Victory Out Of Ruin Part 5

At this Christmastide what we need most is to make room for the Child.

People are ever ready to make room for that which they recognise to be precious. The most precious thing on earth is goodness. Give any mother her choice of her son being rich and a rogue, or poor and good; she will choose poverty. There is no power that builds up men and women in unselfishness and goodness but the power that is radiated from Him whose life on earth began in a manger. We must, if need be, cast away our costliest treasures that we may make room.... In very truth He cannot now be shut out altogether. No contumely will drive Him hence. It is different now from the day when a woman groped her way in agony to the a.s.ses and the stall. Different now, for He comes in through the closed doors. That is how the world has not been able to destroy Christianity; and that is how the Child conquers at the last.

CHAPTER X

DOMINION FROM SEA TO SEA

No part of the Empire rendered the cause of the world's soul in the world war greater service than Canada. When the clouds of chlorine gas were let loose it was the Canadians who stopped the gap through which the torrent of destruction was flowing. And the question the wounded men gasped out of tortured throats and lungs was not 'Shall I live?'

but 'Did the Huns get through?' In the great host that at last swept the wolves back to their lair, the Canadians were foremost. 'We pledge ourselves solemnly before G.o.d to keep faith with our fallen comrades,'

wrote General Currie to Sir Robert Borden, and n.o.bly did they fulfil the pledge. To-day when a citizen of the States begins to demonstrate how his countrymen won the war, a Canadian produces the official statistics from his pocket and shows how the ten millions of Canada gave more of their sons over to death and wounds than the total casualties of the one hundred and ten millions in the States. And it is not surprising that Canada should have a clear vision of the ideal of duty. The very name that their country bears lifts that young nation into the fellowship of the highest ideal. When a name was discussed for the new confederation an inspiration came to Sir Leonard Tilley as he read the eighth verse of the seventy-second psalm: 'He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth,' and on his initiative the name Dominion was adopted. Not for Canada alone but for the whole Empire that name sets forth the only ideal. The cry of 'World-dominion or death' can only be overcome at last by the watchword 'G.o.d-dominion and Life.'

I

It is difficult for men to learn the lesson of their own most bitter experience. Only when the Cross stands far back across the years does its meaning and purpose faintly gleam on the minds of men. It need be no matter for surprise that men who did not themselves stand in the breach of death should be unable to articulate the master-word of the future. That great word will be--Spirit. What the world gazed on for four years of woe was the triumph of the spirit. To the men who, footsore and limping, marched back from Mons, defeat was incredible--their souls knew not the word. And because victory, even as they retreated, was in their souls, they swept the enemy back from the gates of Paris. For four years in mud and misery and defeat the soul endured and triumphed. It was the greatest of all the soldiers of France who said to his body as it shrank in his first battle: 'Tremblest thou? If thou knewest the dangers into which I shall this day carry thee, thou wouldest tremble!' Often and often in these four years the poor worn suffering body said, 'I have had enough--enough of mud and vermin--I am fed up; I will do no more,' but when the call of duty came the soul said to the body, 'I will make you face it, make you go through with it'; and the soul compelled the body to charge into the very face of death. It was the spark of the Divine in the soul that enabled our brothers to conquer the shrinking of flesh and blood and so to conquer the foe. It is in the measure that armies are souls that armies conquer. And it has been the same at home in castle and cot-house. We have but to think of the wives and mothers.

'They let them go forth at the wheels Of the guns and denied not. But then the surprise When one sits quiet alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels, G.o.d! how the house feels.'

However deeply the iron pierced, there was never a thought of defeat being even possible. And when the call came the women toiled in the factories, and the ammunition dumps were their spirit materialised. At home and in the battle-line the final destiny of every nation depends upon the soul.

II

Still more is the mastery of this word apparent when we consider the future destiny of the world. One result of the world's blood-bath is that all thoughtful men are asking, How can the world be saved in the future? And mult.i.tudes discuss the way of the world's salvation by a League of Nations or other method. By parchments and signatures the world is to be saved! All that is but the folly with which men have deceived themselves in all ages. The folly is apparent when we ask, Whence do wars spring? They spring from greed and l.u.s.t and ambition--from the life surrendered to evil. We speak of the horror of war; what we should speak of is the horror of wickedness. For war is only a symptom, not the disease. What all these weary discussions about 'Leagues to make an end of war,' and the new watchword 'No more war,' aim at is the doing away with the symptom--leaving the disease to run its deadly course. To suppress symptoms without removal of the hidden cause is the way of death. What the nations must face is the disease and its healing!

It is with nations as with individuals! How can a man protect himself against a thief. He can do it in three ways. He may (1) use force; or (2) he may make an agreement with the thief--enter into a treaty with him; or (3) he may endeavour to reform the thief. The first method is militarism and, whether in the form of armies or policemen, is costly and uncertain. The second only protects so long as the thief finds it convenient or in his own interest to keep it. Neither a burglar nor a robber-state can be warded off by treaties. The third alone provides a certain protection; the only safety is that the thief experience a change of spirit--be, in short, converted. 'Admirable,' said Cardinal Fleury, when a scheme for 'perpetual peace' was submitted to him; 'admirable, save for one omission--I find no provision for sending missionaries to convert the hearts of princes.' The day of princes is over, and the day of democracy has come. The first requisite of perpetual peace is that the nations of the world experience a change of heart and spirit--should repent. But in all the schemes for ending war there is no suggestion of sending missionaries to convert the world's democracies. France has 'extinguished the lights of heaven which none shall rekindle'; England, if the number of worshippers in the churches be any gauge, is rapidly sinking back into paganism; and across the Atlantic the United States is resolved to live unto itself alone, separating itself from the perishing nations; while on the Continent of Europe there is but one ritual: 'We did no wrong: we did not begin the war.' Missionaries to convert the democracies of the world--they are needed in legions. But such a need is not in all the thoughts of the orators. They can only think of forming leagues to abolish the vultures that swoop down on the carcases. They cannot realise that the only way to make an end of the swooping vulture is to make an end of carcases. Unless the world experiences a spiritual and moral renewal, any league that would secure it peace in the midst of its depravity would only secure its moral doom. It is manifest then that the only way to abolish war is to bring the body into subjection to the spirit.

The way of salvation is the way of spiritual renewal. Love does not kill or poison, and humanity's feet need to be guided into the way of love. Along that road there is but the one guide: He who said 'I am the way.... Love as I have loved you.' The measure of that love is the Cross. And that is why the way to salvation leads through Calvary.... Peace will only come when the kingdoms of this world shall submit to that kingdom of the soul whose dominion is from sea to sea.

'I find a hundred little indications to rea.s.sure one that G.o.d comes,'

writes H. G. Wells. 'The time draws near when mankind will awake ...

and there shall be ... no leader but the one G.o.d of mankind.' But though Mr. Wells writes sentences so vital as that, yet when one asks him what G.o.d is--he is silent. Is He holy and righteous? Though Mr.

Wells' G.o.d is but an abstraction, yet the truth remains. The coming of the Kingdom of G.o.d is the one hope of mankind--that Kingdom which Jesus preached. And the entrance into that Kingdom is by way of repentance and love and faith. When the soul of the world awakes to that, the day of deliverance shall have dawned.

III

This, then, must be the goal of human effort, to bring the nations of the world into such a unity of spirit that war will no longer be thinkable. But we, as a nation, can only do this if we ourselves bring our lives into conformity with the laws of righteousness. It is manifest that no amount of oratory will enable us to raise the world to any higher level than we have attained ourselves.

The first duty, then, is to see that we base our own lives on righteousness. The problem is how to bring to bear on the human heart those motives that will move it irresistibly towards righteousness.

That road is not easy to travel and the choice of it means effort and travail. It means a battle against selfishness and self-seeking--a battle long-drawn-out. Why should men choose that conflict rather than ease and self-indulgence? There can be no reason save this: that G.o.d wills and enjoins righteousness. But does He? We know very little about G.o.d, and the strange thing is that the more knowledge that comes to us regarding Him, the more mysterious He becomes. But there is one thing that we do know with absolute certainty regarding G.o.d, and it is this--that all down the thousands of years of recorded history the power of the Unseen Ruler of the universe can be traced fighting against iniquity, burying corrupt nations under the avalanche, digging the grave for tyranny and corruption. The history of the world is the history of G.o.d making an end of crime. The way to destruction has been the way of iniquity. That G.o.d should have so ordered the universe that the stars in their courses fight against the Siseras, that all its forces are at last arrayed for the destruction of evil, is the proof that G.o.d is righteous and holy and that the pa.s.sion in His heart is that His children should be righteous and holy. The world, as G.o.d means it, is the school for the training of men and women in goodness--and so in the image of G.o.d.... It is only the call of the Unseen Ruler as He summons His children to bring their lives into unison with Himself, that can turn the feet into the way of righteousness. There is no impelling force equal to the choice of good rather than evil except this--that G.o.d wills goodness. No other motive save that can turn the faces of men towards the heights.

IV

The greatest of all questions then is this--how most efficiently to bring that motive to bear upon the nation. It is in the early and plastic years that the destiny of individuals is fixed. If anywhere, it is in our schools that our children shall learn the things out of which are the issues of life and death. What atmosphere shall we surround our children with in our schools? is the supreme question.

'To educate without religion is only to produce clever devils,'

declared the Duke of Wellington in his downright way. And as a nation we have made sure of everything being taught--except religion. No government-inspector ever asks about it!

What a waste it all is and what a travesty--this pumping of facts and figures into the weary, jaded brains of little children. Only five per cent. or so of the people are capable of benefiting by a long process of education--yet everybody must be confined in dreary barracks from five to fifteen years, learning things that will never be of use and are straightway forgotten. We ordained that all the children should be taught, but in our usual blundering fashion we never settled what we should teach them. The child looks out on a world of wonder, and proves its wisdom by peopling every grove and every hill with fairies.

For the child the world is spiritual. And it comes to us and asks how came it and why came it? But our legislators decreed that, so far as they were concerned, the child should be taught geography and the names of rivers and hills, but not about the G.o.d who made the rivers and hills and the world; botany, but not about the G.o.d who made the gra.s.s and the flowers; physiology, but not about the G.o.d who fashioned man; dates of kings and of battles, but not about the G.o.d whose providence is written over all history; about laws, but not about the Source of all law--the divine commands that regulate human action. The only part of man that the educators considered was the brain. If they intellectualised the race they deemed that the millennium would come.

They did it. But the millennium is further off than ever. They caused all the people to go through the mills where knowledge was ground out; they learned to read and write. The only consequence was that they became the victims of every charlatan. They turned their arithmetic into roguery and their literature into l.u.s.t. They became the victims of the gamblers and the betting touts. They pursued the missing words and became the disciples of demagogues. And salvation has tarried though the brain has been nurtured. Yes! there has come a vast progress! London in the next war can be completely destroyed by spraying it with gas bombs--in eight hours! Education, with G.o.d left out, will, then, have come to its fruition!

V

National education will only become a means of deliverance from evil when our schools shall have been transformed into the nurseries of goodness. For after all, what we need is good men and women. Clever men are as common as berries; what the world cries for is men who can be trusted, men whose motive will be the welfare of others and not their own. 'His fame was immense,' was the verdict on a Roman patriot; 'his private property was so scanty that there was not enough to pay the expenses of his funeral. He was buried at the public cost. The matrons mourned him as they mourned Brutus.' Ah! the terrible thing is not to die poor but to die with a character no man honours. To train our children to love and desire goodness is our need. The history of the ages is the proof that goodness cannot flourish apart from religion. And the Bible tells the story of the dealing of G.o.d with men--of the evolution of religion. It is that which const.i.tutes the supreme value of the book.

But no book has suffered more at the hands of its friends than has the Bible. The Bible is an Eastern book, and it is filled with glowing metaphors and parables. Dull, unimaginative Western minds said: 'These are literally true, and unless you believe them so you are lost.' The writer of the beautiful book of Jonah wrote a story rebuking the narrow spirit of the Jews, and his book has become the citadel of all the narrow souls who see nothing in it but the whale. Children should be taught that science and religion cannot contradict each other, because they both are revelations of the one G.o.d; that the Bible is full of poetry and parables which the writers never meant that any should mistake for treatises; that the slaughter of the Canaanites and the psalms of cursing are no more of the essence of religion, than the Stuart tyranny the essence of Scotland; that the serpent in the garden and Jonah in the whale are parables; that religion, in short, is a flowing and deepening river and not a stagnant pool. But religion as too often taught in our schools is only the teaching of things which the growing boy discovers to be untrue. So far from doing good, it is the destruction of religion.

When the Bible is taught as the record of the evolution of the revelation of G.o.d, it will move the hearts of men towards goodness while time endures, for it enshrines the figure of Him who based a Kingdom on love and meekness--a Kingdom that endures for ever, because no guns can fight against a Spirit, nor any frontiers bar it. The education that has not this as its base may produce the chlorine gas--but it will never produce that goodness which alone maketh great.

But the course is so crowded that something must be jettisoned. And as inspectors take no note of religion--let it be thrown overboard. Its total omission in Secondary Schools is declared necessary, because the syllabus is too crowded already! It is as if a man having a ship laden with dross were offered some nuggets of fine gold and answered, 'My ship is overloaded already, I cannot take more.' But he wouldn't be such a fool. He would throw everything overboard, if need be, to make room!

VI

In the last year of the Great War a new Education Bill was pa.s.sed for the Northern Kingdom, and provision was made for everything but the teaching of religion. At every election the voters who desire that religion be continued must have another spell of sentry-go to secure it--all except Roman Catholics and Episcopalians! Truly we are of the race of the Bourbons. The expense of teaching has been trebled; the futility of what is taught remains as before. I heard the Chairman of an Education Authority being asked whether provision was made in the schools for teaching the children the scientific facts about alcohol.

He replied that the syllabus was too crowded already! Alcohol has claimed more victims from humanity than all the wars and famines of all the centuries; and yet our children were not to be taught the truth about it because the syllabus was so crowded! What is it they teach that could compare in value with the truths of temperance and self-discipline? Through a course of training so expensive that the countryside is well-nigh bankrupt because of its cost, the children pa.s.s and they go forth into the world unwarned of the rocks and shoals on which the millions have perished.... That, at this time of day, we should shut the doors of our schools against the knowledge of G.o.d, in whose love alone men can find their healing, and against the teaching of truth and temperance, which alone can make children grow in character and goodness, seems possible only on the supposition that we have been bereft of our judgment. 'If they do abolish G.o.d from their poor bewildered hearts,' said Carlyle, 'all or most of them, there will be seen for some length of time, perhaps for some centuries, such a world as few are dreaming of.'

CHAPTER XI

THERE WERE IN THE SAME COUNTRY SHEPHERDS

'He would denounce the horrors of Christmas until it almost made me blush to look at a hollyberry.'--EDMUND GOSSE'S _Father and Son_.

The world is moving so fast that, before each nightfall, yesterday is forgotten. Sitting here before the fire I have been stirring up my memory, and, out of the subconscious, queer recollections have emerged.

I can see now the grim-faced Highland minister demonstrating in the month of December to his perfect satisfaction that the Founder of Christianity was born in midsummer, and that Christmas was but a pagan festival sprinkled over with holy water so-called. I think it was the first time I heard of Christmas. That good man denounced the horrors of Christmas with such zest that I, too, would have blushed to look at a hollyberry--only no holly grew in that part of the Isle. And that was so not because the Isle was remote and the folk spoke there an ancient and little-known language that segregated them from the great life of the world. It was the same in great centres very conscious of their own culture. It was really only yesterday that Walter Smith was dealt with by his presbytery for holding the first Christmas service in his church in Edinburgh. But we have travelled far since that particular yesterday, and I am glad that the children of to-day will never need to blush before a hollyberry. For from the Solway to the Pentland Firth the church bells everywhere to-day summon the people to keep holy day and go on pilgrimage to Bethlehem.

I

There was never a time when the people of this land needed more to go on such a pilgrimage. There are ample signs that Mammon has captured the hearts of this generation. The day is gone on which Ruskin declared that there is no wealth but life. We have outlived that. A full bank account and an empty house--that is our modern wealth. The rich flaunt their riches in a world seething with discontent. And the aforetime quiescent ma.s.ses now demand that Mammon should smile on them.

Society may perish, but they must have their full share in the largesse of Mammon. On the altar of that G.o.d duty and patriotism are laid as the meet offering. 'Great is Mammon,' is the burden of the praise of our day. And what a G.o.d before whom to bow the knee!

It is only when I go on pilgrimage to-day to the grotto in the rock in which the a.s.ses were stabled in Bethlehem and to the stall where the Child is laid that I can realise the vulgarity and the meanness of Mammon. Out of that manger there issued a power compared to which all other influences that moulded men are as the rushlight to the sun; in that stable lies the fountain out of which sprang the river that has borne on its bosom for nineteen centuries all of beauty and of truth and of love wherewith humanity has been blessed; and yet all that came out of the direst poverty. Mammon had no smile for the greatest and most radiant thing in all the world's history. Money secures at least food and shelter, and it was because they had none that the innkeeper shut them out. If they could have showed him a purse full of gold pieces, he would soon have made room. And all the life of this Jesus was woven after that pattern. The cheapest food sold then were sparrows. It was because He was often sent to buy them that He knew that two of them were sold in the market place for a farthing. The patched garment is the symbol of poverty--or used to be! And He knew all about garments being patched and patched until they were past mending. At the eventide when the boy James brought a coat to be mended He heard His mother say with a weary sigh: 'I have mended this again and again: n.o.body can keep boys in decent clothes; so different from girls; a new patch will just tear a bigger hole in the old.'

Often He saw His mother cast a half-farthing into the treasury, for she had nought else. The tax-gatherer comes, and there isn't a coin to pay. Jesus gave much, but He never gave any money, for He had none to give. He was homeless for three years, deemed mad by His family, with no place where to lay His head. A grave given in charity receives Him at the last. The place of Jesus from the manger to the grave is among the poorest of the poor. He belonged to the great cla.s.s of the disinherited. If the greatest thing on earth sprang from poverty such as this, then surely Christmas pours the contempt of heaven upon Mammon.

II

We have only to look at him with eyes cleansed by gazing at the Child in the manger and we realise how tawdry a G.o.d this Mammon is. What can he do for us? Nothing of any worth. He has never minted a coinage which can buy the inspiration of a n.o.ble thought, which can purchase love for the starved heart, or can endow a man with the vision and the faculty divine. One has but to consider a moment and he will realise the poverty-stricken condition of Mammon's devotees. They can command speed on earth or in the air; they can fly a hundred miles an hour; but what is the good when at the end of the hundred miles they are as at the beginning--sated, restless, and dissatisfied? They can command no speed by which they can escape from themselves. And it is vain to wing a flight upwards through the air if heaven be empty overhead; vain to alight five hundred miles away if on earth there be no temple, no holy day, no shrine at which to worship. 'You own the land,' said the poor painter to the new-rich who boasted his land: 'you own the land but I own the landscape.' The great gift is to own the landscape. And no money ever bought that. The only thing Mammon can do is to secure food, shelter, and clothes. It can also secure freedom from work--but that is a freedom shared with the tramp. Life is greater far than livelihood; and the worshippers of Mammon lose the very essence and the end of life in a vain pursuit of the means of living.

That is the witness raised by Christmas as it calls the nations to realise the true greatness of man. To a generation that has made life a hectic rush after money and pleasure, Christmas testifies that to estimate any man by the money he owns is to blaspheme against the Child laid in the manger. The wealth of Croesus makes him but the prey of the conqueror, and the dust of centuries has buried the pomp and glory of emperors. But this Child, cradled in poverty, reigns from generation to generation. The voice of an Alexander or a Napoleon would to-day cause no heart to beat quicker; but millions would die for Him. And that because He alone revealed to men the things that are unpurchasable, the riches that are unseen. He alone made men realise that a man's life consisteth not in the things that he possesseth, but rather in the thoughts that he thinks, in the motives that sway his action; in the ideals towards which he presses; in the G.o.d whom he worships and makes his own. How great a revolution He made. That one hour in the manger has changed the world. Every time I sit down to write a letter and head it 1922 I bear witness to the truth--that the world I know began when a Child laid in the manger brought to earth the realisation that all the great and n.o.ble things in life can be mine--though my raiment be shabby and though my banker never thinks it worth his while to throw me even a word when I reluctantly pa.s.s in through his swing door. What a wonderful new wine He brought, and how generously does He pour it into our bottles. Still new--after nineteen centuries! Still bursting the old bottles on all sides! I can be quite patient. There is no need for pa.s.sionately tearing them in pieces. Nineteen centuries! What are they in the arithmetic of eternity! Give the Child time--and all the bottles of Mammon and vulgarity will at last be burst.