V
GOD THE CHAMPION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS[7]
"O Lord, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, Thou art God from everlasting and world without end."—Ps. xc. 1, 2.
The story is told of Archbishop Temple that as he was walking away from the House of Lords, after the defeat of the Bill he had brought in for the advancement of Temperance, some well-meaning person was endeavouring to comfort him in his natural disappointment, although, needless to say, he was himself as strong and brave and confident as ever. Was he looking, asked the questioner, to the verdict of posterity? No. Was he looking to the gradual change of public opinion? No. Was he looking to a verdict in another House which would influence the opinion of the house which he had just left? No. What was it he looked to, then? "I look to God."
It was the answer of a true, brave, and believing Christian man; if the God of the Christians exists at all, He is so strong and so powerful and so wise that to be on His side is worth all other aid in the world, and to defy God, apart from its blasphemy, is the most colossal mistake which can be made.
There is a sense, of course, in which the cynic was right when he said that God is on the side of the strongest battalions, for the raising of those battalions means a self-sacrifice and a self-denial which God honours and recognizes; but to imagine that those battalions by themselves represent God, and can be used successfully to further causes which God has beforehand denounced and proclaimed, is to make, in the long-run, the mistake of the ages.
Now we are keeping Trafalgar Day in a most critical week of the greatest war waged in the world for a thousand years. I have visited the long battle-line mile by mile in Flanders. I have also seen the grey Dreadnoughts watching, watching, watching day and night; it is idle bluster for the enemy to say that the ships of the Fleet are hiding from them; they know only too well where to find them when they want to meet them. As in great Nelson's day, the Fleet is the girdle of the Empire; the seas which Nelson swept are clear to-day; not an enemy flag dare show itself from one hemisphere to the other; under the mighty ægis of the Grand Fleet, transports in hundreds carry troops all over the world, food-ships pour in from every port; even when the submarine danger was formidable there was no appreciable slackening of the wonderfully brave mercantile marine, and now that the Navy has that peril, too, well in hand, men sail the seas to-day, except for the necessary restrictions with regard to contraband, with greater freedom and security than they sailed the seas long after the Battle of Trafalgar.
In this great conflict on what are we to found our hopes? To what are we to look? Are we to trust only to the strength of our battleships and the perfect training of our sailors? Are we to look to the new armies produced with such marvellous skill by Lord Kitchener's patient hand? Are we to look to the three millions whose services will be asked for, and no doubt offered, in the next six weeks? No doubt we are to look to all these things; God does only help those who help themselves. But, standing before you as your Bishop, I tell you frankly that my belief in the final victory of our arms is founded on something far beyond these things. I am full of unshakable confidence and hope, because, like Archbishop Temple, I look to God. I try to say with the psalmist every morning:
"And now, Lord, what is my hope?
Truly my hope is in Thee."
"Lord, Thou had been our refuge from
one generation to another."
Notice I do not claim that God is some tribal deity who with partial favouritism supports our side; but I claim, with the great Lincoln, that we are on the side of God.
1. I do so in the first place (and this comes out the more clearly the more you study the previous history of the question), because this is a wantonly provoked war, planned and desired and finally launched by one Power, and one Power alone—that is, Germany.
Now, if God is a God who "makes men to be of one mind in a house," if He made of one blood every nation in the world, and meant them to dwell at peace together; if the teaching of Christ is really the teaching of God's own Son—then the nation which wantonly plans and provokes war, and war on such a scale, must be against God.
You have only to read two such books as "J'Accuse," said to be written by a German, and "Ordeal by Battle," by Mr. Oliver, to see that this is no idle assertion or party statement, but the literal truth. If I mistake not, "J'Accuse" will be for all time the accusing finger of the civilised world pointing at Germany as Nathan pointed at David, saying, "Thou art the man"; and as to "Ordeal by Battle," while it suggests many political questions which I should not think of discussing here and now, as to why we were so unprepared after the warnings given us, the fact stands out as plainly as daylight that Russia, France, and Great Britain one and all made every effort short of national dishonour to keep the peace.
This, then, is my first ground for claiming that we are on the side of God. Those who wantonly provoke war act against God, and those who honestly try to prevent war act on His side. But this is only the beginning of the matter.
2. There has always, up to now, been a kind of chivalry in war which has lighted up the more terrible aspects of it. All through history there have been bright flashes of this chivalry even among non-Christians: the conduct of Saladin in the Crusades, the chivalrous bearing of the Black Prince to the captured French King, and many similar incidents, testify to the fact that you need not cease to be a Christian or a gentleman because you have to fight. Many of these laws of chivalry were embodied by the great Christian nations in the Hague Convention; certain modes of warfare were not to be allowed; women and children must be tenderly and chivalrously treated; the wounded of the other side must be treated as fallen comrades; the dead must be decently buried; the Red Cross must be respected; civilians must be spared; the rights of neutrals guarded.
No one can doubt that God must have approved of such humane regulations, for they are all founded upon the New Testament; they are a softening, and a valuable softening, of the horrors of war.
All other nations began the war by scrupulously respecting them: Mr. Stanley Washburn, who has closely followed the Russian armies, described the kindness and consideration which they displayed to the peasantry of Poland; our own soldiers have never even been accused by the enemy of violating any of them, and one of the Generals at the Front told me with pride that, though his great brigade had been out from the beginning, no accusation of injuring a French woman or girl had been brought against a single member of it.
But, on the other hand, while time shall last the iniquities committed in Belgium by the Germans, as attested by Lord Bryce's Committee, will ring through history; the very invasion of Belgium itself was a breach of international faith. A friend of mine saw with his own eyes, while a prisoner among the Germans, forty civilians shot in cold blood in one town alone; the gallant Cardinal-Archbishop Mercier has recorded a damning list of other murders in his famous charge. The sinking of the Lusitania will always stand out as one of the greatest crimes in history, although, if I am not mistaken, the judicial murder of a poor Englishwoman[8] for harbouring some poor refugees will run it hard in the opinion of the civilised world. There is one thing about that last incident which perhaps was not taken into account by those who perpetrated the crime: it will settle the matter once for all about recruiting in Great Britain; there will be no need now of compulsion.
I wonder what Nelson would have said if he had been told that an Englishwoman had been shot in cold blood by a member of any other nation; he would have made more than the diplomatic inquiries which have been made by a great neutral nation into this crime, right and proper as those inquiries are. He would have made his inquiries with the thunder of the guns of the British Fleet, and pressed the question home with the Nelson touch which won Trafalgar, as indeed our Fleet at this moment is only too ready to do. But is it possible that there is one young man in England to-day who will sit still under this monstrous wrong?
There is a famous old rhyme which has come down from the time of the imprisonment of the seven Bishops who risked their lives for the liberties of Britain, as, please God, the Bishops of to-day are still prepared to do:
"And shall they scorn Tre, Pol, and Pen,
And shall Trelawny die?
There's twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why."
The spirit of Nelson must indeed have died out of our young men, which it certainly has not, if the answer is not the same to-day; the three millions of new recruits asked for will be there. Why was she put to death? Why was she murdered? Three thousand thousand Englishmen—ay, and Scotsmen and Irishmen, too—will know the reason why.
My second reason, then, for trusting to God is that, according to the whole revelation of His character and will, His curse is on the nation, however disciplined and efficient, that tramples underfoot and openly defies the laws of chivalry which once relieved the horrors of war; and that His ultimate blessing must be upon the nation or nations which, however foolishly unprepared, and therefore, for a time, suffering from the want of preparation, in the main are fighting for the weak against the strong.
3. But if this is the negative side what about the positive? I am almost ashamed to ask and answer the question in public again, "For what are we fighting?" If we are fighting for the freedom of the world, for the right to live for the small nations of the earth, for nationality against pan-German tyranny, for international honour as the essential condition of a future brotherhood of nations, then the God who has been the refuge from generation to generation of the down-trodden and oppressed, who planted in us the love of liberty, and who has been the champion of the free, must be the God on whose side we are to-day.
4. We are right, then, to look for victory and help to a God who through one generation to another has shown Himself a lover of peace and chivalry and mercy and liberty, against a delight in war, against brutality and massacre and tyranny; yet we should have ill-read the lessons of Trafalgar Day if we were to stop here.
Nelson never dreamt that God was on his side in the sense that he could relax for an instant his vigilance, or ruin his whole settled plan by impatience, or win a final victory without the self-sacrifice and trust of the nation behind him. If we do look to God, then we must remember this bracing fact that "God helps those who help themselves."
It is a far-reaching saying that the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light; certainly it is a formidable fact to be faced that for a thoroughly bad cause, carried out in a thoroughly bad way, the authors of this greatest crime in history have succeeded in evoking from the hard-working people of Germany, who are under the impression, doubtless, that they are "saving the Fatherland," a far more universal spirit of organised and efficient self-sacrifice than in the most glorious cause ever entrusted to man has yet[9] been evoked from all in these islands. It was one of our great statesmen who truly said that he feared what he called the "potato spirit" in Germany more than all their guns and shells—the spirit, that is, which was content with potato bread, content to make any sacrifice, if only their cause would be victorious; and it is unwise as well as ungenerous not to recognise the gallantry with which both the individual sailors and soldiers of the enemy have fought.
To look to God, then, puts a great responsibility upon those who do so; it means to rise to the level of the sacrifice of God. If it is true that, as you will remember, another great English statesman once quoted on a famous occasion, "Who sups with the devil must have a long spoon," then, Who fights with God must have a high standard. Is this a time, asked the prophet of the trembling Gehazi, to receive oliveyards, vineyards, menservants and maidservants? Is this a time, we may ask to-day, to haunt night clubs[10] or to spend separation allowances in drinking? Is this a time to ignore Sunday and turn your back upon God's House of Prayer? Is this a time to spend anything which can be saved for the nation on personal comfort or extravagant dress? The nation that looks to God must come back to God; it must come back to God at once and come back to Him for good; it is a question whether we at home have yet as a nation deserved the victory which our righteous cause demands. The sailors of the Fleet have deserved it; the soldiers in the trenches have earned it; and when the nation at home has equally deserved it, all will receive together their well-merited reward.
5. But more than this; those that look to God must definitely and persistently seek God's help. How many of those here to-day pray earnestly and persistently to God for help and grace? How many plead in the greatest service of all the one Great Sacrifice, once offered for the sins of the whole world?
"Look, Father, look on His anointed Face,
And only look on us as found in Him;
Look not on our misusings of Thy grace,
Our prayer so languid and our faith so dim:
For, lo! between our sins and their reward
We set the Passion of Thy Son our Lord."
How constantly the faith of our fellow-countrymen amounts to little more than a vague Deism, instead of a living faith in an Incarnate Christ. They are learning more than that in the trenches, and I hope also that the same truth is being revealed to those who remain in the broad sea. These beautiful lines, entitled "Christ in Flanders," the Editor of the Spectator gave me leave to reproduce in the diocesan magazine:
"We had forgotten You, or very nearly—
You did not seem to touch us very nearly.
Of course we thought about You now and then,
Especially in any time of trouble:
We knew that You were good in time of trouble—
But we are very ordinary men.
"And there were always other things to think of—
There's lots of things a man has got to think of—
His work, his home, his pleasure, and his wife;
And so we only thought of You on Sunday—
Sometimes, perhaps, not even on a Sunday—
Because there's always lots to fill one's life.
"And, all the while, in street or lane or byway—
In country lane, in city street or byway—
You walked among us, and we did not see.
Your feet were bleeding as You walked our pavements—
How did we miss Your footprints on our pavements—
Can there be other folk as blind as we?
"Now we remember, over here in Flanders—
(It isn't strange to think of You in Flanders)—
This hideous warfare seems to make things clear.
We never thought about You much in England—
But now that we are far away from England,
We have no doubts, we know that You are here.
"You helped us pass the jest along the trenches—
Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches—
You touched its ribaldry and made it fine.
You stood beside us in our pain and weakness—
We're glad to think You understood our weakness;
Somehow it seems to help us not to whine.
"We think about You kneeling in the Garden—
Ah, God! the agony of that dread Garden—
We know You prayed for us upon the Cross.
If anything could make us glad to bear it,
'Twould be the knowledge that You willed to bear it—
Pain—death—the uttermost of human loss.
"Though we forgot You, You will not forget us—
We feel so sure that You will not forget us—
But stay with us until this dream is past.
And so we ask for courage, strength, and pardon—
Especially, I think, we ask for pardon—
And that You'll stand beside us to the last."
What it comes to is the old truth which we have learnt from Foreign Missions—the centre must be converted by the circumference; it is the self-sacrifice of its Mission work abroad which has saved the Church from "fatty degeneration of the heart" at home; it is the growing change of mind among the defenders of our country which must permeate and ennoble the country itself.
Do I look to God? But I could only see Him in Christ, for He says Himself—and it is either the greatest blasphemy or the greatest truth in the world—"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me."
Trafalgar Day, 1915, then, should be not only the turning-point of the world's history, but the inauguration of a new Britain. If the war stopped at this moment, should we really be a changed nation?—would not the old miserable internal disputes break out again?—might we not again be as we were in July, 1914, on the verge of civil war in Ireland, of a revolution among women, and of the greatest industrial strike of modern times? I come back at the end of so many months of the war to the picture which I tried to hold up to London in its first week—"Facing the war is drinking the cup"—"The cup which My Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" We have to repeat the very words of our Lord Himself.
Have we drunk the cup, and drunk it to its dregs? Only then will the angels come and strengthen us for victory; we shall deserve victory then, and we shall be ready for it, for the cup which we shall drink will be the cup to which the Son of God Himself put His lips, and the courage and fortitude of Gethsemane leads on to the overwhelming victory of Easter Day.
It is then "Our Day" in an even deeper sense than those mean who so rightly ask our alms to-day for those splendid sister societies of St. John and the Red Cross. Of course we shall pour out into their lap, for the sake of our wounded heroes at the Front, all that we can; but it is "Our Day" because it is the day when the nation is tested to the roots of its being. "If thou hadst known, even thou, in the midst of this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes." They are not hid from our eyes yet; it is still Our Day; but let it pass, and it has gone for ever.