THE SALVATION ARMY.
When a man speaks of Modern Europe, he is generally taken to mean the Europe of steam and electricity. As a matter of fact, Modern Europe really dates back to about the middle of the last century, when certain ideas which we call “modern” first began to be promulgated. And these ideas were not, as in this expression “Modern Europe” it is tacitly supposed, merely scientific; they were not only concerned with steam and electricity; they were social. And thus, when we use the expression, if we are to use it, in this particular sense, we should remember that it means, not only that the whole world is netted with railways and telegraphs, but also that, speaking generally, the European races are no longer governed by kings or aristocracies, but by middle-classes or, as some prefer to put it, by peoples. And this, as I take it, is far the more important fact of the two. I will go further, and say that it is the most important fact of our civilization—nay, that itisour civilization, and that, therefore, whoever would seek to understand the meaning of any movement, great or small, which is taking place in our civilization, must seek it here, and here only! Our civilization is our government by the Middle-class or, as some prefer to put it, by the People. But that these individuals who prefer to put it so are, let us say, if not mistaken, at any rate inaccurate, is precisely what I want in this little article to try to show, and in as striking a manner as I can, so that, not only may I try to do something towards making clear to us the real deep true significance of a much misunderstood movement, but also that of a much more misunderstood power—the Middle-class of the European races. I do not propose to go through my subject thoroughly: to do so would require more time and more space than any editor could afford me. I shall merely touch on one phase of the great spiritual movement which is at present permeating the European races, and then turn to consider another phase of it—a phase which is of peculiar interest to us of England, America, and Australia.
In Europe there is but one country that still suffers the despotism of an aristocracy, and that country is Russia. The modern ideas, the modern social ideas, have taken all this time to pass from France, Germany, and England into Russia, and have seized on what, for lack of a better word, I might call, its nascent middle-class. The results have been, and still are, wonderful and terrible. A group of men (for they are little more) has suddenly realised that the immense mass of the People is being despotised over in the interest of a group in reality little larger than itself. All, I will not say freedom, but possibilities of freedom are resolutely withheld. Russia at present has not the guaranteed protection of its men’s and women’s liberties which the English of the fourteenth, the thirteenth, the twelfth, the eleventh, the tenth centuries had! This to-day is a state of things which cannot continue. The group of men who see and feel this, not clearly and quietly as we outsiders can, but intensely and passionately, is waging a duel to the death with the other group, with the despotism, for the bare principles of freedom. On the one hand are knowledge and light, on the other ignorance and darkness, the modern against the ancient spirit. But, thanks to the fact that there are men whose whole interest is to resist the one and support the other to the last, the light has become lightning and not only irradiates but strikes. It is considered by some a question whether this despotism, armed with all resources of wealth and military power, will be able to stamp out this group before the immense mass of the People is awakened to the meaning of it all. Others, however, merely consider whether the Russian government will be destroyed by a revolution or constitutionalized by a reform. We English, you see, consider it all clearly and quietly as mere outsiders, and so, as regards theaspectof the problem, we are; but not, not as regards the problem itself! These modern ideas, these social ideas, are working not only in Russia, where the abuses which surround them make them burn so fiercely, but more or less all over Europe, and in England rather more than less. Ireland, we all see, smoulders with them. And why, pray? Because England and Ireland are always snarling at one another, “it being their nature to?” Not so. It is because that aspect of the problem which is presented to Great Britain generally is a little more pressingin Ireland than in England or Scotland. The trouble in Ireland is not national but social. The strife is not between Irish and English: it is between peasants and landlords. Unhappily many landlords are English: unhappily many peasants believe that the English as a nation support the landlords as a class. Hence whatever Irish hatred of England there may be; but the trouble is not, I repeat, national, it is social. It is the People rising against the Middle-class.
Well, this movement, whether it be in Russia, in England, in Germany, in France, in America, we are all pretty well agreed to call the Socialistic movement. It represents the effort of the People after social improvement. It took its rise not fromwithinthe people, but fromwithout. The French, English, and German Socialists were originally groups of men who suddenly realized that the immense mass of the People was being despotized over in the interest of the Middle-class. Each country has its peculiar aspect of this fact, but the fact is the same in each. In France the Middle-class made and supported the Empire, and, having stamped out the People’s wild attempt at power in ’71, made and supports the Republic. In Germany—dismembered Germany—the problem was pushed back before the apparently greater one of national unity, but now it arises again and demands solution. In England the landed proprietors, and still more the capitalists, are beginning to have qualms; but the real struggle does not lie between them and the Socialists: they are but overgrown individuals of a class. There will be no more Tories and no more Conservatives: the future lies in the struggle between Liberals and Socialists, the Middle-class and the People.
This Socialistic movement, then, took its rise not fromwithinthe People but fromwithout, and not in connection with Religion, the great ally of the powers that were, the Middle-class, but on the whole antagonistic to it. This movement took its rise in men of intellect who had little or no care for Religion, and its tendency is intellectual and careless of Religion. The Middle-class has shown nothing but dislike to this movement: the Middle-class has understood enough of the ideas of this movement to know that they are subversive of its own superiority. As for the People, they have understood little or nothing. Socialists tell them, what is indeed the truth, that they are the masters: that to-morrow, if they pleased, they could send a parliament up to Westminster thatshould dictate what terms they pleased to “their lords and masters, the landowners and the capitalists.” The People does not happily believe it. They are so hopeless: they have been deceived so often by those who said they would help them. (Bill here, you see, with a wife and six children, all living in a den that the Zoological people would consider unfit for a hyena—Bill cannot be made to understand how the question comes home tohim!) Besides which, let us say it at once and insist upon it, the People is the most long-suffering of all things: it desires to despoil no man, it only desires the happiness which mere food, clothing, and a house will give it.
In this state of affairs—the powerlessness of the Socialists to bring home to the People the great idea of social improvement—lie the causes of the religious movement whose best-known and best representative is the Salvation Army.
Consider it—first generally and then particularly.
In Russia the People has religion and no freedom. In England the People has freedom and no religion. (In both, let us add, the People has misery unspeakable). The one question presses for solution in the one country, the other in the other. The two most piteous spectacles in Europe are the religious People of Russia, and the free People of England. The Aristocracy which governs the one, the Middle-class which governs the other, both are equally indifferent to the People. Add to the fact of the utter want of religion of the English People (it is understood that by People I mean the masses), the fact of their utter want of, I will not say the comforts, but the necessities of life, and you have a field for revolution such as nowhere else, I believe, presents itself save in Russia herself.—I speak in the present, as if the problem presented itself to me to-day just as it did years ago, and I am delighted to notice that at last the English Middle-class is awakening to the fact of the misery of the People, and also of the danger of letting that misery continue. But it is quite a mistake to suppose that either the one or the other is mitigated, not to say ended, or that it will be so for years to come.
Religion in England—and Religion has, inaptly enough, become a synonym for Christianity, in which general sense of the term I use it here—Religion in England, just like everything else, is conducted in the interest of the Middle-class. Gointo the London back-streets on a sunday morning. You will find the men leaning against the walls, the women at the doors, the children in the gutters. The public-houses, you observe, are closed: the Middle-class does not like that the People should be drinking beer and spirits while they themselves are indulging in religious worship. Enter the church or the chapel. What are the services like? We all know them—a performance on the part of the choir, or a discreet, sibilant, half-articulate murmur on the part of the congregation. The clergyman or minister reads out a portion of the wonderful and beautiful history of Jesus in a fine meaningless monotone, and “here endeth the second lesson.” But of the passion and the peace of the Galilean story, what doesheknow? He has forgotten or never known Jesus, but he can tell you plenty about Christ. Listen to the sermons. What do they treat of? Matters that are likely to interest the men and women outside there? The sermons are empty of Jesus and full of Christ—empty of the truth of the Master and full of the dogmas of the Pupils. Theology, theological dogmas, Catholic or Protestant, are perhaps interesting to men and women who are well to do, and like to have something to argue about; but what does poverty care for them? The man who has eaten a good breakfast and is waiting for a good dinner may care to have it shown to him, that he and his fellows are the one body of Christians that is absolutely and entirely orthodox; but the man with an empty belly, and little or no prospect of filling it, may perhaps be forgiven for not caring a jot whether these are blasts of true or false doctrine, or not. The matter does not affect him: he stops outside. So should we.
Now, I would not for a moment imply that there are not priests, clergymen, and ministers who have done, and are doing, fine and noble work among the People. There are many such. But what I do say is, that, speaking generally, the church and the chapel have both utterly failed to seriously affect the mass of the People, and that they have done so for the reasons I have given above.—“In the year 1865,” says Mr. Booth in one of the Salvation Army pamphlets, “Mr. Booth was led, by the Providence of God, by no plan or idea of his own, to the East of London, where the appalling fact that the enormous bulk of the population were totally ignorant and deficient of real religion, and altogether uninfluenced by the existing religious organizations, so impressed him that hedetermined to devote his life tomakingthese peoplehearandknowGod, and thus save them from the abyss of misery in which they were plunged, and rescue them from the damnation that was before them. The Salvation Army is the result.”The Salvation Army is the result.He simply states the fact. It was “by no plan or idea of his own.” He has, so far as I know, never explained more than the phenomena of it.[6]I have talked with one of his sons on the subject, and all he has to tell me in explanation of 859 corps or stations, 2041 paid officials, andWar Crynewspapers with a weekly circulation of 550,000, ishow, as he takes it, the Salvationists “get at” the People; but he knows, and probably cares, absolutely nothing about thewhy. “The grate was set,” I say, “You were the match, and behold the fire!” “It is the Lord,” he says, and I do not think of contradicting him. It is not natural that a man who takes part in a movement should know more than thehowof it, should know thewhy. If he did, he would not be as unhesitating as he is in his belief that his movement is so good. To achieve little we must aim at much. He who lives passionately in the present must leave the dead to bury their dead and the babes unborn to consider their suckling: he must create, he has not time to criticise. At the same time how important it is that there should be not only doers but watchers; not only creators but critics; not only those who concern themselves with thehowbut also those who concern themselves with thewhy, for thewhyunlocks the gates of both the past and the future: it tells us not only thewhencebut also thewhither.
Now, as I have said, in a certain state of affairs which we have noticed liesthis why, and there, if we can only look well enough, we shall find it. The Salvation Army is, like everything else an organism. It has its seed, and all its stages of development up to its maturity and down into its decay, when it, too, like everything else, will go to form nutriment for other organisms, just as others have for its own.
Now, nothing will help us more in our search after thiswhythan a knowledge of thehow, and, since this knowledge is, at any rate among the governing classes, wonderfully limited, I propose giving a short account of how the Salvation Army and its work has struck me personally. It seems almost needless to state that I am an unprejudiced observer. The SalvationArmy, as the Salvation Army, is literally nothing to me: my only interest in it lies in the influence which it exerts, whether for good or evil, on the People. I have no cause to plead. If anyone can point out mistakes of mine, or even demonstrate to me that my whole view of this matter is an illusion, no one, I am sure, will be more pleased and grateful than myself. Those are our real benefactors who demonstrate to us an illusion and open the way to a better view of things.
I propose, I said, giving a short account of how the Salvation Army and its work has struck me personally. When I was in England I studied it, as I study all movements that are going on around me, with more or less care. Since I have been in Australia I have done the same, and, as I have found the differences between the English and Australian Salvation Armies to be immaterial ones, and as I am now addressing an Australian audience, I shall speak of the Salvation Army as I have seen it here, so that he who cares may go and see for himself whether I am correct or incorrect in my view of it. This, too, will enable him more easily, if he desires it, to point out my mistakes and even demonstrate to me that my whole view is an illusion, and make me his pleased and grateful debtor for life. First, however, let me just notice what these differences between the English and Australian Salvation Armies are. In one word the Australian is less exaggerative. The People in Australia breathes free: it does not feel the weight of the two great divisions of the Middle-class that is above it, the well-to-do and the gentlemen. Workmen here do not go slouching down the streets, as they do in England, crushed under the sense of their inferiority. This is a true republic, the truest, as I take it, in the world. In England the average man feels that he is an inferior: in America he feels that he is a superior: in Australia he feels that he is an equal. This is indeed delightful. It is the first thing that strikes a new arrival in this country, and although Australia’s sins—sins against true civilization, I mean—are as many as they are heinous, still a multitude of them, as it seems to me, is covered by this—namely, that here the People is neither servile nor insolent, but only shows its respect of itself by its respect of others. Nowhere else but in France is there, I think, anything quite like it.
There is, then, naturally less exaggerativeness in the Australian than the English Salvation Army. When a man is, as they say, “saved” there, it is from a far deeper “abyss of misery” than it is here. The very atmosphere of England is heavy with the degradation of the People. For a man to become, no longer passively, but actively aware of this, is almost overwhelming, and so is his feeling when he believes that he has escaped from it. Hence those wild words and acts of the Salvationists which have offended so many. Add to this the excitement caused by a large gathering, religious emulation, etc., etc., and the matter is a simple one.
Now let us go to a Salvationist popular service, and see their manner of work there. The hall is crowded. The great bulk of the congregation is made up of the upper stratum of the People, servants, small shopkeepers, etc. There are also a not inconsiderable number of the lower stratum of the People, labourers. Many outsiders have come from curiosity. On the stage or platform are a certain number of the regular paid officials in their uniforms, and of “hallelujah lasses” in their straight dresses and poke-bonnets. Considering these men and women attentively, what most strikes us is that the generality are, as Jeffrey said lightly of Carlyle, “terribly in earnest.” Some have the business-like air of all officials, religious or otherwise: some have a somewhat disgusted air, as if they were rather wearying of it all, now that the novelty has worn off. But the generality of them are, there is no doubt of it, “terribly in earnest.” Presently the head officials enter, and the service is opened with a hymn. The Salvationists sing well: I remember that, at the first Salvationist service at which I was present, this singing of theirs was something like a revelation to me. It was not its “go,” as we say, that affected me: it was its depth and sweetness. It comes from the heart and goes to the heart. This is the only language the People can either use or understand.
Just beside me a little boy of four or five, standing between his father’s knees with shut eyes and waving arm, is shouting and bawling out the words of the hymn, so that he may attract attention and be an “edification.” It is painful. (Later on during a prayer he lies along the floor on his stomach and eats a green apple and pinches a bigger boy’s legs. Myself, I prefer him like that.) During the prayers there are frequent interruptions, chiefly from the platform, of “Hallelujah,”“Praise God,” and so on, for the most part in a business-like fashion, quite formal. A man cannot repeat the same words and acts for long with impunity.—These, and things like these, are the inevitable accompaniments of all services, religious or otherwise. We take them for granted, and pass on.
Presently a man is brought forward to give his testimony. He begins by saying that he never thought to address such a gathering as this, that he is a poor ignorant man, and so on, but that he trusts in Jesus to help him through alright. He tells his tale. It is a tale for ever old and for ever new. He was a drunkard, he was debauched, a blasphemer. He used his wife and children ill, he paid no heed to the clergyman and the minister. Then a Salvationist came to him and told him about Jesus. And that converted him, and now, etc., etc., etc. His excitement grows: his voice rises to a high-pitched monotone. He implores, he begs, he entreats, he abjures. “Come to Jesus, come to Jesus! It’s only him can make you happy! You don’t know how he loves you!—O dear people,” he bursts out at length, “I coulddiefor you, if you would only come to him!” In the end, it is painful: the high-pitched monotone oppresses us, and we are glad when he has ended.
Another follows, but with little or no variety. Then a girl speaks, “happy Janet” (say). She has just the same tale to tell: it is all Jesus, nothing but Jesus! “To think,” I heard one of these girls say, hushed and awed, “to think that the Son of God loved us so that he suffered all this forus! To think of the thorns wounding his beautiful brow!” and her voice broke.—Janet cannot say too much about the suffering of Jesus, because it was because he loved us all so, that he suffered. Then she tells how she had a brother, and the brother thought he was old enough to be by hisself, and do for hisself, and he went away, away to Màn-chester, and they were all very sad about it, e-specially mother. And the days and the weeks and the months went by, and they never heard anythink about him, and they went out and up and down the town, hoping he might come back and they might see him again, for he might be ashamed, they thought, to come into the house. And sometimes mother’d come to wake her up early in the morning, and say: “Come, Janet, let’s go out and look for Tom: maybe we’ll find himthismorning.” And they used to go out and look for him in the early morning, and they couldn’t find him. But at last hedidcome back, and O,dear people, how thin he was! Yes, he’d had enough of it! He found he couldn’t do for hisself after all, so he came back to mother and us, and we loved him more than ever.—And O, dear people, that’s the way withusand Jesus. We think we’re old enough to be by ourselves and to do for ourselves. But we ar’n’t: we’re never old enough to do without Jesus! He’s always loving us and strengthening us and giving us peace. So come to him; don’t wait any longer but come to him! Don’t think you’re too wicked. No one’s too wicked for Jesus: he suffered for us and he died for us, foryouandme, and he loves us more than all the others do, and we can’t tell how glad it makes him when we come to him! Here, as in the singing, it is not the “go,” the excitement, which affects us most, it is the depth and sweetness. It comes from the heart and goes to the heart. It is the only language the People can either use or understand.
Jesus!—It is always Jesus, I say, never or very rarely Christ. These Salvationists feel and know their Master. With them he lives: with us he exists. And Jesus is to them as some one dowered with all the possibilities of mortal happiness who yet renounced everything from his great love for the People, and suffered and died for them a cruel death. Herein is the secret of the sempiternal influence of Jesus: he is the great Lover. I do not for a moment think that these Salvationists have any connected scheme of the character or life of Jesus. They cannot argue about him, they would say: they know that helives. They lay little or no stress on the risen Jesus, the Christ. Their concern is with the living Jesus, him who loved the flowers and the children and the publicans and the harlots, him who showed his love by his life and above all by his cruel death. This Jesus was not a philanthropist: he was better, he was a lover. “He, who might have been a great king, actually preferred to come and suffer and die a cruel death because he loved us so!” This love, this pity seems to them unique, godlike. “To think of the thorns wounding his beautiful brow.” Hence the power of Jesus to awaken in men a sense of sin, and, still more, a hope of salvation. “Why,” they ask, “did this wonderful beautiful Jesus suffer all this?—why?” Then comes the answer. “Because he saw that I was a sinner and he loved and pitied me so, that he suffered all this for my sake.” It is an overwhelming fact. Once get a man to see it and his life is revolutionised: he believes in Love.
Napoleon, we remember, was puzzled by this sempiternal influence of Jesus. He remarked that he himself understood how to awaken in his own behalf the enthusiasm of men, but he was alive, whereas Jesus was dead. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not!” Yearning love like this was a mystery to our wonderful destructive Emperor: he would have called it foolish. And to many others beside him this sempiternal influence of Jesus has been, is, and will be the same. Here is our good Man of Science, the immortal dunce who dates knowledge from “Social Statics” and the “Origin of Species,” who thinks Jesus was a very fine character, you know, but full of superstition and delusion. And here is our most irrational of Rationalists who has a pathetic faith in the method of the late lamented Bishop Colenso, a method which consists in the profound consideration of the geometry of the empyrean and the colour of mathematical figures. And lastly, here is our dear blatant Secularist whose discourse so pleasantly shows us how a man who was a blockhead as a Christian can be doubly a blockhead as a Secularist.—Here, I say, are these three types, or let us take them as individuals. Here is our good friend Mr. Caffyn, who was writing such brilliant letters to theArgusthe other day, letters which show a nice acquaintance with the books of Dr. Maudsley and the rudiments of modern physiology; and here is the late lamented Sir Richard Hanson of Adelaide, whose mantle is just now descending on Mr. Justice Williams; and, lastly, here is our loquacious friend at the Hall of Science, Mr. Joseph Symes. All these gather around the poor ignorant labourer who is “saved,” and demonstrate to him his foolishness in believing in such an outworn piece of nonsense as Christianity. “As for this Jesus of yours, my good man,” they say after their several fashions, “he was a very fine character, you know, but—he was only a man just like you or me!” To whom the poor ignorant labourer answers with a smile: “Whether he be a fine character or not, I know not: one thing I know, that,whereas I was blind, now I see.” Come away, Mr. Caffyn: come away, ghost of Sir Richard: come away, Mr. Symes. It is quite useless to talk with a besotted Christo-maniac like this. Why, he absolutely believes that hehas a spiritual experience of which you are ignorant, and can afford to smile at you! After this, the deluge!—Gentlemen, hadn’t you better go home to dinner, and leave the poor devil alone?
To return to the meeting, which is not yet concluded.—When the testimonies are all given, those who feel that they have been leading a life of sin are exhorted to come forward and profess. The hall empties. Ten or twelve, men and women, young men and girls, come forward and kneel down at a bench in front of the platform. Some are inclined to be hysterical. The Salvationists, men and women, come and talk to them, leaning against them, their arms round their shoulders, exhorting and encouraging. This, you see, is Religious Socialism. No one can love Jesus, “the divine Communist” (as Heine calls him), with impunity. If you love, and to love is to know, Jesus, you must get others to love and to know him, and your desire to get others fills you with the same yearning love for them that Jesus has for you: “O dear people, I coulddiefor you, if you would only come to him!”
Then, when no more will come forward, the service concludes with each of those who is “saved,” speaking before them all—saying what has come to him to make him repent, and expressing his firm determination to lead a better life. The first step has now been taken—the man by his public confession is compromised. He cannot now so easily fall back. He is known to his fellows, who will exhort and encourage him. He has every incentive to date a new life from to-day, not to put it off over and over again to “to-morrow.”
What, is all this, then, a trap? Yes, if you care to call it so. Men, to whom the “saved” and the “unsaved” life, the bliss of heaven and the anguish of hell, is a passionate reality, speak of it passionately to the ignorant or the careless, and then (like true guilefully guileless religionists) take advantage of the moment of realization which they have aroused in a soul, to compromise that soul before the world to lead a new life of continual realization. You see, these Salvationists are of the men and women of the People and they know the men and women, not only of the People, but of each and every class of us: they know how frail is unaided resolution, and they act on their knowledge. Do not think, though, that they believe thatweakness of will is to be found only among the People. Far from it! They attack Respectability, they attack the hypocrisy of the Middle-class, as fearlessly as they attack the open sin of the People. Our good clergymen and ministers, for whom I have, in many respects, so much admiration, are afraid to attack the Middle-class: the Middle-class is the payer of pew-rents. Alas, alas, ye cannot serve God and Mammon! It is really a great nuisance; but ye cannot! Now these Salvationists do not happen to have pews: so they need not stand hat in hand before Respectability. They can say boldly that the Publican is as good as the Pharisee: that hypocrisy is no better, if it is not far worse, than open sin. Look, to it, my in-so-many-respects-admirable clergymen and ministers, you are not masters here but pupils!
I am not going to discuss the question of Salvationist ritual. Brass bands and concertinas give but a poor idea of “the beauty of holiness:” a dissenting chapel does the same. Banners and handkerchiefs and so on are apt to be tawdry: so are dressed statues, standards, incense, and the rest. But who, considering the hideousness of Protestantism and the tawdriness of Catholicism, would therefore call Protestantism hideous and Catholicism tawdry? Certainly not I who am so sincere an admirer of them both. Neither, then, considering what we hear called the Christy-Minstrelism and Music-Hallism of the Salvation Army, must we think that, when we have called their meetings Christy Minstrels or Music Halls, we have quite disposed of them. Alas, my dear Middle-class, cannot you see that the People is what you, who govern the People, have made it? Might I, a humble unit of your millions, suggest to you that it is just because, what you call, your Upper Ten Thousand is hideous that you are more hideous? and that it is just because you, my dear Middle-class, are more hideous that the People is most hideous? Will it be many ages, I wonder, before you can be got to see this?—to see that you had better take the mote out of your own eye before you are so enthusiastic about taking the beams out of the eyes of your neighbours?
If, however, anyone wants to see what Mr. Booth himself has to say in defence of his “Colours, Bands of Music, Processions, and other sensational methods employed” (as hesays), I would refer him to a little penny pamphlet called “All about the Salvation Army,” which can be got at the Salvation Army Head-quarters in Russell Street. For myself, I have nothing to do with this side of the question: I profess that I consider most church-bells are as bad as most brass-bands, and am profoundly indifferent as to whether they are, as Mr. Booth would like to know, “unscriptural” or not. I am of opinion that the admirers of church-bells and brass-bands had better fight it out among themselves.
I have as good as said that what makes the outer strength of the Salvationists is their realization of Jesus as liver and lover. Love, yearning love, is undoubtedly the chief characteristic of Jesus. But, just as the sun gives forth not only heat but light, so did he. His life was love: his death was peace. “My peace I leave with you.” And it is just here, just in their realization of “the mildness and sweet reasonableness” of Jesus that the Salvationists are apt to be lacking: and it is just here that the Church of England more than any other Christian sect is, as it seems to me, so strong. TheHymns Ancient and Modernare, on the whole, the best song-book extant of this “mildness and sweet reasonableness.” We must not, however, think that this demand for the peace as well as the love of Jesus is not recognised by the Salvationists: it is, but I cannot think that it is recognised adequately. As soon as a man is “saved” and has “professed,” there are open to him, what they call, the Holiness Meetings. These are the answer to the demand for peace. But they differ only particularly from the other meetings. They are smaller, and hence quieter, than the others; but there is, so to speak, too much heat and too little light in them. Here is the weak point in the Salvationist movement, just as it is the strong point in (I always take the best example our Christianity can give us) the Church of England. Here it is the turn of the Salvationists to be not masters, but pupils. Let us hope that they will see this, and not only teach, but also (which is so much more difficult) be ready to learn from, us.
There are still two parts of the work of the Salvationists to consider—their work with the inmates of the prisons, and their work with the inmates of the brothels. Here again we have everything to learn from them, from them the true disciples of“the divine Communist.” The former work they have made a speciality of, and they are rapidly making the latter. I doubt very much that our churches and chapels (I am not speaking now of the Catholics, whose work is almost exclusively among the Irish, and the Irish are of a race that, save in the matter of agrarian crime and a curious cruelty to dumb animals, is truly admirable for the honesty of its men and the chastity of its women): I doubt very much, I say, that our churches and chapels will ever get much at either the criminals or the prostitutes. Our clergymen, who are so gentlemanly, and our ministers who are so respectable, can neither speak nor understand much the language of the People, the language of the heart. The clergymen are shocked by the foulness, the ministers by the ferocity, of the People. Both feel that they are condescending—the one from the height of refinement, the other from the height of righteousness. The people has no love for condescension of this sort. There are few words that stink more in its nostrils than that of charity, and indeed charity, when it means a gift from a superior to an inferior, is hateful enough. It is a popular delusion with the “charitable” that street beggars and the inmates of the workhouses are the People. Far otherwise is it, O “charitable” ones: these are not independent animals, they are parasites: they are (if you will pardon me saying so) your spiritual lice; so please make the best of them, since it is not only on account of, buton, you that they live.
Well, now, wherein is it that these fanatical ignorant Salvationistsdoget at the People? One of them answers us at once: “No one’s too wicked for Jesus, and so no one’s too wicked for me who am the simple follower of Jesus.Ifhecould do with publicans and harlots, why cannot I?” They say, as Walt Whitman says to “a common prostitute,”
“Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.”
“Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.”
“Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.”
“Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.”
This, you see, is Religious Socialism. It proclaims the spiritual equality of all men. Thespiritualequality, let us notice; it will have nothing to do with the social equality. “My kingdom is not of this world.... Give unto Cæsar the things which be Cæsar’s, and to God the things which be God’s.” “Honour all men,” says Peter, “love the brotherhood, fear God, honour the king.” And more: Religious Socialism hasa tendency to be careless of the dogmas of the creeds. “Is the Army hostile,” asks Mr. Booth, “to the existing evangelical denominations? Just the contrary. Numbers of its converts go to swell the membership of the churches. More than 400 persons, converted and trained in its ranks, have been engaged by other different religious organisations as Evangelists, Ministers,” etc., etc., etc. We notice that he says “evangelicaldenominations?” The Catholics, of course, from (who shall I say?) Augustine to Pascal and Newman, are poor belated idolaters, only slightly better than the heathen. This, you see, is where Mr. Booth, like Mr. Spurgeon and the rest, so pleasantly shows us what nonsense an earnest short-sighted man is capable of believing and brandishing about the world with a godless blatancy. Personally, I cannot make myself angry with any of them for it. For what would an earnest man be without his faults? without, as D’Israeli puts it, a single redeeming vice?
In Melbourne there is a tendency now to let the Salvation Army have its own way unmolested with the criminals and the prostitutes. “It can’t do any harm,” people say, “and it may do good, and really, you know, the—the Social Evil wants looking to.” Nay, more: having made this nice expression “Social Evil,” we are at last plucking up courage to acknowledge that it exists, and that it is not necessarily a sign of filthy-mindedness to wish to discuss it. We speak of it now in papers which come under the eye of those dear creatures about whose stainless purity of mind we are all so anxious (even that Puritanic print, theMelbourne Bulletinis anxious, and theSydney Bulletin, also, for all I know to the contrary)—“our wives and daughters.” Why, possibly there are those among us who will live to see the day when the expression “fearful sinner,” as applied to some poor girl driven out into the miseries of the streets, will be confined to the utterance of our good friends of the Scotch Presbytery, and other few such like. Then, it will be amusing: at present, it is only detestable.
Now let us go to the Barracks of the Prison Brigade, and see what has to be seen there. The officials (all, I believe, old criminals) and the men that they have just got hold of, are gathered for a sort of home service. Man after man, boy after boy, rises to give his “experience.” The “experiences” canbe pretty easily imagined. Then there are hymns, choruses, addresses by the higher officials present. All, or almost all here, there is no doubt of it, are “terribly in earnest.” The interruptions, “Hallelujah,” “Praise God,” and so on, are all earnest. One boy with a maimed face gets up and says: “I was miserable in the streets, I’m very happy now. God bless the Major,” and sits down again. For me, I confess that, over and over again, I have not known whether to answer the word and acts of these men, or shall I say children, with smiles or tears. Now and then I have answered them with both.
Afterwards we are shown the bedrooms, observing that we do not want to see them. I have seen many bedrooms that were delightful, and many keepers thereof whose hearts were as clean and hard as the floors. Also I have seen bedrooms that were poor and crowded, and the keepers thereof whose hearts were as rich as love and as soft as pity. I prefer the latter, myself, if I must choose between them, but tastes of course are different. Then the boy with the maimed face is brought in, to tell his tale and show his wounded leg. The People like you to look at their wounds and sores and casualties generally. It is painful. It is like the young ladies of the Middle-class who like you to look at their drawings and paintings, or listen to their playing and singing. I do not know which habit is the more painful of the two—perhaps, on the whole, the latter. The first only hurts my senses: the second hurts my soul. It makes me lose hope in my ideas for the future of the Middle-class: it makes me think it is doomed to the hideousness of clap-trap for ever. It is like a visit to the sculpture at the Melbourne Public Library.
They show us the rooms and bring us the boy, you notice, in that practical English spirit which is intent on making it clear that their cry is proportionate to their wool, a fact of which we are not altogether ignorant. Hence our carelessness about more than a glance at the rooms, or a short talk with the boy with the maimed face. I think I could tell him as much about himself as he can tell me. I have known him many times before.
It is pleasing to notice here how much they insist on the new life, how comparatively little stress they lay on the “conversion,” on the being “saved.” Also, that the Salvationists know how to laugh. It is only men who keep their religion for a fine heavy diet on sunday who cannot pray at onemoment and laugh at another. If my religion is a part ofme, it is also clearly a part of my laughter.
Now let us go the rounds of the opium dens and brothels round about Little Bourke Street. We walk, my Salvationist and I, into any house that we wish. No one opposes us: only once in the whole evening are we spoken to other than respectfully. “You see,” says the mistress of the most facially contorted Chinee I have yet seen, “You see, the Salvationists helps the girls, that’s why we likes ’em!” Here we are in a den, a girl lying on one side of the bed (the Chinese beds are like large alcoves. In the middle is the opium-tray, containing the pipe, a lamp, etc.), a Chinee on the other, getting her pipe ready for her. We sit and chat with her. She tells us about herself simply enough, showing no signs of wishing to alter her condition. Then the other girl comes in, and we chat with her. My Salvationist recognises her: she was at Bella’s funeral. (Bella was a girl who fell down dead in the brothel opposite, and the Army buried her. All “the girls” about clubbed together, hired cabs, and went to the funeral.) “O yes,” says the girl to him, “you said the service for Bella.” She too tells us about herself simply enough. Her mother is at Ballarat.—“Does she know you’re here?”—“O yes, she knows.”—“Does she think you’re in service?”—“O no,sheknows what I’m doing;” and so on. Presently I go into the other room and talk pigeon English with the remarkable spectacled Chinee, who is like a venerable old ape. Why will the English girls come and live with the Chinese? The answer is simple: the Chinese both pay them well and are kind to them. These girls are not bruised on the face and arms as most of the others are.
You perceive now how the Salvationists work here? They are the “friends” of the girls: they “help” them. Find out from a girl if she is miserable: find out if she would sooner go back to a respectable life. Go everywhere fearlessly: Find out if any girl is being detained against her wishes. Be gentle with them as with equals. Make them feel that you care for them for their own sakes. Work upon their feelings—speak of their home, their mother, their father, their brothers, their sisters. Offer them a new start. Then, the moment that of their own free will they are ready to come, put them into a cab and drive straight away with them to the Home. Here they come under the influence of the women officials of the Army,(some of whom, however, also do visiting work), the same system being pursued with them as with the men. They are not made to feel that they are dealing with people more loftily refined or more loftily righteous than themselves. They are not made to feel that they are “fearful sinners.” They are made to feel that sin is fearful and that they have sinned fearfully, but that they have every hope before them, hope of a new life before God and man. As for the women officials of the Salvation Army, I will say this, that in no body of female religionists, except the Catholic Sisters, have I found so many sweet true women. I have also known Anglican Sisters who were well worthy of a place beside them. Such women are the essence of Christianity. They are the true children of Mary Magdalene and Monica, of the love and of the affection of the soul. Preference for any one of these three classes, there can be none. I cannot exalt true love above true affection any more than I can exalt heat above light: their joy is equal. But in one respect the Salvationist women have an advantage over the others, just as the Salvationist men have over the celibate priests—in just that, in the fact that they need not be celibates. Many of these Salvationist girls and women are the sweethearts or wives of their fellow-workers. This, I think, is as it should be. He who neglects or despises that great law of Nature and God, passion, will be assuredly punished for it. To make a large body of men and women celibates is to put a premium on immorality and hypocrisy. This great rock the Salvation Army has avoided, and herein it has done most wisely. Here, where Rome is weak, it is strong. We must not, however, think that there is nothing to be said in behalf of celibacy: there is much, very much. If we were all men like Francis of Assissi or Vincent de Paul, it would be perfect; but unfortunately we are not. At the same time, he who has seen the work of Catholic priests and of Protestant clergymen or ministers in times of plague and pest must feel how great a clog to perfect courage are those hostages a man has given to fate in wife and children. On the other hand, observe that times of pest and plague are comparatively rare, and that every great idea when put into practice is but a mixed good. What we have to do is to choose that which has least evil, or shall we say most good, and this can, we feel sure, be only chosen in conformity with all of those few great primeval laws which are the guides of life, which are the direct words of Nature and of God.
So much, then, for thehowof the Salvation Army. Let us now consider if it has helped us to thewhy—nay, if it has not absolutely told us thewhy! Did we not instinctively catch at something we saw two or three times rising before us as with small but teleological significance in it? Did we not feel, as we uttered that expression with which this something inspired us, that here was thewhyin propria persona?Religious Socialism.
In this state of affairs—the powerlessness of the Socialists to bring home to the People the great idea of social improvement: in the misery unspeakable of the People; in the atmosphere heavy with the degradation of the People—what is it that the People has done?It has evolved a movement,no longer fromwithout,but fromwithinitself.It has sought for consolation for its unspeakable wretchedness in the perennial spring of Religion, of the yearning love of Jesus. It has, at the touch of the first match that came to it, blazed up into the flaming fire of Religious Socialism.
In the early part of the thirteenth century the People did the same, the People of Italy. But what a heaven lies between the man who ledthatmovement and the man that is leading this! O my eloquent Rationalists, O my loquacious Secularists, both of you whom I esteem so much—how ready are you to talk of the degradation which that gigantic superstition and delusion, Christianity, wrought upon the People! Whenever are you tired of brandishing “starry Galileo” and scattering the scattered dust of poor old Copernicus in the face of Catholicism, making it to tremble and sneeze fearfully? Does it never occur to you that that divine Goddess Scientia, whom you worship with such noble devotion, has wrought a far deeper degradation on the people than Catholicism ever did? Have you never seen, crouching under the shadow of your railways and your telegraphs and all your improved machinery, the unspeakable wretchedness of London, of Birmingham, of Manchester, of Glasgow? And now that this People, whose lives your Goddess has made of such a sort that they will not stand too favourable a comparison with those of dogs—now that this People, in its passionate searching after some consolation, however slight, of whatever sort, seizes on this creature of superstition and delusion, this Jesus who isonly a man, just like you or me, and whom you have so triumphantlyproved so, and makes him the text for this flaming fire of Religious Socialism—has it never struck you, O my eloquent Rationalists, O my loquacious Secularists, what an appalling difference there is between Salvation Army banners, handkerchiefs, brass-bands, and concertinas, and the “green boughs, flags, music, and songs of gladness” that came forth from the Umbrian towns and villages to welcome Francis of Assissi? have you never felt that there is any essential difference between the perpetual Revivalist hymn of “My Jesus to know and to feel his blood flow,” and the “Canticle of the Creatures?” But, above all, have you never felt that it is more to that divine Goddess Scientia, whom you worship with such noble devotion, than to anything else that this appalling difference is due?
And you, O my Middle-class, of whom I am so humble a unit, did it ever occur to you that it is rather a foolish thing to paint a boy’s face black and then be shocked at it? If the People, its foulness and its ferocity, makes you shiver and shudder, who pray made it foul and fierce but you who govern it?—What do you say? “It was no business of yours?” That was what Cain said, but respectable Christians like you are not surely going to take that eminent casuist as your mouth-piece? If you were Atheists or Agnostics, now, worshippers of “the struggle for existence and survival of the fittest,” of course that would be another matter, but you are Christians, respectable Christians who always wear black coats on Sundays, and object to having the Library and Picture-Gallery open.
Well, there! I cannot make myself angry with you, my dear Middle-class. I admire your good qualities too much for that—too much indeed, as I often tell myself; for who shall say but that my belief in your ultimate regeneration and new birth unto a really glorious place in a true civilization be not, after all, but infatuation? Here is Carlyle, whom we all love and admire so, trying to be our benefactor by demonstrating to us our illusions on this matter, and telling us, ever since 1830, of the “steady approach of democracy with revolution (probably explosive) and a finis incomputable to man; steady decay of all morality, political, social, individual; this once noble England getting more and more ignoble, and untrue in every fibre of it, till the gold (Goethe’s composite king) will all be eaten out, and noble England will have to collapse in shapelessruin, whether for ever or not none of us can know.” Really there are hours when I am made quite to suffer by thinking of what is going to happen to my dear Middle-class when the People rise unanimously against it,—“roaring million-headed unreflecting, darkly suffering, darkly sinning ‘Demos’” (as Carlyle says again), “come to call its old superiors to account at its maddest of tribunals.” It will, I fear, be little good for the Mr. Caffyns of those times to write letters to theArgusof those times, explaining the physiological aspects of the movement. On such an occasion in Paris, in 1793, Mr. Caffyns went up into the arms of La Guillotine for much less heinous offences than that, and who would be left capable of recording whether, in this case, they went up “with a tripping movement” (as Mr. Caffyn tells us the fanatical “Hallelujah lasses” go), or whether they marched, as perhaps Mr. Caffyn himself marches to church or chapel every Sunday morning, to the edification of all beholders? But let us not think of such an appalling spectacle. Mr. Caffyn is still with us, and theArgusis still with us, and perhaps some morning we shall have some more brilliant letters on the physiological aspects of Mr. Caffyn’s friends, the hallelujah lasses.
I cannot, I say, make myself angry with you, my dear Middle-class of England (and you might plausibly suggest that it would not matter much if I did), and how then shall I even frown at this Middle-class of Victoria, about whom (if Carlyle is right) I am more infatuate still? Does not the People breathe free in Australia? Are we not liberated here from that charming “Upper Ten Thousand” which monopolises the best of the bad education England has to offer, the Public Schools and the Universities? Is there not a hope that, now that the primary education of the People is progressing so satisfactorily, some of our young rising politicians, (or even some of the old ones), may bring home to us the fact that we want equally—nay, far more!—a secondary education for the Middle-class? so that Victoria may step forward as a competitor with the most universally civilized nation in the world, France, and teach England the unspeakable glory and advantage of (we should call it) an Upper-class, “homogeneous, intelligent, civilized, brought up in good public schools” (and not, as now, in more or less good, or more or less bad, denominational, and “private adventure” schools) “and on the first plane.”
If only this Upper-class of Victoria and of Australia generally could be brought to see it! If only it would confess its sins, many and heinous, against true civilization and be “converted” and lead a new life! Nothing, I think, strikes an Englishman more, coming out here, than the brightness and intelligence of the Victorian girls! (“Our daughters,” you know.) And how heart-rending to discover that all this brightness and intelligence is wasted on the mere accidents and incidents of every-day existence! Two-shilling novels are her idea of literature: “Some day” and “Ehren on the Rhine” her idea of music: the coloured illustrations of the illustrated papers, her idea of art. And her brother is in a worse state! The tortoise English girl is, after all, better than the Australian hare, and the young male bull-dog than the kangaroo.
Everything cries out for the education, for the civilization, of the Upper-class, the ruling class. Educate it, civilize it, let it know what Truth is and what Beauty is, and abolish the bells and the brass-bands for ever! If the Upper-class is beautiful, its beauty will react on the Lower-class. Give us public schools for the Upper-class, as there are public schools for the Lower-class. Fight tooth and nail against any attempts after an “Upper Ten Thousand,” whether it be of land or of wealth. Keep clearly before us the ideal of an Upper-class that ishomogeneous. Let us have the man of business as cultured as the professional man, and the professional man as cultured as the man of means. Let us be a true Republic, offering every opportunity to the intelligence of the Lower-class to attain to the culture of the Upper. Let us not have ten thousand aristocrats, but ten hundred thousand, ever more and more, and never less and less! On the other hand, let us learn from the People the great lesson which they have to teach us—the lesson of the language of the heart. Let us learn from them the softness of pity, yea and the richness of love. Let us give them ourSocial Socialismand let us take theirReligious; for, in the perfect marriage of light and heat, is the perfect day, the true civilization, the beauty of the truth of Nature and of God.
February, 1885.