haracter and quality and
charm of these apparent pagans?"

What could I do but tell him the truth? I knew him well and felt that he
would understand. Most fellows, I said, don't come to church, because if
they've good and decent characters, they hate to be hypocrites. Now you
know, padre, in this improper world of ours, that many men are sinners,
by that I mean that convention describes as sinful some of the things
they do. What do you tell us when we go to early chapel in the morning?
"Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins and are in love
and charity with your neighbours and intend to lead a new life ... draw
near with faith and take this Holy Sacrament ..." Well, then, can you
conceive that such a state of mind exists in an otherwise decent man
that he finds the burden of his sin not intolerable, as he should do,
but that he hugs that special sin as a prisoner may hug his chains? That
his sin, or let us call it his breach of the conventions of Society, is
the one dear precious thing in his existence at the present moment. He
doesn't want to reform or to lead a new life. Later, no doubt, he'll
tire of this sin and then he may come to church again. But how could a
man of character go to God's House and be such an infernal hypocrite? He
cannot partake of the Body and Blood of Christ any more when he is in
that state of mind. So you see, padre, it is often the honest men who
won't be hypocrites, that won't go to your church.

Many the padre that used to drift into our hospital on the long trek to
Morogoro, Church of England, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, and those
who look after the "fancy religions," as Tommy calls them. By that term
is designated any man who does not belong to either of the above three.
One such fellow came to our mess the other day, and in answer to our
query as to the special nature of his flock, he answered that, though
strictly speaking a Congregationalist, he had found that he had become a
"dealer in out-sizes in souls," as he called it. He kept, as he said, a
fatherly eye (and a very good eye too, that we could see) on Dissenters
in general, Welsh Baptists, Rationalists, and all the company of queerly
minded men we have in this strange army of ours. Later we heard that he
had brought with him an excellent reputation from the Front. And that is
not easy to acquire from an army that is hard to please in the matter of
professors of religion.

FOR ALL PRISONERS AND CAPTIVES