The Chocolate Soldier | Page 6

Israel, turning them into CHOCOLATE
CREAMS--"softies", afraid to face the fire and water before them. God
put them all into the saucepan again and boiled them for forty years in
the desert, and left them there. He has no use for Chocolates. It's not
small things He despises, but "Chocolates"; for He said, "Your little
ones shall inherit the promised land which you have forfeited through
listening to men and despising Me" (Numbers 13).
JONAH became a Chocolate Soldier once. Told to go to Africa, he
went to Liverpool and took ship for America. Luckily he met a storm
and a whale which, after three days' instruction, taught him how to pray
and obey, and set him once again on the right track (Jonah 1).
There's nothing that shows up CHOCOLATES so much as a bit of a
breeze among God's people. Paul and Barnabas had one once. Judging
from experience, I guess there were some Chocolates about then who
got into a fog right away! Before that, they had vowed they would go to
the heathen; but this breeze between P. and B. put them off. If they
hadn't been MADE OF CHOCOLATE they would have said, "This
affair between Paul and Barnabas only makes it more necessary for me

to keep close to God, and do what He told me to do more exactly and
punctually; so I shall go a bit sooner to Africa--that's all!"
Difficulties, dangers, disease, death, or divisions don't deter any but
Chocolates from executing God's Will. When someone says there's a
lion in the way, the real Christian promptly replies, "That's hardly
enough inducement for me; I want a bear or two besides to make it
worth my while to go."
CHOCOLATES are very fond of talking loud and long against some
whom they call fanatics, as though there were any danger of Christians
being fanatics nowadays! Why, fanatics among Christians are as rare as
the "dodo". Now, if they declaimed against "tepidity", they would talk
sense. God's real people have always been called fanatics. Jesus was
called mad; so was Paul; so was Whitfield, Wesley, Moody, Spurgeon.
No one has graduated far in God's School who has not been paid the
compliment of being called a fanatic. We Christians of today are indeed
a tepid crew. Had we but half the fire and enthusiasm of the
Suffragettes in the past, we would have the world evangelized and
Christ back among us in no time. Had we the pluck and heroism of the
Flyers, or the men who volunteered for the North or South Polar
Expeditions, or for the Great War, or for any ordinary dare-devil
enterprise, we could have every soul on earth knowing the name and
salvation of Jesus Christ in less than ten years.
Alas! What stirs ordinary men's blood and turns them into heroes,
makes most Christians run like a flock of frightened sheep. The
Militants daily risked their lives in furtherance of their cause, and
subscribed of their means in a way that cried "Shame" on us Christians,
who generally brand the braving of risks and fighting against odds as a
"tempting of God".
CHOCOLATE CARAMELS--"stick-jaw", boys call them--jawing, "I
go, sir," and sticking fast in Christendom. No conquest is made in
assured safety, and conquest for Christ certainly cannot so be made.
We Christians too often SUBSTITUTE PRAYER FOR PLAYING
THE GAME. Prayer is good: but when used as a substitute for

obedience, it is naught but a blatant hypocrisy, a despicable Pharisaism.
We need as many meetings for action as for prayer--perhaps more.
Every orthodox prayer-meeting is opened by God saying to His people,
"Go work today; pray that laborers be sent into My vineyard." It is
continued by the Christian's response, "I go, Lord, whithersoever Thou
sendest me, that Thy Name may be hallowed everywhere, that Thy
Kingdom may come speedily, that Thy Will may be done on earth as in
heaven." But if it ends in nobody going anywhere, it had better never
have been held at all. Like faith, prayer without works is dead. That is
why many PRAYER-MEETINGS might well be styled "much cry, yet
little wool". Zerubbabel didn't only hold prayer-meetings; he went and
cut down trees, and started to build. Hence God said, "From this day
will I bless thee."
Report says that someone has re-discovered the secret of the old
masters. Cannot we Christians re-discover, and put into practice, that of
our Great Master and His former pupils, Heroism? He and they saved
not themselves; they loved not their lives to the death, and so kept on
saving them by losing them for Christ's sake.
WE ARE FRITTERING AWAY TIME AND MONEY IN A
MULTIPLICITY OF CONVENTIONS, conferences, and retreats,
when the real need is to go straight and full steam