“ Foremost among moral forces is that wonderful thing, all powerful though difficult to define, which men call discipline. Of the many qualities which make up discipline, there is one of unrivalled importance, which it partly evokes and partly creates, and that is self-control. It is of the essence of discipline that a man should learn entirely to subordinate his own wish or pleasure or safety to a larger common purpose. Standing in the ranks he must control the desire to move his head or fidget with his hands. In the face of the enemy he must control his desire to run away. ”

“ It is the birthright of every man and woman born into the world. The path of purity is a right of way, and the place of vision has no fences round it; all who will may enter there, and there is none to forbid them but themselves. I believe there are numbers of men who have a dim consciousness of these great possibilities but who, from one cause or another, have never really begun to explore them. The one thing needful, for many a man, is simply that he should give his soul a chance. ”

“ And there are many men who have cause to bless a blameless friendship with a good woman. But if some profit by this new liberty, others, it must be confessed, have shown themselves less worthy of it. It is all too easy for the man of to-day to fall below the standard which is planted in the conscience and instinct of every true gentleman. There is much--too much--in modern life to make men think that women are in the world just to minister to their amusement and gratification, and to make women acquiesce in that idea. ”

“ Does this seem an impossibly high standard for a man who has to live his life in modern society? Perhaps it would be out of reach of us ordinary men, if it were not for a new and mighty spiritual stimulus which, if we will, we may make our own. The secret of chivalry, like the secret of courage, may be learned in the companionship of the one perfect chivalrous Gentleman that the world has seen--Jesus of Nazareth. He, born of a human mother, acquainted with family love. Friend of gentle women, for ever blessed and sanctified the friendship and love of men and women. ”

“ And it is chivalry that is always on the watch to protect the defenceless. In every group of people, in all sections of society, there are always some individuals who seem curiously unable to fend for themselves and invariably get pushed to the wall. Do you do your share in the general pushing? Or do you, with Christian chivalry, try and stand up for those who cannot or do not stand up for themselves?
The chivalrous man, moreover, is never unfair nor unmerciful. War-time makes a big demand on the qualities of fairness and mercy. ”

“ To every Englishman there is something that stirs the blood and fires the imagination in the ancient legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, the legends that Tennyson has immortalized in his Idylls of the King. ”

“ The War is creating a hunger for reality, and above all for spiritual reality. "Break me, O God, destroy me if you will, but save me from self-complacency and little interests and little successes and the life that passes as the shadows of a dream." ”

“ Life gets crowded and men lose sight of God; some men even think He is not there because they have lost the knack of looking for Him. If you cannot see properly through a telescope it is rash to conclude that the object you are looking for is not there; it would be better to clean the lens. It is not God who deserts us; it is we who, blinded by sin, miss Him. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Here again it is not the "Saints" only who are gifted with this capacity for spiritual vision. ”

“ But the man who wants to "fight the good fight with all his might" is called to tilt against the evil without as well as the evil within. It is a caricature of Christianity which makes it out to be simply a provision for each man to save his own skin and qualify for heaven. Christ did indeed come to save men; but He did it, not to ensure their personal safety and exempt them from fighting, but to enlist them for ever on the side of God and Righteousness. The dimensions and issues of this War are such as to demand the utmost from every Christian soldier. ”

“ When you and I fail, it is not just our own Christianity that suffers: we are "letting down" the whole Brotherhood, we are lowering great and immemorial traditions, we are proving unworthy of the unnumbered multitude of Christian heroes who, in every generation, have fought the good light of faith. ”

“ To be loyal to Him will mean being loyal to the Christian Brotherhood and loyal to the Christian Cause. Loyalty to a brotherhood is a thing that should come naturally to a soldier, or indeed to anyone who has imbibed the highest traditions of our Public Schools and Universities and Services. "Comradeship," says a soldier who ought to know, "Comradeship is the saving characteristic of the British Army." A man has learnt one of the greatest lessons of life when he realizes that the honour of the Regiment is of far greater moment than his own personal success, than his life even. ”

“ This sense of owing loyal service to a King is an immemorial instinct in men. And it is a deep-rooted tradition that those who are his "Knights" are bound to him in the closest ties of honourable obligation. In the earliest centuries of our national history the King used to have his "war band," bound personally to him by their free choice, and sworn to fight for him to the death. ”

“ Sermons on sin and exhortations to holiness may leave us cold, but this Knightly ideal carries an appeal that is permanent and powerful; it cannot fail to find some response in the heart of anyone who is a real man. For the point is that Sir Galahad, with all his purity, was no milksop, no untempted saint; he was uncommonly strong in the right arm, as other men found to their cost. But there was, and is always, a deep-down connexion between what a man is and what he does. A man's whole life is the product and expression of the real quality of the hidden self. ”

“ If purity is the condition of vision, it is also the secret of strength.
"My strength is as the strength of ten
Because my heart is pure." Sir Galahad had made the discovery which true men always make. Sin is a source of weakness. Purity is a fount of strength. Unclean men are never conquerors--they have lost the first and most important of battles, that with themselves. ”

“ The difficulty with many people is that Christianity only touches the circumference of their existence and never seems to get established right at the centre of heart and life. It simply makes the whole difference when once you discover that Jesus Christ is a real Person Who, on His side, is interested in you and loves to help you and go about with you, and Whom you, on your side, can talk to and lean on and, gradually, begin to love. ”

“ Those words might serve as a motto for all those who are beginning to see that the greatest Enterprise of all, and one most worth serving, is that of extending the Kingdom of God over the face of the whole earth. The time is ripe indeed for a general Christian offensive. The war has laid bare, as never before, the moral need of the world, and now is the opportunity to begin afresh the task of giving men Christianity, and to "push on with it." ”

“ Will a man be strong here, where strength is so needed, if all the while he is gravely weak in the region of his inner life? Is it likely that he will be able to inspire others with cheerful fortitude in face of hardships and death if the very source is fouled whence his own strength must be drawn? ”

“ Who is the enemy, and how are we to fight him? You won't need field glasses to see his front line. "A soldier's first and last battle is with himself." The enemy outside owes much of his strength and success to his traitorous ally within the gates. Many a man's worst foe is in his own heart and life. There are things that start from within, habits of thought or word or deed, which definitely militate against a man being a true Knight and a Christian gentleman. There can be no truce with these things. The Christian Knight has got to stand up against them. ”

“ There is only one power I ever heard of that could plumb the depths of a human soul and transform the quality of all the stuff that lies down there, and clean out all the refuse, and stiffen the dethroned will and put it back in its place of power--and that is the "Spirit" of Jesus Christ. ”

“ Thank God our Nation has, on the whole, and despite terrible provocation, shown itself to be a chivalrous foe to the enemy. If you are going to be chivalrous, there is no room for vengeance or retaliation. Soldiers and sailors know this by instinct, and act accordingly. I always notice that it is newspaper people, and people who sit snug in their arm-chairs at home, who talk so loud about reprisals and retaliation. ”

“ From the Manger to the Cross He lived out and taught the first law of all chivalry, the great guiding principle of all human relationships, the highest glory both of manhood and womanhood, that it is ever more blessed to give than to receive. ”

“ The question of purity has its roots in these secret places of a man's being that lie hid from any human eye. "There is nothing," insisted Christ, "from without a man that entering into him can defile him, but the things which come out of him, from within, out of the heart ... those are they that defile the man." ”

“ When a man, at whatever cost, "does his bit" in a mighty enterprise, then he begins to enjoy "the top of the fulness of life." In one of the battles of history, when in an advance a soldier was mortally wounded, a comrade bent over him and cheered him with the tidings, "They have taken the position: the flag is planted on it." ”

“ The highest meaning of a soldier's vocation has many points of contact with this Knightly ideal; and some of the greatest soldiers of our history have been men who were also Knights of the Cross. Knights are held to higher ideals and charged with harder tasks than lesser men. And for you who serve our English King and are not unmindful of your allegiance to the King of Kings, I would fain try and draw a picture of what Christian Knighthood may mean. ”

“ It is always in this personal way that God in Christ offers Himself to men. He is the Redeemer Who will release you from the iron bonds of sin, the Friend Who will stand by your side, the King Who would have your loyal service. And, in order to break for good and all the power of sin and death, and that He might found His Kingdom on the free loyalty of love, He died.... It is a common thing for men to lay down their lives for king and country ”

“ There are others who, without descending to vice, have half-unconsciously allowed their thought of the man and woman relationship to be lowered and coarsened. Influenced by the presentment of life which they see at most theatres and cinemas, and in a certain type of novel, they learn to think of love as something easy, exciting, pleasurable, irresponsible, unfettered by ordinary restraints, something to be gazed at, feasted on, dissected, toyed with ”

“ When we find a man is a fellow-Christian, whatever his social position may be, we ought to have that kind of feeling towards him that we should have if he had been at our school, or belonged to our Regiment. There is no free-masonry like that which links together those who have a common love for Jesus Christ and a common interest in His purposes. Moreover, this sense of being one of a great Brotherhood is a spiritual safeguard and incentive. ”

“ Once you get fairly hold of this idea of Christianity being largely a matter of personal loyalty to Jesus Christ, then your "religion" will begin to become alive in all sorts of unsuspected ways. Prayer will cease to be a more or less formal duty which you hardly like to give up, and will become instead a real intercourse with God which you find you cannot do without. ”

“ If Christians generally lived up to this Christian ideal, and cared little for getting, but everything for giving, the world would rapidly become a very different place. Selfishness is the cause of nearly all our ills; and chivalry is just the opposite of selfishness. There is no chivalry in the man who is wrapped up in his own affairs, and who turns a cold eye on all except his own particular friends. ”

“ On all sides of us Evil is everywhere entrenched, and in positions that often seem impregnable; his worldwide forces are knit in close alliance, and fight with the veteran skill of age-long experience. ”

“ Something of this vision, this instinct, will be at the back of his mind in all his contact with the women he knows and sees. And, therefore, his one guiding principle as he meets and mixes with them will be--reverence. A deep reverence for womanhood is the hall-mark of true chivalry. ”