that self-knowledge to cleanse their vision, ennoble their ideals, and amend their ways. That is now coming to pass. Good is once more being brought out of evil, and evil of nearly the most direful sort. This war has opened men's eyes. The mists are lifted. Long-smouldering fires blaze out, and make the sky lurid with their flames. National and international follies and sins are laid bare to the very nerve. Consciences are roused at, and staggered by, what we have been doing, and still more by what we have failed to do. Hearts are purged, and the will of the world is more definitely set towards righteousness and peace.
I am sure of it. Belgium has had a vision of her nobler self; she is cleansed of the stains of the past by the fiery trials to which she has been subjected, and made capable of heroic sacrifices and splendour of daring, which have won for her the sympathy and admiration of the world. France knows now that she is not what she was in the days of the Empire. Her nerves are steel; her resolves are fixed; her spirit steady and calm ; her soul clad with the panoply of courage, fortitude, and faith. She refuses to drift, and is master of herself. Russia saw the true course and took, in one stride of splendid sacrifice of imperial revenue, a leap right away from self-indulgence and intemperance to sobriety, a virile manhood, and a larger freedom. Germany is preparing to recast her estimate of herself; to doubt whether, after all, her swaggering "culture" is anything more than polished egotism and gilded barbarity, and the loud-tongued proclamation of her superiority to all peoples that on earth do dwell, little more than the vapourings of a spoilt child.
And what have the five months which have elapsed since the thunderstorm burst taught us ? They have taught us that whilst we have been Christian, we have not been Christian nearly enough ; they have led us back to God and reality; forced us to measure the bigness of the spiritual issues before us; driven us inward upon ourselves, and the God who dwells there as in His temple; they have toughened our moral fibre, instructed us in sacrifice, generated a new spirit of willinghood and pluck, of readiness to endure and not to flinch; to fight on—not for ourselves, but for that kingdom of righteousness, which is so much greater and wider than we are, and which exists and grows for us and all our fellows the world over.
That does not mean that this war is not hateful and hellish. It is horrible. We cannot sophisticate about it. It carries
