We are having lovely weather.
The buds 'feeling' after each other—new life and resurrection life—a type, a pledge of fuller resurrection, of Easter life—nay, the same Life—'I am the Resurrection and the Life'—working in trees and flowers and man. What a glorious thing to live in a world which has been united with its Maker—a world of perfect law and order—a world where every infraction of law must and will be punished—a world where Love is Law and Law is Love—a world where a great thought is being realised, and will be realised in and for us! You use 'Theology' loosely—'Theology' is the thing and 'Religion' is not, I think, nearly such a fine word. Theology is the Learning, Knowing, Studying God. I am sorry I have said nothing about Jewish sacrificial law. I meant to. That expresses a great fact. It dimly hints (as sacrificial law in other nations does) at the fact that the ground of the universe is self-sacrifice—that the ground of all human, whether family or national, life is a filial sacrifice. I think other nations besides Jews regarded all law as coming from God; nay, I think all nations
To E. N. L., on the occasion of the death of his brother, who was killed by lightning at Cambridge.[1]
June 18, 1892.
… I do feel for you, and could do a great deal to help you. I can only tell you what I have felt to be the only thing which makes life endurable at a time of real sorrow—God Himself. He comes unutterably near in trouble. In fact, one scarcely knows He exists until one loves or sorrows. There is no 'getting over' sorrow. I hate the idea. But there is a 'getting into' sorrow, and finding right in the heart of it the dearest of all human beings—the Man of Sorrows, a God. This may sound as commonplace, but it is awfully real to me. I cling to God. I believe He exists. If He does not, I can explain nothing. If He does, all whom we love are safer with Him than with us. If we can only get nearer ourselves to God, we shall get nearer to those whom we love, for they too are in God.
We shall be one, ever more and more really one, the nearer and the liker we get to God.… My dear friend, words are poor comfort at a time like this, when we see into eternity. A Person is our only hope, and that Person is God. God often takes those whom He loves best home to Himself as soon as He can. In the process of their development they break through the bonds of space and time. He has taken your brother, but not taken him away from you. We are all in the same home—praying for, knowing, loving each other… I believe in the communion of saints—I believe that those who began to know God here, and whom we call dead, are not dead. They are just beginning to live, because they are finding out God: they are just beginning to know us, because they see us as we are—they see us in God. They are with Jesus, and Jesus is a human being. Because they are with a human being, a man, the man, the Son of man, they must, they do, take a deep interest in the affairs of the sons of men, and—may we not believe?—in us, whom they knew below.… These are truths which sorrow helps me to make my own. I pray that you may never, never 'get over' the sorrow, but get through it, into it, into the very heart of God.
[1] Writing to another friend at this time he says, 'He was walking with a friend, and in a moment, without any apparent pain, "God's finger touched him and he slept."'
To A. W. G.
Blackheath: June 27, 1892.