The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-10-29

| truth will triumph in me. I may live anC die a liar. That does not thwart tn,
 sharing in that triumph. God love! righteousness more than sin,
 GOD DEGREES LIBERTY | Now God has decreed liberty for men
 I know this. I do not merely believe 1t I know it because the past is the work 1 of God; the past is the voice of God
 and through it He has been slowly lead ing men from bondage into freedom. know that liberty will be the heritage of men because Gods processes do not stop short of completion. What He has begun in the past, He will finish In the future. God wills that the world be ire. I know that God has decreed justice for men; for all men, regardless of whether they live in Birmingham, or Bel gium or Berlin. God plays no favorites. We have seen Him in the years that are gone leading men out of cruelty into kindness; away from tyranny into mercy; out of Egypt into the promised land. It has ever been His way. It is His way today. It will be His way forever. God wills that justice shall reign; that the wife of the peasant shall be inviolate as the daughter of prince; that the cot of the husbandmen shall be as sacred as the palace of the German king. God wills it. It shall be accom- plished.
 Oh ask yourselves that ye democracies that are struggling for the democracy of the earth; ye men that are fighting for righteousness; ye men that are pleading for love- We think of our re- verses; of how for three long years the apostles of cruelty have stood against the aptsoles of liberty and right. Why have they baffled us and hurled us back? Why has such cause as ours been delayed in securing it's ultimate triumph? How history repeats itself. Away back there In the days of Joshua the Israelites were fighting the battles of God. Defeated again and again. they wondered why, then they found a thief in the camp. Achaan. the thier. was trying to fight for God. They stoned Achaan and the tide of battle turned If God has decreed the triumph of the things We fight for, why does He hold that triumph back?
 A GOOD REASON
 It may not be the only reason, but it seems to me to be a good enough one in itself. We are fighting to give the world something that is not yet ours to give. We have thieves in the camp. There are those who prate of nb- erty who are tyrants in all their rela- tionships. There are those who burn
 
 who are callous to the pain and heart break of their neighbor across the street. We Kill more children every year in our factories than the Germans have killed in three years of war. We ruin more girls in America than the Ger mans have dishonored in northern France!
 Oh well does the President call us to prayer. If ever nation needed to search it's heart it is the nation of America today. The spirit of patriotism so easily becomes the spirit of national self-righteousness. We are the people. We arc the apostles of love and justice and truth. We are the patterns for the children or men. We bear the light in which all humanity must walk. Oh, the President has called us to sackloth: to lasting and penitence and tears He has called US to personal introspection. He has called us to see If we are worthy of these high ideals that we speak Of so lightly; if we are worthy of the cause to which we are committed, and of which We speak so glibly as the cause Of God,
 MUST BE UNSELFISH
 This Is a hard order I know it. But It is hard thing that we seek to do: a noble end that we hope to attain to which cannot be achieved by the igno ble or the base. If our cause is to tri- umph today, if ours are the hands that shall strike the final blow for liberty. if ours the lips that shall proclaim brotherhood and justice for all, we must purify our hearts of all self seeking, we must immolate ourselves on the altar of the world, and for the world give our selves, all we have, all we are and all we hope to be.
 And this means victory for us. And m Tic kl~ for victory comes from His children Ill France and England and America; from His children in the German villages and from the Austrian plains. And God gives 8, victory to us, and our boys come home to a land of plenty while the bands are playing and 100000 people are weeping and crying for joy. God gives victory to us and the beaten armies of Germany go back to their homes without clothes to wear, no food to eat, no industry to give them wages; no shouting, no glad acclaim. It IS perhaps human to hate them for the things they have done, and yet on that day of victory we ought to pity them, for the return of that German army has ever seen. They will have de- served it all? Yes perhaps, they have been cruel, but so have we all at times. They have been unjust, impure, brutal and unholy? Perhaps. And so have we. God does not cease to care for men because they have sinned. If He did, He would have abandoned us long ago. No. God will watch over them then as tenderly and more pityingly than over us God will lead them at last to see as He led us of the south to see, that 1t was better so. God will show to them what we see now. that the only victory Germany could possibly have won lay on the other side of defeat. Through defeat the German people will have won the right to govern themselves. No more will they be sent forth from their peaceful homes so uselessly to suffer; so needlessly to die. In losing the war they will have won their liberty. In losing their battle for injustice they will have won future justice for themselves. In losing their lust of power they will pave the way to win for themselves some part at least of the worlds affection They prayed for victory over us. But God gave them victory over themselves!
 So that in the last analysis God will answer all our prayers. He will make us strong to give to the world the bless ings that He means the world to have. Tn the light of those blessings the ally and the German shall walk and grow to- gether The victory shall be ours and the victory shall be theirs-because-..h the victory shall be Gods.