THE SUPREME NEED
'To me through these thin cobwebs Death and Eternity sat
gazing.'--THOMAS CARLYLE.
Many eager hearts looked for the redemption of mankind to come out of
Armageddon. Aceldama has been cleansed, but redemption seems to tarry.
And nobody need be surprised. Out of filth and mud and horror the
cleansed soul does not emerge. There was a king long ago who saw ten
horrible plagues succeed each other until at last the first-born lay
dead--but he was the same until the sea overwhelmed him. And man is
the same in all ages. Cataclysms do not work renewal. Miracles do not
regenerate. Not even the millions dead will mean a new earth or a new
Britain. That new Britain of the heart's desire will only come if men
and women whose souls are quickened will arise and make their world
anew. The world's supreme need is not reorganisation, but a new spirit.
I
The pathos of humanity is that men are ever the victims of illusion.
After Waterloo, when a conflict that waged for a quarter of a century
ended, our fathers hailed the millennial dawn. But, alas! Peterloo
succeeded Waterloo. The nation was seized with the passion for riches.
To get rich quick the nation had to be reorganised on an industrial
basis, and the people were swept out of the green of England and out of
the straths and valleys of Scotland into sunless, airless cities. A
population that formerly lived in cottages was now piled into barracks.
In mills above ground and in mines beneath little children were set to
labour. Social conditions were created that destroyed two hundred
babies out of a thousand in the first year of life. These conditions
still continue. The pages of the Press in these last days show how
horrifying they still are. There are streets in our cities which are
sacrificial altars on which the little children are offered to the
social Moloch.... These things came after Waterloo. The cannon-fodder
of war became the cannon-fodder of industry. The small minority that
got rich quick were balanced by the vast multitude who got poor quick.
And for four generations the ugly streets have presented the spectacle
of files of men begging for work--begging for permission to exist!
To-day the files wait for the dole. The folly and the greed have
worked out the inevitable consequences. History goes on monotonously
repeating itself.
II
And just as a hundred years ago men thought they were going to make a
new and better world by reorganisation, so also is it to-day. On all
hands the cry is reorganise. In Paris and in Glasgow it is the same.
In Paris they are to save the world from all future bloodshed by a
treaty. That childlike faith in treaties!--they have forgotten that
treaties were unable to save even one fragment of Europe eight years
ago. But this time the treaty is to be so very big that it will save.
But, alas! no treaty is of value beyond the truth in the soul of its
signatories--and of that there is never a word. No treaty can exorcise
greed, ambition, and lust out of the heart--and it is from these wars
spring. If the hearts of the nations be not changed, one more mirage
will be added to the many humanity has pursued across the burning
sands, strewing the barren desert with bleached bones.
In London or Glasgow or Hamilton or Fife it is the same. There also
the new earth is to come through redistribution. Society will be
differently organised. The voice that to-day cries, 'What is yours is
mine,' will to-morrow shout victory. The day of material good will
come through the maximum of pay for the minimum of work. The new order
will banish all our ills. But the question emerges--How is the new
order to be worked? If the new order is to bless humanity it must be
guided and administered by men of truth, unselfishness, and honour.
Unless there be such, then the mastery of capital will be only
succeeded by the tyranny of the mob. None asks how such men are to be
found. The hope of the new world lies not so much in better machinery
as in better men. The men in the Cabinets adjusting the map of the
world and the men in the shipyards and the mines are alike in this,
that they forget that man's supreme need is regeneration and not
reorganisation.
III
It is on that ultimate fact--that the supreme need of the day is a new
spirit--that the Church seeks to fix the attention of the nation. The
Church has only one purpose--to make God blaze forth once more before
the eyes of men. In that alone lies the salvation of the future. The
great host of the toilers may adopt the watchword 'Brotherhood,' but
that is only half a truth. A brotherhood that knows nothing of a
common fatherhood will not stand the day of strain. The Church
therefore proclaims the full truth that the brotherhood of men only
realises itself in the Fatherhood of God. To the nations seeking a
unity by way of parchments, the Church must also proclaim that there
can be only one ultimate unity for nations--the only unity that will
stand all strain--the unity of the Spirit. The Church has the one
message for warring nations and for warring classes: 'One is your
Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.' The Church alone can
bring home to the hearts of men that the way of honour is that of
service, and the path of greatness that of sacrifice. Looking back on
that long road by which humanity has marched forward even to this hour,
it is strange to think how the great days on which the epochs turned
have not been the days of mammon-worship or of military glory, but the
days on which the Cross suddenly blazed forth in the heavens, as it did
to Constantine, when the summons rang--'By this sign conquer.' It was
then that men set their faces to climb upward, realising that the
greatest thing a man can do with his life is to lay it down. And not
by a cross blazing in heaven, but by millions of crosses round which
the winds moan and sigh on earth, does God summon us to-day. It is
that summons the Church would sound. By the spirit of self-sacrifice,
by the law of love--by these alone can the world be saved.
IV
The remedy for every woe on earth is the one commandment--'Love one
another, as I have loved you.' It is so divinely simple--perhaps that
is why the generations refuse to listen. The measure of the law is its
greatness--'As I have loved you.' To obey that law means--blood. It
was the greatness of the sacrifice that was made and the greatness of
the sacrifice demanded that stirred the hearts of men to life. 'He
loved me, and gave Himself for me,' the Christian said, and with
rapture in his heart he looked at others and said, 'He loved that man
also, and gave Himself for him. I cannot rob or murder or leave in
misery a man for whom Christ's hands were nailed to the cross.' That
was what revolutionised the world long ago. It is the only way in
which the world can be revolutionised to-day. If only the world can be
brought to listen to the law of love, the world will become new.