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The Great Discovery

While the thing is still fresh in my mind I will try to put it down on paper--the incredible thing that has happened in our parish. When we had least thought about life's great things, we have come face to face with the greatest.

We had been for long years living on the surface of things. The sun basked on the slopes of the hills, purple at eve; we came back from the offices in town, plunged through the tunnel, and hastened to our gardens. We lifted up our eyes to the hills, and our security seemed as immovable as their crests soaring above the little dells that were haunts of ancient peace around their foundations.

Long years of ease dimmed our vision. The church bell rang in vain for many of us. Those who had six whole days in the week to devote to their own pleasure began to devote the seventh also to that same end. The day of peace was becoming a day of unrest.

Thus it was with us when, with the suddenness of a lightning flash, the incredible overtook us.

If only one could put it into words! But words can never express this sudden meeting of man and God when that meeting was least expected.

It was heralded by the booming of guns across the sea. The great city lay slumbering between us and the shore, but over the turrets and spires it came--boom, boom--under the stars. It was war. That far-away echo might not itself be the grim struggle of death, but it was its harbinger. Over all the seas death would soon be riding on the billows. Faces became stern. Good-byes were spoken.

Ah! that word "Good-bye," which we hear every day, and which, like those old coins which have passed from hand to hand so long until at last the image and superscription are gone, had lost all trace of its original meaning, retaining nothing but a faint aroma of courtesy, which sometimes vanished in the inflection of the voice until the word became only a discourteous dismissal--that word was born for us anew. We heard it on the lips of mothers clinging to the hands of their sons, who were summoned away to join their regiments, and as white lips said "Good-bye" to those whose blood was to water the fair fields of France, we suddenly realised what it meant. The word, meaningless yesterday, to-day expressed the greatest wish that the lips of man can utter--God be with thee. On the mother's lips the word was the commitment of her boy to the charge of the encompassing God. Then, when the harvest was ripening on the slopes and the drum sounded "Come," and the young and the strong went forth with a smile to the great harvesting of death, we learned again the meaning of a phrase. But we were yet to learn the meaning of a word.

It is in the darkness that the stars appear and the immeasurable abysses of the infinite universe, and it was when the dusk sank into the deep night that the word rose high in the firmament of life and burned red into our souls. And that word was God.

It seemed so incredible to us that we should need that old word. We were so powerful and so rich. Our faith was strong, but it was in the reeking tube and in the smoking shard, and in the number of our Dreadnoughts. Then all these things seemed to fail us. A nightmare seemed to fall on us--a nightmare which lifted not night or day. Our soldiers were driven back, back, back. They fought by day and marched by night, and we heard in the night watches the beating of their wearied feet, blood stained.

Was there to be no end to that tramp, tramp of men yielding before death? Was the Empire reared by the heroism of generations to crumble under our feet? The ghastly deeds of shame--were they to come to our doors! We looked at our children, and they could not understand the light in our eyes. These deeds of hell--they might occur even now under the shadow of our hills. It was then that the word began to blaze in the heavens. And the word was--God.

We had built a new church in our parish, that those who built pleasant houses on the slopes, fleeing from the restless city that lay below, might have room to worship. But the desire to worship seemed to be dying of attrition. And the old church where the quarriers and farm servants assembled and worshipped in an atmosphere that on a warm day became so thick that one could cut it with a knife--that old church would have been quite big enough to hold all who came, for the instinct to pray seemed to be dying. And many, because the new church was now too big, regretted the old.

Then, suddenly, the new church was filled to the door. Men and women discovered the road leading down to the hollow where the church stands amid the graves of the generations. With wistful faces they turned towards it. While the bell rang they stood in groups among the graves. And if you listened there was but one word--war, war, war. Over and over again just that one word. Until the bell was silent, and they turned into the now crowded church.

As I sat there and cast a glance around me, I felt a sudden amazement. Those who never before had come down the steep brae when the bell was ringing were sitting here and there just as if they had been there every Sunday when the beadle, with head erect, ushers the minister to the pulpit and snips him in.

In the pew in front of me sat a burly man with a head like a dome. He never came to church. When I met him he would stand for an hour in the lane among the hawthorns explaining his views. Prayer was mere superstition. Cosmic laws unchanging and unchangeable held the universe in their grasp. To ask that one of these laws should be altered for a moment that a boon might be conferred on us was to ask that the universe might be shattered. Prayer was immoral, the asking for what could not be granted, and what we knew could not be granted. If he went to church it would be hypocrisy on his part.

And thus it came that when the farm servants came up the Gallows road on their way to church on a summer morning, they often heard the whirr of my friend's mowing machine as he mowed his lawn. It was the way he took of letting the parish know that culture could have no dealings with effete superstitions.

And yet there he sat in front of me with a hymn-book which he picked up from the shelf at the door, where such books are piled for the use of camp-followers. The tune of the opening Psalm was Kilmarnock, and my friend sang it in a way which showed that his mother had trained him well. Then I forgot him, but after a while something like a stifled sob in front of me brought him again to my consciousness.

The minister began to pray for the King's forces "on the sea, on the land, and in the air." My mind was playing round the words "in the air," for they were an intrusion into the familiar order--an innovation! Every invention of man seemed doomed to become a weapon in the hand of the devil. But the prayer went on--for the sailors keeping their watches in the darkness of the night that God might watch over them, that through their unfaltering courage our shores might be inviolate; for the soldiers now facing the enemy, grappling with death, that God might succour them, covering their heads in the day of battle. "Break Thou down the fierce power of our enemies," cried the minister suddenly, "that with full hearts we may praise Thee, the God of our fathers."

A great hush fell on the crowded church. The shut eyes saw the red battlefields, with the lines swaying to and fro, while the shrapnel burst and the aeroplanes whirred in the smoke of the cannon. The cries of men suddenly smitten smote on the inner ear. It was then that the great thing happened.

All of a sudden the voice broke, recovered, and broke again, and the minister was swept away from the well-ordered, beautiful words he had prepared. He began to speak of the stricken hearts at home, of fathers and mothers to whom their sons would never return, of women in empty houses with their husbands laid in nameless graves, of little children who would never learn to say "Father" ... It was then that my friend stifled a sob. There was Something after all, Someone greater than cosmic forces, greater than law--with an eye to pity and an arm to save. There was God.

And my friend's son was with the famous regiment that was swaying to and fro, grappling with destiny. He was helpless--and there was only God to appeal to. There comes an hour in life when the heart realises that instinct is mightier far than that logic which is, after all is said, only the last refuge of the feeble-minded. There came like the sudden lifting of a curtain the vision of a whole nation--nay, of races girdling the whole earth--to whom the same high experience has come. Everywhere the sanctuaries filled, the eyes turned upward, for instinct is mightier than reason. The smoke of battle has revealed the face of God.

With us in the parish churches of Scotland the great thing is the sermon. But to-day it is different; the great thing now is prayer. And the minister preached about prayer. He set forth in clear and ordered language, with a felicitous phrase now and then lighting up his sentences, that prayer was not a mere relic of fanatical superstition but a mighty power. He discussed with a wealth of learning whether God had shut Himself in behind a prison-house of cosmic laws that made it impossible for Him to answer prayer. He reasoned the worshippers cold. But there in that hour reason was bound to give way before intuition.

"If I am free," cried the preacher, "to rush to the help of my child when he crieth in terror; and if, when the creatures of His hand cry to God He is bound and cannot help or soothe, then He is poorer than I, so great a thing is freedom." Prayer was not mere spiritual gymnastics. A God immured in cold laws, barred for ever from the play of love or tenderness, would be the one being in the universe most to be pitied. The Creator did not sit deaf and dumb on the Throne of indifference answering nothing, doing nothing. History was the proof that Righteousness was throned at the core of the universe, for at the last right ever prevailed.

This was clear, convincing, but cold. Only at rare intervals does the minister of our parish give way to passion. Suddenly there came a wave of emotion. He flung his head back, and his eyes glowed. His voice vibrated through the church. "When I think," he exclaimed, "of the things that have been done with the name of God on men's lips; of atrocities such as the unspeakable Turk never perpetrated; of war waged not upon to-day but upon the centuries of faith that reared great cathedrals now in flames; of women and children laid upon the reeking altars of human passion; and all this in the name of culture, the culture of the superman who deems himself superior to the Ten Commandments--then, I say, may God grant that the culture which beareth such fruit may perish from off the face of the earth. Prayer for the triumph of such a cause cannot be in Christ's name...."

But the preacher never got any further.

This was what happened, and I am afraid some will not believe me, for a Scotsman in church is a stoic, motionless and dumb, as he listens to the Word. But all the traditions of the parish were snapped in a second. In the side gallery sat the General, sitting as he always does with his back to the minister. This he does that he may mark who are in church of his servants and tenants, and who absent.

When I read of the nobles in France who went to the scaffold with a jest in the days of the Terror, I always think of the General. He is that sort of man. To-day, little by little, as the sermon went on, he turned round. At last he was facing the pulpit. His gleaming eyes were fixed on the preacher. His son was dead. And when the words rang through the church, may God grant that such culture may perish ... the General sprang to his feet. "Amen" rang his voice through the church.

There was a sudden movement; as one man they all rose to their feet. Hands were lifted up to heaven. "Amen," "Amen," they cried--and then there rose a cheer--muffled, but still a cheer. In the pulpit the words died on the preacher's lips. He seemed as one suddenly stricken. He gazed bewildered over the sea of faces. They sank back into the pews as though suddenly ashamed.

The last man to sit was my friend, who stood to the last with uplifted hand. I think it was he who cried "Hear, hear"--the only sign he gave of his long absence from church. The sermon was never finished. The preacher in a low voice said, "Let us pray." And he humbled himself as one who enters the valley of humiliation. And then he gave out this psalm:--

This psalm as we sang it that day was a paean of triumph. The clouds suddenly broke. We heard our fathers singing it in their dark days. The melody wedded to the words soared in exultant triumph, wailed like the cry of the shingle swept by the surf; the sighing of the wind over the heather was in it, and the hissing of the storm through the spray. It was fierce as devouring death; it was gentle as a mother crooning over her child. It put iron into the blood of our fathers as they sang it.

It was nerved by such a hymn that the sailors of Queen Elizabeth swept the main, that the Puritans wrestled with principalities and powers, that a handful of moors-men levelled despotism and tyranny to the ground. It swept through our blood like flame as we in our day of stress now sang it. We, too, would pull down strongholds and turn to flight the armies of the alien. In all ages the cause of freedom triumphed, and that cause was ours. We had entered on conflict with clean hands and, God helping us, we would wage it with clean hands. The clouds suddenly broke and the light of victory irradiated our faces. There came overwhelmingly the realisation that there was a power behind us mightier far than sword or shell--even the Lord God Omnipotent. And that was how we made the greatest of all discoveries--we found God.

Yesterday morning I went early to the station, and there in the booking office I found my friend talking to the ticket-collector. The ticket-collector is a philosopher, and he comes to church, because he loves the old psalm tunes. But when one of our parishioners who goes now and then to Keswick comes to the booking office, the ticket-collector calls him in and reasons with him gently.

"Mahn, there's naething in it," he says; "I can tell you for a fact there's naething in it--all a whack of fables." "Some day you'll find out to your cost that there's something in it," flashes the man from Keswick. "If ye wad only reid philosophee," says the ticket-collector, "ye would ken better." But to-day my friend and the ticket-collector had their heads close together, and I only heard the conclusion of their argument. "Mahn," said the ticket-collector, "I am beginning to think there may be something in it."

And in the evening near the top of the brae I saw the General standing erect with his little cane in his hand. He was talking to the shoemaker, the greatest Radical in the parish--one of a party with which the General has no dealings. But they talked like brothers. For the shoemaker has a son fighting at the front, and his heart is sore troubled within him. And the General's son is dead. And as I came up the brae I saw the General putting his hand on the shoemaker's shoulder and turn away, walking slowly up the brae. The old shoemaker saluted and came down the brae. There was a tender look in the old man's eye as he greeted me.

In our parish we have truly made the greatest of all discoveries. We have found God, and, finding Him, we have found each other. The man who in his madness kindled the lurid flames of war little dreamed of this fire which he kindled.

The Revival of Patriotism

There has come to us in these days a revival of the spirit of patriotism. That revival has come when it was sorely needed. In days of unclouded prosperity other gods called forth our devotion and enthusiasm, but the God of our Fathers who made us a great nation and sent us to sow the seeds of righteousness beside all waters, bestowing upon us empire and might, was well-nigh forgotten.

For the new man "words like Empire, Patriotism, Duty, Honour, Glory and God" had little or no meaning. Causes for which the fathers died could not evoke an added heart-beat from their sons. They cared so little for the mighty empire which they inherited that they contemplated the bloodshed of civil war--so hot was their zeal for party and so cold their love for the state.

It was necessary that discipline should come. And that discipline came, shaking the very foundations of our national life. Its first fruit is that the smouldering fires of patriotism have broken forth once more into bright flame; and that everywhere the hearts of the people have been stirred by the call to arise and endure hardness that the goodly heritage of empire perish not. And preachers in a thousand pulpits have sounded the trumpet-note of duty and of patriotism.

It has been said that preachers should aim at making the churches sanctuaries of peace, within whose walls the echoes of the guns and the cries of the perishing should not penetrate. Some have even said that Christianity, so far from fostering the spirit of patriotism, is in reality hostile to it. "Patriotism itself as a duty," says Lecky, "has never found any place in Christian ethics, and strong theological feeling has usually been directly hostile to its growth."

No doubt there is something to be said for that view. The attitude of the early Christians towards the Roman Empire was not that of patriotism. The clear shining of the heavenly Jerusalem so dazzled their eyes that this world, and the temporal empire occupying its stage, seemed but as a shadow. Their devotion to the Unseen King left little room for loyalty to the earthly ruler. In the glorious consciousness of his citizenship in heaven, it was a small thing in the estimation of St. Paul that he was also a Roman citizen--but he did not forget it. But when the earthly ruler persecuted, and burnt, and threw the Christians to the lions, or slaughtered them to make a Roman holiday, then the poor victims cannot be blamed for not being patriots.

The question whether patriotism is a fruit of Christianity must be answered not by reference to what men did in the name of their religion--for men are fallible--but by the precept and example of the Founder of Christianity. He was a Jew, and of all races the Jew was the most patriotic. An exile by the rivers of Babylon, the Israelite refused to forget Zion. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning"--that was the cry wherewith his unconquerable soul faced an overwhelming destiny. And in this respect Jesus Christ was true to His race. He was a patriot. He worshipped in the synagogues, and went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, because He loved the national institutions of His country. One note of true patriotism is anguish. It is when love is great that the folly and sin of the person beloved pierce the heart.

The patriotism of the Founder of Christianity expressed itself in a cry of agony which has reverberated through the centuries--"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." That cry is the measure of His patriotism.

Judged, then, by the example of its Founder, Christianity must produce the spirit of love and loyalty towards one's own country. There was a patriotism before Christianity, but it was that of arrogance, aggression, and self-glorification. It was a patriotism which meted out only contempt to other races. To the Jew the Greek was only a Gentile dog; to the Greek the Jew was only a contemptible Barbarian.

But the patriotism which is animated by the Christian spirit is far other. It is not the vaunting of pride nor the shouting of vulgar ditties. It seeks the glory of its own country, but the glory it seeks is the glory of the greater service rendered to humanity. Conscious of its own defects, it does not condemn others. With eyes cleansed from prejudice, it beholds the good in other races. It seeks the first place for its own nation because it acts the noblest, loves the best. All the elements which make up the strong power of patriotism--love of family, love of neighbours, love of race, love of country--Christianity has purified them all. True patriotism is, then, a fruit of the Christian religion, a virtue which falls to be inculcated by the Church. If Christianity be the projection of the Christ-life into the midst of every generation, then the life that reflects the beauty of Christ must be a life animated by the deepest love of one's country.

It was Dean Stanley who rendered God thanks in Paisley Abbey for that Scotsmen were "citizens of an Empire so great, members of a Church so free." In the building up of the Empire Scotsmen have borne a great share of toil and peril. In other days the fires of patriotism burned brightly. The cry of our fathers was "my country right or wrong." But we feel not quite so sure of our country being always in the right. The passion of Christianity is an ethical passion. Christian patriotism demands national righteousness. To keep patriotism as an ardent fire we must be convinced that our country stands for righteousness. And in this day of our ordeal we have this certainty to uphold us, that we are fighting for the right.

It was not in defiance of Christianity, but in its defence, that we drew the sword. For this war sprang from an unbridled lust of conquest to which a whole nation surrendered itself. But before surrendering to the passions of war the ideals of Christ were first forsaken by our enemy. A new law was promulgated: "Become hard, O my brethren, for we are emancipated and the world belongs to us." New beatitudes were declared: "Ye have heard how ... it was said, Blessed are the meek ... but I say unto you, Blessed are the valiant, for they shall make the earth their throne ... Ye have read, Blessed are the peacemakers, but I say unto you, Blessed are the war-makers, for they shall be called, if not the children of Jehovah, the children of Odin, who is greater than Jehovah."

Out of this new gospel, the gospel of Odin, has sprung a war of extermination--exiled nations, devastated kingdoms, desolated colleges, ruined cathedrals, and multitudes of women and children "left nothing but their eyes to weep with." The name of God has been invoked over unspeakable barbarities--but the God thus invoked is not the Christian God. It is Odin in whose name these things are done. What we are fighting for is for the Christian ideal against Odin--for the law of truth and mercy against the reign of falsehood of word and bond, and of merciless barbarity. We have bared the breast to death that there may sit on the throne of the world's soul, not a ruthless tribal god, but the God of Fatherhood and Love whom Jesus Christ revealed. And in waging that war we have ground to hope that the God of righteousness is on our side.

If we have not had the name of God constantly on our lips it is not because we do not feel that we are fighting His battle, but because He is so great, the Lord of Heaven and Earth before whom we are but as dust, that we shrink from coupling His great name with ours. "Are you sure that God is on your side?" Abraham Lincoln was asked in the dark days of the American Civil War. "I have not thought about that," he replied; "but I am very anxious to know whether we are on God's side." And when the causes of this war are examined the assurance grows stronger and stronger that we are on God's side. That is why the whole nation has been welded into the unity and consistency of polished steel; why the fire of patriotism burns in our midst with an intenser heat than ever before.

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