But we built up the Church for peace and prosperity. Its ordinances, ceremonials, customs, and solemn pomps; its appeal, apparel, and ambition, all needed peace for their opportunity and prosperity for their support. When a nation strips for war, however, it needs a religion from which everything which is extraneous and superfluous is eliminated. When the soldier, living in the world of elemental passions and away from all the Church aids and props, free from the suggestiveness of the church as a sacred place and all the sensuous accessories and aids to worship, asks for religion, he wants it _neat_. He needs the fundamental, the essential, the irreducible minimum. Now the Church has to work in an altogether different atmosphere. It must not be thought that it is an atmosphere less favourable to religion. The drama of the soul never has so fitting a setting as in the red landscape of war, with its alternations of lively death and deadly life. The very processes of soul growth and the problems of time and eternity are, so to speak, 'filmed.' A lifetime is compressed into a campaign. As the individual soul has its tragic opportunities, so the Church itself has its great chance. Never was such a setting for the divine drama since it was first enacted. Never were the truths of religion so clearly illustrated or the comforts of religion so pathetically needed. The suitability of the gospel message as a response to man's needs, and the perfection of Christ as man's Comrade and Saviour, never shine forth so fully as in the lurid glare of war's terrible perspective. It is the business of the soldier's preacher to interpret this. He has abundant mental material to hand, and he works in an atmosphere solemn, insistent, and impressive. If he turns aside to talk of lesser things, he wastes his time. He must not get between the men and God, or put the Church, or its ordinances, or its rules, so far as they are human, between the men and God. If this is so when we speak of the Church in the larger sense, how much more is it so when we speak of the Church as a denomination!--and all Churches are denominations when we are at war. The minister, too, has to cut his baggage down. His spiritual equipment is in his mind and heart. The soldier does not inquire what college his padre comes from, or what qualifications the titles before or after his name stand for. Whether he is a bishop, a great evangelist, or a popular preacher means little to the man. What the man asks is, 'What sort of chap is he? How is he sticking it? What has he got to say? Does he help a fellow?' The chaplain's one object is to lead men in thought and faith to God as God is revealed in Christ, and to get him _there quickly_.