people of the world will
learn righteousness." Are we learning righteousness? Am I, are you,
friends, learning righteousness? I desire, at least, to be among those
who may learn something of the mind of God towards His redeemed world,
even in the darkest hour. But you will tell me perhaps that there is
nothing of the Divine purpose in all this tribulation, that God has
allowed evil to have full sway in the world for a time. Others among us,
as firmly believe that there is a Divine permission in the natural
vengeance which follows transgression, that we are never the sport of a
senseless fate, and that God governs as well as reigns.

"God's fruit of justice ripens slow;
"Men's souls are narrow; let them grow,
"My brothers, we must wait."

Many among us are learning to see more and more clearly that the present
"tribulation" is the climax of a long series,--through almost a century
past,--of errors of which till now we had never been fully
conscious,--of neglect of duty, of casting off of responsibility, of
oblivion of the claims of the millions of native inhabitants of Africa
who are God's creatures and the redeemed of Christ as much as we,--of
ambitions and aims purely worldly, of a breathless race among nations
for present and material gain.

There are hasty judges it seems to me who look upon this war as the
_Initial Crime_, a sudden and fatal error into which our nation has
leapt in a fit of blind passion aroused by some quite recent event, and
chiefly chargeable to certain individuals living among us to-day, who
represent, in their view, a deplorable deterioration of the whole
nation. The evils (which are not chiefly attributable to our nation)
which have led up to this war, and made it from the human point of view,
inevitable, are all ignored by these judges. Like the servant in one of
the Parables of Christ, who said "my Lord delayeth his coming," (God is
nowhere among us,) and began to beat and abuse his fellow-servants, they
fall to inflicting on their fellow citizens unmeasured blows of the
tongue and pen, because of this war. Their hearts are so full of
indignation that they cannot see anything higher or deeper than the
material strife. They judge the combatants, our poor soldiers, the first
victims, with little tenderness or sympathy. When King David was warned
by God of approaching chastisement for his sins as a ruler, he pleaded
that that chastisement should fall upon himself alone, saying, "these