on state occasions ever since its founding in 1636. The Puritan fathers sang it in the early days of our Republic, and now the Puritan sons sing it too. The founders of Harvard College believed in God; and so did the founders of Yale, and so did the founders of Princeton, and all the other Puritan schools of learning.

We are living in trying times these days, my friends; days trying to faith. Many are losing their grip on God. They are saying: "Where is now thy God?" "Why standest Thou afar off?" To many, the Star of Hope has become dimmed. The smoke of shot and shell has wellnigh blotted it out. There is a sigh of despair in the air. Look at Belgium, for instance; a little country, absolutely innocent, minding her own affairs, almost wiped out of existence; her houses in ruins, her cities laid waste, her people fugitives; one long trail of blood smeared across her hills. No shabbier piece of military iniquity ever disgraced the black page of war. I don't suppose there are many avowed atheists in the world, but what can you call the ethics of the jungle but atheism? What is militarism, after all, but atheism? It is the old delusion, is it not, that the greatness of a nation depends on its destructive equipment? If we are living as if God were not, what is that but atheism? If my God is a juggernaut God, what is that but atheism? "God is on the side of the big battalions"; what is that but atheism? If Goliath is king, what is that but atheism? Tolstoi said, a few months before he died, and it was the utterance of a prophet: "The modern world has temporarily lost God, and without Him it cannot live."

Personally, however, I am not discouraged, because I believe that God is soon to show Himself and make bare His arm. The sword of flesh is fast cutting its own throat. God is just biding His time. And when He comes forth it I will be a better world. "The whole creation groaneth in pain," but then, the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory of the age that

is coming the gospel age; the age of the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, the age when war will be no more, when this festering open sore of the world will be healed.

Now, if we have this faith in God firmly fixed in our minds as the secret of the greatness of these people, I think it explains a good many other things about them as well as about the old Baptist prophet. Let us just glance at two or three of them in closing.

I think it explains, first of all, their Courage. They certainly were men of courage. Theirs was a courage that has never been questioned. There was no enemy whom they feared if they were sure that the God of Israel was on their side. They were "the only men who dared to strike at the Duke of Alva and resist the tyranny of Philip." And it was not the courage of the flesh, I repeat. It was the courage of a superb faith-a courage which no persecution could shake. And no persecution could shake it because they believed that the eternal God was their refuge, and that underneath them were the everlasting arms. Nothing makes a man so strong as to feel that he's in the rightthat God is on his side; or rather, as Lincoln put it, "that he's on God's side." When a man believes in God and fears God, as a rule he fears nobody else. And that, I repeat again, was the courage of these Pilgrims far away. They could burst out into the brave lines of Henley, handicapped as he was by sickness all his life long,

"I thank whatever gods there be

For my unconquerable soul."

Then it explains another thing. It explains their conscience. We hear a good deal to-day about the Puritan conscience. What is the Puritan conscience? Why, the Puritan conscience was simply a vision of God. They saw that the throne was white, and so they despised everything that wasn't white. "In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord high and lifted up, and His glory filled the

temple.' That was the vision that thrilled their hearts and dazzled their eyes. They despised hypocrisy and falsehood and sham because they were men of tremendous convictions. They did not live rubber lives. They heard God speak, and that voice was final. They had no tricks. They did not know how to flatter or to bribe or to compromise. They were mighty haters. A mighty hater makes a mighty lover. Hating is the other side of loving. We cannot love truth aright until we hate wrong. And these men hated wrong. They were unflinching, outspoken men; men with a bulldog bite-you must cut off the head to loosen the teeth.

They believed that the day of the Lord was sacred. They believed that law ought to be reverenced. And they were conscientious in their political duties as well as in their religious duties because they felt that "the powers that be are ordained of God." So they were always ready to battle for their country and its freedom. They were men of God, but they carried a sword and a flintlock. They were willing to fight, but they would never fight for a cause that was unjust. They planted the Republic on the rock of a national conscience.

Then it explains another thing. It explains their seeming severity. Let us make no mistake about it. These men were not perfect men. They were not saints. They believed in God, but we must all be ready to confess that He was a severe God. "I knew Thee that Thou art a hard master, reaping where Thou hast not sown." That, let us be free to admit, was too largely their theology.

God is like man in that He has a reputation as well as a character. God's character is what He is. His reputation is what men think He is. Unfortunately, these have not always been the same. Experience teaches us that there are many men of many minds concerning God. In fact, history tells the story of one great theologian once saying to another in the heat of a public debate: "Your God, sir,

is my Devil." Alas, the glass through which we see the Father is blurred so often by our own breath.

Dr. Marcus Dods once remarked that all wrongness of conduct is at bottom based on a wrong view of God. If we think that God is relentless and unyielding, it will make us relentless and unyielding. No man is better than his God. Very few men are as good. The river cannot rise higher than its source. And the trouble with these old fathers was their interpretation of the Eternal One. He was the Old Testament Jehovah. He was not always the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. They wanted to do the right. Their heart was in the right place, but they were overstern to the tender and lovable. Their creed was rugged and bleak, like that first New England winter. Their God was hard, but then they were called upon to do hard things. Life with us is a good deal more tolerant and cheerful to-day. Indeed, there are some wise men who think that we have swung a little too far to the other pole, and that the greatest weakness of the Church of Christ to-day is the loss of her Puritan spirit. Some years ago an article was written on Puritanism under the title of "The Hard Church." And a great divine took up the gauntlet and preached a sermon on what he called "The Perils of the Soft Church." He meant the easy church, the liberal church, the languorous church. I am not so sure that it isn't fraught with full as much danger. Someone has said that what we need most in the State today is the moral equivalent of war. Is that not true of the Church? Archbishop Benson once made a remark something like this: "We are hearing a great deal to-day about High Churchmen and Broad Churchmen, but I am convinced," he went on, "that what we need most is Deep Churchmen." Aye, that is the trouble with the Church to-day. She is not deep enough. She lacks the sacrifice, the reality, the loyalty of the old Pilgrim spirit.

And then it explains one more thing. It explains the

artless simplicity of these people. They were democratic and simple in their tastes because their standards were not material. They had no fondness for the social entanglement that is so vexing us. They did not look without for their fulfillment. They looked within. Their ideal was the simplicity that is in Christ. They were real folks. They didn't pretend.

It is just here that they have suffered most at the hands of their critics. The Puritan is laughed at in society. He has been called fanatical; sanctimonious. He has been the butt of invective and ridicule. He has been put in the pillory and flogged. It is quite touching to hear John Robinson tell his people before they start that they are well weaned from the delicate milk of the motherlandand someone adds, "sour milk." "sour milk." But I believe that if there ever was a time when society needed an infusion of some rich Puritan blood it is to-day. We need to recover something of their temper. We are domineered too tyrannically by the sordid things. With our luxury and frivolity and extravagance and ostentation and vulgarity and sensuality, we are losing the essentials of greatness. The roar of the market has swept into the sanctuary and the home. I lived for a number of years in a fashionable tourist town, and many an evening have I gone out to walk through the corridors of the great hotels and watch the faces of the gay world. All were in search of happiness, and I used to remark that the one thing lacking was the very thing they were seeking. Cheeks lined with care could be noted on every side; eyes with a vacant, worried look; very few with a calm, restful serenity. What is the cause of the anarchy and the I. W. W.'s in our land to-day? It is largely, is it not, the arrogance of the rich? The old notion that the extravagance of the well-to-do helps the poor by giving them employment, I claim, is a false ideal. It is false because it is selfish. It is the old doctrine of Mandeville that private vices are public blessings. There must surely be a slip in the reasoning somewhere. If waste is a