' Which if we do,
this land of England will come to ruin and shame, as surely as did
the land of Israel in old time.
If we do not believe in the living God, we shall believe in
something worse than even a dead god.
For in a dead god--a god who does nothing, but lets mankind and the
world go their own way--no man nor nation ever will care to believe.
And now, nay dear friends, remember that a nation is, after all,
only the people in that nation: you, and I, and our neighbours, and
our neighbours' neighbours, and so forth; and that therefore, in as
far as we are wrong, we do our worst to make the British nation
wrong. If we give way to ungodly pride and self-sufficiency, then
we are injuring ourselves; and not only that, but injuring our
neighbours and our children after us, as far as we can. And
therefore our duty is, if we wish well to our nation, not to judge
our neighbour, nor our neighbour's neighbour, but to judge
ourselves.
If we go on trusting in ourselves rather than God; if we keep within
us the hard self-sufficient spirit, and boast to ourselves (though
we may be ashamed to boast to our neighbours), 'My power and the
strength of my hands have got me this and that;' and in fact live
under the notion, which too many have, that we could do very well
without God's help if God would let us alone--then we are heaping up
ruin and shame for ourselves and for our children after us.
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