The Great Discovery

yers of so many generations, the surcharged heart has voiced its woe in the presence of the Unseen. But in all the years of the dim and fading past there never was a day like this in which we now

d, our cities and villages and fair countryside would become as Louvai

[1] the two great Churches of Scotland met as one in St. Giles, the days of their misunderstanding ended, to pray for King and country-for all the things which make life beautiful. The

ember 1

or freedom are emblazoned, and watched the stream of men flow into the c

he sound of the surf wailing on the shore, and their sobbing as the cry of the grinding pebbles in the backwash of the tide. But the city fathers could stand upright even in that most cruel day when the cloud of destruction was creeping over the Pentlands; and there

d a race meet its Sedan in a sublimer spirit than that. The strong, at toll of bell and tuck of drum, manned the ramparts, and the women filled St. Giles' and sent he

has been no Flodden and no Sedan; but it is by the good hand of God upon us that the enemy was frustrated in his eagerness for another Sedan. And it is in part

the ear; where three thousand people dissolved in tears as the good Regent, foully slain, was borne to his grave. Over it passed wave after wave of fanaticism and barbarism; and at last it fell into the hands of the re

irring our patriotism, assuring us that the men who guarded these flags on m

banner there belonged to the Gordon Highlanders, and was carried through the Peninsula and the Crimea. Woven in faded letters you can read on it still Corunna, Almarez, Pyrenees, Waterloo. Ah! these flags tell of a devotion stronger than death, rekindle the memories of the day when stern silence fell on the ranks, as the Highland Brig

t restrain his admiration for his enemies, but exclaimed with the true soldier's generosity, "Les braves Ecossais"-"Brave, brave Scotsmen" (what a contr

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e have heard with our ears, O God, and our fathers have told us what work Thou didst in their days in the times of old.... Through The

ription "Resurgam." Afterwards the Colonel recovered it and brought it home. When war broke out again his widow restored it to the regiment-the Royal Scots Fusiliers. In 1881 that regiment was the last to leave the Transvaal; in 1900 it was the first to ente

ay to teach history is by flags, and all they stand for. When Douglas threw the heart of Bruce among his enemies he cried, "Lead thou on as thou wast wont and Douglas will follow thee or die." In the spirit of Douglas our fathers followed the flags, and we will follow in the steps of our fathers and face deat

d, realising that He and He alone is the one refuge, the only giver of victory. We hear the old story read of Moses holding up his hands and Israel prevailing on the plains below; but it is not Israel we see travailing in battle, but our own brothers in the rain-sodden trenches, and we feel the uprising of the cea

mbol of the unity of our Empire, and who watcheth over its destinies day and night, and who has sent his son to face death with the meanest of his subjects. We hear the glorious words: "If God be for us

dations. It is a new day that has dawned for us-a day in which we stand united as the subjects of the one King, as the sons of the one God-and the things that separated us one from another

will be done," it prays, in the spirit of submission. But prayer is not submission; it is a wrestling. In other days our fathers wrestled in prayer and prevailed. "I spent the night in prayer," wrote Oliver Cromwell, in critical days; "I prayed God that He would guide us against the enemy. We were simple fellows of the country, an

There is a place for tenderness; but when men are ground to powder by the judgment of God, tenderness is not manifest then.

compelled to unsheath the sword, and we pray that no heart may falter, and no cry arise for th

at service of prayer which within its walls has linked the generations together. Can prayer really prevail w

according to the varying of our hearts. With that lower will we are called to wrestle. A man is born in poverty and obscurity, and the will of God seems to be that he should continue poor

little silenced. The fires of patriotism are dying low, and the love of country gives place to the love of party. There are mean victories rejoiced over, but they are the victories of the cynic and the sensualist. There is the sound of shouting, but it is the shouting over the triumph of one self-seeking politician over another self-seeking partisan. Saintliness, which oth

globe is tottering to destruction. The hay and the stubble cannot come scathless through the flames. The writing is on the wall, and as the eyes see the hand that writes, trembling seizeth upon men. And then there cometh a sudden change. The nation in a day rises out of the morass of its self-indu

he earth. Sharply the choice is presented to them between Christ or Odin, and though choosing the Christ means agony and woe they make their choice unhesitatingly. A new light shines in their eyes, and the work of their hands and the devisings of th

God and is thus endued with His omnipotence, our prayers as we gather in the sanctuaries are no longer the submission of quietism, but a wrestlin

g, and watched the shadows enveloping the Cathedral. They invaded the side chapels first, and then the nave, creeping onwards through the transepts, until the chancel was reached. After that they gathered in strength, until the whole building was in darkness, with the exc

Then we lifted up our eyes and saw.... He will bring deliverance and peace. As we moved along the crowded aisles towards the door the white fig

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