s destinies
day and night, and who has sent his son to face death with the meanest
of his subjects. We hear the glorious words: "If God be for us, who
can be against us?" and they are written for ourselves. We, who fight
for the truth of word and for the freedom and deliverance of the
oppressed, can feel that God is for us, and that all is well.

And when we pray, our voices rising as one, "Thy kingdom come," we can
see that kingdom coming through blood and tears, cleansing the foul
places and establishing peace on everlasting foundations. It is a new
day that has dawned for us--a day in which we stand united as the
subjects of the one King, as the sons of the one God--and the things
that separated us one from another are swept away. What the conferring
of the wise found so difficult to achieve, the roaring of the guns has
accomplished. God teacheth his people by sending them through the
purifying fires.

***

In these prayers in St. Giles' there is a directness which shows that
we are there for a definite purpose. We no longer use qualifying
words. We cry for victory. There is a bloodless form of prayer which
some use and which sends the worshipper away with an aching heart. It
is the prayer that never prays directly for victory. "Thy will be
done," it prays, in the spirit of submission. But prayer is not
submission; it is a wrestling. In other days our fathers wrestled in
prayer and prevailed. "I spent the night in prayer," wrote Oliver
Cromwell, in critical days; "I prayed God that He would guide us
against the enemy. We were simple fellows of the country, and they
were men of blood and fashion, but the Lord delivered them into our
hands. By His grace we killed five thousand. If He continues to show
mercy we will kill some more to-morrow." Such were the Ironsides, "men
of a spirit," who broke the charges of the Cavaliers, as the cliff
dashes back in white spray the rush of the billows.

This was also the language of the Covenanters of old; and though we no
longer use such plainness of speech, we mean the same. There is a
place for tenderness; but when men are ground to powder by the judgment
of God, tenderness is not manifest then. When the heart whispers
"Spare" and justice says "Smite," men must obey the voice of justice,
stifling the voice of the heart.

Our prayers are now for justice. Better far a righteous war than an
immoral peace. We have been compelled to unsheath the sword, and we