{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_33637/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_33637","id":"gutenberg_33637","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33637","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christianity -- Great Britain","Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 20th century"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nVICTORY OUT OF RUIN\n\n\nBY\n\nNORMAN MACLEAN\n\n\n\n\nHODDER AND STOUGHTON LTD.\n\nLONDON -- NEW YORK -- TORONTO\n\nMCMXXII\n\n\n\n\nPrinted in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD.\n  at the Edinburgh University Press\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\nThere is a joy in battle; but the greatest of all joys is to take some\npart, however humble, in the fight for the triumph of righteousness.\nThere is a thrill such as can be found nowhere else in facing a mass of\npeople whose prejudices and social customs are as an unscalable wall,\nin compelling their attention and, at last, in winning them to espouse\nyour cause.  To fight your opponent, loving him all the time, is the\nessence of Christianity.  The excitement of betting on races or\nwatching football matches is nothing compared to the excitement of\nfacing an audience not knowing whether you are to be trampled on or to\nbe applauded.  Those who have fought under the banner of the King of\nKings know the indefinable joy there is in it.  That is why the young\nand the chivalrous give a swift response when the call is to a forlorn\nhope in the service of Christ.\n\nAnd the joy of it is this, that, whatever may happen, you are bound to\nwin.  The Infinite has infinite resources.  Those who array themselves\nagainst Him are up against all the forces in the universe.  The fight\nfor the Kingdom of God is the greatest in which man ever fought; it\ngoes on ceaselessly without any discharge; the big battalions seem\nalways on the other side; but God always wins.  There never has been a\nfight for deliverance, a struggle for progress, but the forces of\nrighteousness conquered at last.\n\nThis book is the third of a series.  The Great Discovery portrayed the\nspiritual emotions of the Great War; Stand up, Ye Dead dealt with the\nsoul of the nation in the midst of its travail; and this third book\nseeks to point out the way of deliverance and renewal.  The malady of\nthe world is spiritual.  The fountain of healing is with God.\n\nN. M.\n\nEDINBURGH, _September_ 1922\n\n\n\n\nNOTE\n\nChapters I, II, III, IV, VIII, IX, XI, XII, and XIII appeared in _The\nGlasgow Herald_, and Chapters VI, VII, and X in _The Scotsman_.\nChapter V is based on an article in _The Glasgow Herald_, but it has\nbeen rewritten.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE ONLY HOPE\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE SUPREME NEED\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nIN THE SACRED NAME OF LIBERTY!\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE GREATEST OF TYRANNIES\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE LAST DELIVERANCE\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nTHE PERIL OF THE CROWD\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nLET US HAVE PEACE\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE WAY OF PEACE\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nNO ROOM\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nDOMINION FROM SEA TO SEA\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHERE WERE IN THE SAME COUNTRY SHEPHERDS\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nTHE FULNESS OF THE TIME\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nVICTORY OUT OF RUIN\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE ONLY HOPE\n\n'To a large extent the working people of this country do not care any\nmore for the doctrines of Christianity than the upper classes care for\nthe practice of that religion.'--JOHN BRIGHT in the year 1880.\n\n\nIt is wonderful how quickly, when a peril is past, men forget about it\nand straightway compose themselves to slumbrous dreams again.  It was\nso after the Great War; it is so already regarding the great strikes.\n'Don't disturb our repose,' they as good as say; 'we have had an\nanxious time; do let us sleep.'  But wars and strikes are only symptoms\nof the hidden disease; and the allaying of a symptom without the\nhealing of the disease is of all things the most dangerous.  What we\nmust consider is the disease and set ourselves to find a remedy.  Then,\nand then only, will the symptoms harass us no more.  It was a little\nbald man with a straggling beard and one eye that had got a little\ntired of the long-continued effort to look at the other, who set me\nthinking.  The burden of his contention was that this country and the\nworld at large is sinking back into paganism.  Though I endeavour to\nkeep an open mind and refuse to accept opinions ready-made, however\nmuch inclined I may be to shirk the preliminary fatigue of forming\nopinions of my own, yet the opinions of my friend are worth recording.\nThey are at least gropings after the truth.\n\n\nI\n\n'What is the test of a Christian?' asked the little man, trying to\nbring his vagrant eye to bear on me; 'if we once settle that we shall\nbe able to judge whether this is now a Christian world.  The test is\nnot beliefs or opinions regarding the Founder of Christianity (for\ntrifles such as that men used cheerfully to burn their fellows\naforetime, thinking they were doing God service); to find the true test\nwe must go back to the only test known to those who knew Christ.  What\nwas their test?  It was this--'If any man have not the Spirit of\nChrist, he is none of His.'  That spirit was love enduring even the\nCross--love emptying itself that it might serve.  Now, apply that test\nto our social organisation to-day.  In the one city you find in one\nstreet mansions such as a Roman emperor could only desire in vain; and\na few yards away a street of crowded closes and airless dugouts and\nfetid tenements where little children perish.  Herod slaughtered a\nscore of babies and the centuries pour the vials of infamy upon him.\nBut this holocaust goes on, year in year out, ceaselessly.  Yet the\ndwellers in the terraces tolerate that.  The causes that produce slums\nand keep slums full are manifest.  Yet they will not rouse themselves\nto remove them.  Is that being a Christian?  We assemble in church and\nrecite, \"I believe in God the Father,\" and every fact of the faith we\nprofess condemns our callous indifference.  If we realised that God is\nthe Father of these babes, we would die to save them; yet we leave them\na prey to vested interests.  Is that toleration of evil compatible with\nChristianity?'\n\n'You forget,' I objected, 'the law of environment.  No man can live\nahead of his own time--at least only the great can--and we are waking\nup to social duty as never before.'\n\n'Waking up!' he exclaimed; 'we are going to sleep.  A Christian should\nnever need to waken up to facts like that.  He would have them as a\nburden ever on his heart until they were for ever banished.  He would\nbe constantly hearing the voice of Him who said of little ones like\nthese that it was better for those who did them wrong that a millstone\nwere hanged round their necks and that they were cast into the midst of\nthe sea....  If only we were Christians, endued with Christ's spirit of\nlove, we would make an end of that at once....  We are only\nsemi-pagans.'\n\n\nII\n\n'It isn't merely what you see outside,' went on the little man,\npolishing his shining poll, 'but look inside the churches\nthemselves--any one of the hundreds in this city--and what do you find?\nYou find the house of God given over to an unholy merchandise.  Every\nchurch is parcelled out into so many square feet, and these are bought\nand sold as ecclesiastical allotments.  Did you ever think of that\ngruesome traffic, and the weirdness of it?  That good news of Love\nbrooding over all, caring even for the grass and the sparrow, has now\nbecome the monopoly of the renter, while the poor are shut out.  And it\nwas at first proclaimed to the poor without money and without price,\ncommitted to the winds of Galilee.'\n\n'Put like that,' I said, 'it is rather weird.'\n\n'Aye,' he went on, 'and every half-year managers and deacons assemble\nin the houses of God to traffic in these square feet of pews.  There is\na story how One long ago knotted a whip of cords and drove the\ntraffickers out of His Father's house, His eyes blazing with anger.\nWould He not wield the same whip on these deacons and managers, and\ndrive them out to-day?  How astonished they would be, with all the law\nand all the vested interest on their side ... and yet that whip!'\n\nThe little man fell silent, and his strange eye looked as if he were\nseeing it all.  And he smiled curiously.\n\n'Did you ever trespass on an ecclesiastical allotment?' he asked\njerkily.  'No!  Well, it is a thing not to be done.  I once trespassed\non a garden allotment out in Kelvinside, just to admire some wonderful\nsweet-peas, and the man who owned it found me and welcomed me like a\nbrother, and sent me away with a radiant bunch of flowers; but an\necclesiastical allotment is another story.  An old heritor once said to\nme that the only thing that really roused the devil in a Scotsman's\nheart was trespassing on his ecclesiastical allotment.'\n\n'That only shows,' I retorted, 'how dear to a Scotsman's heart his part\nin the Church is.'\n\n'That is only quibbling,' jerked out the bald man.\n\n\nIII\n\n'Last Sunday evening,' went on the bald man, speaking very rapidly and\nwalking up and down the room in his excitement, 'I went to a church\nsituated in a mean street, surrounded by closes that each holds the\npopulation of a sparse parish.  A tattered bill on the door proclaimed\nthe traffic in seats.  There seemed to be no demand.  There were only\neighteen present.  A cheap church, with varnished pews, that could hold\na thousand--and only eighteen there--old people and two or three\nchildren--none who could lay hold on life with both hands.  To that\nhandful a discouraged and hopeless preacher proclaimed the evangel of\nthe love of God ... but his voice died in the disconsolate and empty\nspaces....  But when I came out, there in an open space were massed\nthousands of men, and the air throbbed with vitality as they listened\nto an orator denouncing capital and proclaiming the coming of the new\nday when every man could have his heart's desire--money and more\nmoney....  Eighteen at the church where the salt had lost its savour,\nand thousands where the chaff of worldliness was the only bread served\nto perishing souls.'\n\n'But you must remember that there were some churches quite full in the\ncity that evening,' I interjected.\n\n'Quite so,' resumed the bald man, 'but who were they that filled them?\nOnly the one class that has still kept its hold on the seriousness and\nthe duty of life--the middle class--the one layer of health in the\nnation.'\n\n'You forget,' I protested, 'that the other two classes have proved that\nthey know how to die.'\n\nHe came to a sudden halt, and his tripping sentences suddenly stopped.\n\n'Yes,' he answered, 'they know how to die; but what is the use of\nknowing how to die if they do not know how to live?'\n\n\nIV\n\n'What is the use of facing death,' went on the bald man, resuming his\nwalk up and down, and pointing now and again an accusing finger, 'if\ndeath does not teach the way of life?  Through death we conquered the\ngreatest tyranny that ever threatened the world, but the enemy has\nreally been the victor, for the spirit of the enemy has now conquered\nus.  That spirit is the covetousness that knows no law but force.  It\ndoes not matter whether the goal aimed at be the hegemony of the world\nor more and more of gold--the spirit is the same.  And now it has\nseized us.  There is the profiteer living on the results of other men's\nindustry and fattening on the plunder of the public--his god is\ncovetousness.  There are the millions who are ready to march over the\nruins of the Empire, careless of the sufferings of others if only they\nwill get their demands on the world.  Nobody realises the futility of\ngaining the world and losing the life.  Eighteen in church and\nthousands out for their share of the world....  It is covetousness\ntriumphant.'\n\nThe old man came to a halt and began to speak as one weighing his\nwords.  'We are just sinking into savagery,' he went on.  'The savage\nknows no weapon but force--and Christianity knows no weapon but\nlove--but we have chosen force.  We have, in truth, abolished the\nbludgeon of force as between man and man, but pagan Rome did that.  We\nhave never learned that law must rule between class and class, as well\nas between man and man.  We remained pagan in our jealousy and distrust\nas between class and class, and failed to make law supreme.  We failed\nbecause we had no brotherliness, no love.  If we had been Christians we\nwould have made the law of love supreme long ago....  What a hollow\nmockery our actions are.  Our statesmen become rhetorical over a\ntribunal of the nations that will make wars cease for ever, while war\nreigns in our own midst.  Tribunals and treaties are nothing if truth\nbe not supreme in the heart.  But there is never a word about that....\nWe think we can raise the world to a level higher than we have attained\nourselves, as if water could ever rise higher than its source....  The\nlaw of force is honest paganism, but this covering up of the world's\nfoulness with scum--that is nauseating pharisaism.  Where the spirit of\nlove and truth is not, there peace cannot be.'\n\n\nV\n\nWhether the bald man with the one piercing and the other straying eye\nwas right or wrong I am no great judge.  But it is clear that there is\nsomething very far wrong.  It is not in our country, the fairest on\nGod's earth, that the evil lies, nor in the Empire, the greatest and\nrichest ever reared by man.  The evil is not without but within us.\nThe only hope for us is in a regenerated spirit.  And there is none who\ncan give us that new spirit but the Carpenter of Nazareth.  He was\nHimself a poor working man toiling for twenty years, wielding heavy,\nclumsy tools as he shaped rude ploughs in a village of poor fame.  He\ncan feel for poor toiling working men; it was He who first taught\nbrotherhood.  To a generation that says, 'Let me get all I can, however\nmuch others may suffer,' He says, 'Say not so, but rather say, Let me\nserve all I can, however much I may suffer.'  If He were here now He\nwould be talking to men in public-houses and at the street corners and\non the fringes of crowds, and He would say, 'My brothers, why excite\nyourselves over the world?  Life is not money.  Life is love and beauty\nand sonship with God.  It is not what the hand grasps but what the eye\nsees and the heart feels that makes life great.  If you want the\nfulness of life, lose it.'  And to rich men He would say, 'Your riches\nare only yours in trust that you may serve: consecrate them or they\nwill be taken from you.'  He would have but one law for all--Love.  If\nthey but loved there could not be any more profiteering, or ca' canny,\nor any injustice.  For love never says 'Give,' only 'Let me give.'  ...\nBut, alas! we make room for every spirit but that.  For forty years we\nhave taught the children by statute, but they have not been taught\nthat.  They have been taught figures and the records that are mainly\nthe records of crime, and the explanations that are no explanations.\nWe must begin again and teach our children what duty is, what the love\nof God and man is, what reverence is, and how there is a moral purpose\nworking out life and death--life if men conform to it and death if they\ndefy it.  We teach everything by statute except that--the one thing\nneedful.  We teach that man is to be saved by the brain; we have\nforgotten that salvation is of the soul.  There is but one power known\namong men that can turn the self-willed and self-centred life into the\nself-sacrificing and the God-centred life, and that power is the spirit\nof the Carpenter of Nazareth.  If we but sought it, then it would fuse\nthe poor fissiparous sand of our national life into the unity and\npotency of steel.  It is our only hope.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE SUPREME NEED\n\n'To me through these thin cobwebs Death and Eternity sat\ngazing.'--THOMAS CARLYLE.\n\n\nMany eager hearts looked for the redemption of mankind to come out of\nArmageddon.  Aceldama has been cleansed, but redemption seems to tarry.\nAnd nobody need be surprised.  Out of filth and mud and horror the\ncleansed soul does not emerge.  There was a king long ago who saw ten\nhorrible plagues succeed each other until at last the first-born lay\ndead--but he was the same until the sea overwhelmed him.  And man is\nthe same in all ages.  Cataclysms do not work renewal.  Miracles do not\nregenerate.  Not even the millions dead will mean a new earth or a new\nBritain.  That new Britain of the heart's desire will only come if men\nand women whose souls are quickened will arise and make their world\nanew.  The world's supreme need is not reorganisation, but a new spirit.\n\n\nI\n\nThe pathos of humanity is that men are ever the victims of illusion.\nAfter Waterloo, when a conflict that waged for a quarter of a century\nended, our fathers hailed the millennial dawn.  But, alas!  Peterloo\nsucceeded Waterloo.  The nation was seized with the passion for riches.\nTo get rich quick the nation had to be reorganised on an industrial\nbasis, and the people were swept out of the green of England and out of\nthe straths and valleys of Scotland into sunless, airless cities.  A\npopulation that formerly lived in cottages was now piled into barracks.\nIn mills above ground and in mines beneath little children were set to\nlabour.  Social conditions were created that destroyed two hundred\nbabies out of a thousand in the first year of life.  These conditions\nstill continue.  The pages of the Press in these last days show how\nhorrifying they still are.  There are streets in our cities which are\nsacrificial altars on which the little children are offered to the\nsocial Moloch....  These things came after Waterloo.  The cannon-fodder\nof war became the cannon-fodder of industry.  The small minority that\ngot rich quick were balanced by the vast multitude who got poor quick.\nAnd for four generations the ugly streets have presented the spectacle\nof files of men begging for work--begging for permission to exist!\nTo-day the files wait for the dole.  The folly and the greed have\nworked out the inevitable consequences.  History goes on monotonously\nrepeating itself.\n\n\nII\n\nAnd just as a hundred years ago men thought they were going to make a\nnew and better world by reorganisation, so also is it to-day.  On all\nhands the cry is reorganise.  In Paris and in Glasgow it is the same.\nIn Paris they are to save the world from all future bloodshed by a\ntreaty.  That childlike faith in treaties!--they have forgotten that\ntreaties were unable to save even one fragment of Europe eight years\nago.  But this time the treaty is to be so very big that it will save.\nBut, alas! no treaty is of value beyond the truth in the soul of its\nsignatories--and of that there is never a word.  No treaty can exorcise\ngreed, ambition, and lust out of the heart--and it is from these wars\nspring.  If the hearts of the nations be not changed, one more mirage\nwill be added to the many humanity has pursued across the burning\nsands, strewing the barren desert with bleached bones.\n\nIn London or Glasgow or Hamilton or Fife it is the same.  There also\nthe new earth is to come through redistribution.  Society will be\ndifferently organised.  The voice that to-day cries, 'What is yours is\nmine,' will to-morrow shout victory.  The day of material good will\ncome through the maximum of pay for the minimum of work.  The new order\nwill banish all our ills.  But the question emerges--How is the new\norder to be worked?  If the new order is to bless humanity it must be\nguided and administered by men of truth, unselfishness, and honour.\nUnless there be such, then the mastery of capital will be only\nsucceeded by the tyranny of the mob.  None asks how such men are to be\nfound.  The hope of the new world lies not so much in better machinery\nas in better men.  The men in the Cabinets adjusting the map of the\nworld and the men in the shipyards and the mines are alike in this,\nthat they forget that man's supreme need is regeneration and not\nreorganisation.\n\n\nIII\n\nIt is on that ultimate fact--that the supreme need of the day is a new\nspirit--that the Church seeks to fix the attention of the nation.  The\nChurch has only one purpose--to make God blaze forth once more before\nthe eyes of men.  In that alone lies the salvation of the future.  The\ngreat host of the toilers may adopt the watchword 'Brotherhood,' but\nthat is only half a truth.  A brotherhood that knows nothing of a\ncommon fatherhood will not stand the day of strain.  The Church\ntherefore proclaims the full truth that the brotherhood of men only\nrealises itself in the Fatherhood of God.  To the nations seeking a\nunity by way of parchments, the Church must also proclaim that there\ncan be only one ultimate unity for nations--the only unity that will\nstand all strain--the unity of the Spirit.  The Church has the one\nmessage for warring nations and for warring classes: 'One is your\nMaster, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.'  The Church alone can\nbring home to the hearts of men that the way of honour is that of\nservice, and the path of greatness that of sacrifice.  Looking back on\nthat long road by which humanity has marched forward even to this hour,\nit is strange to think how the great days on which the epochs turned\nhave not been the days of mammon-worship or of military glory, but the\ndays on which the Cross suddenly blazed forth in the heavens, as it did\nto Constantine, when the summons rang--'By this sign conquer.'  It was\nthen that men set their faces to climb upward, realising that the\ngreatest thing a man can do with his life is to lay it down.  And not\nby a cross blazing in heaven, but by millions of crosses round which\nthe winds moan and sigh on earth, does God summon us to-day.  It is\nthat summons the Church would sound.  By the spirit of self-sacrifice,\nby the law of love--by these alone can the world be saved.\n\n\nIV\n\nThe remedy for every woe on earth is the one commandment--'Love one\nanother, as I have loved you.'  It is so divinely simple--perhaps that\nis why the generations refuse to listen.  The measure of the law is its\ngreatness--'As I have loved you.'  To obey that law means--blood.  It\nwas the greatness of the sacrifice that was made and the greatness of\nthe sacrifice demanded that stirred the hearts of men to life.  'He\nloved me, and gave Himself for me,' the Christian said, and with\nrapture in his heart he looked at others and said, 'He loved that man\nalso, and gave Himself for him.  I cannot rob or murder or leave in\nmisery a man for whom Christ's hands were nailed to the cross.'  That\nwas what revolutionised the world long ago.  It is the only way in\nwhich the world can be revolutionised to-day.  If only the world can be\nbrought to listen to the law of love, the world will become new.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nIN THE SACRED NAME OF LIBERTY!\n\n'The ranks are gathering; on the one side of men rightly informed and\nmeaning to seek redress by lawful and honourable means only, and on the\nother of men capable of compassion and open to reason but with personal\ninterests at stake so vast and with all the gear and mechanism of their\narts so involved in the web of past iniquity that the best of them are\nhelpless and the wisest blind.'--The Right Hon. C. F. G. MASTERMAN.\n\n\nIt is difficult for men and women to arrive at a true estimate of their\nown state of mind.  What others think of us is often a truer gauge than\nwhat we think of ourselves, for we can only look at ourselves through\nthe distorting glass of self-love and self-interest.  In these last\ndays we have had a wonderful revelation of what others think of us.\nOur hoardings and our advertisement pages are crowded with appeals\nwhich could only appeal to a generation that had ceased to think and\nceased to bear upon their hearts the woes of their fellows.  In the\nsacred name of liberty, in the cause of brotherhood and equality, we\nwere exhorted on every horizon to hold fast and change not.  And we\nwere, above all, to beware of fanatics!  We are indeed fallen very low\nif this measure of our intelligence be correct.\n\n\nI\n\nIn the sacred name of liberty we are exhorted to lay no sacrilegious\nhand on the sacred ark of our licensing system.  Whatever results may\nensue of perishing babes and ruined manhood we must vote No Change, for\nliberty is great.  Moloch of old was great; so great that he demanded\nand got the sacrifice of a child now and then.  But 'Liberty' is\ngreater still.  If it be true that in proportion to the number of\nlicences in a district is the death-rate among the babies; if in\ndistricts crowded with public-houses there be a death-rate of something\nlike 160 to 180 per 1000 babies in the first year of life, while in\ndistricts where public-houses are rare the death-rate is about 40 per\n1000 babies in the first year of life; and if we are to vote No Change\nand acquiesce in that in the name of liberty, how great that idol\nLiberty must be!  We must examine it and make sure that its feet be not\nof clay.\n\n\nII\n\nWhat is freedom?  Freedom is that condition of things which enables a\nman to co-ordinate all his faculties for the development of what is\nbest in him.  The best a man is capable of is the evolution of a\ncharacter whose uprightness and honesty will command respect.  But no\nsooner does a man set his face toward that goal than he finds that he\ncan only climb towards it by sacrificing the liberty of his lower\nnature.  The animal in man must be fettered that the spirit may grow.\nOnly so can nobility of character be produced.  It is manifest then\nthat freedom to produce character is only achieved by sacrificing\nliberty.  The idol Liberty is not, after all, really so great.\n\nThe best in life is not, however, developed in isolation.  For we are\nbound up with our fellow-men in the complex organism of life.  And we\nhave no right to exercise any liberty that will mean loss or injury to\nour fellows.  It may be beneficial to me that I should have the\nstimulus of alcohol; it may add colour to my drab life, and make the\nbores that harass me more tolerable; and I may find in it a sacramental\nvalue, as it promotes the flow of easy fellowship; but if the provision\nmade to supply one with that stimulus means the ruin of others--the\nperishing of babes and the destruction of homes--then I have no right\nto that provision.  The limit of my personal freedom is the beginning\nof hurt or injury to my fellow-men.  It is along this great line that\ncivilisation has evolved.  Each step forward has been a restriction of\nliberty.  Every extension of the franchise has been a restriction of\nthe power of the classes that ruled previously; each new law a\nrestriction of the right to do what one liked.  Every great social\nadvance has been a restriction of previous liberty.  No man is free now\nto leave his children uneducated; no employer is free to deal as he\npleases with his employed.  No sooner is the child born than the law\nhas it in its grip: within a few days the parent must register it and\ngive a biography of its ancestors to a registrar; then it ordains that\nit be inoculated.  At five years of age the child is deprived of\nliberty, for he is shut up in barracks and then made a prisoner for ten\nyears, compelled to learn things that will never be of any value in all\nthe after years.  After he has escaped from that prison-house, there\ncomes an interval of illusory liberty.  He comes and goes as he likes\nafter the hours of toil.  Then comes an emotional crisis and he\nmarries--and what is there left of his liberty?  Every family is\nestablished on this--the restriction of liberty.  The traffic in the\nstreet and the narcotic in the shop are alike in the grasp of law.\nFrom the cradle to the grave a man is surrounded with restrictions of\nliberty.  There is no base liberty left to-day but the liberty to get\ndrunk.  In the name of freedom there must come an end to that liberty.\n\n\nIII\n\nAnd yet the horizon glows with these placarded appeals to leave things\nas they are in the name of liberty.  There is a true feeling behind\nthese appeals--the feeling that above all things Scotsmen love freedom.\nAnd so they do.  There is no race under the sun that have hazarded\ntheir lives so much and so frequently for freedom as we have done.  How\nit stirs our blood to read the words in which our ancestors in the year\n1320 defied the Pope when his Holiness sided with England against King\nRobert Bruce.  'The wrongs which we have suffered under the tyranny of\nEdward are beyond description,' wrote the nobility and commonalty of\nScotland in Parliament assembled, '... while a hundred of us exist we\nwill never submit to England.  We fight not for glory, wealth, or\nhonour, but for that liberty without which no virtuous man can\nsurvive.'  We know the end of that and of every fight our fathers\nfought for liberty.  It was the moorsmen and cottars of Scotland, who\ndefied three kingdoms, and fought on with the Bible in one hand and the\nsword in the other, that saved the liberties of nations.  But what\nliberty was it they fought for? The liberty to get drunk!  The liberty\nto establish at every street corner a centre for the spreading of\ndisease, misery, and pauperism! Those who make such appeals surely\nunderrate the intelligence of a generation who have not yet quite\nforgotten the exploits and the sacrifices of their sires.  The freedom\nthey achieved was the freedom to worship God as their consciences\ndirected, and to develop that national character of uprightness and\nunderstanding that has been so fraught with blessing to the world.  And\nthat freedom it is left to us to carry to fruition--by developing a\nState that shall be free from ignorance, from degradation, from vice,\nfrom self-indulgence--in one word, from drunkenness in every form.  'He\nwho will not give up a little temporary liberty for essential safety,\ndeserves neither liberty nor safety,' declared Benjamin Franklin.  We\nshall awake and establish public safety on the ruins of a false and a\ndegrading liberty.  When we shall have achieved that--then we shall be\nfree indeed.\n\n\nIV\n\nNothing appeals to my own heart so much as the anxiety shown by those\npublicists regarding my taxation.  They feel so much for me, and are\nafraid that I shall require to pay more of an income-tax if I do not\nvote No Change.  This care for my personal interests touches me\nprofoundly; and the desire that the nation should drink itself into\nfinancial prosperity must affect every patriot's heart.  But, again,\nScotsmen can think.  And no sooner do we exercise our minds than we see\nhow fallacious all this is--and how ungrounded our fears.  The greatest\nloss the nation sustains is the revenue from alcohol.  What are the\nlosses that are entailed by that revenue?  Against it must be put the\npauperism that the State has to support, and which is mainly caused by\nalcohol; the cost of police and judges and prisons that are mainly\nrequired because of alcohol; the loss to the State of the lives wasted\nand ruined by alcohol.  Strike a balance--and there is no gain to the\nState from the revenues of alcohol.  The greatest loss the State\nsustains is the revenue it derives from the misery and degradation of\nits citizens.  No State can grow rich by exploiting the misery and the\nvice of its own people.  Were the money now wasted in this\nnon-productive trade devoted to industry, the resultant product would\npay the State over and over again for any loss from the sacrifice of\nalcohol.  Already this is being proved in the United States.  In the\nState of Massachusetts an increase in the taxation of theatres, soft\ndrinks, candy, and transport not only made up for the loss from the\ntaxes on alcohol, but realised an increase of over 500,000 dollars in\nthe first dry year!  There in America the breweries and distilleries\nare being converted into jam factories, boot factories, and where\nformerly 250 men were employed they now employ 1500 men!  One such\nfactory bears the placard:--\n\n  'Once we made booze,\n  Now we make shoes.'\n\nThe revenue that comes from prosperity enriches a nation; the revenue\nthat comes from its degradation impoverishes.  When we are freed from\nthe waste and ruin wrought by alcohol--then our national revenue will\nflourish as never before.  In a prosperous land the revenue will look\nafter itself.  Those who are so anxious lest we be overtaxed are trying\nto inspire us with groundless fears.\n\n\nV\n\nThe most sacred thing on earth is the mother and the child.  It is they\nwho suffer and perish because of conditions that are indefensible.  The\nlittle spark of grey matter behind the eyes of a little child may\nbecome a Newton, a Knox, or a Walter Scott.  'There is no wealth but\nlife,' declared Ruskin.  Every motive of patriotism and religion moves\nus to do everything in our power to save childhood and motherhood.\nThere never in any land was any propaganda so cynical, so unblushing as\nthe propaganda that for weary weeks has now screamed in our ears--'No\nChange.'  The blood of four dread years, and then--'No Change!' The\nagony of the world's most awful Gethsemane, and at its end--'No\nChange!' ... Nothing more need be said.  Only the blind could have made\nsuch appeals.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE GREATEST OF TYRANNIES\n\nThe deadliest foe of humanity is the deadening power of custom.  What\nwe have seen from our earliest days has no power to stir our conscience\nor kindle the fire of indignation.  It may be the case that when Lot\nwent down to Sodom he was at first 'vexed with the filthy conversation\nof the wicked.'  But he did not continue vexed very long.  He got to\nlike it.  At last he sat at the gates of that city with great\nenjoyment.  As he sank into the mire he became unconscious of the\nslough.  Otherwise he would never have returned to it.  When the great\nwar of the five kings against four reached its consummation, and Lot\nwas a prisoner going north with a halter round his neck, he often\ngroaned, 'If I ever get out of this I'll never look near that filthy\nSodom again.'  Like a bolt from the blue came deliverance and victory\nand spoils--and back he went to Sodom and its filthy conversations as\nbefore.  It is such a wonderfully modern story.  In every age men get\nso accustomed to the filth that it no longer seems filth.  The mud of\ntheir daily habit becomes their gold.\n\n\nI\n\nWhen we look back on the long road by which humanity has travelled and\nread of the things men once did in cold blood, we wonder how they could\never have had the heart to do them.  The answer is--custom.  To us it\nis incredible that men should once have trafficked in human flesh and\nblood.  And yet to our forefathers of even recent years it seemed the\nmost natural thing.  Were there not slaves from the beginning, and\nnaturally there would be unto the end!  The captains of the slave ships\nwould assemble their crews in their cabins for prayer meetings while\nthe holds of their ships were filled with men and women dying in these\ngehennas!  So far from experiencing any twinges of conscience, these\nslave captains regarded themselves as benefactors of humanity.  Sir\nJohn Hawkins was not alone in priding himself on the fact that he\nbrought so many of the heathen of Africa into Christian lands, where\nthey might hear the Gospel.  It is not so long ago when children of six\nyears worked in factories from five in the morning to nine at night.\nWe who play with our babes and build our brick castles in Spain while\nthey shout for joy--think of it!  What hearts they must have had--these\nfathers of ours--who took the babes by their thousands and harnessed\nthem to the car of their juggernaut!  And yet they were not any\ndifferent from us.  They were only blinded by custom....  Whoever has\nwandered over the hills of his native land will remember the leap of\nthe heart when he has suddenly seen some fair valley open up before his\namazed eyes.  He can hear the song of the river that waters it, he sees\nthe clouds playing on the slopes, his awestruck lips murmur with the\ngreat artist as he looked on Glen Feshie, 'Lord God Almighty!'  But no\nhuman dwelling is there, only heaps of stones where the homesteads once\nstood; only the bleating of sheep where children once shouted at play.\nWhat became of the people?  They were driven out.  The will of one man\nor one woman drove the population of a parish into the Cowcaddens of\nGlasgow or exiled them beyond the seas.  And the Church of Christ\nlooked on silent.  And the men who made the countryside waste prided\nthemselves on the fact that they set the people, whom they drove forth,\non the way of fortune!  How could men do deeds like these?  How could\nthe Church be silent in the face of them?  Again it was just custom.\nThe ears had got so accustomed to phrases such as the 'sacredness of\nproperty,' the 'right of a man to do what he liked with his own,' that\nthe heart forgot the sacredness of the Gospel and the rights of the\npeople in the land of their birth.  It is time we stopped mouthing\nabout the cannon-fodder of war, and began to speak about the\ncannon-fodder of custom.\n\n\nII\n\nIf poor, blundering, pitiful humanity had not been blinded by custom to\nthe folly of war, it would have made an end of war long ago.  But all\nthe days of youth humanity has shut into dreary barracks, learning all\nsorts of foolish things.  And the history it learns is just the history\nof war after war!  At fourteen the centuries seem to a boy but a river\nof blood.  He deems it an inevitable weapon in the progress of the\nworld--this ceaseless killing!  It is custom alone that prevents\nhumanity from making an end of that horror.  And strikes are only war\nin another form--the bludgeon of force!  Kaiserism is not dead.  World\ndominion for me or destruction for you has its counterpart in two\nshillings for me or ruin for you.  The spirit is the same.  If custom\nhad not deadened us to the meaning of war and strike, we would shrink\nback in horror at the very sound of the words.  But, instead of that,\nere humanity has recovered from the woe of the one, we are plunged into\nthe woes of the other....  It sounds a respectable sort of word!  And\nthe right of a man to stop working seems elementary--for we are not\nslaves.  But humanity has learned there is a higher word than\nrights--and that is duty.  We owe service to our brethren.  We can pay\ntoo high a price for two shillings more a day if they mean starving\nwomen and perishing children.  Life is more than livelihood; and if the\nendeavour to better livelihood means the destruction of life, then it\nis condemned.  And that is what it means.  Europe is perishing.  Vienna\nis dying.  All over the world Rachel is weeping for her children.  What\nEurope needs is coal and raw materials, that it may have wherewith to\nbuy food.  And we go on strike.  And ships can no longer carry food or\ncotton; and Europe will starve ... starving is a good discipline and I\nshouldn't mind ... but, God! the little children ... the babies....\n'Strike,' we shout, finding it easy through long custom.  But our\nstriking is only completing the work that Kaiserism began.  And the\nlittle graves are dug faster and faster;  and you can hear the falling\nof tears like soft rain....  What savages we are, unable through any\ndisciple to learn that the world can only be saved by submitting to law\nand by ceasing to wield the bludgeon of force....  When one thinks of\nthe poor suffering, quarrelling, dying slaves of custom; when one sees\nthe world in one blinding flash convulsed in the death throes--Oh, God!\nif only there came a gale from Heaven--a sudden, rushing wind.  Only\nthat could save a world blinded like this.\n\n\nIII\n\nYou may imagine that I am exaggerating the power of this tyrant of\nwhose despotism you are unconscious.  But you have only to think and\nyou will at once recognise that my words are but the words of\nsoberness.  Use your eyes as if for the first time--and what a world\nthis is that surrounds us!  I read the other day a paragraph in the\nmorning paper that made my blood cold.  A discharged soldier got his\ngratuity and spent his day in jollity.  He came home at night and, in\nthe presence of his children, trampled his wife to death, and not his\nwife only, but the unborn child--and in the presence of his children.\nThat, in the most cultured city in Bible-loving and Christian Scotland.\nAnd every day the tale is much the same.  Little children are\nperishing, mothers are broken-hearted, and the streets are strewn with\nhuman wreckage.  The casualties of war pale in significance before the\ncasualties of peace!  But this does not move us: we are accustomed to\nit.  These crowded, reeking public-houses, thirty to the half-mile,\nbattening on the misery of the poor--we have seen them from our youth\nand they move us not.  How many in our Circuses and Terraces and Places\nwill even trouble themselves to so much as vote for the deliverance of\ntheir fellow-citizens?  Very few in these particular places, if I\nmistake not.  For they cannot shake themselves loose from the yoke of\ncustom.\n\n\nIV\n\nAnd this same tyrant blinds us to the goal to which we are hastening.\nThe last great proof of the power of custom is that when nations and\nempires were perishing they never knew they were perishing.  Men were\nso accustomed to the riches and greatness and security of the Roman\nempire, that even when it was tottering to its fall they never realised\nthat it was doomed.  All nations have gone the one road.  They have\nabolished God or the gods!  They have cast duty to the winds; they have\ngiven themselves to Mammon and to pleasure; and they perished--but they\nnever knew that the world that seemed to them so secure was passing\naway.  And unless there comes a change--a mighty gale from Heaven--then\nthis world we know must perish.  Custom alone blinds us to the fact,\nplain to the open eye.  Scotland cannot feed her people but for a few\nweeks in the year.  For the rest they must be fed by the food brought\nfrom overseas by the fruits of our industries.  If these industries\nfail ... we perish.  The Clyde will no longer hum with the throbbing\nengines or great ships come with food....  And every strike, every\nstoppage of labour, is but a step towards the abyss....  But probably\nthat is what God means.  He makes the wrath of men to praise Him--He\nwill use hunger as the instrument wherewith to scatter the great\nScottish race broadcast over the world, to people the mighty plains of\nCanada and the wastes of Australasia.  A great silence will fall over\nthe plain of central Scotland.  The most hideous of all the workings of\nman will be beautified when the lichen grows over the crumbling ruins.\nThe mavis will sing in the thorn-tree, dewy with fragrance, where\nMotherwell now stands ... or Anderston.  That may be the hidden purpose\nof our follies and our crimes.  This, at least, is sure, that if we\ncannot shake ourselves loose from the grip of custom--custom will be\nour destruction.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE LAST DELIVERANCE\n\nEvery great social advance made by men in the past has been made under\nthe pressure of public opinion.  That public opinion was created by a\nfree and an unfettered Press.  The grim fact that we are now faced with\nis that the day of the free Press is over.  Syndicates of capitalists\ncontrol the Press of the country, and newspapers whose circulation\napproaches a couple of millions create the opinion their owners desire.\nThe duty of the newspaper is to record facts, and communicate to the\npeople the correct data on which public opinion can be based.  If the\nPress purposely suppresses what is true, lends itself to the colouring\nof the records so that the false seems to be the true and the true\nfalse, then it becomes the greatest public peril.  A generation that is\ndoped with doctored news can scarcely arrive at the truth.  The\nnewspapers are supplied free by the bureaux of the interested with news\nthat serve their purpose.  Thus it comes that the machinery for\ncreating public opinion is largely in the hands of those whose purpose\nis that public opinion shall not destroy or lessen their profits.\nThere are noble exceptions; but, taking it as a whole, the syndicated\nPress of this country is no longer a mirror of the truth.\n\n\nI\n\nIn the United States of America and in Canada there are one hundred and\ntwenty millions who speak our language, whose religion is also ours,\nwho are the most intelligent and hard-headed people on the face of the\nearth, yet if one were to believe what the Press of this country says,\none would be driven to the conclusion that they are poor foolish\nidealists who have said farewell to their senses.  And that because the\nPress serves the public with doctored news.  One day we are told how a\nhundred thousand New Yorkers are to march in procession through the\nstreets demanding the return of their alcoholic drinks.  The columns\nare full of the preparations for the greatest uprising of the oppressed\nand parched citizens.  The great day comes and the procession is a\nfiasco.  But the syndicated Press omit to record that only a miserable\nhandful paraded the streets, the offscourings of the city's purlieus,\namid the derision of the onlookers.  We are later informed under great\nheadlines that the American Medical Association or some such society\nhas called for the annulling of the Prohibition Law.  We feel that the\nclimate is bound to become wet again, for the doctors demand it.  But\nwe soon learn that this particular association of doctors is a mere\nfragment of a noble profession--a fragment separate from the American\nAssociation which corresponds to the British Medical Association.  But\nthe syndicated Press does not record that fact.  The Press that\ndistorts events after that manner can only flourish among a generation\nthat desires not the truth.\n\n\nII\n\nThere is nothing more to be desired than that the people of Great\nBritain should acquaint themselves with the facts regarding the\ngreatest social advance ever made by humanity in a generation.  Can it\nbe the case that the millions of America committed an act of social\nfolly when they outlawed the liquor traffic and closed the saloons, and\nthat, awakening from their dream, they are to restore the traffic in\nalcohol and the saloon once more?  That is the impression that a\nspoon-fed Press seeks to create.  Can it be true?\n\nTo answer that question we must ascertain first whether the prohibition\nof the sale and manufacture of alcohol in the States was an act of\npanic legislation, the result of a snap vote, the effect of a passing\nenthusiasm or a fanaticism that was triumphant for a moment?  If it be\nof that order, then it may be expected to be cast aside by a wearied\nand disillusioned people.  But the movement that prohibited alcohol\nacross the Atlantic has the toil and sacrifice and devotion of three\ngenerations behind it.  It is not a thing of yesterday.  As far back as\n1834 the selling of liquor to Indians was forbidden by law.\nSeventy-six years ago (in 1846) the first Prohibition Law was enacted\nin the State of Maine.  Fifty-seven years ago the Presbyterian General\nAssembly excluded liquor distillers and liquor sellers from the\nmembership of the Church.  In 1873 the Women's Temperance Crusade\nmovement was inaugurated--a movement whose ideal was to make the United\nStates safe for women and children by the suppression of the saloon.\nIn 1893 the Anti-Saloon League was formed--an organisation that brought\nthe various societies into unity and fused them into the strength of\nsteel.  There were long years of work in school and of teaching in the\nchurches ere on the 18th December 1917 the Amendment in favour of\nProhibition passed the Legislative Assemblies at Washington.  Having\npassed the House of Representatives and the Senate, it had to be\nratified by a majority of the various States.  The States had seven\nyears in which to ratify; but within one year and two months forty-five\nStates, with a population of over one hundred millions, ratified the\nAmendment.  Only three out of the forty-eight States failed to ratify.\nOn the 29th January, it being certified that three-fourths of the\nStates had ratified as the Constitution requires, the 18th Amendment to\nthe Constitution of the United States, prohibiting alcohol, became law.\nAnd on that night the leaders of the movement held a service of\nthanksgiving in Washington, and when the hour struck ushering in the\nfirst day of the new era, Mr. W. J. Bryan began his address by reading\nthe words: 'They are dead that sought the young child's life.'  An\nAmendment to a National Constitution which has the generations behind\nit is not one to be repealed.  To repeal it requires now a majority of\nthree-fourths of the States!  The one great fact to remember, is that\nby local option two thousand two hundred and thirty-five counties in\nthe United States had made an end of the liquor traffic in their areas\nbefore Prohibition became the national law, and that there were only\nthree hundred and five counties in all the States which had not\ndeclared themselves dry before Prohibition became the law.  If anything\nbe certain under the sun it is that Prohibition is the settled and\nunalterable policy of the United States of America.  During a visit of\nthree months, and after inquiries in several cities, I never met a\nsingle person who wanted the saloon again reopened in the States.\nWhatever criticism might be made, there was among everybody only one\nsentiment regarding the saloon--and that was thankfulness that it was\nclosed for ever.\n\n\nIII\n\nThere are, however, those who desire the Volstead law defining alcohol\namended so that the sale of beer and light wines may be permitted in\nrestaurants with meals.  To us that seems reasonable; but there is no\nchance of such a policy being adopted.  The reason is that these\nexperiments have already been made in the States and have been found\nunworkable and unsatisfactory.  The settled policy of the reformers in\nthe States is to seal up the sources of drunkenness.  Every drunkard\nbegan as a moderate drinker; and the evil has to be stayed at its\nsource.  Mr. Bryan described the process dramatically: 'The moderate\ndrinker says every man should stop when he has had enough.  But the\ndifficulty is to know when one has had enough, for enough is a horizon\nthat recedes as one approaches it.  A frail brother was advised by a\nfriend to drink a glass of sarsaparilla when he had had enough.\n\"That's right,\" was the reply, \"but when I have had enough I cannot say\nsarsaparilla!\"'  The prevailing opinion among the Church and social\nleaders is that the liquor trade as it was conducted in America could\nnot be mended, and that it had to be ended.  And it was ended.  Having\nbeen ended, there is no possibility of its being amended!\n\n\nIV\n\nIt is one thing to legislate and another to make that legislation\neffective.  We know that by experience in this country.  It took long\nyears to make the laws against smuggling operative in this country; and\nit was only after Queen Victoria's accession that the laws abolishing\nslavery in the British Empire, passed in a previous reign, were made\noperative.  In the States the stage of legislation regarding alcohol is\npast, and the stage of making the legislation effective has come.  The\ndifficulty of making Prohibition operative is great, but the difficulty\nis being steadily overcome.  No law that ever was made has been fully\nsuccessful: otherwise there would be no theft and no murder in a\nperfect world.  In one State--Detroit--it is said that five thousand\nautomobiles are stolen every year, but nobody ever suggested that the\ncommandment forbidding theft should be repealed in Detroit.  There are\nmore murders in New York in any one year than in the whole of Ireland\nin its most distressful year, but nobody suggests that the commandment\nagainst murder should be repealed in New York.  That a law is broken is\nno argument for its repeal.  And notwithstanding all the smuggling\nthere is no doubt but that the Prohibition Law is obeyed by 99 per\ncent. of the American people.  'In Nebraska there are several times as\nmany men in the penitentiary for stealing automobiles as there are for\nviolating the liquor laws.'  The persons who are convicted for breaking\nthe law are the aliens newly come to the country--Italians, Poles,\nIrish, Spaniards.  A native-born American scarcely ever is found among\nthe breakers of the Prohibition Law, and very seldom a Scotsman.  But\nthe newspapers themselves are the proof of this.  If the disregard of\nProhibition were the general thing,  the  newspapers  would  cease  to\nrecord it; for according to the Press news is the exceptional.  To walk\nto business every day is commonplace and receives no record; but to be\nrun down in the traffic and break a limb is news.  That receives its\nparagraph.  It is the exceptional that receives the big headlines.  And\nthe big headlines about smuggling across the Canadian border and from\nthe Bahama Islands or about wood alcohol are the proof that these\nthings are exceptional.  Otherwise they would not be news.  That\nethical passion which passed the 18th Amendment is now being diverted\nto its enforcement.  The traffic across the Canadian border is being\nstopped, for Canada is now going dry.  The traffic from the Bahamas\nunder the British flag is being dealt with.  'We shall move heaven and\nearth to make Prohibition effective,' said  the orator.  'You had\nbetter move the Bahamas,' came the reply.  It would be a disaster if\nthe false impression created in this country by the syndicated Press\nregarding the working of Prohibition in the States were to lead those\nin authority to imagine that the people of the States will regard with\nno indignation the British flag being used for the flouting of the laws\nand of the Constitution of the United States.  It is impossible that\nthat can go on.  Everywhere in the States the organisation for making\nProhibition effective is being tightened up.  In social reform the\ncitizens of the States are determined to lead the world.  I for one am\nconvinced that they will not be turned from their chosen path or\ndeflected from their goal by bootleggers or by Jewish syndicates.\nWhoever will judge of the condition of the States regarding Prohibition\nfrom the newspapers in New York will find themselves misled.  'In New\nYork,' says _The World_, 'it will be necessary to install three\nenforcement agents to a family, so that they can stand in three\neight-hour shifts, or hire the entire population of the city as special\nenforcement agents and set every man to watch himself.'  That is the\nsort of piffle that is supplied gratis to the newspapers in this\ncountry.  What is forgotten is the fact that the millions of homes\nwhere the fathers and mothers live and toil, who have carried the law,\nsay nothing.  Their voice is not heard in their Press.  And they have\nnot weakened in their resolution that their country shall be a country\nwhere children shall grow up untempted and where monopolies shall no\nlonger be free to fill the jails and the poorhouses.  No amount of\njibes can alter the fact that there has been no ethical revolution in\nthe history of the world comparable to that passion for righteousness\nwhich passed the 18th Amendment and which is now determined to enforce\nit.  'Our parents,' said a wet orator lately, 'taught us to lay up\nsomething for a rainy day: how much nicer if they had only taught us to\nlay up something for a dry one.'  The American will make any number of\njokes about his climate, but his determination is unalterable that it\nshall be dry.  There has been no great moral advance made by humanity\nin these last centuries which has been unable to hold its ground.\nWhatever dust may be thrown in their eyes, the people of this country\nmay be certain that there will be no repeal.  When the choice is\n'Repeal' or 'Enforce,' the American chooses unhesitatingly.  'Enforce'\nbecomes his watchword.\n\n\nV\n\nThough in the Western States full enforcement of the Prohibition Law\nhas not been effected so far, yet the beneficial effects of the closing\nof the saloons are so many and great, that he who runs may read.  There\nwere four millions idle in the States at the time when I was there, but\nthe nation was going through the greatest industrial crisis in its\nhistory with perfect calm, and without suffering the pangs of\ndestitution, because workmen no longer wasted their money in the\nsaloons.  Here in Britain the idle have been pauperised by doles from\nthe public exchequer; in the United States there have been no doles.\nThe nation can thus come through a crisis of unemployment without half\nits number becoming a charge on the remainder.  That is possible\nbecause the sources of waste are sealed up.  Statistics amply prove\nthat drunkenness is rapidly disappearing.  The Salvation Army ceased\nits rescue work among the drunkards in New York because there were no\nmore drunkards to be rescued.  In Pittsburg I found the jail well-nigh\nempty and the poorhouse without sufficient inmates to keep it clean.\nIt is the same everywhere.  One great employer of labour, whose opinion\nI asked, said: 'Prohibition has given us a good Monday in our factory.'\nThat was the most terse and effective testimony to Prohibition that I\nheard.  There is no broken time owing to drunkenness.  Industrial\nefficiency has been increased 20 per cent.  One man who had an interest\nin a big hotel told me that the profits from soft drinks\n(non-alcoholic) were last year double the profit they used to make by\nthe sale of alcohol.  Hotels never had such a time of prosperity as\nthey have had lately.  The reason is that men can bring their wives and\nchildren to stay at the hotels with perfect safety.  The proprietor of\nthe biggest hotel in a city where I stayed told me that he was glad to\nbe rid of the bar and that he would never have it back on any account.\nA Canadian-Scot who has prospered greatly told me how he became a\nProhibitionist.  'I am interested in a mine in the north,' said he,\n'and I went to visit it.  I saw the men wasting their substance and\ntheir lives in the saloons--lying around drugged, with their pockets\nempty.  It was shocking.  I used to give $500 to fight Prohibition.\nWhen the wet agent came to my office after that for my subscription, I\nsaid: \"Get out!  I'll give $500 a year in the future to make an end of\nall saloons!\"  It is thus the movement spreads.  The moderate drinker\nis as determined as the Rechabites that the saloon shall never open its\ndoor again--and it never will.  One of the oddest testimonies in behalf\nof the success of the new law was this saying: 'In Detroit there has\nbeen a falling off in the taxi-cab trade.'  The inference is that\neverybody can walk home now.  'We saw,' says Mr. Harold Spender, 'only\na single drunken man in America for three weeks, and then he was a\npolitician going to Washington.'  In a period of three months I saw\nnone.  Though this reform has been in operation for so short a time, it\nhas already effected the greatest miracle in modern history.  It has\nhealed the sick by the hundred thousand and it has raised the dead.\n\n\nVI\n\nThe readers of the commercialised Press when they scan the inspired\narticles regarding America's social uprising have only to use their\ncommon-sense to realise that they are being served up falsehoods.  They\nhave only to think what a mighty change for the betterment of humanity\nhas been wrought in the great cities where alcohol no longer seeks and\nlies in wait for the unwary at every street corner.  Instead of liquor\nseeking him, the drouth must now seek the liquor--and the search is a\ntoilsome one in a dry and parched land.  What a deliverance that must\nbe for the weak-willed when the State no longer, by licensed premises\nevery few yards in the crowded streets, tempts them to take the road to\npauperism and destruction.  They have only to think of the lives of\nrich and poor whom they themselves knew, that have made shipwreck on\nthese rocks and shoals, and think what a deliverance has come to the\nnation that no longer, with the marshalled host of its liquor sellers,\nseeks to enslave and destroy its citizens.  They have only to look at\nthe city of their habitation and ask themselves why it is that so many\nhundred thousand of their fellow-citizens live under conditions that\nmean unspeakable misery.  Why are families doomed to one-roomed houses?\nwhy are children reared under conditions that mean their being damned\nbefore they are born?  The answer is--Alcohol!  In proportion to the\nnumber of public-houses in any district is the misery of the housing\nconditions.  You have but to scratch the surface of human misery\nanywhere in our cities and you find the turgid stream of alcohol.  Let\nthe reader of the subsidised Press ask himself why all the money spent\non clearing and cleaning slums has wrought no result?  It is that\nalcohol creates new slums faster than the old are cleared away.  Let\nhim ask why all the money spent in mission work, in philanthropic work,\nin rescue work, has not diminished the mass of human misery; and the\nanswer is--Alcohol!  Let him think of the money now wasted by the\nworkers in the reeking public-houses being used to clothe and feed and\nhouse the children--and what wonderful cities we would have and what a\nnew race we would become.  And all that has been done in the United\nStates and in Canada.  'Our great claim as Prohibitionists,' said\nAdmiral Sims, 'is that it has shut up the schools of future drunkards,\nthe saloons and the clubs.  We have saved the rising generation.'  No\namount of misrepresentations can alter facts.  The Americans are not\nfools.  They know their own business.  'In every community,' said\nPresident Harding recently, 'men and women have had an opportunity to\nknow what Prohibition means.  They know that debts are more promptly\npaid, that men take home the wages that once were wasted in saloons,\nthat families are better clothed and fed, and more money finds its way\ninto the savings bank.  In another generation I believe that liquor\nwill have disappeared, not merely from our politics, but from our\nmemories.'\n\n\nVII\n\nGreat Britain led the world in the deliverance of humanity from the\ndegradation of slavery; the United States and Canada are leading the\nworld in the still greater deliverance of humanity from the degradation\nof alcohol.  Out of the West cometh the world's salvation.  America,\nthat is for ever singing of itself as the 'sweet land of liberty,' is\nnow the seat of the greatest experiment in personal coercion that the\nworld has known.  And that is because the American has freed his mind\nfrom cant.  He has replaced the conception of liberty as liberty to do\nas we like by the conception of liberty which is the liberation of\nlarge masses of the community from thraldom to their base appetites and\nfrom the oppression of grafters and profiteers.  The main cause of that\ndeliverance was the awakened conscience of the people.  When the power\nto veto licences was placed in the hands of the people, the citizens\nbecame conscious of the fact that when they voted for a licence they\nwere just as much partners in the saloon as if they furnished the\nliquor and sold it standing behind the bar.  When they considered that\nthe poisoning of the poor by alcohol was a road to wealth, when they\ntraced the misery and ruin that afflicted the community to the saloons,\nthey felt that they could not any longer be sharers in the traffic nor\nincur responsibility for it.  It was the Churches of the land that\nwakened the conscience of the people.  It was better that any community\nperish rather than that they should offend one of the little ones for\nwhich Christ died....  What we need is that the conscience of the\ncommunity should be wakened in the same manner.  The Church of Christ\nalone can sound the trumpet that wakens from the slumber of torpor.\nBut the Church seems more concerned about dealing out soothing syrup to\nits soporific members than about wakening the dead.  The spectacle of\nbishops denouncing Prohibition in the name of Freedom; of\nrepresentative Church Councils refusing to recommend the cause of\nNo-Licence; of congregations being narcotised to the slaughter of the\ninnocents that goes on ceaselessly all around them--the victims of\nBacchus laid for ever on his altar--while the preacher proclaims peace,\npeace, where there is no peace, and expounds an evangel of sweetness\nand light while the people are perishing--all that may well make angels\nweep.  But the Churches are wakening.  The founder of Christianity\nprayed, 'Lead us not into temptation,' and Christians cannot for ever\nacquiesce in the State tempting its own children to their destruction.\nJust as we look back and marvel how any Christian could ever defend\nslavery, so fifty years hence, when the liquor traffic will have become\na memory, men will marvel how Christians could ever have defended the\nLiquor Trade and looked on, silent, while it swept the young and the\nstrong to doom.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nTHE PERIL OF THE CROWD\n\nThe history of humanity is in large measure the history of its own\nillusions.  It has always been towards the mirage that men have tramped\nwith bleeding feet, only to strew the desert with bleached bones.  One\ngreat illusion has been that the golden age would come when the world's\nautocracies gave place at last to democracy, and the will of the\nmultitude became law.  It has come; democracy now wields the world's\nsceptre.  But alas! the golden age tarries, and the wistful doubt\narises whether the greatest peril confronting humanity may not be just\nthat--the sceptre in the hand of the unregenerate crowd.\n\n\nI\n\nFor what we have to remember is that the crowd is by its very nature\nand spirit capable of crimes such as the individual autocrat would\nshrink from in horror.  You may think that fantastic, and imagine that\na crowd consists, after all, of so many individuals, and that the\nspirit of the crowd can only be the aggregate of the individuals\ncomprising it.  But such a view is mistaken.  The corporate spirit of\nthe crowd is not that of the units composing it.  The best illustration\nof this is the sudden reeling back into the jungle of a crowd when a\npanic seizes them.  Let the cry 'Fire' be raised in a crowded building,\nand though the separate individuals be of the gentlest and most\nconsiderate, yet instantly the crowd becomes daemonic, a wrestling,\nwrithing, struggling mass trampling the weak under foot, with no\nthought but self-preservation.\n\nThere are various explanations.  One is the law of sympathy, by which\nan emotion is intensified in being shared.  At the first cry of peril a\nwave of fear passes through the crowd; and as each looks at the faces\naround him he sees fear in every eye.  The emotion suddenly unloosed is\nlike a river whose source is amid the silent hills, that gathers in its\ncourse a thousand rills, until at last it sweeps in mighty floods\neverything before it.  Before the flood of terror generated by the\ncrowd all the decencies of civilisation vanish, and man becomes once\nmore the animal with but the one instinct--to fight for one's life.\nAnd it is the same with anger.  Let a skilled orator set himself to\nrouse the passion of a crowd, and he will soon generate a spirit that\nutterly obliterates the individual.  Let him depict the wrongs they\nsuffer, and anger sweeps through the multitude, bending them to the\nspirit of the orator as the corn field bends before the wind.  Though\nas individuals they may tremble in their shoes before their wives, now,\nfused by rhetoric into one glowing mass, they are ready to loot a city,\npull down a Bastille, and level an absolutist throne with the dust.\nBut the great explanation of the spirit of the crowd as distinct from\nthe individual is that in the surge of contagious emotion generated by\nthe crowd the sense of personal identity is lost.  Each only lives in\nthe crowd.  And with the loss of identity comes the loss of personal\nresponsibility.  I no longer stand alone to be judged for my acts; it\nis the crowd who will be judged.  The brake of personal responsibility\nsuddenly snaps.  It is thus that a crowd will commit a crime that the\nindividual afterwards remembers with horror.  Only a crowd could have\nsaid: 'His blood be on us and on our children.'\n\nIn these last years the horrors that struck a chill into the heart of\nthe world were committed by the crowd.  Suddenly in a Belgian village\nthe cry was raised, 'We are being sniped.'  Instantly the soldiers were\nswept by one emotion, and there rose the cry for vengeance.  Then the\nMayor and the priest and a handful of village notables would be\ngathered and shot.  It was the rage and panic of a crowd seeking its\nown safety through brutality.\n\nIt is plain, then, that the spirit of the crowd is something far other\nthan that of the individual, and is capable of the greatest crimes.  It\nwas the crowd that compelled Socrates to drink the hemlock; it was the\ncrowd that overbore that poor vacillating weakling, Pilate, with their\nmonotonous chant, 'Crucify, Crucify'; it has always been the crowd that\nhas turned the sanctuaries into the nesting-places of owls and bats;\nand the rock on which humanity may make shipwreck at last is just\nthis--the crowd.  The millions of the dead have made the world safe for\ndemocracy: the appalling question now is--Who will make democracy safe\nfor the world?\n\n\nII\n\nIt is, however, only when the crowd is organised that the crowd becomes\na real menace.  The horrors of war are unspeakable just because they\nare the horrors committed by the crowd perfectly organised.  A crowd\nthat has met for no purpose, and is a mere fortuitous concourse of\natoms, can do neither good nor harm.  In proportion to its organisation\nis the peril of the crowd.  The power of the crowd that committed the\ngreatest crime in the history of the world lay in the fact that it was\nperfectly organised.  It was there in that chilly morning with only one\npurpose, to cry, 'Crucify, Crucify.'  Across all the mists of the\ncenturies we can see the organisers at work moving among the crowd.\nThey whisper to one group: 'He struck you in your property, overturning\nthe tables of your barter; if he lives you are ruined'; and to the\nother: 'Remember his blasphemies: what he called himself.' ... And in\nthe trail of the organisers arose with intenser volume the cry,\n'Crucify, Crucify.'  It was the organised crowd that nailed the Son of\nMan to the cross.\n\nThe fact that confronts us to-day is that the crowd is at last\nperfectly organised; so perfectly organised that all the industry and\ntransport of three kingdoms can be stopped by the flash of an electric\nwire.  The crowd knows what it wants, and it has organised itself to\nget it.  But the crowd to-day is not an isolated handful such as that\nof old in Athens or Jerusalem.  The crowd is now world-wide and\ninternational.  What is shouted on the banks of the Volga in the\nmorning, at noon is shouted on the Clyde, and at the setting of the sun\nin New York.  For the cable and the telephone and the wireless have\nwoven humanity into one web.  From the rising to the setting of the\nsun, slowly but steadily on the forge the international crowd is being\nhammered into the unity of steel.\n\nIn the old days the crowd had to storm their way into the presence of\ntheir Pilates before they could cry 'Crucify.'  But to-day the\norganised, super-national crowd has changed all that.  Now the crowd\ncan make itself heard across half the world.  It assembles on the banks\nof the Ganges and formulates its demands.  The Turk must stay at\nConstantinople!  If not, well, there will be trouble.  There in London\nor Paris or Washington the modern Pilate receives his message.  The cry\nof the crowd hums in his ears across five thousand miles.  'What shall\nI do with the bleeding and persecuted?' asks he.  'What is that to us?'\nanswers the crowd on the Ganges.  And expediency gains the day as it\ndid in Jerusalem....  And fifteen thousand crosses arise with their\nbleeding, agonising victims in Anatolia....  The governors of this\nworld have had but one rule in all the ages.  Instead of fixing their\neyes on the stars they have gazed at the streets and have listened to\nthe crowd....  And the organised crowd can to-day make itself heard\nround all the world as it cries, 'Crucify, Crucify.'\n\n\nIII\n\nThere is to-day one other added element in the peril of the crowd, and\nthat is the removal of the forces that formerly restrained and curbed.\nThe witness of history is that only one spirit can stand up against and\ncast out the spirit of the crowd, and that is the spirit of religion.\nI am not speaking of Christianity merely, but of religion in its\ngeneric sense.  There was only one force in Jerusalem on Good Friday\nstronger than the thirst for blood, and that was the feeling that they,\nthe crowd, must not defile themselves ceremonially.  Only one power,\nreligion alone, can cut the claws of the tiger in man....  In the midst\nof the darkest deeds the thought of God's judgment-seat has ever and\nagain pulled humanity up.\n\nBut it is gone now--that sense of the Unseen Assize.  Two generations\nago the international crowd of the learned (for crowds are of many\nkinds), having discovered they could explain some processes, took it\nfor granted that nobody initiated these processes.  With great\ncongratulations on the delivery of humanity from superstition, they\nbowed the Creator out of His universe.  In so doing they thought they\nwere ushering in a new world, where man would find deliverance from all\nill through the illumined brain....  Alas! for human hopes.  The\nlearned have now gone back to the old truth--that this world is\norganised spirit.  But the sad thing is that though it is easy to\nbamboozle the crowd, yet, once they are bamboozled, it passes the wit\nof man to debamboozle them again.  The scientific crowd bowed God out a\ngeneration ago; but to bow Him in again is beyond them.  And the spirit\nof the crowd is left to-day without curb or chain from Siberia to Cork.\n\n\nIV\n\nThere are few sadder thoughts than this--to think how the Church has\nthrown away the power that once it knew how to use, the mesmeric\ninstinct of the crowd.  'In our State,' said an American, 'the devil is\nfighting hard against the Church!'  'Ah! in Montana it is different,'\nwas the reply; 'there with us, the devil is running the Church.'  It\nwould look as if it were even so.  Wherever there was a crowd waiting\nanywhere on the ministry of the Gospel, the devil set himself to break\nup that crowd.  He did it in ways most skilful.  Had his true\npersonality appeared, he would instantly have been cast forth.  It was\ntherefore apparelled as an angel of light that he set about the work.\nHe never failed to mouth high-sounding phrases.  His favourite\nwatchword was principle.  It did not matter much what the principle was\nif only thereby the crowd could be broken up.  In the beginning of the\nseventeenth century the evangel of Jesus, that was committed to the\nwinds of Galilee and to a handful of peasants, was intellectualised\ninto a massive system of propositions that was to be for all time the\ntest of orthodoxy.  One might smile if the fountain of tears lay not\nhere.  That religion, which is like the wind blowing where it listeth,\nwas caught at last, and embodied in legal enactments and\nformulas--sheltered behind statistics!  Whoever heard of wind blowing\nthrough legal documents?  Build shelters and there is no more wind!\nYet these legal documents became the test of that religion which is\nlife and which is love.  If any doubt was expressed about the use of\nshelters when men needed the fresh breeze from heaven--then the devil\nappeared and said that to abide by the shelter was a principle.  Nobody\nmust touch or change that structure.  If that be done, then those who\nwere loyal must separate.  By a discreet use of the principle of\nloyalty to confessions the devil broke up crowd after crowd of\nworshipping Christians.  There was nothing that he could not use for\nthat purpose.  The doubt arose whether the all-loving Father could\nreally send babes to everlasting torments or decree that the vast\nmajority of mankind be tortured, for ever and ever.  That was used to\nbreak up the Church.  A hymn, a paraphrase, the form of a prayer, the\nposture at worship, a vestment--anything, everything, was good enough\nfor the devil's purpose.  By these he achieved his ends.  The crowd was\nno longer to be found in one sanctuary.  Here, where I write, in the\ndays of my boyhood the folk assembled in the open air for their great\nChristian festival on the second Sunday of August.  It was a moving\nspectacle to see a couple of thousand people in the hearing of the sea,\nwith the hills brooding over them, raise a psalm to heaven.  But that\ncrowd has been broken up into four fragments.  There is no longer a\ncrowd.  The devil has secured its overthrow.  On the wave of an emotion\ngenerated by a thousand hearts no soul shall again be wafted heavenward\nin that green place.  For the devil has seen to it that the thousand\nhearts shall be no longer there.\n\n\nV\n\nThere is a hopeful side to all this if only Christians will learn\nwisdom.  Instead of allowing the devil to break up congregations into\nfragments, as he has done for a hundred years, what the Church must do\nnow is to provide the crowd which will exercise the powerful attraction\nof the herd-instinct on the side of righteousness.  The spectacle\npresented in a poor and crowded district of a great city by competing\nmissions--Primitives, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Catholics, Salvation\nArmy, and so on--each weak and ineffective--is heart-breaking.  There\nare so many of them that there can be a crowd at none of them.  The day\nof home-mission activities as now conducted is at an end....  At\nPittsburg I was taken to a meeting in a great auditorium, seated for\n8000 people, where Gipsy Smith was carrying on a mission.  The place\nwas crowded.  There was a massed choir of a few hundred voices.  After\na great volume of praise rolled heavenward, there came an atmosphere\nvibrant with the sense of the Divine as prayer was offered.  I never\nheard Gipsy Smith before, and I was not prejudiced in his favour.  But\nhis simplicity, his directness, his power of speaking straight home to\nthe heart, made me captive.  Here was a master of crowd-psychology.\nThe Jesus whom this man preached was the elder brother, the lover of\nmen, the saviour from self.  When the preacher asked those who desired\nto follow and obey Jesus to stand up, they rose in hundreds.  It almost\nseemed as if the whole congregation were on their feet.  The difficulty\nwhen every force seemed to lift one up was in continuing to sit still.\nThis is the only mission that can to-day be effective--the mission in\nwhich the mysterious powers latent sub-consciously in man are directed\nheavenward.  Instead of weak, isolated, competitive missions, if the\nchurches would organise home-missions after this order....  There in\nPittsburg, as in every city where men such as Gipsy Smith exercise\ntheir ministry, the first requisite is that the churches organise to\nprovide the herd.  Without the herd, the herd-instinct cannot operate.\nFirst provide the crowd, and then the masters of crowd-psychology can\nturn their faces heavenward.  It will be a poor ruined world if the\ncrowd be left much longer as the monopoly of the devil.  The laws of\ncrowd-psychology, which can crucify a Christ and turn an ancient\ncivilisation into carnage and animalism, can also shape humanity to the\nnoblest ends.  By these same laws self-sacrifice, love, heroism,\nidealism can make their irresistible appeal.  Along this line victory\nwill come.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nLET US HAVE PEACE\n\nIt was to attend a Congress of Churches that I crossed the Atlantic,\nbut it is not listening to speeches that gives a realisation of any\ncountry.  It is when wandering about the streets, sitting in cafes,\nlistening in a smoking-car, or talking to a man in a hotel lounge that\none forms some impression of the atmosphere which Americans breathe.\nIt has been asserted, doubtless with truth, that human aberrations are\na misplaced worship.  That happiness which men were created to find in\nfellowship with the Highest, they seek in base and sensual forms.\nDrunkenness, on this theory, is a species of misdirected worship.  If\nthis be granted, then, Americans are of all nations the most devout.\nThey worship the vast in every form.  At Pittsburg you could hear a man\nrolling out statistics of millions of tons of steel a year; of harbour\ndues, though the city is far from the sea, that put even London and\nGlasgow in the shade; and as he speaks you feel that he has a thrill\napproaching adoration.  He is on his knees before the greatest he\nknows.  It is the same in everything.  A town of 14,000 inhabitants in\n1840 is now a city of a million.  He rolls the figures as if they were\na mystic ritual.  Everything with which he has to do must be the\ngreatest on the earth.\n\n\nI\n\nIt was, however, in New York that one came to the inner shrine of\nAmerican idealism.  I had stayed for two days in the academic calm of\nPrinceton, had heard Lord Bryce lecture in iced and polished and\nclassic phrases on the age-long problem of Church and State; had spoken\nto two hundred theological students who might just be in Oxford or\nEdinburgh, for their eyes were just the same--the eyes of youth, who\nperennially believe that they at least were born to put this old world\nright.  (That is the wonderful feeling that keeps pulpits filled--the\nfeeling that however much the message has been spurned and others have\nfailed, yet I cannot fail--glorious dream of youth!)  From that\natmosphere of reposeful idealism I was suddenly projected into the\nmidst of New York.  It was a bewildering experience.  A friend who knew\nhis way in the maze guided me to the Pennsylvania hotel, 'The biggest\nhotel in the world, with 2200 baths!'  I found a room on the twentieth\nstorey, served by an 'express' service of lifts.  I could enter into\nthe feelings of the countryman who, descending in one of those for the\nfirst time and seeing floor after floor flash past, murmured, 'Thank\nGod, I am safe so far.'  Having secured our 'baths' we went forth to\nsee New York by night.\n\nStraight as an arrow my friend brought me to the spots where the full\nblaze of the illumined streets burst into view.  On every hand the\nstreet fronts blazed with multi-coloured lights.  Rainbows of dazzling\nsplendour spanned the avenues.  Above every sky-scraper, darkening the\nstars, letters of fire proclaimed  'The Greatest Boot Emporium in the\nWorld' or 'The Vastest Store in all the Universe.'  St. John in his\ndreams of apocalyptic splendour in Patmos could never have dreamed\nanything weirder than this.  Far as the eye could see down Fifth Avenue\nthe quivering lights proclaimed to the silent stars:  'We are the\npeople--the greatest on the earth!'  But, after all, the world is but a\ntenth-rate little gutta-percha ball in the immensity of infinitude, and\nit was a comfort to think that the constellations were not impressed.\nOn our way back we rested in a 'Soda-Fountain' refreshment room where\nwe sucked nectar through straws.  'This,' said my friend, 'was a\nnotorious saloon before the war, and here are we, two douce parsons,\ndrinking in all the phylacteries of respectability.'  That, on the\nwhole, was the most wonderful thing we saw that night in New York.  But\nas I looked from the dizzy height of my room in the sky-scraper, out on\nthat city of glittering light, I seemed to realise what it meant.  That\nbuilding of monstrous height, these proclamations that darkened the\nheavens, making the stars but a background for vaunting--what are they\nbut the pursuit of the ideal; the scaling of heaven by force; the soul\nlaying hold on immensity by both hands.  It is humanity on its knees\nbefore the wrong altar.\n\n\nII\n\nIt is the same when the Great War is recalled, as it inevitably is\nevery hour.  To the American his share looms so vast that he is\nconvinced he won the war.  Among certain classes 'We won the war' has\nbecome a watchword.  'My brother last year travelled through Italy and\nFrance and part of Germany,' a typical American will confide in you,\n'and he met a German officer, and this German told him that they\nthought little of the English and less of the French, but that when the\nAmericans came in they recognised their masters and quitted at once.'\nHereupon a quiet man in a corner begins to talk.  'We air a wonderful\nnation, sir, and that's a sure thing,' he nasalises; 'we had only\n50,000 casualties, and you had a million, and the French a million and\na half, and the Russians perhaps two millions, and the Italians half a\nmillion--say five millions in all among the Europeans.  My friend says\nwe won the war with 50,000 casualties!  His idea seems to be that an\nAmerican is worth a hundred of his brethren in Europe.  It is the\natmosphere here, sir.  We air a great nation, sir.'  Upon this the\nfirst eyes the second speaker askance.  But a Canadian takes up the\ntale.  'There was an Englishman down in Florida this summer and he went\nbathing,' thus the Canadian.  'There was a poster forbidding bathing at\na particular beach; but there the Englishman, having donned his bathing\nsuit, plunged in.  The watcher of the beach rushed to him on his return\nto shore and reprimanded him for disobeying orders.  \"Oh!  I am all\nright, for I took precautions,\" was the answer.  \"What precautions?\"\nexclaimed the watcher, at once professionally interested.  And the\nbather turned round and showed his newly-bought bathing suit.  On one\nside it bore the stars and stripes and on the other the legend \"We won\nthe war.\"  Pointing to these he said, \"I was perfectly safe, for no\nshark that ever swam in the ocean would swallow that!\"' ... The\nCanadian can beat the Yankee at his own game.  He just pricks the tube\nand you hear the wind whizzing.  But in a few years nobody in the\nStates outside the ranks of the learned will know anything about any\none's sufferings and heroisms in the Great War except their own.  Just\nas to-day it is a surprise to a German to learn that Wellington won\nWaterloo, so in the future it will be a surprise to an American to\nlearn that Britain and France by rivers of their blood won the Great\nWar.  'We won the war' has only begun as yet to run its course.\n\n\nIII\n\nIt was, however, at Mount Vernon, sixteen miles south of Washington,\nthat I seemed to be nearest to the soul of America.  It was with a\nquiet thankfulness that I left the city behind and went on pilgrimage\nto Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington.  There the scenes amid\nwhich the Father of his country moved and had his being are unchanged.\nIn the city, the Washington monument, a shaft of white marble rising to\na height of '555 feet 5 1/8 inches,' confronts one's eyes at the end of\nevery vista.  But here no monument challenges the world by its height.\nThe plain, wooden building, painted to resemble stone, with a piazza\nextending along the whole front, consisting of two storeys and an attic\nwith dormer windows, surmounted by a small cupola and an ancient\nweathervane, is just as it was when Washington lived and died.  In\nthese rooms with the tables and chairs and bed and pictures, and the\nbooks (duplicates mostly), just as they were a hundred and fifty years\nago, there were dreamed dreams that have changed half the world.  Out\nof this farm-house came the impulse and the power wherewith 'The\nembattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard around the world.'\n\nThere could be found few spots on earth in which one could better muse\non the mutability of earthly affairs than in these rooms tenanted by\nghosts.  Here in the main hall is the key of the Bastille, sent by\nLafayette from Paris as a gift to Washington after the capture of the\nprison in 1789.  'Give me leave, my dear General,' wrote Lafayette, 'to\npresent you with a picture of the Bastille, just as it looked a few\ndays after I ordered its demolition, with the main key of the fortress\nof despotism.  It is a gift which I owe as a son to my adopted country,\nas an aide-de-camp to my General, as a missionary of liberty to its\npatriarch.'  No nation ever owed so great a debt for its liberty as the\nUnited States owed to France.  George Washington won the War of\nIndependence because half the people of Britain sympathised with him,\nknowing that he was fighting their battle for liberty as well as his\nown; but mainly because France espoused his cause on sea and land, and\nsent him money, and men, and leaders such as Lafayette.  But in the\nrealm of international politics gratitude has no place.  When France in\n1914 faced the menace of overwhelming and final destruction; when\nBelgium, to whose independence the United States was a signatory at the\nHague Convention, was overrun, the Government at Washington did not\neven enter a protest, and the President still addressed the Kaiser as\n'great and good friend.'  While France that won her liberty for America\nwas for three years in Gethsemane, the States were 'too proud to\nfight.'  As late as 1917 there was the famous speech about 'peace\nwithout victory.'  It was only when a Presidential Election was gained\nby 'the Man who kept us out of the war,' and when the interests of the\nStates on the high seas were threatened with ruin, that the Americans\nat last entered the fray.  If Britain had acted as the States did,\nFrance to-day would have been the conscript appendage of Germany.  When\nthe American Ambassador in London declared in a candid moment that\nAmerica came into the war for 'her own interests,' the resolutions\npassed and the speeches made disowning him were amazing.  That key of\nthe Bastille there in Mount Vernon is a monument of international\ningratitude.  There is no reason to narcotise ourselves into believing\nthat poor humanity has been changed for ever in this year of grace at\nWashington.\n\n\nIV\n\nTo-day Mount Vernon is a shrine, and a sky-scraping monument dominates\nWashington, but George Washington learned in his own day the lesson\nthat in politics there is no gratitude.  The founder of the great\nRepublic did not escape the common fate.  He was accused as President\nof drawing more than his salary, of aping at monarchy; there were hints\nof the guillotine being needed; until at last the scurrilous attacks\ndrove Washington to declare at a Cabinet meeting in 1793 that he would\nrather be in his grave than in his present position.  It is said that\nat the end he would have preferred to seek reunion with Britain.  (An\nAmerican lecturer was howled down in New York two years ago for\nventuring to refer to that!)  This at least is sure, that Washington\nwas glad to end his days in the peace of Mount Vernon.  If this may\nseem incredible one has only to think of the fate of Clemenceau, of\nVenizelos, or of Woodrow Wilson.  There is to-day in Washington a\nliving monument of national ingratitude.  Whatever may be thought of\nmany of the acts of President Wilson, of his leaving France to her fate\nuntil he won his election to the second term of office by the help of\nthe anti-British and pacifist votes, yet posterity will undoubtedly\nacclaim him as Lincoln now is acclaimed.  It was he who not only, with\nthe dreamers of all the years, dreamed the dream of perpetual peace,\nbut by his unbending will-power forced the nations of Europe to place\nthat dream, materialised in the League of Nations, in the forefront of\nthe Treaty of Versailles.  That was one of those epoch-making events on\nwhich the history of the world turns.  It is idle to think that the\ncoming generations will not place the man who did that among the\ngreatest of the human race.  And yet to-day his own countrymen can find\nno words strong enough to express their contempt and dislike.  There is\nno more pathetic figure in all the world.  A shattered body gains him\nno respite from abuse.  When the broken man drove for the last time\nfrom the White House to his own home--the burden at last laid down--a\ndemonstration organised by the League of Nations Union cheered him at\nhis gate.  They would not go away until he spoke.  He was taken to a\nwindow, and after saying a few words he pointed to his throat, in token\nthat he could not further reply to the ovation.  History can scarcely\nparallel that tragedy.  But Woodrow Wilson can comfort himself with the\nthought that the hosannas will rise in chorus when he is dead.  George\nWashington has now a monument 555 feet high; a hundred years hence\nWoodrow Wilson will have a monument 666 feet high.  The generations of\nthose who garnish tombs never fail.  'I tremble for my country,' said\nPresident Jefferson, 'when I remember that God is just.'\n\n\nV\n\nThe world has raised a chorus of rejoicing over the results of the\nConference at Washington.  While we rejoice at the prospect of reducing\nthe number of battleships, we can only rejoice with trembling.  (It is\nAmerica, who had the Japanese navy on the brain, that has the greatest\ncause to rejoice.)  But agreements and treaties are not going to save\nus.  The crucial question is not the form and context of a treaty, but\nrather whether there is among men sufficient truth and righteousness to\nfulfil its terms.  The warfare of the future will be a warfare of\nchemistry.  (According to a statement ascribed to Edison, the whole\npopulation of London can in the future be wiped out in eight hours by\npoison gas!)  Is there a possibility  of restricting laboratories and\nthe massing of deadly germs?  The men who will release the energy in an\natom will be able to destroy a world.  If we look at facts we shall not\nbe drugged by oratory.  'Rhetoric,' said Theodore Roosevelt, 'is a poor\nsubstitute for the habit of looking facts resolutely in the face.'  The\nfacts confronting us are ominous enough.  Twice recently one of the\ngreatest of nations has thrown over the signature of its Supreme Head\nand its Secretary of State.  The United States repudiated its President\nand refused to ratify the League of Nations; and not only that, but\nrefused also to ratify the Agreement made with France and Britain to\nsecure France against future aggression.  The present misery and unrest\nin Europe are largely due to the failure of one hundred and ten\nmillions of the English-speaking race to honour the signature of their\nChief.  The best of them bewail it, and say that it is the fault of\ntheir political system.  Under the worst system of European government\nsuch events would be impossible.\n\nBut though the failure to ratify treaties be grievous, yet the failure\nto observe treaties duly ratified is still more grievous.  And the\nhistory of our relations with the States is largely the history of\nbroken treaties.  There was the famous Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850\nregarding the Panama Canal; it was repudiated in 1880, and its history\nsince is a history of broken agreements.  There have been so many\nconferences, so many agreements, so many treaties since the days of the\nHoly Alliance to the days of The Hague, and the end has always been the\nsame.  In 1916 Mr. Elihu Root made a speech in the American Senate, the\nechoes of which will ring round the world in the coming years.  The\nburden of his sorrow was shame for his country's repudiation of their\nobligation to protect Belgium.  Here are some sentences:--\n\n'Wherever there was respect for law, it revolted against the wrong done\nto Belgium.  Wherever there was true passion for liberty, it blazed out\nfor Belgium.  Wherever there was humanity it mourned for Belgium....\nThe law protecting Belgium was our law and the law of every civilised\ncountry....  We had played our part, in conjunction with other\ncivilised nations, in making that law....  Moreover, that law was\nwritten into a solemn and formal Convention, signed and ratified by\nGermany, and Belgium and France, and the United States....  When\nBelgium was invaded, that Agreement was binding, not only morally, but\nstrictly and technically, because there was then no nation a party to\nthe war which was not also a party to the Convention.  The invasion of\nBelgium was a breach of contract with us for the maintenance of a law\nof nations....  The American Government failed to rise to the demands\nof a great occasion.  Gone were the old love of justice, the old\npassion for liberty, the old sympathy with the oppressed, the old\nideals of an America helping the world towards a better future, and\nthere remained in the eyes of mankind only solicitude for trade and\nprofit and prosperity and wealth.'\n\nYes, humanity might mourn for Belgium, and the States stand aloof in\nspite of its plighted word, but what of that when an election had to be\nwon and the Irish vote conciliated!  The world being what it is there\ncan be no hope of deliverance along the road of treaties.  There can be\nno salvation by parchments.  You cannot make a treaty when there is no\nsense of truth and honour.  You cannot make a treaty with paganism.\nThere is no truth or honour there for a treaty to rest on.  And the\nworld is still overwhelmingly pagan.  Europe may have been baptized and\nAmerica also, but Asia still dreams that its day will return.  Japan is\nhaunted by the dreams of Potsdam, and the hunger of empire is in her\neyes.  China, India, Africa, and the Turk are not yet even baptized!\nAnd yet people think that we have arrived at last within sight of the\nmillennium.  The characteristic of humanity is its credulous\nsimplicity.  Men cannot rid themselves of the fond belief that they can\nreform the jungle by manicuring the tiger's claws.\n\n\nVI\n\nThe march of events is the proof that the woe of humanity is too deeply\nseated to be healed by any human salve.  There is no balm in any Gilead\nfor these wounds.  The first step towards the rehabilitation of the\nworld would be the mutual cancelling of the nations' debts to each\nother.  The United States alone makes this impossible.  Money that we\nborrowed for our allies, and which we cannot recover from our allies,\nAmerica insists that we pay.  And yet that money was spent to save\nAmerica as well as ourselves.  To realise that one has only to think\nwhat would have happened if Germany had won?  The greatest day in the\nhistory of Scotland was when the German fleet, its crimes against the\nlaws of Neptune for ever ended, came sailing into the Forth to\nsurrender.  Through the mist that shrouded it there never moved a\nprocession so humiliating and so woeful.  Judgment at last overtook the\nmurderers who gloated over the _Lusitania_!  But supposing Germany had\nwon, what then?  The first condition would have been the surrender of\nthe British fleet at Kiel.  And we would have no choice; for a starving\nnation must sacrifice everything to feed its children.  But what would\nhave happened then?  Think of the Emperor William master of the British\nand French fleets as well as his own.  What would have become of the\nMonroe Doctrine next morning?  What would have become of the scores he\nhad to settle about the supplying of munitions to his foes?  In face of\nthe might confronting her, America would have been helpless.  New York\nwould have been given to the flames if America came not to heel.  We\nsaved the great Republic as well as France and ourselves.  And now,\nhaving given our sons and our treasure, we are being bled white that we\nmay pay America for the munitions which we used in her defence.  These\npayments are earmarked for the payment of American war-pensions!  The\nworld has never seen so grotesque a situation.  The protected and the\ndelivered demand that their protectors and deliverers should pay for\nthe privilege of protecting and delivering them!  What is at the back\nof so preposterous a state of things?  It is this, that there is the\nshadow of a Presidential Election looming ahead, and the cancelling of\nthe debts guaranteed by Britain would be unpopular.  One can quite\nrealise the use the Irish orators would make of that.  We forget that\nAnglophobia is still the staple of American history as taught in her\nschools.  The Boston Tea Party and the War of Independence were due to\nBritish vices and the triumph of American virtues.  To cancel the debts\nfor which such a nation is responsible would be to repudiate the makers\nof America! ... What is required, of course, is the right education of\nthe American democracy.  Schools should teach that it is impossible in\nso imperfect a world that all the right can be on one side.  Yet that\nis how history is taught, not only there but here.  Our foes also were\nalways wrong!  There will be no peace in the world until the spirit of\nspread-eagleism is replaced by that of meekness; until nations and men\nrealise that we are members one of another, and that we are here to\nhelp and serve each other.  Until that new spirit breathes through the\nmasses of humanity, there will be war.  And we shall have to endure.\nWe who saved America must pay for the privilege of saving her; and we\nmust do it while every opportunity of doing so is snatched from us.  A\ntariff that will exclude our goods has been established; the only way\nleft to pay is by acting as carriers on the seas!  Now we are to be\ndriven from that service by nationally subsidised mercantile American\nfleets!  And yet we must pay! ... If anything could waken humanity to\nthe fact that the conversion of the people can alone save the world, it\nwould be this.  Missionaries to convert the hearts of the American\nvoters is the world's supreme need.\n\n\nVII\n\nOne of the most impressive sights in New York is the tomb of General\nGrant.  Its site overlooking the deep-gorged Hudson river is most\nimpressive.  It is a square building of white granite without and white\nmarble within, surmounted by a cupola with Ionic columns.  Above the\ndoor, between two figures emblematic of peace and war, are inscribed\nthe words, 'Let us have peace.'  These are the closing words of his\nletter accepting the Presidency.  Grant had a right to use the words,\nfor he was a great peace-maker.  He made peace by conquering the forces\nof disruption.  He kept stubbornly at it.  But when he won at last he\nwould not humiliate Lee by taking his sword from him; and when he was\ntold that Lee's men owned their own horses--'Let them keep them,' said\nGrant; 'they will need them for the spring ploughing.'  Nor would he\nallow any salvos of victory.  'We are all citizens of the same\nRepublic,' said he; 'let us have peace.'  To-day the whole world is one\nRepublic woven together by the mighty shuttles of steamships, airships,\nand wireless.  In that world there can be no hermit nation.  In that\nworld, 'let us have peace.'  In the Governor's garden at the base of\nthe slope that leads to the citadel, in Quebec, there is an obelisk\nthat stirs the heart.  It is a monument to Wolfe and Montcalm.  The one\ndied content that he had won a dominion greater than he knew for the\nnation that he loved; the other, dying, comforted himself with the\nthought that he did not live to see the surrender of Quebec.  There,\nthese two heroic souls, near the scene of their heroism, share a common\nmonument.  The inscription is the most beautiful I know:--\n\n  Mortem, Virtus, Communem,\n      Famam Historia\n    Monumentum Posteritas\n          Dedit.\n\n'Valour gave them a common death; history a common fame; posterity a\ncommon monument.'  That obelisk visualises the hope of the future.  It\nwould indeed be a miserable world in which men went on hating for ever.\nOnly the spirit of Him who for the love of men stooped to a cross can\ndig the grave of hate and war at last.  When the world shall awake from\nits nightmare and shall listen to Him, then the world will have peace.\n\n\nVIII\n\nWhen I shall have forgotten all else, I shall remember a morning spent\nin Trinity Church, New York.  The oldest grave in the graveyard\nsurrounding it is that of a little child, Richard Churcher, 'who died\nthe 5 of April 1681 of age 5 years and 5 months.'  The child's name has\noutlived the city; for the old city is gone.  A few years ago the spire\nof Trinity Church was a landmark.  Now they are completely hidden by\nthe buildings of enormous height that surround them.  By contrast the\nchurch and spire look like toys.  One building soars to 724 feet--49\nstoreys, with elevators rising 41 storeys in one minute, and express\nelevators 30 storeys in 30 seconds!  Even St. Paul's Cathedral\nsurrounded by buildings such as the Woolworth, rising to 800 feet,\nwould be dwarfed into significance, and Trinity Church is small\ncompared to St. Paul's.  It is when one ponders such a scene that one\nrealises what it is that is wrong with the world.  The towers and\npinnacles of Mammon soar everywhere high above the puny sanctuaries of\nfaith.  The evangel of the Carpenter of Nazareth is jostled aside and\ncrowded out.  What the world has to do is to make room once more for\nlove and self-sacrifice--for idealism.  That is the only road to\nsalvation.  Nobody knows that better than the American.  He likes to\nlisten to oratory about world-peace; but when the oratory is done he\nsmiles.  'We might as well,' says he, 'try to lift ourselves by our\nbootlaces.'  And that is the moral of it all.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *\n\nThe United States refused the mandate for Armenia, and the mandate for\nConstantinople, and dishonoured the signature of its chief magistrate\nguaranteeing the security of France.  To-day the blood of the slain\ncries to Heaven, and Britain is left alone holding the gates of Europe\nagainst a race whose only rule is government by massacre.  And from\nAmerica the Press reports a cablegram to the Prime Minister:--'Win\ncivilisation's everlasting appreciation by keeping the brutes out of\nEurope.  Americans expect every Englishman to do his duty.'  What a\nstrange species of humour!  In very truth the regeneration of the\nworld's democracies is the only road to peace.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE WAY OF PEACE\n\nThe supreme need of the world to-day is peace.  Europe is sinking into\nthe morass of despair because across their frontiers a dozen nations\ndrilled and armed are watching each other with sullen eyes.  From the\nshores of the Pacific to the long wash of Australasian seas everywhere\nit is the same.  Civilisation is perishing; but it is a civilisation\narmed to the teeth that is awaiting its obsequies.  Every newspaper\nproclaims the one need is Peace.  The Conference on disarmament has but\none word to express the sum of all its desires--Peace.  There must be\nsome stupendous barrier in the way when all this yearning and endless\ntalking fail to reach the goal of humanity's striving.  However eagerly\nthe nations pursue it, peace seems to be for ever a receding horizon.\nIf on one spot of an anguished world statesmen confer as to the things\nthat make for peace, yet behind their fortified frontiers the nations\nare still sharpening their swords.  It is, as it has ever been, a mad\nworld.\n\n\nI\n\nThere must be some hidden cause of this failure of humanity to work out\nits own deliverance.  And our duty is to find out that cause.  It is\nquite possible to make an idol even of peace.  Peace is not necessarily\nthe supreme good.  If there have been wars which call for repentance\nand humiliation on the part of those who waged them, there have been\nagain and again periods of peace which call for even deeper humiliation\nand keener repentance.  If we have waged war when we ought to have been\nat peace, we have as often been at peace when we ought to have waged\nwar.  Time and again, a generation ago, we heard of Armenians being\nmassacred.  But we kept the peace.  There never was a more disgraceful\npeace in the history of the world, and awful has been the price that we\nhave paid for it.  To keep the peace when the innocent are being\nmassacred is damnation.  Peace is not then the supreme word in man's\nvocabulary.  By mouthing it man often falls into the mire.  There is a\ngreater word by far, and that is--righteousness.  The only peace worth\nhaving is the fruit of righteousness.  That is why peace flies faster\nthan its pursuers.  The votaries of peace have forgotten that fruit\ndoes not grow without roots and soil.  Eloquence can do much, but it\ncannot grow grapes without vines deep rooted in the soil.  And peace is\na fruit of the spirit deep rooted in righteousness.  And the nations\npursuing peace have forgotten that pilgrimages to Washington or The\nHague may be good, but the supreme need of humanity is to go on\npilgrimage to the fountains that will cleanse the heart.  The\ndeliverance of the world is not by way of renewed or remodelled\ntreaties, but by the old, old way of renewed and converted souls.\n\n\nII\n\nHow has peace ever come to men?  It has come in one way only--the way\nof the renewed spirit.  I have been reading again the wonderful story\nof this Scotland of ours, and that old, simple truth has come home to\nme afresh.  The problem that confronted Scotland in the dawn of its\nhistory was how to unify and pacify warring tribes that were\nceaselessly drenching the land with blood.  And the way the problem was\nsolved here is the way in which alone it can be solved on the greater\nstage of the whole world.  Fourteen hundred years ago there was no\nScotland anywhere on the map.  There were four kingdoms in North\nBritain--the Picts north of the Grampians, the Britons in Strathclyde,\nthe Angles in the Lothians and southward to the Tweed, and in Kintyre a\nsmall and feeble colony of Scots who had crossed from Ireland.  (In\nthose days a Scot was invariably an Irishman.)  In those distressful\ndays wars in North Britain were as common as strikes are now, and women\nwent forth to battle along with the men.  And they were wars of\nextermination--without mercy.  Out of that welter how did unity and\npeace come?  The uniter and pacifier came out of Ireland.  The Scots in\nKintyre were Christians, and the pagan Picts under King Brude inflicted\non them a shattering defeat.  It looked as if Christianity were on the\neve of being stamped out in Kintyre.  To Columba in Ireland there came\nthe cry of his kinsmen's woe--'Come over and help us.'  To a man\nburning with ardour and longing for new fields to conquer for his\nMaster, that cry was like a bugle summoning to battle.  He came to\ntheir help, but not with spears and arrows.  He came with the might of\nthe Cross.  The greatness of the man is revealed in the fact that\ninstead of material weapons he went straight to the fountain-head of\nthe misery.  He realised that there was only one way of salvation for\nthe Christian Scots in Kintyre, and that was by converting to Christ\nthe wild people in the North that had braved the Roman arms and were\nstill in their primitive savagery.  In those days to convert a clan one\nhad first to convert the chief; to convert a nation one had first to\nconvert the king.  The goal towards which St. Columba set his face was\nthe castle of King Brude at Inverness.  Iona was but the base for the\ngreat campaign that was to make North Britain safe for Christians.  If\nto-day the problem be how to make the world safe for democracy (though\nthe problem is really greater--how to produce a democracy worth the\nsacrifice of making the world safe for it), in the sixth century the\nproblem was how to make Scotland safe for Christ.\n\n\nIII\n\nThe greatest story in our history is that which tells how Columba made\nhis venture of faith and conquered.  He never lacked courage this man.\n'Do you think, Columba, shall I be saved?' asked the King of Ireland.\n'Certainly not,' answered Columba, 'unless you break off from your\nsins, repent, and be converted.'  The courage wherewith he faced his\nkinsfolk, with that same courage he now faced his enemy.  We can see\nhis galley sailing up Loch Linnhe with the Cross at the masthead, and\nthe face of the leader set like a flint.  He would go to the stronghold\nof paganism.  Up the great glen the little band trudged with death\nlurking behind every bush, but there was never a thought of faltering.\nIn vain did King Brude bar his gates against him.  No walls can shut\nout the Spirit, no gates of iron can debar the Word living and\npowerful.  Outside the gates Columba and his band begin to chant a\nPsalm--'We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us,\nwhat work Thou didst in their days ... how Thou didst drive out the\nheathen with Thy hand....'  And as that voice of his rolled like\nthunder the King and the people 'were affrighted with fear\nintolerable.'  The gates were flung open and King Brude surrendered to\nthe ambassador of Christ.  The wild race, whom the legions of Rome\ncould not subdue, were conquered by an unarmed man.  What a light must\nhave been in that man's eye: what a fire in his heart!  From that day\nScotland was safe for the followers of Christ, and the little band of\nChristians in Kintyre could now sleep peacefully at night, for King\nBrude was learning the law of love and the way of peace.  From that day\nthe good seed was sown broadcast over all the land.  That dauntless\nmessenger traversed sombre, uncharted gulfs, trod his way along\nrock-strewn sounds, and the darkness of the centuries faded before the\nCross that gleamed at the masthead.  The Picts became Christians, and\nin due course united with the Christian Scots in Kintyre, and Scotland\nfound a name.  In time the Angles and Strathclyde were merged in the\nunity of the Kingdom of Scotland.  There came first the unity of one\nideal, of one law, of one faith--and out of that there came the four\nkingdoms merged at last in the unity of the one Kingdom of Scotland.\nUntil at last, after weary centuries, the sounds of war hushed into\nsilence: clan no longer lifted up sword against clan; brethren in\nChrist could no longer slay one another.  Peace lay at last like a\ngolden shaft across all the land.  One fearless unarmed man faced a\nking with the weapons of the Spirit, sowed the harvest which we are now\nreaping.\n\n\nIV\n\nIt is only by that road that humanity can come at last to the great\ngoal of universal peace.  It is the road that nations are unwilling to\ntread.  They still are following the mirage that has strewn the deserts\nof time with the bleached skeletons of those who set out to reach it.\nThe mirage is salvation by treaties.  That idol has had hecatombs\noffered on its altars, and unless there comes a change it will have\nhecatombs in the future.  If there be no truth and righteousness in the\nheart that signs, then treaties are valueless.  The history of the\ncenturies is the proof of their futility.  The treaties of to-day can\nno more save than the treaties of all the yesterdays.  For the nations\nthat sign cannot trust each other.  In the hearts of the nations there\nis not throned that righteousness which can be trusted.\n\nThe world's sickness is of the soul.  What the nations need is that\ntruth and righteousness be enthroned in their midst.  Without that,\npeace is only the scum on the surface of the foul and stagnant pool.\nAnd the witness of the centuries is that righteousness is the fruit of\nthe vision of God.  The foundation of righteousness is the realisation\nof the ceaseless operation of the laws whose source is God.  If only\nthe vision of God could blaze forth before the eyes of democracies as\nit blazed forth before the eyes of King Brude, then the way of peace\nwould open up for groaning humanity.  How can there be lasting peace in\na world of conflicting ideals?  Can Christianity be at peace with\nMohammedanism stained with the blood of millions of Armenians; with\npaganism still brooding over the ideal of an empire based on force?\nCan the ideals of unselfish service and of pride and greed lie down in\npeace together?  There can be no peace until humanity is brought into a\nunity of the soul--of allegiance to one King, of obedience to one law.\nThe only hand worthy to wield the sceptre of the world is the hand that\nwas nailed to a Cross.  What the world has to realise is that the\nManger overthrows the Caesars, and that the road leading to a Cross is\nthe way of peace.  When we shall send forth over all the world men\nendued with the spirit of St. Columba, then there will be hope of the\nworld.  But that is the last thing we think of.  We fondly believe that\nwhile we ourselves are sinking back into the mire we shall be able to\nlift the world up into light; while we ourselves turn our backs on the\nPrince of Peace, that we will bestow peace on the world.  It is the\nweirdest of all obsessions.  When William Ewart Gladstone was once\nasked how a man of his intellect could listen to such dull sermons, he\nanswered--'I go to church because I love England.'  There is a wider\nmotive--'I go to church because I love the world, because I can hear\nthere a law that men should love one another with a love that stoops to\na Cross, by which alone the world can be saved.'  It is vain for\nnations that forsake the worship of a God of love to spend their days\ndevising schemes for bringing peace to a ruined world.  For there is no\nway of peace save one--the way of love.  No nation has as yet tried\nthat way.  And there is no sign that they mean to try it.  The world\nwaits for the man who will convince it that the new order must be based\non fraternity and not on fighting.  But the world will applaud him\ninstantly.  Fraternity--that's the word!  Most excellent!  But when the\nnew Columba will go on to show that fraternity without a Fatherhood to\nrest on is meaningless and powerless; that humanity can only realise\nits brotherhood in a common Father--even God.  Then the world will once\nmore shrug its shoulders.  'This is the same old wheeze,' it will\nsay--and go its way.  For we have no longer any use for God.  That is\nthe root of our misery.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nNO ROOM\n\nThere is an old Gaelic proverb that says: 'Where there is heart-room\nthere also is house-room.'  There was room enough in that mean inn for\nthe farmers with their pouches filled with money for the tax, for the\nsoldiers that swaggered with the pride of empire, for the\nvillage-talebearers with their rude jests; but for a poor woman in the\nhour of her need there was no room.  She was shut out because there was\nnot found in that inn any with heart big enough to make room for her.\nWhat was she anyway?--a mere chattel; and what her child?--already\nthere were too many children; and the only course to adopt was to let\nmost of them die!  And so at its dawn we can see what a mighty change\nChristianity has made in the world.  Though the mother and the Child\nwere shut out of the inn and consigned to the asses' stall, yet because\nof that mother and Child womanhood is to-day honoured and childhood\nmost precious.  To-day, in whatever land on which the shadow of the\nCross has fallen, there is heart-room and house-room for mother and\nchild.\n\n\nI\n\nAs one reads the old beautiful story, this foot-note that explains how\nthe Founder of Christianity was born in a stable because 'there was no\nroom for them in the inn' stirs the mind with a wistful poignancy.  The\nbook slips down on the knees and the imagination awakes.  The essence\nof nineteen centuries of Christian history is here.  The web of all the\ncenturies is woven after the one pattern.  Shut out at His birth, His\nfate has been the same ever since.  He came with the message of\nhumanity's renewal.  He proclaimed the most revolutionary doctrine ever\npreached to men--that the pariahs of humanity, publicans, sinners,\nslaves, those ignorant of the law and therefore accursed, were all the\nsons of God; and that only one law was requisite, that men should love\none another with a love that gleamed red with sacrificial blood.  But\nwhat have men done with this evangel?  They have shut it out!  It was\ntoo beautiful for their gross hearts and their self-clouded eyes.  It\nwas also very difficult.  It required the changed heart and the\ntransfigured life.  And that has always been most difficult--to\ntransmute the self-centred into the God-centred and all it means.  So\nmen set themselves to circumvent that demand for the surrendered\nheart--and they offered the surrendered brain.  That is quite easy.\nThey formulated logical propositions setting forth that thus and thus\nGod acted, and they said--'Believe this and be saved, or disbelieve and\nbe damned!'  Christianity that came into the world as spirit and life\nbecame mere intellectual gymnastics!  And with the name of the Lord of\nLove on their lips Christians cheerfully burnt each other because their\ndefinitions differed....  What an amazing fate to overtake the most\nbeautiful thing that ever was seen on the earth! ... A Borgia sits on\nthe throne of St. Peter; Calvin burns Servetus; the Jesuit exterminates\nhis opponents; the Covenanter proclaims that he prefers to die than to\nlive and see 'this intolerable toleration'; and all the time the Lord\nJesus Christ is shut out.  Not wholly shut out, however, for He has in\nevery age found a shelter and a welcome in the stables and the sheds,\namong the ragged, the mean, and the outcasts of humanity.\n\n\nII\n\nIt is not only in the great organisations that bear His name that there\nhas often been found no room for the Christ; but still less has there\nbeen found room for Him in the social order.  This great revolutionary\nidentifies Himself so closely with humanity, that He declares that\nwhosoever receives a little child and loves it receives and loves Him.\nHow then do we deal with the Founder of Christianity as He comes to us\nin the form of a little child, saying, 'Receive Me'? ... This is the\nway we deal with Him.  Every five minutes of the day a baby dies\nsomewhere in the United Kingdom.  There are districts in great cities\nwhere two hundred out of one thousand perish in the first year of life.\nA third of the possible population die in the years of childhood.  The\nhorrors of war are small compared to the horrors of peace, to which we\nhave become so inured that we scarce notice them.  We have taken the\nsunshine and the fresh air and the starlight from millions of our\nfellow citizens and shut them up in barracks and surrounded them with\nforces of degeneration, and have provided them a narcotic for their\nmisery, so that womanhood becomes degraded and childhood pines and\ndies.  Still, after nineteen centuries, Jesus Christ is shut out from\nthe social order we have laboriously created.  And we celebrate\nChristmas Day without so much as a sense of incongruity between our\nbeliefs and our actions.\n\n\nII\n\nOne of the weirdest symptoms of decay in our day is the way the whole\nsocial system seems to have conspired to shut out the child.  In the\nlast years property-owners had one condition that was unaltered: they\nwould not let their houses to tenants with children.  'How many\nchildren and how old are they?' was the deciding question that always\nshut the door.  The coming of a baby was often the signal that brought\nan ejectment warrant.  The penalty for bringing a child into the world\nwas being thrown into the street.  The men who filled the inn at\nBethlehem with mirth nineteen centuries ago have had a mighty multitude\nwho shared their spirit.  Rents have been to them more to be desired\nthan babies.\n\nHere is an advertisement that appeared in the _Daily Chronicle_ of 29th\nMay 1917: 'Chapel-keepers, man and wife (no children), for large\nCongregational church, Central London; must be total abstainers ... 5\nrooms, coal and light provided.--Write ------, hon. secretary, ... E.C.\n4.'  I forbear giving the name of the Christian church that provides\nfive rooms for its 'keeper' and slams the door in the face of the\nchild.  (The curious can find it in the files.)  Even in this day, when\nthe child is so precious to the race, one can see unblushing\nadvertisements for gardeners and lodge-keepers with the clause 'no\nchildren.'  That the children of this world should act so is\ndeplorable; but that the children of the light should have 'five\nrooms,' and in them all no place for a cradle--that suggests doom.\nThink of that congregation hailing, with songs of rapture, the coming\nof the Child; the preacher getting dewy over the callousness of the inn\nin Bethlehem--and their own servants forbidden a child! ... It was\nsomething like that which caused a prophet of old to exclaim--'Judgment\nbegins in the House of God.'\n\n\nIV\n\nAt this Christmastide what we need most is to make room for the Child.\nPeople are ever ready to make room for that which they recognise to be\nprecious.  The most precious thing on earth is goodness.  Give any\nmother her choice of her son being rich and a rogue, or poor and good;\nshe will choose poverty.  There is no power that builds up men and\nwomen in unselfishness and goodness but the power that is radiated from\nHim whose life on earth began in a manger.  We must, if need be, cast\naway our costliest treasures that we may make room....  In very truth\nHe cannot now be shut out altogether.  No contumely will drive Him\nhence.  It is different now from the day when a woman groped her way in\nagony to the asses and the stall.  Different now, for He comes in\nthrough the closed doors.  That is how the world has not been able to\ndestroy Christianity; and that is how the Child conquers at the last.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nDOMINION FROM SEA TO SEA\n\nNo part of the Empire rendered the cause of the world's soul in the\nworld war greater service than Canada.  When the clouds of chlorine gas\nwere let loose it was the Canadians who stopped the gap through which\nthe torrent of destruction was flowing.  And the question the wounded\nmen gasped out of tortured throats and lungs was not 'Shall I live?'\nbut 'Did the Huns get through?'  In the great host that at last swept\nthe wolves back to their lair, the Canadians were foremost.  'We pledge\nourselves solemnly before God to keep faith with our fallen comrades,'\nwrote General Currie to Sir Robert Borden, and nobly did they fulfil\nthe pledge.  To-day when a citizen of the States begins to demonstrate\nhow his countrymen won the war, a Canadian produces the official\nstatistics from his pocket and shows how the ten millions of Canada\ngave more of their sons over to death and wounds than the total\ncasualties of the one hundred and ten millions in the States.  And it\nis not surprising that Canada should have a clear vision of the ideal\nof duty.  The very name that their country bears lifts that young\nnation into the fellowship of the highest ideal.  When a name was\ndiscussed for the new confederation an inspiration came to Sir Leonard\nTilley as he read the eighth verse of the seventy-second psalm: 'He\nshall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the\nends of the earth,' and on his initiative the name Dominion was\nadopted.  Not for Canada alone but for the whole Empire that name sets\nforth the only ideal.  The cry of 'World-dominion or death' can only be\novercome at last by the watchword 'God-dominion and Life.'\n\n\nI\n\nIt is difficult for men to learn the lesson of their own most bitter\nexperience.  Only when the Cross stands far back across the years does\nits meaning and purpose faintly gleam on the minds of men.  It need be\nno matter for surprise that men who did not themselves stand in the\nbreach of death should be unable to articulate the master-word of the\nfuture.  That great word will be--Spirit.  What the world gazed on for\nfour years of woe was the triumph of the spirit.  To the men who,\nfootsore and limping, marched back from Mons, defeat was\nincredible--their souls knew not the word.  And because victory, even\nas they retreated, was in their souls, they swept the enemy back from\nthe gates of Paris.  For four years in mud and misery and defeat the\nsoul endured and triumphed.  It was the greatest of all the soldiers of\nFrance who said to his body as it shrank in his first battle:\n'Tremblest thou?  If thou knewest the dangers into which I shall this\nday carry thee, thou wouldest tremble!'  Often and often in these four\nyears the poor worn suffering body said, 'I have had enough--enough of\nmud and vermin--I am fed up; I will do no more,' but when the call of\nduty came the soul said to the body, 'I will make you face it, make you\ngo through with it'; and the soul compelled the body to charge into the\nvery face of death.  It was the spark of the Divine in the soul that\nenabled our brothers to conquer the shrinking of flesh and blood and so\nto conquer the foe.  It is in the measure that armies are souls that\narmies conquer.  And it has been the same at home in castle and\ncot-house.  We have but to think of the wives and mothers.\n\n  'They let them go forth at the wheels\n    Of the guns and denied not.  But then the surprise\n  When one sits quiet alone!  Then one weeps, then one kneels,\n    God! how the house feels.'\n\n\nHowever deeply the iron pierced, there was never a thought of defeat\nbeing even possible.  And when the call came the women toiled in the\nfactories, and the ammunition dumps were their spirit materialised.  At\nhome and in the battle-line the final destiny of every nation depends\nupon the soul.\n\n\nII\n\nStill more is the mastery of this word apparent when we consider the\nfuture destiny of the world.  One result of the world's blood-bath is\nthat all thoughtful men are asking, How can the world be saved in the\nfuture?  And multitudes discuss the way of the world's salvation by a\nLeague of Nations or other method.  By parchments and signatures the\nworld is to be saved!  All that is but the folly with which men have\ndeceived themselves in all ages.  The folly is apparent when we ask,\nWhence do wars spring?  They spring from greed and lust and\nambition--from the life surrendered to evil.  We speak of the horror of\nwar; what we should speak of is the horror of wickedness.  For war is\nonly a symptom, not the disease.  What all these weary discussions\nabout 'Leagues to make an end of war,' and the new watchword 'No more\nwar,' aim at is the doing away with the symptom--leaving the disease to\nrun its deadly course.  To suppress symptoms without removal of the\nhidden cause is the way of death.  What the nations must face is the\ndisease and its healing!\n\nIt is with nations as with individuals!  How can a man protect himself\nagainst a thief.  He can do it in three ways.  He may (1) use force; or\n(2) he may make an agreement with the thief--enter into a treaty with\nhim; or (3) he may endeavour to reform the thief.  The first method is\nmilitarism and, whether in the form of armies or policemen, is costly\nand uncertain.  The second only protects so long as the thief finds it\nconvenient or in his own interest to keep it.  Neither a burglar nor a\nrobber-state can be warded off by treaties.  The third alone provides a\ncertain protection; the only safety is that the thief experience a\nchange of spirit--be, in short, converted.  'Admirable,' said Cardinal\nFleury, when a scheme for 'perpetual peace' was submitted to him;\n'admirable, save for one omission--I find no provision for sending\nmissionaries to convert the hearts of princes.'  The day of princes is\nover, and the day of democracy has come.  The first requisite of\nperpetual peace is that the nations of the world experience a change of\nheart and spirit--should repent.  But in all the schemes for ending war\nthere is no suggestion of sending missionaries to convert the world's\ndemocracies.  France has 'extinguished the lights of heaven which none\nshall rekindle'; England, if the number of worshippers in the churches\nbe any gauge, is rapidly sinking back into paganism; and across the\nAtlantic the United States is resolved to live unto itself alone,\nseparating itself from the perishing nations; while on the Continent of\nEurope there is but one ritual: 'We did no wrong: we did not begin the\nwar.'  Missionaries to convert the democracies of the world--they are\nneeded in legions.  But such a need is not in all the thoughts of the\norators.  They can only think of forming leagues to abolish the\nvultures that swoop down on the carcases.  They cannot realise that the\nonly way to make an end of the swooping vulture is to make an end of\ncarcases.  Unless the world experiences a spiritual and moral renewal,\nany league that would secure it peace in the midst of its depravity\nwould only secure its moral doom.  It is manifest then that the only\nway to abolish war is to bring the body into subjection to the spirit.\nThe way of salvation is the way of spiritual renewal.  Love does not\nkill or poison, and humanity's feet need to be guided into the way of\nlove.  Along that road there is but the one guide: He who said 'I am\nthe way....  Love as I have loved you.'  The measure of that love is\nthe Cross.  And that is why the way to salvation leads through\nCalvary....  Peace will only come when the kingdoms of this world shall\nsubmit to that kingdom of the soul whose dominion is from sea to sea.\n'I find a hundred little indications to reassure one that God comes,'\nwrites H. G. Wells.  'The time draws near when mankind will awake ...\nand there shall be ... no leader but the one God of mankind.'  But\nthough Mr. Wells writes sentences so vital as that, yet when one asks\nhim what God is--he is silent.  Is He holy and righteous?  Though Mr.\nWells' God is but an abstraction, yet the truth remains.  The coming of\nthe Kingdom of God is the one hope of mankind--that Kingdom which Jesus\npreached.  And the entrance into that Kingdom is by way of repentance\nand love and faith.  When the soul of the world awakes to that, the day\nof deliverance shall have dawned.\n\n\nIII\n\nThis, then, must be the goal of human effort, to bring the nations of\nthe world into such a unity of spirit that war will no longer be\nthinkable.  But we, as a nation, can only do this if we ourselves bring\nour lives into conformity with the laws of righteousness.  It is\nmanifest that no amount of oratory will enable us to raise the world to\nany higher level than we have attained ourselves.\n\nThe first duty, then, is to see that we base our own lives on\nrighteousness.  The problem is how to bring to bear on the human heart\nthose motives that will move it irresistibly towards righteousness.\nThat road is not easy to travel and the choice of it means effort and\ntravail.  It means a battle against selfishness and self-seeking--a\nbattle long-drawn-out.  Why should men choose that conflict rather than\nease and self-indulgence?  There can be no reason save this: that God\nwills and enjoins righteousness.  But does He?  We know very little\nabout God, and the strange thing is that the more knowledge that comes\nto us regarding Him, the more mysterious He becomes.  But there is one\nthing that we do know with absolute certainty regarding God, and it is\nthis--that all down the thousands of years of recorded history the\npower of the Unseen Ruler of the universe can be traced fighting\nagainst iniquity, burying corrupt nations under the avalanche, digging\nthe grave for tyranny and corruption.  The history of the world is the\nhistory of God making an end of crime.  The way to destruction has been\nthe way of iniquity.  That God should have so ordered the universe that\nthe stars in their courses fight against the Siseras, that all its\nforces are at last arrayed for the destruction of evil, is the proof\nthat God is righteous and holy and that the passion in His heart is\nthat His children should be righteous and holy.  The world, as God\nmeans it, is the school for the training of men and women in\ngoodness--and so in the image of God....  It is only the call of the\nUnseen Ruler as He summons His children to bring their lives into\nunison with Himself, that can turn the feet into the way of\nrighteousness.  There is no impelling force equal to the choice of good\nrather than evil except this--that God wills goodness.  No other motive\nsave that can turn the faces of men towards the heights.\n\n\nIV\n\nThe greatest of all questions then is this--how most efficiently to\nbring that motive to bear upon the nation.  It is in the early and\nplastic years that the destiny of individuals is fixed.  If anywhere,\nit is in our schools that our children shall learn the things out of\nwhich are the issues of life and death.  What atmosphere shall we\nsurround our children with in our schools? is the supreme question.\n'To educate without religion is only to produce clever devils,'\ndeclared the Duke of Wellington in his downright way.  And as a nation\nwe have made sure of everything being taught--except religion.  No\ngovernment-inspector ever asks about it!\n\nWhat a waste it all is and what a travesty--this pumping of facts and\nfigures into the weary, jaded brains of little children.  Only five per\ncent. or so of the people are capable of benefiting by a long process\nof education--yet everybody must be confined in dreary barracks from\nfive to fifteen years, learning things that will never be of use and\nare straightway forgotten.  We ordained that all the children should be\ntaught, but in our usual blundering fashion we never settled what we\nshould teach them.  The child looks out on a world of wonder, and\nproves its wisdom by peopling every grove and every hill with fairies.\nFor the child the world is spiritual.  And it comes to us and asks how\ncame it and why came it?  But our legislators decreed that, so far as\nthey were concerned, the child should be taught geography and the names\nof rivers and hills, but not about the God who made the rivers and\nhills and the world; botany, but not about the God who made the grass\nand the flowers; physiology, but not about the God who fashioned man;\ndates of kings and of battles, but not about the God whose providence\nis written over all history; about laws, but not about the Source of\nall law--the divine commands that regulate human action.  The only part\nof man that the educators considered was the brain.  If they\nintellectualised the race they deemed that the millennium would come.\nThey did it.  But the millennium is further off than ever.  They caused\nall the people to go through the mills where knowledge was ground out;\nthey learned to read and write.  The only consequence was that they\nbecame the victims of every charlatan.  They turned their arithmetic\ninto roguery and their literature into lust.  They became the victims\nof the gamblers and the betting touts.  They pursued the missing words\nand became the disciples of demagogues.  And salvation has tarried\nthough the brain has been nurtured.  Yes! there has come a vast\nprogress!  London in the next war can be completely destroyed by\nspraying it with gas bombs--in eight hours!  Education, with God left\nout, will, then, have come to its fruition!\n\n\nV\n\nNational education will only become a means of deliverance from evil\nwhen our schools shall have been transformed into the nurseries of\ngoodness.  For after all, what we need is good men and women.  Clever\nmen are as common as berries; what the world cries for is men who can\nbe trusted, men whose motive will be the welfare of others and not\ntheir own.  'His fame was immense,' was the verdict on a Roman patriot;\n'his private property was so scanty that there was not enough to pay\nthe expenses of his funeral.  He was buried at the public cost.  The\nmatrons mourned him as they mourned Brutus.'  Ah! the terrible thing is\nnot to die poor but to die with a character no man honours.  To train\nour children to love and desire goodness is our need.  The history of\nthe ages is the proof that goodness cannot flourish apart from\nreligion.  And the Bible tells the story of the dealing of God with\nmen--of the evolution of religion.  It is that which constitutes the\nsupreme value of the book.\n\nBut no book has suffered more at the hands of its friends than has the\nBible.  The Bible is an Eastern book, and it is filled with glowing\nmetaphors and parables.  Dull, unimaginative Western minds said: 'These\nare literally true, and unless you believe them so you are lost.'  The\nwriter of the beautiful book of Jonah wrote a story rebuking the narrow\nspirit of the Jews, and his book has become the citadel of all the\nnarrow souls who see nothing in it but the whale.  Children should be\ntaught that science and religion cannot contradict each other, because\nthey both are revelations of the one God; that the Bible is full of\npoetry and parables which the writers never meant that any should\nmistake for treatises; that the slaughter of the Canaanites and the\npsalms of cursing are no more of the essence of religion, than the\nStuart tyranny the essence of Scotland; that the serpent in the garden\nand Jonah in the whale are parables; that religion, in short, is a\nflowing and deepening river and not a stagnant pool.  But religion as\ntoo often taught in our schools is only the teaching of things which\nthe growing boy discovers to be untrue.  So far from doing good, it is\nthe destruction of religion.\n\nWhen the Bible is taught as the record of the evolution of the\nrevelation of God, it will move the hearts of men towards goodness\nwhile time endures, for it enshrines the figure of Him who based a\nKingdom on love and meekness--a Kingdom that endures for ever, because\nno guns can fight against a Spirit, nor any frontiers bar it.  The\neducation that has not this as its base may produce the chlorine\ngas--but it will never produce that goodness which alone maketh great.\nBut the course is so crowded that something must be jettisoned.  And as\ninspectors take no note of religion--let it be thrown overboard.  Its\ntotal omission in Secondary Schools is declared necessary, because the\nsyllabus is too crowded already!  It is as if a man having a ship laden\nwith dross were offered some nuggets of fine gold and answered, 'My\nship is overloaded already, I cannot take more.'  But he wouldn't be\nsuch a fool.  He would throw everything overboard, if need be, to make\nroom!\n\n\nVI\n\nIn the last year of the Great War a new Education Bill was passed for\nthe Northern Kingdom, and provision was made for everything but the\nteaching of religion.  At every election the voters who desire that\nreligion be continued must have another spell of sentry-go to secure\nit--all except Roman Catholics and Episcopalians!  Truly we are of the\nrace of the Bourbons.  The expense of teaching has been trebled; the\nfutility of what is taught remains as before.  I heard the Chairman of\nan Education Authority being asked whether provision was made in the\nschools for teaching the children the scientific facts about alcohol.\nHe replied that the syllabus was too crowded already!  Alcohol has\nclaimed more victims from humanity than all the wars and famines of all\nthe centuries; and yet our children were not to be taught the truth\nabout it because the syllabus was so crowded!  What is it they teach\nthat could compare in value with the truths of temperance and\nself-discipline?  Through a course of training so expensive that the\ncountryside is well-nigh bankrupt because of its cost, the children\npass and they go forth into the world unwarned of the rocks and shoals\non which the millions have perished....  That, at this time of day, we\nshould shut the doors of our schools against the knowledge of God, in\nwhose love alone men can find their healing, and against the teaching\nof truth and temperance, which alone can make children grow in\ncharacter and goodness, seems possible only on the supposition that we\nhave been bereft of our judgment.  'If they do abolish God from their\npoor bewildered hearts,' said Carlyle, 'all or most of them, there will\nbe seen for some length of time, perhaps for some centuries, such a\nworld as few are dreaming of.'\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nTHERE WERE IN THE SAME COUNTRY SHEPHERDS\n\n'He would denounce the horrors of Christmas until it almost made me\nblush to look at a hollyberry.'--EDMUND GOSSE'S _Father and Son_.\n\n\nThe world is moving so fast that, before each nightfall, yesterday is\nforgotten.  Sitting here before the fire I have been stirring up my\nmemory, and, out of the subconscious, queer recollections have emerged.\nI can see now the grim-faced Highland minister demonstrating in the\nmonth of December to his perfect satisfaction that the Founder of\nChristianity was born in midsummer, and that Christmas was but a pagan\nfestival sprinkled over with holy water so-called.  I think it was the\nfirst time I heard of Christmas.  That good man denounced the horrors\nof Christmas with such zest that I, too, would have blushed to look at\na hollyberry--only no holly grew in that part of the Isle.  And that\nwas so not because the Isle was remote and the folk spoke there an\nancient and little-known language that segregated them from the great\nlife of the world.  It was the same in great centres very conscious of\ntheir own culture.  It was really only yesterday that Walter Smith was\ndealt with by his presbytery for holding the first Christmas service in\nhis church in Edinburgh.  But we have travelled far since that\nparticular yesterday, and I am glad that the children of to-day will\nnever need to blush before a hollyberry.  For from the Solway to the\nPentland Firth the church bells everywhere to-day summon the people to\nkeep holy day and go on pilgrimage to Bethlehem.\n\n\nI\n\nThere was never a time when the people of this land needed more to go\non such a pilgrimage.  There are ample signs that Mammon has captured\nthe hearts of this generation.  The day is gone on which Ruskin\ndeclared that there is no wealth but life.  We have outlived that.  A\nfull bank account and an empty house--that is our modern wealth.  The\nrich flaunt their riches in a world seething with discontent.  And the\naforetime quiescent masses now demand that Mammon should smile on them.\nSociety may perish, but they must have their full share in the largesse\nof Mammon.  On the altar of that god duty and patriotism are laid as\nthe meet offering.  'Great is Mammon,' is the burden of the praise of\nour day.  And what a god before whom to bow the knee!\n\nIt is only when I go on pilgrimage to-day to the grotto in the rock in\nwhich the asses were stabled in Bethlehem and to the stall where the\nChild is laid that I can realise the vulgarity and the meanness of\nMammon.  Out of that manger there issued a power compared to which all\nother influences that moulded men are as the rushlight to the sun; in\nthat stable lies the fountain out of which sprang the river that has\nborne on its bosom for nineteen centuries all of beauty and of truth\nand of love wherewith humanity has been blessed; and yet all that came\nout of the direst poverty.  Mammon had no smile for the greatest and\nmost radiant thing in all the world's history.  Money secures at least\nfood and shelter, and it was because they had none that the innkeeper\nshut them out.  If they could have showed him a purse full of gold\npieces, he would soon have made room.  And all the life of this Jesus\nwas woven after that pattern.  The cheapest food sold then were\nsparrows.  It was because He was often sent to buy them that He knew\nthat two of them were sold in the market place for a farthing.  The\npatched garment is the symbol of poverty--or used to be!  And He knew\nall about garments being patched and patched until they were past\nmending.  At the eventide when the boy James brought a coat to be\nmended He heard His mother say with a weary sigh: 'I have mended this\nagain and again: nobody can keep boys in decent clothes; so different\nfrom girls; a new patch will just tear a bigger hole in the old.'\nOften He saw His mother cast a half-farthing into the treasury, for she\nhad nought else.  The tax-gatherer comes, and there isn't a coin to\npay.  Jesus gave much, but He never gave any money, for He had none to\ngive.  He was homeless for three years, deemed mad by His family, with\nno place where to lay His head.  A grave given in charity receives Him\nat the last.  The place of Jesus from the manger to the grave is among\nthe poorest of the poor.  He belonged to the great class of the\ndisinherited.  If the greatest thing on earth sprang from poverty such\nas this, then surely Christmas pours the contempt of heaven upon Mammon.\n\n\nII\n\nWe have only to look at him with eyes cleansed by gazing at the Child\nin the manger and we realise how tawdry a god this Mammon is.  What can\nhe do for us?  Nothing of any worth.  He has never minted a coinage\nwhich can buy the inspiration of a noble thought, which can purchase\nlove for the starved heart, or can endow a man with the vision and the\nfaculty divine.  One has but to consider a moment and he will realise\nthe poverty-stricken condition of Mammon's devotees.  They can command\nspeed on earth or in the air; they can fly a hundred miles an hour; but\nwhat is the good when at the end of the hundred miles they are as at\nthe beginning--sated, restless, and dissatisfied?  They can command no\nspeed by which they can escape from themselves.  And it is vain to wing\na flight upwards through the air if heaven be empty overhead; vain to\nalight five hundred miles away if on earth there be no temple, no holy\nday, no shrine at which to worship.  'You own the land,' said the poor\npainter to the new-rich who boasted his land: 'you own the land but I\nown the landscape.'  The great gift is to own the landscape.  And no\nmoney ever bought that.  The only thing Mammon can do is to secure\nfood, shelter, and clothes.  It can also secure freedom from work--but\nthat is a freedom shared with the tramp.  Life is greater far than\nlivelihood; and the worshippers of Mammon lose the very essence and the\nend of life in a vain pursuit of the means of living.\n\nThat is the witness raised by Christmas as it calls the nations to\nrealise the true greatness of man.  To a generation that has made life\na hectic rush after money and pleasure, Christmas testifies that to\nestimate any man by the money he owns is to blaspheme against the Child\nlaid in the manger.  The wealth of Croesus makes him but the prey of\nthe conqueror, and the dust of centuries has buried the pomp and glory\nof emperors.  But this Child, cradled in poverty, reigns from\ngeneration to generation.  The voice of an Alexander or a Napoleon\nwould to-day cause no heart to beat quicker; but millions would die for\nHim.  And that because He alone revealed to men the things that are\nunpurchasable, the riches that are unseen.  He alone made men realise\nthat a man's life consisteth not in the things that he possesseth, but\nrather in the thoughts that he thinks, in the motives that sway his\naction; in the ideals towards which he presses; in the God whom he\nworships and makes his own.  How great a revolution He made.  That one\nhour in the manger has changed the world.  Every time I sit down to\nwrite a letter and head it 1922 I bear witness to the truth--that the\nworld I know began when a Child laid in the manger brought to earth the\nrealisation that all the great and noble things in life can be\nmine--though my raiment be shabby and though my banker never thinks it\nworth his while to throw me even a word when I reluctantly pass in\nthrough his swing door.  What a wonderful new wine He brought, and how\ngenerously does He pour it into our bottles.  Still new--after nineteen\ncenturies!  Still bursting the old bottles on all sides!  I can be\nquite patient.  There is no need for passionately tearing them in\npieces.  Nineteen centuries!  What are they in the arithmetic of\neternity!  Give the Child time--and all the bottles of Mammon and\nvulgarity will at last be burst.\n\n\nIII\n\nNo wonder Christmas sends a glow of warmth round the heart, and causes\njoy bells to ring in the souls of even the drooping.  It is to-day as\nit was of old, when the disciples--poor, dull, purblind men--were\ndisputing even near the end as to which of them would have the greater\nposition and the greater wealth and honour.  And Jesus placed a little\nchild in the midst and said, 'Except ye be converted, and become as a\nlittle child, ye cannot enter the kingdom.'  And in a world weary of\ndisputing, sated with strife as to who is to have the higher place and\nthe greater portion, Christmas places the Child in the midst and says,\n'Except ye be converted...' What men need is not the sharing of a\nbooty, but the regenerating of a Spirit.  The faith, the trust, the\npurity, the love of the childlike spirit--that's what we need.  What we\ndo or what we get matters nought, if only that spirit be in the heart.\nOne man may whirl past in a Rolls-Royce, befurred, bejewelled, and may\nbe the most pauperised soul on earth; while the stone-breaker at the\nroadside may be the inheritor of all things and rich beyond all dreams.\nChristmas is the surety of that.  That was the wisdom of 'Stonecracker\nJohn,' who sang:--\n\n  'The good Lord made the earth and sky,\n    The river and the sea--and me!\n  He made no roads, but here am I\n    As happy as can be;\n  For it is just as if he said--\n  \"John, that's the job for thee.\"\n  And so in my appointed place,\n  By God's good grace,\n  I work, according to his plan,\n  And would not change with any man.'\n\nTo-day, as it has done for the centuries and the years that are so many\nthat one wearies in counting them, Christmas throws the halo of beauty\nover all shepherds abiding in the fields calling on their dogs; over\nall toilers in mines and workshops; over all stonebreakers and\nstreet-sweepers; over all mothers and all babes.  It proclaims to-day\nwith a voice whose certainty changes not that the man who serves Mammon\nand gains the world while he loses his soul makes a grievous and a\nprofitless barter.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nTHE FULNESS OF THE TIME\n\nIf there be no will guiding the affairs of men towards a predestined\nend, what a meaningless welter it all is!  What a record of wars and\nfeuds, of rising and of perishing empires, of civilisations born and\ncivilisations overwhelmed: in very truth\n\n          'A tale\n  Told by an idiot: full of sound and fury\n  Signifying nothing.'\n\nThere is unity and a new dignity in the tale when one gets up on a hill\nand sees it in far perspective.  Things did not happen by chance.\nThere was through it all a purpose at work, welding humanity together\nwith the cement of blood, throwing down the barriers of race and\nlanguage, silencing the sound of tumult and war until at last the song\nis heard on the plain of Bethlehem that has sung itself into the hearts\nof men, ushering in the dawn of peace and goodwill.  In the fulness of\nthe time the Child was laid in the manger.\n\n\nI\n\nEvery advance of humanity in its upward struggle has sprung from some\ndivine dissatisfaction.  It was the fulness of the time in that the\nworld, disillusioned and dissatisfied, realised its need.  The Greek\nfound no answer for their moral needs in the pantheon of gods that\nfilled the heart with the passion for beauty alone.  Socrates before\ndrinking the hemlock advised his disciples to search for another\nteacher; but that other could not be found.  The only remedy for the\nills of man that they discovered was that he should cut himself loose\nfrom the world--a gospel of suicide.  The Roman made a god of power.\nBut when he had conquered the world, invested it with roads and bridges\nand by force had imposed peace on it, then he confronted the awful\nmystery of his own personality, and his questioning was baffled by a\nsilence in which there was no voice nor any that answered.  His gods\nbecame objects of derision.  In the gratification of his bodily\ncravings he sought to lull the hunger of his soul.  At last Rome\npresented the dread spectacle of a Nero who was at once 'a priest, an\natheist, and a god.'  There is preserved a record which visualises the\nawful depths to which that pagan world descended.  Nero had murdered\nhis mother, and he comes back to Rome nervous as to how the people will\nreceive him.  But the citizens poured out to meet him in their\nthousands, and rent the welkin with their shouts of welcome--'Hail,\nNero, the god!'  If that world was to be saved, it had to be saved\nthen.  If God was ever to intervene in the affairs of men, He had to\nintervene then.  The extremity of man was God's opportunity.  The\nUnseen Ruler must either come and deliver a world such as that or\nabdicate.  The coming of the Child was a necessity.\n\n\nII\n\nIt is very hard to understand how things do happen; and our only\ncomfort is that we really understand nothing.  We have in these last\nyears been mesmerised into thinking that we understand a great deal\nwhen in reality we understand nothing at all.  We camouflage our\nignorance by speaking of law--but what is it?  Why do like causes\nproduce a like result always?  No answer.  We used to explain the\nheavens by gravitation.  What is it?  No answer.  We ushered in the new\nage of electricity.  What is it!  Silence!  There is no reason, then,\nfor rebelling against the fact that we cannot understand the greatest\nof all mysteries--the coming of God more fully into the lives of men.\nAll we can hope to do is to realise how natural it is that God should\nso come to men.  As the years pass that thought becomes more and more\nnatural.  In other days God was thought of as dwelling far removed from\nthe world.  That is not now the great thought regarding God.  'Whatever\nsort of being God may be,' writes William James, 'He is nevermore that\nmere external inventor of contrivances intended to manifest His glory\nin which our great-grandfathers took such satisfaction.'  (The\nconception of our great-grandfathers may have been limited; but it is\nmore important that we should try to be as good men as they were.)\nThis conception of 'an absentee God outside the world watching it go,'\nhas given place to another.  The world is now realised as spiritual\nthrough and through; the shrine of an indwelling life.  God is in the\nworld, has always been in the world, and man's reasoning and loving is\nbut a reflection of his Maker's reason and love.  Through all the weary\ncenturies God has been with men, in men, striving with their spirits,\nnever absent from them, the source of all their aspirations, visions,\nand dreams.  If that be so, it is the most natural thing in all history\nthat in the fulness of the time, when the need was greatest, God should\ncome in fuller measure into the lives that He had made.  Surely natural\nthat the glows and flashes preceding the dawn should at last break\nforth into the glory of the sunrise.  God, who has been with man from\nthe dawn, guiding and leading, at last in the noontide speaks with the\narticulate Word, making His purpose clear.  If once we realise that\nthere has never been an impassable chasm between God and man, then the\nincredible becomes credible.  For this is not an isolated event; it is\nrather the beginning of another great stage in man's spiritual\nevolution by which God comes and dwells more and more in the hearts of\nmen, becoming incarnate in lives risen from the dead; in souls renewed\nafter His image.\n\n\nIII\n\nWith us, too, it is the fulness of the time.  If God intervenes when\nthe need is sorest, and when man realises the need--then we can well\ncherish the expectation that another manifestation of God is at hand.\nNineteen centuries ago He came to a world whose religion was dead.\nWith us it is not dead; it is sore stricken.  The glow has vanished,\nand those who bow down in the house of God in our day do so largely\nfrom force of habit, and not because they believe.  Religion to-day\ncurbs few evils, and is powerless against the selfishness that\nsacrifices the well-being of nations on the altars of self-interest.\nAnd, just as in Rome the unrest of soul made the degenerate a prey to\nevery charlatan and soothsayer that came out of the East, so the\nspiritual hunger of our day brings men and women to crystal-gazers and\ntable-rappers, bowing down before every superstition, however gross.\nAnd if the Rome of the Caesars sought to allay its soul hunger at the\nbanquets of pleasure, so also with us.  Low forms of pleasure have led\nthe multitudes captive.  The London of Charles II. could not hold a\ncandle to the London or Glasgow of to-day in the way of refinements of\nmaterial sensation.  The old cry of 'bread and circuses' has given\nplace to the cry of dancing-halls and doles!  In that old world at last\nthere was no room for the cradle in the family life--the babe was shut\nout.  And so to-day.  There is every sign that God must again intervene\nand save, or the civilisation we know will be buried with the\ncivilisations of all the past.  The fountain of inspiration, of\ncleansing, of righteousness must be opened afresh, and its reviving\nwaters sent flowing over all the land.  Unless God does so come there\nis no hope.  But all history is the proof that He will so come.  We can\nhear the rumble of His chariot wheels as He comes.  Here and there the\nSpirit is moving on the face of the waters.  Of old it was shepherds\nand fishermen who first received the glad tidings.  That fishermen\nshould be the first to feel the coming outrush of spiritual power in\nour day is wholly natural.  The glad tidings of Christmas is that God\nis ever coming to His own.  The duty laid upon us is that we prepare\nHis way, and make room for Him.  It will be a new Edinburgh and a new\nGlasgow when the renewing Spirit shall have swept through them.  It is\nthe one hope.  In Melrose Abbey there is an old inscription, 'When\nJesus comes the shadows depart.'  Some monk who felt the shadows\ngathering round him realised Christ as a living presence--and the\nshadows were wafted away.  And he carved the words.  And our shadows\nwill vanish when He who lay in the manger will come again, in the\nfulness of His reviving and quickening Spirit.  Then God will again\nwork marvels in transfigured lives and in nations reborn.\n\n\nIV\n\nThere are some good people to whom the word Revival is anathema.  There\nhave always been such people.  'Their doctrines are most repulsive, and\nstrongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect to their\nsuperiors,' wrote the Duchess of Buckingham to Lady Huntingdon,\nregarding the early Methodists.  'It is monstrous to be told that you\nhave a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl the earth.\nThis is highly insulting, and I wonder that your Ladyship should relish\nany sentiment so much at variance with high rank and good breeding.'\nYet it was that same Revival of religion in the days of Wesley and\nWhitefield that saved England when the evil days befell in the end of\nthe eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.  There is\nno nobler figure in all history than that of John Wesley riding over\nthe whole country, reading as he rode, contesting all England for God,\neverywhere wakening the dead.  To duchesses and highly refined folk\nthat Revival seemed to be 'repulsive' and 'monstrous.'  Religion was\ngood enough in its own place, but it must not interfere with their\namusements.  They wanted their religion well iced.  To-day when only\nanother such outrush of spiritual energy can save a poor sick world,\nthere is no need to trouble about the mocker.  There is only reason to\nrejoice that there are manifest stirrings in the depths of human life\nwhich no earthly theory can explain.  Often and often on wearied men\nthere comes the breath of a new life, and armies, long worn out, arise\nand snatch redemption out of ruin.  The prelude to these triumphs of\nthe Spirit has always been a sense of expectation springing up\nmysteriously out of the depths.  That expectation is wholly natural.\nWe have come through the most awful carnival of blood and tears in the\nworld's history, and so far there has been no result commensurate with\nthe sacrifice.  The old world is dead and the new tarries while men are\nleft\n\n  'Wandering between two worlds, one dead,\n  The other powerless to be born,'\n\nIf man's extremity be God's opportunity, then, once more, it is the\nfulness of the time.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nVICTORY OUT OF RUIN\n\nThe world has always been a hard place for minorities.  Majorities are\ncapable of crimes which, as individuals, they would shrink from in\nhorror.  And no crimes that stain the pages of history can equal in\nghastly cruelty those which have been perpetrated under the influence\nof religious passions.  The Founder of Christianity was crucified at\nthe frenzied call of those who were the most devout and religious of\ntheir day.  The Pharisees prayed nine hours a day!  Their cry,\n'Crucify!  Crucify!' still rings in the ear.\n\n\nI\n\nHuman nature has not changed very much in these nineteen centuries.\nAnd the majority of mankind are still pretty much as they were.  There\nis not much good in getting suffused with sentiment over a minority of\none crucified so long ago.  It is more important to realise that the\ngrim tragedy is for ever and for ever being repeated.  It is a grim\nthought to think that the very passions of self-righteousness and\nself-interest which crucified the Galilean are now operating in His\nname.  In a little village in the Hebrides well known to me, four\nPresbyterian churches celebrate the Communion in August.  Here they\nare--the Parish Church; the United Free Church; the Free Church; the\nFree Presbyterian Church!  If you attended a service in any of these\nyou would not know any difference between them.  On all vital matters\nthey are at one.  But there they are in the very name of Christ\nnegating His purpose and breaking His law.  For His purpose is to unite\nmen together; bring them into the fellowship and unity of love.  And\nthey break up that small community into four fragments--and they do it\nfrom the highest motives and under the sanctions of the name of the\nHighest.  They act exactly as the Pharisees acted nineteen centuries\nago.  They too were moved by the highest motives; they too had a\npassion for the Sabbath.  The Christians to-day, like the Pharisee of\nold, make the gospel vain by their traditions.  If He came Himself and\nsaid to them, 'You are wrong: my law is that ye love one another: the\nsign of my faithful followers is the love their lives evince,' ... He\nwouldn't be listened to.  They would not cry 'Crucify.' ... No!  They\nwould only give Him a nickname and declare that He had no right\nprinciples!  ... But it isn't in remote villages one beholds that.  It\ncan be seen anywhere.  Moderators and bishops and dignitaries have met\nfor a quarter of a century in Edinburgh to knock at the door of heaven\nwith petitions asking God to unite them!  And they will meet\nanywhere--in licensed premises even--except in a church; they will do\nanything except have the Communion together....  And they go on\npraying!  To-day the very bigotry that sent the Lord stumbling to\nCalvary under a Cross is glorified by the name of Christ.  That to-day\nis His crucifixion.\n\n\nII\n\nThat, however, is but half a truth.  When we take long views we can\nrealise that there is no day in the year when we have more right to\ncherish the spirit of hope than on this day when the world waits for\nthe Easter joy bells: Rejoice, Rejoice.  The message of a day such as\nthis is that no cause that has in it the seed of righteousness, however\nfeeble it may be and however overwhelming its opponents, need give way\nto despair.  There never was a minority so feeble on the face of the\nearth as these Galileans whose Master had been crucified.  The cause\nwas lost.  They had not even understood what He had tried to teach\nthem.  While He spoke of a kingdom not of this world they could think\nof nothing but pitiful thrones such as Herod's!  They left Him in a\nminority of one--and that minority was crucified.  Nobody in all the\nwide world knew or understood why He hung there....  He who was to\nsmash the Gentiles, as the Jew believed, was there crucified by\nGentiles; He who was innocent was stamped for ever with the criminal's\nbrand--done to death with two thieves.  If ever there was an end made\nof any cause there was an end made of that personified by the Carpenter\nof Nazareth.  The majority trampled the minority into extinction.\n\nThe body can be crucified and can be sealed up in a tomb, but\nmajorities are powerless against the spirit.  When his disciples asked\nSocrates where they would bury him he replied: 'You can bury me\nanywhere if you can catch me!'  The soul can never be caught; can never\nbe sealed up in a tomb.  The wind bloweth where it listeth; and no\nwalls, however high, can imprison it; no tomb hold it.  Out of the dust\nthe new life arose--the life of the spirit.  And suddenly men realised\nthat a kingdom not of this world--an empire without legions--was not\nonly thinkable and possible, but was actually established.  So has it\nalways been since: the perishing of the body has been but the\ntriumphing of the spirit.\n\n\nIII\n\nOne of the miracles of history is the way in which that crucified ideal\narose and conquered; in which peasants and fishermen went forth to sow\nthe seed of an invisible kingdom beneath the feet of militarists and\ntyrants, who though they rooted it up could never destroy it, until at\nlast the minority was transformed into a majority.  And that same\nmiracle is for ever being repeated.  What happened then happens now.\nAnd there are two reasons for that.  The first is that man is much\nnobler than he is himself aware of.  Beneath the subliminal\nconsciousness there are untold riches--golden ore waiting to be mined.\nUnder the influence of the herd-instinct and of crowd-psychology a man\ncan on Friday yell, Crucify!  Crucify! but on Saturday he may enter the\nvalley of repentance and be made anew.  Memory awakes in him when he is\nalone.  He recalls the face and the words of the Crucified; doubts\narise as to whether it was right--that cry of Crucify.  No malefactor\ncould have borne himself like that....  Long-forgotten feelings are let\nloose.  Truly that Man had a regal spirit.  However much a man may\nsink, he never sinks below the capacity of feeling the contagion of a\ntriumphant spirit.  Where is the man who cannot thrill as he hears\nLivingstone say, 'I'll go anywhere, provided it is forward'?  It is in\nthat hidden depth the hope of humanity lies.  The cause that seems lost\nrallies to its side the multitudes that no sooner do the wrong than\nthey are smitten with shame therefor and repent thereof.  From the\nranks of its enemies the cause of righteousness ever recruits its most\nvaliant fighters.  The Sauls are transformed into Pauls, and powerless\nminorities into triumphing majorities.\n\nNot only are the laws of the spirit on the side of the righteous\nminority, but also the laws of the universe.  The cause of reform\ncannot ultimately be defeated because the unchanging laws of nature are\narrayed against evil.  The great ally of every righteous minority is\ndeath.  That was how Christianity conquered at the first.  The\nChristians lived righteous lives, and by the very laws of life outlived\nthe Pagans.  So is it now.  The life of self-indulgence and\nself-interest has no vitality to resist.  Death removes it.  The ranks\nof the devotees of pleasure are being swiftly depleted.  Death is the\ngreat ally of righteousness.  The multitude, who wanted to turn back to\nEgypt, 'died by the plague before the Lord' in the wilderness.  Some\nvirulent influenza came--and they hadn't the stamina to resist! ...\nThat's how majorities vanish and room is made for the vigorous and\nhealthy minority to possess the land.\n\n\nIV\n\nThe Calvaries of Christ are to-day everywhere.  Wherever a child\nhungers or perishes, wherever men and women decay and die, there He,\nwho identifies Himself with men, is again crucified.  Where little\nbabies die, 200 out of every thousand; where in proportion to the\nnumber of licensed premises is the death-rate among the babes--there He\nis crucified.  Here, in this capital city, an hour in the evening has\nbeen added to the hours on which the monopolists in alcohol prey on the\npeople, that more homes may be ruined and more children perish.  It\nseems utterly hopeless.  What is the use of trying to arouse people so\ndead to the decencies of life as this?  But, to-morrow, the city will\nbegin to be ashamed.  The Church will begin to rouse itself.  When Lord\nShaftesbury was toiling to free 35,000 children from five to thirteen\nyears in Lancashire alone from the Moloch of the factory he wrote--'The\nsinners are with me and the saints against me.' That is indeed weird:\nhow often has the Church looked on, indifferent, while wrong triumphed.\nThere is nothing more pathetic than to see the Church mustering up\ncourage to condemn what the world has already judged and set aside! ...\nBut to-day the message that comes across all the centuries to the heart\nof all minorities struggling for the right is this--'Be of good cheer:\nvictory is on the way: though it tarry, wait for it!'  The darkness of\nCalvary is but the prelude to the triumph of Easter morning.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSTAND UP, YE DEAD\n\n\n3rd Edition, 3s. 6d. net.\n\n'It is a book that shakes the heart.... We know no man who has seen\ninto the heart and verity of things more clearly, \"Awake thou that\nsleepest....\"  In the hands of a master in Israel the same thrilling,\ndisturbing cry will wake men from their apathy and complacency.'--_The\nBritish Weekly_.\n\n'One of our prophetic voices is Norman Maclean....  Some people do not\nknow how dead they are, and others do not know how much life there is\nin the apparently dead. Let both sorts read this book and awake....  A\nterrible chapter is called \"The Slum in the Man.\"'--_Public Opinion_.\n\n'Unless you have the heart of a Kaiser it must thrill you through and\nthrough.'--_From Defeat or Victory_, by ABTHUR MEE and J. STUART HOLDEN.\n\n'There are few writers in whom sympathetic insight and uncompromising\nmoral judgment, mystic intuition and prophetic fire, are so perfectly\nblended.'--_The Christian_.\n\n\nHODDER AND STOUGHTON LTD.  LONDON\n\n\n\n\n_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_\n\n\n  DWELLERS IN THE MIST\n  HILLS OF HOME\n  CAN THE WORLD BE WON FOR CHRIST?\n  THE BURNT-OFFERING\n  AFRICA IN TRANSFORMATION\n  THE GREAT DISCOVERY\n  STAND UP, YE DEAD\n  GOD AND THE SOLDIER\n  LIFE OF JAMES CAMERON LEES","title":"Victory out of Ruin","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":30758}