In what we call the practical world of to-day there is no appeal from the God of Fear but _to_ the God of Fear. The great mass of Caucasians will not have it otherwise. And it requires no prophetic vision to foresee the results of the efforts to bring about international harmony while all are obeying the decrees of the Goddess of Discord. Nearly three years after the signing of the armistice the world is in a more hopeless situation than it was when at war. Up to the present each new move only makes matters worse. There are those who believe that our phase of civilisation is staggering into the abyss and that nothing, as far as can now be descried, will save it from the deluge. IX Possibly! Fear tends always to produce the thing it is afraid of. I mention this dark outlook only for the reason that even if the cataclysm were to come the individual can escape from it. Cataclysms are not new in the history of our race. The rise and fall of civilisations may be called mankind's lessons in "how not to do it." Of these lessons there are no such records as those which we find in the Old Testament; and in these records it is unfailingly pointed out that whatever the calamity which overtakes the world at large the individual has, if he chooses, a way of safety. The innocent are not overwhelmed with the guilty, except when the innocent deliberately shut their eyes to the opening toward the _Soteria_--the Safe Return. But that, unhappily, the innocent do so shut their eyes is one of the commonest facts in life. Back in that twilight of history of which the later tale could be told only by some symbol, some legendary hieroglyph, there was already an "Ark" by which the faithful few could be saved from the "Flood." The symbol became permanent. The Ark of the Covenant--the sign of a great spiritual understanding--remained as a token to man that in God he had a sure refuge. It was laid up in his Holy of Holies, a mystic, consecrated pledge, till the ruthless Caucasian came and rifled it. But no rifling could deprive mankind of its significance. That endures. To bring it home to the desolate and oppressed was a large part of the mission of psalmists and prophets. The Ark of the Covenant--of the Great Understanding--meant as much to those who sought God in the ancient world as the Cross does to Christendom. It meant that whatever the collapse, national or general, through siege or sack or famine, those who would escape could escape by the simple process of mentally taking refuge in God. The Ark of God would bear them safely when all material help failed.