How many a poor lad, too, who has got into trouble, has fancied that he could escape God's judgments by going for a soldier, and has found out that he too was mistaken! Perhaps God's judgment has found him out, as it found out Ahab, on the field of battle, and a chance shot has taught him, as it taught Ahab, that there is no hiding-place from the Lord who made him. Or perhaps God's judgments have come in fever, and hunger, and cold, and weariness, and miserable lonely labour; and with that hunger of body has come a hunger of his soul--a hunger after the bread of life, and the word of God! Ah! how many a poor fellow in his pain and misery has longed for the crumbs which used to fall from God's table, when he was a boy at home! for a word of good advice, though it were never so sharp and plain spoken--or a lesson such as he used to hear at school, or a tract, or a bit of a book, or anybody or anything which will put his poor wandering soul in the right way. He used to hate such things when he was at home, because they warned him of his bad ways; but now he feels a strange longing for that very good talk which he hated once, and so like David of old, out of the deep he cries unto the Lord. And when that cry comes up out of a sinful conscience-stricken, self-condemned heart, be sure it does not come up in vain. The Lord hears it, and the Lord answers it. Yes, I know it for certain; for many a sad and yet pleasant story I have heard, how brave men who went out from England, full of strength and health, and full of sin and folly too,--and there in that blood-stained Crimea, when their strength and their health had faded, and there was nothing round them or before them but wounds, and misery, and death; how there at last they found Christ, or rather were found by Him, and opened their eyes at last to see God's judgments for their sins, and confessed their own sin and God's justice, and received His precious promises of pardon, even in the agonies of death; and found amid the rage and noise of war, the peace of God, which this world's pleasures never gave them, and which this world's wounds, and fever, and battle, and sudden death cannot take away. And after that, it matters little for a man what happens to him. For if he lives, he lives unto the Lord; and if he dies, he dies unto the Lord. He may come home, well and strong, once more to do his duty, where God has put him, a sadder man perhaps, but at least a soberer and a wiser man, who has learnt to endure hardship, not merely as a soldier of the Queen, but as a good soldier of Jesus Christ too, ready to fight against sin and wrong-doing in himself and in his neighbours.