All Hallows Hall
A TRADITIONALIST RESPONSE TO A MODERN CHALLENGE
Chapter Four
The Affirmative Way
Music is an important part of life at all Hallows. We all took our place in Choir, to sing alto, bass and tenor parts. Treble parts are taken by boys in the Choir School. We learned the fundamentals of sight reading, melody and counterpoint, harmony, rhythm, tempo, dynamics and orchestration. We learned to sing the services in English using Anglican Chant, and in Latin using Gregorian Chant. Many people are not aware that the Book of Common Prayer was authorized in Latin for schools and colleges, but it was. The Latin Communion Service is still used at Oxford University, to begin term. At Aula Nostra, we do Matins in English and Evensong in Latin, one month and the next month switch, doing Matins in Latin and Evensong in English.
On Sundays and major Feasts, the choir, sings a full Mass, using a two year cycle: baroque in even years, classical in odd. So, in even years, Palestrina, Victoria, Hassler, Byrd, Batten, Lasso, Gabrielli and Vivaldi; in odd years, mostly Mozart and Haydn. Anthems are added from Handel and Bach. On most days, we use simpler settings from Merbecke, Willan and Winfred Douglas. Besides class work there is after dinner music, on film or in live performance. Opportunities are made for instrumental lessons, and there are string, brass and woodwind quartets. Soon, perhaps, we’ll have a full school orchestra.
This expression of Faith in art is seen, not only in music of the Hall, but also in Drawing Class. We learn to understand the uses of line and form, texture and perspective, and the inevitability of composition in great works of art. We learn—as in music—that discipline and freedom are not enemies but rather means and end. After all, we pray every morning to the God, whose service is perfect freedom. There are trips to museums every year and in the All Hallows Customary and Prayer Book, reproductions by great artists such as El Greco and Michelangelo illustrate Scripture lessons. The music of the great Feasts is also included in the Customary, at the regular day of their use. Thus, in this book, one can see how , in the characteristic piety of the Hall, beauty and truth really are one, as Keats said.
The "affirmative way," whereby, as St. Paul says in Romans,
The invisible things of God. . . are understood by the things that are made,
is part of the All Hallows method for the formation of boys. In another time of great doubt and disbelief, John Henry Cardinal Newman attempted to make his contemporaries see,
The exterior world, physical and historical, was but the manifestation to our senses of realities greater than itself.
In his Introduction, to the Customary, Dr. Elliott quotes from the English writer, Evelyn Underhill:
Love and realization of beauty, without reverence and devotion soon degenerates into mere pleasure. So too devotion unless informed with the spirit of beauty becomes thin, hard and sterile, but where these two exist together, we find that developed apprehension which discovered deep messages in nature, in music, in all the noble rhythms of art, makes the senses themselves into channels of the Spirit . . . . The devotional life rightly understood as a vivid joyful thing with that disciplining of the attention and will which is such an important part of it is the most direct way to an attainment of that simple and natural consciousness of our intangible spiritual environment which all ought to possess.
That "disciplining of the attention and will" is not to some vague oceanic or pantheistic feeling; rather, It is anchored firmly in the holy dogmatic tradition of the Faith. The music speaks of Christ’s Virgin Birth, Passion and Resurrection, using words of Holy Scripture and tradition. The paintings are of events in the history of our salvation: the Angel Gabriel announcing to Blessed Mary the Birth of our Lord by Andrea della Robbia, the flight into Egypt by Murillo, cleansing of the temple by El Greco, Ecce Homo by Caravagio, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection both by Mantega, The deposition by Rubens, The Pieta, our Lady holding her son, Our Lord, on her lap after taking the body down from the cross sculpted by Michelangelo, and paintings of many, many saints placed in the Customary on their feast days. Thus are devout expression of the great deeds of the Creed and Scripture given vivid apprehension in melody and harmony, in line and color. Thus were our imaginations disciplined and sanctified. It would, for many of us, be a kind of inoculation against the shallow stuff that passes for music and art—both "serious" and popular—in the modern world.
At Noon, the Angelus bell calls end to classes. We pause and cross our selves saying the familiar prayer and then, we go to lunch. Afternoons are given to sports. Everyone learns to swim and does it every day. In season, we sail and row and so learn the team-work required to make a vessel move swiftly and purposely through the water. In the process, we develop our bodies. Since many of us will be attending balls over Christmas and New Years, we also begin dancing lessons in first term. Except for Advent and Lent, we have regularly scheduled dances at the Hall or at one of the neighboring girls’ schools.
Before Evensong, we pause for Tea. This is a rather formal affair that, besides giving a break with delicious homemade cakes and buns, gives the boys a chance to learn how to behave appropriately on such occasions. Of course, there is no tea on Fridays nor throughout the season of Lent. At six, the Angelus bell rings again telling us that it is time for Evensong.
After Evensong, we sit for Dinner. This is a meal at which everyone dresses in uniform, appropriate to the season. Unlike lunch and breakfast, there is no self service. Boys take turns serving and, in this too, learn something of the joy of service and, that this "common task," indeed provides, "room to deny ourselves, a road to bring us daily nearer God.
Speaking of dinner, brings me to the Farm. The Hall is situated in the midst of a working farm. We raise wheat, corn and rye, grind meal and bake our own bread. We raise vegetables, melons, berries and have a small orchard of apple and pear trees and so provide all manner of vegetables and fruits for table use. We also have chickens and cows and so get butter, milk and eggs, and we keep a small flock of sheep to "cut the grass." The farm uses organic methods, without pesticides or poisons. Every student in the Upper Forms spends one day a week working on the farm, under expert guidance. For the boys who come from cities and towns as most of us do, this is an experience every day filled with astonishment. Responsibility becomes a very lively notion. There is much learned, as well, about ecology animal husbandry and earth science. And, here too, is seen the affirmative way, for, as Cardinal Newman observed, nature is a parable of realities greater than itself. And. we come to know something of what Gerard Manley Hopkins meant when he cried: The world is charged with the grandeur of God! But, again, among creatures, only man is made in the image of God, so the "realities" seen in nature at large are not, as the pantheist believes, the essence of God, but rather expressions of his will. Thus we see in nature God’s omnipotence and providence.
After Dinner, three or four evenings a week, there is performance, music or theatrical. Sometimes these are live performances but more often they are on film. Besides the musical performances, over the course of a two year cycle, we see most of the plays of Shakespeare, either live or on film. On evenings when there is no performance, we, as they say, "hit the books." Lights out is at 9 PM, and, in the dorms, greater silence prevails until the Matins chant: O Lord, Open thou my lips! Nowadays, I often think wistfully of that blessed quietness.
In the second year, at All Hallows, my Fourth Form, the Religion course considers the History and Literature of the Old Testament in Michaelmas, The New Testament in Epiphany and Early Church History in Easter Term. We continued the study of Math with Geometry. In Latin, we read Cicero’s Orations and Virgil’s poetry, chiefly the great Aeneid, In Michaelmas term, we also begin the study of Greek, starting with the New Testament and then moving to the more complex grammar of the Homeric epic. The Iliad is read in Epiphany Term, the Odyssey in Easter . In Epiphany, we begin the study of Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, so that in the third year, we can finally read the entire lectionary in the original languages. We also begin this year a systematic study of formal Logic and Rhetoric, adding to the grammatical analysis of our readings, logical and rhetorical analyses as well.
Music class concentrates on preparation of music for the daily and especially the Sunday and Feast Day services. In the Art classes, the focus shifts from drawing to painting in various media: water colour in Michaelmas, oil in Epiphany and tempera or fresco in Easter.
The physical Education program adds life saving, in swimming and celestial navigation to Sailing. Water sports are also supplemented by Judo in this year.
Three afternoons each week are devoted to practica in expression. One afternoon is spent on dramatics, mostly Shakespeare, leading to after dinner dramatic readings and one or two costumed performances each year. Another is given to declamation, alternate weeks in English and Latin, using a debate format similar to that of the Oxford Union. A third afternoon is spent writing short essays, one in Latin and one in English, which are read with a tutor and one or two other students. This small group permits close attention to both the form and matter of the essay. Socratic dialectic is the ordinary teaching method. Under close dialogue, arguments, grammar and style are all examined and thus expression is refined, difficulties are early spotted, slip shod preparation and pretense are detected and dealt with before they become a way of life. This regime of drama, declamation and essays continues from the second through the last year at Aula Nostra. The Hall believes with Francis Bacon that: reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
My third year (Fifth Form) brought great change. At the end of Easter Term, instead of the usual two months vacation, we got two weeks at home, came back to the Hall for a weekend of prep and were whisked off to the airport for three months in Athens. Here we put our drawing skills to good use, making a sketch book—I still like to look at mine—and continue to swim and perfect our judo skills. Our studies begin with Minos and Mycenae. The focus, however, is on the civilization of 5th and 6th Century Athens. We write Latin E-mail epistles to the Fourth Formers back at Aula Nostra (They are not "mailed" until after tutorial critique.) and English essays on assigned topics. Emphasis in dramatic reading, training and performance shifts from Shakespeare to Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes. The Drama course began with a trip to the theater on the Acropolis, where most of these plays were first performed. Besides the drama, we studied Greek Historians—Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenephon—and read Orations of Demosthenes, Dialogues of Plato and discourses of Aristotle. We made use of the museums and monuments surrounding us on every side, with field trips to Crete, Delphi etc., to study the Religion and Art of ancient Greece.
The Religion course for this year is based on the daily Scripture readings. Since this is the first year we have done the whole lectionary in the original Greek and Hebrew, attention is given to close reading of the texts in those languages. The theme is the unity of Holy Scripture, the New Testament seen as incipient in the Old and the Old Testament as fulfilled in the New. We kept up our Latin, with the "letters home." and in daily worship.
In October, we moved to Rome. As with Athens, the City itself ,with its ancient streets, its monuments and museums, is a great cultural laboratory. We study three phases of life in this great city: Republican Rome, Imperial Rome and Christian Rome. How thrilling to be in Rome for Christmas and to visit the ancient basilicas for these great stational days. Of course, we continue to draw. We also begin the study of Italian. Swimming and judo continue as the chief forms of exercise. Drama continues, but now it is Terence, Plautus and Seneca. Cicero’s philosophical works, St. Augustine’s Civitate Dei (selections ) and St.Athanasius’ de Incarnatione continue the philosophy course. The weight, however, shifts from Drama and Philosophy to History, the Romans were much concerned with and occupied in recording their history. So we we read Livy, Tacitus, Caesar, Sallust, Cicero, Suetonius. And Plutarch. Greek and Roman literature is seen as a pagan analogue to the Hebrew Scriptures. As Cardinal Newman put it:
Pagan literature, philosophy and mythology, properly understood, were but a preparation for the Gospel. . . The Greek poets and sages were, in a sense, prophets.
In January, we began a six-week journey starting with Charlemagne’s Capital of Aachen and moving thence to Medieval France: from Mt. St. Michel in Normandy through Ruen to Rheims, to Amiens to Chartres to Paris. En route, we study stained glass, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts and, above all, architecture, and read: Henry Adam’s Mt. St. Michel to Chartres, St. Anselm’s, Proslogium and Cur Deus Homo. Our tutor decided that, since we were in France, we should start to learn—if we had not, already—the French language. But, It was not exactly Modern French; rather, it was the Old French of the Chanson de geste, of the great Roland. Besides the Latin epistles, we did papers in English on various aspects of Medieval Civilization and illustrated them with our own drawings.
In February, we returned to Italy, not to Rome, but to Florence, where we would study the Renaissance. During these months, we polish our Italian and read the great masterpiece in that language, Dante’s Divina Commedia. We continued our Latin readings with selections from St. Thomas Aquinas, In this beautiful city with, its museums churches and public buildings and sculptures, our art education took giant strides. For, this is the City of Michelangelo and Donatello, of Brunelleschi, Ghiberti and the families della Robbia and Lippi.
In April, we removed to England to study Old English and to read Beowulf . Then we studied the foundational legends of the Church in England concerning Joseph of Aramathea, as well as the Arthurian legend with side trips to Glastonbury, Cornwall and Wales and reading of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. We also studied Medieval England with visits to Oxford, Canterbury and the British Museum and reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, as well as documents such as Magna Carta. In Latin, we read Bede’s Historia Ecclesia Anglicana. Finally we journied to Stratford and London for a study of the 16th and 17th centuries with special attention to Shakespeare and Milton. Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples and Preface to Paradise Lost by C. S. Lewis are used to fill in the background connecting works read.
In July, we crossed the Channel again, spent two days in Spain, with special attention to the paintings of El Greco and took up residence in Paris. Here, we resumed our study of French, this time a more modern variant. We also continued our study of European civilization, with an emphasis on the 17th century. Before leaving Europe we go to Vienna for a long weekend for a study of the music, of the 18th century.
In September, we went through the same fast shuffle as in June of the previous year: off the plane, a week at home and back to the Hall for our last year. I should mention here that, during our stay in England, we started the process of College application.. By the end of the year, two of us were accepted at Yale, and two at The University of Virginia, two at Columbia, Two at NYU, one at The Naval Academy, two at the University of Chicago and two at Harvard.
The last year in our curriculum deals with Modern Civilization: History, Literature and Art. Naturally, American History and Literature get major emphasis. Instruction this year is in both French and English. Michaelmas is devoted to the 18th, Epiphany to the 19th and Easter Term to the 20th Century. Calculus, completes the Math sequence and a survey of science including Chemistry, Physics and Biology with one of these three studied at the Advanced Placement Level, giving college credit at most of the Universities to which we apply. Accompanying these studies is a course in Apologetics in which we look at the confrontation between the Gospel and the "Enlightenment culture" in our time.
Since we, returning sons of Aula Nostra, clothed now in the sophistication of travel and study abroad, are the most senior 6th form, we are expected to take leadership roles at the Hall. Thus we are Dorm, Farm and Refectory prefects, Counselors for lower school and first forms, and members of varsity teams: Debate, Sailing, Fencing, Judo, Swimming and Crew. Some of us will also take lead roles in Shakespearian plays, editorial positions on student publications etc.—who is able for all this? As I earlier complained (bragged?), our class, the Charter Class, was special; we crammed six years into four. The class right behind us—the Second Form contemporary with our Third form—only had to fit the six into five, What we did during our last or fourth year, Sixth Form, was, for them divided into two years Fifth and Sixth Forms. The next behind them and succeeding forms, all had six years—absent unfilled vacancies, and so late admissions.
Thus, our year plus two Summers abroad became, for our successors , two years and three summers. The time in each place doubled, permits the study of German in Vienna, as well as French in Paris. Eventually, it is hoped that All Hallows can establish brother schools in England , France, Italy, Greece and Austria so that we might have a permanent place to go for the time abroad. Similarly, native students from these schools could spend their fifth or sixth forms in America. Perhaps, in this way, we could begin to educate a few Christians in each country—fifth columnists, as it were—who would be dedicated to the old ways in morals, manners, education and religion.
I referred earlier to the Advanced Placement Exams. To graduate from All Hallows with an Honors Diploma, the student needs to maintain a "B? average and to pass Advanced Placements in Greek, Latin, English, U.S. History and at least three other subjects. The additional options are: English Literature, European History, Ancient History, Calculus, Biology, (Chemistry and Physics will be added next year ) French, Italian, Music and Art History. This means that, an All Hallows honor graduate will enter university, with at least a year of College Level credit and so, in many cases, will enter as a sophomore and thus be able to finish his baccalaureate degree a year early.
I must say that, when I look at my fellow students at Harvard who came from "less demanding" schools, I give thanks for the demands that were made of me for four years.
It was Alfred North Whitehead, the great Philosopher of Science, who said :
If in after life [ He meant after-school life] your job is to think, render thanks to Providence which ordained that for five years of your youth you did a Latin prose once a week and daily construed some Latin author.
Yes, we did that, and I do give thanks. Well, only four years, for my Class, but what a four years!—easily the moral equivalent of five.
Dorothy Sayers, the writer of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories, as well as some important religious books such as The Mind of the Maker, went so far as to say that:
The best grounding for education is the Latin grammar. I say this not because Latin is traditional and medieval, but because even a rudimentary knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost any other subject by at least fifty percent.
The late President Mayer of Tufts University used to emphasize the complementarity of the two classical languages:
Familiarity with the rigor of Latin and the suppleness of Greek is an incomparable step toward mastery of expression in any language.
Cardinal Newman pointed out that a Classical Education does indeed aid both thinking and expression. He said, that such an education in the classics:
Gives a man a clear and conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them and a force in urging them.
Something I read by Alexis de Tocqueville has stuck with me. He believed that, for all their virtues, democracies breed a kind of impatience with the time and attention needed for permanent virtues and non-utilitarian beauty. He believed, therefore, the literature of the Greeks and Romans was important for Americans. Because, Nothing in the classical writers,
seems to be done hastily or at random. Every line is written for the eye of the connoisseur and is shaped after some conception of ideal beauty. No literature therefore ought to be more studied in democratic times.
Paul Elmer More, the great Harvard Classicist, put this idea in a broader context:
If much of Greek thought is valuable for what has grown out of it, there are achievements also in which they remain unsurpassed, seemingly unsurpassable, and to have trained the mind to an appreciation of these achievements is to hold forever after a touchstone to distinguish between the higher and the lower pleasures. No later writer of narrative verse has equaled Homer; no dramatist has ever surpassed Sophocles; no lyric poet ever sang more entrancingly than Sappho, no sculptor rivaled Phidias; no philosopher looked so deeply into the human soul as Plato. The work of these men is still a norm of taste, and the full and sane measure of artistic joy can be known only by those whose emotions have been trained to respond to these models. (Emphasis added )
I think experience demonstrates that the earlier this process begins of learning to "respond to these models," the deeper and the more durable are the results. It should not wait for University. I still have a few friends that think I was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. I had one teacher who, joined by my Rector, tried to convince my parents that such a course of study would prove too difficult for a child of my tender years. But my History Professor at Harvard, pointed out that when John Adams came up to Harvard, he had to prove he could read and parse the New Testament in Greek and Cicero and Virgil, and Horace, in Latin and that he could write Latin Prose. John Trumbull, the Painter, he told me, came up having already read Homer in Greek, Virgil, Cicero, Horace and Juvenal in Latin—and he was only twelve. "You’re already eighteen!" he added, laughing.
Harvard was not all that remarkable in the eighteenth century. Columbia’s entrance requirements included translation from Latin to English of selections from Cicero and Virgil, translation from Greek to Latin from St. John’s Gospel. When James Madison entered the College of New Jersey ( now Princeton ) at eighteen, he had already read Virgil, Horace, Tacitus in Latin; Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato in Greek. I begin to feel in pretty good company. Why does everyone assume we are made of lesser stuff than our forebears at these schools?
The All Hallows education is, in fact, the Classical education that could be had in many schools of America and Western Europe until sometime into the 19th century. It is. as
Dr. Elliott likes to say:
an education that frees from the prejudices, passions and fads of the moment, eschewing the ephemeral and trendy, preferring instead. companionship with the best that has been thought, felt, said and done at all times and in all places. The All Hallows’ education is not trendy, rather it is traditional. And what is tradition?
he would ask rhetorically, and answer his own question by quoting G. K. Chesterton:
"Tradition," as Chesterton put it, "means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors . . . tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."
Then, he would add,
Tradition also refuses to mortgage tomorrow and our children to the ephemeral tastes and indulgences of the present moment. To surrender to the plague of
au courantisme.
But, tradition should not be confused with nostalgia for the past. Tradition does not surrender the present to a nostalgic reverie of an imagined past, but rather makes the past a living power in the present, so that our days are not a series of fits and starts like the ignorant tantrums of an undisciplined child but are rather bound each to each in living piety.
One thinks of T. S. Eliot’s essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent:
The historic sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence.
Christians are, as the writer of Hebrews reminds us, Strangers and pilgrims on earth. But, even as we escape the captivity of Egypt, we, like Israel, spoil the Egyptians. We will take the best man has thought, felt and done, in word and deed, music and painting, sculpture and building: the treasured spoils of man’s works and days, his downsittings and his uprisings and place it all reverently upon the Holy Altar of the God who became partaker of our human nature so that we might become partakers of the Divine Nature. We are reminded in this enterprise that Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God is the measure of all things—not "man" as the heathen do falsely boast. It is not to this world that we must be conformed but, rather, to the mind of Christ that we must be transformed, not ourselves that we must "actualize" but the fullness of Christ that we must "grow up into."
Here too, All Hallows had its critics. There is a story from the founding days about a Bishop who, while he did not object to the Curriculum, thought, perhaps, there was too much prayer for "modern boys." However, his successor was the first bishop in that diocese to ordain women to the Priesthood; perhaps the good Bishop did not himself pray quite enough.
What the good Bishop did not understand is that it is all of-a-piece: study in class, performing on stage, worship in Chapel, doing chores on farm or in Dining Hall, sailing a boat, rowing crew; all part of our education in sanctity and all informed by two principles: first, hierarchical subordination, hands and feet to head, head to heart and heart to God; second, in-corporation, as head and hands are part of our body, so we are all made part of the Church, the body of Christ.
So it is that this holy body now sings to its Lord in the Kyrie of the great Mozart Coronation Mass, as the ministers proceed to the Sanctuary. That done, the Bishop stands before the altar, facing East, and intones:
Gloria in excelsis Deo!
The Choir takes up the chant:
Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis,
Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te.
And clouds of incense rise above the altar. The Bishop turns West, to face the people and chants: The Lord be with you!
To which all reply: And with thy spirit.
Then the Bishop turns East again and intones the Collect for the Feast:
Almighty God who hath knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord; Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys which thou hast prepared for those who unfeignedly love thee.
Before the readings, the Bishop blesses the lectern and, after them, the organ. Then The Ministers form a procession and, preceded by the thurifer, incense mounting upward, move to the transept, where the Deacon solemnly chants the Gospel from the Sermon on the Mount. The Bishop resumes his blessings: before the sermon, blessing the pulpit; before the Offertory, the High Altar. As incense again ascends, in generous profusion, choir and congregation sing:
Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, and with fear and trembling stand.
The Bishop proceeds to the Great thanksgiving. joining," with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven," he gives thanks for the great redemption wrought on the cross and the choir sings:
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth!
Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua, hosanna in excelcis!
and all join in that great act of remembrance of the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, in which we join our small offerings of love and thanksgiving with his great sacrifice that we, "be made one body" with Jesus Christ, "that he may dwell in" us and we in him.
Before Communion, we join in the beautiful Prayer of Humble Access:
We do not presume to come to this thy table, O Merciful Lord
Trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies.
We be not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table:
But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy:
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ And to drink his blood in these holy Mysteries, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood.
As the people begin coming up for Communion, the Choir sings,
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
And, since there are many guests today, they continue with other hymns:
Just as I am without one plea but that thy blood was shed for me
And that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God I come, I come.
Returning to my seat, while waiting for the completion of Communion, I quietly say my prayers, always including one I learned in my first year at Aula Nostra:
Anima Christi, sanctifica me, Corpus Christi salva me . . .
When everyone has communicated, a corporate thanksgiving is said, to our good God who doth
feed us in these holy Mysteries with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ and hast assured us, duly receiving the same of thy favour and goodness towards us and that we be very members incorporate in thy Mystical Body. . . and heirs through hope of thy everlasting kingdom, by the merits of the most precious death and passion of thy dear Son . . . .
The liturgy concludes with a glorious solemn Te Deum, two thurifers wafting immense clouds of incense up into the ceiling of the Chapel. Then, singing the School Hymn,
Lo what a cloud of witnesses encompass us around !
Men once like us with suffering tried, but now with glory crowned.
Let us with zeal like theirs inspired, strive in the Christian race;
And freed from every weight of sin, their holy footsteps trace,
we flow out the South Porch and into the Refectory where a glorious breakfast and old friends await us. But, I pause, just a moment, to recollect the last time I was at the Hall: at graduation, we were charged solemnly by Dr. Elliott, in words from the Gospel:
"Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves:
Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves"
