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him a staunch fighter in other fields. He has learnt a new way | him a staunch fighter in other fields. He has learnt a new way | ||
of prayer, and the courage that is born of faith well-founded. | of prayer, and the courage that is born of faith well-founded. | ||
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Latest revision as of 22:18, 18 September 2008
AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS
IN civil life he had always said his prayers. They had done
him good, too, in a way. They had been a sort of squaring of his
accounts morally. He had tried to see where he had failed, made
resolutions to amend, and acknowledged to himself at any rate,
that he had failed. He had remembered his relations and friends
before God, and it had helped him to do his duty by them. At the
same time, he was not in the least degree a mystic. Even in his
prayers he had never felt the reality of God. "God"
to him was rather the name for the principle of goodness than
a Being of infinite power and intimate importance. His greatest
religious "experience" had been a spasmodic loyalty
to the Christ-man, stimulating him at rare intervals to sudden
acts of quixotism.
When he first enlisted he continued the habit of saying his
prayers, more because it was inconvenient than for any other reason,
perhaps. The other fellows in the barrack-room did not say their
prayers, and he was too English not to feel the more resolved
to say his. He was not going to be afraid. So he said them, deliberately
and very self-consciously, half expecting to be laughed at. It
was very difficult. He could not concentrate his mind. He whispered
the words mechanically, his head full of other thoughts. The other
fellows paused in their talk the first night, and then went on
as if nothing had happened. After that no notice was taken at
all. No one followed his example. No one commented, or interfered
with him. A little persecution would have hardened his resolve.
Being ignored weakened it. He could not bring his mind to bear
on his words, and there seemed to be no point in going on. He
tried saying them in bed, in the privacy of his blanket. Then
one day he forgot; and after that he just omitted to say them
ever.
After all it made very little difference. And yet at times
he felt that there was a difference. It was a little like a man
sitting in a room with a frosted window that only opened at the
top. He understood that it gave on to a garden, but he had never
seen the garden. He used to sit with the top of the window pulled
open, and then somehow one day he forgot to open it, and after
that he never bothered. It made so little difference. At times
he did notice that the air was a little less fresh, but he was
too lazy, or too busy about other matters to bother.
This Englishman's religion had always been a bit like that,
like a window opening on to the unknown and unexplored. He liked
to think that his window gave on to a garden, and to think that
he sometimes caught the scent of the flowers. But he had never
had the energy or the faith to test his belief. Suppose he were
to find that after all his garden was only a paved yard! Anyhow
he had left the window shut now. At times he regretted it; but
a kind of inertia possessed him, and he did not do anything about
it.
When he first got to the front he prayed, half ashamed. He
was not quite sure of himself, and he prayed that he might not
be found wanting. But when it came to the point everything was
very prosaic. It was boring, and uncomfortable, and at times terrifying.
Yet he felt no inclination to shirk. He just drifted on, doing
his bit like the others, and with not too good a grace. He was
asked to take the stripe, and refused. It meant more trouble and
responsibility. His conscience told him that he was shirking.
He grew angry with it. "Well," he demanded of it, "why
have I responsibilities more than anyone else? Haven't I failed?"
He put the question defiantly, ostensibly to his conscience, but
with an eye to the "Christ-man" in Whom he had almost
ceased to believe. To his astonishment he got an answer. It was
a contingency with which he had not reckoned. Like a flash this
sentence wrote itself across his mind---" Strengthen My brethren."
It staggered him. He felt that he knew what it meant. "Don't
whine about failure. If you are willing to serve, here is your
job, and the sign of your forgiveness---Strengthen My brethren."
He took the stripe after all, and fathered the boys of his section.
The final stage came later. There had been a charge, a hopeless
affair from the start, undertaken in broad daylight. He had fallen
between the lines, and had seen the battered remnant of his company
retire past him to their own trench before a hail of bullets.
He lay in the long grass between the lines, unable to move, and
with an unceasing throbbing pain in his left leg and arm. A whizz-bang
had caught him in both places. All the afternoon he lay still,
his mind obsessed by one thought---Would anyone find him when
it was dark, or would he be left to die? He kept on wondering
the same thing, with the same maddening persistence. At last he
must have lost consciousness, for he woke to find that the sun
had set, and all was still but for an occasional flare or a random
shot. He had lost a lot of blood; but the throbbing had ceased,
and if he kept still he felt no pain. He just lay there, feeling
strangely peaceful. Above him he could see the stars, and the
moon, though low in the heavens, gave a clear light.
He found himself vaguely wondering about the meaning of everything.
The stars seemed to make it all seem so small and petty. All this
bloodshed---what was the good of it? It was all so ephemeral,
so trivial, so meaningless in the presence of eternity and infinity.
It was just a strife of pygmies. He suddenly felt terribly small
and lonely, and he was so very, very weak. He was cut off from
his fellow men as surely as if he had been on a desert island,
and he felt somehow as if he had got out of his element, and was
launched, a tiny pygmy soul, on the sea of immensity, where he
could find no bearings. Eternity and infinity were so pitiless
and uncomprehending. The stars gazed at him imperturbably. There
was no sympathy there but only cold, unseeing tolerance. Yet after
all., he had the advantage of them. For all his pygmy ineffectiveness
he was of finer stuff than they. At least he could feel---suffer.
He had only to try to move to verify that. At least he was aware
of his own existence, and could even gaugehis own insignificance.
There was that in him which was not in them, unless---unless it
was in everything. "God!" he whispered softly. "God
everywhere!" Then into his tired brain came a new phrase---"Underneath
are the everlasting arms." He sighed contentedly, as a tired
child, and the phrase went on repeating itself in his brain in
a kind of chant---" Underneath are the everlasting arms."
The moon went down behind the horizon, and it was dark. They
fetched him in at last. He will never again be sound of limb;
but there is in his memory and in his heart that which may make
him a staunch fighter in other fields. He has learnt a new way
of prayer, and the courage that is born of faith well-founded.