Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side.
The Church is being tested by war. It had not been prepared by its human leaders for this test, though history shows clearly War, Revolution, Crisis, and Persecution are the foster-mothers of Religion.
But we built up the Church for peace and prosperity. Its ordinances, ceremonials, customs, and solemn pomps; its appeal, apparel, and ambition, all needed peace for their opportunity and prosperity for their support. When a nation strips for war, however, it needs a religion from which everything which is extraneous and superfluous is eliminated.
When the soldier, living in the world of elemental passions and away from all the Church aids and props, free from the suggestiveness of the church as a sacred place and all the sensuous accessories and aids to worship, asks for religion, he wants it neat. He needs the fundamental, the essential, the irreducible minimum.
Now the Church has to work in an altogether different atmosphere. It must not be thought that it is an atmosphere less favourable to religion. The drama of the soul never has so fitting a setting as in the red landscape of war, with its alternations of lively death and deadly life.
The very processes of soul growth and the problems of time and eternity are, so to speak, 'filmed.' A lifetime is compressed into a campaign.
As the individual soul has its tragic opportunities, so the Church itself has its great chance. Never was such a setting for the divine drama since it was first enacted. Never were the truths of religion so clearly illustrated or the comforts of religion so pathetically needed. The suitability of the gospel message as a response to man's needs, and the perfection of Christ as man's Comrade and Saviour, never shine forth so fully as in the lurid glare of war's terrible perspective.
It is the business of the soldier's preacher to interpret this. He has abundant mental material to hand, and he works in an atmosphere solemn, insistent, and impressive.