Most of them believe in God, although they do not know Him in a personal way. They believe in religion, but have not made it vital and dominant in their lives. They have a vague sense or intuition that there is a God and that He is a good God, round about and above them. He is looked upon, however, not as One whom they are to seek first, but rather as a last resort; not as a present Father and constant Friend, but as One to whom they can turn in time of need. They have a vague feeling of unworthiness, although no clear sense of sin. Yet they also have an inarticulate belief or intuition that they have tried, however brokenly or unsuccessfully, to live up to such light as they had or to some standard of their own. They feel that somehow, though they have often failed, at bottom they are not so very bad, and that God is very, very good. Their vague feeling would probably find its most accurate expression in Faber's hymn, "There's a wideness in God's mercy, like the wideness of the sea."
They revere God from afar off and in one compartment of their being, but they have never opened their lives to Him. They have a reverence for Him in the face of death, in the hour of need, and in the great crises of life. Most of them like to sing the Christian hymns on Sunday evening and have thoughts of home and of loved ones that are sacred. They do not feel that they have come into close personal relations with God, but neither do they consciously feel that they are out of relation with Him. They do not think they are altogether right with Him, but neither do they feel in the bottom of their hearts that they are wholly wrong with Him. The vast majority of them in the hour of death do not feel that they have either consciously accepted or rejected Him. They have not loved darkness rather than light, nor have they wholly chosen the light and rejected the darkness.
It will depend upon the individual how he classifies these men. Some will believe that the great love of the Good Shepherd, who laid down His life for the sheep, will somehow in the end not be thwarted in His seeking to save the lost. Not only will men differ in their judgment, but it is exceedingly difficult to pass judgment upon an individual soldier. He seems to be a different man under different circumstances. In the temptations at the base camp, he would perhaps appear to be utterly irreligious and profane. He can hardly be recognized as the same man as he prays in the hour of battle, or as he lies wounded, chastened, and sobered, in the hospital. Which situation reveals the true man?
Before us as we write lies the photograph of a young sergeant. Before the war he was an atheist, an illegitimate child, a member of the criminal class. But in the trenches he found God. Blown up by a mine, for sixteen days he lost the power of speech and of memory. He returned from the front with a deep sense of God, but with no personal, vital relationship to Christ. He eagerly welcomed the first real message that went straight to his heart, and the personal word of loving sympathy which led him to relate his deep experience of the trenches to the presence of the living Christ. All this man needed was someone to interpret to him his own experience, and bring him into the relationship with God which his own heart craved and longed for.
Beside this photograph is the card of a strong-willed, self-righteous young Pharisee, who had no use for religion in peace time, but who was driven to God by his awful conflict with sin in this war. Next comes the card of a young man who formerly had lived a proper conventional life without bad habits. The war taught him to drink and he finally became a drunkard, but in his extremity he found Christ as a personal Saviour. Next comes the card of a man who had been in a public house for thirty-two years—twenty-seven years as a bar tender and five years as a saloon keeper. He said, "I have sent men to hell with drink. I have seen women who would sell the clothes off the backs of their children or pawn their husband's clothing to get drink." Yet this man has been brought to God during the war. Many a man has found God on the field of battle, or like the thief has turned to him in the hour of death.[2]
[Illustration: Three Thousand Soldiers in the Crowboro Hut.]
One young soldier thus describes his experience which is typical of many another: There had been a charge, a hopeless affair from the start. He lay in the long grass between the lines, unable to move, and with an unceasing throbbing pain in his left leg and arm. A whizz-bang had caught him in both places. He just lay there, feeling strangely peaceful. Above him he could see the stars. All this bloodshed—what was the good of it? He suddenly felt terribly small and lonely, and he was so very, very weak. "God!" he whispered softly. "God everywhere!" Then into his tired brain came a new phrase—"Underneath are the everlasting arms." He sighed contentedly, as a tired child. They fetched him in at last. He will never again be sound of limb; but there is in his memory and in his heart that which may make him a staunch fighter in other fields. He has learned a new way of prayer, and the courage that is born of faith well-founded.
The idea has been widely preached by many British chaplains that death in battle saves. This may be good Mohammedanism, but it is surely not the Christian message that is given to Christ's ministers to preach. The verse most often quoted in support of this theory is: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." But such a passage cannot be taken out of its context either in Christ's teaching or in the man's own life. Our Lord had said that we were to love even as He loved, that is, out of a pure and surrendered heart to lay down our life for our friends; and He added, "Ye are my friends if ye do the things which I command you." It is going far beyond the province of the Christian minister to offer any hope other than that which is offered by our Lord Himself. It is not death or a bullet or battle that saves. Christ only saves, and there is no other name given under heaven. This offer is made to all men and at all times.