Sermon-And there's another country, I've heard of long ago

Photographs of the Fallen from the William Cory & Son Roll of Honour

A sermon given at The Corynthians Remembrance Service on Friday 7th November 2025 at St Olave Hart Street commemorating employees of William Cory & Son (now Cory Group) who fought and died in WW1 and WW2. The sermon is based on the text of Micah 4.1-5 and inspired by the music sung during the service and the rediscovery this year of the company ‘Roll of Honour’.

The prophet Micah describes two worlds. The book of the Bible that bears his name shifts its focus back and forth between them.

The first is the world he lived in. Prosperous—on the surface at least—but run by corrupt leaders who abused their positions of power, causing ordinary people to suffer. Micah’s prophecy is that an even greater power—an oppressive regime, symbolised by the Assyrian empire—will overthrow the kingdom of Judah and destroy the temple in Jerusalem.

 

The second world Micah describes is the world that is to come. The world we glimpse in the passage we heard just now. A meeting place of all nations. A place of eternal peace in which weapons become tools to till the earth, to encourage growth. A world in which there is no fear—where everyone is at rest. We find out a little later in the prophecy that a new king will be born in Bethlehem to rule over the people of this new Jerusalem.

 

Written in the midst of the Great War, the next two pieces of music we sing and hear are, like Micah’s prophecy, a reflection on these two worlds.

 

The words of the hymn I Vow to Thee, My Country were written by Sir Cecil Spring-Rice as he returned home from his post as Ambassador to Washington in 1918.

The first verse expresses devotion, duty and loving service towards one’s earthly homeland, embodied by those who had answered the call to arms. The “other country” referred to in the second verse is the Kingdom of God. Speaking in Canada shortly after he wrote the text, Spring-Rice said:

 

“We have read of the ruins of a palace once decorated with pictures of burning cities, troops of captives being tortured to death. That was the banquet hall of the King of Assyria. That is one type of civilization…“There is another, the sign of which is the Cross. The Cross is the banner under which we fight—the Cross of St George, the Cross of St Andrew, the Cross of St Patrick; different in form, in colour, in history, yes, but the same spirit, the spirit of sacrifice.”

 

Sir Hubert Parry died a month before the Armistice and was deeply affected by the sacrifice of so many of his students at the Royal College of Music, where he was Director at the time. “The thought of so many gifted boys being in danger,” he wrote, “is always present with me.” His Songs of Farewell express his despair at the events of this world and his hope for the world to come. The choir will sing the first of these songs in a moment. My Soul, There Is a Country Far Beyond the Stars sets to music the text Peace by the seventeenth-century writer Henry Vaughan, which reflects Micah’s vision of another country, of eternal rest, safety, of perfect peace.

 

Considered an eminent metaphysical poet, Vaughan’s emotive writings are characterised by analogies that lie beyond objective proof in the physical realm. Like Micah’s vision and Spring-Rice’s other country, Vaughan’s peace can seem distant. Unreal.

 

It is thanks to the Long Family that we have been able to begin to study this amazing document: a Roll of Honour recording nearly five hundred employees of William Cory & Son who had enlisted up to the 30th of September 1917. Set down in alphabetical order by surname, the roll gives details about where each man worked and the regiment he joined. The list is interspersed with the pictures of those who died—whose names appear, along with others from the First and Second World Wars, on the company memorial in this church.

 

Many of the faces we see looking out at us from the pages of the Roll of Honour were members of D Company of the 6th Battalion of the Buffs—Cory’s Unit. A “pals” battalion: men who had enlisted together with the promise that they would serve alongside their friends and work colleagues. Several died within a few minutes of each other—on the 13th of October 1915, as the battalion attacked German defensive positions in chalk pits near Loos. Like 35-year-old Private Ernest Asplin, a dockworker at Tilbury, where he lived with his wife. Ernest’s face looks out next to 23-year-old Lance Corporal Harry Orsler of Erith, whose mother wrote to the editor of the local paper asking:

“Sir – will you kindly insert my son’s photo in the Kent Messenger? He was serving with the 6th Battalion the Buffs on October 13th and since when I cannot get any tidings of him. Seeing by your paper the help that has been given to others, I thought I would try too. I sent him a parcel on October 10th, but got it back again, and on it was written: ‘Present location unknown’ and ‘Missing’. Any information from his comrades or officers would be gratefully received.”

 

In the first verse of his hymn, Spring-Rice describes the devoted service embodied by people like Ernest and Harry: the love that never falters, the love that pays the price, the love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

 

The love which, hours before he died on the cross, Jesus told his disciples that in its greatest form looks like someone laying down their life for their friends.

The Roll of Honour lets us look that love in the face.

 

There’s nothing metaphysical about it. It’s there right before our eyes.

 

As we look at the portraits of these men, the mix of emotions we feel is powerful and complex and transcends any and all moral positions on war and conflict. When we try to explain how we feel, words fail us.

 

I wonder if the disciples felt the same way when they looked into the face of Jesus as he gave his beautiful sermon on love the night before he died?

 

As we look through the pages of the Roll of Honour we see the faces of men like Ernest and Harry and we remember the sacrifice they made when they took up arms to defend this country. And we are disarmed as we come face to face with the amazing, transforming, uncomfortable power of love in its greatest expression—

a love that we so often fail to express, even in the smallest way,
a love that challenges us,
a love that sees us,
a love that forgives us—even at our worst.

We see in their faces the reality that these men are a bridge between the two worlds Micah, Parry, and Spring-Rice describe. One foot in the world that is, and one in the world that is to come. Their sacrifice connects the country of duty with the country of peace, the earthly homeland with that other country whose King is the embodiment of perfect love.

 

If we believe their sacrifice - their love - was real, then our faith must be real too—real enough to believe that this other country is not only imaginable, but attainable.
That beyond the ruins and the grief, beyond the years and the distance, there waits that “country far beyond the stars,” where swords are turned to ploughshares,
and where love, in all its fullness, reigns supreme.

May their faces inspire us to look at each other – and the world around us, through the eyes of God’s love.

Amen.