Here is the witness of an educated man, who had long ceased to be a Christian in the conventional usage of the term. He is writing freely to one who had been more than a friend for Christ’s sake, and it is fair to give his words, because death is no longer a mystery to him. “Half-unconsciously I hummed the tune rather than the words of the famous hymn [_When I survey the wondrous Cross_]; As I did so there appeared before me, not a vision of Christ’s person, but of the meaning of the glorious crown of thorns He wore. The King of Heaven, the Prince of Peace, is a man--He took not upon Him the nature of angels. That would have been easy but futile. It would not have linked Him with us closely enough. So my vision told me. He must needs suffer for us.... And if suffering, and forgiveness, and love of our fellows, and general self-forgetfulness be what is required of every one of us, how greatly we all stand in need of His atonement. That was the lasting impression of my vision: but, subsidiary, there was another. I felt, for a moment, a sense of divine spectatorship, as if there was but God in the world besides me; and God, all-seeing, all-understanding, with whom no words were necessary[153].” But also those whose training in the school of life has brought them no such command of words as had the writer of the above, have their own way of voicing the instinct, saying that “if a fellow’s name is written on a bullet he’ll get it, and if it isn’t, he won’t.” Press the naïve metaphor. Who writes the name on the bullet? Not Krupps; they are too busy for that. Then is the writing the writing of God, graven upon the bullet? Probably the man himself would say, Fate is the writer. “Fate” on the lips of men who have nineteen centuries of Christian tradition behind them is only another name, and imperfect, for God the Father. There is fatalism and fatalism. The fatalism of men who, being conscious (however dimly) that duty has drawn them into a war which is at bottom an immense conflict of ideas and ideals regarding the use and abuse of national power, feel somehow that they will not die except they were appointed to lay down their life for others; _that_ fatalism is separated by a hair’s breadth from explicit trust in the overshadowing love of God. Belief in God’s providence may seem difficult to the student at his ease, but it is high human doctrine. It was the doctrine of Jesus; and keen and earnest thinkers, and simple men and women innumerable, facing the sternest facts of life, have found it possible to place their trust in it, and, trusting, have found themselves at peace. _Be not afraid of sudden fear, nor of the desolation of the wicked when it cometh; For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken_ (Pr. 3^{25f}).