The first step, then, back to God must spring from the soul wakened to the {181} realisation that it has sinned and that God is fighting against sin. But so far from the nation realising its true state, the amazing fact is that the nation is hypnotised with the sense of its own righteousness. It is only conscious of its own shining virtues. It has drawn the sword for freedom and in defence of little nations. It is waging a 'holy war.' Self-blinded, unable to believe that virtues such as shine on its face could suffer repulse, in days of humiliation and of defeat it has shouted 'Victory.' And from pulpit after pulpit the doctrine is propounded that this war is not a judgment of our sins; that to speak of war as a judgment of sin is 'antiquated.' The Church has thus cut itself adrift from the teaching of prophet and seer, and the Bible, which is aflame with the judgments of God upon sin, is but the antiquated record of unenlightened ages. Thus the conscience of the nation is narcotised. And it is manifest that a nation whose conscience is chloroformed can hear no {182} call summoning to repentance. When the Church is blind to the sword of God flaming in the heavens, how can any expect the nation to behold it, and, beholding, to repent? This obsession that we are not living in a great day of divine judgment is all the stranger when we consider that every day of our lives is a day of divine judgment, and that we are ever standing at the bar of the great assize. No sooner does a man sin than judgment begins to operate. Let him surrender to intemperance, and the judgment of disordered nerves and enfeebled frame is immediately declared. And so with every violation of the divine order. And the judgment ever operative against the individual is also ever operative against the nation. It requires but little thought to see how the national sins brought on the nation the judgment of these dread days.