DSS at St Giles June 1958 (QER)

Queen’s Edinburgh Rifles 4th and 5th Battalion The Royal Scots and all members of the Regiment who fell in the two World Wars and in other actions.

Forty-Third Annual Commemoration Service
St. Giles Cathedral (The high Kirk of Edinburgh)
Sunday :: 29 June 1958 at 3 p.m.

Address by Rev D.S. Stiven M.C., D.D. Parish Church of St. Michael, Inveresk.

Proverbs 25:25 “As cold water to a thirsty soul so is good news from a far country.”

What a difference it made when the Post Corporal had a letter or a parcel for you. And even a Field Post Card from you with only the words “I am well” brought immense relief and untold joy to loved ones at home.

I’ve been redding up my manse preparing for a removal and getting rid of lots of things which I had kept for sentimental reasons. In two of the drawers of my filing cabinet were stacks of letters - old letters from men and women of my congregation on service in all parts of the world in a wide range of the Fighting Service. It wasn’t easy to throw them out. Indeed I’ve still kept some of them. A few were in reply to letters I myself had sent when the angel of death had visited the home. There were a few -- a very few -- from Padres dealing with difficult domestic questions. But most of them were in acknowledgment of the parcels which our Women's’ Guild had prepared and of the letters I myself sent out every St. Andrews Day [to ‘Friends from the congregation in Musselburgh Serving Overseas’]. One year there were 700.

The replies were significant -- significant of what the Church stood for in the minds of men far from home facing danger and discomfort and uncertainty. One of them was just an airletter with not a word on it -- nothing but a picture -- a picture of the Old Kirk etched first in the mind of the sender.

And there were other things which knit our hearts to our homes and came to us as a cup of cold water in a thirsty land -- the auld Scots songs, the hope of a Blighty one, and there were also the Church Padres -- and a visit from the Church of Scotland Canteen which men called the Kirk o’ the Jocks. Well do I remember taking a Canteen during the last war to a lonely outpost and how some genius at home had just sent out before I left my Centre a bundle of local newspapers. The men just pounced on them at once and devoured them before they even thought of making a purchase at the counter -- A visible sign that ‘as cold water to a thirsty soul so is good news from a far country.’

Yes! Cold water means much to us when we are thirsty! But when you can have it just for the turning on of a tap it doesn’t mean nearly so much as when you’re marching under a burning sun through a waterless desert. There
the last tepid drop in the water bottle is infinitely more precious than the whole of Talla Reservoir. And its sometimes the same with the kirk -- which whiles looks more attractive from a distance. And in the far country the KIrk and what it means can often bring a cup of cold water to the thirsty soul in the Name of the Lord. One of those letters which I treasured was from a man whose little baby had died. He told me how his Padre had stood by him in his grief and how he had asked the Padre to write letter to his sorrowing wife at home for as he said he was sure that she would receive the same comfort as he had received from that good man. Yes, the kirk is always there. As with the Talla Reservoir, everything is ‘laid on’. And we so often forget that it has been laid on just because of the perennial, though often unrecognized, need in the hearts of men everywhere: it’s laid on to assuage
the thirst that men have for the living God:: it’s laid on by the efforts of God’s men working persistently and perseveringly under compulsion of the Holy Ghost ever seeking to pipe the life giving streams of heavenly love so that they may be available when men and women have need of them.

And today the Church brings its benison of COLD water to serving men and women through its Chaplains and though the ministrations of its Huts and Canteens in Germany in Cyprus in Hong Kong following the men where they go just as through its Church Extension Committee it keeps seeking to pour blessing and peace and comfort and hope in the midst of the new housing areas which have been springing up everywhere during the past twenty years. This beneficent work can’t be done for nothing: it is only made possible by the practical vision and open handed liberality of simple men and women who under the compulsion of the Holy Ghost seek to keep the supply line open. I’d commend this benevolence in both its parts to you who, in Remembrance, have assembled yourselves in God’s presence today to thank Him for past blessings and for the hallowing of friendships which though sundered on earth are still dearer and holier than ever to your loving hearts.

In conclusion, I’d apply this text to those of you, who like me are old soldiers and for whom the time is drawing inevitably nearer and nearer when you shall fade away and when your thoughts must draw you towards that far country where our King of Love shepherds the souls of His redeemed and leads them by living waters. Of that far country I bring you, in what I expect will be my last sermon to you, good news. And as His minister I give his own words, “Be thou faithful unto death and I will give Thee a crown of life -- and to him that is athirst I will give the water of life freely.”

And when the strife is fierce the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song
And hearts are brave again and arms are strong.... Hallelujah.
[D.S. Stiven was to live for another 28 years]