The Frenchmen saw them stand unbroken.
* * * * *
On the day of Waterloo
The pibroch blew where fire was hottest.
* * * * *
When the Alma heights were stormed
Foremost went the Highland bonnets.
* * * * *
As it was in days of yore,
So the story shall be ever.
* * * * *
Think then of the name ye bear,
Ye that wear the Highland tartan.
* * * * *
Zealous of its old renown,
Hand it down without a blemish."
As the eye looks along the nave up into the choir and sees the gleam of
red, colours after colours, there comes the memory of words--"We have
heard with our ears, O God, and our fathers have told us what work Thou
didst in their days in the times of old.... Through Thee will we push
down our enemies...." The unseen God who has led His people through so
many and great dangers will not forsake them now.
***
There is a tablet where formerly stood the door that led to Haddo's
Hole, and there hangs on a pillar the flag that pertains of truth to
the realm of romance. Men with their hearts hot with indignation
buried it in Pretoria in 1880, and put above it the inscription
"Resurgam." Afterwards the Colonel recovered it and brought it home.
When war broke out again his widow restored it to the regiment--the
Royal Scots Fusiliers. In 1881 that regiment was the last to leave the
Transvaal; in 1900 it was the first to enter the Transvaal--as the
inscription narrates. And by the direction of Lord Roberts, when
Pretoria was occupied, this identical flag was run up amid the shouts
of the victors. Now it rests here. "Resurgam"--it is the unquenchable
spirit of an invincible nation.
If only the manhood of Scotland could be gathered into this Church,
under these flags, and the story they tell were put into words,
pulsating with passion--then the ranks of our Army would be filled up
in a week. What a lack of imagination we reveal! We teach dates,
thinking we are teaching history. The only way to teach history is by
flags, and all they stand for. When Douglas threw the heart of Bruce
among his enemies he cried, "Lead thou on as thou wast wont and Douglas
will follow thee or die." In the spirit of Douglas our fathers
followed the flags, and we will follow in the steps of our fathers and
face death with undaunted hearts as they were wont. There comes to us
the shouting of their triumph, and we cry: "Lead on; we will follow or
die." This grey church, St. Giles', is the temple of patriotism.
Therefore our feet turn towards it in dark days, and we say, "Our feet
shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem!"
***
How the old words are born for us anew as we thus meet as one "to
entreat God for the broken peace of Christendom." We sing "God is our
refuge and our strength," but there is a note of intensity in the
singing now such as we never knew before. Men close their eyes, and
stand, the world blotted out, before their God, realising that He and
He alone is the one refuge, the only giver of victory. We hear the old
story read of Moses holding up his hands and Israel prevailing on the
plains below; but it is not Israel we see travailing in battle, but our
own brothers in the rain-sodden trenches, and we feel the uprising of
the ceaseless intercession of a nation that has anew found its God. It
is not the right hand that assureth victories; it is that spirit of
enthusiasm, that passion for righteousness which filleth the heart, and
that spirit is as the wind blowing where it listeth--and it cometh out
of the Unseen at the call of our prayers.
When in other days we prayed for the King it was in the spirit of cold
formalism. But now a lump rises in the throat as we invoke the
blessing and protection of Heaven for the solitary man who is the
symbol of the unity of our Empire, and who watcheth over its destinies
day and night, and who has sent his son to face death with the meanest
of his subjects. We hear the glorious words: "If God be for us, who
can be against us?" and they are written for ourselves. We, who fight
for the truth of word and for the freedom and deliverance of the
oppressed, can feel that God is for us, and that all is well.
And when we pray, our voices rising as one, "Thy kingdom come," we can
see that kingdom coming through blood and tears, cleansing the foul
places and establishing peace on everlasting foundations. It is a new
day that has dawned for us--a day in which we stand united as the
subjects of the one King, as the sons of the one God--and the things
that separated us one from another are swept away. What the conferring
of the wise found so difficult to achieve, the roaring of the guns has
accomplished. God teacheth his people by sending them through the
purifying fires.
***
In these prayers in St. Giles' there is a directness which shows that
we are there for a definite purpose. We no longer use qualifying
words. We cry for victory. There is a bloodless form of prayer which
some use and which sends the worshipper away with an aching heart. It
is the prayer that never prays directly for victory. "Thy will be
done," it prays, in the spirit of submission. But prayer is not
submission; it is a wrestling. In other days our fathers wrestled in
prayer and prevailed. "I spent the night in prayer," wrote Oliver
Cromwell, in critical days; "I prayed God that He would guide us
against the enemy. We were simple fellows of the country, and they
were men of blood and fashion, but the Lord delivered them into our
hands. By His grace we killed five thousand. If He continues to show
mercy we will kill some more to-morrow." Such were the Ironsides, "men
of a spirit," who broke the charges of the Cavaliers, as the cliff
dashes back in white spray the rush of the billows.
This was also the language of the Covenanters of old; and though we no
longer use such plainness of speech, we mean the same. There is a
place for tenderness; but when men are ground to powder by the judgment
of God, tenderness is not manifest then. When the heart whispers
"Spare" and justice says "Smite," men must obey the voice of justice,
stifling the voice of the heart.
Our prayers are now for justice. Better far a righteous war than an
immoral peace. We have been compelled to unsheath the sword, and we
pray that no heart may falter, and no cry arise for the sheathing of
the sword, until justice be done. Thus our prayers have become a cry
for victory.
***
As one sits in an ancient church such as this, there comes knocking at
the heart many questions regarding that service of prayer which within
its walls has linked the generations together. Can prayer really
prevail with God? Can it alter the will of the Unchangeable? If there
be no power in it, why should men go on praying?
We must distinguish between the will of God which is unchangeable, and
His lower will which is his purpose towards us and His attitude to us.
The former is unalterable; the latter varies according to the varying
of our hearts. With that lower will we are called to wrestle. A man
is born in poverty and obscurity, and the will of God seems to be that
he should continue poor and obscure. But he wrestles with that lower
will until he prevails. He ultimately moves out into the great tide of
life and becomes a power. The will of God towards that man is changed.
It is the same with a nation. Here is a nation sinking on its lees
with its ideals dimmed and the shrines of its fathers' God forsaken and
desolate. It has fashioned to itself other gods, and the multitudes
crowd the temples of the goddess of pleasure. The very race itself is
sacrificed on the altar of gross pleasure, and the laughter of little
children is being little by little silenced. The fires of patriotism
are dying low, and the love of country gives place to the love of
party. There are mean victories rejoiced over, but they are the
victories of the cynic and the sensualist. There is the sound of
shouting, but it is the shouting over the triumph of one self-seeking
politician over another self-seeking partisan. Saintliness, which
other generations held in awe and reverence, provokes now a pitying
smile. Mammon alone is held in high honour and sitteth in the high
places. What is the will of God towards that nation? It is this--ruin
and utter destruction. Over every nation that thus succumbed to the
gross and sensual, history shows the sword of God unsheathed, and at
last the devouring flames of judgment.
But to such a nation there comes as if out of the silent heaven a call
as a trumpet sound, summoning it to the judgment-seat of God. Over the
sea comes the roar of guns. The foundations which the fathers laid in
righteousness, through long neglect and decay are crumbling. An empire
encircling the globe is tottering to destruction. The hay and the
stubble cannot come scathless through the flames. The writing is on
the wall, and as the eyes see the hand that writes, trembling seizeth
upon men. And then there cometh a sudden change. The nation in a day
rises out of the morass of its self-indulgence. It sets itself to lay
hold again upon the eternal law of righteousness. They seek once more
the shrines of their God. They set themselves to fast and to pray.
"Who can tell," they whisper one to another, "if God will turn and
repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?"
The fields of their inglorious shouting over their games are deserted
for the fields of hardness and grim preparation. Once more they gird
themselves for conflict, as their fathers so often girded, that truth
and righteousness may prevail over all the earth. Sharply the choice
is presented to them between Christ or Odin, and though choosing the
Christ means agony and woe they make their choice unhesitatingly. A
new light shines in their eyes, and the work of their hands and the
devisings of their hearts become the spirit of prayer. Yesterday the
will of God towards that nation, sinking on its lees, was destruction;
to-day towards that same nation, thus risen out of the foul miasma that
was stifling its soul, the will of God is salvation.
Because prayer is the greatest power in the world; because it can alter
the will of God towards us, because it can move the hand of the
omnipotent God and is thus endued with His omnipotence, our prayers as
we gather in the sanctuaries are no longer the submission of quietism,
but a wrestling with God--the crying of a soul as in agony for victory
based on the triumph of righteousness. It was such a cry that rose on
that day in St. Giles.
***
As the second paraphrase was being sung there came the memory of words
spoken in the pulpit of the great Cathedral by Dr. Cameron Lees. It
was at evening service, when the shadows were gathering. "I have often
sat in this pulpit," said Dr. Lees, "on the edge of the evening, and
watched the shadows enveloping the Cathedral. They invaded the side
chapels first, and then the nave, creeping onwards through the
transepts, until the chancel was reached. After that they gathered in
strength, until the whole building was in darkness, with the exception
of the white figure of Christ in the great east window. I pray that
the last vision vouchsafed me on earth may be just that--the Saviour of
men. I can then close my eyes in the knowledge that He will lead me
through the dark valley that leadeth to the eternal home."
It has been like that with the whole nation. Around our shores the
darkness gathered, until all the horizon was black with threatening
clouds. Then we lifted up our eyes and saw.... He will bring
deliverance and peace. As we moved along the crowded aisles towards
the door the white figure of Christ glowed in the great east window,
and we felt that He will bless His people at last with peace--the peace
not of death, but of life.
"Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease,
And, like a bell, with solemn sweet vibrations,
I hear once more the voice of Christ say Peace.
Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals
The clash of war's great organ shakes the skies;
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of love arise."
V
The Victory
V
The blinds were all drawn in the red-roofed house that stands at the
cross-roads. It was not empty, for the smoke arose from its chimneys
in the clear morning air. In other days the music of song and laughter
often floated from its open windows, but now it was stricken dumb.
From it two sons had gone to take their place in the line of soul and
fire that girdles these islands, warding them from destruction.
In a moment the veiled windows flashed their meaning. In the long
lists of the dead I found the name I looked for. I had schooled myself
to look at these lists, thinking of them in the mass as force or power;
but that one name insisted on its individuality. They were all
individual lives, each throbbing with intensest self-realisation, each
with his love and hope and fear. There was none among them so poor but
some heart clung to them. They may die, no longer in units, but in
broad swathes, mown down by machine guns, but they are individual
hearts still. In masses the sea swallows them up, trenches are filled
with them, but however much we try we cannot narcotise our hearts by
sophistries. Some day a name stands out alone--and we realise.
All over the land, in every parish, blinds are being drawn in houses
where music and laughter are silenced. There comes the surge of a wild
revolt. It is not these individual hearts alone that lie stricken, it
is the joy of the centuries yet to be. In nameless graves lie the
dream-children who will never now be born. This criminal sealing up of
the very fountain of life--how can we bear it?
And yet we open not our mouths in protest. Is it because we are losing
our sensitiveness--becoming brutalised? It might be that. For nothing
coarsens the mind like that tide of hatred and passion which war sends
sweeping through the hearts of men. And yet it is not that. For when
they told the mother, breaking it gently as love alone can do, that her
son was dead, she bowed her head in silence, yielding herself to the
solace of tears; but in a little while she said brokenly: "It is good
to die so: I would not have my son shelter himself behind other
mothers' sons."
No, it is not because we are already coarsened that the heart can bear.
It is rather because we have realised with the passing away of the old
world of the last long summer days (it seems already centuries remote)
that there are some things so great that they can transfigure even
death. When the loyalty to the highest can only be fulfilled through
death, we acquiesce in the sacrifice. In our parish we have not been
coarsened--we have been quickened.
***
It seems as if it were in another era that my friend at the top of the
Gallows' Road proved to me convincingly that death alone was king.
With a keen irony he depicted this little globule of a world, a
third-rate satellite of a fifth-rate star, floating in the abysses, in
relation to the universe but as a mere grain of sand amid all the sand
on the world's shores; and on that puny speck of a world he pictured
the ephemeral generations, mere flashes of troubled consciousness--and
then darkness.
It was reasonable when they thought this world the centre of all
things, with the sun and moon and stars circling it round as humble
ministrants, that they should believe in some high destiny for
themselves. But now that they know how miserably and unspeakably
insignificant the world is, it was but vanity and arrogance for any man
to think of himself as of any value whatever in the scheme of things.
His life was as the flashing of a midge's wings. His end was as a
candle blown out in the night.
***
One evening, when the air was vibrant with the melody of birds and
laden with the perfume of the roses that filled the garden, he
developed another train of thought. He pictured the glut of life there
would be if all the generations on this and millions unnumbered of
worlds all survived. With vivid gestures he passed them all before the
eye--low-browed savages, cannibals, fetish-worshippers, Calvinists, and
at last the aesthetics of our day. "There would be no room for them--no
use for them at all--it would be a glut which baffles all imagination."
There was no way out but that the individual perished to prevent the
universe from being crowded out.
And the cobbler at the top of the brae described to me how his dog was
run over in the street. "He gaed a bark--and he never gaed anither.
It'll be like that at the end with us a'. We'll gae out like my dawg."
It was a queer result of the glimpse which came to us of an illimitable
universe--this cheapening of ourselves. There was nothing at last but
the charnel-house of the crowded kirkyard, where the generations lay
layer upon layer, and where the opening of a grave reminded the old
clerk, as he quaintly declared, of nothing but a dentist's shop. The
teeth survived for unrecorded centuries--but that was all.
It is strange the tricks the memory plays. For, sitting here, glancing
over the crowded sheet filled with the names of the dead, I remembered
these things. And there came the sense of the madness of the universe
and the intolerableness of life, if the end of all heroism was but
that--nothingness and corruption. A handful of bones thrown up by the
beadle to make room for the dead of to-day--is that all that is left of
those who handed down the lamp of life to us? Is that all that will be
left of us too at the last?
In the ordinary day my friend at the top of the Gallows' Road and the
cobbler on the breast of the brae would have said that that was the
end. But the extraordinary day has come upon us unawares, and in the
extraordinary day this little, burdened, pain-racked life becomes
suddenly unendurable unless it lie in the bosom of eternity. If there
be no rainbow circling the heavens above the carnage heaps of the
stricken battlefields, if the farewell of death be a farewell for ever,
how can the heart endure?
***
It certainly looks to the seeing of the eye as if destruction were the
end. With the perishing of the body everything seemeth to perish: all
love, all thought, all tenderness vanish for ever. But the eyes and
the ears are for ever playing us false; and here, too, they deceive us.
For the world is so ordered that nothing ever perishes. In nature
there is no destruction. A handful of ashes in a grate look like
annihilation, but what it represents is really resurrection. The
imprisoned sunrays of uncounted aeons, stored up in the lumps of coal,
have been released from the prison-house, and gone forth again as heat
and as light. The physical body may seem to perish; what really
happens is that its constituent elements are re-grouped.
But in the realm of beauty, is there not destruction possible there?
Through long centuries faith and devotion rear a great cathedral, every
line and curve of which is instinct with beauty. Every statue breathes
the love and hope and fears of men. In vaulted aisles and "windows
richly dight," it symbolises the Unseen--the beauty which the heart
yearns for. On that beauty materialised, ruthless Vandalism rains shot
and shell; the devouring flames consume it. Its gaunt walls are now a
monument of barbarism. Has nothing perished there? Is it not mockery
to speak of the conservation of the constituent elements there? For
loveliness has vanished there from off the face of the earth, and
beauty which no hand of man can ever restore has been annihilated.
But it has not. For beauty is not in things, but in souls. The beauty
lay in the soul of the architects that planned, in the hearts of the
builders that carved the stones until they seemed to breathe--and
shells cannot destroy that. The loveliness was shrined in the souls of
the generations that gazed, and, gazing, were raised into the
fellowship of the hearts that planned and builded. Thus did the spirit
of beauty grow in the hearts of men--and shells cannot destroy that.
And let these charred walls be left to the alchemy of time, and nature
will clothe them in richer loveliness. Lichen and moss will grow on
them, and the moonlight will etherialise them. One symbol of beauty
may seem to perish; but the spirit of beauty itself, dwelling in the
hearts of men and abiding at the core of the universe, is
indestructible. The thing which we deem perishable, no power on earth
can kill.
***
There is on earth something infinitely more precious than the material
substance, indestructible though it be. The most beautiful thing the
world can show is a good man. Through the years forces play on him,
and each force adds its element of beauty. He has struggled with
adversity, and in the conflict he has learned patience, tolerance and a
wide charity. Waves of affliction have passed over him, and he has
learned tenderness and sympathy with human suffering, so that bruised
hearts come and lie down in his shadow, and there find healing. With
eyes cleansed from self, he looks out on the comedy and tragedy of
life, and he sees the hidden springs. The healing power that goes
forth from him grows with the years. At last he dies.
Does nature conserve the shell while it consigns the jewel in the
shell--the man himself, with all his love and tender thought and
unselfish care--to annihilation? That is unthinkable. To know one
good man is to know that the human personality is imperishable. It was
through that knowledge that the soul of man triumphed over the terror
of death.
There walked in Galilee a Teacher who made a handful of peasants feel
the possibilities of moral loveliness latent in the human heart, and
when He died they could not associate the thought of death with Him.
"It was not possible that He should be holden of it," they said one to
another. Everything was possible but that He could become as a clod in
the valley of corruption. Of course even that was possible if the
world were a chaos given over for sport to malicious demons.
It would be possible, then, that the self-sacrificing love stronger
than death, and the spirit of unsullied purity should become mere dust.
But the possibility of the world being ruled by any except a Righteous
Power did not occur to the untutored Galileans. Therefore they faced
death with level eyes, refusing to believe in its triumph, saying to
their hearts, "It is not possible."
And that is the rock on which to plant our feet in the day when the
world is given over to the wild welter of bloodshed. In every parish
over all the land blinds are pulled down, and hearts, wrapped round in
the dimness, sit still in the shadow of a dumb affliction. They will
never again hear the familiar footsteps coming to the door; they will
hear it in their dreams--only to awake and find silence. Never again
will the first question be when the door is opened, as it was through
all the days since the golden days of childhood, "Where is mother?"
But the great things which made life noble have not been destroyed by
bullet or shell. No man is worthy of freedom except the man who is
prepared to die for it. The heart, which in death proved itself
deserving of freedom, has entered into the fulness of freedom. The
heavens are again aglow when we realise that.
***
It was the Professor who made me sure of those things. I met him at
the "Priory," where my old friend carries on his controversy with the
Pope--or used to. In that house of his one meets all sorts of
visionaries from the ends of the earth. A Waldensian pastor full of
the dream of a rejuvenated Italy; a leader of French Protestants, who
has forgotten his controversy with the Pope in the great upheaval
through which his race are finding their soul once more; a dreamer from
across the Atlantic, his eyes a-gleam with the vision of a reunited
Christendom--these are the men you will find drinking tea at the Priory
on any day in our parish.
The original bond between them was their controversy with Rome, but
they have now forgotten all about that. There, in a happy hour, I met
the Professor. One phrase of his lit up for me the days of darkness.
"We see the alchemy of Providence at work all round about us," he
exclaimed, pushing his fingers through his hair until it stood up all
on end, an aureole of white.
"It is the flower of our manhood that is perishing," said the "Prior,"
while our hostess was nervously solicitous over the fate of a teacup
which the Professor was balancing in his left hand, utterly regardless
of its purpose.