SECULAR CONTEST BETWEEN CONSCIENCE AND POWER 123 



I cannot deny that some liaunting rominiscence of re;ulii.<; 

 Creasy 's Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World in my youtli has 

 led me to propose to treat the history of conscience in its contest 

 with power in an analogous way. I have sometimes occupied 

 my idle moments in speculating what might have been the conse- 

 quence of Napoleon winning the Battle of Waterloo, and I could 

 see no reason why he should not have firmly re-established the 

 power of France as the first military nation and bequeathed that 

 power to his generals as Alexander the Great did before him. So 

 that if our great countryman had not conquered him at Waterloo, 

 we might never have had the late war, but be still living in the 

 same fear of French aggression as possessed our forefathers even 

 long after the death of the great Napoleon, as witness Tennyson's 

 " Third of February, 1852," and " Eiflem.en, Form! " 



That which makes Creasy 's Decisive Battles more interesting 

 than battles of crows and kites is the fact that those engaged in 

 them were beings endowed with reason and initiative and capable 

 of appreciating things moral. 



But, which ever way these military contests went, the result 

 must be to a large extent at least materialistic, and I must, 

 therefore, make the most of the superior interest of things moral 

 over things material in order to make up for my own deficiencies 

 in investing the subject I am taking with the supreme interest 

 that it deserves. 



It may be fairly objected that to place so much emphasis on 

 particular incidents is not portraying history faithfully — that we 

 have learned in modern times to look for the gradual evolution 

 of great movements and principles which are not to be turned back 

 by one event. No doubt there is much truth in this. A great 

 movement is like a mighty river gradually gaining force, and with 

 force both depth and width, and is not to be dammed up by any 

 barrages. Nevertheless, such a river can at a given point by the 

 exercise of a little ingenuity be diverted, so as to take quite a 

 different course to that which it otherwise would. 



I think it is often the same with the course of religious and 

 political movements, and nothing interests me so profoundly as 

 to recognize the personal effect of some great man on a crisis in 

 human history. Nay, more, believing as I do not only in a 

 general overruling Providence, but that God raises up and sustains 

 men of spiritual power to stand for that part of the Christian 

 revelation which He sees is needful to be emphasized at a par- 

 ticular time, I recognize that there are crises in. spiritual move- 

 ments where the action of God's special witnesses has decisive 

 consequences in directing the flow of such movements into regions 

 where they may, under God's good hand, become a source of 

 fertility to after generations. 



