"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain": for at last the earth is filled with "the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."
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.