at droll chapter about "Such as found out
musical tunes, and recited verses in writing." When the preacher entered
the pulpit, his appearance instantly attracted attention. We had heard
vaguely of him as "the great Oxford swell," but now that we saw him we
felt a livelier interest. "He looks like a monk," one boy whispers to
his neighbour; and indeed it is a better description than the speaker
knows. The Oxford M.A. gown, worn over a cassock, is the Benedictine
habit modified by time and place; the spare, thin figure suggests
asceticism; the beautifully chiselled, sharply-pointed features, the
close-shaved face, the tawny skin, the jet-black hair, remind us vaguely
of something by Velasquez or Murillo, or of Ary Scheffer's picture of
St. Augustine. And the interest aroused by sight is intensified by
sound. The vibrant voice strikes like an electric shock. The exquisite,
almost over-refined, articulation seems the very note of culture. The
restrained passion which thrills through the disciplined utterance warns
even the most heedless that something quite unlike the ordinary stuff of
school-sermons is coming. "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy
youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou
shalt say, I have no pleasure in them." The speaker speaks of the
blessedness and glory of boyhood; the splendid inheritance of a Public
School built on Christian lines; the unequalled opportunities of
learning while the faculties are still fresh and the mind is still
receptive; the worthlessness of all merely secular attainment, however
desirable, however necessary, when weighed in the balance against "the
one thing needful." The congregation still are boys, but soon they will
be men. Dark days will come, as Ecclesiastes warned--dark in various
ways and senses, darkest when, at the University or elsewhere, we first
are bidden to cast faith aside and to believe nothing but what can be
demonstrated by "an appeal, in the last resort, to the organs of sense."
Now is the time, and this is the place, so to "remember our Creator"
that, come what may, we shall never be able to forget Him, or doubt His
love, or question His revelation. The preacher leans far out from the
pulpit, spreading himself, as it were, over the congregation, in an act
of benediction. "From this place may Christ ever be preached, in the
fulness of His creative, redemptive, and sacramental work. Here may you
learn to remember Him in the day