By the Rt. Rev. JOHN PERCIVAL, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF HEREFORD SOMETIME HEADMASTER OF RUGBY JAMES NISBET AND CO. LTD. 21 BERNERS STREET, LONDON.  1905 Photograph of John Percival...

“Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity in itself. . . . O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.  Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy palaces.  For my brethren and companions’ sakes I will wish thee prosperity.  Yea, because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek to do thee good.”— Psalm cxxii. 3, 6-9. As we draw near to the end of our summer term, when so many are about to take leave of their school life, there is sure to rise up in

“And He took a child and set Him in the midst of them: and when He had taken him in His arms, He said unto them, Whosoever shall receive one of such children in My name, receiveth Me: and whosoever shall receive Me, receiveth not Me, but Him that sent Me.”— St. Mark ix. 36, 37. It is one of the characteristics of our time, one of its most hopeful and most encouraging signs, that men are awaking to higher and purer conceptions of the Christian life and what it is that constitutes such a life.  We

“I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh.”— St. John ix. 4. There are few things more commonly disregarded by us in our early years than the brevity of our life through all its successive stages, and the fleeting nature of its opportunities. In childhood we are almost entirely unconscious of both these characteristics of life.  Indeed, it would hardly be natural if it were otherwise.  That reflective habit which dwells upon them is the result of our experienc

“Making the word of God of none effect through your traditions: and many such like things ye do.”— St. Mark vii. 13. Such was our Lord’s word to the Pharisees; and if we turn to our own life it is difficult if not impossible for us fully to estimate the influence which traditions exercise upon it. They are so woven into the web of thought and opinion, and daily habits and practices, that none of us can claim to escape them.  Moreover, as any institution or society grows older, this influence of

“And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.  But he said, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”— St. Luke xvi. 30, 31. It is by no means uncommon for any one who is living a life which does not satisfy his own conscience to console himself with the fancy that if only such and such things were different around him he would be a new man, filled with a new spirit, and exhibiting a ne

“And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?”—1 Kings xix. 9. There is a sound of rebuke in these words.  They seem to imply that the lonely mountain of Horeb was not the place in which God expected to find such a servant as Elijah, and that there should be no indefinite tarrying, no lingering without an aim in such a solitude. As you read the familiar history you see how the record of the prophet’s retirement and his vision in Horeb is a

“And, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.”— St. Luke iv. 16. “He went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there He prayed.”— St. Mark i. 35. These two texts set before us our Saviour’s habit in regard to public and private spiritual exercise; and they suggest to us the question, What have we, on our part, to say of these two elements in our own life?  These texts, we bear in mind, represent not something casual or intermittent in the life of our Lord.  They

“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?  Not one.”— Job xiv. 4. This is one of those simple questions which, by their very simplicity and directness, set us thinking about the importance of our personal life. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?”  But all our common life is somehow the outcome of our separate individual lives—of your life and mine.  Therefore how important it is in the common interest that each of us should look above all things to his own life and its charact

“Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.”— Isaiah xxxii. 20. These words form part of a great prophetic vision.  The prophet is standing among his countrymen like a watchman on the walls of Jerusalem.  And far away, as he looks, the distant horizon of his stormy sky is bright with Messianic hopes, but around him the shadows lie dark and heavy. It was his destiny to speak to a people whose ears were dull of hearing and their hearts without understanding; but he never lost the conviction that t

“And Jacob awakened out of his sleep and said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.”— Genesis xxviii. 16. These words indicate the beginning of a new life in the patriarch Jacob.  They tell us of the moment when, as it would appear, his soul awoke in him.  And they surprise us in some degree, as such awakenings of spiritual capacity often do; for Jacob’s recorded antecedents were not exactly such as to lead us to expect the dream and the vision, and the awakening which are descri

“So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.”— Romans xii. 5. There are some moral and spiritual truths which it seems to be almost impossible to impress upon the practical life of the world, although they meet with a sort of universal acceptance. Men agree with them, they re-echo them, they applaud them; they do everything, in fact, but exhibit them as the moving, inspiring, and guiding truths of their daily practice. And among these I fear we must still cla

“A sower went out to sow his seed.”— St. Luke viii. 5. It is significant that the first of the Saviour’s parables is the parable of the sower, that the first thing to which He likens His own work is that of the sower of seed, the first lesson He has to impress upon us by any kind of comparison is that the word of God is a seed sown in our hearts, a something which contains in it the germ of a new life. It is no less significant that He returns so often to this same kind of comparison for the pur

“This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer.”—S t . Mark ix. 29. You remember the narrative from which I have taken this verse.  Jesus, as we read, had just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration, and when He was come to the multitude, a certain man besought him saying, “Have mercy on my son, for he is lunatic and sore vexed, and I brought him to Thy disciples, but they could not cure him.”  Then Jesus rebuked the devil, and the child was cured from that hour.  Thereupon His discipl

“Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord God.  Repent and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin.”— Ezekiel xviii. 30. These words of Ezekiel may be understood as expressing in the prophet’s language what the Book of Deuteronomy expresses in such denunciations as those which were read to us the other day in the Commination Service. They correspond also to the warning of St. Paul when he says—“Be not

“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”— St. Matthew vi. 13. It is good for us sometimes to stand still for a moment and consider our use of very familiar words.  And this petition may appropriately illustrate our need of such an exercise. It is on your lips every day.  Every Sunday you offer it you hardly know how many times, in private and in public prayer: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  And the moment you stop to think about it you feel—who does

“As it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear.”— Romans xi. 8. “Blindness in part is happened to Israel.”— Romans xi. 25. It is a sad and painful reflection, and one which is continually forced upon us as we read the New Testament, that the long training and preparation of the Jews brought them at the last not to the acceptance but to the rejection of Jesus. They had been taught, generation after generation, that t

“A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.”— Ezekiel xxxvi. 26. In the beautiful and suggestive dream of Solomon, which is recorded in the third chapter of the First Book of Kings, God appears to him, saying, “Ask what I shall give thee”; and Solomon’s answer is, “O Lord, I am but a child set over this great people, give me, I pray Thee, a hearing heart.”  And God said to him, “Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life, nor riche

“And behold I send the promise of My Father upon you ; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high .”— St. Luke xxiv. 49. “Ye shall receive power , after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.”— Acts i. 8. To-day we are celebrating the last of the series of historical festivals which mark the springtime of our Christian year.  And without this one the rest would leave us with a sense of incompleteness; for we should be without its gift of the abiding and indwe

“We are labourers together with God; ye are God’s husbandry; ye are God’s building.”—1 Cor . iii. 9. In this passage St. Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for that spirit of party which was dividing them into followers of this or that teacher and so destroying their unity in Christ.  You do not belong, he says, to Paul or to Apollos; we have no claim upon you; ye are not to be called by our name: you are God’s husbandry, and God’s building, not ours; we are but labourers in His service and minist

“He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”— Revelation xxi. 7. Year by year as at this time, when the week of our Saviour’s Passion and Death is just in front of us, and the shadow of His Cross is falling over us, one generation after another of the boys of this school gather here, and in the face of the congregation, young and old, they take upon them the vows of a Christian life.  So we met last Thursday, and your vow is still fresh upon a gre