If we carry these statements on to their issue, then surely the Christian soldier should fight best of all. He has not only the discipline and training of the Army, but moral discipline and training as well. And he has something more—the spiritual fact which dominates his being and transfigures and transforms him. To him death is not death, he lives and will live, and in the worst of all fiery furnaces there is always with him "the form of the fourth, like unto the Son of God."
Such men as these are unconquerable. They remind us of Punch's famous cartoon, "Unconquerable"; for Punch is not only a humorist, he is a preacher too.
The Kaiser: "So you see—you've lost everything."
The King of the Belgians: "Not my soul!"
The Kaiser has gained his victory and sheathed his sword. Belgium is his; there is nothing in that country left for him to conquer. A ruined building is behind him, on his left is the broken wheel of a gun-carriage. In the distance is a Belgian family—an aged man, a woman, a child. The woman's husband is not there—most likely he is dead.
The King of the Belgians has lost his helmet. His uniform is war-worn, his hair untidy. His scabbard is empty, but he has not parted with his sword. He still grasps it in his strong right hand.
"You have lost everything," says the Kaiser—"Liège, Namur, Brussels, Antwerp." "No, not everything. Not my soul."
But the King of the Belgians was not alone in the claim which Punch puts into his life. Every Christian man fighting for his country, and many another, wounded, frost-bitten, dying, can answer "Not my soul." You cannot take that from him, it is his own sacred possession, and the consciousness that he possesses it still nerves him to do and dare.
As the Rev. E.R. Day, Church of England chaplain at the front, says: "There were men to whom we might almost kneel down in reverence. The bravery, endurance, heroism, and patience of our men at the front are such that French people could not understand it."
It is not necessary to claim that these qualities are the sole possession of the Christian man. It is, indeed, far otherwise. But the Christian graces produce them best of all. Mr. Day is right when he says, "Though apparently careless and light-hearted, one realised that there was a deep-rooted religion in our soldiers, and that it was indeed a fool's game to judge a man by his outward appearance." It is largely because of that "deep-rooted religion" that the qualities of "bravery, endurance, heroism, and patience" are produced.