g
of sorrow and labour, of which the poor, pampered, luxurious savage knows
nothing. This is why Christ brought our forefathers into this bleak,
cold, northern land, and forced them to gain their bread by the sweat of
their brows, and the sorrows of their hearts, and to keep their land by
many wars.

Now this is the reason of our carefulness, of our many troubles, that God
is educating and training us English; that He will not have us be
savages, but Christian citizens; He will have us not merely happy, but
_blessed_ through all eternity. He will not have us to be like the poor
Indians, slaves to our flesh and our appetites--slaves to the pleasant
things around us; but He will have us fill the earth and subdue it; He
will have England the light of the nations--and Englishmen preach
freedom, and wisdom, and prudence, and the gospel of Jesus Christ to all
the nations of the earth. Therefore Christ afflicts us because He loves
us, because whom He loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He
receiveth. Because He has ordained England to preach the Cross,
therefore He will have England bear the cross.

It has often struck me, my friends, as a beautiful and a deep sign, a
blessed ordinance of the great and wise God, that the flag of England,
and especially the flag of our navy--the flag which is loved and
reverenced through all the world, as the bringer of free communion
between nation and nation, the bringer of order and equal justice and
holy freedom, and the divine majesty of law, and the light of the blessed
gospel wherever it goes; that this flag, I say, should be the red-cross
flag, the flag of the Cross of Christ--a double sign--a sign to all men
that we are a Christian nation, a gospel people; and a sign, too, to
ourselves, that we are meant to bear Christ's cross--to bear the
afflictions which He lays upon us--to be made perfect through sufferings,
to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts, that we may be brave
and self-denying; going forth in Christ's strength, remembering that it
is He who gives us power to get wealth; that we ought to fight His
battles, that we ought to spread His name at home and abroad; and rejoice
in every sorrow, which teaches us more and more the blessed meaning of
His saving name, and the share which we have in it.

I have said that we are a melancholy people. Foreigners all say of us,
that we are the saddest of all people; that when they come to England,
they are s