s to forget that He struck a blow in
Jerusalem and wielded the thongs on the shoulders of those who polluted
His Father's house. It is His will that we should strike a blow in
defence of the house of our soul--the sanctuary of nationality.

***

Patriotism must be vibrant with the spirit of religion if it is to be a
power rousing the nation to heroism and self-sacrifice. There never
was a nation so patriotic as the Jew. No city ever gripped a nation's
heart-strings as Jerusalem gripped the heart of the Jew. No suffering,
no defeat, no exile however far, could quench the fire of patriotism in
the heart. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget
her cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I
remember thee not, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy"--such
was the cry of the Jew by the rivers of Babylon, yearning after Sion.

How was it that Jerusalem thus pulled at its children's heart-strings
until they hurried back to rebuild? It was because Jerusalem was the
seat of the worship of God. It was not the material stones or the
hills round about that thus compelled the heart. It was the light of
eternity shining over them. It was because of the "house of the Lord
our God" that the Jew counted no good worth his striving except the
good of Jerusalem. It is only when God standeth at the heart of a
nation that the heart cleaveth with all its fibres to its native land,
for then the whole of the man--not only the cravings of the body and
the heart and the mind, but also the deeper cravings of the soul--wind
themselves round the thought of the nation.

Thus we find that the days when the fires of patriotism burned
brightest were ever those in which God held sway over the nation. It
was with God that the sailors of Queen Elizabeth swept the main, that
the soldiers of Wellington hurled the enemy far from the shores that
face England--they were fighting not only for England but for England's
God.

The testimony of history is this, that patriotism cannot maintain its
power if once it be divorced from religion. Let God's face be veiled
and lost and everything is lost. "Without God nothing, with God
everything," says the ancient Celtic proverb, and all ages testify to
its truth. And the last proof of it is now before our eyes in the
condition of France.

A hundred years ago France dominated Europe, erected thrones and
deposed kings at its will. But little by little France lost