There are always growing up here in every generation those who feel a pride in their school, and in the spirit of it, who strive honestly and earnestly to sow in their society the seeds of manliness, and truthfulness, and good tone, and purity. It would soon go very ill with this or any other society if it were not so. And those who grow up in this way are continually leaving us in their turn, and they will remember with affection the place of their high purposes and earnest and manly efforts. They go out into a new world, and travel along other streams; and blessed are they, if they continue faithful, sowing still beside all waters.
But every change brings with it some element of risk. There is nearly always something of surprise to us in the new forces that confront us in any society which we enter as strangers; and the first feeling that rises is sometimes a feeling of our own weakness or insignificance.
In such a case it is well if we have realised beforehand that our laws of conduct should not vary, and that the call of God, which we have recognised once, is a call which never ceases, and which no circumstances should make inaudible.
When we approach any change we all need this kind of warning; because there are so many things in our life which we are apt to allow our circumstances to regulate for us. Experience tells us only too plainly how much we depend upon the influences that are around us, and how often we fail to carry with us the strength we have gained in one field when we pass over to the next. With the holy we learn in some degree to be ourselves holy; with a perfect man we too are able to walk perfectly; but on the other hand, in our imitative way, as the scene changes, we sometimes find ourselves learning frowardness with the froward, practising indifference with the indifferent, if not actually slipping with the vicious into some vicious way. There is always some
risk of such changes; and it is always well for us to be taking care that our better life has its root in our own heart and spirit, and that we do not wear it as a garment suited to the society in which we happen to be, and change it for the worse, if there comes any corresponding change in outward influences.
Hence it is that at these times, when we are about to separate, these words of Isaiah come to us with a very appropriate reminder: “Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.”
To those who are leaving our society to begin a new life elsewhere, as to those of us who go in the hope of returning by-and-by, they are charged with the same lesson. They bid us all alike take care and see that what is good in our present life has become our own personal and permanent possession, independent of surroundings; that it has sunk in some degree into the fibre of our character; that it is settled in us by conviction and principle, to guide and direct us everywhere, and is not merely
a circumstantial garment, a sort of livery of this or that particular place, which will slip off us as we leave it.
Many of you have learnt, I feel sure of it, to feel during these your school days, the satisfaction of living here a true and worthy life; you have tasted of that pleasure which the careless, the indifferent, and the sinful hardly taste at all, the pleasure that dwells with the consciousness of earnest effort and sincere striving after the best things within us. The love of Christ may have taken hold upon you; the associations of your school and its inheritance of great and good examples, or the sense of honour may have stirred you; the feeling of your closeness in life to those around you, and of the strong currents of mutual influence, may have opened your eyes to what you owe to your neighbour and to the claims of social duty. Some one of these causes, or it may be some other cause, may have given you strength and power to walk amongst us in the narrow way of good habit and good
influence. And wherever this is so, we thank God. But the question to-day is, What assurance do you feel that this will continue? When we go elsewhere, what habits, what tendencies, what fixed bent of spirit and character shall we exhibit? Knowing as we do how strongly the forces of the outer world will act upon us, it is never a useless warning which bids us take care that in new spheres we do not forget our old principles, or lay aside any good habits. “Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.”