ught into a
unity of the soul--of allegiance to one King, of obedience to one law.
The only hand worthy to wield the sceptre of the world is the hand that
was nailed to a Cross. What the world has to realise is that the
Manger overthrows the Caesars, and that the road leading to a Cross is
the way of peace. When we shall send forth over all the world men
endued with the spirit of St. Columba, then there will be hope of the
world. But that is the last thing we think of. We fondly believe that
while we ourselves are sinking back into the mire we shall be able to
lift the world up into light; while we ourselves turn our backs on the
Prince of Peace, that we will bestow peace on the world. It is the
weirdest of all obsessions. When William Ewart Gladstone was once
asked how a man of his intellect could listen to such dull sermons, he
answered--'I go to church because I love England.' There is a wider
motive--'I go to church because I love the world, because I can hear
there a law that men should love one another with a love that stoops to
a Cross, by which alone the world can be saved.' It is vain for
nations that forsake the worship of a God of love to spend their days
devising schemes for bringing peace to a ruined world. For there is no
way of peace save one--the way of love. No nation has as yet tried
that way. And there is no sign that they mean to try it. The world
waits for the man who will convince it that the new order must be based
on fraternity and not on fighting. But the world will applaud him
instantly. Fraternity--that's the word! Most excellent! But when the
new Columba will go on to show that fraternity without a Fatherhood to
rest on is meaningless and powerless; that humanity can only realise
its brotherhood in a common Father--even God. Then the world will once
more shrug its shoulders. 'This is the same old wheeze,' it will
say--and go its way. For we have no longer any use for God. That is
the root of our misery.

CHAPTER IX

NO ROOM

There is an old Gaelic proverb that says: 'Where there is heart-room
there also is house-room.' There was room enough in that mean inn for
the farmers with their pouches filled with money for the tax, for the
soldiers that swaggered with the pride of empire, for the
village-talebearers with their rude jests; but for a poor woman in the
hour of her need there was no room. She was shut out because there was
not found in that inn any with hear