The Knights of the Red Cross
“‘ Other my fellow labourers whose names are in the book of life.”” — Puit. iv. 3.
THESE are noble knights who have left no written biography. Even their names are not blazoned in any visible scroll. They just went away on a chivalrous errand, and shed their blood in a royal service, and nobly lived, and bravely died. They belong to the brilliant élite of the rank and file, whose heroism has no earthly herald, but whose courage and sacrifice win great fame in the courts of heaven and throughout the city of our God. All they seek is a place of
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service, and they are unconcerned about its being a place of honour; they aspire after travail rather than applause; the greatest task presents the most coveted office; and the emblem of their life is not a trumpeter but a quiet cross. Indeed, in the very best and deepest sense of the word, they belong to the distinguished company of the Red Cross Society.
The world has always been deeply in debt to these Knights of the Red Cross. Their blood is the seed of the Church. Nay, it is through their hallowed sacrifices that the race renews its youth. We may not know the ministers of our restoration any more than the man who was healed wist that his Healer was Jesus. But the blood of their sacrifice gets into our veins like hallowed fire, and in our limbs there is born the possibility of heroic deeds, Sacrificial blood is never like spilt milk, a futile waste and
beyond recovery. Sacrificial blood is never shed like the intermittent rains which fall on desert sands. The blood is the life, and when it is given away in lavish surrender eens 184 The Knights of the Red Cross
to a noble cause it is directed by the holy Lord Himself into the anemic veins of the race. In this profound sense death has immediate resurrection.
Life which culminates in sacrifice has reached its appointed goal. We are given our life in order that we may learn how to lay it down. School is over when that lesson is perfected. A young fellow who lays down his life for others at the age of twenty-one has died in maturity and is ready for promotion. Selfish people are infants even though they are three-score years and ten: martyrs are full-grown even though they are only in their teens. Schoolisover! ‘Come up higher!”: