k 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