Welsh Journals

garded them as poisons. Moreover, there was "Lifeboat Day" when funds must be raised for the equipment of the craft with­ what ? There's the rub, and all the time Tommy hung on. Once or twice, when he was nearly all in, it seemed to him that One came walking on the water, im- patient because His vessel was not at sea, but something hit Tommy, and he woke up to find that a passing vessel had picked him up, a sort of good Samaritan of the waters, and left him in hospital. So far so good, but the exposure and the buffetings have left him very weak, and he is still uncured. Modern science has healed his body, but the wound in his soul festers and burns. His real problem is that of the right physicians (or surgeons) and the right treatment and medi- cine. Of two things he is sure, howbeit in a dumb, inarticulate way. Jesus Christ holds the key to a secret he must know if he is to live, while something called "modern thought" is jolly useful. Poor Tommy, how one sympathises with him. Which Jesus, and what modern thought? On one hand he is told that modern thought has ended Christianity, on the other that Christianity reveals modern thought to be bank- rupt. Because the bottom has been knocked out of hell, a man can no longer love God, as though the Devil, Fear, were the essence of religion. Now hell is a pretty ghastly reality. It emptied itself over our world in 1914,- in a kind of mission- ary enterprise on behalf of its own gods. That modern thought which sentimentalises about hell won't do for Tommy. But equally a God who is eternally defied and defeated, in Whose universe there is a life that love has to give up, finally and for ever, won't do either. If we still live in the world of proof-texts we can strike a nice balance between everlasting hell, and the Son of Man drawing all men unto Himself, or in Paul's language, handing, as it were, a completely re- deemed world into the Father's keeping, and God shall be all and in all. Proof-texts don't help much, for they cancel out. Of course, there is the interpretation of texts, but that lands us on the slippery slopes of "modern thought," the sides of hell's own crater. Once again, poor Tommy Henry Jones, Thomas Rees, and David Williams could have helped him, had he listened to them, but now between the Gospel of Christ the Saviour and modern thought there is no possibility of fusion or compromise. Of two good things (for Tommy believes both are good) he must choose the better, in short he must drug his mind to save his soul. And bless him, he won't! There lies the hope of his salvation. One day he will find that behind the kaleidoscopic pictures of Jesus which have been presented to him, there stands a real Jesus, offering him no guarantees against a pain in his mind, but fellowship in a venture which becomes its own vindication. Among the million incompatible theories labelled "modern thought" he will find a method which justifies itself, thalt of free and candid enquiry. Whatever cur dons may say, there lies at the heart of science and of Christianity the same faith, and the same temper. "Ask, seek, knock"; "Come and see"; or in later language, make your experi- ment, and abide by your end results. But what of the church? Tommy has but to realise that he need not start as it were from the beginning, that others have gone before him, and left him the results of their venture, to be able to "carry on." The true church tells him "There are some experiments you need not make, at any rate on the grand scale. We have well-attested evi- dences and documents in which the work of your predecessors can be examined. Take them into life's great laboratory with you, and use them." What else does science tell him? A science which asks anything else of him is not scientific, and equally a Christianity which de- mands more of him is not Christian. There will be explosions in his laboratory, he will burn his fingers, and question his findings, but if he is sin- cere and humble he will not fail. Fifteen years have gone by since first I met Tommy, and I love him now as then. It seems to me rough luck that anyone should try to per- suade him that his two best friends are sworn enemies and incompatibles. They both tell him the same thing, "Have faith" in short that be- hind the locked doors of life there is not empti- ness or nonsense, and that if he but seeks to understand life, and to abide by what he finds, they will swing open, "magic casements." The Lord of all good life bids him love God with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and not to try to love Him with half his nature. If Tommy has to go to hell for obeying that commandment, I shall hit the road with him again, and we boon companions will find that though we are forced to make our bed in hell, God is there. Heresy? Not a bit of it, for we know of One who reveals the God who does not despair of His universe, and who has not lost faith in His own nature. All our seeing of Him is as through a glass, darkly, but only by being loyal to even that poor seeing shall we behold Him face to face. CONTRIBUTIONS in prose or poetry are invited from readers, and should be sent to the Editor, "Welsh Outlook," Newtown, Mont. In any case a stamped and addressed envelope should be enclosed.