From Aldershot to Pretoria | Page 9

bed-cot and
commends his comrades and himself to God. In the case of new
converts this is the testing-time. They must kneel and pray. It is the
outward and visible sign of their consecration to God. A hard task it is
for most; not so hard to-day as it was a few years ago, but difficult still,
and the grit of the man is shown by the way he faces this great ordeal.
Persecution generally follows, but he who bears it bravely wins respect,
while he who fails is treated henceforth as a coward. This testimony for
Christ in the barrack room rarely fails to impress the most ungodly,
though at the time the jeering comrades would be the last to
acknowledge it.
At the risk of appearing to anticipate, let me tell a story.
=Jemmie's Prayer.=
In a nullah in far-away South Africa lay about a dozen wounded men.
They had been lying there for hours, their lives slowly ebbing away.
One of them was a Roman Catholic, who had been a ringleader of
persecution in the barrack room at home. Not far from him lay 'little
Jemmie,' wounded severely, whom many a time the Roman Catholic
had persecuted in the days gone by. Hour after hour the Roman
Catholic soldier lay bleeding there, until at last a strange dizzy
sensation came over him which he fancied was death. He looked across
to where, in the darkness, he thought he could distinguish 'little
Jemmie.' With difficulty he crawled across to him, and bending over
the wounded lad, he roused him.
'Jemmie, lad,' he said, 'I have watched you in the barrack room and
seen you pray. Jemmie, lad, do you think you could say a prayer for
me?'
And Jemmie roused himself with an effort, and, trying hard to get upon
his knees, he began to pray. By-and-by the other wounded soldiers
heard him, and all who could crawl gathered round, and there, in that
far-away nullah, little Jemmie 'said a prayer' for them all. Surely a
strange and almost ghastly prayer-meeting that! As they prayed, some
one noticed the flicker of a light in the distance. They knew not who it

was--Briton or Boer--who moved in the distant darkness. Jemmie,
however, heeded it not, but prayed earnestly for deliverance. The light
came nearer, and the wounded lads began to call with all their
remaining strength for help. And at last it came to them--the light of a
British stretcher party--and they were carried to help and deliverance.
'And now,' said the Roman Catholic soldier, who, on his return from
the war, told this story to the Rev. T.J. McClelland, 'I know that God
will hear the prayer of a good man as well as the prayer of a priest, for
he heard little Jemmie's prayer that night.'
And so the Aldershot barrack room prepares the way for the South
African veldt, and the example apparently unnoticed bears fruit where
least expected.
=The Hymns the Soldier Likes.=
Of all hymn-books Mr. Thomas Atkins likes his 'Sankey' best. He is but
a big boy after all, and the hymns of boyhood are his favourites still.
You should hear him sing,--
'I'm the child of a King,'
while the dear lad has hardly a copper to call his own! And how he
never tires of singing!
But the Scotchmen are exceptions, of course, and when, following
mobilisation times, the Cameronian Militia came to Aldershot, they
could not put up with Mr. Sankey's collection. Rough, bearded crofters
as many of them were,--men who had never been South before,--all
these hymns sounded very foreign. 'We canna do wi' them ava,' they
cried; 'gie us the Psalms o' Dauvit.' But they set an example to many of
their fellows, and the remarkable spectacle was witnessed in more than
one barrack room of these stalwart crofters engaged in family prayer.
But it is time we saw our soldiers depart. And first there is the
inspection in the barrack square, and it is difficult to recognise in these
khaki-clad warriors the men we had known in the barrack room or

'Home.' And then there is the farewell in the evening, and the
'glory-room' or other devotional room is full of those ordered South,
and there is the hearty hand-shake and the whispered 'God bless you,'
and then all join in the soldiers' good-night song--his watchword all the
world over, hymn 494 in Sankey's collection,--
'God be with you till we meet again.'
His life is such a coming and going that he would be unhappy unless
you closed every evening meeting with at least one verse, and on these
occasions, when no one knows whether it will be in earth or heaven
that he will meet his comrade next, it is, of course, impossible to close
without it.