In such a case it is well if we have realised beforehand that our laws of conduct should not vary, and that the call of God, which we have recognised once, is a call which never ceases, and which no circumstances should make inaudible. When we approach any change we all need this kind of warning; because there are so many things in our life which we are apt to allow our circumstances to regulate for us. Experience tells us only too plainly how much we depend upon the influences that are around us, and how often we fail to carry with us the strength we have gained in one field when we pass over to the next. With the holy we learn in some degree to be ourselves holy; with a perfect man we too are able to walk perfectly; but on the other hand, in our imitative way, as the scene changes, we sometimes find ourselves learning frowardness with the froward, practising indifference with the indifferent, if not actually slipping with the vicious into some vicious way. There is always some risk of such changes; and it is always well for us to be taking care that our better life has its root in our own heart and spirit, and that we do not wear it as a garment suited to the society in which we happen to be, and change it for the worse, if there comes any corresponding change in outward influences. Hence it is that at these times, when we are about to separate, these words of Isaiah come to us with a very appropriate reminder: "Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters." To those who are leaving our society to begin a new life elsewhere, as to those of us who go in the hope of returning by-and-by, they are charged with the same lesson. They bid us all alike take care and see that what is good in our present life has become our own personal and permanent possession, independent of surroundings; that it has sunk in some degree into the fibre of our character; that it is settled in us by conviction and principle, to guide and direct us everywhere, and is not merely a circumstantial garment, a sort of livery of this or that particular place, which will slip off us as we leave it.