illegitimate child, a member of the
criminal class. But in the trenches he found God. Blown up by a mine,
for sixteen days he lost the power of speech and of memory. He returned
from the front with a deep sense of God, but with no personal, vital
relationship to Christ. He eagerly welcomed the first real message that
went straight to his heart, and the personal word of loving sympathy
which led him to relate his deep experience of the trenches to the
presence of the living Christ. All this man needed was someone to
interpret to him his own experience, and bring him into the relationship
with God which his own heart craved and longed for.

Beside this photograph is the card of a strong-willed, self-righteous
young Pharisee, who had no use for religion in peace time, but who was
driven to God by his awful conflict with sin in this war. Next comes the
card of a young man who formerly had lived a proper conventional life
without bad habits. The war taught him to drink and he finally became a
drunkard, but in his extremity he found Christ as a personal Saviour.
Next comes the card of a man who had been in a public house for
thirty-two years--twenty-seven years as a bar tender and five years as a
saloon keeper. He said, "I have sent men to hell with drink. I have
seen women who would sell the clothes off the backs of their children or
pawn their husband's clothing to get drink." Yet this man has been
brought to God during the war. Many a man has found God on the field of
battle, or like the thief has turned to him in the hour of death.[2]

[Illustration: Three Thousand Soldiers in the Crowboro Hut.]

One young soldier thus describes his experience which is typical of many
another: There had been a charge, a hopeless affair from the start. He
lay in the long grass between the lines, unable to move, and with an
unceasing throbbing pain in his left leg and arm. A whizz-bang had
caught him in both places. He just lay there, feeling strangely
peaceful. Above him he could see the stars. All this bloodshed--what
was the good of it? He suddenly felt terribly small and lonely, and he
was so very, very weak. "God!" he whispered softly. "God everywhere!"
Then into his tired brain came a new phrase--"Underneath are the
everlasting arms." He sighed contentedly, as a tired child. They
fetched him in at last. He will never again be sound of limb; but there
is in his memory and in his heart that which may make him a s