LookingForward CMCodd
Author: Karen
Date: 2018-06-10T01:12:07.844273+00:00

Looking Forward by Clara M. Codd

Looking Forward

The Coming Faith and... The Coming Social Order

by Clara M. Codd

Published in the 1918

THE HOUR

THE COMING FAITH

THE COMING SOCIAL ORDER

THE MESSAGE OF THE HOUR

A DREAM

IN HIS NAME

The Great Captain of our Salvation and to my Fellow-men

Watchman, what of the Night?

The Watchman said: The morning cometh and also the night:

if ye will enquire, enquire yes: return, come.

He answered and said unto them,......Ye can discern the face of the sky: but can ye not discern the signs
of the times.

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THE HOUR

Not one of us, in these extraordinary days, but vaguely feels the immensity of the moment, the
tremendous import of the hour. Everywhere, in every direction, change succeeds change; shock after
shock follows each other in our moral and mental world, more cataclysmic in effect, more perilous to our
unthinking security, than the cyclonic devastation of the raging world war. An age of an old established
order of things is closing its account, a world of of accustomed procedure and opinion is tottering to its
fal , and we stand breathless, shaken, wondering what new order shall arise therefrom, and at times
dimly sensing that beneath the advancing evolutionary tide a Rock of Ages stands upon which again and
again the bewildered soul of Humanity finds new refuge and fresh faith.

This hour, this dread and wonderful hour, how shal we understand it? The vague intuition of its mighty
meaning and purpose is expressed in the universal sentiment: "It will never be the same world after the
war as it was before". But to clear that dim perception it is necessary to grasp certain principles of Life
and Purpose.

One thing is axiomatic and self-evident. The rapid changes, the widening conceptions, are part of a great
evolutionary plan, and have occurred on a smal er scale in previous epochs. They are the inevitable
concomitant of change, the hallmark of the transition period which accompanies the death-hour of an era,
marking the fact that Humanity, on its great Life-journey, is a "day's march nearer home". Evolution to be truly comprehended must be viewed from two sides, two aspects of Life which are inseparable, and yet
distinct in manifestation and method, Life and Form, or as Science would put it with narrower
connotations- Force and Matter.

Life and Purpose are everywhere and at al times one. Fundamentally there is but one Life, one Purpose,
behind all the multitudinous, ever-changing, infinitely diverse Forms in which it is clothed and expressed.

And the great quality of the Life-side in evolution is that it is ever pressing forwards, gently, irresistibly,
unceasingly, towards ful er, completer, manifestation and expression. And because of that ceaseless
pressure, the great"urge" of Bergsons' Intuitionalism, the forms, material or immaterial in which Life
clothes itself, give way when they can no longer embody or express it sufficiently, and disappear. They
give way because the Form-side in Nature follows an opposite law, coming into being, rising to maturity
and then crystallising into age, at, which stage, the ever-increasing Life forces become "cribbed, cabined
and confined", and so must burst asunder to re-create afresh. Thus death means in every case increase
of life and birth into a higher, nobler form.

Life is one, Form is manifold; Life ever increases, Form continually passes, appears and disappears
under the pressure of the ever-advancing tide of Life of which it is the ever-changing embodiment or
expression. Life strives always towards the Ideal, its temporary embodiment is what we call the real. And
the ultimate purpose of Evolution is to make of the two one, gradually drawing together these which
seem poles asunder, until one day the real shal perfectly express the ideal, and heaven be born upon
earth, His Will being done upon "earth" as it is always done in "heaven".

So often we mourn the passing of a beloved embodiment, cling with desperate insistence to an outworn
mode of thought, not realising that all things must pass, whether of the outer or inner life, and that the life Page 2

Looking Forward by Clara M. Codd
which thus expressed itself is now finding nobler, truer embodiment.

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

---and God fulfills Himself in many ways".

Never more than at this moment was it necessary to grasp this great principle, for with it we may clear
the confusion of the moment, and trace the outlines of the future. It operates in every sphere of our
being. Our bodies pass that we may live anew; old formulas of life and living grow meaningless beneath
the advancing tide of Life; civilisations crumble so that a new social order may arise on fairer, true
foundations, eras grow old and die that the world may grow young again in a new "Day" of God. "Behold!

I make al things new", cries the immortal Spirit of Life, "for the former things are passed away".

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THE COMING FAITH

- I -

On al hands we see this universal principle of the passing of form in operation in every department of our
common life. It we look too casually, too superficial y, we shall but see the universal disintegration, the
surface breaking asunder. In this hour, of all hours, it behooves us to look deeper stil , not at that which
passes, but for that which comes. Standing momentarily as spectators on the shores of Time, let us not
look only at the wave breaking at our feet, but raise our eyes to that which fol ows on behind, upon
whose advancing crest rides the Spirit of the Future, He who shal take command when the world
staggers purified from the reek and horror of war. Well for us if the leaders of the nation in both its
material and spiritual life, can take true cognisance of that which is being writ this day. Again, as two
thousand years ago, the Heart of the World cries to them: "Ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye
not discern the signs of the times?" For on that discernment depends the direction of the tide, the final
salvation of the people everywhere. So tragically true for all time is it that without vision the people must
perish.

What then is happening at this moment in our inner world, the world of man's deepest experience and
most intense realisation? Looking only upon the surface we might unthinkingly agree with the Bishop of

Salisbury when he says: "There has been revealed to us the terrible and painful fact that a great many
are giving up public worship, and that a large proportion of the people of England pay little attention to
religion at all".

You and I do not need the Bishop to tel us this. Throughout the length and breath of England many a
church stands practically empty; the Church as an organised form of religion has lost its hold on the vast
body of the people. The indictment pours in on every side. How often do we see articles in the daily press
all dealing with the question of why the Church has failed us in the hour of our most supreme need. That
something is wrong is clearly felt by many of the clergy themselves, for the Archbishops have appointed
five committees of inquiry to consider what reforms in the Church are needed and what the nature of the
reforms should be. "It is terribly true", writes the Rev. Dr. Selbie, late President of the National Free Church Council and Principal of Mansfiedl College , Oxford, "that God has given the Church the greatest
opportunity it ever had, and that so far it has been neglected".

Why? Because in the crystallisation caused by the passage of the centuries,the Church has made, and is
making, the old, old mistake, of clinging to the letter which killeth, instead of going forward with the
advancing spirit of Life which ever giveth life. Narrow, if sincere, formalism, hidebound dogmatism has
hampered the Christian Church, and it was left for an unofficial body like the Y.M.C.A. to make good in
some small measure her omissions and defalcations. I shall never forget how on the outbreak of war the

Sunday Observance Society placarded London with huge posters pointing out that the evils of war had
fal en upon us because of our non-observance of the Sabbath; nor how a country parson preached upon
the theme of the rains at the front impeding our advance being a "judgment" upon us for digging
allotments on Sundays! Truly, as Dr. Selbie says, "though the future of religion is as sure as the hills,

Christianity in its present form may possibly not survive".

Dogmatism spells death in any sphere of life. For what is a true dogma, properly understood. A symbol,

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an indication, of a great spiritual truth which can never be wholly expressed in words , nor even in idea. It
is a finger-post indicating where on the wings of intuition we may rise to the contemplation of an eternal
verity, and if we take it otherwise we destroy its meaning and purpose.

It is interesting to observe in the evolution of the Christian Church the way in the which the "seat of
authority" has shifted more than once. In the first early years the body of its members grouped
themselves round various teachers, each looking to his leader as the final authority; then, as the
movement consolidated in the might of her traditions, authority became vested in the Church. With the
coming of the Protestant Reformation, authority was shifted, for a large part of the Christian community,
from the Church to the Scriptures, the anarchy of individual interpretation thereupon replacing the
despotism of Rome.

Yet once again, some half a century ago, the seat of authority began to be undermined. With the coming
of the "Higher Criticism", the birth of the Science of Comparative mythology and Religion, the seeming
assaults of the tremendous scientific advance made during the Victorian Age, the letter of the law as
revealed in Scripture received shock after shock; yet once again, the spirit in man, searching for the
certainty his soul demands, was forced to look deeper stil .

And wonderfully is the answer being given in these our days. For a further wonderful truth is emerging in
man's consciousness from the wreckage of the past: this, that the final authority in the religious life rests
in the depth of the human heart, in those splendid hidden depths which the il uminated, the spiritual
giants, of every age and of every faith, touch, and thereby reach the Divinity within and without. For to
reach the God within us, the "hidden man of the heart in that which is incorruptible" of St. Peter, the spirit, the pneuma , of St. Paul's triune classification, is to become one with the Divine Life, the Divine Purpose, operating everywhere, the great "Oversoul" into which, unknowingly as yet, the spirit in man labours to be born.

This triumphant proclamation the inherent Divinity of man is the key-note of the new Theology, which at
the same time is the oldest Theology in the world, and this truth will be the cornerstone of the Coming

Faith. A new conception of God, and of Man, is arising in human consciousness. A witty Frenchman once
said: "In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been returning Him that
compliment ever since". Ever does our conception of Deity rise with our growth, and there has never at
any time been such a person as an Atheist, for all men believe in something greater and more beautiful
than they have yet known, and when a man says: "I do not believe in God", what he really means is: "I do not believe in your conception of Him".

In savage states God is thought of with fear and trembling, a being who personifies the dread, mysterious
unconquerable forces of Nature around man; in a further stage of growth He takes on the character of a
tribal god , one who is the presiding genius of the tribe, who is pleased when the enemies of the tribe are
slaughtered, commanding that they be smitten hip and thigh. And it would seem that in these days of
modern civilisation some nations have not yet risen above the conception of God as a tribal deity.

This was the conception of the early Jewish scriptures which are embodied in our own. After the

Babylonian captivity, a higher note, learnt of the wisdom of Chaldea, replaced it, the Great God, the "One

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without a second" of the East, Who was the Father indeed of al that lived. Yet still was He thought of as
apart, or without His universe, an extra-cosmic god for the generality of mankind.

In these great days a stil greater, more wonderful conception of Him arises; God, as the Father of us all,
not as alone out with His universe, but moving mysteriously within it , utterly immanent as well as
transcendent, His immortal purpose fulfilling itself ever through the hearts and minds of men who at the
same time are eternal y the sons of the Most High. "Some call it Evolution, and others cal it God".

Most of all does He reveal Himself in the heart of Man, so that he who would God must serve Him in man

"We accustomed ourselves", writes Mr.Francis John Moore, "(is it not true to say that we were taught?) to see the best in the natural man , through the dark shadow of the worst, and to believe that the false was
true, and the true false? But the war has taught us that we were wrong, and we know now that the last
thing ('original' if you will) in human nature is goodness and not evil".

From that sublime perception springs the new thought of God, voiced, amongst a thousand others, by

H.G.Wells. Again the Spirit of Life, in the youth-time of a New Day, cries aloud to the hearts of men, who
yet in their present weakness are cooperators and re-builders with Him, "God is a Youth, God is Courage,

God is Personality". He is the unseen King of a Republic as wide as Humanity, the Head of a

Brotherhood of life in which men in measure, according to their growth,have held in common the undying
capacity to see into that Future, otherwise called the region of ideals, which ever seek realisation upon
earth, "the hope of our future glory".

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- II -

There are three main factors in the constitution of every religious system: Scripture, ceremonial, doctrine.

And there are three ways of understanding them, as well set forth by an ancient Father of the Christian

Church, St. Clement of Alexandria. To the unlettered, untutored man, of small understanding and scant
leisure for thought, they must needs be taken literal y, and even so they are of use and benefit to
mankind. But to the educated and thoughtful the conviction dawns that scriptural story and church dogma
have a deeper significance; that the truer meaning is reached when they are taken as al egory and
symbol, and at that stage stand the majority of civilised men today. The last and truest way, understood
by the saint and sage, is the way of mystical interpretation, and this is the highest and nearest way of al .

The higher the way of understanding, the nearer the approach to unity. With the growth of the Science of

Comparative Mythology and Religion men begin to glimpse the unity of inspiration which lies behind the
great religions of the world and time. They began to distinguish between Religion and religious systems.

For there is a difference. Systems vary, and of necessity, for they come at different times in the world's history, to different races under different conditions: but the Reality to which they seek to lead us is
everywhere and at all times One. The great saints and mystics of every age have transcended the
bounds of creed, even though their stumbling efforts to describe in words the ineffable, the indescribable,
the Name that never can be named, are clothed in the familiar terminology of the faith of their upbringing.

Once a man has risen to these heights he discovers Reality and finds it to be everywhere One.

Henceforth to him, the illuminated, a system is a secondary consideration. The house immortal in the
heavens is built, and the system which provided the scaffolding is done with. How should he desire to
know about God, the way to Him, when in terms of deepest human experience He has become one with
the great Reality, the "One without a second" of the Upanishads. "All the Vedas (inspired scripture) are as useful to the enlightened Brahmana as tanks of water would be in a place al covered with water", says
the Gita of Hinduism "The mystics all come from one country and speak the same language", said Blake,
the seer. That "knowledge of God" is the supreme and final experience in the growth of man upwards, but the ways thereto are as many as the souls of men.

Comparison alone convinces us of the underlying unity of the great world-faiths, if we seek essentials,
and as Mr. Wel s truly says, "the essentials of religion can be written on a postcard". Again, upon
essentials we are very well agreed.

It is the undue emphasis upon unessentials which have torn men asunder. The "Golden Rule" of

Christendom: "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you", is paral eled by the Buddha's
saying: "Hatred ceaseth never by hatred, hatred ceased only by love".

Again, on the side of ceremonial, the ritualistic unity is very marked. In the great Buddhist temple at

Buddha Gya, on the spot where the Buddha is said to have attained the supreme initiation of Buddha-
hood, sits a gigantic gilt figure of the Teacher before which the faithful burn little candles, other flowers
and jewels. Around smal er side-chapels enshrine other figures, some of them clothed in bits of silk and
satin that remind one irresistibly of Catholic Brittany. In a little church in Paris built on the spot where
hundreds lost their lives in the burning of a great bazaar stands a large gilt figure of the Virgin Mother of

God. Gazing at the massive golden image of the Buddha at Buddha Gya, before which countless pilgrims
placed flower and jewel and light, the thoughts of the writer flew back in memory to a day in Paris when

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she watched the offerings and prayers of Christian devotees being poured out before another such
golden symbol of God's love and man's trust therein. How many of us too who have watched the figure of
a god taken from the temple in procession round a Hindu village, have remembered a similar festivity in a

Breton hamlet.

And doctrine, dogma, what are they, but symbols of spiritual truths too great to be expressed in words ,
or even to be intellectual y apprehended, except very partially and dimly - for these things are "spiritually discerned". To take them literal y, as complete expressions, destroys their purpose and utility. Not long
ago, a sad but beautiful little book came out entitled "An Englishman's Farewell to his Church". Let me tel you", says the writer, "what things men no longer believe". And he cites amongst others, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, the Fal of Man and the complementary dogma of the Atonement.

If taken literal y verily they are no longer believed. But these great dogmas are glyphs as ancient as the
world, and common to every faith. The great doctrine of the Trinity, which Mr. Wells so quarrels with, and
which nearly every world-faith has embodied, is an attempt to express in formula a self-evident fact in

Nature. Even on the material or Form-side of nature we cannot escape triplicity, for what material form is
there that is not bounded by three-dimensional space, giving al forms length, and breadth and heights?

Again, in the realms of psychology and metaphysics the same triune quality appears, the poles of the

"pairs of opposites" and the relationship between. Shall we not say that as man is made in the image and likeness of God, his threefold activity of thought, emotion, action, of which one is neither "afore or after the other", is framed to finally express the Ideal, Wisdom, Love and Power, and thereby to bring down
upon earth the quality of God.

The story of the Virgin Birth contains an occult truth intertwined with the life-stories of various religious

Leaders. It refers to the Cosmic Christ, God made manifest in a universe, to the pre-evolutionary stage
when the Root of Matter or Form held in solution, in quiescence, the Virgin Sea of matter as yet
unproductive, was just breathed upon by the positive, male, side, the "Will to live" the Eternal Purpose,

"the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters", whereby the inherent qualities were thrown out of equilibrium and differentiation, evolution, set in.

Interwoven with the foregoing is the story of man the microcosm, the universe in miniature. He "fell" when the Divinity and Eternity within him first entered the great cycle of generation, and clothing himself in soul

(St. Paul's psyche ) and body, was at first blinded by his conditions, held prisoner, "cribbed, cabined and confined". Life after life in the school of life's experience, the Son of God in him (St.Paul's pneuma ) learns slowly to express himself therein, and thereby verily redeems, transfigures and exalts the soul and
body wherein shall one day dwell the "Perfect Man" of man's dreaming and God's intending. Thus we are
saved ultimately by the God within as well as without, that Higher Self, the Christ in us, which is the hope
of our future glory. His is the final at-onement (not atonement) when no longer conscious of duality - the
war in his members of aspiring Spirit and, as yet, unredeemed matter - he becomes "One, not by the
conversion of the Godhead (in him) into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God".

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- III -

Another factor of enormous importance has been contributed to the evolution of our religious
consciousness by Science. In these days we see approaching the fulfillment of the saintly Professor

Henry Drummond's prophecy that the salvation of religion would come through science. How near they
draw, those ancient enemies, science and religion, in this day of approaching unity. And yet it is not
astonishing that the old breach should find healing, for the way of Science and the way of Religion are
but two different methods of approach to the same supreme Reality. Science is unflagging in the search
for Truth, and her way is the way of the mind with its methods of observation, comparison, investigation.

Religion seeks also Reality ,but her way is the way of the heart, rising upon the wings of aspiration and
intuition; and we are reminded of George Sand's words: "The mind seeks but it is the heart which finds".

In these days science is bringing about the rationalisation of religion, but it is at the same time becoming
itself spiritualised.

Note the change in the outlook of science now to the dead materialism of its purview is the Victorian age.

Then it would have nothing to do with other-wordliness, even denied sometimes that anything otherwise
than the visible body of things could exist. But now, how vastly different! Science has begun to deal very
seriously with other-worldliness. Year by year the veil between known and unknown, visible and invisible,
grows thinner. Voices are heard, footfal s from the Beyond, and science no longer condemns and scoffs.

It is itself reaching the borderland of the unseen, led there in the first instance by the sublimity and truth
of it own intuitive deductions.

Once Religion alone dogmatised over the soul; now science is beginning to replace pious hope and
belief by knowledge. A London doctor, Dr.Kilner, has succeeded in perfecting an apparatus whereby a
small part of the as yet invisible psychic (psyche - soul) self, permeating and radiating from, the grosser
physical counterpart may be viewed by the normal physical eye; and a Frenchman, Dr. Baraduc of Paris,
has achieved the same end with a photographic plate of superior delicacy. Perhaps the discovery of the

X-Rays, the coming of wireless telegraphy, paved the way for the coming Great Adventure of science into
the hidden realms of Nature. That such is its future mission, Sir Oliver Lodge has declared to us himself,
and no unprejudiced man doubts it. "The beginning of the proof", he writes, "is telepathy - i.e., a connection between mind and mind through unknown and apparently immaterial channels. .... Admittedly
only a minority of scientific men are willing to declare that a new class of facts needs investigation and is
apparently a prelude to a whole new region of knowledge inaccessible by exclusively material methods".

A minority as yet, but led by such names as Wallace, Crookes, Lodge, Lombroso, the coming age will
see the union of science and religion, will witness the rending of the veil between life and death. And then
it will be seen that there is no death, but only a doorway between life and life in fuller, more radiant
measure. Nothing is dead, anywhere in the whole wide universe. Not even is there such a thing as "dead
matter"; inorganic as well as organic matter lives, as Professor Bose's experiments have shown. "Why!

there is no death", cries the little boy hero of Maeterlinck's play "The Blue Bird". No death, but only a change of state, for the universe is seen more and more to be eternally alive in every atom of its being, to
be indeed, in Sir Oliver Lodge's memorable and splendid words, "the ever-growing garment of a
transcendent God". The greatest Teacher known to man proclaimed a great prophecy, "The last enemy
that shall be destroyed is death". The coming era will conquer the King of Terrors.

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- IV -

What then is the message of the hour to Christendom? Nay, not alone to Christendom, but to men of
every faith under the sun. The people have moved towards a world fraternity, through as yet they have
not carried their governments with them. The coming age which will arise from the reeking ruins of war
will tolerate nothing short of unity. The opened eyes of men will see that beyond all creeds, all statements
of faith, all systems, lies the bigger, truer thing of an indestructible human brotherhood, a splendid
eternity of life and purpose moving through, and binding us all together, for ever. To doubt that is to deny

God. A new and splendid life with al the virility and strength of youth is beginning to stir in the hearts of
men, to arise as a young man from sleep, to shake off as a giant the shackles of the lesser things than
himself. Let us do away with Fear, it has no place in the coming Day of God. To fear is to deny eternally
the Lord of Righteousness and Love. "Perfect love casteth out fear". We have drawn nearer together
these days of anguish and pain untold; and drawing nearer to each other have discovered God. That was
always the way if we had but known it. Jerusalem! Jerusalem! if thou hadst but known the things which
belonged unto thy peace But they were hid from thine eyes until the fire of pain unsealed true vision.

Towards this hour the very outer development of the world has been tending. For the first time in human
history, the round world is linked into one. Railways, steamships, telegraphs, newspapers, have brought
the uttermost ends of the earth into juxtaposition. Now is possible a world-faith, a world-policy, a world-consciousness.

What will the new faith be? How moulded, and how inspired? As yet its outlines only are faintly
adumbrated. But from that adumbration three truths stand startlingly distinct.

One is that its final test will be life, not doctrine. In the words of Mr. Francis John Moore --"For a new faith there most certainly will be; a faith whose final test will be neither the letter of Scripture nor ecclesiastical tradition, but the experience of common life... Not that there are no "convinced" Catholics and

Protestants, Neo-Catholics, Nonconformists, and what-not, who will remain what they always were; there
are many of them; but the general tendency is in the direction of simplicity. In other words, Christianity is
conceived of as a spirit and a life rather than a creed, though specific belief holds its right and necessary
place. Men of all creeds have been thrown together in strange and common experiences, and in them
have learnt that beneath all the different forms of faith there is a common faith and spirit that binds them
all together, and that life lived on the high level of the Christ, and governed by His Spirit, is of greater
importance than the forms by which their devotion to Him is expressed. And a Christian life is
understood. Belief may be correct or not correct, truth or superstition, according to the intellectual
equipment and training of the subject; but nobody questions the truth of a Christ-like life. It is Christian,
and it is true, and the coming age will demand no other sign".

Says the Rev. Dr. Selbie again: - "I hear men talking vaguely of Christian unity. Now, I tel you that unity will not be brought about by schemes or tricks. It will only be brought about by Christian men working
passionately for one common end - the salvation of men's souls and men's lives".

In these words Dr. Selbie voices another aspect of the future faith : its sphere of action will be our
common life, and it will bring to that world such a virility and high purpose as shall transform and

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transfigure the domains of politics and social reform. And such a coming Joseph Mazzini, warrior and
saint, foresaw , foretold."Religion and politics are inseparable. Without religion, political science can only create despotism and anarchy", for "the root of every religion , "says he, "is a definition of life and its mission".

This new youthfulness and vigour reflects itself upon the great figure of Christianity's Leader and

Redeemer. Of Him also a newer thought is beginning to arise. No longer as some pale saint, an an
eternal y suffering and patient God-man is He envisaged, but as One Who is man indeed with us, Keeper
of the common heart, Teacher of the common mind, Leader of the common endeavour. The "first-born
amongst the many brethren" is become the Elder Brother of the Race, Captain and Leader in this day of
men's salvation.

To quote Dr. Selbie again:- "Show men how Christianity appeals to the latent heroism in them al . Make it
a great adventure". With that sense of pathos yet of answering exultant understanding do the lines of a
nameless Australian solder, slain at Gal ipoli, strike us. They were found in his lifeless body.

"Jesus, Whose lot with us was cast,

Who saw it out from first to last;

Patient and fearless, tender, true,

Carpenter, vagabond,felon, Jew -

Whose humorous eye took in each phase

Of full rich life the world displays;

Yet evermore kept full in view

The far-off goal it leads us to:

Who, as your hour neared, did not fail -

The World's fate trembling in the scale -

With your halfhearted band to dine,

And speak across the bread and wine;

Then went out firm to face the end,

Alone, without a single friend;

Who felt as your last words confessed -

Wrung from a proud unflinching breast

By hours of dul , ignoble pain.

Your whole life's fight was fought in vain,

Would I could win sand keep and feel

That heart of love, that spirit of steel,

I would not to Thy bosom fly

To shirk off till the storms go by;

.................Set me straight

At some vile job I fear and hate;

Some sickening round of long endeavour,

No light, no rest, no outlet ever;

All at a pace that must not slack,

Tho' heart would burst and sinews crack;

Fog in one's eye, the brain aswim,

A weigh like lead in every limb

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And a raw pit that hurts like hell

Where the light breath once rose and fell;

Do you but keep me, hope or none,

Cheery and staunch till all is done,

And at the last gasp quick to lend

One effort more to serve a friend.

And when, for so I sometimes dream,

I've swum the dark - the silent stream -

So colt it takes the breath away -

That parts the dead world from the day,

And see upon the further strand

The lazy, listless angels stand;

And, with their frank and fearless eyes,

The comrades whom I most did prize;

Then clear, unburdened, careless, cool,

I'll saunter down from the grim pool

And join my friends. Then you'l come by

The Captain of our Company,

Call me out, look me up and down,

And pass me thro' without a frown,

With half a smile, but never a word;

And so - I shall have met my Lord".

This new and splendid life rushing up from the hidden depths of the human heart, this will towards life,
towards the "final beatitude and fulfil ment". of Emerson, is the "power in a man which makes for
righteousness" of Matthew Arnold , and its increasing and blessed purpose we a last are learning how to
trust. A witty reviewer of Mr. Wel 's book, "God, the Invisible King", remarks: "'God's in his heaven', wrote Browning, 'all's right with the world'. 'God's in us' says Mr.Wells, 'al 's right with mankind'". And the future is with Mr.Wells, for that is the third great lineament of the coming faith which is becoming visible through
the darkness.

It will proclaim unhesitatingly the essential Divinity of man. If a word may be momentarily coined, it will commonise heaven and thereby uplift earth .It will be an age of "aye! aye!" in contradistinction to the nays of the past, the great era of affirmation, so great an age of "doing" that we shall forget the "do nots"

of a dead world which was afraid of men. The souls of men laid bare in this hour of trial and crucifixion
have shown us the hero, the saint, the god awaiting evocation within us all. Thereby have we learnt to
look ever forwards to the Ideal, the coming of which into the real is the whole purpose of evolution. WE
gaze with throbbing heart at the portrait in the il ustrated papers of the Manchester gaol-bird who won in
death the Victoria Cross. That man of ours, whose kinship no one of us now will dare deny, is a type of
the future. What fitting requiem could we whisper for him so well as Coventry Patmore's beautiful words:-

"Far, ah! who can express

How full of bonds and simpleness is God,

How narrow is He,

And how the wide, waste field of possibility Is only trod,

Straight to His homestead in the human heart".

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THE COMING SOCIAL ORDER

- I -

The advance of the new era is showing in as equally marked fashion in the outer world of men's
obligations and relationships to each other as in the inner world of the religious consciousness. The one
is indeed the outcome of the other, for to draw nearer to reality within is also to perceive it more clearly
without. And to understand its significance to the world at large we cannot do better than take as a guide
in clear thinking Joseph Mazzini, the most spiritual reformer who ever lived, and who possessed the
understanding and vision of spiritual genius. Although he lived and died more than half a century ago, he
foresaw the present hour and read its meaning with wonderful precision and accuracy.

To Mazzini the world was the incarnation a divine idea of perfectibility, to be gradually realised through
the labour of al God's creatures. "The progressive evolution of the thought of God", said he, "of which our world is the visible manifestation, is unceasingly continuous. The chain cannot be broken or
interrupted". He taught - a self-evident truth taught also by many of the ancients - that the life of the world advances through great cycles or eras, each one demonstrating for all time hereafter some "further word
of truth". In this way the total sum of humanity's great Days shall spell out the Word of God for man.

Every age as it comes formulates a great overshadowing thought, which is only verified in the sphere of
action when the advancing human intel ect is already absorbed in the thought of its successor. Thus "the
hypothesis of the middle ages is the principle of the present day: the idea of the middle ages is now a
recognised admitted law. Does anyone now deny liberty and equality in principle? . The most illiberal
monarch asserts that he is the protector of the rights and liberties of his subjects against the anarchy of
factions. The question is, in the sphere of principles, decided. The only struggle is as to its application.

The dispute no longer regards the law itself, but its interpretation".

The great principle which this past two thousands years of the Christian Era has been occupied in
making clear to men is the principle of individual liberty, the sacred, inviolable right of men to their own souls and bodies. All through the passing epoch the urge of Nature has been in that direction. Hence the
increasing sense of personal awareness, of the value and rights of the individual.

This of necessity engendered strife. One becomes most clearly conscious of selfhood, when pitted
against others. The growing consciousness of individuality meant the ever-increasing strike for its
recognition, the struggle against one autocracy, oppression, tyranny after another. During this era, human
consciousness learnt no longer to tolerate the holding of slaves and serifs. A man's body became,
theoretical y at any rate, his own possession. This was paralleled by the strife for religious liberty, the
coming of free-thought, thereby proclaiming for ever the right of a man to his own soul and mind.

"The first epoch of Christianity", writes Mazzini, "was to constitute individual man as he was destined to be, free, sacred, inviolable. And this mission is accomplished through the French Revolution, which was
the political translation of the Protestant Revolution... The declaration of the rights of man is the supreme and ultimate formula of the French Revolution....Ruins there were without end; but in the midst of these
ruins and negations one immense affirmation stood erect; the creature of God, ready to act, radiant in
power and will; the ecce home, repeated after eighteen centuries of struggle and suffering, not by the
voice of the martyr, but from the altar raised by the Revolution to victory - right, the faith of individuality,

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Looking Forward by Clara M. Codd
rooted in the world for ever.".

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Looking Forward by Clara M. Codd

- II -

The next step was clearly evidence. Having gained the consciousness of individual liberty and value,
men, as yet perhaps more aware of rights than responsibilities through the struggle to obtain their
recognition, next began to discover that other individuals suffered under similar disabilities to themselves,
groaned under the same wrongs and oppressions, and so they learnt to band themselves together,
fighting the same battle for larger rights, the rights of a class, a trade. Learning in the strike, the lockout to submerge himself in the interests of his fellow-workmen , a man grew into a larger consciousness, the
consciousness of his particular department of the world's work, the class consciousness we once heard
so much about. And again this larger self-consciousness was achieved through the same means, by
strife, by combat, by the assertion of rights in the face of opposing interests.

Despite its sometime crudity, apparent selfishness, oftimes pathetic narrowness of vision, labour "unrest"

is fundamentally the cry of the human soul against the tyranny of machinery and materialism, against the
inertia of the collective atmosphere of unthinking people; again, here as everywhere ,the fight of life
against matter, its titanic struggle towards freedom, expansion and light. When shal we learn that the
soul of humanity is a living thing, and that its life is more than meat and its body than raiment? Here, in our world of social organisation , equally as in the religious world, are the words of the Greatest Reformer
who ever lived eternally true, that "the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath". Here,
too, we have made the old mistake of clinging to the letter, to the encasements of life, rather than life
itself, and so that great, unheeded, advancing urge has swept us away now in a world catastrophe
unparalleled in history.

"Since this terrible war", people have said to me more than once, "I cannot believe in God ". Ah! never have I believed so passionately in Him, and in the Love and Justice which are Himself, as during these
past four years of horror and struggle unprecedented. Faith is shaken because the little world of
comfortable routine, of small personal joys and sorrows, of every-day achievements set about with the
fences of what "everybody thinks" and what "nobody does" has been rudely broken into by the eruption of tremendous realities long denied! We shudder because the sleeping volcano, the hidden fires of
submerged human misery and wrong, upon which we al dwelt in a false and fancied - utterly selfish-
security, have at last burst into the open with flame and smoke and sound unimaginable. On the great
picture stage of the war we see horror upon horror played before our eyes, ay, and thanks God! heroism
upon heroism. The heroism of the commonality is the outstanding glory of the hour. But what we see
played upon the stage of the world-war, was played subterraneously in those times of peace which were
no peace, but only hideous wrong and chaos heading straight for disaster.

What shall be said of a civilisation" which knew no higher law than personal profit and gain, which treated
men as "things" worshipping the false gods of money, place and power? We shudder at the tales of
outraged womanhood of murdered childhood in Belgium and Serbia. But what of the trampled
womanliness, the slow-dying child-life, of our crowded cities, our tenement houses, and sweated workers'

dens? Yet we cannot build them houses which can be homes because of the price of land and the rise in
the rates. Now, we make great show of "Baby Weeks", and profess great concern in the question of
infant mortality. In Germany, they say, the bringing-up by the State of illegitimate children, the question of
plural marriages are being discussed. Something in all this grips one tight at the heart with shame and
pain. It is not as cannon fodder that we seek to save the children of the nation, but to save life itself, that

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life may grow truly in every member of the corporate family cal ed a nation, and that we may exalt and
render everywhere possible the things which are eternally dear and true; strong fatherhood, happy
motherhood, the laughter of joyous childhood, the glory of a home.

The sight of maimed young manhood in hospitable and scarlet tie gives us pitiful pause, yet how many of
us have watched the dwarfed and stunted manhood of the army of modern industrialism, the poisoned
bodies, the shockingly short average of years of life amongst the numerous dangerous trades, with equal
pain?

And the heroism that lifts our hearts, how often has it shone al unwatched in the long annals of the poor.

I remember a charwoman of my acquaintance whose husband was repeatedly unemployed, and who
supported a large family by charring during the day, and washing at night; I remember a dear old fragile
lady, now gone to her rest, whose laboured years included uncounted nights when she never slept at all,
but worked on through till another day came again, and in my memory rises too a woman dying of cancer
in the breast who could not stop, or find time to go into hospital, because there were the children to be
fed and clothed until death called her, and afterwards by only God knows whom.

"The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding smal ", says Goethe. The Love and Justice of

God, which is incarnate in life and in the nature of things, and which shall one day rise triumphant from
the last battle and redeem humanity for evermore, has risen tremendously in thunder and flame and
smoke, striving to break asunder a civilisation which denied Love and was founded upon the virtual
repudiation of human kinship and brotherhood.

The passing era put property before life - even in the common-law of England today offenses against
property are often more heavily punished than offenses against human life - success before happiness,
intellect before heart, and is therefore going down in the inevitable nemesis, which follows upon denial of
the Law of Life which may not be broken.

Hence the great unrest, the swaying, surging bursting tide of life upon whose sporadic surface
manifestations men used to sit and discourse learnedly, one straw after another grasped at and labeled
economic, political, social reform, when al the time the trouble lay neither in one department of life nor
did its panacea in any one reform, but in the rooted misconception of life which prevail through human
ignorance , and all the false trappings which hide us from the great naked realities thereof. The growth of
class consciousness provoked the strife of the preceding years, and so fierce has grown the struggle
between different sections of the population, including in these later days a whole sex, that the hearts of
men were torn with the effort to discern the way out, wondering if at last that way would be found by the
fiery road of revolution. And yet the way was clear all the time if only we could have seen it.

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- III -

What can bind opposing interests into one, what further ideal transcend the boundaries of both? The
tragedy of war has shown us. It has made us see that behind all party interests, all claim of class or
trade, lies an ideal to which all alike are subservient, the interest of the nation as a whole. Ah! you say, that we knew before. Never! Look back at the four long years of war. Before that great day of August

1914, what was the nation and the Empire to most of us then? Something we rarely thought of, certainly
not anything towards which we organised daily life. Now, how vastly different! Under the pressure of a
common danger, a common necessity, we have learnt to subordinate private ends for the common good,
to turn divergent energies into a mighty stream of common endeavour, and thereby we have created the
most wonderful war-machine the world has ever seen. The nationalisation of industries, of the
necessities of life, have gone on apace. Changes have taken place which four short years ago Utopian
dreamers would have imagined possible perhaps in the space of four hundred years. We have learnt
what can be done by the will of a people united in one single purpose, we have discovered how much
better is intelligent cooperation to wasteful competition ,and lastly, the greatest fact of all, how utterly
interdependent is each one of us, each trade, each class, upon the other.

The "man in the street" - who was he, what was he, to most of us before the war? Someone we thought
not too much about, whose health, happiness, well-being was his own concern and not ours. Now we
have found out how eternal y in fact we are all very much our "brother's keeper". What of the placards
that used to adorn our walls in the days of that great generous and voluntary effort which made Britain's
name for ever, appeals addressed to the man in the street? They said "Your King and Country need you".

We began to find out that the ordinary, commonplace man stood between disaster and ourselves, that
upon his courage, fitness, and unselfish patriotism rested the safety and the honour of us all. So now we
see that he is fed and clothed and amused, that the pressure of anxiety for wife and child is taken from
his shoulders. Great ladies pet him, newspaper heroics proclaim him, nothing is too good for him. Was it
not always so in reality? And did it need a great war to make us see the bond of brotherhood which binds
us altogether, and to realise that if any one member of the national family goes in misery , privation,
ignorance, the life of the whole is poisoned, that individual health and happiness and freedom are
national assets? We called on his patriotism who owned personally not one single square yard of British
land, nay, more, who had to pay heavy rent for the privilege of living thereon; we hoped for bodily vigour
from him who had passed an il -nourished childhood and youth in roaring factories, darkened mine, and
dingy office; we trembled for the moral safety of many of the men whose amusement had hitherto
perforce been found in the streets and public-house, and yet what good came out of Nazareth, what
beauty and what strength! May we never forget after the war. May we never forget!

If we can pour out mil ions a day to compass death in national defence, we can go on pouring out millions
a week at least to foster life and all its glorious humanities.; If we can put down private profiteering
because of national necessity, we can go on putting it down that the nation itself may grow joyous and
fair.

Nobly and truly spoke the "Weekly Dispatch" of Jan. 21st, 1917: -"If, in two years, such a vast organism can not only be conceived and born, but achieve and enjoy the strength of manhood, think of what we
could do in twenty years if we applied ourselves not to preparing people for war but in repairing war for
people". From the wreckage of the conflict, in the chaos and the ruin, must arise new things - new

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Looking Forward by Clara M. Codd
institutions, new laws, new ideas.

War is a disaster unparalleled in awfulness, but - the poet found beauty in a thunderstorm- this war, the
worst, the most horrible of all, has shown at least how divergent views may be blent for one purpose,
how conflicting ideals may be merged in one hope, how warring policies may find in each other elements
of truth and reason.

We stand on the threshold of the dawn of a new life. The night that has blackened the world is passing,
and in the east is the promise of another day.

As great a tragedy as the war itself would be a reversal to the old antagonisms, the old
misunderstandings, the old heresies. You see none of this on the film (The Battle of the Somme official
cinematograph). You see a miracle of effort created by the first real unity Britain has ever known. In that
unity science and commerce, capital and work, brain and muscle, statesmanship and steel, invention and
industry, became as one. They made in two years the greatest War Machine history ever knew. What a

Peace Machine could we make did we, when we were not in personal peril, realise that the State has
always enemies to fight! Poverty is a Prussian, want is a wanton,hunger is a Hun.

"How shall we build the New England"?

Thus in four bitter years of war have we grown national y conscious , as we never were before, and all
the nations of the earth have learnt that they are every one of them family parties, bound together by an
eternal community of interests and needs which may not , cannot be, denied without disaster to the
whole.

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Looking Forward by Clara M. Codd

- IV -

The growth from national to international consciousness is but a step, already adumbrated in the growing perceptions of men; and that is the great ideal of the coming era, the further "word of truth" which that happier age will assimilate and apply. As Mazzini puts it: "Col ective Humanity" as against the

"Individualism" of the past, with its consequent principle of active cooperation, as against the competition of the past. "Humanity" says he, "is one sole body, as members of that body we are bound to labour for its advance, and to organise both the family and the country towards that aim".

The Unity of Humanity, the spirit of cooperation between its different parts, these are the great ideals of thought and work, which will dominate the coming age. Politically they will work out in the forming of
great Federation. And the first of these will be what has hitherto been called the "British Empire" though, as General Smuts rightly says, the man who will give us the proper name for it will do us al great service.

For it is not an Empire in the ordinary accepted meaning of the term. It is not an Empire such as was the great Empire of Rome, such as the hegemony that Germany sought to establish, an empire held by the
sword, by economic subjection and political slavery. It is the firest confederation of free nations that the
world has ever seen, and the bond that holds them together,so invisible and yet so strong, is the true
bond of united endeavour, of a common idealism and a common purpose. And in that coming mighty
federation of free people two partners must find their place - Ireland and India. The Isle of Saints shall
become the heart and centre of a new spiritual impulse. The days of her ancient curse are lifted, and the
spiritual quality of her people will flower in many a prophet, poet, seer, for the dawning civilisation of the
future.

And India? For what eternal ends did Britain alone of all nations succeed in "conquering" India? Only to add a jewel to her crown of Empire, to increase her wealth and field of commerce? She gave to that
stricken land unity and peace, one language of communication, one great ideal of nationality, and now
when her work nears completion, she will welcome on equal terms the great nation who once lay stricken
at her feet, she will cement a great bond of comradeship that will bring untold beauty and power to the
future."East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shal meet", writes Mr. Kipling, for once not truly. Whilst in the outer world of business, government, organisation, the West has been conqueror of
the East this past one hundred years, in the inner world of men's thoughts and imaginings the East has
been slowly permeating the West. Initiations by Professor Max Muller, a host of translations of the sacred
literature and great poetry of the East continues to flood the book-markets of the West, bringing with it
the inevitable influence of its magnificent spirituality. For the East is nearer heaven than the West. The
artificial separation of matters secular and religious does not exist there as here. The religious
consciousness of the East is difficult for the Westerner to understand. Its atmosphere being so much an
integral part of daily life, it seems elusive, inarticulate. The sense of intimate relationship between the

Divine Order and human affairs is so ful that, as I heard a missionary once complain, there is no "sense
of sin". Hence there is also consequently less attitude of blame.

The gift of her spiritual outlook upon daily life is what the East is bringing the West, and on her side the

West has brought the East her special power for material organisation and advancement. The junction o
the two through the medium of the English language and influence will mould the civilisation of the
future..

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Looking Forward by Clara M. Codd

The gift of opportunity comes to nations as to men, and inexorable yet beneficent Nature weighs them
continually in her balances of Fate. Such a moment came to Britain when Germany trampled on the
rights and dignity of Belgium and attacked France. Had she chosen present ease instead of certain trial,
immediate expediency in place of right, she would have gone down the pathway of the future
dishonoured, broken, lost. But, thank God, she chose otherwise, and so to the greatness of her, her
future is secure. How many times have we heard that Britain entered this war for selfish reasons, that
secret diplomacy, secret treaties, jugglings with the balance of power, were the influences which brought
her in, and with which she wages it? That which governs the mind of Governments the plain man may
not know, but this is clear to al , that the national itself sprung to arms with an enthusiasm no Government
could resist in the defence of weakness unjustly attacked, in fulfil ment of a plighted word. The heart of
the nation was sound in principle, and so the gods have given her the torch-light of the Future when she
shall have arise purged and purified by pain.

For that is the real meaning of the war, in this great testing time of the nations upon earth. It is the final
working out upon the earth of the strife between two contrary principles, one which has dominated the
past and is already doomed, and one which seeks expression in the future and spreads the wings of
victory abroad. Making all allowance for certain virtues and excel encies in the nation itself, it is yet clear
that the war party in Germany has become the concrete expression of the reactionary forces in evolution

- that blind will to power which sees no rights outside its own, no excellence in any "kultur" alien to its own; that intense individualism, grown national, which is so hideously selfish that it has grown blind,
insensitive, ambitious, unable to see, to understand, to tolerate; full of that deadly pride and want of
humour, which is the result of the worship of power without compassion, of intellect devoid of heart. The

Allied nations hold in their hands the banner of a greater, truer ideal; the Spirit of Righteousness that
upholds the small as well as the great, the Spirit of Strength that scorns to abuse its power in the
exploitation of weaker people , weaker things; that knows itself most strong in that supreme control of
power which men call gentleness, the real might that shall inherit the earth, but which can arise as a very Scourge of God when cruelty and oppression walk the earth. It is the Spirit of Christ against the Spirit of

Antichrist, in this the true Armageddon of the world.

The outcome of Germany's defeat will be the federalisation of the world. Already we hear whispers of a
coming United States of Europe, and it will fol ow upon the first League of Nations, the coming

Federation of the Anglo-Saxon race. Quite truly, as Mr. Wel s says, this is the war that will end war, and
those who give life now, give it that that future may come true, dying in very truth that generations yet
unborn may live.

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- V -

In social and economic fields this same spirit of the future is working and will work enormous and
fundamental changes. It would have been said a few years ago that the ancient enemies Labour and

Capital could never meet. Yet the National Alliance of Employers and Employed has sprung into being,
and there is a manifest change of heart and will in many great employers of labour today. The old idea of
land, or a business being the jealously preserved private property of an owner or employer is losing
ground The thought is rapidly growing that the landholder, the employer, is a steward for the State, and
he is learning to regard his employees not as machines but men, with needs of soul and body beyond
their monetary value to their employer. Whilst professional Socialism has been thinking in blinkers, real

Socialism, because it is the keynote of the future, has come, and is coming to stay. It is clear to the
commonsense of very unprejudiced person, that what is necessary to the common life of all should be in
the hands of all through their recognised administrators, the State. It is a monstrous obliquity of vision
which can countenance the power of any individual to "hold up", or "corner", or control the price of any necessity of life. Hence, I make now a prophecy with absolute certainty and conviction; in the next
hundred years or so we shall see the nationalisation of the land, and of every industry necessary to
human life. Startling as that thought may be to some, it would be well that we address ourselves to its
consideration, for no power on earth can long delay it. None may fight against God, and to say God wills
it is only another way of saying that Evolution is leading us that way. It will one day be as hideously
immoral to personally own the necessities of men's lives and their means of production as it now is to
own their souls and bodies. The "wage-slave" is only one remove from the serf. In the brotherhood of a
nation men should not need to barter life for bread. In more ways than one our ruling and possessing
classes are beginning to understand this. The growth of the spirit of love which is the true spirit of life is
moving them to it.

Another movement looms greatly in the future - the movement for prison reform, in which field of work

Captain Arthur St. John, true gentleman and saint , has done such devoted service. How fast the tide of
life is flowing from the days when the prisoner was looked on as a hideous alien to ourselves, tortured
and degrade without compunction. Only a short hundred years ago men and women were hung for
sheep-stealing and shoplifting in England. It almost seemed as if the savagery of English Law was
framed mostly to protect the possessions of those who had from those who had not. And there is stil one
law for the poor and one for the rich, and whist to strike physically is to come within its arm, to abuse the
power of position or superior mentality to get the better of a brother-man is stil allowed by the generality
of the public conscience and law. There is dishonour in using "influence" to gain private advantage from public offices and funds, and a prospective Member of Parliament may fool an electorate with promises
never hereafter redeemed.

It was once my inestimable privilege, in the old, old days of the fight for Women's Suffrage, to spend a
month as one of His Majesty's prisoners in Holloway Gaol, and that month lives in my heart for ever and
ever. I recall the faces of my fellow-prisoners, not one of which looked wicked, but only tired and
stupefied. I remember the deeds for which some of them were incarcerated, the prisoner who brought
round the daily sewing, for instance. Four months for pawning, in desperation, the shirts for which she
was paid but sweated remuneration, that her children might have food. I remember how she told me that
after her sentence all communication with the outside world ceased, and how hear heart ached to know
what had happened to the children whom she supposed the neighbours would take care of until her
return. And the cheery fel ow-prisoner who helped me on with my first prison garments, and told me in

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Looking Forward by Clara M. Codd
whispers that she was in for five months or "nabbing a ticker, dearie,and I shouldn't 'ave done it only I
was boozed at the time".

And I remember, too, the awful gloom, the soul ess cast-iron system which magnified petty breaches of
custom or discipline into heinous sins, the dreary round of monotonous tasks, the perpetual silence, the
awful cruelty of solitary confinements on those who had no inner life of thought and dreams; the utter lack
of human sympathy or light, save here and there in a wardress with a soul above the system; the chapel
every day, the sermons from one or other of the two chaplains, one of which always came back to his
bête-noir, the "dragon of drink", and the other, a better preacher, infinitely more saddening, for the condescending familiarity of his tone. Would the Christ, I wonder, ah! would He, ask human beings to
strip their souls naked for his professional services as a doctor directs recruits to strip for medical
examination?

But here, as in other fields, the rising tide is leading us. Al the world knows now of the work of Judge

Lindsey of Denvers City, of the woman Governor of Sing Sing prison. The new age will know no more
prisons, no more workhouses (sometimes costing the ratepayer nine shillings per week per pauper,
which might well be given as pension instead). It will earn to deal with crime as with disease, and the
nurses of sick and twisted souls will be the best amongst us and not the roughest. They will lead, not
drive and coerce, lead by virtue of love and courage, by being an ideal, not preaching it.

There is only one way by which the soul of man can rise, by love of something higher than himself. To the
older in soul amongst us, those whose "days" of life in the continually turning wheel of birth and death have been more frequent, this may be found in the world of thought and idealism. To the younger, the

"little ones" of a nation's family, it can grow real, a living power, only as it becomes embodied in some personality near and dear. Hence the tremendous faculty for hero-worship which inspires youth, that
great natural force for good so often wasted and left to be led astray.

The new age will prevent crime by removing human misery, by making room for normal healthy human
instincts to grow and expand. It will release that drunkenness, prostitution, crime are best fought by light
and air and happiness, and that State-supported Conservatories of Music, Theaters, Cinemas, Dancing-

Halls, Gardens, are better than al the punishments and sermons in the world.

The spirit of the coming era will also work out into cooperative undertakings in many other directions-
notably in the direction of housekeeping. I will venture another prophecy and say that in a hundred years'

time everyone will be taking the chief meal of the day in a National Restaurant. And why not? The

Englishman is fond of stating that his home is his castle, of greatly resenting any intrusion into the time-
honoured customs of that castle, has a great sense of my house, my children, my wife, but in these days of the universal consideration of human rights and hours of labour, has he ever stopped to consider the
position of the workingman's wife - how she embodies several trades in one, nurse and cook and laundry
and charwoman; that whilst the male population can leave the scene of their labours and have at least a
few minutes change with pipe and beer, either at their own fireside or in the social atmosphere of the
public-house, the working day of the wife begins before anybody is up and stops only when everybody is
in bed, and there is never any change or chance of holiday. Surely, if by cooperation we can lighten the
burden of wife and mother, we shall learn how to do it.

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- VI -

To sum up, what therefore is the message of the hour to our social fabric, what the leading principles
which shall govern the coming order, and which can already be seen outlined on the screen of Time?

It will bring an ever-increasing sense of human solidarity and unity. The outer differences will largely be relegated to their proper place, the secondary one, and humanity's essential unity will be recognised.

Industrial and commercial development have contributed towards that end. Railways, steamships,
telegraph wires, newspapers, have linked this round globe into one as never before. The steamship has
made communication between the uttermost ends of the earth a matter of weeks instead of months. The
after-war development of the airplane will make it days instead of weeks. "Foreign parts" will mean
another planet before long, and the ideas of "foreigner" and "heathen" are bound to disappear.

There wil be a greater sense of personal and national responsibility. War has taught us with startling
clarity the entire interdependence of individuals, classes, nations. With the increasing sense of

"otherness" the sense of "my-ness" will diminish. The belief in the divine right of property is going the same way as adherence to the divine right of kings. People are losing the old sense of "my" and
developing the new sense of "our" More and more are men gaining the sense of public responsibility in
the possession and administration of money, land, and goods. We are learning to think no more in terms
of profit, but to think in terms of common human need and happiness.

And with the growth of the sense of responsibility the clamour for the recognition of rights will lessen , for
it is but the cry of the heart of humanity against blind stupidity, conscious or unconscious aggression and
exploitation. With strength comes responsibility, whether the power be physical or mental. Rights belong
ever to the weak, the ignorant, the child, and the animal. The right to be helped and not to be hindered, to
be loved and not cursed, to be lead and not driven, to be understood and not ignorantly looked down
upon, to be guaranteed a "place in the sun" by virtue of a brother's strength whilst yet not grown enough to hold it for himself, and lastly most of al , the right to learn by being patiently and willingly allowed
cooperation according to his strength with those who are better than himself.

The coming age has been called the age of woman, the age of the child, the age of the animal. It is the
age of the weak thing come into his own. And yet it means such strength as never the world saw before,
for the weak thing can only come into its own when there stands strength to uphold it.

One of the happiest auguries, the most striking sign, of this new spirit, is the universal adoption of animal
mascots by the Allied regiments. How great a mascot this spirit of comradeship to the "little brother" of man will prove to the nations, only the gods can see. He has no voice wherewith to urge his rights, yet he
has suffered more cruel exploitation, his free and beautiful life been more blindly darkened, than any son
of man.

And this growing sense of "otherness" will spread, is fast spreading, to national conceptions of honour and rights too. As Mr. Wel s so truly says:- "The social problem is only the international problem in retail, the international problem is only the social one in gross".

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It will exalt the dignity of Labour, and by that I do not mean that the labour Party will necessarily be paramount, though by widening its boundaries and broadening its outlook it bids fair to become the

National Party of the future, but that a man who does not take his ful share of the collective necessity of
working that al may live, will become a moral outcast. We are beginning to realise the truth of Ruskin's
teaching that luxury and idleness are only possible at one end of the social scale at the cost of human
blood and tears at the other, and that all the claptrap about luxury "making work" is utterly false. Output will be regulated by human necessity and men no longer crushed by the juggernaut car of profit-making
under the spur of competition. With the gradual disappearance of class feeling, of "superior" and "inferior"

a true artistry of work will became possible, and a sense of justice which will cause repulsive work to be
proportionately highly paid, and mechanical work to be shortened in its hours of labour, that the other
side of the man may have an opportunity to live. We shall realise that it does not matter what service a
man performs in the nation, it only matters how he does it. "All service ranks the same with God", sang Robert Browning. The Age of the true Democracy means the Reign of Brotherhood, whose aristocracy is
neither of blood nor of money, but a nobility of character and worth.

It all comes into one growing root-conception, that men are souls and are brothers. The same immortal
and evergreen truths was crystallised for us in an unforgettable formula by the greatest Teacher of all:

"One is your Father, and ye are all brethren", and from that the consequent Law of Life", "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you".

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- VIII -

The Spirit of the New Era stirs within every one of us. It links us heart to heart if not necessarily brain to
brain. With clarion call, a very trumpet of God, it cries to every one of us at this supreme hour to give and
give, all that we have, al that we are, that the future may be built secure and fair. In the terrible sincerity
of the times no man can live to himself alone, to his family, his private interests alone. He must learn to think in terms of human need, do someone service outside the ranks of his personal circle.

For it depends upon ourselves, how that newborn Day shal shape its future whilst yet plastic and weak.

God will fulfill it truly, but through and by and with ourselves. Man is eternal y cooperator with God, the
limitation or the expression of His Will.

The outlines of that mighty Future are growing clear. With what spirit shal we address ourselves to the
task? We say that brotherly love shal recreate the world, but its flame must be fed by the oil of sacrifice,
made dynamic by the Remembrance of God. Brotherhoods have failed for lack of these, systems broken
down because they were forgotten. What is sacrifice? Is it no the giving up the sense of personal
possession and holding all power, material, mental, spiritual, as a trust for God's Humanity, wherein lies, too, the "Remembrance of God"- the Ideal.

Let us give all life over to the Future. What else is it for? Thousands have surrendered that greatest gift a
man can give on the great battlefields of Europe, and thus dying have won greater life, for they will come
back again to life with added power and larger opportunity to serve, having won by sacrifice the right to
build the future world they died in this hour to save. Would we build with them? Then we also must give
away life by the harder way of daily dying to ourselves.

Life is never so splendid as when we lose it with unfaltering courage. "Self-preservation is the law of
evolution for the brute, but self-sacrifice is the law of evolution for men?.

Says Joseph Mazzini: "The soul's salvation, the progress of the individual being through the infinite, the
development of the principle of life which God has placed in each of us, depends upon our activity, upon
our struggles, upon the sacrifices cheerfully made, in order that the law may be fulfilled on earth. God in
judging us will not ask 'What has thou done for thy soul?' but 'What has thou done for the sister souls
which I have given thee?'"

And again: - "We must ascend to the conception of Humanity in order to ascertain the secret rule and law
of life of the individual, of man. Hence the necessity for a general cooperation, for harmony of effort - in a
word, for association, in order to fulfill the work of all".

In ancient days it was said that if there had been found but ten men of resolution and selflessness in

Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities would have been saved. A hundred men of like caliber could save

Britain tomorrow. It needs but the deathless virtues of Courage and Love, allied with the sanity of proven
deeds, not wordy theorisms, and lit with the imagination which comes from thinking in the wide terms of

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humanity and not in terms of class or creed or self.

Today the words of Wil iam Blake, poet, patriot, and prophet, voice for us al the tremendous inspiration of
the hour: -

"Bring me my bow of burning gold!

Bring me my arrows of desire!

Bring me my spear! Oh! clouds unfold

And bring my chariot of Fire.

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land,"

That we may hear, and hearing, spring forward to achieve!

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THE MESSAGE OF THE HOUR

NEVER before, perhaps, in the history of the world, was an hour so fateful, so full of presage, as the
present. Big with starting possibilities, unfolding vistas of unimagined boldness and beauty, it speaks with
a very trumpet-call of eternal y recreative energy to us "upon whom the ends of the world are come". For this is the "end of the world", the passing of an era in time and space. Who amongst us can doubt it?

After an hour of darkest night, the rosy tints of the dawning new day are colouring the sky. And what a

Day dawns! God! what a day for men!

If we strive, in however dim and stumbling a fashion, to read the word of God now being written in the

Book of Time, it forms itself into one root-idea, concept, ideal. That Root-ideal is Unity. Mazzini saw it as

"Collective Humanity", with its consequent principle of action, cooperation as against the root-ideal of the departing era, individuality and separation, with the natural outcome thereof, competition. The past has
been engaged in developing and completing the separate consciousness of the individual, class, nation.

The future cal s these strongly established self-hoods to conscious cooperation , manifesting once again
the fundamental principle of unity, not by imposition from without , but by voluntary impulse form within.

And so the old order passes, giving place to new. On the outer plane of life, customs, systems are being
weighed in the balance: on the inner, doctrines, dogmas, principles. Into the crucible of a world-war the
swift-moving evolutionary forces have cast them, and from that melting-pot is arising "a new heaven and
a new earth", truer, purer, nobler, more worthy a humanity growing daily nearer God.

The sense of having a mission to mankind was said by Germany to lie deep in her heart. But she mistook
the growing world sense of the unity underlying all life and purpose and turned it into its dreadful travesty,
uniformity, seeking to impose by force upon an unwilling world a uniform government, culture,
dominance, and that the Germanic. So strongly has materialism saturated the soul of Germany that she
failed to realise the two sides inseparable in evolution: Life and the multitudinous Forms in which that life
expresses itself everywhere, and that the laws governing these two are fundamental y different. Life is
one, indivisible, inextinguishable, and, therefore, purpose is one in reality, moving continuously towards

"one, far-off, Divine Event"; but the forms in which life clothes itself, intel ectual, aesthetic, physical, are eternal y different the one from the other, and their value lies in their difference, the bond of union being not uniform appearance and manner, but the recognition of unity of aim and fulfillment.

Hence, in the world-conflict, the force at war are not real y nations, but ideals, one which belongs to a
past era and therefore doomed, and the other springing into life from the future and therefore conqueror.

Individual consciousness, whether as the unit man, class, or nation, having grown strong in the struggle
for freedom in the past, is now overleaping its boundaries and bringing an individual sense of unity, of

"brotherly" relationship and interdependence, into a whole humanity. This again has been hastened on
the outer plane by the extraordinary linking up of the round world in these modern days by means of the
steamship, telegraph,newspaper, etc.

It is the spirit of the age from which no man can stand whol y aloof In the sphere of thought it means
toleration: in the world of action, cooperation. No longer will the world tolerate autocracies, tyrannies of any kind. The future is against autocracies, and the tyrannies of Europe are crumbling into the dust.

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Liberty and Unity is its watchword; liberty to utter freedom of development and expression, for small and great alike, upon the side of Form; community of aim, purpose, feeling upon the side of Life.

Let us, therefore, in this tremendous moment, host fast the Message of the Future. Its word is clear, its
meaning wonderful. That its realisation should be striven for in thought and word and deed, in al private
and public relationships, is the great duty of the hour for all humanity.

The world marches unceasingly towards its final beatitude and fulfillment, and, that great World-purpose
works its beautiful will through men, integral, growing parts of the World-order which unfolds Divinity

Himself. He cal s us at this Hour to give the utmost we can give, even to life itself. We may not evade that
mighty summons, pass it by, deny it.

For on us who watch the night depends the destiny of the Day now dawning, and the future of the
humanity who shal possess that day in all its strength and splendour.

So great the Hour, so tremendous, so divine, the issue!

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A DREAM

Mr. H.Gordon Selfridge in an address on "Business Organization" stated that this country lacked that
splendid thing "leadership". Alpha of the Plough writes in the Daily News on "Great Men" and the vital important of a national ability to distinguish them. "The one security of democracy", he says very truly, "is to know greatness, moral greatness, when it sees it". The question is- Where is the Man? How is it that
these supreme times have produced no real y great man is asked again and again in one form or another
in the daily press, but the truth is that although remarkable people are with us in abundance the
immensity of the times dwarfs all power by its magnitude. No ordinary greatness is big enough for the
control and conduct of issues affecting for the first time in history, not nations only, but a world.

And yet the search goes on for the coming leader. In dumb, inarticulate patience, men wait his arrival.

Almost it seems at times, as if a note sounded in human hearts of hope deferred. We spring forward with
beating hearts at times thinking that we hear the sound of his coming, and stil he has not come who is
big enough for men.

The last sound came when President Wilson began to say with dignity and clarity the things which should
be said, thus taking on at once and indisputably the moral leadership of the world. And yet that was not
he, not wholly he!

The attitude of the world is one of expectation, a strained yearning to be delivered from the bonds of
littleness and pride, a voiceless cry towards truth and justice and love, a long looking into the vistas of the
invisible heavens surrounding, a longing to be led as men have always ached for leading.

True leadership is the greatest need of man, and one of the most pathetic things in the world is the way
this heart-hunger of men for guidance and inspiration, leads them, in default of real heroes, to exalt the
sham, and to give whole heart al egiance to unreality.

Men love a Man, and Mr. Graham Wallace is seriously perturbed for the result of this human factor on the
future of Democracy. He may not understand that his ineradicable human instinct exerts such power,
because in the Great Man every man sees the fulfillment of himself, the eternal possibility to which the
soul of him stretches dim and yearning arms. The power of Personality is the greatest force in the world,
for to the majority of men ideas and ideals only assume reality when embodied in human form. "Ideas are
useless", once said the Rev. R.J.Campbell, "until personality lends them wings".

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- II -

Mr.Wells clings to the belief that the religious and social stir of these times will unify mankind under the
kingship of Divinity, God, the Invisible King of a worldwide system of republican states. Yes, but "God" will not be real to the majority of men unless His Truth, His Beauty, His Wonder, His Mighty Love, His all-compel ing Power, are shadowed forth in a supreme and complete Personality inhuman form. A "little bit
of God" lives within every one of us, eternal y urging forward towards full expression through us. That is
why we long to see the Man in whom that hidden Godhead has found freedom and expression. He is
ourselves, the promise of the Future to all that lives.

In this hour or our deepest need, worldwide, immense, unfathomable, the cry goes up for him as never
before. Who will body forth for us the unshaped yearnings after Truth and Beauty shaking all men's
hearts this day? What man is great enough to guide the trembling aspirations, the newfound
understandings born of pain and tears and loss irreparable? Who will cal the hidden resolve of
multitudes of men into flame, direct its power and energy into true channels, speak to us as a Man to
men, utter for us our dearest idealisms, lead us as we ache to be led, cal ing upon a world to recreate a world, leading life to victory and achievement that the beloved dead may not have died in vain? When the
hour strikes, it is aid, the man is there.

The Hour has struck. He comes

And so it happened that I fell into a deep sleep, and in a dream I saw the days that are coming upon
earth. For the response to the cry of humanity in its agony had come as ever it has come, and will come,
again and again, as the wheel of Evolution turns, until the end of Time.

One walked once more amongst men, through Whom the Face of God shone with all the glory of the

Morning. The old names for Him clustered round Him, the Wonderful, the Counselor, the Mighty Lord, the

Prince of Peace Men knew in His Presence that He was in very truth the Elder Brother of the Race, long
passed now from the need of human experience, of human struggle, of human pain and joy in the Great

School of Life, yet remembering every step of the Way that He Himself once trod in eons past, and
thereby holding every heart in His. Truly the High-Priest of Humanity, "after the order of Melchisedec for
ever", God's aspect of Personality to Man. And men knew that there was none other than He, that He
was the Heart of every world-faith, the Leader of every cause which had befriended men.

The sick, the sad, the sinful found again healing at His Hands, the strong such joy in their strength of
service, the lovers of men such inspiration in their work, as never they knew before. The Wisdom dwelt
once more amongst us, and the wings of His Love enfolded the hearts of men, and His Strength brought
healing to a world born out of pain afresh. Thus the Day dawned, and the Man of Men blessed the Hour
of its birth.

To you I write this as a dream, but to me it is no dream but the crowning message of the hour. "Die

Glöck" of the unshackled German Press writes: "Greater the longing for the world's Redeemer could
never have been than our longing today for deliverance from this scourge of God!"

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Even so, come! Lord Christ, Leader and Captain of men.

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Table of Contents

- THE HOUR
- THE COMING FAITH
- THE COMING SOCIAL ORDER
- THE MESSAGE OF THE HOUR
- A DREAM