My sins they are many, their stains are so deep, And bitter the tears of remorse that I weep; But useless is weeping, thou great crimson sea, Thy waters can cleanse me, come, roll over me! My tempers are fitful, my passions are strong. They bind my poor soul, and they force me to wrong; Beneath thy blest billows deliverance I see, Oh, come, mighty ocean, and roll over me! Now tossed with temptation, then haunted with fears, My life has been joyless and useless for years; I feel something better most surely would be, If once thy pure waters would roll over me. O ocean of mercy, oft longing I've stood On the brink of thy wonderful, life-giving flood! Once more I have reached this soul-cleansing sea, I will not go back till it rolls over me. The tide is now flowing, I'm touching the wave, I hear the loud call of "The Mighty to Save"; My faith's growing bolder--delivered I'll be-- I plunge 'neath the waters, they roll over me. And now, Hallelujah! the rest of my days Shall gladly be spent in promoting His praise Who opened His bosom to pour out this sea Of boundless Salvation for you and for me. Chapter V Fight Against Formality The Army's invariable principle of avoiding even the appearance of attacking any other association of religionists, or their ideas or practices, renders it difficult to explain fully either why William Booth became the regular minister of a church, or why he gave up that position; and yet he has himself told us sufficient to demonstrate at one stroke not only the entire absence of hostility in his mind, but the absolute separateness of his way of thinking from that which so generally prevails. The enthusiastic welcome given to The General wherever he went, by the clergy of almost every Church indicates that he had generally convinced them that he had no thought of attacking them or their Churches, even when he most heartily expressed his thankfulness to God for having been able to escape from all those trammels of tradition and form which would have made his great life-work, for all nations, impossible. And I think there are few who would nowadays question that his life, teaching, and example all tended greatly to modify many of the Church formalities of the past.