n its
effects. If a boy's heart--

"Were less insensible than sodden clay
In a sea-river's bed at ebb of tide,"

it could scarcely fail to carry with it into the world outside the
impressions stamped by such a training. I can remember quite clearly
that, even in my Harrow days, the idea of Life as Service was always
present to my mind: and it was constantly enforced by the preaching of
such men as Butler, Westcott, and Farrar.

"Here you are being educated either for life or for fashion. Which is
it? What is your ambition? Is it to continue, with fewer restrictions,
the amusements which have engrossed you here? Is it to be favourite or
brilliant members of a society which keeps want and misery at a
distance? Would this content you? Is this your idea of life? Or may we
not hope that you will have a nobler conception of what a Christian
manhood may be made in a country so rich in opportunities as our own now
presents?"[55]

In Dr. Butler's sermons our thoughts were directed to such subjects as
the Housing of the Working Classes, Popular Education, and the contrast
between the lot of the rich and the lot of the poor. "May God never
allow us to grow proud, or to grow indolent, or to be deaf to the cry of
human suffering." "Pray that God may count you worthy to be foremost in
the truly holy and heroic work of bringing purity to the homes of the
labouring classes, and so hastening the coming of the day when the
longing of our common Lord shall be accomplished." "Forget not the
complaints, and the yet more fatal silence, of the poor, and pray that
the ennobling of your own life, and the gratification of your own
happiness, may be linked hereafter with some public Christian labour."

Thus the influences of school co-operated with the influences of home to
give one, at the most impressionable age, a lively interest in Social
Service; and that interest found a practical outlet at Oxford. When
young men first attempt good works, they always begin with teaching; and
a Sunday School at Cowley and a Night School at St. Frideswide's were
the scenes of my (very unsuccessful) attempts in that direction. Through
my devotion to St. Barnabas', I became acquainted with the homes and
lives of the poor in the then squalid district of "Jericho"; and the
experience thus acquired was a valuable complement to the knowledge of
the agricultural poor which I had gained at home. It was at this time
that I first read _Yeast_ and _A