“Now, boys,” I said, “what am I to talk to you about?” I let them choose
their subject very often.
“Tell us the story of the gipsy tent,” they called out.
And there I was at home, and it was all right, and for an hour I told
them the story of how grace came to that gipsy tent—the old romance of
love.
“Now, boys, I’m through,” I said when I had spoken for an hour—and they
gave me an encore. When I had finished my encore, the dear old Colonel
got up to thank the “performer”—and he couldn’t do it; there was a lump
in his throat and big tears were rolling down his cheeks.
“Boys, I can’t say what I want to, but,” said he, “we have all got to be
better men.”
The Gospel was preached in that hut in a different way from what we have
it preached at home, but we got it in, and the thing is to get it in.
* * * * *
I was talking behind the lines to some of your boys. Every boy in front
of me was going up to the trenches that night. There were five or six
hundred of them. They had got their equipment—they were going on parade
as soon as they left me. It wasn’t easy to talk. All I said was
accompanied by the roar of the guns and the crack of rifles and the
rattle of the machine guns, and once in a while our faces were lit up by
the flashes. It was a weird sight. I looked at those boys. I couldn’t
preach to them in the ordinary way. I knew and they knew that for many
it was the last service they would attend on earth. I said,
“Boys, you are going up to the trenches. Anything may happen there. I
wish I could go with you. God knows I do. I would if they would let me,
and if any of you fall I would like to hold your hand and say something
to you for mother, for wife, and for lover, and for little child. I’d
like to be a link between you and home just for _that_ moment—God’s
messenger for you. They won’t let me go, but there is Somebody Who will
go with you. You know Who that is.”
You should have heard the boys all over that hut whisper, “Yes,
sir—Jesus.”
“Well,” I said, “I want every man that is anxious to take Jesus with him
into the trench to stand.”
Instantly and quietly every man in that hut stood up. And we prayed as
men can pray only under those conditions. We sang together, “For ever
with the Lord.” I shall never sing that hymn again without a lump in my
throat. My mind will always go back to those dear boys.
We shook hands and I watched them go, and then on my way to the little
cottage where I was billeted I heard feet coming behind me, and
presently felt a hand laid upon my shoulder. Two grand handsome fellows
stood beside me. One of them said,
“We didn’t manage to get into the hut, but we stood at the window to
your right. We heard all you said. We want you to pray for us. We are
going into the trenches, too. We can’t go until it is settled.”
We prayed together, and then I shook hands with them and bade them
good-bye. They did not come back. Some of their comrades came—those two,
with others, were left behind. But they had settled it—_they had settled
it_.
* * * * *
Two or three days after that I was in a hospital when one was brought in
who was at that service. I thought he was unconscious, and I said to the
Sister beside me, “Sister, how battered and bruised his poor head is!”
He looked up and said, “Yes, it is battered and bruised; but it will be
all right, Gipsy, when I get the crown!”
One night I had got about fifty boys round me in a dug-out, with the
walls blown out and bits of the roof off. I had taken some hymn-sheets,
for I love to hear them sing. I never choose a hymn for them—I always
let them choose their own hymns. There is wisdom in that. If they have
asked for something and don’t sing it, I can come down on them. Among
the great hymns they choose are these:
“Jesu, Lover of my soul,”
and I have heard them sing,
“Cover my defenceless head,”
with the shells falling close to them. I have heard them sing,
“I fear no foe ...”
with every seat and every bit of building round us rocking with the
concussion of things. And then they will choose:
“The King of Love my Shepherd is,”
“The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want,”
“Abide with me,”
“Rock of ages, cleft for me,”
and the one they love, I think, most of all is,
“When I survey the wondrous Cross.”
Those are the hymns they sing, the great hymns of the Church—the hymns
that all Christian people sing, about which there is no quarrelling.
It’s beautiful to hear the boys.
That night I said, “I have brought some hymn-sheets. I thought we might
have some singing, but I’m afraid it’s too dark.”
Instantly one of the boys brought out of his tunic about two inches of
candle and struck a match, and in three minutes we had about twenty
pieces of candle burning. It was a weird scene.
After the hymns I began to talk, and the candles burnt lower, and some
of them flickered out, and I could see a boy here and there twitch a bit
of candle as it was going out.