The Great Discovery Part 2

The law demanding the conservation of life rests on this foundation, not that physical life itself is sacred, but that human life bears the image of G.o.d. There are things far more sacred than the physical life--even those things which const.i.tute the image of G.o.d stamped upon man. There are things for which men in all ages have been content to die--truth and loyalty to truth, the principles which are dearer than life. Those things which G.o.d ordained that men might through them grow more and more into His image, for these things man must be ready to die, and among these things is nationality.

Men cannot develop in isolation. What poor creatures men would be if they were solitary units. They would be as the beasts that perish. It is through the heritage of nationality that the soul is enriched. What poor stunted lives would ours be if we had not behind us the great and n.o.ble deeds which built up our Empire, if the words of the high souls of many generations did not come thrilling to our hearts, if Shakespeare and Wordsworth, Scott and Burns did not pour their treasures into our laps. The soul grows into the image of G.o.d through the riches of nationality. And whosoever warreth against nationality warreth against the soul. And the men who warreth against the soul must be resisted to the death.

We dare not appeal to Jesus Christ to cloak our shrinking from sacrifice. No doubt His gentleness has been the wonder of history; but His strength also summons us to be strong. For Jesus Christ was not a quietist. His religion is not a mere hospital for wounded souls. His place is among the strong of the earth. He faced the evil of this earth unflinching in His resistance. "Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites" is His denunciation of the oppressor; "Go tell that fox" is His message to the tyrant. When we think of Him making the whips, and falling, with holy anger in His eyes, on those who desecrated the courts of the temple, overturning the tables of the money changers, we know that the ideal of non-resistance is not His.

No doubt He laid it down as the law for the individual that he should turn the other cheek; but He did not lay it down as a law that a man should turn another's cheek to the smiter. What the individual can do, the nation may not do. It no doubt is the duty of the Ruler to turn his own individual cheek to the insulter; it is not his duty to turn the cheeks of the millions over whom he rules to those who would smite them, committing their children to shame and their homes to devastation.

No doubt Jesus Christ enjoined the law of forgiveness, but it was not unconditional. "If he repent, forgive him," is His law, and until the wrongdoer repents and ceases from his evil, it would be immoral to forgive him. Duty demands that every means be used to bring the evildoer to repentance; for only so is there a chance of his soul being saved. It is manifest that Christianity is not a religion of non-resistance to evil, but the religion of Him who Himself resisted evil, and who resisted it even to the death.

Patriotism, therefore, demands that we resist even to the shedding of blood. When a hostile army would destroy a nation, as in Belgium, it warreth against the soul, and it is as Christian to kill as it would be to shoot a tiger which leapeth out of the jungle to devour a man. And that Irish soldier whose face in the hospital in Paris was irradiated with joy when he was told that the enemy was put to flight and Paris saved, and who died with that gladness in his face, died in the spirit of Jesus Christ.

To say that the Founder of Christianity would not strike a blow for home and kindred and truth is to forget that He struck a blow in Jerusalem and wielded the thongs on the shoulders of those who polluted His Father's house. It is His will that we should strike a blow in defence of the house of our soul--the sanctuary of nationality.

Patriotism must be vibrant with the spirit of religion if it is to be a power rousing the nation to heroism and self-sacrifice. There never was a nation so patriotic as the Jew. No city ever gripped a nation's heart-strings as Jerusalem gripped the heart of the Jew. No suffering, no defeat, no exile however far, could quench the fire of patriotism in the heart. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I remember thee not, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy"--such was the cry of the Jew by the rivers of Babylon, yearning after Sion.

How was it that Jerusalem thus pulled at its children's heart-strings until they hurried back to rebuild? It was because Jerusalem was the seat of the worship of G.o.d. It was not the material stones or the hills round about that thus compelled the heart. It was the light of eternity shining over them. It was because of the "house of the Lord our G.o.d" that the Jew counted no good worth his striving except the good of Jerusalem. It is only when G.o.d standeth at the heart of a nation that the heart cleaveth with all its fibres to its native land, for then the whole of the man--not only the cravings of the body and the heart and the mind, but also the deeper cravings of the soul--wind themselves round the thought of the nation.

Thus we find that the days when the fires of patriotism burned brightest were ever those in which G.o.d held sway over the nation. It was with G.o.d that the sailors of Queen Elizabeth swept the main, that the soldiers of Wellington hurled the enemy far from the sh.o.r.es that face England--they were fighting not only for England but for England's G.o.d.

The testimony of history is this, that patriotism cannot maintain its power if once it be divorced from religion. Let G.o.d's face be veiled and lost and everything is lost. "Without G.o.d nothing, with G.o.d everything," says the ancient Celtic proverb, and all ages testify to its truth. And the last proof of it is now before our eyes in the condition of France.

A hundred years ago France dominated Europe, erected thrones and deposed kings at its will. But little by little France lost the vision of G.o.d, until at last M. Viviani celebrated the final triumph over the Church in 1907 by exclaiming: "With one magnificent gesture we have extinguished the lights of heaven, which none shall rekindle." France, in the words of its present Prime Minister, "extinguished the lights of heaven," but in so doing it extinguished something else. For to-day that nation, that not so long ago dominated Europe, can only protect its capital city by the help of the two nations which have not yet extinguished the lights of heaven.

Without G.o.d patriotism becomes impotent, for G.o.d is the source of that moral law, conformity to which means for a nation life, and defiance of which means the degeneration that leadeth to destruction. With the departure from G.o.d came moral decay and racial suicide. The hope of France is this, that through the descent of the nation into the valley of death the lights of heaven may be once more kindled; the hope of Britain, that these same lights may shine more brightly.

The spirit of patriotism will again vivify the nation when we seek after G.o.d. In years of prosperity we have forgotten our high calling.

We have pursued vanities and forgotten the living G.o.d. When we again realise our calling and our election as instruments in the hand of G.o.d for the establishment of His Kingdom of Righteousness over all the earth, our hearts will be filled with ardour, and we shall face whatever perils may a.s.sail us strong in the a.s.surance that the Omnipotent G.o.d is in our midst and that nothing can resist His will.

And this true patriotism will mean the salvation of the nation. For it will strive to realise at home that righteousness which alone exalteth a nation. Its first task will be to raise the life at home nearer to G.o.d, for we cannot raise the world to higher levels than that on which we ourselves stand. The vision of the new Jerusalem descending from G.o.d out of heaven will again flame before our eyes. "And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from G.o.d out of heaven, prepared as a bride for her husband."

That new Jerusalem is not a city remote in the inaccessible heights, but a city which descends and permeates the material city now so polluted by sin, until it becomes the "holy city," with the law of G.o.d obeyed and the will of G.o.d done in it. Its citizens shall walk its streets, pure in heart, seeing G.o.d everywhere. "And they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations into it." There the nations shall be one in the streets of the city of G.o.d, all their contendings forgotten in the sense of their brotherhood, following the one ideal, obeying the one law, loving each other in the love of G.o.d. They will strive then as to who shall bring the greatest glory within the compa.s.s of its walls, and that will be the only striving.

That is the ideal, that we should become a nation so permeated by the spirit of G.o.d, so brought into obedience to His will, that our cities shall become holy cities, even as the new Jerusalem coming down from G.o.d out of heaven. When we shall set ourselves to realise that ideal once more, then will the nation evoke the devotion of its citizens, for devotion to the nation will also be devotion to G.o.d.

It was that ideal which fired the patriotism of the Jew. The same ideal alone will make our patriotism glow as a white flame. When the vision of the Supreme Ruler whose throne is established in righteousness once more blazes forth before the people, then once more the throb of patriotism and the pa.s.sion to make righteous law operative to the ends of the earth will stir the heart, and the manhood of the race will once more thrill with the call summoning to service and to sacrifice. The answering shout will everywhere arise--For G.o.d and the King.

III

The Shadow of the Cross

III

The churchyard of our parish lies in a deep hollow, and a little river half encircles it. In the midst of it stands the church beneath whose shadow the parish has garnered its dead for centuries. There the generations have lain down to sleep, their hearts reconciled one to another, and the beadle has drawn the coverlet of green over them. As he goes about his allotted task he pats a mound here and there gently with the back of his spade--for roadman and belted earl are at one here.

The last time I wandered down to the hollow it seemed as if eternal peace brooded over the living and the dead. The leaves, russet and gold, glowed in the sunlight. At the stirring of a gentle breeze, like the dropping of a sea-bird's feather, leaf after leaf fluttered silently down on the graves. The great bank of trees across the river glowed with rivulets of dull flames running hither and thither. In its stony bed the river sang its endless song. The immemorial yews, beneath whose branches successive generations of children have played with now and then a thrill of pleasing terror because of the overhanging graves, stood regardless of the sun. The crows, sated with the gleanings of harvest fields, fluttered in their rookeries with scarcely a caw. It seemed as if no sound of discord or strife could ever break in that enchanted hollow.

As I turned away to retrace my steps through the gate I came on a woman sitting on the mort-safe, a handkerchief moist with her tears in her hand. She had come up from the quarries and she had visited her dead.

And she came because yesterday she received word that on the battlefield of Marne her son was killed. He was her eldest. The others were not old enough yet to fight. Her husband was killed in an accident, and she had reared her children, refusing all help from the parish. The pride of the blood sustained her. And now that her son was dead she came hither, driven by an irresistible instinct to visit her husband's grave. It was as if she wanted to tell him about John, and how he died a hero, trying to carry a wounded comrade through the hail of the shrapnel.

She was weary, and from her husband's grave she turned to the church.

She would go and sit in the corner under the gallery, where John used to sit. He had sat with her there at his first Communion. The memories wrapped her round, and she would feel her son near her there.

But the door of the church was locked and barred. With an added ache in her heart she turned away, and weariness compelled her to sit on the iron mort-safe, which the parish provided in a former century to protect their dead from sacrilegious hands. "But the church used to be open," I said. "Aye," she replied tremulously, gathering up her handkerchief into a round ball; "but some did-na like it; the boots on the week-days are na sae clean, and they dirtied the kirk. That must be why they lockit the door." It was not that she complained. Those who locked the church were wise men, and no doubt they knew best. So she sat on the mort-safe.

"I have other sons, and when they are older they will go, too," she said. "I'll no' keep them back. And if they die it'll be for G.o.d's great cause." Her lips quivered as she spoke. The moist ball in the right hand was clenched tight--there were no more tears to shed.

And as I looked at the worn, lined face, the bent shoulders, the faded rusty black mantle with its fringe, and the sunken lips that quivered now and then, there came a sudden realisation. I saw no longer the one grief-burdened figure sitting dejectedly on the mort-safe--I saw the unnumbered host of mothers throughout the world who have given their sons over to carnage, and who are as Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted because they are not. Millions of men locked in the death grapple means millions of mothers given tears to drink in great measure, bound in affliction and iron.

The song of the river went on ceaselessly, the russet-leaves fell softly, and the sun shone on a world wrapped in peace--all nature utterly regardless of the millions of Rachels that weep. (Ten million hearts may break, but nature silences not one note of its joyousness.) And as she sat there, behind her, under the campanile, showed the church door, locked and barred. Nature was heedless of her; the church shut its door upon her. She seemed to me the Mater Dolorosa.

As I went up the brae there came the memory of a school lesson long ago. Out of the subconscious it leaped as a diver might come up from the depths of the sea with a gleaming coin in his hand. Among the temples of ancient Rome there was one temple always kept open in time of war. There the Roman General clashed the shield and the spear, invoking the G.o.d ere he went to the battle-line, and its door was shut not day or night. And I have no doubt but that the Eternal Ruler heard that clashing of spear on shield, and marked that open door. But over wide districts of Great Britain we have left these pagan habits far behind us. We shut the doors of our temples alike in war and in peace--excepting two hours on one day of the week, or in many cases one hour in the week. Nor do I doubt but that the same Ruler marks these doors now shut on the mothers of sorrow, and these sanctuaries locked and silent.

The glory was now gone from the day. I could not forget how the iron mort-safe gave the rest that the Church refused. The shadow lay heavy over the valley, and the mind tried to give the shadow a name. But it could not. So up the long flight of stone steps I climbed, and turned along a tree-shaded road. There, where three roads meet, stands a little chapel within whose walls a small section of our parishioners worship. I have pa.s.sed it times out of mind without so much as glancing at it. But to-day its open door arrested my eye, and I stood in the roadway and gazed. And there came to me there a sudden sense of thankfulness for that there is one open door in our parish which witnesses to the fact that the power and solace of religion are not shut in within the confines of only two hours of one day in the week.

While I yet stood in the highway there came forth from the little chapel an honoured parishioner, who is pa.s.sing the golden evening of a useful life in researches regarding Calvin and the Pope. Amazement possessed me, for he is a power in the parish church, whose door is locked and barred. We walked together towards the hills. There was a trace of apology in his explanation. Since this dreadful cataclysm has burst and the boom of the guns has come drifting from the sea across the high-perched city, he has felt the need of quiet meditation. Thus he has often on his walks slipped through the open door of the chapel that stands by the roadside.

"And you have locked the door of the parish church," I exclaimed, "and you deny to the poor the privilege you yourself enjoy." He stopped and faced me in the roadway, blinking at me. "We never locked the Church door," he said. "It used to be open," I answered; "I remember being glad to sit in it myself." "Oh! I remember," he exclaimed, "it was open every day for a few years, but the authorities were never consulted when it was thrown open--a most lawless proceeding!--and when a suitable opportunity occurred the beadle locked it up. Law and order have to be vindicated."

"What you did then," I replied, "was to allow the beadle to deprive the poor parishioners of a privilege which you and a few others enjoy elsewhere." At that he started off walking along the road very quickly, but I kept step with him. "You see," said he, waving a deprecatory hand, "I am only one among many, and I was so absorbed in these old Reformation controversies that I never gave it a thought, and it is only since the war began that I realised...." And as he spoke I felt that my old friend, learned in many controversies, had experienced a revolution. The great tide had swept him past all controversies right up to the fountain head. He had learned that man's high calling is not to dispute, but to pray.

As we walked under the darkling hills I told him of that shadow which had so suddenly fallen upon me that day, and he at once gave it a name.

"It is the shadow of the Cross," said he. And thereupon he began to explain out of the wisdom and ripened experience of seventy years how across nineteen centuries the shadow of the Cross lies still over all the world. One thinks so seldom of these things, and if occasionally one hears them spoken of, familiarity with the words has deadened the hearer to their significance. It was because I listened to him talking in the lane that his words gripped me. They might have made no impression if he were in a pulpit.

We are accustomed to think of the greatest of all tragedies as an event consummated in six hours. It is, however, far from consummated, for it is an age-long tragedy. Its roots lay in self-interest. A degenerate priesthood in an obscure Syrian town saw nothing in the Greatest of Teachers but an unbalanced enthusiast, who struck at their ill-gotten gains, and whose triumph would make an end of them and their system.

So self-interest cried "Crucify." And though the Roman Governor saw through them and wanted to save Him, self-interest again was brought into play, and when threatened with an awkward complaint to Rome, he said "Crucify." And ever since then self-interest on innumerable lips has cried Crucify, Crucify. Not only cried, but did it.

For this Teacher identified Himself with His followers, saying that He was the Vine and they the branches. It follows that whatever is done to the branch is done to the vine. A branch cannot be cut and severed from the vine without the vine bleeding. He declared it to be so.

"Whosoever receiveth you receiveth Me," and it follows that whosoever crucifies you crucifies Me. And the history of the centuries is the history of how the poor and unlearned and the toiling have been persecuted, harried by war, driven to death and crucified.

Generation after generation have raised the Cross anew, and in the crucifying of the dumb mult.i.tudes have crucified Him. Along with His own He fought with wild beasts, went through the flames, and suffered many b.l.o.o.d.y and diverse persecutions, and He was with His people now.

He confronted to-day the mighty of the earth as He did that blinded priesthood of old, and He declared that there is only one way of conquering, and that by love; that gaining the whole world was a miserable bargain if in exchange a man parted with truth and righteousness and purity--those things that const.i.tute the soul's very breath.