It is not possible to give an abstract of the sermon. Some few phrases of it Gerald seems to have written down the same evening; they were probably such as struck him most. Dr. Pearson began by speaking of the intimacy of his own relation to the school. ‘Nobody,’ he said, ‘except, perhaps, your parents, can have the same interest in any one of you--no one the same interest in you all--as I have had.’ There must have been some direct reference to the achievements, perhaps also to the failures and shortcomings, of the school; for he spoke of the common corporate life at St. Anselm’s, ‘a life in which the honour of each one of us has been the honour of all, and if any shame has fallen upon any one of us, even the humblest, we have felt it, every one, as his own personal stain.’ And then, addressing the boys who were so soon about to leave the school, he told them that it was for them, when the enforced discipline of school life should come to an end, to see that their lives were ever controlled and inspired by the more sacred, because more arduous, self-discipline that Christ taught. He bade them remember that it was harder to live nobly than to die nobly; and he begged emphatically that, if they knew any boy who was coming back to school to be in danger of going wrong, they would not--even if in the past they had done wrong themselves--leave St. Anselm’s without asking him to give it up. The last few sentences of his sermon were somewhat as these: ‘I have spoken to you, my dear boys, many a time in this sacred place. To some of you--to those who are leaving--I am speaking now for the last time. Let me then ask of you all, and of them especially, these three things--I ask them as a personal favour in my Master’s name--first of all, that you will never say, or permit it to be said in your presence, that the thing which is right, however difficult it may be, cannot be done, or that the thing which is wrong, however tempting it may be, must needs be done; secondly, that, whatever your profession may be, you will take some part, though it be but slight, in ministering, directly or indirectly, to the relief of human suffering, and so in making this world, or some corner of it, a little better for your lives; and thirdly--knowing, as I must know, what are the difficulties of religious faith in a time like this--that you will not altogether break at any period of your lives with the ordinances of religion, above all, that you will not abandon the privilege of prayer.’ And he told them in a few sacred sentences what the religion of Christ had been to his own soul. Dr. Pearson pressed these requests with an affectionate and pathetic earnestness as one who felt in his heart of hearts his responsibility for the young souls committed to his care. The boys were sobered and melted by his words. They remained kneeling for an unusually long time after the sermon. It was followed by the hymn that long usage had consecrated in the minds of the boys of St.