around you. Think you there
has been no struggle on the part of those tens of thousands who have
given up comforts, home, prospects, harmless pleasures, in exchange for
the ghastly miseries of the trenches, the appalling risks by land, on or
beneath the sea, in the air, all at the call of a stern, compelling
duty, which told them that the life really worth living was the one
spent, laid down if need be, for King and country?

Think too of the heroism of the wives, the mothers, the sweethearts, on
whose lips there must have trembled over and again, "I will not, I
cannot let you go." Yet the will was disciplined, the words remained
unspoken, the tears were shed in secret, and these brave hearts, even in
breaking, shall find their reward.

It was at Waterloo one afternoon, a young officer was being seen off for
the front by father, brother, and _fiancee_. The two former bravely
and cheerily said their good-bye, and withdrew a little to leave the
young couple for their farewell; a kiss, a close embrace, outward
smiles, but tears very near the eyes; and then as the officer got into
the carriage just this one remark: "It's precious hard upon the women."
What a world of meaning there was in that.

Above all, as your pattern and your power, look to Him Who said, "I came
down from Heaven not to do mine own will but the will of Him that sent
Me."

_For suggested meditations during the week, see Appendix._

II

=The Discipline of the Body=

FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT

1 Cor. ix. 27

"I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage."

On Ash Wednesday we were considering some purely subjective realities,
such as principles, motives, will--things we could not see. To-day we
think about a very objective substance, ever present to our senses--our
body. A man may deny point blank the existence of his soul--using the
word in its ordinary acceptation--he cannot say, "I have not got a
body." Even if he should conceive of that body as a mere bundle of
ideas, an accumulation of sensations, yet there it is, making itself
felt in countless ways.

So intimately bound up is it with every part of our life, apparently so
infinitely the most real part of us, that we often think of it as being
our true self. Yet every cell and fibre of it changes in the course of
seven years. Therefore in itself it cannot maintain our identity. Have
you ever pinched your nail, right down at its base, and watched the dark
mass of congealed blood makin