Thus we find that the days when the fires of patriotism burned brightest were ever those in which God held sway over the nation. It was with God that the sailors of Queen Elizabeth swept the main, that the soldiers of Wellington hurled the enemy far from the shores that face England—they were fighting not only for England but for England's God.
The testimony of history is this, that patriotism cannot maintain its power if once it be divorced from religion. Let God's face be veiled and lost and everything is lost. "Without God nothing, with God everything," says the ancient Celtic proverb, and all ages testify to its truth. And the last proof of it is now before our eyes in the condition of France.
A hundred years ago France dominated Europe, erected thrones and deposed kings at its will. But little by little France lost the vision of God, until at last M. Viviani celebrated the final triumph over the Church in 1907 by exclaiming: "With one magnificent gesture we have extinguished the lights of heaven, which none shall rekindle." France, in the words of its present Prime Minister, "extinguished the lights of heaven," but in so doing it extinguished something else. For to-day that nation, that not so long ago dominated Europe, can only protect its capital city by the help of the two nations which have not yet extinguished the lights of heaven.
Without God patriotism becomes impotent, for God is the source of that moral law, conformity to which means for a nation life, and defiance of which means the degeneration that leadeth to destruction. With the departure from God came moral decay and racial suicide. The hope of France is this, that through the descent of the nation into the valley of death the lights of heaven may be once more kindled; the hope of Britain, that these same lights may shine more brightly.
The spirit of patriotism will again vivify the nation when we seek after God. In years of prosperity we have forgotten our high calling. We have pursued vanities and forgotten the living God. When we again realise our calling and our election as instruments in the hand of God for the establishment of His Kingdom of Righteousness over all the earth, our hearts will be filled with ardour, and we shall face whatever perils may assail us strong in the assurance that the Omnipotent God is in our midst and that nothing can resist His will.
And this true patriotism will mean the salvation of the nation. For it will strive to realise at home that righteousness which alone exalteth a nation. Its first task will be to raise the life at home nearer to God, for we cannot raise the world to higher levels than that on which we ourselves stand. The vision of the new Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven will again flame before our eyes. "And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride for her husband."
That new Jerusalem is not a city remote in the inaccessible heights, but a city which descends and permeates the material city now so polluted by sin, until it becomes the "holy city," with the law of God obeyed and the will of God done in it. Its citizens shall walk its streets, pure in heart, seeing God everywhere. "And they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations into it." There the nations shall be one in the streets of the city of God, all their contendings forgotten in the sense of their brotherhood, following the one ideal, obeying the one law, loving each other in the love of God. They will strive then as to who shall bring the greatest glory within the compass of its walls, and that will be the only striving.
That is the ideal, that we should become a nation so permeated by the spirit of God, so brought into obedience to His will, that our cities shall become holy cities, even as the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven. When we shall set ourselves to realise that ideal once more, then will the nation evoke the devotion of its citizens, for devotion to the nation will also be devotion to God.
It was that ideal which fired the patriotism of the Jew. The same ideal alone will make our patriotism glow as a white flame. When the vision of the Supreme Ruler whose throne is established in righteousness once more blazes forth before the people, then once more the throb of patriotism and the passion to make righteous law operative to the ends of the earth will stir the heart, and the manhood of the race will once more thrill with the call summoning to service and to sacrifice. The answering shout will everywhere arise—For God and the King.