The Challenge of the Dead Part 10

He is most happy who has run to the Altar and surrendered his _all_ there to G.o.d and then found a will and a way in which to live.

For most, alas! there is no altar visible, no way to an altar.

They do not know what the Altar is nor what it is for.

Business and war and hate and selfish desire have hidden it from men's eyes.

Only when the cloud lifts the Altar is disclosed, and men commonly when they see it leave all that they have and run to it and fling themselves before it in tears.

It is the grand altar of humanity. The altar of _all_ on which the _one_ sacrifices himself.

It is the altar of the sacrifice of Christ.

The Cross.

The quartering of humanity--an altar in the midst of the people.

All education and literature and religious mission should be to one end--that the way to the Altar may be kept clear.

It is work to clear away all the obstructions and the fogs and mists.

Sweet singing, pious exhortation, the reading of books, love of the dim religious light of churches--these should not be ends in themselves.

Humanity has its pious part which goes to church; but it does not need the organisation of the pious.

Humanity has its charitable part but it does not need the organisation of the charitable.

Humanity has its cultures but it does not stand in need of "schools of thought" and "cults" and "intelligentsia,"

But humanity does need sacrifice upon the one great Altar, every day and all days.

The Cenotaph rising in our midst may be our altar. We may leave our flowers there, the incense-smoke of burning hearts, but the flowers should be our lives. The Cenotaph after all is only the visible sign of the great invisible Cenotaph of humanity which stands in the midst of the ages, an empty tomb in memory of all those who have gone before--of those whose sacrifice _without ours_ is not perfect.

At Westminster Abbey they have buried the dead soldier among poets and statesmen. They have dug up from France Tom, d.i.c.k, or Harry, one of us, unnamed, unknown, who laughed and talked and marched and fired and suffered in the war, one of the many who are always unknown. He did guard duty no doubt in France. He is put on sentry again. Touching as it is to have a soldier in the dim light of the Abbey where so many can shed invisible tears, it had been better perhaps in a stern era to have posted him at St. Stephen's, at the entry to Parliament, that he might challenge in his silence all who enter there to stand for England--

"Who goes there?"

"Friend."

"Advance and be recognised!"

"Pa.s.s, friend!"

Proceed at your peril if you cannot meet the challenge of the dead!