By The Editor
December, 1916. A Thankful Heart
FROM the depths of a thankful heart I sing of the mercies of the Lord to me this year. We can say with the Psalmist, “Thy faithfulness shalt Thou establish in the very heavens.” Yes, God is faithful. I desire to thank Him, as the year passes from us, for all the blessings He has bestowed. The wondrous way in which He has led us, the loving-kindness that has raised us up such a host of friends, and the sense. He has given of His presence with us―all the time and all the way. And as I review the past twelve months, I think of the host of letters I have received from Christians in all parts of the British Empire. Every continent has sent its help and its cheer. Our little rivulet of service has been widened and deepened by God into a river of opportunity. Thank you, O my many friends, on land and sea! May God bless you for every loving word. I cannot tell you how you have cheered me in long hours of service. Your prayers have given strength and purpose to all that has been done. God will bless you. He has seen the tears of gratitude and heard my broken prayers of thanks and praise, as I have realized my deep unworthiness of all your loving sympathy. But God has given me the work, and you are helping me to do it. To God be all the glory.
If I have forgotten to thank any, God has not forgotten. I promised in November “Message” that this number should contain an account of our work and of our needs. I shall tell you a little, but my dear soldier and sailor friends will tell you more. Their letters will speak eloquently of all the work and all the need.
Dear fellows, to whom you have helped me to send Testaments, I know you and I will see hundreds of them in the glory of God! What meetings on those golden streets! What praises from those lips redeemed! Many of Christ’s soldiers I have known have fallen upon the battlefield. I shall hear from them no more on earth, but they have served their God in the trenches, at the base, and elsewhere, and now their work is done. At this Christmas-time there will be thousands and tens of thousands of nameless graves in France and Flanders and elsewhere, and many an empty chair in desolated homes, but the soldiers of Christ have found their home in the mansions of God.
The Bird of Christmas
On our cover this month there is a picture of a robin on a soldier’s bayonet. The bird of home has come to the trenches to cheer the soldiers there with its presence and its song. The glad, eager eyes of the soldier are fixed upon it, and a private writing from the trenches during the winter campaign says, “A plucky little robin used to come into the trench, much to the soldiers’ joy. Sat on the end of my bayonet like a Christmas card, he did,” wrote the Tommy to his family. It was God’s little messenger to cheer and comfort, to speak of the gardens and hedgerows of dear old “Blighty,” of the snow on the fields around the village home, and the bells sounding out their message over the landscape. It brought to remembrance, too, the faces of the loved ones in the homeland: the dear parents and wives and sisters and sweethearts praying for their “boys” this Christmas-time, and saying, “We will keep the holly until they return. God grant it.” It spoke of the warm fires burning, and the family gathered round; “letters from the Front” brought out and read and re-read, and the photos in khaki passed from hand to hand and talked about and loved. Sweet bird of God, the most friendly of all birds, thy song of home was sweet indeed, and thy red breast warm with all the pleasant thoughts of happy times and happy days.
What messengers from God can we send to the trenches? What sweet songs can we bring to these dear men we love so well? I want to send one thousand parcels this Christmas to the Front and elsewhere: parcels containing books that speak of God and Christ. Each parcel costs five shillings, and I am sure my friends will give me that privilege and joy. And I want one hundred thousand Testaments as my Christmas present this year.
Christ and Christmas
All the world was out of course when Christ was born. There was no room for the Lord of glory in the inn where Joseph and Mary were resting. They were so despised and in such poverty that the only place for Jesus to be cradled was the manger. What a world! It had no room for Him who was God manifest in flesh. When my dear father was near his end his thoughts were all of Christ. He turned to me and said, “Is it not wonderful, He who was rich for our sakes became poor?” Yes, it is wonderful indeed. Despised in the inn, and glorified in the heavens. God had told His angels of the birth of Christ, and they had flocked out of heaven to see the wondrous sight—the glory of their presence paled the light of stars, and their song rang out in exultant strains, “Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good-will towards men.” God was glorified through all the universe by the birth of Christ—in the highest heaven and the deepest depths. “On earth―peace,” Yes, in a scene where all were in rebellion against God; in a world filled with death and wounds and sorrow and sin: “on earth―peace.” He is the Prince of peace; His gospel the gospel of peace; His home the abode of peace.” On earth-peace.” “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you.” These are His words who has” made peace by the blood of His cross, “and those who believe in Him can say, He is our peace.”
“Goodwill towards men.” As one has beautifully said, “Christ’s birth was the expression of God’s complacency in men. The Son of God did not become an angel, but a man. He was God from all eternity, and He became man.”
This proved, beyond all question, “what an object of love men were to God.”
And what of this Christ today? What of Him who laid His glory by and became a man to die for us? The world in the days of His flesh cried, “Away with Him,” and now He is at the right hand of God the world that cast Him out still says, “Away with Him.” Preachers are telling the soldiers everywhere that because they sacrifice their lives for their country they are sure of heaven. Another tells us that “Calvary is crowded with crosses.” Can blasphemy go further than this? If these preachers could only stand before the cross of Christ at Calvary and realize what the power of omnipotent love did there to save the soul, would they have dared to speak thus? If they had known what it was to stand lost sinners before the holiness of God, would they not have realized that the stupendous work of man’s redemption could only be settled between God and Christ alone? If these false preachers had been really converted men, would they not have known that it was the Creator-God who became the Redeemer-God, and that the same power that brought worlds into existence by a word had to be exercised in all its fullness of grace to save a soul from hell?
What does St. Paul say? “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:88But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:8)).
A Christless cross no refuge is to me,
A crossless Christ, my Saviour cannot be,
But Jesus crucified I rest in Thee.
Four V.C.’S
Some of you have read of the heroism of four V.C. men: Ritchie, the drummer who, sitting on the enemy’s parapet, ‘mid shot and shell, beat the charge and rallied the leaderless soldiers; Miller, who was sent on a dangerous mission, and, though wounded unto death, brought the message and dropped dead as he delivered it; Short, who, though urged to go to the rear when wounded, remained at his post that he might still be of some service; Jackson, who carried helpless comrades to the place of safety. We admire and honor these heroic men for their self-sacrifice: have we no gratitude and honor for Christ, who gave Himself, not to an honorable death, but a death of shame, that we might be saved?
An Awful Responsibility
What a responsibility these false preachers are taking upon themselves. They deliberately send men on their last journey to wounds and death, with the devil’s lie ringing in their ears, that if they fall on the battlefield they will go straight to heaven. This awful blasphemy has led me to bring out the following leaflet: ―
CHRIST THE JUDGE, NOT THE SAVIOUR
I should not like to have to meet the LORD JESUS in eternity, if I had told a sinner in his sins that he could save himself by dying for his country, and so did not need the atoning work of CHRIST.
I should expect the LORD JESUS to say to me: “IF THE SOLDIER CAN DO WITHOUT ME, YOU MUST.
DEPART FROM ME.”
Heyman Wreford.
Good-Bye Until January, 1917
We have been together, dear reader, for another year. It has been a real joy to me to talk to you and tell you of our needs month by month, and the way that God has blessed us. I wish to emphasize, in saying “Good bye,” that I shall never forget the loving help of friends all over the world this year, and I shall always remember, as I contemplate my twelve files of letters, what wonderful stories of God’s love they contain. They are indeed “living epistles” many of them. Scores who have written to me will write no more; they have passed away, but they have left records behind them of undying faith. “Good-bye.”