How injurious to the cause “whose kingdom is not of this earth” is this alliance with politics and armaments might appear too obvious for discussion. Yet it is quite evident that sincere men are prepared to support the use of political and military force in order to open fields for missionary enterprise, and that the missionary, who is by turns trader, soldier, and politician, seems a most desirable instrument of civilisation.
How close in motive and in conduct this combination really is may be thus illustrated from the recent history of the Soudan.
“Detachments of officers and men from every regiment, British and Egyptian, were conveyed across the Nile in the gunboats to take part in the Gordon memorial service, and to witness the hoisting of the British flag on the ruins of Khartoum ... Surrounded by the soldiers he had directed with terrible and glorious effect, the successful general ordered the flags to be hoisted ... The officers saluted, the men presented arms, and the band played the Egyptian National Anthem and our own. Then the Sirdar called for three cheers for Her Majesty ... The memorial service followed, and the solemn words of the English Prayer-book were read in that distant garden ... The bands played their dirge and Gordon’s favourite hymn, Abide with Me; a gunboat on the river crashed out the salute ... The Highlanders played a long lament, and thus the ceremony was duly fulfilled. Nine thousand of those who would have prevented it lay dead on the plain of Omdurman. Other thousands were scattered in the wilderness, or crawled wounded to the river for water.” [62]
While the writer of this passage omits the final touch, the deliberate shooting of wounded crawlers by troops under British commanders, the picture is profoundly suggestive, with its strange amalgam of the British flag, Abide with Me, and the avenging of Gordon.
Yet it is evident that those who ascend to the misty heights of Imperialism are able to unite these diverse jarring factors in “a higher