The War Romance of the Salvation ArmyHill, Grace Livingston
History
The War Romance of the Salvation Army
Hill, Grace Livingston
World War, 1914-1918 -- War work -- Salvation Army
Meantime her gay young brother, curious to know what had so stirred his
bright sister, went to the Salvation Army meetings to find out, and was
attracted himself. He went again and found Jesus Christ, and himself
joined the Salvation Army. The mother in this case did not object,
perhaps because she felt that a boy needed more safeguards than a girl,
perhaps because the life of publicity would not trouble her so much in
connection with her son as with her daughter.
The daughter after several months away from home returned, only to find
her longing to join the Salvation Army stronger. But quietly and
sweetly she submitted to her mother’s wish and remained at home for
some years, like her Master before her, who went down to His home in
Nazareth and was subject to His father and mother; showing by her
gentle submission and her lovely life that she really had the spirit of
God in her heart and was not merely led away by her enthusiasm for
something new and strange.
When she was twenty her mother withdrew her objections, and the
daughter became a Salvationist, her mother coming to feel thoroughly in
sympathy with her during the remaining years she lived.
This is the story of one of the Salvation Army lassies who has been
giving herself to the work in the huts over in France. She is still
young and lovely, and there is something about her delicate features
and slender grace that makes one think of a young saint. No wonder the
soldiers almost worshipped her! No wonder these lassies were as safe
over there ten miles from any other woman or any other civilian alone
among ten thousand soldiers, as if they had been in their own homes.
They breathed the spirit of God as they worked, as well as when they
sang and prayed. To such a girl a man may open his heart and find true
help and strength.
[Illustration: A letter of inspiration from the commander]
[Illustration: The Salvation Army boy truck driver who calmly went to
sleep in his truck in a shell hole under fire]
It was no uncommon thing for our boys who were so afraid of anything
like religion or anything personal over here, to talk to these lassies
about their souls, to ask them what certain verses in the Bible meant,
and to kneel with them in some quiet corner behind the chocolate boxes
and be prayed with, yes, and _pray!_ It is because these girls have let
the Christ into their lives so completely that He lives and speaks
through them, and the boys cannot help but recognize it.
Not every boy who was in a Salvation hut meeting has given himself to
Christ, of course, but every one of them recognizes this wonderful
something in these girls. Ask them. They will tell you “She is the real
thing!” They won’t tell you more than that, perhaps, unless they have
really grown in the Christian life, but they mean that they have
recognized in her spirit a likeness to the spirit of Christ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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