ums; we dare not {172}
any longer suffer our own lungs to inhale the vapours of the spiritual
slum. To show that we are in some little measure worthy of the price
paid for our life, paid for the Britain that shall be, we will arise
and straightway rebuild--until our cities shall be the cities of God,
and our straths and valleys shall be filled with the songs of happiness
and love and praise. They will not then have died in vain!

{173}

CHAPTER VIII

BEHIND YOU IS GOD

The greatest need of our day is the reinforcement of the soul. Our
mistake has been that we thought the supreme good was the development
of the brain. We went on steadily increasing our power over the forces
of nature, but we neglected to develop the soul-power which could
control and direct the material power thus created. The result has
been the greatest catastrophe in history. The industrial civilisation
which we reared through the painful toil of a century, is passing in
the smoke of the howitzer shells. And the end is not yet. Unless man
becomes master of himself, it can bring nought but misery that he
should master nature. The war of the future will be war in the air.
From the {174} experience of one or two air-craft raining destruction
on a city one can imagine that dread future when thousands of air-ships
and aeroplanes will rain bombs like hail on doomed cities. The old
security of this sea-girt isle has vanished for ever. In the air there
are no frontiers which can be fortified or guarded. Every fresh
triumph of science will be only a new engine of destruction, a new
weapon of devilry. Humanity will be driven underground, burrowing like
rats. It is quite conceivable not only that civilisation should perish
but that the world itself might be destroyed. The development of
power, without the development of soul to control it, means ruin to
mankind. The amazing thing is that men should to-day declare with
passionate conviction that the future safety of England depends on the
increase of that knowledge which has given us the poison clouds of
chlorine gas, without ever a word to indicate that salvation can only
come through the {175} development of self-mastery and
self-control--even through the soul. We have stood for two years in
the centre of the maelstrom of human history, and have heard the
hurricane of judgment sweeping through the world, but as yet we have
not heard the still, small voice of God.

I

The lesson