V
But to return to God means not only a transfigured soul in a transfigured world, it means also a transfigured life. To turn the face Godward is to change one's ideal, and the change of ideal eventuates in a change of life. When the new light illumines the secret places, the soul, quickened by the fellowship of God, sees the unclean with new eyes, and sets itself to conquer whatsoever is unworthy of God. National repentance with us will realise itself in peopling the waste places, in emptying the slums into the country, in destroying the vested interests in the vice of the people, in making a healthy and beautiful life the birthright of every citizen. For the Church that will give itself to the realisation of this repentance there will never be the stagnation of monotony. Life will be electric with conflict, triumphant at last with victory.
It is the thrill and romance of life—this experience of the soul to which we are summoned. It heralds every great day of God. 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,' is the herald of every dawn. It is a message to be preached with yearning and wonder and love, and not with clenched fists. It can be preached with fierceness, but that will little avail. The prophet can call to the people: 'Return, for the precipice is in front of you and destruction yawneth at your feet—return.' But terror is feeble to move the heart. Better far is it to call to the people as Hosea called to Israel: 'Return, for God is behind you; your own God who saved you again and again when there was none to help, who bore you and carried you through the terrible wilderness.... Return, God is waiting for you, just behind you.' The gospel of repentance is the gospel of the love of God. When the soul realises the love and the tenderness and the glory of God waiting to enrich and save—then the soul will return. The greatest adventure in life is just this: the way of repentance leading back to God. If only the Church would voyage forth anew on this enchanted sea, the day of its power would again dawn.
VI
If there be, thus, the wonder of riches untold, the gleam of virgin peaks summoning our feet to climb, a glimpse of the land afar, and the clear shining of God's face in the call to repent, let us not forget that there is also something very terrible bound up with it. And the terrible thing is that it is possible so to disregard it that at last it becomes impossible to obey it. In vain did the prophet call, 'O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God,' for their paralysed wills had become incapable of effort. 'Their deeds will not let them return,' was at last the prophet's mournful verdict. To every nation there comes, after long decline, the stage when recovery is impossible. When the warnings of the wise have been flouted and disregarded; when the prophets have not been stoned but treated with mere contempt; when there is no discernment because there is no longer any consciousness of sin; when no call of the divine is audible any longer even when God speaks by terrible things and the heavens are shaken; when the hearts steeped in self and surrendered to the flesh can see no longer the beauty of purity,—then the call to repentance is heard as one hears voices in sleep. Their deeds will not let them return.
It is not very far away from us that last irrevocable stage when national repentance becomes impossible. A nation such as this, that spends over half a million pounds sterling a day on alcohol when the greatest crisis in the world's history requires all its strength and all its resources; that turns grain into a waste when food is so dear that the poor can scarcely buy; that cries out for economy and offers daily at the shrine of Bacchus the ransom of a province; that suffers vice to wound and slay its children, narcotising its conscience the while; that in God's terrible day empties its churches and crowds its music-halls; that sacrifices its children to the Moloch of its pleasure, or to the greed of its property exploiters; that suffers its people to be massed in slums until the body-politic becomes a gangrene,—for such a people the last stage, where no return is possible, cannot be far removed. Arise, O Israel, and return to the Lord your God, ere the day of repentance sinks into night!