“THE soldier has got religion. I am not so sure he has got Christianity.” Such is part of Professor Cairns’ view on the above subject. The newspaper summary of his views states that they are taken from a report entitled, “The Army and Religion,” drawn up by Rev. Professor Cairns, U. F. College, Aberdeen, with a preface by the Bishop of Winchester. Some of the additional statements as to soldiers’ views on religion are:— “1. The omnipotence of God in the face of the terrible suffering endured by the men was one of the beliefs that soldiers found hard to reconcile with the belief in God as merciful love. 2. They do not think about Christ at all. He has nothing to do with the daily round. 3. Nevertheless, ‘there are three grounds of hope.’ These are:—(1) the resources of God; (2) the self-revelation of man in the War; (3) the misunderstanding of Christianity.”
Such is a brief summary of the leading features of this report. If they are well-grounded conclusions—and we have much reason to fear they are—real Christianity is far from being understood. Assuming they are facts bearing on a large part—perhaps the great mass—of British manhood, we remark on them briefly as follows:— If a soldier, whether by this time discharged or not, has got “religion,” but not Christianity, he is not a Christian. There are fundamental truths of Christianity which every true Christian, who comes to years, values and experiences and more and more comes to go habitually by, as if he and they were native to one another. Now, not an essential of the Christian religion is brought forward in the statement of one witness on the subject.
“The religion of 90 per cent. of the men at the front,” says one witness, “is not distinctively Christian, but a religion of patriotism and of valour tinged with chivalry, and at the best is merely coloured with sentiment and emotion borrowed from Christianity.” A Jap soldier (or civilian) may be chivalrous, courageous, patriotic even to death, and “religious,” but not necessarily a Christian. There are also many baptised as Christians and professing its faith who are evidently heathen as far as the Spirit of it is concerned. But the tares and the wheat will be separated at last.
There is evidently a great amount of difficulty caused, even to confusion, as to the relation between God’s omnipotence and His merciful love. The question arising in the heart and expressed by mouth seems to be: If God is Almighty and Love, why is such dire suffering permitted? We desire to sympathise with any in suffering and difficulties—being still on this side of death—but let us remember that God and His righteous claims have to be considered as well as ourselves. If individuals were brought, by God’s Word and His Spirit, to see themselves to an extent as He views them, then every mouth is stopped and the whole world is brought in guilty before God. The countenance of the sinner falls, and he instinctively reads a doom which is not only God-imposed but self-imposed. And there may be remorse without repentance. No endeavour is herewith made to reconcile the two, if so be they need any such reconciliation. What each stands in need of is that the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, that we receive with meekness the engrafted Word, and then the result will be to marvel at the omnipotence of His love in Christ to self-righteous creatures. In rejecting Christ and His Gospel, individuals or nations may inevitably look for the beginning of sorrows in the life that now is.
Another leading conclusion is that “little is thought of Jesus Christ,” for any practical help and daily guidance. Our sin in this matter lies primarily at our own door. We do not seek to find. We do not search as for hid treasure. We do not ask God to be a present help that we may offer violence to the Kingdom of Heaven, crying, Save or we perish. We are not potsherds in our own esteem, desiring that God would write His Word indelibly upon us so that though we are “earthen furniture” (2 Cor. iv. 7), we might have treasures of wisdom, of spirituality. We regretfully believe, for well-grounded reasons, that Christ’s Gospel in its absolute fulness is not declared to this age. We are forced to conclude that the whole counsel of God is not made known to lost men. If prophets prophesy falsely, and people love to have it so, then such evidently adjudge themselves unworthy of eternal life. If little is thought of the Redeemer for everyday life, our path of wisdom and abiding peace lies in seeking Him in His Word, in asking Him to instruct us in a plain path, to make known to us our need, and His fulness of grace, and mercy, and truth. If we think little of Christ for daily life, can we observe family worship with any relish, or rather do such ever have worship in their families? If we ever stood in need of the truths pithily and scripturally put together in the Shorter Catechism, we have need in these days, and the proof is the general desire to be rid of this document. Were it not true, that we all lost communion with God, and dislike in heart His truth, this little book would be no burden to us.
Finally, there are the three “grounds of hope.” The first is the “resources of God.” Does this mean (a) that God has resources not yet made known to men, or (b) that He will not make such “resources” known for their benefit until death. If we know anything radically of Christianity, there are no more “resources” necessary for the good of souls for this world, or the world to come, apart from those made known in the Gospel. And in passing, we remark that we dislike the expression though using it in the connection. If men got the length of beginning to value and receive God’s Word, and had their hearts set aglow “as He talked with them by the way,” an end would speedily come to ideas of further “resources.”
The second “ground of hope,” namely, “the self-revelation of man in the war” has practically been dealt with already, however briefly, in the opening part of this paper. We need more than what is here meant by “self-revelation.” When souls are brought to seek a ground of sure hope for Eternity, it is not assuredly on “self-revelation” they find a stable foundation, but in the work of Christ finished long ago. Where there is true “self-revelation,” part of it is “self-abasement.” But would not a better “ground of hope” in this connection, for men—whether in war or peace, whether for temporal or lasting prosperity—be the revelation of Christ in us, to live soberly, righteously, godly, instead of a self-revelation, which is avowedly Christless?
Such are these brief comments on this report. Christianity is undoubtedly misunderstood, as is set forth in the closing point of the report, and this “misunderstanding of Christianity” is a “ground of hope.” There is hope, let us be glad, for us in the midst of misunderstanding. There is yet hope for us all. But the change must be on us and in us to know and to live the Christian life. It is not Christianity which requires adaptation to suit our cravings, or any ideal standard of mere man. “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” M.