And if we look nearer home, we must acknowledge that the condition of England has not always been such as to inspire Heathendom with a lively desire to be like us.  A century and a half ago Charles Wesley complained that his fellow-citizens, who professed Christianity, “the sinners unbaptized out-sin.”  And everyone who remembers the social and moral state of England during the ten years immediately preceding the present War will be inclined to think that the twentieth century had not markedly improved on the eighteenth.  Betting and gambling, and the crimes to which they lead, had increased frightfully, and were doing as much harm as drunkenness used to do.  There was an open and insolent disregard of religious observance, especially with respect to the use of Sunday, the weekly Day of Rest being perverted into a day of extra amusement and resulting labour.  There was a general relaxation of moral tone in those classes of society which are supposed to set a good example.  There was an ever-increasing invasion of the laws which guard sexual morality, illustrated in the agitation to make divorce even easier than it is now.  Other and darker touches might be added; but I have said enough to make my meaning clear.  Some say that the war is teaching us to repent of and to forsake those national offences.  If so, but not otherwise, we can reasonably connect it with the lessons of Epiphany.

II

THE ROMANCE OF RENUNCIATION

“What is Romance?  The world well lost for an ides.”  I know no better definition; and Romance in this sense is perpetually illustrated in the history of the Church.  The highest instance-save One—­is, of course, the instance of the Martyrs.  When in human history has Romance been more splendidly displayed than when the young men and maidens of Pagan Rome suffered themselves to be flung to the wild beasts of the arena sooner than abjure the religion of the Cross?  And close on the steps of the Martyrs follow the Confessors, the “Martyrs-Elect,” as Tertullian calls them, who, equally willing to lay down their lives, yet denied that highest privilege, carried with them into exile and imprisonment the horrible mutilations inflicted by Severus and Licinius.  In days nearer our own time, “many a tender maid, at the threshold of her young life, has gladly met her doom, when the words that accepted Islam would have made her in a moment a free and honoured member of a dominant community.”  Then there is the Romance of the Hermitage and the Romance of the Cloister, illustrated by Antony in the Egyptian desert, and Benedict in his cave among the Latin hills, and Francis tending the leper by the wayside of Assisi.  In each of these cases, as in thousands more, the world was well lost for an idea.