第69章

The "Times" December 20th, 1890 Sir,--In discussing Mr. Booth's projects I have hitherto left in the background a distinction which must be kept well in sight by those who wish to form a fair judgment of the influence, for good or evil, of the Salvation Army. Salvationism, the work of "saving souls" by revivalist methods, is one thing; Boothism, the utilization of the workers for the furtherance of Mr. Booth's peculiar projects, is another. Mr. Booth has captured, and harnessed with sharp bits and effectual blinkers, a multitude of ultra-Evangelical missionaries of the revivalist school who were wandering at large. It is this skilfully, if somewhat mercilessly, driven team which has dragged the "General's" coach-load of projects into their present position.

Looking, then, at the host of Salvationists proper, from the "captains" downwards (to whom, in my judgment, the family hierarchy stands in the relation of the Old Man of the Sea to Sinbad), as an independent entity, I desire to say that the evidence before me, whether hostile or friendly to the General and his schemes, is distinctly favourable to them. It exhibits them as, in the main, poor, uninstructed, not unfrequently fanatical, enthusiasts, the purity of whose lives, the sincerity of whose belief, and the cheerfulness of whose endurance of privation and rough usage, in what they consider a just cause, command sincere respect. For my part, though I conceive the corybantic method of soul-saving to be full of dangers, and though the theological speculations of these good people are to me wholly unacceptable, yet I believe that the evils which must follow in the track of such errors, as of all other errors, will be largely outweighed by the moral and social improvement of the people whom they convert. I would no more raise my voice against them (so long as they abstain from annoying their neighbours) than I would quarrel with a man, vigorously sweeping out a stye, on account of the shape of his broom, or because he made a great noise over his work. I have always had a strong faith in the principle of the injunction, "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." If a kingdom is worth a Mass, as a great ruler said, surely the reign of clean living, industry, and thrift is worth any quantity of tambourines and eccentric doctrinal hypotheses. All that I have hitherto said, and propose further to say, is directed against Mr.

Booth's extremely clever, audacious, and hitherto successful attempt to utilize the credit won by all this honest devotion and self-sacrifice for the purposes of his socialistic autocracy.

I now propose to bring forward a little more evidence as to how things really stand where Mr. Booth's system has had a fair trial. I obtain it, mainly, from a curious pamphlet, the title of which runs: "The New Papacy. Behind the Scenes in the Salvation Army," by an ex-Staff Officer. "Make not my Father's house a house of merchandise" (John ii.

16). 1889. Published at Toronto, by A. Britnell. On the cover it is stated that "This is the book which was burned by the authorities of the Salvation Army." I remind the reader, once more, that the statements which I shall cite must be regarded as ex parte; all I can vouch for is that, on grounds of internal evidence and from other concurrent testimony respecting the ways of the Booth hierarchy, I feel justified in using them.

This is the picture the writer draws of the army in the early days of its invasion of the Dominion of Canada:-,"Then, it will be remembered, it professed to be the humble handmaid of the existing churches; its professed object was the evangelization of the masses. It repudiated the idea of building up a separate religious body, and it denounced the practice of gathering together wealth and the accumulation of property. Men and women other than its own converts gathered around it and threw themselves heart and soul into the work, for the simple reason that it offered, as they supposed, a more extended and widely open field for evangelical effort. Ministers everywhere were invited and welcomed to its platforms, majors and colonels were few and far between, and the supremacy and power of the General were things unknown . . . Care was taken to avoid anything like proselytism; its converts were never coerced into joining its ranks... In a word, the organization occupied the position of an auxiliary mission and recruiting agency for the various religious bodies.... The meetings were crowded, people professed conversion by the score, the public liberally supplied the means to carry on the work in their respective communities; therefore every corps was wholly self-supporting, its officers were properly, if not luxuriously, cared for, the local expenditure was amply provided, and, under the supervision of the secretary, a local member, and the officer in charge, the funds were disbursed in the towns where they were collected, and the spirit of satisfaction and confidence was mutual all around".