GENERAL BOOTH
General Booth
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
BY
W. T. STEAD
EDITOR OF "THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS," ETC.
LONDON
ISBISTER AND COMPANY Limited
15 & 16 TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN
1891
Printed by BALLANTYNE HANSON & CO.
London and Edinburgh.
GENERAL BOOTH.
i.
SPIRITUAL PROGENITORS.
General Booth is the George Fox of the Nineteenth
Century. There is little resemblance between the
Salvation Army and the Society of Friends as we
know it. But there is a very close resemblance
between the Salvation Army and the Society of
Friends as it existed in the early days, when it was
still glowing with the inspiration that it caught from
its founder. In two hundred years the Salvationists
may be as respectable as the Friends. They have
never been quite as disreputable as the Quaker en-
thusiasts of the Commonwealth, some of whose sen-
sational methods of testifying would not be tolerated
even in this liberal and easy-going generation. The
8
GENERAL BOOTH.
parallel between the great spiritual revivals of the
middle of the seventeenth and the latter half of the
nineteenth century is so close, and in many things
so exact, that it almost seems as if there were such
a thing as the transmigration of souls, and that the
spirit of George Fox had entered into the body of
William Booth.
The tent in which General Booth held his first
service on the memorable July Sunday when he
began his East-End mission on Mile End Waste
was pitched in an old deserted burial-ground of
the Society of Friends in Baker's Bow. In him
the spirit of the dead Quaker's enthusiasm expe-
rienced a joyful resurrection to a new lease of vigor-
ous life. Quakerism, although still fruitful in good
works, has long been an extinct volcano. Around
its base has sprung up, from the soil fertilised by its
previous activity, a lovely harvest of beneficent
philanthropies, as the vineyards flourish on the lower
slopes of Vesuvius. But the once fiery crater glows
no longer with the central fire. For that we must
look to new eruption of the old spirit which has
created the Salvation Army under the eyes of an
SPIRITUAL PROGENITORS.
9
incredulous and cynical generation. And in the
recent startling proclamation of the urgency of Social
Eeform as an indispensable adjunct to the preaching
of the Gospel, the Salvation Army obeys the same
law which converted the turbulent and iconoclastic
Quakers of Cromweirs time into the cultured leaders
in every beneficent project of humanitarian and
philanthropic endeavour.
George Fox, like William Booth, was a man of
great spiritual genius and of contagious enthusiasm.
It is less generally known that he was equally sub-
ject to the reproach of usurping power, and of lord-
ing it over God's heritage. As the Salvation Army
has been caricatured as the new papacy, so we may
read in the autobiography of the pious Baxter that
the devil and the Jesuits, having found out that the
Eanters "served not their turn," took under their
special patronage the Society of Friends. In the
first years of Cromweirs protectorate George Fox
was publicly accused of making himself a pope, and
putting himself in the place of God. The polemical
literature of the seventeenth century abounds with
tracts against Fox, which are in substance identical
IO
GENERAL BOOTH.
with those that are now published against the
Booths. "Fox," says Barclay, in his "Inner Life
of the Keligious Societies of the Commonwealth,"
"undoubtedly exercised an authority very similar in
kind to that of Wesley in the societies he founded.
It was an authority justly due to his indefatigable
labours for the good of others. Great efforts were
made to discredit his motives, charging him with
ambition, and that his efforts for the establishment
of a complete system of Church government were
in order to increase his influence." If General Booth
draws up his "Eules and Eegulations" in the
peremptory form of a military order, George Fox
issued pastoral epistles the tone of which was equally
peremptory and decisive.
The silent worship of the Friends is diametri-
cally opposed to the noisy singing of the Sal-
vationists, but singing was as much approved of
by George Fox as by William Booth. As for
the ejaculations of the Army, we may read, in an
epistle of the yearly meeting of the Friends in
1675, tnat "ft hath been and is our living sense
and constant testimony according to our experience
SPIRITUAL PROGENITORS.
ii
of the divers operations of the Spirit and power of
God in the Church, that there has been and is serious
sighing, sensible groaning, reverend singing, which
is not to be quenched or discouraged/' The parallel
may be carried to almost any length. In the em-
ployment of women as preachers, in the fiery fervour
of its irregular testifying, in the constant qualifica-
tion for the public gaol as a common nuisance, there
is no difference between the Salvationist and the
Quaker.
It is less generally known, however, that George
Fox anticipated William Booth in starting a kind
of Foreign Missionary Society, and many and
grave were the accusations brought against George
Fox because "a public stock" was provided and
ordered for foreign evangelisation. But the most
remarkable parallel between the two men is sup-
plied by General Booth's recent action. Here is a
passage from Barclay which seems like a fore-
shadowing of "In Darkest England and the Way
Out" :—
Perhaps there was no feature in Fox's character
more strongly developed than his strong conviction that
12
GENERAL BOOTH,
the neglect of the poor in the times in which he lived
was a disgrace to Christendom. He laboured not only
in his public ministry and by the press, but he peti-
tioned Parliament to that effect. Let all the poor people,
blind, and lame and cripples, be provided for in this
nation, that there might not be a beggar in England
nor England's dominions. He tells them that the prac-
tice of the Jews and the early Christian Church "doth
condemn this nation's practice ; where there are so many
beggars." He suggests that neither beggar, nor blind
people, nor fatherless, nor widows, nor cripples, go a-
begging up and down the streets, but that a house may
be provided for them, and meat, and tells them to mind
Christ's doctrine. "You that are called Christians," he
writes, in an address to the Protector and Parliament,
"take heed and see that there be no beggars among you.
"Want often brings them to steal. They that are rich
should prevent temptation, or take them into some
employment, and thus show the nobility of the Chris-
tian's life." A suggestion was also made for a Govern-
ment registration of employers requiring labour, and
the workmen out of employ in every market town.
General Booth himself is much more impressed by
his relationship to John "Wesley than to the great
Quaker. It is but natural that a man should feel
more closely akin to his father than to his grand-
father. The line of direct succession between the
Quakers of the seventeenth, the Methodists of the
SPIRITUAL PROGENITORS. 13
eighteenth, and the Salvationists of the nineteenth
century, although plain enough to the historical
student, is one which is not continuous. These
great movements of the three centuries flare like
beacons from the mountain-tops, but between each
lies a dense darkness, a valley of shadow through
which the rays of light feebly make their way. But
the connection between Methodism and the Salva-
tion Army is close and manifest. General Booth
has sometimes said that he takes up the work where
Wesley left it. On Wesley's death Methodism
crystallised. Its natural development was arrested
at his grave. The Salvation Army represents, in the
General's theory, what Wesleyanism would have
come to if it had not ceased to develop when its
founder died. There is no doubt as to the essentially
Methodist ancestry of the Salvation Army, and this
is equally remarkable in its social as in its religious
phases.
The Methodist movement at its inception, like
that of the Salvation Army in its latest state of
development, was essentially humanitarian. The
Wesleys and the rest of Holy Club persisted in
14
GENERAL BOOTH.
doing what service they could to the prisoners and
two or three poor families in Oxford. They were
howled at accordingly, and, in making efforts to
repel the attacks of the scornful, they proposed to
their friends or opponents, as they had opportunity,
a set of questions which afford conclusive evidence
of the spiritual lineage of General Booth's scheme:—
I. Whether it does not concern all men of all con-
ditions to imitate Him as much as they can, "Who went
about doing good "?
Whether all Christians are not concerned in that
command, "While we have time, let us do good to all
men"?
Whether we shall not be more happy hereafter the
more good we do now?
Whether we can be happy at all hereafter, unless we
have, according to our power, "fed the hungry, clothed
the naked, visited those that are sick, and in prison;"
and made all these actions subservient to a higher pur-
pose, even the saving of souls from death?
Whether it be not our bounden duty always to remem-
ber that He did more for us than we can do for Him,
who assures us, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto
Me"?
*****
III. Whether upon the considerations above-men-
SPIRITUAL PROGENITORS.
5
tioned, we may not try to do good to those that are
hungry, naked, or sick? In particular, whether, if we
know any necessitous family, we may not give them a
little food, clothes, or physic, as they want?
Whether we may not contribute what little we are
able, toward having their children clothed and taught to
read?
Whether we may not take care that they be taught
their catechism and short prayers for morning and
evening?
IV. Lastly, Whether, upon the considerations above
mentioned, we may not try to do good to those that are
in prison? In particular, Whether we may not release
such well-disposed persons as remain in prison for small
sums?
Whether we may not lend smaller sums to those that
are of any trade, that they may procure themselves tools
and materials to work with %
Whether we may not give to them who appear to
want it most a little money, or clothes, or physic?
Here we have the whole principle in a rudimen-
tary form. This was the starting-point of Method-
ism. General Booth has simply worked back in
his own fashion to the position which John Wesley
occupied when he was a young man of seven-and-
twenty.
Kor was it only in laying down abstract, principles
i6
GENERAL BOOTH.
that John Wesley showed himself the genuine social
progenitor of the Darkest England scheme. He
started the Poor Man's Bank, and the Poor Man's
Lawyer; and the Labour Factory at Whitechapel is
but a development of the arrangement by which
the unemployed Methodists were set to work in the
Society room at the Foundry. If the Wesleyans
had but followed up these beginnings of social enter-
prise as zealously as they did the work of conversion
there would have been no room for General Booth.
Here is John Wesley's account of his first experi-
ment in the shape of a Labour Factory :—
Monday, November 3, 1740.—We distributed, as every
one had need, among the numerous poor of our Society,
the clothes of several kinds, which many who could spare
them had brought for that purpose.
Tuesday, 25.—After several methods proposed for
employing those who were out of business, we deter-
mined to make a trial of one which several of our
brethren recommended to us. Our aim was, with as
little expense as possible, to keep them at once from
want and from idleness; in order to do which, we took
twelve of the poorest, and a teacher, into the Society-
room, where they were employed for four months, till
spring came on, in carding and spinning of cotton. And
the design answered: they were employed and main-
SPIRITUAL PROGENITORS.
*7
tained with very little more than the produce of their
own labour.
Next year he determined to go a step further in the
same direction. We read:—
Thursday, May 7, 1741.—I reminded the United
Society that many of our brethren and sisters had not
needful food; many were destitute of convenient clothing,
many were out of business, and that without their own
fault j and many sick and ready to perish; that I had
done what in me lay to feed the hungry, to clothe the
naked, to employ the poor, and to visit the sick ; but was
not alone sufficient for these things, and therefore desired
all whose hearts were as my heart—
I. To bring what clothes each could spare, to be dis-
tributed among those that wanted most.
II. To give weekly a penny, or what they could afford,
for the relief of the poor and sick.
My design, I told them, is to employ, for the present,
all the women who are out of business, and desire it, in
knitting.
To these we will first give the common price for what
work they do; and then add, according as they need.
Twelve persons are appointed to inspect these, and to
visit, and provide things needful for the sick.
Each of these is to visit all the sick within their dis-
trict, every other day, and to meet on Tuesday evening,
to give an account of what they have done, and consult
what can be done farther.
B
i8
GENERAL BOOTH.
It was John Wesley who established the first
medical dispensary for the poor in London. He thus
records the beginning of this good work:—
ThursdayDecember 4.—I mentioned to the Society
my design of giving physic to the poor. About thirty
came the next day, and in three weeks about three
hundred. This we continued for several years, till, the
number of patients still increasing, the expense was
greater than we could bear; meantime, through the
blessing of God, many, who had been ill for months or
years, were restored to perfect health.
The entry which contains the germ of General
Booth's Poor Man's Bank is as follows:—
Sunday, January 17, 1748.—I made a public collec-
tion towards a lending-stock for the poor. Our rule is,
to lend only twenty shillings at once, which is repaid
weekly within three months. I began this about a year
and a half ago: thirty pounds sixteen shillings were then
collected; and out of this no less than two hundred and
fifty-five persons have been relieved in eighteen months.
Dr. W., hearing of this design, sent a guinea towards it;
as did an eminent Deist the next morning.
There were no casual wards in those days, but the
early Methodists were given to hospitality after a
SPIRITUAL PROGENITORS. 19
fashion which now exists nowhere in Christendom
outside Eussia. How far this was carried in some
places may be seen by Wesley's entry after his visit
to Tetney:—
I examined the little Society at Tetney. I have not
seen such another in England. In the class-paper (which
gives an account of the contribution for the poor) I
observed one gave eightpence, often tenpence a week;
another thirteen, fifteen, or eighteen pence; another,
sometimes one, sometimes two shillings. I asked Micah
Elmoor, the leader (an Israelite indeed, who now rests
from his labour), "How is this? Are you the richest
Society in all England?" He answered, "I suppose
not; but all of us who are single persons have agreed
together to give both ourselves and all we have, to
God: and we do it gladly; whereby we are able, from
time to time, to entertain all the strangers that come to
Tetney, who often have no food to eat, nor any friend
to give them a lodging."
As for the Prison Gate Brigade, Wesley was from
first to last a great missioner to the prisoner. It was
to a prisoner in Newgate that he first offered the
free salvation which his followers are now offering
to millions throughout the world, and he ever regarded
it as a great privilege to minister to the condemned.
20
GENERAL BOOTH.
The following passages might be mistaken for extracts
from "In Darkest England ":—
Saturday, February 3, 1753.—I visited one in the
Marshalsea prison; a nursery of all manner of wicked-
ness. Oh, shame to man, that there should be such a
place, such a picture of hell upon earth!
On Friday and Saturday, I visited as many more as I
could. I found some in their cells underground; others
in their garrets, half-starved both with cold and hunger,
added to weakness and pain. But I found not one of
them unemployed who was able to crawl about the room.
So wickedly, devilishly false is that common objection,
"They are poor, only because they are idle!" If you
saw these things with your own eyes, could you lay out
money in ornaments or superfluities?
Wesley's views on social economics were strongly
coloured by his religious connections. Eegarding love
of money as the root of all evil, he strongly condemned
all accumulation. A Wesley an millionaire would
have been a monstrosity in his eyes. One of the last
sermons which he ever preached was specifically
addressed to the inculcation of the doctrine that wealth
Was a thing to be regarded with dread by the sincere
Christian* "The designedly procuring more of this
World's goods than Will supply the plain necessaries
SPIRITUAL PROGENITORS.
21
of Hfe—not delicacies, not superfluities—the labouring
after a larger measure of worldly substance ; a larger
measure of gold and silver; the laying up any more
than these ends require, is expressly and absolutely
forbidden. Whoever did not abide by this com-
mandment practically denied the faith, was worse
than an African infidel, became an abomination in
the sight of God, and purchased for himself hell-fire."
He groaned in spirit and was troubled over the
economical results of a revival of religion. Godliness,
having the promise of the life that now is as well as
that which is to come, naturally brings riches in its
train. Diligence and frugality, the children of true
religion, are in turn the parents of wealth. But wealth
is of all things the most deadly enemy of true reli-
gion. Wesley wrote, u I fear wherever riches have
increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the
same proportion." But as by the nature of things
riches must increase as the fruit of religion, he found
himself in a vicious circle. How could he escape?
"What way, then, can we take, that our money may
not sink us to the nethermost hell?" His only sug-
gestion—a refuge of despair, a counsel of perfection—
22
GENERAL BOOTH.
was the command that the true Methodist should
give away his substance. "Hoard nothing," he
preached only a few months before his death; "lay
up no treasure in earth, but give all you can—-that
is, all you have. I defy all the men upon earth, yea,
all the angels in heaven, to find any other way of
extracting poison from riches."
II.
EARLY LIFE.
The words quoted from John Wesley in the previous
chapter read very much like Salvationism as
preached by General Booth and his disciples.
William Booth was not, however, born a Methodist.
His father was a member of the Church of England,
and the future founder of the Salvation Army was
baptised in a Derbyshire parish church. To be a
member of the Church of England in 1829—for Mr.
Booth was born in the same year as Canon Liddon—
did not necessarily imply anything more than the mere
acceptance of certain civil services, such as regis-
tration of birth and celebration of marriage at the
hands of a grave functionary in a surplice. William
Booth's father belonged to the Church much as he
belonged to the parish and to the county. He was
born in it, he accepted its offices, and that was an end
of it. He was a man of the world, whose life was
spent not in church, but in the market-place, and
24
GENERAL BOOTH.
whose anxiety was not for his soul so much as for his
purse. He was a remarkable man, proud, ambitious,
acquisitive, energetic, and gifted with an extraordinary
talent for calculation, although almost illiterate.
If General Booth inherited from his father the
genius for finance and his indomitable and resource-
ful mind, he owes to his mother that spirit of sym-
pathy and of passionate affection which have been
the chief secret of his spiritual power. His mother
was a saintly woman of such blameless life that her
son used to say that she was always a difficulty
in the way of his acceptance of the doctrine of
the natural depravity of the human heart. She
was everything to her only surviving son, and he was
everything to her. It is the fashion to ascribe the
unique position which is accorded to women in the
Salvation Army to Mrs. Booth, the wife. Probably
an equal share at least should be given to Mrs. Booth,
the mother. A man's estimate of the capacity and
innate worth of women is almost always formed
before he marries. Mothers and elder sisters have
much more to do in deciding the estimate a man forms
of womanhood than wives, whose acquaintance is
EARL Y LIFE.
25
usually made after the character is fixed and the
point of view established.
Young William Booth grew up in an atmosphere
of unrest? in a hotbed of quasi-revolutionary dis-
content. The poverty that he saw on every side filled
him with a spirit of passionate revolt against consti-
tuted authority. He was but a boy of thirteen when
Feargus O'Connor visited Nottingham, but in all the
thousands the great Chartist orator had no more en-
thusiastic disciple than William Booth. He was a
Chartist—a physical force Chartist, of course, being
a boy, and therefore uncompromising. He went to
their meetings, he cheered their speeches, lie sub-
scribed to the Charter, and, if need had arisen, he
would have been disappointed if he could not have
shouldered a pike or fired a musket. Thomas Cooper
in his Autobiography gives some vivid pictures of
the spirit of revolt born of black hunger and despair
which sprung up in the great towns. "The Chartists
were for the poor," so the boy reasoned, "therefore
I am for the Chartists." The same kind of reasoning
may yet carry him over to the ranks of the Socialists.
After two or three years of fermentation in the
26
GENERAL BOOTH.
political revolutionary thought of Chartist Notting-
ham, the boy fell under conviction of sin, and when
fifteen years of age he was, in his own Methodist
dialect, converted. He had become a Methodist
when he became a Chartist. As far back as he can
remember, he has told us, "the Holy Spirit had
continually shown me that my real welfare for time
and eternity depended upon the surrender of myself
to the service of God. After a long controversy I
made this submission, cast myself on His mercy,
received an assurance of His pardon, and gave myself
up to His service with all my heart. The hour, the
place, and many other particulars of this glorious
transaction are recorded indelibly on my memory."
Shortly after his conversion a revival occurred in
the Nottingham Circuit under the preaching of the
Eev.James Caughey,an American revivalist. It was
the first time that he had seen the wonderful effect of a
sustained direct appeal to the moral sense of a semi-
Christian community. The straightforward conver-
sational method of teaching the truth of the gospel,
and the common-sense practice of pushing people up
to the point of decision, made an immense impres-
EARLY LIFE.
27
sion upon his inind. It revealed to him the truth
that in the spiritual as in the material world God
works by law and not by caprice, and that if harvests

WESLEY CHAPEL, NOTTINGHAM,
Where General Booth first preached.
are not reaped it is the husbandry that is at fault.
He tells us, "I saw as clearly as if a revelation had
been made to me from Heaven, that success in
spiritual work, as in natural operations, was to be
GENERAL BOOTH.
accounted for not in any abstract theory of divine
sovereignty, or favouritism, or accident, but in the
employment of such methods as were dictated by
common-sense, the Holy Spirit, and the Word of
God." It was what may be described as the dis-
covery of the reign of law in the spiritual world.
Shortly after the revival William Booth fell sick
of a fever, and for some time he lay at the point of
death. While convalescent some of his comrades,
whose hearts were still glowing with the fervour of
the great religious awakening, began evangelistic
services in the poorest parts of the town. History
does not record the names of these lads, but they
played a more important part than that of many
whose exploits cumber many pages of our national
records. For these lads invented the Salvation
Army. But for their action General Booth might
have been a wealthy Methodist, sitting in Parliament
as M.P. for one of the divisions of Nottingham, and
the Salvation Army would never have existed. They
set the work a-going, met with some success, and
went to his sick-room, telling him how much they
wished he was better, in order that he might come
EARL Y LIFE.
29
and join them. He got better, lie did join them, and
became a leader in the fight. He says :—
Our plan of operation was simplicity itself. We
obtained the loan of cottages, and in these held meetings
every night, always commencing with an open-air address,
fine weather or foul, all the year round, inviting the
people indoors for another meeting. Here again we had
lovely songs, short and sharp exhortations, insisting upon
decision for Christ upon the spot, which was to be
signified by coming out and kneeling at the round table
that stood in the middle of the room. These efforts
were accompanied by visitation of the sick and of the
converts, whose names and addresses were always re-
corded, together with processions to the big chapel on
the Sunday, which the respectable authorities of the
Society soon compelled us to take in at the back door,
where the free seats were. When one convert died, we
had Salvation funerals; placing the coffin in the street
and singing around it, and holding another meeting at
the grave when the parson had done. In short, we had
a miniature Salvation Army.
That was in 1845. It was not until twenty years
later that the Salvation Army came into existence.
But when it arrived, it was but the filling out and
completion of the Nottingham experiment, and its
application to a more extended area. The man
stands to-day where the boy stood then, All that
3°
GENERAL BOOTH.
he has learnt since then are but developments of
the truths which he grasped forty-five years ago.
Not only did he see his end but he knew the road
thereto. He lost sight of it again, and tried to gain
his destination by the conventional methods. But
experience and circumstances brought him back to
the old ways, and the Salvation Army stands to-day
as the outcome and development of the lessons
learned in the cottage services in the town of
Nottingham. He abides to this day by the firm,
simple principles with which he believes his heart
was inspired in the earlier days of his spiritual life.
They are:
1. You must go to the people with the message of
Salvation, instead of expecting them to come to you.
2. You must attract the people so as to induce
them to come within earshot.
3. You must save the people, pushing them to
decision, working up to the given end, and then
striking when the iron is hot.
4. You must employ the people, for there is no way

32
GENERAL BOOTH.
of keeping saved except by being busily engaged in
saving other people.
Such was the spiritual equipment, such the prac-
tical lessons mastered by William Booth when six-
teen years of age. He is now sixty-one, but he
stands where he did, in 1891 as in 1845, the same.
III.
BOOTH AND THE CHUKCHES.
The next period of his history is very interesting
and more instructive. From the time he was seven-
teen until he was thirty-two, he passed into the
hands of the Churches—the free Churches, of course
for the Establishment, from that hour to this, with
one momentary exception, has remained supremely
oblivious to his existence. He had been baptised in
the Episcopalian Church, he has been one of the
greatest spiritual forces born in the land of which the
Anglican Church is the official Church of the nation,
but. neither archbishops, bishops, nor clergy ever
seem to have regarded him as worth looking after.
There were some negotiations carried on between
the Booths and an Archbishop at one time, but they
came to nothing. For fifteen years this young
Englishman, with his heart aflame with the love of
God and a passionate sympathy for the people, was
delivered over to be moulded and utilised by the
c
34
GENERAL BOOTH.
societies which have been organised, with the express
purpose of making the greatest possible use of such
men as he, for the preaching of the gospel and the
conversion of souls. The result of the experiment
serves as a conclusive demonstration of the invari-
ableness of the great law, the first proclamation of
which by Stephen led to his immediate promotion
to the position of the first martyr of the Christian
Church. That law is summarised briefly by Lowell's
version of Theodore Parker's creed, " All men—not
orthodox—may be inspired."
Stephen's sermon sets forth the historical evi-
dence in support of the doctrine that the bearer
of the new truth is always regarded as a heretic
by the custodians of a previous revelation. When
truth crystallises into orthodoxy, when it obtains
general acceptance, it has already become so much
of a falsehood, that it obscures men's perception
of new truth. Again and again in the history
of Israel this melancholy law revealed itself, but
never so clearly as when the Chosen People
of God crucified Jesus Christ as a blasphemer.
The Churches, Catholic and Protestant, have all
BOOTH AND THE CHURCHES. 35
followed the Jewish precedent. In small things as
in great, the custodians of the truth of yesterday feel
bound to slay the prophets to whom has been revealed
the truth of to-day. From this law no Church seems
to be exempt. Mr. Booth was soon to discover that
the latest born of all the Protestant denomina-
tions was as shortsighted as the Sanhedrin or the
Papacy.
As a first step, the Wesleyans, who were directly
responsible for the utilisation of such spiritual and
moral force as their convert possessed, attempted to
reduce him to the regulation pattern. The traditions
of the elders were invoked in order to convince him
that he must conform to the established order and fall
in with the use and wont of the denomination. They
made him a local preacher, put him on the "plan,"
and he went into the pulpit and made sermons like
the rest of them. He abandoned, with a sigh the
rough-and-ready methods of the miniature Salvation
Army, and conformed himself to the regulations of
the Society. He did so well that they wished him to
become a regular minister, to go to college, and to pre-
pare for preaching and pastoral duties as the busi-
36
GENERAL BOOTH.
ness of his life. He did not like it, but feared lest
he should be shirking a duty. His health was infirm,
and he evaded a decision.
He was then in business. His work took him to
London. It was a time when the Wesley an
Society was undergoing a disruption, a disruption
which resulted in the formation of the Methodist
Free Church. Mr. Booth kept apart from the con-
troversy. His sympathies were then, as always,
on the side of authority. But he had a great
passion for souls. He was a local preacher, but he
could not confine his overflowing zeal to the regula-
tion plan. He must go into the highways and hedges
and compel them to come in. So he resigned his
commission as a lay preacher, although he desired to
retain his membership of the Church, which he all
but worshipped, and from which he had not the most
distant idea of separating himself. So he went
preaching in the open air, notably on Kennington
Common. It was this which led to his expulsion
from the Wesleyan Methodist Society.
The following is the General's own memorandum
to me on the subject, which I am glad to publish in
BOOTH AND THE CHI/Reims.
reply to some criticism that has been passed upon
the foregoing statement:—
I came to London in 1849, a member and an accredited
local preacher of the Wesleyan community. Soon after-
wards I became impressed with the idea that I could
better serve my generation by preaching in the streets
and open spaces of the crowded City than by the limited
opportunities afforded me as a lay preacher. I accord-
ingly wrote to this effect to my superintending minister,
the Rev. John Hall, stating at the same time my wish
to be continued as an ordinary member of the Connexion.
Without any reply to me, written or oral, Mr. Hall at
the succeeding quarterly visitation of the classes with-
held my ticket of membership, thus cutting me off from
all communion with the body; and on my asking for an
explanation, he replied that I could not be allowed to be
a member of the Society without continuing to act as a
local preacher.
In connection with this subject it has been stated, I
observe, that my separation from the Wesleyans came
about through the rejection of my candidature for the
ministry. This is an error. I never was a candidate.
The Rev. Samuel Dunn wanted me to become one in
1848, but at my own wish the subject was postponed
until the following year, during which my separation
from the body came about as I have described.
I regret the publicity that has been given to this
matter, because I am quite sure that Mr. Hall's action
would have been disowned by the bulk of the Connexion
38
GENERAL BOOTH.
at that time, had it been known, and I am still more
confident that it would have been disowned by the whole
of the Wesleyan community at the present time. No
one knows better than I do that a body of people cannot
be held responsible for the peculiar action that any
individual official may take in connection with its
discipline.
So far the General, who is now, as always, full of
charity and good feeling towards the Wesleyans. To
those who are not bound by his ties towards the
Wesleyan denomination, it seems that Mr. Hall
acted naturally enough, according to the rule of
red tape. He little thought that when he was
refusing William Booth his card of membership,
he was giving occasion to the enemy to say that
the blindness and folly with which the English
Church drove Wesley out of her pale, was paralleled
by the conduct of the Wesleyan Society itself. The
Jews crucified Jesus, the Catholic Church burnt Huss,
the English Church cast out Wesley, and now the
Wesleyans expelled Booth. Whatever may be the
truth of apostolic succession, the succession from
Caiaphas is only too unmistakable. And as it has
been with Israel, with Eome, with the English
BOOTH AND THE CHURCHES.
Church, and with Methodism, so it will be in time
with the Salvation Army. Stephen's sermon em-
bodies the law of life.
When William Booth found himself expelled from
the Society which he had hoped to serve, he took
counsel with the young lady whom he subsequently
married. She advised him to join the Congrega-
tionalists, where he could be independent, and found,
if he liked, a Methodism of his own. He went to
see Dr. Campbell, of the Banner, Dr. Campbell
received him kindly, took him into his room, heard
his story, and recommended him to apply for admis-
sion to an Independent College, in order to qualify for
the Congregational ministry. Booth agreed, but sud-
denly recollecting the Calvinistic traditions of the
Congregationalists, he said : " But I'm afraid it's im-
possible. I cannot hold with any theory of a limited
atonement. I must preach a salvation as universal
as the love of God." Dr. Campbell smiled and said:
"Go to college: study, read your Bible, and when
you come out preach whatever you find in the Bible/'
Comforted by this broad-spirited assurance, William
Booth sent in his application for admission to an
40
GENERAL BOOTH.
Independent College. It went before a committee of
learned divines. They sent for the young aspirant.
They examined him as to his theology. He answered
them plainly. They said that his views were at
variance with those of the denomination in many
points, but in consideration of his youth, his zeal,
and his sincerity, they would recommend him for
admission. "But," said they, little dreaming what
they were doing, "here are two books, Payne's 'Divine
Sovereignty• and Booth's 'Reign of Grace;' read them
through, and come back in six months with different
ideas." Booth in after-life remarked that if they had
said nothing about six months and postponed Payne
and the ' Eeign of Grace/ he might have been moulded
in college to something very different. But the
peremptory summons to change his views in six
months made him suspicious. He took the books and
went home. He began to read his namesake's "Eeign
of Grace." It is not difficult to understand his
frame of mind.
Here was the book that had to change his opinions
on penalty of forfeiting all chance of the career
which he had longed for. In six months, too, the
BOOTH AND THE CHURCHES.
4i
transformation must be complete. So he opened the
book and began to read. It is a dull book enough,
by a very worthy man, with its theory of the limited
nature of the atonement, of salvation for the eleet
alone, and so forth. William Booth read page after
page, and as he read the darkness deepened. His
whole nature seemed to be gathering itself up in
a recoil against the reasoning which was to con-
vince him. Every instinct of his heart revolted
against circumscribing the free, full, and complete
salvation of Christ to a miserable little handful of
the elect. Still it was this or no admission to
college, no ministry, a blank, hopeless outlook. He
read on; at last the darkness, becoming blacker and
blacker, suddenly burst in a blaze of light. This
could not be. Not for all the Colleges and Congre-
gational ministers in the world could he pretend to
believe it. It was a blasphemy; out with it and be
done with it! And there and then, in the fierce
fervour of his revolt against his unfortunate name-
sake, he seized "The Reign of Grace," hurled it to
the other end of the room, and dismissed from his
mind, there and then, all idea of ever entering the
42
GENERAL BOOTH.
Congregational ministry. The portal was too nar-
row; he could go through no door, if he had to leave
outside the doorstep his faith in a salvation freely
offered to all mankind. So William Booth, expelled
from the Wesleyans and repelled from the Indepen-
dents, stood alone fronting the world and the
Churches, not knowing where to go or what to do.
Cast out from the Wesleyans, repelled from the
Congregationalists, William Booth for a time seemed
to come to a deadlock; which way to move he knew
not. But this perplexity was to last for a very short
period. Before a week had passed, he received an
invitation to take charge of a dozen Methodist
societies that had broken off from the parent body,
and which had their head-quarters in Spalding, in
Lincolnshire. Here he was very successful, and
much beloved. But the form of government, or
rather the want of government, did not suit his
taste.
He was introduced to the New Connexion,
one of the earliest offshoots from the Wesleyan
Church. They wrere quick to perceive his aptitude
for the work, and in little more than a year he was
BOOTH AND THE CHURCHES. 43
back in London, this time to begin his career as
theological student in training for the ministry of
the Methodist New Connexion. Dr. Cooke, with
whom he studied, was somewhat exercised about the
new-comer's habits, which did not harmonise well
with the curriculum of the institution. If there
were revivals going on anywhere within range, Booth
would be there, at any cost, and on one occasion, at
least, it was gravely considered whether or not so
unmanageable a student had not better be released
from further attendance at the classes. But the fact
that his fervid but irregular zeal had borne fruit,
and the conversion of one of the children of the
principal, and that the young man's ministrations
were unmistakably blessed of God in a very marked
degree, stood him in good stead. He was allowed to
be very much of a law unto himself, and in due time
he was ordained as a regular minister of the body.
At that time, wheth'er it was because he had
succumbed to the new influences or whether the
novelty of the position of an ordained minister had
charms for Mr. Booth, there is no doubt that he
shrank from following the career of an Evangelist.
44
GENERAL BOOTH.
Not even a great spiritual awakening that followed
his services at Guernsey tempted him from the
resolve to take the superintendency of a London
circuit. On this occasion the authorities of the
denomination saved him from himself. They
ordered him to undertake a special Evangelistic
mission in Staffordshire. The results were extraor-
dinary. In seven weeks 1700 persons professed to
find salvation, and the authorities, influenced by this
signal confirmation of the wisdom of their decision,
decided to relieve him from all regular pastoral duty
and set him apart as Evangelist for the whole Con-
nexion. This is the only time in the whole of his
career in which the constituted authorities of the
denomination to which he belonged seem to have
been in the least degree helpful, excepting as an east
wind is helpful. They were to make up for it before
long by going the way of all authorities, but at the
beginning, for a marvel, they did good and not evil
by giving wise and timely help in directing him into
the field in which he could find the best opening for
the utilisation of his energies.
After he had been travelling Evangelist for nearly
BOOTH AND THE CHURCHES.
45
a twelvemonth, he married the woman of genius
whom the public has, in rough-and-ready fashion,
canonised as Mrs. Booth, the mother of the Salva-
tion Army. During one of my visits to Clacton she
told me the story of her engagement and marriage.
It was a case with them both of love at first sight.
By one of those curious but common coincidences of
life, he met her for the first time on the very day on
which he had abandoned business for the ministry.
As he himself has written, "We were one in heart,
soul, and purpose from that very night."
It was three years, however, before they married,
but long before her marriage she was his guide and
counsellor. She supplemented his nature. She was
strong where he was weak; her caution was in many
respects in singular contrast to his reckless impetu-
osity. But they both were in desperate earnest to
save souls, and both were so bent upon achieving
their end that questions of means and procedure
assumed the same relative importance as the choice
of one among the rival lines of railway between
London and Edinburgh. The supreme object being
the salvation of the sinner, they were prepared to
46
GENERAL BOOTH,
take any road that led to that goal, preferring only
always the shortest cut. For when going the longer
way about, the sinner was apt to die on your
hands.
Of Mrs. Booth it is unnecessary for rne to say any-
thing here. Much ha^ been said, much more will be
said hereafter, about the heroic and saintly woman.
Among the great Englishwomen of the Nineteenth
Century her place is secure. George Eliot, in
literature; Mrs. Browning, in poetry; Florence
Nightingale, in the ministry of mercy; and Mrs.
Josephine Butler, in the work of reform, do not
stand higher than does Mrs. Booth in the realm of
religion. And, in addition to all her other distinc-
tions, she has reared a large family, almost every
member of which bears trace in mind and heart of
the helping and sanctifying influence of their
mother.
Of Mrs. Booth as a wife it is sufficient to quote the
General's own words: "There may be unions as
thorough and perfect as ours has been, but not very
many, as far as my observation has gone. How she
has helped me as companion, friend, counsellor, and
BOOTH AND THE CHURCHES. 47
not least as mother of our children, I cannot even
attempt to describe." Seldom has the old proverb

From a photograph - - by Elliott &• Fry,
MRS. BOOTH. 55 Baker Street.
had a more appropriate illustration, " He that findeth
a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of
43
GENERAL BOOTH.
the Lord." The matrimonial infelicities of John
Wesley and many another afford a melancholy and
too familiar contrast to the extraordinary and excep-
tional good fortune of General Booth. For, in justice
to the Mrs. Wesleys and others of that much-abused
class of unsympathetic wives, it must be admitted
that the prophet is never a desirable husband from
the point of view of the household.
The great man, whether apostle or reformer, neces-
sarily ranks as a family man far below the good-
natured commonplace greengrocer or comfortable
manufacturer. He has taken all the world to his
heart, and the wife, deprived of the monopoly for
which most women long, resents the passion which
consumes the leisure of her husband. On this she
thinks the home ought to be the first charge, and she
is very apt to regard the great spiritual genius as little
better than a fraudulent defaulter for the very quali-
ties which command the admiration of all the rest
of the world.
"All very fine," thinks Mrs. Wesley, when
hearing of the journeyings and preachings of the
Apostle of the Eighteenth Century, "but it is very
BOOTH AND THE CHURCHES. 49
like being generous with other people's money.
He owed his first duty to me and to his family—he
discharges it by gadding about among the miners of
Cornwall and Northumberland." Hence it is, 110
doubt, that, in sheer despair of harmonising the
affectionate selfishness of the monopolising wife with
the wider claims of the human race, the Eoman
Church cuts the Gordian knot by the ruthless sword
of enforced celibacy.
Ellice Hopkins somewhere says that "the devil
usually appears to a man in the shape of his
wife and her children/' and when he does she
might have added he often quotes the specious
plea that charity must begin at home, in the
hope that he may succeed in making it end there.
Prom this temptation General Booth was saved, not
by the cowardice of celibacy, but by the rare good
fortune which furnished him with a wife who was
one in heart, and soul, and purpose with him from
first to last. Without her there would no more have
been * a Salvation Army than there would have
been Bramwell, Ballington, and all the rest of the
family.
D
GENERAL BOOTH,
Mr. and Mrs. Booth spent their honeymoon con-
ducting revival services in Guernsey and Jersey.
Leaving Mrs. Booth in London, he went to Yorkshire,
•where in the next nine months more than 3000
persons professed to find salvation under his teach-
ing. But for some unaccountable reason the Con-
ference which had set him about this work decided
—ostensibly for reasons of the red-tape order, pro-
bably due in reality to promptings of jealousy—to
compel him to abandon his special mission, and
devote himself to the regular ministry. He chafed
against the decree, but it had at least one good result.
It gave his children time to be born. He spent a
year at Halifax, and then a year at Gateshead.
During this time his four eldest children were born.
But at the end of that period of probation, feeling
within him the stirrings of an irrepressible yearning
for a more directly Evangelistic mission, he appealed
to the Conference for re-appointment as Evangelist.
The scene in Conference when his request, sup-
ported by a memorial of the officers, was considered and
rejected, will some day, it is hoped, be painted by a
great artist, in order that it may hang for ever on the
BOOTH AND THE CHURCHES.
walls of the Conference Hall as a useful reminder of
the blindness and folly which almost every ecclesias-
tical assembly appears to have inherited from the
Sanhedrin. It was a thrilling moment, and there
were many tears when the Eev. William Booth stood
up to testify the faith that was in him before a jealous
and scornful majority, barricaded against all appeals
to head or heart by altogether insuperable obstacles
in the shape of officialism, routine, and red-tape. He
spoke with much feeling and intense earnestness.
u I am called of God to this work," he boldly pro-
claimed to the Conference, and although he had no
prospects before him, nor even any security that he
would be able to earn bread for his wife and his four
little ones, he resigned the ministry, and once more
faced the world anew.
IY.
THE HALLELUJAH BAND.
The spirit of persecution, which some fondly
imagine expired with the fires of Srnithfield, is one
of the most perennial growths of our fallen nature.
The boycotting of English converts to Roman
Catholicism which prevails in Anglican circles even
to-day is almost incredible, and when the Eev. W.
Booth shook off the dust from his feet against the
Methodist New Connexion, the New Connexion
Methodists behaved very much as their prototypes
did in the Wesleyan body, or their still more remote
Jewish progenitors in the time of our Lord. Friend-
ship turned to indifference, men who professed to
have found life eternal through his ministry refused
to put forth a finger to save the temporal life of their
teacher, and it was soon evident he had least to hope
for from those who had most benefited by his labours.
Nothing daunted, and feeling certain of his inward
call, and encouraged by a curious vision or premoni^
THE HALLELUJAH BAND.
53
tion of his wife's, that although they would never
have gold they would never be allowed to lack silver,
Mr. Booth shipped his household goods to London
by steamer, and the little family sought shelter at the
house of his wife's mother—to watch events and see
in what way their path would be made clear before
them.
Mrs. Booth, a year before this, after some wrest-
ling with herself, and long and bitter struggle against
the prompting of the Spirit, had begun to take
public part in the work of Evangelism. No one
who saw her on the platform in later years could
have imagined the timidity, the abject terror with
which she had endeavoured to evade this cross of
public speaking. Tor twenty years after she first
began to speak she never dared open her mouth in
the presence of her husband. "The appearance of
that nose of his," she said with a smile, "in the
farthest corner of the hall, would paralyse me."
This was not so much the bashfulness of the wife
in the presence of the head of the house, as the
result of a somewhat severe criticism which he had
offered on one of her earliest efforts in the pulpit.
54
GENERAL BOOTH.
He did not dream at the time of the effect which
his friendly comments had upon the sensitive crea-
ture whom he was trying to benefit. Men seldom
do appreciate the effect of their remarks upon a
mind which is already smarting and inflamed by
the mere fact of its exposure. A touch whicli is
hardly felt on the hand will cause exquisite pain to
the eyeball. When a woman does anything that is
counted unwomanly for the first time she is all eye-
ball.
The Booths had not long to wait for a call. A
young minister, one of his own converts, asked him
to go to Hayle, in Cornwall. They went and began
to conduct a mission. In that little chapel began
the great revival in Cornwall, whicli immediately
preceded the establishment of the Salvation Army.
The religious awakening in Cornwall was most re-
markable. As they went from place to place the
whole community seemed to be shaken. Barricades
had to be put up in chapels and halls which, before
their coming, were comparatively deserted, to stem
the zeal of the people and the crowding of the con-
verted to the penitent form. Some four thousand
THE HALLELUJAH BAND. 55
persons professed to be saved in four small places
in the West of Cornwall.
In presence of this great awakening of the
conscience of the community the local representa-
tives of the Wesleyans could not resist the im-
pulse to welcome the Booths to their chapels. For
a time it seemed as if the blunder of Kennington
Common was to be repaired, and that the Wes-
leyan body was not to be allowed to lose the ser-
vices of the most remarkable man Methodism
had ever reared. It was not to be. Ecclesiasticism
was obdurate. Local Wesleyans might say, "Lo,
here is the finger of God!" as they saw thousands
of the indifferent and careless crowding to declare
their repentance, and crying aloud, "What shall
we do to be saved?" but the Sanhedrin was
superior to such weaknesses. In face of the re-
vival the Conference passed a general resolution
which had the effect intended of excluding Mr.
Booth from any Wesleyan chapel. He followeth
not us. So they cast him out. To-day they may
seek a place of repentance with tears, but they
find it not. Henceforth the greatest Methodist of
56
GENERAL BOOTH.
our time must live and die outside of organised
Methodism.*
Undeterred by the interdict of the Wesleyan
Conference, the Booths went on their way. If one
door was closed, another opened. At Eedruth they
had a seven weeks' mission, at which several thou-
sand persons were said to have been converted. The
scenes at Eedruth were among the most remarkable
*As this statement has been somewhat rudely contested, it
may be well to state briefly the technical method of the Wes-
leyan coup-de-grdce. When Mr. Booth had made arrangements
with the local Wesleyans for a series of Evangelistic services
in a Wesleyan chapel the arrangements were set on one side by
the following resolution, which was passed by the Wesleyan
Conference expressly in order to prevent the holding of his
services:—
"Special Services.—In accordance with suggestions from cer-
tain large District Committees, the Conference deems it expe-
dient to direct Superintendents not to sanction the occupation
of any of our chapels for continuous service by persons who
are not amenable to our regular discipline. The ministers of
the body are specially referred to Minutes for 1847, Q. xxxix.;
vol. x. pp. 551-553. The object of this record is not to dis-
courage efforts to promote revivals of religion (for these we
have ever sought to encourage by such means as consist with
sound doctrine and godly order), but to prevent irregularities
which tend to impair the true and lasting prosperity of the
Church."—Minutes of the Methodist Conference, 1862, vol. xv.
p. 326, par. 4.
THE HALLELUJAH BAND.
that have been witnessed in the lifetime of this
generation. General Booth was so deeply impressed
that to this day he recalls that seven weeks' mission
as one of the most wonderful experiences of his life.
He dearly loves the Cornishmen. "If I were to be
sorely in need of spiritual enjoyment," he said re-
cently, " and of refreshing from the Lord, then there
is no place in the world where I would go sooner
than to Eedruth. I would take the largest tent I
could get, and go down there, and once more renew
the experiences of that wonderful time." Such an
expression indicates General Booth's unhesitating
conviction that the outpourings of the Spirit are
subject to the same laws as any other natural and
moral phenomena. He no more doubts that if he
went down to Eedruth there would be a revival in
Eedruth, than a farmer doubts when he sows the
seed in March that there will be harvesting to be
done in autumn.
From Cornwall Mr. Booth went to Cardiff, and at
Cardiff he made a new departure. Hitherto he had
only preached in the chapels and halls in connection
with the churches. At Cardiff he had to conduct
58
GENERAL BOOTH.
services in a circus. That was followed by a still
more significant new departure at Walsall. There
the Booths were invited to hold a mission in a big
chapel which had a very poor congregation. They
went and did their best, but charm they never so
wisely they could not get the crowd, who listened
languidly in the Market Square, to follow them into
the chapel. After trying for a time and failing, Mr.
Booth decided to make a bold bid for an audience.
It was an adaptation of the star company system,
familiar enough to theatre-goers, to revivalist work.
Finding that the ordinary services would not draw,
and that the sinners whom he sought to save obsti-
nately kept at a safe distance from the penitent form,
he determined to organise attractions against which
even the Walsall rough would not be proof.
> He set to work to get together a show company of
converted reprobates for all the Midlands. Wherever
in Birmingham or Derby or Nottingham he heard
of any notorious evil-doer who had been roused to a
sense of his sin and brought over to a knowledge of
the truth, he sent for that man and added him to his
band. At last he got together as motley a crew of
THE HALLELUJAH BAND.
59
reclaimed blackguards as ever mustered on a convict
ship, or at a gaol delivery of provincial assizes.
Poachers, drunkards, wife-beaters, prize-fighters, and
gaol-birds of every degree of infamy, he eagerly
enlisted in the service of the revival. Then he adver-
tised them on every hoarding as the Hallelujah Band,
and boldly advanced once more to the attack.
This novel strategy had an immediate success.
The chapel was crowded every night, and convicted
sinners cried aloud for mercy at the penitent form.
The Hallelujah Band became one of the great sensa-
tions of the Midlands. The converted prize-fighters
attracted men who would not have stirred from their
alehouses to hear the whole bench of bishops, for an
ex-gaol-bird is more attractive to these sinners whom
Jesus came to call to repentance, than Mr. Spurgeon.
There are, of course, obvious objections to the utili-
sation of blackguardism even as an advertisement,
but obviously if by parading wife-beater No. I on
the platform you can induce wife-beater No. 2 to
desist from beating his wife, you are bound to parade
your wife-beater No. 1, or take the responsibility
for the continued cudgelling of the poor wife of
6o
GENERAL BOOTH.
No. 2. There seems to have been no doubt that
the Hallelujah Bands did execution. Many noto-
rious profligates were converted, and although the
band subsequently broke up from internal dissen-
sion, there being no leader to whom they were
bound to render obedience, they undoubtedly pro-
duced much more effect on the spiritual and moral
life of the Midlands than if they had retired into
private life, and been too much ashamed of their
past wickedness ever to confess it before their
fellow-men.
The Hallelujah Band is notable because of the
effect which it produced upon the mind of its
founder. We owe, no doubt, much of the "Cory-
bantic Christianity" which Professor Huxley dis-
likes to the success of that Walsall experiment.
General Booth has told us in his sketch of "How
we began" how deeply the Hallelujah Band im-
pressed him. "The remarkable influence and effect
it produced while it lasted upon the worst and
poorest classes of the community made a great
impression on my mind, and I never ceased to
wonder whether such a work could not be so origi-
THE HALLELUJAH BAND.
61
nated and guided as to make it a powerful force for
effectually dealing with the vast continent of ram-
pant wickedness that I saw around me everywhere/'
After visiting the Midlands the Booths went to
Leeds, and there for a time they suspended their
nomadic life so far as to take a house, where the sixth
child was born. It was, however, only a six months'
respite, and not a respite of rest. "We had a hard
fight .... in the market-place, amidst oaths, and
blasphemies, and peltings, and mobbings, we strug-
gled hard for souls and won a goodly number."
But Leeds, it was soon perceived, was not a centre.
The immense centripetal attraction of London
exerted itself on them as on so many others, and
as Mrs. Booth was worrying to have a house where
she could have a chance of seeing after the welfare
of her little ones, they left Leeds and came up to
London in 1864. He was invited to conduct for a
fortnight the services held in the tent pitched on an
old Quaker burial-ground in Baker's Eow, White-
chapel. He accepted the invitation, and from that
day his destiny was fixed.
Y.
THE SALVATION ARMY.
Like most men, Mr. Booth had little idea of the
momentous nature of the decision which formed the
turning-point of his life. He was dispirited and op-
pressed by a sense of his failure to reach the masses.
He began to doubt of his qualifications for the work.
111 would have given worlds, had they been mine, to
have been qualified to attract and interest and lead
to salvation the masses around me; but I despaired
of accomplishing it. This I thought was not my
vocation." It was in this mood that he stood up in
Mile End Waste on July 5th, 1865, and after
preaching out of doors, amid the rival attractions of
the shows and shooting-ranges, led a procession to
the tent. The work fascinated him. The wind
blew the tent down, but they "fell back on our
cathedral, the open air." "The church and chapel
congregations somehow or other lost their charm in
comparison with the vulgar East-enders, as I was
THE SAL VA TION ARM Y.
63
continually haunted with a desire to offer myself to
Jesus Christ as an apostle for the heathen of His
London. The idea, or heavenly vision, or whatever
you may call it, overcame me, I yielded to it, and
what has happened since is, I think, not only a
justification but an evidence that my offer was
accepted."
The open-air cathedral, however, needs side chapels,
and as the tent was gone they took refuge in an old
dancing-saloon. Dancing stopped late after midnight
on Saturday; the converts carried in the seats at four
o'clock on Sunday morning, and all the congregation
had to pass in by an entrance also used by those who
came to be photographed by the proprietor of the
saloon, who had a camera in the top storey. On week-
nights they met at first in a woollen warehouse, into
which the street arabs threw stones, and mud, and
occasional crackers. Then they migrated to a stable,
from which they were ejected for disturbing a gym-
nasium on the other side of the wall. They found a
resting-place for themselves in an old penny gaff at
Limehouse, and then established themselves on the
site of an old beerhouse, the Eastern Star. Tt was
64
GENERAL BOOTH.
not, however, till they took the Effingham theatre
that they considered their work as firmly rooted with
some prospect of permanence. His idea all these
years was merely to make converts for the Churches.
But he was reluctantly driven to the conviction that
the converts were not welcomed by the Churches, and
that if they were not taken care of by him they would
not be taken care of by any one else. So, gradually
it dawned upon him that he would have to build up
a whole religious society on permanent lines, the
fundamental/feature of which was the doctrine that
no one can keep saved who does not try to save other
people. Thus it was that the Salvation Army in
fact, but not in name, was born. It was not invented;
like Topsy, it" growed."
Its growth was natural and regular in its very
supernatural irregularity. At, first there was nothing,
or next to nothing, to distinguish it from the num-
berless evangelistic movements which from time to
time make more or less impression on the indiffer-
entism of the classes which are whitewashed with
Christianity and the heathenism of the masses who
are more or less frankly pagan. The superficial

E
66
GENERAL BOOTH.
observer might have failed to discern, any difference
between this movement and the others. It was not
until a dozen years had passed that its distinctive
peculiarities became conspicuous before the eyes of
all men.
The decisive change which stamped the character
of the movement occurred in 1878. It has often
been told, but it must be told again, if only
to illustrate once more what apparent trifles can
deflect the course of great movements. That which
fixed the direction of the Army's development was
the choice of its title. This was hit upon almost by
chance. Mr. Eailton writes:
We were drawing up a brief description of the Mis-
sion, and, in wishing to express what it was in one phrase, I
wrote, "The Christian Mission is a volunteer army of
converted working people." "No," said Mr. Booth, "we
are not volunteers, for we feel we must do what we do,
and we are always on duty." He crossed out the words
and wrote " Salvation." The phrase immediately struck
us all, and we very soon found it would be far more
effective than the old name.*
This was 1878. Even before that date, however,
* "Heathen England," p. 29.
THE SALVATION ARMY,
67
there had been indications of development in a
quasi-military direction. The Evangelists of the
Mission were called Captain, or Cap'n, by those who
followed their lead, for with the common people
Captain means leader. It is the more polite form
of "gaffer "or "boss." The converts might have
chosen either of the latter terms. Had they done
so, we might have had a great religious caucus with
its bosses, instead of the Army with its officers.
Probably those who most object to the military
title would regard Boss as a fair exchange for
Captain.
The first officer definitely to announce himself
as Captain was Mr. Cadman, who is now in
charge of the Social Wing. He took this step
in 1877, when "Captain Cadman" issued bills
announcing "War in Whitby," and described
the Mission as " The Hallelujah Army." The idea
was in the air, and an apparent accident sufficed
to precipitate it. Mr. Booth, as the leader of the
Mission, had for some time before been known
familiarly as the General. In this there was no
aping of militarism, and the papers which always
68
GENERAL BOOTH.
print the title between inverted commas are merely
displaying their own ignorance. General is the cor-
rect title for the head of a great religious order such
as the Jesuits, or the Benedictines, or the Salvation
Army. With the General at the head of its evangel-
ists, who were familiarly dubbed as Captain by their
converts, and with Cadinan already describing the
Mission as the Hallelujah Army, it was evident that
the development of the Salvation Army would follow
military lines. As Mr. Eailton says:
When the Army name was definitely adopted, all this
was made much plainer to the minds of all the people.
What was inconsistent with the soldierhood for Christ
was as rapidly as possible got rid of, and all that was
useful in the teachings of earth's armies was carefully
learnt. Part No. i of Orders and Regulations for the
Salvation Army was published in 1878, after long and
careful study of the Manuals of the British Army.
/ General Booth told me that he found more practical
help from the regulations of the British Army than he
s^did^from all the methods of all the Churches. From
the moment that the Army received its title its
destiny was fixecL TETwhole organisation was domi-
nated and transformed by the name. To that it owes

THE SAL VA TION ARM Y.
69
both its strength and its weakness. As an Army it
will raise recruits, train soldiers, and overrun many
countries and achieve great victories. But it will
always be an Army in the midst of a civilian popula-
tion. It may dominate a community. It will not
enrol that community in its ranks. Hence the
comparative success with which carping critics can
score when they challenge the General to parade his
congregations in any given district. What he does
is not to collect permanent congregations so much as
to stir up the whole community, and to attract by the
magnet of his spiritual enthusiasm the few souls
which have it in them to respond to his appeal for
soldiers to go forth to proclaim the glad tidings of
great joy unto all nations.
The last twenty-five years of General Booth's life
covers the history of the rise and development of the
Salvation Army. To attempt anything approaching
a biography would be impossible without making a
formal record of the growth and extension of one of
the most remarkable religious organisations of our
day. It will, perhaps, be sufficient merely to pre-
face what I have to say about the man and his work
?o GENERAL BOOTH,
_ »
by bringing together a few of the leading dates in
the history of the Salvation Army.
1865. July 5, Preaching at Mile End Waste.
Monthly magazine of Christian Mission started.
1868. Nov., First conference held.
1870. East London Christian Mission reconstituted as
the Christian Mission.
1872. Mr. Booth laid aside for a time by ill health.
Mission drifts towards respectable denomination-
alism.
1873. The Mission rescued and extended.
1875. Women for the first time appointed to full charge
of stations.
1876. Christian Mission extended northward.
1877. Mr. and Mrs. Booth seriously ill.
Conference report 29 stations and 31 Evangelists.
1878. Aug., The Christian Mission develops into the
Salvation Army.
50 stations, 88 Evangelists.
Orders and Regulations first published.
1879. Eirst Hallelujah Lass sent to gaol for obstructing
thoroughfare in Rhondda Yalley by holding
prayer meeting on a country road.
Flag of Blood and Eire adopted.
THE SAL VA TION ARM Y.
7i
1879. First training home for officers attempted at
Manchester.
1880. Training home started in London.
War Cry founded.
Uniform and badges introduced.
Mr. Eailton sent to the States to "open" cam-
paign in America.
United Kingdom first mapped out into divisions.
Mrs. Reynolds and 5 Lasses sent to Ireland.
1881. Captain Sutherland and wife sent to Adelaide to
open campaign in Australia.
Miss Booth, Miss Soper (now Mrs. Bramwell
Booth), and Mr. Herbert Booth sent bo Paris
to open campaign in France.
Head-quarters removed from Whitechapel to 101
Queen Yictoria Street.
1882. Clapton Congress Hall opened.
669 men, women, and children knocked down or
brutally assaulted for belonging to the Army.
The Grecian Theatre captured.
86 Salvationists sent to gaol for praying and
preaching in public.
First party despatched under Mr. Tucker to open
India.
Corps, 440; officers, 1019,
1883. Operations extended to New Zealand.
Switzerland opened. Officers expelled.
First Swedish corps established.
GENERAL BOOTH.
1883. Three officers sent to open South Africa.
First Prison Gate Brigade started in Yic
Corps, 634; officers, 1541.
1884. First Rescue Home opened in England.
Home for men out of prison opened in Hackney. ^
Corps, 910; officers, 2332.
1885. The Armstrong case. Criminal Law Amendment
Act passed.
Rescue work extended.
Corps, 1322; officers, 3076.
1886. International Congress, London.
Colonel and Major Clibborn imprisoned in Neu-
chatel.
Corps, 1819; officers, 4332.
1887. First Self-Denial week.
Corps, 2331; officers, 5877.
1888. General visited America and Canada.
Food and Shelter Dep6t, Limehouse, opened.
Corps, 2591; officers, 7109.
1889. Torquay Fight for Sunday Open-air Processions.
New Trade Head-quarters opened.
Commissioner Railton and officers sent to Ger-
many.
Corps, 2765; officers, 8639.

THE SALVATION ARMY.
73
1890. Mrs. Booth died.
Home Office opened.
"In Darkest England and the Way out" pub- 1/
lished.
Anniversary held, Crystal Palace.
Corps, 2928; officers, 9921.
1891. ;£ 102,000 subscribed to start the social scheme.
VI.
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT.
What the next few years will show who can say?
Prophecy is idle, but if the future can be inferred
from the past, then by the time the twentieth century
has dawned the Salvation Army will have put in ten
years of work as remarkable, as original, and as full of
promise as that which it has achieved between 1880
and 1890. For the Salvation Army proper can hardly
be said to be more than ten years old. It was only
in 1879 that they first unfurled the Blood and Fire
flag, and we now see it flying in every English-speak-
ing land, while General Booth undertakes, as an
ordinary incident in his pastoral duties, a month's
circuit through Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway,
and Germany.
It is nearly a thousand years since English evan-
gelists made a distinct impact upon the moral and
religious life of the Continent. General Booth may
be regarded as the heir and successor of St. Boniface
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT. 75
of Mayence, whcse memory after the lapse of twelve
centuries is still cherished in the fortress heart of
Eastern Germany.
Last year saw a still more notable departure,
with the fame of which the whole world is ringing.
Like the peal of a great bell sounding forth over the
multitudinous tumult and turmoil of the city, that
glad message of faith, hope, and love has made itself
heard among all peoples, languages, and tongues. The
very commotion that has been raised in certain
quarters, the hooting and the strident clamour of the
birds of night with which the air has been filled, is
the most eloquent testimony to the fact that upon
those who sit in darkness a great light has arisen, and
that the dawn of a new hope has begun to gladden
the heart of mankind.
The inexhaustible capacity for wonder which is
possessed by mankind, alone is sufficient to explain
the surprise and indignation with which many excel-
lent people have read much that has been spoken and
printed of late months against General Booth. It
strikes them as something almost inconceivably pre-
posterous, something quite out of the natural order
76
GENERAL BOOTH.
of things, that a man, merely because he proposes to
devote the whole of what is left of his life, and all
the energies of an immense organisation in order to
save the lost, should be assailed as if he were a thief
and a pickpocket. A clever speculator, by more or
less shady devices, amasses a fortune of half a million,
which he lavishes on his own gratification and the
demoralisation of his relatives and dependents.
Against him not a word must be said. But when
another man invites his fellows to subscribe £100,000
every penny of which is to be spent in benefiting the
most miserable of the outcast poor—Off with him to
the pillory! In the reign of Tiberius that pillory
had the shape of a cross; nowadays, the Crucified
having somewhat softened the savagery of His per-
secutors, it takes the milder shape of the bisuperative
columns of the newspapers.
General Booth fortunately is so used to those
attacks that he is much more surprised at the enthu-
siastic welcome that he has received from so many
quarters, than he is dismayed at the denunciations
which have hailed upon him from his enemies. It is
easy to bear them now, when some idea of the work
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT.
77
done has penetrated the public mind. It was not so
easy when the work was in its infancy. The proto-
type of all the General's recent assailants lost no time
in launching the selfsame accusations as those with
which we are all so familiar to-day. A lady who
took part in the early meetings held by Mr. Booth
on Mile End Waste writes:
I have seen the General pelted with the rest of us
many a time, but he always used to say to the people to
take no notice, but go straight on, and that was the best.
"Old Scotty," the infidel, used to say dreadful things
against him. He used to stand close beside our ring in
the open air with his Bible, pulling it to pieces; and then
he used to say the most dreadful things about the
General and his family. For instance, he used to say
that he lived on the people's money, and that by-and-by
he would gather it all together and be off.
Of this "Old Scotty," who was the original author
and inventcr of the story about the General and
his family feathering their own nest, &c, which has
figured so extensively of late in the newspapers, it
is interesting to learn that he was an infidel lecturer
of the public-house type, who, after fortifying himself
with liquor in a low tavern? would come forth to
78
GENERAL BOOTH.
pour out upon the Bible, and all who believed in it,
the overflowing vials of his wrath in language too
foul to be repeated. "More than once the mission
folk induced him to accept their charity, and after
receiving a certain amount of food, he would for a
time make some show of an inclination to turn
round; but alas, alas, he would soon back again to
the old haunts with the old ways." If the authors
of some of the worst calumnies against the Booths
were to be subjected to examination, it would be
found that they too, like "Old Scotty," are returning
evil for good, and that the virulence of their invective
is measured by the extent to which they have bene-
fited by the kindness of those whom they now
assail.
General Booth has been one of the most fortunate
of men, and fortunate most of all in his enemies. As
John Bright once said to him, "The men who perse-
cute you would have persecuted the Apostles."
Without the constant advertisement supplied by the
malice of his opponents he would never have
achieved one tithe of his present success. Count
Tolstoi, in a very remarkable passage on Christ's

THE ARMY'S GREETINGS,
8o
GENERAL BOOTH.
Christianity, points out that so far from resenting
the infliction of death, and imprisonment for con-
science' sake, Christians should welcome these afflic-
tions; for it is only by displaying unflinching
readiness to face death and bonds for your religion
that you can ever get an opportunity of convincing
the ordinary man that there is any truth in it.
Persecution is the great test of sincerity. The com-
mon man forms his notion of the value of creeds by
seeing what those who hold them are willing to sacri-
fice on their behalf. If there is no persecution, the
believer has no chance of bidding high enough for
his faith to convince the onlooker of his regard for
it. General Booth has always been generously dealt
with in this respect. It is true, that the pagans of
Geneva have not yet burnt Miss Booth in the
central square of their city, but, short of the stake,
the Salvationists have endured almost every species
of persecution. They have been fined and impri-
soned in almost every country they have ever visited.
They have been kicked, knocked down, stoned,
covered with filth, and generally treated as the oS-
scouring of all things. And the net result of it all is
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT. 81
that now as of old the blood of the martyrs is the
seed of the Church.
Much as the Salvation Army has been helped
by its friends, it would have been at a compara-
tive stand-still but for its enemies. They have
enabled it to pose as the champion of liberty of
speech and liberty of procession ; they have furnished
it with a noble company of officers whose university
has been the gaol, and who have been tempered in
the furnace of tribulation before they have been
called to the ministry of love for the salvation of the
lost. And let it never be forgotten that all these
attacks from the outside have been of incalculable
service to the organisation. They nipped in the
bud the tendency to disintegration, they stimulated
loyalty, and they bound soldiers and officers together
with a bond of affection which made the most iron
discipline seem light. What the Salvation Army
would have done without the "Skeletons" I do not
know. The greatest danger which menaces them
to-day is the possibility of their becoming so respect-
able that they will no longer be exposed to the
biting blasts of ridicule and denunciation, which,
F
82
GENERAL BOOTH.
like Kingsley's Nbr'-easter, has made them the men
they are.
General Booth is most fortunate also in the posses-
sion of a keen sense of humour. This gift comes as
a revelation to most of those who hear him for the
first time. It is perhaps his greatest gift as a
speaker. Judging from ordinary standards, he is not
an orator. But he has the saving gift of humour well
under control, and it stands him in good stead.
Homely and plain-spoken, there is in him a good
deal of the same fibre that there was in Abraham
Lincoln. Both were tall, spare men, who loved a
joke, and who yet were called of God to stand in the
breach in a grave crisis, which was assuredly no jest-
ing matter. The Northern armies fought none the
less heroically because of Old Abe's jokes, and the
Salvationists are none the less strenuous in the
saving of souls because their General clenches an
argument with a humorous sally which sets the
audience in a roar. The picture which he- drew at
St. James's Hall of the priest and Levite nowadays
who were no longer content to pass by on the other
side, but who would insist on punching the head of
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT. 83
the Good Samaritan, was as exquisitely amusing as
it was literally correct; but General Booth is pro-
bably the only public speaker who would have
liilifL

from a Pkotografh by the Stereoscopic Co.
ventured upon it in the course of a speech full of
pathetic appeals to the higher emotions. In this
quality of his nature General Booth resembles
84
GENERAL BOOTH.
Shakespeare, whose gravedigger's jests in the midst
of the exalted sentiment of Hamlet so scandalised
the French critics.
If you were to ask General Booth what he
regarded as the secret of his strange success,
he would tell you that it was because he was
a man of one idea. From first to last he has been
dominated by one central thought, which has pos-
sessed him as by a consuming passion. That
one idea has been a passionate yearning love
for his fellow-men. From his boyhood in Not-
tingham he has always been full of sorrow for
the sufferings and the miseries of men and women.
His heart has gone out to them, and his whole
soul has been pre-occupied with the one question,
How can I best do something for them? how
can I help them? how can I best bring some
light and warmth and love and joy into these
darkened, cold, and miserable hearts?
That was the work that he felt called to perform,
and that sacred passion, that irresistible enthu-
siasm for humanity has been the central fire by
which the whole Salvation Army has caught
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT.
85
the glow which distin-
guishes it from all other
denominations. Olive
Schreiner wrote to me the
other day from South
Africa, "The Eoman
Church is great and ma-
jestic, the most glorious
of all the forms of dead
Christianity. The only
form of Christianity
which is a living force


From a Dieto by Stereoscopic Co.
W. BRAMWELL BOOTH.
Chief of the Staff.
From a Photo by Stereoscopic Co.
BALLINGTON BOOTH.
Commissioner for United States.
to-day is the Salvation
Army." That is a sweep-
ing verdict, which, like
most sweeping verdicts,
is very unjust. But what
Olive Schreiner meant
was not unjust, but most
true and obvious, viz.,
that the Salvation Army,
more than any other of
the religious societies of
our time, glows with the
86
GENERAL BOOTH.
sacred passion for the welfare of men, which, to the
author of "The Story of a South African Farm," is
the distinctive note of true Christianity.
The traditions of the Church Universal play but
a small part in the lives of English Nonconformists.
But we have our traditions, which, perhaps, are all
the more influential because they are narrow and
local. Some of us are reared in the memories of
the Puritans of the Commonwealth; others are the
spiritual heirs of the early Quakers. General Booth
was the child not of the seventeenth but of the
eighteenth century. His traditions began and ended
with the story of the great spiritual awakening that
is associated with the names of Wesley and Whit-
field.
He told me once, that from earliest youth he
was constantly thinking of these two men. Of the
two, Whitfield seemed to him much the finer cha-
racter. Whitfield was a great orator—a man of
magnetic presence, with a veritable inspiration as a
preacher. Wherever he went his passionate appeals
roused the sleeping conscience, convicted sinners of
their guilt, and caused thousands to cry aloud in
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT. 87

From a Photo by Sttrtoscofic Co
EVA C. BOOTH.
Field Commissioner.
the anguish of penitence
and remorse, "What shall
I do to be saved?" "Wes-
ley had neither the sacred
passion, the inspiration,
the eloquence, nor the
magnetic influence of
Whitfield. But this plain
man possessed one thing
which his more brilliantly
gifted contemporary
lacked. Wesley understood the importance of
organisation. When he
had made an impression
upon a man, he did not
stop there. When he had
made a convert, he en-
listed him as a recruit.
He recognised the respon-
sibility of leadership. He
was not afraid to accept
From a Photo by Sttrtoscofic Co. the dutieS Of TUler. He
HERBERT n. BOOTH. - , j , t
commandant /or the United framed orders and regula-
Kingdom.

88
GENERAL BOOTH.
tions, and when his followers criticised them, he wrote:
"It is your duty to obey my rules, not to mend them."
As the result of the two methods, what do we
see? Whitfield's marvellous eloquence has van-
ished with the perfume of the roses of summer.
His hearers bowed before his influence as the
grain bends beneath the breeze. But like the
wind it has passed, and only the memory of it
lingers amongst us to this day. Wesley, on the
other hand, although in many respects the inferior
man, has achieved permanent results. Methodism
in all its branches is now the. greatest, the most
widely diffused, and the most vigorous of all the
Protestant Churches to-day. "Remember Whit-
field's failure and Wesley's success," has been the
watchword of General Booth from the beginning.
He has indeed remembered it. If the Salvation Army
a hundred years after his death is not as vigor-
ous and as solid an institution as the Methodist
Churches, it will not be for want of organisation.
General Booth has done much, but all that he has
achieved is but a small thing to that which he hopes
he may yet be instrumental in doing. If he is a
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT. 89

great man who has great
ideas, then General Booth
is one of the greatest men
of our time. He will not
realise all he hopes for.
For if he succeeded to the
utmost of his hopes to-day,
he would hope for some-
thing more to-morrow.
But he has succeeded in Fnmap/utoby stertoscopuco.
LUCY M. BOOTH.
SO much that he may fully Head of Women Officers' Training.
expect to succeed in a good deal more. The field
is wide enough for him to
do enormous things and
still ample elbow-room
would be left for the rest.
He sometimes says
that there are only three
forms of religion or ir-
religion that seem likely
to last — the Roman
5*™****. Church, the Materialist
EMMA BOOTH-TUCKEB. Agnostic and the SaWa-
India. °'

go
GENERAL BOOTH.
tion Army. He dreams of founding a veritable theo-
cracy in some sparsely peopled country, where the
authorities of the Church will avoid all the mistakes
of their predecessors and show the world a realised
and true sample of the Kingdom of Heaven. Already
Boards of Guardians are negotiating with him for the
transfer of their casual wards to the Army. The
Victorian Government, the most democratic on this
planet, votes his Eescue Home and Prison Brigade
an annual subsidy; and who knows how long or
rather how short a time it may be before we see his
officers holding religious services in all the gaols and
workhouses in the land?
He has set his heart on realising the Carlylean
ideals, and if he succeeds even to a limited ex-
tent in organising the unemployed, and in utilis-
ing waste labour, who can foresee whereto this
may grow? We can see in the alarmist predic-
tions of the enemies of the Salvation Army, that
the possibilities of a world-wide extension of
the new religious order are already visible to the
dullest eye. General Booth takes himself quite
seriously. John Wesley's saying, "All the world's
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT. 91
my parish," exactly expresses General Booth's con-
ception of his field of labour. He is almost the only
cosmopolitan man of our time. The Church of Rome
and the Salvation Army—these are the only two
organisations which
operate directly and si-
multaneously in all the
continents and among all
the nations. Humanity
is to both of these re-
ligions a unit.
General Booth has
immense aspirations, but
he can hardly be said to
have gigantic schemes.
He did not devise the Salvation Army. It grew. So
did his social scheme. And so will the other schemes
that are still to come. They are born of circum-
stances acted upon by the constraining pressure of
love for men. General Booth does not do what he
wishes to do; he does what he is driven to do. As
Mr. Eailton wrote some years since:
If the Army lias become completely emancipated from

From a Photo by Stereoscopic Co.
CATHEBINE BOOTH-CLIBBOBN.
Marechale in France.
92
GENERAL BOOTH.
old customs and systems, the emancipation has been won
by slow degrees, and only by the deep conviction and
earnest struggles of people who have had as much diffi-
culty, in the first instance, in reconciling themselves with
the changes that have been made as you yourself could
have. I do not believe that any one can be more shocked
to-day at the Salvation Army than the founder would
have been had he met one of its smallest corps just as it
now is twenty years ago.
The General did not plan out the conquest of the
world. Each of his successive advances was forced
upon him. He could not help himself. Why did
the Salvation Army go to Australia? Because a
quondam drunken milkman who had been saved at
Stepney emigrated to Adelaide, and sent over an
urgent summons for help to start the Holy War in
Australia. In like manner it was a convert from
Coventry who, having settled in Philadelphia, brought
over the Salvation Army to the United States.
Nothing was more true than what Mr. Eailton wrote
when he said, "In this as in almost every forward
step, the action of Head-quarters has been in a manner
forced by circumstances, so that we have been com-
pelled to enter upon a great effort, which we would
much rather have postponed to a later date." But
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT.
93
when a door is opened General Booth dare not refuse
to go through it to proclaim the glad tidings of a
gospel of happiness and love.
"Whenever I am wanted to go anywhere/' said a
humble convert of the Army, "I say, 'Shall I go,
Lord?' and if He says, c Go, Bill!' then I go; but
if He doesn't, I don't." That is General Booth's
spirit. He gets his marching orders, and, acting on
his own precepts, he does as he is told, and does not
"argufy."
He has hitherto had the great advantage of having
had no reputation to lose. While others can do
nothing without considering and hearing and discuss-
ing and wondering what this, that, or the other person
would do or say or think, he has gone ahead and done
the work that was given him to do. And wTho is
there even among the most sceptical of his opponents
can deny that it has been a good work? Apart
altogether from its direct effects, General Booth's life-
work has been as a trumpet call to the Churches of
Christendom. The forward movement among the
Wesleyans and the Church Army in the Establish-
ment are but two illustrations of the effect which he
94
GENERAL BOOTH.
has produced outside the immediate range of his own
operations. Nor is it only the Churches that have felt
the quickening and refining influence of his loving
heart and courageous faith. The whole trend of social
legislation for many a year to come will bear unmis-
takable signs of the influence of his great passion for
the welfare of men; and when the Queen gives her
assent to the Act enfranchising her own sex, she will
but be attesting the change in the popular estimate of
the capacities of women which has been most largely
brought about by the work of the Salvation Army.
On these grounds, if on no other, I regard General
Booth as one of the greatest men of our time.
Edited by Rev. BENJAMIN WAUGH.
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