THE CHDRCH AND THE ARMY. 



199 



and Expeditionary Force Canteens have been spoken of as if they 

 were schools for teaching drunl^enness. Even if we granted the 

 truth of much that has been said, and accepted at its face value 

 every accusation that has been made, we might still demand of 

 these Puritans an entire readjustment of their scheme of moral 

 values in the light of the teaching of Christ. These sins of sense 

 are precisely those which He regarded as least hopeless. It was 

 He Who said of those in His day who mistook respectability for 

 religion : " The publicans and harlots go into the Kingdom of 

 Heaven before you.'" 



I do not want to represent our men as saints, or to claim that 

 the Army presents humanity as Christ would have it. I know 

 and deplore the coarse, sensual sins that are far too common. 

 But the sensualist and the drunkard are not the heroes of our 

 men. They sin often, boldly or carelessly, but — and this is the 

 real point — they feel such sin to be failure. Their admiration 

 is for those who live temperately and cleanly. The Church has 

 not failed to give the average man a respect for temperance. 

 He has learned that, and even when he fails most signally he 

 owns that he ought to practise the thing which he respects. 



The Church's failure, if she has failed, is something quite 

 different. It is this : She has not recognized how near to Christ 

 her children are. She has been inclined to reckon as aliens to 

 the commonwealth of Cod those to whom she should have said 

 joyfully, " The Kingdom of C-od is within you.'" Then, as a 

 consequence of this, our men, believing what the Church says of 

 them, have regarded themselves as irreligious. There is nothing 

 more common than to hear a man say : " But of course I'm 

 not religious. I don't think I've been to church except to be 

 married, since I was a boy." And yet this man is constantly 

 doing the things, and continually hoping and trying to do the 

 things which Christ wants men to do. His life is visibly affected 

 by a spirit, some spirit — what spirit, if it be not Christ's ? 



We proclaim Christ, and men stare at us uncomprehending, 

 though the Christ we proclaim is in them all the time. We preach 

 the Cross, and our words have little meaning to men who, even 

 while they fail to understand, are nailed to the Cross along with 

 Christ, offering themselves as sacrifices for the saving of the 

 world. 



This is the extraordinary contradiction in which we are involved. 

 We have the men of a great empire so near to Christ that only a 

 little space divides them from Him. Yet they do not see Him 



