The School Prayer

Lord, we pray you to send your blessing upon all those who form part of the life of this School.  Grant to our teachers strength and wisdom that they may labour faithfully to extend your Kingdom in the School; and to the Prefects and Captains such courage and perseverance in well-doing that they may be true leaders.  And by your almighty power, enable every member of the School to take a firm stand in the great army of God, to wage the never-ending war against this materialistic world.  Grant, O Lord, to those who have gone forth from this place that they may not weary in well-doing, but that the seed-time of their school days may yield, year by year, a richer harvest.  And to all those set over the School give your grace and heavenly benediction. This we ask through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.

The School Grace

The Grace used is written below, together with its literal translation.  The Grace is said in Latin before and after every formal meal.

    Grace Before Meals

    Benedictus benedicat, per Christum. Amen.
    May the Blessed One bless, through Christ. Amen.

    Grace After Meals

    Benedictus benedicatur, per Christum. Amen.
    May the Blessed One be blessed, through Christ. Amen.

School Reading

• The School has adopted 1 Corinthians 13,1–13 as its school reading.  It is used in services at the beginning and end of each term, at the Old Girls’ Service and at certain other times.  It is summarised in the figures on the school badge and in turn, is itself a summary of what the school would wish each student’s lifelong philosophy to be.

1 CORINTHIANS 13: 1–13 (Revised Standard Version)
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful, it is not arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.  For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I gave up childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.  So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

NEGS School Hymn

Wrought by brave hands long dead, the past has laid
So great a heritage before our feet.
We can, with grateful hearts and unafraid,
Work on to make the present strong and sweet.

Laughter and work! Swift help in other’s need,
Under the friendly walls the terms go by!
The School has lit the torch! Let us take heed
That in our hands that beacon cannot die.

In fragrant morn, as evening grows to night,
The School is calling! Let us go our ways
With faces ever turned towards the light.
Fill with high toil the gracious, common days.

Give of our best! So when the gates swing wide,
And through the larger world our way we choose
Of life’s high enterprise, which we descried,
Never can we the vision wholly lose.

REFRAIN
Lord God, through all the changes time may bring,
Guard thou the School ‘neath Thine o’er shadowing.

The Grace

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all, evermore. Amen
2 Corinthians 13.14