The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of the Salvation ArmyRailton, George S. (George Scott)
History
The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of the Salvation Army
Railton, George S. (George Scott)
Booth, William, 1829-1912; Salvation Army
"The secret of General Booth's personal force and commanding power was
an open one. To him there were no realities so demonstrable as the
realities of the spiritual world--most of all, the reality of Christ's
real personal presence and saving power to-day. He found that
unquestioning faith in Christ's saving power worked everywhere and under
all conditions. We differed from him on theological details, but we
gladly recognise that scores of thousands of 'moral miracles,' in the
shape of lives remade that were apparently shattered beyond repair and
trodden in the mud of dissipation and bold habitual sinning, verified
the faith. The burglar who had been forty years in prison and penal
servitude, the most shameless of Magdalens, the drinker and gambler
brought down to the Embankment at midnight, greedy for a meal of soup
and bread, the man or woman determined to end a state of despair and
disgust with the world by suicide, these, under the influence of The
Salvation Army, became 'new creations.' But the same conviction, and the
evidences of its miraculous Operation, captured a large number of men
and women of the cultured and refined classes, who were either the
victims of moral weakness, or who felt the challenge to service and
sacrifice for the sake of others. Kings, Queens, and Royal Princes and
Princesses were glad to see General Booth, and gave their encouragement
to his work, and it was fitting that, when King Edward died, a Salvation
Army band should comfort the widowed lady by playing in the courtyard of
Buckingham Palace her husband's favourite hymns.
"The Social Work was an inevitable outcome of the evangelistic work. It
had its dangers, and The Salvation Army has not escaped all of them
without scathe. But it was found that the difficulty with thousands of
the Converts was that of giving them a chance to redeem their past, and
to nurse them physically and morally till they were able to stand alone,
in a position to take their places again in the ranks of decent and
self-respecting citizenship. Then there was the 'Submerged Tenth'--the
human wreckage tossed hither and thither by the swirling currents of the
social sea. To safeguard the one class, and to save the other from
themselves and their circumstances, the Social scheme was launched, and
those who estimate its success by moral valuation rather than in terms
of finance, will say that it has justified itself, though it never
accomplished what The General fondly hoped.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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