st, or cries aloud upon Christ out of the depths of its
misery, it cries aloud upon all the love that has ever existed in the
world. It enters at such a moment into definite communion with all
the suffering of all the dead and with all the suffering of all the
unborn.

For in the heart of Christ all the dead are gathered up into
immortality, and all their pain remembered. In the heart of Christ
all the unborn live already, in their pain and in their joy; for such
pain and such joy are latent in the ultimate duality of love and
malice, and in the heart of Christ this ultimate duality struggles
with such terrible concentration that all the antagonisms which the
procession of time evokes, all the "moments" of this abysmal
drama, in the past, in the present, in the future, are summed up and
comprehended in what that heart feels.

The ancient human doctrine of "vicarious suffering," the doctrine
that upon the person of Christ all the sins and sorrows of the world
are laid, is not a mere logical conclusion of a certain set of
theological axioms; but is a real and true secret of life, discovered
by our most intimate experience.

The profoundest of all the oracles, uttered out of the depths, is that
saying of Jesus about the "losing" of life to "save" it. This "losing
of life" for Christ's sake is that ultimate act of the will by which
the lusts of the flesh, the pride of life, the possessive instinct, the
hatred of the body, the malice which resists creation, the power of
pride, are all renounced, in order that the soul may enter into that
supreme vision of Christ, wherein by a mysterious movement of
sympathy, all the struggles of all living things are comprehended
and shared.

Thus it is true to say that the object of life for all living souls is
the eternal vision. Towards the attainment of the eternal vision the
love in all living souls perpetually struggles; and against the
attainment of the eternal vision the malice in all living souls
perpetually struggles. We arrive, therefore, at the only adequate
conception of the nature of the gods which the complex vision
permits us.

The nature of the gods, or of the immortals, or, as I have preferred
to call them, the sons of the universe, is a nature which
corresponds to our nature, even as our nature corresponds to the
nature of animals or of plants. The ultimate duality is embodied in
the nature of the gods more richly, more beautifully, more terribly,
in a more dramati