"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 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.