ifficulties,
beating down obstacles, overcoming enemies; but it is Christ's school
alone which can show us how to conquer _ourselves_. You have probably
noticed the change in a young country lad after he has enlisted for a
soldier, and gone through his drill. Whereas he was a high-shouldered,
slouching, ungainly figure, now he has learnt to carry himself like a
soldier, he has conquered the old bad habits which he acquired by
lounging in the lanes, or plodding along the furrow. My brethren, we
have all got our bad habits, our ugly tempers, our sharp tongues, our
discontented feelings, and it is only the drill of Christ's soldiers,
and the teachings in Christ's school, which will make us get the better
of them. Christ's school will make a radical change in us. Jesus--our
Master--says, "behold I make all things new," and we know that they who
are in Christ are become new creatures, old things are passed away. We
may be quite sure that if we are Christ's scholars we shall be changed
people. S. Paul tells us, as he told the Ephesians, some of the marks
of this change. We shall learn to speak, and act, the truth. "Putting
away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour." We shall learn
to control our temper,--"be ye angry, and sin not. Let not the sun go
down upon your wrath." We shall learn to work, and to work
honestly,--"let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him
labour, working with his hands the thing which is good." We shall
learn to control our tongue,--"let no corrupt communication proceed out
of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying." We
shall learn to be kind and gentle to our neighbours,--"let all
bitterness and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil-speaking, be put
away from you, with all malice." The great world school will teach us
to practise these things, but not the school of Jesus. There we shall
learn "to be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one
another, even as God, for Christ's sake hath forgiven us."

And we shall learn in Christ's school to be brave. The world school
can teach us a certain kind of courage, but not the highest, nor the
best. The world can teach us how to resent an injury, not how to
forgive one. It is in Christ's school only that true heroes are made.
The world can make such soldiers as Caesar, or Napoleon, but the school
of Christ alone can make a Havelock or a Gordon. I have read of a poor
boy who came to school wit