if it will please Thee to specify.  Meanwhile, may we suggest horse-racing or profane language?’ We may be sure, then, that the sin suggested, as a conjurer forces a card, is not a relevant one.  We may be fairly sure also that it is one with which some neighbour is more chargeable than are we ourselves.  The priests of Baal were foolish to cut themselves with knives, but it is to be set to their credit that they used real ones.

“You will observe that Isaiah constantly, in his words of highest promise to her, speaks of Zion as to be redeemed, and her glory as something to be restored:  which implies that her bliss will lie, not in acquiring some new possession, but in regaining a something she has lost or forfeited.  Have we of England in our day built such a Jerusalem that merely to have it again is our dearest hope for the end of this War?

“I come back to my main proposition, and will conclude with one word of immediate practical advice—­the best I can offer, as a plain man, in these days when the minds of all are confused.

“My main proposition is that, all knowledge being one in its process, our best chance of reading God’s mind lies in thinking just as practically, rationally, relevantly about divine things as scientific men take care to do about scientific things, and as you or I should take care to do about the ordinary things of life.  If we only thought of God as important enough, we should do that as a matter of course.  If we then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children . . .  We in England to-day are as yet a long way off the philosophy of Jesus Christ.  That is too hard for us altogether, it seems.  But we ought to be abreast with Isaiah, which is a long way ahead of Joshua and the German Emperor.

“For my word of practical advice—­I counsel you, as a people, not to waste time in flurried undiscriminating repentance; not to fuss, in short, until, having learnt where and how you ought to repent, you can repent effectually.  That knowledge may come soon:  more likely it will come late.  Meanwhile the danger is instant.  Every man in this church,” concluded Mr Hambly, “has a strong sense—­a conviction, which I share—­that the cause of England is right, that she is threatened and calls to him as he has never heard her call in his lifetime:  and the call is to fight for her, but as men not straying to learn a new gospel of hate, remembering rather what at the best our Country has been, and proud to vindicate that.”

“Silly old rigmarole,” commented Miss Oliver on the way home.  “If you can tell me what it was all about!”

“If ’twas no worse than silly there’d be no harm done.  When it comes to hinting that the Almighty hasn’t a purpose of His own for typhoid fever, in my opinion it’s time some one made a public protest.”

“I don’t see what good that would do.  On his own showing it ’d lie between the Lord an’ Scantlebury, the Sanitary Inspector.  He’d no business to speak so pointed:  an’ I always hate personalities for my part.  But I daresay Scantlebury won’t mind, if it comes to his ears even—­”