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
circumstantial garment, a sort of livery of this or that particular
place, which will slip off us as we leave it.

Many of you have learnt, I feel sure of it, to feel during these your
school days, the satisfaction of living here a true and worthy life; you
have tasted of that pleasure which the careless, the indifferent, and the
sinful hardly taste at all, the pleasure that dwells with the
consciousness of earnest effort and sincere striving after the best
things within us. The love of Christ may have taken hold upon you; the
associations of your school and its inheritance of great and good
examples, or the sense of honour may have stirred you; the feeling of