These considerations ought to lead to a deeper devotion to those principles of right and wrong, and to that supreme vision of righteousness which the Bible and our Lord and His Apostles impress upon us; but I would add that it is the great message we should take home to ourselves, not merely in our individual lives, but in our national life. We see before us a great nation, endowed with some of the highest capacities of human nature, allowing itself to be absorbed more and more, year by year, by a great passion for power and dominion and supremacy in the world. This passion has taken such hold on it that it thinks itself justified in over-riding and defying the laws of truth and justice and mercy, even in the imperfect form in which they have been formally recognized in the law of nations. Everything, we are told, must yield to the demands of a nation which believes that a certain supremacy in the world is necessary for it. The consequence is that the air has to be cleared by this awful outburst of national thunder and lightning. But let us apply the danger and the lesson to ourselves. What is our own ideal as a nation and as an empire? Perhaps we too have been in danger of being fascinated too much by that vision of empire. It is a legitimate ideal when applied to right purposes, and subject to the right control; but those purposes must be those of Divine righteousness, and the control is the control of the law of God. If we make it the main object of every power with which God has entrusted us to promote His laws, to support and to spread further the Kingdom of His Christ, to do righteousness and justice in the world, so far as our power and influence reaches; if for that purpose we strive to ensure that all our legislation, and all our imperial and national action, is deliberately and constantly directed to the support and extension of the law of God and of Christ, then we may hope for God’s blessing on our achievements, and may trust to be preserved from those perversions of national spirit, and from that military and arbitrary passion, against which we have at this moment to maintain so desperate a struggle. Let us strive after this great object, alike in ourselves, in our country, and throughout our Empire, and then we may hope that as a nation we may be, in the Psalmist’s words, “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season,” and that whatsoever we do may prosper. In a word, as a nation no less than as individuals, let our delight be in the law of the Lord, and in His law let us meditate day and night. REASONS FOR INTERCESSION. CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL: DAY OF SPECIAL INTERCESSION FOR THE WAR, JUNE 17, 1915. “_The heathen make much ado, and the kingdoms are moved: but God hath shewed His voice, and the earth shall melt away._”--Ps. xlvi. 6.