the basis of
our belief that there is a future. One cannot be at the Front very
long before he is compelled to examine his thoughts in regard to
immortality. Death is brought home very closely. The grim spectre
points his finger at a man--perhaps in the first flush of
manhood--who has just commenced to appreciate the joy of living. Death
challenges, and with no shadow of faltering, but perhaps with a smile,
the challenge is accepted, and the lad goes under. It is no triumph
for death. It is the soul of a man that has gained a glorious victory.
One feels convinced that it is but the body that has terminated
existence. The physical presence is no more, but the personality--the
soul--has been translated and passed beyond us. Freed from the
limitations of this earthly life, it has passed into the infinite to
be with others who have gone before.

Many scenes have been witnessed the memory of which, even now, fills
the eyes with tears. Men waiting the advance of death--resolutely,
fearless, hopeful.

The war has done in a few months what years of preaching apparently
failed to effect. It has produced a revival of religion amongst men,
and consequently a slump in ritualism. Christianity has always had its
enemies, and any opportunity for adversely criticizing the system has
been laid hold of by some with amazing alacrity. The report that the
nearer men get to the firing line the less mindful they become of the
claims of Christ is entirely false, and could only have been
circulated by people who desired to depreciate the men whose character
and courage command the admiration of all who know and understand
them. Those responsible for the rise and spread of such a libel are
neither the friends of the Church nor of the soldiers.

All soldiers are not saints; all may not be gentlemen. Such claim has
never been made by them, nor has it ever been their well-wishers'
boast. Yet there are many soldiers whose lives are clean and sweet,
who are entitled to be described 'saints' if ever man was. As for what
constitutes a 'gentleman,' a difference of opinion exists; but judged
by the standard raised since the outset of this terrific conflict
amongst the nations, I have no hesitation in affirming that the vast
majority of them are 'Nature's own.'

Certainly there are some who are careless and callous, who are not
and never were amenable to the claims of Christ, who daily grow more
forgetful of home-ties and become slaves to ignoble app