With Our Soldiers in France

by Sherwood Eddy

To give another instance—a personal friend of the writer, a young Anglican clergyman, a widely known college principal, was serving in one of the huts of a Convalescent Camp. He had made the acquaintance of the patients in some twelve wards and was going the rounds every morning telling the war news, giving oranges to the fevered, and cheering up the depressed. The Commandant came with apologies and told him that although he was doing the best Christian work in the hospital it must be discontinued, as the chaplain objected. Our friend, who was a clergyman of the same communion as the chaplain, called upon him and asked if he had any objection to the distribution of fruit. He replied that if our friend did this it would give an unfair advantage to his work as his particular organization would get the credit, and that he, as the chaplain, must "push his own show." To continue in the words of our friend: "Then I asked him if I could send the fruit through the lady workers or the hut orderlies, or the 'Tommies' who were friends of the wounded. But he refused all. So I asked him if he would distribute them if I gave them. This he agreed to, and I have sent them to him since then. But he is too busy." The oranges were not distributed, and our friend concludes: "I am out against the whole principle on which he acts. I don't think he is much to be blamed. He is one of the best; a keen, hard-working, pleasant man, zealous for his 'own show,' and in its interests doing much for the men. And in his principle of action he is not an exception, but a common type of the Anglican padre as I have met them in many lands. They are trained and encouraged to 'push their own show.' But this keenness on one's 'own show' rather than on men, is the very essence of the sin of schism, and the very root of Pharisaism. Now, as a rule, all the sects stand for their 'own show' first, and men know it. I am ashamed to be a parson today. Men were not made for any Church, but the Church for them." Here again, which of us is without sin, and who can throw the first stone at his brother, or at other branches of the sadly divided Church of Christ?

Facing the vast common need in war time with four thousand wounded patients, whom no one chaplain could visit, the whole story is obviously pathetic and sad. The writer also recalls visiting a Y M C A hut of another nationality, where the secretary was so obviously "out for his own show," and had become so engrossed in the counter of his dry canteen and his work as a money-changer, that he had forgotten all the higher interests of the men, and the high purpose for which he was there. He had become a mere secularized machine, a kind of automatic cash register, mistaking in his work the means for the end. He was just as much "out for his own show" as the three mentioned above, and it was an infinitely smaller "show."

Here we have four instances of men, each conscientious, well meaning, and earnest; each zealous for his own work and his own organization; yet each earning the pity or contempt of the great body of men outside the churches today who are out of sympathy with sectarian zeal. The saddest religious spectacle the writer ever witnessed was in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where five chapels divide that sacred spot where our Lord is supposed to have been crucified, occupied by five bodies, each claiming to be the church. The blood of their fellow Christians has been shed by the followers of these churches on this very spot, and it is a humiliating sight to see them kept apart even to this day by the Turkish bayonet alone. How many of us are working for "our own show," rather than for the Kingdom of God?

The war work of the Y M C A in America, in England, in France, and elsewhere has been made possible only by churchmen sacrificing their individual interests and losing themselves in service for the Kingdom. The Association represents the churches at work on behalf of the suffering men in the war zone. If it should claim the credit for itself as though it were a wholly independent organization, rather than the united work of the churches which have sunk their own differences to make possible this common work, this would be only a manifestation of the same spirit and more inexcusable. But such a claim it could never truly make. As a matter of fact, this united work has proved how truly Christians of various bodies can get together on a great practical issue. If, as at present, all can unite in a great lay organization, what may not the churches themselves do in the future?

Should we not in this war repent, in bitterness and deep humiliation, for our unhappy divisions and each resolve that he will work for nothing less than the whole Kingdom of God, and that no member of that Kingdom, even one of these least, shall be excluded from the love and fellowship which make us one in Him? One of the chaplains in France who has himself been in the ranks says: "I feel that in the past churches have been more anxious to get men into the Kingdom of the Church than into the Kingdom of God, with the result that very many are Pillars of the Church who are not near to the Kingdom. Out of the two battalions which I have known as a private soldier, I should say that not more than five per cent were vitally related to any of the Christian communions. It is useless making plans for the time when the boys come home, unless the Church rediscovers her Lord and Master. The Spirit-filled Church is more necessary than any modifications of organization."

Is not the whole war a call to deep humiliation to the Church of Christ and should we not all stand convicted of sin before it? So far as our saving the world is concerned and our bringing in the Kingdom of love and peace, which Christ came to establish, does not the war write in flaming judgment against us, "Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting"? Are we not all, like the Pharisees of old, too ready to throw the first stone at someone else who we may think caused the war, instead of admitting our own guilt?

As Arnold Freeman, in his lectures at Sheffield University, says:

"We persuade one another that it was the Kaiser, through his lust for self-glorification, who made this war. Would it be possible for one man to transform all Europe into a slaughter-house unless that same Kaiser-spirit found its response in human nature in every corner of this continent? It is the 'Kaiser' in each one of us that makes wars possible. It is because we have in every nation, and in every class, multitudes of men and women who neglect the service of their fellow-creatures in a desire for self-indulgence and self-aggrandizement, that this catastrophe has fallen upon us all. It is a case of devil-possession, and our only hope is to exorcise ourselves of the evil spirit. Our avowed intention is to cast out 'Kaiserism' in Germany by brute force. We must be no less resolute to cast it out of this country."

The Bishop of Carlisle has well said that if we were really Christians this war would not have happened. If the defense of its citizens is the work of the State, and the redemption of the world is the task of the Church, no one can deny that the State has done its work far better than the Church. In the face of this, the most pathetic spectacle that the Christian world ever witnessed, must we not wring our hands with shame and cry, "Why could we not cast it out?" The divisions, the impotence, the worldliness, the coldness, the sin and failure of the Church stand revealed in the lurid light of this war.

What a self-righteous spirit the war has bred in many of us, and what a hatred of our enemies! One has but to read the secular and religious press on both sides of the present conflict to see our sin writ large before us. Since we have such a keen vision for the mote in our brother's eye and such an eager perception of every flaw in our enemy, we can recognize this spirit most readily if we look for it first in Germany, but in doing so let us clearly recognize that every quotation can be paralleled by the press both secular and religious on our own side of the conflict. In all fairness let us state that a large proportion of the sermons which have been preached in the churches of Germany, England, and America have had a recognition of the sins of their own people. But there have been many preachers on both sides who have praised their own nation to the skies with Pharisaic self-righteousness, and have seen the enemy only with the distorted eyes of prejudice and hate.