Departure of the Trench Train From Victoria Station
What a pathetic picture we have for our cover this month! The Station at Victoria is crowded with soldiers about to return to the Front in France and Flanders, and crowds of friends and relatives are there to wish them farewell. Look at the widowed mother on the left of the picture, holding her son, and gazing in his face with the rapt mother-look that he will carry with him to the trenches. How tenderly he meets her loving gaze! Heart speaks to heart in the solemn moments of farewell. And close by a British Tommy holds his baby in his arms while his wife holds his rifle in her hand. Will he ever see his child and wife again? God only knows. And in the center of the picture the old father is saying parting words to his manly son, while the mother’s face is close to the shoulder of her boy. And in the front, on the right of the picture, a man and maiden stand-newly wedded husband and wife may be. The sadness of farewell is on their faces, and the shadow will be there until they meet again. But he may never come back to lift the shadow from her. Oh! the pathos of it all. Fathers, mothers, husbands, lovers, wives, the burden falls on all alike; the cruel, awful burden of remorseless war.
But as I gaze upon this parting scene that brings the tears to my eyes by its terrible human pathos, I think of another parting that the world will know some day—it may be today. I speak of the parting that will be caused by the Second Corning of Christ. Then in a moment there will be eternal separations. Those who are saved, who can call Christ their Saviour, will be taken from earth to heaven in a moment, and the unbelieving friends and relatives will be left behind. In the trenches the soldiers who are saved will leave the warfare all behind them. Oh! sinner, mind you are not one day too late for Christ. You may as well be a year too late as one minute. If you refuse Christ’s salvation now, and He comes this evening, you will be too late. You may say, “I’ll think about it.” Christ may come while you are thinking about it, and then you’ll have to do your thinking down in hell. How beautiful for the son and the mother to be together in heaven, and the father, the mother and the child, and the fine young soldier with his father and mother to spend eternity together, and the husband and the wife to gaze together on the face of Christ in glory. If it gives pain to part on earth, what will the sorrow of heart be for those who are left on earth for judgment, while their loved ones are with Christ? God bless you, and make you ready for the coming of His Son.
Thank God, I say, as I close my message for this month, for the khaki Testaments you enable us to send; thank God for the word of cheer today. “My dear brother, ―Enclosed £5 for one thousand khaki Testaments towards the thirty you need. Praise the Lord, He has put this work upon your heart.” And praise God for the loving hearts that help us. The sowing is glorious, but what will the reaping be! I am sure God will send us many thousand Testaments this month.
The Diary of a Soul
By the Editor
LORD’S DAY, FEB. 6th ―In our family reading this morning one verse in the chapter spoke to my heart like a message from God. It was the 6th verse of the 9th chapter of the 2nd Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians: “But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap, also sparingly; and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.” Here the Lord of the Harvest speaks through His servant of the sowing and the reaping. The rich must provide for the needs of the poor, so that none may be in want. God would accept a man’s gift according to his ability to give, and God loves a cheerful giver. And as they sowed, so would they reap.
These divine, principles, enunciated for the Assembly at Corinth, in the first century, have their present and personal application today. Sowing and reaping will go on in God’s harvest fields as long as this dispensation lasts. God measures our gifts by the self-sacrifice entailed in the gift. It matters not how small it is, in His blessed hands it will be great. He multiplied the loaves and fishes-two barley loaves and five small fishes-to feed thousands. He can make a “ widow’s mite enough to feed the hungry souls of hundreds of men. Read what a piece of paper did: