'You are talking riddles. Explain.'
'It's no riddle, sir,—it's a solution of all the riddles. I will tell you. While I was convalescing, I went to a Y.M.C.A. camp. I had never been to one of these places before; I don't know why I went then, except that the time hung a bit heavy on my hands. You see, every man was up to his neck in work, and there was great excitement in making preparations for the push, and I couldn't do anything. Not but what I had always respected the Y.M.C.A.,—what the British Army would have done without it I don't know. In my opinion, that body is doing as much to win the war as the War Office is—perhaps a bit more. They have kept thousands upon thousands of our chaps steady and straight. They have done more to fight the devil than—but there, I'll come to that presently.
'Well, one night I made my way into the Y.M.C.A. hut. At first I did nothing but read the papers, but presently I realized that a service was going on. The hall wasn't full by any means. Before this push it was full every night; but you see the boys were busy. Presently I caught sight of the man who was speaking, and I liked his face. I quickly found out that he was an intelligent man, too, and I went up nearer the platform to hear what he had to say. He was not a chaplain or anything of that sort, he was just one of the Y.M.C.A. workers. Who he was I didn't know then,—I don't now, although I have an idea I shall meet him some day, and I shall thank him as a man was never thanked yet.'
'Why?' I asked.
'He made me know the greatest fact in the world,' and he spoke very earnestly. 'He made me realize that there was a God. That fact hadn't come within the realm of my vision,—I hadn't thought anything about it. You see,' and I could see he had forgotten all about military etiquette and the difference in our ranks, 'as I have said to you before, I have been like a man beginning to write the story of his life at the middle. Having no memory, I have had no preconceived notions, and very few prejudices. I suppose if some one had asked me if I believed that there was a God, I should have said yes, although I should have been a bit doubtful. Perhaps I should have thought that there was some great Force which brought all that we see into being, and then I should have said that, if this great Force were intelligent, He'd made an awful mess of things, that He'd found the Universe too big a thing to manage. But I didn't know; anyhow, the thought of God, the fact of God, hadn't troubled me, neither had I thought much about myself in a deeper way.
'Sometimes, when my pals were killed, I wondered in a vague way what had become of them, and whether they were really dead; but there was nothing clear or definite in my mind. But that night, while listening to that man, I woke up to the fact that there was a God; it came to me like a flash of light. I seemed to know that there was an Almighty Power Who was behind everything,—thinking,—controlling. Then I was staggered.'
'Staggered? How?' I asked.
'He said that a Man called Jesus Christ told us what God was like,—showed us by His own life and death. I expect I was a bit bewildered, for I seemed to see more than his words conveyed.'
He did not seem excited, he spoke quite calmly, although there was a quiver in his voice which showed how deeply he was moved, and his eyes glowed with that wonderful new light which made him seem like a new man. That he had experienced something wonderful, was evident. What I and thousands of others regarded as a commonplace, something which we had heard from our childhood, and which, I am afraid, did not hold us very strongly, was to him a wonderful reality, the greatest, the divinest thing in the world.
'I got a New Testament,' he went on, 'and for days I did nothing but read it. I think I could repeat those four Gospels. Man, it's the most wonderful thing ever known,—of course it is! Why——'