LIFE'S MISTAKES. STRIKING LAY SERMON.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 129, 27 November 1909, Page 13

LIFE'S MISTAKES. STRIKING LAY SERMON.

One of the most remarkable and delightful lay sermons that have been listened to for a long time by a secular audience was delivered on the night of 6th October, by His Honour Judge Rentoul, before the Bartholomew Club, London. The club itself is, states the Daily Chronicle, composed largely of City trades-folk, and as it was "ladies' night," there were wives and daughters helping to brighten an already crowded hall. As might have been expected, Judge Rantoul's address, which he entitled ■'The Fourteen Mistakes of Life," was fnll of humour and good stories; but its most remarkable characteristic was the earnest frankness, humbleness, aud sincerity with which the learned judge unfolded a "code of life," based on his own ripe experience. Here are ''The Fourteen Mistakes of Life" in\ due order :—: — 1. To set up our own standard of right and wrong, and to expect everyone to conform to it. 2. To tiy to measure the enjoyment of others by our own. 3. To expect uniformity of opinion in this world. 4. To look for judgment and experience in youth. 5. To endeavour to mould all dispositions alike. 6 Not to yield in unimportant trifles. 7. To iook for peifection in our own actions. 8. To worry ourselves and others about what cannot be remedied. 9. Not to alleviate all the suffering that we . can. 10. Not to make allowances for things in others that seem to unfit them for success in life. 11. To consider anything impossible that we cannot ourselves perform. 12. To believe only -what our finite minds can grasp. 13. To live as* if the moment would last for ever. 14. To estimate people by their nation-, ality, or by any outside quality. Each of these golden "Don'ts" Judge Rentoul illustrated with a wealth of proverb and anecdote and epigram. One may just snatch a few at random :—: — "The greatest bore in life is the man who thrusts his own pleasures upon you. Telling of our own exploits is ono of the meanest forms of this." 'Bigotry has bathed the churches in thb blood of the martyrs. All the beauty ,in the world is the result of lack of uniformity." "Let youth buy experience. TJnbought experience is as worthless as an unfeed lawyer." "Hardly a single great man has won distinction in the work his father intended for him." "The greatest men have been the most conspicuous 'screws I—to1 — to use a horsey metaphor. James Watt was idle; Byron morbid; Wordsworth vain; Johnson bigoted ; Rousseau foolish to the point of idiocy; Napoleon a slave to superstition.' "The man who is not just to your fancy is not necessarily a Judas." These and other apothegms of kindness were heard with eager attention, and a subsequent discussion showed that they had been duly marked, learned, and digested by listeners of both aexes.