“Do you want Jesus in your lives?” and every man of the eight hundred jumped to his feet.
You say they are sceptical where Jesus is concerned. I’ll tell you when they are sceptical—when they see the caricature of Jesus in you and me.
I was, as I have said, under shell fire for a month in one place—night and day for a month—and never allowed out without a gasbag round my neck. I slept in a cellar there at night when I did sleep—only 700 yards from the Germans—and, as I have said before, it was cold.
When the thaw set in, I put a couple of bricks down and put a box-lid on top, so that I could stand in a dry place. We had two picks and two shovels in that cellar in case anything happened overnight. I have been up against it. Whenever I talked to the boys there they sat with their gas-bags round their necks, and one held mine while I talked. It was quite a common thing to have something fall quite close to us while we were singing.
Imagine singing “Cover my defenceless head,” just as a piece of the roof is falling in. Or—
In death’s dark vale I fear no ill
With Thee, dear Lord, beside me—
then another crash! That makes things real. Every word was accompanied by the roar of guns—the rattle of the machine gun and the crack of the rifle. We never knew what it was to be quiet.
A shell once came and burst just the other side of the wall against which I was standing and blew part of it over my head. I have suffered as your boys have, and I have preached the Gospel to your boys in the front line. I long for the privilege of doing it again.