The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of the Salvation ArmyRailton, George S. (George Scott)
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The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of the Salvation Army
Railton, George S. (George Scott)
Booth, William, 1829-1912; Salvation Army
"Money or no money, we must and will have Salvation. If the rich
won't help Lazarus through us, then their money must perish. We
must do the best we can.
"Join the Light Brigade, and give a halfpenny per week! We shall
get through. Is your soul prospering? Cast yourself this morning on
your Lord for a supply of _all your need_."
This "Light Brigade" is another invention of the General's, partly
founded upon the Indian habit of taking a handful out of every new
supply of food, and laying it aside for the priests.
The "Light Brigade" consists of Soldiers and friends who place on their
table a little box, into which all who like can drop a little coin by
way of thanksgiving to God and care for the poor before they eat. These
are called "Grace-before-Meat" Boxes, and in England alone they produced
last year £8,284. 17_s._ 2_d._ for the support of our Social Work.
Altogether I venture to say it will be found that for every shilling he
ever got anywhere he prompted the giving of at least a thousand
shillings to other benevolent enterprises, and that mankind is indebted
to him for the stirring up to benevolent action of countless millions
who never even heard his name.
At the same time it will be found that by his financial plans he has
made The Army so largely dependent upon public opinion that, were its
beneficent work to cease, its means of survival would at the same time
become extinct, so that it could not continue to exist when it had
ceased to be a Salvation Army.
Chapter XXIII
In Germany in Old Age
Though we have had occasion to mention Germany repeatedly, there has
been no opportunity to call attention to the great importance which The
General attached to our Work in that country. It seemed almost as though
we had been premature in our attack upon the country, so little were
either Governments or people prepared for our violent urgency, when we
began in Stuttgart, in 1886. But The General lived to see his annual
visits to Berlin looked forward to by the Press and public as a natural
provision for the spiritual wants of those who had practically ceased to
be of any religion.
In the following description of him, taken from German papers during one
of his last visits to that country, we get not only some idea of his
appearance to the people when he was eighty-one years of age, but his
sense of the importance of that people in the future of The Army. And it
is a remarkable fact that German cities should have been subsidising The
Army's work before any English one did so.
We have happily got complete enough accounts of The General's tour in
Germany, when eighty-one, to supply not merely a most artistic
representation of his own appearance and action at that age, but at the
same time to give an almost perfect view of the impressions and
teachings his Army has been giving out there for nearly thirty years.
In Düsseldorf, we are told:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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