To the right of him the long lines of the tents spread upwards towards the kopje; to the left the veldt, with its wealth of grey-green grass, sown by the bounteous hand of the Great Harvester; all around him, excepting where the graves raised their red-brown furrows, rows of soldiers lounged, listing to the old, old story of man's weakness and eternal shame, and Christ's love and everlasting pity. On the soldier preacher's breast a long row of decorations gleamed, telling of honourable service to Queen and country. Before a man could wear those ribbons he must have faced death as brave men face it on many a battlefield. He must have known the agonies of thirst, the dull dead pain of sleepless nights and midnight marches, the tireless watching at the sentry's post, and the onward rush of armed men up heights almost unscalable. On Egypt's sun-scorched plains he must have faced the mad onslaughts of the Dervish hosts, and rallied with the men who held the lines at Abu Klea Wells, where gallant Burnaby was slain. The hills of Afghanistan must have re-echoed to his tread, else why the green and crimson ribbon that mingled with the rest? His eyes had flashed along the advancing lines of charging impi, led by Zulu chiefs. Yet never had they flashed with braver light than now, when, facing that half-mocking, half-reckless crowd, he cried:
"Prepare ter meet yer God!"
Rough as the thrust of a broken bayonet was his speech, unskilled in rhetoric his tongue, his periods unrounded as flying fragments of shrapnel shell; yet all who listened knew that every word came from the speaker's soul, from the magazine of truth. Some London slum had been his cradle, the gutters of the great city the only University his feet had known, the costers' dialect was native to his tongue; yet no smug Churchman crowned with the laurels of the schools could so have stirred the blood of those wild lads, fresh from the boundless bush and lawless mining camps beneath Australian suns.
"Prepare ter meet yer God!"
And even as he spoke we, who listened, plainly heard the rolling thunder of our guns as they spoke in sterner tones to the nation's foes from Modder River. It was no new figure that the soldier preacher placed before us. It was the same indignant Christ that swept the rabble from the Temple; the same great Christ who calmly faced the seething mob in Pilate's judgment hall; the same sweet Christ who took the babes upon His knee; the same Divine Christ who, with hyssop and gall, and mingled blood and tears, passed death's dread portals on the dark brow of Calvary. The same grand figure, but quaintly dressed in words that savoured of the London slums and of the soldier's camp, and yet so hedged around with earnest love and childlike faith that all its grossest trappings fell away and left us nothing but the ideal Christ.
Once more we heard the distant batteries speak to those whose hands had rudely grasped the Empire's flag, and every rock, and hill, and crag, and stony height took up the echo, like a lion's roar, until the whispering wind was tremulous with sound. Then all was hushed except the preacher's voice.
"Prepare ter meet yer God! I've come ter tell yer all abart a General whose armies hold ther City of Eternal Life. If you are wounded, throw yer rifles down, 'nd 'e will send the ambulance of 'is love, with Red Cross angels, and 'is adjutant, whose name is Mercy, to dress yer wounds. Throw down yer rifles 'nd surrender. No rebels can enter the City of Eternal Life. You can't storm ther walls, Or take ther gates at ther point of ther baynit, for ther ramparts are guarded 'nd ther sentries never sleep. When ther bugles sound ther larst reville you will ever 'ear, 'nd ther colonel, whose name is Death, gives the order ter march, you'll have nothink to fear abart, if yer bandoliers are full o' faith 'nd yer rifles are sighted with good works. Yer uniforms may be ragged, and you may not even have a corporal's stripe to show; but if yer can pass ther sentries fearlessly, you'll find a general's commission waitin' for yer just inside ther gate. But yer earn't fool with my General. Remember this: ther password is, 'Repentance,' 'nd nothink else will do. The sentry on duty will see you comin' and will challenge you. 'Who goes there?' 'Friend!' 'Advance, friend, 'nd give ther counter-sign!' If you say, 'Good works,' you'll find 'is baynit up against yer chest. If yer say you forgot to get it, you'll be in ther clink in 'ell in ther twinklin' of an eye; but if yer say, loud 'nd clear, 'Repentance,' 'e will lower 'is baynit 'nd say, 'Pass, friend. All's well!'"
PRESIDENT STEYN.
Out on the veldt, far from the wife and home he loves so well, he stands, our country's bold, unyielding foe. And even as he stands he knows that the finger of Fate has written his own and his country's doom in letters large and deep on the walls of time. Yet, with unblenching brow, he waits the falling of the thunderbolt, a calm, grand figure, fit to live in history's pages when every memory of meaner men has passed into oblivion, M.T. Steyn, President of the shattered Free State of South Africa. Around this man the human jackals howl to try with lying lips to foul his memory. Yet, as a rock, age after age, throws back with contemptuous strength the waves that break against its base, so every action of his manly life gives the lie to tales which cowards tell.