, and in Him and through Him alone
did they come unto the Holy Father. I cannot work it out here, but along
this way I seem to travel home into the great evangel of the Atonement.

Only, I plead, this propitiatory work of Christ must come second in the
imagination, and His Love-of-God-revealing work first. And I think in the
course of the history of Christianity an inversion has come about. In
hymns and liturgies the _prima facie_ and predominant emphasis seems
rather to rest on our sinfulness than on God's goodness. Before they do
anything else the Prayer Book, as it is at present used, asks men to
embark on the overloaded phrases of the General Confession. I know that
this may be justified by arguing that the Prayer Book assumes that the
other parts of the Christian religion are in the minds of 'the faithful'
members of the Church. But this assumption is unwarranted as regards the
mass of soldiers whom we keep on inviting to use the more or less
mutilated forms of Morning and Evening Prayer.

And even when we come to the Eucharist, though everything can be found in
it, I often wonder whether there the Church has not come to lay more
stress upon the Cross as the offering for sin than as the disclosure of
the Divine pity for the sinner. If so, is it that too much has been taken
for granted, namely, the Love of God which alone can evoke sorrow for sin
and be worthy of the offering for sin? Has familiarity tended to disguise
and overlay the wonder-compelling revelation of God? In the Eucharist has
He been thought of rather as the Father sitting back in reception of
placation, than as the Father Who, while we are a great way off, runs out
to fall on our neck and bring us home?

I think that a re-ordering is needed. For Christianity, stressed as it
appears to be at present, will never catch the souls of men. I think of
the flying boys who, more than any one else, are winning our battles (I
have been chaplain to a squadron of them for a little time). They are far
from unsinful, but they will nevertheless, I am sure, not _begin_ with the
avowal "that there is no health in them"; they will not sing "that they
are weary of earth and laden with their sins." For as they live almost
gaily and unconcernedly on the edge of things, they know that that is not
the primary truth about themselves. Yet Christ, if in Him they see the
all-hazarding and all-enduring Love of God, can win the love and worship
of their eager hearts. He can cat