In this great Day of God, things are beginning to appear as they are, and not as they are represented. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." That simple and sincere Christian, the Czar of Russia, went to the heart of things at the beginning of the war, when he gave that as the motto of the war to his troops; and every boy since then, who, as depicted in the picture entitled "The Great Sacrifice," has laid down his life, with his dead hand resting on the foot of the crucifix, has sealed with his life the great saying of Sir Henry Newbolt:
"Life is not life to him that dares not die,
And death not death to him that dares to live."
It comes round, then, to this: the Advent picture is not a mockery; it is not a mirage in the desert; it is a true picture let down from heaven to cheer us to-day with a prophecy of what some day shall be.
Let that picture at once encourage us while it shames us.
As we watch it, away with all those foolish old sayings about "not believing in Foreign Missions," "sending money out of the country," "converting Whitechapel and Bethnal Green before we attempt China or Japan"; for the knowledge of the Lord—before war can be no more—is to cover the whole earth as the waters cover the sea.
But, on the other hand, let it encourage us:
"Far out of sight while sorrows still enfold us
Lies the fair country where our hearts abide,
And of its joys is nought more wondrous told us
But these few words—We shall be satisfied."
We may behold the land, although it may seem at present "very far off."
Once crush for ever the revived paganism, which perhaps for the last time has challenged the supreme claim of Christ to His own world; when that is in the dust, once astonish the world by the beauty of a chivalry and Christian manhood which shall be seen by contrast to be as day compared to night, and light to darkness; once "placard Christ" through every tribe in Africa and Asia, and preach Him effectively in every island of the sea; and as the last hand slipped down in death the flagstaff of the Black Flag at Omdurman, so shall the last hand at last be lifted, in this world, of one man against a brother-man in fratricidal strife, and the great picture shall be true at last: