"England is Not Yet Awake."

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 127, 31 December 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

"England is Not Yet Awake."

SCATHING WAR SERMON BY FAMOUS CRICKET-ER-CLERGYMANON HIS RETURN FROM A YEAR'S SERVICE AT THE FRONT.

(From the "Weekly Despatch.'')

We give to-day the text of an extraordinary war sermon preached by the Rev. F. H. Gillmgham, the cricketing parson, rector of Bermondsey, who has ju6t returned home alter twelve months' service at the front. In this sermon both the nation and tne Church are accused of being half asleep and the preacher says he has seen more young men m >u cine Hour man ne nau seen m i'ranee uurmg tue wuoie oi ins tnviVu uiuuins oiav. xueie a»c ouiug ret deuces io lite inappropriate luuniiia ui tue uisnt>ii» at nuuiv, vtiuni auuivnviy cuuocu tue emiim ui> tue uoni io taugu uet'io-veiy wiicu re«*u aoout tnem.

Coming home aiter twelve moutuo wiwi luc Lxpeuittouary force i uiiu lual ihe pauioi.Diii 01 >»ocs uoi compare wim tue .patriotism oi Trance. 1 am tuiniung oi patriotism m its ngntiug sense, i nave seen more atue-bouou civuian young men in fjngiaud m one hour man i have eceu m franco aunng tlie whoie oi my twelve montus there.

ceeued, whose second thought is that u teiegium *iiouui Ue scut moir peopie lliimlUiaillJi tue»r HOUiUU lest tllO UUxiety at uonie ue too great.

listen to tnis letter, written from Flanders:

Dear Mother and Dad, —We are ! just olf on a tigutisn joo, one tiiat ■ uas to Ue done, 0u», may not leave many to tell tue tale, audi 1 teel 1 woum line to send you a Ime beiore we go. i aw leaving it with a cnuni, v.jio wiii |>ost it stiouid necessity arise. We an know what we are in lor, yet ail are as happy as* sandboys anu ready to do the jou. 1 teei that eacn ot us here has but one sorrow —the grief that comes to those we love u it is not our turn to come back. It this is to be the case 1 feel sure you will receive the greatest comfort from the knowledge that we have no regrets, and that, having our work clearly before us, we go forward trusting in Providence and knowing God will comfort you m the knowledge that we have done our duty.—lour loving Son. He did not come back, and a rough cross marks tiis spot where he Let, and his last letter forwarded through )m mother to me will be read from many a pulpit to show men how to live and to teach men how to die. THE BEST SOLDIERS. It was always an optimist about human nature. I always thought that deep down in the human heart feelings lie buried which grace can restore, but now, after my twelve months' expeiienoe, I am sure of it. The best soldiers arc men who, perhaps to the casual observer, appear useless. Their lives in peace time know no privacy. they have so many calls, po many social duties, so much pleasure, so much excitement, that the Christ life is often in danger of being crushed out; but when lighting, when bivouacking under the starry sky, when they have much time to think and little of worldly things/ to distract their attention, then it is often the ('in t comes to his own. Men pray who have not prayed for years; men think deeply on subject! which were but cursorily passed ovf before. I know many a man has *• •nd God out there who never really sought for Him here, and I am anxious not so much for them as for the Church at home. .

Let me tell jou what struck the men out tneie. iid-'it w.liter, uurmg an most- anxious months beiore tne best oi oti many s troops Had gone over, to the eastern tiontitr, when our troops, lew in number, uiougli mugmuccnt. in spirit were simply Hanging on, the Ger. mans seemed to nave an unlimited suopiy ot ammunition, whereas our artniciy was limited tor weekb to about lour rounds' per gun per day. High explosives were being poured into our trenches and we coulu only feebly reply.

Then Mr. Lloyd George, who, whatever be your political views, seems to be the man ot the moment, goea up north and makes his tremendous indictment that the work ot producing munitions was hampered by strong drnk, or, in other words, tnat men out there were being killed because there were over here men drinking to excess. 1 know not whether the lacts were true, but so strongly did he speak that our King and Lord Kitchener both abolished strong drink from uieir households for the rest of the war, doubtless expecting, at any rate, that the best of the nation would follow — but who did follow? A few old men and women who hadi never been tempted to excess in all their lives, and one or two others. The great majority went on as before. Is- that patriot sm ? Again, your fighting soldiers, your French Allies, cannot understand strikes at such a time as this. Ido not pretend to know on whose shoulders/ the blame must fall, whether on the employers, who seem to be coining gold while the red blood flows, or the employed, who seem to have little cause for grumbling, but there the fact remains that industrial strikes have been going on incessantly for the last eight or nine months.

1 nave seen young soldiers shot for cowardice; Having peeped into tne mouth ox nell ttieir courage has tanca tiietu. After careiul, the most carelul, inquiries, in wii.cn every extenuating circumstance that could be advanced has been advanced, reluctantly and tor the saKc of example the Cowuiander-in-Chiet has ordered that they should be shot down. If that is true, alas! it is true, what punishment do you think ought to be meted out to men who every night sleep in a comfortable bed, have their meals ready and hot for them, who know no danger, who know nothing of the thankless march to the trenches with packs of GO and 70 pounds to carry, who know nothing of the strain and anxiety of watching day and night for an attack, Mho know nothing of seeing a comrade blown to pieces within a tew feet of them, feeling that sooner or later their turn in almost bound to come? What punishment do you think ought to be meted out to men who know nothing i>t all this, and yet refu6e to work because they cannot get an extra Id. an hour? PATMOTISM-AND -NIGHT CLUBS.

When I was your vicar I tried to take a definite line as regards Churclimanship. I viewed with apprehension the gradual growth and incursion of a type of worship which I thought too extravagant, too symbolical for what is call the man in the street. Perhaps tu those days I was too emphatic, and today, though I have not changed my views, though I am more confident than ever that what is needed is ;. Simple, earnest worship that can be understood by the ordinary layman, yet I think if I were here to-day I would not try to emphasize our differenced quite so much. 1 would try, and shall try 60 far as my feeble powers will allow me, to sound a clarion call so that the Church as a whole will be ready foi the tremendous opportunity that is ly; ing within her gram to-day, an opportunity which will be increased when our brave fellows come home. A HALO FOR KING CHARLES. The Church is only half awake, and it is my earnest conviction that unless she awakes luUy irom her slumber and puts her house m order she is going to miss the opportunity ot her lite, important though the matter was at the time, yet now is not the moment to argue and harangue about Kikiyu. It was with a reeling ol disgust that out there i read of a discussion going on in 'The Times' as to the proper place of a comma in the Lord's Prayer, and 1 shall never forget the roar ot laughter that went round our meas table when our general, a man for whom I have the greatest reverence, always thoroughly supporting the work of the chaplain, read out that the House ot Convocation had decided to canonise King Charles 1. To my mind it is a very doubtful point whether King Charles ought ever to have a halo, but 6urely it it were thought necessary the discussion might have been'postponed to another season, the siHy season, instead of a time when the hordes of the Germans were throwing their immense weight agauist our thin, unsupported line round Ypres. Marvellous it is how they did not get through; it wa«s solely the super -human efforts of our first line of troops that prevented it, Ji" T I ciu at ue mirth expressed round our mess table, yet 1 was speechless, for I felt that the ridicule was richly deserved.

Part of uiy duties was to censor letters, and many avert the documents 1 used to read by which men tried to express their indignation and disgust at the wane of patriotism displayed at home. Patriotism? What about the night clubs and the teas hops opened to entrap the unwary and to decoy them to chambers winch lead to hell:" Patriotism ? What about the unnecensary high rise in the prices of foodstuffs and the necessaries of life? Patriotism:'' What abut the continuance of racing after it had once been banned ? Patriotism? What about the supply ot men?.

I am given to understand that here in Birmingham you have done well. 1 congratulate you on it but more could be done even here, and there are young, strong, married, and even single men who are hiding behind excuses. The married man says: "Let the single men go first/' The single man says : "if they want me they will come and fetch me.'' But the leal truth is that unless compulsion comes in, which for the present seems to l'e impossible, these men at home have lo intention of going, but prefer to latten and fatten on jobs which others have left open, content to read the papers and discuss things rather than do anything themselves.

WHAT ENGLAND HAS NOT SEEN

CAN THE.Y COME BACK TO THIS?

I tell you seriously that England is not yet awake. She has been spared the sorrows of Belgium, France, and Russia. She had not seen her towns destroyed, her women ravished, her country devastated.

One day—God grant it may be soon! —we shall have thousands of men coming home. Once they have been used to short, earnest services, must they come back to sing, "Moab is my wash pot and over Edom will I cast my shoe" ? Out there, I tell you, in their rough, untheological way they have found and loved the Christ. Must they come home and sit through long drawn out services which are ©ften little understood by the initiated? For three hundred years our Prayer Book, gorgeous and magnificent though it be. has not been changed. Cannot we have some liberty allowed us? Cannot the powers that be meet together and for the nonce forget about vestments and the finer shades of theological discussion, and draw up and allow us to incorporate as an appendix to our Prayer Book some simple form of service which will at onco appeal to those men and from which they can be drawn on to deeper and deeper truths? If this war does.not convert Eng land, said some public speaker, then she will never be converted at all, but if England is to be converted it can only come about by the conversion of the individual.

You have been spared all this because of your Fleet, because of your best and purest blood poured out like water. Most of you have not even heard a shell buret. Because of this, England 's only half-awake. The men out there know it, feel it. and when they heard of the raids on Hartlepool and Scarborough, and of the Zeppelin attacks on the East Coast, the almost universal comment was: " Good. lam sorry in a way, but perhaps that will make them think a bit and wake up."

I know there are many men who cannot go out; they are employed on munitions and Government work at home, or have fcome other genuine reason which would satisfy not only themselves but others; but if a man can go out and will not go out, if a man 6tops) his ears to the old cry, "Come over and help us," and does nothing to help, then ho deserves to be branded as a coward, to l>e ostracised from all decent men, and to be permanently banished from the land whose greatness, whoso liberty, whose security havebeen won by the sacrifice of her generous sons. A SON'S LETTER. Patriotism, I know, is not dead, for have T not seen men with gaping wounds and mutilated limbs bearing it all with astonishing cheerfulness, whose nr«>l thought on recovering wnbciousnets is whether the attack tuc-

What difference has the war made to you ? Has it mad© you pray any more? Has it made you sit down and think out your position as regards Eternal trufth? What about your special meetings for intercession? D?d you flock to them at first when the war was a novelty and then gradually elide back again iuto the o|d slipshod method of desultory and perfunctory worship ?

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?J i' * iff— Iy^f^Plß 1 y^f^Plß Have you tried to find wit Irfiat vM God s message to the nation in ail thnfl cruel bloodshed ? Haveyou started any recognition of God in your pyiM home? xlavo you begun family Wfpfl shipr 1 ''• < ■ lou have been kind, I know, pMjfijS thropic beyond what one could ably expect. You have sent out cigafe ettes, papers, food to the troops; yo* have given the wounded a -good tuats Hut in that all? "1 Have you withheld from them thj one thing that will give strength Mjf. inspiration when the struggle JF hercest, the one thing that wal giv» comfort and solace when the heavjr loottall ot the Angel Reaper is heart and the thickening lilm shuts out n-om their gaze the tilings pi time £■■ place? Hare you withheld Hun be* cause you don't know Him and cannot tell others? My friends, it is an inexpressibly solemn time. Are you fully awakefl Each man and w> a ..1 h »* Irs w ••»-•» bit to do, and if- this Garden of England is to be weeded and to bud and blossom like the rose, see that your own part is done. * '