scarcely anything," boys have said on leaving, "which I would not do for the school." There are not many here, at least of the warmer and deeper natures among you, who would not adopt this sentiment as your own; and I hope that many of you realise what a help school patriotism has been to you in mastering your natural selfishness, and how the sympathy of numbers, intent upon some common enterprise, has for the time suppressed within you all meaner feelings, and played its part in training you to be men. But in congratulating ourselves upon the healthy esprit de corps which characterises this and every British school worthy of the name, we must take care not to lose sight of the individual responsibility of members of the same school for each other's character and welfare. I know that many who here and elsewhere are invested with definite authority over their fellows, do feel a large measure of this responsibility; but I beg you, one and all, to take this matter solemnly to heart-whether you thoroughly realise the extent to which as schoolfellows you are your brother's keepers.

I am afraid that much of what I am about to enforce is against the usual code of schoolboy morality-a code which I am thankful to think

is not fully accepted here; but I am afraid also that both a lazy dislike to taking trouble, and a cowardly fear of giving offence or becoming unpopular, may prevent some of you from doing your whole duty to your brethren at school.

It is impossible to discuss the whole subject, but let me give you one or two examples of what I mean.

Do you carry out that most practical command of our Lord Jesus Christ? "If thy brother sin against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother." Which is right, here, Christ or the world?

The world says, "Wait till he comes to you;" which, as he also probably thinks that you are in the wrong, he will not do. Brood over your wrongs till a petty difference shall ripen into a smouldering feud; talk about it to other people, give your own coloured version of the story; but whatever you do, think only of yourselves. Nurse your pride, your vanity, your dignity, your popularity. But for him, "score off him," as the phrase is, if you can, and let him go his own way; what is he to you? "Are you your brother's keeper?"

But Christ says,

"Go to him when you are

calm; run the risk, for your sake and for his, of being misunderstood; frankly admit your own faults of temper and of tact; and without exaggeration or special pleading, tell him where you think he has been wrong if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother."

Yes, that is the pledged reward,-thou hast gained thy brother; and so far as you have been thinking most for him and least for yourself, shall the unsought blessing stream down upon you most abundantly from the throne on high; and at your own sorest need shall you receive that mercy which blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

But suppose your brother has not sinned against you, but against himself or against another, what then? Your duty depends upon your power. You cannot redress all the wrongs in the world. But where you have the power, your duty is absolutely clear. The law and the Gospel unite in warning you of your own guilt and danger if you suffer sin upon your brother -if either by his own folly, or by the influence or violence of others, he comes to any harm which it was within your power to prevent. I know that I am touching upon a difficult subject; that I am saying much and imply

ing more which flies in the face of widely accepted school tradition. But the work of this place is altogether a failure if you are slaves to any such tradition. We try to teach you to acquire the mental habit of looking at every matter, great or small, on its own intrinsic merits, and of rising superior to the unexamined opinions, and the irrational customs, and the injurious ways of life, into which prejudice and routine and selfishness have drifted both at school and elsewhere. And you cannot but be aware that the frightful prevalence of the most terrible curses which can afflict schoolboy life, is due in many school communities to the deeply rooted tradition of minding one's own business and not meddling in other people's affairs.

Yes, "you are not your brother's keeper," is still, as in the days of the first murder, one of the most subtle inspirations of the author of all mischief. What is the practical outcome of this principle when it is predominant in school life? That you may see another treated with cruelty or injustice, and must accustom yourself to look calmly on, and repress the rising throb of unselfish indignation; that you must allow faults of temper or tact or manner to become stereotyped in others without a word of kindly and well

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timed remonstrance; that you must see the innocent corrupted, without using your own influence to save him, for that would be officiousness—or the influence of others, for that would be talebearing; that you must let dishonesty gain its ends without thwarting it, and falsehood glory in its shame without exposure; that you must suffer profanity to swagger unrebuked, and the swift contagion of foul talk or unutterable deed. to spread unchecked, till it saturates with a loathsome leprosy the school which you profess to love.

Such is the bitter fruit of average worldly wisdom, which, among both young and old, reserves its bitterest censures for those who go out of the beaten track to save their brethren from dominant forms of evil. Such are some of the practical lessons which not only bad boys and men, but the vast mass of indifferent boys and men, are apt to draw from the specious sneer which was an essential part of the devil-taught creed of Cain, and which has been one of the articles of faith of the Church of the Evil One from that time to the present.

For the dividing line between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the Evil One is drawn deeply, though invisibly, through the midst of