With Our Soldiers in France Part 7

It may be asked, To what extent are the men thinking of religion and discussing its problems? One friend of the writer, a young Anglican chaplain, says: "The men are not thinking at all. They are 'carrying on.' They spend hours in playing a game like House because it requires no thought." However, it would probably be fairer to say that at times all of them think about religion, although they do not talk very much about it. It is not, however, consistent thought leading to action.

Rather they have moments of deep impressions, vague longings, intuitions, and hunger of heart. But the minute anyone starts a discussion or begins to attack religion, men show that they have been thinking, or that they have ideas of their own in private.

Most of them believe in G.o.d, 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 G.o.d and that He is a good G.o.d, 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 G.o.d is very, very good. Their vague feeling would probably find its most accurate expression in Faber's hymn, "There's a wideness in G.o.d's mercy, like the wideness of the sea."

They revere G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 cla.s.sifies 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 pa.s.s judgment upon an individual soldier. He seems to be a different man under different circ.u.mstances.

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 cla.s.s. But in the trenches he found G.o.d. 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 G.o.d, but with no personal, vital relations.h.i.+p 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 relations.h.i.+p with G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l with drink. I have seen women who would sell the clothes off the backs of their children or p.a.w.n their husband's clothing to get drink." Yet this man has been brought to G.o.d during the war. Many a man has found G.o.d on the field of battle, or like the thief has turned to him in the hour of death.[2]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 gra.s.s 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. "G.o.d!" he whispered softly. "G.o.d 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 pa.s.sage 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.

But although one may not preach so dangerous and misleading a doctrine, it is nevertheless possible to realize that many a man is unconsciously more of a Christian than he knows, and that in the last day he may say with surprise: "When saw I Thee an hungered and fed Thee?"

We may turn to "A Student in Arms" for his interpretation of the feeling of the common soldier in this crisis:

"Then at last we 'got out.' We were confronted with dearth, danger, and death. . . . They, who had formerly been our despair, were now our glory. Their spirits effervesced. Their wit sparkled. Hunger and thirst could not depress them. Rain could not damp them. Cold could not chill them. Every hards.h.i.+p became a joke. . . . Never was such a triumph of spirit over matter. . . . If it was another fellow that was. .h.i.t, it was an occasion for tenderness and grief. But if one of them was. .h.i.t, O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory? . . .

Life? They did not value life! They had never been able to make much of a fist of it. But if they lived amiss they died gloriously, with a smile for the pain and the dread of it. What else had they been born for? It was their chance. With a gay heart they gave their greatest gift, and with a smile to think that after all they had anything to give which was of value. One by one Death challenged them. One by one they smiled in his grim visage, and refused to be dismayed. They had been lost, but they had found the path that led them home; and when at last they laid their lives at the feet of the Good Shepherd, what could they do but smile?"

It has been well said that there is much natural religion in the trenches, but that much of this religion is not Christian. What is the att.i.tude of the men to Christ Himself? Most of them a.s.sociate Him with all that is highest and n.o.blest in life. They link Him with G.o.d in their thought, and with themselves in their time of deepest need. Although His name with that of G.o.d is sometimes taken on their lips in profanity, there is often a deep reverence for Him. Thousands have seen the cross of Christ standing among the ruins in the villages of Belgium and Northern France, when all about seems to be battered and wrecked. The old skeptical theories and captious criticisms of pre-war days are little heard during this awful time. Generally speaking, the facts of the gospel narrative are not disputed. They believe in Christ as the revelation of G.o.d. They have no difficulty with the doctrine of the divinity of Christ and do not doubt that He is a living reality and has power to save. Their only difficulty is with their own sin. They do not know how to break from it or are unwilling to give it up.

The great need of the hour is for interpretation. On the one hand, men have had in their hours of great need a deep experience of G.o.d which they do not understand; yet on the other hand, they are gripped by the power of temptation which alone they cannot overcome. They admire the virtues of courage, generosity, and purity, but for the most part they see no connection between these and the presentation of Christ in the lives and words of those about them who profess to be Christians. What is needed is personally to relate the man to the G.o.d and Father of Jesus Christ, with Whom he has been brought face to face at the battle front. There is urgent and imperative need of the giving of that message, both in public presentation and in the channels of personal friends.h.i.+p.

One chaplain says of the men: "I am sure the soldier has got religion: I am sure he has got Christianity; but he does not know he has got Christianity. I am convinced that of the hundreds of men who go into action the majority come out affected towards good rather than coa.r.s.ened.

They come out realizing that there are times when they cannot get on without G.o.d; they are not frightened of Him, they flee to Him with their simple cries for strength."

While another, a student who laid down his life at the front, makes this valuable suggestion as to the presentation of Christ: "When I was talking to them at these services, I always used to try to make them feel that Christ was the fulfilment of all the best things that they admired, that He was their natural hero. I would tell them some story of heroism and meanness contrasted, of courage and cowardice, of n.o.ble forgiveness and vile cruelty, and so get them on the side of the angels. Then I would try and spring it upon them that Christ was the Lord of the heroes and the brave men and the n.o.ble men, and that He was fighting against all that was mean and cruel and cowardly, and that it was up to them to take their stand by His side if they wanted to make the world a little better instead of a little worse."

III

The third question discussed with the men was, _What is the att.i.tude of the soldier to the churches, and what lesson has the Church to learn from the present war_? Let it be said at the very outset that the writer speaks as a member of the Church and in deep sympathy with it. As the divinely const.i.tuted organization which stands for the highest human ideals, and for the establishment of the Kingdom of G.o.d on earth, we all are, or ought to be, members of the Church. "With charity for all and with malice toward none," we see no ground for self-complacence on the part of any branch of the Church, and no part of it which deserves sweeping condemnation from the rest. Doubtless it will seem to many that it is unwise to confess our faults, but the men at the front are not silent, however much we may desire to be. We would do well to face the facts which this war is forcing upon our attention, however much we may dislike the searching glare of the present conflict. Obviously something is wrong. Had the Church fulfilled her divine mission, the present war between so-called "Christian" nations would have been impossible.

As was stated in the preceding chapter, according to the opinion of the majority, less than 20 per cent or one-fifth of the men are vitally related to any of the Christian communions. A series of conferences held with individuals and carefully selected groups of men and officers brought out by a general consensus of opinion the following points as representing the att.i.tude of the men toward the churches:

1. _Indifference to the Church_. As one typical young sergeant, a member of the student movement, puts it: "The men simply have no time for it.

They do not care for the Church because it did not care for them." There is a general feeling that the churches do not understand them or sympathize with the social and industrial disabilities of the men. They feel that the ideals of life for which the Church stands are dull, dim, and altogether unnatural; its standard of comfort and complacent respectability makes no appeal to them and they have no part or lot in it. They feel that this respectability of the Church is quite in keeping with flagrant selfishness in social and industrial relations.h.i.+ps, that the Church is largely in the possession of the privileged cla.s.ses, who monopolize it, and who have neither sought nor welcomed them within its doors.

As one representative chaplain in a most influential position in France says: "There is the plain fact that the great ma.s.s of men are out with the Christian Church, and do not look to it as being in any vital relation to life as they know it, either in peace or war. There is the deeper and sadder fact that to a very large proportion of them G.o.d Himself means little or nothing, or means something that is very unchristian. Where there is a living presentation of religion men are responsive--extraordinarily so. Put it how you will, men must be summoned to a new thought, a new outlook on life, a new att.i.tude towards the unseen and eternal."

2. An att.i.tude of _separation and alienation_ from the Church. For the most part the men are largely ignorant of what the Church really is, and for this the churches are largely responsible. They believe that its message and presentation of truth are often too feminine and impractical and that its fellows.h.i.+p is too cold and exclusive. They do not understand the vocabulary and tone adopted frequently by preachers in speaking of religious things, and they feel that the churches are almost complete strangers to the real facts of life with which they have to deal.

It is true that the practical work of the churches in their helpful ministry through the various organizations working in the camps has brought many of the men into vital contact with religion for the first time. But the war has revealed the lack of the churches' hold upon the men in pre-war times.

3. _Criticism of its worldliness_. The men have an unuttered belief in G.o.d, and they reverence Jesus Christ as the friend and brother and comrade of man, as the embodiment of the highest ideal they can conceive.

But they feel that somehow the churches do not adequately represent Christ, that they have become merely the adjunct of the State to second its schemes and aims. Many feel that the Church has lowered its colors in the present war, that in some countries it has been little more than a recruiting station for enlistment and that its message cannot be reconciled with the Sermon on the Mount.

One sergeant thus states his convictions: "Perhaps it would be well if we out here could get up a committee of inquiry on 'Civilians and Religion'

and arrive at some decision as to what is the matter with you at home.

Are we to return home where the spiritual fires have been kept burning brightly, or to the blackened ashes of those great ideals of the early days of August, 1914, which have burned themselves out? Are we to return to a country in which, in spite of all the community of suffering and sorrow, the Christian churches have still their differences simmering instead of being regiments in one common Army?"

Another soldier writes: "What could not the churches do for the world if they could only connect the symbols Christ gave us with the knowledge that is within the hearts of men? There must be more known about suffering and sacrifice now in the hearts of men than at any past time.

I thought once, on the Somme, that the two races facing each other in such agony were as the two thieves on their crosses reviling each other, and that somewhere between us, if we could but see Him, was Christ on His Cross."

4. The men are _bewildered and repelled by the Church's divisions_.

There is a widespread feeling among them that there is something wrong here, that instead of representing Christ or losing themselves in the wide interests of His Kingdom, instead of concern for the winning of the world and humanity as a whole, the aims of many of the churches are petty, narrow, exclusive, and sectarian. There is a feeling among the men that far too many Christians are working for themselves or for their own particular branch of the Church, or are, as one of them puts it, "out for their own show."

In the last hospital we visited, the young American Episcopal chaplain working with one of our own units asked the writer to accompany him one morning to help him in cheering up the patients, giving them Testaments, meeting their needs, and answering their doubts and difficulties. While we were proceeding through one of the wards, the Nonconformist chaplain came by. The writer was speaking to a poor boy who was dying. The chaplain seemed shocked and surprised that we were speaking to one of his patients without his permission. The young Episcopal chaplain explained that he felt sure that the chaplain would not mind if we tried to help the men. Although he followed him out of the ward and tried his best to make his peace with him, the chaplain reported the matter, and we were prevented from doing personal Christian work in neighboring hospitals.

The Roman Catholic chaplain in the next hospital, a most consecrated and earnest man, has managed to get a military rule pa.s.sed that no services can be held in any ward of the hospital unless every Roman Catholic patient is bodily carried out. This has successfully prevented the holding of any Christian services whatsoever, Catholic or Protestant.

Throughout the entire war we have never known of a single instance of any man trying to proselytize or to divert a soldier from allegiance to his own church. We have known of men leaving the churches altogether during the war, but not one instance of a man's changing his church or being asked to do so. Yet the jealousy and suspicion of the bare possibility of men's doing so has blocked and excluded much genuine Christian work.

To give another instance--a personal friend of the writer, a young Anglican clergyman, a widely known college princ.i.p.al, 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 G.o.d?

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 a.s.sociation 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 G.o.d, and that no member of that Kingdom, even one of these least, shall be excluded from the love and fellows.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d, 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 l.u.s.t 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 cla.s.s, mult.i.tudes 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.