"Forget? GOD smiles to see them merry, For His own SON was once a boy; They never shall be old and weary, But of their youth shall have great joy, And in the playing fields of Heaven Shall run and leap, new-washed, new-shriven. "Now Heaven's by golden boys invaded, 'Scaped from the winter and the storm; Stainless and simple as He made it GOD keeps the boy's heart out of harm. The wise old Saints look down and smile, They are so young and without guile. "Oh, if the sonless mothers weeping, The widowed girls, could look inside The Country that hath them in keeping Who went to the Great War and died, They'd rise and put their mourning off, Praise GOD, and say, 'He has enough!'"[24] [24] Katharine Tynan. Secondly, it is for the boys who will come home that you have your five priestly functions to discharge. They will come home very different to what they went out. I saw this wonderful transforming power as I went down the lines. Boys came out of the trenches, with the mud upon their puttees, knelt down and asked me to confirm them, thirty at a time (of course they had been previously prepared by the Chaplains). Many came to other services. They sang "When I survey the wondrous Cross," while the guns thundered close by, with a reality which it was impossible to mistake. Are they coming back to irreligious girls, to careless sweethearts, careless sisters who neglect their religion, to girls who would drag them down? No. Let us have here a country and a Church worthy of its defenders, to which they can return. Let us have such a work going on at home, side by side and step by step with what is going on in Flanders and the Dardanelles, that when they come back they may find a changed England at home. For their sakes you must sanctify yourselves--for the sake, too, of the little sister who looks to you as her model and her example. You have more influence over her, perhaps, than anyone else in the house, except her mother. For her sake be a priest of GOD, and--I say it without the least sense of immodesty--also for the sake of the children who are to be. I speak to-night to the future mothers of the children of Nottingham, and it makes all the difference to the young mother, as she looks round her children, and, when they grow older, tries to influence her growing sons and daughters, whether she can look them in the face without shame and without a blush, and is only asking them to do what she tried to do herself before she was married. For the sake of the children to be, exercise this glorious priesthood. If you do you will ennoble Nottingham by your action. You will make it a city set upon a hill; and "a city set upon a hill cannot be hid." IV TO BOYS THE EFFECT OF THE HOLY GHOST ON HUMAN CHARACTER[25]