ly
They had devoured us all.
* * * * *
But blessed be God,
Who doth us safely keep,
And hath not giv'n
Us for a living prey
Unto their teeth,
And bloody cruelty.
* * * * *

This psalm as we sang it that day was a paean of triumph. The clouds
suddenly broke. We heard our fathers singing it in their dark days.
The melody wedded to the words soared in exultant triumph, wailed like
the cry of the shingle swept by the surf; the sighing of the wind over
the heather was in it, and the hissing of the storm through the spray.
It was fierce as devouring death; it was gentle as a mother crooning
over her child. It put iron into the blood of our fathers as they sang
it.

It was nerved by such a hymn that the sailors of Queen Elizabeth swept
the main, that the Puritans wrestled with principalities and powers,
that a handful of moors-men levelled despotism and tyranny to the
ground. It swept through our blood like flame as we in our day of
stress now sang it. We, too, would pull down strongholds and turn to
flight the armies of the alien. In all ages the cause of freedom
triumphed, and that cause was ours. We had entered on conflict with
clean hands and, God helping us, we would wage it with clean hands.
The clouds suddenly broke and the light of victory irradiated our
faces. There came overwhelmingly the realisation that there was a
power behind us mightier far than sword or shell--even the Lord God
Omnipotent. And that was how we made the greatest of all
discoveries--we found God.

***

Yesterday morning I went early to the station, and there in the booking
office I found my friend talking to the ticket-collector. The
ticket-collector is a philosopher, and he comes to church, because he
loves the old psalm tunes. But when one of our parishioners who goes
now and then to Keswick comes to the booking office, the
ticket-collector calls him in and reasons with him gently.

"Mahn, there's naething in it," he says; "I can tell you for a fact
there's naething in it--all a whack of fables." "Some day you'll find
out to your cost that there's something in it," flashes the man from
Keswick. "If ye wad only reid philosophee," says the ticket-collector,
"ye would ken better." But to-day my friend and the ticket-collector
had their heads close together, and I only heard the conclusion of
their argument. "Mahn," said the ticket-collector, "I am beginning to
think t