as a sermon taster,
while its officers were the acknowledged possessors of letters patent to
the true ecclesiastical nobility. In my student days, medals and
scholarships were never quoted among the trophies of our divinity men if
it could be justly said of any one that he had preached twice before the
hard heads of St. Cuthbert's. This triumph was recited with the same
reverent air as when men used to say, "He preached before the Queen."

Some hundreds of miles must be traversed before I reached the place, but
only some four-and-twenty hours before I reached the time, of my trial
sermons. Therefore did I convert my car into a study and my unsteady
knee into a desk, giving myself to the rehearsal of those discourses by
which I was to stand or fall. Every weak hand thereof I laboured to
strengthen, and every feeble knee I endeavoured to confirm. And what
motley hours were those I spent on that fast-flying train! All my
reflections tended to devotion, but yet my errand was throbbing with
ambition.

Whereupon I fell into a strange and not unprofitable reverie, painfully
striving to separate my thoughts, the sheep from the goats, and to
reconcile them the one to the other. I knew well enough the human frame
to be persuaded that ambition could not altogether be cast out from the
spirit of a man, which led me to reflect upon its possible place and
purpose if controlled by a master hand beyond the hand of time. I
strove to discover my inmost motive, far behind all other aims, and
consoled myself with the hope that God might make it the dominant and
sovereign one, to which all others might be unconscious ministers, even
as all other lesser ones obey the driving wheel.

I somehow felt that the vision of that radiant face at home, for whom
ambition sprung like a fountain, was in no wise inconsistent with the
holiest work which awaited me on the morrow.

At thought of her, my ambition, earth-born though it was, seemed to be
robed in white and to be unashamedly ministering unto God. And I was
fain to believe at last that this very hope of a larger place was from
Himself, and that He was the shepherd of the sheep and of the goats
alike. Whereupon I fell upon my sermons afresh with a clearer
conscience, which means a stronger mind, and swiftly prayed, even while
I worked, that the Lord of the harvest would winnow my tumultuous
thoughts, garnering the wheat unto Himself and burning the tares with
unquenchable fire.

Onward rushe