Produced by Al Haines
THE GREAT DISCOVERY
BY
NORMAN MACLEAN
"Had I stood aside when in defiance of pledges to which my kingdom was
a party, the soil of Belgium was violated and her cities laid desolate,
when the very life of the French nation was threatened with extinction,
I should have sacrificed my honour, and given to destruction the
liberties of my Empire and of mankind."
_Proclamation by King George V._
GLASGOW
JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS
PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY
1915
PUBLISHED BY
JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW
Publishers to the University
MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD. LONDON
New York ... The Macmillan Co.
Toronto .... The Macmillan Co. of Canada
London ..... Simpkin, Hamilton and Co.
Cambridge .. Bowes and Bowes
Edinburgh .. Douglas and Foulis
Sydney ..... Angus and Robertson
MCMXV
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
DWELLERS IN THE MIST.
HILLS OF HOME.
THE BURNT OFFERING.
CAN THE WORLD BE WON FOR CHRIST?
AFRICA IN TRANSFORMATION.
TO
J. P. CROAL
TO WHOM THIS BOOK OWES
ITS EXISTENCE
Preface
Six articles which the writer contributed to _The Scotsman_ constitute
this book. Four of these, which appeared under the title "In Our
Parish," were, in response to requests, re-printed by _The Scotsman_ as
leaflets, and in that form had a circulation that reached an aggregate
of 100,000. One of the articles (now Chapter II.), which was published
on February 14, 1914, has been revised and somewhat enlarged. The rest
are reprinted substantially as they were originally written.
In these last months there has come to the nation a spiritual and
ethical revival. Life will never again be what it was in the last long
summer days ere the guns began to speak. It will be a better world
than it has yet been. The nation is being saved as by fire, and in the
fire much dross will be consumed. The conscience of the State has been
stirred, and it cannot in the future acquiesce in the continuance of
the social evils which are gnawing at the nation's heart. The fate of
the Empire in the long years to come will depend more on the fight for
social renewal in the midst of the streets than on red battlefields.
To the men who have stood between the race and destruction the State
owes a debt which it can only repay by such measures of social
regeneration as will make possible for every man and woman to realise
the thrill and the joy of life. These pages only represent an effort
to portray the first stirring of that newly awakened consciousness of
God and of duty which was felt in every parish throughout the Empire,
and which is destined to transform the world.
Contents
I. THE GREAT DISCOVERY
II. THE REVIVAL OF PATRIOTISM
III. THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS
IV. THE POWER OF PRAYER
V. THE VICTORY
VI. THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN
I
The Great Discovery
I
While the thing is still fresh in my mind I will try to put it down on
paper--the incredible thing that has happened in our parish. When we
had least thought about life's great things, we have come face to face
with the greatest.
We had been for long years living on the surface of things. The sun
basked on the slopes of the hills, purple at eve; we came back from the
offices in town, plunged through the tunnel, and hastened to our
gardens. We lifted up our eyes to the hills, and our security seemed
as immovable as their crests soaring above the little dells that were
haunts of ancient peace around their foundations.
Long years of ease dimmed our vision. The church bell rang in vain for
many of us. Those who had six whole days in the week to devote to
their own pleasure began to devote the seventh also to that same end.
The day of peace was becoming a day of unrest.
Thus it was with us when, with the suddenness of a lightning flash, the
incredible overtook us.
***
If only one could put it into words! But words can never express this
sudden meeting of man and God when that meeting was least expected.
It was heralded by the booming of guns across the sea. The great city
lay slumbering between us and the shore, but over the turrets and
spires it came--boom, boom--under the stars. It was war. That
far-away echo might not itself be the grim struggle of death, but it
was its harbinger. Over all the seas death would soon be riding on the
billows. Faces became stern. Good-byes were spoken.
Ah! that word "Good-bye," which we hear every day, and which, like
those old coins which have passed from hand to hand so long until at
last the image and superscription are gone, had lost all trace of its
original meaning, retaining nothing but a faint aroma of courtesy,
which sometimes vanished in the inflection of the voice until the word
became only a discourteous dismissal--that word was born for us anew.
We heard it on the lips of mothers clinging to the hands of their sons,
who were summoned away to join their regiments, and as white lips said
"Good-bye" to those whose blood was to water the fair fields of France,
we suddenly realised what it meant. The word, meaningless yesterday,
to-day expressed the greatest wish that the lips of man can utter--God
be with thee. On the mother's lips the word was the commitment of her
boy to the charge of the encompassing God. Then, when the harvest was
ripening on the slopes and the drum sounded "Come," and the young and
the strong went forth with a smile to the great harvesting of death, we
learned again the meaning of a phrase. But we were yet to learn the
meaning of a word.
It is in the darkness that the stars appear and the immeasurable
abysses of the infinite universe, and it was when the dusk sank into
the deep night that the word rose high in the firmament of life and
burned red into our souls. And that word was God.
It seemed so incredible to us that we should need that old word. We
were so powerful and so rich. Our faith was strong, but it was in the
reeking tube and in the smoking shard, and in the number of our
Dreadnoughts. Then all these things seemed to fail us. A nightmare
seemed to fall on us--a nightmare which lifted not night or day. Our
soldiers were driven back, back, back. They fought by day and marched
by night, and we heard in the night watches the beating of their
wearied feet, blood stained.
Was there to be no end to that tramp, tramp of men yielding before
death? Was the Empire reared by the heroism of generations to crumble
under our feet? The ghastly deeds of shame--were they to come to our
doors! We looked at our children, and they could not understand the
light in our eyes. These deeds of hell--they might occur even now
under the shadow of our hills. It was then that the word began to
blaze in the heavens. And the word was--God.
***
We had built a new church in our parish, that those who built pleasant
houses on the slopes, fleeing from the restless city that lay below,
might have room to worship. But the desire to worship seemed to be
dying of attrition. And the old church where the quarriers and farm
servants assembled and worshipped in an atmosphere that on a warm day
became so thick that one could cut it with a knife--that old church
would have been quite big enough to hold all who came, for the instinct
to pray seemed to be dying. And many, because the new church was now
too big, regretted the old.
Then, suddenly, the new church was filled to the door. Men and women
discovered the road leading down to the hollow where the church stands
amid the graves of the generations. With wistful faces they turned
towards it. While the bell rang they stood in groups among the graves.
And if you listened there was but one word--war, war, war. Over and
over again just that one word. Until the bell was silent, and they
turned into the now crowded church.
As I sat there and cast a glance around me, I felt a sudden amazement.
Those who never before had come down the steep brae when the bell was
ringing were sitting here and there just as if they had been there
every Sunday when the beadle, with head erect, ushers the minister to
the pulpit and snips him in. (Though the church is new, the minister
is yet snipped in by the beadle--a lonely prisoner there on his perch,
and it is an uncanny sound to hear the click of that snip shutting in
the solitary man.)
In the pew in front of me sat a burly man with a head like a dome. He
never came to church. When I met him he would stand for an hour in the
lane among the hawthorns explaining his views. Prayer was mere
superstition. Cosmic laws unchanging and unchangeable held the
universe in their grasp. To ask that one of these laws should be
altered for a moment that a boon might be conferred on us was to ask
that the universe might be shattered. Prayer was immoral, the asking
for what could not be granted, and what we knew could not be granted.
If he went to church it would be hypocrisy on his part.
And thus it came that when the farm servants came up the Gallows road
on their way to church on a summer morning, they often heard the whirr
of my friend's mowing machine as he mowed his lawn. It was the way he
took of letting the parish know that culture could have no dealings
with effete superstitions.
***
And yet there he sat in front of me with a hymn-book which he picked up
from the shelf at the door, where such books are piled for the use of
camp-followers. The tune of the opening Psalm was Kilmarnock, and my
friend sang it in a way which showed that his mother had trained him
well. Then I forgot him, but after a while something like a stifled
sob in front of me brought him again to my consciousness.
The minister began to pray for the King's forces "on the sea, on the
land, and in the air." My mind was playing round the words "in the
air," for they were an intrusion into the familiar order--an
innovation! Every invention of man seemed doomed to become a weapon in
the hand of the devil. But the prayer went on--for the sailors keeping
their watches in the darkness of the night that God might watch over
them, that through their unfaltering courage our shores might be
inviolate; for the soldiers now facing the enemy, grappling with death,
that God might succour them, covering their heads in the day of battle.
"Break Thou down the fierce power of our enemies," cried the minister
suddenly, "that with full hearts we may praise Thee, the God of our
fathers."
A great hush fell on the crowded church. The shut eyes saw the red
battlefields, with the lines swaying to and fro, while the shrapnel
burst and the aeroplanes whirred in the smoke of the cannon. The cries
of men suddenly smitten smote on the inner ear. It was then that the
great thing happened.
All of a sudden the voice broke, recovered, and broke again, and the
minister was swept away from the well-ordered, beautiful words he had
prepared. He began to speak of the stricken hearts at home, of fathers
and mothers to whom their sons would never return, of women in empty
houses with their husbands laid in nameless graves, of little children
who would never learn to say "Father" ... It was then that my friend
stifled a sob. There was Something after all, Someone greater than
cosmic forces, greater than law--with an eye to pity and an arm to
save. There was God.
And my friend's son was with the famous regiment that was swaying to
and fro, grappling with destiny. He was helpless--and there was only
God to appeal to. There comes an hour in life when the heart realises
that instinct is mightier far than that logic which is, after all is
said, only the last refuge of the feeble-minded. There came like the
sudden lifting of a curtain the vision of a whole nation--nay, of races
girdling the whole earth--to whom the same high experience has come.
Everywhere the sanctuaries filled, the eyes turned upward, for instinct
is mightier than reason. The smoke of battle has revealed the face of
God.
***
With us in the parish churches of Scotland the great thing is the
sermon. But to-day it is different; the great thing now is prayer.
And the minister preached about prayer. He set forth in clear and
ordered language, with a felicitous phrase now and then lighting up his
sentences, that prayer was not a mere relic of fanatical superstition
but a mighty power. He discussed with a wealth of learning whether God
had shut Himself in behind a prison-house of cosmic laws that made it
impossible for Him to answer prayer. He reasoned the worshippers cold.
But there in that hour reason was bound to give way before intuition.
"If I am free," cried the preacher, "to rush to the help of my child
when he crieth in terror; and if, when the creatures of His hand cry to
God He is bound and cannot help or soothe, then He is poorer than I, so
great a thing is freedom." Prayer was not mere spiritual gymnastics.
A God immured in cold laws, barred for ever from the play of love or
tenderness, would be the one being in the universe most to be pitied.
The Creator did not sit deaf and dumb on the Throne of indifference
answering nothing, doing nothing. History was the proof that
Righteousness was throned at the core of the universe, for at the last
right ever prevailed.
Then the measured tones went on to speak of the difficulty of believing
in the efficacy of prayer when Christians faced Christians in mortal
conflict, and they both cried for victory--both the children of the One
Father crying for victory over each other. But the difficulty was of
appearance only. For the only prevailing prayer was prayer in the name
of Christ. "Whatsoever ye shall ask _in My name_ that will I do." To
ask in His name was to ask in His spirit--the spirit of humility,
self-sacrifice, and love--the spirit of self-surrender to the _will_
supreme. The question was which of the prayers for victory was prayer
in the name of Christ....
This was clear, convincing, but cold. Only at rare intervals does the
minister of our parish give way to passion. Suddenly there came a wave
of emotion. He flung his head back, and his eyes glowed. His voice
vibrated through the church. "When I think," he exclaimed, "of the
things that have been done with the name of God on men's lips; of
atrocities such as the unspeakable Turk never perpetrated; of war waged
not upon to-day but upon the centuries of faith that reared great
cathedrals now in flames; of women and children laid upon the reeking
altars of human passion; and all this in the name of culture, the
culture of the superman who deems himself superior to the Ten
Commandments--then, I say, may God grant that the culture which beareth
such fruit may perish from off the face of the earth. Prayer for the
triumph of such a cause cannot be in Christ's name...."
But the preacher never got any further.
This was what happened, and I am afraid some will not believe me, for a
Scotsman in church is a stoic, motionless and dumb, as he listens to
the Word. But all the traditions of the parish were snapped in a
second. In the side gallery sat the General, sitting as he always does
with his back to the minister. This he does that he may mark who are
in church of his servants and tenants, and who absent.
When I read of the nobles in France who went to the scaffold with a
jest in the days of the Terror, I always think of the General. He is
that sort of man. To-day, little by little, as the sermon went on, he
turned round. At last he was facing the pulpit. His gleaming eyes
were fixed on the preacher. His son was dead. And when the words rang
through the church, may God grant that such culture may perish ... the
General sprang to his feet. "Amen" rang his voice through the church.
There was a sudden movement; as one man they all rose to their feet.
Hands were lifted up to heaven. "Amen," "Amen," they cried--and then
there rose a cheer--muffled, but still a cheer. In the pulpit the
words died on the preacher's lips. He seemed as one suddenly stricken.
He gazed bewildered over the sea of faces. They sank back into the
pews as though suddenly ashamed.
The last man to sit was my friend, who stood to the last with uplifted
hand. I think it was he who cried "Hear, hear"--the only sign he gave
of his long absence from church. The sermon was never finished. The
preacher in a low voice said, "Let us pray." And he humbled himself as
one who enters the valley of humiliation. And then he gave out this
psalm:--
Now Israel
May say, and that truly,
If that the Lord
Had not our cause maintained;
* * * * *
Then certainly
They had devoured us all.
* * * * *
But blessed be God,
Who doth us safely keep,
And hath not giv'n
Us for a living prey
Unto their teeth,
And bloody cruelty.
* * * * *
This psalm as we sang it that day was a paean of triumph. The clouds
suddenly broke. We heard our fathers singing it in their dark days.
The melody wedded to the words soared in exultant triumph, wailed like
the cry of the shingle swept by the surf; the sighing of the wind over
the heather was in it, and the hissing of the storm through the spray.
It was fierce as devouring death; it was gentle as a mother crooning
over her child. It put iron into the blood of our fathers as they sang
it.
It was nerved by such a hymn that the sailors of Queen Elizabeth swept
the main, that the Puritans wrestled with principalities and powers,
that a handful of moors-men levelled despotism and tyranny to the
ground. It swept through our blood like flame as we in our day of
stress now sang it. We, too, would pull down strongholds and turn to
flight the armies of the alien. In all ages the cause of freedom
triumphed, and that cause was ours. We had entered on conflict with
clean hands and, God helping us, we would wage it with clean hands.
The clouds suddenly broke and the light of victory irradiated our
faces. There came overwhelmingly the realisation that there was a
power behind us mightier far than sword or shell--even the Lord God
Omnipotent. And that was how we made the greatest of all
discoveries--we found God.
***
Yesterday morning I went early to the station, and there in the booking
office I found my friend talking to the ticket-collector. The
ticket-collector is a philosopher, and he comes to church, because he
loves the old psalm tunes. But when one of our parishioners who goes
now and then to Keswick comes to the booking office, the
ticket-collector calls him in and reasons with him gently.
"Mahn, there's naething in it," he says; "I can tell you for a fact
there's naething in it--all a whack of fables." "Some day you'll find
out to your cost that there's something in it," flashes the man from
Keswick. "If ye wad only reid philosophee," says the ticket-collector,
"ye would ken better." But to-day my friend and the ticket-collector
had their heads close together, and I only heard the conclusion of
their argument. "Mahn," said the ticket-collector, "I am beginning to
think there may be something in it."
And in the evening near the top of the brae I saw the General standing
erect with his little cane in his hand. He was talking to the
shoemaker, the greatest Radical in the parish--one of a party with
which the General has no dealings. But they talked like brothers. For
the shoemaker has a son fighting at the front, and his heart is sore
troubled within him. And the General's son is dead. And as I came up
the brae I saw the General putting his hand on the shoemaker's shoulder
and turn away, walking slowly up the brae. The old shoemaker saluted
and came down the brae. There was a tender look in the old man's eye
as he greeted me.
In our parish we have truly made the greatest of all discoveries. We
have found God, and, finding Him, we have found each other. The man
who in his madness kindled the lurid flames of war little dreamed of
this fire which he kindled.
II
The Revival of Patriotism
II
There has come to us in these days a revival of the spirit of
patriotism. That revival has come when it was sorely needed. In days
of unclouded prosperity other gods called forth our devotion and
enthusiasm, but the God of our Fathers who made us a great nation and
sent us to sow the seeds of righteousness beside all waters, bestowing
upon us empire and might, was well-nigh forgotten.
For the new man "words like Empire, Patriotism, Duty, Honour, Glory and
God" had little or no meaning. Causes for which the fathers died could
not evoke an added heart-beat from their sons. They cared so little
for the mighty empire which they inherited that they contemplated the
bloodshed of civil war--so hot was their zeal for party and so cold
their love for the state.
It was necessary that discipline should come. And that discipline
came, shaking the very foundations of our national life. Its first
fruit is that the smouldering fires of patriotism have broken forth
once more into bright flame; and that everywhere the hearts of the
people have been stirred by the call to arise and endure hardness that
the goodly heritage of empire perish not. And preachers in a thousand
pulpits have sounded the trumpet-note of duty and of patriotism.
***
It has been said that preachers should aim at making the churches
sanctuaries of peace, within whose walls the echoes of the guns and the
cries of the perishing should not penetrate. Some have even said that
Christianity, so far from fostering the spirit of patriotism, is in
reality hostile to it. "Patriotism itself as a duty," says Lecky, "has
never found any place in Christian ethics, and strong theological
feeling has usually been directly hostile to its growth."
No doubt there is something to be said for that view. The attitude of
the early Christians towards the Roman Empire was not that of
patriotism. The clear shining of the heavenly Jerusalem so dazzled
their eyes that this world, and the temporal empire occupying its
stage, seemed but as a shadow. Their devotion to the Unseen King left
little room for loyalty to the earthly ruler. In the glorious
consciousness of his citizenship in heaven, it was a small thing in the
estimation of St. Paul that he was also a Roman citizen--but he did not
forget it. But when the earthly ruler persecuted, and burnt, and threw
the Christians to the lions, or slaughtered them to make a Roman
holiday, then the poor victims cannot be blamed for not being patriots.
And the Church in the mediaeval period, organised in the mighty
hierarchy of Rome, did not tend to foster a national spirit of
patriotism. In those days when the Emperor Theodosius made penance in
the Cathedral of Milan and Ambrose declared that "the Church is not in
the empire, but the Emperor in the Church"; or in those later days when
Hildebrand promulgated the doctrine that the temporal power was subject
to the spiritual power, and kings and emperors were only vassals of the
Church, and Henry V. was left three days standing barefooted in the
snow waiting humbly to see the Pope at Canossa--in those days certainly
Christianity sought to foster not the sense of national loyalty, but
that of devotion towards that holy Catholic and universal Church whose
visible head was the Pope. Christianity placed the Pope on the throne
of the Caesars, and sought to evoke towards him a patriotism which
transcended nationality. But the Reformation gave its death blow to
Hildebrandism, and the Pope no longer usurped the temporal Thrones of
Europe. And there came the throb of the awakening spirit of
nationality. The spirit of patriotism stirred once more the slumbering
races.
***
The question whether patriotism is a fruit of Christianity must be
answered not by reference to what men did in the name of their
religion--for men are fallible--but by the precept and example of the
Founder of Christianity. He was a Jew, and of all races the Jew was
the most patriotic. An exile by the rivers of Babylon, the Israelite
refused to forget Zion. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right
hand forget its cunning"--that was the cry wherewith his unconquerable
soul faced an overwhelming destiny. And in this respect Jesus Christ
was true to His race. He was a patriot. He worshipped in the
synagogues, and went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, because He loved the
national institutions of His country. One note of true patriotism is
anguish. It is when love is great that the folly and sin of the person
beloved pierce the heart.
The patriotism of the Founder of Christianity expressed itself in a cry
of agony which has reverberated through the centuries--"O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are
sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together,
even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!
Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." That cry is the measure
of His patriotism.
Judged, then, by the example of its Founder, Christianity must produce
the spirit of love and loyalty towards one's own country. There was a
patriotism before Christianity, but it was that of arrogance,
aggression, and self-glorification. It was a patriotism which meted
out only contempt to other races. To the Jew the Greek was only a
Gentile dog; to the Greek the Jew was only a contemptible Barbarian.
But the patriotism which is animated by the Christian spirit is far
other. It is not the vaunting of pride nor the shouting of vulgar
ditties. It seeks the glory of its own country, but the glory it seeks
is the glory of the greater service rendered to humanity. Conscious of
its own defects, it does not condemn others. With eyes cleansed from
prejudice, it beholds the good in other races. It seeks the first
place for its own nation because it acts the noblest, loves the best.
All the elements which make up the strong power of patriotism--love of
family, love of neighbours, love of race, love of country--Christianity
has purified them all. True patriotism is, then, a fruit of the
Christian religion, a virtue which falls to be inculcated by the
Church. If Christianity be the projection of the Christ-life into the
midst of every generation, then the life that reflects the beauty of
Christ must be a life animated by the deepest love of one's country.
***
It was Dean Stanley who rendered God thanks in Paisley Abbey for that
Scotsmen were "citizens of an Empire so great, members of a Church so
free." In the building up of the Empire Scotsmen have borne a great
share of toil and peril. In other days the fires of patriotism burned
brightly. The cry of our fathers was "my country right or wrong." But
we feel not quite so sure of our country being always in the right.
The passion of Christianity is an ethical passion. Christian
patriotism demands national righteousness. To keep patriotism as an
ardent fire we must be convinced that our country stands for
righteousness. And in this day of our ordeal we have this certainty to
uphold us, that we are fighting for the right.
It was not in defiance of Christianity, but in its defence, that we
drew the sword. For this war sprang from an unbridled lust of conquest
to which a whole nation surrendered itself. But before surrendering to
the passions of war the ideals of Christ were first forsaken by our
enemy. A new law was promulgated: "Become hard, O my brethren, for we
are emancipated and the world belongs to us." New beatitudes were
declared: "Ye have heard how ... it was said, Blessed are the meek ...
but I say unto you, Blessed are the valiant, for they shall make the
earth their throne ... Ye have read, Blessed are the peacemakers, but I
say unto you, Blessed are the war-makers, for they shall be called, if
not the children of Jehovah, the children of Odin, who is greater than
Jehovah."
Out of this new gospel, the gospel of Odin, has sprung a war of
extermination--exiled nations, devastated kingdoms, desolated colleges,
ruined cathedrals, and multitudes of women and children "left nothing
but their eyes to weep with." The name of God has been invoked over
unspeakable barbarities--but the God thus invoked is not the Christian
God. It is Odin in whose name these things are done. What we are
fighting for is for the Christian ideal against Odin--for the law of
truth and mercy against the reign of falsehood of word and bond, and of
merciless barbarity. We have bared the breast to death that there may
sit on the throne of the world's soul, not a ruthless tribal god, but
the God of Fatherhood and Love whom Jesus Christ revealed. And in
waging that war we have ground to hope that the God of righteousness is
on our side.
If we have not had the name of God constantly on our lips it is not
because we do not feel that we are fighting His battle, but because He
is so great, the Lord of Heaven and Earth before whom we are but as
dust, that we shrink from coupling His great name with ours. "Are you
sure that God is on your side?" Abraham Lincoln was asked in the dark
days of the American Civil War. "I have not thought about that," he
replied; "but I am very anxious to know whether we are on God's side."
And when the causes of this war are examined the assurance grows
stronger and stronger that we are on God's side. That is why the whole
nation has been welded into the unity and consistency of polished
steel; why the fire of patriotism burns in our midst with an intenser
heat than ever before.
***
It is not merely from the righteousness of our cause in this war that
our patriotism draws inspiration, but also from the ideals for which
our Empire stands over all the world. As we look out to-day on the
Empire which our fathers bequeathed us, taking it all in all, it stands
for righteousness as no other on earth. It stands for the freedom of
the soul and the freedom of the body all over the world.
Think of India, whose three hundred millions have been rescued from
tyranny and ceaseless bloodshed, whose widows have been saved from the
flames, whose starving have been fed in famine, and to whom the British
race brought security and peace. "When I think," said ex-President
Taft, "of what England has done in India ... how she found those many
millions torn by internecine strife, disrupted with constant wars,
unable to continue agriculture or the arts of peace, with inferior
roads, tyranny, and oppression; and when I think what the Government of
Great Britain is now doing for these alien races, the debt the world
owes England ought to be acknowledged in no grudging manner."
No work ever done on earth for the elevation of humanity can compare
with that wrought in India by our race for the uplift of humanity; and
it is the same wherever the standard of Britain waves. In our own day
we have seen in Egypt a whole race rising out of the mud and clothed
anew in the garments of self-respect. Through Africa, wherever the
sway of Britain extends, though yesterday the land reeked with blood,
to-day mercy and kindness are healing the woes of men, and millions who
knew not when death lurked for them in the bush now sleep in peace
under the palms. It was the might of Britain that destroyed the slave
trade, and it is nothing except the might of Britain which prevents the
slave raider resuming his nefarious traffic, and slavery under the
guise of other names being imposed on the natives of Africa. Wherever
you go, to the tropics or the Orient, there the great power for
righteousness is the British Empire. It does not exploit inferior
races for gold; it is the trustee of the helpless native.
When one thinks of these little islands floating in the western sea, of
the power that has gone forth from them to heal and bless, of the vast
multitudes to whom the King-Emperor is the symbol of justice and
security--his is a poor heart which cannot feel the thrill of gratitude
for citizenship in an Empire girdling the whole earth, whose
foundations are thus laid in righteousness.
***
Patriotism is not, however, a mere sentiment. It was not sentiment
which built up the Empire. It was self-sacrifice--the spirit that
faced and endured death. For us, too, patriotism must be more than
sentiment; it must be action and the self-sacrifice which action
requires.
What our fathers reared we must defend. And the startling thing is
that there are still so many of our people who shrink from the burden
which patriotism imposes. Many thousands refuse to prepare themselves
for war; who are as the Romans who could not leave their baths to go
and fight.
Vast multitudes congregate to gaze on football matches and gamble on
the issue. The call of King and country falls on ears grown deaf. We
thank God for those who, hearing the call, have gone forth to fight,
counting everything but loss as compared to their country's gain. But
these others, they cannot have paused to think. They have not pictured
these fair lands, that have not heard the sound of war for seven
generations, given over to that devouring enemy which has made Belgium
a wilderness.
They have not thought of Oxford and St. Andrews sharing the fate of
Louvain; of London and Edinburgh become as Brussels; of the millions of
Glasgow and Birmingham thrown on the mercies of the world, women and
children fleeing, driven by nameless fears, with no place to flee to
but the mountain fastnesses of Wales and the Highlands of Scotland--the
last refuge of the miserable and the broken. And yet these miseries
would surely befall were all the manhood of the race such as these.
Think what it would mean were the walls of our defence broken down.
Supposing that a shattering blow were struck at the heart of the Empire
and our fleet crushed. What would follow? The crumbling of the Empire
in a week! It is not we alone, with our wives and children in these
little islands, who would be swept to ruin, and on whom despair would
fall. From the far north-west to the long wash of the Australasian
seas the shadow of devouring misery and death would fall on humanity.
The millions of India would be forthwith swept into the whirlpools of
war and mutiny. Egypt would be thrown back into chaos. Africa would
be left to Islam and the merciless rule of a nation which knows but how
to smite. Australia and New Zealand would be at the mercy of the
yellow races.
It would not be a calamity for us in these islands alone. It would be
a calamity whose withering blight would be cast over all the world.
The ideals of righteousness which this Empire upholds would be trampled
everywhere under foot. Covetousness and the lust of gold would hold
the field of the world.
There is only one thing to be done, one duty summoning us with an
irresistible call--the duty that calls us to stand between our country
and destruction. Were the fate which has overtaken the Low Country to
overtake us; were this fair land to be made a wilderness, our women and
children driven into the wilds, and the Empire wrested from our hands,
the men who failed in their duty would never be able to hold up their
heads again.
What a terrible load would lie on him who, beholding the ruin of his
native land, could say, "This might not have happened if I, and others
like me, had done our duty." That would be a hell from which there
would be no escape. "Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell."
There can be no limit to the sacrifice which patriotism requires, so
great a heritage is our native land. It does not require of us as
Christians to engage in wars of conquest for the gratification of pride
and greed, but it does require of us even the sacrifice of our lives in
the defence of our homes or in the defence of our brother's home.
There are those who find themselves faced with difficulty. They are
called upon to fight with every force in their power, to slay,
withholding not their hand, while they hear the commandment, "Thou
shall not kill," ringing in their ears, and across the centuries the
voice of their Lord saying, "Resist not evil; whosoever shall smite
thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." They are
bewildered. Is not the attitude of non-resistance that which Jesus
Christ enjoins? If they fight with sword and shell are they not
lowering themselves to the level of Nietzsche, Bernhardi and Buelow, and
submitting to the arbitrament of the sword, which decides nothing
except its own sharpness. The call of patriotism summoning to resist
even unto blood comes to them, and they are uncertain whether to obey.
But we must interpret the will of God, not by isolated sentences, but
by the whole content of the divine revelation. The commandment, "Thou
shalt not kill," does not mean that we are not to kill in any
circumstance whatever. If the commandment is to be taken literally,
then no limit is to be set to it, and we must not kill any animal--not
even the parasites of uncleanness. There is, moreover, another law
which runs: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed, for in the image of God created He him." So far from the mere
physical life being for ever sacred, the very altar of God Himself was
to be no sanctuary for the murderer. The man who owned a vicious ox
and knew him to be vicious, and the ox killed a man, the owner thereof
was to be slain. There are therefore circumstances in which the law,
"Thou shalt not kill," is abrogated, and its place is taken by the law,
"Thou shalt kill."
The law demanding the conservation of life rests on this foundation,
not that physical life itself is sacred, but that human life bears the
image of God. There are things far more sacred than the physical
life--even those things which constitute the image of God stamped upon
man. There are things for which men in all ages have been content to
die--truth and loyalty to truth, the principles which are dearer than
life. Those things which God ordained that men might through them grow
more and more into His image, for these things man must be ready to
die, and among these things is nationality.
Men cannot develop in isolation. What poor creatures men would be if
they were solitary units. They would be as the beasts that perish. It
is through the heritage of nationality that the soul is enriched. What
poor stunted lives would ours be if we had not behind us the great and
noble deeds which built up our Empire, if the words of the high souls
of many generations did not come thrilling to our hearts, if
Shakespeare and Wordsworth, Scott and Burns did not pour their
treasures into our laps. The soul grows into the image of God through
the riches of nationality. And whosoever warreth against nationality
warreth against the soul. And the men who warreth against the soul
must be resisted to the death.
***
We dare not appeal to Jesus Christ to cloak our shrinking from
sacrifice. No doubt His gentleness has been the wonder of history; but
His strength also summons us to be strong. For Jesus Christ was not a
quietist. His religion is not a mere hospital for wounded souls. His
place is among the strong of the earth. He faced the evil of this
earth unflinching in His resistance. "Woe unto you Scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites" is His denunciation of the oppressor; "Go tell
that fox" is His message to the tyrant. When we think of Him making
the whips, and falling, with holy anger in His eyes, on those who
desecrated the courts of the temple, overturning the tables of the
money changers, we know that the ideal of non-resistance is not His.
No doubt He laid it down as the law for the individual that he should
turn the other cheek; but He did not lay it down as a law that a man
should turn another's cheek to the smiter. What the individual can do,
the nation may not do. It no doubt is the duty of the Ruler to turn
his own individual cheek to the insulter; it is not his duty to turn
the cheeks of the millions over whom he rules to those who would smite
them, committing their children to shame and their homes to devastation.
No doubt Jesus Christ enjoined the law of forgiveness, but it was not
unconditional. "If he repent, forgive him," is His law, and until the
wrongdoer repents and ceases from his evil, it would be immoral to
forgive him. Duty demands that every means be used to bring the
evildoer to repentance; for only so is there a chance of his soul being
saved. It is manifest that Christianity is not a religion of
non-resistance to evil, but the religion of Him who Himself resisted
evil, and who resisted it even to the death.
Patriotism, therefore, demands that we resist even to the shedding of
blood. When a hostile army would destroy a nation, as in Belgium, it
warreth against the soul, and it is as Christian to kill as it would be
to shoot a tiger which leapeth out of the jungle to devour a man. And
that Irish soldier whose face in the hospital in Paris was irradiated
with joy when he was told that the enemy was put to flight and Paris
saved, and who died with that gladness in his face, died in the spirit
of Jesus Christ.
To say that the Founder of Christianity would not strike a blow for
home and kindred and truth is to forget that He struck a blow in
Jerusalem and wielded the thongs on the shoulders of those who polluted
His Father's house. It is His will that we should strike a blow in
defence of the house of our soul--the sanctuary of nationality.
***
Patriotism must be vibrant with the spirit of religion if it is to be a
power rousing the nation to heroism and self-sacrifice. There never
was a nation so patriotic as the Jew. No city ever gripped a nation's
heart-strings as Jerusalem gripped the heart of the Jew. No suffering,
no defeat, no exile however far, could quench the fire of patriotism in
the heart. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget
her cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I
remember thee not, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy"--such
was the cry of the Jew by the rivers of Babylon, yearning after Sion.
How was it that Jerusalem thus pulled at its children's heart-strings
until they hurried back to rebuild? It was because Jerusalem was the
seat of the worship of God. It was not the material stones or the
hills round about that thus compelled the heart. It was the light of
eternity shining over them. It was because of the "house of the Lord
our God" that the Jew counted no good worth his striving except the
good of Jerusalem. It is only when God standeth at the heart of a
nation that the heart cleaveth with all its fibres to its native land,
for then the whole of the man--not only the cravings of the body and
the heart and the mind, but also the deeper cravings of the soul--wind
themselves round the thought of the nation.
Thus we find that the days when the fires of patriotism burned
brightest were ever those in which God held sway over the nation. It
was with God that the sailors of Queen Elizabeth swept the main, that
the soldiers of Wellington hurled the enemy far from the shores that
face England--they were fighting not only for England but for England's
God.
The testimony of history is this, that patriotism cannot maintain its
power if once it be divorced from religion. Let God's face be veiled
and lost and everything is lost. "Without God nothing, with God
everything," says the ancient Celtic proverb, and all ages testify to
its truth. And the last proof of it is now before our eyes in the
condition of France.
A hundred years ago France dominated Europe, erected thrones and
deposed kings at its will. But little by little France lost the vision
of God, until at last M. Viviani celebrated the final triumph over the
Church in 1907 by exclaiming: "With one magnificent gesture we have
extinguished the lights of heaven, which none shall rekindle." France,
in the words of its present Prime Minister, "extinguished the lights of
heaven," but in so doing it extinguished something else. For to-day
that nation, that not so long ago dominated Europe, can only protect
its capital city by the help of the two nations which have not yet
extinguished the lights of heaven.
Without God patriotism becomes impotent, for God is the source of that
moral law, conformity to which means for a nation life, and defiance of
which means the degeneration that leadeth to destruction. With the
departure from God came moral decay and racial suicide. The hope of
France is this, that through the descent of the nation into the valley
of death the lights of heaven may be once more kindled; the hope of
Britain, that these same lights may shine more brightly.
The spirit of patriotism will again vivify the nation when we seek
after God. In years of prosperity we have forgotten our high calling.
We have pursued vanities and forgotten the living God. When we again
realise our calling and our election as instruments in the hand of God
for the establishment of His Kingdom of Righteousness over all the
earth, our hearts will be filled with ardour, and we shall face
whatever perils may assail us strong in the assurance that the
Omnipotent God is in our midst and that nothing can resist His will.
***
And this true patriotism will mean the salvation of the nation. For it
will strive to realise at home that righteousness which alone exalteth
a nation. Its first task will be to raise the life at home nearer to
God, for we cannot raise the world to higher levels than that on which
we ourselves stand. The vision of the new Jerusalem descending from
God out of heaven will again flame before our eyes. "And I, John, saw
the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven,
prepared as a bride for her husband."
That new Jerusalem is not a city remote in the inaccessible heights,
but a city which descends and permeates the material city now so
polluted by sin, until it becomes the "holy city," with the law of God
obeyed and the will of God done in it. Its citizens shall walk its
streets, pure in heart, seeing God everywhere. "And they shall bring
the glory and the honour of the nations into it." There the nations
shall be one in the streets of the city of God, all their contendings
forgotten in the sense of their brotherhood, following the one ideal,
obeying the one law, loving each other in the love of God. They will
strive then as to who shall bring the greatest glory within the compass
of its walls, and that will be the only striving.
That is the ideal, that we should become a nation so permeated by the
spirit of God, so brought into obedience to His will, that our cities
shall become holy cities, even as the new Jerusalem coming down from
God out of heaven. When we shall set ourselves to realise that ideal
once more, then will the nation evoke the devotion of its citizens, for
devotion to the nation will also be devotion to God.
It was that ideal which fired the patriotism of the Jew. The same
ideal alone will make our patriotism glow as a white flame. When the
vision of the Supreme Ruler whose throne is established in
righteousness once more blazes forth before the people, then once more
the throb of patriotism and the passion to make righteous law operative
to the ends of the earth will stir the heart, and the manhood of the
race will once more thrill with the call summoning to service and to
sacrifice. The answering shout will everywhere arise--For God and the
King.
III
The Shadow of the Cross
III
The churchyard of our parish lies in a deep hollow, and a little river
half encircles it. In the midst of it stands the church beneath whose
shadow the parish has garnered its dead for centuries. There the
generations have lain down to sleep, their hearts reconciled one to
another, and the beadle has drawn the coverlet of green over them. As
he goes about his allotted task he pats a mound here and there gently
with the back of his spade--for roadman and belted earl are at one here.
The last time I wandered down to the hollow it seemed as if eternal
peace brooded over the living and the dead. The leaves, russet and
gold, glowed in the sunlight. At the stirring of a gentle breeze, like
the dropping of a sea-bird's feather, leaf after leaf fluttered
silently down on the graves. The great bank of trees across the river
glowed with rivulets of dull flames running hither and thither. In its
stony bed the river sang its endless song. The immemorial yews,
beneath whose branches successive generations of children have played
with now and then a thrill of pleasing terror because of the
overhanging graves, stood regardless of the sun. The crows, sated with
the gleanings of harvest fields, fluttered in their rookeries with
scarcely a caw. It seemed as if no sound of discord or strife could
ever break in that enchanted hollow.
***
As I turned away to retrace my steps through the gate I came on a woman
sitting on the mort-safe, a handkerchief moist with her tears in her
hand. She had come up from the quarries and she had visited her dead.
And she came because yesterday she received word that on the
battlefield of Marne her son was killed. He was her eldest. The
others were not old enough yet to fight. Her husband was killed in an
accident, and she had reared her children, refusing all help from the
parish. The pride of the blood sustained her. And now that her son
was dead she came hither, driven by an irresistible instinct to visit
her husband's grave. It was as if she wanted to tell him about John,
and how he died a hero, trying to carry a wounded comrade through the
hail of the shrapnel.