'You forget,' I protested, 'that the other two classes have proved that they know how to die.'
He came to a sudden halt, and his tripping sentences suddenly stopped.
'Yes,' he answered, 'they know how to die; but what is the use of knowing how to die if they do not know how to live?'
IV
'What is the use of facing death,' went on the bald man, resuming his walk up and down, and pointing now and again an accusing finger, 'if death does not teach the way of life? Through death we conquered the greatest tyranny that ever threatened the world, but the enemy has really been the victor, for the spirit of the enemy has now conquered us. That spirit is the covetousness that knows no law but force. It does not matter whether the goal aimed at be the hegemony of the world or more and more of gold—the spirit is the same. And now it has seized us. There is the profiteer living on the results of other men's industry and fattening on the plunder of the public—his god is covetousness. There are the millions who are ready to march over the ruins of the Empire, careless of the sufferings of others if only they will get their demands on the world. Nobody realises the futility of gaining the world and losing the life. Eighteen in church and thousands out for their share of the world.... It is covetousness triumphant.'
The old man came to a halt and began to speak as one weighing his words. 'We are just sinking into savagery,' he went on. 'The savage knows no weapon but force—and Christianity knows no weapon but love—but we have chosen force. We have, in truth, abolished the bludgeon of force as between man and man, but pagan Rome did that. We have never learned that law must rule between class and class, as well as between man and man. We remained pagan in our jealousy and distrust as between class and class, and failed to make law supreme. We failed because we had no brotherliness, no love. If we had been Christians we would have made the law of love supreme long ago.... What a hollow mockery our actions are. Our statesmen become rhetorical over a tribunal of the nations that will make wars cease for ever, while war reigns in our own midst. Tribunals and treaties are nothing if truth be not supreme in the heart. But there is never a word about that.... We think we can raise the world to a level higher than we have attained ourselves, as if water could ever rise higher than its source.... The law of force is honest paganism, but this covering up of the world's foulness with scum—that is nauseating pharisaism. Where the spirit of love and truth is not, there peace cannot be.'
V
Whether the bald man with the one piercing and the other straying eye was right or wrong I am no great judge. But it is clear that there is something very far wrong. It is not in our country, the fairest on God's earth, that the evil lies, nor in the Empire, the greatest and richest ever reared by man. The evil is not without but within us. The only hope for us is in a regenerated spirit. And there is none who can give us that new spirit but the Carpenter of Nazareth. He was Himself a poor working man toiling for twenty years, wielding heavy, clumsy tools as he shaped rude ploughs in a village of poor fame. He can feel for poor toiling working men; it was He who first taught brotherhood. To a generation that says, 'Let me get all I can, however much others may suffer,' He says, 'Say not so, but rather say, Let me serve all I can, however much I may suffer.' If He were here now He would be talking to men in public-houses and at the street corners and on the fringes of crowds, and He would say, 'My brothers, why excite yourselves over the world? Life is not money. Life is love and beauty and sonship with God. It is not what the hand grasps but what the eye sees and the heart feels that makes life great. If you want the fulness of life, lose it.' And to rich men He would say, 'Your riches are only yours in trust that you may serve: consecrate them or they will be taken from you.' He would have but one law for all—Love. If they but loved there could not be any more profiteering, or ca' canny, or any injustice. For love never says 'Give,' only 'Let me give.' ... But, alas! we make room for every spirit but that. For forty years we have taught the children by statute, but they have not been taught that. They have been taught figures and the records that are mainly the records of crime, and the explanations that are no explanations. We must begin again and teach our children what duty is, what the love of God and man is, what reverence is, and how there is a moral purpose working out life and death—life if men conform to it and death if they defy it. We teach everything by statute except that—the one thing needful. We teach that man is to be saved by the brain; we have forgotten that salvation is of the soul. There is but one power known among men that can turn the self-willed and self-centred life into the self-sacrificing and the God-centred life, and that power is the spirit of the Carpenter of Nazareth. If we but sought it, then it would fuse the poor fissiparous sand of our national life into the unity and potency of steel. It is our only hope.