ssociate yourselves from the labouring
masses, and in particular from the women and girls of England. They are
your sisters; and a blight and a curse rests on you if you ignore them,
and grasp at all the pleasures and sweetness and cultivation of your
life with no thought or toil for them. Their lives are the foundations
on which ours rest. It is horrible in one class to live without this
consciousness of a mutual obligation, and mutual responsibility. All
that we get, we get on trust, as trustee for them. I remember that
Thring says somewhere, that "no beggar who creeps through the street
living on alms and wasting them is baser than those who idly squander at
school and afterwards the gifts received on trust."

I know that our class education isolates us and separates us from the
uneducated and common people as we call them, makes us perhaps regard
them as uninteresting, even repellent. Part of what we hope from the
girls who come from great schools like this is, that they shall have a
larger sympathy, a truer heart. Remember all your life long a saying of
Abraham Lincoln's, when he was President of the United States. Some one
remarked in his hearing that he was quite a common-looking man.
"Friend," he replied, gently, "the Lord loves common-looking people
best; that is why He has made so many of them."

You can all make a _few_ friends out of the lower class; you cannot do
much; but learn to know and love a few, and then you will do wider good
than you suspect.

But you are beginning to ask--Is all this religion? You expected
something else. Let me remind you of the man who came to Jesus Christ,
and asked Him what he should do to obtain eternal life. And this
question, I may explain, means--What shall I do that I may enter on that
divine and higher life now while I live; how can I most fully develop my
spiritual nature? And the answer was--Love God; and love your neighbour
as yourself. Go outside yourself in love to all that is divine and ideal
in thought and duty; go outside yourself in love to your neighbour--and
your neighbour is every one with whom you have any relation; and then,
and then alone, does your own nature grow to its highest and best. This
is the open secret of true religion.

Eastertide is the teacher of ideals. Its great lesson is--"If ye were
raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above." If by
calling yourself a Christian you mean that you aim at the higher, the
spiritual, the d