expresses itself, as true love always
does express itself in the desire to do good to its object, and, above
all, how it breathes the spirit of moral and religious earnestness. "Yea,
because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek to do thee good." If
ever you desire to test the sincerity and the worth of any love you bear
to person, place, institution, or society, you have only to turn to this
Psalm, and see if these words fit your thoughts, desires, and
endeavours--"They shall prosper that love thee--For my brethren and
companions' sakes I will wish thee prosperity--Yea, because of the house
of the Lord our God I will seek to do thee good." Here are the notes of
true patriotic feeling--personal love, public spirit, sanctified by moral
and religious purpose, desire to do good. These are the qualities which
are the salt of all societies, and it is by virtue of these that they win
their good name, if they do win it.

In the history of our own school we can point to abundant illustrations
of this truth. I will mention one only, familiar to those who know our
history. "I verily believe," wrote a School-house boy to his friend
fifty-three years ago--"I verily believe my whole being is soaked through
with wishing and hoping and striving to do the school good, or, rather,
to hinder it from falling in this critical time, so that all my cares,
and affections, and conversation, thought, words, and deeds, look to that
involuntarily."

Such was one of your predecessors as he sat here Sunday by Sunday, a boy
like any of you.

He was eager to follow those friends who had preceded him to Oxford as
scholars of Balliol; he was keenly interested in all intellectual
pursuits; he turned for his daily pleasure to literature or history; but
alongside of it all, or rather through it all, underlying it all, giving
earnestness and fervour, the true unselfish quality, to it all, there was
burning in his heart a consuming zeal for the good of his house and
school. "For my brethren and companions' sakes I will wish thee
prosperity. Yea, because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek to
do thee good."

It was through the spirit and the lives of such as he, growing up here,
and leavening all the life around them, and then going forth in the same
spirit, to live the noble and earnest type of life elsewhere, that the
name of Rugby School became honoured among schools, and this chapel came
to be looked upon as a sacred home of