Chapter II: Part 2

And my answer shall be given to that, not in anger, but in sadness: "And have you during this last twenty-five years fought the wild beast yourself in this great city? Have you yourself practised strict self-denial to the point of sacrifice, in dealing with the drink question, to help the weak brethren for whom CHRIST died? Have you crushed down the wild beast of lust in yourself, and grappled with the haunts of vice, as many in London have done for twenty-five years? Have you seen that there is a Mission Church among every eight thousand people as they have come into London, and given of your substance to plant one? Have you done your best to see that every sailor that goes from our ports is a Christian, and that every trader who trades throughout the world, and every bank clerk who has been to work in Berlin or Paris, lives up to his religion? Have you given every available penny to spread the Gospel, the failure of which you now deplore, throughout the world? Or have you spoken of 'sending money out of the country,' of the uselessness of Christian servants, and repeated the travellers' tales about Missions of those who have never visited a missionary station in their lives, when you have been asked to support Mission work abroad?"

Then, until you have done that, I refuse you the right to speak of the weakness of the religion which you have failed to support. It is only promised that "they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain" when "the earth is filled with the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea."

But what if we have never really attempted to fill the earth with the knowledge of the LORD? What if we have only very feebly attempted to know this ourselves? What if, as a consequence of spending less than a million a year on Foreign Missions, we are now having to spend five millions a day on a war made necessary by the neglect of our Christian duty?

No one believes more absolutely than I do in the righteousness of the present war; as I have said a thousand times, I look upon it as a war for purity, for freedom, for international honour, and for the principles of Christianity. I look on everyone who fights for this cause as a hero, and everyone who dies in it as a martyr; but, at the same time, I believe that if every Christian throughout the world had fully risen to his responsibilities and had fully lived up to his Christianity, for the last hundred years, we might have done more to avert it. You cannot say more than that. Slavery was undoubtedly as much opposed as war to Christianity, but it took eighteen hundred years to abolish that; it may take another eighteen hundred years to abolish war. We must not hurry GOD, but we must not fail to help Him; we can hasten the kingdom. It is no good praying "Thy kingdom come" by itself; we must also make it come, and the only sure way to make the kingdom come, and with the kingdom the extinction of war, is to spread throughout the world the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

We were beginning to find this out before the war.

A striking pamphlet by Canon Holland, "The White Man's Burden," has been published by the great Society which for two hundred years has tried, amidst much indifference, apathy and discouragement, to propagate the Gospel throughout the world. He showed how our skilled and devoted Governors and statesmen throughout the world found after a time that their ability and hard work reached a point at which they could go no farther.

For instance, quite naturally their system of education broke down the old beliefs of India; quite naturally the ideals and ideas of freedom and personal responsibility which they taught produced a desire among individuals also to be free, and a longing in every nation to realise itself. The great statesman rubbed his eyes; he couldn't quarrel with this result of his own teaching. But who was to bind this transformed nation with new cords? where was he to find the new restraints to take the place of the old ones which had been broken through from sheer life and vigour? Where were the new wine-skins to hold the new wine?

And, pathetically, even before the war such men were turning to the religion which they had been partially taught at their public school, but which in their blindness they had half despised, as having no bearing on a practical workaday world; but, lo! practical common sense had broken down; could the secret be, after all, in what they had heard in their Confirmation preparation, in that school sermon to which they had only half attended, in the prayers which they had said rather as a matter of form ever since they were taught them at their mothers' knees?

From end to end of the world the revelation was coming, and, as one of those who has borne this white man's burden, Lord Selborne, in his preface to the pamphlet, endorses what it says. There is only one set of rules which will hold the new nation, and only one set of wine-skins which will hold the new wine; and that is the rules of GOD'S Commandments as interpreted and extended in the New Testament, the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount; and the only wine-skins which will hold the new wine are those produced by the Gospel of the Incarnate, Risen, and Ascended CHRIST, with the miracles which He worked believed, and the Sacraments which He gave accepted and used. "Let the new wine be put into new wine-skins, and both are preserved."

All this was before the war. But since the war began, just as you see against the dark thunderclouds the brilliancy of the sunshine, which even lights up those clouds and turns them into a glory and a radiance themselves, so all that was chivalrous and noble in Europe has suddenly leaped to light. Christianity has been rediscovered. Censors have been converted by reading soldiers' letters. Many a man who professed himself an atheist has now seen what Christianity really means. "Even an atheist must have believed if he had seen my father die," wrote a young officer of a father who was buried yesterday. "Could you sing me a hymn?" asked a young officer, dying in the last battle, of the chaplain, who in the very thick of the shells and the bullets was at his work. And, with his arm round him, the chaplain sang with him "JESU, Lover of my soul," until he died.

In this great Day of GOD, things are beginning to appear as they are, and not as they are represented. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." That simple and sincere Christian, the Czar of Russia, went to the heart of things at the beginning of the war, when he gave that as the motto of the war to his troops; and every boy since then, who, as depicted in the picture entitled "The Great Sacrifice," has laid down his life, with his dead hand resting on the foot of the crucifix, has sealed with his life the great saying of Sir Henry Newbolt:

"Life is not life to him that dares not die,
And death not death to him that dares to live."

It comes round, then, to this: the Advent picture is not a mockery; it is not a mirage in the desert; it is a true picture let down from heaven to cheer us to-day with a prophecy of what some day shall be.

Let that picture at once encourage us while it shames us.

As we watch it, away with all those foolish old sayings about "not believing in Foreign Missions," "sending money out of the country," "converting Whitechapel and Bethnal Green before we attempt China or Japan"; for the knowledge of the LORD--before war can be no more--is to cover the whole earth as the waters cover the sea.

But, on the other hand, let it encourage us:

"Far out of sight while sorrows still enfold us
Lies the fair country where our hearts abide,
And of its joys is nought more wondrous told us
But these few words--We shall be satisfied."

We may behold the land, although it may seem at present "very far off."

Once crush for ever the revived paganism, which perhaps for the last time has challenged the supreme claim of Christ to His own world; when that is in the dust, once astonish the world by the beauty of a chivalry and Christian manhood which shall be seen by contrast to be as day compared to night, and light to darkness; once "placard CHRIST" through every tribe in Africa and Asia, and preach Him effectively in every island of the sea; and as the last hand slipped down in death the flagstaff of the Black Flag at Omdurman, so shall the last hand at last be lifted, in this world, of one man against a brother-man in fratricidal strife, and the great picture shall be true at last:

"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain": for at last the earth is filled with "the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea."

V

GOD THE CHAMPION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS[7]

[7] Preached in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Day, 1915.

"O LORD, Thou hast been our refuge from one generation to
another. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the
earth and the world were made, Thou art GOD from everlasting and
world without end."--Ps. xc. 1, 2.

The story is told of Archbishop Temple that as he was walking away from the House of Lords, after the defeat of the Bill he had brought in for the advancement of Temperance, some well-meaning person was endeavouring to comfort him in his natural disappointment, although, needless to say, he was himself as strong and brave and confident as ever. Was he looking, asked the questioner, to the verdict of posterity? No. Was he looking to the gradual change of public opinion? No. Was he looking to a verdict in another House which would influence the opinion of the house which he had just left? No. What was it he looked to, then? "I look to GOD."

It was the answer of a true, brave, and believing Christian man; if the GOD of the Christians exists at all, He is so strong and so powerful and so wise that to be on His side is worth all other aid in the world, and to defy GOD, apart from its blasphemy, is the most colossal mistake which can be made.

There is a sense, of course, in which the cynic was right when he said that GOD is on the side of the strongest battalions, for the raising of those battalions means a self-sacrifice and a self-denial which GOD honours and recognizes; but to imagine that those battalions by themselves represent GOD, and can be used successfully to further causes which GOD has beforehand denounced and proclaimed, is to make, in the long-run, the mistake of the ages.

Now we are keeping Trafalgar Day in a most critical week of the greatest war waged in the world for a thousand years. I have visited the long battle-line mile by mile in Flanders. I have also seen the grey Dreadnoughts watching, watching, watching day and night; it is idle bluster for the enemy to say that the ships of the Fleet are hiding from them; they know only too well where to find them when they want to meet them. As in great Nelson's day, the Fleet is the girdle of the Empire; the seas which Nelson swept are clear to-day; not an enemy flag dare show itself from one hemisphere to the other; under the mighty ægis of the Grand Fleet, transports in hundreds carry troops all over the world, food-ships pour in from every port; even when the submarine danger was formidable there was no appreciable slackening of the wonderfully brave mercantile marine, and now that the Navy has that peril, too, well in hand, men sail the seas to-day, except for the necessary restrictions with regard to contraband, with greater freedom and security than they sailed the seas long after the Battle of Trafalgar.

In this great conflict on what are we to found our hopes? To what are we to look? Are we to trust only to the strength of our battleships and the perfect training of our sailors? Are we to look to the new armies produced with such marvellous skill by Lord Kitchener's patient hand? Are we to look to the three millions whose services will be asked for, and no doubt offered, in the next six weeks? No doubt we are to look to all these things; GOD does only help those who help themselves. But, standing before you as your Bishop, I tell you frankly that my belief in the final victory of our arms is founded on something far beyond these things. I am full of unshakable confidence and hope, because, like Archbishop Temple, I look to GOD. I try to say with the psalmist every morning:

"And now, LORD, what is my hope?
Truly my hope is in Thee."

"LORD, Thou had been our refuge from
one generation to another."

Notice I do not claim that GOD is some tribal deity who with partial favouritism supports our side; but I claim, with the great Lincoln, that we are on the side of GOD.

1. I do so in the first place (and this comes out the more clearly the more you study the previous history of the question), because this is a wantonly provoked war, planned and desired and finally launched by one Power, and one Power alone--that is, Germany.

Now, if GOD is a God who "makes men to be of one mind in a house," if He made of one blood every nation in the world, and meant them to dwell at peace together; if the teaching of CHRIST is really the teaching of GOD'S own SON--then the nation which wantonly plans and provokes war, and war on such a scale, must be against GOD.

You have only to read two such books as "J'Accuse," said to be written by a German, and "Ordeal by Battle," by Mr. Oliver, to see that this is no idle assertion or party statement, but the literal truth. If I mistake not, "J'Accuse" will be for all time the accusing finger of the civilised world pointing at Germany as Nathan pointed at David, saying, "Thou art the man"; and as to "Ordeal by Battle," while it suggests many political questions which I should not think of discussing here and now, as to why we were so unprepared after the warnings given us, the fact stands out as plainly as daylight that Russia, France, and Great Britain one and all made every effort short of national dishonour to keep the peace.

This, then, is my first ground for claiming that we are on the side of GOD. Those who wantonly provoke war act against GOD, and those who honestly try to prevent war act on His side. But this is only the beginning of the matter.

2. There has always, up to now, been a kind of chivalry in war which has lighted up the more terrible aspects of it. All through history there have been bright flashes of this chivalry even among non-Christians: the conduct of Saladin in the Crusades, the chivalrous bearing of the Black Prince to the captured French King, and many similar incidents, testify to the fact that you need not cease to be a Christian or a gentleman because you have to fight. Many of these laws of chivalry were embodied by the great Christian nations in the Hague Convention; certain modes of warfare were not to be allowed; women and children must be tenderly and chivalrously treated; the wounded of the other side must be treated as fallen comrades; the dead must be decently buried; the Red Cross must be respected; civilians must be spared; the rights of neutrals guarded.

No one can doubt that GOD must have approved of such humane regulations, for they are all founded upon the New Testament; they are a softening, and a valuable softening, of the horrors of war.

All other nations began the war by scrupulously respecting them: Mr. Stanley Washburn, who has closely followed the Russian armies, described the kindness and consideration which they displayed to the peasantry of Poland; our own soldiers have never even been accused by the enemy of violating any of them, and one of the Generals at the Front told me with pride that, though his great brigade had been out from the beginning, no accusation of injuring a French woman or girl had been brought against a single member of it.

But, on the other hand, while time shall last the iniquities committed in Belgium by the Germans, as attested by Lord Bryce's Committee, will ring through history; the very invasion of Belgium itself was a breach of international faith. A friend of mine saw with his own eyes, while a prisoner among the Germans, forty civilians shot in cold blood in one town alone; the gallant Cardinal-Archbishop Mercier has recorded a damning list of other murders in his famous charge. The sinking of the _Lusitania_ will always stand out as one of the greatest crimes in history, although, if I am not mistaken, the judicial murder of a poor Englishwoman[8] for harbouring some poor refugees will run it hard in the opinion of the civilised world. There is one thing about that last incident which perhaps was not taken into account by those who perpetrated the crime: it will settle the matter once for all about recruiting in Great Britain; there will be no need now of compulsion.

[8] This was preached the day after the judicial murder of Nurse
Cavell.

I wonder what Nelson would have said if he had been told that an Englishwoman had been shot in cold blood by a member of any other nation; he would have made more than the diplomatic inquiries which have been made by a great neutral nation into this crime, right and proper as those inquiries are. He would have made his inquiries with the thunder of the guns of the British Fleet, and pressed the question home with the Nelson touch which won Trafalgar, as indeed our Fleet at this moment is only too ready to do. But is it possible that there is one young man in England to-day who will sit still under this monstrous wrong?

There is a famous old rhyme which has come down from the time of the imprisonment of the seven Bishops who risked their lives for the liberties of Britain, as, please God, the Bishops of to-day are still prepared to do:

"And shall they scorn Tre, Pol, and Pen,
And shall Trelawny die?
There's twenty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why."

The spirit of Nelson must indeed have died out of our young men, which it certainly has not, if the answer is not the same to-day; the three millions of new recruits asked for will be there. Why was she put to death? Why was she murdered? Three thousand thousand Englishmen--ay, and Scotsmen and Irishmen, too--will know the reason why.

My second reason, then, for trusting to GOD is that, according to the whole revelation of His character and will, His curse is on the nation, however disciplined and efficient, that tramples underfoot and openly defies the laws of chivalry which once relieved the horrors of war; and that His ultimate blessing must be upon the nation or nations which, however foolishly unprepared, and therefore, for a time, suffering from the want of preparation, in the main are fighting for the weak against the strong.

3. But if this is the negative side what about the positive? I am almost ashamed to ask and answer the question in public again, "For what are we fighting?" If we are fighting for the freedom of the world, for the right to live for the small nations of the earth, for nationality against pan-German tyranny, for international honour as the essential condition of a future brotherhood of nations, then the GOD who has been the refuge from generation to generation of the down-trodden and oppressed, who planted in us the love of liberty, and who has been the champion of the free, must be the God on whose side we are to-day.

4. We are right, then, to look for victory and help to a GOD who through one generation to another has shown Himself a lover of peace and chivalry and mercy and liberty, against a delight in war, against brutality and massacre and tyranny; yet we should have ill-read the lessons of Trafalgar Day if we were to stop here.

Nelson never dreamt that GOD was on his side in the sense that he could relax for an instant his vigilance, or ruin his whole settled plan by impatience, or win a final victory without the self-sacrifice and trust of the nation behind him. If we do look to GOD, then we must remember this bracing fact that "GOD helps those who help themselves."

It is a far-reaching saying that the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light; certainly it is a formidable fact to be faced that for a thoroughly bad cause, carried out in a thoroughly bad way, the authors of this greatest crime in history have succeeded in evoking from the hard-working people of Germany, who are under the impression, doubtless, that they are "saving the Fatherland," a far more universal spirit of organised and efficient self-sacrifice than in the most glorious cause ever entrusted to man has yet[9] been evoked from all in these islands. It was one of our great statesmen who truly said that he feared what he called the "potato spirit" in Germany more than all their guns and shells--the spirit, that is, which was content with potato bread, content to make any sacrifice, if only their cause would be victorious; and it is unwise as well as ungenerous not to recognise the gallantry with which both the individual sailors and soldiers of the enemy have fought.

[9] This sermon was preached in 1915. There has been a great
improvement in 1916.

To look to GOD, then, puts a great responsibility upon those who do so; it means to rise to the level of the sacrifice of GOD. If it is true that, as you will remember, another great English statesman once quoted on a famous occasion, "Who sups with the devil must have a long spoon," then, Who fights with GOD must have a high standard. Is this a time, asked the prophet of the trembling Gehazi, to receive oliveyards, vineyards, menservants and maidservants? Is this a time, we may ask to-day, to haunt night clubs[10] or to spend separation allowances in drinking? Is this a time to ignore Sunday and turn your back upon GOD's House of Prayer? Is this a time to spend anything which can be saved for the nation on personal comfort or extravagant dress? The nation that looks to GOD must come back to GOD; it must come back to GOD at once and come back to Him for good; it is a question whether we at home have yet as a nation deserved the victory which our righteous cause demands. The sailors of the Fleet have deserved it; the soldiers in the trenches have earned it; and when the nation at home has equally deserved it, all will receive together their well-merited reward.

[10] Shortly after this night clubs were abolished.

5. But more than this; those that look to GOD must definitely and persistently seek GOD's help. How many of those here to-day pray earnestly and persistently to GOD for help and grace? How many plead in the greatest service of all the one Great Sacrifice, once offered for the sins of the whole world?

"Look, FATHER, look on His anointed Face,
And only look on us as found in Him;
Look not on our misusings of Thy grace,
Our prayer so languid and our faith so dim:
For, lo! between our sins and their reward
We set the Passion of Thy SON our LORD."

How constantly the faith of our fellow-countrymen amounts to little more than a vague Deism, instead of a living faith in an Incarnate CHRIST. They are learning more than that in the trenches, and I hope also that the same truth is being revealed to those who remain in the broad sea. These beautiful lines, entitled "CHRIST in Flanders," the Editor of the _Spectator_ gave me leave to reproduce in the diocesan magazine:

"We had forgotten You, or very nearly--
You did not seem to touch us very nearly.
Of course we thought about You now and then,
Especially in any time of trouble:
We knew that You were good in time of trouble--
But we are very ordinary men.

"And there were always other things to think of--
There's lots of things a man has got to think of--
His work, his home, his pleasure, and his wife;
And so we only thought of You on Sunday--
Sometimes, perhaps, not even on a Sunday--
Because there's always lots to fill one's life.

"And, all the while, in street or lane or byway--
In country lane, in city street or byway--
You walked among us, and we did not see.
Your feet were bleeding as You walked our pavements--
How _did_ we miss Your footprints on our pavements--
Can there be other folk as blind as we?

"_Now_ we remember, over here in Flanders--
(It isn't strange to think of You in Flanders)--
This hideous warfare seems to make things clear.
We never thought about You much in England--
But now that we are far away from England,
We have no doubts, we know that You are here.

"You helped us pass the jest along the trenches--
Where, in cold blood, we waited in the trenches--
You touched its ribaldry and made it fine.
You stood beside us in our pain and weakness--
We're glad to think You understood our weakness;
Somehow it seems to help us not to whine.

"We think about You kneeling in the Garden--
Ah, GOD! the agony of that dread Garden--
We know You prayed for us upon the Cross.
If anything could make us glad to bear it,
'Twould be the knowledge that You willed to bear it--
Pain--death--the uttermost of human loss.

"Though we forgot You, You will not forget us--
We feel so sure that You will not forget us--
But stay with us until this dream is past.
And so we ask for courage, strength, and pardon--
Especially, I think, we ask for pardon--
And that You'll stand beside us to the last."

What it comes to is the old truth which we have learnt from Foreign Missions--the centre must be converted by the circumference; it is the self-sacrifice of its Mission work abroad which has saved the Church from "fatty degeneration of the heart" at home; it is the growing change of mind among the defenders of our country which must permeate and ennoble the country itself.

Do I look to GOD? But I could only see Him in CHRIST, for He says Himself--and it is either the greatest blasphemy or the greatest truth in the world--"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the FATHER but by Me."

Trafalgar Day, 1915, then, should be not only the turning-point of the world's history, but the inauguration of a new Britain. If the war stopped at this moment, should we really be a changed nation?--would not the old miserable internal disputes break out again?--might we not again be as we were in July, 1914, on the verge of civil war in Ireland, of a revolution among women, and of the greatest industrial strike of modern times? I come back at the end of so many months of the war to the picture which I tried to hold up to London in its first week--"Facing the war is drinking the cup"--"The cup which My FATHER hath given me, shall I not drink it?" We have to repeat the very words of our LORD Himself.

Have we drunk the cup, and drunk it to its dregs? Only then will the angels come and strengthen us for victory; we shall deserve victory then, and we shall be ready for it, for the cup which we shall drink will be the cup to which the SON of GOD Himself put His lips, and the courage and fortitude of Gethsemane leads on to the overwhelming victory of Easter Day.

It is then "Our Day" in an even deeper sense than those mean who so rightly ask our alms to-day for those splendid sister societies of St. John and the Red Cross. Of course we shall pour out into their lap, for the sake of our wounded heroes at the Front, all that we can; but it is "Our Day" because it is the day when the nation is tested to the roots of its being. "If thou hadst known, even thou, in the midst of this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes." They are not hid from our eyes yet; it is still Our Day; but let it pass, and it has gone for ever.

VI

THE KNOCKING AT THE DOOR[11]

[11] Preached at St. Mary's, Bryanston Square, at a service for the
Church-workers of the Deanery.

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice
and open the door, I will come and sup with him, and he with
Me."--REV. iii. 20.

I will come unto him and sup with him, and he with Me. I think sometimes that we dwell in our Advent meditation too exclusively on the thought of the coming Judgment. Of course we have to dwell on it. "Behold, the Judge standeth before the door." A tremendous truth that is. "Behold, the Judge standeth before the door." There is going to come a time when the door will come down with a crash, and we shall be face to face with the Judge. And this affects every single period of our lives. We sometimes imagine that we are going--dare I say the word?--to _dodge_ the Judgment. Not at all; we are going to look into those Eyes like a Flame of Fire, and every man will give an account of himself before GOD. And every day is making up the Judgment. Every thought, every word, every act, every service, every decision we make, it all goes into the judgment, it all goes into the verdict. And when the Judge who stands before the door comes inside, He registers the verdict and the sentence we have been preparing all our lives. We go to our own place--the place that we have prepared for ourselves.

Now that is a tremendous thought, and it is one that we cannot possibly ignore. What is a person, what is a Church-worker, to do who realises that the Judge standeth before the door? What am I to do when I realise that He stands before the door of my heart? The answer can only be: Ask Him in as the SAVIOUR, before He comes as the Judge that is to be.

I want now to take with you another kind of Advent--may I say a more delightful kind of Advent?--that is, the Advent of JESUS CHRIST Himself into the soul. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him and sup with him, and he with Me." It seems at first sight too good to be true, when you think who JESUS CHRIST was--the LORD of Angels, the SON of GOD, the supreme Captain of the heavenly host, the most perfect beautiful Character that ever lived--that He is going Himself to come. Think of it--that He is going to come within me, within you, to live there, to dominate your consciousness, dominate your mind, your life, so that you will speak with His words, think with His thoughts, judge with His judgment; that He will live in you. It seems almost too much to believe; and yet this is precisely the thing which, when we study the New Testament, we find is promised, not only in this passage, but in St. John's Gospel. "My FATHER and I, We will come unto him and make Our abode with him." St. Paul's favourite motto is: "CHRIST in you the hope of glory." CHRIST in you, through the HOLY SPIRIT. He, of course, brings JESUS with Him. It is said in St. John's Gospel: "He is with you, but He shall be _in_ you." And when I speak to a number of Confirmation candidates, I believe it is perfectly true to say before the Confirmation: "He is _with_ you, but He shall be _in_ you." For that is the great gift of Confirmation, the falling of the HOLY GHOST. "Then laid they their hands on them, and the HOLY GHOST came upon them, for as yet He had fallen on none of them."

There is no doubt that this tremendous gift is the special promise given by Christianity. CHRIST wants to live in me. He wants to come inside. He stands outside the door, but if I ask Him He will come inside. And notice, secondly, that this tremendous promise is not made to a few selected people. You might suppose that it was meant for a few Sisters of Mercy, very devoted, who live their lives among the poor, or to a few particular saints among the clergy. But you all have this promise. This tremendous promise comes in the midst of the message to the Church in Laodicea, the people who were neither cold nor hot, the people who were uplifted when they ought to have been humble, the people who had to be chastened and rebuked that they might be made humble, the people who had not a chance of overcoming in their own strength--in fact, people just like you and me. And it is just because we know this, that I have to give this message of love to you. It is just because we know that we are neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm--the churchwardens, workers, sidesmen, Sunday-School teachers--it is just because we are conscious, and because we know that we do want chastening, that we may be perfected and purified; in fact, it is just because we are like the people to whom that message was given that we need to pay heed to the warning of the message. CHRIST says: "I stand at the door and knock, and if any of you will open the door and hear My voice, I will come in and sup with you, and you with Me."

And, therefore, you see, that sets us thinking, does it not? as to what this knocking at the door can mean. Is it possible, you say, that CHRIST has been knocking at the door, and I never knew it was He who was knocking? The whole thing is wonderfully symbolised at the consecration of a church. Perhaps you have not seen the consecration of a church. The Bishop, representing JESUS CHRIST, knocks three times at the door, and says: "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in." The churchwardens and sidesmen say: "Who is the King of Glory?" And the Bishop outside replies: "The LORD of Hosts. He is the King of Glory." Then the doors are flung open, and the Bishop enters, symbolising the entrance of CHRIST into His Church. That happens every time a new church is consecrated in the diocese of London or anywhere else. Who is the King of Glory? Who is He? Is it possible that He has been knocking at my heart and I have never known?

How does He knock? 1. First of all, and perhaps most commonly, by what we call _smiting the conscience_. You notice we use the very words in our popular language which represents knocking--smiting the conscience. Is it possible, for instance, that even now some of you have been conscious that you are not what you ought to be, that your life is not what it ought to be, that there is something wrong with you? People sometimes come to me and say: "Bishop, I want to see you. I am not right. There is something not right with me; something tells me I have not done my work as I ought. There seems to be something between me and GOD." Well, you must cherish that smiting of the conscience. Do not ignore it or despise it. It is the knocking, knocking at the door, of JESUS CHRIST Himself. There is not a doubt about it. Sometimes He knocks the door very loudly. Sometimes His knocks are soft, just like taps. When some pure-hearted boys or girls are going to be confirmed, it is a very gentle knock that CHRIST makes at the door of their young hearts. He feels sure they will attend. He does not have to rouse them by loud thundering knocks. He comes quietly because that heart is made for JESUS CHRIST, and JESUS CHRIST is made for that heart. And therefore at a Confirmation of well-prepared candidates it is lovely to think how He comes up and knocks at the young soul, and the soul recognises the knock, and says: "Come in." No loud knock is wanted. We were meant to grow up with "our days bound each to each by natural piety." CHRIST, who has taken us up in His arms at Baptism, is made to come gently, quietly, and happily, into the young soul at Confirmation. There is not meant to be some great break in our lives. We are meant to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our LORD and SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. But if there comes this knocking, a smiting of the conscience, I do pray you to remember that it is meant in love, that it is CHRIST who wants to come within us.

2. Sometimes the knock is a very heavy one, the heavy dull knocking of a _great sorrow_. I have seen a great deal of it, when people have lost their dear ones in this Great War. One who had lost the light of her eyes said to me the other day: "I somehow feel nearer GOD in spite of it all." No doubt in that heavy, sad knock at the door you can hear JESUS CHRIST'S own knocking. He may come into the soul through the sorrow in a way in which He has never come when all is right and bright and happy. If some of you have heard that heavy knocking at the door, do not think GOD has forgotten you and forsaken you. Rise and open the door, and CHRIST will come into your soul in a way in which He has never come before in all your life.

3. Sometimes it is the quick happy _knocking of joy_. Someone wrote to me the other day that he had had a great joy. All the darkness seemed now to have cleared away. He said: "I see my path in the light of GOD'S love." There was the quick knocking of joy, and CHRIST came in with the joy. The clearer knock of joy was the knocking of JESUS CHRIST.

4. Sometimes it is _some friend_ who comes into the life, some influence, perhaps a parish priest, who knocks at the door. Perhaps only too unwillingly at first you open the door, and you find that in the parish priest who comes you have found your best friend on earth, and he by his coming in brings CHRIST to you; he brings Him with him, and he leaves Him with you, if he is a faithful steward. If the parish priest is a faithful steward, he leads you to the Master. Then, perhaps, the sudden call comes. I have seen this happen to many young soldiers. I lately spent two months with those who were just going out--they are now in the trenches. They crowded in every evening to have a talk or they lay down on the ground and drank in every word at some Church Parade service. I could see, as I watched their faces, that they were hearing the call of their country to risk their lives, their all. It brought them near to JESUS CHRIST. In the knocking of their country's call JESUS CHRIST knocked, and I believe there are many fighting in the trenches now every day borne up by a faith they did not have until this summer--a belief in the immediate presence of their SAVIOUR with them. It would not have happened but for this sudden necessity of facing the ordeal of their lives.

Is it possible that all these things, or some of them, have been happening to you--or something different that I have not mentioned--and you have never recognised it as yet as being what it is, JESUS CHRIST knocking at the door? Now what are you to do? What are any of us to do, for I am just one among you? It seems clear there are three things that we are bound to do, if this great miracle (and it is nothing else) is to take place. The first thing is to listen for and recognise the voice of JESUS CHRIST outside the door, that we may be ready and prepared to open the door. And do you not think that the reason that many of us never hear JESUS CHRIST'S voice is that we never listen for it, that we have no quiet time, that we have provided no time for meditation and prayer? We are too busy. We get up in the morning just in time to start off for our work; we never have this quiet time, or only a very few moments to think, in which the voice will be heard.

Now, I cannot tell you how much I believe in what I call _listening to the voice of God_. We pray, indeed--we all of us pray. But it is the ten minutes after prayer that matters, it is the ten minutes' listening to what He is going to say back, and often we do not give that time at all, and so we never get the answer. Is it not fair to say that some of you Church-workers just kneel down for a few hurried moments, and then are up again from your knees, off to some duty on earth, and that possibly a few minutes each day would constitute all the time we devote to listening to the voice of GOD? If that is all, can you wonder when you take your Sunday-School lesson that it is rather dry, or that your mission sermons do not seem to have much inspiration about them, and gradually the voice of JESUS CHRIST fades away and becomes very vague? You do not give time. Do not tell me that in the twenty-four hours you cannot find time for the most vital thing in this world. We are only here for a few passing years. Five minutes after death it matters more than I can say--these quiet times in our lives, they are worth more than gold, quiet times when we listen to the voice of GOD. After death how still it is!

"I hear no more the busy beat of time,
Nor in me feel the fluttering pulse nor faltering breath."

One moment will not be different from the next in the stillness and quiet of Paradise. And in the quiet of the other world how much we shall regret having had so few quiet times on earth! Why, one of the very busiest merchants in the City used to be very regular at a daily service. I said to him once: "How can you find time, you, one of the very busiest merchants in the City, to attend daily service?" He said: "I am so busy I must go to the daily service." He felt his business would simply sweep him away if he did not get a quiet time. And Mr. Gladstone, you will remember, kept his Sundays in unbroken quiet, waiting upon GOD during the very busiest period of his life. Without it he would have lost the quiet and strength of his soul. Therefore make your first resolution. "I will listen to what the LORD GOD will say concerning my soul." "Speak, LORD, for Thy servant heareth." If you want to have strength and happiness in your spiritual work, wait upon God. And in the silence you will hear the voice of JESUS CHRIST; you will hear His knock.

Then, when we have heard the voice and recognised the knock, the next thing to do is to open the door. How simple that sounds, does it not? and how difficult it often is! Picture some who have had the door of their souls closed tightly for years. You have to prise the door open, and you have to break down the fixed habits of the man who has never prayed except for a few moments or two in his life; how hard he finds it to reverse the habits of a lifetime! Someone who has an old quarrel, through jealousy or something else, with another worker--how hard it is to forgive and begin all over again! But it has got to be done, the door has to be prised or forced, because if CHRIST is to come in we have to open the door--that is our part in it--and CHRIST _will_ come in. And if only we realised how eager He is to come in, and what a power He has to change the heart and control the thoughts and purify the conscience, we should all want Him to come, and we should not spare any time and trouble to get the door open.

And when He has come in, notice this wonderful phrase: "I will sup with him, and he with Me." He does not come in as a transient guest to stay for a little while, and go away, but He comes on a permanent visit, to take up His permanent residence. And although we should not have dared to use the words ourselves, the words "I will sup with him, and he with Me," describe the most delightful friendship. Do you desire His presence? How often do you come to Holy Communion, how carefully do you prepare for the great gift of the presence of JESUS CHRIST in your soul? Why, I would press this on you, that the supping with JESUS CHRIST and He with you which takes place in the Holy Communion is the most glorious moment of your whole day. The first Christians never thought of spending Sunday without going first to Holy Communion. It was the special service on the Lord's Day. It may be that some of you who used to be regular have drifted away from this way of receiving the presence of CHRIST into the soul. We know no better way for cherishing the presence of CHRIST in the soul than being regular at Communion. The humblest communicant comes away from his Communion with the thought: "CHRIST lives in me; I live, yet not I, but CHRIST liveth in me."

Will you, then, take from me these three thoughts, Listening, Opening, and Cherishing the Presence: Devotion, Consecration, Communion? And if you do, I tell you what will happen to your deanery. It will gradually become the most Christian fellowship in London. You will be drawn to one another in a way in which you never have been before. We want more unity in every deanery, so that the parishes may take an interest in one another, and that all Church gatherings may be keen and well attended as by a band of brothers and sisters.

This service now may be the beginning of a new life for the deanery, not only of a new fellowship, and of far greater devotion in your work, and of a joy which you never had before. Christmas in war time is not going to be a merry Christmas for any of us. But there is no reason, if we understand what happiness means, why it should not be a happy one. If these three lessons are taken home, you will as a deanery and individually and as parishes have a joy which the world can neither give nor take away.

VII

IMMORTALITY[12]

[12] Preached at the Parish Church, Camden Town.

"JESUS said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he
that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."--ST.
JOHN xi. 25, 26.

"Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." If a man die, shall he live again? There is no time in our history when that has been a more pressing question than it is to-day. Men are dying in hundreds. I can think myself of some as dear to me as if they were my own sons, whose bodies are lying to-day in some Belgian or French grave. And I spend much of my time in going to comfort the widows and the mothers. If a man die, shall he live again? I wonder whether you have ever read or heard read this little poem called "The Army of the Dead":[13]

[13] By Barry Pain. Published in the _Westminster Gazette_.

"I dreamt that overhead
I saw in twilight grey
The Army of the Dead
Marching upon its way,
So still and passionless,
With faces so serene,
That scarcely could one guess
Such men in war had been.

"No mark of hurt they bore,
Nor smoke, nor bloody stain;
Nor suffered any more
Famine, fatigue, or pain;
Nor any lust of hate
Now lingered in their eyes--
Who have fulfilled their fate,
Have lost all enmities.

"A new and greater pride
So quenched the pride of race
That foes marched side by side
Who once fought face to face.
That ghostly army's plan
Knows but one race, one rod--
All nations there are Man,
And the one King is God.

"No longer on their ears
The bugle's summons falls;
Beyond these tangled spheres
The Archangel's trumpet calls;
And by that trumpet led
Far up the exalted sky,
The Army of the Dead
Goes by, and still goes by.

"Look upward, standing mute;
Salute!"

And will they live again? I think that what chills our faith, and forms really the only argument that they will not live again, is the dead appearance of the dead. I am perfectly certain it is that that chills the faith of hundreds. The dead look so dead. There is "no voice nor any that answers, nor any that regardeth," and all the attempts, foolish, often even mischievous, to reach those in the other world have ended in utter failure. And, therefore, when we are facing the dead appearance of the dead, we are facing the only argument there is that they do not live again.

I want to say now one or two things that I hope will help you to have a happy view of death, to make you absolutely certain that when a man dies he does live again.