On the Saturday evening before the last Sunday Harry Venniker asked him if he were going to communion the next morning, and rather than excite suspicion of his spiritual state (though he somehow felt that he was acting a part) he answered _Yes_. The two friends knelt for the last time side by side in the memorial of the Divine Passion. There were very many communicants; the service was not over until nearly two o’clock. The last Sunday evening service at the chapel at St. Anselm’s was always an impressive occasion. Who could look without emotion on such a multitude of young lives gathered for the last time in that place of holy memories and associations? So often had they worshipped together during their school lives. When would they all meet for worship again? At all times the striking feature of a school service is its unity. A common parochial congregation is made up of diverse elements, the young and the aged, the rich and the poor, masters and servants, men, women, and little children; they meet, as it were, accidentally, their lives are various and separate, they are bound by no strong personal ties each to the other; and the preacher, if he appeals to one class from the pulpit, is necessarily oblivious or neglectful of another. Among the boys of the same great school it is not so; they are one in sentiment, tradition, association, life; the honour of each is the interest of all; they are trustees, the weakest as well as the strongest, of the name and fame of an institution greater than themselves, and in the congregation itself they are not one element out of many--they are all. And some of them are in the morning of their days as yet unclouded, and some in the chequered midway of school life, and some on the very verge of the great change, going forth into the world; and there are those who will make shipwreck of faith or morals in after-days, or will be wasted with suffering, or will die heroic deaths in far-off lands, and those who will rule senates or parliaments, or expand the confines of learning, or mitigate the sufferings of the poor, and those, too, who will lead the forlorn hopes of philanthropy and plant the Cross where the tortured slave kneels down to die. It is not hard to believe that such thoughts as these filled Dr. Pearson’s mind as he looked in silence upon that congregation before beginning his sermon. He chose as his text the words, ‘Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men.’ A profound stillness reigned in the chapel while he spoke. Even in dark days afterwards, Gerald Eversley did not forget that sermon. At two or three points of the sermon some boys sitting on the front benches drew their handkerchiefs from their pockets, then hastily thrust them back again, as if ashamed of themselves.