silence becomes a prayer, and the response is ever helpful.

The individual amid the thunder of his surroundings in the red surge of
battle somehow never allows his soul to become obscured. It is taking
impressions which later in the day as he sits by the camp fire cause
him to think and to reach conclusions which leave him a different man
from what he has been. We see this in the glow of the soldiers' letters
to those he loves: he has come within the shadow of the Divine Reality
as the wondrous book of Life and Death opens on the battlefield. The
result is the Soldier's Gospel. It would cause the devotees of little
Bethel to faint with its crude "superstitions" and absence of
meaningless and stupid dogma yet its grip of spiritual things and Divine
Aid would make the ordinary "go to meeting" Christian gape with
astonishment. The soldier's simple faith, his willing endurance, his
quiet heroisms, his silent self-sacrifice, though they call for no
louder name than duty, are just those chords which link him to the Great
Heroism which saw its culmination in Calvary. After all, deeds only are
the words of love.

The Soldier's Gospel is a wonderful revelation: the world grows
gratefully small as it appreciates its work, worth and effect upon the
man. All the lights by which he steers sum up good citizenship rather
than sectarianship. We had long ceased to cultivate the former.

"There goes a hospital ship," and a Commander of one of H.M. Patrols
pointed out to me a transport full of wounded. We thought in pity of
that array of maimed men, of silent suffering, of bandages, slings,
crutches and artificial limbs, but suddenly there arose from the
transport a mighty cheer of greeting and salutation to the white ensign.
That was the reply of war's wreckage to those who pitied. It is a
wonderful Gospel that produces this. But the invisible, while full of
awe, does not daunt him, the soldier reaches out towards the rather
unknown searching for light and finding it. Under fire means so much, it
is filled up with so many experiences, you march through a lifetime in a
few seconds, you get new views of the past years from another angle of
vision. Shadow and darkness and doubt are lifted, the soldier is frank
and honest, he is not hide-bound by petty superstitions, he is willing
fairly to consider and weigh all sensations, visions and inner
illuminations. He is not blinded with the dogma of either agnosticism or
sectarianism, while his