BIBLE AND THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 48, 24 February 1917, Page 13

BIBLE AND THE WAR

A GIGANTIC WORK

Cromwell was as good a soldier as he was religious enthusiast, and there are copies still in existence of the collection of extracts —all save" six from the Old Testament—which he caused to be made from- the Genevan Bible of 1560, in which the "Scriptures are reduced to severall heads and fitly applied to the souldier!s severall occasions." Those fighting Ironsides were reminded in one of the sections that "a souldier must consider that sometimes God's people have the worst in Battell as well as God's. Enemies, " and that "the very nicke of time that God had promised us helpe is when we see no helpe in man." The little manual has been thrice reprinted, the first time being in 1861, when it was largely distributed to the Northern Army in the American Civil War, while another one made somewhere in the nineties elicited high commendation from the late Viscount Wolseley. So far however no one seems to have thought of reproducing it in the present war in which tho Bible itself is bearing a bigger share than is realised.

The timo lias not yet come (says a. writer in London Daily Telegraph in which any complete survey cim be made of the religious psychology evolved out of the conflict now raging. Contributions are being made to it of very diverse character, as in the late Donald Hankey's book, " A Student in Arms," and in, the intimate revelations of letters and diaries. On tho ono hand is the mysticism that could lead Lanco-Corporal Sedding to--write torn -the-trenches before he went, into action and died from, the wounds he received of the vision of the Wings of Peace, "'For as in love they enfold me, I will look up" and behold their shining glory, arched in a vault of dusky gold, gleaming with rainbow hues. Gold for sovereignty and power and all the wondrous graces, Charity and Love that colour Thy Divinity—so shall I rest in Peace." Others have made tho simple return to ■ memories of childhood, like that Lancashire private who confessed that since he had been in hospital he had every night repeated the prayer of boyish days :

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Between those extremes of thought every phase that faith can Accept has found expression. FIVE MILLIPN VOLUMES. The -Army Chaplains have been, as we have learnt in many ways, a splendid and devoted contingent. In its worthy endeavours for the uplifting of souk the Young Men's Christian Association has not at all overlooked the very important work of oaring also for men's-bodily comfort and the value of cheer and recreation. But behind these have been the very quiet work that the British and Foreign Bible ,Society has carried on with no assertiveness or special appeals. Once more the Briton, and all the Sons of the Blood, have proved the deep veneration of the race for the English Bible and all that, it stands for in the Imperial life. Testaments and Prayer Books have been carried through bayonet charge and bombing attacks, in air 'reconnaissances, and submarine feats of daring. Upon the blood-stained fly-leaves dying hands have traced their last messages to mother •or wife ; at Loos there was hardly a wounded man brought' in that had not a khaki-bound Testament upon him. Few, indeed, realise how great have been the activities of tin's learned and unddntroversial society since the first days of the war. It is difficult to grasp, much less to attempt to visualise, totals in millions,' but in. this twenty-eight months 5,000,000 volumes have gone, out, each containing at least one complete book or gospel, while a large proportion consisted of the entire New Testament. Some enquiries on this subject in the Literary Department of the great building in Queen Victoria-street brought forward many striking facts in this connection. Of that great total, about three-fifths have been in English. Numbers of copies were, requisitioned by Uic society's auxiliary branches, in the Dominions overseas. Canada alone, called for 150,000 Testaments, and every man from Australia and New Zealand was duly presented with a neatly bound and compact copy, including, of course, the j members oE the Maori contingents. Just fifty languages and dialects are also included in that huge aggregate. Russia, with the Greek Church possessing so much in common with our own, has absorbed many thousands of copies of the Gospels for the Cossacks and the corps of Lettish, Kuthenian,' and Lithuanian troops. Through the gifts of American youngsters attending the Sunday schools, the society has had money enough to send more than half a million Psalters, Testaments, and Gospels to Russian prisoners of war interned in Central Europe. Equally it ministered to the spiritual needs of the enemy prisoners in Eussian hands, the Swedish Red Cross .Society undertaking the task, cost free, of sending the cases, numbering fifty-four, and of a weight of eleven tons, over its railways, and into Petrogra' ' A BOND OF UNION. In-the distribution strange things happened sometimes with.the mixing up of peoples, nations, and languages. One colporteur in Siberia had almost reached the Manchurian border, -where his stock of books in German, Hungarian, and Bohemian had been 'eagerly accepted. To his surprise 't-here were a few men from the Trentino district who could only speak Italian, and even a demand so unexpected in such a region as that he was niile to meet. Perhaps one of tlie strangest requests that the society has ever been called upon to grant came from a Jewish volunteer corps -working in Egypt, which specially asked for copies of the Psalms in Hebrew, and were duly supplied. From returns that have been made there are something like half a million members of the Jewish faith now under arms, and the Old Testament in Yiddish and Hebrew has been enormously appreciated by them. It has been a strange bond of union among the. varied races and peoples of the Allied, cause. The Gurkha from Nepal, the Malagassay or the native of Tonking, the Servian from his mountain fastnesses, the Armenians saved from the miseries of Mousa Dagh and brought to sa.fety in Egypt are only a few among the many who, had they all spoken, would together have thrown into shade that throng which at the first Pentecost at Jerusalem hoard tho Apostltifs every man in his own tongue wherein ho was born. And the work of 'translating and especially of revising has proceeded quietly, scholars of years far beyond the limit fixed for military service having gone on with the work independently of tho clash of a worM in arms. It is rather a curious coincidence that among tho vereions now Tinder the most careful over-hauling is thaifc of the Scriptures in Bulgarian. To our own military and V.A.D. hospitals tho society issues on an average a thousand -books a day—it may be of the Psalms, of a separate Gospel, or of the complete New Testament, and it is in direct touch, with War Ofuec approval, with no Uww thai) 1200 ci.i.jh mgtltu.. Jipas.: .Manx4hQUsaiids p{ ikess .copies

have been distributed through the WaiLibrary at Surrey House, which sends parcels of literature to the Fleet as well as to the troops. Said one officially connected with this work: "The soldiers frankly resent having ' goody-goody' books thrust upon them, but they are always pleased to receive a Gospel or a Testament." The British Red Cross Committee welcomes such assistance, and, in making acknowledgment of a. large gift, said that, judging from letters previously received, the books would be thoroughly appreciated by the men. Thanks to friendly neutral help, large consignments have even been sent into the prison camps in Germany, in Turkey, and Bulgaria. LOFTY PATRIOTISM, It would be in no conventional sense that the TBible will have been read under such circumstances. The matchless purity of its English, the lofty patriot tism, the splendours of rhetoric and poetry, the faith for which men are fighting, even though they know it not when expressed in terms of theology and dogma, the sound common-sense philosophy they are finding under new conditions, will be impressed upon their minds, and all are helping to shape the coming outlook—whatever it may. prove to be. For the Bible goes to the great elemental things of life and love a.nd death— Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, And Dot on paper leaves or leaves of stone-; Each age, each kindred adds a verse to it; Texts of despair or hope or joy or moan ; While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud, While thunder surges burst on cliffs of 1 cloud, Still at tho Prophet's feet the nations sit. In the churches to-day there is a very favourite phrase as to "the reinstatement of religion," It is being, made even at this Christmastide, and it will be a guiding force when the World has cast off the_ dragging weight of Prussian materialism and militaiism*