Sermons at Rugby | Page 8

even brutalised; he may become dead to
the higher life even before he becomes a man." Seeing, then, that there
is this possibility of death even in the midst of life--a possibility, we
would fain hope, seldom realised in this school, but still a
possibility--shall we not be very careful, men and boys alike, so to do
our part in this society, so to shelter the young and strengthen the weak,

and to keep the atmosphere of our life a pure atmosphere, that every
sensitive soul which comes amongst us may grow up here through a
healthy and wholesome boyhood, and go out to the duties and the
calling of his life, strong, unselfish, public-spirited, pure-hearted, and
courageous--a Christian gentleman.

IV. THE INFLUENCE OF TRADITION.
"Making the word of God of none effect through your traditions: and
many such like things ye do."--ST. MARK vii. 13.
Such was our Lord's word to the Pharisees; and if we turn to our own
life it is difficult if not impossible for us fully to estimate the influence
which traditions exercise upon it.
They are so woven into the web of thought and opinion, and daily
habits and practices, that none of us can claim to escape them.
Moreover, as any institution or society grows older, this influence of
the part which is handed on from one generation to another tends to
accumulate; so that the weight of it lies heavier on us in an old place
than in a new one, and it is obvious that there is both loss and gain in
this.
A good tradition is a great help and support, giving a strength, or
firmness, or dignity to our life which it would not otherwise have had.
We often see or feel the value of such a tradition as it acts upon the
members of a family, or of a college, or of a regiment, or of a school.
And this influence of a tradition, inasmuch as it has become impersonal,
and rooted in the general life, is apt to be very persistent, so that the
man who establishes a good tradition anywhere begins a good work,
which may go on producing its good results long after he himself is in
his grave.
Many of you must have felt the power of such an influence, handed on
to you as if it were a part of your inheritance, when thinking of a

brother, or father, or other relative or ancestor, who by some distinction
of character, or by some inspiring words or some brave or generous act,
has left you a good example, which seems somehow to belong to you,
and to stir you as with an authoritative call to show yourself worthy of
it.
Similarly in a society like this school you can hardly grow up without
sometimes being stirred by the tradition of the noble lives that have left
their mark upon its history.
So a man's good deeds live after him, and become woven as threads of
gold into the traditions of the world.
And we are equally familiar with traditions that are bad, and with their
pestilent influence; for we are constantly made to feel how much of the
good that men endeavour to do is thwarted, counteracted, or destroyed
by influences of this sort, and how weak and imitative souls are
entangled in the network of traditional influence as in a spider's web.
Tradition, in fact, represents to us the accumulated power of past lives
as it acts upon us from the outside, just as what men call heredity
represents this same influence in our own blood.
And we have seen that this power may be, and often is, a real
advantage and support to our life. We feel also that as the Divine light
shines stronger and steadier in human affairs the traditional influence of
each generation ought to become more and more helpful to those that
follow.
And yet, you observe, the Saviour gives us no encouragement to
depend upon those helps that tradition might bring us. On the contrary,
His language shows how dangerous He felt the influence of tradition to
be. How are we to account for this? His strongest denunciations are
reserved for the Pharisaic party; and yet a historian would describe
them as in many respects the best elements of Jewish life. They were
earnest, patriotic, religious, many of them wise and holy men; but their
judgment was held in bondage by the influence of tradition, and in this
lies the cardinal defect of their life. They had set up between their souls
and the spirit of God a sort of graven image of ritualistic observances,

and traditional usages and interpretations. They depended on externals,
or what came to them from the past or from the outer world, and their