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WORLD POWER: 
 
 THE EMPIRE of CHRIST 
 
WORLD POWER: 
 
 THE EMPIRE ^/CHRIST 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN MacNEILL 
 
 Minister, Walmer Road Baptist Church, Toronto 
 
 
 HODDER & STOUGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
^y. 
 
 Copyright, 1914, by 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 DEC 23 1914 
 
 ©Cl,A39109o 
 

 TO THE MEMBERS OF THE 
 
 WALMER ROAD BAPTIST CHURCH, TORONTO 
 
 WHOSE AFFECTION, LOYALTY AND COURAGE 
 
 HAVE BROUGHT ME UNCEASING COMFORT AND INSPIRATION 
 
 IN OUR WARFARE OF THE GOSPEL 
 
PKEFACE 
 
 The sermons contained in this volume were suggested 
 by various phases of the events leading up to the present 
 war. At least two sudden revelations have been made to 
 the popular mind by this crisis in our civilization. It 
 has served on the one hand to reveal many baneful ten- 
 dencies of our modern society, and on the other hand to 
 uncover afresh some of the eternal principles of Chris- 
 tianity. It occurred to the preacher that the modern 
 spirit is expressed in some of the now famous phrases of 
 individuals and nations and over against each phrase is 
 some great Divine truth that answers to it. Each ser- 
 mon is the attempt to bring the light of Christ's teaching 
 to bear upon some certain feature of the present hour. 
 No one realizes more than the author that he is dealing 
 with only a passing phase of national life. What is said 
 here of Germany applies only to the Germany of to-day, 
 and what is said of the Germany of to-day might have 
 to be said of the Russia, or France or Britain of to- 
 morrow. In that sense the messages are momentary and 
 incidental. There is no pretence to any comprehensive 
 study of the relation of Christianity to the war in all 
 its bearings, nor is there any endeavor to interpret these 
 events of history in the light of Scripture prophecy. 
 The chief aim was to emphasize, with the war as a 
 background, some of the eternal truths that abide 
 through all the shocks of change, to fix upon the public 
 
 ■5 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 and individual mind a new sense o£ responsibility, and 
 to point the way to comfort and hope. 
 
 Shattering the Nest was preached in the City Tem- 
 ple, London, England, on Sunday morning, August ninth, 
 the Sunday following Britain's entrance into the war. 
 It was repeated to my own congregation on my return 
 from England in September. The other sermons were 
 delivered in the regular course of my ministry in Wal- 
 mer Road Church on the nine successive Sunday even- 
 ings of October and November. They were prepared 
 from week to week, amid the pressing duties of a heavy 
 pastorate. They are essentially spoken sermons, follow- 
 ing the extemporaneous method, and they are printed as 
 they were spoken. In response to the wishes of my 
 congregation each sermon was published in pamphlet 
 form on the week following its delivery. These pam- 
 phlets have been gathered into this volume, with no 
 attempt to rewrite them and little attempt to revise. 
 While bearing in consequence many marks of literary 
 imperfection they retain the form of direct spoken coun- 
 sels and evangelistic appeals. They were graciously 
 blessed by the Holy Spirit in the conversion of men and 
 women and they are sent out in this form only with the 
 hope that they may prove of further blessing to a wider 
 congregation. 
 
 John MacNeili,. 
 
 Walmer Road Baptist Church, 
 Toronto. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FA6B 
 
 World Power: The Empire of Christ . . . 11 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 Shattering the Nest . SI 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Alliance and Entente: The Solidarity of the 
 
 Race 55 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 A Place in the Sun: The God of History . . 73 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The Day! The Day! The Nemesis of Justice 93 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A Scrap of Paper: The Morality of Nations 113 
 
 7 
 
8 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Blood and Iron: The Immorality of Militar- 
 ism o 135 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Treason to Culture: The Marks of Progress 153 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Peace with Honor: The Foundations of Peace 171 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 To A Finish: The Brotherhood of Man . . ipi 
 
WORLD POWER: THE EMPIRE OF 
 CHRIST 
 
WORLD POWER: THE EMPIRE OF 
 CHRIST 
 
 Text: — "And it came to pass in those days that there 
 •went out a decree from Ccesar Augustus that all the 
 world should be taxed." 
 
 "And it came to pass that the days were accomplished 
 that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her 
 -firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and 
 laid him in a manger." — St. Luke 2:1^ 6, 7- 
 
 Placed thus in contrast, these two passages 
 reveal a wide difference in spirit, but they un- 
 cover the same great ambition springing from 
 the opposite poles of the spiritual world. They 
 are as far apart as the universe in motive and 
 method, but hidden away in each is the same 
 daring ideal of the universal sway over men. 
 Over there in Rome the di'eam of world power 
 was floating in the mind of Caesar; over yonder 
 in Bethlehem the dream of world empire was 
 imbedded in the brain of an unconscious child. \ 
 It was the beginning of a struggle for the 
 mastery of the race. In those two figures — the 
 
 11 
 
12 WORLD POWER 
 
 Cffisar and the Christ — there are the potential 
 rulers of mankind. The one is the incarnation 
 of force; the other is the incarnation of faith. 
 The weapon of the one is the sword; the 
 weapon of the other is the cross. It is the car- 
 nal against the spiritual, and with breathless 
 interest the ages watch what the end will be. 
 
 Let us glance for a moment at these two as- 
 pirants for world power. On the one hand was 
 Caesar, with countless legions, unbending laws, 
 relentless organization and ruthless power. 
 Wherever he will go the garments of the na- 
 tions are rolled in blood. The only crown he is 
 ambitious to wear is a helmet ; the only sceptre, 
 a sword within his hand. Throughout all the 
 ages the symbols of his power will be the reek- 
 ing spear and smoking cannon; the pillaged 
 cities and wasted lands; the slaughtered chil- 
 dren and outraged women ; the laws that crush 
 the very liberties out of the hearts of the free, 
 and the taxes that drain the very blood out of 
 the veins of the poor. And over against that 
 figure there moves another to dispute his sway. 
 At Bethlehem it might be said that God 
 crossed the border into the territory of human 
 life. He had mobilized all the forces of the 
 
WORLD POWER 13 
 
 spiritual universe in Christ. The incarnation 
 of Jesus was the invasion of humanity. It was 
 the declaration of war. There was no blast 
 of trumpet, no clash of sword, no flaunting 
 of banner, no pomp and circumstance of war. 
 'No sound indeed was heard except the croon- 
 ing of a mother as she sang her lullaby to the 
 Infant at her breast. He will wear no royal 
 purple ; His robes will be the simple garments 
 of a peasant. The only crown upon His head 
 will be a crown of thorns ; the only sceptre, a 
 nail print in His hand. Throughout all the 
 ages the symbols of His power will be love 
 and peace, gentleness and meekness, sacrifice 
 and brotherhood and faith. He would not 
 be anointed to sit upon any earthly throne, but 
 He would be "anointed to preach the gospel 
 to the poor"; He would be "sent to bind up 
 the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the 
 captive, and the opening of the prison to them 
 that are bound ; to proclaim the acceptable year 
 of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our 
 God." 
 
 And there they stand, the one against the 
 other. It is the dimpled hand of the child 
 against the mailed fist of the warrior. It may 
 
14 WORLD POWER 
 
 look like a hopeless task for the child, but we 
 shall see! we shall see! I know the pink and 
 dimpled hand of the baby looks helpless on 
 His mother's breast, but we are here to recall 
 the fact to-night that this is the Hand that 
 has thrown down the gauntlet to Caesar in 
 every age; that has challenged the march of 
 brute force across the fields of time; that cut 
 the sinews of Roman supremacy and changed 
 the currents of history for all the generations 
 to come. 
 
 The Dream of World Power by C^sar 
 
 I have emphasized this contrast because it is 
 apparent that it is this old world dream of 
 Caesar that has precipitated the great strug- 
 gle in which all Europe is engaged at the pres- 
 ent time. You are well aware that for the past 
 thirty years these phrases, "world power," 
 "world influence," "world domination," in one 
 nation at least, have passed from lip to lip 
 and from group to group until men have 
 visioned, not perhaps the actual ownership, 
 but at least the actual domination of Europe 
 and, through Europe, the domination of the 
 world. 
 
WORLD POWER 15 
 
 It would be interesting and illuminating did 
 time permit to see how at steady intervals all 
 through the centuries that idea has arisen to 
 assert itself in the world. Long before the 
 Christian era it made its appearance in Baby- 
 lon, Carthage, Assyria, Persia, Egypt. But 
 glance at the past 1,900 years in Europe alone 
 and you will see how again and again in the 
 brain of a single individual or a single nation, 
 that dream has formed itself to gain the mas- 
 tery of Europe and through Europe the mas- 
 tery of the world. 
 
 Roughly speaking, Europe came to its birth 
 in the days of Julius Csesar. The Roman 
 eagles winged their way over the many lands, 
 and back from their borders came the laconic 
 message of Csesar, "I came, I saw, I con- 
 quered." That Roman Empire of 400 hun- 
 dred years was perhaps the greatest national 
 entity that ever appeared in Europe, but it 
 was doomed to go down, submerged beneath 
 the Gothic storm that burst so suddenly and 
 so furiously out of the dark clouds of the north. 
 In the eighth century the world idea fired the 
 brain of Charlemagne, but his mighty empire 
 fell because the machinery of his government 
 
16 WORLD POWER 
 
 failed to consolidate the more permanent ele- 
 ments of the state. In the eleventh century the 
 idea seized the Norman brain and although 
 they conquered England and most of France 
 and Germany and part of Italy and ruled the 
 sea, they were not able to assimilate their con- 
 quests, with the exception of England, where 
 their great William the Conqueror became the 
 founder of our royal English line. It was 
 the Popes who next dreamed of world power, 
 and in the twelfth century Innocent III made 
 a mighty effort for political control of Europe, 
 forgetting that his kingdom, if he had a king- 
 dom, was not of this world. It was Spain's 
 turn next, and the sixteenth century saw the 
 Spanish influence extend until she prepared 
 to launch her thunderbolt against her last and 
 greatest rival, England. But the hand of 
 Providence was lifted against her, and Spain's 
 Armada was shattered on the storm-swept 
 coasts of Britain. Louis the Fourteenth of 
 France, "the Grand Monarch," in the seven- 
 teenth century took up the dream. It was he 
 who said, "The State! I am the State." But 
 that very State crumbled away beneath the 
 wickedness and corruption of his wicked and 
 
WORLD POWER 17 
 
 corrupted Court. One hundred years ago 
 there sprang into the arena of Europe the daz- 
 zluig genius of Napoleon. In the western 
 world his like had not been seen before. The 
 world idea was in his brain and the thunder- 
 bolts of Jove were in his hand. At the close 
 of his first Italian campaigns, the greatest 
 military marvel of history, he was only twenty- 
 eight years of age. "At that time," he said 
 afterward, "I saw what I might become. I 
 already saw the world beneath me as if I were 
 being carried through the air." But the star 
 of Napoleon set and his restless and ambitious 
 spirit chafed itself away on the lonely rock of 
 St. Helena. 
 
 And now in our own day that dream of 
 world power has again mounted to the brain 
 of one man and one nation. There is evi- 
 dence enough to be had, if evidence were need- 
 ed, that the consuming passion of Prussia is 
 to control the world. It is not many years ago 
 that the German Kaiser at a national anni- 
 versary declared, "that henceforth nothing 
 must be settled in this world without the in- 
 tervention of Germany and the German Em- 
 peror." Prof. Treitschke, the German his- 
 
18 WORLD POWER 
 
 torian, says that "the sceptre of the universe 
 will belong to the Germans, who will impose 
 their will upon the decadent and enfeebled 
 people round about." A German writer of 
 note has observed "that true history will be- 
 gin from the moment that the German, with 
 a mighty hand, seizes the inheritance of an- 
 tiquity." General von Bernhardi in his notable 
 book on "Germany and the Next War," has 
 a chapter that bears the title "World Power 
 or Downfall," and the refrain sounds through 
 his volume again and again, "It is all or noth- 
 ing; it is now or never." I pass no judgment 
 on these statements for the moment. I merely 
 quote them to show how that idea of world 
 power is not dead, even in the twentieth cen- 
 tury, how the fatal fire may burn in the brain 
 of one man and one nation, how these danger- 
 ous ambitions have jeopardized the freedom 
 of mankind, and how the whole continent of 
 Europe — and indeed the whole civilized world 
 — feels that the threatened liberties and the 
 sacred pledges of honorable nations must be 
 defended at any cost against the merciless ag- 
 gressions of a strong and unscrupulous foe. 
 
WORLD POWER 19 
 
 The Claims of World Empire by Christ 
 
 And now, against the background of all 
 these foolish world dreams that have been en- 
 tertained in turn by Roman and Norman, 
 Spanish and British, French and German, let 
 me fling up this great truth, the assertion which 
 I have been preparing to make from the be- 
 ginning. It is this — that there is not, and 
 never has been, and never shall be, any single 
 individual except One who has the right or 
 the qualification to aspire to world power, and 
 there is not, and never has been, and never shall 
 be, any nation or society or people in the world, 
 except one, that has the right or the resources 
 to carry such claims to a glorious and success- 
 ful issue. You ask me who that individual 
 is, and I answer you in the words of our scrip- 
 ture to-night, "Wherefore God also hath highly 
 exalted Him and given Him a name that is 
 above every name, that at the name of Jesus 
 every knee should bow, of things in heaven 
 and things on earth and things under the earth, 
 and that every tongue should confess that 
 Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the 
 Father." You ask me who that people, that 
 
20 WORLD POWER 
 
 society, may be, and I answer you again in 
 the words of scripture, "But ye are a chosen 
 generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a 
 peculiar people, that ye should show forth the 
 praises of Him who hath called you out of 
 darkness into His marvellous light." 
 
 It is a long time since these great claims 
 were made for Christ and His people. It is 
 a long time since John in apocalyptic vision 
 lifted one corner of the veil and showed us 
 that "the kingdoms of this world are become 
 the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ." 
 It is a long time since Paul, surveying the 
 battlefield where Christ had met His enemies, 
 declared "that He must reign until He hath 
 put all his enemies under His feet." It is 
 longer still since the Psalmist in his inspired 
 moment heard Jehovah breathe this promise 
 to His Son, "Thou art my son, this day have 
 I begotten thee: ask of me and I will give 
 thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the 
 uttermost parts of the earth for thy posses- 
 sion," It is a long time, too, since Isaiah with 
 seraphic vision saw Him coming up from the 
 carnage of His last victory : "He that cometh 
 forth from Edom with dyed garments from 
 
WORLD POWER 21 
 
 Bozrah, this that is glorious in His apparel, 
 striding along in the greatness of His 
 strength." These are great claims, but there 
 is not one prophecy concerning Christ that 
 shall not be fulfilled, and there is not one claim 
 for His people that shall not be made effec- 
 tive when by His power in them they shall 
 impose their spirit and His spirit upon all peo- 
 ples and kindreds and nations and tongues. 
 
 It may be said that this is but an empty 
 claim, with no more promise of fulfillment than 
 another. But it is not so. It is supported 
 from every side — intellectual, spiritual, philo- 
 sophical, ethnological. In general terms it 
 may be said that the claims for world power 
 with any aspiring nation or ruler rest upon 
 three conditions; first, the personality that 
 rules must have a universal appeal; second, 
 the conquest he makes must be a spiritual con- 
 quest; third, the end he secures must be the 
 highest good of all. 
 
 1. The world ruler must have in him the 
 element of universal appeal. By which I mean 
 that his nature must be so full and perfect, 
 so many-sided and all-sided, so comprehensive 
 and responsive, that the genius and tempera- 
 
22 WORLD POWER 
 
 ment and spirit and aspirations of every peo- 
 ple and nation and kindred and tongue will 
 find its answer in him, and he shall be able to 
 articulate the peculiar and subtle quality of 
 every individual subject. And because that 
 universal appeal has never been and can never 
 be found in any mortal man, it is impossible 
 for any one man to ever mount the throne 
 of a true world power. Caesar is a Roman, al- 
 ways a Roman, with the pride of the Roman 
 in his heart, and his withering scorn scorch- 
 ing the barbarian who crouches at his feet. 
 With all his force of character, his versatility 
 of mind, his gifts — statesman, poet, musician, 
 soldier, preacher — ^it is impossible that the Ger- 
 man Kaiser should ever become a true world 
 ruler, for the fire is Prussian fire that lights 
 his eye. The one man of mortal and sinful 
 men who came nearest to it in Europe was 
 Napoleon Bonaparte. In my humble judg- 
 ment his was the most stupendous personality 
 that ever flung its impact against the Euro- 
 pean life; his the most rapid and compre- 
 hensive mind; his the most dazzling and bril- 
 liant genius. And yet Napoleon is a Corsican. 
 The most he can accomplish is to interpret the 
 
WORLD POWER 23 
 
 spirit of a passing phase of the French peo- 
 ple. But Napoleon could never have incar- 
 nated the genius of British liberty; he could 
 never gather up into himself the elements of 
 the true democracy. The wistful, hungry 
 gaze of the Russian eyes could never find a 
 response in his, for the full note of the uni- 
 versal was not within his soul. It is in Christ 
 and Christ alone you find that full sounding 
 note. 
 
 "One man of a particular age and race," 
 says Bishop Gore, "cannot be the standard for 
 all men, the judge of all men of all ages and 
 races, the goal of all human moral develop- 
 ment, unless he is more than one among many. 
 And that is what we find Christ to be; He is 
 more than "one among many." You cannot 
 mention Him in the same breath and in the 
 same class as Shakespeare and Socrates and 
 Confucius and Emerson, brilliant as their 
 genius may be. He is the one above all others. 
 He is not "a son of men," nor "a son of man," 
 nor "the son of men" ; He is "the Son of Man^' 
 — the Universal Homo, blending in Himself 
 all races and ages and temperaments and types. 
 He belongs to all the centuries, though He 
 
24 WORLD POWER 
 
 was born in the first. He belongs to all races, 
 though He was born a Jew. He belongs to 
 all countries, though He was born in Bethle- 
 y hem. He combines all the purest and gentlest 
 of womanhood with the strongest and great- 
 est of manhood. And any man, whether he 
 be prince or peasant, who will front the eyes 
 of Jesus will find them flash back the native 
 spiritual fire of his own ; and any man, whether 
 he be Mongolian or Saxon or Teuton or Slav 
 or Latin, who comes near to the heart of Christ, 
 will find it throb in perfect sympathy with 
 the deepest core of his own being. It is this 
 that constitutes His first great claim for world 
 power, and beside Him there is none else. 
 
 2. Jesus alone is qualified for world power, 
 for He alone can make the supreme spiritual 
 conquest of men. You will agree with this that 
 no man is conquered till the deepest thing in 
 him has been subdued. You may enslave his 
 body, but his soul is free. You may imprison 
 his mind, but his spirit will range. Forty 
 years ago the Germans conquered Alsace and 
 Lorraine, but these provinces have never been 
 subdued. Their citizenship is German but their 
 allegiance is French. Their taxes have flowed 
 
WORLD POWER 25 
 
 into the German treasury, but the incense that 
 rises from their heart altars is "Vive la 
 France." He who conquers must conquer the 
 soul. Go back to Napoleon and learn that 
 though he conquered almost every nation in 
 Europe, he subdued none. The fires were 
 smouldered, but they leapt out afresh. At St. 
 Helena the Emperor said — you may read it in 
 Bertrand's Memoirs — "I know men and I tell 
 you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Alexan- 
 der, Csesar, Charlemagne and myself have 
 founded empires, but upon what did we rear 
 the creations of our genius? Upon force. 
 Jesus Christ alone founded an empire upon 
 love, and to this very day there are millions 
 who would die for Him." Of all the brilliant 
 words of Napoleon these are among the most 
 brilliant and wisest of them all. For the con- 
 quest of Jesus is the conquest of the soul. It 
 is the conquest of the deepest and last thing in 
 man. His weapons are the weapons of His 
 love. By these He will win where others fail, 
 and every conquest is a conquest that endures. 
 There is no other hope of a world kingdom, 
 for no kingdom can hope for universal sway 
 that does not base itself upon the conquest 
 
26 WORLD POWER 
 
 of the deepest thing in man. It is that citadel 
 that Jesus carries and that is the reason that 
 no man can ever truly say that he belongs to 
 the kingdom of Christ who has not yielded up 
 to Him the inner citadel of his soul. 
 
 3. And just because His conquest is a con- 
 quest of the deepest thing in man, He meets 
 the third qualification for world power in that 
 He secures the highest good of man. For there 
 are no interests so precious as the spiritual in- 
 terests, and the highest good of these is the 
 highest good of the whole man. Man has a 
 body, but man is a soul. Whatever kingdom 
 claims his allegiance must be a kingdom that 
 secures the highest good of the highest part of 
 man. And this has Jesus done. He has done 
 it and none other has done it. It is His work 
 and not the work of another. He has emanci- 
 pated the souls of men. It may be within 
 the power of others to lift the burdens 
 from the body; Jesus alone can Hft the 
 burdens of the soul. It may lie within 
 the power of others to enfranchise the mind; 
 Jesus Christ alone can liberate the spirit. 
 He has met our worst enemies; He has re- 
 moved our burdens ; He has cleansed our stain ; 
 
WORLD POWER 27 
 
 He has cancelled our guilt ; He has made pos- 
 sible our fellowship with the highest; He has 
 opened to men the expanses of heaven ; He has 
 charged life with purpose ; He has guaranteed 
 our fullest development on the highest possi- 
 ble pattern towards the highest possible goal. 
 The good of the world and the good of the in- 
 dividual are safe within His hands. He has 
 caught us up into the eternal enterprises of 
 God, and if we will we may share in the abid- 
 ing glories and profits of His kingdom and 
 serve Him from the steps of that Throne that 
 shall never pass away. 
 
 My friends, this is the true world power. 
 This is the one kingdom that will survive. The 
 issue is joined, the battle is set, and the out- 
 come is sure. To-night I summon you in the 
 name of the King to join your fortunes to His. 
 It is Christ against Caesar, truth against error, \^ 
 light against darkness, freedom against tyran- 
 ny, the golden day against the dark age. 
 Where do you stand? Under what sovereign 
 do you serve? Is it the Emperor or the Child? 
 Is it Christ or Csesar? 
 
II 
 
 SHATTERING THE NEST 
 
II 
 
 SHATTERING THE NEST 
 
 Text: — "As an eagle stirreth up her nest, flutter eth 
 over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh 
 them, hedreth them on her wings, so the Lord alone did 
 lead him, and there was no strange god with him." — 
 Deut. xxxii., 11, 12. 
 
 Of all the figures of the Old Testament, 
 perhaps there is no other that illustrates in such 
 a striking fashion the severity and tenderness 
 of the Divine love. It was a figure that was 
 familiar to the vivid imagination of every Ori- 
 ental mind. On the face of some high chff , 
 far above the plain, on a ledge of rock, an 
 eagle, with instinctive wisdom, has built her 
 nest, far from the prowling of wild beasts and 
 safe from the fury of the storm. There she 
 has hatched and reared her young. In the 
 early days of their helpless babyhood she has 
 carefully protected them, and has gone out, 
 swift of pinion, keen of eye, and strong in beak 
 
 31 
 
32 WORLD POWER 
 
 and claw, to find their daily food. Under 
 her tender care they flourish till their callow 
 days are gone and the time has come when 
 they must fly and forage for themselves on 
 the wide plain below. But every attempt on 
 the part of the mother bird to induce them to 
 leave their nest is unavailing. The clifl* is so 
 high, the plain is so far below, the air is so 
 wide and empty, the ledge is so safe, and their 
 wings are not yet tried. You can see the 
 mother eagle thrusting them out from the nest, 
 but they only flutter about here and there and 
 hurry back to the shelter of their cosy home. 
 And then the eagle does a strange and what 
 seems a cruel thing. She deliberately wrecks 
 her nest, tearing it to pieces with her claws 
 and scattering its ruins out in the abyss be- 
 low till the fledglings are left without a shel- 
 ter on the lofty height. They are driven off 
 the ledge. But the mother bird hovers over 
 them. She guides them in their flight. By her 
 own example she teaches them to use their 
 wings. If one of them should weary and 
 begin to fall, she swoops beneath it and bears 
 it up on her strong pinions, but when its wings 
 are rested and its fear is gone, she swoops 
 
SHATTERING THE NEST 33 
 
 from beneath it again, and tosses it out once 
 more upon the empty air. 
 
 And thus the young birds are forced to ven- 
 ture into that great space in which for all the 
 future they must live and move and have their 
 being. So they are compelled to use their 
 wings, to develop their strength, to measure 
 their latent energies against the forces of Na- 
 ture until their pinions are trained, their eye 
 is keen, the beak and claw grow strong, and 
 the stout young eagle goes out to the enjoy- 
 ment of his native element with the full use 
 of every tested power. 
 
 It was in the terms of that stern symbolism 
 that Moses viewed the severity and tenderness 
 of the Divine love, and also interpreted the se- 
 cret of the nation's history. He was looking 
 back, near the close of life, upon the dealings 
 of Jehovah with His chosen people, dealings 
 not always easy to understand. But a gleam 
 of light came through the picture of the eagle 
 and her nest. What if God were the great 
 mother eagle of the race? Indeed, had not 
 Jehovah said, "You know what I did to the 
 Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' 
 wings and brought you unto Myself." 
 
34 WORLD POWER 
 
 Through the ages, therefore, one increasing 
 purpose runs. It was God, then, who shook 
 them out of their shelters in Egypt. It was 
 the Lord who broke up the stagnation of their 
 life. It was Jehovah who shattered their homes 
 in Goshen, where they were content to remain 
 in debasing slavery. It was God who forced 
 them through the discipline of the wilderness, 
 who sent them out into the venture of the 
 desert, where their powers were awakened, 
 their nationhood trained, where they were fitted 
 for their place in history and prepared to step 
 into the great scheme of redemption to which 
 they were so vitally important in the purposes 
 of God. 
 
 ,You will instantly recognize that here is un- 
 covered one of those primitive and fundamen- 
 tal principles lying at the basis of all life — 
 a principle that holds good not only in the 
 natural world, in the training of eagles, but 
 in the supernatural world, in the training of 
 human life. 
 
 The Individual Experience 
 
 And before I pass on to speak of the one 
 theme that is uppermost in all our minds to-day. 
 
SHATTERING THE NEST 35 
 
 let me try your patience a moment while we 
 note the bearing of this principle on the indi- 
 vidual. The truth is simply this — that every 
 human life, to come to its best and highest, 
 to be fitted for and reach the goal for which 
 it was intended, will find its nest shattered, and 
 must be prepared to confront those upheavals 
 that break up our shelters and cast us out on 
 the wide spaces of the new and the untried. 
 We need not go beyond our own lives to know 
 how prone we all are to settle down into the 
 snug and complacent nest that our circum- 
 stances may afford, refusing to face the new 
 and the unknown. Ah, then it is the part of 
 God's wisdom and love to allow the shattering 
 of the nest, that in the consequent discipline 
 our powers may be developed and our faith 
 in Him increased. 
 
 Such a principle lies at the basis of all in- 
 tellectual growth. Change is a prime condi- 
 tion of all apprehension and intelligence. The 
 mind dies under stagnation. It only expands 
 as it is compelled to venture into the hitherto 
 unexplored. As James Martineau says: 
 "Dipped for ever in the same scene, plunged 
 in the one color, filled with one monotone, no 
 
36 WORLD POWER 
 
 perception would be startled into birth; the 
 glance of attention sleeps till the moment of 
 transition; it leaps out at the edges of light 
 and darkness, of sound and silence, and in 
 crossing the line first learns the realms on 
 either side." Much more is such an upheaval 
 the condition of all moral and spiritual prog- 
 ress. The most earnest souls have welcomed 
 the day when their nest was shattered, when 
 they were pushed off their comfortable ledge 
 to test their wings in the unknown spaces of 
 life. You recall that prayer of Robert Louis 
 Stevenson, which he calls "The Celestial Sur- 
 geon," off'ered when he feared the loss of the 
 keen appreciation of life's common joys: 
 
 If I have faltered more or less. 
 In my great task of happiness; 
 If I have moved among my race. 
 And shown no glorious morning face; 
 If beams of happy human eyes 
 Have moved me not; if morning skies. 
 Books, and my food, and summer rain, 
 Knocked on my sullen heart in vain: — 
 Lord ! Thy most pointed pleasure take. 
 And stab my spirit broad awake; 
 Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, 
 Choose thou, before that spirit die, 
 A piercing pain, a killing sin, 
 And to my dead heart run them in! 
 
SHATTERING THE NEST 37 
 
 Often and often was that prayer answered in 
 Stevenson's experience; not often through 
 pleasure, but many times through pain. Every 
 nest he feathered was shattered. He was con- 
 stantly being driven off the ledge of life. He 
 was ever testing his wings against the stormy 
 gales: but think of the pinions he had, think 
 of the vision he gained, think of the ranges he 
 swept, and then ask if it was not an eternal 
 kindness that hovered over him. 
 
 The Present Crisis 
 
 And now, not for one individual but for 
 millions, not for one nation alone but for al- 
 most every nation of Europe, there has been 
 shattered, at one ruthless stroke, the precarious 
 nest of international peace that has been tot- 
 tering so long on the doubtful security of 
 the diplomatic ledge. To-day we are involved 
 in a struggle such as the world has not known 
 before and the issues of which are beyond any 
 human wisdom to forecast. This is not the 
 hour nor the place to deal with the long train 
 of events leading up to this crisis, so far as 
 those events are known to the world. The 
 
38 WORLD POWER 
 
 sobering fact is this, that the calamity is upon 
 us, and we must see it through to the end. 
 We have put our hand to the plough, and 
 there can be no looking back, and we must 
 ask ourselves what our spirit and behavior are 
 to be. 
 
 Almost all will depend on how far the con- 
 science of the nation is clear before Heaven. 
 The first spectre to be laid is any haunting 
 fear as to the righteousness of our cause. In 
 that region every man must decide for him- 
 self. For my own part, I do not hesitate to 
 say that there is enough, and far more than 
 enough, on the open page of our diplomacy, 
 as set forth in the White Paper published by 
 His Majesty's Government, to clear the con- 
 science of the nation, to strengthen her moral 
 purpose, and clothe her with the conviction 
 that she has unsheathed her sword in a cause 
 that is right and just. It is now clear to all 
 the world that our distinguished Foreign Sec- 
 retary — and no greater has guided the foreign 
 policies of Britain since the days of Pitt — that 
 Sir Edward Grey, whose sincerity and earnest- 
 ness are recognized as unimpeachable in every 
 Court of Europe, has labored in the face of 
 
SHATTERING THE NEST 39 
 
 great obstacles and in spite of sore provoca- 
 tion, till the last moment and beyond it, to pre- 
 serve for Em'ope "an honorable and a lasting 
 peace." It is now clear to all the world that 
 by the rejection — the unwarranted and inso- 
 lent rejection — of his just and generous over- 
 tures his great and beneficent purposes have 
 been defeated. It is now clear to all the world 
 that nothing more than Britain has done could 
 she have done to prevent, in the first instance, 
 the outbreak of war, and to limit, in the sec- 
 ond instance, the area of hostilities once begun. 
 It is now clear to all the world that nothing 
 less than Britain demanded of Germany could 
 she have demanded and maintain her honor. 
 As the guardian of her own purity, which is 
 dearer to her than life, and as the protector of 
 the smaller States, the most reluctant must 
 confess that Britain has gone the last step 
 towards peace that was consistent with her own 
 honor and consistent with that obligation that 
 the strong must always owe to the weak. No 
 better defence — if defence, indeed, were need- 
 ed — can be found than the notable words of 
 Britain's great Prime Minister, whose clear 
 judgment and calm spirit, whose chastened 
 
40 WORLD POWER 
 
 wisdom and unflinching courage, are among 
 the greatest assets of the nation at this crisis in 
 her history. 
 
 *'If I am asked," said Mr. Asquith, "what 
 we are fighting for, I can reply in two sen- 
 tences. In the first place, to fulfil a solemn 
 international obligation, an obligation which, 
 if it had been entered into between private per- 
 sons in the ordinary concerns of life, would 
 have been regarded as an obligation not only 
 of law but of honor, which no self-respect- 
 ing man could possibly have repudiated. I 
 say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the 
 principle, in these days when material force 
 sometimes seems to be the dominant influence 
 and factor in the development of mankind — 
 we are fighting to vindicate the principle that 
 small nationalities are not to be crushed in 
 defiance of international good faith by the ar- 
 bitrary will of a strong and overmastering 
 power. I do not believe any nation ever en- 
 tered into a great controversy — and this is 
 one of the greatest history will ever know — 
 with a clearer conscience, and stronger con- 
 viction that it is fighting, not for aggression, 
 not for maintenance even of its own selfish 
 
SHATTERING THE NEST 41 
 
 interest, but in defence of principles the main- 
 tenance of which is vital to the civilization of 
 the world." 
 
 Every word in that historic paragraph is 
 weighty and none more so than the last sen- 
 tence. It is the civilization of the world that 
 is at stake. Liberty is threatened in the very 
 cradle of liberty itself. The inalienable rights 
 of every free-born citizen throughout the 
 world are jeopardized by the aggressive tyran- 
 ny of a proud and insolent militarism. The 
 supremacy of the German spirit over Europe 
 would set the civilization of the world back a 
 thousand years. The fruits of our freedom 
 are too precious to be abandoned after the long 
 struggle of the centuries. That freedom was 
 purchased on the blood-soaked fields of Europe 
 by our fathers and, please God, it shall not 
 be sold without the blood of their sons. There 
 never was a better cause undertaken after more 
 patient exhaustion of the means of an honor- 
 able peace, and in the face of more deliberate 
 and insulting provocation, and there are no 
 lengths of resistance and self-sacrifice, we be- 
 lieve, to which the British nation and the na- 
 
42 WORLD POWER 
 
 tions of the Empire will not be prepared to 
 go to defend the right and to crush that mad 
 spirit which, beginning in "folly," has had 
 its end in "wickedness." I speak of this be- 
 cause, without a clear conscience, our purpose 
 cannot be high, our faith cannot be firm and 
 strong; but with the profound conviction that 
 our cause is right, the faith of the nation will 
 remain unclouded, the courage of the nation 
 will never falter, the sacrifice of the nation will 
 know no limits; no defeat shall ever dismay 
 us, no victory shall ever spoil us, for with un- 
 shamed conscience we can and we will in 
 humblest dependence wait upon God. 
 
 The Duties of the Hour 
 
 With that deep sense of right undergirding 
 all, what is to be the spirit of our people? 
 There are three duties that await us: 
 
 1. We must seek, first of all, for the good 
 that lies beyond this conflict^, for good there 
 surely is. It is not easy now to see its form. 
 It is hard to trace one gleam of light through 
 the cloud. It is difiicult to behold anything 
 in the immediate prospect but the incalcula- 
 
SHATTERING THE NEST 43 
 
 ble suffering and misery that must fall on 
 guilty and innocent alike, and the immeasura- 
 ble loss that must come, not to this country 
 alone, but to every country, and not to this 
 age alone, "but to posterity and to the whole 
 prospects of European civilization." But 
 good there will be ! I repeat, it is not easy now 
 to see. 
 
 For who can so forecast the years. 
 And find in loss a gain to match? 
 Or reach a hand through time to catch 
 The far-off interest of tears? 
 
 But a "far-off interest" there will surely be 
 to all our tears, and in the providence of God 
 a mightier gain will match each overwhelming 
 loss. It may be that the Empire needs this 
 baptism of blood. We are not here to con- 
 demn one another, but to confess that, as a 
 nation, in the riot of gain and pleasure, we 
 have been forgetting God. Isaiah tells of a 
 time when Israel was soggy with content, 
 steeped in the stupor of material prosperity, 
 morally insensible under the narcotic of world- 
 ly gain and pleasure, till it was written of 
 them, "The heart of this people is waxed fat, 
 their ears are dull of hearing, their eyes have 
 
44 WORLD POWER 
 
 been closed, lest they see with their eyes and 
 hear with their ears and believe with their 
 hearts." Is it any wonder that such a nest of 
 comfort was shattered and they passed into the 
 captivity of Babylon, from which they 
 emerged with a chastened view of life and a 
 new recognition of the sovereignty of God? 
 
 Neither must we forget that it has been out 
 of such experiences that almost every nation 
 has come to its best in literature and art and 
 religion. It was this fact that led Ruskin, 
 no doubt, to make that extreme statement 
 about war. "I found in brief that all great na- 
 tions learned their truth of word and strength 
 of thought in war; that they were nour- 
 ished in war and wasted in peace, taught by 
 war and deceived by peace, trained by war 
 and betrayed by peace — in a word, that they 
 were born in war and expired in peace." 
 
 Ruskin was not an advocate of war — far 
 from it. He is only hinting at this stern fact, 
 that without the ministry of severe discipline 
 the best of the nation is bound to die. And 
 surely it is a striking fact that the highest 
 
SHATTERING THE NEST 45 
 
 period of literature and art and philosophy in 
 Greece is coupled with a life and death strug- 
 gle against Persia. It was when England 
 was fighting against Spain and Spain's ar- 
 mada that she entered upon the "golden age" 
 of English literature that has never been sur- 
 passed, if, indeed, it has ever been equalled, 
 in the subsequent history of English letters. 
 Is it not. a significant fact that during the 
 first ten years of the last century, from 1800 
 to 1810, or you might stretch it to 1815, at a 
 time when all Europe was blood-dripping with 
 the wars of Napoleon, she gave birth to al- 
 most every great man who was to guide her 
 better destinies for a hundred years to come? 
 In that terrible decade of travail, England 
 gave birth to Disraeli, Gladstone, Cobden, 
 Bright, Browning, Tennyson, Shaftesbury, 
 and many others, all born within ten years of 
 each other. In these same ten years Italy 
 suckled at her bleeding breasts Cavour, Maz- 
 zini. Garibaldi, and a few years later Victor 
 Emmanuel, the four men who secured the lib- 
 erty of the Italian people and brought about 
 the unity of the Italian kingdom. In those 
 same ten years Germany, fighting then against 
 
46 WORLD POWER 
 
 the Cffisarism of which she is now the exponent, 
 produced her first and greatest statesman, Bis- 
 marck; France gave us Victor Hugo for 
 literature; while the throb of that world-up- 
 heaval seemed to reach America and there 
 sprang into being Wendell Phillips, William 
 Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
 Henry Ward Beecher, and last and most 
 splendid of all, Abraham Lincoln, the flower 
 of American manhood. No ! I am not an ad- 
 vocate of war. I believe that "war is hell" and 
 comes out of hell. But let us not forget that 
 in His overruling wisdom God brings good out 
 of evil; He will make the wrath of men to 
 praise Him; and let us remember that the high- 
 est spiritual interests and hopes of the race 
 were redeemed and secured out of the mys- 
 tery of suffering by the world's Saviour in 
 Gethsemane and Calvary. 
 
 Already, in the present crisis, there is much 
 that has been gained. The hearts of men every- 
 where have been cleansed of cowardice and 
 divorced from selfishness by the superb spec- 
 tacle of Belgium — heroic little Belgium — lift- 
 ing herself with victorious courage against the 
 
SHATTERING THE NEST 47 
 
 aggressions of a tyrannous and unscrupulous 
 foe. Within our own Empire we have seen, 
 as by a miracle, the sudden welding of the 
 nation's life. Men and parties which a fort- 
 night before were irreconcilable leaped into 
 one another's arms. Without regard for poli- 
 tical attachments, men have been invited to ac- 
 cept, and have accepted, the gravest responsi- 
 bilities at their country's call. The opening 
 of homes and mansions for hospitals, the out- 
 pouring of a quarter of a million in a single 
 day for the Prince of Wales' Fund, the mag- 
 nificent response to his Majesty's call for vol- 
 unteers — prove that the spirit of the nation is 
 not dead and the spirit of sacrifice, thank God, 
 still lives. Ireland, which ten days before was 
 the blackest cloud on our otherwise bright sky, 
 is now the brightest spot on the dark horizon, 
 for Nationalist Catholics of the South and 
 Protestant Ulstermen of the North, ready 
 two weeks before to lock arms in civil strife, 
 are now shoulder to shoulder to defend the na- 
 tion's honor and protect the country's flag. 
 The danger that has threatened the Mother- 
 land has brought her children from over the 
 seas with swiftest steps to hjsr side. From 
 
48 WORLD POWER 
 
 India and every self-governing Colony of the 
 Empire have come the warm and unsolicited 
 assurances of support. You know the re- 
 sponse awakened in Canada, and I am confi- 
 dent that I voice the spirit which animates this 
 land, that there shall not be lacking the full 
 share of men and treasure and courage to as- 
 sist that dear old Motherland who has be- 
 queathed and secured to us the sweetest and 
 truest liberties we enjoy. 
 
 2. Our second duty is to remember that God 
 is over all. In the stately words of our lesson, 
 "It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the 
 earth and the inhabitants thereof are as grass- 
 hoppers." The nations before Him are as a 
 drop of a bucket. He is the exalter of princes 
 and the debaser of monarchs. He setteth up 
 whom He will and putteth down whom He 
 shall choose. Eagle-like He moves with lord- 
 ly power in lofty planes. He is strong to de- 
 stroy as well as to save. His eye is keen to 
 mark every foul thing upon the earth. His 
 sudden justice often swoops down on the rot- 
 ting carcase of Society to rend it in pieces 
 with His unexpected judgment. We recall 
 
SHATTEHING THE NEST 49 
 
 what Victor Hugo said of Waterloo: "Was 
 it possible for Napoleon to win Waterloo? 
 We answer, No. Why? Because of Welling- 
 ton? No. Because of Blucher? No. Be- 
 cause of the rain? No. Because of God. It 
 was time this vast man should fall. He had 
 been impeached before the throne of the In- 
 finite and his fall had been decreed." And 
 then Victor Hugo adds, with almost a touch 
 of sacrilege: "Napoleon bothered God." Woe 
 to the nation that "bothers God"! We can 
 hope and ask for nothing higher than to be 
 the instnmients of His will in all His unfold- 
 ing of the moral order. And if so be that we 
 are among those who are His chosen ministers 
 of judgment, we must do our appointed work 
 thoroughly and well. And I do not say that 
 with the German people in mind. There is 
 a sense in which we are not at war with the 
 German people, but with a war spirit behind 
 them which they detest and under which they 
 groan as deeply as we. And it can hardly be 
 doubted that they shall serve the interests of 
 peace and the Kingdom of the Prince of Peace 
 who shall join hands to blot out from the 
 face of the earth that selfish, cruel, unscrupu- 
 
50 WOULD POWER 
 
 lous, blood-lusting" spirit of militarism, which, 
 for the gratification of its own ambitions, does 
 not hesitate "to wade through slaughter to 
 a throne and shut the gates of mercy on man- 
 kind." 
 
 3. Our third duty is to fortify ourselves for 
 great sacrifice. We shall all be sufferers. 
 There is no one, rich or poor, high or low, from 
 the King with his overwrought anxiety to the 
 lowliest child, on whom the burden will not 
 fall. The pressure of pain will come upon 
 Society everywhere. Destitution will not be 
 slow to visit us. Sorrow shall sit on every 
 doorstep. The homes of great and small will 
 be wrapped in gloom alike because the light 
 will have died out of young eyes, and the 
 strong hearts of fathers and husbands and 
 brothers and sons will have ceased to beat. It 
 is the duty of all to sink their selfish interests 
 in the interests of mankind. We must lend 
 ourselves — as each one may — to the service of 
 others. The individual loss, the individual 
 ^ief, the individual discomfort, must be for- 
 gotten. We have had a noble example set 
 for us by President Wilson of the United 
 
SHATTERING THE NEST 51 
 
 States of America, who, from the bedside of 
 his dying wife, penned the messages of medi- 
 ation to every warring State of Europe, mes- 
 sages which thus far have fallen on deaf and 
 heedless ears. It is not easy thus to subordi- 
 nate personal grief to the service of mankind. 
 But it must be done. The rich must pour out 
 their wealth like water; the poor, their sym- 
 pathy and service. Employers must protect 
 employees who often live on such a narrow 
 margin. Employees must be considerate of 
 their employers who have such immense inter- 
 ests at stake. All greed and attempts to trade 
 on the nation's disaster must be crushed out 
 of our hearts. Not even in money or food must 
 we try to hoard beyond our daily and suf- 
 ficient need. Above all things, we must clothe 
 our spirits in humility and intercession. We 
 must bear in our souls, not the weakness of 
 panic but the power of peace. We must carry 
 on our lips, not the empty boastings of pride 
 but the persistent prayers of faith. For our 
 help is in God. It is in no other. More than 
 all else our leaders need — and shall I say de- 
 sire — our prayers, that theirs may be the Di- 
 vine wisdom and theirs the Divine power. 
 
52 WORLD POWER 
 
 The nest is shattered! The birds are out 
 upon the empty air. We know not what the 
 end may be. We know not the ghastly harvest 
 of the plain below. But this we know, that 
 our hope must be in God. He will not be far 
 from those who put their trust in Him. He 
 will be above, below, and round about them, 
 to bear them on His strong pinions, for "the 
 Eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath 
 are the everlasting arms." 
 
Ill 
 
 ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE: THE 
 SOLIDARITY OF THE RACE 
 
Ill 
 
 ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE: THE 
 SOLIDARITY OF THE RACE 
 
 Text — " .... The new man, •which is renewed in 
 Jcnowledge after the image of him that created him: 
 •where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor 
 uncircumcision. Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but 
 Christ is all and in all." — Colossians 3: 10^ 11. 
 
 The sentiments of these words are echoed 
 in many parts of the scripture, but they fall 
 with peculiar and startling force from the 
 lips of Paul because in birth and training" and 
 temperament he was the greatest individual- 
 ist of his day. The native atmosphere of this 
 youth was designed to call him away from the 
 world-idea of the common life of man, and 
 everything conspired to make him proud and 
 exclusive and self-contained. By nature he 
 was one of those independent spirits who is 
 born to lead, who is a pioneer in the world 
 of thought, blazing new trails, establishing new 
 standards, and setting aside with a fine aloof- 
 
 55 
 
56 WOULD POWER 
 
 ness of soul the assistance and companionship 
 of men. He had been born, as you know, into 
 the great Roman Empire, the proudest and 
 most exclusive of the old empires of the world. 
 When occasion demanded it, Paul appealed to 
 his rights as a Roman citizen, and even to 
 the last the flash of the old Roman fire would 
 leap forth from his eye. And above all things 
 here was a man whose religion was the re- 
 Hgion of the Jew. It was narrow; it was 
 Pharisaic; it was traditional; it was exclusive; 
 it was selfish. He himself reminds us that 
 "after the strictest sect of our religion I lived 
 a Pharisee," that he was "a Hebrew of the 
 Hebrews, as touching the law a Pharisee, con- 
 cerning zeal persecuting the church, touching 
 the righteousness which is in the law, blame- 
 less." 
 
 And now in the very intensity of that ex- 
 clusive life there swept over the man a change 
 — a breath — a power that broke down all bar- 
 riers, that overleaped all boundaries, that lifted 
 and pushed back the horizons until the social 
 and racial and religious differences among men 
 disappeared and there emerged instead the 
 
ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 57 
 
 great conception of the spiritual unity of the 
 race. Strange indeed it is now to hear a 
 bigoted Jew say to the Romans that "there is 
 no difference between the Jew and the Greek." 
 Strange indeed it is to hear a proud aristocrat 
 take up the cause of the oppressed and say, 
 "Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is 
 injured and I burn not?" Strange indeed 
 it is to hear a haughty Roman say that "there 
 is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor un- 
 circumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor 
 free." I shall speak a little later of the power 
 that wrought that change, but the change it- 
 self is one of the marvels of history. Once 
 he had thought of men as Romans or other- 
 wise; now he thinks of them as the citizens of 
 the world. Once he had looked upon them 
 as possible proselytes ; now he looks upon them 
 as possible saints. Once he regarded them as 
 aristocrats or otherwise ; now he regards them 
 as the souls for whom Christ died. He has 
 caught the great conception of the unity of 
 mankind; he sees the solidarity, the oneness 
 of the race, its common sin, its common sor- 
 row, its common pain, its common hope, its 
 common destiny — and from the moment of 
 
58 WOULD POWER 
 
 that vision the world became his parish and 
 he gave himself to the service of mankind. As 
 Frederick W. Myers puts it finely into his 
 lips: 
 
 "Only like souls I see the folk thereunder. 
 
 Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be 
 kings, — 
 Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder. 
 Sadly contented in a show of things: — 
 
 "Then with a rush the intolerable craving 
 
 Shivers throughout me like a trumpet-call, — 
 Oh to save these ! to perish for their saving. 
 Die for their life, be offered for them all!" 
 
 The Fact 
 
 It is this truth so mightily enthroned in and 
 gripping the mind of Paul, that we emphasize 
 to-night. Yes, there is such a thing as the 
 solidarity of the race! Beneath all the accu- 
 mulated rubbish of our modern society it has 
 been oftentimes obscured. There is a sense in 
 which all men belong to each other and belong 
 to the whole world and are bound together 
 in the same great bundle of a universal life. 
 There are theoretical proofs more than suf- 
 ficient to demonstrate that. Science, with its 
 
ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 59 
 
 root idea in the universality of law, forces 
 upon us the thought of a world that is a co- 
 herent whole. Psychology, with its analysis 
 of the mental process, declares not only the 
 essential unity of the individual mind, but, 
 through imitation and the reaction of mind 
 upon mind, the presence of a universal con- 
 sciousness. Philosophy, if it starts at all, must 
 start with the assumption of a universe, a real 
 unity of truth, and a scheme of things in which 
 no being or phenomenon is unrelated to the 
 whole. And what theory has declared, practi- 
 cal hfe has demonstrated. Yielding to the 
 impulse of their common interests, we find 
 men and women grouping themselves into 
 families, into cities, into nations, or into 
 groups of nations, and the dream of the Uto- 
 pian poet is "the parliament of man, the fed- 
 eration of the world." For the past fifteen or 
 twenty years in Europe there has been grow- 
 ing up one group of nations — Germany, Aus- 
 tria, and Italy — ^known as the Triple Alliance, 
 bound together by their common ambitions and 
 their common need. On the other hand there 
 has been shaping another group — Britain, 
 France and Russia — ^in the Triple Entente, 
 
60 WORLD POWER 
 
 bound together in the defence and preservation 
 of their common life. And not in our Ufe- 
 time have we seen or shall we see such a demon- 
 stration as this war has furnished of the soli- 
 darity of the race. The first blow had not been 
 struck twenty-four hours till it was felt in the 
 farthest corners of the world. It was not the 
 nations who were involved who alone were af- 
 fected, it was every nation on the face of the 
 earth. The effect was felt in every stock ex- 
 change, in the industrial markets, in the home 
 life, in the travelling conveniences, in the per- 
 sonal relationships of men. Because of that 
 blow, 500 miles away a sentry took his place 
 beside a wayside bridge in a Scottish glen; 
 5,000 miles away a mother's head is bowed in 
 gi'ief in Vancouver; a child on the other side 
 of the world is fatherless in Australia; a sol- 
 dier joins his army in the seclusion of Thibet. 
 Because of that blow a king of a cannibal 
 island in the heart of the Pacific must needs 
 declare his neutrality towards the nations he 
 has never seen. The vibrations of that blow 
 have thrilled into the last and farthest fibre 
 of the world's life. Nations may be neutral, 
 but they cannot escape. Homes may be dis- 
 
ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 61 
 
 tant, but they are not exempt. O yes, there 
 is a great world life to which we all belong. 
 There may not be a common language of the 
 lips, but there is a common language of the 
 soul. The yellow Mongolian, the swarthy 
 Latin, the fair Saxon, the red-skinned Indian, 
 merge all their colors in the common hue of 
 the crimson tides of the heart, and manhood 
 recognizes manhood by the swift instinct of 
 the mind. 
 
 And what theory has propounded and life 
 has proved, revelation has confirmed. God has 
 made of one blood all nations of the earth. 
 We are members one of another, and none of 
 us liveth unto himself, and no man dieth unto 
 himself. We are inextricably bound up with 
 one another in joy and sorrow, in life and 
 death. You will remember how Lowell teaches 
 that in some of the most vigorous verse he 
 ever wrote. The noble deed of one nation 
 uplifts the whole world, for: 
 
 "When a deed is done for freedom, through the broad 
 
 earth's aching breast 
 Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from East 
 
 to West, 
 And the slave where'er he cowers feels the soul within 
 
 him climb 
 
62 WORLD POWER 
 
 To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime 
 Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem 
 of time." 
 
 Ah, jes, but the reverse is also true, and the 
 tyranny of one nation crushes farther into the 
 earth the slave of every land. It was for that 
 reason that all the world regarded the sacking 
 of Louvain, not only as a crime against Bel- 
 gium, but as a crime against Humanity. 
 
 "So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a 
 
 chill. 
 Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill. 
 And the slave where'er he cowers feels his sympathies 
 
 with God, 
 In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by 
 
 the sod, 
 Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the 
 
 nobler clod." 
 
 And that is possible because men are bound to- 
 gether, and for the reason that when you smite 
 one life you smite the whole corporate life of 
 man. 
 
 "For mankind is one in spirit, and an instinct bears 
 
 along. 
 Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right 
 
 or wrong; 
 
ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 63 
 
 Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast 
 
 frame. 
 Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy 
 
 or shame: — 
 In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal 
 
 claim." 
 
 The Basis 
 
 This then is the fact, and now, in the sec- 
 ond place, we ask for the basis on which it 
 surely rests. What is this binding element 
 in human life? I have already hinted that it 
 lies deeper than language or color or climate 
 or creed. It does not rest upon the natural 
 affinities of the nations, for even in the present 
 war many of the natural affinities are de- 
 stroyed and unnatural antagonisms or un- 
 natural alliances have risen up. Britain and 
 Germany, oftentimes the allies of the past in 
 the cause of liberty, are ranged against each 
 other to-day, but the time will come again, 
 we trust, when the true Germany will stand 
 once more as the champion of freedom. Rus- 
 sia and Japan, fighting a few years ago to the 
 bitter death in the Orient, have joined hands 
 in a common cause. South Africa twelve years 
 ago was slaughtering Britain's sons on the 
 
64 WOULD POWER 
 
 South African veldt and now is sending her 
 sons to the defence of the Empire. No! No! 
 This solidarity of the race lies deeper than 
 any consideration I have named. If you will 
 note two phrases in my text you will see how 
 Paul reveals the bonds that bind the race in 
 one. In the first part of the verse he tells 
 us that man was created in the likeness of 
 God, "after the image of Him that created 
 him"; in the last part of the verse he tells us 
 that all the distinctions are blotted out because 
 Christ is present in human life and "Christ is 
 all and in all." Here, then, are the founda- 
 tions on which the solidarity of the race abides 
 — first, because the human is created in the im- 
 age of the Divine, and second, because the 
 Divine is incarnate in the image of the hu- 
 man. Take this congregation here to-night. 
 You are strangers to me, many of you, and 
 most of you to one another, and yet we are 
 all bound together in a solidarity of life. It is 
 not because we live in the same city, or speak 
 the same language, or seek the same interests. 
 It is because that in me and in you and in every 
 one of us there is the image of God. It may 
 be, and it is, fearfully defaced and scarred, 
 
ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 65 
 
 but nevertheless the traces of the image re- 
 main. We have something in common, and 
 it is the shattered heritage of the Divine. Some 
 of you will say that the only common quality 
 we have is sin, and it is true we all have that 
 quality — no man without it — but man has sin 
 because man has a moral nature that is capa- 
 ble of good or evil, and man has a moral na- 
 ture because he was created in the image of 
 God. 
 
 But that is not all. There is another unify- 
 ing bond — it is the presence of Christ. You 
 talk about the solidarity of the race. What 
 if God Himself were to step into the soli- 
 darity ! And this He has done. "A God must 
 mingle with the game." Christ is the ideal 
 head of humanity. Their common hopes and 
 fears and aspirations, their sin and their salva- 
 tion, are all undertaken by Him. He has as- 
 sumed the liabilities of the race. He has taken 
 over the spiritual fortunes of the whole world. 
 When you remember that every man in the 
 world is a man for whom Christ died, that 
 every man in the world is a man in whom Christ 
 may reproduce Himself, that every man in the 
 world is a man for whom Christ alone has fur- 
 
66 WORLD POWER 
 
 nished the opportunity to realize the best and 
 the highest and be changed into His image 
 — then you begin to see how for humanity 
 "Christ is all and in all," how we are bound 
 together not only by the failure of the first 
 Adam, but by the victory of the last Adam, 
 and how it may be true that in Him "all things 
 are yours; whether Paul, or ApoUos, or Ce- 
 phas, or the world, or life, or death, or things 
 present, or things to come; all are yours; and 
 ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." 
 
 The Implications 
 
 The implications arising from this great 
 truth are too many and far-reaching to be fol- 
 lowed out to-night. But there are two of them 
 that I wish to emphasize before I close — the 
 one is the great obligation resting upon each 
 of us because of our place in the solid world, 
 the other is the great hope coming to us be- 
 cause of God's place in the same solidarity 
 of life. 
 
 1. We get a glimpse of the tremendous re- 
 sponsibility that rests upon each individual life. 
 Because of the solidarity of the race it lies 
 
ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 67 
 
 within our power to help to make or mar the 
 world. "Our echoes roll from soul to soul and 
 go forever and forever." It is impossible for 
 you to cheat a man in business in Toronto 
 without affecting the life of China. It is im- 
 possible to yield to greed, or indulge in sin, or 
 cherish vanity, or wallow in lust, without strik- 
 ing a blow at the spiritual interests of the Hot- 
 tentots of Africa. And, thank God, the other 
 side is also true. You cannot live a noble life 
 in a common hamlet without blessing the hfe 
 of India ; you cannot be unselfish in motive and 
 pure in thought without uplifting the life of 
 the whole world. 
 
 "No stream from its source 
 Flows seaward, how lonely soever its course, 
 But some land is gladdened. No star ever rose 
 And set without influence somewhere." 
 
 I want to say that to the very weakest and 
 lowliest life here. I want to say it to the timid 
 little mother who creeps out into the big world 
 from her humble home, thinking that she 
 counts for nothing. You do not count for 
 nothing; you count for everything; as any 
 one of us may count for everything in the good 
 
68 WORLD POWER 
 
 of the world. Ah, it is a solemn thing to live! 
 To-day the sober judgment and moral sense of 
 the civilized nations have passed the verdict of 
 guilt upon the Prussian military party and 
 their philosophy of might. And they are not 
 mistaken. It was Germany that lighted the 
 fuse that has fired the crowded magazine of 
 modern civilization. The perpetration of that 
 crime lies at her door. But while all that is 
 true, let us remember that we are not guilt- 
 less. We are not guiltless as a nation nor as 
 individuals. We have all had our share in pre- 
 paring the conditions that have brought about 
 the war. In our love of ease and power, in. 
 our greed and grasping, in our adherence to 
 false standards, in our departure from the sim- 
 ple life, in our riot of gain and pleasure, we 
 have fostered those carnal forces and have pre- 
 pared the way. It is for that reason that we 
 ought to humble ourselves before God in re- 
 pentance. And our repentance will count. 
 We can help to prepare the way for peace. 
 To-day we pray for peace and long for peace 
 that is lasting. My friend, the beginning of 
 that must begin with you. If you want to 
 count for peace you must become in yourself 
 
ALLIANCE AND ENTENTE 69 
 
 a centre of peace. The peace of God must 
 enter your life. You must adopt the stand- 
 ards of Christ in your thinking, the spirit of 
 Christ in your heart. Your best hope of set- 
 ting up the kingdom in Europe is to set up 
 the kingdom in your own soul. You must put 
 away your selfishness, abandon your sin, bend 
 your judgments to the standards of Jesus. 
 It is not impossible. By faith in Christ Jesus 
 and by the power of His Holy Spirit, it was 
 done in Paul and it may be done in you. I 
 speak to you, everyone and each one, each by 
 each, when I say that so long as you refuse 
 to surrender your whole heart to Christ and 
 live by His laws, to that degree you are a 
 menace to the peace of the world and a bar- 
 rier to the progress of the race. 
 
 2. But out of this principle we get a glimpse 
 of a great hope. It is this, that God is in "the 
 game." He is a member of the race. He is 
 in its solidarity. He is not separated from it. 
 You wonder what He thinks of it and how He 
 bears it. Man, you forget your gospel ! Look 
 you at Calvary and you will see what He thinks 
 of it and how He bears it. He has put Him- 
 self beneath the crushing burden. He has let 
 
70 WORLD POWER 
 
 the world's great pain press upon His own 
 heart. He suffers in it and for it and in His 
 suffering he redeems it. He has joined up His 
 fortunes with our fortunes. The hazardous 
 fortunes of the race are in His hand, and He 
 will not suffer them to fail. We shall not ut- 
 terly be lost. And in our great Head of the 
 race, its true Head, we shall see the gathering, 
 some day, of all peoples and nations and kin- 
 dreds and tongues in the solid and holy unity 
 of a redeemed family, and happy shall we be 
 if through Christ we shall be found within their 
 midst. 
 
IV 
 
 A PLACE IN THE SUN: THE GOD 
 OF HISTORY 
 
IV 
 
 A PLACE IN THE SUN: THE GOD 
 OE HISTORY, 
 
 Text: — "And I saw an angel standing in the sun." — 
 Eevelation 19: 17. 
 
 The phrase that has suggested our subject 
 for to-night is one that has been on the lips of 
 the German people for the past ten or fifteen 
 years. We are not quite certain who coined 
 the phrase in the beginning, but it is general- 
 ly supposed that it sprang out of the fertile 
 brain of the Kaiser himself. Over and over 
 again he has repeated it to his people. Over 
 and over again the world has been told that 
 Germany must have her "place in the sun." 
 And not only are we uncertain about its ex- 
 act origin, but we are also uncertain about its 
 exact meaning. It is one of those subtle phrases 
 that expresses the hidden quality of a nation's 
 character and unconsciously uncovers the se- 
 cret purpose and driving motive that sends 
 
 73 
 
74 WORLD POWER 
 
 her on her way. There can be little doubt that 
 in its first use it simply signified the desire on 
 the part of Germany to have an equal chance 
 with all the other great nations of the world. 
 She wanted the opportunity to develop her 
 resources, to perfect her institutions, to expand 
 her influence, and to live out the genius of her 
 life. There was a sense (though no one else 
 could be blamed) in which she was handi- 
 capped in the opportunity to live. There can 
 be no doubt that in her present form she came 
 into the arena at a very late date, when all the 
 best opportunities were gone and the place of 
 influence held by the older and stronger na- 
 tions of the world. She came at a time when 
 the national and international institutions 
 were more or less settled and the hard and fast 
 lines of their development were long and deep- 
 ly laid. She came at a time when nearly all 
 the other great nations had reached maturity 
 or were well upon the way. She came with a 
 strong, young, buoyant life, with a rapidly in- 
 creasing population at a time when there was 
 no place to put it because all the vacant terri- 
 tory of the world had been pre-empted by other 
 European powers and there was no open door 
 
A PLACE IN THE SUN 75 
 
 for the colonial expansion of the German race. 
 In other words, the other members of the 
 European family had basked in the sunshine 
 of a great opportunity. They had had their 
 share; Germany felt that she had been over- 
 shadowed — crowded into the twilight: and 
 from this time on she must have an equal 
 chance; she must have "a place in the sun." 
 
 But if that was the original idea of the 
 phrase it soon took on a dark and sinister 
 meaning. Not only did Germany want "a 
 place in the sun," but she wanted the most cen- 
 traland commanding place of all. She demand- 
 ed that she should stand in the centre. The 
 full meridian glory must fall on her, and her 
 alone. Her shadow would stretch itself across 
 the world. If other nations lived at all, they 
 must live through sufferance. They must pass 
 their days in the shadow of that one great 
 figure that claimed the commanding and con- 
 spicuous position in the sunlight of civiliza- 
 tion. Indeed, she herself would be the sun- 
 light of the world. And so what was a fair 
 chance passed into an arrogant demand; what 
 was a privilege became a right; what was an 
 equal share became the whole ownership. All V 
 
76 WORLD POWER 
 
 else must stand in the shadow. Her motto be- 
 came: "Prussia at the head of Germany; Ger- 
 many at the head of Europe; Europe at the 
 head of the world." To put it briefly, there 
 must be one great controlling element in the 
 life of mankind, and that one element must be 
 the German power. "A place in the sun!" 
 
 Well, our text reminds us that nineteen hun- 
 dred years ago in a very striking and beauti- 
 ful figure, John the apostle told us about this 
 "place in the sun," and who it was that held 
 it, and how He secured it, and what He 
 achieved through the power that He had 
 gained. "I saw an angel standing in the sun." 
 In these closing chapters of the Revelation 
 there passes before the eyes of John the vision 
 of the new heaven and the new earth. He gets 
 a glimpse of the perfect civilization that is to 
 be. Behind it all and within it and through 
 it and dominating all he discerns a power that 
 holds the central place, — a power that is the 
 guiding and moving spirit of history. "An 
 angel standing in the sun!" I do not think we 
 are supposed to take John's words in any ht- 
 eral sense. The "sun" with him, for the most 
 part, is symbolic of the spiritual light and 
 
A PLACE m THE SUN 77 
 
 glory and blessing attendant on the reign of 
 Christ. The "angel," for the most part, is sym- 
 bolic of some Divine presence that pervades 
 the church, or the Kingdom, or the world, or 
 human life. It is a very significant thing that 
 close to my text, and in the very next breath, 
 and indeed throughout the chapter, that Di- 
 vine presence is identified with the radiant Son 
 of God. And so when John says that he "saw 
 an angel standing in the sun," he means that 
 in the world there is a Divine presence out of 
 which all its glory springs ; that there is some- 
 thing behind the world of matter that we can- 
 not see and cannot account for; that beneath 
 all the network of law there seems to stand 
 in the dignity of omnipotence a something that 
 is higher than law; that there is a guiding mind 
 in all our history; that there is a commanding 
 will in human events; that there is a purpose 
 under which life will yield its meaning; that 
 in the motion of a butterfly's wings and in the 
 mighty cataclysms of the race there is a rea- 
 son so pure and great that every event is justi- 
 fiable; that history is so religious that it is di- 
 vine. In a word, he means that God stands 
 at the centre of the imiverse. It is He who 
 
78 WORLD POWER 
 
 has taken the "place in the sun." His is the 
 hidden energy; His is the motive power; He 
 is the controlling and guiding mind ; He is the 
 distant goal to which all things move and in 
 whom all things consist ; He is the 
 
 "One God, one law, one element. 
 And one far off Divine event, 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 God in Nature 
 
 When we begin to examine this truth, we 
 see at once how clear is its proof in the realm 
 of nature. We have all been aware, at least 
 at times, that there is something behind the 
 beauty and ruggedness, the moods and tem- 
 pers of nature that we cannot see, an invisible 
 presence that breathes through and breaks out 
 from it to impress itself upon our minds. All 
 the poets have been conscious of their inability 
 to quite define or describe the mystic spirit that 
 is there. Their songs have not been strong 
 enough or deep enough or subtle enough in 
 feeling to catch the liquid melody of a run- 
 ning brook. They have never been able to write 
 verses that could match "the rhythm of the fall- 
 
A PLACE IN THE SUN 79 
 
 ing rain." They are helpless to fashion music 
 that can approach the majesty of the deep- 
 toned thunder. The silences that men create can 
 never out-silence in stillness "the pathway of 
 the snow." Against the background of light 
 there emerges a something ineffably more 
 glorious. Within and behind and speaking 
 through nature is nature's great infinity, which 
 is God. And that is what men like Tennyson 
 hint at when in the beauty of a modest flower 
 they find themselves confronted by the unex- 
 plored depths of a nameless presence. It is 
 "the angel in the sun." 
 
 Flower in the crannied wall^ 
 
 I pluck you out of the crannies, 
 
 I hold you here, root and all, in my hand. 
 
 Little flower — but if I could understand 
 
 What you are^ root and all, and all in all, 
 
 I should know what God and man is. 
 
 God in Human Experience 
 
 Carry this text into the realm of human ex- 
 perience and let His saints bear witness how 
 in their joys and sorrows, their prosperities 
 and adversities, they have been able to trace 
 the footsteps of a Presence that ruled and 
 
80 WORLD POWER 
 
 overruled, that guided and controlled, and even 
 unveiled His face through the mantle of the 
 darkest cloud. Hear the Psalmist say: "It is 
 good for me that I have been afflicted that I 
 might learn thy statutes. Before I was af- 
 flicted I went astray ; but now have I kept thy 
 word." What does this mean if not that this 
 man found God in all his life, transmuting 
 even the darkest sorrow into the Divinest bless- 
 ing. Hear Paul, beaten, stoned, imprisoned, 
 shipwrecked, robbed of friends, home, com- 
 forts — hear Paul say: "But I would have you 
 understand, brethren, that the things which 
 happened unto me have fallen out rather unto 
 the furtherance of the gospel ; so that my bonds 
 in Christ are manifest in all the palace and in 
 all other places." To Paul there was a Divine 
 purpose even in his chains. Or hear Frances 
 Ridley Havergal, from a bed of sickness, with 
 not a moment's surcease of pain, say : 
 
 I take this pain. Lord Jesus, from Thine own hand, 
 
 The strength to bear it bravely Thou wilt command. 
 ****** 
 
 'Tis Thy dear hand, O Saviour, that presseth sore, 
 
 The hand that bears the nail-prints for evermore. 
 
 And now beneath its shadow, hidden by Thee, 
 The pressure only tells me Thou lovest me! 
 
A PLACE IN THE SUN 81 
 
 These are the glimpses of those who have read 
 the secret meaning of human life, who have 
 learned to know that "all things work to- 
 gether for good to those who love the Lord," 
 who with eyes that were cleansed of the dust 
 of earth and deepened in spiritual penetra- 
 tion have seen the vision of an "angel stand- 
 ing in the sun." 
 
 God in History 
 
 Take with you this truth out into the wider 
 tracts of the history of the race, and its lines 
 are writ so large that "he who runs may read." 
 I do not deny that many a man at many a time 
 has found it hard to trace the footsteps of God 
 in the ebbing and flowing of the human prog- 
 ress. So dark, so forbidding, so puzzling have 
 been the prospect and the retrospect alike that 
 men have been led to ask, "Is there any God at 
 all? Is there any guiding mind? Is there any 
 dominating will? Is there any loving heart? 
 Is there any holy end? Is there any angel in 
 the sun?" To all these fear-born questions 
 the long verdict of history gives only one re- 
 ply — there is ! Even a passing glance at a few 
 
82 WORLD POWER 
 
 of the great turning points of the race will 
 serve to make that clear. Never was there a 
 day so dark in the history of Israel as the day 
 of the Exile. The wistful home hunger of the 
 patriot was eating out their hearts. Their 
 beautiful Jerusalem was in ruins, their tem- 
 ple desecrated, their walls battered down, the 
 ploughshare of the conqueror had gone over 
 the ground on which their homes had stood. 
 And they themselves had been driven away 
 from their native land, away to the low, wide 
 plains about Babylon, and there were no moun- 
 tains as at home, to break the long weary mo- 
 notony of the skyline and speak to them of the 
 everlasting God who was round about His peo- 
 ple, and there were no dashing, sparkling 
 mountain streams to sing the message of His 
 care. It was little wonder that after their fit- 
 ful attempts to cheer their hopeless and deject- 
 ed spirits they "hanged their harps upon the 
 willows," for "how shall we sing the Lord's 
 song," said they, in a strange and captive land? 
 Yet history has justified it now as faith justi- 
 fied it long since. It proved to be the salva- 
 tion of Israel. In that experience they were 
 cleansed and chastened. In that experience 
 
A PLACE IN THE SUN 83 
 
 they came to a new recognition of God. 
 Through that experience they were prepared 
 to play their part in the great scheme of re- 
 demption to which they were so vitally impor- 
 tant in the purposes of God. And if you want 
 to see further how God can step into history, 
 recall the instrument by which He broke the 
 power of Babylon and set His people free. 
 Much is said to-day about the strange alliance 
 between civilized England and so-called semi- 
 barbarous Russia. It is not the first time that 
 Jehovah has taken a strange weapon to fight 
 His battles. In the case of Israel He laid hold 
 of a pagan people. He summoned Cyrus, a 
 pagan king, a leader of a nation who were not 
 Jehovah-worshippers, "a ravenous bird from 
 the East," as Isaiah called him, and for the 
 time being he became the sword of vengeance 
 in the hand of that angel that standeth in the 
 sun. 
 
 Or take a second instance. Perhaps the 
 mightiest shock that Europe yet has known 
 was felt in the downfall of the Roman Empire. 
 When the disaster came, it was thought that 
 the gods were angry and that Christianity, 
 newly accepted in the Empire, had proved a 
 
84 WORLD POWER 
 
 failure. But in that dark day Augustine 
 wrote his famous treatise on "The City of 
 God," in which he proved the reverse. It was 
 the clearing" of the foundations for the build- 
 ing of a nobler structure. It was the Eternal 
 Builder sweeping away the debris that the 
 Eternal City — the true Eternal City — might 
 rise. Out of that cataclysm came a new lib- 
 erty for the individual, the opening of new 
 doorways for the doctrine of the Christ, and 
 the assertion of those eternal principles which 
 underlie the whole superstructure of our free 
 institutions. And in that turning point of his- 
 tory one can discern again the overshadowing 
 presence of that One who sets the bounds on 
 the ambitions of men, and orders all things 
 after the counsels of His own will. "And 
 now," says Kingsley, speaking of that Gothic 
 invasion under which Rome went down, "and 
 now, gentlemen, was this vast campaign 
 fought without a general? If Trafalgar could 
 not be won without the mind of a Nelson, or 
 Waterloo without the mind of a Wellington, 
 was there no one mind to lead these innumer- 
 able armies, on whose success depended the fu- 
 ture of the whole human race? Did no one 
 
A PLACE IN THE SUN 85 
 
 marshal them in that impregnable convex 
 front, from the Euxine to the North Sea? No 
 one guide them to the two great strategic cen- 
 tres of the Black Forest and Trieste ? No one 
 cause them, blind barbarians without maps or 
 science, to follow those rules of war without 
 which victory in a protracted struggle is im- 
 possible, and by the pressure of the Huns be- 
 hind, force on their flagging myriads to an 
 enterprise which their simplicity fancied at first 
 beyond the power of mortal men? Believe it 
 who will ; I cannot. 
 
 "But while I believe that not a stone or a 
 handful of mud gravitates into its place with- 
 out the will of God ; that it was ordained ages 
 since into what particular spot each grain of 
 gold should be washed down from an Austra- 
 lian quartz reef, that a certain man might find 
 it at a certain moment and crisis of his life — 
 if I be superstitious enough (as, thank God, 
 I am) to hold that creed, shall I not believe 
 that though this great war had no general upon 
 earth, it may have had a general in Heaven; 
 and that in spite of all their sins the hosts of 
 our forefathers were the hosts of God." 
 
 Or take another notable instance. One hun- 
 
86 WORLD POWETl 
 
 dred years ago the storm of the French Revo- 
 lution broke over Europe, yet the lapse of one 
 hundred years has enabled us to see with clearer 
 vision that it marked the downfall of an old 
 system that gave way to the rising of a new. 
 There was an angel in the sun. God compelled 
 events to serve Him. How wonderful it is 
 that at the very moment when these old sys- 
 tems were crashing into dust He was prepar- 
 ing and initiating the new movements that 
 would bless the centuries. In the midst of 
 that storm came the modern missionary cru- 
 sade when William Carey led the attack of 
 Christianity against the paganism of India; 
 in the midst of that time of stress was initiated 
 the great Sunday School movement; in the 
 midst of the same stormy days emerged the 
 Bible Society that has sown the seed of the 
 Scriptures broadcast throughout the world. 
 It was evident to all who had eyes to see that 
 there was an angel in the sun. Writing of 
 Waterloo, which was the culmination of that 
 gigantic struggle, Victor Hugo says, "This 
 madness, this terror, this falling to ruins of 
 the highest bravery which ever astonished his- 
 tory, can that be without cause? No, the shad- 
 
A PLACE IN THE SUN 87 
 
 ow of an enormous right hand rested on 
 Waterloo. It is the day of destiny. A power 
 above man controlled that day. Hence the 
 loss of mind in dismay; hence all these great 
 souls yielding up their swords. Those who had 
 conquered Europe fell to the ground having 
 nothing more to say or to do, feeling a terri- 
 ble presence in the darkness. That day the 
 perspective of the human race changed. Wat- 
 erloo is the hinge of the nineteenth century. 
 The disappearance of the great man was neces- 
 sary for the advent of the great century. One, 
 to whom there is no reply, took it in charge. 
 The panic of heroes is explained. In the battle 
 of Waterloo there is more than a cloud, there 
 is a meteor. God passed over it." What is 
 this but the attempt of a brilliant man to say 
 what John taught us long ago, that there is 
 "an angel standing in the sun." 
 
 The Two Lessons 
 
 And now with that truth firmly established 
 there are two lessons we must learn: 
 
 1. We must learn to take a long view of his- 
 tory, God moves across the ages with stately 
 
88 WORLD POWER 
 
 step, and they who would understand Him 
 must read His records with the light of two 
 eternities upon them. Emerson was fond of 
 saying that the supreme lesson of life is learn- 
 ing "what the centuries say against the hours." 
 With Jehovah a thousand years is as a day 
 and a day as a thousand years. We are too 
 near to the great events of to-day to be sure 
 that we read them aright. The roar of cannon 
 deafens us; the dust of battle blinds us; the 
 rush of events dazzles us; and the passion of 
 the hour carries us by storm. Momentary vic- 
 tory may not mean success ; momentary defeat 
 may not mean failure. Above the mighty 
 drama is God. He has taken His place in the 
 sun. It is occupied by no other. At times it 
 may seem otherwise, but it is not so. 
 
 "Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but 
 
 record 
 One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems 
 
 and the Word; 
 Truth forever on the scaiFold, Wrong forever on the 
 
 throne — 
 Yet that scaffold sways the Future, and, behind the 
 
 dim unknown, 
 Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above 
 
 His own." 
 
A PLACE IN THE SUN 89 
 
 2. Again let us learn to take a clear view of 
 Christ in relation to the scheme of life. He is 
 the angel that standeth in the sun. He is to 
 us the manifestation of the Divine presence, 
 "the effulgence of God's glory from the ex- 
 press image of His person." All things re- 
 volve about Him. All things must exist for 
 Him. He must reign until He has put all 
 enemies under His feet. At the very darkest 
 hour of all He stepped into human history in 
 the flesh. He is there, as John tells us, by the 
 right of His cross. He has on His vesture and 
 on His thigh a name written. King of Kings 
 and Lord of Lords. He is the centre of all 
 created things. He is the one who will con- 
 trol. Around Him the nations must bow in 
 submission. Make no mistake. It is not Ger- 
 many or another who will hold the place in 
 the sun. It is He whose right it is to rule. It 
 is He who has the last word of life. We stand 
 or fall by Him and our relation to Him. 
 
 "He hath sounded forth the trumpet 
 That shall never call retreat. 
 
 He is sifting out the hearts of men. 
 Before His judgment seat. 
 
 O ! be swift my soul to meet Him; 
 Be jubilant, my feet, 
 
 For God is marching on." 
 
THE DAY! THE DAY! : THE 
 NEMESIS OF JUSTICE 
 
V 
 
 THE DAY! THE DAY! : THE 
 NEMESIS OF JUSTICE 
 
 Text: — "Woe unto you that desire the day of ike 
 Lord: to what end is it for you? the day of the Lord is 
 darkness and not light." — Amos 5: 18. 
 
 "The day!" "The day of the Lord!" "The 
 day of the Lord is darkness and not light." 
 These are ominous words and strangely mod- 
 ern as they drift across the twenty-seven cen- 
 turies that lie between. They were uttered by 
 Amos at a critical hour in the history of Israel. 
 It was a time of impending national danger. 
 He himself tells us that the vision came "two 
 years before the earthquake," and at once you 
 realize that he is thinking not so much of any 
 quaking of earth as some great cataclysm of 
 the nation. The truth is that the storm of 
 war was about to break over Israel. Amos 
 knows that it must come. His own heart tells 
 him so. His God tells him so. Events teU him 
 so. The signs have been ripening these many 
 years. The sound of the conflict is already in 
 
 93 
 
94 WORLD POWER 
 
 his ears. It is coming in the marching hosts 
 of Assyria, who have long been preparing for 
 the fray. Already the force of their mighty 
 hand has been felt in the West, and Amos, who 
 knew how to read the signs of the times, knew 
 that it meant the day of sorrow for Israel, an 
 Israel who by her sin deserved the wrath and 
 the justice of God. 
 
 Besides, it was not Israel alone that would 
 be involved. Once the blow was struck it 
 would smite the whole circle of nations — Syria, 
 Philistia, Phoenicia, Edom, Ammon, Moab, — 
 north, south, east, west, the rage of battle 
 would spread. And before he announces what 
 the doom of Israel would be, he takes a few 
 moments to make it clear why the sword of 
 justice would fall on the nations round about. 
 There is something tremendously modern 
 about this, something that silences all the 
 boast about the progress of our civilization. 
 Syria will be punished, says the prophet, be- 
 cause she has been guilty of wanton cruelty in 
 war, cruelty that Amos can only compare with 
 the driving of sharp and heavy threshing 
 boards over the ripened corn; Philistia and 
 Phoenicia will be punished because of their 
 
THE DAY! THE DAY! 95 
 
 heartless slave-trade that stirred the indigna- 
 tion of God; Edom will be punished because 
 of her pitiless and untiring hatred of Israel, 
 a hatred that was nursed by day and nour- 
 ished by night; Ammon, because of their un- 
 speakable barbarity to women in a war whose 
 only justification was the extension of terri- 
 tory; Moab, because of the insolence with 
 which she desecrated the holy places of the 
 land and insulted the pieties universally cher- 
 ished toward the dead. The world around 
 Israel was a hard and cruel world that tram- 
 pled remorselessly upon the fundamental sanc- 
 tities of life and liberty, and to a man of the 
 spirit of Amos it seemed only right that they 
 in turn should be trampled under the iron 
 heel of the Assyrian horde. 
 
 The Case of Israel 
 
 Up to that point the nation listened with 
 delight to their prophet. The doom of the 
 other nations satisfied their complacent and 
 vindictive spirits. Let it fall; they deserved 
 it; it could not come too soon. The day! The 
 day! Would that it were here! they would 
 welcome it. These decadent and barlbarous 
 
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 nations must go down! The day! The day! 
 But swift as lightning Amos turns upon them. 
 They too shall be caught in the storm. They 
 thought themselves guiltless but they were not. 
 They boasted of their pedigree as the chosen 
 people of God. They gloried in a sort of Di- 
 vine right that sheltered them. They regarded 
 themselves as the called of God and therefore 
 exempt from His wrath. Their land was pros- 
 perous and they took their prosperity as a sign 
 of the Divine favor. But their life was reek- 
 ing with sin. They had trampled upon the 
 poor; they had laid heavy burdens of taxa- 
 tion on the people; they had turned the sanc- 
 tuaries into places of lust and merchandise; 
 they had poisoned justice at the fountains of 
 the nation; they had developed a class of the 
 rich and powerful that ruled the nation with 
 an iron hand. For all this the day of reckon- 
 ing would come. It would be a day of destiny. 
 It would be the awful havoc of war. He 
 warns them that (5:3) 
 
 "The city that marched forth a thousand 
 Shall come back with a hundred, 
 And the city that marched forth a hundred 
 Shall come back with but ten." 
 
THE DAY I THE DAY! 97 
 
 It would be a day of terror and desperation. 
 It would be as if a man fled from a lion and 
 lo! a bear met him, or escaping from the lion 
 and the bear he is met by a serpent that bites. 
 O Israel, you have hailed the day of doom for 
 others, but it will prove to be the day of doom 
 for you! O Israel, you have boasted the day 
 of defeat for others, but it will be the day of 
 defeat for you! The day! The day! you say. 
 "Woe unto you that desire the day of the 
 Lord; to what end is it for you? the day of the 
 Lord is darkness and not light." 
 
 The Case of Germany 
 
 No one can miss the very striking parallel 
 between these words and that thing that has 
 been cherished for twenty-five years at the 
 heart of a great and powerful people to-day. 
 It is a well-known fact that for these many 
 years in the officers' mess in the army and navy 
 of Germany there has been drunk a toast to 
 "The Day! The Day!"— the day when the 
 dogs of war would be slipped in Europe, the 
 day when the doom would fall on all Ger- 
 many's rivals, and on some occasions at least 
 the hope was emphasized by smashing the 
 
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 glasses from which the toast was drunk, as 
 symbolic of the blow by which they would 
 smash Britain when "the day" would come. 
 Their prosperity they took as a sign of the 
 Divine favor; their pedigree and culture as a 
 sign of the Divine sanction. To prepare for 
 "the day" they trampled on the poor; they 
 laid heavy burdens of taxation on the people; 
 they developed a class of the rich and power- 
 ful that ruled the nation with an iron hand; 
 they poisoned the fountain springs of justice; 
 they fanned the popular mind into a flame of 
 war; they impregnated the soil of their na- 
 tional life with the seeds of hatred, suspicion, 
 and strife. Boasting and toasting for the 
 day, lying and spying for the day, dreaming 
 and scheming for the day, sowing and grow- 
 ing for the day, wronging and longing for 
 the day — ^until the conscience of the world pro- 
 tested in the name of God, and rose up to 
 say, "You have hailed the day of doom for 
 others, it will be the day of doom for you. 
 You have hastened the day of blood for others, 
 it will be the day of blood for you. You have 
 boasted the day of defeat for others, it will 
 be the day of defeat for you. 'The Day! The 
 
THE DAY! THE DAY! 99 
 
 Day' you say. Let it come. It cannot come 
 too soon, would that it were here. 'Ah, woe 
 unto you that desire the day of the Lord; to 
 what end is it for you? the day of the Lord 
 is darkness and not light.' " 
 
 The Spiritual Teaching 
 
 And now from these two events so far apart 
 in point of time, so close together in charac- 
 ter, there emerge a few great truths we do well 
 to heed to-day : 
 
 1. The Inexorable Working of the Moral 
 Law. — And first of all we are impressed with 
 the inexorableness and certainty of the work- 
 ing of the moral law. Over against the sin is 
 "the day." There is the inevitable day of the 
 Lord, the day of reckoning. Israel imagined 
 that she might escape the doom that would fall 
 on others though she shared their sin. But 
 there was not and is not any escape. There is 
 nothing surer than that. In the moral world 
 the laws never fail. As Plato says, the sin and 
 its effects are "rivetted together." Certain 
 effects follow certain causes; certain fruits 
 will come from certain roots. It cannot be 
 
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 otherwise. "Men do not gather grapes from 
 thorns nor figs from thistles." "Be not de- 
 ceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a 
 man soweth that shall he also reap." That is 
 a truth that is not only written in the Bible 
 but written indelibly on the conscience of man. 
 We have put it into our proverbs. "Our sins," 
 we say, "come home to roost," and in that we 
 are not mistaken. "The mills of the gods grind 
 slowly, but they grind exceeding small," and 
 in that we are not mistaken. Said an oppressed 
 woman to Richelieu, "God does not always 
 pay at the end of the week but He pays." Ah, 
 there it is! He pays! He pays! In the old 
 Greek mythology this sure retribution was rep- 
 resented and worshipped as a goddess. Her 
 name was Nemesis — hence my subject, "The 
 Nemesis of Justice." And she is always rep- 
 resented with a measuring rod to indicate that 
 justice will measure the exact reward; she is 
 represented with sword and scourge to indi- 
 cate that justice will administer the punishment 
 that is due ; she is represented with wings, driv- 
 ing in a chariot drawn by swift griffins, to indi- 
 cate the swiftness with which justice will fol- 
 low on all the wrongdoing of men. 
 
THE DAY! THE DAY! 101 
 
 Ah, when will we learn this great truth that 
 there can never be any harmless infraction of 
 the moral law? The nation that breaks it shall 
 suffer; so also the man. No lapse of time can 
 ever cheat that unf or getting* nemesis of jus- 
 tice. No stretch of space can divide you from 
 the long arm of that moral law. As Carlyle 
 says: "It would seem that the unjust thing 
 has no friend in Heaven, and a majority 
 against it on Earth ; nay that it at bottom has 
 all men for its enemies ; that it may take shelter 
 m this fallacy and then in that, but will be 
 hunted from fallacy to fallacy till it find no 
 fallacy to shelter in any more but must march 
 and go elsewhither; — ^that, in a word, it ought 
 to prepare incessantly for decent departure, 
 before indecent departure, ignominious drum- 
 ming out, nay savage smiting out and burning 
 out, overtake it !" 
 
 Remembering that, we will cease to wonder 
 that this war is upon the nations. It is the 
 natural harvest of a seed that has been assidu- 
 ously sown. It is the inevitable fruitage of 
 the German philosophy and some of the Ger- 
 man theology, the German ambition and the 
 German hate. How could it be otherwise? 
 
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 They that sow the wind must reap the whirl- 
 wind. For my own part, when I think of the 
 seed that has been sown, the spirit that has been 
 cherished, the teaching that has been rife 
 among" the nations, and Germany in particular, 
 it would have seemed a breakdown in the whole 
 moral order of God's economy if the harvest 
 had not come in just the way it has. 
 
 2. Tlie Surprises of Judgment — Note again 
 the great surprise that often accompanies the 
 outworking of the moral law. "The day of the 
 Lord is darkness and not light." Woe unto 
 you who call for the day! It will not be the 
 kind of day you think it will be. Instead of 
 light, darkness ; instead of .hope, despair ; in- 
 stead of victory, defeat. For twenty-five years 
 Germany has called for "the day" — thinldng 
 of it only as a day of power, of victory, of 
 easy triumph, and the humiliation of every foe. 
 I would not be foolish enough .to offer any 
 opinion on the status of the fighting thus far, 
 but it is safe to say that already "the day" has 
 not proved to be all that Germany anticipated. 
 And this is not the place nor the hour, nor is it 
 ever the place or the hour, to say one boastful 
 
THE DAY! THE DAY! 103 
 
 word, but if this great struggle ends as we 
 hope it shall, as we believe it ought if there be 
 a God in Heaven, if it ends in the only way in 
 which the civilized world can afford to have it 
 end, then "the day" will prove to be a great 
 surprise to the proud ambitions of the German 
 power. 
 
 "But after the Day there's a price to pay 
 For the sleepers under the sod, 
 And He whom you mocked for many a day- 
 Listen and hear what He has to say: 
 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' 
 What can you say to God?" 
 
 But it is not upon the conscience of Ger- 
 many that I can hope to write that word. A 
 nearer duty lies at hand — ^to write that word 
 on your conscience now. We have a kind of 
 easy way of thinking of sin, confusing it with 
 good, supposing we could sow the seed of sin 
 and from our sowing reap the harvest of righ- 
 teousness. My friends, that harvest will sur- 
 prise us. You remember the guilty king in 
 "Hamlet," guilty of the murder of his brother, 
 praying to Heaven and trying to assure him- 
 self that all may yet be well: 
 
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 "What if this cursed hand 
 Were thicker than itself with brother's blood — 
 Is there not rain enough in the sweet Heavens 
 To wash it white as snow?" 
 
 And yet he knows there is no prayer that he 
 can offer Hkely to be heard in those "sweet 
 heavens" since 
 
 "I am still possessed 
 Of those effects for which I did the murder: 
 My crown^ mine own ambition, and my queen." 
 
 And then with an insight into the laws of God 
 hke the deep vision of a saint, the conscience- 
 stricken king is made to say: 
 
 "In the corrupted currents of this world. 
 Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice; 
 
 but 'tis not so above; 
 
 There is no shuffling — there the action lies 
 In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled. 
 Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults. 
 To give in evidence." 
 
 But why should I seek an illustration of this 
 when our Lord Himself pulled aside the veil 
 of the future and glimpsed for us the surprise 
 that shall fall upon men in that great day. 
 "Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or 
 athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in 
 
THE DAY I THE DAY! 105 
 
 prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then 
 shall He answer them, saying, Verily I say 
 unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of 
 the least of these, ye did it not to me." For 
 these men the day of the Lord will be darkness 
 and not light. 
 
 This is the truth we must fearlessly face in 
 our own hearts. There are some who in their 
 thought of "that day" think of it only as a 
 day of light. Are you quite sure it will prove 
 to be so, and is your confidence well founded? 
 It is an easy matter to get ourselves into the 
 habit of thinking that death can only bring us 
 good. We convince ourselves that somehow 
 we shall "muddle safely through." We talk 
 of death as a rest, a sleep that we shall wel- 
 come. We say that "in the grave we end the 
 heartache and the thousand natural shocks that 
 flesh is heir to." We speak as though the tide 
 that bears us on must inevitably bear us into 
 bliss. We say "to die is gain," forgetting that 
 the man who said that was able first to say, "to 
 me to live is Christ." It is the old philosophy 
 of the self-satisfied — the philosophy of the 
 Rubaiyat, "God's a good fellow and 'twill all 
 be well." But life and destiny do not rest on 
 
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 such a foundation as that. Let us examine the 
 ground of our confidence, if confidence we 
 have. Let us forget, for the moment, Ger- 
 many and her "day" and think of our "day," 
 near or distant, who can tell? Let us see that 
 no dark surprise awaits us in that day. And 
 the "day of darkness" it will surely be unless 
 we come to it in Christ, yielded to Him, for- 
 given through Him, cleansed by His blood, and 
 adopted into His family of grace. Without 
 Him to plead our cause we shall be poor indeed, 
 and that day will not be a glad looking-for- 
 ward-to of glory but a "fearful looking-for- 
 ward-to of judgment and fiery indignation" — 
 a day of darkness and not light. 
 
 3. The Necessity of Atonement — There is 
 something in this great retribution falling 
 upon sin that helps us to see the necessity of 
 that Atonement which Christ made upon the 
 cross. We find it difficult at times to see the 
 need of it, and why "it pleased the Lord to 
 bruise Him," and how "he was wounded for 
 our transgressions and bruised for our iniqui- 
 ties." But if history has made one thing 
 plainer than another it is this — that sin must 
 be punished. It is a part of the great order of 
 
THE DAY! THE DAY! 107 
 
 a moral world. It is a necessity to which God 
 Himself is subject. To deal with sin in any 
 other way than this would be a violation of 
 the order He Himself established and a con- 
 tradiction of His own nature. Well do we 
 know that we had laid up for ourselves a "day 
 of darkness" in our sin. Well do we know 
 that if that sin was atoned for some one must 
 step into the darkness ; well do we know that it 
 was not we who did that. It was Christ who 
 took our place. That is the meaning of Cal- 
 vary. It is the day of the world's darkness 
 borne by One in whom the darkness spent it- 
 self. The blow fell on Him ; the judgment was 
 visited on Him; the sword went through His 
 heart. He was made sin for us, though He 
 knew no sin. We know not (and thank God 
 need never know) how deep was that darkness, 
 only we know that to Him the Father's face 
 was obscured. In the desolation of that hour 
 He cried, "My God, My God, why hast thou 
 'forsaken me?" My friend. He entered that 
 darkness that you might enter into light. He 
 bowed His head beneath that shame that you 
 might lift your head in glory. He bore the 
 
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 burden of that Cross that you might wear the 
 splendour of that crown. 
 
 With this majestic promise then I close — 
 majestic in its possibilities of salvation. Are 
 you thinking of "the day! the day!" with some 
 deep foreboding in your heart that all may not 
 be well? What if it were possible to put the 
 day of darkness forever behind you ! What if 
 you were able to turn your face upon the shad- 
 ow of your sin and turn your face to light that 
 is undimmed. And this can you do. Listen! 
 *'He that heareth my word and believeth on 
 Him that sent me hath everlasting life and shall 
 not come unto judgment, but is passed from 
 death into life." "There is therefore now no 
 condemnation — no judgment — ^to them that 
 are in Christ Jesus." Even here and now 
 where you sit you may see the passing of "the 
 day" if you will but open your heart to Him. 
 In a very few minutes this congregation will 
 be scattered far and wide. Would that I 
 might cease speaking to the congregation and 
 take hold of the hand of some man, glad to es- 
 cape from the condemnation of sin. Hast thou 
 seen the vision of righteousness? Hast thou 
 heard the music from the upper reaches of life ? 
 
THE DAY! THE DAY! 109 
 
 Hast thou longed for a sense of peace and the 
 assurance that you were right with God? Come 
 and you may have what your heart longs for. 
 He will pardon; He will break the tyrant's 
 power; He will dissipate the darkness and in 
 the radiance of His love you need have no fear 
 of the night for in Him the day of darkness is 
 past and the true light shineth in the soul. 
 
VI 
 
 A SCRAP OF PAPER: THE 
 MORALITY OF NATIONS 
 
VI 
 
 A SCRAP OF PAPER: THE 
 MORALITY OF NATIONS 
 
 Text: — "Shall he breaJc the covenant and be deliv- 
 ered? . . As I live, surely mine oath that he hath 
 despised and my covenant that he hath broken, even it 
 •will I recompense upon his own head." — Ezekiel 17: 15, 
 19. 
 
 It is a very common saying that "history re- 
 peats itself" and even a casual glance at the 
 past centuries will show you how the wheel re- 
 volves and the experiences of the nations are 
 reproduced again and again. Striking indeed 
 was the parallel we noted last Sunday evening 
 between the case of Israel that called for "The 
 Day! The Day!" little dreaming that "The day 
 of the Lord would be darkness and not light," 
 and the case of Germany twenty-seven centu- 
 ries later that toasted "The Day! The Day!" 
 little thinking that it may prove for her the day 
 not of "world power" but "downfall." Hardly 
 less striking is the parallel we find in our text 
 
 113 
 
114 WORLD POWER 
 
 to-night. As far back as six hundred years be- 
 fore Christ here was a nation that looked upon 
 her treaties as "a scrap of paper," and, regard- 
 less of honor, violated her pledged and plighted 
 word. There is no need that I should review 
 this long story of Judah's perfidy. Suffice it 
 to say that Zedekiah and his counsellors had 
 bound themselves as the representatives of the 
 kingdom to "serve the King of Babylon." The 
 honor of the nation was pledged to that. Under 
 a solemn compact they had agreed also to en- 
 ter into no alliance with Egypt against Baby- 
 lon. But in a secret and treacherous hour Ju- 
 dah tore her treaty to shreds. For the sake of 
 a military advantage that might be gained she 
 sent her ambassadors to Egypt to secure the 
 support of the infantry and cavalry of Pha- 
 raoh. Her pledge to Babylon was nothing, her 
 honor nothing, her promise nothing. But it 
 proved to be a gross miscalculation. Egypt 
 was not able to furnish the expected help. 
 "Neither shall Pharaoh with his mighty army 
 and great company make for him in the war by 
 casting up mounds, and building forts, to cut 
 off many persons" (17: 17) . The treacherous 
 hopes of Judah fell to the ground. And then 
 
A SCKAP OF PAPER 115 
 
 the prophet Ezekiel pointed out that for all this 
 treachery and for the violation of her honor 
 there are two results that will surely come. 
 The first is that the violation of their word to 
 men will be regarded by Jehovah as the viola- 
 tion of their word to Him and consequently 
 His vengeance will visit them. The second re- 
 sult is that on the ground where they violated 
 their honor, on that very ground would they 
 be humbled before the eyes of men. "As I 
 live, saith the Lord God, surely in the place 
 where the king dwelleth that made him king, 
 whose oath he despised, and whose covenant 
 he brake, even with him in the midst of Baby- 
 lon he shall die" (17:16). 
 
 The Modern Perfidy 
 
 Leave behind you now the twenty-five cen- 
 turies that lie between and you can read again 
 the same story in the history of the German 
 Empire to-day. In company with the other 
 great nations of Europe, Germany put her 
 signature to a solemu compact that guaranteed 
 the neutrality of Belgium for all the future. 
 That pledge goes back as far as 1839. From 
 
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 time to time throughout the past century it was 
 confirmed. Germany's honor was behind it; 
 behind it also her pledged word. Prince Bis- 
 marck recognized the binding character of that 
 treaty in 1870 and in the Franco-Prussian war 
 the neutrality of Belgium was observed. But 
 for the sake of a supposed military advantage 
 in the present crisis Germany tore her treaty 
 to shreds. It was only "a scrap of paper." To 
 strike a swift blow at France it was necessary 
 to pass over Belgian soil. In the presence of 
 that selfish purpose all her honor was thrown 
 to the winds. In the words of the German 
 Chancellor, "Necessity knows no law." Right 
 or wrong "he must hack his way through." 
 With a calm defiance of all decency and honor, 
 he says, "This is an infraction of international 
 law. We are compelled to over-rule the legiti- 
 mate protests of the Luxemburg and Belgian 
 governments. We shall repair the wrong when 
 our military aims have been achieved." Mili- 
 tary aims then annul treaties; militaiy neces- 
 sity knows no law ; the slaughter of thousands 
 of innocent and peaceable citizens and the de- 
 struction of medieval monuments constitute a 
 wrong that is to be repaired, as if that kind of 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 117 
 
 thing can ever be atoned for by any nation un- 
 der the sun. I need hardly remind you how the 
 parallel holds again. That act on the part of 
 Germany was a gross miscalculation. By that 
 act she enlisted against her the moral sentiment 
 of the whole civilized world. By that act she 
 received a check at the hands of the brave Bel- 
 gian army before Liege that forbade her swift 
 blow at France and threw the whole plan of 
 her campaign out of joint. In the saloon of 
 the "Royal Edward" on my return from Eng- 
 land this summer I listened with profound in- 
 terest to a group of ten or twelve Americans 
 as they reviewed the miscalculations of Ger- 
 many in a stroke to which she attached so much. 
 She had miscalculated on Sweden, which she 
 hoped would furnish a quarter of a million of 
 men to strike Russia on the north; miscalcu- 
 lated on the spirit and strength of France; 
 miscalculated on the courage of Belgium; 
 miscalculated on the rapidity of Russian mobi- 
 lization; miscalculated on the spirit of In- 
 dia and Ireland; miscalculated above all 
 on the moral sense of the British people. 
 In a somewhat surprised and complaining 
 
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 way the German Chancellor declared, "Just 
 for a word — neutrality — a word which in 
 war-time had so often been disregarded — 
 just for a scrap of paper Britain was go- 
 ing to make war." Ah ! that was the greatest 
 miscalculation of all. And somehow we can- 
 not but think that the two dark results that 
 fell upon Judah will fall upon Germany, viz. : 
 that the violation of her pledged word to Bel- 
 gium will be regarded by the Eternal Jehovah 
 as a violation of her pledged word to Him 
 as a Christian nation and, again, that on that 
 very ground of Belgium where she violated her 
 honor — on that very ground shall she be hum- 
 bled before the eyes of the whole world. 
 
 Here then is raised for us the supreme ques- 
 tion of truth and honor in our relation to men 
 and our relation to God. It is along these two 
 lines I can best crystallize my message to- 
 night: first, our pledged word in relation to 
 men; second, our pledged word in relation to 
 God. Upon our observance of the first rests 
 the whole structure of society; upon our ob- 
 servance of the second depends the pure es- 
 sence of all religion. 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 119 
 
 Our Pledged Word in Relation to Men 
 
 First of all, then we observe that the great 
 law of honor holds in the individual life between 
 man and man. It is no light thing for a man 
 to give his word in solemn promise to another. 
 His word is the expression of his personality. 
 It is not something that is separated from 
 himself. When a man gives his word he gives 
 himself; when he breaks his word he breaks 
 himself. Likewise his name represents him- 
 self. In the olden days a man's name was the 
 expression of his character. The name Jacob 
 means "a trickster" and so Jacob proved to be. 
 Abraham was called Abraham because Abra- 
 ham means "the father of a multitude" and 
 so Abraham was in the purposes of God. 
 Jesus was called Jesus because that name 
 means Saviour and it was written of Him, 
 "Thou shalt call His name Jesus for He shall 
 save His people from their sins." And 
 though we do not follow the custom now, a 
 man's name is the expression of liimself . It is 
 no light thing, therefore, to put your name to 
 a bond, and unless a man is released honorably 
 and willingly from it he must endeavor so far 
 
120 WORLD POWER 
 
 as in him lies to redeem the honor of his name. 
 And, thank God, this country is not without 
 some shining examples of men who were legal- 
 ly discharged from some obligation they con- 
 tracted for the sake of another, yet felt 
 themselves morally bound to discharge it, and 
 discharge it they did because their honor was 
 involved and because they scorned to pass on 
 to their children and their children's children a 
 name that bore a stain. 
 
 So also does the same law of honor hold in 
 the corporate dealings of men. In the case of 
 the employer and employee there are obliga- 
 tions implied in their contract with one another 
 as sacred as the vows one makes to God. The 
 moral import is sacred though the written seal 
 is not put. upon it. It is because this has been 
 disregarded on both sides at times that the 
 troubles rise in the labor world. When a 
 workman contracts as he does to give his time 
 and effort and skill to his employer for a cer- 
 tain period of each day and squanders his time, 
 or withholds that effort, or skimps his work, or 
 puts less than his best skill into it, he has torn 
 up the solemn compact to which his honor is 
 attached and counts it no more than "a scrap 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 121 
 
 of paper." And when an employer contracts 
 as he does to protect his workman from dan- 
 ger, to advance his interests, to justly recom- 
 pense his labors, to stand by him in the time of 
 stress, and fails to do these things, he too has 
 torn up his solemn compact to which his honor 
 is attached and counts it no more than "a scrap 
 of paper." It will not be until we have recog- 
 nized this fact that we shall see an end of some 
 of those gigantic conflicts that shake the labor 
 world from end to end. 
 
 What holds for the individual and the com- 
 munity binds itself also upon the nation. In 
 deed if not in word we have tried to demon- 
 strate that the nation has no soul. It is a 
 common enough saying that "corporations 
 have no souls" and we have set about to prove 
 it. We treat them at times as if they were 
 beyond the pale of morals. Many a man who 
 would scorn to cheat another will not hesitate 
 to cheat a railway of his fare. Many a man 
 who would blush to rob a merchant will with 
 an easy conscience rob the government at the 
 customs house. But the code of morals that 
 Jesus shaped for individual honor is binding 
 on national honor too. There is such a thing 
 
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 as the breakdown of national morality. There 
 are some nations that come to be trusted and 
 some are regarded with suspicion and fear. 
 Take the case of Germany. There has been a 
 widespread mistrust of German diplomacy. 
 The world has not forgotten how Bismarck 
 edited the famous Ems telegram in 1870 — 
 changing it in two words so that it was de- 
 signed to injure the pride of the French people 
 and inflame the French spirit till it kindled 
 into war. That seed is flourishing to-day, in 
 the breaking of treaties, in the rending of cove- 
 nants, in the utter disregard of all the accepted 
 rules of warfare, and it may be traced back 
 to the Bismarckian standards that stamped 
 themselves upon the nation's life. In the pres- 
 ent instance, German perfidy is all the more 
 glaring and dastardly because it is so selfish 
 and because it was directed against a small and 
 defenceless people. I need not remind you 
 that if such standards obtain civilization will 
 be at an end. It is a Satanic sneer hurled with 
 fell purpose into the midst of human life. So- 
 ciety under such a code would be swiftly re- 
 duced to ruins. Rather than live under such a 
 code let us perish. And there is something to 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 123 
 
 me superbly grand in the figure of Britain's 
 great Prime Minister standing in the Guild- 
 hall in London, as with tense, white face he 
 declared that he would rather see England 
 blotted out from the pages of history than to 
 see her remain as "a silent witness to the tragic 
 triumph of force over law and freedom." 
 
 OuE Pledged Word in Relation to God 
 
 Binding as our covenants are which are 
 made with men they are not more so than the 
 covenants that we make with God. He is 
 pleased indeed to regard our sacred cove- 
 nants with one another as in some sense made 
 with Himself. He is the fountain of all truth 
 and honor and any violation of truth in the 
 whole wide universe is a blow aimed at the 
 sanctity of the Eternal government among 
 men. There are many ways in which as a na- 
 tion we have made our covenant with God. 
 We repeatedly call ourselves a Christian peo- 
 ple, which implies at least that we have accept- 
 ed the moral standards and spiritual teachings 
 of Christ. Think for a moment of the tacit 
 covenants into which we have entered in the 
 
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 phrases and mottoes in which we crystallize the 
 sentiment of the nation. Never before per- 
 haps in the life time of any one here have we 
 sung so often and so fervently our national 
 anthem: 
 
 God save our gracious King, 
 Long live our noble King, 
 
 God save the King! 
 Send him victorious, 
 Happy and glorious. 
 Long to reign over us: 
 
 God save the King! 
 
 Do we stop to realize what is implied in 
 that? It is our covenant which as a nation we 
 have made with High Heaven on behalf of 
 our King. In that we confess that the Royal 
 throne stands or falls by the will of God; that 
 victory or defeat turns upon His word; that 
 the very life of our sovereign is in His hands. 
 Yet there are times when in the swagger of 
 our power we leave God out of our reckoning 
 and in that hour we have torn our covenant to 
 shreds and counted it as "a scrap of paper." 
 Again ! I hold in my hand a coin of the realm, 
 a bit of silver that passes as currency, a pledge 
 of good faith between man and man. And 
 upon it I find this inscription: Georgius V, 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 125 
 
 Dei Gratia Rex et Ind. Imp.: George V, by 
 the grace of God, King, and Emperor of In- 
 dia. Note the phrase " by the grace of God." 
 It implies that by the gracious consent and 
 anointing power of God our sovereign holds 
 his place as King of Great Britain and Em- 
 peror of India. From the Royal mint with the 
 full authority of the nation we have stamped 
 that conviction upon every coin, gold, silver, 
 copper, that passes into the circulation of our 
 business life. And yet there are times when 
 in the greedy grasping after that coin and all 
 it represents, in our surrender to the material- 
 ism for which it often stands, we belie the pro- 
 fession we have made, we have torn our cove- 
 nant to shreds and tossed it as "a scrap of 
 paper" to the winds. Within the memory of 
 all who are here except the youngest will come 
 the recollection of that day in 1897 when 
 Queen Victoria celebrated her jubilee, gather- 
 ing her children from a hundred colonies 
 around her knees. In that elevated moment 
 the true imperial sentiment found its utterance 
 in the Recessional of Kipling — Kipling who 
 unfortunately has not always consecrated his 
 genius to such high ends. But in that greatest 
 
126 WOULD POWER 
 
 product of his literary and spiritual genius he 
 voiced the soul of the nation : 
 
 "God of our fathers, known of old; 
 
 Lord of our far flung battle line. 
 Beneath whose awful hand we hold 
 
 Dominion over palm and pine. 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
 Lest we forget, lest we forget." 
 
 And the closing verse, as it should, leads to 
 the climax: 
 
 "For heathen heart that puts her trust 
 
 In reeking tube and iron shard. 
 All valiant dust that builds on dust. 
 
 And guarding calls not Thee to Guard. 
 For frantic boast and foolish word. 
 Thy mercy on Thy people. Lord." 
 
 Noble sentiment and nobly expressed! Yet 
 we know that we have put om- trust in "reeking 
 tube" and "iron shard"; we have guarded and 
 called not Him to guard; we have filled our 
 lips with "frantic boast" and "foolish word," 
 forgetting that by the hand of God we hold 
 our wide dominion "over palm and pine." And 
 we knew not that in every such hour we had 
 torn our sacred compact to shreds and tossed it 
 away like "a scrap of paper." 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 127 
 
 But it is not with the national covenant I 
 must leave the application of this truth. Let 
 me search your hearts — nay, our hearts, let me 
 say — with this nearer and sterner fact, that we 
 have made and broken our personal covenants 
 with God. Glad would I be, if time permitted, 
 to tell of His unfailing faithfulness — how He 
 has kept His covenant with men, how before 
 all the world He can say, "My covenant will I 
 not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out 
 of my lips. Once have I sworn by my holiness 
 that I will not lie unto David" (Ps. 89 : 34-35) . 
 It is that unfailing covenant that is the glory 
 of the world and the one bit of solid footing on 
 which men of all the ages have found a place 
 to stand. Think you to-night of your cove- 
 nants with God, some of them made in the 
 open before men, some made in the secret place 
 where none but you and He could hear. How 
 have you kept them? Have they been forgotten 
 or ignored or openly repudiated? Are they 
 nothing more to you than "a scrap of paper" ? 
 I am speaking perhaps to some young man — 
 your case is typical of more than one such in- 
 stance I could call by name — who a few years 
 ago found your whole heart go out in a pas- 
 
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 sionate love to the woman who is now your 
 wife. She was then an ardent Christian girl 
 with strong convictions and high principles, 
 true and loyal to her faith in Christ. And she 
 told you frankly that she could never join her 
 life to that of any man who did not share with 
 her the faith she had in Jesus and the service 
 she loved to render to His church. And that 
 you promised to do. To win her for your own 
 you pledged yourself to God, to serve her 
 Christ and her church, and on the sacredness of 
 that promise she went with you to the altar 
 where you were made "one flesh." But the days 
 have grown to months and the months have 
 grown to years, and you have not redeemed 
 your pledge, and the grey shade of disappoint- 
 ment has come into her eyes, and you have be- 
 numbed her soul and hardened your own, and 
 as for your covenant with God you have torn it 
 to shreds and thrown it as "a scrap of paper" 
 into His face. I am speaking perhaps to some 
 man or woman — your case is typical of more 
 than one instance in my own ministry that I 
 could call by name — who know what it is to go 
 down to the very verge of the vaUey of death. 
 You are not unlike one that I think of now to 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 120 
 
 whose bed I was called more than one night in 
 the grim conflict for life to help him if possible 
 through prayer to beat back the hosts of death. 
 And like him you promised that if God gave 
 you back your life it would be His — from that 
 time to do with it whatsoever He would. And 
 like his your Kf e was given back — no one knows 
 how. The doctor could not explain it, nor yet 
 the nurse, nor yet the minister who sat beside 
 you — save in this that God healed you in an- 
 swer to your pledge to Him. But the days 
 have gone, one excuse after another has been 
 framed, one delay has followed another, and 
 your pledge to the God who gave you back 
 your life has not been yet redeemed. With 
 an insolence and confidence bom out of the 
 very strength you got from him you have re- 
 pudiated your vows, you have torn your com- 
 pact to shreds and flung it from you like "a 
 scrap of paper." I am speaking perchance to 
 some father and mother — ^your case, too, is typi- 
 cal of more than one instance in my own ob- 
 servation that I could call by name — who in 
 days of horror and nights of growing despair 
 fought for the life of the child that came to 
 bless your home. Yours may not be unlike one 
 
130 WORLD POWER 
 
 home I have now in mind. Two little girls had 
 blessed their home circle with their beauty and 
 love. And the desire of their hearts seemed all 
 fulfilled when the baby boy joined their happy 
 group. He was the light of their eyes. And I 
 well remember the night when it seemed that 
 he could not be with them till the morning. In 
 the utter despair of that hour they went to 
 God. Together they promised that if He 
 would spare their child their lives, hitherto 
 denied to Him, would be devoted to His ser- 
 vice. And the mother in the fervor of her heart 
 declared that if the boy was given back to 
 them, and God should see fit to accept him, she 
 would dedicate him to the ministry of the Gos- 
 pel of the Son of God. And she promised, too, 
 that she would train him up with that hope in 
 mind that he might enter, if God so desired, the 
 highest and holiest calling among men. And 
 the child recovered, but the pledge lies broken, 
 a thing that is repudiated, "a scrap of paper" 
 they have thrown back into the face of God. 
 
 What have you done with your vows, for 
 there is no man or woman here, I venture, who 
 has not in some way or in some hour struck a 
 holy compact with the Lord? I call upon you 
 
A SCRAP OF PAPER 131 
 
 to-night to redeem your covenant. I call upon 
 you to renounce your treachery to the Most 
 High. I call upon you to yield yourself to 
 Christ, whose great mercy in you and love for 
 you and gifts upon you with your acceptance 
 and enjoyment of His daily goodness binds 
 you by a solemn compact that no honorable 
 man will dare to break. Is that covenant to be 
 nothing but "a scrap of paper" ? 
 
 "High heaven, that heard that solemn vow. 
 That vow renewed shall daily hear. 
 Till in life's latest hour I bow, 
 
 And bless in death a bond so dear." 
 
VII 
 
 BLOOD AND IRON: THE IMMO- 
 RALITY OF MILITARISM 
 
VII 
 
 BLOOD AND IROlSr: THE IMMO- 
 RALITY OF MILITARISM 
 
 Text: — "Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, 
 and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the 
 force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the 
 time that their iniquity had an end. Therefore, as I live, 
 saith the Lord God, I will prepare thee unto blood, and 
 blood shall pursue thee: since thou hast not hated blood, 
 even blood shall pursue thee." — Ezekiel 35 : 5-6. 
 
 Peehaps there is no piece of literature either 
 in the Bible or out of it that portrays in fewer 
 words and more graphic colors the diabolical 
 character of the spirit of militarism as it has 
 revealed itself in every country and in every 
 age. The whole hell-begotten family of this 
 hell-begotten mother troop past us in this chap- 
 ter across the stage of Edom's life. Here we 
 see the "pride" that hardens the sensibilities; 
 here is the "hatred" that is "perpetual" ; here is 
 the "revenge" that never sleeps; here is the 
 blood-lust that wallows in carnage; here is 
 "envy" that clouds the reason; here is the "blas- 
 
 135 
 
136 WORLD POWER 
 
 phemy" that shudders the soul; here is the mad 
 and ruthless ambition that tramples under foot 
 the sacred rights of the weak, and does not hes- 
 itate "to wade through slaughter to a throne 
 and shut the gates of mercy on mankind." 
 
 In those days of Ezekiel it was the land of 
 Edom that was seized with this wild insanity — 
 an insanity that has never failed to find a victim 
 in every age of the world's life. What you find 
 in Edom you will find in Nero at Rome, who 
 gloated over the human torches with which he 
 lighted his gardens as he burned the Christians 
 to death. What you find in Nero you find in 
 Napoleon, in the presence of whose statue in 
 one of the great squares of Paris, one was 
 heard to utter these words, "Monster, if all the 
 blood that thou hast shed were gathered in this 
 square thou wouldst not need to stoop thy lips 
 to drink." What you find in Napoleon you 
 find in Prince Bismarck, whose watchword for 
 the German Empire was summed up in that 
 notorious phrase, "Blood and iron! by blood 
 and iron we shall extend our power." And 
 what you find in Bismarck you will find in mod- 
 em Prussia that has sold herself to blood, that 
 has dedicated her powerful intellect to the de- 
 
BLOOD AND IRON 137 
 
 vising and perfecting of the greatest fighting 
 machine the world has ever seen, and prosti- 
 tuted her soul to that ferocious hatred that has 
 kindled the flame of war throughout the world. 
 Now it is against that proud and envious and 
 blood-lusting spirit of militarism that the swift 
 rebuke of God is heard, not only in this chapter 
 but throughout the whole Bible from Genesis 
 to Revelation. There can be no doubt about 
 the teaching of the Scripture in regard to that. 
 No man can study the principles of Jesus with- 
 out arriving at the firm conviction that in the 
 intention of Christ concerning the Kingdom 
 and its progress no place can be found for the 
 spirit of "blood and iron." It is doubtless true 
 — and it is clear enough to my own mind — that 
 there are times and circumstances when war is 
 justifiable, in self preservation, in the defence 
 of liberties, in the protection of the weak, but 
 the war of revenge, of aggression, of might, of 
 ambition — these and the spirit out of which 
 they spring must pass forever under the con- 
 demnation not only of Christianity but of the 
 whole civilized world. It is doubtless true — 
 and it is our duty if possible to see it — that 
 there are many great moral results secured 
 
138 WORLD POWER 
 
 through war, but that is not due to the thing 
 in itself which is evil, but to the over-ruling 
 wisdom and power of God who is able to turn 
 the evil to good account, and "make the very 
 wrath of men to praise Him." After all that 
 can be said about the moral sanctions for war 
 and the moral results of war, the fact remains 
 that woven into the fibre of our modern civiliza- 
 tion there is that spirit of militarism that noth- 
 ing can justify — ^blind, revengeful, aggressive, 
 vaulting, drunk with sight of power, intoxi- 
 cated with the taste of blood, a spirit that must 
 be cut out like a cancer, a spirit which in the 
 individual or the nation is condemned before 
 the bar of God's justice and impeached before 
 the conscience of the world. 
 
 Its Barbarous Motives 
 
 The utter wickedness of the spirit of militar- 
 ism is apparent when you search the motives 
 out of which it springs. It is not the noble and 
 heroic that gives it birth. It is born out of .the 
 baser animal passions — darkest, most cruel, 
 most barbarous. This whirling passion that 
 has seized the Prussian mind is not the product 
 
BLOOD AND IRON 139 
 
 of the high and honorable impulses of life. It 
 has leaped out of the very heart of hell. Its 
 progenitors are hatred and greed and ambition. 
 It is always so. We have only to look into our 
 own hearts to learn that. No matter how our 
 judgment may condemn it, nor how we may 
 try to crush the beast within, nor how we tell 
 ourselves that it is devilish, it needs no more at 
 times than the sound of fife and drum to wake 
 these barbarous passions and make us drunk 
 with the wild wine of war. We know quite 
 well what Richard le GalKenne meant when he 
 wrote, 
 
 War 
 
 I abhor. 
 
 And yet how sweet 
 
 The sound along the marching street 
 
 Of drum and fife, and I forget 
 
 Broken old mothers, and the whole 
 
 Dark butchery without a soul. 
 
 Without a soul — save this bright drink 
 Of heady music, sweet as hell; 
 And even my peace-abiding feet 
 Go marching with the marching feet. 
 For yonder, yonder, goes the fife. 
 And what care I for human life! 
 The tears fill my astonished eyes 
 'And my full heart is like to break; 
 
140 WORLD POWER 
 
 And yet 'tis all embannered lies — 
 A dream those drummers raake. 
 
 Oh, it is wickedness to clothe 
 
 Yon hideous grinning thing that stalks 
 
 Hidden in music, like a queen 
 
 That in a garden of glory walks. 
 
 Till good men love the thing they loathe! 
 
 Art, thou hast many infamies. 
 
 But not an infamy like this. 
 
 Oh, snap the fife and still the drum. 
 
 And show the monster as she is ! 
 
 And if we should see her as she is we would 
 revolt from her. Tear open the heart of this 
 barbarous thing and search its motives. You 
 will find the lust for power. To rule Europe, 
 to dominate the world, to dictate the terms of 
 existence for other states, to hold the "place in 
 the sun," to play the God for the universe — 
 this is the consuming passion of the Prussian 
 mind. Or lower than the lust for power is the 
 lust for gain. Behind all this horrible crime 
 of war there is the restless greed of the war- 
 makers who foster the military spirit that the 
 race in armaments may go on ; who create war 
 scares that they may reap their millions out of 
 the building of Dreadnoughts and siege guns; 
 who change the fashion of weapons, scrapping 
 
BLOOD AND IRON 141 
 
 those of last year out of which they made vast 
 profits and introducing new models this year to 
 make vaster profits still ; who bribe Parliaments 
 and corrupt Cabinets for their unholy trade. 
 Mr. J. A. Hobson, speaking of the book en- 
 titled "The War Traders," by Mr. G. H. Fer- 
 ris, says, "The story is positively fascinating in 
 its wickedness." It is worth noting that the 
 wealthiest woman in the world to-day is the 
 young woman of the Krupp family which owns 
 the immense Krupp works in which Germany 
 has forged her mighty engines of death. Or 
 deeper than the lust for power and the lust for 
 gain is the lust of hate. It comes out in the 
 ideals and literature of the German people. 
 Here is a passage from the pen of Dr. Fuchs, 
 a German educationist, who advocates the use 
 of the schools for the cultivation of hate: 
 "Therefore the German claim of the day must 
 be — ^the family to the front. The state has to 
 follow, at first in the school, then in foreign 
 politics. Education to hate. Education to the 
 estimation of hatred; organization of hatred. 
 Education to the desire for hatred. Let us 
 abolish unripe and false shame before brutality 
 and fanaticism. We must not hesitate to an- 
 
142 WORLD POWER 
 
 nounce : To us is given faith, hope and hatred, 
 but hatred is the greatest among them." Here 
 is a verse of a poem by Ernest Lissauer as he 
 voices his hate against England — translated by 
 Barbara Henderson, 
 
 "You we hate with a lasting hate. 
 We shall never forego our hate; 
 Hate by water and hate by land 
 Hate of the head and hate of the hand. 
 Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown, 
 Hate of seventy millions choking down." 
 
 It is out of that spirit that our militarism is 
 born and when you feel its hot blast upon your 
 face it is as though you stood in the very vesti- 
 bules of hell. 
 
 Its Mission Is Irrational and Futile 
 
 Again the vi^ickedness of militarism appears 
 because it is so utterly irrational and futile, its 
 means so ill adapted to the end it has in view. 
 For it is supposed to secure justice among men 
 and how often do you suppose it succeeds in its 
 attempt. Speaking generally there have been 
 three methods adopted by which men have tried 
 to secure justice. One was by duelling, which 
 
BLOOD AND IRON 148 
 
 is an appeal to force; another by casting lots, 
 which is an appeal to chance; and another by 
 arbitration, which is an appeal to reason and 
 which answers to our various forms of judica- 
 ture. An appeal to force, chance and reason — 
 and of all these the appeal to force is the least 
 rational, for it is least likely to secure a just 
 decision. It is not always that you can count 
 on justice being* on the side of might. If jus- 
 tice is based on the appeal to force then the day 
 of justice in the case of Belgium vs. Germany 
 would be far distant. It was Napoleon's sneer 
 that "God was always on the side of the big- 
 gest battalions," but that is a lie and Napoleon 
 lived long enough to learn the falsity of such a 
 word as that. The truth is that far too often 
 God is ruled out of the case altogether. He is 
 defied; He is forgotten; and out of the shat- 
 tered work of man He must glean the harvest 
 of justice as best His wisdom can. 
 
 How insane it all seems when you remember 
 that when the struggle is all over and the con- 
 testants lie bleeding and helpless they will have 
 to do in weakness what they might have done in 
 strength ; they will have to do at the end what 
 they might have done at the beginning — to ap- 
 
144. WORLD POWER 
 
 peal to reason and make their terms of peace. 
 At the end of every war is a treaty, and every 
 such treaty, welcome as it may be, is a con- 
 demnation of the very thing it terminates. 
 For it should have been, and might have been, 
 made before instead of after, and had it come 
 before there would have been no war for it to 
 close. O, the utter insanity of it all ! We need 
 only call the case before our minds to see how 
 diabolical, how irrational, how ill-adapted is 
 the method to secure the end in view. Carlyle 
 exposes its absurdity in a fine passage in "Sar- 
 tor Resartus" : "What, speaking in quite un- 
 official language, is the net purport and upshot 
 of war? — To my own knowledge, for exam- 
 ple, there dwell and toil, in the British vil- 
 lage of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred 
 souls. From these, there are selected, during 
 the French war, say thirty able-bodied men. 
 Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled 
 and nursed them; she has, not without diffi- 
 culty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, 
 and even trained them to crafts, so that one 
 can weave, another build, another hammer, and 
 the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoir- 
 dupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and 
 
BLOOD AND IRON 145 
 
 swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; 
 and shipped away, at the public charges, some 
 two thousand miles or say only to the south of 
 Spain ; and fed there till wanted. 
 
 "And now to that same spot in the south 
 of Spain are thirty similar French artisans, 
 from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner 
 wending, till at length, after infinite effort, 
 the two parties come into actual juxtaposition; 
 and thirty stands fronting thirty, each with a 
 gun in his hand. 
 
 "Straightway the word *Fire!' is given, and 
 they blow the souls out of one another, and 
 in place of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen the 
 world has sixty dead carcases, which it must 
 bury and anew shed tears for. Had these men 
 any quarrel? Busy as the devil is, not the 
 smallest! They lived far enough apart; were 
 the entirest strangers; nay in so wide a uni- 
 verse, there was even, unconsciously, by com- 
 merce, some mutual helpfulness between them. 
 How then? Simpleton! Their governors had 
 fallen out, and instead of shooting one another, 
 had the cunning to make these poor blockheads 
 shoot." 
 
 Futile indeed is the mission of militarism in 
 
14.6 WORLD POWER 
 
 securing justice or securing peace. The watch- 
 word of European militarism for the past gen- 
 eration has been, "To secure peace be prepared 
 for war." That lie is discredited forever. Has 
 not this war leapt out of an armed peace? Can 
 it be doubted that it made arbitration impos- 
 sible? Did not the combatants refuse to appeal 
 to reason because they were organized and 
 equipped to the last button on their uniform 
 and the last drop of oil in the machinery of 
 war? Is it not true that Europe has been an 
 armed camp ; its manhood a drilled body of sol- 
 diers; its millions spent on battleships or field 
 artillery; its idle officers eager for war that 
 they might justify their long years of train- 
 ing? No! No! The sword has been tried for 
 centuries as a means to secure peace and for- 
 ever for civilization there has been nailed to 
 the wall that falsehood that the way to guar- 
 antee peace is to stand prepared for war. 
 
 Its Attitude is Treason Against God 
 
 The wickedness of the spirit of militarism 
 appears from another angle. It is high trea- 
 son against the constituted authority of the 
 
BLOOD AND IRON 147 
 
 universe. In God is the sovereign power. The 
 spirit of militarism, such as I have described, 
 is a revolt against His authority; it is a de- 
 fiance of His constituted power. It is an 
 attempt to leap into the throne of the eternal; 
 it is the assumption of that sword that belongs 
 alone to His hand for "Vengeance is mine, I 
 will repay, saith the Lord." I stated in the 
 earlier part of my sermon that there were times 
 and circumstances when war was justifiable. 
 But no war is justifiable on both sides. Some- 
 one has been the aggressor. It may be that 
 one nation is clear in conscience, in self-de- 
 fence, or in the protection of the weak, but 
 God will never justify the nation that was the 
 aggressor in revenge, or ambition, or greed. 
 In every such terrible struggle as we see to- 
 day someone has arrogated to himself the Di- 
 vine prerogative. For Christ is the appointed 
 King of Kings and Lord of Lords. His will 
 is the will for the whole earth, and they who, 
 driven on by the lust for gain or the lust for 
 power or the lust of hate, "take the sword shall 
 perish by the sword," for in so doing they have 
 set themselves against the mighty law of Christ 
 within the earth. At bottom then it is atheis- 
 
148 WORLD POWER 
 
 tic. It is not just to say that it is brutal; that 
 would be a slander on the brute creation for 
 they would never do the deeds that men have 
 done within these past few weeks. It is not 
 just to say that it is barbarous, for the barbari- 
 ans have not stooped lower than the so-called 
 civilized nations in those atrocities that have 
 been perpetrated in the name of culture. There 
 is only one name for it — it is devilish, satanic, 
 springing out of the spirit of hell, and in its 
 last analysis it is not only atheistic but it is a 
 blow aimed at the constituted authority and 
 sovereignty of God. 
 
 The Personal Equation 
 
 It is easy to see how all this comes back to 
 fit itself upon the individual in his relation to 
 Christ. The spirit of militarism against man 
 roots itself in the spirit of militarism against 
 God. And if you have not surrendered your- 
 self to the Lordship of Jesus you have set 
 yourself against the constituted authority of 
 the universe. For it is written of Him that 
 "He must reign — He must reign until all His 
 enemies shall be put under His feet." And it 
 
BLOOD AND IRON 149 
 
 is written again of Him that, "God also hath 
 highly exalted Him, and given Him a name 
 that is above every name; that at the name of 
 Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
 heaven, and things in earth, and things under 
 the earth; and that every tongue should con- 
 fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of 
 God the Father." And every one who does 
 not so bow and so confess is a rebel in God's 
 great world. He is defying the government 
 of Christ. He is a centre for the forces of 
 sedition — sedition against Him who by crea- 
 tion and redemption has established every claim 
 upon our allegiance and our love. There is 
 not a high thinking man or woman here who 
 has not in the past few days entertained a feel- 
 ing of contempt for those leaders in the South 
 African revolt — ^men who a few years ago took 
 the oath of allegiance to the British crown, 
 who have enjoyed since that day the benefits 
 of her liberty, who accepted positions of trust 
 in the councils of the nation, and who in the 
 moment of the Empire's great peril have seized 
 the opportunity to strike a blow at her heart. 
 But what shall be said of those who owe their 
 very being unto Christ, who have been cared 
 
150 WORLD POWER 
 
 for and nurtured through these years by His 
 love, who enjoy the Hberties of this land be- 
 cause of His work, who have been redeemed 
 upon the cross by the incalculable price of His 
 blood — what shall be said of those, who in the 
 full enjoyment of His goodness have lifted 
 their hand in rebelhon to smite Him from 
 His throne? My friends, the most pressing 
 problem of this moment for you is the spirit 
 of militarism that you hold against the author- 
 ity of Christ. And I summon you to-night to 
 lay down your arms of rebellion against Him. 
 I summon you to yield to His will and to the 
 Empire of that love whose bondage is the guar- 
 antee of your fullest freedom. 
 
VIII 
 
 TREASON TO CULTURE: THE 
 MARKS OF PROGRESS 
 
VIII 
 
 TREASON TO CULTURE: THE 
 MARKS OF PROGRESS 
 
 Text: — "Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
 crites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which 
 indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full 
 of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness." Matthew 
 
 23:27. 
 
 These are strong and terrible words, fall- 
 ing as they do from the lips of Him who was 
 the Lord of incarnate love. With the excep- 
 tion of those words addressed to the cities of 
 His day — Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Caper- 
 naum — no words perhaps ever fell from our 
 Lord's lips that voice such a merciless exposure 
 as do these of the shams and hypocrisies of 
 men. There were some kinds of sin in the pres- 
 ence of which our Saviour spoke with the 
 greatest tenderness and the deepest love, for 
 it was written of Him, "The bruised reed He 
 shall not break and the smoking flax He shall 
 not quench." But there were other kinds of 
 
 153 
 
154 WORLD POWER 
 
 sin that required heroic treatment and these 
 never failed to kindle the flame of His high 
 and holy indignation. Spiritual pride was one 
 of them; self -righteousness was another, cov- 
 etousness was another; oppression of the 
 weak was another. But the one that kindled 
 the hottest flame of His anger was that hypoc- 
 risy that harbored a spirit of evil within while 
 it carried a fair profession without. Twelve 
 times in the lesson I have read He hurled His 
 anathemas against it. Seven times out of the 
 twelve He addressed them as "hypocrites" ; 
 twice He calls them "blind guides"; twice He 
 calls them "fools and blind" ; and once He ad- 
 dressed them as a "generation of vipers." But 
 of all His withering words against sham and 
 the false exterior of life this figure of the text 
 is perhaps the most scathing and rebuking of 
 them all: "For ye are like unto whited sepul- 
 chres which indeed appear beautiful outward, 
 but within are full of dead men's bones and 
 of all uncleanness." 
 
 The imagery behind this denunciation was 
 one that would make a very powerful appeal 
 to the vivid imagination of every Jewish mind. 
 These whited sepulchres gleaming in the sun 
 
TREASON TO CULTURE 155 
 
 were a familiar feature in the landscape. They 
 were not separate buildings like the stately 
 mausoleums of Rome. They were simply cav- 
 erns cut in the face of the limestone rock with 
 a great stone set up to close the opening. Once 
 a year these stones were whitewashed not for 
 the purpose of making them beautiful but to 
 warn the people that a grave was there lest 
 they should touch it, and touching be defiled. 
 Many a time our Lord had wondered at them 
 when He rambled as a lad among the hills 
 of Nazareth. You know how the darkness 
 and the white stones and the thought of the 
 dead would stir the imagination of a boy. It 
 had burned itself into His brain and years 
 afterwards in His preaching whenever He saw 
 the fair exterior and the outward profession, 
 knowing that behind there lay pride and ar- 
 rogance and spiritual decay and cruelty, His 
 mind flew back to the vivid picture of His 
 youth and He turned to say to them : "Ye are 
 like the whited sepulchres I was wont to see 
 at Nazareth, that appeared so beautiful out- 
 wardly but within were full of uncleanness and 
 dead men's bones." 
 
 Terrible as the figure is, it will always re- 
 
156 WORLD POWER 
 
 main as the truest and most merciless expo- 
 sure of a spurious culture in all its forms. Here 
 we are reminded that "man looketh upon the 
 outward appearance but God looketh on the 
 heart." Here we are warned that the hid- 
 den rottenness of life will be eventually ex- 
 posed. Here we are informed in the plainest 
 of terms that all the decoration and garnish- 
 ing and poHshing of life is useless without a 
 cleansing from within, and no great and last- 
 ing transformation of society can ever be ex- 
 pected that does not touch and regenerate the 
 secret springs of being. 
 
 The False Conception of Culture 
 
 At the present moment the world is vastly 
 interested in the idea of culture because Ger- 
 many has presented to us a type of culture 
 which she has nourished with the most assid- 
 uous care for the past generation. You are 
 all well aware that the German Empire in 
 its present form came to its birth mider the 
 dominance of one great idea, — the profound 
 conviction of the supreme value of the Teu- 
 tonic mind and the German element for the 
 
TREASON TO CULTURE 157 
 
 civilization of the world. With all their char- 
 acteristic energy and thoroughness they under- 
 took the cultivation of that Teutonic type. 
 They perfected their government, reorganized 
 their system of education, expanded their com- 
 merce, and developed their science and their 
 art. It is safe to say that the Germans have 
 been by all means the most comprehensive and 
 discriminating students of modern times. The 
 systematic thoroughness with which everything 
 is done in the world of intellect in Germany is 
 almost inconceivable, and they have succeeded 
 in developing an imposing system of culture 
 that has become a powerful factor in the life 
 of Europe and in the life of the world. There 
 are many respects in which the students of 
 every nation have sat at the feet of Germany 
 and have learned of her during the past gen- 
 eration. She has become the acknowledged 
 leader in science and technical education, is 
 regarded by many as the pioneer in the world 
 of philosophy and by some as the pathfinder in 
 the realms of theological thought. Neither do 
 we forget that this was a culture that had its 
 roots in a truly great and glorious past. We 
 gratefully remember that it was Germany who 
 
158 WOULD POWER 
 
 gave us Luther, the father of modern Protes- 
 tantism; that it was Germany who gave us 
 Kant, the father of modern philosophy; that 
 it was Germany who gave us Goethe with his 
 matchless poetry and Beethoven and Wagner 
 with their majestic music. 
 
 Yes! a noble past but the German culture 
 of to-day has fallen far below that level. It 
 has gathered into its bosom many elements of 
 barbarism and might. It fed itself upon the 
 philosophy of Nietzsche and kindred cults, who 
 taught that might is right, that the survival 
 of the fittest leaves no place for the unfit, that 
 the fittest are those who are able by pure force 
 to push themselves to the top, that the strong 
 are bound by no obligations to the weak. 
 
 *'That they shall take who have the power 
 And they shall keep who can." 
 
 Its ideals are not the ideals of Christ; its mo- 
 tives are not the motives of Jesus. It has taken 
 the great words of humanity, like Valor and 
 Honor and Power and Heroism, and emptied 
 them of their noble contents only to fill them 
 with the idea of Brute Force. It engendered 
 within its heart the spirit of pride, the spirit 
 
TREASON TO CULTURE 159 
 
 of arrogance, and a haughty selfishness that 
 trampled underfoot the sacred prerogatives of 
 the soul. Its insolence had no bounds. It has 
 been generally agreed that there is nothing 
 quite so insolent and clumsy in the interna- 
 tional contact as Prussian diplomacy. It has 
 reversed the standards of character and con- 
 duct that were set by Jesus; it has written 
 the Beatitudes to read: "Ye have heard how 
 in olden times it was said, 'Blessed are the 
 meek for they shall inherit the earth.' But I 
 say unto you: Blessed are the valiant for they 
 shall make the earth their throne. And ye 
 have heard men say, 'Blessed are the poor in 
 spirit,' but I say unto you: Blessed are the 
 great in soul and the free in spirit for they 
 shall enter Valhalla. And ye have heard men 
 say: 'Blessed are the peace-makers,' but I say 
 unto you : Blessed are the war-makers for they 
 shall be called, if not the children of Jahve, 
 the children of Odin, who is greater than 
 Jahve." And hidden away in the heart of this 
 whited sepulchre of modern culture is that 
 which is most deadly of all — a passionate ha- 
 tred, that never sleeps, that summons heart 
 and hand and head to the work of revenge, — 
 
160 WORLD POWER 
 
 a hatred that issues in a cruelty and ruthless- 
 ness, that gluts on blood, and leaves behind its 
 smoking" trail the mangled bodies of the de- 
 fenceless and the innocent, the aged, the mother 
 and the child. It was the charge of Harnack, 
 the greatest of Germany's theologians, that 
 in taking the field against Germany, Britain 
 was guilty of a "treason to culture." Trea- 
 son to culture forsooth! If this be the culture 
 they offer then let it be part of Britain's never- 
 dying glory that in the hour of the world's 
 great danger she should prove a traitor to a 
 culture such as that! 
 
 The True Conception of Culture 
 
 Over against this spurious product we set 
 the true culture as it is revealed in Christ. 
 When I came to this point in the preparation 
 of my sermon and looked about in my own 
 mind for some statement of pure culture, some 
 description of the refined and noble character, 
 I found myself come back invariably to those 
 words with which our Lord opened His ser- 
 mon on the Mount. They are known as the 
 Beatitudes. They might also be called the 
 
TREASON TO CULTURE 161 
 
 Elements of a True Culture. They who pos- 
 sess those qualities of heart and mind are the 
 exponents of the highest form of culture. It 
 will be worth our while to refresh our minds 
 with this Divine summary of life at its best 
 and highest: 
 
 Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom 
 of Heaven. 
 
 Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be com- 
 forted. 
 
 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 
 
 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after right- 
 eousness: for they shall be filled. 
 
 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. 
 
 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 
 
 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called 
 the children of God. 
 
 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' 
 sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 These are the qualities that make for culture. 
 The poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, 
 they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 
 the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace- 
 makers, the persecuted — these are the men and 
 women who have stepped into the true aris- 
 tocracy of refinement, whose presence is a 
 blessing unto men and whose reward will never 
 fail. 
 
162 WORLD POWER 
 
 Should you ask for an illustrious example 
 of that perfect culture you will find it in Him 
 by whose lips those words were first of all 
 pronounced. His heart is pure and warm; 
 His mind is clear and unprejudiced; His spirit 
 is without guile ; He bore no bitterness, "Who, 
 when He was reviled, reviled not again ; when 
 He suffered threatened not; but committed 
 Himself to Him that judgeth righteously"; 
 He is strong with all the strength of a lion 
 for He is the "Lion of the tribe of Judah"; 
 He is gentle with all the gentleness of a Lamb 
 for "He is the Lamb of God"; He holds in 
 perfect poise all the apposites of character. To 
 put it in George Dana Boardman's splendid 
 summary. He was: "gracious without conde- 
 scension; just without severity; lenient without 
 laxity; flexible without vacillation; patient 
 without stoicism; decisive without bluntness; 
 imperative without imperiousness ; heroic with- 
 out coarseness; indignant without bitterness; 
 forgiving without feebleness ; sociable without 
 familiarity; in a word He was absolutely per- 
 fect, and yet absolutely natural." 
 
 It is only as we come into the clear at- 
 mosphere of such lofty standards and perfect 
 
TREASON TO CULTURE 163 
 
 character that we realize how far removed is 
 the German ideal from all that is sound and 
 pure in the realm of culture. Put up against 
 the background of the Christ spirit and the 
 Christ teaching it is not only found wanting 
 but proclaims itself as diametrically opposed 
 to all truer instincts of the higher life of man. 
 
 Society and the Individual 
 
 In the light then of our Lord's test as ap- 
 plied to life either in society or in the indi- 
 vidual two conclusions must become clear. 
 
 1. Society's transformation must he 
 wrought from within. We have an old prov- 
 erb: "Scratch a Russian and you will find a 
 Tartar," which is only another way of saying 
 that the veneer of civilization leaves the soul 
 untouched. If the present events have taught 
 us anything they have taught us that if you 
 scratch civilization you will find beneath its 
 veneer the elements of barbarism. Time has 
 proved that you may make a community rich, 
 and comfortable, and clean, and intelligent, 
 and sesthetic, and still leave its moral life un- 
 changed. What society demands for its trans- 
 
164 WORLD POWER 
 
 formation is not some adornment from with- 
 out but some new impulse from within; not 
 some revising but some renewal; not some re- 
 formation but some regeneration. Society can 
 never be saved on the horizontal except as it 
 is saved in the perpendicular. Let us have 
 our art and education and the cultivation of 
 the sesthetic and the improvement of the con- 
 ditions under which we live. These things we 
 ought to do and not to leave the others un- 
 done, but let us never imagine that we have 
 reached a true culture until our moral stand- 
 ards are set to the standards of Christ and the 
 spiritual impulses of the nation's life flow out 
 from righteousness and justice and truth. 
 
 2. Individual salvation demands an inward 
 change. It is difficult for our so-called culture 
 to comprehend that necessity. The New 
 Testament furnished the most outstanding ex- 
 ample of that. If ever there was a man in 
 Jerusalem who might have been regarded as a 
 man of culture that man was Nicodemus. Yet 
 to this man Jesus said in the most unequivocal 
 terms: "Verily, verily, I say unto you except 
 a man be born again he cannot see the King- 
 dom of God." "Ye must be born again." 
 
TREASON TO CULTURE 165 
 
 There is something in this finahty of Jesus 
 from which there is no appeal. In every in- 
 stance where Jesus opens a sentence with 
 "Verily, verily" there follows a pronouncement 
 that admits of no qualification. And in every 
 instance where Jesus says, "except" and "can- 
 not" you may know that He has reached the ir- 
 reducible minimum. And in every instance 
 where Jesus says, "must" you may know that 
 there stands behind Him the compulsion of 
 eternity. 
 
 There is something* therefore tremendously 
 final in His word to this cultured man. 'No 
 man could be more surprised to hear it than 
 Nicodemus. Nicodemus was the last man in 
 all Jerusalem who thought that he needed to 
 be bom again. He was a ruler of the Jews. 
 He was a master in Israel. He belonged to 
 the highest religious body in the land. He 
 was learned in the Scriptures. He was con- 
 nected with and practised the highest moral- 
 ity. Nicodemus had always taken it for grant- 
 ed that if the Kingdom came in his day he 
 would be taken up to sit in one of the highest 
 seats. It had never once entered his head 
 that he needed to be anything else than he was 
 
166 WORLD POWER 
 
 — a respectable, moral man, devoted to the 
 Church and State and honored in their high 
 offices. What a blow in the face it must have 
 been for Nicodemus to be told, and told by 
 the King Himself, that he had not reached 
 the true culture of life and never would until 
 he had been born again. 
 
 Let us not marvel at that either in his case 
 or in our own. The truth is that the only way 
 to truly enter into a kingdom is to be born 
 into it. Except a man be born with brains he 
 cannot enter into the kingdom of intellect. 
 Except a man be born with artistic instincts he 
 cannot enter into the kingdom of art. Ex- 
 cept a man be born with poetic impulses he 
 cannot enter into the kingdom of poetry. 
 Poets are bom not made. So are Christians, 
 who at their best represent the highest culture. 
 Reasons enough there are, God knows, why 
 we require such a miracle upon our inner life. 
 Every other conceivable means has been tried 
 to make life different but it has not availed. 
 Philosophy was tried. Philanthropy was tried. 
 Reformation was tried. Environment was 
 tried. But all in vain. Nothing short of a 
 regeneration from within will make life new 
 
TREASON TO CULTURE 167 
 
 and touch it with the beauty of the true cul- 
 ture. Truly Jesus knew whereof He was 
 speaking when He said: "Ye must, ye must be 
 bom again." 
 
 My friends, this is the true culture. By 
 all means, let us better the conditions under 
 which we live. Let us cultivate the aesthetic. 
 Let us store our minds with knowledge. Let 
 us surround ourselves with noble and refined 
 associations, but let us never imagine that in 
 so doing we have attained unto the true cul- 
 ture. That is only reached through the pos- 
 session of a mind and heart renewed by the 
 grace of God and led captive to the will of 
 Christ. 
 
 "One thing I of the Lord desire. 
 For all my way hath miry been. 
 Be it by water or by fire, 
 O, make me clean ! O, make me clean ! 
 
 So wash me thou without, within. 
 Or purge with fire if that must be, 
 No matter how, if only sin 
 Die out in me, die out in me." 
 
IX 
 
 PEACE WITH HONOR: THE FOUN- 
 DATIONS OF PEACE 
 
IX 
 
 PEACE WITH HONOR: THE FOUN- 
 DATIONS OF PEACE 
 
 Text: — "And the work of righteousness shall be 
 peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and 
 peace forever." — Isaiah 32: 17. 
 
 The popular phrase to which your atten- 
 tion is invited is one that has long held a place 
 in the vocabulary of every honorable nation. 
 Peace they must have but it must be "peace 
 with honor." The sword must be sheathed but 
 it must not be sheathed in shame. There may 
 be defeat but it must be defeat that has no 
 disgrace. Peace with honor ! Seldom perhaps 
 has that phrase sent a deeper thrill through 
 Britain than in those stormy days when Dis- 
 raeli's hand was on the helm of state. In the 
 presence of a great international crisis that 
 threatened almost every country in Europe he 
 conducted at Berlin those negotiations that se- 
 cured an honorable peace. On his return to 
 
 171 
 
172 WORLD POWER 
 
 England, and in his own mysterious fashion, 
 he announced the result of his mission in those 
 memorable words, "Peace with honor." It was 
 a word that sent the nation into a dehrium 
 of joy and made them doubly delirious when 
 they knew that not only was peace secured but 
 it was a peace in which the country's honor was 
 truly and honorably sustained. For that is a 
 sentiment that burns in the heart of every true 
 patriot. He demands it for himself and he 
 demands it all the more for his country. If 
 he will live he must live honorably ; if he must 
 die he will die without disgrace, and there is 
 no man with the faintest spark of nobility in 
 him who does not understand the lofty senti- 
 ment of Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or 
 give me death." 
 
 It was that sort of liberty and peace that the 
 prophet Isaiah saw as he turned his eyes away 
 to the golden days that lay beyond. "The fruit 
 of righteousness shall be peace." The peace 
 that was coming was a peace in which the na- 
 tion could rejoice. It was a peace in which 
 all that was best and highest would be secured 
 and all that was base and unjust would be sub- 
 dued. That was a peace that would be based 
 
PEACE WITH HONOR 173 
 
 on a righteous government, for he says, "A 
 king shall reign in righteousness and princes 
 shall rule in judgment." That was a peace 
 that would protect the individual man and 
 make him a potent factor in the life of the 
 nation, for he says that "a man shall be a hid- 
 ing placfe from the wind and a covert from 
 the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place 
 and as the shadow of a great rock in a weary 
 land." That was a peace that redeemed the 
 foolhardy and the coward for "the heart of the 
 rash shall understand knowledge and the 
 tongue of the stammerer shall be ready to 
 speak plainly." That was a peace that would 
 provide for all the natural resources of the 
 land for "the wilderness shall be a fruitful 
 field and the fruitful field be counted for a 
 forest." That is the peace that every true 
 nation has always desired and that is the peace 
 for which, I trust, we long and pray and fight 
 in this most awful struggle of the world's dark 
 night. 
 
 The Cry for Peace 
 
 Peace ! Yes, but remember it must be peace 
 with honor ! Let me remind you of what is tak- 
 
174 WORLD POWER 
 
 ing place to-night — ^has taken place indeed to- 
 day throughout the whole wide world. On 
 this Sabbath day — the Sabbath day of God — 
 there has risen from the lowly altars of bleed- 
 ing hearts and from the lofty altars of ancient 
 shrines the agonizing cry to God for peace. 
 It was lifted in the severe and simple chapels 
 of England by plain and earnest men with no 
 other ordaining hand upon them than the un- 
 seen hand of the Eternal, It was echoed in 
 the great cathedrals through "long-drawn aisle 
 and fretted vault" by men behind whose ordi- 
 nation vows there stand the unbroken succes- 
 sion of a priestly order. It was uttered by the 
 devout Roman Catholic in the shattered 
 churches of Belgium, by the sad and reverent 
 peasant over whose hearth there passed the dev- 
 astating horrors of war. It resounded in the 
 stately ritual of the Greek Catholic Church 
 of Russia threading its way to God through 
 heavy incensed air. It was wrung out of the 
 anguished hearts of fearful wives who fear 
 that they shall never see again the faces of 
 men who are more to them than life itself. It 
 was distilled in blood-drops from the souls of 
 mothers who pass through their sevenfold 
 
PEACE WITH HONOR 175 
 
 Gethsemane for sons who gladly cast away 
 their lives in a rapture of courage and sacri- 
 fice. From every heart that is not stone such 
 prayers as those shall rise. But this will be 
 their one great reservation — it must be peace 
 with honor. Even in the falling blood-drops 
 of mothers' prayers you will hear that reserva- 
 tion. Peace! but peace with honor! Peace! 
 but not merely peace for the sake of peace! 
 Peace! but not peace at any price! Peace! 
 but peace that leaves no shame, that suffers 
 no disgrace, that heaps no dark dishonor on 
 the nation's soul! 
 
 The Terms of Peace 
 
 What then is involved in that? There is no 
 presumption, to my mind at least, in the fact 
 that already we are beginning to think of the 
 terms without which Britain shall not put up 
 the sword. Not that the end is near, nor the 
 victory won, but it is just at this time when 
 the awful price is being paid that we must 
 shape within our minds the unyielding terms 
 by which we hope to safeguard and guarantee 
 our future for many years to come. Believ- 
 
176 WORLD POWER 
 
 ing as we do that Germany was the aggressor 
 in this war; that she might have spoken at Vi- 
 enna the word that would have forbidden it 
 and that word she refused to speak; that she 
 planned for it and hastened it; that she vio- 
 lated her treaty obligations in striking and has 
 violated the instincts of a common humanity 
 in the conduct of her campaign — ^believing 
 that, there are some considerations without 
 which an honorable peace can never be signed. 
 What those terms may be must be left to wiser 
 and higher minds than ours, but the common 
 sense and conscience of the common people 
 is not far astray when it demands the follow- 
 ing: The destruction of the power of Prus- 
 sian militarism and the blotting out of the 
 Krupp works at Essen ; the dismantling of the 
 German navy ; indemnities from Germany that 
 will fully repair, so far as money can repair, 
 the losses to Belgium and France ; the restora- 
 tion of Alsace-Lorraine to the French Repub- 
 lic ; the Kiel canal in the hands of an interna- 
 tional commission; the limitation of Germany's 
 future military power; a full manhood suf- 
 frage for Germany to dehver her from the 
 power of her own military party; the racial 
 
PEACE WITH HONOR 177 
 
 boundaries to determine the boundaries of 
 states; the independence of Poland; the ex- 
 clusion of the Turk from Europe; the end 
 of secret diplomacy so that never again shall 
 the declaration of war rest with a few diplo- 
 mats who deny to the people any voice in a 
 national step that plung-es the nation into a 
 welter of blood and sends all the waves and bil- 
 lows of sorrow over the people's soul. 
 
 An examination of these terms — reflecting 
 as they do the thought and conscience of the 
 people — reveals at least these three conditions 
 involved in peace with honor. 
 
 Based on Righteousness 
 
 1. It must be a peace that is based on right- 
 eousness. True peace is only reached where 
 justice is secured. "Behold a king shall reign 
 in righteousness." It is only when our dif- 
 ferences are settled with a due regard for 
 righteousness that we reach the sohd ground 
 of peace. It is for that reason that the world 
 demands that German militarism shall be de- 
 stroyed for it is this spirit that has sinned 
 against Europe. It is for the same reason that 
 
178 WORLD POWEK 
 
 civilization demands that the weapon be taken 
 out of the hands in which it cannot be trusted. 
 It is for that reason that civihzation demands 
 that the wanton damage done must be repaired. 
 Restitution of all wrong must be made so far 
 as restitution can be made. Belgian homes 
 must be rebuilt; Belgian churches must be re- 
 paired; Belgian fields must be restored. They 
 who have been beggared, whose substance has 
 been wasted, the labor of their years swept 
 away in a night, whose fields are a wilderness 
 and whose hills and valleys are an unbroken 
 graveyard — ^these must be compensated if com- 
 pensation can be found. That constitutes a 
 debt that it is the duty of civilization to see 
 shall be paid to the very last farthing. 
 
 That is an instinct that is truly based in the 
 conscience of the race. It holds good through- 
 out the whole moral order. It applies with 
 equal force to the final rightness of society and 
 to the final peace of the individual soul. There 
 is no peace worth while that is not based on 
 righteousness. It is right at this point that 
 we get a glimpse into the necessity of Calvary. 
 How often men think that the Cross might 
 have been dispensed with in the redemption 
 
PEACE WITH HONOR 179 
 
 of the world. They see no reason why sin 
 could not be forgotten and wiped out, with- 
 out an atonement such as was demanded on the 
 Tree. But such men forget that God had to 
 do right by the moral order of the world. He 
 could not meet sin in any other way. For 
 here was the problem. He must condemn the 
 sin and at the same time save the sinner. He 
 must uphold the ethical order of the universe 
 and at the same time save that man whom the 
 ethical order condemned. To use Paul's great 
 phrase he must "be just and the justifier" of 
 the unjust. Surely as Chalmers said, "It was 
 a problem fit for a God." And that founda- 
 tion of peace can never change. It must be 
 based on righteousness. "There is no peace 
 saith my God to the wicked." You must 
 come to some understanding with God about 
 your sin. It is not merely a question of gain- 
 ing peace. It is a question of gaining the true 
 peace that is based on righteousness. You 
 will wander in the wilderness of a great un- 
 rest until you reach that solid ground where 
 the soul's content is deep and strong and abid- 
 ing because it is rooted in the fact that full 
 atonement has been made — ^that perfect atone- 
 
180 WORLD POWER 
 
 ment which was made in Jesus Christ our 
 Lord. 
 
 Enduring 
 
 2. It must he a peace that is enduring. I 
 do not mean to imply that with the ending of 
 this war we can make a peace that shall bind 
 the world for all time to come. I am well 
 aware that in many quarters the conviction is 
 expressed that this is "a war on war" and that 
 "this will be the last great war." I regret to 
 say that I cannot cherish that hope. No doubt 
 we shall see a great revulsion of world senti- 
 ment against war with a diminution of arma- 
 ments and the war-spirit rebuked. But that 
 is not necessarily the end of war. As Tenny- 
 son asks, "Who can fancy warless men?" But 
 we mean this much at least, that in the peace 
 that follows there must be no patching up, no 
 compromise with honor, no temporizing, no 
 mere cessation of hostilities for a season, no 
 healing of the hurt of the daughter of my peo- 
 ple slightly, saying, "Peace! peace! when there 
 is no peace," no such obscuring of the great 
 principles and issues at stake as to leave the 
 whole battle to be fought over again. Those 
 
PEACE WITH HONOR 181 
 
 who know anything of the recent events in 
 Europe know that peace of a kind has been 
 made many times during the past few years, 
 but it was not the peace that endures. Such 
 a peace was made in the Balkan crisis, but it 
 was no more than a truce. Such a peace was 
 made in the Morocco crisis, but it was no more 
 than a bit of temporizing. Such a peace was 
 made in the Tripoli crisis, but it merely put 
 off the evil day unto the to-morrow. The peace 
 that closed the Franco-Prussian war was not 
 a lasting peace. It left France smarting un- 
 der humiliation and her borders still menaced 
 by the presence of a watchful foe. If France 
 and Germany have not met on the battle- 
 fields of Europe for forty years it was not 
 because they were at peace. It was an armed 
 neutrality. It was a breathing spell for a 
 worse conflict. Writing in 1897 of "The 
 Peace, 1871" — the peace that did not pacify 
 — EHzabeth Waterhouse put it thus in her 
 poem: — 
 
 "I have made peace, thank God." O Emperor King; 
 At this thy word the nations lift their eyes. 
 Looking for One they wot of to arise. 
 White robed, on happy wing. 
 
182 WORLD POWER 
 
 What do they see? There crouches at thy heel 
 A sullen thing with vengeance in her face. 
 Writhing and wroth, but fettered to her place 
 By bonds of German steel. 
 
 As one should tell us in the dim thick night — 
 "Behold the dawn," and we looked forth to see 
 The whole wide East grown golden silently 
 With joy of coming light. 
 
 And saw instead a line of cloudy flame 
 And lightning flashes leaping swift there-through, 
 And heard the muffled thunder-pulse and knew 
 The storm, not morning, came. 
 
 So is it when each wiry nerve to-day 
 Of eager Europe thrills with that sweet word, 
 Sweet yet so false, soon as its sound is heard 
 Its promise dies away. 
 
 Thy God of Battles, whom we do not know. 
 Thank for the Rhinelands and the Golden Fleece, 
 But not for such poor truce the Christ of Peace — 
 His Peace He gives not so. 
 
 So must it ever be in the nation's soul and 
 ours. No peace is worth the name that does 
 not come to stay. We shall never know true 
 peace on any path that merely patches up 
 the past and temporizes and leaves the soul's 
 great central problem still untouched. "Peace 
 I leave with you, My peace I give unto you; 
 
PEACE WITH HONOR 183 
 
 not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let 
 not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
 afraid." My friend, there is a peace the world 
 can never give and cannot take away. There 
 is a peace that endures through storm and tem- 
 pest. There is a peace that leaves you free to 
 keep unbroken fellowship with God — a peace 
 that persists in life and death, in time and 
 eternity, but it is not found elsewhere than 
 in the reconciling love of the Eternal Son 
 of God. 
 
 Fruitful 
 
 3. Peace with honor demands again that the 
 peace must be fruitful. Look you at the peace 
 that Europe has maintained for the past forty 
 years. It was a peace that wasted her vast re- 
 sources in many ways. The country bled at 
 every pore even without the curse of war. It 
 was a peace in many ways more devastating 
 than war because it was long drawn out. Na- 
 tions slept with their armor on, with one eye 
 open, waiting for the footstep of the foe. The 
 tension and fear and dread sapped the vitals 
 of every land. Think of the expenditures in 
 those forty years of peace. Contemplate for 
 
184. WORLD POWER 
 
 a moment the incalculable millions wasted and 
 worse than wasted in the preparation for war. 
 The hard-earned savings of the poor, the 
 blood-drops of labor, the brawn and brain of 
 men and women and children, all swept away 
 to feed the maw of this monster whose hunger 
 is never satisfied. In the insane rivalry of 
 armies and navies the taxes on the peoples 
 doubled, trebled, were multiplied by ten. To 
 her enormous outlay on the navy Britain was 
 compelled in recent years to increase it by 
 about fifteen or twenty millions of pounds 
 sterling in each successive year. Think of 
 the enormous cost of building up and main- 
 taining, in such a comparatively short time, 
 Germany's army of millions and adding to 
 that a navy to rival Britain upon the seven 
 seas. Contemplate the expenditure to-day. 
 Think of the millions poured out by each na- 
 tion day after day. Think of the British Par- 
 liament in two separate votes — just two — and 
 at this early stage of the war, authorizing the 
 expenditure of £350,000,000, and doing it with 
 the utmost ease. Not that I condemn that ac- 
 tion — under the circumstances by all means 
 let it be done. But it is easy enough to see 
 
PEACE WITH HONOR 185 
 
 that so long as we live under an armed neu- 
 trality our peace will rob us of our substance. 
 The nations must be free and secure to en- 
 joy the fruits of their labors. Think for a 
 moment of the expenditure of men. The earn- 
 ing power of men ceases when they devote 
 themselves to military life. That is a bad 
 enough waste in times of peace. But think 
 of the expenditure in times of war. Bernhardi 
 declares that war is a biological necessity to 
 maintain the physical fitness of the race. But 
 it is not so. It is not the survival of the fittest 
 that war secures. It is the flower of the na- 
 tion's manhood that is swept away in war. It 
 is the "unfittest" who are left. It is a fact of 
 history that through the slaughter of France's 
 "fittest" men physically Napoleon lowered 
 the average stature of the French nation by 
 two or three inches. We want no peace that 
 leaves us ever open to such a scourge as that, 
 that wastes the men and money of the nation 
 and makes impossible or insecure the perma- 
 nent enjoyment of the fruits of labor's hands. 
 Is it any wonder that the noblest of our states- 
 men in every land, that is not insane with mili- 
 tarism, have protested against this awful dev- 
 
186 WORLD POWER 
 
 astating peace and pointed to the poor and 
 the unemployed and the handicapped and 
 aged for whom the nation in her consequent 
 poverty has been unable to provide. 
 
 My friends, let us not live in a fool's para- 
 dise either concerning the nation's peace or 
 our own. There is no peace worth while that 
 is not founded on righteousness, that is not 
 enduring, that does not secure to us the fruits 
 of life's best and highest. For man and na- 
 tion alike it is found in the will of God. We 
 cannot defy His will and be at peace with 
 Him. We cannot defy His will and carry 
 in our hearts a calm that is unbroken through 
 the years. We cannot defy His will and flour- 
 ish in our souls in all that makes life truly rich. 
 But in Christ we can have the peace that pass- 
 eth all understanding, a peace that is most 
 enduring when every earthly comfort slips 
 away, a peace that is most serene when the 
 skies above are dark. 
 
 Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin? 
 The blood of Jesus whispers peace within. 
 
 Peace, perfect peace, by thronging duties pressed? 
 To do the will of Jesus, this is rest. 
 
PEACE WITH HOlSrOR 187 
 
 Peace, perfect peace, with sorrows surging round? 
 On Jesus* bosom nought but calm is found. 
 
 Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away? 
 In Jesus' keeping we are safe and they. 
 
 Peace, perfect peace, our future all unknown? 
 Jesus we know, and He is on the throne. 
 
 Peace, perfect peace, death shadowing us and ours? 
 Jesus hath vanquished death and all its powers. 
 
 It is enough; earth's troubles soon shall cease. 
 And Jesus call us to heaven's perfect peace. 
 
X 
 
 TO A FINISH: THE BROTHERHOOD 
 OF MAN 
 
X 
 
 TO A FIlSriSH: THE BROTHERHOOD 
 OF MAN 
 
 Text: — "But in the latter days it shall come to 
 pass. . ." — Micah 4:1. 
 
 These are the words of an Old Testament 
 prophet who gets an inspired vision of the 
 golden age of man. It is a vision that is very 
 daring and very wonderful. He sees the 
 struggle of the ages fought "to a finish" and 
 beyond "in the latter days" there emerges a 
 new humanity, restored by the hand of God 
 and inbreathed by the spirit of love. Here 
 is a man who lifts his eyes beyond the mists 
 and conflicts of time, beyond the storm and 
 stress of society, the wars and rumors of wars 
 among nations, the inequalities and injustices 
 of the people, and he sees the rising of a new 
 kingdom that harbors its citizens in the security 
 and prosperity of righteousness, justice and 
 peace. There the bitterness of strife is over, 
 
 191 
 
192 WORLD POWER 
 
 the spirit of brotherhood prevails, the greed 
 of the miser is dead, the oppression of the 
 poor is ended, the clang of the sword is si- 
 lenced, and the golden age has come to hu- 
 manity for the golden heart has come to man. 
 Althought our text is taken from the prophecy 
 of Micah this is not a vision that is confined 
 to one prophet or patriarch in the Old Testa- 
 ment or the New. Isaiah has it, in almost the 
 same words ; Amos has it ; Hosea has it ; Jere- 
 miah has it; and every prophet and patriarch 
 carries this hope in his heart and this message 
 on his lips. You may go as far back in the 
 Old Testament as Abraham and you will find it 
 there for even while he labored among the 
 idolatrous cities of his own day, he had a vision 
 of the latter days, and "he looked for a city 
 which hath foundations whose builder and 
 maker is God." You may go as far forward 
 in the New Testament as John in the island 
 of Patmos, and you will find it there for, 
 even while he saw Rome seated on the seven 
 hills and drunk with the blood of the saints, 
 he saw in the latter days: "the holy city, the 
 new Jerusalem, coming down from God out 
 of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for 
 
TO A FINISH 193 
 
 her husband." And ever in the hearts of men 
 the dream of that perfect society has been 
 cherished as a never-dying hope. Twenty- 
 three centuries ago Plato enshrined it as best 
 he could in his "Kepublic." Four centuries 
 ago Sir Thomas More portrayed it as best 
 he could in his "Utopia." The poets have sung 
 of the hour that would usher in "the parlia- 
 ment of man, the federation of the world," 
 and even unto this day the world is filled with 
 the voices that declare and define and announce 
 the "golden age" of man. 
 
 It is interesting to notice how that hope has 
 revived itself in the presence of this latest col- 
 lapse of civilization. The forces of tyranny 
 and freedom, of reaction and progress are 
 matched against each other and the conflict 
 must be fought "to a finish." And somehow 
 beyond that "finish" we instinctively hope for 
 a new order of things, furnishing a clearer 
 illustration of the brotherhood of man. Dis- 
 tant as that desirable day may be it is not a 
 useless hope. It may seem to be all visionary 
 but we cannot do much without our visions. 
 The very last man the world can spare is the 
 dreamer. We are told that this realization is 
 
194 WORLD POWER 
 
 far beyond our reach. We are reminded that 
 with all the lapse of centuries our "progress 
 halts on palsied feet." We are told that with 
 all our efforts at regeneration society is still 
 
 "Wandering between two worlds 
 One dead, the other powerless to be born." 
 
 That may be true but at the same time we 
 shall not get far upon our way unless our 
 "young men see visions and our old men dream 
 dreams." Our work lies in the nearer days, 
 'tis true, but we must keep our eyes on "the 
 latter days" as well. We are crowded into 
 the valleys of action but we must learn to 
 glance at the mountains of hope. We must 
 see the glorious goal if we are to walk with 
 buoyant step along the way. We must not 
 only see what we are working at but we must 
 see what we are working for. Like Michael 
 Angelo we must see the angel in the marble. 
 Like Jesus Christ we must discover the thing 
 that might be in the thing that is. And unless 
 we are to be given over to a hopeless pessi- 
 mism, unless we believe that we are fighting 
 a losing game, unless we purpose to quit the 
 field and surrender the spoils to the devil, we 
 
TO A FINISH 195 
 
 must take our stand beside men like Mieah and 
 say to ourselves and to our brothers: "The 
 prospect may look dark now, but in the latter 
 days it shall come to pass. . . ." 
 
 What is it that shall come to pass? What 
 is this "golden age" to be? What is God's 
 Utopia like? What are its distinguishing 
 characteristics ? 
 
 The Supremacy of the Spiritual 
 
 First of all let it be noticed that this "golden 
 age" is distinguished by the supremacy of 
 the spiritual. That is its most distinguishing 
 feature. "And in the latter days it shall come 
 to pass that the mountain of the house of the 
 Lord shall be established in the tops of the 
 mountains and shall be exalted among the 
 hills" (4:1). That is, the spiritual shall be 
 supreme. It shall dominate everything. It 
 shall overshadow everything. The spiritual 
 values will obtain, the spiritual standards will 
 rule. There will be other towering mountains 
 but the mountain of the house of the Lord will 
 overtop them all. There will be other com- 
 manding interests but the spiritual will be the 
 
196 WORLD POWER 
 
 most commanding. In a very beautiful and 
 suggestive illustration Dr, Jowett recalls the 
 city of Durham as an emblem of the prophet's 
 thought. Through the lower reaches of the 
 city flows the river with the pleasure craft pass- 
 ing up and down. Higher up on the first 
 slopes are the shops and places of trade. Above 
 this is the residential section of the city with 
 the homes of the people. Above the homes 
 is the Castle Hill with its frowning front, 
 while on the highest summit and commanding 
 all, with stately majesty, rises the grand old 
 Cathedral. It is a fitting emblem of the great 
 interests of life. Pleasure is suggested by the 
 river; the highways of trade are representative 
 of gain; the home is the shrine of the family; 
 the castle is symbolic of power; and the Ca- 
 thedral is significant of God. This is the pic- 
 ture that Micah has in mind. In the latter 
 days the spiritual will be supreme. In God's 
 Utopia it will dominate and shape all our 
 pleasures; it will rule in all our business; it 
 will command and guide our home life ; it will 
 determine our use of power. That is the pic- 
 ture of the ideal society. Let us not deceive 
 ourselves. We are not getting near the golden 
 
TO A FINISH 197 
 
 age unless we are establishing the Lord's house 
 on the top of the mountains; we are not ap- 
 proaching the Utopia and never can except 
 to that degree in which we make the spiritual 
 the ruling factor in our life. 
 
 As we look out upon the present day we 
 are not without great reason for encourage- 
 ment, for a new sense of the spiritual has come 
 down upon us. I say that in spite of and in 
 the presence of the clash and roar of the pres- 
 ent conflict. The mighty upheaval that our 
 civilization has suffered has served to uncover 
 to us again some of the realities of life. We 
 are beginning to revise our values. That trend 
 has been apparent for some time. It has been 
 apparent in the new philosophy of the hour. 
 The materialistic philosophy of thirty years 
 ago is as dead as the moon. It can never live 
 again. If Marie Corelli were to write a novel 
 crystallizing the underlying philosophy of the 
 day she would not call it "The Mighty Atom." 
 The mighty atom is exploded. 'No one be- 
 lieves in the mighty atom as the origin of any- 
 thing. It is apparent in the literature that 
 has been commanding the attention of the 
 reading world. True it is that there is much 
 
198 WORLD POWER 
 
 that is atheistic and sodden in its materialism 
 but no one could fail to notice how wide is 
 that range of recent literature that contains 
 one long protest against the materialistic and 
 renews its affirmation of the spiritual element in 
 man. Even in the face of the wholesale slaugh- 
 ter of men on the fields of Europe we assert 
 that we shall emerge from the war with a more 
 profound sense of the value of human life. 
 Everywhere there is a new recognition of the 
 essential sacredness of personality, that every 
 human being is created in the image of God, 
 and that there are inalienable human rights 
 that must be kept inviolate, because man is 
 what he is — a spiritual being. 
 
 The Results of the Spiritual Supremacy 
 
 Three great and fruitful ministries will flow 
 from this supremacy of the spiritual. 
 
 1. It will bring a ministry of brotherhood 
 among men. It will unite and not divide. It 
 will draw men together by magnetic power. In 
 God's Utopia it is said that "many nations 
 shall come and say, Come let us go up to the 
 mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God 
 
TO A FINISH 199 
 
 of Jacob, and He will teach us all His ways 
 and we wiU walk in His paths" (4:2). There 
 is nothing more certain than that. The true 
 brotherhood of men will be found in the su- 
 premacy of the spiritual. No other force is 
 sufficiently and permanently cohesive. Pleas- 
 ure is frequently divisive, splitting society up 
 into its cliques and sets. Commerce with the 
 jealous protection of interests often keeps 
 the nations asunder. We have proof enough 
 before our eyes that union is not secured by 
 force of arms. It is even possible that a false 
 spirituality will divide men and women who 
 name the name of Christ. But the spiritual 
 dominance that Christ will bring will draw us 
 all closer together in an unbroken brotherhood. 
 And if we are to be accounted as the true fol- 
 lowers of Christ there must be an end of all 
 our exclusiveness towards those who name the 
 name of Christ, whatever tongue they speak 
 and in whatsoever clime they live. We must 
 learn to look on men through His eyes ; to love 
 those whom He loves whether they be black or 
 red or white or yellow; to obliterate national 
 prejudices by the power of His Divine love; 
 to kiU all hatred in our hearts ; and to think of 
 
200 WORLD POWER 
 
 those sheep which are not of this fold, that 
 bringing them to our hearts there may be one 
 fold as there is one shepherd. 
 
 2. It will bring a ministry of construction. 
 Where the spiritual is supreme men will "beat 
 their swords into ploughshares, and their spears 
 into pruning-hooks" (4:3). The destructive 
 will be changed into the constructive. The 
 weapon that reaped nothing but a harvest of 
 death will be transfigured into a weapon that 
 will reap the harvest of bread. It is a common 
 hope, expressed in fervent words, that the 
 sword may soon be sheathed again, but that is 
 not the Divine ideal; or that it may be broken 
 and cast away forever, but neither is this the 
 Divine plan. No! not sheathed, nor broken, 
 but hammered into a ploughshare! No! not 
 cast away but beaten into a pruning-hook ! To 
 such great ends are we invited to direct the 
 forces of our civilization to-day. We are in- 
 vited to take the millions of money poured out 
 in the destructive business of warfare and not 
 only withdraw it from those channels but pour 
 it into the constructive arts of peace. We are 
 invited to take the countless thousands of lives 
 devoted to the God of Militarism and not only 
 
TO A FINISH 201 
 
 withdraw them, but turn their energies into the 
 fields of fruitful enterprise. And even in our 
 warfare this is the goal that must be kept in 
 mind. "The Son of man came not to destroy; 
 men's lives but to save them." There are many 
 elements within the German Empire that must 
 be eradicated for the safety of the world, and 
 the surgeon's hand must not be stayed. But 
 even if it were possible, the German Empire 
 must not be destroyed. Germany has a mis- 
 sion for the world. Her great energies and 
 immense resources of mind and heart must be 
 pressed into the highest service of Europe. 
 The brain and brawn that have been expend- 
 ed in the development of military efficiency 
 must not only be recalled from that fiendish 
 business but must be directed into the great 
 constructive ministries of civilization. Freed 
 from the blight of her false philosophy, let us 
 hope that her theologians and teachers, her 
 statesmen and writers, her captains of industry 
 and her masters of thought may take their 
 place among the greatest benefactors of our 
 common hf e. Her vast potentialities so sadly 
 and so destructively gone astray must be har- 
 nessed up to the high service for which they 
 
202 WORLD POWER 
 
 were designed. In other words her sword must 
 be beaten into a ploughshare and her spear 
 into a pruning-hook. 
 
 3. The supremacy of the spiritual will bring 
 a ministry of social justice. When the spirit- 
 ual is supreme "every man shall sit under his 
 vine and under his fig-tree" (4:4). There will 
 be a little beauty for everybody, — "the vine 
 and fig-tree"; there will be a little ease for 
 everybody, "they shall sit" ; there will be a lit- 
 tle reward for everybody, "his vine and his fig- 
 tree." Life will not be a dreary monotony. 
 It will be furnished with protection and leisure 
 and the fair division of comforts and the due 
 reward of our labor. "And none shall make 
 them afraid." The haunting fear of poverty 
 and war and famine will not be found in that 
 order of things. Who wiU question for a mo- 
 ment that this is not a faint outline of our so- 
 ciety as God designed it to be and as He shall 
 some day m^^ake it to be? It is toward that goal 
 that our true spirituality will work. Our 
 spirituality is not the spirituality of God nor 
 of His Christ unless it drives us out to feed 
 the hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the 
 sick, to minister to the imprisoned, and to 
 
TO A FINISH 203 
 
 sweep the whole man, body, soul and spirit, in 
 all his relationships — social, domestic, political, 
 personal — into the imperial purpose of the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 This, my friends, is "the finish" to which 
 we look when "He maketh wars to cease unto 
 the end of the earth." Only let us remember 
 it shall not come in the power of a mere prin- 
 ciple nor in the wisdom of men. It shall come 
 not apart from a Divine Sovereign. There 
 is no one of our great prophets who cherishes 
 that hope apart from a King. The key to the 
 future is furnished by all in the words of 
 Isaiah: "Behold a King shall reign in right- 
 eousness." It is His presence alone that will 
 bring in the "golden day." His day may be 
 near or distant, we know not. But this we 
 know, that we can hasten the day of His power, 
 we can prepare the way of the Lord, we can 
 raise up a highway for the King. We can 
 level the mountains and exalt the valleys and 
 make smooth the rough and make straight the 
 crooked. Until, when He shall stand within 
 our midst His righteousness shall cover the 
 earth as the waters cover the face of the deep. 
 

 
 
 
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