Once you get fairly hold of this idea of Christianity being largely a matter of personal loyalty to Jesus Christ, then your "religion" will begin to become alive in all sorts of unsuspected ways. Prayer will cease to be a more or less formal duty which you hardly like to give up, and will become instead a real intercourse with God which you find you cannot do without. The Bible, too, will no longer be, what it too often is, a mere adjunct of conventional religion, but will become instead a living book, a book which makes you see, as nothing else can, the mind and character and purposes of the King you are trying to serve. Public worship will be a pleasure instead of a bore, because you have discovered its point and meaning. And the Holy Communion, instead of being either a religious "extra" beyond your reach or else an occasional effort out of touch with your ordinary life, will take its place as an indispensable means of bringing new life to your soul, as a wonderful pledge of His amazing love and of all that you long to give Him in response.
Now there are two things which this loyalty to the King of Kings will necessarily involve. To be loyal to Him will mean being loyal to the Christian Brotherhood and loyal to the Christian Cause. Loyalty to a brotherhood is a thing that should come naturally to a soldier, or indeed to anyone who has imbibed the highest traditions of our Public Schools and Universities and Services. "Comradeship," says a soldier who ought to know, "Comradeship is the saving characteristic of the British Army." A man has learnt one of the greatest lessons of life when he realizes that the honour of the Regiment is of far greater moment than his own personal success, than his life even. As a senior subaltern said to a junior brother officer, when giving him some homely advice on the day that he passed his recruits' drills and was finally "off the square":--"All that you've got to remember is that it's the Regiment which counts; and you've got to make yourself a credit to it."[1] Again and again in this war it has been shown what a wonderful force there is in this Regimental esprit de corps. There can be no doubt--to cite one instance only--that this spirit, this tradition, was a vital factor in the glorious achievements of the immortal 29th Division at Gallipoli.
[1] "The Making of an Officer." The Times, June 8, 1916.
"It's the Regiment which counts." The Christian Church could do with more of this spirit of mutual loyalty. We are "members one of another," urged St. Paul; and yet how little there is of real brotherliness among us Christians! When we find a man is a fellow-Christian, whatever his social position may be, we ought to have that kind of feeling towards him that we should have if he had been at our school, or belonged to our Regiment. There is no free-masonry like that which links together those who have a common love for Jesus Christ and a common interest in His purposes. Moreover, this sense of being one of a great Brotherhood is a spiritual safeguard and incentive. When you and I fail, it is not just our own Christianity that suffers: we are "letting down" the whole Brotherhood, we are lowering great and immemorial traditions, we are proving unworthy of the unnumbered multitude of Christian heroes who, in every generation, have fought the good light of faith. "Therefore, surrounded as we are by such a vast cloud of witnesses let us fling aside every encumbrance and the sin that so readily entangles our feet, and let us run with patient endurance the race that lies before us, fixing our gaze on Jesus our Prince Leader in the Faith."[2]
[2] Hebrews xii 1, 2. Weymouth's Version.
Any genuine loyalty to our "Prince Leader" carries with it, of necessity, loyalty to His Cause. I have said something, in a previous Chapter, about the call to Christians to do some fighting in the real Holy War. I would urge, once more, that the true Knight of Christ cannot do less than place himself, and all that he has, at the disposal of his Master's Cause.
"A Christian," says a recent writer, "is one who believes in and supports the claim of Christ to universal Sovereignty." Christ needs men who will spend themselves in His Cause with the same splendid devotion that men show when they are fighting for their country. In the recent advance,[3] as the Newfoundland Regiment was pushing along through a storm of lead, a corporal turned to the man by his side and said, "If I go down you take charge and go straight ahead." A minute afterwards a bullet hit him in the chest and he dropped. The man he had spoken to tried to lift him up, but he was done for, and his last words were "Push on with it."
[3] July, 1916.
Those words might serve as a motto for all those who are beginning to see that the greatest Enterprise of all, and one most worth serving, is that of extending the Kingdom of God over the face of the whole earth. The time is ripe indeed for a general Christian offensive. The war has laid bare, as never before, the moral need of the world, and now is the opportunity to begin afresh the task of giving men Christianity, and to "push on with it." It is to a mighty Adventure, with big risks and great sacrifices, that Christ is calling us; and that is the kind of call that a real man always loves to hear. At the supreme crisis of his fortunes, after the capitulation of Rome, Garibaldi, the Saviour of Italy, called for volunteers to go after him. "I am going out from Rome," he cried; "I offer neither quarters, nor provisions, nor wages. I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles, death. Let him who loves his country with his heart, not with his lips only, follow me." And men streamed out after him into the hills. That is the spirit in which Christ summons men to serve His Cause. "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his Cross daily, and follow Me." And the curious thing is that when men at last cut loose from a snug religion and fling themselves with a certain recklessness into the service of Christ and His Kingdom, then they begin to taste the real joy of life. As at a Coronation, as soon as the homage is accomplished, the trumpets blow. When a man, at whatever cost, "does his bit" in a mighty enterprise, then he begins to enjoy "the top of the fulness of life." In one of the battles of history, when in an advance a soldier was mortally wounded, a comrade bent over him and cheered him with the tidings, "They have taken the position: the flag is planted on it." A film was on the eyes of the dying man, and he could see nothing; but with a smile on his face he murmured, "I helped to put it there." Will you and I be able to say that when the flag of the triumphant Christ is unfurled in His final victory?
"And the King sat
Crown'd on the dais, and his warriors cried,
'Be Thou the King, and we will work Thy will
Who love Thee.'"