With Our Fighting Men: The story of their faith, courage, endurance in the Great WarSellers, William E.
History
With Our Fighting Men: The story of their faith, courage, endurance in the Great War
Sellers, William E.
Great Britain. Army -- Military life; World War, 1914-1918 -- Religious aspects
"'You might wait,' whispered one. 'The Camerons and Seaforths may be
able to come.' So we waited--a hushed and solemn waiting. Then quietly
some of them began to croon old psalm memories, and quiet hymns,
waiting. And at length the others came, stepping softly into the
place; and with them comrades, who explained that, though they were of
a different country and a different church belief, they yet desired to
share in the act of worship, preparatory to celebration. At length
about one hundred and twenty men were there, and we began.
"It was the 23rd Psalm, the Psalm of God's shepherding, the
comradeship of the Divine in the Valley of the Shadow, the faith and
the hope of the brave. What a power was in it--what a spell of wonder,
of comforting, and uplifting in this land of war! They sang it very
tenderly, for it spoke to them of times when they had held their
mothers' hands, and looked up wondering in their faces, in the church
at home, wondering why tears were there.
"It means a big thing still, to-day, for our Empire, this heart-deep
singing of our soldier men. I have never dreamed that I should see
such depth of feeling for eternal things. Do not tell me this is
Armageddon. It is not the end of things. It is Resurrection and
Pentecost we are passing through. A harvest is being sown in France of
which the reaping shall be Empire-wide. There will be angels at the
ingathering.
"It only needed the simplest words to seal that sacrament. And next
morning, in the grey light, the men who had been touched by the
thought of home and the dear ones there, and the big throbbing thought
of consecration, were marching off to grip the very hand of death, in
sacrifice, like Christ's for others."
The Easter visit of the Bishop of London to the front is fresh in our
memories. What a holy and triumphant progress it was! Vast bodies of
men have listened to the addresses of the bishop, and joined
reverently in the responses to the prayers. How grandly those glorious
hymns, "Rock of Ages" and "Jesu, Lover of my soul" have swelled forth
in the stillness which was only broken by the booming of great guns!
The programme of the visit had been arranged with much care. There
were all sorts of services. Now the bishop was with the Flying Corps
gathered in one of their great hangars, now with the Household Cavalry
massed in the field, now with the Army Service Corps beside their big
lorries. To all sorts and conditions of men the bishop spoke, and it
seemed as though he had the right word for each man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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