There has been in this war a wonderful display of the heroism of men. But their thoughts about God and religion are for the most part at a level below the highest in themselves. They have come to themselves in giving themselves away. But they think that religion is mostly concerned with self-saving. They tend to recognise most easily the signs of God's favour in this or that instance of safety or escape. This means that they do not think of God in terms of Christ, but that they think of Him as outside the trouble and pain and cost of life, and in the immunity of heaven. They do not think of Him as involved in the risks and agonies of the world. Though they do not formulate it to themselves, the glories of human nature go beyond anything they know of the divine. For them God is less wonderful than man. A fine soldier protested to me lately about the service which was read at the funeral of a very brave officer, "Why say more than 'here is a very gallant soldier'?" as though there were nothing in the Author of our being akin to the gallantry in man. Not that such a man would deny the idea, but that he and the rest are not possessed by joy in its truth. Men of our race do not deny greatly, but then neither do they joyfully assert. They have not received the good news of God in Christ. XIV We all need to be so possessed before peace comes back. For peace, as I have said, is the real test of our religion, not war. We have been plunged into war, rejoicing little in God. We have got to put Him and His will and desire first before peace returns. Or else the thought of Him will sink out of our attention, and we shall return to the getting of gain and to self-service in a mood of perpetual postponement. God will come last again. He did so in the minds of soldiers at the beginning of the war. Often they looked upon chaplains as no more than preliminary undertakers. At the beginning of the war, officers in my old regiment, in the friendliest way, asked me what there was to do as a chaplain except burial duties. Clearly they thought of _life_ as something apart from God. What is needed is a new joy in God as Love and Purpose, here and now. Need, whether the pressure of sickness or danger or anxiety or age or guilt, will often operate in turning the heart God-ward. The sense of being thrown in entire dependence upon God can be the God-given turning-point in a man's life and an end to his godlessness. But need will never provide the lasting religious motive which sets the chord of what is noblest in men vibrating within them. The peculiar glory of the Christian religion is that it provides that motive--it is the motive of God's need. He wants us, for He loves us. He is love.