THE KING’ S BUSINESS 773 A writer in the New York Tribune describes an under- ground chapel in the French trenches at Verdun. He wrifes as follows: “ Yesterday morning we went down to examine a mine. Tbe French had dug a long gal
Praying
and Killing.
lery out from their front trenches and had mined the ground for 500 yards along their front. It was exactly like going through the tunnels, cross-cuts, and drifts in a gold mine in the Rockies. But at the entrance to the main tun nel the regimental chaplain had persuaded the colonel to let a huge chamber be excavated thirty feet under ground, and the chaplain had fitted it up as a chapel.” He then goes on to describe a service in this chapel at 10 o’clock on a Sun day morning. He says: “While cannon booming overhead in a terrific bom bardment told of preparing for a German assault, we, with two hundred French soldiers, assisted at mass, the colonel taking part. We saw soldiers going to the altar and receiving communion, while two of their comrades sat in a little chamber, hollowed in one side of the chapel, with their fingers oil electric buttons, ready to explode mines if the signal came that the attacking Germans had reached the mine-field.” There is something at once horrible and pathetic in this description. It is encouraging to know that these awful times have awakened even hardened and unbelieving soldiers to a sense of dependence upon God, but to think of some praying while their companions sit ready any. moment to send other human beings into eternity, has something horrible in it. Doubtless on the German side there were chapels in the trenches too, and men praying and calling upon God, while they were getting ready to send their antagonists who were praying in front of them into eternity, and very likely into hell. How must a God of infinite love feel as He looks down from heaven and sees these antagonists both praying to Him and both ready to kill one another! region a waiting list of 150,000 natives of India “who have been refused bap tism for' the present because the missionaries have not schools and churches enough to accommodate them.” From Korea the report comes that there has been an average of one convert every hour in Korea since missionary work began there twenty-five years ago, and- that at the present time there is an aver age of eighteen converts per hour. The crowds are so great in some places that church services must be held orle after another to accommodate them, and that at the midweek prayer meetings it is not uncommon in Korea to have 1000 in attendance. And then come reports from Japan regarding the work of the Japanese evangelist Kimura, who was trained at the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, and- who has been in part supported by one of the organizations con nected with the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. Willard Price, in the Review o f Reviews, says concerning his work: “ I heard Kimura preach to 5000 people in his great tent in Tokyo, and saw nearly 100 Japanese ‘hit the trail’ every night. In two weeks’ time he made 1300 conversions.” He goes on to say: “ The evangelistic movement in which Kimura and many other workers, both native and foreign, are taking part has not reached a conclusion, so that definite On every hand reports are pouring in of great religious awakenings. In a recent report of the work started in Wide Revival Come? Northwestern índia under Bishop Thobum and car ried on by his successors, it is said that there is in that Has the World- „
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