here by saying you don't know what you have to work for? Learn the lesson of tenacity and fixity of purpose in doing what is set before you doggedly and well, and a corner-stone of character is laid.

Do you fail, and say "It is no use striving for I am sure to fail again"? Then look on failure as a spur to fresh effort, seeing in each blunder something to be retrieved.

Do you make compacts and break them, silencing your conscience with: "It is what you do," "Other fellows do it?" The question of life is not what other fellows do. Remember that unless you square your promises by performances, unless your deeds make good your words, you can win no respect from yourself, or man, or God.

You have heard of men in the world of money, of whom it is said, "Everything they touch turns to gold." If you are boys of character, your influence on your fellows will be so great, you will help them so much, that everything you do will turn to gold.

"How do you give your sons such force of character?" said an American to an English peer. "I tell them to learn to say 'No!"" That is a fine secret. "No!" to every weak wish and every evil inclination. But there is a finer secret; nay, it is no secret, it is Christ's message, the Gospel of the New Testament. Learn to say "Yes!" "Yes, I will," to everything that is noble, everything that is pure, everything that is true. "Yes, I will be steadfast, pure, true, generous, not because I must, but because I ought. I will not seek to be loved, I will seek to be lovely. Yes, I will be brave, because I know I am a coward. Yes, I will think

of others, because it is so difficult to forget myself. If I have done wrong in the past, I will strip away all self-excuse. I will not persuade myself and tell others that I have tried when I have merely drifted. I will not, like Saul, blame others for my own weakness. I will say: 'I have done wrong, the fault is mine. Grant me Thy forgiveness, Father, Thy love, unworthy as I am."

I know you all know what is right. You know equally well that if you have blundered, if you have done wrong, the noblest, the only thing is to own it. This manliness, this Godliness which Christ has taught us, is within reach of every one of us.

"The Past cannot be changed. ... The Future is yet in our power."

THE past cannot be changed!

"The moving finger writes, and having writ
Moves on. Nor all your piety, nor wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line;
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."

The past cannot be changed-words which are full of truth so grave that they must sting us back from heedlessness into thought. To-night, the last Sunday of a school term, at the end of a year, they come home to many of us with a solemn force, and it is well they should. Let us look back. How full of mistakes, of blunders, of wrong, yes, and of evil! Let us pray to be filled, as we look at our past, with a divine discontent; but let there be no despair, "for westward, look, the land is bright."

The future is yet in our power. Let us honestly recognize and admit the wrong we have thought, the evil we have spoken, the harm we have done, and then let us turn to the coming year determined so to think, and speak, and do that, at the end of it, we shall be more content to face the words "The past cannot be changed."

If we were asked to name the things we have thought, said, or done, which could be written down on the credit side of our life's account, how paltry

would be the list and how pitiful our silence. And yet the listening angel would not despair, for he would know how great is the gift of the knowledge of our own imperfections. May we have the gift and we need not despair; nay, rather, we must not despair. Some of us would, how gladly, get away from our past; how gladly begin again. But "we must let God teach us that the only way to get rid of our past is to get a future out of it."

The future is yet in our power. It is of the future, of "the things that we shall speak," that I would bring to our minds to-night. I would speak about conversation. Do you remember Psalm 39, verse I? "I said I will take heed to my ways that I offend not with my tongue." It is a hard lesson to learn, and that tells us that it is a good one.

There have been philosophers who held that man could only attain to happiness by returning to nature, giving up evil and good alike, and they would begin, if it were possible, by robbing him of the gift of speech. There have been saints whose institutions and ideas linger to-day, who held that the tongue should be used only in the praise and worship of God, and have cut off themselves and their followers from converse with their fellow-men, as if the glory of God could be manifested by disusing his greatest gift to man.

Without language there could be no knowledge, no progress amongst men-without it we are animals. We must not lose or impair this splendid inheritance. Whatever we speak, or whatever we write, let us try and speak and write as well as we

can.

To do this in conversation we must get rid of

the thought of self, which is a burden which weighs us down.

With whom do we like to converse? With the man who is thinking and caring not about himself, or about his entertainment, or how he appears in the eyes of his guests, but about others.

It is the man who speaks not of his own plans and projects and opinions, but of ours, who is so attractive; the man who is always getting away from himself.

A second necessity is sincerity, for without it there can be no confidence in one another. The words we speak in confidence must not be repeated, and we must know that they will not be repeated. It is a not uncommon practice to discuss and jest about the character and behaviour of him behind whom the door has just closed. Such criticisms and jests do not do much harm to the subject of them, but they tend to injure the character of those who utter them, especially if behind the criticism or jest there lies any envy or jealousy.

If we like to hear or tolerate the saying of something to another's disadvantage, then we may know that we are helping to degrade the tone of conversation, and a generous person will always hang out a flag of opposition, and will speak up for the one who is attacked.

It has been said that one of the greatest instruments of education is conversation. If this be so, we must cultivate a desire to promote it, and we must take care that we have the materials. We must be able to have some subject or subjects of interest from which to contribute our share, and we must learn to be good listeners. If we cannot