^ If I were attempting a survey of the whole field of the literature of patriotism, the very first book to which I should need to ask your attention would be our sacred Scriptures ; for nowhere will you find a more intense patriotism than glows in the words of some of its psalmists and prophets. And in New Testament times, when the Jewish nation had fallen upon evil days, even those who knew that her ancient glory had departed for ever still clung to her with passionate longing, Paul could wish that he himself were anathema from Christ for his brethren's sake, his kinsmen according to the fiesh. And who can forget Christ's reverence for the great names m Jewish history, His observance of His nation's customs. His tears over the doomed city of Jerusalem ? Did He not say that He was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ? And when He sent forth His disciples on their world-wide mission- did He not charge them to " begin at Jerusalem " ? He wno says that " Christianity kills patriotism " has misunderstood either one or the other or both.^
1 G. H. Morrison. 2 gij. Alfred Lyall.
* George Jackson, A Young Mmi's Bookshelf, 1 8**
ROMANS IX. 3 179
(1) Let us look first of all at Jesus Christ the Patriot, and let us remember that though the patriotism of Jesus be obscured by His world-wide mission and His care for single souls, there haa never moved across this earth a truer patriot than the prophet of Nazareth at whose feet we bow. He was a Jew after the flesh, and that is enough. With all the passion of a Jew He loved His country. We shall never understand Christ's hatred of the Pharisees, nor shall we ever comprehend His tears over Jerusalem, unless we remember that the lover of mankind was also a lover of His little country. Patriotism is never so strong as when the country that inspires it is a little one. Britain is little, Switzerland is little, Japan is Kttle, Palestine was little ; and these are the countries, perhaps above all others, where love of the homeland has been supreme. Into that heritage, then, Christ Jesus entered. He was a prophet ; He was the son of David. The past was alive for Him, and the hills and the lakes were dear — twice dear because consecrated with such holy memories.
^ Is it not a patriot of whom we read that " when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying. If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes " ? Is there not deep love of country in the cry, "0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not " ? It is a disappointed patriot who, when He finds a stranger ready to recognize in the Man of Sorrows the conqueror of disease and death, exclaims, " I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel" In all the labour of Jesus Christ there seems to be a yearning desire that the Jewish people should be His fellow-workers, and it is only when He finds them deter- minedly opposed to Him that He goes to the Gentiles. It is hardly too much to say that we have evidence of the longing of the Founder of our faith that those of His own nation should be the missioners to the outside world. Few sharper pangs can have been felt by our Master than that one, to which the prophet had beforehand testified as one of the sufferings of the Messiah : " We hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not " ; and to which reference is made by St. John in the first chapter of his Gospel, " He came unto his own, and his own received him not."^
» H. R. Wakefield.
i8o ANATHEMA FROM CHRIST
^ What is great in patriotism comes not from the love of one's own country to the exclusion of others, but from the forgetfulness of one's own self in the possession of a larger idea of humanity. Christ as a patriot would have been adored by the Jews, and probably recognized as the Messiah. They hated Him because He loved the Gentile,^
(2) Let us look at St. Paul's patriotism — that is, at Christian patriotism, as distinguished from all other. Christian patriotism concerns itself with the moral and the spiritual rather than the physical and the external. It can never be enough for a Christian citizen that each census gives a larger population than the last, that the Savings Banks are congested with money, that the volume of trade is swollen, that the rate of wages is rising, that the arms of the country have prevailed over foreign foes, or that we have annexed another province. For he knows that a land may be populous, and rich, and strong, and feared, whose people are miserable, and whose dependencies are spoiled. He has been taught that a nation is blessed only when its homes are full of peace and its power is used for righteousness. Patriotism must labour for the good of all and the injury of none, to build up a nation in faith towards God and love towards man. Jesus warned His contemporaries that if they persisted in their unreasoning fanaticism, the end would be a bath of blood ; and can any one doubt that if the Jews had listened to His voice they would have possessed their own land to-day, and their glory have had no shadow ?