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There is to-day one other added element in the peril of the crowd, and that is the removal of the forces that formerly restrained and curbed. The witness of history is that only one spirit can stand up against and cast out the spirit of the crowd, and that is the spirit of religion. I am not speaking of Christianity merely, but of religion in its generic sense. There was only one force in Jerusalem on Good Friday stronger than the thirst for blood, and that was the feeling that they, the crowd, must not defile themselves ceremonially. Only one power, religion alone, can cut the claws of the tiger in man.... In the midst of the darkest deeds the thought of God's judgment-seat has ever and again pulled humanity up.

But it is gone now--that sense of the Unseen Assize. Two generations ago the international crowd of the learned , having discovered they could explain some processes, took it for granted that nobody initiated these processes. With great congratulations on the delivery of humanity from superstition, they bowed the Creator out of His universe. In so doing they thought they were ushering in a new world, where man would find deliverance from all ill through the illumined brain.... Alas! for human hopes. The learned have now gone back to the old truth--that this world is organised spirit. But the sad thing is that though it is easy to bamboozle the crowd, yet, once they are bamboozled, it passes the wit of man to debamboozle them again. The scientific crowd bowed God out a generation ago; but to bow Him in again is beyond them. And the spirit of the crowd is left to-day without curb or chain from Siberia to Cork.

LET US HAVE PEACE

It was to attend a Congress of Churches that I crossed the Atlantic, but it is not listening to speeches that gives a realisation of any country. It is when wandering about the streets, sitting in caf?s, listening in a smoking-car, or talking to a man in a hotel lounge that one forms some impression of the atmosphere which Americans breathe. It has been asserted, doubtless with truth, that human aberrations are a misplaced worship. That happiness which men were created to find in fellowship with the Highest, they seek in base and sensual forms. Drunkenness, on this theory, is a species of misdirected worship. If this be granted, then, Americans are of all nations the most devout. They worship the vast in every form. At Pittsburg you could hear a man rolling out statistics of millions of tons of steel a year; of harbour dues, though the city is far from the sea, that put even London and Glasgow in the shade; and as he speaks you feel that he has a thrill approaching adoration. He is on his knees before the greatest he knows. It is the same in everything. A town of 14,000 inhabitants in 1840 is now a city of a million. He rolls the figures as if they were a mystic ritual. Everything with which he has to do must be the greatest on the earth.

It was, however, in New York that one came to the inner shrine of American idealism. I had stayed for two days in the academic calm of Princeton, had heard Lord Bryce lecture in iced and polished and classic phrases on the age-long problem of Church and State; had spoken to two hundred theological students who might just be in Oxford or Edinburgh, for their eyes were just the same--the eyes of youth, who perennially believe that they at least were born to put this old world right. From that atmosphere of reposeful idealism I was suddenly projected into the midst of New York. It was a bewildering experience. A friend who knew his way in the maze guided me to the Pennsylvania hotel, 'The biggest hotel in the world, with 2200 baths!' I found a room on the twentieth storey, served by an 'express' service of lifts. I could enter into the feelings of the countryman who, descending in one of those for the first time and seeing floor after floor flash past, murmured, 'Thank God, I am safe so far.' Having secured our 'baths' we went forth to see New York by night.

Straight as an arrow my friend brought me to the spots where the full blaze of the illumined streets burst into view. On every hand the street fronts blazed with multi-coloured lights. Rainbows of dazzling splendour spanned the avenues. Above every sky-scraper, darkening the stars, letters of fire proclaimed 'The Greatest Boot Emporium in the World' or 'The Vastest Store in all the Universe.' St. John in his dreams of apocalyptic splendour in Patmos could never have dreamed anything weirder than this. Far as the eye could see down Fifth Avenue the quivering lights proclaimed to the silent stars: 'We are the people--the greatest on the earth!' But, after all, the world is but a tenth-rate little gutta-percha ball in the immensity of infinitude, and it was a comfort to think that the constellations were not impressed. On our way back we rested in a 'Soda-Fountain' refreshment room where we sucked nectar through straws. 'This,' said my friend, 'was a notorious saloon before the war, and here are we, two douce parsons, drinking in all the phylacteries of respectability.' That, on the whole, was the most wonderful thing we saw that night in New York. But as I looked from the dizzy height of my room in the sky-scraper, out on that city of glittering light, I seemed to realise what it meant. That building of monstrous height, these proclamations that darkened the heavens, making the stars but a background for vaunting--what are they but the pursuit of the ideal; the scaling of heaven by force; the soul laying hold on immensity by both hands. It is humanity on its knees before the wrong altar.

It is the same when the Great War is recalled, as it inevitably is every hour. To the American his share looms so vast that he is convinced he won the war. Among certain classes 'We won the war' has become a watchword. 'My brother last year travelled through Italy and France and part of Germany,' a typical American will confide in you, 'and he met a German officer, and this German told him that they thought little of the English and less of the French, but that when the Americans came in they recognised their masters and quitted at once.' Hereupon a quiet man in a corner begins to talk. 'We air a wonderful nation, sir, and that's a sure thing,' he nasalises; 'we had only 50,000 casualties, and you had a million, and the French a million and a half, and the Russians perhaps two millions, and the Italians half a million--say five millions in all among the Europeans. My friend says we won the war with 50,000 casualties! His idea seems to be that an American is worth a hundred of his brethren in Europe. It is the atmosphere here, sir. We air a great nation, sir.' Upon this the first eyes the second speaker askance. But a Canadian takes up the tale. 'There was an Englishman down in Florida this summer and he went bathing,' thus the Canadian. 'There was a poster forbidding bathing at a particular beach; but there the Englishman, having donned his bathing suit, plunged in. The watcher of the beach rushed to him on his return to shore and reprimanded him for disobeying orders. "Oh! I am all right, for I took precautions," was the answer. "What precautions?" exclaimed the watcher, at once professionally interested. And the bather turned round and showed his newly-bought bathing suit. On one side it bore the stars and stripes and on the other the legend "We won the war." Pointing to these he said, "I was perfectly safe, for no shark that ever swam in the ocean would swallow that!"' ... The Canadian can beat the Yankee at his own game. He just pricks the tube and you hear the wind whizzing. But in a few years nobody in the States outside the ranks of the learned will know anything about any one's sufferings and heroisms in the Great War except their own. Just as to-day it is a surprise to a German to learn that Wellington won Waterloo, so in the future it will be a surprise to an American to learn that Britain and France by rivers of their blood won the Great War. 'We won the war' has only begun as yet to run its course.

It was, however, at Mount Vernon, sixteen miles south of Washington, that I seemed to be nearest to the soul of America. It was with a quiet thankfulness that I left the city behind and went on pilgrimage to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. There the scenes amid which the Father of his country moved and had his being are unchanged. In the city, the Washington monument, a shaft of white marble rising to a height of '555 feet 5 1/8 inches,' confronts one's eyes at the end of every vista. But here no monument challenges the world by its height. The plain, wooden building, painted to resemble stone, with a piazza extending along the whole front, consisting of two storeys and an attic with dormer windows, surmounted by a small cupola and an ancient weathervane, is just as it was when Washington lived and died. In these rooms with the tables and chairs and bed and pictures, and the books , just as they were a hundred and fifty years ago, there were dreamed dreams that have changed half the world. Out of this farm-house came the impulse and the power wherewith 'The embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard around the world.'

There could be found few spots on earth in which one could better muse on the mutability of earthly affairs than in these rooms tenanted by ghosts. Here in the main hall is the key of the Bastille, sent by Lafayette from Paris as a gift to Washington after the capture of the prison in 1789. 'Give me leave, my dear General,' wrote Lafayette, 'to present you with a picture of the Bastille, just as it looked a few days after I ordered its demolition, with the main key of the fortress of despotism. It is a gift which I owe as a son to my adopted country, as an aide-de-camp to my General, as a missionary of liberty to its patriarch.' No nation ever owed so great a debt for its liberty as the United States owed to France. George Washington won the War of Independence because half the people of Britain sympathised with him, knowing that he was fighting their battle for liberty as well as his own; but mainly because France espoused his cause on sea and land, and sent him money, and men, and leaders such as Lafayette. But in the realm of international politics gratitude has no place. When France in 1914 faced the menace of overwhelming and final destruction; when Belgium, to whose independence the United States was a signatory at the Hague Convention, was overrun, the Government at Washington did not even enter a protest, and the President still addressed the Kaiser as 'great and good friend.' While France that won her liberty for America was for three years in Gethsemane, the States were 'too proud to fight.' As late as 1917 there was the famous speech about 'peace without victory.' It was only when a Presidential Election was gained by 'the Man who kept us out of the war,' and when the interests of the States on the high seas were threatened with ruin, that the Americans at last entered the fray. If Britain had acted as the States did, France to-day would have been the conscript appendage of Germany. When the American Ambassador in London declared in a candid moment that America came into the war for 'her own interests,' the resolutions passed and the speeches made disowning him were amazing. That key of the Bastille there in Mount Vernon is a monument of international ingratitude. There is no reason to narcotise ourselves into believing that poor humanity has been changed for ever in this year of grace at Washington.

To-day Mount Vernon is a shrine, and a sky-scraping monument dominates Washington, but George Washington learned in his own day the lesson that in politics there is no gratitude. The founder of the great Republic did not escape the common fate. He was accused as President of drawing more than his salary, of aping at monarchy; there were hints of the guillotine being needed; until at last the scurrilous attacks drove Washington to declare at a Cabinet meeting in 1793 that he would rather be in his grave than in his present position. It is said that at the end he would have preferred to seek reunion with Britain. This at least is sure, that Washington was glad to end his days in the peace of Mount Vernon. If this may seem incredible one has only to think of the fate of Clemenceau, of Venizelos, or of Woodrow Wilson. There is to-day in Washington a living monument of national ingratitude. Whatever may be thought of many of the acts of President Wilson, of his leaving France to her fate until he won his election to the second term of office by the help of the anti-British and pacifist votes, yet posterity will undoubtedly acclaim him as Lincoln now is acclaimed. It was he who not only, with the dreamers of all the years, dreamed the dream of perpetual peace, but by his unbending will-power forced the nations of Europe to place that dream, materialised in the League of Nations, in the forefront of the Treaty of Versailles. That was one of those epoch-making events on which the history of the world turns. It is idle to think that the coming generations will not place the man who did that among the greatest of the human race. And yet to-day his own countrymen can find no words strong enough to express their contempt and dislike. There is no more pathetic figure in all the world. A shattered body gains him no respite from abuse. When the broken man drove for the last time from the White House to his own home--the burden at last laid down--a demonstration organised by the League of Nations Union cheered him at his gate. They would not go away until he spoke. He was taken to a window, and after saying a few words he pointed to his throat, in token that he could not further reply to the ovation. History can scarcely parallel that tragedy. But Woodrow Wilson can comfort himself with the thought that the hosannas will rise in chorus when he is dead. George Washington has now a monument 555 feet high; a hundred years hence Woodrow Wilson will have a monument 666 feet high. The generations of those who garnish tombs never fail. 'I tremble for my country,' said President Jefferson, 'when I remember that God is just.'

The world has raised a chorus of rejoicing over the results of the Conference at Washington. While we rejoice at the prospect of reducing the number of battleships, we can only rejoice with trembling. But agreements and treaties are not going to save us. The crucial question is not the form and context of a treaty, but rather whether there is among men sufficient truth and righteousness to fulfil its terms. The warfare of the future will be a warfare of chemistry. Is there a possibility of restricting laboratories and the massing of deadly germs? The men who will release the energy in an atom will be able to destroy a world. If we look at facts we shall not be drugged by oratory. 'Rhetoric,' said Theodore Roosevelt, 'is a poor substitute for the habit of looking facts resolutely in the face.' The facts confronting us are ominous enough. Twice recently one of the greatest of nations has thrown over the signature of its Supreme Head and its Secretary of State. The United States repudiated its President and refused to ratify the League of Nations; and not only that, but refused also to ratify the Agreement made with France and Britain to secure France against future aggression. The present misery and unrest in Europe are largely due to the failure of one hundred and ten millions of the English-speaking race to honour the signature of their Chief. The best of them bewail it, and say that it is the fault of their political system. Under the worst system of European government such events would be impossible.

But though the failure to ratify treaties be grievous, yet the failure to observe treaties duly ratified is still more grievous. And the history of our relations with the States is largely the history of broken treaties. There was the famous Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 regarding the Panama Canal; it was repudiated in 1880, and its history since is a history of broken agreements. There have been so many conferences, so many agreements, so many treaties since the days of the Holy Alliance to the days of The Hague, and the end has always been the same. In 1916 Mr. Elihu Root made a speech in the American Senate, the echoes of which will ring round the world in the coming years. The burden of his sorrow was shame for his country's repudiation of their obligation to protect Belgium. Here are some sentences:--

'Wherever there was respect for law, it revolted against the wrong done to Belgium. Wherever there was true passion for liberty, it blazed out for Belgium. Wherever there was humanity it mourned for Belgium.... The law protecting Belgium was our law and the law of every civilised country.... We had played our part, in conjunction with other civilised nations, in making that law.... Moreover, that law was written into a solemn and formal Convention, signed and ratified by Germany, and Belgium and France, and the United States.... When Belgium was invaded, that Agreement was binding, not only morally, but strictly and technically, because there was then no nation a party to the war which was not also a party to the Convention. The invasion of Belgium was a breach of contract with us for the maintenance of a law of nations.... The American Government failed to rise to the demands of a great occasion. Gone were the old love of justice, the old passion for liberty, the old sympathy with the oppressed, the old ideals of an America helping the world towards a better future, and there remained in the eyes of mankind only solicitude for trade and profit and prosperity and wealth.'

Yes, humanity might mourn for Belgium, and the States stand aloof in spite of its plighted word, but what of that when an election had to be won and the Irish vote conciliated! The world being what it is there can be no hope of deliverance along the road of treaties. There can be no salvation by parchments. You cannot make a treaty when there is no sense of truth and honour. You cannot make a treaty with paganism. There is no truth or honour there for a treaty to rest on. And the world is still overwhelmingly pagan. Europe may have been baptized and America also, but Asia still dreams that its day will return. Japan is haunted by the dreams of Potsdam, and the hunger of empire is in her eyes. China, India, Africa, and the Turk are not yet even baptized! And yet people think that we have arrived at last within sight of the millennium. The characteristic of humanity is its credulous simplicity. Men cannot rid themselves of the fond belief that they can reform the jungle by manicuring the tiger's claws.

One of the most impressive sights in New York is the tomb of General Grant. Its site overlooking the deep-gorged Hudson river is most impressive. It is a square building of white granite without and white marble within, surmounted by a cupola with Ionic columns. Above the door, between two figures emblematic of peace and war, are inscribed the words, 'Let us have peace.' These are the closing words of his letter accepting the Presidency. Grant had a right to use the words, for he was a great peace-maker. He made peace by conquering the forces of disruption. He kept stubbornly at it. But when he won at last he would not humiliate Lee by taking his sword from him; and when he was told that Lee's men owned their own horses--'Let them keep them,' said Grant; 'they will need them for the spring ploughing.' Nor would he allow any salvos of victory. 'We are all citizens of the same Republic,' said he; 'let us have peace.' To-day the whole world is one Republic woven together by the mighty shuttles of steamships, airships, and wireless. In that world there can be no hermit nation. In that world, 'let us have peace.' In the Governor's garden at the base of the slope that leads to the citadel, in Quebec, there is an obelisk that stirs the heart. It is a monument to Wolfe and Montcalm. The one died content that he had won a dominion greater than he knew for the nation that he loved; the other, dying, comforted himself with the thought that he did not live to see the surrender of Quebec. There, these two heroic souls, near the scene of their heroism, share a common monument. The inscription is the most beautiful I know:--

Mortem, Virtus, Communem, Famam Historia Monumentum Posteritas Dedit.

'Valour gave them a common death; history a common fame; posterity a common monument.' That obelisk visualises the hope of the future. It would indeed be a miserable world in which men went on hating for ever. Only the spirit of Him who for the love of men stooped to a cross can dig the grave of hate and war at last. When the world shall awake from its nightmare and shall listen to Him, then the world will have peace.

The United States refused the mandate for Armenia, and the mandate for Constantinople, and dishonoured the signature of its chief magistrate guaranteeing the security of France. To-day the blood of the slain cries to Heaven, and Britain is left alone holding the gates of Europe against a race whose only rule is government by massacre. And from America the Press reports a cablegram to the Prime Minister:--'Win civilisation's everlasting appreciation by keeping the brutes out of Europe. Americans expect every Englishman to do his duty.' What a strange species of humour! In very truth the regeneration of the world's democracies is the only road to peace.

THE WAY OF PEACE

The supreme need of the world to-day is peace. Europe is sinking into the morass of despair because across their frontiers a dozen nations drilled and armed are watching each other with sullen eyes. From the shores of the Pacific to the long wash of Australasian seas everywhere it is the same. Civilisation is perishing; but it is a civilisation armed to the teeth that is awaiting its obsequies. Every newspaper proclaims the one need is Peace. The Conference on disarmament has but one word to express the sum of all its desires--Peace. There must be some stupendous barrier in the way when all this yearning and endless talking fail to reach the goal of humanity's striving. However eagerly the nations pursue it, peace seems to be for ever a receding horizon. If on one spot of an anguished world statesmen confer as to the things that make for peace, yet behind their fortified frontiers the nations are still sharpening their swords. It is, as it has ever been, a mad world.

How has peace ever come to men? It has come in one way only--the way of the renewed spirit. I have been reading again the wonderful story of this Scotland of ours, and that old, simple truth has come home to me afresh. The problem that confronted Scotland in the dawn of its history was how to unify and pacify warring tribes that were ceaselessly drenching the land with blood. And the way the problem was solved here is the way in which alone it can be solved on the greater stage of the whole world. Fourteen hundred years ago there was no Scotland anywhere on the map. There were four kingdoms in North Britain--the Picts north of the Grampians, the Britons in Strathclyde, the Angles in the Lothians and southward to the Tweed, and in Kintyre a small and feeble colony of Scots who had crossed from Ireland. In those distressful days wars in North Britain were as common as strikes are now, and women went forth to battle along with the men. And they were wars of extermination--without mercy. Out of that welter how did unity and peace come? The uniter and pacifier came out of Ireland. The Scots in Kintyre were Christians, and the pagan Picts under King Brude inflicted on them a shattering defeat. It looked as if Christianity were on the eve of being stamped out in Kintyre. To Columba in Ireland there came the cry of his kinsmen's woe--'Come over and help us.' To a man burning with ardour and longing for new fields to conquer for his Master, that cry was like a bugle summoning to battle. He came to their help, but not with spears and arrows. He came with the might of the Cross. The greatness of the man is revealed in the fact that instead of material weapons he went straight to the fountain-head of the misery. He realised that there was only one way of salvation for the Christian Scots in Kintyre, and that was by converting to Christ the wild people in the North that had braved the Roman arms and were still in their primitive savagery. In those days to convert a clan one had first to convert the chief; to convert a nation one had first to convert the king. The goal towards which St. Columba set his face was the castle of King Brude at Inverness. Iona was but the base for the great campaign that was to make North Britain safe for Christians. If to-day the problem be how to make the world safe for democracy , in the sixth century the problem was how to make Scotland safe for Christ.

The greatest story in our history is that which tells how Columba made his venture of faith and conquered. He never lacked courage this man. 'Do you think, Columba, shall I be saved?' asked the King of Ireland. 'Certainly not,' answered Columba, 'unless you break off from your sins, repent, and be converted.' The courage wherewith he faced his kinsfolk, with that same courage he now faced his enemy. We can see his galley sailing up Loch Linnhe with the Cross at the masthead, and the face of the leader set like a flint. He would go to the stronghold of paganism. Up the great glen the little band trudged with death lurking behind every bush, but there was never a thought of faltering. In vain did King Brude bar his gates against him. No walls can shut out the Spirit, no gates of iron can debar the Word living and powerful. Outside the gates Columba and his band begin to chant a Psalm--'We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work Thou didst in their days ... how Thou didst drive out the heathen with Thy hand....' And as that voice of his rolled like thunder the King and the people 'were affrighted with fear intolerable.' The gates were flung open and King Brude surrendered to the ambassador of Christ. The wild race, whom the legions of Rome could not subdue, were conquered by an unarmed man. What a light must have been in that man's eye: what a fire in his heart! From that day Scotland was safe for the followers of Christ, and the little band of Christians in Kintyre could now sleep peacefully at night, for King Brude was learning the law of love and the way of peace. From that day the good seed was sown broadcast over all the land. That dauntless messenger traversed sombre, uncharted gulfs, trod his way along rock-strewn sounds, and the darkness of the centuries faded before the Cross that gleamed at the masthead. The Picts became Christians, and in due course united with the Christian Scots in Kintyre, and Scotland found a name. In time the Angles and Strathclyde were merged in the unity of the Kingdom of Scotland. There came first the unity of one ideal, of one law, of one faith--and out of that there came the four kingdoms merged at last in the unity of the one Kingdom of Scotland. Until at last, after weary centuries, the sounds of war hushed into silence: clan no longer lifted up sword against clan; brethren in Christ could no longer slay one another. Peace lay at last like a golden shaft across all the land. One fearless unarmed man faced a king with the weapons of the Spirit, sowed the harvest which we are now reaping.

It is only by that road that humanity can come at last to the great goal of universal peace. It is the road that nations are unwilling to tread. They still are following the mirage that has strewn the deserts of time with the bleached skeletons of those who set out to reach it. The mirage is salvation by treaties. That idol has had hecatombs offered on its altars, and unless there comes a change it will have hecatombs in the future. If there be no truth and righteousness in the heart that signs, then treaties are valueless. The history of the centuries is the proof of their futility. The treaties of to-day can no more save than the treaties of all the yesterdays. For the nations that sign cannot trust each other. In the hearts of the nations there is not throned that righteousness which can be trusted.

The world's sickness is of the soul. What the nations need is that truth and righteousness be enthroned in their midst. Without that, peace is only the scum on the surface of the foul and stagnant pool. And the witness of the centuries is that righteousness is the fruit of the vision of God. The foundation of righteousness is the realisation of the ceaseless operation of the laws whose source is God. If only the vision of God could blaze forth before the eyes of democracies as it blazed forth before the eyes of King Brude, then the way of peace would open up for groaning humanity. How can there be lasting peace in a world of conflicting ideals? Can Christianity be at peace with Mohammedanism stained with the blood of millions of Armenians; with paganism still brooding over the ideal of an empire based on force? Can the ideals of unselfish service and of pride and greed lie down in peace together? There can be no peace until humanity is brought into a unity of the soul--of allegiance to one King, of obedience to one law. The only hand worthy to wield the sceptre of the world is the hand that was nailed to a Cross. What the world has to realise is that the Manger overthrows the Caesars, and that the road leading to a Cross is the way of peace. When we shall send forth over all the world men endued with the spirit of St. Columba, then there will be hope of the world. But that is the last thing we think of. We fondly believe that while we ourselves are sinking back into the mire we shall be able to lift the world up into light; while we ourselves turn our backs on the Prince of Peace, that we will bestow peace on the world. It is the weirdest of all obsessions. When William Ewart Gladstone was once asked how a man of his intellect could listen to such dull sermons, he answered--'I go to church because I love England.' There is a wider motive--'I go to church because I love the world, because I can hear there a law that men should love one another with a love that stoops to a Cross, by which alone the world can be saved.' It is vain for nations that forsake the worship of a God of love to spend their days devising schemes for bringing peace to a ruined world. For there is no way of peace save one--the way of love. No nation has as yet tried that way. And there is no sign that they mean to try it. The world waits for the man who will convince it that the new order must be based on fraternity and not on fighting. But the world will applaud him instantly. Fraternity--that's the word! Most excellent! But when the new Columba will go on to show that fraternity without a Fatherhood to rest on is meaningless and powerless; that humanity can only realise its brotherhood in a common Father--even God. Then the world will once more shrug its shoulders. 'This is the same old wheeze,' it will say--and go its way. For we have no longer any use for God. That is the root of our misery.

NO ROOM

There is an old Gaelic proverb that says: 'Where there is heart-room there also is house-room.' There was room enough in that mean inn for the farmers with their pouches filled with money for the tax, for the soldiers that swaggered with the pride of empire, for the village-talebearers with their rude jests; but for a poor woman in the hour of her need there was no room. She was shut out because there was not found in that inn any with heart big enough to make room for her. What was she anyway?--a mere chattel; and what her child?--already there were too many children; and the only course to adopt was to let most of them die! And so at its dawn we can see what a mighty change Christianity has made in the world. Though the mother and the Child were shut out of the inn and consigned to the asses' stall, yet because of that mother and Child womanhood is to-day honoured and childhood most precious. To-day, in whatever land on which the shadow of the Cross has fallen, there is heart-room and house-room for mother and child.

As one reads the old beautiful story, this foot-note that explains how the Founder of Christianity was born in a stable because 'there was no room for them in the inn' stirs the mind with a wistful poignancy. The book slips down on the knees and the imagination awakes. The essence of nineteen centuries of Christian history is here. The web of all the centuries is woven after the one pattern. Shut out at His birth, His fate has been the same ever since. He came with the message of humanity's renewal. He proclaimed the most revolutionary doctrine ever preached to men--that the pariahs of humanity, publicans, sinners, slaves, those ignorant of the law and therefore accursed, were all the sons of God; and that only one law was requisite, that men should love one another with a love that gleamed red with sacrificial blood. But what have men done with this evangel? They have shut it out! It was too beautiful for their gross hearts and their self-clouded eyes. It was also very difficult. It required the changed heart and the transfigured life. And that has always been most difficult--to transmute the self-centred into the God-centred and all it means. So men set themselves to circumvent that demand for the surrendered heart--and they offered the surrendered brain. That is quite easy. They formulated logical propositions setting forth that thus and thus God acted, and they said--'Believe this and be saved, or disbelieve and be damned!' Christianity that came into the world as spirit and life became mere intellectual gymnastics! And with the name of the Lord of Love on their lips Christians cheerfully burnt each other because their definitions differed.... What an amazing fate to overtake the most beautiful thing that ever was seen on the earth! ... A Borgia sits on the throne of St. Peter; Calvin burns Servetus; the Jesuit exterminates his opponents; the Covenanter proclaims that he prefers to die than to live and see 'this intolerable toleration'; and all the time the Lord Jesus Christ is shut out. Not wholly shut out, however, for He has in every age found a shelter and a welcome in the stables and the sheds, among the ragged, the mean, and the outcasts of humanity.

It is not only in the great organisations that bear His name that there has often been found no room for the Christ; but still less has there been found room for Him in the social order. This great revolutionary identifies Himself so closely with humanity, that He declares that whosoever receives a little child and loves it receives and loves Him. How then do we deal with the Founder of Christianity as He comes to us in the form of a little child, saying, 'Receive Me'? ... This is the way we deal with Him. Every five minutes of the day a baby dies somewhere in the United Kingdom. There are districts in great cities where two hundred out of one thousand perish in the first year of life. A third of the possible population die in the years of childhood. The horrors of war are small compared to the horrors of peace, to which we have become so inured that we scarce notice them. We have taken the sunshine and the fresh air and the starlight from millions of our fellow citizens and shut them up in barracks and surrounded them with forces of degeneration, and have provided them a narcotic for their misery, so that womanhood becomes degraded and childhood pines and dies. Still, after nineteen centuries, Jesus Christ is shut out from the social order we have laboriously created. And we celebrate Christmas Day without so much as a sense of incongruity between our beliefs and our actions.

One of the weirdest symptoms of decay in our day is the way the whole social system seems to have conspired to shut out the child. In the last years property-owners had one condition that was unaltered: they would not let their houses to tenants with children. 'How many children and how old are they?' was the deciding question that always shut the door. The coming of a baby was often the signal that brought an ejectment warrant. The penalty for bringing a child into the world was being thrown into the street. The men who filled the inn at Bethlehem with mirth nineteen centuries ago have had a mighty multitude who shared their spirit. Rents have been to them more to be desired than babies.

At this Christmastide what we need most is to make room for the Child. People are ever ready to make room for that which they recognise to be precious. The most precious thing on earth is goodness. Give any mother her choice of her son being rich and a rogue, or poor and good; she will choose poverty. There is no power that builds up men and women in unselfishness and goodness but the power that is radiated from Him whose life on earth began in a manger. We must, if need be, cast away our costliest treasures that we may make room.... In very truth He cannot now be shut out altogether. No contumely will drive Him hence. It is different now from the day when a woman groped her way in agony to the asses and the stall. Different now, for He comes in through the closed doors. That is how the world has not been able to destroy Christianity; and that is how the Child conquers at the last.

DOMINION FROM SEA TO SEA

No part of the Empire rendered the cause of the world's soul in the world war greater service than Canada. When the clouds of chlorine gas were let loose it was the Canadians who stopped the gap through which the torrent of destruction was flowing. And the question the wounded men gasped out of tortured throats and lungs was not 'Shall I live?' but 'Did the Huns get through?' In the great host that at last swept the wolves back to their lair, the Canadians were foremost. 'We pledge ourselves solemnly before God to keep faith with our fallen comrades,' wrote General Currie to Sir Robert Borden, and nobly did they fulfil the pledge. To-day when a citizen of the States begins to demonstrate how his countrymen won the war, a Canadian produces the official statistics from his pocket and shows how the ten millions of Canada gave more of their sons over to death and wounds than the total casualties of the one hundred and ten millions in the States. And it is not surprising that Canada should have a clear vision of the ideal of duty. The very name that their country bears lifts that young nation into the fellowship of the highest ideal. When a name was discussed for the new confederation an inspiration came to Sir Leonard Tilley as he read the eighth verse of the seventy-second psalm: 'He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth,' and on his initiative the name Dominion was adopted. Not for Canada alone but for the whole Empire that name sets forth the only ideal. The cry of 'World-dominion or death' can only be overcome at last by the watchword 'God-dominion and Life.'

It is difficult for men to learn the lesson of their own most bitter experience. Only when the Cross stands far back across the years does its meaning and purpose faintly gleam on the minds of men. It need be no matter for surprise that men who did not themselves stand in the breach of death should be unable to articulate the master-word of the future. That great word will be--Spirit. What the world gazed on for four years of woe was the triumph of the spirit. To the men who, footsore and limping, marched back from Mons, defeat was incredible--their souls knew not the word. And because victory, even as they retreated, was in their souls, they swept the enemy back from the gates of Paris. For four years in mud and misery and defeat the soul endured and triumphed. It was the greatest of all the soldiers of France who said to his body as it shrank in his first battle: 'Tremblest thou? If thou knewest the dangers into which I shall this day carry thee, thou wouldest tremble!' Often and often in these four years the poor worn suffering body said, 'I have had enough--enough of mud and vermin--I am fed up; I will do no more,' but when the call of duty came the soul said to the body, 'I will make you face it, make you go through with it'; and the soul compelled the body to charge into the very face of death. It was the spark of the Divine in the soul that enabled our brothers to conquer the shrinking of flesh and blood and so to conquer the foe. It is in the measure that armies are souls that armies conquer. And it has been the same at home in castle and cot-house. We have but to think of the wives and mothers.

'They let them go forth at the wheels Of the guns and denied not. But then the surprise When one sits quiet alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels, God! how the house feels.'

However deeply the iron pierced, there was never a thought of defeat being even possible. And when the call came the women toiled in the factories, and the ammunition dumps were their spirit materialised. At home and in the battle-line the final destiny of every nation depends upon the soul.

It is with nations as with individuals! How can a man protect himself against a thief. He can do it in three ways. He may use force; or he may make an agreement with the thief--enter into a treaty with him; or he may endeavour to reform the thief. The first method is militarism and, whether in the form of armies or policemen, is costly and uncertain. The second only protects so long as the thief finds it convenient or in his own interest to keep it. Neither a burglar nor a robber-state can be warded off by treaties. The third alone provides a certain protection; the only safety is that the thief experience a change of spirit--be, in short, converted. 'Admirable,' said Cardinal Fleury, when a scheme for 'perpetual peace' was submitted to him; 'admirable, save for one omission--I find no provision for sending missionaries to convert the hearts of princes.' The day of princes is over, and the day of democracy has come. The first requisite of perpetual peace is that the nations of the world experience a change of heart and spirit--should repent. But in all the schemes for ending war there is no suggestion of sending missionaries to convert the world's democracies. France has 'extinguished the lights of heaven which none shall rekindle'; England, if the number of worshippers in the churches be any gauge, is rapidly sinking back into paganism; and across the Atlantic the United States is resolved to live unto itself alone, separating itself from the perishing nations; while on the Continent of Europe there is but one ritual: 'We did no wrong: we did not begin the war.' Missionaries to convert the democracies of the world--they are needed in legions. But such a need is not in all the thoughts of the orators. They can only think of forming leagues to abolish the vultures that swoop down on the carcases. They cannot realise that the only way to make an end of the swooping vulture is to make an end of carcases. Unless the world experiences a spiritual and moral renewal, any league that would secure it peace in the midst of its depravity would only secure its moral doom. It is manifest then that the only way to abolish war is to bring the body into subjection to the spirit. The way of salvation is the way of spiritual renewal. Love does not kill or poison, and humanity's feet need to be guided into the way of love. Along that road there is but the one guide: He who said 'I am the way.... Love as I have loved you.' The measure of that love is the Cross. And that is why the way to salvation leads through Calvary.... Peace will only come when the kingdoms of this world shall submit to that kingdom of the soul whose dominion is from sea to sea. 'I find a hundred little indications to reassure one that God comes,' writes H. G. Wells. 'The time draws near when mankind will awake ... and there shall be ... no leader but the one God of mankind.' But though Mr. Wells writes sentences so vital as that, yet when one asks him what God is--he is silent. Is He holy and righteous? Though Mr. Wells' God is but an abstraction, yet the truth remains. The coming of the Kingdom of God is the one hope of mankind--that Kingdom which Jesus preached. And the entrance into that Kingdom is by way of repentance and love and faith. When the soul of the world awakes to that, the day of deliverance shall have dawned.

This, then, must be the goal of human effort, to bring the nations of the world into such a unity of spirit that war will no longer be thinkable. But we, as a nation, can only do this if we ourselves bring our lives into conformity with the laws of righteousness. It is manifest that no amount of oratory will enable us to raise the world to any higher level than we have attained ourselves.

The first duty, then, is to see that we base our own lives on righteousness. The problem is how to bring to bear on the human heart those motives that will move it irresistibly towards righteousness. That road is not easy to travel and the choice of it means effort and travail. It means a battle against selfishness and self-seeking--a battle long-drawn-out. Why should men choose that conflict rather than ease and self-indulgence? There can be no reason save this: that God wills and enjoins righteousness. But does He? We know very little about God, and the strange thing is that the more knowledge that comes to us regarding Him, the more mysterious He becomes. But there is one thing that we do know with absolute certainty regarding God, and it is this--that all down the thousands of years of recorded history the power of the Unseen Ruler of the universe can be traced fighting against iniquity, burying corrupt nations under the avalanche, digging the grave for tyranny and corruption. The history of the world is the history of God making an end of crime. The way to destruction has been the way of iniquity. That God should have so ordered the universe that the stars in their courses fight against the Siseras, that all its forces are at last arrayed for the destruction of evil, is the proof that God is righteous and holy and that the passion in His heart is that His children should be righteous and holy. The world, as God means it, is the school for the training of men and women in goodness--and so in the image of God.... It is only the call of the Unseen Ruler as He summons His children to bring their lives into unison with Himself, that can turn the feet into the way of righteousness. There is no impelling force equal to the choice of good rather than evil except this--that God wills goodness. No other motive save that can turn the faces of men towards the heights.

The greatest of all questions then is this--how most efficiently to bring that motive to bear upon the nation. It is in the early and plastic years that the destiny of individuals is fixed. If anywhere, it is in our schools that our children shall learn the things out of which are the issues of life and death. What atmosphere shall we surround our children with in our schools? is the supreme question. 'To educate without religion is only to produce clever devils,' declared the Duke of Wellington in his downright way. And as a nation we have made sure of everything being taught--except religion. No government-inspector ever asks about it!

What a waste it all is and what a travesty--this pumping of facts and figures into the weary, jaded brains of little children. Only five per cent. or so of the people are capable of benefiting by a long process of education--yet everybody must be confined in dreary barracks from five to fifteen years, learning things that will never be of use and are straightway forgotten. We ordained that all the children should be taught, but in our usual blundering fashion we never settled what we should teach them. The child looks out on a world of wonder, and proves its wisdom by peopling every grove and every hill with fairies. For the child the world is spiritual. And it comes to us and asks how came it and why came it? But our legislators decreed that, so far as they were concerned, the child should be taught geography and the names of rivers and hills, but not about the God who made the rivers and hills and the world; botany, but not about the God who made the grass and the flowers; physiology, but not about the God who fashioned man; dates of kings and of battles, but not about the God whose providence is written over all history; about laws, but not about the Source of all law--the divine commands that regulate human action. The only part of man that the educators considered was the brain. If they intellectualised the race they deemed that the millennium would come. They did it. But the millennium is further off than ever. They caused all the people to go through the mills where knowledge was ground out; they learned to read and write. The only consequence was that they became the victims of every charlatan. They turned their arithmetic into roguery and their literature into lust. They became the victims of the gamblers and the betting touts. They pursued the missing words and became the disciples of demagogues. And salvation has tarried though the brain has been nurtured. Yes! there has come a vast progress! London in the next war can be completely destroyed by spraying it with gas bombs--in eight hours! Education, with God left out, will, then, have come to its fruition!

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