Thoughts on Religion At the Front

Part 1

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THOUGHTS ON RELIGION AT THE FRONT

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA . MADRAS MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

THOUGHTS ON RELIGION AT THE FRONT

THE REV. NEVILLE S. TALBOT

ASSISTANT CHAPLAIN-GENERAL LATE RIFLE BRIGADE FORMERLY FELLOW AND CHAPLAIN OF BALLIOL AUTHOR OF 'THE MIND OF THE DISCIPLES'

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1917

COPYRIGHT

First Edition January 1917 Reprinted March, April and November 1917

PREFACE

I send out this little and fragmentary book with the consciousness that it calls for apology. I have had to write it hastily during a short period of leave. Yet it touches upon great subjects which deserve the reverence of leisurely writing. Ought I not, then, to have waited for the leisure of days after the war? I think not. Such days may never come. And, in any case, now is the time for the Church to think intently about the war and its issues, and to learn from them. The Church is far more than a department of 'the services,' the resources of which it is convenient to mobilise as so much more munition of war. She is the perpetual protagonist in the world of the Kingdom of God. War for her, if for nobody else, should be an apocalypse, that is, a vision of realities for which at all times she is bound to fight, of which, nevertheless, she is apt to lose sight during the engrossments of peace. It is as lit up by the cruel light of war's conflagrations that the things concerning the Kingdom must be seized anew. If anybody has thoughts which he feels he must share with others, he should not postpone doing so. He should communicate his thoughts to others in order that he may learn from their comments and criticism. I can claim, whilst asking pardon for whatever may offend in them, that the thoughts represented by the following pages have not been come by hastily, but have been growing in my mind during the long months at the front since the beginning of the war. They have, so to say, been hammered out as metal upon the anvil of war.

They are thoughts about religion. Nothing is so important as religion; nothing is more potent than true ideas in religion. Deep fountains of real religion--of simple and unself-prizing faith--have been unsealed by the convulsion of war. Yet this religion is weak in ideas, and some of the ideas with which it is bound up are wrong ideas. Men of our race are very sure that it matters more what a man is than what he thinks. British religion is deep and rich, but it is, characteristically, deeper and richer in what it is than in what it knows itself to be. It sorely needs a mind of strong and compelling conviction. If these pages were to help ever so few readers towards being possessed anew of the truth of the Gospel of God in Christ, their appearance would be justified.

I have written, perhaps, as one who dreads saying 'Peace, where there is no peace.' I would rather err on the side of emphasising criticism and difficulty than the other way. There is, indeed, little room for complacency in a Christian, still less in an English Churchman, at the front. Yet in 'padres' hope and expectation should predominate, and these as based less upon results achieved than upon the mutual understanding, respect, and indeed affection which increasingly unite them to the men whom they would serve. And in them, too, if they are 'C. of E.,' there should be growing, along with an unevasive discontent, a sanguine loyalty to their mother Church. For all that she now means so little to so many she will yet win a more than nominal allegiance from many of her wandering children. For there is in her, beneath the surface of her sluggish confusion, a living heart and candid mind, upon which is being written afresh the good news in Christ. She is being vivified, as perhaps no other part of Christendom, into readiness for the future.

N.S.T.

B.E.F., November 1916.

'And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be brought low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols shall utterly pass away. And men shall go into the caves of the rocks, and into the holes of the earth, from before the terror of the Lord and from the glory of His majesty, when He ariseth to shake mightily the earth.'

* * * * *

'Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you.'

I write this little book in order to help towards an answer to the question, How is it with the Christian religion at the front? With the flower of British manhood massed in the Army this and like questions are bound to arise--How is it with the men? Where are they religiously? What do they want? What will they need when they return? and so forth. There never has been such an opportunity of taking a comparative view of British Christianity and of framing answers to such questions. Perhaps those who are working as chaplains at the front are especially challenged to attempt these tasks. Their answer must not be loose or sentimental. There is a danger of that. The emotions aroused by the war may encourage sentimental verdicts. That may be the reason why a good many ideas which are current at home about religion at the front, are a good distance removed from reality.

I can only venture upon a verdict after first acknowledging that it is inseparably bound up with my own shortcomings. Other men of a truer devotion and love may well have grounds in a more effective ministry for challenging and amplifying it.

Further, I have to ask that allowance be made for the fact that men like myself, who have been working as 'C. of E.' chaplains, are not very well qualified to speak about the religion of the men. There is something wrong about the status of chaplains. They belong to what the author of A Student in Arms calls 'the super-world' of officers, which as such is separate from the men. As a class we find it hard to penetrate the surface of the men--that surface which we can almost see thrust out at us like a shield, in the suddenly assumed rigidity of men as they salute us. We are in an unchristian position, in the sense that we are in a position which Christ would not have occupied. He, I am sure, would have been a regimental stretcher-bearer, truly among and of the men. We are very unlike Him. We are often liked, and are thought good fellows, but we are unlike Him and miss what He could discover. Our--my--verdict is not necessarily His.

Lastly, all verdicts must be rough in war. The nature of war and of its effects often precludes any one from knowing exactly what is going on in the souls of men. War is a muddy business, encasing the body in dirt, and caking over the soul. It forms hard surfaces over the centres of sensitiveness. It is benumbing to spiritual faculties. That is nature's way of accommodation with war's environment. To feel things much would literally be maddening. To brood about danger, to apprehend or anticipate or philosophise may imperil 'nerve.' Rather the majority of men carry on, callously, almost gaily, with mental and spiritual faculties if possible inactive. I have met an entirely devout lover of music (since killed in action) who told me that he didn't miss music out here because "he wasn't carrying on with those faculties." I have seen a man of indubitable Christian conviction come down from the cold clam of the trenches in mid-winter and take up a religious book which ordinarily would have excited him and say--"Ah! yes, there is all that." I could almost see the surface which war had hardened over him. Beneath it in him and all the rest, who knows what may not be in process, ready to emerge when they can bathe in the solvent waters of peace?

Meanwhile they 'carry on.' That I think is especially congenial to the British. There is no doubt that men of our race have an invincibility, which is due in part to the fact that they do not think about or feel what is really going on. To be practically and sensually occupied with the passing moment is the way to carry on in war. It is characteristic of our men. They are remarkably void of apprehension in every sense of the word. Had the rank and file who fought the first battle of Ypres--when the whole of the British forces came to be strung out from Ypres to La Bassee in one line without a reserve--formed a general apprehension of and as to their position, they would have been 'rattled' and broken. They were not beaten, in part because they did not think of being beaten. "You can't," as they sing, "beat the boys of the bull-dog breed," but this invincibility has not altogether the virtue of facts understood, faced, and triumphed over. In short, British qualities and defects of qualities are closely interwoven. But my point is, that this being so, any verdict about what is going on in British souls during a war must be humble and tentative and patient of qualification.

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