Norman Maclean

“ That is why the whole nation has been welded into the unity and consistency of polished steel; why the fire of patriotism burns in our midst with an intenser heat than ever before.
It is not merely from the righteousness of our cause in this war that our patriotism draws inspiration, but also from the ideals for which our Empire stands over all the world. As we look out to-day on the Empire which our fathers bequeathed us, taking it all in all, it stands for righteousness as no other on earth. It stands for the freedom of the soul and the freedom of the body all over the world. ”

“ We, who fight for the truth of word and for the freedom and deliverance of the oppressed, can feel that God is for us, and that all is well.
And when we pray, our voices rising as one, "Thy kingdom come," we can see that kingdom coming through blood and tears, cleansing the foul places and establishing peace on everlasting foundations. It is a new day that has dawned for us—a day in which we stand united as the subjects of the one King, as the sons of the one God—and the things that separated us one from another are swept away. ”

“ No work ever done on earth for the elevation of humanity can compare with that wrought in India by our race for the uplift of humanity; and it is the same wherever the standard of Britain waves. In our own day we have seen in Egypt a whole race rising out of the mud and clothed anew in the garments of self-respect. Through Africa, wherever the sway of Britain extends, though yesterday the land reeked with blood, to-day mercy and kindness are healing the woes of men, and millions who knew not when death lurked for them in the bush now sleep in peace under the palms. ”

“ It is His will that we should strike a blow in defence of the house of our soul—the sanctuary of nationality.
Patriotism must be vibrant with the spirit of religion if it is to be a power rousing the nation to heroism and self-sacrifice. There never was a nation so patriotic as the Jew. No city ever gripped a nation's heart-strings as Jerusalem gripped the heart of the Jew. No suffering, no defeat, no exile however far, could quench the fire of patriotism in the heart. ”

“ There is a place for sorrow in our land, but its place is by the hearth-stones of those whose sons choose to survive with shame. He has taken his place among those who, unseen, are leading on the embattled hosts of his race to victory. He has discovered the treasures in store for the brave and the true. When, amid the flutterings of flags and the shouting of the people rejoicing in their deliverance, the great army will return home at last—he, too, will come. ”

“ And my friend's son was with the famous regiment that was swaying to and fro, grappling with destiny. He was helpless—and there was only God to appeal to. There comes an hour in life when the heart realises that instinct is mightier far than that logic which is, after all is said, only the last refuge of the feeble-minded. There came like the sudden lifting of a curtain the vision of a whole nation—nay, of races girdling the whole earth—to whom the same high experience has come. Everywhere the sanctuaries filled, the eyes turned upward, for instinct is mightier than reason. ”

“ It is death that has saved us all from that. Were man's location here for ever, the world would be his god. A world without death would be a world with no room for the Cross. Men climbed the heights of nobility as they defied death. The crackling flames were unable to silence the martyrs' song; the march of the hosts of devouring tyranny could not move the hearts that chose death rather than slavery; the generations sealed with their blood their testimony that truth and loyalty to truth are more precious than life, and so met death with a smile ”

“ And as humanity will realise its horror, the word sin will once more burn red before men's eyes, and there will arise that passion for righteousness which will lay sin low even as the dust. There will ring round the world the compelling cry that this power of hell must not for ever hold humanity in its grip—that ruthless ambition, militarism, despotism must be made to cease from the face of the earth. Once more the shadow of the Cross will mean salvation to men. ”

“ The foundations which the fathers laid in righteousness, through long neglect and decay are crumbling. An empire encircling the globe is tottering to destruction. The hay and the stubble cannot come scathless through the flames. The writing is on the wall, and as the eyes see the hand that writes, trembling seizeth upon men. And then there cometh a sudden change. The nation in a day rises out of the morass of its self-indulgence. It sets itself to lay hold again upon the eternal law of righteousness. ”

“ In masses the sea swallows them up, trenches are filled with them, but however much we try we cannot narcotise our hearts by sophistries. Some day a name stands out alone—and we realise.
All over the land, in every parish, blinds are being drawn in houses where music and laughter are silenced. There comes the surge of a wild revolt. It is not these individual hearts alone that lie stricken, it is the joy of the centuries yet to be. In nameless graves lie the dream-children who will never now be born. ”

“ The fires of patriotism are dying low, and the love of country gives place to the love of party. There are mean victories rejoiced over, but they are the victories of the cynic and the sensualist. There is the sound of shouting, but it is the shouting over the triumph of one self-seeking politician over another self-seeking partisan. Saintliness, which other generations held in awe and reverence, provokes now a pitying smile. Mammon alone is held in high honour and sitteth in the high places. What is the will of God towards that nation? It is this—ruin and utter destruction. ”

“ A wave has passed over us, raising us to the realisation of the higher values of things. Words live for us now which were dead yesterday. A beam of light has fallen into the chamber of imagery, and the word Temperance has risen from the couch on which it lay dying, and it claims us for its own. Through it we can make the world know that we are worth fighting for—worth that the young, the strong, and the brave should take everything they hold dear—their ideals, their love, their little children unborn—and throw them into the trench, and there give themselves and their dreams to death for us. ”

“ And let these charred walls be left to the alchemy of time, and nature will clothe them in richer loveliness. Lichen and moss will grow on them, and the moonlight will etherialise them. One symbol of beauty may seem to perish; but the spirit of beauty itself, dwelling in the hearts of men and abiding at the core of the universe, is indestructible. The thing which we deem perishable, no power on earth can kill. ”

“ The ideals of righteousness which this Empire upholds would be trampled everywhere under foot. Covetousness and the lust of gold would hold the field of the world.
There is only one thing to be done, one duty summoning us with an irresistible call—the duty that calls us to stand between our country and destruction. Were the fate which has overtaken the Low Country to overtake us; were this fair land to be made a wilderness, our women and children driven into the wilds, and the Empire wrested from our hands, the men who failed in their duty would never be able to hold up their heads again. ”

“ The crumbling of the Empire in a week! It is not we alone, with our wives and children in these little islands, who would be swept to ruin, and on whom despair would fall. From the far north-west to the long wash of the Australasian seas the shadow of devouring misery and death would fall on humanity. The millions of India would be forthwith swept into the whirlpools of war and mutiny. Egypt would be thrown back into chaos. Africa would be left to Islam and the merciless rule of a nation which knows but how to smite. ”

“ The conscience of the State has been stirred, and it cannot in the future acquiesce in the continuance of the social evils which are gnawing at the nation's heart. The fate of the Empire in the long years to come will depend more on the fight for social renewal in the midst of the streets than on red battlefields. To the men who have stood between the race and destruction the State owes a debt which it can only repay by such measures of social regeneration as will make possible for every man and woman to realise the thrill and the joy of life. ”

“ Like the wind blowing in from the sea that sweeps before it the foul miasma that lies over the valleys, so that men look up and see the heavens and feel a new vigour moving in their blood, so a breath from the living God came stirring the foul places of humanity, and the eyes, no longer blinded by the exhalations of evil passions, saw the ideal of purity arise before their eyes, and they turned to climb towards the clearer vision. ”

“ Every morning the dwellers on the slopes are borne by the railway on a great span of arches over the little village, and they look down on the roofs of its houses. On the slopes there lies the world in which the fringes of life are embroidered—a world where men and women talk of books, pictures and plays. It is a world of hyphenated names. But in all the village there is not so much as one hyphenated name. It is a refuse-heap of humanity. ”

“ And that humanity which named His name was driven once more to the holocaust of war—ten millions of men consigned to the hell of reeking trenches. In the midst of the world the Cross stands as never before, bearing its awful woe. In the seeing of the whole world the Eternal Love is crucified. It was its shadow that fell on her whose lips trembled as she sat on the mort-safe over against the locked and barred door of the House of God. ”

“ Men cannot develop in isolation. What poor creatures men would be if they were solitary units. They would be as the beasts that perish. It is through the heritage of nationality that the soul is enriched. What poor stunted lives would ours be if we had not behind us the great and noble deeds which built up our Empire, if the words of the high souls of many generations did not come thrilling to our hearts, if Shakespeare and Wordsworth, Scott and Burns did not pour their treasures into our laps. The soul grows into the image of God through the riches of nationality. ”

“ With a keen irony he depicted this little globule of a world, a third-rate satellite of a fifth-rate star, floating in the abysses, in relation to the universe but as a mere grain of sand amid all the sand on the world's shores; and on that puny speck of a world he pictured the ephemeral generations, mere flashes of troubled consciousness—and then darkness.
It was reasonable when they thought this world the centre of all things, with the sun and moon and stars circling it round as humble ministrants, that they should believe in some high destiny for themselves. ”

“ The one hand clutched his hair and the other made sundry gestures clinching his arguments.
"Why should we rail at death?" said he; "for death has been the saviour of humanity. It was death that made men of us. It was in the school of death that man learned unselfishness, self-sacrifice, chivalry and honour. There is nothing so ugly as the man whose heart is filled by the world. ”

“ There is on earth something infinitely more precious than the material substance, indestructible though it be. The most beautiful thing the world can show is a good man. Through the years forces play on him, and each force adds its element of beauty. He has struggled with adversity, and in the conflict he has learned patience, tolerance and a wide charity. Waves of affliction have passed over him, and he has learned tenderness and sympathy with human suffering, so that bruised hearts come and lie down in his shadow, and there find healing. ”

“ The most wonderful thing in history is that from a peasant done shamefully to death in a remote corner of the Eastern world there should flow through the ages such an inexplicable power. And yet there must be some explanation of it. Why should a passion for righteousness be evoked in the human heart by the fact that a Galilean was crucified by a petty Roman official? There can be no explanation but this—that that deed of shame revealed to men the hatefulness of the power which wrought so evil a deed. That power was self-interest—selfishness. ”

“ And there came the sense of the madness of the universe and the intolerableness of life, if the end of all heroism was but that—nothingness and corruption. A handful of bones thrown up by the beadle to make room for the dead of to-day—is that all that is left of those who handed down the lamp of life to us? Is that all that will be left of us too at the last? ”

“ It is Odin in whose name these things are done. What we are fighting for is for the Christian ideal against Odin—for the law of truth and mercy against the reign of falsehood of word and bond, and of merciless barbarity. We have bared the breast to death that there may sit on the throne of the world's soul, not a ruthless tribal god, but the God of Fatherhood and Love whom Jesus Christ revealed. And in waging that war we have ground to hope that the God of righteousness is on our side. ”

“ The passion of Christianity is an ethical passion. Christian patriotism demands national righteousness. To keep patriotism as an ardent fire we must be convinced that our country stands for righteousness. And in this day of our ordeal we have this certainty to uphold us, that we are fighting for the right.
It was not in defiance of Christianity, but in its defence, that we drew the sword. For this war sprang from an unbridled lust of conquest to which a whole nation surrendered itself. But before surrendering to the passions of war the ideals of Christ were first forsaken by our enemy. ”

“ We teach dates, thinking we are teaching history. The only way to teach history is by flags, and all they stand for. When Douglas threw the heart of Bruce among his enemies he cried, "Lead thou on as thou wast wont and Douglas will follow thee or die." In the spirit of Douglas our fathers followed the flags, and we will follow in the steps of our fathers and face death with undaunted hearts as they were wont. There comes to us the shouting of their triumph, and we cry: "Lead on; we will follow or die." This grey church, St. Giles', is the temple of patriotism. ”

“ History is for ever repeating itself, and to-day the process of humanity's deliverance from evil will gather momentum and advance a long way towards the final triumph. For just as men only realised the hatefulness of sin when they saw it laid upon Jesus Christ, so will it be also to-day. A generation that had lost the sense of sin beholds sin laid upon millions of men, working woe unspeakable, and, beholding, learns anew what sin is and the hatefulness of it. For these millions of men grappling with death, what are they but humanity's sin-bearers. ”