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ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 

 
‘ECHOES AND... 
 MEMORIES 
 
 BY \ 
 
 BRAMWELL BOOTH 
 
 ‘Your fame is as the grass whose hue comes 
 and goes, and His might withers it by Whose 
 power it sprang from the lap of the earth’ 
 
 , Dante 
 
 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Tuis book is mainly a series of personal impres- 
 sions of various people I have known, some of 
 them very intimately, others but casually. I 
 confess that certain of these people I have not 
 at all understood, but many of them I have 
 admired, and a number I have loved. There 
 are some faintly sketched references to men of 
 eminence in various walks of life, with whom, 
 in one way or another, I came in contact up to 
 the time when I became the General of The 
 Salvation Army; these chapters are not con- 
 cerned with the period subsequent to that date. 
 Reference is made also to some whose names 
 belong to the humble rank and file of The Army 
 itself. These are men and women whose 
 histories are not to be found in any book of 
 contemporary biography, but their names are 
 written in heaven. Many of them had an in- 
 fluence on me and on multitudes of others out 
 of all proportion to their worldly renown. 
 Here are also some memories of Salvation 
 Army life and warfare as I recall them. I 
 hesitate to obtrude myself in these pages, but 
 I think it will be obvious that my appearance is 
 necessary if only for the purpose of introduction. 
 
 Vv 
 
vi FOREWORD 
 
 Several of these chapters have already 
 appeared in a Review circulating exclusively 
 amongst our Staff, and I have found some — 
 advantage in their publication, since a Move- 
 ment such as ours has much to learn in the 
 present from its own past. 
 
 My life is a crowded one, and it may be that 
 I have included here memories which I have 
 found it easiest to recall when possibly I had 
 better have laid hold of more important con- 
 cerns. 
 
 I have to thank Colonel Carpenter, of my 
 Staff, and Mr. Harry Cooper, a Journalist of this 
 City, for assisting me in preparing the matter 
 for publication and passing it through the press. 
 
 BRAMWELL Boot. 
 THE SALVATION ARMY, 
 
 Lonpon, E.C. 4. 
 November, 1925. 
 
CHAP. 
 
 r. 
 II. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FATHER AND SON 
 
 THE First GENERAL OF THE SALVATION ARMY 
 
 AND HIS CHIEF OF STAFF . 
 
 . THE PROPHET 
 
 . DISTURBERS OF THE PEACE . 
 
 . FRIENDS IN NEED , 
 
 . How THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 
 
 . ‘SIGNS AND WONDERS’ . 
 
 . THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 
 
 . SOME OTHER CHURCHMEN I HAVE KNOWN 
 . A MANAGER OF MEN 
 
 . SWEDEN AND ALL THE WORLD 
 
 . SOME METHODS OF ARREST . 
 
 . STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY 
 . THE MINOTAUR 
 
 . THE OLD BAILEY 
 
 . GLIMPSES OF STATESMEN 
 
 . W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 
 
 . EARTHEN VESSELS 
 
 . THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 
 . BENCH AND BAR 
 
 . MorRE ABOUT THE LAw’s MAJESTY 
 . CONCERNING “SACRAMENTS ’ . 
 
 . A BRUSH WITH HERBERT SPENCER 
 . PURELY PERSONAL . 
 
 . CORONATIONS 
 
 vii 
 
 103 
 II5 
 125 
 133 
 I4l 
 153 
 161 
 173 
 181 
 IQI 
 201 
 209 
 215 
 

 
I 
 FATHER AND SON 
 
 ONE picture among the many that I cherish of my father 
 I should like to place at the very beginning of what I have 
 to say of him here. It explains a certain new development 
 in the history of The Army, but it also gives a glimpse of 
 the deep fires that burned in the personality of William 
 Booth. One morning, away back in the eighties, I was an 
 early caller at his house in Clapton. Here I found him in 
 his dressing-room, completing his toilet with ferocious 
 energy. The hair-brushes which he held in either hand 
 were being wielded with quite eloquent vigour upon a mane 
 that was more refractory than usual, and his braces were 
 flying like the wings of Pegasus. No good-morning-how-do- 
 you-do here ! 
 
 ‘Bramwell,’ he cried, when he caught sight of me, ‘ did 
 you know that men slept out all night on the bridges ?’ 
 
 He had arrived in London very late the night before 
 from some town in the south of England, and had to cross 
 the city to reach his home. What he had seen on that mid- 
 night return accounted for this morning tornado. Did I 
 know that men slept out all night on the Bridges ? 
 
 ‘Well, yes,’ I replied, ‘a lot of poor fellows, I suppose, 
 do that.’ 
 
 ‘Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself to have 
 known it and to have done nothing for them,’ he went on, 
 vehemently. 
 
 I began to speak of the difficulties, burdened as we were 
 already, of taking up all sorts of Poor Law work, and so 
 forth. My father stopped me with a peremptory wave of 
 the brushes. 
 
 B I 
 
2 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 ‘Go and do something!’ he said. ‘ We must do some- 
 thing.’ 
 
 ‘What can we do ?’ 
 
 “Get them a shelter !’ 
 
 ‘ That will cost money.’ 
 
 ‘Well, that is your affair! Something must be done. 
 Get hold of a warehouse and warm it, and find something 
 to cover them. But mind, Bramwell, no coddling!’ 
 
 That was the beginning of The Salvation Army Shelters, 
 the earliest and most typical institutions connected with 
 our now world-wide Social Work. But it also throws a ray 
 of light on the characteristic benevolence of The Army’s 
 Founder. Benevolence, which is a languid quality in many - 
 men, with him was passionate. I should be disposed to 
 place his benevolence first among his characteristics. I 
 write of him here, as far as it is possible to do so, aside from 
 what I humbly acknowledge to have been the great deter- 
 mining force of his life—namely, the uplifting and guiding 
 influence of the Spirit of God. This apart, his benevolence 
 was the first quality to light up. The governing influence 
 of his life was good will to his fellows. I am not saying that 
 he never thought of himself. His saintship was not after 
 the pattern of Francis d’Assisi, at least as described by Paul 
 Sabatier. Nor can I say that he was always at the same 
 level of self-denial and self-effacement in order to give prac- 
 tical expression to his benevolent impulse. But I do say, 
 looking at his life as I saw it over a great span of years, 
 not only in workday association as his comrade and principal 
 helper, but in the still closer intimacy of a son, that his 
 benevolence was the leading feature of his character. He 
 really set out to do good to all men—an object which, no 
 doubt, often seemed hopeless, but not on that account to be 
 less sought after. The horizon of his soul was not limited 
 by human hope—it reached out to Divine Power and Love. 
 His heart was a bottomless well of compassion, and it was 
 for this reason principally that, although perhaps more 
 widely and persistently abused than any other figure of 
 his time, he was even more widely and tenaciously loved. 
 
 It would be easy to multiply evidences of his own 
 
FATHER AND SON 3 
 
 unselfishness. The slander that he enriched himself was not 
 merely untrue, it was ridiculously untrue. It was not 
 merely a distortion of the facts, it was an inversion of them. 
 Again and again he had legitimate opportunities to enrich 
 himself, and no one could have flung a stone at him had he 
 accepted them, but he turned them down without hesitating 
 a moment. Rich men even sent him blank cheques on 
 condition that the amount which he filled in he should apply 
 to his own personal use. The cheques were returned. For 
 The Army he was ready to accept such gifts with both 
 hands ; for himself, not at all. 
 
 Next to this, among his outstanding qualities—and, 
 indeed, I am always in doubt whether it should not>be 
 placed first—was his temperamental simplicity. If ‘his 
 appearance, with his smooth and open forehead, his kindling 
 and flashing eyes, his ‘eminent’ nose, his shaggy visage, 
 his general expression of keenness and vivacity, suggested 
 some ancient prophet, his heart was the heart of a little child. 
 His guilelessness was one great secret of his strength. Many 
 who came into his presence were so impressed by his open- 
 ness and candour, the absence of all pretence and casuistry, 
 that they went away feeling that if they had a thousand 
 lives they could trust them into his hands. 
 
 This simplicity of character, of course, had its apparent 
 disadvantages. He would often say what everybody 
 thought to be impolitic. The fear of his occasional impru- 
 dences gave me bad half-hours! There were interviews of 
 great importance ; for example, when it was certainly the 
 part of worldly, if not of spiritual wisdom to refrain from 
 entering upon certain subjects so long as silence could be 
 maintained with honour. In such circumstances he was 
 never to be trusted, however much he might have been 
 entreated beforehand! The interview would be _ half 
 through, when out would come the cat from the bag! It 
 was delightful, and I am bound to say that I never—or very 
 rarely—found anything but good come of his ‘ indiscretions,’ 
 however much they might give me and others ‘ pins and 
 needles’ at the time. 
 
 In the same way, if, in urging any particular course 
 
4 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 upon others, he had any second intention, something at the 
 back of his mind—any arriéve-pensee, as the saying is—it 
 was safe to make its appearance before the parley ended. 
 He could not have kept it back. 
 
 Anything ‘ put on’ or ‘made up’ was anatheina. His 
 honesty was not based on the infamous copy-book maxim. 
 Had he been a thief—and he was in the habit of saying that 
 by nature he was a grabber !—he would have been a shining 
 example of the honour which is supposed to exist among 
 the fraternity ! Nor was he honest only because his religion 
 made him so, although, of course, his religion fortified him 
 in his honesty. But sincerity was a native quality with him. 
 It was in the mould from which he was taken. If it were 
 possible to think of William Booth without his religion, 
 such a William Booth would certainly have been a sincere 
 and honest man. 
 
 The third outstanding characteristic in him was his 
 granite and superlative will. He was immovable, and there- 
 fore, in the passive sense, invincible. Anything like slackness 
 or wobbling or unsteadiness in purpose was abhorred. When 
 he had considered a matter, and made up his mind about it, 
 not all the angels of Heaven could have shaken his deter- 
 mination. This led him at times upon a line of conduct 
 which may have appeared pedantic to those who did not 
 understand ; yet one could never forget that it was this 
 strength in him which enabled him to achieve so much. 
 His determined and steadfast will was really the driving 
 force of his other qualities. 
 
 It was these three characteristics in combination which 
 distinguished his personality and marked him out in his 
 generation. Other men, no doubt, have had equal power of 
 will, but without his genius for compassion ; others, again, 
 may have had a like simplicity, but without the indomitable 
 will. It was his will power which directed his other qualities 
 to practical ends. Without it he would still have been 
 splendid and most lovable, but he would not have been the 
 Founder of The Salvation Army. 
 
 He had, I dare say, the faults of these qualities. His 
 own benevolence made him impatient of the selfish and, 
 
FATHER AND SON 5 
 
 perhaps, too swift in his judgment of those who only cared 
 to gratify themselves. He was at times a hasty executioner, 
 deaf to excuses until after the culprit’s head was off ! 
 
 His sincerity, too, as I have already hinted, had its 
 embarrassing side. In writing of W. E. Gladstone, Lord 
 Morley said that ‘ He had a marked habit of believing peo- 
 ple ; it was part of his simplicity.’ Well, so with my father. 
 He believed people. He was so utterly sincere himself that 
 he could not credit that others could practise any deception. 
 It was only with the greatest difficulty, and in face of the 
 most unquestionable evidence, that he would accept the 
 fact that he had been intentionally misled or treated un- 
 fairly. In the official life of The Army, long after he should 
 have let people go, in the interests of The Army itself, which 
 does not want those who are not of it, he persisted in holding 
 on to them. It was not a mere polite reluctance to believe 
 that men were not honourable and straightforward ; it was 
 almost a constitutional inability. 
 
 His great will power, again, at times made him difficult 
 to deal with. His own determination clashed with the 
 determination of others, and the sudden friction produced 
 sparks; not often, fortunately, leading to conflagrations, 
 though sometimes these did happen. No doubt, there was 
 a vein of hardness in him. It ran side by side with a vein 
 of exquisite tenderness. But the hardness was there. Had 
 it not been there he could not have accomplished what he 
 did. Weakness always fails. 4 
 
 It is impossible to speak of my father in this intimate 
 way without some estimate of the influence of my mother 
 upon him. That influence was extraordinarily uplifting and 
 encouraging, especially during the early years of the Move- 
 ment, when he was hable to depression and to a sense of 
 loneliness, both of which wore off, in some measure, as the 
 success of the work became assured. Catherine Booth 
 continually fed his enthusiasm with fresh fuel, strengthened 
 his faith in God, and pointed him to the gleaming distance. 
 She was the complement of him as he was of her. Marvel- 
 lously did they fit into one another. Where his temperament 
 made him unsure, she was buoyant ; where she would waver, 
 
6 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 he was rock. Both of them, I dare say, had faults, his a 
 certain superficial irritability, especially when worn and 
 tried ; hers the inclination to take the less hopeful view on 
 certain matters. But the faults of each were wonderfully 
 neutralized in the personality of the other. 
 
 In some senses she was more combative than he. She 
 was, for example, more inclined to resent the injustices to 
 which, especially again in the early days, The Army was 
 continually subject. He was rather content to let such 
 opposition tire itself out, and to answer misrepresentation 
 by silence, because he feared that to turn aside upon these 
 guerilla engagements would be to weaken the arm for the 
 real fight against the hosts of the Devil who held captive 
 the souls of men. ‘ Better,’ he used to say, ‘ better to suffer 
 than contend.’ But her counsel was ever, ‘Up, and at 
 them, William!’ She was a warrior ; of compromise she 
 would have none. 
 
 Their relations during all the thirty years that I had 
 experience of them together were ideal. His love for her 
 was entirely beautiful—something quite out of the ordinary, 
 even in the happiest unions. Muingled with his love was an 
 element of deep admiration for her uncommon ability. She 
 was far more widely read than he. Certain circumstances 
 of her youth had favoured what was naturally a studious 
 temperament, and her spiritual influence, her devotion to 
 Jesus Christ, her intense longings for the advance of His 
 Kingdom on earth, her intellectual skill, her command of 
 widely gathered information helped him in his hurried and 
 stormy life to look beyond his own immediate interests and 
 ideas, and to look on to that City which hath foundations. 
 Speaking beside her open grave, he said : 
 
 I have never turned from her these forty years for any journeyings 
 on my mission of mercy, but I 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 has 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, the hours, 
 
FATHER AND SON 7 
 
 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. 
 
 Her delicacy of health, which was the heritage of spinal 
 trouble in her girlhood, unfitted her in some respects to be 
 the wife of a poor minister, whose income was scarcely 
 sufficient to cover the domestic needs. There is an under- 
 tone in some of her letters to him before their marriage 
 which suggests that she could see him occupying a very 
 different station, and one worthier of the powers she already 
 knew him to possess. In my boyhood I have sometimes 
 known her exceedingly harassed by the cares of a house full 
 of children, and tried, no doubt, by straitened circumstances, 
 and by her own bodily weakness. I have seen him come into 
 the house, put his hat down in the hall, and, entering the 
 room, find it all out in a moment. Taking her hand, he 
 would say, ‘ Kate, let me pray with you,’ and he would turn 
 us out while they knelt together. Then a little while after 
 it was evident that the skies were blue again. 
 
 Although he was at times irascible, and, when displeased, 
 had great liberty of speech, I never heard him in all those 
 long years—many of them years of intense strain upon 
 them both, with all the demands which poverty and sickness 
 make upon patience and kindness in the home—say one 
 harsh word to her. There were times when he would arrive 
 at the house like a hurricane, blowing, as it were, the children 
 right and left—we used to call him the ‘ Bishop’ in those 
 early days, and sometimes, although we loved the very 
 ground he trod upon, we were unanimously agreed on the 
 advisability of keeping out of the way of his ‘ visitations ’ 
 —but to her he would be like a lover of twenty come to visit 
 his girl ! 
 
 I touch with hesitation the subject of my father’s religion. 
 How, indeed, can it be dealt with in a page of reminiscence | 
 But, at least, this may be said: that it was never a platform 
 pose. The religion he commended to his fellows with such 
 directness and sincerity was the religion which he himself 
 
§ ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 accepted with all his heart and lived with all his might. 
 And it was a success. It sustained him especially in those 
 later years when he was sorrow-stricken and really heart- 
 broken by the loss of those he loved. I do not suggest that 
 he was always shouting the praises of God at the top of 
 his voice to his housekeeper, but I do say that amid all 
 the innumerable affairs of his crowded life the vision of a 
 Mighty God, and of a present Saviour, was ever before him 
 —was ever the great possession of his soul—that he had a 
 fine consciousness of responsibility to God for every gift he 
 possessed and a profound sense of Eternal Things. 
 
 Despite his wonderful capacity for eliciting the emotions 
 of others, often playing upon them as a harper upon the 
 strings, he was singularly reticent about his own inner life. 
 He was totally innocent of ‘ gush.’ Yet who that knew him 
 could doubt the reality of his spiritual experience? It 
 sustained him amid persecutions, slanders, and conflicts, and 
 under the burden of a world of cares such as few men have 
 been called to endure. It did more than sustain him in 
 the stoic sense ; it kept his spirit sweet. When I have gone 
 to him, perhaps with some infamous newspaper attack, and 
 in my indignation have said, ‘ This is really more than we 
 can stand,’ he has replied, ‘ Bramwell, fifty years hence it 
 will matter very little indeed how these people treated us ; 
 it will matter a great deal how we dealt with the work of 
 aod.’ He would not accuse those who accused him. He 
 would not impugn motives or imply evil. He could speak 
 sut when duty demanded. But he did not wish to speak. 
 He would never take unfair advantage in argument or treat 
 personalities as reasons. He rather strove to account for 
 the mistakes of his opponents, and to hope all things. It 
 was his rule not to retaliate, scarcely to explain, and it was 
 perfectly delightful to see how many cursings and railings 
 turned out in the end to be blessings. There is a story of 
 one of our Canadian Officers who, on being pelted with eggs, 
 found that by some mistake of the mob the eggs were quite 
 good, and, deftly catching them, she ee turned them 
 into omelettes ! 
 
 That was William Booth all over ! 
 
IT 
 
 THE FIRST GENERAL OF THE SALVATION ARMY AND 
 HIS CHIEF OF STAFF 
 
 Tuts book is not the place for a considered estimate of my 
 father’s achievements. That has been undertaken already 
 by another hand, not the hand of a son nor even the hand 
 of a Soldier of The Salvation Army, but the result is perhaps 
 all the more balanced and complete because of the fresh, 
 untrammelled mind which Mr. Harold Begbie brought 
 to his task.1 Constant and intimate association with a man, 
 such as I had with my father until I myself was almost 
 within hail of threescore, may have the effect, if not of 
 concealing, at least of foreshortening the view. Fully to 
 survey a great personality, it may be necessary to abide a 
 day’s journey away from the mount. 
 
 At the same time, my relations with the first General 
 were of quite an unusual kind. I was not only his eldest 
 son, but one of his Officers for nearly forty years of the 
 hurly-burly of a strenuous campaign, and his Chief of the 
 Staff for more than thirty; and as I am often asked by 
 those who have studied The Army with some degree of care 
 how affairs were managed between my father and myself, it 
 may be not only interesting, but perhaps useful, to put on 
 record something of the manner in which we worked to- 
 gether. Our co-operation over so long a period, and on so 
 varied a field of activity, is a remarkable circumstance, 
 especially when it is remembered that our temperaments 
 were different and our points of view by no means always 
 the same. 
 
 It would be foolish to pretend that we were invariably 
 of one mind. On the contrary, from-time to time we 
 differed, both in judgment and feeling, with regard to some 
 
 1 ‘William Booth,’ by Harold Begbie. (Macmillan.) 
 9 
 
10 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 of the most difficult problems to be solved. Nor can I say 
 that, in the light of subsequent events, either of us has 
 proved to be always right. Oftener than not, from my very 
 first experience of the responsibilities of an Officer in close 
 association with him, the questions which exercised us levied 
 toll not only on all our mental but on our spiritual resources. 
 We had from the beginning—the day of very small things— 
 the sense that we were really dealing with large affairs, 
 though we—lI especially, of course—had little experience of 
 such affairs. The Movement with which we had to do was 
 a new movement; we had no precedent to go upon, very 
 little experience to guide us. Much that we did had to be 
 done literally as an act of faith. We were often in such 
 complete and balanced uncertainty as seemed to make any 
 given course highly speculative. 
 
 Moreover, we were both of us very ignorant as to many 
 matters which were essential to success (though we had the 
 saving virtue of knowing it !), and yet we were the respon- 
 sible guides of a ‘concern,’ as we sometimes called it, to 
 which hundreds, and presently thousands, of men and 
 women were giving their allegiance, abandoning in so doing 
 their worldly prospects, and even in many cases severing 
 their family connexions. In later years considerable accu- 
 mulations of property also came under our control, though 
 we were but slightly versed in the ways of finance and the 
 business world. In this respect, of all others, previous 
 experience would have been of the highest value, and we 
 had almost none. We had to build the ship while we were 
 at sea, and not only build the ship, but master the laws of 
 navigation, and not only master the laws of navigation, but 
 hammer sense into a strangely assorted crew ! 
 
 This ignorance was not without its advantages, if only 
 because it stimulated us—especially me-—to study at first 
 hand the questions on which we needed information. Al- 
 though my father had an amazing kind of intuition, he had 
 not a particle of the folly which supposes that this can take 
 the place of careful investigation and vigilant balancing of 
 judgment. As The Army began to develop an international 
 organization, we came up with such large questions as the 
 
THE FIRST GENERAL AND HIS CHIEF II 
 
 laws of different countries and their bearing upon our work, 
 status, and possessions in those countries, or the way in 
 which our disturbing and irregular methods could be best 
 adapted to fresh environments. He would charge me to 
 enter on a course of research into such subjects, and would 
 himself also labour over them, until we had _ sufficient 
 material to enable him to make decisions. Experts were 
 available, of course—at any rate in some departments of 
 effort—and he neither despised them nor stood in awe of 
 them. He knew that undue reliance on experts was likely 
 to lead us into mistakes, and their advice was only acted 
 upon when we had assured ourselves that it was not 
 materially opposed to his own instincts as to what was best. 
 The character of much of the work was so new in religious 
 history that many decisions, even though they seemed at 
 the time to involve only minor points of policy and method, 
 proved to be of great importance. If we ‘rolled the old 
 chariot along,’ as our song runs, it was never on a rutted 
 road. It was often on tracks that were scarcely a road at 
 all. 
 
 As the years passed on, not only did the occupied 
 territory greatly extend, but the operations became more 
 diverse, and in some ways complicated, though in all this 
 we kept ever in mind our own overruling purpose—the 
 illumination and spiritual emancipation of the people. 
 
 The list of the operations of The Army towards the end 
 of the Founder’s life included services and visitations for 
 the churchless masses, evangelistic, educational, and social 
 work for the heathen abroad, labour bureaux and indus- 
 trial homes and workshops for the unemployed, food dépéts, 
 and the provision of breakfasts and other meals for the 
 starving, migration and other assistance for the workless, 
 shelters for the homeless, homes and colonies for inebriates, 
 prison visitation and police-court and prison-gate work for 
 the criminal, homes and hospitals for the daughters of shame, 
 preventive work for young girls, nursing, clothing dépdts, 
 and holiday homes for the people of the slums, hospitals 
 and dispensaries for the sick, special corps, bands, schools, 
 leagues, and a host of other agencies for the young. Then 
 
12 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 there were land schemes and innumerable other features 
 of service for those who in one direction or another needed 
 help. 
 
 Although my father was the General and I was his chief 
 executive Officer, there was, after the first few years, no 
 very hard-and-fast division of authority between us. He 
 continued—at any rate until the last ten or twelve years of 
 his life—to do many things which would ordinarily have 
 fallen to me as Chief of Staff. For example, when he felt 
 able during his distant travels to decide matters on the spot, 
 it would have been ridiculous to have referred them to me 
 in London merely because technically such matters came 
 within my appointed province. Again, when he was thou- 
 sands of miles away he unhesitatingly required me to make 
 decisions which ought properly to have been left to him if 
 he had been more accessible. In the ordinary routine he was 
 both generous and wise in guarding my position. He made 
 my office a reality, and not a mere name; and in the course 
 of time he increasingly left large affairs in my hands—to 
 take action on his behalf often without reference to him. 
 
 In certain respects he was exacting. For example, he 
 required that any information I set before him or for which 
 I was responsible, should be authentic beyond cavil; and if 
 I tripped, as I am afraid occasionally happened, either 
 through my own fault or the inefficiency of others, and cir- 
 cumstances turned out otherwise than he had been led to 
 believe, he could be very angry, and rightly angry. On 
 such occasions he showed his displeasure in a way that was 
 sometimes grievous to bear. 
 
 One of his characteristic requirements was that both 
 sides of every course of action should be fully stated. If, 
 for example, his advisers—I among them—had made up 
 our minds to propose a certain course of action with regard, 
 say, to new work in Europe or to fresh financial arrange- 
 ments, perhaps in India, or to the promotion and transfer 
 of a particular Officer, he insisted, when the matter was 
 submitted to him, that we should argue against the projected 
 course as well as in its favour. All that we were aware of 
 on the other side of the question had to be put before him. 
 
THE FIRST GENERAL AND HIS CHIEF 13 
 
 We had sometimes perforce to take the réle of an advocatus 
 diabolt, and woe betide any one who was found afterwards 
 not to have disclosed everything! It was the same in all 
 matters. Never would he allow any retreat under the 
 familiar plea, ‘ Ah, but if you only knew all!’ His instant 
 reply to such an observation was, ‘ If you know anything 
 that I don’t, what are you there for but to tell me?’ 
 
 I do not mean to say that on every question he adopted 
 the extreme course just indicated. If only because of the 
 multiplicity of matters requiring decision, that would have 
 been impracticable. He took the advice of his Staff on 
 many matters without very close inquiry, especially during 
 the last twenty years of his life. But when on any point 
 there was a difference of opinion, or he was in doubt and 
 asked for further particulars, or required us to study a case 
 from its opposite aspect, then everything had to be laid on 
 the table. The unbroken happiness of my long relationship 
 with him was greatly furthered by my own scrupulous care 
 to muster the pvo and con of every matter of serious import 
 which came before us, although this often involved immense 
 labour for myself, and sometimes—not often—unpleasant- 
 ness with other responsible Officers. But the slightest idea 
 that something was being kept back, no matter whether he 
 was in London or ten thousand miles away, was fatal to his 
 peace of mind—and to ours! 
 
 We had, of course, differences of opinion. They some- 
 times cut deep and caused me—as I know they caused him 
 —very considerable searching of heart, especially so, in his 
 case, when a final decision had to be taken in opposition 
 to my views. Yet in undertaking by his instructions a given 
 course the wisdom of which I doubted, I was always helped 
 by his patience in hearing all that we had to say against 
 what he thought best, and by his evident desire not merely 
 to gratify some whim of his own, but to do what was for the 
 highest welfare of The Army and of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 He was very agreeable to do business with. Conferences 
 were a reality. The youngest member present felt that his 
 advice was sought for and valued. No time was begrudged, 
 no labour spared, to explore fully the questions before him. 
 
14 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 When he was in doubt about this or that course, he would 
 reserve decision for thought and prayer. When his mind 
 was made up there was no use spending another moment 
 on the matter. His humour was a great help. If one vexed 
 him, and the heavens were suddenly darkened, sure enough 
 the clouds quickly passed and out came the sun. In later 
 years he acted on the principle that ‘the king can do no 
 wrong ’—that we, the men he called in on the different 
 questions and problems, and whom he trusted so fully, were 
 responsible advisers, and that if mistakes were made, we 
 ought to have guided him in a better way. 
 
 One beautiful trait of his was that if, in the long run, it 
 turned out that he had been mistaken in his own judgment, 
 he would always acknowledge it with a quite delightful frank- 
 ness. At times he would go unnecessarily out of his way to 
 have it made clear that another had proved right and he had 
 been wrong. That also helped to win for him not only the 
 affection and esteem but the perfect confidence of those he led. 
 
 The world best knew the Founder as he appeared 
 when on the platform, but to his Officers the picture of 
 him which is most complete is his appearance at the Officers’ 
 Councils—to which only his Officers were admitted— 
 in different parts of the world. Each of these gatherings 
 would probably extend over two or three days, and each 
 day would have its three long sessions. Councils with the 
 Staff often continued much longer. A month or some- 
 times more would be devoted to preparation for such 
 assemblies, when various phases of the work in its most 
 recent developments, or its approaching advances, would be 
 faithfully examined, and both possibilities and weaknesses 
 explored. In preparing for these Councils the Founder 
 frequently called in the most experienced of his Staff, and 
 his own notes were of the most comprehensive character. 
 In such gatherings he never spared himself, and his prepara- 
 tion was usually so complete as to make him independent of 
 the inspiration of the moment, though if that inspiration 
 came he took advantage of it to the full. We had in these 
 Councils some glorious experiences of light and freedom in 
 the presence of the Lord, and revelations under which all 
 
THE FIRST GENERAL AND HIS CHIEF 15 
 
 hearts were united in love and joy with the Greatheart who 
 led us forward. 
 
 No doubt, my relationship as his son had some dis- 
 advantages, but it was helpful, too. While I must say that 
 he seldom if ever forgot the General in thinking of the father, 
 I can say on the other hand that I never forgot the father in 
 dealing with the General. I do not mean that I presumed 
 because of my relationship, nor would he have brooked this 
 for a moment, he who knew no man after the flesh. But 
 the remembrance of it was a help to me in moments of 
 special anxiety or strain. 
 
 The life in our old home was a training for me. While 
 he was always a forceful and dominating personality, and 
 also most sensitive to anything that seemed like unfaithful- 
 ness or undutifulness, he was remarkably tolerant of differ- 
 ent opinions over the family table. In all our discussions 
 at home, whether on historical, political, social, or religious 
 questions, we were permitted great freedom of expression— 
 within limits, of course—although the views of the ardent 
 youth about him must often have run counter to his own. 
 He liked to hear the other side, and, knowing this, I never 
 hesitated to reason with him, although sometimes he would 
 more or less playfully object, and tell me that I would stand 
 arguing with death itself! This freedom of expression car- 
 tied over, so to speak, into our official relations. It gave 
 me more tenacity in arguing a case, and I think it also 
 enabled him to understand, even when his orders had been 
 most peremptory, and I had sallied forth to carry out in- 
 structions about which I had anxious misgivings, that after 
 all I might be right! 
 
 He was sometimes nervous and hasty, but always with 
 such kindliness in the background that one could love— 
 and I did love—his every mood. And so we never quarrelled. 
 The differences, which were those of method, rather than of 
 principle, were quickly adjusted. Every day brought to us 
 some mountain to hit, some gulf to bridge, but we worked 
 together in true love for God and man and for each other, 
 and somehow the crooked bits in the road were made straight 
 and the rough places plain. While I can say nothing of 
 
16 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 any faculty for conciliation or accommodation which I may 
 possess, I feel that I was greatly privileged to be able to 
 work with him for forty years, ever feeling for him an 
 increasing reverence and deeper affection, and carrying, as 
 time went on, a larger and larger share of responsibility, 
 which, in his own generous words, made it possible for him 
 to do what otherwise he would not have been able to 
 accomplish. 
 
Iil 
 THE PROPHET 
 
 JoHN WESLEY is said to have preached 40,000 sermons, 
 and to have travelled 250,000 miles. The number of sermons 
 which my father preached during his sixty years of evangel- 
 istic campaigning was, on a low estimate, between 50,000 
 and 60,000; and for every mile that Wesley travelled, he 
 must have travelled twenty. Wesley, of course, had to go 
 on horseback or by coach; William Booth had the advan- 
 tage of the railway and the steamship, and, in his later 
 years, the motor-car. Thanks to these methods oi loco- 
 motion, the voice of William Booth was heard by greater 
 multitudes of every race and nation than the voice of any 
 mortal man had been heard before. Nor can any preacher 
 have made a pulpit of so many strange platforms. The 
 theatre stage, the circus ring, the grand stand of the race- 
 course, the footboard of the railway carriage, the captain’s 
 bridge, the stall in the market-place, the drinking trough on 
 the village green, the magistrate’s bench, the convict prison, 
 the bleak and stormy headland, the sheltered inlet by the 
 sea, the dais of the American Senate, the rostrum of the 
 London Guildhall, the Indian pandal, the University quad- 
 rangle—they all served his purpose. 
 
 What impression did he leave on the minds of those who 
 heard him? Mr. Harold Begbie, who accompanied him on 
 part of a motor tour from Penzance to Aberdeen, in 1904, 
 wrote with genuine insight? : 
 
 One discovers, the longer one listens to General Booth, a noble- 
 ness of diction in his oratory. It is all simple and rugged and real. 
 His voice is against him, he has the Nottingham sing-song ; but this 
 has no effect on the burden of his tale. Moreover, some of his 
 
 1 In the ‘ Daily Mail’ (London), August 12, 1904. 
 = 17 
 
18 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 sentiments strike a discordant note, . . . but the general result of 
 his oratory is the conviction of the eternal and infinite mysteries, 
 and the uplifting and magnifying of the spiritual existence in each 
 separate soul before him, 
 
 The same writer went on to say that the spiritual conflict of 
 Faust was a poor and bloodless drama compared with the 
 rugged rock-hewn tragedy which this preacher forced into 
 the souls of his breathless listeners. 
 
 One of the greatest talkers of his age, my father was yet 
 most diffident about his own powers. Many a time in great 
 auditoriums he has said to me just before rising to speak, 
 ‘Pray for me; I feel like sinking through the floor.’ He 
 has again and again declared himself utterly unequal to 
 the occasion and the opportunity. I have seen him also in 
 great weakness, when his merely physical condition quite 
 obviously unfitted him for the strain of a public address. 
 That strain was all the greater because he never, or very 
 rarely, allowed himself to use notes in his great Meetings. 
 Any notes which he might have made he kept in his pocket. 
 He preached often when he was little prepared, sometimes 
 when he was not prepared at all; often again under the 
 compulsion of haste, or in fatigue even to the point of ex- 
 haustion. Yet after he had risen and gone to the platform 
 rail, the depression was, as a rule, soon shaken off, his frailty 
 seemed to disappear, and presently he suggested nothing so 
 much as a fighting champion triumphing in the fray. 
 
 I cannot subscribe to the view that his power on the 
 platform depended in any great measure upon his appear- 
 ance. Nevertheless, his appearance did help him to obtain 
 attention. His splendid head and fine profile, and keen, 
 flashing eyes, his outstretched arms, his scarlet jersey, his 
 erect and yet supple figure, swayed at times like a tree in 
 the wind, all gave the most casual listener the impression 
 of something quite out of the ordinary. They put an 
 audience in an expectant mood. His voice was powerful 
 without being loud. It was a voice that wore well. On 
 occasion, when he spoke, for example, in such places as the 
 Albert Hall or the Transept of the Crystal Palace, or in 
 the Madison Square Gardens in New York, or the Circus 
 
THE PROPHET 19 
 
 Busch in Berlin, he could by an effort compass an immense 
 area, and hold a great throng, in the old phrase, spellbound. 
 These were, of course, the days before amplifiers. 
 
 His opening was customarily quiet, almost lamb-like. It 
 was an astonishing contrast—his striking and aggressive 
 appearance, and the gentleness with which he began to talk. 
 No loud or sensational beginning could have arrested an 
 audience so completely. Then one or two propositions 
 would be presented, often quite simple, sometimes more 
 profound, more difficult to accept, or requiring to be sup- 
 ported by further argument. After this, warming to his 
 topic, he would introduce incidents by way of illustration 
 or appeal out of his own vast experience. These would be 
 told rapidly, and helped in the telling by a touch of humour 
 or pathos, and then he would go on to a final appeal, sparing 
 nothing in directness, urged with tremendous energy in 
 which the whole man—body, soul, and spirit—seemed to 
 share. Sometimes, even at moments of great tension, his 
 manner would be very subdued, and personally I liked him 
 best then. At other times action would accompany almost 
 every sentence. Head, arms, hands, feet, the whole frame 
 would vibrate and tremble as the subject or the audience, 
 or both, stirred him. Yet the movement, emphatic as it 
 was, never seemed to overlay the speech. It was always 
 subordinate and passing. 
 
 His gestures at times were deliberately illustrative, and 
 not due merely to the vehemence of his utterance. Once 
 in a railway carriage he said to one of his leading Officers, 
 ‘My arms are not long enough to reach both rich and poor.’ 
 He stretched his arms out to their full length, and said, 
 ‘When I am in touch with the poor ’—bringing one hand 
 down to the floor of the carriage— I am out of touch with 
 the rich ’—and the other hand went towards the carriage 
 roof—‘ and when I am in touch with the rich, I lose touch 
 with the poor.’ And then, letting both hands drop, he drew 
 himself up and said, as though thinking aloud, ‘ I very much 
 doubt whether God Almighty’s arms are long enough.’ 
 Something of that kind was frequently his platform method 
 too. 
 
20 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 His illustrations were innumerable, but they were not 
 mere attachments to his addresses, like spangles on a gar- 
 ment. They were woven into the texture, so that it became 
 almost impossible to recall the illustration without remem- 
 bering the truth which it had been chosen to enforce. The 
 illustration itself, without any subsequent embroidery, con- 
 veyed its lesson. The same was often true of his texts, for 
 though his texts were frequently no more than doorways 
 through which he entered upon some great principle or 
 truth, he saw to it that they were deeply set in the minds 
 of his hearers. I shall never forget the effect upon great 
 audiences of the repetition of texts such as, ‘ This year thou 
 shalt die’; ‘ The great day of His wrath is come, who shall be 
 able to stand’; ‘ Serve the Lord with gladness’ ; ‘ Be sure 
 your sin will find you out’; ‘ Blessed are the pure in 
 heart’; ‘ And the flood came, and took them all away.’ 
 
 With his gift of declamation and appeal was also the 
 ability to explain and reason. Here is an extract from an 
 address to the ungodly : 
 
 Alas, alas, a great many people meglect Salvation. What does 
 that mean—what is it to neglect ? Well, it does not imply that you 
 should hate it. Some people do hate it. I suppose they have met 
 with humbugs who have professed it; perhaps they have had 
 hypocrites round about them; perhaps they have had some 
 servants who were hypocrites, or they have had masters who 
 were hypocrites, and so they say every one is a hypocrite. 
 Don’t say that. Oh, my God, what hypocrites there are! But, 
 thank God, there are a crowd of realities. Iamareality. I am not 
 a humbug; and there are crowds about us who are not hypocrites. 
 You need not hate religion in order to neglect it. 
 
 You need not be like the Frenchman who said he wished he had 
 a ladder long enough to reach to the Throne of God and a knife 
 strong enough that he could plunge it into the heart of the Almighty. 
 He hated God, but you don’t hate God. 
 
 You need not hate God to neglect Salvation, you need not 
 persecute His people (you must not persecute the Salvationists), you 
 need not commit those vulgar sins, to neglect Salvation. It does not 
 follow that you should be a drunkard or a harlot or a cheat. You 
 have nothing to do but ignore Him; turn your back on Him; turn 
 your back on Calvary; don’t take any notice; give yourself up to 
 the world ; just treat this Salvation as if it was not there. 
 
 Look at that man yonder; look at him going down the river. 
 There he is going down in a boat with Niagara beyond. He has got 
 
THE PROPHET 21 
 
 out into the stream; the rapids have got hold of the boat, and 
 down he goes. He need not pull at the oars; he has nothing to do 
 but to be still; to go on with his sleep; to go on with his novel. He 
 is going—going—-going ; my God! he is gone over, and he never 
 pulled at an oar. That is the way people are damned: they go 
 on; they are preoccupied; they are taken up; they have no 
 time ; they don’t think; they neglect Salvation, and they are lost. 
 
 Although he did not care for the poets, he was himself 
 a master of one of their arts, that of repetition. His 
 dramatic repetitions would sometimes give a startling 
 rhythm to his utterance. In some discourses the use of 
 one word over and over again seemed to proclaim the whole 
 message. In depicting the scene before the chief priests 
 when they refused the return of the thirty pieces of silver, 
 he would say, ‘ And Judas—Judas—JuDAS went out and 
 hanged himself.’ Or in an address on the downfall of Sam- 
 son he would flash the question out upon his hearers: 
 ‘What is your Delilah—YOUR Delilah?’ Once when he 
 was addressing a great working-class audience in Wales he 
 pointed to his old-time supporter who was seated by him 
 on the platform, and said, ‘ Mr. Cory’s motto for the thirty 
 years I have known him has been COALS—COALS—COALS. 
 And my motto has been SoULS—SOULS—SOULS.’ The effect 
 upon an audience in a coal district was far greater than the 
 words in cold print can convey. 
 
 His sensationalism cannot be denied. He adopted it 
 when it seemed to be the best lever wherewith to prise open 
 the insensitive mind. The aim of his sensationalism was to 
 startle and shock the people whom an ordinary appeal about 
 their danger or the evil of their sins, would leave unmoved. 
 He used the method with the same deliberateness as he would 
 have raised his voice in speaking to the partially deaf, or 
 warning the inmates of a burning building. The sensational 
 image, too, generally carried its own lesson. He would 
 picture Lot going out to warn his sons-in-law on the last 
 night in Sodom, and would turn up his coat-collar, and 
 seize somebody’s hat which happened to be on the platform, 
 to suggest a man going out on a disagreeable but an imperious 
 errand, and the whole audience would be given the feeling of 
 the dark night, the knocking at the door, the coming doom, 
 
22 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 and then the hollow laughter of the young men—how it all 
 went home! Or he would depict with dramatic power 
 Ananias, who, having told his story, is waiting for Sapphira 
 to come and tell hers! Or, again, it would be a representa- 
 tion of the various classes of sinners suffering their doom in 
 the regions of the lost, and among them one counting some- 
 thing, always counting, counting, and the audience would 
 hold its breath while he himself counted: ‘ One—two— 
 three—four—five ’—I have seen thousands of people trans- 
 fixed as the counting proceeded— ten—eleven—twelve— 
 thirteen ’—you could have heard the drop of the proverbial 
 pin—‘ twenty-eight—twenty-nine—thirty— . . . why, it is 
 Judas!’ The impression was never to be forgotten. 
 
 His humour was also a great resource. It was of varied 
 quality, sometimes caustic and dangerous, even wounding, 
 at others a lambent fire. Occasionally, it must be confessed, 
 the humorous touch seemed incon¢-vous, but no one could 
 deny the immense power of this flashing scimitar up to the 
 very last in breaking down the stiffness of an audience. 
 
 In the earlier days of The Army, when he had to face 
 audiences which were uproarious to the last degree, this gift 
 was in very truth a godsend. Not often could there be found 
 a man able to make good-humoured fun of people at the 
 very moment when they were in ecstasies of enjoyment 
 because they thought they were making fun of him! But 
 his humour, like his other oratorical stratagems, had always 
 its deeper purpose. He would at one moment have an 
 audience on the crest of a wave of rampant merriment, when, 
 in an instant, like the swift flight of a bird over the waters, 
 out would come the truth he wanted them to see. 
 
 So much for the method and manner. What of the 
 substance ? William Booth’s subjects were nearly always 
 heart subjects. Some of his critics have denied him the 
 philosophic mind, and others have found fault with the lack 
 of scientific range in his preaching, but his great work could 
 never have been done along that line. He did not neglect 
 reason in his audiences, but reasoned with them of sin, and 
 of righteousness, and of judgment—always of judgment— 
 and the evil heart of rebellion and unbelief in them was ever 
 
THE PROPHET 23 
 
 before him. He did not stand before the upturned faces of 
 thousands in order to spin out a philosophic theology or 
 to make abstract pronouncements based on questionable 
 information. He was a messenger to the heart of mankind 
 —a courier taking the most direct route, and making all 
 possible haste. His great appeal was to the conscience. 
 He believed that in every individual there was a judgment 
 seat, continually approving or condemning; and to that 
 inward tribunal he appealed, reminding men also of that 
 solemn bar of God, at which they would one day appear. 
 The larger and more miscellaneous his audience, the more 
 simple did he set himself to become. His vocabulary was 
 the vocabulary of the common people. Clear, direct, vigor- 
 ous, simple. He scarcely used an expression which would 
 puzzle the most ignorant. It was a dictum of his: ‘ Use 
 words that Mary Ann will understand, and you will be sure 
 to make yourself plain to her mistress ; whereas if you speak 
 only to her mistress, you will very likely miss her, and 
 Mary Ann as well.’ 
 
 When speaking to his Staff, particularly those in his 
 closer confidence, he did not always admit the same neces- 
 sity, and his thought then moved along other planes, and 
 occasionally he would make ventures of a speculative kind. 
 Those who imagined that his simplicity was the mark of 
 intellectual narrowness would have been amazed had they 
 studied the range and diversity of subjects upon which he 
 spoke with knowledge and force, and often with challenging 
 originality. The problems with which The Salvation Army 
 came to deal in later years were of extraordinary variety ; 
 they called for counsel or direction on almost every subject 
 touching the life of mankind. I do not say that the Founder 
 was equally at home on every topic, but I always felt that 
 he had something fresh and important to say, the fruit of 
 his shrewd observation of men and things, as well as of the 
 Wisdom that cometh from above. On such diverse subjects 
 as Socialism, the Poor Law, Hydropathy, children and 
 Sunday-schools, marriage and divorce, public advertising, 
 the intensive cultivation of the land, missionary propaganda, 
 emigration, colonization, the training of children, crimin- 
 
24 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 ology, congregational singing, housing, thrift, public morals 
 temperance, government, education, discipline, on these and 
 many others he spoke, if not ex cathedra at all events with 
 understanding ; and besides these, he dealt, of course, with 
 homiletic and theological subjects unnumbered. 
 
 But versatile as he was in his lectures and other addresses, 
 it is as a preacher of Jesus Christ and His Salvation, with a 
 direct and arresting message, that he will be most remem- 
 bered in all the lands he visited. His preaching was barbed. 
 Its purpose was not merely to instruct or edify, still less to 
 tickle the ears, but to bring men to decision on the most 
 momentous questions which can engage the human mind. 
 Its aim was as definite as the speech of a counsel to a jury. 
 His earnestness, his deep yearning for souls, his profound 
 sympathy with sinners, were always uppermost—and lower- 
 most. This was so apparent that it broke down the ramparts 
 of hostile or critical audiences. What he said was so 
 obviously a part of himself that he disarmed his critics, who 
 then and there began to believe in him; and having gone 
 thus far, he carried many further still, until they responded 
 to his message. He had the wonderful gift of establishing 
 what we call ‘ connexions’ with his audiences, so that an 
 enormous proportion of those present at any one time had 
 the feeling that he knew them individually ; that their 
 griefs and passions were an open book to him; and, above 
 all, that he was vividly awake to their sins and sorrows. 
 He talked all the time as one who knew them. He probed 
 their unspoken problems so that each auditor could say, as 
 multitudes did say, ‘ He is describing me!’ 
 
 One other thing remains to be said. William Booth 
 was not only a great preacher; he was one of the greatest 
 of preacher-makers. He spoke not only with his own voice, 
 but through the men and women whom he selected and 
 encouraged—often apparently the most unpromising mouth- 
 pieces—to drive home the word and the testimony. He 
 not only talked himself of the eternal verities, but he set 
 other men talking of them. His tongue is now silent, but 
 theirs is heard, and heard in every quarter of the globe. 
 He, being dead, yet speaketh, 
 
IV 
 DISTURBERS OF THE PEACE 
 
 DURING one year—1882—the number of Soldiers of The 
 Salvation Army who were known to have been knocked 
 down or otherwise brutally assaulted in the United Kingdom 
 was 642. More than one-third of them were women. In 
 addition, twenty-three children suffered. Some of these 
 people were injured for life. And all because they attended 
 religious meetings in their own buildings or in the open air. 
 In that same year sixty of our buildings were practically 
 wrecked by the rabble. There was no redress. We could 
 obtain neither protection nor reparation. 
 
 Yet the most persistent and unrelenting opposition that 
 The Salvation Army had to encounter in what we sometimes 
 call the lawless years came less from the drinking saloons 
 than from the parsonages. The children of this world were 
 for once outdone in malevolence by the children of light ! 
 Always the chief opposition to The Army was from the 
 Churches; less so in the United States and the overseas 
 Dominions than in the Old Country ; more so, perhaps, in 
 Germany, Holland, and Switzerland even than in Great 
 Britain. 
 
 It has died down just now; or what remains is like the 
 sullen embers on the hearth when the night is far gone. 
 But the passage of thirty, forty, or more, years does little 
 to subdue the just indignation which it is surely right to 
 feel at opposition from sources so unexpected, and taking 
 so malignant a form. Every conceivable calumny was 
 spread abroad against us. From the Founder down to the 
 latest Convert, or, for that matter, down to the members 
 of the last Sabbath day’s congregations, no one was safe 
 from these astonishing and often scurrilous aspersions. 
 
 25 
 
26 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 Every evil which could be imagined was told of us; and 
 the tellers were, not the denizens of the pothouse, who, 
 generally speaking, only repeated and coarsened these 
 fables, but those whom we called our ‘ fellow Christians ’ ! 
 
 What recklessness in indictment as well as exuberance 
 in imagination was required in those who hashed up such 
 a charge as that our Meetings promoted promiscuous 
 immorality ! That accusation was started by none other 
 than certain bishops of the Anglican Church. The right 
 reverend gentlemen were challenged to prove it, which 
 they never did, and never could, and in the end they were 
 screwed up to the point of making a milk-and-water apology. 
 Some of them afterwards wanted the Founder and the rest 
 of us to come in and strengthen the Church to which they 
 belonged, but for that foul and baseless charge they never 
 expressed in public one word of real contrition. 
 
 It was deans and vicars who went about making state- 
 ments that we were after the poor people’s money, and 
 that presently we should be off with it ‘to America!’ 
 It was the leading lights of Nonconformist bodies who 
 warned their flocks against the Founder as a Jesuit in dis- 
 guise and Catherine Booth as his fellow-conspirator! It 
 was the reverend editor of one of the Christian papers who 
 denounced what he called our ‘ bacchanalian processions ’ 
 and described the Founder as a ridiculous imitation of the 
 Pope of Rome. Clergymen who had never been to a meeting 
 of The Salvation Army, or spoken to a Salvationist in their 
 lives, denounced us from their pulpits and wrote letters of 
 ill will in the newspapers. In India, our first mission field, 
 it was the Presbyterian missionaries from whom came the 
 most bitter and sustained opposition—opposition which 
 again and again broke out in open violence. The religious 
 Press, in its turn, distinguished itself by the eagerness 
 with which it received and printed any story that came 
 along to prove that we taught false doctrines, promoted 
 irreverence, and encouraged blasphemy, and that the prin- 
 cipal result of our work was ‘to bring religion into con- 
 tempt.’ 
 
 On the Continent, perhaps the climax of this railing 
 
DISTURBERS OF THE PEACE a7 
 
 was reached when La Comtesse Gasparin, a Swiss Protestant 
 leader of that day, called us liars and cheats. 
 
 In this country the denunciation reached its height—of 
 absurdity—when the great Earl of Shaftesbury solemnly 
 stated that, as the result of much study, he had come to 
 the conclusion that The Salvation Army was clearly Anti- 
 christ ; whereupon some silly admirer put the cap on his 
 lordship’s absurdity by discovering that the letters in the 
 name of William Booth made ‘ 666,’ the mark of the beast ! * 
 There was no more to be said. 
 
 It was much the same with our Social Work. Apart 
 from poor Huxley and one or two other infidels, the only 
 people who attacked the Social Work at its inauguration 
 were the religious people. They would have wrecked the 
 project if they could, but, fortunately, the tide of sympathy 
 in the nation was too strong for them. One West End 
 vicar, a leader of the evangelicals, declared that we were 
 getting money for social work while we intended to spend 
 it on something else. A prominent parson in the East End 
 wrote in ‘The Times’ that what we were really seeking to 
 do was to ‘sweat’ the poor people whom we had rescued 
 from the gutters and set to work, in order to make a money 
 profit out of their distress. 
 
 A well-known and widely esteemed dean rushed into the 
 papers to suggest that our borrowing money for the erection 
 of our buildings would prove another South Sea bubble! 
 Another clergyman mocked at us for feeding and warming - 
 the wretched creatures who spent their miserable nights on 
 the London bridges and embankments, and said with quite 
 convincing effrontery that we had brought them there 
 ourselves ! 
 
 4 Eh bien: Nous vous le déclarons, A VOUS (General Booth) les Ames 
 que vos insanités ont éloignées du Christ; les indifférents dont vos 
 travestissements de l’Evangile ont fait des ennemis de l’Evangile; les 
 incrédules dont vos boniments (Charlatanries) ignobles ont fait des blas- 
 phémateurs ; les abusés de par votre jésuitisme, les asservis de par votre 
 autocratie, les égarés de par vos sacriléges prétentions d’inspiration divine, 
 les suvres chrétiennes entravées par vos exhibitions de foire, les séduits 
 que vous arrachez aux roulis certaines pour les mener aux fondricres : 
 de tout cela, de tous ceux-la vous rendrez compte devant le tréne de Dieu. 
 
 —From ‘ Lisez et Jugez, Armée—soidisant—du Salut,’ by La Comtesse 
 Gasparin, Geneva, 1883. 
 
28 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 If the din of battle thus shook the windows of Head- 
 quarters, what about the local fights, where malice often 
 took more petty forms, and the persecuted were less able 
 to meet the onslaught ? Rarely anywhere in the country 
 did black cloth—whether State Church or Free Church— 
 come to the help of Salvationist blue. The parsons, of 
 course, whatever their sect, were always ‘ shocked’ that 
 our poor people should be bullied and injured, but they 
 seldom said so publicly or gave us any support when we 
 were down. In fact, they seemed nearly always, for one 
 reason or another, to take the opposite side. They struck 
 up an alliance—no doubt fortuitous—with ‘ beer’ against 
 us. In their respectable way they seconded the efforts of 
 the baser sort.? 
 
 The men who tripped up our processions, who insulted 
 and assaulted our women, who threw sticks and stones, 
 not to mention dead cats and dogs and the most offensive 
 refuse, when a Salvationist cap appeared on the street ; 
 who refused us even the peaceful burial of our dead; who 
 invaded our Halls and smashed our furniture and other 
 property, and generally treated us as lawful game, were in 
 many cases men known to the police. The‘ skeleton army ’ 
 and other organized opposition which came out against us 
 were marshalled from the beer-houses, and generally led by 
 
 1 No doubt in some instances they were misled by the Government of 
 the day. In a case known as the Stamford Appeal the Magistrates had 
 become so frightened by the violence of the roughs that they appealed 
 to the Home Secretary asking what they should do. Sir Vernon Harcourt 
 replied in terms which drew upon him the severe and merited rebuke of 
 practically every important newspaper in the country, Conservative or 
 Liberal. He stated that the Salvationist processions, ‘ not being illegal in 
 themselves cannot. . . be legally prevented, but where they provoke 
 antagonism and lead to riotous collisions, and where the peace of the 
 town would be endangered if they are allowed to continue, the Magis- 
 trates should by every means in their power endeavour to prevent them’ ! 
 He recommended that in such circumstances the Chief Constable should 
 lay before them a sworn statement to that effect, and then the Magistrates 
 should issue notices prohibiting them, and if necessary use force to pre- 
 vent them. In other words, we were to be dealt with on the principle 
 of local option. The question whether peaceable subjects of the Crown 
 were to be allowed to exercise their legal right and to walk in procession 
 was to be referred to the good pleasuve of the roughs. This monstrous 
 pronouncement presently reacted greatly in our favour, but at the moment 
 it was a grievous infliction, and greatly increased disorder throughout the 
 country. 
 
DISTURBERS OF THE PEACE 29 
 
 well-known men of evil repute. The source and character 
 of the opposition alone might have reassured the most 
 hesitating as to where he should bestow his sympathy. But 
 I doubt whether a couple of score of ministers of religion 
 the country over had a word to say in our support. Rarely 
 did a note of encouragement ring out in the churches. Yet 
 we were fighting for freedom to proclaim the same Saviour 
 whom they honoured. We found that there was liberty in 
 the streets for the infidel and the anarchist to hold forth 
 day and night, liberty for the creatures of vice to parade, 
 liberty for the patrons of the lowest music-hall to queue 
 up, liberty for the cheap-jacks and the ‘ Punch and Judy’ 
 shows, liberty for the barrels of beer to be rolled over the 
 pavements. Our fight, or one part of it, was just this: to 
 ensure that the streets and open spaces should be free also 
 for the feet of those who were seeking the broken and the 
 lost, the feet of them that brought the good tidings of a 
 Saviour’s love. 
 
 Why had we to fight alone? Why had we against us, 
 not only the publicans and sinners, but also, very often, the 
 religious leaders? Well, many good folk were, no doubt, 
 afraid that if we were left in freedom it would lead to un- 
 comfortable consequences for what they called religion. 
 They were right. We were a menace to the ‘ comfortable ’ 
 worship of the day. Our people’s zeal and joy put to shame 
 the religion which consisted mostly in a listless rote. The 
 new spirit which is seen in the churches all over the world 
 to-day is distinctly traceable to the stimulus which 
 The Salvation Army has imparted in its many conflicts. 
 
 Perhaps a ‘ rock of offence’ in those days was that we 
 aimed at definite and immediate results. We have always 
 believed that the Gospel of Christ proclaimed in the demon- 
 stration of the Spirit and with power ought to prove, must 
 prove, visibly as well as in the heart, its Divine efficacy. 
 What indeed can be the use of any religious speaking unless 
 it secures some 1mmedtate results. The fact that such results 
 were seen continually presented, of course, a great contrast 
 to the outcome of much of the religious effort of that day, 
 and deepened some of the opposition from religious circles. 
 
30 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 The trouble with the religion of that day was that it 
 was so egregiously respectable. Much of this spirit has 
 passed away, I hope for ever, although even within the last 
 few years our Officers have been refused admission to well- | 
 known places of worship at the hour of service, because 
 they were accompanied by poor, unkempt, and broken 
 creatures whom they wanted to bless. Yet, after all, it really 
 was those people whom Christ came to save. The trouble 
 with The Army was that it was not respectable. And so the 
 proprieties and politenesses of the religious world took 
 fright and began to rear. Indeed, if I may be permitted the 
 figure, began to kick ! 
 
 A deeper reason for the obloquy which met us was that 
 we were intruders. ‘Ian Maclaren,’ in his later years, said 
 that he ‘ liked The Salvation Army because it made religion 
 where there was no religion before.’ But that was the reason 
 why many people did not like it. It broke into the Devil’s 
 preserves and at the same time disturbed the hitherto 
 unruffled calm of religious exercises and lip-service which 
 many nice people had mistaken for the religion of Jesus. 
 
 And more—signs and wonders followed it. Things 
 unusual began to happen. Things visible. If they were 
 not great miracles, they were nevertheless great marvels, 
 things which came not by any human reckoning. Whether 
 the instances were few or many, they were there. And their 
 existence stirred up the ministers and other officials of reli- 
 gious bodies quite in the spirit of the Pharisees of old, who 
 raised all manner of quibblings in the presence of the man 
 born blind who had received his sight. ‘ We are Moses’ 
 , disciples. We know that God spake unto Moses: as for 
 this fellow, we know not from whence he is.’ _In short, they 
 threw cold water on the whole business. 
 
 Perhaps even when all this is said we have not plumbed 
 to the ultimate secret of the opposition. Was it that our 
 kind of personal religion was different in yet deeper respects 
 from much of the religion around us? Ours was a practical 
 faith. It appealed to the common mass, and illumined them. 
 It offered a spiritual charter to the ecclesiastically disfran- 
 chised. It made the dumb speak. It lifted people from the 
 
DISTURBERS' OF THE PEACE 31 
 
 dunghills. It rebuked those cosy, self-satisfied professors 
 who wanted to keep out of sight every sign of the warmth 
 and enthusiasm which belong to a heart religion. It per- 
 sisted in bringing the facts and claims of religion into the 
 open. It was out of season as often as it wasin. It dared 
 to say not only that there was One who was ‘ mighty to 
 save, but that He did save. It was not ashamed to confess 
 that life was full of evil, but it proclaimed also that good 
 was coming and would prove stronger than the evil. It 
 gave its message through the mouths of quite ‘ vulgar’ 
 people—mechanics, domestic servants, factory girls, farm 
 labourers! It taught the children to sing for God. It 
 even set to heavenly music the voices of the Magdalen and 
 the drunkard. It pinked the complacency of conventional 
 religion, and shone as a bright light in a gloomy twilight. 
 It made the Devil cry out. It disturbed the publicans and 
 the brothel-keepers and the gambling gentry and the 
 “nasty ’ newspapers. Finally, and perhaps most unforgiv- 
 ably, it openly organized a people who really had renounced 
 the Devil and all his works, and who separated themselves 
 from the pomps and vanities of this wicked world ! 
 
 All this was very disturbing. And if it be an offence to 
 bring the impact of spiritual reality upon a religious world 
 wedded to forms of worship but too often forgetful of its 
 spirit, then undoubtedly we have committed that offence, 
 and the dim-religious-light sort of Christian could not and 
 cannot abide us. 
 
 I was—indeed, I am now—often very sorry that things 
 have had to be turned upside down. But to act, as we do, 
 and as we have done, is no impish indulgence on our part ; 
 we do not upset people for fun, or spite, or to earn notoriety. 
 But there are the facts. I cannot deny them. Because we 
 were what we were, the religion which is always hesitating 
 about what should be believed, the religion which is made 
 up half of hope and half of fear, the religion which mis- 
 takes refinement and civilization for hfe—abundant life in 
 Christ, or thinks that fine preaching or good music and ornate 
 ceremonial can somehow be a substitute for surrender to 
 God and separation from the world and the service of others 
 
32 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 —that religion was bound by its very nature to oppose 
 The Salvation Army. And it did. 
 
 * x * x 
 
 I have not written here the whole story. There was a 
 brighter side to all this, and it shall be told on another 
 
 page. 
 
V 
 FRIENDS IN NEED 
 
 It is pleasant to turn from this rather dreary record of 
 abuse and persecution to the few friends—men of out- 
 standing spiritual influence with their fellows—who were 
 raised up in the Churches to help The Army forward in 
 those early days. Of such friends some continued to the 
 end faithful in their friendship. They had eyes to see the 
 spirit which was working inwardly among our people. 
 However the exterior may have perplexed them, they could 
 see beneath it. These, having once espoused our cause, 
 never deserted us. The attitude of others varied with the 
 passage of time. For a year or two they would do valiant 
 defensive work, and then we found that in some respect 
 or other they were offended. But even with regard to these 
 we rejoiced, and felt when they had rendered us some signal 
 service, that as Mordecai said of Esther, they had come to 
 the kingdom for a time like this. 
 
 Among these latter I think that my first memory would 
 be of C. H. Spurgeon. My first touch with him was con- 
 nected with a visit which the Founder paid to one of his 
 Pastors’ College festivals early in the seventies. Spurgeon, 
 who made a very nice reference to his guest, struck me as 
 a man very conscious of the fact that he had reached his 
 zenith, and desperately anxious to continue where he was. 
 Yet that could not really have been the case, because he 
 maintained in subsequent years a high rate of progress. 
 
 It was at about the time of this visit that Spurgeon took 
 occasion to mention the work of the Christian Mission in 
 the ‘Sword and Trowel.’! After referring to Mr. Booth as 
 one of the centres of holy activity stirring the masses of 
 
 4 December, 1870. 
 D 33 
 
34 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 London, he quoted from our ‘ Mission Magazine ’ the expe- 
 rience of two evangelists of the Mission who had had brought 
 out against them, to silence their speaking, a whole brass 
 band, and Spurgeon added this comment : 
 
 What would some of our brethren have done in such a case? 
 If a baby cries they are utterly disconcerted, and a little noise from 
 the Sabbath School children makes them drop the thread of their 
 discourse! Puling evangelists would do well to try Whitechapel in 
 the open-air, and they would probably say with a certain brother 
 (of the Christian Mission), ‘ I find the work very trying to the voice ; 
 the rumbling of the buses and carts in the Mile End Road drowns 
 the voice unless backed by a strong pair of lungs.’ We are afraid 
 they would hardly have the grace to add, ‘ The Lord strengthen us 
 for this great work.’ 
 
 Later on Spurgeon gave his lecture on ‘ Candles‘ at our 
 Hall in Whitechapel, and I was more impressed with him 
 than I had been on the former occasion. Later still I heard 
 him preach in a tent in Limehouse to a fine concourse of 
 people, numbering from three to four thousand. I do not 
 think that I have ever heard a more beautiful voice. It 
 was a melody with an immense scale of tones. Moreover, 
 I thought his general manner on the platform exceedingly 
 impressive and attractive. I had heard the story of the 
 child who was taken by his mother to hear Spurgeon preach, 
 and after a quarter of an hour or so whispered, ‘ Mother, 
 is Mr. Spurgeon speaking to me?’ and I realized, as I lis- 
 tened to him myself, that that story could be quite true. 
 I was, however, disappointed with his matter. It struck 
 me—as his printed sermons have also done—as being a 
 careful erection from the surface rather than an upheaval 
 from the depths. Yet here, again, I must have been wrong, 
 for there were depths in him. I regretted, nay, I resented 
 his style off the platform also. He arrived at the gathering 
 I have referred to in a fine carriage, smoking a cigar. His 
 remark that he smoked to the honour and glory of God 
 is one of those oft-quoted sayings which have done infinite 
 harm to the world, putting into the mouth of many a youth 
 not only a poisonous weed but a flippant and irreligious 
 apology. 
 
 More than once Spurgeon spoke up for The Army. His 
 
FRIENDS IN NEED 35 
 
 Calvinistic soul did not like our Holiness teaching, and he 
 condemned it in his rough and ready fashion; but he 
 always recognized that souls were being brought to the 
 truth, and his own early sensationalisms saved him from 
 prejudice against our new and unconventional methods for 
 winning the attention of the multitude. He became our 
 advocate with regard to some of the very measures which 
 most offended the sentiment of ‘the Christian public.’ It 
 should be added that his kindly feelings were shared by 
 his son Thomas, both when in New Zealand and while, 
 later on, he was in charge of his father’s church. 
 
 Of Spurgeon’s great contemporary in the Nonconformist 
 pulpit I have some pleasant recollections. Dr. Parker was 
 the first preacher of any note, either in London or the 
 provinces, to invite of his own motion my dear mother to 
 occupy his pulpit, and that at a time when hardly a woman’s 
 voice was heard in the Christian temples of this country.! 
 Now and again during the stormy years Parker spoke out 
 boldly for us with that defiant note to which the City Temple 
 so frequently rang. Later on he invited me once or twice 
 to take one of his Thursday services, and I have often re- 
 gretted that circumstances prevented me from accepting 
 his invitation. During Dr. Parker’s last illness my father 
 paid him a visit, and spoke of him to me with deep interest 
 and sympathy. The two men had a happy time together, 
 conscious as both of them were that soon their stern battles 
 would be done. They had a likeness also in this, that each 
 mourned a deeply loved wife, and they were drawn to speak 
 to one another of the reunions awaiting them on the other side. 
 
 Among other reminiscences of Dr. Parker is one which, 
 though of a different order, is not without interest. In his 
 vestry a small Committee of influential men was discussing 
 a meeting we proposed to hold in the City Temple in con- 
 nexion with the Purity Campaign of 1885. Some question 
 arose as to whether a certain Labour leader, at that time a 
 bold and active figure, should be asked to speak. He had 
 been already approached, and had expressed his willingness 
 
 1It was also at the City Temple many years later, in 1889, that 
 Mrs. Catherine Booth preached her last sermon. 
 
30 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 to come—‘ but, mind, none of your damned religion!’ 
 Some one put it to Parker at. last definitely whether the 
 Labour leader should be invited. ‘ Oh, let him come,’ was 
 the Doctor’s reply ; and then, in his deepest tones, ‘ Yes, 
 let him come, but, mind, none of his damned infidelity !° 
 
 Of other Nonconformists who befriended us I mention 
 three, all of Bristol, and each of them honoured in his 
 denomination by being elected to the chair of the Union. 
 These were Urijah Thomas and Arnold Thomas, both of 
 them Congregationalists, and Richard Glover, the Baptist. 
 Urijah Thomas went out in the processions with us, and 
 attended the early Bristol services, where he himself was 
 greatly blessed. And I must name also Dr. J. B. Paton, 
 the head of the Congregational Institute for Theological and 
 Missionary Studies at Nottingham. That he was ‘ one of 
 the right sort ’’ may be seen from a letter which he wrote to 
 my father after the death of my sister, Mrs. Booth-Tucker . 
 
 I have throughout a long life always felt it to be one of the 
 highest privileges of that life to stand by your side wherever it was 
 possible and to aid by prayers and fullest sympathy one who has 
 been in our times the chosen Apostle of our Glorious Redeeming 
 Lord, to do a work which scarce any other of His great Apostles 
 has been permitted todo .. . . and now when you are smitten by 
 this storm of trial, what can I more than stand again by your side, 
 offering you a heart full of loving sympathy. FEternally united! 
 Death to you and meisnomore. They are with you here, and, oh! - 
 how soon you will be with them there. And then may I still be at 
 your side, and at the side of her, the Mother of your Army, who 
 bade me good night, and told me to meet her in the Morning. 
 
 Ever your affectionate and faithful friend, 
 J.B. Patron: 
 
 We had also some helpers in Scotland. Dr. Stalker 
 greatly appreciated my mother’s writings, and was very 
 warm and cordial to the Founder ; and among other friends 
 in the north were Dr. Denney and Dr. Alexander Whyte of 
 Free St. George’s, Edinburgh. These were all true friends 
 when friends were few. 
 
 The Army has had, and still has, many valued friends 
 among Methodists. A host of names comes to mind—names 
 like Alexander McCaulay ; Bishop Taylor, of California ; 
 
FRIENDS IN NEED 37 
 
 Luke Tyreman, and T. B. Stephenson (of the National 
 Children’s Home), as well as many generous Methodist 
 laymen, Henry Reed, William MacArthur, John Cory ; James 
 Barlow, of Bolton; William Walker, of Whitehaven ; 
 William Gooderham, of Toronto; Mary Fowler, of Liver- 
 pool; Dr. Wood, of Southport, among others. 
 
 The Church of England long remained aloof from 
 The Army. Anglicanism could not somehow get us into 
 focus. All the same, there appeared here and there a 
 splendid friend amongst its clergy. Some comparatively 
 early sympathizers among those who are entitled to be 
 called great Churchmen are mentioned in another chapter, 
 but there were others who will always be remembered as 
 friends in need. One was E. W. Moore, then minister of 
 Brunswick Chapel, Marylebone, and another D. B. Hankin, 
 who was vicar of St. Jude’s, Mildmay. These men 
 attended our services and wrote warmly in our defence in 
 their Church papers, both under their own name and under 
 a nom-de-plume. I specially rejoiced in their advocacy, 
 because it helped to counteract the false theories spread 
 abroad, chiefly by members of their own Church, with 
 regard to our higher life teaching. 
 
 Among the other brave spirits of that time who took a 
 definite share in the open-air fighting was one who held 
 what is known as a perpetual curacy at one of the West End 
 chapels. I recall that on more than one occasion he sallied 
 forth carrying an open umbrella bearing striking words of 
 warning plastered upon it, and not only did he carry this 
 to Salvation Army meetings, but he walked about with it 
 in Hyde Park to the blessing of many souls. 
 
 Material help has also been extended to us from time 
 to time by well-to-do men. Once in a Holiness Meeting, 
 during a time of great stress and poverty at Headquarters, 
 { mentioned that we needed sympathy and help. The next 
 morning, almost before I began work, a Church of England 
 parson who had been present at the meeting was at Head- 
 quarters, and said, ‘How much do you want? Would a 
 loan of £3,000 be of any use?’ I replied that while it would 
 not cover our need, it would certainly be of use ; whereupon 
 
38 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 he said, ‘I have securities at my bank which will produce 
 just that amount as a loan. I will send it up to you. But 
 I want to make one condition, that you do not send me any 
 sort of acknowledgment or allow the matter to be men- 
 tioned between us until you are ready to repay me ! ’ 
 
 Then there was the late Frank S. Webster, afterwards 
 Prebendary of St. Paul’s and rector of All Souls, Langham 
 Place, who was a staunch friend. He came under The Army's 
 influence while at Oxford. I have more than once seen him 
 walking in our processions, singing the praises of God, and 
 plastered with mud from head to foot. Benjamin Waugh, 
 the children’s protector, was another who unflinchingly 
 stood by us during the purity prosecution, though he risked 
 losing many of his wealthy supporters by so doing. 
 
 Others who must be named in this connexion are Bishop 
 Lightfoot, of Durham, Bishop Moorhouse, of Manchester, 
 Dean Hole, of Rochester, Bishop Welldon, now Dean of 
 Durham, and Canon Scott-Holland, afterwards of St. Paul’s. 
 Farrar and Wilberforce, of Westminster, are the subject of 
 more extended reference elsewhere. A few clergymen took 
 a share of the brickbats, and came to our meetings and spoke 
 encouragingly to our people. They were great exceptions, 
 it is true, but there were these exceptions. Among the 
 encouragers whose names recur to me was that curious 
 mixture of this world and the next known as ‘ Hang 
 Theology’ Rogers, rector of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate. 
 Rogers was naturally a very attractive man, a really good 
 town specimen of the shooting and fox-hunting parson ; 
 and one of his persistent endeavours—in which he never 
 succeeded—was to get the General to go down with him to 
 the Derby ! : 
 
 There was also dear old William Pennefather, the 
 founder of the Mildmay Conferences, who came down to 
 Whitechapel quite in the early days, before his Conferences 
 had removed from Barnet, where they began. Pennefather 
 was the first man I ever saw embrace my father in public ! 
 He created no end of a sensation by kissing him before the 
 people in a crowded meeting. 
 
 Now, why did such men as I have mentioned help us 
 
FRIENDS IN NEED 39 
 
 at all? It is scarcely possible, of course, for another to 
 analyse their feelings and motives. Nevertheless, some 
 things which seemed to be common to them all, or nearly 
 all, throw light on the matter. They were, on the whole, 
 drawn to us by our high standards of personal religion. 
 Even when they could not quite accept our doctrine 
 or did not quite see the necessity of imposing on them- 
 selves or on others our self-denying ordinances, they still 
 delighted in our testimony. The best of them felt and 
 specially rejoiced that the witness was forthcoming, not 
 from the members of some gifted coterie of rare minds, 
 but from the common people, that the spirit of Pentecost 
 was in the shabby room, and had fallen on the poor and 
 the simple and the despised. In general we may explain 
 their espousal of our despised and rejected cause by the 
 fact of our religion—definite—aggressive—hot religion. 
 Any number of good people when spoken to about The 
 Salvation Army to-day will say, ‘ Yes, it is doing a great 
 work.’ What these men saw was something more than that. 
 The Army might or might not be doing a great work, but 
 The Army was a great thing ! 
 
 It should be added that many of those who came for- 
 ward and helped us in this way had in their own personal 
 lives received new power through the instrumentality of 
 one or other of our agencies. As I go about the world people 
 still say to me—not Army people: ‘It was at such and 
 such a meeting of The Army, or through reading such and 
 such an Army book, or through hearing such and such a 
 Salvationist song, or through coming in contact with such 
 and such a soldier, that my hfe was directed to the service 
 of the Cross of Christ.’ It was so with them. | 
 
 I think, further, that the opposition which these men 
 encountered was of immense service to them. It damped 
 the zeal of some, no doubt, but it stiffened the fibre of 
 others. They saw in the character of those individuals and 
 influences which opposed us a great testimony to the hand 
 of God upon us. They differed from us in doctrinal mat- 
 ters; they differed about the sacraments, about women’s 
 ministry, about many of our methods, but they felt that 
 
40 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 The Army must possess some essential thing which God 
 loved and approved or it would never have found arrayed 
 against it in the way it did the world, the flesh, and the 
 Devil. The very thing which hopelessly frightened many 
 of their co-religionists drew them to us and made them 
 valiant in our defence. We owe them much; they helped 
 to roll the old chariot along, even though they were not 
 always pushing behind with might and main. They were 
 auxiliaries of the main attacking Army, freelances wielding 
 redoubtable steel. They have their reward. 
 
 One venerable friend who has lately left us I have not 
 forgotten, but I have left him till last because his name 
 forms such a fitting completion of this honoured roll. 
 Dr. Clifford always looked with kindness on The Army. 
 Back in the old days, when we had few friends among the 
 Nonconformists to say one good word for us, he said many. 
 I can never forget his helping hand in the great legal fight 
 over the Eagle Tavern. Some of the hatred which fell on 
 us fell on him also. Again and again his pulpit has been at 
 our disposal. I like to think of him as I last saw him, 
 though the shadows were already creeping up the splendid 
 hills of his fruitful life. It was the night of my father’s 
 wondertul funeral service at Olympia. Near to the repre- 
 sentatives of the King and Queen, and among the leading 
 men of every Church and religion, was Dr. Clifford, seven 
 years the Founder’s junior, his hand raised on high and 
 singing with all his might, his eyes filling with tears, as the 
 mighty audience burst forth : 
 
 We're marching through Immanuel’s ground, 
 And soon shall hear the trumpet sound. 
 
 Dr. Clifford’s power was in his marvellous capacity to 
 throw himself body and soul into what he was doing or 
 saying. Power on the platform is often falsely put down 
 to a special gift of speech, when it really arises, as in his case, 
 from a burning and overflowing heart. 
 
 Dr. Clifford should have been a Salvationist ! 
 
VI 
 How THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 
 
 LATE one Sunday night in Whitechapel, when I was about 
 twelve or thirteen years of age, I was walking home with 
 the Founder when he led me for the first time in my life 
 into a drinking saloon. I have never forgotten the effect 
 that the scene produced upon me. The place was crowded 
 with men, many of them bearing on their faces the marks 
 of brutishness and vice, and with women also, dishevelled 
 and drunken, in some cases with tiny children in their arms. 
 There in that brilliantly lighted place, noxious with the 
 fumes of drink and tobacco, and reeking with filth, my 
 father, holding me by the hand, met my inquiring gaze and 
 said, ‘ Willie, these are our people; these are the people 
 I want you to live for and bring to Christ.’ The impression 
 never left me. 
 
 The Founder’s struggles in those early and formative 
 years were not always with the outward and visible. There 
 were more subtle difficulties, questionings, uncertainties, 
 hesitations, misgivings. How could it be otherwise ? The 
 very foundations of his life were challenged. Many old 
 cherished things were already marked to pass away and 
 many utterly undreamed-of things were to become new. 
 In the result, he gradually came down from the aloofness of 
 a semi-ecclesiastical position into that of a man who deemed 
 all else of no account if by any means he might win some. 
 
 For a long time he shared many of the notions which 
 prevailed in the then religious world with regard to what 
 may be called ecclesiastical precedence or order. He be- 
 lieved, for example, that there was some superiority in the 
 mere fact of being a minister, that the call and separation 
 involved in that life really did convey some special grace, 
 
 41 
 
42 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 that it necessarily set a man apart from the people and put 
 a hedge about him. He left Methodism of his own motion. 
 It is quite true that, from a certain standpoint, the Methodist 
 authorities may be said to have ejected him, but he never 
 felt quite happy in putting it only in that way. They 
 offered him a circuit, and with a circuit, a home, and salary, 
 with no small opportunity to work for the Kingdom of God. 
 It is scarcely the whole story to say that he was turned out ! 
 On the other hand, it is also true that when he joined the 
 Methodist New Connexion there was a distinct understand- 
 ing with the authorities of that time that he became one of 
 their ministers for evangelistic work, in which he had already 
 gained a great measure of success in various parts of the 
 country. It was their subsequent refusal of that work 
 which brought about the rupture. 
 
 After he broke with the Conference he was immediately 
 invited to visit various circuits as Missioner, holding special 
 services, and at once had a great measure of success, par- 
 ticularly in Cornwall, in the Midlands, and in South Wales. 
 Thereupon the ministers who had personally agitated against 
 his evangelism within the Church felt that the position 
 ‘ would be worse than ever ’ if he were allowed to roam about 
 the country without any restraint. Accordingly they moved 
 their Conference—and with entire success—to close the 
 pulpits against any travelling evangelists who were not 
 authorized by the Annual Conference. The same resolution 
 which closed their doors against William Booth closed them 
 also to James Caughey, and to Dr. and Mrs. Palmer, who 
 had been instrumental at that time in strengthening many 
 of the Nonconformist Churches in the United Kingdom. 
 No doubt, some of the opposition which developed in the 
 long run against the Booths was originally due to a pre- 
 judice against ‘ foreigners,’ the Evangelists just mentioned 
 having come from the United States. The very strong, not 
 to say bitter, feeling then prevailing against the ministry of 
 women, had also to be reckoned with, for Catherine Booth 
 had shared in the Founder’s work. 
 
 For two years after the Churches were thus closed against 
 him he wandered about the country without a religious 
 
HOW THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 43 
 
 domicile. Towns in which he had been marvellously used 
 _ could offer him nothing except the personal hospitality of 
 individuals, which was not what he was seeking. Those 
 two years were probably the darkest in his whole life, at 
 least from the time of his ordination onwards. Small 
 buildings only were available for his services—he who had 
 been accustomed to great congregations; and the results 
 were, I am afraid, correspondingly disappointing. Finan- 
 cially also they were years of very great embarrassment, 
 rendered the more so, no doubt, by his independence and 
 his delicacy about accepting gifts. Many of his letters 
 during this period illustrate the acute personal conflicts 
 through which he passed. Mrs. Booth was living mean- 
 while with four children in a little house in Yorkshire—her 
 husband wandering about the country, separated from her 
 sometimes for months at a time. 
 
 Yet this period, dark and perplexing as it was, was a 
 period in which, I consider, he was being most marvellously 
 fitted for the work which, unknown to him, was awaiting 
 his hand in the East End of London; nay, in the ‘ East 
 End’ of the world. If he had had to come down straight 
 from those crowded buildings, with a thousand or fifteen 
 hundred people night after night, with influential ministers 
 and leading men of all parties on his platforms, and streams 
 of penitents just below them—if he had had to come down 
 from all that immediately to the cold and tumble-down tent 
 or the little barren skittle-ground of Whitechapel and the 
 Mile-End Waste, and to submit himself to the tender mer- 
 cies of a London mob, the change might have been too much 
 even for his brave spirit. They were wilderness years, but 
 they were years in which the reality of his call was being 
 proved in his own consciousness and his fibre stiffened for 
 conflict and conquest. They were years of‘enduring and of 
 hardness. 
 
 All this time, notwithstanding that the ceremonial trap- 
 pings of his Church life had been, if not torn away, at all 
 events considerably loosened—the buttons coming off, as 
 Carlyle would have put it—there still remained with him a 
 haunting sense of superiority or separateness as a minister 
 
44 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 which was a constant embarrassment. As he himself said, 
 it was a long while before he could divest himself of his white 
 tie and his black clothes, and his umbrella, and come right 
 down to the common people as one of themselves. 
 
 What was substantially the same difficulty in other 
 aspects of his own work and experience appeared again and 
 again during the earliest developments of The Army. | 
 remember his addressing on one occasion a congregation of 
 twelve hundred or so at Whitechapel, the large majority 
 of those present being utterly godless, many of them openly 
 vicious. He was making only the most trifling impression, 
 do what he would. But when presently he called upon an 
 old man—a kind of gipsy hawker, who was converted from 
 a life of open wickedness a few weeks before—to speak aiter 
 him, a wonderful impression upon the throng was created 
 by that man’s words, bungling as no doubt they were. He 
 saw it and felt it, and he said to me afterwards, ‘ Willie, 
 I shall have to burn all those old sermons of mine, and go 
 in for the gipsy’s.’ And yet those ‘old sermons,’ or old 
 swords, aS we might well call them, had done wonderful 
 execution in the former days, and he was not a little attached 
 to them. But he found, as he wrote later on, ‘ that ordinary 
 working-men in their corduroys and bowler hats could 
 command attention from their own class which was refused 
 point-blank to me with my theological terms and superior 
 knowledge.’ Thus in the methods of The Salvation Army, 
 as they gradually took shape, there was so much that was 
 contrary to his preconceived notions, that perhaps the great- 
 est struggle of all in the making of The Army was the 
 struggle within himself. 
 
 To a large extent Catherine Booth was under the same 
 influences, but with her the conflict was rather in the intel- 
 lectual than in the ecclesiastical arena. She had in those 
 early days no little difficulty, for instance, in reconciling 
 herself to the employment of young and untrained minds 
 to convey the great messages of divine things. Should she 
 approve or disapprove when it was proposed to call simple 
 and ignorant people away from their homes, impose upon 
 them a rather stern discipline, and involve them in a wan- 
 
HOW THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 45 
 
 dering life of poverty in order that they might minister of 
 the sacred things to the multitude ? What advice was she 
 to give when servant girls and ’prentice lads seemed to be 
 so manifestly shaping for leadership ? She went through 
 no small measure of humbling in realizing that, after all, 
 these rough and untutored spirits might be chosen vessels of 
 Ministering Grace, worthy to take their places beside her 
 more carefully prepared and more precious earthenware. 
 
 But with her, as well as with him, these traditions and 
 hesitations, so natural, nay, so honourable in them both, 
 were overcome by the tremendous passion for souls which 
 possessed them, and especially for the souls to whom, if 
 they did not actually antagonize them, the Churches made 
 little or no appeal. Here, and in their delightful humility, 
 was the true secret of their emancipation from many clinging 
 prejudices. In their burning love for men, the bonds which 
 during twenty years had been wound round them were 
 destroyed. Love—love for humamty—found a way. It 
 routed, at last, all the fastidiousness alike of temperament, 
 association, and habit. The more degraded, the more 
 vicious, the more distant and stubborn the people, the more 
 fiery became their own zeal, the more steady their own 
 pursuit until they were won. William Booth at this time, 
 let it be remembered, was not a young fellow of twenty-five 
 embarking in a youthful spirit of enterprise on new adven- 
 tures. He was forty and mature. 
 
 The growth of The Army brought also struggles of 
 another kind. His contemporaries never realized—will pos- 
 terity realize >—how often William Booth had to do violence 
 to himself. Consider, for example, the government of the 
 Organization, and his place init. It was not that he wanted 
 to be an autocrat. All his predispositions were the other 
 way. Yet from the earliest days of the East End Mission 
 there was, I think, always before him the idea that soon or 
 later—no matter how reluctant he might feel when the time 
 came—he would have to take control of everything. I am 
 sometimes asked how it was that for the first thirteen or 
 fourteen years of our existence we made comparatively so 
 little impression. I honestly think that the reason was that 
 
46 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 the Founder, after the first two or three years, hesitated, 
 chiefly on account of his previous notions of Church govern- 
 ment, to take the lead. He was still in thought—or rather 
 in attitude of mind—a good deal of a Methodist. And 
 although later in life the influences of his early years in the 
 Church of England were clearly seen, he would still say, 
 ‘there is one God, and John Wesley is His prophet.’ He 
 had always in his ears an echo of the impact which 
 Methodism had made upon the world. It was only natural 
 that John Wesley’s example should influence him. He felt 
 himself as time went on to be placed in circumstances in 
 many important respects similar to those in which Wesley 
 had ultimately been placed, and his position was very like 
 Wesley’s in one respect at least, that people would come to 
 him and say, ‘ Take us under your care. We have loosed 
 our anchors.’ 
 
 For some time he held back from taking this absolute 
 control. It was not only the natural diffidence of a refined 
 spirit which held him back ; the habits and training of his 
 previous life were against such a course. We had for some 
 years, for regulating the local work, the usual organization 
 of Elders and other meetings composed of selected officials 
 of the different societies, and in the middle of the seventies 
 there came into existence a governing body known as the 
 Annual Conference, with which the Founder freely shared 
 his authority and in a less degree his responsibility. But 
 the Conference failed, obviously and palpably failed, as 
 “government by talk’ generally fails, and there came at 
 length a time when he went the whole length in the direction 
 of what has often been called his autocracy. The immediate 
 crisis which led to this change, so long seen to be approach- 
 ing, was the expressed dissatisfaction of many of his most 
 effective helpers. They came to him, and said plainly, ‘ We 
 gave our lives up to work under you, and those you should 
 appoint, rather than under one another.’ ‘ Very well,’ he 
 answered, ‘let it be so,’ and took up the burden. Much, if 
 not all the pressure of his previous training had to be shaken 
 off. It took him twelve years to reach that position, and 
 even then there remained an instinctive shrinking from 
 
HOW THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 47 
 
 much that was involved. On one of the first occasions on 
 which the title ‘General WILLIAM BooTH’ was used in 
 print, he ringed the first word in the proof and returned it 
 to me with a note at the side, ‘ Cannot this form be altered ? 
 It looks too pretentious!’! And yet, side by side with 
 this natural shyness, there was, at any rate after the first 
 few years, the most determined and absolute dedication of 
 all his powers to make known the Saviour of the world, and 
 the utmost readiness to be made a spectacle—if need be a 
 derided spectacle—for men and angels, if only he could 
 attract attention to the Lamb of God. 
 
 When he assumed the entire control of the work, he had 
 of course but the faintest idea of the possibilities which 
 time has shown were before us. But even so the question 
 as to what form the Organization should take immediately 
 became a serious one. No one desired to build without a 
 plan, still less to build without sufficient foundation, and 
 least of all to build without some reasonable prospect of 
 permanence. A system of government must be decided 
 upon. When it came to making a choice in that matter he 
 conceived himself to be perfectly untrammelled as regards 
 the various Church systems already in existence. So far 
 as he could see no particular theory of a Church and no 
 particular form of Church government could find any sup- 
 port either direct or indirect in the teaching of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. This being so, he felt that he was free to adopt 
 that modified form of militarism which has proved so prac- 
 tical for our great purposes, and is seen to be so effective in 
 The Army of to-day. 
 
 But it must not be supposed that this was determined 
 upon without great searchings of heart and humbling of 
 spirit, nor without doing considerable violence to his own 
 feelings. He, of all people, had no ambition to be a Pope! 
 He did not desire to make a new sect. Indeed, neither he 
 nor any of us who were associated with him had any such 
 thought. We were, of course, as the work prospered, 
 assailed on that point both by friends and foes, but it was 
 
 1The Life of William Booth, Vol. I, contains a facsimile of the 
 sheet referred to. 
 
45 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 not difficult to answer that we were as far as could be from 
 a sect, as ordinarily understood. It was not a Church after 
 the fashion of the Churches but an Army that was aimed at 
 —and which, thank God, is still aimed at. That is, a force 
 as real, as active, as self-sacrificing and as much under 
 control for soul-winning as the ordinary military armies are 
 for slaughter and destruction. 
 
 Writing on this matter, which continued for years a 
 tender point with the Founder, I find Commissioner Railton, 
 saying, and his words come home to some of us even to-day : 
 
 ‘But this is making a denomination—a new sect.’ Well, and 
 supposing it is. Is there any harm in doing so? Is there not a need 
 for just such a ‘sect’ in many a city and town of this kingdom, 
 where no such work is being done amongst the masses? But we 
 deny that we are in any proper sense a sect. We refuse to settle 
 down into places of worship such as might be agreeable to our 
 people and their families, but insist upon the open-air stand and the 
 place of amusement, where there may be little comfort, but where 
 the most good may be done. We refuse to allow our Officers to stay 
 very long in any one place, lest they or the people should sink into 
 the reJationship of pastor and flock, and look to their mutual enjoy- 
 ment and advantage rather than to the Salvation of others. The 
 whole Army is kept in its course by the direction of one controlling 
 will. . . . We refuse utterly to allow of any authoritative assembly, 
 committee, church meeting, or any other representative or popular 
 gathering, except purely for the purpose of auditing finance and 
 accepting and confirming and arranging for the execution of the 
 plans which have been tried and proved most calculated to promote 
 the common object. We are not and will not be made a sect. We 
 are an Army of Soldiers of Christ, organized as perfectly as we have 
 been able to accomplish, seeking no Church status, avoiding as we 
 would the plague every denominational rut, in order perpetually 
 to reach more and more of those who lie outside every Church 
 boundary. Owing to our adherence to this military system, we are 
 losing almost every year Officers who, having lost their first love, 
 begin to hanker after the ‘rights,’ ‘ privileges,’ ‘ comforts,’ 
 ‘teaching,’ or ‘ respectability ’ of the Churches. 
 
 And there came to be something of the same freedom 
 from the trammels of the past in the relation of many 
 methods of The Army to its inner spirit. This, again, was 
 seen first of all in the Founders themselves. They came to 
 understand in a marvellous way the power of external 
 impression on the people, and the influence which it could 
 
HOW THE BUTTONS CAME OFF 49 
 
 exert in favour of religion and righteousness. Holding back 
 somewhat in the early years from the sensational and 
 broadly emotional, they came at last to accept every lawful 
 thing which would arrest the divided attention or seize for 
 God the imagination of the crowd. The employment of 
 music was one example of this. The Churches, from Rome 
 and onwards, used instrumental music of some kind. But 
 they first, since the days of the Israelites, brought the 
 trumpets and cymbals and drums out into the highways 
 and market places of the world. They put the ‘secular’ 
 music to sacred uses, and made the ‘ sacred’ music more 
 sacred still! Ours is the marching Chorus, the bivouacking 
 Choir, the peripatetic Organ! How well that this should 
 have been done! What a message of hope and peace, what 
 a call to higher things The Army musicians have brought 
 to the people ! 
 
 The employment of untrained and often very uncouth 
 and ignorant converts to do the work of calling their former 
 associates to Christ, and to do it in their own free and easy 
 way, was another instance of this same principle of being “ all 
 things to all men’ that by any means they might save some. 
 They saw that the mighty change produced by Salvation 
 and the whole outcome of that change, including emotion 
 and sanctified passion, could be employed for the spread of 
 Christ’s Kingdom. 
 
 In the preface to his book ‘ Broken Earthenware,’ 
 Harold Begbie says : 
 
 Does one expect a man whose entire being has suffered so great, 
 SO pervasive, so cataclysmic a change, to walk sedately, to measure 
 his words, to take the temperature of his enthusiasm and feel the 
 pulse of his transport ? The enchanted felicity which sends this 
 man singing and marching into the slums is not only the token of 
 the miracle in himself, but is the magic, as my book shows over and 
 over again, which draws unhappy and dejected souls to make sur- 
 
 render of their sin and wretchedness. Does not Christ speak of a 
 sinner’s repentance actually increasing the joy of Heaven ? 
 
 And there is a profound truth in Professor Seeley’s 
 words : 
 No heart is pure that is not passionate, 
 No virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic ! 
 
50 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 Yes, but with all this, definite and distinctive and 
 effective as it was and is, there was no depending on it or on 
 kindred influences or activities for spiritual results. Our 
 religion works by regeneration, not merely by impression ; 
 ‘by life rather than by movement; by the incoming of God, 
 not merely by worshipping Him or by building up a kind 
 of likeness to Him.’ 
 
 The purpose, deliberate and persistent, to make an 
 impression by external means, was there with the Founders 
 and is with The Army, but always as a subordinate aim, 
 merely as a way towards the great end. The Army has 
 ever set out to awaken and move the spirits of men, striving 
 to stir by any means the slothful, the sensual, the wilful, 
 and ready to employ every kind of measure which will serve 
 to do that work. But in that work we have ever recognized 
 that only the Holy Spirit can quicken the spirits we long 
 to save, can bring them to that Holiness which they were 
 made to manifest, were destined to enjoy. 
 
 And so, as ‘ the buttons came off,’ and more and more a 
 holy liberty spread its influence in the Founders’ lives, and 
 from them to us, there was more and more seen the power 
 of a Living Saviour working among the peoples, a Saviour 
 strong to deliver, mighty to save, almighty to create and 
 renew, our ever-present Keeper, our all-satisfying Food. 
 
VII 
 
 ‘SIGNS AND WONDERS’ 
 
 And as he journeyed, he came neay Damascus : and suddenly there 
 shined vound about him a light from Heaven : and he fell to the earth, 
 and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou 
 Me?... And Saul arose from the earth ; and when his eyes were opened, 
 he saw no man ; but they led him by the hand, and brought him into 
 Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat 
 nov dvink.—Acts ix. 3, 4, 8, 9. 
 
 I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the 
 body, I cannot tell; ov whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God 
 knoweth) ; such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew 
 such a man (whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell: God 
 knoweth) : how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard un- 
 speakable words, which it 1s not lawful for a man to uttery.—2 Cor. xii. 
 
 2-4. 
 
 ALL my life I have been interested in what are sometimes 
 spoken of as bodily manifestations, though I have had a 
 considerable degree of misgiving. From my earliest years 
 of responsible work for God I have approached all such 
 manifestations, if not with a hostile mind, certainly with a 
 mind deliberately cautious. I have always felt that any- 
 thing claiming to be of the supernatural must have creden- 
 tials which placed its genuineness beyond cavil. Neverthe- 
 less, I have this feeling also—and with regard to The Army 
 I have it particularly—that there is a place for these out- 
 ward demonstrations which have undoubtedly been wit- 
 nessed by us, and the like of which are recorded in various 
 periods of religious history. 
 
 The first instances of manifestation to which I was 
 introduced were seen in the extraordinary breaking down of 
 ungodly persons in the presence of the Spirit of God. I 
 have seen men in our Meetings, who were raving and blas- 
 pheming when the service began, suddenly broken down as 
 
 ye 
 
52 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 though some physical power had laid them prostrate on 
 the floor, and after a time of silence, weeping, and penitence, 
 they were confessing their sins and imploring the mercy of 
 God. In many such cases the whole of their subsequent 
 lives was changed, and no question could arise in the minds 
 of any of those who knew them as to the reality of the 
 experience. 
 
 One of the earliest instances of this which I met with 
 was not in connexion with Army work at all. As a young 
 lad I visited Cardiff from time to time and stayed with our 
 friends Mr. and Mrs. Billups. During one of these visits 
 Robert Aitken, vicar of Pendeen, in Cornwall, and father of 
 Canon Hay Aitken, was conducting a‘ mission ’ in St. John’s 
 Church there. 
 
 The mission was very successful. Night after night the 
 churches were crowded, and many scores of persons crowded 
 together at the Communion rail and were afterwards met in 
 a schoolroom by Mr. Aitken, who exhorted them as peni- 
 tents. Lad as I was, I was detailed by Mr. Aitken, who had 
 known my father, to look after some lads of my own age, 
 and I became somewhat intimate with the inner work of the 
 mission. It was there also that I became acquainted with 
 one of the most delightful men who has ever crossed my 
 path. This was Mr. (later Canon) Howells, a Welshman, 
 one of the saints of God, so intimate with spiritual things — 
 and so gentle and lovable in his whole personality as to be 
 a brother of all the Church of Christ. 
 
 In the course of this mission some opposition and ridi- 
 cule developed in the town, and Mr. Aitken was specially 
 attacked for certain remarks he had made in a sermon on 
 retribution, and it was indeed a tremendous sermon. I 
 was walking up the street one day when I saw Mr. Aitken 
 approaching. A number of men, on seeing him, flocked to 
 the door of a public-house and jeered at him as he passed, 
 one of them offering a pot of liquor. Mr. Aitken turned 
 sharply round on this poor fellow, and said to him in his 
 deep voice, but with extreme tenderness, ‘ Oh, my lammie ! 
 how will you bear the fires of Hell?’ At those words the man 
 instantly dropped on the pavement. He fell like a piece of 
 
“SIGNS AND WONDERS’ 53 
 
 wood, apparently losing all consciousness for the moment. 
 One or two people assisted him, Mr. Aitken looking on, and 
 presently there on the sidewalk he came to himself and 
 sought the mercy of God, afterwards, as I learned, becoming 
 an earnest Christian man. 
 
 Later on, in Meetings of The Army, we had far more 
 wonderful scenes of this nature. During an ‘All-Night of 
 Prayer,’ for example, there would be a certain movement 
 apparent among the people, and sometimes when prayer was 
 being offered, and at other times during the singing or the 
 address of a particular speaker, here and there among the 
 audience people would be observed to fall to the ground. 
 At times they appeared to fall with great violence, yet I 
 have never known of anyone being really hurt. On some 
 occasions there would be perhaps in a meeting of several 
 hundreds of people only half a dozen such manifestations, 
 although I have known as many as fifty or sixty in one 
 gathering. Sometimes the younger people were in the 
 majority, but at other times those thus influenced were 
 mainly from the older portions of the audience. 
 
 One case is recorded in my journal of January 16, 1878, 
 of a meeting following our half-yearly Council of War at 
 Whitechapel, when nearly all our evangelists were present : 
 
 At night Corbridge led a Hallelujah Meeting till 10 o’clock. Then 
 we commenced an Ail-Night of Prayer. Two hundred and fifty 
 people were present till 1 a.m.; two hundred or so after. A tre- 
 mendous time. From the very first Jehovah was passing by, 
 searching, softening, and subduing every heart. The power of the 
 Holy Ghost fell on Robinson! and prostrated him. He nearly 
 fainted twice. The brother of the Blandys? entered into full liberty, 
 and then he shouted, wept, clapped his hands, danced, amid a scene 
 of the most glorious and heavenly enthusiasm. Others meanwhile 
 were lying prostrate on the floor, some of them groaning aloud for 
 perfect deliverance. I spoke twice in the course of the night; so 
 did Corbridge. He did well. . . . It was a blessed night. 
 
 In many cases these manifestations occurred among those 
 
 who had resisted the light breaking in on their lives. In 
 some cases they had resisted the call to surrender themselves 
 1 Robinson was a North Country pitman of specially powerful build, 
 
 who had lately entered the service of the Mission. 
 2 Two Evangelists of ours. 
 
54 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 to some particular service or self-denial, or to abandon some 
 doubtful thing. Not infrequently persons who seemed most 
 unlikely to be the subjects of these special influences—some 
 of whom had indeed openly said, ‘I will take care that 
 nothing of this kind ever happens to me ’—had been over- 
 come. Others, again, would be sincere seekers after higher 
 things ; perhaps in some of these last cases there was a 
 predisposition to yield easily to the influence of the hour. 
 I always looked upon such—although it seems almost a 
 contradiction to say so—as the least satisfactory. All the 
 same, judged by their subsequent experience, they often 
 proved to have been most graciously and wonderfully 
 blessed. 
 
 My own course, and the course adopted by most of our 
 leaders in the presence of these influences, was, while never 
 opposing or deprecating them, to take care to have the sub- 
 jects of them immediately, or at any rate as soon as it was 
 possible, removed from the public gathering. They were 
 usually taken to adjoining rooms, the men separate from 
 the women, and quietly laid down. Wherever possible, 
 especially in the early days when we were less accustomed 
 to what afterwards became more ordinary, we had a doctor 
 within call lest some ill effects should follow these experi- 
 ences; perhaps also sometimes with a view to confirming 
 their genuineness. 
 
 This rapid removal from the open meeting was a wise 
 thing. It effectually prevented any vain or neurotic persons 
 from drawing attention to themselves. But it is important 
 to remember that we very seldom had any cases that were 
 not entirely sincere. Although we had various doctors in 
 attendance at different times and in different localities, the 
 number of cases in which it was the medical opinion that 
 there was something ‘put on’ was exceedingly small, whether 
 among women or men; so small, in fact, as to be almost 
 negligible. 
 
 What happened afterwards? Well, the great majority 
 of those who were unsaved sought the pardon of God and 
 lived new lives, and the fact that their new lives dated from 
 so extraordinary a beginning no doubt helped their faith. 
 
“SIGNS AND WONDERS’ 55 
 
 With regard to those who were already our own people or 
 were Christian people visiting our meetings, the after- 
 effects, of course, varied. In the majority of such cases an 
 immediate desire was manifest to give themselves wholly to 
 the will of God. 
 
 [ must have heard hundreds of testimonies to the 
 wonderful help received during or in consequence of these 
 visitations. They were testimonies from people about whose 
 absolute sincerity there could be no reasonable question, 
 and of whose increased devotion in the cause of God there 
 was abundant evidence. The explanation of these prostra- 
 tions is difficult to frame. May it not be that, so far as the 
 merely physical is concerned, certain Divine influences 
 coming upon a crowd of people are specially attracted by 
 those who might be described as spiritual conductors, and 
 that such persons, being overweighted as it were on the side 
 of the physical, lose their balance and fall down ? 
 
 In a certain number of cases we had remarkable descrip- 
 tions of visions or revelations occurring during the period 
 of unconsciousness. These were, however, relatively few in 
 number, for though I heard of many who had been conscious 
 of remarkable things, they did not, as a rule, seem anxious 
 to say much about them. There was a kind of restraint 
 upon them. The impression they gave was akin to that 
 expressed by the Apostle when he spoke of having been 
 caught up into the third heaven, and being uncertain whether 
 he was in the body or out of the body; being, that is, in 
 some rapture or ecstasy which left him afterwards undecided 
 as to where he was—and of hearing unspeakable words not 
 again to be uttered. 
 
 Nevertheless, some striking descriptions were given. I 
 cannot say that such recitals, with here and there an excep- 
 tion, impressed me deeply, and for this reason. There was 
 nearly always an element in them which sounded unnatural. 
 Still, some of them were truly most remarkable, and to the 
 ordinary mind most moving, and often produced great 
 effects in the telling. 
 
 One of these exceptions just referred to was the case 
 of a woman named Bamford, an Officer who came from 
 
56 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 Nottingham. After a visitation of this kind which came upon 
 her during an ‘ All-Night of Prayer,’ in which she lay for 
 nearly five hours unconscious, and during which her coun- 
 tenance was most evidently brightened, she gave a picture 
 of something she had seen, relating chiefly to the felicity 
 of the redeemed. It made a profound impression upon 
 my own heart, and I believe it afterwards helped her to 
 win hundreds of souls for God, for she constantly referred to 
 it in her work as an Officer. She died some years later with 
 a glorious record of soul-winning behind her. In some of 
 her Corps her name is still as ‘ ointment poured forth.’ 
 
 There was also a similar instance of a man. He was 
 undoubtedly an extraordinary person, in the sense that he 
 always seemed to be living on the verge of considerable 
 elation, so that he had to be scrutinized carefully. He had 
 several visitations. In fact, he seemed a favourable ‘ sub- 
 ject,’ and when he came back to earth, so to speak, he had 
 something wonderful to relate, not perhaps wonderful in the 
 sense of profundity or originality, but wonderful for the 
 intensity with which it had evidently gripped his own soul. 
 For instance, he spoke on one occasion—lI think it was at 
 Hammersmith Town Hall—on a picture he had seen of 
 himself at the Final Judgment, and how in this tremendous 
 ordeal he had only barely escaped the censure of the Judge 
 because of the negligence of his life and character. I shall 
 never forget how it affected a town-hall audience, three 
 parts of whom were men who did not believe in this sort of 
 thing, and at first regarded the speaker with a certain pity- 
 ing amusement. Yet he took hold even of these scoffers in 
 a way which gave them to think. He made them feel that 
 at least his eyes had seen the thing described. He was a 
 lovable fellow, became an Officer afterwards, and killed 
 himself with work for others. 
 
 Instances of levitation also took place in our services, 
 and well authenticated stories came before me from time to 
 time. Of these, however, I do not write now, except to say 
 that I cannot doubt that everything about them was open 
 and true. Nor can I dwell at any length upon equally well 
 authenticated instances of Divine healing. The Army has 
 
‘SIGNS AND WONDERS’ 57 
 
 ever had in its ranks in various parts of the world a number 
 of people unquestionably possessed of some kind of gift of 
 healing. If extravagances have gathered round the subject 
 in some quarters, they ought not to be permitted to obscure 
 the central fact, which is that the healing of the sick by 
 special immediate Divine interposition, in answer to prayer 
 and faith, has undoubtedly occurred. 
 
 Surely there is nothing surprising in this. On the 
 contrary, it would have been surprising had it been other- 
 wise. For we have not merely recognized that the healing 
 of the sick by the power of God has from the beginning been 
 associated with the office of prophets, priests, teachers, and 
 apostles, but it has always seemed to us in perfect harmony 
 with the views and experience of The Army itself that God 
 should heal the sick after this fashion. Not only has no- 
 thing to the contrary ever been taught amongst us, but far 
 and near we have insisted upon the fact that God does raise 
 up the sick in answer to our prayers; and numerous in- 
 stances, as I have said, of this healing ministry have occurred 
 throughout our history. 
 
 All these manifestations of the unusual have been 
 experienced also in the work of The Army in other lands. 
 Perhaps one of the least likely countries for such phenomena 
 is Holland; yet there they have occurred, especially in 
 connexion with the work for the thoughtless and the un- 
 saved. Men have fallen on their faces as though stricken 
 by some unseen Hand, and have cried aloud for the mercy 
 of God. In Switzerland also similar wonders have been 
 witnessed, and in some of the Scandinavian countries, 
 where indeed we have had trouble owing to manifestations 
 called the ‘ Gift of Tongues.’ 
 
 We have to be suspicious of any voices or gifts which 
 make men indisposed to bear the Cross or to seek the 
 Salvation of others; and although some of our own people 
 have received what is spoken of as a gift of tongues, we have 
 almost invariably found that one of the consequences has 
 been a disposition to withdraw from hard work for the 
 blessing of others and from fearless testimony to the Saviour. 
 I recognize the dangers which attend the whole subject, and 
 
58 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 while I believe that these things, as I have witnessed them, 
 are Divine in their origin, I do not forget that in some 
 instances they may have been mixed with what is the very 
 reverse. 
 
 In the United States, in the earlier days, we had a record 
 of somewhat similar experiences, except that there they 
 generally took the form of extreme joy. One of the pecu- 
 liarities of the prostrations and trances and the like in 
 Europe has been the great solemnity which has nearly 
 always marked their occurrence, no matter whether they 
 concerned those who were outside or inside The Army. 
 But in the United States it was rather the other way about. 
 In these demonstrations of the Spirit, the reality of which 
 no one would challenge who knew what had really happened, 
 there was an accompaniment of overpowering joy, exhibited 
 in singing, and sometimes in a disposition to dance, or to 
 remain for a long period in a kind of ecstasy. The practical 
 effects, however—and it is by their practical effects that all 
 these things must be judged—were very much the same 
 there as elsewhere. 
 
VIII 
 THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 
 
 AN interesting episode in the history of The Army was the 
 series of discussions—or, shall I say, negotiations— which 
 took place with certain distinguished leaders of the Church 
 of England in the early eighties. The impulse to these 
 negotiations really came out of the interest awakened in 
 religious as well as irreligious circles by the rise and progress 
 of The Army. Early in 1882 the then Archbishop of York 
 (Dr. Thomson) wrote as follows to the Founder : 
 
 SIR,—Some of my clergy have written to me to beg that I would 
 ascertain how far it was possible for the Church to recognize the work 
 of The Salvation Army as helping forward the cause of Christ con- 
 sistently 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 
 pect 
 
 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. 
 
 Shortly afterwards, the Lower House of Convocation 
 petitioned the Upper House, that is, the House of Bishops, 
 to issue some general instruction as to the attitude of the 
 Church of England towards The Army. A Committee was 
 then appointed to consider the question, of which Dr. Ben- 
 son, the Bishop of Truro, was the chairman. The instruc- 
 tions issued do not concern us here, but shortly after this 
 the Founder received a letter from the Bishop in which, 
 after referring to the growth of the work, he opened the 
 subject of harmony with the Church. It was not purposed 
 
 59 
 
60 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 to enter upon any formal arrangements, but several of the 
 bishops had desired to know more of the Movement and to 
 make themselves acquainted with its spirit. If from a free 
 interchange of views there should be found any way of co- 
 operation with The Army many Christian people would 
 rejoice. Would the General be willing to meet a few repre- 
 sentatives of the Church for a friendly discussion? The 
 Founder accepted this invitation. 
 
 The purpose which the Church of England authorities 
 had in view was to find a means of linking up The Army in 
 union with that Church. The principal ecclesiastics who 
 took part in the negotiations were Dr. Benson, then Bishop 
 of Truro, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury ; Canon 
 Westcott, of Westminster, and of the University of Cam- 
 bridge—afterwards Bishop of Durham; Dr. Lightfoot, at 
 that time Bishop of Durham; Canon Wilkinson, who was 
 subsequently Bishop of Truro, and after that Bishop of 
 St. Andrews; and Randall Davidson, the present Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, who was then Dean of Windsor. 
 With each of these I had some intercourse, and on one or 
 two occasions met several of them together. Each one of 
 them made a distinct impression upon me, which the passage 
 of a long stretch of years has not effaced. 
 
 Dr. Davidson, the only one of the group who is now 
 living, was acting in these negotiations as the representative 
 of Dr. Tait, the then Archbishop of Canterbury. He struck 
 me aS a man who, while sincerely anxious to explore the 
 ground and, if possible, to arrive at some means of linking 
 The Salvation Army with his Church, and of helping 
 forward its work, was yet fully determined, if this should be 
 the issue, not to allow the Founder to continue in what was 
 called his ‘autocratic’ relationship. Evidently it was 
 unthinkable to him that William Booth should ever become 
 a high ecclesiastic in the Church of England, and for that 
 reason alone he was careful to ensure that no power beyond 
 what he could not help conceding should remain in the 
 Founder’s hands if The Army should come into alliance 
 with his Church. Dr. Davidson was very urbane and con- 
 siderate throughout the negotiations, and although he was 
 
THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 61 
 
 the rigid—not to say narrow—ecclesiastic, he showed real 
 ability in fastening upon essentials when in conference with 
 the Founder. I do not think he quite realized on his side 
 how completely the Founder saw the ‘ buttons on the back 
 of his coat,’ but he did grasp the fact that he was not willing 
 to relinquish his full control, no matter what advantages 
 might be secured from the inclusion of himself and his 
 Organization under the wing of the Church of England. So 
 far as Dr. Davidson was concerned, this was, I am afraid, 
 irom the beginning, fatal to the project. 
 
 Canon Westcott’s was quite a different type of church- 
 manship. He was a scholar and recluse rather than a man 
 experienced in ecclesiastical politics, and if a given end 
 seemed to be desirable, he was inclined to underestimate any 
 practical difficulties which might be in the way. I regarded 
 him as one who really cared for the progress of religion, 
 quite apart from the advancement either of the Church of 
 England or of The Army. His influence upon the negotia- 
 tions was that of a large-minded and sympathetic statesman, 
 earnestly desirous of securing for his Church the accession 
 of youthful zeal and vitality which unmistakably charac- 
 terized the new Movement. He was, I dare say, more at 
 home in the privacy of his study than at our round table, 
 and he hardly realized how when a thing is theoretically 
 desirable, its attainment may be impeded by obstructions 
 which arise out of the nature of the case, and are not to be 
 ascribed to the narrowness or obduracy of anybody. I 
 carried away from our brief intercourse a deep impression 
 of Dr. Westcott as a truly spiritual man; not exactly one 
 of the old mystics, and yet possessed of a good deal of their 
 vision and their charm. He was indeed a man to thank God 
 for, no matter in what age he lived or to what Church he 
 belonged. 
 
 Of Dr. Lightfoot I saw little; but here, again, the 
 student and the scholar predominated. He was more wil- 
 ling than any of the others to leave the matter to Benson 
 and Davidson. He spoke very kindly at that time in public, 
 commending what he called the ‘apostolic zeal’ of The. 
 Army. He remarked with great satisfaction that a large 
 
62 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 proportion of its converts and members were comparatively 
 young people. To his thinking it was a grand testimony to 
 the character of its message and to the efficacy of its work 
 that this Organization should be able to call to its banner 
 the fiery and adventurous spirit of early manhood and 
 womanhood. He also spoke with great appreciation of 
 my dear mother’s writings, and he joined heartily with 
 Dr. Benson in desiring to bring about some kind of union 
 with us. , 
 
 Bishop Lightfoot’s most memorable testimony to the 
 work of The Army is found in his unforgettable words about 
 the lost ideal of the work of the Church of Christ. Let the 
 passage be quoted in full: 
 
 Shall we be satisfied with going on as hitherto, picking up one 
 here and one there, gathering together a more or less select congre- 
 gation, forgetful meanwhile of the Master’s command, ‘ Go ye into 
 the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in’? The Sal- 
 vation Army has taught us a higher lesson than this. Whatever 
 
 may be its faults, it has at least recalled to us the lost ideal of the 
 work of the Church, the universal compulsion of the souls of men. 
 
 Of the five negotiators perhaps I retain the happiest 
 personal memory of Canon Wilkinson, afterwards Bishop of 
 Truro, and later of St. Andrews. Wilkinson was one of the 
 sweetest men I ever knew, either within or without The 
 Army borders. Both humble and sagacious, he had a gift 
 for mediation and reconcilement which he had already put 
 to good use in his own Church by intervening between the 
 bishops and the ritualists. His feeling for The Army and 
 some of its leaders was not simply admiration; it was 
 love. He was the member of the group to take up the réle 
 of persuading the Founder to soften his conditions ; and he 
 it was who suggested with regard to the sacraments a com- 
 promise—which afterwards for a time bore some fruit— 
 whereby the members of The Army were to be invited once 
 a year to the Communion in their respective parish churches. 
 To the more strait-laced of the negotiators the accredited 
 position which the women Officers already occupied in 
 The Army presented serious difficulty ; and it was Wilkin- 
 son, again, who suggested that these comrades should be 
 
THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 63 
 
 given an assured position and recognized as a body of 
 deaconesses, but that any future additions to their number 
 should be required to go through a certain examination 
 folowing our Training. I think that Canon Wilkinson 
 worked more arduously to bring about what they all desired 
 than any of the others, and also that he had more faith than 
 any of them for a practical outcome. 
 
 The Bishop of Truro, Dr. Benson, however, was the 
 moving spirit in the negotiations. To him there had 
 evidently come a kind of revelation of the new strength 
 which the Church of England would acquire with The Army 
 as its fighting auxiliary. His naturally sanguine tempera- 
 ment helped him to see not only what presented itself at the 
 moment, but what was likely to come to pass in the future. 
 He realized—and said as much—that The Army, which was 
 then working in only three or four countries, was destined 
 to play an awakening part in many lands. The Bishop of 
 Minnesota (Dr. H. B. Whipple) had acquainted him with 
 what The Army was beginning to do in the United States, 
 and Benson saw an opportunity for that extension of the 
 Church beyond the Old Land which his school of thought 
 most earnestly desired. 
 
 I believe that Dr. Benson also had the best conception of 
 the spiritual forces which The Army had released. Whereas 
 the other negotiators, more particularly Dr. Davidson, 
 centred their thought upon the Leaders and their Staff, 
 Benson saw The Army en masse. Moreover, there was a 
 prophetic vein in him. He had a vision of the future after 
 the manner of Balaam, when he said of Israel of old, ‘ from 
 the top of the rocks I see him . . . who can number the 
 fourth part of Israel . . . as the valleys are they spread 
 forth, as trees which the Lord hath planted... .’ 
 
 Benson saw The Army as a force—a force which would 
 go far and carry much; and subsequent events have 
 abundantly proved that he was right. It was undoubtedly 
 these considerations which stirred his spirit, and urged him 
 to take the initiative. I never thought so highly of him 
 intellectually as did some others who were more intimate 
 with him. I cannot say that I regarded him as being of the 
 
64 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 calibre of Westcott or Lightfoot ; but his combination of 
 courtliness and candour, his genial freedom of manner and 
 evident sincerity of feeling, made him lovable and unforget- 
 table. There was something, half hidden, perhaps, but yet 
 attractive, about his personal sympathy with heart religion, 
 and therefore with our religion. He struck me, and I talked 
 of it at the time, as a man who suddenly perceived in actual 
 life what he had long looked for, more or less in vain. There, 
 in flesh and blood, visible to all, were ordinary people who 
 had renounced the pomp and glory of this world, who were 
 really living for others, and who had organized the new-old 
 conception of the Kingdom of God as for the poor. And, 
 seeing it, he longed with a great longing to bring it into 
 close union with himself and with the Church he loved. 
 
 All these men were, of course, Church of England men. 
 They put the Church to which they belonged first in every- 
 thing, and indeed nothing in our discussions involved the 
 smallest departure on their part from a perfect loyalty to 
 their own communion. But more than once we saw signs 
 of the difficulties which undoubtedly confront all sincere 
 thinkers when they come to claim, as the Church of England 
 does claim, exclusive graces or privileges for any particular 
 body of Christian people. The fact is, that the Church of 
 England is no more the Church than the Church at Jerusalem 
 or the Church at Rome, or the Church of the Lutherans and 
 Puritans, or the Church of the Calvinists and Presbyterians. 
 
 It was, of course, the purpose of our Lord Jesus Christ 
 to gather out of the world a people composed of His true 
 believing followers. This was spoken of in the New Testa- 
 ment as the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God. 
 It is obvious that in the accomplishment of this purpose a 
 Body or Society would be formed distinct from the world in 
 life, in purpose, and in interests, and that it would be 
 generally recognized as such. This implies union and some 
 form of organization, varying, no doubt, from time to time, 
 but marked always under whatever form, by the possession 
 of a certain common spirit—the spirit of Christ. ‘ By their 
 fruits ye shall know them.’ Thus we get a visible society— 
 the Society spoken of in the Bible as the Church or Con- 
 
THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 65 
 
 gregation.! But as to the outward form which this Society 
 should take, Jesus Christ gave no recorded instruction. It 
 is impossible to believe, if He had intended any particular 
 constitution or form of government to be essential to this 
 Society—His Kingdom on earth—that He would not have 
 left explicit directions with regard to it. Whereas on the 
 whole matter He is entirely silent—says, in fact, nothing 
 at all on the subject. 
 
 No, there is one Church. Just as there was only one 
 people of Israel, no matter how widely scattered, so there 
 is only one spiritual Israel. As Paul so finely says, ‘ There 
 is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope 
 of your calling; one Lord; one faith, one baptism, one 
 God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
 and in you all.’ And being one, yet it is to be for all 
 peoples and all classes. In the Church of Christ ‘there is 
 neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, 
 Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all and 
 in all.’ 
 
 Of this, the Great Church of the Living God, we claim, 
 and have ever claimed, that we of The Salvation Army are 
 an integral part and element—a living fruit-bearing branch 
 in the True Vine. 
 
 The idea that Jesus Christ in some way instituted a 
 society with set orders of worship, and appointed the times 
 and manner of sacred things, such as sacraments and 
 sacrifices, or settled an order of ministers who should be the 
 exclusive channel of grace, has no particle of authority in 
 the New Testament. On the contrary, the fact is that He 
 left His followers free to adopt such forms and methods, 
 under the guidance and instruction from time to time of 
 the Holy Spirit, as they should feel wisest and most appro- 
 priate to attain the objects in view. The Apostles did 
 likewise, foreseeing that no matter how appropriate and 
 wise might be the rules they could lay down for their day, 
 other rules would be required for other times. 
 
 Dr. Lightfoot, to whom I have just been referring, 
 expresses in his work on ‘ The Christian Ministry ’ what is 
 
 1 In the original the same word stands for both. 
 
66 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 so entirely in harmony with our view on this point, that 
 I shall quote him. He says: 
 
 The Kingdom of Christ, not being a kingdom of this world, is 
 not limited by the restrictions which fetter other societies, political 
 or religious. It is in the fullest sense free, comprehensive, universal. 
 It displays this character not only in the acceptance of all comers 
 who seek admission, irrespective of race or caste or sex, but also 
 in the instruction and treatment of those who are already members. 
 It has no sacred days or seasons, no special sanctuaries, because 
 every time and every place alike are holy. Above all, it has no 
 sacerdotal system. It interposes no sacrificial tribe or class between 
 God and man by whose intervention God is reconciled and man 
 forgiven. Each individual member holds personal communion with 
 the Divine Head. To Him immediately he is responsible, and from 
 Him directly he obtains pardon and draws strength. 
 
 Further, as to the calling out and setting apart of leaders 
 in the days of early Christianity, we find also a wonderful 
 record of freedom and a remarkable likeness to what hap- 
 pened with us. No one who knows The Army can study the 
 story of our Lord’s selecting and calling the Twelve without 
 being struck by the similarity in many respects—I say 
 this with all reverence—of our method with His. And the 
 glimpses of further calls which we get in the Acts illustrate 
 also our nearness to Apostolic plans. The early Christian 
 leaders—that is of the first hundred years—proceeded 
 much as we have done. They dealt with a not dissimilar 
 kind of material, chiefly uneducated and poor working 
 people—and, guided by the Spirit of God, they adopted 
 means for spreading and establishing the work just as the 
 Founder and those who gathered around him, also led by 
 the Spirit of God, adopted means, and not dissimilar means, 
 for us—means which we still follow. 
 
 On this subject it is of interest to read the earliest 
 Christian writing (apart from the New Testament) which 
 now remains in the world—a letter from a celebrated man of 
 that time whose life in part ran parallel with the concluding 
 years of the lives of many of the first Apostles. Clement of 
 Rome, in about the year A.D. 96-8, says: 
 
 The Apostles received the Gospel for us from the Lord Jesus 
 
 Christ ; Jesus Christ was sent forth from God. Christ then was 
 from God, and the Apostles from Christ. Both therefore were from 
 
THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 67 
 
 the will of God in perfect order. Having then received commands, 
 and being fully assured through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and being confirmed in the word of God with full assurance 
 of the Holy Ghost, they went forth, preaching the good tidings 
 that the Kingdom of God was at hand. Preaching therefore from 
 country to country, and from city to city, they appointed their first 
 fruits [that ts the converts], having tested them by the Spirit, to be 
 bishops and deacons to them that should believe.? 
 
 The word rendered ‘ bishop’ means literally overseer, 
 and would answer to our Divisional Officer—one who came 
 to have the oversight of several of the congregations or 
 societies of Christian disciples. The word ‘ deacon’ means 
 minister or servant. The ‘deacon’ was the first visiting 
 official, he cared for the sick, and distributed the alms of 
 the society among the poor as well as gave instruction in the 
 Scripture. The deacon of those early days answers in many 
 matters to the Field Officer of our own early history. 
 
 We believe then that our Lord Jesus Christ has called 
 us into His Church of the Redeemed, that our call has not 
 been by man or the will of man, but by the Holy Spirit of 
 God ; that our Salvation is from Him, not by ceremonies or 
 sacraments or ordinances of this period or of that, but by 
 the pardoning life-giving work of our Divine Saviour. We 
 believe also that our system for extending the knowledge 
 and power of His Gospel, and of nurturing and governing 
 the believing people gathered into our ranks, is as truly and 
 fully in harmony with the spirit set forth and the principles 
 laid down by Jesus Christ and His Apostles as those which 
 have been adopted by our brethren of other times or of 
 other folds. 
 
 In this we humbly but firmly claim that we are in no 
 way inferior, either to the saints who have gone before, or 
 —though remaining separate from them, even as one branch 
 in the Vine is separate from another—to the saints of the 
 present. We, no less than they, are called and chosen to 
 sanctification of the Spirit and to the inheritance of eternal 
 life. And our Officers are, equally with them, ministers in 
 the Church of God, having received diversities of gifts, but 
 
 1Tt will be noted that no reference is here made to ‘ Ordination,’ but 
 to appointing ; nor to ‘ Sacraments,’ but to the good tidings. 
 
68 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 the one Spirit—endowed by His Grace, assured of His 
 guidance, confirmed by His Word, and commissioned by 
 the Holy Ghost to represent Him to the whole world. 
 Speaking of this matter in 1894, the Founder said : 
 
 The Salvation Army is not inferior in spiritual character to any 
 Christian organization in existence. We are in no wise dependent 
 on the Church. . . . If it perished off the face of the earth to-morrow 
 we should be just as efficient for the discharge of the duties we owe 
 to men as we are to-day. . . . We are, I consider, equal every way 
 and everywhere to any other Christian organization on the face of 
 the earth (i) in spiritual authority, (ji) in spiritual intelligence, 
 (iii) in spiritual functions. We hold ‘the keys’ as truly as any 
 Church in existence. 
 
 But I must return to the bishops. In the course of 
 the negotiations Benson and Davidson visited, either by 
 appointment or quite unknown, certain Salvation Army 
 centres, and were present at typical meetings. Of his visits 
 Dr. Davidson afterwards wrote : 
 
 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 
 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 help that he may speak his 
 message with the like straightforward ability and earnest zeal. 
 
 Among the places to which Dr. Benson came was the 
 Training Garrison at Clapton. His purpose was to look over 
 the buildings, see something of the character of the students 
 and of their work, and from this to form a judgment. He 
 was late for his appointment that morning, and by the time 
 he arrived I was conducting one of our ordinary Prayer 
 Meetings with Officers. As soon as he learned that this was 
 in progress he sent word that he would like presently to 
 come into the service, where he hoped I would allow him to 
 remain for at least a part of the time. Accordingly while I 
 went on with the meeting, he looked round the buildings, 
 saw something of the Cadets, the classes and text-books, 
 
THE FOUNDER AND THE BISHOPS 69 
 
 and at last came into the Lecture Hall. He entered at the 
 back, and, apart from myself, no one was aware of his 
 presence. Some two hundred Officers were on their knees, 
 and the meeting was one of liberty and fervour, with hearty 
 responses and moving singing. We were having what we 
 call a ‘ good time.’ 
 
 After watching the meeting, on his knees, for nearly an 
 hour, the Bishop, seeing that it was about to conclude, with- 
 drew, and waited for me in one of the reception rooms. I 
 was a little doubtful of the kind of impression such a 
 gathering would have made upon him, not in any degree 
 because I questioned its naturalness or rightness, but because 
 its extreme freedom and its noise were in such contrast to 
 the modes of worship to which he was accustomed. As I 
 came into the room he rose from his seat, took both my 
 hands in his, and before I could say a word, exclaimed, 
 “O, my dear brother, the Holy Spirit is with you!’ I 
 began to explain certain of the incidents which it might 
 have been difficult for him to appreciate, but he stopped 
 me, remarked on the evident sincerity of it all, and gave me 
 Godspeed. 
 
 There the story tails off. It is left with a rather ragged 
 edge. Tait died, Benson became Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 and Wilkinson Bishop of Truro. Other topics filled the 
 mind, and other duties became urgent. My feeling is that 
 the Founder unquestionably adopted the right course in 
 these negotiations. I never took upon myself, nor did 
 Railton, who was now in our inner councils, to urge upon 
 the Founder that the freedom for which he had paid so 
 great a price should in no case be forfeited, if its forfeiture 
 meant the furtherance of what we all had more deeply at 
 heart. We were aware that some kind of union with the 
 Church of England would enhance our position in the eyes 
 of the public, and that it would not only clear our financial 
 skies in the immediate present, but probably enormously 
 increase our resources for the future. 
 
 But just as Dr. Davidson felt that the question of 
 authority was the real difficulty, so we saw on our side that 
 the absence of authority was a grave weakness of the Church 
 
70 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 of England, and that its sacrifice on our part would involve 
 the ruin of The Army. There was nothing little or petty 
 in this. It was not a point of personal prestige or dignity ; 
 it was simply that the so-called ‘ autocracy,’ although it 
 might lay us open to misunderstanding, was necessary for 
 the effectiveness of our War. Railton here was a wise 
 counsellor. He had already seen The Army beginnings in 
 other lands ; he foresaw it encircling the globe, and he felt 
 —as we all came to feel—that to barter the very thing which 
 made The Army capable of such prompt mobility and such 
 singleness of front could only prove disastrous. 
 
 We must admit that had it been possible to reach some 
 kind of combination, or even a treaty of mutual support, 
 The Salvation Army would have been greatly helped, and 
 there would have been an infusion of new enthusiasm and 
 energy and spiritual life into the Church of England. Part 
 of the energy and devotion which have been turned into 
 High Church channels would have been guided into spheres 
 of activity much more fruitful to the Church and useful 
 to the world, and as I firmly believe, much more honouring 
 to God. But it was not to be. And yet The Army is 
 marching on ! 
 
IX 
 SOME OTHER CHURCHMEN I HAVE KNOWN 
 
 ARCHBISHOP TAIT, who was one of the moving spirits in the 
 negotiations referred to in the previous chapter, was the 
 first prominent ecclesiastic of the Church of England to give 
 any kind of help to The Army. Early in 1882 my father 
 bought the Grecian Theatre and dancing saloons and the 
 Eagle Tavern, then a notorious place of evil life and corrupt 
 influence in the north-east of London. We immediately 
 turned it to a new employment, amid a storm of abuse from 
 theatrical and kindred interests. It was towards this enter- 
 prise that we received £5 from the then Archbishop of 
 Canterbury. The gift was accompanied by a somewhat 
 tremulous letter. Huis Grace’s secretary said : 
 
 The question of the co-operation of the clergy of the Church of 
 England in the actual work of your association is one of extreme 
 difficulty. Without at present expressing any opinion on that 
 subject, his Grace has no hesitation in approving the acquisition by 
 you of premises used for so different a purpose. 
 
 It is always to be counted to Archbishop Tait for 
 righteousness that he did this in the face of most bitter 
 opposition. As an example of the kind of thing he had to 
 put up with, I find quoted in his ‘ Life’ a letter from one of 
 his angry correspondents, in which it is said: ‘ Things have 
 indeed come to a pass when the head of the English clergy, 
 the official guardian of our orthodoxy, the man who more 
 than any other is solemnly bound to denounce and if possible 
 to extirpate heresy and schism, sends a donation from the 
 chair of St. Augustine to promote the cause of the Church’s 
 most profane and mischievous foe’ ! 
 
 But the chair of St. Augustine has shifted its position. 
 Archbishop Tait’s successor, Benson, looked on_ these 
 
 7a 
 
72 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 matters differently. He was appealed to in 1888 for help 
 towards the establishment of new rescue homes and food 
 and shelter dépots, the forerunners of the Social Scheme. 
 In reply his secretary wrote: 
 
 His Grace thanks God for every hand held out to help the sad 
 and suffering and to rescue the fallen, and can but rejoice if your 
 work helps to fill one of the gaps in the lines of attack upon the 
 kingdom of darkness. 
 
 But while thus feeling deep sympathy for your philanthropic 
 efforts in general, and wishing success to the rescue homes, he feels 
 that he could not support a plan of passing and casual relief which 
 aims at no permanent assistance and tends only to prolong the 
 present distress, and also that state endowment of religious charities 
 is contrary to the principle of the National Church, and would 
 create both strifes and imperfectly organized rival agencies. 
 
 The dictum that ‘ State endowment of religious charities 
 is contrary to the principle of the National Church’ is 
 really rich! But even this was not the final archiepiscopal 
 word on the subject. On the occasion of our International 
 Congress, in 1914, the present Archbishop of Canterbury 
 (Dr. Randall Davidson) wrote a very kind letter to Bishop 
 Boyd-Carpenter in which he requested him to attend the 
 opening gathering and express the appreciation of the 
 Church of England for the social and philanthropic work 
 in which The Army, ‘ working in the name of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, has shown so much capable energy and per- 
 severing enthusiasm.’ ‘Its authorities will not expect,’ his 
 Grace went on, ‘ that we can, as the Church of England, 
 express agreement with their doctrinal or ecclesiastical 
 position. But this wide difference in no way weakens our 
 appreciation of the remarkable service which they have 
 beyond all doubt rendered to the community, both in 
 England and abroad.’ 
 
 So that we have one archbishop refusing to help the 
 Social Work because he thinks it is casual relief and also 
 because it would be State endowment of religious charities ; 
 while another expresses approval of this very work, although 
 he cannot subscribe to our doctrinal and ecclesiastical 
 position! It reminds me a little of a famous American 
 millionaire who, when asked to subscribe to our work among 
 
OTHER CHURCHMEN I HAVE KNOWN 73 
 
 the American troops during the war, said, ‘ No, you are not 
 a Church; you are a mere mission, and this is work for 
 the Churches.’ When, later, we approached him on behalf 
 of our home service work there, he said, ‘No, you are 
 another Church, and that is what we do not want’ ! 
 
 One of the first great churchmen with whom I came in 
 contact was Dean Church. The incident is a curious one 
 to reflect upon to-day. This Dean of St. Paul’s was a lovable 
 and extremely sensitive man. He could’ never quite get 
 free from the overwhelming influence of the cathedral and 
 of the more outward aspects of Anglican worship and cere- 
 monial, which he did so much to revive there. Yet he was 
 a man of great spiritual insight, and, as any one who has 
 read his sermons will understand, he made a very marked . 
 impression on all who were even casually associated with him. 
 
 My purpose in going to him was to ask if a service for 
 The Army could be arranged in the cathedral, which is a 
 stone’s throw from our Headquarters. We did not propose 
 that any leader of The Army should take part in the conduct 
 of the service. Members of The Army were to form the 
 congregation while worship would be conducted perhaps by 
 Lightfoot and the sermon preached by Liddon. Dean 
 Church looked doubtful. It was evidently painful for him 
 to refuse, but his duty to the cathedral must be done! 
 He asked, after a few kindly words, whether most of our 
 people, being working people, did not wear hobnailed boots ; 
 I agreed that this might be so, and he said that St. Paul’s 
 had not long ago been repaved at great expense, and that 
 he feared the marble might be scratched! ‘Surely,’ I said, 
 “you would not consider that a sufficient ground for keep- 
 ing them out of a place set apart for the national recog- 
 nition of religion?’ But he had made up his mind and 
 insisted on his decision, and although I was profoundly dis- 
 appointed by the absolute inadequacy and inconsequence 
 of his reason for refusal, I could not but feel that it was in 
 no way intended to offend. Dean Church had the unfor- 
 tunate limitations of an extreme refinement of nature, 
 combined with the ghastly narrowness of a high eccle- 
 siasticism. 
 
74 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 Of Dr. Liddon, the great pulpit figure of St. Paul’s, who 
 died within a few months of his Dean, I recall that he came 
 to some of my weekly Holiness Meetings in Whitechapel, 
 where he appeared much at home, taking a hearty share in 
 the singing and evidently stirred by the testimonies. On 
 one of these occasions he was introduced to me by a man 
 who was with him, and gave me a kind of benediction. I 
 can well understand, however, that Liddon, with his severe 
 notions of discipline and seemliness in the church, may 
 have been disturbed, as he was reported to have been, by 
 some of the things which we did, though not, I think, at 
 that meeting. There was no suggestion of this when he 
 spoke to me. He was a man who saw that the Kingdom 
 had a very wide door, a Broad Churchman, less strait-laced 
 than any other divine of his time, and infinitely sad on 
 account of divisive weaknesses in his own Church. 
 
 I have heard other preachers in St. Paul’s, but Liddon 
 and Knox-Little were the only men who seemed resolved 
 to drive their message home. Neither of them was a man 
 who contented himself with the quarter of an hour which 
 many preachers deem sufficient. Liddon would preach the 
 hour round. Knox-Little appeared to be a man determined 
 to make the people understand what it was he wanted to 
 say, and a man, too, with a heart stirred to its depths by 
 the truths he spoke. He always read his sermons ; but this, 
 while no doubt it detracted from their power in delivery, 
 seemed to add to their substance. 
 
 A very taking figure among the Churchmen of the same 
 period was Archdeacon Wilberforce, He will be remem- 
 bered as of Westminster, though perhaps his most fruitful 
 years were spent in Southampton. He was a man who 
 appealed to me from the very first time I met him, when 
 he was rector of the fine church he built as a memorial to 
 his father in the southern seaport. He showed the most 
 charming old-world courtesy to my mother. For her he 
 had, and often expressed, a reverential regard. She stayed 
 with him more than once at Southampton and spoke at 
 meetings which he organized. Later on I came to know 
 him a little when he attended some of our services, and I 
 
OTHER CHURCHMEN I HAVE KNOWN 75 
 
 heard him speak on more than one occasion. Once or twice 
 during the series of conferences my mother held in the West 
 End of London he opened the meeting for her, giving out 
 the hymns and reading the Scripture, and saying a few 
 words of introduction. 
 
 With all the charm of his personal character and the 
 delightful influences that played about his home—due in 
 large degree to the beautiful affection which existed between 
 himself and his wife—there was nevertheless a feeling that 
 in many ways he was overmuch concerned with worldly 
 things. His position was one of no small difficulty. Flat- 
 tered and favoured by the great ones, and with everything 
 around him that spoke of art and wealth and beauty, he 
 was perhaps bound to appear something of a contradiction. 
 
 Wilberforce stood by us in the Armstrong business, in 
 1885. After that I lost touch with him to a great extent. 
 In 1894 he came to Westminster, and seemed for a time to 
 suffer eclipse. On his wife’s death, I believe, he was heart- 
 broken. I wrote to him about his grief, to which he replied 
 in tender words. 
 
 The last time I saw him, though not to speak with, was 
 at the funeral service of the Duke of Argyll, in the Abbey. 
 He was then acting for the Dean of Westminster. I thought 
 him looking much aged and worn, and my heart went out 
 to him, so that I resolved to find some way of seeing him. 
 Before I could put the resolve into execution, alas! he was 
 gone. 
 
 I do not class Wilberforce with Liddon as a great pulpit 
 power, but he did exercise a very sound, restraining in- 
 fluence, especially during fourteen or fifteen years of his 
 life, on the upper middle-class of Church people at a time 
 when many were beginning to give up their confidence in 
 the divinity of the Son of God. 
 
 The mention of these great Churchmen recalls another 
 who belonged to their period. I refer to Dr. Temple, 
 ultimately Benson’s successor at Canterbury. Immediately 
 after Temple became Bishop of London in 1885, I came into 
 touch with him over quite a different matter. When 
 ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’ was published, 
 
76 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 the charge was made in one quarter that the facts had been 
 overstated, whereupon Stead arranged that a committee of 
 investigation should be set up, with the Bishop as chairman. 
 To this committee in due course we presented our facts, 
 and they found that there was abundant evidence for what 
 Stead had alleged. Temple impressed me as a man who 
 felt in a special degree the burden of London, its shame and 
 sin. The gruff, shaggy prelate, who had small concern for 
 the politer trifles, had had a harder struggle than most 
 men who come to wear the mitre. He grew up under 
 circumstances of real poverty. 
 
 On one occasion during the sittings of this committee, 
 the Lord Mayor (we met at the Mansion House) sent word 
 that Temple wanted to speak to me. I found the Bishop 
 standing with his back to the fire in the mayoral parlour. 
 The Lord Mayor was commenting, in rather a fussy way, 
 upon the peculiar circumstances which had brought the 
 Bishop and The Army together. ‘ You know, my lord,’ he 
 said, ‘I don’t know what your friends will think; and I 
 am afraid I am responsible for allowing it to happen!’ 
 
 The Bishop looked at me with his humorous eye, and 
 gave one of his deep chuckles. 
 
 “I don’t think it matters very much,’ he said drily, 
 “what my friends think of me. What is important is 
 what I think of them!’ 
 
 Another great figure of Westminster—of Roman not 
 Anglican Westminster—was Cardinal Manning. Our first 
 touch with him was in 1882, when he wrote a paper on 
 The Army in the ‘ Contemporary,’ of which Mr. (afterwards 
 Sir) Percy Bunting had just become editor. It was critical 
 in part, and yet it was thought to be a remarkable pro- 
 nouncement of friendliness. One sentence in that article to 
 which he gave emphasis and which he repeated was that 
 The Salvation Army ‘ could never have existed but for the 
 spiritual desolation of England.’ ‘ The spiritual desolation 
 of London alone,’ he wrote, ‘would make The Salvation 
 Army possible.’ The article was a great lift, up to a certain 
 point. It brought us, of course, a small avalanche of corre- 
 spondence from the extreme Protestant party, and some of 
 
OTHER CHURCHMEN I HAVE KNOWN Fig 8 
 
 our critics who had always been disposed to discover 
 Jesuitry in The Army now had their suspicions fully con- 
 firmed! But it helped. 
 
 Later the Founder and one or two of us met him and 
 had a delightful time, and after the publication of ‘ In 
 Darkest England and the Way Out’ he wrote to the 
 Founder : 
 
 “You have gone down into the depths. Every living soul cost the 
 Most Precious Blood, and we ought to save it, even the worthless and the 
 worst. Aiter the Trafalgar Square miseries I wrote a Pleading for the 
 Worthless, which probably you never saw. It would show you how com- 
 pletely my heart is in your book. No doubt you remember that the Poor 
 Laws of Queen Elizabeth compelled parishes to provide work for the 
 able-bodied unemployed, and to lay in stores of raw material for work.’ 
 
 Manning influenced other Roman dignitaries to sym- 
 pathize with us, and he used our work to broaden their views. 
 He had greatly regretted the alienation of Cardinal Vaughan 
 (then Bishop of Salford) from other than Catholic workers, 
 urged him to visit some of The Salvation Army Shelters. 
 Vaughan did so, accompanied by Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, who 
 gives the following account of the visit to one place: 
 
 ‘In one room sat a number of old women, at various sorts of needle- 
 work. ‘‘ Are any of my people here ?’’ asked the Bishop, addressing the 
 assembly. And, dotted about the room, aged dames, in the dignity of 
 poverty, stood up for their faith. Then the Bishop turned on the Captain : 
 “And do these attend Protestant prayers ?’’ ‘‘ They attend the praises 
 of God every evening.’”’ ‘‘ And what do you preach?’’ ‘“‘ We preach 
 Christ, and Him crucified ; and we shall be very pleased if you will stay 
 and so preach Him this evening. We are quite unsectarian.”’ 
 
 “This was too much. “ Well, but if I told them that unless they were 
 baptized they could not be saved ?’”’ ‘“‘ I should tell them that it was not 
 true,’ said the Captain. ‘‘ And I should tell them that it was not true,”’ 
 echoed Cardinal Manning when we told him the story an hour later; “I 
 should explain to them the Church’s doctrine of the Baptism of Desire.”’ 
 
 ‘ Later in the day the Cardinal said to Vaughan that he hoped that he 
 who was already so good a Catholic would now, after his contact with 
 The Army, also be a good Christian ! ’ 
 
 The impression which Cardinal Manning made upon my 
 mind was that of a very clever, not to say wily old saint ! 
 There was an undercurrent of subtlety about him which 
 made one never quite sure of one’s grip. He had the wisdom 
 of a serpent with, in a quite extraordinary degree, the harm- 
 
78 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 lessness of the dove. But for the poor he no doubt greatly 
 cared. In all his dealings with them he endeavoured to 
 bring them to a knowledge of God. I do not think that 
 outside The Salvation Army I ever met a man who more 
 uncompromisingly brought his religion into everything he 
 touched, into everything he wrote, into everything he 
 planned. He did it with the most exquisite tact, and 
 without the slightest suggestion of putting himself forward, 
 but he did it. 
 
 I saw him several times at Westminster. More than 
 once we spoke of the most intimate spiritual experiences. 
 The Salvation Army was not within his Church, but it was 
 at least within the protection of his Church’s prayers. He 
 joined heartily in several attempts to raise funds for us. 
 He saw the worth of those whom Society esteemed as 
 worthless, and he liked The Army because it saw the same 
 thing, and said so, and went to work to help them. I have 
 seen him in various moods. I have seen him intensely 
 critical, arguing with the most subtle skill with those who 
 sought to cross swords with him. I have seen him angry, 
 with flashing eyes and emphatic gestures denouncing ini- 
 quity. And I have seen him tender, with the tears running 
 down his ascetic cheeks, moved by some tale of sorrow, 
 especially where little children were concerned. But I never 
 lost the impression that somewhere behind those penetrating 
 grey eyes, and those fine manners, and that exquisite tact, 
 and that mystical saintliness, there was an astute diplo- 
 matist looking out for the best way for his Church to take. 
 
 I think that Manning was utterly wrong in the ground 
 he took for joining the Roman Church, and personally I 
 had more sympathy with Newman’s position than with his. 
 I never mentioned to Manning—straight out—his action 
 with regard to the doctrine of papal infallibility, the evidence 
 for which he marshalled at great length in his writings in 
 1870. But I did once say to him that no matter what fears 
 might exist about infallibility in other quarters, we had no 
 doubts as to the infallibility of our Pope! 
 
 How he laughed ! 
 
x 
 A MANAGER OF MEN 
 
 THE pages of this book about our Founder have already 
 extended beyond the space I had planned, but I cannot 
 refrain from a reference to what was, after all, more out- 
 standing and significant in him than his oratory, or his 
 business genius, or his diplomatic skill—I mean his excel- 
 lence in the management of men. 
 
 Early in the history of our work he became convinced, 
 as he said, that the best way of reaching the large class 
 of the population lying at that time outside religious and 
 moral influences, was by means of those who were of the 
 same stock, who had its roughnesses still upon them, but 
 who had passed through the saving fires and had become 
 new men. In setting these men to work, he asked little more 
 than that they were one with him in love for God, in zeal 
 for the Salvation of men, and in willingness to obey orders 
 received ; he took no account of birth, education, social 
 position ; indeed, he felt that what the world calls advan- 
 tages might easily prove encumbrances in the work we have 
 to do. 
 
 It was strange and often very difficult material that came 
 to his hand in this way. He had, perhaps, a natural love 
 for rough and original characters. He liked to have some 
 angles about a man, upon which he could generally manage 
 to hang something. Moreover, a fighting organization called 
 for the spirit of enterprise, adventure, audacity, rather than 
 for judgment or reflection. Among the men who stood close 
 around William Booth in those early days were many bold, 
 buccaneering spirits who quite as often needed the bridle 
 as the spur. They were splendid material in many respects, 
 but not easily manageable, not taking kindly to any yoke, 
 
 79 
 
80 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 men not easily to be told the day and the hour what 
 they were to do. The Founder, whatever gifts of manage- 
 ment he may have had previously, had his powers wonder- 
 fully sharpened through having to deal with these devoted 
 but singular co-operators. It was partly, no doubt, owing 
 to his habitual contact with these men during the early 
 years of The Salvation Army that he became eventually 
 one of the most successful managers of men the world has 
 ever seen—one who must be placed very high in the ranks 
 of commanders, no matter how illustrious in war, in politics, 
 or in industry are the names-of the others. 
 
 It is worth while to inquire a little into the secret of his 
 managing quality. 
 
 In the first place, he had the invaluable gift of discerning 
 the good and useful qualities in every type of man, and this 
 faculty became more sure and unerring as time went on. 
 Some men have an instinct for detecting base metal in those 
 who carry the appearance of honesty ; William Booth had 
 rather the gift for discovering fine, even heroic qualities 
 beneath exteriors which suggested the very opposite. Men 
 who were to all appearance the most unlikely to be of any 
 use to his organization—men whose participation in it 
 might even be expected to create prejudice—were found by 
 him to possess some unsuspected grace or ability or energy 
 which fitted them to occupy a particular niche. Again 
 and again I have known him seize hold of apparently 
 hopeless material, give it a shake or two, invoke upon it 
 the blessing of God, and put it to most excellent service. 
 
 Not that he was invariably right in his judgments. He 
 made mistakes, especially in the earlier years. But they 
 were the mistakes of optimism. If he was at fault it was in 
 action taken because he was too sanguine. If there was 
 blindness in him it was blindness to the shadow, not to the 
 light. He saw men’s weaknesses, and he knew and studied 
 the peculiar dangers of every type of character; but, on the 
 other hand, he had a vivid realization of the possible good 
 in every man, and was so hopeful about it that sometimes 
 he did not allow enough for the downward drag of old 
 habit and antecedents. At the same time, the men 
 
A MANAGER OF MEN 81 
 
 who proved altogether unworthy of his trust were singu- 
 larly few. 
 
 Allied with his discernment went his power of command. 
 He was accustomed to call men and women to his side by 
 vigorous methods, and once there he disciplined them into 
 orderly legions. This power of command grew as the years 
 went on, as he became not only more wise but also more 
 confident. During the last twenty-five or thirty years of 
 his life he was the ideal commander. His authority 
 extended, not only to men’s hands and feet, but to their 
 spirits, to the motives which governed them. 
 
 Like all great leaders of men, he made great demands on 
 his followers. The spirit of Cromwell, who rallied his men 
 at Naseby by saying, ‘ Gentlemen, we are upon an engage- 
 ment very difficult,’ is the spirit of the true leader. 
 William Booth had that spirit in full measure. He never 
 scrupled to ask hard things of those who fell in behind 
 ‘The Army Flag. He never tried to conceal the fact that 
 he had called them to what many would regard as a desperate 
 adventure. He knew that the hearts of all true men are won 
 for a cause and a leader, not by what is promised to them, 
 but by what is exacted from them. And they for their 
 part recognized the voice of authority. Here was one of 
 the men who are obviously made to be obeyed, a man who 
 said to one, ‘Go!’ and he went, and to another, ‘ Come!’ 
 and he came. 
 
 Many men he sent on what might well appear to be 
 forlorn hopes. Some he called to endure exile, to lead 
 The Army in new lands, to face physical peril. To some he 
 gave the charge of quite small spheres of service—hum- 
 drum service—where, however, faithfulness was as important 
 as in any other part of the field. Few men in history have 
 asked their fellows to do such difficult and unusual things. 
 But rarely had they any serious misgivings as to the right- 
 ness of their leader’s choice, rarely any feeling that he had 
 asked too much of them, or too little. It was very far from 
 his ideal, of course, to get men working at top speed—the 
 ideal that might content a factory manager—but in the 
 matter of sanctification, in the matter of being given up 
 
 G 
 
82 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 wholly to the will of God, there was nothing which he did 
 not require. When he was not satisfied with the answers 
 given to his solemn questions he would add, in tones and 
 with authority not to be forgotten, ‘ Then to-day is the day. 
 Let it be done to-day.’ 
 
 With the extension of The Army to other races and 
 nations the capacity for command grew upon him. It did 
 not depend upon his prestige as the head of a world- 
 enveloping organization, it was inherent in his personality. 
 Men who came into contact with him, even when they could 
 not speak his language, nor he theirs, were conscious of 
 his authority. Thousands could have echoed the remark of 
 the old Irish prize-fighter in the East End, when explaining 
 how he came to surrender to William Booth at the first 
 encounter, ‘Sure, there was something strange about him 
 that laid hold of a man,’ and, later, after he had been brought 
 down before God, ‘I got up from my knees ready to die 
 for that man.’ 
 
 Side by side with that humble tribute may be placed 
 the remark of a distinguished American describing the 
 impression which the Founder made on a gathering—at 
 Washington—of senators and others, including some of the 
 greatest in American politics: ‘ The Salvationist chief took 
 them captive without their knowing how’; one result in 
 that case was that a series of after-dinner speeches became 
 personal and very moving confessions. To me it was often 
 a matter of astonishment to observe how a man who had 
 comparatively little acquaintance with him would receive 
 at his hands orders for the toughest of tough jobs, and would 
 go out eager to do it and, if need be, unhesitatingly to risk 
 his life in the cause. 
 
 This power to command was not a mere inherited genius, 
 not an arbitrary gift of nature, but in the main something 
 gradually and painfully acquired. It was something 
 superimposed upon his natural characteristics. It may 
 have been there in embryo from the beginning, from the 
 time when he played soldiers in boyhood in the streets of 
 Nottingham, and was usually captain, but it was quickened 
 and refined by the work of the Holy Spirit in him and by 
 
A MANAGER OF MEN 83 
 
 his own patient cultivation, the result of self-discipline, of 
 concentrated quest, and of reliance on the help of God. 
 
 But he did more than command his followers, he inspired 
 them. He set to work to make them believe in themselves. 
 He would have no part or lot in the ‘Oh, to be nothing, 
 nothing,’ theory. He believed that all things were possible 
 with the man who really gave himself up to God. He was 
 not surprised at anything which might happen to that man. 
 In dealing with his Officers he started out to make them 
 believe that they could accomplish something greater than 
 they had ever anticipated, or than any one had ever anti- 
 cipated for them. He believed that every man was bigger 
 than he thought himself to be—that every man had, so to 
 speak, the making of a greater man in him, just as the bud 
 enfolds the flower. He was always prepared to find the 
 new man emerging to surprise the old. His own expecta- 
 tions themselves helped to form and elicit that which was 
 expected. I have seen him a hundred times produce the 
 most marvellous changes in the whole outlook of a man, 
 especially a young man. Such a one may have believed 
 himself to be nobody in particular, and perhaps was very 
 nearly right in that respect, but he has come out from 
 William Booth’s presence with his head erect, knowing 
 himself to be somebody, with a bit of work assigned to 
 him which no one else could do, and for the time being he 
 has regarded himself as one of the spear-points of the whole 
 Army. 
 
 To be able to inspire a man with confidence in himself 
 is a great gift. Itis a sort of miracle, the extending of one- 
 self upon another, making the listless eager, the sluggish 
 quick, the timid resolute. The Founder was never afraid 
 of the element of human worship in all this, because he 
 ever kept looking himself and pointing others to the divine 
 life and energy as the source of it all. Indeed, the fact 
 that the Divine Spirit was all the time available for every 
 man was the grand support of his own heart and mind in 
 all that he did to inspire his fellows. 
 
 Another characteristic which was largely contributory 
 to his success in the management of men was his capacity 
 
84 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 for detail. Some of those who saw him amid his various 
 activities might have supposed that his achievements cost 
 him little or nothing, ‘came natural’ to him, in a word. 
 That would be a great mistake. Like other men, he toiled 
 on step by step. When, for example, he has been writing 
 an article | have known him go over a passage many times, 
 like a lapidary polishing a precious stone, in order to bring 
 it to his satisfaction. I have said to him, ‘ My dear General, 
 you have done enough at this. That will do.’ His answer, 
 in his playful, half-testy way, has been, ‘ Chief, I am not 
 writing to please you.’ 
 
 It was just the same with his dealings with individual 
 men. In a letter written in his seventy-sixth year he said, 
 “IT am more than ever impressed by the idea that we must 
 do more for the staff, and I can see at present no better 
 way of helping them than to go about amongst them and 
 show them how to meet their difficulties one by one.’ This 
 master of assemblies was a one-by-one man. It was not 
 only in articles intended for the eyes of the thousand that 
 he devoted scrupulous care to his phrasing, but in a letter 
 intended for just one individual he would often draft and 
 re-drait half-a-dozen times, usually with his own pen, so 
 that the phrases would convey the exact shade of meaning 
 he wanted to convey and give rise to no misunderstanding. 
 
 No doubt the recipients of such letters regarded them as 
 ordinary epistles, struck off at the first attempt, simply 
 because they fulfilled their purpose so well. But the truth 
 was that—especially if they had to do with difficult personal 
 questions—they had often cost him immense labour. The 
 late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning 
 were his favourite times for correspondence. He would 
 often come home late from a Meeting, to all appearance 
 tired out, and, as his biographer says, ‘would seek his 
 writing-table as another man would seek his couch.’ 
 Details which many men would call petty became to him 
 of infinite importance because they concerned the well- 
 being of one particular individual under his command, for 
 whom he felt a responsibility. The care of military leaders 
 has usually been for the regiment, rather than for the 
 
A MANAGER OF MEN 85 
 
 individual, but The Salvation Army has not MSs built to 
 that pattern. 
 
 Another great quality which shone out in his leadership 
 was his absolute justice. He knew no favouritism. Some 
 people, of course, commended themselves to him more than 
 others, some natures were more congenial. And, as it 
 happened, not a few of those in whose company he found 
 the most pleasure tormented him by their carelessness and 
 transgressions! But whatever his personal liking or dis- 
 liking, when it came to any question of privilege or honour, 
 or anything which affected a man’s happiness or usefulness, 
 his merely personal preferences became of no account. It 
 did not matter who the man was, nor how near he might 
 be to the General’s eye, his case was dealt with, or the 
 appointment filled, or the difference adjusted solely in the 
 interests of fair dealing and the advantage of The Army. 
 He was out to do justice, to secure fairness, to establish 
 equity in his ranks. Possibly here, too, he may have made 
 mistakes, but, if so, the mistakes were not due to any 
 conscious bias. In all my forty years’ experience of his 
 work at the closest range I cannot charge my memory 
 with a single case among the many thousands he dealt 
 with in which he acted with anything approaching injustice. 
 And when mistakes were subsequently seen to have been 
 mistakes I think they generally caused him more suffering 
 than they had ever caused anybody else. No man was 
 more generous in admission of a blunder, or more unhappy 
 until its consequences were repaired. 
 
 It must not be inferred from what has already been 
 written—and indeed it cannot be inferred by any one who 
 has the smallest knowledge of the Founder’s later life—that 
 all his dealings were with the rough and uncultured. He 
 had to do with men who occupied very high positions in 
 many countries. And it is an astonishing circumstance 
 that William Booth, of humble birth, with very limited 
 educational advantages, with no opportunity until he was 
 well in middle-age of coming into contact with the leisured 
 or polite classes, should nevertheless have been able to make 
 himself at home with men of the university, of Parliament, 
 
86 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 of the Court, of the ‘City.’ He met them on common 
 ground, he was not ‘awkward’ in their company; they 
 found him interesting, and very often, before they were 
 aware, he had slipped the leading strings on them, and was 
 taking them whither he would. 
 
 But this rare gift of adaptability was exercised equally 
 in his dealings with the poorest creature of the street. He 
 was more proud of the fact that he could, so to speak, 
 break bread with the poor than that he could sit as an 
 honoured guest at a dinner table in Park Lane. He had 
 the infinite tact—if tact is the right word—which con- 
 descends to men of low estate, without letting it appear 
 to be condescension. In spite of many temptations, he 
 always resisted, nay he hated, what he called the ‘ Nabob’ 
 spirit. In this respect, no doubt, his kindly humour often 
 came to his help. The man who has real humour is sure 
 to have a saving humility and to be, at least to some extent, 
 unspoiled. And his humour often got him to the heart of a 
 situation. 
 
 No matter whether he was dealing with the prodigal 
 of the gutter or with a ruler who sought his advice, he was 
 the same man, adaptable, though never opportunist, 
 brotherly, though still careful of his position and authority, 
 projecting himself by sympathy into the place of another, 
 but never surrendering a principle to please or conciliate 
 anybody. Everywhere he went, up and down the world, 
 the people who faced him—their faces white, or brown, or 
 black, or yellow, the setting a convict prison, a great 
 auditorium, a council chamber, or a throne-room—knew 
 that he belonged to them, was one of them— 
 
 Men felt 
 That in their midst a son of man there dwelt, 
 Like and unlike them, and their friend through all. 
 
 I want to make it plain that he laid himself out for this. 
 He professed it. He was not concerned to disavow the 
 compliment that he was remarkable in these matters, It 
 was his boast that he had studied human nature, that he 
 could read it like a book, that he could meet it on its own 
 
A MANAGER OF MEN 87 
 
 levels, high or low. He was equally at home as the centre 
 of an enthusiastic gathering of ten thousand people, or pre- 
 siding over the hard bargaining of a Finance Council. The 
 world in general saw his excellence in the one respect, it 
 was given to only a few to see his excellence in the other. 
 In later years, of course, much of the business side of Army 
 work in every country was delegated to others, but when it 
 came to the final bargain and the finish up those others 
 always wanted to know that he was pleased. 
 
 In a word, William Booth was a man who never lost an 
 opportunity of making contact with his fellow-creatures. 
 In a train he would have regarded it as shocking to ride hour 
 after hour without a word to the other passengers. He 
 would speak to the platelayers on the line when the train 
 stopped at the signals, and to the inspectors and porters 
 on the platform, and to the men on the engine. He could 
 mix also with those who were in despair or profligacy and 
 talk with them—real talk, not the asking of superior ques- 
 tions. His knowledge of the drunkard and the criminal 
 was obtained by first-hand acquaintance. Every creature 
 was to him a rare book, occasionally gilt-edged, but more 
 often very rough-cut indeed, and loose in the binding, and 
 sometimes very difficult to decipher. 
 
 The greatest of all his qualities in the management of 
 men has been implied all along in what I have written, and 
 yet I have not specifically named it. It was his love, his 
 spirit of goodwill. In him this was a constant fountain of 
 benevolence, seldom a sudden gush of feeling. The Founder 
 was more benevolent than he was compassionate—I mean 
 that his love went further back than the immediate appeal 
 to the feelings, although the feelings were there—and was 
 therefore a more dependable quality. 
 
 His love for his fellows seemed boundless. It was not 
 to be put off by the extreme unloveliness of some of those 
 before whom it was poured out, nor by their ingratitude, 
 nor their hardness of heart. It was like strong, kindly hands 
 searching for the worst. He plunged into the underworld 
 in quest of those whom others shunned or of whom they 
 despaired. Here and there a great soul has gone to sublime 
 
88 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 levels because of the God-given love that was in his heart 
 for his fellows, but William Booth went further than the 
 sublime, he did not scruple to go to the verge of the ridi- 
 culous if by any means he could save some. His wide- 
 embracing and fervent ‘charity’ no criticism could stay, 
 no rebuffs diminish, no hatred quench. Because of the love 
 that was in him he dared, not only the anger of the world, 
 but its laughter. 
 
 I close this chapter—and my ‘ memories’ of him in this 
 book—with some words from an address which he gave at 
 one of the early gathering of Officers : 
 
 ‘The secret of our success is often inquired for, and here 
 it is: it is not in gifts, or human learning, or exceptional 
 opportunities, or in earthly advantages, but in a heart 
 consumed with the flame of ardent, holy, heavenly love.’ 
 
 Thank God, that 1s still ‘ the secret.’ 
 
XI 
 SWEDEN AND ALL THE WORLD 
 
 THE year 1878, in which our Movement took the name of 
 The Salvation Army, was a year of great strain, upon me in 
 particular. I was then twenty-two, and although I had 
 recovered in a great measure from the weakness of my 
 early teens, I was again physically in a thoroughly limp and 
 shaken condition. Our friend Mr. Billups, of Cardiff, with 
 whom and his wife my people had formed a friendship 
 several years earlier, was then building a railway between 
 the Swedish port of Halmstad, in the Cattegat, and Jén- 
 koping, the great centre of the match industry of Sweden, a 
 hundred miles from the coast. On this business he was 
 going to stay there for a month or two with Mrs. Billups, 
 and, seeing my run-down condition, they very kindly asked 
 me to join them for a few weeks’ holiday, and not only 
 received me as their guest in Sweden, but paid my travelling 
 expenses. Accordingly I journeyed with them, via Dover 
 and Ostend, my first Channel trip, and then — that 
 Mrs. Billups should not be over-fatigued—by easy stages 
 to Copenhagen and Malm6é. 
 
 At Hamburg a trifling circumstance occurred, which, 
 however, had its significance in view of what was to happen 
 later. After dinner at the hotel on the evening of our 
 arrival Mr. Billups invited me to go with him to a small 
 Mission Hall, carried on, if I remember correctly, by a 
 joint committee of English and German residents of 
 Hamburg for the benefit of English sailors entering that 
 port. We found the little place without much difficulty. 
 Once there I became greatly interested in a group of German 
 sailors who were watching with more or less attention the 
 service conducted on behalf of their English mates. After 
 
 89 
 
go ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 saying a few words to the English part of the audience, it 
 occurred to me that I might also speak to the Germans 
 if I could get any one to translate my words. Turning to 
 I think it was the English Missionary in charge, I asked 
 him if he could speak German, and learning that he could, 
 I then addressed myself to the Germans present, giving my 
 message sentence by sentence through my missionary 
 friend. 
 
 The meeting and all concerned with it soon passed from 
 my thoughts in the experience of further travel, but I 
 realized in a sort of presentiment that I had stumbled 
 upon a method in which, by the use of interpreters, in a 
 certain way, we might largely overcome our own limitations 
 in the matter of speech, and address ourselves to any people 
 in their own tongue. 
 
 Our journey proceeded, the last Jap being by road, and 
 a day or two later I found myself with my kind hosts estab- 
 lished in a roomy farmhouse on the outskirts of a village on 
 the lakeside at Wernamo, some fifteen miles from J6n- 
 koping, and on the railway line which Mr. Billups was 
 constructing. After afew days I began to feel uncomfortable 
 because the farmer’s wife and the servants could take no 
 part in the English family prayers, which I was in the habit 
 of conducting at the suggestion of my good host. On think- 
 ing the matter over, it occurred to me that, in spite of the 
 language difficulty, it might be well if they were invited to 
 be present. This was arranged, and the servants at once 
 began to show interest. They used Swedish Bibles, though, 
 of course, our reading and prayer were in English, which 
 they did not understand. 
 
 On the second or third morning one of the maids asked 
 permission for her father, who was working on the farm, to 
 come in, and this was granted, and on the following morning 
 another of the servants was particularly impressed, even to 
 distress of mind. We learned after some trouble that this 
 young woman had been moved by the realization of her 
 sins. 
 
 These circumstances encouraged me, much to the 
 delight of Mrs. Billups, to persevere in our little effort ; and 
 
SWEDEN AND ALL THE WORLD QI 
 
 obtaining the assistance of Mr. Billups’s manager—a rough 
 Englishman of the navvy type, who showed little or no 
 sympathy with religion—I started out to discover whether 
 some one could be found in the neighbourhood who spoke 
 both English and Swedish. We made our way to the bank 
 where Mr. Billups transacted his business, and here, to my 
 great satisfaction, we found a Scotsman, named Duncan, 
 who could speak both languages. I introduced myself, and 
 asked him if he would be so very kind as to come to the 
 farm house for two or three mornings to read to us in Swedish 
 ‘from the Bible, and to translate for me sentence by sen- 
 tence anything that I might wish to say in prayer. After 
 a little persuasion, he gave a reluctant consent, and on the 
 following morning we made a start. 
 
 It was in that room, where the small company included 
 Mr. and Mrs. Billups, the latter’s attendant, the farmer’s 
 wife, the three maids, the father of one of them, and Duncan 
 the Scotsman, that was begun that method of testimony 
 and appeal and instruction which has since been carried 
 all over the world by The Salvation Army, and which has 
 given us the ear of multitudes in many lands, both East 
 and West, even though the speakers knew no language 
 except their own. Had we all been accomplished linguists, 
 with half the languages of the world at our command. 
 we should still have had a stammering tongue compared 
 with the direct and open speech whereby, through this 
 method, Salvation truths have been proclaimed around the 
 globe. 
 
 On this first morning Duncan read verse by verse with 
 me. I then made a few remarks, specially directed, | must 
 say, to the maid who had appeared in distress of mind on 
 the previous occasion, and he translated them, though very 
 nervously, sentence by sentence. At the conclusion of 
 prayers we found the young woman really broken down 
 in a spirit of repentance towards God. We sent away the 
 others, and Mrs. Billups and I and the translator remained 
 and tried to point her to the Atonement and the promise 
 of sins forgiven. We did not succeed that day, but shortly 
 afterwards she and others were wonderfully delivered from 
 
g2 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 condemnation and fear, and, in what we now recognize 
 as Salvation Army fashion, began to speak to those around 
 of what God had done. 
 
 This new development was altogether so unexpected 
 that, small though it was, we could not but be impressed 
 by the thought that the hand of God was in it. I was at 
 once asked to conduct evening prayers at an hour when 
 other workers also could attend, and after only one or two 
 days we had an evening attendance of, perhaps, thirty people, 
 some of whom began to seek after God. The room available 
 was too small, and we obtained permission to use a large 
 room at the post office once or twice, which also was quickly 
 crowded. 
 
 Among others who received a revelation from on high 
 which changed the character of their future was the post- 
 mistress herself. Her name—one which has come to be 
 revered in Army annals—was Hanna Ouchterlony, a remark- 
 able woman, who came of one of the old Swedish military 
 families. Of striking personality and courageous spirit, she 
 had already proved her mettle in connexion with the 
 Woman’s Movement in Sweden, and she afterwards became 
 the first Officer of The Salvation Army in that country, and 
 its pioneer leader for nine or ten years, during which time 
 she was instrumental in accomplishing a really national 
 work for God and righteousness. ? 
 
 The room at the post office being too small, Mr. Billups 
 fitted up the unfinished booking office of the new railway 
 station with a platform and rough seating, and here I 
 spoke twice daily for about a fortnight, still with the aid of 
 my interpreter, the Scotsman. Among others to be greatly 
 blessed in the meetings was the Scotsman’s wife, a Swedish 
 lady, the daughter of the Governor of the province. Several 
 other people of importance in the locality were influenced, 
 as well as many of humbler station. 
 
 Once again we outgrew our accommodation, and at last 
 a Mission House, seating about five hundred people, was 
 placed at my disposal. Here for some ten days I conducted 
 
 1 Commissioner Hanna Ouchterlony, after some years of honoured 
 retirement, died in 1924. 
 
SWEDEN AND ALL THE WORLD 93 
 
 one or two meetings a day. There would have been no 
 difficulty, so far as attendances were concerned, about 
 holding an even larger number of services, but I was sup- 
 posed to be on furlough, recruiting my overworked nervous 
 system! Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed this unpre- 
 meditated campaign, including the small day meetings, 
 which were held in the homes of several of the converts who 
 lived at a distance from the little town, and who liked me 
 to go to their homes in order that I might speak at close 
 quarters with their neighbours. On its small scale, it was 
 quite an important awakening, and out of it came not only 
 Commissioner Ouchterlony’s dedication to our service, but 
 other important influences which to this day are traceable 
 in our Scandinavian ranks. 
 
 I was happy in this unlooked-for effort, and greatly 
 interested in the people—especially in those who had been 
 blessed in the way I have described. In a letter, written to 
 Mrs. Billups, from Malmé, the day after I left Wernamo 
 on my return to London, and which I found among the 
 correspondence she sent me shortly before her death, I see 
 that I thus described my feelings : 
 
 I could not tell you, if I tried to do so, how much I have felt 
 leaving the Wernamo friends. I felt on Sunday afternoon in that 
 Mission House as though my inmost soul was knit with theirs. 
 I do not think I have ever felt drawn out to yearn over people 
 more, and seldom so much, and doubly so, of course, for those 
 who have taken Jesus Christ. I was unduly anxious about them 
 in the night and this morning, and could not help feeling 
 (realizing) what trials of faith and courage are before them all, 
 and there is no one strong to fall back upon. I asked the Lord 
 to speak a word of quietness to me, and, opening my Bible, my 
 eyes rested on, ‘And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of 
 Hosts, in that day when I make up My jewels, and I will spare 
 them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him... .” 
 
 How slow we are to confide in God, and how slow of heart 
 still are even we to believe all that the prophets have 
 Spoken 2 04; 
 
 The Lord give you, dear Mrs. Billups, more and more of 
 the pertinacity and violence of faith... . 
 
 Yours by His mercy, 
 W. BRAMWELL Boortu. 
 
94 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 The Swedes attracted me greatly. Young as I was, and 
 entirely without experience of other nationalities which 
 could serve me as a basis for comparison, I began to see in 
 them at that time what I have since proved to be their 
 distinguishing qualities, both the very good and the less 
 good. I discovered at once in them what I can only describe 
 as a certain intellectual clarity—a resilience of mind— 
 which enabled them to apprehend spiritual things in a way 
 that is not the case with all peoples. There seemed to me 
 to be fewer twists and turns and tergiversations in the 
 Scandinavian mentality, and especially the Swedish, than in 
 that of some other nationalities. I have noticed a similar 
 thing in parts of Scotland. I know no audience to whom 
 it is a greater intellectual pleasure to speak than an audience 
 of northern Scotch—say in Aberdeen, Inverness, or Dingwall; 
 not because they are demonstrative or even very responsive 
 to personal appeal, but because the speaker is sure that there 
 is at least intellectual sympathy between himself and his 
 listeners ; that their thoughts are not constantly running off 
 at tangents, but that they open their minds and weigh his 
 words from start to finish. 
 
 All this I discerned in the Swede. Inexperienced as lI 
 was, and in spite of the fact that the work with which I was 
 connected had not up to that time gone beyond the limits 
 of the Old Country, I at once saw Sweden as a new field. 
 I was taken also with the Swedish combination of spiritual 
 insight with genuine emotion. Their nature had both sub- 
 stance and warmth. No doubt, then as now, they were not 
 free from some drawbacks attaching to emotionalism, but 
 they certainly gave promise—a promise which has been 
 abundantly fulfilled in our subsequent experience of them 
 —of doing a great work as the result of a sanctified emotion. 
 
 Much is written and said in deprecation of feeling in 
 religion ; but, when all is said and done, the emotions do 
 spring from the depths of our nature, and the attempt to 
 divorce religion from them is really absurd. The idea that 
 the feelings must for ever be mistrusted and denied has 
 probably had more to do with the production of frigidness 
 and formality in religion than any other single thing. 
 
SWEDEN AND ALL THE WORLD 95 
 
 I defy any man to read the Bible with an open mind, 
 especially the Old Testament, with its psalms and pro- 
 phecies, without realizing that God intended the emotions 
 to play a great part in action and experience, not only in 
 our personal communion with Him, but in the practical 
 carrying out of His word of love and righteousness in daily 
 life. ‘ O taste and see,’ said the Psalmist, ‘ that the Lord is 
 good.’ How absurd to deny the precious feelings and affec- 
 tions of which Jesus Christ Himself was so manifestly an 
 example. We know better than to flee from knowledge, 
 but it has been well said, ‘ Christianity consists far more in 
 having a full heart than in having a crowded head.’ 
 
 A heart right in the sight of God is, in fact, the prime 
 necessity of religion as revealed in the New Testament. 
 What a man thinketh in his heart, that is he. ‘ The hidden 
 man of the heart ’istherealman. Especially and constantly 
 is the word heart used in the Bible of the emotion of affec- 
 tion both towards man and towards God. It is there that 
 the Kingdom of God is to be set up; that the life of Christ 
 is to be seen in us; that the Fire of the Holy Ghost is to 
 come, and enthroned there the love of God and man is to 
 govern our lives. As well might one seek to live without 
 life and spirit as to love without feeling. 
 
 The work of The Army in Scandinavia sprang from that 
 little effort by the lakeside of Wernamo, and Scandinavia 
 —in which term I here include Finland—has proved one of 
 The Army’s very fruitful fields. Not only has that work 
 been of immense service among the Scandinavian nations 
 themselves, and brought blessing to the lives of multitudes 
 in those northern lands, including the Lapps, but it has 
 spread amongst the Scandinavian populations of the United 
 States. And, thank God! it has been the means of raising 
 up from those various peoples hundreds of valiant souls 
 who have gone forth into the dangers and difficulties of 
 the dark lands—some to lay down their lives without 
 question for the lost. Few things give me greater satis- 
 faction about the work of The Army in any country than 
 the missionary effort which it produces and the blessings 
 which it disperses into. the heathen world. And next to 
 
96 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 England—-which, of course, has had special advantages in 
 the fact that it was the land of The Army’s original foun- 
 dation, and that it has had a longer time in which to prepare 
 and develop its missionary enterprise—Sweden, Norway, 
 Denmark, and Finland have, in the experience of The Army, 
 produced the greatest results along this particular line. 
 
 When some time ago I was leaving the King of Sweden, 
 at the termination of an interview with him in Stockholm, 
 he said to me with great earnestness that he wanted to 
 thank me for the work The Salvation Army had accom- 
 plished amongst his people, and to express his desire that 
 that work should make still further progress. It was with 
 serious purpose and also with great satisfaction that I was 
 able to answer him, ‘ And I thank you, Sir, and through 
 you the Swedish people, for the noble and splendid spirits 
 Sweden has given to aid us in the extension of the work of 
 God among the non-Christian peoples.’ 
 
XII 
 SomME METHODS OF ARREST 
 
 ONE night, after a meeting I had been holding in the West 
 End of London, several members of The Army were person- 
 ally introduced to me. Among them was a man of perhaps 
 forty-eight or fifty; one, I think, of our Local Officers. 
 I asked him how he came into The Army. ‘I was ina 
 miserable state,’ he told me. ‘I had wasted a great part 
 of my life. And then a very unusual, even remarkable 
 thing happened, which led to my conversion. One evening 
 I was wandering aimlessly across Hyde Park when I was 
 attracted by a crowd in the middle of which was a man 
 shouting out something. It proved to be an Open-Air 
 Meeting of The Salvation Army. I waited on the edge of 
 the crowd for a little while, not paying much attention, and 
 presently I turned away. As I did so, the speaker shouted 
 out, ““ Now, remember what I said,” quoting a passage, and 
 then crying out, very loudly and emphatically, “ JOHN, 
 THREE AND SIXTEEN!” Those words, “ JOHN, THREE AND 
 SIXTEEN,” electrified me. I went home, but not to rest. 
 In fact, I knew no rest until I had come to God, and by 
 His grace was anew man.’ ‘ But,’ I said, somewhat puzzled, 
 “What was there about the words “ John, Three and Six- 
 teen ’’ which had this effect on you? Did you turn to the 
 passage?” ‘Well, you see, Chief,’ was his reply, ‘my 
 name is John; I have been married three times; and I 
 have had sixteen children !’ 
 
 I met with a somewhat similar case, illustrating the 
 extraordinary way in which souls may be roused from 
 lethargy, some years ago in Leeds. A fully uniformed 
 Salvationist came up to me and said, ‘ You don’t remember 
 me?’ I had to say that I did not. ‘I was converted,’ he 
 
 H 97 
 
98 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 went on, ‘at one of your meetings in London. It was an 
 All-Night of Prayer at Stratford.’ ‘ Yes,’ I said, recalling 
 some remarkable episodes of a night of prayer there, ‘ how 
 did it come about?’ ‘ Well,’ he replied, ‘I was saved 
 really by a snore.’ ‘Saved by a snore!’ I repeated in 
 astonishment. ‘ Yes,’ he said, ‘by a man snoring. I went 
 to the All-Night of Prayer out of curiosity, just to see what 
 you did. I took a seat rather towards the back of the 
 building. In the course of the night I fell asleep. I was 
 roused out of my sleep by a violent snore in my neighbour- 
 hood. This I found to proceed from another man in the 
 seat in front of mine. I woke up startled, not realizing 
 where I was, and, jumping to my feet, made my way to the 
 aisle. At that moment the Officer who was leading the 
 second meeting for you shouted at the top of his voice, 
 “Here’s another soul for Jesus!’’ Then a second Officer 
 at the end of my row seized me, and led me almost dazed 
 to the penitent-form. I was thoroughly aroused now by the 
 extraordinary circumstances which had brought me to my 
 knees, I reflected on what I had heard in the earlier part of 
 the service, and I did honestly begin to search my heart and 
 think of my life of sin. In the end, I gave myself to God, 
 He pardoned me, I became a Salvationist, and here I am.’ 
 
 The old General used to tell a story of a man in South 
 Africa who was exceedingly successful in dealing with mule 
 teams. Asked how he managed these stubborn creatures, 
 he said, ‘ Well, when they stop and won’t go on, I just pick 
 up a handful of grav<l or soil, put it to their mouths, and let 
 them taste it. Of course, they spit it out again; but, asa 
 rule, they begin to go on.’ ‘ Why do you think it has that 
 effect on them ?’ persisted his questioner. ‘ Well, I don’t 
 know,’ was the reply, ‘ but I expect it changes the current 
 of their thoughts ! ’ 
 
 There is a philosophy in this. Do some of our methods, 
 which appear erratic and irrelevant, need any apology after 
 all? Their connexion with spiritual things may not be 
 immediately traceable, but if they shock and startle men, 
 wake them up and turn them right about, have they not 
 their purpose? The ordinary materialistic monotony of 
 
SOME METHODS OF ARREST 99 
 
 life induces such a stupor that the spirit has often to be 
 stabbed awake. The thing which snaps the coiling thread 
 of the humdrum has its justification in the result. It 
 ‘changes the current of their thoughts.’ 
 
 When people have told me that they have found Salva- 
 tion or some other blessing on hearing my addresses, I have 
 often discovered on further inquiry that what actually 
 enlightened them or met their difficulty or turned them to 
 Christ was not some great truth I had propounded, not some 
 striking thought to which I had perhaps given a little extra 
 emphasis, not a careful and arousing passage; but, on the 
 contrary, some quite simple and detached circumstance, 
 a forgotten phrase, a chance aside, a passing allusion. One 
 woman, for example, came and told me that she had given 
 herself to God through a quite incidental reference I had 
 made in an address to the previous evening’s sunset. It 
 reminded her, she said, of the sunsets of long ago as she 
 used to see them in her village home when she was a girl 
 and went to Sunday school, and thus her heart woke up to 
 desire and seek after God. In such apparently casual ways 
 the truth finds admission. Can it be doubted that this is 
 the philosophy which underlies some of the extraordinary 
 proceedings on the part of the ancient prophets and kings ? 
 The breaking of pitchers and other outlandish things which 
 were done in the presence of the people were not mere 
 symbolism. They were means of arrest. They were sudden 
 diversions. Their purpose was to secure the attention of 
 the thoughtless, the forgetful, the preposessed. To use a 
 very modern figure, they were the last jerk of the crank 
 handle which availed to start the engine. 
 
 No doubt this explains some of our success. We had 
 one man, for example, who, despairing of getting the people 
 otherwise to hear him, went every night during a week in 
 winter and lay down in the market-place in the snow, 
 remaining there for three-quarters of an hour without saying 
 a word. By the end of the week half the population had 
 gone out to see him, and then he got up and talked to them, 
 and talked with effect. We had another man who even went 
 so far as to ‘ play ghost’ in order to get the people within 
 
I0o ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 sound of the Gospel. The Army records to this very day, 
 are rich with the stories of men who did strange things, things 
 which others could not have done because of their timidity 
 of spirit or their sense of propriety. It is easy to scoff at 
 what they did; often it has been difficult to defend, some- 
 times we have had to disapprove and restrain, but there is 
 a true psychology behind it. It is another instance of the 
 foolish things of the world confounding the wise. The trouble 
 with conventional religion is that it is not ‘ foolish’ enough. 
 It is too dainty in its choice of weapons to get to the heart 
 of the ungodly. It thinks that everything must be solemn 
 and proper and in good taste if it is to be effective. It for- 
 gets that in almost the literal sense people have to be 
 wakened before their souls can be won. The Salvation Army 
 might itself have been stiffened by the starch of respecta- 
 bility had it not been for some enthusiasts who have not 
 hesitated to strike away from the beaten track, and counted 
 it a light thing to suffer ridicule. I think of many a man 
 who helped to set us loose, Dowdle and his fiddle, the Neals 
 and their preaching and song, Cadman and his amazing 
 displays, Corbridge and his announcements. One of Cor- 
 bridge’s little railway tickets : 
 
 
 
 HALLELUJAH RAILWAY 
 LEICESTER TO HEAVEN 
 
 FIRST CLASS 
 
 1877 
 
 is before me now. On the back of it are the words: ‘ Con- 
 ditions fully explained at every service by Corbridge, the 
 real old Hallelujah Man, and crowds of Blood-washed 
 passengers.” Another handbill of a later period announces 
 a “Great Fair at the Salvation Market,’ and among those 
 billed to appear are Moorhouse and Bricky, Skelton the 
 Thrasher, Wells the Converted Thief, and a score of others 
 described with similar force and freedom. 
 
 We in The Army have learned to thank God for eccen- 
 tricity and extravagance, and to consecrate them to His 
 
SOME METHODS OF ARREST I0L 
 
 service. We have men in our ranks who can rollick for the 
 Lord. Often they have blundered, and occasionally they 
 land us in awkward places. Some of them have been very 
 rough and uncouth, and all that. I have never wanted to 
 imitate what they did. I could not have done so. But 
 they have enlarged my conception of the power of God and 
 the mysteriousness of His ways. And I have felt less in- 
 clined to shrink from doing some unusual thing myself 
 because they on their part did not shrink from doing things 
 far more unusual. Thank God for the dare-devils! They 
 led us on the forward march. Their freedom of attack has 
 brought, and still brings, within our reach the very people 
 we most want. They have helped to keep us free from the 
 shackles of respectability. They keep us passionate. So 
 that even such a writer as H. G. Wells, after saying that our 
 ‘shouts, clangour, trumpeting, gesticulations, and rhythmic 
 pacings stun and dismay my nerves,’ can add, ‘I see God 
 indubitably present in these excitements.’! 
 
 I know, of course, what some of my scientific friends will 
 say to this. But I may be permitted to reply to their views 
 in the words of a great student of human life: 
 
 . . . however convincingly it [science] may show us that religion 
 is a clumsy term for describing emotional excitement, science itself 
 cannot and does not save the lost and rescue the abandoned. Science 
 cannot do this ; it knows how it is done, and yet cannot itself do the 
 thing which it assures us is not a miracle ; and science does not do 
 it, does not desire to do it, for the very reason that it lacks the 
 religious impulse which alone can accomplish the miracle, the 
 miracle not only of converting the people, but of making the con- 
 version of the evil and the bad a passion of the life of the good 
 and the virtuous. 
 
 A method I have sometimes adopted in conducting an 
 Army meeting is to be frankly emotional up to a certain 
 point. I set out deliberately to create a certain impression 
 upon the hearts of the people to whom I am speaking. I 
 use various means to that end, some in one place, some in 
 another, according to the audience and my own state of 
 mind. I desire to produce that heart opening without 
 which I believe it to be of little use making an appeal 
 
 1 ‘God the Invisible King.’ 
 
102 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 either to the intellect or the conscience. Then, when I have 
 come to that point, I begin to produce the harder facts of 
 my message. Having softened the wax, I press the die. 
 Then can come a definite invitation to resolve, to act, and 
 an opportunity to do it then and there. For myself, I do 
 not even then, in this sternest phase of the battle, rigidly 
 exclude the relation of a fact or incident which may have an 
 emotional bearing. But this is not done with the same 
 object as at the opening. The object now is to fortify the 
 people so that they may overcome the immediate diffi- 
 culties and hesitancies which are the impeding work of the 
 enemy of souls. Therefore I tell of the power of Christ’s 
 love to change. I use whatever comes handiest to urge 
 them to the final step. I bid them with all the tenderness 
 I can muster come and make the great surrender, come and 
 find the great Salvation. And, thank God, they come! 
 
XIII 
 STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY 
 
 Many stories could be told of mysterious gifts received 
 from strangers for The Army. Once a man, then quite 
 unknown to us, called at Headquarters and said, ‘I want 
 to see Mr. Bramwell Booth.’ He was shown up to me, 
 and he told me his name, and said: 
 
 “I have been very much interested in the work you are 
 doing, although I wish you were not so much mixed up with 
 disturbances. I want to give you a thousand pounds.’ 
 
 He brought out his cheque, and after I had thanked 
 him, I asked him how he had first come to be interested in 
 us. 
 
 ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will tell you. Some time ago I was 
 walking down Aldersgate Street, and I noticed on the other 
 side of the road a costermonger loading sacks of scrap iron 
 on to a barrow. One of the sacks was apparently too 
 heavy for him to lift, and a tall man wearing a silk hat 
 stopped and put up the sack for the old costermonger and 
 said a word to him. I was so much interested that I asked 
 a policeman who was near by to tell me who it was that had 
 assisted the costermonger. ‘“‘ Oh, don’t you know ?”’ said 
 the policeman; “ that’s General Booth.” ‘ Well,” I said 
 to myself, “if that is the spirit of The Salvation Army, 
 then I shall help it as I have opportunity.” ’ 
 
 The same benefactor gave us further help afterwards. 
 He had a friend, a man nearly blind, who came to our 
 Meetings occasionally, where he was deeply interested and 
 blessed. One day this gentleman called at Headquarters, 
 seeking me, and said: 
 
 “Look here, I am going to give something to your work. 
 How are you off for funds ? ’ 
 
 103 
 
104 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 ‘We are really very hard pressed just now,’ I said. ‘I 
 have been praying the Lord to send us along some help, 
 and I have no doubt He has sent you.’ 
 
 Then he took out of his pocket-book a cheque, and held 
 it up close to his eyes. 
 
 ‘It is signed,’ he said. ‘ Fill it in and make it payable 
 to The Army.’ 
 
 ‘How much shall I make it payable for?’ I asked 
 him. 
 
 ‘Well,’ he said, ‘ what do you think ?’ 
 
 ‘I leave it to you.’ 
 
 ‘Fill it up, then, for what you think the Lord would 
 have me give you.’ 
 
 I remembered that he was a rather wealthy man, but, 
 still, I did not know much about him, and I cast my mind 
 upwards for help in this emergency. 
 
 ‘Shall we say a thousand pounds ?’ [ said at last. 
 
 ‘Well—yes,’ he replied rather hesitatingly; ‘as you 
 have only said one thousand pounds, we will make it one 
 thousand.’ 
 
 I am afraid my pleasure in receiving the gift was dashed 
 a little by regret that I had not said five ! 
 
 Wonderful indeed have been the answers to prayer in 
 special predicaments. Sometimes in bygone days I have 
 signed cheques, and stood them up against the inkpot, 
 saying, ‘I cannot let them go until the Lord has sent along 
 the wherewithal to meet them.’ And even while I have 
 been waiting at Headquarters casting up my heart to God 
 for help, people have called and said, ‘ I feel the Lord would 
 have me come and give you a hundred pounds ’—or two 
 hundred pounds, or five hundred, as the case might be. 
 That kind of thing has been repeated in practically every 
 department of The Army, and in every land, and even in 
 many a Corps. It ought to teach us to believe hard as 
 well as work hard. 
 
 Once I remember our good friend T. A. Denny coming in 
 ‘when we were in a tight financial squeeze. The old General 
 was just off on one of his long-distance tours, and I was 
 terribly tried about getting in money. 
 
STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY 105 
 
 ‘Now, Mr. Bramwell,’ said Denny, ‘ I hear from Beard’ 
 —we had then a friend named Beard at Headquarters— 
 “that you are very hard up as usual.’ 
 
 ‘That is true. Mr. Denny,’ I said; ‘ we are in a corner.’ 
 
 ‘I have never known you far from that corner,’ was his 
 reply. ‘How much do you want? Will a_ thousand 
 pounds be of any use to you?’ 
 
 ‘Of course it will be of use,’ I said, ‘ but it will not 
 get me over this special difficulty.’ 
 
 ‘Then how much do you really want ?’ 
 
 ‘IT want four thousand.’ 
 
 Denny took a cheque out of his pocket. 
 
 ‘Bramwell,’ he said, ‘I made it out for four thousand 
 before I came along. I had an impression that that was 
 what you wanted.’ 
 
 ‘Did Beard give you any idea of the sum ?’ I asked in 
 amazement. 
 
 ‘No,’ he said, ‘nobody gave me any idea of it.’ 
 
 To put it mildly, a remarkable coincidence ! 
 
 When we were buying and altering the Congress Hall 
 property at Clapton for our Training Work we had to raise 
 some twenty-five thousand pounds, at that period of our 
 history a very large sum. Sir William M‘Arthur, who was 
 Lord Mayor of London in 1880, and a zealous Methodist, 
 signed a letter on our behalf, which was sent to a number of 
 leading Methodists. A few of the recipients were asked to 
 come together and hear about the General’sscheme. One of 
 them was Dr. James Wood, of Southport, a Methodist 
 layman and a doctor of laws. The meeting was summoned 
 for a Monday afternoon, and on the previous Saturday 
 Dr. Wood came to see me and said that he was going to 
 give us fifty pounds. After a little talk he decided, without 
 any suggestion of mine, to double the proposed donation. 
 I asked him, and he agreed, to come toa Holiness Breakfast 
 the following morning at our Whitechapel Hall. We met 
 in the City and walked to the Hall. About two hundred 
 of our people were present. The doctor would not come 
 to the platform, as I wished ; he insisted on sitting among 
 the people. 
 
106 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 Next day, at the gathering at Headquarters, Dr. Wood 
 set the ball rolling, after the General had outlined his scheme. 
 Our Lancashire friend told how he had come up with his 
 cheque already made out for fifty pounds. After hearing a 
 little more of the work, he decided to make it a hundred 
 pounds. But when he went on the previous day to one of 
 the Meetings he found the enthusiasm and warmth of old- 
 fashioned Methodism at its best. He explained that he had 
 sat among the people for two reasons. ‘I wanted, in the 
 first place, to see whether they were genuine working people 
 who got their living with their hands. After I had looked 
 at them and spoken to several, I had no doubt at all on 
 that score. So far from getting anything out of this work, 
 they contribute to its support. The other reason I sat 
 amongst them was to see whether they were clean, and 
 I am satisfied that they were. I could see that they 
 had all washed their necks and ears. General, yours is 
 a work of practical godliness. I shall give you a thousand 
 pounds.’ 
 
 M’Arthur gave a thousand guineas, and we got several 
 thousand pounds as a result of that afternoon meeting. 
 We put it down in no small measure to Dr. Wood’s scrutiny 
 of our people in Whitechapel, and his discovery that they 
 washed their necks and ears ! 
 
 I have had quite as much satisfaction, however, in 
 receiving small gifts from small people as in receiving bigger 
 gifts from bigger people. I know that was true also of the 
 Founder. It never ceased to be to him a source of pleasure 
 that so large a proportion of The Army’s income was drawn 
 from the masses. When Officers reported to him that there 
 was no gold in the collection, he would often say, ‘ Well, 
 never mind! There 1s plenty of copper.’ He did not dis- 
 esteem the democratic coin. He knew that it often spoke of 
 sacrifice as great as the more precious metal. 
 
 And what the poor gave was not always ‘ copper.’ 
 
 One day an elderly woman, a Soldier in one of our 
 London Corps, wrote asking me for an interview. I was 
 extremely busy at the time, and asked my secretary to write 
 her and say that he would see her in my stead. She replied 
 
STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY 107 
 
 by return, saying that she must see me herself. Accordingly 
 she was asked to come. I went into the room where she was 
 waiting, and she opened the conversation by saying : 
 
 ‘General, I have come to give you £100.’ 
 
 I replied that that was very interesting, and looking at 
 her thin garments and work-worn hands, and guessing that 
 she earned a precarious livesihood, I said : 
 
 ‘And how did you get it ?’ 
 
 Quick as thought she answered, ‘ General, excuse me, 
 but I think that is my business !’ 
 
 ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘ but you are not in ordinary circumstances. 
 [ do not like the idea of taking such a sum from you without 
 knowing more about you.’ 
 
 Then she told me. 
 
 “When my husband died he left me £40—all his savings. 
 We had both been brought to God in The Salvation Army, 
 and the Lord has been good to us. Moreover, we had no one 
 dependent onus. After he died, I began to go out cleaning, 
 and I generally got one meal a day given me, so that I was 
 able to put by sometimes a shilling and sometimes half a 
 crown. Then, about two years ago, I thought I was living 
 in too expensive a room. I paid six shillings a week for it. 
 After praying about it, it came to me that by sharing my 
 room with another lady, I might halve that rent. I did it. 
 So, little by little, by the Lord’s goodness, I have added 
 to that £40 until it has become {100. And now He has 
 told me to come and give it to you to help on the work of 
 The Army.’ 
 
 ‘Well,’ I said, ‘ Mrs. , this is very generous and 
 good of you. But I do not feel quite happy about it. What 
 is your age ?’ 
 
 Bridling a little, she said, ‘ I think that is my business, 
 too, General.’ 
 
 ‘Yes,’ I said, smiling at her bashful appearance, ‘ but 
 you must tell me, because I am thinking of what the future 
 may have for you.’ 
 
 ‘Well,’ she said, ‘ I am sixty-six, and when I am seventy 
 I shall be receiving the old age pension, so that you need 
 not trouble about me.’ 
 
 
 
108 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 After turning the matter over in my mind for a few 
 moments, I said: 
 
 ‘Well, now, I don’t quite feel as if I ought to take this 
 money from you, but I will tell you what I will do. I will 
 receive it and enter it in our books under your name. And 
 I will make an entry to the effect that should you be sick or 
 in any way in need of it, you can at any time withdraw 
 what you require. Should you not require it, and be taken 
 to Heaven, it will fall entirely into The Army’s funds.’ 
 
 But my suggestion encountered unexpected obstinacy in 
 her. She was evidently surprised that I should raise any 
 objection. 
 
 ‘If your father, our dear old General what’s in Heaven, 
 had been here,’ she said, almost severely, ‘he would not 
 have made all this fuss about taking my {100 for the work 
 of The Army !’ 
 
 So, after all, I had to yield the point, and when I knelt 
 down beside her, and thanked God for the spirit He had 
 put in her poor old heart I could not help but praise Him. . 
 A lonely widow hidden away in the purlieus of the great 
 city, toiling hard every day, adding slowly to her small 
 store of savings, and then bringing them all into the treasury 
 of her Lord. 
 
 Many people will hardly believe it, but the old General 
 had an instinctive dread of money. The Army has from 
 the very first been widely associated in people’s minds with 
 money-raising. Tens of thousands, especially in London, 
 first heard of us through a queer music-hall chorus of the 
 eighties : 
 
 General Booth sends round the hat ; 
 
 Samson was a strong man, 
 But he wasn’t up to that ! 
 
 The Founder said more about money, probably, than 
 any other leader in the religious world. He also instituted 
 a system under which money has been raised in quite con- 
 siderable sums. Yet, for all that, he had an instinctive 
 dread of it. It was a sort of constitutional fear of its power 
 and tyranny. After the first ten or twelve years of the life 
 of the Movement he never himself touched the money. All 
 
STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY 109 
 
 his financial arrangements, though carried on, of course, 
 in his name, were attended to by others. By 1878-9 I was 
 already signing the cheques. He himself had nothing to do 
 with them, although he insisted on exact returns and on 
 knowing from time to time where we were financially, and 
 he bore the heavy burden of money raising. 
 
 This is not to say that he did not realize the necessity 
 for exactness and economy in dealing with money, both 
 private and public. He had great confidence in the public 
 Auditors who have looked after our accounts. While he 
 never took anything from the funds of The Army for 
 himself, he was careful to have full accounts rendered to 
 him by the publishers of his books. These works of his and 
 of my mother’s—and later on her ‘ Life’—for a number of 
 years largely supported them. On the establishment of 
 “The War Cry,’ when some of our friends urged him to 
 make that, at least, private property, and thus place 
 himself and his family out of need, he declined the 
 suggestion. I believe his will was worth a great deal to 
 The Army funds. People woke up to the fact that this 
 man, with legitimate opportunity to do so, had never 
 enriched himself. 
 
 He carried his financial diffidence to a point which 
 many would regard as quixotic. Soon after the Mission 
 started, in 1865, he had a Financial Guarantee Committee, 
 of which Stephenson Blackwood and one or two other 
 fairly well-known men were members. This Committee 
 authorized the payment of his insurance premiums. When, 
 later on, his books became a source of income, he paid 
 these premiums himself, and a few years afterwards he 
 asked the Auditors to make an estimate of the total sum 
 paid during the years that they had been met by the 
 Committee. They did so, and determined the amount 
 at five hundred pounds, and this sum he handed over to the 
 funds of The Army.? 
 
 Mr. T. A. Denny, whom I have already mentioned, was 
 one of several friends of like mind and heart. Henry Reed 
 
 1See ‘ William Bact: the Founder of The Salvation Army by 
 Harold Begbie, Vol. II, p. 131. pea : ih 
 
 j ie 
 & 
 
 ‘ 
 
ILO ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 was perhaps the first on the list. Another was Samuel 
 Morley, then head of the great Nottingham firm of I. & R. 
 Morley, who loved to consider himself a ‘ sleeping partner ’ 
 in our work. He varied from time to time in his feelings, 
 but one of the last things he did before his death was to 
 give a couple of thousand for the extension of the Women’s 
 Social Work in London. Then there were Mr. and 
 Mrs. Billups, of Cardiff, and John and Richard Cory, of the 
 same city, who knew and trusted ‘ the Booths’ before as 
 well as after The Salvation Army was born. There were the 
 Armitages (Farnley), who not only gave nobly up to the 
 limit of their means, but came to the Meetings, and marched 
 with the processions, helped with the penitents, and testified 
 in the Holiness gatherings. There was Mrs. Freeman, from 
 whom came many a ray of light amid the darkness of 
 financial anxiety in the earliest days. And there were the 
 Misses Wells, who not only brought of their wealth to help 
 us, but joined The Army, donned its uniform, and gave up 
 their luxurious home to live as simple Salvationists. Per- 
 haps the most generous of all our helpers, though of a 
 somewhat later period, was Frank Crossley, of Manchester, 
 whose splendid gifts largely made possible the extension of 
 The Army’s work in other lands during the late eighties. 
 I wish he could know now what harvests have been reaped 
 from the seed he helped us to sow ! 
 
 With the development of The Army’s philanthropic work 
 we had frequently to do with a different kind of benefactor. 
 Men came forward to help us because of the downright 
 common sense of some of our efforts for social amelioration, 
 although perhaps they had no sympathy with, often no 
 understanding of, our presentation of the Gospel. The very 
 daring of the Founder’s schemes caught the interest of men 
 who, in their own financial transactions, were accustomed to 
 ‘think big.” One such man was the late George Herring. 
 
 George Herring began his career as a bookmaker. He 
 was associated with that class of doubtful characters who 
 frequent race meetings. To the end of his life, although 
 probably one of the best-dressed men in London, he always 
 gave a certain impression of being ‘ horsy.’ He made a 
 
STORIES OF THE ARMY’S TREASURY = 1112 
 
 large sum of money on a particular race, and on the same 
 day he ‘ cut’ the Turf. He came into the City, went on the 
 Stock Exchange, and took up a branch of business connected 
 with the floating of loans for foreign Governments. Of this, 
 with a partner, he made a great success. Before he had 
 reached middle life Herring was a wealthy man. 
 
 We first came across him on the publication of ‘In 
 Darkest England and the Way Out,’ in 1890. He came to 
 see us, and at once said that he would put up {10,000 of the 
 money required to purchase the proposed Land Colony. 
 He made very many excursions with one of our Officers 
 seeking land. We finally decided that Hadleigh, in Essex, 
 was the right place for us. Herring did not like the land, 
 however, and accordingly his ten thousand came to nothing. 
 He then rather drew off from us for some time. He was 
 chaffed a good deal by his friends about his Salvation Army 
 experiences. In our later intimacy we learned that one of 
 his chums who thought to make fun of him sent him as a 
 Christmas box a Salvation Soldier’s cap. This joke pleased 
 him greatly, but in a different way from that which the 
 sender anticipated. He had an elegant glass-case made, in 
 which he placed this cap as one of the ornaments in the 
 drawing-room at his beautiful hunting lodge near Luton. 
 He often explained to his friends how the cap came into 
 his possession, and how he only wished that he was worthy 
 to wear it. 
 
 Later on he became very much interested in our proposal 
 for housing the people on a scheme of higher-class Shelters. 
 He got much more intimate with us all, especially with the 
 Founder and myself and the late Commissioner Sturgess. 
 He went to our Shelters, attended Meetings, tramped about 
 with us at midnight, and gave considerable sums towards 
 new and enlarged premises. The General and the ‘ Bloater,’ 
 as his familiars called him, taking liberty with his name, 
 became quite good friends, and he was probably the only 
 Society person in London with whom the General ever 
 ‘dined out.’ This was at Herring’s town house in Hamilton 
 Place, Piccadilly. 
 
 The last time Herring was at Headquarters he bade the 
 
Pr ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 old General a cheery good-bye, and was so delighted with 
 his youthful optimism and plans that he called up the lift 
 as it was carrying him down, ‘ Good-bye, I thought you 
 were twenty-six, and I see you are only about nineteen !’ 
 Herring was at the foundation of a small-holding scheme 
 which we inaugurated at his suggestion. He found about 
 forty thousand pounds for it, but as the later developments 
 of that scheme come within my own period of Generalship, 
 the story must await another occasion. 
 
 George Herring was a singularly unassuming man. In 
 my own intercourse with him he never presumed to dictate 
 or to instruct me even as to matters on which I wished 
 to defer to him. I had more than one talk with him on 
 spiritual things, though I fear I did not make very much 
 progress. I remember well the occasion of our last meeting. 
 We had been discussing at some length the plans for the 
 small-holding settlement, and I passed to some very serious 
 words about eternal things. He seemed touched, and as 
 he left me I said, ‘ Well, Mr. Herring, I shall pray for you.’ 
 He paused at the door, and came back to my table, and 
 alter a moment’s hesitation said with great seriousness, 
 “No, don’t bother about me. I’m not worth it.’ I wonder 
 whether I ought to have been more earnest that day ! 
 
 The story of Army finance recalls our critics as well as 
 our friends. One of these critics was Henry Labouchere, 
 the editor of ‘Truth.’ Labouchere began by belabouring 
 The Army, saying that we had no accounts to show, and so 
 forth, and Charles Bradlaugh, his colleague in the repre- 
 sentation of Northampton, dotted his ‘i’s’ and crossed his 
 ‘t’s.’ One morning there was brought to me a cutting from 
 ‘Truth ’ which abused us with more definiteness than usual. 
 Forthwith I put the cutting into the hands of one of our 
 Staff, and the man himself into a hansom, and told him, in 
 effect, that he was not to come back until he brought 
 Labouchere with him. 
 
 If his instructions did not go quite so far with regard to 
 ‘knocking down or locking up’ as those which were given 
 to Sam Weller when he set out to secure Mr. Winkle, they 
 were more effective. LLabouchere came to Headquarters. 
 
SPORIES OF THE ARMY'S TREASURY 1133 
 
 In the meantime I had communicated with our auditors, 
 and one of the partners came over. Everything was in 
 readiness for ‘ Labby’s’ inspection, and he spent a useful 
 hour and a half going over the books, examining the 
 vouchers, and talking to members of the Staff. 
 
 I do not pretend that Labouchere ever came to the 
 penitent-form, but from that time onwards he was more 
 or less a friend. He occasionally helped us in an appeal for 
 money, signing one or two ‘ round robins’ which we issued ; 
 but the chief value of his countenance to us was in the fact 
 that he was so great an authority on such matters that 
 when he took a thing up and even faintly praised it people 
 accepted its credentials right away. Bradlaugh we never 
 succeeded in ‘ converting.’ One of his exclamations on his 
 death-bed was, ‘ Oh, General Booth’s accounts !’ 
 
 The secret behind Army finance is not expressed in the 
 word ‘ genius,’ nor even in ‘ prevision’; it is the result of 
 faith in God. Our Movement was born in absolute penury. 
 Nobody connected with it at the start, from the Founder 
 downwards, possessed a spare sovereign. Yet money was a 
 necessity. Buildings must be erected or hired. The poor 
 and neglected must be cared for. Evangelists or leaders 
 must be provided with their daily bread. The work must 
 be made known. Casual gifts, the result of occasional 
 appeals, were forthcoming; but these meant only spasmodic 
 and disconnected efforts. We could not make any great 
 show with the scissors when we were so uncertain of the 
 cloth. The Founder saw that the work must be made, so 
 far as was possible, to be self-supporting. 
 
 But ours was, and still is, a very poor community. The 
 people lived from hand to mouth themselves. Few of the 
 stations became self-maintaining in the first years. The 
 money they raised had to be supplemented from the centre. 
 By 1880, nevertheless, we had abundantly proved that the 
 little communities in the different localities could, as a 
 general rule, be supported by the people’s own gifts and 
 exertions. No doubt many of our Officers did suffer great 
 privations in establishing this principle, often because they 
 
 were so keen upon their work that they would not apply 
 I 
 
114 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 for the provision which was available for them. But the 
 principle of self-support within each community once 
 accepted has become widely adopted, and has answered 
 beyond all expectations. 
 
 We unite with this principle of self-support the further 
 principle that the strong must help the weak, or, rather, 
 that the strong and the weak must help each other. The 
 earliest form by which we tried to raise money for work 
 other than that carried on among the people from whom we 
 begged it, was by what were called Quarterly Collections. 
 The amount thus collected once in three months at each 
 Station was set apart for mew work. Later came the Self- 
 Denial Fund. That Fund came out of a remark of Major 
 (now Commissioner) Carleton on the platform of the old 
 Exeter Hall, to the effect that he proposed ‘ to give up his 
 pudding’ for a certain period in aid of the Funds. ‘ Why 
 not have an annual effort,’ said the Founder, ‘in which 
 every one shall be invited to perform some act of self- 
 denial?’ But for this principle it would have been impos- 
 sible either to begin or to carry on the missionary work 
 of The Army. Every Territory contributes to the Fund, 
 even those Territories which receive assistance from it 
 towards their own missionary enterprise. 
 
 Had it not been for this definite policy in connexion 
 with our exchequer, The Army might never have broken 
 its national boundaries, never have found opening before 
 its tread the gates of the future. We have gone on the 
 principle that if people have a religion worth having they 
 will prove it by making some sacrifice to maintain it. And 
 if it is the religion of Jesus Christ, they will want to extend 
 it to their fellows, even to the uttermost parts of the earth. 
 
XIV 
 THE MINOTAUR 
 
 In the autumn of 1885 I was indicted at the Old Bailey 
 —the Central Criminal Court of the United Kingdom— 
 together with the late W. T. Stead, then editor of the 
 “ Pall Mall Gazette,’ and certain other persons, on the charge _ 
 of unlawfully taking Eliza Armstrong, aged thirteen, out 
 of the possession of her parents and against their will. The 
 other persons concerned in the alleged abduction were 
 Rebecca Jarrett, a woman who had formerly kept a house 
 of ill fame, and had reformed her life after coming under 
 the influence of The Salvation Army; Elizabeth Combe, a 
 Swiss Officer of The Army; and Mussabini, a Greek, who 
 had taken the name of Sampson Jacques, and had assisted 
 Stead in the investigations. There was a further charge 
 against Stead, Jarrett, and Jacques, together with one 
 Madame Mourez, a procuress, of being concerned in an 
 assault on the child in question. 
 
 The case was tried before Mr. Justice Lopes and a 
 common jury. Mr. Justice Lopes, who afterwards became 
 Lord Ludlow, was said to have exceptional ability in a 
 certain class of case, but not even his closest legal friend 
 would claim a place for him among the great lawyers of 
 his time. Any distinction which the bench lacked, however, 
 was fully made up in the well of the court. The then 
 Attorney-General, Sir Richard Webster, who afterwards 
 became Lord Alverstone and Lord Chief Justice of England, 
 led the prosecution for the crown, and with him were 
 Mr. (now Sir Harry) Poland and Mr. R. S. Wright, then 
 M.P. for Norwich, and afterwards a very able judge of the 
 QOueen’s Bench. On our side another future Lord Chief, 
 then simply Mr. Charles Russell, appeared for Rebecca 
 
 115 
 
116 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 Jarrett. He was the outstanding figure in the defence, and 
 showed the conspicuous qualities for which the name of 
 Lord Russell of Killowen will long be remembered in the 
 annals of bench and bar. His junior was Mr. Charles 
 Matthews, afterwards Public Prosecutor. My own counsel 
 was Mr. S. D. Waddy, Q.C., later a judge of the County 
 Court, and with him were Mr. Horne Payne and Mr. R. F. 
 Colam. Mr. Sutherst was for Mrs. Combe, while Jacques’s 
 principal counsel was Mr. Henry Matthews, who became 
 Home Secretary in Lord Salisbury’s Government, and after- 
 wards was raised to the. peerage as Viscount Llandaff. 
 Stead defended himself, though his case was “‘ watched’ by 
 Charles Matthews. 
 
 The hearing occupied thirteen days in all, and seldom 
 if ever can the Old Bailey have witnessed the unfolding of 
 such a drama. The facts which were elicited created a 
 profound sensation throughout the country, and, indeed, 
 in many parts of the world. In the result I was acquitted ; 
 the charge against Elizabeth Combe was dismissed before 
 the case for the defence was even opened ; Stead was found 
 guilty of abduction and of aiding and abetting in the 
 assault, and was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment ; 
 Jacques was acquitted on the first charge, but was found 
 guilty of the same offence as Stead on the second, and was 
 sentenced to one month’s imprisonment, and Jarrett was 
 found guilty on both charges and sentenced to six months’ 
 imprisonment. In all these cases the punishment was 
 without hard labour, but Madame Mourez, whose case was 
 in a different category, was sentenced to imprisonment with 
 hard labour for six months. 
 
 Behind this prosaic narration of names and facts isa 
 somewhat important episode in the social history of modern 
 England. The trial itself was an anti-climax; it was a 
 cross-scent on the trail, and although, as I will explain pre- 
 sently, it had its uses, particularly for The Salvation Army, 
 it must not occupy the field to the exclusion of the real 
 achievement, namely, the violent awakening of the public 
 conscience which had already taken place on the subject 
 of child prostitution, and the expression of that conscience 
 
THE MINOTAUR 117 
 
 in the passing of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 
 1885. 
 
 I am concerned mainly in these pages with my own and 
 The Army’s share in the events of those agitating days, and 
 I write simply from that point of view. 
 
 From our earliest years as the Christian Mission, there 
 came, occasionally, to our penitent-form in Whitechapel, 
 unfortunate girls who looked to us for some means of 
 enabling them to throw off the fetters of their deadly 
 calling. Here and there kind women-comrades would fix 
 up these poor creatures for a night or two, but that was 
 only a very casual and uncertain method of dealing with 
 the problem. Presently one motherly woman, a baker’s 
 wife, who had already given up her front room to Magdalen, 
 suggested to me that if only she had more accommodation 
 she could take in these girls for a few days and look after 
 them until they were passed on to some employment. 
 
 Accordingly, The Army helping her, she and her husband 
 took a larger cottage, which was soon given over entirely to 
 this work, and another cottage was taken in addition. The 
 name of Mrs. Cottrill, in her little home in a shabby East 
 End street, is one to be handed down in honour to our 
 Army posterity, not only for what she herself did, but for 
 the mighty rescue work to which it led. To such humble 
 souls there is reared no monument on earth, save the work 
 of which they helped to lay the foundations, but surely 
 there is a window set up in Heaven ! 
 
 This work into which The Army, without any set pur- 
 pose of its own, was gradually led, was placed under the 
 personal supervision of Mrs. Bramwell Booth. Some time 
 after my marriage, the Founder, talking with me of this 
 new development, had said, ‘ What about Florrie ? ’ (mean- 
 ing my wife). ‘She is very young, I know, but if she feels 
 her heart drawn that way, then let her have charge.’ From 
 this time forward my wife began to interest herself in these 
 pitiful cases, and she was duly appointed to lead the new 
 undertaking. 
 
 Before she had been at her task for six months, it was 
 brought home to her that a frightful state of things existed 
 
118 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 in London. She was prepared for the evidence of widespread 
 prostitution, terrible as that is, but it came upon her as an 
 appalling revelation to find that young girls—children, 
 really, of thirteen and fourteen—were being entrapped by a 
 vicious network of carefully devised agencies and in their 
 innocence condemned to a life of shame. She declared 
 further that there existed a regular traffic in these girls ; 
 that it had widespread ramifications, both in England and 
 on the Continent; that it was maintained by the most 
 atrocious fraud and villainy, and involved such anguish 
 and degradation as, in her opinion, could not be matched 
 by any trade in human beings known to history. 
 
 Those hideous facts greatly affected her, and during the 
 first year or two of our married life, the skies were often 
 overcast on this account. Where there should have been 
 smiles and brightness there were often tears and sorrow. 
 Thinking of the miseries of these poor creatures, Mrs. Booth 
 cried herself to sleep night after night. She told me of the 
 most harrowing incidents which had come to her knowledge. 
 I tried to comfort her by suggesting that the stories were 
 probably exaggerated ; that the credibility of these folks 
 was not to be trusted too readily, and so on. But, pre- 
 sently yielding to her entreaties, I said that I would look 
 into the matter for myself. I made certain inquiries and 
 interviewed one or two people. Among the latter was the 
 then Chamberlain of the City of London, Mr. Benjamin 
 Scott, who, in association with Mrs. Josephine Butler, had 
 been attacking the Contagious Diseases Acts then in force. 
 He said that he could well believe all that I heard from my 
 wife, that it was a disgrace to civilization, and that some of 
 the police winked at the betrayers and procurers. He 
 expressed in his gentle, courteous way the hope that some- 
 thing would be done. I answered him with emphasis that 
 something would ! 
 
 It was some little time after this that, on arriving at 
 our offices in Queen Victoria Street one day, I was informed 
 that the housekeeper when he opened the front gate at 
 seven o’clock that morning had found a young girl outside 
 who had told him an extraordinary story. The girl was 
 
THE MINOTAUR 11g 
 
 brought to me, a decent, well-favoured girl of about seven- 
 teen, wearing a very beautiful red silk dress. She told me 
 that she had come up from the country to London in answer 
 to an advertisement for a girl to help in the general work 
 of a house, and had been received on arrival by the mistress 
 who had answered her application. She soon found, how- 
 ever, that she had been entrapped into a brothel. 
 
 As the days went on her ‘mistress’ urged her with 
 increasing force to be a ‘ lady ’ like the others in the house, 
 gave her the red silk dress, and compelled her to visit a 
 certain music-hall in her company. The girl resisted all 
 importunities, but escape seemed to be impossible, and she 
 did not know what to do or where to go. On the previous 
 night a man had made himself very objectionable, where- 
 upon she fled and barricaded herself in one of the kitchens, 
 yielding neither to threats nor cajolery. After some time 
 she heard the landlady say, “ Leave her there till morning ; 
 she will come to her senses when she wants her breakfast.’ 
 Left alone, the girl remembered amid her alarm and agita- 
 tion that in her own town she had attended some meetings 
 of The Salvation Army, and that in her box was an old 
 song-book, which bore on its cover the address of General 
 Booth. He was surely the one person in all the great city 
 who would help her! It was four o’clock in the morning 
 before everything was still in the house. She waited a 
 while, and then crept up to her room, found the little red- 
 covered song-book, and slipped out. Inquiring her way of 
 a policeman, she walked from Pimlico to Queen Victoria 
 Street, and remained outside the door of Headquarters 
 until it was opened. 
 
 The story was hard to believe, but there was the girl, 
 who had been found outside the door between seven and 
 eight o’clock that morning ; and there, moreover, was the 
 dress, which obviously was not such as a mistress would 
 provide for a domestic servant. 
 
 I sent a man at once to the address from which she 
 said that she had escaped. There they stated at first that 
 they knew nothing of her, but when he told them that 
 they were telling lies, and that he was an Officer of 
 
120 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 The Salvation Army, which already had the girl under its 
 protection, they changed their tune. At last he got her 
 box away, and we found further confirmation of her story. 
 The incident made a great impression upon me, an impres- 
 sion which was deepened further when a number of girls 
 were brought up from Whitechapel by Mrs. Booth, and I 
 had the opportunity of questioning them. One of them, 
 about fourteen years old, manifestly enceinte, told a terrible 
 story of how she had been met in the street by a very 
 ‘nice’ woman, taken to a music-hall, persuaded to meet 
 her ‘friend’ again, and so dragged into virtual imprison- 
 ment and the last outrage. 
 
 All this caused me no little suffering and I resolved—and 
 recorded my resolve on paper—that, no matter what the 
 consequences might be, I would do all I could to stop these 
 abominations, to rouse public opinion, to agitate for the 
 improvement of the law, to bring to justice the adulterers 
 and murderers of innocence, and to make a way of escape 
 for the victims. 
 
 It will be asked: Where, all this time, were the police ? 
 Was there no law which could be invoked to scourge the 
 offenders? The legislative position in 1885 was this: The 
 House of Lords, to its credit, had already three times passed 
 a Bill the primary object of which was to ensure greater 
 protection for young girls and women, and particularly to 
 raise the age at which a girl’s consent could free her seducer 
 from responsibility. The age at that time, wickedly and 
 absurdly, was thirteen! On the first two occasions the Bill, 
 after passing the Upper House, met with some untimely 
 fate in the Lower. It was passed for the third time by the 
 Lords in the spring of this fateful year. 
 
 We knew that the Government was very tepid on the 
 whole question, and without the stimulus of popular 
 agitation it seemed unlikely that the Bill would meet with 
 any greater success on its third venture into the House of 
 Commons than on its first or second. As a matter of fact, 
 to anticipate a little, although Sir William Harcourt, whom 
 we approached, lost no time in putting the Bill on the 
 Orders of the House, it was talked out on the second reading 
 
THE MINOTAUR I2I 
 
 early in May. Altogether an inglorious chapter in the 
 records of the People’s Chamber ! 
 
 The appeal, then, must be to the people themselves, 
 whose heart and conscience, we were sure, had not been 
 interpreted by their representatives in Parliament assembled. 
 
 After some further conference with various friends, 
 including Benjamin Scott and Mrs. Josephine Butler, I 
 consulted W. T. Stead, and told him the facts of child 
 enslavement and prostitution as they had come to our 
 notice. I said that I and Mrs. Booth had looked into them 
 sufficiently to feel that, although there might, here and 
 there, be exaggerations, there was urgent need for the 
 passing and the strengthening, if possible, of the measure 
 then before Parliament. I asked him to give publicity to 
 the business so that the Government should become aware 
 of the pressure of public opinion. At first Stead hesitated. 
 He had not been so very long in London, and though editor 
 of the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette,’ was not perhaps so firmly in 
 the saddle as afterwards. Finally, however, he came to 
 Headquarters ; I introduced him there to Benjamin Scott, 
 who explained the legal situation and also the Continental 
 traffic, a branch of the iniquity with the history and detail 
 of which he was specially familiar. After Scott had gone I 
 told Stead that I had three or four women in the next room, 
 together with a converted brothel-keeper, whom he might 
 interview for himself. These women were brought in one by 
 one, and Stead put them through their stories. Women I 
 call them, but, with the exception of Rebecca Jarrett, they 
 were all under sixteen. 
 
 When the interrogatories were ended and the girls had 
 withdrawn, there was a pause, and I looked at Stead. He 
 was evidently deeply moved by what he had heard. It 
 had shaken his vehement nature, and presently his feelings 
 found vent. Raising his fist, he brought it down on my 
 table with a mighty bang, so that the very inkpots shivered, 
 and he uttered one word, the word ‘Damn!’ This explo- 
 sion over, I said, ‘ Yes, that is all very well, but it will not 
 help us. The first thing to do is to get the facts in such a 
 form that we can publish them.’ Stead agreed; we not 
 
122 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 only took counsel together, we prayed together, and then 
 he went away. 
 
 A period of consideration, during which Stead conferred 
 with one or two friends, including Mrs. Butler, followed.} 
 Ultimately we had another meeting at Headquarters and 
 decided that the best thing to do would be to examine the 
 situation, independently of the evidence of the injured girls 
 whom we had collected. Stead wanted to obtain first-hand 
 information. I provided a woman who actually went and 
 placed herself in a brothel as though she were a woman of 
 doubtful character, and lived there for ten days, reporting 
 what happened. This beautiful and fearless girl carried. 
 through the scheme with complete satisfaction. We 
 
 i Mrs. Josephine Butler, one of the pioneers of freedom for women, 
 the wife of Canon Butler, of Winchester, had been long and deeply con- 
 cerned about the very painful conditions prevailing in some Continental 
 countries, and she entered with enthusiasm into our campaign. Her one 
 fear was that we should delay the publication of what we discovered, 
 and she urged us to make public the facts already at our disposal before 
 the then approaching General Election. The following, from a letter from 
 Winchester, June 11, 1885, shows something of her feeling: 
 
 _‘ My dear Mr. Bramwell, 
 
 ‘I have received your letter; thanks. I wish I could have seen 
 you to express my strong conviction of the mistake, it will be, if the 
 publication of our discoveries is delayed. Hear me, as an old political 
 agitator, and the daughter of an old political agitator. In some ways my 
 experience is far less than yours in your blessed Salvation work, but I 
 have been taught something of political agitation. 
 
 ‘TI never believed that you could have got the age of protection raised 
 this session by a “‘ fluke,’’ as it were. God sees further than we do. While 
 you (we) were thinking of moving London in order to obtain our good 
 end, He has, I think, a wider purpose, i.e. to move our whole country. 
 Remember London is but a small part of England, and no great reform 
 on any moral question was ever carried by London alone—never. The 
 backbone of our country is in the provinces. . . . Now in order to arouse 
 these, and above all to move the new Electors, the country people, you 
 want time, and you have not got a bit too much time before the General 
 Election comes on. If you put off other questions on which the new 
 constituencies are already being [?] will beat you out of the field. I do 
 believe God means us to make our appeal to the conscience of all England 
 (still the land of the Bible), and now is the very time to doit. ... 
 
 ‘See what an opportunity missed it will be if you let this General 
 Election pass without having roused the people over the country in a 
 way which London people alone cannot be roused ; and what an influence 
 on the character of the new Parliament you will have. I do pray you and 
 Mr. Stead to look at the matter in this light, and also please let me tell 
 you this that there is no time to lose, for it takes longer than you may © 
 suppose to set the wave moving in the provinces. .. . 
 
 ‘Ever yours affectionately, 
 wi) og eee ed ee 
 
THE MINOTAUR 123 
 
 provided her with money, so that she could pay the brothel- 
 keeper suitably, and at the same time express a certain 
 fastidiousness with regard to callers. Although she had 
 some unpleasant experiences, she came through unharmed. 
 We planned also that Stead should visit her in the house, 
 and there she told him the awful story of what she had 
 witnessed concerning girls of thirteen or thereabouts. 
 
 Other people also were set upon the task of investigation, 
 including a detective, a clever fellow, the Greek already 
 mentioned. In the result we found a great deal more 
 immorality in London than we had ever supposed to exist, 
 a great many more houses of ill fame than even the police 
 had known about ; but, shocking and sorrowful as all this 
 was, it concerned men and women, and was more or less 
 open and acknowledged. The further thing which we 
 found, and the discovery of which determined our subse- 
 quent action, was that running through all this brazen 
 organization of vice, was, as Mrs. Booth had affirmed, a 
 deeper and darker vein of more cruel and appalling wicked- 
 ness—nothing less than a traffic in children who were lured 
 to a physical and moral doom. It was not the immorality 
 that stung us so much, horrible as it was; it was the 
 deliberate scheming and planning whereby mere children 
 were bought and sold as irrevocably as in a slave market. 
 
 The ‘ Pall Mall Gazette’ ‘ Extra’ of July 6, 1885, in 
 which Stead described ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern 
 Babylon,’ took the British public by storm in a way that 
 can hardly be paralleled in newspaper history. I remem- 
 ber that I was out of London on the afternoon that the 
 first article, which I had already seen in proof, appeared, 
 and, returning in the evening, I found that the only copies 
 of the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette’ to be obtained were being 
 sold by boys in Ludgate Circus for half-a-crown a sheet. 
 The sensation was all the more tremendous because the 
 ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ had a high reputation for exactitude. 
 It was a paper of tone and privilege, much patronized 
 by clubmen. The hot waves of public feeling quickly 
 swelled and lapped up to the doors of the House of 
 Commons. 
 
124 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 On the very day of the publication of the first of the 
 articles, Lord Salisbury’s new Ministry had met Parliament. 
 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, in his programme for the remainder 
 of the session, had made no reference to the Criminal Law 
 Amendment Bill, which had been left in the air—and, 
 being House of Commons air, none too healthy a medium 
 in which to be suspended. Nor did the ex-Ministers opposite 
 protest against the omission. But a day or two later, 
 evidently prompted by the state of feeling outside, the 
 Home Secretary, Sir Richard Cross, proposed to resume 
 the interrupted debate, on a promise of co-operation from 
 Sir William Harcourt. Stead and I and one or two propa- 
 gandists were called in to suggest how the measure could be 
 strengthened. The Bill was a week in Committee in the 
 House of Commons, and it passed into law early in August. 
 The age of consent was put even higher than the fifteen 
 years on which the Lords had insisted. On the motion 
 of the Home Secretary himself, by 179 votes to 71, it was 
 raised to sixteen. Never has there been a more immediate 
 capitulation to the Fourth Estate. But the Fourth Estate in 
 this case had behind it a British public stirred to the depths. 
 
 So far so good. The battle was won! We had suffered 
 in the fray and we were still to suffer, but nothing could 
 undo the result of the campaign. Wounded we were. I say 
 nothing here of myself, but the following by Mrs. Josephine 
 Butler may give some idea of the extent to which Stead 
 had passed through the furnace: 
 
 Mr. Stead is publicly known only as a brave and enterprising 
 reformer. But tomy 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!’ 
 
ove 
 THE OLD BAILEY 
 
 THE events—and the success—I have here narrated 
 will raise the query, ‘Why the Old Bailey? Why three 
 months’ imprisonment for the chivalrous man who had 
 laid bare the infamy, and in doing so had risked his reputa- 
 tion and even his life? Why imprisonment, or at least the 
 strain and odium of public trial, for his associates?’ 
 Strange indeed it was that in the first case of any public 
 interest under the new Criminal Law Amendment Act the 
 ‘criminals’ in the dock should be, not the monsters who 
 had battened on the villainy, but the men and women who 
 had helped to expose it! To explain that strange twisting 
 of causes and circumstances, I must retrace my steps a 
 little, and go back to the secret inquiry which led to the 
 publication of the ‘ Maiden Tribute.’ 
 
 It was one thing for Stead and the rest of us to satisfy 
 ourselves of the truth of the position; it was another 
 thing to gain public credence for what we knew. It was 
 not enough to put forward the general results of our obser- 
 vations ; we must have concrete cases proved or capable 
 beyond all doubt of being proved. Before venturing on 
 publication, therefore, Stead suggested that certain experi- 
 ments be made. He got an old procuress to “‘ sell’ him two 
 girls, both under sixteen, for each of whom he paid fio. 
 The girls were produced at the appointed house, and Stead 
 had a talk with each of them with the object of discovering 
 how far they were aware of the nature of the transaction. 
 It was evident, particularly so in the case of one of them, 
 that they had only the vaguest notion of any possible 
 impropriety. Stead’s blunt talk thoroughly frightened them, 
 however, and, giving each of them £5, he sent them away. 
 
 125 
 
126 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 Other experiments of various kinds were made, equally 
 confirmatory of what we had heard. 
 
 But even such stories were not definite enough for the 
 purpose. They would have to be taken only on the word 
 of Stead and those co-operating with him. We then decided 
 that the only other thing to do was to make an experiment 
 with an actual case, and to carry it through in such a way 
 that we could call evidence from people of repute with regard 
 to what had happened. We thought out the plan most care- 
 fully, and it was put into execution on the Derby day of 1885. 
 
 The plan was this: that Rebecca Jarrett, who, being 
 an ex-brothel-keeper, understood the business, should go to 
 some woman she knew would part with her child. The 
 child should be taken to a professional procuress (Madame 
 Mourez), who would certify it to be a virgo intacta, this 
 being one of the abominations essential to such trans- 
 actions. Then it was arranged that the child should be 
 conveyed to a well-known house where Stead had engaged 
 a room, and that there he should be left alone with her 
 for an hour or so. It was important, further, to have it 
 certified after this experience, that nothing had happened 
 to the child, and accordingly it was agreed that she should 
 be taken from the brothel by one of our trusted women, 
 who was a great factor in these investigations, and was 
 known throughout as Mrs. X,} straight to the house of a 
 specialist whose name I had suggested, and who had most 
 warmly agreed to help us, and that the specialist, after 
 examining her, should furnish a certificate. 
 
 All this was done to plan, and the next morning at 
 Charing Cross Station I received the child from Jarrett, 
 and Mrs. Combe conveyed her to Paris. Thus the case was 
 proved up to the hilt, for although this particular girl had 
 received no whit of harm, it was shown to be possible for a 
 procuress to buy a child for money, to certificate her, bring 
 her to a house of ill fame, leave her with a man she had 
 never seen before, and then send her off to the Continent 
 so that nothing further need be known of her. 
 
 1 Mrs. X. was Mrs. Major Reynolds, one of the most devoted of the 
 splendid band of women then working under Mrs. Booth. 
 
THE OLD BAILEY 127 
 
 The moment this was done, Stead felt that his case was 
 complete. He already had his information; he simply 
 wanted to clinch it. The exposures in the ‘ Pall Mall 
 Gazette’ soon followed. 
 
 It would have been wonderful in such an enterprise if 
 there had been no mistakes or miscalculations. The mis- 
 takes never made me regret in the least the plan that we 
 pursued. The need was desperate, and was met by desperate 
 measures, which usually mean risk. 
 
 The little circumstance which led us eventually to the 
 dock was the (quite unnecessary) publication by Stead of a 
 letter which the girl had written from France to her mother, 
 and which, of course, had been intercepted. He published 
 it with the object of showing the innocence of the child 
 who had been sold for money. In this letter she had quoted 
 a childish rhyme, which her mother recalled that she knew, 
 and at once said, ‘ That’s my Eliza’ (the child had been 
 called by another name in the revelations). 
 
 Forthwith, in the character of the injured parent, she 
 went to a great enemy of ours who did not like the pro- 
 minence which The Salvation Army had obtained through 
 the affair. Another story was also set before the editor of 
 a Sunday newspaper, also no friend to The Army. The 
 ‘crime’ stood revealed! The girl had been abducted ! 
 We, the protagonists of repressive legislation, had broken 
 our own law! An evening rival of the ‘ Pall Mall ’—now 
 defunct—took the case up. Information was laid on which 
 a charge could be preferred. We were summoned under 
 our own Act, which, of course, provided for much heavier 
 sentences than had been possible under-the old law! We, 
 a gang of subterranean engineers, were hoist with our own 
 petard ! 
 
 The circumstances of the trial at the Old Bailey need 
 not be gone into at any length. Stead and I and the others 
 were summoned in the first instance to appear at Bow 
 Street, and a warrant was issued for the arrest of Rebecca 
 Jarrett ; I had refused to disclose her whereabouts, fearing, 
 as I did, that, her case being on a somewhat different plane 
 from ours, she might be refused bail. We resolved that we 
 
128 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 would not have her arrested until the trial, when we hoped 
 to be able to get bail for her along with ourselves, and so 
 it turned out. 
 
 Every blackguard in London must have assembled in 
 Bow Street while the case was before the magistrate. From 
 every foul den in the metropolis the people had come to 
 gloat on the discomfiture of these modern Galahads. I 
 was mobbed more than once, dragged out of a cab, and 
 maltreated, and only rescued with difficulty by a police 
 inspector, who drove the crowd right and left. On more 
 than one occasion the police placed a ‘ Black Maria’ at 
 our disposal, and we were rapidly conveyed from the Court 
 to some distant Square, where cabs could be available for 
 us. And, apart from the mob who shook our heads, there 
 were the righteous and respectable people who shook their 
 own. They were agreed as to the evil, were, in fact, horrified 
 that such things could be in their midst, but, with here and 
 there an exception, they strongly disapproved our methods 
 of meeting it. It was impossible to disapprove of theirs, 
 because they gave no hint of having any. 
 
 And so to the Old Bailey. Here the feeling inside and 
 outside the Court was intense. At times during the hearing 
 the Court was very subdued, the common hush almost 
 suggesting a religious solemnity ; at other times there was 
 outburst and clamour. The public excitement could not 
 be kept away from the precincts of the law. I am bound 
 to say that on the whole we were personally treated with 
 consideration. The robing room was given up to us, and 
 we lunched together. Everything that could be unpleasant 
 was dispensed with, except the necessary formality of 
 locking us up for a few minutes in the cells each morning 
 before we entered the dock. I had the ‘ condemned’ cell, 
 by the way, not, I am sure, because of its associations, but 
 because it happened to be the most commodious in the old 
 Old Bailey. The warders were very civil, the police quite 
 nice, and all the time we were sustained by a current of 
 friendliness, if not of sympathy, even on the part of some 
 who were against us. 
 
 Mr. Justice Lopes, who behaved with great civility to 
 
THE OLD BAILEY 129 
 
 me personally, was against us from the beginning. His 
 view was evidently that we were all guilty. He showed 
 himself particularly hostile at first, but weakened consider- 
 ably, and it was at his suggestion that Mrs. Combe was 
 released, long before the hearing concluded. All parties 
 agreed that there was no evidence against her; meaning, 
 of course, that they had not been able to secure any evidence. 
 
 Rebecca Jarrett broke down under cross-examination. 
 She had kept a house of ill fame, and certain things were 
 brought forward relating to her past which she had not the 
 courage to admit. It was a cruel ordeal for her, and I 
 repented while I sat in the dock listening to her in the 
 witness-box that I had allowed her to embark on such an 
 adventure. Yet I amsatisfied that the evidence we obtained 
 through her was an essential link in the chain, and that 
 without it we should never have enforced the need for raising 
 the age. 
 
 My own feelings during the summing-up are set down in 
 a letter written to my mother from the dock; from which 
 I make an extract: 
 
 As to the case, I have no regrets as to what I did. The mistakes 
 and accidents all through have only been such as are usually attached 
 to all human enterprises. I regret them, but I could not prevent 
 them, glad as I would have been to do so. It is painful to have all 
 regard for motive shut out of what they think it well to shut it out 
 from, and yet to imply all sorts of bad motives in connexion with 
 the smallest incidents of the affair. But I do beg you not to be 
 distressed in any way about me personally. God will take care of 
 me ! 
 
 Then another thing. I do hope that no efforts will be made on 
 
 my behalf, if we go to prison, that are not made on behalf of Stead. 
 Do please let me beg this of you... . 
 
 The jury showed a very intelligent mastery of the 
 problem. Although we were told over and over again as 
 the trial proceeded that motive had nothing to do with the 
 law, and that the simple question was whether or not we 
 had abducted the girl, we could see day by day that the 
 jury were coming more and more to the conviction that 
 motive must be allowed for. They were almost bound to 
 find Stead guilty because of his own admissions, technical 
 
 K 
 
130 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 though they were, yet such was their evident hesitation in 
 doing so, and such the volume of public sentiment outside, 
 that Mr. Justice Lopes gave what was a comparatively 
 light sentence—three months—which the Home Secretary 
 promptly ordered should be in the first division. Still, it 
 was a conviction, and my satisfaction in my own acquittal 
 was overshadowed by it. 
 
 The feature of the whole trial, in my opinion, was 
 Charles Russell’s speech for Jarrett. It was one of his most 
 wonderful efforts. He spoke for two hours, and when he 
 sat down, my dear wife sent up a note to me in the dock 
 saying that she did not care how the case ended after that 
 speech! ‘It is worth it all.’ Although Rebecca Jarrett in 
 her evidence had produced an unfavourable impression, yet 
 when Russell finished speaking for her there was not a dry 
 eye in the Court. Even the Judge and the Clerk of Arraigns 
 were moved by the appeal which he made on her behalf. 
 When the Attorney-General came to reply, he dealt with 
 Rebecca very cautiously. 
 
 During his cross-examination, Sir Richard Webster 
 showed some tendency to bully. One of his favourite 
 methods in cross-examining was to repeat the question, 
 “Do I understand you to say ...?’ At last I said to 
 him in reply to one such repetition, ‘Sir Richard, I have 
 told you once. Why do you ask me again?’ From that 
 point his manner greatly improved. One small circum- 
 stance which I recall with regard to Webster was our dis- 
 covery of a bundle of letters on the table of the apartment 
 assigned to our use, which Webster had evidently mislaid. 
 I took them up and read one or two, thinking they were 
 ours, but finding that they belonged to the prosecuting 
 counsel, sent them to him. I gathered enough of their 
 contents to know that they were letters from his con- 
 stituents—he had just been elected for Launceston—hotly 
 criticizing him for appearing against The Salvation Army ! 
 
 The best speech after Russell’s was Waddy’s for me. 
 Both Russell and Waddy saw our position from the begin- 
 ning, but certain of our legal friends misunderstood it in 
 some respects. At one of the conferences in the Temple, 
 
THE OLD BAILEY 131 
 
 at which nearly all the counsel—a formidable array— 
 engaged in the defence were present, Stead expressed our 
 unwillingness to take a certain line which, though it might 
 be useful for the defence, was not, in his opinion, entirely 
 candid. Thereupon Henry Matthews, in the presence of us 
 all, burst out with the exclamation, ‘ Oh, Russell, I cannot 
 stand these people’s thirst for being martyrs!’ Stead 
 replied like lightning, “ No! you will never be one.’ It was 
 the idea of some of these gentlemen in wigs that the whole 
 thing was a flare, either to win renown for The Salvation 
 Army, or to make the fortune of a newspaper. 
 
 The uses of the trial? Of course, we had already 
 obtained the Act, and we counted nothing else of very much 
 moment. But the trial did The Army a great deal of good. 
 It made us known, and put us at one stroke in the very front 
 rank of those who were contending for the better treat- 
 ment of the lost and the poor; and while it roused some 
 powerful enemies, especially in the Press, the enmity lasted 
 only for a time, while the sympathy which was generated 
 remained and remains a permanent possession. Our work 
 for women was greatly furthered by these strange circum- 
 stances. We gained friends in political circles, won recog- 
 nition from the Government then existing and from its 
 successors, and were brought into touch with Queen Victoria 
 and with some of her Court who ever since have been inter- 
 ested in what we have been doing. We knew from the 
 Dowager Marchioness of Ely and others that the Queen 
 followed the proceedings with great concern and sympathy. 
 The case opened doors for us also in the oversea Dominions, 
 and in the United States, and the sympathy materialized in 
 financial help, which, if not at the time large in amount, was 
 encouraging in character. 
 
 A word may be said on subsequent happenings as they 
 concern one or two of the persons who figured in these pro- 
 ceedings. One strange circumstance was the discovery, ten 
 years later, that Eliza Armstrong was the illegitimate 
 daughter of the woman who had posed as the injured mother. 
 Had this been known at the time it is very improbable that 
 we should have been prosecuted at all. The Salvation Army 
 
132 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 has since assisted Eliza more or less. The mention of Rebecca 
 Jarrett shall close this episode. It is pleasant to record that 
 she has done well. Her subsequent life has amply proved 
 the sincerity of her repentance. She is still with The Army, 
 enjoying a happy old age, free from the bondage of the past, 
 and trying to serve God in the sphere in which He has in 
 His mercy placed her. 
 
XVI 
 GLIMPSES OF STATESMEN 
 
 ONE of the early champions of The Salvation Army among 
 British statesmen was John Bright. He it was who wrote 
 to us, at a time when we were harassed by unruly mobs and 
 law-breaking magistrates, ‘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.’ 
 
 For a long period Bright had rooms in Piccadilly, over 
 a shop, where he stayed during the Parliamentary week, 
 going home into the country for the week-end. It was a 
 dismal place, musty and dusty. At the time I saw him the 
 Home Rule agitation was beginning to rend the Liberal 
 Party. Bright was angry with Gladstone for having sent 
 up his ‘ kite’ without notice to his colleagues. ‘ Why didn’t 
 he ask us?’ he kept on saying. I can see him now in the 
 shadows of that room, his deep voice repeating the question. 
 He seemed even more annoyed at the neglect of Gladstone 
 to inform his colleagues than at his change of attitude on the 
 Irish question. 
 
 We talked of W. T. Stead. Of some of Stead’s views 
 Bright had a great horror. He spoke with indignation of 
 Stead’s former agitation for increasing the fleet. I suggested 
 that if he had a fine mansion, filled with precious things, he 
 might not think it very wicked, with burglars about, to keep 
 a good-sized bulldog in the garden. He laughed so that the 
 teacup shook in his hand. 
 
 ‘Well,’ he said at parting, ‘tell your friend Stead I 
 will let him have the dog, but he must keep him on the 
 chain.’ 
 
 It struck me—was I wrong ?—that his objection to the 
 
 133 
 
134 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 fleet and, indeed, to armaments in general, was more to the 
 appearance than to the reality. He did not think it so very 
 wicked to have anavy. What he objected to was having 
 it too much in evidence ! | 
 
 With Bright, as with every really great man, there was 
 a total absence of ‘ side.’ Before I had been in his room for 
 five minutes he had made me as much at home as if I had had 
 his acquaintance for years. In some ways he was really a 
 most charming man, and in appearance one of the most 
 noble. Although, as in the case of Gladstone, at first sight 
 his shortness of stature was disappointing, he had the most 
 beautiful face and hands, and a head in ten thousand. 
 
 For all his Liberalism—shall I say Radicalism ?—there 
 was a strain of real Conservatism in Bright. He had a 
 mind capable of certain important distinctions. I believe 
 he was able to perceive, and did perceive, ‘ that while perse- 
 cution is always bad, intolerance of vice, and of the opinions 
 that promote vice, is the life-blood of a healthy society ; 
 that what is called broadmindedness is often just no more 
 than not knowing what you think yourself, and not caring 
 what other people think.’ 
 
 Lord Salisbury impressed me in a different way. Like 
 Bright’s, his head was magnificent, though his features, if 
 there be anything in physiognomy, were scarcely those of a 
 strong character. His figure was an imposing one. A feature 
 of it—especially in his later years—was a marked stoop, 
 which at times seemed to be a defect, but which at other 
 times appeared, curiously enough, as a not unfitting accen- 
 tuation of the weight and burliness of the man. His head 
 appeared to be too heavy for his frame. It was said of him, 
 possibly with some truth, that in diplomacy he was ‘a 
 lath painted to look like iron.’ There was something about 
 his appearance which gave an idea of tremendous force, 
 combined with a curious frailty. In some respects I 
 regarded Lord Salisbury as an ideal diplomatist, as diplo- 
 matists go, though I was quite alive to his mistakes. I was 
 first interested in him because of the fine part he played, then 
 as Lord Robert Cecil, in the Schleswig-Holstein affair, in 
 1866. That, of course, was before my time of intelligent 
 
GLIMPSES OF STATESMEN 135 
 
 comprehension of world affairs, but in after years I read his 
 published speeches, and in my early visits to Denmark I 
 attained a somewhat intimate knowledge of the heartbreak 
 caused by the British failure in that matter. I never 
 sympathized, however, with the clamour of those who 
 abused Lord Salisbury’s line of action in Berlin after the 
 Turco-Russian War, miserable as the consequences have 
 turned out to be for the world. I am confident that he 
 really fought for what he believed to be right, and that the 
 result might have been a far happier one for Europe if he 
 had been alone there instead of being an understudy to 
 Disraeli. 
 
 Hatfield is on the same railway line as my own station, 
 and sometimes I saw Lord Salisbury on his journeys to and 
 from town. On occasion, without noticing that he was 
 already occupying the carriage, I got into the same compart- 
 ment, to find him alone. Several times I noticed that he 
 was reading the New Testament; once or twice it may 
 have been the Book of Common Prayer. Now and again 
 we had a brief conversation on these little journeys. One 
 occasion I remember particularly. He was seeking to 
 encourage me about the work of The Army, and he advised 
 me not to take too much notice of the attacks which were 
 constantly being made upon us. I cannot recall whether 
 he said he had made the remark in a speech he had just 
 delivered, or that he was intending to make it, but he said, 
 ‘I give vou the counsel which I give to my own friends, 
 “Never say anything for me unless you say something 
 against me.”’’ That idea, that unmixed praise may be a 
 serious evil, and that a moiety of abuse may be a positive 
 good, has often thrown a little ray of light upon the way. 
 
 Mr. Asquith, whose title, the Earl of Oxford, is not yet 
 familiar to the public ear, I came to know owing to his 
 being retained for us in various law proceedings. Of his 
 skill as a lawyer I have something to say in another chapter. 
 Later on we consulted him in matters concerning develop- 
 ments in our constitutional arrangements. From the first 
 I felt a kind of surprised admiration for his ability, about 
 which, indeed, no man with half an eye could be mistaken. 
 
136 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 His is the kind of genius which I hold most in respect—the 
 ability to take trouble, plus the will to take 1t. 
 
 In my opinion Mr. Asquith has always suffered from 
 two great disadvantages. He came late in life to Parliament 
 and office, and this, coupled perhaps with his legal training, 
 in a great measure accounts for that inflexibility of manner 
 and that compartmental habit of thinking noted by so many 
 students of his personality. They are the signs of the 
 mechanical habit of mind, although of the mechanical 
 raised to the level of genius. It is a Jove who wields the 
 hammer, but the strokes are too precise. One must recog- 
 nize, however, that it was probably this very characteristic 
 which helped to make him a master of lucid and precise 
 statement. His other defect, to which I have referred, is 
 the absence of what has been called the ‘ emotion ideal.’ 
 But I should like to say that I believe the Earl of Oxford 
 to be a man of true principle. If he is not possessed of any 
 great moral passion or crusading ardour, he is a true hater 
 of compromises and shams, he detests dodgery, in politics 
 or elsewhere, and he is a man who sees clearly what he 
 sees and acts with concentrated energy. If he had seen 
 that spiritual truth is not dependent on history, and if only 
 he had had the dominating motive of religious conviction and 
 experience—especially experience—he could easily have 
 taken as commanding a place in his own time as Gladstone 
 took in his—perhaps even more commanding. 
 
 With Gladstone I never came into personal contact. 
 My father had one interview with him at Hawarden, and 
 Gladstone greatly impressed him as a sincere and spiritually 
 minded man, and the Founder was a good judge! A letter 
 from Gladstone followed the interview, in which, referring 
 to some notes which the Founder had sent him, he said 
 that they helped him ‘ 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 
 
 1 The Life of William Booth, by Harold Begbie. (Vol. ii, pp. 213-18.) 
 
GLIMPSES OF STATESMEN 137 
 
 a genuine purpose to promote the work of God in the 
 world.’ 
 
 Both men made a deep impression on the other. Writing 
 shortly afterwards of the matter my father said : 
 
 It may be asked what were the general impressions made upon 
 me by my conversation with this remarkable man ? No matter how 
 widely divergent opinions may be respecting Mr. Gladstone’s political 
 views and legislative action, there is no room for opposing estimates 
 of his intellectual powers, his oratorical gifts, the lofty positions he 
 has filled in the Councils of his country, or the vast influence he has 
 wielded in the world. No one could be with him, and hear him talk 
 in the unconventional manner I had the opportunity of doing, 
 without receiving some definite and lasting impressions respecting 
 him. In my case, what were they ? At least, what were some of 
 them ? 
 
 The first thing that struck me was his earnestness—you might 
 term it his unaffected 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. 
 
 I was also much impressed by the genzality which made me feel 
 at home all in a moment. Then at every point I could not help 
 feeling that I was in contact with a lofty soul, controlled by motives 
 of generous kindliness, who was pleased to learn something of what 
 seemed like a wonderful work of God. 
 
 I was also impressed by the disinterestedness with which he pur- 
 sued his inquiries, as well as with the choice and beautiful and 
 expressive words which he evidently had at perfect command. 
 There was no hesitation. The phrases wanted to express the exact 
 shade of meaning he desired came at will and that, I thought, in 
 tones most grateful to the ear. I had heard it said before the inter- 
 view that he was a great talker. After the interview it is my opinion 
 that he ought to talk. Itis a luxury to listen to him. It is ashame 
 for him to be silent. It surely is the message, and not the age of a 
 speaker, which is the vital matter. 
 
 My Salvationist friends will ask me how far I was impressed with 
 Mr. Gladstone’s religious realizations ? I shall answer, that I had 
 not much opportunity for judging; but I may say that not only 
 was the whole tenor of that conversation favourable to such a 
 conclusion, but that there were passages in that interchange of 
 thoughts, views, and feelings that produced on my mind very 
 forcibly the impression that, among the many things carefully con- 
 sidered and experimentally known to W. E. Gladstone were the 
 governing influences of the Holy Spirit and the saving Grace of God. 
 
 I saw Gladstone in the House once or twice and heard 
 
138 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 him make a short speech. Some time after—during the 
 period I think of his second administration—I was walking 
 down Regent Street one afternoon when I recognized the 
 Prime Minister on the other side of the street. No one who 
 knew him at all could mistake him. The vivacity which 
 belonged to his speaking and action showed itself in his very 
 gait, and he conveyed something of himself in the varying 
 changes of his facial expression. On this occasion he was 
 accompanied by a young woman, and I, probably quickened 
 in my perceptions as a result of Salvation Army experience, 
 instantly saw that she was one of a sorrowful class. Mr. 
 Gladstone was evidently speaking to her in the most kindly 
 and fatherly manner. I did not of course hear what he said, 
 but there was something about his whole attitude, and about 
 the girl’s appearance also, which led me to feel that he was 
 appealing to her and bestowing some kind of favour upon 
 her. 
 
 I did not then know what I afterwards found to be the 
 case, that both he and Mrs. Gladstone concerned themselves 
 for many years in work for those unhappy women, but it 
 was certainly a curious thing that I, already much interested 
 in Rescue Work and at that time feeling the admiration 
 which many young men felt for the Grand Old Man, should 
 have had a glimpse of him under such circumstances. 
 
 Perhaps my distant picture of Gladstone as a man 
 worthy of all homage was coloured by my firm belief in 
 his deep personal religion. The contrast with his great 
 antagonist, Disraeli, no doubt heightened the effect in 
 Gladstone’s favour; and it was still further added to by 
 some illuminating flashes upon the home-life both of him- 
 self and of Mrs. Gladstone. These were forthcoming from 
 an old servant of the family, who through his own fault 
 had fallen on evil days, and who at the request of the 
 Gladstones was taken in hand and helped by us. 
 
 When, later on, I came to read Morley’s ‘ Life,’ I was 
 glad to find so much that tended to confirm my former 
 estimate. Few passages in any literature that I know of 
 more finely express the fundamentals of the personal faith 
 and practice of spiritual religion than some words of 
 
GLIMPSES OF STATESMEN 139 
 
 Gladstone’s, which I see I have underscored in my copy of 
 that book? : 
 
 In the Christian mood, which ought never to be intermitted, 
 the sense of this conviction—[In His will is our peace|—should 
 recur spontaneously ; it should be the foundation of all mental 
 thoughts and acts, and the measure to which the whole experience 
 of life, inward and outward, is referred. The final state which we 
 are to contemplate with hope, and to seek by discipline, is that in 
 which our will shall be one with the will of God; not merely shall 
 submit to it, not merely shall follow after it, but shall live and move 
 with it, even as the pulse of the blood in the extremities acts with 
 the central movement of the heart... . 
 
 Resignation is too often conceived to be merely a submission, 
 not unattended with complaint; to what we have no power to 
 avoid. But it is less than the whole of the work ef a Christian. 
 Your full triumph is... that you would not if you could alter 
 what in any matter God has plainly willed... . 
 
 Here is the great work of religion; here is the path through 
 which sanctity is attained, the highest sanctity ; and yet it is a path 
 evidently to be traced in the course of our daily duties. 
 
 It has been said that Gladstone was a disciple, almost a 
 creation, in fact, of Bishop Butler. Lamnotsure. [donot 
 think we can easily overstate the greatness of Bishop Butler’s 
 conception of the truth or the unflinching sincerity with 
 which he states it. He was one of the greatest teachers and 
 one of the most earnest characters in the history of our faith, 
 at any rate in England. Dean Church has a valuable com- 
 ment on one aspect of Butler which I quote’: 
 
 Pitt is reported to have said of the ‘ Analogy’ that it was a 
 book which opened as many questions and raised as many doubts 
 as it solved. Of course it does. No one can expect to sound the 
 “great deeps’ of God’s government, without meeting difficulties 
 which defy human understanding. This would be true of any dis- 
 cussion going deeply and sincerely into a subject in which our only 
 possible knowledge can be but ‘in part,’ seeing ‘ through a glass 
 darkly.’ But Butler’s object is not to remove all doubts and diffi- 
 culties, which, in such a matter as religion, with light and faculties 
 like ours, is obviously impossible, but to put doubts and difficulties 
 in their proper place and proportion to what we do see and know in 
 a practical scheme of life and truth, and in a practical choice between 
 God and the rejection of Him. 
 
 1 Morley’s ‘ Life of Gladstone,’ Vol. i, Chapter vi, p. 216. 
 2* Pascal and other Sermons.’ 
 
140 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 But I would rather speak of Gladstone as a disciple of 
 Paul. I think that his fine intellect drank at that source. 
 For Paul, history, revelation, reason, emotion, faith, ceased 
 to be a huge aggregation of differing and sometimes con- 
 tending forces the moment he saw them from the Cross of 
 Christ. This was the great Apostle’s chief lesson to the ages. 
 Gladstone had received and assimilated that lesson, and in 
 his long life, cast in surroundings perhaps the least favourable 
 to spiritual things, he really strove to apply it. 
 
 I should like to add one word here about another view 
 of Gladstone, described to me by the late Lord Armitstead, 
 with whom I was rather intimate. Lord Armitstead always 
 spoke of the sympathetic quality in his nature. He who saw 
 Gladstone, not as a political leader but as a friend, saw the 
 tenderness and considerateness that was hidden from the 
 world by that stern old countenance and often remote and 
 imperious manner. Lord Armitstead, who with Sir Donald 
 Currie arranged little sea trips for their hero, said that when 
 cn board ship with Gladstone it often happened that many 
 other members of the company had not the smallest inclina- 
 tion for devotions. But there was one who never missed the 
 short daily service, who faithfully took his place whether any 
 others joined him or not. It was the Grand Old Man. 
 
XVII 
 W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 
 
 SOME of my recollections of W. T, Stead are told in the 
 chapters which deal with the passing of the Criminal Law © 
 Amendment Act (1885) and with his appearance, with 
 myself and others, in the dock at the Old Bailey. 
 
 I always think that Stead’s three months’ imprisonment 
 did him harm. It tended to increase his insularity. When 
 he came out of prison he had an immense following in the 
 country, and if he had been disposed to adopt more 
 ordinary methods of strengthening his influence he would 
 no doubt have become a great power in the nation on the 
 side of important reforms. But he preferred to plough a 
 lonely furrow, if that is not too quiet a figure for the man’s 
 fiery energy, and he avoided association with any existing 
 groups or parties of organized opinion. He remained 
 always, however, very friendly with The Army, and helped 
 us in the Press. He had indeed always done that from the 
 time of his first meeting with our people in Darlington, 
 where he was editor of the ‘ Northern Echo,’ when he 
 championed what was then our very unpopular cause. 
 In his first letter to us he complained that our Officers in 
 that town were overworked, and that it was not good 
 generalship to let the soldiers kill themselves. The Founder 
 replied that he would never make a general if he was afraid 
 to sacrifice his men in order to win the battle! Later on, 
 after he came to London, Stead used his influence with 
 John (later Lord) Morley, then his chief on the ‘ Pall Mail 
 Gazette, to make known and put down the disgraceful 
 violence which assailed us in many parts of the country. 
 Later still (1890) his pen did very much to help us in con- 
 nexion with the ‘ Darkest England’ Scheme. He brought 
 
 14! 
 
142 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 the valuable help of his journalistic skill to bear upon the 
 task of editing some of the material which appeared between 
 the covers of the Founder’s Book: ‘In Darkest England 
 and the Way Out.’ 
 
 At an early period of my acquaintance with Stead I 
 learned to appreciate deeply his religious character. It was 
 both strong and passionate. During the investigations 
 which led to the ‘ Maiden Tribute’ we spent for periods of 
 weeks half an hour to an hour in prayer together aaiy. The 
 offices of the ‘ Pali Mall Gazette’ were then in Northumber- 
 land Street, off the Strand, and Stead had rooms a stone’s 
 throw away, where he used to take lunch and tea. Thither 
 we would adjourn and pray. The facts which he discovered 
 during those investigations had a great effect upon us both, 
 but especially upon him. He used to come to my rooms at 
 all hours during those summer nights. I have seen him on 
 my Office floor sobbing, partly, no doubt, owing to the ex- 
 treme tension and horror of the inquiry, but in a large 
 measure also because of the human grief of his fervent spirit 
 at the heartrending cruelty which stood disclosed. Some 
 earnest prayer, a cup of coffee, and he was braced for further 
 efforts. J was upheld, amid the whole ghastly business, by 
 my conviction that the country could be roused on this 
 subject. Stead did not realize, journalist though he was, 
 what a sensation it would make, nor to what great purpose 
 the facts, adequately presented, would stir the public soul. 
 
 Stead always impressed me in that early association as a 
 man intensely anxious to seek the guidance of God. The 
 deepest passion which moved him was for the victory of a 
 righteous cause. He was a journalist, but he always sub- 
 ordinated his journalism to what he believed to be right. 
 Religion with him was service. He set out, heart and soul, 
 to serve his generation. The world was cleaner and sweeter 
 for his eloquent voice. He aroused the nation on the 
 social question. He carried through that battle to its end 
 (which for him was Holloway Jail), not with a journalist’s 
 keenness for a scoop?, but with the fierce zeal of a reformer 
 
 1 Indeed, his crusade is said to have greatly injured the ‘ Pall Mall 
 Gazette’ by the withdrawal of advertisements. 
 
W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 143 
 
 intent on righting a great wrong. He was a Salvationist in 
 mufti. J remember that when I was in the witness-box at 
 the Old Bailey, answering, I hope, with some effectiveness 
 the cross-examining counsel, Stead sent me a slip of paper 
 on which he had written, ‘ Hallelujah! The Court feels like 
 a Salvation Army prayer-meeting.’ That was the spirit in 
 which the whole of that dreadful business was carried 
 through. 
 
 Although we were meeting daily and nightly, consider- 
 able correspondence passed between us at this time. Some 
 of Stead’s letters reveal something of the intense horror 
 and anger we felt at the abominations unearthed. He 
 writes on one occasion : 
 
 Dear Bramwell, 
 
 Hell, Damnation—and all the foul fiends. O man, it is a 
 sore sight. To have a child of 14, beautiful and innocent as the day 
 to be brought to you to be ruined—willingly—yes, for she wants 
 money for her mother who is lying ill and in sore trouble. Poor 
 thing, poor thing, it made my heart bleed. 10 for the price of her 
 shame, selling it as she might for mother’s sake. 
 
 She nerved herself up to it—poor child, but when I left the room 
 she broke down in tears. 
 
 ‘Would you have half and not be seduced, or all and be seduced ? 
 Half, oh, yes, half!’ 
 
 And she shall have it. But Dr. Miller never turned up; so the 
 examinations could not take place. Ask Mrs. Reynolds to call on 
 me as soon as possible in the morning. I want her to go to the 
 address the child gave me, to use it to take some nourishing food to 
 her mother, and make inquiries, of course knowing nothing about 
 this. 
 
 O Bramwell, it is killing me—the Devil’s work. 
 
 But courage! I must now hasten to the Café in 
 Street, to eat a supper—infernal sacrament of the Devil—with one 
 of the worst procuresses in London. 
 
 Good Lord, help me. 
 
 They also brought me a maiden, a healthy, motherless country 
 lass just up to town—apprenticed to ; 
 
 Oh, these she fiends! I was at the Lock hospital to-day. Good 
 Matron—very ; hates C.D. Acts and doctors and police like the 
 very Devil. 
 
 And, Amen, and Amen. God help us all, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
144 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 Stead was a religious man. When I met him on his 
 release from prison his first words were, ‘ I have had a great 
 time. What the world wants is Christ!’ And during my 
 last conversation with him, many years afterwards, not 
 many weeks before he went down on the 7véanic—our talk 
 turned on some of the disappointments he had found, and 
 the burden on heart and spirit which they involved, and I 
 shall not easily forget the way in which he suddenly held 
 up his finger and exclaimed with deep teeling, ‘Ah! It isin 
 God I trust. Only the living God can hold up a living soul.’! 
 
 My dear mother was one of Stead’s heroines. During 
 her last illness I remember him twice coming down to 
 Clacton-on-Sea and kneeling by the side of her suffering bed 
 and pouring out his soul to God. With the Founder of 
 The Salvation Army he never got on quite so well. Both 
 men were doughty blades, and at times they clashed a 
 little. Even when Stead was at the zenith of his public 
 influence the Founder had misgivings about his real strength. 
 Himself the soul of simplicity and candour, the Founder did 
 not like a certain artificiality which he thought there was 
 about Stead’s exterior. And, on his side, Stead never quite 
 accepted the Founder in the sense in which one man looks 
 to another for leadership. He admired him, and foresaw 
 something of the success of The Army when others doubted 
 him, but there was some reserve between the two. I cannot 
 resist telling a story of one of Stead’s last interviews at Head- 
 quarters. Stead and the old General were alone, and evi- 
 dently failed to reach complete agreement on some matter, 
 
 i Stead suffered acutely at times from depression. In such moments 
 the clouds obscured all the lights in his firmament. Towards the end of the 
 Old Bailey trial already referred to he had one of these experiences. I 
 find I wrote to him : 
 
 ‘Your reputation is at this very moment such as you never dreamed 
 of. Your name is as well known as any living man’s—and known in 
 connexion not with some old party cry and doctrine, but with the rising 
 tide of a great new movement amongst the whole English-speaking popu- 
 lation of the earth, in favour of right and purity and freedom. This Court, 
 this Jury, cannot harm you in the end—the worst they can do is to make 
 you a little harder fight. 
 
 ‘Don’t talk about offering yourself up, Gon, I tell you, is above all 
 this chatter. I have more to fear than you from the Attorney and the 
 Judge—you have a House-top from which to answer in the P.M.G.; and 
 when all thety lies are forgotten God's truth will go marching on.’ 
 
W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 145 
 
 Presently I thought it time to enter the room and apply the 
 closure. After a few words I brought Stead out to my own 
 adjoining room, while I remained for a moment behind with 
 my father. My father, who was evidently a little exasper- 
 ated, said to me vehemently, ‘ I cannot stand Stead!’ And 
 as for Stead, when I returned to him, he remarked, with his 
 delightful chuckle, ‘ You’ve got a pretty handful in there ! ’ 
 indicating the next room ! 
 
 Is this generation of short memories forgetting how 
 great a national figure Stead was? He began his career by 
 pressing the Eastern question into life. He was really the 
 founder of the modern British navy ; nobody worked as he 
 did to create public enthusiasm for the fleet. Lord Fisher, 
 in his ‘Memories,’ describes Stead as the greatest of all 
 journalists—‘ he was absolute integrity and feared no man.’ 
 When Stead went down with the Titanic, Fisher wrote to 
 Lord Esher saying that he could see him putting the 
 women and children in the boats, ‘and probably singing 
 a Hallelujah! and encouraging the ship’s band to play 
 cheerfully.’ 
 
 In the South African War Stead took a very pronounced 
 line. He was in violent antagonism to the whole British 
 policy. He would never believe that there was anything in 
 the attitude of the Kruger party which was at all serious. 
 All the anti-British, pro-Dutch or Africander business, with 
 its projected United States of Africa, he dismissed as purely 
 superficial. Perhaps—I am not sure—his views on the 
 whole question were unconsciously coloured by his an- 
 tagonism to the eminent British statesman most concerned 
 in the rupture. 
 
 Stead’s open expression of his convictions, on the Boer 
 War and on other matters, must have meant a great renun- 
 ciation for him, yet he never wavered. He had confidence 
 in himself as an instrument of Providence, directed to give 
 effect to some things in the will of God. Above everything 
 else, he was a fighter. Perhaps it was this as much as 
 anything which drew us to him. He loved fighting, and he 
 understood it. He did not raise the welkin when he got a 
 scratch, nor ask for decorations when he had won a skirmish ! 
 
 L 
 
146 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 And in all his warfare he showed a marvellous generosity 
 towards the other side. Usually such intense self-confidence 
 as his goes with intolerance. In Stead we had a man who was 
 convinced that his own sometimes very narrow way was the 
 right one, and yet a man who could find something beauti- 
 ful in his most deadly opponent. 
 
 All the harder, therefore, is it to speak of the spoiling 
 influence of his later career. It was the grief and disturbance 
 occasioned by the death of a dearly loved son that finally 
 sent him over into ‘ spookism’ with which he had toyed on 
 and off for some years. He soon showed the same dogged 
 tenacity which had characterized him in investigations more 
 worthy of his powers. He made egregious blunders in his 
 estimates of the different mediums, yet he held to his main 
 theory that communication was possible, and that it would 
 serve a good purpose. I took, of course, the directly contrary 
 opinion, and hold it still. During the many years that I 
 have been observing human life I have never known any 
 one who has been in any way bettered by association with 
 what we have come to call spiritualism ; and I have known 
 many who have been worsened. I do not say this merely 
 because I think that the great majority of spiritualists are 
 deluded, and a considerable minority fraudulent; nor 
 because of my belief that if any intercourse has really 
 been achieved it must be with evil spirits. I say it because 
 of what I have observed in the effects on character of those 
 who have taken up spiritualism. 
 
 My own conviction is that if there are ‘ familiar spirits,’ 
 then they are evil spirits, and that these communications 
 with the dead, assuming that there is anything in them at 
 all, are due to personations by these evil spirits, who pretend 
 to be the beloved departed. But I, too, am a spiritualist (for 
 the word is too good a one to belong to necromancy), and the 
 spiritualism which I believe in is that which manifests itself 
 in the life of the individual, producing such wonderful 
 changes and exaltations in human character as we con- 
 tinually see in The Army. I believe in communications 
 from above, expressed not in terms of cryptic or trivial 
 
 messages, but in terms of personal purity and courage, and 
 
W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 147 
 
 holiness and joy. Our spiritualism can marshal its converts 
 by tens of thousands. They are men and women who have 
 been brought up from utter selfishness into a new life of love 
 and sanctity. By the side of this, what has been achieved 
 by that other spiritualism to which poor Stead gave his 
 adherence ? Where hus it ever taken us? How has it ever 
 helped us ? | 
 
 W. T. Stead is linked in my mind with Cecil Rhodes by 
 an unfortunate circumstance. On one of his visits to 
 England, Rhodes told me that he had made a settlement of 
 his fortune which would benefit education, and that he had 
 appointed Stead in an important relationship to his trustees. 
 He said also, incidentally, that he had given Stead instruc- 
 tions that he was to help The Salvation Army. This greatly 
 interested both myself and the Founder, and we spoke to 
 Stead about it. Stead observed a very proper reticence with 
 regard to the intentions of Mr. Rhodes, but he confirmed 
 generally what the latter had said, and told us that Rhodes 
 had given him the direction, in addition to other instructions 
 of a more formal nature, ‘ Booth is to be helped.’ 
 
 Stead’s attitude on the Boer War, however, led to a 
 division between the two men, and in the end Rhodes 
 largely altered his will and excluded Stead from any part in 
 the disposal of his estate. We, naturally, were greatly 
 disappointed. But Stead never varied a hair’s breadth 
 in his firm belief that the war was a crime against civiliza- 
 tion. I dare say—I have no positive knowledge—that he 
 would have benefited personally had he become Rhodes’s 
 trustee, but I do not believe he ever felt a single regret for 
 the course he took. 
 
 I have never met any one, always excepting the old 
 General, who made such an impression upon me as did Cecil 
 Rhodes. In appearance alone he filled the picture. He was 
 a mountain of a man, over six feet high, broad and deep- 
 chested, and with the look of a Viking. One had a feeling 
 that his enormous bulk was governed by a mind correspond- 
 ingly large and powerful, and that his huge head and mas- 
 sive brow betokened a tremendous will. His whole presence 
 spoke of personal force, of faith in ideas, and of iron self- 
 
148 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 reliance. He was a man in whom temperament as distinct 
 from character, and character as distinct from training, 
 and training as distinct from either of the others, all com- 
 bined to make a rare example of what a man could be. 
 But what sombre tragedy he suggested, too! He was a 
 man of profound melancholy. It enveloped him, and its 
 folds extended out and covered you also. Here was indeed 
 a great soul dwelling in the shadows. 
 
 This depression was all the more remarkable because his 
 life was full of faith—though not, indeed, the highest kind 
 of faith—which is ever the reverse and antidote of depression. 
 The moving force cf his career was his faith in Britain’s 
 future. He believed in Britain as no man I have ever met 
 believed in her. His patriotic faith took on almost a religious 
 enthusiasm. He believed in the British character and civi- 
 lization. His ambition was to make the British Empire 
 the supreme force in the world, not merely politically, but 
 morally, intellectually, spiritually. I think that The Army 
 helped to give his ideas a more international range before 
 he got them into their final shape. But there he was, prob- 
 ably one of the most powerful, yet one of the most detached 
 personalities that has ever loomed above the horizon to 
 command the gaze of men. 
 
 Apart from some casual intercourse, I met him only 
 twice, but each occasion was memorable. The first was in 
 1898, when he spent a day with us at our Land Colony for 
 Men at Hadleigh. The second was when he came, quite 
 unexpectedly, to one of our meetings in the (London) Mansion 
 House. To deal with the second occasion first, we assembled 
 as the custom is in the Lord Mayor’s parlour, before proceed- 
 ing to the platform. Here I introduced Rhodes to several 
 people, and presently took him aside and asked him if he 
 would speak at the meeting. He declined. It occurred to 
 me that he refused because he thought that if he spoke he 
 would be expected to subscribe to The Army. Rhodes’s 
 personal finance was always an amusement tous. The man 
 who left six millions to education never seemed to have any 
 cash in his pocket. I suggested to him plainly that he need 
 not concern himself about giving us money. He replied with 
 
W. T. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES 149 
 
 a laugh, ‘ I suppose you have heard that I have not got any.’ 
 ‘Well, not exactly that,’ I said, but before I could proceed 
 further he broke into a loud guffaw and remarked, ‘ I hear 
 your friend Stead has been saying that I am a millionaire 
 without a sixpence.’ He paused to see the effect of this quip. 
 I could not deny that I had heard something of the kind, 
 and began rather awkwardly to explain. But he burst out 
 laughing again, and clapping me on the shoulder, said, 
 ‘ My dear fellow, if you only knew how true it is!’ ‘ Well, 
 all right,’ I said, ‘ but come and speak.’ Again he refused, 
 and all I could get out of him on further request was, ‘ Well, 
 I will see how you get on, and let you know.’ 
 
 After the Lord Mayor, who presided, had spoken, I made 
 my speech. As soon as I sat down Rhodes passed along his 
 newspaper to me on the edge of which he had written, after 
 a kindly word about my own address, ‘All right, I will say a 
 few words if you wish it.’ Of course, I did wish it, and I 
 had the pleasure of hearing him make a short but altogether 
 capital speech in our support, to the great delight of the 
 audience, and, incidentally, to the great astonishment of the 
 Press. He had been most anxious previously to conceal 
 himself, and had desired the Lord Mayor not to mention the 
 fact that he was present. He finished his little speech by 
 saying that he would give £200 for the particular fund we 
 were met to promote. To those who did not know him it 
 seemed a trifling gift, but to his familiars on the platform it 
 was nothing less than a portent that The Salvation Army 
 should have succeeded in getting money from Rhodes, who 
 gave nothing to any cause save his great imperial projects. 
 The speech was useful to us in other ways, and the next 
 morning ‘The Times’ commented upon it in a leading 
 article. 
 
 But it was on that previous occasion, while visiting the 
 Essex Colony, that I got the more intimate glimpse of the 
 true man. He went down with us on the invitation of the 
 Founder, whom he had met before in South Africa. Evi- 
 dently he recognized in the Founder a kindred spirit. The 
 picture of Rhodes which many people have is that of a 
 silent, taciturn’ man, cold, stiff, and difficult to approach. 
 
150 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 They would have been surprised if they had looked through 
 the windows of that railway carriage even before we were 
 out of the station. We had not been sitting there five 
 minutes before Rhodes and the Founder were talking as 
 hard as they could go about the poor and the miserable of 
 the world ; about South Africa and the native races ; about 
 the prospects of our work in Rhodesia, and the chances of 
 our getting help to do something for the peoples of the 
 Zambezi. Upon many things they agreed; when they 
 differed, they said so, and passed on. Rhodes seemed to 
 enter fully into the Founder’s ideas as to the value of the 
 people to the country before all else, and the importance of 
 watching over their moral and spiritual as well as their 
 material well-being. The subject of prayer being mentioned, 
 Mr. Rhodes referred to an incident which occurred when 
 they were in South Africa, and, turning to Lord Loch, who 
 was the fourth of the company, said : 
 
 ‘The General has prayed for me.’ 
 
 Lord Loch replied, ‘ Well, I cannot say that he has ever 
 prayed for me.’ 
 
 The General answered at once, in the most natural way, 
 ‘Then I will pray for you now’; and, kneeling down in 
 the compartment, he asked God’s blessing on both his 
 Puests. 
 
 Rhodes did not kneel, in part because it was physically 
 difficult for him to do so in that narrow space, but he bowed 
 his head and closed his eyes, and when the General took his 
 seat again Rhodes held out his hand to him in the midst of 
 a silence which to me seemed eloquent of thoughts too deep 
 for words. He was evidently greatly touched. 
 
 The great South African was delighted with his day at 
 Hadleigh, and said so. He went everywhere, saw every- 
 thing, asked innumerable questions, interviewed Officers 
 and colonists, tasted the soup, challenged the price of the 
 coal, offered his advice on the value of fruit trees, and chaffed 
 me unmercifully about an old portable engine which ought, 
 no doubt, to have been disposed of long ago, but which 
 our poverty had induced us to keep going. He was much 
 impressed with some of the colonists, and on invitation 
 
W. I. STEAD AND CECIL RHODES I51 
 
 spoke to a few of them, and showed his delight in the most 
 unaffected way. He could not believe at first that these 
 fine, brawny fellows had a history behind them such as 
 we knew them to have. But he had seen something of the 
 kind in South Africa. At Capetown, when one of our 
 Commissioners met him, Rhodes asked a Local Officer of 
 The Army who was also present about a discharged criminal 
 in whom he had taken an interest, and who had been sent 
 to us, in more or less despair, twelve months before. 
 
 ‘ He is doing well, sir,’ was the answer. ‘ He stayed with 
 us for eight months, and he is now earning his own bread 
 in regular employment.’ 
 
 ‘Do you mean to say that you have made that fellow 
 work for twelve months ?’ asked Rhodes. 
 
 meVes, Sir: 
 
 ‘Then,’ he said, ‘ that is the kind of miracle I believe 
 At Hadleigh he also visited our little Hall. I shall never 
 forget the expression on Rhodes’s face as he stood and looked 
 down at the penitent-form. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I see. This 
 is the dividing line between the old life and the new.’ It 
 reminded me of a remark by Sir Walter Besant, when I was 
 taking him round an exhibition we were holding at the 
 Agricultural Hall. The exhibition included a model village 
 Hall, in which regular Army Meetings were going forward 
 continuously. Sir Walter looked in at one of the open 
 windows, and seeing two or three kneeling at the penitent 
 form, he said, in a tone of great earnestness, “ I am very glad 
 to see you have the converting work going on here.’ 
 
 Coming home in the train from Hadleigh, Rhodes and I 
 were left alone. My father was in the next carriage, and 
 Lord Loch had left us earlier in the day to attend the House 
 of Lords. Struck by the depression and gloom which seemed 
 to surround the man, and hopeful for him because of his 
 evident interest in our work, I leaned across and said, 
 ‘Mr. Rhodes, are you a happy man?’ (A remark he had 
 made at lunch about happiness gave me the opening.) I 
 shall never forget how he threw himself back against the 
 cushions of that first-class compartment, gripped the arm of 
 
 in. 
 
152 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 the seat, and in this tense attitude looked at me with that 
 extraordinary stare of his and exclaimed, ‘Happy? I— 
 happy ? Good God, no!’ 
 
 ‘There is only one place, Mr. Rhodes,’ I said, ‘ where 
 we can find real happiness, and that is down at the feet of 
 the crucified Saviour, because it is only there we can be 
 freed from our sins.’ 
 
 ‘Yes,’ he said, and then he added, ‘I would give all 
 I possess to believe what that old man in the next carriage 
 believes.’ 
 
 As long as I live I shall never forget the tragedy—the 
 utter tragedy—of his voice as he said, ‘Happy? I— 
 happy ? Good God, no!’ Yet if a vote had been taken 
 in the City of London, how many would have coveted what 
 Rhodes had before anything else in the world? Here he 
 was, unbosoming himself to one who was almost a stranger. 
 ‘Happy ? I—happy? Good God, no!’ Considering all 
 the circumstances, and the personality of the man, I think 
 that conversation was a very remarkable one. He pro- 
 foundly moved me. 
 
 When we were separating that night at Liverpool Street 
 station Rhodes said to me, ‘Ah! You and the General are 
 right ; you have the best of me, after all. I am trying to 
 make new countries ; you are making new men.’ It wasa 
 true thought, finely expressed. Rhodes’s eloquence came 
 now and then, like the stones from his own reefs. He had 
 no stream of eloquence at his command, but he could say, 
 with apparent casualness, a memorable thing. He was 
 dead within a year or two of that conversation, and even as 
 I write I am reminded of his last words: ‘ So little done, 
 so much to do.’ 
 
 Nothing in the remarkable documents he left behind him 
 seems to me more impressive than this testimony, which, 
 save for the agnosticism of the opening phrase, might have 
 been given on a Salvation Army platform : 
 
 “If there be a God, and if He does care, then the most 
 wmportant thing in the world for me 1s to find out what He 
 wants me to do, and then to go and do 1.’ 
 
XVIII 
 EARTHEN VESSELS 
 
 I HAVE need to pull myself up in these desultory remini- 
 scences lest they seem to treasure up the small coin of recol- 
 lection of the wise men after the flesh and the mighty and 
 the noble and leave out of the reckoning the sterling worth 
 of that which, while often accounted weak and base, is 
 really illustrious and great. The Army would be little or 
 nothing had it not been for the great lowly ones. Our 
 work has been the product, under God, of popular love and 
 devotion and faith. It has been inspired largely from the 
 ranks. It was the work of a dairy-maid in Melbourne which 
 gave the original impulse to our labours among the lepers. 
 It was a humble woman-comrade and her toiling husband 
 in Lambeth who set us going at the Slum Posts. It was an 
 East End compositor who was the means of originating 
 The Army’s work for prisoners. It was a carpenter at 
 Salisbury who formed our first Band. 
 
 That is the solution of the puzzle which The Army 
 presents of a multitude of various activities. Virile charac- 
 ters have arisen, very often from the lowest social levels, to 
 whom The Army has come to owe no small part of its direc- 
 tion. They have often been rough and workworn hands 
 which have started it upon fresh paths, pressed it forward 
 over the painful miles of virgin territory. How can I pay 
 an adequate tribute to those who have influenced us, who 
 have prompted us to this or that or the other enterprise, 
 or whose trust in us has been our perpetual encouragement : 
 We could write another eleventh of Hebrews from the 
 records of The Army and fill it with names which the world 
 never knew, and of which the world was never worthy. 
 
 Of several men in my earliest East End days I retain 
 
 153 
 
154 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 a picture which the long years have not dimmed. There 
 was Bamford, the evangelist, a powerful man physically, 
 and a really earnest talker, with whom I had a measure of 
 fellowship when quite a young lad, scarcely in my teens, in 
 the Whitechapel Society. There was Thomas, a comrade of 
 later years, a man not at all effective on the platform, but 
 with a heart of gold, abounding in sympathy and love 
 wherever sorrow and wickedness and poverty raised their 
 heads. Together Thomas and I visited the poorest and 
 lowest districts of the town in which we were working, 
 Thomas putting on an apron and scrubbing the dirt off the 
 floors, cleaning the grates, and lighting the bits of fires, 
 watched over me while I proceeded to wash and tend the 
 sick, cut the tangled hair of the old and helpless, and so 
 forth. Between us we clothed the naked and fed the 
 hungry, and sometimes performed the last reverent services 
 for the dead, while we struggled to win the souls of the 
 living. 
 
 But it is of two men, each of them in his way an enthu- 
 siast, that I want specially now to write. The first is dear 
 old Cornish. I was about fourteen when I first knew him. 
 I suffered at that time from very bad health, and was in an 
 unsatisfactory and unsettled condition of mind, both as to 
 my present and my future. Occasionally I attended the 
 services of the Mission in Whitechapel, where my ill health 
 made me exceedingly shy and reticent, and on this account, 
 and also as the child of my parents, I was no doubt an 
 object of interest to many people in the Mission circle. 
 Some tried very disinterestedly to help me, little thinking 
 that in later years we should stand side by side in the 
 fighting of many a desperate battle. 
 
 One remarkable spirit in the Mission who made a deep 
 impression upon me and influenced in some ways my whole 
 life was this converted drunkard who had been a wild and, 
 I am afraid, a very cruel man. His wife had died, and when- 
 ever he spoke of her it was in such terms as made one feel 
 that he charged himself with the responsibility for her 
 death. By business he was a costermonger, gaining a 
 precarious livelihood by selling greenstuff out of a barrow 
 
EARTHEN VESSELS 185 
 
 in the Whitechapel streets. I do not know how it was that 
 he became specially interested in me, but he often spoke 
 to me in the Aiter-Meetings, where he himself had great 
 freedom in prayer. He urged me to take part also. 
 
 One Sunday after the morning service he invited me to 
 go home with him to his room and read to him. How well 
 I remember it! I went there many times afterwards. 
 Three flights of rickety stairs took one to a bare garret. In 
 one corner were some strange cushions where he made his 
 bed, and he had also a table, a couple of wooden chairs, 
 and a large Bible, together with a kettle, a teapot, and a 
 frying-pan. We began by praying together, and then I 
 would read to him a little. He was only able to make out 
 one or two chapters, which he did with the assistance of 
 immense horn spectacles. Before long I found the most 
 gracious and inspiring influence coming into my hfe through 
 that one-time drunkard’s prayers, and my visits to him 
 became a sort of institution. He would fry me a piece of 
 bacon, and with that and some potatoes I often made a 
 meal with him. It was a veritable sacrament. When we 
 knelt down together and when he began to pray he was so 
 uplifted that it often seemed to me that he was another 
 man, a man with a heavenly mind and an angel tongue. 
 And there came to me, in answer to those prayers—mingled 
 with my own no doubt—a new feeling of relationship to the 
 souls of men, a new directional impulse, impelling me to 
 love and suffer for the sake of others. Again and again I 
 have come down those old squeaking stairs feeling as though 
 I walked on the wind, and have gone out on to Mile End 
 Waste to speak and pray with sinners in altogether a new 
 and self-forgetting fashion. 
 
 Among the days of greatest progress I have known 
 were those days in association with that strange old man, 
 and in the presence of the divine influences which his simple 
 and prayerful faith brought into my life. We were a peculiar 
 couple: I, brought up in more or less refined and cultured 
 surroundings, influenced by the teaching and example of 
 some of the very noblest souls who had ever served God, 
 and having some knowledge of the wider world ; he, a poor 
 
156 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 old drunkard, pulled out of the fire in the closing years of a 
 ruined life, living on bacon and potatoes in a garret, unable 
 to do much more than write his own name, and earning his 
 bread by hawking cabbages in the purlieus of Spitalfields. 
 Yet his influence on me was altogether in advance of the 
 influence of any other human being who came across my 
 path at that time, if perhaps I except my wonderful mother, 
 and even with her the restraint and awkwardness of my 
 growing youth made me for a time less responsive to her 
 influence. Dear old Cornish, I shall find him in Heaven, 
 and he will be one of those to whom I shall hope to express 
 my gratitude for all that they have done for me ! 
 
 It was after I first knew Cornish—I must have been 
 about seventeen at the time—that we had in connexion 
 with one of our Societies in the East End a man of very 
 striking religious experience who suffered from the most 
 awful lisp I have ever had the agony of listening to. He 
 was a convert of the Mission, and had come one day to the 
 mercy-seat in Whitechapel. I was delegated to speak to 
 him. I found that he was seeking the power of God to 
 witness for Christ, notwithstanding the ridicule which every 
 effort of that kind brought upon him owing to this affliction. 
 He was greatly helped by our prayer together, and from 
 that day he did make his testimony in public hke the 
 enthusiast he was, though I confess that I often wished 
 he had remained silent because of the turbulent amusement 
 which his remarks produced among the crowd! And he 
 really seemed to hug those sibilant phrases which brought 
 out his infirmity most conspicuously ! 
 
 I became acquainted with him somewhat, and it was 
 my great joy to find that wherever he went to lodge he got 
 some of the people of the house—his landlords or land- 
 ladies or their families—converted to God. He worked at 
 that time in a drapery establishment in St. Paul’s Church- 
 yard. One day I suggested to him that he should change his 
 lodgings oftener because of this wonderful gift of his for 
 securing the salvation of the people he lived with. And he 
 did from that time frequently change his rooms. He also 
 spoke often in the open air, his first efforts usually producing 
 
EARTHEN VESSELS 157 
 
 such a howl of derision as would have discouraged any other 
 speaker, but after a few minutes the people would quieten 
 down, and he would go on with what he had to say in spite 
 of his disability. I kept up my acquaintance with him for 
 two or three years, and his courage and the results of his 
 testimony deeply impressed me. One day I received word 
 that he was dying in the London Hospital as the result, I 
 think, of an accident. I went to see him, and we had a 
 delightful time together. He thanked me tor my help in 
 encouraging him to give his testimonies, and in bidding me 
 good-bye with many assurances, he quoted—I have never 
 forgotten it—that wonderful verse of Cowper’s hymn : 
 Then in a nobler, thweeter thong, 
 I'll thing Thy power to thave, 
 
 When thith poor lithping th-tammering tongue 
 Lieth thilent in the grave. 
 
 Another random recollection of those early years in the 
 East End comes back to me. Near my father’s house on 
 the border of Victoria Park there was a little street of work- 
 men’s houses, small, and built as closely together as possible, 
 with the front doors opening flush with the pavement. 
 They were akin to the poorest sort of ramshackle buildings 
 of the period. In the course of my early work in the Mission 
 I frequently visited in this street, especially the sick, which 
 as a lad I was rather fond of doing. In one of these houses 
 I came across the wife of one of our own people, belonging to 
 our Society at Bethnal Green. The man was a foreman ina 
 cardboard-box factory in the City. They had a numerous 
 family, and the wife, who had lately given birth to another 
 child, was very ill. It was soon evident that she was sick 
 unto death, and to my great distress I found her exceedingly 
 sad, overcast and gloomy, in face of the coming shadow. I 
 visited her on several occasions, prayed with her, and tried 
 to bring her into the light, but made little progress. Then 
 one day, as I was going up the stairs to her room, I heard 
 her rejoicing and praising God in the most pronounced 
 manner. As soon as I reached her bedside I asked what 
 had happened to bring about this wonderful change, and 
 she told me, ‘O Mr. Bramwell, the Lord has come to me, 
 
158 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 and I have given them all up ’—she alluded to her children, 
 whom she had been so concerned at leaving—‘ and laid 
 everything at His blessed feet. Now I can trust Him. Now 
 all is well.’ A few days afterwards she died. 
 
 But there was a sequel. Her last request to me was that 
 I would take charge of the baby—the latest of her family. 
 Perhaps not altogether realizing what I was undertaking, I 
 promised that I would. Naturally 1 turned to my mother 
 for assistance, and after a certain amount of negotiation the 
 little boy—Harry, we called him—was brought into our 
 own home and placed under the care of my sister Emma, 
 afterwards Mrs. Booth-Tucker, who was at that time in 
 delicate health, and who found in the training of this baby 
 delightful occupation. The child grew and prospered, and 
 gave early evidence of being a child of God. While still in 
 his teens he developed a singular gift for caring for the sick. 
 
 When in 1888 my sister was married to Commissioner 
 Booth-Tucker and went to India this lad begged us to send 
 him also. He went, and was no sooner there than he began 
 to take an interest in the sick people connected with the 
 native Societies which The Army had formed in various 
 places. He had a remarkable knowledge of hydropathy, 
 and was able to do some good work with that system. By 
 this success he won the confidence of the people. Then he 
 began to lance small abscesses and so on. I purchased and 
 sent him a second-hand dental outfit, and he took out bad 
 teeth, and was soon allowed even to attend the Indian 
 women. A remarkable gift for surgery presently developed, 
 including skill in setting broken bones, and we brought him 
 to London and gave him a six months’ course as ‘ dresser’ 
 at one of the big hospitals. Here he proved himself some- 
 thing of a genius, learning more than any ordinary dresser 
 would pick up in years. Returning to India, he was placed 
 in charge of a small hospital. Although he was unable, 
 according to the English law, to grant a death certificate, he 
 treated hundreds of cases with the greatest success. The 
 hospital was enlarged, partly by the gifts of wealthy Indian 
 patients whom he had benefited, and before very long he 
 began to perform major operations. Realizing that this 
 
EARTHEN VESSELS 159 
 
 might involve certain risks in view of his lack of qualifica- 
 tion, we decided to give him a course of reading, and let 
 him take a degree, which he did at the University of Illinois 
 in Chicago, himself contributing towards the cost of his 
 support, as well as paying all the fees by his work during 
 the course. Before he was in the University a year he was 
 selected by the surgeons to perform delicate operations in 
 front of the students. He returned to India a fully qualified 
 man, and was placed in charge of our then largest hospital, 
 a new hospital in the Punjab. The war came, and he was 
 one of the medical men who perished in it. 
 
 But this is not quite the end of the story—even on 
 earth—of my ‘East End baby.’ The following extract 
 from the ‘ London Gazette,’ which announced the bestowal 
 of the V.C. upon him, speaks for itself : 
 
 ‘Captain Andrews was senior medical officer in charge of 
 the Khajuri post. Hearing that the convoy had been 
 attacked, he immediately took out an aid post under heavy 
 fire and established it, affording some protection to the 
 wounded, but none to himself. Subsequently he was com- 
 pelled to remove it, but continued most devotedly to attend 
 the wounded. Finally, when an ambulance was available, 
 he showed the utmost disregard for danger in collecting the 
 wounded under fire and placing them in the ambulance. 
 Eventually he was killed on the completion of his task.’ 
 
 Writing of him in the British ‘ Medical Journal,’ Major- 
 General Sir Patrick Hehir said: 
 
 ‘He was a man with broad human sympathies. . . . He 
 was loved by the poor, and their care, comfort, and treat- 
 ment were meticulously attended to in his hospital. He 
 was a good operator, and crowds of people flocked from 
 various parts of the Moradabad district to be treated by 
 him. He designed and supervised the construction of 
 The Salvation Army Hospital at Moradabad. It is a model 
 of what a district hospital should be in India. It is one of 
 the few hospitals in Oudh that has its own tube well. I was 
 particularly struck with the admirable way in which the 
 various departments of the hospital were arranged. It was 
 well organized and administered. The hospital was made 
 
160 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 over to Government as a War Hospital in a whole-hearted 
 manner by The Salvation Army, and did most laudable 
 work for our sick and wounded Indian soldiers. For such a 
 man the future life could have no cause for apprehension, 
 and we may be certain that he was welcomed into the other 
 world with the words, “‘ Well done, thou good and faithful 
 servant.” ’ 
 
XIX 
 THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 
 
 THE position held by woman in The Salvation Army almost 
 from the beginning has been unique. There has probably 
 been nothing like it before in the history of the world, and 
 it may be useful to review, however briefly, some of the 
 influences and circumstances which have led to what we 
 now see. 
 
 When I say that the association of woman with The Sal- 
 vation Army is unique, I am not forgetting that, so far as 
 we are able to understand the circumstances, a prominent 
 position was accorded to woman for a considerable period 
 in the history of the early Church. Paul, who has been 
 called “ the great silencer ’ so far as woman’s public ministry 
 is concerned, nevertheless entrusted women with some of 
 the most difficult and delicate work of the infant Churches. 
 It is quite possible, not to say probable, that in this as in 
 other matters his views had changed as he had gained ex- 
 perience. Whether this be so or not, there is sufficient 
 ground for saying that woman did play an important part 
 in early Christianity. She was recognized as a teacher and 
 guide in the first centuries. She took her place by the side 
 of man in proclaiming her Saviour, in suffering for her testi- 
 mony, and in dying for the truth. Authentic records of the 
 early martyrs are meagre, but so far as they exist it is clearly 
 seen that woman had a place among them fully equal to 
 that of man. Indeed, the complexity and delicacy of her 
 nature made it possible to inflict upon her ignominy and 
 anguish which her brethren were spared. And she did not 
 quail. 
 
 But for one reason or another she fell into the background 
 after the first two or three hundred years so far as public 
 
 M 161 
 
162 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 ministry was concerned. Later the Roman Church raised 
 up some remarkable women, as, for instance, Theresa of 
 Avila, Catherine of Sienna, Bridget of Sweden, and in these 
 islands, Hilda of Whitby, and Juliana of Norwich. Ireland 
 had a Bridget as well as a Patrick. 
 
 Nearer to our own times George Fox revived in theory 
 a great deal that had been in abeyance, and the early Quaker 
 records, both of England and Ireland, give us some splendid 
 examples of women ‘ ministers.’ But here again, for one 
 reason or another, there was a great falling off shortly before 
 and immediately after George Fox’s death. Methodism, 
 also, strove to give woman a place of testimony for her Lord, 
 and although the records of her occupying pulpits are very 
 few, there is no doubt that some Methodist women, especially 
 during the first twenty years after John Wesley’s death, 
 were useful and powerful. Methodism inherited a great 
 difficulty in this matter from the fact that the Methodists 
 grew up in the established Church. To put a woman, no 
 matter how gifted, into the pulpit of the parish Church 
 would have been considered a very improper thing, not only 
 from the point of view of the Church itself, but from that 
 of the State. Nevertheless, many Methodist women took 
 up their cross, and here and there among them were powerful 
 preachers and successful soul-winners. : 
 
 No surprise need be felt, therefore, that The Salvation 
 Army, even in its earliest days, should move in this direction. 
 But it was not merely an evangelistic impulse—which was 
 evidently the origin of woman’s position in the societies to 
 which I have referred—that led The Army to take the course 
 it did, though no doubt a similar impulse played a part. 
 With us the position taken arose from deep convictions first 
 expressed by Catherine Booth, and from the realization of 
 a much wider calling of God than anything which had 
 influenced either the Friends or the Methodists. | 
 
 Like so much in the history of The Army, we can trace 
 the origin of this movement—for it clearly was a movement 
 within a greater movement—to the work of the Holy 
 Spirit in the minds and hearts of the Founders. There is 
 still in existence a correspondence which shows how, though 
 
THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 163 
 
 by very slow degrees at first, the Founder came to the 
 same judgment as Catherine Booth with regard to woman’s 
 position. I will quote a few sentences from a letter written 
 by him in 1855, a few months before their marriage, reply- 
 ing to some arguments of hers: 
 
 Thy remarks on Woman’s position I will read again. . . . From 
 the first reading I cannot see anything in them to lead me for one 
 moment to think of altering my opinion. You combat a great deal 
 that I hold as firmly as you do—viz., her equality, her perfect equality, 
 as a whole—as a being. But as to concede that she is man’s equal, 
 or capable of becoming man’s equal in intellectual attainments or 
 prowess—I must say that is contradicted by experience in the world 
 and [by] my honest conviction. You know, my dear, I acknowledge 
 the superiority of your sex in very many things—in others I believe 
 her inferior. Vice veysa with man. 
 
 I would not stop a woman preaching on any account. I would 
 not encourage one to begin. You should preach if you felt moved 
 thereto ; felt equaltothe task. I would not stay you if I had power 
 to do so. Although J should not like it. It is easy for you to say 
 my views are the result of prejudice; perhaps they are. I am for 
 the world’s Salvation ; I will quarrel with no means that promises 
 help. 
 
 This letter is interesting because it shows the views which 
 were entertained at that time by those who may reasonably 
 be regarded as being among the most advanced in all matters 
 relating to freedom in the service of God. It is also useful 
 because it shows the line of difficulty which, notwithstanding 
 his wonderful Catholicity, the Founder felt and which had 
 to be combated in succeeding periods when advances were 
 taken which led to our present position. 
 
 Catherine Booth’s own convictions in this matter were 
 not reached without very considerable thought. That those 
 views were entertained before she met the Founder may be 
 seen from a remarkable letter (she was then 21) which she ad- 
 dressed to a Minister for whom she had a high regard and who 
 had made some critical remarks in her hearing. She writes: 
 
 Permit me, my dear sir, to ask whether you have ever made the 
 subject of woman’s equality as a being the matter of calm investiga- 
 tion and thought? . 
 
 So far as Scriptural evidence is concerned, did I but possess ability 
 to do justice to the subject, I dare take my stand on it against the 
 
 1¢ William Booth.’ By Harold Begbie. Vol. i, p. 255. 
 
164 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 world in defending her perfect equality. And it is because I am 
 persuaded that no honest unprejudiced investigation of the sacred 
 volume can give perpetuity to the mere assumptions and false notions 
 which have gained currency in society on this subject, that I so 
 earnestly commend it to your attention. 
 
 That woman is, in consequence of her inadequate education, 
 generally inferior to man intellectually, I admit. But that she is 
 naturally so, as your remarks seem to imply, I see no cause to believe. 
 I think the disparity is as easily accounted for as the difference be- 
 tween woman intellectually in this country and under the degrading 
 slavery of heathen lands. No argument, in my judgment, can be 
 drawn from past experience on this point, because the past has been 
 false in theory and wrong in practice. Never yet in the history of 
 the world has woman been placed on an intellectual footing with 
 man. Her training from babyhood, even in this highly favoured 
 land, has hitherto been such as to cramp and paralyse rather than 
 develop and strengthen her energies, and calculated to crush and 
 wither her aspirations after mental greatness rather than to excite 
 and stimulate them. And even where the more directly depressing 
 influence has been withdrawn, the indirect and more powerful 
 stimulus has been wanting.} 
 
 This letter clearly sets forth one determining factor in 
 my mother’s attitude on the woman question. She claimed 
 that woman was to take her place by the side of man in all 
 things relating to the Kingdom of God, not only because 
 redemption equally extended to her with man—‘ In Christ 
 Jesus there is neither male nor female ’—but because she 
 was, as a being, intellectually, morally, spiritually his equal. 
 
 We see the same thought, but more fully developed, in 
 a letter to the Founder, one of the last of the love letters : 
 
 I am ready to admit that in the majority of cases the training of 
 woman has made her man’s inferior, as under the degrading slavery 
 of heathen lands she is inferior to her own sex in Christian coun- 
 tries; but that naturally she is in any respect except physical 
 strength and courage inferior to man I cannot see cause to believe, 
 and I am sure no one can prove it from the Word of God, and it is 
 on this foundation that professors of religion always try to establish 
 it. I believe that one of the greatest boons to the race would be 
 woman’s exaltation to her proper position mentally and spiritually. 
 Who can tell its consequences to posterity ? 2 
 
 After a reference to the women of the Old Testament who 
 exercised the prophetic gift, she goes on: 
 
 God having once spoken directly by woman, and man having 
 1° William Booth,’ by Harold Begbie. Vol.i, p.126. Ibid. Vol.i, p.270. 
 
THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 165 
 
 once recognized her divine commission and obeyed it, on what ground 
 is omnipotence to be restricted, or woman’s spiritual labours ignored ? 
 Who shall dare say unto the Lord, ‘ What doest Thou ?’ when He 
 ‘pours out His Spirit upon His handmaidens,’ or when it is poured 
 out shall I render it null with impunity ? If, indeed, there is ‘ in 
 Christ Jesus neither male nor female,’ but in all touching His King- 
 dom ‘ they are one,’ who shall dare thrust woman out of the Church’s 
 operations, or presume to put my candle which God has lighted under 
 A Ouse) 2600 2. 
 
 If God has given her ability, why should not woman persuade the 
 vacillating, instruct and console the penitent, and pour out her soul 
 in prayer for sinners ? 4 
 
 She ends the letter with some passionate words about the 
 equality of woman with man in Christ, and there is a fine 
 irony in her suggestion that if modern quibblers had been 
 among the disciples to whom a woman announced the Lord’s 
 resurrection they would have hesitated to receive such 
 tidings from her lips. In this letter there is to be found a 
 sufficient apology for the whole position which The Army 
 has claimed for and given to woman in its ranks. 
 
 The Founder, however, moved slowly, and it is evident 
 from letters and memoranda too voluminous to quote here 
 that it was not until some years later that he came fully 
 to accept the position for which Mrs. Booth contended. A 
 curious circumstance contributed to this result. They were 
 stationed at Gateshead-on-Tyne. Some special meetings 
 were being conducted at Newcastle, just across the river, by 
 an American evangelist named Palmer, helped by his wife. 
 Mrs. Phoebe Palmer was a devout and also an eloquent 
 woman, and her services were popular. They attracted the 
 attention of a minister of one of the Nonconformist bodies 
 who had formerly been Vicar of the parish, and he made a 
 studied criticism of woman as a preacher of the Gospel, 
 attacking Mrs. Palmer with more or less asperity. Mrs. 
 Booth felt called upon to reply to this attack, and wrote 
 and published a pamphlet of some thirty pages dealing with 
 the whole question in what has generally been conceded to 
 be a comprehensive and effective manner.” The preparation 
 
 1‘ William Booth,’ by Harold Begbie. Vol. i, p. 270. 
 
 2¢Female Ministry, or Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel’ (the 
 substance of this pamphlet can be found reprinted in ‘ Practical Religion’). 
 
166 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 of that pamphlet involved considerable research, and in 
 order that she might reveal any weaknesses in her own 
 argument she fully discussed the whole subject with the 
 Founder. It was these conversations and the reasoning they 
 evolved which resulted in his coming completely to take the 
 view she had already urged upon him, and from that time 
 no serious question arose in either of their minds as to the 
 equality of woman with man. 
 
 When the Mission originated in the East of London, 
 there came immediately to the front converts who were 
 obviously gifted in public testimony. For a long time the 
 forces were very small, and the immediate seizure of the 
 opportunity for open-air work which was afforded by the 
 Mile End Waste taxed the resources of the infant Society to 
 the utmost.! One consequence of this was that, without 
 any deliberate plan, or even very serious consideration, the 
 women who could speak to the crowds were encouraged, even 
 urged, to do so equally with the men, and it was soon ob- 
 served that they could often win the sympathy of those to 
 whom they spoke more easily than could the men. The 
 same thing was seen in the private meetings. There the 
 women, though often reluctant and hesitating, spoke with 
 an impressiveness which seemed quite as appealing as any- 
 thing the men were able to command. Thus by degrees, 
 and without any preconceived arrangement, though with the 
 entire approval of the Founders, woman took for herself a 
 place in the Mission, and began a work which proved to be 
 of the greatest consequence. 
 
 While the work of the Mission was confined to the one 
 station at Whitechapel, the care of those who had joined 
 themselves to the little Society, was easily compassed by 
 the Founder and by one or two volunteers who gave him 
 their spare time. But after the first few years, when stations 
 were opened at Bethnal Green, at Millwall, at Poplar, at 
 Limehouse, and later, at Canning Town, it became necessary 
 to employ others for this work. The first of these were 
 
 1 The Mile End Waste was a strip of unoccupied land about a mile long 
 between the side walk and the main road of the Mile End Road, one of the 
 most popular thoroughfares of the East of London. Tens of thousands 
 of people passed over it daily. 
 
THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 167 
 
 working women, who were engaged for part of their time. 
 Actually the first was a Mrs. Collingridge, who worked for 
 her bread in a candle factory in Millwall. She and her deli- 
 cate husband were among the early converts of the Mission, 
 and she showed a great aptitude for this work. She received 
 a few shillings weekly from the funds ‘ for boot leather, and 
 to enable her to get her tea when away from home.’ She 
 filled up a careful return—some of those returns are still in 
 existence—showing the number of persons visited and in- 
 cluding a brief report upon special cases. Mrs. Collingridge 
 became the forerunner of others, and at each of the Stations, 
 before the appointment of regular Evangelists, there were 
 one or two such local part-time workers. On the whole, 
 they were well received by the people. 
 
 After the first two or three years the Mission was organ- 
 ized on a very definite plan. Each Station or Society had 
 its own duly appointed workers—Treasurer, Secretary, 
 Elders—who together formed an Elders’ Meeting for the 
 transaction of certain local business. Other lay workers, 
 known by various terms, also came into being. From the 
 beginning women took a part in this local organization, and 
 although in some cases that part was relatively small, it was 
 an important fact. Many of the women who thus shared 
 the burden of the Stations did splendid work, softening oppo- 
 sition, which at times was fierce, and helping the weak and 
 trembling with whom some of the men had little patience. 
 
 It must not be supposed that thisarrangement was carried 
 out without difficulty. Some of the men who had been con- 
 verted in the Mission—some, indeed, who had been raised 
 from the very gutters—as soon as they found themselves in 
 office and with certain influence in their own Societies, 
 demurred when women were placed beside them in similar 
 positions. Men who had been brought up amidst the ruffian- 
 ism of the lowest districts, objected to women being regarded 
 as on an equality with themselves, and again and again, men 
 who gave the most hopeful promise of future usefulness de- 
 clined to work with women, and were only brought round 
 after great effort and much prayer. Some, I am afraid, were 
 never brought round. The difficulty was not a little 
 
168 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 increased from the fact that though many of the women in 
 question were fully alive to their own usefulness and had 
 deep experiences of spiritual religion, they hesitated or drew 
 back in the presence of opposition from the men. They 
 suffered equally with the men who objected, from the long 
 prejudices and ignorances of the past. 
 
 Nor was it only the men who objected. There were 
 certain women who raised difficulties. Some married women, 
 in particular, thought it unwise and even indelicate to bring 
 their single sisters into any sort of confidential relations with 
 the members, or, indeed, into any public service in which 
 they had to deal with men. 
 
 But we held on. The women who had taken up the 
 burden of the work were encouraged—sometimes, I think, 
 coaxed—to persevere. They were met in little companies, 
 and were urged with infinite patience to take up their 
 Cross, to hold fast to the opportunity which had been given 
 them, and as a rule they did not disappoint us. 
 
 The problem was complicated by the fact that some of 
 the women who had taken up local positions were married 
 women whose husbands, either saved or unsaved, objected 
 to their undertaking any sort of public work, especially in 
 association with such a despised and openly ridiculed com- 
 munity as ours quickly became. But here again, convinced 
 that God was guiding them, the leaders persevered. Some 
 of the women withdrew owing to their husbands’ objections, 
 but the majority overcame their difficulties, and often had, 
 in addition to other joys, the joy of leading both husband 
 and children to Christ. 
 
 This brings me to a further development. The women 
 Evangelists, although very acceptable and useful, were not 
 at first entrusted with the responsible control of a Corps or 
 Society. To place a woman in charge of one of these Societies 
 —or, as they would be called outside The Army, Churches— 
 involved quite a new departure. Opinion was divided 
 amongst the most thoughtful of the leaders. The Army 
 Mother herself had never quite contemplated placing women 
 in positions which would involve their authority over men. 
 This would be going further than anything recorded even 
 
THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 169 
 
 in the early Church. The Founder delayed for a consider- 
 able time before making his decision. Commissioner Railton, 
 who was always ready for new departures, favoured entrust- 
 ing women with the responsibilities and authorities which 
 we had given to the men. Some of the leading Evangelists, 
 on the other hand—all good men and true—were opposed 
 to anything of this kind. They said, ‘ Let the woman help 
 us, but do not give her any authority over men.’ John Allen,? 
 probably the most spiritually-minded of all those early 
 fighters, and a true lover of souls, felt very strongly that 
 there was something positively dangerous to the woman in 
 placing her in any position of public notoriety. 
 
 The Army Mother hesitated. She felt that the women, 
 especially the single women, who might be appointed to com- 
 mand Corps, would undoubtedly be placed in circumstances 
 of danger and temptation. That aspect of the matter was 
 fully considered. Without safeguards she never would have 
 agreed, as she did agree, that the women should assume these 
 positions. Indeed, there was a kind of undertaking given 
 that single women should always be appoinied in couples. 
 
 At the time when this question arose it caused great 
 perplexity. We only wanted to do what was the best. That 
 a great opportunity had arisen could not be denied. The 
 difficulty of raising, in sufficient numbers, men competent 
 for the work was only too manifest. The call for leaders 
 from station after station and town after town was constantly 
 ringing in our ears. And there before our eyes was un- 
 mistakeable evidence of woman’s remarkable acceptableness 
 as a messenger of Christ and her wonderful success in win- 
 ning souls. The work of the Local Officers? and of those 
 early ‘shepherds’ to whom I have referred, pointed also 
 to the probability that many women would be found 
 possessed of other gifts—the gifts necessary for the conduct 
 of secular affairs, for the guidance in spiritual things of those 
 under their care, and for the management and control of the 
 people. Finally, therefore, it was decided to make a trial. 
 
 1 See ‘ The Salvation Navvy ’—the life-story of Captain John Allen. 
 
 2 Lay workers, who have entered into very definite undertakings as to 
 obedience and experience, but who receive no payment. 
 
 eet at. -_ 
 
170 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 The first woman to be appointed in sole charge of one of 
 the Societies was Captain Annie Davis, who afterwards be- 
 came the wife of Commissioner Ridsdel.1 She was sent to 
 Barking (a suburb of East London) in July, 1875. She was 
 a remarkable little woman, gifted less from the public stand- 
 point than from devotion to principle and ability to manage 
 and control. Her appointment proved a complete success. 
 The men members of the Society were soon as devoted to 
 her as they could have been to any man, and she, guided 
 from above, watchful and prayerful and conscious that she 
 was making important experiments for the guidance of 
 others, overcame every difficulty. From that time no 
 serious hesitation was felt, and women soon came to be 
 appointed to take charge of Corps just as men. 
 
 There were, of course, notwithstanding this success, still 
 some of the Evangelists—or Officers, as I will now call them 
 —who objected. They doubted the reality of the success 
 reported, and still questioned the possibility of the women 
 maintaining the work which they (the men) had begun. But 
 all these questions were set at rest by one circumstance. 
 The rapid extension of The Army after 1878 taxed all our 
 resources, and the Founder decided that he would send 
 women just as he sent men, not only to maintain work al- 
 ready commenced, but to establish new Stations. It was, 
 no doubt, an adventure. There was a great deal of head- 
 shaking aboutit. Butit was aninstant success. And when, 
 later on, some of the brethren who had doubted the capacity 
 of their sisters to control and maintain the work of God 
 committed to them, came themselves to succeed these sis- 
 ters, and were appointed to take charge of the Corps which 
 their sister comrades had raised up, they soon found that 
 the women had proved fully equal—sometimes more than 
 equal—to themselves. 
 
 The appointment of women to take command of Corps 
 encouraged other developments, and we soon had women in 
 charge of various important undertakings. My sister Emma 
 —‘ The Consul,’ as she was afterwards called—was placed 
 
 1 The Commissioner is now, after forty-two years of happy service, on 
 our retired list. 
 
THE CALL AND MINISTRY OF WOMAN 171 
 
 in charge of the Women’s Training Home. Then my sister 
 Eva, widely known as the Field Commissioner, was success- 
 ful in the charge of one of our large London Corps. Mrs. 
 Bramwell Booth, a year after our marriage, took over the 
 work which later spread into many parts of the world as the 
 Women’s Social Work, and afterwards other women, as 
 occasion demanded, were placed with full confidence in 
 various commands. 
 
 This brings me to another stage in our evolution. It was 
 not until a few years after their appointment to Corps that 
 it seemed desirable to place women in any of those Higher 
 Commands which also involved authority over men. Many of 
 our men Officers (and some women also) who had been quite 
 happy to work side by side with women Captains who were, 
 like themselves, placed over Corps, objected—in some cases 
 strongly—to being themselves placed under women who were 
 designated for the position of Divisional Commanders.' 
 But, there again, the progress of the work and an unexpected 
 development secured the way. Two women of striking 
 character quarried the road for their comrades. 
 
 My sister Catherine in her work as pioneer and leader 
 of The Army in France and Switzerland after 1881, and 
 Commissioner Hannah Ouchterlony, as pioneer and leader 
 of our work in Sweden after 1883, made it perfectly plain, 
 so that those who ran could read, that there was no 
 adequate reason for withholding the higher Commands 
 from women. The work in France was small, and my 
 sister always had a serious difficulty in that she never 
 completely silenced the criticism of some in her immediate 
 Staff. The work in Sweden, on the other hand, grew with 
 great rapidity, but Commissioner Ouchterlony also was 
 not without serious difficulties in that some of her staff, 
 though devoted to her and to The Army, never entirely 
 accepted her authority. Yet in both these Commands 
 God was so evidently using the Leaders, and so evidently 
 guiding them in the rule and management of the work, 
 
 1 A Divisional Commander has the oversight of a defined area containing 
 a number of places in which The Army is working or intending to work. 
 The D.C. answers in many respects to the Bishops of the Anglican and 
 Roman Churches, 
 
49? ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 that without our having to make any show of the matter, 
 the way was clear. The barriers of fear and prejudice were 
 broken down, men and women alike came to acknowledge 
 that woman no less than man might possess those natural 
 gifts and receive those endowments of the Spirit which were 
 needed for the governing and leadership of the people of God. 
 
 By this I do not mean to say that there are not still in 
 The Army men Officers working under women—and, for 
 that matter, women Officers also—who would prefer to work 
 under men. I do say, however, that, with perhaps here 
 and there an exception, all that small jealousy which was 
 so troublesome in the past, and the prejudices which belong 
 to narrow and selfish minds, have become things of yester- 
 day. I do occasionally hear an objection raised to the 
 command of a woman, and I am sometimes challenged by 
 suggestions that there are among our women leaders those 
 who are influenced in their rule by the desire for praise of 
 men or by vanity or by other unworthy considerations. But 
 I am persuaded that even if these grievous things be so they 
 are exceptional. 
 
 Woman has won her place in The Army. She has won 
 a very wonderful place in the world by means of The Army. 
 It may be worth while to remark here that, though seldom 
 acknowledged, there is little doubt that the women of 
 The Army have played a part in the general emancipation 
 of woman which we see to be going on in the Western nations. 
 In the political struggle, The Army, of course, has taken 
 no part, but in the higher realms of the fight, the hand of 
 the Salvation woman, both Officer and Soldier, has helped 
 to carry the banner to victory. The women who marched 
 at the head of the little bands of despised Salvationists in 
 years gone by were accustoming the public mind to the 
 spectacle of woman in command, of woman taking an active 
 unshrinking share in public duty, and overcoming by the 
 grace of God her supposed inferiorities. Thus we may truly 
 say that we were opening a door through which women might 
 carry the Message of Love and Life to multitudes who would 
 never receive it save from a woman’s lips. That door will 
 never again be shut. 
 
XX 
 BENCH AND BAR 
 
 OnE of the first difficulties which my father encountered, 
 after the Christian Mission (as The Salvation Army was first 
 called) had become a distinct entity, was the question of 
 the holding of property. Any property involves law. We 
 made an experiment in the early seventies along the lines of 
 certain Nonconformist bodies. A Model Deed for the holding 
 of property was in one case adopted, with trustees whose 
 powers were defined. This Deed was hung upon the Con- 
 ference which had been called into existence, and such an 
 arrangement might well have proved quite plain sailing, but 
 the Conference itself came to grief, and therefore, of course, 
 such a plan for the general holding of our property fell to 
 the ground. 
 
 When the Founder decided to take affairs into his own 
 hands, and began to issue regulations on the principle now 
 adopted, we came at once to the question of property 
 control. We had in mind two main purposes: first, to 
 make provision for really securing the property for the 
 objects for which it was obtained and to impress it with 
 its trust character; and secondly, to secure that the 
 General for the time being (or, as he was then called, the 
 General Superintendent) should have ample powers of dis- 
 position and control. This latter was in some respects a new 
 idea, and involved us in considerable legal difficulties. The 
 Deed (or Deed Poll, as it is more correctly named) that was 
 finally settled was the fruit of much thought and prayer. 
 It was adopted by the Conference of 1878, and enrolled in 
 the Chancery Division in the August of that year. 
 
 My first introduction to counsel of any standing was 
 over the drafting of that Deed. One incident I remember 
 
 173 
 
174 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 had to do with Mr. Cozens-Hardy, afterwards Master of the 
 Rolls. In his gloomy, candle-lit chambers in the Temple 
 one dismal afternoon, after the Courts had risen, we assem- 
 bled for a consultation. Mr. Cozens-Hardy, as I remember 
 him, was a small man physically, sitting with his wig at the 
 back of his head (he had just come out of Court), and 
 looking up from the piles of documents on the table before 
 him to scrutinize the faces of his visitors. After a long 
 discussion, Cozens-Hardy said, with a touch of acerbity, 
 “Mr. Booth, you want me to make you into a Pope, and I 
 do not think it can be done.’ 
 
 ‘Well, Mr. Cozens-Hardy,’ replied the Founder in a 
 flash, responding with humour, as he always did when any- 
 one adopted that tone to him, ‘1 am sure you will get as 
 near to it as you suitably can!’ 
 
 Forty years after that, an important question involving 
 the interpretation of that Deed came before Lord Justice 
 Cozens-Hardy in his then capacity as Master of the Rolls. 
 While nothing in the judgment he then delivered would 
 have led a stranger to think that he had ever seen the Deed 
 before, he commented upon its evident purport and inten- 
 tion in a way which made it plain to those who had been 
 present at that distant interview that the circumstance was 
 clearly within his recollection. 
 
 That Deed became the ground of many battles. Like, 
 I suppose, other really important legal instruments, it has 
 gathered strength to itself by the judgments of courts in 
 various lands bearing upon its provisions. Looking back 
 now for the more than forty years since it was executed 
 by the Founder and adopted by the representatives of 
 The Army, we can say that it accomplishes, in fact, what we 
 wanted. It has impressed the holdings of The Army in the 
 most unquestionable manner with their trust character, and 
 yet it has secured to the General for the time being the 
 absolute control of the property within the limits of his 
 trust. It has not made ‘ the General for the time being’ a 
 ‘ corporation sole,’ as the bishops are (and as the General 
 has in later years been made in some other countries), but 
 in practice it has had almost the same effect. 
 
BENCH AND BAR 175 
 
 A later law business of a serious character was in con- 
 nexion with the Grecian and Eagle Tavern -litigation. 
 There I came into touch with a distinguished counsel who 
 has proved a lifelong friend and supporter, Mr. (now Sir) 
 Edward Clarke. He was our leading counsel in the action 
 brought against us for breach of covenant in using the Eagle 
 Tavern for purposes other than those of a public-house. 
 The case came before Mr. Justice Stephen (Fitzjames 
 Stephen), the only English judge I have come across who 
 has seemed—in my opinion—incurably biased against 
 us. My father was in the witness-box, and Clarke was 
 examining. 
 
 “Now, General Booth,’ said Clarke, ‘you met with 
 opposition, did you not ?’ 
 
 The General answered, Yes, we had met with opposi- 
 tion: the Devil was always ready to oppose. 
 
 Thereupon the gruff voice of the Judge struck in—so 
 gruff as to be almost inarticulate, like the growl of a bear, 
 ‘ We-don’t-want-the-Devil-in-here.’ The court did not know 
 whether to tremble or to laugh! I think that at that time 
 Stephen’s mind was already going. His resignation was due 
 to a disease which began gradually to affect his mental 
 powers. 
 
 We lost the case in that court; but we recovered a 
 large part of what we lost and part of our costs in the Court 
 of Appeal, where Nathaniel Lindley, afterwards Master of 
 the Rolls, expressed in the course of his judgment one of the 
 most beautiful pieces of English to be found in the law 
 records. 
 
 Before his conduct of this case, Sir Edward Clarke was 
 quite unknown to us. One incident I remember which 
 helped our acquaintance. He was standing with one or 
 two of usinthe corridor of the court after one of the adjourn- 
 ments, when one of our witnesses, named Archer, stepped 
 up to him, and said, ‘ We shall pray for you, Mr. Clarke.’ 
 Thereupon Clarke took off his hat, and stood still uncovered 
 for a moment. It made a deep impression on us. I have 
 been in association with Sir Edward Clarke since then in a 
 dozen or more business cases, and I have always been struck 
 
176 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 by his absolute sincerity and conscientiousness. In his 
 “The Story of My Life’ (Murray) he refers to his friend- 
 ship with the old General, his admiration for The Army, and 
 what it has done for the poor of every nation; also the 
 pleasure which it gave him (Sir Edward) to be caricatured in 
 ‘Punch’ in Salvation Army uniform, staggering under and 
 vigorously beating a very big drum ! 
 
 Sir Edward Clarke has been an adept at early rising to 
 pursue his legal work. Perhaps, however, he may have been 
 beaten in this respect by Sir Richard Webster, later the 
 Lord Chief. I believe that at four o’clock every morning, 
 summer and winter, a light would peep out in Webster’s 
 home, denoting that he was beginning his labours. Webster, 
 who as Attorney-General led against us in the Old Bailey 
 prosecution, was interested in children, and took an active 
 part in promoting the Children Act, 1908, in the House of 
 Lords. This brought us into correspondence with him—by 
 this time he was Lord Alverstone—for The Army took great 
 interest in that measure, and got some of its ideas incor- 
 porated, thanks to the Home Secretary of the day, Mr. (now 
 Sir) Herbert Samuel. 
 
 Another great lawyer with whom I came in contact from 
 time to time was John Rigby, afterwards Attorney-General 
 and then Lord Justice of Appeal. We first employed him 
 in a matter which was heard before Mr. Justice North, 
 in 1887. This was the first case to raise the question of 
 the charitable character of The Salvation Army trusts. 
 Wright, who also afterwards became a judge—and a very 
 good judge—was against us. It was an interesting case 
 in that the money was a legacy from a benevolent brewer 
 at Hereford, the amount in question being £4,000 cash 
 and {£4,000 to be paid on the death of the legatee’s 
 niece. The case was made memorable for us by some 
 observations by Mr. Justice North when deciding in our 
 favour. 
 
 Rigby was one of the most delightful of men, but not at 
 all professional either in manner or appearance. He would 
 have passed any day for a sturdy Norfolk farmer. He had 
 a wilfully wandering beard, and was a great smoker. A 
 
BENCH AND BAR 177 
 
 common occurrence with him was that when he wanted to 
 get out of his pocket a handkerchief or some papers a pipe 
 would tumble out in the process. It did not seem to matter 
 which pocket he dived in, the pipe came out all the same ! 
 His chambers were the most dismal, I think, I have ever 
 been in—a desolate, doldrums of a place, dark and melan- 
 choly, lit by a sputtering lamp that would seldom burn. Yet 
 at this time he was all but the head of the Bar so far as trust 
 and equity business was concerned. On more than one 
 occasion, seated in this miserable gloom, he would say to 
 us, ‘ Have confidence in your own scheme. You have here 
 all the elements of freedom combined with power.’ He 
 greatly strengthened the Founder’s belief in the wisdom of 
 our legal arrangements. 
 
 Rigby remained a friend to the end of his life, gave us 
 a little money, and made at least one speech which was of 
 great service to us. It was at a Mansion House meeting, 
 after he became a Lord Justice of Appeal. He declared 
 that the Headquarters of The Salvation Army was an 
 excellent school for the training of good men of business. 
 “I found them [The Army leaders] sensible and far-seeing 
 men of business, moderate and fair in the statement of their 
 case; in fact, in that respect I have never found any body 
 of men that I could praise more to my own satisfaction than 
 when, to the best of my humble powers, I have advised 
 them as to their legal rights. I say this for them, that | 
 never advised them as to what they ought to do, but 
 immediately they realized their position. They, uniformly 
 acting in the most liberal and fair spirit, took those steps 
 which I think I should have taken myself under the circum- 
 stances.’ He also spoke for us in the House more than 
 once, and was always ready to inconvenience himself in 
 our interests, and seldom took from us anything but 
 nominal fees. 
 
 When the ‘ Darkest England ’ scheme was started, a new 
 Deed setting up a distinct trust was required, and it was to 
 Rigby and Sir Charles Sargant, now a Lord Justice, that we 
 turned. The final drafting of the Deed had not been 
 settled; there had been some delay, and as it was desired 
 
 N 
 
178 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 to execute it in a public meeting on a given date, it fell to my 
 lot to put some pressure upon the legal gentlemen to bring 
 their work to a conclusion. The final touches were given to 
 the draft by Sir John Rigby in the cooling room of a Turkish 
 bath in St. James’s Street, whither I and Mr. Frost, one of 
 our solicitors, had followed him. He came out to us clad 
 in a bathing sheet, and in these unusual surroundings and 
 attire he went over the Deed for the last time. He gave 
 us about two hours, and finally put his initials to the draft, 
 which as passed by him was adopted. The incident shows 
 the keenness and sympathy with which he was ready at all 
 times to assist us in our work. 
 
 Lord Russell, of whose advocacy in the Armstrong case 
 I have had something to say in previous chapters, was one 
 of the most quick-tempered men I have ever met. A most 
 attractive personality and a beautiful talker, but woe betide 
 the subordinate who displeased him! Much of his irrita- 
 bility I put down to his excessive snuff-taking, though the 
 immediate effect of the habit was to restore his evenness of 
 temper. I have never seen or heard of any one who could 
 take the amount of snuff which Charles Russell consumed. 
 He would take a snuff-box the size of a pack of cards out of 
 his left-hand waistcoat pocket, knock the corner of it with 
 one hand against the other, then open it and shake out 
 into his palm a dose about the size of a filbert, close the 
 box, and go forward to complete satisfaction! The pro- 
 cess ended only when all the stuff had disappeared, some of 
 it scattering far and near! Then he would produce an 
 enormous silk pocket-handkerchief and proceed to modify 
 conditions in the usual way. The curious thing about it 
 was that for the moment this seemed to have the most 
 soothing effect on him. His voice, always very charming, 
 assumed its most silvery tones, his expression became 
 benign, he stood forth as the sweet composer of unfortunate 
 differences, and his demeanour which a few minutes before 
 had approached that of a storm at sea, became that of the 
 most courteous gentleman. 
 
 He worked on the Armstrong case as, he told us, he had 
 worked on no other. He was a Roman Catholic, and strict 
 
BENCH AND BAR 179 
 
 in the observance of certain practices of his Church—a 
 religious man, I believe, in a very strict sense of the word. 
 He had a great objection to Sunday work. This case, how- 
 ever, was a very heavy one, and Sunday after Sunday he 
 was at his chambers toiling over the papers and speaking 
 personally to the witnesses. He had been at the bar for 
 twenty-five years, and never, he told me, had had a case 
 which had made him work on Sundays until he came to 
 ours. He really sympathized with the great object we had 
 had in view and put his heart into his pleading—a thing 
 which it is often so difficult to get counsel to do. He was 
 a most able counsel on our behalf in other cases also, and 
 made one of the most dignified and brilliant Lord Chiefs 
 that the English Bench has seen for many years—even 
 though he decided against us in the case I have already 
 mentioned ! 
 
 One of the most spiritually-minded men in the legal 
 profession whom I have met was Earl Cairns, who was 
 Lord Chancellor in Disraeli’s Government. Although a 
 lawyer of outstanding brilliance, and a man who moved in 
 the highest social and intellectual circles, his was a simple, 
 beautiful Christlike spirit, with a chief care for the interests 
 of the Kingdom of God. He came to many of our Meetings. 
 He had a great admiration for my dear mother, showed no 
 little kindness to me, and with Lady Cairns took a deep 
 interest in the work. They did not, of course, approve of 
 some things which were done by us and said so, but they 
 helped us when friends were few. 
 
 Lord Cairns always brought the question to the practical 
 issue: ‘ What can I do to help you?’ And he made more 
 than one address, which went forth to the world, and, 
 coming from such a source, created confidence in the 
 Founder, and encouraged people to aid us financially. He 
 made a remark on one occasion which was widely advertised : 
 
 I can only say that as soon as I can find another organization 
 moving amongst this same class of people, bringing the Gospel to 
 bear upon them, and producing such results as this Army is pro- 
 ducing, and doing this work in a way more free from the possibility 
 of criticism, I may perhaps prefer that organization. But at present 
 there is no such organization, and we are in this position—that we 
 
180 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 must either take the agency of The Salvation Army, and make the 
 best of it, or else we must give up all those masses of people as 
 hopeless and abandoned for ever. We cannot, most of us, go and 
 work in the places where the forces of The Salvation Army work. 
 We cannot do it in person; but it is surely a great privilege for us, 
 if we cannot do the work ourselves, to be able to help forward those 
 who can and will do it. 
 
 Not many men accustomed to legal restraint have been 
 able so to yield themselves to a great enthusiasm. I shall 
 never forget Lord Cairns in connexion with the opening of 
 the Congress Hall at Clapton in 1882. The place was filled 
 as only we know how to fill buildings! There could not have 
 been fewer than four thousand people present. It was the 
 culmination of a great effort. The opening of those premises 
 was quite an event for us at that time, and we were all in 
 high spirits. It was then that there was first introduced in 
 public what we afterwards came to call the “ Wave Offering.’ 
 Pocket-handkerchiefs were brought out and waved during 
 the singing of some chorus of praise to God. Lord Cairns 
 produced his pocket-handkerchief and waved it with the 
 rest. He entered with all the simplicity and enthusiasm of 
 a Salvationist into this moment of special gladness. And 
 then, aS we resumed our seats more or less breathless his 
 lordship said to me, ‘I do hope we are not unduly 
 excited!’ Ifancy that he was at that moment thankful 
 that Lady Cairns was not present ! 
 
 This has become a chapter of personal reminiscences of 
 great lawyers rather than a story of the law as it has 
 affected—or has been affected by—The Salvation Army. 
 Some reflections on the legal procedure of different countries 
 must be for another chapter, but the personal reminiscences 
 of great lawyers are by no means exhausted. 
 
XXI 
 MORE ABOUT THE LAw’s MAJESTY 
 
 ONE good thing that The Army has done—which was not 
 within the direct vision of the Founder—has been to estab- 
 lish a body of legal opinion that has become a powerful 
 instrument for protecting and maintaining liberty’s fair 
 work in this and other lands. Not only in the British Empire, 
 but in countries as different as Germany and Switzerland 
 and the United States, we have on record a set of judgments 
 that have not only helped us (and continue to help us) in 
 adjusting our trust position and our work generally to the 
 legal requirements of the various countries which The Army 
 has entered, but have also been of great assistance to other 
 
 bodies working for liberty and righteousness. | 
 
 Our experience of legal affairs in various countries makes 
 it possible for me? to attempt some comparisons which may 
 be of interest. I cannot, however, make it too clear that in 
 this connexion I am speaking of things as we happened to 
 find them, and as they have impressed themselves upon my 
 own mind. There may be a good deal to be said by others 
 who look at these things from different v ew-points or who 
 have had different experiences. 
 
 I should say that by far the slowest, most cumbersome, 
 and most costly legal proceedings in the world are those of 
 the United Kingdom. This may be the result—or partly 
 the result—of the slow, peculiar, and individual growth of 
 the various bodies of statutory enactment, Case law and 
 Custom, which have come to constitute English Law as we 
 know it to-day. However this may be, the fact, I think, 
 is what I have stated. The most direct, expeditious, and 
 
 1TI say ‘me’ chiefly because the law affairs of The Army have been 
 mainly under my direction. 
 
 181 
 
182 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 incomparably most economical proceedings of a correspond- 
 ing nature are those of Germany. In the courts of first 
 instance in Germany, answering to the Police and County 
 Courts here, I have obtained judgments in a week or ten 
 days, and at a cost of fifty shillings, which here would have 
 taken six weeks or perhaps three months, and cost anything 
 up to £20 or £30 or more. In the larger questions which 
 come before the courts, those of Germany can do the business 
 in perhaps a quarter of the time occupied over here, and at 
 one-fifth of the expense and do it quite as well. 
 
 In the United States—which is, of course, a newer 
 country, and has had the English experience to build upon 
 —the legal system is also immensely in advance of that of 
 this country, particularly in expedition, though something 
 has to be taken off that advantage because of the large and 
 easy facilities for appeals and the means available to liti- 
 gants for prolonging the proceedings between the hearing of 
 appeals. Once in court, however, everything makes for 
 thoroughness, for the practical application of agreed legal 
 principles (which are much the same everywhere, and, of 
 course, largely correspond with the British), and for quick- 
 ness. Some of the most important judgments which we 
 have obtained in connexion with freedom of action in our 
 methods and the settlement of our property have been 
 obtained in the United States in the course of a few months, 
 while corresponding actions in the old country would have 
 dragged on for a couple of years. 
 
 In Canada and Australia the position is not quite so 
 good in some respects. The judiciary in those countries, 
 however, is extremely careful. The courts of appeal have 
 at their head men not only of commanding ability, but of 
 the most scrupulous rectitude and principle. 
 
 Speaking generally, I entertain the highest opinion of the 
 judicial systems of all the Western nations so far as I know 
 them, and indeed my experience is that all over the world 
 our Western justice is recognized as the very criterion of 
 what justice should be. If I were asked to suggest changes, 
 I would inquire whether in England and Scotland the 
 judges could not be given their positions much earlier in life, 
 
MORE ABOUT THE LAW’S MAJESTY 183 
 
 and be far better paid. In France, I think, the present pre- 
 liminary examinations in criminal cases might be abolished, 
 and the judges of the Supreme Court—the Cour de Cassation 
 —made irremovable. In Germany I would give the people 
 in some way a share in the selection of the magistrates, and 
 I would pay the Judges on altogether a higher scale, both 
 in the Lower and in the Supreme courts. In Scandinavian 
 countries, generally, I would both appoint and retire the 
 judges at an earlier age than is the case at present, and the 
 pensions should be much more liberal. In Italy, I think 
 that much of the legal procedure could be simplified, the 
 courts made more easily open for the poorer people, and the 
 judges more highly paid and chosen from a wider circle. In 
 the United States I should like to see the present system of 
 election greatly modified,and I think the Judges of the High 
 Courts in every State should all be better paid. This latter 
 remark applies also to the judges of the Supreme Court, who 
 should be appointed on the understanding that they do not 
 afterwards take up politics. In Australia and Canada the 
 present system leaves little room for improvement in its 
 suitability to the country concerned, though here, also, I 
 am sure, it would be wise to pay larger salaries and 
 especially to provide liberal pensions. 
 
 I would have women magistrates, and, by and by, 
 women judges, as well as women jurors, everywhere. I 
 would also modify the legal procedure of all countries, 
 including the United Kingdom, so that the County Court 
 judges here and the judges who answer to them in other 
 countries, should be empowered to deal with all matters 
 (except certain reserved questions) where both parties agree 
 that they should be so dealt with. A great deal of litigation 
 is brought to the High Courts, with consequent expenditure 
 of time and money, when it could be settled in the Lower. 
 While I would not deprive a man of his right to go to the 
 Higher Court, if he desires, I would give every encourage- 
 ment to the parties to agree between themselves to accept 
 the decision of a Lower. 
 
 My experience of arbitrations is perhaps unfortunate— 
 at any rate, in England. While the expense, as a rule, is 
 
184 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 (contrary to popular belief) as great or greater than in 
 ordinary actions, the result is often equally unsatisfactory 
 to both parties. As sure as ever there is a fairly fought-out 
 arbitration, both sides will go away saying, ‘I wish I had 
 had an action.’ No doubt this is much to be regretted, but 
 there it is. 
 
 With regard to the costliness of law proceedings I may 
 not be competent to speak. The Army is in a singular 
 position. We have been almost uniformly successful in our 
 law cases, and therefore, generally, we have obtained our 
 costs. Having regard to the hundreds of actions, small and 
 great, which have been fought in different parts of the 
 world, it has always seemed to me a matter for congratu- 
 lation that success has so largely attended us—congratula- 
 tion, I mean, not only to ourselves, but to our legal advisers 
 in the different countries, and particularly to our London 
 solicitors. Even when we have failed there have been 
 compensations, as, for example, in one English Shelter case, 
 when Lord Russell, to whom I have made some personal 
 reference, decided against us. The Lord Chief spoke very 
 warmly of our work on that occasion; in fact, he gave 
 us a kind of testimonial of which we were able to make 
 use. 
 
 His decision, however, was not in our favour. We - 
 contended that our Shelters and Homes for homeless men 
 and women were not “common lodging-houses,’ one reason 
 being that we did not wish to bring them under the common 
 lodging-house regulations, because, for one thing, this 
 rendered them liable to police inspection. In theory, the 
 inspection was of the places only, but in practice it often 
 included the inmates. We felt that these poor people, our 
 clients, were as much entitled to the seclusion of the simple 
 accommodation they could pay for as the aristocrat was 
 entitled to the seclusion of the Hotel Metropole. ‘ Common 
 lodging-houses’’ also were open to the visits of detectives 
 looking for criminals. It is quite proper that detectives 
 should look for criminals whenever they want them, but 
 when they come to a private house to search for a criminal _ 
 they must bring a warrant, whereas they need not bring 
 
MORE ABOUT THE LAW’S MAJESTY 185 
 
 one into a ‘common lodging-house.’ There were other 
 considerations, but we lost the case. 
 
 Another famous Judge of the nineteenth century who was 
 very good to us, and appreciated our work, was Mr. Justice 
 Hawkins. He has a bad name, and yet he was a great man, 
 who really took an interest in the reform of criminals. 
 While I cannot join in all that has been said about Hawkins’s 
 severity, I believe, nevertheless, that he did give on occasion 
 what would now be called vindictive sentences. Sir Edward 
 Clarke complains of his unfairness, and speaks of his ‘ career 
 of public disservice.’ On the other hand, I have thought 
 that Hawkins’s long sentences were in the nature of a 
 rebound—hardly, perhaps, admitted to himself—from the 
 absurd method of a long-continued course of short sentences. 
 Our experience in dealing with criminals, which has been of 
 some range, both in this and other countries, goes to show 
 that nothing can be more ruinous and destructive of every 
 hope of reform than the giving of a succession of short 
 sentences. Some of those long and seemingly harsh sen- 
 tences which Hawkins gave were in opposition to that prin- 
 ciple. It had: been proved, say, in the case of a particular 
 man that a series of short sentences was unavailing. ‘ Very 
 well, then,’ said the judge, ‘ give him a long sentence, and 
 keep him out of society.’ So far as Hawkins’s intellectual 
 power and insight were concerned, I regarded him as a 
 prince among the judges of his day, though no doubt he 
 was a hard man. 
 
 We have been very fortunate in the lawyers who have 
 pleaded for us. I have made it my purpose to get the very 
 best men I could find, and although they have often been 
 matched against men of equal ability and weight on the 
 other side, I have seldom had to admit that from the point 
 of view of moral influence and stamina, the other side were 
 better off than ours. In the United Kingdom especially 
 the lawyers have fought for us with a skill and industry and 
 courage which no fees could repay. The same or almost 
 the same thing can be said of other countries—notably the 
 United States and Australia, India and Germany. Among 
 others I would name here Sir Henry Matthews (Lord 
 
186 ECHOES AND. MEMORIES 
 
 Llandaff) ; Mr. R. Sutherst, one of our most valiant cham- 
 pions, who went up and down the land on our behalf, and 
 worked for the most paltry fees; Mr. Richardson, a 
 solicitor and Common Councillor of the City of London ; 
 Mr. Justice Duke, the President of the Probate, Divorce, 
 and Admiralty Division; Mr. Vaughan Williams, later on 
 a Judge of the High Court; Mr. Hughes, an eminent and 
 respected K.C. on the Chancery side; Mr. Sargant, now a 
 Lord Justice of Appeal, and many other well-known men. 
 Our solicitors, Ranger, Burton & Frost, have also done 
 splendid work. We have employed counsel of every shade 
 of creed. Jessel, son of a late Master of the Rolls, was a 
 Jew ; so is the late Lord Chief Justice (Lord Reading), who 
 has worked for us. Russell was a Roman Catholic; so was 
 Horne Payne. Sir Edward Clarke, Gully (later the Speaker), 
 Jelf, and Greenwood, were strict Churchmen. Waddy was 
 a Methodist, Cozens-Hardy a Congregationalist, Rigby and 
 Willis were Baptists. 
 
 In many of our cases of appeal on the common law side, 
 especially in matters connected with our Open-Air work and 
 meetings and questions of finance, and so forth, we often 
 employed William Willis. He was a remarkable man, of a 
 fervid temperament, and deeply and sincerely religious. We 
 used to have prayer in his delightful chambers. He occa- 
 sionally came to our Meetings, and always greatly rejoiced in 
 the conflicts through which we passed, reckoning it one of the 
 surest signs of the Divine Spirit working among our people 
 that we were persecuted and hated. Without doubt he was 
 one of the ‘ brightest ’ counsel who ever came into a court 
 in my time. His mere advent seemed to make the lamps 
 goup. The judges looked more expectant. A smile creased 
 the most parchment-like faces of counsel. Even the solicitors 
 began to enjoy themselves. Is this too bright a picture ? 
 Well, certainly Willis’s great features were his sincerity, 
 generosity, and an intense humanity. It is said that he 
 lived in lodgings on circuit, instead of going to the swell 
 hotels, and has been seen stopping on the way to the Law 
 Courts to take hungry boys into a ‘tuck’ shop; and then 
 run, so as not to be late for his case. 
 
MORE, ABOUT “IHE’EAWS=MAJESTY 187 
 
 The only other man I remember who had at all a similar 
 way with him was Danckwerts, one of the ablest members 
 of the Bar. You never knew how Danckwerts was going 
 to spring. He was most dangerous when he was most gentle. 
 In my experience I never knew any man who could do 
 so well with a bad case, a case which everybody knew was 
 a bad case, and a case which—most wonderful of all—he 
 himself knew was a bad case. I remember one occasion 
 when Danckwerts appeared for the Crown against us. We 
 had quashed a conviction by certain magistrates, but the 
 question of costs remained over to be argued. Danckwerts 
 made a speech in which he said that the Crown had no funds : 
 how was it to pay the costs of the defeated magistrates ? 
 Lord Chief Justice Coleridge was on the bench. He hada 
 habit of appearing to sleep during the hearing of a case, his 
 eyes closing and his head leaning forward. But when 
 Danckwerts uttered the startling proposition that the Crown 
 had no money, Coleridge instantly woke up from his apparent 
 slumber. ‘ That is one of the most serious statements that 
 could possibly be made,’ he said, ‘ by a gentleman repre- 
 senting the Crown. If the Crown has no money, what is to 
 happen to me?’ Coleridge’s ‘me’ echoed through the 
 court, and remained for some years afterwards a classic 
 allusion with us. Danckwerts simply replied, ‘As your 
 lordship pleases’ (which caused more merriment) and then 
 sat down. We got our costs. 
 
 Another counsel whom I remember being nonplussed 
 was E. H. Pember, of the Parliamentary Bar. Pember, 
 whose conduct of our case, by the way, was perfect, was 
 winding up a case before a Committee of the House of Lords 
 with a most cogent appeal, but mumbling in the usual way. 
 Once, during his hee-ing and haw-ing, he made a mistake, 
 and one of his own juniors, sitting behind him, as they do 
 in Parliamentary committees, corrected him. Pember 
 seemed nettled. He stopped. ‘I do hate,’ he said testily, 
 ‘being corrected from behind.’ Whereupon somebody 
 remarked in a stage whisper (which had the peculiar property 
 of being heard everywhere), ‘ He is thinking of his boyhood 
 days!’ 
 
188 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 Our Eastbourne Bill, on behalf of which he appeared, 
 was one for the amending of a previous Act regulating the 
 government of the town—a great centre of disturbance in 
 the middle eighties. The police and authorities there had 
 taken up a pronounced position against our work. One 
 of the debates in the House of Commons was characterized 
 by a rattling speech for us by Sir Henry James, afterwards 
 Lord James of Hereford, who was standing legal adviser 
 to the Devonshire family—the town was then largely 
 Cavendish property. 
 
 In criminal cases, cases that is in which we have been 
 concerned for accused persons whom we have thought it 
 right to have defended, I have come across most generous 
 helpers. Among those should be mentioned the late Forrest 
 Fulton, who became Recorder of the City of London, and 
 Sir Charles Gill, who though receiving infinitesimal fees, 
 have gone to immense labour for their unhappy clients, 
 greatly to their clients’ advantage. Such circumstances 
 have again and again showed me a kind of passion for 
 justice working in the minds of men who to the outsider 
 have often appeared in the garb of the partisan. 
 
 Sometimes such Counsel have been young and at that 
 time almost unknown men, but that has proved an advantage 
 rather than otherwise. Judges often show consideration to 
 a hitherto unknown man who is struggling with a difficult 
 case simply from their desire to find and encourage ability. 
 Thus the novice will get a sympathetic attention for points 
 which a more seasoned man would hardly be expected to 
 notice. 
 
 We have not seldom known the best results follow an 
 interview between the accused and the judge—with Counsel 
 attending. The prisoner is often completely distracted when 
 in the witness box, but makes an excellent impression when 
 given an opportunity to explain himself in a quiet room. 
 
 The difficulties in which we were involved at Eastbourne 
 and Torquay introduced us to several notable men, among 
 them Mr. Duke and Mr. Asquith. Both these men put their 
 hearts into the different proceedings, and did us good service, 
 although it was perfectly well known that the cases would 
 
MORE ABOUT THE LAW’S MAJESTY 189 
 
 not be decided in our favour. Mr. Asquith! was then one of 
 the men who go ‘special’; that is, only appear in other 
 courts than their own for a ‘special’ extra fee of fifty 
 guineas. Later he and Mr. Haldane (now Lord Haldane) 
 and Mr. (now Lord Justice) Sargant advised us in the 
 settlement of a deed of trust which was adopted at our 
 International Council of 1904. This supplemented our deed 
 of origin. Its main purpose was to provide machinery 
 for removing a General who, on account of any one of 
 certain definite causes, had forfeited his claim to the position, 
 and for appointing a new General in a certain contingency. 
 Mr. Asquith, Mr. Haldane, and Mr. Sargant took a deep 
 personal interest in this matter. We had conference after 
 conference, and I am afraid their fees were infinitesimal in 
 comparison with the amount of work they put in. 
 
 I liked Mr. Asquith. His directness and his alert mind 
 were in delightful contrast with some lawyers I knew. He 
 won my confidence quite early, partly because he really 
 mastered his papers so that conferences became actual 
 conferrings. In court he was a little too detached to please 
 me, but on the other hand he could fight to the last ; and, 
 in fact, he did sometimes win in the very last ditch. 
 
 On one point, with regard to counsel’s fees, I have taken 
 a very definite stand. It has always seemed to me that 
 when counsel are unable to appear, and have to leave the 
 case to somebody else, they should return their fees, or at 
 least a reasonable portion of them. The only counsel from 
 whom I have succeeded in obtaining the return of fees under 
 such circumstances have been Mr. Finlay (afterwards Lord 
 Chancellor), Sir Edward Clarke, and Mr. Clarke Hall, now 
 a Metropolitan magistrate. I was sometimes told that it 
 was contrary to the practice of the Bar. Nevertheless, I 
 had a special satisfaction in the return of these fees. But, 
 after all, the failure of counsel to appear has happened 
 rarely in our affairs. 
 
 I do not subscribe to the common jests at the expense of 
 lawyers. I own to a partiality for the members of the legal 
 profession. I generally understand them, and, even when 
 
 1 Raised to the peerage in 1925 as Earl of Oxford and Asquith. 
 
Igo ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 we disagree, we do not fall out. Theirs is a fighting life, and 
 so is mine. Their profession, no doubt, helps them to 
 appreciate and recognize and acknowledge the rights of 
 others. I dare say that we have afforded to the counsel 
 whose clients we have been an almost inexhaustible reservoir 
 of fun! Yet I think that they have lked us because of 
 our frank, go-straight and go-ahead attitude. Lawyers 
 have their emotions like other men. Once in a provincial 
 city I had on my platform one of the present Lord Justices. 
 After my lecture was over we had a quiet talk, and he told 
 me that when he was a young man and briefs were few and 
 far between, he occasionally went to hear my father and 
 mother in the old Exeter Hall. Then he looked up at the 
 ceiling and said, ‘ You know, the impression of those Meet- 
 ings has never left me, and it has been reawakened this 
 afternoon. If I had given myself to the impulse of those 
 days perhaps my life might have accomplished more for 
 God and my generation.’ 
 
XXII 
 CONCERNING ‘ SACRAMENTS ’ 
 
 ONE question of considerable difficulty for The Army in the 
 early days was our attitude to what are called the Sacra- 
 ments, especially the Supper. I do not think that any of 
 us were much troubled about the baptismal question, 
 although for some years we followed the practice of many 
 Churches and baptized infants. I have in some cases myself 
 “sprinkled ’ as many as thirty in one service! And, by the 
 way, such services were made both interesting and useful. 
 We had a simple and yet very definite formula whereby the 
 parents engaged to give the children over to be the servants 
 of God and to train them for Him. This practice, however, 
 died down gradually, chiefly because it had no very strong 
 conviction behind it ; and in place of it The Army intro- 
 duced a service of Dedication which has become much 
 valued among our people in many lands. 
 
 The case with regard to the Supper was on a different 
 plane altogether. Here, as in some other matters, the 
 Founder’s early training in the Church of England and his 
 later Church work influenced him. He was in some 
 measure predisposed to attach importance to ceremonial 
 of this nature, and while he never allowed that in itself 
 it possessed any spiritual efficacy, or that it was in the 
 least degree necessary to the Salvation of any man, yet he 
 used it, though with increasing misgiving. 
 
 When I came on the scene as a responsible official of the 
 Mission, in 1874, the Lord’s Supper was administered 
 monthly at all our stations to all members of the Mission 
 and to such other Christian friends as were known to be 
 in good standing and who desired to join with us. These 
 services Were in many cases really impressive. There was 
 a simplicity and naturalness about them which made them 
 
 IgI 
 
1g2 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 very welcome, and whether the number partaking was a 
 score, or whether—as on special occasions—it ran up to 
 six or seven hundred, the gatherings were in many respects 
 remarkable. There was a total absence of display, but 
 wonderful freedom. The faith of many was strengthened, 
 former promises and vows were recalled and renewed, and 
 not seldom the unsaved or irreligious who had been allowed 
 to come into the buildings as spectators were there and 
 then brought to Christ. 
 
 A sense of misgiving, however, arose, and made itself 
 more evident with the growing work. I think that this 
 misgiving was experienced first of all by Catherine Booth. 
 She had a deep horror of anything which might tend to 
 substitute in the minds of the people some outward act or 
 compliance for the fruits of practical Holiness. Her know- 
 ledge of the low tone of spiritual life in the Churches, gained 
 as a result of her friendship with many religious people and 
 their leaders, made her look with dread upon the possibility 
 that our people, most of whom were very ignorant and 
 simple, might come in time to lean upon some outward 
 ceremonial instead of upon the work of the Holy Spirit as 
 witnessed in a change of heart and life. 
 
 To anticipate for a moment, it may be mentioned here 
 that later on she came to know something of the evils which 
 have followed from this misplaced confidence within the 
 Churches on the continent of Europe, both Roman and 
 Lutheran. This knowledge convinced her that tens of 
 thousands of merely nominal Christians would wake up and 
 really seek after God if it were not for the benumbing 
 influence of sacramentalism.! 
 
 1 Compare the late Bishop Jayne in his farewell letter to his Diocese : 
 ‘I am bound to point out that we are thwarted in all our attempts to 
 promote the Kingdom by the sad and most mysterious fact that for 
 centuries in East and West the Holy Communion has notoriously been 
 the storm-centre of bitter controversy and division throughout Christen- 
 dom. No truth of Christianity has undergone more strange perversions 
 or has been more grievously deflected and distorted out of shape than the 
 doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. If you wish to know how Christians can 
 hate one another, you have only to read the later history of the Sacrament 
 of our Saviour’s dying love. Jf you wish to know the lowest and grossest 
 depth of superstition within the circle of the Christian Church, you have only 
 to turn to the same history. Truly our Table has become a snare to us ; the 
 marvel 1s that it has survived tts own corruptions.’ 
 
CONCERNING ‘SACRAMENTS’ 193 
 
 The Founder approached the matter differently. He 
 was essentially a utilitarian, particularly as related to ques- 
 tions not necessary to Salvation. His first inquiry with 
 regard to the adoption or abandonment of any measure was, 
 “Will it help to our great end? If it will not help, will it 
 hinder?’ And, little by little, he came to believe that 
 there was danger in the continuance of this practice amongst 
 us. Its chief danger, in his eyes, lay in its divisiveness. It 
 involved many questions. To begin with, it was unthink- 
 able that we should use fermented liquors. Many of our 
 people, both men and women, were rescued drunkards, and 
 already some of our Converts, who had been sent to the 
 Churches, if they had not broken down immediately, had 
 at least been placed in grievous temptation owing to the 
 cup which they were offered. This may seem to be a minor 
 question, but it was persistently troublesome. On the 
 other hand, many of our people did not like the idea of 
 ‘ diluted jellies,’ and unfermented wine was then unknown, 
 at any rate in this country; others, again, preferred that 
 the element should be water. 
 
 Then there arose the question whether the Evangelists 
 alone should be the administrators. Great exception was 
 taken in some quarters to administration by others, even by 
 the principal local officials ; indeed, in some places the 
 people absented themselves from the service unless ‘ the 
 bread and wine’ were offered by ‘ the regular preachers.’ 
 
 A further and more acute difficulty was that many of 
 the Evangelists were women, as had been the case from the 
 early years of the Mission, and the idea of women adminis- 
 tering sacraments was at that time almost unthinkable to 
 many good people, in spite of our stand, from the beginning, 
 on the perfect equality of men and women in the Kingdom 
 of Christ. 
 
 Yet another divisive question arose when we had to 
 decide who should partake of the sacrament, and who should 
 be the local authority to give the decision? To pick and 
 choose might only accentuate family and other divisions, 
 and yet it was obvious that there must be some regulation 
 and discrimination. 
 
 oO 
 
194 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 These various controversies, slight as the matter of them 
 may seem now, did result in the loss of valuable people to 
 the Mission. We were led, therefore, to make a certain 
 examination of the whole subject. Jailton, from the begin- 
 ning, was in favour of abandoning all ceremonials which 
 were prominently associated with the rest of the religious 
 life of the world. He argued with great cogency that if, as 
 we all admitted, participation in, for instance, the Supper 
 was not necessary to Salvation, it became merely a question 
 of its value, as one method of helping the people; and he 
 claimed that the freedom which was purchased by Jesus 
 Christ was a freedom from all that belonged to the old 
 dispensation, including the whole ceremonial principle. My 
 mother, although not feeling so strongly as Railton on the 
 subject, at once grasped the seriousness of anything which 
 might mislead or divide our simple people. 
 
 For myself, I confess that I had so often received 
 spiritual help—no doubt the result of my own faith—in the 
 administration of the Supper, that it was with considerable 
 hesitation, not to say reluctance, that I came round to the 
 view which the Founder finally adopted. I believe that I 
 was the last Officer of The Salvation Army to administer 
 the Lord’s Supper to any of its people; and, indeed, the 
 Founder gave me, young as I was, a freedom in this matter 
 which, so far as J am aware, he gave to no one else, and 
 which he gave to me on no other subject of importance on 
 which our views were for the time out of accord. But 
 gradually I, too, realized how prone the human mind is to 
 lean upon the outward. 
 
 I saw something at this time of the High Church party 
 in the Church of England, and, though an outsider, I 
 deplored, with some of the Church’s own best men, the 
 tendency of that movement to a kind of materialism—the 
 reliance, that is, upon outward and visible signs which so 
 easily become substitutes for inward and spiritual grace. 
 Finally, my mind completely concurred in the decision to 
 which the Founder had come. 
 
 If I were asked what view I take with regard to this 
 ceremony, I think I should say that I see nothing in it of 
 
CONCERNING ‘SACRAMENTS’ 195 
 
 any advantage except in so far as such advantage arises 
 from the individual act of faith at the time of partaking, 
 and I see no reason why that same faith should not turn 
 every meal into a sacramental feast. The great blessing 
 is not some kind of ceremonial eating and drinking which 
 is the fruit of redemption—the great blessing is, must be, 
 in the redemption itself. Only too often have I seen how 
 “communion,’ and the material trappings which the 
 Churches have associated with it, obscure the thought of a 
 real redemption. Life does not come by a sacrament, nor 
 is it maintained by a ‘sacramental substance,’ but by a 
 Divine Person consciously revealed in us as a present 
 redeeming, life-giving Saviour. 
 
 Much is to be said for the Quaker standpoint. I think 
 it is perhaps better set forth in Barclay’s ‘Apology for the 
 True Christian Divinity ’ than in any other writing I know. 
 A near approximation to the truth that it is solely faith in 
 the communicant—not any force or virtue in the symbols 
 —which is all in all, is found in Dean Alford’s Exposition 
 of Matthew xxvi. in his Greek Testament. The truth of the 
 matter as it appears to The Salvation Army is set forth in 
 The Army’s ‘ Handbook of Doctrine.’ 
 
 For some time a practice existed among our Corps of 
 
 1 Paul to the Ephesians iv. 5, 6, sums up the hope and strength of the 
 children of God in a very notable passage—a passage which has been 
 received by the entire Church of Christ, in all periods of its history, as 
 containing a remarkable summary of its whole practical relationship to 
 God and His truth—‘ One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father 
 of all who 1s above all, and through all and in you all. And the Apostle 
 does not even mention a sacrament; his silence, when making so impor- 
 tant a declaration, is infinitely suggestive. 
 
 The claim of some of the Sacramentalists, that a watey baptism is here 
 intended, is surely impossible to maintain. There were numerous baptisms 
 or washings under the old dispensation. Is not the clear intention here to 
 show that they are all superseded by the one which Jesus Christ came to 
 bring in: ‘ He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with five’? Tf it 
 be claimed that in Ephesians v. 26 ‘ water’ is again referred to, | would 
 suggest that it cannot be water in the literal sense which is to cleanse 
 the Church of Christ! The cleansing is to be in and ‘ by the Word’ 
 actually there referred to. What word? Whose word? That Word of 
 God received in faith which carries the real regenerating and cleansing 
 power. : 
 
196 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 going to the parish churches to ‘communion.’ Here some 
 of the clergy, fearing the opposition of their ‘ respectable’ 
 parishioners, arranged that The Salvation Army visits 
 should be in the night, and as one consequence large crowds 
 generally attended. But after one or two such visits to 
 their churches, certain clergymen—one, I think, at Bristol 
 and another in a North London parish—took the oppor- 
 tunity of publicly announcing their refusal to administer 
 the communion to those who had not been ‘ confirmed ’ 
 according to the Church of England system. As most of 
 our people, though living godly lives, had not been con- 
 firmed, nor, for that matter, their forbears either, the 
 Founder saw that another line of division was. likely to 
 develop. Thereupon he called off the whole matter, and 
 said that we would have no more of it. From that time 
 forward we had no more ‘sacraments,’ and very little more 
 trouble on the subject, although any Soldier who declared a 
 Serious conviction in the matter and desired to participate 
 —and this is still the law amongst us—could receive a 
 recommendation to go to some other body for the purpose of 
 partaking. 
 
 The subject of The Salvation Army and the sacraments 
 was one upon which I had a long talk with Dr. Farrar, then 
 Canon of Westminster, one of the most popular preachers 
 and writers of his day. The Canon had in the early days 
 _ denounced The Army in perhaps the most unqualified terms 
 ever employed against us by any minister of Christ. He 
 effectually blotted us out of recognized society! Years 
 afterwards, however, at the inception of the ‘ Darkest Eng- 
 land’ Scheme, when the Press both in the United King- 
 dom, in the Australias, and the United States was largely 
 antagonistic, Canon Farrar, to our glad astonishment, 
 intervened, and preached a remarkable sermon in West- 
 minster Abbey containing a most eloquent and appreciative 
 reference to The Salvation Army, its Leader, and its Social — 
 Work. This opened up communication between The Army 
 and the Canon, and he came to examine some of our work, 
 seeing for himself sights of unutterable misery and evi- 
 dences of the effectiveness of what we were doing to relieve 
 
CONCERNING ‘SACRAMENTS’ 197 
 
 it. This further impressed him, so that a week or two 
 later he preached again—a sermon making even more truly 
 sympathetic and eulogistic reference. He still proclaimed 
 that, except on the great fundamental truths of Christianity, 
 on which all Christians are agreed, he differed even more 
 widely from The Army than many of his brethren. ‘ Never- 
 theless,’ he added, ‘ two things I plainly see. The one, that 
 God has not left them unblessed; another, that there is 
 much which we might profitably learn from the methods 
 which have enabled them to accomplish, in so short time, so 
 great a work.’ 
 
 Farrar was much abused as a consequence of his cham- 
 pionship. I saw some of the remonstrance which found its 
 way through his letter-box, and had a tenth of the allega- 
 tions made against us been true, he would have been justified 
 in withdrawing every word he had said in our favour. He 
 showed a type of courage somewhat rare among his con- 
 temporary ecclesiastics in that, despite this abuse, he yet 
 stood out as the champion—at all events so far as the Church 
 of England was concerned—of what was then still a new 
 and relatively untried movement. 
 
 On more than one occasion I talked with him on wider 
 matters, and he made a great effort to persuade me to ask 
 for the reintroduction amongst us of the Supper. Other 
 Churchmen, notably Dr. Westcott (afterwards Bishop of 
 Durham), had said that they approved of the stand we 
 took in refusing the Supper, as this meant a refusal to 
 embark upon what was, in their view, ‘a schismatic pro- 
 cedure.’ Farrar, on the contrary, urged that it should be 
 restored. He reasoned with me for more than an hour in 
 one of our interviews, which, I remember, took place in a 
 delightful room in his home in Dean’s Yard, probably his 
 study, for we were surrounded by a wonderful gathering 
 of books. He referred, with an intimacy which surprised 
 me at the time, but which I understood better when I knew 
 more of his life, to the Supper as having been a means of 
 comforting and strengthening his own spirit. He believed 
 that there was a revelation of the Divine Mind made to 
 those who humbly and in faith partook of this sacrament, 
 
 
 
198 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 which was different from that forthcoming by other 
 means.? 
 
 I am bound to say that his arguments from Scripture, 
 and from the practice of the earliest Christians, while they 
 proved the range of his scholarship and his wonderful 
 familiarity with some of those rows of silent books, failed 
 entirely to influence me. As to the latter, he could not 
 claim that the first Christian communities, of whom, by 
 the way, he had made a special study, attached any im- 
 portance to the matter at all, or that they had, so far as 
 we know, even so much as given a mame to what have since 
 come to be called ‘ The Sacraments ’ ! 
 
 The absence—total and complete—of any recognized 
 doctrine with regard to them, in those early days, is equally 
 difficult to explain if they really are so important. It is 
 also very significant that we have little or no evidence that 
 any kind of proper instruction was given by the Apostles 
 on the question. Paul’s references to it are but slight and 
 not very clear. As to baptism he deliberately seeks to dis- 
 associate himself from any mission or desire to baptize 
 anybody !? 
 
 But, more important, as our conversation proceeded, it 
 
 1 But my impression is that he approved refusal, by his own Church, 
 
 of those who had not been ‘ confirmed’ according to the customs of that 
 Church. Farrar, like many splendid Churchmen, had a sectarian mind. 
 
 2 Dean Farrar spoke chiefly of the (alleged) command of Jesus Christ. 
 But the ‘command’ of our Lord, leaving aside for a moment the question 
 of what He commanded, does not appear to have been any more definite 
 and precise than the command with reference to the washing of feet 
 (John xiii. 5~9), which immediately followed the Supper, and which no 
 one now dreams of regarding as a ‘Sacrament’ or as binding on any one. 
 And of the two ceremonials the latter was, in fact, something more urgent 
 than the Supper. For while the Supper referred to the actual death once 
 for all of Jesus Christ, already foreshadowed by the Jewish rite (now 
 passing away) of the Passover, the foot-washing represented not only its 
 own lesson of humility and brotherly love, but the daily need of cleansing 
 at the hands of the Divine Master even after the new birth of the Spirit. 
 Moreover, while the words of Jesus Christ at the Supper were at most a 
 command about the observance of a ceremonial eating and drinking, the 
 command of the feet-washing is enforced by the clear and solemn words, 
 ‘Ye ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, 
 that ye should do as I have done to you,’ and ‘If I wash thee not, thou hast 
 no part with Me.’ 
 
CONCERNING ‘SACRAMENTS’ 199 
 
 became evident that Dr. Farrar could not and would not 
 claim that this ‘Sacrament’ was in any sense necessary to 
 Salvation—whether Salvation be viewed as a new beginning 
 or as a life—and nothing that he could urge apart from that 
 seemed to me to have any substantial weight. In fact, I 
 remember saying to the Founder at the time that I thought 
 I could have put the Canon’s case more effectively than he 
 had put it himself.* 
 
 But when he spoke of himself and the strengthening of 
 faith which had come to his own soul through this service, 
 I confess he did make an impression upon me. He was not 
 a man who found it easy to show his feelings—the very 
 breadth of his charity rather removed him from the sway of 
 emotion—yet through this self-revelation of his we were 
 drawn to one another. Those interviews made me reflect, 
 as I have had to do with regard to other choice spirits, that 
 if only he had been a Salvationist what a joy it would have 
 been to work with him, and what a field we could have 
 offered him, far greater than his own Church ever did. 
 The Church of England never showed its lack of courage 
 more conclusively than when it consigned Farrar to a 
 Deanery (Canterbury) while it filled some of its bishoprics 
 with feeble courtiers. 
 
 So Dean Farrar was the only man who made any con- 
 sidered effort to bring us back to a practice we had long 
 discarded ; certainly the only man of any consequence 
 either in the Church of England or among Nonconformists 
 who said boldly, ‘ You ought to give the sacraments, even 
 though there may be questions about the effectiveness of 
 your agents.’ The Founder, however, stood his ground. 
 No doubt we have lost friends by our attitude. Some would 
 have joined us had they not been deterred by the line we 
 
 1 Tn his ‘ Doctrine of the Church and Re-union,’ the Bishop of Gloucester 
 (p. 90) says: ‘ It is clear that there was no historical tradition of any value 
 concerning Apostolic ordinances in the Church. The Apostles and the 
 Church of the Apostles’ days did in all things what the times demanded. 
 They made rules for their own time, not for the future; and because the 
 Church was a living organism, adapting itself to newer conditions, there- 
 fore after generations modified and changed the customs which had come 
 down to them, while still claiming to obey Apostolic injunctions.’ 
 
200 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 adopted. And yet I believe the line was wise. Of course, 
 the whole situation is changed the moment the claim is 
 made that the sacraments, especially the Supper, are in any 
 way necessary to the salvation of the soul. In that case I 
 can see consistency in the Roman and High Church position 
 which prefers even the Mass to a mere memorialism and 
 insists on their observance; but I have never been able to 
 reconcile the view that there is nothing in them which is 
 essential to saving faith, and that salvation is by faith, with 
 the emphasis which is laid upon them both in the Lutheran 
 and Anglican Churches. 
 
XXIII 
 
 A BRUSH WITH HERBERT SPENCER 
 
 In 1896 I had a brush with Herbert Spencer. I had long 
 entertained misgivings with regard to his system of philo- 
 sophy. On more than one occasion I had noticed the 
 extraordinary inconsistencies which some of his work re- 
 vealed. This was quite compatible with a certain detached 
 intellectual enjoyment in the building of his logic and in 
 the precision with which he could hit certain nails on the 
 head. But I had never taken him very seriously, potent as 
 was his name among a certain set in the latter part of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 The last volume of ‘ The Principles of Sociology ’ was 
 published in 1896, and with it the ‘ Synthetic Philosophy ’ 
 was complete. Congratulations poured in upon Spencer 
 from many quarters, and the newspapers gave laudatory 
 reviews. ‘ The Times,’ in a leading article on the subject, 
 claimed for Spencer that from the inception of his system of 
 philosophy up to that present time—a stretch of fifty years 
 or so—his work had been marked by consistency. The 
 word ‘ consistency ’ was a challenge to the critical reader. 
 I laid no claim to be a philosopher myself. Even as a critic 
 of Spencer I was not entirely original, for some of my 
 objections to his methods had been suggested to me by others. 
 But this extraordinary claim by his editorial admirer seemed 
 at last to offer an opportunity to confront Herbert Spencer 
 with—Herbert Spencer ! 
 
 Accordingly I wrote a letter to ‘ The Times,’ which ap- 
 peared in that journal on December 1, 1896. In this letter 
 I took up the point made by the writer of the leading article 
 that ‘many and multiform as have been Mr. Spencer’s 
 Jabours since [the publication of his first work] all that he 
 
 201 
 
202 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 has written has been consistent in every way with the views 
 he then held and expressed.’ I pointed out that at least on 
 one subject Mr. Spencer’s writings had not been consistent. 
 In ‘ Social Statics,’ published in successive editions froin 
 1850 to 1870, he wrote on ‘ The right to the use of the 
 land,’ and declared that equity did not permit property 
 in land: 
 
 Equity does not permit property in land. For if one portion 
 of the earth’s surface may justly become the possession of an 
 individual, and may be held by him for his sole use and benefit, as 
 a thing to which he has an exclusive right, then other portions of 
 the earth’s surface may be so held, and eventually the whole of the 
 earth’s surface may be so held. 
 
 ‘But time,’ say some, ‘is a great legalizer. Immemorial 
 possession must be taken to constitute a legitimate claim.’ . . . To 
 which proposition a willing assent shall be given when its pro- 
 pounders can assign it a definite meaning. To do this, however, 
 they must find satisfactory answers to such questions as, How long 
 does it take for what was originally a wrong to grow into a right ? 
 At what rate per annum do invalid claims become valid ? 
 
 I showed that Mr. Spencer had found still further reason 
 to deny the rectitude of property in land and had urged 
 that ‘it can never be pretended that the existing titles to 
 such property are legitimate.’ Further, some years later, in 
 ‘ Political Institutions,’ he had set forth the same position, 
 along a different line of argument. 
 
 But in 1891, in his ‘ Justice’—Part IV of ‘The 
 Principles of Ethics’—there appeared the following 
 remarkable confessions : 
 
 When, in ‘ Social Statics,’ published in 1850, I drew from the 
 law of equal freedom the corollary that the land could not equitably 
 be alienated from the community, and argued that, after compensat- 
 ing its existing holders, it should be re-appropriated by the com- 
 munity, I overlooked the foregoing considerations. Moreover, I did 
 not clearly see what would be implied by the giving of compensation 
 for all that value which the labour of ages has given to the land. 
 While . . . I adhere to the inference originally drawn that the 
 aggregate of men forming the community are the supreme owners of 
 the land—an inference harmonizing with legal doctrine and daily 
 acted upon in legislation—a fuller consideration of the matter has 
 led me to the conclusion that individual ownership, subject to State 
 suzerainty, should be maintained. ... 
 
A BRUSH WITH HERBERT SPENCER — 203 
 
 I added that it would seem that it did not take very 
 long, after all, at any rate in the case of Mr. Spencer’s views, 
 for what was originally a wrong to grow into a right. In 
 a word of personal explanation—namely, that upon the 
 particular subjects discussed (the right to the land) I 
 expressed no opinion; I concluded my letter : 
 
 And yet my interest in Mr. Spencer, and the contradictory 
 position in which, as it seems to me, he finds himself, is not entirely 
 academic. If in this, a matter of vital moment to society, his 
 teaching is inconsistent with itself, is it not probable that on other 
 and infinitely graver questions—questions of religious faith and 
 Divine authority which make or mar men’s lives—on which he has 
 spoken with similar assurance and with little regard to the teaching 
 of revelation, he is equally unreliable ? I venture to think that 
 he is. 
 
 This letter was immediately followed by some protests 
 from shocked Spencerians, but it was supported by Pro- 
 fessor Thomas Case, then Waynflete Professor of Moral and 
 Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, and now President of 
 Corpus Christi College. Professor Case went further than I, 
 and claimed that Spencer was inconsistent, not only in 
 separated particulars, but in the whole basis of his philo- 
 sophy. Spencer had said that no man could know the 
 world beyond himself, and yet he claimed to assert certain 
 things with regard to that world, as, for example, that it 
 was resistant and persistent. The logic of this was either 
 that Spencer was superhuman or that one or other of these 
 assertions was ill-founded. ‘ The moment Mr. Spencer pre- 
 sumes to say,’ wrote Professor Case, ‘ that it is something 
 resistant and persistent, agnosticism is at an end.’ 
 
 Within a few days I had occasion again to write to ‘ The 
 Times’ in order to make it plain, as against the swords 
 which flashed from their scabbards in Mr. Spencer’s defence, 
 that I did not condemn him for a change of view or because 
 he had ‘not gone on publishing what he thought to be 
 untrue.” On the contrary, I admired his candour. [I also 
 pointed out that his views on the land question were not the 
 only instance of contradictions in his philosophic fabric. 
 In ‘ Social Statics,’ for example, he had deduced from the 
 will of God the law of equal freedom. That, indeed, was 
 
204 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 the basis of his philosophic plan. Yet he had employed 
 subsequently all the resources of his massive intellect in the 
 effort to eliminate God from human life. In the one case 
 he wrote that human happiness was the Divine will;* in 
 the other he was at pains to deny that the possession of a 
 Divine will could be affirmed at all if any definite meaning 
 were to be attached to the word ‘will.’ I must not do 
 injustice by paraphrasing a philosopher, and therefore the 
 two quotations as they appeared in ‘ The Times’ shall be 
 
 set out side by side: 
 
 From ‘ Social Statics’ (1877), 
 Chapter IV: 
 
 Starting afresh, then, from the 
 admitted truth, that human 
 happiness is the Divine will, let 
 us look at the means appointed 
 for the obtainment of that 
 happiness. . . 
 
 Now if God wills man’s happi- 
 ness, and man’s happiness can 
 be obtained only by the exercise 
 of his faculties, then God wills 
 that man should exercise his 
 faculties. . . . But as God wills 
 man’s happiness, that line of 
 conduct which produces un- 
 happiness is contrary to His will. 
 Therefore, the non-exercise of the 
 faculties is contrary to His will. 
 Either way, then, we find that 
 the exercise of the faculties is 
 God’s will and man’s duty... . 
 
 From this conclusion there 
 seems no possibility of escape. 
 . . . God wills man’s happiness. 
 
 The law of equal freedom, 
 derived as it is, directly from 
 the Divine will, is a higher 
 authority than all other laws, 
 and the creative purpose de- 
 mands that everything shall be 
 subordinated to it. 
 
 From ‘ Principles of Sociology’ 
 (1896), Vol. III, Chapter XVI: 
 
 To believe in a Divine con- 
 sciousness, men must refrain 
 from thinking what is meant by 
 consciousness—miust stop short 
 with verbal propositions; and 
 propositions which they are de- 
 barred from rendering into 
 thoughts will more and more fail 
 to satisfy them. Of course like 
 difficulties present themselves 
 when the will of God is spoken 
 of. So long as we refrain from 
 giving a definite meaning to the 
 word will, we may say that it is 
 possessed by the Cause of all 
 Things, as readily as we may say 
 that love of approbation is 
 possessed by a circle; but when 
 from the words we pass to the 
 thoughts they stand for, we find 
 that we can no more unite in 
 consciousness the terms of the. 
 one proposition than we can 
 those of the other. 
 
 1" Social Statics,’ 1877, Chapter IV. 
 ** Principles of Sociology,’-1896, Vol. III, Chapter XVI. © 
 
A BRUSH WITH HERBERT SPENCER 205 
 
 ‘ The Divine idea,’ Mr. Spencer says at one time, ‘ is the 
 happiness of man’; ‘ Divine consciousness,’ he says at 
 another, ‘is practically unthinkable.’ ‘ The will of God is,’ 
 he writes in one book, ‘ the law of equal freedom’; ‘ that 
 God possesses a will at all,’ he writes in another, ‘can no 
 more be affirmed than love of approbation is possessed by 
 a circle!’ 
 
 No one attempted any reply to this letter. But on 
 December 17th Spencer himself wrote: 
 
 To the Editor of ‘The Times.’ 
 
 SIR,—Energy spent in controversy is generally wasted, and I 
 have little left to waste; but it seems needful that I should say 
 something to prevent spread of misapprehensions. 
 
 If Mr. Bramwell Booth will refer to the current edition of ‘ Social 
 Statics,’ published in 1892, he will fail to find the passages he quotes 
 from the earlier edition, and will see that with the disappearance of 
 them have disappeared the incongruities on which he comments. 
 Further, if he will look at the preface he will perceive how it happened 
 that those incongruities continued so long to be conspicuous. 
 
 Thus the conflict of earlier and later beliefs which Mr. Booth 
 insists upon was long ago publicly recognized by me. If after thirty 
 years of lifeit was blameable not to see everything which forty more 
 years of life enabled me to see, I must admit the blame. The 
 inconsistencies emphasized are those between conclusions partially 
 thought out and conclusions fully thought out. I believe search 
 would enable Mr. Booth to trace other inconsistencies consequent 
 on other changes of views. It would be strange if a writer on 
 evolution contended that his own ideas were the only things that 
 had undergone no evolution. 
 
 I am, Sir, yours, etc., 
 HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 It will be noticed that the philosopher left Professor 
 Case’s more general accusation of inconsistency alone. An 
 acknowledgment from me in the next day’s paper closed the 
 correspondence so far as I was concerned : 
 
 To the Editor of ‘ The Times.’ 
 
 Sir,—I cordially acknowledge the frankness and courage of 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer’s admissions in ‘The Times’ of to-day. I hope 
 he will not feel it an impertinence on my part if I add that the 
 admission of error, whether in practice or in theory, is in itself a 
 mark, which we can all appreciate, of both a strong and noble 
 character. 
 
206 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 The inconsistencies in his writings are, Mr. Spencer now argues, 
 really evidences of the operation of the principle of evolution of 
 which he has written so much. 
 
 His ideas, in common with other things, ‘have undergone 
 evolution.’ But the processes of evolution, as Mr. Spencer himself 
 has taught us, are unending; and in making this singular admission 
 he has allowed the main contention of my letters—that his ideas are 
 changing ideas; that what they are to-day is no possible guide to 
 what they may be to-morrow; that they are, in fact, transitory, 
 uncertain, and unreliable. 
 
 In this lax philosophy, it seems to me, there can be no security, 
 especially on those supremely important matters of faith and morals 
 by which men order their conduct and regulate their lives. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 W. BRAMWELL Bootu. 
 
 The immediate object of the controversy was attained. 
 ‘The Times,’ which at first had said that all that Mr. Her- 
 bert Spencer had written had been a tissue of consistency, 
 had an article six weeks later saying: ‘ Inconsistencies, 
 some of which he [Mr. Herbert Spencer] has endeavoured to 
 eliminate, have been revealed. . . . In consequence of correc- 
 tions or qualifications made from time to time, the prin- 
 ciples of his system have become somewhat less definite 
 than when first stated.’ 
 
 My purpose was, of course, not merely to expose a single 
 inconsistency, nor, for that matter, half a dozen. It was to 
 reveal the absurdity of those who regarded Herbert Spencer’s 
 tpse dixit as possessing a final authority which they would 
 have been the last to concede to the testimony of revelation. 
 It was no point of mine to complain that Spencer and Huxley 
 and the others attacked Christianity. It was not for me to 
 object if they entertained and published views opposed to 
 the divine authority of the Bible. Much as I might deplore 
 the bitterness and ridicule with which they assailed what 
 I loved and revered, that was not the matter at i sue. 
 What I did object to—what I regarded and still regard as 
 fundamentally dishonest—was that they should put forward 
 their views in such a form as to imply that they were final, 
 when they knew quite well, as Spencer now confessed, that 
 they were only fluid. Spencer’s views were introduced and 
 were generally accepted by his followers as a sufficient 
 
A BRUSH WITH HERBERT SPENCER 207 
 
 answer to the claims of revealed religion. Yet he regarded 
 himself as possessing the right of subsequent revision, and 
 in this correspondence suggested that he was rather sur- 
 prised to find that that right was called in question! At 
 one moment the agnostic philosophy was holding up to 
 contempt the teaching of the Bible, the example of Christ, 
 and to some extent the instinctive demands of conscience. 
 And at another moment this same agnostic philosophy was 
 declaring that nothing could be known! 
 
 Perhaps in referring to eminent Victorian agnostics I 
 ought to distinguish Darwin from the rest. Darwin’s theory 
 did not necessarily involve abandonment of the whole 
 teaching of the Bible, although towards the end of his life 
 he did disclaim belief in any revelation. Writing in 1879 to 
 a student at Jena, he said, ‘ As far as I am concerned I do 
 not believe that any revelation has ever been made. With 
 regard to a future life every one must draw his own con- 
 clusions from vague and contradictory probabilities.’ All 
 the same I think that the author of ‘ The Origin of Species ’ 
 shared with Calvin in another sphere the misfortune of 
 having nominal disciples who first distorted their master’s 
 views, and then expanded their distortions until those views 
 themselves were all but lost in the absurdities of the disciples’ 
 - own creation. 
 
 Even though Spencer’s name to-day casts nothing lke 
 the spell it exercised a quarter of a century ago, the episode 
 is not without its present interest. It shows us the inter- 
 esting spectacle of a philosopher raising the smoke-cloud of 
 evolution and trying to escape under its cover. How could 
 we be sure, when Herbert Spencer deduced the materialistic 
 explanation of all phenomena, that even he himself had 
 said the last word on the subject, let alone those who came 
 after him? Evolution does not stop even when ‘ conclu- 
 sions partially thought out’ become ‘conclusions fully 
 thought out.’ Where are you to put a finger on the evolu- 
 tionary process and say, ‘ This is settled ; that other is still 
 to be determined’? If Spencer had lived, his “conclusions 
 fully thought out’ would no doubt have been subject to 
 further evolution—they might, in fact, have come round to 
 
208 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 —well, to mine, and have clothed him at last in a red 
 guernsey | | 
 The matter is much more serious than a mere illustration 
 of the fallibility of great minds. Faith and spiritual life 
 are at stake. When the philosopher puts forward conclu- 
 sions, stamped to all appearance with the seal of ultimate 
 wisdom, faith is often wrecked. And however candid may 
 be the philosopher’s later admissions that he has changed 
 his views, that his own ideas have shared in the evolution 
 he has been propounding, it will not mend the mischief. 
 Not even a new edition will do that. If such conclusions 
 were marked at every stage, ‘ Subject to revision—to after- 
 thought—to fresh discovery,’ it would be different. But 
 they are not. They are as pontifical as any decree of the 
 Vatican! There is nothing to equal the accent of authority 
 with which they are announced! And yet when all is said 
 and done they are in reality but ‘ questionable guessing.’ 
 
XALV 
 PURELY PERSONAL 
 
 EVERY man, I suppose, has notable moments in his personal 
 spiritual life—not at all identical with notable moments of 
 his earthly career. A number of such occasions stand out 
 for me with remarkable vividness. Among them have been 
 some associated with an outward scene or incident—quite 
 apart from public affairs or services—which in some way 
 brought a new awe upon the soul. The first in point of 
 time was, I think, connected with a visit which I paid to 
 Tintern Abbey when I was but a boy of thirteen or fourteen. 
 It seemed as though there was something in those wonderful 
 ruins by the winding Wye which suddenly became vocal to 
 me and something in me which spoke back again. I hada 
 similar feeling, years afterwards, when in Rome I visited 
 the Colosseum. This time it came as a deep sense of the 
 inner spiritual conflicts through which the martyrs must 
 have passed. So realit was that I seemed able to apprehend 
 a little of what must have been experienced in those far-off 
 days on the very stones on which we knelt, I and the two 
 men who were with me. I felt a mysterious liberation, an 
 enlargement, a mounting up—what shall I call it?—of the 
 spirit within. 
 
 It was not the mere passing impression of the traveller. 
 Little else in Rome, at any rate during that visit, affected 
 me in anything like the same way, except, perhaps, the 
 Corso, the street through which many of the martyrs passed 
 amid hostile multitudes to their condemnation and death. 
 Certainly I found that some of the basilicas appealed greatly 
 to the eye, but I cannot say that they touched me very 
 deeply. The pictures in the Vatican galleries were wonder- 
 ful, though in some cases I thought them overdone. The 
 
 
 
 P 209 
 
210 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 tapestries in the Sistine Chapel stirred me in some degree ; 
 but very slightly as compared with a little scene that I 
 witnessed in a side chapel in, I believe it was, 5. Maria 
 Maggiore. The priest, a minor canon, had just concluded a 
 service, when an old woman, bent with age and, I should 
 think, with trouble, came in his path and bent herself yet 
 more to receive his blessing! He put out two fingers, 
 mumbled a word or two, and passed on. Here was a poor 
 hungry creature, type of a stricken humanity, looking up 
 with a wistfulness no one could mistake. And there was 
 the smooth priest in his elaborate vestments, bestowing his 
 perfunctory benison! It-struck home to my heart ! 
 
 The same transfiguring influence which I had experi- 
 enced in the old English Abbey and in the Roman amphi- 
 theatre came upon me again on a journey from New York. 
 How mighty the ocean and how passing small the ship! 
 And from that a sense of how helpless and yet how secure 
 the human spirit on a Mighty Bosom. We had a good 
 passage, the water was comparatively quiet, and I, a bad 
 sailor, was able to look about a little. The sense of distance, 
 of solitariness, of being at the mercy of the purely physical, 
 a new perspective of oneself and of the world, of the visible 
 and the invisible, made it one of those moments when again 
 something inward seemed to rise up and take wing. 
 
 Yet I have been scarcely affected by some of the things 
 which are supposed to appeal, and indeed do appeal, to the 
 traveller. Niagara did not make any very great impression 
 upon me, though I admired the rainbows, of which I saw a 
 gay succession in a few minutes. When the sun is in a 
 certain direction the humidity of the atmosphere caused by 
 the waterfalls makes the most beautiful iridescence, one 
 rainbow embracing another. Even the Alps did not arouse 
 in me the feeling that they do in many. The people who 
 were with me on my first visit thought me unresponsive, 
 although, there in the Alps, I had something of the same 
 sense as later I had on the Atlantic, at once of helplessness 
 and security, of coming to one’s own limits and finding 
 beyond them—God ! 
 
 During’a large part of my life many of the laws and facts 
 
PURELY PERSONAL 211 
 
 of nature have seemed to me, though not alive, to have in 
 them a spirit of life, separate from them, but working in 
 them. 
 
 The Lord of all, Himself through all diffused, 
 
 Sustains and is the life of all that lives. 
 
 . one spirit, His 
 Who wore the plaited thorns with bleeding brows, 
 Rules universal nature. 
 
 But I have felt more than this. The universe itself, as one 
 of our poets has it, has murmured to the ear of love and 
 faith tidings of invisible things, secrets from the everlasting 
 Silence. These have seemed like the echo of the voice of 
 God. They have been more than illustrations of something 
 higher than themselves, more than mere analogy. They 
 have been more than the thoughts which Pope’s fine lines 
 envision for us, though he does take care to separate the 
 work from the Great Worker. 
 
 All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body Nature is and God the soul ; 
 
 That changed through all, and yet in all the same ; 
 Great in the earth, as in th’ ethereal frame ; 
 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
 
 Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, 
 Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; 
 
 Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part ; 
 As full as perfect in vile man that mourns 
 
 As the rapt seraph, that adores and burns. 
 
 To Him, no high, no low, no great, no small— 
 He fills, he bounds, unites and equals all. 
 
 I have felt, indeed, that I could go further even than the 
 Psalmist, when he said, ‘ Marvellous are Thy works; and 
 that my soul knoweth right well,’ for they have been more 
 to me than manifestations of divine power, or divine order, 
 or divine beauty. It 1s as though at times they have given to 
 me something living, which He had given them that they might 
 communicate to me. It has been as though He was not only 
 outside His own creation as a builder is outside the house 
 he builds or the artist is outside the picture he paints, but 
 
gto ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 there within it all, a living personal power, an inspiring and 
 communicating Spirit ; as though there was something of 
 His abiding word in the trees and flowers, in the rocks and 
 seas, a spirit in the hills and vales which could call to me 
 and which my own spirit, starting up at that call, was able 
 to answer. This has helped me to keep my heart in patience, 
 in faith and hope. It has strengthened my hold on the 
 secret of the Lord. It has deepened my knowledge that I 
 live and move within the victorious purpose of God’s will. 
 
 The contemplation of extremes of human misery affects 
 me somewhat in the same way. I believe that our religion 
 does enable us to account for much that is extremely baffling 
 in human history and in the conditions of human life. One 
 problem there is, however, in the presence of which I always 
 feel dumb. It is the problem of suffering children. I cannot 
 grasp anything tangible in the Divine purpose which per- 
 mits little children to suffer. I cannot doubt His love. I 
 know that wisdom belongeth unto Him. All the same, I 
 feel, not merely pain, but a sense of profound mystery when 
 I approach the suffering of children. I hear above the voice 
 of the crippled and starved another voice which stirs me. 
 I am in the presence of the insoluble. I realize this in con- 
 nexion with those states of misery of the innocent and 
 helpless, as I do not realize it even in experiences which 
 might be thought more solemn, such as the presence of 
 death or of widespread calamity. 
 
 My experience from time to time in prayer has also made 
 me conscious of the new life unexpectedly emerging within 
 the life Iam living. It isin such moments as though I come 
 to a rift in the great wall of circumstance and look out upon 
 a free and boundless sea. In my early life my experience of 
 prayer was, to a large extent, bound up with the fight 
 against temptation, and I cannot say that in those early 
 years, apart from prayer for those I loved, and for pressing 
 needs, that I prayed with very deep desire or real under- 
 standing for anything except deliverance in temptation or 
 trial of one kind or another. 
 
 But there stand out in my life now various occasions 
 _ when, in praying for help for myself or for the souls of men, 
 
PUREAY eR RSONAT 213 
 
 there has been this same deep consciousness of something 
 new added to me, some awakening of a new spiritual faculty, 
 or, shall I say, a new spiritual sense, with which to realize 
 the Divine. I have had many remarkable answers to prayer 
 in the way of material gifts and signs and leadings. Those, 
 however, appear quite small in retrospect, so far as their 
 permanent value is concerned, compared with these inward 
 uprisings of my spirit—which have often had little or nothing 
 to do with requests for any particular thing—to meet, I 
 humbly believe, to know and to meet the Spirit of God. 
 
 Another, and in a way kindred, experience in succeeding 
 visitations I have had, which though difficult to write of, 
 may be of service to some. Will it be understood if I put 
 itin this way? Through a great part of my life I have felt 
 a reverent sympathy with God. I passed through a deeply 
 harrowing period of perplexity over the question of punish- 
 ment and the relation of the Father to the whole matter of 
 retribution. I have never been a ‘treacle and water ’ 
 person. I have always felt that there must be some moral 
 test supreme over men, and that it must be the one laid 
 down by Jesus Christ : ‘ By their fruits ye shall know them.’ 
 I have always felt that the love of God must be a holy love. 
 I have always felt that the love of God must have an 
 exclusive, as well as an inclusive, character. Nevertheless, 
 when, while relatively a young man, I was confronted with 
 the arguments of a certain school, I was brought up very 
 short on the question. I had great strivings over it. My 
 dear father and General helped me greatly, although he 
 never pushed me. He was infinitely patient. And I came 
 through. 
 
 But it was in that stress of mind and soul that I began 
 to feel a humble reverent sympathy with my God in the 
 unmeasured responsibility and difficulty that were His of 
 administering justice in a rebel world—responsibility and 
 difficulty made greater just in proportion as He understood 
 and loved that world and as that world misunderstood and 
 hated Him. I knew that He was bound by the laws of His 
 own nature—that His Omnipotence is a rational omni- 
 potence. I knew that He could not contradict Himself. I 
 
214 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 knew, for example, that He could no more make a lie into 
 a truth than I—the nature of things being what it is—could 
 make two and two into five. A he being a lie, I knew that 
 the punishment of the liar is the inherent inevitable conse- 
 quence of the lie. And so it has seemed to me that love for 
 God involved such true sympathy with Him as His child 
 could feel in the tremendous task that is His of vindicating 
 amid a world smitten by the inevitable consequences of sin, 
 the mercy and the justice which are the support of His 
 throne. 
 
 This sympathy has been a conscious reality in my inner 
 life and has helped me all-along my way. It has opened 
 to me new views of the Divine Mind and Will. It has led 
 me to the mastery of other emotions of my nature, so that 
 they also could be used to glorify God. It has carried me 
 through many dark hours of misgiving and weakness. It 
 has strengthened my faith for the ultimate triumph of good. 
 It has inspired me to work for my God. It has helped me 
 also to do many things required in that work which have 
 been painful to a more or less sensitive nature. I have felt 
 that in doing that which was just and right towards others 
 when it was so very painful for me, as well as for them, 
 I, one of His servants, was tasting with the great Father 
 and Saviour, of the cup that He must drink in contem- 
 plating and judging a rebel and ruined world. 
 
 In all these experiences, and above and beyond them all, 
 there has been the ‘ spiritual awakening of spiritual wants,’ 
 and the union—the beginning of the union of the drop with 
 the Everlasting Ocean. 
 
XX V 
 CORONATIONS 
 
 SHORTLY after the announcement of the Coronation of 
 King Edward we received an intimation from the Earl 
 Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk, that the King had commanded 
 that a representative of The Salvation Army should be in- 
 vited to attend the solemnity in Westminster Abbey. The 
 Founder appointed me for this duty. I received in due 
 course a very handsome invitation card and the usual 
 instructions giving particulars of the hour at which I was to 
 be in my place. I found that I was expected to wear 
 Court dress. After thinking over the matter I came to the 
 conclusion that if I was present at all it must be as an 
 Officer of The Salvation Army, in The Army uniform. 
 Accordingly I wrote to the Earl Marshal requesting his 
 authority for this alteration. His Grace, though with 
 courtesy and respect, replied that he found himself unable 
 to allow our uniform to be worn at so important a State 
 function. I explained that the uniform was much more to 
 us than a badge of office or rank; that it represented the 
 great principles for which we were contending, and that 
 it was rich in many sacred associations for those who wore 
 it. I added that I did not feel at liberty to lay it aside 
 even though I might be deprived of the honour of repre- 
 senting The Army at the Coronation. The decision, how- 
 ever, appeared to be inalterable. Court dress was de rigueur. 
 Then I determined to write to the King, and indeed was in 
 the act of doing so when the announcement was made that 
 owing to his illness the Coronation had been postponed. 
 
 As soon as the date of the service was again fixed, 
 and the King was reported to be sufficiently improved in 
 health to come back to London, I wrote to His Majesty, 
 
 215 
 
216 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 August 5, 1902, and sent my letter to Cowes by special 
 messenger, to the following effect : 
 
 Having been honoured by an invitation to be present at 
 the solemnity of His Majesty’s Coronation as a representa- 
 tive of The Salvation Army, I asked the King to give me 
 ‘his gracious permission to attend in the uniform of my 
 rank as a Salvation Army Officer.’ I continued : 
 
 I feel it could not be in harmony with Your Majesty’s wish that 
 I should lay aside our uniform at a moment when I am called to 
 represent our people on an occasion of such widespread interest 
 among them in every part of the Empire. 
 
 It is only because I have been informed by the Earl Marshal that 
 he has no power to give me the permission I desire that I have 
 ventured to address you on the subject. 
 
 Among all the peoples who are rejoicing on account of your 
 recovery none are more truly grateful to God for His great goodness 
 
 to Your Majesty and to the Queen than are we of The Salvation 
 Army. 
 
 On the following morning I received a telegram from 
 Lord Knollys, finally disposing of the matter in the most 
 kind and satisfactory way : 
 
 I am commanded by the King to say that he has much pleasure 
 in giving you permission to attend the Coronation in the uniform 
 
 of your rank as a Salvation Army Officer. His Majesty thanks you 
 for your kind congratulations. KNOLLYS. 
 
 That ended the episode. Everybody had acted with 
 perfect correctness: the Earl Marshal in insisting on the 
 usual etiquette, I in claiming privilege for The Army uniform, 
 and the King in exercising his prerogative. Thus for the 
 first time in history, on a great State occasion, admission was 
 found for the simple Salvationist uniform amid the astonish- 
 ing splendour of velvet and lace, plumage and jewellery, 
 priestly vestments and knightly armour. So far from any 
 one at the Abbey appearing to object to our uniform, I 
 think that most, if not all, of those who saw it in their midst 
 felt that the King had done the right thing in the right way. 
 The officials who were looking after the King’s guests showed 
 it every mark of respect and consideration, as did those of 
 the guests themselves with whom I came in contact. This 
 
CORONATIONS 217 
 
 act of the King commanded attention all over the Empire, 
 and even in some other countries, and we have never had 
 this kind of difficulty again, either as regards our men or 
 our women. It was a royal gesture which had behind it 
 something of greater significance than a mere concession to 
 Army practice or the good-nature of a King who was not 
 over-concerned for the minutiae of ceremonial. 
 
 The Coronation service throughout was calculated to 
 stir the imagination and touch the heart. It had deep inward 
 meanings as well as outward magnificence. It embodied, 
 of course, certain dreary forms and precedents which had 
 largely lost their value in this gentler age. Some people, 
 no doubt, objected to the ecclesiastical order of the ser- 
 vice, and declared much of it to be vain repetition. Yet, 
 on the whole, it was a service with warm devotional elements 
 and continual appeal to the best in King and people. It 
 was a recognition of the rights and duties of each towards 
 the other, and an open acknowledgment that neither the 
 Throne nor its lieges could properly exercise those rights or 
 discharge those duties without the strength of God. Dull 
 indeed must have been the mind and cold the heart that 
 was not impressed. 
 
 I shall not be misunderstood when I say that much in 
 this service reminded me of a Salvation Army Meeting. 
 Here was what the general body of the British people 
 regarded as a supreme expression of national faith and 
 consecration, yet it contained many things which we in 
 The Army have loved and fought for amid much criticism 
 and abuse. To begin with, there were processions, with 
 banners, from the doors of the Abbey to the altar steps. 
 There were uniforms, the great crimson robe of State which 
 was worn by the King, and the gowns and trappings of his 
 distinguished subjects and of the foreign Ambassadors, all 
 of them betokening some rank, some office, some authority, 
 some privilege, some association, some conquest. There 
 were the responses of the congregation to the prayers offered 
 by the prelates, and the unrestrained acclamations, whose 
 fervour and exuberance almost recalled our loudest Halle- 
 lujahs. There was the reading of moving passages of 
 
218 ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 Scripture which brought the distant past into sharp relation 
 with the present. There was the note through it all of glory 
 to God and of abounding joy, as when the choir, assisted 
 by trumpeters and trombone players, sang to the noble 
 tune ‘ Ein feste Burg’: 
 Rejoice to-day with one accord, 
 Sing out with exultation ; 
 
 Rejoice and praise our mighty Lord, 
 Whose arm hath brought Salvation. 
 
 The words ‘ Salvation,’ ‘ Lamb,’ ‘ Blood,’ ‘ Fire,’ were 
 not eschewed. The walls of the Abbey rang to what might 
 have been sung in any of our Holiness gatherings : 
 
 Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, 
 And ’lighten with Celestial Fire : 
 Thou the Anointing Spirit art, 
 
 Who dost the sevenfold gifts impart : 
 Thy blessed unction from above, 
 
 Is comfort, life, and fire, and love. 
 
 Finally, the King not only had a crown placed on his head, 
 but he was also girt with a sword. ‘ With this sword,’ said 
 the Archbishop, ‘.. . faithfully serve our Lord Jesus Christ 
 in this life.’ 
 
 The possibility occurred to me that the Church of 
 England had taken some lessons from The SalvationArmy, 
 while hesitating to acknowledge the source! The adoption 
 of brass instruments by The Army, from the time when 
 Leedham}! first blew his cornet in our Halls, offended many 
 good people as a sin against reverence and decorum. Yet 
 here were brass instruments in the Abbey on this most 
 solemn of occasions; and drums, too, powerful drums, 
 which accompanied nearly all the singing. I was told—I 
 do not know whether it was true—that drums had never 
 been heard in the Abbey before. The band consisted of 
 seventy-five players (including ten fanfare trumpeters, 
 resplendent in habiliments of gold), and at one or two parts 
 of the service the band played sacred music without the 
 accompaniment of voices. 
 
 Then if one looked beyond the immediate circumstance 
 
 1 See Chapter VI. 
 
CORONATIONS 219 
 
 and setting, the service was such as to appeal even more 
 to the Salvationist heart and soul. Here was a profession 
 of humble submission to the King of kings. When Edward 
 the Seventh rose from his chair and knelt down before the 
 vast concourse, he made, by an outward act as to which 
 there could be no uncertainty, his admission that God had 
 the supreme claim upon his life and service. He swore in 
 the hearing of us all, not only to be faithful to the realm, 
 but to maintain the laws of God. From beginning to end 
 there was an open avowal that God was the true foundation 
 of life and the real source of power, that by Him kings 
 reign and princes decree justice. It was not enough 
 inwardly to acknowledge and resolve; he did it outwardly 
 before as many as could be gathered together. And that 
 led me to feel that surely this recognition of God on the 
 part of the highest in the realm ought to make us in our 
 humbler walks more than ever daring in declaring ourselves 
 the servants of our Loid. From my place in the Abbey, 
 the pride or unbelief which refused to acknowledge Him 
 seemed more than ever contemptible. The King never 
 looked more manly than when he knelt down while the 
 Archbishop prayed for him that God would pour upon his 
 head and heart the blessing of the Holy Ghost, and make 
 him at last a partaker of the Eternal Kingdom through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 Then if one looked away from that central space, and 
 surveyed the distinguished throng to right and left, one had 
 a fresh sense of the impressiveness of the occasion. Hither 
 men had gathered from every clime. They were there from 
 every continent and from the islands of the sea. They 
 represented every province, even every outpost, of the 
 Empire. There were Ambassadors from every nation. 
 What moving thoughts the scene inspired! What multi- 
 tudes beyond multitudes, of every colour and tongue, it 
 called to mind! Here were gathered the kingdoms of this 
 world and the glory of them! Yet what were they all— 
 what was the proud Empire whose Monarch was the central 
 figure in this scene—but a range of sandhills, to be washed 
 away by the relentless waves of time ? And over against it 
 
220 ~ ECHOES AND MEMORIES 
 
 all, the wondrous thing to which the whole service was a 
 continual approach, was an everlasting Kingdom, a Kingdom 
 of Salvation, a Kingdom without end. 
 
 At King George’s Coronation I was not so well placed. 
 I neither heard nor saw so much. But the scene was again 
 one of great beauty and splendour, and it was illuminated, 
 as the former occasion had not been, by sunlight, though 
 this came and went in fitful spells. The picture was one of 
 life and colour as before, and some of the music was very 
 moving, though to a less degree, I think, than at the 
 Coronation of King Edward. The sermon by the Arch- 
 bishop of York had the brevity which has characterized the 
 last three or four Coronation sermons, in distinction from 
 the extreme length of those sermons in the olden time. It 
 was on the sovereignty of service, and in speaking of the 
 King’s work for the people and the Queen’s influence in 
 the home, the Archbishop came near to many hearts. The 
 Prince of Wales met with a very warm greeting, as did all 
 the members of the Royal Family. The King and Queen 
 themselves, as they passed out, robed and crowned, in that 
 great final procession, created such a sense of awe as perhaps 
 checked the acclamations of many. And in this case there 
 was not the great pathos of the former occasion when we 
 had greeted a king but lately come back to us from the 
 very gates of death. 
 
 Once again the prayers offered for the King found a 
 deep response in the Salvationist heart. ‘ Strengthen him, 
 O Lord, with the Holy Ghost the Comforter. Confirm and 
 establish him with Thy free Spirit... and fill him, O Lord, 
 with the spirit of Thy holy fear, now and for ever’; also 
 the prayer immediately preceding the crowning: ‘O God, 
 the Crown of the faithful . . . as Thou dost this day set a 
 crown of pure gold on his head, so enrich his heart with 
 Thine abundant grace, and crown him with princely virtues, 
 through the King Eternal, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.’ 
 
INDEX 
 
 A 
 
 Age of Consent, 120. 
 Aitken, Rev. Robert, 52. 
 Alverstone, Lord, 115, 176. 
 Andrews, V.C., Lieut. - Colonel 
 
 Harry, 159. 
 Armistead, Lord, 140. 
 Armitage, Mr. and Mrs., 110. 
 Armstrong, Eliza, 115, 131, 178. 
 Asquith, Lord, 135, 136, 188, 189. 
 
 B 
 
 Band, First S.A.; 153. 
 Begbie, Harold, 9, 17, 49. 
 Benson, Archbishop, 59, 61, 62, 63, 
 
 63769, 71. 
 
 Besant, Sir Walter, 149, 151. 
 
 Billups, Mr. and Mrs., 52, 89, 90, 
 OI, 92, 93, 110. 
 
 Blackwood, Stevenson, 109. 
 
 Boer War, The, 149. 
 
 Booth, Catherine, 5, 35, 42, 44, 162, 
 
 163, 165, I92. 
 
 Booth, Mrs. Bramwell, 117, 118, 
 
 120. 
 
 Booth, Miss Eva, 171. 
 Booth, William, 
 
 and the homeless, I. 
 
 and his Chief of the Staff, 9. 
 
 methods in conference, 13. 
 
 and his Councils with Officers, 14 
 
 on the platform, 18. 
 
 as a preacher, 21. 
 
 first styled ‘ General,’ 47. 
 
 a manager of men, 79. 
 Booth-Tucker, Commissioner, 158. 
 Boyd-Carpenter, Bishop, 72. 
 Bright, John, 133, 134. 
 
 Butler, Bishop, 139. 
 Butler, Mrs. Josephine, 118, 121, 
 el Be eo 
 
 C 
 
 Cadman, Commissioner, I00, 
 Cairns, Earl, 179, 180. 
 
 Carleton, Commissioner, I14. 
 
 Cecil, Lord Robert (see Salisbury), 
 
 134. 
 Children’s Act, 1908, 176. 
 
 221 
 
 Christian Mission, 117, 173. 
 
 Church of England, 59, 72. 
 
 Church, Dean, 73, 139. 
 
 Clarke, Sir Edward, 175, 185, 189. 
 
 Clifford, Dr. John, 4o. 
 
 Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice, 187. 
 
 Combe, Elizabeth, 115, 129. 
 
 ‘Contemporary Review,’ 77. 
 
 Coronations, 215. 
 
 Cory, John 253137, Tro; 
 
 Cory, Richard, 110. 
 
 Cottrill, Mrs., First S.A. Rescue 
 Worker, 117. 
 
 Cozens-Hardy, Lord Justice, 174, 
 186, 
 
 Criminal Law Amendment Act, 117, 
 125) 
 
 Crossley, Frank, IIo. 
 
 Currie, Sir Donald, 140. 
 
 D* 
 Dankwerts, Mr., 187. 
 Darkest England Scheme, 141, 177, 
 196. 
 Darwin, Charles, 207. 
 Davidson, Archbishop, 60, 61, 63, 
 
 68, 72. 
 Deed Poll of Salvation Army, 173, 
 174. 
 Denney, James, D.D., 36. 
 Denny, T. A., 104, 105, 109. 
 Doctrine, S.A. Handbook of, 195. 
 Duke, Mr. Henry, 186, 188. 
 
 E 
 Eagle Tavern, London, 7!, 175. 
 Eastbourne Biil, The, 188. 
 East End Mission, 45. 
 Edward VII, His Majesty, 215, 219. 
 Ely, Marchioness of, 131. 
 
 F 
 Familiar Spirits, 146. 
 Farrar, Archdeacon, 38, 196, 199. 
 Female Ministry and the Church, 
 165. 
 Financial Guarantee Committee, 
 109. 
 
222 
 
 Finlay, Lord, 189. 
 Fisher, Lord, 145. 
 Fowler, Miss Ann, 37. 
 Freeman, Mrs., IIo. 
 Frost, Mr. William, 178. 
 Fulton, Sir Forrest, 188. 
 
 G 
 Gasparin, La Compasse, 27. 
 George V, His Majesty, 220. 
 Germany and The Salvation Army, 
 25, 181. 
 ‘ Gift of Tongues,’ 57. 
 Gill, Sir Charles, 188. 
 Gladstone, Wm. E., 5, 133, 136, 137, 
 139, 140. 
 Gladstone, Mrs. W. E., 138. 
 Gloucester, Bishop of, 199. 
 Grecian Theatre, London, 71, 175. 
 Gully, Mr., 186. 
 
 H 
 
 Hadleigh Land and _ Industrial 
 Colony, I11. 
 
 Haldane, Lord, 189. 
 
 Hall, Mr. Clarke, 189. 
 
 Harcourt, Sir William, 120, 123. 
 
 Harcourt, Vernon, 28. 
 
 Hawkins, Mr. Justice, 185. 
 
 Hehir, Major-General Sir Patrick, 
 159. 
 
 Herring, George, 110, 111, I12. 
 
 Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, 123. 
 
 Hole, Dean, 38. 
 
 House of Convocation, 59. 
 
 Howells, Canon, 52. 
 
 Huxley, Professor, 27. 
 
 J 
 * Jacques, Sampson,’ I15, 116. 
 James, Lord, of Hereford, 188. 
 Jarrett, Rebecca, 115, 121, 126. 
 
 K 
 Knollys, Lord, 216. 
 
 L 
 
 Labouchere, Henry, 112, 113. 
 
 Legal affairs at home and abroad, 
 181. 
 
 Liddon, Canon, 73, 74. 
 
 Lightfoot, Bishop, 38, 60, 61, 62, 
 64, 65, 73. 
 
 Lindley, Nathaniel, 175. 
 
 Llandaff, Viscount, 116, 186. 
 
 Loch, Lord, 156, 151. 
 
 ‘London Gazette,’ 159. 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lopes, Mr. Justice, 115, 128, 130. 
 Ludlow, Lord, 115. 
 
 M 
 
 MacArthur, Sir William, 37, 105. 
 MacLaren, Ian, 30. 
 Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, 
 
 WN ees Lane hae 
 Manning, Cardinal, 76, 78. 
 Matthews, Sir Charles, 116. 
 Methodism and Woman, 162. 
 Methodist New Connexion, 42. 
 Mile End Waste (London), 43, 166. 
 Moorhouse, Bishop, 38. 
 Morley, Lord, 5, 141. 
 Morley, Samuel, I10. 
 Mourez, Madame, 115, 116, 126. 
 
 N 
 North, Mr. Justice, 176. 
 
 O 
 Oxford, Lord, 135, 188, 189. 
 
 P 
 
 ‘Pall Mall Gazette,’ 115, 121, 122, 
 123/227) 3442 
 
 Palmer, Dr. and Mrs., 42. 
 
 Parker, Dr. Joseph, 35. 
 
 Pennefather, William, 38. 
 
 Poland, Sir Harry, 115. 
 
 Presbyterian attitude towards Sal- 
 vationists, 26. 
 
 Prisoners, The Army and, 153. 
 
 Procuration Work, 118. 
 
 Property and The Salvation Army 
 173. 
 
 *Panchis176: 
 
 Purity Campaign of 1885, 35. 
 
 Quakers and Woman, 162. 
 Queen Victoria, 131. 
 
 R 
 Railton, Commissioner George, 48, 
 69, 70, 169, 194. 
 Ranger, Burton & Frost, 186. 
 Reading, Viscount, 186. 
 Reed, Henry, 37, 109. 
 Rhodes, Cecil, 141, 147, 148, 149, 
 150, I51. 
 Rigby, Sir John, 176, 178, 186. 
 Rogers, ‘ Hang-Theology,’ 38. 
 Russell, Lord, of Killowen, 116, 178, 
 184, 186. 
 
INDEX 
 
 S 
 
 Sacraments and The Salvation 
 Army, I9I. 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, 134, 135. 
 
 Salvation Army, Opposition to, by 
 Christian bodies, 26. 
 
 Salvationists injured in persecu- 
 tions, 25. 
 
 Salvationist V.C., 159. 
 
 Scott-Holland, Canon, 38. 
 
 Samuel, Sir Herbert, 176. 
 
 Sargant, Sir Charles, 177, 189. 
 
 Shaftesbury, Earl of, 27. 
 
 Shelters for men, 2. 
 
 “ Social Statics,’ 202, 203, 204. 
 
 Social Work of The Salvation Army, 
 72. 
 
 Sociology, Principles of, 201, 204. 
 
 South African War, 145. 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 201, 202, 
 204, 205, 206, 207. 
 
 Spiritualism, 146. 
 
 Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, 33, 34. 
 
 Spurgeon, Thomas, 35. 
 
 Stamford Appeal Case, 28. 
 
 Stalker, Dr. James, 36. 
 
 Sem WN 4 70, TES, 110; 121; 122, 
 P28, 0825, 1260;°127; 120) 137,133; 
 I4I, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147. 
 
 4% 
 Tait, Dr. (Archbishop), 60, 69, 71. 
 Taylor, Bishop (‘ California’), 36. 
 Temple, Archbishop, 75, 76. 
 
 203, 
 
 223 
 
 Thomas, Urijah, Rev., 36. 
 
 Thompson, Dr. (Archbishop of 
 York), 59. 
 
 ‘ Times,’ The (London), 27, 149, 201, 
 203, 205, 209. 
 
 Tintern Abbey, 209. 
 
 Titanic, 144, 145. 
 
 ‘Truth ’ (London), 112. 
 
 V 
 Vaughan, Cardinal, 77. 
 
 W 
 Waugh, Benjamin, 38. 
 Welldon, Bishop, 38. 
 Wells, Misses, 110. 
 Wells, H. G., ror. 
 Wernamo, Sweden, 90. 
 Wesley, John, Sermons and Travels, 
 
 rs; 
 Westcott, Canon, 60, 61, 64, 197. 
 Westminster Abbey, 215. 
 Whyte, Dr. Alexander, 36. 
 Wilberforce, Archdeacon, 38, 74, 75 
 Wilkinson, Canon, 62, 63, 69. 
 Williams, Mr. Vaughan, 186. 
 Willis, Q.C., Mr. William, 186. 
 Woman, Call and Ministry of, 161. 
 Women’s Social Work, 171. 
 Wright, Mr; Ke5. 115; 
 
 af 
 York, Archbishop of, 220. 
 
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 By Harortp Beasier. This thrilling life-story is told in the author’s 
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 PAPERS ON LIFE AND RELIGION. By GENERAL BRAMWELL 
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 FRIENDSHIP WITH JESUS. By Mrs. BRAMWELL Bootu. This 
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