In the first volume of The Student in Arms, that widely read book of
the war, Donald Hankey has a chapter on "The Religion of the
Inarticulate," in which he shows that the "Tommy" who for so long has
been accused of having no religion, really has a very definite one. He
has a religion that embraces all the Christian virtues, such as love,
sacrifice, brotherhood, and comradeship, but he has never connected
these with either Christ or the church. His religion is the "Religion
of the Inarticulate." Hankey then shows that this war is articulating
religion as never before.
John Oxenham, Poet-Preacher, is giving articulation to the voice of
Christianity--a voice ringing out from over and above the thunder of
the guns, the blare, the flare, the outcry, the hurt, the pain and
anguish of the most awful war that earth has ever suffered. Some of us
have been thinking of this war in terms of Christian hope. We have
thought that we see in it a new Calvary out of which shall come a new
resurrection to the spiritual world. We have dreamed that men are being
redeemed through the sacrifice, through the spirit of service and
brotherhood thrust upon the world by war's supreme demands. We have
thought all of this, but we have not been able to make it articulate.
Now comes a poet to do it for us.
What magnificent hope sings out, even in the titles that Oxenham has
selected for his books in these days of darkness, anguish and
lostness. After his first book, Bees in Amber, comes that warm
handclasp of strength: that thrill of hope; that word of a watchman in
the night, like a sentinel crying through the very title of his second
book, "All's Well." Then came The Vision Splendid, and soon we are to
have The Fiery Cross. The publishers were kind enough to let me examine
this last book while it was still in the proof sheets. It is the one
great hope book of the war. Every mother and father who has a boy in
the war, every wife who has a husband, every child who has a father
will thrill with a new pride and a new dignity after reading The Fiery
Cross.