up to thank the “performer”—and he couldn’t do it; there was a lump in his
throat and big tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“Boys, I can’t say what I want to, but,” said he, “we have all got to be
better men.”

The Gospel was preached in that hut in a different way from what we have
it preached at home, but we got it in, and the thing is to get it in.

* * * * *

I was talking behind the lines to some of your boys. Every boy in front of
me was going up to the trenches that night. There were five or six hundred
of them. They had got their equipment—they were going on parade as soon as
they left me. It wasn’t easy to talk. All I said was accompanied by the
roar of the guns and the crack of rifles and the rattle of the machine
guns, and once in a while our faces were lit up by the flashes. It was a
weird sight. I looked at those boys. I couldn’t preach to them in the
ordinary way. I knew and they knew that for many it was the last service
they would attend on earth. I said,

“Boys, you are going up to the trenches. Anything may happen there. I wish
I could go with you. God knows I do. I would if they would let me, and if
any of you fall I would like to hold your hand and say something to you
for mother, for wife, and for lover, and for little child. I’d like to be
a link between you and home just for _that_ moment—God’s messenger for
you. They won’t let me go, but there is Somebody Who will go with you. You
know Who that is.”

You should have heard the boys all over that hut whisper, “Yes,