Page:The Power of the Spirit.djvu/28

 It is not hate that men seek after, but love, the love of comrades and of country. They will seek that noble life of 'great difficulties', and will get it somehow. Has Christianity then nothing to offer them nowadays but consolation, and—to use an expressive word which our soldiers have invented—a 'cushy' feeling? Has the Church no remembered echo of that Sursum corda, which is the oldest phrase in the Christian liturgy? Does she seem to speak to them only of mothers' meetings, and snug parsonages, and charming cathedral closes, and big episcopal palaces, of green old churchyards, and prim churches, and the scent and rustle of clean clothes on Sunday morning?

The martyrs were followed by the monks, heroic pioneers, who fought their way among the fierce barbarian tribes, and turned the vast wildernesses of ancient Europe into farms and gardens: we still use their prayers, hardly marking the constant note of danger—the assaults of our enemies in the morning, the fear of our enemies in the evening, and the perils and dangers of the night—we who do not even lock our front doors in the country! For a thousand years the struggle went on, and still Russia and Lithuania, Prussia and Scandinavia remained to be won; but the romance of the struggle had already gone out in the settled nations. Military orders arose, but they were shadowy for want of opposition. Foes there were, but they were far away; and Christendom in the