O there’s sunshine, blessed sunshine,
When the peaceful, happy moments roll;
When Jesus shows His smiling face,
There is sunshine in the soul.”[15]
The sequel is best explained in a letter written to his mother by one of the boys:
“You will be surprised to hear that I am in the hospital, but I am getting well quickly and am having a good time. But best of all, some Salvation Army people came along and sang and talked about sunshine, and while they were talking the sunshine came through my window—not into my room alone, but into my heart and life as well, where it is going to stay. I know how happy this will make you.”
An incident from the Spanish-American War reveals the unity of Christian faith in the way
American Soldiers Greeted Christmas
Christmas Eve, 1898, found the Seventh Army Corps encamped along the hills at Quemados, near Havana, Cuba. Suddenly from the camp of the Forty-ninth Iowa rang a sentinel’s call, “Number ten; twelve o’clock, and all’s well!” Lieutenant-Colonel Curtis Guild thus wrote about it:
“It was Christmas morning. Scarcely had the cry of the sentinel died away, when from the bandsmen’s tents of that same regiment there rose the music of an old, familiar hymn, and one clear baritone voice led the chorus that quickly ran along the moonlit fields: ‘How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord!’ Another voice joined in, and another, and another, and in a moment the whole regiment was singing, and then the Sixth Missouri joined in with the Fourth Virginia, and all the rest, till there on the long ridges above the city ... a whole American army corps was singing: