Transcribed from the 1905 James Nisbet and Co. edition ,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
SERMONS AT RUGBY
By the Rt. Rev. JOHN PERCIVAL, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF HEREFORD
SOMETIME HEADMASTER OF RUGBY
JAMES NISBET AND CO. LTD.
21 BERNERS STREET, LONDON. 1905
p. vINTRODUCTORY NOTE
This little group of Rugby Sermons is to be taken and read as beingnothing 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 casethe 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 theend of a term that suggested it; or more frequently some incident inthe 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 growingunder his hand towards the destiny of their endless life.
To those boys, and to the masters, my p. vicolleagues,and to other fellow-labourers—some gone to their rest, some stilldoing their appointed work—I dedicate this brief reminder of ourcommon life in days of happy fellowship.
J. HEREFORD.
July 1905.
p. 1I. RELIGIOUSPATRIOTISM.
“Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unityin itself. . . . O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosperthat love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness withinthy palaces. For my brethren and companions’ sakes I willwish thee prosperity. Yea, because of the house of the Lord ourGod I will seek to do thee good.”—Psalmcxxii. 3, 6-9.
As we draw near to the end of our summer term, when so many are aboutto take leave of their school life, there is sure to rise up in manyminds 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 yearsas they pass from youth to age.
And it should be our aim and desire, as need hardly be said, thatfrom the day when each one comes amongst us as a little boy to p. 2theday when he offers his last prayer in this chapel before he goes outinto the world, his life here should be of such a sort that its aftertaste may have no regrets, and no bitterness, and no shame in it, andthe memories to be cherished may be such as add to the happiness andstrength of later years. And if, as we trust, this is your case,your feeling for your school is almost certain to be in some degreelike that which is expressed in this pilgrim psalm. Its languageof intense patriotism, steeped in religious feeling, which is the peculiarinspiration of the Old Testament Jew, will seem somehow to express yourown feelings for that life in which you grew up from childhood to manhood.
Indeed, the best evidence that your school life has not failed ofits higher objects is the growth of this same sort of earnest patrioticenthusiasm. Do you fe