It is only by that road that humanity can come at last to the great goal of universal peace. It is the road that nations are unwilling to tread. They still are following the mirage that has strewn the deserts of time with the bleached skeletons of those who set out to reach it. The mirage is salvation by treaties. That idol has had hecatombs offered on its altars, and unless there comes a change it will have hecatombs in the future. If there be no truth and righteousness in the heart that signs, then treaties are valueless. The history of the centuries is the proof of their futility. The treaties of to-day can no more save than the treaties of all the yesterdays. For the nations that sign cannot trust each other. In the hearts of the nations there is not throned that righteousness which can be trusted. The world's sickness is of the soul. What the nations need is that truth and righteousness be enthroned in their midst. Without that, peace is only the scum on the surface of the foul and stagnant pool. And the witness of the centuries is that righteousness is the fruit of the vision of God. The foundation of righteousness is the realisation of the ceaseless operation of the laws whose source is God. If only the vision of God could blaze forth before the eyes of democracies as it blazed forth before the eyes of King Brude, then the way of peace would open up for groaning humanity. How can there be lasting peace in a world of conflicting ideals? Can Christianity be at peace with Mohammedanism stained with the blood of millions of Armenians; with paganism still brooding over the ideal of an empire based on force? Can the ideals of unselfish service and of pride and greed lie down in peace together? There can be no peace until humanity is brought into a unity of the soul--of allegiance to one King, of obedience to one law. The only hand worthy to wield the sceptre of the world is the hand that was nailed to a Cross. What the world has to realise is that the Manger overthrows the Cæsars, and that the road leading to a Cross is the way of peace. When we shall send forth over all the world men endued with the spirit of St. Columba, then there will be hope of the world. But that is the last thing we think of. We fondly believe that while we ourselves are sinking back into the mire we shall be able to lift the world up into light; while we ourselves turn our backs on the Prince of Peace, that we will bestow peace on the world. It is the weirdest of all obsessions. When William Ewart Gladstone was once asked how a man of his intellect could listen to such dull sermons, he answered--'I go to church because I love England.' There is a wider motive--'I go to church because I love the world, because I can hear there a law that men should love one another with a love that stoops to a Cross, by which alone the world can be saved.' It is vain for nations that forsake the worship of a God of love to spend their days