Your Boys | Page 2

people at home were a tenth as grateful as they ought to be they would crowd into our churches, if it were for nothing else but to pray for and give thanks for the boys.
They are just great, your boys. They saved your homes. I was recently in a city in France which had before the war a population of 55,000 people. When I was there, there were not 500 people in that city--54,500 were homeless refugees, if they weren't killed. I walked about that city for a month, searching for a house that wasn't damaged, a window that wasn't broken, and I never found one. The whole of that city will have to be rebuilt. A glorious cathedral, a magnificent pile of municipal buildings, all in ruins; the Grande Place, a meeting-place for the crowned heads of Europe, gone! "Thou hast made of a city a heap"--a heap of rubbish. Your city would have been like that but for the boys in khaki.
I was saying my prayers in a corner of an old broken chateau, the Y.M.C.A. headquarters for that centre, with my trench-coat buttoned tight and my big muffler round my ears. Presently I heard some one say--one of the workers--"A gentleman wants to see you, sir," and when I got downstairs there was a General, a V.C., a D.S.O., and a Star of India man--a glorious man, a beautiful character. He was there with his Staff-captain, and he said,
"I've come to invite you to dinner to-morrow night, Mr. Smith. I want you to come to the officers' mess."
"What time, sir?" I asked. "I cannot miss my meeting at half-past six with the boys."
"Well, the mess will be at half-past seven. We will arrange that."
"Before you go, sir, I should like to ask why you are interested in me."
"Well, I'll tell you, if you wish," he said. "Men are writing home to their wives, mothers, sweethearts, and they are talking about a new power in their lives. 'We have got something that is helping us to go straight and play the game,' they write. And so," said the General, "we should like to have a chat with you."
I went the next night, and for an hour and a half I preached the Gospel to those officers. It was a great chance; and it was the result of the note-paper which I have sometimes given out for an hour and a half at a time to your boys.
There are lots of people think you are not doing any spiritual work unless you are singing, "Come to Jesus." Put more Jesus in every bit of the day's business. Jesus ought to be as real in the city as in the temple. If I read my New Testament aright, and if I know God, and if I know humanity, and if I know Nature, then that is God's programme. God's programme is that the whole of life should be permeated with Christ.
God bless the women who have gone out to help your boys. Women of title, of wealth and position, serving God and humanity behind tea-tables.
In one of our huts I saw a lady standing beside two urns--coffee and tea. She was pouring out, and there were 150 or 200 men standing round that hut waiting to get served. The fellows at the end were not pushing and crowding to get first, but waiting their turn. They are more good-natured than a religious crowd waiting to get in to hear a popular preacher. I have seen these people jostle at the doors.
But your boys don't do that. They just sing, "Pack up your troubles," and wait their turn.
Well, these boys, wet and cold, were waiting for a cup of coffee, and one of those red-hot gospellers came along, and he said, "Sister, stop a minute and put a word in for Jesus. This is a great opportunity."
"But," she replied, "they are wet and tired; let me give them something hot as soon as I can."
"Oh! but let's put a word in for Jesus," urged this chap.
Then a bright-faced soldier lad called out, "Guv'nor, she puts Jesus in the coffee." That is what I mean when I say you have got to put Jesus into every bit of the day's work.
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I have never once been asked by your boys to what Church I belonged. They don't stop to ask that if they believe in you. They want the living Christ and the living Message. It isn't creed; it's need. And don't you get the notion that the boys can't be reached, and don't you think that the boys are hostile to Christianity. They are not. I won't hear it without protest. The best things that the old Book talks about are the things the boys love in one