Britain’s Danger
What is our greatest danger now? The lack of our humiliation before God as a nation and the confession of our national sins. Let me quote from a little pamphlet just published and called “Britain’s Danger”:— The Pause in our Destiny”: ―
‘Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people’ (Prov. 14:34).
“We stand as a nation at the cross-roads of our destiny. A wrong turning now and we may be lost. We are face to face with appalling dangers. For three months and more our brave troops, with their allies, have faced the enemy over a battle-front of more than two hundred miles. There seems to be a great pause now — no advance, no retreat — but God, waiting to see if, as a nation, we are worthy of His help. IT IS THE PAUSE OF DESTINY! Dare we, as a nation, face the truth about ourselves? Our salvation, I firmly believe, depends upon our honesty.
“Britain is being tried by fire; she is in the crucible now; she is being weighed in the balances of God. Will she be found wanting? Will there be so much dross that the gold will never be seen? It is indeed a critical time for our dear Land. God has made our nation great, and God can grind it to powder if it be His will. We are not strong in our own strength, and we never have been. We have gone to the Nations of the earth with the Bible in our hands — the Bible of Queen Elizabeth, and Queen Victoria, and our reverence for God’s Holy Word has made us great.
“The canker of unbelief is weakening the national strength; and our very failure to recognize and preserve what has made us great, may bring about our fall.
“Oh! that some prophet-tongue could bring home to the national conscience the danger of its sins! ‘Thou art the man,’ was thundered in the appalled ears of the king of God’s chosen people. And he, who, in his pride, had sat in careless and voluptuous ease, startled and convicted by the Voice of God through His servant, cries, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ And when he faced the sin in the light of the holiness of God, ‘he fasted, and went in and lay all night before the Lord.’ Gone was the pride of place — the mighty king has become the suppliant now. His humiliation has exalted God, and the divine forgiveness rests upon that humbled head, for God’s servant says: ‘The Lord also hath put away thy sin.’
“And then to that humbled and forgiven man God gave the fruits of victory. We are told in the same chapter that records his sin and penitence (2 Sam. 12), ‘that David gathered all the people together, and went to Rabbah, and fought against it and took it. And he took their king’s crown from off his head... and it was set on David’s head. And he brought forth the spoil of the city in great abundance.’
“The crown and the spoil were won, not by the blood and the valor of a nation’s manhood only, but by the tears, and the fasting, and the prayers of the nation’s king, and by the penitence that had said, ‘I have sinned against the Lord.’ And the sacrifices that God accepted then He will accept now, the sacrifices of a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart God will not despise.
“With all humility I pray, that our beloved King and Queen may speak to God for our nation now; and what David did and said for his own sins, may our King and Queen do for the nation’s sins. Oh! may they come forth, and lay aside the robes of a royalty prouder and grander than the world has ever seen. May the majesty of Britain bow low in humiliation and penitence before the throne of God; and may a royal decree appoint a day for that purpose.”
Concerning this appointed day a dear Christian sends me the following letter:—
“Thank you for the booklet, ‘Britain’s Danger,’ received today. It is true and timely, and my thoughts (with many others doubtless) have been much in sympathy with those expressions of your mind. While the appointment of a ‘day of humble prayer’ has been made as your footnote on page 5 states, it probably did not escape your notice that I quote Lord Stamfordham’s letter of October 26th to the Archbishop of Canterbury: — ‘Personally the King is disinclined to advocate the use of any term which might plausibly be misinterpreted either at home or abroad.’ This evidently refers to the phrase, ‘Day of humiliation and prayer.’
“What does it matter who of MEN may misinterpret, while we bow ourselves in humiliation before GOD, confessing our sins? As you say in closing your booklet, ‘IN OUR DAY OF HUMILIATION LET THE WHOLE WORLD HEAR OUR CONFESSION OF SIN.’ There is a vast difference between ‘humble prayer, and national humiliation.’... Those feeling the need for humiliation must deplore the change, and it is impossible to resist the conviction that declining to humble ourselves, we shall be humbled, it may very likely be, in those things in which most of all the nation prides itself.
“Let those, however, who so feel, not cease to lay it all, with their own confessions, before Him who overrules all, and forgets not the righteous, even though they be few. Sodom might have been spared for ten such, but they were not found.”
Yes, my readers, may God’s people be stirred up everywhere to pray that even now our beloved King may lead the whole nation in humiliation before God and confession of our national sins.