And when we pray, our voices rising as one, "Thy kingdom come," we can see that kingdom coming through blood and tears, cleansing the foul places and establishing peace on everlasting foundations. It is a new day that has dawned for us—a day in which we stand united as the subjects of the one King, as the sons of the one God—and the things that separated us one from another are swept away. What the conferring of the wise found so difficult to achieve, the roaring of the guns has accomplished. God teacheth his people by sending them through the purifying fires.
In these prayers in St. Giles' there is a directness which shows that we are there for a definite purpose. We no longer use qualifying words. We cry for victory. There is a bloodless form of prayer which some use and which sends the worshipper away with an aching heart. It is the prayer that never prays directly for victory. "Thy will be done," it prays, in the spirit of submission. But prayer is not submission; it is a wrestling. In other days our fathers wrestled in prayer and prevailed. "I spent the night in prayer," wrote Oliver Cromwell, in critical days; "I prayed God that He would guide us against the enemy. We were simple fellows of the country, and they were men of blood and fashion, but the Lord delivered them into our hands. By His grace we killed five thousand. If He continues to show mercy we will kill some more to-morrow." Such were the Ironsides, "men of a spirit," who broke the charges of the Cavaliers, as the cliff dashes back in white spray the rush of the billows.
This was also the language of the Covenanters of old; and though we no longer use such plainness of speech, we mean the same. There is a place for tenderness; but when men are ground to powder by the judgment of God, tenderness is not manifest then. When the heart whispers "Spare" and justice says "Smite," men must obey the voice of justice, stifling the voice of the heart.
Our prayers are now for justice. Better far a righteous war than an immoral peace. We have been compelled to unsheath the sword, and we pray that no heart may falter, and no cry arise for the sheathing of the sword, until justice be done. Thus our prayers have become a cry for victory.
As one sits in an ancient church such as this, there comes knocking at the heart many questions regarding that service of prayer which within its walls has linked the generations together. Can prayer really prevail with God? Can it alter the will of the Unchangeable? If there be no power in it, why should men go on praying?
We must distinguish between the will of God which is unchangeable, and His lower will which is his purpose towards us and His attitude to us. The former is unalterable; the latter varies according to the varying of our hearts. With that lower will we are called to wrestle. A man is born in poverty and obscurity, and the will of God seems to be that he should continue poor and obscure. But he wrestles with that lower will until he prevails. He ultimately moves out into the great tide of life and becomes a power. The will of God towards that man is changed.
It is the same with a nation. Here is a nation sinking on its lees with its ideals dimmed and the shrines of its fathers' God forsaken and desolate. It has fashioned to itself other gods, and the multitudes crowd the temples of the goddess of pleasure. The very race itself is sacrificed on the altar of gross pleasure, and the laughter of little children is being little by little silenced. The fires of patriotism are dying low, and the love of country gives place to the love of party. There are mean victories rejoiced over, but they are the victories of the cynic and the sensualist. There is the sound of shouting, but it is the shouting over the triumph of one self-seeking politician over another self-seeking partisan. Saintliness, which other generations held in awe and reverence, provokes now a pitying smile. Mammon alone is held in high honour and sitteth in the high places. What is the will of God towards that nation? It is this—ruin and utter destruction. Over every nation that thus succumbed to the gross and sensual, history shows the sword of God unsheathed, and at last the devouring flames of judgment.
But to such a nation there comes as if out of the silent heaven a call as a trumpet sound, summoning it to the judgment-seat of God. Over the sea comes the roar of guns. The foundations which the fathers laid in righteousness, through long neglect and decay are crumbling. An empire encircling the globe is tottering to destruction. The hay and the stubble cannot come scathless through the flames. The writing is on the wall, and as the eyes see the hand that writes, trembling seizeth upon men. And then there cometh a sudden change. The nation in a day rises out of the morass of its self-indulgence. It sets itself to lay hold again upon the eternal law of righteousness. They seek once more the shrines of their God. They set themselves to fast and to pray. "Who can tell," they whisper one to another, "if God will turn and repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?"