lu chiefs. Yet never had
they flashed with braver light than now, when, facing that half-mocking,
half-reckless crowd, he cried:

"Prepare ter meet yer God!"

Rough as the thrust of a broken bayonet was his speech, unskilled in
rhetoric his tongue, his periods unrounded as flying fragments of shrapnel
shell; yet all who listened knew that every word came from the speaker's
soul, from the magazine of truth. Some London slum had been his cradle, the
gutters of the great city the only University his feet had known, the
costers' dialect was native to his tongue; yet no smug Churchman crowned
with the laurels of the schools could so have stirred the blood of those
wild lads, fresh from the boundless bush and lawless mining camps beneath
Australian suns.

"Prepare ter meet yer God!"

And even as he spoke we, who listened, plainly heard the rolling thunder of
our guns as they spoke in sterner tones to the nation's foes from Modder
River. It was no new figure that the soldier preacher placed before us. It
was the same indignant Christ that swept the rabble from the Temple; the
same great Christ who calmly faced the seething mob in Pilate's judgment
hall; the same sweet Christ who took the babes upon His knee; the same
Divine Christ who, with hyssop and gall, and mingled blood and tears,
passed death's dread portals on the dark brow of Calvary. The same grand
figure, but quaintly dressed in words that savoured of the London slums and
of the soldier's camp, and yet so hedged around with earnest love and
childlike faith that all its grossest trappings fell away and left us
nothing but the ideal Christ.

Once more we heard the distant batteries speak to those whose hands had
rudely grasped the Empire's flag, and every rock, and hill, and crag, and
stony height took up the echo, like a lion's roar, until the whispering
wind was tremulous with sound. Then all was hushed except the preacher's
voice.

"Prepare ter meet yer God! I've come ter tell yer all abart a General whose
armies hold ther City of Eternal Life. If you are wounded, throw yer rifles
down, 'nd 'e will send the ambulance of 'is love, with Red Cross angels,
and 'is adjutant, whose name is Mercy, to dress yer wounds. Throw down yer
rifles 'nd surrender. No rebels can enter the City of Eternal Life. You
can't storm ther walls, Or take ther gates at ther point of ther baynit,
for ther ramparts are guarded 'nd ther sentries never sleep. When ther
bugles sound ther lar