CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL: DAY OF SPECIAL INTERCESSION FOR THE WAR, JUNE 17, 1915.
“The heathen make much ado, and the kingdoms are moved: but God hath shewed His voice, and the earth shall melt away.”—Ps. xlvi. 6.
“The heathen make much ado, and the kingdoms are moved: but God hath shewed His voice, and the earth shall melt away.”—Ps. xlvi. 6.
We are come here this evening to offer our earnest prayers and supplications to God for His help in this grievous and dangerous crisis of our national life, to entreat Him to grant the victory to our King and his Allies, and to deliver our nation, our Empire, and the world from the violence and oppression with which they are threatened by the enemy. In order that we may do so aright, it is necessary we should realize distinctly what is God’s special concern with the war, and what is our own relation to Him in respect to it. Now, the one supreme truth which I would urge upon you this evening is that the war, as a whole—its origin, its course, its end, and its purpose—is in the hands of God, and that we must look to Him,and to Him alone, for our guidance in it, and our deliverance from it. I fear we are too much disposed to think of the natural causes of the war, of the natural means we have of conducting it, and of the human and physical forces which are engaged in it; while we think of God as standing outside the struggle, and appeal to Him to interfere in it, as we might appeal to some great human power, in our extremity. We are too much disposed to act and think as if the result depended entirely on the number of men we can put in the field, upon the munitions of war we can obtain, the guns and the shells and the other physical means we can bring into action. It is true that these thing—men and the munitions of war—are the indispensable instruments of success and victory. Even in times when God interfered miraculously, He required His people, as under Joshua and David, to put forth their full strength, and to make the utmost sacrifices for their cause. But the main lesson which is inculcated in the Scriptures respecting war is that it is one of God’s great agencies for carrying out His will and accomplishing His ownpurposes, and that its issue is in all cases absolutely in His hands. It is He Who permits war; it is He Who in the exercise of His righteous judgment, occasions war; it is He Who alone can determine the issue of war; and it is His purposes, and not ours, which are brought to pass by war.
If, in fact, we would apprehend our position and the position of our Empire and of Europe in this war, we must in spirit see God upon His throne, permitting by His judgment the fierce passions of war to break forth, and controlling the whole course of the tremendous storms they involve by His justice and His will. As the Psalmist says, “The Lord reigneth, be the people never so impatient, He sitteth between the Cherubim, be the earth never so unquiet.” Or, again, “The Lord is King, the earth may be glad thereof; yea, the multitude of the isles may be glad thereof: Clouds and darkness are round about Him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His seat. There shall go a fire before Him and burn up His enemies on every side. His lightnings gave shine unto the world: the earth sawit and was afraid.” That might be taken for a picture of war with the thunders and lightnings of its “red artillery.” Let us, if we would turn this occasion to due account, look up for a while from the human thunders and lightnings by which the earth and sea are now shaken; let us raise our eyes and our hearts to the Psalmist’s vision of God sitting on His throne, above all these earthly and human struggles and sufferings, and though clouds and darkness are round about Him, yet controlling them by His righteous judgment.
Let us look into this general consideration a little more particularly. War is the result of human passion, human error, and human sin. If only men were unselfish, wise, and true, there would be no occasion for the struggles from which it springs; but instead of that they are covetous, foolish, and blind, and God has so constituted mankind that the ultimate appeal of these passions and follies must be made to force; and in the ordinary course of His providence He leaves them to make that appeal. He lets their passions work themselves out to their natural results, and sobring their own punishment upon themselves. If, indeed, men sought His guidance and grace in all humility and earnestness before war broke out, we may be confident He would guide and control them; but the very danger of their pride and their passion is that it makes them forget Him, and then He suffers them to find their need of Him by leaving them to bear the consequences. But when those consequences have broken out into war, they are then, in the most absolute degree, subject to His over-ruling hand. It is an essential characteristic of war that it sets forces loose which are beyond calculation, and beyond human control. Ordinary ways of action are suspended, and we become subject to the most unexpected and most incalculable influences. We are beginning to see it ourselves in the present war. We are forced to resort to public measures which all confess to be absolutely unprecedented; and the whole world, old and new, is immersed in dangers and disorders never before dreamed of. But when men and nations are in this tumult and disorder and blindness, then they realize, as they too often fail to do in quiettimes, that they are absolutely dependent on God. He has at His command infinite natural and spiritual forces by which the result of a war or a battle can be determined. As in the famous battle of Joshua, or in the destruction of the Spanish Armada in our own history, storms and tempests, or a mere turn in the weather, or it may be added, the invisible interposition of some angelic agent, may defeat all human schemes and determine the issue of a battle, and, through a battle, the fate of an Empire. Of great commanders, moreover, no less than of kings, the words of our Collect are true, that their hearts are in God’s rule and governance, and that He disposes and turns them as it seems best to His godly wisdom.
The message of the Bible, in fact, from first to last, the message of Jewish history, and the message of the Psalms, is that God is in a pre-eminent degree the “Lord of war,” with Whom it lies to bring on men the judgment of war, to control war, and to make wars to cease. “O come hither,” says the Psalm of my text, “behold the works of the Lord, what destruction He hath brought upon theearth. He maketh wars to cease in all the world, he breaketh the bow, and knappeth the spear in sunder, and burneth the chariots in the fire. Be still, then, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen and I will be exalted in the earth.” Or, as it is expressed in another Psalm, “There is no king that can be saved by the multitude of an host, neither is any mighty man delivered by much strength. A horse is counted but a vain thing to save a man, neither shall he deliver any man by his great strength. Behold the eye of the Lord is upon them that fear Him, upon them that put their trust in His mercy.” Or, once more, “We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what Thou hast done in their time of old; How Thou hast driven out the heathen with Thy hand, and planted them in; how Thou hast destroyed the nations and cast them out. For they gat not the land in possession through their own sword; neither was it their own arm that helped them; but Thy right hand and Thine arm, and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou hadst a favour unto them.”
The first conviction, then, with which we should come before God to-day is that, although the utmost efforts on our part are required, still, when we have used the last ounce of our strength, and made the last sacrifice of life and limb, we are absolutely dependent for the issue upon the will, the power, and the over-ruling providence of God. We are bound to fall at His feet as His helpless creatures, absolutely dependent on His hand. We are bound to recognize that the wealth and power we enjoy, the great position which this Empire occupies in the world, have been gifts from Him, and that we gat not this possession by our own sword; neither was it our own arm that helped us; but God’s right hand and God’s arm, and the light of His countenance, because He had a favour towards us, for some great purposes of His own.
But what were those purposes? If we feel that we are thus the instruments of God’s hand, to be used as He pleases, we must needs ask, with anxious earnestness, What are His great purposes? and can we know whether we are acting in accordance with them? We know that we arenot in the hands of an arbitrary power or an unreasoning will. We know that whatever God does is done with reason and justice and love. Here, again, it is our privilege to have revealed to us, in God’s Word, the great purposes for which He is working. His methods and His ways of carrying His purposes out are beyond our comprehension, but He has graciously told us what those purposes are. Their great object is the manifestation of His glory, His truth, His love, to be the light, the salvation, the infinite happiness of man. That was the object of the whole of His work in establishing the people of Israel in their land, in protecting them, in bringing punishments upon them, in delivering them from their enemies, or allowing them to fall into captivity. By means of them—through their history, their Prophets, their Psalmists, and their Kings—He made known that grand revelation of Himself which is recorded in our Bibles. All these acts were done, and their memory is preserved, in order that all the world might see and learn that in knowledge of Him, in obedience to Him, in love to Him and prayer to Him, is life and health, inbody and soul, in this world and in the next. Let us be assured that that remains His purpose, and the guiding rule of His providence, throughout all history, and in our own, to the present day. If God has given us wealth, and strength, and prosperity, and imperial power, we may be sure that it is in order that we may be His instruments for the spread of His Kingdom, for bringing the knowledge of Christ and of Christ’s salvation to the ends of the earth, that the love of Christ, the example of Christ, the law of Christ may be established throughout the world. Do not let us suppose that there is any other object whatever in God’s dispensations. The manifestation of God in Christ, and the bringing of all human souls, all human life, into harmony with it, into the full enjoyment of it, and consequently into perfect obedience to His will—this is the end of all the struggles, of all the wars, of all the sufferings of mankind, mysterious as they are, and utterly baffling to our feeble apprehension.
There is surely an infinite comfort in realizing this great revelation. If we grasp the assurance that this is the sure andcertain end of God’s dispensations, we can bear with patience, and even with thankfulness, the sufferings and sorrows through which they are worked out. While we bitterly mourn the loss of those who are sacrificed in such a war as this, we can feel that they have laid down their lives in the eternal battle in which Christ is the Commander, and in which we are all taking part, and that we remain one with them, and they one with us, in serving Christ and asserting the will of God.
One army of the Living God,To His command we bow,Part of the host have crossed the flood,And part are crossing now,
One army of the Living God,To His command we bow,Part of the host have crossed the flood,And part are crossing now,
One army of the Living God,To His command we bow,Part of the host have crossed the flood,And part are crossing now,
One army of the Living God,
To His command we bow,
Part of the host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now,
or will be crossing soon. Only let us take care, if we are to have the reward, hereafter, of having served in this great army, that we are working, fighting, dying, and suffering bereavement, in the cause of this great Commander and in accordance with His will.
But if these are the purposes with which God has directed all history, and controls all wars, we cannot dare to come before Him, and ask for His help, unless the spirit in which we are joining in this waris in harmony with His, and unless we mean, with His help, to act and fight in entire devotion to Him, and in obedience to Christ. If we fought merely to gain victory, to assert the supremacy of our Empire, to establish our superiority over other nations, we could not expect His countenance and help, and we should be affronting His Majesty and His Holiness by asking for it; but these are not our aims. They are, it appears, in the main, those of our enemy, and for that reason we may be confident that God’s face will be against them. But, so far as we are fighting for a kingdom and an Empire which acknowledges in all things the sovereignty of our Lord Jesus Christ, which endeavours to act, to govern, and to serve in accordance with His will, and which will promote and protect the spread of His Kingdom—so far as we are conscious in our consciences that that is our aim—we may confidently come before Him and appeal to Him to help us with His right hand and His holy arm. But we cannot thus serve Him and obey Him as a nation unless we obey and serve Him in our own individual lives; and when we kneel,therefore, before Him to-day we are called upon to pledge ourselves, with the utmost sincerity and earnestness, to give our hearts and wills and lives up to Him in all things, with greater truth and singleness of heart than we have ever yet realized.
If we look candidly into the recent life of our nation, it must, I fear, be acknowledged that we have in many respects grievously failed in this Christian spirit. The habits of our people have in too many respects declined from the Christian standard which was set us by our forefathers in their best days. The worship and service of God and Christ have not been held so high among us as the supreme duty of life. We see it in the increasing neglect of the public worship of God, in a less general piety of life, in a growing disposition to acquiesce in standards of action which are not in all respects those of the New Testament; in the failure to look to the authority of Christ and His Apostles as the supreme rule in all the relations of life, in the relations of men and women, in the ideals of domestic and private life. We have lived too much for this life and too little for the next. Wehave cared too much for time and too little for eternity. We shall not be able to fulfil the purposes of God for our nation and for the world unless we amend our lives in these respects, unless we humbly confess our failure before Him, and set ourselves resolutely to live more Christian lives in the future. If we kneel before Him this evening in this spirit of confession for the past, and of heartfelt devotion for the future, we may come boldly to His throne of grace; and we may be thankful to be assured that our country and our country’s cause, and the welfare of all who are dear to us, here and hereafter, are in His hands. You are invited to begin your supplication this evening with that penitential Psalm, in which David confessed from the bottom of his heart his own grievous sin, but was also inspired by God’s Holy Spirit to seek comfort and regeneration, righteousness and peace. That is the spirit in which we should approach God at all times, but especially in a time of sore trial like the present; and if we do so, we may confidently join in the concluding petition, in which the Psalmist beseeches God’sblessing upon His nation. “The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt Thou not despise. O be favourable and gracious unto Zion; build Thou the walls of Jerusalem. Then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness,” with the devoted offerings and service of a regenerated and Christian nation. God grant it, for Christ’s sake.