I.
IT seems but a short time since we older men put off the uniform which you are now putting on. As things are at present the army is a necessity. It is as necessary to the nation as a policeman is to a community; both army and police stand for the restoration and maintenance of order, and in this light you young fellows are putting us very much in your debt.
But while we fully acknowledge this debt we cannot but feel great concern for you. The temptations always associated with army life and the numerous dangers of the battlefield along with your part in them are burdens which fall on us daily. Oh, what would we not give to know that you are safe in the keeping of Jesus. Then, come what may, life or death, all will be well with you. I have no doubt but that you set many affairs in order before you joined up. But why did you leave over the question of your salvation? Surely that was a matter which required your urgent attention, was it not?
I should like so much to help you in some way or other but I fear that if I begin preaching you will be tempted to read no farther. Will you mind if I tell you how other soldiers are going through the new experience introduced to them by army life? Much of the inner life of your fellow soldiers must be unknown to you. You know that you may march daily with the same men and after all know little about their feelings and thoughts. Yet such knowledge might do you real good. Such contact might open up unexpected and startling questions for you, or it might bring to the light some of the deeper though less definite desires of your heart—desires which are struggling for expression. Who knows; such contact might even help you to satisfy these desires. That would be a blessing surely.
The saying that the army “either breaks or makes” a man is true. Morally, spiritually and physically, the army cannot leave a man just where it found him. It would seem that by pushing the merely physical aspect of life so much to the forefront the army tends to obscure other and important sides of our nature. In this way everything is put out of focus.
I don’t know what you think about it but I used to think that no form of employment offered such a sense of physical well-being as army work. Exercise, open-air-life, regular habits, a well balanced diet, freedom from care, all unite to offer the soldier the maximum of health and energy. Yes, in the army, as nowhere else, one feels the joy of living,—in the physical sense it is good to be alive. You feel that you have a man’s work to do, a man’s life to live and a man’s energy to do it with. Oh, these were grand feelings as I recall them. The sad thing is that men, in these circumstances, are tempted to see no farther than the temporal side of their nature. The emphasis laid on the purely physical side is so tremendous that you will find it hard to believe that anyone in the whole army thinks on spiritual things. You find yourself thinking like this, “Well these spiritual things may be all right for home thoughts and conversations but certainly the army is a most unsuitable place to begin taking any interest in them.” The whole trend is set strongly away from spiritual things and there is a contentment to leave it that way.
And yet, do you know that there are men, good soldiers too, who enjoy this physical side of army life to the full but who do not forget that there is an important part of their make-up which is not physical—men who have refused to allow the physical to smother soul-consciousness within them. With you they stand beside the window which opens widely on the earthly prospect, but unlike you, they have not been content with one window. They have opened another—a window in their souls, and its prospect is towards Heaven and Eternity. Do you know that some of your fellow-soldiers are consciously living on the border line between earth and Heaven? that they are not afraid to look their souls squarely in the face; that they hold daily communion with the God of Eternity, that they do this of choice and that they are supremely happy in the doing of it?
They lose nothing that you gain and they gain very much that you lose. Either you have a soul or you have not one. The intensively physical environment pressing so closely on you can hide your soul but it cannot make it non-existent. And your soul answers to another word—ETERNITY. Probably you are reluctant to look at things in this straight forward fashion, but should you permit that reluctance to master you? Others have overcome it, they are overcoming it daily, they are doing so now in the army. How are they doing it? Their answer is bound up in a name—Christ. The Son of God has liberated them from every worldly power and has given them light and strength to square up to all the facts of their existence. In the only true sense they have become men. Men who are not afraid to look out on all they are and on all that they have, and noting well where they have come from and to where they are going they have acted accordingly. And right here is help for you. Solid help. What Christ has done them He is waiting to do for you. He can open another window in your soul; a window which no man can shut.
When we speak of the temptations of army-life what have we in mind? We do not need to go into the army to find drunkenness, foul language, gambling, immorality and such things, for we can get plenty of these in civilian life. There godlessness has often an emphasis on the less as black as Hell, and we cannot speak of temptations anywhere for people who live in this loose way. They may be regarded as opportunities, but as temptations, never. Nor can we speak of temptations in connection with people who regard army-life as a splendid escape from the moral restraints imposed on them by their social level. We may speak of them as helps towards a greater liberty or, to be correct, to greater licence, but as temptations, no.
However, there are those who are resolved to pass through the army with their moral life unimpaired and these understand what it is to be tempted. Yes, tempted so as to fall: yes, fall, so as to lose all resolution. Not all, no, but I fear many do fall.
I think that you will admit that we may place most men in one of the two last groups. I am not sure where I should place you but that is not the point at present. My intention is rather to show how real is the moral change which the army works on men.
First, let us take men in a company. I was once the means of putting a complete stop to swearing and foul language in a hut of forty men. Afterwards I found that very few of these men were in the habit of using bad language in civil life, for most of them had been brought up in respectable homes and quite a number had definite Christian influences behind them. What is more, the majority of them were ready and glad to give up the habit when they came into touch with one sufficiently strong to encourage them. I think that you will agree that we must put most of these fellows into group three. They had learned the habit after joining up.
And don’t you think these confessions, these few, taken from many made by individuals, point in the same direction—”My chum and I have been reading the Bible and saying prayers for four months together now, there has been no opposition but we simply cannot carry on. We just feel exhausted morally and have no power left.” “I never got drunk or swore or did filthy things and I meant to go through the army in good clean fashion but the force of example is too strong for me. I am going to stop resisting and I am going to take every opportunity of doing everything that I see others do. I hope to return to my old ways of living only when the war is over.” “Do you think that I believe that you Christian chaps are any better than others. Not a bit of it. You only do secretly what we do openly. I know what I am talking about for I tried hard to live like you do, and I have failed, I don’t believe that anyone can be out and out good in the army.” “When I joined up I was just as good living as you are. My position in life would not let me live any other way. As well as that my father is a preacher. But now I am gone. What power is it that works in you; what is it that has kept you?” another. For every good habit given up two bad ones were embraced. Now, I do not doubt but there were many who did not “go” but there were more who had to confess to failure. That is on some one count or another. Quite clearly these fellows were brought to look on the amy as a place where good living could not be expected of men. One reason why they gave up the fight was because their whole environment called out that it was useless to go on fighting. And yet another thing is clear. These men recognised that Christians were different. Don’t you think that is so? Although they could not lay their fingers on the reasons for it but they felt that there was some power at work in Christians—a power to which they themselves were strangers.—A 4th Seaforth.
(To be continued.)