PIETY AND PATRIOTISM.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 244, 12 October 1907, Page 10

PIETY AND PATRIOTISM.

(By Henry F. Cope.} "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they Shall prosper that lore thee." Ps. cxxil. 6. The reminder of the days -when men laid down their lives for their land thrills our hearts with a new appreciation of our privileges, and a larger, deeper love of country. 2so land is worth much until it has cost much. Without the shedding of blood no patriotism is born, and by no other means can a soil be consecrated to a people. The man in whom there awakens no response to the call of patriotism, who does not love one land above all others because it is his own land, cannot love any land at all, cannot enter into full living, for love for one's country and service for her welfare are part of the soul and substance of every true life. Living for a city or a nation ij religious service. It is moonshine for men to talk of loving , heaven unless they can love this earth and labour to make it heavenly. Such sentimentalism usually stands for simple evasion of known duty to the present by deferring them to an indefinite future. The important thing is not that you should go up to the city of God but that it should come down to US. Patriotism, after all, simply is living for and working for others, those who constitute the State or nation. It enlarges the love from the self centre to the full social circumference. It teaches to love the neighbour as oneself. It is altogether imperfect and often perilous until it includes those high religious mo-

tives of altruism, service and reverence for noble ideals and inheritances. It always has seemed so easy to pray, '"Thy kingdom come," and then to wait for it to drop full orbed from the skies that we have forgotten that every such jjrayer waits for the endorsement of out endeavour to bring all that that kingdom means to us within reach of all our fellows now, that no man really believes in that ideal kingdom who does not seek to make it immediately real. The best memorial that can be offered for the sacrifice and service of days long past is sacrifice and service for some worthy purpose to-day. Religion and patriotism become one motive, compelling us to willingness to pay the full price of citizenship. There is no better way to honour the dead than honourably to live for the things for which they died. We hear no thrilling call to arms; we feel no tidal wave of martial enthusiasm. There is no call for those ready to die. But there is a call for those who will live. It is all the same, dying on the field or fighting for the right in the city; the patriot is giving his life to his land. The dying or the keeping a whole skin are incidental; the essential thing is that we give ourselves. Vain are all our dreams of glory past unless we are making the present goodly and the future's promise yet more glorious. Too many evaporate their patriotism in pride of yesterday's mighty ■works or in to-day's full dress parade. The puppets of passing enthusiasms, they mistake emotional memories for enduring memorials. When the captain of all the forces ! Calls the troops before him the scars trpon which he will look with greatest loye may not be those that remain to remind us of sword wounds; they may be the scars of hearts bruised and faces ■tear stained, of backs bent and hands made horny in loving, lowly service of ;our fellows. STioever loves his neighbour glorifies the State; whoever helps his fellow citizen honours his city. The battlefield of to-day is the slum and the highway; ihe foes are greed and lust; the patriotic motives will be many, including love for men, high aspirations for our land, confidence in the coming of the glorious HtvofGod. To fight against the things that keep us down, within and without - to lay down our lives in daily living for men is to become part of the glorious army that follows the King.