that we may stand fast and be strong in the strength and chastening of God!
Now I have put it—this matter of our need of discipline—in the most personal and individual way, but it is our great national and corporate need. The body of a nation can only exist through the ordered discipline of its members and the spirit of a nation like the spirit of a man needs to be cleansed of all the lusts of willfulness and self-indulgence. The spirit of our American nation needs such cleansing. Mr. Kipling has drawn us his picture of it:
"Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.
"His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadaloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.
"Calm-eyed he scoffs at sword and crown,
Or panic-blinded stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;
"Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,
He dubs his dreary brethren Kings.
His hands are black with blood—his heart
Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.
"But, through the shift of mood and mood,
Mine ancient humour saves him whole—
The cynic devil in his blood
That bids him mock his hurrying soul;
