{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_33635/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_33635","id":"gutenberg_33635","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33635","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: History - Modern (1750+)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","World War I","World War, 1914-1918 -- Great Britain","World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE GREAT DISCOVERY\n\n\nBY\n\nNORMAN MACLEAN\n\n\n\n\n\"Had I stood aside when in defiance of pledges to which my kingdom was\na party, the soil of Belgium was violated and her cities laid desolate,\nwhen the very life of the French nation was threatened with extinction,\nI should have sacrificed my honour, and given to destruction the\nliberties of my Empire and of mankind.\"\n\n_Proclamation by King George V._\n\n\n\n\nGLASGOW\n\nJAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS\n\nPUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY\n\n1915\n\n\n\n\nPUBLISHED BY\n\nJAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW\n\nPublishers to the University\n\n\nMACMILLAN AND CO. LTD. LONDON\n\n  New York ... The Macmillan Co.\n  Toronto .... The Macmillan Co. of Canada\n  London ..... Simpkin, Hamilton and Co.\n  Cambridge .. Bowes and Bowes\n  Edinburgh .. Douglas and Foulis\n  Sydney ..... Angus and Robertson\n\nMCMXV\n\n\n\n\n_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._\n\n  DWELLERS IN THE MIST.\n  HILLS OF HOME.\n  THE BURNT OFFERING.\n  CAN THE WORLD BE WON FOR CHRIST?\n  AFRICA IN TRANSFORMATION.\n\n\n\n\nTO\n\nJ. P. CROAL\n\nTO WHOM THIS BOOK OWES\n\nITS EXISTENCE\n\n\n\n\nPreface\n\nSix articles which the writer contributed to _The Scotsman_ constitute\nthis book.  Four of these, which appeared under the title \"In Our\nParish,\" were, in response to requests, re-printed by _The Scotsman_ as\nleaflets, and in that form had a circulation that reached an aggregate\nof 100,000.  One of the articles (now Chapter II.), which was published\non February 14, 1914, has been revised and somewhat enlarged.  The rest\nare reprinted substantially as they were originally written.\n\nIn these last months there has come to the nation a spiritual and\nethical revival.  Life will never again be what it was in the last long\nsummer days ere the guns began to speak.  It will be a better world\nthan it has yet been.  The nation is being saved as by fire, and in the\nfire much dross will be consumed.  The conscience of the State has been\nstirred, and it cannot in the future acquiesce in the continuance of\nthe social evils which are gnawing at the nation's heart.  The fate of\nthe Empire in the long years to come will depend more on the fight for\nsocial renewal in the midst of the streets than on red battlefields.\nTo the men who have stood between the race and destruction the State\nowes a debt which it can only repay by such measures of social\nregeneration as will make possible for every man and woman to realise\nthe thrill and the joy of life.  These pages only represent an effort\nto portray the first stirring of that newly awakened consciousness of\nGod and of duty which was felt in every parish throughout the Empire,\nand which is destined to transform the world.\n\n\n\n\nContents\n\n\n   I.  THE GREAT DISCOVERY\n  II.  THE REVIVAL OF PATRIOTISM\n III.  THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS\n  IV.  THE POWER OF PRAYER\n   V.  THE VICTORY\n  VI.  THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nThe Great Discovery\n\n\n\nI\n\nWhile the thing is still fresh in my mind I will try to put it down on\npaper--the incredible thing that has happened in our parish.  When we\nhad least thought about life's great things, we have come face to face\nwith the greatest.\n\nWe had been for long years living on the surface of things.  The sun\nbasked on the slopes of the hills, purple at eve; we came back from the\noffices in town, plunged through the tunnel, and hastened to our\ngardens.  We lifted up our eyes to the hills, and our security seemed\nas immovable as their crests soaring above the little dells that were\nhaunts of ancient peace around their foundations.\n\nLong years of ease dimmed our vision.  The church bell rang in vain for\nmany of us.  Those who had six whole days in the week to devote to\ntheir own pleasure began to devote the seventh also to that same end.\nThe day of peace was becoming a day of unrest.\n\nThus it was with us when, with the suddenness of a lightning flash, the\nincredible overtook us.\n\n***\n\nIf only one could put it into words!  But words can never express this\nsudden meeting of man and God when that meeting was least expected.\n\nIt was heralded by the booming of guns across the sea.  The great city\nlay slumbering between us and the shore, but over the turrets and\nspires it came--boom, boom--under the stars.  It was war.  That\nfar-away echo might not itself be the grim struggle of death, but it\nwas its harbinger.  Over all the seas death would soon be riding on the\nbillows.  Faces became stern.  Good-byes were spoken.\n\nAh! that word \"Good-bye,\" which we hear every day, and which, like\nthose old coins which have passed from hand to hand so long until at\nlast the image and superscription are gone, had lost all trace of its\noriginal meaning, retaining nothing but a faint aroma of courtesy,\nwhich sometimes vanished in the inflection of the voice until the word\nbecame only a discourteous dismissal--that word was born for us anew.\nWe heard it on the lips of mothers clinging to the hands of their sons,\nwho were summoned away to join their regiments, and as white lips said\n\"Good-bye\" to those whose blood was to water the fair fields of France,\nwe suddenly realised what it meant.  The word, meaningless yesterday,\nto-day expressed the greatest wish that the lips of man can utter--God\nbe with thee.  On the mother's lips the word was the commitment of her\nboy to the charge of the encompassing God.  Then, when the harvest was\nripening on the slopes and the drum sounded \"Come,\" and the young and\nthe strong went forth with a smile to the great harvesting of death, we\nlearned again the meaning of a phrase.  But we were yet to learn the\nmeaning of a word.\n\nIt is in the darkness that the stars appear and the immeasurable\nabysses of the infinite universe, and it was when the dusk sank into\nthe deep night that the word rose high in the firmament of life and\nburned red into our souls.  And that word was God.\n\nIt seemed so incredible to us that we should need that old word.  We\nwere so powerful and so rich.  Our faith was strong, but it was in the\nreeking tube and in the smoking shard, and in the number of our\nDreadnoughts.  Then all these things seemed to fail us.  A nightmare\nseemed to fall on us--a nightmare which lifted not night or day.  Our\nsoldiers were driven back, back, back.  They fought by day and marched\nby night, and we heard in the night watches the beating of their\nwearied feet, blood stained.\n\nWas there to be no end to that tramp, tramp of men yielding before\ndeath?  Was the Empire reared by the heroism of generations to crumble\nunder our feet?  The ghastly deeds of shame--were they to come to our\ndoors!  We looked at our children, and they could not understand the\nlight in our eyes.  These deeds of hell--they might occur even now\nunder the shadow of our hills.  It was then that the word began to\nblaze in the heavens.  And the word was--God.\n\n***\n\nWe had built a new church in our parish, that those who built pleasant\nhouses on the slopes, fleeing from the restless city that lay below,\nmight have room to worship.  But the desire to worship seemed to be\ndying of attrition.  And the old church where the quarriers and farm\nservants assembled and worshipped in an atmosphere that on a warm day\nbecame so thick that one could cut it with a knife--that old church\nwould have been quite big enough to hold all who came, for the instinct\nto pray seemed to be dying.  And many, because the new church was now\ntoo big, regretted the old.\n\nThen, suddenly, the new church was filled to the door.  Men and women\ndiscovered the road leading down to the hollow where the church stands\namid the graves of the generations.  With wistful faces they turned\ntowards it.  While the bell rang they stood in groups among the graves.\nAnd if you listened there was but one word--war, war, war.  Over and\nover again just that one word.  Until the bell was silent, and they\nturned into the now crowded church.\n\nAs I sat there and cast a glance around me, I felt a sudden amazement.\nThose who never before had come down the steep brae when the bell was\nringing were sitting here and there just as if they had been there\nevery Sunday when the beadle, with head erect, ushers the minister to\nthe pulpit and snips him in.  (Though the church is new, the minister\nis yet snipped in by the beadle--a lonely prisoner there on his perch,\nand it is an uncanny sound to hear the click of that snip shutting in\nthe solitary man.)\n\nIn the pew in front of me sat a burly man with a head like a dome.  He\nnever came to church.  When I met him he would stand for an hour in the\nlane among the hawthorns explaining his views.  Prayer was mere\nsuperstition.  Cosmic laws unchanging and unchangeable held the\nuniverse in their grasp.  To ask that one of these laws should be\naltered for a moment that a boon might be conferred on us was to ask\nthat the universe might be shattered.  Prayer was immoral, the asking\nfor what could not be granted, and what we knew could not be granted.\nIf he went to church it would be hypocrisy on his part.\n\nAnd thus it came that when the farm servants came up the Gallows road\non their way to church on a summer morning, they often heard the whirr\nof my friend's mowing machine as he mowed his lawn.  It was the way he\ntook of letting the parish know that culture could have no dealings\nwith effete superstitions.\n\n***\n\nAnd yet there he sat in front of me with a hymn-book which he picked up\nfrom the shelf at the door, where such books are piled for the use of\ncamp-followers.  The tune of the opening Psalm was Kilmarnock, and my\nfriend sang it in a way which showed that his mother had trained him\nwell.  Then I forgot him, but after a while something like a stifled\nsob in front of me brought him again to my consciousness.\n\nThe minister began to pray for the King's forces \"on the sea, on the\nland, and in the air.\"  My mind was playing round the words \"in the\nair,\" for they were an intrusion into the familiar order--an\ninnovation!  Every invention of man seemed doomed to become a weapon in\nthe hand of the devil.  But the prayer went on--for the sailors keeping\ntheir watches in the darkness of the night that God might watch over\nthem, that through their unfaltering courage our shores might be\ninviolate; for the soldiers now facing the enemy, grappling with death,\nthat God might succour them, covering their heads in the day of battle.\n\"Break Thou down the fierce power of our enemies,\" cried the minister\nsuddenly, \"that with full hearts we may praise Thee, the God of our\nfathers.\"\n\nA great hush fell on the crowded church.  The shut eyes saw the red\nbattlefields, with the lines swaying to and fro, while the shrapnel\nburst and the aeroplanes whirred in the smoke of the cannon.  The cries\nof men suddenly smitten smote on the inner ear.  It was then that the\ngreat thing happened.\n\nAll of a sudden the voice broke, recovered, and broke again, and the\nminister was swept away from the well-ordered, beautiful words he had\nprepared.  He began to speak of the stricken hearts at home, of fathers\nand mothers to whom their sons would never return, of women in empty\nhouses with their husbands laid in nameless graves, of little children\nwho would never learn to say \"Father\" ... It was then that my friend\nstifled a sob.  There was Something after all, Someone greater than\ncosmic forces, greater than law--with an eye to pity and an arm to\nsave.  There was God.\n\nAnd my friend's son was with the famous regiment that was swaying to\nand fro, grappling with destiny.  He was helpless--and there was only\nGod to appeal to.  There comes an hour in life when the heart realises\nthat instinct is mightier far than that logic which is, after all is\nsaid, only the last refuge of the feeble-minded.  There came like the\nsudden lifting of a curtain the vision of a whole nation--nay, of races\ngirdling the whole earth--to whom the same high experience has come.\nEverywhere the sanctuaries filled, the eyes turned upward, for instinct\nis mightier than reason.  The smoke of battle has revealed the face of\nGod.\n\n***\n\nWith us in the parish churches of Scotland the great thing is the\nsermon.  But to-day it is different; the great thing now is prayer.\nAnd the minister preached about prayer.  He set forth in clear and\nordered language, with a felicitous phrase now and then lighting up his\nsentences, that prayer was not a mere relic of fanatical superstition\nbut a mighty power.  He discussed with a wealth of learning whether God\nhad shut Himself in behind a prison-house of cosmic laws that made it\nimpossible for Him to answer prayer.  He reasoned the worshippers cold.\nBut there in that hour reason was bound to give way before intuition.\n\n\"If I am free,\" cried the preacher, \"to rush to the help of my child\nwhen he crieth in terror; and if, when the creatures of His hand cry to\nGod He is bound and cannot help or soothe, then He is poorer than I, so\ngreat a thing is freedom.\"  Prayer was not mere spiritual gymnastics.\nA God immured in cold laws, barred for ever from the play of love or\ntenderness, would be the one being in the universe most to be pitied.\nThe Creator did not sit deaf and dumb on the Throne of indifference\nanswering nothing, doing nothing.  History was the proof that\nRighteousness was throned at the core of the universe, for at the last\nright ever prevailed.\n\nThen the measured tones went on to speak of the difficulty of believing\nin the efficacy of prayer when Christians faced Christians in mortal\nconflict, and they both cried for victory--both the children of the One\nFather crying for victory over each other.  But the difficulty was of\nappearance only.  For the only prevailing prayer was prayer in the name\nof Christ.  \"Whatsoever ye shall ask _in My name_ that will I do.\"  To\nask in His name was to ask in His spirit--the spirit of humility,\nself-sacrifice, and love--the spirit of self-surrender to the _will_\nsupreme.  The question was which of the prayers for victory was prayer\nin the name of Christ....\n\nThis was clear, convincing, but cold.  Only at rare intervals does the\nminister of our parish give way to passion.  Suddenly there came a wave\nof emotion.  He flung his head back, and his eyes glowed.  His voice\nvibrated through the church.  \"When I think,\" he exclaimed, \"of the\nthings that have been done with the name of God on men's lips; of\natrocities such as the unspeakable Turk never perpetrated; of war waged\nnot upon to-day but upon the centuries of faith that reared great\ncathedrals now in flames; of women and children laid upon the reeking\naltars of human passion; and all this in the name of culture, the\nculture of the superman who deems himself superior to the Ten\nCommandments--then, I say, may God grant that the culture which beareth\nsuch fruit may perish from off the face of the earth.  Prayer for the\ntriumph of such a cause cannot be in Christ's name....\"\n\nBut the preacher never got any further.\n\nThis was what happened, and I am afraid some will not believe me, for a\nScotsman in church is a stoic, motionless and dumb, as he listens to\nthe Word.  But all the traditions of the parish were snapped in a\nsecond.  In the side gallery sat the General, sitting as he always does\nwith his back to the minister.  This he does that he may mark who are\nin church of his servants and tenants, and who absent.\n\nWhen I read of the nobles in France who went to the scaffold with a\njest in the days of the Terror, I always think of the General.  He is\nthat sort of man.  To-day, little by little, as the sermon went on, he\nturned round.  At last he was facing the pulpit.  His gleaming eyes\nwere fixed on the preacher.  His son was dead.  And when the words rang\nthrough the church, may God grant that such culture may perish ... the\nGeneral sprang to his feet.  \"Amen\" rang his voice through the church.\n\nThere was a sudden movement; as one man they all rose to their feet.\nHands were lifted up to heaven.  \"Amen,\" \"Amen,\" they cried--and then\nthere rose a cheer--muffled, but still a cheer.  In the pulpit the\nwords died on the preacher's lips.  He seemed as one suddenly stricken.\nHe gazed bewildered over the sea of faces.  They sank back into the\npews as though suddenly ashamed.\n\nThe last man to sit was my friend, who stood to the last with uplifted\nhand.  I think it was he who cried \"Hear, hear\"--the only sign he gave\nof his long absence from church.  The sermon was never finished.  The\npreacher in a low voice said, \"Let us pray.\"  And he humbled himself as\none who enters the valley of humiliation.  And then he gave out this\npsalm:--\n\n  Now Israel\n    May say, and that truly,\n  If that the Lord\n    Had not our cause maintained;\n    *    *    *    *    *\n  Then certainly\n    They had devoured us all.\n    *    *    *    *    *\n  But blessed be God,\n    Who doth us safely keep,\n  And hath not giv'n\n    Us for a living prey\n  Unto their teeth,\n    And bloody cruelty.\n    *    *    *    *    *\n\nThis psalm as we sang it that day was a paean of triumph.  The clouds\nsuddenly broke.  We heard our fathers singing it in their dark days.\nThe melody wedded to the words soared in exultant triumph, wailed like\nthe cry of the shingle swept by the surf; the sighing of the wind over\nthe heather was in it, and the hissing of the storm through the spray.\nIt was fierce as devouring death; it was gentle as a mother crooning\nover her child.  It put iron into the blood of our fathers as they sang\nit.\n\nIt was nerved by such a hymn that the sailors of Queen Elizabeth swept\nthe main, that the Puritans wrestled with principalities and powers,\nthat a handful of moors-men levelled despotism and tyranny to the\nground.  It swept through our blood like flame as we in our day of\nstress now sang it.  We, too, would pull down strongholds and turn to\nflight the armies of the alien.  In all ages the cause of freedom\ntriumphed, and that cause was ours.  We had entered on conflict with\nclean hands and, God helping us, we would wage it with clean hands.\nThe clouds suddenly broke and the light of victory irradiated our\nfaces.  There came overwhelmingly the realisation that there was a\npower behind us mightier far than sword or shell--even the Lord God\nOmnipotent.  And that was how we made the greatest of all\ndiscoveries--we found God.\n\n***\n\nYesterday morning I went early to the station, and there in the booking\noffice I found my friend talking to the ticket-collector.  The\nticket-collector is a philosopher, and he comes to church, because he\nloves the old psalm tunes.  But when one of our parishioners who goes\nnow and then to Keswick comes to the booking office, the\nticket-collector calls him in and reasons with him gently.\n\n\"Mahn, there's naething in it,\" he says; \"I can tell you for a fact\nthere's naething in it--all a whack of fables.\"  \"Some day you'll find\nout to your cost that there's something in it,\" flashes the man from\nKeswick.  \"If ye wad only reid philosophee,\" says the ticket-collector,\n\"ye would ken better.\"  But to-day my friend and the ticket-collector\nhad their heads close together, and I only heard the conclusion of\ntheir argument.  \"Mahn,\" said the ticket-collector, \"I am beginning to\nthink there may be something in it.\"\n\nAnd in the evening near the top of the brae I saw the General standing\nerect with his little cane in his hand.  He was talking to the\nshoemaker, the greatest Radical in the parish--one of a party with\nwhich the General has no dealings.  But they talked like brothers.  For\nthe shoemaker has a son fighting at the front, and his heart is sore\ntroubled within him.  And the General's son is dead.  And as I came up\nthe brae I saw the General putting his hand on the shoemaker's shoulder\nand turn away, walking slowly up the brae.  The old shoemaker saluted\nand came down the brae.  There was a tender look in the old man's eye\nas he greeted me.\n\nIn our parish we have truly made the greatest of all discoveries.  We\nhave found God, and, finding Him, we have found each other.  The man\nwho in his madness kindled the lurid flames of war little dreamed of\nthis fire which he kindled.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nThe Revival of Patriotism\n\n\n\nII\n\nThere has come to us in these days a revival of the spirit of\npatriotism.  That revival has come when it was sorely needed.  In days\nof unclouded prosperity other gods called forth our devotion and\nenthusiasm, but the God of our Fathers who made us a great nation and\nsent us to sow the seeds of righteousness beside all waters, bestowing\nupon us empire and might, was well-nigh forgotten.\n\nFor the new man \"words like Empire, Patriotism, Duty, Honour, Glory and\nGod\" had little or no meaning.  Causes for which the fathers died could\nnot evoke an added heart-beat from their sons.  They cared so little\nfor the mighty empire which they inherited that they contemplated the\nbloodshed of civil war--so hot was their zeal for party and so cold\ntheir love for the state.\n\nIt was necessary that discipline should come.  And that discipline\ncame, shaking the very foundations of our national life.  Its first\nfruit is that the smouldering fires of patriotism have broken forth\nonce more into bright flame; and that everywhere the hearts of the\npeople have been stirred by the call to arise and endure hardness that\nthe goodly heritage of empire perish not.  And preachers in a thousand\npulpits have sounded the trumpet-note of duty and of patriotism.\n\n***\n\nIt has been said that preachers should aim at making the churches\nsanctuaries of peace, within whose walls the echoes of the guns and the\ncries of the perishing should not penetrate.  Some have even said that\nChristianity, so far from fostering the spirit of patriotism, is in\nreality hostile to it.  \"Patriotism itself as a duty,\" says Lecky, \"has\nnever found any place in Christian ethics, and strong theological\nfeeling has usually been directly hostile to its growth.\"\n\nNo doubt there is something to be said for that view.  The attitude of\nthe early Christians towards the Roman Empire was not that of\npatriotism.  The clear shining of the heavenly Jerusalem so dazzled\ntheir eyes that this world, and the temporal empire occupying its\nstage, seemed but as a shadow.  Their devotion to the Unseen King left\nlittle room for loyalty to the earthly ruler.  In the glorious\nconsciousness of his citizenship in heaven, it was a small thing in the\nestimation of St. Paul that he was also a Roman citizen--but he did not\nforget it.  But when the earthly ruler persecuted, and burnt, and threw\nthe Christians to the lions, or slaughtered them to make a Roman\nholiday, then the poor victims cannot be blamed for not being patriots.\n\nAnd the Church in the mediaeval period, organised in the mighty\nhierarchy of Rome, did not tend to foster a national spirit of\npatriotism.  In those days when the Emperor Theodosius made penance in\nthe Cathedral of Milan and Ambrose declared that \"the Church is not in\nthe empire, but the Emperor in the Church\"; or in those later days when\nHildebrand promulgated the doctrine that the temporal power was subject\nto the spiritual power, and kings and emperors were only vassals of the\nChurch, and Henry V. was left three days standing barefooted in the\nsnow waiting humbly to see the Pope at Canossa--in those days certainly\nChristianity sought to foster not the sense of national loyalty, but\nthat of devotion towards that holy Catholic and universal Church whose\nvisible head was the Pope.  Christianity placed the Pope on the throne\nof the Caesars, and sought to evoke towards him a patriotism which\ntranscended nationality.  But the Reformation gave its death blow to\nHildebrandism, and the Pope no longer usurped the temporal Thrones of\nEurope.  And there came the throb of the awakening spirit of\nnationality.  The spirit of patriotism stirred once more the slumbering\nraces.\n\n***\n\nThe question whether patriotism is a fruit of Christianity must be\nanswered not by reference to what men did in the name of their\nreligion--for men are fallible--but by the precept and example of the\nFounder of Christianity.  He was a Jew, and of all races the Jew was\nthe most patriotic.  An exile by the rivers of Babylon, the Israelite\nrefused to forget Zion.  \"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right\nhand forget its cunning\"--that was the cry wherewith his unconquerable\nsoul faced an overwhelming destiny.  And in this respect Jesus Christ\nwas true to His race.  He was a patriot.  He worshipped in the\nsynagogues, and went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, because He loved the\nnational institutions of His country.  One note of true patriotism is\nanguish.  It is when love is great that the folly and sin of the person\nbeloved pierce the heart.\n\nThe patriotism of the Founder of Christianity expressed itself in a cry\nof agony which has reverberated through the centuries--\"O Jerusalem,\nJerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are\nsent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together,\neven as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!\nBehold, your house is left unto you desolate.\"  That cry is the measure\nof His patriotism.\n\nJudged, then, by the example of its Founder, Christianity must produce\nthe spirit of love and loyalty towards one's own country.  There was a\npatriotism before Christianity, but it was that of arrogance,\naggression, and self-glorification.  It was a patriotism which meted\nout only contempt to other races.  To the Jew the Greek was only a\nGentile dog; to the Greek the Jew was only a contemptible Barbarian.\n\nBut the patriotism which is animated by the Christian spirit is far\nother.  It is not the vaunting of pride nor the shouting of vulgar\nditties.  It seeks the glory of its own country, but the glory it seeks\nis the glory of the greater service rendered to humanity.  Conscious of\nits own defects, it does not condemn others.  With eyes cleansed from\nprejudice, it beholds the good in other races.  It seeks the first\nplace for its own nation because it acts the noblest, loves the best.\nAll the elements which make up the strong power of patriotism--love of\nfamily, love of neighbours, love of race, love of country--Christianity\nhas purified them all.  True patriotism is, then, a fruit of the\nChristian religion, a virtue which falls to be inculcated by the\nChurch.  If Christianity be the projection of the Christ-life into the\nmidst of every generation, then the life that reflects the beauty of\nChrist must be a life animated by the deepest love of one's country.\n\n***\n\nIt was Dean Stanley who rendered God thanks in Paisley Abbey for that\nScotsmen were \"citizens of an Empire so great, members of a Church so\nfree.\"  In the building up of the Empire Scotsmen have borne a great\nshare of toil and peril.  In other days the fires of patriotism burned\nbrightly.  The cry of our fathers was \"my country right or wrong.\"  But\nwe feel not quite so sure of our country being always in the right.\nThe passion of Christianity is an ethical passion.  Christian\npatriotism demands national righteousness.  To keep patriotism as an\nardent fire we must be convinced that our country stands for\nrighteousness.  And in this day of our ordeal we have this certainty to\nuphold us, that we are fighting for the right.\n\nIt was not in defiance of Christianity, but in its defence, that we\ndrew the sword.  For this war sprang from an unbridled lust of conquest\nto which a whole nation surrendered itself.  But before surrendering to\nthe passions of war the ideals of Christ were first forsaken by our\nenemy.  A new law was promulgated: \"Become hard, O my brethren, for we\nare emancipated and the world belongs to us.\"  New beatitudes were\ndeclared: \"Ye have heard how ... it was said, Blessed are the meek ...\nbut I say unto you, Blessed are the valiant, for they shall make the\nearth their throne ... Ye have read, Blessed are the peacemakers, but I\nsay unto you, Blessed are the war-makers, for they shall be called, if\nnot the children of Jehovah, the children of Odin, who is greater than\nJehovah.\"\n\nOut of this new gospel, the gospel of Odin, has sprung a war of\nextermination--exiled nations, devastated kingdoms, desolated colleges,\nruined cathedrals, and multitudes of women and children \"left nothing\nbut their eyes to weep with.\"  The name of God has been invoked over\nunspeakable barbarities--but the God thus invoked is not the Christian\nGod.  It is Odin in whose name these things are done.  What we are\nfighting for is for the Christian ideal against Odin--for the law of\ntruth and mercy against the reign of falsehood of word and bond, and of\nmerciless barbarity.  We have bared the breast to death that there may\nsit on the throne of the world's soul, not a ruthless tribal god, but\nthe God of Fatherhood and Love whom Jesus Christ revealed.  And in\nwaging that war we have ground to hope that the God of righteousness is\non our side.\n\nIf we have not had the name of God constantly on our lips it is not\nbecause we do not feel that we are fighting His battle, but because He\nis so great, the Lord of Heaven and Earth before whom we are but as\ndust, that we shrink from coupling His great name with ours.  \"Are you\nsure that God is on your side?\" Abraham Lincoln was asked in the dark\ndays of the American Civil War.  \"I have not thought about that,\" he\nreplied; \"but I am very anxious to know whether we are on God's side.\"\nAnd when the causes of this war are examined the assurance grows\nstronger and stronger that we are on God's side.  That is why the whole\nnation has been welded into the unity and consistency of polished\nsteel; why the fire of patriotism burns in our midst with an intenser\nheat than ever before.\n\n***\n\nIt is not merely from the righteousness of our cause in this war that\nour patriotism draws inspiration, but also from the ideals for which\nour Empire stands over all the world.  As we look out to-day on the\nEmpire which our fathers bequeathed us, taking it all in all, it stands\nfor righteousness as no other on earth.  It stands for the freedom of\nthe soul and the freedom of the body all over the world.\n\nThink of India, whose three hundred millions have been rescued from\ntyranny and ceaseless bloodshed, whose widows have been saved from the\nflames, whose starving have been fed in famine, and to whom the British\nrace brought security and peace.  \"When I think,\" said ex-President\nTaft, \"of what England has done in India ... how she found those many\nmillions torn by internecine strife, disrupted with constant wars,\nunable to continue agriculture or the arts of peace, with inferior\nroads, tyranny, and oppression; and when I think what the Government of\nGreat Britain is now doing for these alien races, the debt the world\nowes England ought to be acknowledged in no grudging manner.\"\n\nNo work ever done on earth for the elevation of humanity can compare\nwith that wrought in India by our race for the uplift of humanity; and\nit is the same wherever the standard of Britain waves.  In our own day\nwe have seen in Egypt a whole race rising out of the mud and clothed\nanew in the garments of self-respect.  Through Africa, wherever the\nsway of Britain extends, though yesterday the land reeked with blood,\nto-day mercy and kindness are healing the woes of men, and millions who\nknew not when death lurked for them in the bush now sleep in peace\nunder the palms.  It was the might of Britain that destroyed the slave\ntrade, and it is nothing except the might of Britain which prevents the\nslave raider resuming his nefarious traffic, and slavery under the\nguise of other names being imposed on the natives of Africa.  Wherever\nyou go, to the tropics or the Orient, there the great power for\nrighteousness is the British Empire.  It does not exploit inferior\nraces for gold; it is the trustee of the helpless native.\n\nWhen one thinks of these little islands floating in the western sea, of\nthe power that has gone forth from them to heal and bless, of the vast\nmultitudes to whom the King-Emperor is the symbol of justice and\nsecurity--his is a poor heart which cannot feel the thrill of gratitude\nfor citizenship in an Empire girdling the whole earth, whose\nfoundations are thus laid in righteousness.\n\n***\n\nPatriotism is not, however, a mere sentiment.  It was not sentiment\nwhich built up the Empire.  It was self-sacrifice--the spirit that\nfaced and endured death.  For us, too, patriotism must be more than\nsentiment; it must be action and the self-sacrifice which action\nrequires.\n\nWhat our fathers reared we must defend.  And the startling thing is\nthat there are still so many of our people who shrink from the burden\nwhich patriotism imposes.  Many thousands refuse to prepare themselves\nfor war; who are as the Romans who could not leave their baths to go\nand fight.\n\nVast multitudes congregate to gaze on football matches and gamble on\nthe issue.  The call of King and country falls on ears grown deaf.  We\nthank God for those who, hearing the call, have gone forth to fight,\ncounting everything but loss as compared to their country's gain.  But\nthese others, they cannot have paused to think.  They have not pictured\nthese fair lands, that have not heard the sound of war for seven\ngenerations, given over to that devouring enemy which has made Belgium\na wilderness.\n\nThey have not thought of Oxford and St. Andrews sharing the fate of\nLouvain; of London and Edinburgh become as Brussels; of the millions of\nGlasgow and Birmingham thrown on the mercies of the world, women and\nchildren fleeing, driven by nameless fears, with no place to flee to\nbut the mountain fastnesses of Wales and the Highlands of Scotland--the\nlast refuge of the miserable and the broken.  And yet these miseries\nwould surely befall were all the manhood of the race such as these.\n\nThink what it would mean were the walls of our defence broken down.\nSupposing that a shattering blow were struck at the heart of the Empire\nand our fleet crushed.  What would follow?  The crumbling of the Empire\nin a week!  It is not we alone, with our wives and children in these\nlittle islands, who would be swept to ruin, and on whom despair would\nfall.  From the far north-west to the long wash of the Australasian\nseas the shadow of devouring misery and death would fall on humanity.\nThe millions of India would be forthwith swept into the whirlpools of\nwar and mutiny.  Egypt would be thrown back into chaos.  Africa would\nbe left to Islam and the merciless rule of a nation which knows but how\nto smite.  Australia and New Zealand would be at the mercy of the\nyellow races.\n\nIt would not be a calamity for us in these islands alone.  It would be\na calamity whose withering blight would be cast over all the world.\nThe ideals of righteousness which this Empire upholds would be trampled\neverywhere under foot.  Covetousness and the lust of gold would hold\nthe field of the world.\n\nThere is only one thing to be done, one duty summoning us with an\nirresistible call--the duty that calls us to stand between our country\nand destruction.  Were the fate which has overtaken the Low Country to\novertake us; were this fair land to be made a wilderness, our women and\nchildren driven into the wilds, and the Empire wrested from our hands,\nthe men who failed in their duty would never be able to hold up their\nheads again.\n\nWhat a terrible load would lie on him who, beholding the ruin of his\nnative land, could say, \"This might not have happened if I, and others\nlike me, had done our duty.\"  That would be a hell from which there\nwould be no escape.  \"Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.\"\n\nThere can be no limit to the sacrifice which patriotism requires, so\ngreat a heritage is our native land.  It does not require of us as\nChristians to engage in wars of conquest for the gratification of pride\nand greed, but it does require of us even the sacrifice of our lives in\nthe defence of our homes or in the defence of our brother's home.\n\nThere are those who find themselves faced with difficulty.  They are\ncalled upon to fight with every force in their power, to slay,\nwithholding not their hand, while they hear the commandment, \"Thou\nshall not kill,\" ringing in their ears, and across the centuries the\nvoice of their Lord saying, \"Resist not evil; whosoever shall smite\nthee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.\"  They are\nbewildered.  Is not the attitude of non-resistance that which Jesus\nChrist enjoins?  If they fight with sword and shell are they not\nlowering themselves to the level of Nietzsche, Bernhardi and Buelow, and\nsubmitting to the arbitrament of the sword, which decides nothing\nexcept its own sharpness.  The call of patriotism summoning to resist\neven unto blood comes to them, and they are uncertain whether to obey.\n\nBut we must interpret the will of God, not by isolated sentences, but\nby the whole content of the divine revelation.  The commandment, \"Thou\nshalt not kill,\" does not mean that we are not to kill in any\ncircumstance whatever.  If the commandment is to be taken literally,\nthen no limit is to be set to it, and we must not kill any animal--not\neven the parasites of uncleanness.  There is, moreover, another law\nwhich runs: \"Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be\nshed, for in the image of God created He him.\"  So far from the mere\nphysical life being for ever sacred, the very altar of God Himself was\nto be no sanctuary for the murderer.  The man who owned a vicious ox\nand knew him to be vicious, and the ox killed a man, the owner thereof\nwas to be slain.  There are therefore circumstances in which the law,\n\"Thou shalt not kill,\" is abrogated, and its place is taken by the law,\n\"Thou shalt kill.\"\n\nThe law demanding the conservation of life rests on this foundation,\nnot that physical life itself is sacred, but that human life bears the\nimage of God.  There are things far more sacred than the physical\nlife--even those things which constitute the image of God stamped upon\nman.  There are things for which men in all ages have been content to\ndie--truth and loyalty to truth, the principles which are dearer than\nlife.  Those things which God ordained that men might through them grow\nmore and more into His image, for these things man must be ready to\ndie, and among these things is nationality.\n\nMen cannot develop in isolation.  What poor creatures men would be if\nthey were solitary units.  They would be as the beasts that perish.  It\nis through the heritage of nationality that the soul is enriched.  What\npoor stunted lives would ours be if we had not behind us the great and\nnoble deeds which built up our Empire, if the words of the high souls\nof many generations did not come thrilling to our hearts, if\nShakespeare and Wordsworth, Scott and Burns did not pour their\ntreasures into our laps.  The soul grows into the image of God through\nthe riches of nationality.  And whosoever warreth against nationality\nwarreth against the soul.  And the men who warreth against the soul\nmust be resisted to the death.\n\n***\n\nWe dare not appeal to Jesus Christ to cloak our shrinking from\nsacrifice.  No doubt His gentleness has been the wonder of history; but\nHis strength also summons us to be strong.  For Jesus Christ was not a\nquietist.  His religion is not a mere hospital for wounded souls.  His\nplace is among the strong of the earth.  He faced the evil of this\nearth unflinching in His resistance.  \"Woe unto you Scribes and\nPharisees, hypocrites\" is His denunciation of the oppressor; \"Go tell\nthat fox\" is His message to the tyrant.  When we think of Him making\nthe whips, and falling, with holy anger in His eyes, on those who\ndesecrated the courts of the temple, overturning the tables of the\nmoney changers, we know that the ideal of non-resistance is not His.\n\nNo doubt He laid it down as the law for the individual that he should\nturn the other cheek; but He did not lay it down as a law that a man\nshould turn another's cheek to the smiter.  What the individual can do,\nthe nation may not do.  It no doubt is the duty of the Ruler to turn\nhis own individual cheek to the insulter; it is not his duty to turn\nthe cheeks of the millions over whom he rules to those who would smite\nthem, committing their children to shame and their homes to devastation.\n\nNo doubt Jesus Christ enjoined the law of forgiveness, but it was not\nunconditional.  \"If he repent, forgive him,\" is His law, and until the\nwrongdoer repents and ceases from his evil, it would be immoral to\nforgive him.  Duty demands that every means be used to bring the\nevildoer to repentance; for only so is there a chance of his soul being\nsaved.  It is manifest that Christianity is not a religion of\nnon-resistance to evil, but the religion of Him who Himself resisted\nevil, and who resisted it even to the death.\n\nPatriotism, therefore, demands that we resist even to the shedding of\nblood.  When a hostile army would destroy a nation, as in Belgium, it\nwarreth against the soul, and it is as Christian to kill as it would be\nto shoot a tiger which leapeth out of the jungle to devour a man.  And\nthat Irish soldier whose face in the hospital in Paris was irradiated\nwith joy when he was told that the enemy was put to flight and Paris\nsaved, and who died with that gladness in his face, died in the spirit\nof Jesus Christ.\n\nTo say that the Founder of Christianity would not strike a blow for\nhome and kindred and truth is to forget that He struck a blow in\nJerusalem and wielded the thongs on the shoulders of those who polluted\nHis Father's house.  It is His will that we should strike a blow in\ndefence of the house of our soul--the sanctuary of nationality.\n\n***\n\nPatriotism must be vibrant with the spirit of religion if it is to be a\npower rousing the nation to heroism and self-sacrifice.  There never\nwas a nation so patriotic as the Jew.  No city ever gripped a nation's\nheart-strings as Jerusalem gripped the heart of the Jew.  No suffering,\nno defeat, no exile however far, could quench the fire of patriotism in\nthe heart.  \"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget\nher cunning.  Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I\nremember thee not, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy\"--such\nwas the cry of the Jew by the rivers of Babylon, yearning after Sion.\n\nHow was it that Jerusalem thus pulled at its children's heart-strings\nuntil they hurried back to rebuild?  It was because Jerusalem was the\nseat of the worship of God.  It was not the material stones or the\nhills round about that thus compelled the heart.  It was the light of\neternity shining over them.  It was because of the \"house of the Lord\nour God\" that the Jew counted no good worth his striving except the\ngood of Jerusalem.  It is only when God standeth at the heart of a\nnation that the heart cleaveth with all its fibres to its native land,\nfor then the whole of the man--not only the cravings of the body and\nthe heart and the mind, but also the deeper cravings of the soul--wind\nthemselves round the thought of the nation.\n\nThus we find that the days when the fires of patriotism burned\nbrightest were ever those in which God held sway over the nation.  It\nwas with God that the sailors of Queen Elizabeth swept the main, that\nthe soldiers of Wellington hurled the enemy far from the shores that\nface England--they were fighting not only for England but for England's\nGod.\n\nThe testimony of history is this, that patriotism cannot maintain its\npower if once it be divorced from religion.  Let God's face be veiled\nand lost and everything is lost.  \"Without God nothing, with God\neverything,\" says the ancient Celtic proverb, and all ages testify to\nits truth.  And the last proof of it is now before our eyes in the\ncondition of France.\n\nA hundred years ago France dominated Europe, erected thrones and\ndeposed kings at its will.  But little by little France lost the vision\nof God, until at last M. Viviani celebrated the final triumph over the\nChurch in 1907 by exclaiming: \"With one magnificent gesture we have\nextinguished the lights of heaven, which none shall rekindle.\"  France,\nin the words of its present Prime Minister, \"extinguished the lights of\nheaven,\" but in so doing it extinguished something else.  For to-day\nthat nation, that not so long ago dominated Europe, can only protect\nits capital city by the help of the two nations which have not yet\nextinguished the lights of heaven.\n\nWithout God patriotism becomes impotent, for God is the source of that\nmoral law, conformity to which means for a nation life, and defiance of\nwhich means the degeneration that leadeth to destruction.  With the\ndeparture from God came moral decay and racial suicide.  The hope of\nFrance is this, that through the descent of the nation into the valley\nof death the lights of heaven may be once more kindled; the hope of\nBritain, that these same lights may shine more brightly.\n\nThe spirit of patriotism will again vivify the nation when we seek\nafter God.  In years of prosperity we have forgotten our high calling.\nWe have pursued vanities and forgotten the living God.  When we again\nrealise our calling and our election as instruments in the hand of God\nfor the establishment of His Kingdom of Righteousness over all the\nearth, our hearts will be filled with ardour, and we shall face\nwhatever perils may assail us strong in the assurance that the\nOmnipotent God is in our midst and that nothing can resist His will.\n\n***\n\nAnd this true patriotism will mean the salvation of the nation.  For it\nwill strive to realise at home that righteousness which alone exalteth\na nation.  Its first task will be to raise the life at home nearer to\nGod, for we cannot raise the world to higher levels than that on which\nwe ourselves stand.  The vision of the new Jerusalem descending from\nGod out of heaven will again flame before our eyes.  \"And I, John, saw\nthe holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven,\nprepared as a bride for her husband.\"\n\nThat new Jerusalem is not a city remote in the inaccessible heights,\nbut a city which descends and permeates the material city now so\npolluted by sin, until it becomes the \"holy city,\" with the law of God\nobeyed and the will of God done in it.  Its citizens shall walk its\nstreets, pure in heart, seeing God everywhere.  \"And they shall bring\nthe glory and the honour of the nations into it.\"  There the nations\nshall be one in the streets of the city of God, all their contendings\nforgotten in the sense of their brotherhood, following the one ideal,\nobeying the one law, loving each other in the love of God.  They will\nstrive then as to who shall bring the greatest glory within the compass\nof its walls, and that will be the only striving.\n\nThat is the ideal, that we should become a nation so permeated by the\nspirit of God, so brought into obedience to His will, that our cities\nshall become holy cities, even as the new Jerusalem coming down from\nGod out of heaven.  When we shall set ourselves to realise that ideal\nonce more, then will the nation evoke the devotion of its citizens, for\ndevotion to the nation will also be devotion to God.\n\nIt was that ideal which fired the patriotism of the Jew.  The same\nideal alone will make our patriotism glow as a white flame.  When the\nvision of the Supreme Ruler whose throne is established in\nrighteousness once more blazes forth before the people, then once more\nthe throb of patriotism and the passion to make righteous law operative\nto the ends of the earth will stir the heart, and the manhood of the\nrace will once more thrill with the call summoning to service and to\nsacrifice.  The answering shout will everywhere arise--For God and the\nKing.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nThe Shadow of the Cross\n\n\n\nIII\n\nThe churchyard of our parish lies in a deep hollow, and a little river\nhalf encircles it.  In the midst of it stands the church beneath whose\nshadow the parish has garnered its dead for centuries.  There the\ngenerations have lain down to sleep, their hearts reconciled one to\nanother, and the beadle has drawn the coverlet of green over them.  As\nhe goes about his allotted task he pats a mound here and there gently\nwith the back of his spade--for roadman and belted earl are at one here.\n\nThe last time I wandered down to the hollow it seemed as if eternal\npeace brooded over the living and the dead.  The leaves, russet and\ngold, glowed in the sunlight.  At the stirring of a gentle breeze, like\nthe dropping of a sea-bird's feather, leaf after leaf fluttered\nsilently down on the graves.  The great bank of trees across the river\nglowed with rivulets of dull flames running hither and thither.  In its\nstony bed the river sang its endless song.  The immemorial yews,\nbeneath whose branches successive generations of children have played\nwith now and then a thrill of pleasing terror because of the\noverhanging graves, stood regardless of the sun.  The crows, sated with\nthe gleanings of harvest fields, fluttered in their rookeries with\nscarcely a caw.  It seemed as if no sound of discord or strife could\never break in that enchanted hollow.\n\n***\n\nAs I turned away to retrace my steps through the gate I came on a woman\nsitting on the mort-safe, a handkerchief moist with her tears in her\nhand.  She had come up from the quarries and she had visited her dead.\nAnd she came because yesterday she received word that on the\nbattlefield of Marne her son was killed.  He was her eldest.  The\nothers were not old enough yet to fight.  Her husband was killed in an\naccident, and she had reared her children, refusing all help from the\nparish.  The pride of the blood sustained her.  And now that her son\nwas dead she came hither, driven by an irresistible instinct to visit\nher husband's grave.  It was as if she wanted to tell him about John,\nand how he died a hero, trying to carry a wounded comrade through the\nhail of the shrapnel.\n\nShe was weary, and from her husband's grave she turned to the church.\nShe would go and sit in the corner under the gallery, where John used\nto sit.  He had sat with her there at his first Communion.  The\nmemories wrapped her round, and she would feel her son near her there.\nBut the door of the church was locked and barred.  With an added ache\nin her heart she turned away, and weariness compelled her to sit on the\niron mort-safe, which the parish provided in a former century to\nprotect their dead from sacrilegious hands.  \"But the church used to be\nopen,\" I said.  \"Aye,\" she replied tremulously, gathering up her\nhandkerchief into a round ball; \"but some did-na like it; the boots on\nthe week-days are na sae clean, and they dirtied the kirk.  That must\nbe why they lockit the door.\"  It was not that she complained.  Those\nwho locked the church were wise men, and no doubt they knew best.  So\nshe sat on the mort-safe.\n\n\"I have other sons, and when they are older they will go, too,\" she\nsaid.  \"I'll no' keep them back.  And if they die it'll be for God's\ngreat cause.\"  Her lips quivered as she spoke.  The moist ball in the\nright hand was clenched tight--there were no more tears to shed.\n\nAnd as I looked at the worn, lined face, the bent shoulders, the faded\nrusty black mantle with its fringe, and the sunken lips that quivered\nnow and then, there came a sudden realisation.  I saw no longer the one\ngrief-burdened figure sitting dejectedly on the mort-safe--I saw the\nunnumbered host of mothers throughout the world who have given their\nsons over to carnage, and who are as Rachel weeping for her children,\nrefusing to be comforted because they are not.  Millions of men locked\nin the death grapple means millions of mothers given tears to drink in\ngreat measure, bound in affliction and iron.\n\nThe song of the river went on ceaselessly, the russet-leaves fell\nsoftly, and the sun shone on a world wrapped in peace--all nature\nutterly regardless of the millions of Rachels that weep.  (Ten million\nhearts may break, but nature silences not one note of its joyousness.)\nAnd as she sat there, behind her, under the campanile, showed the\nchurch door, locked and barred.  Nature was heedless of her; the church\nshut its door upon her.  She seemed to me the Mater Dolorosa.\n\n***\n\nAs I went up the brae there came the memory of a school lesson long\nago.  Out of the subconscious it leaped as a diver might come up from\nthe depths of the sea with a gleaming coin in his hand.  Among the\ntemples of ancient Rome there was one temple always kept open in time\nof war.  There the Roman General clashed the shield and the spear,\ninvoking the god ere he went to the battle-line, and its door was shut\nnot day or night.  And I have no doubt but that the Eternal Ruler heard\nthat clashing of spear on shield, and marked that open door.  But over\nwide districts of Great Britain we have left these pagan habits far\nbehind us.  We shut the doors of our temples alike in war and in\npeace--excepting two hours on one day of the week, or in many cases one\nhour in the week.  Nor do I doubt but that the same Ruler marks these\ndoors now shut on the mothers of sorrow, and these sanctuaries locked\nand silent.\n\nThe glory was now gone from the day.  I could not forget how the iron\nmort-safe gave the rest that the Church refused.  The shadow lay heavy\nover the valley, and the mind tried to give the shadow a name.  But it\ncould not.  So up the long flight of stone steps I climbed, and turned\nalong a tree-shaded road.  There, where three roads meet, stands a\nlittle chapel within whose walls a small section of our parishioners\nworship.  I have passed it times out of mind without so much as\nglancing at it.  But to-day its open door arrested my eye, and I stood\nin the roadway and gazed.  And there came to me there a sudden sense of\nthankfulness for that there is one open door in our parish which\nwitnesses to the fact that the power and solace of religion are not\nshut in within the confines of only two hours of one day in the week.\n\nWhile I yet stood in the highway there came forth from the little\nchapel an honoured parishioner, who is passing the golden evening of a\nuseful life in researches regarding Calvin and the Pope.  Amazement\npossessed me, for he is a power in the parish church, whose door is\nlocked and barred.  We walked together towards the hills.  There was a\ntrace of apology in his explanation.  Since this dreadful cataclysm has\nburst and the boom of the guns has come drifting from the sea across\nthe high-perched city, he has felt the need of quiet meditation.  Thus\nhe has often on his walks slipped through the open door of the chapel\nthat stands by the roadside.\n\n\"And you have locked the door of the parish church,\" I exclaimed, \"and\nyou deny to the poor the privilege you yourself enjoy.\"  He stopped and\nfaced me in the roadway, blinking at me.  \"We never locked the Church\ndoor,\" he said.  \"It used to be open,\" I answered; \"I remember being\nglad to sit in it myself.\"  \"Oh!  I remember,\" he exclaimed, \"it was\nopen every day for a few years, but the authorities were never\nconsulted when it was thrown open--a most lawless proceeding!--and when\na suitable opportunity occurred the beadle locked it up.  Law and order\nhave to be vindicated.\"\n\n\"What you did then,\" I replied, \"was to allow the beadle to deprive the\npoor parishioners of a privilege which you and a few others enjoy\nelsewhere.\"  At that he started off walking along the road very\nquickly, but I kept step with him.  \"You see,\" said he, waving a\ndeprecatory hand, \"I am only one among many, and I was so absorbed in\nthese old Reformation controversies that I never gave it a thought, and\nit is only since the war began that I realised....\"  And as he spoke I\nfelt that my old friend, learned in many controversies, had experienced\na revolution.  The great tide had swept him past all controversies\nright up to the fountain head.  He had learned that man's high calling\nis not to dispute, but to pray.\n\nAs we walked under the darkling hills I told him of that shadow which\nhad so suddenly fallen upon me that day, and he at once gave it a name.\n\"It is the shadow of the Cross,\" said he.  And thereupon he began to\nexplain out of the wisdom and ripened experience of seventy years how\nacross nineteen centuries the shadow of the Cross lies still over all\nthe world.  One thinks so seldom of these things, and if occasionally\none hears them spoken of, familiarity with the words has deadened the\nhearer to their significance.  It was because I listened to him talking\nin the lane that his words gripped me.  They might have made no\nimpression if he were in a pulpit.\n\n***\n\nWe are accustomed to think of the greatest of all tragedies as an event\nconsummated in six hours.  It is, however, far from consummated, for it\nis an age-long tragedy.  Its roots lay in self-interest.  A degenerate\npriesthood in an obscure Syrian town saw nothing in the Greatest of\nTeachers but an unbalanced enthusiast, who struck at their ill-gotten\ngains, and whose triumph would make an end of them and their system.\nSo self-interest cried \"Crucify.\"  And though the Roman Governor saw\nthrough them and wanted to save Him, self-interest again was brought\ninto play, and when threatened with an awkward complaint to Rome, he\nsaid \"Crucify.\"  And ever since then self-interest on innumerable lips\nhas cried Crucify, Crucify.  Not only cried, but did it.\n\nFor this Teacher identified Himself with His followers, saying that He\nwas the Vine and they the branches.  It follows that whatever is done\nto the branch is done to the vine.  A branch cannot be cut and severed\nfrom the vine without the vine bleeding.  He declared it to be so.\n\"Whosoever receiveth you receiveth Me,\" and it follows that whosoever\ncrucifies you crucifies Me.  And the history of the centuries is the\nhistory of how the poor and unlearned and the toiling have been\npersecuted, harried by war, driven to death and crucified.\n\nGeneration after generation have raised the Cross anew, and in the\ncrucifying of the dumb multitudes have crucified Him.  Along with His\nown He fought with wild beasts, went through the flames, and suffered\nmany bloody and diverse persecutions, and He was with His people now.\nHe confronted to-day the mighty of the earth as He did that blinded\npriesthood of old, and He declared that there is only one way of\nconquering, and that by love; that gaining the whole world was a\nmiserable bargain if in exchange a man parted with truth and\nrighteousness and purity--those things that constitute the soul's very\nbreath.\n\nBut self-interest answered with cold disdain: \"What sickly\nsentimentalist is this?  Let Him be crucified.\"  He faced to-day the\nlust of conquest, and declared that the conquering of men's bodies was\nnothing; that the only way of attaining power was to conquer men's\nhearts and minds and wills, thus clasping them to us with hooks of\nsteel; that the will of God for His children was that they should love\ntheir enemies and not pour upon them the vials of wrath, trampling them\nunder foot; but the arrogance of man answered with the hoarse cry,\n\"Crucify.\"\n\nAnd that humanity which named His name was driven once more to the\nholocaust of war--ten millions of men consigned to the hell of reeking\ntrenches.  In the midst of the world the Cross stands as never before,\nbearing its awful woe.  In the seeing of the whole world the Eternal\nLove is crucified.  It was its shadow that fell on her whose lips\ntrembled as she sat on the mort-safe over against the locked and barred\ndoor of the House of God.\n\n***\n\nThe most wonderful thing in history is that from a peasant done\nshamefully to death in a remote corner of the Eastern world there\nshould flow through the ages such an inexplicable power.  And yet there\nmust be some explanation of it.  Why should a passion for righteousness\nbe evoked in the human heart by the fact that a Galilean was crucified\nby a petty Roman official?  There can be no explanation but this--that\nthat deed of shame revealed to men the hatefulness of the power which\nwrought so evil a deed.  That power was self-interest--selfishness.\n\nThe eyes of men turned to Jesus Christ, and they saw one holy,\nharmless, undefiled, separate from sin, whose journeying was the\njourneys of healing among the sons of men, whose words were words of\nblessedness, declaring that God loved and pardoned His children, and\nyet men reviled, scorned, scourged and at last crucified Him.  The\npower that moved men to this dread crime was sin, and thus the word sin\nbecame a word of horror.  (For the selfishness that crucified was only\none fruit of sin.)  Out of that realisation of the horror of sin there\nsprang an ethical passion--a passion which in the heart and in the\nworld waged ceaseless war on selfishness and all the devices of evil.\nThus humanity was lifted out of the mire.  They girded themselves to\nfight that dread and hateful power which crucified the Holy One.\n\nLike the wind blowing in from the sea that sweeps before it the foul\nmiasma that lies over the valleys, so that men look up and see the\nheavens and feel a new vigour moving in their blood, so a breath from\nthe living God came stirring the foul places of humanity, and the eyes,\nno longer blinded by the exhalations of evil passions, saw the ideal of\npurity arise before their eyes, and they turned to climb towards the\nclearer vision.  Through the revelation of purity in the face of Jesus\nChrist and the realisation of the awfulness of that power which crowned\nthat purity with thorns, there came to humanity the dawning of\ndeliverance from sin--a deliverance still going on to its fruition.\n\n***\n\nHistory is for ever repeating itself, and to-day the process of\nhumanity's deliverance from evil will gather momentum and advance a\nlong way towards the final triumph.  For just as men only realised the\nhatefulness of sin when they saw it laid upon Jesus Christ, so will it\nbe also to-day.  A generation that had lost the sense of sin beholds\nsin laid upon millions of men, working woe unspeakable, and, beholding,\nlearns anew what sin is and the hatefulness of it.  For these millions\nof men grappling with death, what are they but humanity's sin-bearers.\nOn them is laid the burden of the sins of this generation.  The\nselfishness, greed, ambition, lust--all the passions which sweep men to\nwars of conquest--have poured the vials of misery on their heads.  The\nson of the widow sitting on the mort-safe, who now lies in a nameless\ngrave, he bore it.  The bearing of it killed him.\n\nAnd as humanity will realise its horror, the word sin will once more\nburn red before men's eyes, and there will arise that passion for\nrighteousness which will lay sin low even as the dust.  There will ring\nround the world the compelling cry that this power of hell must not for\never hold humanity in its grip--that ruthless ambition, militarism,\ndespotism must be made to cease from the face of the earth.  Once more\nthe shadow of the Cross will mean salvation to men.\n\n***\n\nThere was another power also that stirred the world under the shadow of\nthe Cross, and that was the power of self-sacrifice.  There came to men\nan overwhelming realisation that at the heart of the universe was the\nSpirit of self-sacrifice, and that the Cross was but the expression of\nit.  They realised that the greatest thing a man can do with his life\nis to lay it down.  And as men realise to-day that the Cross still\nabides in the heart of God, so that in all their affliction He is\nafflicted, there comes to them the feeling that the one way of coming\nnearest to His heart is the way of self-sacrifice.\n\nUnder the shadow of the Cross now lifted up, a nation that sought\nlife's pleasures has suddenly thrilled with the glory of\nself-sacrifice.  What is it that sustains the men who go down to the\nearthly hell of ruthless war?  It is just this--the consciousness,\nnewly wakened, of how glorious a thing it is to die for King and\ncountry, for home and kindred.  They are content to be blotted out if\nonly the race will live, to descend to the abyss that the nation may be\nexalted.  Under the shadow of the Cross self-sacrifice has become once\nmore the only rock on which our feet can stand secure.  Men charge\nacross fields of death with the light of it in their eyes.  They are\nraised into the fellowship of the Cross.  And we are raised with them.\n\nIf I could only tell the bowed widow sitting there on the mort-safe the\nglorious fellowship with which her son is numbered, she would again\nlift up her face to the light.  He has died that we may live.  Greater\nlove hath no man than this--nor yet greater glory.  But she needs not\nto be told; she knows it already.  She knows it far better than you or\nI do, for she feels it.  In the deep places of life where words are\nmeaningless, her dumb heart feels the mystery of sin-bearing and the\nglory of self-sacrifice.\n\nBy a faculty deeper and truer far than reason, in the depths of the\nsoul where the Unseen Spirit moves revealing the things that are of\nlasting worth, she has learned in meekness and suffering that divine\nwisdom which is hid from the wise.  She knows that the road that goes\nby Calvary up to the Cross is the one road along which the feet can\ncome to God.  She knows that her son has walked along that road, and\nthat, because of his bearing the cross laid upon him, and his dying\nwhile bearing it, God has brought him into that joy which all the\ncross-bearers see shining beyond the darkness and the woe.  And because\nshe has thus entered into the secret place of the Most High, and has\nfelt the touch of God, she is ready to greet the day of still greater\nsacrifice.\n\n***\n\nIn the evening, when the curtains were drawn, I took up a magazine and\nread an article.  It was a bitter invective against Christianity and\nthe Church.  Nineteen centuries of the religion of the Cross--and this\nholocaust as the fruit.  It is amazing the blindness of the jaundiced\neye.  It would be as reasonable to blame the Founder of Christianity\nfor His own crucifixion as to blame Christianity for the fact that the\nwicked have continued to crucify Him.  These things are so not because,\nbut in spite, of Christianity.\n\nGrievous as war now is, yet it is not war as in the days before the\nCross was erected on Calvary.  When Ulysses asked Agamemnon for\nsanction to bury the body of Ajax, the King was greatly annoyed.  \"What\ndo you mean?\" he answered, \"do you feel pity for a dead enemy?\"  That\nwas the spirit of war in the old heathen world--the spirit which had no\nmercy on the living and no pity for the dead.  Slowly but surely the\nspirit of Christ fettered the spirit of hate and dethroned the spirit\nof revenge.  We now minister to the wounded and bury the dead enemy\nwith the pity and the honour we render to our own.\n\nWe can trace the evolution of peace through the centuries.  Wars\nbetween individuals have ceased.  A century and a half ago warring\nclans in Scotland dyed the heather red; to-day wars between tribes have\nceased.  There remains only war between nations, and already there are\ngreat nations between whom war is unthinkable.  If we in these days\nwage war with Germany, yet we in these days also celebrate the\nhundredth anniversary of unbroken peace with the United States of\nAmerica.  If we bewail the failure of Christianity in the former, let\nus be grateful for the triumph of Christianity in the latter.\n\nFormerly war was the normal condition; now to the moral consciousness\nof Christendom war is an outrage.  We only need to look beneath the\nsurface to realise that Galilee is conquering Corsica, and will conquer\nat the last.  Beneath the shadow of the Cross men will at last find\nhealing for their grievous wounds.\n\n***\n\nAnd as a symbol thereof the doors of the sanctuaries of peace will be\nflung wide open, and no burdened heart will find the House of God\nlocked and barred against groping hands.  One fruit of these grievous\ndays may well be that the Church will realise that it does not become\nher to occupy a lower plane than that heathen temple in ancient Rome,\nwhose door was shut not day or night while men were dying in battle.\n\nIn the coming days when the mothers of sorrow come to their dead, over\nwhose graves the falling leaves flutter as a benediction, they will not\nbe left sitting on the iron mort-safe.  The open door will invite them\ninto the sanctuary of peace, and they will croon the coronach of their\nwoe in the holy place.  For they are the priesthood of this generation,\noffering up the most precious sacrifice--and the door of the holy place\nmust be open to them.  And there, in the sanctuaries of peace, their\nsorrow will be transmuted into joy.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nThe Power of Prayer\n\n\n\nIV\n\nFor eight centuries the Church of St. Giles has been the centre of the\nreligious life of Scotland.  At all times of sorrow the nation has\nturned to it, and within its walls, consecrated by the prayers of so\nmany generations, the surcharged heart has voiced its woe in the\npresence of the Unseen.  But in all the years of the dim and fading\npast there never was a day like this in which we now stand.  Death has\ncome as a grim spectre, and has looked into our eyes.  The winds carry\nto our ears the moans of our perishing sons, dying gloriously for\nfreedom on the bloody fields of Flanders.  The great ships guard our\nshores, and we know that if that vigil failed, our cities and villages\nand fair countryside would become as Louvain and the Low Country.\nDeath itself would be welcome rather than that.\n\nIf there ever came to any nation a call to seek the refuge which eye\nhas not seen, that call soundeth persistently, compellingly in our\nears.  And that call soundeth not in vain.  To-day[1] the two great\nChurches of Scotland met as one in St. Giles, the days of their\nmisunderstanding ended, to pray for King and country--for all the\nthings which make life beautiful.  They have come through days of\nalienation and isolation, but to-day they are with one accord in one\nplace.  And in their hearts only one purpose--to seek the blessing of\nGod for their nation.\n\n\n[1] November 18, 1914.\n\n\n***\n\nAs one sat there, under the tattered flags on which many bloody fights\nfor freedom are emblazoned, and watched the stream of men flow into the\nchurch, what memories came crowding through the echoing corridors of\ntime.\n\nFour hundred years ago there came to Edinburgh the news of Flodden, and\nout of the closes the women rushed to St. Giles, until round all the\naltars there was no room to kneel because of the great crowd wailing\nfor their dead.  The moaning of their lamentation was as the sound of\nthe surf wailing on the shore, and their sobbing as the cry of the\ngrinding pebbles in the backwash of the tide.  But the city fathers\ncould stand upright even in that most cruel day when the cloud of\ndestruction was creeping over the Pentlands; and there is the note of\nthe heroic in that resolution which called all the able-bodied men to\nrally to the defence of the capital, and exhorted \"the good women to\npass to the kyrk, and pray whane tyme requires for our Soveraine Lord\nand his Army, and neichbouris being thereat.\"\n\nThat proclamation stirs the blood!  They are dust, these fathers of\nours, but their spirit is all alive, throbbing in the heart of\nus--their far-away children.  Never did a race meet its Sedan in a\nsublimer spirit than that.  The strong, at toll of bell and tuck of\ndrum, manned the ramparts, and the women filled St. Giles' and sent\nheavenward their cries.  The bodies of such a race may for a brief\nseason be brought to subjection, but their souls are invincible--and it\nis the soul that always conquers.\n\nAnd here to-day it is the same.  From every part of Scotland men have\ncome, and they passed \"to the kirk to pray for our Sovereign Lord and\nhis Army.\"  True, there has been no Flodden and no Sedan; but it is by\nthe good hand of God upon us that the enemy was frustrated in his\neagerness for another Sedan.  And it is in part the prayer of\nthanksgiving that is laid to-day upon His altar, and in part the\npetition that His mercies may be continued to the nation in the cruel\ndays to come.\n\n***\n\nWhat a sanctuary for a nation's prayers, this church, where Kings have\nprayed and gone forth to die in battle; where Queens have wept as the\nvoice of judgment, grim and stern, untouched by tenderness or love,\nsounded in the ear; where three thousand people dissolved in tears as\nthe good Regent, foully slain, was borne to his grave.  Over it passed\nwave after wave of fanaticism and barbarism; and at last it fell into\nthe hands of the restorers--more ruthless far than Goths or Vandals!\nBut, through it all, the house of God survived; and, apparelled once\nmore in some of its pristine glory, it opens its doors to a nation that\nonce more seek after its God.\n\nAnd above us, as we sit there, hang the colours of our Scottish\nregiments stirring our patriotism, assuring us that the men who guarded\nthese flags on many bloody fields were guarded by God, and that we are\nstill in His keeping.\n\nWhat a place this is in which to set vibrating that note of patriotism\nwhich now quivers from Maiden Kirk to John o' Groat's.  These colours\nthere--they are the most eloquent things on earth, for they pertain to\nthe realm of symbols.  Words are poor compared to tears, and that is\nbecause tears belong to the world of symbols.  That tattered banner\nthere belonged to the Gordon Highlanders, and was carried through the\nPeninsula and the Crimea.  Woven in faded letters you can read on it\nstill Corunna, Almarez, Pyrenees, Waterloo.  Ah! these flags tell of a\ndevotion stronger than death, rekindle the memories of the day when\nstern silence fell on the ranks, as the Highland Brigade breasted the\nslopes of the Alma until Sir Colin Campbell lifted his hat and they\nrushed on the foe with the slogan of victory; and that other day when\n\"the thin red line tipped with steel\" rolled back the surge of the\nCossacks; aye, and of a hundred such days when men went down joyously\nto death that the race might be free and live.\n\nWaterloo!--it is on many flags.  And we remember how the Man of Destiny\nhimself, as he saw his ranks yield before the onslaught of the\nHighlanders, did not restrain his admiration for his enemies, but\nexclaimed with the true soldier's generosity, \"Les braves\nEcossais\"--\"Brave, brave Scotsmen\" (what a contrast to \"French's\ncontemptible little Army\").  The hands that carried, the hearts that\nthrilled at the waving of these flags, their fame will never perish.\n\n  \"On the slopes of Quatre Bras\n  The Frenchmen saw them stand unbroken.\n      *    *    *    *    *\n  On the day of Waterloo\n  The pibroch blew where fire was hottest.\n      *    *    *    *    *\n  When the Alma heights were stormed\n  Foremost went the Highland bonnets.\n      *    *    *    *    *\n  As it was in days of yore,\n  So the story shall be ever.\n    *    *    *    *    *\n  Think then of the name ye bear,\n  Ye that wear the Highland tartan.\n    *    *    *    *    *\n  Zealous of its old renown,\n  Hand it down without a blemish.\"\n\nAs the eye looks along the nave up into the choir and sees the gleam of\nred, colours after colours, there comes the memory of words--\"We have\nheard with our ears, O God, and our fathers have told us what work Thou\ndidst in their days in the times of old....  Through Thee will we push\ndown our enemies....\"  The unseen God who has led His people through so\nmany and great dangers will not forsake them now.\n\n***\n\nThere is a tablet where formerly stood the door that led to Haddo's\nHole, and there hangs on a pillar the flag that pertains of truth to\nthe realm of romance.  Men with their hearts hot with indignation\nburied it in Pretoria in 1880, and put above it the inscription\n\"Resurgam.\"  Afterwards the Colonel recovered it and brought it home.\nWhen war broke out again his widow restored it to the regiment--the\nRoyal Scots Fusiliers.  In 1881 that regiment was the last to leave the\nTransvaal; in 1900 it was the first to enter the Transvaal--as the\ninscription narrates.  And by the direction of Lord Roberts, when\nPretoria was occupied, this identical flag was run up amid the shouts\nof the victors.  Now it rests here.  \"Resurgam\"--it is the unquenchable\nspirit of an invincible nation.\n\nIf only the manhood of Scotland could be gathered into this Church,\nunder these flags, and the story they tell were put into words,\npulsating with passion--then the ranks of our Army would be filled up\nin a week.  What a lack of imagination we reveal!  We teach dates,\nthinking we are teaching history.  The only way to teach history is by\nflags, and all they stand for.  When Douglas threw the heart of Bruce\namong his enemies he cried, \"Lead thou on as thou wast wont and Douglas\nwill follow thee or die.\"  In the spirit of Douglas our fathers\nfollowed the flags, and we will follow in the steps of our fathers and\nface death with undaunted hearts as they were wont.  There comes to us\nthe shouting of their triumph, and we cry: \"Lead on; we will follow or\ndie.\"  This grey church, St. Giles', is the temple of patriotism.\nTherefore our feet turn towards it in dark days, and we say, \"Our feet\nshall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem!\"\n\n***\n\nHow the old words are born for us anew as we thus meet as one \"to\nentreat God for the broken peace of Christendom.\"  We sing \"God is our\nrefuge and our strength,\" but there is a note of intensity in the\nsinging now such as we never knew before.  Men close their eyes, and\nstand, the world blotted out, before their God, realising that He and\nHe alone is the one refuge, the only giver of victory.  We hear the old\nstory read of Moses holding up his hands and Israel prevailing on the\nplains below; but it is not Israel we see travailing in battle, but our\nown brothers in the rain-sodden trenches, and we feel the uprising of\nthe ceaseless intercession of a nation that has anew found its God.  It\nis not the right hand that assureth victories; it is that spirit of\nenthusiasm, that passion for righteousness which filleth the heart, and\nthat spirit is as the wind blowing where it listeth--and it cometh out\nof the Unseen at the call of our prayers.\n\nWhen in other days we prayed for the King it was in the spirit of cold\nformalism.  But now a lump rises in the throat as we invoke the\nblessing and protection of Heaven for the solitary man who is the\nsymbol of the unity of our Empire, and who watcheth over its destinies\nday and night, and who has sent his son to face death with the meanest\nof his subjects.  We hear the glorious words: \"If God be for us, who\ncan be against us?\" and they are written for ourselves.  We, who fight\nfor the truth of word and for the freedom and deliverance of the\noppressed, can feel that God is for us, and that all is well.\n\nAnd when we pray, our voices rising as one, \"Thy kingdom come,\" we can\nsee that kingdom coming through blood and tears, cleansing the foul\nplaces and establishing peace on everlasting foundations.  It is a new\nday that has dawned for us--a day in which we stand united as the\nsubjects of the one King, as the sons of the one God--and the things\nthat separated us one from another are swept away.  What the conferring\nof the wise found so difficult to achieve, the roaring of the guns has\naccomplished.  God teacheth his people by sending them through the\npurifying fires.\n\n***\n\nIn these prayers in St. Giles' there is a directness which shows that\nwe are there for a definite purpose.  We no longer use qualifying\nwords.  We cry for victory.  There is a bloodless form of prayer which\nsome use and which sends the worshipper away with an aching heart.  It\nis the prayer that never prays directly for victory.  \"Thy will be\ndone,\" it prays, in the spirit of submission.  But prayer is not\nsubmission; it is a wrestling.  In other days our fathers wrestled in\nprayer and prevailed.  \"I spent the night in prayer,\" wrote Oliver\nCromwell, in critical days; \"I prayed God that He would guide us\nagainst the enemy.  We were simple fellows of the country, and they\nwere men of blood and fashion, but the Lord delivered them into our\nhands.  By His grace we killed five thousand.  If He continues to show\nmercy we will kill some more to-morrow.\"  Such were the Ironsides, \"men\nof a spirit,\" who broke the charges of the Cavaliers, as the cliff\ndashes back in white spray the rush of the billows.\n\nThis was also the language of the Covenanters of old; and though we no\nlonger use such plainness of speech, we mean the same.  There is a\nplace for tenderness; but when men are ground to powder by the judgment\nof God, tenderness is not manifest then.  When the heart whispers\n\"Spare\" and justice says \"Smite,\" men must obey the voice of justice,\nstifling the voice of the heart.\n\nOur prayers are now for justice.  Better far a righteous war than an\nimmoral peace.  We have been compelled to unsheath the sword, and we\npray that no heart may falter, and no cry arise for the sheathing of\nthe sword, until justice be done.  Thus our prayers have become a cry\nfor victory.\n\n***\n\nAs one sits in an ancient church such as this, there comes knocking at\nthe heart many questions regarding that service of prayer which within\nits walls has linked the generations together.  Can prayer really\nprevail with God?  Can it alter the will of the Unchangeable?  If there\nbe no power in it, why should men go on praying?\n\nWe must distinguish between the will of God which is unchangeable, and\nHis lower will which is his purpose towards us and His attitude to us.\nThe former is unalterable; the latter varies according to the varying\nof our hearts.  With that lower will we are called to wrestle.  A man\nis born in poverty and obscurity, and the will of God seems to be that\nhe should continue poor and obscure.  But he wrestles with that lower\nwill until he prevails.  He ultimately moves out into the great tide of\nlife and becomes a power.  The will of God towards that man is changed.\n\nIt is the same with a nation.  Here is a nation sinking on its lees\nwith its ideals dimmed and the shrines of its fathers' God forsaken and\ndesolate.  It has fashioned to itself other gods, and the multitudes\ncrowd the temples of the goddess of pleasure.  The very race itself is\nsacrificed on the altar of gross pleasure, and the laughter of little\nchildren is being little by little silenced.  The fires of patriotism\nare dying low, and the love of country gives place to the love of\nparty.  There are mean victories rejoiced over, but they are the\nvictories of the cynic and the sensualist.  There is the sound of\nshouting, but it is the shouting over the triumph of one self-seeking\npolitician over another self-seeking partisan.  Saintliness, which\nother generations held in awe and reverence, provokes now a pitying\nsmile.  Mammon alone is held in high honour and sitteth in the high\nplaces.  What is the will of God towards that nation?  It is this--ruin\nand utter destruction.  Over every nation that thus succumbed to the\ngross and sensual, history shows the sword of God unsheathed, and at\nlast the devouring flames of judgment.\n\nBut to such a nation there comes as if out of the silent heaven a call\nas a trumpet sound, summoning it to the judgment-seat of God.  Over the\nsea comes the roar of guns.  The foundations which the fathers laid in\nrighteousness, through long neglect and decay are crumbling.  An empire\nencircling the globe is tottering to destruction.  The hay and the\nstubble cannot come scathless through the flames.  The writing is on\nthe wall, and as the eyes see the hand that writes, trembling seizeth\nupon men.  And then there cometh a sudden change.  The nation in a day\nrises out of the morass of its self-indulgence.  It sets itself to lay\nhold again upon the eternal law of righteousness.  They seek once more\nthe shrines of their God.  They set themselves to fast and to pray.\n\"Who can tell,\" they whisper one to another, \"if God will turn and\nrepent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?\"\n\nThe fields of their inglorious shouting over their games are deserted\nfor the fields of hardness and grim preparation.  Once more they gird\nthemselves for conflict, as their fathers so often girded, that truth\nand righteousness may prevail over all the earth.  Sharply the choice\nis presented to them between Christ or Odin, and though choosing the\nChrist means agony and woe they make their choice unhesitatingly.  A\nnew light shines in their eyes, and the work of their hands and the\ndevisings of their hearts become the spirit of prayer.  Yesterday the\nwill of God towards that nation, sinking on its lees, was destruction;\nto-day towards that same nation, thus risen out of the foul miasma that\nwas stifling its soul, the will of God is salvation.\n\nBecause prayer is the greatest power in the world; because it can alter\nthe will of God towards us, because it can move the hand of the\nomnipotent God and is thus endued with His omnipotence, our prayers as\nwe gather in the sanctuaries are no longer the submission of quietism,\nbut a wrestling with God--the crying of a soul as in agony for victory\nbased on the triumph of righteousness.  It was such a cry that rose on\nthat day in St. Giles.\n\n***\n\nAs the second paraphrase was being sung there came the memory of words\nspoken in the pulpit of the great Cathedral by Dr. Cameron Lees.  It\nwas at evening service, when the shadows were gathering.  \"I have often\nsat in this pulpit,\" said Dr. Lees, \"on the edge of the evening, and\nwatched the shadows enveloping the Cathedral.  They invaded the side\nchapels first, and then the nave, creeping onwards through the\ntransepts, until the chancel was reached.  After that they gathered in\nstrength, until the whole building was in darkness, with the exception\nof the white figure of Christ in the great east window.  I pray that\nthe last vision vouchsafed me on earth may be just that--the Saviour of\nmen.  I can then close my eyes in the knowledge that He will lead me\nthrough the dark valley that leadeth to the eternal home.\"\n\nIt has been like that with the whole nation.  Around our shores the\ndarkness gathered, until all the horizon was black with threatening\nclouds.  Then we lifted up our eyes and saw....  He will bring\ndeliverance and peace.  As we moved along the crowded aisles towards\nthe door the white figure of Christ glowed in the great east window,\nand we felt that He will bless His people at last with peace--the peace\nnot of death, but of life.\n\n  \"Down the dark future, through long generations,\n    The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease,\n  And, like a bell, with solemn sweet vibrations,\n    I hear once more the voice of Christ say Peace.\n  Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals\n    The clash of war's great organ shakes the skies;\n  But beautiful as songs of the immortals,\n    The holy melodies of love arise.\"\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nThe Victory\n\n\n\nV\n\nThe blinds were all drawn in the red-roofed house that stands at the\ncross-roads.  It was not empty, for the smoke arose from its chimneys\nin the clear morning air.  In other days the music of song and laughter\noften floated from its open windows, but now it was stricken dumb.\nFrom it two sons had gone to take their place in the line of soul and\nfire that girdles these islands, warding them from destruction.\n\nIn a moment the veiled windows flashed their meaning.  In the long\nlists of the dead I found the name I looked for.  I had schooled myself\nto look at these lists, thinking of them in the mass as force or power;\nbut that one name insisted on its individuality.  They were all\nindividual lives, each throbbing with intensest self-realisation, each\nwith his love and hope and fear.  There was none among them so poor but\nsome heart clung to them.  They may die, no longer in units, but in\nbroad swathes, mown down by machine guns, but they are individual\nhearts still.  In masses the sea swallows them up, trenches are filled\nwith them, but however much we try we cannot narcotise our hearts by\nsophistries.  Some day a name stands out alone--and we realise.\n\nAll over the land, in every parish, blinds are being drawn in houses\nwhere music and laughter are silenced.  There comes the surge of a wild\nrevolt.  It is not these individual hearts alone that lie stricken, it\nis the joy of the centuries yet to be.  In nameless graves lie the\ndream-children who will never now be born.  This criminal sealing up of\nthe very fountain of life--how can we bear it?\n\nAnd yet we open not our mouths in protest.  Is it because we are losing\nour sensitiveness--becoming brutalised?  It might be that.  For nothing\ncoarsens the mind like that tide of hatred and passion which war sends\nsweeping through the hearts of men.  And yet it is not that.  For when\nthey told the mother, breaking it gently as love alone can do, that her\nson was dead, she bowed her head in silence, yielding herself to the\nsolace of tears; but in a little while she said brokenly: \"It is good\nto die so: I would not have my son shelter himself behind other\nmothers' sons.\"\n\nNo, it is not because we are already coarsened that the heart can bear.\nIt is rather because we have realised with the passing away of the old\nworld of the last long summer days (it seems already centuries remote)\nthat there are some things so great that they can transfigure even\ndeath.  When the loyalty to the highest can only be fulfilled through\ndeath, we acquiesce in the sacrifice.  In our parish we have not been\ncoarsened--we have been quickened.\n\n***\n\nIt seems as if it were in another era that my friend at the top of the\nGallows' Road proved to me convincingly that death alone was king.\nWith a keen irony he depicted this little globule of a world, a\nthird-rate satellite of a fifth-rate star, floating in the abysses, in\nrelation to the universe but as a mere grain of sand amid all the sand\non the world's shores; and on that puny speck of a world he pictured\nthe ephemeral generations, mere flashes of troubled consciousness--and\nthen darkness.\n\nIt was reasonable when they thought this world the centre of all\nthings, with the sun and moon and stars circling it round as humble\nministrants, that they should believe in some high destiny for\nthemselves.  But now that they know how miserably and unspeakably\ninsignificant the world is, it was but vanity and arrogance for any man\nto think of himself as of any value whatever in the scheme of things.\nHis life was as the flashing of a midge's wings.  His end was as a\ncandle blown out in the night.\n\n***\n\nOne evening, when the air was vibrant with the melody of birds and\nladen with the perfume of the roses that filled the garden, he\ndeveloped another train of thought.  He pictured the glut of life there\nwould be if all the generations on this and millions unnumbered of\nworlds all survived.  With vivid gestures he passed them all before the\neye--low-browed savages, cannibals, fetish-worshippers, Calvinists, and\nat last the aesthetics of our day.  \"There would be no room for them--no\nuse for them at all--it would be a glut which baffles all imagination.\"\nThere was no way out but that the individual perished to prevent the\nuniverse from being crowded out.\n\nAnd the cobbler at the top of the brae described to me how his dog was\nrun over in the street.  \"He gaed a bark--and he never gaed anither.\nIt'll be like that at the end with us a'.  We'll gae out like my dawg.\"\nIt was a queer result of the glimpse which came to us of an illimitable\nuniverse--this cheapening of ourselves.  There was nothing at last but\nthe charnel-house of the crowded kirkyard, where the generations lay\nlayer upon layer, and where the opening of a grave reminded the old\nclerk, as he quaintly declared, of nothing but a dentist's shop.  The\nteeth survived for unrecorded centuries--but that was all.\n\nIt is strange the tricks the memory plays.  For, sitting here, glancing\nover the crowded sheet filled with the names of the dead, I remembered\nthese things.  And there came the sense of the madness of the universe\nand the intolerableness of life, if the end of all heroism was but\nthat--nothingness and corruption.  A handful of bones thrown up by the\nbeadle to make room for the dead of to-day--is that all that is left of\nthose who handed down the lamp of life to us?  Is that all that will be\nleft of us too at the last?\n\nIn the ordinary day my friend at the top of the Gallows' Road and the\ncobbler on the breast of the brae would have said that that was the\nend.  But the extraordinary day has come upon us unawares, and in the\nextraordinary day this little, burdened, pain-racked life becomes\nsuddenly unendurable unless it lie in the bosom of eternity.  If there\nbe no rainbow circling the heavens above the carnage heaps of the\nstricken battlefields, if the farewell of death be a farewell for ever,\nhow can the heart endure?\n\n***\n\nIt certainly looks to the seeing of the eye as if destruction were the\nend.  With the perishing of the body everything seemeth to perish: all\nlove, all thought, all tenderness vanish for ever.  But the eyes and\nthe ears are for ever playing us false; and here, too, they deceive us.\nFor the world is so ordered that nothing ever perishes.  In nature\nthere is no destruction.  A handful of ashes in a grate look like\nannihilation, but what it represents is really resurrection.  The\nimprisoned sunrays of uncounted aeons, stored up in the lumps of coal,\nhave been released from the prison-house, and gone forth again as heat\nand as light.  The physical body may seem to perish; what really\nhappens is that its constituent elements are re-grouped.\n\nBut in the realm of beauty, is there not destruction possible there?\nThrough long centuries faith and devotion rear a great cathedral, every\nline and curve of which is instinct with beauty.  Every statue breathes\nthe love and hope and fears of men.  In vaulted aisles and \"windows\nrichly dight,\" it symbolises the Unseen--the beauty which the heart\nyearns for.  On that beauty materialised, ruthless Vandalism rains shot\nand shell; the devouring flames consume it.  Its gaunt walls are now a\nmonument of barbarism.  Has nothing perished there?  Is it not mockery\nto speak of the conservation of the constituent elements there?  For\nloveliness has vanished there from off the face of the earth, and\nbeauty which no hand of man can ever restore has been annihilated.\n\nBut it has not.  For beauty is not in things, but in souls.  The beauty\nlay in the soul of the architects that planned, in the hearts of the\nbuilders that carved the stones until they seemed to breathe--and\nshells cannot destroy that.  The loveliness was shrined in the souls of\nthe generations that gazed, and, gazing, were raised into the\nfellowship of the hearts that planned and builded.  Thus did the spirit\nof beauty grow in the hearts of men--and shells cannot destroy that.\n\nAnd let these charred walls be left to the alchemy of time, and nature\nwill clothe them in richer loveliness.  Lichen and moss will grow on\nthem, and the moonlight will etherialise them.  One symbol of beauty\nmay seem to perish; but the spirit of beauty itself, dwelling in the\nhearts of men and abiding at the core of the universe, is\nindestructible.  The thing which we deem perishable, no power on earth\ncan kill.\n\n***\n\nThere is on earth something infinitely more precious than the material\nsubstance, indestructible though it be.  The most beautiful thing the\nworld can show is a good man.  Through the years forces play on him,\nand each force adds its element of beauty.  He has struggled with\nadversity, and in the conflict he has learned patience, tolerance and a\nwide charity.  Waves of affliction have passed over him, and he has\nlearned tenderness and sympathy with human suffering, so that bruised\nhearts come and lie down in his shadow, and there find healing.  With\neyes cleansed from self, he looks out on the comedy and tragedy of\nlife, and he sees the hidden springs.  The healing power that goes\nforth from him grows with the years.  At last he dies.\n\nDoes nature conserve the shell while it consigns the jewel in the\nshell--the man himself, with all his love and tender thought and\nunselfish care--to annihilation?  That is unthinkable.  To know one\ngood man is to know that the human personality is imperishable.  It was\nthrough that knowledge that the soul of man triumphed over the terror\nof death.\n\nThere walked in Galilee a Teacher who made a handful of peasants feel\nthe possibilities of moral loveliness latent in the human heart, and\nwhen He died they could not associate the thought of death with Him.\n\"It was not possible that He should be holden of it,\" they said one to\nanother.  Everything was possible but that He could become as a clod in\nthe valley of corruption.  Of course even that was possible if the\nworld were a chaos given over for sport to malicious demons.\n\nIt would be possible, then, that the self-sacrificing love stronger\nthan death, and the spirit of unsullied purity should become mere dust.\nBut the possibility of the world being ruled by any except a Righteous\nPower did not occur to the untutored Galileans.  Therefore they faced\ndeath with level eyes, refusing to believe in its triumph, saying to\ntheir hearts, \"It is not possible.\"\n\nAnd that is the rock on which to plant our feet in the day when the\nworld is given over to the wild welter of bloodshed.  In every parish\nover all the land blinds are pulled down, and hearts, wrapped round in\nthe dimness, sit still in the shadow of a dumb affliction.  They will\nnever again hear the familiar footsteps coming to the door; they will\nhear it in their dreams--only to awake and find silence.  Never again\nwill the first question be when the door is opened, as it was through\nall the days since the golden days of childhood, \"Where is mother?\"\nBut the great things which made life noble have not been destroyed by\nbullet or shell.  No man is worthy of freedom except the man who is\nprepared to die for it.  The heart, which in death proved itself\ndeserving of freedom, has entered into the fulness of freedom.  The\nheavens are again aglow when we realise that.\n\n***\n\nIt was the Professor who made me sure of those things.  I met him at\nthe \"Priory,\" where my old friend carries on his controversy with the\nPope--or used to.  In that house of his one meets all sorts of\nvisionaries from the ends of the earth.  A Waldensian pastor full of\nthe dream of a rejuvenated Italy; a leader of French Protestants, who\nhas forgotten his controversy with the Pope in the great upheaval\nthrough which his race are finding their soul once more; a dreamer from\nacross the Atlantic, his eyes a-gleam with the vision of a reunited\nChristendom--these are the men you will find drinking tea at the Priory\non any day in our parish.\n\nThe original bond between them was their controversy with Rome, but\nthey have now forgotten all about that.  There, in a happy hour, I met\nthe Professor.  One phrase of his lit up for me the days of darkness.\n\"We see the alchemy of Providence at work all round about us,\" he\nexclaimed, pushing his fingers through his hair until it stood up all\non end, an aureole of white.\n\n\"It is the flower of our manhood that is perishing,\" said the \"Prior,\"\nwhile our hostess was nervously solicitous over the fate of a teacup\nwhich the Professor was balancing in his left hand, utterly regardless\nof its purpose.\n\n\"Perishing!\" exclaimed the Professor; \"they are not perishing--they are\nliving.  To talk of the wastage of life is mere cant.\"  Our hostess\nrescued the teacup, and the Professor had now the free use of both his\nhands.  The one hand clutched his hair and the other made sundry\ngestures clinching his arguments.\n\n\"Why should we rail at death?\" said he; \"for death has been the saviour\nof humanity.  It was death that made men of us.  It was in the school\nof death that man learned unselfishness, self-sacrifice, chivalry and\nhonour.  There is nothing so ugly as the man whose heart is filled by\nthe world.  It is death that has saved us all from that.  Were man's\nlocation here for ever, the world would be his god.  A world without\ndeath would be a world with no room for the Cross.  Men climbed the\nheights of nobility as they defied death.  The crackling flames were\nunable to silence the martyrs' song; the march of the hosts of\ndevouring tyranny could not move the hearts that chose death rather\nthan slavery; the generations sealed with their blood their testimony\nthat truth and loyalty to truth are more precious than life, and so met\ndeath with a smile; it was through this wrestling with death that great\nand noble character was forged on the anvil of life.  Death was the\nweapon which forged greatness of soul.  Death cannot destroy what death\nhas created.  That could only happen in an insensate world.  What is\nit--death--but just this--the slave of immortality?\"\n\nIf I could only write it down as the Professor spoke, if I could only\nmake you see his eyes glowing with little darts of flame as he saw the\nwhole world transformed into a mighty workshop in which the \"alchemy of\nProvidence\" is transmuting the soiled substance of our humanity into\nliving souls (over whom death can have no dominion) fashioned for\nheavenly destinies--then you, too, would believe.  Since that day my\nold friend has not spoken a word about the \"waste of the flower of the\nrace.\"\n\n***\n\nThe house with the drawn blinds stands at the cross-roads, and I must\ncome back to it.  What is it that has happened to him who lies in a\nnameless grave in France?  The opportunity for winning glory and\nearthly fame did not come his way; he just laid down his life along\nwith hundreds of thousands more.  He has taken his place among the\nundistinguished dead.\n\n      \"O, undistinguished dead,\n  Whom the bent covers or the rock-strewn steep\n  Shows to the stars, for you I mourn--I weep,\n      O, undistinguished dead.\n\n      \"None knows your name,\n  Blackened and blurred in the wild battle's brunt,\n  Hotly ye fell with all your wounds in front.\n      That was your fame.\"\n\nNot a line in the records of time for him.  But there are other\nrecords--those of eternity.  He has lost nothing of the thrill of life.\nHe is being borne on that tide of self-surrender and heroism which has\nflowed through the ages, and bears those who embark on it to the very\nfeet of God.  He would not himself have it otherwise.  \"It is better\nfar to go out with honour than survive with shame,\" wrote a comrade\nfrom the trenches, now united with him in death.  There is a place for\nsorrow in our land, but its place is by the hearth-stones of those\nwhose sons choose to survive with shame.  He has taken his place among\nthose who, unseen, are leading on the embattled hosts of his race to\nvictory.  He has discovered the treasures in store for the brave and\nthe true.  When, amid the flutterings of flags and the shouting of the\npeople rejoicing in their deliverance, the great army will return home\nat last--he, too, will come.\n\nAt Kobe, when the bugles were welcoming the victorious Japanese home in\n1895, Lafcadio Hearn spoke to an old man of those who would never\nreturn.  \"Probably the Western people believe,\" answered the old man,\n\"that the dead never return.  There are no Japanese dead who do not\nreturn.  There are none who do not know the way.\"  It is a poor,\nemasculated religion that does not believe that.  When at the last the\nbugles call in the quiet evening ... they will come back.  They will\ncome crowned with glory and honour and immortality--with that victory\nwhich overcometh the world.  Let the blinds be rolled up, and the\nwindows be all flung open to the light.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nThe Cities of the Plain\n\n\n\nVI\n\nIt was the old clerk, of whose services and devotion to our parish I\nhave previously written, who gave the Biblical name to the little\nvillage that lies near the boundary of the great city that is steadily\ncreeping towards us, and ever threatening to engulf us.  Its own name\nis singularly pleasant to the ear and redolent of the sound of running\nwaters, but it is unnecessary to burden the memory with it.  Though it\nis now many years ago, I remember, as it were yesterday, the first time\nI heard the word on the old clerk's lips.  I was sitting warming myself\nby the fire in the ticket-collector's office.  The ticket-collector was\nostensibly waiting to provide tickets, but as everybody in our parish\nhas a season ticket, that part of his duty is almost a sinecure.\n\nThus it happens that the ticket-collector has leisure, just before the\ntrains pass through, to give his friends the fruits of his researches\nin the realms of philosophy.  That particular day he was speaking of\nthe changes he had seen.  \"I was brought up,\" said he, closing his\nargument, \"on the Shorter Catechism and porridge.  I dinna haud any\nlonger by the Catechism, but I havena lost my faith in porridge.\"\n\nIt was then that the clink of coppers was heard on the sill of the\nticket window.  In the aperture was framed the face of the clerk, with\nthe trimmed grey beard and the small twinkling eyes.  He held three\npennies deftly in his thumbless hand.  \"Return, Sodom,\" said he.  The\nticket-collector pushed back his cap, stretched out his right hand as\nif he were beginning to speak, then thought better of it.  Out of his\ncase, without a word, he produced a return ticket for Sodom, clinked it\nin his machine, and passed it through the window.  The old clerk\nreceived it with a grim chuckle.\n\nAway below the bridge there came a rumble.  \"Train,\" said the\nticket-collector, closing the aperture with a snap, and making for the\ndoor.  And I have never forgotten the hoarse voice of the old clerk\nwith an acid edge to it as he clinked his three coppers, saying\n\"Return, Sodom.\"\n\n***\n\nIt is an amazing thing how within the circuit of the same parish,\nremoved by one mile from one another, there can live together two eras\nso remote from each other in the order of human development, as the\nworld of the red-roofed houses on the slopes of the hills, and the\nvillage at their base where the gorge, worn by the little river through\nthe travail of immemorial centuries, debouches on the great central\nplain that runs across Scotland.\n\nEvery morning the dwellers on the slopes are borne by the railway on a\ngreat span of arches over the little village, and they look down on the\nroofs of its houses.  On the slopes there lies the world in which the\nfringes of life are embroidered--a world where men and women talk of\nbooks, pictures and plays.  It is a world of hyphenated names.  But in\nall the village there is not so much as one hyphenated name.  It is a\nrefuse-heap of humanity.  Many diverse races are crowded in it.  The\ncity fathers clean out slums without providing first for the\nslum-dwellers, and, swept before the broom of so-called social\nreformers, homeless men and women have drifted to the village, and\nthere reconstituted their slum.\n\nFrom the glens of the north broken Highlanders, driven out to make room\nfor sheep, have drifted hither to work in the quarries, and the speech\nof their children's children still bears the trace of their ancient\nlanguage pure and clean; over the sea Irishmen have come to reap the\nharvest fields of the Lothians, and they have been deposited by the\ntide in the village.  Stray Poles have come hither and straggling\nCzechs; a man from Connemara neighbours a shaggy giant from Lewis; and\na dour stone-cutter from Aberdeen is door by door with an Italian who\nsells what looks like a deadly mixture from a hand-cart.\n\nHere you can see humanity in its primitive state, before it began to\nadorn the fringes of life, and make for itself sanctuaries of privacy.\nBetween the slopes and the base of the hill there yawns an invisible\nchasm.  Centuries separate them.  Thus it comes that the slope-dweller\npasses on the top of the arches, scanning his newspaper, without so\nmuch as seeing the huddle of houses which constitute the village.\n\nIt is only a week ago that, like the old clerk, I took out a return\nticket for the \"Cities of the Plain.\"  (For the old clerk had a\ntwo-fold formula.  When he was going to one village he said, \"Return,\nSodom,\" but when he meant to go to the quarries beside the village he\nsaid, \"Return, Cities of the Plain.\")  It was to visit an old soldier\nthat I thus descended into the plains.  He lives in a rookery in which\nmany families are crowded one on the top of the other--a rabbit-warren\ninfested by many and strange odours.  He used to come up the slopes and\ndo odd jobs, tidying up gardens, and he loved to talk of\n\n    \"unhappy far-off things\n  And battles long ago,\"\n\nin a language which I also could speak.  So I got to know him.  And as\nI sat by his bed I heard a moan from the adjoining room.  It began in a\nlow cry, and then rose into a wail that seemed charged with all the\nwoes of humanity.  The old man sat up in bed trembling.  The cry of woe\nnow changed into a chorus; other voices swelled it.  It was the act of\na moment to open the door, and in the dim landing find the door of this\nother room.\n\nI opened it, and there I saw three children huddled before a grate\nwhich contained nothing but ashes.  On an iron bed, stretched on straw,\nlay a woman sunk in sleep....  A foetid air was laden with the fumes of\nalcohol....  There was no food....  A broken chair, a stool or two, and\na box that did duty for a table....  The old soldier told me what to\ndo, and I did it.  A kindly woman brought coal and food, and the\nwailing was silenced.  The old man explained it all.  The woman sunk in\nthe stupor is the wife of a soldier now in the trenches.  She did not\nbelong to our parish; but only came a week or two before, swept before\nthe broom of the \"social reformers\" from the city.  The mothers of the\nParish, the old soldier declared, were heroines.  One such, when her\nson asked her consent to enlist, said, \"Eh, laddie, I dinna want ye to\ngang; I dinna want ... but if I were ye I wud gang mysel'.\"  Our own\nwives and mothers were splendid--but those who came from the city,\nflotsam and jetsam borne on the tide, staying for a little and then\ncarried away again, of whom there were three or four in the\nvillage--these were different.  They meet each other eager for news.\nThey are depressed, and feel the need for cheering.  One suggests a\nstimulant ... and the result is this.\n\nHe is no Puritan--the old soldier lying on his bed, his campaigning\ndone--and he spoke out of an understanding heart.  It was only poor\nhuman nature, overtaken by thick darkness and misery, trying to open a\nwindow towards the realm of sunshine.\n\nAnd I came out into the roadway and turned towards the station.  I did\nnot see them before, but I saw them now.  A few yards separating them,\nI pass two shops licensed to sell the means for opening windows towards\nthis realm of happiness; and two houses with gaudy lights called the\nvillagers to enter the region where all cares and worries are\nforgotten.  In the street pale-faced, ill-clad children played at being\nsoldiers, marching with heads erect.  The gorge was already dark with\nthe evening shadows, but the lamps in the village were lit.\n\nWhen the village was passed I stood and looked back.  In the west the\nsetting sun had thrown over the heavens a glow.  A well of liquid fire\nglowed over Torfionn, and its rays spread fan-like, so that they\nspanned the horizon, and, touching the rounded mass of Corstarfin, went\nforth over the firth.  Against this background stood silhouetted the\ngreat arches that carry the railway across the hollow, and behind these\nthe arches that bear the canal.  The piers stood as a gigantic forest.\nThese mighty arches might have been the work of the Romans.  A soft,\nluminous haze fell on the village.  Window after window was lit up.\nThe door of a cottage near me was opened, and a flood of light streamed\nout.  A woman stood in the door, and looking up the road shouted \"Jim,\"\nand a little boy, leaving his fellow-soldiers, rushed to her, and she\nclasped him in her arms and closed the door....  In that moment the\nlittle village seemed to me as if it were an outpost of Paradise.\nNature threw as a benediction the mantle of its loveliness over it.\nWhat nature meant to be a sanctuary of beauty, man had changed into\nSodom.\n\n***\n\nThe ticket-collector stood at his post and scanned the passengers as\nthey went through.  He knew them all, and had only a stray ticket to\ncollect.  I was last, and duly gave up my \"return\" from the \"Cities of\nthe Plain.\"  But he did not let me through the gate.  \"I want to show\nyou something,\" said the ticket-collector, and he led me into his\noffice and produced a pamphlet.\n\n\"I got it from the man who goes to Keswick,\" said the ticket-collector;\n\"you know him.\"  I knew him, the best of men.\n\n\"Nae doubt,\" went on the ticket-collector; \"nae doubt.  He was always\ngiving me tracts.  Tracts--faugh!--poor stuff, nae style, nae logic,\nand nae philosophee in them.  But I aye took them and thanked him--for\nhe is a nice man, though a perfect babe in matters of understanding.\nAnd I found them useful for spills.  The other day he handed me\nthis...\" and he waved a blue paper-covered booklet.\n\n\"Mahn,\" he exclaimed, pushing his peaked cap back from his grey head,\nand sweeping his brass buttons down with his hand; \"mahn, this has fair\nhit me between the eyes.\"  Then he opened the pamphlet and began to\nread passages that he had heavily scored with blue pencil.  The Czar\nhas abolished the sale of vodka for ever!  What is the result?\n\n\"The old women in the villages,\" read the ticket-collector, \"can hardly\nbelieve their own eyes, so changed are their menfolk....  Everywhere\npeace, kindness and industry.  War is said to be hell; but this is like\na foretaste of heaven.\"\n\n\"Listen to this,\" cried the collector, his arm outstretched.  \"A\nnewspaper correspondent writes, since the sale of vodka stopped the old\nnight population (in the doss-houses) seems to have vanished.\"  Every\npassage he read bore the same testimony.\n\n\"And what are we doing?\" he exclaimed.  \"We have stopped nothing; we\nsurround our soldiers with the old temptations, and we leave their\ndefenceless wives exposed to the same temptations; I know all about it.\nMahn, it was Ruskin that said, 'There is no wealth but life,' and we\nleave all our wealth of life at the mercy of every evil.  It's a fair\nscandal.  Do you ken the conclusion I've come to!  It is that the best\nform of government is a benevolent despotism.  Oor men are afraid of\nthis and that--losing votes--but an autocrat with a stroke of a pen can\nsweep away the power of hell.  If they would only make King George an\nautocrat for a few years....  That would be grand!\"\n\nHe insisted on lending me the blue-covered pamphlet, and it being his\nhour off he walked with me across the bridge.  The valley was now dark.\nThe snuff-manufacturer's house down below was wrapped in gloom.  Lights\ntwinkled on the slopes.  Below a lamp-post at the far end of the bridge\ntwo men stood.  When he saw them the ticket-collector stood fast.\n\n\"Mahn,\" said he, \"I've come to a great resolution.  I'm too old to\nfight; and they canna get at me in ony way.  No Income-tax for me; and\nthreepence on the tea is naething, for I never take it; I want to feel\nthat I am worth men dying for me; and I am going to be tee-total till\nthe end of the war.  I'll give the money to help the soldiers' weans.\nIt's the weans that pull at my heart-strings.\"\n\nAnd he turned on his heel and walked rapidly back across the bridge.\n\nUnder the lamp-post stood the roadman and the beadle, looking after\nhim.  I spoke to them, for since the war began we all speak to each\nother in our parish.\n\n\"Has he forgotten ony thin'?\" asked the roadman, waving a hand towards\nthe retreating form of the ticket-collector.\n\n\"I don't think so,\" I answered, \"he just said that he was going to be\ntee-total till the end of the war.\"\n\n\"Tee-total!\" echoed the roadman mournfully; \"there gangs anither lost\nsoul!\"\n\nMy two friends went sadly down the steep brae, and I turned up the long\nflight of stone steps that leads to the road above.  On the top of the\nfirst flight I turned and looked after them.  When they came opposite\nthe door of the village inn, they slowed down ... and then went\nresolutely past, down into the hollow.  The two of them have probably\nresolved to join the company of the \"lost souls.\"\n\n***\n\nI have read the ticket-collector's pamphlet, and I feel a little dazed.\nIt is such an odd world, and the strange thing is that I never realised\nits queerness before.  A Grand Duke is murdered in a place of which I\nnever heard before, and whose name I cannot even now trust myself to\nwrite down correctly, and here, a thousand miles away, the result is\nthat I am brought face to face for the first time with the problem that\nlay twice a day under my feet--the problem of the Cities of the Plain.\nA flood of light seems to have fallen on things which were aforetime\nhazy.  Events stand out luridly and arrestingly.  Here is one.  I was\nin a far Hebridean isle when war broke out.  All of a sudden there\nsounded the drum,\n\n      \"Saying Come,\n      Freemen, come,\n  Ere your heritage be wasted! said the\n      quick alarming drum.\"\n\nAnd the manhood of the island sprang to their feet.  Mothers gave their\nsons, sending them away with sobs and tears, but in the name of God.\n\nOn a drizzling morning the little steamer lay at the pier, crowded with\nmen and horses, going out to fight and die.  The hawsers were loosed.\nThe steamer churned and backed and crept away.  A girl stood near me\ncrying softly.  A youth with clean-cut features, and the yearning no\ntongue can utter shining in his eyes, leant over the taffrail and\ncalled to her, \"Not crying, Jessie?\"  And she wiped her cheek with the\nmoist handkerchief, and turned a smiling face to him and said, \"No, I\nam not crying.\"  And the paddles churned faster, and they passed into\nthe drizzle and the haze.  Weeks later I read how one man of that\nregiment--the regiment of my own county--killed another ... and a few\ndays later I read that he had done so in a drunken brawl.  He was not\nfrom the island, that man, and I know not who he is.  His mother\ndoubtless sent him forth to fight as a hero for his King, and he became\na murderer under the fostering of the State.\n\nOut of the clean countryside they were taken, these men, and the State\nthat summoned them, and whose call they answered, surrounded them with\ntemptations.  Away from the influence of mother and sister and\nsweetheart, wearied and worn with the hard toil of preparation, the\nState opened the canteen and said, \"Take your ease thus,\" and they did\nso.  The Secretary of War made appeals to them.  \"Be sober,\" said he,\n\"avoid alcohol, that the State, through your self-denial, may live.\"\nBut the State said, \"See, I have made ample provision for you, so that\nyou may disregard the noble advice my servant gives you.\"  They came in\ntheir thousands across the Atlantic from the far North-West at the call\nof their mother--clean and sober--and their mother opened the canteen\nfor their benefit on the plain.  Such a world as that dwelt in the\nimagination of Dean Swift--I never imagined that it could exist here\nand now.  And in that world of the cities of the plain, what reward are\nwe preparing for the men who are baring their breasts to the arrows,\nstanding between us and death?  When they come back, war-worn, to what\nwill they return?  To homes in which the fires are extinguished, the\ncandles burnt down to the socket; the cupboards bare, the children\nfamished and neglected?  Is that to be the guerdon of their sacrifice;\nis it for that that they have gone down into hell?  Surely it cannot be\nfor that!  A wave has passed over us, raising us to the realisation of\nthe higher values of things.  Words live for us now which were dead\nyesterday.  A beam of light has fallen into the chamber of imagery, and\nthe word _Temperance_ has risen from the couch on which it lay dying,\nand it claims us for its own.  Through it we can make the world know\nthat we are worth fighting for--worth that the young, the strong, and\nthe brave should take everything they hold dear--their ideals, their\nlove, their little children unborn--and throw them into the trench, and\nthere give themselves and their dreams to death for us.  We must see to\nit that we are worthy the sacrifice.\n\n***\n\nIt seemed to me hitherto that I was a citizen of the country endowed\nwith the greatest freedom on earth.  But the ticket-collector has\nproved to me that that was a dream.  Here in our parish I have no power\nto control this thing that matters so vitally in the Cities of the\nPlain.  We have a Parish Council and a County Council, and I don't know\nhow many other dignified and honourable authorities, whom we elect.\nBut we elect nobody to control this.  A body of unelected Justices, of\nwhom we know nothing, settle for us that down yonder in the Cities of\nthe Plain there shall be half a dozen State-regulated places for the\nmanufacturing of paupers and criminals.  (The laws change with such\nkaleidoscopic swiftness in those days that I may be wrong.)  And here\nam I, newly awakened by the ticket-collector to that enormity, and I am\nnot free to do anything.  It is surely a mad world.  We needed to be\nawakened; and we have been awakened with the shriek of shells and the\ncrying of the perishing!  And the result of the awakening will be\nregeneration for the Cities of the Plain.\n\n***\n\nThe ticket-collector has deprived me for the time being of my peace of\nmind.  My conversion is so recent that I am afraid of falling into the\nfanaticism of the newly converted.  I followed the General the other\nday into the railway carriage, and as we were passing over Sodom, lying\nthere under our feet, I spoke to him about it.  He looked at me with\ncold eyes.\n\n\"Do you want to sacrifice the freedom of the individual?\" he asked in\nhis curt military tones; \"do you think that you can make saints of\npeople by Act of Parliament?  They would be mere plaster-saints.\"\n\nI was reduced to silence.  My new-born zeal seemed to ooze out at every\npore.  There was a touch of amused scorn in the General's eye as he\nglanced at me.  The General is a man of experience, and he is quite\nright.  Acts of Parliament will never make saints of the people.  But\nthe State can see to it that the people are not surrounded by\ntemptations through the operations of Acts of Parliament; that, if the\nState is impotent to make saints, it shall not, on the other hand, set\nitself deliberately to make devils.  That, it seems to me, is what the\nState is now doing in the Cities of the Plain.\n\nIn ten thousand schools the State sanctions that its children be taught\nto pray--\"Lead us not into temptation,\" and that same State encircles\nthe path of its children by legalised temptations at every corner.  It\nis the maddest of worlds.  I may be wrong and the General wholly right.\nBut as the ticket-collector said the last time I saw him--\"I would like\nto see the man who could convince me that I am wrong.\"  And I don't\nknow whether to be grateful to the ticket-collector or not.  He has\ndeprived me of some of my sleep; he has made my head ache with thinking\nof problems which I am not fit to cope with; and, most unlooked for of\nall, he has made a tee-totaler of me till the end of the war.  There is\na plaintive note in the ticket-collector's voice, which strikes a chord\nin my heart, when he invariably adds: \"I hope the war won't last long.\"\nFor, if it does, there will be the danger of the ticket-collector and\nmyself becoming teetotalers for altogether.  And it is such an ugly\nword--tee-totaler!  If only the ticket-collector would coin a new and\nbeautiful word to connote his new and beneficent state of mind!  It is\na pity that great causes should be burdened by the weight of ugly words.\n\n\n\n\n  GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS\n  BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.","title":"The Great Discovery","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":22196}