Whether or no the scheme commends itself to us for its fitness, seasonableness, and promise, one thing it has assuredly done: it has revealed us to ourselves, and that in an agreeable light. It has been discovered to us that we, too, love our brother; that we, too, yearn over “the bruised” with something of the tenderness of Christ. The brotherhood of man is no fancy bred in the brain, and we have loved our brother all the time--the sick, the poor, the captive, and the sinner, too; but the fearful, and unbelieving, and slothful amongst us--that is, the most of us--have turned away our eyes from beholding evils for which we saw no help. But now that a promise of deliverance offers, more adequate, conceivably, than any heretofore proposed, why, the solidarity of humanity asserts itself; our brother who is bruised is not merely near and dear; he is our very self, and whoso will ease and revive him is our deliverer too. The first flush of enthusiasm subsides, and we ask, Are we not, after all, led away by what Coleridge calls the “Idol of Size”? Wherein does this scheme differ from ten thousand others, except in the colossal scale on which the experiment is to be tried? And perhaps we should concede at the outset that this hope of deliverance is “the same, only more so,” as is being already worked out effectually in many an otherwise sunless corner of the great vineyard. Indeed, the great project has its great risks--risks which the quieter work escapes. All the same, there are aspects in which the remedy, because of its vastness and inclusiveness, is new. Hitherto we have helped the wretched _in_ impossible circumstances, not _out of_ them. Our help has been as a drop in the bucket, reaching to hundreds or thousands only of the lost millions. Even so, we cannot keep it up; we give to-day, and withhold to-morrow; worse than all, our very giving is an injury, reducing the power and the inclination for self-help. Or, do we start some small amateur industry by way of making our people _independent_? This pet industry may sometimes be a transparent mask for almsgiving, and an encroachment upon regular industries and the rights of other workers. Now and then is a gleam of hope, now and then a soul and body snatched into safety; but the hardest workers are glad of the noise of the wheels to keep the eternal _Cui bono?_ out of their ears. There is so much to be done, and so little means of doing it. But this scheme--what with the amplitude of its provisions, what with the organisation and regimentation it promises, the strong and righteous government, the moral compulsion to well-doing--considering these, and the enormous staff of workers already prepared to carry it out, the dreariest pessimist amongst us concedes that General Booth’s scheme _may_ be worth trying. “But,” he says, “but---- DO WE BELIEVE IN CONVERSION?”