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For suggested Meditations during the week see Appendix.

IX

=Discipline through Victory=

EASTER DAY

Romans vi. 9

  “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more.”

To couple the word discipline with victory may seem incongruous almost to the point of impossibility.  Yet, if we look below the surface, we shall see that never is the connection more strong and the need for realising it more urgent.

Lent is over, its special discipline has passed, and now the danger begins.  The danger is lest any progress made, any victory won, should lead to that self-confidence which can only end in disaster.  Success is often a discipline far more fatal in its results than failure.

We celebrate to-day the grandest victory the world has ever known:  a victory which sprang out of the depths of an apparently complete defeat.  “We trusted that it was He which should have redeemed Israel.”  Vain confidence, for how could One Who had died as a malefactor, Who could not save Himself, rescue His nation from the tyranny of the Roman power?  And then He, this stranger Whom they knew not, opened to them the Scriptures; showed them the necessity of the sufferings, and the great climax, in the Resurrection.  The ears were dull, the hearts unconvinced, as they generally are by mere argument, till he revealed Himself in “the breaking of bread.”  The eyes of love could not be deceived and sorrow gave place to joy.

Some dispute has arisen as to whether we ought to pray for victory in this War.  The matter is well put by an anonymous writer:  “If we are only to pray in matters wherein there is no difference of opinion our prayers will be few, and if we cannot pray for the triumph of honour over falsehood, of respect for treaties over unscrupulousness, of order over cruelty and outrage, for what are we ever to pray?  We must pray according to the light we have.  And if we end our prayers with the truly Christian supplement ‘Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt,’ we cannot be doing anything contrary to the principles of the highest religion.  Surely prayer is, or should be, merely the expression of our best hopes and wishes submitted to a Divine tribunal.”

Putting aside the question of prayer, let us consider for a moment what should be our attitude as we look into the future.  First and foremost one of confidence and hopefulness.  Without arrogance we can say that we believe firmly and strongly in the absolute righteousness of our cause.  In violating the neutrality of Belgium, Germany itself confesses that a wrong was done.  A wrong which necessity compelled, as they say.  What necessity?  That of getting to Paris at the earliest possible moment.  And so when Germany prays for victory, as of course it does, and ought, at the same time it has to confess to an initial wrong, which was certainly not made right by the fact that it was the quickest way of accomplishing an end.