LIFE of
The GOSPEL TRUTH WILLIAM BOOTH
FOUNDER and FIRST GENERAL
of the SALVATION ARMY
by
Harold Begbie
1920
In Two Volumes
Volume 1
Chapter 22
THE FIRST LONDON MISSION 1865-1868
WILLIAM BOOTH, describing his mission in The Christian, in 1865, wrote:
The moral degradation and spiritual destitution of the teeming population of the East of London are subjects with which the Christians of the metropolis are perfectly conversant. More than two-thirds of the working-classes never cross the threshold of church or chapel, but loiter away the Sabbath in idleness, spending it in pleasure-seeking or some kind of money-making traffic. Consequently, tens of thousands are totally ignorant of the Gospel; and, as they will not attend the means ordinarily used for making known the love of God towards them, it is evident that if they are to be reached extraordinary methods must be employed.
This announcement was made six weeks after the beginning of an irregular mission in Whitechapel, to the holding of which he had been invited by a firm of publishers, Messrs. Stabb & Chase. Services of a revival character were held first in an old tent erected on the Quakers' burying-ground in Thomas Street, and afterwards in the open air in the Mile End Road. From the outset these services were well attended, and scarcely a meeting passed without several conversions--conversions which must have acquainted William Booth with the strange character of the East London whirlpool, since they were representative of nearly every class in the community.
It will be observed that he speaks in this announcement of the moral degradation and the spiritual destitution of East London. There is not one word, not a hint anywhere, of the economic degradation and the physical destitution which are only too often the direct causes of spiritual torpor. At the beginning of his career in London, it is quite clear, William Booth had one remedy, and only one remedy, for the distresses of mankind, and that the Gospel. Shocked as he was by the ugliness. the misery, the grinding poverty of Whitechapel, his vision failed at this time to penetrate beneath the surface of that immense quagmire. He was not lacking in sympathy with the poor, but he believed--and, of course, in one sense he was profoundly right--that faith in God, confidence in God, and hope of everlasting felicity were the sovran healing of all humanity's distress. It was not until later in his life that he realized how economic conditions can so oppress and bear upon the soul that its natural functions of love, worship, and aspiration may be almost completely inhibited. But even when he did come to this apprehension, even when he was hot-foot among the social reformers, he remained in nearly every essential a conservative, and never ceased to lay his supreme emphasis on conversion as the cure of individual sorrow and of social disorder.
So far as we can judge, it was this very concentration of purpose, this intense singleness of view, this consuming one-ideaness of soul, which made William Booth so successful as a preacher of personal religion. For he differed from other Hebraists in the depth and warmth of his human sympathy, so that while he was blind and deaf to the political question he was all eyes and all ears for the sufferings of humanity. He had nothing but Christ to give to those who suffered, but this Christ was given with an eagerness and a passion infinitely more convincing to democracy than the millennial promises of the politician. He was a preacher because he truly and earnestly loved his fellow-men; and he practised, so far as his slender means would allow, the charity he preached.
The character of the man as a preacher, and his personal attraction. may be clearly seen in the account of this East London Mission which I have been fortunate to obtain from his first London convert, an old Irishman, who acted for a considerable time as an official in the movement.
I called upon this veteran at a house in Lancing, half nursing home and half boarding establishment, where he was recovering from the after effects of an operation.
"I must tell you," said he, "that I was a prize-fighter, and in those days we fought in a twenty-one-foot ring, not a sixteen-foot ring, so that a man had to be smart to hold his own with a quick fighter. It was because I was as smart as the wind that I bested what I took on. We used to fight at the back of The Blind Beggar public-house, and it was there, forty-eight years ago, that a match had been arranged between me and another Irishman named FitzGerald, the finest man as ever walked the streets of Whitechapel. There had been a bit of a chip between us over our winnings, and the fight was to be a big one. Well, one morning I was walking towards the public-house, but on the opposite side of the way, just strolling along with my hands in my pocket, when I came across General Booth for the first time in my life. I met him promiscuously. That was on the 26th July, 1865. I looked at him. He looked at me. Something in the man's external appearance took hold of me then and there. I stopped dead in the street, looking at him; and he stopped, too, looking at me. At first I thought he was going to ask me the way somewhere. I could see he was a minister, for he wore a white choker and a tall hat, and I thought he was strange to the place. But, after he had looked at me a long while, says he very sadly, 'I'm looking for work.' I was taken aback. 'I've got no place,' says he, 'to put my head in.' I got hold of some coins in my pocket, and was just going to offer them to him, when he pointed to 'the boys' outside the public-house just opposite, a great crowd of them, and says he, 'Look at those men,' he says; 'look at them!--forgotten by God and man. Why should I be looking for work? There's my work, over there, looking for me. But I've got no place,' he says, 'where I can put my head in.' 'You're right, sir,' I said; 'those men are forgotten by God and man, and if you can do anything for them 'twould be a great work.' And what made me say that? Sure, it was just the man's external appearance. He was the finest-looking gentleman ever you saw--white-faced, dark-eyed, and a great black beard over his chest; sure there was something strange about him that laid a hold on a man. Well, he told me he was preaching in the Mile End Road, and asked me to come and hear him, and bring some of the boys along with me; and I promised that I would."
I asked him to tell me whether the preacher did not say anything at that first interview which accounted in some measure for this instant effect upon his mind. But again and again he protested that "it was just the man's external appearance," hinting of some ghostly emanation, or psychic influence, which laid a spell upon his senses. "I felt I could do just anything for that fine-looking gentleman."
Then he proceeded, "On the next day I was to fight FitzGerald. I said to myself, 'This'll be the last fight of your life,' for I was still thinking of the minister; and I'll tell you the candid truth now that it's over-past, as I stripped that morning I thought FitzGerald would kill me. He was a terrible man, taller altogether than me, and fierce with it, and proud, too. But he gave up, like an old woman, after an hour and three-quarters. Although I'd beaten him, and all the boys were making a hero of me, I didn't want ever to fight again, and as soon as I could I went off to the Mile End Waste, where Mr. Booth was preaching. Well, I think he was the most impetuous man I ever met. There he was holding forth, surrounded by the blackguards of Whitechapel, who in them days were the greatest vagabonds you could meet anywhere on God's earth. Some were mocking, and some were laughing; but Mr. Booth he shouted at them finely, and then gave out a hymn, and led the singing till he just drowned their noises, or nearly so. Then I threw off my coat, and walked round the ring instead of joining in the revelry, and in two minutes all those blackguards were as quiet as lambs. Well, when the meeting was over Mr. Booth linked hold of me, and, said he, 'How did you do it?' I told him that there were better men than me in the crowd, but that my nationality covered a bit of that, for they all knew an Irishman would fight. Then he looked at me and said, 'You're not happy; you know you're not happy.' 'What reason is that?' I asked. 'You'll perish like a dog.' he said; 'you're living for the devil, and the devil will have you.' I answered: 'Who made a prophet of you?' He says, 'My Father in Heaven.' I cast down my eyes at that. Then he put a hand on my shoulder, and says he, 'I'll make a man of you yet.' And not very long after that he had me down at the penitent-form after one of his sermons in the Tent, and he came to me, put his arm round me, and says he in my ear, 'You're not happy!'--so that I had to cry out it was true, for I was everything vile, contaminating, and diabolical. Then he prayed with me, and afterwards I was converted. I got up from my knees ready to die for that man."
I asked him if he began from that moment to work for the Mission.
"Work!" he exclaimed. "I became manager of the Soup Kitchen!"
He told me that William Booth never spared any man who worked for him, and that during those first years of service he was not only manager of the food distribution, but took the meetings in the slums of Shoreditch ("for I was a bit of a rough myself"), acted as coachman to Mrs. Booth--who was terribly nervous of driving about London and was "more or less" the first lay secretary of the Salvation Army.
"Every day for seven years," he said, perhaps letting his imagination go a little, "I was with the General or the General was with me. We had a little bit of a shack for an office and for dinner there was always a piece of steak or a mutton chop--he hadn't got into opulence then--which we shared together. He'd preach three times a day on that bit of meat. I was glad when he wasn't there, for then I had the chop or the steak to myself! He was a hard man, though, the General was. I remember one time there was some groups taken, and I said to him, 'I should like to have one of them groups.' 'You shall,' said he. A month later I said to him, 'You haven't given me one of them groups yet.' He turned round on me sharp, and says he, 'Why don't you buy one?' I told him straight that I'd worked for him night and day, and I thought it would be only decent for him to give me one of the groups. He laughed at that, and turning to one of the others who was present, he says, 'Oh, give him one, if he won't pay for it.' But you couldn't be angry with him."
I asked him if he himself figured in this group.
"Oh, no!" he exclaimed. "Sure it was just a group of the General by himself."
He told me how the General prophesied the ruin of his married life. "I was always one to love money," he says very honestly, "and I fell in love with a woman who had a fortune of £500. When I told the General that I wanted to get married, he said to me, 'Brother M------, it's money you're marrying for, not love.'" "Was that true?" I inquired.
"It was true. Then the General said, 'You'll lose it all, every penny.' And that was true, too. It was a strange prophecy. My poor wife died hungry, though it was not for want of money. She couldn't eat a thing. She died of hunger. But I had lost every penny of her fortune all the same."
He told us that he went into the business of an estate agent in the north of London, remaining a Salvationist. "I've bought and sold houses for years," he said, "and now I do no work, for my employers have pensioned me off. The last house I sold was the whole of Muswell Hill," he concluded proudly, and I did not press for an explanation.
It is a curious reflection that the personal influence of William Booth has remained with this old man all his life. He underwent a very serious operation in 1913, and he was visited in hospital by many ministers of religion but by no Salvationist. This seems to have angered him. "I said to myself," he relates, "that I'd have no more to do with the Army; if that was all they cared for me, after nearly fifty years of service, sure I'd be better without them." And then he smiles, and uses a charming phrase, "Ah, but I wasn't as bad as my mind!" The trouble was cleared up, and when he left the hospital it was as a faithful Salvationist. "I'm told," he says proudly, "that General Bramwell Booth heard of my feelings, and said to one of the Officers at Headquarters, ' We'll get him back.' God bless you, he knew I couldn't desert!"
This old man's testimony to the earnestness and passionate sympathy of William Booth is worth recording: "It was the poor people he looked for from start to finish. If he worked other people hard, he worked harder himself. All day long he was at it, preaching, praying, singing, writing, talking, journeying--always for the poor. There was never a man like him for that."
And he speaks, too, with affection of Mrs. Booth, though her extreme timidity seems to have left him with a source of continual amusement. "She wore the most consecutive dress ever I saw on a woman," he says; "and she'd look at you in a queer way, smiling out of her eyes, and talk to you as if you were something of a child. I'd drive her to meetings, hand the horse and carriage over, and go inside with her.' Brother M------,' she'd say to me, 'remember I want you to keep the Devil out of this meeting.' And many times the only way I could keep the Devil out was by throwing him out, for Mrs. Booth would go to some queer blackguard places, same as the General. She was always very gentle and quiet in her preaching, but the General was the most impetuous man I ever met. It seemed as if he'd tear the soul out of your body. And then in the midst of it all there'd be a bit that would make you want to cry, or a tale that would set you laughing fit to burst. But all the time you felt that he wanted to save your soul. There was no doubt about that."
The account which Mrs. Booth gave of the origin of the mission to East London tallies with that of the old Irishman. "I remember well," she said, "when the General decided finally to give up the evangelistic life and to devote himself to the salvation of the East Enders. He had come home from the meeting one night, tired out as usual. It was between eleven and twelve o'clock. Flinging himself into an easychair, he said to me, 'Oh! Kate, as I passed by the doors of the flaming gin-palaces to-night, I seemed to hear a voice sounding in my ears, "Where can you go and find such heathen as these, and where is there so great a need for your labours?" And I felt as though I ought at every cost to stop and preach to those East End multitudes.' I remember the emotion that this produced in my mind. I sat gazing into the fire, and the Devil whispered to me, 'This means another new departure--another start in life.' The question of our support constituted a serious difficulty. Hitherto we had been able to meet our expenses by the collections which we had made from our more respectable audiences. But it was impossible to suppose that we could do so among the poverty-stricken East Enders. We had not then the measure of light upon this subject which subsequent events afforded, and we were afraid even to ask for a collection in such a locality. Nevertheless, I did not answer discouragingly. After a momentary pause for thought and prayer, I replied, 'Well, if you feel you ought to stay, stay. We have trusted the Lord once for our support, and we can trust Him again.' There was not in our minds, at the time we came to this decision, the remotest idea of the marvellous work which has since sprung into existence."
William Booth himself has given the following account of this fresh movement in his life: "I saw multitudes of my fellow-creatures not only without God and hope, but sunk in the most desperate forms of wickedness and misery that can be conceived. I went out and looked on the wretched sons and daughters of debauchery and vice and crime who were all about me. The drunkenness, and harlotry, and pauperism, and slumdom, and blasphemy, and infidelity of these crowds had a fascination for me .... I not only saw but compassionated the people sunk in the sin and wretchedness that I beheld, and the everlasting woe that I knew must follow."
It will be seen both from these accounts and from that of the old Irishman already quoted, that it was the spectacle of sin and suffering which moved William Booth to his decision. The incessant degradation and the multiplied misery of East London were to him like veritable and heartbreaking human cries for help; he could not walk a pace through these dreadful streets without acute suffering; he had no rest until he gave himself to the work of rescue. And yet some years were still to pass before he realized the true nature of his vocation.
Soon after the Booths' decision to give themselves to this work, a step which meant at that time a voluntary return to poverty, Mr. Samuel Morley, the philanthropist, hearing of William Booth's courageous preaching in the Mile End Road, invited the missionary to call and see him. We learn from Commissioner Booth-Tucker that the philanthropist was cordially impressed by the account he received of the Mission. "The open-air meetings on the Mile End Waste, surrounded by blaspheming infidels and boisterous drunkards; the processions down the Whitechapel Road, pelted with garbage; the placards carried with striking texts; the penitent-form and the testifying of the new converts, enlisted his unbounded sympathy."
One result of this conversation was a generous contribution on Mr. Morley's part towards the support of William Booth and his family. It came, as it happened, just at a moment when William Booth was in sore need of such assistance, for some of his friends--and there were not many--had forsaken him. "Some of them," says Commissioner Booth-Tucker, "objected to his holiness teaching. Others considered that he laid too much stress upon repentance and works, and too little upon bare faith. Not a few grew weary of the ceaseless open-airs and processions, with the mobbing and mockery of the crowd."
The extraordinary courage and tenacity of the man were never exhibited more finely than in the early years of the Christian Mission. The flourish of trumpets had died away; the excitement of novel proceedings was at an end; the enthusiasm of the over-fervent had evaporated. He was faced by an almost boundless hostility and an almost boundless indifference. Surrounded by his little band of disciples, he confronted the ridicule, the hatred, the scorn, and the bitter malice of perhaps the most destitute and degraded place in the world. It was like preaching in Hell; for the atheism of East London in those days was a fierce and oppugnant atheism, an atheism which hated the very name of God, and to which Jesus appeared as the archdeceiver of the human race. Attacked on every side by those who hated religion, and regarded with an amused curiosity or a provoking ridicule by those who neither knew nor wanted to know about religion, William Booth doggedly continued his work, and never once lost heart. It is remarkable that often as he may have doubted in the midst of his successful crusades as a revivalist preacher, when thousands were flocking to country chapels to hear him preach, he never once lost heart in those early and most difficult days of the Christian Mission in East London.
Mr. Morley's support came at the right moment, but William Booth was still faced by the abysmal problems which his Mission had discovered to him. He wanted more helpers, and the Churches sent no one to his aid. He wanted a hall, but he had only a weather-beaten tent. Nevertheless the man fought on, making converts here and there, encouraging those who were faithful, and working everybody who offered him the least assistance almost to death.
There he was in East London--an eccentric, an innovator. Churches and Chapels were equally cold, equally hostile. Athanasius scarcely had Christendom so heartily and unanimously against him.
He called the open-air his "cathedral." He stood up before the vilest people imaginable and proclaimed the Gospel of Love. He confronted the most abominable people in London, and denounced sin with the unqualified energy of an inspired prophet. He was fearless. One thing must be carefully remembered, he never lost his humanity. He could draw to his side such a person as the Irishman we have just spoken about. He inspired some of his followers with an affection which was only this side of idolatry. And he could make the worst of people feel that he cared for them. If he had lacked this humanity, it is probable that the mob would have stoned him to death.
It is told in many places that the wind one night blew down the old tent in Whitechapel. The Irishman, however, tells me that the cords of the tent were cut by a gang of roughs. He says that he knew about it, but said nothing to the General for fear of adding to his sorrows. "It was better for him to think," he says, "that the wind blew it down."
The loss of this tent drove the Mission into an old dancing saloon. "The people danced in it," says William Booth, "until the small hours of the Sunday morning, and then the converts carried in the seats, which had fortunately not been destroyed with the tent. It was a long, narrow room, holding about 600 people. The proprietor combined the two professions of dancing-master and photographer, the latter being specially pushed on Sundays. In the front room, through which all the congregation had to pass from the open street, sat the mistress colouring photographs, whilst some one at the door touted for business. The photography was done at the top of the house, and customers had to pass on their way up by a sort of parlour that was open to our hall. It was a regular thing for them to pause, and listen to the message of salvation as they went upstairs on their Sabbath-breaking business."
He speaks of wonderful meetings held in this dancing-saloon, and relates that regularly during those Sundays he gave three, occasionally four, open-air addresses, led two or three processions through the streets, and conducted three meetings in the dancing-saloon. "The power and happiness of the work," he says, "carried me along, and in that room the foundation was really laid of all that has since come to pass."
The dancing-saloon was only available on Sundays. "For week-nights," he says, "we secured an old wool warehouse in one of the lowest parts of Bethnal Green. Unfortunately, the windows opened on the street. When crowded... it became oppressively hot, especially in summer. If we opened the windows the boys threw stones and mud and fireworks through, and fired trains of gunpowder, laid from the doors inwards. But our people got used to this, shouting 'Hallelujah!' when the crackers exploded and the powder flashed .... It was an admirable training-ground for the development of the Salvation Army spirit."
Mr. W. T. Stead relates some of the Christian Mission's troubles in a monograph on General Booth published in 1891 now said to be very scarce. "They migrated to a stable, from which they were ejected for disturbing a gymnasium on the other side of the wall. They found a resting-place for themselves in an old penny gaff at Limehouse, and then established themselves also on the site of an old beerhouse, The Eastern Star. It was not, however, until they took the Effingham Theatre that they considered their work as firmly rooted with some prospects of permanence." This was in 1867.
One of General Booth's later sayings affords us a pretty accurate view of the attitude now adopted towards him by the Churches. "The day has gone when the priest and Levite are content to pass by the wounded man. They must needs stop now, turn back, and punch the head of any good Samaritan who dares to come to the rescue." Of course there is exaggeration in this saying, which was uttered after bitter attacks on his Darkest England Scheme, but it is picturesque and explosive enough to make us feel the loneliness in which William Booth attempted to reach the masses.
It was this attitude of the Churches, more than anything else, which transformed the Christian Mission from a purely pioneer agency into an organized society aiming at a permanent corporate life. It cannot be too clearly known that one object of William Booth in going out to preach Christianity in the streets of London was to help the Churches. He recognized, and never ceased to recognize, that there must be a pastoral as well as an evangelistic side of Christian propaganda. He never attacked the idea of a resident minister domiciled in a particular locality and serving the needs of a community of Christians. He was indeed sincerely convinced that a pastorate was not merely a wise provision of the Church, but that it was essential to Christian life. His object at the beginning of his career in East London was to rescue from sin those who never attended church or chapel and to send them as converted men and women to the ministers of the various denominations. It was only when he discovered that the Churches either failed to keep these people, or, as in some cases, deliberately turned their backs upon such sorry "rift-raft," that he conceived the idea of a Mission composed almost entirely of its own converts.
In these early years, when he was mercilessly attacked from all quarters as a bombastic clown or as a raving fanatic bent upon setting up a new sect, few people were allowed to know the real truth. But before the end of his career it was recognized that he had set out with no antagonism towards the Churches, and that it was the circumstance of the Churches' ill-will towards his converts which drove him to the establishment of a distinct organization.
To follow with intelligence the rise and history of the Salvation Army it is necessary to recognize this truth, and also to bear in mind that William Booth began his extraordinary work in East London as a pure Hebraist, and with but little interest in social and economic questions.
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