Page:The Psychology of Jingoism.djvu/61

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Christianity in Khaki
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'covenant.' 'The Lord thy God has chosen thee to be a special people unto Himself above all people that are upon the face of the earth.' 'Take heed unto yourselves lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God which He made with you.' 'Speak ye home to the heart of England, for the covenant stands between God and England.'

How do we know that this covenant exists? Dr. Watson assigns a curious reason: –

Are any man's eyes so blind that he cannot see the mission of England? ... I do not, when I strike so high a note, forget England's sins. Does our sin break the covenant which the Eternal made with our fathers? No people ever sinned against God like Israel. Between the sin of Israel and the sin of England there is a similarity which arises from a sense of being in the same position.

Our 'peculiar' sins are, then, the 'semeia' of our 'covenant' and our 'mission.' But what is the nature of this mission? Dr. Watson marks it out in no uncertain language when he says, 'We have found out who are our friends in the world and who are our enemies, and we are not going to forget them.' Presumably England's God is to be of special service to her in her mission of 'not forgetting' her enemies.

For a fuller revelation of this covenant and mission we may turn, not inappropriately, to

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