Thoughts on religion at the front | Page 9

richness of God towards men. It is the
Cross not only as the climax of free loving self-offering to the Father,
but as itself the laying bare of the Father's heart--it is God reconciling
the world unto Himself.
It is this--the revelation of God in Christ--of which the experience of
the war shows we are above all else in the world in need. God, not
merely assented to as a mysterious "One above," at the back of things,
but God, known and delighted in, in terms of Jesus Christ. It is one
great light which we need to walk in--the light of the knowledge of
what God is, as it shines upon the face of Jesus Christ. The specific
Christian thing that makes Christianity salvation is not--as so many
men in the army think--just goodness nor negative and kill-joy
propriety, but the fact that in the ardent, venturesome, and
self-regardless sacrifice of Jesus, we see the Love of God Himself
coming out to win the souls of men.
Everything else follows from that, and comes second to it as first--all
that follows from God's love being holy, and from men being unholy,
all that is meant by Christian experience, all that is involved in the
activities of prayer and service. Men have to begin from, and ever keep
rallying round, the truth of what God is as made known in
Christ--treating the truth as no matter of course, but as the disclosure
which in this strange world seems nearly too good to be true.
For there is no reconciliation between the facts of the world and the
Absolute of philosophy or the highly attributed Supreme Being of
natural religion. One thing alone can meet the passion of men--whether
imposed upon them or self-inflicted--it is the passion of God in Christ
whereby His Love works out its victory. That alone can harness to
itself the vitality and heroism of men, which else will riot away in
waste or flag in disillusion. That alone can be the constraining object of
their joy and praise, and the satisfaction of their adventurous devotion.

FOOTNOTES:
[2] 1 Peter i. 3.

XIII
There has been in this war a wonderful display of the heroism of men.
But their thoughts about God and religion are for the most part at a
level below the highest in themselves. They have come to themselves
in giving themselves away. But they think that religion is mostly
concerned with self-saving. They tend to recognise most easily the
signs of God's favour in this or that instance of safety or escape. This
means that they do not think of God in terms of Christ, but that they
think of Him as outside the trouble and pain and cost of life, and in the
immunity of heaven. They do not think of Him as involved in the risks
and agonies of the world. Though they do not formulate it to
themselves, the glories of human nature go beyond anything they know
of the divine. For them God is less wonderful than man. A fine soldier
protested to me lately about the service which was read at the funeral of
a very brave officer, "Why say more than 'here is a very gallant
soldier'?" as though there were nothing in the Author of our being akin
to the gallantry in man. Not that such a man would deny the idea, but
that he and the rest are not possessed by joy in its truth. Men of our
race do not deny greatly, but then neither do they joyfully assert. They
have not received the good news of God in Christ.

XIV
We all need to be so possessed before peace comes back. For peace, as
I have said, is the real test of our religion, not war. We have been
plunged into war, rejoicing little in God. We have got to put Him and
His will and desire first before peace returns. Or else the thought of
Him will sink out of our attention, and we shall return to the getting of
gain and to self-service in a mood of perpetual postponement. God will
come last again. He did so in the minds of soldiers at the beginning of

the war. Often they looked upon chaplains as no more than preliminary
undertakers. At the beginning of the war, officers in my old regiment,
in the friendliest way, asked me what there was to do as a chaplain
except burial duties. Clearly they thought of life as something apart
from God.
What is needed is a new joy in God as Love and Purpose, here and now.
Need, whether the pressure of sickness or danger or anxiety or age or
guilt, will often operate in turning the heart God-ward. The sense of
being thrown in