XV

THE HARVEST AND THE WAR1

SOW TO YOURSELVES IN RIGHTEOUSNESS, REAP ACCORDING TO MERCY: BREAK UP YOUR FALLOW GROUND: FOR IT IS TIME TO SEEK THE LORD.-Hosea x. 12.

BE NOT DECEIVED: GOD IS NOT MOCKED: FOR WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH, THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP.-Galatians vi. 7.

1. NEVER, for many a long year, have we watched the fortunes of the English Harvest with an anxiety so painful, and so well-founded. Among the more disconcerting surprises of the War has been the rapid development of submarine warfare; and perhaps the greatest scandal of German methods has been the application of submarines to the purpose of blockading these islands by the sinking of merchant vessels in circumstances alien to the precedents of civilized fighting and repulsive to the humane instincts of mankind. We have discovered that our ancient immunity from hostile attack is

1 Preached in York Minster on Thursday, October 4, 1917, at the Harvest Thanksgiving.

passing away, that Science is binding us to the continent by viewless bridges which cannot be destroyed, so that we, like our neighbours of the mainland of Europe, though not yet in the same measure, are menaced by the risks of invasion and the cutting off of our food-supplies. In spite of the British Fleet, to whose unsleeping vigilance and unfailing valour we all owe a debt of gratitude which cannot be exaggerated, there has been so considerable a destruction of ships and cargoes, that the possibility of a supreme national calamity has been outlined on the horizon, and can only be averted by prudence and economy. Abstinence from waste and a reduction in normal consumption have become civic duties of the first importance, and public opinion ought to, and surely will, support the national authority in dealing severely with those bad citizens who fail to perform them. From all this it has followed, that a new interest attaches to our home-grown harvest, for we hardly know how far we may have to depend for our national maintenance on what we can provide from our own land. Hitherto, indeed, our privations in this War have been petty, so petty that, when we remember the hardships so cheerfully borne by our brave Allies in France and Italy, and reflect on the extreme

miseries into which the civil population of BELGIUM, SERBIA, ROUMANIA, and POLAND has been plunged, we are almost ashamed to speak of them, but the high prices of provisions do certainly bear hardly on our poorest people, and we have to contemplate a future in which we may all have to learn by personal experience the severity of civilian discomfort which a long-continued War must create. In these circumstances we have taken an almost painful interest in the growth of the crops, and in the changing fortunes of the harvest. Now that

the process of ingathering has been completed, and we know that, if our highest expectations have not been satisfied, our worst fears have certainly not been justified, we come together for our annual thanksgiving with a deepened sense of our dependence on the Will of GOD, and a more vivid consciousness of HIS unfailing Providence. We have discovered our own weakness: we have witnessed HIS renewed bounty: we bend our heads in reverent worship before the AUTHOR of all good. "We praise THEE, O GOD; we acknowledge

THEE to be the LORD."

2. The War has raised questions the answering of which will bring about great changes in our national system. For one thing it has driven us

all to realize the gravity of that neglect of agriculture which has obtained in recent years, and it has opened our eyes to the harsh conditions under which our agricultural population has been living. We have been driven by the spur of necessity, but we shall be greatly guilty if, when that spur has ceased to urge us, we forget the visions of duty and interest which it forced us to gain. In peace we must not forget the lessons of the War, and suffer ourselves to fall back into the evils from which we were for the time lifted. No doubt it is the case that a serious attempt to develop English agriculture, and to raise the standard of living among agricultural labourers, will present formidable problems which the highest wisdom of our economists and statesmen will be needed to solve, but economists and statesmen cannot succeed unless they build on a sure foundation, and work with a sound estimate of their materials. They will not arrive at the true solutions of the social problems, which they must perforce handle, unless they work continuously in view of the deeper issue of morality which really dominates all properly human questions. We cannot go far in our essays at social improvement before we discover that the subject we have in hand, though its aspects be

many, is essentially neither economical nor political but moral. Housing, education, the reform of the liquor laws, land-tenure, wages, profits-every one raises questions peculiar to itself, but all are intertwined so subtly that to deal with one is to affect all, and to leave out any is to endanger the success of the rest. At the root of everything lies the moral issue, for, as the LORD said, "MAN DOTH NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE: BUT BY EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDETH OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD DOTH MAN LIVE." What view do we take of Man, of his rights in society, of his obligations to society, of his essential needs, of his true happiness, of his final destiny? On the answer to these questions will turn finally both our decision on the specific practical policies, and the success in the long run of what we actually decide to do. Taking the familiar procedures of Nature as illustrations of their doctrine, this is the core of the messages which Prophets and Apostles delivered to their contemporaries, and in the sacred Scriptures have transmitted to us.

3. For my text I have placed together two passages illustrating respectively the prophetic and the apostolic teaching. HOSEA and ST. PAUL agree both in the substance and in the method of their witness.

Both, by appealing to the familiar course