Plaudits are heard on nearly every side. The religious bodies give him the homage of fear. They shout approval because they dare not show hostility. Next come the mob of cheap philanthropists. This consists of rich ladies and gentleman, who feel twinges of remorse at living sumptuously while others are starving, and who are ready to pay conscience-money to any social charlatan. When they have written out a cheque they feel relieved. “On with the dance, let joy be unconfined.” But it is not thus that the spectre of poverty and misery will be laid. Evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as by want of heart. If the so-called lower classes are to be elevated, the so-called upper classes will find they will have to do some _thinking_. Social knots cannot be cut, they must be untied. The Sphinx says you must _read_ her riddle. All the money-bags in the world will never smooth her terrible brow. General Booth’s scheme of social salvation is before the world in the form of a book. Let us examine the prophecy of this would-be Moses of the serfs of poverty and degradation. An ordinary author would sign himself “William Booth,” but this one is “General” even on a title-page. In Darkest England is an obvious plagiarism on Stanley, and The Way Out is suggested by his long travel through the awful Central African forest. In the preface General Booth acknowledges the “valuable literary help” of a “friend of the poor, who, though not in any way connected with the Salvation Army, has the deepest sympathy with its aims, and is to a large extent in harmony with its principles.” The friend is Mr. Stead. This gentleman has “written up” the scheme in the manner of “the born journalist,” that is, in the fashion of the Modern Babylon” and the adventures of Eliza Armstrong. He contributes the descriptions, the gush, the hysterics, the sentences crowded with adjectives and adverbs. Sometimes he writes a whole chapter, unless our literary scent misleads us; sometimes he interpolates the General, and sometimes the General interpolates Stead. One result of this twofold authorship is that the book is twice as big as it should be; another result is that it often contradicts itself. For instance, the General states in the preface that he has known “thousands, nay, I can say tens of thousands,” who have proved the value of _spiritual_ means of reformation, having “with little or no temporal assistance, come out of the darkest depths of destitution, vice, and crime, to be happy and honest citizens and true sons and servants of God.” Elsewhere (p. 243) he speaks of them as “multitudes.” Yet in the very next paragraph of the preface Mr. Stead (if we mistake not) breaks in with the assertion that “the rescued are appallingly few,” a mere “ghastly minority.”