The Chocolate Soldier | Page 4

pungent, "I will tell you
what you ask, and more. (John was always liberal!) I? I am nobody, but
ye and your masters are a generation of vipers." A good hot curry, that!
John never served his curries with butter sauce, but he was always very
liberal with chutney--a man of God--NO SUGAR PLUM NOR
CHOCOLATE SOLDIER HE!
Thus also he faced Herod after six months in an underground dungeon,
and he a man of "God's Open-air Mission". Brought straight in before
the king; surrounded with all the might and majesty of camp and court;
blinking at the unaccustomed sight of light, but by no means putting
blinkers on the truth, he blurted out his hot and thunderous rebuke,
"Thou shalt not have that woman to be thy wife." A whole sermon in
one sentence, as easy to remember as impossible to forget. John had
preached like that before; like Hugh Latimer, he was not above
repeating a good sermon to a king, word for word, when the king had
not given sufficient heed to it.
John received the unique distinction of a first-class character from both
God and the agent of the devil. Hark to the Savior indulging in an
outburst of exquisite sarcasm, "What think ye of John? A reed shaken
by the wind? A man clothed in soft raiment?" A Chocolate Christian?
(How delicious! The Chocolates were right in front of Jesus at the
time--Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, scribes, lawyers, and other

hypocrites. How the crowd must have enjoyed it!) "A prophet? Nay,
much more than a prophet! Of men born of women there is none
greater than John." And what did the devil's agent say when, after
John's death, he heard of Jesus? "This," I tell you, "is John risen from
the dead." What a character! Fancy Jesus being mistaken for anyone!
He could have been mistaken only for John. Nobody envies him the
well-deserved honour, great though it was, for John was a man--pure
granite right through, with not a grain of chocolate in him.
Had John but heard Jesus say, "Ye shall be My witnesses unto the
uttermost parts of the earth," I very much doubt if Herod's dungeon, or
his soldiers, could have detained him. He surely would have found
some means of escape, and run off to preach Christ's Gospel, if not in
the very heart of Africa, then in some more difficult and dangerous
place. Yet Christ said, referring to His subsequent gift of the Holy
Ghost to every believer, "He that is least in the kingdom of God is
greater than he," intimating that even greater powers than those of John
are at the disposal of every Christian, and that what John was, each one
of us can be--good, straight, bold, unconquerable, heroic.
But here are other foot-tracks--outrageous ones: they can belong only
to one man--THAT GRANDEST OF CHRISTIAN
PARADOXES--THE LITTLE GIANT PAUL--whose head was as big
as his body, and his heart greater than both. Once he thought and
treated every Christian as a combination of knave and fool. Then he
became one himself. He was called "fool" because his acts were so far
beyond the dictates of human reason, and "mad" because of his
irresponsible fiery zeal for Christ and men. A first-class scholar, but
one who knew how to use scholarship properly; for he put it on the
shelf, declaring the wisdom of men to be but folly, and determined to
know nothing else save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The result--he
made the world turn somersault. His life was a perpetual gamble for
God. Daily he faced death for Christ. Again and again he stood fearless
before crowds thirsting for his blood. He stood before kings and
governors and "turned not a hair". He didn't so much as flinch before
Nero, that vice-president of hell. His sufferings were appalling; read
them. He trod in his Master's footsteps, and so received--God is always

just in His favors--the same splendid compliment that Jesus did. "All
forsook him." So there were some Chocolate Christians in those days
too. Anyone who forsook Paul must have been made of Chocolate.
Doubtless the "CHOCOLATES" excused themselves as they do today.
"Who could abide such a fanatical, fiery fool? such an uncompromising
character? Nobody could work with him, or he with them!" (What a lie!
Jesus did, and they got on well together.) A tactless enthusiast, who
considered it his business to tell every man the unvarnished truth
regardless of consequences. He won his degree hands down, and
without a touch of the spur. A first-class one, too--that of the headman's
axe--next best to that of the cross.
And so the tale goes on. Go where you will through the Scriptures or
history, you find that men who really knew God, and didn't merely say
they