“How do the Americans stand dressing their wounds and the suffering in the hospitals?” a friend of mine asked a prominent surgeon.

“They bear their suffering like Frenchmen.  That is the highest compliment I can pay them,” he replied.

And so back of their wounds are their immortal, undying, unflinching souls.  And back of the tremblings of these boys that night, thank God, I had the glory of seeing their immortal souls, and to me the soul of an American boy under fire and pain is the biggest, finest, most tremendous thing on earth.  I bow before it in humility.  It dazzled mine eyes.  All I could think of as I saw it was: 

  “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

That night I said, just before I left:  “Boys, it’s Sunday evening, and they wouldn’t let you come to my meeting!  Would you like for me to have a little prayer with you?”

“Yes!  Sure!  That’s just what we want!” were the stammered words that followed.

“All right; we’ll just stand, if it’s easier for you.”

Then I prayed the prayer that had been burning in my heart every minute as we stood there in that dimly lit ward, talking of home and battle and the folks we all loved across the seas.  All that time there had been hovering in the background of my mind a picture of a cool body of water named Galilee, and of a Christ who had been sleeping in a boat on that water with some of his friends, when a storm came up.  I had been thinking of how frightened those friends had been of the storm; of the tossing, tumbling, turbulent waves.  I had thought of how they had trembled with fear, and then of how they had appealed to the Master.  I told the boys simply that story, and then I prayed: 

“O Thou Christ who stilled the waves of Galilee, come Thou into the hearts of these boys just now, and still their trembling limbs and tongues.  Bring a great sense of peace and quiet into their souls.”

“Oh, ye of little faith!” When I looked up from that prayer, much to my own astonishment, and to the astonishment of the friend who was with me, the tremblings of those fine American boys had perceptibly ceased.  There was a great sense of quiet and peace in the ward.

The nurse told me the next day that after I had gone the boys went quietly to bed; that there was little tossing that night and no walking the floors, as there had been before.  A doctor friend said to me:  “After all, maybe your medicine is best, for while we are more or less groping in the dark as to our treatment of shell-shock, we do know that the only cure will be that something comes into their souls to give them quiet of mind and peace within.”

“I know what that medicine is,” I told him.  “I have seen it work.”

“What is it?” he asked.

Then I told him of my experience.

“You may be right.”