The established and endowed teachers of religion have not always used their influence on the side of mercy; but on the question of reprisals I have observed with thankfulness that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London have spoken on the right side, and have spoken with energy and decision.  They, at any rate, have escaped the peril of induration, and in that respect they are at one with the great mass of decent citizens.

I am no advocate of a mawkish lenity.  When our soldiers and sailors and airmen meet our armed foes on equal terms, my prayers go with them; and the harder they strike, the better I am pleased.  When a man or woman has committed a cold-blooded murder and has escaped the just penalty of the crime, I loathe the political intrigue which sets him or her free.  Heavy punishment for savage deeds, remorseless fighting till victory is ours—­these surely should be guiding principles in peace and war; and to hold them is no proof that one has suffered the process of induration.

Here I am not ashamed to make common cause with the stout old Puritan in Peveril of the Peak: “To forgive our human wrongs is Christian-like and commendable; but we have no commission to forgive those which have been done to the cause of religion and of liberty; we have no right to grant immunity or to shake hands with those who have poured forth the blood of our brethren.”

But let us keep our vengeance for those who by their own actions have justly incurred it.  The very intensity of our desire to punish the wrong-doer should be the measure of our unwillingness to inflict torture on the helpless and the innocent.  “Lest we grow hard”—­it should be our daily dread.  “A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character:  bestial, childish, stupid, scurrilous, tyrannical.”  A pagan, who had observed such a character in its working, prayed to be preserved from it.  Christians of the twentieth century must not sink below the moral level of Marcus Aurelius.

IV

FLACCIDITY

My discourse on “Induration” was intended to convey a warning which, as individuals, we all need.  But Governments are beset by an even greater danger, which the learned might call “flaccidity” and the simple—­“flabbiness.”

The great Liddon, always excellent in the aptness of his scriptural allusions, once said with regard to a leader who had announced that he would “set his face” against a certain policy and then gave way, “Yes, the deer ‘set his face,’ but he did not ’set it as a flint’—­rather as a pudding.”

To set one’s face as a pudding is the characteristic action of all weak Governments.  Lord Randolph Churchill once attracted notice by enouncing the homely truth that “the business of an Opposition is to oppose.”  A truth even more primary is that the duty of a Government is to govern; to set its face, not as a pudding, but as a flint, against lawlessness and outrage; to protect the innocent and to punish the wrong-doer.