all that is behind the best spirit of the time, all that is behind the true spirit of Christ's teaching, and shall set themselves to reach forward to the great things which are still before us, the great problems which our age, if any, may solve; the great doctrines of our common faith which we may have the opportunity of grasping with a firmer hold than ever before, the great reconciliation of things old with things new, of things common with things sacred, of class with class, of man with man, of nation with nation, of all with God.

Let your lives be dedicated, young men, to such objects as these in whatever realm of thought and action, in industry, or politics, in art, science or literature, in theology or philosophy, your lot may be cast. That dedication will be the highest and the truest form of commemoration service for All Saints and All Benefactors, and for all those "immortal dead" whose names must be held in reverence by our Church or University—

“Who live again

In minds made better by their presence; live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

For miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues."

LADY SIDNEY DAY. I

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers who begat us."-ECCLESIASTICUS xliv. 1.

OME of you will remember the passage in the

Phædrus of Plato, where the poet-philosopher attempts to explain the origin of the spiritual gifts of humanity. Under the poetic mysticism of that magnificent mythe Plato tells how on stated days human souls follow in the train of the immortal Gods, and rising above the material world attain to the vision of the unseen and the eternal, and how though falling back again once more to the level of earth they retain through life the memory of this Beatific Vision as the impulse and motive of all high thought and righteous deed.

For us Christians the dream of Plato is realised in the Gospel of Christ. In the glory which he revealed we recognise the Transfiguration of Human Life, and find, some of us, in Him, our Spiritual Master in the Eternal Life of Truth,

Preached February 14, 1896, in the Chapel of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, on the occasion of the Tercentenary Celebration of the College Foundation.

wisdom, and love, the inspiring motive and spring of our lives, and having once "seen the Light and whence it flows" learn also to recognise in other human souls, who exhibit any portion of his gift, signs of the Master's Presence.

It is good, surely, that on a day like this, when we are gathered together to commemorate the Founders of this place, we should strive to enter into brief communion with their spirit, and gladly recognise in their work the signs of the great Master's Presence, and record our gratitude to Him and them for the opportunities which in the days of our youth we share together here of sound learning, of disciplined loyalty, and generous life.

Such acts of commemoration, expressing in modern form the idea of the old mediæval "Obit" or the "General Mynde," when the names of good doers were read out in church to the people, tend, I think, to create that sense of social communion, to foster the feeling of a historic past, and attachment to local memories and the delight in the names of the mighty dead, all of which may exert so potent an influence on the morality of the living.

Such an annual "General Mynde" we to-day are celebrating in this Tercentenary Commemoration Service. It is just 300 years ago since the House of the Grey Friars, which had been founded 300 years earlier by Edward I., and which had been for long, so chroniclers say, by reason of its largeness, famous as the assembling place of the University-its ancient Senate House in fact-was

bought by the executors of Lady Frances Sidney, Dowager Countess of Sussex, from the authorities of Trinity College, and incorporated by Charter bearing date February 14, 1596, as a College in this University. The building was commenced in the following May, and completed, with the exception of the Chapel, in 1598.

It is interesting, I think, to remember, for any of us at any rate who have any sympathy with the sentiment of the genius loci, that the College Chapel in which we are met to-day, rebuilt by Green just a hundred years ago, occupies the site, and was originally formed out of the ruinous walls of the ancient refectory of the Grey Friars' Monastery, where for three centuries of stirring national life the Franciscan Monks had kept alive, let us hope, something of the mystic tenderness, the brotherly compassion, the fervour of missionary zeal, which they had learnt from their great Founder, Saint Francis of Assissi.

But it is not, of course, to the Franciscan Monks that we Sidney men trace our spiritual ancestry.

Sidney College was born at the meeting point of two great epochs of English history. The age of the Renascence was passing into the age of Puritanism. Rifts which were still little, were widening every hour and threatening ruin to the fabric of the Church and State which the Tudors had built up. A new political world was rising into being; a world healthier, more really national, but less

picturesque, less wrapt in the mystery and splendour that poets love. Great as were the faults of Puritanism, it may fairly claim to be the first political system which recognised the grandeur of the people as a whole.

As great a change was passing over the spiritual sympathies of man. A sterner Protestantism was invigorating and ennobling life by its morality, its seriousness, its intense conviction of God. But it was at the same time hardening and narrowing it. The Bible was superseding Plutarch. The obstinate questionings which haunted the finer souls of the Renascence were being stereotyped in the theological formulas of the Puritan. The sense of. Divine omnipotence was annihilating man. The daring which turned England into a people of adventurers, the sense of inexhaustible resources, the buoyant freshness of youth, the intoxicating sense of beauty and joy, which created Sidney and Marlowe and Drake, was passing away before the consciousness of evil and the craving to order man's life aright before God.

Sidney College was the child of this transition period. Its Foundress, Lady Frances Sidney, was one of the learned ladies of the Court of Elizabeth. She was the aunt both of Sir Philip Sidney and of the Earl of Leicester: the wife of Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex, known at least to all readers of "Kenilworth" as the rival of Leicester. To-day the noble families of Pembroke, Carnarvon, and Sidney claim her as their common ancestress. A