and release those who through fear of death were all their
lifetime subject to bondage. Hebrews 2:15
War makes death real
to us, and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the
great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of
our mortality. I am inclined to think they were right. All the animal life in
us, all schemes of happiness that centred in this world, were always doomed to
a final frustration. In ordinary times only a wise man can realise it. Now the
stupidest of us knows. We see unmistakably the sort of universe in which we
have all along been living, and must come to terms with it. If we had foolish
un-Christian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought
we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would
turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city
satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon.
But if we thought that for some souls, and at some times, the life of learning,
humbly offered to God, was, in its own small way, one of the appointed
approaches to the Divine reality and the Divine beauty which we hope to enjoy
hereafter, we can think so still.
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