CHURCH AND WAR

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2932, 18 November 1916, Page 6

CHURCH AND WAR

THE CASUALTY LISTS

FELLOWSHIP IN SACRIFICE

Day by day we keep looking with dim eyes at the blinding list of casualties. It seems that if anything could put faith to confusion, if anything could cancel prayer, if anything could quench hope, it would bo this welter of war and wounds and death. How can wa riso out of our darkness and look behind us and before us with quiet and assured hearts? There is a supplication appropriate for the neod in the I,9th Psalm. That psalm has truly beeu called the dirgo of tho world. But it is a dirgo which rises into hope. "Let tho beauty of tho Lord our God be upon us; and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us: yea, tho Work of our hands establish Tliou it." Can tho beauty of the Lord our God rest ou those fields of slaughter? What of the men who seem to pass into the unknown as tho leave trains pull slowly out?- This war can never be taken lightly. ' "War, the great forcing-house of character, admits no, lies. Sooner or later it finds out a man, and ho stands in the pitiless glare of truth for what ho is. : There are hosts of men who have first realised their manhood on the field of death. •• They have wakened 'to the reality of life. They have seen their goal and made for it, and won it. They have given their best aud arc ready to givo their best again, for they have come to know what it is to fight in faith, what it is-to fight-for loyalty and liberty and love and all things that are sacred and dear. They havo come to be aware of the meaning of sacrifice. Arid .so the beauty of the Lord our God- has been upon them. For what is tho beauty of tho Lord bur God? Is it not the beauty of sacrifice ? God is love. And. that we know because God gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Christ, Who was fairer than the children of men, is seen in His full glory' and beauty on the Cross where He died for His brethren. Those who follow in.His steps, who count not their lives dear unto them, have the beauty of the Lord our God resting upon them as they pass through the fury of the battle. Tho beauty of the Lord our God is surely -upon countless thousands of. faces struck Into silence.' They are the faces of those who have sacrificed. But wo cannot be content to leave it there. Something within us protests. The very instincts of humanity rise against acquiescence in tho end, glorious as it is; And so we complete the prayer. AVe have seen the beauty of the Lord outGod on the battlefield; on tho faces of the living and the dead. But wo go on ■to plead: "Establish Thou the work of our hands upon us: yea, tho work of our hands, establish Thou it." "Somewhere in England a telegraph boy comes whistling up the drive, and the woman catches her'breath. .With fingers that tremble she fakes the bulf envelope—with fearful eyes she opens the flimsy paper. Superbly she draws herself up—'There is no answer.' "Lady, you are right. There is no answer, no answer this side of the Great Divide. Just now —with your aching eyes fixed on his chair you face your God, and ask Why? ( He knows, dear woman, He knows, and in time it will-all be clear—the why and the wherefore. Surely it must be so." Surely the beauty of tho Lord our God is upon the brave sufferers who accept in faith and meekness the law appointed to their beloved. Sacrifice cannot be solitary. There are very few so lonely as that some do not suffer in their suffering. - It takes years of living, to understand how dear to a few even the meanest of us is. What remains for the living is to follow the dead. If they submitted themselves to God and hazarded all in the cause of honour, aud wero content to die rather than that their dear land should be enslaved, so those who almost die in their dying have to drink the bitter cup. And they aro drinking it all over the land, in homes. without number. Or they are preparing to drink it, and that too is very hard. But the beauty of the Lord our God, tho beauty of sacrifice, rests upon those who do not scream or rave or charge God foolishly, who seek for His spirit that they may be patient and faithful when the blow falls which is to change all the years. AVe cannot be satisfied, however, unless we are assured that these faithful souls are in safe keeping, and that the offering they made of their all has been marked and accepted by God. AVe lose ourselves amid those casualty lists. AVe are not able to conceive the full magnitude and horror of the war. Mind and heart break down against the sustained effort. A r et we take comfort in the thought that God knows it all, understands it all, and will in -His own good time clear away the mystery. It is well that the bodies sanctified by death should be reverently buried; it is well that the tidings of their passing should be sympathetically conveyed. It is well that kind-hearted men should write letters of syinapthy. It is well that the graves of the soldiers should be carefully marked, to be visited, if it please God, when the war is over. That, wo 6ay, is God's way. He individualises our poor woi'k, however humble it may be. He cares for every one for whom Christ died. AVe shall know one day what worth was in our work, what it contributed to tho general good, how it forwarded tho Kingdom of God. AVe shall know—we individually, for wo-shall survive individually to look back ou all the paths by which we were led. There is no loss, no waste or confusion, in tho ordering of God, and of all that the Father has given to Christ Ho will lose not one. The prayer will bo answered. The work will bo established. The life will bo preserved and carried into the I light where all things shalbbo seen and known even as they truly aro. There will be no lapsing into tho void. AA'c shall walk before God in the. land of the living. Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours and their works do follow them.— "British Weekly."