We come into the real school-life when we have left school. Duty is twofold: duty to do, duty to endure. We have the tasks of the school to do, and the discipline of the school to bear. And the more honest we are in the first, the braver shall we be for the second.
I. We have duties to perform. Not what you do, but how you do it, is the test. And small things, done as to the Lord and not to men, grow golden and precious with the stamp of honest stewardship. Our manhood is truly developed only as we make life real, and we only make life real in proportion as we take each duty, great or small, and make it great by principle, and sacred because we do it unto God.
II. Nor are these duties of our school-life restricted by the bounds of our activities; they enter into the region of endurance and challenge patience as well as principle; the fortitude which can bear as well as the courage that can achieve. Christianity is tested as much or more by the meekness with which the discipline is borne as by the energy with which the task is done. Not in the romance that wakes the poet's lyre, or the adventure that upstirs a nation's wonder, and the brunt that kindles man's acclaim, is true life only to be shown, and noble guerdon to be won; but in the constancy which carries principle along each quiet path of duty, doing the unnoticed deed for Christ's sake only, carrying the load to the grave's brink through weal or woe in His one name.
A. Mursell, Catholic Sermons,vol. ii., p. 25.
References: Proverbs 4:13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiv., No. 1418; W. Arnot, Laws from Heaven,1st series, p. 163.