good God, round about and above them. He is looked
upon, however, not as One whom they are to seek first, but rather as a
last resort; not as a present Father and constant Friend, but as One to
whom they can turn in time of need. They have a vague feeling of
unworthiness, although no clear sense of sin. Yet they also have an
inarticulate belief or intuition that they have tried, however brokenly
or unsuccessfully, to live up to such light as they had or to some
standard of their own. They feel that somehow, though they have often
failed, at bottom they are not so very bad, and that God is very, very
good. Their vague feeling would probably find its most accurate
expression in Faber's hymn, "There's a wideness in God's mercy, like the
wideness of the sea."

They revere God from afar off and in one compartment of their being, but
they have never opened their lives to Him. They have a reverence for Him
in the face of death, in the hour of need, and in the great crises of
life. Most of them like to sing the Christian hymns on Sunday evening
and have thoughts of home and of loved ones that are sacred. They do not
feel that they have come into close personal relations with God, but
neither do they consciously feel that they are out of relation with Him.
They do not think they are altogether right with Him, but neither do they
feel in the bottom of their hearts that they are wholly wrong with Him.
The vast majority of them in the hour of death do not feel that they have
either consciously accepted or rejected Him. They have not loved
darkness rather than light, nor have they wholly chosen the light and
rejected the darkness.

It will depend upon the individual how he classifies these men. Some
will believe that the great love of the Good Shepherd, who laid down His
life for the sheep, will somehow in the end not be thwarted in His
seeking to save the lost. Not only will men differ in their judgment,
but it is exceedingly difficult to pass judgment upon an individual
soldier. He seems to be a different man under different circumstances.
In the temptations at the base camp, he would perhaps appear to be
utterly irreligious and profane. He can hardly be recognized as the same
man as he prays in the hour of battle, or as he lies wounded, chastened,
and sobered, in the hospital. Which situation reveals the true man?

Before us as we write lies the photograph of a young sergeant. Before
the war he was an atheist, an