Nothing short of that will do, I believe, if Christianity is to remain a saving religion. Good men have died in all ages; great teachers have again and again gone to their deaths in behalf of their truth or out of love for their disciples. It touches us as we read of their bravery and their loyalty, but we do not and we cannot build a world-saving religion upon them. Christ is different! We feel that in him the veil is lifted and we are face to face with God. When we hear with our hearts the words, “In the world ye shall have tribulation; but fear not, for I have overcome the world,” we feel that we are hearing the triumph of God in the midst of suffering—we are hearing of an eternal triumph. Christ can not be for us less than God manifested here in a world of time and space and finiteness, doing in time what God does in eternity—suffering over sin, entering vicariously into the tragedy of evil, and triumphing while he treads the winepress. No one has fathomed the awfulness of sin, until, in some sense, he feels that his sin makes God suffer, that it crucifies him afresh. If Christ is God revealed in time—made visible and vocal to men—then, through the cross, we shall discover that we are not to think of God henceforth as Sovereign—not a Being yonder, enjoying his royal splendor. We must think of him all the time in terms of Christ. He is an eternal Lover of our hearts. We pierce him with our sins; we wound him with our wickedness. He suffers, as mothers who love suffer, and he enters vicariously into all the tragic deeps of our lives, striving to bring us home to him. Jan Ruysbroeck says: “You must love the Love which loves you everlastingly, and if you hold fast by his love, he remakes you by his Spirit, and then joy is yours. The Spirit of God breathes into you, and you breathe it out in rest and joy and love. This is eternal life, just as in our mortal life we breathe out the air that is in us and breathe in fresh air.” CHAPTER VIII THE LIGHT-FRINGED MYSTERY I THE RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF DEATH