one message for warring nations and for warring classes: 'One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.' The Church alone can bring home to the hearts of men that the way of honour is that of service, and the path of greatness that of sacrifice. Looking back on that long road by which humanity has marched forward even to this hour, it is strange to think how the great days on which the epochs turned have not been the days of mammon-worship or of military glory, but the days on which the Cross suddenly blazed forth in the heavens, as it did to Constantine, when the summons rang—'By this sign conquer.' It was then that men set their faces to climb upward, realising that the greatest thing a man can do with his life is to lay it down. And not by a cross blazing in heaven, but by millions of crosses round which the winds moan and sigh on earth, does God summon us to-day. It is that summons the Church would sound. By the spirit of self-sacrifice, by the law of love—by these alone can the world be saved.

IV

The remedy for every woe on earth is the one commandment—'Love one another, as I have loved you.' It is so divinely simple—perhaps that is why the generations refuse to listen. The measure of the law is its greatness—'As I have loved you.' To obey that law means—blood. It was the greatness of the sacrifice that was made and the greatness of the sacrifice demanded that stirred the hearts of men to life. 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me,' the Christian said, and with rapture in his heart he looked at others and said, 'He loved that man also, and gave Himself for him. I cannot rob or murder or leave in misery a man for whom Christ's hands were nailed to the cross.' That was what revolutionised the world long ago. It is the only way in which the world can be revolutionised to-day. If only the world can be brought to listen to the law of love, the world will become new.

CHAPTER III

IN THE SACRED NAME OF LIBERTY!

'The ranks are gathering; on the one side of men rightly informed and meaning to seek redress by lawful and honourable means only, and on the other of men capable of compassion and open to reason but with personal interests at stake so vast and with all the gear and mechanism of their arts so involved in the web of past iniquity that the best of them are helpless and the wisest blind.'—The Right Hon. C. F. G. MASTEBMAN.

It is difficult for men and women to arrive at a true estimate of their own state of mind. What others think of us is often a truer gauge than what we think of ourselves, for we can only look at ourselves through the distorting glass of self-love and self-interest. In these last days we have had a wonderful revelation of what others think of us. Our hoardings and our advertisement pages are crowded with appeals which could only appeal to a generation that had ceased to think and ceased to bear upon their hearts the woes of their fellows. In the sacred name of liberty, in the cause of brotherhood and equality, we were exhorted on every horizon to hold fast and change not. And we were, above all, to beware of fanatics! We are indeed fallen very low if this measure of our intelligence be correct.

I

In the sacred name of liberty we are exhorted to lay no sacrilegious hand on the sacred ark of our licensing system. Whatever results may ensue of perishing babes and ruined manhood we must vote No Change, for liberty is great. Moloch of old was great; so great that he demanded and got the sacrifice of a child now and then. But ' Liberty' is greater still. If it be true that in proportion to the number of licences in a district is the death-rate among the babies; if in districts crowded with public-houses there be a death-rate of something like 160 to 180 per 1000 babies in the first year of life, while in districts where public-houses are rare the death-rate is about 40 per 1000 babies in the first year of life; and if we are to vote No Change and acquiesce in that in the name of liberty, how great that idol Liberty must be! We must examine it and make sure that its feet be not of clay.

II

What is freedom? Freedom is that condition of things which enables a man to co-ordinate all his faculties for the development of what is best in him. The best a man is capable of is the evolution of a character whose uprightness and honesty will command respect. But no sooner does a man set his face toward that goal than he finds that he can only climb towards it by sacrificing the liberty of his lower nature. The animal in man must be fettered that the spirit may grow. Only so can nobility of character be produced. It is manifest then that freedom to produce character is only achieved by sacrificing liberty. The idol Liberty is not, after all, really so great.

The best in life is not, however, developed in isolation. For we are bound up with our fellow-men in the complex organism of life. And we have no right to exercise any liberty that will mean loss or injury to our fellows. It may be beneficial to me that I should have the stimulus of alcohol; it may add colour to my drab life, and make the bores that harass me more tolerable; and I may find in it a sacramental value, as it promotes the flow of easy fellowship; but if the provision made to supply one with that stimulus means the ruin of others—the perishing of babes and the destruction of homes—then I have no right to that provision. The limit of my personal freedom is the beginning of hurt or injury to my fellow-men. It is along this great line that civilisation has evolved. Each step forward has been a restriction of liberty. Every extension of the franchise has been a restriction of the power of the classes that ruled previously; each new law a restriction of the right to do what one liked. Every great social advance has been a restriction of previous liberty. No man is free now to leave his children uneducated; no employer is free to deal as he pleases with his employed. No sooner is the child born than the law has it in its grip: within a few days the parent must register it and give a biography of its ancestors to a registrar; then it ordains that it be inoculated. At five years of age the child is deprived of liberty, for he is shut up in barracks and then made a prisoner for ten years, compelled to learn things that will never be of any value in all the after years. After he has escaped from that prison-house, there comes an interval of illusory liberty. He comes and goes as he likes after the hours of toil. Then comes an emotional crisis and he marries—and what is there left of his liberty? Every family is established on this—the restriction of liberty. The traffic in the street and the narcotic in the shop are alike in the grasp of law. From the cradle to the grave a man is surrounded with restrictions of liberty. There is no base liberty left to-day but the liberty to get drunk. In the name of freedom there must come an end to that liberty.

III

And yet the horizon glows with these placarded appeals to leave things as they are in the name of liberty. There is a true feeling behind these appeals—the feeling that above all things Scotsmen love freedom. And so they do. There is no race under the sun that have hazarded their lives so much and so frequently for freedom as we have done. How it stirs our blood to read the words in which our ancestors in the year 1320 defied the Pope when his Holiness sided with England against King Robert Bruce. 'The wrongs which we have suffered under the tyranny of Edward are beyond description,' wrote the nobility and commonalty of Scotland in Parliament assembled, '... while a hundred of us exist we will never submit to England. We fight not for glory, wealth, or honour, but for that liberty without which no