We see that, if we

domestic reforms, however urgently required, are arrested, postponed, even defeated altogether, by the ruinous obsessions of conflict. But we are witnessing the novel combination of War and Social Reform. It is surely, when we consider the fact, deeply significant that, in the mid-course of a desperate struggle, we should be putting our hands to a great project of educational reform. Perhaps the explanation of the novelty lies in our perception that the War is itself the result of education, wrongly conceived, and wrongly directed. We see in the War the Harvest of an ill sowing. would make an end of this ancient Curse, it will not be enough to defeat Germany, though that would seem to be the indispensable first step, unless we get the shaping of the people, their moral and intellectual training, sound and efficient. We cannot get the Harvest of lasting Peace if we sow in the minds of the young the dragon's teeth of envy, self-seeking, and ambition. "BE NOT DECEIVED: GOD IS NOT MOCKED FOR WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH, THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP." We must establish in the minds of our people that truth which it is so impossible to deny, and so difficult really to believe, that "no one ever did a designed injury to another, but at the same time he did a much greater to

himself." We must secure patriotism by divorcing it from that immoral and aggressive nationalism, which in its completest development has carried Germany into her immense crime. "THE WORK

OF RIGHTEOUSNESS SHALL BE PEACE: AND THE EFFECT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE FOR EVER."

7. If this indeed be the case, if the aggression of Germany which has brought such extreme misery on the world has its source in the false ideals and false disciplines which have perverted the soul of the German people, then it follows that in fighting Germany the Allies are really fighting a conception of human life and human duty so deeply wrong, so corrupting, so contagious, that the whole spiritual future of Mankind requires its defeat and repudiation. We may apply to this tremendous struggle, though. it be fought with the limitless material resources of modern industrialism and modern science, the great words of ST. PAUL: "OUR WRESTLING IS NOT AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD, BUT AGAINST THE PRINCIPALITIES, AGAINST THE POWERS, AGAINST THE WORLD-RULERS OF THIS DARKNESS, AGAINST THE SPIRITUAL HOSTS OF WICKEDNESS IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES." For the moment the immitigable conflict may define itself by political

descriptions, but, even while we conceive it thus, we know that the same conflict proceeds within every community and within every individual. We are

fighting the battle of the German People as well as our own when we say in the memorable phrase of the American President that the object of our fighting is "that the world may be made safe for democracy." Remember that the higher your view of the character of the conflict, the more you are bound to fight on till the victory has been won. If this be in its essence a spiritual warfare, then the LORD'S Words hold good with respect to it: "HE THAT ENDURETH TO THE END, THE SAME SHALL BE SAVED." The issues of the War are as yet veiled from us, but not our duty or the end of our warfare. There are victories worse than defeats : defeats which are better than victories. The essential thing is to "do out the duty": so doing we cannot finally fail. "LET US NOT BE WEARY IN WELL DOING FOR IN DUE SEASON WE SHALL REAP, IF WE FAINT NOT."

XVI

THE VISION OF THE INVISIBLE1

HE ENDURED, AS SEEING HIM WHO IS INVISIBLE.-Hebrews xi. 27.

I. THE Christian Church was historic and militant from the first, with the gathered and growing power of a great tradition of moral endeavour bearing it forward from the past, and the challenge of a mighty conflict in its ears. A solemn urgency lay upon those earliest believers, for the time was short and the task great. Ever they heard the warning summons of their Lord, "WE MUST WORK THE WORKS OF HIM THAT SENT ME WHILE IT IS DAY. THE NIGHT COMETH, WHEN NO MAN CAN WORK.” There were times of depression when the outlook seemed dark, and Christian courage sank; times of confusion when discord broke up the fellowship of Faith, and there was no clear vision of Truth;

1 Preached in Liverpool to an Assembly of Doctors and Nurses on Sunday, October 14, 1917.

times of cowardice when the Church would make terms with the World, and shrank timidly from the magnitude of her LORD'S claim. In such dark hours the Past, with its treasury of personal heroism, its precedents of fortitude, its glowing records of victory against odds, was the strength of the Christian Army, the source from which, as from a well-stored arsenal, it replenished its fighting strength. The Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews appears to have lived in one of these dark hours, and to have addressed himself to the task of rallying the Christian Forces. In this noble chapter, from which I have taken the text, we notice that he turned to the sacred past, and from it drew the appeal which he made to his brethren. He showed them that they were being called to a warfare which had been illustrated by a long line of champions, and which found its supreme exponent in the Divine MASTER Himself. Infinitely various had been the circumstances in which the "GOOD FIGHT OF THE FAITH" had been fought, but in its essence that Fight, continuing through the ages, had been the same; all the Great Army of the combatants had stood for the same truth, and were destined to receive the same reward. Not yet, he says, not now: the battle still proceeds,