Regeneration: Being an Account of the Social Work of The Salvation Army in Great BritainHaggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
Religion
Regeneration: Being an Account of the Social Work of The Salvation Army in Great Britain
Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
Great Britain -- Social conditions; Salvation Army
So it goes on. At length the great audience rises and begins to
depart, filing one by one through a certain doorway. As they pass,
Officers who have appeared from somewhere wait for them with
outstretched arms. The most of them brush past shaking their heads and
muttering. Here and there one pauses, is lost--or rather won. The
Salvation Army has him in its net and he joins the crowd upon the
platform. Still the hymn swells and falls till all have departed save
those who remain for good--about 10 per cent of that sad company.
[Illustration: SEEKING THE HOMELESS AT MIDNIGHT.]
It is done and the catcher feels that he has witnessed the very
uttermost of tragedies, human and spiritual.
* * * * *
Mere common 'revivalism'! the critic will say, and it may be so. Still
such revivalism, if that is the term for it, must be judged by its
fruits. I am informed that of those who kneel here experience shows
that but a small percentage relapse. The most of them become what in
the Salvation Army cant--if one chooses so to name it--is known as
'saved.'
This means that from drunkards and wastrels stained with every sort of
human fault, or even crime, they are turned into God-fearing and
respectable men who henceforward, instead of being a pest to society
and a terror to all those who have the misfortune to be connected with
them, become props of society and a comfort and a support to their
relatives and friends.
Thus is the mesh of mercy spread, and such is its harvest.
The age of miracles is past, we are told; but I confess that while
watching this strange sight I wondered more than once that if this
were so, what that age of miracles had been like. Of one thing I was
sure, that it must have been to such as these that He who is
acknowledged even by sceptics to have been the very Master of mankind,
would have chosen to preach, had this been the age of His appearance,
He who came to call sinners to repentance. Probably, too, it was to
such as these that He did preach, for folk of this character are
common to the generations. Doubtless, Judea had its knaves and
drunkards, as we know it had its victims of sickness and misfortune.
The devils that were cast out in Jerusalem did not die; they reappear
in London and elsewhere to-day, and, it would seem, can still be cast
out.
I confess another thing, also; namely, that I found all this drama
curiously exciting. Most of us who have passed middle age and led a
full and varied life will be familiar with the great human emotions.
Yet I discovered here a new emotion, one quite foreign to a somewhat
extended experience, one that I cannot even attempt to define. The
contagion of revivalism! again it will be said. This may be so, or it
may not. But at least, so far as this branch of the Salvation Army
work is concerned, those engaged in it may fairly claim that the tree
should be judged by its fruits. Without doubt, in the main these
fruits are good and wholesome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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