might. He had great simplicity as well as magnanimity; I should think that he never had a quarrel or an enemy. He did not care to talk of himself or of the College, and hardly at all of persons. He was very pleasant in society, though too much occupied with his pupils to take a leading part in it. He was a lover of music too, and had a great belief in its power as an instrument of education. Nothing was more beautiful in his character than his devotion to his venerable mother, whom he used constantly to visit in her sick room, which during the last few months she had been unable to quit. He was a lover of a garden in which he used to work himself, and it was pleasant to see him on a summer's morning gathering flowers with which to present her. So innocent and dutiful was his life in small things as well as great; like a breath of fresh air blowing to us, amid the conventionalities of society, from some truer region, like the dew of Hermon which fell upon the mountains of Sion.'

And so, dear friend, we take leave of thee; tomorrow we return to our accustomed work, bitterly reflecting that we have no longer thy counsel and experience, thy sweet example to be our guide. We feel that upon all of us there falls a heavier responsibility than hitherto. For about 640 years without interruption this College has been a home of learning and religion; during the last seventy or eighty years some peculiar distinction has attached to it of which

we are proud; or rather, I would say, it has grown up, we cannot tell how, by the blessing of God, by the self-devotion of generations who have preceded us.

The care of this inheritance is now entrusted to us, and we must pray and strive that we prove ourselves worthy of it, and maintain its fair fame by diligence, by endurance, by energy, by union with one another, by outward decorum and courtesy, by inward purity of life, so that it may be truly, and not in name only, a Christian society. Would that every one in afterlife could look back upon the three or four years which he has spent at the University as having set their mark upon him of happiness and good. During the last ten years this College has been singularly tried by the loss of several of its most eminent members. Yet there have not been wanting others who have filled up the breach. And we pray God that the loss of our dear brother, which has been so grievous to us, may not be without fruit by awaking in our minds a deeper sense of the obligation which lies upon us, and of the blessings which we enjoy in this place.

XVI

1

1 AND AS HIS CUSTOM WAS, HE WENT INTO THE SYNAGOGUE ON THE SABBATH DAY.

LUKE iv. 18.

THE worship of the Synagogue was widely spread among the Jews in the time of our Lord. As in all the Eastern religions, there had sprung up among them a moral teaching independent of the ceremonial which was consecrated by tradition. This was partly based on the language of the prophets, who from the times of Micah and Isaiah, seven hundred years before, had denounced ritualism in words which must have sounded strangely in the ears of Jewish kings and priests, and which are almost too strong for us to bear in the present day (' Bring no more vain oblations: your new moons and Sabbaths are an abomination.' 'It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting'). The force of these utterances had passed away; we are not to suppose that they were constantly in the mouths of the Gamaliels or Hillels of the day, who probably had their modes of reconciling them to existing institutions. But still the Synagogues represented something different from the old worship of the temple and tabernacle; it

1 Preached at Balliol in 1875.

belonged to another age, and although the smoke of the evening sacrifice still went up as in the days of Solomon, yet in the minds of men the sacrifices had become figures and symbols. A religion of words and ideas had taken the place of external rites and teachers and preachers of priests and Levites.

Into one of these Synagogues, which seem to have been erected in every large town, Christ, as His custom was, entered on the Sabbath day and taught the people. What would we not have given to have heard the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth'; or even to have had them reported to us exactly as they were spoken! The discourses of Christ in the Gospel are but fragments of His entire teaching; these words which have been the light of the world occupy altogether but a few pages. And we are reminded of the singular remark which occurs at the end of the fourth Gospel: Many other things Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books which should be written.' Any history, any record of a life is necessarily imperfect: while the oral traditions remain, there is often no interest in collecting them or writing them down: too late, care begins to be taken, and for ages afterwards the minds of men are occupied in recovering fragments, in reasoning about disputed meanings of words, or reconciling contradictory statements. In the middle of the second century there is no reason to suppose

that anything more was known of the apostolic age than is now contained in the Gospels and Epistles. Still these difficulties do not prevent us from obtaining a living image of the spirit and teaching of Christ, as He spoke to His disciples of His Father and their Father, of His God and their God. Even of the outward manner and circumstances of His life, though these are not so important as is sometimes imagined, the recollection has been preserved to other ages. We can still read how He went up alone into a mountain to pray; how He taught the people out of a boat on the lake of Gennesareth; how at Jerusalem He was wont to resort to a garden on the opposite side of the valley, whither, after He had sung a hymn shortly before His death, He retired with His disciples; how He entered into the Synagogues, as His custom was, on the Sabbath day, and then expounded to the people the words of the prophet Isaiah which He applied to Himself.

The custom of meeting together, not on the Sabbath, but on the first day of the week, seems to have existed among Christians from the earliest times. Before the end of the second century simple forms of celebrating the Communion had become fixed among them. Even in the New Testament, though there is no trace of a regular hierarchy, or of a distinction between the clergy and laity, nor any mention of a form of worship, yet we may observe that the assembling of the disciples on Sunday is a custom