his: the way of repentance leading back to God. If
only the Church would voyage forth anew on this enchanted sea, the day
of its power would again dawn.

VI

If there be, thus, the wonder of riches untold, the gleam of virgin
peaks summoning our feet to climb, a glimpse of the land afar, and the
clear shining of God's face in the call to repent, let us not forget
that there is also something very terrible bound up with it. And the
terrible thing is that it is possible so to disregard it that at last
it becomes impossible to obey it. In vain did the prophet call, 'O
Israel, return unto the Lord thy God,' for their paralysed wills had
become incapable of effort. 'Their deeds will not let them return,'
was at last the prophet's {199} mournful verdict. To every nation
there comes, after long decline, the stage when recovery is impossible.
When the warnings of the wise have been flouted and disregarded; when
the prophets have not been stoned but treated with mere contempt; when
there is no discernment because there is no longer any consciousness of
sin; when no call of the divine is audible any longer even when God
speaks by terrible things and the heavens are shaken; when the hearts
steeped in self and surrendered to the flesh can see no longer the
beauty of purity,--then the call to repentance is heard as one hears
voices in sleep. Their deeds will not let them return.

It is not very far away from us that last irrevocable stage when
national repentance becomes impossible. A nation such as this, that
spends over half a million pounds sterling a day on alcohol when the
greatest crisis in the world's history requires all its strength and
all its resources; that turns grain into a {200} waste when food is so
dear that the poor can scarcely buy; that cries out for economy and
offers daily at the shrine of Bacchus the ransom of a province; that
suffers vice to wound and slay its children, narcotising its conscience
the while; that in God's terrible day empties its churches and crowds
its music-halls; that sacrifices its children to the Moloch of its
pleasure, or to the greed of its property exploiters; that suffers its
people to be massed in slums until the body-politic becomes a
gangrene,--for such a people the last stage, where no return is
possible, cannot be far removed. Arise, O Israel, and return to the
Lord your God, ere the day of repentance sinks into night!

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