at the Front, 'Out here every man puts up
some kind of a prayer every night.' The superficial scepticism which is
so largely ethical, or the result of indifference, and which is assumed
by many men in England, has no hold at the Front. One of our best known
Bishops was telling me when I met him 'somewhere in France' that a short
time back he was about to conduct a service in a hospital ward, in his
own city, and upon handing a hymn-book to one of the patients lying in
bed, he was met with, 'Thank you, I would rather not, I am an agnostic'
Hearing this, the man in the next bed raised himself up on his elbow,
and looking at the objector, tersely remarked, 'You silly young fool, a
week at the trenches would take that nonsense out of you.' Undoubtedly
our men are being awakened to the tremendous reality of eternal
verities, and it behoves us to help them all we can. In this respect the
experience of the padre is intensely happy; no work on which he engages
is more fruitful than that of upholding Christ before men who have come
near the end of their earthly course. Said an officer to me--who had
just been brought in badly wounded, and I had written to his wife
assuring her that all was being done to alleviate his suffering and to
effect his recovery (which happily took place)--'Padre, I have been a
wild man all my life, but last night as I lay wounded in the trenches,
for the first time I realized God, and perfect peace came into my
heart.'

A captain in the Guards, badly hit through the lungs with shrapnel,
demanded a good bit of my attention. When he was sent to the Base I
hardly thought that he would survive the journey; however, in due course
he reached England. Some months afterwards I received a letter from his
mother, stating that her boy was slowly climbing back to recovery, and
thanking me for what I had been able to do for him; which was little
enough. At the bottom of the letter was a postscript: 'My darling boy
died at twelve to-day. Just before he passed away he said, "Mother, I am
in perfect peace with God. Give my love to padre."' Those are the kind
of things that make a man thank God for having volunteered to do one's
'bit' in that particular line of life in which he has been placed. No
work is grander than a chaplain's; but I must lay it down as a general
axiom, that no man should undertake this particular kind of work unless
he knows that he is charged with a message from God.

In the Neuve Chapelle dispa