X. The Salvation Army

(Contemporary Review, 1882.)

As I have been asked to form and express a judgment on the Salvation Army, I give the following, under -correction. But I need hardly say that I have been present at no services or preaching, and judge of it only from documents of its own members.

To draw a perfect circle on paper is one thing, to carry it out in stone is another. Abstract mental con ceptions are always imperfectly realised in concrete human works. The Church on the eternal shore has no admixture of evil with good: the Church in this world is the field of wheat and tares. The Cathari of old and the Puritans since were impatient of this mystery of the long-suffering of God. It is well to bear this in mind when we judge of any men or works outside of the Divine organisation and unity of the faith. If good and evil be mingled in the Church divinely founded and divinely guided, what may we not look to find in any system which is of human origin, and dependent on the instability of man? Water can not rise above its source.

1. The first observation I would make on the Salvation Army is that it could never have existed but for the spiritual desolation of England: for to our own country my remarks will be confined.

In the reign of Elizabeth the whole people, excepting the Catholics who remained steadfast, were nominally within the Established Church. The Brownists began the separation of what Mr. Skeats has called " the Free Churches." These Nonconformist bodies, continually multiplying, claim at this day to divide the population of England equally with the Anglican Church. In truth, if we separate those who are explicitly Anglican from the multitudes who are only passively and nominally Anglican, and those who are explicitly Nonconfor mists of every kind from those who are only passively and nominally Nonconformists, there will be a residuum on both sides of millions, over whom religion has no power. They live and die outside of any religious body. When an attempt was made, some forty years ago, to ascertain the extent of church room in London, it was computed that all the existing places of worship, giving to each three services on Sunday, would provide for about 800,000 persons. The population of London was then under two millions— it is now nearly four. And great as the efforts of church-building have been, the proportion of church room is certainly not greater than it was; it is almost certainly less, for the population has increased more rapidly than the church room. What, then, is the spiritual desolation of London? Let any man stand on the high northern ridge which commands London from west to east, and ask himself: How many in this teeming, seething whirlpool of men have never been baptised? have never been taught the Christian faith? never set a foot in a church? How many are living ignorantly in sin? how many with full knowledge are breaking the laws of God? What multitudes are blinded, or besotted, or maddened by drink? What sins of every kind and dye, and beyond all count, are committed day and night? It would surely be within the truth to say that half the population in London are practically without Christ and without God in the world. If this be so, then at once we can see how and why the Salvation Army exists. In a population full of faith and religious life it could have no place. There would be no need to supply, no conscious craving to satisfy, no spiritual desolation to break up. Its good tidings would be already known, and its warnings daily anticipated. A watchman's rattle is good at midnight, when men are sleeping. It is need less at noonday, when men are wide awake. We may in some degree measure the need for it by the response it has elicited. The spiritual desolation of London alone could make the Salvation Army possible.

In passing by railroad through Birmingham, Man chester, and Liverpool, the multitude of spires, steeples, towers, bell-turrets, gables, and roofs with crosses and other tokens of religion, must force itself upon the least observant eye. Where would the knowledge of God, and of the Name of our Kedeemer, have been now but for the zeal and activity of the many irreconcilable and often conflicting bodies who have reared and sustained these places of Christian worship? Nevertheless, how great a multitude in all these cities and towns never set a foot in church or meeting-house!

So again, throughout the provinces of England and Wales, there are, it is to be feared, millions living, without faith and in sin.

VOL. m. o

II. To such a population a voice crying aloud in God's Name is as a warning in the night. There is also in the most outcast a voice that answers. The conscience in man is as the worm that dieth not; and even in the worst and most depraved it bears witness against the sins of their life and state. The words death, judgment, heaven, hell, are to them not mere sounds, hut strokes upon the soul. There are, indeed, men who are " past feeling," but they are like the sightless among mankind, exceptions and anomalies. The mass of men believe in right and wrong, and judgment to come. They know that they have souls, blaspheme as unbelievers may. They hope for a better life after this, and they believe that an evil life here will end in a worse hereafter. This was the strength of Wesley in the last century, and is the strength of William Booth in this. He and his, for seventeen years and more, have been calling men to repent and to turn to God. These are Divine truths which, like seeds wafted by the winds or carried by birds, strike root where they fall. Good seed will grow whoever sows it. This was the meaning of S, Paul when he said: " Some indeed, even out of envy and contention: but some also for goodwill preach Christ. Some out of charity.... and some out of contention..... But what then? So that by all means, whether by occasion or by truth, Christ be preached: in this also I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." S. Paul does not hereby sanction the preaching of those who go with out being sent, much less the imperfections or faults of their preaching; but so far as it made known the ' Phil. i. 15-18.

Name and redemption of Christ it was to him a cause of joy. Imperfect or unauthorised preaching in the unity of the Church is disorder; but outside its unity it is at least so much of truth made known to those who will not listen to its perfect voice. Within the unity of faith, the Church has freely permitted its members to teach the truth. S. Francis of Assisi was never a priest, but he preached everywhere. B. John Colombini was not even a deacon, but a layman only, and yet from the hour of his conversion he went about preaching the Name of Jesus till he died. And after death, as his biographer tells us, when he lay upon the bier the people came and kissed his hand as if he were a priest. The Divine invitation comes, indeed, from God to the Church, but every member of it may make it known. " The Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let him say, Come." ' In a wilderness where there is no Shepherd, any voice crying a fragment of the truth prepares the way for Him Who is the perfect truth.

III. With these precautions we may go on, without fear of being misunderstood, to point out what things in the Salvation Army are hopeful, and what things are to be feared for it in the future.

I take the account of it from Mr. Booth's own statement.

1. The Salvation Army affects no secrecy or specialities of its own. It is open as the light in its words and acts. It offers to everybody the results of its own experience. It has no patent medicines or mysterious 2 Apoo. xxii. 17.

spiritual prescriptions, but desires the widest diffusion of its teaching and mode of acting.

2. It has no compromises in its teaching. It holds to the " old-fashioned Gospel " of salvation from " real guilt, and real danger of a real hell," through Him Who gives " real pardon to the really penitent," and " to all who really give up to Him a whole heart, and trust Him with a perfect trust." And this doctrine it holds as- " embodied in the three creeds of the Church."

3. It teaches that " sin is sin no matter who commits it, and that there cannot be sin without Divine displeasure; and that all men are responsible for accept ing or rejecting the perfect deliverance from sin provided by our Lord." It deals largely with "the terrors of the Lord," believing that soft and soothing doctrines may easily be, and are at this day, too prominent, and even exclusive of the eternal truths.

4. It holds that we ought to lay down our lives for the salvation of others, in the full sense of the second precept of charity.

5. Its organisation is military. Having tried government by committees and by democracy, and finding that those who work do not care to talk, and that those who talk do not much care to work, its government was reduced to two simple principles— namely, to authority and obedience.

6. Its officers and preachers are continually, and often suddenly, changed from place to place, to prevent local and personal attachments.

7. The General has never received a penny out of the funds of the Army; and the Army depends absolutely on the providence of God. But it seems to possess property in trust.

8. It believes itself to be guarded against the admission of self-seeking and interested people by the great sacrifices they must make to become members: and against "drones " by the heavy obligation of holding from nineteen to twenty-five meetings a week, extending over thirty to thirty-five hours; and of spending eighteen hours in visiting the poor.

9. Finally, Mr. Booth declares his firm resolve that the Salvation Army shall never become a sect. He cites the failure of John Wesley in his attempt to main tain an unsectarian position. The meaning of this would seem to be that the aim of the Salvation Army is to promote general and personal religion apart from all bodies, and, above all, apart from all controversies.

This summary is almost in the words of its chief; and if the work answered to the conception, it would rank high among the movements external to the Catholic unity in prudence, zeal, and devotion. It exacts a life of labour, in poverty, in sacrifice of self, and in obedience.

It is a less pleasing task to turn to the other aspect of the Salvation Army, and to point to the fears which it suggests.

1. If it were certain that the conflicts and assaults of which we have heard arose as inevitably as the afflictions of S. Paul at Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, we might feel no check to our sympathy. But S. Paul did not go in array, nor with the pomp and circumstance •of war. If, on the one hand, this bold bearing be a sign of apostolic courage, it is hardly a sign of apostolic prudence. It is hardly the advent of "the Son of Peace;" and its sounds are rather of the whirlwind than of the still small voice. It is hardly like the conduct of our Divine Master, Who, when the Pharisees were offended, " withdrew Himself," lest they should add sin to sin. It is one thing to rehuke sinners as S. Peter and S. Stephen did, and another to challenge opposition by military titles and movements with drums and fifes. These things seem not only unwise for the Salvation Army, but dangerous to souls. The " offence of the Cross " is inevitable if we preach " Christ and Him crucified;" and both wisdom and charity lay on us an obligation not to add to it by any needless provocation.

2. We also need a clearer explanation of its teaching. It says that salvation and sanctification are the work " of a moment." There is no doubt that the forgiveness of sin is bestowed in a moment, as when the father fell on the neck of the prodigal on his return; and when our Divine Lord said to the man sick of the palsy, " Thy sins be forgiven thee;" and when in His Name at this hour absolution is given to the contrite. All this is an act of grace on God's part — full and complete when He bestows it. They who are forgiven are in a state of salvation, in which, if they persevere, they will be saved. But the work is not yet finished; and sanctitication is only begun. God might, indeed, complete it, like our regeneration, in a moment. But He does not do so. That is not the Divine method. The cleansing ofj the soul and the infusion of perfect sanctification are progressive works. This was said in an article in the War Cry, in substance correctly enough, though in words and phrases not sufficiently guarded.

3. A still graver objection is to be found in the practice of what is called "the training of converts." " The moment any man, woman, or child professes to have received remission of sins, we require them to stand up and tell the audience." In this we must believe spiritual dangers of the most perilous kind to be inevitable. First, each one is to be the judge of his own state; next, he is to make instant and public profession of it. Against those who resolve the certainty of their adoption as sons of God into their own inward consciousness even Luther said, " I rest my adoption, not on my own assurance, but upon the act of God in my baptism." This is building on the rock, the other is building on the sand. If the Salvation Army builds its work on such foundations, how can it stand? There is no form of deception or self-deception which this does not invite. They who know least of themselves, of the sinfulness of sin, and of the sanctity of God, would be among the first to believe in their own salvation. If there be any warning in God's Word more constant and more urgent than another, it is humility and self-mistrust. The instant public profession, that is, the calling of all eyes and ears and attention upon themselves, is the last thing that the Spirit of God in any record of Holy Scripture counsels or warrants. The rising up of any one in the midst of a congregation with such a profession seems like: " God, I thank Thee that now I am not as other men are; not even as those around me." This surely is not the voice of humility, nor could any humility long endure such a training. If it be said that such public profession is an act of thanksgiving, we must answer that the best thanksgiving is the humblest. If it be said that it is a humiliation, we must answer again that self-imposed humiliations are the most subtil of all snares. It may be that a person of mature experience in the spiritual life may, without self-consciousness, lay open his life and state in public. But that men, women, and children, kneeling in the front row of a public meeting, should at the outset of their conversion tell the audience the work of God in their souls without danger to humility, sincerity, or reality, is contrary to the spiritual experience of the world.

This observation extends to the usage of making the " Saved " put an " S," or some such sign, upon their collar. Believing the last danger of the spiritual life to be what is called " the Storm in the Harbour " — that is, spiritual complacency springing from self-consciousness and self-contemplation, which wrecks even those who have escaped from the perils of the deep into the port of safety — we must look with great fear upon a system which systematically calls out into activity the self-complacency latent in all men, and trains it by an elaborate external discipline. Such was not the training of the first disciples, or of the early Christians, or of the confessors and martyrs of any age, whether in persecution or in peace. Humility, sorrow for sin, conversion to God, like the frost and the dew and the light, work silently, and with a Divine power. An old writer says: " Ira est, non gratia, cum quis ponitur super ventum nullos habens radices in solidi-tate virtutum." The history of the Church is full of examples of conversion which have no roots, or such only as are in flesh and blood. They have been the most public and self-proclaimed, but the least fruitful and the least abiding. If this be true within the unity of the Catholic Church, and under the strong guidance of its discipline, what may we look for among those who are outside of its shelter, and choose their own guides and their own way?

4. And this leads on to another fear. There is a distinction to be ever maintained between essential devotion and sensible devotion; between the rational sorrow for sin and the emotional sorrow for sin. Essential devotion is a constant and fervent exercise of the will in obedience to God. Kational sorrow for sin is the judgment of the reason and the conscience condemning ourselves. And these things are calm and inward; often they have no outward sign except a change of life. Many of the most devout have little emotion, and many of the most penitent never shed a tear; but their piety and their repentance are deep, still, and changeless. They begin in the spirit, and they end in the spirit. Not so those who begin in emotion, or excitement, or self-consciousness. There is great danger lest they should end in the flesh. All who have had experience in these things will know the meaning of these few words.

5. One more objection is as follows: The head of the Salvation Army is resolved that it shall never become a sect. In this he is wise. A sect is soon stereotyped. He seems to wish that it may not he a sect, but a spirit, which, like the four winds, may blow upon all the valley of dry bones — men, women, children, sects, communions, and, as he perhaps would say, Churches, quickening and raising them all to a higher life. So long as the Salvation Army teaches the three creeds in their true sense, and does not assail the Catholic faith or Church, it is so far doing a constructive, if it be only a fragmentary, work. God "would have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth."3 So far, then, as it brings men to any truth, even though it be only one truth, such as a belief in God, in this evil and unbelieving generation, it is doing a work beyond its own foresight. Looking, as we must, over the spiritual desolations of England, every voice that speaks for God is on our side. In the measure in which its teaching is more perfect, our hopes and our sympathy grow greater. When the Apostle said, " Master, we saw a certain man casting out devils in Thy Name, and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us," the answer was, "Forbid him not, for he that is not against you is for you.'M If it be said that the Salvation Army does not cast out devils, S. Augustine would answer that the conversion of a soul from sin to God is a greater miracle. And no man can doubt that God makes use of His own means to bring souls to Himself. At times He uses some whom He has not sent to rebuke those in whose hands the Apostolic commission slumbers. Nevertheless, we have a conviction that the Salvation Army

• I. Tim. xi. 4. * Luke ix. 49, 56.

will either become a sect, or it will melt away. This world is not the abode of disembodied spirits. The history of Christianity abundantly proves that neither the human intellect nor the human will can alone perpetuate any teaching without change. Nor can human authority or human obedience perpetuate itself without an organisation which compacts and sustains both. But what is such an organisation but a sect? One more of the separate bodies which have either departed from some parent sect, or have aggregated themselves-together out of the dispersed and scattered units in our wilderness of souls. The Divine Wisdom has provided for the perpetuity of truth in a visible and world wide organisation, in which the faith is guarded and sustained " yesterday, to-day, and the same for ever." Our fidelity to this Divine and immutable organisation, which " is terrible as an army with banners," gives to us a measuring rod whereby we can measure the devia tions of those who are outside of its unity, and the dangers to which those deviations lead.

There remains still one more, and that a yet graver fear, as to the future of the Salvation Army. Its material dissolution would be a small evil compared with the demoralisation resulting from the reckless language in which the most sacred subjects are often treated. In the last number of the Contemporary Review, in two articles, examples were given which are too displeasing to be repeated here. They were well called "rowdyism." No mistake is greater than to think that to speak of God and of Divine things in low language brings truth nearer to the minds of the poor

OQ4 THE SALVATION ARMY.

or of the uneducated. No words are more elevated, and none more intelligible to the multitude, than the language of the four Gospels. Low words generate low thoughts; words without reverence destroy the veneration of the human mind. When man ceases to venerate he ceases to worship. Extravagance, exaggeration, and coarseness are dangers incident to all popular preachers; and these things easily pass into a strain which shocks the moral sense, and deadens the instincts of piety. Familiarity with God in men of chastened mind produces a more profound veneration; in unchastened minds it easily runs into an irreverence which borders upon impiety. Even the Seraphim cover their faces in the Divine presence. When levity or coarseness is permitted in preaching, or prayer, or hymns, we fear that it will deaden the reverence of some and provoke the blasphemy of others. The War Cry and the Little Soldier are both disfigured by such language, and the latter by still graver faults. Cease less watchfulness would be needed to keep its preachers and teachers within the limits of pure and sober speech. But who shall control the utterances of men, women, and children in the front row in the moment of their supposed conversion? And, above all, when such unbecoming language is used, and even enjoined, as i means of rousing attention. They who do so must have forgotten S. Paul's rejection of human arts, and his simple trust in the Word of God, and in the power of His Spirit.

In all this the action of the Salvation Army is deplorably below the mental conception of it given in its own professions, at the outset of this paper.

Such are some of our fears for this zealous but defiant movement. Our fears greatly overbalance our hopes. Nevertheless, our heart's desire and prayer is that they who labour so fervently with the truths they know may be led into the fulness of faith; and that they who are ready to give their lives for the salvation of souls may be rewarded with life eternal.