fellows
of the stars. Lord, be our everlasting Sun and cast Thy light on every
star, now and for ever. Amen.

SERBIA AT PEACE.

_Delivered for the first time at Cambridge, in the New Lecture Rooms,
the Vice-Chancellor of the University in the chair._

The most suitable language for tragedy is silence. Serbia's tragedy
needs no rhetoric, no language to describe it, to exalt it. For silence,
and not rhetoric, makes tragedy greater. Serbia's silence to-day is as
deep as her tragedy is dark. The most silent suffering is the most vocal
suffering at the same time. The most silent suffering is like a screw
boring into the conscience of the makers of the suffering. Such silent
suffering is the severe judge of the world who makes all rich people
poor, all proud humble, all pleasure bitter, all human progress abased.
There is something wrong about this life. What may it be? I do not know,
but suffering reminds us every day that there is something wrong with
this world. Suffering from surrounding nature is not the worst,--nature
can be governed by us; nor the suffering from God,--God can be touched
by our prayer; but the worst of all is our suffering from ourselves.
Thousands and thousands of serpents live in Serbia. Yet all the
serpents throughout the Serbian history, from the time of the Druids on
this island till the time of Tennyson and Kipling, effected not such a
poisonous devastation of men and cattle in Serbia as lately a host of
invaders did, who boastfully regarded themselves to be at the summit of
human civilisation. It is despairing to see what use of her power, her
"kultur," her science and her riches, Germany of to-day is making in
Serbia, among a people who for half a thousand years struggled against
the Turkish tyranny with the motto _For Cross and Freedom_, and who
looked sometimes from their dark corner towards the German Kaiser, the
knight of many Holy Orders, as towards the champion and redeemer of
enslaved Christianity in the Balkans. Never suffered a nation from
serpents as much as the poor nation of Serbs suffers to-day from
"civilised" men. Don't you think indeed that there is something wrong
about this life of ours? The Bible showed in its first sheets that there
is something very wrong with us. By the killing of his brother, Cain
fore-shadowed all the history of mankind. Even the first man on earth
was not a balanced and happy creature. All our earthly time is filled up
with a passionate convu