THE night before some hundreds of men went up to the battle-line they were assembled together at a so-called religious meeting at the Front, and the following address was given to them: — “Tomorrow, comrades, you will be face to face with the reality, and Death will become to you a familiar friend, instead of a remote enemy to be feared and shunned... Soon you will be faced with the ordeal of battle, called to redeem the individual and separate vows with which you entered the War... That was the call of God, for King and Country, and you are going to meet the supreme ordeal in the same spirit in which you took on your training and prepared for the fight. Not all of you will come back, and my business tonight, brothers, is to assure you, with all the passion of a soul which ardently believes, that whatever the issue of the coming days, you need not concern yourselves. You are the sons of God and He has you, living or dying, in His safe keeping... You have, by so consecrating yourselves to the Great Cause, become entitled to an abundant entrance when the moment comes. Sons of God, brothers of Him Who made the supreme sacrifice in order that others might live, tomorrow, or any morrow, need have no terrors for you; living or dying, you are safe.”
And with this blasphemy ringing in their ears they went forth, many of them, to die. God forgive this blasphemer. And a vision rose before me, as I read these words sent to me by a friend, of a cross raised upon a lonely hill, and of One nailed upon it, Who was “Incarnate, yet crucified.” He had said before He died: “I am the Way... no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.” “I am the Door, by Me if any man enter in he shall be saved.” And God had said, “This is My beloved Son.” And the apostle said “There is no other name under heaven given among men where by we must be saved. The way to heaven is by way of the cross. The finger posts of God all point to Calvary as the way to heaven. Men are making other roads, and preaching other saviors, but there is only one way to heaven, only one Savior for the lost, only one door that will lead into the presence of God, and that is Christ. Men are speaking of crowding Calvary with crosses, but God only sees one, where His Beloved Son died, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God. Many of us can say:—
“Inscribed upon the cross we see,
In shining letters God is Love,
The Lamb who died upon the tree,
Has brought us mercy from above.”
And when to think of the amazing fact, that it was the Son of God Who died for sins, and “bore our sins in His own body of the tree.” We lose sight of all besides, and say with the apostle Paul, “The Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
A Chaplin at the Front, the Rev. T H.―, tells us his opinion about this awful doctrine. He says:—
“I have preached against the devils lie, that men are taken to heaven because they have sacrificed their bodies on the battlefield. That lie is being preached at the Front. May Gods Holy Spirit blast and dispel it. It is utterly untrue. But this I do believe, that in answer to the prayers of Gods people Jesus Christ is very near to our boys at the Front, bringing back to them long-forgotten memories and turning the eye of faith to Jesus Christ as they are out there facing death. To give you one incident as an illustration: —
“We had just launched a gas attack; it was followed by a tremendous bombardment. In the place where I was, there was a large cellar, and the men next to us, after the gas had been launched, came and asked if they could come down into our cellar. I said, ‘Why, of course, come down.’ As they went down the last man turned round and said, ‘Will you come down and have a talk with us?’ They had had samples of my ‘talks,’ and knew what to expect. I said I would, but I could not come for long, as when danger was about, my place was at the dressing station. When I got down I asked them, What do you want me to talk about? ‘They looked shy, as Englishman always do over the things of God. I said, ‘There is only one thing worth talking about, that is, the shelter of the blood of Jesus Christ.’ I told them of that ‘shelter,’ and told them, I want you by simple faith to get into that shelter; and when the danger is over I want you fellows, who really get into that shelter, to come and let me know that you have asked for something that will forever remind you of this day’s great bombardment and the shelter that you found.’
“Twenty-two out of thirty-five men came to me the next day, and told me they had got into that ‘shelter,’ and I gave each of them a little Testament, to remind them of the day of the great bombardment, when they got into the shelter of the blood of Jesus Christ.”