"I have never doubted one great thing. I believe in the soul and its immortality. In God's sight all souls are equal, because they are part of Him. From birth that soul is struggling to inform the body, in all its functions. It never tires; it never despairs. I dare to affirm that it is most active when body and mind are fighting against it, spurning it, denying, perhaps, its very existence or power. I affirm, further, that this quickening spirit within us may be least potent to achieve its purpose when body and mind are stagnant, steeped in apathy, content with the things of this earth, food, drink, clothes, money and—pleasure.
"Try to believe, for a moment, that your souls are omnipotently right. In the text I have chosen, Bishop Berkeley uses the word 'heart.' I take it that he meant mind. Are your minds right? Are they working in harmony with your souls? Each of you is called upon to answer that question in relation to this world-war, and what that war may demand of each of us. It is the duty of some of you to go, not grudgingly, not because pressure is brought to bear upon you, not because you want to pose before others as more valiant than they are, not for any selfish reason whatever, but in the same spirit which informed the apostles, men like yourselves, hard workers, absorbed, as you are, in their own affairs, who abandoned everything with one unswerving purpose before them—the regeneration of a world in pain.
"A great Cause is animating all of us.
"This war may inspire some of you to actions undreamed of in days of peace, to a valour which you cannot measure if you would, because the hour provoking it has not yet come. Sooner or later that hour comes to the greatest and the humblest. And the manner of our rising to it may shape anew our lives and other lives, and determine our progress here and hereafter. From the cradle to the grave, each of us carries a sleeping energy capable of immense expansion, which wakes when the great opportunity presents itself.
"Some of you, I daresay, are unconscious of this latent power. We don't expect much of a child, do we? A child eats and plays and sleeps. But children of the tenderest years have performed amazing, incredible deeds. Why? Because of this Divine fund of spiritual force. And we who are past middle-age; how difficult it is to say, with any certainty, how early we began, resolutely, to exercise what is called the human will.
"I ask you again, are your hearts right? I repeat again that your souls are right. Obey the voice of conscience, and it will be well with you. It is the duty of some of us to stay here in Nether-Applewhite. I wish with all my heart that I could go, but I must stay. A very solemn obligation rests with the women. I have never doubted the immense influence consciously or unconsciously exercised by you women over men. Are your hearts right? Do you realise, thinking, as you must do, of your dependence upon your bread-winners, that you may be hindering instead of helping those whom you love; that, in urging them to stay at home, you may be taking from them an opportunity to rise to their full stature, never to be offered again?
"What does Bishop Berkeley mean by true patriotism?
"Are the Germans true patriots? Let us admit that they are passionate lovers of their Fatherland. But their patriotism would seem to be an insensate fury of self-interest, shrinking from no outrage to be inflicted on others, provided only that the material end be accomplished—world-dominion. I cannot bring myself to speak, before young women and children, of the atrocities deliberately wreaked upon helpless Belgians. They are so abominable that details are unprintable in clean newspapers.
"Is, then, their form of patriotism true?
"What form will your patriotism take? Will it be true, springing to life and strength, out of a right mind inspired by the soul; or will it pattern itself after the Prussian model, concerning itself with material gain regardless of spiritual loss?