Anarchy then
spread among the lower ranks of mankind, and many sincere consciences
were troubled by the evil example. How long, O Lord, they wondered, how
long wilt Thou suffer the pride of this iniquity? Or wilt Thou finally
justify the impious opinion that Thou carest no more for the work of Thy
hands? A shock from a thunderbolt, and behold, all human foresight is
set at nought! Europe trembles upon the brink of destruction!
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Many are the thoughts that throng the breast of man today, and the chief
of them all is this:
God reveals Himself as the Master. The nations that made the attack, and
the nations that are warring in self-defense, alike confess themselves
to be in the hand of Him without Whom nothing is made, nothing is done.
Men long unaccustomed to prayer are turning again to God. Within the
army, within the civil world, in public, and within the individual
conscience, there is prayer. Nor is that prayer today a word learned by
rote, uttered lightly by the lip; it surges from the troubled heart, it
takes the form, at the feet of God, of the very sacrifice of life. The
being of man is a whole offering to God. This is worship, this is the
fulfillment of the primal moral and religious law--the Lord thy God
shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve.
And even those who murmur, and whose courage is not sufficient for
submission to the hand that smites us and saves us, even these
implicitly acknowledge God to be the Master, for if they blaspheme Him,
they blaspheme Him for His delay in closing with their desires.
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