[25] Preached in Marlborough College Chapel. The text is based upon the report taken by the _Marlborough Times_, kindly lent for this purpose. "For he was a good man, and full of the HOLY GHOST and of faith."--ACTS xi. 24. I need not tell you, not only how much I look forward to my Marlborough day, but also how much I have thought as to what message I would give you. When I think of the many to whom I have preached at Marlborough year by year, of the three hundred now dead, of the hundreds more who are fighting, and of the fact that many of those to whom I am speaking would soon, if the war went on, be in the thick of it, I realise what a very solemn thing it is to come down to Marlborough and give a message to my old school. I will tell you what made me choose this message. The fact that Whitsuntide this year comes on the same day as St. Barnabas' Day gives me a subject, the most solemn subject I have ever taken at Marlborough--viz., the effect of the HOLY GHOST upon human character. St. Barnabas was one of the most attractive characters in the New Testament, an example of attractive goodness. He was such a _gentleman_ in all he did, and therefore, if we could have produced in us, by the HOLY GHOST, the wonderful character that the HOLY GHOST produced in St. Barnabas, we might have that description used of us; just think what it would be for men to say of us--"He was a good man, full of the HOLY GHOST and of faith." What, then, is the effect of the HOLY GHOST upon human character? You might say, "But do we have the falling of the HOLY GHOST, too?" Why did we have that hymn this morning, "Our blest Redeemer, ere He breathed"? I was asked to choose the hymns, and I chose that one because it so beautifully describes the indwelling of the HOLY GHOST on your Confirmation day, and that is what makes the School Confirmation the crowning event of the year. At Confirmation you have the falling of the HOLY GHOST in exactly the same way as happened in the early Church. Yesterday, for instance, I confirmed, under the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, two hundred and thirty people of all ages. "What is the effect of the HOLY GHOST upon human character?" Some people imagine that what is called "doctrine" has no practical value. But is this true?