Thank God for that hope! Thank God for that word!
In "The Ballad of Jim Baxter" this same thought is more vividly and
strongly set forth. It is the story of one type of German cruelty of
which we have heard in the war dispatches several times and that have
been confirmed on the spot; the story of the Germans nailing men to
crosses. Jim Baxter suffered this experience:
"When Jim came to, he found himself
Nailed to a cross of wood,
Just like the Christs you find out there
On every country road.
"He wondered dully if he'd died,
And so, become a Christ;
'Perhaps,' he thought, 'all men are Christs
When they are crucified.'"
The Vision Splendid.
And in this homely lad's homely way of putting his cruel experience who
knows but that there may be such truth as yet we cannot see in the dark
chaos of war?
THE CHRIST AND HIS VOICE
It isn't a far step from the cross to the Christ of the cross, and in
this man's poetry the two mingle and commingle so closely that one
overlaps the other. But always these two things stand out--the cross
and the Christ. And in the new volume, The Fiery Cross, one finds
many pages devoted to this great thought alone.
Of the tenderness of the Christ he speaks most sympathetically, having
in mind again the lads that war has taken. In "The Master's Garden"
hear him:
"And some, with wondrous tenderness,
To His lips He gently pressed,
And fervent blessings breathed on them,
And laid them in His breast.
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