelessness, or simplicity of character, his trustfulness, and by all the untarnished and unspoilt possibilities of goodness in him.

It is in the blessed endowment of such gifts as these that the little child looks in the face of Christ, and is embraced in the arms of His love.

And these are, or they once were, your gifts. As you love the better life, and hope for good days, hold them fast and cherish them, or if any of them be unhappily lost, let it be your endeavour to recover it.

As we contemplate such a scene as this in our Lord's life with the little child in the midst, and listen to the Saviour's words, all the commands and injunctions to keep innocency, to keep the spirit of obedience, to keep a guileless and trusting and loving heart, gain a new force. They seem to speak to us with new voices; for if the true life, the life that has in it the hope of union with Christ, must be a life endowed with these gifts, whether in youth or age, what a blessed thing it will be for you if you have never lost or squandered them. We cannot too soon learn this lesson; for if under the influence of any wrong motives, or following any wrong ideals, or misled by any bad example, you go astray and rob your young life of these divine gifts, no man knows how, or when, or where you will recover them, and become again as a little child.

And if we turn our thoughts from our own separate personal life, and look for a moment at our duty as members of a society, how this picture of Christ embracing the little child, and blessing those who receive or help one such, should stir us to new and keener interest in social duty! Does it not carry in it, this example and teaching of the Lord, does it not carry in it the condemnation of a great many of our traditional notions about our duty to the young? We see the Lord's tenderness and love and care for the little child; we see how He values the childlike qualities; and how He enjoins the nursing and the cherishing of these. If, then, we have really learnt the lesson which He thus presses upon us, we shall feel something like reverence for every young life, as it begins its perilous and uncertain course on the sea of man's experiences; and with this feeling we shall be eager to help and protect such lives whenever we have the chance of doing it, and we shall be very careful to do them no wrong.