Now we are keeping Trafalgar Day in a most critical week of the greatest war waged in the world for a thousand years. I have visited the long battle-line mile by mile in Flanders. I have also seen the grey Dreadnoughts watching, watching, watching day and night; it is idle bluster for the enemy to say that the ships of the Fleet are hiding from them; they know only too well where to find them when they want to meet them. As in great Nelson's day, the Fleet is the girdle of the Empire; the seas which Nelson swept are clear to-day; not an enemy flag dare show itself from one hemisphere to the other; under the mighty ægis of the Grand Fleet, transports in hundreds carry troops all over the world, food-ships pour in from every port; even when the submarine danger was formidable there was no appreciable slackening of the wonderfully brave mercantile marine, and now that the Navy has that peril, too, well in hand, men sail the seas to-day, except for the necessary restrictions with regard to contraband, with greater freedom and security than they sailed the seas long after the Battle of Trafalgar. In this great conflict on what are we to found our hopes? To what are we to look? Are we to trust only to the strength of our battleships and the perfect training of our sailors? Are we to look to the new armies produced with such marvellous skill by Lord Kitchener's patient hand? Are we to look to the three millions whose services will be asked for, and no doubt offered, in the next six weeks? No doubt we are to look to all these things; GOD does only help those who help themselves. But, standing before you as your Bishop, I tell you frankly that my belief in the final victory of our arms is founded on something far beyond these things. I am full of unshakable confidence and hope, because, like Archbishop Temple, I look to GOD. I try to say with the psalmist every morning: "And now, LORD, what is my hope? Truly my hope is in Thee." "LORD, Thou had been our refuge from one generation to another." Notice I do not claim that GOD is some tribal deity who with partial favouritism supports our side; but I claim, with the great Lincoln, that we are on the side of GOD. 1. I do so in the first place (and this comes out the more clearly the more you study the previous history of the question), because this is a wantonly provoked war, planned and desired and finally launched by one Power, and one Power alone--that is, Germany. Now, if GOD is a God who "makes men to be of one mind in a house," if He made of one blood every nation in the world, and meant them to dwell at peace together; if the teaching of CHRIST is really the teaching of GOD'S own SON--then the nation which wantonly plans and provokes war, and war on such a scale, must be against GOD.