This proverb, then, to get i' the hundred and lose i' the shire, is now quite plain to us.

You might canvass so as to get a hundred, several hundreds, many hundreds on your side, and yet you might lose when it came to counting up the whole shire.

You might possess yourself of a hundred or two and yet be poor compared with him who possessed the whole shire.

And then the proverb has been preserved out of the old political life of England, and has been moralised and spiritualised to us in the _Holy War_.

And thus after to-night we shall always call this shrewd proverb to mind when we are tempted to take a part at the risk of the whole; to receive this world at the loss of the next world; or, as our Lord has it, to gain the whole world and to lose our own soul.