qualities of justice, mercy and refinement.

When some sudden catastrophe such as Revolution or War befalls, there is always great danger that that elaborate system of artificial auxiliaries to virtue will be broken down and the beast let loose in unchecked savagery. Unquestionably this gives the key to the atrocities that stained the French Revolution: it probably gives the key to the crimes of German warfare. It certainly leads us to the contemplation of the horrors from which we ourselves would be free—a contemplation which helps to make our Day of Intercession one not [pg 006] merely of prayer for victory and its material benefits, but for the ennoblement of our minds and the purification of our souls.

The happenings of the past two weeks have led our thoughts to the possibilities of peace and the consideration of peace terms.

May the peace, whenever it come, be worthy of the conflict that it ends, a peace which enthrones justice in the affairs of the world and banishes oppression. May the final treaty include specific provision for the trial and punishment of the men who have organised and carried out the crimes of the war. So shall resentment die, when it is realised that our victory is unstained with injustice, and the German people themselves are helped to return to the fellowship of civilised mankind. Thus shall the nations now at war at last be bound together by the ties of international goodwill. If we are able to realise these high aims then God will indeed “have sent us to prepare a permanence on the earth and to save lives by a great deliverance.”

How great is the debt we owe to those who are bearing the brunt of the struggle—how deeply we realise our dependence upon the manhood of this nation! We cannot allow a day set apart for supplication to come and go without more than a passing thought for those who have sustained wounds or suffered hardship for the maintenance of our integrity and our rights of existence as a nation.

[pg 007]

Many are the movements to which the War has given rise, which aim at alleviating the ravages of the combat. When we think that of the seven-and-a-half million Belgians left in Belgium, more than three-and-a-half millions are being fed by the free canteens or receiving relief in some form from the charity provided in the first place by the large-heartedness of the American people, we shall understand something of the vastness of some of the problems which arise only to be dealt with by outside agencies. The gallant stand of a gallant people is still continued both before and behind the German lines, where the Belgians are as stubbornly resistant to day as they were when their King drew his sword and said: “For us there can be no other answer.” And the passive resistance of the imprisoned millions in Belgium to the compulsion and cajolery alike of their would-be friend, the enemy, is a factor in the German subduing process the world outside must appreciate. But the Belgians are paying the price. Their resources are diminishing day by day. The world's benevolence is dwindling and they are facing an immediate future wherein life's necessities will have to be defined in terms of the irreducible minimum. The whole nation, we are told, is growing so thin on the small ration that can be provided, that wasting diseases, due to under-nutrition, are increasing by leaps and bounds.

These facts are here referred to, first and foremost, that we may pay some tribute, if only in thought, to these and our other brave allies who have suffered loss incalculable, and in the second place to direct our [pg 008] attention to our own more fortunate position and to remind us that amid all the devastation, the War is being commemorated by works of beneficence and mercy, works intended to show our sympathy for suffering and our gratitude to the God who is supporting us through these terrible days.

He is not a good man who fails to employ every possible effort to supply the needs of those dependent upon him in his own household. No less is he a moral failure who does not lend himself to support every noble effort for the succour of those bound to him by the ties of religious faith, especially when suffering has come upon them through their faithfulness. And so no one could have any compunction in appealing to you as was done a short time ago for your own brethren. But we must not forget that he who builds a fence, fences out more than he can fence in. Israel must be faithful to his own, but his own includes not only the members of Israel's faith, who have the first claim upon him, but all the children of God, who are by the fact of their human birth, his brethren; and to-day the appeal is made to us on behalf of those to whom we have to pay something we owe. The sick and wounded of our soldiers and sailors have a claim we cannot ignore: their misfortunes have been brought about by their devotion to our country's cause. It is enough that they must suffer for us: we must see that everything possible is done to alleviate the pains they undergo. The Sick and Wounded Fund asks for your help, and, as I know you, I am sure you will give it with no unstinting hand.

[pg 009]

We think to day of our wounded, but we think also of our dead. Men may be willing to die for one cause in one age, and in another for what may seem a different cause, but in the last analysis it will be found that that for which human beings lay down their lives is always what they regard as the Eternal Right.

In every man created in the image of his God there is this strange mystical susceptibility, this urge to lay all he has upon the altar of the ideal that he feels has the right to demand his uttermost. Nothing else so fully demonstrates man's spiritual nature: it is the one great fact that differentiates us from the brutes.

On the one hand is man selfish, greedy, earth-bound, false and sordid in his aims. On the other, at repeated intervals, in great and solemn hours, comes this austere appeal for all he has to give—and he promptly gives it, joyously, willingly, without thought of reward, and derives a greater satisfaction from that self-giving than from all other kinds of gain together. It is deep, mysterious, elusive, this stress of the spirit, but we all know it unmistakably as all generations have known it. There is nothing so strong in human nature as this impulse to fling ourselves away at the bidding of we know not what, the something that incarnates itself now in this cause or objective and now in that, and makes us feel וישלחני אלהים לפניכם לשום לכם שארית בארץ ולהחיות לכם לפליטה גדולה “God hath sent us [pg 010] before you to prepare a permanence on the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.” There is nothing so exalting within the totality of human experience as the elevation of soul reached by the one who willingly dies for the sake of the others.

How many men of character and intellectual gifts, how many thinkers,