Such was the condition of the nation when the trumpet of judgment sounded and civilisation went reeling into the furnace. The slum-dwellers and the slum-infected were alike shaking back into paganism and the beast. For the time we have emerged from the greater horror of sin into the horror of war. But what is to happen after? Saved as by fire, are we to hug our slums again? Surely it cannot be for the perpetuation on earth of life after this order, that five millions of men have arisen {171} and faced death. If we are to be worthy of the price that has been paid for our deliverance, by a resurrection from the dead we must cleanse our souls and transform our slums. It is not for us as we are, or for our cities as they now are built, or for a State that denies to its children the decencies of life, or for the continued reign of that plutocracy that has darkened the windows of the soul--not for the continuance of these have our brothers died right joyfully in the glory of their youth. It was for another England, another Scotland--the kingdom of the heart's desire wherein shall be found no more either the slum-dweller or the slum-lover--that they fought and died. When we think of them we know what the early Christians felt when they said one to the other, 'We are bought with a price; we are no longer our own to do as we like; we are His.' And we--we are _theirs_. We must be worthy of them. We dare not any longer leave their children in noisome slums; we dare not {172} any longer suffer our own lungs to inhale the vapours of the spiritual slum. To show that we are in some little measure worthy of the price paid for our life, paid for the Britain that shall be, we will arise and straightway rebuild--until our cities shall be the cities of God, and our straths and valleys shall be filled with the songs of happiness and love and praise. They will not then have died in vain! {173} CHAPTER VIII BEHIND YOU IS GOD