that the temptation of dishonour is one which they are not strong enough to resist.

For those, then, who are soon going to enter upon active life, the most earnest prayer that I would urge them to make to God, on this solemn occasion, is, that he would enable them to overcome this most fearful temptation, the dread of the censure or dishonour of the world. In our state of life, Christ's solemn warning may be most profitably altered in word that we may most effectually preserve its spirit. We do not now so much need to be told, "Fear not them who kill the body:" bodily sufferings in the path of our duty are no longer our worst dangers; Christ now says to us, Fear not them who can vex the mind and feelings with dishonour and insult for a few short years, and after that have no more that they can do; but I will forewarn you whom you shall fear fear Him who is able to cast you into the lowest pit of shame and dishonour for ever, yea, I say unto you, fear Him.

In truth, however, if, on your first entrance into life, you follow Christ in sincerity and without affectation, your path will be spared this severe trial. Even the world respects a man who is a consistent Christian, and allows

that he should act in his own way, and from his own motives, At any rate, whatever trial you have to encounter, will be chiefly at the very beginning. Before a young man is thoroughly known, his Christian principles and practice may be suspected of hypocrisy; but it depends upon himself how long the suspicion may last. You will confirm it most seriously if your principles are seen to be strict on points which you have no inclination for, but lax in the case of your own favourite tastes. If a timid man, who is passionate in his language, and licentious in his life, first provokes a quarrel by the violence of his tongue, and then endeavours to get out of it, by speaking of the sin of fighting, it is manifest, that he would very naturally be thought a coward, who only made his principles a cloak to save him from what he did not like, not a restraint to curb himself from indulging in those vices which he did like. And another great protection to the principles of a young man, is to connect himself closely with Christian friends. Two men of the same age, intimate with one another, and both in earnest in their desire to please God, are a strength and support to each other, of incalculable value. A larger number of such friends

becomes still more invincible to temptation, and, to say nothing of other advantages, should our acting steadily on Christian principles ever expose us to the ridicule or contempt of the world, how greatly is such a trial lessened, when those whom we most love and value continue to honour and respect us, because their estimate of life is the same with

our own.

I may seem to have been long upon this subject; but what I have said is in truth the great lesson of life, and a few minutes need not be grudged to hearing it. It is this too in which you most need confirmation; for in your struggles against common vices, the world itself will help you; in condemning idleness, and meanness, and falsehood, and unkindness, and illnature, the world and the Gospel are agreed. It is to run the race of Christians that you are now preparing; and that must needs be most difficult, where not the flesh only, but the world, are united to obstruct it. So, too, for those among you who are still to continue here some time longer; your danger is greatest, and your need of confirmation, or the help of God, is most urgent, where the world in which you live exercises its influence against your

progress. To you I need not speak of the vices of meanness and illnature, for even the voice of the world in which you live condemns these. But as the world of men is far less pure than the Spirit of God, so the opinion of the world of boys is even less pure than that of men. Idleness, which in after life is despised, is, perhaps, rather encouraged by the voice of that society in which you are now living: selfish extravagance, and the practice of incurring debts, too lightly censured in manhood, are here, I fear, scarcely censured at all. The plain common-sense notion, that your interest and mine are, in fact, the same; that school regulations are not laid on, or enforced, out of a petty love of power, or moroseness, and that, therefore, it is all fair to evade them, but are intended solely to train and accustom you to do what a few years hence you would be ashamed not to do;—that the principles and feelings which I wish to inspire amongst you are but those in which all good men have lived and died, and in which, by God's blessing, I hope to live and die myself; this plain way of looking at your present state, and the views of conduct which would follow it, are not yet established amongst you. The fact is, that public opinion,

in schools, is in many points the opinion exactly of the most worthless members of them, which they spare no pains to enforce, and to which, the well-disposed yield out of weakness. Indeed, if we could ever safely or innocently wish for one evil to cast out another, I should almost say, that a boy, when placed at a public school, would find pride a most valuable safeguard to his principles: he would then scorn to be led blindly in the track of others; he would look with disgust and contempt upon the low principles which he has heard advanced around him, and the low practice which flowed from them. But what pride could not do without causing other evils at the same time-uncharitableness towards others, and a dangerous satisfaction in ourselves-that the Spirit of Christ, whose aid will be to-morrow in a particular manner implored for you, will enable you to do in meekness and in tenderness. If you examine your own hearts and lives by the light of the Scripture, you will find cause enough to make you humble for yourselves and indulgent to others but if you strive, also, to walk by the light of the Spirit, you will be bold and decided in thinking for yourselves, and in doing what you yourselves approve, without caring