mercy upon me, O Lord. . . . Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness." . . . But then instantly: "O be favorable and gracious unto Zion, build Thou the walls of Jerusalem."

Study of the Lenten Scriptures in their entirety brings out with startling force the intention of the Church that personal penitence shall be rooted in the sense of national contrition. How impressive they are, these passages from the Old Testament, which reach us across the abyss of the generations with accent clear as that of yesterday! "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: ... If ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if ye thoroughly execute justice between a man and his neighbor, if ye oppress not the stranger" (how about the alien enemy?), "the fatherless and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place

then will I cause you to dwell in this place in the land which I gave to your fathers, forever and ever. Behold ye trust in lying words that can not profit. Is this house which is called by my name become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord." 1

"Son of man, when the land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out mine hand upon it and will break the staff 1Jeremiah vii, 1-11.

of the bread thereof and will send famine upon

it and will cut off man and beast from it."1

"Show My people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. . . . Behold in the day of your fast ye find pleasure and exact all your labors. Behold ye fast for strife and debate and to smite with the fist of wickedness.

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?" 2

This last great phrase in particular never fails, when Ash-Wednesday comes round, to thrill and appal with its tragic modernity. That thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh! How accurately it describes our worst offence, penetrating to the centre of our sin and shame,-our classexclusiveness, our group-provincialism, our national arrogance and jealous instinct of self-protection! The sins are social, the penitence must be social, and social must the expiation be.

"The first thing to do is to pray sensibly and

1 Ezekiel xiv, 13.

'Isaiah lviii, 1-7. All these passages are from the Lenten Lessons.

deeply... that the diabolic spirit of war, whether it manifests itself in the ghastly convulsion of shot and shell, or whether, vampirelike, it slowly drains the life-blood of a nation by its bitter class-jealousy, its materialism, its mammon-worship, may be forever banished from our lives."1

Perhaps the sense of sin which was fast becoming unreal to our stalwart and shallow generation could be renewed by nothing short of some great shock, forcing men to face a world delivered over to terror by the results of their own blindness and wrong-doing. That shock came in 1914, and it is not expended yet. As revolution succeeds war, and the struggle between classes throws even the titanic anguish of four momentous years into the shadow, thoughtful men experience more and more completely a consciousness of guilty responsibility for the causes of world catastrophe. It becomes apparent that no shifting of blame nor concentration of it on one source is possible. The crimes of every nation, not least our own, lie upon us with a bitter weight: imperialistic ambition and commercial greed, sullen class-antagonisms, lowering suspi

1 Rev. E. M. Venables.

cions, tortuous cruelties to those without, grasping meanness toward those within.

Most of us have had no immediate concern with these evils as individuals; indeed, to a large extent, the wrong inheres in a system which is an unconscious growth and for which no one, not the capitalist nor the politician, nor any one else, is directly responsible today. Men have been blinder than Bartimæus, but as we of the democratic nations receive our sight, with what terrible clearness loom before us our irresponsibility, our lazy acquiescence in racial and class antagonisms, our impossible economic conditions, our national policies, sure to ripen into disaster! Sins, negligences, ignorances,-only confession can heal us,-confession, and such reparation as can be made by a reconstruction of society from its very base, in its international and industrial relationships. Shallow men may plume themselves on seeing red, and acquire cheap merit by invective against the sins of Germany or of the Bolsheviks. That is emphatically a method closed to the Christian. Israel had enemies enough; but the prophets did not keep busy denouncing the sins of Assyria, nor did they enjoin such denunciations as a duty on the people of Jehovah.

Israel, in the Old Testament, is not only nation but Church. The sorrowful rebukes of the Lord

are addressed to His Chosen People, who should be His witnesses on earth yet have turned themselves to idols. How about the modern Church? Divided, piteous, inept, its failure to afford leadership toward social righteousness scandalizes the non-Christian world. Through vast portions of nominal Christendom, the forces which aim to restore their heritage to the meek, encounter not only passivity but fierce opposition on the part of organized religion. Among us Anglo-Saxons, the situation is less clear-cut. Religion, though hesitant and backward, begins to escape convention and to endorse liberal programmes. But even in England and the United States, hundreds of people within the Church are alienated by her timidity and her parrot-like echo of the lower ethics of the State. They turn from her in contempt; they leave the shelter of her altars, and join the noble army of heretics who through the ages, in similar pain and wrath, have tried the ever-futile experiment of separation. For the great loss, to themselves and to us, who is responsible? Largely as usual the Catholic Church, drugged by her own philanthropies, clogged with worldliness since the fatal gift of Constantine, and never even when best-intentioned able to move swiftly enough to meet the righteous impatience of those whose ears have been opened