If he turns aside to talk of lesser things, he wastes his time. He must not get between the men and God, or put the Church, or its ordinances, or its rules, so far as they are human, between the men and God.
If this is so when we speak of the Church in the larger sense, how much more is it so when we speak of the Church as a denomination!--and all Churches are denominations when we are at war.
The minister, too, has to cut his baggage down. His spiritual equipment is in his mind and heart. The soldier does not inquire what college his padre comes from, or what qualifications the titles before or after his name stand for. Whether he is a bishop, a great evangelist, or a popular preacher means little to the man. What the man asks is, 'What sort of chap is he? How is he sticking it? What has he got to say? Does he help a fellow?'
The chaplain's one object is to lead men in thought and faith to God as God is revealed in Christ, and to get him there quickly.
In regard to the Church as an institution, there is a feeling among the men, more or less articulate, that it has humbugged them. It has denounced the sins it does not often commit, but has been too silent about the sins which are common to its own membership. The Church, in time of peace, has built up a vast superstructure of respectability. The sins of the flesh and drunkenness and swearing were not respectable; but it has not turned the white burning light of truth against the sins of the spirit—covetousness, selfishness, lying, fraud, greed, and injustice. The soldier has many things to put up with, but for the time he is freed from the soul-destroying influence of an industrial system built upon the basis of competition. He is not afraid of losing his job, and he need not toady to any one to secure the chance of his bread-and-butter. Under the pressure of campaigning he begins to exalt comradeship and self-sacrifice to the first place in the list of virtues. Battle forges a new and strong bond of brotherhood.
He does not possess this at first. He comes out of a world of self-seeking, but he gradually discovers that men depend on each other. In a word, the shells that fly, knocking the parapets about, and the rough and tumble of campaigning knock a man's creed about fearfully. He has to re-sort his ideas of religion and the Church, and when he puts them together again, he finds that they fit his complex needs better when they are built up the other way. Perhaps an arrangement of topics which I have found to be dead topics as far as work amongst soldiers is concerned, and others which seem to be live topics, will help to show what I mean.
| Dead Topics | Live Topics. |
|---|---|
| Future punishment | Personal salvation |
| Baptismal regeneration | Prayer and providence |
| Apostolic succession | Comradeship and Communion |
| Claims of the Church | Christ as Friend and Lord |
| Sabbath observance | Righteousness |
| Observance of Holy Days and Church ordinances | God as a Ruler |
| Sectarianism and all Church shibboleths | Here, hereafter, and the soul's destiny |
The soldier is particularly interested in spiritual biography, and very glad to hear about what God did for Paul, Peter, Moses, Joshua, and David. There are vestiges of superstition lingering in many men, and it is hard to see where superstition ends and faith begins. I have known men sample all sorts of religion during the campaign, trying to find out perhaps what different chaplains have to say about things.
There is a species of fatalism; they value luck, and would sympathize with the Prayer-Book phrase, 'Good luck in the name of the Lord.'
It is strange that men should turn to the elements of religion in which the Church is getting slack. They value prayer, and I think most of them pray in their own way. They believe in providence, but do not expect that prayer for them means necessarily immunity from wounds or death; but they know quite well that whatever may be their lot they will be the better for the prayers which ascend for them and for their own prayers.