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the ambition, here proposed to you in the name of Christ-older men envy you as they exhort -to make yourselves wise in all this world's learning; to enter with all earnestness of selfdevotion into the mysteries of nature and of existence; to be quite sure, and therefore absolutely fearless in your search, that truth and the truth must be at one; that nature, which is God's common working, cannot really contradict miracle, which is God's exceptional yet not less orderly working; that science can be perilous (in a religious sense) only to the irreligious; that to the man who will take God with him in his search, God will reveal Himself, for the satisfaction of his own soul, and for the reassurance and reconciliation (it may be) of other seekers who but for him might have

floundered into Atheism. O for a few earnest hearts-and such there are, I doubt not, I know, in this congregation-who shall take this for their province! so to trust, and doubt not, the fidelity of their God, as to give themselves to track His footsteps in earth and sea and sky, in plan and law and system and providence, on purpose that they may be ready to grapple with the arrogances of a 'science falsely so called,' and both to reanimate the doubting and to convict and confute the gainsayers!

This University has been fertile in such intellects; men who have brought Science herself to God's footstool and made her bend a willing knee to Him who gave her at once her implements and her subjects. They pass to the grave, one by one; scarce one or two of the

giants of Cambridge philosophy lingering still in the loved precincts where first they fearlessly studied, and afterwards as fearlessly illustrated, the wonderful works of God. They pass to their rest, clamoured down already by new strifes of tongues, yet safe themselves in God's tabernacle, and bequeathing the reality of their work to others. Happy they on whom the mantle shall fall-the mantle of their 'readiness' and of their devotion!

We know well enough that such men must be rare. 'Every man hath his proper gift of God-one after this manner, another after that.' There is no honest toil which is not a part of God's preparation. Literature, as well as science, can equip for God's conflict. It is ignorance, it is undiscipline, it is uneducation,

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which makes us flee when none pursueth. A mind practised in study, whatever be its department, is not awed into doubting by the selfassertion of the infidel. It can weigh, and wait, and judge. And not only that. For one man who could be made with any culture an effective champion, in speech or writing, of revelation, a thousand are capable of being shod with that Gospel readiness of which the text makes mention. Brethren, it might make Angels weep to see the waste here too often made of priceless gifts; gifts such as God gives, in these Universities, to England, and to no other nation on the face of His earth. You have before you, every one, a lifetime short at the longest, and then an eternity unmeasured by millenniums. As you prepare, so will you live; as you live, so will

you die. Fearful the spectacle of young lives risking, chancing, gambling away themselves! daring to undertake the charge of other lives, whether as masters, landowners, legislators, or ministers; daring to face trouble, doubt, difficulty, temptation; daring to settle their faith and to shape their destiny, without preparation long and anxious for responsibilities so tremendous! Listen, brethren, listen to-day to St Paul's counsel. Put on the sandal of readiness -not in the form (for of that there is too much) of presumption and positiveness, of prejudice and self-conceit, of swiftness to speak and incapability of doubting-but of that preparedness, for life and for death, which is only, which is surely, to be found in what the text calls 'the Gospel of peace;' that Gospel

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