2. But it is not only upon the war that the picture of the potter and the clay throws such light; it also shows what we have to do with our country. There are some people who imagine it is inconsistent to say two things at the same time. People blame me for declaring two things in the same breath. One is that we never have had such a righteous cause; that we are fighting for the freedom of our country, for the freedom of the world; that we are fighting for international honour, for the future brotherhood of nations; we are fighting for the "nailed hand against the mailed fist." But, on the other hand, are we to speak as if we had no faults of our own? Are we to take the tone of Pharisees and say, "We thank GOD we are not as other men, even as these Germans"? We have to admit that we have grave national sins ourselves, and if we want to shorten the war we have to put these national sins away. That is why we are going to have a national mission this autumn, and we are preparing for it now. The Church is going to preach this great national mission, and--please GOD--our Non-conformist brethren will fall in on their own lines and do the same. We have great national sins, and we have to put those away if we would shorten the war. What a disgrace it is still to have a National Drink Bill of 180 millions! What a disgrace it is that we have not yet more thoroughly mastered immorality in London! What shame it is that still there is so much love of comfort, and that there are people making all they can out of the war! We have to get rid of all this; we must have the spirit of sacrifice from one end of the nation to the other. We have to ask the great Potter to remake the country, to give the Empire a new spirit. Why was it that, when I had myself pressed a Bill to diminish the licensing hours on Sunday from six to three--a harmless reform, you would have thought--to give the barmen and barmaids a chance of Sunday rest, that was shelved in the long run? Why was it that we could not raise the age for the protection of girls even to eighteen? There is much to be purged out of our country, and there could be no greater calamity than for this war to end and England still to be left with her national sins. Therefore the great Potter must remake us. He may have to break some nations to pieces like a potter's vessel. It is possible for a nation to be so stiffened in national sins that there may be nothing for it but to break it in pieces. We pray GOD that we may not be so far gone as that, that we may still be plastic clay in the hands of the Potter. That is our prayer, that is our ideal, to be a new England, a new British Empire, and that GOD may use us as His instrument in freeing the world.