SERMONS AND LECTURE8.—Some Helps fin School Life. By the Rev.
J. Percival. (Rivington.)—Here we have twenty-seven sermons, preached (with one exception) in the chapel of Clifton College, at intervals during the seventeen years for which Dr. Percival held the head-mastership. The sermon with which the volume begins, " On Corporate Life," is excellent, and represents fairly enough the spirit and character of the whole. The outsider is sometimes tempted to consider those appeals to the esprit de corps of a congregation of schoolboys somewhat exaggerated. But the influence is one of great power, and the preacher dues quite right in making the most of it. " Manliness " is another good and useful sermon. The discourse on " Lenten Observance " acorns hardly definite enough,. A. few very plain words addressed to the too common greediness and selfishness of schoolboys would have been very much in place. The eighth and ninth sermons, on "Christ Bearing His Cross," and "Christ Sacrificing Himself for Us," are of a more distinctively thecs logical character. The difficult quest ion of "Progressive Morality' is dealt with in sermons about Joel and the " Slaughter of Amalek." These are, as far as they go, satisfactory ; and naturally the character of the audience to which they were addressed would impose limits on the preacher. The sermon on " Sunday " is one of notable excellence. And so, in a different strain, is that on "The Unaccomplished Work of Schools." We may quote a paragraph from its conclusion :-
" I think of the time whim), from some school, tinder some influence which as yet we know not, there shall go forth u new generation of
men who shall be charneterised not by some special gift, not by some literary accomplishment, or some varnish of culture, but by a com- bination of gifts and strength and spirit, which shall stamp them as prominent workers, if not as leaders and prophets, in the next stage of our country's progress. There is abundant room, to say nothing of the crying need, for these missionaries of a new type, who shall be men of cultivated and disciplined intellect, enlightened and strong ; who shall be sworn to the new chivalry of personal purity and the suppression of the baser animal appetites ; who shall be men of simple and pure tastes, no epicurean sentimentalists, the declared enemies of luxury, whether vulgar or refined ; men, again, in whom public spirit and social purpose shall be practical and guiding motives, not vague and intermittent sentiments, who shall feel the call to alter those conditions of life which are working so destructively in all our cities; men who, with all this, are not bigoted, who shall have learned to know that earnestness and toleration are not incompatible, who shall have no respect either for that spurious young man's liberalism which is the child of indifference, nay, which is begotten by shallow criticism, of cynicism as its mother, and nursed by luxury and want of faith ; above all, men whose life shall be guided by a serious and humble and reverent spirit, who may fairly be described as faithful, and religious, and devout."
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