nd 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
circumst