lies in the joy
which letters bring to loving hearts at home. Likewise there is joy in
Heaven when one forgetful wayward son turns in heart thither homewards.

For God loves us and therefore wants us and desires to use us. It is what
He is which is the saving motive of our religion. Every other motive,
however natural, is tainted with morbidity, and can never long possess the
eager hearts of men nor be their glory in the full tide of life. But in
God they can glory as they see what He is, at work with purposes of holy
love in the venture of creation; and this they can see in Christ, living,
suffering, dying, rising, and alive for evermore; or else Christianity is
nothing in the world. That is the pure metal of our glorious religion,
which the fierce fires of war must refine out of its traditional alloy.
That is the great golden secret uttered in Christ--God, all-suffering and
all-faithful love, calling out into active alliance the like qualities in
His children for the accomplishment of His will on earth as in heaven.

XV

We need in peace the free and conscious realisation of that of which men
are perforce, and dumbly, aware in war. It is that there is something
going on in the world which demands primary allegiance, and the putting
second of every self-interest. At the front men hardly know what it is.
They are suspicious of rhetoric and unreality in talk about liberty and
international equity, and right against might. They only know--a wonderful
majority of them--that something great and righteous wants them and
requires of them their help. So, reluctantly, with grumblings and
insistent longing for it all to be over, and yet with the inalienable joy
of doing the right thing, they obstinately endure. We can say, without
apportioning right wholesale to the Allies or wrong wholesale to Germany,
that, however dimly aware of it, they are 'seeking first the Kingdom of
God and His Righteousness.'

Can they maintain this allegiance in peace despite every seduction which
will rush to recapture their souls? That is the great question which all
who call themselves Christians should be considering on their knees while
the war is still raging.

The answer lies in a great measure with the Church. She has to enlist in
her warfare for the kingdom of God--the war which is never over--that
capacity in men for service and suffering which the war has disclosed. How
can this be? Would that I had no uncertain answer to utter!