Conclusion.
The soldiers of Queen Victoria were not angels. They were the same mixture of vice and virtue that human beings have ever been. Their campaigns are not always ones that present-day sensibilities find easy to endorse, but it is difficult not to be struck with admiration at what they did. Even allowing for differences in weaponry, the odds that they faced were often stupendous. They showed cool heads and steady nerves. These are qualities that we would do well to emulate, so that “since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.” (2 Corinthians 4:1).
Above all, we should not lose sight of what we aim at, and why it is so precious that we should strain every nerve both to attain it ourselves and to make it an object of striving on the part of our nation. For: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” (Matthew 13:44). To display the beauty and value of this treasure, we need to “[set] forth the truth plainly [and thereby] commend ourselves to every man’s conscience” (2 Corinthians 4:2).
41. Grand Old Man
2 John 1.
Key word: obedience.
In 1903 Boer War veteran Erskine Childers wrote the novel Riddle of the Sands. It is an adventure yarn with a purpose: to warn about the danger of invasion by Germany. Eleven years later he was gun running for Irish Republicans, a traitor to the very nation about whose defence he had earlier been so concerned. The same trajectory was followed by Sir Roger Casement: though knighted in 1911 for work on behalf of the Crown, by November 1914 he was in Berlin urging Irish prisoners of war to form a brigade to serve against the Allies. Two years later he was caught at Tralee smuggling German weapons and hanged for treason.[97] These two Irishmen are tribute to Britain’s extraordinary capacity for taking men of goodwill from that island and turning them into implacable enemies.
For centuries Ireland was a festering sore in the British body politic, a constant reminder of the contradiction at the heart of Empire: that a nation with freedom and representative government as its lodestone denied those very things to its nearest neighbour and supposed partner.
English policy towards Ireland was rarely as deliberately malicious as legend paints it, but it might just as well have been for all the difference it made to those on the receiving end. Negligence, absentee landlords, doctrinaire application of laissez faire economics and visceral anti-Catholicism did tremendous damage. Yet even after the appalling potato famine of 1846-47, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that Ireland would sever completely from Britain. The Easter Rising of 1916 remains a powerful symbol of Irish nationalism, but it was the work of a small minority. Dubliners at first jeered the captured Irish Volunteers who were marched through the streets after the battle, seeing them as traitors, for large numbers of Irishmen were at that moment fighting and dying on the Western Front in British uniform. It took a heavy-handed and inept government response to harden public opinion. Even then, it is doubtful that a majority of Irishmen from the start actively sided with the rebels during the fight for independence that broke out in 1919. Only the ruthless genius of Michael Collins and the brutality of the Black and Tans so utterly transformed the political landscape that independence became the only course acceptable to the mass of Irishmen.
Ireland’s is a story of what might have been had William Ewart Gladstone, four times Prime Minister and twice Chancellor of the Exchequer, succeeded in his efforts to bring in Home Rule during the closing years of the nineteenth century.
Most tend to become more conservative and less radical with the passing years. Gladstone was exactly the opposite. At the start of his political career he was described by Macaulay as “the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories.” By its end he was leader of the Liberal Party, had been responsible for disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, the passing of two Irish Land Acts[98] and had twice extended the franchise through the Reform Acts of 1884 and 1885. Home Rule Bills were presented in 1886 and 1893. Each failed, though hardly for want of trying on the part of the Grand Old Man, eighty-four when the last of these attempts was made, yet still possessed of extraordinary energy. His endeavours fatally split the Liberal Party, but he would doubtless have considered this a price worth paying. With the benefit of hindsight, we know now what misery resulted from his inability to carry Parliament and the country with him.
Practicing the truth.
Gladstone was a lifelong Christian. He attended church every day of his adult life, sometimes more than once a day. It was obedience to the Christian message that forced him inexorably towards recognising the common humanity of all peoples, and the need for justice towards them whatever his own religious or political preferences might be. This growing conviction found typically eloquent expression during his Midlothian election campaign of 1879-80. In words that still have relevance for today’s Britain, on one occasion he told his audience: “Remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own. Remember that He who has united you as human beings in the same flesh and blood has bound you by the law of mutual love; that that mutual love is not limited by the shores of this island, is not limited by the boundaries of Christian civilisation, that it passes over the whole surface of the earth and embraces the meanest along with the greatest in its unmeasured scope.”
The apostle John talks a great deal, both in his gospel and in his letters, about love. His second letter, addressed “To the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth” (2 John 1:1) returns to this theme: “And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another.” (2 John 1:5). The command to which he refers is taken from Jesus’ last discourse with his disciples, when he told them: “A new command I give you: Love one another.” (John 13:34). To emphasise the central importance of this message, Jesus repeated similar words a short while later: “This is my command: Love each other.” (John 15:17).
John explains what this command involves: “And this is love; that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.” (2 John 1:6). Again, the apostle’s words echo those of his Lord: “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love ... You are my friends if you do what I command.” (John 15:10 and 14). Christian love, in other words, requires action. It is not merely or even necessarily a question of warm feelings, but instead is founded on obedience to the teaching of Jesus, with this obedience being put into practice in our daily lives.
Love is intimately bound up with truth. Indeed, taken together these are the measure of the extent and genuineness of Christian faith. The consequence of experiencing and acting out Christian love will inevitably be that we practice the truth and that the truth will be in us. This is more than solely a matter of telling the truth. It goes beyond being unwilling to tolerate any kind of falsehood, deception, concealment or equivocation. It involves taking on a character that is increasingly like that of Christ and thus of God himself. John’s second letter helps to show how this can be so and what it means.
Truth and love.
John makes what at first sight might seem a rather unexpected connection between truth on the one hand and love on the other. He describes “the chosen lady and her children” (2 John 1:1) as people “whom I love in the truth ... because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us for ever.” (2 John 1:1-2). This is a highly unusual way for one person to express regard for another, however great that regard might be, and indeed John is doing more than just expressing regard. There are three separate but related elements to what he says:
• Loving “in the truth” (2 John 1:1).
• Loving “because of the truth” (2 John 1:2).
• Having truth “[living] in us and [being] with us for ever.” (2 John 1:2).
; At first blush, these statements might seem nonsensical or even meaningless. To understand what John is driving at, we need to remind ourselves of the inseparable nature of ultimate truth and Christian love. Jesus – both fully man and fully God – says that he is “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6) and John tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Both truth and love, in other words, are part of who God is. They are aspects of his character, but they are also more than that, for God is the embodiment of each in its greatest fullness and perfection. So, too, is he the yardstick by which each is to be measured. If we want to know what perfect truth and love are, in other words, we look to God (which is to say, to Jesus, who is his earthly representation) for the answer.
Truth is thus portrayed as the source and fount of love, as well as its inevitable outgrowth. The truth and love of which John speaks both belong to and are essential characteristics of a person, within whom truth and love are forever linked. Hence: “Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.” (2 John 1:3).
John Keats wrote that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.” The Christian might perhaps counter that love is truth and truth is love.
Protecting the truth.
Human beings have a tendency to put difficulties and obstacles in the way of truth. We are fond of painting the world many shades of grey rather than acknowledging that there might be such a thing as straightforward right and wrong. Pontius Pilate asked Jesus: “What is truth?” (John 18:38) and our present age pretends that there are many competing truths, all of which are somehow capable of existing at the same time and being equally ‘valid’ even when they are contradictory. Such nonsense puts to shame the many fine minds that spout it.
It need not be so. Even children can learn to walk in the truth: “It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us.” (2 John 1:4). Attaining truth, however, requires humility and obedience. We have to recognise that truth is not something that we can make up for ourselves or bend to fit the demands of circumstances, but that it derives from a standard set by Almighty God.
The ease with which truth can be avoided, distorted and mishandled requires vigilance on our part: “Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully.” (2 John 1:8). It also requires recognition that those who manipulate or trample God’s truth thereby act in opposition to the Lord: “Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.” (2 John 1:7). Our need to be alert is emphasised by the fact that truth is something which can slip from our grasp: “Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.” (2 John 1:9).
Truth is less difficult and problematic than we like to make it, but in human hands it is fragile and needs to be protected. We are reminded to exercise discernment in whom we learn from and to whom we lend our aid: “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work.” (2 John 1:10-11). As in all things, there is a need for balance: between warning and encouragement, belief and behaviour, doctrinal accuracy and discerning love.
Conclusion.
If we are to be obedient to God’s laws and faithful to his commands, truth and love must go hand in hand. We are fooling ourselves if we imagine that we can have one without the other. Of course, every generation has its blind spot. Our Victorian forebears perhaps emphasised hellfire and damnation at the expense of the love of God. We are apt to do the reverse. We need to strive for the most complete understanding that we can achieve, but to recognise at the same time that God is more interested in what is in our hearts than in any doctrinal nuance. The best evidence of what is in our hearts and of the genuineness of our faith consists in our obedience to the commands that God has given us.
Discerning the will of God in our lives and for our nation is rarely completely straightforward, but in its broad outline at least it is a great deal simpler than we often imagine. We do not need direct communication from the Almighty to know that obedience to his commands involves kindness and generosity to others – that is a logical result of Jesus telling us to “do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31). Neither do we need much reflection to realise that the injunction not to steal (Exodus 20:15) encompasses all kinds of unlawful taking from others, whether it be skimping on work, overcharging, taking unwarranted sick leave, fiddling a tax return, submitting inflated expenses claims or what have you.
The result is that we have no excuse for disobedience. Of course, there are many aspects of present-day life that throw up complexities we do not find easy to disentangle and there may be particular fields of endeavour in which God wishes us to be involved that we can only know about through his speaking to us directly. When once we set off down the road of obedience, however, there is a tendency over the course of time for such things to be revealed to us. The fact that we may not have the full answer at the outset is no reason to delay putting into practice what we do know. So it was in the life of Gladstone. Only as time wore on did the full implications of applying Christian principles in policy towards Ireland dawn upon him.
The life of the Gladstone family echoes the ups and downs of England’s course over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Gladstone’s father, a Scottish immigrant to Liverpool, made money from the slave trade, in direct contravention of and disobedience to God’s laws. The son did his best to make amends. Our nation has done wrong in the sight of God. Now is the time for us to make amends. We will do so by showing obedience to the commands of our Lord.
42. Besieged
1 Chronicles 29:14-20.
Key word: integrity.
Charles George Gordon (1833-85)[99] fought for his country in the Crimean War, and thereafter was employed by the Chinese government during the Taiping rebellion. From 1877 to 1880 he was Governor-General of the Sudan on behalf of the Khedive of Egypt. Already noted for his reckless courage against the Russians, in China he went into hand-to-hand combat at the head of his troops armed only with a rattan cane. Such exploits earned him the nickname ‘Chinese’ Gordon. Although he was hardly a youngster when he first came to the Sudan and had never ridden a camel before, within weeks he was delighting in outpacing his escort and arriving long before them in the remote and often hostile outposts that it was his remit to visit. He was by any measure an extraordinary man.
Gordon was a devout Christian. His was a practical faith. During one of his rare tours of duty in England he began taking in foundlings, feeding and clothing them at his own expense and incurring considerable strain to his finances. These informal acts of charity grew in due course into the Gordon Homes for young people.
In 1884 Gordon entered service with the Egyptian government for a second time and returned to Khartoum with instructions to evacuate all Egyptian forces in the Sudan. It was a job no-one else wanted. The country was in the throes of rebellion as a result of an uprising led by Muhammad Ahmad, who claimed to be the Mahdi, the long-awaited ‘Rightly Guided One’ of Islam.[100] As Ahmad’s army closed slowly around Khartoum, Gordon ignored every opportunity to escape and made no real attempt to follow his orders. Despite a considerable disparity in numbers and the poor quality of the Egyptian soldiers under his command, he instead invited a showdown, scorning all idea of surrender or flight. Almost to the last he seems to have hoped that a British column would come to his aid, although Her Majesty’s government had made clear its wish to avoid further entanglement in either Egypt or Sudan.
In the event, public outcry at home ensured that a relief force was finally sent (much against the wishes of Gladstone and his cabinet), but it arrived too late.[101] On 26 January 1885, after ho
lding out for nearly twelve months, Khartoum’s walls were breached and its defenders overwhelmed. The victorious dervishes swarmed to the Governor-General’s palace from which Gordon emerged alone, clad in white, and faced his attackers calmly. Although he carried a revolver and wore a sword at his belt, he made no attempt to defend himself as spears and swords lacerated his body. The head was cut from the corpse and taken to Ahmad.
After taking Khartoum, Ahmad set up an Islamic state with its capital at Omdurman. His reign lasted only about six months, for he died in 1885, not long after Gordon. Retribution for the latter’s death came thirteen years later. On 2 September 1898, witnessed by the young Winston Churchill, a British punitive expedition pulverised the forces of Ahmad’s successors in a battle just outside Omdurman. Some 52,000 dervishes were cut to pieces by 20,000 men under Kitchener. Forty-eight British soldiers were killed, together with about four hundred of their Egyptian and Sudanese auxiliaries. The enemy dead, described by Churchill as littering the battlefield like “dirty bits of newspaper” numbered well over 10,000, with many more dying later from their wounds. Ahmad’s Islamic Caliphate collapsed, to be replaced by Anglo-Egyptian rule.
Cast out.
Redeeming a Nation (Timeless Teaching) Page 30