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 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
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 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL
 
 WORKS BV THE Rev. E. A. BURROUGHS. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF DECISION : a Plea for Wholeness 
 in Thought and Life. Crown Hvo, 5s. net. Third 
 Impression. 
 
 THE PATIENCE OF GOD. Two Addresses to Clergy 
 in Preparation for the National Mission of Repentance 
 and Hope. Fcp. 8vo, 6d. net. 
 
 THE ETERNAL GOAL. Three Letters to " The Times " 
 on the Spiritual Issues of the Present Situation. 8vo, 
 paper covers, 2d. net. 
 
 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL. The Task of the Rising 
 Generation. Fcp. 8vo, 2s. net. 
 
 THE CREED OF A CHURCHMAN. By the Right 
 Rev. F. Theodore Woods, D.D., Lord Bishop of 
 Peterborough ; the Right Rev. C. West- Watson, D.D., 
 Bishop of Barrow-in-Furness; the Rev. Cyril C. B. 
 Bardslev, M.A. : the Rev. E. A. Burroughs, M.A. ; 
 and the Rev. E. S. Woods, M.A., C.F. Crown 8vo, 
 paper covers, is. net ; cloth, is. 6d. net. 
 
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 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 THE TASK OF THE RISING GENERATION 
 
 E. A. BURROUGHS 
 
 FELLOW AND TUTOR OF HERTFORD COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 AUTHq^t OF "the VALLEY OF DECISION"; "A FAITH FOR THE 
 
 FIRING-LINE," ETC. 
 
 Arise and conquer while ye can 
 The foe that in your midst abides, 
 
 And build within the mind of man 
 The Empire that abides. 
 
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 1^ 
 
 To THE 
 
 MASTERS AND BOYS 
 
 OF 
 
 ETON, UPPINGHAM, WELLINGTON, 
 AND WEYMOUTH 
 
 WHOSE FRIENDLY WELCOME AND READY RESPONSS 
 
 MADE DELIGHTFUL A TASK 
 
 WHICH MIGHT WELL HAVE BEEN DIFFICULT 
 
 M i~ ;j >«r% n <
 
 FOREWORD. 
 
 No happier outcome of a generous rivalry be- 
 tween two Public Schools could be imagined 
 than that an Old Harrovian should come to 
 Eton as a Messenger of the National Mission. 
 Services of forty minutes each were held in the 
 College Chapel at g p.m. on the 30th and 31st of 
 October and the ist of November, 1916, and at 
 7.30 a.m. on All Saints' Day there v.as a Special 
 Celebration of the Holy Communion in memory 
 of the Dead and in self-dedication of the Living. 
 All the services were voluntary, and at the 
 Evening Services the Chapel was filled almost 
 to its utmost capacity — a sign that the boys 
 were ready to receive the Message, for which 
 they had been prepared by the Head Master, and 
 to welcome it heartily when it came. " The 
 Call of the War to the Rising Generation " did 
 not fall on deaf ears, and our happy experience
 
 viii FOREWORD 
 
 made us at Eton wish that other schools, be- 
 sides those to whom this book is dedicated, 
 should have the opportunity of reading an ex- 
 pansion of the thoughts of this Message. The 
 three evening Addresses given at Eton were 
 under the headings of chapters ii., v. and ix. 
 respectively, and the Lessons at the usual Morn- 
 ing Services were chosen to suit those subjects. 
 The main object of the writer is to prepare 
 the hearts of his readers for after-war problems, 
 so that the after-war world may be a better 
 world. The sacrifices of our fighting men will, 
 he urges, be useless if the nation resumes the 
 habit of selfishness after the War ; what is 
 wanted is a new spirit, like the war-spirit, but 
 bigger and better — what he calls "super- 
 patriotism," when a man is inspired by the 
 spirit, not only of his country, but by that of 
 Christ, in his fight in God's War for the triumph 
 of good over evil. "The rebuilding of the 
 Ruins" is aptly compared to the history of 
 Nehemiah — building and fighting together. 
 "The Call to the Rising Generation " is a call 
 to a new tradition — the Restoration of God ; 
 for this War is a danger-signal to warn the 
 world of the colossal mistake of " leaving God
 
 FOREWORD ix 
 
 out," which leads to moral Death, whereas the 
 spirit of self-denial and devotion to a Cause is 
 leading men back to Life. When he comes to 
 the question " What is sufficient for these 
 things ? " the writer's answer is — " Reinforce- 
 ment by God," so that man thus remade can 
 become in the words of the young Marlburian 
 poet — 
 
 A part of one Great Strength 
 That moves and cannot die. 
 
 The effects of living the Higher Humanity, 
 reinforced by God, are drawn out with con- 
 vincing power in chapter vi. After some 
 helpful hints on practical prayer, and an earnest 
 appeal to the soldier of God to abandon the 
 British reserve about spiritual things, and to 
 come forward for active service in word and 
 work, he dwells in the concluding chapter on 
 the duty of "self-reconstruction" in memory of 
 our Dead, so that we may build a new world 
 on the foundation-stones of the lives thus laid 
 down, and " for their sakes consecrate our- 
 selves " — finding within this motive a yet deeper 
 motive, the sacrifice of Christ. 
 
 Such is a brief summary of a stirring Message, 
 which has been heard by only a few school
 
 X FOREWORD 
 
 congregations, and will, I hope, by publication, 
 win a far wider hearing, so that boys may learn 
 to readjust the scale of values in their Public 
 School traditions, and strive by resolute self- 
 training to gain the spiritual strength which 
 alone will enable them to give freely that higher 
 personal service which will make the country 
 more worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that 
 their school-fellows have made. 
 
 FRANCIS HAY RAWLINS. 
 
 Eton, 
 March 7, 1917.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 It fell to the writer, as an " Archbishops' Mes- 
 senger " in the National Mission of Repentance 
 and Hope, to give the "Message" of the Mission 
 at several schools. At some of them (mentioned 
 in the Dedication) the visit extended to four or 
 five days, and it was possible to some extent to 
 develop this " Message" as it comes to the boy 
 of to-day. n each case there were kind re- 
 quests from both masters and boys for some- 
 thing on the lines of the addresses to be printed, 
 to remind them of the Mission ; and, as there 
 seemed to be room for some small book that 
 should voice the call of the war to the rising 
 generation, I have sought to meet both demands 
 together. 
 
 The chief excuse, however, for its publication 
 must be the readers for whom it is meant. There 
 is nothing much in its contents different from
 
 xii PREFACE 
 
 what I have, in some form or other, tried to sa}'^ 
 to grown-up readers already. This is an attempt 
 to say the same thing to boys. If there is any 
 importance in the thoughts expressed in such 
 a book as "The Valley of Decision," it matters 
 more that the rising generation should think 
 them than any other part of the community. 
 Never had a generation of boys and girls a life 
 of such moment and difficulty before them. 
 Never did it matter more to the world that this 
 generation should all "make good". And never, 
 perhaps, was it clearer to see that " making 
 good" is, before all, a matter of faith and of 
 moral decision. All that this book attempts, 
 then, without thought of any other public, is to 
 make this plain to boys of to-day ; and it is 
 their criticism, if they read it, that I shall 
 value most. 
 
 Many of its pages have had to wait to be 
 written in the rather chequered leisure of a 
 voyage to Egypt and the Sudan, — again on 
 National Mission work. My present where- 
 abouts and movements would have involved an 
 almost indefinite further delay, had not my 
 friend the Rev. L. B. T. Chaffey, of Eton College, 
 most kindly undertaken to see the book through
 
 PREFACE xiii 
 
 the press. The gratitude I owe him for this is 
 only second to that which I shall always feel for 
 his invaluable help at the time of the Mission 
 at Eton. It is a great pleasure to be able to 
 acknowledge both debts together. The kindness 
 of the Vice-Provost of Eton in writing the Fore- 
 word is only a sequel to very special kindness 
 at the same time. Nor can I forbear a word of 
 special thanks to the several Head Masters for 
 infinite trouble ungrudgingly taken. A more 
 general but not less real gratitude to many 
 other helpers, at all the Schools concerned, I 
 have tried to express in the Dedication. 
 
 E. A. B. 
 
 At Bishop's House, Cairo, 
 January 25, 1917.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Foreword bv the Vice-Provost of Eton College vii 
 
 Preface xi 
 
 Introduction — " After the War " . . . i 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. Super-Patriotism 12 
 
 II. Rebuilding the Ruins 21 
 
 III. The Harvest of Death 28 
 
 IV. The Harvest of Life 40 
 
 V. " Who is Sufficient for These Things ? " . 45 
 
 VI. The Higher Humanity 57 
 
 VII. Practical Prayer 68 
 
 VIII. Witness and War 78 
 
 IX. Our Dead and Our Duty 92
 
 r 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 "AFTER THE WAR." 
 
 We must live ; and if we would live as men, we must have 
 as the first thing an aim, a love, a hate — in short, an ideal. If 
 you do not try to find this when you are young, you will never 
 find it, and you will not know life. — Charles Wagner. 
 
 I. 
 
 Quite at the beginning of the war a Public 
 Schoolboy's letter was quoted in one of the 
 "Just too papers, as expressing the spirit and 
 young." feelings of his kind. He was green 
 
 with envy of an elder brother, a midshipman at 
 sea, and cursed his own luck at being born just 
 a little too late. In those days, despite Lord 
 Kitchener's forecast, we did not really believe 
 the war would last long. By now three years 
 seems a moderate estimate, and we are quite 
 prepared for four or five. Not a few who in 
 August, 1914, were groaning at being too young 
 to serve have since gone into it and given their 
 lives. And even to-day he would be a bold
 
 2 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 man who should draw a line across a school 
 list, and say, " Those below this line will not be 
 needed". 
 
 Still, the end must and will come some day: 
 and then what will be the feelings of the "just 
 Reliefer disap- ^00 young " ? Will it be with relief 
 pointment? qj. disappointment that the first 
 batch of boys will go from the schools, no 
 longer into the fighting Services, but into the 
 old, deserted, familiar ways of life ? 
 
 Both disappointment and relief of course 
 there will be. We are all human, more or less : 
 and there is that in human nature which will 
 be honestly relieved, and that also which will, 
 as honestly, be disappointed. On the one oc- 
 casion when I had the good fortune to see the 
 Front and come under shell-fire — quite a mild 
 dose — I seemed to realise what it would belike. 
 The first relief at escaping intact was soon 
 succeeded by acute disappointment. One was 
 sorry not to have had a fuller taste of it while 
 one was there. So it will no doubt be with 
 many — " after the war ". 
 
 But from one point of view the relief and the 
 disappointment will both be misplaced. Peace 
 
 The real dura- '^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ WOrk of the War. 
 
 tionof thewar. jjj ^ ggj^gg j^. ^jj} rather be the signal 
 for tackling it. And however well we may
 
 "AFTER THE WAR" 3 
 
 eventually beat our enemies, if we slack off then 
 we shall have lost the war. Such will be the 
 verdict of history a hundred years hence. The 
 real work of the war awaits the survivors — the 
 rising generation of to-day. And it will be the 
 harder work for being less heroic. There will 
 not be the novelty, the excitement, the hearten- 
 ing sense that everybody else is doing it. For 
 that very reason most people wonH do it. Most 
 people only do things so long as they are " being 
 done ". It will take the best people to see the 
 need, and go to meet it, and stick to their work 
 till others join in. If such people do not come 
 along, the war will have been a failure even for 
 the winning side. In fact the losers, if they see 
 this point and act accordingly, may well prove 
 the winners, if the winners ignore it. " The war 
 may end any year now," as they say to cheer 
 themselves up in the trenches : but the real 
 work of the war will last a century. The task of 
 securing that it has not been a colossal failure, 
 a tragic mistake — that the blood and tears and 
 treasure of the nations have not been poured 
 out worse than in vain — that task will keep 
 all of us busy all our days. It will claim the 
 whole life-work of every boy and girl at school 
 or even in the nursery to-day : and their chil- 
 dren too will have a part to play in it. It takes
 
 4 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 many hands, many years, to rebuild a world. 
 So, when the end of the fighting comes, neither 
 disappointment nor relief will be quite to the 
 point. There will still be " fighting jobs " for 
 the asking — work and adventure and sacrifice 
 for all. And those who refuse will just be un- 
 worthy to have lived in such days and to have 
 come safe through them. They will be the true 
 shirkers — " after the war ". 
 
 IL 
 For one thing at least we shall all agree on. 
 The after-war world is bound to be poorer, but 
 The hope of a '^ ought to bc better for what it has 
 better world. \^qqyi through. Mcn and nations do 
 not spend themselves as they are doing to-day 
 without some hope of a solid recompense. 
 Men and nations do not fight and suffer " to 
 right the wrong " without meaning that things 
 shall be more right and less wrong than formerly. 
 But to end one wrong is little use if you start a 
 hundred others in doing so, and leave them to 
 run their course unchecked. And at present 
 this seems to be about what has happened. In 
 our hearts we agree with one who wrote from 
 the trenches: "If I did not believe that the 
 world is going to be better for this war, I should 
 walk to the nearest German trench and get my- 
 self decently shot ". A present like ours would
 
 " AFTER THE WAR " 5 
 
 be quite unbearable if we knew that the future 
 was only going to be worse. Unless it is a real 
 beginning of better things, the war will have 
 lost its one justification. It was the secret faith 
 of the man in the street that Sir David Beatty 
 voiced, when he wrote a year ago the much- 
 quoted words : " Surely the Almighty God does 
 not mean this war to be just a hideous fracas, a 
 blood-drunken orgy ; there must be purpose in 
 it, improvement must be born out of it". But 
 can we really see the improvement coming in 
 any form that will last ? 
 
 The coming of peace in itself will not mend 
 things. In many ways it will make them 
 The dangers harder. "It's tough work being 
 of peace. Prime Minister during the war," said 
 
 some one lately ; " but it's beer and skittles to 
 what it will be to be Prime Minister after the 
 war." " After-war problems " and " the dangers 
 of peace " are phrases with which we are grow- 
 ing familiar. Some of those dangers are already 
 visible, only kept in abeyance because the war 
 is on. 
 
 Just look at one of them among many. We 
 are accustomed to remember, at least now and 
 A sample then, the wider meaning of the " Roll 
 
 "After-war r tt d t • 11 1 
 
 problem". of Honour . It is not the loss to the 
 present that matters so much as the loss to the
 
 6 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 future : the loss of the leaders of a generation 
 that will need good leading more than any 
 other generation before. As the father of one 
 such leader that might have been wrote to me 
 after his son had fallen : " One cannot help 
 wondering what the country will do ten or 
 twenty years hence, when men like him would 
 have been the back-bone of society". But that 
 loss is at any rate being recognised. Do we 
 realise widely enough another wrong which the 
 war is doing to the future, in spoiling masses of 
 good human material which is not being killed ? 
 In the working classes especially — to some 
 extent even in the better-off classes — boys and 
 girls are growing up to-day in conditions the 
 very worst for producing good citizens. A 
 stable, vigorous, disciplined population is the 
 greatest need of the times ahead of us : and ex- 
 perience proves that you can only get such out 
 of genuine homes, with an ordered home-life. 
 But home-life has largely gone by the board. 
 Home discipline was decaying before the war : 
 the war, by removing so many fathers, has 
 largely broken up what was left of it. Mothers 
 and elder brothers and sisters have " gone into 
 munitions," or other such work, and even mere 
 children have become " wage-earners ". 
 
 The ill effects are bewilderingly many, espe-
 
 "AFTER THE WAR" 7 
 
 cially as, in present conditions, employment itself 
 war-wastage is no longcF 3. discipline : for a boy will 
 
 of boy and girl . 
 
 life. throw up his war job as soon as it 
 
 bores him, and know that another can soon be 
 found. Above all, the work itself is the very 
 worst thing for both minds and bodies at just 
 that stage. The years from fourteen to seventeen 
 are, according to the experts, the most important 
 in every man's life. They are those in which 
 the body is " setting " towards manhood or wo- 
 manhood, and the mind and spirit are also taking 
 their permanent colour and shape. Monotony 
 and strain are at this stage the deadliest enemies 
 of the man that is to be — deadly to character 
 as well as to physique. And yet the war work 
 which is claiming the working-class boy and 
 girl in their thousands is at once monotonous 
 and over-tiring; and the ill effects of it are 
 only doubled by the premature independence 
 which its wages bring. We have no right to 
 expect the boys and girls whom the war is thus 
 affecting to-day to turn out, either physically 
 or .morally, the sort of citizens the future needs. 
 It will not be their fault if they develop into 
 weeds and wasters — an unstable and unproduc- 
 tive element in society. This too will be part 
 of the waste of war — a part of it which peace 
 will only make more obvious.
 
 8 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 Peace, then, of itself will not make things 
 better. Nor yet will the sacrifice of the present 
 Mere sacrifice savc the futurc, as some seem to 
 will not save, ^j^ink ; though it shows how the 
 future might be saved. People sometimes speak 
 as if " all this wonderful sacrifice " were itself 
 enough to set everything right, and usher in a 
 better world. But there is this to bear in mind 
 about sacrifice. Another man's sacrifice of him- 
 self for me does me no good unless I enter into 
 it, and share the same spirit. Rather it leaves me 
 worse than before — harder, less capable of being 
 inspired. And so the sacrifice now being offered 
 will prove a curse and not a blessing, unless 
 it leaves the same spirit in those who survive. 
 Then indeed it will achieve its object and bring 
 in a new age. But short of this it will be wanton 
 waste : it will but leave the world poorer and 
 sadder — and worse. 
 
 in. 
 
 And yet it is that which might save the future, 
 as well as that which alone lights up our world 
 What sacrifice t^-day. The war has been teaching 
 can do. those who would learn the mysterious 
 
 powers and prizes of sacrifice. -It has shown 
 not only what the spirit of sacrifice can do, but 
 what it can give the man whom it grasps. It
 
 "AFTER THE WAR" 9 
 
 gives him not only a new splendour in the eyes 
 of others, but also a new satisfaction in his own 
 heart. To that we shall come back later. At 
 the moment we are concerned with the miracles 
 which the spirit of sacrifice makes possible. 
 " Things which we once considered Utopian," 
 said Mr. Asquith in an early war speech, " are 
 no longer Utopian now." Old gulfs have been 
 bridged, old jealousies stifled. If this " war 
 spirit " could but spread and last, it would help 
 more than anything else in the hard times 
 coming. But, as things now stand, it is " for 
 the duration ". Then, unless something happens 
 meanwhile, they say we shall see "the inevit- 
 able reaction ". The pendulum will swing to 
 the other extreme : self-indulgence will take 
 the place of self-sacrifice. 
 
 It is only natural, from one point of view. 
 We all know what it is to want to " get our own 
 The threat of back ". It is one effect of our instinct 
 reaction. £qj. justice. " Wc havc donc our 
 bit," men will say on their return, " and now 
 we mean to have our fling." " This French 
 beer is siich poor stuff"" — so wrote an ingenuous 
 Tommy in a Y.M.C.A. Hut in France—" that 
 I've turned T.T. for the war. But please God, 
 if I get home, I shall get drunk the first night." 
 Nothing could be more "human" than this
 
 10 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 spirit — yet nothing more fatal. For if this 
 natural reaction once sets in, it will sweep from 
 us all that the war may have taught us. It will 
 rob us of just the spirit which has saved the 
 situation during the war, and which alone can 
 cope with the dangers of peace. And it will 
 put in the saddle the opposite spirit — the old 
 spirit of self-assertion, competition, suspicion — 
 which will make each step and stage of the read- 
 justment impossibly difficult. During the war 
 men have remembered their duties and discarded 
 their rights. After it, as things are shaping at 
 present, they are likelier to remember their rights 
 and discard their duties — and that when the 
 spirit of duty will be more needed than ever. 
 And if that does happen, well, God help our 
 nation ! We shall need His help, and we shall not 
 get it : for we shall have proved that we did not 
 deserve to win. To have seen, to have accepted, 
 to have owed our lives to so much magnificent 
 sacrifice, and then go back to the old selfish ways 
 — that, God knows, would be a worse blot on our 
 scutcheon than any possible defeat in the war. 
 
 And it will come to this, unless something 
 else happens — something that will make the 
 The need of a " war Spirit" last. What we need 
 newspint. jg ^ ^^^ Spirit right through the 
 nation, like the war spirit, but bigger and better :
 
 "AFTER THE WAR" ii 
 
 one that, when it grasps a man, grasps him 
 whole, and will last for the rest of his days. 
 Can such be had ? and what do we mean by it ? 
 and how might it come ? Those are the ques- 
 tions with which this little book is concerned. 
 And you, who read, are a bit of the answer — a 
 very important bit. For you are one through 
 whom the right spirit may come to fight and 
 conquer the spirit of reaction. To save the 
 future lives are needed as well as deaths.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SUPER.PATRIOTISM. 
 
 What we look for, work for, pray for as believers is a nation 
 where class shall be bound to class by the fullest participation 
 in the treasure of the one life ; . . . where each citizen shall 
 know, and be strengthened by the knowledge, that he labours 
 not for himself only, nor for his family, nor for his country, but 
 for God. — Bishop Westcott. 
 
 What came over us all when the war broke 
 out ? Above all, a new sense of something to 
 The birth of ^^^^ ^^^ '• ^^^ sense of a " Cause," a 
 patriotism. cause that claimed us, the cause of 
 country and of freedom at once. 
 
 There is but one task for all, 
 
 For each one life to give ; 
 Who i-tands if Freedom fall ? 
 
 Who dies if England live ? 
 
 So wrote Rudyard Kipling on a day in the 
 first month of war. What it meant was 
 that " self" was suddenly put out of action, with
 
 SUPER-PATRIOTISM 13 
 
 all its " selfish " aims and ambitions. A new 
 "self" took its place, and a new spirit filled 
 us, the spirit known as patriotism. This new 
 self was, when you come to think of it, none 
 other than the " Patria," — all that an English- 
 man means by "England," or a Frenchman 
 by " France ". Men lived no longer as Mr. A. 
 or the Duke of B., but as Britons first and 
 themselves only second. They were suddenly 
 fragments, limbs of Britain : it was the spirit 
 of the Empire that at once inspired and united 
 us all. 
 
 But it needed the war to bring this to pass. 
 To many the claim which it urged came as quite 
 
 Its depend- ^ "^^'^ °"^- '^^^ \ove and the hate 
 enceonwar, which make the patriot were a new 
 and an unexpected experience. Their country 
 had hitherto meant little to them. Only when 
 it was threatened did it begin to count. Men 
 who have since died gladly for England thought 
 patriotism nonsense in the days of peace. One 
 such wrote from Germany only a few months 
 before the war that he could more easily see 
 himself dying for Germany than for England. 
 But when the war came he found he was an 
 Englishman after all, and was killed by a Ger- 
 man bullet. Yet after the war such patriotism 
 is likely to fade, just because it needed the war
 
 14 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 to excite it. Even now its influence sometimes 
 .nditsincom. ^^ils ; and men who profess them- 
 pieteness. sclves excellent patriots will start, in 
 one way or another, to play their own game 
 once more, instead of only that of their country. 
 Broadly speaking, such selfishness is out of 
 fashion now' : to put self before country is simply 
 " bad form ". But that is only because " there's 
 a war on ". Most of us had the same selfish 
 outlook before the war, and we shall go back 
 to it quite naturally afterwards — unless the new 
 spirit, the " super-patriotism," arrives and lays 
 hold of us first. 
 
 To that super-patriotism this book is a call. 
 If the spirit of patriotism is the spirit of his 
 
 Super-patriot- country inspiring a man, super-pa- 
 ism and Super. . . i i • 
 
 war. triotism comes when he is grasped 
 
 by the Spirit of God. But at once, when I say 
 that, it sounds vague and unreal. We don't see 
 how that Spirit is going to do it. But then 
 neither did we see, before the war, how the spirit 
 of Britain could grasp us and make us patriots. 
 Again, the temper and attitude of the super- 
 patriot, his whole way of life, will be what we 
 have, perhaps, been vaguely bored with as 
 Christianity. And then, too, a sense of unreality 
 and disappointment comes up. Christianity, as 
 we have known it or thought of it, is something
 
 SUPER-PATRIOTISM 15 
 
 rather ordinary, dull, and detached. Super- 
 patriotism ought, we feel, to be something ex- 
 citing, absorbing, unique. And so Christianity 
 is when you get there : but you can only get 
 there when you see it as war. It is, in fact, the 
 super-war which calls for and kindles the super- 
 patriot. 
 
 To be a Christian is to feel, and to try to act, 
 towards God^ — the God who has showed us His 
 Christianity likcncss in Jcsus Christ — as in August, 
 as both. 1914, we all felt and wanted to act 
 
 towards England. It is to recognise God's 
 war as ours — the war for the triumph of good 
 over evil. It is to admit the new claim, to feel 
 the new love, to share the new hate ; and so to 
 find the old self sinking into the background, and 
 God the new Self controlling our lives. That 
 is why St. Paul says (Gal. ii. 20), " I live no 
 longer as I myself, but Christ liveth in me " : 
 that is, " I am a Christian first, and myself only 
 second — I exist to further the interests of Christ, 
 to fight the battles of the Kingdom of God". 
 So too he speaks of Christians as " members 
 of Christ," — limbs moved and inspired by Him 
 as their " Head". Yet St. Paul too had once 
 thought Christianity nonsense — the sort of non- 
 sense he was bound to destroy, and would 
 certainly never himself be guilty of. And he is
 
 i6 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 only one of hundreds of thousands who have 
 made the same change of front. 
 
 There are probably some who will read these 
 words who feel about Christian super-patriotism 
 War changes, what that English lad in Germany 
 
 visible and in- r i i 
 
 visible. three years ago felt and wrote about 
 
 love of England, They cannot imagine them- 
 selves living, much less dying, for Christ. And 
 three years ago it would have been quite hard 
 to make them even think of the change as 
 possible. To-day, with the other great change 
 before them — yes, and within them — which the 
 war has brought, they may perhaps be more 
 willing to let me say on. For with that change 
 other changes have come. Life itself has been 
 changed by the new nearness of Death. Death 
 has been changed by the numbers of young lives 
 that have marched right through it and out of our 
 sight. We are beginning to feel that we do live 
 in two worlds, and that we need them both. 
 If life in this world is to seem worth living, we 
 must have some hold on that other world. And 
 so, as Nicodemus came to see Jesus " by night," 
 men have been secretly turning to God, and feel- 
 ing about in the dark to find Him: and some 
 who had little care for Him before are learning 
 now that they can't do without Him. " It was 
 like stretching out my hand in the dark : " so a
 
 SUPER-PATRIOTISM 17 
 
 wounded soldier described to his hospital nurse 
 what had happened to him in Gallipoli. He had 
 left his religion behind with his childhood, and 
 nearly forgotten it all. And then one day there 
 came on him an overpowering sense of loneliness 
 and need. He searched his memory for scraps 
 of texts and prayers and hymns he had learned 
 as a boy, and put up some sort of prayer to the 
 God of his boyhood. " It was like stretching 
 out my hand in the dark," he said ; " and God 
 came and found me." 
 
 That experience of his is far from unique. I 
 have myself met many officers and men, in 
 An officer's Francc and at home, who have said 
 
 change of 
 
 front. much the same ; and some have ad- 
 
 mitted that, like St. Paul, they were once not 
 only indifferent but hostile. Here is part of a 
 letter written by an Oxford undergraduate from 
 an Officers' hospital to his former College tutor : 
 " My experience in France has been of the 
 greatest possible advantage to me from many 
 points of view, but chiefly from a moral and 
 religious point of view — in which respects I feel 
 an altered man. It has indeed been a great 
 revelation to me as to many others ; for from 
 being careless, negligent, and indifferent on such 
 matters, I was brought to see that a man's 
 strength needs to be supplemented, and to
 
 i8 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 acknowledge the great comfort and consolation 
 provided by the too generally derided faith. 
 And on this matter I feel that I owe you some- 
 thing like a personal apology. In the spacious 
 days of peace, when Oxford and the world were 
 unruffled by thoughts of war, I often sneered at 
 and ridiculed — both to myself and to my coterie 
 of friends — your efforts at making religion a liv- 
 ing thing and at showing its efficacy. Now my 
 opinion has completely changed. . . ." 
 
 Nor is it only at the Front that such changes 
 happen. The same revolution has been silently 
 The same re- at work in many at home. Mr. H. G. 
 
 volution at ttt 11 i i- 1 • 1 
 
 home. Weils, thc novclist, has never m the 
 
 past been known as a friend of religion. He has 
 been, in the strictest sense, a " free thinker," and 
 an advocate (like so many other modern novelists) 
 of a similar freedom from restraint in conduct. 
 Religion, to such, has stood for restriction, a 
 thing to be resisted in the interests of " life ". 
 God was, in their view, a sort of bogey, devised 
 to bar men from the joys of " living their life " 
 and " obeying their instincts ". But what does 
 Mr. Wells say now ? In his latest novel he 
 traces a typical English family from June, 1914, 
 till the second winter of the war ; and the 
 central thread of the study is their rediscovery 
 of God. On the last page but one the central
 
 SUPER-PATRIOTISM 19 
 
 character — a father who has lost a best-beloved 
 son of eighteen — sums up his war experiences in 
 words which have already been widely quoted : 
 " Religion is the first thing and the last thing, 
 and until a man has found God and been found 
 by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to 
 no end. He may have his friendships, his 
 partial loyalties, his scraps of honour. But all 
 these things fall into place, and life falls into 
 place, only with God. Only with God, Who is 
 the End, Who is the Meaning. He is the only 
 King." ^ 
 
 " He is the only King." If his Kingship were 
 recognised, war would soon become impossible. 
 The task of the ^'^''^ ^^c nations would be but so many 
 super.patriot. confederated "Dominions" in the 
 Empire of God, living and working for one an- 
 other because each was thinking first of His 
 will. If Canada and Australia and India and 
 South Africa can harmonise in the British 
 Empire, there is no reason why some day, im- 
 possible though it now seems, France and 
 Germany and Austria and England should not 
 unite in the Kingdom of God. As the spirit 
 of Britain unites the one group, so the Spirit of 
 God and of Christ might harmonise the other — 
 if once He were "the only King". Why not 
 1 " Mr. Britling Sees It Through," p. 432.
 
 20 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 make Him so now and save the future ? That 
 is the task of the super-patriot, the man who 
 gives his all in the super-war for the restora- 
 tion of God. And that is the only war which 
 will really end war, by making the world once 
 more one home, one commonwealth, under one 
 Creator, Father, and King.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 REBUILDING THE RUINS. 
 
 Then the king said unto me, For what dost thou make re- 
 quest ? So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said unto 
 the king, If it please the king, and if thy servant have found 
 favour in thy sight, that thou wouldst send me unto Judah, 
 unto the city of my fathers' sepulchres, that I may build it. — 
 Nehemiah ii. 4, 5. 
 
 Nehemiah was a man who had fallen on his 
 feet. When the decree of the Persian king 
 At the Court Cyrus had allowed the Jews to return 
 of Persia. ^^ Palestine, after their seventy years' 
 captivity, his family seems to have stayed on and 
 made its home in the Persian capital, Shushan 
 the Palace. And he himself had come in for 
 a fat and influential post at court. As cup- 
 bearer to the Great King he would be one of 
 the most privileged court officials : and that he 
 was an important one appears when he asks for 
 leave of absence, for the king's first question is 
 " When will you be back ? " 
 
 The cause of this request was bad news from 
 21
 
 22 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 "home". If England is always "home" for 
 The call of ^^^ Australian of to-day, much more 
 country. g^ ^^g Jcrusalcm to the Jew who 
 
 had settled abroad. Things were in a bad way 
 down there in the province, as the conquered 
 Jewish kingdom had now become. " The wall 
 of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates 
 thereof are burned with fire." The news is 
 enough to cloud Nehemiah's sky and take up all 
 his thoughts. Jerusalem mattered so much to 
 the faithful Jew that, with it in ruins, Nehemiah, 
 though hundreds of miles away, could not feel 
 himself. He must be up and doing something 
 to help. 
 
 He might well have argued that he could best 
 serve his country by staying where he was — 
 Practical pulHug wires and pla3ang the friend 
 patriotism. ^^ QOUTt He might— but he didn't. 
 His strongest impulse was that which in these 
 last years of war has changed so many modern 
 lives : the impulse to go where the work was 
 hardest and the need greatest — to go " to the 
 Front ". And so, regardless of position, pro- 
 spects, or pay, he seizes the chance of asking the 
 king for a special commission. " If it please 
 the king, and if thy servant have found favour in 
 thy sight, send me to Judah, to the city of my 
 fathers' sepulchres, that I may build it." The
 
 REBUILDING THE RUINS 23 
 
 rest of Nehemiah's book is the story of his 
 building campaign : one in which fighting and 
 building went on together, until, after heart- 
 breaking worries and struggles, he had the joy 
 of seeing his holy city purged, restored, and at 
 peace once more. 
 
 To-day that same spirit of practical patriotism 
 is being spent perforce on a work which is not 
 wanted.worid- buiMing but pulling down. True, 
 builders. there was much which needed to 
 
 come down to clear the space for a new and better 
 building. But the war itself will do nothing to 
 build it : and, unless that new building is some- 
 how built, the only result of so much sacrifice 
 will be to leave the world a wilderness. Mean- 
 while, the men who might have done most to 
 build the future are being buried among the 
 ruins of the present and past. And the great 
 call is for other builders to take their places, 
 ready to labour all their days at the rebuilding 
 of our Jerusalem. You must have heard those 
 lines of William Blake : — 
 
 Bring me my bow of burning gold ; 
 
 Bring me my arrows of desire ; 
 Bring me my spear : O clouds, unfold ! 
 
 Bring me my chariot of fire. 
 I will not cease from mental strife, 
 
 Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand. 
 Till we have built Jerusalem 
 
 In England's green and pleasant land.
 
 24 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 That is the spirit we need in our lives, if 
 they are not to disappoint both God and our 
 country — and our dead. And, thank God, it is 
 there, it has been stirred : it only needs to be 
 developed and guided. As each one of you goes 
 forward to live his life in the hard days ahead 
 of us — those of you, that is, who come through, 
 for one can't forget that some who are still boys 
 to-day may yet be among the gallant dead, the 
 thought of whom will inspire their successors — 
 as you go forward, and hear God saying to you 
 on the threshold of life, " For what dost thou 
 make request ? " surely, surely, you will with a 
 true heart answer : " If Thy servant have found 
 favour in Thy sight, send me unto the city of my 
 fathers' — my brothers' — sepulchres, that I may 
 build it ". 
 
 The new world we dream of will not just 
 build itself, any more than the stones of Louvain 
 With sword or Ypres will come together again 
 and trowel. -when the war is over. The rebuild- 
 ing will be as long and laborious as the destruc- 
 tion is great. And it will be building and fight- 
 ing togeth2r, as it was for Nehemiah. " They 
 which builded on the wall, and they that bare 
 burdens, with those that laded, every one with 
 one of his hands wrought in the work, and 
 with the other hand held a weapon. For the
 
 REBUILDING THE RUINS 25 
 
 builders, every one had his sword girded by his 
 side, and so builded " (Neh. iv. 17, 18). Are you 
 ready for that kind of thing ? It is the only 
 way of rebuilding the ruins. To be cup-bearer 
 to the king of Persia was not good enough for 
 Nehemiah when his city, " the city of his 
 fathers' sepulchres," lay in ruins. No life ought 
 to be good enough for us, who have lived through 
 this war and seen the crucifixion of thousands 
 around us, which is not really and actively 
 helping to " build Jerusalem " in the land for 
 which they died. 
 
 But what will it mean, this fighting and 
 building ? Not necessarily that you will have 
 The choice of ^° ^^^^ ^^ spccial jobs, such as being 
 professions. parsons or social workers. It may 
 mean that : for some it almost certainly will. 
 It will be the duty of each, in deciding his pro- 
 fession, to ask, not (as formerly), " How much 
 shall I get ? " but " How much shall I thus 
 be able to give ? How much real ' building ' 
 shall I be able to put in ? " The right sort of 
 parson can do more giving and more building 
 than almost anyone else. He will have more 
 opportunities, and be more needed, now than 
 ever; and there will be no danger of his job 
 being taken for a soft one — not if he is the right
 
 26 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 sort. It will be a fighting job if ever there was 
 one : and unless more of the best type of men 
 come and throw themselves into it, in the same 
 spirit in which they have thrown themselves 
 into the war, God knows what is going to be- 
 come of the Church. So don't assume that the 
 job at present before you is the one you're 
 meant for till you're sure that no other offers a 
 better chance of "rebuilding the ruins ". 
 
 It is not, however, to any special job, parson's 
 or layman's, that I am concerned to call you 
 Thenewtradi- "ow. What mattcrs most is that 
 "°"" you do your bit of rebuilding, by 
 
 building in your own walk of life, whatever it be, 
 a new tradition — the tradition of super-patriot- 
 ism, of "God before self". The keynote of it 
 was struck long ago by the wise man, Solo- 
 mon : — 
 
 In all thy ways ackowledge Him, 
 And He shall direct thy paths. 
 
 If all the world had done that in the past, our 
 paths would have been " directed" very differ- 
 ently. A world which really " acknowledged 
 God in all its ways" could never have crashed 
 into this war. Now that we are faced with the 
 ghastly effects of leaving God out — for, as we 
 shall see in the next chapter, it is really from this 
 that the war has arisen — we ought to be ready,
 
 REBUILDING THE RUINS 27 
 
 God knows, to bring Him back again : into our 
 own lives first, and, through them, into the hfe 
 of the nation. To do so — to restore God to 
 His Kingship — is the Crusade which awaits 
 you, needs you, claims you : the Crusade of the 
 trowel and sword. To that God asks you, and 
 your country asks you, to give up your lives : 
 the lives which alone can make fruitful the 
 deaths by which they are being saved.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEATH. 
 
 Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man 
 soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to the 
 flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. — Galatians vi. 7, 8. 
 
 The call of the war to the rising generation is 
 a call to strike out into a new tradition : a tra- 
 " Into the way dition the keynote of which shall be 
 of peace." ^^^ restoration of God. " In all thy 
 ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy 
 paths." To this the evidence supplied by the 
 war relentlessly points us. In this direction only 
 can we discover " the way of peace ". To justify 
 these apparently sweeping statements is the 
 aim of this chapter and the next. But you will 
 remember that we have already touched on the 
 subject at the end of chapter I. To individuals, 
 anyhow, the war has often brought a new dis- 
 covery of God — His reality, His importance, 
 His character. That is the one bright spot in 
 the darkness. " Through the tender mercy of 
 our God the dayspring from on high hath 
 visited us : to give light to them that sit in 
 28
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEATH 29 
 
 darkness and in the shadow of death, and to 
 guide our feet into the way of peace." 
 
 Of St. Paul's words quoted at the head of 
 this chapter the war might almost have been 
 Moral har- designed as a vast illustration. It 
 ^"""2- is a moral harvest. What St. Paul 
 
 means is that the universe runs on moral and 
 spiritual lines. The material side of it — the 
 side which we see — is only the outside. Its 
 " true inwardness," as we say, is a spiritual 
 thing. And as is the universe, so also is man : 
 a spiritual being in a material framework, a 
 spirit which works through a body. Man tries 
 continually to forget that it is so, and live like 
 an animal. But he is as continually reminded 
 that he is more than mere matter, and that the 
 life of his body is not the only nor the most im- 
 portant life he has to live. 
 
 Reminders come to him out of the very world 
 around him : its " true inwardness " beckons 
 Voices of ^"^ appeals to his. Some of us can 
 Nature. enter into these words of a young 
 
 soldier-poet, now a prisoner in Germany : — 
 
 What fairy in the falling rain 
 
 Takes the robin's small refrain, 
 
 And twists it to a tiny charm 
 
 To keep a tempted heart from harm ? 
 
 It puzzles me a wild bird's song 
 
 Should save my soul from doing wrong.' 
 
 ' F. VV. Harvey, " A Gloucestershire Lad".
 
 3© WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 And many in the trenches have testified to the 
 flood of old emotions suddenly released by hear- 
 ing a lark singing high above them in a lull of 
 the gun-fire. 
 
 Then, if such hints fail to remind men of 
 their inner self, stronger ones follow. If a man 
 Pain as a dan- won't bcHeve that fire burns, and 
 ger-signai. thrusts his hand into it, his hand is 
 burned : and then he knows. The pain is a 
 danger-signal. It says, " You are on the wrong 
 track, get back again ". In this way pain is 
 really a safeguard. If burning, for instance, 
 did not hurt, one might fall asleep with one's 
 feet to the fire, and wake up to find one had 
 nothing left below the knees. And it is just 
 the same on the spiritual side of us. The 
 essential meaning of sin is mistake. The Greek 
 for it {aixapria) means "missing the mark". 
 And what we call the penalties of sin are 
 danger-signals to pull men up and head them 
 back into the right direction. For our own 
 benefit we are never quite allowed to forget our 
 souls or to leave God out. Something happens 
 to show we are calculating wrongly and making 
 the great mistake of all. Men think they can 
 " mock God," and find they cannot, any more 
 than they can make twice two equal five. " Be 
 not deceived ; God is not mocked : for whatso-
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEATH 31 
 
 ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." 
 It is simply the working of cause and effect : 
 as real in the moral and spiritual background 
 of life as we know it is in the physical fore- 
 ground. 
 
 And such precisely is this war : a colossal 
 danger-signal to warn the world of a colossal 
 Tt,»„^;c.;«„ mistake, and head it back into the 
 
 Ine omission ' 
 
 of God. right direction. That mistake is 
 
 leaving God out. Things could hardly have 
 been managed so as to prove it more clearly. 
 The war is the harvest of corruption that St. 
 Paul predicts from " sowing to the flesh " : that 
 is, calculating as if man and the world were 
 only matter — the view of life which we call 
 materialism. And the significant thing is that 
 the whole catastrophe is the direct result of the 
 first avowed, big-scale application of material- 
 ism to international politics. Let me explain 
 whcii that means. 
 
 The real world-forces are not things, but 
 thoughts. Every movement, for good or for 
 Thoughts as ^^^^' starts as a thought in some one's 
 world-forces. ^^^^ . ^ thought which gcts hoM of 
 
 him and shapes him, and, through him, gets 
 hold of others and shapes them too. A man's 
 acts are determined by his outlook ; his outlook 
 by his beliefs and thoughts. Now Germany for
 
 32 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 many years past has been the headquarters of an 
 outlook which one may call scientific material- 
 ism : materialism worked out into detail with 
 German thoroughness, and based on one-sided 
 admiration for the wonders of modern natural 
 science. The great forces and laws of the 
 material world, which the natural sciences dis- 
 cover and deal with, seem to have so impressed 
 the German as to leave him no eyes for any 
 The thoughts other. "Power" became more and 
 of Germany, j^^^-g ^j^g tcst-word in life: and 
 
 " power " meant only material power. The 
 highest and most complex manifestation of 
 power in the world is the State — that which 
 gathers up into itself all the big or little amounts 
 of power belonging to all its citizens, and puts 
 the sum total behind the national will and aim 
 and ambition. A great nation unitedly on the 
 move towards a splendid goal before it — that 
 was how, after the triumph of 1870-71, the 
 German Empire came to think of itself. And 
 the goal itself grew with the growing sense of 
 power. First it was only the unification of 
 Germany : then it became predominance on the 
 continent of Europe : and then — a world-wide 
 empire. "World-power or Downfall": such, 
 according to General von Bernhardi, six or 
 seven years ago, was the issue to be decided
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEATH 33 
 
 in Germany's next war. And in the light of 
 that thought the leaders of Germany lived, and 
 prepared, and toasted " the Day ". 
 
 And, lest such deliberate contempt for the 
 rights of others should cause them scruples, 
 The State in their materialistic outlook came to 
 God's place, their aid. Such scruples were mere 
 false sentiment — a form of weakness ; which is 
 the only crime in a world in which power alone 
 counts. " There is nothing above the State," 
 and " the State is Power ". That is the cardinal 
 doctrine of the Prussian court-historian and 
 philosopher Treitschke, whose teaching was 
 one of the forces that most shaped and per- 
 verted modern Germany. And so, for him, a 
 State which in any way lessens or gives away 
 its power, out of respect for principles, is guilty 
 of " the political sin against the Holy Ghost ". 
 It is putting something unreal above the high- 
 est reality — itself, its own power. If a State 
 is strong enough to do what it wants, it is right 
 to do it. Success is its own sufficient justifica- 
 tion. There is no higher court of appeal. 
 
 Along with this teaching of Treitschke, the 
 apostle of militarism, came the very different 
 Theanti- but equally Godless philosophy of 
 
 Christianity . i i . i t-» 
 
 of Nietzsche. Nietzschc : one who hated Prussian- 
 
 ism, but also worshipped physical power. His 
 
 3
 
 34 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 life was an avowed campaign against the whole 
 teaching and example of Christ, with His love 
 for the weak and down-trodden, His emphasis 
 on mercy and humility and self-sacrifice. 
 Nietzsche's own ideal was the Super-man — a 
 sort of glorified human animal, a " blonde 
 beast " : physically splendid, mentally a master 
 of men ; but free from any taint of the weak- 
 ness of pity, and ready to sacrifice anyone and 
 anything to his own advancement and satis- 
 faction. Christianity was, he saw, the great 
 force in the world which would thwart the 
 Super-man, by telling men still to respect the 
 weak and to seek to gain their lives by losing 
 them. And so he denounces Jesus Christ as 
 the greatest enemy of human progress. One of 
 his books is entitled "Anti-Christ," and his cry 
 is " Break up, break up, I pray you, the good 
 and the just". For goodness and justice are 
 only phantoms v/hich keep the strong man from 
 his own. 
 
 You will easily see how thoughts like these, 
 The violation silently at work in the brain of the 
 
 of Belgium ex- . i i i i • i 
 
 plained. nation, would lead right up to the war. 
 
 And in fact the first step of Germany in the 
 war was exactly in line with these principles. 
 Belgium was violated just because they thought 
 this would pay them, best. If they succeeded,
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEATH 35 
 
 it would thereby be justified. And they felt they 
 were strong enough to succeed. In the circum- 
 stances, all they need think of was the balance 
 of power : and that seemed all in their favour. 
 The chief defence of Belgium was " a scrap 
 of paper". To be held back by that would 
 be stupid, old-fashioned, sentimental, wrong : 
 it would be " the political sin against the Holy 
 Ghost ". So through Belgium they went. And 
 their Chancellor thought the act sufficiently ex- 
 plained and excused when he told the Reichstag, 
 " We did wrong, but we had to do it ; otherwise 
 we should have lost an advantage ". In a word, 
 mihtary advantage must come before moral ob- 
 ligations and moral principles. Might, that is 
 to say, is higher than right, or rather supersedes 
 it. Might is right. The only wrong thing is to 
 fail. 
 
 And that is the doctrine that we came into the 
 war to fight. That is why we have no choice 
 
 From material- ^Ut tO fight tO 3. finish. If OnCC thc 
 
 ism to chaos. German doctrine were accepted, civi- 
 lisation would run back to chaos in no time. 
 Both nations and men would be working once 
 more on 
 
 The good old rule, the simple plan, 
 That he should take who has the power, 
 And he should keep who can.
 
 36 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 If right and wrong varied from day to day like 
 quotations on the Stock Exchange : if my neigh- 
 bour only paid me his debt this week because 
 he wasn't yet strong enough to refuse it, but 
 was more than likely to return next week and 
 get his own back with interest, civilised society 
 would promptly collapse. And yet all that 
 comes straight out of materialism ; out of the 
 doctrine of Treitschke that " there is nothing 
 above the State," which is only another way of 
 saying " There is no God " ; out of the rage 
 of Nietzsche to " break up " the restraining 
 influences of " the good and the just ". So 
 dangerous is it to leave God out. Society, we 
 are learning as never before, is based, not (as 
 Civilisation ^^e Gcrmans thought) on science, 
 and conscience. ^^^ ^^ conscicncc : the scnsc and the 
 fear of a God over all. " Be not deceived ; God 
 is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, 
 that shall he also reap." The natural harvest 
 of materialism is war. The war, as I have said, 
 is a colossal danger-signal, warning us to re- 
 trieve a colossal mistake. Could there be any 
 stronger argument for setting out to build a 
 new world on a new tradition — the tradition of 
 " God before all " ? " In all thy ways acknow- 
 ledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths." 
 
 But now don't let us on the other side, the
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEATH 37 
 
 right side, be too pleased with ourselves ; as if 
 And what of Germany were wholly at fault in this, 
 ourselves? ^^^^ ^g ^g wholly right. All that 
 Germany did was to be more logical than we, 
 and go a step further. Having decided that 
 God, and all God stands for, no longer mattered, 
 they just applied this belief to international 
 politics. But it is a belief on which the world 
 at large has been cheerfully acting in most other 
 things. Conscience has long since ceased to be 
 that which really settles the line men take. A 
 man will follow his conscience in some things : 
 more often he will only think of what pays best, 
 and do what he has a mind to. In commerce 
 and business, for instance, the final question is 
 apt to be " Does it pay ? " Sweated labour, com- 
 missions, profiteering, false labelling of goods : 
 we don't say they're right, but then " Business 
 is business ". And is not that just what the 
 German Chancellor said about Belgium ? " We 
 did wrong, but we had to do it : otherwise we 
 should have lost an advantage." It is profit 
 before principle over again. Yes, and in our 
 own private lives, it is just the same, every time 
 a man refuses to do right because of what it will 
 cost him. He too is acting on the principle 
 which carried the Germans into Belgium : and 
 " to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it
 
 38 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 not, to him it is sin ". It is all a question of 
 leaving God out. For, as Ruskin says, " He 
 who offers God the second place, offers Him 
 nothing". 
 
 And meanwhile the war is pressing on us 
 the great question of all. " How long halt ye 
 How long halt between two opinions? If the Lord 
 ^"' be God, /o/Zoie' Him." If God exists. 
 
 He is all-important all the time ; and we can 
 only be scientific — we can only be successful — 
 by treating Him as if He were so. " In all thy 
 ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct 
 thy paths." In the past the attitude of the 
 average Englishman towards God has been 
 very much that of the hostess in Shakespeare's 
 " Henry V." when she describes the death of 
 Falstaff. '"A cried out— ' God, God, God!' 
 three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid 
 him 'a should not think of God : I hoped there 
 was no need to trouble himself with any such 
 thoughts yet." "No need to trouble himself 
 yet ! " as if God were a necessary inconvenience, 
 to be avoided as long as possible : the God " in 
 Whom we live and move and have our being," 
 the God Who '* so loved the world that He gave 
 His only begotten Son " to fight and fall in 
 humanity's battle. Could there be a vaster 
 miscalculation, a deeper or more many-sided sin ?
 
 THE HARVEST OF DEATH 39 
 
 And can we be surprised if such a mistake has 
 led to such consequences ? " Ye will not come 
 to Me," said our Lord to the Jews, " that ye 
 might have life : " and the only alternative to 
 life is death. The world has got what it was 
 asking for. God is not mocked. The war, in 
 a sense, is His vindication : for it has shown 
 men what comes of leaving God out.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE HARVEST OF LIFE. 
 
 Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. . . . 
 He that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life ever- 
 lasting. — Galatians vi. 7, 8. 
 
 But the vindication of God through the war 
 is twofold : and side by side with the harvest 
 Sowing to the ^^ ^^^^^ ^hcre is a harvest of life 
 spirit, which tells the same tale. If " sow- 
 
 ing to the flesh " means calculating as if matter 
 were the only reality, as if men were but bodies 
 and this life were all, sowing to the spirit means 
 taking the spiritual background into one's cal- 
 culations, and acting accordingly. And that is 
 what many are doing perforce to-day who never 
 did so formerly : and it works out right. " He 
 that soweth to the spirit" does "reap life". 
 The harvest from such sowing even already 
 is enough to give a final and clinching argu- 
 ment for " the new tradition," the restoration 
 of God. 
 
 Briefly, whenever a man acts on the assump- 
 40
 
 THE HARVEST OF LIFE 41 
 
 tion that the life of his body is not the most 
 Satisfaction important part of him, he is " sowing 
 rifice. to the spirit " : and the experience of 
 
 thousands who are doing so to-day is that life 
 is better and bigger in consequence, — they are 
 " reaping life ". True, there is nothing a man 
 can give " in exchange for his life " : but there 
 are things a man will give his life in exchange 
 for, and not regret his bargain. He knows they 
 matter more. Every soldier who volunteered 
 because '• he couldn't feel happy at home " is a 
 proof of it : and the way such men have felt 
 happy afterwards drives the proof home. " I 
 think I told you," wrote one of my friends some 
 time ago, soon after reaching the Front, from 
 which ill-health had long kept him back, — " I 
 think I told you that I feel extraordinarily happy 
 and contented somehow." The strange, super- 
 human cheerfulness of the trenches — the greatest 
 miracle of the war — tells the same tale also. 
 These men have been " sowing to the spirit " : 
 they are " reaping life ". And the " life " does 
 somehow make up for the hardships. " All the 
 same, I wouldn't have missed the last nine 
 months for anything ; " so a gentleman trooper 
 ended a hearty "grouse " to me about things in 
 general at a camp in France in April, 1915. 
 And such men are not only happier, they are
 
 42 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 bigger and better : and they know it themselves. 
 
 Growth Here is a story I was told by a well- 
 
 through sacri- i i • x-> ? i 
 
 fice. known chaplain up at Bethune in 
 
 July, 1916. One of his men had in civil life 
 been a drink-sodden steeple-jack. I forget how 
 many times he said he had been " before the 
 beak". He was drunk when his friends took 
 him to the recruiting-office ; and he didn't know 
 he was a soldier till next day. The eighteen 
 months that followed had, he said, been the 
 hardest time in his life. And yet " he knew 
 he was a better man for it ". How ? He tried 
 to excuse himself from explaining on the ground 
 that he " hadn't words ". But at last his padre 
 got this much out of him. He had found, for 
 one thing, that it is good to be temperate. 
 (Hitherto his main idea of bliss was to drink.) 
 And, for another, "you somehow feel you're 
 living for something bigger than yourself". 
 In a word, he had stumbled upon two key- 
 notes of the Christian life — the life God made 
 us for — self-denial, and devotion to a Cause : 
 and he knew instinctively that, for all the 
 hardships, he was the gainer. 
 
 And carry the same discovery a little deeper 
 The key to the !"» in the words of one who, himself 
 mystery. ^ Christian, was able also to explain 
 
 his own experience. " I never enjoyed myself
 
 THE HARVEST OF LIFE 43 
 
 so much," wrote an officer from the trenches, the 
 very day before he was killed : " I never knew 
 before what it was to be taken so completely 
 out of myself". Or, as another put it : " I think 
 the reason people are so cheerful is that there is 
 hardly any g^o about". What a testimony to 
 those words of Christ which we have perhaps 
 been inclined to dismiss as paradox ! " He 
 that willeth to save his life shall lose it : but he 
 that loseth his life for My sake, the same shall 
 find it." " It is more blessed to give than to 
 receive." Jesus Christ, in fact, was right : He 
 knew more about human nature than human 
 nature knew about itself. But we preferred to 
 go our own way, and buy our own experience 
 bitterly. Now that we have paid for our lesson, 
 shall we throw it away ? The policy of getting 
 leads to death : for it means competition, and 
 war is only competition writ large. The policy 
 of giving — self-giving — is leading men mysteri- 
 ously back to life. And so it ceases to be 
 strange that He Who said, " I came that they 
 might have life, and have it more abundantly," 
 said also to those who desired that life : " If 
 any man willeth to come after Me, let him deny 
 — efface — himself, and take up his own cross 
 daily, and follow Me ". 
 
 " The most living man," says the French
 
 44 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 writer, Paul Sabatier, " is he who gives, forgets, 
 The sfccrjfice Sacrifices himself." " He that sow- 
 
 of the super- , , ..,,, . , oi 
 
 patriot. eth to the spirit, denying the liesh, 
 
 does " of the spirit reap life " more abundant ; 
 even when it is only for his country that he 
 does it. What we need is to carry the same 
 principle further. As we have seen in chapter L, 
 Christianity is the true super-patriotism : act- 
 ing by God and Christ as men to-day are learn- 
 ing to act by their countries. God asks a fuller 
 and more painful sacrifice : that of " ourselves, 
 our souls and bodies ". *' They that are Christ's 
 have crucified the flesh, with the affections and 
 lusts." But He also offers a fuller and wider 
 sweep of life in return — " life which is life 
 indeed ". He who in this sense " sows to 
 the Spirit '* — who takes into his reckoning not 
 merely the spiritual side of life but the Personal 
 Spirit of God at its centre — does, of that Spirit, 
 " reap everlasting life ". Men have learned to 
 sow to the spirii these days. All we need is 
 to sow to the Spirit also. That is our new 
 tradition.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 "WHO IS SUFFICIENT FOR THESE THINGS?" 
 
 That low man seeks a little thing to do, 
 
 Sees it and does it : 
 This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 
 
 Dies ere he knows it. 
 
 That has the world here : should he need the next, 
 
 Let the world mind him ! 
 This throws himself on God, and, unperplexed, 
 
 Seeking shall find Him. 
 
 — Robert Browning. 
 
 The calt which comes to us out of the war is a 
 call to a great and difficult adventure. It is a 
 The old and ^^^^ ^^ rcvcrse the whole direction of 
 the new. modcm life : to strike out into, and 
 
 help others to strike out into, a new tradition, 
 of which the central, guiding rule shall be, " In 
 all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall 
 direct thy paths". The old tradition has 
 frankly failed. Our present darkness and agony 
 are, as we have seen, the direct consequence of 
 leaving God out. Our old world lies in ruins 
 45
 
 46 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 around us. A new world of some sort has to be 
 built : and the rising generation will somehow 
 have to build it. Will they have the faith and 
 courage to build it on the very opposite lines to 
 the old ? That is the critical question. 
 
 There is, as we have seen, a big encourage- 
 ment to push forward. The new lines have 
 Encourage- already largely been laid down by the 
 
 ment and dan- _, , . , . , 
 
 ger. war. For the time bemg, the new 
 
 tradition is largely in force. Love of country 
 has sent men bounding along that very path of 
 self-effacement which Christ marked out as " the 
 way of peace ". Only for us it is the way of war. 
 The tragic thing is that what men might have 
 gained by following Christ in one united war 
 against evil, they have preferred to learn by 
 fighting among themselves. The gain is almost 
 swallowed up in loss : and the worst of it is, the 
 loss will last, while the gain will vanish, — un- 
 less steps are taken to perpetuate it, by rising 
 from " the war spirit " into " the Spirit of 
 Christ ". 
 
 And the question is, How can we do it ? The 
 task this generation is up against is frankly too 
 ThereducHo much for human nature. If there is 
 
 ad absurdum , . , , i • i 
 
 of Man. one thmg more than another which 
 
 the war has brought home, it is the weakness 
 and futility of human nature, even in its most
 
 "WHO IS SUFFICIENT?" 47 
 
 enlightened and (so-called) progressive form. 
 The beginning of the twentieth century saw 
 mankind forging ahead, as it seemed, with the 
 aid of the new science, towards complete 
 mastery of the world around it. One invention 
 follow^ed on another : each making easy what 
 quite a short time ago w^ould have seemed a 
 miracle. At last a golden age of comfort and 
 culture seemed well in sight. And now ! From 
 that bright outlook and sense of power we have 
 plunged abruptly into the greatest tragedy in 
 human history : and the worst part is that we 
 can't get out of it again. Human nature on 
 both sides is heartily sick and sad with it all. 
 But neither side sees any remedy but mutual 
 massacre and exhaustion. Surely it is the 
 redudio ad absurdum of civilised man ! " S'il 
 n'existait pas Dieu," as the French wit said, 
 " il faudrait I'inventer." If there were no God, 
 we should have to invent one : for if man is the 
 highest thing in the world, the world is insane. 
 Fortunately for us, we haven't to invent God : 
 only to restore Him, to let Him come back. 
 God's oppor- Therein \ies the only hope of man- 
 '"°''y- kind in the uphill battle which lies 
 
 before it, if it is to retrieve the tragedy and 
 save the future. " Man's extremity is God's 
 opportunity," — if man will only give God His
 
 48 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 chance. ** Not that we are sufficient of ourselves 
 to think anything as of our own ability : but 
 our sufficiency is from God." We now know our 
 weakness : shall we let God make us strong ? 
 
 There is nothing, I suppose, which so unfits 
 a man for work before him as a sense of " not 
 Our fear of being up to it". Of nothing is a 
 ourselves. j^^j^ g^ afraid as of the hidden weak- 
 ness of his inner self. " Conscience doth make 
 cowards of us all:" not so much, perhaps, by 
 reproaching us with things we have done as by 
 reminding us of the awful things we might do. 
 Our own heart knows, as no outsider knows, the 
 full possibilities of evil inside us — the many ways 
 in which we might fail. Men, and boys, will go 
 all their days in terror of this inner self, as of 
 some wild beast liable at any moment to break 
 the uncertain chain which holds it. And while 
 one is thus handicapped by the unnerving pres- 
 ence of the foe within, how can he join in the 
 great battle of God against evil around ? 
 
 How can we fight for truth and God 
 
 Enthralled by lies and sin ? 
 He who would fight for Thee on earth 
 
 Must first be true within. 
 
 And that is just where the rub comes. How 
 can I be sure of myself ?
 
 "WHO IS SUFFICIENT?" 49 
 
 There was published lately a volume of poems 
 by a Marlborough boy, Charles Hamilton Sorley, 
 Weakness and who was killed in France in October, 
 strength. j^^^, at the agc of 20. One of them, 
 
 written when he was only 17^ and still at 
 school, is a strange and vivid picture of how 
 this sense of his own weakness ma}' grip a 
 man — and undo him. It suggests the things a 
 man will do because he feels weak and wants 
 to be strong. The man is standing by a dark, 
 swift river by night. 
 
 The mass of blackness moving down 
 
 Filled full of dreams the eye ; 
 The lights of all the lighted town 
 
 Upon its breast did lie. 
 The tall black trees were upside down 
 
 In the river's phantasy. 
 
 He had an envy for its black 
 
 Inscrutability. 
 He felt impatiently the lack 
 
 Of that great law, whereby 
 The river never travels back, 
 
 But still goes gliding by : 
 
 But still goes gliding by, nor clings 
 
 To passing things that die, 
 Nor shows the secrets that it brings 
 
 From its strange source on high : 
 And he felt, " We are two living things, 
 
 And the weaker one is I ".
 
 50 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 " The weaker one is I : " that is the trouble. 
 The silent, steady strength of the stream brings 
 home to him the contrast, and makes him 
 yearn to be also strong. 
 
 He saw the town, that living stack 
 
 Piled up against the sky. 
 He saw the river running black 
 
 On, on, and on. Oh, why 
 Could he not move along his track 
 
 With such consistency ? 
 
 He had a yearning for the strength 
 
 That comes of unity : 
 The union of one soul at length 
 
 With its twin soul to lie ; 
 To be a part of one great strength 
 
 That moves and cannot die. 
 
 Notice those last words. They say so ex- 
 actly what anyone who knows himself knows 
 to be his deepest need, though often he can't 
 find words to express it. The man in the 
 poem, anyhow, overcome by this yearning " to 
 be a part of one great strength," takes a 
 sudden, unpremeditated step, as he thinks, to 
 satisfy it. He throws himself into the stream. 
 
 The thing that never travels back 
 
 Received him silently. 
 And there was left no shred, no wrack, 
 
 To show the reason why : 
 Only the river running black 
 
 Beneath the blacker sky.
 
 "WHO IS SUFFICIENT?" 51 
 
 It is a startling, sombre way of putting it : but 
 isn't it very true to that fear of his own weak- 
 " A part of ness, and strange unreasoning wor- 
 
 one Great , . . , . , . , . 
 
 Strength." ship of anything strong, which is even 
 more alive, I think, in boy than in man, and 
 by which all of us are at any rate sometimes 
 haunted, till we find ourselves 
 
 a part of one Great Strength 
 That moves and cannot die ? 
 
 And what the Gospel of Jesus Christ has to 
 offer is precisely a place, for every one who will 
 apply for it, in the " one Great Strength " of 
 Almighty God, the Strength of the One Father 
 out of Whose Life our little fragmentary lives 
 came forth, and Who made us "for Himself," 
 — to "live and move and have our being "f'« 
 Him. " Not that we are sufficient of ourselves 
 . . . but our sufficiency is from God." The 
 whole secret of what we call the Christian life 
 lies just in that discovery : " I can't, but God 
 can," and, as St. Paul discovered and count- 
 less others ever since, " I have strength for 
 anything in Him Who gives me the power". 
 If I am "in Him" and He is "in me," then 
 nothing is impossible : for, in the old saying, 
 " God plus one makes a majority ". It is a case 
 of not living by oneself, nor on one's own 
 
 4*
 
 52 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 resources, but having the Son of God by one's 
 side and in charge. " I don't get past, we get 
 past." So said an old converted drunkard, 
 when his friends asked him how it was that he 
 now got safely past the public-house which be- 
 fore had always engulfed him. "I don't get 
 past, we get past." That is the very heart of 
 the matter. Our part is only to keep in touch : 
 " under orders " and ready to obey them. Christ 
 does the rest. And the man who thus has 
 Christ living in him, living his life for him, is 
 the man we call a Christian. " I live," says St. 
 Paul again, " no longer as I myself, but Christ 
 liveth in me." 
 
 And the way into this "one Great Strength 
 that moves and cannot die " is not by learning 
 strength thiugs, " bcHeving " things, doing 
 
 through . . . , , . 
 
 Friendship. thmgs, domg without thmgs, — not by 
 any kind of observance or discipline, but 
 simply by finding ones Friend. To find our 
 friend is what, consciously or unconsciously, we 
 are always trying to do. We know in our 
 hearts that a real friend is the highest form of 
 wealth ; that without a friend the richest of 
 men is poor. And we want, and value, the right 
 kind of friend not merely because he makes 
 us richer and happier, but because he makes 
 us good, — because he brings out the best
 
 "WHO IS SUFFICIENT?" 53 
 
 self in us. " Our chief want in life," says Emer- 
 son, " is some one who shall make us do what 
 we can; this is the service of a friend." And 
 what Christianity comes to boy or man and 
 says is ; " You needn't wait to be happy and 
 rich and at the top of your form till the great 
 friend you are hoping for comes along ; you 
 needn't depend for help and happiness on a 
 friend who, at best, is only human, and who 
 must some da}/ die ; for the Perfect Friend can 
 be had for the asking now". "This is life 
 eternal that they may know Thee, the only true 
 God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent." 
 The coming of Christ was just to make men see 
 what God is like, so that they should want to 
 make friends with Him Whose great desire is 
 to make friends with us. A Christian is one 
 who has made friends with the ever-living, ever- 
 present Son of God. 
 
 It is the continual />r^s^«c^ of God, of Christ, 
 that makes His friendship so valuable. A friend 
 God the ever- ^^ mine, a Chaplain at the Front, 
 present. askcd a lad he was preparing for 
 
 Confirmation, " What do you think is the chief 
 thing about Christianity ? " After a pause the 
 answer came, and he was delighted with it : 
 " Isn't the chief thing, Sir, that He's always 
 there ? " That's about it. The same friend has
 
 54 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 since been through the thick of the Somme 
 fighting and won the D.S.O. for the part he 
 played. He wrote to me afterwards : " I have 
 tested in fire what we called '* Omnipresence,' 
 and found it true ; circumstances simply don't 
 matter ". An done could quote a dozen testi- 
 monies from friends at the Front to the same 
 effect. If it's true — and it is not likely so 
 many independent witnesses, not only now but 
 all down the ages, should all be utterly out in 
 their reckoning, — if it's true, isn't it pure 
 tragedy that any life should go on feeling weak 
 and puzzled and ineffectual, and afraid of its 
 own weakness, when, for the asking, it can 
 become 
 
 a part of one Great Strength 
 That moves and cannot die ? 
 
 And isn't it something like treason to the 
 country, to the future, to God Himself, to shirk 
 one's part in the campaign of world-building be- 
 cause one is " not up to it," when one might " be 
 able for anything in Him Who gives the power " ? 
 " Behold," says Christ, " I stand at the door 
 and knock. If any man hear My voice and 
 open the door, I will come in unto him and will 
 sup with him and he with Me. To him that 
 overcometh I will give to sit with Me on My 
 throne, even as I also overcame, and sat down
 
 "WHO IS SUFFICIENT?" 55 
 
 with My Father on His Throne." That, and 
 no less, is the goal to which the " one Great 
 Strength " is moving, and wants to carry you 
 and me. 
 
 Of course there is a condition : a simple but 
 a very sweeping one. If Christ comes in, He 
 Strength and comcs in as Mastcr, and He must have 
 purity. j^-g Q^yj^ ^^,^y jj^ ^j^g house. And the 
 
 first thing He will want to do is to clean it out : 
 and some things may have to be turned out as 
 rubbish or dirt which we, perhaps, have treasured 
 as ornaments. That has to be faced : for there 
 is no such thing as sharing God's strength 
 except a man also shares His purity. But then 
 when you really care for some one, your chief 
 desire is that he should be satisfied : where he 
 is concerned, self comes in second. And also 
 it's not as if Christ said, " You must clean up 
 your life before I can help you ". What He says 
 is " Let Me in, and I'll help you to clean up 
 your life ". A favourite phrase of the great 
 preacher Spurgeon used to be, " Come to Christ, 
 chain and all " : not " first throw off your chain, 
 and then be religious ". And isn't it worth a 
 lot to be free and pure ? Those who shrink 
 from the struggle to be pure do know in their 
 hearts that they wa)it to be pure, if they could 
 but see how. And there's nothing that brings
 
 56 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 rest and strength and gaiety into a life like the 
 sense, " I really am getting the victory ". I 
 wonder may I quote two letters from one of 
 those to whom this book is dedicated, to show 
 what I mean ? He had decided at last to try 
 what I had urged about this in his School 
 Chapel, and wrote to me afterwards to report 
 progress. In one he says: "Oh, how happy I 
 feel, now I feel that I have conquered this sin ! " 
 And in another, some weeks later : " People in 
 the house say that I have been much better- 
 tempered lately, and I can quite believe this 
 true ; as I feel much better-tempered myself 
 since I have given up that sin ". 
 
 It is the old story of Sir Galahad : — 
 
 My strength is as the strength of ten 
 Because my heart is pure. 
 
 Every true boy wants to be a strong man ; 
 
 and the world needs the boys of to-day to be 
 
 the very strongest men the\' can be ; 
 
 And you? . t i -i t-t- 
 
 and it matters to our Lord and His 
 Kingdom even more. Think it all over, and 
 see whether you can't give Him His way with 
 your life more fully and loyally than ever before. 
 For it means everything to you, to the country, 
 and to Him that you should be 
 
 a part of His Great Strength 
 That moves and cannot die.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE HIGHER HUMANITY. 
 
 So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 When duty whispers low " I must," 
 
 The youth replies, " I can ". 
 
 — R. W. Emerson. 
 
 I am able for anything in Him Who gives me the power. — 
 St. Paul. 
 
 To build a new world : to start a new tradition. 
 That is the task that needs the new power of 
 Menre-made. which we have bccn thinking; the 
 power which makes new men, " If any man be 
 in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature : old 
 things are passed away, nay, look you, they are 
 become new." Things strike him quite differ- 
 ently : and he too strikes the world around him 
 with a different and a surer stroke. He is no 
 longer a fragment of life driven hither and 
 thither on the stream of events, the creature of 
 his circumstances. He is " a part of One Great 
 Strength that moves and cannot die," — a master 
 of every situation, because he never confronts 
 57
 
 S8 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 any alone. The strongest Will and Wisdom 
 and Power in the universe is behind him. 
 
 It is a great new output of this " higher 
 humanity " that the world is needing to bring 
 Reinforcement ^^ings right. And every individual 
 by God. -g i^a^(jg a.nd meant and wanted to be 
 
 part of it. Every human creature is, as it were, 
 a piece of mechanism made to be worked by the 
 power, directed by the will, of Almighty God. 
 Between man as he too often makes himself 
 and man as God wants to make him there is all 
 the difference that there is between an aeroplane 
 crumpled and rusting in a field and the same 
 machine battling its way through the clouds 
 like a live thing. The tragedy is that com- 
 paratively so few of us really rise to our " higher 
 humanity" — humanity reinforced by God — by 
 sharing our lives with the One Who made and 
 alone can manage them. 
 
 Just look at a few results of being thus " re- 
 inforced by God," through living the shared life, 
 Some effects of — the life in which it is " no longer I " 
 
 it: (I) Moral , ^ „ „ 
 
 strength. but WC . 
 
 I. In the first place, it does make a man 
 proof against temptation. People assume that, 
 because certain temptations are common to all 
 of us, certain sins are necessary and excusable 
 in all. This is the same as to say that, because
 
 THE HIGHER HUMANITY 59 
 
 influenza germs happen to be in the air all round 
 you, when an epidemic is on, therefore every- 
 body is meant to have influenza: whereas, in 
 fact, the prevalence of the germs only has the 
 effect of making men take precautions which 
 will make them proof. And if experience shows 
 that there is a remedy against succumbing to 
 temptation, no man can go on claiming that he 
 is meant to succumb. I have already quoted 
 (in last chapter) one testimony to the power of 
 the higher humanity to foil temptation : let me 
 add another — that of one who in his day was 
 a great athlete and a distinguished soldier. " I 
 was tempted often and desperately," he told an 
 audience of young men in later life, " but God 
 in His mercy brought me through it all, clean 
 and victorious. And how ? By nothing of my 
 own : but, when the temptation beset me, some- 
 thing prompted me always and at once to shut 
 my eyes, and to say to myself, * Jesus Christ '." 
 That made the difference : why ? Because the 
 Friend called in was already there, only waiting 
 for the call. The " something that prompted " 
 was His Spirit. 
 
 2. Again, the shared life saves a man from 
 (a) The cure lonelincss, which is the source of 
 for loneliness, ^q^^ gf thc unhappiness and not a 
 little of the sin of the world. As life gets on,
 
 6o WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 one begins more and more to realise what a 
 very lonely thing it is. 
 
 Yes ! in the sea of life enisled, 
 
 With echoing straits between us thrown, 
 
 Dotting the shoreless watery wild, 
 We mortal millions live alone.^ 
 
 Now and then we " discover " one another, 
 as the ship in which these lines are being written 
 " discovered " Malta, away out by itself in 
 mid-Mediterranean, j-esterday. But the sudden 
 mutual understanding somehow vanishes : ex- 
 cept in a few instances we can't follow it up. 
 The night before, apparent intimacy : next 
 morning, the great gulf fixed again, perhaps 
 never to be bridged a second time. Even with 
 what we call " close " friends we are only too 
 conscious of distance — a distance that varies in 
 a baffling, unaccountable way. There is the 
 longing to understand and be understood, but 
 there isn't always the power. But in the higher 
 humanity there is. The Christian is one who 
 never can feel lonely or misunderstood so long as 
 he " keeps in touch " by practising the presence 
 of God. And in the most wonderful way, as he 
 grows accustomed to open his heart unreservedly 
 to his unseen Friend, he finds himself also get- 
 ting nearer the other human islands 
 
 Dotting the shoreless, watery wild 
 ^ Matthew Arnold.
 
 THE HIGHER HUMANITY 6i 
 
 around him. The atmosphere in which he 
 lives makes him more approachable, and gives 
 him a new desire and power of approach to 
 others. And this enriches life and gives it 
 meaning and purpose as nothing else can. 
 Those who really live in the Divine Friendship 
 gain the faculty of making friends among men. 
 That is surely what our Lord meant when He 
 said that those who have " left house or brothers 
 or sisters or mother or father or children," for 
 His sake and to do His work, should receive 
 "an hundred-fold more now in this time" of 
 the same things, as well as " in the world to 
 come, hfe everlasting". All who are friends of 
 Jesus Christ have the best possible point of 
 contact with one another : and one might 
 almost say that " points of contact are the 
 highest form of wealth ". 
 
 3. Then, too, the higher humanity has the 
 secret of courage in danger and indifference to 
 (3) Indifference death, bccausc the friend of Jesus 
 
 to danger and _^, . , , , . , 
 
 death. Christ knows that nothmg that 
 
 happens can really hurt him, and that He Who 
 is looking after him is the Conqueror of death. 
 He sees things set in a wider horizon than that 
 of this life, and can say with St. Paul, " O 
 Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is 
 thy victory ? Thanks be unto God, Who giveth
 
 62 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 See the new horizon reveahng itself in these 
 words of a subaltern at the Front, writing to 
 his mother. " Those who have not been to the 
 trenches think it should create a pathetic yearn- 
 ing over life and the so transitory gleam. . . . 
 The fellowship of death has taught us better 
 and truer things. Yet, because death is strange, 
 pray humanly that the cup may pass from me, 
 dear mother. Pray that, as is permissible : but 
 never grieve if it is not so, for God's ways are 
 glorious and past finding out in His love for 
 the children of men." (The italics are in the 
 original.) And focus in with it this further 
 glimpse, through the eyes of a brother-officer, 
 of faith looking death between the eyes. " It 
 may perhaps comfort you a little to hear of 
 Stanley before he went up to that attack. I 
 was myself hit in the forenoon, and he came 
 over and spent some time with me. He was 
 absolutely happy and serene, though he knew 
 well what an inferno he was going to. If ever 
 I saw faith in a man's face, it was in his." Add 
 also, as one more testimony among many, the 
 words of a native lad from a missionary public 
 school in Ceylon, who came over to fight in the 
 ranks for the Empire. He was writing of his 
 experience on the first day of the Somme battle.
 
 THE HIGHER HUMANITY 63 
 
 " All this stress has taught me one great thing, 
 and that is, our Almighty Father is with us 
 always and everywhere. All this stress has 
 strengthened my faith. Just before we climbed 
 over the parapet, these few lines gave me 
 tremendous courage : — 
 
 Absolutely tender, absolutely true, 
 Understanding all things, understanding you : 
 Infinitely loving, exquisitely near — 
 This is God, our Father: what have we to fear ? " ^ 
 
 4. But there are also more positive qualities 
 in the higher humanity — humanity reinforced 
 (4) Inspiration, by God. There is a certain power 
 which takes the place of, and will do far more 
 than, what men call talents or gifts. I know 
 no better expression of it than these words of 
 the great Bishop Phillips Brooks of New York : 
 " Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. 
 Pray for powers equal to your tasks ! Then the 
 doing of your work shall be no miracle. But 
 you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall 
 wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which 
 has come in you by the grace of God. There 
 
 ^ It is perhaps appropriate that I should be writing this 
 section in about the " unhealthiest " part of the Mediterranean, 
 with life-belt and wraps beside me (by order), as the signal for 
 boat-stations may be given at any moment. I hope I should 
 not have the effrontery to urge such a faith in such surround- 
 ings, if I did not honestly believe it myself.
 
 64 WORLD.BUILDERS ALL 
 
 is nothing which comes to seem more foolish 
 to us, I think, as years go by, than the limita- 
 tions which have been quietly set to the moral 
 possibilities of man. They are placidly and 
 perpetually assumed. ' You must not expect 
 too much of him,' so it is said. ' You must 
 remember that he is only a man after all.' 
 Only a man ! That sounds to me as if one 
 said, * You may launch your boat and sail a 
 little way, but you must not expect to go very 
 far. It is only the Atlantic Ocean.' Why, 
 man's moral range and reach are practically 
 infinite : at least no man has yet begun to 
 comprehend where its limit lies. Men's 
 powers of conquering temptation, of despising 
 danger, of being true to principle, have never 
 been even indicated, save in Christ." And in 
 the higher humanity of the Christian the human 
 powers are reinforced b\' nothing less than His. 
 It is not only moral difficulties that it is good 
 to face with Him. The same applies to any 
 emergency, any problem. Here too it is true, 
 that " I don't get past, we get past". If you 
 want to do anything properly, do it with God. 
 Every Christian is meant to be " on the spot " 
 every time : for he might, if he would, be a man 
 inspired. To quote Emerson once more, " God 
 is everywhere, having His will, and He cannot
 
 THE HIGHER HUMANITY 65 
 
 be baffled. Make His business yours, as did 
 His Son. The man who works with Him is 
 constantly assured of achievement." 
 
 5. But last, and for our present purpose far 
 from least, the man who shares his life with 
 (5) Incentive J^sus Christ has a constant motive 
 to service. to urgc him to scrvicc. He is work- 
 ing for his Friend, and he is working under his 
 Friend's eye : and the thought of what that 
 Friend has done for him makes him brave and 
 eager. There is nothing like love to make men 
 courageous. Even a sheep, when it has a lamb 
 to defend, will stand up to a dog that attacks it. 
 And, as John Wesley used to put it : " All that 
 I know of Christianity is summed up in one 
 word — * We love Him because He first loved 
 us ' ". " The love of Christ," says St. Paul, 
 "constrains us ... to live no longer for our 
 own ends but for His, Who for our sakes died 
 and rose again." There again we get the key- 
 note of the new tradition — " God before self". 
 
 Such is the higher humanity, of which every 
 Christian is supposed to be a working model. 
 
 The true J^^^ ^°°^ back ovcr the qualities of 
 
 super-man. ^j^jg ^^^ ^^^ higher kind of man 
 
 which we are meant to be, with his power to 
 
 rise superior to temptation, danger and death ; 
 
 his secret of friendship with God and with man ; 
 
 5
 
 66 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 his gift of being equal to any occasion ; his 
 unfaihng energy of service, inspired by love. 
 Think what a great new output of such " Super- 
 men" — not Nietzsche's variety — could do to 
 rebuild the world to-day. Where are they to 
 come from ? All that is needed is — you and I, 
 willing to let God re-make us along His own 
 lines : willing to go into training as Super- 
 patriots, to help God our Friend to win back 
 His lost world. What line shall we take ? 
 
 Here are two prayers for those who want to 
 be soldiers of God. The first is by Thomas 
 Two prayers Hughcs, thc author of " Tom Brown's 
 builders. Schooldays " ; the second by Ig- 
 
 natius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, 
 who himself began life as a soldier. 
 
 A PRAYER FOR ACTIVE SERVICE. 
 
 O God of Truth, Whose living Word 
 
 Upholds whate'er has breath, 
 Look down on Thy creation, Lord, 
 
 Enslaved by sin and death. 
 
 Set up Thy standard, Lord, that we 
 
 Who claim a heavenly birth, 
 May march with Thee to smite the lies 
 
 That vex Thy groaning earth. 
 
 Ah t would we join that blest array. 
 
 And follow in the might 
 Of Him, the Faithful and the True, 
 
 In raiment clean and white ?
 
 THE HIGHER HUMANITY 67 
 
 How can we fight for truth and God, 
 
 Enthralled by lies and sin ? 
 He who would fight for Thee on earth 
 
 Must first be true within, 
 
 O God of Truth, for Whom we long. 
 
 Thou Who wilt hear our prayer. 
 Do Thine own battle in our hearts 
 
 And slay the falsehood there. 
 
 So, tried in Thy refining fire. 
 
 From every lie set free. 
 In us Thy perfect truth shall dwell, 
 And we may fight for Thee. 
 
 A PRAYER FOR THE SOLDIER SPIRIT. 
 
 Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest : to 
 give and not to count the cost ; to fight and not to heed the 
 wounds ; to toil and not to seek for rest ; to labour and not to 
 ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do Thy will : 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 5*
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PRACTICAL PRAYER. 
 
 He that would be little in temptation, let him be much in 
 prayer. — John Owen. 
 
 In the larger sense of the word, as the spiritual language of 
 the soul, prayer is intercourse with God, often seeking no end 
 beyond the pleasure of such intercourse. — H. P. Liddon. 
 
 The Christian life, as we have been thinkinj:^ of 
 it, is a hfe in which God and a mortal co-operate, 
 co-opera.ive " ^ ^on't get past, wc get past." And 
 ^'^*' the method, so to speak, of co-opera- 
 
 tion is what we call Prayer. Prayer is our 
 human way of getting into the broad, strong 
 current of the life of Christ, and so becoming 
 
 a part of One Great Strength 
 That moves and cannot die. 
 
 As we have seen, we are not meant to live 
 simply on our own resources, nor yet on our own 
 account. While we do, we can neither succeed 
 nor be really happy. But a Christian finds that, 
 when he stops living for himself, he also no 
 
 68
 
 PRACTICAL PRAYER 69 
 
 longer has to live by his own exertions. Things 
 are done for him. He finds himself twice the 
 man he was : so long as he is letting the " One 
 Great Strength " work through him, he is always 
 on the spot, always " on top ". And what this 
 implies is that his chief task and responsibility as 
 a Christian is to keep in touch, " under orders," 
 under control : which in turn means cultivating 
 the art of remembering that God is there. And 
 that is Prayer: "the practice of the Presence 
 of God "} 
 
 Now Prayer is a thing which probably all of 
 us do, more or less ; and about which we are 
 Prayer as CO- always hearing scimons ; and which, 
 
 operation with ,. , , r i , 
 
 God. frankly, most 01 us look upon as a 
 
 religious duty which is rather a bore. One is 
 generally bored with things one feels one ought 
 to do but doesn't really understand or do well. 
 And the remedy is to study and practise — as we 
 
 1 This is the title of a little book (it can be had for 2d.) by 
 " Brother Lawrence," an old Lay Brother who was cook in a 
 French monastery in the late sixteen-hundreds and became 
 known throughout France for his wonderful nearness to God. 
 His letters of advice to those who consulted him are still being 
 read all over the world: a good instance of the unlimited 
 influence of a very ordinary and unlearned man who really did 
 " share his life " with God. His great aim was, even in the 
 monastery kitchen, never for a moment to forget the Presence 
 of God.
 
 70 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 do with anything else which we regard as worth 
 doing. The question is, are we ready to do the 
 same with Prayer — to take enough trouble to 
 get really good at it ? Of the importance of it 
 there can be no two opinions. If there is any- 
 thing in all that this little book is trying to say, 
 it would seem to be the key to the situation — 
 the means of reinforcing oneself with the power 
 of Christ and living " in Him ". It is infinitely 
 more than asking for things at intervals, or 
 even occasionally talking to God : it is that 
 which brings God into action by our side all 
 the time. And the experience of all those who 
 have really tried it tells the same tale : that it 
 is the thing that makes all the difference. 
 "The devil will let you keep anything else," an 
 experienced teacher once told a group of young 
 men who were about to be ordained, " if he can 
 take your private prayers from you. He will 
 let you keep your Bible, your public worship, 
 even your Holy Communions. For he knows 
 that, if he can rob you of your prayers, he holds 
 the key to the position." 
 
 Avast amount of experience supports this view. 
 Yet even still it is comparatively rare to find 
 The need of a man, outsidc the circle that make 
 
 practising . r ■ r i- ■ u 
 
 Prayer. a spccial proiession 01 religion, who 
 
 approaches the problem of his prayers scientifi-
 
 PRACTICAL PRAYER 71 
 
 call}' — as he would (say) the problem of becoming 
 a good pianist or a good bat. Men won't give 
 the needed time and thought : and then they 
 profess themselves disappointed with pra3^er. 
 " I've tried, but it doesn't work." " I gave it 
 up because it didn't do me any real good." " I 
 did pray in such and such an emergency, but 
 nothing happened." As well might a man who 
 had never tried to play more than five-finger 
 exercises, and had given up even that, complain 
 that piano-playing was no good, because, when 
 he sat down to a Sonata of Beethoven, he could 
 not get beyond the first bar. Prayer is a form 
 of work, and hard work. You know the proverb, 
 " Orare est laborare ". It calls into play every 
 part of a man's nature ; and it can only really 
 come off, so to speak, when all are harmonised 
 by the Spirit of God. Yet we rush into it as 
 unconcernedly as one rushes off to wash one's 
 hands when the dinner bell rings ; and the 
 whole thing is over almost as quickly. This 
 sort of thing gives God no chance. 
 
 What follows is only for those who are ready 
 to take some pains with their prayers. The 
 Some practical ^^^^ ^^^ ^^"^c themsclvcs the troublc 
 suggestions. q£ re^jjing it. It is only some very 
 simple and rather obvious suggestions for ac- 
 quiring the art of Prayer and putting it into
 
 72 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 practice to the best advantage. Of course no 
 two natures are the same : what suits one 
 may be useless to another. These suggestions, 
 therefore, are only suggestions, not " rules ". 
 But with a little experim.enting each can find 
 out how best to use them. The main thing is 
 that nothing should be refused just because it 
 takes time and trouble ; or because we have 
 never done it before. 
 
 The united verdict of all who have attained 
 to "the higher humanit}'," by living near to 
 Morning God, is that the most essential thing 
 prayer-time. ^^ ^jj jg ^q make onc's momtng prayer- 
 time sufficient, and keep it sacred. It is then 
 that the mind is least over-laid wdth the dis- 
 tractions of life, and so can best concentrate 
 and make contact with God. As some one has 
 put it, the mind is then " in a freer and more 
 natural state, resembling somewhat a sensitive 
 plate, where impressions can readily leave their 
 traces ". And what is wanted is that God 
 should imprint His own image indelibly on it 
 before other things crowd in. The man or bo}' 
 who takes enough time then to get the thought 
 of his Friend and Partner's Presence clearly 
 stamped on his mind, through unhurried con- 
 versation with him about all that is in his 
 heart, is the one who instinctively remembers
 
 PRACTICAL PRAYER 73 
 
 later, when the trouble or temptation comes 
 along. ^ 
 
 Nor is it only he himself who profits. Often 
 quite unconsciously, he will bring the same 
 Bringing God Prcsence and influence with him into 
 toothers. other lives he comes in touch with, 
 and so fas it has been finely put) help to feed 
 " the secret springs from which the regenerative 
 forces of society proceed ". That in itself is the 
 best form of world-building. And, as Bishop 
 Phillips Brooks has said, " To know God so that 
 other souls may know Him from us ; to be in 
 any way a deepener and enlightener of the lives 
 of our brethren — what is there for a man to 
 thank God for like that ? " When we find our- 
 selves sluggish and unwilling to take trouble 
 with our morning prayer, it is not a bad thing 
 to remember it is others we are wronging as well 
 as ourselves : not only those whom we should 
 
 ^ Another footnote from the surroundings in which I am 
 writing may come in here, to illustrate the effect of " remember- 
 ing ". Last night a fellow passenger, a young R.F.C. officer, 
 speaking of the fierce temptations of Egypt, admitted that once 
 or twice he had very nearly given in : but he had thought of 
 his fancee in England, and it cleared the whole atmosphere in 
 an instant. "One felt a sort of warm glow all over." And he 
 added, " By Jove, I was glad I had clinched things with her 
 before I left England ". So it is with remembering Christ : 
 only in this case one is remembering a Friend who is already 
 there.
 
 74 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 help by praying for them, but those into whose 
 lives the atmosphere of God's Presence might 
 come with us. So make sure that you get each 
 morning "enough time to forget time": that 
 is, to get clean out of the distracting atmosphere 
 of the lower life into that in which God can be 
 felt. In other words, decide over-night to get 
 up at whatever hour will give you enough time : 
 and in the morning stick to it ! The two 
 minutes after one is called are often the most 
 critical moment of the day : the moment which 
 decides the whole day's campaign. 
 
 Then as to using this time, a few hints may 
 help. 
 
 I. Write down on a sheet of paper a list of 
 the things and people that are most " on your 
 A programme mind," and that you have most to do 
 
 of Prayer. ^^J^J^ . J^ f^^.^^ ^^ ^hc things about 
 
 which you would naturally talk to your best 
 friend — especially if he were so rich and power- 
 ful that he could also do anything you wanted. 
 Remember often, " Christ is interested in any- 
 thing that interests me ". Then divide up these 
 subjects over the da3's of the week, to give 
 variety and avoid having just to hurry through. 
 Some people and things will, of course, come in 
 daily; and every day you'll go over that day's 
 programme, step by step, with our Lord be-
 
 PRACTICAL PRAYER 75 
 
 forehand, and ask Him to meet you at all 
 the danger-points. Also, if you are really 
 "friends" with Him, you'll naturally think of 
 what interests Him — His great campaign in the 
 world — as well as of what concerns yourself. 
 
 2. Read a few verses of the Bible before you 
 kneel down, and see if they suggest anything to 
 bring in to the prayer that follows. 
 
 3. Have your list of subjects before you, and 
 begin on whatever you find easiest to pray for. 
 If )'ou can't finish before breakfast or early 
 school, arrange to finish later on : but that's 
 harder. 
 
 4. Don't worry if your thoughts wander — so 
 do mine and everybody's. When you catch 
 them wandering, just " apologize " (so to speak) 
 and go straight ahead again. Having the list 
 before you will help. To fix the eye is half the 
 battle of fixing the thoughts. And don't think 
 it necessary always to kneel. Sometimes 6ne 
 can concentrate better sitting. 
 
 5. When you find your own thoughts won't 
 flow easily, and you can't get up any keenness 
 The use of to pray, take some familiar Pra3'er- 
 prayers. Book Collcct, or a short Psalm, or a 
 hymn which is a prayer, and try to make its 
 words and thoughts your own. When any such 
 prayer or hymn strikes you as one you might
 
 76 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 use, make a note of it. And every Sunday take 
 a quarter of an hour some time to write out the 
 Collect for the week for use as part of your own 
 daily prayer that week, and to bring your list 
 of subjects up-to-date, by asking, "Am I really 
 covering the ground ? Have any new people or 
 things come into my life since last Sunday, 
 which ought to come into my prayers ? " 
 
 Then during each day pull yourself up occa- 
 sionally just to "remember," and share your 
 ■■Ejacuutory passing thoughts with Him Who "is 
 Prayer. always there". Some, for instance, 
 
 try to remember God whenever they hear a 
 clock strike. It takes no time : there is no need 
 to stop what you are doing (unless it is wrong) : 
 and it gradually forms the habit of remembering 
 always. Try never to make a decision or face 
 an interview with anyone without first turning 
 round to get His advice. Did you notice 
 Nehemiah's quick prayer as he stood by the 
 royal dinner-table in the passage which stands 
 at the head of chapter II. ? That is exactly the 
 sort of thing I mean. It is so easily done, and 
 is never inappropriate. A boy in a Mission 
 College in India was playing in a football match, 
 and made a magnificent shot. Instinctively 
 out came the exclamation, in his own language, 
 " Look, Lord Jesus ! " He and Nehemiah were 
 both on the right track.
 
 PRACTICAL PRAYER 77 
 
 Of course all this may at first sound rather 
 far-fetched and unnatural : and it will require a 
 Self-training ^^^^ cffort of will to sct out to achieve 
 in Prayer. j^^ g^^ the thing to hoM on to is 
 that, if there is the " One Great Strength " 
 which we are meant, and need, and in our hearts 
 do really want, to become part of ; and if the 
 great need of the world is that this Great 
 Strength should be released to rescue and re- 
 store it : then all difficulties must give way 
 before the plain duty of being the best and 
 strongest men we can. And if you'll only give 
 the plan outlined above fair trial, you will soon 
 find it make such a difference to life that you 
 won't grudge the time and trouble demanded. 
 
 Only, don't forget the condition. " If ye abide 
 in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask 
 The condition ^hat ye will and it shall be done for 
 of success. yQ^" g^t «jf J regard iniquity in 
 
 my heart, the Lord will not hear me ". We 
 can't be part of the One Great Strength of the 
 Divine Purity while wilfully keeping in our 
 hearts what we know to be sin. We must be 
 clean if we want to be strong. But then, if 
 we really want to be clean, He Who strengthens 
 can also, and does, cleanse. It is not our sins, 
 but our refusal to part with them, that alone can 
 baffle Him " Who taketh away the sin of the 
 world ".
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WITNESS AND WAR. 
 
 We are here on earth not to contemplate but to transform 
 created things : to found, as far as in us lies, the image of the 
 Kingdom of God on earth, not to admire earth's contrasts. — 
 Mazzini. 
 
 To do anything because others do it, and not because the 
 thing is good or kind or honest in its own right, is to resign all 
 moral control and captaincy upon yourself, and go post-haste 
 to the devil with the greater number. — R. L. Stevenson. 
 
 " To transform created things," by building a 
 new world on the lines of a new and Christian 
 To make men tradition : that, we have seen, is the 
 *"• task ahead — the hardest task ever 
 
 set to any generation since the world began. 
 Humanity, travelling in the wrong direction, 
 has reached the end of its own resources : as the 
 Prodigal, by turning his back on home, soon 
 arrived at " the husks that the swine did eat ". 
 But God is still there, and still our Father : and 
 His wealth and power are at our disposal, if we 
 will but go home again. Every life that turns 
 78
 
 WITNESS AND WAR 79 
 
 round, goes back, and gives in to its Father is 
 not only finding its own recovery, but helping 
 Him to restore the world. The problem is to 
 make men see this. And so the first task of 
 the world-builder is to be, in some sense, a 
 missionary: an ambassador of God. If we are 
 convinced that only thus can the world be 
 saved, our most obvious first duty is to tell 
 it so. To keep the secret to ourselves is 
 treason. 
 
 But it is just here that we are up against the 
 biggest crux of all. It is part of the old tradi- 
 our British ^^"^^ which wc havc to unseat — it is 
 reserve. vcry Specially part of the Public 
 
 School tradition — to keep all such things to 
 oneself. Before going to one great Public 
 School for the National Mission, I asked one of 
 its leading boys for advice. This was part of 
 what he gave me, in his own words : " All 
 that is necessary is to tell fellows quite plainly 
 what you want them to do, and they will do it 
 privately ; only you can't hope for any open 
 manifestations ". But it is precisely " open 
 manifestations" of some sort that are wanted 
 more than anything. There is no lack of latent 
 faith in the world to-day. What we call "im- 
 pressions " have been made by the thousand : 
 how could it be otherwise ? Even in ordinary
 
 8o WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 times most men have much more religious 
 feeling than they will ever let on. But, just 
 because they keep it buried, it comes to noth- 
 ing. After all, if a seed is going to grow, it 
 must at some stage show itself above ground. 
 But most men refuse even to contemplate 
 reaching that stage. They refuse, in other 
 words, to bridge the gulf between " impression " 
 and " expression ". And yet students of human 
 nature tell us that impressions which never 
 reach expression are not only useless but some- 
 times positively harmful to a man. It is bad 
 for him to be "impressed" if nothing follows. 
 Be that as it may, the point that concerns us 
 now is their uselessness. There can be no 
 building of a new world, no striking out in a 
 new direction, without some open break with 
 the past. For such a break thousands, I be- 
 lieve, are waiting and longing. But so few 
 have the courage to give a lead — to be " first 
 over the- top ". " It is not being done " : so 
 hardly anyone does it. 
 
 Now suppose the nation generally, or the 
 Public Schools and Universities in particular 
 Secret Service (as the placcs whcrc this British re- 
 
 or Active Ser- . . . , ^ . - , 
 
 vice? ticence is strongest), had said to the 
 
 Government in August, 1914: "We are abso- 
 lutely with you about this war ; we realise how
 
 WITNESS AND WAR 8i 
 
 necessary it is, and we hope Lord Kitchener 
 will find the men he is asking for. But, 3'ou 
 know, you can't expect us to go into uniform : 
 it is so conspicuous, and so unusual : it is an 
 open manifestation : it gives us away. We'll 
 do anything you like to tell us in the way of 
 the Secret Service : but we must draw the line 
 at coming into the open." If Englishmen had 
 at all generally taken that line, we know where 
 we should have been now. If there's a war on, 
 there must be an army : and you can't have an 
 army without a uniform. It is needed for a 
 double purpose : to let men on the same side 
 recognise each other, and to distinguish them 
 from the enemy. But the majority of those 
 who, at Baptism and then at Confirmation, 
 have professed themselves "Christ's faithful 
 soldiers" either wear no uniform of His at all, 
 or deliberately affect a shade of khaki (so to 
 speak) which is very hard to distinguish from 
 the enemy's field-grey. One learns with ex- 
 perience to discount a lot that men say against 
 religion : it is so often just a veil to hide their 
 real feelings. But of course it means that they 
 are hurting the side with which they secretly 
 sympathise through what, in plain language, is 
 cowardice. Treason for gain is contemptible 
 enough : but treason through cowardice is " the 
 6
 
 82 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 limit ". And yet that is what it comes to when 
 men who secretly hope in Christ pretend, with 
 a Briton's " inverted hypocrisy," to be on the 
 side of His enemies. 
 
 It has come to this, that we must either give 
 up our faith and hope, and face the consequences 
 The Church as " go ^ut into thc darkest period of 
 God's Army, human history " having no hope, and 
 without God in the world " — or we must put 
 ourselves on a war footing and fight for our 
 faith, giving Christ an army which He can 
 count on for anything. And this involves both 
 making ourselves known to one another as His 
 soldiers, and standing up to anything that 
 opposes Him : witness and war in one. It all 
 follows from being "part of one Great Strength": 
 those who are "members of Christ " are also, 
 necessarily, members one of another — all parts 
 of one Body, one fighting force. That is where 
 what we call " the Church " comes in : all those 
 whom Christ can count on to use for His own 
 ends, as a man counts on his limbs and his 
 senses. Till "the Church" in this sense be- 
 comes a fad we shall make no headway. And it 
 will not be a fact till the scattered sympathisers 
 throw down the barriers of reserve and join 
 together as a fighting army. 
 
 By " witness," however, I mean far more than
 
 WITNESS AND WAR 83 
 
 wearing one's heart on one's sleeve, or " talking 
 The need and religion". McFe "talking religion" 
 
 meaning of o a 
 
 "witness". is one of the most objectionable of 
 things. What is wanted is men who will so 
 live their religion that it will become a natural, 
 living part of themselves : and, when it is that, 
 it is bound to find its way to the surface, unless 
 they yield to a sort of social cowardice and force 
 it back. All our real interests do show them- 
 selves in our lives, and, sooner or later, on 
 our lips. And, though it is quite true that 
 the witness of the life is far more important — 
 since without it the other is no good — yet some 
 of us do need " to shew forth God's praise not 
 only in our lives but with our lips ". Otherwise 
 God does not get the credit for what men see in 
 us. They see, perhaps, a force which keeps us 
 straight when others go crooked, which makes 
 us cheerful when others flag. But they think 
 it is our temperament, or the like ; instead of a 
 power which is for them too, if they will claim 
 it. And so God loses, as it were, an advertise- 
 ment which He needs and is more than entitled 
 to, because we do not admit that we are draw ing 
 upon Him. I honestly believe, with a conviction 
 which every week seems to add to, that nothing 
 is more needed than that the world should grow 
 accustomed to think, and speak, of God in a
 
 84 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 natural way, as one of the admitted Facts of 
 life and the most important of them ; that 
 multitudes outside what are called " religious 
 circles " are only waiting for a lead, to acknow- 
 ledge their own belief in Him ; and that the 
 most serious bar in the way of the " new tra- 
 dition," based on such open acknowledgment of 
 Him, is that absurd reserve about spiritual 
 things, which may be British but is certainly 
 not human. For 
 
 That independence Britons prize too high 
 Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie. 
 
 Acknowledgment of God, of course, need not 
 be only or chiefly acknowledgment in words. 
 Consistency ^"^ obvious fomi of it is consist- 
 and leadership, q^^^, Jj^ ■^yhat are Called religious ob- 
 servances. For instance, why should it be the 
 case that many, when they go into the Army, 
 whether as officers or as men, give up things 
 they did as a matter of course in civil life : such 
 as saying their prayers, or going to Holy Com- 
 munion ? The Holy Communion, after all, is 
 the most obvious and natural way of telling 
 those around us, " I am trying to share my life 
 with Christ and to live on Him ". It is the 
 highest and the Divinely-appointed form of wit- 
 ness. Why, with so many, should it be an 
 exceptional act ? Of course the reason is that,
 
 WITNESS AND WAR 85 
 
 in their new surroundings, the thing is ap- 
 parently not the fashion ; and nine men out of 
 ten prefer to toe a line than to give a lead — 
 especially, alas, in what are called the " leading 
 classes". Men, boys, anybody, who will resist 
 this impulse to follow, and will lead instead, 
 are the most needed kind of national benefactor. 
 And if you would but try, you \vould find it far 
 less difficult than it looks. 
 
 Here is a true story which shows what I 
 mean : both the way in which men will take 
 Thepowerofa their colour from their surroundings, 
 strong lead. ^^^ ^^^ g^^^ ^^,jj.j^ which a real lead, 
 
 if given, can change them back again. A party 
 of officers were crossing from Southampton to 
 Havre, on their way to the Front: all but one 
 for the first time. Of the whole crowd one 
 only, and he was a mere boy, had the courage 
 to kneel and say his prayers. The rest, as 
 idiots will when they see something they don't 
 understand, began to laugh and rag him : all 
 but the older man who had been out before. 
 And then he chipped in. " I'll tell you what it 
 is, you chaps," he said : " in another week you'll 
 all be damned glad to be saying your prayers." 
 At that, dead silence : and then, one after 
 another, six of the mockers knelt down them- 
 selves, confessing that what they had been
 
 86 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 laughing at was what, in their hearts, they were 
 wanting to do. That is but one instance of 
 many I might quote to the same effect. It is 
 against this social cowardice that our first attack 
 needs to be launched. 
 
 For, clearly, the right sort of witness will 
 speedily pass into war. We shall indeed — let 
 Through wit- there be no mistake— be up against 
 
 ne3stowar. J^ g^^^ ^f^gj. ^j]^ ^^^^ -g ^^^^^ ^^g 
 
 are here for. God's life is one long war against 
 evil in all its forms : a war so stern that it could 
 only be won by the Son of God giving His life 
 in battle. And He, after His resurrection, said 
 to His first followers, " As My Father hath 
 sent Me, even so send I you"; to the same 
 victory, yes, but by the same path — the Way of 
 the Cross. If the path you are following as a 
 Christian leads to no battle, no crucifixion, you 
 may well stop and ask if you are on the right 
 track. Anyhow the lack of fighting will not be 
 for lack of enemies. For a Christian with his 
 eyes open there is a fighting front wherever he 
 may turn. Wherever evil rears its head in any 
 form, there is one of God's battlefields : one 
 where you, perhaps, are the reinforcements He 
 is looking out for. Quite possibly you'll fall in 
 the attack : very likely it will seem as if nothing 
 was gained by it. But that is no excuse for
 
 WITNESS AND WAR 87 
 
 holding back ; and, as a matter of fact, no attack 
 which is made for Christ's sake and under His 
 leadership ever fails. 
 
 For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, 
 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
 Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
 
 Comes silent, flooding in, the main.^ 
 
 Anyhow to refuse battle, in this campaign, is to 
 confess yourself beaten, and to betray your 
 Leader. 
 
 Let me close with an illustration — a pointed 
 one I think — of the kind of fighting that lies 
 The clash of ahead if the new tradition is to 
 
 the two , , 1171 11 
 
 traditions. conquer the old. What we call 
 "the Public School tradition," with all that is 
 admirable and inspiring in it, may at one point 
 at least be an enemy to be overcome. What 
 it aims at and sets most store by is esprit de 
 corps. The first and last question it is apt to 
 ask is not, " Is this right ? " but " Is it sport- 
 ing ? " — that is, Is it loyal to the tradition ? In 
 effect, it sets up a social code — the laws of 
 " sportsmanship" — in place of the law of God. 
 And, where the two conflict, it is apt to back 
 the sportsman against the Christian. A great 
 friend and pupil of mine, one of the best all- 
 
 1 A. H. Clough.
 
 88 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 round men I have known and the first of my 
 friends to fall in the war, once told me how it 
 had befallen him at school in this. For that 
 matter, he mas a sportsman in every sense, 
 including that of playing for the University : 
 and he made no profession in words of being a 
 Christian, In his last j'ear but one at school, 
 he discovered a moral plague-spot in his house, 
 and called the attention of the head of the 
 house to it. The latter was either a coward or 
 a knave, and did nothing. My friend told him 
 that, if he didn't act, he would go himself to the 
 house master. Still nothing was done ; and he 
 went. The wrong was set right. He had done 
 the house and the school the best turn he could, 
 regardless of consequences to himself. But what 
 happened ? What he had done was right, was 
 his duty, was courageous ; but it wasn't " sport- 
 ing". And so, though he was already captain 
 of football, and was to be head of the school 
 the next year, the whole house united against 
 him and sent him to Coventry. There you see 
 the two traditions at grips; and that is the sort 
 of situation for which the world-builder has to 
 prepare. Where "sportsmanship " reaches the 
 point of persecuting moral courage, and frown- 
 ing on moral enterprise — the two things the 
 country most needs to-day — it has become a
 
 WITNESS AND WAR 89 
 
 national peril, a form of treason. And of that 
 kind of " sportsmanship " the Public School 
 tradition needs to be purged. It is true it was 
 not at a "leading" school that this thing 
 happened : but the head master of one of the 
 most leading schools, to whom I told the 
 stor}-, volunteered the comment, " It might have 
 happened at any Public School ". If so, there 
 is much fighting ahead of some of us, if the 
 Public Schools are to play the part their past 
 entitles them to in rebuilding the world on the 
 only right lines. Are you ready for it ? 
 
 Mind, I don't mean that informing the 
 authorities is the best way of combating 
 A more excel- ^vil. Of course it isn't. To a large 
 lent way. extcnt the "sporting" instinct here 
 
 is a true one. My friend was driven to the 
 course he took because the proper authority, 
 the head prefect, failed when appealed to. The 
 better way is for all who are right-hearted in a 
 house to show their hand first one to another, 
 and so form a solid nucleus of Christian public 
 opinion which cannot be ignored by the rest : 
 and, in particular, for every boy to speak up to 
 his own friends, instead of saying to himself, 
 like Cain, " Am I my brother's keeper ? " Of 
 course, he will risk popularity by so doing : but 
 he will gain influence — another and a better
 
 90 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 thing. " I daren't do it, I should lose my in- 
 fluence " : so another fellow — one who, but for 
 this lack of courage, was all one could wish 
 in a Public School boy — excused himself, when 
 begged to use his very leading position in 
 the College to secure some needed reform. He 
 meant his popularity: for, in fact, by normally 
 taking this line, he just fell short of genuine in- 
 fluence. Since then, I fancy, he has changed 
 his view. For he wrote to me lately from a 
 far part of the globe, and, after wishing we 
 had more of the spirit of Cromwell's time in 
 the British Empire of to-day, ended up with 
 these words: "Religion is often mistaken for 
 weakness, — perhaps because it appeals more 
 quickly to the weaker kind of nature ; but the 
 strong religious man is the toughest devil 
 afloat ". 
 
 It is such "tough devils" that are needed 
 now for the fight for the future, for building the 
 new world. We need the Public 
 School esprit de corps even more than 
 ever ; but we need it to be combined with the 
 moral courage and enterprise of the man who, 
 when the old tradition conflicts with the new, 
 will take his orders from God and not from 
 society. If the Public School boy of the new 
 generation can only develop in this direction, 
 
 • The toughest 
 devil afloat."
 
 WITNESS AND WAR 91 
 
 he will do even more for the England of to- 
 morrow than his fathers and brothers have done 
 and are doing for the England of yesterday and 
 to-day. He will be a true " super-man " — " the 
 toughest devil afloat ".
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OUR DEAD AND OUR DUTY. 
 
 Brethren, how shall it fare with me 
 
 When the war is laid aside. 
 If it be proven that I am he 
 
 For whom a world has died ? 
 
 If it be found, when the battle clears, 
 
 Their death has set me free, 
 Then how shall I live with myself the years 
 
 Which they have bought for me ? 
 
 — RuDYARD Kipling. 
 
 Spirits are not finely touched 
 But to fine issues. 
 
 — Shakespeare. 
 
 The world-building task before us is one that is 
 going to demand, first of all, a great reconstruc- 
 Reconstruc- tion of oursclves : our whole outlook, 
 
 tion of our- i - • -, r 
 
 selves. programme, and ambitions. If we 
 
 are to rise to the occasion, it will only be at the 
 
 cost of real denial of self, giving up being and 
 
 doing much that we might otherwise have looked 
 
 forward to. For this war of ours will last as 
 
 long as we live. 
 
 92
 
 OUR DEAD AND OUR DUTY 93 
 
 Does the road wind up-hill all the way ? 
 
 Yes, to the very end. 
 Will the day's journey take the whole long day ? 
 
 From morn lo night, my friend. ^ 
 
 We need, then, something that shall hold us 
 to it, and make it seem worth while : something 
 The memory ^ven morc compelling than the 
 of our dead. thought of the stakes involved, even 
 more reassuring than the faith that victory is 
 certain. I think we shall best find it, most of 
 us, in a loyal and affectionate memory of those 
 who have died for us in these few 5^ears that 
 are deciding the fate of centuries. They have 
 laid down their lives as the foundation-stones 
 of that new world which it rests with those who 
 survive them to build. Without such a founda- 
 tion, perhaps, the new world never could have 
 been built : even as we now see that Christianity 
 could never have come to anything without the 
 Cross of Christ as its starting-point. We must 
 not think of their lives as lost or thrown away, 
 any more than the granite blocks which are 
 swallowed up by the thousand in the sea, before 
 some great breakwater can be built across a 
 harbour to protect the ships of sailors still un- 
 born. What we must remember, on the other 
 hand, is that it is our work, our building, which 
 
 ' Christina RosBetti.
 
 94 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 will determine whether their sacrifice is gain or 
 loss to the world. The sunken blocks are use- 
 less till others are well and truly laid on top of 
 them. The foundation is wasted until the new 
 building rises upon it. And our own hearts tell 
 us that the one intolerable thing that can happen 
 is that the new world, built upon their sacrifice, 
 should be a worse and not a better place. " If 
 I weren't a different man after what I've been 
 through, it wouldn't be fair to God." If one at 
 the Front could feel things in that way, as he 
 looked on to the future, much more should we 
 others feel the same, who, for one reason or an- 
 other, have borne but lesser parts of the sacri- 
 fice. " If I weren't a different man, it wouldn't 
 be fair to God " — or to them. They have the 
 most sacred of all rights to demand that our 
 lives should, as it were, be given to them, to 
 carry out all that they died for. 
 
 It will help us to make our sacrifice to feel 
 that, in a real sense, it is made to them. Do 
 An example Y^^ ^now this story— a true one— 
 from Verdun, ^^.^j^^ Vcrdun ? It was in the critical 
 early days of the great defence. A battery of 
 French " 75s " was firing away, protecting a 
 detachment of infantry who were stubbornly 
 holding the trenches a couple of miles in front. 
 The guns were growing almost red-hot, and the
 
 OUR DEAD AND OUR DUTY 95 
 
 water for cooling them was exhausted. No 
 more could be had, except that in the gunners' 
 water-bottles. One and all, though parched 
 with thirst already, and keenly looking forward 
 to the water — their own water, which they had 
 more than deserved to drink themselves — they 
 voted to give it to their brothers in the trenches, 
 by giving it to the guns that were protecting 
 them. And so the guns fired on : and the 
 gunners bore the thirst for love of France and 
 of their brothers. Do you see how it fits our 
 case ? 
 
 I venture to repeat a suggestion, already 
 made elsewhere, that may help us to keep " our 
 A way of re- Dead and our Duty" linked together 
 membering. ^^ q^^. thoughts. It is that cach One 
 should include in his private calendar " some 
 Khaki-letter Saints' Days — days on which those 
 whom he knew and loved, or admired at a dis- 
 tance, laid down their lives for him and the 
 rest of us ; " and, on these anniversaries, as the 
 years brought them round, should " stand before 
 their photographs, thank God for their example, 
 and renew his vow : ' For his sake — and his — 
 and his — I consecrate myself'."^ Most of us, 
 between brothers and friends and old school- 
 fellows who have fallen, will find such days 
 1 " The Fight for the Future," pp. 25-6.
 
 96 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 coming often enough to keep us reminded of 
 their sacrifice, and so the readier for our own. 
 
 And then, as we see farther and farther into 
 the meaning of their sacrifice, as that on which 
 The Cross re- S-lonc 3. ncw world could be founded, 
 
 interpreted. ^^^ ^^^^ which UrgCS US tO build it 
 
 bravely and well, we shall find within and be- 
 yond this motive another, older, deeper, even 
 more compelling : a motive which the modern 
 world has largely mislaid. Behind their cross 
 we see looming up the Cross of Another : the 
 Cross which explains and makes bearable all 
 other crosses, because it shows us suffering and 
 sacrifice right at the heart of God's own life. 
 " One begins," said a well-known Oxford pro- 
 fessor lately — one who has never, so far as I 
 know, professed to accept the Christian creed — 
 "one begins to feel the force of the old Chris- 
 tian phrases, as one comes to be haunted by 
 the thought 'Some one has died for me'." 
 There is no getting away from it, it was that 
 thought which made the great Christians of the 
 early days : the men and women and even 
 children who 
 
 met the tyrant's brandished steel, 
 
 The lion's gory mane, 
 
 and conquered the Roman Empire for Christ 
 by doing so. The thought that burned in them
 
 OUR DEAD AND OUR DUTY 97 
 
 and toughened them was the thought : " He 
 died for me, and I must hve and, if need be, die 
 for Him ". Their worst fear was not of death 
 and torture, but of the reproach one day to be 
 faced in the eyes of their Saviour, if they denied 
 Him. They could enter closely into the spirit 
 of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's poem, " The Neu- 
 tral " :— 
 
 Brethren, how must it fare with me, 
 
 Or how am I justified, 
 If it be proven that I am he 
 
 For whom Manliind has died; 
 If it be proven that I am he 
 
 Who, being questioned, denied ? 
 
 Only to them it seemed even more awe-inspiring 
 that not man only but God Himself had died 
 for them, and had done so because 
 
 There was none other good enough 
 
 To pay the price of sin ; 
 He only could unlock the gate 
 
 Of heaven, and let us in. 
 
 Stop a moment and think how much it 
 means to us now that He has done so ; that 
 What we owe ^^^^^ darkened, saddened, death-ridden 
 to the Cross, •^yorld is no longer our only hope and 
 home, but a mere stage on the journey to a 
 better world, where He has "prepared a place 
 for us," and where " because He lives, we shall 
 live also". Think of this, and of how on this
 
 98 WORLD-BUILDERS ALL 
 
 work of His for us depends our only hope of 
 receiving back those whom so many of us now 
 are mourning, and in whose absence this world 
 will never quite be the same again. Think of 
 all this, and ask yourself " Can I refuse Him — 
 can I refuse them — the loyal life-long service 
 and sacrifice which will at once be bringing in 
 His Kingdom and building up that better world 
 for the hope of which they died ? " You may 
 have seen a little poem written by Sir Henry 
 Newbolt on the War Films, expressing his 
 feelings on seeing even that veiled reflection of 
 the great sacrifice on the Somme. It ends with 
 an address to Christ : — 
 
 Brother of men, when now I see 
 
 The lads go forth in line, 
 Thou knowest my heart is hungry in me. 
 
 As for Thy bread and wine : 
 Thou knowest my heart is bowed in me 
 
 To take their death for mine. 
 
 If their death, why not His also, which theirs 
 is re-interpreting for us ? When our heart is 
 " bowed in us" to take His death for ours — to 
 see in His suffering what, but for His love, 
 would have been our own — then we have in us 
 the spring of that grateful love to Him which 
 will make His service perfect freedom, and 
 " constrain us to live no lonsfer for our own
 
 OUR DEAD AND OUR DUTY 99 
 
 ends, but for His, Who for our sakes died and 
 rose again ". 
 
 Then indeed we shall find ourselves able to 
 build the better world and strike out into the 
 .. Unto the per- new tradition. Then, as we face the 
 feet day." futurc, wc shall be ready to say to 
 God, in the words of Hamlet to his father's 
 spirit : — 
 
 Yes, from the tables of my memory 
 
 I'll wipe away all trivial, fond records, 
 
 All saws of books, all forms, all pressures' past. 
 
 That youth and observation copied there ; 
 
 And Thy commandment all alone shall stand 
 
 Within the book and volume of my brain. 
 
 Unmixed with baser matter. 
 
 And then, when once we do thus " in all our 
 ways acknowledge Him," we shall find Him 
 " directing our paths " : paths which will hence- 
 forth be " as the shining light, that shineth more 
 and more unto the perfect day ". 
 
 ^ i.e. impressions. 
 
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