Your Boys | Page 3

another. They don't always think of the Book, but they love the fruits of the Spirit in one another. They love truth, honour, courage, humility, friendship, loyalty. And where do you get those things? Why, they have their roots in the Cross--they grow on that Tree.
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I had a dear friend who won the M.C.--a young Cambridge graduate. He was all-round brilliant. He could write an essay, preach a sermon, sit down to the piano and compose an operetta. The boys delighted in him. He would always be at the front. He would always be where there was danger. I was talking about him one day in one of the convalescent camps, and two of the boys said to me afterwards,
"You have been talking about our padre. We loved him. We were with him when he was killed, for the shell that killed him wounded us. Every man in the battalion would have laid down his life for him."
This old world's dying for the want of love. There are more people die for the want of a bit of it than with overmuch of it. Don't stifle it--let it out.
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"I am afraid," said a padre to me once, "the boys are sceptical."
"Come with me to-morrow," I answered. "I'll prove to you they are not sceptical."
We were half an hour ahead of time and the hut was crowded with eight hundred men. They were singing when I got in--something about "an old rooster--as you used to."
Do you suppose I had no better sense than to go in and say, "Stop this ungodly music?" You can catch more flies with treacle than with vinegar.
I looked at the boys and said, "That's great, sing it again."
And I turned to the padre and asked, "Isn't that splendid? Isn't that fine?"
While we were waiting to begin the meeting, I said, "Boys, we must have another."
"One of the same sort?" they shouted.
"Of course," was my reply. And they sang "Who's your lady friend?" and when they had sung that, I called out, "Boys, we will have one more. What shall it be?"
"One of yours, sir."
I had not trusted them in vain.
I said, "Very well, you choose your hymn."
"When I survey the wondrous Cross"--that was the song they chose.
And they sang it all the better because I had sung their songs with them. Before we had got to the end of the last verse some of those boys were in tears, and it wasn't hard to pray. It isn't far from rag-time to "When I survey the wondrous Cross."
When they had finished the hymn I said, "Boys, I am going to tell you the story of my father's conversion." For I had to convince my padre friend that they were not sceptical. I took them to the gipsy tent and told them of my father and five motherless children, and of how Jesus came to that tent, saving the father and the five children and making preachers of them all.
I said, "Did my father make a mistake when he brought Christ to those five motherless children?" And the eight hundred boys shouted, "No, sir."
"Did he do the right thing?"
"Yes, sir."
"What ought you to do?"
"The same, sir."
"Do you want Jesus in your lives?" and every man of the eight hundred jumped to his feet.
You say they are sceptical where Jesus is concerned. I'll tell you when they are sceptical--when they see the caricature of Jesus in you and me.
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I was, as I have said, under shell fire for a month in one place--night and day for a month--and never allowed out without a gasbag round my neck. I slept in a cellar there at night when I did sleep--only 700 yards from the Germans--and, as I have said before, it was cold.
When the thaw set in, I put a couple of bricks down and put a box-lid on top, so that I could stand in a dry place. We had two picks and two shovels in that cellar in case anything happened overnight. I have been up against it. Whenever I talked to the boys there they sat with their gas-bags round their necks, and one held mine while I talked. It was quite a common thing to have something fall quite close to us while we were singing.
Imagine singing "Cover my defenceless head," just as a piece of the roof is falling in. Or--
In death's dark vale I fear no ill With Thee, dear Lord, beside me--
then another crash! That makes things real. Every word was accompanied by the roar of guns--the rattle of the machine gun and the crack of the rifle. We never knew what it was to be quiet.
A shell once came and burst just the other side of the wall against which