Thoughts on religion at the front | Page 8

which He drew in with open mouth, blind to what He saw, deaf to what

He heard, unelated by His joy. He was surprised to find them strangely
and otherwise absorbed, with hearts elsewhere centred than in God. He
expected to find them united to God in a loving loyalty. He found them
in a spiritual adultery.
This unshared absorption of Jesus was not the fruit of adversity nor a
resort in disappointment. He was not driven to it by anxiety. It came
first for Him in peace, in full health, and youth and powers. His was a
house which was built in fine weather upon a rock, so that when the
storms of adversity beat on it, it stood firm. His religion stood the
severest test, namely, the quiet of normal and uneventful days. It was
ready for the strain of a campaign. He emerged out of the peace of
Nazareth prepared for enterprise. For the Father to Him was not only
the object of immobile worship and delight--not only a Name to be
hallowed, but was He Who called Him out to a venture for His
kingdom and the doing of His will.
That was how Jesus came among men. He came calling men to a great
adventure, to non-calculating and self-regardless co-operation with the
active energy and will of the Father. How much He knew beforehand of
whither that will would lead Him can never be known. To suppose that
He knew all and saw the end in the beginning and had no steps in the
dark to take, would be to deny to Him the essential element of human
faith and trust, which is that it has to step out beyond the light of
knowledge into the darkness of uncertainty. On the other hand, to
suppose that He knew nothing, is to deny to Him that humanly heroic
resolution with which He set His face to tread the path which led Him
to suffering. In our ignorance let us grip this certainty, that for Him the
one sufficient thing was that the Father knew all things--the times and
the seasons, the cup to be drunk, the will to be done and the final
outcome. That was enough for Him and must be enough for us.
This religion of Jesus then is that to which all can turn, as their hearts
are full beyond expression with proud and thankful sorrow for the great
company of those who have trustfully given themselves to death for
others. Jesus is the Word, that is, the full and crowning expression of
that which is hardly articulate in others. His open-eyed

self-consecration to do the will of the Father seals and ratifies their
confused yet steadfast devotion. He is first among many brethren,
giving full utterance to their dumb trustfulness. In a world of mixed and
partial motives He is the absolute and unmitigated lover of God--loving
with all His mind and soul and strength, freely hazarding all upon the
Father.

XI
Is not that enough? This simple element--this religion of Jesus--is it not
the one thing needful, possessed of which men may slough off all else
in the traditional deposits of Christianity? Yes, would certainly be the
answer if the men of His day had in fact been so possessed, and if men
were so possessed to-day. What was actual in Him was, is, in fact,
unrealised in them. He did find, of old, fellow-adventurers to share His
enterprise. But they could not share it to the end. He could love God
wholly, they only partially. He had to leave them, and they Him; He to
do the will of the Father, they to fail to do it. He alone could not only
announce but fulfil the first and great commandment; they in the end
could only be defied and broken by it.
So it was proved. And it is a result which any honest man can verify for
himself. As I have tried to show elsewhere,[1] the most rigorously
human and non-miraculous view of Jesus and the Gospels leads to this
point, to what may be called the porch where Peter wept, where the
silence of God broods over the tragedy of human failure.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Mind of the Disciples (Macmillan).

XII
"But the third day He rose again." Peter was not left in the porch, nor
are we. His broken hope was remade by the One fully trusted in by

Jesus only--by the "God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ."[2]
The Christian thing which we look for is the Good News of God in
Christ. It is not only the religion of Jesus our Brother, but religion in
Jesus, in Him revealing God to men. It is not only His human richness
towards God, but in Him the