pray that no heart may falter, and no cry arise for the sheathing of
the sword, until justice be done. Thus our prayers have become a cry
for victory.

***

As one sits in an ancient church such as this, there comes knocking at
the heart many questions regarding that service of prayer which within
its walls has linked the generations together. Can prayer really
prevail with God? Can it alter the will of the Unchangeable? If there
be no power in it, why should men go on praying?

We must distinguish between the will of God which is unchangeable, and
His lower will which is his purpose towards us and His attitude to us.
The former is unalterable; the latter varies according to the varying
of our hearts. With that lower will we are called to wrestle. A man
is born in poverty and obscurity, and the will of God seems to be that
he should continue poor and obscure. But he wrestles with that lower
will until he prevails. He ultimately moves out into the great tide of
life and becomes a power. The will of God towards that man is changed.

It is the same with a nation. Here is a nation sinking on its lees
with its ideals dimmed and the shrines of its fathers' God forsaken and
desolate. It has fashioned to itself other gods, and the multitudes
crowd the temples of the goddess of pleasure. The very race itself is
sacrificed on the altar of gross pleasure, and the laughter of little
children is being little by little silenced. The fires of patriotism
are dying low, and the love of country gives place to the love of
party. There are mean victories rejoiced over, but they are the
victories of the cynic and the sensualist. There is the sound of
shouting, but it is the shouting over the triumph of one self-seeking
politician over another self-seeking partisan. Saintliness, which
other generations held in awe and reverence, provokes now a pitying
smile. Mammon alone is held in high honour and sitteth in the high
places. What is the will of God towards that nation? It is this--ruin
and utter destruction. Over every nation that thus succumbed to the
gross and sensual, history shows the sword of God unsheathed, and at
last the devouring flames of judgment.

But to such a nation there comes as if out of the silent heaven a call
as a trumpet sound, summoning it to the judgment-seat of God. Over the
sea comes the roar of guns. The foundations which the fathers laid in
righteousness, through long neglect and decay