When Will the War End?

THIS is the question that is being asked by millions. Parents ask it whose sons are at the Front. Wives ask it whose husbands have left them for the War. The cry comes from a mighty nation in the throes and shadow of death. How long? The greatest voice in the realm has told us that the “end is not in sight.” Statesmen warn us that we must be prepared to face great sacrifices, and that all the manhood of the nation will be required to give us victory. We must have munitions, and we [must have men, they say. Dear friends, we must have God.
The nation is not seeking God, and as long as “business as usual, pleasure as usual,” is the motto of a nation, there will be no permanent success. Are the leaders of the nation seeking God? Do we ever hear His name mentioned in Parliament or in Proclamations? We know from the Word of God, we know from history, that no nation ever prospered that failed to acknowledge Him. And yet God has been dealing gently with this nation, although His mighty hand has been laid upon it. God is warning Great Britain now. He is standing at the door and knocking. If the nation does not open its doors and let Him in, it will never be well with it.
God allowed the enemy to bombard our shores; God allowed his submarines and mines to sink our men-of-war; God allowed his Zeppelins to pour down death and destruction from the skies. Over and over again the nation has been on the eve of a mighty victory, when by some mischance it was snatched away. The casualty lists are getting longer and longer, and the world is mourning its best and bravest. All these things are the voices of God, that the nation has not yet heard, that the nation does not seem inclined to hear. Pleasure and sin are rampant in our midst. Like hounds in leash, men and women are scarcely held back from all the excesses of sin. The spirit of the nation seems to say, “While our men are dying for us abroad, we will laugh and enjoy ourselves at home. We will crowd the theaters and the picture palaces, and eat and drink and enjoy ourselves, even if the groans of the wounded and the dying rend the air around us.”
A young officer fresh from the battle-front said to me, “People take things much more seriously in France than they do in England.” An atheist, in Hyde Park, was shouting out to the people around him, “There is no God! I can prove there is no God.” There were two wounded soldiers from the trenches listening to him, and one said loudly, “We can believe there is no God in London; but we know there is a God in the trenches.” While men are dying for their country abroad, this is how the nation is living at home.
We want a Jonah to go through the land to bring the nation to its knees. We want some prophet-voice from God to rebuke, to chasten, to exhort. The nation will be scourged for its sins — most of all for the sin of forgetting God, and for blaspheming against Christ, the Son of God, and for denying His power to save.
In the days of the Armada the nation prayed, and God sent a mighty wind that swept the Armada away from our shores and destroyed it. The breath of God did more that day than all the might of England could have done.
And today God could send a storm that would wreck every Zeppelin; and God could give a power to the nation’s arms that would lead to instant victory. Directly Britain prays and repents God will give victory. He says: “I will be inquired of.” The Christians in our midst must be the forlorn hope of Christendom. They must throng the courts of heaven and cry aloud to God for the nation’s sins. They must pray to God that the blindness may be taken away that refuses to see God in all that is happening, and to acknowledge Him in the confession of a nation’s sins. Unless God is exalted we shall be debased. Our beloved King holds the hearts of all his people in his keeping; under God, he holds the national destinies of all the peoples over whom he rules in his keeping also. “By Me kings rule.” So if the King would read the people, they would follow him in the acknowledgment of God, by prayer and the confession of the nation’s sins. Then a people face to face with God could say, “Our eyes are upon Thee” — “the battle is not ours but God’s.”
But if we fill the theaters instead of our haunts of prayer; if we run after pleasure instead of seeking after God, then God will leave us, and the devil will have his way with us. One week-day given up to penitence and prayer; one hour of silence before the majesty of heaven; one mighty cry from a nation’s heart to God; the sackcloth of penitence upon us from the highest to the lowest; the royalty of Britain laid before the King of kings; the warriors of England prostrate before the omnipotence of God; the statesmen of Britain seeking to know the mind and will of God — let this be done, and the sun of victory will shine out in its effulgence over all our world, and the cannons’ roar will be drowned by the mighty diapason of a nation’s paean of worship,
“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
H.W.

Incidents of the War
“If Jesus Christ be God, and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.” C. T. S.
What sacrifice will you make for Him this Christmas? What shall your Christmas gift be? The following touching episode happened a day or two ago: —
“YES, BUT I WILL AFFORD IT”
I was visiting an invalid friend the other day and talking about the dear soldiers at the Front who need Testaments sent to them. After a few minutes I saw her fumbling underneath the bedclothes. “Now what can she be doing?” thought I, but soon I knew, for she produced a bright shilling from her scanty store, as she said: “Give this to your fund for sending God’s Word to the soldiers.” “My dear friend,” I replied, with a gladdened feeling, “you cannot afford so much.” “Yes, true, but I will afford it. God’s work must be carried on, so I will give it.” “What made you think of it?” I said. “When I read the October Message you gave me, and the Doctor’s appeal for help.” Don’t you think, dear readers, that some of us too, who think we cannot afford any more, may say to ourselves, as my friend did, “I will afford it”?
Emily P. Leakey
And she will be blest for her giving.
And so will another dear friend, who has denied herself of many things to give to God. She says in her letter:― “I am enclosing a Money Order to buy more books for the soldiers and sailors. I feel I must do this, or I shall ever regret it in eternity. I know I shall rejoice then that I helped to feed the souls of men. It gives me very great pleasure now to be able to send.... I have asked God to help me to send you all the money I can. I do wish I could do more, but God knows even the desires of His children. These splendid opportunities of helping will never come again.”
An invalid writes: — “Seeing in the little book, ‘A Message from God,’ you are badly in need of Testaments for our brave soldiers and sailors, a poor invalid sends one shilling to help forward the great work you are doing for the Master.”
A friend tells us she has had a birthday present of ten shillings given her for some years. This year she wanted to buy a Bible with it. She says in her letter: “Well, I suddenly thought of the soldiers and sailors. What I was going to spend on one Bible would buy sixty Testaments for them, and surely they needed the Word of Life more than I needed a Bible.... I made it a matter of prayer, and became fully convinced that it was the Lord’s will I should send the money to you. When my birthday came I had a Bible given me just the kind I was longing for. The Lord does indeed give above all we ask or think.”
A dear worker at the Front writes: — “I am truly grateful for the three nice parcels of New Testaments and literature received today. I was entirely out of New Testaments, and last night made it a matter of special prayer, and while I was praying yours were on the way.”
Another tells me: — “I received yesterday a parcel of Testaments, etc., from you, and was delighted to receive them. Would that I had possessed such a lot fourteen months ago.”
Another says from the Front: — “We sometimes distribute five hundred Gospels in one day; we never have too many Testaments or too much literature; the work constantly expands.
One more letter from a worker: — “Only last night I spoke to a wounded soldier, and on offering him a Testament he pulled one out of his breast pocket; it was much worn, and many of the pages were loose, but he would not have another in the place of if. ‘This one,’ said he, ‘has saved my life on more than one occasion, and I mean to keep it and read it every day, and when it is too mutilated to read I shall still keep it.’ He said that the Testaments and Gospels were much appreciated at the Front, and many who had never before read them are making a practice of reading them now.”
I want you to read this Christmas number of the “Message from God” by your fireside, and as you read it think of the dear brave fellows a few hundreds of miles away in the trenches. One who had been home on leave and had returned said he had to ride for fifteen miles in pouring rain to get to the trenches, and then stand in mud above the ankles. This is done cheerfully every day for us. Do you want to send these dear, brave fellows a Christmas present? I want you to let me send them one or more of the boxes containing Testaments and Gospels and magazines, etc., from you. If you look at the last page of the Magazine you will see you can send

One parcel containing Gospels, Testaments, etc., for 5/- |
Two parcels containing Gospels, Testaments, etc., for 10/-|
Four parcels containing Gospels, Testaments, etc., for 20/- |
and so on in proportion.
Ask God how many you shall send, and let me have the joy of sending them for you. You will have a happy Christmas then. We send plenty of “Message from God” in every box, and “How Can I Be Saved?” and Travelers’ Guides, etc., etc. The box is valued wherever it goes, and we want to send one thousand away this Christmas. Please help us all you can to do this. Get all your friends to send us the request for one, two, four, or more boxes.
If only one soul is saved through the sending of a box, think of the blessing of one thousand souls for God this Christmas. We have four hundred willing workers ready to distribute far and wide, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, the Word of God.