after all, the New Testament picture of  a Father and a Son
turns out to be much more accurate than anything we try to substitute for it
That is what always happens when you go away from the words of the Bible. It
is  quite right to go away  from them for  a moment  in  order  to make some
special point clear. But you must always go back. Naturally God knows how to
describe Himself much better than we know how to describe Him. He knows that
Father and Son is  more like  the  relation  between  the First  and  Second
Persons than anything else we can think of. Much the most important thing to
know  is that  it is a relation of love. The Father delights in His Son; the
Son looks up to His Father.
     Before going on, notice the practical importance  of this. All sorts of
people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that "God is love," But
they seem  not  to notice that the words "God is love" have  no real meaning
unless God contains at least two Persons. Love  is something that one person
has for another person. If  God was  a single person, then before the  world
was made, He was not love. Of course, what these people mean  when  they say
that God is love is often something quite different: they really  mean "Love
is God."  They really mean that  our feelings of love,  however and wherever
they arise,  and whatever results they produce, are to be treated with great
respect. Perhaps they are: but  that is something quite different from  what
Christians mean  by  the  statement "God is  love."  They  believe that  the
living, dynamic activity of love has been going  on in  God for ever and has
created everything else.
     And that, by the  way, is perhaps the most important difference between
Christianity and  all other  religions:  that  in Christianity God is not  a
static thing-not  even  a  person-but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life,
almost a kind  of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind
of dance. The union between the Father and Son is such a live concrete thing
that   this  union  itself  is  also  a  Person.  I  know   this  is  almost
inconceivable, but look at it  thus. You know that among human beings,  when
they  get together in a family,  or  a club, or  a trade union,  people talk
about the "spirit" of that family, or club, or trade union. They talk  about
its "spirit"  because  the individual  members, when  they  are together, do
really  develop particular ways of talking and behaving which they would not
have if they were apart. (*)
     ----
     [*] This corporate behaviour may, of course, be either better or  worse
than their individual behaviour.
     ----
     It  is  as  if a sort of  communal personality came into existence.  Of
course, it is not a real  person:  it is only rather like a person. But that
is just one of the  differences between God  and us. What  grows out of  the
joint life of the Father and Son is a real Person, is  in  fact the Third of
the three Persons who are God.
     This third Person is called, in  technical language, the Holy Ghost  or
the "spirit" of God. Do not be worried or surprised if  you find it (or Him)
rather vaguer or more shadowy in your mind than the other two. I think there
is a  reason why that must be so. In the Christian  life you are not usually
looking at Him: He is always acting through you. If you think  of the Father
as something "out  there,"  in  front of you,  and  of the  Son  as  someone
standing at your side, helping you to pray, trying to turn you  into another
son, then you have to think of the third Person as something  inside you, or
behind you. Perhaps some people might find it easier to begin with the third
Person  and  work  backwards.  God is  love,  and  that  love  works through
men-especially through the whole community of Christians. But this spirit of
love is, from all eternity, a love going on between the Father and Son.
     And now, what does it all matter? It matters more than anything else in
the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life
is  to be played out in each one of  us: or (putting it the other way round)
each one of us has got to  enter that pattern, take his place in that dance.
There is no other way to  the happiness for which we were made. Good  things
as well  as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to
get warm you must  stand near the fire:  if you want to be  wet you must get
into the water. If you want joy,  power, peace,  eternal life, you must  get
close to, or  even into, the  thing that has  them. They are not  a  sort of
prizes which God could, if He chose, just hand  out to anyone.  They  are  a
great  fountain of energy and  beauty  spurting up at  the  very  centre  of
reality. If you are dose to it, the spray will  wet you: if you are not, you
will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?
Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?
     But  how  is  he to be united  to God? How is it possible  for us to be
taken into the three-Personal life?
     You remember what I said in Chapter II about  begetting  and making. We
are not  begotten by God, we  are only made by Him: in our  natural state we
are  not  sons  of God, only (so to speak)  statues. We have  not got Zoe or
spiritual life: only Bios or biological life which is presently going to run
down and die. Now the whole offer  which Christianity makes is this: that we
can, if we let God have His way, come to share  in the life of Christ. If we
do, we shall  then be  sharing a life  which  was begotten,  not made, which
always has  existed and  always will exist Christ  is the Son of God. If  we
share in this kind of  life we also shall be sons of God.  We shall love the
Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world
and became  a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has-by
what I call "good infection." Every Christian is to become a little  Christ.
The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.

        5. The Obstinate Toy Soldiers


     The Son of God  became a man to enable men to become sons of God. We do
not  know-anyway,  I  do not know-how things would have worked if the  human
race had  never rebelled against God and joined the enemy. Perhaps every man
would have been "in Christ," would have  shared the life of the Son of  God,
from  the moment he  was born. Perhaps the  Bios or natural  life would have
been  drawn up into the Zoe, the uncreated life, at once and as a matter  of
course. But that is guesswork. You and I  are concerned  with the way things
work now.
     And the present state of things is this. The two kinds of life are  now
not only different  (they would always have been that) but actually opposed.
The  natural life  in each of us is something self-centred,  something  that
wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit
the whole universe. And especially it wants to be  left to  itself: to  keep
well away from anything better or stronger or higher  than it, anything that
might make it feel small. It is afraid of the light and air of the spiritual
world, just as people who have been  brought  up to be dirty are afraid of a
bath. And in a sense it is quite right It knows that  if the  spiritual life
gets hold  of it,  all its  self-centredness  and self-will  are going to be
killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that
     Did you ever think, when you were a child, what fun it would be if your
toys could come to life? Well suppose you  could really have brought them to
life. Imagine turning a tin soldier into a real little man. It would involve
turning the tin  into flesh. And suppose the tin soldier did  not like it He
is not interested  in flesh;  all he sees is that the tin is being spoilt He
thinks you are killing him. He will do everything  he can to prevent you. He
will not be made into a man if he can help it.
     What you would have done about that tin soldier I do not know. But what
God did about us was this.  The Second Person in God, the Son, became  human
Himself: was born into the world as an actual man-a real man of a particular
height, with  hair of a  particular  colour, speaking a particular language,
weighing  so many  stone.  The Eternal Being, who knows  everything  and who
created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before  that) a baby,
and before that a foetus inside a Woman's body.  If you want to get the hang
of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.
     The result of this was that you now had one man who really was what all
men were intended to be: one man in whom the created  life, derived from his
Mother,  allowed  itself to  be  completely  and  perfectly turned into  the
begotten life. The natural human creature in Him was taken up fully into the
divine  Son. Thus in one instance  humanity had,  so to  speak, arrived: had
passed into the life of Christ.  And because the whole  difficulty for us is
that  the natural life has to be, in a sense,  "killed," He chose an earthly
career  which   involved  the   killing  of  His  human  desires   at  every
turn-poverty, misunderstanding  from His own family, betrayal by  one of His
intimate  friends,  being  jeered  at  and  manhandled by  the  Police,  and
execution by torture. And then, after  being thus killed-killed every day in
a sense-the human creature in  Him, because it was united to the divine Son,
came to life again. The Man in  Christ rose again: not only the God. That is
the whole point For the  first time we saw a real man. One tin  soldier-real
tin, just like the rest-had come fully and splendidly alive.
     And  here, of course, we come to the point where  my illustration about
the tin soldier breaks down. In the case of real toy soldiers or statues, if
one  came to life, it would obviously  make  no difference to the rest. They
are  all separate. But human beings  are not. They look separate because you
see diem walking about separately. But then, we are  so made that we can see
only  the present  moment. If we could see the past, then of course it would
look different. For there was a time when every man  was part of his mother,
and (earlier still) part of his  father as well: and when they  were part of
his grandparents. If you could see humanity spread out in time, as  God sees
it, it  would not look like a lot of separate things dotted about. It  would
look  like  one single growing thing-  rather like a  very complicated tree.
Every individual would appear connected with every other. And not only that.
Individuals are not really separate from God any more than from one another.
Every man, woman, and child  all over the world is  feeling and breathing at
this moment only because God, so to speak, is "keeping him going."
     Consequently, when Christ becomes man it  is not really as if you could
become one particular  tin soldier. It  is as if  something  which is always
affecting  the whole human mass begins, at one point,  to  affect that whole
human  mass in  a  new way. From that  point the effect  spreads through all
mankind. It makes a difference to people who lived before  Christ as well as
to  people who lived after  Him.  It makes  a  difference to people who have
never heard of Him. It  is  like dropping into a glass of water one drop  of
something which gives a new taste or a  new colour to the whole lot. But, of
course, none of these illustrations really  works perfectly. In the long run
God is no one  but Himself and what He does is like nothing else.  You could
hardly expect it to be.
     What,  then, is the  difference  which  He has made to the whole  human
mass? It is just this; that the business of becoming a son of God, of  being
turned from  a created thing into a begotten thing, of passing over from the
temporary biological life into timeless "spiritual" life, has been done  for
us.  Humanity  is  already  "saved" in  principle. We  individuals  have  to
appropriate that salvation. But the  really tough work-the bit we  could not
have  done for  ourselves-has been  done  for us. We have not  got to try to
climb  up into spiritual life  by our own  efforts; it has already come down
into the human race. If we will  only lay  ourselves open to the one  Man in
whom it was fully  present, and  who, in  spite of being God, is also a real
man,  He will  do it in  us and for  us. Remember what  I said  about  "good
infection." One of our own race has this new life: if we get close to Him we
shall catch it from Him.
     Of course, you can express this in all sorts of different ways. You can
say that Christ died for our  sins. You may say that the Father has forgiven
us because Christ has done for us what  we ought to  have done. You may  say
that we are  washed in the blood  of  the Lamb. You may say that  Christ has
defeated death. They  are  all true. If any of them do not  appeal  to  you,
leave it alone and get on with the formula that does. And, whatever you  do,
do not start  quarrelling with other people because  they  use  a  different
formula from yours.

        6. Two Notes


     In order  to avoid  misunderstanding I  here add  notes  on  two points
arising out of the last chapter.
     (1) One sensible critic wrote asking me why, if God wanted sons instead
of "toy soldiers," He did not beget many sons at the outset instead of first
making toy soldiers and  then bringing them to life by such a difficult  and
painful process. One part of the answer to this question is fairly easy: the
other  part is probably beyond all human  knowledge. The easy  part is this.
The process of being turned from a creature into a  son  would not have been
difficult  or  painful if  the  human  race  had  not turned  away  from God
centuries ago. They  were able to do this because He gave them free will: He
gave them free will because  a world of mere  automata could never  love and
therefore never know infinite happiness. The  difficult part  is  this.  All
Christians are  agreed  that there  is, in the full and original sense, only
one "Son  of God."  If we insist on asking "But could there have been many?"
we find ourselves in very deep  water. Have the  words "Could have been" any
sense at  all when  applied to  God? You can say that one  particular finite
thing "could have been" different from  what it  is,  because it  would have
been different if something else had been  different, and the something else
would have been different if some third thing had been different, and so on.
(The letters on this page would have  been red  if the printer  had used red
ink, and  he would have used red ink  if he had been instructed  to, and  so
on.) But  when you  are  talking  about  God-i.e.  about  the  rock  bottom,
irreducible Fact on  which all other facts depend- it is nonsensical  to ask
if  It  could  have been otherwise. It is what It is, and there is an end of
the matter. But quite apart  from  this, I find a  difficulty about the very
idea of  the  Father begetting  many sons from all eternity.  In order to be
many they would have  to be somehow different  from one another. Two pennies
have  the  same shape. How are  they two? By  occupying different places and
containing different atoms.  In other words, to think of them  as different,
we have had  to  bring in space and matter; in fact we have  had to bring in
"Nature"  or the  created universe. I can understand the distinction between
the Father and the Son without bringing in space or matter, because the  one
begets  and the other is begotten.  The  Father's relation to the Son is not
the same as the Son's relation to the Father. But if there were several sons
they would all be related to one another and to the Father in  the same way.
How would they differ from one another? One  does  not notice the difficulty
at first, of course. One thinks one can form the idea of several "sons." But
when  I think closely, I find that the  idea seemed possible only because  I
was vaguely imagining  them as human forms standing  about together  in some
kind of space.  In  other words, though I  pretended  to  be  thinking about
something that exists  before any universe was made,  I was really smuggling
in the picture of a universe  and putting  that something inside  it. When I
stop doing that and still  try to think of  the Father begetting  many  sons
"before all worlds" I find  I am not really  thinking of anything. The  idea
fades away into mere words. (Was Nature-space  and  time and  matter-created
precisely in order to make manyness possible? Is there perhaps no  other way
of  getting many  eternal  spirits  except  by  first  making  many  natural
creatures, in a universe,  and then spiritualising them?  But  of course all
this is guesswork.)
     (2) The idea that  the whole human race is,  in a sense, one thing -one
huge organism,  like  a  tree-must  not  be  confused  with  the  idea  that
individual differences do not matter or that real people,  Tom and Nobby and
Kate, are somehow less important than collective things like classes, races,
and so forth. Indeed the two ideas are opposites. Things  which are parts of
a single organism  may be very different  from one another: things which are
not, may be very alike. Six pennies are  quite  separate and very alike:  my
nose and my lungs  are very different but they are only alive at all because
they are parts of my  body and share its common life. Christianity thinks of
human individuals not as mere members of a group  or items in a list, but as
organs  in  a body-different from one  another and each contributing what no
other  could.  When  you  find  yourself wanting to  turn your children,  or
pupils, or even your neighbours, into people exactly like yourself, remember
that God probably  never meant them to be that.  You  and they are different
organs, intended  to do different things.  On the  other hand, when  you are
tempted not  to bother about someone else's  troubles because  they are  "no
business of yours," remember that though he is different from you he is part
of the same  organism  as you.  If you forget that he  belongs  to  the same
organism as yourself you will become an Individualist. If you forget that he
is a different organ from you, if you want to  suppress differences and make
people all alike, you will  become a Totalitarian. But a Christian must  not
be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist.
     I feel  a  strong desire to  tell you-and I  expect  you  feel a strong
desire to tell me-which of these two  errors is the worse. That is the devil
getting at  us.  He always  sends  errors into  the  world in pairs-pairs of
opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which
is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the
one  error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be
fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between
both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.

        7. Let's Pretend


     May I once again start  by putting two pictures, or two stories rather,
into your minds? One is  the story you  have all read called Beauty and  the
Beast. The girl, you remember,  had to marry a  monster for some reason. And
she did. She kissed it as if it were a man. And then, much to her relief, it
really turned into a man and all went well. The other story is about someone
who had to wear a mask; a mask which made him look much nicer than he really
was. He had to wear it for  year.  And  when he took it off he found his own
face had grown to fit it. He was  now really  beautiful.  What had begun  as
disguise had become a reality. I think both these stories may (in a fanciful
way,  of course)  help to illustrate what I have to say in this chapter.  Up
till  now, I have been trying to describe  facts-what God is and what He has
done. Now I want  to talk about practice-what do we do next? What difference
does  all this  theology make? It can start  making a difference tonight. If
you are interested enough to have read thus  far you are probably interested
enough to  make a  shot at saying your prayers: and, whatever  else you say,
you will probably say the Lord's Prayer.
     Its  very  first words are Our Father. Do you now  see what those words
mean? They mean quite frankly, that you are putting yourself in the place of
a son of God. To put it bluntly, you are dressing up as Christ. If you like,
you  are  pretending.  Because, of  course, the  moment you realise what the
words mean, you  realise  that you  are not a son of God.  You are not being
like The Son of God, whose will and interests are at  one with those  of the
Father: you  are a bundle of self-centred fears,  hopes, greeds, jealousies,
and self-conceit,  all doomed to death.  So that, in a way, this dressing up
as Christ is a piece of outrageous cheek.  But  the odd thing is that He has
ordered us to do it.
     Why? What is the good of pretending  to be what you are not? Well, even
on the human  level, you know, there are two kinds of pretending. There is a
bad kind, where the pretence is  there instead of  the real thing; as when a
man pretends he is  going  to help  you instead of  really  helping you. But
there  is also a good  kind,  where the pretence leads up to the real thing.
When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the
best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave
as if you  were a nicer person than you  actually are. And in a few minutes,
as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were.
Very often the only way to get a quality in  reality is to start behaving as
if you had it  already.  That is why children's games are so important. They
are  always  pretending to be grown-ups-playing soldiers,  playing shop. But
all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits, so
that the pretence of being grown-up helps them to grow up in earnest.
     Now, the moment  you realise "Here I am, dressing up as Christ," it  is
extremely  likely that you will  see at once some way in which  at that very
moment the pretence could be made less of a pretence  and more of a reality.
You will find several  things going on in your mind which would not be going
on there  if  you were really a son  of  God.  Well,  stop  them. Or you may
realise  that, instead  of saying your  prayers, you ought to be  downstairs
writing a letter, or helping your wife to wash-up. Well, go and do it.
     You  see what  is happening. The Christ Himself, the Son of God who  is
man  (just like you) and God (just like His Father) is actually at your side
and  is  already  at that  moment  beginning to turn  your  pretence into  a
reality. This  is not  merely a fancy  way of saying that your conscience is
telling you  what  to do. If  you simply ask your  conscience, you  get  one
result:  if you  remember that you are  dressing  up as  Christ,  you get  a
different one. There are lots of things which your conscience might not call
definitely wrong (specially things in  your mind)  but which you will see at
once you cannot go on doing if you are seriously trying to  be like  Christ.
For you are no longer thinking  simply about right and wrong; you are trying
to  catch  the  good  infection  from  a Person. It is more like  painting a
portrait than like  obeying  a set of rules. And the odd thing is that while
in one way it  is much harder than keeping  rules,  in another way it is far
easier.
     The real Son of  God is at your side.  He is beginning to turn you into
the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to "inject"
His kind of life  and thought, His Zoe, into you; beginning  to turn the tin
soldier into a live man. The part of  you that does not like it  is the part
that is still tin.
     Some of you may feel that this is very unlike your  own experience. You
may say "I've  never had  the sense  of being helped by an invisible Christ,
but I often have been helped by other human beings." That is rather like the
woman in the first war who said that if there were a bread shortage it would
not bother  her  house because they always ate toast. If there is  no  bread
there will be no toast. If there were no help from Christ, there would be no
help from other human beings. He works on us in all sorts of  ways: not only
through what we think our "religious life." He works through Nature, through
our  own bodies, through books, sometimes through experiences which seem (at
the time) anti-Christian. When a young man who has been going to church in a
routine way honestly realises that he does not  believe in  Christianity and
stops going-provided he does it for honesty's sake and not just to annoy his
parents-the spirit of Christ is probably nearer to him then than it ever was
before. But above all, He works on us through each other.
     Men  are mirrors,  or "carriers"  of Christ  to  other  men.  Sometimes
unconscious carriers. This "good infection" can be carried by those who have
not got it themselves. People  who were not Christians themselves  helped me
to  Christianity.  But usually it is those  who know Him  that bring  Him to
others. That is why the Church, the whole body of Christians showing  Him to
one another, is so important.  You might  say  that when  two Christians are
following Christ together there is not  twice as  much Christianity as  when
they are apart, but sixteen times as much.
     But do  not forget this. At first it is  natural for a baby to take its
mother's  milk without knowing  its mother. It  is equally natural for us to
see the man who helps us without seeing  Christ behind him. But we  must not
remain babies. We must go on to recognise the  real Giver. It is madness not
to. Because, if we  do not, we shall be relying on human beings. And that is
going to let us down. The best of them will  make mistakes; all of them will
die. We must  be thankful  to all the  people  who  have helped  us, we must
honour  them  and love them. But never, never  pin your whole  faith on  any
human being: not if he  is the best and wisest in the whole world. There are
lots of nice things you can do with sand; but do not try building a house on
it.
     And now we begin to see  what  it is that  the New Testament is  always
talking about. It talks about Christians  "being born again"; it talks about
them "putting on  Christ";  about Christ "being  formed  in us";  about  our
coming to "have the mind of Christ."
     Put  right out  of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of
saying  that Christians  are to read what Christ said and  try to  carry  it
out-as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try  to carry it out. They
mean something much  more than  that. They mean  that a real Person, Christ,
here and now, in that  very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing
things to  you.  It is not a  question of a good man who died  two  thousand
years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much
God as He was when He created the world, really  coming and interfering with
your very self; killing the old natural  self  in you and  replacing it with
the  kind  of  self  He has. At first,  only for moments.  Then  for  longer
periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a different
sort  of  thing; into  a new little Christ, a being  which, in its own small
way,  has the  same  kind of  life as God; which  shares in His power,  joy,
knowledge and eternity. And soon we make two other discoveries.
     (1)  We  begin  to notice,  besides  our  particular  sinful acts,  our
sinfulness; begin to be alarmed not only about what we do, but about what we
are. This may sound rather difficult, so I will try to make it clear from my
own case. When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of
the day, nine  times out of ten the  most  obvious  one is  some sin against
charity; I have sulked  or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the
excuse  that immediately  springs to my mind is that the provocation was  so
sudden and unexpected: I was caught off my guard, I had  not time to collect
myself.  Now  that may  be  an extenuating  circumstance  as  regards  those
particular  acts: they would obviously be worse if they had  been deliberate
and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken
off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what
pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there
are rats  in  a cellar you  are most  likely  to see them if you go  in very
suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them
from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make
me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I  am. The
rats are  always there  in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily
they will have taken  cover before you switch  on  the light. Apparently the
rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always  there in  the cellar of my
soul. Now that cellar is out of reach of  my conscious will.  I can  to some
extent control my acts: I have no direct control over my temperament. And if
(as I said before) what we are matters even more than what we do-if, indeed,
what we do matters chiefly as evidence of what  we are-then it  follows that
the change which I most  need to undergo  is a  change  that my  own direct,
voluntary  efforts cannot bring  about  And this applies to  my good actions
too. How many of  them were done for the right  motive? How many for fear of
public opinion,  or a desire to show off? How  many from a sort of obstinacy
or sense of superiority which, in different circumstances, might equally had
led to some very bad act? But I cannot, by direct moral effort,  give myself
new motives. After the first few steps in the Christian life we realise that
everything which really needs  to  be done in our  souls can be done only by
God. And that brings  us to  something which has been  very misleading in my
language up to now.
     (2)  I  have been talking  as  if it  were  we  who  did everything. In
reality, of course, it is God who does everything. We, at most, allow  it to
be done to us.  In a  sense  you  might  even say it  is God  who  does  the
pretending. The Three-Personal God,  so to speak, sees before Him in  fact a
self-centred, greedy, grumbling, rebellious human animal.  But  He says "Let
us pretend that this is not  a mere creature, but our Son. It is like Christ
in so far as it is  a Man, for He became Man. Let us pretend that it is also
like Him in  Spirit. Let us treat it as if it  were what  in fact it is not.
Let us pretend in order to make the pretence  into a reality."  God looks at
you  as  if  you were a  little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you
into one. I daresay this idea of a divine make-believe sounds rather strange
at  first. But,  is it so strange  really? Is not that how  the higher thing
always raises the lower? A mother teaches her baby to  talk by talking to it
as if it understood long before it really does. We treat our dogs as if they
were "almost  human":  that is why they really become "almost  human" in the
end.

        8. Is Christianity Hard Or Easy?


     In the last chapter we were considering  the Christian idea of "putting
on Christ,"  or  first "dressing up" as a son of God in order  that you  may
finally become a real son. What I want to make clear is that this is not one
among many jobs  a Christian has  to  do; and it is not  a  sort  of special
exercise for  the top class.  It is  the whole of Christianity. Christianity
offers  nothing else at all. And I should  like  to point out how it differs
from ordinary ideas of "morality" and "being good."
     The ordinary idea which we  all  have before  we become  Christians  is
this. We  take as starting point  our ordinary self with its various desires
and interests. We then admit  that  something  else  call it  "morality"  or
"decent behaviour," or "the good of society" has claims on this self: claims
which interfere with its own desires. What we mean by "being good" is giving
in to those claims. Some  of the things the ordinary self wanted to do  turn
out to be what we  call "wrong": well, we  must give  them up. Other things,
which  the self did  not want to do, turn  out to be  what we call  "right":
well, we shall have to do them. But we are hoping all the time that when all
the  demands  have  been  met, the  poor natural  self  will still have some
chance, and some time, to get on with its own life and do what it  likes. In
fact,  we  are  very like an honest man  paying  his taxes. He pays them all
right, but he does  hope that there will be enough left over for him to live
on. Because we are still taking our natural self as the starting point.
     As long as  we are thinking  that  way, one or other of two  results is
likely  to follow. Either we give up trying  to be  good, or  else we become
very unhappy indeed. For, make no mistake: if you are really going to try to
meet all the demands made  on the natural self, it will not have enough left
over to live on. The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience
will  demand of you. And your natural  self, which is thus being starved and
hampered and worried at every turn, will  get  angrier  and angrier. In  the
end, you will either give up trying to be  good, or else become one of those
people who, as they  say, "live  for  others" but always  in a discontented,
grumbling  way-always wondering why  the  others  do not notice it more  and
always making a martyr of yourself.  And once you have become that  you will
be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have
been if you had remained frankly selfish.
     The Christian way  is different: harder, and easier. Christ says  "Give
me All. I don't want so much of your time and so  much of  your money and so
much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self,
but to kill  it. No half-measures are any good. I  don't want  to cut off  a
branch  here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don't
want to drill the tooth, or  crown it, or  stop it, but to have it out. Hand
over  the whole natural self,  all the desires  which  you think innocent as
well  as  the ones  you think wicked-the whole outfit. I will give you a new
self  instead.  In fact, I  will give you Myself: my own  will  shall become
yours."
     Both harder  and easier than what  we  are all trying  to  do. You have
noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way
as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, "Take up your Cross"-in other
words,  it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next
minute  he says, "My yoke  is easy  and my burden light." He means both. And
one can just see why both are true.
     Teachers will tell you that the laziest boy in the class is the one who
works hardest  in the end. They mean this.  If you  give two  boys,  say,  a
proposition in geometry to do, the  one who is prepared to take trouble will
try to understand  it. The lazy boy will  try to learn it by heart  because,
for the moment, that needs less effort. But six months  later, when they are
preparing for an exam., that lazy boy is doing  hours and hours of miserable
drudgery over things the other boy understands, and positively enjoys,  in a
few minutes. Laziness  means  more work in the long run. Or look  at it this
way. In a battle, or in mountain climbing, there is often one thing which it
takes  a lot  of  pluck to do;  but it is also, in  the long run, the safest
thing to do. If you  funk  it, you will  find yourself, hours  later, in far
worse danger. The cowardly thing is also the most dangerous thing.
     It  is like that here. The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing,
is to hand over your whole self-all  your wishes and  precautions-to Christ.
But it is far  easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we
are  trying to  do is to remain what  we call "ourselves," to  keep personal
happiness as  our  great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good." We
are all trying to let  our mind and heart go their  own way-centred on money
or pleasure or ambition-and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and
chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not
do. As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains
nothing  but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may  keep
it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce
wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and
re-sown.
     That  is why the real  problem of the Christian life comes where people
do not usually  look  for it. It  comes  the  very moment  you wake  up each
morning.  All  your  wishes  and  hopes  for the day  rush at  you like wild
animals. And the first  job each morning consists simply in shoving them all
back;  in listening  to that other voice, taking that  other point  of view,
letting that other larger, stronger,  quieter life come flowing  in.  And so
on, all day. Standing back from all  your natural  fussings  and  frettings;
coming in out of the wind.
     We can only do it  for moments at first. But from those moments the new
sort  of  life  will be  spreading through  our system: because now  we  are
letting  Him work at  the right part  of  us.  It is  the difference between
paint, which is merely  laid on the surface,  and a dye or stain which soaks
right through. He  never talked vague,  idealistic  gas. When he  said,  "Be
perfect," He meant it. He meant that  we must go  in for the full treatment.
It is  hard; but  the  sort  of compromise we  are all  hankering  after  is
harder-in fact,  it is impossible. It may be hard  for an egg to turn into a
bird: it would  be a  jolly  sight  harder  for  it to  learn  to fly  while
remaining an  egg.  We are  like eggs  at  present. And  you  cannot  go  on
indefinitely being just  an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched  or  go
bad.
     May  I  come  back  to  what  I  said  before?  This  is the  whole  of
Christianity. There  is  nothing else.  It  is so easy  to get muddled about
that.  It  is  easy  to  think  that  the  Church  has  a  lot of  different
objects-education, building, missions,  holding services. Just as it is easy
to  think  the  State  has a lot of different  objects-military,  political,
economic, and what  not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The
State exists  simply to promote  and to  protect  the ordinary happiness  of
human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple
of  friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own
room or digging in his own garden-that is  what the State  is there for. And
unless they are  helping to increase  and prolong and protect  such moments,
all  the  laws,  parliaments, armies, courts,  police, economics, etc.,  are
simply a waste of  time. In the same way the Church exists for  nothing else
but to draw men  into Christ, to make them little  Christs.  If they are not
doing that,  all  the cathedrals, clergy,  missions, sermons, even the Bible
itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.  It
is  even doubtful, you know, whether  the whole universe was created for any
other purpose. It says in the Bible  that  the whole  universe  was made for
Christ  and that  everything  is to be  gathered together in Him.  I do  not
suppose any  of us can  understand how this will happen as regards the whole
universe.  We do not know  what (if anything) lives in the parts of it  that
are millions of miles away from this Earth. Even on  this Earth  we  do  not
know how it  applies to things other than men. After all, that  is  what you
would expect. We  have been shown the plan  only  in so far as  it  concerns
ourselves.
     I  sometimes like to imagine that  I can just see how it might apply to
other things. I  think I can see how the higher animals are in a sense drawn
into  Man  when he loves them and makes them (as he  does)  much more nearly
human than they would otherwise be. I can even see a sense in which the dead
things  and  plants are  drawn  into  Man  as he studies them and  uses  and
appreciates  them. And if there  were  intelligent creatures in other worlds
they might do the  same with their worlds. It might be that when intelligent
creatures entered into  Christ they would, in that