The GOSPEL TRUTH

LIFE of

WILLIAM BOOTH

FOUNDER and FIRST GENERAL

of the SALVATION ARMY

 by

Harold Begbie

1920

In Two Volumes

Volume 2

 

CHAPTER I

A CRITICAL YEAR

1882

 

BEFORE proceeding to describe the violent opposition which set itself to destroy the Salvation Army in the 'eighties, it is well to bear in mind that William Booth was not only supported at this period by wealthy enthusiasts like Mr. Samuel Morley and Mr. T. A. Denny, but that he was encouraged by public men so eminent as Ruskin and Bright.

In May of 1882 John Bright replied from the House of Commons to a letter addressed to him by Mrs. Booth, in the following terms:

 

DEAR Madam--I gave your letter to Sir W. Harcourt. He had already given his opinion in the House of Commons, which will be to some extent satisfactory to you. I hope the language of Lord Coleridge and the Home Secretary will have some effect on the foolish and unjust magistrates to whom, in some districts, the administration of the law is, unfortunately, committed.

I suspect that your good work will not suffer materially from the ill-treatment you are meeting with. The people who mob you would doubtless have mobbed the Apostles. Your faith and patience will prevail.--I am, with great respect and sympathy, yours sincerely, JOHN BRIGHT.

 

Archbishop Tait and Lord Coleridge championed the Salvation Army in the House of Lords; Lord and Lady Cairns gave it their earnest support; Mr. W. T. Stead, who had come from editing The Northern Echo in Darlington to assist Mr. John Morley on the staff of The Pall Mall Gazette, seized every opportunity in his power to defend the crusade of the Army; Mrs. Josephine Butler was also a warm friend and a bold ally of the Salvationists--writing to Mrs. Booth, "there is not a day, scarcely an hour, in which I do not think of you and your fellow-workers"; Dr. Lightfoot, Bishop of Durham, nobly declared: "Whatever may be its faults, it has at least recalled us to this lost ideal of the work of the Church--the universal compulsion of the souls of men." And among people in society those at least were not actively antagonistic who had reflected upon Mrs. Booth's question as to whether it were better to face the masses with the Gospel or the sword.

At this time, then, the work of the Booths was beginning to be recognized by a few great and powerful people as a work that deserved well of the public. But the opinion of the country as a whole was apparently against the Army, and the opposition of the Churches, the publicans, and the mob only tended to increase with the rapid growth of the movement.

Perhaps the worst of the riots was that which occurred at Sheffield this year, when a procession led by General and Mrs. Booth was attacked by a numerous and savage multitude armed with sticks and stones. The procession arrived at its destination with bruised and bleeding faces, with torn and mud-bespattered garments, cheering the General who had passed unscathed through the rabble. "Now's the time," he said, regarding his ragged, wounded, and excited followers, "to get your photographs taken." A graphic account of this disturbance appeared in The Times.

Riots occurred at Bath, Guildford, Arbroath, Forfar, and many other places. In twelve months, it is recorded, 669 Salvationists, of whom 25x were women, were "knocked down, kicked, or brutally assaulted." Fifty-six buildings of the Army were stormed and partially wrecked. Eighty-six Salvationists, fifteen of them women, were thrown into prison. From one end of the Kingdom to the other, this effort to break up the Army was carried on in a most shameless fashion under the very eyes of the law, the mob attacking the Salvationists, the police arresting the Salvationists, the magistrates sentencing the Salvationists. But those persecutions failed to damp the courage of the Salvationists, and only tended to swell the ranks of the Army. As many as 30,000 people assembled to welcome one Salvationist's release from prison. Converts came in by hundreds, many of them the roughest of the rough, and many of the worst won by women who faced public-house mobs to effect their rescue. If the Salvationists suffered, the Salvation Army grew; and William Booth, watching the movement, came to think at last that he had evoked a spirit which would influence the world.

Some of the best friends of the Army were, however, disturbed from time to time by its excesses, or by some sign on its part of what they took to be narrowness and uncharitableness. Mr. W. T. Stead, for instance, addressed an interesting reproof to Commissioner Railton on the latter score, writing from the offices of The Pall Mall Gazette on February x5, 1882:

I am glad to hear from you. The Bolton affair I had noticed in the Manchester papers. They say you marched through the Catholic quarter in an aggressive fashion and got your heads broken. I fear Mr. Morley will not be inclined to protest in this case, for the question of Protestant versus Catholic comes in. I have read your account of your visit to the Russian Church with much interest not unmixed with some regret. I have so often had to defend the Salvation Army from precisely the charges you bring against the Russian Church, and that to Russians themselves, that I confess I had hoped you would have been more sympathetic, not to say charitable. My dear Mr. Railton, do remember that you do not understand Slavonic, that what to you was mummery is to a hundred millions of men, women, and children rich with all the associations of a faith cradled at Bethlehem and glorified at Calvary, and that an intelligent foreigner witnessing the excited services of the Army --say at an All-Night--might retort upon you with effect if he were unable to understand what was said ....

[One of the converts had been known as the "Tipton Devil": he had once sold a coffin of his dead child in order to get money for drink. When a Salvationist got him to the penitent-form and told him to pray, he said, "I can't pray"; I urged again, he cried out, "0 God, jump down my throat, and squeeze the Devil out." Another convert, a woman, told how she was rescued from a public-house on a bitter cold night, and how the Salvationist took off her own jacket and wrapped it round the shoulders of the poor drunkard, lest she should take cold.]

Public feeling at the same time was manifesting a rigorous disapproval. From all over the country protests were issued against the processions, the bands, and the too lively spirit of the Army.

A report in The War Cry of March 23, I882, shows how the question was brought before the House of Commons:

The other day a certain Member of Parliament . . . thought proper, we hope at the suggestion of others, to give notice--

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the performances of a so-called religious body, entitled the "Salvation Army."

And whether he will issue special instructions to the local magistrates to suppress the street processions of this body, processions which have caused, and are likely to cause, serious rioting, which tend also to create gross profanity; and which have been the means of greatly disturbing the peace and quiet of respectable citizens.

Doubtless, a good deal to his surprise, four other members immediately put on the order-list six questions looking all the other way, and of which the following were the most interesting:

Mr. Mason (Member for Ashton-under-Lyne).--To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will be so good as to devise some means of protection from mob-ruffianism and occasional magisterial weakness for the loyal and lawabiding people called the "Salvation Army," who are endeavouring to rescue from vice and crime the very dregs of the population not hitherto cared for by the greatest religious organisations of the country.

Mr. Caine (Member for Scarboro').--To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has received a Memorial, accompanied by sworn information, from several of the leading tradesmen of Basingstoke, with regard to the riots which have taken place in that town recently, and at recurring intervals during the last twelve months, caused by the persistent efforts of an organized gang of roughs to suppress by violence and intimidation the processions and meetings of a religious body known as the "Salvation Army."

Whether he has instituted any inquiry, with a view of ascertaining the names or positions of those who are well known to be the ringleaders of this dangerous mob:

And, if he will take prompt and immediate steps to secure for the "Salvation Army" that protection from injury and outrage which the magistrates and police of Basingstoke do not afford them.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been called to a paragraph in The Daily News of yesterday, headed "Uproarious Meeting at Basingstoke," describing a meeting held by Mr. Arch in that town, in the Corn Exchange, to consider the question of the agricultural labourer. It states that "the room was occupied before the proceedings commenced by a gang of roughs. Mr. Arch attempted to speak, but was refused a hearing, and was pelted with rotten eggs and ochre. Mr. Mitchell shared the same fate. After an hour and a half had been vainly spent in endeavouring to obtain quietude, the meeting was brought to an end amid much uproar."

Whether the authorities of Basingstoke were aware that this meeting was broken up by the same organized gang whose violence towards the members of the Salvation Army has more than once been the subject of Parliamentary inquiry:

And, if the Home Office will take the matter into immediate consideration.

Mr. M'Laren (Member for Stafford).--To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he is aware that a young man is being prosecuted in the City of London for selling a religious periodical called The War Cry in the streets.

And, whether he is prepared to direct the prosecution also of the persons who habitually obstruct the streets of London by offering for sale the indecent periodicals, with offensive contents bills, which have been hawked in public for the last nine months without any interference on the part of the police.

Sir Wilfrid Lawson (Member for Carlisle).--To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether it is true that, on September 21, I881, ten of the Basingstoke roughs were released from Winchester Gaol, where they had been suffering a fortnight's imprisonment for attacks on the Salvation Army.

Whether they were brought home to Basingstoke in a carriage-and-four, escorted by outriders in fancy costumes, and accompanied by their supporters--the brewers and publicans of Basingstoke.

Whether, in the evening, a banquet was given to the released prisoners in the Corn Exchange, which was granted for the purpose by the Corporation, the proceedings being wound up by a free fight, in which the police were powerless.

And, whether any communication has been made from the Home Office to the authorities of Basingstoke, with a view to a better preservation of order.

 

The reply of the Home Secretary, though lengthy, did not contain very much information. But two practical sentences should command universal attention:

"It is not in my power to compel the magistrates to do what they don't see fit to do. If they don't preserve the peace they are liable to a criminal information for not preserving the peace. (Hear, hear.) I cannot, as I am at present situated, issue any instructions to the magistrates. If I am asked for an opinion I am bound to give it. I may say that those people cannot be too strongly condemned who attack persons who are only meeting for a lawful, and I may say laudable, object."

The right honourable gentleman showed a lamentable want of information to exist at the Home Office when he said that the famous proclamation at Basingstoke had produced peace, and its withdrawal renewed rioting, whereas the said proclamation is posted up in Basingstoke to this very day, and the rioting was never affected by it in the least, nor peace in any degree restored to the town, till the magistrates, the other day, wisely decided to protect us in processioning as if there had been no such proclamation!

We notice, with pleasure, that Mr. Sclater Booth, Member for that part of the county, corrected with a "No" one misstatement as to Basingstoke. There was also a repetition of the old story as to Stamford, corrected at the time it first arose by so many papers. We have no Station at Stamford to this hour. No wonder that honourable gentlemen were not satisfied with the replies made, and gave notice to move again in the matter at a later date! We hope that all parties concerned will take timely warning by all this, and act as the Basingstoke bench has now done, seeing that we have now, thank God, got friends in high places, who are determined that we shall be no longer abandoned either to the "mob-ruffianism," or to the "magisterial weakness," as to which the Home Office has been left, it would seem, so much in the dark.

In the following month an absurd attack upon General Booth appeared in The Times. The writer was a Wesleyan minister. In a leading article, which was not unkind to General Booth, The Times administered an elegant chastisement to its correspondent:

Most interesting is it to notice how soon ivy, lichen, and moss can throw the honours of time on the congregations of yesterday. His complaint is that the Salvation Amy not only takes a line antagonistic to all the Churches, but has the audacity to act as a permanent institution, acquiring money, houses, and land, as well as a despotic organisation.

A month after this discussion in the House of Commons, General Booth received the following cordial and encouraging letter from the Archbishop of York (Dr. Thomson):

 

BISHOPTHORPE, YORK, April 18, 1882.

Sir--Some of my clergy have written to me to beg that I would ascertain how far it was possible for the Church to recognise the work of the Salvation Army as helping forward the cause of Christ consistently with our discipline. For this purpose they asked me to put myself into communication with your Leaders. I now, in compliance with their request, address you with this friendly object.

In two at least of the Churches of this diocese bodies of the Salvation Army have been admitted to Holy Communion at their request; and nothing has occurred on those occasions to hinder a compliance with like requests in future.

What I would ask of you, Sir, is that you would refer me to some document in which the principles of the Army are stated concisely and clearly, as the clergy would thus be enabled to judge for themselves. Any remarks which you are good enough to add will receive my best attention. Some of us think that you are able to reach cases, and to do so effectually, which we have great difficulty in touching. They believe that you are moved by zeal for God and not by a spirit of rivalry with the Church or any other agency for good, and they wish not to find themselves in needless antagonism with any in whom such principles and purposes prevail,--Wishing you every blessing, I am yours faithfully, W. EBOR. ....William Booth, Esq., General of the Salvation Army.

 

An event which marked an epoch in the history of the Salvation Army occurred in June of this year. There was a very notorious public-house in London called The Eagle, to which gardens and a theatre were attached, the tavern having its main entrance in the City Road, the gardens and the theatre facing a side-street known as Shepherdess Walk. This place was sufficiently notorious to inspire a comic song which became popular in the music-halls, the jaunty chorus of which was sung by many people wholly unaware of the true character of the tavern:

Up and down the City Road,

In and out the Eagle,

That's the way the money goes,

Pop goes the weasel.

[It is perhaps necessary to explain that "pop" is a colloquialism for pawn, and "weasel "a slang word for watch.]

 

In truth the tavern was a sink of iniquity. Drunkenness was perhaps the least of its vices. The gardens at night, with their rustic arbours, were a scene of the most flagrant immorality, and thither flocked some of the very worst characters of the town. This corner of Shepherdess Walk was indeed a meeting-place for all that was most base and shameless in the London of those days; and although the scandal of it had attracted attention, and although complaints about its challenging debauchery had been made again and again, nothing was done by authority either to end or to abate this abominable disgrace.

CRITICAL YEAR

William Booth, on learning in 1882 that the premises were for sale, made up his mind that this scandal should be put a stop to, and he determined to stop it in a very characteristic way. He planned to purchase an assignment of the underlease from its holder, and to convert it into a religious meeting-place. Thus he would not only destroy a work of the devil, but out of that destruction build a temple to God. He saw the opportunity of publicly challenging the conscience of London, of forcing London to confront the degradation of sin; and with great zest he flung himself into this crusade--the beginning of a new offensive on the part of religious morality.

It was necessary, of course, to proceed with caution, and no hint was given in the negotiations that the purchaser was the Salvation Army. The purchase, price was agreed upon at £16,750, and it is interesting to know that out of some £9,000 subscribed towards this sum no fewer than £3 ,000 were given by the poor Soldiers of the Salvation Army, who only a few weeks before had subscribed handsomely towards the new Training Home at Clapton.

Queen Victoria gave her sympathy to this movement, the Archbishop of Canterbury subscribed the first £5 towards the purchasing fund, and among other of William Booth's well-known supporters was the Rector of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate--"Hang-Theology" Rogers. The money was raised, the underlease of the tavern, with its gardens, its music-hall, and its Grecian theatre, was purchased, and William Booth took triumphant possession of the property. But no sooner had the conversion been made than such a storm broke upon him as we in these days can scarcely imagine. "Up with the Lark to capture the Eagle," the Salvationists marched in force on the first day, singing hymns of triumph. But their progress was disputed, something like a riot occurred, and the police had to intervene in great numbers.

 

The Daily Chronicle of that day gave a long description of these proceedings: "Reinforced from time to time during the day, there were upwards of 400 constables on the scene by night, and but for the skilful tactics of Mr. Superintendent Fidge, of the G Division .... it is not too much to say that--such was the murderous temper of the mob, who raged and howled in an appalling manner--blood would have been shed and Lives lost."

 

This contest was only the beginning of a stern fight. Howling mobs besieged the place by day and by night, the worst pimps and crimps of London stormed it, drunken and savage gangs armed with sticks and stones assailed it; for some months the place had to be guarded by police, on many occasions with drawn truncheons. William Booth was many times in grave danger of his life. Once he would have surely been torn to pieces by the savage mob but for one of his staff and a friendly workman who enabled him to escape over a garden wall--the workman remarking that he was not religious, but he believed in the work William Booth was doing for the poor.

Close on the heels of their mobbing came legal actions. William Booth had inspired the enmity of a very powerful trade, and the whole machinery of the law was set in motion to crush him. If such a man were allowed a free hand what would become of our liquor interests, of our British workman's right to get drunk as often as he pleased? Clearly such a fighter must be fought. The legal dispute turned on the question whether a man could hold licensed premises without offering alcoholic drink for sale, and a great deal was made of the meaning of the words, "inn," "tavern," and "public-house." It was first decided in the Court of Chancery that William Booth had taken an assignment of an underlease of a public-house, and must be restrained from any breach of its covenants which would imperil its existence as licensed premises. One of the judges said that by his letters to the newspapers he had given rise to the supposition that he intended to use the Eagle Tavern in a way which would be a breach of the covenant, "but his subsequent affidavit showed that this was not his intention." The action was decided therefore in favour of the Army. But the ground landlords, who were trustees of an East End parish, raised the question in another form by means of an action in the Court of Queen's Bench, and there the liquor interest won the day. For a time, in order to fight his case, the General had stood a pot of ale on the counter of The Eagle, but this was much against his will and was finally abandoned. [Mr. Justice Kay said of the Salvation Army in this judgment that "whatever individuals might think of the manner in which it was carried on . . . [it] must command the respect and sympathy of every sensible man, because no doubt the main intention of [William Booth] was the extension of morality and religious feeling among those amidst whom at present they were least to be found."]

The Salvation Army historian remarks of this final judgment: "Not content with condemning us to hand over the entire property, for which £20,000 had been paid, that it might become what it had been before, the judge, who had said, after hearing all the evidence, that 'he had seen nothing in the case as it came before the Court to lead him to think that Mr. Booth was wanting in good faith,' thought proper to make reflections upon the General's action which were so reported and commented upon as undoubtedly to make a very bad impression on many minds." Nothing was said of William Booth's effort to pluck this cancer out of London's life, but a great deal was said of the judge's remark that he had not been quite frank in making his purchase.

We shall see later on how Professor Huxley made use of this judicial stricture, tearing it from its context, to discredit William Booth in the public estimation, a course of conduct thoroughly unworthy of so honest a man and so able a controversialist. But what must strike most people at this distance of time is the fact that in a fight for public morality so gallant and so desperate William Booth should have been unsupported by the whole organised force of righteousness. The very fact, however, that it was to all intents and purposes a solitary fight, shows clearly the need of that day for the awakening challenge of the Salvation Army. This event, as we have said, was epoch-making; and we may claim for it that it did indeed mark a new offensive on the part of religion. Other men before William Booth had attacked public evils, but it was his particular merit that somehow or another he always roused the national conscience and gave fresh courage to the rather timid and passive forces of religion. The case of The Eagle was a step on the road to his tremendous challenge in the name of the submerged tenth.

Later in the same year, General Booth's work attracting more and more attention, a committee was appointed by the Upper House of Convocation to consider the possibility of an alliance with the Salvation Army. This committee consisted of Dr. Benson, then Bishop of Truro; Canon Westcott, Canon Wilkinson, and the Rev. Randall J. Davidson. A real desire was manifested on this occasion to bring the Army under the wing of the Anglican Church, but the difficulties of any such union, from the Salvation Army's point of view, were considered to be so great that the effort was eventually abandoned. General Booth made certain concessions. He was willing, says Mr. Booth-Tucker, "for the two organizations to run side by side like two rivers with bridges thrown across, over which the members could mutually pass and repass; nor did he object to the Corps marching at stated intervals to Church"; but the Army could not submit to the authority of the Church, nor could it abandon its central position concerning the primacy of conversion, nor give up its now firmly established conviction that the catholic sacraments were not necessary to salvation.

During this year, too, the Salvation Army had spread to Switzerland, Sweden, India, and Canada; it had already established itself in the United States of America, in Australasia, and in France. William Booth was now not merely the head of an unsectarian mission society in England, but the General of an Army which looked like spreading its influence to all parts of the world. He could not, it will readily be seen, attach this great and growing force to the national Church without in some measure paralysing its foreign legions. But his relations with Dr. Benson remained of a friendly character, and when the Bishop was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury he wrote to him in the following terms:

 

January 5, 1883.

MY LORD--I think you should know sufficient of me as well as of this Army to accept with the utmost assurance of its heartfelt sincerity this expression of the great satisfaction and thankfulness to God with which we have heard of your Lordship's appointment to the Primacy.

Although we are no more likely to admire all the plans adopted by others than to have our own generally admired, we cannot but look forward with pleasure to the prospect of that long career of determined spiritual activity to which we trust God will spare you. We shall prove the groundlessness of all the fears that have been expressed as to our becoming sectarian by the heartiness with which we shall hail every fresh advance against the common enemy by all true godly men.

We have held back our notes on the list of queries with regard to the Army sent to the Clergy, thinking it improbable that the Committee would endeavour to complete their report much before the reassembling of Convocation. Our Annual Report, of which we send a copy herewith, does in part reply, but of course every week's progress very materially affects our position. We have only this very week, for instance, heard of our first services attended by blessed success in Sweden and Switzerland. The multiplication of these foreign extensions will, we think, greatly widen the sphere of our usefulness in this country by delivering us from any narrow grooves of thought and by promoting amongst persons of education those ideas of world-wide aggression for Christ with which it is admitted that we have imbued so many thousands of poor.

It would be quite out of place for me to make any suggestions as to the future of the Church in its purely ecclesiastical capacity, though it might well be congratulated upon the prospect of a general extension of recent progress in Cornwall.

But we cannot but regard the elevation of your Lordship to the See of Canterbury at this time as an invaluable sign of the quickening of the nation's conscience and as an indication that the Church, in its larger national character, is about to enter upon an era of greater activity and more practical sympathy with all soul-saving efforts than it has ever yet known.

Should an opportunity arise for public demonstration on our side of heart-felt sympathy with your Grace in this grand purpose we shall be pleased to avail ourselves of it, but whether in public or in private be assured that our prayers on your behalf shall go up to God, and that we shall rejoice with you over every victory won for God.--I am, my Lord, yours most faithfully,

(Signed) WILLIAM BOOTH.

The Bishop of Truro.

 

Unhappily their friendly relations were not destined to continue without interruption. A few months after the writing of this letter a charge of a most serious character was brought against the Salvation Army by the Bishops of Oxford and Hereford.

 

CHAPTER II

A VAGUE BUT EPISCOPAL CHARGE OF IMMORALITY

1883

 

RUMOURS had been spread for some time that the Salvation Army encouraged a form of hysteria which led in many instances to sexual immorality. It was commonly stated that Salvationists held a meeting called "Creeping for Jesus," in which the lights were turned down, and men and women, getting upon their knees, proceeded to crawl upon the floor groping with their hands in the darkness.

These and other rumours, with accounts of blasphemous handbills supposed to be circulated by Salvation Army Officers, tended to inflame respectable opinion. There was a strong feeling among some of those who knew nothing of William Booth and nothing of the frightful condition existing in parts of the great cities, that the Salvation Army was a scandal and an outrage. People said that Salvationists deserved everything they received at the hands of the mob. Newspapers so eminent as The Times pronounced judgment against General Booth. Religious people and irreligious people uttered their disapproval of these noisy, irreverent, and now immoral Salvationists.

It was, on the whole, a good thing that these flying rumours should at last take shape in a more or less definite charge uttered by wholly responsible people. In the Upper House of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, on the 10th of April, I883, the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Mackarness) said:

The point I wish to raise is a very definite one. This Salvation Army professes to be an agency for promoting holiness, upon which it is said by persons whom I have reason to trust that it promotes not holiness, but distinct immorality to a great degree. What I would do is to institute inquiries from those who have seen the work, so as to enable us to say whether they are working with the contrary result to that which the leaders are desirous of obtaining, or whether they are doing a good work. It is not merely to examine tenets, but the results of those tenets in actual life, and what the people who receive their teaching are doing. It is to see what really is the ratio of illegitimate births, and the relation of the Salvation Army to that we would wish to know.

 

The Bishop of Hereford (Dr. Atlay) confirmed the statement with the remark:

. . . two . . . of my clergy, who are well disposed in the main towards the development of unusual methods even of arousing religious feeling among those who are commonly called the masses, have told me that from their own knowledge very disastrous consequences--I need not further explain what I mean--have followed the teaching of the Army.

 

General Booth wrote next day both to the Bishop of Oxford and to the Archbishop of Canterbury. In his letter to the Archbishop he said:

I observe with great regret in this morning's Journals a report of proceedings in Convocation yesterday, in the course of which a number of serious accusations against the Army appear to have been made. It seems to me very hard that the outrageous statements constantly made with regard to us should be credited without our having an opportunity to reply to them.

There has been no change whatever in our Orders or methods during the last twelve months, and the only development I know of is in the increase, amounting to more than a doubling of the numbers of those who are doing the work and enduring the sufferings to which attention was called in your Lordship's house twelve months ago.

I am well aware that there have been of late a great many efforts made both in England and in Switzerland to misrepresent both our teachings and our plans; but we have never yet met with a charge that can be maintained against us when fairly examined in daylight.

I enclose a note to his Lordship, the Bishop of Oxford, and trust that some opportunity will at least be given to us to meet the very grave accusations he appears to have brought against us, and which we venture to say cannot be supported by one solitary fact. There can be no doubt that such an accusation made in such a quarter will be used in such a way in the Press as to greatly increase the ill-usage of our poor people in the streets.

Our earnest desire to maintain friendly relationships with the authorities of the Church has not in the least degree changed. We might point with satisfaction to the enormous growth, not merely in the numbers of those connected with us, but of those belonging to all denominations, who in spite of the efforts of our enemies have been won to sympathise with us during the last six months. And we might in presence of these facts resign ourselves with indifference to any hostile expression of opinion.

But what I regret and would fain avert, if not too late, is a growth of a conviction amongst all these, that the scandalous reports circulated against us find ready credence with the authorities of the Church, and that the multitudes of poor labourers whose zealous efforts to diffuse religion cannot at any rate be denied, are looked upon no longer with sympathy, but rather with contempt, by the clergy. I do not hesitate to say that the spread of such a conviction in these days when, as his Lordship the Bishop of Exeter has pointed out, the spiritual state of great masses of the population, especially in large towns, is so unsatisfactory, would be a national calamity.

Is it impossible for us to have an opportunity of meeting and refuting the groundless accusations made against us, which alone can account for the changed attitude of your Lordship's house towards us?--I am, my Lord, yours most respectfully,

(Signed) WILLIAM BOOTH.

 

The answer he received to this protest is not very easy to understand:

LAMBETH PALACE, S.E.,

April 13, 1883.

MY DEAR SIR--I am directed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 11th inst. respecting the newspaper reports of the late discussion upon the Salvation Army in the Upper House of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury.

His Grace understands you to ask for an opportunity of making a statement respecting your view of the present position and work of the persons under your control.

I am directed to remind you that when enquiry was first set on foot by a Committee of Bishops, nearly a year ago, you were so kind as to offer, for the information of the Committee, to send full answers to the circular of enquiry addressed to clergy and others who had had experience of the working of the Salvation Army.

These papers were placed in your hands on their first issue in order that you might be fully cognizant of the enquiries that were being made, but no answer whatever was received until a few days ago, when a request emanated from your Office for new copies of the questions, the former copies having been lost. New copies were at once sent, but the Archbishop has not, as yet, received from you any reply.

I am directed now to inform you that a Committee of both Houses of the Convocation of Canterbury was on Tuesday last appointed to consider the various methods which in different quarters are now being adopted and suggested for reaching the masses, and to assure you that this Committee hopes that it may be allowed to obtain from yourselves, as well as from other organisations, any such information as you may be kindly able to afford.--I remain, my dear Sir, yours faithfully,

RANDALL J. DAVIDSON, Chaplain.

Mr. W. Booth.

 

On the 12th of April General Booth addressed a letter of protest to the Bishop of Hereford, and received the following replies:

THE PALACE, HEREFORD,

April 13, 1883.

SIR--Your letter of the 12th instant has come into my hands this morning.

For the remarks which I made in Convocation I believed that I had sufficient authority; but as you challenge this statement, I shall of course make further enquiries, and if I find that I am misinformed I will take an early opportunity of correcting the mistake.--I am, Sir, faithfully yours,

J. HEREFORD.

Gen. Booth.

April 16, 1883.

SIR--Having made the enquiries referred to in my letter of the 13th inst., I regret to say that I am compelled to abide by the language which I used in Convocation last week, as reported in The Guardian Newspaper of the 11th instant.--Faithfully yours,

J. HEREFORD.

Gen. Booth.

 

On the 19th, General Booth replied to the two Bishops. We give his letter to the still sceptical Bishop of Hereford:

April 19, 1883.

To The Right Hon. The Lord Bishop of Hereford.

MY LORD--I have read both your Lordship's letters, but find to my great regret that neither of them afford even the hope of our being confronted with the particular accusations which are made against us. I am astonished that your Lordship should not, apparently, perceive the unreasonableness of making a charge affecting the morality of 450 congregations of poor people without first giving any one of those congregations an opportunity of clearing themselves from the imputation. It is impossible for us to let the matter rest here; we must give the same opportunity to all which we have given to the two congregations existing in your Lordship's Diocese to meet the accusation, and we are confident of being able to show from every part of the country that whatever cases of immorality may have occurred the impression produced as to the general character of our services and of their moral effect is quite erroneous.--I am, my Lord, yours faithfully, (Signed) WILLIAM BOOTH.

 

The Bishop of Oxford was more reasonable, and after an interview with Commissioner Railton and two other Salvationists approved of the following statement, which was immediately made public:

He assured us that he had never had any intention of making an accusation against the Army, still less of exciting public hostility to it, and that his words used in the midst of a discussion in Convocation must have been ill-chosen to have conveyed such an impression.

All he had meant to convey was that he strongly disapproved of the gathering together of young people at late and exciting meetings, inasmuch as there was great danger that, however excellent might be the intentions of those who held such meetings, young men and women on leaving them without proper control might fall into immorality, as had doubtless been the case sometimes already. G.S.R.

 

Although the Salvation Army was able to clear itself of these charges, opposition against it grew rather than diminished with its advancement among the masses. There was nothing at all during the 'eighties of that wonderful popularity among men of all creeds and of no creeds which came in 1890. One may say generally that while the Army was making friends for itself among the saddest sections of democracy it was making enemies among the other classes. The aristocracy, the professional and commercial classes, the better-off working man, and the most degraded elements of the mob were hostile to the movement. William Booth, who had watched, from 1878 to 1883, the development of the extraordinary spirit which he himself had evoked, and who perhaps had wavered on some important matters, was driven more and more to take a definite line of action. He was forced into this position as much by the hostility of the world as by the devotion of his followers. It was a case in which a man must either surrender or fight. If he altered his methods or bowed in any way to popular clamour he not only acknowledged himself to be wrong, but violated his own conscience and surrendered his army into the hands of its enemies. To maintain his position and to lead his followers it was necessary to advance with greater boldness and with more unfaltering determination.

But it is interesting to observe that the conservative character of his disposition still held him back from any violent onslaught. He was not one of those who, in John Morley's phrase, "helped to state the problem, writing up in letters of flame at the brutal feast of kings and the rich that civilization is as yet only a mockery"; on the contrary, he was a monarchist, a constitutionalist, a conservative, and certainly not a lover of radicals and socialists; he kept his eyes averted from the political problem, he never once was temped to make himself the leader of revolution, the captain of an angry and avenging democracy; his whole emphasis was on religion, and the only war he understood, the only war for which he had the smallest inclination, was the war against sin. If he became a bolder leader and a greater general after 1883, it was still in the sphere of practical religion; he advanced more confidently as the head of an increasing international organization, but his whole attack was concentrated upon the forces of iniquity. He may have harboured critical thoughts about the Church, he may have entertained in his heart hard judgments for society, but his public life was entirely circumscribed to a consistent and an undeviating attack upon the moral causes of suffering and poverty.

 

CHAPTER III

NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

1883-1885

 

ONE Of the penalties of his sudden rise into the public attention was the necessity forced upon William Booth of adopting, or attempting to adopt, the part of a diplomatist.

Here was a very simple and downright man, whose whole being, since the dawn of his understanding, had been consumed by the single purpose of saving wretched and unhappy people from the consequences of sin, who had gone of his own will and choice into the most obscure and abandoned places of the world to fulfil this passionate hunger and thirst of his spirit, and who was so simple and primitive that he could trust himself to the most brutal mobs of industrial England with the ancient thunders of Sinai and the least qualified and uncompromising version of Christianity; here was this poor preacher, suddenly become a public character, suddenly in conflict with Churches and Governments, and suddenly called upon to deal with acute and vigilant intellects who regarded him, for the most part, either with an indignant hostility or a suspicious disapprobation.

It would probably have been wiser if William Booth had kept to his own rough path, stubbornly pursuing his original goal, and never expecting assistance or sympathy from those in smoother places who had the power to help him; but he was hungry for unselfish success, dreamed of evangelizing the Churches as well as the masses, and to this end was sometimes inclined to consider a working understanding with men in high places, who, reflection ought to have told him, could not possibly become his partners.

He would have been a grander figure, I think, if he had held solitary to his path of darkness and storm, poverty and suffering, neglect and contumely; it is with a feeling of regret that we find him, although the invitation came from the other side, entering the sphere of diplomacy, and desiring, however pure and unselfish the end, the sympathetic help of authority; but we must not forget, indeed it is a salient characteristic of the man, that with all his plainness and downright honesty there was an element of dexterity in his nature, a disposition to finesse, which kept him perpetually on the watch for opportunity, and moved him to clutch with both hands at every chance of advancing the cause which was dearer to him than his own life.

He was a man whose true nature did not always show itself in conversation except with those who entirely shared his opinions or were his intimate and affectionate friends. He endeavoured to adopt with those whom he felt to be inimical or critical the manner which we describe as easygoing--a practical common-sense manner, not very attractive perhaps, and somewhat foreign to his loving, impulsive, and affectionate nature. His extraordinary tenderness, his almost feminine sympathy with the suffering and the lost, were completely hidden on these occasions; he appeared only as the organizer, the business-man of religion, who wanted to get things done. It was as if he feared to show his heart to one or two, and could only unbosom himself before a multitude or to those who loved him. I can imagine that men who saw him only on business, though they saw him a score of times, formed no true opinion of the real man.

The impression he made in the early 'eighties on Archbishop Benson and Dr. Randall Davidson, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, was the impression of a good and straightforward man who had no intention in the world of setting up a new sect and who was not antipathetic to the idea of some form of alliance with the Church of England. He told them that he had small patience with the quarrelling chapels, and that he felt himself nearer to the Church of England than to any other body in Christendom. He was emphatic in all the conversations he had with them that the very last thing he desired to do was to found a fresh body of dissent. Again and again, Archbishop Davidson tells me, he laid emphasis on this assertion that he was founding an Army, not a Church.

A letter addressed in 1881 to the Archbishop of Canterbury by a clergyman in East London shows that this opinion formed in Lambeth Palace was at least an opinion shared by one who had carefully endeavoured to get the views of William Booth. After mentioning that he has had an interview with General Booth, this correspondent proceeds:

I have long felt that if he would consent to work with the Church, in the now vast movement he regulates, it would be for both his advantage and that of the Church of England. I went therefore to question him on the subject. I asked him if he was founding a Church, or only heading an evangelistic agency which could work alongside of the Church of England. He assured me the latter was the case. I asked him if his people had any ill-feeling towards the clergy, as I had heard reports of occasional attacks by Salvationists upon the ministers of the Church. He again assured me, that though individuals amongst the Army might have met occasional Church opposition with ill-advised retort, such attacks were wholly contrary to his wishes or to the general principles of the Army, who were earnest after unity and concord, especially with the Church of England.

I asked him whether they administered the Sacraments, and he told me that some of his people on their own responsibility had had a very simple "breaking of bread" together, but that this was no part of the "Army "--as an evangelistic agency. . . . Before I left he said he earnestly hoped one day there might be a service for the Army in St. Paul's Cathedral, and that the Clergy might learn to see that the Army was co-operating and not in any way in opposition.

 

Whether the General was more drawn to the Church of England than to any of the other Churches is a matter on which we should not care to express a definite opinion, but we think it is beyond all reasonable question that he was utterly unconscious of animosity towards any of the Churches, and that his procedure then and afterwards never veiled the least degree of real antagonism. It was not his business to quarrel with the Churches, and he had a natural detestation of controversy. He desired recognition for the Army to advance his gospel of salvation and to protect his followers from persecution; his immediate aim was certainly limited to this desire for recognition, and anything in the nature of definite alliance had probably not presented itself to his mind as a practical idea. In order to obtain recognition he was willing to say generous and even flattering things to those in authority; he wanted to smooth troubled waters, to remove suspicion and prejudice, to win the sympathy of those who could help him financially. But even while he was prepared to go a considerable distance to meet his critics in order that he might gain this authoritative recognition for his followers, there was always something to which he held openly and definitively, and this was his absolute headship of the Army. He was honest enough to make this fact absolutely and abundantly clear.

It must be remembered that in the negotiations with the Church of England, William Booth was approaching men the aim of whose diplomacy was naturally to gain control over the irregular organization which he had brought into existence. This diplomacy was not dictated by jealousy: some of those who pursued it were earnest admirers of the Salvation Army, and almost disciples of Mrs. Booth. It was dictated purely by the genuine and laudable desire to save the work of William Booth from becoming a menace, not to the Church, but, as those who followed it genuinely believed, to Christianity itself. I have seen something of the correspondence which reached Lambeth Palace at that time, touching this question of the Church's countenance of the Army, and so earnest, so solemn, and so indignant are the wild, absurd charges brought against the followers of William Booth, that it is a wonder to me the Archbishop went even as far as he did in these difficult negotiations. And these letters are not the whisperings of jealous clergymen, but the bold and plain-spoken charges of laymen, many of them belonging to the workingclass. One man quotes from The World newspaper that "Mr. Booth is accustomed to adapt sardonically a certain text of Scripture, and say, 'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is the parson.'" Another writes, "I cannot but think that a most awful responsibility is incurred by any who by their influence help on the propaganda of such sickening blasphemy .... " Another describes Salvation Army processions as "a lot of screaming, raving youths and girls, dancing and indulging in most unseemly contortions." "Their proceedings," we read in another letter, "can do no possible good, and merely afford an incessant subject for the scoffs and blasphemies of the publicans and their allies." "I hope," writes a working-man, "you will not imitate your late predecessor, to have your name blazoned in The War Cry, for supporting and encouraging those I call the Salvation Army." "Returning to England a week since," writes a correspondent from the suburbs, "... I heard that you had publicly expressed your approval of the proceedings of the Salvation Army. I trust my informant was mistaken in attributing such sentiments to your Grace, as I have no doubt that could you but hear the fearful blasphemies uttered publicly by that body you would never lend it countenance or support."

Dr. Davidson knew that in spite of exaggeration and excitement the Salvation Army was witnessing the miracle of conversion all over the country; he was honest enough not to shut his eyes to this important fact, even while he gave his ears to those who had nothing but abuse and condemnation for the Army; he, therefore, desired to curb with the instant hand of authority those things in the Army which offended the susceptibilities of the Church party, rather than allow them to be outgrown in the evolution of this new force in the religious world, and to leave unchecked only the devotion and earnestness which gained the Army its lasting victories.

Dr. Randall Davidson, who was then chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, gave considerable attention to this matter, taking, in fact, a leading part on the Church's side in the negotiation of which we are writing. He has expressed to me a very warm admiration for Catherine Booth, describing her as one of the most remarkable women he ever met, and telling me that his father, a singularly hard-headed and deep-thinking Scot, after hearing for the first time one of Catherine Booth's addresses at Exeter Hall, said to him, "If ever I am charged with a crime, don't bother to engage any of the great lawyers to defend me; get that woman." But the feelings of Dr. Davidson towards William Booth are not so clear and not so unmixed. He is ready to say that in some respects he misjudged the man, for he held the opinion in the early 'eighties that the work of the Army would not last, and that William Booth would outwear the patience of the world. He found William Booth, he says, on the whole, a simple and not very profound person, who was perfectly honest in his idea of religion, but not altogether unscrupulous in his methods for advancing that idea. "He did not give me the impression," he says, "of anything like so original and interesting a personality as Catherine Booth; and even now I think he owed something of his popularity, not all of course, to his wonderful, his almost magnificent appearance. But I felt very strongly during those months of our negotiations that Booth was determined to keep control, and an autocratic control, of the Army. I was opposed to that. I could see his reasons for desiring this autocratic control, but I could not possibly bring myself to support so dangerous a policy. He certainly gave me to understand, and very emphatically, that he did not seek to establish a new sect, and I felt, whether he was sincere or not in this particular, that the tide would be too strong for him. We could not get anything in the nature of control over the organization, and so we had to let it go."

In an article published in The Contemporary Review for August, 1882, Dr. Davidson criticized the Army with singular ability, and not unfairly, but he paid a generous tribute at the same time to the sincerity and devotion of its Soldiers:

Whatever be their errors in doctrine or in practice, I can only say that, after attending a large number of meetings of different kinds in various parts of London, I thank God from my heart that He has raised up to proclaim His message of Salvation the men and the women who are now guiding the Army's work, and whose power of appealing to the hearts of their hearers is a gift from the Lord Himself. I am sorry for the Christian teacher, be he cleric or layman, who has listened to such addresses as those given by "General" Booth, Mrs. Booth, and by some five or six at least of their "staff officers," who has not asked for help that he may speak his message with the like straightforward ability and earnest zeal.

 

Canon Farrar of Westminster, who was later on to become one of the Army's greatest champions, was at this time one of its severest critics. "Can they not see how fatal it must be to some natures," he asked in an Abbey sermon, "thus to wear their hearts upon their sleeves? thus to drag the course of their spiritual life out of the gracious shadows wherein God leaves them?" Whether he ever looked in the slums of uttermost brutality for these "gracious shadows," I do not know, but I am perfectly certain that he might have preached all his sermons to the broken wreckage of East London without changing a single heart, without restoring a single soul. He spoke of the Salvationist's "grotesque and irreverent phraseology, calculated quite needlessly to disgust and repel," not knowing that any other phraseology must have failed to rouse the sunken and degraded multitudes of great cities, even as his own somewhat too florid rhetoric failed to please the discriminating judges of literature.

Dr. Davidson, criticizing the Army as he did, quoted in The Contemporary Review with approval the following document signed by the Mayor and Sheriff of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, by four Members of Parliament, and by twelve resident magistrates:

We, the undersigned, while by no means willing to identify ourselves with, or to defend, all the means and measures used by the Salvation Army in the prosecution of their efforts for the restoration of the worst portion of the population to habits of morality, temperance, and religion, nevertheless feel bound to state that we know they have succeeded in this town and neighbourhood, not only in gathering together congregations of such as never previously artended religious services, but in effecting a marked and indisputable change in the lives of many of the worst characters. We are therefore strongly of opinion that their services ought not to be left to the mercy of riotous disturbers, but should have the fullest protection.

"One clergyman has told me," he wrote, "that two whole streets in his parish, which were once 'a very den of thieves,' have become quiet and comparatively respectable since the Salvation Army opened fire upon them." In spite of very strong and uncompromising criticism, this article shows that a section of the Church was watching the new movement with genuine admiration and sincere sympathy, although in the autocracy of William Booth she saw a sovran danger, and in some of the excesses and exuberances of the converts she saw matter for profound regret. But towards the end of the article, Dr. Davidson hinted at the main obstacle to any real alliance between the Church and the Army. He wrote:

In abstaining carefully from doctrinal questions, I have precluded myself from reference even to so vital a point as the Army's position with respect to the Sacraments of Christ. That question, about which there seems still to be much uncertainty in the Army's councils, must be dealt with soon and firmly, if the Church is to extend active sympathy to the Army as a whole.

Cardinal Manning, it is instructive to find, shared with Dr. Randall Davidson the impression that William Booth, protest as he might, was bound to set up a new Church.

Mr. Booth (he wrote) declares his firm resolve the Salvation Army shall never become a sect. He cites the failure of John Wesley in his attempt to maintain an unsectarian position. The meaning of this would seem to be that the aim of the Salvation Army is to promote general and personal religion apart from all bodies and, above all, apart from all controversies .... The head of the Salvation Army is resolved that it shall never become a sect .... He seems to wish that it may not be a sect but a spirit which, like the four winds, may blow upon all in the Valley of Dry Bones---men, women, children, sects, communions, and, as he perhaps would say, Churches, quickening and raising them to a higher life .... Nevertheless we have a conviction that the Salvation Army will either become a sect, or it will melt away. This world is not the abode of disembodied spirits.

 

Both Dr. Randall Davidson and Cardinal Manning complained of the language and practices of the Army, and it is quite certain that in expressing his disapprobation of the more fantastic of these things Dr. Davidson was uttering the mind of his Church as a whole. One must not forget that some adherents of the Army at this period of its existence not only did actually commit grievous offences against modesty and good taste, but that the Army was unfortunate enough to have attributed to its officials wholesale blasphemies, obscenities, and immoralities of a most repellent kind. Nothing was too bad or too grotesque to be said of this excited and elated body of converted sinners, and, alas! nothing too incredible to be believed by many good people.

What direction the diplomacy of William Booth would have taken but for the constant influence of Bramwell Booth and George Railton, it is impossible to say; it is fair to assume, however, that without this strong and enthusiastic influence that diplomacy would have been at least more anxious for a better understanding with the Church, more patient and adaptable in these fumbled negotiations. He was a great hater of controversy; he had few scruples where compromise might clear the field for action; he held with all the fire and resolution of his vehement character that nothing was so important as "getting men saved from their sins." Catherine Booth, too, although she permitted herself to utter on occasion certain caustic remarks concerning the opposition of the Churches, and although she was by nature and habit a controversialist, and from her youth up had been hotly opposed to what is called Clericalism, nevertheless felt that some understanding with the recognized forces of religion would have been valuable to the cause of the Army; she, too, we think, might have been brought to consider a compromise. But the influence of the young men who shared the inner counsels of General and Mrs. Booth was all on the side of no compromise, all in the direction of their own Salvation Army offensive against sin, all in the direction of utmost liberty. They had no sympathy of any kind with the Sacramentalists, they had no veneration for ecclesiastical tradition, and their one feeling as regards antiquity was to break utterly free from its somnolent sobriety, its paralysing dignity, its soul-destroying precedents and formulae, to break free from all that; not to attack and criticize the Church, but to live with all the vitality and courage of a present only valuable as it shaped the future. Influenced by those younger men, themselves urged on by the tide of success everywhere lifting the Salvation Army into the estimation of men, William Booth decided not to prosecute his negotiations with the Church of England, and allowed the matter to end without communicating to the Archbishop any definite decision.

We find an expression of his views, however, in an article which he wrote a few years later, on the occasion of Archbishop Benson's sudden death at Hawarden:

The little personal intercourse I was privileged to have with Archbishop Benson, a few years ago, has rendered his recent sudden decease--taking place as it did under such graphically impressive circumstances--of specially solemn interest to me ....

The Army had at that time [1882] with somewhat startling suddenness, sprung into public observation--I think I may say public estimation, considering the kindly sentiments expressed concerning us on every hand--and the question of Comprehension was being considered by more than one of the Religious Organizations. Some of the leading Dignitaries of the National Church were loudly controverting the wisdom of the course pursued by their forefathers in allowing Wesleyan Methodism to drift away from the Establishment, and wondering whether a little patient manœuvring might not have been successful, not only in retaining the Wesleys and the Coadjutors within its Fold, but of securing to the Episcopacy the influence and direction of the immense multitudes who have since grown up under the Methodist Banner--now far out-numbering those of the Parent Fold.

Here, it was argued, are another people very similar in object and character, only still more pronounced and practical, rising up with the promise of a coming success, which, if not equal to that of the great Methodist Community, still evidently has in it the germ of a future power and progress very much like it. Can we not avoid the mistake of the past? True, we have not the power to shut out from our Churches the leaders of the Salvation Army, as did the Bishops and Clergy the Methodist Leaders of 150 years ago, seeing that they are not numbered with us, nor do they seek the use of our Synagogues; still less have we any desire to persecute them. But can we not manage by a little kindly attention to take them in, so not only ensuring to them the benefits of our Episcopal supervision, but securing for ourselves the advantages growing out of their enthusiastic zeal.

With such feelings--highly honourable to the leaders of the Church of England, set forth at the time in their literature, at gatherings of the Clergy, and in other ways--the late Archbishop (then Bishop of Truro), with the Bishop of Durham (then Canon Westcolt), sought, by their own request, an interview with me, which took place at our Headquarters, Queen victoria Street.

The possibility of a union between the Salvation Army and the Church, or the attachment of the Army to the Church in some form which would mean the same thing, was the topic. And the patient, thoughtful, and I may say respectful, manner in which the subject was argued by my distinguished visitors made that conversation to me for ever a pleasant memory. The beautiful spirit of enquiry manifested on the part of Canon Westcolt especially impressed me.

The conditions of the Union desired, on the part of the Army as set forth, were simple as simplicity itself. Whatever might have been felt necessary on closer investigation to the maintenance of the Union, nothing was asked beyond an open recognition of our connection with the Church, and the regular attendance by each Corps at the Parish Church, or at an authorized service in some other consecrated building, say at regular intervals, wkly. or once a month, and that, to meet the requirements of our particular work, it was suggested, might be at an early hour, say eight o'clock. At such times it was remarked that it would be quite admissible for the Army to march up to the Church-doors with bands playing and banners flying, as was our custom to our own Barracks. Indeed, invited by friendly Clergymen in various parts of the country, our people were at that time actually attending different Churches in this fashion.

I don't recollect whether the partaking of what is known as the (ordinance of) Lord's Supper at this service was named, but I think it is probable that it would be. Anyway, I know there was the distinct understanding that we should be left at perfect liberty at all other times to carry on our own work in our own way. There was to be no interference with our Government or our Methods. We were to be the Salvation Army to all intents and purposes, as we were then, with this addition only--we were to be the Church Salvation Army.

Here the difficulties likely to be experienced by our Soldiers in Churches where a High Ritual form of service was in force occurred to my mind, and I suggested that the bulk of our people would be found either totally ignorant of the supposed benefits flowing out of the use of images, candles, crucifixes, vestments, or of almost any of the numerous forms and ceremonials practised in many Churches, or they would be found very strongly opposed to them.

On my mentioning this difficulty, and asking how it could be met, Doctor Benson suggested for our imitation his own custom under such circumstances. He said that when in the performance of his duty he came to a church where the manner of the service was not in harmony with his own views on such matters, he simply did the work for which he was present to the best of his ability, regarding the responsibility for the surrounding furniture and usages as resting upon the shoulders of those who were responsible for that particular church.

The Ordinance of the Lord's Supper and our attitude towards it was talked over in a thoughtful, though summary manner. On my remarking that I did not hold the partaking of the Ordinance to be essential to Salvation, and that I believe no thoughtful Christian would shut us out of the Pale of Salvation here, or close the Gates of Heaven against us hereafter, because we had not been regular partakers of that Ordinance, his Lordship, while appearing to assent to this statement, remarked that, apart from that bearing of the subject, he thought that the sincere Churchman derived a great blessing from joining in that particular service. To this I of course assented, but enquired whether this blessing was not consequent upon the exercise of faith in the sacrifice of the Cross which it set forth. "Yes!" the Archbishop answered, "but I think there is a blessing peculiar to this Ordinance; something above and beyond anything that is realized in any other religious service." To this I again enquired whether this peculiar blessing of which his Lordship spoke could not be traced to the fact that a peculiar measure of faith and devotion was called forth by that particular ceremonial. To which it was again answered, that apart from any such special exercises on the part of the worshipper, God, he thought, had connected a special impartation of His presence and blessing with this particular service. What appeared to be the natural answer to this observation at once came to my mind, but perceiving that to pursue the conversation on this line would be likely to carry us into the region of controversy, I did not continue it.

On other difficulties being mentioned, one of my Visitors--I forget which--made the obvious remark that it was all but impossible to conceive that there could be any insuperable difficulties in the way of the Church extending her recognition to the Salvation Army, when she was able to comprehend the High Church, with its extravagant ritual on the one hand, and the Broad Church, with its semi-scepticism on the other.

Much more passed--in which the spirit manifested by my Visitors was, I thought, very commendable--which I cannot call up at the moment, and I am sorry to be unable to lay my hand upon the record of the conversation which I must have made at the time; but I do recollect very well the conclusion to which I was compelled to arrive, and which I remember stating in something like the following words, at the close of the interview: That while appreciating the sympathy of my friends, for which I was deeply grateful, and their worthy wishes to avoid the establishment of another separate Religious Organization, with which I heartily concurred, I was afraid the Union we had been discussing was simply impossible at the present date. In the earlier history of the Army it was a thing that might have been. A few years back, I strove hard and long to connect the Army with some existing Organization, but utterly failed. Now it seemed that the Providence of God, the convictions and feelings of our people (which I was bound to regard), and the whole circumstances of the case, seemed to indicate that the spirit of union--which was the next best thing to actual Union itself--would be most effectually attained by the two Bodies continuing to live and work apart, their labours and influences flowing on side by side, like two distinct streams, with bridges connecting each at frequent intervals (my figure here became a little mixed, I fear, but the meaning was clear), over which the leading spirits of both Organizations might often pass and repass with mutual sympathy, prayer, and co-operation.

On an occasion of some interest, I had the pleasure ol meeting the Archbishop again. To that interview I will not refer now. On earth I shall meet him no more. The time, however, may not be very far distant when the Union he desired may be consummated in another world.

Dr. Benson impressed me as being before all else a Churchman. He believed in his own concern. Here, at least, we were on equal terms. I believed then, and more than ever I believe to-day, in mine.

It may be said, we think, that the Church of England missed an almost priceless opportunity when she let those negotiations fall to the ground. For, impossible as those negotiations were from the point of view of absorption or amalgamation, impossible too, as they were, from the point of view of an immediate alliance, they did undoubtedly present to the Church an opportunity for establishing a cordial understanding with the Salvation Army which might have developed with the evolution of time into a real alliance. Unhappily, the Church stood upon doctrinal and ceremonial ground, and praising here, admiring there, but criticizing as a whole, made no movement of opening her arms to embrace and bless these simple apostles of the poor. Much good might have flowed from one annual Salvation Army Service in St. Paul's Cathedral, from constant consultation with William Booth in matters of evangelical concern, and from frank and generous recognition of the Salvation Army as an essential branch of the Christian Brotherhood, even if it were necessary to proclaim the fundamental difference in doctrine. But the Army at that time was giving grave offence, judicious observers thought that it would not endure, and the Church herself was now sending out a rival army under ecclesiastical direction to cover the same field. In these circumstances, and as the General did not prosecute the negotiations, the Church allowed the matter to drop, and one more division was made in the suffering and dismembered body of Christendom.

That individual clergymen longed for some such recognition may be gathered from the following letter, which may be taken as an example of many others, to William Booth, written in 1885 by the Rev. D. B. Hankin, Vicar of St. Jude's, Mildmay Grove:

. . . I was at the Prince's Hall Meeting on Tuesday morning and could only bow my head and weep for very shame--tho' at the same time I rejoiced at the glorious wave of spiritual power now issuing from the S.A., which has carried to the front a subject which has so persistently been kept in the background until now.

. . . But oh! I do so wish that you were in communion with the Church of England!!! Your liberty of action perfectly free and untrammelled--but your people on special occasions meeting in their own Churches!

 

Canon Liddon, who disliked the excesses of the Army as much as any man, nevertheless lamented the failure of these negotiations. But the General had his growing Army to direct, and the Church had her thousand activities to pursue; the General had his autocracy to guard, and the Church had her dignity to preserve. Negotiations, hopeless for any immediate benefit, but full of hope for future blessing, slid out of hands too busy for the patient work of diplomacy, and William Booth, protesting that he was no sectarian, continued to organize on his own lines (and under his uncompromising government) the most world-wide of all evangelistic agencies.

In 1886 he wrote to his wife from Bristol: "Their great point with outsiders is the old one which every one knows, that I am Pope. But that will wear out, because the continued success makes people think and feel that for me it answers and cannot be much condemned."

He was not a diplomatist of the first order, and if he had been a diplomatist of any order at all it is perhaps doubtful whether he would have found men in almost every nation under heaven ready to give their lives for the message he commanded them to preach.

 

CHAPTER IV

THE PURITY CRUSADE

I885

 

ALTHOUGH Mrs. Booth had been greatly impressed in 1865, as the reader will remember, by the work of the Midnight Mission, she did not take any steps to make the rescue of fallen women a particular labour of the Salvation Army. Nor was there much enthusiasm on the part of William Booth when his son Bramwell, in 1884, almost forced the Salvation Army to take up this difficult work.

"For many weeks," says Mr. Bramwell Booth, describing his first inquiries into what we now call the White Slave Traffic," I was like one living in a dream of hell. The cries of outraged children and the smothered sobs of those imprisoned in living tombs, were continually in my ears. I could not sleep, I could not take my food. At times I could not pray."

He had seen women on the streets as he came from the East End late at night; touched by their forlorn position he had spoken to them; in cases where there was an expression of genuine disgust for the life he had effected rescues; but it was not until after a dramatic visit to his office from a poor girl who had escaped out of a brothel (she actually climbed down a rain-pipe from the room in which she was imprisoned) that he came to study the trade in women, the trade which swindles and tricks young girls into a life of debauchery, the trade which destroys the souls and bodies of quite young children. This trade, which few people in those days believed to exist, was, and still is, a highly organized business, with its ramifications in every country, and its curse over every nation. To Bramwell Booth the discoveries he made were so appalling that he felt he could consecrate his life "to stop these abominations."

Catherine Booth was sympathetic to his proposal. William Booth was also sympathetic, but sceptical on the question of procedure. We must remember that thirty years ago people spoke with extreme disgust of the fallen woman. No religious society cared to associate itself with a definite work of rescue. Religious people felt, and many still feel, an aversion almost like nausea at any mention of this subject. The unfortunate is most unfortunate in the universal disgust she inspires. Men of the world invent brutal and disdainful terms for her, religious people avert their faces as they pass her in the street, and shudder even to think of her. A fallen woman seems to carry with her into the pit of perdition all the horror of humanity for the desecration of the most sacred of its ideals.

It is owing, I think, largely to the quite heroic work of Mrs. Bramwell Booth that this attitude of the public has been modified. If this book were the life of Brainwell Booth, or a history of the Salvation Army, we should tell at length the moving and dramatic story of that work; but as our concern is the narrative of William Booth's history, we can but glance at the great Purity Campaign of 1884-85, and can tell only in brief the story of the famous prosecution which threatened at one time to end the crusade and to cripple the Salvation Army in a very serious manner.

Mr. Bramwell Booth had married, in 1882, Miss Florence Soper, the daughter of a physician practising in Wales. This lady had come under the influence of Catherine Booth, had joined the Army, and had been through some of the most stormful scenes in Paris which accompanied the Army's first efforts to establish itself on French soil. She was young, delicate, refined; her remarkable powers of grasp and administration had not been developed at this time; she was typical of the well-educated, rather shrinking and self-conscious girl of the English professional classes--perhaps the last person in the world to whom any one would have thought of committing so hazardous and dreadful a business as this rescuing of fallen women. But she was moved by her husband's appeal, and, in spite of some doubt on William Booth's part, was appointed to take charge of the Salvation Army's first Rescue Home.

The work was now launched--the work of rescuing repentant Magdalens and educating them in habits of industry and self-respect. But Bramwell Booth was not content. He had pity--because he suspected the devilries of the trade --for the unrepentant and the hardened woman who mocked at religion, who cursed God, and who went to her death drunken, scornful, and terribly diseased. It did not satisfy him to rescue a hundred weeping Magdalens; he set himself to attack the trade which annually ruins both in body and in soul thousands of quite innocent girls and children.

He chose for the man to help him in this work Mr. W. T. Stead, of The Pall Mall Gazette--perhaps the most enthusiastic journalist of his time. Matthew Arnold wrote to John Morley, in 1884, saying, "Under your friend Stead, the P.M.G., whatever may be its merits, is fast ceasing to be literature." This was a just censure, but Mr. Stead would have read it unmoved. He was first and last a journalist, a man whose imagination never strayed from the columns of the passing hour to the bookshelves of posterity. He had no literary ambitions for The Pall Mall Gazette; he sought rather to give it a spirit which would permeate the national conscience. He was a Puritan who loved his fellow-men. In those days he was narrower than he came to be, and yet more sensible. He boasted that he had never entered a theatre, but he had not fallen a victim to the most absurd delusions of spiritualism. His manner was eager, pleasant, and not without a touch of worldly humour. He made friends with men who shared none of his ideals. He sought rather to encourage those whom he met to go a step farther on their own road than to cross over and march at his side. He was fanatical, I think, in the depths of his soul, but a diplomatist on the surface. He believed passionately in conversion and prayer, but he kept this conviction for those who were already persuaded. He never intruded his religion, and he sometimes cloaked it. Perhaps it may be said, considering his work for the Royal Navy, that no journalist of his generation rendered greater services to the British Empire.

 

William Booth, in my opinion, was never greatly attracted by Mr. Stead. He was more or less suspicious about this thrusting, eager, and headlong journalist, who did much to help the Salvation Army and who was a brave champion from early days of its innovating General. William Booth used Mr. Stead, and was grateful for his assistance, but he never greatly warmed to him, never wholly trusted his judgment, and was sometimes disposed to regard him as one who shilly-shallied with the great decision of Christian life. Mr. Stead was perhaps aware of thls, for in The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon he speaks of the help he received from the Salvation Army--"from the Chief of the Staff"--that is, Bramwell Booth--"down to the humblest private." There is no mention of the General.

On the other hand, Bramwell Booth--at that time young and ardent--not only admired Mr. Stead as a journalist, but felt for him a generous affection. He thought first of all of Mr. Stead when the idea of publicly exposing the traffic in women occurred to his mind, and he never once questioned the wisdom of this inspiration.

Mr. Stead listened incredulously to the evidence presented to him. When he was persuaded of its truth he struck with his fist the table in Bramwell Booth's room and vowed himself to destroy this most damnable work of the Devil. A few weeks after that conversation the country was in a blaze. In the columns of The Pall Mall Gazette Stead exposed the hell of child-harlotry with a force and energy never before known in journalism. The nation was staggered. For weeks scarcely any other subject was discussed. These articles, full of heart-breaking narrations and disclosures which took away the breath of respectability, roused the whole country, but divided it into two very unequal camps. On one side were the few selfless people, like Mrs. Josephine Butler, who passionately longed to save women from the degradation of vice; on the other, a multitude who lived vicious lives, and a still greater multitude, composed of the religious and indifferent, who wanted society to exist without disturbance. But with Stead in the field, and Bramwell Booth using the organization of the Salvation Army to create a public opinion on this subject, apathy was broken, and the conscience of the world was profoundly stirred.

A monster petition, organized by the Salvation Army in seventeen days, and bearing no fewer than 393,000 signatures, was presented to the House of Commons on July 30, 1885, praying that the age of consent should be raised to sixteen. The General, always ready to do something, announced a scheme for Rescue Homes, costing £20,000. Meetings were held up and down the country. The Salvation Army, basing itself upon the revelations of Stead, sought to lead the nation in a campaign against flagrant iniquity.

Stead, foreseeing that the disclosures of The Pall Mall Gazette would be regarded as merely sensational journalism, either grossly exaggerated or entirely untrue, conceived the idea of himself buying a young girl, ostensibly for the purposes of seduction. It was his business to prove that a young girl could be bought from her parents for a few pounds--a possibility which many absolutely refused to believe. He went to Bramwell Booth for assistance. After considerable thought a plan was arranged. A woman who had once been a procuress, and who was then living under the care of the Salvation Army and later with Mrs. Josephine Butler, was pressed into service; a lady in France connected with the Army was linked up with the mechanism of this strategy; and Bramwell Booth stood ready to do his part.

The girl, Eliza Armstrong, an illegitimate, was purchased by the ex-procuress, Rebecca Jarrett. She was taken to a brothel, she was drugged, and Stead entered the room. She was then taken to a railway-station and sent under excellent protection to Madame Combe in France. Thus Stead's contention was proved, and a child who might have been ruined was saved to society.

Mrs. Josephine Butler gives us a moving account of Stead's condition of mind during the period of these disclosures.

 

Mr. Stead is publicly known only as a brave and enterprising reformer. But to my mind the memory is ever present of a dark night in which I entered his office, after a day of hand-to-hand wrestling with the powers of Hell. We stumbled up the narrow dark stairs; the lights were out, not a soul was there, it was midnight. I scarcely recognized the haggard face before me as that of Mr. Stead. He threw himself across his desk with a cry like that of a bereaved or outraged mother, rather than that of an indignant man, and sobbed out the words, "Oh, Mrs. Butler, let me weep, let me weep, or my heart will break." He then told me in broken sentences of the little tender girls he had seen that day sold in the fashionable West-end brothels, whom he (father-like) had taken on his knee, and to whom he had spoken of his own little girls. Well might he cry, "Oh, let me weep!"

 

But in his eagerness to prove his contention, in order to convert public opinion to his view, Stead had broken the criminal law. The purchase of Eliza Armstrong was a crime. That is to say, the reformer in his zeal for truth had technically broken the law of abduction. To the astonishment of a great many people a Government prosecution was set on foot and, with Stead and Rebecca Jarrett, Bramwell Booth was placed in the dock.

It is interesting to find that while Catherine Booth was immediately filled with an angry indignation and was ready to fight for her son's honour to the very last, William Booth--thinking of the Salvation Army--was chiefly concerned because the action of Stead, in dragging Bramwell Booth into this business of a prosecution, had dragged the Salvation Army into a questionable position.

On the eve of the trial he convened an "All Night of Prayer" at Clapton.

"When he spoke," says one present at this gathering, "it was evident that he was profoundly moved by the fact that his son was being put on his trial; and during the course of a long and moving speech he referred to the chief incidents in the Armstrong case and vindicated the Christ-like part 'his son Bramwell'--it was in these terms he referred to him again and again--had taken in the interests of womanhood. Then he referred to the forthcoming trial, which he regarded as a supreme attempt of the Arch Enemy of Souls, and the earthly enemies of the Army, to destroy our work and our fair name. Then with his whole frame quivering with holy passion he said--as well as I can remember, 'If they imprison my son Bramwell, I will go round this country and stir up the people from one end to another.' (I am not sure he did not say, 'I will move Heaven and Hell.') , Then he added, and the phrase I have never forgotten, 'But--if we win, we win, and if we lose, we win!' There was the most wonderful outburst of enthusiasm and cheering I ever witnessed in any Army Meeting when he uttered these, the last words of his fiery peroration."

The case itself, the whole question of white slavery, did not so much concern him as the honour of the Army, which he felt might be impugned by this incident in its career. The enemies of Stead were not so much allies of the prostitute as the foes of the Army--that is to say, foes of God and allies of Satan.

His letters at this period are of great value. They demonstrate quite clearly that however much he longed, and long he certainly did, to sweep away vice, the Purity Crusade of the 'eighties owed little to his initiative. They also prove, I think, that he foresaw nothing of the glory which has since come to the Army for its heroic lead in this matter--a narrative which should one day be told in full; and they help one to realize how exclusively and intensely his life was centred upon the work of spiritual religion. He was a man, as we shall see presently, who wanted to help the fallen woman, but not in the sensational manner which Stead felt was essential to a national awakening. It was a saying with him at this time that Stead must not carry the Army into sensationalism.

[The Government was compelled by the agitation to pass the Criminal Law Amendment Act. It was greatly strengthened by W. T. Stead's and Bramwell Booth's influence. It concerned boys as well as girls, but its chief provision was the raising of the "age of consent." It provided for the first time in English law for accused persons to give evidence in their own behalf, and Stead and Bramwell Booth were actually the first prisoners in England to go into the witness-box and speak on oath for themselves.]

That the Government should move against her son and against Mr. Stead, infuriated the heart of Catherine Booth. The wicked and the adulterous hated Stead for his disclosures, the worldly-minded and the hypocrites loathed the Salvation Army and longed for its injury; these might have joined forces and sought to ruin the apostles of purity without arousing the wrath and indignation of Catherine Booth. But that the Government of Christian England should take up the first stone, that the Ministers of Queen victoria should seek to shut the mouth of Stead and to cover the Salvation Army with infamy, this was more than that very logical good woman could suffer.

The following bold and significant passage in a Salvation Army Petition to the Queen shows that Mrs. Booth had excellent ground for her indignation:

 

Your Memorialists desire to call the attention of your Most Gracious Majesty to the fact that a noted procuress, a Mrs. Jeffries, resides in Church Street, Chelsea. This slave-dealer has kept twelve immoral houses, which houses, the evidence showed, were mainly frequented by noblemen and gentlemen in the upper classes. In May, 1885, this notorious woman was brought to trial; her complicity with the home and foreign traffic in girls and women was well known; twenty witnesses were ready to give their testimony, and yet because of her wealth and position the trial became a travesty of justice. Accommodated with a seat in Court, covered with sealskin robes, her brougham waiting outside to convey her to her sumptuously furnished villa, she was instructed to plead guilty, and fined £200. Your Memorialists believe that a more grave miscarriage of justice never took place. For more than twenty years this buyer, seller, and exporter of English girls and women has carried on her criminal traffic.

 

One can better understand the fiery indignation of Mrs. Booth than the calm and watchful annoyance of the General. But in reading the following letters the reader will bear in mind that William Booth had gone unwillingly into the side-issue of a Purity Crusade, that he had the Salvation Army to think about, that the Salvation Army was more to him than wife or child, that he never suffered the most precious of his personal affections to come between him and the interests of this Army, and that he was sharply conscious of enemies on every side watching for an opportunity to attack and destroy his Army.

It should be clearly borne in mind that he was not without sympathy for the harlot. He was not in the least self-righteous; he had no element of that detestation for the public woman which characterizes the attitude of so many very pure people to this whole question; but he did not feel that it was the business of the Salvation Army to lay an exceptional emphasis on this matter; he did not want the Army to be mixed up with a public scare; he held that the warning of the Salvation Army to repent must be addressed indiscriminately to the whole world.

 

To his Wife.

ROOKWOOD ROAD, STAMFORD HILL, LONDON, N.,

Sept. 13, '85.

MY DEAREST LOVE.--We have had an anxious day, altho' I should not be anxious myself, but that it is Bramwell who I fear may worry about things. Still I believe that if they are committed to-morrow, which we all expect, he will feel much better. Rebecca [Jarrett] is all right they say, and has consented to some evidence coming out which blacks her.

The cross-examination on Saturday showed up Mrs. Broughton as a very low bad woman. But Ranger and all think they are certain to commit whether the matter ever comes to a real trial or not, very doubtful in the estimation of Russell and others. They think that the Government has felt so bespattered with these Revelations that they have felt compelled to discredit them before the world, consequently they have fallen upon this case. Perhaps they may never push the thing to the extremity of a trial; if they do, nothing very much can possibly come of a conviction if any Jury can be gof together that will say "Guilty."

My opinion is that any way the Army cannot suffer very much. We shall have after the trial, whichever way it may go, a splendid text for an appeal to the Country. If they convict, we can show up the injustice of the thing--if they acquit, we can show the infamy and groundlessness of the prosecution.

If B. goes to prison they will make a martyr of him, and this alone will make him a heap of new friends and bind the Army and him more closely together and make thousands burn to go to prison too.

Only one thing can hurt us, our own fears and worries; in other words, our OWN UNBELIEF.

Have faith in God, Lucy has written across her breast. Oh let us have it written across our hearts, and act it out. Now. my darling, I do hope God will guide you to-morrow night. I hardly see how you can be wrong in a few words bearing upon what has led up to the Revelations, and on the wisdom of the Government prosecuting those who for the national weal made them. You should not say anything that links Bramwell with STEAD in ANYTHING--any day, some more unwise things may come out yet.

Bramwell believed this girl had been parted with by her parents in such a manner as convinced him that they had no concern to have her back under their care, and as such made Stead her natural guardian; he took her and believed he was doing her, the child, and God service in trying to keep her from going back to misery and perdition.

You must be careful--there's some sort of a threat to bring an action for libel and damages against all concerned for asserting that Mrs. Armstrong sold her child. Now there are a lot of scoundrels who would find money for anything to get at our throats, so we must be careful. I hate this litigation. The time it consumes is awful. I can't make out why it should be so. But it goes to the heart direct.

We must at once get up some sort of Counter-demonstration in the shape of a big influential defence Committee. You will see the card Railton has got out--I enclose a rough proof---I don't see much in it--he thinks it will attract attention and associate us with the prayers every time people read them at Church. It can't do any harm. We shall send them to the Queen, Cabinet Ministers, Bishops, etc., etc. Our People will buy them--this is a rough proof. An effort is to be made to get some down to Bradford.

My darling. If I could always be assured of your welfare and that you don't worry or care, I should be comparatively reckless about the other things. Let us cast our care on Him who cares for us--all our care--our care for those who are dearest and nearest and weakest in our circle.

All seem well here. Florrie [Mrs. Bramwell Booth] has done well to-day. I do think she helps Bramwell much. I am sure she will prove a great power for good and a helper of our joy and usefulness beyond what some have feared.

My heart's love to Herbert. His telegram cheered the Chief. Could you get a simple vote of sympathy with the Chief of Staff [Bramwell Booth] and Stead in this prosecution on Monday night and wire it in time for War Cry on Tuesday morning? Indeed, there must be a Press telegram if you have a good go.

Keep within the law, and we will have counsel's advice as to how far we can go when the Committal has taken place. Good-night. Jesus Christ is a Brother born for adversity. We suffer in the Name for His sake and through His Spirit in us. Let us bear it like the Saints; be strong; "we'll be Heroes." Now is the time. God bless and keep my beloved.--Your affectionate husband, W.B.

 

P.S.--Since writing the above I have had a talk with Railton about expressions of sympathy with the Chief in meetings, and about explanations of the matter altogether; and he argues with a good deal of force that anything like votes of sympathy of Soldiers or anybody else with Superior Officers is unwise and prejudicial to discipline. He thinks that explanations are beneath us; but would advocate the pushing forward of our Rescue Work, the showing up of what we are doing in this direction, bringing out the case, and then remarking that this is the sort of thing for which they are attacking our Chief of the Staff.

There is something in all this. Anyway it does not seem dignified for an Army meeting to sympathize with the Army. The proper thing to do is to get up a great Defence Committee outside of us and let them speak.

I am sure the best answer we can make to the whole affair is to go on with our own work, keep our heads up, and keep on with the song of victory.

The lasses went past here this morning from Tottenham, singing "Victory." They had had a quiet meeting, sold 200 War Crys, and had a collection of 15s. in the open air.

To be explaining yourself until the trial is over Railton thinks is humiliating.

Consider the matter carefully, and God give you wisdom.

W.B.

 

We have always had safety and success in going on with our own work. If you and the friends make a spiritual impression on Bradford it will do more to answer the slanderous lies than any explanation that can be given at this stage of the affair.

The Holy Ghost is our Power and our Defence.

 

ROOKWOOD, STAMFORD HILL, N.,

Nov. 9, '85.

MY DEAREST LOVE--I have yours proposing Meeting at Exeter Hall, but I must say that I am heartily sick of the whole affair. The enclosed is Stead's account of things, which appears in to-night's Pall Mall Gazette. It is such a throwing up of the sponge and leaving us all in the lurch that I cannot go any further on in the agitation. To soap anybody down in that fashion is to me disgusting. I understand all the way through that the Attorney-General was hard upon our people, and on Sat. all said that the Judge was quite a partisan. And here is Stead, abandons poor Rebecca, and said that the verdict is just, etc., etc., etc., according to the evidence, etc.

Let us go back to our own work. I could say much more, but I never feel sure that my letters will reach you or not, or be seen by others after I have sent them. If I could only be assured of this I should write much more freely.

However, I am moidered* up with a thousand things, and matters have been so neglected of late that I must go back to my own work and look after the Army. [*A term in general use throughout the north and midlands, also in other places. The English Dialect Dictionary gives many examples. "A wur that moithered a didn' know wheer a was to a wik." As a verb it means to confuse, perplex, bewilder.]

We shall see what is done to-morrow. Stead won't be put in prison, in my opinion, but will drop back into his old role of journalist, and leave us smeared with the tar of this affair to fight it out with blackguards and brothel-keepers all over the world.

I am sure the S.A. is the thing, and our lines are all right. We shall see tremendous things. We are deciding for our International Council in June next, and shall have Soldiers from all parts of the world and 2,000 Officers. This will wipe out the very memory of Eliza Armstrong.

Bramwell is not quite out of the wood yet. We will wire you to-morrow how things go.

 

ROOKWOOD ROAD, Nov. 9, I885.

MY DEAREST LOVE--I have yours this morning. I like the telegram to Her Majesty. They will have wired you the Queen's reply, which I think is very good. Of course the torpid people will say you should have waited until the trial was concluded. Altho' I have not heard any say so yet. I don't think so! You have let them see beforehand what they have to expect. It will no doubt have a salutary effect. I don't believe they intend to send Stead to prison. We shall see! Surely the next trial will not last long. Somebody said they thought it would be over in two or three hours. You will have seen something of the papers this morning, I suppose. The Daily News is bitterness itself, only a sentence or two against Bramwell; but of course we are implicated in its sweeping, scathing sarcasm. The Standard I hear is bad, and I fully expect they will all be alike. I have not a hope from any newspaper in the land except the religious ones, and only partially from them. However, this is just what we expected, and although I feel it at the moment, our turn will come by-and-by.

We are not doing any meetings until after the trial. God must help us, and He will!

It is no use anticipating evils. I shall not allow myself to do so. The matter will for the season drop out of sight in consequence of the election strife, and it is quite possible the verdict may be reversed on appeal, the thing will work round .... Do be restful and get some strength. We have a lot of fighting yet before we go to rest, I hope.

 

101 QUEEN VICTORIA STREET,

Nov. 10, 1885.

MY DARLING,--- . . . You will have got our wire with reference to the trial this morning. So far as we are concerned now the trial is at an end. I understand that the Judge remarked this morning that Mr. Bramwell Booth was justified in believing that Mrs. Armstrong sold her child. Why didn't he say so on Saturday? Perhaps he has had some new light.

The trial of Stead and Jarrett and she or their's for the indecent assault is now going on. Bramwell is in court---of course, wanting to be as near Stead as he can when the sentence is pronounced. But I don't believe that Stead will go to prison; and I don't think that very much will be done to Rebecca. If there is, I think we can get a remission of the sentence. We will try, but beyond that I don't see any way clear of fighting on those lines; I am sure our work has materially suffered by our attention being taken from it to give the other; we may have been paid back to a certain extent, and in the long run much good may be done, but I thoroughly believe in "Salvation" being a panacea for the world's sins and sorrows, and that while there are other medicines that look in the same direction, the largest amount of good can be accomplished, with the least expenditure of time and money, by simply getting the people's souls saved and keeping them saved.

I had a long talk with Mr. Railton's brother last night, and so far as I can see from what he says, and my own observation, the hope of the nations is really in the S.A. Let us spend our strength upon it.

I hope you won't strongly object to it, but I propose that we are content with Thanksgiving Meetings throughout the country on Monday next .... I have been writing a column for the Cry this morning, and have made a very decent flourish. Of course, with what the Judge said this morning, we come out of the thing with flying colours. And if (as I fully expect) some further evidence will be got in vindication of Rebecca the tables will be turned altogether yet.

Mrs. Butler is fast at Winchester with bronchitis, working on a pamphlet on Rebecca Jarrett. When the thing is quite over, the probability is that Stead will kick out again, and renew the fight. Anyhow, we can lend a hand, along with our other duties, to the good cause .... You rest--there's a darling. They will take care of Stead--of course it will make him.

Just got the sentences we have wired you:

 

Stead ........3 months

Jarrett .....6 months (not hard labour)

Jacques......1 month

Mourey.......6 months' hard labour

 

We must do something now. I am woke up again and in for fighting. Still I am sure it is not our business.

 

ROOKWOOD ROAD,

Nov. 11, '85.

MY DEAREST LOVE--I have your letter and Herbert has yours also. I am sorry the matter should so grieve you, although I expected you would be very much disappointed with Stead's article, as I was myself; but we can't expect people to go beyond themselves, although we are always doing it! After mature deliberation on the subject, I have come back to my impression formed before I heard the sentence, that we ought not to involve the Army in any great struggle on the subject.

To begin with, Stead has innumerable friends who worship him, and who will agitate the country, and do so far better without us mixed up in it, than with us. Indeed, it is a great relief to them, I have no doubt, for us to be out of it, so that they can ask for a favour to Stead, or justice, if you like to call it, without having to ask for us at the same time. We shall therefore embarrass them by mixing ourselves up with it, so that on his account it will be better for us to remain separate.

Again, there are things in the thing that are very discreditable to us, that is in the way the thing was done. The jury have absolved us from blame, and all the Judge could rake up to say was, "that we ought to have given up the child," which had we known what he knows now we would have done. If we could help Stead we ought to do so, and we will help him by petitioning or holding meetings on our own lines.

Then as to Jarrett, the sentence is not a heavy one; she has no hard labour, her disease will get her all manner of attention; it is possible that she will be treated as a first-class misdemeanant, and on the whole it may really be better for her to be in than out.

Then again, she has behaved badly in some respects, perhaps we could not expect anything else from her; still when we remember what she was, and the notice that has been taken of her, she was under very great obligation to us. It may do her soul good; she says it will, and that she will come out and spend the rest of her days working for God ....

I know what can be said with regard to a great deal of this, and will talk it over with you. You say there is nothing to be done. Well, the independent party will have a meeting in Exeter Hall and try and get a Bishop in the chair; but they won't want us there, and we can have our meetings, send up our petitions; and with regard to Jarrett, I think we may use some private influence. A letter from you to the Home Secy., for instance, might have weight; but I am hardly inclined to our troubling the Queen on the matter. I shall see you to-morrow.

 

The following letters from Mr. W. T. Stead, addressed from prison to his friend Bramwell Booth, reveal in a rather remarkable way the influence of religion upon his mind, and in particular the influence of the Salvation Army. William Booth never understood, perhaps, the ambition of Stead to work for the salvation of the State. He did not believe in saving humanity by machinery or in the lump; he was unfalteringly convinced that salvation is a single and individual transaction:

HOLLOWAY,

Nov. I9, '85.

 

DEAR BRAMWELL--You are down in the dumps. Don't be down in the dumps. I tell you my imprisonment is a great blessing and will be a greater. It would be a thousand pities to get me out. Don't be savage or indignant or contemptuous or anything, but joyful and grateful and willing to do God's will.

Poor 'Becca, I would offer to change places with her, but it would be no use and the people would think that the proposal was merely made for theatricality, so I must just hope and pray that God may be with her where she is.

It is no use you troubling to come up to Holloway. The rule is in cast-iron. Waugh, Mrs. Fawcett, George Russel, and Bunting have all been peremptorily refused. I see no one, only Wife, Talbot, and Stout.

I am very sorry to see that the Glasgow bailies have sent the Freethinker seller to gaol for six days for your caricature. It will do harm, and I wish I could get him out.--I am, yours truly,

W. T. STEAD,

 

HOLLOWAY PRISON,

Dec. 13, '85.

DEAR BRAMWELL--I more and more come to the conclusion that I am a very spoiled child of Divine Goodness; I have far more than my share. I am happier in prison than ever I have been out of it, and you poor people who are free are plagued with iil health and all kinds of afflictions.

I am in a little Heaven 15 feet square, wonderfully uplifted and jubilant. A wonder with all who come to see me for my exceeding high spirits and almost riotous joyfulness.

I am working like a slave, in first-rate health and full of themes and plans and hopes and faiths.

I wish you could come and see me for half an hour. It would do you good, only it might make you envious and sad that you were not in gaol.

I have never in all my life felt such a strong presentiment and conscious foreknowledge of coming power and influence all over the world. How it is to come to pass I don't know. But it is coming soon. Then I shall be glad to get to gaol again to be saved from a mob that will try to kill me, and then after a further period the mob will clutch me before I can get to such a safe shelter as this; my work being done, the mob will kill me and my memory and death will raise up far more workers than my life has done, so the good work will go on.

All this is very present to me. But altho' I am as ever strongly drawn to the Army and more than ever penetrated by the thought that I am not fit to tie the shoe-laces of the humblest of your cadets, I am not going to join the Army. My work lies otherwhere. A great idea and luminous has dawned upon me in the solitude here that my work, that is to say the work God wants me for, is to raise up a band of men and women who will labour to save England and collective humanity and the kingdom of this world with--say a tenth part of the same zeal and devotion that you Army people show in saving individuals. We want a revival of civic virtue, of patriotic religion, of the Salvation of the State and its political and collective action. You look after the individual. It is right, it is the root of all. But I look after the composite and collective individuals. I want to organize a Salvation Army of a secular sort with a religious spirit in it, and if God wants it done and He thinks that I am the man for the job "I'm game," as the saying is.

I have just read The Salvation War for 1884 through at a sitting. I think you had better send me all your "Wars." My chapter on you and your work must necessarily bear largely on the Woman side of it.

Pray for me--not in generalibus--there are lots doing that, but that in writing about the Army in the third Chapter of the Episode about the new Crusade I may say just the right thing to help you in the right way--I am, yours in great peace and joy, W.T. STEAD.

 

P.S.--Report how Leoni is getting on. Is she saved yet? Is there anybody you know who could do anything for Norral's daughter--that policeman, you know, who seduced his daughter? Was going to drown herself, and Mrs. Butler had her. The man has bolted and the woman is hanging aimlessly on P.M.G., threatening to go to Lloyds and tell them how the P.M.G. has exposed and ruined her husband, Gibbons, etc. She is thirty-two and very helplessly useless.

 

CHAPTER V

FAMILY LIFE IN THE 'EIGHTIES

1880--1885

 

MRs. BOOTH'S health, which had always been indifferent, "grew slowly worse after 1884. She enjoyed long spells of energy and was often free from distress; occasionally, too, enthusiasm for a new remedy or a fresh treatment deceived her as to the real character of her sufferings. But she was carrying about with her the seeds of inevitable death.

There is something extremely pathetic in this long, obstinate, and courageous struggle of Catherine Booth. No woman that ever lived, I suppose, believed more implicitly in the unlimited power of prayer and in the perpetual interposition of Divine Providence; she relied far more on heavenly control than did William Booth, who held that God manifests His mercy in the discoveries of science, and that doctor and surgeon may be the means whereby the Almighty answers the supplications of humanity. To Catherine Booth, on the other hand, not only was there something suspicious about the medical profession, but she even regarded the anodynes of science as cowardly. God sent the sickness; God could remove the sickness if He would; at any rate, to bear the sickness without murmur was the clear and bounden duty of His faithful children.

But, unknown to everybody, Catherine Booth was smitten with cancer--cancer, as it afterwards proved, of a most malignant and painful order; all her prayers, and all the force and rigidity of her faith, though it helped her to an extraordinary degree in the bearing of her suffering, could neither arrest the deadly march of the disease nor abate one of its agonies.

It was inevitable that she should suffer, and sometimes for long periods, from a general inquietude of mind, an irritability of her nerves, the very suppression of which by her splendid will not only tried her strength but left her nerves inflamed to a degree of susceptibility sometimes almost as painful for others as it must always have been for herself. Noise became a torture to her. She struggled with all the force of her heroic nature and with all the energy of her unquestioning faith, to suppress her irritability; and she did suppress it so far that it never once became irascibility; but her condition as the years advanced became more and more nervous, more and more trying.

Her struggle with disease was like the struggle of religion in that period of profound transition. She clung to an inherited notion of Providence which all the sternest facts of life belied. With the refutation of this idea burning and consuming her body, she still proclaimed that faith. Science might reveal the laws of creative evolution, history might prove the rise of man--apparently self-aided--from savagery to civilization, theology itself might discover in the doctrine of the Incarnation a larger and, as some thought, a truer interpretation of God's character and purpose; but to Catherine Booth, in whose wounded body and heroic soul science, history, and theology could have found convincing evidence for their resistless logic, the old faith was still the true faith, the old notion of an interposing Providence was still the only true notion, and she was ready to die in the pangs of excruciating torture to vindicate the truth of this traditional aspect of religion.

Men have now passed from the dark Deism of that generation to a Theism which, whether it be truer or not, at least commends itself to science and philosophy; mankind is more anxious and eager to discover the truth of things than to establish the theses or defend the creeds of its ancestry; but those most conscious now of the freedom of truth, most happy in the enlargement of spiritual vision, most certain of the ultimate triumph of the Christ Spirit, will be the first to admire the tenacity and heroic stubbornness with which the soul of Catherine Booth clung to that phase of religion with which, to so many noble souls --men, for example, like Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Radstock--appeared to be bound up the health and salvation of mankind.

To admire such heroism at a distance is not difficult; but to live side by side with it, day after day, year after year, is difficult to the point of torture. And when we remember that she who suffered so terribly and he who comforted and consoled so diligently, were engaged in proclaiming to the indifferent masses of the world God's longing to help, God's passionate desire to heal and restore, we may faintly realize the soul of their tragedy, so full of pathos, so shot with irony.

The more one studies this period of William Booth's life the more is our pity stirred, and our desire heightened and intensified to get at the heart and soul of the man. He was on the crest of the wave moving with speed to an almost world-wide victory of his cause; at the same time he was the mark of every suspicion and every calumny that sectarian and atheistical enmity could suggest; and in his home, hidden from the eyes of the world, there was this tragedy of the beloved of his soul suffering, in spite of his prayers, in spite of her prayers, suffering as the years advanced the very sharpest of pain, and refusing to believe that God would fail her.

A lady who remembers the family life of the Booths at this time, when I asked for a description of the home, replied with a smile, "It was like a railway-station." And she proceeded to tell me that one of the distresses of Catherine Booth in her later years was the sacrifice of her once orderly home to the insistent demands of the Salvation Army.

"Mrs. Booth," she said to me, "was an admirable manager, and while the family lived in Gore Road she controlled the household and kept things in wonderful order. But with the move from Clapton Common to Rookwood, another house in Clapton, in 1885, the character of the house gradually changed. Everything had to give way to the Army. Family life, I may say, vanished at one gulp into the mouth of the Army. At any rate, the games and fun which had enlivened the children's evenings vanished for ever. Occasionally a game of croquet was played in the garden, and the General, who never looked on at anything, would field the balls 'to help things along.' But there was very little play of any kind. The General, you see, was organizing from morning to night--with an immense correspondence; Mrs. Booth was preaching or giving addresses up and down the country; Bramwell, Bailington, and Catherine and Emma were all engaged in public work; the younger children were helping the Army at home and longing to be full-fledged Salvationists. To visit the Booths in those days was to find yourself in a vortex. But I really cannot liken the house to anything better than a railway-station. There was a ceaseless coming and going. Something was always happening; something was always going to happen. On every side there was a rush, a bustle, and a commotion. People called, telegrams arrived, messengers came and went. Meals were served when they could be served, and were bolted rather than eaten. Some one was starting on a journey; some one was arriving; and some one else was arriving only to start off immediately. You cannot imagine the agitation. And poor Mrs. Booth, to whom order and discipline had ever been essentials in life, looked on in despair at all this and grieved because to direct such a storm was now beyond her powers. There was little attention to meals; no mending of stockings; no care of furniture. It was bad for the rest of the family, and poor Mrs. Booth knew it, and grieved over it."

William Booth gave a description of these new houses on Clapton Common to Mr. Henry Reed, in breaking the news that he had purchased one of them for £1,260, because his wife "longed after" it:

They look on to the Common, and the tram-cars passing in the distance, the children at play, the cows grazing, dogs swimming about the pond, all together make the look-out quite lively, and this suits my dear wife's brain and helps her through many an otherwise sad hour.

It was first in this house on Clapton Common, and then at Rookwood, that the Booths fashioned the Salvation Army during the most critical years of its existence, struggling at the same time to live their family life. The girls, we are told, were not "domesticated"; and their bedrooms are likened to offices--used only for the business of life. It is at this period, too, that one catches glimpses of William Booth which reveal some of the most interesting aspects of his character. Outside the pages of Charles Dickens no such household, I am inclined to think, ever existed, nor in any suburb of London, we may confidently guess, has a more remarkable family ever been gathered under one roof.

William Booth was the central figure and the master of the household. He inspired one, a visitor to the home tells me, with awe. But if at one moment he was blazing away at some unfortunate follower for stupidity or disobedience in his half-testy and half-humorous way, at the next he was comforting one of his younger children, or tending his delicate wife, or encouraging in the privacy of his study a penitent backslider. Every report of that period shows him as the life and soul of the house--sometimes the stormful life and the tempestuous soul, sometimes the most tender and gentle soul--but always the visible head and authentic master. His departures put everything into agitation; his arrival home was like the coming of a whirlwind. In his bedroom, where he kept a desk, he held important conferences; at the breakfast-table he examined his private correspondence; in his study he gave interviews to newspaper reporters, composed hymns, wrote sermons, drafted regulations and manifestoes, edited proofs, and encouraged his disciples. The Army was spreading across the world, but it was attacked on every side. And while this extraordinary man, suffering in body and mind, was directing the fortunes of his Army, answering its enemies, and composing its internal troubles, he was also comforting his stricken wife and fighting, very often amid great spiritual tempests, for the strength and consolation of a whole faith.

It is part of his tragedy that he was occasionally visited during these difficult years by that eclipse of faith which neither mystic nor saint (so far as I know) has ever escaped, plunging out of unearthly light into darkness black as death, losing the sense of spiritual reality, and feeling himself not only forsaken of God but inhabiting a universe where God is not. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? is a cry which has been wrung from the souls of honest saints down all the ages. To the mystic this terrible experience is so well known that it has lost its terrors, and he waits with folded hands and quiet breast for the return of the light; but to William Booth, the man of action, who knew little of the literature of mysticism, and who had rather taken the Kingdom of Heaven by storm than entered its gates with joy, this darkness of the soul was a symptom of something wrong within, and he agonized in his "might of the soul" and rent his heart with hands of violence.

His sufferings were hidden from the world. No evangelist was ever so impersonal. If he had stories to tell in public, they were the stories of other people. If he encouraged other men to bare their bosoms to the world, his own inmost bosom was shrouded by something more painful than reticence or restraint. Few men who have lived so public a life ever had more soul-sides. He showed to the man of the world one aspect of his character, another to the diplomatist who would negotiate with him, another to the journalist who came to him for an interview, another to the vast congregations he addressed all over the world. But while he was tolerant and generous and accommodating with the man of the world, and while he was a thunderer armed with the bolts of Jehovah when he addressed a congregation, only to his wife, and occasionally to some of his children, did he reveal that side of his soul which more than any other revealed the tide of his spiritual existence.

It was in his home that he burst into tears over the sufferings of children, the sins of the world, and the destitution of the poor. It was in his home that he dreamed his great dream of evangelizing the whole world, and wrestled on his knees in spiritual darkness for the vital sense of God's existence. It was here, too, that he spent long hours at the bedside of his stricken wife, praying with her, consoling her, consulting with her, and wooing her with a lover's tenderness. Here it was that the man most truly and frankly uttered himself; and it was here, far more than on public platforms or at the Headquarters in Queen Victoria Street, that he stamped upon his Army of Salvation the impress of his strong and stormful personality.

The family was now beyond the stage of childhood; the older ones were already in what they called the firing-line. No sign in the early 'eighties was visible of those ruptures which were later on to tear the heart-strings of this vehement but tender nature. He gave his orders, and they were obeyed; he punished, and no murmur of mutiny was heard. With children remarkable and headstrong, full of his own turbulence and his own genius, he was nevertheless the unquestioned head and the supreme autocrat.

Bramwell Booth, who married in 1882, lived close at hand and spent more hours of his life at the side of his father than in his own home. Commissioner Railton also lived close at hand and was in constant attendance, almost a member of the family. Ballington Booth, tall, handsome, and fiery, was now an evangelist rejoicing in the popularity which everywhere manifested itself at his appearance. Catherine Booth, doing hard work in France, was suffering persecution of an odious kind in Switzerland; Emma Booth, singularly able and attractive, was almost as passionate an evangelist as her mother; Herbert Booth was just beginning work and composing Salvation hymns and Salvation music; Eva and Lucy Booth, at present too young for the fray, divided their time between the dullness of a governess and the whirl of Salvationism.

There was now no game of "Fox and Geese" in that household; no romp after supper; no silkworms and rabbits in the garden. The bell was always ringing. Messengers were for ever coming and going. Work was incessant from morning to night. When the General was at home for the whole day, there was silence in the house during the early afternoon, for, whatever the business on hand might be, his nap after the mid-day dinner was a rule of existence. But for the rest of the day you heard the younger children murmuring their lessons in one room, the piano sounding from another, the stormful voice of the General booming in a third, and the scratching of Mrs. Booth's unresting pen in a fourth. Some one was always standing on the doorstep, food was always being prepared in the kitchen, portmanteaux were always being packed, and cabs were always arriving and departing.

There were still pets in this household--a dog, a canary, and cats. Eva Booth tells me that she never remembers her home without a cat. The dog at this time belonged to Eva, a child very dear to her father. It was a retriever, and went by the name of Nelson. One unlucky day an old charwoman--one of the odd characters whom Mrs. Booth was for ever discovering and introducing into her household--ventured to strike Eva Booth for pulling at some washed blankets which she had hung but a moment before to dry on a line in the back-garden. The dog, resenting this action, flew at the old creature and bit her in the arm. Orders were issued that Nelson should be shot.

The grief of Eva was wild and poignant. She tells me she felt that her heart was broken. In the midst of all his work the General found time to comfort the child. He sent for her early in the morning and had her to breakfast alone with himself; then she was told to put on her hat, and he carried her off with him to the City, telling her stories all the way about Welsh ponies. He kept her at his side throughout the day, and brought her back in his cab, still telling stories, late in the evening. And, in secret, he gave orders for Nelson to be converted into a rug, and when the rug arrived he gave it to the child as a surprise, telling her that she should keep it for her own. But at sight of Nelson in this pathetic condition Eva burst into tears. The General looked on for a moment with a lugubrious expression. Then he exclaimed, "Never mind, never mind!" and looking about him, called out, "Here, somebody; take it away!" and kicked the rug out of the child's offended sight.

The canary also belonged to Eva, and was so devoted to her that it would feed from her lips. This devotion was, however, of a jealous nature. When the General kissed his daughter the canary would fly at him, beating its wings against his face--a protest which always amused him. He loved all his children with a wonderful tenderness which was for ever breaking free from the obsession of his work to indulge itself in the simplicities of domestic affection.

In the midst of his work he would find time for brief confidences with his children. A phrase with him in those days was, "Gossip to me a bit," as if he refreshed himself after the strain of his labours in listening to the chatter of the young folks. He really did listen to their tales, and really did feel interest in their concernments.

When a dog belonging to the house had puppies, he took Eva on his knee, who was greatly excited by the proceeding, and said, "Now, tell me all about it." On one occasion a kitten was lost, and the General, hearing its mother crying for it at two o'clock in the morning, got up from his bed and searched till three o'clock, finding the lost kitten at last under a wash-tub.

He was a man who not only loved with his whole heart, but who loved to be loved. In his letters to this daughter in after years he was always, she tells me, "clamouring for love."

An old acquaintance from Nottingham who called to see William Booth in the City, in the 'eighties, full of admiration and hero-worship--for the Salvation Army had realized his own dream of the Church Militant--gives me a rather doleful, half-humorous, and yet an informing account of the visit. "The whole atmosphere of Headquarters was the atmosphere of business. I was conducted to a small glass-panelled waiting-room--a kind of rabbit-hutch. As I waited there, I could hear a man next door dictating a letter. His voice was hard, his delivery was quick and commercial. And when at last I saw the General it was to find him a flurried and busy man, with no time to waste, and no inclination to discuss spiritual matters. I had so much to say; and he so little time to spare. I went away entirely out of love with the Army, and it was not till many years later that I came to understand the exigencies of so enormous an organization."

William Booth, one can well imagine, with his great dream of evangelizing the world, had no time at all for curious discussions on doctrines, even of Entire Sanctification. Nevertheless we must agree that the mechanical stress of religious organization is disagreeable, and that even in so holy and splendid an ambition as seeking to gain the whole world for religion it is unhappily possible for a man to lose his own soul alive. William Booth was not blind to this danger. There were moments in his life, as he himself told me, when he looked away from the mechanism of evangelization and desired acquaintance with the large serenities of mysticism. He would remind others of the sanctity of spiritual things in the midst of his organization by interjected prayer, praying himself with two or three in his own office, and commanding all those engaged at Headquarters to cease work and pray for the blessing of God. But a man whose work was spreading all over the world as his was spreading at that time, and who knew as sharply and decisively as he knew the miseries and iniquities of mankind, would naturally postpone mysticism for a future day, for some expected, longed-for, and neverto-be-realized vacation. The immediate necessity was for ever under his eyes.

He had discovered that men rescued from sin could be made the most successful rescuers of sinful men. He had the services of such men, a constantly increasing host, entirely at his disposal. Between what he had already attained and a victory 'wide as the world itself there was now but one barrier--the lack of money. He became, and no one can wonder at it, more and more set upon the difficult business of raising the wind, and to raise the wind one must be himself something of a cyclone.

Every one who knew William Booth intimately could not fail to realize that he was by nature not only a very acute and able man of business--that is to say, a practical and hard-headed man of affairs--but something of a showman. He had a genius for making a noise in the world. He made a noise in the world, not only because it served a perfectly righteous purpose, but because it was his nature to attract attention and to arouse interest. He had no reticences in this matter. The world was "a perishing world"; to shout in its ear, to wave a danger-signal under its eyes, to strike it, back and front, to do any conceivable thing that would wake it from its sleep of death, this was not only a manifest duty, but a fine, valiant, and glorious way of spending life. However, one must be careful to observe that this showman of religion did not beat his big drum to get into his own cap the pennies of simple and foolish people. He threw himself into poverty with a real passion. He embraced hardship and persecution with an infinite zest. He demanded of all who would follow him suffering and self-sacrifice. There was nothing mean nor base in his soul; a man might shudder at his methods, yet could do nothing but pay reverence to his sincerity. Even when he permitted himself to use the wisdom of the serpent in his relations with certain rich men, his object was to enrich others, not himself. He refused gifts for himself again and again. He ordered his whole family into the firing-line, and gave those whom he most loved and cherished into the arms of poverty and suffering. He converted his home into "a railway-station," made his children the outcasts of religion, and used every scrap of his wife's vanishing strength for the furtherance of God's Kingdom. And himself a dyspeptic, between fifty and sixty years of age, no one was more full of energy than he, no one more impatient of excuses and laziness, no one more ready to go where the fight was hardest. He loved his life, and he believed with all his heart that God had given into his hands the key of salvation.

His sense of humour helped to keep him going. He was hotly indignant when persecutions were cruel and malicious, but for the ordinary attacks and criticisms of the world he was always ready with the defence of good-humoured laughter. "They only help to advertize us," he would say. Any man who wanted to bang his drum for him was welcome to do so. The great thing with him in those days was to keep the drum beating, to be for ever in the public eye, to be for ever a vital and striking part of national existence. His wisdom told him that a great spiritual offensive must never degenerate into or wear the appearance of a truce. One may say that he spent some hours of every day in watching for strings to which he might attach his kite of Salvation.

And this oldish man, fighting his great battle with the whole world, hiding the terrible tragedy of his heart from mankind, and going doggedly, stubbornly forward on his own way, would now and then look at himself in the glass and smile grimly at his tattered state, his woeful poverty. "I do hope the man will bring my trousers," he wrote to Bramwell, 1883, from a hydropathic establishment in Bushey Park. "I am disgraceful. Also post me a set of studs for Shirt front, and a collar-stud--a fair size. This is short and punishes my fingers. My coat is disgraceful, but I am not building a reputation on clothes--otherwise, what a fall there would be." Throughout his letters of this period we find constantly the phrases: "I am well, but very tired"; "I am awfully tired"; "this has been a heavy lift"; "I must have a little rest somehow. Where and how?"

In one of his letters (1884) he gives an amusing account of a provincial meeting:

For crowds and friendliness among the very poor and among the shopkeepers it was a long way ahead of the last one I had, which was certainly a superb affair. The roughs wanted to take the horses out when we started, to draw the carriage, which of course I refused to allow, thinking they might not draw us smoothly, and not quite certain where they would land us--chiefly because of the occasion it would give our pious friends for cavil! Mamma did the ride well until the last, when, after the march past, which was the worst managed thing of the lot, as the carriage was trotting fast away a lot of fellows would cling to the carriage; one fell and the wheels went over him, and Mamma saw him picked up and carried off. On enquiries at the Infirmary the doctors report he was too drunk to tell the extent of his injuries!

 

For the rest, his letters are almost entirely concerned with business. Wherever he went at this time telegrams, messengers, and communications from Headquarters pursued him. No one there, not even the loved and trusted Bramwell, ventured on any important departure without his orders. And when he returned from his triumphant tours it was to find a congestion of business awaiting him at Headquarters, visitors at home, attacks to be answered, an offended follower to be mollified, and the woman whom he loved beyond everything else on earth sinking more and more visibly into the shadows of death.

We might almost say that he fashioned the Salvation Army--for these were the years that witnessed the determination of its international character--at the open grave of his wife.

His one exhilaration in his home-life was music. In his bedroom conferences with Bramwell he talked nothing but business; at table, conversation usually turned on the lighter side of business, or else some discussion would take place about hydropathy or vegetarianism; but occasionally the autocrat of this household would call for music, and his children, nearly all of whom could play by ear, would run with excitement to the piano. Then an hour passed with joy and pleasure. This music was always evangelical music, and when a new tune had been discovered or composed by Herbert, the eagerness to hear it, the enthusiasm to learn it, and the freedom with which criticism was expressed gave vigour and vivacity to the party.

Music was still the chief pleasure of William Booth. He might not now run whistling upstairs or sing as he dressed, but when he was able to throw off the burden of his work, and his wife was able to bear the sound, he would call his children about him at the piano, and they would sing till it was time for bed.

 

CHAPTER VI

IN THE CHARACTER OF PILGRIM FAtHER

1886-1887

 

AT the age of fifty-seven William Booth made his first visit to foreign countries.

Quite simply and naturally, by the emigration to the United States of a Salvationist family, in the year 1879, the Army had planted itself on American soil. Letters from the man arrived at Headquarters in London describing the conditions of his new environment and pleading for support. After some persuasion William Booth had agreed to send an experienced Officer to report upon the situation, and the report being favourable he had pushed the fortunes of the Army in America with energy and affection.

When, in 1886, he paid his first visit to the United States he found "238 Corps in the Union, under the leadership of 569 Officers, mostly Americans." His letters home during this period are chiefly concerned with Army news--accounts of triumphal processions, large meetings, public receptions, and extraordinary conversions. But every now and then the General gives way to the Man, and we find him writing to his wife with the old passionate love, telling her how deeply he longs for and how sadly he misses her, or uttering to Bramwell some characteristic complaint about his circumstances or his wardrobe. The main note of these letters, however, is one of almost unbounded enthusiasm for the American continent. He writes to Bramwell from Columbus, Ohio:

Good-bye! I shall soon love this country. I am not sure that if there were to be a quarrel between your herdmen and my herdmen, as with Abraham and Lot, and you were to have the choice of countries and you chose the Old One--I am not sure--whether I should not very thankfully take this, but we must have them both, anyhow we must have this!

I am delighted with the country and with the work and the people.

The New York papers had a report in the day before I landed that Miss Charlesworth's fortune was to be squandered to pay the debts of the Army, etc., etc.

This I rectified, and garbled reports of the rectification have gone all over the Continent. It is astonishing what an interest is felt in us at every turn and at every comer of the farthest parts of this vast Continent.

 

What a magnificent Continent this Canada is. With territory capable of maintaining some, say, 500 millions of people, there are only about 5 millions in the whole land, and yet our poor people are starving at home. I intend to do something in the way of emigration yet worth naming.

. . . Here is a nation being made. The people are beautiful; so simple, so thorough, so intelligent, and so full of zeal. We have more uniform than in the Old Country, and everyway I am much encouraged.

. . . This has been a trying week, having to get into the way of things and to meet so much expectation.

. . . We must pay attention to this country. We shall get a lot of splendid Officers out of it. There is, I think, much more simplicity among the people than in the Old Country, and consequently more steady piety among the Officers.

 

Oh how I did tremble again yesterday on the point that haunts me day and night. "How to be equal to the opportunity?"

We must have some more Divisional Officers here. Push it on, Bramwell. Look them up. Let them get here before I leave the States. You are the General of the Old Country for the time being. Push it on, Railton. Four good common-sense young fellows should come away at once.

As Boston and New York come nearer, I must say I begin to have some few fears. I must nurse up my energies a little. My staff is unfortunately nowhere.

I was mortified no little to get the 30th October Cry to find nothing in it but a piece of twaddle about Quebec and two silly pictures. What a ridiculous appearance to the world of a really national tour to which thousands of all classes flock.

If it had not been too late, and could I possibly have done it, I would have taken the reporting into my own hands. And then I asked Railton to read and select. And--not being able to put a descriptive title under a "cut." Altogether it shows the value set upon this work on which I am lavishing every item of strength I possess.

Never was a big undertaking supported by such a staff. Willing enough--but childish--and the arrangements--well, the less said the better about a good deal of it.

However, nothing alters my impression of the reality of the work and the possible future of it.

 

He writes to Bramwell from Chicago:

My visit so far has been beyond my most sanguine expectations. It has really affected the religious mind of the City and much of other sorts of mind as well. I shall have had in the three days and a quarter nine meetings, eight of them public--they say 10,000 men turned away the first meeting.

Moody's people refused us their place. We had the Rink and Music Hall.

. . . Moody's people, some of them (Farwell among them) are very grieved! to put it mildly, at our going so near them. It is the same Avenue, a stone's throw off on the opposite side of the way. But we could not help it ....

It is proper! And this is a proper City for us. So intelligent and yet so devilish, and yet so appreciative of red-hot truth. I never gave them such red-hot things the same day in my life as Sunday.

Oh what a future there is for us in this country, and oh what a country it is! . . . The papers have been awfully down upon our meetings, but very respectful, as a rule, to me. One of them compares me favourably to Moody and others!

Give my love to R. and all. I have been dreadfully done up for a few days, but have rallied again. Ma will give you some of her letters to read. I trust you to care for her--you must forgive if you think I am unmindful of you. Do remember the whirl I am in. To-day I had Officers two hours and a half to plan the building of our Temple with architects. We only bought it at 12.30 yesterday, and we had stone ready but could not get foundation in till this morning. This afternoon I had to speak to a great crowd on the laying of it in the open air. To-night, Tuesday, I have been interviewing people; then big meeting; and at 10.30 same night go off for 500 miles to Kansas City. Meeting there to-morrow, and come out next morning 675 miles, again travelling till Friday to Drayton, and Columbus Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

Good-bye. I am well and in good spirits. . . . Oh for some Officers for this Country.

If these [undecipherable] have done this work what might not be done?

Staff! Staff! Staff! Staff! is wanted!!!"

 

His letters to Mrs. Booth express the same enthusiasm for the people of the country, and at the same time furnish us with some idea of his activity:

 

You need not have any anxiety respecting my health and strength. I watch carefully any indication and am as anxious to come back well and strong as you can be. I see my value to the work of God and your happiness just now and shall not knowingly throw myself away. In my humble opinion, it does not matter how much I do, so that I do not go really beyond my strength. No doubt the climate at this time of the year, cool and yet not too cold, and the change, brace and keep me up. Then I am really very careful, get enough sleep one way and another, and being unable to write in the train gives my brain a good deal of rest, and altogether I am careful.

In the afternoon it was awfully stiff. Seven ministers sitting in a row on the platform looking solemn as death, not helping to loosen either my feelings or those of the meeting. Then there had been no topic advertised, and so I was driven to a general talk. Hard and cold as I was at the start, God helped me before I got far in, and I finished in a tornado. I took the three things God wanted to do with a man. 1. To pardon. 2. To cleanse and rectify. 3. To employ for the accomplishment of His purposes. Oh those parsons did look solemn as I closed in with them and all present on the importance of being consistent with the mighty truths we profess to believe. I pushed home, as I have done several times the last few days, the taunts of the infidels that we Christians do not believe our own doctrines, saying it was the weapon that pierced my soul the deepest, etc. To a man they shook hands with me at the close, introducing each other, and thanked me for my words--some of them in the heartiest way. It is a strange peculiarity of the American people, that they will sit and stare at you, looking as solemn as death, not letting you see by the movement of a muscle that they are affected in the slightest degree by what you are saying, altho' your own heart is in an agony and your words are burning and scathing or otherwise affecting them; and then, when you have done, they will gather round you and in the politest, kindest, and most genial manner, bid you welcome, and say how glad they are to see and hear you. To look at that people yesterday afternoon you would not have thought they cared much, but yet I heard afterwards that they were much impressed.

One thing against me is these odd, that is single, Services (only one in a town) and the immense curiosity. I shall learn a good deal on this tour as to future plans and tours.

. . . I was through Boston yesterday. I go there Monday and Tuesday. It is considered the most critical and educated city of the Union. I find that the Evangelical Alliance at their last meeting have invited me to address them on the "Army" on Monday afternoon at 2. There were 350 ministers present and the invitation was unanimous. One Congregational Minister saying that they not only owed it to General Booth but to themselves that they should hear me.

This will be perhaps the most important meeting I have held, as there may be some 400 or 500 ministers and big people present. I cannot ask you to pray for me, because the meeting will be over before you get this. I may send you a wire to say how I get on at Boston; if I do, you will better understand it after this.

I want an hour this morning to pull myself together for that meeting. If it goes off well it will powerfully influence New York.

I am sure we are right. "Practical Godliness" is our theme. Let us push it with pen and tongue and example.

 

Ah, how a minister assured me yesterday that he had been blessed by your Aggressive. The ministers must be a better sort here as it relates to personal religion. They seem so much more free, and yet the state of much of the professing world must be very awful.

[Aggressive Christianity, by Catherine Booth.]

 

I have had a good night's sleep. Am not doing the afternoon meeting at Augusta where we are bound next. Dowdle goes on to do it early this morning, and I go on at noon. Is not that good of me?

I came here, Washington, Saturday night. It is, as you know, the Capital City of the States. The seat of Government, a great centre of learning, wealth, fashion, and influence. We have only a young Corps here, twelve months old. Still they gave me a good reception on Saturday night, and we marched through the principal parts of the City. A crowded meeting followed, at which I spoke with only little liberty; could not get away. How mysterious these hard times are. I was sorry afterwards, as I learned that influential people were there. You cannot judge your audiences in this country from appearances. For instance, you cannot tell which are ministers from their dress. Yesterday afternoon there sat opposite me three of the leading ministers of the City, two of them D.D.'s, and but for their close attention and a certain refinement of feature I should not have supposed them to be ministers. Indeed, in the Old Country I should have said it was not so. They dress just as ordinary business men and often very shabby and slouchy.

However, I have since Saturday had good times and wonderful afternoon meetings. On Sunday we had the penitent-form full after each meeting. Last night the Hall was crowded and they had to go away. I spoke an hour and a half with unabated interest to the audience. The shaking hands afterwards was immense.

I like the "South" so far better than the North. They told me I should, and the farther South I go the warmer-hearted they say the people are. Any way, I like these Washington people.

Oh what a splendid City this is and is going to be. I have no doubt but they will make it the finest City in the world.

 

There are repeated references to his son Ballington in a letter from Washington, dated November 30, 1886. He asks Catherine Booth to see Bramwell about Ballington's transference to America, saying that it is "the thing," and that he has seen it for two years. At the same time he wishes that he himself could mention it to Ballington, adding: "You know his danger; I don't want him to suppose that I am driven up to this." Then he says: "The temptation to linger will be awful . . . it must be an appointment for a time, say five years .... "

When he is in Canada he writes of Ballington's popularity when passing through:

 

Ballington made a tremendous impression here; the press men speak of this when they interview me, and the people themselves mention his name with enthusiasm. He must come again next year, if spared, with Maudie. God bless them; tell them of my love for them when you write.

 

These references to Ballington Booth, and this conviction that he and Mrs. Ballington Booth should take command of the Salvation Army in the United States, are interesting in the light of what followed ten years later.

Such exclamations as the following occur throughout his long letters to his wife, interrupting his account of meetings, and descriptions of the people he meets:

Love me as in the days of old. Why not? I am sure my heart feels just the same as when I wrote you from Lincolnshire or came rushing up Brixton Road to hold you in my arms and embrace you with my young love.

 

Or he asks for domestic gossip:

Send me love-letters and particulars about yourself. Tell me how you are; how you get up and go about, and what you do and what time you retire, and whether you read in bed when you feel sad. Tell me about yourself. To know what you wear and eat and how you go out, indeed, anything about yourself, your dear self, will be interesting to me.

. . . You must go on thinking about me; I reckon on this.

 

He always finds encouraging news to send to his wife.

 

"Oh, what love these girls send to 'the Mother.' She is beloved. She would have a welcome here." And from Toronto:

In every direction people speak in the highest terms of your books and ask most affectionately after you. Mr. G----, my host, said last night that he came back from England thinking forty times as much of the Army as when he left . . . and that among other things with which his visit had delighted him had been the delight and profit with which he had heard Mrs. Booth; that you were the most eloquent speaker he had ever listened to; that to see you "shake your little fist" and hear you speak at Exeter Hall was worth going 16,000 miles.

A Wesleyan Minister, the Chairman of the Toronto District, has just been in to see me, and has been telling me how he has read your books with profit, that they are the primitive Methodism of John Wesley and John Fletcher.

An old man from the interior of the City grasped my hand in the carriage yesterday and bade me tell you what a blessing your books had been to him and that he read them first himself and then lent them to his neighbours. Continually these testimonies are coming up.

. . . I had letters from Bramwell and a short note from Railton. Railton was kind, Bramwell was OFFICIAL, I suppose he had no time for more. But I have been away from you all for 15 days, and I certainly longed for a few special words.

 

With more emotion he writes to her from Halifax:

Before starting on anything else, and I have plenty before me, I must scribble a few lines to my beloved. My thoughts have been with you through the night. When I awake I can safely say my heart comes over to you, and I embrace you in my arms and clasp you to my heart and bless you with my lips and pray God to keep you from all harm and bring me safely to meet you again on earth.

The time is flying. The third week has passed since I gave you that hurried farewell, for truly there was no time for a deliberate farewell kiss or time thoughtfully to say "Good-bye."

That was a remarkable day. How dark things looked at the beginning and how different at the end. So has it not been with us, my darling, all the way through life. Go back to the very outset of our acquaintance. Had we not all manner of difficulties to cloud our first acquaintance and to damp our earliest joys? Did not the first prospects and controversies concerning all that was dearest to us outside each other becloud our first acquaintance and threaten our path with thorns and difficulty--and yet has not God cleared the way? Has He not led us onwards, and oh what a position is this! The most popular Methodist Minister in St. Johns, New Brunswick, greeted me on Friday night on leaving for Halifax in the most respectful and affectionate manner, saying that next to John Wesley he hailed me benefactor to the world! He had relapsed from his simplicity, given himself up to popularity-hunting, lecturing, etc. He has come to our Army Meetings, gone out for a new and full surrender and got a clean heart, brought his people, and is now a leader in the Christian world of that City and neighbourhood.

. . . The Reception was immense. The Mayor and the City Marshal (the latter a Catholic, one-third of the population is Catholic) met me at the station. The Mayor rode with me in my carriage. We had torch lights and red lights and crowds and music and volleys and a wind up on the parade, where an electric light had been fixed over where my carriage halted. Here I addressed for a short time the assembled multitude. There was a little hubbub at the start, but the police soon settled that, and all was still and quiet as a church, while I showed them that only righteousness could exalt their City or themselves personally. I only regret I did not go on longer.

 

There are brief references to his spiritual condition, and he encourages his wife to fight against despair:

I am feeling well in spiritual matters.

Now, my dearest love, do be encouraged. Don't give way to any single gloomy thought or fear. Rise to the thought of all the good that is being done and remember that the Devil may well tempt you and us considering the inroads being made on his 'kingdom.

About my own dear children I feel unutterable things. Oh we have none of us the most remote idea of the extent to which we are blessing the race. The whole human family are being laid under obligation to us more and more day by day.

 

He tells her about his health:

I am well this morning. The weather has been charming but is a little cooler this morning. But yesterday I could only wear the same things I wore in the summer in England. It is so far all a hoax about the cold. They say there is seldom snow till the middle of December of any account.

I have taken such an extra delight in fresh air and fresh water that I could, if I had time, bath with pleasure two or three times a day. I surprise all my hosts by my pertinacious coldwater operations in the morning. They are all for hot water and hot rooms, etc., etc.

I don't sleep quite as much perhaps. The climate stimulates me I think .... Altogether I am really well. Never better, and altho' working hard am looking, I think, quite as well as for months.

 

Bramwell Booth, the delicate Chief of the Staff, almost killing himself with overwork, comes in for an occasional wigging. The General encounters a Canadian Officer whose accounts have been overlooked:

. . . He makes the remarkable statement that there has never been an audit of his a/c as yet. Now that is abominable. I have been supposing that the D.O.'s[Divisional Officers] accounts were regularly audited every 6 months, and here at least are accounts run on for several years without being overhauled. Do get some systematic attention to these things. Make some one man Auditor-General, and let him be responsible direct to you, and thro' you to me, for the correctness of the whole accounts .... Let him report to me thro' you. That will save a great deal of trouble, and we can then stop a lot of wasteful extravagance.

 

Then to the same Chief of the Staff he writes in a more chastened mood as the day of departure draws near, humbly suggesting that he would like two days' rest when he returns:

Have you any proposal to make with respect to my return? I should like a day or two's rest before Christmas with Mamma, and I am afraid I shall require a week after. Then I must attend to Headquarters and pass through the Country. Then I reckon a visit to Switzerland, Sweden, and France. Then home again, and then--we will wait and see.

. . . These dear Montreal Soldiers--you would love them. I think the Soldiers and Officers here are more simple and devoted than in the Old Country. And oh the possibilities of this immense Country are practically limitless.

In his last letter of the tour to Catherine Booth, he comforts her concerning the voyage home, and expresses his longing to be back:

You must not be anxious about me on the water. I have not a fear. You cannot judge the weather at sea from what it will be on shore. So do not lie awake one hour on my account if you hear the wind blow. God will take care of me.

Good-bye . . . take a little care of yourself so as to be able to sit at the table and welcome me when I return. I long for your smile and voice and to lay my head on your bosom once more.

I am just the same, your husband, lover, and friend, as in the earliest days. My heart can know no change.

This visit of the General to America, although it cannot compare in enthusiasm with the later visits of 1894, 1903, and 1907, gave a valuable impulse to the work, and William Booth returned to England not only convinced of the Salvation Army's future, but with a new opinion concerning emigration which was to influence his mind two years later towards a fresh and adventurous channel.

 

CHAPTER VII

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ADVENTURE

1888-1889

 

LATE One night--it was in the early morning hours--in the year 1888 William Booth returned to London from a campaign in the south of England, and slept exceedingly ill when he arrived at his home.

Bramwell Booth, living near by, was early in attendance next morning, and scarcely had he entered the dressing-room, quick, alert, and cheerful, when his father, who was walking to and fro with hanging braces and stormy hair, burst out at him, "Here, Bramwell! do you know that fellows are sleeping out at night on the bridges?--sleeping out all night on the stone?"

Bramwell, thus checked in his greeting, exclaimed, "Yes, General; why, didn't you know that?"

The General appeared to be thunderstruck. He had seen those tragic huddled forms benched on stone for the first time on the previous night, and his own sleep in a warm bed had been robbed in consequence. "You knew that," he said, "and you haven't done anything!"

To this attack the Chief of the Staff made answer--first, that the Salvation Army could not at present undertake to do everything that ought to be done in the world; and, second--he admits now that he spoke like a copy-book--that one must be careful about the dangers of indiscriminate charity.

The General broke in angrily on this exordium. "Oh, I don't care about all that stuff," he said; "I've heard it before. But go and do something. Do something, Bramwell, do something!" And he walked about the room, running his fingers through his long beard and speaking with a loving rage and pity of the homeless wretches forced to sleep in the recesses of the London bridges.

"Get a shed for them," he ordered; "anything will be better than nothing; a roof over their heads, walls round their bodies"; and then he added, with characteristic caution, "you needn't pamper them."

This was the beginning of the great social scheme which was announced to the world two years later by means of the book In Darkest England and the Way Out. Twenty years before, William Booth had published his pamphlet How to Reach the Masses with the Gospel. He now began to see, after this twenty years of ceaseless labour, that he must first take arms against the worst of social conditions before he could carry the saving health of religion, even with the great force he had raised up in the meantime, to these ultimate masses.

His first impression of London, as the reader will remember, had been one of horror at the godless condition of the multitudes. His compassion for these multitudes had been moved by their spiritual neglect. All his anxiety and all his extraordinary activity for the past twenty years had been directed by this compassion, and it was purely evangelical in its nature. "Let any man," said Cardinal Manning," stand on the high northern ridge which commands London from West to East and ask himself how many in this teeming, seething whirlpool of men have never been baptized? have never been taught the Christian Faith? never set foot in a Church? How many are living ignorantly in sin, how many with full knowledge are breaking the laws of God, what multitudes are blinded or besotted or maddened with drink, what sins of every kind and dye and beyond all count are committed day and night? It would surely be within the truth to say that half the population in London are practically without Christ and without God in the world. If this be so, then at once we can see how and why the Salvation Army exists." This, for twenty years, was the spirit of William Booth. He mourned over "the spiritual desolation of London."

He asked himself how many were baptized? how many were taught the Christian Faith? how many set foot in a Church? But he began now to ask himself questions of another kind. He asked himself how many were hungry and thirsty? how many were naked? how many were homeless and cold?

To most of us it would be a platitude to assert that these questions were an expression of the Christ spirit; we should be impatient with a person who pointed out to us, as Drummed in a famous pamphlet pointed out to a former generation, that the very essence of Christianity lies not in doctrinal exactitude but in service, and service of the most simple and human character. But to William Booth, although his impulsive nature drove him at all costs to do something (Herbert Spencer would not have liked that exclamation), this venture in social reform sometimes appeared a step aside from his real path, and to the end of his life he never perhaps perfectly apprehended the entirely spiritual and religious character of his own social service.

This troubled and divided spirit which manifested itself in his life from 1888 onwards, is one of the most valuable clues to his personality. His love for men made him a social reformer, almost against his will. His faith in conversion, bound up with his faith in his mission as preacher, haunted him like a ghost, almost rebuking him, as he fed the hungry and housed the homeless. He never understood Theism; he never realized the profoundest meaning of Immanence. The soul of the man was saturated with the dogmatism of evangelical Deism. If his heart had not been as greatly saturated with as simple and emotional love for humanity as ever illuminated our sad and tragic history, he would never have glanced at social reform. But his pity tortured him, and he was torn between Martha and Mary. The better part manifestly was to hold up before a perishing world the Cross of Christ; to build a shelter for the homeless, and to carry meat to the hungry, this was obviously to be busied with temporal things.

From the beginning of this new venture the Salvation Army differentiated with the greatest care between its social and its spiritual work. The division was symptomatic of William Booth's theology. Professor Huxley, who knew as little of modern theology as Booth, attacked the Army for using social work as a mask for its spiritual work. William Booth defended himself against this attack without asking his critic to indicate to the world precisely where social work ended and religious work began. He never once quoted in his controversies on this subject the words of Christ Himself--"Depart from me . . . for I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat."

It is possible, we think, that William Booth might have been the very greatest force in history since St. Paul if he had seen vividly the spiritual character of social service--that is to say, if he had thrown himself with undivided will and undistracted religious enthusiasm into the work of righting men's social wrongs. But in that case his revolution would certainly have been a violent one, and the world's politics would by now have suffered a vast change. For if this man could win the affection of the saddest and most abandoned classes in the community, addressing them with a Mosaic authority on their duty towards God, what must have been his effect in the abyss, among the hungry and the embittered, if he had addressed them on their wrongs, not as a political agitator, but as the prophet of God? He was, however, at the very centre of his nature, a convinced Deist, a convinced conservative, and a convinced individualist. I am not sure that he had much faith in democracy's rightful use of political freedom. If he missed absolute greatness, it was because his will was divided and because his spirit, even in its most emotional moments, was controlled by one fixed and unshakable idea in religion. He came to greatness, not by the force and power of this religious notion, which he deemed the star of stars which would burn on the front of his crown of glory, but by the suspected force and the distrusted power of that simple and impulsive human sympathy which, inspired by it, transfigured his religiousness and saved him both from fanaticism and sectarian narrowness. "No one," says Sainte Beuve, "ever went through more mental vicissitudes than I have done." Of William Booth it might be said that no one ever went through more emotional vicissitudes than he did.

And it was the purity, the sincerity, and the intensity of this emotion which, in all its vicissitudes, drove the man onward and forced its way into everything he attempted.

In the Preface to his book, In Darkest England and the Way Out, there is one bold moment in which he seems to realize the essentially religious character of his social proposition: "... my humanity and my Christianity, if I may speak of them in any way as separate one from the other," he says, "have cried out for some more comprehensive method of reaching and saving the perishing crowds." But this sentence, we think, slipped in unawares; for the whole Preface might seem to some people as an anxious apologia for interrupting "religious" work. He speaks of the souls already saved in the slums, and acknowledges that "these results have been mainly attained by spiritual means." The individualist shows himself immediately: "No doubt it is good for men to climb unaided out of the whirlpool on to the rock of deliverance in the very presence of temptations which have hitherto mastered them, and to maintain a footing there with the same billows of temptation washing over them." And then: "I propose to go straight for these sinking classes, and in doing so shall continue to aim at the heart." Further on: "... in this or in any other development that may follow, I have no intention to depart in the smallest degree from the main principle on which I have acted in the past. My only hope for the permanent deliverance of mankind from misery, either in this world or the next, is the regeneration or remaking of the individual by the power of the Holy Ghost through Jesus Christ." "In proposing to add one more to the methods I have already put in operation," he says, "...do not let it be supposed that I am the less dependent upon my old plans, or that I seek anything short of the old conquest."

To many pious people, as well as to atheists and agnostics, this social campaign of the Salvation Army was more than a dangerous experiment, it was a positive rock of offence; and I have met apparently intelligent people at the present time who protest that the Salvation Army is merely a philanthropic and humanitarian agency in which religion is entirely subservient to social organization. Moreover, there still exists in the Salvation Army, at any rate in some countries, the sharp division between religious and social work, so far as the mechanism is concerned, which William Booth was most careful to make from the very beginning of his new venture.

In one sense, obviously, William Booth was right. It is easier to feed the hungry man than to turn the heart of the hardened man. Moreover, one may feed a hungry man with no impulse of religion in one's own heart and without producing the smallest change of any kind in his heart. Further still, and this was probably General Booth's most haunting thought as he struggled with his compassion, neither good wages nor comfortable circumstances can give to a man the energy of the spiritual life. He says in his book: "Some of the worst men and women in the world, whose names are chronicled by history with a shudder of horror, were those who had all the advantages that wealth, education, and station could confer or ambition could attain."

We are disposed to think that in missing the greatness of a revolutionist whose glory would have been that he changed the conditions of civilization, William Booth, by the very means which missed him this greatness, taught to his generation a lesson of infinite significance and incalculable value. For with all the nations of the earth hurling themselves through the gates of legislation and seeking in materialism for the Utopia of their dreams, here at any rate was a man who descended to the social abyss and told the most brutal and the most violent and the most abandoned and the most despairing that unless a man be born again he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. He changed the men, and the men themselves changed their conditions. Legislation, which knows nothing of individuals and regards the heart as a mere expression in the language of sentimentalism, seeks to change multitudes and masses of men by the most pompously announced and the most laboriously debated, but the most trivial, alterations in their conditions. William Booth saw the folly, the futility, and the awful danger of this method. He was right to insist that the individual man must be changed at the heart. And in changing some of the very worst men that ever lived, and in making those same men the self-sacrificing and rejoicing savers of other men as bad as they themselves had once been, he taught to all the nations of the earth a lesson whose value, as we have said without exaggeration, is incalculable.

That he did at certain moments very nearly throw himself whole-heartedly into the work of social reformation, recognizing its religious character and hating with all the rigour of his nature the miserable cant which railed against his undogmatic philanthropy, may be seen in many places throughout his book:

If this were the first time that this wail of hopeless misery had sounded in our ears the matter would have been less serious. It is because we have heard it so often that the case is so desperate. The exceeding bitter cry of the disinherited has become to be as the moaning of the wind thro' the trees. And so it rises unceasing, year in year out, and we are too busy or too idle, too indifferent or too selfish, to spare it a thought. Only now and then, on rare occasions, when some clear voice is heard giving more articulate utterance to the miseries of the miserable men, do we pause in the regular routine of our daily duties, and shudder as we realise for one brief moment what life means to the inmates of the Slums.

What a satire it is upon our Christianity and our civilization, that the existence of these colonies of heathens and savages in the heart of our capital should attract so little attention! It is no better than a ghastly mockery--theologians might use a stronger word--to call by the name of One who came to seek and to save that which was lost those Churches which in the midst of lost multitudes either sleep in apathy or display a fitful interest in a chasuble. Why all this apparatus of temples and meetinghouses to save men from perdition in a world which is to come, while never a helping hand is stretched out to save them from the inferno of their present life? Is it not time that, forgetting for a moment their wranglings about the infinitely little or infinitely obscure, they should concentrate all their energies on a united effort to break this terrible perpetuity of perdition, and to rescue some at least of those for whom they profess to believe their Founder came to die?

 

"I leave to others," he says, "the formulation of ambitious programmes for the reconstruction of our entire social system .... In taking this course I am aware that I cut myself off from a wide and attractive field." He goes so far, looking the problem of England's submerged millions full in the face, to declare, even while he passes by "those who propose to bring in a new heaven and a new earth by a more scientific distribution of the pieces of gold and silver in the trouser-pockets of mankind":

It may be that nothing will be put permanently right until everything has been turned upside down. There are certainly so many things that need transforming, beginning with the heart of each individual man and woman, that I do not quarrel with any visionary ....

 

But he raps out angrily, in declaring that the problem is urgent and cannot be postponed: "This religious cant, which rids itself of all the importunity of suffering humanity by drawing unnegotiable bills payable on the other side of the grave, is not more impracticable than the Socialistic clap-trap which postpones all redress of human suffering until after the general overturn." And to his son Bramwell he wrote on the 18th May, 1888: "Heaven and earth and, if necessary, the other place must be moved to get something done."

But in spite of his burning desire to get something done, and in spite of his almost boundless enthusiasm for his "Way Out," the central pull of his nature drew him back again and again from the political implications of this tremendous adventure; and after many years of incredible labour in the social work of the Army he came to wonder--but this, we must be careful to remember, was in his lonely and extreme old age, and even then only in certain moods --whether he ought ever to have diverted any of the energies of the Army from the strictly evangelical responsibilities of the preacher's vocation.

Before we summarize his proposals for cutting a way out from Darkest England, it must be told how the book itself was written, and in what circumstances William Booth led the way to this new endeavour.

In 1889 the Booths moved from Clapton to a small villa at Hadley Wood. Mrs. Booth's health had not improved; and the appearance of a small tumour drove her to consult a specialist--Sir James Paget, father of two bishops--and from the lips of this eminent man she learned the true character of her disease. An operation was suggested after the examination, but Mrs. Booth decided to consider, though she ultimately rejected, the proposal. She asked how long she had to live, and was told reluctantly that perhaps the end would come in eighteen months or two years. After this interview she drove back alone to her home. General Booth was setting off that night for Holland, and he was at home when the cab drove up to the door. He has left on record an account of that meeting with his wife:

After hearing the verdict of the doctors, she drove home alone. That journey can better be imagined than described. She afterwards told me how, as she looked upon the various scenes through the cab window, it seemed that the sentence of death had been passed upon everything: how she knelt upon the cab floor and wrestled in prayer with God; of the unutterable yearnings over me and the children that filled her heart; how the realization of our grief swept over her, and the uncertainties of the near future, when she would be no longer with us.

I shall never forget in this world, or the next, that meeting. I had been watching for the cab and had run out to meet her and help her up the steps. She tried to smile upon me through her tears; but, drawing me into the room, she unfolded gradually to me the result of the interviews. I sat down speechless. She rose from her seat and came and knelt down beside me, saying, "Do you know what was my first thought? That I should not be there to nurse you in your last hour."

I was stunned. I felt as if the whole world were coming to a standstill. Opposite me on the wall was a picture of Christ on the cross. I thought I could understand it then as never before. She talked like a heroine, like an angel, to me; she talked as she had never talked before. I could say little or nothing. It seemed as though a hand were laid upon my very heart-strings. I could only kneel with her and try to pray.

I was due in Holland for some large meetings. I had arranged to travel that very night. She would not hear of my remaining at home for her sake. Never shall I forget starting out that evening, with the mournful tidings weighing like lead upon my heart. Oh! the conflict of that night journey! I faced two large congregations [that day] and did my best, although it seemed I spoke as one in a dream. Leaving the meetings to be continued by others, I returned to London the following evening.

Then followed conferences and controversies interminable as to the course of treatment which it might be wisest to pursue. Her objections to an operation finally triumphed.

And then followed for me the most painful experience of my life. To go home was anguish. To be away was worse. Life became a burden almost too heavy to be borne, until God in a very definite manner visited me and in a measure comforted my heart.

Mrs. Booth continued for a few months more to preach and to speak, and for a still longer period to dictate letters and addresses; but she was doomed, and an atmosphere of death fell upon the Booth household. She tried a remedy called the Mattei treatment, and for some time her pain was alleviated; but the progress of the disease was unmistakable. Then she was prevailed upon to submit to an operation. "The return to consciousness from the anaesthetics used," says Commissioner Booth-Tucker, "was followed by a period of intense suffering."

It was decided in 1889 to move her to Clapton, so that she might be near the sea, for which she had expressed a desire. Thither the General transferred so much of homelife as was left to him, and there, after prolonged suffering, she breathed her last on the 4th of October, 1890.

During the period, William Booth laboured with his idea for social reformation. It is quite impossible to exaggerate the torture endured by this profoundly loving and most sensitive man during those two years. He was a strong man, but of those strong men who most desperately cling to the love of their heart. He loved Bramwell as a son on whom he could lean and whose perfect loyalty and unquestioning affection he knew would never fail him in the work of his life; he loved his daughter Emma with a depth of affection intensified by his admiration for her remarkable abilities and her very beautiful nature; he loved Eva as a daughter quivering with emotion and having something of his own courage and audacity, and bright with a quick intelligence and a smiling wit; he loved all his other children for their sound qualities and because they were his children. Nevertheless, there was one infinitely nearer, so near that she was almost one with him; and for two years he was doomed to watch the agonizing death of this other self, the agonizing death of one whom he had loved with the romantic passion of youth, with the deepening affection of manhood, and with the increasing tenderness of age; one who waited for him in poverty, had shared poverty and contumely with him in married life, and had encouraged him in every fight he had ever waged against clerical narrowness, professional calumny, and the apathy of the world; not only encouraged him, but actually fought at his side and in many contests with even greater power than his own.

Whatever may be urged against William Booth's methods of propaganda, and whatever defects may be pointed out in his character or his intellect, this at least is a fact beyond question and cavil, that his love story is one of the noblest documents in human history. The perfectly pure and the perfectly faithful love of this despotic man, with its infinite tenderness as its supreme beauty, and with its proudful delight in the object of its worship and devotion as its most charming characteristic, shines through his fierce, tempestuous, and plangent life of action, like an unflickering light upon a quiet altar. When we remember the pressing poverty of their early life, the indifferent health of the man, and the tremendous and exhausting labours which consumed him; when we consider, too, that with the breaking of Catherine Booth's health the home lost much of its restfulness, everything sacrificed to the bitterly opposed and cruelly libelled Army, it is impossible not to pay homage to this exquisite devotion which only gathered more beauty and tenderness as the years advanced.

 

To write a book, amidst all his other labours, during the two years of watching at his wife's death-bed was at once the burden and the blessing of William Booth. For some hours it distracted his thoughts from the fixed centre of their distress, and for some hours, reading his pages to his wife, and telling her about his manifold schemes, he was almost unconscious of the dark angel in the room. But there were days when to work out difficult schemes, to frame sentences, and to argue his thesis on paper, seemed to him in the presence of the dark angel so callous as to be almost a treason to the beloved. On these occasions he flung the work aside and refused even to think about it.

The papers became chaotic. In the meantime the Shelter and Food Depots which he had set up in 1888 were besieged by crowds of the homeless whom he could not house and of the hungry whom he could not feed. During the 1889 experiments the Salvation Army sold, among other things, to these miserable human beings in London alone 192 1/2 tons of bread and 140 tons of potatoes. The work was already on a great scale; it was solving at least a fraction of the vaster problem; and money was essential.

In these circumstances William Booth was prevailed upon to call in Mr. W. T. Stead, and that brilliant journalist, whose admiration for Mrs. Booth was one of the truest and steadiest facts of his life, after listening to the scheme and examining the manuscript, gave himself with enthusiasm to the task, taking away the disordered papers of William Booth, and converting them into a broad-margined manuscript which Booth himself could work upon with a feeling of comfort. To Mr. Stead, whose anonymous services are acknowledged in the Preface, the world owes, then, no small part of the debt for this epoch-making book--a book which has powerfully influenced legislative and religious activity ever since. At the same time it is permissible to say that the book as a piece of literature would have been surer of immortality had it been written from the first page to the last in the vigorous, direct, unpolished, but wonderfully dynamic vernacular of William Booth. It is quite possible to see where Booth breaks in upon the well-ordered and elaborate sentences with a stroke of his own, and excellent as Mr. Stead's work may be, those strokes in the midst of it are like a door blowing suddenly open, or like a human voice shouting great news above the murmur of bees. It is as if a sermon by Bossuet contained every now and then an exclamation by Bunyan.

In these trying circumstances, then, and by this not very well-matched conjunction, the book came to be written. We shall now proceed to summarize its argument.

["I have also to acknowledge valuable literary help from a friend of the poor, who, though not in any way connected with the Salvation Army, has the deepest sympathy with its aims and is to a large extent in harmony with its principles. Without such assistance I should probably have found it--overwhelmed as I already am with the affairs of a world-wide enterprise--extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have presented these proposals, for which I am alone responsible, in so complete a form, at any rate at this time. I have no doubt that if any substantial part of my plan is successfully carried out he will consider himself more than repaid for the services so ably rendered."]

 

 

PART II

They shall walk, and not faint

 

CHAPTER VIII

"IN DARKEST ENGLAND AND THE WAY OUT"

1889-1890

 

"THE denizens in Darkest England for whom I appeal," wrote William Booth, "are (1) those who, having no capital or income of their own, would in a month be dead from sheer starvation were they exclusively dependent upon the money earned by their own work; and (2) those who by their utmost exertions are unable to obtain the regulation allowance of food which the law prescribes as indispensable even for the worst criminals in our gaols."

He sorrowfully admitted that it would be Utopian "to dream of attaining for every honest Englishman a gaol standard of all the necessaries of life." "Some day," perhaps, he adds sardonically, "we may venture to hope that every honest worker on English soil will always be as warmly clad, as healthily housed, and as regularly fed as our criminal convicts--but that is not yet." The standard he sought to establish for these unhappy people was "the standard of the London Cab-Horse":

 

When in the streets of London a Cab-Horse, weary or careless or stupid, trips and falls and lies stretched out in the midst of the traffic, there is no question of debating how he came to stumble before we try to get him on his legs again. The Cab-Horse is a very real illustration of poor broken-down humanity; he usually falls down because of overwork and underfeeding ....

It may have been through overwork or underfeeding, or it may have been all his own fault that he has broken his knees and mashed the shafts, but that does not matter.

If not for his own sake, then merely in order to prevent an obstruction of the traffic, all attention is concentrated upon the question of how we are to get him on his legs again .... Every Cab-Horse in London has three things--a shelter for the night, food for its stomach, and work allotted to it by which it can earn its corn.

These are the two points of the Cab-Horse's Charter. When he is down he is helped up, and while he lives he has food, shelter, and work.

 

How many people in England, he asked, lived worse than the London Cab-Horse? Mr. Joseph Chamberlain said that between four and five millions "remained constantly in a state of abject misery and destitution." William Booth declared, "I am content to take three millions as representing the total strength of the destitute army." Darkest England, then, he announced, had a population almost equal to that of Scotland.

 

Three million men, women, and children, a vast despairing multitude in a condition nominally free, but really enslaved--these it is whom we have to save.

It is a large order. England emancipated her negroes sixty years ago, at a cost of £40,000,000, and has never ceased boasting about it since. But at our doors, from "Plymouth to Peterhead," stretches this waste Continent of humanity--three million human beings who are enslaved--some of them to taskmasters as merciless as any West India overseer, all of them to destitution and despair .... This submerged Tenth--is it, then, beyond the reach of the nine-tenths in the midst of whom they live, and around whose houses they rot and die?

 

He spoke of the Homeless, the Out-of-Works, of those on the Verge of the Abyss, of the Vicious, of the Criminals, and of the Children of the Lost.

 

Thousands upon thousands of these poor wretches are, as Bishop South truly said, "not so much born into this world as damned into it." The bastard of a harlot, born in a brothel, suckled on gin, and familiar from earliest infancy with all the bestialities of debauch, violated before she is twelve, and driven out into the streets by her mother a year or two later, what chance is there for such a girl in this world--I say nothing about the next? . . . There are thousands who were begotten when both parents were besotted with drink, whose mothers satiated themselves with alcohol every day of their pregnancy, who may be said to have sucked in a taste for strong drink with their mother's milk, and who were surrounded from childhood with opportunities and incitements to drink. Such poor creatures as these are to be found in thousands among the out-of-works, the homeless, the vicious, and the criminal. Many may be among the Submerged Tenth whose childhood was innocent and whose early life was bright with opportunity, but the vast majority of these three millions is composed of men and women "not so much born into this world as damned into it."

 

The case stated, he proceeds to enumerate "the essentials to success" in any plan which aims to save these three millions of destitution and despair:

The first essential . . . is that it must change the man when it is his character and conduct which constitute the reasons for his failure in the battle of life. No change in circumstances, no revolution in social conditions, can possibly transform the nature of man. . .

Secondly: The remedy, to be effectual, must change the circumstances of the individual when they are the cause of his wretched condition, and lie beyond his control. . .

Thirdly: Any remedy worthy of consideration must be on a scale commensurate with the evil with which it proposes to deal. It is no use trying to ball out the ocean with a pint pot ....

Fourthly: Not only must the Scheme be large enough, but it must be permanent ....

Fifthly: But while it must be permanent, it must also be immediately practicable ....

Sixthly: The indirect features of the Scheme must not be such as to produce injury to the persons whom we seek to benefit .... It is no use conferring six pennyworth of benefit on a man if, at the same time, we do him a shilling's worth of harm ....

Seventhly: While assisting one class of the community, it must not seriously interfere with the interests of another. In raising one section of the fallen, we must not thereby endanger the safety of those who with difficulty are keeping on their feet.

These essentials to success having been carefully propounded, he announces his scheme, which "divides itself into three sections, each of which is indispensable for the success of the whole." And he says, "In this threefold organization lies the open secret of the solution of the Social Problem."

This scheme I have to offer consists in the formation of these people into self-helping and self-sustaining communities, each being a kind of co-operative society, or patriarchal family, governed and disciplined on the principles which have already proved so effective in the Salvation Army.

 

These communities he calls, for want of a better word, Colonies, and styles them:

 

(1) The City Colony.

(2) The Farm Colony.

(3) The Over-Sea Colony.

 

The City Colony was to stand "in the very centre of the ocean of misery... to act as Harbours of Refuge for all and any who have been shipwrecked in life, character, or circumstances. These Harbours will gather up the poor destitute creatures, supply their immediate pressing necessities, furnish temporary employment, inspire them with hope for the future, and commence at once a course of regeneration by moral and religious influences."

The Farm Colony was to be an agricultural estate in the provinces, to which men improved by the City Colony were to be drafted; and "here the process of reformation of character would be carried forward by the same industrial, moral, and religious methods."

The Over-Sea Colony was to be a tract of land in "South Africa, Canada, Western Australia, and elsewhere," which the Salvation Army would prepare for settlement, "establish in it authority, govern it by equitable laws, assist it in times of necessity, settling it gradually with a prepared people, and so create a home for the destitute multitudes."

The scheme, in its entirety, may aptly be compared to a Great Machine, foundationed in the lowest slums and purlieus of our great towns and cities, drawing up into its embrace the depraved and destitute of all classes; receiving thieves, harlots, paupers, drunkards, prodigals, all alike on the simple conditions of their being willing to work and to conform to discipline. Drawing up these poor outcasts, reforming them, and creating in them habits of industry, honesty, and truth; teaching them methods by which alike the bread that perishes and that which endures to Everlasting Life can be won. Forwarding them from the City to the Country, and there continuing the process of regeneration, and then pouring them forth on to the virgin soils that await their coming in other lands, keeping hold of them with a strong government, and yet making them free men and women; and so laying the foundations, perchance, of another Empire to swell to vast proportion in later times. Why not?

Such was the scheme of William Booth, the first sensible notion contributed to blundering Parliaments, and remaining to this day the most efficient remedy for the social problem. It was a scheme, in its essence, of paternal emigration. To William Booth, looking into "the sea of misery," it was manifest enough that the first thing to do was to pull out the drowning man; having pulled out the drowning man, as manifestly the next thing to do was to restore him to life; and having restored him to life, as manifestly the next thing to do was to put him where he could use that life with no more fear of returning to the sea of misery. He had travelled through Canada, with what enthusiasm and dreaming what dreams we have already seen; his Officers had reported to him from other dominions, and he knew that enormous continents across the sea lay waiting with domestic rewards for honest labour. To ship miserable wretches out of congestion, pauperism, and crime to these distant lands would have been a short-cut from our own calamitous condition, but it would have been something more than dangerous for those who went, for those whom his compassion sought to save. The genius of his scheme, then, lay in establishing authority, ruling with equitable laws, and employing in every process government and discipline "on the principles which have already proved so effective in the Salvation Army." He would pour forth saved and restored humanity to virgin lands, but "keeping hold of them with a strong government." It was this Booth touch which gave force to his idea, and which attracted at once the enthusiasm and the opposition of the world.

But before the book was published, and before he found himself involved in another battle with scepticism and enmity, his long and agonizing vigil at the death-bed of Catherine Booth was brought to an end. For the first time, and in the greatest struggle of his career, he fought without her love to cheer him and her heroism to inspire him.

 

CHAPTER IX

THE DEATH-BED OF CATHERINE BOOTH

1890

 

So tragic and so agonizing was the last year of Catherine Booth's life, that we should not make any further reference than has already been made to those sufferings did not the diary of William Booth at this period furnish us with exceptional material for a more intimate understanding of his character.

There are two things which the reader must keep constantly in his mind if he is not to be greatly shocked or entirely baffled by the history of this tragic episode. He must remember, first of all, that Catherine Booth was two years dying; that this was no swift and beatific approach of Death; that she suffered from time to time excruciating pain, and for the last year of her life was stretched on a veritable rack of agony. Next, he must remember that not only William Booth and his children, but the dying Catherine Booth herself, were by this time so absorbed into the Salvation Army that many of the ordinary reticences and restraints which govern conventional existence exercised little influence on their minds, but were voluntarily, and indeed of set purpose, set aside as they pressed forward, always thinking of eternity, to the conversion of the people.

"The sick-bed proved for Mrs. Booth," says her historian, "a world-wide platform from which her very sufferings enabled her to preach the most eloquent and heart-appealing sermon of her life."

If we are honest with ourselves we must confess that it is beyond the power of the human mind to support a prolonged strain of this dreadful character without violent reaction. Men have longed for the death of those they love after witnessing only a few days of their agony. Doctors have been implored to end such sufferings. The first hours of heart-broken longing for recovery, the first days of devoted watching at the bedside, the first days of anxious and fearful listening for the footfall of Death, give way to a dull and aching ennui and an almost mechanical visitation heavy with despair, finally to a longing for the end.

A few extracts from the diary of William Booth will put the reader into the position of realizing something of the ordeal which he was called upon to face in these difficult years. We purposely refrain from quoting the most terrible descriptions given in this diary of Mrs. Booth's sufferings, descriptions more harrowing than anything we have read in Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.

 

A large part of the breast has fallen off, and Carr has cut it away and left the gaping wound which is simply; one mass of cancer.

She exclaimed again and again as she started with the stabbing pains, which like lightning flashes started in her poor bosom, "Oh these fiery scorpions! these fiery scorpions!"

Two nurses are required, seeing that she is so very helpless, and the breast has to be repeatedly dressed to keep the fiery flame that burns night and day anything like down.

 

My darling had a night of agony. When I went into her room at 2 a.m. she had not closed her eyes. The breast was in an awful condition. They were endeavouring to staunch a fresh hamorrhage. Everything was saturated with the blood.

 

He speaks frequently of the scorpions writhing and stinging in that ghastly "gaping wound," and of the agony she struggled to endure without crying out when what she called "the fiery darts" rained in upon her burning flesh.

Again and again the family was hastily summoned to the bedside, nine and ten months before death actually came to end these sufferings. Days of great pain, heroically borne and in part employed by the dying saint for preaching faith and exhorting to service, culminated in unspeakable distress, and in unconsciousness so like to death that over and over again the watchers thought--they must have hoped--the end had come.

 

After they had gone we settled down for a sleep. Then I got up and found that she had started from her slumber in great anguish. We did not know what was the matter. Her eyes at times were transfixed, and with violent spasms she struggled for breath. It was the heart. We did not comprehend it at the moment. Once or twice it was terrible to behold. The agony expressed [itself] in her countenance and especially in her eyes; but midst it all she managed to gasp out "Don't be alarmed, this is only physical. He has got me. He has got me."

 

It is not to be wondered at that William Booth, being an honest man, cried out to Heaven for an explanation of this trial. His faith never once deserted him; but again and again his theology seemed to break in his hands. God, who had the power, refused to act. God, who bids us pray, refused to answer. God, who promises joy to the believer, "sent" to this holy and beautiful saint agony as intolerable as it was hideous.

Mrs. Booth refused morphia, largely on religious grounds; and William Booth, who implored her to relent, was therefore forced to witness her quite conscious struggles with this indescribable anguish. Again and again, Bramwell Booth tells me, his father broke down utterly when he came from his wife's room to take up the accumulating burden of his work. "I don't understand it! I don't understand it!" he would cry out, and covering his face with his hands, he would walk to and fro in an excess of grief, or throw himself upon his knees and implore the Almighty for help.

Even in his diary we find mention of these dark hours:

 

I am 60 years old, and for the first time during all these long years, so far as memory serves me, has God, in infinite mercy, allowed me to have any sorrow that I could not cast on Him.

 

He grows tired of the inscrutable mystery.

 

It seems incredible that she should die. Like many good people, to this moment I have very strong feelings about it, and there are many good people at the present moment who are strongly believing that this sickness after all is not unto death. My mind grows bewildered when I think of the subject, so once more I dismiss it with perhaps the laziest feeling of, "The Lord must do what seemeth Him good in His sight."

 

He feels that he is assailed by temptation:

I was very weary. A great part of the night I had had a strong conflict myself with the enemy and great darkness and heaviness in my soul.

 

At one moment he is at her bedside, holding her hand and singing with her:

On this my steadfast soul relies: Father, Thy mercy never dies;

at the next he is on his knees in his study agonizing in spiritual darkness for strength to find, with hands groping through the gloom, the Hands of God's Fatherhood.

 

He interrupts his history of these appalling days to set down what he calls:

MY REFLECTIONS BY THE RIVER.

I. The reality of the existence, personality, and power of the Devil.

II. Of the utter insignificance of all other props and helps apart from God.

III. That God's mercy displayed in Jesus Christ is the only ground on which a man can appear before God.

IV. How the delusions and coverings, hiding-places and refuges of lies are torn away by the skeleton hand of Death.

 

And yet there came to this tempted, half-doubting, bewildered, and heart-broken man hours of such wonderful beauty as cannot be depicted, cannot even be remembered:

 

By this time she was completely worn out, and I sent them all out, resolving to have the remainder of the night alone with her. What passed that night can never be revealed. It will never be half remembered by myself until the day of Eternity dawns. It was a renewal, in all its tenderness and sweetness and a part of its very ecstasy, of our first love. It seemed, I believe to us both, in spite of all the painful circumstances of the hour, a repetition of some of those blissful hours we spent together in the days of our betrothal. Oh the wonderful things! . . .

I wept, prayed, and believed and exulted. We were in Jordan as it were together. Evidently she could not bear to let me go from her bedside or loose my hand. She had come back, she said, to her first love. I saw how exhausted she was, and again and again entreated her to consider her poor body and try and get a little sleep; and when I made as though I would leave her she upbraided me in the gentlest, most expressive, and most effectual manner, by saying, "Can you not watch with me one night? It will soon be over, and what matters a few hours shorter or longer now? I have done with the body. I shall soon leave it for ever."

And so we watched and counselled and prayed and believed together through that long night.

 

In another entry we read:

She took hold of my hand almost at the very beginning, and took the ring off her finger, and slipping it on to mine, said: "By this token we were united for time, and by it now we are united for eternity." I kissed her, and promised that I would be faithful to the vow and be hers and hers alone for ever and ever.

 

That ring became William Booth's most cherished possession. One may say that it was his only "personal property."

There are references in the diary to a young doctor, an agnostic, who attended the dying woman, and whose soul, even in her agonies, she endeavoured to influence. It is striking to think of the spirit of Catherine Booth, labouring on her death-bed to save the soul of a man whose science was unable to save her body:

She said to him when he came out that she really did not see what was the use of her staying here any longer as she could not do any good. "Indeed you do," he answered; "you are benefitting all about you." She said she could not see it. He said,

 

"You have done me good; you see your courage and anxiety for my welfare are so beautiful."

She spoke to him beautifully, saying that she would like to hear when she got on the other side that the Dr. who had attended her had been brought to Christ through her words. I had a few words with him further about spiritual matters downstairs, and he went away in a very subdued manner. In fact, again and again the tears came into his eyes. We must pray for him.

Mrs. Booth had a nice talk with the Dr. and discovered that he had some patients in great poverty, whereupon she asked him if he would distribute a sovereign amongst them for her, to which he readily assented. And then she tacked on to it a commission to distribute a War Cry to each as well. To this he assented in a most ready manner. It was curious to see this young Scotch agnostic Doctor go off to his conveyance with a bundle of War Crys for personal distribution.

In the midst of his vigil at the dying-bed the machinery of the Army had to go on. William Booth was not only attempting to compose an epoch-making book, but was directing the international activities of his yearly expanding forces. We find in the diary of this period continual references to a new enterprise, a difficulty with Officers, lawsuits, purchase of properties, trouble with some subscriber who has believed the lies and calumnies of a wretched backslider, and the growing work of the Army in foreign countries:

Had a great sorrow on top of all the other sorrows with one of the most devoted and, as we thought, and I think still, one of the most godly Officers we have, married to a lovely wife. It is too painful almost to write here. Through some marvellous moral blindness he committed himself before his conversion and, as far as that goes, since his conversion. He has continued in the wrong, and now it has all come out and I see nothing for him but to go away into obscurity. It was pitiful to behold the fellow's anguish.

Oh these grumbling, dissatisfied, selfish, ambitious souls, who vow one day and break their vows the next without compunction. What a curse they are to the Army, what a hindrance they are to the Kingdom. There is a needs be that offences come, but woe be to them through whom they come. Woe! Woe!! Woe!!!

It is very mysterious how all the way through life I have noticed that men who marry rich wives, for some reason or other, mostly from good reasons in their own estimation, drop out of the fight.

 

Some gifts arrive for the dying woman of fruit and flowers, and he says of the givers:

These are ex-Officers . . . and not so very long ago they went out in a dreadful passion and said some very unkind things about us, and now they are at every turn expressing their sorrow that ever they left, and pleading that they may be taken back. Such is the course of things.

 

He goes away to address meetings, and overhears what people in the crowds he passes through have to say about him:

As I passed through them one said, "There goes their God." Another said, "General, cannot you let us go in?" And another, as I neared the door, said, "There goes a grander old man than Gladstone."

 

World-wide attention, of course, was aroused by the bulletins from Clacton, and the diary contains records of some of the strange visitors who besieged the Booths with importunate beseechings to see the Mother of the Army:

 

Two women have just been announced as having come all the way from Manchester to see her. I cannot imagine what it is for, except it is on some Faith-Healing Mission. I shall have to see them. She will be too ill. There is some mystery about them. They appear poor, belonging to the working-classes. They say they are Soldiers, and yet are dressed in tawdry fashionable finery. Several of the girls tried to show them how ill Mrs. Booth was, but they said they had come all the way to see her, and they just wanted to look at her face. They were in no hurry--they would wait.

Eva supplied them with refreshment, and when Mamma was informed of them, although very ill, she said, "Let them come in." She was touched with their interest in her, proved by coming so long a journey.

Mrs. O----'s two daughters have just come to look, if that were possible. Mrs. Booth saw them--the same train brought a poor demented man from London. He said he wanted to see her. Said Jesus Christ had sent him, but he was evidently insane! He stayed at Clacton for some days, after calling up every day saying he wanted to see one or the other of us, and it was with difficulty after several days that we got him to take the train for London, for which journey we paid his fare.

Mrs. -- has been for a long time in a very excitable condition with nerves highly strung and kept at a very considerable tension. I was always afraid of the consequences. To my amazement on Friday night after the Staff-meeting she announced that she had embraced the Agapemone Doctrine. I reasoned with her for half an hour, then had to leave her to catch my train. Sent for her to see me the next day. Found that she was hopelessly involved, talking in the wildest and most random fashion and doing several things that had the appearance of cunning and deception so unlike her that I feared her reason was giving way. On Sunday she was down at Clapton, talking the strangest rubbish, and on Tuesday night, as I have said, I found her here. I sent Secretary Fry up with her, and she wanted me to promise at parting that I would send Mamma's dead body to her and that she would raise it from the dead!

The dramatic element in the Booth character, fostered by a public life so devoted to eternal and invisible realities that the conventions of this world appeared not merely insignificant but ridiculous and grotesque, seized upon the tragedy of this long dying and used it in a heart-moving appeal addressed to the whole world of perishing sinners. Mrs. Booth was not dying, but preaching. Her bed of death was a "world-wide platform." The eloquent sermon of her sufferings was to be given to mankind.

No curtain is drawn across those windows, no screen is set round the death-bed, no silence is posted at the door to keep guard over those struggles and prayers. The bed is draped with the Army flag. Photographs of the absent children are arranged where she can see them. The family assemble in uniform. The chief Officers of the Army are summoned for a last farewell. The faithful servants are called from the kitchen. And the company pray together, and sing together.

 

"With streaming eyes and faltering voices," says Commissioner Booth-Tucker, "the gathered family sang again and again her favourite choruses, watching with inexpressible emotion as the loved lips moved in the effort to take part:

We shall walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death,

We shall walk through the Valley in peace!

For Jesus Himself shall be our Leader,

As we walk through the Valley in peace.

 

"Although her voice could not be heard, and the breathing was hard and difficult, each time the word peace was repeated her hand was raised as a signal that such was indeed her experience."

 

The interest of the world flowed into that Clacton villa, and claimed the dying woman. Everything she said must be recorded, and even her very smile must be given to the world. We read in the diary:

The Chief [Bramwell] would have one more attempt to get a portrait of darling Mamma. The Stereoscopic Company were equally anxious, and sent down their manager and two of their best men and a sort of artist to endeavour to get a group in order to get a portrait. They made an attempt this evening with the lime-light. I don't know whether it will be a success.

 

Death came to her on the 4th of October, 1890, after a night of thunder, lightning, and torrential rain. She called William Booth by an endearing name, drew him down for her last kiss, and passed away, as Commissioner Booth-Tucker records, to "the singing of the larks and the dull murmur of the waves beating on the shore."

So passed away from this earth one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth century, whose beautiful spirit impressed itself alike upon the most exacting of her intellectual contemporaries and upon vast masses of the poor. The development of her personality in conjunction with that of her husband is a most interesting study in psychology, and the growth of her spiritual power seems to me like one of the miracles of religious history. In her frail body the spirit of womanhood manifested its power and the Spirit of God its beauty. It is a tribute to the age in which she lived that this power and beauty were acknowledged by the world during her lifetime. She exercised a spell over many nations.

Her body lay in state; immense crowds flocked to pay their last tribute to the Army Mother, and in the procession through the City of London to the cemetery, which was a Salvation Army Pageant, William Booth, we are told, "followed alone in an open carriage, standing and bowing his acknowledgments to the sympathetic greetings with which he was continually met."

At her grave, in Abney Park Cemetery, he delivered a remarkable and most characteristic address, mastering his emotion, frankly rejoicing in the multitudes who had paid tribute to his wife in the streets, and declaring his determination to use her death for religious ends.

The Daily Telegraph said of this scene at the graveside:

It was a most touching sight when the tall, upright General came forward in the gathering darkness to tell his comrades of the loss he, their chief, had sustained. He spoke manfully, resolutely, and without the slightest trace of affectation. Not a suspicion of clap-trap marred the dignity of the address. He spoke as a soldier should who had disciplined his emotion, without effort and straight from the heart. Few wives who have comforted their husbands for forty years have received such a glowing tribute of honest praise. It is clear enough where the strength of the Salvation Army is to be found, where its courage, its indomitable energy, where its unswervingness of purpose. To hear General Booth speak, and to see the man, is to understand a great deal of the success of the Salvation Army. [In his diary, October 14, 1890, William Booth anticipates the natural criticism of this action as follows: "I was weary myself. I had stood, balancing myself with the jerking of the carriage in its stops and starts, 4 hours. I couldn't see the people craning their necks trying to see me without endeavouring to gratify them. Some may find fault with me, and say I made an exhibition of myself. That is what I have been doing with myself for my Master's sake all my life, and what I shall continue to do as long as it lasts, and what I shall do through eternity for my Master's sake and the people's sake. And now I am restarted on the same path, the same work. A large part of my company has gone before, and I must travel the journey, in a sense that only those can understand who have been through it, alone"]

 

Here follows the address:

You will readily understand that I find it a difficulty to talk to you this afternoon. To begin with, I could not be willing to talk without an attempt to make you hear, and sorrow doesn't feel like shouting.

Yet I cannot resist the opportunity of looking you in the face and blessing you in the name of the Lord, and in the name of our beloved one who is looking down upon us, if she is not actually with us in this throng to-day.

As I have come riding through these, I suppose, hundreds of thousands of people this afternoon, who have bared their heads and have blessed me in the name of the Lord at almost every revolution of the carriage-wheels, my mind had been full of two feelings, which alternate--one is uppermost one moment, and the other the next--and yet which blend and amalgamate with each other; and these are the feeling of sorrow and the feeling of gratitude.

Those who know me--and I don't think I am very difficult to understand--and those who knew my darling, my beloved, will, I am sure, understand how it is that my heart should be rent with sorrow.

If you had had a tree that had grown up in your garden, under your window, which for forty years had been your shadow from the burning sun, whose flowers had been the adornment and beauty of your life, whose fruit had been almost the stay of your existence, and the gardener had come along and swung his glittering axe and cut it down before your eyes, I think you would feel as though you had a blank--it might not be a big one --but a little blank in your life!

If you had had a servant who, for all this long time, had served you without fee or reward, who had administered, for very love, to your health and comfort, and who had passed suddenly away, you would miss that servant!

If you had had a counsellor who, in hours--continually recurring--of perplexity and amazement, had ever advised you, and seldom advised wrong, whose advice you had followed and seldom had reason to regret it; and the counsellor, while you are in the same intricate mazes of your existence, had passed away, you would miss that counsellor!

If you had had a friend who had understood your very nature, the rise and fall of your feelings, the bent of your thoughts, and the purpose of your existence; a friend whose communion had always been pleasant--the most pleasant of all other friends --to whom you had ever turned with satisfaction, and your friend had been taken away, you would feel some sorrow at the loss.

If you had had a mother for your children, who had cradled and nursed and trained them for the service of the Living God, in which you most delighted--a mother, indeed, who had never ceased to bear their sorrows on her heart, and who had been ever willing to pour forth that heart's blood in order to nourish them, and that darling mother had been taken from your side, you would feel it a sorrow!

If you had had a wife, a sweet love of a wife, who for forty years had never given you real cause for grief; a wife who had stood with you side by side in the battle's front, who had been a comrade to you, ever willing to interpose herself between you and the enemy, and ever the strongest when the battle was fiercest, and your beloved one had fallen before your eyes, I am sure there would be some excuse for your sorrow!

Well, my comrades, you can roll all these qualifies into one personality, and what would be lost in each I have lost all in one. There has been taken away from me the delight of my eyes, the inspiration of my soul, and we are about to lay all that remains of her in the grave. I have been looking right at the bottom of it here, and calculating how soon they may bring and lay me alongside of her, and my cry to God has been that every remaining hour of my life may make me readier to come and join her in death, to go and embrace her in life in the Eternal City.

And yet, my comrades (for I won't detain you), my heart is full of gratitude, too, that swells and makes me forget my sorrow, that the long Valley of the Shadow of Death has been trodden, and that out of the dark tunnel she has emerged into the light of day. Death came to her in all his terrors, brandishing his dart before her for two long years and nine months. Again and again she went down to the river's edge to receive his last thrust, as she thought, but ever coming back to life again. Thank God, she will see him no more--she is more than conqueror over the last enemy!

Death came to take her away from her loved employment. She loved the fight! Her great sorrow to the last moment was: "I cannot be with you when the clouds lower, when friends turn and leave you, and sorrows come sweeping over you: I shall no longer be there to put my arms round you and cheer you on."

But she went away to help us! She promised me many a time that what she could do for us in the Eternal City should be done! The Valley to her was a dark one in having to tear her heart away from so many whom she loved so well. Again and again she said, "The roots of my affection are very deep!" But they had to be torn up. One after another she gave us up; she made the surrender with many loving words of counsel, and left us to the Lord.

This afternoon my heart has been full of gratitude because her soul is now with Jesus. She had a great capacity for suffering and a great capacity for joy, and her heart is full of joy this afternoon.

My heart has also been full of gratitude because God lent me for so long a season such a treasure. I have been thinking, if I had to point out her three great qualities to you here, they would be: First, she was good. She was washed in the Blood of the Lamb. To the last moment her cry was, "A sinner saved by grace." She was a thorough hater of shams, hypocrisies, and make-believes.

Second, she was love. Her whole soul was full of tender, deep compassion. I was thinking this morning that she suffered more in her lifetime through her compassion for poor dumb animals than some doctors of divinity suffer for the wide, wide world of sinning, sorrowing mortals! Oh, how she loved, how she compassioned, how she pitied the suffering poor! how she longed to put her arms round the sorrowful and help them!

Lastly, she was a warrior. She liked the fight. She was not one who said to others "Go," but, "Here, let me go," and when there was the necessity she cried, "I will go." I never knew her flinch until her poor body compelled her to lie aside.

Another thought fills my soul with praise--that she has inspired so many to follow in her track.

 

My comrades, I am going to meet her again. I have never turned from her these forty years for any journeyings on my mission of mercy, but I have longed to get back, and have counted the weeks, days, and hours which should take me again to her side. When she has gone away from me it had been just the same. And now she has gone away for the last time. What then is there left for me to do? Not to count the weeks, the days, and the hours which shall bring me again into her sweet company, seeing that I know not what will be on the morrow, nor what an hour may bring forth. My work plainly is to fill up the weeks, the days, and the hours, and cheer my poor heart as I go along with the thought that when I have served my Christ and my generation according to the will of God, which I vow this afternoon I will to the last drop of my blood--then I trust that she will bid me welcome to the Skies, as He bade her. God bless you all. Amen!

William Booth, we may say without exaggeration, rose up from the death-bed of his beloved and noble wife to offer the very first hours of his widowerhood as a sacrifice to the Salvation Army. There was no touch of perverted Byronism in this spontaneous and emotional action; it came from a temperament naturally impulsive, naturally dramatic, and naturally philanthropic; and it flowed also from the reaction of a heart which, given long since to the public service of mankind, had borne for two intolerable years the burden, the desolation, of this inscrutable bereavement.

 

CHAPTER X

THE CONFLICTING RECEPTION GIVEN TO THE DARKEST ENGLAND SCHEME

1890

 

WILLIAM BOOTH'S offer to grapple with the social problem was greeted on the whole with generous enthusiasm, but some particularly bitter and significant criticism was not lacking. Since he saw fit to publish In Darkest England and the Way Out immediately after Catherine Booth's funeral he could not complain, we suppose, of the spirit in which he was treated by those who disapproved of his scheme. But it must strike the least reflective as curious and interesting that men who never tired of attacking his Salvationism for its want of dignity were the first to discharge at him, in the grey and friendless dawn of his widowerhood, arrows of outrageous criticism which were feathered with scorn and tipped with acrimony.

We will not thrust upon the reader at the outset the ferocious and malignant attack by Professor Huxley; it will afford a truer idea of the criticism directed towards this scheme if we quote from the more sober and respectable leading article which appeared in The Times on the 20th of October, 1900. It is somewhat disturbing, however, to find that pity for a man just risen from his wife's grave, a man whose honesty and zeal the writer of this article did not question, failed to check the employment in his criticism of those veiled sneers and masked derisions which have always rendered the controversial method of political journalism so odious and so contemptible in the eyes of liberal men.

The writer of the article begins in the following manner:

"General" Booth has been long enough before the world as the founder of an eccentric religious organization. His remarkable success in that character forbids us to doubt his capacity for making a certain class of mankind believe in him. He has even displayed talent in disciplining and governing those who acknowledge him as their pontiff, and are thoroughly imbued with his peculiar ideas as to what constitutes dignity in divine worship. If there were any doubt as to the influence he and his family exert over his followers it would have been dissipated by the spectacle that London witnessed some six days ago on the occasion of Mrs. Booth's funeral. But when Mr. Booth steps outside this groove of governing those of his own religious feeling, and making religious converts, to pose as the general regenerator of society, the world may be excused for feeling shy of his proposals ....

 

He goes on to say:

The modesty with which Mr. Booth approaches his self-imposed task of curing poverty and vice may be sufficiently gauged by his extraordinary declaration that "the moment you attempt to answer this question (i.e. as to numbers of the residuum) you are confronted with the fact that the social problem has scarcely been studied at all scientifically."

 

The chief point of the critic, so far as we can gather, lies in the fact that the opinions of General Booth "differ irreconcilably from those of all the cautious statesmen and economists who have moulded our Poor Laws into their present form." While the most "serious consideration for those who are asked to subscribe the million Mr. Booth asks for is that Mr. Booth himself appears to be the tortoise upon which the great system is to be ultimately poised."

This criticism, we think, fairly expressed the opinion of many moderate and cautious men. General Booth's scheme promised too much; it depended entirely upon his autocracy; there was no apparent guarantee that the money would be wisely, even honestly, expended. Moreover, we must remember that many good people in those days were antipathetic to the entire spirit of Salvation Army propaganda, particularly in its earliest manifestations.

 

Lord Shaftesbury, for instance, never got over his first disapproval. Temperament, not intellectual conviction, decides these matters, as it decides the form our religion takes. No intellectual bar prevented men like Matthew Arnold and Henry James from becoming Liberals or Dissenters. Our temperaments employ our intellects and remain master of them even when we most change our opinions. Therefore, while I criticize Professor Huxley's attack as unfair, and while I set against it the generous support of men like Cardinal Manning, I confess that there were many who stood aside from William Booth, lending him no aid, and perhaps speaking unkindly of him, only because they were temperamentally out of sympathy with the Army. All criticism was not malignant, if very little of it was helpful and formative.

But among moderate and cautious men there were many with more generosity than the writer of the leading article in The Times, who hailed with gratitude the courage of William Booth, who were not satisfied with "our Poor Laws in their present form," and who paid homage to the man's long and unsparing labour in the service of humanity.

 

Archdeacon Farrar, whose earlier opinion of the Salvation Army we have already noticed, not only addressed the following letter to General Booth, but preached a sermon on the scheme in Westminster Abbey:

I have read with deep interest your suggestion of a systematic effort to deal with the mass of misery which exists in our great cities. So far as I am aware no scheme of the same magnitude has ever been proposed. I heartily wish that such an effort had originated in my own Church, but, in the absence of any other plan, I think it a duty to help to the utmost of my power. Early next year I hope to be able to send you £50.

I trust that courage and wisdom may be given you and that you may be enabled to grapple effectually with the immense and terrible problem.

[Conservatism here has all the charm and leaves dissent and democracy and other vulgar variations nothing but their bald logic. Conservatism has the cathedrals, the colleges, the castles, the goodness, the traditions, the associations, the line names, the better manners, the poetry; Dissent has the dusky brick chapels in provincial by-streets, the names out of Dickens, the uncertain tenure of the h; and the poor mens sibi conscia recti." (Henry James, English Hours.)]

 

Cardinal Manning wrote as follows:

The gift of your book and your letter has just reached me, and I lose no time in thanking you for it. I have already sufficient knowledge of its contents to say at once how fully it commands my sympathy. Your comments on modern political economy, Poor Law administration, Government statistics, and official inquiries are to the letter what I have said in private and in public for years. This is both superficial and unreal. You have gone down into the depths. Every living soul costs the most precious blood, and we ought to save it, even the worthless and the worst.

After the Trafalgar Square miseries I wrote a "Pleading for the worthless," which probably you never saw. It would show you how completely my heart is in your book. No doubt you remember that the Poor Law of Queen Elizabeth compelled Parishes to find work for the able-bodied unemployed, and to lay in stores of raw material for work. The modern political economists denounce the giving of work, even in winter and to honest and true men out of work, as alms and as demoralizing.

I hold that every man has a right to bread and to work. Those modern economists say that society must adjust the demand to the supply of labour until all are employed.

I have asked how many years are required for this absorption, and how many weeks or days will starve honest men and their children? To this I have never got an answer.

 

Sir Squire Bancroft, the actor, sent a letter to The Times:

I know nothing of General Booth's scheme in detail, but it seems to me to be so noble in its object that something really serious and thorough should be done to aid it.

I read that the large sum of £100,000 will be necessary to insure an actual trial, and without the smallest pretence to hang on to even the skirts of philanthropy, I beg to say that, if 99 other men will do the same for the cause, I will give General Booth £1,000 towards it.

 

Sir Edward Clarke, a devout Anglican, but a brave friend of the Salvation Army, wrote as follows:

 

Your book In Darkest England has greatly interested me, and points out, in my belief, the best means of dealing with the misery and crime which defile and disgrace the civilization of our land.

I have entire confidence in your wise and faithful stewardship of any Fund that may be subscribed, and I enclose a cheque for £50 as my contribution to the good work.

 

The Bishop of Durham (Dr. Westcott) sent his best wishes for the scheme in a letter which expressed kind and dignified sympathy with General Booth in his domestic sorrow:

My thoughts have been with the poor all my life, and at last I am brought face to face with the problems of social life as objects of direct practical labour. Terrible as they are, I can re-echo your words in faith and hope. Life is very different in the North and in the South. Here there is no scarcity of work, nor are the hours long, but there is grievous wretchedness. There can be no permanent improvement, I feel sure, except by the action of spiritual forces. I need not say with how much sympathy I have followed the record of your loss, but God gives--may we not trust?--more than He takes. All Saints' Day is a great reality. We can, I think, feel the fellowship which is beyond time and space. No friend is more present to me than my predecessor. May God bless every endeavour to hasten His Kingdom on earth.

 

The Bishop of Manchester--Dr. Moorhouse--wrote with equal approval:

I am struck with the practical wisdom of your plan, which has in it, I believe, many of the elements of success. My experience in the Colonies enables me to commend especially your determination, on the one hand, to prepare the emigrant for his new home and, on the other, to prepare the home for the new emigrant.

The latter is especially important, and it is too often neglected by our emigration societies.

 

I am afraid that you will find the development of the national resources for a new country more difficult and costly than you have anticipated, and that it will be well, therefore, for you to secure as far as possible the co-operation of the Colonial authorities in your proposed emigration arrangements.

I trust, therefore, to the practical wisdom which you have displayed in all the details of your scheme. Very few men could hope to carry it out successfully, but I think that you may for the following reasons:

(1) You have proved that you can teach the waifs and strays to work.

(2) You can surround them with the authority, the sympathy, and help of men of their own class on firm Christian principles.

(3) You make a radical change of their character an essential condition of your scheme, and have again proved that in many cases religious means which I confess I could not use myself, are effective to that end.

(4) You have the assistance of a large and enthusiastic staff of Officers stationed in various parts of the world and working for Christ's sake with little more than a mere subsistence provided from your funds.

Having this belief, I feel myself called upon to help you, and though it is not convenient for me to do so just now, you may count on receiving £100 from me during the next year.

May God bless you for the wise and noble effort you are making, and spare you long enough to the poor waifs whom for Christ's sake you love to rescue, many, if not all of them, from their terrible physical and spiritual destitution.

 

Queen Victoria, most careful in such matters, expressed cordial good wishes for the scheme:

The Queen cannot of course express any opinion upon the details of a scheme with which she is not yet acquainted; but understanding that your object is to alleviate misery and suffering Her Majesty cordially wishes you success in the undertaking you have originated.

 

An amusing example of the official opposition which met General Booth at the threshold of his experiment is to be found in the following letter of Lt.-Col. Henry Smith, Commissioner of Police, addressed to the Lord Mayor of London on January 21, 1891:

In a letter addressed to your Lordship, and published in The Times of yesterday, "General" Booth asserts that one night last week his "Officers found on one of the Thames' bridges no less than one hundred and sixty-four persons of various ages without any sort of shelter or protection from the weather than that provided by the parapets surrounding the recesses of the footpaths"; and that "most of these poor creatures remained all night" . . . and, as your Lordship has seen in this morning's Times, Blackfriars is the bridge indicated.

Having been instructed to report upon the accuracy of this statement, I can only confirm what I said last night, that there is not a word of truth in "General" Booth's allegations.

Strict orders are always in force that no one is to be allowed to remain all night on any of the bridges within the jurisdiction of the City Police, and during the recent inclement weather special instructions have been issued on the subject to prevent people---apparently homeless--from loitering or falling asleep.

I need hardly point out to your Lordship that had such a state of things been allowed to exist on Blackfriars Bridge, numerous cases of sudden and severe illness and possibly of death would have been the inevitable result. No one case, that even by a stretch of the most vivid imagination could be attributed to exposure on the Bridge, has been taken to Bridewell Place Station since the beginning of Dec.--I have not had time to search further back.

The whole story is absolutely untrue from beginning to end.

 

Fortunately for General Booth's reputation, although the particular crowd in question was said afterwards to be gathered together to receive relief, this pompous denial of a fact tragically well known to every observant Londoner was too humorous for serious consideration. We give it place here only as an amusing example of that denying, denouncing, and pooh-poohing spirit with which the official in every age meets the least criticism of the status quo. Thus did men meet the criticism of the first Factory Acts, the first efforts to save children of tender years from the rapacity of the manufacturer and the brutal tyranny of the farmer; thus did they oppose any change in those laws which allowed lunatics to be chained up and flogged; thus did they meet the crusade to save young girls from the pimps and the seducer; thus have they met, and always will meet, the struggles of the good to drag humanity out of its rut. But in this particular instance the letter of the Police Commissioner admirably illustrates the indifferent and almost callous attitude of the public at that period to the frightful sufferings of the destitute. His "strict orders" that "people--apparently homeless"--should be prevented from loitering deserves to remain on record in the singularly disagreeable language in which he records them for the Lord Mayor of London's approval.

It was Professor Huxley, the most formidable controversialist of the period, an able exponent of the rather limited and dogmatic physical science of that day, an indifferent philosopher, and a person of somewhat violent antipathies, but a great friend and a very amiable man in private life, who led the fighting opposition against this Darkest England Scheme. Professor Huxley detested the Salvation Army. He seldom penetrated beneath the surface of anything religious, and of a certainty he never got behind what we may describe as the shop-window of Salvationism. The garish flag, the brass band, and the jingling tambourines; the laughing Hallelujah Lass, the loud-voiced Adjutant; the strange hymns and the catch-penny phrases on bills and posters; these things, staring him in the face and beating upon his ears in the pleasant and respectable solemnity of Eastbourne, drove him into a fury and blinded him to things of more moment which, he might have surmised, lay obviously behind these distracting phenomena. He spoke with loathing and contempt of "corybantic Christianity." He regarded William Booth with a genuine horror, with a real indignation. He believed the whole thing to be, if not a gross and palpable hypocrisy, then a very perilous and fanatical conspiracy. And he came to believe at the last, with the most stubborn obstinacy and the most vehement tenacity, that the Booths were liars and rogues. One may fairly say that he sprang at the Darkest England Scheme ("Oh that mine enemy would write a book!") in the hope of destroying the Booths and scattering the Salvation Army to the four winds of Physical Geography.

[It is worthy of notice that soon after the outbreak of war in August, 1914, the shelters of the Salvation Army and of the philanthropic societies who had followed its example, as well as the casual wards of great cities, became almost entirely empty--the old men going gladly to work and the younger men into the army.]

In a volume of his essays the reader will find for himself these fierce and petulant criticisms of the Darkest England Scheme, which appeared in The Times, preserved in book form as a monument of the Professor's wisdom and good manners. We shall only attempt in this place a summary of the indictment.

At the outset William Booth is exhibited as a despot and a fanatic:

Undoubtedly, harlotry and intemperance are sore evils, and starvation is hard to bear, or even to know of; but the prostitution of the mind, the soddening of the conscience, the dwarfing of manhood are worse calamities. It is a greater evil to have the intellect of the nation put down by organized fanaticism, to see its political and industrial affairs at the mercy of a despot whose chief thought is to make that fanaticism prevail ....

 

As he goes on his indignation increases, and William Booth is charged with crimes of a terrible nature:

Society, says Mr. Booth, needs "mothering". . .the mother has already proved herself a most unscrupulous muddler, even if she has not fallen within reach of the arm of the law.

 

He speaks of chantage--"in plain English, blackmailing"--and asks "how far does the Salvation Army . . . differ from a Sicilian Mafia." Later on General Booth adds to his abominable crimes that of the Sweater. "While he and his family of high officials live in comfort, if not in luxury, the pledged slaves whose devotion is the foundation of any true success the Army has met with," have scarcely food enough to sustain life:

At this point it is proper that I should interpose an apology for having hastily spoken of such men as Francis of Assisi, even for the purpose of warning, in connection with Mr. Booth.

 

Mr. Booth, as printer and publisher, "utilizes the Officers of the Army as agents for advertising and selling his publications; and some of them are so strongly impressed with the belief that active pushing of Mr. Booth's business is the best road to their master's favour, that when the public obstinately refuse to purchase his papers they buy them themselves and send the proceeds to Headquarters." He rakes up the "Eagle" case to make out that William Booth had deceived the judge as to his purpose in getting hold of that very foul and evil tavern. He goes back to the Armstrong trial to suggest that Bramwell Booth had told a lie in court. And then he speaks of the money for this Darkest England Scheme passing into "the absolute control of a person about the character of whose administration this concurrence of damnatory evidence was already extant."

Of a correspondent who had ventured to furnish him with reasonable arguments for at least a modification of these hooligan charges he observes, in conclusion of the whole matter:

He would obviously be surprised to learn the extent of the support, encouragement, and information which I have received from active and sincere members of the Salvation Army--but of which I can make no use, because of the terroristic discipline and systematic espionage which my correspondents tell me is enforced by its chief ....

 

It will be noticed by the reader with amusement that the "corybantic" Christians, the "noisy squadrons," the "fanatics" with prostituted minds and sodden consciences, immediately they write grumbling, confidential, and traitorous letters to Professor Huxley become "active and sincere members of the Salvation Amy." It will also be observed that the poor sweated victims of William Booth's unconscionable greed, so penniless that they cannot buy themselves food enough for the body's wants, are yet able to purchase the books and pamphlets of their despotic lord in such quantities as to curry favour with that most inhuman monster!

But these are small matters; and the calumnies of Mr. Huxley, charging one of the most unselfish, unsparing, and large-hearted of men--in the first days of his widowerhood--with shameful dishonour and most wicked crime may safely at this hour of the day be dismissed with the displeasure which they gave to all decent people at the time of their promulgation. "I have not had patience," wrote Cardinal Manning, "to read Professor Huxley's letters."

A number of intelligent and comfortable people, however, were undoubtedly influenced by a certain part of this criticism. Mr. Huxley's criticisms were built upon inaccurate or insufficient information concerning two legal actions in the past, and some letters and papers sent to him by men who had served in the Army and had either deserted from it or been dismissed for very good reasons. But out of the depths of his own nature he drew up the main criticism of the Darkest England Scheme, and that criticism, which did influence people against the Army, is so singular and interesting that we propose to deal with it, albeit as briefly as possible, in the following chapter.

William Booth, of course, foresaw the attack that would be made upon him, and in the last chapter of his book he endeavoured to forestall it:

If among my readers there be any who have the least conception that this scheme is put forward by me from any interested motives, by all means let them refuse to contribute even by a single penny to what would be, at least, one of the most shameless of shams. There may be those who are able to imagine that men who have been literally martyred in this cause have faced their death for the sake of the paltry coppers they collected to keep body and soul together. Such may possibly find no difficulty in persuading themselves that this is but another attempt to raise money to augment that mythical fortune which I, who never yet drew a penny beyond mere out-of-pocket expenses from the Salvation Army funds, am supposed to be accumulating. From all such I ask only the tribute of their abuse, assured that the worst they say of me is too mild to describe the infamy of my conduct if they are correct in this interpretation of my motives.

And in the midst of the storm which immediately broke upon his head, when not only Professors Huxley and Tyndall, but Mr. C. S. Loch of the Charity Organization Society and Dr. Plumptre, Dean of Wells, were warning the public against him, and when every conceivable rumour was afloat concerning his honesty, he kept his course with a proud silence, writing to a friend, "God and time will fight for me; I must wait, and my comrades must wait with me."

[Later Mr. Loch became a warm friend.]

 

CHAPTER XI

TROUBLES OF AN OVERWORKED AND SUFFERING AUTOCRAT

 

OBSESSED by the idea of William Booth's autocracy, and seeing in the Army, "a strong, far-reaching, centralized organization, the disposal of the physical, moral, and financial strength of which rests with an irresponsible chief, who, according to his own account, is assured of the blind obedience of nearly 10,000 subordinates," Mr. Huxley asked, "prudent men and good citizens," whether they ought "to aid in the establishment of an organization which, under sundry, by no means improbable, contingencies, may easily become a worse and more dangerous nuisance than the mendicant friars of the Middle Ages."

Respectable people were asked to pause before they gave money to William Booth for saving 3,000,000 miserable and suffering fellow-creatures, lest they should be endowing "a new Ranter-Socialist sect." He actually brought himself to speak of General Booth's "socialistic autocracy." Carlyle's writings on social miseries, he tells us in one place, made upon his mind "an ineffaceable impression forty years ago"; but the appeal of William Booth, who cried out, not rhetorically from a student's library, but with authentic piteousness from the very abyss itself, only produced in the mind of the middle-aged comfortable Professor in his Eastbourne villa a feeling of terror for the safety of society. Who could guarantee, he asked, the character of the Salvation Army in 1920, under the autocracy of a General who "controls the action, say, of 100,000 Officers pledged to blind obedience, distributed through the whole length and breadth of the poorer classes, and each with his finger on the trigger of a mine charged with discontent and religious fanaticism"? The nation's "political and industrial affairs" would be "at the mercy of a despot." He prophesies "ruthless intimidation." No member of Parliament would be safe. He warns the people against "the great social danger of the spread of Boothism," and against "despotic socialism in all its forms, and more particularly in its Boothian disguise."

Now, this criticism, however exaggerated, had the merit of being intelligent and reasonable. William Booth happened to be one of the stiffest Conservatives and one of the most unbending Individualists of the Victorian era, but under the autocratic system of the Salvation Army no one could guarantee the character of the organization in future, or say decisively what colour the politics of its General would assume in 1920. We may point out that shareholders in The Times newspaper, where Professor Huxley's indictment appeared, could not have foreseen that a dozen years later that moderate and dignified organ of public opinion would be valiantly supporting an ex-Republican in his gospel of Protection; nor can they be guaranteed at the present day that next week or next year the fortunes of the paper will not be directed by a Radical millionaire in favour of the single tax. Men undoubtedly change their minds. Things do unquestionably happen. The devout Roman Catholic of five or six hundred years ago, in bestowing his goods to build a church, could not be certain that the voice of Heresy would not one day slightly distress his branching roof and pillared aisles, or that a powerful nobleman would not enrich himself out of the endowments.

Nevertheless, Mr. Huxley's criticism had real point, and it certainly succeeded so far in its purpose as to prejudice considerable numbers of people against William Booth and the Salvation Army.

Two years before Mr. Huxley's attack, that is to say in March, I888, William Booth had made a gift of £500 to the Army in the manner indicated by the following letter from a firm of chartered accountants:

 

2 GRESHAM BUILDINGS, BASINGHALL STREET, E.C.

LONDON, March 22, 1888.

General Booth.

DEAR SIR--Referring to our conversation with you last Tuesday, in which you informed us of your desire to make a gift to the funds of the Army of the sum of £500--being about the amount of the payments made in respect of your life policies by direction of your then Committee (1869 to 1880), we have pleasure in confirming what we then stated to you that the above-named sum will about cover the amounts paid.

We have also to acknowledge the receipt of your cheque for £500, which amount we have paid over to the Cashier at Headquarters as from, "A Friend per J. Beddow & Son."--Yours faithfully, (Signed) JOSIAH BEDDOW & SON.

 

During the years of his extreme poverty, when he was struggling to bring up his family, the committee of the Christian Mission, a body of friends interested in its work, had taken the burden of his insurance premiums off his shoulders; and one of his first acts, when his head was above water, and when he could count with fair confidence on a modest income, was to make over to the Salvation Army, quite privately, the whole sum which had been paid during those eleven years by his committee.

He lived for a number of years, as we have already seen, by the slender profits of his books; and he had refused to possess himself, as he had a perfect right to do, of the very valuable copyright of The War Cry. He received nothing from the Salvation Army at the time of Mr. Huxley's attack, and he never drew one farthing from its funds or from the profits of his book In Darkest England during the whole of his life, except for expenses. When he was in the United States, and warmer clothing than he possessed became necessary in winter, he refused to let the Army in America charge itself with this expenditure, "although his work there was bringing us in thousands of dollars." And at every one of his meetings in whatever country he might be, he always contributed to the offertory out of his own purse. No man controlling enormous funds was ever more nice and scrupulous in his handling of public money. No man, we think, ever thought less of himself and more of the work for which he had sacrificed health and comfort.

We are bound at the same time to confess that the obvious dangers of autocracy were no doubt present in the Salvation Army organization from the first days of its existence. Our purpose here, since we are concerned only with the life of William Booth and not with the history of the Army, is only to express as accurately as possible his personal attitude towards this important matter.

He learned from experience, as we have already shown, that to get anything done well and swiftly, autocracy was essential. He could not suffer his work to be hindered by committees and councils. He could not stop on his road to discuss matters of casuistry or questions of finance. He was always inveighing, as we have seen, against "government by talk." He had upon his hands a work of gigantic magnitude, and after a long and grievous experience of committees, he determined in middle-age--encouraged by the most able and devoted of his followers--to make himself an autocrat. His autocracy, then, was not for personal aggrandisement, certainly not for villainy or despotic socialism, but was established solely and publicly for the sake of the righteous work to which he had set his hand. Moreover, it was an autocracy which depended absolutely on the loyalty of his followers--an autocracy which guarded itself by rules laid down for its own limitation. He never concealed his faith in the principle of autocracy. At a crowded meeting of business men in Edinburgh, after he had explained his scheme and his methods, a small, fussy, and somewhat aggressive member of the audience tackled him on the subject of his despotic control of the Army, talking till everybody was wearied, and demanding as he went along, "Don't you think two heads are better than one?" Before he could go on, the General rapped out, "It depends on the heads!" At which the audience laughed with a good understanding. "I am determined," he wrote to a correspondent in 1877, "that Evangelists in this Mission must hold my views and work on my lines." This was his position from the beginning to the end.

 

There are risks in every great undertaking, and William Booth confronted the public with the avowal that he and he alone was in this sense master of the Salvation Army, thus stating without apology or equivocation the risk incurred by the public in contributing to his funds. Moreover he believed that he could so select and so train his successor that the same character which had founded the Army would be transmitted to future generations, and the risk of malversation in 1920 or 1999 be no greater than it was in 1890.

A man so enormously employed, and struggling to impress his will upon thousands of Soldiers, some of whom, many of whom, had been but lately rescued from suffering and sin, would have been a god if he had not made mistakes. William Booth was occasionally impatient, irritable, masterful; but he was never really irascible. He sometimes blurted out his feelings of the moment without weighing his words and without looking ahead. He trusted some of his followers too frankly. He censured others, perhaps, too hastily. But, on the whole, his wise handling of this most difficult force is abundantly proved--it cannot possibly need to be argued--by the affectionate devotion, extraordinary in its character, which inspired the lives of thousands of intelligent men and women who obeyed his orders in nearly every country of the world.

Is it to be supposed that the Salvation Army was free of domestic troubles? Is it to be assumed that because most of its Soldiers were satisfied and happy some were not mutinous and discontented? From the beginning of his career to the end, William Booth was constantly embroiled in troubles of this domestic nature. One Officer was jealous, another was lazy, another was stupid, another was conceited and insolent; occasionally, an Officer either confessed to, or was discovered in, some act which compromised the honour of the Flag. William Booth, we make bold to claim, handled these besetting difficulties with great humaneness and with considerable wisdom. His mistakes caused him infinitely more suffering and sorrow than they caused other people. He was always on the side of mercy, and would forgive and forgive again a disloyal, even a traitorous, follower, until it was a scandal to retain his services. "My father used to say to me," says Bramwell Booth, who at that time, conscious of the Army's watchful enemies, was perhaps a stricter disciplinarian than William Booth, "whenever, for the good name of the Army, I wanted summarily to dismiss a bad Officer, 'Bramwell, you must not judge a man in that out-of-hand fashion. How do you know the force of the temptation to which he succumbed? Don't you see, some men are more tempted by a woman or by money than others? The temptation is greater, fiercer. It sweeps them off their feet. It draws them down like a whirlpool. And perhaps they repent afterwards, as the less-tempted man never repents.'" He forgave one or two Officers over and over again. He never once dismissed the least of his Soldiers without sorrow and regret.

There is no doubt that at times he was rough in manner, and on occasions could be rude and harsh; but a kindly and assuaging humour was never far behind the most vigorous of his upbraidings. Commissioner Kitching, on one occasion, at that time a newly-appointed Major, made a mistake of some kind in the business of the Army, and went to report this matter to his General. "What fool made you a Major?" demanded the old man. The answer was given with a smile, "Your son, General." And in a moment William Booth was laughing with a rich pleasure.

We shall have to say something in another chapter about the family defections which in after years came as the crown of his sorrows. But we would observe at this point that while the autocracy of William Booth might be swayed, somewhat unduly perhaps, by family affection, love for his children could not bend it against the interests of the Army. He did undoubtedly appoint his children to important offices at an age when some of them had not given adequate proof of administrative ability; but when they questioned an order he dealt firmly with them, and when they refused to obey an order he let them go. I can discover no single instance in which he used his autocracy to favour himself or his children against the rules and regulations laid down by himself for the welfare of the Army.

 

A few pages from his diary afford an idea of one class of difficulty which confronted him:

Talked to Herbert and Bramwell about the troubles that seem to be coming on us thick and fast. Majors ---- and ---- have both resigned. Their pretext is that Herbert's government is too autocratic. The real reason is that ---- feels we have not received him with the same confidence and affection since he came back from ---- where he proved himself to be totally incompetent for his post. And I think that ----'s reason for going is because he thinks we have lost confidence in him by changing his position to that of an Evangelist to visit the Corps. And moreover, it turns out now that both of them had been engaged by Mr. ---- to go to ---- and push his paper and do some sort of Revival Work amongst the Reformed Episcopal Churches, for which they have both been ordained in this country by some "shoddy" Bishop.

---- and ---- are neither of them quite happy yet. Two or three more Officers also are not right. The new regime is rather too exacting.

The appointment of Herbert a few months ago as Commissioner of Great Britain and bringing in of his Staff has been a difficulty with some of the older Officers.

Major ----, a young man of considerable energy and a very objectionable abruptness, has made himself a reputation for harshness, which is, I think, very unjustified; still it is there. And this, together with two or three mistakes, have certainly created some preiudice in the minds of worthy Officers against Herbert's management ....

Then the vile falsehoods that have been so industriously circulated by ---- concerning him, have produced some sort of effect even where they have not been believed, so that the notion that the government was going to be one of a hard, machine-like character, has got abroad and been fastened upon, especially by some who have not wanted to work by order and regulation.

Concerning the dissatisfaction which necessarily existed at certain times, and which is to be found, we suppose, in all organizations, clerical or commercial, where numbers of men are struggling to distinguish themselves, the General is perfectly frank and open, perfectly honest and straightforward. He never hid these things. His printed and published addresses are now and again full of references to domestic concerns of this character. He was for ever teaching his Soldiers to lose themselves, with every trivial or tragical feeling of self, in the work of love and charity. Not only this, his diaries show that he confronted every Officer with a grievance, real or imaginary, and offered to do everything lawful and just within his power to secure a perfect understanding:

 

. . . Much harassed by rumours of dissatisfaction amongst Staff Officers. All manner of things in the air.

Suspicion seems to reign. No Officer seems to know whether his next door Officer is not going to bolt, and yet no one can give me any intelligent reason for dissatisfaction! Some mysterious cause for it.

. . . I cleared the atmosphere a little by referring to the recent desertions, and saying that if any one knew of any case of injustice or hardship of any serious character, if they would bring it to my notice I would have it investigated; or if any one had suffered any hardship or injustice, no matter where it was, how long ago, or where they had gone to, I would seek them out on the Prairies of Canada or anywhere else, acknowledge the wrong and rectify it as far as I could . . .Nobody answered. I said also, if any one had anything of this kind let them write to me. I keep on saying this, but nobody writes.

 

If this man was an autocrat, clearly he did not use his autocracy like a tyrant. He may not have been a complaisant and obliging autocrat, but there is no evidence that he ever once acted as a despot, harassed and exasperated as he was at times by these rather petty grievances of some of his followers:

 

Things still very perplexing. Major ---- is gone out like a "roaring bull," threatening what he will do, although it will be difficult for him to assign any cause for his separation from us except his own violent, ungoverned temper.

There is still the appearance of a considerable amount of dissatisfaction in some of the Staff Officers, any real cause for which we are just as puzzled as ever to define. It expresses itself, so far as it says anything intelligibly, as dissatisfaction with the Executive in the management of the Field Officers. Major ----, Major---- and two or three other Officers, who have to do with the Intelligence Department and the Commandant are the main objects of attack. They are said to be hard, wanting to reduce the whole concern to a sort of machine in order to grind all the labour that is possible out of them .... When they talk about injustice, and we ask for instances, they have none to give, or if they do adduce any and we enquire into the facts all appearance of even severity vanishes. Then they fall back upon some mere vague generalities.

 

We cannot fail to observe in these extracts, and in all the letters we have published above, a spirit of genuine kindness and reasonable consideration. William Booth hated mutiny because it hampered the work, because it fed the hostile mind of his enemies with exaggerated rumours, and because he was eminently a practical and kind-hearted man. Irritated by having to stop for such petty business in the midst of his tremendous activities, he did nevertheless stop again and again, and, with patience and sympathy in the majority of cases, seek to smooth the ruffled feathers of self-esteem. The worship, amounting almost to adoration, with which thousands of his followers regarded him, and which particularly distinguished the loyalty of his most able and efficient Officers--this and the standing fact of the Army's coherent growth and corporate prosperity, make it impossible for any intelligent person to believe either that William Booth was a despot or that the Army groaned under his autocracy.

A letter, typical of many which came to me unsolicited during the writing of this biography, expresses, we believe, the normal feeling of Salvation Army Officers for their General. The writer says: "If you think any of the incidents will help you to illustrate why his Officers loved him and were willing to carry out his instructions, you are welcome to use what you like."

 

The infidel rowdies of Bradlaugh's town (Northampton) in 1887 vowed they would kill the General. A public welcome and a procession from the Railway Station had been arranged by our Leaders.

I was a Cadet (in training for Officership) and playing in the Band just behind the carriage. Outside the station we were set upon, our instruments smashed by sticks, belts, etc. Along the whole march we were assaulted with sticks, belts, fists, knives (shoemakers' paring knives). They flung soot, flour, eggs (ancient and modern), the old General being the centre of these attacks.

It was his undaunted courage that won my admiration. In the midst of that storm he would persist in standing up in the carriage, shouting out (as Salvationists got knocked down) "Help that man up"; "Get that woman into a shop," etc. Had he sat down, few of the missiles would have touched him. There was no driving down a side street or putting up the hood. He was a Leader. I was delighted.

I heard some of the Officers urge him to sit down. He would not.

His thoughtfulness for his Officers endeared him to us. I was a young Staff Officer and had been made responsible to meet him at Basingstoke and take him and his Staff to a billet. When they arrived it was pouring with rain. The General and three Staff Officers got into the carriage. He then said to me, "Where is your overcoat?" I replied, "At Brighton, General." He then said, "What's the good of that? you will get wet through if you ride outside; get in and sit on Lawley's knees, he is big enough to hold you." I might mention many others, but those little thoughtful acts are remembered.

I had a carriage waiting outside his billet to run him to the Station. He heard my voice in the Hall and said, "Come upstairs and bring a light, I have lost my Wedding Ring, and I will not leave the house until I find it, if I miss a dozen trains." It had slipped off while wiping his hands. Shall never forget his pleasure when I found it and handed it back to him.

He had a keen sense of humour and he took a little "rise" out of me once when riding with him from his billet to Portsmouth Town Hall.

He had not been very well overnight and I asked him "if he had had a good night." He said, "No! They gave me one of those wretched India-rubber Water-bottles and the thing leaked. I had to call my Secretary to come and remake my bed." I replied, "I am very sorry, General." With a twinkle in his eye he replied, "No, you are not! that is only a saying." I turned my head to have a grin, and when I looked round again I saw the old General was enjoying the fun at my expense.

I do not know if you are aware the old General had quite a habit of sending a "tip" to the drivers of the engines when travelling. He thought "The man who had the care of your life was more worthy of a 'tip' than the man who only cared for your luggage."

 

The following noble letter addressed in February, 1891, to the Editor of The Times by Sir Squire Bancroft shows that there were those whose instinctive faith in William Booth's honesty could not be shaken by criticism, however able, of Salvation Army methods:

As it was by your leave that in November last--prompted by no other feeling but pity for the very poor, and quite on the spur of the moment--I made an offer to help "General" Booth's scheme; and as the sum of £100,000, which was required to start it, has either been promised or subscribed--although not in the way I ventured to suggest--I ask you to let me further say, that those who have communicated with me, and whom I have consulted upon the subject, have, with myself, withdrawn their condition as to 99 others giving the same amount, and have either sent, or now will send, the money they promised to the fund.

Whether the scheme is Utopian, or whether it is destined to achieve part of its great object, I would I had skill enough to decide; but I can at least meet those alike who most harshly judge it and those who look most hopefully towards it on what I trust must still be common ground, and wish it all success.--

Yours, etc. S.B. BANCROFT

 

William Booth had asked for £100,000. His book was published in October, 1890, and by February in the following year he had received £108,000. In spite of this, criticism continued, and the General was denounced either as a merciless autocrat or an autocrat none too nice in his conduct of public money.

But Mr. Huxley's mind, influenced temperamentally against the emotionalism and the noisiness of the Salvation Army in its early days, was prepared and fertile soil for any seeds of criticism or calumny which might be sown there by the deserter's hand. We do not mean that he was intentionally unjust, or that his wits went wool-gathering when the "backslider" wrote him a letter or the deserter sent him a pamphlet; nor do we mean that some of the strictures which came to him in the course of his crusade were not without truth and justice; but we hold that his mind was decisively prejudiced, and that he gave to every fragment of secret tattle which reached him in this way a magnitude of importance which not one of them deserved, even the most sincere and just, and all of which, when weighed in truthful scales against the character and devotion of William Booth and against the world-wide progress of the Salvation Army, become utterly unworthy of a moment's doubt or anxiety.

Mr. Huxley was typical of many Englishmen, and his vituperative attacks hardened the hearts of a considerable body of people, who not only withheld their support from the Darkest England Scheme, but went about spreading the very wicked and evil rumour which Mr. Huxley more than any other man had fostered, that the Booths were unscrupulous rogues and impudent impostors.

General Booth's autocracy, which was essential to his work, cost him dear. For the greater part of his life he was a suspected man, and even to this day there are people who shake their heads over his management of the Salvation Army finances. "Half a word, ladies and gents," said a park orator, jumping on a wooden box to collect an audience from the dispersion of another orator's crowd; "half a word about that ole 'umbug, General Booth." And he got an audience. In his extreme old age William Booth enjoyed, but if the truth must be told with a rather ironical amusement, a world-wide popularity, never, we think, earned by any other man. But he passed, it may truthfully be said, the greater part of his life, a life of amazing labour and selfless devotion, in an atmosphere of mistrust. Hostility and malevolence always confronted him. Is it any wonder that out of the anguish of his heart he said of his wife, standing at her grave, "She suffered more in her lifetime through her compassion for poor dumb animals than some doctors of divinity suffer for the wide, wide world of sinning, sorrowing mortals"?

We do not assert that this unfortunate and oppressive situation was no fault of his; we can see very clearly that he conducted his propaganda and his business in a fashion likely enough, however necessary for his purpose, to create in some minds suspicion and dislike; but our point is that William Booth regarded autocracy as an essential of work, and that in spite of some mistakes he used that despotic power throughout his career in the best interests of the people he sought to serve. There certainly could not have been a world-wide Salvation Army if the machinery set up by William Booth had been controlled by conferences and committees. There certainly could not have been in 1914 a successful organization of the British peoples in the great struggle with the Central Powers if autocracy had not taken the place of "government by talk."

 

CHAPTER XII

AT THE THRESHOLD OF A NEW PHASE

1891-1892

 

WITH the death of Catherine Booth and the publication of In Darkest England, William Booth entered upon a new phase of his career. His autocracy was sensibly modified, and his interest in social reform as sensibly increased. Accustomed to lean upon Mrs. Booth, whose influence was exercised almost entirely in the spiritual sphere, William Booth had never deeply felt the need of counsellors and captains to share his burden of supremacy. But with the death of Mrs. Booth, and the sudden opening of a new door on the frontiers of social service, William Booth was inclined to call others to his side, and was disposed to consider an entirely new policy. He had arrived at "four roads and no signpost."

From 1890 to 1898, that is to say from his sixty-first to his sixty-ninth year, this astonishing man was at the height of his powers. Till 1890 he had been a fervent and passionate preacher of the changed heart, but a preacher harassed by poverty, opposed by enemies, and often involved in doubts and uncertainties. After 1907 or 1908 he was a beautiful and patriarchal figure, a genial, gracious, amiable, and endearing old man, only on occasion a mighty captain of salvation, or a vigorous legislator in the modern struggle of social reform. We shall see that after 1898, before, that is, he had reached the patriarchal stage, he began, if not to lose faith in the efficacy of social reforms, at least to question whether he had done wisely in throwing so much of his energy into this tremendous struggle. But from 1891 to 1898, although insisting from time to time upon the first importance of purely spiritual work, he was unquestionably heart and soul in the Salvation Army's magnificent effort to solve the social riddles of modern industrialism--that effort which is perhaps the most striking monument to his life. Mrs. Booth's death, after so long and trying an illness, released his energies from a sad restraint even while he was momentarily stunned by her loss. He threw himself into the agitation concerning In Darkest England, threw himself still more energetically into the work of establishing his scheme, and in a few months had so overworked and exhausted himself that it was imperative to send him away from England on a long journey.

Thus began, early in 1891, those wider world-travels of William Booth, which were to make so picturesque an effect in almost every country under the sun, which were to endear him to so many nations, and which were to continue to the end of his life, in 1912. But these earlier travels were not by any means chiefly picturesque. William Booth set out on his travels with a compulsive desire in his mind to fire the enthusiasm of the world for his new adventure. He visited Germany, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and India. In the following year he visited Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland. With the one exception of 1905, he travelled every year of his life, visiting nearly every country in the world; and the immense enthusiasm, the extraordinary pageants which marked the later and more spectacular travels, were the fruit of the earlier journeys, particularly the journeys of 1891-1898, when he was consumed with a burning sympathy for the poor and suffering, and was on fire with enthusiasm for his social scheme.

We shall not attempt to follow him in any of his travels, but the reader will perhaps be able to form some idea of the toil and success of those many journeys from the following extracts taken either from his letters or his diaries---extracts chosen, of course, not to furnish an account of his travels, but to show the mind and character of the traveller:

 

We must have some more spiritual work up and down the country.

We stayed at Hamburg at an Hotel--had precious little comfort--could not get enough to eat--yet they managed to make a good bill!

It seems a long time not to have a sign or a sound from you. You might have raised a wire yesterday to say how you were. I cannot help feeling anxious about Eva's teeth, and as to whether there have been any more earthquakes, or blizzards, or waterspouts, or typhoons, or cyclones from The Times or any other quarter .... I long after you continually and mourn that I am away from England just now. Surely God will take care of you all, and continue unto us the blessings we have so largely enjoyed up to now .... I would have liked one line from you. You need not say much but just a word or two of love. I have felt much and tenderly about you--and still feel as though I must come to you all right away.

I am only very down to-day. I don't improve; and feel terribly under my work, altho' when I get at it, I have remarkable freedom and power. But nothing seems to cheer me as in the past .... I feel as though I must come away home to-night, and yet if I was in London I don't suppose I should feel any better. This accommodation is wretched. Think of a Training Home with only wood partitions. They will make getting on for £100 out of me, and yet could not take me a couple of rooms where I could get a little quiet and sleep. Oh dear!!

Do stop ---- sending out foolish instructions about my food. Here everybody has raisins and I know not what--I never touch them. Why can't he ask me before he sends messages about my eating and drinking--as if I was so fanciful.

I must feel very different in my spirits before I can write any more books. The intervals of my meetings are often awful. I must get something for my nerves, if possible.

The papers, so far, have been most friendly here (Copenhagen), none more so than the Socialist Organ. To-night I am on "Darkest England" . . . every ticket has been sold already. This afternoon I am with Count Moltke to dine and drawingroom [meeting]. My visit has made an enormous advance for our people in Norway and Sweden, but I think here the benefit will be far greater. Going to Australia in my present state of mind seems simply impossible. I want to get home now. Why Brussels? or even Paris?

If I succeed after the same fashion or anything approaching it at Berlin, I shall certainly think I ought to do the other capitals of Europe, whether I am able or not.

 

His successful meetings in Berlin, where numbers were turned away every night from the doors, were interrupted by the bad news that his daughter Emma, Mrs. Booth-Tucker, was returning from India very seriously ill. He writes to Bramwell, on the eve of an all-night railway journey which must be made, "with this dreadful sorrow tugging at my heart-strings." He insists that he must go to Emma at Cannes, and exclaims: "Surely God will spare us the horror of losing her." This letter concludes:

I shall blame myself for trusting her to India. No rest--poor thing, after all that struggle and heart agony over Mamma. Oh, God help us!

 

He comes home and is taken ill--an illness which developed into dysentery. He writes to Bramwell:

Metcalfe is here. He says I am very low--I must have great care--which they always do--mustn't do any mental work--which I shall. He orders me fish--can you bring a bit?--they say it is cheap. Eva might like a bit to-morrow.

 

Cured of dysentery he is struck down a little later with influenza, caught, he says, by sleeping in damp beds and fireless rooms while campaigning. He insists that he must have proper rooms, and says that he will pay for them out of his own pocket, "altho' there is not much in it."

He makes a long journey to comfort his sick daughter in Cannes, and on one occasion writes in an excusably bad mood of foreign vexations:

 

---- brought us some chicken that stunk, so we had to throw it out of the window--some stale bread and butter I could not eat--some dry raisins two seasons old, and some rotten oranges.

 

But his letters are chiefly full of schemes for the future, and when he goes back to his meetings in Germany next month he sends Bramwell all manner of ideas; such, for instance, as a method for the manufacture of cheap, non-phosphorous matches, and the possibility of establishing a tea-plantation in Ceylon.

But ever and anon everything on earth sinks into insignificance before the urgent necessity of spiritual surrender:

 

I have been telling the Officers that without the heart right and possessed of the Holy Spirit all is vain. It came with great power. It went to my own heart. The rest of my days, many or few, I will spend teaching and by His grace exemplifying the truth.

 

But he has moments when he is overwhelmed by his solitude: "I feel awfully alone."

In a letter to Bramwell, written from South Africa, he sends this affectionate son and Chief of the Staff a child's kiss, marked by a cross. Always behind the fault-finding and truth-dealing public hero there is the heart of the old man almost pathetic in its hunger for love and its thirst for sympathy.

We find an interesting reference in one of these South African letters to a psychological experience:

 

I am trying to send something for All the World,[One of the Salvation Army's magazines.] and have outlined it, but cannot make it fit, and have not darling Mamma to help me round the corner, nor you, so I have stuck.

. . . I think the Tour will do me good nervously .... I had a shadowy, strange feeling for months gone--as tho' I were not myself--as tho' my real self had gone out of me. I cannot describe, but I think I am coming back again to my old self.

 

From Australia he writes approvingly of a member of his staff:

---- looks after me personally, and would, I believe, eat anybody he thought likely to incommode me. The way he looks at the babies that squall in the meetings is something to be remembered!

Rumours reach him that a rich and most friendly supporter of the Army is criticizing his scheme, and he sends Bramwell this humorous message from Colombo:

If Mr. Richard Cory is not satisfied, tell him that on good information I hold him to be an arrant humbug! Put it a bit milder than that.

The following letter written from Bombay at this time will give the reader some idea of the immensity of the General's labours when on his world tours, as well as of the welcomes with which he was acclaimed:

 

BOMBAY,

January 16, 1892.

I broke off at the beginning of my Calcutta Campaign as above, not having had a moment's space to resume. Never had I such a crush of engagements before, and it was really all I could possibly do to keep pace with them, and that I only did to some extent in a poorish way.

The detail of them I must leave to another day.

I may say, however, that Calcutta in interest exceeded anything I have seen since I left England. From the rush of welcome at the railway-station at six in the morning, to the pack who came to say farewell (in which the papers say there were 3,000 people), it was one series of surprises. Although the Town Hall Meeting was stiff, and the Europeans were conspicuous by their absence, still there was sufficient indication of the high esteem in which the Army was held in general, and myself in particular, to make it a matter of great interest and encouragement.

Of the welcomes that followed from individuals of note, such as Mr. Bannerjee and Mr. Bhose (representing the Brahmo Samaj); and the successor to Chunder Sen, Mr. Chuckervetty, the lay reader of the Yogal Samaj, His Highness the Maharajah Sir Joteendro Mohun, of Tanjore, one of the most princely men of the city; the Nawab Abdool Luteef, the most distinguished leader of the Mohammedans, etc.; and of the several missionaries who came up, all was really complimentary and respectful--nay, affectionate.

Then there were the crowds, perhaps the greatest in the Emerald Theatre, in which there must have been nearly 3,000 people, inside and out, listening through the doorways. It was certainly the most remarkable audience I ever addressed. Exclusively native. I only saw one white face in the crowd beyond our own people. Nothing more hearty could have been conceived. Then came Meeting upon Meeting; but the Circus on Sunday night outdid almost anything, in some respects, that I have ever witnessed in my life. It came upon me quite by surprise. The hour fixed was the same as the churches, and it had been predicted that we should not get an audience. It was right away outside the city, in a park in the swellest part of the suburbs. Consequently, it was not at all attractive to the native, who doesn't like to get outside his own quarter.

The Emerald Theatre had been a great success because it was in the midst of his quarter; the Europeans would not come there, and now it was fair to assume that the native would not come to the European centre.

As to any attendance of English people, that was hardly to be expected. They had cold-shouldered me at the Town Hall, the Lieutenant-Governor had even refused to see one of our Officers when she called, although he had the reputation of being a Christian man. The Viceroy had been civil to me--he could not have been otherwise; in fact, he verged on friendliness before we parted--but that was all. His Military Secretary had been as stiff as military etiquette could possibly make him. There seemed to be, therefore, nothing much to expect as to audience from them.

Then I was tired out--a more wearying morning and afternoon I had seldom experienced--and I bargained in my own mind, and even mentioned it to Ajeet Singh, that if there was not much of an audience I should leave them to bear the brunt of the burden.

As we drove up the appearance of things seemed to confirm my anticipations. Everything was silent. They had been afraid of the roaring of the wild beasts disturbing the Meetings, but there was not a growl to be heard, nor a carriage to be seen, not even a pedestrian. It is true we were at the back part of the Circus.

Hoe came to meet us, however, at the gates, and when asked about the audience very coolly announced, to our amazement, that they were full. Without any delay, therefore, I mounted the platform, and the sight that met me certainly was sufficiently surprising to be actually bewildering. They say the place seated 3,500; it appeared to be full. It was a simple circle, with a ring set in the centre. At one end was a little platform seating myself and my Staff, opposite me was the entrance for the horses, which was packed by the crowd, while on the remaining space, circle upon circle, tier upon tier, the audience was to be seen. On the right hand we had row after row of Queen's soldiers in their red jackets, lower down the Eurasian and middle-class Europeans, with a few natives. In the centre we had a very fair proportion of the elite of Calcutta: there was the Lieut.-Governor, the Chief Commissioner of Police, the Consuls of America and two or three other countries, some great native swells, ladies bespangled with jewellery and finery, while on the left was one mass of dark faces reaching right up to the canvas sky. It was the most picturesque audience I ever addressed, to say the least of it.

Our singing of "Grace is flowing like a river" was very weak; still everybody listened, nobody more so than the swell Europeans.

The solo, "On Calvary," was sung with good effect, and then I rose to do my best. The opportunity put new life into me. I was announced to speak on "The Religion of Humanity," but this did not seem to me to be the hour for argument of any description; there was no time for dissertation. I felt I must have something that went straight to the point. I had been talking to these Brahmo Samaj and other people upon Social Work, alluring them on afterwards by indirect arguments long enough. Now I felt that I must go as straight to the point as it was possible to do. So I took "What must I do with Jesus?" and made it fit into "The Religion of Humanity" as best I could.

I never hit out straighter in my life, and was never listened to with more breathless attention--except for a few natives in the top seats, who would go out, I guessed, because they did not know the language, and came perhaps expecting I should be translated, and after sitting an hour felt that was enough. However, they soon cleared out, the audience taking no notice of the process.

Once done, however, a general movement took place; a Prayer-Meeting was impossible. We retired feeling that a victory had been gained so far.

I cannot stop here to speak of the Meeting at which the Brahmo Samaj presented me with an Address of Welcome the next day.

All I know is, that nothing surprised me more than to hear some of the priests and laymen declare that they had gone with me in every word I had said the night before.

Other Meetings followed, interviews, visits to the houses of the leading natives, and with blessings without stint poured upon my head, and hand-shaking that almost threatened to lame me, the train tore me away from the packed platform, and I left Calcutta with unfeigned regret.

I stayed a night at Benares, and had the Town Hall crowded, with a leading Hindu in the chair. Quiet Meeting. Landed here (Bombay) six this morning with a hearty welcome, and, I think, with the promise of good Meetings, although anything equal to Calcutta is not to be expected; and the news of the death of the Prince has come in our way, the news of which we have only just received.

 

Many of the letters are full of social work. He announces that he is negotiating for land for immigrants into South Africa and Australia, and sends Bramwell suggestions for the manufacture of a certain kind of bricks, of coffee, and non-alcoholic beer. Mixed up with these schemes are references to Lucy, Emma, and Eva, who are ill. He sends very tender and anxious messages concerning Eva. Lucy, he says, is to go to South Africa to recuperate; but his orders are not obeyed, and he threatens the Chief of the Staff, telling him that he must produce very good reasons when the General returns.

He speaks of his magnificent receptions, his enthusiastic meetings, and the friendliness of the various Governments.

One of Bramwell Booth's letters to his father, written on September 21, 1891, contains an interesting prophecy by William Stead concerning Mrs. Annie Besant:

I had a nice talk with him (Stead) yesterday. He is deeply interested in the reports of your movements. He hopes you were able to make a good impression on Rhodes, about whom he is very anxious. The present attitude of Mrs. Besant towards Buddhism, etc., and towards what are called "Spiritual Phenomena" is interesting Stead very much. He thinks she will become a Christian. Anyway, she now says man has a soul, and unless you change it from bad to good you do nothing for him whatever else you do.

 

The journal of the General for this year is not very illuminating, but every now and then one comes across an entry which shows the state of his mind, or is characteristic of his temperament:

 

. . . at the close of the meeting (Frankfort) I was rushed off in a cab by some young fellow to see his mother, who wished me to introduce some kind of coffee which is used in a limited way in Germany, and which she thought would be a great boon to the poor people of England. She received me in her own chamber--she suffered from some kind of head complaint, and in the most friendly manner at once proceeded to unfold the great advantages of this beverage--simple, cheap, refreshing, almost as tasty as the ordinary coffee, without any of its injurious properties. They gave me a cup to taste, and I certainly was very pleased with its resemblance to the genuine stuff, and brought away a pound or two as a sample, and probably will enquire into it.

At 9 we were on board a magnificent boat steaming up the Rhine. I have often heard that people talk in raptures, and have read poetic and no small amount of prose rhapsody on the picturesque scenery of this world-famed river. I suppose it is very beautiful, but I cannot say that I was particularly carried away with it. I don't know whether anything of the kind, however striking, would have impressed me, seeing that my head was full of other things.

 

I understood that the Army in N. Wales was in a low condition--dying out. However, these people looked not only alive but shouted like it also--they were a noisy crew. The wife of a Wesleyan Minister said to me next morning that she did enjoy herself at the meeting, it was like being near a red-hot furnace.

 

Of his daughter, who is suffering from a bad abscess in the shoulder, threatened with "something like Mamma's," he writes:

What a mystery this depression is that creeps over one whether or no. As a family we are all terrible sufferers in this direction. What a martyr dear Mamma was to it, and some of the children, perhaps all, suffer in the same direction, and I have thought I have done more so than any of them. John Wesley boasts, as well he may, of his equable disposition in this respect. What a boon it must have been to him .... We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made. The greatest earthly mystery is the human heart. Mine is past finding out--that is, by me. I am glad there is One who knows its every thought and every feeling--and who loves it too. I must trust Him with it--with dear, darling Lucy too. Oh God help me!

However is it that I cannot shake the terrible lowness from my heart? I think, nay, I am sure, I am feeling my loss, my loneliness more to-day than 6 months ago, a great deal. Darling, darling Mamma, what would I give to have you with me to-night; and yet I could not, would not, had I the power to do so, fetch you back from your blessed home to share my lot in this world of sorrow and strife. No! my Lord, Thy will be done. My heart says so altho' it bleeds to say it.

Dear Bramwell is very tender to me--so are all my precious children, but alas! their tenderness and sympathy cannot comfort my poor solitary heart.

 

After an extraordinary hard week he is conscious of elation and good health:

 

I could only explain it on the theory of the terrible spiritual conflict and temptation and harassment with which nearly every great effort I make is preceded, and the nervous rebound which is the result of the consciousness that the work is done, and done fairly well.

 

There is an entry on July 16, when in Canada, which, besides offering amusement, shows that the Salvation Army was making friends among the powerful classes:

 

The Earl of Aberdeen had written me, saying that the Countess would like to call and say good-bye before I left, and this afternoon it was arranged. He brought her and left her, having to go to some other appointment. She is very tall, and what would be termed a fine-looking woman, I suppose. She was exceedingly kind, quite affectionate, manifested considerable interest in the work, which we talked over, in some of its aspects. On my making the remark to her that it was impossible to understand our Social Operations without a personal knowledge of the Army, she said that some of them knew more about it than we thought; that she had often been to our meetings, and mixed with our people.

His journal for 1892 is still full of his great schemes, and only now and then do we find personal references or meditative asides which help us to understand his character or to obtain glimpses of his private life:

Only a little dinner, but suffered out of all proportion. Oh this eating is bound to kill me; and yet I must eat, I suppose.

All who are interested in helping the poor, and they are very very few, are concerned to do it in some other way.

Lord Radstock has seen, I expect, a statement I made to the representative of Dalziel in an interview that I was in a corner for money, etc. He wired me yesterday that he was in deep sympathy with me and had a plan to help me of which he was writing. A letter has arrived to-day from him repeating his expressions of sympathy; with respect to assistance, he simply says that he and other Xtians would be willing to help me on two conditions:

1. The recognition by me of other Xtians in their service, and the recognition that there is one common cause, the cause of Christ, that He is the Head and His own Word the guide.

2. That if there is to be co-operation of Xtians, there must necessarily be consultation and agreement for the conduct of our Commonwealth.

If there is agreement on these views as the basis of a conference, he proposes one. The first, I am not aware but that I have adhered to and acted upon all through my career--the latter I am foggy about. I am willing to have God for my Head and His Word for my guide, but I should certainly object to accept Lord Radstock and his word in the same relations.

Referring to the custom of inviting people to meet him at his billets:

Oh how I hate this fashionable usage of Society, and oh how weak and useless is the chatter that goes on generally. I cannot think why people come to meet me. In many cases they don't appear to be desirous in the slightest degree to receive information, to say nothing about instruction, from me, neither do they seem to have any to impart--but they just sit and eat and chatter, and then, with a few empty compliments, depart.

To-morrow commences Self-Denial week. It looks very much like a sad one to me--but indeed a large number of my weeks are sad ones indeed. If my heart is not depressed with disappointment in men and measures, if I am not cast down with the innumerable cares of these enterprises, I am perplexed as to which course should be taken on questions that appear to be of insuperable importance to the Kingdom of God and the well-being of mankind. However, I must struggle on.

 

Worked, or tried to work, till very near morning. Brain stupid or weary or something. Perhaps it is on the principle that all work and no play, et cetera. I certainly do seem to be very nearly always doing or attempting it--and I am sure I am dull enough.

. . . it is only too evident that there is some truth in the remark of a Critic in one of the Reviews, that "The Country is tired of Mr. Booth"; so I must let the Country rest, and go on as well as I can without it.

 

On Christmas Day, 1892, at the end of this the second year of his widowerhood, he writes:

All [The Chief, Mrs. Bramwell Booth. and their children.] coming in to dine at 5 and spend the evening. Even this jars on my feelings; I would rather be alone, but I think that she would like me to have them together. We have been wonderfully together as a family for many, many years--only one or two absent on Christmas Day, and now we are very much scattered. Darling Emma and Lucy in India, Katie in France, and Ballington in the States. I have no doubt they will be thinking very tenderly about me. Sympathy is very precious. But after all there are some sorrows that it cannot very well get at.

 

During part of 1892-93, leaving the organization of the Darkest England Scheme very largely in the hands of his Chief of Staff, William Booth visited India, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland, and held a number of very important meetings up and down the British Isles. He was now a world figure, and though a certain section of the public might be "tired of Mr. Booth," it is quite certain that throughout the world he was becoming recognized as a man who had discovered one of the great secrets of life. He was no longer the outcast revivalist of Whitechapel, but the head of an international organization which had set itself to handle some of the most painful and troublesome difficulties which beset the path of the legislator. In this way, we find him not only welcomed, and rapturously welcomed, by masses of people in every city he entered, but everywhere cordially and respectfully entertained by men seriously attentive to the social dangers which were threatening civilization.

 

CHAPTER XIII

POPULARITY OF THE GENERAL, AND THE SPIRIT OF THE ARMY

1892

 

POPULARITY in its widest sense came to William Booth early in the 'nineties, and it came, unquestionably, from the instinctive feeling of the public that here was a man--whatever the expression of his religion might mean--who deeply felt for the outcasts of society and seriously sought to save them from misery.

Other men laboured at that time as earnestly in this heart-breaking region of human service as William Booth; but no one so dramatically caught the attention of the public or so convinced multitudes of people, usually indifferent to religion, that he possessed the secret which would change a condition of things everywhere acknowledged to be a scandal and disgrace to civilization.

It will be worth our while to consider what was the quality in William Booth which distinguished him from other reformers of the time; and in making this attempt we need not interrupt our narrative to any violent extent, since the quotations we intend to make from his writings were mainly inspired by his Darkest England Scheme, and are particularly characteristic of his work as a social reformer. We shall find from these quotations that the foundation of his popularity was the intense and profound earnestness of his love for unhappy people--a love which came home to the dullest man in the street and to the most selfish man of the world, because William Booth sacrificed every convention of society and every restraint common among average people in order to make this love, this "cosmic patriotism" a planetary power in the affairs of men. He cared nothing what men might say of him. He was indifferent to custom and usage. In comparison with the work of saving souls every canon of society appeared in his eyes as the trivial and pitiful etiquette of a child's doll's house. He wore a red jersey; he called himself a General; he marched through the streets behind a brass-band, waving an umbrella; and at every conceivable point he sacrificed his own comfort, his own peace of mind, his own domestic happiness, in order to make this centre of his life, love for humanity, the pivot of social existence.

At its outset the Salvation Army was the triumph of a personality; and that personality made its impression upon a formal, mechanical, and materialistic generation by the force of the love which inspired its existence. William Booth not only loved mankind, but he believed in love as the sole energy of progress. The late Professor William James seized upon this fact as the centre of Salvation Army activity. "General Booth," he says," . . . considers that the vital step in saving outcasts consists in making them feel that some decent human being cares enough for them to take an interest in the question whether they are to rise or sink." Goethe long ago had said that if we would improve a man we should make him believe that we already think him that which we desire to make him. But William Booth went deeper when he demanded not merely the affectation of sympathy, but a real love, and that for the lowest and most abandoned.

It will be seen from the quotations which follow how the emphasis of William Booth, in his instructions to his Officers, was always on this necessity for love. And it will be further seen that the love of which he was so vigorously mindful and heartful was neither the sentimental love of religious rhetoric, nor the impersonal, wistful, and praying love of the religious mystic, but the practical, active, seeking, and individual love which goes not only into the highways and by-ways of human existence, but into the swamps, the morasses, and the uttermost depths of depravity and suffering in its "passion for souls."

 

We think that nothing written by William Booth, except his letters, is so true a key to his character as the book from which the following quotations are made, a book not known outside the official circles of the Salvation Army, but over which he spent himself with infinitely more care and enthusiasm than marked his work In Darkest England. This book is entitled Orders and Regulations for Field Officers, and it expresses the mind of the General on almost every conceivable question of conduct, discipline, and belief concerning the Salvation Army. "My father," says Bramwell Booth, "was really less an organizer than a legislator; he was a whole legislature in himself. He laid down the law in every detail, thinking of everything, and left others to organize the machine. I think he gave more attention to the Orders and Regulations for Field Officers than to anything else he wrote. His anxiety was to compile in that book a set of regulations which would perpetuate the Salvation Army, and preserve it from the mistakes and confusions which have befallen so many other societies in the religious sphere. In that book you have the General's spirit, and the spirit which animates the Salvation Army."

Our quotations are taken from various parts of this informing book, and while our main object has been to choose such passages as reveal William Booth's insistence on the need for affection and sympathy in religious ministration, we have also chosen passages which seem to us characteristic of his practical nature and his extreme care for the most trivial details:

 

It must always be remembered by the F.O.[Field Officer] and by every one who is desirous of producing any great moral or spiritual changes in men, that the example of the individuals attempting this task will be much more powerful than the doctrines they set forth, or any particular methods they adopt for teaching those doctrines, however impressive these may be.

The same shot, with the same charge of gunpowder, from a rifled cannon will produce ten times a greater effect than from one with a smooth bore. The make of the gun gives the extra force to the shot. Just in the same way, the truth from the lips of one man whom his hearers believe to be holy and true, will strike with a hundred-fold more force than the same message will from another who has not so commended himself. The character of the man gives the extra force to the truth.

The F.O. must have been converted or changed by the power of the Holy Spirit from the old, worldly, selfish, sinful nature; and not only must he thus have received a new heart, but he must have the Holy Spirit living in that heart, possessing it, and working through it, to will and to do the good pleasure of God.

The F.O. who does not feel the perilous condition of the men and women about him, will not impress them with the tremendous meaning of his message. They will measure the extent of their danger by his anxiety. If he does not care, neither will they. If he is moved, they will be moved. If he weeps over them, they will be very likely to weep over themselves. There is nothing more certain than that the F.O. who is not concerned whether men are saved or damned, will accomplish little or nothing. Nowhere, perhaps, in the universe is a heart of stone--that is, a heart that is not tender and full of feeling--more out of place than in the breast of an F.O. in the Salvation Army. If he is earnest about success, the shortest way to win it will be to get the stony heart taken away, and to obtain a heart of flesh in its place. This done, he and everybody about him will soon see the change--and feel it too.

We have been talking to men about their souls for upwards of forty years, and we have had some opportunities of observing others who have been similarly engaged. Of nothing has our experience made us more certain than of the comparative uselessness of all soul-saving talk or effort which is not the outcome of a compassionate heart.

No matter how an Officer may exert himself in public or private, no matter how he may plead or weep, if his tears and words are not the expression of feelings which exist in his soul, their real character will be perceived by those who listen to him, and they will be of little or no avail.

If an Officer shuts himself up in his house, reading a few dried-up books or committing Mr. Somebody's speeches and anecdotes to memory to spout to the people his heart will grow colder and colder, and no wonder.

 

Instead of this, let him go out into the streets and lanes and slums, and listen to the tramp of the multitudes as they march down to the gates of Hell. Let him hear them cursing and swearing, and calling upon Jehovah to damn their bodies and souls and families and comrades. Let him listen as they jibe and sneer and flout the very name of God, and defy Him with uplifted eyes and hands. Then let him consider how miserably small is the minority of those who are on the side of the King--and how powerless, humanly speaking, the latter are in comparison. He will then be likely to consider the condition of the world--at the very headquarters of Christianity--to be awful. His soul will be moved whether he will or no; and he will go to work in dead earnest to alter things.

Success, however, as a rule, has a tendency to damage Officers by making them proud, and so injuring their usefulness. We have known Officers who, while fighting against great difficulties, with few friends, little money, and not many souls, have kept a simple and beautiful character and grown in grace and in favour with God and men. And we have known the same Officers, when suddenly launched on a tide of success, with money, souls, and the good wishes and approbation of the multitude, lose their humility, their love for sinners, and their power with God, and so, shorn of their spiritual strength, we have seen them become as weak and powerless for good as other men.

The F.O. in his general demeanour, both in private and in public, should have an earnest yet cheerful manner. He should be himself and not some one else; he must not imitate or mimic the manner of any one. Let him be natural, neither better nor worse than he is. To appear worse would be a pity and a shame. To appear better would be a pretence and a deception. Let him be himself.

At the same time the F.O. must beware of buffoonery and silly laughing, joking, giggling, flirting, and the like, such things being a huge folly and an outrage on his office and profession, and a standing impediment to the souls about him in the way which leads to the Kingdom of Heaven.

The F.O. should be himself influenced by his work. If the War, with all its solemnity, importance, and consequences, has its full influence upon his heart, it will make its mark upon his countenance and upon his every movement; this influence will be on him when he walks abroad, when he visits the people, when he sings and prays and talks, when he is alone or in company, wherever he may be, or whatever he may be doing.

 

There are elaborate instructions concerning health, diet, and clothing. We give a few characteristic illustrations of the General's Orders concerning cleanliness and modesty in apparel. The Field Officer, he says, should keep himself clean, with hands and face frequently washed, teeth brushed, finger-nails pared, and hair tidily cut, so presenting altogether a neat and decent appearance. If cleanliness is not next to godliness it is not very far away.

Worldly ornaments, such as light gloves, frillings, fur on collars, capes or jackets, rings (except the wedding ring) must be abandoned.

Ear-rings or hoops of every description are prohibited. The popular belief that they are beneficial to the eyes is a delusion. There is no possible connection betwixt rings in the ears and the condition of the eyes. Anyway, whatever view is held, Officers must not wear them. Gold and silver chains, or chains having the appearance of gold and silver, lockets, or ornaments of the same class, are strictly forbidden for either male or female Officers. The same applies to worldly ornaments or ornaments of every kind, even including articles such as brooches made of silver or fancy material, and bearing the name of the Army, or some good motto. If the F.Os trick themselves out in any degree, however trifling, the vanity will be observed by the Soldiers, who will feel that when Officers, subject to regulations, thus indulge in finery to a small extent, they show that they would indulge in it wholesale if they were free. This applies also to ornamental ways of doing the hair, such as frizzings, crimpings, fringes, or tufts let down over the forehead. Female Officers must not cut their hair, or part it, so as to resemble men; and men must not part their hair so as to resemble women.

 

The following passages are significant of the General's theology:

 

Nothing is more clearly revealed in the Bible, or better known by Salvationists, than that the world is in rebellion against God; that the majority of men defy His authority, have little or no regard for His laws, and do not in any form attempt to order their conduct according to His wishes; in short, that they neither love nor fear Him. Of the truth of this painful indictment the F.O. can find ample evidence in almost every street in which he moves, and in almost every house that he enters.

The F.O. must see that men, as rebels, are condemned to die by the law they have broken. Every intelligent transgressor of the Divine law is of necessity under its condemnation, the decree of Heaven being that, unless forgiven, "The soul that sinneth it shall die."

As a consequence of this rebellion, the F.O. sees misery everywhere. Sin means poverty, toil, suffering, affliction, cruelty, blasphemy, murder, war, death, and damnation. God has joined sin and suffering together in this world, as well as in the world to come.

The F.O. should realize that men are perpetually perishing; that every moment of his life, when he wakes and when he sleeps, some soul somewhere passes into eternity.

He should see that those who reject God's mercy are driven away in their wickedness--driven down to Hell. At death probation ends, the day of mercy closes, and there is no hope for evermore.

The F.O. must perceive that in all this misery men apart from God are totally unable to help themselves, that they get worse rather than better; that, unless deliverance is obtained from without, they must perish.

The F.O. should set apart a fixed time to read and think and pray about this state of things. He should do this, until he realizes it vividly in his soul, and until all his nature is possessed of the true conception of the awful condition, suffering, and danger of these millions of never-dying souls. The world will then appear to him to be full of people living in red-handed rebellion against their Maker; who are, in consequence, condemned criminals before Him: and that, as a result, multitudes of men are living in indescribable sufferings, are dying every moment without hope, and passing away to still further wretchedness and wrath in the world to come.

There must be no bitterness in his heart, in his words, or in his manner. He must not scold. If the people think he is angry with them, they will feel like answering him back, or justifying themselves: whereas, if they can see that while knowing how wrong they are, and feeling it, he is full of pitying tenderness towards them, they will melt down before him, condemn themselves, acknowledge their sin, and seek mercy.

. . . His condemnation will be modified, and his heart will rise up and plead on their behalf, if he remembers

(a) That sinners only act out their depraved nature; they are what their dispositions make them.

(b) That multitudes follow the example set before them from their babyhood; they have seen nothing else around them--father, mother, brothers, sisters, companions, all bad and devilish, and always so.

(c) That many of them have been not only actually born in iniquity, but bred up and trained in it as their natural condition of life.

(d) That many are totally ignorant of the evil nature of sin and of the love of God.

(e) That all are more or less possessed of the Devil, who drives them about at his good pleasure.

The recollection of these things will make the F.O. pity sinners, and impel him to do all he can to rescue them.

Compassion will prevent that stuck-up-ism and professionalism and unnatural, canting way of talking, which is so abominated by sinners in general. While sinners hate the whining talk which only comes from the tongue, they respect anything like conviction and reality in religion, and as a rule will be prepared to give it a favourable hearing; and when they can see that people are really concerned about them, there are very few people who will not listen and be moved, if nothing more. Love is a wonderful conqueror--compassion is eloquence. Words without it, no matter how clever or numerous, are only words; they may scratch the skin, but it is very seldom they prick the heart.

The first and most important duty of the F.O. with regard to his Soldiers is to love them. No matter what other qualifications he may possess, unless he has this one he will be comparatively powerless in dealing with his Corps. He may give his goods to feed them, if he has any to give; he might allow his body to be burned for their benefit, if that were possible; he might talk like Gabriel, so as to charm them in spite of themselves; he might work miracles before their eyes; he might heal their sick and do many wonderful things on their behalf; but unless he loves them, and makes them feel that he does so, he will be in their estimation as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. They will regard him as a mere hireling, and will look upon all his efforts as only so much work done to gain a livelihood or a position, and in consequence will have as little communication with him as they can help.

The royal and only way for the F.O. to make his Soldiers love others is for him to love them. The living waters of love that flow from him to his Soldiers will flow from them to others. Here is a stream--a life-giving stream--that neither men nor devils can dry up.

This invincible method of securing victory is possible to every Officer alike. All cannot equally solo, or speak eloquently, or invent new plans; but all can love. Love is a gift that grows with its exercise. The more an Officer loves, the more ability he has to love. Let every Officer prove the truth of this sentiment by putting it to practice.

The F.O. must love the unfaithful and wayward Soldiers of his Corps in order to get them put right. He must love them for Christ's sake. The Spirit of the Master within him will make him pity them, and strive to remove what is wrong in them, and to bring them up to that level of devotion and service on which he himself stands.

 

Under the heading "Roughs, Toughs, or Larrikins" we find the following instructions which reveal, with the rich humanity of William Booth, his sense of humour:

 

In all the large towns and cities of Great Britain, and even in the smaller places and villages, there are large numbers of young men belonging to the lowest orders of Society who are known by the general term of "roughs." In Australia they have named the same class "larrikins" and in the United States they pass by the name of "hoodlums" or "toughs."

A large portion of this class have no regular employment; they don't work if they can help it, and are therefore ever ready for fighting, riot, or any other mischief, and should there come, as any day there may, some great revolutionary upheaval of Society, these and multitudes of others equally godless and profane, whom they would drag along with them, will be ready and able to make serious trouble to Society.

Over this class, in the Protestant nations at least, the ministers of religion exercise little or no control or influence.

From this set has come nearly all the mob persecution. The Army has had to suffer in Great Britain and in other countries. They haunt the low public-houses or saloons and brothels and gambling dens, and consequently are very much under the influence of those parties who are interested in the maintenance of vice, and who, perceiving readily how antagonistic the principles of the Army are to their vicious and devilish purposes, burn with hatred against it, and find in this demoralized part of the community the ready tools and agents to carry out their designs.

Now an F.O. will see at a glance that the only hope for these roughs is in the Army. If they are not saved by its agency, there is no other that pretends in any shape or form to be able to touch them. Everywhere they are willing, as a rule, to come to our Halls, and every Sabbath tens of thousands of them are there. They listen to our message, sing our songs, accompany our processions, and in many cases are guardians of order for us in the open air: and, better still, numbers of them have become converted and become Soldiers in the Army, some of whom are now highly valued and very useful Officers.

Still, our success among this class has come far short of what it ought to have been. In many cases they have been driven from the Army in the most foolish, we might say wicked, manner: and where they might have been in our ranks in thousands, they now stand aloof, and if they don't persecute they secretly despise us, putting us down as being no more in sympathy with them than other Christians who, with a few professions of regret, pass them by on the other side.

Now, if these heathens, who are anyway as worthy of our notice as the Hindoos or the Africans, are not to be left to perish, our F. Os must seriously turn their attention to them, and learn to adapt themselves and their measures to the important task of saving them. We have not to cross the seas at great expense, and go to the trouble of learning another language, to get at them. There they are, speaking our mother tongue, in any numbers close to our doors. We have only to cross the streets to lay our hands upon them. They have hearts: they can be won, and once saved, they make splendid Soldiers, full of spirit and daring, ready to face any danger and endure any hardship.

 

HOW NOT TO REACH THEM

To Officers who do not want to reach and save these roughs, we give the following counsels:

I. Don't go where they are; keep out of those neighbourhoods where they live. Act as though there were no such people. Leave them to harden in sin, sink lower in vice and crime, and to go to Hell without being disturbed on the way thither. You will then in time, perhaps, come to lose sight of them and to question their very existence, as some other people do.

2. Don't let them come where you are, if you can help it. Have Door-keepers who will keep them out of your Halls, or throw them down the stairs if they do come in, because they don't behave like ladies and gentlemen.

3. If they do come near you, don't talk to them in a language they can understand. Adapt your praying and singing and talking to the Church and Chapel and nice people; and there being nothing the roughs can understand or that interests them, they will soon cease to trouble you with their vulgar presence.

4. Make it evident that you look down upon them as an inferior class of people. Dress and talk and pray all above their notions, as though you belonged to a superior class. There is nothing they hate like stuck-up lady-and-gentlemanism.

5. Treat them as people who are never likely to become religious.

6. Scold them plenty. Be like the Judgment Day to them. Let them only see one side of the character of God, and that the angry side. In short, be just the reverse of what Jesus Christ was, who came not to condemn, but to save.

7. Be impatient with any little irregularities they may manifest. That is, if they keep their hats on, or speak to one another in the meeting, as they do at their places of amusement, lose your temper over it. Or, still worse, let a Door-keeper strike them, or use violence in keeping them out, or patronize and encourage Sergeants who do all this, and the roughs will never trouble overmuch, indeed they will soon find out that you do not love them, and then they will most certainly trouble you no more.

8. Threaten them a great deal and fail to perform your threats, and they will mark it down and reckon you up as not being true to your word, and despise and trifle with you ever after. Or if you don't do this, have plenty of law against them. Always be running for the police, getting out summonses, making them pay fines, or sending them to prison--in short, hate them where you should love them, drive them where you should draw them, and make their damnation more certain and terrible because of your appearing on the scenes, rather than be the means of making their calling and Salvation sure.

If you want to save the roughs, just go and do the opposite of all this.

 

These various quotations, we think, are helpful, among other and greater things, in explaining the popularity of William Booth. They manifest the hunger and thirst of his soul for the two great principles of human conduct--sincerity and love. His methods, which were spontaneous and entirely natural, although they attracted in the first instance, were in truth hindrances to his subsequent progress; but in spite of the grave impediments they created in his way, causing many just people to regard him as a fanatic, and many careless to dismiss him as a mountebank, he won, as no other man of his time succeeded in winning, the confidence of the world and the love of the poor. It is a curious and very remarkable fact of the Salvation Army that among its most liberal subscribers have been men who made no religious profession at all, or men of quite different religions. William Booth certainly succeeded in convincing the world, and a section of the world most difficult to convince about anything, that he was an honest man, doing with considerable success a work that entitled him not only to public assistance but to national gratitude.

 

CHAPTER XIV

SOCIAL REFORMS AND FAMILY DIFFERENCES

1892-1893

 

PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S attack upon William Booth, the Salvation Army, and the Darkest England Scheme made but a small impression upon the General, who had, it seems, less compassion and sympathy for an infidel than for any other creature. His pronunciation of this term was in itself a whole volume. "Huxley's an infidel," he would say; and then, lifting his eyebrows, "how can he possibly understand us?" On opening The Times during this period, he would ask, "Well, what is there this morning? I'm a culprit! What have I done now? What's the latest crime and felony I've committed?" And at his ever-growing Meetings, for the interest in him and his work was now enormous, if any one suggested that he should reply to Huxley, his invariable response was--"Don't answer criticisms. Let's have a good Meeting." It was a saying with him--"The thing you are doing is the great thing--not the commotion: never mind the commotion, go on with the work." We find in Orders and Regulations for Field Officers the following instructions regarding contact with agnostics:

 

In dealing with infidels, or any other unbelievers, the F.O. should not argue--It is his business to convert him, and not to refute him-- In dealing with infidels the F.O. should find out the points wherein they agree with him . . . and should push these points home. For instance, he can dwell on the consciousness of sin existing in the heart of every unsaved man . . . the awful power which sinful habit has over men . . . the miseries which sin produces in this life.

 

"My father," says Bramwell Booth, "had by this time become almost callously indifferent to outside criticism, but he was, on the other hand, very sensitive to the criticism of those whom he took into his inner council. He welcomed that criticism. A constant phrase of his in asking my own opinion of his schemes and proposals was, 'Don't be partial.' He used to say that the Salvation Army was not a mutual admiration society, but rather a school for self-criticism. He never heedlessly rushed anything forward, but always thought, and thought hard, before he acted. I don't say his cogitations always appeared to me to prove successful. For instance, as compared with his scheme for Colonies Overseas, I preferred paternal emigration on a large scale, and this has become a successful part of our work; but the General, while approving the emigration, stuck tenaciously to his idea, and never ceased to regret its disappearance from the Darkest England Scheme. To the end of his life he was worried by the loss of the projected Colonies Overseas."

At the side of the General in the early years of his widowerhood were three of his children, Bramwell, Emma, and Herbert, and these three surrounding their father were ready to die for him. They faced the world with the utmost enthusiasm for the Salvation Army. They were part of the General's inner council: they were privy to all his schemes; they were in their own measure his critics and guardians as well as his devoted children and his loyal followers. Ballington Booth was in the United States, Catherine with her husband on the Continent, Eva in Canada, and Lucy in India. These children were as dear to the General as the others, but they did not so intimately share the higher responsibilities of the Army.

Troubles developed in the year 1892. The first of these was in the sphere of doctrine. One of his children was caught by an extreme view of Faith-Healing. The General was by no means unsympathetic to this interesting question, as may be seen in Orders and Regulations, but he had neither time nor disposition for mystical speculations. Moreover, he was expending every ounce of his energy on a worldwide effort on behalf of the submerged. "I can't bother with spasms," he used to say; "I want things that can be done again, that can be fitted in with what's going on already." Thus there was trouble behind the scenes, serious difference of opinion, though the family presented one front to the world.

Later on these troubles widened, and were intensified by graver difficulties in the sphere of discipline. "I can't have doctrinal differences interfering with the work," said the General; "go and keep the Regulations, and save the people; keep your difficulties to yourselves." But when serious divergence from Orders supervened on these differences of opinion, the General was adamant. "There are worse things than suffering," he said; "one must go on; at all costs one must go on." In his journal for 1893 he writes of one of his daughters and her husband:

 

We parted very affectionately. They appear very sorry for the previous misunderstandings and promise very fairly for the future. I have made them understand that they must conform to Orders and Regulations as other Officers, that I am General first and Father afterwards.

 

But as the years went on, these promises were not realized; and between 1898 and 1901 three of his children left him and went their own way. He suffered acutely and hoped for reconciliation, but reconciliation never came. No doubt much might be said on both sides of this subject; but the main position of William Booth seems to me unassailable, since it was the position of one rooted in loyalty at every cost to what he conceived to be the highest duty of his life. His children had of their own free choice become Officers in the Army. He was now the "General first and Father afterwards."

In this sad and regrettable incident of his life, there is at least one aspect which helps the outsider to respect all parties. The children of William Booth who left the Salvation Army--not one of them, we may be sure, without pain and sorrow--remained, and still remain, workers in the cause of religion. Such was the training and influence of their father's life that they could not desert the person of Him whose service he and their mother had laid upon them in childhood; and such were their dispositions that no difference of opinion, no rupture of affectionate relationship, could cast them out of the field of self-sacrifice and service for others. William Booth lost three of his children; but in reality they were still his followers.

We do not propose to refer to this domestic difficulty again, and we have purposely only glanced at it in this place because we feel, first, that the matter did not prove to be of great importance; and, second, because those chiefly concerned are still alive. But before leaving the subject we must say that, while we admire William Booth for his loyalty to his faith and to the discipline of the Salvation Army, we cannot fail to regret that he did not succeed in his efforts to discover a path to reconciliation.

On the other hand, a man between sixty and seventy years of age, engaged in a work of universal and eternal importance, may perhaps be pardoned if he did not turn aside from his labours to seek middle-aged children who had departed from his spirit, and in one way or another disputed his authority. And the more we consider the prodigious labours of this man, carrying as he was the sorrows and sufferings of an immense host of humanity, the more readily we shall be disposed, if not to forgive him for any apparent lack of tenderness, at least to understand his impatience with anything which appeared to him likely to hinder the work of his life on the part of those for whom he had, as he conceived, and as they acknowledged, given so many proofs of a boundless confidence and affection. We will, therefore, turn away from these domestic disturbances and return to the social labours which occupied William Booth in the 'nineties.

A sufficient sum of money was subscribed to the Darkest England Scheme within four months of its promulgation. Bramwell Booth and his Staff immediately set to work on the labour of materializing his father's schemes. Food Depots and Shelters, Rescue Homes and Labour Bureaux, were set up in the great industrial centres, a farm was purchased in Essex, and the entire Social Wing of the Army, with Shelters for Women and Prison-gate Brigade, and a Slum Sisterhood, was re-organized. But a sum of £30,000 a year was necessary to sustain this immense activity, and the criticisms of Professor Huxley, the persistent attacks of The Times newspaper, and the scurrilous pamphlets issued by "backsliders" and others, checked the flow of annual subscriptions.

[By September, 1892, £129,288:12:6 was subscribed to the Fund. (Report of the Committee of Inquiry, p. 6.)]

It was very generally believed, as the Salvation Army itself expressed the matter, that "part of the money has been expended on his (William Booth's) personal aggrandizement or advantage, and that, in particular, money contributed for the Darkest England Fund has been used to defray the cost of demonstrations at home or in the Colonies." Further, there was doubt as to "the accuracy and completeness of the published Accounts and Balance-Sheets." And finally, there was question "as to whether the whole of the Darkest England Fund has been expended upon the objects of the scheme . . . as distinguished from the ordinary operations of the Salvation Army."

In order "to satisfy all sincere persons, and in the hope of removing these doubts and of correcting misrepresentations, General Booth has invited an examination by a Committee of Inquiry on the points referred to."

This Committee, of which Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James of Hereford) was chairman, consisted of Lord Onslow, Mr. Sydney Buxton, M.P. (who resigned on account of a domestic bereavement), Mr. Walter Long, Mr. Edwin Waterhouse, President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, and Mr. C. Hobhouse, M.P., who acted as Hon. Secretary of the Committee. Eighteen meetings of the Committee were held, twenty-nine witnesses were examined, and the Committee "received the fullest assistance from and the complete co-operation of the Officers of the Salvation Army." Further, we are told in the Report, "The Committee have afforded full opportunity to those who have preferred charges against, or have adversely criticized, the administration of the 'Darkest England' funds and institutions, to appear and give evidence before the Committee."

 

The matters investigated were summarized by the Committee in the following form:

 

1. Have the moneys collected by means of the Appeal made to the public in In Darkest England and the Way Out been devoted to the objects and expended in the methods set out in that Appeal, and to and in no other?

2. Have the methods employed in the expenditure of such moneys been, and are they, of a business-like, economical, and prudent character, and have the accounts of such expenditure been kept in a proper and clear manner?

3. Is the property, both real and personal, and are the moneys resulting from the above Appeal now so vested that they cannot be applied to any purposes other than those set out in In Darkest England, and what safeguards exist to prevent the misapplication of such property and money, either now or after the death of Mr. Booth?

 

It will be interesting before giving the conclusions to which the Committee came on the 19th December, 1892--subsequently published as the "Report of the Committee of Inquiry upon the Darkest England Scheme"--to quote a few passages from a Memorandum issued by the Salvation Army for the information of this Committee:

 

During the 27 years the Army has been in existence the General has not drawn any income from its funds; nor has he derived, nor arranged to derive, either for himself or for any member of his family, any material profit or benefit from the working of the Social Scheme.

He has set aside the entire profits of his book In Darkest England, amounting to £7,838, for the benefit of the Funds. The particular manner in which these profits are to be appropriated has not as yet been decided upon. Still the money will be used for the benefit of the Army Funds and will be accounted for accordingly.

It can be shown that the system of Accounts and Finance followed in the Army is such as makes it impossible for the General or any Officer whatever to draw any money from the Funds without the same being vouched for in a business-like manner and being duly entered in the accounts. All payments have to be passed by a regularly appointed Expenditure Board. This rule applies to both the Spiritual and Social sides of the Army.

Of the accuracy of these statements, the Auditors and Accountants, together with the Books and Balance-Sheets of the Army, will be alike open to the examination of the Committee.

The General's express instructions have been that the accounts shall be kept in a complete, elaborate, and thoroughly businesslike manner.

To ensure this object, the General has entrusted a firm of Auditors of high standing in the City, Messrs. Knox, Burbidge, Cropper & Co., 16 Finsbury Circus, E.G., with absolute control over the Accounts and Balance-Sheets of both the Spiritual and Social sides of the Army, giving them to understand that he holds them responsible not only for all necessary accuracy in bookkeeping, but for the issue of such Balance-Sheets as are required by the Public.

No money has been spent on Demonstrations, Special Steamers, Special Trains, or anything of that description, as has been represented. The expenses involved in the General's African, Australasian, and Indian Tours did not in any way fall on the "Darkest England" Funds, although that scheme profited by that Tour in the way of income. The financial responsibilities of those Tours were taken by the Spiritual side of the Army, the result being an actual gain after all expenses of every description were paid.

Neither have any of the moneys contributed to the Social Scheme been used for the support or extension of the Spiritual side of the Army, such as the erection of Barracks, payment of Officers, etc., as has also been asserted.

At the onset the General executed a Deed, in which he bound himself and his Successors to the appropriation of the Social moneys to the purposes for which they were contributed.

The provisions of that Deed have been strictly adhered to in this as in other respects, of which the Books will give ample evidence. So rigidly is this rule observed that even the Corps on the Farm Colony, composed as it is so largely of the Officers, Colonists, and Employees on the estate, voluntarily supports its own Spiritual Officers and pays a rental of £50 for the use of their Barracks, which, considering that the building only cost £650, may be regarded as good interest on the outlay.

 

This statement, ex parte in its origin, was strictly in accordance with the facts, and after careful investigation the Committee of Inquiry supported the contention of the Salvation Army and disposed of the allegations of its enemies. The Committee found:

 

1. That, with the exception of the sums expended on the "Barracks" at Hadleigh (rented by the Spiritual Wing from the Social Wing of the Salvation Army), mentioned in the earlier part of the Report, the funds collected by means of the Appeal made to the public in In Darkest England and the Way Out, have been devoted only to the objects and expended in the methods set out in that Appeal, and to and in no others.

2. That, subject to the qualifications expressed in the preceding portion of this Report, arising from the difficulty of forming an opinion at so early a stage in the existence of some of the institutions, it appears that the methods employed in the expenditure of such moneys have been and are of a business-like, economical, and prudent character.

3. That the accounts of such expenditure have been and are kept in a proper and clear manner.

4. That, whilst the invested property, real and personal, resulting from such Appeal is so vested and controlled by the Trust of the Deed of January 30, 1891, that any application of it to purposes other than those declared in the Deed by any "General" of the Salvation Army would amount to a breach of trust, and would subject him to the proceedings of a civil or criminal character, before mentioned in the Report, adequate legal safeguards do not at present exist to prevent the misapplication of such property.

 

The disgraceful insinuations concerning the personal integrity of William Booth which had crept into criticisms of the Darkest England Scheme, made even by such men as Professor Huxley, were met by the following statement in the Committee's Report:

 

In examining the accounts, the Committee were careful to inquire whether any portion of the travelling expenses of the members of the Salvation Army had been borne by the Darkest England Fund, and whether Mr. Booth or any of his family have drawn any sums for their personal use therefrom. No such expenditure appears to have been incurred. There is no reason to think that Mr. Booth or any member of his family derive, or ever have derived, benefit of any kind from any of the properties or money raised for the Darkest England Scheme. Some members of Mr. Booth's family draw salaries from the Spiritual Wing of the Salvation Army and a list was put in from which it appears that Mr. Booth himself has received nothing from either side of the Salvation Army. He has a small income partly settled on him by a personal friend and partly derived from the sale of his literary works, the amount and nature of which he explained to the Committee, and which seemed to them commensurate with the maintenance of his personal establishment.

 

In spite of this Report, minds of the baser order continued to nurse the slander that William Booth was a rogue and a charlatan. Charles Bradlaugh, it is said, at the very hour of his death continued to repeat the phrase, "General Booth's accounts, General Booth's accounts!" over the hope of an exposure. But, on the whole, it may be said that faith in the honesty of William Booth was now general throughout the country, established, we are disposed to think, more by the ardour with which the Salvation Army continued to throw itself into the work of moral and social reform than by the finding of the Committee of Inquiry.

It is important to know that at the time when William Booth set himself to solve the social problem the very poor of East London, far from being neglected, were in danger of being submerged by the wasteful excesses of sentimental charity. It was to systematize charity, and to make charity masculine, practical, and scientific, that William Booth threw himself into the work. He saw that in spite of free lodgings, free meals, gifts of clothing, and gifts of money, there was no moral and religious progress. He believed that religious progress tarried because sentimental charity tended to intervene between the chastisement of God and the repentance of the sinner. His scheme was not to give and not to relieve, but to rescue, revive, and rebuild. Indeed, he gave up, years before, an annual sum of £500, given to him for the provision of free breakfasts, because he was entirely convinced of the destructive, or at any rate the dangerous, nature of such charity. His principle was to love the souls of men, to spare no sacrifice in the work of turning the hearts of the foolish, and certainly to lift up at all hazards the fallen cab-horses of humanity; but as regarded the bodies and minds of men his principle was to test their worth, to prove their genuineness, not by religious catechism but in the workshop and the field. He hated all coddling. He abhorred grandmotherliness in all its manifestations. He was the enemy of every form of softness.

It was a charge against him, repeatedly and exultingly brought by his enemies, that he underpaid his Officers and condemned them to lives of inordinate hard labour. The fact was, that William Booth believed in poverty, and feared riches. Moreover, he knew of no better test for the sincerity of religious professions than the school of poverty and the field of absolute self-abnegation. So hot was he against humbug and cant and mere lipservice, that he made it one of his glories that those who followed him followed him in poverty, and often in distress. I have encountered in the slums of great cities many humble Soldiers of the working-classes, those who toil for the Army and give their savings for its support, who consider that the secret of their General's success was this very demand for poverty and labour.

It may be imagined that immense difficulties confronted William Booth in reducing sentimental charity to a practical system of regeneration. So great were those difficulties and so absorbing the attention they demanded, that for three years he was almost obsessed by the machinery of his scheme. He became more and more a social reformer, and for the moment rather less of a religious revivalist. The stubbornness and obstinacy of his nature took control of his energies; he determined that at all costs his much-vaunted and much-derided scheme should be established and should succeed. His letters and diaries are much occupied by this great adventure. And we may see in the fact that practically every one of his proposals, with the exception of the Oversea Colony, is now an integral part of the Salvation Army's Social Work, evidence that he not only laboured industriously and with great faith and enthusiasm, but that his labour triumphed. Against every difficulty that disputed his path, he threw the full force of his dogged and purposeful nature. His mind was made up to answer his critics not in words but in facts; and the standing accomplishment of this tremendous, most-complicated, and extremely hazardous task witnesses to the triumph of his will. It is true that but for the assistance of others this scheme might either have been botched or might have come to naught; but it is equally certain that but for the inspiration of William Booth and his incessant enthusiasm for the triumph of his idea, the scheme would never have taken any shape at all. I am not arguing that the successful organization of this particular enterprise was entirely the creation of William Booth; but I want to make it clear, for more reasons than one, that although he himself did not do all the laborious and exacting part of this work, he was nevertheless consumed by interest in its success for at least three years of his life--the three years which saw the materialization of his schemes and the successful establishment of this first venture in coherent social reform.

 

CHAPTER XV

GOING BACK TO FIRST CAUSES

1893

 

DURING the three years in which he was absorbed by the Darkest England Scheme there were moments when he found himself haunted by the call of the world evangelist; and after these three years of absorbing labour, of almost unbroken obsession, he left the business of social reform very largely in the hands of others and returned to his work as preacher of salvation.

Social reform seemed to him an important business; he acknowledged it, indeed, as a wing of Salvation Army activity; to the end of his life he was proud of the Darkest England Scheme and interested in its welfare; but from 1893-1894 onwards he himself turned more and more to the centre of his Army, and with as much ardour as in his earliest years, but with more breadth and profounder sympathy, preached the great gospel of the changed heart.

Extracts from his letters and diaries are now full of this central cause. We read but seldom of match manufactories, patent coffee, tea plantations, and colonies in Rhodesia. Instead we come across constant cries for more faith, more power to convert the world, more strength to drive his blundering forces straight at the main position of iniquity--indifference to God.

The following extracts from his correspondence for 1893 will give the reader a faithful and authentic impression of his turbulent, troubled, and yet deeply affectionate character:

. . . he never had much tenderness or tact in getting at the hearts. Heart Work is what we seem to want everywhere. HEART WORK!

. . . I love you and miss you very much .... It is foolish not to find a little more time for the practice and culture of affection--human affection--sanctified human affection. It must be of God. Anyway, I finished up as I began without any intention of doing so with the observation that what the S.A. needs is HEART WORK! HEART WORK!

I expect a good night. But--7 o'clock is too early for the town.--We don't get the working men! And we must!

But I have not learnt how to preach yet. I am much down on my work to-day. It is not straight or simple enough, and I lack the tenderness that breaks the heart.

But the stinking, unventilated hall I have been in is certainly enough to poison the devil!

If the parsons came and helped us it would be something. It is a great query whether it would not be better to try and secure the co-operation of the churches if they are to reap so largely of the results. But I suppose they would only cripple us.

We had a swell veterinary surgeon out in the morning--with great practice. Already wants to throw up and come in as an Officer. Also a parson who testified this afternoon to getting a clean heart.

I cannot see through that Anti-Liquor League Meeting at Exeter Hall. I have no heart for it. I am much exercised about mixing up in any way with those who are not for my Lord.

You cannot imagine the early Xtians going to Caesar to ask for help in rectifying the sins and miseries of the world. They said Jesus Christ was the Saviour. "None other Name."

I am going back to the faith of my early days. Not a philanthropist or a parson shook hands with me at Liverpool. Not one!!!

I do want to learn how to save souls. I feel there is yet much to learn--some secret. I know I am wanting in faith. I expect that is my weak spot.

The Holy Ghost convicting people of sin, making them saints and soldiers--sacrificing, weeping, tolling to save men from sin and hell--there is our power in a nutshell.

I am awfully alone! and I must own with some little shame that little things try me not a little. Still I am struggling to "keep believing."

 

Speaking about the Darkest England Scheme and his inability to answer critics about the results because of his ignorance of statistics, he writes to Bramwell:

You see--I don't know enough! No one will be at the trouble to teach me! Or else I won't find time to be taught. I want some one with me who won't fuss me but fix me!

This "gadding about" is not such a "pleasant Sunday afternoon" as you imagine.

We must shake the world in some way. Oh that I knew how!

I have read Mrs. Butler's letter. My dear boy, I cannot go in for any more "campaigns" against evils. My hands and heart are full enough. And, moreover, these . . . reformers of Society have no sympathy with the S.A. nor with Salvation from worldliness and sin. Our campaign is against Sin! And our great difficulties lie in the direction of a lot of professed followers of Jesus Christ who are all full of humanitarian pleasant Sunday afternoon Moodyism or the like. The Christ people who are not for a religion of deliverance from sinning are God's great enemies.

All except two or three silly students very attentive. I snubbed these fellows, and they were quiet until the middle of the Prayer-Meeting, when one of them fired off a cracker, which made a terrible row in the gallery. Our "Salvation Roughs" --as they call them--collared him and frightened him out of his wits. It didn't affect the Prayer-Meeting ....

The follies big and little of the S.A. make a perpetual marvel to me as to its survival!

I get so sad when I go away sometimes. I cannot get my bit of food. I shall have to give up the diet. And I hate Hotels of any sort!

Speak plainly to them. Tell them they must take their commands or say so! I will tell ---- as plainly to mind her own business when I see her.

. . . I am not strong enough and am too nervous now for the heavy cattle I have to deal with.

I quite agree with you about bringing expenditure and income to the same level. Thought we had done this; if not, the sooner it is done the better. You know my views about begging from the rich.

Why don't you look into things? A general oversight is what is wanted and leave a lot of the details to other people. Excuse me, but that is the one great error of your management and mine, spending our energies on details and leaving greater things to take care of themselves.

I see from a Westminster just arrived that you have had rain. I like to know something about secular affairs--that is very different to devouring 2 daily secular papers and 3 or 4 religious weeklies ....

The Victoria, another Ironclad, gone. They will continue building these "death-traps" whatever occurs. Poor fellows. I saw Tryon once. He was a fine intelligent-looking fellow.

 

Of Mrs. Bramwell Booth, whose work for the rescue of fallen women had developed in a most wonderful fashion since 1885, he writes to Bramwell, asking:

Why does she not write a book on How our girls are damned? . . . or, if she does not like swearing in her title, put it blasted, blighted, ruined, only it should be a good expletive!

 

Speaking of the bad arrangements for one campaign, posters wrong, meetings on market-days, etc.:

No room for my comet in this concern simply because there is nobody to describe my orbit.

Your letter to ---- is excellent and must do good .... I have spent the day so far over mine to ---- and a few other unimportant epistles.

Oh the time spent over these wretched misunderstandings. The Devil knows. He understands how to waste time and stop progress.

 

You can please feel perfectly safe in any intimations of affection you make to me. My objection is not to expressions of love and sympathy when they are real--perhaps few prize such terms more highly or regard them as more sacred--but I certainly do object to extravagant phrases which are not borne out by the evidences of every-day life. I know you care for me, and the knowledge of it is one of the chief human sustaining influences of my life. My love for you is more than I can tell.

 

. . . I did not write to Mr. ---- when it came to it. I hardly knew how to do it. I cannot play the toady or appear to have feelings which I do not entertain, and I hardly know what to say. I won't ask him for money, and I hardly know how otherwise to approach him. He has not answered my last and has evidently made up his mind to cut us--and he will do so until God brings him round again, or takes him home.

I am either so occupied or so weary, or sleeping or trying to sleep most of the time! Not that I am quite content that it should be so. I could welcome a little leisure--ever so little, but it seems to be denied to me. But I don't repine or complain. I go forward. I certainly would like a Comrade to travel with me . . . who understood me and my little fads--without my having to plead for every one--over and over again. John Wesley allowed himself this from the beginning, and I do think it might be allowed me.

 

I wonder how you are? How little time we have for the amenities of life. I suppose we shall have time up yonder.

Send me Tolstoi's article in New Review, with no expectation that I shall answer. Once and for all let ---- and all else know that I don't write about Jesus Christ and Salvation or anything else simply to sell people's Reviews or newspapers or anything else. I don't hold my pen and my opinions so cheap myself, if other people do.

I don't understand how it is I go so poorly at times, and no one seems to take any notice of me. They think it is Wolf! Wolf! But it is not. I wish I had a doctor whom I could talk to who would have patience with me. But what good are they? I am quite willing to endure all, only these low weak helpless fits hinder me so much.

The aside which he had uttered in 1891, "We must have some more spiritual work up and down the country," had now become the ground-swell of his soul. "We must shake the world in some way," he cries in 1893, and adds, "Oh, that I knew how!" But he knew at least the secret of Salvation Army power--"The Holy Ghost convicting people of sin, making them saints and soldiers--sacrificing, weeping, toiling to save men from sin and hell." And when he finds fault with bad arrangements or stupid excuses, when he says, "I want some one with me who won't fuss me but fix me!" he is groping his way through the temporal and material exigencies of his tempestuous career only that he may clutch the inviolable shade, only that the unconquerable hope of his soul may achieve the salvation of men.

 

CHAPTER XVI

THE LION IS INTERVIEWED BY THE LAMB

1894

 

NEVER before in its troublous history had the Salvation Army been so busy as during these years. It had now penetrated into the social field of human progress, spreading itself into many of the occupations of mankind, associating itself with the total effort of humanity, itself a part of civilization. But the soul of the old General was now concerned mainly with the one and ultimate activity which had fired his youth; he was glad to hear of victories on this wing and that, was watchful and critical of the strategy all along the Army's extended battle-front; but his attention was directed always to the centre, his determination was now set with something of a new impulse upon the conquest of sin and the conversion of mankind.

Evidence of this concentration of his soul on its original line of march is seen in the report of an interview which he gave to one of his own journalists in the year 1894, the printer's proof of which we may be perfectly certain was subjected to his improving pencil. This simple newspaper article, autobiographical in its character, is one of the most valuable documents of that period; its total omission of any reference to social reform, its ardent insistence upon the centre of Salvation Army experience, its fiery promulgation of Salvation Army teaching, not only reveal the contemporary mind of William Booth with authentic force, but help one to realize how complete at this time was his reaction from the obsessions of social reformation. It will be seen later on that the year I894, besides being a very busy one, was a year of some anxiety for the Army's social organization, but the piece of journalism which we now present to the reader with but few omissions, and those only for the sake of brevity, shows with unmistakable emphasis that his social adventure had now lost its obsessing power and that he was back again at the Penitent-Form, with powers undimmed, and his natural force unabated.

The interviewer, who we feel was of a somewhat lamblike nature and certainly of an accommodating turn of mind, begins with an account of the General's room, which is unfortunately not so intimate or informing a record as we could desire.

"On mantel, shelf, and table," he tells us, "were dispatches, documents, papers and letters relating to up-to-date engagements in the great Salvation Army campaign. Here lay a pile of statistics of miseries and woes which the Social Scheme is devised to assuage; there was a plan of campaign for Reconciliation Week; and yonder a synopsis of some book or pamphlet ready for the press. Whether at home or abroad, among princes or peasants, no one can fail to be impressed with the intense fixity of the General's purpose and the continuity of his plans and schemes to realize it. There is no swerving from the highway on which he is travelling towards his goal. There was not a vestige of a paper, a book, nor, I might add, an ornamentation which did not in some way or other point to activities present or prospective. The General lives, moves, and has his being in the smoke of this holy crusade.

"My entry on the occasion being in the nature of a surprise, I was prepared for the question: 'What brings you here?'"

"... I would like to hear," said the interviewer, "a statement from your own lips as to some of the main principles which have come now to find an embodiment in the government, practice, and operations of the Army."

We then read:

Disconnecting himself from every other topic, the General, with that vivacity which never seems to desert him, dived at once into the subject. Standing for a moment near the fireplace, with a programme of some Yorkshire meetings in his hand, he observed:

"The Salvation Army has been, is, and will be for some time to come, at least to a very great extent, the expression of my own religious convictions, experiences, and practices; it must be so of necessity.

"I stand," the General continued, "in the relation of father to my people; the children will resemble their parents. My position and my duty have made me their instructor; my teaching has been, and still is, accepted, followed, and repeated until it reaches every Soldier in the most distant Corps; I have walked before my people for the twenty-nine years the Organization has been in existence; and, loving me as they have done, and as, I am thankful to be able to say, they still do, it is natural that they should have imitated me. Therefore, if, instead of willing that it should be so, I had willed the opposite, I could not have made it otherwise. The all but universal feeling that runs through the eleven thousand of its Officers, and of the tens of thousands of its Soldiers and Recruits, is 'What does the General believe, and what does the General do?'--that will we accept, if it be consistent with the great principles laid down in the Word of God; and that will we do, if it be possible."

"That suggests what some of your critics say," I interjected "that you are creating a new order of popes."

"Yes; but the new is as different from the old as freedom from slavery. The loyalty of my Soldiers implies no mental servility, no soul-bondage. They believe in being influenced by the same Holy Spirit that influences their General, and in being led by the leader whom God shall raise up for them; and believing that God 'has raised me up to be their leader, it is their joy to accept my direction. And more still, their own experience has given them confidence in my integrity, discrimination, and judgment ....

"I do not claim, in saying this, any particular originality for all that there is of faith, organization, and activity in the Army. Far from it. My indebtedness to the glorious men and women who have gone before me is limitless, and to many of my compeers also. Others have impressed, instructed, and influenced me. The obligation under which I have been laid by my dear wife in this respect is well known. Although at the commencement of the Salvation Army, and during its early years, she was much occupied in her particular path of labour, she was my constant adviser, counsellor, and friend. I thought and felt little about the Army, and did far less respecting it, concerning which I did not first confer with her."

Pausing for a moment, and pacing the room as if he wanted to compass the whole range of some important point, special emphasis was given to what followed:

"I have learned much from my comrades, many of whom have been men and women of great ability, while others have had the advantage of more intimate and practical acquaintance with the class to which they belonged and still belong ....

"The principle of adaptation on which I have acted has led me to acquire information from every possible source as to the character and customs of the people whom I have wished to impress, and the best means of doing so. This must be so, from the composition of my own mind."

"In what particular, General?"

"My natural yearning for success is, perhaps, almost a weakness, and, together with my impatience as to the feeble progress that the Kingdom of Heaven makes in its extension in the world, notwithstanding the efforts put forth, compels me to be not only willing but delighted to discover an improved plan for accelerating the pace. I readily recognize the Mosaic character of these influences. While teaching others, others have taught me."

"But while this applies principally to your methods and the growth of the organization--does it also apply to your principles?"

"Certainly not; while we know of no finality as to method, our principles are unchangeable. And here again the Army to-day is largely an exhibition of those principles implanted in my own soul almost from the very beginning, and which have grown and strengthened up to the present hour."

"Will you kindly name some of these principles?" "Generally they may be described as few in number, simple in character, and are more or less entertained and cherished by every Soldier in the Army. Wherever that Soldier may be found, or to whatever tribe or nationality he may belong, the Salvationist is substantially the same sort of person all over the world. There are, in the Salvation framework, as it were, all those leading truths which are the common property of all orthodox Christian Communities. There is no necessity for occupying your time in enumerating them, seeing they are too well known and believed to need it."

"But you attach more importance to some than to others?" "True: the subtleties and intricacies of theological creeds we leave to those who have the time, learning, and ability to deal with them."

"And what are the main features on which you insist?" "Man must believe in the great God--the great common Father--and Jesus Christ, His Son, who died on the cross to save all men; in the Holy Ghost, who opens people's eyes to see themselves sinners, and shows them how to believe, helps them to master their selfishness in general and fight the Devil and sin. Then to these elementary truths I must add three others, on which great and constant stress is laid in almost every public meeting, namely, the Day of Judgment, a Real Place of Punishment, and a Glorious Heaven where all faithful and victorious Soldiers will enjoy unspeakable happiness in companionship with saints, angels, and God."

"But what beliefs, after these main doctrines, do you consider have had the most powerful place in your mind, and consequently had the most direct influence on the Army?"

"Well, they have many--too numerous to be dwelt upon here. But I may enumerate several which at the moment strike me as having had much to do with fashioning the form and inspiring the spirit of the Army of to-day; and I will begin with one which lies at the root of almost all our aggressive measures, namely, the division of all men into two distinct classes in their relations to God and eternity--the righteous and the wicked. I saw, or I thought I saw, this clearly enough, and that these characters answered to the two destinies of Heaven and Hell which awaited men in the next world. Nay, that the characters of men, while having much variety about them--that is, degrees of goodness or badness--were in the main as distinct here as their destinies would be there, and that one would determine the other --that is, if they would not let God save them and make them holy and good here, they must be lost hereafter; and if, on the other hand, they accepted the Salvation of God and were washed in the precious Blood of Jesus Christ, and were renewed and kept by the power of the Holy Ghost, they would be blessed for ever.

"Meanwhile, there they were, the distinctions of earth being more or less lost sight of in view of what they appeared to be in their standing before the great God Himself, and my business was clearly to persuade those who were on the wrong side to come over to God.

"I got this truth out of my own experience. I knew what I was before conversion and what I was after, and I knew also how different the one character was from the other.

"I got this truth out of my Bible. I saw it clearly stated there, and repeated over and over again, from the beginning to the end. Two classes are only recognized in the old Book--the friends and the enemies of God.

"I got this truth from observation. In relation to God I found two distinct classes or people everywhere I turned. One set did not understand me. After my conversion they could not make me out; thought me a fool. I talked a foreign language in their ears. They did not sympathize with me. Their tastes were different. My Bible, and my Meetings, and my Saviour, and my Songs had no charm for them. They hated what I loved; they loved what I hated. Men and women have appeared to me in this two-fold aspect ever since. They do to-day."

"And how far, may I ask, are these convictions shared by your followers?"

"My people universally share them," replied the General. "In fact, it determines their treatment of men. When they come up to a man they say in their hearts, 'Is this man for God or against Him?' They won't believe he is for God except he says so. They echo the words of their Master, 'He that is not for Me is against Me.'

"Another truth which took strong hold of my young heart, and which has influenced me very largely, and, through me, Salvationists everywhere, expresses itself in this wise--a change of character requires a change of nature. I saw that goodness was desirable, that it was necessary to please God, was the condition of happiness, and that without it Heaven was impossible at last. But I saw that men left to themselves could not be good. Nothing to me was plainer than this. No resolutions or religious ceremonials or pious feelings alone could make them good. They were in bondage to their lusts and appetites, to the fashions of the world and the influences of men, and no matter how they withstood them, they could not, by their own strivings, master or get away from them. I saw that like could only produce like, that the effect could not be better than the cause, that if you wanted to improve the nature of the effect you must change the character of the cause. To have sweet waters you must have the fountain sweet; in other words, that there was no hope for amendment in the man without the change of heart.

"My Bible insisted on this. I heard my Saviour say, 'Marvel not, ye must be born again'; and again, 'Except a man be converted, he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.' My own experience confirmed the same. I knew that the great change which had come over me had all come at once and had been produced by a power outside me.

"I saw it in the experience of my Converts. I was satisfied that there could be no real religious life or feeling without this internal revolution, and I have taught the same ever since."

"And what was the outside power to which you ascribed the change?"

"I saw very clearly that God was the Author of this change, and that, consequently, it was possible in the case of the very worst characters. While I knew from my own experience and observation that no human resolutions or ceremonials could effect this change, I was conscious that it was a perfectly easy task for God. Hence, I knew that all things were possible with Him. I felt no difficulty when a boy, and I have felt no difficulty since I became a man, in assuring the greatest of sinners that they can be saved from the power of their sinful habits and the condemnation of their past evil doings, and that this can be realized wherever and whatever they may be, seeing that it is God who saves."

"This accounts, perhaps, General, for your Soldiers and Officers having such confidence in offering Salvation to everybody --without knowing anything at all about their circumstances?"

"It does. Nothing is more vividly realized than this truth, and more emphatically taught by the humblest Soldier in our ranks. People wonder when they hear our ignorant Soldiers say to the vilest and worst of transgressors, 'Only come down to this Penitent-Form and you can have Salvation here and now.' This confidence is inspired, not by any virtue existing in the Penitent-Form, but by the belief in the almightiness of their Saviour, and the greater the sinner the more glory they think will be brought to His name. They know they are weak and ignorant and helpless, but their confidence rests in no wise upon any ability, goodness, experience, or knowledge they may possess. Their faith is in an Omnipotent God.

"Then the responsibility for every man for his own Salvation was in the beginning powerfully borne in upon my own mind. . . . While I saw, as I have said, the helplessness of men to save themselves, I saw at the same time that God had placed within their reach all the grace and power they needed to enable them to live a holy, useful, and happy life, and that the condemnation of those who remained unsaved, now and hereafter, would be having refused to accept that Salvation. For years I had seen the right way myself, and felt that, by God's grace, it was possible for me to walk in it, but I had refused, and was condemned for so doing. I had tried to excuse myself on the ground of my natural inclinations, peculiar circumstances, and that kind of thing, but had never succeeded in quieting my troubled conscience. When but a child I felt that I was wicked and deserved to be sent to Hell, not because I was wicked, but because I would not seek God; and, directly I did seek Him, there came upon me this wonderful power which enabled me to please Him."

"Was your experience, then, the sole ground of your belief in the responsibility of man for his own Salvation?"

"No; after my conversion I soon learned that other boys, and then men and women as well, felt the same sense of responsibility and the same condemnation for not acting upon it. My reading of the Bible, the sermons I heard, and the books I read confirmed me in this truth, and my experience of the years since then has gone to show me that I was right."

"In your early days, General, did you come into any doctrinal controversy on this subject?"

"I did, alas! I was thrown, almost at the onset of my religious career, over head and ears as it were, into the Calvinistic Controversy; but I was strengthened, perhaps, in my views of Human Responsibility as the outcome. Oh, the agony I went through in those times, over the pros and cons of the worn-out theme--worn out so far as this country is concerned anyway--of Election and Reprobation! Was God or man responsible for the sinner's damnation?--that was for a long period of my early life an absorbing question."

"But you found a way out?" was an interjection that naturally arose there.

"Yes, I got early on into the half-way house," replied the General, "maintaining that the sinner's salvation was of God, and his damnation of himself. And then ... I landed safe and sound in the simple truth, that a man must have power to accept or reject mercy. If he accepted it he would be saved, though all the devils in Hell and all the men on earth opposed; while if he rejected it, he would perish, whoever should strive to prevent it; and whether saved or lost, his destiny will be made to work out the glory of God and the good of the universe. I rested there. I was satisfied."

"And you have made this a cardinal plan of your public utterances since?"

"Most certainly--I have preached it to my people in all lands, and they have received it. They believe it, and it has gone out into the heart and life of every true Salvationist, serving as a sharp stimulus to his warfare, making him feel that not only is every man responsible for his own salvation, but that, somehow or other, he, the Salvationist, is very nearly responsible for the salvation of every man that comes within the range of his influence, and if not actually responsible for it, he has something to do with it."

"Is there not, in the Army, a remarkable and definite notion, everywhere prevalent, that salvation comes directly and immediately from God?"

"Yes; it is a truth which has had a powerful influence upon moulding the Army. Reconciliation with God is a definite transaction, occurring at a given time between the soul and God, on the simple conditions of repentance and faith. That is how I looked at it in my own first experience of divine things. I felt that I was a sinner, deserving only the displeasure of my Lord. I went to Him and asked Him to forgive me. He made me understand clearly that I must heartily repent, renounce my sinful ways, and make restitution wherein I had wronged others; and that on my doing this He would accept me.

"I fought against these terms for a time; tried to make a compromise; failed, and grew more miserable every day. I then gave in, went down flat before Him, and did what He insisted upon. He forgave me, and fired my heart with joy. I went to God--not to the Church, nor to the Bible, nor to my feelings, but to Himself--and I have ever since been sending people who have desired mercy to the same Source ....

"The whole plan is scriptural. The Bible is full of it. It is rational; we have sinned against Him, and what is more likely than that we should ask forgiveness at His hands? It is feasible, possible to any poor sinner, however ignorant, if it is rightly apprehended. The children can understand it, it is the children's way, and all who walk in it go into the Kingdom of Heaven.

"Here you have one of the many justifications for the Penitent-Form. When a Salvationist says, 'Come this way, kneel at the Mercy-Seat,' he means, ' Get down before your offended Father, and ask Him to forgive you. We will go with you. We will advise, encourage, and counsel you. But it is God that must save you if ever you are saved; so, come to God.'

"Nearly akin to the last-named principle I saw also that there was sufficient divine grace flowing, through the sacrifices of Jesus Christ, to enable every man who seeks it to find Salvation. In other words, there is Salvation for every man. This was from the beginning, and has been to the present moment, one of the most precious features of redeeming love in my eyes. Oh, how wonderful, how glorious, how like the God of love is the fulness, boundlesshess of His mercy--Salvation for every man, from every sin, and Salvation just now. It was illustrated in the mercy that had been shown to me. I used to sing over and over again the couplet,

 

'Tis mercy all, immense and free, For, O my God, it found out me!

 

"Then," proceeded the General . . . "there came another truth which had much to do with the experience of those early days. The willingness and ability of the Holy Ghost to make men entirely holy in thought, feeling, and actions in this life. This truth laid hold of the very vitals of my new religious existence. It interested me, it stirred me up. It was a fascinating attraction, ever drawing me forwards. I saw that entire Holiness was insisted upon in my Bible; while my Hymn Book, composed chiefly of the precious hymns of Charles Wesley, was all aflame with the beauty and value of it. Soon after my conversion, I was thrown into the midst of a red-hot revival that was thoroughly permeated with this truth. The spiritual interests of my newborn soul yearned after it, giving-me no rest until I believed for it. I saw thousands seek and testify to having found it. It appeared to me in those days--and has appeared to me ever since--as a condition of happiness, a qualification for usefulness, and a preparation for Heaven.

"How could I doubt," went on the General, with his soul evidently stirred, "that God was willing and able to sanctify any and every man, body, soul, and spirit, who trusted Him to do so? Through life the theme has been a favourite one. Some of the most beautiful souls I have known during my fifty years' Salvation service on the earth have walked in light and joy of the experience, glorifying in the fact that Jesus Christ was manifested in suffering and shame, in power and in sacrifice, to utterly destroy out of the hearts of His people the works of the Devil."

"I have heard you again and again hoist an even higher standard?"

"You have. It is the duty of every child of God, I maintain, to serve Him as his King and Father, consecrating all he has of ability, influence, and possession to this task. Perhaps nothing that loomed up within the bounds of my religious horizon, within a very short period of my conversion, was more distinctly realized than that truth. This yearning to be a true and devoted servant of Jesus Christ was born in me. I entered the spiritual world with a soldier's nature. I remember well how puzzled I used to be in my early Christian days, and I have been perplexed more than a little all my life through, with the apparent heartlessness of so many who profess to be the sons and daughters of God and are quite sure of Heaven, as to the interests of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom on the earth. These do not seem either to know or care about the Salvation of souis, or to do any mourning on account of the bedraggled, wrecked condition of His interests in the world. All that appears to concern them is that they may have a good time in this life and a better time still in the life that is to come. They have neither opportunity nor heart for these things. They are Christian Gallios."

"How do you explain this?"

"I do not believe that the ministers who preached to me (when I could find time to hear them, which was seldom, for I was generally at the same business myself in some back court or alley), or that the leading men who directed the affairs of the Church, carried the burden of souls or a concern for its interests more heavily on their hearts than I, a boy of sixteen, did on mine.

"I have heard a great deal about the 'call to the ministry' since those days, but my call to follow my Saviour and save as many sinners from the pains of Hell as I possibly could, came to me at the beginning of my career. It came as loud and as distinct as it has ever done since. While it might seem possible to be a servant without being a son, it appeared to me utterly impossible to be a son without being a servant. I never needed either my Bible or my minister, or any special movement of the Holy Spirit on my heart to press this truth home upon me. It appeared to me then, and has ever since, and will I think for evermore, self-evident that the religion of Jesus Christ could not be possessed without the Christ-like hunger for the Salvation of men."

"I should like a more particular exposition of this Doctrine of Consecration. Do you mean that, as followers of Christ we are called upon to make a literal dedication of ourselves to Him as did the Apostles and Martyrs?"

"What else does Consecration mean? It involves to my mind the duty of every Christian man to place himself and all he possesses, life included, fully and freely, without reserve, at the service of God--literally--here and now. That has always been the meaning of Consecration to me. It has seemed to be a mere sham, and pretence on any other interpretation. Is not this what Paul means when he says, 'I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacririce, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service'? To Paul it meant that and nothing else, he illustrated his meaning by his own life, and was followed closely in this track by his fellow-Apostles, and multitudes more have been following on in the same lines from that day to this."

"But there are differences of opinion, General, on the subject?" "Yes, but I make answer: There cannot be two standards--one for Paul and the Apostles and the Martyrs and the Missionaries of bygone days, and another for those who are their true successors to-day; or one for those who lead the Army, and another for those who follow; one for that class of saints who go to the wars, and another for those who abide in the callings of everyday life at home ....

"If it does not signify that a man, on becoming a Christian, becomes voluntarily under obligation to serve his King with all the capacity, goods, influence, time, and anything else he may possess which is likely to advance the interest of his Master, I don't know what it does mean, neither do I understand the passages scattered so freely through both Old and New Testaments insisting on the same thing under the peril of all sorts of losses--too many for me even to allude to.

"There, there, I saw, was the standard; and there before my eyes were illustrations of it in the lives and deaths of Paul, his fellow-apostles, and the multitude of brave warriors that have followed him, in the true Apostolic Succession, right down to the present day.

"I saw with my youthful, uncorrupted Salvation eyes, that there could not be two standards for life and service---one for Paul and the Martyrs and Missionaries, and the other for leaders of God's Army, past and present. Therefore, here was the standard for every soul of us, whether leaders or followers, whether marching at the head of God's Armies or abiding in the trade and callings of everyday life. I saw it. I liked it. I embraced it in my inmost soul. It did not come to me in mournful, melancholy aspect. The consecrated life, with tolls and tears and troubles and what else, matched my consecrated spirit. Was I not a soldier of the Cross, and ought I not to welcome a soldier's career?"

"...Is it not probable that, as a result, springing from the natural enthusiasm of your nature, you raised this high standard of Christian Consecration to harmonize with the public career you had marked out for yourself?"

"No! Impossible. Because, please remember that I had no prospect of a ministerial life in those days. I had a laborious and anxious calling which took all my strength and attention many hours per day. My earthly lot was full of bitterness, disappointments, losses, and mortification. Indeed, it appeared at times as though I had nothing outside my family circle that I valued but God and a handful, a small handful, of comrades likeminded with myself, and a soldier's life. To become a minister, and have no other concern but how best to promote the glory of my God and the salvation of men, I remember to this hour, appeared altogether beyond my reach. But if I could not become a minister, I could fight on in such a sphere as I occupied and with such means as I could scrape together. This was plainly my God-appointed task. I would do it. And I asked nothing higher and better than this. Let me fight for my God and the salvation of men. That will give me joy--that will be heaven for me. Fighting was what I wanted. Only let me have plenty of it.

"It was under such circumstances and with such feelings that I became a Salvation Soldier without the name; and thenceforth, down to this very day, it has seemed to me one of my first duties to make other eyes see as my eyes saw, and other hearts feel as my heart felt, in those days."

"What then, in your opinion, does this consecration involve?" "Well, the seeking first the glory of God. He must not be left out. God must be the central figure, and His glory the end of any service. He must be first and last. No help for the poor world without Him. Vain the attempt to mend it without direct reference to the Maker. To seek to do good to the bodies as well as the souls of men. To love and labour for the afflicted, and to help those who have none to care for them. To tend the sick and the dying."

"But have I not heard you say that getting people saved became at once the joy of your heart?"

"Yes; it was my meat and drink to seek before all else the salvation of the souls of men. Indeed, it was here that my heart's love was captured and enthralled. I became a lover of souls. To save a man--that is, to win him over for Christ--appeared to me like finding a Pearl of Great Price. In those days I used to say I would rather be a successful soul-winner than fill the highest stations of earth, and were I only sure of ultimate salvation, than the highest Archangel in Heaven. Call it boyish enthusiasm or what you like---there was this hunger for souls burning in the centre of my heart by night and by day."

"We see this reproduced in the Salvationists of all ranks to-day?"

"Yes; and it was of the great mercy of God and by the fostering care of His Holy Spirit that much has grown out of this soul-love. Much began to grow at once, and grew at a great pace. My love-treasure set me to think and to work, and in working and thinking and planning I soon found myself, although only some sixteen years old, one of the principal leaders of a miniature Salvation Army."

"...After all these years of warfare and experience, what do you consider as the most remarkable feature of resemblance in the Salvation Army of to-day that this early love-treasure contained?"

After some thought, the General replied: "There are seven--First, our sphere of operation was amongst the poorest and most needy; then, our aim was the immediate salvation of the people; there were similar forms of leadership; for although connected with a Church, we practically managed our own work; there was to some extent rigid and similar discipline, there were aggressive attacks on the unsaved in the streets, lanes, and homes of the people. There were similar demonstrations of rejoicing: such as miniature Crystal Palace Anniversary in a large Public Tea-Garden, a great Field Day of Salvation, attended by thousands of people, with penitent meetings on the grass. We had Army funerals, with service around the coffin outside the house, a procession to the cemetery, and a service at the grave-side; there were adaptation and organization and house-to-house visitation, and many other methods which on review look now, at this distance, as though they had been the seed-corn--nay, verily, the small beginnings of the wonderful things that have followed in these latter times.

In this splendid and whole-hearted fashion did the lion roar before the lamb, and we are verily assured that all the honesty of his character, all the vehemence of his nature, and all the impetuous enthusiasm of his soul was in every roar. Not once did he boast of the work done for the bodies of men, not once did he refer to the universal attention aroused by his Darkest England Scheme, now in a flourishing condition. He goes back to his boyhood and draws a straight line from that distant past to this burning present--the spiritual line that unless a man be born again he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

This reaction, as I have termed it, is experienced by every statesman who, less concerned for the success of his party, earnestly desires a better world. For a moment it seems as if some new Act of Parliament will revolutionize evil conditions and bring the millennium within sight; and men fling themselves into the battle of passing the Act with the self-sacrifice and enthusiasm of crusaders. But when the Act is passed, and little comes of it, and when, looking back on the record of Parliamentary Government we see how much has been achieved and how little changed, we begin to wonder, as the just and upright statesman wonders, whether the first of all conditions to be changed is not after all, as Christ said it was, the heart of man.

William Booth was a man of great compassion. He yearned over the sorrows and sufferings of humanity. His Darkest England Scheme was a statesman's Act of Parliament, aimed to change social conditions and reduce the sum of human misery. But while it did immediately change, and is still changing, for a great number, social conditions that were evil and unjust; and while it did immediately reduce the sum of human misery, for all of which he was profoundly grateful, he saw that the total transformation of humanity could only be wrought by a subdual of men's will to the will of God.

If he did not see quite as clearly as others about him did see, that this excellent social work of the Salvation Army was an expression of the religious conscience and quite definitely religious work, at least he saw, as perhaps no other man of his generation saw so visibly, that religious work is the greatest of all social works. --"You cannot make a man clean by washing his shirt."

 

CHAPTER XVII

WHICH TELLS OF DISPATCHES, A STORM AT SEA, HOW WILLIAM BOOTH WAS BOARDED IN A BEDROOM AND BORED AT A TEA-MEETING, AND OF AN INTERVIEW WITH W. E. GLADSTONE

1894-1896

 

IN the year 1894 the Salvation Army had extended in the eastern hemisphere to so remote a suburb of civilization as Java, and with this fresh manifestation of the worldwide application of its principles to hearten it still more, the Army held an International Congress in London. One feature of this Congress was the celebration with ebullient enthusiasm of the jubilee of the General's conversion.

These International Congresses, let us pause to say, are of considerable interest, since they demonstrate with unmistakable force the universality of the great central Christian principle of conversion. The thousands of delegates who flock into London on these occasions are drawn from almost every country under the sun, and it is a curious fact worthy of reflection that the same enthusiasm which we know so well in our English Salvationists characterizes the delegates of all these other countries. Few sights are more impressive than a march-past of these Salvationists from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, every face shining with a like happiness, every voice singing with a like enthusiasm. I know of no other religion except the Christian which has this catholic effect, and no other form of the Christian religion except the Salvation Army which has this catholic expression of gladness and confidence.

in South Europe during this year, preaching salvation with the energy which fires the interview set out in our last chapter, but receiving, as always when absent, wherever he went long and important "dispatches" from his Chief of Staff in London.

Although we cannot concern ourselves here with the history of the Army itself: it is important for our study to state that William Booth to the end of his life not only required to know what was being done in every field of Salvation enterprise, but ceaselessly influenced the organization of this huge machine, and overruled without hesitation the decisions of his subordinate Officers when he disapproved them.

The" dispatches" of Bramwell Booth--exceedingly long and business-like letters, beginning "My dear General," and concluding "Yours affectionately"--kept the General informed of every new move and every fresh development in the operations which every good Salvationist describes as "the War." One may be tempted from a careful reading of these documents, in which important changes are occasionally announced and apologized for on the score of time pressure, to conclude that Bramwell Booth was not always in mourning for his father's absence; that he seized, perhaps, on the opportunity of his situation to carry out reforms or initiate new undertakings which, had William Booth not been preaching on the other side of the globe, might have tarried long or might perhaps have taken different forms.

Here and there the General disapproves and comes angrily down on his Chief of Staff; but, on the whole, it is clear that in spite of a few grumbles and hesitations he acquiesced in the decisions of his son and affectionately acknowledged his work. Bramwell was a man who did not fuss the General but fixed him. He knew his father's character with such confident intimacy that he could advance boldly and far where another Officer would have feared to move an inch. And the love of father and son was so profound and beautiful, so essential to the happiness of both of them, so necessary to the welfare of the Army, that Bramwell could act with the perfectly certain knowledge that nothing he attempted, be it successful or unsuccessful, be it growlingly praised or angrily censured, would be judged by the General as a step towards self-aggrandizemeat or a deviation towards any assumption of his father's authority.

While the General preached, and the Army celebrated its International Congress, Bramwell Booth, who had to overlook the arrangements of both these important matters, was deep in the work of the Darkest England Scheme. We cannot pause, unfortunately, to tell the story of that benevolent enterprise, but it is part of William Booth's story to know that his intense love for his son, and his complete confidence in Bramwell's judgment, were deepened and intensified by the work of those years--work so very difficult and so entirely new to the ordinary routine of the Salvation Army that its triumph must always remain something of a mystery. It is enough to say, perhaps, that the Army with all its other work, home and foreign, set up in Essex, with a thousand agricultural perplexities in its way, one of the most successful land colonies in this or any other country--and a farm colony manned by labourers who but for Salvation Army succour would almost certainly have sunk to the depths of destitution in London slums.

Most of the difficulties of this undertaking were solved by 1894, and in 1895 the Farm Colony, which was to amaze Mr. Cecil Rhodes, received a visit from the President of the Board of Agriculture--that charmingly picturesque Victorian, that most unlikely Salvationist, Mr. Henry Chaplin, now Viscount Chaplin. In one of the dispatches sent to the General an account is given of this important visit, which deserves to be noticed, perhaps, by Lord Chaplin's biographer:

Mr. Chaplin was accompanied by Sir Hugh Owen, who is the permanent Secretary to the Local Government Board . . . apparently a very able man, and Mr. Little, who is a member of the Board of Agriculture and a regular Judge in prize competitions at all sorts of Agricultural Shows and Government valuations . . . a very able man. There were also a couple of Private Secretaries in attendance. Without going into a lot of detail, I am glad to be able to say that all passed off most satisfactorily: they were all charmed beyond measure at the place, and astounded not only at what they saw we were doing with the land, but at the whole organization of the undertaking. The Fruit, the Market Gardens, the Grass Land (!) on the Marshes, the buildings, all came in for unstinted admiration. The appearance of the men whom they saw at work and the plan upon which the Colony is organized impressed them enormously. Mr. Chaplin said he had never seen anything like it, nor had any idea that we had got anything of the kind. Little, the Agriculturist, said that if we had anything like ordinary "luck" the place could not help but be a great financial success; advised the extension of Fruit . . . especially the Bush Fruit. He thinks that Strawberries are more dangerous for us.

Now then comes the great question which always arises in such circumstances as these. Chaplin said to Lamb two or three times in the day: "How can I help you?" Lamb also heard him say to Owen: "This thing ought to be helped; what the devil can we do?" Their whole attitude was one of sympathy with us. Mr. Chaplin said to Lamb: "Of course it is a matter for the Treasury. We have no money at the Local Government Board. Show me how I can help you and I am willing to try."

I have been so ill that really I have not been able to think or do anything else this week, but I think I can see my way to getting a scheme by which the parishes can send people to us before they have become workhoused, and of course Mr. Chaplin of all men can help.

 

Another visitor to the Colony, in 1895, was Mr. W. T. Stead. In a further "dispatch" to the General we read:

On Monday last Stead visited the Colony and was very much impressed and surprised. He came on to see me here on Wednesday morning, and we had a long talk about the future of the scheme. He was evidently completely captured by what he saw at Hadleigh--the place, the agriculture, the men, the officials, the whole thing came upon him with a freshness of an entirely new idea, and he was charmed beyond measure.

Now he is full of desire to help us, and seems to feel some of that enthusiasm which is always a good sign with him. His idea is to go straight and hard for the Prince of Wales. He argues that there is no man living who is so likely to help us as the Prince, and there is no doubt something in it. Stead, of course, is practical, and says that what we want is plenty of money and to be let alone and we will show these "wooden heads" what can be done. He is very friendly indeed with one or two people, who are just now very close to the Prince, and I have given him full permission to go on following his own lead and doing all he can to get hold of his men in his own way.

Nothing came, so far as we can discover, of this suggestion that the Prince of Wales should lend his patronage to the Farm Colony, but we know that the Prince was at least interested in the Darkest England Scheme and cherished a rather genial and man-of-the-world admiration for the social reforms of the Salvation Army.

Trouble of a serious kind occurred for the Army in 1895. An outbreak of smallpox led to an inquiry into the shelters which the Army had set up all over London for the immediate succour of the houseless and the starving. This inquiry was followed by a prosecution, and by some very cruel insinuations in the Press. Mr. Chaplin was asked a question in the House of Commons, and his answer was sent to the perambulating General at the other side of the world by the Chief of the Staff:

My attention has been called to a report in The Times of the 15th instant as to proceedings instituted by the Vestry of St. George the Martyr, Southwark, with alleged overcrowding of the Salvation Anny Shelter in Blackfriars Road. I understand that the case was adjourned, and no decision has yet been given by the magistrate in the matter, and I think, therefore, that I cannot properly make out any observations with reference to the evidence referred to. The Local Government Board are aware that a considerable number of cases of Smallpox have occurred amongst persons who have been relieved in the Salvation Army Shelters. In the early part of last year the Board directed an inquiry as to the arrangements in connexion with these Shelters, especially as regards dealing with cases of infectious disease, and at the beginning of the present month I requested that further inquiries should be made by one of the medical inspectors of the Board as to precautionary measures taken at the shelters with a view to the detection of cases of smallpox among the persons admitted. The general result of the inquiry would appear to be that the Salvation Army authorities realize their responsibility in the matter of smallpox, and are anxious to do all in their power to prevent the spread of that disease by means of the shelters. The Local Government Board are not empowered to enforce a medical inspection. Any powers for this purpose, apart from those which may be exercised by the medical officer of health, could only be obtained by legislation. The subject has been receiving my attention, and the question as to the alteration of the law with regard to these and similar other institutions will be considered by me.

 

In another dispatch the General is told of the progress of the case:

The case came on yesterday, the 10th (of October), after the long adjournment which I reported to you in my last on the subject. Our case was opened by the evidence of an eminent Chemist--Professor Wanklyn, which was aimed at destroying the very foundation of the case on the other side, namely, that a fixed cubic space must be provided for each sleeper irrespective of ventilation. I think we carried the Magistrate entirely on the point, and if so, the battle may be said to be won. The Professor is an old man, whose business it has been, as he told the Court, to teach Medical Officers of Health their business, and when, therefore, he was confronted with their evidence, he brushed it aside in capital style. The case is again adjourned for fourteen days. The Medical evidence which we have to call will, I think, finish it.

 

At this time of his life William Booth formed the habit of writing what he called a Family Letter--that is to say, a letter addressed to "My dear Children," which, having been read by Bramwell and his wife, was then passed round the entire family circle. These letters are a very extraordinary mixture of Salvation Army business and personal adventures. Many of them were written on board ship. A few examples will give the reader a taste of this new correspondence, and place him, we hope, in still closer intimacy with the character of William Booth:

 

I have just been discussing with P. on the deck the possibility of our preparing a set of Regulations applicable to Australia, U.S., Canada, and elsewhere .... How ever the Territories outside Great Britain have done as well as they have with the little attention given them--that is, little compared with what has been given to Britain is a constant puzzle to me as I go along .... Australia and nearly every other Territory left to-day to imitate Great Britain and adopt its Orders and Regulations at its own sweet will! This should not, must not, shall not be. Take a further illustration. In the U.S. the internal arrangement has grown up according to the judgment and choice of Commissioners. This must all be reduced to system. We have given our strength to Great Britain. We must work for the world over.

The Unity of the Army is an unceasing wonder to me. I repeat with unspeakable satisfaction what I said, I think, in my last letter, that I have felt in Africa that the Officers and Soldiers of Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town, and every other Corps visited, are as much one with International Headquarters as are the Officers and Soldiers of Bristol, Glasgow, or Newcastle-on-Tyne--or more so. On looking on any English-speaking country I have come to think the same sentiment will equally apply, and very nearly the same may be said of any other Territory. Anyway the Officers and Soldiers anywhere only want to know International Headquarters a little better to make it so.

 

April 13, '95.

 

I am determined to be more faithful--more personal than I have been. To this end I must have more of the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit. It is God the world wants, for which the Church languishes and is without grip of the thoughtful portion of it--indeed any portion of it.

The S.A. will only be a blessing as it carries God to the hearts of men. That is our business. To baptize with "Fire."

 

Sept. 22.

 

The rolling of the ship has really been beyond either rhyme or reason and my poor head has ached and ached and ached again. . . . To add to the discomfort it is fearfully cold .... I am gradually getting cold to the bone. And as one cannot walk the deck or take exercise with any sort of comfort there is nothing for it but to go to bed. It is true they have taken the Saloon, but it is so stuffy and there is generally such a clatter of tongues or music or children that work is all but an impossibility.

Children . . . yes, children, for there are some of the worst behaved little things opposite my cabin whose din attends me all the time, that I ever met with. There is a little boy about five years old whom for beauty--specially when the most splendid head of hair that I ever saw is taken into consideration--and for self-willed disagreeableness for his age and weight I will back against the world. Oh, they are a "lovely" set!

We make little headway with any spiritual work amongst the passengers . . . the Saloon lot appear to be very obtuse and earthy. I wonder what you are doing? Various things I suppose. Do you wonder--do you find time to wonder about me?

I am thinking much about darling Mamma. . . .Oh how many times I wonder, does she know what we are about down here!... Oh the mystery of existence, and oh the mystery of passing out of it! Yesterday at eight in the morning they buried a man in the deep, deep waters who had died the day before. He was a Saloon passenger, came on board at . . . where he left his wife and two children. He was a German, quite a young man, going to New Zealand for some purpose or other and coming back to Africa. Instead of which he has gone into eternity.

I never saw a funeral at sea before, and I must say it impressed me very much. The passing of the man; simply sewn up in canvas and with the outward form of a man seemed to realize to one so much more vividly than the coffined dead, that it is a man who is being passed away. We cast our dead into the sea, and then there came to our minds the time when "The sea gave up her dead."

Our steward has been telling us that just about this point a man jumped overboard on the last voyage of the same steamer. So that on sea as well as on land the words I heard read by the Captain from the prayer-book yesterday morning are being fulfilled: "In the midst of life we are in death."

To sit with my cabin chair tied from the four corners of the little square room, swinging to and fro with the ship, trying to write and think while freezing with cold, dinned by those screaming children, is not altogether favourable to health of body or of brain--to say nothing of the stuff that is produced!

The American said he was ashamed of living in such a one-horsed planet--for my part the size is all very well, quite passable; anyhow, will do for the present; it is the quality of its inhabitants that is a grief and a shame to me.

Oh what a strange jumble we have here, and the garb of a sort of religion is carefully thrown over us all by the Captain in the Church Service every Sunday. He reads the prayers, absolves everybody from their sins, and then reads a sermon which is very good indeed so far as it goes . . . the sin and ruin of it all being that it helps to make these utterly Christless people think that somehow or other there is nothing particularly wrong about any of them. Peace, Peace, and yet there is not an atom of real foundation for Peace. Good-night, my darlings.

I have dreamed so much about Mamma on this ship and yet not a bit of comfort in any of them. Oh how I wish--but it's of no use wishing.

I have been no little exercised ihe last few days about my grandchildren and considering whether I do not owe them some duty beyond what I am at present discharging. Surely I do nothing for them at the present moment beyond praying for them and greeting them kindly when we meet.

What can I do? I have been wondering how it would be if I wrote them a monthly letter. It could be typewritten and passed round to each family where there were children old enough to understand it. Mothers and fathers might--would think it of sufficient importance to read and explain and preach a little from it and so help to impress this precious oncoming generation with the great sentiments and principles I want to cherish.

If they would not pretend to be Christians I could do with them.

A bad night is evidently before us. ---- announced to me this morning that he had resolved to treat the sea and all it could do to him with haughty disdain. He is holding on to his resolution so far. But ----, I hear, is already laid down, the others will doubtlessly follow; all but the valiant ----. He holds up in all weathers alike and takes walks, and eats his food as well as on land and better--if that were possible!

We . . . were off at four, and almost from that very hour have been more or less in a state of torture difficult to describe. It must be experienced to be felt! I had a real bad 36 hours .... Poor ---- has been very ill and is so still. ---- keeps up by keeping down. ---- had a great go and now is hard at work. ----has just announced that he thinks he is round the corner. His "haughty disdain" had an ignominious finish. He gave in, and has since been at the mercy of his foe--mostly in a prostrate position.

. . . is patient and always beautifully willing to do what he can. He has a kind heart and a wonderful stomach--oh that I resembled him in the last peculiarity--that is, at sea!

You may judge something as to the tossing when I tell you that the very stewards were sick, and Colonel Lawley pronounced it serious!

This last night has been simply a terror. A poor lady came down our passage at 2 o'clock this morning seeking some one she styled "Jim." Her brother, I guessed. She was in a great fright. I heard her ask a steward if he had ever known anything like it before! Then she rushed at my cabin, but retreated, on not finding "Jim" there, for some other part of the vessel. Poor thing, I was sorry for her.

Let me quote again my old favourite verse. I don't know where it comes from, but it always goes to, as it comes from, my heart---and specially in this case in applying it to our beloved Army:

Her passage lies across the brink

Of many a yawning wave,

And devils wait to see her sink,

But Jesus lives to save.

 

Arrived safely at his journey's end on the other side of the world, the General at once gets to work.

 

When Colonel---- went to the Minister of Public Buildings to take the Exhibition Building, he said in answer to the question, what would rent be--" Well if you don't have any of these -- parsons on the platform it will be £2 per day, but if you have them in a row, looking through their fingers to see who else is there, it will be £12:12s. per day."

At five I went on with ---- to Government House. His Excellency received me kindly, as kindness goes with that class, and I had a few words with Lady ----, but I was disappointed as to any heart intercourse. I could not understand why they [the Salvation Army authorities in the city] had pressed me to go there for the night, and I was sorry, almost as soon as I got there, that I had exchanged the intelligent, intellectual, genial atmosphere of the Chief Justice's residence for the cold, stony clime of Government House. We went to the meeting. My throat and chest seemed to make talking to the great crowd impossible for any length of time. However, I was in for doing what could be done.

There was a beautiful audience, the Chief Justice was all urbanity and heartiness, and at it we went--the Governor was in the chair and made a neat little speech--rather cold. A letter was read from the Bishop regretting a previous engagement, but praising our social work in the city, before the Governor's speech. My turn came and I went at it. From the first sentence I found we could be heard, and I gave what I considered a temperate but flashing and interesting talk.

I turned round once or twice to look at the Governor, having a feeling that he was not right, and sure enough he looked the picture of mortification. He has a yellowish complexiom, but he was absolutely saffron colour. I went on, however, and looked again and again, but not once the whole night did he relax or smile, the whole hour and a half I was on my feet.

Meanwhile the Judge, who had seated himself before me with the ladies, was laughing and shaking and clapping all through.

A vote of thanks was moved by the Judge, and seconded by the Mayor, who told us that he had only come in for a few minutes, having another engagement, but that he had been so taken up with the speech that he had forgotten his appointment, and begged to support the vote of thanks with all his heart.

The proceedings terminated in the most friendly manner. The Governor walked home. I rode with Lady----. Over the supper we talked in a friendly way, but on retiring to my room the Governor accompanied me, and to my surprise instead of handing me a cheque for the work, which I thought quite possible, turned on me by saying that he regretted having taken his sons and daughters (girls he called them--young women they are) to the meeting in view of what I had said about "Lost women, etc." He then went on to say that I had intimated that everybody who was not doing S.A. work were living frivolous lives, and went on with a rigmarole about what was being done in the East of London. How his daughters were doing work amongst the poor, etc., etc., helping George Holland and the like. This, together with some more talk of the same kind, I must say, cut me up a little. Because I had been very careful to guard myself by starting with the remark that I came there in no spirit of depreciation of other work, etc., and as to offending good taste or saying what young girls and boys could not hear without being in any way damaged, I did not understand how that could be, as all over the world I have talked on these themes and never had a breath of objection in this direction.

The next morning he tried to be a little friendly, but I assure you I was glad to get away from Government House, notwithstanding the apparent kindliness of Lady---- and "the girls."

Was it not strange that a Brewer, who has an interest in the pubs of Ratcliffe Highway, should lecture me after this fashion? "What about other people's daughters?"

Stayed with Judge ---- Comfortable home and cared for by the longest, rapidest-tongued lady it was ever my lot to run up against. Her like I could only hope that it may never be my lot to listen to again.

At 6 a banquet had been arranged at a Ladies' College. Fine pile of buildings, belonging to the Methodist Church and partially supported by public subscription. I supposed I was simply going to meet the leading men and women of the place and to have a word and introduction and friendly talk with them. To my surprise we were marshalled into a large apartment, and after about 100 nabobs, male and female, had marched in and seated themselves at tables beautifully ornamented and heavily laden with turkeys, etc., the young College Lady Students, dressed in the highest and, I think, the loudest costumes, came along. There must have been 70 or more--frizzed and curled and adorned in the most approved worldly style.

The loud talk of these girls rose above the conversation of the elder and more sober portion of the gathering, until even the Principal was dismayed. Perhaps it was my face disturbed his equanimity a little. However, at the end of an hour he proposed that I should speak as long as I could find time and strength for. But I said I could not speak with the clatter of cups and plates going forward. He suggested that the company would finish in quietness if I started. But you don't catch old birds with chaff, and I simply said, and that pretty bluntly, that I should not get on to my feet till the eating and drinking entirely ended. Whereupon he called them to order; which meant, cease eating and drinking. Which they did or nearly so, and entirely so before I had spoken a dozen words.

It was no easy matter to meet the expectations of that gathering and deliver my soul of its burden at the moment. However, I did the latter. I said a few words on the S.A. and then put my University question to the young people, prefixed by the remark: "There, that is what I have done with my life. What are you going to do with yours?" I drove that in with all my might--an awe as of death and judgment settled on the trifling young creatures, and we adjourned to the Opera House for a Social Meeting. We were crowded there and had an enthusiastic night.

On the 2Ist of December, 1896, William Booth drove over to Hawarden Castle from Keighley to see Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Herbert Gladstone met him at the entrance, and in the drawing-room Mrs. Gladstone and Mrs. Drew received him kindly and brought an old-fashioned easy-chair (whose manufacture he mourned as a lost art) to an open fire, and bade him warm himself. Presently Gladstone came, welcomed him in the most kind and friendly manner, and bore him off to the library.

William Booth had often wished to hear Gladstone speak, but his work had kept him away from "the big nights at the House." Describing the effect made upon him by Gladstone, the General said afterwards that he would not have recognized him from his photograph if they had been face to face in a railway carriage. "The features in the public prints are, as a rule, larger, and, to my fancy, seem to have a hard and masterful look about them, a look which certainly failed to show itself to me for a single moment in the original that afternoon." He thought the statesman's face "intelligent, expressive, quick, and commanding in a high degree, and equally sympathetic and kindly."

Gladstone having flung a fresh log on the great fire, the two leaders sat down opposite each other.

Gladstone started the conversation by saying, "I suppose in addressing you as General I use the title to which you are accustomed, and which harmonizes with your own feelings?"

William Booth said that that name defined his position properly. He spoke of the usefulness of the Salvation Army's military titles, because the most undisciplined and ignorant man knew that when he joined a Corps, the "Captain" stood for authority, and was some one to be obeyed.

Gladstone asked how the Central Authority of the Army could be maintained, extending all over the world, while allowing that free and energetic local action so necessary to vigorous growth?

The General described the various commands from Territories to Corps, but Gladstone asked again how they maintained the Central Authority?

The General replied that he chose the Territorial Commissioners, and could extend or diminish their five years' term of office.

Gladstone asked if Officers in positions of authority in other lands were chiefly sent from England? The General replied that it was so at present, but that it was a first principle with the Salvation Army that each people must work out its own spiritual regeneration, "that Americans must conduct the War in America, that Frenchmen must evangelize France, that Indians must mission India, and the like."

Gladstone inquired into the finances of the Army, and when he was told its probable annual revenue, and that the great bulk of the sum was made up by the voluntary contributions of the poor, he exclaimed several times that it was very remarkable.

The conversation turned to the general question of the state and prospects of Spiritual religion, and Gladstone asked William Booth which country stood most favourably in this respect? William Booth wrote:

I felt it a difficult question to answer, and I said so. So far as Protestant Churches are concerned, I thought there was a good work in progress in some parts of Holland; otherwise I was afraid that Protestantism, as a rule, was very broad, very cold and inactive, and so far as practical godliness could be estimated, one country did not appear to me to have much preference over another.

"Is not Romanism making progress in Holland? .... Yes," I said; "there are, I believe, some advances in that direction." "Had we experienced any considerable measure of opposition from the Church in what might be termed Catholic countries?" I replied that while many priests watched our movements, and set a careful guard on those of their people who might be influenced by us, some of the more philanthropic among the clergy had manifested much interest in my Social Work, and in some cases have expressed their warm sympathy with me in other ways. And I could hardly say, either on the Continent or elsewhere, that we had suffered more actual opposition from the Catholic than we had done from the Protestant Clergy.

 

Gladstone asked if the Salvation Army had any measure of success among Catholic populations, and being told that it had, asked: "But what becomes of those Catholics who come to the penitent-form?"

 

I replied that while some became Soldiers in our ranks, it was quite a common thing for others, while regularly coming to our services, to continue, at the same time, their attendance at their own Church, and to assure us, with evident sincerity, that they were striving to live better and nobler lives.

"They come to your penitent-form and then go to confession?" I replied, "Yes."

"But how do they regard you?" I remarked that it was not unusual for the more thoughtful and devout amongst them to tell us that we ought to be Catholics. They considered us, I thought, to have much in common with Francis of Assisi, or perhaps with Madame Guyon and the mystic class of religionists.

 

The General spoke of the importance of the experimental aspect of religion, and how they looked on every man as right or wrong with God, and, if he were not saved, said in their hearts, "Now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation." The Army, he said, was more successful in dealing with the poor and ignorant than the comfortable and better educated. Gladstone replied that the illiterate and unprejudiced condition of the poor was mentally favourable to that simple obedience to the truth necessary to salvation. He spoke of the wealth and habits and tastes of the age being enemies of religion, and said with evident feeling, looking away into the distance, "There is nothing, I fear, easier of acquisition than the aspirations and the language of devotion while living a life the opposite of all they imply."

"I do not know," General Booth says, "whether it was the mention of religious books that led to it, but Mr. Gladstone remarked, with some emphasis, that there was nothing that surprised him more than the objection he found running through many religious works to what was described as 'Self-righteousness.'"

"While I cannot understand," said he, "how any man with any true knowledge of his heart, or of his life, or of the Holy God whom he worships, can possibly conceive that anything he can think, or feel, or say, or do, can be deemed worthy of presentation before Him, as constituting any meritorious ground on which to claim His favour, I do think that instead of condemning righteousness, in any form, its cultivation should be encouraged, and its all-important need insisted upon."

Gladstone asked "with a serious and somewhat apologetic air" what the arrangements for the successorship were?

William Booth explained how each General was to nominate his successor, giving the sealed envelope containing his name to the Army Solicitors: there was a Deed to legalize this.

 

Gladstone was deeply interested. "It was a peculiar position, he said, that we had taken up. Even the Pope, he suggested, was elected by a Conclave of Cardinals, and he thought we must go back to the sixteenth century to find an example of a system of personal nomination by the person occupying the post of authority similar to the one I have chosen." The General mentioned a scheme for providing against the danger that would "be caused by a General passing away who had neglected the appointment of his successor, or who, for some calamitous reason, had become incapable for, or unworthy of, his position, and for selecting a new General, in an assembly of all the Commissioners throughout the world." The General named one or two of the possibilities that might occur, and Gladstone added, "Yes, and the possibility of heresy would come under that category." The General spoke of Cardinal Manning. Mr. Gladstone was not surprised that the Cardinal should make the observation as to the Holy Spirit's influence on my work to which I had referred, nor at the spiritual tenor of his conversation at the interview, as, from his own observations, he believed that Cardinal Manning had attached very much more importance to the work of the Holy Spirit during the last few years of his life than during his former career. They parted with great friendliness. William Booth was very much impressed by Gladstone's geniality, by his perfect command of words, and by his earnestness. "He put his heart into my business, and that right away, going straight to the very vitals of the subject as phase after phase of it passed before him . . ." He brought away the impression that "among the many things carefully considered and experimentally known to W. E. Gladstone were the governing influences of the Holy Spirit and the saving Grace of God."

A few days later the General received the following letter from Mr. Gladstone:

 

HAWARDEN, Jan. 2, 1897.

DEAR GENERAL BOOTH--I thank you for the promise contained in your kind note that you are sending me, beside the books you refer to, a note you have made of the conversation between us.

You are quite right in saying that it was not part of my purpose to express definite opinions upon the very remarkable and interesting circumstances which you were good enough to lay before me. Apart from the formation of such opinions, I had useful lessons to learn from the reception of such a communication. It helps me to look out upon the wide world and reflect with reverence upon the singular diversity of the instruments which are in operation for recovering mankind, according to the sense of those who use them, from their condition of sin and misery; and encourages hearty good-will towards all that, under whatever name, is done with a genuine purpose to promote the work of God in the world. The harvest truly is plenteous; may He send further labourers into His harvest.

Believe me to remain, with all good wishes, faithfully yours, W. E. GLADSTONE.

 

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BEGINNING OF THE FIGHT AGAINST OLD AGE

1897-1900

 

THE reader will see from the writings of William Booth which compose the present chapter that he was still eagerly pursuing the ideal of his earliest youth, and pursuing that ideal in the spirit of dissatisfaction with himself which was one of his most salient characteristics.

Dostoevsky has said that self-satisfaction is the mark of a quite peculiar stupidity; certainly William Booth, whatever else he may have been, was not stupid. His honesty, his thirst for reality, his hatred for all shams and pretensions, made it impossible for him in his quest both of God and man, ever to be long at rest, ever for a moment to be really satisfied with his own efforts. If he constantly accused the world of indifference, and some of his Officers of lukewarmness, quite as constantly he upbraided himself for lack of faith and want of understanding. "You can only keep company with God," he once wrote, "by running at full speed," forgetting that breathlessness is not consonant with peace of mind, and that exhaustion is not the prize for which the soul of humanity strives. The Byronic hero, we are told, went to clasp repose in a frenzy;

 

All crimson and aflame with passion, he groaned for evening stillness.

Of the religious enthusiast it may also be said that he pursues the peace which passes understanding as if he was runniug to catch a train. And it must be so; for, unlike the mystic, he seeks that peace for others, and those others are in number like the sands on the shore.

By temperament, of course, William Booth was the last man in the world to value equanimity or to be satisfied with patience, but his violent quest of God--quest of a God who interfered, who provided, who relieved, who rewarded--added whirlwind to the natural storm of his character and a poignant bitterness to the natural unrest of his heart.

He writes to Bramwell Booth after an illness:

. . . I have been seized with a spirit of determination this morning more than ever to go forwards regardless of the opposition of men or devils, traitors or cowards or renegades or the whole lot. If any considerable number of Officers and Soldiers can rise up to this spirit of self-abnegation and reckless go-forward-ism, baptized with the Holy Ghost, we shall yet awake a blaze that will light up not only this world but the universe. You will guess that I am feeling a little better!

 

These moods of tremendous aggression and of almost undefeatable optimism were by no means transitory, nor were they, as the success of the Salvation Army very practically proves, fruitless. But as he advanced in age, reaction from these sudden accessions of tempestuous energy was at times sharp and swift. His diaries, his letters, even his public utterances, bear witness to the darkness which clouded his vision and the burden of sorrow which weighed down his soul during such periods.

In his letters to Bramwell Booth we read:

 

I suffer about many things that I do not tell you about, nor anybody else. There are two or three very heavy burdens upon me just now. God is very good to me, and although I have very little time for privately dealing with Him, and have to do my closest work largely lying on my bed, He does come to me and comfort me. And I suppose I ought to feel, as I think I do to some extent, that it is a great joy to be allowed, not only to believe on Him but to suffer something for His sake. I think I know better now than ever what Paul meant when he talked about "the care of the Churches" being the biggest trial he had to endure.

I am very tired--but must on---on--on--I cannot stand still.

 

I have worked to-day and lain down when I could sit no longer, and then got up and gone on again. A "fire" is in my bones, and though at times I feel as though I should die of a broken heart, I revive and go on again. But I feel often as if I was approaching an end--here!

 

Very characteristic is a reference to one of his other sons:

Why doesn't he settle down and get some rest? What a worrying thing "Booth blood" is.

 

That this Booth blood was active and restless enough in his own veins, we find plenty of evidence in his letters to the Chief of the Staff throughout the present period. He manifests the keenest interest in all the concerns of the Army, even troubling his mind about such matters as the journalistic style of his Officers:

I hope you will translate this Canadian cable into decent Christian English. I do hate this "Cock-a-hoop" style. Where is the humility and lowliness of religion gone to? Of the Colony at Hadleigh he writes:

God's plan in farming, in my opinion,. was "five acres and a cow," and whenever you depart from that you have to pay the piper.

 

But another letter, describing a successful meeting, shows his desire to keep social betterment in a second place:

We were packed last night at the Social Lecture and had a pretty good time, although I must say I am heartily tired of Social Schemes in places where I can get a crowd and get souls saved.

 

Sometimes an account of his crowded and enthusiastic meetings is made the opportunity for a dig at his Officers:

 

We had a fearful struggle last night owing to the heat, but we got thirteen out, which on the top of a Salvation Army and Social address was not so bad; if we could have had people there who could have worked the thing, and had room, we should have got forty. It is the Officers. I felt last night that if I was the Lord I would send them all to Hell for a little bit. I was so vexed with the cold-blooded way in which they dealt with the opportunity.

When he hears a good story that might be useful for campaigning, he finds time to send it to his Chief of Staff in London:

I heard two good stories yesterday. One was suggested by an illustration I had been giving in the Council, on the folly of using high-falutin language in prayers.

A young minister, full of big empty phrases and anxious to show himself off to the simple people in a Yorkshire town, commenced on a certain occasion his prayer something as follows: "0 Thou Great Omnipotent Being," and then stuck fast. He started again, "0 Thou Great Omniscient God," and again had to pause. He made another effort, "0 Thou Great Eternal Spirit," and hesitated, starting off once more, "0 Thou Great--what shall we call Thee?"

An old woman in the audience could stand it no longer and jumping up, she called out to the bewildered preacher, "Call him Fayther, lad--call him Fayther."

Something of the work which the General undertook may be gathered from the following account of a campaign in Scotland, written by one of his secretaries:

The General rose at 7.20, having only had a fair night, and consequently very tired indeed. Breakfast at 7.40, departed for Glasgow at 8.5, travelling 8.20 train.

. . . The General . . . wrote the Chief of Staff advising a system of training of Probationary Officers in Scotland, and for Scotland a system of rigid inspection, the insistence upon Visitation, Open-air preaching, Circles, Hawking, etc.

The remainder of the journey was taken up in preparation for the Officers' meetings in Glasgow.

... Proceeded directly to the Masonic Hall, where the General met the Officers of Scotland. The General's topic was "My model Officer."

Drove to the Hall for afternoon meeting, and, following up his morning talk, the General spoke upon "The operation of the Holy Ghost in co-operation with men and women in the work of soul-saying .... "

The City Hall was crowded at 7.30. Good reception. The General promised in his opening remarks that he would have something to say upon the present condition of the Social Scheme, which greatly pleased the crowd.

"Who is on the Lord's side?" was the General's topic. Writing to the Chief about this meeting the General said, "We had a very good meeting last night--a time of great power ....

Somehow or other, independently of all I had to say, the Spirit of the Lord seemed to come down upon us, and I was able to talk to the hearts of the people and the result was a great awakening in many minds." There were 43 for Salvation and 17 for the Blessing ....

The General dispatched to London Indian communications etc. by the night train.

In his own diary the General writes on one of the days of this campaign:

Beautiful morning. Charming for a walk, but cannot afford the time. I did promise myself half-an-hour yesterday, but could not feel free for it.

During one of his visits to Scotland he stayed at the house of a wealthy merchant whose son, a singularly able man, has since become Lord Provost of Glasgow. The General was very anxious to enlist this son in the Army, and made repeated efforts to get him to join. At last he said, with a humorous twinkle in his eye, digging the obdurate Scot in the ribs: "Look here, you join us and I'll make you a Colonel!"

It was on this same occasion that he lost his wife's wedding-ring, which he always wore on a finger of his left hand. A daughter of the house eventually found this precious ring and restored it to him. "The General," she said, "rushed at me, covered my hand with kisses, and with tears in his eyes told me that he had rather lose anything else in the world than this ring of his dear wife's."

From Scotland the party journeyed to Ireland, and the Secretary, after telling of the arrival at Belfast on the previous day, when the General gave "an address to 800 Soldiers at seven o'clock, when 76 came out to the mercy-seat," proceeds as follows:

The General rose this morning at 7.30 and had breakfast with Mr. Morrow, and after prayers spent the time in his bedroom till 10.30 in close preparation for the coming meetings in the Ulster Hall. At that hour the carriage called, and at 11 the General was facing the first public audience of the visit.

The Ulster Hall is a long building with a large gallery round three of its sides and a great platform. On special occasions it would seat, I should think, about 2,000 people. This morning, however, only about 1,500 were present. They were an appreciative lot, and listened very well, although the General seemed not to get away from the stiffness; at least he said so. He turned over very poorly yesterday and is not yet better, so that accounts for his feelings in the matter. Perhaps it will be different in the afternoon. His topic was "If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," and every word went into the hearts of the people, and at the end of the morning 18 souls came to the front and sought for Salvation or Sanctification, which, considering the ice was hardly broken, was in the estimation of us all very good.

Dinner was partaken at the Young Women's Christian Association. The Superintendent did all she could to make the General comfortable. There are, however, about twenty young ladies living in the house, and so with all their efforts it was impossible to keep the place quiet, therefore the General's rest was very much broken into and he was not in a very good state for the afternoon's meeting. The congregation was a larger one, and more enthusiastic, and the General on "The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways," took every one by storm. He spoke with much more freedom than even this morning, and kept it up.

Sunday afternoons in Belfast so far as meetings of any description are concerned are always difficult affairs, and this afternoon was no exception. Although the General spoke with so much power, and although there was a spirit of anxious longing for something to be done pervading the meeting, no sooner did Colonel Lawley commence the first chorus than the congregation rose en masse and left the Hall. Only three solitary cases came to Jesus. The General's disappointment was intense.

He had tea at the Y.W.C.A., but by himself, and turning very poorly after the meeting this afternoon he got away to his room as soon as he could, and lay down for a few moments. There was no sleep for him, however, as he was too much in earnest for the evening's meeting, and rising from the bed he spent the time till the commencement of the meeting in close preparation and prayer.

The Ulster Hall to-night presented a picture. It was crammed in every part, and hundreds were hammering at the doors long after the commencement of the meeting in vexation at being shut out. Inside, the air was stuffy and close, and more than once the General stopped, out of consideration for those whom he could see from the platform were suffering from faintness, and ordered a window here or a door there to be opened to let in a little fresh air.

His topic for the evening was "And the Flood came and took them all away." Like his foregoing topics it told on the people, and the smash that followed convinced every one of the mighty Holy Ghost power with which it went into the hearts of the people who were present. 59 cases came out to the penitent-form, and some of them very remarkable ones.

The meeting over, the General, accompanied by Mr. Morrow and self, went to Hillcrest, and had supper, and after to bed.

 

During this campaign he cries out in his diary: "Souls! Souls! Souls! My heart hungers for souls!"--and to the people of Dundee, he hammers in the object of his mission, the object of his life's calling, the conversion of everybody, Christian and Pagan, to the practical work of benevolence:

There is no need for me to teach you anything. How can I, when a Scotchman knows everything?---everything that ever happened, or is going to happen! No, you are cradled in theology, and fed on religion. But I'll tell you what I can do: I can urge you to make practical use of what is in your heads and your hearts. Real, practical religion! to get you into the ways of the Saviour, who went about doing good--that is why I am here.

 

In this same year (1897) he paid a visit to the Continent. His journal contains incidents of the following character:

Over no one did our people rejoice more than a tall, powerful, battered-looking man who was praying for mercy among the Penitents, like a little child. He had been for years a notoriousy drunkard, quarrelsome in his cups, and being a powerful fellow, he was not very easy to deal with when he got into a row. Consequently he gave the police no end of trouble.

In talking over my coming visit, the Inspector said to one of our Sergeants, "Now if you can get that fellow saved, you will do the town a good turn, and we will stand fifty kroner for the job." "Done," said, or thought, the Sergeant. The man promised to come to the meetings, kept his word, came sober and professed Salvation. I hope the fifty kroner will be honourably paid. It has been well earned, and the work is cheap at the money!

 

And to The War Cry he sends the following story:

I left Berlin with reluctance. But there was no alternative. I was expected at Copenhagen, and go to Copenhagen I must. Almost the last thing I looked upon in my Quarters on that Saturday morning was a really beautiful basket of flowers sent in the night before, bearing the inscription:

"The Baroness Stephanie von ---- presents her compliments to General Booth, with the love of her aged mother--eighty-four --who was converted last Monday night, and trusts that he will continue to have good health and win many souls for Christ's Kingdom, and speedily return."

Although not without a natural love for flowers, I have no time to regale myself with their beauties in this world: I shall probably have that leisure in the next. But those flowers, I must confess, charmed me, because telling me of this dear, aged soul entering into the rest of faith when so very near eternity. May God keep her faithful to the last:

During the autumn of this same year he sat for his portrait to Professor Herkomer, making up for the enforced idleness of this unusual situation by his usual attempt to get at the souls of every one who crossed his path:

I have been three times to Professor Herkomer; he is an interesting man so far as his talking goes, however his painting may turn out. I hope to get at him some way or other. God must help me. He is full of worldly ambition, and yet I should think with a beautiful nature. Oh what might he not do for God and mankind if his magnificent genius was sanctified. God will help me to say something that will be of service.

 

Later the Secretary writes:

The General went this morning at 11.30 to Herkomer's, and sat to that gentleman for the last time. He finished up very friendly, but as dissatisfied as ever with his performance. Herkomer seems to think the portrait is a very good one, and that either the General is a bad judge or else the picture will prove a great disappointment ....

Early in the following year William Booth took Cecil Rhodes and Lord Loch to see the Farm Colony at Hadleigh. This was in May, 1898. It seems that William Booth was deeply perturbed by the political situation in South Africa, and regarded Cecil Rhodes as a man who might either plunge the country into war or make an end of a very dangerous tension by reasonable and conciliatory diplomacy. On the way to the Farm Colony they talked of social redemption and land reclamation, and during the inspection of the Arrny's work Cecil Rhodes was absorbed in practical agricultural affairs.

The Secretary says of these notable visitors: "Both were deeply interested, immensely impressed, and no little surprised by what they saw, Mr. Rhodes especially." But General Booth was thinking of other things, and on his way back to London in the railway carriage, he put his hand upon the arm of Cecil Rhodes, and said to him: "I want to speak to you about yourself. You're a man with much depending on you just now. Tell me, how is it with your soul?" Lord Loch looked surprised, but Cecil Rhodes immediately made answer, "Well, General, it's not quite so well with my soul as I could wish." "Do you pray?" inquired the old man. "Sometimes; not quite so often as I should." "Will you let me pray with you--now?" "Yes." Lord Loch turned his face away, and looked out of the window. William Booth and Cecil Rhodes kneeled down together in the railway carriage, and the Salvationist prayed that God would guide, direct, and save the soul of the South African Colossus. When they rose from their knees, Rhodes took the hand of William Booth, and said to him, "I hope you will continue to pray for me."

In the month following, William Booth was on the Continent, and his diary contains, for the most part, nothing but jottings and ideas. For example:

 

. . . The speed of the train from Helsingfors to Christiania was such as to enable me to get through a fair amount of work. I wonder how it is that so many people seem to have no better occupation whilst travelling than to loll about and sleep or do nothing.

The curiosity evinced at seeing us at work.

The remarks made to my A.D.C. when I left the carriage. Bradlaugh and the General at the station in England. Instant in season and out.

[The following statement made by a Salvationist of education and gentle birth, explains this jotting in the General's diary:

"My conversion was brought about by the contrast presented to me between the General and Bradlaugh, both seated in the same train (thirteen years ago), but the one comfortably settled down, reading a Daily Telegraph and the General, having a careworn look, scrutinizing everything passing up and down, as if they one and all (including myself) were objects of interest to him and he was wanting to do them good, I was brought up in an agnostic home, and Bradlaugh early became one of my heroes. I had read his Life with great interest and admiration, just before coming across him in this way. I had also just previously got to know my first Salvationist, which helped forward the circumstances which I am narrating. As I looked at Bradlaugh, somehow my hero-worship received a shock. He looked altogether too comfortable and self-centred, I fancied, to fit in with my pre-conception. Then I walked along and my guide showed me the General in another carriage. It was the first time I had seen him. Somehow the absence of the paper, and instead, the interest in the ordinary people around him (there did not seem to be any Salvationisis there) made a powerful impression upon my heart, helped, of course, by the General's whole face and figure. My heart (I was seventeen) seemed to go out to a new hero, and as I went home that day I prayed, for the first time for nine years, and struggled on from that moment until I got saved weeks later."]

 

We find in the journal such entries as this, showing how his mind was centred on salvation:

"Ah," said a young man to Commissioner Booth-Hellberg in the morning meeting, "I have been a bad fellow. I have been saved before several times, and when I go out there no one would believe me. I can't keep it. I am as weak as a rag. It is no use. I won't come." The Commissioner dealt faithfully with him, but when the meeting closed he sorrowfully rose from his seat, and walked out of the building.

 

I don't know what his feelings were, but I am certain that the Spirit of God took powerful hold of him, for he came to the afternoon meeting, and when Colonel Lawley blew his whistle, and shouted out with all his might, "Here comes No. 5," Commissioner Booth-Hellberg leant over to me, and joyfully said, "This is the man I was dealing with all through the Prayer Meeting this morning."

As soon as I had done, the Fishers, who were scattered all through the meeting, started to talk first to the person who was next to them, and then to move about tackling people who, they thought, were convicted.

"I am not saved yet," said a girl in white as she was being dealt with in the Registration Room. Down they all went and spent some more time with her till she was through.

 

This often happened.

Later in this same year William Booth writes from Amsterdam to his Chief of the Staff:

I don't think we ought to fret ourselves about evil doers--or about Officers and others who don't do quite as well as we think they ought to do.

I wish I was stronger! I don't think any of you have any idea of the amount of weakness and weariness, if not positive sickness, through which I have to fight my way! You see me under the stimulus of the hour or on the spur of the excitement caused by your intercourse--and are apt to infer wrongly as to my general condition. My life is now a hard fight.

 

A few quotations from the letters of this period from Bramwell Booth to his father show us something of the relations which existed both between father and son, and General and Chief of the Staff. As we have already recorded, Bramwell Booth was one of the few Officers who would stand up to the General, and not only stand up to this fiery spirit, but occasionally even reproach him for want of appreciation! The repentance of William Booth on these occasions was swift and absolute.

Here is an admirable example of reproof:

. . . I really don't quite understand your letter. I thought I was working a system--and sometimes indeed creating one--to a very large extent. How else is it supposed we do work the thing? Here I am with 300 men directing the movements of 10,000 Officers; we are passing through our hands £7,000 a week; besides the trade--doing Religion--money--social--farming--Rescue--Building--Newspapers--clothing, tea--buying and selling almost everything, from shiploads of timber to the contents of the ashpits--making in one way or another most things from baby linen to bicycles--law--banking--Continental campaigns--Jubilees--Self-Denials and Salvation--how could it be done as it is largely without friction and shindys, at any rate, so far as London is concerned, if there was not both system and authority and confidence? Really, I know you are a man with a "hungry heart" to make things better than they are, but I don't quite see that we gain very much by not seeing what is done!

 

And here is a letter where reproof is mingled with something in the nature of a smoothing down:

. . . I rec°d . . . your letter of the 13/14 March, condemning me for suspending your New Zealand campaign. But, my dear General, you surely could not imagine that I could be a party to such an effort when you were in that state, or that I shd. allow you to have either the extra thought and worry of having to decide what you would do. Herbert cabled me your condition, adding the code word which meant that they could not control your movements, and that I must bring pressure to bear upon you! I was aghast. You in dysentery fever, with high temperature, confined to bed, the possibility of heart trouble wh. I knew well enough to be in the background, and this abt. pressure being put on you lest you should attempt meetings! I felt, for once, that it was not the moment to ask you what to do. Indeed, I still feel that it would have been absurd, if not ludicrous, and unkind into the bargain, to consult you with your everlasting willingness to attempt all and sundry, to place you in the position of deciding ....

Then Herbert's wire seemed to me to show that he needed a little stiffening. I cabled therefore definitely, "The matter is in your hands," and instructed him to drop the New Zealand campaign without consulting you, and to run no risks. Your life was at stake. What a pair of fools we shd. have been--I especially--to have hesitated abt. a few meetings over against letting you risk everything. I knew that the only rational way to relieve you was to say that the thing was done. Immediately I found you were round the corner so wonderfully, I wired: "Can the New Zealand campaign go on omitting Tasmania?" I am not surprised that N. was anxious--we all were! If we had gone harassing you about yr. movements when you were in that condition and anything had gone wrong, neither he nor I would ever have been forgiven! You can see the cables when you arrive. Thank God it is all past.

 

The habit of making mere jottings in his diary grew upon him at this time, as will be seen in the following examples from his journal for 1899:

. . . The monsoon continued.

The disappointment in my sea-going qualities. All but helpless.

When you can't, you can't--How much better to say so and lie off.

Paul says they lay-to and waited for the day! We waited for the monsoon to blow over. . . . Aden. The mail. The night.

Strife of tongues--how these Easterns do talk. Com. T. says it is because they don't read. What splendid orators they would make. The night.

The passengers who lay on the deck and in the coal dust. . . . Now for the Red Sea. Passed Hell Gates in safety.

Saw the spot passed in the outward voyage in the night where the China went on the Rocks, when the Dancing was in full swing.

What I hear of the cost of the restoration of the China. [A new vessel.]

The cost of the restoration of the ship-wrecked Officers and Soldiers.

Never mind, they are worth it. Which can't be said of the China.

A restored backslider sometimes better--not always--for the experience.

The dreaded Red Sea.

Hot. "Hotty hotty," China woman says.

(We have a China woman on board, an Ayah or nurse.)

The thermometer has registered 90--to-day it is 88. Everybody perspiring and complaining, playing cards, reading novels and eating, specially eating.

I am living on potatoes, rice, and fruit. Not much choice of the latter. But plenty, and enough is as good as a feast. I am expecting an extra feed for dinner of macaroni and tomatoes.

. . . The Paris wrecked--on the rocks fatal to the M. Great efforts to save her. So many steamers tugged at her. Tons of rocks blasted. Given up.

Left there to her fate--melancholy conclusion to her career--to wait the action of winds and waves that will break her up. A Salvage Company appears. The conditions.

And now the world rings with the tidings. The Paris is floating. The beautiful steamer is saved, towed into harbour, and with damages repaired is to resume her career.

Shall I tell you what my mind went on to? I suppose it is "the ruling passion" carries me on to the one track--the fiddling for ever on the one string--but, anyway, I could not help my thoughts going out to the miserable wrecks that strew the ocean of Time--not ships, but men and women.

The Paris was impaled on a sharp projecting piece of Rock--she held together, but any storm, etc. Rocks on it. Backslider.

Tremendous efforts made to save her. No giving up. Never despair. Ingenuity succeeded.

And yet it was all in the ordinary course of things. Tremendous satisfaction.

More interest than in the building of a new steamer. Left there, she was a constant reproach.

Tremendous profit to the Saviours. And she steams about, one of the best-known ships on the Ocean.

 

There are one or two characteristic entries in the diary for 1900:

. . . as soon as I arrived (in Nottingham) a respectful invitation was handed me from the Theatrical Company performing at the Grand Theatre. I had already seen on the walls the announcement that a Play entitled "The Christian" was being run at the theatre. This invitation offered me a Private Box to witness the Play, as an inducement, informing me that at a private performance of the Play in New York 2,000 Ministers had been present. I wonder whether that was truth or falsehood. I should be willing to believe the latter. The book on which the Play is founded is a caricature of the Christian religion, and ought to be avoided in any and every shape. I told my Soldiers that if they wanted to see the real performance of the Christian it would be at the Albert Hall on the morrow!

 

Concerning a Sunday of three services in the Albert Hall at Nottingham, he writes:

If called upon to criticize my performances I should be disposed to regard them as a little too fierce. But how can it be avoided? When the heart is hot with a burning resolution to do or die, feeling that the great possibility of the hour can never come again, what is there but to go for the realization of your aim with all your might.

 

He kept his head during a rather painful period of the Boer War:

Everybody too much excited about the relief of Mafeking. Oh! that we could get some more interest into the world on the subject of the Salvation War.

Miriam --[One of Bramwell Booth's daughters, who died in 1917.] broke in upon me at eight this morning with the news that Mafeking is relieved. The tidings reached London at 9.30 last night, and created according to the papers the wildest enthusiasm. Within five minutes it is said that thousands of people collected in the principal thoroughfares that were all empty five minutes before, singing and shouting themselves hoarse with "God save the King," cheering for Baden-Powell, and I know not what else.

 

The subject that really occupied his mind was the work of making bad men good, and good men Christian:

In the Registration Room they tell me the scene was most touching. One man said, "I've got a red nose now, but I'm going to change it for a red jersey."

 

On the last day of the old year, and at the threshold of a new century, he writes:

So the Old Year goes out, or rather the Century.

Have no time or heart to philosophize or sentimentalize on the event. Must turn my attention to getting some truths--facts, arguments, appeals, that will influence the thousands I shall have to talk to at 10.30. Oh God, what can I say?

 

CHAPTER XIX

ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE PICTURESQUE PERIOD

1901

 

SELDOM without friends, and never without enemies, William Booth arrived with the new century not only on the frontier of old age but at the gateway of a very wide popularity. We may describe him from now onwards as living in this world's sunshine. He had become a patriarch, and one of the most picturesque of patriarchs. His romantic figure was known to nearly all the nations of the earth. His work was recognized in nearly every land as the work of one honestly inspired by love for humanity. He ceased to be an object of scorn. He became a hero of the world.

His appearance at this time was striking to the point of the dramatic, Tall and attenuated, with slightly stooping shoulders, the frail body of the man would have seemed almost feeble but for the vigour and distinction of the strong head. His hair, which was snow-white, grew long and was brushed carelessly, standing up from the brow and falling backward to the neck and ears. His face was almost bloodless in its pallor, The rather small eyes, under dark and restless eyebrows, had the brightness of beads. The lower part of his face was covered by moustache and beard as white as his hair. It seemed as if he were a figure carved out of chalk. In repose, he was like a tired man who observes and reflects between spells of nodding sleep; but in action, with his thin arms raised above his head, his eyes blazing, and his powerful voice hurling out his thoughts, he was like a prophet. For myself, I loved the man most in repose, when his gentleness and tenderness and even sweetness gave a singular beauty to the old and rugged face; and I think this expression of his spirit is visible in the famous photograph which appears as the frontispiece of our book, a photograph which the whole Army seized upon at once as the truest likeness of their General, and perhaps as an emblem of the Army.

In that face one can see how the spirit was bowed down by the sorrows and sufferings of humanity. There is nothing there of the thundering preacher or the vigorous "showman" or the burning prophet, but only the infinite compassion of an old man for a world which is unhappy, a world for which he has given all his days.

His tours were now events of considerable importance. Instead of encountering hordes of howling roughs in the manufacturing towns of England, he found himself welcomed in the capitals of the world by monarchs, statesmen, and the heads of churches as well as by the multitude. Some of these tours resembled a royal progress. The streets of cities were hung with flags, bands played their welcome, civic dignitaries in robes of state greeted him on arrival, and immense multitudes of people thronged about him shouting an affectionate acclamation. Moreover, he was seriously consulted by statesmen concerning the problem which affects all countries, the problem of poverty, a problem which exists under so many and various forms of government, that this circumstance alone should convince intelligent people of a spiritual rather than a mechanistic cause. In all the countries he visited, William Booth was asked by kings, governors, or politicians what he would recommend them to do for the alleviation of human suffering and the removal of poverty. He had become an authority on the weakness and miseries of mortality.

During these wonderful campaigns he remained as humbly and usefully active as ever with his pen. A secretary records on one journey that after meetings and receptions of a most exhausting character he would work at his "Children's Catechism." [The Salvation Army Directory, a book of religious instruction for children.]

 

Very earnest about Catechism, which he considered would be of immense value to the Army in the future--spent much time on it.

Then such a reference to doctrinal matters as that which follows, shows how watchful the General was of the Army's spiritual life:

Conference at tea-table... about the Doctrinal Question in Norway. General said that the time had now come when the Army must take a definite stand in Norway, and that Officers who had difficulties about Doctrine must not give expression to them publicly, or in any way that would injure the faith of others.

 

We find, too, an amusing entry by his Secretary like this:

Worked all the morning on his article for The Sunday Strand, which he considers is a paper differing from the weekly papers in so far as it proposes to amuse people on the way to Hell on Sunday instead of on week-days.

References to the Boer War are not very numerous in his diaries, but we know from other sources that the General regarded this conflict with horror, and felt in particular the enmity which it aroused against England in almost every part of the world. The following entries occur in the Secretary's diary, which records a visit to Berlin:

Awful news in the streets with regard to the Transvaal War. Rumours that Butler is murdered. Weighs very heavily on the dear General's mind. Seems very distressed.

Very much perturbed with news of disaster to British Arms at Ladysmith. Says it is going to be an awful business, and grieves over the possible shooting of Salvationists by each other.

 

He is mortified by . . . the Continental spirit which seems to gloat over any news that it can get concerning British disasters.

It was not only the dreadful and inhuman hatreds roused by war which distressed William Booth. The moral earnestness which it occasions always seemed to him a waste of the human spirit. He saw with bewilderment and pain a nation which tolerates sin and suffering in its own midst roused by war to an almost incredible condition of moral energy and spiritual enthusiasm. Why, he asked himself, would not people give to the war against evil--which is the root cause of poverty and pain--something of this same energy and enthusiasm?

During the Boer War he visited Paris, where, just then, Englishmen were far from being popular, and conducted Salvation meetings on his own lines:

Before coming to his text he spoke for a few moments on the work of the Army, and made a very great impression upon the crowd, which was composed of about 700 people, most of them intelligent and a few influential. The General, in spite of suggestions that had been made to him as to the fastidious nature of the Parisian audiences, launched out in the same fashion and spoke the same plain unvarnished Gospel truth that he would do in a British audience. A little apprehension was felt at first as to the result, but the audience accepted it and went down before it; for a long time we had to wait for the first soul, but at last it came, and we finished up with 18 at the Mercy-Seat. There were two or three very remarkable cases amongst them. This is the first time that a penitent-form has been introduced in any (secular) Public Hall in Paris.

 

That he was absorbed in his spiritual work, and that neither great public events nor his own international popularity had power to deflect this main direction of his soul, may be gathered from the following very simple entries in his journals:

We were startled last night by the news of the death of Colonel Pepper. He was in the Crimean War, but for the last thirty years has been in the Salvation War. He was a loyal, devoted soldier of Jesus Christ. Travelling with his devoted wife throughout Great Britain wherever it was thought they could be useful.

One of the characteristics of the Colonel was his War Cry Booming. Every Saturday in the Restaurants--Public Houses-Market Places--Open Air--everywhere, he was to be seen pushing his Crys.

His translation has been sudden. Well and at work Sunday --attacked by a shivering fit on Monday--and in Heaven on Thursday morning.

His dear wife has written for an out-and-out funeral, and requests that an Officer who will understand making the event a blessing to the City may be sent down for that purpose.

Had special Soldiers' Meeting at night in Temple and 74 souls, including a man who threatened to knock the Commissioner to pieces if he did not let him in; but he didn't do that, he got saved instead.

One man, who had travelled 51 miles on his bicycle to get saved, came out to the penitent-form, being almost the last.

One young man leapt from the Gallery behind to the platform, and hurt himself, in order to be saved.

Quite a number of young men came out completely drunk. One would have thought they would not have known what they were doing, but for the fact that they were at the meetings on the foilowing day testifying and praising God.

 

The Secretary writes elsewhere:

. . . A Jewess got to the penitent-form. Had been attending our Halls for five years. Frequently used to curse the name of Christ aloud and disturb the meetings. Perspiration rolled down her, and yet she was as cold as ice.

In the evening the meeting was much more hopeful, and 23 came out. Michael Baxter was again present, and was very much impressed. He made Commissioner Howard a promise of £100. One of the converts was a girl who confessed to having murdered her child. She came to the Mercy-Seat to make her peace with God, and in the morning is to go to the Police and give herself up.

The night meeting was a wonderful time. The power of the Holy Ghost clothed the General, and his sermon, "This year thou shall die," riveted the attention of all to the need of being saved at once. 88 came forward to the penitent-form.

The first to come this afternoon was a man who is called out for the Reserve to go to S. Africa in connection with the war. He wanted to be saved before he started. May God keep him, and if he dies take him to Heaven.

Another interesting incident was a Salvation Soldier walking 6 miles to obtain the General's blessing before he went to South Africa. He too has been called out to go and fight. The General saw him, gave him his blessing and kissed him, the Soldiers standing at attention all the time. When he got outside into the passage he cried with emotion. In the evening he was on the platform weeping, laughing, and clapping his hands over the sinners coming to repentance.

Later we heard that a Band Sergeant who was playing his instrument in the meetings to-day died at 3 o'clock the next morning.

 

Then we get William Booth himself:

Some years ago I was preaching at Linköpping in Sweden. The night was warm and the windows were wide open. Altho' everything was very quiet the power of God was upon the people. One man was so deeply convicted that he rose up and leapt out of the window, and ran four miles away and then ran four miles back. I had left, but the Soldiers were still praying with some convicted people. This young man made straight for the penitent-form and found salvation. His career since has been one of almost uninterrupted success, his last victory being a powerful Revival at Eskilstuna where the ---- Movement has been like a blight on the people. They doubled the Corps, and now in the height of summer he has four meetings a day.

 

I have just promised to visit Wigan Sunday week, and in talking about it Brigadier [Now Commissioner.] Kitching has been telling me a good story. When opened, the girl Captain found it difficult to get any attention either out-door or in to her message. They treated her with indifference, if not with contempt. She was determined, however, not to sit down with this sort of neglect, so she hit on the following device. Wigan is full of Colliers, Iron Workmen, and the li