"And have you during this last twenty-five years fought the wild
beast yourself in this great city? Have you yourself practised
strict self-denial to the point of sacrifice, in dealing with the
drink question, to help the weak brethren for whom CHRIST died? Have
you crushed down the wild beast of lust in yourself, and grappled
with the haunts of vice, as many in London have done for twenty-five
years? Have you seen that there is a Mission Church among every
eight thousand people as they have come into London, and given of
your substance to plant one? Have you done your best to see that
every sailor that goes from our ports is a Christian, and that every
trader who trades throughout the world, and every bank clerk who has
been to work in Berlin or Paris, lives up to his religion? Have you
given every available penny to spread the Gospel, the failure of
which you now deplore, throughout the world? Or have you spoken of
'sending money out of the country,' of the uselessness of Christian
servants, and repeated the travellers' tales about Missions of those
who have never visited a missionary station in their lives, when you
have been asked to support Mission work abroad?"
Then, until you have done that, I refuse you the right to speak of
the weakness of the religion which you have failed to support. It is
only promised that "they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy
mountain" when "the earth is filled with the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea."
But what if we have never really attempted to fill the earth
with the knowledge of the LORD? What if we have only very feebly
attempted to know this ourselves? What if, as a consequence of
spending less than a million a year on Foreign Missions, we are now
having to spend five millions a day on a war made necessary by the
neglect of our Christian duty?
No one believes more absolutely than I do in the righteousness of
the present war; as I have said a thousand times, I look upon it as
a war for purity, for freedom, for international honour, and for
the principles of Christianity. I look on everyone who fights for
this cause as a hero, and everyone who dies in it as a martyr; but,
at the same time, I believe that if every Christian throughout the
world had fully risen to his responsibilities and had fully lived
up to his Christianity, for the last hundred years, we might have
done more to avert it. You cannot say more than that. Slavery was
undoubtedly as much opposed as war to Christianity, but it took
eighteen hundred years to abolish that; it may take another eighteen
hundred years to abolish war. We must not hurry GOD, but we must not
fail to help Him; we can hasten the kingdom. It is no good praying
"Thy kingdom come" by itself; we must also make it come, and the
only sure way to make the kingdom come, and with the kingdom the
extinction of war, is to spread throughout the world the knowledge
of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.
We were beginning to find this out before the war.
A striking pamphlet by Canon Holland, "The White Man's Burden,"
has been published by the great Society which for two hundred years
has tried, amidst much indifference, apathy and discouragement, to
propagate the Gospel throughout the world. He showed how our skilled
and devoted Governors and statesmen throughout the world found after
a time that their ability and hard work reached a point at which
they could go no farther.
For instance, quite naturally their system of education broke down
the old beliefs of India; quite naturally the ideals and ideas of
freedom and personal responsibility which they taught produced a
desire among individuals also to be free, and a longing in every
nation to realise itself. The great statesman rubbed his eyes; he
couldn't quarrel with this result of his own teaching. But who was
to bind this transformed nation with new cords? where was he to
find the new restraints to take the place of the old ones which had
been broken through from sheer life and vigour? Where were the new
wine-skins to hold the new wine?
And, pathetically, even before the war such men were turning to
the religion which they had been partially taught at their public
school, but which in their blindness they had half despised, as
having no bearing on a practical workaday world; but, lo! practical
common sense had broken down; could the secret be, after all, in
what they had heard in their Confirmation preparation, in that
school sermon to which they had only half attended, in the prayers
which they had said rather as a matter of form ever since they were
taught them at their mothers' knees?
From end to end of the world the revelation was coming, and, as one
of those who has borne this white man's burden, Lord Selborne, in
his preface to the pamphlet, endorses what it says. There is only
one set of rules which will hold the new nation, and only one set of
wine-skins which will hold the new wine; and that is the rules of
GOD'S Commandments as interpreted and extended in the New Testament,
the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount; and the only wine-skins
which will hold the new wine are those produced by the Gospel of
the Incarnate, Risen, and Ascended CHRIST, with the miracles which
He worked believed, and the Sacraments which He gave accepted and
used. "Let the new wine be put into new wine-skins, and both are
preserved."
All this was before the war. But since the war began, just as you
see against the dark thunderclouds the brilliancy of the sunshine,
which even lights up those clouds and turns them into a glory and a
radiance themselves, so all that was chivalrous and noble in Europe
has suddenly leaped to light. Christianity has been rediscovered.
Censors have been converted by reading soldiers' letters. Many a
man who professed himself an atheist has now seen what Christianity
really means. "Even an atheist must have believed if he had seen
my father die," wrote a young officer of a father who was buried
yesterday. "Could you sing me a hymn?" asked a young officer, dying
in the last battle, of the chaplain, who in the very thick of the
shells and the bullets was at his work. And, with his arm round him,
the chaplain sang with him "JESU, Lover of my soul," until he died.
In this great Day of GOD, things are beginning to appear as they
are, and not as they are represented. "Greater love hath no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." That simple and
sincere Christian, the Czar of Russia, went to the heart of things
at the beginning of the war, when he gave that as the motto of the
war to his troops; and every boy since then, who, as depicted in the
picture entitled "The Great Sacrifice," has laid down his life, with
his dead hand resting on the foot of the crucifix, has sealed with
his life the great saying of Sir Henry Newbolt:
"Life is not life to him that dares not die,
And death not death to him that dares to live."
It comes round, then, to this: the Advent picture is not a mockery;
it is not a mirage in the desert; it is a true picture let down from
heaven to cheer us to-day with a prophecy of what some day shall be.
Let that picture at once encourage us while it shames us.
As we watch it, away with all those foolish old sayings about "not
believing in Foreign Missions," "sending money out of the country,"
"converting Whitechapel and Bethnal Green before we attempt China or
Japan"; for the knowledge of the LORD--before war can be no more--is
to cover the whole earth as the waters cover the sea.
But, on the other hand, let it encourage us:
"Far out of sight while sorrows still enfold us
Lies the fair country where our hearts abide,
And of its joys is nought more wondrous told us
But these few words--We shall be satisfied."
We may behold the land, although it may seem at present "very far
off."
Once crush for ever the revived paganism, which perhaps for the last
time has challenged the supreme claim of Christ to His own world;
when that is in the dust, once astonish the world by the beauty of
a chivalry and Christian manhood which shall be seen by contrast to
be as day compared to night, and light to darkness; once "placard
CHRIST" through every tribe in Africa and Asia, and preach Him
effectively in every island of the sea; and as the last hand slipped
down in death the flagstaff of the Black Flag at Omdurman, so shall
the last hand at last be lifted, in this world, of one man against
a brother-man in fratricidal strife, and the great picture shall be
true at last:
"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain": for at
last the earth is filled with "the knowledge of the LORD, as the
waters cover the sea."
V
GOD THE CHAMPION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS[7]
[7] Preached in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Day, 1915.
"O LORD, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to
another. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the
earth and the world were made, Thou art GOD from everlasting and
world without end."--Ps. xc. 1, 2.
The story is told of Archbishop Temple that as he was walking away
from the House of Lords, after the defeat of the Bill he had brought
in for the advancement of Temperance, some well-meaning person was
endeavouring to comfort him in his natural disappointment, although,
needless to say, he was himself as strong and brave and confident
as ever. Was he looking, asked the questioner, to the verdict of
posterity? No. Was he looking to the gradual change of public
opinion? No. Was he looking to a verdict in another House which
would influence the opinion of the house which he had just left? No.
What was it he looked to, then? "I look to GOD."
It was the answer of a true, brave, and believing Christian man;
if the GOD of the Christians exists at all, He is so strong and so
powerful and so wise that to be on His side is worth all other aid
in the world, and to defy GOD, apart from its blasphemy, is the most
colossal mistake which can be made.
There is a sense, of course, in which the cynic was right when he
said that GOD is on the side of the strongest battalions, for the
raising of those battalions means a self-sacrifice and a self-denial
which GOD honours and recognizes; but to imagine that those
battalions by themselves represent GOD, and can be used successfully
to further causes which GOD has beforehand denounced and proclaimed,
is to make, in the long-run, the mistake of the ages.
Now we are keeping Trafalgar Day in a most critical week of the
greatest war waged in the world for a thousand years. I have visited
the long battle-line mile by mile in Flanders. I have also seen the
grey Dreadnoughts watching, watching, watching day and night; it is
idle bluster for the enemy to say that the ships of the Fleet are
hiding from them; they know only too well where to find them when
they want to meet them. As in great Nelson's day, the Fleet is the
girdle of the Empire; the seas which Nelson swept are clear to-day;
not an enemy flag dare show itself from one hemisphere to the other;
under the mighty ægis of the Grand Fleet, transports in hundreds
carry troops all over the world, food-ships pour in from every
port; even when the submarine danger was formidable there was no
appreciable slackening of the wonderfully brave mercantile marine,
and now that the Navy has that peril, too, well in hand, men sail
the seas to-day, except for the necessary restrictions with regard
to contraband, with greater freedom and security than they sailed
the seas long after the Battle of Trafalgar.
In this great conflict on what are we to found our hopes? To
what are we to look? Are we to trust only to the strength of our
battleships and the perfect training of our sailors? Are we to
look to the new armies produced with such marvellous skill by Lord
Kitchener's patient hand? Are we to look to the three millions whose
services will be asked for, and no doubt offered, in the next six
weeks? No doubt we are to look to all these things; GOD does only
help those who help themselves. But, standing before you as your
Bishop, I tell you frankly that my belief in the final victory of
our arms is founded on something far beyond these things. I am full
of unshakable confidence and hope, because, like Archbishop Temple,
I look to GOD. I try to say with the psalmist every morning:
"And now, LORD, what is my hope?
Truly my hope is in Thee."
"LORD, Thou had been our refuge from
one generation to another."
Notice I do not claim that GOD is some tribal deity who with partial
favouritism supports our side; but I claim, with the great Lincoln,
that we are on the side of GOD.
1. I do so in the first place (and this comes out the more clearly
the more you study the previous history of the question), because
this is a wantonly provoked war, planned and desired and finally
launched by one Power, and one Power alone--that is, Germany.
Now, if GOD is a God who "makes men to be of one mind in a house,"
if He made of one blood every nation in the world, and meant them
to dwell at peace together; if the teaching of CHRIST is really the
teaching of GOD'S own SON--then the nation which wantonly plans and
provokes war, and war on such a scale, must be against GOD.
You have only to read two such books as "J'Accuse," said to be
written by a German, and "Ordeal by Battle," by Mr. Oliver, to
see that this is no idle assertion or party statement, but the
literal truth. If I mistake not, "J'Accuse" will be for all time
the accusing finger of the civilised world pointing at Germany as
Nathan pointed at David, saying, "Thou art the man"; and as to
"Ordeal by Battle," while it suggests many political questions which
I should not think of discussing here and now, as to why we were
so unprepared after the warnings given us, the fact stands out as
plainly as daylight that Russia, France, and Great Britain one and
all made every effort short of national dishonour to keep the peace.
This, then, is my first ground for claiming that we are on the side
of GOD. Those who wantonly provoke war act against GOD, and those
who honestly try to prevent war act on His side. But this is only
the beginning of the matter.
2. There has always, up to now, been a kind of chivalry in war
which has lighted up the more terrible aspects of it. All through
history there have been bright flashes of this chivalry even
among non-Christians: the conduct of Saladin in the Crusades, the
chivalrous bearing of the Black Prince to the captured French King,
and many similar incidents, testify to the fact that you need not
cease to be a Christian or a gentleman because you have to fight.
Many of these laws of chivalry were embodied by the great Christian
nations in the Hague Convention; certain modes of warfare were not
to be allowed; women and children must be tenderly and chivalrously
treated; the wounded of the other side must be treated as fallen
comrades; the dead must be decently buried; the Red Cross must be
respected; civilians must be spared; the rights of neutrals guarded.
No one can doubt that GOD must have approved of such humane
regulations, for they are all founded upon the New Testament; they
are a softening, and a valuable softening, of the horrors of war.
All other nations began the war by scrupulously respecting them:
Mr. Stanley Washburn, who has closely followed the Russian armies,
described the kindness and consideration which they displayed to the
peasantry of Poland; our own soldiers have never even been accused
by the enemy of violating any of them, and one of the Generals at
the Front told me with pride that, though his great brigade had been
out from the beginning, no accusation of injuring a French woman or
girl had been brought against a single member of it.
But, on the other hand, while time shall last the iniquities
committed in Belgium by the Germans, as attested by Lord Bryce's
Committee, will ring through history; the very invasion of
Belgium itself was a breach of international faith. A friend of
mine saw with his own eyes, while a prisoner among the Germans,
forty civilians shot in cold blood in one town alone; the gallant
Cardinal-Archbishop Mercier has recorded a damning list of other
murders in his famous charge. The sinking of the _Lusitania_ will
always stand out as one of the greatest crimes in history, although,
if I am not mistaken, the judicial murder of a poor Englishwoman[8]
for harbouring some poor refugees will run it hard in the opinion
of the civilised world. There is one thing about that last incident
which perhaps was not taken into account by those who perpetrated
the crime: it will settle the matter once for all about recruiting
in Great Britain; there will be no need now of compulsion.
[8] This was preached the day after the judicial murder of Nurse
Cavell.
I wonder what Nelson would have said if he had been told that an
Englishwoman had been shot in cold blood by a member of any other
nation; he would have made more than the diplomatic inquiries which
have been made by a great neutral nation into this crime, right
and proper as those inquiries are. He would have made his inquiries
with the thunder of the guns of the British Fleet, and pressed the
question home with the Nelson touch which won Trafalgar, as indeed
our Fleet at this moment is only too ready to do. But is it possible
that there is one young man in England to-day who will sit still
under this monstrous wrong?
There is a famous old rhyme which has come down from the time of
the imprisonment of the seven Bishops who risked their lives for
the liberties of Britain, as, please God, the Bishops of to-day are
still prepared to do:
"And shall they scorn Tre, Pol, and Pen,
And shall Trelawny die?
There's twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why."
The spirit of Nelson must indeed have died out of our young men,
which it certainly has not, if the answer is not the same to-day;
the three millions of new recruits asked for will be there. Why was
she put to death? Why was she murdered? Three thousand thousand
Englishmen--ay, and Scotsmen and Irishmen, too--will know the reason
why.
My second reason, then, for trusting to GOD is that, according
to the whole revelation of His character and will, His curse is
on the nation, however disciplined and efficient, that tramples
underfoot and openly defies the laws of chivalry which once relieved
the horrors of war; and that His ultimate blessing must be upon
the nation or nations which, however foolishly unprepared, and
therefore, for a time, suffering from the want of preparation, in
the main are fighting for the weak against the strong.
3. But if this is the negative side what about the positive? I am
almost ashamed to ask and answer the question in public again, "For
what are we fighting?" If we are fighting for the freedom of the
world, for the right to live for the small nations of the earth, for
nationality against pan-German tyranny, for international honour as
the essential condition of a future brotherhood of nations, then the
GOD who has been the refuge from generation to generation of the
down-trodden and oppressed, who planted in us the love of liberty,
and who has been the champion of the free, must be the God on whose
side we are to-day.
4. We are right, then, to look for victory and help to a GOD who
through one generation to another has shown Himself a lover of
peace and chivalry and mercy and liberty, against a delight in war,
against brutality and massacre and tyranny; yet we should have
ill-read the lessons of Trafalgar Day if we were to stop here.
Nelson never dreamt that GOD was on his side in the sense that
he could relax for an instant his vigilance, or ruin his whole
settled plan by impatience, or win a final victory without the
self-sacrifice and trust of the nation behind him. If we do look to
GOD, then we must remember this bracing fact that "GOD helps those
who help themselves."
It is a far-reaching saying that the children of this world are in
their generation wiser than the children of light; certainly it is a
formidable fact to be faced that for a thoroughly bad cause, carried
out in a thoroughly bad way, the authors of this greatest crime
in history have succeeded in evoking from the hard-working people
of Germany, who are under the impression, doubtless, that they are
"saving the Fatherland," a far more universal spirit of organised
and efficient self-sacrifice than in the most glorious cause ever
entrusted to man has yet[9] been evoked from all in these islands.
It was one of our great statesmen who truly said that he feared
what he called the "potato spirit" in Germany more than all their
guns and shells--the spirit, that is, which was content with potato
bread, content to make any sacrifice, if only their cause would be
victorious; and it is unwise as well as ungenerous not to recognise
the gallantry with which both the individual sailors and soldiers of
the enemy have fought.
[9] This sermon was preached in 1915. There has been a great
improvement in 1916.
To look to GOD, then, puts a great responsibility upon those who do
so; it means to rise to the level of the sacrifice of GOD. If it is
true that, as you will remember, another great English statesman
once quoted on a famous occasion, "Who sups with the devil must
have a long spoon," then, Who fights with GOD must have a high
standard. Is this a time, asked the prophet of the trembling Gehazi,
to receive oliveyards, vineyards, menservants and maidservants? Is
this a time, we may ask to-day, to haunt night clubs[10] or to spend
separation allowances in drinking? Is this a time to ignore Sunday
and turn your back upon GOD's House of Prayer? Is this a time to
spend anything which can be saved for the nation on personal comfort
or extravagant dress? The nation that looks to GOD must come back to
GOD; it must come back to GOD at once and come back to Him for good;
it is a question whether we at home have yet as a nation deserved
the victory which our righteous cause demands. The sailors of the
Fleet have deserved it; the soldiers in the trenches have earned
it; and when the nation at home has equally deserved it, all will
receive together their well-merited reward.
[10] Shortly after this night clubs were abolished.
5. But more than this; those that look to GOD must definitely and
persistently seek GOD's help. How many of those here to-day pray
earnestly and persistently to GOD for help and grace? How many plead
in the greatest service of all the one Great Sacrifice, once offered
for the sins of the whole world?
"Look, FATHER, look on His anointed Face,
And only look on us as found in Him;
Look not on our misusings of Thy grace,
Our prayer so languid and our faith so dim:
For, lo! between our sins and their reward
We set the Passion of Thy SON our LORD."
How constantly the faith of our fellow-countrymen amounts to little
more than a vague Deism, instead of a living faith in an Incarnate
CHRIST. They are learning more than that in the trenches, and I hope
also that the same truth is being revealed to those who remain in
the broad sea. These beautiful lines, entitled "CHRIST in Flanders,"
the Editor of the _Spectator_ gave me leave to reproduce in the
diocesan magazine:
"We had forgotten You, or very nearly--
You did not seem to touch us very nearly.
Of course we thought about You now and then,
Especially in any time of trouble:
We knew that You were good in time of trouble--
But we are very ordinary men.
"And there were always other things to think of--
There's lots of things a man has got to think of--
His work, his home, his pleasure, and his wife;
And so we only thought of You on Sunday--
Sometimes, perhaps, not even on a Sunday--
Because there's always lots to fill one's life.
"And, all the while, in street or lane or byway--
In country lane, in city street or byway--
You walked among us, and we did not see.
Your feet were bleeding as You walked our pavements--
How _did_ we miss Your footprints on our pavements--
Can there be other folk as blind as we?
"_Now_ we remember, over here in Flanders--
(It isn't strange to think of You in Flanders)--
This hideous warfare seems to make things clear.
We never thought about You much in England--
But now that we are far away from England,
We have no doubts, we know that You are here.
"You helped us pass the jest along the trenches--
Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches--
You touched its ribaldry and made it fine.
You stood beside us in our pain and weakness--
We're glad to think You understood our weakness;
Somehow it seems to help us not to whine.
"We think about You kneeling in the Garden--
Ah, GOD! the agony of that dread Garden--
We know You prayed for us upon the Cross.
If anything could make us glad to bear it,
'Twould be the knowledge that You willed to bear it--
Pain--death--the uttermost of human loss.
"Though we forgot You, You will not forget us--
We feel so sure that You will not forget us--
But stay with us until this dream is past.
And so we ask for courage, strength, and pardon--
Especially, I think, we ask for pardon--
And that You'll stand beside us to the last."
What it comes to is the old truth which we have learnt from Foreign
Missions--the centre must be converted by the circumference; it is
the self-sacrifice of its Mission work abroad which has saved the
Church from "fatty degeneration of the heart" at home; it is the
growing change of mind among the defenders of our country which must
permeate and ennoble the country itself.