are all rampant for our destruction. It may be disputed, but, admitting
it, one may ask: Is there no place among Christian people for those
distinctive virtues on which we base the superiority of our religion?
When the need is greatest, should the practice be less urgent? It is not
evident that the free-thinker is obliged by any of his principles to
give better example. It is evident the Christian is so obliged. Why is
he found wanting? If human weakness were pleaded, one could understand.
It is against the making a virtue of it lies the protest. How many noble
things there are in our philosophies, and how little practised. No
violent convulsions should be needed to make us free, if men were but
consistent: we should find ourselves wakening from a wicked dream in a
bloodless and beautiful revolution. We are in the desert truly and a
long way from the Promised Land. But we must get to the higher ground
and consider our position; and if one by one we are stripped of the
prejudices that too long have usurped the place of faith, and we find
ourselves, to our dismay, perhaps lacking that faith that we have so
long shouted but so little testified, and tremble on the verge of panic,
there is one last line that gives in four words with divine simplicity
and completeness a final answer to all timidity and objections: "Fear
not; only believe."




CHAPTER XIV

MILITARISM


I