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Dr Stephen Perse was a remarkable man with wide interests. He was a theologian, a medical doctor, a Fellow of this College, and a philanthropist who gave generously to the university library, supported the building of a new road, the Maids Causeway, paid for a better water supply for Cambridge, and established a free grammar school, among his many other acts of generosity.

In this sermon named after him, I would like us for a moment to think about education, as reflected in his life and interests, and as such I have chosen the text from St Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 22: 

‘Love the Lord your God with all your mind’.

Sir William Ostler in his published lectures to his medical students in the early part of the 20th century, pleads with them to think of their graduation not as the end of their studies but as the beginning. He tells him to take up new interests, new areas of study and new projects for research. He commends the aged doctors of France with their white hair who mingle with those who are just beginning in the profession, and he calls upon his students to take every precaution against arrested intellectual development and to go on learning.  And so must we all.

Many years ago, I invited the President of Yale to come to England to give a lecture on the title, ‘The Future of the University’. During that lecture, in making out a case for research for its own sake, he told us this story:

“Two weeks ago I went to see a man in hospital who had just had a successful eye operation conducted with a laser beam. And this was the man who 20 years previously had invented the laser beam with no practical use whatsoever. Even though his discovery had no foreseeable practical use at the time, he kept on researching and learning for its own sake.  And here, 20 years later, he was on the receiving end of his own invention, for which someone else had found a use”.

There is nothing in the world more interesting than learning and it is always better done with friends. That is why Quintilian, the great Latin expert on education, was quite certain that education in schools and colleges was infinitely better than private education at home, because of the friendships it provided and the incentives it gave to go on learning together. This sentiment must have been shared by Stephen Perse, being a Fellow of this College and the founder of a school.

The theme of going on learning is one picked up by St Paul when writing to the Galatians. “You ran well” he said, but added, “What stopped you?”

Go on learning. Don’t just be a good teacher but be a great one. Don’t just be a good lawyer but an outstanding one. Don’t just be a run of the mill scientist but a brilliant one.

‘Serve the Lord your God with all your mind.’  This does not only mean going on learning, but it also means going on thinking.

Professor J. A. Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy, in his philosophy lectures of 1914 began the series along these lines: 
“Ladies and Gentlemen, you are about to embark upon a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Some of you, when you go down from university, will go into the Church, or to the Bar, or to the House of Commons, or to the Home Civil Service, or the Indian or Colonial Services, or into various professions. Some may go into the Army, some into industry or commerce; some may become country gentlemen. A few – I hope a very few – will become teachers or dons. Let me make this clear to you. Except for those in this last category, nothing that you will learn in the course of all your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life – save only this – that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a person is talking rot, and that, in my view is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.”

In an age of fake news and scams, the world needs more than ever before people who can reason and think for themselves. Why was GK Chesterton’s Father Brown such a good detective? Because he went on thinking. On one occasion, he unmasks a criminal disguised as a Roman Catholic priest. The man asked Father Brown how he knew that he was not a priest, and Father Brown replied, “Because you argued against reason and no Roman Catholic Priest would argue against reason.”  The Christian faith goes beyond what reason can prove but never against reason.

Love the Lord your God with all your mind.

This means not only going on learning and not only going on thinking but also, like Stephen Perse, going on thinking about others, and not too much about ourselves. 

Charles Kingsley once told his tiny congregation at Eversley, “If you want to be miserable, think about yourself, think about your position in society, think about what others think about you, and in no time you will be as miserable as sin”. 

If you want to grow and develop as a person you have to enjoy things, you have to live thankfully and you need to think about others. One of the most moving passages in English literature comes from Dickens’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities’.

You will remember that Sydney Carton has changed places with a friend in the Bastille during the French Revolution. As he is waiting to be taken away to the guillotine, a young girl sees his kindly face and comes up to him and says, “May I ride with you on this last journey? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak.” And so the two of them ride hand in hand in the open cart as it rattles through the cobbled streets of Paris, amid the jeering crowds, until they come to the place of execution, where she turns to him and says, “I know that you were sent to me from heaven.”

Love and kindness and generosity and thinking about others will always be seen as coming from heaven.

For most of my life I have been haunted by some words of one of my predecessors, James Martineau, who said, “The things we do for ourselves die with us. The things we do for others last forever.”  One kind deed can so often cascade down through the centuries as well as rippling out across the world.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart

Finally, Stephen Perse endowed this sermon, so I am sure that we would be right to conclude that he would have not only wanted us to go on learning, to go on thinking, to go on thinking about others, but also to go on thinking about God.

It is to my mind one of the interesting facts of the early church, that when the first disciples looked back and thought seriously about the life and death of Jesus, they did not blame God for letting a good man die, but somehow they saw in the life and death of Jesus a new way of overcoming sin and bitterness, hatred and greed and envy, and said, God must be like that.  Not only that God must be like that, but God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

Today is Candlemas, when we think of Christ come as the light of the world. And this fact is recognised by two elderly people, Simeon and Anna, who went on thinking about God and watching for his coming. Candlemas also marks the last day of Christmas. It does not seem long ago since we sang in our Christmas Carol Services, Mrs Alexander’s hymn: ‘Once in Royal David’s City.’  It is a hymn which begins like a fairytale with the opening words being so like, ‘Once upon a time’, and the end being so like, ‘They all lived happily ever after’. And the words, ‘Christian children all must be mild, obedient, good as He’, are a real fairytale. It is however that great second verse that comes right to the heart of the Christian faith. ‘He came down to earth from Heaven, who is God and Lord of all’.

The only people who recognise this great fact were those who were qualified to do so by their own humility. The humble shepherds whose ears were opened by the heavenly host, believed it. The wise men who were humble enough to follow where their reason lead, believed it. The young woman, Mary, visited by an Angel, believed it, and the aged Simeon and Anna, who had, over many long years been watching and thinking about God, believed it.

God’s challenge is to shepherds and wise men, to a young couple, Mary and Joseph, and two elderly people Simeon and Anna. His challenge is to the privileged and the underprivileged, to the educated and the illiterate, to the old and the young, to the rich and the poor; to all people and everyone. And if we too believe it, we shall prove to ourselves and to others, that Christianity is not a fairytale nor an empty ritual, but the love, and light, and saving power of God released into the world to bring peace on Earth and goodwill to all people.

Amen.

Sir Ralph Waller KBE

1^st February 2026