XII

“DON’T WORRY”

This is at present the soldier’s favourite chorus at the front—­

  “What’s the use of worrying? 
    It never was worth while! 
  Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag
    And Smile, Smile, Smile!”

Not a bad chorus, either, for the trenches!  You can’t stop a shell from bursting in your trench, even if Mr. Rawson can!  You can’t stop the rain, or prevent a light from going up just as you are half-way over the parapet ... so what on earth is the use of worrying?  If you can’t alter things, you must accept them, and make the best of them.

Yet some men do worry, and by so doing effectually destroy their peace of mind without doing any one any good.  What is worse, it is often the religious man who worries.  I have even heard those whose care was for the soldier’s soul, deplore the fact that he did not worry!  I have heard it said that the soldier is so careless, realizes his position so little, is so hard to touch!  And, on the other hand, I have heard the soldier say that he did not want religion, because it would make him worry.  Strange, isn’t it, if Christianity means worry and anxiety, and if it is only the heathen who is cheerful and free from care?  Yet the feeling that this is so undoubtedly exists, and it must have some foundation.  Perhaps it is one of the subjects which ought to engage the attention of Churchmen in these days of “repentance and hope.”

Of course, worrying is about as un-Christian as anything can be. [Greek:  “me merimnate te psyche umon"]—­“Don’t worry about your life”—­is the Master’s express command.  In fact, the call of Christ is a call to something very like the cheerfulness of the soldier in the trenches.  It is a call to a life of external turmoil and internal peace.  “I came not to bring peace, but a sword”; “take up your cross and follow Me”; “ye shall be hated”; “he that would save his life shall lose it.”  It is a call to take risks, to risk poverty, unpopularity, humiliation, death.  It is a call to follow the way of the Cross.  But the way of the Cross is also the way of peace, the peace of God that passeth understanding.  It is a way of freedom from all cares, and anxieties, and fears; but not a way of escape from them.

Yet worrying is often a feature of the actual Churchman.  The actual Churchman is often a man whose conscience is an incubus.  He can do nothing without weighing motives and calculating results.  It makes him introspective to an extent that is positively morbid.  He is continually probing himself to discover whether his motives are really pure and disinterested, continually trying to decide whether he is “worthy” or “fit” to undertake this or that responsibility, or to face this or that eventuality.  He is full of suspicion of himself, of self-distrust.  In the trenches he is always wondering whether he is fit to die, whether he will acquit himself worthily in a crisis, whether he has done anything that he ought not to have done, or left undone anything that he ought to have done.  Especially if he is an officer, his responsibility weighs on him terribly, and I have known more than one good fellow and conscientious Churchman worry himself into thinking that he was unfit for his responsibilities as an officer, and ask to be relieved of them.