We are come here this evening to offer our earnest prayers and supplications to God for His help in this grievous and dangerous crisis of our national life, to entreat Him to grant the victory to our King and his Allies, and to deliver our nation, our Empire, and the world from the violence and oppression with which they are threatened by the enemy. In order that we may do so aright, it is necessary we should realize distinctly what is God’s special concern with the war, and what is our own relation to Him in respect to it. Now, the one supreme truth which I would urge upon you this evening is that the war, as a whole--its origin, its course, its end, and its purpose--is in the hands of God, and that we must look to Him, and to Him alone, for our guidance in it, and our deliverance from it. I fear we are too much disposed to think of the natural causes of the war, of the natural means we have of conducting it, and of the human and physical forces which are engaged in it; while we think of God as standing outside the struggle, and appeal to Him to interfere in it, as we might appeal to some great human power, in our extremity. We are too much disposed to act and think as if the result depended entirely on the number of men we can put in the field, upon the munitions of war we can obtain, the guns and the shells and the other physical means we can bring into action. It is true that these thing--men and the munitions of war--are the indispensable instruments of success and victory. Even in times when God interfered miraculously, He required His people, as under Joshua and David, to put forth their full strength, and to make the utmost sacrifices for their cause. But the main lesson which is inculcated in the Scriptures respecting war is that it is one of God’s great agencies for carrying out His will and accomplishing His own purposes, and that its issue is in all cases absolutely in His hands. It is He Who permits war; it is He Who in the exercise of His righteous judgment, occasions war; it is He Who alone can determine the issue of war; and it is His purposes, and not ours, which are brought to pass by war.