There is something almost unreal in these words when they are read
aloud in the times through which we are passing. They sound like the
voice of a mocking-bird calling from the midst of the dust and the
débris of a ruined world. It is like hearing the gentle peal of church
bells on the bloody field of battle. It is like anything you choose
which has become unreal, and which has been transferred from the healthy
book of noble prophecy to the bitter pages of satire and the sour lips
of the cynic. Yes, I grant that the great passage unfolds ideals which
have become mere scraps of paper, torn and retorn into a thousand
pieces, and blown about like withered leaves in an autumn gale. What,
then, are we to do? I am reminded of what Lord Morley said in Manchester
a few weeks ago. "When the war is ended,--this mournful chapter of sore
bereavement and wasted treasure, when all that is gone, I ask is there
not a moral loss which ought to be counted, a moral loss in the wreck of
ideals in which the men of my generation were deeply concerned? That
loss has got to be counted and retrieved. The fabric of those ideals has
to be built up again in the hearts and minds of men and women." Surely
that is an opportune word, and it offers both counsel and warning to the
Christian Church. We must not just sit down in the bloody dust, and wail
our misereres in deadly impotence. We have got to reconstruct the ruined
pile, and we must begin the reconstruction by rebuilding the golden
palace of our dreams.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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