II
COURAGE
A wounded Highlander was describing one day to his ward Sister, in a burst of confidence, the circumstances in which he was hit. "We were advancing a wee bit through a cornfield and the corn was bonny, thick and tall. Then they turned their machine-guns on us, and I saw the corn cut and flicker, and the men fall and fall! God forgive me! I couldn't face it! ... I turned aside, mem, and I hid on my face in the uncut corn."
There was a pause. He moistened his lips with his tongue and went on: "Well, I lay there and lay I there, and I could hear the bullets going swish, swish through the corn. Then something said to me 'Jock! will ye lie here to be shot like a rabbit in the harvest? Get up, and take your dose like a man!' So I got up, mem, and I got it right enough!"[1]
[1] Time and Talents, July, 1916, p. 81.
The brave man--and that Scotchman was brave indeed--is not necessarily a man who doesn't feel fear; he is one who doesn't yield to it. Even that hero General Gordon used to say he felt afraid when in action. Most of us would like to run away; but most manage, somehow, to "stick it out." There are other situations where it is just as important, and almost as difficult, to "stick it out" as in a shell-plagued trench. There is another War on hand, and the man who takes his place on this front will need all the pluck that he can muster.
It is useless to disguise the fact that to be a Christian means you are in for a fight--and a stiff one at that. Some people seem to think of the Christian religion as if it were a kind of Sunday Club, or a rest cure, or a mutual benefit society. But Christianity is not a passive thing at all. If you are going to be a Christian you have got to take sides in the eternal war of Right against Wrong; and a man cannot take sides without taking hard knocks too. We sometimes speak of War as if it were a kind of great game. Here is the greatest Game of all. And, as a Christian, you are not spectator, linesman or referee: you are one of the team; and it's "up to" you to strip and get going and play the game for all you are worth.
And what of the fight? Who is the enemy, and how are we to fight him? You won't need field glasses to see his front line. "A soldier's first and last battle is with himself." The enemy outside owes much of his strength and success to his traitorous ally within the gates. Many a man's worst foe is in his own heart and life. There are things that start from within, habits of thought or word or deed, which definitely militate against a man being a true Knight and a Christian gentleman. There can be no truce with these things. The Christian Knight has got to stand up against them. And if he feels--and who does not?--that he is woefully lacking in the needed strength and courage, then let him turn once more to the living Son of God, Who alone can make weak men strong, and Who loves to do it.
But the man who wants to "fight the good fight with all his might" is called to tilt against the evil without as well as the evil within. It is a caricature of Christianity which makes it out to be simply a provision for each man to save his own skin and qualify for heaven. Christ did indeed come to save men; but He did it, not to ensure their personal safety and exempt them from fighting, but to enlist them for ever on the side of God and Righteousness. The dimensions and issues of this War are such as to demand the utmost from every Christian soldier. On all sides of us Evil is everywhere entrenched, and in positions that often seem impregnable; his worldwide forces are knit in close alliance, and fight with the veteran skill of age-long experience. Here in the England that we love, in any town, or village, in any school or regiment, on any day, the Enemy is visibly, incessantly striving to work grievous hurt on our manhood and womanhood. Who, if not Knights of the Cross, shall withstand him and fight him to the death? William Blake's well-known lines might well serve as a motto for the Christian soldier:
"I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land."