ion. It is the expression of
a craving for security. Literally it is a looking for salvation. It is a
very unnatural man who does not feel at any rate more inclined to pray
when danger abounds and anxiety presses, than at other times. Naturally,
then, chaplains find a readier response to their efforts right at the
front than farther back. Men come to a service before they go to the
trenches. Communicants increase before a fight. Chaplains are frequently
told of prayer being resorted to under this or that strain of this
terrific war. There is in short a general association of ideas about
religion and, as I have said, it may be called the association of a
craving for security.

I would say nothing disrespectful of it. I would not pretend for a moment
to be void of this very natural craving. I would recognise that
impressions made by strain and anxiety are often the means whereby God
brings men home to Himself. I thought it a hard saying of an ardent
salvationist lad, who told me of a transport sergeant's prayers one night
in a ditch by a shrapnelled roadside, and of the same sergeant's reversion
to apparent irreligion on return to safety. "I call it," said the boy,
"cowardice." But what I do say about it is, firstly, that religion thus
mainly associated with danger, is not the Christian religion, and
secondly, that many of the best men of all ranks have little to do with
it, or what little they do have is intermittent and rather shamefaced.

I leave the first statement for the moment. About the second I hazard the
belief that this has been more or less true of all soldiers in history.
Religion regarded _merely_ as a resort in trouble, as a possible source of
good luck, as a charm or insurance policy is as old as man; but I believe
many of the best soldiers up and down history have had little to do with
it, and the more sporting and soldierly the man, the less he has had to do
with it. After all, the soldier-man's code goes clean the other way. It is
ever insisting on non-calculating and self-regardless service, endurance,
and sacrifice. As such, it lies above the ordinary level of life, calling
out the heroic and honourable in men. But religion associated with anxiety
touches men at a level lower than the highest in them, it has the
morbidity of their weaker moments hanging about it, it wears badly, and,
above all, often it does not seem to work. I have had the case propounded
to me of "Bill who did pray," but yet had had