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    The Great Discovery
    The Great Discovery
    The Great Discovery
    Ebook116 pages1 hour

    The Great Discovery

    By Norman Maclean

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
    The Great Discovery
    Author

    Norman Maclean

    Born in Glasgow in 1936, Norman Maclean was educated at school and university in Glasgow, before going on to teach all over Scotland. He garnered much fame after winning two Gold Medals at the National Mod - for poetry and singing - in the same year, 1967, the only person ever to do so. Shortly afterwards he began a career, as he would say himself, as a clown, and it is in that role, and that of a musician, that he is still best-known today.

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      Book preview

      The Great Discovery - Norman Maclean

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Discovery, by Norman Maclean

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The Great Discovery

      Author: Norman Maclean

      Release Date: September 4, 2010 [EBook #33635]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT DISCOVERY ***

      Produced by Al Haines

      THE GREAT DISCOVERY

      BY

      NORMAN MACLEAN

      Had I stood aside when in defiance of pledges to which my kingdom was a party, the soil of Belgium was violated and her cities laid desolate, when the very life of the French nation was threatened with extinction, I should have sacrificed my honour, and given to destruction the liberties of my Empire and of mankind.

      Proclamation by King George V.

      GLASGOW

      JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS

      PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY

      1915

      PUBLISHED BY

      JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW

      Publishers to the University

      MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD. LONDON

      New York ... The Macmillan Co.

      Toronto .... The Macmillan Co. of Canada

      London ..... Simpkin, Hamilton and Co.

      Cambridge .. Bowes and Bowes

      Edinburgh .. Douglas and Foulis

      Sydney ..... Angus and Robertson

      MCMXV

      BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

      DWELLERS IN THE MIST.

      HILLS OF HOME.

      THE BURNT OFFERING.

      CAN THE WORLD BE WON FOR CHRIST?

      AFRICA IN TRANSFORMATION.

      TO

      J. P. CROAL

      TO WHOM THIS BOOK OWES

      ITS EXISTENCE

      Preface

      Six articles which the writer contributed to The Scotsman constitute this book. Four of these, which appeared under the title In Our Parish, were, in response to requests, re-printed by The Scotsman as leaflets, and in that form had a circulation that reached an aggregate of 100,000. One of the articles (now Chapter II.), which was published on February 14, 1914, has been revised and somewhat enlarged. The rest are reprinted substantially as they were originally written.

      In these last months there has come to the nation a spiritual and ethical revival. Life will never again be what it was in the last long summer days ere the guns began to speak. It will be a better world than it has yet been. The nation is being saved as by fire, and in the fire much dross will be consumed. The conscience of the State has been stirred, and it cannot in the future acquiesce in the continuance of the social evils which are gnawing at the nation's heart. The fate of the Empire in the long years to come will depend more on the fight for social renewal in the midst of the streets than on red battlefields. To the men who have stood between the race and destruction the State owes a debt which it can only repay by such measures of social regeneration as will make possible for every man and woman to realise the thrill and the joy of life. These pages only represent an effort to portray the first stirring of that newly awakened consciousness of God and of duty which was felt in every parish throughout the Empire, and which is destined to transform the world.

      Contents

      I

      The Great Discovery

      I

      While the thing is still fresh in my mind I will try to put it down on paper—the incredible thing that has happened in our parish. When we had least thought about life's great things, we have come face to face with the greatest.

      We had been for long years living on the surface of things. The sun basked on the slopes of the hills, purple at eve; we came back from the offices in town, plunged through the tunnel, and hastened to our gardens. We lifted up our eyes to the hills, and our security seemed as immovable as their crests soaring above the little dells that were haunts of ancient peace around their foundations.

      Long years of ease dimmed our vision. The church bell rang in vain for many of us. Those who had six whole days in the week to devote to their own pleasure began to devote the seventh also to that same end. The day of peace was becoming a day of unrest.

      Thus it was with us when, with the suddenness of a lightning flash, the incredible overtook us.

      If only one could put it into words! But words can never express this sudden meeting of man and God when that meeting was least expected.

      It was heralded by the booming of guns across the sea. The great city lay slumbering between us and the shore, but over the turrets and spires it came—boom, boom—under the stars. It was war. That far-away echo might not itself be the grim struggle of death, but it was its harbinger. Over all the seas death would soon be riding on the billows. Faces became stern. Good-byes were spoken.

      Ah! that word Good-bye, which we hear every day, and which, like those old coins which have passed from hand to hand so long until at last the image and superscription are gone, had lost all trace of its original meaning, retaining nothing but a faint aroma of courtesy, which sometimes vanished in the inflection of the voice until the word became only a discourteous dismissal—that word was born for us anew. We heard it on the lips of mothers clinging to the hands of their sons, who were summoned away to join their regiments, and as white lips said Good-bye to those whose blood was to water the fair fields of France, we suddenly realised what it meant. The word, meaningless yesterday, to-day expressed the greatest wish that the lips of man can utter—God be with thee. On the mother's lips the word was the commitment of her boy to the charge of the encompassing God. Then, when the harvest was ripening on the slopes and the drum sounded Come, and the young and the strong went forth with a smile to the great harvesting of death, we learned again the meaning of a phrase. But we were yet to learn the meaning of a word.

      It is in the darkness that the stars appear and the immeasurable abysses of the infinite universe, and it was when the dusk sank into the deep night that the word rose high in the firmament of life and burned red into our souls. And that word was God.

      It seemed so incredible to us that we should need that old word. We were so powerful and so rich. Our faith was strong, but it was in the reeking tube and in the smoking shard, and in the number of our Dreadnoughts. Then all these things seemed to fail us. A nightmare seemed to fall on us—a nightmare which lifted not night or day. Our soldiers were driven back, back, back. They fought by day and marched by night, and we heard in the night watches the beating of their wearied feet, blood stained.

      Was there to be no end to that tramp, tramp of men yielding before death? Was the Empire reared by the heroism of generations to crumble under our feet? The ghastly deeds of shame—were they to come to our doors! We looked at our children, and they could not understand the light in our eyes. These deeds of

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