Sermons at Rugby | Page 3

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 God 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 noble 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 God 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 constitutes 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