Telling the Story

I have heard it said, “The people at home want the gospel as much as the soldiers; is there not a fear of their being neglected?” This argument is a bad one in every way. If you know a man is dangerously ill and likely to die, and he is unsaved, would you not go at once to that man and leave no stone unturned to bring him to Christ? Would you not be more anxious for his soul than you would for the man’s soul who walked the streets perfectly well? Perhaps you ought to be as anxious about the one as the other, but the Good Samaritan, loving all, went where He was most needed. At home you can get a Bible or a Testament in five minutes, if you have not one in the house. Out there, at the Front, they are starving for the Word of God, tearing Testaments to pieces to make it go as far as they can. How wrong to tear up the Testaments, you say, perhaps. How wrong of you, at home, not to send them Testaments. Have you done your part? Out there they have fought for the Word of God. I have had many a heartache when the pleading letters have come to me. “Do send me a Testament!” A worker writes to me, “Please don’t stop the Testaments, whatever else goes short.” A Tommy says in a letter, “I thanked God when He put that little Testament into my hand.”
A dying soldier in a trench says to a comrade, “Can you tell me anything about God?” His friend says, “I’m afraid I cannot, but this little book may help you.” He gives a Gospel of St. John to the dying man. The poor fellow reads it eagerly, turning over the pages feebly with his dying hands. Then looking at his comrade he says, “This is just what I wanted,” and soon after passed away. Perhaps that man’s death, and the story of it, may do more good read in England than a hundred sermons. He knew, this dying man, that death in battle would not save his soul, but he found in the precious Word of God just what he wanted. If a soldier or sailor is saved through reading the Testament, he goes from the battle to heaven, from death to glory; but if he comes home a really saved man he will bring the gospel with him, and take care that his wife and children, and his friends know what great things the Lord has done for him. So by sending the Testaments to the soldiers we are helping to evangelize England. A rough soldier saved at the Front writes to his wife: “My dear old gal, I have been a brute to you in the past, but all shall be changed when I come home. It shall be all sunshine for you and the dear babies.” Yes, England will be flooded with the sunshine of God’s love to sinners when the saved soldiers return, bringing their Testaments with them.
I sometimes think I could “depart in peace” if I only knew that every soldier, of every nation, had: the Word of God in his pocket, but when we are told by workers among the soldiers on their last journey to the Front, for many of them, that only two in ten have a Testament, and by a Christian soldier, who has to search the dead, that only one in five have a Testament―the same proportion thus strangely verified―we feel that there is an overwhelming need for the work we are trying to do, and that God’s blessing must rest upon the distribution of His own Word.