_THE TRIUMPHS OF ENDURANCE_
"By your endurance ye shall make your souls your own." If the origin
of this saying were unknown, one could fancy much ingenious conjecture
about it; but no one, I think, would attribute it to an English
source. An Englishman's idea of self-realization is action. If
he is to be truly himself he must be doing something; life for
him means energy. To be laid on one side, and to exist only as
a spectator or a sufferer, is the last method of making his soul
his own which would occur to him. _Dolce far niente_ is a phrase
which could never have originated on English soil. The greater the
difficulties by which he is confronted, the more gnawing becomes
the Englishman's, hunger for action. "Something must be done!" is
his instinctive cry when dangers or perplexities arise, and he
is feverishly eager to do it. What exactly "it" should be, and
how it may be most wisely done, are secondary, and even tertiary,
considerations. "Wisdom is profitable to direct"; but the need
for wisdom is not so generally recognized in England as the need
for courage or promptitude or vigour.
Some of the shallower natures find a substitute for action in speech.
If only they talk loud enough and long enough, they feel that they
are doing something valuable towards the desired end, and they
find others, still weaker than themselves, who take their words
at their own valuation. Who does not recall moments of the present
war when the man-in-the-street has exclaimed, "That was a splendid
speech of Blower's! I feel now that we are on the right line"; or,
"After what Bellowell said last night, there can be no going back
to the discredited policy"? The man-in-the-street did not realize
that Blower's words are only articulated air, or that Bellowell
could speak with equal effect whether his brief were to defend
Belgium or to annex her. But alike the Englishman who acts and
the Englishman who talks look askance on the people who think. Our
national history is a history of action, in religion, in politics,
in war, in discovery. It is only now and then that an Englishman
can allow himself a moment for contemplation, for the endeavour
to "see into the life of things," for contact with those spiritual
realities of which phenomena are only the shadows. Burke did it,
but then he was an Irishman. Lord Beaconsfield did it, but then
he was a Jew. Gladstone did it, but then he was a Scotsman. May
I add that the present Prime Minister does it, but then he is a
Welshman? Englishmen, as a rule, are absorbed in action; it is
to them a religion, and it takes the place of a philosophy.
At this moment all England is acting, from the King and the War
Cabinet to the children who play at soldiers in the gutter. There
is no distinction of class, or sex, or temperament. All alike feel
that they must be doing something to win the war, and that they
would die or go mad if they were restrained from action. Limitations,
physical or mental, incapacities for effort, restrictions of
opportunity, gall as they never galled before. To compare great
things with small, the whole nation pulsates with the spirit of
the fiercely contested cricket-match:
"Oh, good lads in the field they were,
Laboured and ran and threw;
But we that sat on the benches there
Had the hardest work to do!"
Action, then, is the creed and the consolation of the English race,
and God forbid that we should disparage that on which national
salvation depends. The war must be won by action; but in the strain
and stress of these tremendous days we are tempted to forget that
there is something to be won or lost besides the war. It is possible
to conquer on the Western front, and at the same time to be defeated
on the not less important field of moral being. The promise which
heads this paper was uttered in full view of an impending agony
which should crush religion and civilization into powder. We can
realize the consternation with which a patriotic audience heard
those premonitions from the lips of a patriotic Teacher; but in
the midst of all that was harrowing and heart-rending came the
promise of triumph through endurance. "Ye shall make your souls
your own." The gloomy and the cheerful prediction were alike made
good.
"The East bow'd low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain;
She let the legions thunder past,
And plunged in thought again.
"So well she mused, a morning broke
Across her spirit grey;
A conquering, new-born joy awoke,
And fill'd her life with day."
The Roman Eagles led a momentary triumph, but they fled before the
newly discovered Cross. Endurance won.
And so it has been from that time to this. The triumphs of endurance
have no end. The barbarism of the Cæsars, the barbarism of Islam,
the barbarism of Odin and Thor, all in turn did their uttermost
to destroy the new religion. Persecution fell, not on armed men
strong to resist, but on slaves and women and boys and girls. "We
could tell of those who fought with savage beasts, yea, of maidens
who stept to face them as coolly as a modern bully steps into the
ring. We could tell of those who drank molten lead as cheerfully
as we would the juice of the grape, and played with the red fire
and the bickering flames as gaily as with golden curls." These
were the people who by endurance made their souls their own; and,
by carrying endurance even unto death, propagated the faith for
which they gave their lives. It did not take Rome long to discover
that "the blood of Christians is seed."
The victorious power of endurance is not yet exhausted; but, on
the other hand, the peril of moral defeat must never be ignored. It
was a strange coincidence that the most trying phase of a four-years'
war should have occurred in the week which, for Western Christendom,
commemorates the supreme example of endurance. As far as action
is concerned, the national will is not in the slightest danger
of collapse. The British nation will plan, and work and fight for
ever, if need be. Our only danger is in the moral field. Though
our power of action is undiminished, our power of endurance may
ebb. We may begin to cry, in our impatience, "Lord, how long?";
to repine against the fate which condemns us to this protracted
agony; to question within ourselves whether the cause which we
profess to serve is really worth the sacrifices which it entails.
It is just by mastering these rebellious tendencies that we can
make our souls our own. If we went into the war believing in the
sacredness of Freedom, Brotherhood, and Right against Might, it
would be a moral collapse to emerge from it believers in tyranny,
imperialism, and the rule of the strong. "He that endureth to the
end shall be saved." On that "end" we must keep heart and eye
unflinchingly fixed; and strive to add one more to the age-long
triumphs of endurance.