Woe be to the man who goes into the hut and tries to preach
sectarianism. The Y.M.C.A. is creating a spirit of unity amongst the
boys, and that is going on all the time. I want the limitations to
vanish at home. I want the ecclesiastical barriers to go. When you get
to Heaven the Lord will have to give Gabriel a job to introduce many
Christians to one another. You should see your boys, how they mix up.
They come in—the Roman Catholics, the Church of England, and the
Nonconformists and Plymouth Brethren and Salvation Army, and all
sorts—you don’t know who’s who. We are not quarrelling over religions
at the front—we are fighting and dying for the folks who are doing that
at home.
Let’s stop our religious nonsense. Religion’s too big to be confined
within our four little walls. If our Church rules are so rigid that they
won’t let us come together, then our Church rules are wrong. God never
made rules which divide men—all God’s laws unite. Christ died that we
might be one, and it is time we got together. Your boys are bigger than
your Churches. You and I have got to rise to the opportunity. God help
us to do it!
* * * * *
Somebody asks, “Why does the Y.M.C.A. always want more new huts? Why not
move the old ones?” What will the boys do who take the places of those
who have gone forward? When the line goes forward, it does not come
back—not in these days; it abides—and the boys who come up as a
support, they take the huts the other boys leave.
The Y.M.C.A. stands for everything to your boys. It is their club, their
church, their recreation-room. It is their canteen—dry canteen, you may
be sure—it is their reading-room, it is their smoking-room, and why
should not the Church of Jesus Christ provide places of recreation for
its own people? Why should it leave the public-house and the theatre to
do it all? We have lost lots of people because we have been so slow—we
have lost them, you and I, but we are learning sense in these days, and
the Y.M.C.A. has come to the help of the Churches, to be the
communication-trench between the Churches and the people.
It is doing magnificent work.
As I write these lines I think of one dear boy, a young sergeant, a
Public-School boy. I had watched him grow up. I knew his home, and as he
leaned against me he said, “Gipsy, I’m homesick; I want my mother,” and
then, with a sob, he said, “Tell me more about Jesus.”
I was able to talk to him about his mother because I had lost mine, and
just because I love Jesus I was able to talk to him about the blessed
Jesus Who comes into a man’s heart when he is sad, lonely, and homesick,
and helps him.
He was lying on a stretcher, and it was my privilege to hold his hand
and to kiss him for his mother.
“Gipsy,” he said, “does it mean West?”
I said, “Sonny, it means West.”
As I held his hand it flickered for a moment and he said, “I am not
afraid to go. I know Christ. I found Him in your meetings, and—it’s
great to die, for freedom.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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