and unless the very first fruits of it be dedicated to the cause of
heroic Belgium, to her re-instatement in something of her former
condition, it will have come in vain. The time of distress and disaster
has knit together the Empire in a wondrous unity of brotherhood. There
will be debts to be repaid to India and our Colonies, debts which can
never be discharged in money, but in those higher acts of fellowship,
justice, endeavour, which will knit yet closer the bonds that have been
formed. There will remain a large heritage of disablement and
unemployment to cope with which will require wise counsel, comprehensive
measures, real self-sacrifice. It is computed that should the war last
another eighteen months there will be nearly a quarter of a million men
more or less unfitted to resume their ordinary callings.

All this, you say, is the concern of the State; certainly, but what is
the State? Only another term for you and me. Therefore the seriousness
of attitude, the sense of proportion, the realisation of brotherhood,
that by the mercy of God we have gained, must be retained for the facing
of the new problems that will lie before us.

Turning to the more purely personal aspect of it, there will be the
temptation to grow slack and cold in intercessions and communions, when
the immediate occasion that prompted them has passed. To be forewarned
is to be forearmed, let us look out for this, expect it, then we shall
not be afraid to meet it. "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no
more"; think what the permanency of that victory has meant all down the
ages of the past in the triumphs of the saints, in the deaths of the
martyrs, in the splendid story of the Church of Christ. Think what it
means to-day in the lives of millions of the faithful; in all the deeds
of charity which are brightening homes, cheering hearts, giving hope to
the hopeless, healing to the sick, and soundness to the maimed: think of