475	----	None 
51565	----	George Bernard Shaw Major Barbara Credits for Temi Rose Production of GB Shaw's Major Barbara Directed by Temi Rose CAST: Andrew Undershaft - Laurence Cantor Lady Britomart Undershaft - Lucy McMichael (Major) Barbara Undershaft - Rin Allen Stephen Undershaft - Jonathan Horvath Sarah Undershaft - Shariffa Wilson Adolphus Cusins - Paul Singleton Charles Lomax - Philip T. Casale Bronterre O'Brien Price - Jason Daniel Siegel Rummy (Romola) Mitchens- Joan Shepard Peter Shirley - Jerry Sodgers Bill Walker - Matthew L. Imparato Jenny Hill - Nathalie Frederick Mrs. Baines - Eve Sorel Morrison & Bilton - Gardiner Comfort Narrator - Temi Rose MUSIC CREDITS Scene 1.1 Onward Christian Soldiers, Salvation Army Band Bands of the Salvation Army Album: Jerusalem Year 2003 Scene 1.5 Scanned/music for lungs and bellows. Will Duke, concertinas, voice; Dan Quinn, melodeons, voice. 2001, Hebemusic HEBE CD 003 and Onward Christian Soldiers, Salvation Army Band Bands of the Salvation Army Album: Jerusalem Year 2003 Scene 2.1 The Big Day In. Simon Thoumire, concertina; David Milligan, piano, 2001, Foot Stompin' Records CDFSR17B Scene 2.8 Bach Preludio Partita 3 http://www.concertinaconnection.com/partita3prelude.mp3 and Onward Christian Soldiers, Salvation Army Band Bands of the Salvation Army Album: Jerusalem Year 2003 Scene 3.1 Andante from Italian Concerto BWV 971 - Bach Catrin Finch (harp) http://www.gardnermuseum.org/music/listen Scene 3.5 Orfeo ed Euridice (excerpt) - Gluck Paula Robison (flute) Mariko Anraku (harp) http://www.gardnermuseum.org/music/listen Scene 3.9 same Recorded December 22, 2011 at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York City. WEBSITE FOR THE PROJECT WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND LINKS http://www.2cyberwhelm.org/2011/shaw/barbara 
26652	----	STANDARDS OF LIFE AND SERVICE BY COMMISSIONER T. H. HOWARD THE SALVATION ARMY BOOK DEPARTMENT LONDON: 79 & 81 Fortess Road, N.W. MELBOURNE: 69 Bourke Street NEW YORK: 120 West Fourteenth Street TORONTO: Albert Street CAPE TOWN: Loop Street SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LTD. 4 STATIONERS' HALL COURT, LONDON, E.C. 1909 THE SALVATION ARMY PRINTING WORKS, ST. ALBANS PREFACE The following pages contain reports of addresses delivered by Commissioner Howard, of our International Headquarters, during an important series of Holiness Meetings held in the Congress Hall, London, principally in 1908. Those Meetings were widely used by God, and at my request the Commissioner has revised the shorthand reports of his words for this volume. We now send forth his messages in the hope of still further extending their usefulness. Christianity is a present-day call to a good life. If it be anything less than that, it is really not worth troubling about. It is, of course, rich in holy memories, and venerable in its association with all that is true and best in the past. But it is not only ancient in its origin and triumphs--it is intensely modern in its touch with human need, and in its demand that the spirit of righteousness should be the controlling force in human life--in the common life of to-day. It is the aim of the following addresses to bring that truth home to us, and to help us to go direct to JESUS CHRIST Himself for power to respond to that claim. Cast in popular form, as was necessary for meeting such occasions as those which called them forth, these addresses do not attempt any comprehensive statements of the philosophy of Holiness. Anything of that kind, no matter how successful, would have been the undoing of the whole effort. Nevertheless, the diligent reader will, I think, find underlying these practical counsels certain valuable principles. In particular, he will find implied, when not actually expressed, an important distinction between the work of God in the justifying and purifying of the soul, and the work of man in walking in obedience to the laws of God. It is that obedience I am thinking of when I say that Christianity is a demand for righteousness. It is that obedience we mean when we talk of Holiness--in its practical aspects. One of the dangers to which all deeply spiritual teaching is open, is a kind of antinomianism--a species of religious bargaining between the soul and God; and that is a thing which is, of course, totally alien to His will, and completely ruinous to true progress. The process of such thought is something like this: 'Christ has performed for me a work of infinite love and merit. If I confess and deplore evil, I may claim pardon for it and purifying from its guilt by faith in the Divine Sacrifice made for me. That will ease my burdened soul and free me from apprehension as to future peril--peril which would otherwise have proved very real. As to temptation to further evil, I must watch against it; but if by chance or evil impulse, or even wilful choice, I fall into it, let me not be too deeply concerned. I can easily obtain again what I have obtained before.' Now, that is not only a false position, but it involves an extremely dangerous error--an error which in practice is ultimately destructive of real faith. Salvation--indeed, all spiritual experience, is entered into by faith, of course; but it can only be maintained by hearty, determined obedience on our part. Christ has died for us, but He has not obeyed for us. The 'new heart' is by faith in Him--but the new life can only be lived by watchful and often painful obedience to the law of love. 'I counsel thee to buy of Me', saith He that walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, 'white raiment that thou mayest be clothed'; and 'Blessed', He says also, 'is he that watcheth, and _keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked_'. Paul prayed for the saints of his day 'that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith'; but he prayed also that they 'might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, _being fruitful in every good work_, strengthened _with all might_ unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness'. It is towards standards for this life of rightly living that Commissioner Howard is working in the following chapters. May the blessing of the great Standard-Bearer rest upon his words, and give the light and grace which He alone can afford to every reader. BRAMWELL BOOTH. THE SALVATION ARMY, LONDON, _April, 1909_. FOREWORD I wish that these Addresses could, in their present form, be marked by those personal experiences which made the thoughts so alive to me when the words were uttered in public Meetings. If the flashes of light, the intensity of conviction, and the sense of Divine help which were mine when speaking, could be reproduced in cold type, the impression upon the readers would be much more effective. That may not be fully possible, but I pray that in His own way God may use the book to the helping of many souls in the things which make for Holiness and happy service. T. H. H. _Thou hidden love of God, whose height, Whose depth unfathomed no man knows; I see from far Thy beauteous light, Inly I sigh for Thy repose: My heart is pained, nor can it be At rest till it finds rest in Thee._ _Is there a thing beneath the sun That strives with Thee my heart to share? Ah, tear it thence, and reign alone, The Lord of every motion there! Then shall my heart from earth be free, When it hath found repose in Thee._ _Oh, hide this self from me, that I No more, but Christ in me, may live; My vile affections crucify, Nor let one darling lust survive! In all things nothing may I see, Nothing desire or seek, but Thee!_ _Each moment draw from earth away My heart, that lowly waits Thy call: Speak to my inmost soul, and say, 'I am thy Lord, thy God, thy All!' To feel Thy power, to hear Thy voice, To share Thy cross be all my choice._ CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE v FOREWORD ix I. GOD'S CALL 1 II. CONSECRATION COMPLETE 8 III. DIVINE FELLOWSHIP 15 IV. FINDING GOD 23 V. THE DOCTRINE ADORNED 31 VI. SURENESS 40 VII. THE PATHWAY OF THE HOLY 49 VIII. CIRCUMSTANCES AND CONSEQUENCES 58 IX. BOUND TO THE ALTAR 68 X. WHY SHOULD I? 77 XI. JUDGED BY FRUIT 87 XII. PERPETUAL COVENANTS 95 XIII. THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT 104 XIV. LOST EARNINGS 113 XV. FIGHTING HOLINESS 123 XVI. SANCTIFIED COMMONPLACES 132 XVII. SPIRITUAL GROWTH 141 XVIII. THE INWARD LAWS 151 XIX. WORRY VERSUS PEACE 159 XX. AN APPEAL AND A RESPONSE 168 'WE believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be "wholly sanctified", and that their "whole spirit and soul and body" may "be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ". That is to say, we believe that after conversion there remain in the heart of the believer inclinations to evil, or roots of bitterness, which, unless overpowered by Divine grace, produce actual sin; but that these evil tendencies can be entirely taken away by the Spirit of God, and the whole heart, thus cleansed from everything contrary to the will of God, or entirely sanctified, will then produce the fruit of the Spirit only. And we believe that persons thus entirely sanctified may, by the power of God, be kept unblameable and unreprovable in His sight.'--_The Doctrines of The Salvation Army._ STANDARDS OF LIFE AND SERVICE I God's Call _'What manner of persons ought ye to be?'_ (2 Peter iii. 11.) _'As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.'_ (1 Peter i. 15, 16.) When we set up standards for life and character we must be quite clear that our teaching fits in with God's purpose as revealed towards His people. Therefore, when we enforce the doctrine of personal Holiness, there is no reason more weighty than that which Peter gives us in the verses quoted, namely, that God calls us to Holiness. The statement I have read seems to me to show that _it is a mistake to suppose that personal Holiness is left optional_. Many people go to Meetings, and, when they are shown the teachings of the Bible about Holiness, they recognize that it is a state of being cleansed, filled with the love of God, and kept by the indwelling Holy Ghost. They see it as a very desirable thing and a possible experience. But, somehow or other, they sit and listen, come and go, and seem to have the idea that it is quite left to themselves whether they should obey the call and claim this blessing or not. Some talk as if there were two roads to Heaven; I mean the sinning and repenting life; falling down and getting up again; persevering in their journey with just enough religion to make them want to save their souls from going to Hell, in contradistinction to the experience of the saintly man or woman who says, 'By God's help I am going to live a life without sin! I am going to have my heart fully sanctified, and walk in the will of God.' Some, I am afraid, even go so far as to deliberately say, 'Holiness is a very good thing if you want it; but I am not quite prepared for this, or to give up this, that, and the other. I think I shall get on very well as I am. If _you_ want the blessing I am glad to see you go in for it.' That is what I mean when I talk about people regarding the matter as if it were optional; and I like these words of Peter's because they show us a direct command: 'Be ye holy, for I am holy'. They fit in also with the other injunction: 'Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing'. It is a grand and glorious privilege to have a clean heart; to have God Almighty coming and taking full possession of you; and to have His Holy Spirit day by day, filling your heart with love and keeping you in Divine fellowship. But I want you also to realize that it is a binding duty upon every follower of Jesus Christ to seek to become holy. I think it was John Wesley who said something to the effect that professing Christians who had not got the blessing of a clean heart, or were not earnestly seeking to be delivered from sin, could not consistently be regarded as Christians at all. I do not put it as strongly as that; but I do, from deep conviction, say this to you, that every Salvationist, and other persons who, in Meetings of this kind, are taught that the will of God is that they shall be delivered from all sin, that they shall live a life of purity and Holiness, that they shall walk in the enjoyment of a Full Salvation, and yet are not willing to follow the light, and do what they know God wants them to do, are probably heart-backsliders, and in a fair way to backslide altogether. I tell you, God has called you, not unto uncleanness, not to remain in a state of impurity, but to Holiness; and he that despiseth that calling despiseth not man, but God. Therefore, I beg of you not to imagine that, with clear light as to your duty, and the possibility of Full Salvation, you can either take it or leave it, and yet remain in the favour of God. Then these verses are very useful because they _set the standard for our personal spiritual condition_. Need I explain what I mean by this? Let your minds turn to weights and measures, and you will see my meaning exactly. If you went to a draper's shop, and asked for so many yards of material, you would not be satisfied by his guessing the quantity--you would want it measured by the yard-stick, the proper standard of measurement. So with weights. If you ask for so many pounds of sugar or potatoes, it would not be for the shopman to say to you, 'Will that do for you? Put another in? All right! Will that do?' You would say, 'Please weigh them properly according to standard'. Now it seems to me that in spiritual character we must have something by which we can measure and compare ourselves, and Peter gives us just such a standard when he says, 'As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy'. The standard is the character of God. If Peter had said, 'As He is almighty, so be ye almighty', or, 'As He is infallible, so be ye infallible', then at once you would know that the standard was altogether out of your reach, and could not be realized. But, if you are a Christian at all, your inmost conviction tells you that to be holy is a reasonable requirement, and the law of consistency endorses it. As you study your Bibles you will find many references to this standard of conformity with the Divine character, and will quickly see that nothing short of that can satisfy. It is not only the standard that exists in the Divine mind, but the world rightly expects that we, as Christian men and women, shall be holy. I know the world is very often disappointed, and that, unfortunately, the failures of some so-called Christian people are used as an excuse for disregarding the claims of God, but the world is right in expecting us to live holy lives. That passage of Peter's contains a significant reminder in the sentence, 'Be ye holy in all manner of conversation'. Now, that word, 'conversation', has a much broader meaning in old English than the sense attached to our common use of it, generally limiting the word to mean intercourse between each other by speech. Here it really means the whole manner of living. To me it is a matter of unspeakable joy to think that there is no right association, no duty, and no proper relationship in life that cannot be wholly sanctified and have God's smile upon it. Your eatings and drinkings, your speakings, your workings, your dressings, your courtings and marriages, also many other things, such as business and recreation, can all be sanctified, and the functions performed in harmony with the profession of Holiness and the maintenance of a clean heart. But do not miss _the true inwardness of this command_: 'Be ye holy, for I am holy'. It is this--we cannot live up to the true standard, we cannot fulfil life's obligation, without a sanctified heart. The General very frequently says, with reference to the failures of certain classes of people who call themselves Christians, that they make the mistake of supposing that they can keep the holy law of God with an unholy heart. The thing is absolutely impossible, and I should only be deluding you if I told you otherwise. We sometimes say that in Heaven there is, and ever will be, an unwavering fulfilment of the highest will of God. But what secures that condition in Heaven? Do you think it is the absence of a personal Devil? Not only that--although the hope of it counts for a good deal with some of us. Do you think it is the absence of wicked surroundings and temptations from evil men and women? Not only that. Do you think it is the possession of things that produce unfailing pleasure and satisfaction? Not only that. It is just the fact that every heart is confirmed in its perfect acceptance of the Father's will, and is in the fullest conformity with the holy law of a holy God. There are many other things that go to make up Heaven, but without that there can be no Heaven at all. Did you repeat the Lord's Prayer this morning? If so, you came to that little sentence, 'Thy will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven'. Now, I ask you, do you really mean that? Do you honestly want that for yourselves? Because, unless you can put yourselves in line with that petition, unless there is a compliance with these words of Peter's, 'Be ye holy, for I am holy', you can never get that prayer answered. II Consecration Complete _'Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.'_ (Romans xii. 1.) Surely, amongst those who love God and desire His Kingdom to come, there can be no difference of opinion with regard to the duty of whole-hearted consecration to the service of God. The rightness of God's claims is beyond dispute among His own people; and so it ought to be recognized as our absolute duty to yield fully to those claims. The feeling of every professed servant of Christ ought to be, nay, surely is, 'I am not my own; I am bought with a price: I should "therefore glorify God in my body and soul, which are God's"'. Whilst, however, in so many words all this is acknowledged, when it comes to practically facing the question, with its personal responsibility, how few there are who respond to the claims of the Master, rendering Him that out-and-out devotion of which we hear and speak. Of a consecration that consists in attending Holiness Meetings, singing hymns, and uniting in prayers full of the most sublime sentiment, we have an abundance. With eyes closed and hands upraised, many vow that henceforth they will live, not unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again; but when the Meetings are over, the surroundings changed, and the actual duty presents itself, how much of this consecration is found to be mere sentiment, for 'as the early cloud and morning dew' so it passeth! 1. Now, let it be understood that _real consecration is a practical thing_. I have a saying, which cannot be repeated too often--'that which I give away I no longer have'. If we can only persuade people to recognize that truth, and make their consecration on these lines, something practical will follow. Men like to say, 'I am the Lord's!' but when the Lord wants to make practical use of His own, Oh, what backwardness to obey! What slowness of speech on the part of the tongue that was professedly given to the Lord! What weariness of body will sometimes be found when that body is demanded by the Master for some special service! A dumb devil seems to take possession of the tongue, and the fear of man brings a snare, and all this often results in a shameful compromise. The fact is, much of the popular consecration means, 'Everything in general and nothing in particular'--mere words, clouds without water, leaves without fruit--and the world is little better for the vows that have been made. We may want to follow Jesus without denying ourselves; but He says plainly that we cannot. If any man will deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Christ, he, and he only, shall be a true disciple. Real, true consecration is a plain, matter-of-fact piece of business; sublime, not so much because of the character of the work it does, as because of the constraining love that is the motive and the results flowing from it. The beautiful halo and glamour clinging round our vows and prayers and songs during a Meeting, are gratifying to our senses; but real consecration manifests itself in hard, self-denying labour, when no eye but His sees; often, perhaps, when no heart but His appreciates, and no voice but His commends. The halo no longer seen, the glamour no longer felt, the soul steps forward and meets its duty, and, in the strength of God, does it: that is the consecration which tells for God and the Kingdom. 2. Let us also understand that _real consecration is an 'all-round' thing_. Many recognize the claims of God in great things, but are not so particular in the ordinary matters of everyday life. I recall a young man, who, in private Meetings, and on the platform, would go into rhapsodies as he spoke of his love for a perishing world, and his intense desire to be sent on some great mission. I spoke to him of the hundreds of recklessly godless men with whom he daily associated at his work, and who lived round about his house, and asked him what he did in reference to these. Need I tell you how suddenly this man collapsed? He did not think that consecration meant such a commonplace thing as being faithful in the ordinary duties and walks of life, for I had inquired as to what happened when the men gathered for meals or conversation in the intervals of work. Does it seem to some of you an evidence of entire consecration that we stand on platforms and lead Meetings, or are doing some work which draws other eyes towards us in appreciation of--what is deemed--untiring devotion? Well, I trust that the appearance does not go beyond the spirit of the business; but I tell you, the real test lies elsewhere. It shows itself in such an abandonment to God and the interests of the Kingdom, that no duty is felt too small or trifling. The man is not found saying, 'I'll do _this_', or 'I won't do _that_', and '_that_ doesn't matter'; but whatsoever his hand findeth to do, he does with his might, and does it unto the Lord. Be not deceived, my friends. Consecration in great things will not atone for neglect in smaller and more trifling matters, and that only is a perfect consecration which is real and all round in its application. In little things and great things self is to be denied, ignored, and God and His glory to be the one end from attaining which the consecrated soul never swerves. Let this be faced at the commencement, and it will save endless controversy later on. It is because so many do not take all this in at the beginning, that disappointments come, and very often breakdowns. Let your consecration take in all time and circumstances, and remember that the soul's responsibility is only limited by its opportunities. 'All for Jesus' should mean 'nothing left out'. 3. _Whole-hearted consecration is a joyous thing._ I don't know how the delusion has become so popular that entire devotion to the service of God means melancholy and sadness, and irksome duties and burdens. It may have only come by a roundabout road, but it is a doctrine of the Devil, who is a liar from the beginning, and the fully consecrated soul hurls the lie back to its father, proclaiming, with a heart full of gladness, 'I delight to do Thy will, my God'; 'My meat and my drink is to do the will of my Father', and 'His fruit is sweet to my taste'. Singleness of purpose and simplicity of intention soon clear discontent and unhappiness out of a man's heart. When the soul has cut loose from all self-considerations, and has put an end to such wretched questions as, 'Will it pay to follow the Master?' or such thoughts as, 'If I give myself fully to God, perhaps I shall have to suffer the loss of many things I hold dear; people will be down upon me, and chaff me, and, perhaps, persecute me; and, besides, I really do want to make a little money for myself and my family, and I must not be righteous over-much'; when, I say, men or women have cast aside all such thoughts, and come to the determination to live for God and for God alone, then indeed are they freed from many things which cause sadness and bitterness. It is the double-minded who are strangers to true lasting joy and peace. The great sorrows of most lives spring from disappointed ambitions, covetousness, or from love of praise, fear of man, or similar things; but when this life of selfishness is crucified, and a man is alive only unto God, none can deprive him of that which he most values. Whilst others may be saying, 'We know thy poverty', he hears the Lord say, 'But thou art rich'. Christ has been revealed to him as a living Friend, and though by the outward eye he sees Him not, 'yet believing, he rejoices with joy unspeakable and full of glory'. Do you remember what John said about that white stone which will be given to him that overcometh? It had 'written in it a new name which no man knoweth save he who receiveth it'. The joy of whole-hearted service for God is like that; no man really understands it save he who possesses it, but of its reality thousands daily testify. Are you fully consecrated? Not after the fashion we spoke of at the beginning, but practically, and in a whole-hearted, all-round way? Have you settled it to go all lengths for God? If not, 'I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies--yourselves--a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service'. III Divine Fellowship _'That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.'_. (1 John i. 3.) My mind and heart have been dwelling upon that sweet word 'fellowship'. We all know what it means in ordinary social intercourse--it means acquaintance, friendship, communion of spirit, interchange of thought and feeling. But I want you to see that all this marks the fellowship prevailing between the Lord and His sanctified saints. There is a chorus we sometimes sing, which expresses something of what I mean:-- _Friendship with Jesus,_ Fellowship Divine; Oh, what blessed, sweet communion, Jesus is a Friend of mine!_ I have been reflecting on this principle as it works itself out in the current everyday life of the sanctified. I will not now try to exhaust all the wonderful things in the vision which has come to me in relation to this matter, for I really could not explain to you all that has been in my mind and heart, but the thing has come to me somewhat in this fashion:-- 1. First of all, I have thought of the _fellowship of Salvation_. That may sound rather low down for a Holiness Meeting, and yet that is just where true fellowship began, so far as I was concerned. There had to be a co-operation, a uniting of God and myself before my soul could be saved at all. Two words were in my mind--'He' and 'I'; He doing His part, and I doing my part. His heart; my heart; His approaches to me by the power and influence of His Holy Spirit; my approaches to Him. Jesus died; I believed. He called; I answered. He gave; I accepted. I trusted, and Jesus saved me. I want you to see what I mean, because it was that union of the Lord Jesus Christ and my own heart which brought life, and light, and peace to my soul. My Salvation life began at that point, and I was able to say, as we often sing:-- _'Tis done, the great transaction's done, I am my Lord's, and He is mine; He drew me, and I followed on, Charmed to confess the Voice Divine._ 2. Then, pursuing this line, my reflection brings me up to this: there is a _fellowship of love_. 'He loved me, and He gave Himself for me'. We love Him because He first loved us. So, you see, our relationship has been built up, and is to be built up, upon that double plank. It is all in that. I do not suppose there is anybody in this Hall who does not know something of the power of love. You not only know the power of loving, but the sweetness of being loved. I am not quite sure which is the better side of the two, but they are two beautiful sides of fellowship. Do we not see it in our family life? At any rate, I do. I can speak for myself in this matter because my family always has been a very affectionate one, and this loving and expressing our love to one another has brought us very close together. I think about the children. I go back to the time when they were little, and remember how they would climb upon my knee, and how they used to press their little faces against mine, and their little hearts, as it were, against my breast; and how, with more feeling than their words could express, they used to say, Dadda, papa, father, you _are_ a dear! I _do_ love you!' You would readily imagine what I should say back to them. It has been just the same with my wife. She has sweetened my life very much with her expressions of love. She has done it by responding to my appeals, and by sharing my sorrows and joys. And I have no doubt that were she here to speak for herself, she would say she has equally felt the force and sweetness of my expressions of affection during the many years we have loved and lived together. I have only told you these things because I want you to see that the fellowship of love is just as real between the Lord Jesus Christ and the soul that is set upon Him, as it is in these sacred human relationships. 3. Then there is the _fellowship of service_. Now, it follows that, if we are fully saved, we are and we should be workers together with God, not simply going out on 'our own', as you young people say sometimes, trying to do people good; but really, if it is as it ought to be, your relations are expressed in those words, 'We are workers together with God'. There are several particulars about that fellowship of service which I want you to note. For instance, there is _the union of purpose_. You cannot have fellowship with God in service without a union of purpose. Are you in for that? Perhaps it may give my words a closer application if I glance at two or three references: 'For this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the Devil'. Are you in union with Him for that purpose? There is the reason round about us, plain and visible enough. Take another: 'To this end came I into the world that I might bear witness of the truth'. Are you in union with Him in that witness-bearing? I assure you there is a great need of it. Take still another: 'As the Father hath sent Me, even so'--that is a very powerful little link--'even so send I you'. There is not only the sender and the one sent, but the same purpose in both minds. There is _the unity of effort_; that is, being yoked together for the work. It is a beautiful thing to be yoked with loving comrades in service, so that when there is a difficulty to face, some burden to be carried, or something to be moved, then you can go in for a good pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together. But this fellowship with Christ really means having Jesus Christ as a yoke-fellow in your work for God; that as you are not your own, you are not left to yourselves, but find that He is yoked up with you, and when the pull comes it is pulling together--He pulls and you pull. 4. Then this service sometimes goes so far as to become _the fellowship of suffering_. Jesus Christ could only redeem men by the sacrifice of Himself. There was no other way, and if He had not done that man would not have been redeemed, and the whole world would have remained under the ban of condemnation and without hope. It is on the same track that we must work out our union with Him in the service of God and humanity. When I was meditating on this Divine union a picture imaged itself before my mind. The scene was a prison in Rome, where was seated a prisoner for Christ's sake; his name was Paul. During a visit to Rome they showed me the place where this was supposed to have occurred. There is Paul, in this prison-cell, writing a letter which he wants to send by one who, having visited him in prison, is now returning to his own people at Philippi. The prisoner is reviewing his life. He writes that he was well-born, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and that he became very zealous, and persecuted the Christians until the Lord met him and converted him. He went on, 'But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.... That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.' And on the same page of his letter Paul says: 'Brethren, be followers together of me'. It is one of the plainest things which the Bible and Christian history confirm, that the union of service does very often include the fellowship of suffering. 5. The last feature of this relationship which I want to name is _fellowship of victory and glory_. Thank God, we are in for that fellowship! We all know that a great victory will crown our Blessed Lord's sacrificial life and service; that the great Victor over death and the grave shall not only see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied, but as He sits upon His throne there will be many crowns of glory. But the blessedness of that knowledge is the fact that if we suffer with Christ we are also to reign with Him--glorified together--not only workers and victors, but 'more than conquerors'. We are to sit down among that company who are able to say that they overcame by the Blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony. We may have to go on with the service and suffering, but we know that we shall be transformed into His blessed likeness, and be sharers of His glory. Salvation, love, service, victory, glory! These are the things which we share with our Lord, and that is what I mean by Divine fellowship. I do not think, however, I can leave this soul-entrancing vision of fellowship without specially indicating how men may enter into it. How shall I do this? By reading to you these words from the First Epistle of John: 'This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the Blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.' Who shall participate in the joy of this experience? The people who walk in the light; the people who are cleansed from all sin in the Blood of Jesus. IV Finding God '_Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart._' (Jeremiah xxix. 13.) The words of Jeremiah in their relation to God are very appropriate for men and women in whose hearts there is any longing after personal Holiness. Look at them: 'Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart'. I like this word, because it turns our minds to the true and only source of light and life and power. We speak of seeking and getting the blessing; but, in reality, the object is to find God, and that deliverance and blessing which can be secured only from Him. In our prayers and songs we express a great fact when we say, 'Thy gifts, alas! cannot suffice unless Thyself be given'. _Less than Thyself, Oh, do not give, In might Thyself within me live, Come, all Thou hast and art._ I want to make it plain that Holiness is an aspect of religion in which the personality of God is very real. We must find God, and have Him possessing and dwelling within us if we are to live the life and do the work which Full Salvation implies. To realize this Divine union is as essential as to experience the forgiveness of sin. We must know God as well as worship Him, and the text I have read indicates to us that _the discovery of a personal God belongs to the heart_: 'Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart'. God's power displayed in Nature may be perceived by the eye, the ear, and other organs of the senses. On the lines of the Psalmist, we may walk out at night, and consider the heavens the work of His fingers, and exclaim, 'All Thy works praise Thee'; 'The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handywork'. The mind also by reflection and deduction may clothe the Creator with attributes or qualities of character, such as Almighty skill and benevolence; but 'spiritual things are spiritually discerned'; and it is only when God reveals Himself to the heart that He is truly known as a personal Father, Friend, and Saviour. To the formal religionist or the casual dealer in pious phrases and occasional prayers, these revelations do not come. It is when the heart is set upon finding God that realizing faith makes-- _The clouds disperse, the shadows fly, The invisible appears in sight, And God is seen by mortal eye._ We urge men and women to thus seek God, because He alone can meet their need; He alone can save after the fashion that they need a Saviour; He alone, having forgiven, can break the power of sin, and cleanse from natural impurity. But the real trouble with some is that they do not seek Full Salvation with that full purpose of heart which the prophet's words imply. In a sense they want the blessing, but I fear they do not want it enough to make them put their whole heart into seeking God's sanctifying power. Turn to the Garden of Gethsemane, on that final night when certain men came to take Jesus. When they fain would have included and taken others, His words, you remember, were, '_If ye seek Me, let these go their way_'. Now, may I not reasonably apply these words to some who regularly attend our Meetings, but do not obtain the blessing? You are holding on to things about which it requires no stretch of imagination to hear Christ say, 'If ye seek Me, let _these_ go their way'. He desires to be your Saviour and Sanctifier, but cannot until you drop the things which hinder and which come between you and Him. Some of these things may not be positively evil in themselves, but they are associated with things which are evil or questionable; doubtful pursuits, questionable friendships or conduct. Do you care enough about God and Holiness to drop all such? Some have not done so up to the present, and it is about these very things which hinder that Jesus says to you, 'If ye seek _Me_, let these things go'. Then, again, some have not found God as a perfect Sanctifier, because their minds are not fully made up as to the lines of service and duty. The general meaning of our various topics may be put thus, 'Holiness, and what comes out of it'. Not simply spiritual blessings as an inward experience, but a gift to be lived out in daily toil and effort to spread the Kingdom. We must have that or our teaching will be rightly regarded as 'goody-goody', and be of little real use. A very fine young woman, on the occasion of my visit to a certain town, offered herself as a Candidate for Army Officership. Hearing that the case did not mature, I inquired a little later, from an Officer who had seen her, what the difficulty was, and he repeated to me the explanation she had given him: 'Well, Colonel, I have changed my mind; I have left The Army and become a Christian'. That seems a strange putting of the position; but I fear that it was with her, as with some of you who have sought to dodge the cross, escape the toil, and evade the testimony, the sacrifice, and the service which are indispensable to the maintenance of Holiness. Instead of trying to escape from duty as it is revealed to us from day to day, our hearts should be tuned up to the idea in the song, which says-- _For thee delightfully employ What e'er Thy bounteous grace hath given; And run my course with even joy, And closely walk with Thee to Heaven._ The central thought of Jeremiah's text is beautifully illustrated in the Parable of the Lost Piece of Silver. Look at this woman's anxious concern and corresponding action; she lights the candle--that is, uses what light she has; she sweeps the house--turns everything over; she searches diligently--keeps at it, not giving up at the first disappointment. Observe also the effect upon herself when her search is successful. Full of satisfaction she calls in her neighbours and friends--'Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I had lost'. Loud in her testimony, she delights in making her blessing known. You see, this woman so valued the piece of silver, that she gave herself up to the search for it, and nothing satisfied her until she found it. When men appreciate the importance of having a clean heart and the blessing of God like that, they will not seek long without result. There are two or three things implied in this whole-hearted search after God which need to be emphasized. Of these I will name, first, _intensity of desire_. There are blessings that come like God's rain and sunshine, sought or unsought; but no man ever got a clean heart who did not badly want it; and if God is to sanctify and keep you in the enjoyment of the blessing, your heart will have to be moved by strong desire. Jesus put it clearly when He talked about 'hungering and thirsting'. Even prayer, without strong desire, does not accomplish much. 'What things soever ye _desire_'; it is that which gives intensity to your prayers, as well as 'believing that ye receive'. The Psalmist's words are equally fitting--'As the hart panteth after the water brooks'--as the hunted deer longs for the stream--'so panteth my soul after Thee, O God'. That means more than a contention for the doctrine, more than a sentimental admiration of Holiness. It implies the deep stirrings of conviction, the heart moved by strong cravings, the crying out, 'Oh, that I might find Him whom my soul desireth'! This whole-hearted seeking the blessing also implies _fullness of intention_. How often I have spoken of the relation of the will; the choice, the setting of the mind in strong purpose, the decision--'I ought, I must, I will secure God's sanctifying blessing'; all this counts for much. People speak of their desires and hopes, but how slow they are to make up their minds that, at all costs, they will seek and find a Saviour, by whose power they shall be fully delivered, and kept in purity and fellowship with God. I like those Bible words about 'sincerity', 'following the Lord fully', 'cleaving unto Him with full purpose of heart', for it is to people in that state of mind that God reveals Himself. Finally, _compliance with God's conditions_ is included in whole-heartedly seeking Holiness. The revealed conditions of entire Sanctification have often been stated, but may be repeated once more: a turning from all things known to be evil or doubtful; a full surrender and dedication of ourselves to God's service; and a simple trust in the all-cleansing Blood of Jesus Christ. The real tests are different with different people, but all who seek this blessing must face God's conditions, and pay the price by complying with them, not only as I have stated the conditions in general terms, but as the Holy Spirit reveals them to each one personally. To one it is, 'Do this', to another 'Do that'; 'Give up this', or 'Give up that'; 'Trust Me for this', 'Trust Me for that'. But all who cast themselves fully into God's hands, letting Him have His own way with them, shall find the truth of Jeremiah's message, 'Ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart'. V The Doctrine Adorned '_But shewing all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things._' (Titus ii. 10.) Those of us who are specially interested in this great work often seek for plans by which the knowledge and enjoyment of a Full Salvation may be extended. I think I have found a good plan for helping the Kingdom forward, and I see it in this little sentence which Paul wrote to Titus: 'That they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things'. When I say that is a plan for spreading Salvation, I mean simply this: as there is nothing which commends an apple-tree so much as the sight of the ripened fruit hanging from the branches, so nothing sets people longing for Holiness like the living exhibition of it. First of all, I want you to see the force of that little word 'adorn'. In speaking about adornment we usually mean something more than necessary dress. The word in our minds usually expresses the idea of clothing or covering, with the addition of decorations or ornaments. If you fathers and mothers ask your boy or girl the meaning of the word, they will probably turn to the dictionary, and tell you something like this: 'To "adorn" is to set off to advantage, to add to the attractiveness, to beautify, to decorate as with ornaments'. Now that is exactly what the Apostle meant, and the application is that you and I must set off to advantage, add to the attractiveness of the Gospel which we profess to believe. Jesus Christ meant that when He said, 'Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works'--and be so influenced that they shall 'glorify your Father which is in Heaven'. That also was the idea in Paul's mind in that verse to the Philippians, 'Shine as lights', or luminaries, 'in the world'. Will you also look at that word 'doctrine'? It is not an acceptable word at public meetings, generally implying some system of theology, some stated creed, some definition of religious belief. But whilst that may be the general application, the Apostle had no such idea in his mind when he wrote these words. He was now writing about persons many of whom were of very humble position, servants in the houses of the ungodly, often mere slaves in some pagan household. They had never heard about formulated creeds or theologies, but they did understand the duty of living up to their profession. They knew the importance of showing in their daily lives the power of the things which they believed, and thus commending their religious faith and teaching to all observers. There are people who know very little of what you call 'the body of doctrine', who yet in all simplicity hold the truth of God, and live up to it. Tens of thousands have crossed the River who could never give you a definition of any doctrine; but they accepted the simple truths in their hearts, were ornaments to their profession, and are now in Glory. Now take the two words together--'adorn' and 'doctrine'--and then you will see your duty. There are many doctrines to which this duty of adorning may be made to apply. I might talk to you about the doctrine relating to God's government, and bring in _the truth about His good guiding providence_. We profess to believe in that. But the question is, Does your regular practice, your daily trust, your hourly following and accepting what God's providence sends you, adorn the doctrine? Then I might also speak to you about _the doctrine of prayer and its result_. Surely you believe that God 'hears and answers prayer'. But can you say that your life of faith and victory is such that all who know you believe it, because they see you living a life of faith and victory such as can only come to the men and women whose prayers God does answer? That is, do you adorn the doctrine? For the present purpose, however, I want to apply the principle to _the doctrine of Holiness_. The great object of these Addresses is to help men and women into the enjoyment of the blessing of Holiness. We hear about that; sing about that; most of you believe in it, and some of you proclaim it; but do you know what is really wanted? It is that you shall so manifest the spirit of Holiness, give such illustrations of it as to adorn the truth, and make people around you say, 'We are bound to believe the doctrine when we look at these people, for _they live the blessing_'. You cannot but know what we teach as the doctrine of Holiness. Our trumpet has no uncertain sound. We not only talk about the pardoning mercy of God, but about the all-cleansing Blood of Jesus Christ. We not only point out how the rebel can be transformed into a child, but we show how a man's heart can be made pure, and his nature renewed by the indwelling Spirit. Delivered from the love of sin and from its pollution in his heart, he can be kept from sin and sinning, and be enabled to rejoice evermore, to pray without ceasing, and in everything to give thanks. A clean heart, filled with love, possessed and directed by the Holy Ghost--that is the experience which we call Holiness, and the truth which we are exhorted to adorn. Only think what a recommendation of the doctrine it would be if you all adorned the truth, and showed in your daily lives the power to live in that Holiness and righteousness of which I am speaking. I am not now asking whether you have an intelligent comprehension of the doctrine, or that you should say what is possible, and what is not. Some of you could probably define the blessing as well as I can; but your duty is not simply to define or defend or explain Holiness, but to adorn the teaching, give exhibitions of it, make everybody see what it means in living flesh and blood amidst the hurly-burly of life. 1. And now, what are the means by which you and I can fulfil this exhortation of Paul? First, you can adorn the doctrine by _personal testimony_. Personal testimony, coming from the heart, is always good and helpful; that is, to be able to say about any definite experience, 'Oh, glory! He has done it for me!' But this is especially valuable about a clean heart, and in relation to a Full Salvation. When I was a boy I sometimes heard the doctrine of Entire Sanctification discussed over pipes and ale; but those discussions, which were merely theological disputes, had little or no relation to the personal experience of the people who were debating and contending and losing their tempers over the doctrine, and so it made no impression on me. Years after, my own heart was awakened, and desires arose in my soul. I began to search for the truth about it, and to listen for references to it, and most of all to rejoice if I could find or hear a clear testimony about it, for then I saw the possibility of the blessing for myself. I frequently throw my Meetings open for testimony, because I know the helpful power of such words. Sometimes the wording may be a little upside down, or some qualifying term be left out, or some exaggerating word put in; but in spite of all, great is the power of testimony to encourage other hearts. I fear, however, that many people are silent who ought to speak, and I touch some very closely when I say that owing to this silence the power of your experience has declined and become like a faded flower or a moth-eaten garment, and then when you would fain speak you find the assurance about the blessing has waned. My word, therefore, to you is, first of all get the blessing, then at every suitable opportunity, profess it openly and boldly for God, and by your happy testimony you will adorn the doctrine of Holiness. 2. Again, you can adorn the doctrine by your _consistent living_. To profess one thing and practise another is a blot on the profession, and a despicable thing. What I may call mere Meeting piety, platform or parlour Holiness, will not stand the weather. It is too much like the painted sparrows sold as canaries--the paint comes off and the real nature of the bird is revealed. For instance, how can you ornament the truth if, after testifying here, you go out to gossip and slander and injure your neighbour? The word lived out is more powerful than its mere repetition. The teaching may be good and powerful, the testimony still more so; but the evidence of the life and spirit is the most powerful of all. I heard somebody tell a story about a man who was too pious to shave himself on Sunday, and yet he was pretty keen during the other six days trying, in his business, to 'shave' other people. I hope you are not among that sort. If you want to adorn this doctrine, there must be the beauties of a happy, consistent character and life, otherwise it goes for nothing. I do not ask the adornment of education, nor the polish of culture, so-called; neither do I ask a sanctimonious attitude; I only claim from you professors of the blessing the beauties of grace in your personal character and conduct. The endorsement of the lip by the life is only equalled by the discount to the teaching caused by some inconsistent action or unfaithfulness in the teacher or professor. An angry word, even a flash of the eye, has been known to take the point off some well-given talk or testimony. A lack of kindly consideration, which looks like selfish indulgence, is not easily atoned for, even by illuminating speeches. As one has said, 'The words ever go to the level of the life--up or down'. Talking about Holiness has small effect unless it is to be seen in your disposition, in your ordinary life, in your loving consideration for other people, or in your patient endurance of injury, real or imaginary. Without that your profession of Holiness is mere talk without adorning. 3. You must also adorn the doctrine by your _zeal for God and souls_. Holiness means the possession of the Christ-spirit, the passion for saving others, with reasonable efforts to secure what you seek. When God sanctifies your soul He makes a great inward light; the purpose is not to be your own selfish enjoyment, but that you may be better qualified as a minister of blessing and Salvation to the poor dark souls around you. The love of souls is an essential feature of inward Holiness, and if this is exhibited in practical effort you will adorn your profession and compel people to believe in your doctrine. There is just one other word of importance in that verse, 'that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour'. I mean the word, 'Saviour'. I am so glad that is there to meet those who say, 'Ah! you talk about adornments, but I am distressed because I see so many things about me that disfigure and discredit the doctrine'. You feel that you need a power which can give deliverance from the worldly spirit, the light and frivolous disposition, bad tempers, resentments, and other selfish and sinful things which hold you more or less in bondage; but in that beautiful word, 'Saviour', you have a pledge, a guarantee that it can be made all right, for He is able to deliver you and save you fully. VI Sureness '_The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever._' (Isaiah xxxii. 17.) One reason why I glory in teaching Full Salvation is that it includes a religion of certainty. It brings a man to a place of sureness as to his religious relationships. A soul just awakened to a sense of responsibility is naturally full of wonderment and anxiety, and this must be disposed of. So that when we speak of a man obtaining Salvation, we say 'he found peace'. Doubt is torment, and torment is the opposite of peace. The soul cannot rest if it is perpetually on the string. To enjoy religion the mind must be settled about the main facts of the case; there must be a feeling of sureness as to one's acceptance with God and His approval of our spiritual condition. We have a wily old Devil to deal with, and I believe that nothing gives him more malicious delight than to get sincere souls into the bondage of fear as to their state and standing. I believe many sincere souls hesitate to claim the blessing, and say they have it, because they are afraid of deluding themselves or deceiving others by their testimonies. Afraid to do right for fear of doing wrong, they go on, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, falling into discouragement and doubt, and allowing the Devil to get an advantage over them in this respect. Now, we cannot dispute the fact that in the experiences of good people there are many points of difference. Temptations, surroundings, position, and work are the cause of these differences. But in the midst of all, there is the possibility and blessed privilege of being sure about one's own rightness before God. I saw a reference the other day to Charles Spurgeon's method of treating this matter. He showed how disturbing and distressing it would be if, in our domestic life, we had elements of uncertainty such as many people have in regard to their spiritual relationships. After quoting the old verse:-- _'Tis a point I long to know, Oft it causes anxious thought; Do I love the Lord or no, Am I His or am I not?_ Mr. Spurgeon made a humorous parody of the verse by making it read:-- _'Tis a point I long to know, Oft it causes anxious thought; Do I love my wife or no, Am I hers or am I not?_ Uncertainty about our religious condition is quite as unsatisfactory as any doubt about our most sacred domestic relationships. Sureness is vital to peace, and the truly sanctified soul will live in the region of certainty, Divine things and Divine revelations becoming definite and real to him. Temptations to doubt and fear will arise; but, in spite of them, those who are sanctified realize that the Blood cleanses and the Holy Spirit dwells within. I will not ask whether you have any religion or not, because most of you are professors of religion, but I do ask, Has your religion got this element of 'sureness' in it? We must settle that point. You may say, 'If I am to be sure, I must have evidence'. Quite so. We will, therefore, glance together at several things about which you can either say, 'It is so', or 'It is not so', and thus arrive at a reasonable conclusion as to where you are. I will classify the evidence in this way:-- First, there is the testimony of one's own consciousness, or one's own spirit, as Paul puts it. Second, there is the testimony of the Spirit of God--the Holy Ghost. Third, there will be the results manifest to ourselves and to others; effects which testify just as reliably as the hanging fruit indicates the character and condition of any particular tree. 1. By the first class of evidence I do not mean a set of fanciful sensations, or frames of feeling, but such an exercise of our judgment, when we examine the facts before us, as will enable us to come to a sound and reasonable conclusion. _The witness of one's own spirit_ is largely a matter of consciousness and faith, and it works like this: 'I am not only conscious of God's revealed claims upon me, and my own duty to Him; but, as far as I understand, I have put myself in line with what He wants me to be and do. For instance, I am told that whilst God will sanctify me I am able to sanctify myself. I therefore ask, "Have I so far co-operated with Him as to come out and separate myself from evil?" If I am right I can say, "Yes, I have"; and as a further evidence of my sincerity I seek to abstain from all appearance of evil.' I am also commanded to present myself for practical and joyful service, and I am told that I must believe such a sacrifice is acceptable because whatever touches the Divine altar is holy. Now, I can be quite sure as to my compliance with these demands, and my willingness to live as a sanctified soul ought to live. I know whether or not in these things I have done my part; and, if I know that I have, I can then reasonably trust God or reckon on Him to do His part. That is what Paul calls 'a good conscience toward God', and there is no presumption in such a conclusion. If we turn to John's Epistle we shall see how plainly he puts the truth about assurance. 'If', says the Apostle, 'our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things'; but 'if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God'. Without this conscious sincerity it is useless to pray for the blessing, for God cannot sanctify us whilst we are clinging to any known wrong or compounding with some doubtful habit or folly. If, on the other hand, we are conscious that we have no reserves, and accept by faith the cleansing Blood as the cure for our heart's plague, we may with all reasonableness say, 'I have the testimony of my own spirit'. 2. Let us look at the second class of evidence, namely, _the testimony of the Spirit of God_--the assurance of the Holy Ghost. If we are to be quite certain about the important things in relation to the soul, we must have the expression of God's mind and approval. Nothing is made clearer in the Apostolic writings than the fact that it is our blessed privilege to have this Divine testimony. Paul not only tells us that 'the Spirit beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God', but speaks of the marvellous manifestations of God in saved souls in subsequent revelations: 'We have received the Spirit, which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.' On first thought we might say, perhaps, that the gift would speak for itself. But the Lord goes beyond that by giving us not only the blessing itself, but also the Spirit to assure us that we have got the blessing. John is on the same line when he says repeatedly about those spiritual blessings, 'we know', 'we know that we know', and the secret of sureness is made clear, 'we know by the Spirit which He hath given unto us'. When we speak of the witness of the Spirit, either to our conversion or our sanctification, we do not mean some audible voice or some miraculous demonstration, but an inwrought conviction as to the correctness of our words when, in all sincerity, and to the glory of God, we profess to have arrived at a certain point, or obtained a certain blessing. It is a conviction which removes doubt, and satisfies the soul on the question. The mode of this--the way in which the Holy Ghost does it--may be quite beyond our comprehension; but the fact is there, as far beyond dispute as with the assurance of the blind man, who said, 'This one thing I know, that whereas once I was blind, now I see'. 3. Then I also used the word _'results', as indicating a class of evidence_ without which all other professed experiences are but passing sentiments and sensations. In the character and life there must be results in the shape of those holy fruits of which I have so frequently spoken. In a sense often described, and well understood, every child of God becomes at conversion the temple of the Holy Ghost; we are born of the Spirit; enlightened by the Spirit; our spiritual life is sustained by the Spirit. The fruits of the Spirit are therefore manifest in a greater or lesser degree, but the advantage to the entirely sanctified is that not only is the fruit-bearing power increased, but fruits of an opposite character are absent. In other words, the fully sanctified man is 'filled with the Spirit'. The fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, are abundant in him. To illustrate my meaning, take one passage relating to that spiritual fruit described by the word _love_. 'We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.' Now, of course, that comes into operation at conversion; but in the fully sanctified this is love without admixture, pure love, without any feeling opposed to love. We can soon test ourselves. Think of love in the forgiveness of injury; the love which 'thinketh no evil', 'envieth not', the love which 'worketh no ill to his neighbour'. Where does grudge-bearing, backbiting, or uncharitableness come in? Pride, passion, self-assertion, and such things belong not to the results of sanctification; the opposites are found in those who bring forth 'fruits unto Holiness'. I heard a good woman quote a passage with an application of her own which is true in point of fact, even if not the precise meaning of the original writer. 'Great peace have they which love Thy law, and nothing shall offend them.' She meant, literally, that, however she might be pained by the words or actions of those about her, she would not be 'offended'. This is a pretty high class of result, for nothing is more common than the readiness to take offence. But this refusal to take offence is, with the other fruits, clear proof that the heart and life are sanctified. So I might work out this law of results. These samples will, however, indicate my line of teaching. Now, coming back to my thought at the beginning--the necessity for 'Sureness' in regard to religion, and especially in the experience of Holiness--let me ask, Where are we found? Have the testings confirmed that certainty of heart, or have my words disturbed self-satisfaction? Do not be afraid of facing the direct issue. If you have the evidences referred to, then be sure to go about proclaiming what God has done. But if not, then this unsatisfied and unsatisfactory condition cannot be persisted in when the Fountain which cleanses is open for all, and when the Holy Spirit is here to apply the Blood, and to take full possession of every soul. Let this be the hour when you come to the altar round which the cleansing stream so freely flows. VII The Pathway of the Holy '_ An highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness._' (Isaiah xxxv. 8.) One would think that Isaiah was speaking of two separate roads, for his prophetic eye sees 'a highway and a way' along which the course of God's people runs. Perhaps we may interpret the prophet's distinction as referring to the higher and lower paths along some of the roadways in the Holy City; but he makes it quite plain that the course of the truly godly may be correctly described as 'The way of Holiness'. Nobody here would like to say there are two separate roads to Heaven, but as we note the lives and experiences of many Christian professors it really does appear that there are two levels on which they run their various religious courses--one the lower, the other the higher path; one lying oft in shadow, the other up in the open sunshine of Heaven; one largely a profession of faith and repeated religious observances, the other full of rich experiences and realizations of God's favour and spiritual gifts. Some people appear to step up and down according to seasons and inclinations, when, for instance, Holiness Conventions and Higher Life Conferences are on or off--like the man we heard testifying, who thanked God that he had had no ins and outs, but admitted many ups and downs. We want to help you to walk in what Isaiah calls 'The way of Holiness', or in modern terms, the pathway of the holy. There are _three things about a way_. There is a beginning; a finishing place; and the course between the two points. This pathway of the holy may be said to have its beginning at the cleansing Fountain; it finishes, if it finishes at all, amid the glories of the Heavenly World; but between these two points lies the road which must be trodden, the journey which has to be made. We often dwell upon that moment where the soul, by an act of submission and trust, enters upon the highway, or 'gets the blessing', as we say; but Holiness is, after all, a state, _a continuous experience_, a set course or way in life where the will of the Lord is supreme, and the full-hearted love of God is the great moving force. It is in that course and along that path that you and I ought to travel continually. We like testimonies from any who are in the way, but we appreciate and are helped still more by the words of those who have walked on in patient faith and obedience for long periods. Reading lately the life of William Bramwell, I was encouraged by his testimony as to obtaining the blessing of Holiness and its enjoyment for many long years. But I was the more delighted to find his words supported by his acquaintances, who bore testimony that Bramwell adorned the doctrine so beautifully. Of himself this good man said, 'The Lord came suddenly to His temple, and I had an immediate evidence that this was the blessing; my soul was then all wonder, love, and praise. It is now twenty-six years ago--I have walked in that liberty ever since.' You see, he _went on_ in the way of Holiness because it had become his way of life. One who was closely associated with this man said, 'I knew him intimately for twenty years. I lived in the same house with him in his seasons of relaxation as well as occupation, but never saw him in such a temper that I could reprove. His soul was like a spring, continually overflowing with the most amiable, benevolent emotion. In his last years, in particular, he was like a shock of corn fully ripe and fit for the heavenly garner, or like a beautiful tree whose vigorous and luxuriant branches were weighted with a diversity of the richest fruit.' Bramwell trod consistently the pathway of the holy, a worthy successor of Enoch, who 'walked with God', and was translated after receiving the testimony that his way pleased God. I would like to refer to several features of this pathway of the holy which appeal strongly to me. 1. The way of Holiness is a _pathway of the purified_. The prophet intimates plainly that nothing unclean can pass that way. The hearts of men and women who are to walk there must be washed from their moral defilements. I heard of a good man who said, 'Many years ago the Lord took me out of the mire; some years after, He took the mire out of me'. I think you quite understand his meaning. Sin is a foul, slimy, miry thing, defiling whoever it touches. This must be purged away if you are to walk in the way of Holiness; and it can only be purged by the 'Blood of Jesus Christ which cleanseth us from all sin'. 2. The way of Holiness is _a pathway of light and learning_. It is a way of advancing knowledge. There is a point where the path commences, when one knows for the first time that the Blood cleanses, and the Holy Spirit sheds abroad the love of God in the heart; but each succeeding step brings fuller light, and things unknown are revealed. Familiar intercourse with God brings deeper realizations and knowledge of Divine and spiritual things, so that yours does indeed become the path of the just 'which shineth more and more unto the perfect day'. As a result, your own heart is enlarged, your spiritual capacities increased, and, growing in grace, you advance in knowledge and favour with God. Those who walk this pathway are they to whom the Lord whispers His secrets, and whose souls He fills with heavenly delights. Oh, that we could induce you to step up from the lower to this higher and better pathway! Let me give you a note from the personal experience of another of God's saints who walked the higher way, one who habitually lived on that level, and who expressed himself thus: 'Let me say that my spiritual life is no longer like a leaky suction pump, half the time dry, and affording scanty water only by desperate tugging of the handle, but it is like an artesian well of water springing up unto everlasting life. The Scriptures are sweeter than honey. Prayer and praise are a delight, and it is like Paradise regained; the glory of Christ has become the all-absorbing passion of my soul.' The sanctified life is not only a lengthening of the spiritual experience, but a growth or advance in the knowledge of Divine realities. 3. Then, further, the way of Holiness is _a path of duty_, not a pathway of ease and indulgence. We can never leave this practical thought out, whatever our topic may be, for Holiness and hard work are inseparable. The eyes being open to see the need, the hand is ever ready to take up its task; and the labour of love being the sweetest of all occupations, work for God and souls becomes a delight. He who is too holy to work for others will soon step to the lower path. The willing soul will ever be crying, 'Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?' and the answer will come, 'Do this, do that, come here, go there'. The way of Holiness is not free from temptation and suffering; but, thank God, it can be _the way of victory and safety_. Even the ordinary workaday life is full of circumstances which try and tempt and test you. The more you struggle towards living in God's way the more the Devil will attack you. The path which the holy Saviour trod was the way of the cross, and they who follow Him must share the cross-bearing. The ultimate crown is for the overcomer, and not for the untempted one. _Christ leads us through no darker rooms Than He went through before; He who into God's Kingdom comes Must enter by this door._ There is no crown without a previous cross; but with trials and temptations comes the way of escape and victory, 'these light afflictions ... work out an exceeding weight of glory'. The Book says, 'All who will live godly ... shall suffer persecution'. And this will be specially so with those who openly profess and live on the lines of a Full Salvation. Here is a page from the personal experience of one who was determined to walk the King's highway:-- 'Perfect love', he says, 'will not go long untested. For a time I was not called to suffer distinctly for Christ from that hostile spirit which nailed Him to the cross. The lion, however, was not dead, but asleep, and presently he awoke and glared at me. My soul was calm as a summer's evening. When it pleased the Blessed Master that I should suffer reproach and vilification for my testimony, then it was that the river of joy which flows from the Throne flowed through my heart as never before. It was a new experience--a quintessence of joy. The shouts of burning martyrs were no longer a mystery. I stagger no more at the account of the saints who took joyfully the spoiling of their goods. My soul is bathed in an ocean of balm and ineffable joy.' 4. But I spoke also of _the safety_ of the way of Holiness. I must speak of that more fully another time, but what I mean is this: So long as you have the remains of sin in your heart you are exposed to a double danger--the enemy without and the responding traitor within. One reason why religion is so unsatisfactory to some people is that they persist in walking on the low level where doubts often spoil their worship and the allurements of the world pull very hard, and its siren song makes discord in their hallelujahs. It is, of course, possible to backslide from any level; but, believe me, the prospect of stability is infinitely greater if you get a clean heart, and determine to walk in the pathway of the holy. In closing, let me quote a short prayer. David cried: 'Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts: see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting'. If, in sincerity and simplicity of intention to follow Christ fully, you offer that prayer, God will not only lead you along the way, but to the Home of the holy. There are, however, two little notes which you should compare in this connexion. One refers to the passage now before us, 'The way of Holiness'. It is said, 'The unclean shall not pass over it'. The other refers to Heaven, and says, 'There shall in no wise enter any thing that defileth or maketh a lie'. By connecting these two you see that you need to be not only led along the heavenly way, but to be made fit for the heavenly courts; and David's prayer, sincerely offered, brings that fitness--that purity of heart which sees God and delights in the completion of His holy will. VIII Circumstances and Consequences '_And fears shall be in the way._' (Ecclesiastes xii. 5.) The man who wrote these words was specially emphasizing the importance of settling one's relationships to the great Creator before the coming of days when infirmities increase, and decay of natural powers sets in. The practical outcome of that thought is, that postponement only adds to one's difficulties when the battle really has to be fought. Amongst those difficulties the sacred writer places that natural foreboding, physical shrinking and hesitation which paralyse men when, after lives spent in sin and selfish indulgence, they desire to make their peace with God; for, says he, 'They shall be afraid of that which is high, and _fears shall be in the way_'. The imaginary obstacles which arise in people's minds, seeming to make holy living impossible, are varied in character, but I see that many are influenced by fears and feelings concerning things which I class under the headings of 'Circumstances and Consequences'. How often, when giving earnest advice, one gets the response, 'My circumstances are against me', 'Placed as I am, it cannot be', or 'The consequences are too serious', 'The price of the blessing is too high'. Even with persons who have no doubt as to the possibility of a clean heart and sanctification of life, these thoughts operate; and we find the fear of circumstances hindering one, and the fear of consequences influencing another, so that they are held back from definitely seeking the blessing. True, in many instances, the idea is a delusion, a snare of the Devil, by which souls are kept out of God's Full Salvation; but, there is the fact--'fears are in the way'. Fear is like a great magnifying-glass; or one of those mirrors which give a distorted image of things reflected in them. This effect is often produced in persons both as regards their own circumstances and the consequences of following the leadings of God's Spirit. You may remember how Bunyan, in his 'Pilgrim's Progress', represents Christian desiring to enter the House Beautiful, but suddenly he espied two lions in the way, and was almost frightened out of his purpose until some one told him that, if he went boldly on, and kept in the middle of the path, he need not fear, seeing the lions were securely chained. What an illustration of the quaking fears which hinder definite action in regard to spiritual blessings! 1. A few words as to _circumstances_ may be helpful to some one. Let me, however, first make one thing clear. With some people circumstances exist which are insurmountable barriers; there are positions in the world which could not be held by a fully sanctified person any more than fire can be carried in a man's bosom and he not be burned; situations involving the practice of evil or resulting in gain through the unjust sufferings of others. Such positions must be given up, if men wish to enjoy God's sanctifying power. I am not, however, dealing now with such positions or the circumstances connected with them; I am referring to circumstances or conditions of life which are lawful in themselves and in the light of the Word of God, but which may present difficulties and involve serious trial to those determined to live purely and serve God faithfully. The fear in some instances is that if they obtain the blessing the strain of temptation would be such as to render a fall probable. 'I could not _keep_ the blessing if I got it'; 'If I could change my position, or surroundings, or connexions, then I would take the necessary steps'. These are words we frequently hear. A married man or woman says, 'Ah! if only I were single, then I could live a life of full consecration'. With equal seriousness the single person says, 'Ah! if only I were married, then the life of purity and Holiness would be possible to me'. The mother, fearful about the strain which the care of the children brings, often speaks in the same way. So it is with business relationships and many other matters in which the circumstances are presented as things making Holiness an impossibility. When I was a young man in business I yearned for a position in which I could be separate from all worldly entanglements, so that I could obtain and enjoy the blessing. But, do you know, since I have been a Salvation Army Officer, I have often been tempted to think that the sanctified life is easier in the circumstances of commercial life, and that if I was so placed the spiritual things would be more appreciated, and I should be able to live nearer to God. You see, it is the same old temptation, 'My circumstances, my conditions of life, my work, my home', and the fear of these things often becomes a snare. That is a pathetic picture which the Psalmist gives us of these poor Jews by the waters of Babylon, who, when urged to sing the songs of Zion, answered, 'How shall we sing the Lord's songs in a strange land?' Is not that the feeling which bursts from many lips and many more hearts, 'How can you expect _me_, in _my_ circumstances, to get sanctified and live a holy life?' But is not that just the point where the triumph of faith comes in? It is there that we see the value of those exceeding great and precious promises by which you are to become a partaker of the Divine nature, and on which your faith is to build. 'As thy days, so shall thy strength be'; 'My God shall supply all your need'; and that includes your need in cleansing, your need in keeping, and your need in blessing adapted to your circumstances. Remember, the Lord is the Master of circumstances, and you must put yours into His hands, and trust Him not only to sanctify you wholly, but to preserve you blameless unto the end. You must trust God to make you equal to your circumstances. 2. But there is that second class of anxious persons to whom I referred: those who are held back by _the fear of consequences_. Oh, what crowds of enlightened souls might be walking triumphantly along the King's highway, who are yet tramping on amidst doubts and fears and frequent condemnation, all because they dread the pressure of God's claims upon them, and fear the consequences of making a whole-hearted surrender to Him. There is another point of view about which I must speak a word in passing. When looking at the consequences of fully yielding to God's claims, and perhaps trembling and hesitating, do you ever think of the results of holding back what you know God wants? Do not forget that there are some consequences of saying 'No' to the Lord. When a child knows his father's wish, but, in answer to a reasonable request, says, 'No', you call it disobedience. Is it not a still more serious thing to be disobedient in the presence of more than a father's love? You must count the cost of that, when resisting the light and influence of God's Spirit. Surely, you will not choose to be numbered among those who 'knew their Lord's will, but did it not'. In the Gospel story such were 'beaten with many stripes'; that means stripes of loss, stripes of pain, stripes of sorrow, perhaps even stripes of death. If we are to suffer, let it be the result of following Him, rather than the consequence of denying our Lord. Now, I do not want to mislead anybody, for, of course, there are consequences of surrender and determination to live the holy life; but, unfortunately, these fearful ones look at the wrong side of the list. They think of the separateness from the world involved in a life of Holiness; they think of the cold shoulder which some, even Christian friends, would give them; they think of the toil after souls which the sanctified must maintain; of the money that they may have to give; of the partnership in Christ's sufferings, and other self-denying expressions of devotion to God and the Kingdom. 'Oh, I shall have to wear uniform!' or 'go to the Open-Air', or 'perhaps become an Army Officer', and, as an Officer, 'may have to leave my native land'. The enemy holds these and many similar things before the eyes of a convicted soul, very often magnifying the facts until the word difficulty is changed to impossibility, and, like the young ruler of the Gospel story, they 'go away sorrowful'. A man came across London to be present at one of our Thursday Meetings. When spoken to by an Officer, he admitted the force of all that had been said, but he found an insurmountable difficulty in his business as a shopkeeper. He saw that the goods on his shelves and sold over the counter were mixed, including what he realized to be bad and damaging to many others. His heart was full of conviction and desire, but anxiety about his wife and family prevented him closing down, while his conscience prevented him selling a business which he knew had wrong and doubtful things connected with it. 'What is wrong for me', he said, 'would be wrong for another'; and so he could not pay the price, and, like the young ruler referred to, he has gone away sorrowful. In the Meeting of the following week a man came to the table seeking the blessing, and he cried out aloud, 'O Lord, give me a clean heart! Take the malice out which I have had towards these two persons! O Lord, I will go straight to them, and confess, and ask them to forgive me!' Needless to add, the blessing came, and, rejoicing, he went off to his home, fifty miles out of London, to fulfil his word. The contrast between this and the man previously mentioned teaches its own lesson. Now, it is quite right that seekers of Full Salvation should _look at the cost, and count it well_; but, Oh, that they would also think of the tremendous balance of joy and peace and blessing which more than makes up for what has to be borne or done or given up! Instead of dim twilight, or hazy doubts or forebodings, the sunshine of the Divine Presence makes all things bright and gladsome. Instead of depending for light and peace on 'suns' which 'go down' and 'moons' which 'withdraw' themselves, the fully sanctified man finds that God has become his 'everlasting light, and the days of his mourning are ended'. As I have said, there will be sacrifice, but there also will be satisfaction; and, as with the mother in regard to her new-born babe, the fully saved soul forgets the suffering and the sacrifice which has been made. Sometimes we are tempted to look at sacrifice apart from love. I heard Mr. Bramwell Booth say in a Meeting, 'Sacrifice is the flower of love'; and you know full well that things which are otherwise impossible become comparatively easy to true love and faith. Men do not talk about sacrifices when they realize that they have received more--much more--than that which they gave up. When I hear people dwelling on how much they have given up for God, I begin to wonder whether those self-denying ones have realized the joy and satisfaction which God wants to give to the fully consecrated heart. If they have, it is strange for them to talk of rushlight sacrifices whilst they are bathed in the sunlight of the Divine Presence. Sometimes distressing consequences do follow surrender and faith, but are there not also glorious consequences in the form of joy in the seasons of sorrow, light and guidance in the hours of perplexity, Divine approval and communion when others misunderstand and shun us? Surely the knowledge of this leads me to cry, 'O my Lord, let me have the blessing with all its consequences!' Oh, my friends, whilst counting the cost, look at both sides of God's gift, the crown as well as the cross; the delight as well as the denial; the heavenly sunshine as well as the earthly shadows; and the great, glorious, everlasting reward in eternity. When you have looked at all these things, make your choice; and, having chosen aright, 'hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown'. IX Bound to the Altar '_Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar._' (Psalm cxviii. 27.) Periodically in our Halls we have had what we call Altar Services. At such times, and more especially during the Self-Denial and Harvest Festival efforts, Soldiers, friends, and others who are interested in God's work are invited to come forward with gifts of money to lay upon the special table which, for that occasion, serves the purpose of an altar. Those who have been present at these Meetings will not need to be told that the 'gift' is irrevocable. The giver cannot honestly get it back--it has been deliberately parted with. That is a very definite thing _done_, and it illustrates the central idea of the verse which I have read to you. Some time ago I went with The General to Stockholm, where the Swedish Officers were gathered together for their annual Congress. At the close of the Councils I asked an Officer how he liked the Meetings, and what the result would be. He replied, 'Commissioner, it's just like this. It is as if The General during these days builded an altar, and to-night we all climbed upon that altar offering ourselves a sacrifice unto God, and the fire came down and sanctified the offering.' _The true worship and service of God_--it need not be told--_involves sacrifice_. If any one here feels that religion is all a question of how much he can get out of God by saying so many prayers or offering so many donations, he has a totally wrong conception of what it is. I know that there are many who regard their vows to God very lightly. They seem to think they can get through their religion without much self-denial. Religion of that sort, however, is worth nothing either to those who possess it or to the Lord whom they profess to serve. Without self-sacrifice, without self-denial, religion comes to nothing, or, at any rate, amounts to very little. I do not desire that you should imitate the senseless practices prevailing in some countries, where the people are allowed to build their hopes of Salvation upon penance and self-torture. And yet we are sometimes put to shame by the things we hear and see. A short time ago I received a letter from a young Officer in India. After describing some pleasing scenes, he said, 'One sees some awful things out here. I saw a man the other day literally walking upon nails. It made me shiver. He imagined that by this he could save his soul. With what passion I wished that man could only understand that other nails were pierced in other feet for him! But you see how in earnest the people here are about their religion, and in all these things they are seeking for Salvation.' There are not many who are prepared to do what that poor Indian devotee did. They are a long way off that. But unless they are prepared to include sacrifice in their religion, they are not on the lines either of their Lord's example or their Lord's words. The cross, the following, the denial of self, the Calvary path, cannot be excluded from the life of Christ's follower. Whilst true service must always be a spiritual thing, do not imagine it is something merely 'in the mind'. I have heard it talked about in the same way as a doctor talked to a poor lad who had his thumb crushed in a machine. 'Don't shout, my poor boy', he said. 'Don't you know I feel it as truly as you do?' 'Perhaps so,' replied the boy; 'but you feels it in your mind, and I feels it in my thumb!' Sacrifice is often talked about by some people who feel it perhaps as much as the doctor felt the crushed thumb, being largely a matter of sympathy, without the actual hurting. This matter of sacrifice indicates a certain principle, a certain state of mind, which _expresses itself in two ways_. It is either a giving up of things which are against God's will, or the contribution of something which is valuable, to be surrendered or used in His service. Shall I not say that sacrifice represents the heart saying, on the one hand, 'I will come out, and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing'? and, on the other hand, 'What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?' Not only singing, 'Where He leads I will follow', 'Lord, I make a full surrender', but actually spending and being spent for Him. I need not dwell at any great length upon the word 'altar'. I referred to the table in our Altar Services as the place of gifts. It is also the place of dedication, and the place of sacrifice. Thank God, it has been so to many, as well as the mercy-seat, where God has sealed the acceptance of the offering presented to Him. How often have we been reminded of that altar of sacrifice in the shape of the accursed cross, where the Saviour made atonement for our sins! And it is in reality at that altar we bow when we sincerely sing-- _Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all!_ Not only 'demands' the sacrifice, but 'shall have my soul, my life, my all'. _But what does the binding of the sacrifice to the altar mean?_ The phrase is very significant. The horns were the corner posts, and sometimes the worshipper presenting a living creature would tether it with a cord to the altar's horn, so that the gift could be used either for sacrifice or service. In both cases the figure of speech seems to imply the possibility of the consecration being reversed by the withdrawal of the offering, or broken by its loss, the sacrifice slipping off or away from the altar, or being loosened by the person who had presented the offering. The Psalmist therefore urges those to whom he is speaking to maintain their consecration, and to see to it that their sacrifice is not taken off the altar after being put on. These corner posts were not there for ornament, but for use, and the cords were intended to hold the sacrifice to the altar, so that it could not be snatched away. Here is my Bible. If I turned away, and anybody were so minded, it would be easy to make off with it while my back was turned. But if I had some cord, and, by crossing it transversely from corner to corner, tied the Book to the table, that would make it secure. It was thus that the sacrifices were bound to the Jewish altar. What I want to emphasize by this is, that those who come with gifts and dedications should bind themselves in terms of unalterable covenant. They should stand to their consecration when loss or pain or temptation come, as come they will in one form or another. It is just here where so many fail--they do not really maintain their sacrifice. That is to say, having made a consecration they do not stand to it. The offering has been made, but it has been taken back again; the vow has been registered, but not paid; the promise has been made, but not fulfilled; the consecration has been broken or reversed. Take that wonderful scene in the life of Abraham. At the command of God he erected an altar, cut the sacrifice in pieces, and laid it there. Then Abraham waited for the coming of the fire. Before the fire came, or anything happened, the vultures, those unclean birds, were circling around his head, and around the altar, trying to defile the sacrifice or snatch it away or devour it. The story says that when the birds came down Abraham drove them away, and he stood to his covenant until the fire came. The vultures of temptation will circle around you. They will try to frighten you, and to remove the sacrifice wholly or partially, or to defile it in some way. Your business then is to drive them away, to bind and rebind the sacrifice to God's altar. In the days of Queen Mary, a girl-martyr refused, when pressure was brought upon her, to deny her Lord and renounce her faith. She was condemned and taken to the seashore. There she was bound to a stake near the low tide line, and, as the incoming waters gathered round her feet, one of her persecutors rode out and offered to spare her life if she would renounce her faith and turn her back upon her Lord. The waters rose to her waist, and he rode out again, and, when half unconscious, she was dragged out, and urged to recant. Refusing to do this, the girl was again bound to the stake. When the waters reached her shoulders the offer was repeated. To one and all she replied something like this: 'No, I will not draw back! I will not deny my Lord!' And as the rising tide came in she bowed her head, and poured her soul out unto death rather than deny her Master. She bound her sacrifice to the altar, and died in the faith. Some of those who hear my words are disappointed and sad at heart, for they have gone back on Jesus Christ; not perhaps to save their lives, but for a mere trifle. Why these neglected vows? Why these defiled sacrifices? Why these broken consecrations? If they were ever really put on the altar they were not, I am afraid, bound there. Impulse, sentiment, desire, intention may have induced the offering, but it was not bound with 'cords of submission, cords of determination'. Companionships, some secret indulgence, some selfish pleasure, some act of reversal, carried off the sacrifice. Alas! how many have never seriously and sincerely approached the Divine altar to make the full surrender of themselves to God. The love of sin, the selfish gratifications which are so precious to them, have kept them back, though often convicted about their duty. But the act of dedication is very simple, and can be made or renewed now. While we bow before God around the altar of consecration, bring yourselves and the sacrifice again and put it on that altar in an unchangeable covenant, and with a simple faith that will bring from God that holy fire which makes it possible to maintain it there for ever. _A willing sacrifice at last Myself to Thee I give; The weary, painful strife is past-- I die that I may live._ _I yield Thee all my hallowed powers, Thine only will I be, Contented if I may but know Thou giv'st Thyself to me._ X 'Why Should I?' '_Thou saidst, What advantage will it be? What profit shall I have, if I be cleansed from my sin? I will answer thee, and thy companions with thee._' (Job xxxv. 3, 4.) In reading these words I have no wish to enter into the controversy between Job and his friends as to the relationship of physical suffering to sin, but to emphasize a certain mental attitude which they indicate, and which often expresses itself in relation to other things. The human mind is so constituted that men will not commit themselves to a course suggested by another unless it is proved to be worth their while. When we want to move people to do that which does not at the moment fit in with their desires, we have to urge motives upon their consideration. Very few actions are performed without there being some personal motive. It seems born in us to ask, 'Is it worth while? Why should I do, or go and accept what I do not want?' and so we hang back until some motive carries our judgment or feelings. We find the same attitude in men's minds towards Salvation and those spiritual blessings and conditions of life in which the Lord wants men to live. The immediate gratification of the flesh, or love of selfish indulgence, lies in the opposite direction to the Altar of Consecration; so that when the call to surrender and Holiness comes, naturally, and at once, the cry springs up, 'Why should I? Where is the advantage? What profit shall I have?' It seems, therefore, absolutely necessary to find some personal motives by which to urge people to be saved, or seek a clean heart, and pursue those lines of sacred duty to which redeemed men should be consecrated. Speaking from personal experience, I would say that whilst soul-saving is hard work, it appears equally difficult to persuade professors of religion to definitely seek deliverance from inward sin, and to attain those spiritual realizations which we speak of as 'Full Salvation' or 'The Blessing of Holiness'. As evidence of this difficulty, I may point to the state of soul and spiritual experience in which even some of you are now found: receiving light and instruction about Holiness, but continuing unsanctified; singing of the Cleansing Blood, but yet remaining uncleansed by it; praying, 'Baptize me with the Holy Ghost', and yet resisting His gracious leadings to the higher life of Holiness. In one of my Meetings my subject was 'Out-and-Out Consecration'. I was attracted by a man who seemed intensely interested. I spoke with him afterwards, when he said, 'I was much pleased with your address--I entirely approve of the sentiments you expressed'. And yet I could not induce the man to give himself to God. Thus we have to seek for motives by which to move the hearts of people in this vital matter. 1. Let me again set before you those motives which should lead you to seek the blessing. I place first among them the fact which Paul stated thus, 'This is the will of God, even your sanctification'. I put this first because the highest motive stimulating the soul of the child of God should be _the knowledge of his Father's will_. One would think that to know God's will should be enough to provoke the determination to do it. To hear the Father's voice should stir the heart in responsive desire and effort. We had a little daughter who, before she went to Heaven, was the joy of our hearts and the light of our home. The child had a passion for cleanliness, and as the evening hour came on, she gave the maid no peace until she was washed and dressed in clean clothes. Then, running to her mother, she would ask, 'Mamma, am I clean, clean enough for father?' Soon after my return from business, the child would climb on my knee, put a little hand on each side of my face, to compel me to look at her, and then ask, 'Am I clean, papa, am I clean?' Nothing would delight that child more than for me to say, 'Yes, my darling, you are clean, even clean enough for father'. Let us ask ourselves, 'What does the will of God count for with us? We know what He wants, and the claims of gratitude and sincere regard for His glory should influence our attitude, and lead us to say, 'Lo! I come to do Thy will, O my God!' _He wills that I should holy be: That Holiness I long to feel; That full, Divine conformity To all my Saviour's righteous will._ 2. A second motive to Holiness may be found in _the urgent need of the people around us_. We all know something of God's plan for saving the world. It is, broadly speaking, on the line of using one man to save another. Co-operation on this line is rightly expected from all professing Christians. Personally, I hold that professors of religion who are not moved by a concern for the souls of others, and a willingness to use all possible efforts to seek their Salvation, can hardly claim to be properly saved themselves. The need of saved men and women to act on these lines of consecrated effort is, indeed, very great, and the knowledge of this fact should urge us to the fullest consecration. But we need to see more clearly that unless we exhibit in our own characters and lives the true fruits of Holiness, we shall either fail in our own consecration, or our influence will be greatly reduced. What do you think will be the effect of a man's words about the Christian's 'separateness', and about Christ being the satisfying portion of the human heart, if people see him seeking satisfaction with the multitude that go to do evil? How will the world be influenced by Christian talkers who sacrifice honour, truth, and perhaps honesty, in their daily associations? How often people's tongues are tied, when they ought to speak and act? They are half paralysed through a sense of their personal inconsistency. Holiness is not only the inspiration to holy effort; it is a necessary qualification. The power of a holy life is the best evidence of what God can do. Platform and Meeting-Holiness, or glass-case sanctity, are feeble when compared with the exhibition of the blessing in daily association. Therefore, 'Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven'. These words indicate my meaning when I urge you to seek and maintain the blessing of Holiness in the interests of those around you. Holy lives are the most convincing sermons and testimonies. We often say 'Holiness is power'; and I am sure that you need all the power which can be obtained to influence the world around for God and Salvation. 3. Then, as a last motive to stimulate you in the pursuit of Holiness, I will name _self-interest_. That may seem rather a low-down motive, seeing that Holiness, which is perfect love, is the extreme opposite of that selfishness which is the essence or root of all sin. It seems like a paradox or contradiction to say that self-denial can harmonize with enjoyment; and yet it is true. A man does advance his highest interests and truest well-being when he submits to the sanctifying conditions of the Holy Ghost; for what the world counts loss, he finds to be gain. I would point out that we find God Himself appealing to men just at that point of self-interest. What a chapter is that fifty-fifth of Isaiah, beginning, 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters', and so on, the second verse finishing, 'Eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness'. As much as to say, 'You will find it worth while to come into right relations with Me'. There is no doubt that people are moved when they properly understand the fact which Paul set forth in the words: 'Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come'; 'Godliness with contentment is great gain'. And I want you to see that to have the blessing of Full Salvation will be worth your while, because it will meet the deep needs of your individual life. If I am asked to define what you must be in order that your religious life may be happy and successful, I would state the case thus. First, you need to be in right and happy relationship with God. There must be no enmity there; no clouds in that sky; no closed doors between you and your Heavenly Father. Salvation does nothing for you if it does not bring that. Second, you need to be delivered from those inward evils which have darkened your mind, polluted your soul, and will be like roots of bitterness springing up to trouble you if they are not removed. Third, you want power to live up to your own ideals; that is, up to the standards of life upon which your consecrated heart will be set. You do not want to be in the position of the man who exclaims, 'The good that I would I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do'. You want power to live 'unspotted from the world', to walk in Divine fellowship, to triumph over temptation, and to have victory and success in your service. These are the things you must have to meet your deepest need, and they are all secured to you in the blessing of Holiness which we urge you to seek. Believe me, nothing spoils a man's happiness so much as sin in the heart, and nothing helps in human happiness so much as a holy, sanctified condition. You see the supreme advantage when you remember the open fellowship possible to the fully sanctified; the perfect peace in which God keeps the man whose mind is stayed on Him; the perfect love which casteth out fear, and the joy unspeakable and full of glory realized by one filled with the Holy Ghost. On the other hand, how much unhappiness and disappointment is caused by the remains of sin in the heart! Look, for instance, at ill-tempers and their effect. You may have found a certain amount of gratification in letting your temper display itself; you have 'spoken your mind', and so forth, and, perhaps, caused pain to somebody in so doing; but you know how unhappy and humiliated you have been upon reflection. Take also the case of the envious man. We all know that it is wrong to be envious; but who is the chief sufferer? Why, the envious man himself. So with grumbling and discontent: it is very unpleasant for those around; but how unhappy are the grumblers themselves! Similarly with pride; it may be very self-satisfying, until one sees somebody better, or something which cuts one out; then comes disappointment. And so I might go on with other illustrations, but I have said enough to show what I mean. Now look at these motives which I have named; they all appeal to you in regard to Holiness. It is the will of God concerning you. It is desirable and necessary to give your religion power with those around you. It is also to your own happiness and interest to get your nature sanctified and your own heart and mind and life brought into harmony with God. To those whose experience includes the enjoyment of the blessing, I say let these motives influence you in maintaining the conditions. And to those who have not got the blessing, let these motives constrain you to seek the blessing without delay. _Lord, my will I here present Thee Gladly, now no longer mine; Let no evil thing prevent me Blending it with Thine. Lord, my life I lay before Thee, Hear this hour the sacred vow! All Thine own I now restore Thee, Thine for ever now._ XI Judged by Fruit '_A good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes._' (Luke vi. 43, 44.) Jesus Christ, in the few sentences quoted, indicates the true secret or principle of holy living. They show that holy living works from the heart of things--beginning within--to the outside. Many judge their religion the other way about. They take up religious duties, attend religious Meetings, sing hymns, say prayers, put on what may be called the outward things of religion. Perhaps they adopt a dress, make a profession, or assume a religious manner, and hope to grow good in the process. But really it does not work out that way. I do not say that the things are not good. Far from that; but what I want to make plain is this: in none of these things does the secret of true religion lie, and you will be a failure if you rely upon the outward form. You have the secret, the principle of religion, in the words of Jesus: 'A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh'. You see, that which is in will come out, and you cannot bring out that which is not in. In these words Jesus tries to enforce a great truth in human life, by showing how the principle works out in the action of a tree. Nature cannot teach us everything about God, nor everything about religion; but Nature does supply us with a great many beautiful illustrations. Jesus makes use of one when He says, 'Of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. Every tree is known by his own fruit.' You see, not only is the fruit according to the tree, but the quality of the tree is to be judged according to its fruits. That is the way by which ordinary people identify a tree. There are some who are highly skilled in forestry, who can tell you all about a tree by looking at the bark or the leaves or the blossoms, or even by its general appearance. But we cannot all do that. I have sometimes stood in a company, and listened to an argument as to what kind a particular tree really was. But no arguments are required when the fruit hangs on the branches. Everybody can tell the apple tree then, and knows what a pear or a plum tree is when they see the fruit hanging upon it. You can see the bearing of this upon personal religion and character. By our fruit, then, we shall be known and judged. In the fifth chapter of Galatians you will find a commentary upon this natural law. Shall we read it? 'Now the works of the flesh'--the fruit of the flesh, if you like to put it that way--'are manifest, which are these: Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance', or self-control. The two sets of verses taken together not only show in detail a cluster of virtues which are like luscious fruit in a beautiful garden, but also a cluster of evils, which are like poisoned berries upon the roadside bushes. The contrast between the two clusters indicates how great is the difference when one is changed from being a proud, fleshly, corrupt man into a clean, holy, spiritual person; but the contrast also marks the grace of God as the transforming power. No matter what change was wrought in you at conversion, you cannot properly call yourselves fully sanctified until the transformation is complete; that is, until you are delivered from the works or fruit of the flesh, and produce the fruit of the Spirit, and by your fruits you shall be known. Profession of Holiness without appropriate fruit is no good. That would be just like the tree to which the Saviour turned on one occasion when He found nothing but leaves. Let me put the matter very simply, but very definitely. Here is a man, we will suppose, who says, 'I am saved'. That is good. I like to hear men who are able to stand up and say, 'I am saved'. But if in that man's dealings with those around him he tells lies--black ones or white ones--well, then it is obvious that the man still needs Salvation. Here is another who stands up and says, 'I have a clean heart'. That is a testimony in which I glory. But if you see that man's bodily appetites master him, or see him fall into uncleanness of speech or of act, you know very well what even those who want to be charitable will say, 'Either that man fails to understand the meaning of the words he uses, or his profession of Holiness is a false one'. Another person says, 'I love God with all my heart'--or as many do say, 'There is nothing between my soul and God'. But if you see the same person running after those things which he knows God is against, however charitable you may feel, you cannot help judging by what he does rather than by what he says. One may stand up and speak about being sanctified; but if his actions indicate in some form or another that he is jealous, or ill-tempered, or selfish, everybody will say, 'No matter what that person may say about himself, testimony or no testimony, profession or no profession, he still needs the blessing of Full Salvation!' Let me, by an illustration or two, help you to see what I mean--the fruits of the sanctified heart. A university professor was afflicted with an ungovernable temper. One day he went to the house of a relative with a view to adjusting some property matters in dispute. Now, the man to whom he went not only made unjust claims, but put forth these claims in a way to provoke his Christian relative to anger. He did it on purpose; he was determined to show that this man's religion made him no different from the people round about him. As a consequence, high words arose, and the professor left the house in a rage, slamming the door behind him. When he got into the street calm reflection came, and in the place of anger and bitterness a sense of humiliation and shame and defeat. He went straight home, up to his room, fastened the door, got down on his knees, and spent the night pleading that God would not only forgive him for his display of temper, but would deliver him from those angry passions which made him such a discredit to his profession of religion. As morning dawned, peace came to his soul, the power of the Holy Ghost fell upon him, and a sense of deliverance pervaded his whole being. He went to the house of his relative, and found him at breakfast. With deep humility, and in the presence of the family, he confessed his sin, said not a word about provocation, and only pleaded that they would forgive him for his display of anger. Thirty years subsequent to this that professor, who became famous as a man of God, stated that no temptation or provocation received had ever stirred the emotion of evil temper within him since that memorable night. He had been delivered. Instead of the fruit of the flesh, there grew the fruit of the Spirit. Take the case of a certain mother with several unconverted children. She was a fretting, chafing woman, and by her impatience, fault-finding, and nagging she fretted and vexed the whole family. When she got the blessing she became so even in her disposition that she was kept in such 'perfect peace' that, by the power of the Holy Ghost, the domestic circle became like a little heaven below. Resentful and revengeful persons are so changed that the spirit of forgiveness and forbearance which they exhibit in their lives is the admiration of all who know them. Self-seeking Christians are made into self-sacrificing, cross-bearing saints and soldiers, where formerly they would only be content if they were having their own way. Now, what does this mean? This: that such open professors of religion as we are must justify our profession by bringing forth fruit unto Holiness. If the condition of your mind and heart, if the state of your disposition (I will put it that way) is not such as brings forth this fruit, you must earnestly and sincerely ask the Lord to cleanse and sanctify and anoint you with the Holy Ghost, so that instead of bringing forth the fruit of the flesh, everybody shall see displayed and exhibited by you the fruit of the Spirit. Do not say the standard is too high, for it is simply a case of your experience being too low. We want the whole thing not 'levelled down', but 'levelled up'. Let God take full possession of you; let the Divine power be exerted upon your particular difficulty; and seek to be wholly anointed with that Holy Spirit who can not only cleanse, but keep you, making you fruitful in every good word and work. XII Perpetual Covenants '_Come, and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten._' (Jeremiah 1. 5.) We find in our Meetings persons who are perplexed by the doctrinal statements about Holiness or entire Sanctification and equivalent terms. Some take our words to mean more than we intend; others think the statements imply less than we mean; some put the standard too high, whilst others put it altogether too low. At the close of a recent Meeting a gentleman said to me, 'I greatly enjoyed your address, but I am sure you will never get people to follow that line, because you advocate an abnormal life. It cannot be lived.' Equally I find men who in an indefinite way imagine that high states of emotion dispense with standards of morality such as truth, honour, and rectitude in business. And it is with great difficulty that we make the Bible standard plainly understood. I think, however, that very few are perplexed as to what we mean by the consecration side of Holiness. There is, in all who are moderately well instructed in Bible truth, a living sense of God's claims, a recognition of what I may call the law of consistency, and a feeling that, as a matter of duty, we really ought to yield to those claims, and devote ourselves to doing His will. That is what Jeremiah meant when he called upon the people to join themselves unto the Lord in '_a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten_'. We all recognize how right it is for buildings to be dedicated to God's service; we call them the houses of God. We also see the rightness of contributing gifts to help God's cause; and yet men and women are so slow to fully and definitely join themselves unto the Lord, that is, to put the sacred mark upon their entire lives, and recognize their duty in spending their lives for God alone. They are slow to regard their bodily, mental, and other powers and faculties as belonging to God, and slower still in yielding their hearts in supreme love to Him who loved them, and gave Himself for them. I am often puzzled as to why religious people who, in their business life, are regularly making covenants and contracts, either for labour or material, should so fail to follow on similar lines in their relations to God. My duty called me lately to examine a contract, and I found the basis expressed in terms like these: 'This is an agreement between So-and-so in the first part and So-and-so in the second part'. And then on each side there were pledges and responsibilities and commitments; finally, the contract was 'signed, sealed, and delivered' by the two contracting parties. Now, that illustrates precisely what is meant by a covenant with the Lord. He, on the one part, and we on the other part, uniting for a common purpose, and each undertaking definite responsibilities to secure the purpose desired. Mind, this covenanting with God is not a case of bargaining. I know that it pays to be on right relationships with God, and to do His will; but do not forget--He settles and dictates the terms, our part is to comply and surrender. Moses puts this in a simple but beautiful way to his people when he said, '_Thou hast avouched_ the Lord this day to be thy God, and to walk in His ways, and to keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His judgments, and to hearken unto His voice: and _the Lord hath avouched_ thee this day to be His peculiar people, as He hath promised thee, and that thou shouldst keep all His commandments'. The appeal of the Apostle is also familiar to us all, 'I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service'. Jesus always kept this before His disciples. He certainly talked of daily cross-bearing, and following and confessing Him before the world; but He was careful to say to them, 'There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting'. Our songs and prayers are full of the same ideas, and we are again face to face with the appeal expressed by Jeremiah: 'Come, let us join ourselves unto the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten'. Now, there are certain features of this covenant-making that I should like to look at. 1. To begin with, _it is to be an inward act, a thing of the heart_. I believe in outward tokens of religious life and feeling, such as standing up, raising the hand, coming to the table, and similar modes of testimony; but if any of these outward acts are mere forms, they are next to useless. The heart must be in it if the covenant is to be properly made and maintained. One frequently hears it said, 'Ah, yes, I do it in my heart. I can get the blessing in my seat or at home quietly. I do not believe in this public line of declaration, and this parade of one's sacred experiences'. Well, I believe, in both the inward and the outward. If, however, we cannot have both, by all means let us have the covenant made in sincerity of heart, for without that the whole thing is in vain. We may learn much from an old Hebrew custom referred to in the twenty-first chapter of Exodus, which shows that the Jewish people understood the nature of true devotion. Under the Mosaic law a bondservant could only be held by his master for six years; in the seventh he was 'to go out free for nothing'. But if the servant came to his master, and said, 'I don't want to go; I love you; I will not go out free; I will serve you for ever', the master would reply, 'If you really mean that, let us have it settled, and settled in public'. The master would then bring the servant to the judges to register the agreement, and would also take him to the doorpost, and with an awl bore a hole through the man's ear, fastening him to the post. This was the sign of a perpetual covenant, and everybody who saw it knew that the man's self-surrender to his master was real, binding, and permanent. We have no such ceremony in our public Meetings, but we can have the definite declaration, 'I love Thee, O Lord, and I will serve Thee; and here and now I bind myself in an everlasting covenant to serve Thee for ever'. 2. Then, again, a true covenant is _a deed which commits you to active and definite service_. Some covenant-makings are largely sentimental; a kind of religious IOU or promise to pay, and I fear some are treated as the Irishman treated his responsibility when, having signed a promissory note for a debt, he exclaimed, 'Thank God, that is done with!' The vows and covenant-making which God wants are those which will be followed by something practical. The states of emotion and high spiritual contemplation are right in so far as they assist men to realize the presence of God and Divine things; but to answer their purpose they must carry men out to activity and self-denying service for God and those around them. The highest type of religion is a combination of the experimental and the practical, the inward and the outward, the personal and the relative. Our consecration must include what God can get out of us as well as what we obtain from Him. I found a parable the other day in a legend of the Greek Church which is worth repeating. That Church has two favourite saints--St. Cassianus, the type of monastic asceticism, and St. Nicholas, the type of genial, active, unselfish, laborious Christianity. St. Cassianus enters Heaven, and Christ says to him, 'What hast thou seen on earth, Cassianus?' 'I saw', he answered, 'a peasant floundering with his wagon in a marsh'. 'Didst thou help him?' 'No.' 'Why not?' 'I was coming before Thee,' said St. Cassianus, 'and I was afraid of soiling my white robes'. Just then St. Nicholas enters Heaven, all covered with mud and mire. 'Why so stained and soiled, St. Nicholas?' said the Lord. 'I saw a peasant floundering in a marsh,' said St. Nicholas, 'and I put my shoulder to the wheel, and helped him out'. 'Blessed art thou', answered the Lord. 'Thou didst well; thou didst better than Cassianus.' And He blessed St. Nicholas with fourfold approval. The moral is so obvious that I need not labour the application of my parable. 3. Let me also impress upon you that _covenant-making must be a believing act_. That is to say, when you come up to the altar of consecration, and say, 'Here I give my all to Thee', you must believe that if you are good for your word the Lord is also good for His. So that what you give, God accepts; what you claim, God gives. That may appear a very simple way of putting the faith that saves and sanctifies, but in all its simplicity it is true, for 'He is faithful who hath promised'. 4. Then comes the all-important _necessity of standing to your consecration at all costs_. 'Let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.' God wants men and women who stand to their covenant; who, having made their pledges and promises, are not turned aside by difficulties or temptations, but say and mean, as we sing sometimes-- _High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow, That vow renewed shall daily hear, Till in life's latest hour I bow, And bless in death a bond so dear._ In the Book of Judges there is the story of a man named Jephthah. He made a vow, and when the test came he found it involved the sacrifice of one who was all the world to him--his daughter, and she was his only child. Jephthah rent his clothes, and almost broke his heart; and, no doubt, everybody expected him to set aside his vow; but, no, he stood to it, declaring, 'I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back'. There are some, thank God, who equally stand to their covenants with Him; but, alas! that so many open their mouths, and sing and say words of consecration, but when the temptation comes they do not stand to their vows. Of all the people who hinder the cause of Jesus Christ, I think the most lamentable cases are those who go back upon their Lord. Having spoken, they do not fulfil their word; having vowed, they do not perform their vows. They lack that decision which can be expressed in the words, 'I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of His people', and I want to urge all such to join with those of us who, bowing before the Divine altar, renew our covenant, resolving by His grace to bind ourselves in perpetual devotion and service. _Take my poor heart, and let it be For ever closed to all but Thee; Seal Thou my breast, and I shall wear The pledge of love for ever there._ XIII The Baptism of the Spirit '_And suddenly there came a sound from Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind.... And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost._' (Acts ii. 2, 4.) The Holy Ghost is the active force in all spiritual life. It is, therefore, important that we should realize the close connexion between the experience of Holiness and that 'Promise of the Father' for which the early disciples were to wait. All followers of Jesus should realize, as truly as the disciples did on that historic day, that their day of Pentecost has fully come, and each of us should be able to say, 'Not only was the Holy Ghost outpoured upon the waiting host in that Jewish centre, but Pentecost has come to my heart. The Spirit of the living God has come to me.' Now, whatever manifestations of the Holy Ghost there might have been in Old Testament times--and without question there were some wonderful displays--the age in which we live is the dispensation of the Holy Ghost for us. Our Lord said that He should come to convince the world of sin, and to produce many other mighty effects. To my mind, that Pentecostal event was like the launching of God's great campaign for the evangelization of the world. The world without the Holy Ghost would be as dark, spiritually, as the material world was in the beginning before the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters, and God said, 'Let there be light'. Going over Peter's sermon on that occasion, we find him quoting Joel's very wonderful prophecy, claiming its fulfilment that day. And amongst all the glorious truths that have been proclaimed in our own time, there is none grander than that God will dwell with men--yea, the Spirit of God will dwell _in_ men. You cannot read your Bibles, nor look through the books of human experience, without seeing that God's great purpose in the outpouring of the Spirit was the setting up of His Kingdom upon the earth. And we see that as the Son of God humbled Himself to earth's poverty, ignominy, and death, to redeem men, so the Holy Ghost is sent to be the great operating force in leading the world back to God. The hope of the world is in the presence of the Holy Ghost through Jesus Christ. _It is so in relation to the individual soul._ The Holy Ghost stands at the door of the Kingdom of God, either to bar the entrance or to fit the soul to enter. You remember the Saviour's words to Nicodemus, 'Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God'. There is, and can be, no entrance without conversion. 'No man', says Paul, 'can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.' And when some would have put outward religion or the profession of it in the place of this conversion, the deciding point was stated in unmistakable terms: 'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.' The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of Health, the Spirit of Love, the Spirit of Power, and there would be no hope for the human soul or the individual life apart from His gracious presence and influence. This matter cannot be explained in terms of ordinary language, but it is none the less real and definite in human experience. To Nicodemus, Jesus said, 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit'. The Spirit, like the wind, is mysterious in movement, uncontrolled by human restriction, and yet its influences are all-pervading. The courses of the wind are to be discerned by the effects; equally so will the Spirit's operations; mysterious, unfettered, unexplainable these operations may be, but the effects are discernible in ourselves and others. Analysing the purpose of God in the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, _we see its application to ourselves in several ways_. There is the rectification of our own hearts, the revealing of Divine things within us, the transforming of our characters. All these are indications of the Holy Ghost's work in ourselves; and then comes the power to help and bless and save others, God making us channels of blessing, and instruments by which His Kingdom can be extended. In this connexion there are two sayings of Jesus, which, although the figure is changed, come up together in my mind. The first is in the story of the woman at the well in Samaria. The Saviour said to her what is very applicable to you, 'Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life'. Later, on the last day of the feast, Jesus said, 'He that believeth on Me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water'. Do you see what those two sayings of Jesus set before us? The one shows how the Baptism of the Spirit provides the inward spring, the inward supply, bubbling up within, fresh, clean, sweet, and vitalizing like a 'fountain ever springing'; the other indicates the outflow, from us to others, of this spiritual force and blessing. Now, you want both the inward spring and the outward flow. Some of you are very desirous about the second provision: 'Out of you shall flow rivers of living water'. It is good that you have such desires; but before you can become a channel through which the vital force can flow for the Salvation of others, you must yourselves be the subject of the Spirit's operations within you. Not only as the great Revealer must the Holy Ghost make Divine things real to you, but as a purifying flame He must change your nature, purging away the natural corruption and sinfulness of your heart. An Eastern legend says that an angel once rested by a fair fountain. In a favoured hour he infused it with a mysterious power, so that if only some drops of its water were scattered in a barren plain, a fountain of sweet water would spring up. Any traveller who henceforth came to the spring might, after refreshing himself, take some portion from it, and carry with him the secret of unfailing springs, and suffer no fear of thirst either for himself or those with him. We are such travellers, and for us the water which Christ gives is better than that fabled fountain, for he who carries the precious water may drop it in places where no spiritual water is, and so bring life and blessing to the multitudes of needy souls. Oh, note the words, 'The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up', and 'out of him shall flow rivers of living water'. This He spake of the Spirit which they that believe on Him should afterwards receive. That is a very blessed promise, 'Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you'; and yet, so far as we understand the prevailing experience of Christian people, the promises of power are very feebly realized, and very slowly acted upon. When we see the manifest lack of the Holy Ghost in the experience, and ask, 'Why is this?' we know that the cause may lie in certain easily defined facts. One reason may be the actual _existence of sin in the heart_--some hidden or secret wrong. There are numbers in whose hearts there is something wrong. Is it so with you? Is there some inward love of or desire for evil? Or the world spirit--is that there? Or anything of a similar character? Now, before the Holy Ghost can flow into you, to say nothing of Him flowing through and out of you, these wrong things must be purged away by the cleansing stream; or, to change the figure, the purifying flame must _Burn up the dross of base desire, And make the mountains flow._ Or the hindrance may lie in a _want of surrender and faith_, without which the Spirit cannot possess and use us. I am not speaking of some act of surrender or faith only, but also of that condition which must be maintained. It is just that neglect or withdrawal which disturbs the touch with God, and so the connexion is broken. You are all familiar with the electric switch and the light. You know how slight is the thing which connects or disconnects the current. A child's finger can touch a button which will turn on enough electricity to blast a rock or move the machinery of a great factory. And so I tell you that little things which are held on to against God's will switch off the Power. That unwillingness in some hearts to follow the Lord, and do as He commands, will switch it off; that spirit which chooses to do this, but won't do that; which says, 'I will go here, but I won't go there', that sort of thing breaks the connexion. This comes home very close to some of you, for, alas! it is just there that your power fails. You must ask yourselves what are the hindrances, if any, in your hearts and lives? Some of you are weak, wavering, wobbling, and uncertain. If you look closely you will find the secret of that in your want of surrender and faith. Do not make a mistake; the inward experience is closely related to the outward service. God's plan is first to do the cleansing, and then the filling; first the inward spring, and then the outward flowing river. One other important thing. If you have not got the Holy Spirit abiding within you, _no substitute will meet the need_. Many try to make other things produce the same effects--religious talking, singing, energetic service, or the memories of spiritual experiences. These are all very good, but of themselves they will no more meet the necessities of your hearts and lives than a picture of a fire will warm the man who spreads out his hands before it. You must have the real thing--the power of the Holy Ghost. Now, the Lord is around and among us, saying, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost'; and whether you are an enslaved sinner, or a backslider in heart; or whether it is the assurance of Salvation, cleansing from sin, or power for service, which you lack, the Holy Ghost will meet your particular need. Let God work His will in you, and in Jesus Christ's name I say, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost'. _'Tis fire we want, for fire we plead, Send the fire! The fire will meet our every need, Send the fire! For strength to ever do the right, For grace to conquer in the fight, For power to walk the world in white, Send the fire!_ _To make our weak hearts strong and brave, Send the fire! To live a dying world to save, Send the fire! Oh, see us on Thy altar lay Our lives, our all, this very day-- To crown the offering now we pray, Send the fire!_ XIV Lost Earnings '_He that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes._' (Haggai i. 6.) In our Holiness Meetings we often speak of Full Salvation as a blessing to be obtained, and also a blessing to be retained; but I want now to turn the truth the other way round, and speak about 'losing the blessing'. These words of Haggai about the man who lost his earnings through a faulty bag will serve me as a text, and are very significant. As a figure of speech, the words are well understood. From the boy who, by holding a horse, or running errands, earns threepence, and puts it into a pocket with a hole at the bottom, to the man or woman who puts the savings of years into a rotten speculation, all know the literal meaning of Haggai's text, 'He that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes'. The central idea is that something gained by hard effort has been lost, and that the loss was due to the man's own fault. The man had earned his wages, and then let what he had won by toil slip through holes in the bag into which he put it. The possibility of this in relation to spiritual blessings is a danger we are warned against in God's Word, and the necessity for guarding against such losses is one of the important lessons to be learned. This text reminds me of an incident and parable in the Book of Kings. During the progress of a battle one of the leaders, having captured a prisoner, called to a subordinate and placed the captive in his care, to be kept at the risk of his life. Later, the man had to give an account, and when admitting the loss of the prisoner he said, 'As thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone'. Alas! there are many whose spiritual acquisitions have slipped away like that. The spiritual application of this thought is brought home to us by a verse in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 'Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip'. If you look in the margin of your Bible, you will see the words, 'run out as leaking vessels', and in the Revised Version the words read, 'drift away from them'. You see the idea is, that unless you are careful you will lose your blessing after having enjoyed it. Looking round my audiences I can with fitness use these figures, and apply the idea to many who, after tears and agonies of heart, secured the Salvation of their souls, and the heavenly treasure which only the pardoned sinner knows; but, alas! through the faulty bag, or pocket with holes, their earnings slipped away, and they are now spiritual bankrupts, their latter state being worse than the first. Thank God, if those who have thus lost their Salvation and peace will truly repent and do their first works, they may again obtain heavenly treasure, and with it grace and wisdom to prevent the repetition of past follies. Let others learn and take heed lest they also drift away, as the Apostle puts it. My chief purpose, however, relates to those who, though they once _had the blessing of a clean heart, have lost it_. Their present lack is not due to their having exhausted their earnings in lawful pursuits, or because they invested their treasure in sanctified enterprises, but because they have let the blessing slip; or, turning back to Haggai's words, they have been as him 'that earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes'. The experience is a thing of the past. At times they are tempted to say that they were deluded, and never had the blessing, or that they were as a man who only dreamed that he had his wages; but that is not so. The wages were earned, but lost. So you must not regard your experience as the sensations of a dream. You had the blessing right enough, and some of you had secured it at no small sacrifice; but, alas! you let it slip out of your possession, and you woke up to find it gone. It is remarkable how many sanctified people have to testify that before they settled into the regular experience of Full Salvation they lost the blessing which they had received; in fact, some eminent saints have recorded repeated experiences of loss before they learned how to carry themselves and guard against the dangers. Perhaps here I ought to say definitely, that the Bible does not tell us of any stage in our heavenward journey at which we can be saved from the possibility of losing the blessing. This blessed treasure of perfect purity, peace which passeth all understanding, and joy unspeakable, is only ours so long as we maintain that entire consecration and faith which are the conditions on which the blessing is received. There is no spot where the advice is not necessary--'Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life'. Paul put it clearly, 'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall', and showed how seriously he regarded the matter when he declared that he had to keep his body under and in hand, lest after preaching to others he should himself become a castaway. I have called to mind two remarkable touches of Bunyan, in his 'Pilgrim's Progress'. The first picture shows us Christian, weary with climbing the Hill Difficulty, turning aside into a pleasant arbour where he sat down to rest. For the comfort of his own heart he pulled out his roll of assurance. He also began to examine with great satisfaction the coat which had been given to him, and 'after pleasing himself for a while' he fell into a slumber, and in his sleep let the roll fall from his hand. Mercifully, Christian was awakened, and hasted along the road. Later, he got into great temptation, and, desiring to reassure his own heart, he put his hand into his bosom to find the roll, 'which was his pass to the Celestial City'; but, to his horror, it was not there! After great distress Christian remembered his sleeping in the arbour, and painfully retraced his steps 'bewailing his sinful sleep in the midst of difficulty'. He reached the place of his loss, and at last espied the roll which had slipped out of his hand. He secured it once more, and after giving thanks for his recovery, the Pilgrim betook himself again to his journey. Bunyan's other picture of Vain-hope is even more pathetic. The vision shows the gate of the Celestial City, and the entrance of Christian and other pilgrims. But when this man, Vain-hope, came up, he had no roll or certificate, having lost it, if he ever had it; the poor wretch passed away to 'a door on the side of the hill', which caused the dreamer to write, 'Then I saw that there is a way to Hell even from the very gates of Heaven'. How true, therefore, it is, that at every stage of the heavenward journey, one has to guard against the loss of that spiritual treasure which has been secured at such a cost. I hope you see clearly that the Divine treasure is all right, and the possibility of its continued enjoyment is not in question. If lost, the fault is with the bag or carrier of the bag. But by pointing out some of the holes in the bag through which certain people have lost their blessing, we may help them and others. As one hole through which spiritual loss is sustained, let me first speak of _ignorance_. I do not say that in an unkind way. By ignorance I mean _lack of knowledge_. You cannot imagine a man putting his wages into a faulty pocket if he knew there was a hole there. There are traps and pitfalls for the newly sanctified. Some know of them; others do not know, and are unprepared for dangers and the devices of the Devil, who, if he cannot hinder a man getting the blessing will scheme to rob him of it. For instance, temptations to doubt are pressed on a soul just entering the path of Holiness: 'Can it be?' 'Have I been deceiving myself?' 'I thought I should have such and such sensations; where are the feelings of ecstasy which I expected?' The uninstructed soul often confuses feelings with assurance, particularly if in the moment of deliverance some special wave of feeling swept over the soul. When this wave subsides the sensations are different, and the soul is tempted to doubt the reality of the transaction. Personally, I am always thankful that both in the matter of conversion and getting a clean heart, the Lord left me to claim the blessing by naked faith. I had little or no special feelings; I just had to go on believing. I stepped out, as upon thin air, and found my feet on the rock. For lack of knowledge many souls imagine that Holiness will mean ecstasy, or that the sanctified soul will not feel temptation; and Satan feeds the anxious thought until sometimes the hand of faith is unclasped, and the blessing lost for the time being. Later on the faithful soul learns to hold on, to resist the enemy's insidious attacks, and understands the meaning of the lines-- _Quick as the apple of the eye The first approach of sin to feel_. Again, _unwatchfulness_ is a hole, a danger against which I warn you. Recently saved people, and those who have recently found Full Salvation, are tempted to say, 'Glory to God, now I am all right!' forgetting that, although on the right road, the journey is before them, and that the rule of the road is, '_As_ ye received the Lord Jesus, _so_ walk in Him'. Do not forget the relation between those two little words 'as' and 'so'. Now the word _unwatchfulness_, or I might change it for _carelessness_, is a very general term. I will touch upon two or three things in which it shows itself. Going where Jesus could not go with you; to do that is like playing with pitch, or with fire. Keeping company with the wrong people: some of you lose there; treating Meetings and prayer lightly; resenting little unkindnesses and persecution; carelessness of speech; gossiping, frivolity, forgetting that whilst the Holy Ghost is a Spirit of Joy, He is grieved by lightness and frivolous jesting. These are some of the little holes through which the blessing drops out. You must watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. Then, _holding back from testimony_ is a snare into which some of you have fallen. Listen to me! Some of you have tried to testify, and your very backwardness and fear have been holes in your bag through which the blessing has been lost. May I once more refer to myself. When, during a long course of years, I have been bold and outspoken about my possession of the blessing of Full Salvation and my relations to God, sureness and confidence have filled my heart; but when I have been tempted to modify and hedge and hesitate in the terms of my testimony, I have had reason to say, 'Is it so? Where am I?' Apply what I am saying to your own experience, and judge ye what I say. _Failure to walk in the light_ has been the cause of many professors of Holiness losing their blessing. The path of Holiness brings many surprises and tests. Demands not previously thought of come upon one; duties not expected are presented; sacrifices are required: Do this, do that. Let that go. Follow here, go there. I doubt whether any single day passes which does not bring its test of our consecration. If you follow the light, you will be safe; but if you refuse it, you will go under. Disobedience and a spirit of unwillingness knock holes in the bag. It has been so with some of you, and loss has been the result. I want to add a word about _personal prayer_ in this connexion, for I believe many owe their loss to a neglect of that essential. The lack of prayer shows over-confidence in oneself, and accounts for many falls. 'Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication.' This is indeed a necessary condition of keeping the blessing. My closing question Is a very straight one. Have you got the blessing of a clean heart now? If you have had it and lost it, seek it once more. Make haste to the altar; renew your consecration again, claiming the blessing, and the Lord will restore you. XV Fighting Holiness '_Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life._' (1 Timothy vi. 12.) My object, in announcing 'Fighting Holiness' as my subject, is to make it quite clear that a Full Salvation does not mean a hot-house emotionalism or glass-case sanctity, but a vigorous, daring, aggressive religion, on the lines of the Saviour's words, 'The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force'. If this text, 'Fight the good fight of faith', means anything at all, it means you must struggle for the thing you believe in. If you do not fight for it, the inference is either that you have little love for and confidence in your cause, or that you are indolent and unfaithful to that cause. You say you believe in the rightness of God's claims upon the hearts and lives of men; you believe in the humiliation and passion of Christ to redeem men; you believe in the necessity for and possibility of rescuing human souls from the curse of evil and the eternal penalty of sin; but, believe me, your faith is vain if you do not stand for, and labour and fight to enforce, God's claims to proclaim Christ's redeeming grace, and to deliver men from going down to the pit. The aspects of personal Holiness set out in terms such as 'perfect peace' and the 'rest of faith' are frequently before us, and I do not desire to reduce their value, for it is a blessed truth that 'we which have believed do enter into rest'. If by the 'rest of faith' is meant that calm confidence in the power and grace of God by which the believing and obedient soul is kept in perfect peace, then, all right; that, however, is very different from the only-believe-and-do-nothing policy of some people who adopt the phrase. Let there be no mistake about the fact that every consecrated man must take his place in God's fighting line. The story of Mary of Bethany, 'who sat at the Lord's feet, and heard His word', also appeals to me; but the emphasis is not quite as some people put it. What Christ commended in Mary was not that she sat at His feet whilst Martha did all the hard work, but that she had 'chosen the good part--the one thing needful', which her anxious sister seems to have overlooked. There is rest for the struggling soul who finds in Jesus a real deliverer. There is rest for the soul tossed about on waves of doubt and fear, who, anchoring in the haven of the Saviour's love, finds peace in believing. For the faithful but tired servant of Christ who 'works whilst it is called day', for the warrior also who has faced the enemy and braved the danger, there is rest; but the rest comes after the working and fighting is over. I like the words 'fight' and 'fighting', because _they involve taking a side_, and devoting oneself to secure victory for the side one belongs to. I heard some one remark the other day, 'God wants fighting saints as well as kissing saints'; truly the phrase is not without its lesson for us. This is the very opposite to the attitude known as 'sitting on the fence', or that wretched fear which seems to possess some professed followers of Jesus Christ, who, outside a church or religious Meeting, are afraid to declare themselves for Him.' I am for Jesus Christ, and I want everybody to know it'; that is the line of the true Soldier. Oh, how the spirit of compromise curses and hinders the work of God! I think the man who invented the phrase 'out-and-out consecration' was a benefactor to the cause, seeing it is such a contradiction of the half-and-half spirit which characterizes so much religious profession and service. When reading the history of the American Civil War, I found instances of strange fraternizing on the part of the soldiers of contending armies. Sometimes the soldiers of the North would be on one side of a river when the Southern troops were on the other side. With the evening came suspension of hostilities, and under cover of darkness men of one army would cross over to the enemy's camp to smoke and talk with men who during the day had sought their destruction. That may have seemed very fine, from a certain point of view, but is regrettable in religious warfare. When the Soldiers of Jesus cross over to the Devil's forces for their pleasure and refreshment, it indicates little devotion to their King or enthusiasm for His cause. Why should we be friends with the enemies of our Lord? If we have sincerely chosen His side, let all compromise cease, and each of us declare and stand for Him at all costs. Then this idea of Fighting Holiness implies that _the sanctified Soldier of Christ is an aggressor in the struggle for his Lord's supremacy_. He cannot be content with following the line of the least resistance; he is rather in the spirit of the words already quoted, 'The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force'. The business of attack in Spiritual Soldier-ship is quite as important as the protection of your own soul or defence of your position. It may involve doing violence to your own feelings, and oft-times to the feelings of others, but you cannot be faithful to your profession unless willing to attack the Devil's strongholds, and fight evil in its own entrenchments. I was much interested a few days ago in the story of a man connected with a Corps where there has been a marvellous religious awakening. The man got truly saved, and became a Salvation Soldier. A month later he was convinced of his need of a clean heart, his chief conviction being that he ought to become 'a fisher of men'. He went to the mercy-seat, made his consecration, claimed the blessing and power, and began fishing for souls. That was a little over a year ago; recently the results of that man's personal fishing were ascertained, and it was seen that since his consecration he had personally induced over 300 persons to go to the mercy-seat for Salvation. That is an illustration of the aggressive spirit included in Fighting Holiness. We each find our own particular difficulties with which we should grapple, and the enemies whom we ought to attack; but, speaking generally, I point to the evil influences which are around us, cursing the people, the victims, alas! being multiplied by those who fatten on the woes and vices and even ruin of their fellows. These influences must be resisted, the fiends of Hell in human form must be grappled with, and 'the prey be taken from the mighty'. People must be aroused from their indifference and selfishness; the cold-blooded carelessness and worldliness of formal religionists must be assailed as well as help rendered to those who are ready to perish. Our fighting programme must include all this, if we are to be consistent professors of holy consecration to God and His Kingdom. Then, further, I recognize that _personal spiritual conflicts are included in Fighting Holiness_. That is to say, our battles and victories relate not only to resistance of the Devil and the rescue of his captives, but in the varying phases of personal experiences we have to fight this good fight of faith. Spiritual conflicts often have much mystery connected with them. If the fact had not been recorded, that Christ was tempted in all points like as we are, and learned obedience in the things which He suffered, we should wonder whether some of our struggles of faith were not the result of personal sin. We know, however, that there may be much temptation without either contracting the guilt or stain of sin. It is true that spiritual conflicts are all the more dangerous for those who have not yet found deliverance from their own unsanctified passions and tendencies. A heart in which such things as pride and evil desire, lust, worldly ambition, and ill-tempers remain, is like a citadel in which traitors lurk to respond to the call of outward enemies. But when the heart is sanctified, and we are equipped with the armour of which Paul wrote to the Ephesians, the attacks of the enemy can be continually resisted. I cannot cover the area of spiritual conflict. As varied as our characters are our temptations, and with all the changes in circumstances and physical or mental condition come enticements to evil. We have never taught that Holiness of heart means freedom from temptation. In one form or another temptation will come to the holiest of us, and the fight of faith has to be sustained even up to the very gates of Heaven. The fully consecrated soul has not only to resist the temptations to positive sin, but must manifest its victory in the patient endurance of physical ills and the trials of life; and that apostolic note of triumph is also a word of guidance, 'This is the victory which overcometh ... even your faith'. Human nature, even with the best of us, is a marvellous combination. We have nerves which sometimes vibrate like the wires of a highly-strung harp. Mental clouds at times seem to shut the sun out of the conditions of life, and dark shadows stretch across or along the pathway. Some of us have dispositions which, whilst capable of exquisite pleasure, also expose us to the most acute pain and disappointment. Then comes the temptation to charge against our spiritual condition weaknesses which are purely physical. To resist such temptations is indeed the fight of faith. Physical depression comes upon some people until, for the time being, life is a burden and death would be a relief. Measured by their bodily and mental sensations, their experience is sometimes like a stretch of arid desert, and in such hours the enemy assails the mind with difficulties and suggestions to doubt, which can only be conquered by steady confidence in the love and wisdom and prevailing grace of the living God. That is the good fight of faith. I hope that what I have said will not discourage any soul. Remember, if we are fully given up to God, and seeking to realize His will for us, we are not fighting a losing battle; 'He that is with us is greater than they that be against us'. The provision of Divine Grace is such that, in spite of enemies and dangers, our life can be one of victory; we can be more than conquerors through Him that loved us. The victor's palm and the overcomer's crown will more than compensate for the self-denial and loss of things which the world counts gain. Many of you know the story of a certain Indian conqueror who, in his onward march, came to a temple containing a specially sacred idol. This he was proceeding to destroy, when the priests and others pleaded with him, and offered a large sum of money if he would only spare that idol; but, refusing the bribe, the conqueror demolished the image, and found within it the treasures of the temple, which for safety had been hidden there. There are many things which we may lose by fighting our battles faithfully, but the heavenly treasure will more than make up for it all. 'Be thou faithful unto death' is a strong exhortation; but that which makes it a positive inspiration to loving and enduring service and fighting is the added sentence, 'I will give thee a crown of life'. XVI Sanctified Commonplaces '_In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, Holiness unto the Lord; and the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts._' (Zechariah xiv. 20, 21.) What I have to say may not strike some of you as setting forth any very high or exalted truth, but I am satisfied as to its being a very important matter. I want to talk to you about the sanctification of the commonplace things in life. However desirable it may seem, you cannot always be sitting at the Master's feet in that contemplative, ecstatic mood sometimes attributed to Mary. Like Martha, we have to do a good deal of serving. Whether we are _encumbered_ by 'much serving' is a separate question; but if we are to fulfil the Divine tasks we have to do a great deal of serving as well as praying and trusting. I may quote, with slight alteration, two lines of a poem:-- _Who sleeps and dreams that life is beauty, Will wake to find that life is duty_. How true that is in practical life many of us know full well. The most attractive manifestation of God's power is seen in the fact that He stoops to touch men at the points of their daily need. It is that aspect of the grace of God--the meeting your need in the daily battle of life--which makes it so supremely precious. In the same way, when we, who profess to be followers and imitators of our Heavenly Father, and to regulate our conduct by the principles of holy living, bring these principles to bear upon the ordinary relationships of life, we are most accepted in our witness for Jesus Christ, and exert the best, the most effective influence upon others. These are the thoughts that have been in my mind, and which have led me to the subject upon which I wish to speak: the sanctification of the commonplace things. My thoughts arise from reading this passage in the Book of Zechariah: 'In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, _Holiness unto the Lord_; and the pots in the Lord's house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts'. Now, when we look at these things, these pots and pans and horses and bridles and things of that sort, having to do with our daily toil, our cooking and eating, our work at home and in the streets, and compare them with the glories of the Temple, the golden candlesticks, the golden vessels, the High Priest's wonderful garments, his breastplate, and, not least, with the Ark of the Covenant, we feel they are very commonplace things. And yet, you see, according to this statement the same stamp of holiness is to be put upon them all. Even the most commonplace of them comes within the scope of this Divine sanctity, and there is to be in relation to each of them this sacredness, this sanctification: 'Holiness unto the Lord', is the stamp for all alike. As an illustration of how _Jesus did great things by the use of the commonplace_, look at that narrative of the marriage in Cana of Galilee. We should probably never have heard of this marriage but for our Lord's miracle; and yet, apart from His Divine power, the process of turning the water into wine and transforming the character of the entire feast, that event was, indeed, a very common one. Look, first of all, at these clay pots--common enough--jars and jugs, standing in a corner, or perhaps standing out on the veranda, near where the Saviour was sitting. These pots are easily broken, and no great value is attached to them. If Christ had intended to do this great thing you would have imagined that He would have called for the best vessels in the house; but He did nothing of the kind. He took the very meanest vessel of the whole household, and He consecrated and sanctified it to His Divine use. Look at the water--that is common enough. Wine is costly, but water is cheap; it is thrown about, slopped about, and the pails containing it are often upset because easily filled again. Ordinarily speaking, water is one of the commonest of the commonplace necessaries of life. And yet that water was sanctified for a display of the Divine power. Then there are the servants--never a scarcity in the East, where often there are three to do one man's work. Christ did not call the master of the house to stand near and observe Him, or say, 'Ye highly-placed guests, come and see'. He left the head people, as we should say, and took the common servants. 'Fill up the jars; draw it out; carry it to the governor; pass it round', was His simple command. And the water was turned into wine. Some one has poetically said, 'The modest water saw its Lord, and blushed'; but it was more than that, for His was the best wine of the feast. Christ, you see, sanctified commonplace things and persons to display His benevolence and power. Make some practical use of them in regard to your own lives. It is hardly needful for me to point out that life is very largely made up of commonplaces--commonplace engagements, commonplace relationships, and commonplace duties. There are some who are a little better off than others, but even such people have common things to do before they get through the routine of life. With some of us it is altogether so--commonplace in the home, commonplace in the situation, commonplace in the workshop, commonplace in the office, commonplace in what we do for our living, and commonplace in the persons with whom we are associated. Nothing great or dignified about it. It is indeed a case of 'the trivial round, the common task'. But, whether you are a business man or a road-sweeper, you can live the sanctified life. Some of you may be heads of houses or domestic servants, horse-drivers or laundry-workers, factory hands or the owners of factories; but whatever you are, as followers of Jesus Christ, God wants you to put this label upon each and every section of your life--'Holiness unto the Lord'. He wants you also to conduct yourselves in every way consistent with that thought. The pots and the pans, and the bridles of the horses, and whatever we may have to do, must be labelled with that. 'Commissioner, can a man have a clean heart and drive a cab?' a man recently asked me. 'Of course, he can,' I replied, 'and if you come with me I will show you how to do it'. Why, the way in which we use these things is to be a part of our consecrated service to God. It does not sound very lofty, but that is just where the highest exhibition of Holiness can be given to the world. It is not what you do--that may seem very important or may be very trivial; but it is the manner of doing it and the motive behind it which is the main thing. You have all heard the story of the servant-girl who had got the blessing, and who, when asked how she knew she had it, said that she knew it because she 'now swept under the mats'. What a very simple thing, and yet the blessing of Holiness just shows itself in that. Sweeping round the mat and in the middle of the room only is not 'Holiness'. The girl was quite right; she knew that the sanctifying Grace of God had made a change in her, because she wanted to clean where dirt would not have been seen even if left there. How beautiful the lines of George Herbert, where, after speaking of doing things 'for Christ's sake', he says:-- _A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws Makes that and the action fine._ The fact that you do your work in the spirit of your religion sanctifies your lives. It transforms them from secular to sacred. Your work and your worship spring from the same motive, and those who see this treat you and your work with respect. The Scripture puts it beautifully in speaking of the Apostles, 'The people took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus'. Observe carefully how Zechariah combines the great and the commonplace. He says not only that the pots in the Lord's house shall be as sacred as the bowls before the altar, but that every pot and pan in the city shall be sanctified. The great point to be learned is that the Holiness of the home is to be as the Holiness of the Temple. The dedication which makes the bowls before the altar holy is also to sanctify the pots of the household, and the bells and trappings of the horses; the label which was written upon the priest's forehead, 'Holiness unto the Lord', is to be stamped upon the common things, in the street, in the shop, in the house--in fact, upon everything. Get rid for ever of the idea that the affairs of human life are divided into things secular and things sacred; that business is separate from religion, and religion separate from business; that the consecration of certain hours to Meetings, to Bible-reading, or to religious work, is a different sort of thing from the devotion of other hours to labour, or eating, or physical necessities. Now, such a division may exist with some, but it cannot be allowed to exist in the lives of those who profess to have consecrated themselves to God. In that case there is only _one label for everything_. For the meanest act, the commonest duty, the personal and private habits, there is only one motive, 'Holiness unto the Lord'. God's will, God's honour, God's service--these are on the labels. And-- _The trivial round, the common task, Will furnish all we ought to ask, Room to deny ourselves--a road To bring us daily nearer God._ Some have not got there yet. They have not made a dedication such as Zechariah spoke of, one which governs the whole life, the big and the little, the work and the worship, their associations and pleasures and methods of business. There are things in their daily work and personal habits, little indulgences or selfishnesses, to which that label, 'Holiness unto the Lord', cannot be attached. Oh, I beseech you, make no distinctions. Let there be no reserves. Body, soul, spirit, as we sometimes sing, lay upon the altar. Consecrate yourselves to your Lord in simplicity and sincerity, with a simple faith that God will baptize you, and give you His Holy Spirit to maintain this consecration. _What e'er pursuits my time employ, One thought shall fill my soul with joy; That silent, secret thought shall be That all my hopes are fixed on Thee._ XVII Spiritual Growth '_Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring whose waters fail not._' (Isaiah lviii. 11.) '_Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ._' (2 Peter iii. 18.) The truths of the Bible exist in counterpart, having at least two aspects, each of which must be considered in relation to the other, if their full meaning is to be understood. That is a very necessary statement in regard to the aspect of truth which we emphasize under the general heading of 'Spiritual Growth', or 'Growth in the Divine Life'. On the one hand, we know that spiritual experience is marked by certain crises which are in some cases like earthquakes or tidal waves; whilst, on the other hand, the law of progression must be in constant operation. We speak of conversion as a crisis, because a man in a moment 'passes from death unto life'; or, in the Saviour's words, is 'born again'. Whatever happens before or after, there must be that definite change before any man can enter the Kingdom of God. Then, happily, many have experienced another crisis which we speak of as 'getting a clean heart'. This happens when an enlightened soul fully and absolutely consecrates itself to God, and, by faith, claims and realizes that 'the Blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin'. A man may be a long time, in coming to that point; but, sooner or later, he must reach and pass it if he is to secure that 'holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord'. But whilst no amount of improvement in moral character can dispense with the crises referred to, we cannot rightly magnify the definite transactions at conversion or cleansing, or any other remarkable point of religious life, to the detraction of spiritual growth. Each aspect of the truth, as I have already said, is the counterpart of the other, and must be viewed in its natural perspective. People sometimes express themselves in exaggerated language as regards both aspects of truth. A lady friend, referring to a young person of beautiful disposition, said to me, 'Ah, you see, in her case there is no need of conversion. She was born sanctified like her mother.' Quite a false notion. But it is equally foolish for persons to exclaim, 'I am converted, and a child of God; now I am all right'; or, 'Now I have got a clean heart; it is all done'. As a matter of fact, there is no more important principle to be cultivated than the law of progression or advance in the Divine life. That principle is certainly in perfect harmony with Scripture teaching, and is expressed in Peter's exhortation, 'Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ'. Paul's words about 'growing up unto Him in all things which is the head even Christ', express the same thought; whilst John shows the ascending grades of spiritual experience in directing his words to 'little children', 'young men', and 'fathers'. These grades are not measured by years, but by progress in spiritual life and vigour and personal knowledge of God. The Bible contains many figures illustrating this idea of growth or progress, whether applied to character or service. For example, it refers to the garden as a place where things grow, and thus illustrates the garden of the soul; to the development of a building in course of erection, 'all fitly framed together' and growing; to the growth of a fortune by wise investment, in the use of talents, two becoming four, five becoming ten, and so forth. The growth of the human body is also referred to, with its limbs, muscles, and parts developing with the head; and the growth of the student, as exemplified in the text, 'Add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity'. Then the ideas associated with a garden or the field are also used as illustrations. The Bible parables from nature are very significant and powerful. They embrace the vine and its branches, the sower and the seed, the lily among thorns, the trees planted by the rivers of water; and thus the facts of the spiritual realm are made clear to us. I often speak of _the garden of the soul_. If I widen the figure, and apply it to our personal character and general make-up, we shall see the similitude of a garden which is a place where all sorts of things grow; things related to the body, and to the mind, and to life generally. The gardener studies his ground, and the possible products and available seed. He seeks to get rid of the weeds and briers and poisonous plants, in order that the desired products may grow to perfection. So the ground of our hearts and characters must be purged from the weeds and hindering things which grow with the affections and disposition generally. Evil things flourish apace in the garden of human nature; but if they are removed, sanctified seed may be sown, and holy plants may be cultivated. The Bible also speaks of God's saints as being in '_the garden of the Lord_', as trees which His right hand planted, or growing from seed which He has sown, blossoming as the rose, fragrant as the honeysuckle and almond, and bringing forth the fruits of righteousness to the glory of His name. But whether you look at your souls as a garden, from which evil plants are to be removed, and in which the plants of God's grace are to flourish instead, or regard yourselves as trees in God's garden, the ideas are always connected with growth, enlargement, and productiveness. Isaiah gives an illustration which is in striking contrast. Speaking of God's idea concerning His saints, he says, 'Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and a spring whose waters fail not'; but he supplies another picture of those 'who forsake the Lord' after having known Him, God saying to them, 'Ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water'. Let us look well at ourselves, and find out to which class we belong. The religion of Jesus Christ is pre-eminently good because it marks things of evil growth as things to be rooted out, and it produces qualities in the soul and character which are Christ-like, such as love, forgiveness of injuries, patience, devotion, and self-sacrifice for the good of others. These are all things which grow, and must grow, if we are to be as God wants us to be. Cleansing from evil things we must definitely seek and secure; but growth in grace and peace and Divine knowledge, and skill in service, must be sought and cultivated by us continually. It may help our understanding of this truth if we study carefully the process in the growth of a good tree. If there is satisfactory development, three things in the tree will be discovered; namely, growth in the root, growth in the branches, and growth in the form of flowers and fruit. 1. I said _growth in the root_. This means that the tree must strike deep, deeper, and deeper still, so as to get an increasingly firm grip on the earth below, from which it draws much of its support. Without this the tree will fall of its own top-weight, or be uprooted by the storms which will rage about it. So, in the individual soul and character there must, below the surface, be a deepening and spreading and gripping of the spiritual forces and principles and realizations, those hidden connexions with the Divine Unseen without which one cannot stand before the storms and scorching tests of life. One of the sacred writers speaks of a section of God's people in trouble, and in danger of being wiped out, but reveals God's purpose for them in these words, 'They shall yet again take root downward, and bear fruit upward'. It is not difficult to grasp the principle illustrated; we must cultivate _a religion with roots_, otherwise our experience will be superficial and shallow, and, like the seed in the parable, with no depth of earth, and having little root, will ultimately become dried up. This really means growth in secret, growth out of sight, and reminds us of the beautiful words of Jesus: 'When thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall Himself reward thee openly'. There are many kinds of prayer, but here is one that helps growth in the very roots of our religion. It fits in with the Psalmist's word, 'He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty'. 2. I also spoke of _growth in the branches_. It is easy to understand what the growth of trunk and branches means in a tree; it grows higher, develops strength, and reaches out farther. It means the same when applied to growth in grace and character; getting power to grow stronger in resisting evil and standing for the right; stronger to say 'Yes' and 'No'; stronger to discharge our duty, and to endure hardness as good soldiers of Christ. Equally it means reaching out, stretching farther, and extending our efforts to reach and help and bless. The banyan tree of the East affords us an apt illustration in this connexion. Its stem shoots up, its branches dip, touch the earth, and take root, repeating the process of extension until a great area is covered, and crowds may shelter beneath it. In like manner the extent of one's influence may at first be small, and the circle affected by our power be limited; but if it is wisely used and cultivated, it will stretch and grow, reaching farther and farther, and touching new people with new power and blessing. You know the old preacher's reproach to the people who sang, 'Oh, for a thousand tongues!' and yet would not use the one they each possessed to witness for their Lord. I knew a man who wanted to go to China as a missionary, who would not testify for Christ in the neighbourhood where he lived. That meant declension, not growth. Growth comes by using the grace, stretching out and reaching forth; the power increases by reason of use. 3. Finally, there is _growth in the form of flowers and fruit_. God no more intended His creatures to be barren and unfruitful in religion, than He intended plants to fail in bloom and fruit. How perfectly clear Jesus makes this in His Parable of the Vine and the Branches! Of the branch which abideth in the Vine He says that when purged it shall experience a certain progression. Observe the order, 'bear fruit--more fruit--much fruit', and 'fruit which shall remain'. Let us ask ourselves to which of these stages we have attained, and go on earnestly to a fuller fruitfulness. If I had space to speak of the various kinds of Nature's growth, I should point out how some fruit is for human food, such as apples, oranges, grain, and vegetables. Some blossoms are for beauty and fragrance, and in other cases flowers and fruit appear to be chiefly for seed purposes; but with almost every plant and tree the best feature is its reproductive power; that is, fruit is produced whose seed is in itself, and so multiplies its own kind. Is not that what God wants with us? Beauty and grace and gratification, certainly, for we must adorn the doctrine; but your sanctified fruit must have the seed in itself, which drops and takes root, and reproduces itself in the world around you. Remember my last word, 'Herein is your Father glorified that ye bear much fruit'; fruit now and fruit always; so that, like the trees planted by rivers of water, you shall 'bring forth fruit even in old age'. _Oh, help us, Lord, throughout our time To test ourselves, by help divine, To see what fruit we bear; What promise are we making Thee, As ripened souls we wish to be, When harvest home draws near._ XVIII The Inward Laws '_I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them. Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more._' (Hebrews x. 16, 17.) The beginnings of religion lie in the desire to have our sins forgiven, and to be enabled to avoid doing the wrong things again. It was so with David when, in the fifty-first Psalm, he not only cried, 'Have mercy upon me, O God, and blot out my transgressions', but 'Wash me, cleanse me from my sin'. Sin is a double evil. On the one hand, it creates a record of wrongdoing which has to be faced; on the other, it creates a disease in the moral system and spiritual make-up of a man. This disease creates desires for the evil thing, and so warps and weakens a man's force of resistance that when the temptation is presented, the inward craving asserts itself, and makes the man _want_ to go into the temptation. To deal with this complex character of sin is a greater problem than human ingenuity and skill are equal to. God, however, has solved the problem Himself, and His plan of Salvation is addressed to both aspects of evil. It includes, first, the forgiveness of sins; and then the introduction of a new governing force and the power to live according to the will of God. Both these things are set out in the verses quoted, although the order of statement is reversed. Let me use two stories to illustrate the separate points. The one relates to a little boy who, having done wrong in his home, had been dealt with by his mother. Referring to it afterwards, the boy said, 'Yes, I knew mother had forgiven me for the wrong; but I saw in her face, although she did not frown, that she remembered all day what I did in the morning'. There are many, no doubt, who forgive in that fashion; but it is not God's way. He says, 'Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more'. He forgets as well as forgives. An illustration of the other point came out in the personal testimony of an eminently religious man who, before his conversion, was addicted to horse-racing. He said that after his conversion he did not go to the race-meeting, but very much wanted to do so. Later, when the light came to him, he got his heart and mind sanctified; and 'Then', said he, 'I not only did not go, but I had no desires to be there; the Lord had taken _the want to_ out of my heart'. It is the knowledge of these two aspects of evil, and of the necessity for having the double problem dealt with, which causes us to lay such emphasis upon the 'clean heart' teaching. First, the forgiveness of the sins; then cleansing from the evil desire, and getting the power to live the holy life. This is the essence of our Holiness doctrine. There are, as I have frequently pointed out, other things besides inner experiences connected with true religion; for instance, we read in this chapter of its outward tokens, such as witnessing for Christ, holding fast the profession or confession of our faith without wavering. That is very important. There is also the association with others who are of the same mind; 'not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together'. Combination and outward union seem to be within the Divine plan for extending religion. Stirring one another up to duty is also emphasized, 'exhorting one another', 'provoking one another to love and good works'; that is, helping each other in the things which make for the godly life. All these must be in us and abound, if we are to justify our religion. But, after all, _the vital thing about religion is its inward springs and connexions_; the outer life inspired and regulated by the laws of God put into our hearts and written in our minds, reproducing themselves in the activities and relations of daily life. We would not undervalue the tables of stone, on which God with His own finger wrote the Commandments, and delivered them to Moses. We would ever prize the Blessed Bible, with its sacred records of the wonderful revelations of the Divine mind and purposes concerning men; for, in producing these, 'holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost'. How much more highly, however, do we value the Spirit of God writing upon the fleshly tables of the heart, bringing the heart and mind, not only into the knowledge of God's will, but into harmony with it, and planting and feeding the living principles which produce the fruit of good living! It is worth while to inquire what are the laws which God undertakes to put into the hearts and minds of His willing children. In this connexion we think of _the law of submission and obedience_. Religion begins there. When seeking Salvation, either at the penitent-form or elsewhere, we went down, submitted ourselves to God, so far as we knew it, and declared that we would do what He wanted us to do. We saw, felt, and accepted it as the settled thing for us that His will should be the governing law; that must go on operating all along life's way. Continuing to follow Him is as important as beginning to do so--'If any man will deny himself, let him take up his cross, and follow Me' That means continued submission to His government and conditions of service. In the days of Christ's ministry a large number of people gathered around Him, but when they saw what was involved, 'they went back from following Him'. We must see that the surrenders of the sanctified life are not matters of a moment. There is a supreme moment when consecration lays its all upon the altar, but every day brings its own tests even to the most advanced among us. As in Abraham's experience, the birds of temptation and beasts of prey seek to destroy or defile the offering, and we have to hold on in our obedience, binding the sacrifice with fresh cords to the altar. Now, we must not miss the point of the Apostle's teaching, which is, that when the law of God is stamped in the heart and mind, the spirit of the law prevailing within us makes us desire to obey and serve, and so we are empowered to sustain the claims of the consecrated life. Then, there is _the law of faith_. It is spoken of in these verses. 'We are to draw near in the full assurance of faith'; that is, with the confidence that our approaches will not be in vain, because Christ has opened the way by His own Blood; and we believe that the provisions are at our disposal. Now, faith is a law for the mind as well as for the heart. It is with the heart that a man 'believeth unto righteousness'; but there must be an intelligent perception of the facts and of the rightness of the truth; there must be an apprehension of the reasonableness of God's requirements before a man will happily submit, obey, and follow. May I touch upon our own family sorrow in the death of a beloved son and Officer in India? Before my heart could rest in the will of God as exhibited in that bereavement, I had to reach the point of believing that a Father's hand prepared that cup, and that His will is the best, and His power and grace will make all things work together for good. The heart cried out in its agonizing pain and sense of loss; but, trusting in the Divine Love, rest and peace came to my bereaved soul. And so, all along the consecrated way and line of service, it is when the law of faith is written in the mind, and becomes a settled perception or conviction, that the sanctified heart is able to find rest. 'By grace are ye saved through faith', is true at the beginning; but equally true is the word, 'Kept by the power of God through faith'; and the principle is that the law in the mind and heart constantly operates as we tread the appointed path of life and service. I cannot leave the subject without touching specially upon one among other important laws which deserve our consideration; _the law of love_. Paul was quite right when, comparing the various qualities of Christian character he declared, 'The greatest of these is love'. 'Love is the bond of perfectness.' Even submission and sacrifice are acts of joy when it is a case of love's surrender. The blessedness of service is great when love is the inspiration of that service, and great is the enduring power of true God-given love. The human will at best is weak; human supports are like reeds which bend or break when most needed; intellectual capacity or natural talents are valuable; but, after all, they only stand for so much in one's life; but 'love never faileth'. I cannot sufficiently commend to you this law of love in the heart; but, believe me, it sweetens life's sorrow, lightens life's burdens, and strengthens our powers of service and endurance. How far does our experience harmonize with what has been said about the nature and conditions of true religion? which is only another way of presenting the blessing of Holiness. The new and living way of which the Apostle speaks as opened through the Blood of Jesus, is the only way to the cleansing fountain and the sanctifying grace. Let his words, therefore, encourage you to 'enter with boldness', to 'draw near with a true heart', a heart knowing its need, but believing the promises of God, and He will meet you and make these inward laws of Holiness and service your abiding experience. XIX Worry _versus_ Peace '_Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus._' (Philippians iv. 6, 7.) Before the full bearing and value of these verses can be realized, I think they require to be read several times over. Even if the sentences are read through slowly, just as they stand, a deep sense of blessing and rest steals into the soul; but the more deeply they are considered, the richer will the words be found. It would be almost correct for me to call this a New Testament commentary on Isaiah's beautiful verse, 'Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee', for the ideas and their relation are very similar. If we look at the various phases of this message, we shall see that they are very important. They imply, first, a perfect surrender or committal of oneself to God, based on a perfect trust; second, open access to God; freedom of intercourse; telling Him all about things which try and burden and distress us. We have also perfect peace; that is, quietness of spirit, rest of soul, deliverance from inward conflict, consequent upon God's keeping power through Jesus Christ. Read carefully this Apostolic message, and observe not only the different sections, but how they are connected, and how, in their completeness, they express a most desirable spiritual experience. Included or connected with Full Salvation are certain blessings to which we generally refer, such as perfect love and purity, also that peace to which the Apostle here alludes, as well as a deep, settled faith in the saving purposes and power of God. But we do not always see that we may equally include deliverance from that undue anxiety which we call worry; and yet these verses certainly prescribe a cure for worry as well as other evils, and it may be helpful for us to look at that aspect of truth. Many are tempted to regard this as an ideal condition, something to long for, and perhaps to aim at; whereas if the teaching of Paul here--in fact, of the Bible generally--is not a delusion, this is intended to be a realized experience; and I remind any who say that Salvation from worry is too high for us, that they have said just the same when we have talked about a clean heart, and Salvation from sin and sinning. A thoughtful author has recently written a book bearing the title of 'Worry, the Disease of the Age'. He takes trouble to show that, owing to commercial competition, the increased desire for luxurious living, keeping up appearances, and other developments of modern days, heads of families and persons in responsible positions do a great deal of worrying. This writer then goes on to say: 'It is, however, more than a certainty that true religion is a cure for worry, a preventative of worry, and is utterly incomparable in its performance of these functions'. 'The religion which Jesus Christ taught in Galilee', says the same writer, 'is a casting of one's care upon the Lord, an acceptance of the ills and lashes of life with a settled faith that God is too good and wise to err or to be unkind, and that He will make all things work together for good to them that love Him'. I know that a state of worry may arise from physical causes. Inflamed nerves, mental depressions, or hysterical fears, are, in many instances, quite beyond the control of the sufferer. With others there is an intense desire to do something or get something done; but I also know that, as with bad tempers, a good deal is put down to physical and nervous disorders which ought to be put down to lack of spiritual life and power. Now, when I speak of Salvation from worry, I do not mean deliverance from nervous agitation or shrinking from physical suffering, although I do not know how to fix a point where God's gracious power is exhausted, even as regards these things; but 'worry' is that carking care, that undue anxiety about one's personal affairs which destroys peace of mind, burdens the heart, and often leads to distrust of God's love and power. From such things God's grace is sufficient to deliver. Let me be plain, however, on one point. I think carelessness, recklessness, and indifference to possible happenings, is wrong. You hear persons say, 'Oh, never mind; what does it matter? Don't fash or bother yourself.' But such expressions often spring from pure selfishness, and sometimes exhibit a sinful disregard for the happiness of other people. Nothing makes it right to ease yourself at the expense of others, or to shirk burdens by shifting them to other shoulders. Some are clever at that, but such action may be positively sinful. On the other hand, God can deliver us from that anxious care and foreboding and unrest with which so many good people are afflicted. Oh, my friends, can you not learn to come to God as the Apostle directs, making known your requests in 'prayer and supplication with thanksgiving'? for then 'the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ'. We need far more trust in the providence of our Heavenly Father. What needless pain we suffer! what agonies of mind we endure! what clouds hang above and around us! because we do not trust Him in respect of the circumstances of life. There are those even who are trusting God to forgive their sins and save their souls, who yet will not trust Him to carry them through a difficulty in ordinary life and association, or help them with their bread and butter. The fact is, they doubt God's personal interposition in the affairs of men; consequently, their affairs get muddled, and their hearts and minds are disturbed, often to distraction. No truth is more plainly taught than that God does interpose. 'In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.' 'The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.' 'Who is he that shall harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?' 'No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.' I know that distrust and doubt can erect all sorts of difficulties, and perhaps none is more common and specious than what is called by the sceptical men 'the logic of proportion'. This argument says, 'In a universe so vast, what is man? As a speck of dust is to a planet, and as a star is to the vast universe, so is man to the world in which he lives'. Well, it certainly is not strange that the mind should stagger at the thought of the Creator of the universe putting His hand to the management of the details of a human life. And yet God's truth in the Bible completely wipes out this so-called 'logic of proportion'. Let us look at a familiar illustration used by our Master of God's minute care for those who fully trust and follow Him. One able man has called what I am referring to 'the doctrine of the odd sparrow'. Matthew records how, on one occasion, Jesus said, 'Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father'. But, turning to Luke, we find a slight variation in what Jesus said, 'Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God'. Now, do you see the point of Luke's putting of it? It is as if the dealer had said to the buyer, 'Look here, you want a farthing's worth of sparrows. Well, you can have two; but, if you will buy two farthingsworth, I will _throw the odd one in for nothing_'. Two for a farthing; five for a halfpenny. But see; of that odd sparrow thrown in as hardly worth counting, Jesus said, 'Not one of them is forgotten before God. Not one shall fall to the ground without your Father. Are ye not of more value than many sparrows?' Now, in the light of that illustration, turn once more to the Apostolic message, 'Be careful for nothing', and I think you will find good reason for believing the promise, 'The peace of God shall keep your hearts through Jesus Christ'. Before leaving this matter of worry, I suggest that we look well to find the cause of the trouble; for, alas! it is not unfrequently the case that care or undue anxiety arises from positive sin in the heart. Some of you worry in respect of your position in life as compared with other people's; but are you sure that some of this fratch and distress does not arise from feelings of envy, or jealousy, or discontent? Others may worry because of comparative poverty, but is it not often pride or ambition concerning yourselves or your children, and a desire to be level with your neighbours, which causes the trouble? You worry, perhaps, because people cross your purposes and upset your plans and irritate you needlessly; but is not the secret really that you resent interference, and want to have your own way? Now, before blaming your circumstances, I suggest you have a thorough self-examination, for it may be that the inward trouble is due to unbelief, selfishness, ambition, pride, or some other form of heart sin, and that evil must be dealt with before perfect peace can prevail. May I come very close to you, and ask, Is it not true of some that, far from being kept by the peace of God which passeth all understanding, you are in a condition, an attitude of mind, which distinctly hinders the enjoyment of such a blessing? Some, I fear, have not got even as far as saying, 'Being justified by faith, I have peace with God'. There is some sin, some indulgence, which God is against; and as rebellion and peace are opposed to each other, you cannot have guidance and peace and spiritual blessings until you cast yourselves at the mercy-seat, and take Christ as your Saviour. Again, it may be some point of controversy. Something in regard to your circumstances, or your consecration, or even your inward condition; you refuse or hesitate to obey God's call, and follow the light. God has not left you to yourselves, but the Spirit is grieved by your unwillingness; and the result is, that you have conflict in your hearts, clouds in your sky, and failure in your lives. Take it from me, that you cannot have this deliverance which the Apostle describes, this keeping power and peace, unless the will of God is supreme in your heart. Controversy must be given up, the full surrender made, and then you must trust yourselves and your lives in God's hands. If this is done, and the Apostolic direction followed, then you will be able to sing-- _Careless through outward cares I go, From all distraction free; My hands are but engaged below, My heart is still with Thee._ XX An Appeal and a Response '_I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us? Then said I, Here am I; send me! And He said, Go._' (Isaiah vi. 8, 9.) The incident with which these words are connected was a real mosaic in sacred history. You have the record of a vision which was not a dream but a revelation--a panorama of actualities. The background of this vision might well absorb our attention. The temple and the glory which filled it; the throne and Him who sat thereon; the seraphim, with their wings and ascriptions of Holiness. The atmosphere was, indeed, electric with the presence of God and the angelic host. Isaiah, the solitary human figure in the scene, was overawed with the glorious majesty of the Divine character; shame at the revelation of his own impurity overwhelmed him. He rightly felt that he was a blot upon this temple scene, but the Divine touch of the living fire transformed him, and prepared him for that which was to follow. Analyse this conversation, and you see three things standing in a most natural order:-- First. An Appeal sounds out: 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?' Second. A Response is made to that Appeal: 'Here am I; send me'. Third. A Commission was given: 'And He said, "Go"'. Now this conversation was not only important and imperative as regards Isaiah and his circumstances, but in its application to ourselves and our surroundings. I think we shall get some blessing and inspiration for duty if we consider the three facts as they stand. 1. _The nature of the appeal was a very simple one._ The Lord wanted a suitable representative to stand for Him among a sinful, backslidden people. Isaiah was already supposed to fill that position--at any rate, on special occasions; but he was so much like the people themselves that in the ordinary way his religion had little weight with them. No doubt he felt the honour and privilege of being a prophet when a special message had to be sent, but he hardly realized the high purpose of his mission, and maybe his cry, 'Here am I; send me', was a pleading for another chance to better represent His Lord. The same appeal, 'Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?' is sounded in our ears to-day. There are certain aspects which I would like you to note. _It was an appeal based upon a great need._ Then, as now, the people were without God; indifferent to His claims, few of them with any experimental knowledge of His Salvation, and, consequently, having no hope in the world. And in these respects God wanted a man who would arouse the people, assert His claims, and lead them back to His service. Believe me, the world's need to-day is a deep and terrible one. I need hardly enlarge upon it. You know it, because samples of it are at your door and around you. But do not forget that the deepest need of the people lies in their lack of knowledge of God and that Salvation which, after all, is the panacea for human woe. We live in days when the practical aspects of religion are most emphasized. The social conditions and physical needs of the poor people are regarded as affording a sphere for Christ-like effort quite as much as is the preaching of the Gospel. Bread, not creed; relief as well as pity; material improvements in place of missions and Gospel addresses and such-like are demanded on every hand. God forbid, however, that the doing of these things should be regarded as quite sufficient. There are humanitarian considerations, and we must not ignore them. Squalor, poverty, debauchery, harlotry, oppression, war, and ignorance are existing evils which must have attention. We must not be so taken up with the souls as to neglect the temporal, social, and physical needs of our fellows. But the deepest wail of want and woe which comes from the world is not to be met by bread, or sovereigns, or sanitation, or education, or more equal conditions of life. It is the absence of God and eternal hope which gives the deepest and most sorrowful tone to the world's bitter cry. This was also _an appeal for human help_. I do not know why God has so tied Himself up as He has, but it is a fact. Although angels are available, and the direct operations of His Spirit would be almighty, His plan is to get His will made known by one man telling another. Men to save men; men to help men; that seems to be God's method, and He appeals now, as before, 'Who will go for Us?' 2. The second point I named was _the response to the Divine appeal_: 'Here am I; send me'. Cannot that be repeated in various directions among us? Thank God for the responses already made, and but for which dark and hopeless, indeed, would be human hearts and places which have been illuminated by the light of God's Salvation. But, Oh, for more ready and larger responses to the appeal which is ever sounding in our ears! Isaiah's response was a _voluntary_ one. Some people are like the horse whom his owner said had only two faults; one, that he 'took such a lot of catching', and the other that 'he would not work when he was caught'. Others have to be disciplined and broken by trouble before they fall in line with God's will. But why should not every one who names our Lord's name cry out with a ready spirit, 'Here am I, Lord; send me'? This was also _a response without conditions_; or, as we put it, an unreserved surrender, an unconditional consecration. It is a matter to rejoice over when men and women express willingness to do any service, but it is infinitely better when, coming up to the Divine altar, they say, 'Here am I, Lord; have your own way; do as you will with me; anything for Jesus--anywhere for Thee'. Have you got there yet? If not, let that be the advance which you make now, without further bargaining and reserves. But _this response came from a heart qualified to make it good_. Ah! that is the secret of all successful service. Isaiah, cleansed, sanctified, and touched with Divine Fire, was a different person from the one who lay grovelling in the dust, and crying, 'Woe is me!' Up to that moment he was too much like those around him; but now, touched, baptized, and qualified, he was fit to be God's witness and agent. That just touches the point where some of you are lacking. You need this cleansing, this 'unction of the Holy One', or you need it afresh in the face of the world's crying need. You hold back, you stumble and often fail; but why? The answer is, you need just what Isaiah got to qualify him for his mission. You must get this so as to be able to respond to God's appeal as he did. 3. Then I also spoke of the _Divine commission which followed the response_. Observe the process, 'Who will go?' 'Here am I.' '_And He said, Go_'. That is still the line upon which our Lord acts in sending out His representatives. We sometimes dwell upon the 'Come's' of the Bible, quoting the Divine invitations for the encouragement of hesitating souls. May we not with equal force quote the 'Go's' of the Book as indicating the will of God concerning our duty? You remember the Lord's 'Go' to Moses, when, appearing to him in the burning bush, God set out His plan for Israel's deliverance: 'I will send thee to bring My people out'. In the same manner the Lord gave Joshua his marching orders to 'Go over Jordan, and possess the land'. Paul had a similar experience when the Lord bade him rise and receive his commission to go to the Gentiles. Christ's Parable of the Great Feast strikes the same note when the liberal host sent out his servants, saying, 'Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled'. But the grand chord was sounded out by our Risen Lord when He said to His disciples, 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature'. That is the commission given to us. During successive years I have, on behalf of The General, had the privilege of commissioning from our International Training Homes batches of 400 or 500 young men and women who have been trained to be Officers of The Salvation Army. That is a grand annual contribution towards the world's Salvation. But the word comes not only to the leaders of God's hosts, but to every Soldier and follower of Jesus Christ who is consecrated to His service. _The Lord's 'Go' means different things to different people._ To some, the Divine finger points one way; perhaps to a distant field, where millions lie in the darkness of heathendom, or to Army Officership somewhere. To others it points to spheres of testimony and work near at hand. The kinds of places and labour are varied, but the purpose is the same, and all who go out in obedience in God's name will find His almighty power behind them and blessings in their train. I cannot direct you in detail, but in general terms I can say, _Go where you know God wants you_. Where the streams of sin are sweeping the people down to damnation and dark despair--go there. Where the poor people are being ruined by that cup which not only curses now, but at the last 'biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder'--go there. Where struggling souls are crying for sympathy and help--go there. Where the youth of our land are being polluted by depraved men and women among whom they earn their daily bread--go there. Where God seems unknown, or His claims unheeded for lack of living witnesses--go there. Go where you may lift up your voice for your Master; go where a helping hand or kindly words can minister comfort to depressed and hopeless hearts. _Hark! for the Master calls, Child, I have need of thee; Man in thy pride of strength, Youth in thy beauteous glee, Aged and young, and rich and poor, Trifles and toys no more pursue; The world is wide, and time is short; There's work for all to do._ These thoughts have revived in my memory Scott's poem in which he records an ancient custom found amongst the traditions of Scottish history. A chieftain desired to summon his clansmen to war in great urgency. The shrill blast of the bugle called together his immediate followers, but those at a distance must be summoned by other means. Before sending out a swift and trusty messenger, the priest was called and certain rites which had been observed from time immemorial performed. A cross was constructed from the branches of the yew tree, and then held aloft by the priest, whilst he pronounced awful curses on the men who, at the sight of the signal, failed to obey the summons of their chief. The cross was then held in the fire until it blazed, was again uplifted and fresh curses added; then it was plunged in the blood of a newly-slain sacrifice, and, smoking and reeking with gore, the charred and bloody cross was given into the hands of a swift messenger, who leaping away as an arrow sped from a bow, flies along the mountain-path, and, holding the crimson sign before the eyes of the clansmen, names the place of assembly, and passes the signal on throughout the borders. I have no yew-tree cross, no bleeding sacrifice visible to outward eyes, but before the eyes of your souls, I lift up the cross of Calvary, charred by the fires of sin, and reeking with the Blood of the Divine Victim, and in God's name I charge you to go forth to rescue the needy souls of men. _See the brazen hosts of Hell Art and power employing, More than human tongue can tell Blood-bought souls destroying; Hark! from ruin's ghastly road Victims groan beneath their load, Forward, O ye sons of God, And dare or die for Jesus._ SALVATION ARMY PUBLICATIONS BY THE GENERAL Salvation Soldiery. Stirring Addresses on the Requirements of Jesus Christ's Service. Every page full of Burning Truths. 156 pages. Illustrated. Cloth, Gilt Edges, 2s. 6d.; Cloth, 1s. 6d.; Paper, 1s. The General's Letters. Remarkable series of Letters published in 'The War Cry' of 1885, dealing with Neutrality, Courage, Realities, etc. 204 pages. Half Calf, 5s.; Cloth, 2s.; Paper, 1s. The Training of Children. Important to Parents. This book shows how to make Children into Saints and Soldiers. 260 pages. Cloth, Bevelled Edges, 2s. 6d.; Limp Cloth, 1s. 6d.; Paper, 6d. The Doctrines of The Salvation Army. 119 pages. Limp Cloth, 6d. Purity of Heart. A Valuable Collection of Letters to Salvationists on Personal Holiness. 118 pages. Cloth, 1s.; Paper, 6d. Religion for Every Day. Vol. I. An Invaluable Work for every Salvationist, dealing with matters affecting Soul, Body, Family, Business, etc. 190 pages. Cloth, 1s. 6d.; Paper, 1s. Love, Marriage, and Home. Being Vol. II of RELIGION FOR EVERY DAY. 190 pages. Cloth, 1s. 6d.; Paper, 1s. Religion for Every Day. Two Vols. in one; 370 pages. Cloth, 3s. Visions. A Reprint of Interesting Articles from 'The War Cry'. 160 pages. Cloth, 1s. 6d.; Paper, 1s. Sergeant-Major Do-Your-Best; or, Sketches of the Inner Life of a Salvation Army Corps. 287 pages. Cloth, 2s.; Paper, 1s. The Seven Spirits; or, What I Teach my Officers. 112 pages. 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A Series of Pungent Reviews, reprinted, by request, from 'The War Cry'. 191 pages. Cloth, 1s. 6d.; Linen, 1s. Servants of All. A description of the Officers of The Army and their Work. 167 pages. Cloth, Bevelled Boards, 1s. 6d.; Cloth, 1s.; Paper, 6d. Social Reparation; or, Personal Impressions of Work for Darkest England. 124 pages. Cloth, 1s. Bible Battle-Axes. A reprint of Short Scripture Studies from 'The Field Officer' magazine. Carefully revised. 178 pages. Cloth, 1s. Our Master. Thoughts for Salvationists about their Lord. 168 pages. Cloth, 2s. THE RED-HOT LIBRARY _Cloth Boards_, 1s.; _Paper_, 6d. _per volume_. No. 1.--Francis the Saint, or, Less than the Least. By Brigadier EILEEN DOUGLAS. No. 2.--On the Banks of the River. A Brief History of the Last Days of MRS. GENERAL BOOTH. By THE CHIEF OF THE STAFF. No. 3.--George Fox, the Red-Hot Quaker. By Brigadier EILEEN DOUGLAS. No. 4--Helps to Holiness. By Colonel S. L. BRENGLE. No. 5--David Stoner; or, The Shy Preacher. By Brigadier EILEEN DOUGLAS. No. 6.--Red Flowers of Martyrdom. By Brigadier EILEEN DOUGLAS. No. 7.--Heart-Talks on Holiness. By Colonel S. L. BRENGLE. No. 8.--Commissioner Dowdle, the Saved Railway Guard. By Commissioner RAILTON. No. 9.--Peter Cartwright, God's Rough-rider. By Commissioner RAILTON. No. 10.--Lieut.-Colonel Junker. By Commissioner RAILTON. No. 11.--The Soul-Winner's Secret. By Colonel S. L. BRENGLE. No. 12.--The Life of Gideon Ouseley. By Commissioner RAILTON. No. 13.--Fletcher of Madeley. By Brigadier MARGARET ALLEN. No. 14.--The Cross our Comfort. Selections from the Writings of the late CONSUL EMMA BOOTH-TUCKER. No. 15.--Sighs from Hell. By JOHN BUNYAN. No. 16.--What Hinders You? By Mrs. Colonel BRENGLE. No. 17.--The Fruits of the Spirit, and The Whole Armour of God. By Brigadier EILEEN DOUGLAS. THE WARRIORS' LIBRARY _Cloth Boards_, 8d. _net; Half Cloth Boards_, 6d. _net per volume_. No. 1.--Catherine Booth: A Sketch. By Colonel MILDRED DUFF. 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By Brigadier MARGARET ALLEN. * * * * * _Order from THE MANAGER, Publishing Department, 79 & 81 Fortess Road, London, N.W._ 
13434	----	Distributed Proofreaders Team [Illustration: GENERAL BOOTH] REGENERATION Being an Account of the Social Work of The Salvation Army in Great Britain. H. RIDER HAGGARD 1910 DEDICATION I dedicate these pages to the Officers and Soldiers of the Salvation Army, in token of my admiration of the self-sacrificing work by which it is their privilege to aid the poor and wretched throughout the world. H. RIDER HAGGARD. DITCHINGHAM, _November, 1910_ CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY MEN'S SOCIAL WORK, LONDON SPA ROAD ELEVATOR GREAT PETER STREET SHELTER FREE BREAKFAST SERVICE EX-CRIMINALS MEN'S WORKSHOP: HANBURY STREET, WHITECHAPEL STURGE HOUSE, BOW ROAD CENTRAL LABOUR BUREAU INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT EMIGRATION DEPARTMENT WOMEN'S SOCIAL WORK IN LONDON HEADQUARTERS OF THE WOMEN'S SOCIAL WORK HILLSBOROUGH HOUSE INEBRIATES' HOME MATERNITY NURSING HOME MATERNITY RECEIVING HOME MATERNITY HOSPITAL 'THE NEST,' CLAPTON TRAINING INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN'S SOCIAL WORK WOMEN'S INDUSTRIAL HOME, HACKNEY INEBRIATES' HOME WOMEN'S INDUSTRIAL HOME, SOUTHWOOD WOMEN'S SHELTER, WHITECHAPEL SLUM SETTLEMENT, HACKNEY ROAD PICCADILLY MIDNIGHT WORK ANTI-SUICIDE BUREAU WORK IN THE PROVINCES, LIVERPOOL MEN'S SOCIAL WORK, MANCHESTER OAKHILL HOUSE, MANCHESTER MEN'S SOCIAL WORK, GLASGOW ARDENSHAW WOMEN'S HOME WOMEN'S LODGING-HOUSE, GLASGOW LAND AND INDUSTRIAL COLONY, HADLEIGH SMALL-HOLDINGS SETTLEMENT, BOXTED IMPRESSIONS OF GENERAL BOOTH THE CHIEF OF THE STAFF NOTE ON THE RELIGION OF THE SALVATION ARMY APPENDICES AUTHOR'S NOTE The author desires to thank Mr. D.R. DANIEL for the kind and valuable assistance he has given him in his researches into the Social Work of the Salvation Army. He takes this occasion to make it clear that this book does no more than set out the results of his investigations into some of that vast Social Work, and his personal conclusions as to it and those by whom it is prosecuted. To obviate any possible misunderstanding as to the reason of its writing, he wishes to state further that it has not been compiled by him as a matter of literary business. INTRODUCTORY WHAT IS THE SALVATION ARMY? If this question were put to the ordinary person of fashion or leisure, how would it be answered? In many cases thus: 'The Salvation Army is a body of people dressed up in a semi-military uniform, or those of them who are women, in unbecoming poke bonnets, who go about the streets making a noise in the name of God and frightening horses with brass bands. It is under the rule of an arbitrary old gentleman named Booth, who calls himself a General, and whose principal trade assets consist in a handsome and unusual face, and an inexhaustible flow of language, which he generally delivers from a white motor-car wherever he finds that he can attract the most attention. He is a clever actor in his way, who has got a great number of people under his thumb, and I am told that he has made a large fortune out of the business, like the late prophet Dowie, and others of the same sort. The newspapers are always exposing him; but he knows which side his bread is buttered and does not care. When he is gone no doubt his family will divide up the cash, and we shall hear no more of the Salvation Army!' Such are still the honest beliefs of thousands of our instructed fellow-countrymen, and of hundreds of thousands of others of less degree belonging to the classes which are generally typified under the synonym of 'the man in the street,' by which most people understand one who knows little, and of that little nothing accurately, but who decides the fate of political elections. Let us suppose, however, that the questioner should succeed in interesting an intelligent and fair-minded individual holder of these views sufficiently to induce him to make inquiry into the facts concerning this Salvation Army. What would he then discover? He would discover that about five and forty years ago some impulse, wherever it may have come from, moved a Dissenting minister, gifted with a mind of power and originality, and a body of great strength and endurance, gifted, also, with an able wife who shared his views, to try, if not to cure, at least to ameliorate the lot of the fallen or distressed millions that are one of the natural products of high civilization, by ministering to their creature wants and regenerating their spirits upon the plain and simple lines laid down in the New Testament. He would find, also, that this humble effort, at first quite unaided, has been so successful that the results seem to partake of the nature of the miraculous. Thus he would learn that the religious Organization founded by this man and his wife is now established and, in most instances, firmly rooted in 56 Countries and Colonies, where it preaches the Gospel in 33 separate languages: that it has over 16,000 Officers wholly employed in its service, and publishes 74 periodicals in 20 tongues, with a total circulation of nearly 1,000,000 copies per issue: that it accommodates over 28,000 poor people nightly in its Institutions, maintaining 229 Food Dépôts and Shelters for men, women, and children, and 157 Labour Factories where destitute or characterless people are employed: that it has 17 Homes for ex-criminals, 37 Homes for children, 116 Industrial Homes for the rescue of women, 16 Land Colonies, 149 Slum Stations for the visitation and assistance of the poor, 60 Labour Bureaux for helping the unemployed, and 521 Day Schools for children: that, in addition to all these, it has Criminal and General Investigation Departments, Inebriate Homes for men and women, Inquiry Offices for tracing lost and missing people, Maternity Hospitals, 37 Homes for training Officers, Prison-visitation Staffs, and so on almost _ad infinitum_. He would find, also, that it collects and dispenses an enormous revenue, mostly from among the poorer classes, and that its system is run with remarkable business ability: that General Booth, often supposed to be so opulent, lives upon a pittance which most country clergymen would refuse, taking nothing, and never having taken anything, from the funds of the Army. And lastly, not to weary the reader, that whatever may be thought of its methods and of the noise made by the 23,000 or so of voluntary bandsmen who belong to it, it is undoubtedly for good or evil one of the world forces of our age. Before going further, it may, perhaps, be well that I should explain how it is that I come to write these pages. First, I ought to state that my personal acquaintance with the Salvation Army dates back a good many years, from the time, indeed, when I was writing 'Rural England,' in connexion with which work I had a long and interesting interview with General Booth that is already published. Subsequently I was appointed by the British Government as a Commissioner to investigate and report upon the Land Colonies of the Salvation Army in the United States, in the course of which inquiry I came into contact with many of its Officers, and learned much of its system and methods, especially with reference to emigration. Also I have had other opportunities of keeping in touch with the Army and its developments. In the spring of 1910 I was asked, on behalf of General Booth, whether I would undertake to write for publication an account of the Social Work of the Army in this country. After some hesitation, for the lack of time was a formidable obstacle to a very busy man, I assented to this request, the plan agreed upon being that I should visit the various Institutions, or a number of them, etc., and record what I actually saw, neither more nor less, together with my resulting impressions. This I have done, and it only remains for me to assure the reader that the record is true, and, to the best of his belief and ability, set down without fear, favour, or prejudice, by one not unaccustomed to such tasks. Almost at the commencement of my labours I sought an interview with General Booth, thinking, as I told him and his Officers (the Salvation Army is not mealy-mouthed about such matters) that at his age it would be well to set down his views in black and white. On the whole, I found him well and vigorous. He complained, however, of the difficulty he was experiencing, owing to the complete loss of sight in one eye, occasioned by an accident during a motor journey, and the possible deprivation of the sight of the other through cataract. Of the attacks that have been and are continually made upon the Salvation Army, some of them extremely bitter, General Booth would say little. He pointed out that he had not been in the habit of defending himself and his Organization in public, and was quite content that the work should speak for itself. Their affairs and finances had been investigated by eminent men, who 'could not find a sixpence out of place'; and for the rest, a balance-sheet was published annually. This balance-sheet for the year ending September 30, 1909, I reprint in an appendix.[1] With regard to the Social Work of the Army, which in its beginning was a purely religious body, General Booth said that they had been driven into it because of their sympathy with suffering. They found it impossible to look upon people undergoing starvation or weighed down by sorrows and miseries that came upon them through poverty, without stretching out a hand to help them on to their feet again. In the same way they could not study wrongdoers and criminals and learn their secret histories, which show how closely a great proportion of human sin is connected with wretched surroundings, without trying to help and reform them to the best of their abilities. Thus it was that their Social operations began, increased, and multiplied. They contemplated not only the regeneration of the individual, but also of his circumstances, and were continually finding out new methods by which this might be done. The Army looked forward to the development of its Social Work on the lines of self-help, self-management and self-support. Whenever a new development came under consideration, the question arose--How is it to be financed? The work they had in hand at present took all their funds. One of their great underlying principles was that of the necessity of self-support, without which no business or undertaking could stand for long. The individual must co-operate in his own moral and physical redemption. At the same time this system of theirs was, in practice, one of the difficulties with which they had to contend, since it caused the benevolent to believe that the Army did not need financial assistance. His own view was that they ought to receive support in their work from the Government, as they actually did in some other countries. Especially did he desire to receive State aid in dealing with ascertained criminals, such as was extended to them in certain parts of the world. Thus only a few weeks before, in Holland, the Parliament had asked the Salvation Army to co-operate in the care of discharged prisoners and gave a grant of money for their support. In Java the tale was the same. There they were preparing estates as homes for lepers, and soon a large portion of the leper population of that land would be in their charge. General Booth told me the story of a celebrated Danish doctor, an optician, who became attracted to the Army, and, giving up his practice and position, entered its service with his wife. They said they wished to lead a life of real sacrifice and self-denial, and so, after going through a training like any other Cadets, were sent out to take charge of the medical work in Java. A recent report stated that this Officer had attended 16,000 patients in nine months, and performed 516 operations. In Australia, the Government had handed over the work amongst the Reformatory boys to the Army. In New Zealand, the Government had requested it to take over inebriates, and was now paying a contribution to that work of 10s. per head a week. There the Army had purchased two islands to accommodate these inebriates, one on which the men followed the pursuits of agriculture, fishing, and so forth, and the other for the women. In Canada there was an idea that a large prison should be erected, of which the Salvation Army would take charge. He hoped that in course of time they would be allowed greatly to extend their work in the English prisons. General Booth pointed out to me with reference to their Social Work, that it was necessary to spend large sums of money in finding employment for men whom they had rescued. Here, one of their greatest difficulties was the vehement opposition of members of the Labour Party in different countries. This party said, for example, that the Army ought to pay the Trade Union rate of wage to any poor fellow whom they had picked up and set to such labour as paper-sorting or carpentry. Thus in Western Australia they had an estate of 20,000 acres lying idle. When he was there a while ago, he asked the Officer in charge why he did not cultivate this land and make it productive. The man replied he had no labour; whereon the General said that he could send him plenty from England. 'Yes,' commented the Officer, 'but the moment they begin to work here, however inefficient or broken down they may be, we shall have to pay them 7s. a day!' This regulation, of course, makes it impossible to cultivate that estate except at a heavy loss. He himself had been denounced as the 'prince of sweaters,' because he took in derelict carpenters at their Institution in Hanbury Street (which I shall describe later), to whom he did not pay the Trade Union wage, although that Institution had from the first been worked at a loss. In this case he had made peace with the Parliamentary Committee by promising not to make anything there which was used outside the Army establishments. But still the attacks went on. Passing from this subject, I asked General Booth if he had formed any forecast of the future of the Salvation Army after his own death. He replied that there were certain factors in the present position of the Army which seemed to him to indicate its future growth and continuity. Speaking impersonally, he said that the present General had become an important man not by his own choice or through the workings of ambition, but by the will of Providence. He had acquired a certain standing, a great hold over his community, and an influence which helped to concentrate and keep together forces that had grown to be worldwide in their character. It was natural, therefore, that people should wonder what would happen when he ceased to be. His answer to these queries was that legal arrangements had been made to provide for this obvious contingency. Under the provisions of the constitution of the Army he had selected his successor, although he had never told anybody the name of that successor, which he felt sure, when announced, was one that would command the fullest confidence and respect. The first duty of the General of the Army on taking up his office was to choose a man to succeed him, reserving to himself the power to change that man for another, should he see good reason for such a course. In short, his choice is secret, and being unhampered by any law of heredity or other considerations except those that appeal to his own reason and judgment, not final. He nominates whom he will. I asked him what would happen if this nominated General misconducted himself in any way, or proved unsuitable, or lost his reason. He replied that in such circumstances arrangements had been made under which the heads of the Army could elect another General, and that what they decided would be law. The organization of the Army was such that any Department of it remained independent of the ability of one individual. If a man proved incompetent, or did not succeed, his office was changed; the square man was never left in the round hole. Each Department had laws for its direction and guidance, and those in authority were responsible for the execution of those laws. If for any reason whatsoever, one commander fell out of the line of action, another was always waiting to take his place. In short, he had no fear that the removal of his own person and name would affect the Organization. It was true, he remarked, that leaders cannot be manufactured to order, and also that the Army had made, and would continue to make, mistakes up and down the world. But those mistakes showed them how to avoid similar errors, and how and where to improve. As regarded a change of headship, a fresh individuality always has charms, and a new force would always strike out in some new direction. The man needed was one who would _do_ something. General Booth did not fear but that he would be always forthcoming, and said that for his part he was quite happy as to the future, in which he anticipated an enlargement of their work. The Organization existed, and with it the arrangements for filling every niche. The discipline of to-day would continue to-morrow, and that spirit would always be ready to burst into flame when it was needed. In his view it was inextinguishable. MEN'S SOCIAL WORK, LONDON THE MIDDLESEX STREET SHELTER The first of the London Institutions of the Salvation Army which I visited was that known as the Middlesex Street Shelter and Working Men's Home, which is at present under the supervision of Commissioner Sturgess. This building consists of six floors, and contains sleeping accommodation for 462 men. It has been at work since the year 1906, when it was acquired by the Army with the help of that well-known philanthropist, the late Mr. George Herring. Of the 462 men accommodated daily, 311 pay 3d. for their night's lodging, and the remainder 5d. The threepenny charge entitles the tenant to the use of a bunk bedstead with sheets and an American cloth cover. If the extra 2d. is forthcoming the wanderer is provided with a proper bed, fitted with a wire spring hospital frame and provided with a mattress, sheets, pillow, and blankets. I may state here that as in the case of this Shelter the building, furniture and other equipment have been provided by charity, the nightly fees collected almost suffice to pay the running expenses of the establishment. Under less favourable circumstances, however, where the building and equipment are a charge on the capital funds of the Salvation Army, the experience is that these fees do not suffice to meet the cost of interest and maintenance. The object of this and similar Shelters is to afford to men upon the verge of destitution the choice between such accommodation as is here provided and the common lodging-house, known as a 'kip house,' or the casual ward of a workhouse. Those who avail themselves of these Shelters belong, speaking generally, to the destitute or nearly destitute classes. They are harbours of refuge for the unfortunates who find themselves on the streets of London at nightfall with a few coppers or some other small sum in their pockets. Many of these social wrecks have sunk through drink, but many others owe their sad position to lack or loss of employment, or to some other misfortune. For an extra charge of 1d. the inmates are provided with a good supper, consisting of a pint of soup and a large piece of bread, or of bread and jam and tea, or of potato-pie. A second penny supplies them with breakfast on the following morning, consisting of bread and porridge or of bread and fish, with tea or coffee. The dormitories, both of the fivepenny class on the ground floor and of the threepenny class upstairs, are kept scrupulously sweet and clean, and attached to them are lavatories and baths. These lavatories contain a great number of brown earthenware basins fitted with taps. Receptacles are provided, also, where the inmates can wash their clothes and have them dried by means of an ingenious electrical contrivance and hot air, capable of thoroughly drying any ordinary garment in twenty minutes while its owner takes a bath. The man in charge of this apparatus and of the baths was one who had been picked up on the Embankment during the past winter. In return for his services he received food, lodging, clothes and pocket-money to the amount of 3s. a week. He told me that he was formerly a commercial traveller, and was trying to re-enter that profession or to become a ship's steward. Sickness had been the cause of his fall in the world. Adjoining the downstairs dormitory is a dining and sitting-room for the use of those who have taken bed tickets. In this room, when I visited it, several men were engaged in various occupations. One of them was painting flowers. Another, a watch repairer, was apparently making up his accounts, which, perhaps, were of an imaginary nature. A third was eating a dinner which he had purchased at the food bar. A fourth smoked a cigarette and watched the flower artist at his work. A fifth was a Cingalese who had come from Ceylon to lay some grievance before the late King. The authorities at Whitehall having investigated his case, he had been recommended to return to Ceylon and consult a lawyer there. Now he was waiting tor the arrival of remittances to enable him to pay his passage back to Ceylon. I wondered whether the remittances would ever be forthcoming. Meanwhile he lived here on 7-1/2d. a day, 5d. for his bed and 2-1/2d. for his food. Of these and other men similarly situated I will give some account presently. Having inspected the upper floors I descended to the basement, where what are called the 'Shelter men' are received at a separate entrance at 5.30 in the afternoon, and buying their penny or halfpennyworth of food, seat themselves on benches to eat. Here, too, they can sit and smoke or mend their clothes, or if they are wet, dry themselves in the annexe, until they retire to rest. During the past winter of 1909 400 men taken from the Embankment were sheltered here gratis every night, and were provided with soup and bread. When not otherwise occupied this hall is often used for the purpose of religious services. I spoke at hazard with some of those who were sitting about in the Shelter. A few specimen cases may be interesting. An old man told me that he had travelled all over the world for fifty years, especially in the islands of the South Pacific, until sickness broke him down. He came last from Shanghai, where he had been an overseer on railway work, and before that from Manila. Being incapacitated by fever and rheumatism, and possessing 1,500 dollars, he travelled home, apparently via India and Burma, stopping a while in each country. Eventually he drifted to a lodging-house, and, falling ill there, was sent to the Highgate Infirmary, where, he said, he was so cold that he could not stop. Ultimately he found himself upon the streets in winter. For the past twelve months he had been living in this Shelter upon some help that a friend gave him, for all his own money was gone. Now he was trying to write books, one of which was in the hands of a well-known firm. He remarked, pathetically, that they 'have had it a long time.' He was also waiting 'every day' for a pension from America, which he considered was due to him because he fought in the Civil War. Most of these poor people are waiting for something. This man added that he could not find his relatives, and that he intended to stop in the Shelter until his book was published, or he could 'help himself out.' The next man I spoke to was the flower artist, whom I have already mentioned, whose work, by the way, if a little striking in colour, was by no means bad, especially as he had no real flowers to draw from. By trade he was a lawyer's clerk; but he stated that, unfortunately for him, the head partner of his firm went bankrupt six years before, and the bad times, together with the competition of female labour in the clerical department, prevented him from obtaining another situation, so he had been obliged to fall back upon flower painting. He was a married man, but he said, 'While I could make a fair week's money, things were comfortable, but when orders fell slack I was requested to go, as my room was preferable to my company, and being a man of nervous temperament I could not stand it, and have been here ever since'--that was for about ten weeks. He managed to make enough for his board and lodging by the sale of his flower-pictures. A third man informed me that he had opened twenty-seven shops for a large firm of tobacconists, and then left to start in business for himself; also he used to go out window-dressing, in which he was skilled. Then, about nine years ago, his wife began to drink, and while he was absent in hospital, neglected his business so that it became worthless. Finally she deserted him, and he had heard nothing of her since. After that he took to drink himself. He came to this Shelter intermittently, and supported himself by an occasional job of window-dressing. The Salvation Army was trying to cure this man of his drinking habits. A fourth man, a Eurasian, was a schoolmaster in India, who drifted to this country, and had been for four years in the Colney Hatch Asylum. He was sent to the Salvation Army by the After Care Society. He had been two years in the Shelter, and was engaged in saving up money to go to America. He was employed in the Shelter as a scrubber, and also as a seller of food tickets, by which means he had saved some money. Also he had a £5 note, which his sister sent to him. This note he was keeping to return to her as a present on her birthday! His story was long and miserable, and his case a sad one. Still, he was capable of doing work of a sort. Another very smart and useful man had been a nurse in the Army Medical Corps, which he left some years ago with a good character. Occasionally he found a job at nursing, and stayed at the Shelter, where he was given employment between engagements. Yet another, quite a young person, was a carman who had been discharged through slackness of work in the firm of which he was a servant. He had been ten weeks in the Institution, to which he came from the workhouse, and hoped to find employment at his trade. In passing through this building, I observed a young man of foreign appearance seated in a window-place reading a book, and asked his history. I was told that he was a German of education, whose ambition it is to become a librarian in his native country. He had come to England in order to learn our language, and being practically without means, drifted into this place, where he was employed in cleaning the windows and pursued his studies in the intervals of that humble work. Let us hope that in due course his painstaking industry will be rewarded, and his ambition fulfilled. All these cases, and others that I have no space to mention, belonged to the class of what I may call the regular 'hangers-on' of this particular Shelter. As I visited it in the middle of the day, I did not see its multitude of normal nightly occupants. Of such men, however, I shall be able to speak elsewhere. THE SPA ROAD ELEVATOR BERMONDSEY The next Institution that I inspected was that of a paper-sorting works at Spa Road, Bermondsey, where all sorts of waste paper are dealt with in enormous quantities. Of this stuff some is given and some is bought. Upon delivery it goes to the sorters, who separate it out according to the different classes of the material, after which it is pressed into bales by hydraulic machinery and sold to merchants to be re-made. These works stand upon two acres of land. Parts of the existing buildings were once a preserve factory, but some of them have been erected by the Army. There remain upon the site certain dwelling-houses, which are still let to tenants. These are destined to be pulled down whenever money is forthcoming to extend the factory. The object of the Institution is to find work for distressed or fallen persons, and restore them to society. The Manager of this 'Elevator,' as it is called, informed me that it employs about 480 men, all of whom are picked up upon the streets. As a rule, these men are given their board and lodging in return for work during the first week, but no money, as their labour is worth little. In the second week, 6d. is paid to them in cash; and, subsequently, this remuneration is added to in proportion to the value of the labour, till in the end some of them earn 8s. or 9s. a week in addition to their board and lodging. I asked the Officer in charge what he had to say as to the charges of sweating and underselling which have been brought against the Salvation Army in connexion with this and its other productive Institutions. He replied that they neither sweated nor undersold. The men whom they picked up had no value in the labour market, and could get nothing to do because no one would employ them, many of them being the victims of drink or entirely unskilled. Such people they overlooked, housed, fed, and instructed, whether they did or did not earn their food and lodging, and after the first week paid them upon a rising scale. The results were eminently satisfactory, as even allowing for the drunkards they found that but few cases, not more than 10 per cent, were hopeless. Did they not rescue these men most of them would sink utterly; indeed, according to their own testimony many of such wastrels were snatched from suicide. As a matter of fact, also, they employed more men per ton of paper than any other dealers in the trade. With reference to the commercial results, after allowing for interest on the capital invested, the place did not pay its way. He said that a sum of £15,000 was urgently required for the erection of a new building on this site, some of those that exist being of a rough-and-ready character. They were trying to raise subscriptions towards this object, but found the response very slow. He added that they collected their raw material from warehouses, most of it being given to them, but some they bought, as it was necessary to keep the works supplied, which could not be done with the gratis stuff alone. Also they found that the paper they purchased was the most profitable. These works presented a busy spectacle of useful industry. There was the sorting-room, where great masses of waste-paper of every kind was being picked over by about 100 men and separated into its various classes. The resulting heaps are thrown through hoppers into bins. From the bins this sorted stuff passes into hydraulic presses which crush it into bales that, after being wired, are ready for sale. It occurred to me that the dealing with this mass of refuse paper must be an unhealthy occupation; but I was informed that this is not the case, and certainly the appearance of the workers bore out the statement. After completing a tour of the works I visited one of the bedrooms containing seventy beds, where everything seemed very tidy and fresh. Clean sheets are provided every week, as are baths for the inmates. In the kitchen were great cooking boilers, ovens, etc., all of which are worked by steam produced by the burning of the refuse of the sorted paper. Then I saw the household salvage store, which contained enormous quantities of old clothes and boots; also a great collection of furniture, including a Turkish bath cabinet, all of which articles had been given to the Army by charitable folk. These are either given away or sold to the employes of the factory or to the poor of the neighbourhood at a very cheap rate. The man in charge of this store was an extremely good-looking and gentlemanly young follow of University education, who had been a writer of fiction, and once acted as secretary to a gentleman who travelled on the Continent and in the East. Losing his employment, he took to a life of dissipation, became ill, and sank to the very bottom. He informed me that his ideals and outlook on life were now totally changed. I have every hope that he will do well in the future, as his abilities are evidently considerable, and Nature has favoured him in many ways. I interviewed a number of the men employed in these works, most of whom had come down through drink, some of them from very good situations. One had been the superintendent of a sewing-machine company. He took to liquor, left his wife, and found himself upon the streets. Now he was a traveller for the Salvation Army, in the interests of the Waste-Paper Department, had regained his position in life, and was living with his wife and family in a comfortable house. Another was a grocer by profession, all of whose savings were stolen, after which he took to drink. He had been three months in the works, and at the time of my visit was earning 6s. a week with food and lodging. Another had been a Barnardo boy, who came from Canada as a ship's steward, and could find nothing to do in England. Another was a gentleman's servant, who was dismissed because the family left London. Another was an auctioneer, who failed from want of capital, took to drink, and emigrated to Canada. Two years later he fell ill with pleurisy, and was sent home because the authorities were afraid that his ailment might turn to consumption. He stated that at this time he had given up drink, but could obtain no employment, so came upon the streets. As he was starving and without hope, not having slept in a bed for ten nights, he was about to commit suicide when the Salvation Army picked him up. He had seen his wife for the first time in four years on the previous Whit Monday, and they proposed to live together again so soon as he secured permanent employment. Another had been a soldier in the Seaforth Highlanders, and served in the Egyptian Campaign of 1881, and also in the American Army. Subsequently he was employed as a porter at a lodging-house at a salary of 25s. a week, but left because of trouble about a woman. He came upon the streets, and, being unable to find employment, was contemplating suicide, when he fell under the influence of the Army at the Blackfriars Shelter. All these men, and others whom I spoke to at random but have no space to write of, assured me that they were quite satisfied with their treatment at the works, and repudiated--some of them with indignation--the suggestion that I put to them tentatively that they suffered from a system of sweating. For the most part, indeed, their gratitude for the help they were receiving in the hour of need was very evident and touching. THE GREAT PETER STREET SHELTER WESTMINSTER This fine building is the most up-to-date Men's Shelter that the Salvation Army possesses in London. It was once the billiard works of Messrs. Burroughes and Watts, and is situated in Westminster, quite near to the Houses of Parliament. I visited it about eight o'clock in the evening, and at its entrance was confronted with the word 'Full,' inscribed in chalk upon its portals, at which poor tramps, deprived of their hope of a night's lodging, were staring disconsolately. It reminded me of a playhouse upon a first-night of importance, but, alas! the actors here play in a tragedy more dreadful in its cumulative effect than any that was ever put upon the stage. This Shelter is wonderfully equipped and organized. It contains sitting or resting-rooms, smoking-rooms, huge dormitories capable of accommodating about 600 sleepers; bathrooms, lavatories, extensive hot-water and warming apparatus, great kitchens, and butteries, and so forth. In the sitting and smoking-rooms, numbers of derelict men were seated. Some did nothing except stare before them vacantly. Some evidently were suffering from the effects of drink or fatigue; some were reading newspapers which they had picked up in the course of their day's tramp. One, I remember, was engaged in sorting out and crumpling up a number of cigar and cigarette ends which he had collected from the pavements, carefully grading the results in different heaps, according to the class of the tobacco (how strong it must be!) either for his own consumption or for sale to other unfortunates. In another place, men were eating the 1d. or 1/2d. suppers that they had purchased. Early as it was, however, the great dormitories were crowded with hundreds of the lodgers, either in bed or in process of getting there. I noticed that they all undressed themselves, wrapping up their rags in bundles, and, for the most part slept quite naked. Many of them struck me as very fine fellows physically, and the reflection crossed my mind, seeing them thus _in puris naturalibus_, that there was little indeed to distinguish them from a crowd of males of the upper class engaged, let us say, in bathing. It is the clothes that make the difference to the eye. In this Shelter I was told, by the way, that there exists a code of rough honour among these people, who very rarely attempt to steal anything from each other. Having so little property, they sternly respect its rights. I should add that the charge made for accommodation and food is 3d. per night for sleeping, and 1d. or 1/2d. per portion of food. The sight of this Institution crowded with human derelicts struck me as most sad, more so indeed than many others that I have seen, though, perhaps, this may have been because I was myself tired out with a long day of inspection. The Staff-Captain in charge here told me his history, which is so typical and interesting that I will repeat it briefly. Many years ago (he is now an elderly man) he was a steward on board a P. and O. liner, and doing well. Then a terrible misfortune overwhelmed him. Suddenly his wife and child died, and, as a result of the shock, he took to drink. He attempted to cut his throat (the scar remains to him), and was put upon his trial for the offence. Subsequently he drifted on to the streets, where he spent eight years. During all this time his object was to be rid of life, the methods he adopted being to make himself drunk with methylated spirits, or any other villainous and fiery liquor, and when that failed, to sleep at night in wet grass or ditches. Once he was picked up suffering from inflammation of the lungs and carried to an infirmary, where he lay senseless for three days. The end of it was that a Salvation Army Officer found him in Oxford Street, and took him to a Shelter in Burne Street, where he was bathed and put to bed. That was many years ago, and now he is to a great extent responsible for the management of this Westminster Refuge. Commissioner Sturgess, one of the head Officers of the Army, told me that their great difficulty was to prevent him from overdoing himself at this charitable task. I think the Commissioner said that sometimes he would work eighteen or twenty hours out of the twenty-four. One day this Staff-Captain played a grim little trick upon me. I was seated at luncheon in a Salvation Army building, when the door opened, and there entered as dreadful a human object as I have ever seen. The man was clad in tatters, his bleeding feet were bound up with filthy rags; he wore a dingy newspaper for a shirt. His face was cut and plastered over roughly; he was a disgusting sight. He told me, in husky accents, that drink had brought him down, and that he wanted help. I made a few appropriate remarks, presented him with a small coin, and sent him to the Officers downstairs. A quarter of an hour later the Staff-Captain appeared in his uniform and explained that he and the 'object' were the same person. Again it was the clothes that made the difference. Those which he had worn when he appeared at the luncheon-table were the same in which he had been picked up on the streets of London. Also he thanked me for my good advice which he said he hoped to follow, and for the sixpence that he announced his intention of wearing on his watch-chain. For my part I felt that the laugh was against me. Perhaps if I had thought the Salvation Army capable of perpetrating a joke, I should not have been so easily deceived. This Staff-Captain gave me much information as to the class of wanderers who frequent these Shelters, He estimated that about 50 per cent of them sink to that level through the effects of drink. That is to say, if by the waving of some magic wand intoxicants and harmful drugs should cease to be obtainable in this country, the bulk of extreme misery which needs such succour, and it may be added of crime at large, would be lessened by one-half. This is a terrible statement, and one that seems to excuse a great deal of what is called 'teetotal fanaticism.' The rest, in his view, owe their fall to misfortune of various kinds, which often in its turn leads to flight to the delusive and destroying solace of drink. Thus about 25 per cent of the total have been afflicted with sickness or acute domestic troubles. Or perhaps they are 'knocked out' by shock, such as is brought on by the loss of a dearly-loved wife or child, and have never been able to recover from that crushing blow. The remainder are the victims of advancing age and of the cruel commercial competition of our day. Thus he said that the large business firms destroy and devour the small shopkeepers, as a hawk devours sparrows; and these little people or their employes, if they are past middle age, can find no other work. Especially is this the case since the Employers' Liability Acts came into operation, for now few will take on hands who are not young and very strong, as older folk must naturally be more liable to sickness and accident. Again, he told me that it has become the custom in large businesses of which the dividends are falling, to put in a man called an 'Organizer,' who is often an American. This Organizer goes through the whole staff and mercilessly dismisses the elderly or the least efficient, dividing up their work among those who remain. So these discarded men fall to rise no more and drift to the poorhouse or the Shelters or the jails, and finally into the river or a pauper's grave. First, however, many spend what may be called a period of probation on the streets, where they sleep at night under arches or on stairways, or on the inhospitable flagstones and benches of the Embankment, even in winter. The Staff-Captain informed me that on one night during the previous November he counted no less than 120 men, women, and children sleeping in the wet on or in the neighbourhood of the Embankment. Think of it--in this one place! Think of it, you whose women and children, to say nothing of yourselves, do not sleep on the Embankment in the wet in November. It may be answered that they might have gone to the casual ward, where there are generally vacancies. I suppose that they might, but so perverse are many of them that they do not. Indeed, often they declare bluntly that they would rather go to prison than to the casual ward, as in prison they are more kindly treated. The reader may have noted as he drove along the Embankment or other London thoroughfares at night in winter, long queues of people waiting their turn to get something. What they are waiting for is a cup of soup and, perhaps, an opportunity of sheltering till the dawn, which soup and shelter are supplied by the Salvation Army, and sometimes by other charitable Organizations. I asked whether this provision of gratis food did in fact pauperize the population, as has been alleged. The Staff-Captain answered that men do not as a rule stop out in the middle of the winter till past midnight to get a pint of soup and a piece of bread. Of course, there might be exceptions; but for the most part those who take this charity, do so because if is sorely needed. The cost of these midnight meals is reckoned by the Salvation Army at about £8 per 1,000, including the labour involved in cooking and distribution. This money is paid from the Army's Central Fund, which collects subscriptions for that special purpose. 'Of course, our midnight soup has its critics,' said one of the Officers who has charge of its distribution; 'but all I know is that it saves many from jumping into the river.' During the past winter, that is from November 3, 1909, to March 24, 1910, 163,101 persons received free accommodation and food at the hands of the Salvation Army in connexion with its Embankment Soup Distribution Charity. THE FREE BREAKFAST SERVICE BLACKFRIARS SHELTER On a Sunday in June I attended the Free Breakfast service at the Blackfriars Shelter. The lease of this building was acquired by the Salvation Army from a Temperance Company. Behind it lay contractors' stables, which were also bought; after which the premises were rebuilt and altered to suit the purposes to which they are now put, the stabling being for the most part converted into sleeping-rooms. The Officer who accompanied me, Lieut.-Colonel Jolliffe, explained that this Blackfriars Shelter is, as it were, the dredger for and the feeder of all the Salvation Army's Social Institutions for men in London. Indeed, it may be likened to a dragnet set to catch male unfortunates in this part of the Metropolis. Here, as in the other Army Shelters, are great numbers of bunks that are hired out at 3d. a night, and the usual food-kitchens and appliances. I visited one or two of these, well-ventilated places that in cold weather are warmed by means of hot-water pipes to a heat of about 70 deg., as the clothing on the bunks is light. I observed that although the rooms had only been vacated for a few hours, they were perfectly inoffensive, and even sweet; a result that is obtained by a very strict attention to cleanliness and ample ventilation. The floors of these places are constantly scrubbed, and the bunks undergo a process of disinfection about once a week. As a consequence, in all the Army Shelters the vermin which sometimes trouble common lodging-houses are almost unknown. I may add that the closest supervision is exercised in these places when they are occupied. Night watchmen are always on duty, and an Officer sleeps in a little apartment attached to each dormitory. The result is that there are practically no troubles of any kind. Sometimes, however, a poor wanderer is found dead in the morning, in which case the body is quietly conveyed away to await inquest. I asked what happened when men who could not produce the necessary coppers to pay for their lodging, applied for admission. The answer was that the matter was left to the discretion of the Officer in charge. In fact, in cases of absolute and piteous want, men are admitted free, although, naturally enough, the Army does not advertise that this happens. If it did, its hospitality would be considerably overtaxed. Leaving the dormitories, I entered the great hall, in which were gathered nearly 600 men seated upon benches, every one of which was filled. The faces and general aspect of these men were eloquent of want and sorrow. Some of them appeared to be intent upon the religious service that was going on, attendance at this service being the condition on which the free breakfast is given to all who need food and have passed the previous night in the street. Others were gazing about them vacantly, and others, sufferers from the effects of drink, debauchery, or fatigue, seemed to be half comatose or asleep. This congregation, the strangest that I have ever seen, comprised men of all classes. Some might once have belonged to the learned professions, while others had fallen so low that they looked scarcely human. Every grade of rag-clad misery was represented here, and every stage of life from the lad of sixteen up to the aged man whose allotted span was almost at an end. Rank upon rank of them, there they sat in their infinite variety, linked only by the common bond of utter wretchedness, the most melancholy sight, I think, that ever my eyes beheld. All of them, however, were fairly clean, for this matter had been seen to by the Officers who attend upon them. The Salvation Army does not only wash the feet of its guests, but the whole body. Also, it dries and purifies their tattered garments. When I entered the hall, an Officer on the platform was engaged in offering up an extempore prayer. 'We pray that the Holy Spirit may be poured out upon these men. We pray, O God, that Thou wilt help them to take fresh courage, to find fresh hope, and that they may rise once again to fight the battle of life. We pray that Thou mayst bring to Thy feet, this morning, such as shall be saved eternally.' Then another Officer, styled the Chaplain, addressed the audience. He told them that there was a way out of their troubles, and that hundreds who had sat in that hall as they did, now blessed the day which brought them there. He said: 'You came here this morning, you scarcely knew how or why. You did not know the hand of God was leading you, and that He will bless you if you will listen to His Voice. You think you cannot escape from this wretched life; you think of the past with all its failures. But do not trouble about the years that are gone. Seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you. Then there will be no more wandering about without a friend, for I say to you that God lives, and this morning you will hear from others, who once were in a similar condition to yourself, what He has done for them.' Next a man with a fine tenor voice, who, it seems, is nicknamed 'the Yorkshire Canary,' sang the hymn beginning, 'God moves in a mysterious way.' After this in plain, forcible language he told his own story. He said that he was well brought up by a good father and mother, and lost everything through his own sin. His voice was in a sense his ruin, since he used to sing in public-houses and saloons and there learnt to drink. At length he found himself upon the streets in London, and tramped thence to Yorkshire to throw himself upon the mercy of his parents. When he was quite close to his home, however, his courage failed him, and he tramped back to London, where he was picked up by the Salvation Army. This man, a most respectable-looking person, is now a clerk in a well-known business house. In his own words, 'I knelt down and gave my heart to God, and am to-day in a good situation.' Next a Salvation Army soldier spoke. Four years before he had attended the Sunday morning meeting in this hall and 'found the friendship of God. He has helped me to regain the manhood I had lost and to do my duty. For two years now I have helped to support an invalid sister instead of being a burden to every one I knew, as once I was.' After the singing of the hymn, 'Rock of Ages,' another man addressed the meeting. He had been a drunkard, a homeless wanderer, who slept night after night on the Embankment till fortune brought him to this service and to the Penitent-Form. Since that time, two and a half years before, no drink had passed his lips, and once again, as he declared, he had become 'a self-respecting, respectable citizen.' Then a dwarf whom I had seen at work in the Spa Road Elevator, and who once was taken about the country to be exhibited as a side show at fairs and there fell a victim to drink, gave his testimony. Another verse, 'Could my tears for ever flow,' and after it, in rapid succession, spoke a man who had been a schoolmaster and fallen through drink and gambling; a man who, or whose brother, I am not sure which, had been a Wesleyan preacher, and who is now employed in a Life Assurance Company; a man who had been a prisoner; a man who had been a confirmed drunkard, and others. Always it was the same earnest, simple tale of drink and degradation, passed now for ever; of the Penitent-Form; of the building up of a new self, and of position regained. More singing and an eloquent prayer which seemed to move the audience very much, some of them to tears; an address from a woman Salvation Army Officer, who pleaded with the people in the name of their mothers, and a brief but excellent sermon from Commissioner Sturgess, based upon the parable of the Marriage of the King's Son as recorded in the 22nd chapter of St. Matthew, and of the guests who were collected from the highways and byways to attend the feast whence the rich and worldly had excused themselves. Then the great and final invocation to Heaven to move the hearts of these men, and the invitation to them to present themselves at the Penitent-Form. Lastly a mighty, thundering hymn, 'Jesu, Lover of my soul,' and the ending of the long drama. It was a wonderful thing to see the spiritually-faced man on the platform pleading with his sordid audience, and to watch them stirring beneath his words. To see, also, a uniformed woman flitting to and fro among that audience, whispering, exhorting, invoking--a temptress to Salvation, then to note the response and its manner that were stranger still. Some poor wretch would seem to awaken, only to relapse into a state of sullen, almost defiant torpor. A little while and the leaven begins to work in him. He flushes, mutters something, half rises from his seat, sits down again, rises once more and with a peculiar, unwilling gait staggers to the Penitent-Form, and in an abandonment of grief and repentance throws himself upon his knees and there begins to sob. A watching Officer comes to him, kneels at his side and, I suppose, confesses him. The tremendous hymn bursts out like a paean of triumph-- Just as I am, without one plea, it begins, the rest I forget or did not catch. Now the ice is broken. Another comes and another, and another, till there is no more room at the Penitent-Bench. They swarm on to the platform which is cleared for them, and there kneel down, and I observed the naked feet of some of them showing through the worn-out boots. 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. I have only to add to my description of this remarkable service, that the number netted, namely, about 10 per cent of those present, was, I am told, just normal, neither more nor less than the average. Some of these doubtless will relapse; but if only _one_ of them remains really reformed, surely the Salvation Army has vindicated its arguments and all is proved to be well worth while. But to that one very many ciphers must be added as the clear and proved result of the forty years or so of its activity. Whatever may be doubtful, this is true beyond all controversy, for it numbers its converts by the thousand. * * * * * The congregation which I saw on this particular occasion seemed to me to consist for the most part of elderly men; in fact, some of them were very old, and the average age of those who attended the Penitent-Form I estimated at about thirty-five years. This, however, varies. I am informed that at times they are mostly young persons. It must be remembered--and the statement throws a lurid light upon the conditions prevailing in London, as in other of our great cities--that the population which week by week attends these Sunday morning services is of an ever-shifting character. Doubtless, there are some _habitués_ and others who reappear from time to time. But the most of the audience is new. Every Saturday night the highways and the hedges, or rather the streets and the railway arches yield a new crop of homeless and quite destitute wanderers. These are gathered into the Blackfriars Shelter, and go their bitter road again after the rest, the breakfast, and the service. But as we have seen here a substantial proportion, about 10 per cent, remain behind. These are all interviewed separately and fed, and on the following morning as many of them as vacancies can be found for in the Paper Works Elevator or elsewhere are sent thither. I saw plenty of these men, and with them others who had been rescued previously; so many, indeed, that it is impossible to set out their separate cases. Looking through my notes made at the time, I find among them a schoolmaster, an Australian who fought in South Africa, a publican who had lost £2,000 in speculation and been twelve months on the streets, a sailor and two soldiers who between them had seen much service abroad, and a University man who had tried to commit suicide from London Bridge. Also there was a person who was recently described in the newspapers as the 'dirtiest man in London.' He was found sitting on the steps of a large building in Queen Victoria Street, partly paralysed from exposure. So filthy and verminous was he, that it was necessary to scrape his body, which mere washing would not touch. When he was picked up, a crowd of several hundred people followed him down the street, attracted by his dreadful appearance. His pockets were full of filth, amongst which were found 5s. in coppers. He had then been a month in the Shelter, where he peels or peeled potatoes, etc., and looked quite bright and clean. Most of these people had been brought down by the accursed drink, which is the bane of our nation, and some few by sheer misfortune. Neither at the service, nor afterwards, did I see a single Jew, for the fallen of that race seem to be looked after by their fellow religionists. Moreover, the Jews do not drink to excess. Foreigners, also, are comparatively scarce at Blackfriars and in the other Shelters. THE EX-CRIMINALS On the afternoon of the Sunday on which I visited the Blackfriars Shelter, I attended another service, conducted by Commissioner Sturgess, at Quaker Street. Here the room was filled by about 150 men, all of whom had been rescued, and were then working in the various Shelters or elsewhere. I may say that I have seldom seen a congregation of more respectable appearance, and never one that joined with greater earnestness in a religious service. I will take this opportunity to observe that the Salvation Army enforces no religious test upon those to whom it extends its assistance. If a man is a member of the Church of England or a Roman Catholic, for instance, and wishes to remain so, all that it tries to do is to make him a good member of his Church. Its only _sine qua non_ is that the individual should show himself ready to work zealously at any task which it may be able to find for him. The rest of that afternoon I spent in interviewing ex-criminals who were then in the charge of the Salvation Army. To give details of their cases in this book is impossible. Here I will only say, therefore, that some of these had been most desperate characters, who had served as much as thirty or forty years in various prisons, or even been condemned to death for murder. Indeed, the nineteen men whom I interviewed had, between them, done 371 years of what is known as 'time.' I cannot honestly report that I liked the looks of all these gentry, or believed everything that they told me. For instance, when such people swear that they have been wrongly convicted, an old lawyer and magistrate like myself, who knows what pains are taken by every English Court to safeguard the innocent, is apt to be sceptical. Still, it should be added that many of these jailbirds are now to all appearance quite reformed, while some of them are doing well in more or less responsible positions, under the supervision of the Army. The Salvation Army Officers have authority from the Home Office to visit the various prisons, where the inmates are informed that those who are desirous of seeing them must give in their names. Then on a certain day, the Officer, who, under Commissioner Sturgess, is responsible for the Prison work of the Army in England, appears at the Wandsworth or the Pentonville Prison, or wherever it may be. There he finds, perhaps, as many as 150 men waiting to see him, the total number of ex-prisoners who pass through the hands of the Army in England averaging at present about 1,000 per annum. He interviews these men in their cells privately, the prison officials remaining outside, and stops as long with each of them as he deems to be needful, for the Governors of the prisons give him every opportunity of attaining the object of his work. This Officer informed me that his conversation with the prisoners is not restricted in any way. It may be about their future or of spiritual matters, or it may have to do with their family affairs. The details of each case are carefully recorded in a book which I saw, and when a convict is discharged and given over to the care of the Army, a photograph and an official statement of his record is furnished with him. This statement the Army finds a great help, as in dealing with such people it is necessary to know their past in order to be able to guard against their weak points. The Government authorities have now begun to seek the aid of the Army in certain special cases. If they feel that it is unnecessary to retain a man any longer, they will sometimes hand him over, should the Salvation Army Officers be willing to take him in and be responsible for him. General Booth and his subordinates think that if this system were enlarged and followed up, it would result in the mitigation or the abbreviation of many sentences, without exposing the public to danger. In discussing this matter with them, I ventured to point out that it would be a bad thing if the Army became in any way identified with the prison Authorities, and began, at any rate in the mind of the criminal classes, to wear the initials G.R. instead of those of the Army upon their collars. This was not disputed by Commissioner Sturgess, with whom I debated the question. What the Army desires, however, is that the Government should subsidize this work in order to enable it to support the ex-convicts until it can find opportunity to place them in positions where they can earn their own bread. The trouble with such folk is that, naturally enough, few desire to employ them, and until they are employed, which in the case of aged persons or of those with a very bad record may be never, they must be fed, clothed, and housed. After going into the whole subject at considerable length and in much detail, the conclusion which I came to was that this work of the visitation of prisoners by Salvation Army Officers, and the care of them when released either on or before the completion of their sentences, is one that might be usefully extended, should the Home Office Authorities see fit so to do. There is no doubt, although it cannot guarantee success in every case, that the Salvation Army is peculiarly successful in its dealings with hardened criminals. Why this is so is not easy to explain. I think, however, that there are two main reasons for its success. The first is that the Army takes great care never to break a promise which it may make through any of its Officers. Thus, if a man in jail is told that his relatives will be hunted up and communicated with, or that an application will be made to the Authorities to have him committed to the care of the Army, or that work will be found for him on his release, and the like, that undertaking, whatever it may be, is noted in the book which I have mentioned, and although years may pass before it can be fulfilled, is in due course carried out to the letter. Now, convicts are shy birds, who put little faith in promises. But when they find that these are always kept they gain confidence in the makers of them, and often learn to trust them entirely. The second and more potent reason is to be found in the power of that loving sympathy which the Army extends even to the vilest, to those from whom the least puritanical of us would shrink. It shows such men that they are not utterly lost, as these believe; that it, at any rate, does not mark them with a figurative broad arrow and consign them to a separate division of society; that it is able to give them back the self-respect without which mankind is lower than the beast, and to place them, regenerated, upon a path that, if it be steep and thorny, still leads to those heights of peace and honour which they never thought to tread again. This is done not by physical care and comfort, though, of course, these help towards the desired end, but by its own spiritual means, or so it would appear. Its Officers pray with the man; they awake his conscience, which is never dead in any of us; they pour the blessed light of hope into the dark places of his soul; they cause him to hate the past, and to desire to lead a new life. Once this desire is established, the rest is comparatively simple, for where the heart leads the feet will follow; but without it little or nothing can be done. Such is the explanation I have to offer. At any rate, I believe it remains a fact that among the worst criminals the Salvation Army often succeeds where others have failed. Another point that should not be overlooked in this connexion is that it must be a great comfort to the sinner and an encouragement of the most practical sort to find, as he sometimes will, that the hands which are dragging him and his kind from the mire, had once been as filthy as his own. When the worker can say to him, 'Look at me; in bygone days I was as bad as or worse than you'; when he can point to many others whose vices were formerly notorious, but who now fill positions of trust in the Army or outside of it, and are honoured of all men; then the lost one, emerging, perhaps, for the fifth or sixth time from the darkness of his prison, sees by the light of these concrete examples that the future has promise for us all. If _they_ have succeeded why should _he_ fail? That is the argument which comes home to him. There remains a matter to be considered. Let us suppose that as time goes by the Authorities become more and more convinced of the value of the Army's prison work, and pass over to its care criminals in ever-increasing numbers, as they are doing in some other countries and in the great Colonies, what will be the effect upon the Army itself? Will not this mass of comparatively useless material clog the wheels of the great machine by overlading it with a vast number of ex-prisoners, some of whom, owing to their age or other circumstances, are quite incapable of earning their livelihood, and therefore must be carried till their deaths? When I put the query to those in command, the answer given was that they did not think so, as they believed that the Army would be able to turn the great majority of these men into respectable, wage-earning members of society. Thus of those who have been sent to it lately from the prisons, it has, I understand, been forced to return only two, because these men would not behave themselves, and proved to be a source of danger and contamination to others. As regards the residuum who are incapacitated by age or weakness of mind or body, General Booth and his Officers are of opinion that the Government should contribute to their support in such places as the Army may be able to find for them to dwell in under its care. I hope that these forecasts, which after all are made by men of great experience who should know, may not prove to be over-sanguine. Still it must be remembered that in England alone there are, I am told, some 30,000 confirmed criminals in the jails, not reckoning the 5,000 who are classed as convicts. If even 20 per cent of these were passed over to the care of the Army, with or without State grants in aid of their support, this must in the nature of things prove a heavy burden upon its resources. When all is said and done it is harder to find employment for a jailbird, even if reformed, than for any other class of man, because so damaged a human article has but little commercial value in the Labour market. If, however, the Salvation Army is prepared to face this gigantic task, it may be hoped that it will be given an opportunity of showing what it can do on a large scale, as it has already shown upon one more restricted. Prison reform is in the air. The present system is admitted more or less to have broken down. It has been shown to be incompetent to attain the real end for which it is established; that is, not punishment, as many still believe, for this hereditary idea is hard to eradicate, but prevention and, still more, reformation. The 'Vengeance of the Law' is a phrase not easy to forget; but among humane and highly-civilized peoples the word Vengeance should be replaced by another, the best that I can think of is--Regeneration. The Law should not seek to avenge--that may be left to the savage codes, civil and religious, of the dark ages. Except in the case of the death sentence, which is not everywhere in favour, it should seek to regenerate. If, then, among other agencies, the Salvation Army is able to prove beyond cavil that it can assist our criminal system to attain this noble end, ought not opportunity to be given it in full measure? Is it too much to hope that when the new Prison Act, of which the substance has recently been outlined by the Home Secretary, comes to be discussed, this object may be kept in view and the offer of the Salvation Army to co-operate in the great endeavour may not be lightly thrust aside? If its help is found so valuable in the solution of this particular problem in other lands, why should it be rejected here, or, rather, why should it not be more largely utilized, as I know from their own lips, General Booth and his Officers hope and desire?[2] THE MEN'S WORKSHOP HANBURY STREET, WHITECHAPEL This Salvation Army carpentering and joinery shop has been in existence for about fifteen years, but it does not even now pay its way. It was started by the Army in order to assist fallen mechanics by giving them temporary work until they could find other situations. The manager informed me that at the beginning they found work for about thirty men. When I visited the place some fifty hands were employed--bricklayers, painters, joiners, etc., none of whom need stop an hour longer than they choose. From 100 to 150 men pass through this Workshop in a year, but many of them being elderly and therefore unable to obtain work elsewhere, stop for a long while, as the Army cannot well get rid of them. All of these folk arrive in a state of absolute destitution, having even sold their tools, the last possessions with which a competent workman parts. The Parliamentary Committee of the Labour Party and the Trade Unions have recently stirred up a great agitation, which has been widely reported in the Press, against the Hanbury Street Workshop, because the Army does not pay the Union rate of wages. As a result the Army now declines all outside contracts, and confines its operations to the work of erecting, repairing, or furnishing its own buildings. Here it may be stated that these complaints seem to be unreasonable. The men employed have almost without exception been taken off the streets to save them from starvation or the poorhouse. Often enough they are by no means competent at their work, while some of them have for the time being been rendered practically useless through the effects of drink or other debaucheries. Yet it is argued with violence that to such people, whom no business firm would employ upon any terms, the Army ought to pay the full Trade Union rate of wages. When every allowance is made for the great and urgent problems connected with the cruel practice of 'sweating,' surely this attitude throws a strange light upon some of the methods of the Trade Unions? The inference seems to be that they would prefer that these derelicts should come on the rates or starve rather than that the Army should house and feed them, giving them, in addition, such wage as their labour may be worth. Further comment seems to be needless, especially when I repeat that, as I am assured, this Hanbury Street Institution never has earned, and does not now earn, the cost of its upkeep. It is situated in the heart of a very poor district, and is rather a ramshackle place to look at, but still quite suitable to its purposes. I have observed that one of the characteristics of the Salvation Army is that it never spends unnecessary money upon buildings. If it can buy a good house or other suitable structure cheap it does so. If it cannot, it makes use of what it can get at a price within its means, provided that the place will satisfy the requirements of the sanitary and other Authorities. All the machines at Hanbury Street are driven by electric power that is supplied by the Stepney Council at a cost of 1_d_. per unit for power and 3_d_. per unit for lighting. An elderly man whom I saw there attending to this machinery, was dismissed by one of the great railway companies when they were reducing their hands. He had been in the employ of the Salvation Army for seven years and received the use of a house rent free and a wage of 30_s_. a week, which probably he would find it quite impossible to earn anywhere else. The hours of employment are from 6.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. if the man is engaged on outside work, or to 6 p.m. if he labours in the workshop, and the men are paid at various rates according to the value of their work, and whether they are boarded and lodged, or live outside. Thus one to whom I spoke, who was the son of a former mayor of an important town, was allowed 3_s._ a week plus food and lodging, while another received 9_s._ a week, 5_s._ of which was sent to his wife, from whom he was separated. Another man, after living on the Army for about two years, made charges against it to the Carpenters' and Joiners' Union. He returned and apologized, but had practically to be kept under restraint on account of his drinking habits. Another man spent twenty years in jail and then walked the streets. He is now a very respectable person, earns 27_s._ 6_d._ a week, and lives outside with his wife and family. Another was once convicted of cruelty to his children, whom he placed under the boards of the flooring while he went out to drink. These children are now restored to him, and he lives with them. Another among those with whom I happened to speak, was robbed by a relative of £4,000 which his father left to him. He was taken on by the Army in a state of destitution, but I forget what he earned. Another, the youngest man in the Works, came to them without any trade at all and in a destitute condition, but when I saw him was in charge of a morticing machine. He had married, lived out, and had been in the employ of the Army for five years. His wage was 27_s._ 6_d._ a week. Two others drew as much as £2 5_s._ 11_d._ each, living out; but, on the other hand, some received as little as 3_s._ a week with board and lodging. Amongst this latter class was a young Mormon from Salt Lake City, who earned 4_s._ 6_d._ a week and his board and lodging. He had been in the Elevator about three months, having got drunk in London and missed his ship. Although he attended the Salvation Army meetings, he remained a Mormon. In these Works all sorts of articles are manufactured to be used by other branches of the Salvation Army. Thus I saw poultry-houses being made for the Boxted Small Holdings; these cost from £4 5_s._ to £4 10_s._ net, and were excellent structures designed to hold about two dozen fowls. Further on large numbers of seats of different patterns were in process of manufacture, some of them for children, and other longer ones, with reversible backs, to be used in the numerous Army halls. Next I visited a room in which mattresses and mattress covers are made for the various Shelters, also the waterproof bunk bedding, which costs 7_s._ 9_d._ per cover. Further on, in a separate compartment, was a flock-tearing machine, at which the Mormon I have mentioned was employed. This is a very dusty job whereat a man does not work for more than one day in ten. Then there were the painting and polishing-room, the joinery room, and the room where doors, window frames, and articles of furniture are constructed; also special garden benches, cleverly planned so that the seat can be protected from rain. These were designed by a young lady whom I chance to know in private life, and who, as I now discovered for the first time, is also a member of the Salvation Army. Such is the Hanbury Street Workshop, where the Army makes the best use it can of rather indifferent human materials, and, as I have said, loses money at the business. STURGE HOUSE, BOW ROAD This branch of the Men's Social Work of the Salvation Army is a home for poor and destitute boys. The house, which once belonged to the late Dr. Barnardo, has been recently hired on a short lease. One of the features of the Army work is the reclamation of lads, of whom about 2,400 have passed through its hands in London during the course of the last eight years. Sturge House has been fitted up for this special purpose, and accommodates about fifty boys. The Officer in charge informed me that some boys apply to them for assistance when they are out of work, while others come from bad homes, and yet others through the Shelters, which pass on suitable lads. Each case is strictly investigated when it arrives, with the result that about one-third of their number are restored to their parents, from whom often enough they have run away, sometimes upon the most flimsy pretexts. Not unfrequently these boys are bad characters, who tell false tales of their past. Thus, recently, two who arrived at the Headquarters at Whitechapel, alleged that they were farm-labourers from Norfolk. As they did not in the least look the part, inquiries were made, when it was found that they had never been nearer to Norfolk than Hampstead, where both of them had been concerned in the stealing of £10 from a business firm. The matter was patched up with the intervention of the Army, and the boys were restored to their parents. Occasionally, too, lads are brought here by kind folk, who find them starving. They are taken in, kept for a while, taught and fed, and when their characters are re-established--for many of them have none left--put out into the world. Some of them, indeed, work daily at various employments in London, and pay 5s. a week for their board and lodging at the Home. A good proportion of these lads also are sent to the collieries in Wales, where, after a few years, they earn good wages. In these collieries a man and a boy generally work together. A while ago such a man applied to the Army for a boy, and the applicant, proving respectable, the boy was sent, and turned out extremely well. In due course he became a collier himself, and, in his turn, sent for a boy. So the thing spread, till up to the present time the Army has supplied fifty or sixty lads to colliers in South Wales, all of whom seem to be satisfactory and prosperous. As the Manager explained, it is not difficult to place out a lad as soon as his character can be more or less guaranteed. The difficulty comes with a man who is middle-aged or old. He added that this Home does not in any sense compete with those of Dr. Barnardo; in fact, in certain ways they work hand in hand. The Barnardo Homes will not receive lads who are over sixteen, whereas the Army takes them up to eighteen. So it comes about that Barnardo's sometimes send on cases which are over their age limit to Sturge House. I saw the boys at their dinner, and although many of them had a bad record, certainly they looked very respectable, and likely to make good and useful men. The experience of the Army is that most of them are quite capable of reformation, and that, when once their hearts have been changed, they seldom fall back into the ways of dishonesty. This Home, like all those managed by the Salvation Army, is spotlessly clean, and the dormitories are very pleasant rooms. Also, there is a garden, and in it I saw a number of pots of flowers, which had just been sent as a present by a boy whom the Army helped three years ago, and who is now, I understand, a gardener. Sturge House struck me as a most useful Institution; and as there is about it none of the depressing air of the adult Shelters, my visit here was a pleasant change. The reclamation or the helping of a lad is a very different business from that of restoring the adult or the old man to a station in life which he seems to have lost for ever. THE CENTRAL LABOUR BUREAU This Bureau is established in the Social Headquarters at Whitechapel, a large building acquired as long ago as 1878. Here is to be seen the room in which General Booth used to hold some of his first prayer meetings, and a little chamber where he took counsel with those Officers who were the fathers of the Army. Also there is a place where he could sit unseen and listen to the preaching of his subordinates, so that he might judge of their ability. The large hall is now part of yet another Shelter, which contains 232 beds and bunks. I inspected this place, but as it differs in no important detail from others, I will not describe it. The Officer who is in charge of the Labour Bureau informed me that hundreds of men apply there for work every week, of whom a great many are sent into the various Elevators and Shelters. The Army finds it extremely difficult to procure outside employment for these men, for the simple reason that there is very little available. Moreover, now that the Government Labour Bureaux are open, this trouble is not lessened. Of these Bureaux, the Manager said that they are most useful, but fail to find employment for many who apply to them. Indeed, numbers of men come on from them to the Salvation Army. The hard fact is that there are more idle hands than there is work for them to do, even where honest and capable folk are concerned. Thus, in the majority of instances, the Army is obliged to rely upon its own Institutions and the Hadleigh Land Colony to provide some sort of job for out-of-works. Of course, of such jobs there are not enough to go round, so many poor folk must be sent empty away or supported by charity. I suggested that it might be worth while to establish a school of chauffeurs, and the Officers present said that they would consider the matter. Unfortunately, however, such an experiment must be costly at the present price of motor-vehicles. I annex the Labour Bureau Statistics for May, 1910:-- LONDON Applicants for temporary employment 479 Sent to temporary employment 183 Applicants for Elevators 864 Sent to Elevators 260 Sent to Shelters 32 PROVINCES Applicants for temporary employment 461 Sent to temporary employment 160 Applicants for Elevators 417 Sent to Elevators 202 Sent to Shelters 20 Sent to permanent situations 35 THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT This is a curious and interesting branch of the work of the Salvation Army. About two thousand times a year it receives letters or personal applications, asking it to find some missing relative or friend of the writer or applicant. In reply, a form is posted or given, which must be filled up with the necessary particulars. Then, if it be a London case, the Officer in charge sends out a skilled man to work up clues. If, on the other hand, it be a country case, the Officer in charge of the Corps nearest to where it has occurred, is instructed to initiate the inquiry. Also, advertisements are inserted in the Army papers, known as 'The War Cry' and 'The Social Gazette,' both in Great Britain and other countries, if the lost person is supposed to be on the Continent or in some distant part of the world. The result is that a large percentage of the individuals sought for are discovered, alive or dead, for in such work the Salvation Army has advantages denied to any other body, scarcely excepting the Police. Its representatives are everywhere, and to whatever land they may belong or whatever tongue they may speak, all of them obey an order sent out from Headquarters wholeheartedly and uninfluenced by the question of regard. The usual fee charged for this work is 10_s_. 6_d_.; but when this cannot be paid, a large number of cases are undertaken free. The Army goes to as much trouble in these unpaid cases as in any others, only then it is not able to flood the country with printed bills. Of course, where well-to-do people are concerned, it expects that its out-of-pocket costs will be met. The cases with which it has to deal are of all kinds. Often those who have disappeared are found to have done so purposely, perhaps leaving behind them manufactured evidence, such as coats or letters on a river-bank, suggesting that they have committed suicide. Generally, these people are involved in some fraud or other trouble. Again, husbands desert their wives, or wives their husbands, and vanish, in which instances they are probably living with somebody else under another name. Or children are kidnapped, or girls are lured away, or individuals emigrate to far lands and neglect to write. Or, perhaps, they simply sink out of all knowledge, and vanish effectually enough into a paupers grave. But the oddest cases of all are those of a complete loss of memory, a thing that is by no means so infrequent as is generally supposed. The experience of the Army is that the majority of these cases happen among those who lead a studious life. The victim goes out in his usual health and suddenly forgets everything. His mind becomes a total blank. Yet certain instincts remain, such as that of earning a living. Thus, to take a single recent example, the son of a large bookseller in a country town left the house one day, saying that he would not be away for long, and disappeared. At the invitation of his father, the Army took up the case, and ultimately found that the man had been working in its Spa Road Elevator under another name. Afterwards he went away, became destitute, and sold matches in the streets. Ultimately he was found in a Church Army Home. He recovered his memory, and subsequently lost it again to the extent that he could recall nothing which happened to him during the period of its first lapse. All that time vanished into total darkness. This business of the hunting out of the missing through the agency of the Salvation Army is one which increases every day. It is not unusual for the Army to discover individuals who have been missing for thirty years and upwards. THE EMIGRATION DEPARTMENT Some years ago I was present one night in the Board-room at Euston Station and addressed a shipload of emigrants who were departing to Canada under the auspices of the Salvation Army. I forget their exact number, but I think it was not less than 500. What I do not forget, however, is the sorrow that I felt at seeing so many men in the prime of life leaving the shores of their country for ever, especially as most of them were not married. This meant, amongst other things, that an equal number of women who remained behind were deprived of the possibility of obtaining a husband in a country in which the females already outnumber the males by more than a million. I said as much in the little speech I made on this occasion, and I think that some one answered me with the pertinent remark that if there was no work at home, it must be sought abroad. [Illustration: INMATES OF A MEN'S INDUSTRIAL HOME.] There lies the whole problem in a nutshell--men must live. As for the aged and the incompetent and the sick and the unattached women, these are left behind for the community to support, while young and active men of energy move off to endow new lands with their capacities and strength. The results of this movement, carried out upon a great scale, can be seen in the remoter parts of Ireland, which, as the visitor will observe, appear to be largely populated by very young children and by persons getting on in years. Whether or no this is a satisfactory state of affairs is not for me to say, although the matter, too large to discuss here, is one upon which I may have my own opinion. Colonel Lamb, the head of the Salvation Army Emigration Department, informed me that during the past seven years the Army has emigrated about 50,000 souls, of whom 10,000 were assisted out of its funds, the rest paying their own way or being paid for from one source or another. From 8,000 to 10,000 people have been sent during the present year, 1910, most of them to Canada, which is the Mecca of the Salvation Army Emigration policy. So carefully have all these people been selected, that not 1 per cent have ever been returned to this country by the Canadian Authorities as undesirable. The truth is that those Authorities have the greatest confidence in the discretion of the Army, and in its ability to handle this matter to the advantage of all concerned. That this is true I know from personal experience, since when, some years ago, I was a Commissioner from the British Government and had authority to formulate a scheme of Colonial land-settlement, the Prime Minister of Canada, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, told me so himself in the plainest language. Indeed, he did more, formally offering a huge block of territory to be selected anywhere I might choose in the Dominion, with the aid of its Officers, for the purposes of settlement by poor folk and their children under the auspices of the Salvation Army. Also, he added the promise of as much more land as might be required in the future for the same purpose.[3] Most unhappily, as I hold, that offer was not accepted by the British Government. If this had been done, by now hundreds of English families would have been transferred from conditions of want at home in the English towns, into those of peace and plenty upon the land abroad. Moreover, the recent rise in the value of Canadian land has been so great that the scheme would not have cost the British taxpayer a halfpenny, or so I most firmly believe. Unfortunately, however, my scheme was too novel in its character to appeal to the official mind, especially as its working would have involved a loan repayable by instalments, the administration of which must have been entrusted to the Salvation Army or to other charitable Organizations. So this priceless opportunity was lost, probably for ever, as the new and stricter emigration regulations adopted by Canada, as I understand, would make it extremely difficult to emigrate the class I hoped to help, namely, indigent people of good character, resident in English cities, with growing families of children. Young men, especially if they have been bred on the land, and young marriageable women are eagerly desired in the Colonies, including Australia; but at families, as we have read in recent correspondence in the newspapers, they look askance. 'Why do they not want families in Australia? I asked Colonel Lamb. 'Because the trouble of housing comes in. It is the same thing in Canada, it is the same thing all through the Colonies. They do not want too much trouble,' he answered. These words define the position very accurately. 'Give us your best,' say the Colonies. 'Give us your adult, healthy men and women whom you have paid to rear and educate, but don't bother us with families of children whom we have to house. Above all send us no damaged articles. You are welcome to keep those at home.' To my mind this attitude, natural as it may be, creates a serious problem so far as Great Britain and Ireland are concerned, for the question will arise, Can we afford to go on parting with the good and retaining the less desirable? On this subject I had a long argument with Colonel Lamb, and his answer to the question was in the affirmative, although I must admit that his reasons did not at all convince me. He seemed to believe that we could send out 250,000 people, chosen people, per annum for the next ten years without harm to ourselves. Well, it may be so, and, as he added, 'we are in their (that is, the Colonies') hands, and have to do what they choose to allow.' Also his opinion was that 'the best thing possible for this country is wholesale emigration,' of course of those whom the Colonies will accept. He said, 'People here are dissatisfied with their present condition and want a change. If we had money to assist them, there is practically no limit to the number who want to go. There are tens of thousands who would conform to the Canadian regulations. One of the things we advise the man who has been forced out of the country is that rather than come into the town he should go to the Colonies.' On the matter of the complaints which have been made in Canada of the emigrant from London, Colonel Lamb said, 'The Londoner, it is alleged, is not wanted. The Canadian is full of self-assertiveness, and the Cockney has some of that too; he does not hesitate to express his views, and you have conflicting spirits at once. The Cockney will arrive at the conclusion in about twenty-four hours that he could run Canada better than it is now being run. The Scotchman will take a week to arrive at the same conclusion, and holds his tongue about it. The Cockney says what he thinks on the first day of arrival, and the result is--fireworks. He and the Canadians do not agree to begin with; but when they get over the first passage of arms they settle down amicably. The Cockney is finally appreciated, and, being industrious and amenable to law and order, if he has got a bit of humour he gets on all right, but not at first.' Colonel Lamb informed me that in Australia the Labour Party is afraid of the Army because it believes 'we will send in people to bring down wages.' Therefore, the Labour Party has sidetracked General Booth's proposals. Now, however, it alleges that it is not opposed to emigration, if not on too large a scale. 'They don't mind a few girls; but they say the condition that must precede emigration is the breaking up of the land.' Colonel Lamb appeared to desire that an Emigration Board should be appointed in England, with power and funds to deal with the distribution of the population of the Empire and to systematize emigration. To this Imperial Board, individuals or Societies, such as the Salvation Army, should, he thought, be able to submit their schemes, which schemes would receive assistance according to their merits under such limitations as the Board might see fit to impose. To such a Board he would even give power to carry out land-settlement schemes in the British Isles. This is a great proposal, but one wonders whence the money is to come. Also how long will it be before the Labour Parties in the various Colonies, including Canada, gain so much power that they will refuse to accept emigrants at all, except young women, or agriculturalists who bring capital with them? But all these problems are for the future. Meanwhile it is evident that the Salvation Army manages its emigration work with extraordinary success and business skill. Those whom it sends from these shores for their own benefit are invariably accepted, at any rate in Canada, and provided with work on their arrival in the chosen Colony. That the selection is sound and careful is shown, also, by the fact that the Army recovers from those emigrants to whom it gives assistance a considerable percentage of the sums advanced to enable them to start life in a new land. THE WOMEN'S SOCIAL WORK IN LONDON At the commencement of my investigation of this branch of the Salvation Army activities in England, I discussed its general aspects with Mrs. Bramwell Booth, who has it in her charge. She pointed out to me that this Women's Social Work is a much larger business than it was believed to be even by those who had some acquaintance with the Salvation Army, and that it deals with many matters of great importance in their bearing on the complex problems of our civilization. Among them, to take some that she mentioned, which recur to my mind, are the questions of illegitimacy and prostitution, of maternity homes for poor girls who have fallen into trouble, of women thieves, of what is known as the White Slave traffic, of female children who have been exposed to awful treatment, of women who are drunkards or drug-takers, of aged and destitute women, of intractable or vicious-minded girls, and, lastly, of the training of young persons to enable them to deal scientifically with all these evils, or under the name of Slum Sisters, to wait upon the poor in their homes, and nurse them through the trials of maternity. How practical and efficient this training is, no one can know who has not, like myself, visited and inquired into the various Institutions and Refuges of the Army in different cities of the land. It is a wonderful thing, as has happened to me again and again, to see some quiet, middle-aged lady, often so shy that it is difficult to extract from her the information required, ruling with the most perfect success a number of young women, who, a few weeks or months before, were the vilest of the vile, and what is stranger still, reforming as she rules. These ladies exercise no severity; the punishment, which, perhaps necessarily, is a leading feature in some of our Government Institutions, is unknown to their system. I am told that no one is ever struck, no one is imprisoned, no one is restricted in diet for any offence. As an Officer said to me:-- 'If we cannot manage a girl by love, we recognize that the case is beyond us, and ask her to go away. This, however, very seldom happens.' As a matter of fact, that case which is beyond the regenerating powers of the Army must be very bad indeed, at any rate where young people are concerned. In the vast majority of instances a cure is effected, and apparently a permanent cure. In every one of these Homes there is a room reserved for the accommodation of those who have passed through it and gone out into the world again, should they care to return there in their holidays or other intervals of leisure. That room is always in great demand, and I can imagine no more eloquent testimony to the manner of the treatment of its occupants while they dwelt in these Homes as 'cases.' In truth, a study of the female Officers of the Salvation Army is calculated to convert the observer not only to a belief in the right of women to the suffrage, but also to that of their fitness to rule among, or even over men. Only I never heard that any of these ladies ever sought such privileges; moreover, few of the sex would care to win them at the price of the training, self-denial, and stern experience which it is their lot to undergo. Mrs. Bramwell Booth pointed out to me that although the actual work of the Army on these women's questions is 'more than just a little,' it had, as it were, only touched their fringe. Yet even this 'fringe' has many threads, seeing that over 44,000 of these women's cases have been helped in one way or another since this branch of the home work began about twenty years ago. She added that scarcely a month goes by in which the Army does not break out in a new direction, open a new Institution, or attempt to attack a new problem; and this, be it remembered, not only in these islands but over the face of half the earth. At present its sphere of influence is limited by the lack of funds. Give it enough money, she said, and there is little that it would not dare to try. Everywhere the harvest is plentiful, and if the workers remain comparatively few, it is because material means are lacking for their support. Given the money and the workers would be found. Nor will they ask much for maintenance or salary, enough to provide the necessary buildings, and to keep body and soul together, that is all.[4] What are these women doing? In London they run more than a score of Homes and Agencies, including a Maternity Hospital, which I will describe later, where hundreds of poor deceived girls are taken in during their trouble. I believe it is almost the only one of the sort, at any rate on the same scale, in that great city. Also they manage various Homes for drunken women. It has always been supposed to be a practical impossibility to effect a cure in such cases, but the lady Officers of the Salvation Army succeed in turning about 50 per cent of their patients into perfectly sober persons. At least they remain sober for three years from the date of their discharge, after which they are often followed no further. Another of their objects is to find out the fathers of illegitimate children, and persuade them to sign a form of agreement which has been carefully drawn by Counsel, binding themselves to contribute towards the cost of the maintenance of the child. Or failing this, should the evidence be sufficient, they try to obtain affiliation orders against such fathers in a Magistrates' Court. Here I may state that the amount of affiliation money collected in England by the Army in 1909 was £1,217, of which £208 was for new cases. Further, £671 was collected and paid over for maintenance to deserted wives. Little or none of this money would have been forthcoming but for its exertions. Mrs. Bramwell Booth informed me that there exists a class of young men, most of them in the employ of tradesfolk, who habitually amuse themselves by getting servant girls into trouble, often under a promise of marriage. Then, if the usual results follow, it is common for these men to move away to another town, taking their references with them and, sometimes under a new name, to repeat the process there. She was of opinion that the age of consent ought to be raised to eighteen at least, a course for which there is much to be said. Also she thought, and this is more controversial, that when any young girl has been seduced under promise of marriage, the seducer should be liable to punishment under the criminal law. Of course, one of the difficulties here would be to prove the promise of marriage beyond all reasonable doubt. Also to bring such matters within the cognizance of the criminal law would be a new and, indeed, a dangerous departure not altogether easy to justify, especially as old magistrates like myself, who have considerable experience of such cases must know, it is not always the man who is to blame. Personally, I incline to the view that if the age of consent were raised, and the contribution exacted from the putative father of an illegitimate child made proportionate to his means, and not limited, as it is now, to a maximum of 5s. a week, the criminal law might well be left out of the question. It must be remembered further, as Mrs. Booth pointed out herself, that there is another remedy, namely, that of a better home-training of girls who should be prepared by their mothers or friends to face the dangers of the world, a duty which these too often neglect. The result is that many young women who feel lonely and desire to get married, overstep the limits of prudence on receipt of a promise that thus they may attain their end, with the result that generally they find themselves ruined and deserted. Mrs. Bramwell Booth said that the Army is doing its utmost to mitigate the horrors of what is known as the White Slave traffic, both here and in many other countries. With this object it has a Bill before Parliament at the present time, of which one of the aims is to prevent children from being sent out of this country to France under circumstances that practically ensure their moral destruction. It seems that the state of things in Paris in this connexion is, in her own words, 'most abominable, too horrible for words.' Children are procured from certain theatre dancing schools, and their birth certificates sometimes falsified to make it appear that they are over fourteen, although often they may be as young as twelve or even ten. Then they are conveyed to vile places in Paris where their doom is sure. Let us hope that in due course this Bill will become law, for if girls are protected up to sixteen in this country, surely they should not be sent out of it in doubtful circumstances under that age. Needless to say abominations of this nature are not unknown in London. Thus a while ago the Army received a telegram from a German girl asking, 'Can you help?' Two of its people went at once to the address given, and, contriving to get into the house, discovered there a young woman who, imagining that she had been engaged in Germany as a servant in an English family, found herself in a London brothel. Fortunately, being a girl of some character and resource, she held her own, and, having heard of the Salvation Army in her own land, persuaded a milkman to take the telegram that brought about her delivery from this den of wickedness. Unfortunately it proved impossible to discover the woman who had hired her abroad, as the victim of the plot really knew nothing about that procuress. This girl was restored to her home in Germany none the worse for her terrific adventure, and a few weeks later refunded her travelling expenses. But how many must there be who have never heard of the Salvation Army, and can find no milkman to help them out of their vile prisons, for such places are no less. Another branch of the Army women's work is that of the rescue of prostitutes from the streets, which is known as the 'Midnight Work.' For the purpose of this endeavour it hires a flat in Great Titchfield Street, of which, and of the mission that centres round it, I will speak later in this book. The Women's Social Work of the Salvation Army began in London, in the year 1884, at the cottage of a woman-soldier of the Army who lived in Whitechapel. This lady, who was interested in girls without character, took some of them into her home. Eventually she left the place which came into the hands of the Army, whereon Mrs. Bramwell Booth was sent to take charge of the twelve inmates whom it would accommodate. The seed that was thus sown in 1884 has now multiplied itself into fifty-nine Homes and Agencies for women in Great Britain alone, to say nothing of others abroad and in the Colonies. But this is only a beginning. 'We look forward,' said Mrs. Bramwell Booth to me, 'to a great increase of this side of our work at home. No year has passed without the opening of a new Women's Home of some kind, and we hope that this will continue. Thus I want to build a very big Maternity Hospital if I can get the money. We have about £20,000 in hand for this purpose; but the lesser of the two schemes before us will cost £35,000.' Will not some rich and charitable person provide the £15,000 that are lacking? THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE WOMEN'S SOCIAL WORK LOWER CLAPTON ROAD The Women's Social Headquarters of the Salvation Army in England is situated at Clapton. It is a property of nearly three acres, on which stand four houses that will be rebuilt whenever funds are forthcoming for the erection of the Maternity Hospital and Training Institution for nurses and midwives which I have already mentioned. At present about forty Officers are employed here, most of whom are women, under the command of Commissioner Cox, one of the foremost of the 600 women-Officers of the Salvation Army in the United Kingdom who give their services to the women's social work. It is almost needless for me to add that Commissioner Cox is a lady of very great ability, who is entirely devoted to the cause to which she has dedicated her life. One of the reasons of the great success of the Salvation Army is that only able people exactly suited to the particular work in view are put in authority over that work. Here there are no sinecures, no bought advowsons, and no freehold livings. Moreover, the policy of the Army, as a general rule, is not to allow any one to remain too long in any one office, lest he or she should become fossilized or subject to local influences. I remember when I was in America hearing of a case in which a very leading Officer of the Army, who chanced to be a near relative of General Booth, declined to obey an order to change his command for another in a totally different part of the world. The order was repeated once or twice, and as often disobeyed. Resignation followed and an attempt to found a rival Organization. I only mention this matter to show that discipline is enforced in this Society without fear, favour, or prejudice, which is, perhaps, a principal reason of its efficiency. HILLSBOROUGH HOUSE INEBRIATES' HOME Under the guidance of Commissioner Cox I inspected a number of the London Women's Institutions of the Army, first visiting the Hillsborough House Inebriates' Home. This Home, a beautifully clean and well-kept place, has accommodation for thirty patients, twenty-nine beds being occupied on the day of my visit. The lady in charge informed me that these patients are expected to contribute 10s. per week towards the cost of their maintenance; but that, as a matter of fact, they seldom pay so much. Generally the sum recovered varies from 7s. to 3s. per week, while a good many give nothing at all. The work the patients do in this Home is sold and produces something towards the cost of upkeep. The actual expense of the maintenance of the inmates averages about 12s. 6d. a week per head, which sum includes an allowance for rent. Most of the cases stay in the Home for twelve months, although some remain for a shorter period. When the cure is completed, if they are married, the patients return to their husbands. The unmarried are sent out to positions as governesses, nurses, or servants, that is, if the authorities of the Home are able to give them satisfactory characters. As the reader who knows anything of such matters will be aware, it is generally supposed to be rather more easy to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than to reclaim a confirmed female drunkard. Yet, as I have already said, the Salvation Army, on a three years' test in each case, has shown that it deals successfully with about 50 per cent of those women who come into its hands for treatment as inebriates or drug-takers. How is this done? Largely, of course, by effecting through religious means a change of heart and nature, as the Army often seems to have the power to do, and by the exercise of gentle personal influences. But there remains another aid which is physical. With the shrewdness that distinguishes them, the Officers of the Army have discovered that the practice of vegetarianism is a wonderful enemy to the practice of alcoholism. The vegetarian, it seems, conceives a bodily distaste to spirituous liquors. If they can persuade a patient to become a vegetarian, then the chances of her cure are enormously increased. Therefore, in this and in the other female Inebriate Homes no meat is served. The breakfast, which is eaten at 7.30, consists of tea, brown and white bread and butter, porridge and fresh milk, or stewed fruit. A sample dinner at one o'clock includes macaroni cheese, greens, potatoes, fruit pudding or plain boiled puddings with stewed figs. On one day a week, however, baked or boiled fish is served with pease pudding, potatoes, and boiled currant pudding, and on another, brown gravy is given with onions in batter. Tea, which is served at six o'clock, consists--to take a couple of samples--of tea, white and brown bread and butter, and cheese sandwiches with salad; or of tea, white and brown bread and butter, savoury rolls, and apples or oranges. It will be observed that this diet is as simple as it well can be; but I think it right to add, after personal inspection, that the inmates appear to thrive on it extremely well. Certainly all whom I saw looked well nourished and healthy. A book is kept in the Home in which the details of each case are carefully entered, together with its record for two years after discharge. Here are the particulars of three cases taken by me at hazard from this book which will serve to indicate the class of patient that is treated at this Home. Of course, I omit the names:-- _A.B._ Aged thirty-one. Her mother, who was a drunkard and gave A.B. drink in her childhood, died some time ago. A.B. drove her father, who was in good circumstances, having a large business, to madness by her inebriety. Indeed, he tried to commit suicide by hanging himself, but, oddly enough, it was A.B. who cut him down, and he was sent to an asylum. A.B. had fallen very low since her mother's death; but I do not give these details. All the members of her family drank, except, strange to say, the father, who at the date of my visit was in the asylum. A.B. had been in the Home some time, and was giving every satisfaction. It was hoped that she will be quite cured. _C.D._ Aged thirty. C.D.'s father, a farmer, was a moderate drinker, her mother was a temperance woman. Her parents discovered her craving for drink about ten years ago. She was unable to keep any situation on account of this failing. Four years ago C.D. was sent to an Inebriate Home for twelve months, but no cure was effected. Afterwards she disappeared, having been dismissed from her place, and was found again for the mother by the Salvation Army. At the time of my visit she had been six months in the Home, and was doing well. _E.F._ Aged forty-eight; was the widow of a professional man, whom she married as his second wife, and by whom she had two children, one of whom survives. She began to drink before her husband's death, and this tendency was increased by family troubles that arose over his will. She mismanaged his business and lost everything, drank heavily and despaired. She tried to keep a boarding house, but her furniture was seized and she came absolutely to the end of her resources, her own daughter being sent away to her relatives. E.F. was nine months in the Hillsborough Home, and had gone as cook and housekeeper to a situation, where she also was giving every satisfaction. THE MATERNITY NURSING HOME LORNE HOUSE, STOKE NEWINGTON Her Royal Highness Princes Louise, the Duchess of Argyll, defrayed the cost of the purchase of the leasehold of this charming Home. The lady-Officer in charge informed me that the object of the establishment is to take in women who have or are about to have illegitimate children. It is not, however, a lying-in Home, the mothers being sent to the Ivy House Hospital for their confinements. After these are over they are kept for four or sometimes for six months at Lorne House. At the expiration of this period situations are found for most of them, and the babies are put out to nurse in the houses of carefully selected women with whom the mothers can keep in touch. These women are visited from time to time by Salvation Army Officers who make sure that the infants are well treated in every way. All the cases in this Home are those of girls who have fallen into trouble for the first time. They belong to a better class than do those who are received in many of the Army Homes. The charge for their maintenance is supposed to be £1 a week, but some pay only 5s., and some nothing at all. As a matter of fact, out of the twelve cases which the Home will hold, at the time of my visit half were making no payment. If the Army averages a contribution of 7s. a week from them, it thinks itself fortunate. I saw a number of the babies in cradles placed in an old greenhouse in the garden to protect them from the rain that was falling at the time. When it is at all fine they are kept as much as possible in the open air, and the results seem to justify this treatment, for it would be difficult to find healthier infants. Five or six of the inmates sleep together in a room; for those with children a cot is provided beside each bed. I saw several of these young women, who all seemed to be as happy and contented as was possible under their somewhat depressing circumstances. THE MATERNITY RECEIVING HOME BRENT HOUSE, HACKNEY This Home serves a somewhat similar purpose as that at Lorne House, but the young women taken in here while awaiting their confinement are not, as a rule, of so high a class. In the garden at the back of the house about forty girls were seated in a kind of shelter which protected them from the rain, some of them working and some talking together, while others remained apart depressed and silent. Most of these young women were shortly expecting to become mothers. Certain of them, however, already had their infants, as there were seventeen babies in the Home who had been crowded out of the Central Maternity Hospital. Among these were some very sad cases, several of them being girls of gentle birth, taken in here because they could pay nothing. One, I remember, was a foreign young lady, whose sad history I will not relate. She was found running about the streets of a seaport town in a half-crazed condition and brought to this place by the Officers of the Salvation Army. In this house there is a room where ex-patients who are in service can bring their infants upon their holidays. Two or three of these women were here upon the occasion of my visit, and it was a pathetic sight to see them dandling the babies from whom they had been separated and giving them their food. It is the custom in this and other Salvation Army Maternity Homes to set apart a night in every month for what is called a Social Evening. On these occasions fifty or more of the former inmates will arrive with their children, whom they have brought from the various places where they are at nurse, and for a few hours enjoy their society, after which they take them back to the nurses and return to their work, whatever it may be. By means of this kindly arrangement these poor mothers are enabled from time to time to see something of their offspring, which, needless to say, is a boon they greatly prize. THE MATERNITY HOSPITAL IVY HOUSE, HACKNEY This Hospital is one for the accommodation of young mothers on the occasion of the birth of their illegitimate children. It is a humble building, containing twenty-five beds, although I think a few more can be arranged. That it serves its purpose well, until the large Maternity Hospital of which I have already spoken can be built, is shown by the fact that 286 babies (of whom only twenty-five were not illegitimate) were born here in 1900 without the loss of a single mother. Thirty babies died, however, which the lady-Officer in charge thought rather a high proportion, but one accounted for by the fact that during this particular year a large number of the births were premature. In 1908, 270 children were born, of whom twelve died, six of these being premature. The cases are drawn from London and other towns where the Salvation Army is at work. Generally they, or their relatives and friends, or perhaps the father of the child, apply to the Army to help them in their trouble, thereby, no doubt, preventing many child-murders and some suicides. The charge made by the Institution for these lying-in cases is in proportion to the ability of the patient to pay. Many contribute nothing at all. From those who do pay, the average sum received is 10_s_. a week, in return for which they are furnished with medical attendance, food, nursing, and all other things needful to their state. I went over the Hospital, and saw these unfortunate mothers lying in bed, each of them with her infant in a cot beside her. Although their immediate trial was over, these poor girls looked very sad. 'They know that their lives are spoiled,' said the lady in charge. Most of them were quite young, some being only fifteen, and the majority under twenty. This, it was explained to me, is generally due to the ignorance of the facts of life in which girls are kept by their parents or others responsible for their training. Last year there was a mother aged thirteen in this Hospital. One girl, who seemed particularly sad, had twins lying beside her. Hoping to cheer her up, I remarked that they were beautiful babies, whereon she hid her face beneath the bedclothes. 'Don't talk about them,' said the Officer, drawing me away, 'that child nearly cried her eyes out when she was told that there were two. You see, it is hard enough for these poor mothers to keep one, but when it comes to two--!' I asked whether the majority of these unfortunate young women really tried to support their children. The answer was that most of them try very hard indeed, and will use all their money for this purpose, even stinting themselves of absolute necessaries. Few of them go wrong again after their first slip, as they have learned their lesson. Moreover, during their stay in hospital and afterwards, the Salvation Army does its best to impress on them certain moral teachings, and thus to make its work preventive as well as remedial. Places in service are found for a great number of these girls, generally where only one servant is kept, so that they may not be taunted by the others if these should find out their secret. This as a rule, however, is confided to the mistress. The average wage they receive is about £18 a year. As it costs them £13, or 5_s_. a week, to support an infant (not allowing for its clothes), the struggle is very hard unless the Army can discover the father, and make him contribute towards the support of his child, either voluntarily or through a bastardy order. I was informed that many of these fathers are supposed to be gentlemen, but when it comes to this matter of payment, they show that they have little title to that description. Of course, in the case of men of humbler degree, money is even harder to recover. I may add, that my own long experience as a magistrate goes to confirm this statement. It is extraordinary to what meanness, subterfuge, and even perjury, a man will sometimes resort, in order to avoid paying so little as 1_s_. 6_d_. a week towards the keep of his own child. Often the line of defence is a cruel attempt to blacken the character of the mother, even when the accuser well knows that there is not the slightest ground for the charge, and that he alone is responsible for the woman's fall.[5] Also, if the case is proved, and the order made, many such men will run away and hide themselves in another part of the country to escape the fulfilment of their just obligations. In connexion with this Maternity Hospital, the Salvation Army has a Training School for midwives and nurses, all of whom must pass the Central Midwives Board examination before they are allowed to practise. Some of the students, after qualifying, continue to work for the Army in its Hospital Department, and others in the Slum Department, while some go abroad in the service of other Societies. The scale of fees for this four months' course in midwifery varies according to circumstances. The Army asks the full charge of eighteen guineas from those students who belong to, or propose to serve other Societies. Those who intend to go abroad to work with medical missionaries, have to pay fifteen guineas, and those who are members of the Salvation Army, or who intend to serve the Army in this Department, pay nothing, unless, at the conclusion of their course, they decide to leave the Army's service. At the last examination, out of fourteen students sent up from this Institution, thirteen passed the necessary test. 'THE NEST' CLAPTON When I began to write this book, I determined to set down all things exactly as I saw or heard them. But, although somewhat hardened in such matters by long experience of a very ugly world, I find that there are limits to what can be told of such a place as 'The Nest' in pages which are meant for perusal by the general public. The house itself is charming, with a good garden adorned by beautiful trees. It has every arrangement and comfort possible for the welfare of its child inmates, including an open-air bedroom, cleverly contrived from an old greenhouse for the use of those among them whose lungs are weakly. But these inmates, these sixty-two children whose ages varied from about four to about sixteen! What can I say of their histories? Only in general language, that more than one half of them have been subject to outrages too terrible to repeat, often enough at the hands of their own fathers! If the reader wishes to learn more, he can apply confidentially to Commissioner Cox, or to Mrs. Bramwell Booth. [Illustration: SOME OF THE CHILDREN AT 'THE NEST'.] Here, however, is a case that I can mention, as although it is dreadful enough, it belongs to a different class. Seeing a child of ten, whose name was Betty, playing about quite happily with the others, I spoke to her, and afterwards asked for the particulars of her story. They were brief. It appears that this poor little thing had actually seen her father murder her mother. I am glad to be able to add that to all appearance she has recovered from the shock of this awful experience. Indeed, all these little girls, notwithstanding their hideous pasts, seemed, so far as I could judge, to be extremely happy at their childish games in the garden. Except that some were of stunted growth, I noted nothing abnormal about any of them. I was told, however, by the Officer in charge, that occasionally, when they grow older, propensities originally induced in them through no fault of their own will assert themselves. To lessen this danger, as in the case of the women inebriates, all these children are brought up as vegetarians. Before me, as I write, is the bill of fare for the week, which I tore off a notice board in the house. The breakfast on three days, to take examples, consists of porridge, with boiling milk and sugar, cocoa, brown and white bread and butter. On the other mornings either stewed figs, prunes, or marmalade are added. A sample dinner consists of lentil savoury, baked potatoes, brown gravy and bread; boiled rice with milk and sugar. For tea, bananas, apples, oranges, nuts, jam, brown and white bread and butter and cocoa are supplied, but tea itself as a beverage is only given on Sundays. A footnote to the bill of fare states that all children over twelve years of age who wish for it, can have bread and butter before going to bed. Certainly the inmates of 'The Nest,' if any judgment may be formed from their personal appearance, afford a good argument to the advocates of vegetarianism. It costs £13 a year to endow a bed in this Institution. Amongst others, I saw one which was labelled 'The Band of Helpers' Bed. This is maintained by girls who have passed through the Institution, and are now earning their livelihood in the world, as I thought, a touching and significant testimony. I should add that the children in this Home are educated under the direction of a certificated governess. My visit to this Refuge made a deep impression on my mind. No person of sense and experience, remembering the nameless outrages to which many of these poor children have been exposed, could witness their present health and happiness without realizing the blessed nature of this work. THE TRAINING INSTITUTE FOR WOMEN SOCIAL WORKERS CLAPTON Colonel Lambert, the lady-Officer in charge of this Institution, informed me that it can accommodate sixty young women. At the time of my visit forty-seven pupils were being prepared for service in the Women's Department of what is called 'Salvation Army Warfare.' These Cadets come from all sources and in various ways. Most of them have first been members of the Army and made application to be trained, feeling themselves attracted to this particular branch of its work. The basis of their instruction is religious and theological. It includes the study of the Bible, of the doctrine and discipline of the Salvation Army and the rules and regulations governing the labours of its Social Officers. In addition, these Cadets attend practical classes where they learn needlework, the scientific cutting out of garments, knitting, laundry work, first medical aid, nursing, and so forth. The course at this Institution takes ten months to complete, after which those Cadets who have passed the examinations are appointed to various centres of the Army's Social activities. When these young women have passed out and enter on active Social work they are allowed their board and lodging and a small salary to pay for their clothing. This salary at the commencement of a worker's career amounts to the magnificent sum of 4s. a week, if she 'lives in' (about the pay of a country kitchen maid); out of which she is expected to defray the cost of her uniform and other clothes, postage stamps, etc. Ultimately, after many years of service, it may rise to as much as 10s. in the case of senior Officers, or, if the Officer finds her own board and lodging, to a limit of £1 a week. Of these ladies who are trained in the Home few leave the Army. Should they do so, however, I am informed that they can generally obtain from other Organizations double or treble the pay which the Army is able to afford. This Training Institution is a building admirably suited to the purpose to which it is put. Originally it was a ladies' school, which was purchased by the Salvation Army. The dining-room of the Cadets was very well arranged and charmingly decorated with flowers, as was that of the Officers beyond. There was also a Cadets' retiring-room, where I saw some of them reading or otherwise amusing themselves on their Saturday half-holiday. The Army would be glad to find and train more of these self-sacrificing workers; but the conditions of the pay which they can offer and the arduous nature of the lifelong service involved, are such that those of a satisfactory class are not too readily forthcoming. Attached to this Training Institution is a Home for girls of doubtful or bad antecedents, which I also visited. This Rescue Home is linked up with the Training School, so that the Cadets may have the opportunity of acquiring a practical knowledge of the class of work upon which they are to be engaged in after-life. Most of the girls in the Rescue Home have passed through the Police-courts, and been handed over to the care of the Army by magistrates. The object of the Army is to reform them and instruct them in useful work which will enable them to earn an honest living. Many of these girls have been in the habit of thieving from their mistresses or others, generally in order to enable them to make presents to their lovers. Indeed, it would seem that this mania for making presents is a frequent cause of the fall of young persons with a natural leaning to dishonesty and a desire to appear rich and liberal. The Army succeeds in reclaiming a great number of them; but the thieving instinct is one not easy to eradicate. All these girls seemed fairly happy. A great deal of knitting is done by them, and I saw a room furnished with a number of knitting machines, where work is turned out to the value of nearly £25 a week. Also I was shown piles of women's and children's underclothing and other articles, the produce of the girls' needles, which are sold to help to defray the expenses of the Home. In the workroom on this Saturday afternoon a number of the young women were engaged in mending their own garments. After their period of probation many of these girls are sent out to situations found for them by the Army. THE WOMEN'S INDUSTRIAL HOME HACKNEY This Home is one of much the same class as that which I have just described. It has accommodation for forty-eight girls, of whom over 1,000 have passed through the Institution, where they are generally kept for a period of six months. Most of the young women in the Home when I visited it had been thieves. One, who was twenty-seven years of age, had stolen ever since she was twelve, and the lady in charge told me that when she came to them everything she had on her, and almost all the articles in her trunk were the property of former mistresses. In answer to my questions, Commissioner Cox informed me that the result of their work in this Home was so satisfactory that they scarcely liked to announce it. They computed, however, that taken on a three years' test--for the subsequent career of each inmate is followed for that period--90 per cent of the cases prove to be permanent moral cures. This, when the previous history of these young women is considered, may, I think, be accounted a great triumph. No money contribution is asked or expected in this particular Home. Indeed, it would not be forthcoming from the class of girls who are sent or come here to be reformed, many of whom, on entering, are destitute of underclothing and other necessaries, The needlework which they do, however, is sold, and helps to pay for the upkeep of the place. I asked what was done if any of them refused to work. The answer was that this very rarely happened, as the women-Officers shared in their labours, and the girls could not for shame's sake sit idle while their Officers worked. I visited the room where this sewing was in progress, and observed that Commissioner Cox, who conducted me, was received with hearty, and to all appearance, spontaneous clapping of hands, which seemed to indicate that these poor young women are happy and contented. The hours of labour kept in the Home are those laid down in the Factory Acts. While looking at the work produced by the inmates, I asked Commissioner Cox if she had anything to say as to the charges of sweating which are sometimes brought against the Army, and of underselling in the markets. Her answer was:-- 'We do not compete in the markets at all, as we do not make sufficient articles, and never work for the trade or supply wholesale; we sell the garments we make one by one by means of our pedlars. It is necessary that we should do this in order to support our girls. Either we must manufacture and sell the work, or they must starve.' Here we have the whole charge of sweating by the Army in a nutshell, and the answer to it. In this Home a system has been devised for providing each girl with an outfit when she leaves. It is managed by means of a kind of deferred pay, which is increased if she keeps up to the standard of work required. Thus, gradually, she earns her outfit, and leaves the place with a box of good clothes. The first thing provided is a pair of boots, then a suitable box, and lastly, the materials which they make into clothes. This house, like all the others, I found to be extremely well arranged, with properly-ventilated dormitories, and well suited to its purposes. THE INEBRIATES' HOME SPRINGFIELD LODGE, DENMARK HILL. This house, which has a fine garden attached, was a gentleman's residence purchased by the Salvation Army, to serve as an Inebriates' Home for the better class of patients. With the exception of a few who give their services in connexion with the work of the place as a return for their treatment, it is really a Home for gentlefolk. When I visited it, some of the inmates, of whom there are usually from twenty-five to thirty, were talented ladies who could speak several languages, or paint, or play very well. All these came here to be cured of the drink or drug habit. The fee for the course ranges from a guinea to 10_s_. per week, according to the ability of the patient to pay, but some who lack this ability pay nothing at all. The lady in charge remarked drily on this point, that many people seemed to think that as the place belonged to the Salvation Army it did not matter if they paid or not. As is the practice at Hillsborough House, a vegetarian diet is insisted upon as a condition of the patient receiving treatment at the Home. Often this is a cause of much remonstrance, as the inmates, who are mostly persons in middle or advanced life, think that it will kill them. The actual results, however, are found to be most satisfactory, as the percentage of successes is found to be 50 per cent, after a year in the Home and three years' subsequent supervision. I was told that a while ago, Sir Thomas Barlow, the well-known physician, challenged this statement. He was asked to see for himself, he examined a number of the patients, inspected the books and records, and finally satisfied himself that it was absolutely correct. The Army attaches much importance to what may be called the after-care of the cases, for the lack of which so many people who pass through Homes and then return to ordinary life, break down, and become, perhaps, worse than they were before. The seven devils of Scripture are always ready to re-occupy the swept and garnished soul, especially if they be the devils of drink. Moreover, the experience of the Army is that relatives and friends are extraordinarily thoughtless in this matter. Often enough they will, as it were, thrust spirituous liquors down the throat of the newly-reformed drunkard, or at the least will pass them before their eyes and drink them in their presence as usual, with results that may be imagined. One taste and in four cases out of six the thing is done. The old longings awake again and must be satisfied. For these reasons the highly-skilled Officers of the Salvation Army hold that reclaimed inebriates should be safeguarded, watched, and, so far as the circumstances may allow, kept under the influences that have brought about their partial recovery. They say that they owe much of their remarkable success in those cases to a strict observance of such preventive methods for a period of three years. After that time patients must stand upon their own feet. These remarks apply also to the victims of the drug habit, who are even more difficult to deal with than common drunkards. At this Home I had a conversation with a fine young woman, an ex-hospital nurse, who gave me a very interesting account of her experiences of laudanum drinking. She said that in an illness she had gone through while she was a nurse a doctor dosed her with laudanum to deaden her pain and induce sleep. The upshot was that she could not sleep without the help of laudanum or other opiates, and thus the fatal habit was formed. She described the effects of the drug upon her, which appeared to be temporary exhilaration and freedom from all care, coupled with sensations of great vigour. She spoke also of delightful visions; but when I asked her to describe the visions, she went back upon that statement, perhaps because their nature was such as she did not care to set out. She added, however, that the sleep which followed was haunted by terrible dreams. Another effect of the habit, according to this lady, is forgetfulness, which showed itself in all kinds of mistakes, and in the loss of power of accurate expression, which caused her to say things she did not mean and could not remember when she had said them. She told me that the process of weaning herself from the drug was extremely painful and difficult; but that she now slept well and desired it no more. To be plain, I was not satisfied with the truth of this last statement, for there was a strange look in her eyes which suggested that she still desired it very much; also she seemed to me to prevaricate upon certain points. Further, those in charge of her allowed that this diagnosis was probably correct, especially as she is now in the Home for the second time, although her first visit there was a very short one. Still they thought that she would be cured in the end. Let us hope that they were right. The Army has also another Home in this neighbourhood, run on similar lines, for the treatment of middle-class and poor people. THE WOMEN'S INDUSTRIAL HOME SOUTHWOOD, SYDENHAM HILL This is another of the Salvation Army Homes for Women. When I visited Southwood, which is an extremely good house, having been a gentleman's residence, with a garden and commanding a beautiful view, there were about forty inmates, some of whom were persons of gentle birth. For such ladies single sleeping places are provided, with special dining and sitting-rooms. These are supposed to pay a guinea a week for their board and accommodation, though I gathered that this sum was not always forthcoming. The majority of the other inmates, most of whom have gone astray in one way or another, pay nothing. A good many of the cases here are what are called preventive; that is to say, that their parents or guardians being able to do nothing with them, and fearing lest they should come to ruin, send them to this place as a last resource, hoping that they may be cured of their evil tendencies. Thus one girl whom I think I saw, could not be prevented from gadding on the streets, and therefore had been placed here. Another young woman was a schoolmistress who would not get out of bed and refused to work. When she came to the Home she was very insolent and bad-tempered, and would do nothing. Now, I was informed, she rises with the lark, at 6.30 indeed, and works like a Trojan. I could not help wondering whether these excellent habits would survive her departure from the Home. Another lady, who had been sentenced for thefts, was the daughter of a minister. She horrified the Officers by regretting that she had gone to jail for so little, when others who had taken and enjoyed large sums received practically the same sentence. She was reported to be doing well. Another, also a lady, was the victim of an infatuation which caused her to possess herself of money to send to some man who had followed her about from the time she was in a boarding school. Another was a foreigner, who had been sent to an American doctor in the East to be trained as a nurse. This poor girl underwent an awful experience, and was in the care of the Salvation Army recovering from shock; but, of course, hers is a different class of case from those which I have mentioned above. Another was an English girl who had been turned out of Canada because of her bad behaviour with men. And so on. It only remains to say that most of these people appeared to be doing well, while many of those in the humbler classes of life were being taught to earn their own living in the laundry that is attached to the Institution. THE WOMEN'S SHELTER WHITECHAPEL This is a place where women, most of them old, so far as my observation went, are taken in to sleep at a charge of 3_d._ a night. It used to be 2_d_. until the London County Council made the provision of sheets, etc., compulsory, when the Army was obliged to raise the payment. This Shelter, which is almost always so full that people have to be turned away, holds 261 women. It contains a separate room, where children are admitted with their mothers, half price, namely 1-1/2_d._, being charged per child. There is a kitchen attached where the inmates can buy a large mug of tea for a 1/2_d._, and a huge chunk of bread for a second 1/2_d._; also, if I remember right, other articles of food, if they can afford such luxuries. The great dormitory in this Shelter, it may be mentioned, was once a swimming-bath. Some of the women who come to this place have slept in it almost every night for eighteen or twenty years. Others make use of it for a few months, and then vanish for a period, especially in the summer, when they go hop or strawberry picking, and return in the winter. Every day, however, fresh people appear, possibly to depart on the morrow and be seen no more. I asked whether the aged folk had not been benefited by the Old Age Pensions Act. The lady Officer in charge replied that it had been a blessing to some of them. One old woman, however, would not apply for her pension, although she was urged to take a room for herself somewhere. She said that she was afraid if she did so, she might be turned out and be lonely. I visited this Shelter in the late afternoon, before it was filled up. A number of dilapidated and antique females were sitting about in the rooms, talking or sewing. One old lady was doing crochet work. She told me that she made her living by it, and by flower-selling. Another informed me that it was years since she had slept anywhere else, and that she did not know what poor women like her would do without this place. Another was cooking the broth. Her husband was a sea captain, and when he died, her father had allowed her _£1_ a week until he died. Afterwards she took to drink, and drifted here, where, I was informed, she is doing well. And so on, and so on, _ad infinitum_. The Hanbury Street Women's Shelter is not a cheerful spot to visit on a dull and rainy evening. THE SLUM SETTLEMENT HACKNEY ROAD Slum work is an important branch of the Social labours of the Salvation Army, Thus last year the Slum Sisters visited over 105,000 families, over 20,000 sick, and over 32,000 public-houses, in which work they spent more than 90,000 hours of time. Also they attended 482 births, and paid nearly 9,000 visits in connexion with them. There are nine Slum Settlements and Posts in London, and nineteen others in England, Scotland, and Ireland. The old system used to be for the Sisters and Nurses to live among the lowest class of the poor, lodging in the actual tenements in which their work was carried out. This, however, was abandoned as far as possible, because it was found that after the arduous toil of the day these ladies could get little rest at night, owing to the noise that went on about them, a circumstance that caused their health to suffer and made them inefficient. Now out of the 117 Officers engaged in Slum work in Great Britain, about one-half who labour in London live in five houses set apart for them in different quarters of the city; fifteen Officers being the usual complement to each house. The particular dwelling of which I write is a good specimen of them all, and from it the Sisters and Nurses who live there work Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, and the Hoxton and Hackney Road districts. It is decently furnished and a comfortable place in its way, although, of course, it stands in a poor neighbourhood. I remember that there was even the finishing touch of a canary in the window. I should add that no cases are attended in the house itself, which is purely a residence. To this particular Settlement two qualified midwives and a nurse are attached. While I was there one of the midwives came in, very tired, at about half-past eleven in the morning. Since three o'clock on that same morning she had attended three confinements, so no wonder she was tired. She said that one of her cases was utterly unprovided with anything needful as the father was out of work, although on the occasion of a previous confinement they had all they wanted. Now they lived in a little room in which there was not space 'to swing a cat,' and were without a single bite of food or bit of clothing, so that the baby when it came had to be wrapped up in an old shawl and the woman sent to the Infirmary. The Sister in charge informed me that if they had them they could find employment for twice their strength of nurses without overlapping the work of any other charity. The people with whom they deal are for the most part those who have a rooted objection to infirmaries, although the hospitals are much more used than was formerly the case. The system of the Army is to make a charge of 6_s_. 6_d_. for attending a confinement, which, if paid, is generally collected in instalments of 3_d_. or 6_d_. a week. Often, however, it is not paid, and the charge remains a mere formality. She added that many of these poor people are most improvident, and make no provision whatsoever for these events, even if they can afford to do so. The result is that the Army has to lend them baby garments and other things. The Sister said in answer to my questions that there was a great deal of poverty in their district where many men were out of work, a number of them because they could find nothing to do. She thought that things were certainly no better in this respect; indeed, the state of depression was chronic. Owing to the bad summer of 1909, which affected the hop-picking and other businesses, the destitution that year was as great during the warm months as it usually is in the winter. The poor of this district, she said, 'generally live upon fried fish and chips. You know they cannot cook, anyway they don't, and what they do cook is all done in the frying-pan, which is also a very convenient article to pawn. They don't understand economy, for when they have a bit of money they will buy in food and have a big feast, not thinking of the days when there will be little or nothing. Then, again, they buy their goods in small portions; for instance, their coal by the ha'p'orth or their wood by the farthing's-worth, which, in fact, works out at a great profit to the dealers. Or they buy a farthing's-worth of tea, which is boiled up again and again till it is awful-looking stuff.' I asked her what she considered to be the main underlying cause of this misery. She answered that she thought it was due 'to the people flocking from the country to the city,' thereby confirming an opinion that I have long held and advanced. She added that the overcrowding in the district was terrible, the regulations of the Public Health Authorities designed to check it being 'a dead letter.' In one case with which she had to do, a father, mother, and nine children lived in a room that measured 9 ft. by 9 ft., and the baby came into the world with the children looking on! The general weekly rent for a room containing a family is 5_s_., or if it is furnished, 7_s_. 6_d_. The Sister described to me the furniture of one for the use of which this extra half-crown is charged. It consisted of a rickety bed, two chairs, one without a back and one without a seat, and a little shaky table. The floor was bare, and she estimated the total value of these articles at about their weekly rent of 2_s_. 6_d_., if, indeed, they were worth carrying away. In this chamber dwelt a coachman who was out of place, his wife, and three or four children, I wonder what arrangement these poor folk make as to the use of the one chair that has a bottom. To occupy the other must be an empty honour. With reference to this man the Sister remarked that as a result of the introduction of motor vehicles, busmen, cabmen, and blacksmiths were joining the ranks of her melancholy clientele in numbers. This and some similar stories caused me to reflect on the remarkable contrast between rents in the country and in town. For instance, I own about a dozen cottages in this village in which I write, and the highest rent that I receive is 2_s_. 5_d_. a week. This is paid for a large double dwelling, on which I had to spend over £100 quite recently to convert two cottages into one. Also, there is a large double garden thrown in, so large that a man can scarcely manage it in his spare time, a pigsty, fruit trees, etc. All this for 1_d_. a week less than is charged for the two broken chairs, the rickety bed, and the shaky table! Again, for £10 a year, I let a comfortable farmhouse; that is, £3 a year less than the out-of-work coachman pays for his single room without the furniture. And yet, as the Sister said, people continue to rush from the country to the towns! Nor, it seems, do they always make the best of things when they get there. Thus the Sister mentioned that the education which the girls receive in the schools causes them to desire a more exalted lot in life than that of a servant. So they try to find places in shops, or jam factories, etc. Some get them, but many fail; and of those who fail, a large proportion go to swell the mass of the unemployed, or to recruit the ranks of an undesirable profession. She went so far as to say that most of the domestic servants in London are not Cockneys at all, but come from the country; adding, that the sad part of it was that thousands of these poor girls, after proper training, could find comfortable and remunerative employment without displacing others, as the demand for domestic servants is much greater than the supply. These are cold facts which seem to suggest that our system of free education is capable of improvement. It appears that all this district is a great centre of what is known as 'sweating.' Thus artificial flowers, of which I was shown a fine specimen, a marguerite, are made at a price of 1_s_. per gross, the workers supplying their own glue. An expert hand, beginning at eight in the morning and continuing till ten at night, can produce a gross and a half of these flowers, and thus net 1_s_. 6_d_., minus the cost of the glue, scissors, and sundries. The Officers of the Army find it extremely difficult to talk to these poor people, who are invariably too busy to listen. Therefore, some of them have learnt how to make artificial flowers themselves, so that when they call they can join in the family manufacture, and, while doing so, carry on their conversation. For the making of match-boxes and the sticking on of the labels the pay is 2-1/2_d_. per gross. Few of us, I think, would care to manufacture 144 matchboxes for 2-1/2_d_. I learned that it is not unusual to find little children of four years of age helping their mothers to make these boxes. The Slum Sisters attached to the Settlement, who are distinct from the Maternity Nurses, visit the very poorest and worst neighbourhoods, for the purpose of helping the sick and afflicted, and incidentally of cleaning their homes. Also, they find out persons who are about sixty-nine years of age, and contribute to their maintenance, so as to save them from being forced to receive poor-law relief, which would prevent them from obtaining their old-age pensions when they come to seventy. Here is an illustration of the sort of case with which these Slum Sisters have to deal; perhaps, I should say, the easiest sort of case. An old man and his wife whom they visited, lived in a clean room. The old woman fell sick, and before she died the Slum Sisters gave her a bath, which, as these poor people much object to washing, caused all the neighbours to say that they had killed her. After his wife's death, the husband, who earned his living by selling laces on London Bridge, went down in the world, and his room became filthy. The Slum Sisters told him that they would clean up the place, but he forbade them to touch the bed, which, he said, was full of mice and beetles. As he knew that women dread mice and beetles, he thought that this statement would frighten them. When he was out selling his laces, they descended upon his room, where the first thing that they did was to remove the said bed into the yard and burn it, replacing it with another. On his return, the old man exclaimed: 'Oh, my darlings, whatever _have_ you been doing?' They still clean this room once a week. The general impression left upon my mind, after visiting this place at Hackney Road and conversing with its guardian angels, is, that in some of its aspects, if not in all, civilization is a failure. Probably thoughtful people made the same remark in ancient Rome, and in every other city since cities were. The truth is, that so soon as its children desert the land which bore them for the towns, these horrors follow as surely as the night follows the day. THE PICCADILLY MIDNIGHT WORK GREAT TICHFIELD STREET I visited this place a little before twelve o'clock on a summer night. It is a small flat near Oxford Street, in which live two women-Officers of the Army, who are engaged in the work of reclaiming prostitutes. I may mention that for the last fourteen years the Major in charge, night by night, has tramped the streets with this object. The Titchfield Street flat is not in any sense a Home, but I saw a small room in it, with two beds, where cases who may be rescued from the streets, or come here in a time of trouble, can sleep until arrangements are made for them to proceed to one of the Rescue Institutions of the Army. This work is one of the most difficult and comparatively unproductive of any that the Army undertakes. The careers of these unfortunate street women, who are nearly all of them very fine specimens of female humanity, for the most part follow a rocket-like curve. The majority of them begin by getting into trouble, at the end of which, perhaps, they find themselves with a child upon their hands. Or they may have been turned out of their homes, or some sudden misfortune may have reduced them to destitution. At any rate, the result is that they take to a loose life, and mayhap, after living under the protection of one or two men, find themselves upon the streets. Sometimes, it may be said to their credit, if that word can be used in this connexion, they adopt this mode of life in order to support their child or children. The Major informed me that if they are handsome they generally begin with a period of great prosperity. One whom she knew earned about £30 a week, and a good many of them make as much as £1,000 a year, and pay perhaps £6 weekly in rent. A certain proportion of them are careful, open a bank account, save money, retire, and get married. Generally, these keep their bank-books in their stockings, which, in their peculiar mode of life, they find to be the safest place, as they are very suspicious of each other, and much afraid of being robbed. The majority of them, however, are not so provident. They live in and for the moment, and spend their ill-gotten gains as fast as they receive them. Gradually they drift downwards. They begin in Piccadilly, and progress, or rather retrogress, through Leicester Square on to Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, and thence to the Euston Road, ending their sad careers in Bishopsgate and Whitechapel. The Major informed me that there are but very few in the Piccadilly neighbourhood whom she knew when she took up this work, and that, as a rule, they cannot stand the life for long. The irregular hours, the exposure, the excitement, and above all the drink in which most of them indulge, kill them out or send them to a poorhouse or the hospital. She said, however, that as a class they have many virtues. For instance, they are very kind-hearted, and will always help each other in trouble. Also, most of them have affection for their children, being careful to keep them, if possible, from any knowledge of their mode of life. Further, they are charitable to the poor, and, in a way, religious; or, perhaps, superstitious would be a better term. Thus, they often go to church on Sundays, and do not follow their avocation on Sunday nights. On New Year's Eve, their practice is to attend the Watch Night services, where, doubtless, poor people, they make those good resolutions that form the proverbial pavement of the road to Hell. Nearly all of them drink more or less, as they say that they could not live their life without stimulant. Moreover, their profession necessitates their walking some miles every night. For the most part these women lodge in pairs in their own flats, where they pay about 35_s_. a week for three unfurnished rooms. The Officer told me that often some despicable man, who is called a 'bully,' lives on them, following them round the streets, and watching them. Even the smartest girls are not infrequently the victims of such a man, who knocks them about and takes money from them. Occasionally he may be a husband or a relative. She added that as a class they are much better behaved and less noisy than they used to be. This improvement, however, is largely due to the increased strictness of the police. These women do not decrease in number. In the Major's opinion, there are as many or more of them on the streets as there were fourteen years ago, although the brothels and the procuresses are less numerous, and their quarters have shifted from Piccadilly to other neighbourhoods. The Army methods of dealing, or rather of attempting to deal with this utterly insoluble problem are simple enough. The Officers walk the streets every night from about twelve to two and distribute cards in three languages according to the nationality of the girl to whom these are offered. Here they are in English, French, and German:-- Mrs. Booth will gladly help any Girl or Woman in need of a friend. _APPLY AT_ 79 Great Titchfield Street, or 259 Mare Street, Hackney, N.E. [Illustration: BONNES NOUVELLS.] Vous avez une amie qui est disposée à vous aider. (S addresser) Madame Booth 79 Great Titchfield Street, Oxford Street, Londres, W. MADAM BOOTH will herzlich gerne Jedem Mädchen oder Jeder Frau helfen, die sich in Noth auf eine Freundin befinden. 259 Mare Street, Hackney, 70 Great Titchfield Street, W. Most of the girls to whom they are offered will not take them, but a good number do and, occasionally, the seed thus sown bears fruit. Thus the woman who takes the card may come to Great Titchfield Street and be rescued in due course. More frequently, however, she will give a false address, or make an appointment which she does not keep, or will say that it is too late for her to change her life. But this fact does not always prevent such a woman from trying to help others by sending young girls who have recently taken to the trade to the Titchfield Street Refuge in the hope that they may be induced to abandon their evil courses. Occasionally the Army has midnight suppers in its Regent Hall for these women, who attend in large numbers, perhaps out of curiosity. At the last supper nearly 300 'swell girls' were present and listened to the prayers and the exhortations to amend their lives. Sometimes, too, the Officers attend them when they are sick or dying. Once they buried one of the women, who died whilst under their care, holding a midnight funeral over her at their hall in Oxford Street. It was attended by hundreds of the sisterhood, and the Major described the scene as terrible. The women were seized with hysterics, and burst into shrieks and sobs. They even tried to open the coffin in order to kiss the dead girl who lay within. Amongst many other cases, I was informed of a black girl called Diamond, so named because she wore real diamonds on her dresses, which dresses cost over £100 apiece. The Army tried to help her in vain, and wrote her many letters. In the end she died in an Infirmary, when all the letters were found carefully hidden away among her belongings and returned to the Major. The average number of rescues compassed, directly or indirectly, by the Piccadilly Midnight work is about fifty a year. This is not a very great result; but after all the taking of even a few people from this hellish life and their restoration to decency and self-respect is well worth the cost and labour of the mission. The Officers told me that they meet with but little success in the case of those women who are in their bloom and earning great incomes. It can scarcely be otherwise, for what has the Army to offer them in place of their gaudy, glittering life of luxury and excitement? The way of transgressors is hard, but the way of repentance is harder; at any rate, while the transgressor is doing well. On the one hand jewels and champagne, furs and motors, and on the other prayers that talk of death and judgment, plain garments made by the wearer's labour, and at the end the drudgery of earning an honest livelihood, perhaps as a servant. Human nature being what it is, it seems scarcely wonderful that these children of pleasure cling to the path of 'roses' and turn from that of 'thorns.' With those that are growing old and find themselves broken in body and in spirit, who are thrust aside in the fierce competition of their trade in favour of younger rivals; those who find the wine in their tinsel cup turning, or turned, to gall, the case is different. They are sometimes, not always, glad to creep to such shelter from the storms of life as the Army can offer, and there work out their moral and physical salvation. For what bitterness is there like to that which must be endured by the poor, broken woman of the streets, as scorned, spat on, thrust aside, she sinks from depth to depth into the last depth of all, striving to drown her miseries with drugs or drink, if so she may win forgetfulness even for an hour? Sometimes, too, these patient toilers in the deep of midnight sin succeed in dragging from the brink those that have but dipped their feet in its dark waters. _Nemo repente fuit turpissimus_--no one becomes altogether filthy in an hour--runs the old Roman saying, which is as true to-day as it was 2,000 years ago, and whether it be spoken of body or of soul, it is easier to wash the feet than the whole being. When they understand what lies before them certain of the young shrink back and grasp Mercy's outstretched arms. One night about twelve o'clock, together with Lieut.-Colonel Jolliffe, an Officer of the Army who was dressed in plain clothes, I accompanied the Major and the lady who is her colleague, to Leicester Square and its neighbourhood, and there watched their methods of work, following them at a little distance. Dressed in their uniform they mingled with the women who marched the pavements, and now and again, with curiously swift and decisive steps glided up to one of them, whispered a few earnest words into her ear, and proffered a printed ticket. Most of those spoken to walked on stonily as people do when they meet an undesirable acquaintance whom they do not wish to recognize. Some thrust past them rudely; some hesitated and with a hard laugh went their way; but a few took the tickets and hid them among their laces. So far as the work was concerned that was all there was to see. Nothing dramatic happened; no girl fled to them imploring help or asking to be saved from the persecutions of a man; no girl even insulted them--for these Officers to be insulted is a thing unknown. All I saw was the sowing of the seed in very stony ground, where not one kern out of a thousand is like to germinate and much less to grow. Yet as experience proves, occasionally it does both germinate and grow, yes, and bloom and come to the harvest of repentance and redemption. It is for this that these unwearying labourers scatter their grain from night to night, that at length they may garner into their bosoms a scanty but a priceless harvest. It was a strange scene. The air was hot and heavy, the sky was filled with black and lowering clouds already laced with lightnings. The music-halls and restaurants had given out their crowds, the midnight mart was open. Everywhere were women, all finely dressed, most of them painted, as could be seen in the glare of the electric lights, some of them more or less excited with drink, but none turbulent or noisy. Mixed up with these were the bargainers, men of every degree, the most of them with faces unpleasant to consider. Some had made their pact and were departing. I noticed one young girl whose looks would have drawn attention anywhere, whispering an address from beneath an enormous feathered hat to the driver of a taxicab, while her companion, a pleasant-looking, fresh-coloured boy, for he was scarcely more, entered the vehicle, a self-satisfied air upon his face. She sprang in also, and the cab with its occupants glided away out of my ken for ever. Here and there stalwart, quiet policemen requested loiterers to move on, and the loiterers obeyed and re-formed in groups behind them; here and there a respectable woman pushed her way through the throng, gathering up her skirts as she did so and glancing covertly at this unaccustomed company out of the corners of her eyes. While watching all these sights we lost touch of the Salvation Army ladies, who wormed their way through the crowd as easily and quickly as a snake does through undergrowth, and set out to find them. Big drops began to fall, the thunder growled, and in a moment the concourse commenced to melt. Five minutes later the rain was falling fast and the streets had emptied. That night's market was at an end. No farmer watches the weather more anxiously than do these painted women in their muslins and gold-laced shoes. Meanwhile, their night's work done, the Salvation Army ladies were tramping through the wet back to Titchfield Street, for they do not spend money on cabs, and the buses had ceased to run. THE ANTI-SUICIDE BUREAU This is a branch of the Army's work with which I have been more or less acquainted for some years. The idea of an Anti-Suicide Bureau arose in the Army four or five years ago; but every one seems to have forgotten with whom it actually originated. I suppose that it grew, like Topsy, or was discovered simultaneously by several Officers, like a new planet by different astronomers studying the heavens in faith and hope. At any rate, the results of the idea are remarkable. Thus in London alone 1,064 cases were dealt with in the year 1909, and of those cases it is estimated that all but about a dozen were turned from their fatal purpose. Let us halve these figures, and say that 500 lives were actually saved, that 500 men live to-day in and about London who otherwise would be dead by their own hands and buried in dishonoured graves. Or let us even quarter them, and surely this remains a wonderful work, especially when we remember that London is by no means the only place in which it is being carried on. How is it done? the reader may ask. I answer by knowledge of human nature, by the power of sympathy, by gentle kindness. A poor wretch staggers into a humble little room at the Salvation Army Headquarters in Queen Victoria Street. He unfolds an incoherent tale. He is an unpleasant and disturbing person whom any lawyer or business man would get rid of as soon as possible. He vapours about self-destruction, he hints at dark troubles with his wife. He produces drugs or weapons--a point at which most people would certainly show him out. But the Officers in charge do nothing of the sort. They laugh at him or give him a cup of tea. They bid him brace himself together, and tell them the truth and nothing but the truth. Then out pours the awful tale, which, however bad it may be, they listen to quite unmoved though not unconcerned, for they hear such every day. When it is finished, they ask coolly enough why, in the name of all that their visitor reverences or holds dear, he considers it necessary to commit suicide for a trifling job like that. A new light dawns upon the desperate man. He answers, because he can see no other way out. Why, exclaims the Officer, there are a dozen ways out. Let us find one of them. You, A., have been faithless to your wife. Well, when the matter is explained to her, I daresay she will forgive you. You, B., have defrauded your employer. Well, employers are not always relentless. I'll call on him this evening and talk the matter over. You, C., are hopelessly in debt through horse-racing or speculation. Well, at the worst you can go through the Court and start afresh. You, D., have committed a crime. Go and own up to it like a man, stand your trial, and work out your sentence. I daresay it won't be so very heavy if you take that course, and we will look after you when it is over. You, E., have been brought into this state through your miserable vices, drink, or whatever they may be. Cure yourself of the vices--we'll show you how--don't crown them by cutting your throat like a cur. You, F., have been afflicted with great sorrows. Well, those sorrows have some purpose and some meaning. There's always a dawn beyond the night; wait for that dawn; it will come here or hereafter. And so on, and on, through all the gamut of human sin and misery. Of course, there are cases in which the Army fails. As I have said, there were about a dozen of these last year, six of which, if I remember right, occurred with startling rapidity one after the other. The Suicide Officers of the Army always take up the daily paper with fear and trembling, and not infrequently find that the man whom they thought they had consoled and set upon a different path, has been discovered dead by drowning in the river, or by poison in the streets, or by whatever it may be. But everything has its proportion of failures, and where intending suicides are concerned 1 or 2 per cent, or on the quarter basis that I have adopted as beyond question of sincerity of intent, 4 or 8 per cent is not a large average. Indeed, 20 per cent would not be large, or even 50 per cent. But these figures do not occur. Of course, it is suggested that many of those who drift into the Anti-Suicide Bureau have no real intention of making away with themselves, but that they come there only to see what they can get in the way of money or other comfort. As regards money, the answer is that, except very occasionally, the Army gives none, for the simple reason that it has none to give. For the rest the fatal cases which happen show that there is a grim purpose at work in the minds of many of the applicants. But I repeat, let us halve the figures, let us even quarter them, which, as Euclid remarked, is absurd, and even then what are we to conclude? Before proceeding with my comments upon this work I ought to state, perhaps, that the Army has various branches of this Anti-Suicide Crusade. Thus, it is at work in almost all our big cities, and also in America, in Australia, and in Japan. The Japanese Bureau was opened last year with very good results. This is the more remarkable in a country where ancient tradition and immemorial custom hallow the system of _hara-kiri_ in any case of trouble or disgrace. Moreover, the idea is spreading, Count Tolstoy is said to have been interested in it. Applications have been received from the Hague for particulars of the Army methods in the matter. Similar work is being carried out in Vienna, not by the Army, but on its lines. The Army has been informed that if it will open an Anti-Suicide Bureau in Budapest, office accommodation, etc., will be found for it. And so forth. Colonel Unsworth who, until recently had charge of the Anti-Suicide Bureau from its commencement, is of opinion that suicide is very much on the increase, a statement that it would be difficult to dispute in view of the number of cases recorded daily in the local Press. For instance, I read one on this morning of writing, in a Norfolk paper, where a farmer had blown out his brains, to all appearance because he had a difference of opinion with his wife as to whether he should, or should not, take on another farm. Colonel Unsworth attributed this sad state of affairs to sundry causes. The first of these was the intense and ever-increasing nervous pressure of our time. The second, the spread of fatalism, The third, the advance of materialistic ideas, and of the general disbelief in the doctrine of future retribution. The fourth, a certain noticeable return in such matters to the standard of Pagan nations, especially of ancient Rome, where it was held that if things went wrong and life became valueless, or even uninteresting, to bring it to an end was in no sense shameful but praiseworthy. In illustration of this point, he quoted a remark said to have been made by a magistrate not long ago, to the effect that in certain conditions a man was not to be blamed for taking his own life. His fifth reason was that circumstances arise in which some people convince themselves that their deaths would benefit their families. Thus, insurances may fall in, for, after one or two premiums have been paid, many offices take the risk of suicide. Or they may know that when they are gone, wealthy relatives will take care of their children, who will thus be happier and better off than these are while they, the fathers, live. Wrong as it may be, this, indeed, is an attitude with which it is difficult not to feel a certain sympathy. After all, we are told that there is no greater love than that of a man who lays down his life for his friend, though there ran be no doubt that the saying was not intended to include this kind of laying down of life. Colonel Unsworth's sixth cause was the increasing atrophy of the public conscience. He stated that suicide is rarely preached against from the pulpit, as drunkenness is for instance. Further, a jury can seldom be induced to bring in a verdict of _felo-de-se._ Even where the victim was obviously and, perhaps painfully sane, his act is put down to temporary insanity. Other causes are drink, hereditary disposition, madness in all its protean shapes; incurable disease, unwillingness to face the consequences of sin or folly; the passion of sexual love, which is sometimes so mighty as to amount to madness; the effects of utter grief such as result from the loss of those far more beloved than self, of which an instance is at hand in the case of the Officer in charge of the Shelter at Great Peter Street, Westminster, mentioned earlier in this book, who, it may be remembered, tried to kill himself after the death of his wife and child; and lastly, where women are concerned, terror and shame at the prospect of giving birth to a child, whose appearance in the world is not sanctioned by law or custom. Suicide among women is, however, comparatively rare, a fact which suggests either that the causes which produce it press on or affect them less, or that in this particular, their minds are better balanced than are those of men. I was told, at any rate, that but few women apply to the Suicide Bureau of the Army for help in this temptation; though, perhaps, that may be due to the greater secretiveness of the sex. Speaking generally, this magnitude of the evil to be attacked may be gauged from the fact that about 3,800 people die by their own hands in England and Wales every year, a somewhat appalling total. Intending suicides come into the hands of the Army Bureau in various ways. Some of them see notices in the Press descriptive of this branch of the Social Work. Some of them are found by policemen in desperate circumstances and brought to the Bureau, and some are sent there from different localities by Salvation Army Officers. I have looked through the records of numbers of these cases, but, for obvious reasons, it is difficult to give a full and accurate description of any of them. The reader, therefore, must be content to accept my assurance of their genuine nature. One or two, however, may be alluded to with becoming vagueness. Here is an example of a not infrequent kind, when a person arrives at the office having already attempted the deed. A business man who had recently made a study of agnostic literature, had become involved in certain complications, which resulted in a quarrel with his wife. His means not being sufficient to the support of a double establishment, he took the train to London with a bottle of sulphonal in his pocket (not a drug to be recommended for his purpose) and swallowed tabloids all the way to town. When he had taken seventy-five grains, and the bottle, as I saw, was two-thirds empty, he found that the drug worked in a way he did not expect. Instead of killing him, it awoke his religious susceptibilities, which the course of agnostic literature had scotched but not killed, and he began to wonder with some earnestness whether, after all, there might not be a Hereafter which, in the circumstances, he did not care to face. In this acute perplexity he bethought him of the Salvation Army, and arrived at the Bureau in a state of considerable excitement, as quickly as a taxicab could bring him. A doctor and a fortnight in hospital did the rest. The Army found him another situation in place of the one which he had lost, and composed his differences with his wife. They are now both Salvationists and very happy. So, in this instance, all's well that ends well. _Case Two._--A man, in a responsible position, and of rather extravagant habits, married a wife of more extravagant habits, and found that, whatever the proverb may say, it costs more to keep two than one. His money matters became desperately involved, but, being afraid to confide in his wife, he spent a Sunday afternoon in trying to make up his mind whether he would shoot or drown himself. While he was thus engaged, a Salvation Army band happened to pass his door, and reminded him of what he had read about the Anti-Suicide Bureau. Postponing decision as to the exact method of his departure from this earth, he called there, and was persuaded to make a clean breast of the matter to his wife. Afterwards the Army took up his extremely complicated affairs. I saw a pile of documents relating to them that must have been at least 4 ins. thick. The various money-lenders were interviewed, and persuaded to accept payment in weekly or monthly instalments. The account was almost square when I saw it, and the person concerned extremely happy and grateful. I should say that, in this case, a lawyer's bill for the work which was done for nothing would have amounted to quite £50. In another somewhat similar case, that of an official who had tampered with moneys in his charge, though this was not discovered, some of the creditors had placed the business in the hands of debt-collecting-agencies, than whom, said Colonel Unsworth, 'there are no harder or more cruel creditors.' At any rate, they drove this poor man almost to madness, with the usual result. A friend brought him to the Army, who shouldered his affairs, dealt with the debt-collecting agencies, obtained help from his connexions, and paid off what was owing by instalments. He and his family are now again quite comfortable. [Illustration: AT ONE OF THE ARMY FOOD DEPOTS.] _Case Three_.--A man was cursed with such a fearful temper that he could keep no situation. He came to London in a state of fury, with a razor in his pocket. Happening to see the words 'Salvation Army Shelter' on a building, it occurred to him to hear what the Suicide Officers had to say before he cut his throat. They dealt with the matter, and showed him the error of his way. He is now in a very good single-handed situation abroad where, as he cannot talk the language, he finds it difficult to quarrel with those about him. _Case Four_.--Telephone operator, who was driven mad by that dreadful instrument and by domestic worries. The Army Officers saved the man and smoothed over the domestic worries; but how he gets on with the telephone instruments is not recorded. _Case Five_.--Unsuitable marriage and bad temper. The wife had become involved in some trouble in early life, and unwisely, as it proved, confessed to the husband, who brought it up against her every time there was a quarrel between them. In this instance, also, suicide was averted and the domestic differences were arranged. _Case Six_--A man in a business firm, married, with children, was through no fault of his own thrown out of work, owing to the appointment of a new manager. He came at last to the Embankment, and afterwards applied for a job in answer to an advertisement. The advertiser told him it was a pity that as he had been so near the river he did not go into it. The man determined to commit suicide; but the Officers dissuaded him from this course and helped him. He returned a year later in a condition of considerable prosperity, having worked his way to a Colony where he is now doing extremely well, his visit to England being in connexion with the business in which he had become a partner. And so on _ad infinitum._ I might tell many such stories, some of them of a much more tragic character than those I have instanced, but refrain from doing so lest by chance they should be identified, especially where the individuals concerned belonged to the upper strata of society. Perhaps enough has been said, however, to show what a great work is being done by the Army in this Department, where in London alone it deals with several would-be suicides every day. Of course, some of these people are frauds. For instance, one of the Officers told me that not long ago a medical man, who was evidently a drunkard, called on him and said that he would commit suicide unless money were given to him. He was informed that this was against the rules; whereon the man produced a bottle and said that if the money were not forthcoming, he would drink its contents and make an end of himself in the office. As may be imagined the Officer went through an anxious moment, not quite knowing what to do. However, he looked the man over, summed him up to the best of his judgment and ability, and coming to the conclusion that he was a bully and a braggart, said that he might do what he liked. The man swallowed the contents of the bottle, exclaiming that he would be dead in a few minutes, and a pause ensued, during which the Officer confessed to me that he felt very uncomfortable. The end of it was that his visitor said, with a laugh, that 'he would not like to cumber the Salvation Army with his corpse,' and walked out of the room. The draught which he had taken was comparatively harmless. As I have mentioned, however, a proportion of the cases are quite irreclaimable. They come and consult the Army, then depart and do the deed. Six that can be traced have been lost in this way during the last few months. Colonel Unsworth explained to me what I had already guessed, that this business of dealing with scores and hundreds of despairing beings standing on the very edge of the grave, is a terrible strain upon any man. The responsibility becomes too great, and he who has to bear it is apt to be crushed beneath its weight. Every morning he reads his paper with a sensation of nervous dread, fearing lest among the police news he should find a brief account of the discovery of some corpse which he can identify as that of an individual with whom he had pleaded at his office on the yesterday and in vain. On former occasions when I visited him, Colonel Unsworth used to show me a small museum of poisons, knives, revolvers, etc., which he had taken from those who proposed to use them to cut the Gordian knot of life. Now, however, he has but few of these dreadful relics. I asked him what he had done with the rest. He answered that he had destroyed them. 'The truth is,' he added, 'that after some years of this business I can no longer bear to look at the horrid things; they get upon my nerves.' If I may venture to offer a word of advice to the Chiefs of the Salvation Army, I would suggest that the very responsible position of first Anti-Suicide Officer in London is not one that any man should be asked to fill in perpetuity. WORK IN THE PROVINCES LIVERPOOL When planning this little book I had it in my mind to deal at some length with the Provincial Social Work of the Army, Now I find, however, that considerations of space must be taken into account; also that it is not needful to set out all the details of that work, seeing that to do so would involve a great deal of repetition. The Salvation Army machines for the regeneration of fallen men and women, if I may so describe them, are, after all, of much the same design, and vary for the most part only in the matter of size. The material that goes through those machines is, it is true, different, yet even its infinite variety, if considered in the mass, has a certain similitude. For these reasons, therefore, I will only speak of what is done by the Army in three of the great Midland and Northern cities that I have visited, namely, Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow, and of that but briefly, although my notes concerning it run to over 100 typed pages. The lady in charge of the Slum Settlement in Liverpool informed me that the poverty in that city is very great, and during the past winter of 1919 was really terrible owing to the scarceness of work in the docks. The poor, however, are not so overcrowded, and rents are cheaper than in London, the cost of two dwelling-cellars being about 2_s_. 6_d_., and of a room about 3_s_. a week. The sisterhood of fallen women is, she added, very large in Liverpool; but most of these belong to a low class. In this city the Army has one Institution for women called the 'Ann Fowler' Memorial Home, which differs a good deal from the majority of those that I have seen. It is a Lodging-Home for Women, and is designed for the accommodation of persons of a better class than those who generally frequent such places. This building, which was provided in memory of her mother by Miss Fowler, a local philanthropist, at a cost of about £6,000, was originally a Welsh Congregational chapel, that has been altered to suit the purpose to which it is now put. It is extremely well fitted-up with separate cubicles made of oak panelling, good lavatory accommodation, and kitchens in which is made some of the most excellent soup that I ever tasted. Yet strange to say this place is not as much appreciated as it might be, as may be judged from the fact that although it is designed to hold 113 lodgers, when I visited it there were not more than between forty and fifty. This is remarkable, as the charge made is only 4_d_. per night, or 2_s_. a week, even for a cubicle, and an excellent breakfast of bread and butter, fish, and tea can be had for 2_d_. Other meals are supplied on a like scale, with the result that a woman employed in outside work can live in considerable comfort in a room or cubicle of her own for about 8_s_. a week. The lady in charge told me, however, that there are reasons for this state of affairs. One is that it provides for people of a rather higher class than usual, who, of course, are not so numerous as those lower in the social scale. The principal reason, however, is prejudice. It is known that most of the women accommodated in the Army Shelters are what are known as 'fallen' or 'drunks.' Therefore, occupants of a Home devoted to a higher section of society fear lest they should be tarred with the same brush in the eyes of their associates. Here is a story which illustrates this point which I remember hearing in the United States. A woman, whose inebriety was well known, was picked up absolutely dead drunk in an American city and taken by an Officer of the Army to one of its Homes and put to bed. In the morning she awoke and, guessing where she was lodged from various signs and tokens, such as texts upon the wall, began to scream for her clothes. An attendant, who thought that she had developed delirium tremens, ran up and asked what was the matter. 'Matter?' ejaculated the sot, 'the matter is that if I don't get out of this ---- place in double quick time, _I shall lose my character!_' The women who avail themselves of this 'Ann Fowler' Home are of all ages and in various employments. One, I was told, was a lady separated from her husband, whose father, now dead, had been the mayor of a large city. A Liverpool Institution of another class, known as 'The Hollies,' is an Industrial Home for fallen women, drunkards, thieves, and incorrigible girls. It holds thirty-eight inmates and is always full, a good many of these being sent to the place from Police-courts whence they are discharged under the First Offenders Acts. I saw these women at their evening prayers. The singing was hearty and spontaneous, and they all seemed happy enough. Still, the faces of most of them (they varied in age from forty-six to sixteen) showed traces of life's troubles, but one or two were evidently persons of some refinement. Their histories, which would fill volumes, must be omitted. Suffice it to say that this Home, like all the others, is extremely well-arranged and managed, and is doing a most excellent and successful work. When the women are believed to be cured of their evil habits, whatever they may be, they are for the most part sent out to service. There are two rooms in the place to which they can return during their holidays, or when they are changing situations, at a charge of 5s. a week. This many of them like to do. Next door to 'The Hollies' is another Home where young girls with their illegitimate babies, and also a few children, are accommodated. It is arranged to hold twenty-four mothers, and is generally full. A charge of 5s. a week is supposed to be made, but unless the cases are sent from the workhouse, when the Guardians pay, in practice little is recovered from the patients. When they are well again, their babies are put out to nurse, as at the London Maternity Home, and the girls are sent to service, no difficulty being experienced in finding them places. During the two years that this Home had been open eighty-two girls had passed through it, and of these, the Matron informed me, there were but ten who were not doing so well as they might. The rest were in employment of one sort or another, and seemed to be in the way of completely regaining their characters. I visited this place late at night, and in the room devoted to children, as distinct from infants, saw one girl of nine with a curious history. This child had been twelve times in the hands of the police before her father brought her to the Army on their suggestion. Her mania was to run away from home, where it does not appear that she was ill-treated, and to sleep in the streets, on one occasion for as long as five nights. This child had a very curious face, and even in her sleep, as I saw her, there was about it something wild and defiant. When the Matron turned her over she did not yawn or cry, but uttered a kind of snarl. I suppose that here is an instance of atavism, that the child throw back for thousands or tens of thousands of years, to when her progenitors were savages, and that their primitive instincts have reasserted themselves in her, although she was born in the twentieth century. She had been ten months in the Home and was doing well. Indeed, the Matron told me that they had taken her out and given her opportunities of running away, but that she had never attempted to avail herself of them. The Officer in charge informed me that there is much need for a Maternity Hospital in Liverpool. There are also Institutions for men in Liverpool, but these I must pass over. THE MEN'S SOCIAL WORK MANCHESTER The Officer in charge of the Men's Social Work in Manchester told me the same story that I had heard in Liverpool as to the prevailing distress. He said, 'It has been terrible the last few winters. I have never seen anything like it. We know because they come to us, and the trouble is more in a fixed point than in London. Numbers and numbers come, destitute of shelter or food or anything. The cause is want of employment. There is no work. Many cases, of course, go down through drink, but the most cannot get work. The fact is that there are more men than there is work for them to do, and this I may say is a regular thing, winter and summer.' A sad statement surely, and one that excites thought. I asked what became of this residue who could not find work. His answer was, 'They wander about, die off, and so on.' A still sadder statement, I think. The Major in charge is a man of great organising ability, force of character, and abounding human sympathy. Yet he was once one of the melancholy army of wasters. Some seventeen years ago he came into the Army through one of its Shelters, a drunken, out-of-place cabinet-maker, who had been tramping the streets. They gave him work and he 'got converted.' Now he is the head of the Manchester Social Institutions, engaged in finding work for or converting thousands of others. At first the Army had only one establishment in Manchester, which used to be a cotton mill. Now it is a Shelter for 200 men. Then it took others, some of which are owned and some hired, among them a great 'Elevator' on the London plan, where waste paper is sorted and sold. The turn-over here was over £8,000 in 1909, and may rise to £12,000. I forget how many men it finds work for, but every week some twenty-five new hands come in, and about the same number pass out. This is a wonderful place, filled with what appears to be rubbish, but which is really valuable material. Among this rubbish all sorts of strange things are to be found. Thus I picked out of it, and kept as a souvenir, a beautifully-bound copy of Wesley's Hymns, published about a hundred years ago. Lying near it was an early edition of Scott's 'Marmion.' This Elevator more than pays its way; indeed the Army is saving money out of it, which is put by to purchase other buildings. Then there are houses where the people employed in the paper-works lodge, a recently-acquired home for the better class of men, which was once a mansion of the De Clifford family, and afterwards a hospital, and a store where every kind of oddment is sold by Dutch auction. These articles are given to the Army, and among the week's collection I saw clocks, furniture, bicycles, a parrot cage, and a crutch. Not long ago the managers of this store had a goat presented to them, which nearly ate them out of house and home, as no one would buy it, and they did not like to send the poor beast to the butcher. In these various Shelters and Institutions I saw some strange characters. One had been an electrical engineer, educated under Professor Owen, at Cardiff College. He came into money, and gambled away £13,000 on horse-racing, although he told me that he won as much as £8,000 on one Ascot meeting. His subsequent history is a story in itself, one too long to set out; but the end of it, in his own words, was 'Four years ago I came here, and, thank God! I am going on all right.' Why do not the writers of naturalistic novels study Salvation Army Shelters? In any one of them they would find more material than could be used up in ten lifetimes; though, personally, I confess I am content to read such stories in the secret annals of the various Institutions. Another man, a very pleasant and humorous person, who was once a Church worker and a singer in the choir, etc., when, in his own words, he used 'to put on religion with his Sunday clothes and take it off again with them,' came to grief through sheer love of amusement, such as that which is to be found in music-halls and theatres. His habit was to spend the money of an insurance company by which he was employed, in taking out the young lady to whom he was engaged, to such entertainments. Ultimately, of course, he was found out, and, when starving on the road, determined to commit suicide. The Salvationists found him in the nick of time, and now he is foreman of their paper-collecting yard. Another, at the ripe age of twenty-four, had been twenty-seven times in prison. His father was in prison, his eldest brother committed suicide in prison by throwing himself over the banisters. Also, he had two brothers at present undergoing penal servitude, who, when he was a little fellow, used to pass him through windows to open doors in houses which they were burgling. I suggested that it was a poor game and that he had better give it up. He answered:--'I shall never do it again, sir, God helping me.' Really I think he meant what he said. Another, in the Chepstow Street Shelter, where he acted as night-watchman, was discharged from Portland, after serving a fifteen years' sentence for manslaughter. His trouble was that he killed a man in a fight, and as he had fought him before and had a grudge against him, was very nearly hanged for his pains. This man earned £9 in some way or other during his sentence, which he sent to his wife. Afterwards, he discovered that she had been living with another man, who died and left her well off. But she has never refunded the £9, nor will she have anything to do with her husband. OAKHILL HOUSE MANCHESTER Oakhill House is a Rescue Home for women, which was given to the Army by Mrs. Crossley, a well-known local lady. It deals with prison, fallen, inebriate, and preventive cases. At the time of my visit there were sixty-three inmates, but when a new adjacent building is completed there will be room for more. There is a wonderful laundry in this Home, where the most beautiful washing is done at extremely moderate prices. The ironing and starching room was a busy sight, but what I chiefly remember about it was the spectacle of one melancholy old man, the only male among that crowd of women, seated by a steam-boiler that drove the machinery, to which it was his business to attend. (No woman can be persuaded to look after a boiler.) In the midst of all those females he had the appearance of a superannuated and disillusioned Turk contemplating his too extensive establishment and reflecting on its monthly bills. The matron in charge informed me that even for these rough women there is no system of punishment whatsoever. No girl is ever restricted in her food, or put on bread and water, or struck, or shut away by herself. The Army maxim is that it is its mission not to punish but to try to reform. If in any particular case its methods of gentleness fail, which they rarely do, it is considered best that the case should depart, very possibly to return again later on. She added that although many of these women had committed assaults, and even fought the Police, not one of them attacks another in the Home once in a year, and that during her twenty years of work, although she had lived among some of the worst women in England, she had never received a single blow. As an illustration of what the Salvation Army understands by this word 'work' I may state that throughout these twenty years, except for the allotted annual fortnight, this lady has had no furlough. THE MEN'S SOCIAL WORK GLASGOW I saw the Brigadier in charge of the Men's Social Work in Glasgow at a great central Institution where hundreds of poor people sleep every night. The inscriptions painted on the windows give a good idea of its character. Here are some of them: 'Cheap beds.' 'Cheap food.' 'Waste paper collected.' 'Missing friends found.' 'Salvation for all.' In addition to this Refuge there is an 'Elevator' of the usual type, in which about eighty men were at work, and an establishment called the Dale House Home, a very beautiful Adams' house, let to the Army at a small rent by an Eye Hospital that no longer requires it. This house accommodates ninety-seven of the men who work in the Elevator. The Brigadier informed me that the distress at Glasgow was very great last year. Indeed, during that year of 1909 the Army fed about 35,000 men at the docks, and 65,000 at the Refuge, a charity which caused them to be officially recognized for the first time by the Corporation, that sent them a cheque in aid of their work. Now, however, things have much improved, owing to the building of men-of-war and the forging of great guns for the Navy. At Parkhead Forge alone 8,000 men are being employed upon a vessel of the Dreadnought class, which will occupy them for a year and a half. So it would seem that these monsters of destruction have their peaceful uses. Glasgow, he said, 'is a terrible place for drink, especially of methylated spirits and whisky.' Drink at the beginning, I need hardly remark, means destitution at the end, so doubtless this failing accounts for a large proportion of its poverty. The Men's Social Work of the Army in Glasgow, which is its Headquarters in Scotland, is spreading in every direction, not only in that city itself, but beyond it to Paisley, Greenock, and Edinburgh. Indeed, the Brigadier has orders 'to get into Dundee and Aberdeen as soon as possible.' I asked him how he would provide the money. He answered, 'Well, by trusting in God and keeping our powder dry.' As regards the Army's local finance the trouble is that owing to the national thriftiness it is harder to make commercial ventures pay in Scotland than in England. Thus I was informed that in Glasgow the Corporation collects and sells its own waste paper, which means that there is less of that material left for the Salvation Army to deal with. In England, so far as I am aware, the waste-paper business is not a form of municipal trading that the Corporations of great cities undertake. Another leading branch of the Salvation Army effort in Scotland is its Prison work. It is registered in that country as a Prisoners' Aid Society, and the doors of every jail in the land are open to its Officers. I saw the Army's prison book, in which are entered the details of each prison case with which it is dealing. Awful enough some of them were. I remember two that caught my eye as I turned its pages. The first was that of a man who had gone for a walk with his wife, from whom he was separated, cut her head off, and thrown it into a field. The second was that of another man, or brute beast, who had taken his child by the heels and dashed out its brains against the fireplace. It may be wondered why these gentle creatures still adorn the world. The explanation seems to be that in Scotland there is a great horror of capital punishment, which is but rarely inflicted. My recollection is that the Officer who visited them had hopes of the permanent reformation of both these men; or, at any rate, that there were notes in his book to this effect. I saw many extraordinary cases in this Glasgow Refuge, some of whom had come there through sheer misfortune. One had been a medical man who, unfortunately, was left money and took to speculating on the Stock Exchange. He was a very large holder of shares in a South African mine, which he bought at 1s. 6d. These shares now stand at £7; but, unhappily for him, his brokers dissolved partnership, and neither of them would carry over his account. So it was closed down just at the wrong time, with the result that he lost everything, and finally came to the streets. He never drank or did anything wrong; it was, as he said, 'simply a matter of sheer bad luck.' Another was a Glasgow silk merchant, who made a bad debt of £3,000 that swamped him. Afterwards he became paralysed, but recovered. He had been three years cashier of this Shelter. Another arrived at the Shelter in such a state that the Officer in charge told me he was obliged to throw his macintosh round him to hide his nakedness. He was an engineer who took a public-house, and helped himself freely to his stock-in-trade, with the result that he became a frightful drunkard, and lost £1,700. He informed me that he used to consume no less than four bottles of whisky a day, and suffered from delirium tremens several times. In the Shelter--I quote his own words--'I gave my heart to God, and after that all desire for drink and wrongdoing' (he had not been immaculate in other ways) 'gradually left me. From 1892 I had been a drunkard. After my conversion, in less than three weeks I ceased to have any desire for drink.' This man became night-watchman in the Shelter, a position which he held for twelve months. He said: 'I was promoted to be Sergeant; when I put on my uniform and stripes, I reckoned myself a man again. Then I was made foreman of the works at Greendyke Street. Then I was sent to pioneer our work in Paisley, and when that was nicely started, I was sent on to Greenock, where I am now trying to work up a (Salvation Army) business.' Here, for a reason to be explained presently, I will quote a very similar case which I saw at the Army Colony at Hadleigh, in Essex. This man, also a Scotsman (no Englishman, I think, could have survived such experiences), is a person of fine and imposing appearance, great bodily strength, and good address. He is about fifty years of age, and has been a soldier, and after leaving the Service, a gardener. Indeed, he is now, or was recently, foreman market-gardener at Hadleigh. He married a hospital nurse, and found out some years after marriage that she was in the habit of using drugs. This habit he contracted also, either during her life or after her death, and with it that of drink. His custom was to drink till he was a wreck, and then take drugs, either by the mouth or subcutaneously, to steady himself. Chloroform and ether he mixed together and drank, strychnine he injected. At the beginning of this course, threepennyworth of laudanum would suffice him for three doses. At the end, three years later (not to mention ether, chloroform, and strychnine), he took of laudanum alone nearly a tablespoonful ten or twelve times a day, a quantity, I understand, which is enough to kill five or six horses. One of the results was that when he had to be operated on for some malady, it was found impossible to bring him under the influence of the anaesthetic. All that could be done was to deprive him of his power of movement, in which state he had to bear the dreadful pain of the operation. Afterwards the surgeon asked him if he were a drug-taker, and he told me that he answered:-- 'Why, sir, I could have drunk all the lot you have been trying to give me, without ever knowing the difference.' In this condition, when he was such a wreck that he trembled from head to foot and was contemplating suicide, he came into the hands of the Army, and was sent down to the Hadleigh Farm. Now comes the point of the story. At Hadleigh he 'got converted,' and from that hour has never touched either drink or drugs. Moreover, he assured me solemnly that he could go into a chemist's shop or a bar with money in his pocket without feeling the slightest desire to indulge in such stimulants. He said that after his conversion, he had a 'terrible fight' with his old habits, the physical results of their discontinuance being most painful. Subsequently, however, and by degrees, the craving left him entirely, I asked him to what he attributed this extraordinary cure. He replied:-- 'To the power of God. If I trusted in my own strength I should certainly fail, but the power of God keeps me from being overcome.' Now these are only two out of a number of cases that I have seen myself, in which a similar explanation of his cure has been given to me by the person cured, and I would like to ask the unprejudiced and open-minded reader how he explains them. Personally I cannot explain them except upon an hypothesis which, as a practical person, I confess I hesitate to adopt. I mean that of a direct interposition from above, or of the working of something so unrecognized or so undefined in the nature of man (which it will be remembered the old Egyptians, a very wise people, divided into many component parts, whereof we have now lost count), that it may be designated an innate superior power or principle, brought into action by faith or 'suggestion.' That these people who have been the slaves of, or possessed by certain gross and palpable vices, of which drink is only one, are truly and totally changed, there can be no question. To that I am able to bear witness. The demoniacs of New Testament history cannot have been more transformed; and I know of no stranger experience than to listen to such men, as I have times and again, speaking of their past selves as entities cast off and gone, and of their present selves as new creatures. It is, indeed, one that throws a fresh light upon certain difficult passages in the Epistles of St. Paul, and even upon the darker sayings of the Master of mankind Himself. They do, in truth, seem to have been 'born again.' But this is a line of thought that I will not attempt to follow; it lies outside my sphere and the scope of these pages. After the Officer who used to consume four bottles of whisky a day, and is now in charge of the Salvation Army work in Greenock, had left the room, I propounded these problems to Lieut.-Colonel Jolliffe and the Brigadier, as I had done previously to Commissioner Sturgess. I pointed out that religious conversion seemed to me to be a spiritual process, whereas the craving for drink or any other carnal satisfaction was, or appeared to be, a physical weakness of the body. Therefore, I did not understand how the spiritual conversion could suddenly and permanently affect or remove the physical desire, unless it were by the action of the phenomenon called miracle, which mankind admits doubtfully to have been possible in the dim period of the birth of a religion, but for the most part denies to be possible in these latter days. 'Quite so,' answered the Colonel, calmly, in almost the same words that Commissioner Sturgess had used, 'it _is_ miracle; that is our belief. These men cannot change and purify themselves, their vices are instantaneously, permanently, and miraculously removed by the power and the Grace of God. This is the truth, and nothing more wonderful can be conceived.' Here, without further comment, I leave this deeply interesting matter to the consideration of abler and better instructed persons than myself. To come to something more mundane, which also deserves consideration, I was informed that in Glasgow, with a population of about 900,000, there exists a floating class of 80,000 people, who live in lodging-houses of the same sort as, and mostly inferior to the Salvation Army Shelter of which I am now writing. In other words, out of every twelve inhabitants of this great city, one is driven to that method of obtaining a place to sleep in at night. In this particular Refuge there is what is called a free shelter room, where people are accommodated in winter who have not even the few coppers necessary to pay for a bed. During the month before my visit, which took place in the summer-time, the Brigadier had allotted free beds in this room to destitute persons to the value of £13. I may add that twice a week this particular place is washed with a carbolic mixture! THE ARDENSHAW WOMEN'S HOME GLASGOW I visited two of the Salvation Army's Women's Institutions in Glasgow. The first of these was a Women's Rescue Home known as Ardenshaw. This is a very good house, substantially built and well fitted up, that before it was bought by the Army was the residence of a Glasgow merchant. It has accommodation for thirty-six, and is always full. The inmates are of all kinds, prison cases, preventive cases, fallen cases, drink cases. The very worst of all these classes, however, are not taken in here, but sent to the Refuge in High Street. Ardenshaw resembles other Homes of the same sort that I have already dealt with in various cities, so I need not describe it here. Its Officers visit the prisons at Duke Street, Glasgow, Ayr, and Greenock, and I saw a letter which had just arrived from the chaplain of one of these jails, asking the Matron to interest herself in the case of a girl coming up for trial, and to take her into a Home if she were discharged as a first offender. While I was eating some lunch in this house I noticed a young woman in Salvation Army dress coming up the steps with a child of particularly charming appearance. At my request she was brought into the room, where I extracted from her a story which seems to be worth repeating as an illustration of the spirit which animates so many members of the Army. The young woman herself had once been an invalid who was taken into the Home and nursed till she recovered, after which she was sent to a situation in a large town. Here she came in contact with a poor family in which the mother is a drunkard and the father a respectable, hardworking man, and took a great fancy to one of the children, the little girl I have mentioned. This child, who is about five years of age, it is her habit to supply with clothes and more or less to feed. Unfortunately, however, when the mother is on the drink she pawns the clothes which my Salvation Army friend is obliged to redeem, since if she does not, little Bessie is left almost naked. Indeed, before Bessie was brought away upon this particular visit her protectress had to pay 14_s_. to recover her garments from the pawnshop, a considerable sum out of a wage of about £18 a year. I asked her why she did not take away this very fascinating child altogether, and arrange for her to enter one of the Army Homes. She answered because, although the mother would be glad enough to let her go, the father, who is naturally fond of his children, objected. 'Of which the result may be,' remarked Lieut.-Colonel Jolliffe grimly, 'that about a dozen years hence that sweet little girl will become a street-walking drunkard.' 'Not while I live,' broke in her foster-mother, indignantly. This kind-hearted little woman told me she had been six years in service as sole maid-of-all-work in a large house. I inquired whether it was a hard place. She replied that it would be easier if her four mistresses, who are sisters and old maiden ladies, did not all take their meals at four different times, have four different teapots, insist upon their washing being sent to four different laundries, employ four different doctors, and sleep in four different rooms. 'However,' she added, 'it is not so difficult as it was as there used to be five, but one has died. Also, they are kind to me in other ways and about Bessie. They like me to come here for my holiday, as then they know I shall return on the right day and at the right hour.' When she had left the room, having in mind the capacities of the average servant, and the outcry she is apt to make about her particular 'work,' I said that it seemed strange that one young woman could fulfil all these multifarious duties satisfactorily. 'Oh,' said the matter-of-fact Colonel, 'you see, she belongs to the Salvation Army, and looks at things from the point of view of her duty, and not from that of her comfort.' It is curious at what a tender age children learn to note the habits of those about them. When this little Bessie was given _2d_. she lisped out in her pretty Scotch accent, 'Mother winna have this for beer!' THE WOMEN'S LODGING-HOUSE GLASGOW The last place that I visited in Glasgow was the Shelter for women, an Institution of the same sort as the Shelter for men. It is a Lodging-house in which women can have a bed at the price of 4_d_. per night; but if that sum is not forthcoming, they are not, as a rule, turned away if they are known to be destitute. The class of people who frequent this Home is a very low one; for the most part they are drunkards. They must leave the Shelter before ten o'clock in the morning, when the majority of them go out hawking, selling laces, or other odds and ends. Some of them earn as much as 2_s_. a day; but, as a rule, they spend a good deal of what they earn, only saving enough to pay for their night's lodging. This place has been open for sixteen years, and contains 133 beds, which are almost always full. The women whom I saw at this Shelter were a very rough-looking set, nearly all elderly, and, as their filthy garments and marred countenances showed, often the victims of drink. Still, they have good in them, for the lady in charge assured me that they are generous to each other. If one of the company has nothing they will collect the price of her bed or her food between them, and even pay her debts, if these are not too large. There were several children in the place, for each woman is allowed to bring in one. When I was there many of the inmates were cooking their meals on the common stove, and very curious and unappetizing these were. Among them I noted a dark-eyed lassie of about sixteen who was crying. Drawing her aside, I questioned her. It seemed that her father, a drunken fellow, had turned her out of her home that afternoon because she had forgotten to give him a message. Having nowhere to go she wandered about the streets until she met a woman who told her of this Lodging-house. She added, touchingly enough, that it was not her mother's fault. Imagine a girl of sixteen thrown out to spend the night upon the streets of Glasgow! On the walls of one of the rooms I saw a notice that read oddly in a Shelter for women. It ran:-- _Smoking is strictly prohibited after retiring_. THE LAND AND INDUSTRIAL COLONY HADLEIGH, ESSEX The Hadleigh Colony, of which Lieut.-Colonel Laurie is the Officer in charge, is an estate of about 3,000 acres which was purchased by the Salvation Army in the year 1891 at a cost of about £20 the acre, the land being stiff clay of the usual Essex type. As it has chanced, owing to the amount of building which is going on in the neighbourhood of Southend, and to its proximity to London, that is within forty miles, the investment has proved a very good one. I imagine that if ever it should come to the hammer the Hadleigh Colony would fetch a great deal more than £20 the acre, independently of its cultural improvements. These, of course, are very great. For instance, more than 100 acres are now planted with fruit-trees in full bearing. Also, there are brickfields which are furnished with the best machinery and plant, ranges of tomato and salad houses, and a large French garden where early vegetables are grown for market. A portion of the land, however, still remains in the hands of tenants, with whom the Army does not like to interfere. The total turn-over of the land 'in hand' amounts to the large sum of over £30,000 per annum, and the total capital invested is in the neighbourhood of £110,000. Of this great sum about £78,000 is the cost of the land and the buildings; the brickworks and other industries account for £12,000, while the remaining £20,000 represents the value of the live and dead stock. I believe that the mortgage remaining on the place, which the Army had not funds to pay for outright, is now less than £50,000, borrowed at about 4 per cent, and, needless to say, it is well secured. Lieut.-Colonel Laurie informed me on the occasion of my last visit to Hadleigh, in July, 1910, that taken as a whole even now the farm does not pay its way.[6] This result is entirely owing to the character of the labour employed. At first sight, as the men are paid but a trifling sum in cash, it would appear that this labour must be extremely cheap. Investigation, however, gives the story another colour. It costs the Army 10_s_. a week to keep a man at Hadleigh in food and lodgings, and in addition he receives a cash grant of from 6_d_ to 5_s_. a week. Careful observation shows that the labour of three of these men, of whom 92 per cent, be it remembered, come to the Colony through their drinking habits, is about equal to that of one good agricultural hand who, in Norfolk, reckoning in his harvest and sundries, would earn--let us say, 18s. a week. Therefore, in practice where I, as a farmer, pay about 18s., or in the case of carters and milkmen nearly £1, the Army pays £2, circumstances under which it is indeed difficult to farm remuneratively in England. The object of the Hadleigh Colony is to supply a place where broken men of bad habits, who chance in most cases to have had some connexion with or liking for the land, can be reformed, and ultimately sent out to situations, or as emigrants to Canada. About 400 of such men pass through the Colony each year. Of these men, Lieut.-Colonel Laurie estimates that 7-1/2 per cent prove absolute failures, although, he added that, 'it is very, very difficult to determine as to when a man should be labelled an absolute failure. He may leave us an apparent failure, and still come all right in the end.' The rest, namely 91 per cent or so, regain their place as decent and useful members of society, a wonderful result which is brought about by the pressure of discipline, tempered with kindness, and the influence of steady and healthful work. Persons of every class drift to this Colony. Thus, among the 230 Colonists who were training there when I visited it in July, 1910, were two chemists and a journalist, while a Church of England clergyman had just left it for Canada. As a specimen of the ruck, however, I will mention the first individual to whom I happened to speak--a strong young man, who was weeding a bed of onions. He told me that he had been a farm labourer in early life, and, subsequently, for six years a coachman in a private livery stables in London. He lost his place through drink, became a wanderer on the Embankment, was picked up by the Salvation Army and sent to one of its Elevator paper-works. Afterwards, he volunteered to work on the land at Hadleigh, where he had then been employed for nine months. His ambition was to emigrate to Canada, which, doubtless, he has now done, or is about to do. Such cases might be duplicated by the dozen, but for this there is no need. _Ex uno disce omnes_. All the labour employed, however, is not of this class. For instance, the next man to whom I spoke, who was engaged in ploughing up old cabbage land with a pair of very useful four-year-olds, bred on the farm, was not a Colonist but an agricultural hand, paid at the rate of wages usual in the district. Another, who managed the tomato-houses, was a skilled professional tomato-grower from the Channel Islands. The experience of the managers of the Colony is that it is necessary to employ a certain number of expert agriculturalists on the place, in order that they may train the raw hands who come from London and elsewhere. To a farmer, such as the present writer, a visit to Hadleigh is an extremely interesting event, showing him, as it does, what can be done upon cold and unkindly land by the aid of capital, intelligence, and labour. Still I doubt whether a detailed description of all these agricultural operations falls within the scope of a book such as that upon which I am engaged. Therefore, I will content myself with saying that this business, like everything else that the Army undertakes, is carried out with great thoroughness and considerable success. The extensive orchards are admirably managed, and were fruitful even in the bad season of 1910. The tomato-houses, which have recently been increased at a capital cost of about £1,000, produce many tons of tomatoes, and the French garden is excellent of its kind. The breed of Middle-white pigs is to be commended; so much so in my judgment, and I can give no better testimonial, that at the moment of writing I am trying to obtain from it a pedigree boar for my own use. The Hadleigh poultry farm, too, is famous all over the world, and the Officer who manages it was the President for 1910 of the Wyandotte Society, fowls for which Hadleigh is famous, having taken the championship prizes for this breed and others all over the kingdom. The cattle and horses are also good of their class, and the crops in a trying year looked extremely well. All these things, however, are but a means to an end, which end is the redemption of our fallen fellow-creatures, or such of them as come within the reach of the work of the Salvation Army at this particular place. I should add, perhaps, that there is a Citadel or gathering hall, which will seat 400, where religious services are held and concerts are given on Saturday nights for the amusement of the Colonists. I may mention that no pressure is brought to bear to force any man in its charge to conform to the religious principles of the Army. Indeed, many of these attend the services at the neighbouring parish church. Notwithstanding the past characters of those who live there, disturbances of any sort are unknown at Hadleigh. Indeed, it is extremely rare for a case originating on the Colony to come before the local magistrates. THE SMALL-HOLDINGS SETTLEMENT BOXTED, ESSEX General Booth and his Officers are, as I know from various conversations with them, firmly convinced that many of the great and patent evils of our civilization result from the desertion of the land by its inhabitants, and that crowding into cities which is one of the most marked phenomena of our time. Indeed, it was an identity of view upon this point, which is one that I have advanced for years, that first brought me into contact with the Salvation Army. But to preach the advantages of bringing people back to the land is one thing, and to get them there quite another. Many obstacles stand in the way. I need only mention two of these: the necessity for large capital and the still more important necessity of enabling those who are settled on it to earn out of Mother Earth a sufficient living for themselves and their families. That well-known philanthropist, the late Mr. Herring, was another person much impressed with the importance of this matter, and I remember about five years ago dining with him, with General Booth as my fellow-guest, on an occasion when all this subject was gone into in detail. So lively, indeed, was Mr. Herring's interest that he offered to advance a sum of £100,000 to the Army, to be used in an experiment of land-settlement, carried out under its auspices. Should that experiment prove successful, the capital repaid by the tenants was to go to King Edward's Hospital Fund, and should it fail, that capital was to be written off. Of this £100,000, £40,000 has now been invested in the Boxted venture, and if this succeeds, I understand that the balance will become available for other ventures under the provisions of Mr. Herring's will. A long while must elapse, however, before the result of the experiment can be definitely ascertained. The Boxted Settlement is situated In North Essex, about three miles from Colchester, and covers an area of 400 acres. It is a flat place, that before the Enclosures Acts was a heath, with good road frontages throughout, an important point where small-holdings are concerned. The soil is a medium loam over gravel, neither very good nor very bad, so far as my judgment goes, and of course capable of great improvement under intensive culture. This estate, which altogether cost about £20 per acre to buy, has been divided into sixty-seven holdings, varying in size from 4-1/2 acres to 7 acres. The cottages which stand upon the holdings have been built in pairs, at a cost of about £380 per pair, which price includes drainage, a drinking well, and, I think, a soft-water cistern. These are extremely good dwellings, and I was much struck with their substantial and practical character. They comprise three bedrooms, a large living-room, a parlour, and a scullery, containing a sink and a bath. Also there is a tool-house, a pigstye, and a movable fowl-house on wheels. On each holding an orchard of fruit trees has been planted in readiness for the tenant, also strawberries, currants, gooseberries, and raspberries, which in all occupy about three-quarters of an acre. The plan is that the rest of the holding should be cultivated intensively upon a system that is estimated to return £20 per acre. The arrangement between the Army and its settlers is briefly as follows: In every case the tenant begins without any capital, and is provided with seeds and manures to carry him through the first two years, also with a living allowance at the rate of 10_s_. a week for the man and his wife, and 1_s_. a week for each child, which allowance is to cease after he has marketed his first crops. The tenancy terms are, that for two years the settler is a tenant at will, the agreement being terminable by either party at any time without compensation. At the end of these two years, subject to the approval of the Director of the Settlement, the settler can take a 999 years' lease of his holding, the Army for obvious reasons retaining the freehold. After the first year of this lease, the rental payable for forty years is to be 5 per cent per annum upon the capital invested in the settlement of the man and his family upon the holding, which rent is to include the cost of the house, land, and improvements, and all moneys advanced to him during his period of probation. It is estimated that this capital sum will average £520 per holding, so that the tenant's annual rent for forty years will be £26, after which he will have nothing more to pay save a nominal rent, and the remainder of the lease will be the property of himself, or rather, of his descendants. This property, I presume, will be saleable. So, putting aside all legal technicalities and complications, it comes to this: the tenant is started for two years after which he pays about £4 a year rent per acre for the next forty years, and thereby virtually purchases his holding. The whole question, which time alone can answer, is whether a man can earn £4 per acre rent per annum, and, in addition, provide a living for himself and family out of a five-acre holding on medium land near Colchester. The problem is one upon which I cannot venture to express any decisive opinion, even after many years of experience of such matters. I trust, however, that the answer may prove to be in the affirmative, and I am quite sure that if any Organization is able to cause it to work out this way, that Organization is the Salvation Army, whose brilliant business capacity can, as I know, make a commercial success of the most unpromising materials. I should like to point out that this venture is one of great and almost of national importance, because if it fails then it will be practically proved that it is impossible to establish small holders on the land by artificial means, at any rate, in England, and at the present prices of agricultural produce. It is not often that a sum of £40,000 will be available for such a purpose, and with it the direction of a charitable Organization that seeks no profit, the oversight of an Officer as skilled and experienced as Lieut.-Colonel Hiffe, and, in addition, a trained Superintendent who will afford advice as to all agricultural matters, a co-operative society ready to hire out implements, horses and carts at cost price, and, if so desired, to undertake the distribution or marketing of produce. Still, notwithstanding all these advantages, I have my misgivings as to the ultimate result. The men chosen to occupy these holdings by a Selection Committee of Salvation Army Officers, are for the most part married people who were born in the country, but had migrated to the towns. Most of them have more or less kept themselves in touch with country life by cultivating allotments during their period of urban residence, and precedence has been given to those who have shown a real desire to return to the land. Other essentials are a good character, both personal and as a worker, bodily and mental health, and total abstention from any form of alcohol. No creed test is required, and there are men of various religious faiths upon the Settlement, only a proportion of them being Salvationists. I interviewed two of these settlers at hazard upon their holdings, and, although the year had been adverse, found them happy and hopeful. No. 1, who had been a mechanic, proposed to increase his earnings by mending bicycles. No. 2 was an agriculturist pure and simple, and showed me his fowls and pigs with pride. Here, however, I found a little rift within the rural lute, for on asking him how his wife liked the life he replied after a little hesitation, 'Not very well, sir: you see, she has been accustomed to a town.' If she continues not to like it 'very well,' there will, I think, be an end to that man's prospects as a small holder. I had the pleasure of bring present in July, 1910, at the formal opening of the Boxted Settlement, when the Salvation Army entertained several hundred guests to luncheon, many of them very well-known people. The day for a wonder was fine, General Booth spoke for over an hour in his most characteristic and interesting way; the Chairman, Earl Carrington, President of the Board of Agriculture, blessed the undertaking officially and privately; everybody seemed pleased with the holdings, and, in short, all went merrily as a marriage bell. As I sat and listened, however, the query that arose in my mind was--What would be the state of these holdings and of the tenants or of their descendants on, say, that day thirty years? I trust and hope that it will be a good state in both instances; but I must confess to certain doubts and fears. In this parish of Ditchingham, where I live, there is a man with a few acres of land, an orchard, a greenhouse, etc. That man works his little tenancy, deals in the surplus produce of large gardens, which he peddles out in the neighbouring town, and, on an average, takes piecework on my farm (at the moment of writing he and his son are hoeing mangolds) for two or three days a week; at any rate, for a great part of the year. He is a type of what I may call the natural small holder, and I believe does fairly well. The question is, can the artificially created small holder, who must pay a rent of £4 the acre, attain to a like result? Again, I say I hope so most sincerely, for if not in England 'back to the land' will prove but an empty catchword. At any rate, the country should be most grateful to the late Mr. Herring, who provided the funds for this intensely interesting experiment, and to the Salvation Army which is carrying it out in the interests of the landless poor. IMPRESSIONS OF GENERAL BOOTH It has occurred to the writer that a few words descriptive of William Booth, the creator and first General of the Salvation Army, set down by a contemporary who has enjoyed a good many opportunities of observing him during the past ten years, may possibly have a future if not a present value. Of the greatness of this man, to my mind, there can be no doubt. When the point of time whereon we stand and play our separate parts has receded, and those who follow us look back into the grey mist which veils the past; when that mist has hidden the glitter of the decorations and deadened the echoes of the high-sounding titles of to-day; when our political tumults, our town-bred excitements, and many of the very names that are household words to us, are forgotten, or discoverable only in the pages of history; when, perhaps, the Salvation Army itself has fulfilled its mission and gone its road, I am certain that the figure of William Booth will abide clearly visible in those shadows, and that the influences of his work will remain, if not still felt, at least remembered and honoured. He will be one of the few, of the very few enduring figures of our day; and even if our civilization should be destined to undergo eclipse for a period, as seems possible, when the light returns, by it he will still be seen. For truly this work of his is fine, and one that appeals to the imagination, although we are so near to it that few of us appreciate its real proportions. Also, in fact, it is the work that should be admired rather than the man, who, after all, is nothing but the instrument appointed to shape it from the clay of circumstance. The clay lay ready to be shaped, then appeared the moulder animated with will and purpose, and working for the work's sake to an end which he could not foresee. I have no information on the point, but I should be surprised to learn that General Booth, when Providence moved him to begin his labours among the poor, had even an inkling of their future growth within the short period of his own life. He sowed a seed in faith and hope, and, in spite of opposition and poverty, in spite of ridicule and of slander, he has lived to see that seed ripen into a marvellous harvest. Directly, or indirectly, hundreds of thousands of men and women throughout the world have benefited by his efforts. He has been a tool of destiny, like Mahomet or Napoleon, only in this case one fated to help and not to harm mankind. Such, at least, is my estimate of him. A little less of the spirit of self-sacrifice, a different sense of responsibility, and the same strength of imagination and power of purpose devoted to purely material objects, might have raised up another multi-millionaire, or a mob-leader, or a self-seeking despot. But, as it happened, some grace was given to him, and the river has run another way. Opportunity, too, has played into his hands. He saw that the recognized and established Creeds scarcely touched the great, sordid, lustful, drink-sodden, poverty-steeped masses of the city populations of the world: that they were waiting for a teacher who could speak to them in a tongue they understood. He spoke, and some of them have listened: only a fraction it is true, but still some. More, as it chanced, he married a wife who entered into his thoughts, and was able to help to fulfil his aspirations, and from that union were born descendants who, for the most part, are fitted to carry on his labours. Further, like Loyola, and others, he has the power of rule, being a born leader of men, so that thousands obey his word without question in every corner of the earth, although some of these have never seen his face. Lastly, Nature endowed him with a striking presence that appeals to the popular mind, with a considerable gift of speech, with great physical strength and abounding energy, qualities which have enabled him to toil without ceasing and to travel far and wide. Thus it comes about that as truly as any man of our generation, when his hour is ended, he, too, I believe, should be able to say with a clear conscience, 'I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do': although his heart may add, 'I have not finished it as well as I could wish.' Now let me try to convey my personal impressions of this man. I see him in various conversations with myself, when he has thought that he could make use of me to serve his ever-present and impersonal ends, trying to add me up, wondering how far I was sincere, and to what extent I might be influenced by private objects; then, at last, concluding that I was honest in my own fashion, opening his heart little by little, and finally appealing to me to aid him in his labours. 'I like that man; _he understands me!_' I once heard him say, mentioning my name, and believing that he was thinking, not speaking. I tell this story merely to illustrate his habit of reflecting aloud, for as he spoke these words I was standing beside him. When I repeated it to his Officers, one of them remarked horrified:-- 'Good gracious! it might just as well have been something much less complimentary. One never knows what he will say.' He is an autocrat, whose word is law to thousands. Had he not been an autocrat indeed, the Salvation Army would not exist to-day, for it sprang from his brain like Minerva from the head of Jove, and has been driven to success by his single, forceful will. Yet this quality of masterfulness is tempered and illuminated by an unfailing sense of humour, which he is quite ready to exercise at his own expense. Thus, a few years ago he and I dined with the late Mr. Herring, and, as a matter of fact, although I had certain things to say on the matters under discussion, his flow of most interesting conversation did not allow me over much opportunity of saying them. It is hard to compete in words with one who has preached continually for fifty years! When General Booth departed to catch a midnight train, for the Continent I think, Mr. Herring went to see him to the door. Returning presently, much amused, he repeated their parting words, which were as follows:-- GENERAL BOOTH: 'A very good fellow Haggard; but a talker, you know, Herring, a talker!' MR. HERRING (looking at him): 'Indeed!' GENERAL BOOTH (laughing): 'Ah! Herring, you mean that it was _I_ who did the talking, not Haggard. Well, _perhaps I did_.' Some people think that General Booth is conceited. 'It is a pity that the old gentleman is so vain,' a highly-placed person once said to me. I answered that if he or I had done all that General Booth has done, we might be pardoned a little vanity. In truth, however, the charge is mistaken, for at bottom I believe him to be a very humble-minded man, and one who does not in the least overrate himself. This may be gathered, indeed, from the tenor of his remarks on the subject of his personal value to the Army, that I have recorded at the beginning of this book. What people of slower mind and narrower views may mistake for pride, in his case, I am sure, is but the impatient and unconscious assertiveness of superior power, based upon vision and accumulated knowledge. Also, as a general proposition, I believe vanity to be almost impossible to such a man. So far as my experience of life goes, that scarce creature, the innately, as distinguished from the accidentally eminent man, he who is fashioned from Nature's gold, not merely gilded by circumstance, is never vain. Such a man knows but too well how poor is the fruit of his supremest effort, how marred by secret weakness is what the world calls his strength, and when his gifts are in the balance, how hard it would be for any seeing judge to distinguish his success from common failure. It is the little pinchbeck man, whom wealth, accident, or cheap cleverness has thrust forward, who grows vain over triumphs that are not worth having, not the great doer of deeds, or the seer whose imagination is wide enough to enable him to understand his own utter insignificance in the scale of things. But to return to General Booth. Again I hear him explaining to me vast schemes, as yet unrealized, that lurk at the back of his vivid, practical, organizing brain. Schemes for settling tens of thousands of the city poor upon unoccupied lands in sundry portions of the earth. Schemes for great universities or training colleges, in which men and women might be educated to deal with the social problems of our age on a scientific basis. Schemes for obtaining Government assistance to enable the Army to raise up the countless mass of criminals in many lands, taking charge of them as they leave the jail, and by regenerating their fallen natures, saving them soul and body. In the last interview I had with him, I read to him a note I had made of a conversation which had taken place a few days before between Mr. Roosevelt and myself on the subject of the Salvation Army. Here is the note, or part of it. MR. ROOSEVELT: 'Why not make use of all this charitable energy, now often misdirected, for national ends?' MYSELF: 'What I have called "the waste forces of Benevolence." It is odd, Mr. Roosevelt, that we should both have come to that conclusion.' MR. ROOSEVELT: 'Yes, that's the term. You see the reason is that we are both sensible men who understand.' 'That is very important,' said General Booth, when he had heard this extract. '"Make use of all this charitable energy, now often misdirected for national ends!" Why not, indeed? Heaven knows it is often misdirected. The Salvation Army has made mistakes enough. If only that could be done it would be a great thing. But first we have got to make other people "understand" besides Roosevelt and yourself.' That, at least, was the sense of his words. Once more I see him addressing a crowded meeting of City men in London, on a murky winter afternoon. In five minutes he has gripped his audience with his tale of things that are new to most of them, quite outside of their experience. He lifts a curtain as it were, and shows them the awful misery that lies often at their very office doors, and the duty which is theirs to aid the fallen and the suffering. It is a long address, very long, but none of the hearers are wearied. At the end of it I had cause to meet him in his office about a certain matter. He had stripped off his coat, and stood in the red jersey of his uniform, the perspiration still streaming from him after the exertion of his prolonged effort in that packed hall. As he spoke he ate his simple meal of vegetables (mushrooms they were, I remember), and tea, for, like most of his family, he never touches meat. Either he must see me while he ate or not at all; and when there is work to be done, General Booth does not think of convenience or of rest; moreover, as usual, there was a train to catch. One of his peculiarities is that he seems always to be starting for somewhere, often at the other side of the world. Lastly, I see him on one of his tours. He is due to speak in a small country town. His Officers have arrived to make arrangements, and are waiting with the audience. It pours with rain, and he is late. At length the motors dash up through the mud and wet, and out of the first of them he appears, a tall, cloaked figure. Already that day he has addressed two such meetings besides several roadside gatherings, and at night he must speak to a great audience in a city fourteen miles away; also stop at this place and at that before he gets there, for a like purpose. He is to appear in the big city at eight, and already it is half-past three. Five minutes later he has been assisted on to the platform (for this was before his operation and he was almost blind), and for nearly an hour pours out a ceaseless flood of eloquence, telling the history of his Organization, telling of his life's work and of his heart's aims, asking for their prayers and help. He looks a very old man now, much older than when first I knew him, and with his handsome, somewhat Jewish face and long, white beard, a very type of some prophet of Israel. So Abraham must have looked, one thinks, or Jeremiah, or Elijah. But there is no weariness in his voice or his gestures; and, as he exhorts and prays, his darkening eyes seem to flash. It is over. He bids farewell to the audience that he has never seen before, and will never see again, invokes a fervent blessing on them, and presently the motors are rushing away into the wet night, bearing with them this burning fire of a man. Such are some of my impressions of William Booth, General of the Salvation Army. THE CHIEF OF THE STAFF No account of the Salvation Army would be complete without some words about Mr. Bramwell Booth, General Booth's eldest son and right-hand man, who in the Army is known as the Chief of the Staff. Being convinced of this, I sought an interview with him--the last of the many that I have had in connexion with the present work. In the Army Mr. Bramwell Booth is generally recognized as 'the power behind the throne.' He it is who, seated in his office in London, directs the affairs and administers the policy of this vast Organization in all lands; the care of the countless Salvation Army churches is on his shoulders, and has been for these many years. He does not travel outside Europe; his work lies chiefly at home. I understand, however, that he takes his share in the evangelical labours of the Army, and is a powerful and convincing speaker, although I have never chanced to hear any of his addresses. [Illustration: MR. BRAMWELL BOOTH, Chief of the Staff.] In appearance at his present age of something over fifty, he is tall and not robust, with an extremely sympathetic face that has about it little of his father's rugged cast and sternness. Perhaps it is this evident sympathy that commands the affection of so many, for I have been told more than once that he is the best beloved man in the Army, and one who never uses a stern word. I found him busy and pressed for time, even more so, if possible, than I was myself; he had but just arrived by an early train from some provincial city. In fact, he was then engaged upon his annual visitation to all the Field Officers in the country, which, as he explained, takes him away from London for three days a week for a period of six weeks, and throws upon him a considerable extra strain of mind and body. The diocese of the Salvation Army is very extensive! I said to Mr. Bramwell Booth that I desired from him his views of the Army as a religious and a social force throughout the wide world, in every land where it sets its foot. I wished to hear of the work considered as a whole, likewise of that work in its various aspects, and of the different races of mankind among which it is carried on. Also, amongst others, I put to him the following specific questions:-- In what way and by what means does the Army adapt itself to the needs and customs of the various peoples among whom it is established? What is its comparative measure of success with each of these peoples, and what future is anticipated for it among them respectively? Where is the work advancing, where does it hang in the balance, and where is it being driven backwards? What are your views upon the future of the Army as a religious and social power throughout the world, bearing in mind the undoubted difficulties with which it is confronted? Do you consider that now, after forty-five years of existence, it is, speaking generally, on the downward or on the upward grade? What information can you give me as to the position of the Army in its relations with other religious bodies? At this point Mr. Bramwell Booth inquired mildly how much time I had to spare. The result of my answer was that we agreed together that it was clearly impossible to deal with all these great matters in an interview. So it was decided that he should take time to think them over, and should furnish his replies in the form of a written memorandum. This he has done, and I may say without flattery that the paper which he has drawn up is one of the most clear and broad-minded that I have had the pleasure of reading for a long while. Since it is too long to be used as a quotation, I print it in an appendix,[7] trusting sincerely that all who are interested in the Salvation Army in its various aspects will not neglect its perusal. Indeed, it is a valuable and an authoritative document, composed by perhaps the only person in the world who, from his place and information, is equal to the task. Personally I venture upon neither criticism nor comment, whose rôle throughout all these pages is but that of a showman, although I trust one not altogether devoid of insight into the matter in hand. To only one point will I call attention--that of the general note of confidence which runs through Mr. Bramwell Booth's remarks. Clearly he at least does not believe that the Salvation Army is in danger of dissolution. Like his father, he believes that it will go on from good to good and from strength to strength. There remain, however, one or two other points that we discussed together to which I will allude. Thus I asked him if he had anything to say as to the attacks which from time to time were made upon the Army. He replied as his father had done: 'Nothing, except that they were best left to answer themselves.' Then our conversation turned to the matter of the resignation of certain Officers of the Army which had caused some passing public remark. 'We have an old saying here,' he said, with some humour, 'that we do not often lose any one whom we very much desire to keep.' I pointed out that I had heard allegations made to the effect that the Army Officers were badly paid, hardly treated, and, when they proved of no more use, let go to find a living as best they could. He replied that, as to the matter of money, the Army had established a Pension fund in all the Western countries, which now amounts to a large total. In this country the sum was about £44,000, and during 1909 about £1,800 had been paid here in pensions. This, however, was only a beginning, but he thought that the effort was being made on the right lines, and that, notwithstanding their poverty, a really adequate Pension fund would be built up in due course. Then of a sudden he became eloquent. He said he admitted that the Army had little to offer. Those who came into its service knew that this was so; that they had no hope of temporal reward; that thenceforth the great feature of their life and work was that it must be filled with labour and self-denial. The whole business of helping and saving our fellow-creatures was one of struggle and suffering. Sacrifice was the key-note of Christianity as laid down by its Founder. Those who sought money and temporal honour must look elsewhere than to the Salvation Army. Its pride and glory was that thousands were willing to suffer and deny themselves from year to year, and to find their joy and their recompense in the consciousness that they were doing something, however little, to lighten the darkness and relieve the misery of the world. Here are some of his actual words upon this matter that I will quote, as I cannot better them:-- 'The two facts of real consequence about our Officers are these: First, that their numbers go on increasing year by year, and second, that they remain devoted to their work, very poor, and absolutely bent on obtaining a reward in Heaven. But let me quote here from General Booth on this matter:-- '"I resolved that no disadvantage as to birth, or education, or social condition should debar any one from entering the list of combatants so long as he was one with me in love for God, in faith for the salvation of men, and in willingness to obey the orders he should receive from me and from those I authorized to direct him. I have, of course, had many disappointments--not a few of them very hard to bear at the time--but from the early days of 1868, when I engaged my first recognized helper, to 1878, when the number had increased by slow degrees to about 100, and on to the present day, when their number is rapidly approaching 20,000, there has not been a single year without its increase, not only in quantity, but in quality. '"I am sometimes asked, What about those who have left me? Well, I am thankful to say that we remain in sympathetic and friendly relations with the great bulk of them. It was to be expected that in work such as ours, demanding, as it does, not only arduous toil and constant self-denial and often real hardships of one kind or another, some should prove unworthy, some should grow weary, and others should faint by the way, whilst others again, though very excellent souls, should prove unsuitable. It could not be otherwise, for we are engaged in real warfare, and whoever heard of war without wounds and losses? But even of those who do thus step aside from the position of Officers, a large proportion--in this country nine out of ten--remain with us, engaged in some voluntary effort in our ranks."' 'But,' continued Mr. Bramwell Booth, 'I would be the last person to minimize our losses. They may be accounted for in the most natural way, and yet we cannot but feel them and suffer from them. And yet it is all just a repetition of the Bible stories of all ages; nay, of all stories of genuine fighting in any great cause. The great feature of our present experience in this matter is that the number who go out from us grows every year smaller in proportion to the whole, and that, as the General says in the above extract, a very large proportion of those continue in friendly relations with us. 'The triumph of these splendid men and women, in the face of every kind of difficulty in every part of the world is, however, really a triumph of their faith. It is not the Army, it is not their leaders, it is not even the wonderful devotion which many of them manifest, which is the secret of their continued life and continued success, nor is it any confidence in their own abilities. No! The true representative of the Army is relying at every turn upon the presence, guidance, and help of God in trying to carry out the Father's purpose with respect to every lost and suffering child of man. By that test, alike in the present and future, we must ever stand or fall. The Army is either a work of faith or it is nothing at all. 'Everything throughout all our ranks can really be brought to that test, and I regard with composure every loss and attack, every puzzle and danger, chiefly because I rely upon my comrades' trust in God being responded to by Him according to their need.' Perhaps I may be allowed to add a few remarks upon this subject. A great deal is made of the resignation of a few Salvation Army Officers in order that they may accept excellent posts in other walks of life; indeed, it is not uncommon to see it stated that such resignations herald the dissolution of the Society. Inasmuch as the number of the Army's Officers is nearing 20,000 it would seem that it can very well spare a few of them. What fills me with wonder is not that some go, but that so many remain. _This_ is one of the facts which, amongst much that is discouraging, convinces me of the innate nobility of man. An old friend of mine of pious disposition once remarked to me that _he_ could never have been a Christian martyr. At the first twist of the cord, or the first nip of the red-hot pincers, he was sure that _he_ would have thrown incense by the handful upon the altar of any heathen god or goddess that was fashionable at the moment. His spirit might have been willing, but his flesh would certainly have proved weak. I sympathized with the honesty of this confession, and in the same way I sympathize with those Officers of the Salvation Army who, in racing slang, cannot 'stay the course.' Let us consider the lot of these men. Any who have entered on even a secular crusade, something that takes them off the beaten, official paths, that leads them through the thorns and wildernesses of a new, untravelled country, towards some distant goal seen dimly, or not seen at all except in dreams, will know what such an undertaking means. It means snakes in the grass; it means savages, or in other words veiled and poisonous hatreds and bitter foes, or, still worse, treacherous friends. The crusader may get through, in which case no one will thank him except, perhaps, after he is dead. Or he may fail and perish, in which case every one will mock at him. Or he may retreat discouraged and return to the official road, in which case his friends will remark that they are glad to see that his insanity was only of the intermittent order, and that at length he has learned his place in the world and to whom he ought to touch his cap. Well, these are official roads to Heaven as well as to the House of Lords and other mundane goals, a fact which the Salvation Army Officer and others of his kind have probably found out. On the official road, if he has interest and ability--the first is to be preferred--he might have become anything, and with ordinary fortune would certainly have become something. But on the path that he has chosen what is there for him to gain? An inheritance of dim glory beyond the stars, obscured doubtless from time to time, if he is like other men, by sudden and sickening eclipses of his faith. And meanwhile the daily round, the insolent gibe, and the bitter ingratitude of men that leaves him grieving. Also not enough money to pay for a cab when it is wet, and considerable uncertainty as to the future of his children, and even as to his own old age. Few comforts for him, not even those of a glass of wine to stimulate him, or of tobacco to soothe his nerves, for these are forbidden to him by the rules of his Order. Unless he can reach the very top of his particular tree also, which it is most unlikely that he will, no public recognition even of his faithful, strenuous work, and who is there that at heart does not long for public recognition? In short, nothing that is desirable to man save the consciousness of a virtue which, after all, he must feel to be indifferent (being well aware of his own secret faults), and the satisfaction of having helped a certain number of lame human dogs over moral or physical stiles. In such a case and in a world which we must admit to be selfish and imperfect, the wonder is not that certain Salvation Army Officers, being trained men of high ability, yield to tempting offers and go, but that so many of them remain. 'Look at my case,' said one of them to me. 'With my experience and organizing ability I am worth £2,000 a year as the manager of any big business, and I could have it if I liked. Here I get about £200!' This was one of those who remain. I say all honour to such noble souls, for surely they are of the salt of the earth. NOTE ON THE RELIGION OF THE SALVATION ARMY The religious faith of the Salvation Army, as I have observed and understand it (for little has been said to me on this matter), is extremely simple. It believes in an eternal Heaven for the righteous and--a sad doctrine this, some of us may think--in a Hell, equally eternal, for the wicked.[8] Its bedrock is the Bible, especially the New Testament, which it accepts as true without qualification, from the first word to the last, troubling itself with no doubts or criticisms. Especially does it believe in the dual nature of the Saviour, in Christ as God, and in Christ as man, and in the possibility of forgiveness and redemption for even the most degraded and defiled of human beings. Love is its watchword, the spirit of love is its spirit, love arrayed in the garments of charity. In essentials, with one exception, its doctrines much resemble those of the Church of England, and of various dissenting Protestant bodies. The exception is, that it does not make use of the Sacraments, even of that of Communion, although, on the other hand, it does not deny the efficacy of those Sacraments, or object to others, even if they be members of the Army, availing themselves of them. Thus, I have known an Army Officer to join in the Communion Service. The reason for this exception is, I believe, that in the view of General Booth, the Sacraments complicate matters, are open to argument and attack, and are not understood by the majority of the classes with which the Army deals. How their omission is reconciled with certain prominent passages and directions laid down in the New Testament I do not know. To me, I confess, this disregard of them seems illogical. The motto of the Army is 'Salvation for all,' and, as I have hinted in these pages, it has a sure conviction of the essential persistence of miracle in these modern days. It holds that when a man kneels at the Penitent-Form and 'gets converted,' a miracle takes place within him, if his repentance is true, and that thenceforward some Grace from on High will give him the power to overcome the evil in his heart and blood. It believes, too, in the instant efficacy of earnest prayer, and in the possibility of direct communication by this means between man and his Maker. Here is an instance of this statement. While inspecting the Shelters in one of the provincial cities, I was shown a certain building which had recently passed into the possession of the Army. The Officer who was conducting me said that the negotiations preliminary to the acquisition of the lease of this building had been long and difficult. I remarked that these must have caused him anxiety. 'Oh, no,' he answered, simply. 'You see I had talked with the Lord about it, and I knew that we should get the place in the end.' This reply may cause some to smile, but I confess I find such childlike faith touching and even beautiful. There is small doubt that consciously or unconsciously, the Salvation Army has followed St. Paul's example of being all things to all men, if 'by all means' it may save some. This is the reason of its methods which to many seem so vulgar and offensive. Once I spoke to an Officer high up in the Army of this matter, instancing, amongst other things, its brass bands and loud-voiced preaching at street corners. 'My dear sir,' he replied, 'if we came to convert _you_, we should not bring a brass band or send a missionary who shouted out sacred names every minute. Possibly, if we thought that you were open to the influences of music, we might send a first-rate violinist to play pieces from the classical masters, and we should certainly send a man whom we knew to be your intellectual equal, and who could therefore appeal to your reason. But our mission at present is not so much to you and your class, as to the dregs of humanity. The folk we deal with live in a state of noise of which you have no conception, and if we want to force them to listen to us, we must begin by making a greater noise in order to attract their attention at all. In the same way it is of no use wasting subtleties on them; we have to go straight to the main points, which are clear and sharp enough to pierce their drink-besotted intelligences, or to reach any fragment of conscience they may have remaining in them.' I thought the argument sound and well put, and results have proved its force, since the Salvation Army undoubtedly gets a hold of people that few other forms of religious effort seem able to grasp, at least to any considerable extent. I wish to make it clear, however, that I hold no particular brief for the Army, its theology, and its methods. I recognize fully, as I know it does, the splendid work that is being done in the religious and social fields by other Organizations of the same class, especially by Dr. Barnardo's Homes, by the Waifs and Strays Society, by the Church Army, and, above all, perhaps, by another Society, with which I have had the honour to be connected in a humble capacity for many years, that for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Still it remains true that the Salvation Army is unique, if only on account of the colossal scale of its operations. Its fertilizing stream flows on steadily from land to land, till it bids fair to irrigate the whole earth. What I have written about is but one little segment of a work which flourishes everywhere, and even lifts its head in Roman Catholic countries, although in these, as yet, it makes no very great progress. How potent then, and how generally suited to the needs of stained and suffering mankind, must be that religion which appeals both to the West and to the East, which is as much at home in Java and Korea as it is in Copenhagen or Glasgow. For it should be borne in mind that the basis of the Salvation Army is religious, that it aims, above everything, at the conversion of men to an active and lively faith in the plain, uncomplicated tenets of Christianity to the benefit of their souls in some future state of existence and, incidentally, to the Reformation of their characters while on earth. The social work of which I have been treating is a mere by-product or consequence of its main idea. Experience has shown, that it is of little use to talk about his soul to a man with an empty stomach. First, he must be fed and cleansed and given some other habitation than the street. Also the Army has learned that Christ still walks the earth in the shape of Charity; and that religion, after all, is best preached by putting its maxims into practice; that the poor are always with us; and that the first duty of the Christian is to bind their wounds and soothe their sorrows. Afterwards, he may hope to cure them of their sins, for he knows that unless such a cure is effected, temporal assistance avails but little. Except in cases of pure misfortune which stand upon another, and, so far as the Army work is concerned, upon an outside footing, the causes of the fall must be removed, or that fall will be repeated. The man or woman must be born again, must be regenerated. Such, as I understand it, is at once the belief of the Salvation Army and the object of all its efforts. Therefore, I give to this book its title of 'Regeneration.' THE NEED IS GREAT! * * * * * _The principal items of the Salvation Army's expenditure for Social Work during the financial year ending September 30, 1911, are as follows, and help is earnestly asked to meet these, the work being entirely dependent upon Voluntary Gifts_. For Maintenance of Work amongst the Destitute and Outcast Men and Women, including Shelters for Homeless Men and Women, Homes for Children, Rescue Homes, etc..................................... £15,000 For Maintenance of the Slum Sisterhood and Nurses for the Sick Poor..................................... £3,000 For Prison Visitation Staff and Prison-Gate Work........ £5,000 For Work among Youths and Boys.......................... £2,000 For Special Relief and Distress Agencies................ £5,000 For Development of the Work and Agricultural Departments of the Hadleigh Colony.................... £3,000 For Assistance and Partial Maintenance of the Unemployed and Inefficient............................ £5,000 For Assisting suitable Men and Women to Emigrate........ £3,000 Towards the provision of New Institutions for Men and Boys in London and various provincial Cities...... £10,000 For the General Management and Supervision of all the above Operations.................................. £2,000 ------- £53,000 Cheques and Postal Orders should be made payable to WILLIAM BOOTH, crossed 'Bank of England, Law Courts Branch,' and sent to MRS. BOOTH, 101 Queen Victoria Street, London, E.C. Clothes for the poor and articles for sale are always needed. LEGACIES * * * * * Ladies and Gentlemen are earnestly asked to remember the needs of the Salvation Army's Social Work (the 'Darkest England' Social Scheme), in connexion with the preparation of their wills. * * * * * All kinds of property can now be legally bequeathed for charitable purposes, and the following form of legacy is recommended. Where a legacy does not consist of a certain amount of money, care should be taken to identify clearly the property, shares, stock, or whatever it may be intended to be bequeathed. _'I GIVE AND BEQUEATH TO WILLIAM BOOTH, or other the General for the time being of the Salvation Army, and Director of the "Darkest England" Social Scheme, the sum of £............_ (or) _MY TWO freehold houses known as Nos.......... in the county of................_ (or) _my £............ ordinary stock of the London and North-Western Railway Company_ (or) _my shares in............Limited_ (or as the case may be) _to be used or applied by him, at his discretion, for the general purposes of the "Darkest England" Social Scheme. And I direct the said last-mentioned Legacy to be paid within twelve months after my decease.'_ * * * * * DIRECTIONS FOR EXECUTION OF WILL * * * * * The Will must be executed by the Testator in the presence of two witnesses, who must sign their names, addresses, and occupations at the end of the Will in the presence of the Testator. The best method to adopt for a Testator to be quite sure that his Will is executed properly, is for him to take the Will and his two witnesses into a room, lock the door, and tell the witnesses that he wishes them to attest his Will. All three must sign in the room and nobody must go out until all have signed. GENERAL BOOTH will always be pleased to procure further advice for any friends desiring to benefit the Salvation Army's work in any of its departments, by Will or otherwise, and will treat any communications made to him on the subject as strictly private and confidential. Letters dealing with the matter should be marked Private, and addressed to GENERAL BOOTH, 101 QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, LONDON, E.C. APPENDIX A NOTES ON THE ARMY'S FUTURE (Following My Conversation with Mr. Rider Haggard) BY BRAMWELL BOOTH When asked to give my own view of the present and probable future influence of the Salvation Army upon the world, I feel in no danger of exaggeration. If any one could imagine what it has been for me to sit at its centre almost without intermission for more than thirty-five years, receiving continual reports of its development and progress in one nation after another, studying from within not only its strength and vitality, but its weaknesses and failures, and labouring to devise remedies and preventatives, until what was a little unknown Mission in the East End of London has become the widely, I might almost say, the universally recognized Army of to-day, he could perhaps understand something of my great confidence. Curious indeed seem to be the thoughts of many people about us!--people, I mean, who have only had a glance at one of our open-air meetings, or have only heard some wild challenge of General Booth's good faith, and have then more or less carefully avoided any closer acquaintance with us. They often appear to be under the impression that you have only to persuade a few people to march through any crowded thoroughfare with a band, to gather a congregation, and, if you please, to form out of it an Army, and from that again to secure a vast revenue! I often wish that such people could know the struggles of almost every individual, even amongst the very poorest, between the moment of first contact with us and that of resolving to enlist in our ranks. How few, even now, seem aware of the fact that so far from paying or rewarding any one for joining in our efforts, all who do so are from the first called upon daily not only to give to our funds, but by sacrifice of time, labour, money, and often of health as well, to constitute themselves efficient soldiers of their Corps, and assist in providing it with every necessity. Every one of the 3,000,000 meetings held annually, even in this country, depends upon the voluntary giving up of the time and effort of working-men and women who have in most cases to hurry from work to home, and from home to meeting-place, after a hard day's labour. Much the same may be said of the 450,000 meetings held annually on the Continent of Europe; with this difference, that our people there have mostly to begin work earlier in the day, and to conclude much later than is the case here. Their evening meetings, in conformity with the habits of the country concerned, must needs be begun, therefore, later, and conclude much later than similar gatherings in the United Kingdom. A cursory glance through the seventy-four newspapers and periodicals published by the Army--generally weekly--in twenty-one languages, would show any one how variously our people everywhere are seeking to meet the different habits of life in each country, and how constantly new plans are being tried to attain the supreme object of all our multitudinous agencies--the arousing of men's attention to the claims of God and their ingathering to His Kingdom. The original plan adopted in this country of going to the people by means of meetings and marches in the streets, is in many lands not legally permissible, while in others it is almost useless. Our leaders, therefore, have always to be finding out other means of attaining the same end. This has resulted in very great gains of liberty in several ways. On the Continent, for example, though it is not possible to get a general permission to hold open-air meetings in the streets, it is becoming more and more usual to let our people hold such gatherings in the large pleasure-grounds, provided within or on the outskirts both of the great cities and the lesser towns. In some cases the announcements of further meetings, made somewhat after the style of the public crier, develops into a series of short open-air addresses. In other cases, conspicuously in Italy, where our work is only as yet in its infancy--the sale of our paper, both by individual hawkers and by groups of comrades singing the songs it contains in marketplaces, largely makes up for the want of the more regularized open-air work. And in the courts of the great blocks of buildings which abound in cities like Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and elsewhere, meetings are held which are really often more effective in impressing whole families of various classes than any of our open-air proceedings in countries like England and the United States. But everywhere the Army seeks especially, though not by any means exclusively, for those who are to be found frequenting the public-houses, cafes, beer gardens, dives, saloons, and other drinking-places of the world. In all countries our people sell our papers amidst these crowds, as well as at the doors of the theatres and other places of amusement, and the mere offer of these papers, now that their unflinching character as to God and goodness is well known, constitutes an act of war, a submission to which in so many million cases is no slight evidence of confidence among the masses of the people in our sincerity, and, so far, a sign of our success. But 'The War Cry' seller is in the countries of more scattered population, such as Switzerland, some of the colonies, and large parts of India, much more than is the case in the big cities, the representative of every form of helpfulness. He, or she, not merely offers the paper for sale to those who have neither opportunity nor inclination to attend religious services of any kind, but enters himself where no paper ever comes, holds little meetings with groups of those who have never prayed, heartens those who are sinking down under pressure of calamity, visits the sick-room of the friendless, and often becomes the intermediary of the suffering and destitute and those who can help them in their dismal necessities. Of the persistent hopefulness with which our people everywhere go to the apparently abandoned, I will only say that it constitutes a store of moral and material help, not only for those people themselves, but for all who become acquainted with it, the value of which in the present it is difficult to exaggerate, and the influence of which on the future it is equally difficult to over-estimate. While leaving the utmost possible freedom for initiative to our leaders, we are seeking everywhere to solidify and regularize every effort that has once been shown to be of any practical use. Any one amongst us, down to the youngest and poorest in any part of the world, may do a new thing next week which will prove a blessing to his fellows, and some one will be on the watch to see that that good thing, once done, be repeated, and, so far as may be, kept up in perpetuity. Where special classes of needs exist, we must of course employ special agencies. The vitality and adaptability of the Army in the presence of new opportunities is one of the happy auguries for the future. While all that is virile and forceful in it increases, there is less and less of the rigid and formal. Fourteen or fifteen years ago some Officers were set apart to visit the Lapps who range over all the Territories to the north of Scandinavia. This meant at first only months of solitary travelling during the summer, and no little suffering in the winter, with little apparent result. But gradually a system of meetings was established, the people's confidence was gained, and at length it has been found possible to group together various centres of regular activity amongst these interesting but little-known people, and now experienced leaders will see both to the permanence of all that has already been begun, and to the further extension of the work. In Holland, where our work has assumed the proportions of a national movement, the beneficent effects of which are recognized by all classes, the canal population is helped by means of a small sailing ship, on which are held regular meetings for them. Our Norwegian people also have a life-boat called the _Catherine Booth_ stationed upon a stormy and difficult part of the coast, which not only goes out to help into safety boats and boats' crews, but whose crew also holds meetings on islands in remote fisher hamlets where no other religious visitors come. The same principle of adaptation to local conditions and requirements will, I doubt not, quickly ensure success for the small detachment of Officers we have just sent to commence operations in Russia. In Dutch India we have not only a growing Missionary work amongst both Javanese and Chinese, but Government Institutions have been placed under our care, where lepers, the blind, and other infirm natives, as well as neglected children, are medically cared for and helped in other ways. In South Africa, both English and Dutch-speaking peoples are united under one Flag, and give themselves up to work amongst the native races round them--races which constitute so grave a problem in the eyes of all thoughtful men who know anything of the true position in South Africa. One of the latest items of news is that an Angoni has accepted salvation at one of our settlements in Mashonaland, and on return to his own home and work--lying away between Lake Nyassa and the Zambezi--has begun to hold meetings and to exercise an influence upon his people which cannot but end in the establishment of our work amongst them. But, to my mind, one of the most important features of our work in all Eastern and African lands is our development of the native power under experienced guidance to purely Salvationist and therefore non-political purposes. Surely the most potent possible corrective for the sort of half rebel influence that has grown or is growing up in Africa under the name of Ethiopianism, as well as for much of the strange uneasiness among the dumb masses of India, is the complete organization of native races under leaders who, whilst of their own people, are devoted to the highest ethical aims, and stand in happy subjection to men of other lands who have given them a training in discipline and unity which does not contemplate bloodshed. We are now beginning both in India and Africa, as well as in the West Indies, to find experienced native Officers capable of taking Staff positions; that is, of becoming reliable leaders in large districts where we are at work. These men have not merely all the advantages of language and of fitness for the varieties of climate which are so trying to Westerners, but they show a courage and tenacity and tact--in short, a capacity for leadership and administration such as no one--at any rate, no one that I know of--expected to find in them. Here is opened a prospect of the highest significance. More than can be easily estimated has been done in spreading information about us for some years past by Salvationists belonging to various national armies and navies. We encourage all such men to group themselves into brigades, so far as may be allowed, in their various barracks and ships. Thus united, they work for their mutual encouragement, and for the spreading of good influences among others. It was such a little handful that really began our work in the West Indies, and we have now a Corps in Sierra Leone, on the west coast of Africa, formed by men of a West Indian regiment temporarily quartered there. The same thing has happened in Sumatra by means of Dutch and Javanese soldiers. For British India we naturally felt ourselves first of all, as to the heathen world, under obligation to do something. And no inconsiderable results have followed the efforts which were first commenced there twenty-eight years ago. Our pioneers, though they greatly disturbed the official white world, won the hearts of the people at a stroke, by wearing Indian dress, living amongst and in the style of the poorer villages. Soon Indian converts offered themselves for service, and after training; were commissioned as Officers, and it was at once seen that they would be far more influential than any foreigners. From the point at which that discovery was really made, the work assumed important proportions, passing at once in large measure from the position of a foreign mission to being a movement of the people themselves. The vastness of the country and the difference of language have led to our treating it as five separate commands, now under the general lead of one headquarters. Incidentally, this has helped us in dealing with some of the difficulties connected with caste, as it has been possible to remove Indian Officers from one part of India to another, and we have made some efforts which have, I admit, proved less successful in some districts than in others, to deal with castes which, within their own lines, are often little more than Trade Unions with a mixture of superstition. Meanwhile, the practical character of our work has shown itself in efforts to help in various ways the lowest of the people to improve their circumstances. The need for this is instantly apparent when one reflects that some 40,000,000 of the inhabitants of India are always hungry. A system of loan banks, which has now been adopted in part by the Government, has been of great service to the small agriculturalists. The invention of an extremely simple and yet greatly improved hand loom has proved, and will prove, very valuable to the weavers. New plans of relief in times of scarcity and famine have also greatly helped in some districts to win the confidence of the people. Industrial schools, chiefly for orphan children, have also been a feature of the work in some districts. Recently the Government, having seen with what success our people have laboured for the salvation of the lower castes, have decided to hand over to us the special care of several of the criminal tribes, who are really the remnants of the Aborigines. Although this work is at present only in its experimental stage, all who have examined the results so far have been delighted at the rapidity with which we have brought many into habits of self-supporting industry, who, with their fathers before them, had been accustomed to live entirely by plunder. About 2,000 persons of this class are already under our care. There are some 3,000,000 of these robbers in different parts of India. They are only kept under anything like control at great cost for police and military supervision; but we are satisfied that, if reasonable support be given, a great proportion of them can be reclaimed from their present courses of idleness and crime, and in any case their children can be saved. We have been able in India, perhaps more than in any other part of the world, to realize the international character of our work by linking together Officers from England, Germany, Holland, and the Scandinavian countries, as well as from America, in the one great object of helping the heathen peoples. But most of all we have rejoiced in being able to blend East and West, European Officers having often been placed under more experienced Indian comrades, as well as vice versa. The great common purpose dominating all sections of the Army, and the influences of the Spirit of God, have united men of different levels of intelligence, and knit them together in the same fellowship, without any unwise mingling of races. We have now 2,000 Officers in India, and that alone is a testimony of the highest significance to the success of our efforts, and to the possibilities which lie before us. But even more important in its bearing upon the future, in my estimation, is the wonderful ambition dominating our people there to reach every class, but most of all to deal with the low caste, or outcast, as they are sometimes called. Many of our Indian Officers have followed in the steps of our pioneers in the country, and, consumed by an enthusiasm amounting to a passion for their fellows, have literally sacrificed their lives in the ceaseless pressing forward of their work. In America we have had to deal, perhaps, with the other extreme of human needs. Throughout Canada there is very little to be seen of poverty and wretchedness. In the United States the great cities begin indeed to have areas of vice and misery not to be surpassed in any of the older cities of the world. But everywhere we have found people who have become forgetful of God, neglectful of every higher duty, and abandoned to one or other form of selfishness. Our work in the United States especially has been confronted with difficulties peculiar to the country, its widespread populations and their cosmopolitan character being not the least of these. Nevertheless, we have now in the States and Canada nearly 4,000 Officers leading the work in 1,380 Corps and Societies, and 350 Social Institutions. I ought to say that it has not been found easy to raise large numbers in many places, but of the generosity and devotion of those who have united themselves with us, and the immense amount of work which they accomplish for their fellows, it is impossible to speak too highly. I look with confidence to the future in both these great countries. Governments and local Authorities are beginning to grant us the facilities and help we need to deal effectually with their abandoned classes, as well as to attack some other problems of a difficult nature. Within the last few years, we have placed in Canada more than 50,000 emigrants, chiefly from this country. Their characteristics, and their success in their new surroundings, have won for us the highest commendation of the Authorities concerned. In the vast fields of South America, we have as yet only small forces, but we have established a good footing with the various populations, and have already received no inconsiderable help for our purely philanthropic work from several of the Governments. Our latest new extensions, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru, and Panama, seem to offer prospects of success, even greater than we have been able to record in the Argentine or Uruguay. Before your book is published, we shall probably have made a beginning also in both Bolivia and Brazil. The South American Republics--chiefly populated by the descendants of the poorest classes of Southern Europe--are professedly Roman Catholic. The influence of the priesthood, however, owing to various causes, seems to be on the wane, and a habit of abandoning all religious thought is much on the increase. But the realization that our people never attack any Church, or quibble about details of creed and ceremonial, has won their way to the hearts of many, and there can be no doubt that we have a great future amongst these peoples. In Peru the law does not allow any persons not of the Romish Church to offer prayer in public places, but when it was found that our Officers made no trouble of this, but managed all the same to hold open-air and theatre services very much in our usual style, great numbers of the people were astonished at the 'new religion,' and so many had soon begun to pray 'in private' that we have little doubt about the future of our work there. In thinking of the future, I cannot overlook our plans of organization which have, I am persuaded, much to do with the proper maintenance and continuance of the work we have taken in hand. While striving as much as possible to avoid red tape, or indeed any methods likely to hinder initiative and enterprise, we are careful to apply a systemization comprehensible to the most untrained minds, so that we may make every one feel a proper degree of responsibility, as well as guard them from mere emotionalism and spasmodic activity, accompanied as that kind of thing often is, by general neglect. Thus no one can join the Army until after satisfying the local Officer and some resident of the place during a period of trial of the sincerity of his profession. He must then sign our Articles of War. These Articles describe precisely our doctrines, our promise to abstain from intoxicants, worldly pleasures, and fashions, bad or unworthy language, or conduct, and unfairness to either employer or employé, as well as our purpose to help and benefit those around us. (See Appendix B.) Some local voluntary worker becomes responsible for setting each recruit a definite task in connexion with our efforts, and all are placed under the general oversight of their Captain. A Corps, which is the unit of our Organization, is organized under a Captain and Lieutenant who have been trained in the work they have to do as leaders. Corps are linked together into divisions under Officers, who, in addition to seeing that they regularly carry out their work, have the oversight of a considerable tract of country, with the duty of extending our operations within that area. In some countries a number of divisions are sometimes grouped into provinces with an Officer in charge of the whole province, and each country has its national headquarters under a Territorial Commissioner, all being under the lead of the International Headquarters in London. No time is wasted in committee-ing or debating amongst us, and yet in all matters of finance and property there is such arrangement that several individuals are cognizant of every detail, and that no one person's fault or neglect shall necessarily involve permanent injury or loss. The central accounts in each country, including those in London, are under the care of public auditors; but we have also our own International Audit Department, whose representatives visit every headquarters from time to time, so as to make sure, not only that the accounts are kept on our approved system, but that all expenditure is rigidly criticized. All who really look into our financial methods are impressed by their economy and precision. The fact is that almost all our people have been well schooled in poverty. They have learned the value of pence. All this seems to me to have great importance in connexion with estimates of our future. On the one hand we are ever seeking to impress on all our people the supreme need of God's spirit of love and life and freedom, without whose presence the most carefully managed system could not but speedily grow cold and useless. But at the same time, we insist that the service of God, however full of love and gladness, ought to be more precise, more regular, nay, more exacting than that of any inferior master. II As to your question whether we are generally making progress, I think I can say that, viewing the whole field of activity, and taking into account every aspect of the work, the Army is undoubtedly on the up-grade. Naturally progress is not so rapid in one country as another, nor is it always so marked in one period as in another in particular countries, nor is it always so evident in some departments of effort as in others; but speaking of the whole, there is, as indeed there has been from the very beginnings, steady advance. In some countries, of course, there is more rapid development of our purely evangelistic propaganda, while in others our philanthropic agencies are more active. Progress in human affairs is generally tidal. It has been so with us. A period of great outward activity is sometimes followed by one of comparative rest, and in the same way the spirit of advance in one department sometimes passes from that for a time to others. A period of great progress in all kinds of pioneer work, for example in Germany, is just now being followed there by one of consolidation and organization. A time of enormous advance in all our departments of charitable effort in the United States is now being succeeded by a wonderful manifestation of purely spiritual fervour and awakening. In this, the old country, our very success has in some ways militated against our continued advance at the old rate of progress. Not only has much ground already been occupied, but innumerable agencies, modelled outwardly, at least, after those we first established, have sprung into existence, and are working on a field of effort which was at one time largely left to us. And yet during the last five years the Army has enormously strengthened its hold on the confidence of all classes of the people here, increased its numbers, developed in a remarkable degree its internal organization, greatly added to its material resources, as well as maintained and extended its offering of men and money for the support of the work in heathen countries. But even in places where we have appeared to be stagnant, in the sense of not undertaking any new aggressive activities, we are constantly making as a part of our regular warfare new captures from the enemy of souls, maintaining the care of congregations and people linked with us, working at full pressure our social machinery, training the children for future labour, raising up men and women to go out into the world as missionaries of one kind or another, and doing it all while carrying on vigorous efforts to bring to those who are most needy in every locality both material and spiritual support. Like all aggressive movements, the Army is, of course, peculiarly subject to loss of one kind or another. That arising from the removals of its people alone constitutes a serious item. Any one who knows anything of religious work amongst the working-classes will understand how great a loss may be caused--even where the population is, generally speaking, increasing--by the removal of one or two zealous local leaders. But such losses are trifling compared with those which follow from some stoppage of employment when large numbers of workmen must either migrate or starve. Similar results often occur from the change of leadership. The removal of our Officers from point to point, and even from country to country, is one of our most indispensable needs; but, of course, we have to pay for it, chiefly in the dislocation and discouragements and losses which it often necessarily entails. So far from such variations being in any way discreditable to us, we think them one of the most valuable tests of the vitality and courage of our people, both Officers and Soldiers, that they fight on unflinchingly under such circumstances--fight on happily, to prove that while fluctuations of this character are very trying, they often also open the way both to the wider diffusion of our work elsewhere and to the breaking up of entirely new ground in the old centres. In brief, it is with us at all times a real warfare wherein triumphs can only be secured at the cost of struggles that are very often painful and unpleasant. You cannot have the aggression, the advance, the captures of war without the change, the alarms, the cost, the wounds, the losses, which are inseparable from it. A very striking and thoughtful description of some of the work done at one of our London Corps has recently been issued by a well-known writer. I refer to 'Broken Earthenware,' by Mr. Harold Begbie. No one can read the book without being impressed by the sense of personal insight which it reveals. But how few take in its main lesson, that the Army is in every place going on, not only with the recovery but with the development of broken men and women into more and more capable and efficient servants and rescuers of their fellows. That this should be so is remarkable enough as applied to Westerners, broken by evil habits and more or less surrounded by wreckage, but how much more valuable when applied to the teeming populations of the East! There in so many cases there is no past of criminality or even of vice as we understand it to forget, but only an infancy of darkness and ignorance as to Christ and the liberty He brings. Many of our best Indian Officers have been snatched from one form or other of outrageous selfishness, but thousands of our people there are gradually emerging from what is really the prolonged childhood of a race to see and know how influential the light of God can make even them amongst their fellows. Ten years ago in Japan a Salvationist Officer was a strange if not an unknown phenomenon, but with every increase of the Christian and Western influences in that country, every capable witness to Christ becomes, quite apart from any effort of his own, a much more noticed, consulted, and imitated example than he was before. In Korea, after a couple of years' effort, we have seen most striking results of our work, and have just sent, to work among their own people, our first twenty married Koreans, after a preliminary period of training for Officership. It is most difficult to realize the revolution involved in the whole outlook on life to men who have been looked upon as little more than serfs, without any prospect of influence in their country. The same processes of inner and outer development which have made of the unknown English workman or workwoman of twenty years ago, the recognized servants of the community, welcomed everywhere by mayors and magistrates to help in the service of the poor, will, out of the clever Oriental, I believe, far more rapidly develop leaders in the new line of Christian improvement in every sphere of life. It is considerations such as these which make me say sometimes that the danger in the Army is not in the direction of magnifying, but rather of minimizing the influences that are carrying us upward and outward in every part of the world. But in our own estimation there is another reason which perhaps equals all these for calculating upon a wider development of the Army's future influence. During the last twenty years we have been pressing forward amongst a very large number of Church and missionary efforts. Our speakers have notoriously been amongst the most unlearned and ungrammatical, and therefore often despised, while so many thousands of university men were preaching and writing of Christ. But no one now disputes the fact that the old-fashioned proclamation of the doctrine of Jesus Christ as a Divine Saviour of the lost has largely gone out of fashion. The influence of the priest, of the clerk in holy orders, of the minister, has been so largely undermined that candidates for the ministry are becoming scarce in many Churches, just while we are seeing them arise in steadily increasing numbers from among the very people who know the Army and its work best, and who have most carefully observed the demands of sacrifice and labour it makes upon its leaders. One cannot but rejoice when one hears ever and anon of some conference or congress at which various efforts are made to recover, at any rate, the appearance of a forward movement in the Churches. But the most serious fact of all, perhaps, is the mixture amongst these Christianizing plans, whether in one country or another, of the unbelieving leaven, so that it is possible for men to go forth as the emissaries of Christianity who have ceased to believe in the Divine nature of its Founder, and who look for success rather to schemes of education and of social and temporal improvement than to that new creation of man by God's power, wherein lies all our hope, as indeed it must be the hope of every true servant of Christ. But I call attention to these facts not to reproach any Church. Far from it. I simply desire to point out one reason for thinking ourselves justified in anticipating for the Army a future influence far beyond anything we have yet experienced. Recent 'defences' of Christian revelation have, in our view, been far more seriously damaging than any attacks that have ever been made from the hostile camp. In the hope--a vain hope--of conciliating opposition, there has too often been a timid surrender of much that can alone give authority to Christian testimony. If Jesus Christ was not competent to decide the truth or untruth of the Divine revelation, which He fully and constantly endorsed as such, how absurd it is to suppose that any eulogies of His character can save Him from the just contempt of all fearless thinkers, no matter to what nationality they belong. The Army finds itself already, and every year seems more and more likely to find itself, the only firm and unalterable witness to the truth of Christ and of His redeeming work in many neighbourhoods and districts, among them even some wide stretches of Christian territory. And the times can only bring upon us, it seems to me, more and more the scrutiny of all who wish to know whether the declarations of the Scriptures as to God's work in men are or are not reliable. This, then, however melancholy the reflection may be--and to me it is in some aspects melancholy indeed--assures to us a future of far wider importance and influence than any we have dreamed of in the past. Our strength, as your book eloquently shows, in dealing with the deepest sunken, the forgotten, the outcasts of society, the pariahs and lepers of modern life; has ever been our absolute certainty with regard to Christ's love and power to help them. How much greater must of necessity be the value and influence of our testimony where the very existence of Christ and His salvation becomes a matter of doubt and dispute! Here, at any rate, is one reason which leads me to believe that the Salvation Army has before it a future of the highest moment to the world. III In relation to other religious bodies, our position is marvellously altered from the time when they nearly all, if not quite all, denounced us. I do not think that any of the Churches in any part of the world do this now, although no doubt individuals here and there are still bitterly hostile to us. In the United States and in many of the British Colonies the Churches welcome our help, and generally speak well of our work; and even many Roman Catholic leaders, as well as authorities of the Jewish faith, may be included in this statement. On the Continent there are signs that they are slowly turning the same way. Now, I confidently expect a steady extension of this feeling towards us as the Churches come more and more to recognize that we not only do not attack them, but that we are actually auxiliaries to their forces, not only gaining our audiences and recruits from those who are outside their ministrations, but even serving them by doing work for their adherents which for a variety of reasons they find it very difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish themselves. At the same time it would be a mistake to think that we have any desire to adopt any of their methods or ceremonials. We keep everywhere to our simple and non-ecclesiastical habits, and while we certainly have some very significant and impressive ceremonials of our own, the way our buildings are fitted, the style of our songs and music, and the character of our prayers and public talking are everywhere entirely distinctive, and are nowhere in any danger of coming into serious competition with the worship adopted by the Churches. Some of our leading Officers think that in one respect our relations to the Churches, their pastors, and people are unsatisfactory. In the United States it is customary for the clergy and leaders of every Church to treat our leaders with the most manifest sympathy and respect. But there is far too marked a contrast between that treatment and that which we receive in many other countries. There are, of course, splendid exceptions. Still few members of any Church are willing to be seen in active association with us. I daresay this is very largely a question of class or caste, and I am very far from making it a matter of complaint. We would, in fact, far rather that our people should be regarded as outcasts, than that they should be tempted to tone down the directness of their witness, or that they should come under the influence of those uncertainties and misgivings to which I have already made reference. Nevertheless, it is certainly no wish of ours that there should remain any distance between us and any true followers of Christ by whatever name they may be called. And so we keep firmly, even where it may seem difficult or impolitic to do so, to our original attitude of entire friendliness with all those who name the Name of Christ. I give a few figures bearing upon the present extent of our operations:-- Number of Countries and Colonies occupied by the Salvation Army 56 Languages in which the Work is carried on 33 Corps, Circles, and Societies of Salvationists 8,768 Number of persons wholly supported by and employed in Salvation Army Work 21,390 Of those, with Rank 16,220 Without Rank 5,170 Number of Training Colleges for Officers and workers 35 Providing accommodation for 1,866 SOCIAL OPERATIONS.-- Number of Institutions 954 Number of Officers and Cadets employed 2,573 Number of Local Officers, voluntary and unpaid 60,260 NUMBER OF PERIODICALS 74 These Periodicals are published in twenty-one languages, and have a total circulation per issue of about one million copies. APPENDIX B THE SALVATION ARMY'S ARTICLES OF WAR HAVING received with all my heart the salvation offered to me by the tender mercy of Jehovah, I do here and now publicly acknowledge God to be my Father and King, Jesus Christ to be my Saviour, and the Holy Spirit to be my Guide, Comforter, and Strength; and that I will, by His help, love, serve, worship, and obey this glorious God through time and through eternity, BELIEVING solemnly that the Salvation Army has been raised up by God, and is sustained and directed by Him, I do here declare my full determination, by God's help, to be a true Soldier of the Army till I die. I am thoroughly convinced of the truth of the Army's teaching. I believe that repentance towards God, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and conversion by the Holy Spirit are necessary to salvation, and that all men may be saved. I believe that we are saved by grace, through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and he that believeth hath the witness of it in himself. I have got it. Thank God! I believe that the Scriptures were given by inspiration of God, and that they teach that not only does continuance in the favour of God depend upon continued faith in and obedience to Christ, but that it is possible for those who have been truly converted to fall away and be eternally lost. I believe that it is the privilege of all God's people to be wholly sanctified, and that 'their whole spirit and soul and body' may 'be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,' That is to say, I believe that after conversion there remain in the heart of the believer inclinations to evil, or roots of bitterness, which, unless overpowered by divine grace, produce actual sin; but these evil tendencies can be entirely taken away by the Spirit of God, and the whole heart, thus cleansed from anything contrary to the will of God, or entirely sanctified, will then produce the fruit of the Spirit only. And I believe that persons thus entirely sanctified may, by the power of God, be kept unblameable and unreprovable before Him. I believe in the immortality of the soul; in the resurrection of the body; in the general judgment at the end of the world; in the eternal happiness of the righteous; and in the everlasting punishment of the wicked. THEREFORE, I do here and now, and for ever, renounce the world with all its sinful pleasures, companionships, treasures, and objects, and declare my full determination boldly to show myself a soldier of Jesus Christ in all places and companies, no matter what I may have to suffer, do, or lose, by so doing. I do here and now declare that I will abstain from the use of all intoxicating liquors, and from the habitual use of opium, laudanum, morphia, and all other baneful drugs, except when in illness such drugs shall be ordered for me by a doctor. I do here and now declare that I will abstain from the use of all low or profane language; from the taking of the name of God in vain; and from all impurity, or from taking part in any unclean conversation, or the reading of any obscene book or paper at any time, in any company, or in any place. I do here declare that I will not allow myself in any falsehood, deceit, misrepresentation, or dishonesty; neither will I practise any fraudulent conduct in my business, my home, nor in any other relation in which I may stand to my fellow-men, but that I will deal truthfully, fairly, honourably, and kindly with all those who may employ me, or whom I may myself employ, I do here declare that I will never treat any woman, child, or other person, whose life, comfort, or happiness may be placed within my power, in an oppressive, cruel or cowardly manner, but that I will protect such from evil and danger so far as I can, and promote to the utmost of my ability their present welfare and eternal salvation. I do here declare that I will spend all the time, strength, money, and influence I can in supporting and carrying on this war, and that I will endeavour to lead my family, friends, neighbours, and all others whom I can influence, to do the same, believing that the sure and only way to remedy all the evils in the world is by bringing men to submit themselves to the Government of the Lord Jesus Christ. I do here declare that I will always obey the lawful orders of my Officers, and that I will carry out to the utmost of my powers all the orders and regulations of the Army; and further that I will be an example of faithfulness to its principles, advance to the utmost of my ability its operations, and never allow, where I can prevent it, any injury to its interests, or hindrance to its success. AND I do here and now call upon all present to witness that I enter into this undertaking, and sign these Articles of War of my own free will, feeling that the love of Christ, who died to save me, requires from me this devotion of my life to His service for the salvation of the whole world, and therefore wish now to be enrolled as a Soldier of the Salvation Army. _Signed_........................................... _Image (full Christian and Surname)_ _Address_........................................ _Date_........................ _Corps_............. APPENDIX C COPY OF THE SALVATION ARMY BALANCE SHEET, EXTRACTED FROM THE FORTY-THIRD ANNUAL STATEMENTS OF ACCOUNT FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPTEMBER 30, 1909. _Copies of this Balance Sheet with Statements of Account can be had upon application. The Balance Sheet and Statements of Account for the year ending September 30, 1910, will be posted from the press early next year. The Balance Sheet of The Army's Social Fund can be obtained from the Secretary._ LIABILITIES DR. £ s. d. TO LOANS UPON MORTGAGE, including accrued Interest 540,277 3 11 " LOANS FOR FIXED PERIODS, including accrued Interest 121,958 8 1 " RESERVE FUNDS, including General and Special Reserves 176,143 15 ½ " SUNDRY CREDITORS 10,359 3 2 " COLONIAL AND FOREIGN TERRITORIES FUND 55,219 10 7 " SELF-DENIAL FUND (Balance) 3,463 12 3 ---------------- Carried Forward £907,621 13 1/2 ASSETS CR. £ s. d. £ s. d. BY FREEHOLD and LEASEHOLD PROPERTY (at or below cost) in the United Kingdom, as on September 30, 1908 1,066,923 16 2-1/2 " Additions during the year 23,271 4 6 -------------------- 1,090,195 2 8-1/2 " Freehold Estate in Australia 10,375 3 6 ----------------- 1,100,571 6 4-1/2 " INVESTMENTS, including Investment of Reserve and Sinking Funds 196,412 9 2 " FURNITURE and FITTINGS at Headquarters, Officers' Quarters, and Training College, as on September 30, 1908 5,412 16 1 " Additions during the year 2,768 9 5-1/2 --------------- 8,181 5 6-1/2 _Less_ Depreciation 2,433 19 9 --------------- 5,748 5 9-1/2 ----------------- Carried forward £1,802,732 1 4 BALANCE SHEET--_continued_ DR. Brought forward 907,621 13 0-1/2 To The Salvation Army Fund, as per last Balance Sheet 411,701 0 6-1/4 " Donations and Subscriptions For Capital Purposes (including building Contributions, £20,044 0s. 2d.) 37,044 6 2 " General Income and Expenditure Account (Balance) 1,309 17 8-1/2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 450,064 18 4-1/2 ----------------- £1,357,706 11 5 CR. Brought forward 1,302,732 1 4 By Loans " Trade Headquarters Fund 27,902 16 5 " Sundry Colonial and Foreign Territories 8,606 16 0 ------------ 34,506 12 5 " Sundry Debtors 18,360 10 4 " Cash at Bank 2,107 7 4 --------------- £1,357,706 11 5 We have examined the above Statement with the Books, Accounts, and Vouchers relating thereto, and certify the same to be correct. We have also verified the Bank balances and Investments. KNOX, CROPPER & CO., _Chartered Accountants._ 16 FINSBURY CIRCUS, E.C. _December_ 31, 1909. APPENDIX D A FEW FIGURES SHOWING SOME OF THE WORK OF THE DARKEST ENGLAND SCHEME IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. TO SEPTEMBER 30, 1909 DURING TOTAL TO 1910 SEPT. 30, 1910 Number of Meals supplied at Cheap Food Dépôts 69,784,480 6,869,897 76,654,377 Number of Cheap Lodgings for the Homeless 27,850,674 2,445,300 30,295,974 Number of Meetings held in Shelters 140,747 8,660 149,407 Number of Applications from Unemployed registered at Labour Bureaux 302,538 13,009 315,547 Number received into Factories 63,694 6,754 70,448 Number for whom Employment (temporary or permanent) has been found 249,453 20,210 269,663 Number of Ex-Criminals received into Homes 8,840 416 9,256 Number of Ex-Criminals assisted, restored to Friends, sent to situations, etc. 7,886 1,166 9,052 Number of Applications for Lost Persons 44,001 2,120 46,121 Number of Lost Persons found 13,710 398 14,108 Number of Women and Girls received into Rescue Homes 44,417 3,679 48,096 Number of Women and Girls received into Rescue Homes who were sent to Situations, restored to Friends, etc. 37,168 3,346 40,514 Number of Families visited in Slums 998,079 109,750 1,107,829 Number of Families prayed with 577,550 64,141 641,691 Number of Public-houses visited 630,021 33,188 663,209 Number of Lodging-houses visited 17,330 3,457 20,787 Number of Lodging-house Meetings held 7,319 1,792 9,111 Number of Sick People visited and nursed 93,233 21,912 115,145 NOTES: [1: See Appendix C] [2: The following extract from the recently issued 'Report of the Commissioners of Prisons and the Directors of Convict Prisons,' for the year ended March 31, 1910, Part I [Cd. 5360], published since the above was written, sets out the present views of the Authorities on this important matter:-- 'Out of the present inmates of convict prisons over 40 per cent have been previously in penal servitude, viz. out of 3,046 male convicts in convict prisons, 1,253 had been previously sentenced to penal servitude, 672 once, 271 twice, 196 three times, and 114 four times or more. Mr. Secretary Churchill has referred to us the question whether, and in what way, it would be possible to make any impression on this roll of recidivism--this unyielding _corpus_ of habitual crime. The problem is never absent from the minds of those responsible for the administration of prisons and the treatment of crime, and during recent years great efforts have been made to improve the machinery of assistance on discharge, fully impressed as we are with the truth of the old French saying, "_Le difficile ce n'est pas emprisoner un homme, c'est de le relâcher_." We have tried to avail ourselves fully of the resources offered by such powerful agencies as the Church Army, Salvation Army, as well as other societies who have for years operated in this particular field of charitable effort. We recognize the ready help given by all these agencies. No doubt by their efforts many difficult and unpromising cases have been rehabilitated; but after full consideration we have come to the opinion that the task of rehabilitation in the case of men returning to freedom after a sentence of penal servitude is too difficult and too costly to be left entirely to voluntary societies, unaided by any grant of public funds, and working independently of each other at a problem where unity of method and direction is above all things required. Mr. Secretary Churchill, to whom these views have been represented, at once agreed that the difficulty lay in this question of discharge, and that the official authority, acting in close and friendly co-operation with the voluntary societies must take a more active part than hitherto in controlling the passage into free life of a man emerging from penal servitude. ... A plan is now under consideration for establishing a Central Agency of Control for Discharged Convicts, on which both the official and unofficial element will be represented, with a subsidy from public funds, the purpose of which will be to take in hand the guidance and direction of every convict on the day of discharge' (pp. 15, 16).] [3: See Parliamentary Blue Book [Cd. 2562].] [4: The scale of pay in the Salvation Array for Officers in charge of Corps (or Stations) is as follows:--For Single Men: Lieutenants, 16s. weekly; Captains, 18s. weekly. For Single Women: Lieutenants, 12s. weekly; Captains, 15s. weekly. For Married Men, 27s. per week and 1s. per week for each child under 7 years of age, and 2s. per week for each child between the ages of 7 and 14. Furnished lodgings are provided in addition.] [5: But the day before this proof came into my hands it was my duty to help to try a case illustrative of these remarks. In that case a girl when only just over the age of sixteen had been seduced by a young man and borne a son. First the father admitted parentage and promised marriage. Then he denied parentage, and, apparently without a shadow of evidence, alleged that the child was the result of an incestuous intercourse between its mother and a relative. At the trial, having, it seemed, come to the conclusion that this wicked slander would not enable him to escape an affiliation order, he again frankly admitted his parentage. In the country districts, at any rate, such examples are common.--H. R. H.] [6: The loss is being reduced annually, that for the financial year which has just closed being the lowest on record.] [7: See Appendix A] [8: On this and other points see the Salvation Army's 'Articles of War,' Appendix B.] INDEX Affiliation Orders, 91, 109-110. 'Ann Fowler' Home, 166, 168. Anti-Suicide Bureau, 151-164. Ardenshaw Women's Home, Glasgow, 188. Argyll, Duchess of, 103. 'Articles of War,' 257. Australia, 14, 83. Balance-sheet for 1909, 260-261. Barlow, Sir Thomas, 123. Barnardo, The late Dr., 71, 73, 233. Blackfriars Shelter, 41. Booth, General, 7, 10-12, 14-18, 57, 61, 63, 85, 97, 200-201, 206, 208-217, 223. Booth, Mr. Bramwell, 218-225. Booth, Mrs. Bramwell, 87, 89, 91-93, 95, 144. Boxted Small Holdings, 69, 200-207. British Government, The, and Colonial Land Scheme, 82. Canada, 14, 82-86. Carrington, Earl, 206. Central Labour Bureau, 75. Chief of the Staff, The: see Mr. Bramwell Booth. Cox, Commissioner, 96, 98, 119, 120. Criminals in England, 61. Crossley, Mrs., 176. Drink, 37. Duke Street, Glasgow, 188. Edinburgh, 179. Embankment Soup Distribution, 22, 39, 40. Emigration Department, 80; Emigration Board, 85. Employers' Liability Act, 38. Ex-Criminals, 54. First Offenders Act, 168. Free Breakfast Service, 41. Future of the Salvation Army, Notes on, 237. Glasgow, 165, 178-182, 192. Government Labour Bureaux, 75-76. Government Subsidy, 57. Great Peter St. Shelter, 33, 157. Great Titchfield St., 94, 140, 150. Hadleigh Land Colony, 76, 182, 184, 194, 198, 199. Hanbury St. Workshop, 65-70. Herring, The late Mr. George, 19, 200, 201, 207, 212. Hillsborough House Inebriates' Home, 98, 102, 122. Hollies,' 'The, 168, 169. Home Office, The, 55. Iliffe, Lieut.-Colonel, 204. Impressions of General Booth, 208. India, 23. Inebriates' Home, The, Springfield Lodge, 122. International Investigation Department, 77. Ivy House Maternity Hospital, 107. Java, 233. Jolliffe, Lieut.-Colonel, 41, 148, 185-186, 190-191. King Edward Hospital Fund, 201. Labour Bureau, Central, Whitechapel, 75; Statistics, 76. Labour Party and Trade. Unions, 65, 85-86. Lamb, Colonel, 81, 83-85. Lambert, Colonel, 115. Land Colony, Hadleigh, 194. Laudanum-drinking, 124, 183. Laurie, Lieut.-Colonel, 194-196. Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 82. Liverpool, 165. London County Council, 129. London Maternity Home, 169. Lorne House, 103, 105. Manchester, 165; Social Institutions, 172. Maternity Home, Lorne House, Stoke Newington, 103. Maternity Home, Brent House, Hackney, 105-106. Maternity Hospital, Hackney, 105, 107; Liverpool, 171. Maternity Hospital, New, required, 170. Men's Social Work, Glasgow, 178; London, 19, 65; Manchester, 171. Middlesex Street Shelter, 19. Midnight Work, Social, 94. Needs, Our, 235. Nest,' 'The, Clapton, 112. Oakhill House, Manchester, 176. Old-Age Pensions Act, 130. Paris, 93. Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Unions, 65. Penitent Form, The, 46-48, 51, 230. Pentonville Prison, 56. Piccadilly Midnight Work, 140. Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Society for the, 233. Princess Louise, H.R.H., 103. Prison Act, The New, 63. Prison Reform, 62, 63 (note). Prison Visitation, 55, 188. Prisoners' Aid Society, 180. Quaker Street, 54. Religion of the Salvation Army, Note on the, 229. Rescue Home, The, 117. 'Revivalism!' 49. Roosevelt, Mr. 214-215. 'Rural England,' 10. Sacraments, The, 230. Salvation Army, Some Statistics of the, 9-10. Scale of pay, Officers', 90 (note). Scotland, 131, 179. Slum Settlement, The Hackney Road, 131. Slum Sisters, 88; Some Statistics of their work, 131. Small Holdings, 200-207. Southwood, Sydenham, 126. Spa Road Elevator, 27, 46, 79. Sturge House, 71-74. Sturgess, Commissioner, 19, 36, 47, 54, 55, 57, 186. Sweating, Charges of, refuted, 28, 66, 120-121. Titchfield Street Home, The, 140, 145, 150. Trade Unions and rate of Wages, 15-16. Training Institute for Women Social Workers, The, 115. Unsworth, Colonel, 155, 157, 160, 164. Vegetarianism, 99, 113-114. Visitation of prisoners by Salvation Army Officers, 55-56. Wandsworth Prison, 56. Waste Paper Department, Spa Road, 27, 31, 52; Manchester, 172; Glasgow, 180. White Slave Traffic, 87, 93. Whitechapel, 72, 75, 95, 132, 142. Women's Industrial Home, Hackney, 119; Sydenham, 126. Women's Shelter, 129. Women's Social Work, London, 87; Headquarters, 96. 
6669	----	GODLINESS. BEING REPORTS OF A SERIES OF ADDRESSES DELIVERED AT JAMES'S HALL, LONDON, W., During 1881, BY MRS. CATHERINE BOOTH. _INTRODUCTION BY DANIEL STEELE, D.D._ PUBLISHERS' PREFACE. In giving this volume to our American readers, we are assured that we are doing a special favor to all the lovers of "Christianity in earnest." "Aggressive Christianity," from the same talented author, has met with unusual favor, and has been the means of much good. We are confident that the present volume is in all respects equal to the former, and that no one can read it without great spiritual profit. The Introduction, by Dr. Daniel Steele, is a forcible presentation of the main doctrines of the book, and is creditable to the head and heart of the writer, and a commendation which all intelligent readers will highly esteem. Our object in publishing these sermons, is, that their perusal may kindle a flame of revival in the hearts of believers, which may result in many turning unto the Lord. MCDONALD & GILL BOSTON, MASS. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. In presenting another volume of reports of my Addresses, I have only to repeat what I have said with respect to similar books before-- Read, for the sake of getting more light and more blessing to your soul, and you will, I trust, partake of the good which many have professed to receive at the West-End services, wherein most of these words were first spoken. I am well aware that, in such imperfect reports of, for the most part, extemporaneous utterances, often most hurriedly corrected, there may be found abundant ground for criticism; but, if this book may be the means of leading only a few souls to devote themselves more fully to God and to the salvation of men, I shall be more than compensated for any unfriendly criticism with which it may meet. I have not sought to please any but the Lord, and to His fatherly loving-kindness I commend both the book and its readers. CATHERINE BOOTH. _London, Nov._ 10, 1881. INTRODUCTION. The sermons of Mrs. Booth already re-published under the title of "_Aggressive Christianity_," came to American Christians as a tonic to their weakness, and a stimulant to their inertness. The sermons in the present volume are a much-needed prophylactic, a safeguard against several practical errors in dealing with souls; errors which lead them into Egyptian darkness, instead of the marvelous light. The sermon on _Repentance_ is a most faithful showing up of spurious repentance, the vain substitute for a downright abandonment of every form of sin, and right-about facing towards the Lord. In directness and point, it is a model for earnest revival preaching,--rather, for all preaching to unsaved souls, outside the church, or within it. All of these will be found in some subterfuge, which must be ruthlessly torn down, before it will be abandoned for the cleft Rock. The sermon on _Saving Faith_ is next in order. The disastrous consequences of what, for the want of a better description, maybe styled an Antinomian faith, an unrepentant assent of the intellect to the historic facts of the Gospel, which too many evangelists and other religious teachers are calling saving faith, are clearly set forth and plainly labeled, POISON. This spurious trust in Christ following a superficial repentance, which has never felt the desperate sinfulness and real misery of sin, has furnished our churches with a numerous class of members, aptly described by the prophet Micah: "The sin of Israel is great and unrepented of, yet they will lean on the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us?" We are convinced that much of the work of the faithful and pungent preacher, who preaches with his eye fixed on the great white throne and the descending Judge, is to dislodge professors from their imaginary trust in a Saviour who does not save them, and probe deeply their hearts festering with sin, which have been hastily pronounced healed, "slightly healed." Many of us have incautiously said to awakened souls, "Only believe," before we have thrust the heart through and through with the sword of God's law. We have dismissed God's schoolmaster. The law, like the slave charged with the task of leading the boy to school, and of committing him to the teacher, we have thought to be too harsh and severe for our sentimental age, and have unwisely discharged, and have assumed its office of a _paidagogos_ to Christ, and we have missed the way, and misled a priceless soul. God have mercy on us, and give us humility, as He gave Apollos, to be set right by an anointed woman! After her timely correction of erroneous teachings on faith, Mrs. Booth proceeds, pruning-knife in hand, to cut away from the tree of modern Christianity the poisonous fungus of a "spurious charity." Her four sermons on _Charity_ are four beacons set on the rocks of counterfeit Christian love. She sets forth several infallible tests by which genuine love may be distinguished from the devil's base imitation. Like the Epistles of St. John, these sermons are full of touchstones for testing love, that golden principle of the Christian life. It would be very profitable for all professors of that perfect love which casteth out all tormenting fear, to apply unflinchingly these touch-stones to themselves. They may find the word "perfection" taking on a meaning deeper, broader and higher than they had ever before conceived. Why should not our conception of Christian perfection steadily grow with the increase of our knowledge of God and of His holy law? The sermon on _The Conditions of Effectual Prayer_, we commend to all Christians and to all seekers of Christ, who are mourning because their prayers do not prevail with God. In the clear light of this sermon they will find that the difficulty lies, either in the lack of fellowship with Jesus Christ, or of obedience to His commands, or in the absence from their hearts of the interceding Spirit, or in defective faith. In the discussion of these hindrances to prayer, the preacher lays open the heart, and with a skilful spiritual surgery, searches it to the very bottom. The incisiveness of her style, her courage and plain dealing with her hearers, tearing off the masks of sin and selfishness, the various guises in which these masquerade in many Christian hearts and obstruct their access to a throne of grace, remind us of Dr. Finney's unsparing exposure and condemnation of these foes to Christian holiness, and of John Wesley's cutting up by the roots "Sin in Believers." In this sermon Mrs. Booth turns her attention to another phase of faith and of practical error in the guidance of souls to Christ. Her views on this vexed question are not extreme but philosophical and scriptural. She teaches that God has made the bestowment of salvation simultaneous with the exercise of faith, and that "telling a person to believe he is saved, before he is saved, is telling him to believe a lie." But she insists that the act of faith is put forth with the special aid of the Holy Spirit giving an assurance that the blessing sought will be granted. This assurance, or earnest, given by the Spirit, becomes the basis on which the final act of faith rests, namely, "I believe that I receive." This corresponds with William Taylor's Divine "ascertainment of the fact of the sinner's surrender to God, and his acceptance of Christ," before justification. [Footnote: Election of Grace, pp. 38-42.] Both teachers agree with Wesley's analysis of faith which teaches that the fourth and last step, "He doth it," can be taken only by the special enabling power of the Holy Spirit, [Footnote: Sermons. Patience, Section 13; Scripture Way of Salvation, Section 17; and Whedon on Mark xi. 24.] All three locate the Divine efficiency before the declaration, "I believe that I receive," or "have received" (R. V.), making that declaration rest upon the perception of a Divine change within the consciousness. They all insist that saving faith is not a mere humanly moral exercise, but that power to believe with the heart descends from God, and that it must be waited for in prayer, and that it becomes in the believer a series of supernatural and spiritual acts, a habit of soul, at once the seed and fruit of the Divine life-stirring, uniting in itself the characters of penitent humility, self-renunciation, simple trust, and absolute obedience grounded in love. These teachers magnify the Divine element in faith. We look in vain in their writings for any such direction to a penitent as this, "Believe that you are saved, because, God says so in His Word," but rather believe that you are saved when you hear His Spirit crying, Abba, Father, in your heart. Many modern teachers fall into the error of treating saving faith as an unaided intellectual act to be performed, at will, at any time. It is rather a spiritual act possible only when prompted by the Holy Spirit, who incites to faith only when He sees true repentance and a hearty surrender to God. Then the Spirit reveals Christ and assists to grasp Him. In the refutation of the high predestinarian doctrine that faith is an irresistible grace sovereignly bestowed upon the elect, there is great danger of falling into the opposite error, called Pelagianism, which makes saving faith an exercise which the natural man is competent to put forth without the help of the Holy Spirit. The real guilt of unbelief lies in that voluntary indifference toward Christ, and impenitence of heart, in which the Holy Spirit cannot inspire saving faith. In our introduction to "_Aggressive Christianity_," we advertised, in behalf of the American churches, a universal want--Enthusiasm. In her brief Exeter-Hall address, Mrs. Booth discloses the source of the supply. Holiness is the well-spring of enthusiasm. Hence it is not a spring freshet, but an overflowing river of power in all its possessors, and, notably in the Salvation Army, bearing the unchurched masses of England on its bosom. A holy enthusiasm is contagious and conquering. We cannot touch the people with the icicle of logic; but they will not fail to bow to the scepter of glowing and joyful love. Few men can reason; all can feel. Enthusiasm and full salvation, like the Siamese twins, cannot be separated and live. The error of the modern pulpit is that of the blacksmith hammering cold steel--a faint impression and huge labor. The baptism of fire softening our assemblies would lighten the preacher's toil and multiply its productiveness. The four addresses on _Holiness_ are hortatory rather than argumentative or exegetical. They are spiritual cyclones. It is difficult to see how any Christian could withstand these impassioned appeals to make what Joseph Cook calls "an affectionate, total, irreversible, eternal, self-surrender to Jesus Christ, as both Saviour and Lord," in order to attain that "perfect similarity of feeling with God," wherein evangelical perfection consists. It gives me great pleasure to have some humble part in echoing across the American continent these glowing utterances from the lips of this modern Deborah, the Christian prophetess raised up by God for the deliverance of His people from captivity to worldliness and religious apathy. "Would God that all the Lord's people," men and women, "were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!" "Shall we the Spirit's course restrain, Or quench the heavenly fire? Let God His messengers ordain, And whom He will inspire! Blow as He list, the Spirit's choice Of instruments we bless: We will, if Christ be preached, rejoice, And wish the word success." DANIEL STEELE. _Reading, Mass., Nov._ 23, 1883. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. REPENTANCE CHAPTER II. SAVING FAITH CHAPTER III. CHARITY CHAPTER IV. CHARITY AND REBUKE CHAPTER V. CHARITY AND CONFLICT CHAPTER VI. CHARITY AND LONELINESS CHAPTER VII. CONDITIONS OF EFFECTUAL PRAYER CHAPTER VIII. THE PERFECT HEART CHAPTER IX. HOW TO WORK FOR GOD WITH SUCCESS CHAPTER X. ENTHUSIASM AND FULL SALVATION CHAPTER XI. HINDRANCES TO HOLINESS CHAPTER XII. ADDRESSES ON HOLINESS CHAPTER I. REPENTANCE, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of Heaven is at band.--MATT. iii. 2. From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.--MATT. iv. 17. "Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: but shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and torn to God, and do works meet for repentance."--ACTS xxvi. 19,20. In the mouths of three witnesses--John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, and the Apostle Paul--this word shall be established, namely, that repentance is an _indispensable_ condition of entering the kingdom of God. People generally are all at sea oh this subject, as though insisting that repentance were an arbitrary arrangement on the part of God. I believe God has made human salvation as easy as the Almighty, Infinite mind could make it. But there is a necessity in the case, that we should "repent and turn to God." It is just as necessary that my feelings be changed and brought to repentance towards God, as it is that the wicked, disobedient boy, should have his feelings brought back into harmony with his father before he can be forgiven. Precisely the same laws of mind are brought into action in both cases, and there is the same necessity in both. If there is any father here who has a prodigal son, I ask, How is it that you are not reconciled to your son? You love him--love him intensely. Probably you are more conscious of your love for him than for any other of your children. Your heart yearns over him every day; you pray for him night and day; you dream of him by night; your bowels yearn over your son, and you say, with David, "Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son." Why are you not reconciled? Why not pat him on the head, or stroke his face, and say, "My dear lad, I am well pleased with you. I love you complacently; I give you my approbation?" Why are you always reproving him? Why are you obliged to hold him at arm's length? Why can you not live on amicable terms with him? Why can you not have him come in and out, and live with you on the same terms as the affectionate, obedient daughter? "Oh!" you say, "the case is different; I cannot. It is not, 'I would not;' but, '_I cannot_.' Before that can possibly be, the boy's feelings must be changed towards me. He is at war with me; he has mistaken notions of me; he thinks I am hard, and cruel, and exacting, and severe. I have done all a father could do, but he sees things differently, to what they are, and has harbored these hard feelings against me until he hates me, and will go on in defiance of my will." You say, "It is a necessity that, as a wise and righteous father, I must insist on a change in him. I cannot receive him as a son, till he comes to my feet. He must confess his sin, and ask me to forgive him. Then, oh! how gladly will my fatherly affection gush out! How I should run to meet him, and put my arms around his neck! but there is a 'cannot' in the case." Just so. It is not that He does not love you, sinner; it is not that the great, benevolent heart of God has not, as it were, wept tears of blood over you; it is not that He would not put His loving arms around you this moment, if you would only come to His feet, and confess you were wrong, and seek His pardon; but, otherwise, He may not--He _cannot_. The laws of His universe are against Him doing so. The good, it may be, of millions of immortal beings, is involved. He dare not, and He _cannot,_ until there is a change of mind _in you._ You must repent. "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Well, if repentance be an indispensable condition of salvation, let us glance at it for a moment, and try to find out what repentance really is; and, oh! how full of confusion the world and the church are upon this subject! I say it, because I know it by converse with hundreds of people. May the Holy Spirit help us! Well, first, repentance is not merely conviction of sin. Oh! if it only were, what a different world we should have to-night, for there are tens of thousands on whose hearts God's Spirit has done His office by convincing them of sin. I am afraid we should be perfectly alarmed, astounded, confounded, if we had any conception of the multitudes whom God has convinced of sin, as He did Agrippa and Festus. Oh! I could not tell you the numbers of people, who, in our anxious meetings, have grasped my hand, and said, "Oh! what would I give to feel as I once felt! There was a time, fifteen, or seventeen, or twenty years ago," and so on, "when I was so deeply convinced of sin that I could scarcely sleep, or eat--that I could find no rest; but, instead of going on till I found peace, I got diverted, cooled down, and now, I feel as hard as a stone." I am afraid there are tens of thousands in this condition--once convinced of sin. There are thousands of others, who are convinced _now_. They say, "Yes, it is true what the minister says. I know I ought to lay down the weapons of my warfare against God; I know I ought to cut off this right hand, and pluck out this right eye." They are convinced of sin, but they go no further. That is not repentance. They live this week as they did last. There is no response to the Spirit; they resist the Holy Ghost. Neither is repentance mere sorrow for sin. I have seen people weep bitterly, and writhe and struggle, but yet hug on to their idols, and in vain you try to shake them from them. Oh! if Jesus Christ would have saved them with those idols, they would have no objection at all. If they could have got through the strait gate with this one particular idol, they would have gone through long since; but to part with that--that is another thing. Such people will weep like your stubborn child, when you want him to do something which he does not want to do. He will cry, and when you apply the rod he will cry harder, but he will not yield. When he yields, he becomes a penitent; but, until he does, he is merely a convicted sinner. When God applies the rod of His Spirit, the rod of His providence, the rod of His Word, sinners will cry, and wince, and whine, and make you believe they are praying, and want to be saved, but all the while they are holding their necks as stiff as iron. They will not _submit_. The moment they submit, they become true penitents, and get saved. There is no mistake more common than for people to suppose they are penitents when they are not. There are some of you in this condition, I know. I am afraid you are quite mistaken--you are not penitents. God is true though every man should be a liar; and, if you had sought, as you say you have, and perhaps, think you have; if you had been sincere and honest with God, you would have been saved years ago. Oh! may God, the Holy Spirit, help you to come out and be HONEST. That is what God wants--that you be honest. "Oh," says He, "why cover ye my altar with tears, and bring your vain oblations? Just be honest, and I will be honest with you and bless you; but while you come before Me and weep and profess, and bring the halt, and the maimed, and the blind, a curse be upon you." He looks at you afar off. Be honest. Repentance is not mere sorrow for sin. You may be ever so sorry, and all the way down to death be hugging on to some forbidden possession, as was the young ruler. _That_ is not repentance. Neither is repentance a promise that you will forsake sin in the future. Oh! if it were, there would be many penitents here to-night. There is scarcely a poor drunkard that does not promise, in his own mind, or to his poor wife, or somebody, that he will forsake his cups. There is scarcely any kind of a sinner that does not continually promise that he will give up his sin, and serve God, but he does _not do it_. Then what is _repentance_? _Repentance is simply renouncing sin_--turning round from darkness to light--from the power of Satan unto God. This is giving up sin in your heart, in purpose, in intention, in desire, resolving that you will give up every evil thing, and DO IT NOW. Of course, this involves sorrow, for how will any sane man turn himself round from a given course into another, if he does not repent having taken that course? It implies, also, hatred of, sin. He hates the course he formerly took, and turns round from it. He is like the prodigal, when he sat in the swine-yard amongst the husks and the filth, he fully resolved, and at last he acts. He went, and that was the test of his penitence! He might have sat resolving and promising till now, if he had lived as long, and he would never have got the father's kiss, the father's welcome, if he had not started; but he went. He left the filth, the swine-yard, the husks--he trampled them under his feet; he left the citizen of that country, and gave up all his subterfuges and excuses, and went to his father honestly, and said, "I have sinned!" which implied a great deal more in his language then than it does in ours now. "I have sinned against Heaven, and before thee;" and then comes the proof of his submission, "and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants"--put me in a stable, or set me to clean the boots, so that I can be in thy family and have thy smile. That is repentance--Jesus Christ's own beautiful illustration of true penitence. Have you done that? Have you forsaken the accursed thing? Have you cut off that particular thing which the Holy Spirit has revealed to you? Is the _"but"_ the hindrance that keeps you out of the Kingdom? You know what it is, and you will never get saved until you renounce it. Submission is the test of penitence. My child may be willing to do a hundred and fifty other things, but, if he is not willing to submit on the one point of controversy, he is a rebel, and remains one until he yields. Now, here is just the difference between a spurious and a real repentance. I am afraid we have thousands in our churches who had a spurious repentance: they were convinced of sin--they were sorry for it; they wanted to live a better life, to love God in a sort of general way; but they skipped over the real point of controversy with God; they hid it from their pastor, perhaps, and from the deacons, and from the people who talked with them. Now, I say, Abraham might have been willing to have given up every other thing that he possessed; but, if he had not been willing to give up Isaac, all else would have been useless. It is your Isaac God wants. You have got an Isaac, just as the young ruler had his possessions. You have got something that you are holding on to, that the Holy Spirit says you must let go, and you say, "I can't." Very well; then you must stop outside the kingdom. I beseech you, do not deceive yourselves by supposing that you repent, for you do not; but, oh! my dear friends, let me beseech you to repent. The apostle says, "Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men;" and this is, I believe, the greatest work of the ministry. To do what? To persuade men to submit. We are constantly talking to thousands of people who know just what God wants of them. We cannot bring many of them any new light or new Gospel. They know all about it. They used to tell me that so often, that I longed for a congregation of heathen, which I have found since then. Consequently, when they hear the Gospel, like the publicans and sinners of old, they go into the kingdom, while such as some of you who are the natural children of the kingdom, are shut out, because when they hear they receive, and submit, and obey, while you stand outside and hold on to your idols, and reason, and quibble, and reject! My dear friends, let me persuade you to trample under foot that idol, to tear down that refuge of lies, and to come to God honestly, and say, "Lord, here I am, to be a servant, to be nothing, to do anything, to suffer anything. I know I shall be happier with Thy smile and Thy blessing than all these evil things now make me without Thee." When you come to a full surrender, my friends, you will get what you have been seeking, some of you, for years. But then another difficulty comes in, and people say, "I have not the power to repent." Oh! yes, you have. That is a grand mistake. You have the power, or God would not command it. You can repent. You can this moment lift up your eyes to Heaven, and say, with the prodigal, "Father, I have sinned, and I renounce my sin." You may not be able to weep--God nowhere requires or commands that; but you are able, this very moment, to renounce sin, in purpose, in resolution, in intention. Mind, don't confound the renouncing of the sin, with the power of saving yourself from it. If you renounce it, Jesus will come and save you from it. Like the man with the withered hand--Jesus intended to heal that man. Where was the power to come from to heal him? From Jesus, of course. The benevolence, the love, that prompted that healing, all came from Jesus; but Jesus wanted a condition. What was it? The response of the man's will; and so He said, "Stretch forth thy hand." If he had been like some of you, he would have said, "What an unreasonable command! You know I cannot do it--I cannot." Some of you say that; but I say you can, and you will have to do it, or you will be lost. What did Jesus want? He wanted that, "I will, Lord," inside the man--the response of his will. He wanted him to say, "Yes, Lord;" and, the moment he said that, Jesus supplied strength, and he stretched it forth, and you know what happened. Don't look forward, and say, "I shall not have strength;" that is not your matter--that is His. He will hold you up;--He is able, when you once commit yourself to Him. Now then, say, "_I will._" Never mind what you suffer--it shall be done. He will pour in the oil and balm. His glorious, blessed presence will do more for you in one hour, than all your struggling, praying, and wrestling have done all these weary years. He will lift you up out of the pit. You are in the mire now, and the more you struggle the more you sink; but He will lift you out of it, and put your feet on the rock, and then you will stand firm. Stretch out your withered hand, whatever it may be;--say, "I will, Lord." You have the power, and mind, you have the obligation, which is universal and immediate. God "now commandeth all men everywhere to repent," and to believe the Gospel. What a tyrant He must be if He commands that, and yet He knows you have not the power! Now, do you repent? Mind the old snare. Not, do you weep? The feeling will come after the surrender. Now, do not say, "I do not feel enough." Do you feel enough to be willing to forsake your sin? that is the point. Any soul who does not repent enough to forsake his sin, is _not a penitent at all!_ When you repent enough to forsake your sin, that moment your repentance is sincere, and you may take hold of Jesus with a firm grasp. You have a right to appropriate the promise, then it is "look and live." "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Will you come to that point now? Don't begin making an excuse. _Now!--all men! everywhere!_--NOW! Oh! my friend, if you had done that ten years ago! You have been accumulating sin, condemnation, and wrath ever since. God commanded you these ten years to repent, and believe the Gospel, and here you are yet. How many sermons have you heard?--invitations rejected? How much blessed persuasion and reasoning of the Holy Spirit have you resisted?--how much of the grace of God have you received in vain? I tremble to think what an accumulated load of abused privilege, lost opportunity, and wasted influence, such people will have to give an account of. Talk about hell!--the weight of this will be hell enough. You don't seem to think anything of the way you treat God. Oh! people are very much awake to any evil they do to their fellow-men. They can much more easily see the sin of ruining or injuring their neighbors than injuring the great God; but He says, "Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me." Do you not see; the awful weight of condemnation that comes upon you for putting off, rejecting, resisting, vascilating, halting, while He says, _Now--now?_ He has had a right to every breath you have drawn, to all your influence, every hour, of every day of all your years. Is it not time you ended that controversy? He may do with you as He did with such people once before--swear in His wrath that you shall not enter into His rest. Are you not provoking Him as they provoked Him? Oh! my friend, be persuaded now to repent. Let your sin go away, and come to the feet of Jesus. For your own sake be persuaded. For the peace, the joy, the power, the glory, the gladness of living a life of consecration to God, and service to your fellow-men, yield; but most of all, for the love He bears you, submit. A great, rough man (stricken down), said to my husband, a few weeks ago, when he looked up to the place where other people were being saved, "Mr. Booth, I would not go there for a hundred pounds!" My husband whispered, "Will you go there for love?" and, after a minute's hesitation, the man, brushing the great tears away, rose up, and followed him. Will you go there for love--the love of Jesus!--the great love wherewith He loved you and gave Himself for you? Will you, for the great yearning with which your Father has been following you all these years--for His love's sake, will you come? Go down at His feet and submit. The Lord help you! Amen. CHAPTER II. SAVING FAITH. And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.--ACTS xvi. 30,31. This is one of the most abused texts in the Bible, and one which, perhaps, has been made to do quite as much work for the devil as for God. Let every saint present, ask in faith for the light of the Holy Ghost, while we try rightly to apply it. Let us enquire:-- 1. _Who are to believe_? 2. _When are they to believe_? 3. _How are they to believe_? I. Who are to believe? To whom does the Holy Spirit say, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved?" Now mark, I answer, _not_ to all sinners indiscriminately. And here is a grand mistake in a great deal of the teaching of this age--that these words are wrested from their explanatory connexion, and from numbers of other texts bearing on the same subject, and held up independently of all the conditions which must ever, and did ever, in the mind and practice of the Apostles, accompany them; indeed, it has only been within the last sixty or seventy years that this new gospel has sprung into existence, preaching indiscriminately to unawakened, unconverted, unrepentant sinners--"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." It seems to me, that great injury has been done to the cause of Christ by thus wrongly dividing the Word of truth, to say nothing of the unphilosophical character of such a course, for how can an unawakened, unconvicted, unrepentant sinner, believe? As soon might Satan believe. It is an utter impossibility. Thousands of these people say, "I do believe." My dear son, only a little time ago, on the top of an omnibus, was speaking to a man who was the worse for liquor, and using very improper language; trying to show him the danger of his evil, wicked course, as a transgressor of the law of God. "Oh!" said the man, "it is not by works, it is by faith, and I believe as much as you do." "Yes," said my son, "but what do you believe?" "Oh," he said, "I believe in Jesus Christ, and of course I shall be saved." That is a sample of thousands. I am meeting with them daily. They believe there was such a man as Jesus, and that He died for sinners, and for them, but as to the exercise of saving faith, they know no more about it than Agrippa or Felix, as is manifest when they come to die, for then, these very people are wringing their hands, tearing their hair, and sending for Christians to come and pray with them. If they had believed, why all this alarm and concern on the approach of death? They were only believers of the head, and not of the heart; that is, they were but theoretical believers in the facts recorded in this book, but not believers in the Scriptural sense, or their faith would have saved them. Now, we maintain that it is useless, and as unphilosophical as it is unscriptural, to preach "only believe" to such characters; and Christians have not done their duty, and have not discharged their responsibility to these souls, when they have told them that Jesus died for them, and that they are to believe in Him! They have a much harder work to do, and that is, "to open their eyes" to a sense of their danger, and make them, by the power of the Spirit, realize the dreadful truth that they are sinners, that they are sick, and then they will run to the Physician. The eyes of the soul must be opened to such a realization of sin, and such an apprehension of the consequences of sin, as shall lead to an earnest desire to be saved from sin. God's great means of doing this is the law, as the schoolmaster, to drive sinners to receive Christ as their salvation. There is not one case in the New Testament in which the apostles urged souls to believe, or in which a soul is narrated as believing, in which we have not good grounds to believe that these preparatory steps of conviction and repentance, had been taken. The only one was that of Simon the sorcerer. He was, as numbers of people are, in great religious movements, carried away by the influence of the meeting, and the example of those around him, and professed to believe. Doubtless, he did credit the fact that Jesus died on the cross. He received the facts of Christianity into his mind, and, in that sense, he became a believer--in the same sense that tens of thousands are in these days--and he was baptized. But when the testing point came, as to whose interests were paramount with him, his own or God's, then he manifested the true state of the case, as the apostle said, "I see thy heart is not right with God." And nobody is converted whose heart is not right with God! That is the test. If Simon had been converted, his heart would have been right with God and he would not have supposed the Holy Ghost could have been bought for money. And Paul added, "For I perceive that thou art still in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity." And what further did he say to him? "Therefore, at once believe"? No; he did not. "Therefore, repent, and pray God, if, perhaps, the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee." Repent first! and then believe, and get this wickedness forgiven, and so we get a double lesson in the same passage. This Simon was the only person we have any record of, as believing, where there is not in the passage itself, taken with the context, a reasonable and rational evidence, that these preparatory steps of conviction and repentance, were taken before the teaching of faith, or the exercise and confession of faith. Simon had this faith of the head, but not of the heart, and, therefore, it ended in defeat and despair. Some have written me this week that they had believed. They had been persuaded into a profession of faith, but no fruits followed. Ah! it was not the faith of the heart: it was the faith of the head--like that of Simon's--and it left you worse than it found you, and you have been groping and grovelling, ever since. But do not think that was real faith, and that therefore real faith has failed, but be encouraged to begin again, and _repent_. Try the real thing, for Satan always gets up a counterfeit. Therefore, don't go down in despair because the wrong kind of faith did not succeed. That shall not make the real faith of God of none effect--God forbid! Look at one or two other cases--the three thousand in a day. Surely this is a scriptural illustration. Surely no one will call that anti-Gospel or legal. What was the first work Peter did? He drove the knife of God's convincing truth into their hearts, and made them _cry out_. He awoke them to the truth of their almost lost and damned condition, till they said, "What must we do to be saved?" They were so concerned, they were so pricked in their hearts, their eyes were so opened to the terrible consequences of their sin, that they cried aloud before the vast multitude, "Men and brethren, what must we do to be saved?" He convinced them of sin, and thus followed the order of God. Again, the eunuch is often quoted as an illustration of faith; but what state of mind was he in? Was he a careless, unconvicted sinner? There he was--an Ethiopian, a heathen; but where had he been? To Jerusalem, to worship the true and living God, in the best way he knew, and as far as he understood; and then, what was he doing when Philip found him? He was not content with the mere worship of the temple, whistling a worldly tune on his way back. He was searching the Scriptures. He was honestly seeking after God, and the Holy Ghost always knows where such souls are; and He said to Philip, "Go, join thyself to that chariot: there is a man seeking after Me; there is a man whose heart is honestly set on finding Me. Go and preach Christ, and tell him to believe." That man would have sacrificed, or done, or lost anything, for salvation, and, as soon as Philip expounded the way of faith, he received it, of course, as all such souls will. Saul, on his way to Damascus, is another instance. Jesus Christ was the preacher there, and surely, He could not be mistaken. His philosophy was sound. Where did He begin? What did He say to Saul? He saw there an honest-hearted man. Saul was sincere, so far as he understood, and if, in any case, there needed to be the immediate reception of Christ by faith, it was in his. But the Lord Jesus Christ did not say one word about faith. "Saul, Saul, why _persecutest_ thou Me?"--tearing the bandages of deception off his eyes, and letting him see the wickedness of his conduct. When Saul said, "Who art Thou, Lord?" He repeated the accusation. He did not come in with the oil of comfort; He did not plaster the wound up, and make it whole in a moment; but He said, "I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest." He ran the knife in again, and opened Paul's eyes wider, and his wounds wider, too, and sent him bleeding on to Damascus, where he was three days before he got the healing. He had to send for a poor human instrument, and he had to hear and obey his words, before the scales fell from his eyes, and before the pardon of his sins was pronounced, and the Holy Ghost came into his soul. I wonder what Paul was doing those three days! Not singing songs of thanksgiving and praise. That had to come. Oh! what do you think he was doing? He neither ate nor drank, and he was in the dark. What was he doing? No doubt he was praying. No doubt he was seeking after this Christ, who had spoken to him in the way. No doubt he was looking with horror upon his past life, and abjuring forever his accursed antagonism to Jesus Christ, and to His Gospel. Of course, he was bringing forth fruits meet for repentance, according to the Divine order--Acts xxvi.: And then came Ananias, and preached Christ unto him, and he believed unto salvation, and the scales fell off, and his mouth was filled with praise and thanksgiving to God. Cornelius, is another instance, but what was the state of his mind and heart? We know that he feared God and wrought righteousness, as far as he was able. He gave alms to the people, and prayed day and night. That is more than some of you ever did, who live in the Gospel times. You never prayed all night about your souls. No wonder if you should lose them--not half a night, some of you. But Cornelius did--he was seeking _God_. He honestly wanted to know Him. He was willing, at all costs, to do His will: consequently, the Lord sent him the glorious message of the revelation of Jesus Christ. I might go on multiplying instances, but I must stop. We have said enough to show who are to believe. Truly penitent sinners, and they only. This text is to a repenting, enlightened, convicted sinner. Now, some of you are enlightened, convinced, and so wretched that you cannot sleep. You _do_ repent. You are the very people, then, to whom this text comes--Believe. You are just in the condition of the gaoler. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved," and now let us look what state of mind the gaoler was in. We see, from the whole narrative, how his eyes had been opened. The earthquake had done that. Some people need an earthquake before they get their eyes opened, and it has to be a loud one, too. The gaoler's eyes were opened, and he made the best use of his time. He was lashing their backs a little while before! Talk about a change--here was a change. "Sirs, what must I do to be saved? I am ready to do anything, only tell me what." And when a soul comes to that state of mind, he has nothing more to do but to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And he came in, trembling, and went down on his knees, and washed their stripes. When you get to that state of mind, you will soon get saved. You will have nothing more to do but to believe. You will find it easy work, then. II. When is a sinner to believe? When he repents? Here again I am going to answer some of your letters. One writes: "I am afraid I do not realize my sin sufficiently. I have no particular agony on account of sin, but I do see my whole life to have been one huge error and sin." There is nothing more common than for souls to delude themselves on this point of feeling. That gentleman confounds feeling with conviction. He thinks because he has not this extreme agony which some have, therefore he is not sufficiently convinced, while the Holy Ghost has opened his eyes to see that his whole life has been one huge error and sin. He is convinced that it has been _all_ sin--not one isolated sin here and there abstracted from his life, but such a perception of his true character that he sees his whole life to have been sin. Surely, my friend, you are convinced. What else but the Holy Ghost could have shown you _that_? Now, the truly repentant soul first sees sin; secondly, he _hates_ sin; thirdly, he _renounces_ sin. Now, let me try you by each of these tests. Don't let Satan deceive you, and make you belie the exercises of your own mind. Face the facts, and when you have come to a conclusion, don't allow him to raise a controversy, but stick to your facts, and go on from them, or you will never get saved. Satan is an accuser of the brethren, and, I suppose, of the sisters too. I will be as honest and as searching with you as I possibly can. I will not spare the probe, but when we have probed and found the truth, stand on it, for Christ's sake, and don't let it go from under your feet, because Satan will try to cheat you out of your common sense, conscience, and convictions. You _see_ sin. An entirely unawakened soul does not see sin; that is, in its true character, in its heinousness, in its consequences. He admits that all people are sinners. Oh! yes; but he does not see the deadly, damning character of sin. He does not see what an evil and bitter thing sin is in itself. Now, the Holy Ghost alone can open the soul's eyes to see this. Without Him, all my preaching, or any other preaching, even the preaching of the angels, if they were permitted to preach, might go on to all eternity, and it would never convince of sin. If you see sin, it is the Holy Ghost who has opened your eyes. Praise Him, and take encouragement, my friend. If God has thus far dealt with you, and opened your eyes to see the character and consequences of sin, does it not augur well that He desires also to save you from it? He has opened your eyes in order that He may anoint them with eye-salve, and cause you to see light in His light. Now, have you got thus far? You have told me that your life has been one great sin; others say, one particular form of sin. Whatever it is, if you are convinced of sin, it is the Holy Ghost who has convinced you; therefore, thank God, and take courage thus far. Further, the true penitent _hates_ sin; that is, his feelings towards sin are quite different to what they were in the past. There was a time when you could commit sin, almost without notice, without concern. People do not realize the great change that has taken place in them in this respect. They are brought gradually to it. Translate yourself back into your unawakened state. How did you live then? The very things that now cause you such distress, you practised every day, and they gave you no concern. The things that horrify you now, in the very thought or temptation to them, you then were daily practising without compunction. You had no hatred to, no dread of sin. You were willing bondslaves of Satan. Now, you are his unwilling slave. Then, you _ran_ towards sin, now, he has to drive you, and when you fall, it is against your will. You hate sin. Now, mind, this is not being saved from it. This is not saying you have power to save yourself from it. In fact, this is the very difficulty personified by the apostle, when representing the ineffectual struggles of a convicted sinner. The things you would not, those you do, and the things you would, those you have not the power to do. Nevertheless, you _desire_ to do them. There is the difference. Once you did not desire to do them, and, perhaps, those who did, were a pack of hypocrites, in your estimation. Now, you feel quite differently, and you struggle, and strive, and pray, and watch. Some of you have told me so, and yet you say, "I am again and again overcome." Of course you are, because you are not _saved yet_! But don't you see, you _desire_ to be. You hate the sin which enthrals you. You struggle against it. You watch against it and you are not overcome half so frequently, perhaps, as you were before. People do not see what a great deal they owe to the convincing and preventing power of the Holy Spirit helping their infirmity, even now, to cut off and pluck out the right hand and the right eye, and bringing them up in a waiting attitude before God, like Cornelius and the eunuch. You, my hearers, some of you, are following after God. You are longing for deliverance, are striving against sin. Take an another illustration. I don't mean that the soul has power to save itself from its internal maladies. That you will get when Jesus Christ saves you. But, I mean this: here is a soul convinced of sin. Here is a man who is daily addicted to drink. He is a drunkard. He becomes convinced of sin. Now, then, the Spirit of God says, "Will you give up the cup?" Then commences the struggle. Now, the question is, are you to teach that man that he is to go on drinking, and expect God to save him? Are you to keep putting before him faith, and telling him, "Oh! never mind your cup, but believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved"--or, are you to tell him, "you must put away your sin, cut off that right hand, pluck out that right eye, renounce that drink forever in your heart, in your purpose, in your will, and until you do, you cannot exercise faith on the Lord Jesus?" Here is another person addicted to lying. He, when he is convinced of sin, sets a watch over his lips, that he may not offend with his mouth, and he does succeed in so guarding himself, or the Holy Spirit so helps him to guard himself, that he does not lie as he used. He is overcome now and then, because he has not yet found the power, but he is resolutely, and as far as his will is concerned, cutting off this outward sin, and waiting in the way of obedience for full deliverance and salvation. There is a servant systematically robs his master's till. He goes to a religious meeting and is convinced. "Now," the Spirit of God says, "you must cut off that dishonesty. You cannot come to this meeting night after night pretending to want to be saved, while you are going on every day robbing your master! You must cut off that right hand, and give up that pilfering, and resolve that you will make restitution, and wait for Me in the way of bringing forth fruits meet for repentance." You see what I mean. Now, you are just here, some of you--you know you are. If you are addicted to any evil habit, it is just the same. Jesus Christ wants you to forswear that habit in your will, determination, and purpose. You have not the power to deliver yourself from it. You may struggle, as some of you tell me you are doing, but it overcomes you, and down you go. He knows all about that, but He approves of the struggle, and the effort, and the watchfulness, and the determination, and when He saves you, He will give you the power, and then you will stand and not fall, for He will hold you up. Now you know that you go thus far, and you know that at this moment, if you had the power in yourself to extinguish the force of that evil habit over you forever, you would do it without another moment's hesitation. You say, "Oh yes, I would indeed. Would to God I had the power." That is repentance; that is _genuine_ repentance. Now, what you cannot do for yourself, He meets you just where you stand, and says, "I will do it for you; I will break the power of that habit; I will deliver you out of the hands of the enemy; I will save you out of that bondage. Only throw your arm of faith around me, and I will lift you up; and I will inspire you with my Spirit; you shall stand in Me and by Me; and what you are now struggling to do for yourself, I will do for you." Then you have got thus far that you hate sin? "Yes, I have." You have said it in your letters to me, and there are others saying it who have not written to me. "Yes," you are saying, "I desire to be saved from it. I would save myself this very instant if I could, and never sin again." Would you? Is not that repentance? What else is it, think you? Suppose you had a disobedient and rebellious son, and he had been living irrespective of your law and will, wasting your money and trampling under foot your commandments. Suppose he comes back, he sees the error of his course. His eyes are opened, perhaps, by affliction, perhaps by want, or ten thousand other things. At any rate he sees it, and he comes home and says, "Oh! father, what a fool I have been; how wicked I have been. I see it all now--I did not see it when I was doing it. I see my evil course, my sins that made you mourn, and turned your hair grey. Oh! how I hate it all. I repent in dust and ashes. Father! I forsake it all! I come home to you!" What would you say? Would you say, "My son, you have not repented enough. Go! begone! Wait till you feel it more!" No, your paternal heart would go out in love and forgiveness, and you would put the kiss of your reconciling love upon his cheek. "Even so there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that _repenteth!_" as there would be joy in that family circle over the return of that wandering child. But suppose that lad were to come and say, "Father, I do thus repent; I do thus forsake my sins; but there are some companions who will follow me so closely that I am afraid I shall again fall under their power, and there are some habits so terrible that I am afraid they will again conquer. Let me, then, be always by your side. You must strengthen me." What would you say? Would you not say, "Then, come in, my son; sit by me, live with me, and I will shield you--I will deliver you? Thou shalt never cross this threshhold without me. I will live with you; I will hold you up." And, as far as a human being could shield another, you would shield your son; he would never lack your sympathy or your strength day or night. Your Heavenly Father lacks neither sympathy or strength. His eye never sleeps. His arm never tires, and you have only to go and lay your helpless weakness on His Almighty strength by this one desperate leap of faith, and He will hold you up, even though there were a legion of devils around you. Lastly, you _renounce_ your sins, that is, in will, purpose, and determination. You say, "I never wish to grieve Him again." You sing it, and you feel it. "I never want to grieve Him any more;" and if you could only live without grieving Him, you would not much mind, even if it were in hell itself. Is not that penitence? You know it is. You renounce sin. You do not say, "Lord Jesus, save me with this right hand, with this right eye; Lord Jesus, save me with these forbidden things hanging about my skirts." No; you say, "Lord Jesus, save me out of them. Make me clean." That is penitence. You see it. You hate it. You renounce it. Now then, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, Holy Spirit, reveal the simple way of faith. III. You say, "How am I to believe?" Some despairing soul asked me this in large letters, "How am I to believe?" How does a bride believe in her husband when she gives herself to him at the altar? She trusts him with herself. She believes in him. She makes a contract, and goes home, and lives as if it were true. That is _faith_. How do you trust your physician when you are sick, as you lay in repose or anguish upon your bed? You trust him with your case. You commit yourself to him. You believe in his skill, and obey his orders. Have faith like this in Jesus Christ. Trust and obey, and expect that it is going to be with you according to His Word. Instead of this, the faith of many people is like that of a person afflicted with some grievous malady. A friend tells him of a wonderful physician who has cured hundreds of such cases, and gives him abundant evidence that this doctor is able and willing to cure him, if he will only commit himself to his treatment. The sick man may thoroughly believe in the testimony of his friend about this physician, and yet, for some secret reason, he may refuse to put himself into his hands. Now, there are numbers like that with Jesus Christ. They believe He could cure the malady of sin on certain conditions. They believe He is no respecter of persons. They believe He has done it for hundreds as bad as they, and yet there is some reason why they do not _trust Him_. They hold back. Now, what you want is to give your case into His hands, and say, "Lord Jesus, I come as Thou hast bid me, confessing and forsaking sin. If I could, I would jump out of it now and forever. Thou knowest I come renouncing it, but not having power to save myself from it; and now, Lord Jesus, Thou hast said, "Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out." I do come; Thou dost not cast me out; Thou dost take me; Thou dost receive me. Blessed, Holy Father, I give myself to Thee. I put my sins upon the glorious sacrifice of Thy Son. Thou hast said Thou wilt receive me, and pardon me for His sake. Now, I roll the guilty burden on His bleeding body, and I believe Thy promise, I trust Thee to be as good as Thy word." _That is faith_. "Oh!" said a dear lady, "I do not feel it." No: you must trust first. Mark, not believe you are saved, but believe that He does now save you. "What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." That is the law of faith. Believe that ye receive it before you feel it; when you receive it then you shall feel it. God shall be true, and every man or devil who contradicts Him, a liar. Throw your arms around the Crucified. Take fast hold of the hand of the Son of God. Put your poor, guilty soul right at the foot of His cross, and say, "Thou dost receive; Thou dost pardon; Thou dost cleanse; Thou dost save;" and keep using the language of faith. I have seen numbers of souls step into liberty repeating these precious words in the first person, "He was wounded for _my_ transgressions, He was bruised for _my_ iniquities, the chastisement of _my_ peace was laid upon Him, and by His stripes _I am_ healed." Keep using the language of faith all the way home to-night. Go into your closet and say, "I am determined to be saved, if there is any such thing as salvation." Resolve that if you perish, you will perish in that room, at the foot of the cross, suing for pardon, and you will get it. I have never known a soul come to this who did not soon get saved. Get into the lifeboat. Put off from the old stranded wreck of your own righteousness or your own efforts; step right into the lifeboat of His broken, bleeding body. Take fast hold, and resolve that you will never let go until the answering Spirit comes into your soul, crying, "Abba, Father," and you shall know of a truth that you have passed from death unto life. The Lord help you. Amen. CHAPTER III. CHARITY. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.--1 COR. xiii. 13. It must be a precious thing to be greater than _faith_, and greater than _hope_--it must, indeed, be precious!--and, just in proportion as things are valuable and precious amongst men, so much trouble and risk will human speculators take to counterfeit them. I suppose that in no department of roguery in this roguish world, has there been more time and ingenuity expended, than in making counterfeit money, especially bank notes. Just as wicked men have tried to imitate the most valuable of human productions for their own profit, so the devil has been trying to counterfeit God's most precious things from the beginning, and to produce something so like them that mankind at large should not see the difference, and, perhaps, in no direction has he been so successful as in producing a _Spurious Charity_.--I almost think he has got it to perfection in these days. I don't think he can very well improve on the present copy. This Charity--this love--is God's most precious treasure; it is dearer to His heart than all the vast domains of His universe--dearer than all the glorious beings He has created. So much so, that when some of the highest spirits amongst the angelic bands violated this love, He hurled them from the highest Heaven to the nethermost hell! Why? Not because He did not value those wonderful beings, but because He valued this _love more_. Because He saw that it was more important to the well-being of His universe to maintain the harmony of love in Heaven than to save those spirits who had allowed selfishness to interfere with it. So our Lord says, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven." The day is coming when He will behold all the dire progeny of this first rebellion fall also. Haste, happy day! But, let us look for a few minutes at this precious, beautiful Charity. Let us try, first, to define it. What is it? _First_.--_It is Divine_. It must be shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost. In vain do we look for this heavenly plant amongst the unrenewed children of men--it grows not on the corrupt soil of human nature; it springs only where the ploughshare of true repentance has broken up the fallow ground of the heart, and where faith in a crucified Saviour has purified it, and where the blessed Holy Spirit has taken permanent possession. It is the love _of_ God--not only love _to_ God, but _like_ God, _from_ God, and fixed on the same objects and ends which He loves. It is a Divine implantation by the Holy Ghost. Perhaps some of you are saying, "Then it is useless for me to try to cultivate it, because I have not got it,--exactly!" You may cut and prune and water forever, but you can never cultivate that which is not planted. Your first work is to get this love shed abroad in your heart. It is one of the delusions of this age that human nature only wants pruning, improving, developing, and it come out right. No, no! Every plant which my Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up. If you want this Divine love, you must break up the fallow ground of your hearts, and invite the Heavenly Husbandman to come and sow it--shed it abroad in your soul. _Secondly_, I want you to note that this love is a Divine principle, in contradistinction to the mere love of instinct. All men have love as an instinct; mere natural love towards those whom they like, or who do well for them. "If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even publicans the same?" Wicked men love one another from mere natural affinity, as the tiger loves its cubs. There is great confusion amongst professors of religion on this subject. They feel sentiments of pity and generosity towards their fellow-men, and they may even give their goods to feed the poor, and yet not have a spark of Divine Charity in their hearts. Saul, after God departed from him, was not wholly destitute of generous feeling respecting his family and kingdom. Dives in hell had some pity for his brethren! But neither of them had a spark of this Divine Charity. Mind you are not deceived; millions are! Let us note one or two points wherein a spurious and Divine Charity utterly and forever diverge--disagree in nature. _First._--Spurious Charity is selfish--is never exercised but to gratify some selfish principle in human nature. Thousands of motives inspire it--too many to enumerate; but we will glance at two or three. We read in the context that a man might give his goods to feed the poor, and his body to be burned, and yet be destitute of true Charity. Now what an anomaly. But we have wonderful illustrations that such a thing is possible. First, a man may do this to support and carry out a favorite system of intellectual belief of which he has become enamored, just as men become absorbed, in politics, or in what they consider the good of their nation, so that they will even go to the cannon's mouth to promote it. Further, a man may do it in order to merit eternal life. Paul did this when he went about to establish his own righteousness. He tells us afterwards that self was the mainspring of all his zeal. It was all his own exaltation; there was no Divine love; he was an utterly unrenewed, Christless, and selfish man, at the very time he was doing this. Or, it may be, in the third place, to gratify a naturally generous disposition. I used to say to a generous friend of mine, when he was talking in a confidential way about his giving, and the delight it gave him, attributing it to Divine grace--I used to put my hand on his, and say, "Hold! my friend; I am not so sure it is all grace. You like giving better than other people do receiving. Look out that you do not lose your reward through not taking the trouble to see what you give to; don't give your money to every scheme that comes across you. Remember that you are answerable to God for your wealth, and that God will demand of you HOW you have bestowed your goods." That is true Charity that takes the trouble to investigate relative claims, and tries to find out the best channels in which to give for God's glory and the salvation of men. Don't you put down your generosity to the Holy Ghost if it is not of that kind, for you will never receive a bit of interest for it, here or hereafter--not a fraction! A false Charity begins in self and ends on earth. Here is a mark for you to distinguish between it and God's Charity. The devil's Charity always contemplates the earthy part of man in a superior degree to the spiritual part; and here it exactly crosses and contradicts the Divine Charity, which always contemplates man in the entirety of his being, and always gives the first importance to the soul. We have plenty of spurious Charity in these days. The other day when I took up a so-called "religious print," and saw some fulsome things it had been saying about a certain individual, lately dead, I thought, really, would one ever imagine this were a Christian paper, in a Christian country? There is not the slightest recognition of a soul, no reference to the man's spiritual condition or his future state. Here are one or two of the most ordinary human qualifications seized on, and made the most of, to make it out that he was something beyond his fellows, but, as to any recognition of a soul, or of a God who will judge him, of a Heaven or hell, nothing! Oh, people say, when speaking of Godless, and even wicked men, "You must be _charitable,_ you must not judge." Satan does not care how much of this one-sided Charity there is; the more the better for his purpose; it will make people all the more comfortable in their sins, and get them all the more easily down to hell. My friends, are you more concerned about relieving temporal distress than you are about feeding famished souls? If you are, you may know where your charity comes from! Don't misrepresent me, and say that I teach all of one, and none of the other. God forbid, for, if any man "hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" But, on the other side, if he sees him spiritually famishing--dying for want of the bread of life--how dwelleth the love of Christ in him, if he does not minister to this spiritual destitution? I know that real Christianity cares for body and soul. Bless God, it does; but, always mind that it sets the soul FIRST. I know the Master fed the multitude; but, before that, He had them with Him three days, trying to save their souls, and when they got hungry in the process, then He made them sit down, and fed their bodies. He always looked after the soul first, and so does everyone possessed of Divine Charity. Why? Because Divine Charity has opened his eyes. He realizes the value of souls. He sees them famishing. He sees them being damned, and he cannot help himself. His desire to save them rushes out of him like a torrent; he beholds them, and has compassion on them. Try your Charity by this mark: Do you contemplate the dying, famishing, half-damned souls of your fellow-men? Do you look abroad on the state of the world, and the state of the church? Do you think about it? Do you go into your closet, and spread it before the Lord, as Hezekiah and Jeremiah and Hosea did? Do you look at it, and turn it over, and weep over it, and pray and cry, as Daniel and Paul did? Try yourselves, my brethren, my sisters, by this mark. Divine Charity is always revolving round that great problem of infinite love. "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Oh, I can never get it out of my ears or away from my heart! Oh, how I see the emptiness and vanity of everything compared with the salvation of the soul! What does it matter, if a man dies in the work-house--if he dies on a door-step, covered with wounds, like Lazarus--what does it matter, if his soul is saved? It is your creed as much as mine, that the soul is immortal, and that the death of the body is only its introduction, if it be saved, to a glorious future of everlasting felicity, progress, and holiness. Does the child remember how he used to cry over his lessons, when he becomes a man? Does he remember all the little difficulties of his school days, when he is inheriting the fruits of them? Just so; ten thousand times less important will be all our sufferings, trials, and griefs here, if we save our souls, and the souls of others. This Divine Charity makes everything else subservient to the salvation of souls; it uses everything else to save and bless the inner and spiritual man. Do you remember, on one occasion, when the Master had fed the multitudes, and when they came to Him again to be fed, He said, "Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled." You would have said, "Quite right; the people want to be fed; they are hungry." But do you hear the Divine lament that comes out in these words, that they were so spiritually obtuse, that they valued the earthly bread more than the heavenly! Give them as much temporal bread as you like, but mind you give them the spiritual bread first, for this is characteristic of true Charity. Have you got this Charity? Every soul knows whether it has or not. People are so unphilosophical in religion; they talk about not knowing; but you can find out in two minutes whether you love God or yourself best. Tell me that woman does not know whether she loves her husband or herself best! Nonsense! What is the proof?--she seeks to please him, and is willing to sacrifice herself for him--in fact, merges her interests altogether in his. Do you love God best? Are you willing to forego your interests, and to seek His? Have you this Divine Charity, born of Heaven, tending to Heaven? If not, my friend, resolve you will have it now. Begin to cry mightily to God, for the Holy Spirit to shed it abroad in your heart; give up your quibblings and reasonings, and go down at the foot of the cross and ask Him,--"Come, Lord, and break up this poor, wicked heart of mine, and shed this beautiful, pure, Divine Charity abroad in it," and then you will not, henceforth, seek your own, but the things that are Jesus Christ's. CHAPTER IV. CHARITY AND REBUKE. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.--1 COR. xiii. 13. The second main point of difference between a true and a false Charity, we want to remark, is, _Divine Charity is not only consistent with, but it very often necessitates, reproof and rebuke by its possessor_. It renders it incumbent on those who possess it to reprove and rebuke whatever is evil--whatever does not tend to the highest interests of its object. This Charity conforms in this, as in everything else, to its Divine model--"As many as I love I rebuke and chasten"--when necessary for the good of its object, for He doth not _willingly_ afflict or grieve the children of men, any more than a father willingly chastises a disobedient child; but, if he be a wise father, he will do it because he loves it. Just so the possessor of this Divine Charity can afford to rebuke and reprove sin wherever he finds it. He will not suffer sin upon his neighbor, but will in any wise reprove him, and strive to win him to the right. We will just turn to a beautiful illustration (there are many, if we had time to go into them) of the working of this Divine Charity in the heart and life of the very apostle who wrote this 13th of Corinthians. We cannot get wrong, because it is Paul himself. (Gal. ii. 11-15.) "But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles; but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel, I said unto Peter before _them_ all"-- Well done, Paul,--noble, gloriously courageous Charity that! He did not go and mutter behind Peter's back and stab him in the dark-- "I said unto Peter _before them all_, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? We _who are_ Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles." You want a characteristic of true Charity. Now, listen to it. It would be exceedingly painful to Paul thus publicly to rebuke Peter. They loved one another, for we find Peter, long after this, in one of his Epistles, calling Paul "our beloved brother, Paul." They loved one another. Paul understood the claims of true Charity, for he wrote this thirteenth of Corinthians. If he loved Peter, and if he understood the claims of true Charity, why did he thus openly rebuke Peter, why did he inflict upon himself the pain of doing it? Faithfulness to Peter himself, faithfulness to the truth, faithfulness to Jesus Christ demanded it; therefore, he sacrificed his own personal feelings, and inflicted this pain upon himself, rather than allow Peter to go wrong, the Romans to be misled, and the Jews to be carried away with worldly policy. Paul set himself to rebuke Peter in the presence of all, for truth lay, as it very often does, with the minority; nearly all the influence was on the side of the circumcision. _They_ were the most influential of the brethren, and Paul set himself against all this influence in his rebuke of Peter. Why? Because faithfulness to the truth demanded it, and Divine Charity is FIRST PURE. There is a greater example still in our Lord Himself, in the Master whose whole soul was love, whose life was one sacrifice for the good of His creatures; and yet how faithfully He reproved His own when they erred from the truth, and how fearlessly He exposed and denounced the shallowness and hypocrisy of those who professed to love God, and yet contradicted this profession in their lives. How fearlessly He reproved sin everywhere. He said to his disciples on one occasion, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." As if He had said, you ought to have learned this before now. On another occasion, He said, "Are ye also yet without understanding?" And again, "Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou savourest not the things that be of God;" that was Divine Charity, that was faithful love, that dared to rebuke, rather than let the object of it do wrong, and sin against God. And again, when He goes to the hypocrites and Pharisees, He says, "Ye say ye are the children of Abraham"--(it was as difficult for Jesus Christ to confute the professors of His day, as it is for His ambassadors to confute the professors of this day, who are living inconsistently with their professions)--He said, "Ye say that ye are the children of Abraham; if ye were the children of Abraham, ye would listen to me; or, if ye were the children of God, ye would believe in me, for I came out from God. No! ye are the children of your father, the devil, and his works ye do." And yet His Divine heart was full, to breaking, of love, and broke itself on the cross for them, and prayed, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Oh, that your Charity and mine might not lack this lineament of the Divine likeness! Would to God there were more of this faithful, loving Charity, that dares to reprove sin, and to rebuke its brother, instead of the false Charity that fawns on a man to his face, and goes behind him and stabs him in the back. Do you suppose that the great mass of the professors of this generation think one another to be right? Take almost any given church. Do you suppose that the great mass of the members of that church suppose in their hearts that their fellow members, brothers and sisters in church communion, are living consistently--I don't mean in _things_ only, but in heart--that they are living really godly lives? Alas! witness what they say behind each other's backs. They believe no such thing; they know perfectly well it is not so, and they take care to tell other people so; and yet there is not one in a thousand of them ever went privately to his brother, and took lovingly hold of his hand, and reproved him for his sinful and backsliding conduct. What would be thought of any woman who were to go, after being to church the day before, and ask for a private interview with Mrs. ----, and, when alone with her, with tears in her eyes, and deep earnestness in her voice, were to say, "Dear Mrs. ----, I have come to see you on a very painful errand, but will you suffer a word of exhortation from one so unworthy and weak as I feel myself to be, and yet, I trust, one who has the Spirit of God, which urges me to come to you? Will you allow me to say that I was much pained with your attitude at church, yesterday. It seemed to me that your mind was not at all occupied with the solemnity of the service, but seemed to be occupied in criticising the person's dress in the seat opposite to you, and I could not help noticing that when you got outside the doors you began to laugh and talk in a way quite incompatible with the service you had been attending?" If she were to say, "Dear Mrs. ----, I have not mentioned this to a soul, not even to my husband, but I have come to tell it to you; let us go down before the Lord and ask Him for the Holy Spirit, that He may show you how wrong you are, and how you are sliding away from the love of God"--what would be the thought, what would be said, of such conduct? If everybody who sees sin upon his neighbor would do that--if he would take the Lord's counsel and go and see his brother alone, and tell him his fault--how many would be saved from backsliding, and how many a disgraceful split and controversy in churches might be saved! But where are the people who will do it? I don't mean there are not any--God forbid--I know there are; but I am speaking comparatively. Where is the man who will inflict pain upon himself?--for that is the point. If it were a pleasant duty, he would do it easily enough; but it is a painful duty, he does not like to screw himself up to it. Where is the man that will do it, rather than suffer his brother to go to sleep in his sin, and rather than the precious cause of Christ shall be disgraced and injured? Where are the saints who will go in meekness and in love to try to reclaim the one who has erred? I hope you know a great many. I am sorry to say I know only a few. If you know many, I am very glad, and the more you know the better I am pleased. If you are one of these, that is one, at all events. If every Christian would have this sort of Charity, what a change would soon come about. That is what the church wants--people who can afford to rebuke and reprove, because they don't care what men think of THEM --who are set only on pleasing their Lord and Master, and doing His will. Have you got this Charity that seeketh not her own? What a contrast between Saul and Paul. Did you ever think about it? What does he say? "I went about to establish my own righteousness." That was his inspiring motive; that was the spring of his action, before he got true Charity; not that he cared for the kingdom of God, but he cared for his own honor, glory, and exaltation, and wanted to stand well with his nation. Then contrast him when he becomes Paul. What does he say? "For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." _There_ is Charity, if you like. These were the very people with whom he had been so anxious to stand well, and whose good word he wanted; but, when the Holy Ghost had come, and Paul had got the Divine Charity, and got his eyes opened to see their devilish and lost condition, he so weeps over them that he says, "I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." _There is a contrast_. He does not care now, what they think of HIM; he is going about, trying to open their eyes and make them see that they are not the children of Abraham, but the children of the devil, that they are going to the bottomless pit, and that, unless they turn round and seek the God of their fathers, they must perish. Self is lost sight of altogether, now; Paul's heart and soul and efforts are set on the salvation of men. If they choose to; praise him, he takes it as a matter of course; if they choose to condemn him, he takes that as a matter of course, too. He is seeking the kingdom, and, however men treat him, the kingdom he seeks, right on to martyrdom. He runs the gauntlet of their direst hate and malice, that he may open their eyes and turn them from Satan to God, and from sin to righteousness. Self is lost sight of; it is not Paul now--it is Christ and His kingdom. False Charity is the opposite of this. Its possessor is most concerned about what people think of HIM; not how they treat his professed Lord. The possessor of false Charity cannot afford to reprove anybody. Oh, dear, no! he would faint at the very idea; and he calls people hard and legal and censorious who dare to do it--poor, sneaking coward! but he will not be afraid to stab a man behind his back. The speech of this false Charity betrayeth it, it flattereth with its lips; honey is on its tongue, but the poison of asps is underneath; beware of it! Even when it professes to commend a brother, or neighbor, it rolls up its sanctimonious eyes, and always puts a "but" in--one of the devil's "buts." "Oh, he is a good man, but--." "Yes, I have a great esteem for him, only there is such and such a thing." Oh, it is very Divine. The devil can put on a garb of light when it answers his purpose. Oh, the fair reputations that this slime of the serpent has trailed over! Oh, the influence for good that this venom of the devil has poisoned and ruined, for it has been, truly said, "There is no virtue so white that back-wounding calumny will not strike"--even in God's perfect man, those who are watching and seeking to betray can find something on which to ground their accusations. I say, mind which Charity you have got True Charity, rejoiceth not in iniquity. Are you conscious in your soul of a feeling of triumph when anybody that you don't like happens to fall on some evil thing? If you have, look out--the devil has got hold of you. Do you rejoice in iniquity when it happens to an enemy? If so, woe be to you, unless you get that venom out. God won't have it in Heaven. _One man with that venom in him would damn Paradise_, "Love your enemies"--love them; "bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven." Now, my brother, my sister, try yourself. "We shall meet again, and you will find that these are no imaginary vagaries that I have been talking of; they are realities--though these great realities of our Christianity are seldom preached in these days; but they are _here_, and there is no truth in you if you have not got the Charity which hates evil as evil, and which will reprove it, and root it out, and have it _cured_!" Here, again, false Charity is the very antipodes of the Divine. It does not care much about righteousness. Quietness is its beau ideal of all that is lovely and excellent. It says, "Let us be quiet; you must not disturb the peace of the church." It cries, "Peace, peace!" when there is no peace. It says, "We cannot help these evils. Every man must look after himself; we are not responsible for our neighbor." It knows very often that there are continents of dirt underneath--"things," and "systems," and men--which it chooses to patronize; but then, it is covered up, and so it says, "Let it alone; we cannot have a smudge. Let it alone. Peace! Peace! Never mind righteousness--the church must be supported, if the money does come out of the dried-up vitals of drunkards and harlots; never mind, we must have it. Never mind if our songs are mixed with the shrieks of widows and orphans, of the dying and damned! Sing away, sing away, and drown their voices. Never mind; we cannot have it looked into, and rooted out, and pulled up. Peace; we must have peace!" And they call you, as Ahab did Elijah, the disturber of Israel, if you dare to touch the sore place and exhibit their putrifying wounds and bruises; and when you say to them, "The law of life is, 'Do unto others as you would they should do unto you,'" they impudently turn upon you and say, "But we are not expected to be perfect in this life," and so they throw a thicker covering over the filth, and on it goes. This is the devil's Charity; and the more the better for his purpose. But the Charity and the wisdom which is from above, is first pure, and then peaceable! I would rather be in everlasting warfare in company with that which is fair, and true, and good, than I would walk in harmony with that which is hollow, and rotten, and vile, and destined for the bottomless pit. The Lord help you to make the same choice! CHAPTER V. CHARITY AND CONFLICT. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.--1 COR. xiii. 13. Another characteristic of this Divine Charity is, that it OFTEN INVOLVES CONFLICT. It was so with our Lord. He was the very personification of it. He was love itself, and grace and truth poured from His lips incessantly. His blessed feet went about doing good, and His hands ministering to the necessities and happiness of His creatures, yet His whole course through this degenerate world was one of conflict, opposition, and persecution. His proper mission was to bring peace on earth; but the result of it was a sword! Why? That was not His fault. He would, doubtless, have enjoyed being at peace with all men, as His ambassador exhorts us--"as much as lieth in us to be." More, He was the Prince of Peace! Then, how was it that wherever He went, there was sword, opposition, and conflict to the death? Because men _resisted_ and _rejected_ His Divine and Heavenly ministrations. They would not hear His rebukes and His teaching, because they condemned them. They would not listen to His voice, because they were of their father the devil, and the works of their father they would do; and, therefore, they went about to persecute Him, and to kill Him. This was the reason--not that _He_ wanted it to be so, but it was the consequence of their resistance to the beautiful, heavenly, and Divine truths which He taught; and it is just so now, with the same truth, and the living embodiments of such truth. JESUS CHRIST COME IN THE FLESH AGAIN IN HIS PEOPLE, living out before the world His principles, acting upon His precepts, living for the same objects for which He lived, will produce, exactly and everywhere, the same result. It must be so while men are divided into two classes--the righteous and the wicked--those who are born of the flesh, and those who are born of the Spirit. One must either give in, or there must be perpetual conflict and warfare. It was so with the Saviour, and so, perhaps, with some of us. I think this is often a snare to God's really sincere people. I think some of God's people are afraid; they don't like the feeling that their hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them, or nearly so. They do not like the feeling of isolation; they do not like being compelled to take a course which nearly all the Christian professors round about them condemn, and make out to be uncharitable, and they often examine themselves to see whether it is possible that they may be going wrong in following the Divine Spirit. They say with Jeremiah, and with the Jeremiahs of every age, "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth!" They are as "speckled birds, against whom all the birds round about are gathered." They feel this opposition and conflict deeply, but what are they to do? Very often, in following the leadings of the Divine Spirit, it is impossible for us to avoid such consequences. We have to march through troops of opposing forces. We have to become the subjects of almost universal suspicion. But what then? Must we give in? Must we decline to tread in the bloodstained footsteps of the Captain of our salvation? Must we decline the honor of being in the advance guard of the Lamb's army because of the conflict, because of the pain, because of the persecution? Nay, nay; let us hold on, those here, who are thus led by the Divine Spirit into paths which involve conflict with everybody. Follow on, brother! follow on, sister! There is no point on which those who want to come out thoroughly for God, suffer more than oh this. They continually say, "You see, my friends"--they are Christian, friends--"my friends object." People come, to see me, or they write that the Spirit of God has been urging them into a certain course, for months or years, and they are held back by the opinions and wishes, perhaps, of parents, or of brothers and sisters, or uncles, or aunts, or Christian friends. _I believe it will be found, in the great day of account, that there have been more blessed enterprises crushed, more leadings of the Holy Ghost disobeyed, more urgings of the Spirit quenched, through the influence of what are called Christian friends, than all other influences put together. "Suffer me first to go and bury my father," is an everlasting standing excuse for those whom, the Lord calls on in advance paths of Christian service! Oh, my friends, I am sure of it. Look out, you fathers and mothers, you brothers and sisters, and aunts!_ Do not misunderstand me. Carefully weigh, probe, and examine, before God, your impressions and desires. Go into your closet, spread them there before the Lord. Lay them out, examine your own heart. Be sure there is no self-interest, no vain glory, no desire to be great, or to do some out-of-the-way thing. Be as clear as you like; be satisfied, in your own mind, that it is God's call, and then let fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, husbands, or wives complain--but go forward, my brother, and God will justify you. If, twenty years ago, I had stopped for Christian friends to sanction and to open the door, I should have waited till today, and the number of souls God, in His infinite mercy, has given me, I should not have gathered. But I did not wait for anybody's sanction to my Lord and Master's call; but said, "Lord, if I die in attempting it, I will do it." He seldom lets people die in attempting His will. He stands by them, and gives them abundant fruit. A lady said to me the other day, "You know my father is a Christian, and I am so afraid of going opposite to him." "Yes," I said, "that is quite a right feeling; I respect that feeling in you." But she was a woman of considerably matured age, and I added, "But is your father awake to the interests of God's kingdom as he ought to be?" She replied, "I dare not say he is." "I suppose," I said "he is comparatively old--a sort of dried-up Christian, who has lost the vigor and enterprise of his youthful days, when he wanted to go out and make everybody Christian?" "Yes," she said, "he has gone sadly behind in his zeal for the kingdom of Jesus Christ." "Now," I said, "God holds you responsible, just as He holds any other being. _He has not two codes-one for men and one for women._ There will be no two judgment seats, whatever men do here. God will hold you responsible for obedience to the teaching of His Spirit, and the leading of His providence, as much as your brother. What shall you say? You will be in the position of the man who said, 'Suffer me first to go and bury my father.'" She said, "I am afraid I shall." Now, I say, let us settle this, you Protestant Christians here. Because Catholicism has abused this principle, that a man is to leave his father and mother, and houses and lands, if needs be, is that any reason that we Protestants are to give it up? And has it come to this, that a man has only to follow Christ when everybody approves it --cries "Amen"--and when his own interests appear to him to be secured by so doing? Then, if it were so, I would give up religion altogether, and go and enjoy myself. I said to a lady, "When you married yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ, you put yourself in the same position as you would to an earthly husband." What woman in the world would feel that she ought to obey father and mother, rather than her husband? Ridiculous! Much less is she to obey her father, if her father's wishes are exactly contrary to the Divine teaching. She is only to obey IN THE LORD, and yet thousands of fathers and mothers are preventing their children working for God. Oh! what will you say to God when your precious children stand at His bar, without the sheaves they might have gathered, and the souls they might have won? What will you say to Him? And why do you hold them back? Oh, the mean, paltry considerations that you would be ashamed to own before this congregation! Is it for fear of suffering? Not in many instances; but, even if it were, did you bargain with Jesus Christ when you gave yourself and children to Him, that they were not to suffer for Him? Is it because of your pride?--because you want for them this world's applause and favor? Look out! God has wonderful ways of chastising His people in those very things in which they sell His interest. But you say that "everybody will be against you!" Yes, very likely. Let us settle that at once. Count all things dung and dross. Let none of these things move you. You say, "It will be a life of conflict to the end." Very likely, so was His. "I am so weak," you say. He knows all about that. You say, "It will be so cutting to have people saying this, and saying the other." I know it is cutting, but that is the path He calls you to tread, and He will give you grace to bear the cutting. "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you, falsely, for my sake;" and, "If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you." He does not show where He is leading us, so we can only go a step at a time. The future may look dark, but let us be fully persuaded in our own minds that the step in advance is the step the Lord wants us to take--then take it, and leave the future with Him. Come out, as Abraham did, not knowing whither you go; and, as sure as He sits upon the throne, He will vindicate your course, and, perhaps, the very things that you sacrifice, or that you think you sacrifice, for Him, He will give you, as the reward of your faithfulness. Oh, have I not known many such instances. I have known daughters who have been turned out of their father's houses for following the leadings of the Spirit of God, and who have endured all sorts of persecution, and trial, and suffering, and those fathers, when they were dying, would have nobody else to pray with them but that individual daughter. The way to win the souls of parents is by a consistent, steadfast, holy consecration to the Lord Jesus; whereas, if you pander, and trim, and hesitate, you will miss the reward. Do you think people do not know when we are inconsistent? Oh, yes, they know quite well, and they say, "That is not the right sort of religion;" but you be consistent and thorough, and God will honor these very means to the winning of the souls about whom you are so concerned. Further, a false Charity shrinks from opposition. It cannot bear persecution. Now, here is one unfailing characteristic of a false Charity: _it is always on the winning side_--that is, apparently, down here; not what will be, ultimately, the winning side. When Truth sits enthroned, with a crown on her head, this false Charity is most vociferous in her support and devotion; but when her garments trail in the dust, and her followers are few, feeble, and poor, then Jesus Christ may look after Himself. I sometimes think respecting this hue and cry about the glory of God and the sanctity of religion, I would like to see some of these saints put into the common hall with Jesus again, amongst a band of ribald, mocking, soldiers. I would like to see, then, their zeal for the glory of God, when it touched their own glory. They are wonderfully zealous when their glory and His glory go together; but, when the mob is at His heels, crying, "Away with Him!--crucify Him!--crucify Him!"--then He may look after His own glory, and they will take care of theirs. True Charity sticks to the LORD JESUS IN THE MUD, when He is fainting under His cross, as well as when the people are cutting down the boughs and crying "Hosanna!" I fear many people make the Lord Jesus Christ a stalking-horse on which to secure their ends. God grant us not to be of that number, for, if we are, He will topple us from the very gates of Heaven down to the nethermost hell. This false Charity cannot go to the dungeon--you never find it at the stake. It always manages to shift its sides, and change its face, before it goes as far as that. Never in disgrace; never with Jesus Christ in the minority, at Golgotha--on the cross. Always with Him when He is riding triumphant! Oh, I often think if times of persecution were to come again how many of us would be faithful? How many would go to the dungeon? How many would stand by the truth, with hooting, howling mobs at our heels, such as followed Him on the way to the cross--such as stood round His cross and spat upon Him, and cast lots for His vesture, and parted His garments among them, and wagged their heads and cried, "He saved others; Himself He cannot save"? How many of us would stick to Him then? But, as your soul and mine liveth, that is the only kind of love that will stand the test of the Judgment Day. Oh, have you got this Charity? Love in the darkness; Love in the Garden; Love in sorrow; Love in suffering; Love in isolation; Love in persecution; Love to the death!--Have we got this love? Examine yourselves, beloved, and see whether you are in the faith or not, for there is much need of it in this day, when there are so many false gospels and so much false doctrine;--when we hear so much about being "complete in Him" by people who never were in Him at all, and no more understand what it means than the very kitten that lies on their hearth. I say, examine yourself, whether you be in the faith or not, and whether you are in Him; for, verily, it is no easier now to be His real followers than ever it was. Further, a false Charity _refuses to call things by their proper names!_ Oh! what endless ways it has of putting lying! lying that is done on this day by professing Christians! Oh, the nice, comfortable, self-indulgent ways it has of looking at ungodly trades and practices! What do I mean? I mean trades that cannot be made subservient to the interest of the kingdom of Christ; trades that thrive by ministering either to the vile passions of human nature, or to the ungodliness of human nature. By what nice names it calls Satanic traffics in the bodies, hearts, and souls of men! And, when Divine Charity remonstrates with it, it turns round and says, "Well, you know, but we must have regard to our own interests; we have large interests at stake." I sometimes say, "God knows you have! and, when the Judge riseth up to avenge those who have been oppressed and destroyed by your iniquitous traffics, you will find them sadly TOO LARGE, TOO BIG FOR THE HELL ITSELF TO CONTAIN." The Lord have mercy on any of you who are living on the follies or wickedness of your fellow-men. Make haste to get out of such trades. Wash your hands of them, for, depend upon it, that is the devil's Charity that would try to make you comfortable in them! It has nothing to do with Divine Charity. "Oh, my soul, come not into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united," but stand aloof from all such alliances of light with darkness, of truth with falsehood; "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness," "For behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." He is the same God; He changes not! Let us call things by their right names. Let us face the evil. Let us chase it out of the world--or, at any rate, chase it out of the church. Depend upon it, the Lord is going to prove all things. I can hear, as it were, the rumbling of the earthquake of the Divine indignation underground, I can see the gathering of the Divine wrath overhead; and, IF THIS NATION DOES NOT REPENT, AND IF THE CHURCHES OF THIS LAND DO NOT COME OUT AND WASH THEIR HANDS OF THESE THINGS, GOD WILL SEND US SUCH A BAPTISM OF BLOOD AS WE HAVE NEVER CONCEIVED OF, AND HE WILL PUT US OUT, and put some other nation in our place, or else He will act contrary to all His former dealings with nations! Do you suppose that Jerusalem was more guilty than we are? Have we not been exalted much higher than Jerusalem ever was? And have we not sinned against greater light and privilege than ever she did? Are not our professed Christians exactly the same in character as her Pharisees? Do they not make fine and long prayers, and, at the same time, devour the widow and fatherless? Yea, for hellish gain, do they not make widows and orphans wholesale? Might not God truly say of us, "Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger: they are gone away backward." Even the prophets prophesy falsely, and the people love to have it so! Do you say, "No, we are not so _bad?"_ I answer, look abroad over the land, open your eyes, observe and see. Has it not become proverbial--have you not heard it until your ears have tingled, and your face burned with shame--"Better go and deal with anybody than a Christian"? and, alas! has there not been much ground for it? Have we any need to wonder that infidels wag their heads? Can you go into a shop where you are sure you will not be extortioned? Do you know anybody who keeps a conscience with respect to the profits he makes? Is there anybody scarcely who won't charge his neighbor more than the article is worth, if he has a chance, and call it lawful? _That_ is extortion. It may be only asking twopence for an article worth a penny, or a 1,000 pounds for what 700 pounds should buy; it does not matter the amount--it is EXTORTION! God puts extortioners amongst the blackest of sinners. The Lord help me to "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others," and have the Charity that will not take a mean advantage of my neighbor because I have the chance, and thus traduce the precious name of the Holy Jesus by calling myself one of His followers. It is time this satanic Charity was swept out! The very first law, the very vital principle of true Charity, is _righteousness._ There is no Charity apart from righteousness. If your Charity is incompatible with righteousness, it is born of the devil and leads to hell! If you have had anything revealed to you, in your heart or life, that you see to be wrong, say, "Here Lord, pour the light in; I am so glad You have shown this thing to me while there is time to alter it. Now bring your dissecting knife, and cut it away, even if the roots go deep down into my very heart's core. I will have it out." Will you? Will you be made true, straight, clean? Will you be made Divine? Will you be filled with the pure, holy love of God towards God, and towards men, and all beings? That is what the Lord wants you to have. This is what He has sent His Son to do. No subterfuge; no make-believe work to get you into Heaven as you are; but He wants to make you as He wants you to be, and _He can do it._ The Great Physician is able, He is willing, He has got love enough, and power enough and grace enough to do it for you. Confide all your heart to Him. Will you have this Divine Charity wrought in you? It will make you willing to suffer, to endure hardness, and shame, and contempt, and persecution. It will make you willing to do anything that human nature can do, and endure anything that human nature can suffer, that you may accomplish the same purposes that He came to accomplish, that you may help onward the progress of His glorious kingdom. CHAPTER VI. CHARITY AND LONELINESS. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.-I COR. xiii. 13. _The possession of this Divine Charity often necessitates walking in a lonely path._ Not merely in opposition and persecution, but _alone_ in it, and here, again, Jesus, who was the personification of Divine lore, stands out as our great example. He was emphatically alone, and of the people there was none with Him. Even the disciples whom He had drawn nearest to Him, and to whom He had tried to communicate most of His thought and spirit, were so behind that He often had to reprove them, and lament their obtuseness and want of sympathy. In the greatness of His love He had to go forward into the darkness of Gethsemane. He was alone while they slept, and then through ribaldry, scorn, and sarcasm, to the cross. Alas! alas! almost alone, except a few--to their everlasting honor--poor faithful women--_alone!_ And, as it was with the Master, so it has been with all those whom God has called to go in advance of their race. It was so with John, and with Paul, and with most of the apostles, and with all those whom God has called to extraordinary paths since. Must John have a revelation of things shortly to come to pass? He must go alone into the Isle of Patmos! Must Paul hear unspeakable words, not, at that time, lawful for a man to utter? He must go alone into the third heaven, and not be allowed even to communicate what he saw and heard when he came down; alone, he must necessarily go in advance. And just so, when God has called some of His followers to an out-of-the-way path, they have had to go alone in an untrodden way. Superior love necessitates a lonely walk. You shrink, and say, "That seems so hard." Yes, I know; I wish I could make it easier, but I cannot help it. I simply state the fact, that superior love necessitates, in some measure, a lonely walk, because you see it is only they who--thus love, to whom the Lord tells His secrets. If you want to ask a confidential question and get a confidential answer, you must be on the bosom of your Master. You won't be able to do it at a distance. Then, you see, when He gives to any soul superior light to its fellows, and that soul _follows_ the light, it necessarily entails a path in advance of its fellows. Unless he can inspire and encourage them (which, alas! is hard work) to follow, he must go on alone. That was a beautiful illustration we read in the lesson (Acts x.). Here is Peter called to go in advance of the whole Church! Now, the Lord wants a man to do this, and whom does He choose? He chooses impulsive, energetic, head-first Peter. But then, there is something to be done first God lets down the sheet with all its unclean contents, and Peter fastens his eyes upon it. (I wish you had studied all the sheets the Lord has let down before _your eyes_, you would have come out very differently to what you have.) Peter studies them, and soon the Divine vision has absorbed Peter's attention. When the Lord has fairly got his attention, then comes the voice, "Now, Peter, rise, slay and eat." Then, when the Lord had taught him his lesson effectually, and when Peter saw that he had not yet explored all the ideas of the Divine mind about the extension of His kingdom, and that his business was to follow his Lord's directions, and not to have his own "ifs" and "buts," but go ahead and do as God bade him, then Peter goes on to carry out the Divine direction. Then the church, aghast, as usual, at anything new--always down upon a measure, whether good or bad, if it has the _awful quality of being new_--was down upon it. This new church, which had only just itself been brought to God by a set of _new measures_, is down upon Peter, and they call him to the council to answer for his conduct. He tells them all about it in the truthful simplicity of a man of God, and, thank God, they had sense enough--yes, and love enough, charity enough, to accept his explanations, and to glorify God. Would to God we could get as much sense and charity in these days! A lady writes to me, only the other day, of her husband, saying that he sympathises with outside work, but contends that there is everything one wants in the church; and another contends that there is everything everybody wants somewhere else, and so they are down upon all the Peters that dare to do anything out of the jog-trot line. You may reason ever so urgently, and show them that all these old measures are not enough for everybody, that there is a great mass of outlying population which they do not reach--the Gentiles of this generation; you may show them that these Gentiles are without the Holy Ghost, that they are not cleansed, that they are yet common and unclean; you may show them that these new measures of yours are quite as lawful as their old measures, and that, probably, they would be a great deal more useful, and, moreover, that they have been borne in upon you by the Holy Ghost, and that you feel as if there were a fire in your bones urging you to go and try them, but they will not hold their peace and glorify God, but will loose their tongues and villify you. False Charity looks more at the means than at the end. Its possessor is more concerned about what men will think of _him_, than what will exalt the Redeemer. You can know it by this mark. Are you more concerned about what your neighbor, Mr. So-and-So, or your minister, Rev. Mr. So-and-So, or even your bishop, thinks about you, than you are about the extension of the kingdom of Christ? Look out, my friend, yours is the wrong sort of Charity. True Charity looks at the end--the spread of righteousness in the earth--_the reign of the King_--and it is not very fastidious about the measures, so that they are lawful. I do not advocate anything unlawful, to do good--God forbid. Divine Charity says, "Anywhere with Jesus"--in the temple or outside of it--at the seaside or in Cheapside--on the mountain top or in the market place--in the streets--anywhere, Lord Jesus, if Thou wilt only come and take Thine inheritance and reign over the hearts and souls of men. True Charity is only too glad to become a Jew to the Jews, as weak to the weak, if it can only pick them up;--only too glad to descend to men of low estate, and put its arms round their necks, if it can only bring them to the cross and bring them back to the heart and Heaven of God; and it does not care what the Pharisee on the other side says; it is set on saving the poor sinner; it is pouring in oil and wine, and putting him on its own beast; _it is intent on saving him_, and does not care what anybody thinks. Have you got it? It is so good. It makes you feel so warm and comfortable inside. It is beautiful, and it proves better and better every day, and it will be better still when you are dying--Faith and Hope will be done away, but this love will last _forever!_ But this necessitates somebody leading the way--going on in advance. Will _you_ be content to go in advance? Will _you_ endure the hardness of a pioneer? Can you bear the ridicule and gibes of your fellow-men? Dare _you_ go where the Holy Ghost leads, and leave Him to look _after the consequences?_ If so, happy are you, and you shall have a harvest of precious souls; you shall shine as the stars forever; but, if you draw back, His soul shall have no pleasure in you. Step out on to the Divine love, that is able, alone amongst the breakers, to bear your little bark--able to make you _more_ than a conqueror. Oh, step out--follow, follow, follow--do not be afraid! _Spurious Charity_ is the opposite of this. It must have human notice. Ostentation is its very essence. Cease to notice it, and it will soon die. "I went about to establish mine own righteousness," says Paul, before he got the true Charity. Here was a grand opportunity for Pharisaic Saul. These Nazarenes, were they not everywhere spoken against? Was not this a grand opportunity for _him_ to be everywhere spoken for?--and so he takes advantage of public opinion, and becomes "exceedingly mad" against them; and, not satisfied with persecuting them in his own city, he goes after them into strange cities, but he reveals, afterwards, when he got the Divine Charity, that the mainspring of his zeal was SELF-GLORY. False Charity hates to be in a minority--you never find it in an unrespectable minority,--it wants company, and that of a respectable, genteel kind. Its possessors are always sticklers for the traditions of the elders; their horizon is bounded very largely by the opinions of men and the attitude of the _rulers_. They are always asking, "Have any of the rulers believed on Him?" Now, my friends, let this teach you wisdom and love. Prove all things before you condemn. I have no doubt Saul was an honest man, in the world's acceptation of the term, for he says he persecuted the Nazarenes ignorantly, thinking he was doing God service; but what a grand mistake he was making, and how effectually he was doing the _work of the devil!_ Of course, if he had _seen_, he was mistaken, he would have ceased to _be mistaken_. I wish people would stop and think that the path they are now standing in the well-beaten track on which they are now walking with such slow dignity--was one quite as new and unconventional and outrageous to the coadjutors of their forefathers, as the path which any new departure by the Holy Ghost may set before them _now_. I wish such people would read history. I suppose they do not, or, if they do, they read it as they do the Bible--they fail to draw any practical principle from it. Such people should read "Neale's History of the Puritans," and see in what a hurricane of excitement, opposition, contempt, and persecution, their forefathers fought for the very paths they are now _standing still in_, and holding so sacred that they cannot have them disturbed. Do you see how unphilosophically they are acting? If their forefathers had acted on the principles they are acting on, they would have stood still in old paths, and we would never have been in the new ones. These people stand in these paths of traditionalism and routinism, just where their forefathers left them, occupying all their time in admiring the wisdom and benevolence and devotion of their forefathers, instead of imitating _their aggressive faith_ and MARCHING ON TO THE CONQUEST OF THE WORLD. Which is the most God-honoring? Which has the most common sense in it? Which will please your forefathers the most? But it is now as it was in the days of the Son of Man--for, "ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, 'If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets." Alas! what a deal of this is going on to-day, only there is one difference--it is going on "under a Christian creed, instead of a Jewish." It is only the _creed_ that differs--the character, the spring of action, is the same. Now, my friends, try yourselves--which Charity _have you got?_ Do you rejoice in the extension of the kingdom of Jesus Christ by any lawful means, or are you more concerned _about the color of a man's coat than the state of his heart?_ Would you rather the poor drunkard were left to rot and seethe in his misery, than that a man should put on a blue jacket with an S.[Footnote: Badge of the Salvation Army.] on his collar, and go and fetch him out? Would you rather have men damned conventionally, than saved unconventionally? If you would, you are a Pharisee at heart--I care not what you call yourselves. Go home and read for your instruction Matt, xxiii. 23-28. Further, how bitterly this false Charity often comes out in individual cases. We will just take an illustration. We will suppose here is a family of decent, respectable, professedly Christian people, who have been to church or chapel most of their lives. Or here is a Church, we will suppose, of the same character--nothing particular has happened; they fear the Lord, and go comfortably along, and are just where they were ten or fifteen years ago, making up for _deaths_ and _removals_. We will suppose that a member of that family or that church, as the case may be, gets converted. He reads a book, goes to a special meeting, or some providential utterance is the means of sending the light of God's Spirit upon his soul, and he is quickened and woke up to see the miserable, half-dead, guilty condition in which he is; he is praying and groaning, and feeling after God; he gets the sense of his transgressions and unfaithfulness being taken away, and the joy of God's salvation restored to his soul. Now, in a moment, almost immediately, as in the case of Peter, as soon as the internal work is done, comes the external path opened up. The Spirit of God lays before him some new work, something strikes him which has been long forgotten, or which never seems to have been recognised in his family or church. He sees what a grand thing that would be for the conversion of souls, and the extension of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and he feels it beginning to burn like a fire in his bones to enter this path of usefulness. He prays much over it, and he waits until he is fully satisfied that it is not a vain impulse, but that it is of the Spirit of God. Full of love, and faith, and zeal, he goes to tell his minister, or some Christian friend; he expects that they will sympathise with his feelings, and enter into his project; but, alas! alas! they begin by raising objections--they start difficulties:--"Well, but you see that would be a little out of our order: that is not exactly our way of doing things. I am afraid the deacons would object, or I am afraid something would happen;" and if he has the misfortune to be young (anybody would think it was a sin to be young), they will "crush" him out; they put the extinguisher on, and say, "Wait, my brother, until you have more experience," or, "my sister," especially, "_you_ must never presume to do anything of which we cannot approve!" Oh! friends, you smile because you _know_ how true it is! Oh, alas! the thousands of urgings of the Holy Ghost; the thousands of heavenly voices that have been as clear to human souls as ever Peter's sheet was to him; the thousands of glorious aspirations and schemes for the spread of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ that have been thus crushed by this spurious, false, selfish, devilish Charity! The Lord put it out. Oh! I would not care what the Lord called my child to do that would be for the extension of His kingdom and the glory of His name; I would not restrain her or keep her back. I might say, "My child, it may be a painful thing for me to consent. I might have chosen another path for you; but if you are satisfied the Spirit leads you, go forward, and I will do all I can to help you." Why? Because I want the King to have His own, and I do not care how it is, so that He gets His own, and I will have Him to use _mine_ as well as me to get it. Fathers and mothers, look out! If you grudge your children to God, He will be even with you. "They that honor Me, I will honor, but they who do not, shall be lightly esteemed." They shall get light weight all round, and be whipped with their own rods. Mind how you withhold that which is most precious from God! Mind you do not receive the grace of God in vain; _some people do_. The fifth point in which this Divine and spurious Charity contradict each other, is, that Divine Charity--the pure love of God--is _law abiding_. That is, it always manifests itself in harmony with the great moral law of the universe--it never does evil that good may come! You never hear it saying--"I cannot say that this is exactly square; I know this is not exactly the right course, but then I can accomplish such and such objects by adopting it." Never! that is of the devil! You may always know that the law of righteousness is entwined round the very heart of Divine Charity, and as justice and judgment are the habitation of the throne of its Divine Author, so righteousness is in the very core of its soul. It will never sacrifice righteousness for peace, or anything else. Now, what is the whole duty of man? To love mercy, to do justly, and walk humbly with God; and, when the Holy Spirit has brought about that result in your soul, God will look on you with a beneficent eye, with a smile of approbation, and its genial influence will sun your whole being, and you will walk in the light of it, even as the angels do in Heaven. "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God;" that is the whole duty of man--everything is included in that. Do you hear it, oh! ye temporizers with Divine law? Do you hear it, ye who say that we must come down partly, and be a little like the world in order to win it? that you must come on to the level of the ungodly in order that you may win them to God?--I tell you that _all unrighteousness is sin!_ Do you hear this, you who contend for covering up by a false Charity certain sins which are sending men to perdition wholesale, and make laws and acts of parliament to protect men in these crimes? I know your specious arguments that come from the devil; but I ask, is it justice to take one part of the human race, and that the weaker, and, therefore, according to the law of Divine Charity, demanding the greater protection from cruelty and wrong, and offer that part up for the _supposed_ good of the other, because the latter is stronger? Is that justice? Is that mercy? and, mind, I say emphatically _supposed good_; for, do you think one part of God's creation can be trodden down without reacting with terrible moral force upon the other? Do you think it can? Was it ever done? Will it ever be done? _No! not while He sits on His throne_. Yes, _supposed_ good, for facts mock your arguments. It is not for their good; you know it is not. You cannot accomplish your purpose when you have done all; and think you that you will escape, by your satanic inventions, the Divine Executioner? Think you that your specious arguments will avail with Him who hath sworn in His holy habitation that He will avenge the oppressed and down-trodden of the earth? No, no! I see written between the lines, and I hear muttering between your speeches. "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." You cannot escape the penalty! The last characteristic of true Charity which I shall name is, that _it holds out_, in spite of ingratitude, opposition, and persecution! Its possessor seeks the good of all men, not because he ought, merely, but because he cannot help it. His _heart_ is on the side of God and truth. He _loves_ righteousness, and, therefore, cannot desist from seeking to bring all beings to love it, too, although they hate and despise him for so doing. Jesus held out in this glorious love, even in the agonies of crucifixion. "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." His heart was set on bringing man back to God, and He went through with it. His soul did not draw back, and His Divine love constrained Him, even onto death. Paul followed his Master in this respect; and though the more he loved some of his converts, the less he was loved, he went on, seeking their highest good, not being hindered for a moment by their ingratitude. He loved _them_--not their good opinion or applause! A spurious Charity soon tires when the objects of it prove unworthy. Its possessor says: "I have had enough of this; the kinder I am, the worse people treat me. I shall button up my pocket, and take my ease, till I am better appreciated." _Self_-glory is the very life of spurious Charity: it dies right out under ingratitude and contempt. Which have you got, my brother?--my sister? Does somebody say, as a man who had been to a service at Scarborough the other, day, and had been hearing some straight truth, said, when asked, "How did you like it?" The man, a young, prosperous tradesman in the town, shuffled about, and said: "Well, it was awful; if that is true, I am on my way to hell." Thank God he had found it out. Now, have you got this Divine Charity? I told you, at the beginning, it did not grow on unregenerate human nature, so if you are an unregenerate man, and have not the Holy Spirit, I want you to find it out. You have to begin at the beginning, and get the plant planted. No matter what spurious imitations you have got, if you have not got _the love of God_. Have you got it, brother?--sister? If you have not, you can have it this afternoon. Will you seek it? We were all once without it, even as it is said, "We were the children of wrath, even as others;" we hated those who hated us; we hated things, not because they were wicked, and against God, but because they were opposed to us personally; our love and hate were influenced by selfishness, the same as others, but now the Lord has renewed our hearts, and made us in some little measure, like Him who "loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; and, therefore, God anointed Him with the oil of gladness above His fellows." Oh! yes; the more you love righteousness and hate iniquity, the more of gladness you will have, and the more glorious the testimony you will give for God. You will be able to say, with David, "I have not hid Thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation: I have not concealed Thy loving kindness and Thy truth from the great congregation." There will be no difficulty about declaring it. We find it easy to declare it when people get it. We cannot keep them quiet; they are like the early converts--they are up two or three together; and, like Paul, we have to say, "One at a time; you shall all prophecy, if you do it one at a time." When people get it, it bubbles up, and runs over; "it springs up," as out great Master said, "as a well of water, unto everlasting life." Many floods cannot quench it; it abideth forever. Have you got it? Have you got enough of it to lift you above your petty, selfish interests, or are you guided by the Charity that first looks inside to see how any proposition will affect _self_, instead of seeing how it will affect the kingdom of God? And you, poor sinner, who know you have not got it--I have more hope of you than some who profess to have it. His great bowels of compassion move towards you; He is waiting to shed abroad this love in your heart. The feast is spread; all things are now ready. Oh! come into His banqueting house, and sit under His banner of love for ever and ever. CHAPTER VII. CONDITIONS OF EFFECTUAL PRAYER. If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you.--JOHN xv. 7. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.--MARK xi. 24. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.--JAMES i.5-7. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.--ROMANS viii. 26,27. I have not taken the texts in the order in which they stand, but in the order in which they logically follow one another, and in which they elucidate the subject. And now, in the few remarks I wish to make, I shall try to embody answers to the letters I have received on this subject. There is no experience, perhaps, more common in these days than this, nothing more constantly said to me by professing Christians: "Well, I have prayed a long time for certain things, but I don't seem to get any answers to my prayers." I often wonder such people don't give up praying altogether I think I should if I never got answers. Now I say, this is a very God-dishonoring experience, and there must be something wrong somewhere when this is the case. There must be something wrong either with the suppliants or the Giver. Oh! I feel often what a deeply God-dishonoring thing it is when Christians meet, as they frequently do, up and down the country, to pray for a revival, to pray for a specific thing in their Churches and in their families, and it never comes. Some years ago, when the wave of revival was sweeping over Ireland and America, you know the Churches in this country held united prayer-meetings to pray that it might come to England; but it did not come, and the infidels wagged their heads, and wrote in their newspapers: "See, the Christians' God is either deaf or gone a-hunting, for they have had prayer-meetings all over the land for a revival, and it has not come." Oh! how my cheeks burned with shame as I thought of it; how I mourned over it! I knew it was not because our God was asleep --not because His arm was shortened--not because His bowels of compassion did not yearn over sinners--not because he could not have poured out His Spirit and have given us the same glorious times of refreshing they had in other places. _That was not the reason_. There was only one reason, and that was, that His people asked amiss. They did not understand the conditions of prevailing prayer. They did not fulfil them. If they had prayed till now, and maintained the same attitude, they would not have got the answer, because there are conditions to these promises, as to all other promises; and we may pray ourselves black and blue in the face if we do not comply with the conditions. God will never move an inch to meet us, and never fulfil the promises in our experience. May you, who are awake to perceive your responsibilities and obligations in respect to the perishing world, take heed to my words, and take home what I say--think about it, pray over it, try to realize it is the Lord's message to you. These are only a tithe of the glorious promises with respect to prayer. There are plenty of them in the Book, in which God has bound Himself to answer the faithful prayers of His people. "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." Now, why is it that the great mass of professing Christians do not get answers to their prayers? In the first place, they are not the CHARACTERS to whom God has made the promises. These promises are made to God's saints--to those who keep His commandments, who walk in the light and have fellowship with Him through the Holy Spirit, and, therefore, the Spirit can make intercession for them. How can the Spirit make intercession for a man when He is not in him? Those who are walking in the light can see what sort of requests to put up, when to put them up, and how to put them up; they see it all, because they are _in the light_. Such people do ask, and receive. But, alas! it is because there are so few of these that God's character is traduced every day, and that infidels laugh at us and at our God, too. Now, do not go round about, and try to put this off you. Who are these promises made to? I challenge anybody to find me promises in this Book, taken with the context (except in the case of repenting sinners, who are a special class, and met with special promises), except to saints. There are no promises of answer to prayer, except to this class of character. These promises are not made to everybody, are they? The prayer of the wicked is an abomination to God, except it be his prayer when he is forsaking his wickedness. Then that prayer is not an abomination; but all other prayers of the wicked are. These promises are made to righteous people--to people who are: First, _in fellowship with God_. "If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you;"--having been brought into living fellowship by a living faith, the promises are made to those people who MAINTAIN that union--who walk in it, who live in it, and who avail themselves of the opportunities and privileges which Jesus has bestowed upon them by virtue of that union. Now, you see, friends, it is not enough that you were _once_ in union with Jesus, in order to get answers to your prayers. I am afraid there are thousands in a backslidden state. They have let go the grasp of faith; they are not abiding in Christ; they are abiding _out of Him_, and yet they are constantly praying and wondering why God does not answer their prayers. Don't you see, the first condition is wanting. There is no possible way of approach to the Father but through the Son. All prayers are an abomination to God which do not go up to Him through His Son, and in His Son, except such as those of Cornelius, who never heard of Christ; but to people who have ever had the light and known His Son, no prayers while out of living union with His Son are accepted. And that does not mean saying, "For the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ." It does not matter much what people _say_. God never pays any attention to people's words; it is what they mean and feel that He pays attention to; and He knows when people really offer their prayers in union with His Son. They are not in union, and, therefore, their prayers never rise any higher than the room in which they offer them. They hardly get out of their mouths; God never hears them. They are drowned and buried in their own throats. Oh! you young converts, never drop out of living union with Jesus. Keep in it--hold it fast--walk in it, and you will get answers to your prayers every day. You will be as sure of it as if you saw God doing what you ask, and heard Him speaking to you. You will be able to say, "I know that Thou hearest me always." Bless His name! Those who abide in Him can say that in their measure. The next condition of prevailing prayer, is--_obedience to the light_. Now, what does it mean to walk in obedience? Well, it does _not_ mean, searching this New Testament to find out how little of God's grace will get you into Heaven! It does not mean, running round to see what this person says and the other person says about such and such a text, in order that you may escape from the real, practical meaning of the text! Such people are hypocrites at heart, whoever they are; or at least, insincere. They don't want to know God's will; they would much rather not know it. They want to get away from the plain, practical, common-sense meaning of the text, and then they say, "It doesn't mean exactly what it says," and "It should be interpreted so-and-so;" and they stroke themselves down, and try to make themselves feel comfortable when they are traitors at heart. _That is not walking in the light_. Walking in the light is like walking in the sun--not running behind a pillar there, and a tree yonder, to get away from the light. It is coming right out, and saying, "Now, Lord Jesus; I want to know Thy will. Lord, pour Thy light upon me. I am prepared to follow it, even though it is to the block and to the stake." First, desire to have the light. Oh! it makes my heart ache--I was going to say boil--with righteous indignation, in jealousy for God's honor, to think that He should be so traduced and blasphemed by those who profess to love Him--who try to make out that they get wrong for want of light. Nothing of the kind. Here is plenty of light; but you must say, "Yes, Lord, I am willing to have it, even if it condemns me. If it condemns my heart, my head, Lord, pour it on me. If it condemns my life, pour it on me. If it condemns those companions, those indulgences, pour it on me: I will give them up. If it condemns my business, pour it on me: I will abandon such business, and sooner die in the workhouse than continue in it. If it condemns my family relations, I will come out from them, and follow Thee." The Lord will always answer such a soul as that. He will put His finger down on this sore spot and the other, and He will tell you what to do, and you will be as sure of it as if you heard His audible voice. What does it mean to walk in the light? Obey His voice. Don't stop to confer with flesh and blood, but, as Paul did, get up, and set off to commence the career which your Master commands. Paul did not stop to confer with flesh and blood. He did not stop to reckon what it would cost him, but on he went, and never stops, until he reaches the block. _That_ is walking in the light--obeying--not standing, quibbling with the Lord about it; not saying, "Oh! but,"--but _doing_ it. Oh! friends, no matter who preaches another Gospel to you; no matter who comes with the doctrine that you can be accepted of God--be a saint on any other conditions. For Christ's sake and your soul's sake, don't believe them. As the apostle John says: "If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into _your_ house, neither bid him God speed." You say, "But then it is such a costly sacrifice." It is, in one sense; but when you have paid the price, when you have made the sacrifice, when you have entered upon the road, the joy, the light, the power, and the glory are worth a hundred times as much. Did any man that ever got the Pearl of great price feel that he had given too much for it, even if he had given all that he had? _Never!_ Martyrs and confessors have gloried in the possession of it while they have writhed on the rack and in the flames, and you never heard one solitary testimony that any man or woman of God ever thought that they had paid too highly for it. Never! Do you want to have your prayers answered? That is the way. Walk so that your own heart condemns you not. The obedient child that lives in complacent affection with its parent has no fear in coming up to ask for favors. It knows it will get them. Its own heart does not condemn it. "If our own heart condemn us not, _then_ have we confidence toward God." I defy any man to separate confidence and obedience. If you will not be obedient, you cannot have confidence. I challenge any Christian here to tell me that he can go up to the throne of God in faith for any blessing, when his own heart condemns him. He knows he cannot. HE HAS FIRST TO GET THAT STATE OF CONDEMNATION TAKEN AWAY before he can exercise faith for any blessing. Walk in the light, and then you shall have fellowship with Him, and His blood will cleanse you from all sin, and the Spirit will teach you how to pray, and what to pray for, which the great mass of professors know nothing about. Further, the _leading, teaching, and urging of the Holy Ghost_ is the next condition of effectual prayer. We might call these conditions a four-linked chain, connecting our souls with the very heart of God. First, fellowship with Jesus; second, obedience to His commands, walking in the light; third, the intercession of the indwelling Spirit; and fourth, the exercise of faith; and if you miss any one of these links, your prayers are done for. You may have all the other three, but if you miss one, you will not get answers. It will cut communion, and there will be no response. I am afraid a good many professors do not know what the Spirit of intercession means. They do not know anything about the Spirit making intercession for them with groanings that cannot be uttered. When we get more of this Spirit of intercessory prayer in parents, we shall see more spiritual children born. Now, the Holy Spirit says, here we know not what to pray for as we ought, unless the Spirit teaches; hence people are constantly, as James says, asking and not receiving, because they ask amiss. "Ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts"--that means, your earthly desires, affections, purposes, bound by the horizon of earth. Now, I believe that this is the great reason why thousands of Christians pray and never, get answers. They ARE SELFISH IN THEIR PRAYERS; they are earthy; they ask amiss, that they may consume it upon their earthly desires, affections, and propensities. Mothers tell me that they have prayed for their children for years, and not got one of them converted. I say, "More the pity; more the shame on you." Why? Because they prayed merely selfish, instinctive prayers, because they were _their_ children, or because they wanted them to be religions, so that they would not go into sin, or bring disgrace or misery upon the family, or it would be so nice to have them religious; but they don't want them to be righteous over much; they don't want them to be so given up to God as to cut off the vanities and fooleries of this world, and to give themselves up wholly to Christ--that is too much; but just religion enough to make them a comfort to themselves. Would _you_ answer such prayers _if you were God?_ Hundreds and thousands of prayers are put up every day that go no deeper and no higher than that, if the motives were analyzed--and the Holy Ghost _does analyze_. I am afraid many wives pray for their husbands on the same tack. They are not troubled that their husbands are living in disobedience to God, squandering their time, talents, and money, and robbing the kingdom of Jesus Christ of what they might be doing for it;--the agonizing consideration is, that, if religious, they would spend so much more time at home; that they are wasting the money, instead of laying it up for the children; and that, if they were religious, all this would be right. Now, I say, God will never answer that wife's prayer for her husband! You must think of what your husband could be for God--what he could do for God's kingdom--how Jesus Christ has shed His blood for him--how dishonoring a life of sin is to God; and you must dwell on this until your heart is ready to break, and you will soon get your husband converted, if you act wisely along with your prayers. God hates selfishness--selfishness is the devil, the very embodiment of him. You must get out of self; you must look at your child always as God's, as having a precious soul redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus, and having talents and capacities to _glorify Him_ and spread His kingdom; and you must ground your prayers on that, and say, "I would rather lay them in the grave, a thousand times--rather they were poor and despised--than they should grow up to _dishonor Thee_." Then you will get your prayers answered! People pray about their business. God sees that the way to destroy that man is to let him get on. He does not want money in order to roll the old chariot along. God sees that prosperity would eat his soul like a canker, and so He won't let him get on. The Spirit of God never leads the soul to a selfish prayer. No; it leads the soul to weep because men keep not His law, to cry more about His interests than its own. It is willing for its own house to lie desolate, if that will promote the spread of God's kingdom. It is willing for the sparrow to find a nest on its own altar, if by that it can replenish and glorify the altar of Jehovah. Then comes the last link--_faith_. Here is another secret. No believer can exercise faith for anything that the Holy Ghost does not lead him up to. You may pray, and pray, but you will never exercise faith until you have the Spirit making intercession in you. There is very little difficulty about believing with people who have taken the three preceding steps. Those who are in fellowship with Jesus, those who are walking in the light, those who have the Holy Ghost as an interceding Spirit--they know what to pray for; they know what the mind of the Spirit is; they know how the Spirit is leading them, and they can march up to the throne and "ask and receive." They know their request is according to the mind of God, and they can wrestle, if need be, like the Syrophenician woman, if He sees fit to try their faith. He does not always answer at once. He lets them wrestle with groans that cannot be uttered; but they know the Spirit is making intercession for them, and they hold on sometimes amidst great discouragement and temptation till the answer comes. They get the assurance of faith, which says, "Yes, it shall be done." People look at them with wonder. Christian friends know the thing they are praying for has not come, and say, "You look as glad as if yon had it;" "I have got the earnest: I know it is coming: I have the assurance that it shall be done." Now, every praying parent ought to wrestle till that is got for every child. You never ought to leave off till then, and then train as well as pray--co-work with God: that is the law of the kingdom, all the way through. Believe that ye receive it, and ye _shall_ have it. Oh! the confusion, the jumbling there is, in dealing with poor souls at that point. People say, "Believe you are saved, and you are saved." I have heard Christians give that advice to souls many a time. "Believe you are saved, and you are saved." Believe a lie, and it will come true. Is that God's philosophy? What is the use of telling a person to believe he is saved _before_ he is saved? That is telling him to believe a lie. People say, "Believe you are sanctified, and you are sanctified." Indeed! When were you sanctified? God never tells a person to believe a thing until it happens. He has made the bestowment of the gift to be simultaneous with the exercise of the faith. Believe that ye receive, and ye shall have--not that ye did receive an hour ago, for that would not be true; not that ye will receive an hour hence, for that would be presumption. There is no such promise, but believe that ye do now receive, and ye shall have. "I will never disappoint the man who dares trust me to that extent." He shall have it. You say the age of miracles is past. Yes, because the age of that sort of faith is past. You will get miracles back when that sort of faith returns. God has bound Himself over to the faith of His real people, and He would sooner break all the laws of nature, than He would break the laws of grace. He can easily set aside a law of nature; but He will never set aside a law of grace. He has bound Himself to faith--the only power in the universe to which He has bound Himself--and nobody ever rose up in this world yet, and said, "I trusted God, and He deceived me." Faith means TRUST--faith means ABANDONMENT--as if you were dying, and you had nothing left but the naked promise of God. You say, "I am dying: I must trust now," and that man jumps on to the promise. He gives up experimenting, and really trusts; and you have seen the light come into his eyes; you have heard the song of praise burst from his lips, because he believed he received, and he did receive. Now, then, some of you who have written to me, know you are living in fellowship with Jesus. Some of you have lately commenced to walk in the light. You have cut off and put away the idols; you have abandoned yourself to the will of God, and sworn, by His grace, that you will follow Him all the way. You _do_ feel the Holy Ghost is in you. Oh! I entreat you to obey fully, to let the Spirit have His way. Do not restrain Him. Don't think it will hurt your bodies: don't think it is too much; don't think you are getting fanatical; don't think that, after all, God does not require this kind of thing--follow the Spirit. Let the Spirit lead you, and groan through you; let the Spirit wrestle with God through you--follow Him. If we had more of this in these services, we should have more fruit; and if the church had more of this, there would be more souls born into the kingdom. It was one of the things in which I grieved the Spirit of God in my early days that I would not let Him, to the extent He would have done, make me a woman of prayer; and yet, in comparison with many, perhaps, I was one. He used to lay particular people and subjects on my heart, so that I could not help praying; but oh! how bitterly I have regretted and wept before the Lord that I did not let Him have all His way with me in this respect. Take warning! and you whom He is beginning to lead, let Him lead you. Pour out your souls for others and with others. I believe that more souls are convinced in real prayer, than in speaking. I have noticed this many a time. I have seen at the bottom of a great hall or theatre, or in the gallery, a lot of the roughest men conceivable, behaving in the most unseemly manner, arrested by the influence of prayer. Perhaps, when the rowdyism has been ready to break into open tumult, a little woman has stretched out her hands over the congregation, and said, "Now, let us pray;" and I have seen the whole mass of men assume an attitude of quietness and reverence. I have watched the aspect of the congregation, and seen great, rough, black-faced fellows get their heads down, and sometimes wipe their eyes; and when we have got up to sing, there has been no more disorderly conduct, but they have settled down with the solemnity of death, to listen. Hundreds of them were convinced of sin while under that prayer. It was the Holy Ghost wrestling for those souls in the heart of that woman, that struck them with conviction. Prayer is agony of soul--wrestling of the Spirit. You know how men and women deal with one another when they are in desperate earnestness for something to be done. That is prayer, whether it be to man or God; and when you get your heart influenced, and melted, and wrought up, and burdened by the Holy Ghost for souls, you will have power, and you will never pray but somebody will be convinced,--some poor soul's dark eyes will be opened, and spiritual life will commence. CHAPTER VIII. THE PERFECT HEART. For the eyes of the Lord ran to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him--2 CHRON. xvi. 9. This passage occurs in the history of Asa, one of the most godly and devoted kings that ever sat upon the throne of Judah. We are told in the fourteenth chapter that he commenced his reign by setting himself to destroy the idolatry into which the whole nation had been betrayed by its former ruler, and to restore the worship and service of the God of Israel. He set himself to bring back the nation to its allegiance and obedience to God; and his success is a great encouragement to any who shall set themselves, single-handed and with a perfect heart, towards God, to do this in any circle, under any circumstances. _He succeeded_. God blessed him in his efforts to purge his kingdom inside, and God also delivered him from his enemies outside, and enabled him by His power to defeat the king of Ethiopia, who came against him with an exceeding great army, because King Asa was perfect in his heart towards God. When this king came up against him, Asa went and cried unto the Lord, and cast himself upon his God, trusting Him to deliver him, and God never disappointed any man, either before or since Asa's day, who did that. God delivered his enemies into his hand and made him a successful and happy king, over a prosperous and increasing people. But by-and-bye, after many years, for Asa was perfect in his heart towards the Lord for many years of his long reign; but whether it were, as, alas! too often happens, that a life of ease and prosperity brought forth in Asa the results of partial backsliding, we know not; but as years went on, another war was declared, and this time it was the king of Israel who came up against the king of Judah. What did Asa do? Did he go, as formerly, and cry unto the Lord, and put his battle into His hands? No, he did not. He had left His first love; he had become, in a measure, untrue to the Lord God of Israel. He forgot where his strength lay; his spiritual perceptions had become dim; he had lost his realization of God's ability to help and deliver him out of the hands of his enemies, and so he fell back upon worldly policy. He went down to Assyria and courted Ben-hadad, the king of Assyria, and said, "Come and help me, that my enemies may depart, for I am sore pressed." Ah! what a picture of backsliders. On another occasion, when Jehosophat made an ungodly alliance, a prophet met him and said, "Should'st thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the Lord?" No man ever did this without being sorely whipped, as poor Asa was. He succeeded, indeed, in the battle, and won the victory. It was a lawful end, but he accomplished it by unlawful means. He won the victory, and, I dare say, he was congratulating himself, and stroking his beard in self-complacency, when, lo! the prophet comes to deliver God's message to him, and he says:-- "Because thou hast relied on the king of Syria, and not relied on the Lord thy God, therefore is the host of the king of Syria escaped out of thine hand. "Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubims a huge host, with very many chariots and horsemen? yet because thou didst rely on the Lord He delivered them into thine hand. "For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him. Herein thou hast done foolishly; therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars"--the very thing he went to Assyria to seek to avoid. He wanted _peace_, not war, and he went down to Assyria to enable him to spend the remainder of his days in peace, when, lo! the Word of God goes forth, "Thou shalt have wars." He was chastised in the very thing for which he sold himself and his God. "Be sure thy sin will find thee out." It is God's way to chastise His children by those very things in which they sell His interests. "Thou shalt have wars." But we want to deal specially with the lesson which the prophet draws from this event; for he says, "Wherefore didst thou go to Assyria? Wherefore hast thou sinned against God? Hast thou forgotten who the God of Israel was? Didst thou not know that the eyes of the Lord run throughout the whole earth?" He would have helped thee now, Asa, as much as in the past. He will help any man who is whole-hearted towards Him--that trusts in Him. Now, I say, this is the lesson which the prophet draws, not only for Asa, but for all the Asas since his day, and those who are yet to come, for every man and woman who professes to be a servant of God, the prophet sounds down to the ages that "the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him." Now, what is this perfect heart? "Ah!" you say, "that is the point." Yes, that is the point, and we will try to show what kind of a heart this is. It must be A DIFFERENT KIND OF HEART TO HEARTS IN GENERAL; all hearts are not perfect towards God, or else His eyes would not have to be running to and fro throughout the earth to find them. They would be plentiful enough if they were the common sort of hearts, but evidently they are a different kind of hearts to ordinary hearts; and another thing is evident on the face of the text, that these kind of hearts are very precious in the sight of God. He delights in them; He makes greater store by one such than He does by thousands of the other kinds of hearts, of which there are so many. I say, these two lessons everybody with common sense will admit at once--that these hearts are not the common hearts, and that they are very precious in the sight of God. Now, what is the meaning of this term "perfect heart," referring to the hearts of God's children, all the way through the Bible? As you know, I like to establish my points in the mouths of two or three witnesses, I will give you two or three texts, that we may find out God's meaning of this term, and then we will give you the very lowest rendering, where all schools are agreed, for I don't want controversy. We will just look at Psalm xxxvii. 37: "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace." There _are_ such people as God means in that verse. Psalm lxiv. 4: "That they may shoot in secret at the perfect," who have always been a favorite target of the devil. He does not shoot much at people whose hearts are perfect towards the Lord. It is at those perfect people he shoots. "Suddenly do they shoot at him," perhaps while he is thinking they are his friends. "Suddenly they shoot, and fear not." "Be ye perfect," says the Saviour, "even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect." That means something. We will try to find out what it does mean (Matt. xix. 21)-- "Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in Heaven: and come _and_ follow Me." And, again, at 1 Cor. ii. 6-- "Howbeit, we speak wisdom among them that are perfect." And (2 Timothy iii. 17)-- "That the man of God may he perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." There are numbers of others, but these are samples, and I suppose all Christians attach _some_ meaning to these terms. They must be terms signifying a great difference between the persons who are spoken of and ordinary men and women. Now, what do they mean? Well, the very lowest rendering of all divines and all schools is this, that it means _sincerity_ and _thoroughness_. Well, that is all I want. Give me a man sincere and thorough in his love, and that is all I want; that will stretch through all the ramifications of his existence; it will go to the ends of his fingers and his toes, through his eyes, and through his tongue, to his wife, and to his family, to his shop, and to his business, and to his circle in the world. That is what I mean by _holiness_! Then, taking the lowest translation, it means that a man is whole-hearted in love, and thorough out-and-out in service! Amen. For that man who is thus perfect towards God, God will indeed show Himself strong in more ways than one! This cannot mean a merely natural heart, it must mean a renewed heart, because there are no perfect hearts by nature. There is no one in this sense that doeth good and sinneth not, for every child of Adam has gone astray like a lost sheep, has done the things he ought not, and left undone the things he ought to have done, and the whole world has become guilty before God. There are no naturally perfect hearts. It must mean, then, a heart renewed by the Holy Ghost, put right with God, and then kept right. A heart cannot be kept right until it has been _put right_, and that is the secret of the failure with some of you. You are trying to bring forth fruits before the tree is planted. You are looking for the fruits of a perfect heart before you have got one. You may well be disappointed. You must get your heart renewed, and then kept right by the power of the Holy Ghost. Then, what does this perfect heart imply? 1. _A heart perfect in its loyalty to God_, thoroughly given over to God's side, irrespective of consequences,--_loyal_. These are the hearts that God wants. This was the difference between David and Saul. There was not so much difference in the greater part of Saul's outward life, when compared with the life of David. It was only the prophet Samuel, perhaps, who knew the difference, and a few close observers; but the difference was, that David was loyal to God, and God calls him, for this reason, a man after His own heart. From the first calling of David from the sheepfolds, right to the end, with one or two exceptions, during the whole of his life, he was loyal to God, and, if you will carefully search his history, you will find that in all his wars, and all his dealings with the nations round about, and with the leaders of affairs in his own kingdom--in everything, David was loyal to God. It was the interests of God's kingdom that lay at David's heart--not his own honor, ease, or aggrandizement--not his own fame or riches, or building himself a house--it was the house of his God that was dear to his heart. He was loyal; whereas Saul was loyal only as far as it served his own purposes and interests. Oh! how many such Sauls there are in these days. When God's commandments went counter with his notions, he openly set God at naught, and did as he liked. He sacrificed God's interests to his own. He was unloyal at heart, hence he was a traitor, and never could learn the way of the Lord. He was never perfect towards the Lord his God, and, at last, God cast him off, and Samuel did also, and you know what his end was. Just the difference between the two--loyal and unloyal. A heart perfect towards God! What does it mean? It means-- 2. Perfect in its _obedience_. That man or woman who has this kind of a heart, ceases to pick and choose amongst the commandments of God, which he shall obey, and which he shall not--he ceases to have his own will, though sometimes he may have a struggle with his own will, and the way that God may call him to take may look to him as if it were a dangerous or risky way, and he may wait a little bit, to be thoroughly satisfied; but when once satisfied that it is God's way, the true child will not hesitate. He confers not with flesh and blood, but on he goes, irrespective of consequences. This was Paul's kind of obedience. He conferred not with flesh and blood; he counted all things dung and dross, and he went on doing so to the end--thorough in his obedience. People come to us and want to know what they are to do; they feel that they are only half-hearted in God's service; they have neither joy nor power, and say, "What must I do?" and we take, as God helps us, the dissecting knife, and try to find out the difficulty. We get them down under the blaze of the Holy Spirit's light, and try to probe them and find where they are wrong. Perhaps the Lord leads us to the sore spot, and we point out the difficulty, but, instead of obeying, they shrink away. They look ahead, and they see that to obey the light will involve loss of some kind--perhaps reputation, wealth, family associations, ease, or loss of friends, loss of temporal comforts, loss of good business. Loss is in the background, and they see it. They know where we are leading them to, and they slip back; they do not want to see, and yet they do not want to consider themselves dishonest, so they turn their heads away, and will not look in the direction of the light, smoothing it all over and singing-- "Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were an off'ring far too small," &c. That is not a perfect heart, but a partial heart towards the Lord God. The partial heart, so common, alas, now-a-days, wants to serve God a little. It is willing to go a little way with God, but not all the way; so that, taking the lowest interpretation, that is not a perfect heart towards the Lord. Can it be expected that the Lord should shew Himself strong in behalf of such people? Do you think you would if you were God? Suppose you were a king, and had a prince or statesman who was serving you very valiantly and devotedly while it served himself; but, suppose the tables were turned, and you were dethroned and cast away into exile, your name being bandied about the nation where you once reigned as king, in disgrace and dishonor; suppose this statesman gave you up, and said, "Oh! I am going to be on the side of the reigning monarch. I was very devoted to this man while he reigned, but I cannot afford to be devoted to him now his interests draggle in the dust; I must be on the winning side." What would you think of such a man? And if you were restored to your kingdom and power, would you show yourself strong on behalf of such a man? No; you would remember, as David did, the man who cursed you. But if you had a prince or statesman who followed you into exile, who ministered to you in secret, who tried to hold up your interests, who contended for your righteousness and justice, and held up your name and tried to make the people see that you were a good and true man, who held on to you, when all the nation was calling you traitor--if you came back to your throne, would you not show yourself strong in behalf of that man? Of course you would. The Lord says He will show Himself strong in behalf of those of such a heart towards Him. You masters here have a servant--a clever, smart man; you know how well he can serve you, and how valuable he can be, and would be if he were true; but you have reason to believe that he will only go with you as far as it will be for his own interests; he will serve you as far as he can serve himself, too, but, if he can get up by putting you down, you may lie there. What would you say to such a man? You would say, "I shall never show myself strong for him." So God is not likely to show Himself strong for people who are not of a perfect heart. A lady said to me, "I have been doing this and doing that for years, but I have no power; why don't I have it?" I said, "Because you are not true to God. He will give it to anybody who is true to Him, and He can see into your heart, and knows you are not." Why will He not show Himself strong in your behalf? _Because you do not show yourself thorough in His behalf._ The moment you show yourself thorough, that moment will He show Himself strong for you. If you had been in Daniel's place you would not have done as he did. Daniel was one of the perfect-hearted men; he served his God when he was in prosperity. He set his window open every day. Then his enemies persuaded the king to make a decree that no man should pray but to this king for so many days. "Now," they said, "we shall have him." But Daniel just did as he was wont, he went and prayed with his window open. You say, "That was demonstrative religion, that was courting opposition. What need was there for him to make this display; could he not have shut the window and gone into an inner room? That was just like you Salvation-Army people, you always make a demonstration. Why could he not have gone into an inner chamber and prayed?" Because he would be thorough for his God in adversity, in the face of his enemies, as he was in prosperity. So he went and prayed with open window to the God of Heaven, and because _He is_ the God of Heaven, He is able to take care of His own. His heart was perfect towards the Lord his God. 3. _This perfect heart is perfect in its trust_:--and, perhaps, that ought to have come first, for it is the very root of all. Oh, how beautiful Abraham was in the eyes of God; how God gloried over him. How do I know that Abraham had a perfect heart towards God? Because he trusted Him. No other proof--no less proof--would have been of any use. I dare say he was compassed with infirmities, had many erroneous views, manward and earthward, but his heart was perfect towards God. Do you think God would have failed in His promise to Abraham? Abraham trusted Him almost to the blood of Isaac, and God showed Himself strong in his behalf, and delivered him, and made him the father of the faithful; crowned him with everlasting honor, so that his name, from generation to generation, has been a pillar of strength to the Lord's people, and a crown of glory to his God. CHAPTER IX. HOW TO WORK FOR GOD WITH SUCCESS. Son, go work to-day in my vineyard.--MATT. xxi. 28. Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.--LUKE xiv. 23. I am to speak of some needful qualifications for successful labor; and I say:-- First, that there are certain laws which govern success in the kingdom of grace as well as in the kingdom of nature, and you must study these laws, and adapt yourself to them. It would be in vain for the husbandman to scatter his seed over the unbroken ground or on pre-occupied soil. You must plough and harrow and put your seed in carefully, and in proper proportion, and at the right time, and then you must water and weed and wait for the harvest. And just so in Divine things. Oh! we shall find out, by-and-by, that the laws of the spiritual kingdom are quite as certain and unerring in their operation as the laws of the natural kingdom, and, perhaps, a great deal more so; but, through the blindness and obtuseness and unbelief of our hearts, we could not, or would not find them out. People get up and fluster about, and expect to be able to work for God without any thought or care or trouble. For the learning of earthly professions they will give years of labor and thought, but in work for God they do not seem to think it worth while to take the trouble to think and ponder, to plan and experiment, to try means, to pray and wrestle with God for wisdom. Oh! no: they will not be at the _trouble_. Then they fail, grow discouraged, and give up. Now, my friends, this is not the way to begin work for God. Begin as soon as you like--begin at once--but begin in the right way. Begin by praying much for Him to show you how, and to equip you for the work, and begin in a humble, submissive, teachable spirit. Study the New Testament with special reference to this, and you will be surprised how every page of it will give you increased light. You will see that God holds you absolutely responsible for every iota of capacity and influence He has given you, that He expects you to improve every moment of your time, every faculty of your being, every particle of your influence, and every penny of your money _for Him_. When you once get _this_ light, it will be a marvelous guide in all the other particulars and ramifications of your life. Study your plans. How men in earthly warfare study plans of stratagem, and adopt all manner of measures in order that they may take the enemy by surprise! But, alas! how little care and attention God's people give to taking souls; and yet it is _far harder work to take souls than it is to take cities_. How surprised I have often been at the assumption of people who, perhaps, never gave one hour's consecutive thought in their lives to the best means of doing certain work, and yet they will pronounce an opinion right off as to certain modes and measures which have been tried and proved successful in the lives of some of the most successful laborers for God. They will say, "Oh! I don't believe in it." "Oh! it is all nonsense, ridiculous, wrong!" while, perhaps, those people whom they condemn have been pleading, and weeping, and studying, and experimenting, and almost sacrificing their heart's blood to try to find out the best means of winning souls for Christ. I shall never forget the shock that came over me once in a large gathering of Christian people, when a gentleman, who occupied a somewhat prominent position, was giving out a hymn which contained a verse something about spending one hour in watching with Jesus. He stopped in the middle of this hymn, and said words to this effect: "I am afraid we are verily guilty here. I do not know that I dare say I ever watched one consecutive hour with Jesus in my life." I shall never forget it. My cheeks burned with shame. I said, "Oh! my God, if these are the leaders, we need not wonder at the people." A man occupying such a position to dare to say it! The Lord have mercy on him. No wonder the Lord's work is done in such a bungling way! I say those who want to be successful in winning souls require to watch not only days but nights. They want much of the Holy Ghost, for it is true still, "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting." We have grown wiser than our Lord now-a-days; but, I tell you, it is the same old-fashioned way, and if you want to pour out living waters upon souls, either publicly or privately, you will have to drink largely at the fountain yourself, and have them very ready to let out! If you have not, your talk will be as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. Oh! it makes my soul weep tears of blood to think of the misdirected effort that will be put forth this very Christian Sabbath. Plenty of labor, but how little comes of it?--all because it is cramped, and ruined, and misdirected, for want of thought, and prayer, and a single eye for the salvation of souls. May God rouse us up to this, and make us willing to think, and labor, and learn, and wrestle, and sacrifice, in order that we may do it. Then, further, the second qualification for successful labor is power to get the truth _home_ to the _heart_. Not to _deliver_ it! I wish the word had never been coined in connection with Christian work. "Deliver" it, indeed--_that_ is not in the Bible! No, no; not deliver it; but drive it home--send it in--make it _felt_. That is your work;--not merely to say it--not quietly and gently to put it before the people. Here is just the difference between a self-consuming, soul-burdened, Holy Ghost, successful ministry, and a careless, happy-go-lucky, easy sort of thing, that just rolls it out like a lesson, and goes home, holding itself in no way responsible for the consequences. Here is _all_ the difference, either in public or individual labor. God has made you responsible, not for delivering the truth, but for GETTING IT IN--getting it home, fixing it in the conscience as a red-hot iron, as a bolt, straight from His throne; and He has placed at your disposal the power to do it, and if you do not do it, _blood_ will be on your skirts! Oh! this genteel way of putting the truth! How God hates it! "If you please, dear friends, will you listen? If you please, will you be converted? Will you come to Jesus? or shall we read just this, that, and the other?"--no more like apostolic preaching than darkness is like light. God says, "GO AND DO IT: compel them to come in. That is your work. I have nothing to do with the measures by which you do it providing they are lawful." "Use just the same diligence, earnestness, and determination that you would if you were resolutely set on any human project, and always be sure that I will be with you to the end of the world. Never doubt My presence when you are set on My business. I will be with you, and I will succeed you." Do it--the Lord help us to get the truth home! This was the way with Paul, and this was the way with Jesus. Paul says: "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." Oh! what a beautiful insight this gives us into the ministry. Why do you persuade men, Paul? "Because I know the terror of the Lord that is coming on, and because we thus judge that, if One died for all, then were all dead. Therefore, I persuade men." He did not give up when he had put it before them. He carried them on his heart, and he says, "That by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears." He wept it in, as well as drove it in, with his logic, and his eloquence, and with the power of the Holy Ghost in him. Make it go in--make your words felt; don't talk to them in that sickly, languid way that makes no impression--make them know it. If you have not enough of the Holy Ghost for this, go to your closet till you have, and then come and drive the Word home to their conscience as a two-edged sword, dividing asunder soul and spirit. The second thing indispensible to success is _simplicity_:--naturalness in putting the truth. You have not only to get it home, but, in order to do this, give it them simply and naturally. If I were asked to put into one word what I consider the greatest obstacle to the success of Divine Truth, even when uttered by sincere and real people, I should say, _stiffness_. It seems as if people, the moment they come to religion, assume a different tone, a different look, and manner--short, become unnatural. People sometimes come to me and say, "Oh! I would give the world to be natural, but I have got into this way of talking to people. It seems as though I cannot be natural. Can you help me?" I say, "Yes, I can help you, by this advice--Determine, by the help of God, that you will break the neck of this bondage. I will tell you how to begin. Begin with your family. Break off right in the middle of conversation on earthly matters, and begin to talk about their souls, or your own experience, or drop down on your knees, and begin to pray." "Oh! but it would be such a break." It should not be a break to talk to your Father. If you are in the spirit of it there will be no break. This will help you, more than anything else. Determine that you will overcome this sanctimoniousness, which is the curse of a great deal of the religion of this day. We want SANCTIFIED HUMANITY, not sanctimoniousness. You want to talk to your friends in the same way about religion, as you talk about earthly things. If a friend is in difficulties, and he comes to you, you do not begin talking in a circumlocutory manner about the general principles on which men can secure prosperity, and the sad mistakes of those who have not secured it; you come straight to the point, and, if you feel for him, you take him by the button-hole, or put your hand in his, and say, "My dear fellow, I am very sorry for you; is there any way in which I can help you?" If you have a friend afflicted with a fatal malady, and you see it, and he does not, you don't begin to descant on the power of disease and the way people may secure health, but you say, "My dear fellow, I am afraid this hacking cough is more serious than you think, and that flush on your cheek is a bad sign. I am afraid you are ill--let me counsel you to seek advice." That is the way people talk about earthly things. Now, do exactly so about spiritual things. If your friend is a spiritual bankrupt, tell him so. Tell him where he is going, and that the reckoning day is coming, and that he will be in God's prison-house very soon, and that, if the creditor once gets hold of him, and shuts him up, he will never get out till he has paid the uttermost farthing. If your friend has a spiritual disease, tell him so, and deal just as straight and earnestly with him as you would about his body. Tell him you are praying for him, and the very concern that he reads in your eyes, will wake him up, and he will begin to think it is time he was concerned about himself. Try to attain this simple, easy, natural way of appealing to people about their souls. I believe if all real Christians would attain this, and act upon it, this country would be shaken from end to end! Thirdly, you must be in _earnest--desperate_, I would like to say. And, indeed, friends, settle this as a truth, that you will never make any other soul realize the verities of eternal things, any further than you realize them yourself. You will beget in the soul of your hearer, exactly the degree of realization which the Spirit of God gives to you, and no more; therefore, if you are in a dreamy, cosy, half-asleep condition, you will only beget the same kind of realization in the souls who hear you. You must be wide awake, quick, alive, feeling deeply in sympathy with the truth you utter, or it will produce no result. Here is the reason why we have such a host of stillborn, sinewless, ricketty, powerless spiritual children. They are born of half-dead parents, a sort of sentimental religion, which does not take hold of the soul, which has no depth of earth, no grasp, no power in it, and the result is, a sickly crop of sentimental converts. Oh! the Lord give us a real robust, living, hardy Christianity, full of zeal and faith, which shall bring into the kingdom of God, lively, well-developed children, full of life and energy, instead of these poor, sentimental ghosts that are hopping around us. Oh! friends, we want this vivid realization ourselves. If we have it we shall beget it in others. Oh! get hold of God. Ask Him to baptize you with His Spirit "till the zeal of His house eats you up." This Spirit will burn His way through all obstacles of flesh and blood, of forms, proprieties, and respectabilities--of death, and rottenness of all descriptions! He will burn His way through, and produce living and telling results in the hearts of those to whom you speak. Earnestness--such earnestness that it comes to desperation--like that of Paul, who counted all things but dross; yea, and who counted not his life dear unto him. That was the secret. He counted not his life, nor anything that constitutes life--liberty, pleasure, enjoyment, friends, reputation, ease, &c.,--all on the altar, all was in the scale. He counted none of those dear unto him, so that he might win the perfection, the fulness of Christ in his own soul, and the salvation of the souls around him. Oh! what a LAUGHING-STOCK TO HELL is a light, frivolous, easy, lukewarm professor. Oh! what a shame and puzzle to the angels in Heaven, and what a supreme disgust to God. "I would thou wert cold or hot. So, then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of My mouth." Oh! what will that be? Talk about shame! Think of that! Shame! Some of you feel it going into the streets for God. You feel it when a few people see you kneel down here! Think of being spewed out of the mouth of God before an assembled universe. What will that be? God helping me, I will avoid that I will sooner hang with Jesus on the cross, between two thieves, than I will bear that shame. "_I would thou wert cold or hot!_" Some of you say, in your letters, that you will have this whole-heartedness. You say that you have given up all, and that you are consecrating yourself to a life of labor. Now, be _hot_. I know you will burn the fingers of the Pharisees. Never mind that. I know you will fire their consciences, like Samson's foxes did the corn. Never mind that. _Be hot._ God likes hot saints. Be determined that you will be hot. They will call you a fool: they did Paul. They will call you a fanatic, and say, "This fellow is a troubler of Israel"; but you must reply, "It is not I, but ye and your father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord." Turn the charge upon them. Hot people are never a trouble to hot people. The hotter we are the nearer we get, and the more we love one another. It is the cold people that are troubled by the hot ones. The Lord help you to be HOT. Then another indispensable condition is the surrendering of _all our powers_. There must be no holding back. "Cursed be he that holdeth back his sword from blood." That curse is resting on Christendom to-day. Oh! they will thrust the sword a little way in, but they will not go in to the core. They dare not draw blood--the soldiers of this age--for their lives. They dare not touch a man to the quick, because, alas! they are looking to themselves, and thinking what people will say of THEM, instead of what God will say of them. You must not be afraid of blood if you are to be a true warrior of the Lord Jesus Christ. You must not be afraid to say, if need be, "Oh! generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? "You must not be afraid to say, if need be, "You have made my Father's house a den of thieves," if you save some of them by doing it. Oh! this accursed sycophancy; I was going to say, this accursed fear to brave the censure of the world--this accursed making good evil and evil good, as if God were altogether such an one as ourselves. Don't you think He sees through the vile sham? Oh! my friends, if we don't mend in this respect, He will come in judgment before long, and we shall find out then the difference between the precious and the vile, if we do not find out before. If you want to be a successful worker, you must make up your minds to begin with, that you will be CRUCIFIED. As a dear minister once said to somebody, when he was arguing with him about being so hard in the pulpit, "I don't care." "Oh!" said the other, "Don't you know what became of 'Don't care?'" "Yes," he said, "He was crucified, and I am ready to be crucified alongside of him." When you are in the right, don't care. You can but be crucified, and it will soon be over; and then the Book says, "They that suffer with Him will also reign with Him, and they shall be glorified together." It would be a wonderful thing to be glorified alone, but, oh, think of being glorified together! A gentleman said lately, "I have been thinking a great deal about the glory. It is a wonderful thing--that glory that is to follow. This would be worth a man sitting on the dunghill all his life to obtain." I looked at him, and thought, perhaps you are nearer to it than you think, and perhaps I am, too. Ah! it _is_ a wonderful thing, that glory that is to follow. Then let us be willing to suffer with Him and for Him. Make up your mind to be crucified at the start, and then it will be easy. Further, _complete abandonment_ is a condition of successful labor. It is so in anything. What would you think of a soldier who was always reckoning how much it was to cost, and when he should get back, or whether it was worth the sacrifice? You would say, "He is of no use to the British Army. We want men who will go in to win at all costs." Now, God wants men and women who will go in to win, who believe in winning, who know they have the power to win, and who count _all things_ loss in comparison to winning. Do you want success? If you do not come to that first, you will never get it. Fourthly--_You must give up, kick out of the way, trample underfoot, all that hinders._ _Reputation_. Perhaps there are some ministers here. There were some last Sunday, and there were some the Sunday before. Some of you have written and others have talked to me. You say, "It would be such an entire breaking from one's circle." Exactly. Some say, "You see, the inevitable consequences of setting up this high standard would be a constant running of the sword into some of your best hearers and your best friends." Exactly; that is giving your sword to blood. You would not think much of drawing the blood of an enemy--it is the blood of your _friends_ that is the test! I know all about it; I have been there. I was there a long while once. It was my own sore spot. The devil said, "If you begin preaching they will call you an impudent woman," and I felt it would be better almost to go to hell than have that said about me. He said, "They will put you in the newspapers, and say all manner of coarse and vulgar things about you;" and God only knows what that was to my soul; but I battled and struggled with it for a long while, until I said, at last, "Lord, I don't care what they call me--I give myself to Thee to win souls." Have I ever regretted it? Shall I ever regret it? No; He will take care of your reputation. Give it up to Him, my brother. The Scribes and the Pharisees never had anything good to say of Jesus coming in the flesh. Give up your reputation--follow Him. If it must be, decide to go after Him to Gethsemane, to Golgotha and the cross. Never mind--follow Him. Give up your reputation. Then, your habits. How ashamed some of you will be who have made the mere Paris-born frivolities of society stand in the way of your consecration to Christ; and yet people who do this say they are Christians. I don't know; I cannot believe it. There is drinking; they will have a glass of wine. Very well, you can have it; but you shall not have the wine of the kingdom. Professors will dress like the prostitute of Paris. Very well; but they shall not be the bride of the Lamb. He will not walk in the streets with them, nor sit at the same table. You can go to parties where it is said there are only religious people, but where you know all manner of gossip and Christless chit-chat is going on, which you would be awfully ashamed the Master should hear, and from which you retire with no appetite for prayer. You can go to all this, but I defy you to have the Holy Ghost at the same time. I won't stop to argue it; I ONLY KNOW YOU CANNOT DO IT. All that will have to be put aside and given up. You say, "That is a sore point." Yes; I know that is driving the sword to blood. Fifthly.--You must consecrate your money to be used for God. I once heard an old veteran saint say, and I thought it was extravagant at the time, "I consider the use of money the surest test of a man's character." I thought, no, surely his use of his wife and children is a surer test than that; but I have lived to believe his sentiment. Hence, you see how human experience justifies Divine wisdom--"the love of money is the root of all evil". So it is, in one form or other. God never uses anybody largely until they have given up their money. I simply state a fact. We know it is so by experience and the history of God's people. You must give up your money as an end: saving it for its own sake, or the gratification of your selfish purposes or those of your children--it must be all given to God, to whom it belongs, being entirely used in His service. If you want to be a successful laborer for souls, you will have to do that at the threshhold. Give up your money to the Lord. If you think it right to keep some of it, keep it to use it for Him as you go; and be as strict with yourself, to your Heavenly Father, as you would be with your secretary or clerk to yourself, and then you will be all right. It is a narrow and difficult path. I tremble for you who have got it, and I am glad I have not; but as you have got it, I give you the best advice I know. It is an awful thing to have it, but the next best thing is to consecrate it and use it to His glory; and if you do not, it will eat into your soul as doth a canker. To your spiritual nature it will be as a cancer is to your physical nature. They are Paul's words, not mine. I must say a word about _the reward_. You think I am always driving you _to do_. Yes, because you need it. The Lord knows I do not find you do any too much. Some of you I am heartily ashamed of. Some of you need driving so that you ought to thank God for the rod. Paul says, "Shall I come unto you with the rod?" He was obliged to do it with some people. It is not an enviable thing to have to do; but we dare not, when God sets us work to do, shirk it; but there is a bright side--there is the reward. "What!" you say, "does He pay you?" Yes, good wages--pressed down--heaped together! He says, "The man who remembereth the poor (do you think He means only their bodies?), I will remember him; I will make his bed (what a tender allusion!) in his sickness." He will shake it up; spread His feathers on the pillows as no earthly nurse, not even the tenderest wife, can do. "I will make his bed in his sickness." You will want Him then, brother! You are very independent, some of you, now, but you will want Him then. "I will make his bed in sickness. I will put underneath Him my everlasting arms." He will cause you to triumph in the swellings of Jordan. That will be grand, will it not? He will give you a triumphant entrance into His kingdom, those of you who have gone out in loving solicitude and anxious sympathy to labor for the souls of your fellow-men. He will administer unto you an abundant entrance, and then--what? He will give you CHILDREN; and the barren woman shall have more children than she that hath a husband. Oh! the whole world is akin here. Every man and woman wants children. They are especially a heritage from the Lord. Nothing can make up for the want of children. The poorest parents, living in the humblest hut, would not sell you their children, and the rich man, who has twenty thousand a year, would give it for a son or for a daughter, when he cannot have one. All human beings want children. Now, then, the Lord will give you children. A mother--even a sanctified mother--I suppose, cannot help feeling proud, or, rather, glad and thankful, when she shows good, obedient, and godly children to her friends. I do not believe that God wants to grind this out of us. I believe He delights in it Himself, just as He delighted to show His servant Job to the devil. "Hast thou considered My servant Job?" Ah! was He not proud of him?--and He has been proud of him ever since. God has put this feeling in us, and it is a right feeling when it is sanctified. We cannot help but be proud of godly and obedient children; but what will it be to show your spiritual children, to the angels? How shall you feel when you gather the spiritual family which God has given you round the throne of your Saviour, and say, "Here am I and the children whom Thou hast given me"?--the children won through conflict, and trial, and strife, such as only God knew; "Children begotten in bonds," as Paul says--chains--children born in the midst of the hurricane of spiritual conflict, travail, and suffering, and cradled, rocked, fed, nurtured, and brought up at infinite cost and rack of brain, and heart, and soul; but now, here we are, Lord. We are here through it all. "Here am I and the children whom Thou hast given me." How shall you feel? Shall you be sorry for the trouble? Shall you regret the sacrifice? Shall you murmur at the way He has led you? Shall you think He might have made it a little easier, as you are sometimes tempted to do now? Oh! no, no!--THE CHILDREN! THE CHILDREN! you shall have children! Won't that be reward enough? Oh! sometimes, when I am passing through conflict, and trial, in connection with a work which brings plenty of it behind the scenes, I encourage myself in the Lord, and remember those who have gone home sending me their salutations, from the verge of the river, telling me they will wait and look out for me, and be the first to hand me to the Saviour when I get there. Will not this be reward enough? Even so, Lord. Amen. CHAPTER X. ENTHUSIASM AND FULL SALVATION. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN EXETER HALL. Why should we be enthusiastic in everything but religion? Can you give me any reason for that? If there is any subject calculated to move our souls to their very centres, and to call out the enthusiasm of our nature, surely it is religion, if it be the real thing. Why should we not be enthusiastic? I have never seen a good reason yet. Why should we not shout and sing the praises of our King, as we expect to do it in glory? Why should not a man cry out, and groan, and be in anguish of soul, as the Psalmist says, as if he were crying out of the belly of hell, when he is convinced of sin, and realizes his danger, and is expecting, unless God have mercy, to be damned? Why should he not roar for the disquietude of his spirit as much as David did? Is there anything unphilosophical in it? Is there anything contrary to the laws of mind in it? Is there anything that you would not allow under any great pressure of calamity, or realization of danger, or grief? Why should we not have this demonstration in soul matters? They had it under the old dispensation. We read, again and again, that when the people came together after a time of relapse, and backsliding, and infidelity, when God sent some flaming, burning prophet amongst them, and they were gathered on the sides of Carmel or elsewhere, that, on some occasions, the weeping, and, on other occasions, the rejoicing, was so great that they made the very ground tremble, and almost rent the heavens with the sound of their crying and rejoicing. We are told, on one occasion, that the noise was heard afar off, and, on another, that it was as the sound of many waters. Would to God we could get men, now-a-days, so concerned about their sins and their souls, that they should thus cry out. It would be a happy day for religion and for the world if it were so. If these things are realities, I contend that this is the most sane, rational, and philosophical way of dealing with them; and I say that the ordinary, cold, heartless, formal way (and, if it is not so, it has that appearance) is unscriptural. Somebody was talking to me about having so much feeling in religion. I said, "My dear friend, what do you think God gave you feeling for?" Some people seem to think it a mistake that we _have_ feelings. Our feelings play a very important part in all our social relations. Why would you exclude them from religion? David expressed his feelings, and was so carried away by them that he called on all creation to praise the Lord, the hills and the trees to clap their hands and be glad. Get the right kind of religion, and it will make you glad. If you have not the right kind of feeling, I am afraid you. have not the right kind of religion. We have some enthusiasm, and when our enthusiasm dies, I am afraid we shall die, too. Nevertheless, our power is not in our enthusiasm; neither does it consist in certain views of truth, or in certain feelings _about_ truth. But it consists in whole-hearted, thorough, out-and-out surrender to God; and that, with or without feeling, is the right thing, and _that_ is the secret of our power. We have glorious feelings as the outcome; but the feeling is not the religion--the feeling is not the holiness. Holiness is the spring and source of the enthusiasm. Hence our power with the masses of the people. How is it that wherever we go, as an organization, these signs and wonders are wrought? Somebody said, "It is a strange thing; see what has been done at So-and-so, and So-and-so, and So-and-so. They had all tried, and you send a couple of lads or lasses, and you have the town in an uproar at once. What is it? What is the secret? Will you answer the question?" Well, it is the whole-hearted, determined abandonment of everything for the King's sake. That is it. It is going in, as the Apostles went in, determined to win souls, determined to set up the kingdom of Jesus Christ, at all costs. That is the source of our power, and if you get that, you will have power, and if you don't get that, it matters not what else you have. I want you reasonably and calmly to see that this holiness is a real, definite blessing; that it is a level on to which the great mass of the professing Christians of this generation have not come, or even scarcely looked up. It is a high level, but it is a level on to which every one of you can come, if you will. You have heard enough about it. You are convinced you may have it. Will you have it? The Lord is sitting there; He is looking at you, and He is saying, "What is all this stir about? What is all this talk, this singing, and this praying about? Here I am. What do you want Me to do? I am ready to do it." And you say, "Lord, I want Thee to cleanse my heart from sin, and to fill me with the Holy Ghost, and to enable me to be whole-hearted and thorough in Thy service, and to go and win souls for Thee." "Very well," the Lord says, "I am ready to come into the temple, if you will clear out the rubbish. Are you willing for Me to come in? I am waiting to come in as a Refiner; but you must make a straight way for my feet. You must pick out the stones, and throw out the rubbish, and make Me a straight path." Will you make Him a straight path? Will you trample under foot that accursed thing which has so long kept the fulness of the blessing from you? Will you give up arguing about it and trying to make out that it is not a stumbling-block, when you know it is? How many will? I wish we had room to have a form. I am sorry we have not. With all the light you have on the subject, with what I am sure the Holy Ghost has revealed and is revealing to your souls, with all the glory that He is putting before you, and the power for usefulness and happiness, will you make this full consecration? The light of the Spirit is on you: _will you, act? Will you act?_ Every spark of light you get without obeying it, leaves your soul darker. Every time you come up to the verge of the kingdom and don't go over, the less the probability that you ever will. I know people who have been going up and down for more than forty years, like the Israelites, and it is a question if they ever go in. You have come near again. Will you go over? You can tell the Lord without telling us, though we would like to know, and see you put your foot over the border, into this Canaan of peace and power. Will you put your foot over? Who will? who will? Will you stand up and raise your voices to the Lord and ask Him? CHAPTER XI. HINDRANCES TO HOLINESS. I shall try, in the short time I may occupy, to go straight to the point--to some of the difficulties and hindrances which I know are keeping not a few here to-day out of the enjoyment of the blessing. I know there are some here who are satisfied that this blessing is attainable, who are satisfied that God can thus keep them, as we have been singing, if they were to lean the whole weight of their need--their soul, and body, and spirit--upon Him, and trust Him. They believe He could, and they believe He would. They have come to perceive that it is not at all a question of human strength, or human weakness, or human knowledge, but that it is simply a matter of Divine strength, fully recognized and fully trusted by human weakness. Therefore, there is no more a stumbling-block in their way about reckoning themselves holier than other people, or stronger than other people, for they recognize themselves as the very weakest and most sinful of _all_ people: but they have come to understand this blessing to be human weakness, leaning with all its weight upon Divine power; and they believe God does thus save and keep those people who do thus lean. Then, what hinders? There they stand, just where the Israelites stood, when they might have gone in and possessed the good land. "They entered not in because of unbelief," and for that unbelief there is a reason--a cause. They dare not venture their souls on this Divine power, because there is back in their consciousness some difficulty, some obstacle, something which is only known to themselves and the Holy Ghost, which prevents them from doing this. When they try to jump on to the Divine strength there is something that holds them back, and they cannot make the spring. They try to forget it--they sing, and pray, and seek, to make themselves believe there is nothing, and they come up again and again right to the entrance of the goodly land, and then they try to spring in. Some of you will today, but you will not be able to spring, because there is something holding you back; and you are conscious of it, but will not allow yourselves to realize it. Now this is the point, when my dear husband read that passage, "When they had prayed, the place was shaken," I thought, Oh! what was involved in that prayer--what does that mean? _Why_ did the glory come? Why did the Holy Ghost overshadow them? Why were they filled with God--so filled that they had to go down and could not help themselves, but went into the streets and poured it out upon the godless multitudes around them? _Why, why_ did it come? Why do hundreds of assemblies of God's people meet and pray, but nothing comes? They hold long meetings, and make long prayers, and sing, "We are waiting for the fire;" but nothing comes! Why did it come on that particular occasion? Because in that prayer was thorough, entire, everlasting self-abandonment. They came up caring for nothing but pleasing God and doing as He bade them; and the Holy Ghost alone knows when a soul arrives at that point. He will never come till the soul _does_ arrive at that point. This is the deficiency, I am satisfied, with hundreds. There they stand, right on the borders of the glory-land, but there is some wedge of gold, or Babylonish garment that they buried years ago. They won't think about it. They say, "Oh, it is nought, nought! That little thing would not hinder, it is so long ago." They would not, when they knew they ought, dig it up and burn it before the Lord. If this is so with any here, you _must_ dig it up, or the Holy Ghost will never come. A lady, a short time ago, was brought up to the very edge of this blessing, but there was something she felt she ought to do. She had a sum of money which she felt ought to be given up to a certain object. She prayed and struggled, and attended prayer-meetings, and prayed long into the night; but, no, she would not face the difficulty. She said, "Oh! no; I am not satisfied in my own mind. How do I know God wants it for that purpose?" She might have struggled till now if she had not made up her mind to obey; but, the moment she did--alone, up in her bedroom, the blessing came. A gentleman came up to the penitent-form, after one of my West-end services, last season, and told me: "I am a preacher. I have been laboring in the Gospel for eight years, but I know I am utterly destitute of this power." "Do you want it?" "Oh!" he said, "I do;" and he looked as though he were sincere. "Then," I said, "what is it? There is a hindrance. It is not God's fault. He wants you to have it He is as willing to give you the Spirit as He was Peter or Paul, and you want to have it. Now, _will you have it?_ Have you understood the conditions?" "Ah!" he said, "_that_ is the point." Now, you know I should be a false comforter if I were to try to make you believe you were right when you had not yielded that point. "Well," he said, "you see it would be cutting loose from one's entire circle." Ah! he was led, you see, by "Christian friends." I said, "Did not the Lord Jesus cut loose from His circle to save you? and, if your Christian friends are such that to live a holy life you must cut loose from them, what are you going to do--stop in that circle, ruin your own soul, and help to ruin them, or cut loose and help to save them?" Oh! there is no profounder philosophy in any text in the Bible than that--"How can ye believe who receive honor one of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?" You will have to come to God not caring what anybody thinks. As a dear lady, who is going through floods of persecution for Jesus, said, "I don't care if they turn their backs on me, and never speak to me any more, and cast me out, and my children, too. I don't care if I can only have His presence and follow Him." When you come to that you will get this pearl. I know a father and mother who want this blessing,--especially the mother. They have a family of beautiful little children, but the father says, "What are we going to do for our children? It is a very serious matter cutting loose from our circle." A gentleman said to me, "I have to do _something_ for my sons. What am I to do?" "No," I said, "you have got to do nothing for your sons. You have to train them for God, and leave GOD _to do for them_, and He is well able to look after His own. That is your business; train them for God, and leave God to find a niche for them, and if He can't on earth, I warrant you He will in Heaven." People have things wrong way up now-a-days. They have the notion that they have to do this, that, and the other, for themselves and their children, instead of accepting it as their great commission that they have to propagate and push along and extend the kingdom of Jesus Christ, to seek His kingdom and His righteousness, and leave Him to look after their interests. When you come to this it will soon be done. A FRAGMENT. Love Him, trust Him, Him alone; Father, Keeper, Three in One. Saviour, Master, Leader, too; Lover, Brother, ALL to you. Fear not, care not, Only follow His way, this day, And to-morrow. Waiting, working, For His sake; Watching, hoping, Till daybreak. Peaceful, joyful, In His peace; Filled full, kept full, By His grace. CHAPTER XII. ADDRESSES ON HOLINESS, IN EXETER HALL. FIRST ADDRESS. I think it must be self-evident to everyone present that it is _the most important question_ that can possibly occupy the mind of man--how much like God we can be--how near to God we can come on earth preparatory to our being perfectly like Him, and living, as it were, in His very heart for ever and ever in Heaven. Anyone who has any measure of the Spirit of God, must perceive that this is the most important question on which we can concentrate our thoughts; and the mystery of mysteries to me is, how anyone, with any measure of the Spirit of God, can help looking at this blessing of holiness, and saying, "Well, even if it does seem too great for attainment on earth, it is very beautiful and very blessed. I wish I could attain it." That, it seems to me, must be the attitude of every person who has the Spirit of God--that he should hunger and thirst after it, and feel that he shall never be satisfied till he wakes up in the lovely likeness of his Saviour. And yet, alas! we do not find it so. In a great many instances, the very first thing professing Christians do, is to resist and reject this doctrine of holiness as if it were the most foul thing on earth. I heard a gentleman saying, a few days ago--a leader in one circle of religion--that for anybody to talk about being holy, showed that they knew nothing of themselves, and nothing of Jesus Christ. I said, "Oh, my God! it has come to something if holiness and Jesus Christ are at the antipodes of each other. I thought He was the centre and fountain of holiness. I thought it was in Him only we could get any holiness, and through Him that holiness could be wrought in us." But this poor man thought this idea to be absurd. May God speak for Himself! Ever since I heard that sentiment I have been crying from the depths of my soul, "Lord, speak for Thyself; powerfully work on the hearts of Thy people and awake them. Take the veil from their eyes, and show them what Thy purpose in Christ Jesus concerning them _is_. Do not let them be bewildered and miss the mark; do not leave them, but Lord, reveal it in their hearts." There is no other way by which it can be revealed, and, if you will let Him, He will reveal it in your heart. It occurred to me that I might say a word or two on what my husband said about infirmities, because I am so continually meeting people who _will make infirmities sins_. They insist upon it that the requirements of the Adamic law have never been abated; that we are not under the evangelical law of love, or the law of Christ, as the Apostle puts it, but that we are still under the Adamic law, and that these imperfections and infirmities, to which my husband has referred, are sins. I wonder that such people do not think of a certain passage, which must forever explode such a theory, where the Apostle says, "Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." If these infirmities had been sins, we should have the outrageous anomaly of an apostle of Jesus Christ glorying in his sins! You see, his infirmities were only those defects of mind and body which were capable of being overcome and overruled by grace, to the glory of Christ and to the furtherance of His kingdom. I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me --that, in consequence of these very infirmities, the power of Christ shall so rest upon me as to lift me above them, make me independent of them, master of them, so that, through these very infirmities, I shall more glorify His strength and grace than if I were a perfect man, in mind and body. In another place he says, "And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to buffet me." Some people think this was _sin_; but surely, the words, "messenger of Satan," show that this thorn was no act or disposition of Paul's, but some external temptation or affliction, inflicted by Satan. Besides, the Divine assurance, "My grace is sufficient for thee," _ought_ to forbid the idea of sin. Paul sought the Lord thrice to have this thorn removed; surely if it had been _sin_, the Lord would, have been as anxious to have it removed as His servant was! This thorn was, doubtless, some physical trial--as the words, "in the flesh," indicate--some tribulation or sorrow, through the patient endurance of which the strength of Christ could be magnified in Paul's weakness--one of those things which he could bear "through Christ who strengthened him." But mark, this was a Divinely-permitted discipline to _prevent Paul_ from falling into sin; quite a different thing to sin itself. "God tempteth no man with evil." The Lord sent this to Paul for the purpose _not of making_ him humble, for he was humbled before, but of keeping him humble. And does He not send something to us all? Do we not need trials and tribulations in the flesh in order to keep us humble? But is this evidence that, because we require these things to keep us humble, therefore pride is dwelling in us and reigning over us? It is an evidence just to the contrary. Oh, that people, in their enquiries about this blessing of holiness, would keep this one thing before their minds, that it is _being saved from sin_!--sin in act, in purpose, in thought! I have a beautiful letter, received a short time ago from a young lady, who wrote me soon after my former services in the West End. She told me that she had been the bondslave, I think, for four or five years, of a certain besetting sin, and her first letter was the very utterance of despair. She had struggled and wrestled and prayed, and tried to overcome the sin that had been reigning over her. Now and then she would get the victory, and then down she went again, and she said, "It is such a subtle thing, connected with my thoughts and imagination, so that I do not think I ever can be saved." I answered the letter, and tried to encourage her faith and hope in Jesus Christ. I showed her how dishonoring this unbelief was, and that, if she would only trust Him to come in and reign in her heart, He could purify and cleanse the very thoughts and imagination. She made a little advance, and wrote me another letter. I wrote her again, and encouraged her to trust further. She said she could not come so far as to think that He could purify her thoughts. She had got as far as to believe that He could save her from putting them into practice, but she could not believe that He could purify _them_. I wrote her back once more, and tried, the Lord helping me, to show her how Jesus, by the inspiration of His Holy Spirit, could purify the very thoughts of our hearts, and, thank God, she did go another step. I have had two letters from her since. She said in the first of them, "I rejoice with trembling, for fear it should be only temporary, but I have trusted Him to purify the source, and I must say HE HAS DONE IT, and, instead of thinking these thoughts, I have holy thoughts, and if Satan presents anything to my mind, it is so repulsive to me that I cannot tell you the grief and horror with which it fills me." I wrote her again, encouraging her, and I got another letter, in which she said, "It is a fact that He has cleansed the thoughts of my heart, and now I am conscious that my thoughts are pleasing to Him, that He has saved me from this sin which has been the trouble and torment of my life for all these years gone by." Now, what I want to say to you, is, that what He can do for one, He can do for another. If I am wrong here, I give up the whole question. I am perfectly mistaken in the purpose and aim and command of the Gospel dispensation, if God does not want His people to be pure. Not to count themselves pure when they _are not_. Oh, no! We are told, over and over again, that God wants His people to be pure, and THAT PURITY IN THEIR HEARTS IS THE VERY CENTRAL IDEA AND END AND PURPOSE OF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST; if it is not so, I give up the whole question--I am utterly deceived. In justification of this, I have selected two or three texts which seem to put it all in one; summing-up texts, so to speak. I will take first, as a specimen, what my husband has been trying to enforce--"The will of God is your sanctification." There is, however, a sense, and an important sense, in which sanctification must be the will of man. It must be _my_ will, too, and if it is not my will, the Divine will can never be accomplished in me. I must _will_ to be sanctified, as God is willing that I should be sanctified. There are as many, and more, exhortations in the Bible to sanctify yourselves than there are promises of God to sanctify you. The next text is James iv. 8: "Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse _your_ hands, _ye_ sinners; and purify _your_ hearts _ye_ double-minded." This was to backsliders, to people who had been professing to believe, but who had gone back under the dominion of their fleshly appetites and passions. There are two or three other texts where we seem to get the whole matter summed up, as, for instance, "He gave Himself for us (that is, for us Christians, the whole Church of God) that He might redeem us from _all iniquity_, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."--That is, purify _us_. And then 1 Timothy i. 5 shows God's purpose and aim in the whole method of redemption. "Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a _pure heart_, and of a _good conscience_, and of faith unfeigned"--cleansed and kept clean, for if it had been cleaned and become dirty again, it would not be a good but a bad conscience. And again, in I John iii. 3: "And every man that hath this hope in Him, purifieth himself, even as He is pure." Now, I say, these are summing-up texts, and there are numbers of others to the same effect, to show that the whole end and purpose of redemption is this--that He will restore us to purity; that He will bring us back to righteousness; that He will purge your consciences from dead works to serve the living God--not only purge you from the past, but keep you purged to serve the LIVING GOD; that it shall be done by the application of the blood to the conscience, and then it shall be maintained by the power of the Holy Ghost keeping us in a state of purity and obedience to righteousness. Now, I say, if this be not the central idea of Christianity, I do not understand it. If God cannot do this for me--if Jesus Christ cannot do this for me, what is my advantage at all by His coming? There is a great deal more in these epistles directed to the individual Christian to _be_ this, that, and the other, and to _do_ this, that, and the other, than there is about what God will do for him after all! This is not an objective Christianity--this is not sitting down and sentimentalizing and thinking of Christ in the Heavens, in these epistles; it brings Him down, to all intents and purposes, INTO OUR HEARTS AND LIVES HERE, and it is one of the continual exhortations, _be_ ye this, and _do_ ye this and the other. These epistles represent a real, practical transformation to be accomplished IN US, and this is the only thing that will do to die with. If it is not accomplished in you, I tell you, you will not be able to die in peace. You will want to be cleansed, as my dear husband told you, before you can venture into the presence of the King of kings. You will want a sense of beautiful, moral rectitude and righteousness spreading over your whole nature, which will enable you to look up into the face of God and say, "Yes, I love Thee, I know Thee, and Thou knowest me, and lovest me, and we are one. I love the things Thou lovest, and desire the things Thou desirest. We are of one spirit, 'joined in one spirit unto the Lord.'" You will want that, and nothing less will do to die with. And why not have it? Will you have it? Why not let God work it in us? Will you try it? People are constantly saying, "They long for it, and they wish they could get it." Will you let God do it? Will you put away the depths of unbelief which are at the bottom of all your difficulty? People really do not believe that God _can_ do it for them, and that is at the bottom of their difficulties. But He can do it, and He promises to do it. Will you go down, and say, "Be it unto me according to Thy word"? "BORN--A SAVIOUR." Luke ii. 11. Jesus a Saviour born, Without: Without the inn, refused with scorn. Cast out: Cast out for me, my Saviour, King, Cast out to bring this lost one in. Jesus a Saviour born, A man: A man of sorrows, smitten, torn by stripes: By stripes, O Lord, my soul is healed, By stripes, Thy stripes, my pardon sealed. Jesus a Saviour born, The Lamb: The Lamb of God hath bled and borne My sins: My sins the Sacrifice did slay, My sins the Lamb doth take away. Jesus a Saviour born To save: To save at night, at noon, at morn. To keep: To keep from sin, from doubt, from fear; To keep, for lo! the Keeper's here. Jesus a Saviour born, A King: A King! exalt His glorious horn, And sing: O sing, ye heavens! He burst His grave, And sing, O earth! He lives to save! SECOND ADDRESS. I beseech yon therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.--ROM. xii. 1,2. I have been thinking about the word in the text, "_that_"--"that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable, and perfect will of God." This advance in the Divine life, as well as every other, right to the end, till we advance into glory, has its _conditions_. The condition of the advance from an absolutely unawakened worldly condition, to that of a convinced sinner, _is the reception of the light_. God awakens and enlightens tens of thousands, and thousands reject the light--instantly put it away--shut their eyes --will not have the light. These go back into greater darkness, and sin with more alacrity than ever they did before;--those who receive the light advance into the condition of awakened, enlightened souls. The next condition of advance from the state of a struggling sinner, willing to part with his sins and to follow Christ, _is faith_, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that he may receive the forgiveness of sins. And at every advance onwards, if the believer is ever to get beyond the first principles, if he is ever to grow a single inch, so to speak, there is a condition involved in that advance! For instance, if, after conversion, the Holy Spirit reveals to him something which is inconsistent--which he did not before see--the condition of his advance another step is the _renunciation_ of that thing!--the reception of the light, and _obedience to it;_ and, if he shrinks from and does not receive and obey the light, he will never advance _any more_ until he does. There are thousands of Christians, who, instead of advancing, have gone back since their conversion, because they would not comply with the condition, "THAT" they might prove the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. There was a condition. They would have proved the will of God if there had been no condition; but there was a condition they would not comply with; so there they stick, just where they were--or, rather, they have gone backward. Well, now, then, here is a condition to _this_ grand and glorious advance from the state of justification, where, while the believer is given power over sin, so that it does not rule over him, yet he sometimes, through its inward workings, falls under its power--the advance from this comparatively sinning and repenting condition on to that platform where the believer so abides in Christ that he sins not, that he loves God with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength--so united to Christ that, walking in the power of the Holy Ghost, he fulfils the law of love under which he is placed--the advance, I say, from that up and down, in and out, falling and rising state, to this higher platform, also has its _conditions_. You would go up to it to-day if it were not for the conditions; most of you would go up in a body, as the Israelites would have gone into Canaan, if there had been no condition. I never knew anyone so foolish as not to want to be in the good land; they want to be in, of course, and they would go in and get the honey and the milk, but there are the _conditions!_ Now then, here you have it plain, and you have it in numbers of other passages equally plain. There is nothing upon which the Holy Ghost has been more particular than in laying down the conditions. And what are they? "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice"--the living man--you, all of you; not _it_--not something in you. The latter term is never used by the Holy Ghost when speaking to Christians, but always _you, ye, your_ bodies, _your_ souls, _your_ mind, the whole man--YOU, "a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, _which is_ your reasonable service." And is it not? Is it too much? Is it more than He bargained for when He bought you? Is it more than He paid for? It is "your reasonable service." And now, then, comes the conditions: "And be _not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed_ by the renewing of your mind, _that_ ye may prove." Oh! if you could be transformed to Him and conformed to this world at the same time, all the difficulty would be over. I know plenty of people who would be transformed directly; but, to be not conformed to this world--how they stand and wince at that! They cannot have it at that price. As dear Finney once said, "My brother, if you want to find God, you will not find Him up there, amongst all the starch and flattery of hell; you will have to come down for Him." That is it--"Be not conformed to this world." Nothing wounds me more, after being at meetings for dealing with souls, where I have tried to speak in a most pointed and thorough way to make everybody know what I meant, when I go to the dinner or supper-table, people have not known a bit, or, if they have, they won't accept it. Oh! this is the secret--they will not come down from their pride and high-mightiness. But God will not be revealed to such souls, though they cry and pray themselves to skeletons, and go mourning all their days. They will not fulfil the condition--"Be not conformed to this world;" they will not forego their conformity even to the extent of a dinner party. A great many that I know will not forego their conformity to the shape of their head-dress. They won't forego their conformity to the extent of giving up visiting and receiving visits from ungodly, worldly, hollow, and superficial people. They will not forego their conformity to the tune of having their domestic arrangements upset--no, not if the salvation of their children, and servants, and friends depends upon it. The _sine qua non_ is their own comfort, and then take what you can get, on God's side. "We _must_ have this, and we _must_ have the other; and then, if the Lord Jesus Christ will come in at the tail end and sanctify it all, we shall be very much obliged to Him; but we cannot forego these things." Oh! friends, I tell you, this will never do. God helping me, I will, I must tell you, because it is driven in upon my soul by what I am seeing and hearing every day. People come to these meetings, and they groan and cry and come to us for help, and we exhaust our poor brains and bodies in talking to them and giving them advice, telling them what to do, and, when it comes to the point, we find, "Oh! no; don't you be mistaken: we are not going to sacrifice these things. We cannot have the Lord if He will not come into our temples and take them as He finds them. We could not forego these things." You remember the text that was read at the opening of the meeting--"And the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world." It means something! and there are a hundred other texts teaching the same truth. Now, _what does it mean_? The Lord help us to see it! Does it not mean that we are not to be like the rest of the world?--that we are not to be guided by the same maxims, or act upon the same principles as the world?--that we are not to attach the same importance to mere earthly and worldly things that worldly people do? Have you ever thought of those awful words in the parable of the sower?--"And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things, entering in, _choke_ the word, and it becometh unfruitful,"--not abominable things, not immoral things, not shameful things, but the _desire of other_ things. And, in another text: "_Who mind earthly things_." They attach more importance to worldly things and other things than they do to the things of His kingdom. They practically make these things _first_, though they sing about His kingdom and profess to make Him first: they make the earthly things first, and, therefore, they will not have their earthly things upset for His things; and do you suppose He is cheated? Do you suppose He is deceived? Do you think it likely that the great God of Heaven, who has millions of angels and archangels to worship and serve Him, is going to pour His glory on such people, and reveal Himself to them, and use them? Not likely! "I will be first in your love," He says. You women here, if you knew that you were not the first and only one in the affections of your husband, what would you say? And you husbands, would you dwell with a wife if you knew you were not the only one in her affections, but that they were divided between you and someone else? "Not likely!" you would say; "I am not going to lavish my affections, and my society, and my gifts, and everything I possess, on one whose heart is divided with another. If she will have her heart divided, then she must go to that other." Now you know God is a jealous God, and He knows who do mock Him, and He knows who will not sacrifice this conformity to the world that they may walk with Him in white. He knows, also, who do not care what anybody thinks of them, or what people say of them; who are willing to be counted fools and fanatics that they may walk with Him and promote the interests of His kingdom, and who only regard their bodies as His instruments and their homes as His temples; who are willing that their breakfast hours, or dinner hours, or luncheon hours, or any other hours may be upset, and, in fact, everything made subservient to the interests of His kingdom. We must place everything at His service--our children, business, homes, and everything. If I understand it, this is nonconformity to the world. Before I close, let me say a word to help those who are desiring to attain this blessing. There is no other way. It is of no use beating about. BE NOT CONFORMED, BUT BE YE TRANSFORMED. These two are in juxtaposition. If you will be conformed, then you cannot be transformed; if you will not be transformed, then you must be conformed. Now, will you give up conformity to the world? If so, you may, everyone of you, be transformed this morning--go up into the land. You may all be saved to-day, and make your abiding-place in Christ, and have all the power and glory which comes to those who possess Him; you may advance from the miserable condition of a poor up-and-down, in-and-out, wretched man, on to the glorious vantage ground of a saved man--a saved woman--a triumphant saint of God! FAITH. My faith _looks up_ to Thee-- My faith, so small, so slow; It lifts its drooping eyes to see And claim the blessing now. Thy wondrous gift It sees afar; Thy perfect love It claims to share, And doth not, cannot fear. My faith _takes hold_ on Thee-- My faith, so weak, so faint; It lifts its trembling hands to be, Trembling, but violent. The kingdom now It takes by force, And waits till Thou, Its last resource, Shall seal and sanctify. My faith _holds fast_ on Thee, My faith, still small, but sure, Its anchor holds _alone_ to Thee, Whose presence keeps me pure. And Thou alway, To see and hear, By night, by day, Art very near-- Art very near to me. THIRD ADDRESS. What a deal there is of going to meetings and getting blessed, and then going away and living just the same, until sometimes we, who are constantly engaged in trying to bring people nearer to God, go away so discouraged that our hearts are almost broken. We feel that people go back again from the place where we have led them, instead of stepping up to the place to which God is calling them. They come and come, and we are, as the Prophet says, unto them a very pleasant instrument, or a very unpleasant one, as the case may be; and so they go away, and do not _get anything_. They do not make any _definite advance_. We have not communicated unto them any spiritual gift. They merely have their feelings stirred, and, consequently, they live the next week exactly as they lived the last, and go down under the temptation just as they did before. Would you dream for a moment from reading the New Testament that this was the kind of thing God intended in His provisions of grace and salvation? Is there not a definite end in every promise, exhortation, and command? God is most _definite_ in His requirements and promises, and in the provision which He has made; and yet many of the Lord's people are perpetually and persistently _indefinite_. They go to and fro, like a door on its hinges, and never get anything from the Lord. We want you absolutely to get something from the Lord, and we are quite sure you may and _will_, if you comply with the condition. The Lord is ready to give you that particular measure of grace, strength, and salvation which you need. Now that you have come up to the threshhold of the goodly land, there is only one thing which can keep you out, provided you have made the needed consecration. Of course, if you are holding anything back, then you can never come in until you give that up. If yon are cleaving to some doubtful thing, and don't give God the benefit of the doubt, you can never come in; but, if you see this, and make the necessary consecration, if you _really_ desire this blessing, there is only one thing which can possibly keep you out of its enjoyment, and that is--_unbelief_. It will be said of you, in years to come, as it was said of some in olden times, "They entered not in because of unbelief." You have come right up to the threshhold, and some of you have been there many a time. Oh! what gracious influences you have been the subject of. You have seen through the veil! You have felt His hand! You have had your feet on the threshhold! You have been almost in, and then you have drawn back through unbelief. Shall it be so again to-night? God forbid! Will yon step over? Will you venture? Will you trust? Will yon leap on to His faithfulness? Will you spring into the arms of Omnipotent Love, and trust Him with consequences? Never mind if you _do_ die, or something happens to you that never happened to anyone else in the world's history; God will take care of you. Never mind if the devil does come round and "consider" you, as he did Job, and afflict you with boils, and put you upon the dunghill--you will be happier there with Jesus than in a palace without Him. Oh! this caring for consequences! The devil knows the grand _possibilities_ open to many of you; he knows not only what you might receive and enjoy in yourselves, but what you might accomplish for God if you would only come in and possess this blessing; and so he frightens you with consequences. He knows what you might do, and whom you might be instrumental in saving! Who knows how many of these precious ones that cluster round you, you may be instrumental in leading on to this higher platform--this glorious vantage ground of Christian experience? and, through them, how many more? and how, in this way, the glorious blessing would spread? Remember, also, that every time you come near and go back, there is less _probability that you will ever come in at all_; and the nearer you come and go back, the less probability there is that you will ever come as near again. You _are grieving the Spirit_. There are some people who have been coming near for years, and now they have gone back altogether, and I am afraid they will never come up again. _What will you do?_ The law of the kingdom, from beginning to end, is, "According to your faith be it unto you," and, "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive _them_, and ye shall have _them_." _Eternal truth has uttered it_--"ye shall have them." Now then, will you? Have you let go all? Are your skirts free? Are you leaving all behind you? Are you resolved from to-night to cut from the past, and no more make any provision for the flesh to fulfil its lusts, but that you will bid the things that are behind a final adieu, close your eyes on them, and fix your eyes on the mark of the prize of your high calling, and press on every succeeding hour of your life until you reach it? Will you? If you will, God will give you this blessing. He waits to do it; He is here. The Holy Ghost is here: He is leading many of you up; He is beseeching you; He is seconding what I am saying, in your hearts; He is saying, "Come, beloved; come into the banqueting house;" He wants to bless you and fill you with His Spirit. Now then, will you come? Oh! the Lord help you not to draw back, but to press on, _press on, press on_, never minding the consequences. FOURTH ADDRESS. I think, dear friends, that I have only a very few words to say to you now. I am, as it were, holding on to God for power by which to say them, so that they shall sink into your hearts and produce some immediate and permanent results in your lives. I believe the Lord is not only grieved and disappointed, but I believe He is angry, when His people meet, and talk, and sing, and pray, and then go away without any definite result having been reached--without ever having given anything to Him, or received anything from Him. I believe He feels with respect to us, just as He felt with respect to His people of old, when He said, "Why come ye and cover my altar with tears?" As though He said, "You know what I want you to do; come and do it; and, when you do it, I will open the windows of Heaven and pour out a blessing." My heart ached at what a lady told me this morning, before I came into this hall. She said, "A friend of mine remarked, 'You don't mean to say that you are going to call four thousand people together to cry for the Holy Ghost?' She said, 'Yes, I do.' 'Well, it makes me frightened. What if anything should happen; if something should be done?'" Would to God something would happen; would to God something might be done that should frighten somebody. But oh! what did that reveal? Depths of infidelity and unbelief; and yet people wonder that infidelity is increasing. Is it any wonder that infidels are laughing us to scorn? Is it any wonder that at Christian Evidence Societies men get up and say that the Christian system has become effete? No wonder, when that is the state of heart of the Lord's people. People meet together, and pray, and talk, and sing "Whiter than snow," and they don't believe it any more than do the heathen. They pray for the Holy Ghost, and do not so much as believe there is a Holy Ghost. They ask God to do something, when they never knew Him to do anything, and don't expect He ever will. The world is dying because of this unreality, and being damned by it. Josephine Butler says, about France, "France is waiting for a _reality_:" and so is England, and so is the world waiting for a _reality_. God help us to make some _real people_. You believe, some of you, that nothing is going to happen. You don't believe that God is going to do anything--so He won't in your experience. If you had lived at Nazareth, do you think Jesus Christ would have done anything for you? If you had been deaf and dumb, you would have remained so, for He could not have done any mighty works in you, because of your unbelief! He is the same now; and if you don't expect Him to do anything, brother, He will not. But some of us do _expect_ Him to do _something_. Some of us _believe_ He is going to do _something_, and that by this little stone, cut out of a mountain, without hands, He intends to raise a great kingdom. Jesus Christ is not going to be disappointed, and allow the devil to chuckle in His face forever, and say, "I have cheated You out of Your inheritance." We will do something, or die in attempting it. After all, what does God want with us? He wants us just _to be_ and _to do_. He wants us to be like His Son, and then to do as His Son did; and when we come to that, He will shake the world through us. People say, "You can't be like His Son." Very well, then, you will never get any more than you believe for. If I did not think Jesus Christ strong enough to destroy the works of the devil, and to bring us back to God's original pattern, I would throw the whole thing up for ever. What! He has given, us a religion we cannot practice? I say, No, He has not come to mock us. What? He has given us a Saviour who cannot save? Then I decline to have anything to do with Him. What! does He profess to do for me what He cannot? No, no. He "is not a man, that He should lie: neither the Son of man, that He should repent:" and I tell you that His scheme of salvation is two-sided--it is God-ward and man-ward. It contemplates me as well as it contemplates the great God. It is not a scheme of salvation, merely--it is a scheme of _restoration_. If He cannot restore me, He must damn me. If He cannot heal me, and make me over again, and restore me to the pattern He intended me to be, He has left Himself no choice. I challenge anybody to disprove by the Bible that He proposes to _restore_ me--brain, heart, soul, spirit, body, every fibre of my nature--to restore me perfectly, to conform me wholly to the image of His Son. If He could have saved me without restoring me, then He could have saved me without a Saviour at all. How do you read your Bibles? How do you read the history of the miracles--the stories of His opening the eyes, unstopping the ears, cleansing the leper, and raising the dead? He will heal you if you will let Him. These are the sort of words the world wants--the living words, living embodiments of Christianity, walking embodiments of the Spirit, and life and power of Jesus Christ. You may scatter Bibles, as you have done, all over the world. You may preach, and sing, and talk, and do what you will; but, if you don't exhibit to the people _living epistles_, show them the transformation of character and life in yourself which is brought about by the power and grace of God--if you don't go to them and do the works of Jesus Christ, you may go on preaching, and the world will get worse and worse, and the church, too. We want a living embodiment of Christianity. We want JESUS TO COME IN THE FLESH AGAIN. Did you ever notice the tense in that passage--"He that believeth that Jesus is come in the flesh"--not that He _did_ come, or _was_ come, but that He _is_ come now. Oh! how people hate Jesus Christ in the flesh. You may be ever so devout, ever so Pharisaic, till you come to Jesus in the flesh, and then they will gnash on you with their teeth as they gnashed on Christ. They can't resist such people. This is what the world wants--holy people; and nothing else will do. We have tried everything else. You Christian people from other divisions of the Lord's forces, you have tried Bibles, and preaching, and singing, and services, and Sunday-schools. I have been lately to a part of the country where they told me that nearly every member of the population had passed through their Sunday-schools, and yet there are men there who will drag a young girl down a flight of stone stairs and kick her till she is black and blue. The great mass of the people who took part in the Lancashire Riots have passed through your Sunday-schools. Now, I say, God is speaking to you in these things, if only you will hear Him, and He is saying that the letter killeth, that circumcision, and baptism, and forms, and ceremonies, and going to chapel, and Bible reading, is all nothing, when there is no Holy Ghost in it. You want a real, living embodiment of Christianity over again, and if the Salvation Army is not going to be that, may God put it out! I would be willing to pronounce the funeral oration of the Army if I did not believe it was going to be that. The world is dying for this. I was so touched, yesterday, by hearing a story from Paris, told by a young woman who has just returned, and was telling me about my precious child. The story was this: A woman came, one morning, and asked for the lady. They tried to put her off, and asked, "Will not someone else do?" "No," said the woman; "I do want to see the lady herself." They said, "You can't see her to-day--she is too ill!" "Then," she said, "When can I see her?" They appointed a time the next afternoon, and then this poor woman came, and she told this story: "I did hear, six years ago, that there was somebody could take the devil out. Now, see, I have got a devil in, and he do make me wicked and miserable, and I do want him taken out, and I have been running about these six years to find somebody who could pull him out. I've been to lots of priests, but they could not pull him out because they had a devil in _them_; and, you see when there's a devil in me and a devil in them, we got to fighting, and they could not pull him out." What a comment on "Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?" Of course, nobody can put a devil out who has a devil in them. The poor old woman's sense told her this. "And," she continued, "a gentleman told me that this lady who has come here is able to pull him out, and I have come to her to do it, for I want him pulled out." Oh, yes! I thought, that is what poor humanity wants all the world over. THEY WANT PEOPLE WHO CAN CAST THE DEVIL OUT--people who have in them Holy Ghost power to do it. Oh! will you be such an one? "Where is God?" someone said to me the other day, in agony--"Where is God?" Where, indeed! "Why does He not show Himself? Why does He not do something?" That lady was afraid something would happen when 4,000 met together to beseech the Holy Ghost! Why not? You say He has not changed. Your creed says so. You say He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. You say the needs of the world are as great. You say His great, benevolent heart beats for His fallen, sinful, erring human family. You say He loves us. You are always telling about His love. What is the reason He does not do something for us, and come down in the same plentitude of spiritual power as He did at Pentecost? Why? Only because you are not as given up to Him and as willing to do it as the people were in former times. You have not accounted all things dung and dross. You have not thrown everything into the scale, and, therefore, He will not thus baptize you with the Holy Ghost. These are the people that the world wants--people of one idea--Christ, and Him crucified. For Christ's sake, give up quibbling. I said to a lady who had got this blessing when somebody got at her and began with this verse and that verse, and this translation and that translation--"Mind you don't begin to reason; you will lose your blessing"--and she did lose it. You can't know it by understanding. Oh! if the world could have known it by understanding, what a deal they would have known. But He despises all your philosophy. It is not by understanding, but _by faith_! If ever you know God it will be by faith, becoming as a little child--opening your mouth, and saying, "Lord, pour in;" and then your quibbles and difficulties will be gone, and you will see holiness, sanctification, purity, perfect love, burning out on every page of God's Word. I weep before God, I feel almost more than I can bear, over this awful knack that some people seem to have of plucking the bread out of the children's mouths when they are just getting an appetite for it. The Lord have mercy upon them! If you don't come in yourselves, for Christ's sake don't keep other people out. A minister--a devoted, good man--was trying to show me that this sanctification was too big to be got and kept. I said, "My dear sir, how do you know? If another man has faith to march up to Jesus Christ and say, 'Here, I see this in your Book; You have promised this to me; now then, Lord, I have faith to take it:' mind you don't measure His privilege by your faith. Do you think the church has come up to His standard of privilege and obligation? I don't. It has many marches to make yet. Mind you don't hinder anybody." The law of the kingdom all the way through will be--"According to your faith." If you want this blessing, put down your quibbles, put your feet on your arguments, march up to the throne and ask for it, and kill, and crucify, and cast from you, the accursed thing which hinders it, and then you shall have it, and the Lord will fill you with His power and glory now, and something _will_ happen. The Lord grant it. 
34805	----	[Illustration: "How can I ever go!" cries Betty (_See page 1_] BETTY'S BATTLES _AN EVERYDAY STORY_ BY S. L. M. _Author of "Jabez the Unlucky"_ PREFACE BY MRS. BRAMWELL BOOTH [Illustration] _Illustrated by Gertrude M. Bradley_ THE SALVATIONIST PUBLISHING AND SUPPLIES, LTD. LONDON: 117-121 Judd Street, King's Cross, W.C. 1 GLASGOW: 38 Bath Street MELBOURNE: 69 Bourke Street NEW YORK: 120 West Fourteenth Street TORONTO: Albert Street CAPE TOWN: Loop Street WELLINGTON: Cuba Street SIMLA: The Mall MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE CAMPFIELD PRESS, ST. ALBANS PREFACE I have derived real pleasure from the reading of "Betty's Battles," because I am sure if we can only get it into the hands of other "Bettys," that they will be inspired and helped to take up arms in their own cause, and fight, as Betty did, for the love and peace and orderliness of their own dear homes. I think a fact is revealed in this story which is not actually transcribed in black and white. It is that the Grandmother--through staying with whom Betty had been so much blessed and helped--bore the same surname as Betty's father. For if she had brought up Betty's mother, I am quite sure there never could have been so much difficulty in the home as was the case when Betty returned from her holiday! This little book will, I believe, help our Young People to realise their responsibility towards their own homes and their fathers and mothers. Nothing is more grievous at the present time in many countries where civilisation is most advanced, than the decay of all that which is precious and beautiful in home life. There are many causes which have contributed to this, to which I cannot allude here; but there is one remedy which by the blessing of God cannot fail. It is that our young women should be enlightened and trained to acknowledge and to carry their responsibilities for that work which God has committed to women. Undoubtedly, it is God's arrangement that women should beautify and adorn the home. A home is an absolute necessity to her; and only by the retirement and protection of a good home, can women ever be fitted to train and mould the nation's youth. As a wise, far-seeing writer has said: "It is not too much to say that the prosperity or adversity of a nation rests in the hands of its women. They are the mothers of the men; they make and mould the characters of their sons, and the centre of their influence should be, as Nature intended it to be, the home. Home is the pivot round which the wheel of a country's highest statesmanship should revolve; the preservation of home, its interests, its duties and principles, should be the aim of every good citizen.... A happy home is the best and surest safeguard against all evil; and where home is not happy, there the Devil may freely enter and find his hands full. With women, and women only, this happiness in the home must find its foundation." I believe in the successful mission of this little book, and wish it good speed. Florence E. Booth _November 1907_ CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. "GOOD-BYE, GRANNIE" 1 II. HOME AGAIN 7 III. THE BATTLES BEGIN 19 IV. BETTY'S BIRTHDAY 31 V. REAL TROUBLE 48 VI. FOR FATHER'S SAKE 59 VII. DAY BY DAY 71 VIII. THE CAPTAIN 83 IX. A PLACE FOR EVERY ONE 95 X. A QUARREL 107 XI. FATHER AT HOME 123 XII. LUCY 129 XIII. COMRADES 140 XIV. BETTY'S BIRTHDAY ONCE MORE 147 BETTY'S BATTLES CHAPTER I "GOOD-BYE, GRANNIE" "Oh, Grannie, how sweet it all is here! How can I ever go!" cries Betty. Betty's bag stands by the gate. Betty herself roams restlessly about the little garden, while Betty's Grannie shades her gentle old eyes from the morning sunshine, and peers down the road. Betty's bag is stout and bulgy; stuffed full of Grannie's home-made goodies, including a big plum-cake, and pots of delicious jam. Betty herself is not stout at all; indeed, she is rather thin. She came to Grannie's country home, five weeks ago, to grow strong again after a bad illness; but though the moorland breezes have brought colour back to her cheeks, and strength to her long limbs, they have given no plumpness to either. Betty's Grannie--well, she _is_ Grannie, a true Army Grannie, with a heart large enough to take in everybody's troubles, and a spirit wise enough to find a cure for most of them. "The carrier's cart is a little later than usual," remarks Grannie, still peering down the road; "but don't worry, you've plenty of time to do the ten miles to the station; and Bob the carrier will see you safe into the express. Of course, your father will meet you when the train arrives, so you've nothing to trouble about, dear." "Nothing to trouble about!" Betty turns round quickly. "Oh, Grannie, it's leaving _you_ that troubles me so dreadfully--how can I go--how _can_ I, when I'm only just beginning to understand?" During these five weeks Betty has grown to love her dear good Grannie as she never loved anyone before, for, week by week, day by day, Grannie has been bringing her nearer and nearer to God. "Last night, dear child, you gave your heart into the Lord's keeping," says Grannie softly, laying a loving hand on the girl's shoulder, "and He is with those who trust Him always, wherever they may go." "Yes, I know, Grannie; and while I'm with you it seems so easy to do right--and though you are so wise and good, you never get cross with me when I make mistakes, or answer too sharply--but, Oh, it is so different--so very different at home! Whatever shall I do without you?" And Betty flings her arms round the old woman's neck, and clings to her as though she would never let her go. "Your home is God's gift to you, Betty," says Grannie, gravely. "My home? Grannie, it's _horrid_ at home sometimes! The rooms are so stuffy, and dark, and untidy, and I hate untidy rooms! The children are always quarrelling, and they shout and stamp until my head aches and aches, and mother never seems to care. If only it were pretty and clean and fresh like this place--if only mother were like you!" But Grannie's face grows graver still. "Hush, hush, Betty! Indeed, you must not allow yourself to run on in this way. Remember, you have given yourself to God now, and you must do the work He puts into your hands bravely and well. "Of course, it is easier to be cheerful and good when there is nothing to try us. Of course, it is easier to carry a light burden than a heavy one. Your father is poor, and there are many little ones. Your mother has struggled through long years of weary work and anxiety. It is your part to be their help and comfort, Betty." "I will try, indeed, I will; and I'll try to remember all you've told me, all the dear beautiful talks we've had together, and--and last night, Gran." "That's my own darling!" "Yes, I'm really going to be good now, and patient, and unselfish, and I'll help mother, and teach the children, and make our home as sweet as your home is. But, Oh, dear Grannie, if you could only see our home--it makes me so cross, for nobody even tries to help, and they are all so careless, and snap one up so." Betty stops short, there is a queer little twinkle in Grannie's eye that is almost like a question. "Oh, yes, I know. _I_ am snappy sometimes; but they are all so unjust. When I try to put things straight a bit, Bob is sure to say I've lost some of his books; and, Grannie, it isn't 'interfering' is it to tell people of a thing when you know it's wrong?" "It may be 'interfering' even to put things straight, dear, unless you are very careful to let love do the seeing, and speaking, and doing. "Courage, Betty! You were very weak and listless when you came five weeks ago; and your heart was heavy and sad. Now you are my own strong Betty again. And the Lord has come to dwell in your heart and take its sadness away. "Let Him reign in your heart, Betty; give Him the whole of it. In His strength you will learn to check the 'snappy' words when they rise to your lips; to conquer the discontented thoughts and careless habits. You will learn to be happy and bright, and to make all those around you happy too." But Betty thinks, "Clearly Grannie doesn't know how horrid things are at home sometimes; if mother would only let me manage altogether it wouldn't be half so difficult." "The carrier's cart, my child!" Betty lifts her head from Grannie's shoulder and hastily wipes her eyes. The cart stops; the bulgy bag, the paper parcel, and big bunch of sweet-smelling, old-fashioned flowers are lifted in. Betty turns to Grannie for the final kiss. "Remember, dear, the little crosses of daily life, borne bravely and cheerfully for Jesus' sake, will make you a true Soldier, and win a crown of glory by and by," whispers Grannie, as she presses her grandchild in her kind arms. Betty nods, and then turns her head away very quickly; she dare not trust herself to speak. The cart moves away. Yes, now, indeed, her holiday is over! The blue sky, the golden gorse, the fresh, sweet air of the moors, they are still around her, but they belong to her no more. Through a mist of tears she looks back at the little cottage where she has been so happy; Grannie still stands by the gate--round that turn in the road beyond is the village, and the little Salvation Army Hall, where Grannie goes every Sunday. It was at the close of the Meeting last night that she gave her heart to God. Then afterwards, in her dear little bedroom, with her head buried in Grannie's lap, she felt so strong, so sure--and now? "Oh, dear; Oh, dear," she sobs, "it is all so different at home!" CHAPTER II HOME AGAIN Betty dries her tears, and looks up. She is in the train now, speeding towards the great, smoky city, where she has lived nearly all her life. She watches the fields and woods flying past, and her thoughts are sad. Already Grannie seems far away. The little white cottage is hidden among those great moors yonder. She can see them still, although they are growing fainter every minute, fading into the blue of the sky. "Dear Grannie! how good she has been to me--how happy I have been with her!" She pulls a little Bible out of her pocket. Grannie put it into her hands as she gave her the first kiss this morning. "I will read it every morning and evening," she thinks, "just as Grannie does. When I see the words I shall remember the very sound of her voice and the look in her dear eyes. That will help me so much." The thought comforts her, and she looks about more cheerfully. "Grannie has promised to write to me, and I'm to write to her. How I shall love her letters! I know just how she'll write--she is so wise and strong, and yet so loving and kind. But what sort of letters shall I write to Grannie? "Why, of course, I must tell her all my troubles, and how hard I am fighting--_so_ hard! Then she must know everything about the wonderful victories I mean to win. How pleased she will be! I shall have plenty of battles to fight, for home is horrid sometimes--it really is. "There's Bob; when Bob is in one of his teasing fits it's almost impossible to keep one's temper. But _I_ mean to do it. Bob shall have to own that he _can't_ make me cross. "Then I do believe Clara is the most trying servant in the whole world. Well, I'm going to teach her that a dirty face and torn apron are a real disgrace, and I'll show her how to keep the kitchen just as Grannie keeps hers. "I do wish I could persuade mother to keep the sitting-room tidier, and finish her house-work in the morning, and do her hair before dinner. If she'd only let me manage everything, I believe I should get on much better. "Jennie and Pollie must learn to sew, and Harry to read, and Lucy really must leave her perpetual poring over books and take an interest in her home like other girls. And father--dear old father!--he shall have all his meals at the proper time, instead of scrambling through them at the last minute; and I'll keep his socks mended, and his handkerchiefs ironed. Yes, Grannie's quite right--there are heaps of battles to fight every day. I'll fight them, too; I'll manage everything; I'll be more than conqueror! Oh, how surprised and glad she will be!" And Betty sinks back in her seat with quite a self-satisfied smile. And still the fields fly past; they are flatter now; the woods have disappeared, and every now and then the engine rushes screaming through the station of a large town. Betty eats her lunch of Grannie's apples and home-made cake. She is sad no longer. The battle-field is before her; she is eager for the fight. "I'm _glad_ now that things are so tiresome at home; there is so much more for me to put right. What a change I'll make in everything!" All her doubts have vanished; she is sure of success. As for failure and defeat, that is clearly impossible! It is late in the afternoon before long lines of houses, stretching away in every direction, begin to warn her that she is nearing home. Be sure her head is out of the window long before the train draws up at the well-known platform, and her eyes are eagerly straining to catch the earliest possible glimpse of father's face. For Betty loves her father dearly. There he is! The platform is crowded, but she sees him directly. He sees her, too, and, pushing his way through the crowd, he opens the carriage door, and she springs into his arms. "Aye, Betty, my girl, I'm glad to see you back again!" he says; that is all. But John Langdale is a man of few words, and this is a great deal from him. [Illustration: "How did you leave your Grannie?"] He shoulders her bag, and makes his way through the pile of luggage, the bustling porters, and anxious passengers, Betty following as best she can. Her head feels giddy and bewildered after the long train journey, and the noise, and hurry, and smoky air, all is so different from the quiet country scenes she left eight hours ago. Her father does not speak again until they are safely seated on the top of a homeward-bound bus; and even then, before he speaks a word, he turns to his daughter, and looks searchingly in her face. There is a change in Betty's face that tells of more than the mere return of health and strength. "Aye, well, my girl!" he says softly. Betty smiles confidingly into his eyes, and nestles closer to his side. He half smiles in return, and then turns away with a sigh. For he thinks, "It is the country air and her Grannie's care that have made such a change in my Betty, and now she will have neither." "Well, how did you leave your Grannie?" he says aloud. "Oh, ever so well! And she sent lots of love and messages--and other things--for the children, you know. The other things are in the bag. Be careful you don't smash the jam-pots! I'll tell you the messages as I remember them. And the love--Oh, father, Grannie showed me what real love is; and, father, I----" Betty comes to a full stop. "Well, well, my girl, what is it?" asks her father, turning his eyes inquiringly to her face. "Grannie has taught me so many things," she goes on, in a low voice, "and somehow, without saying much, she made me understand how selfish I have been; how through all these years I have been trying to do without God. And--and she took me to The Army Meetings, and last night I--I asked God to forgive me and make me as good as Grannie." Betty's voice has sunk to the merest whisper, but father hears it above all the roar of the traffic. "That's right, my girl. God bless you, Betty!" he says, heartily, and now at last a bright smile lights up his careworn face. "Here we are!" says father, presently, and he signals to the driver. The bus pulls up at the entrance to a small street, father shoulders the bag, and Betty, scrambling down after him, soon finds herself standing on the shabby little front doorstep of her home. A narrow, dull street it is; closely packed with dull houses, all built in one pattern, all alike grey with smoke, all looking as though no breath of spring air, or gleam of spring sunshine, could ever find their way through the close-shut windows. All too swiftly Betty's thoughts travel back to the white cottage in the hills, to the sunny garden, the fresh moorland breezes. The contrast is too much for her; a big lump seems to rise in her throat. Her eyes fill with tears; her good resolutions fade away. She doesn't want to be at home--Oh, that she were with Grannie now! Father has found his key at last, and fits it into the lock. At the same moment there is a rush of noisy feet within, the loud clamour of excited voices. Directly the door is flung open Betty is surrounded by a boisterous crowd of younger brothers and sisters--they seize her, they dance round her, shouting out their rough welcome. "We knew it was you! Mother, here's our Betty! Come along, Betty." And they almost drag her down the passage into the family sitting-room. Tea is set on the round table. Betty's quick eye notices that the tray is slopped with milk, and the stained cloth askew. "How different from Grannie's tea-table," she thinks bitterly. "Where's mother?" she asks, after kissing her brothers and sisters all round. "She was rather late to-day, and so she's only just gone upstairs to tidy herself," explains Lucy. Lucy is next in age to Betty. "You mustn't go up, she'll be down in a minute." "This bag feels pretty heavy," exclaims Bob, the eldest boy, "anything good in it, Betty?" and he begins fumbling at the fastening. "My flowers--Oh, Bob, do be careful!" cries Betty, rushing to the rescue of her daffodils and wallflowers. How sweet and fresh they looked this morning, how crushed and faded now! "You careless boy; you've broken the stalks off ever so many! Put the bag down. Oh, dear, why isn't mother here! Father's washing his hands, I suppose. Lucy, do ask mother to make haste; here's the kettle boiling away, and the tea not in the pot or anything." Betty is growing more irritable every minute; but now mother appears. "Well, Betty, here you are at last, then." Mrs. Langdale is a large, fair-haired woman. Her gown is only half-fastened, and stray wisps of hair are hanging round her face. This is nothing unusual, for Betty's mother is scarcely ever neatly dressed. Betty knows this well enough. It would be well if she understood the look of love in her mother's eyes as clearly as she sees the untidiness of her mother's dress. "Well, Betty, I'm glad to have you back again, that I am; there's so much to be done in this house, and time slips away so. Now, to-day, I really made up my mind to have everything ready by the time you came in, but what with one thing and another--Pollie, take your fingers out of the sugar-bowl, you naughty child--Jennie, fetch the knives, they're in the scullery, I forgot them; make haste now! Can't you see your sister wants her tea?" She pushes a few loose tags of hair out of her eyes, and begins making the tea, talking all the time. "Well, my dear, did your Grannie send any message to me? What sort of journey did you have? How did those boots wear? Now did you----?" "Betty's too tired to talk just yet, I think," interposes her father, coming in that moment. "She'll tell us everything after tea." Indeed, Betty does feel dreadfully tired. The noise and confusion bewilder her. Every one seems to be talking at once. It is all so different from the quiet orderliness of Grannie's home. The knives are brought at last, the tea made, and for awhile the younger children are too busy with their bread and butter even for talk. Tea over, however, the tumult begins afresh. The tea-things are just pushed to one side of the table, and then mother begins to unpack the bag. Shrieks of delight greet the various packages, the table is soon strewn with Grannie's good things. The paper is torn from the cake; Bob seizes on a great pot of blackberry jam, bumps against a chair and drops the pot with a crash to the floor. The sticky mess, mixed with broken glass, spreads slowly over the carpet. "There you go, you tiresome boy!" cries mother fretfully. "Always smashing something, always spoiling things. If you eat a bit of it you'll swallow broken glass, and serve you right. Lucy, ask Clara for a duster and pail of water to mop up the mess. Who told you to touch that cake, Pollie? Jennie, how dare you meddle with the honey--you'll overset that next! I don't believe there ever were such rude, tiresome, disobedient children! I'm sure I don't know what to do with you all. Harry, Jennie, Pollie, I _won't_ have that cake eaten to-night! You shall all just pack off to bed." The younger children sober down a little at this threat, and presently, between coaxings, and slappings, and the promise of unlimited cake to-morrow, they go off noisily to bed. How thankful Betty is when she manages at last to escape to her own little room, and lays her weary head on her pillow! She is utterly tired out. Too tired to remember any of her good resolutions; too tired even to think. CHAPTER III THE BATTLES BEGIN The morning is bright and clear, and just one glint of sunshine has actually found its way into the room. Betty sits up in bed. She has slept soundly all night, and feels thoroughly refreshed. Grannie's daffodils and wallflowers, carefully placed in a large glass on the little toilet-table, have lifted their drooping heads, and look almost as bright as they did yesterday morning in their far-away country home. "The battle is to begin to-day," Betty thinks, as she springs lightly out of bed. "Yes, to-day I am to begin to change everything in this untidy, stuffy old house--to-day I must commence the fight that is not to end until I have made it a really bright, cosy home. "Half-past six! I shouldn't wonder if Clara hasn't got up yet; she's such a lazy girl in the mornings. Never mind, I'll soon shame her out of that. One of the very first things I have to do is to make every one in this house understand that they _must_ get up early in the morning." Betty's mind is so full of this grand idea that she quite forgets to ask the Lord for His blessing and guidance during the day. Lucy is sleeping peacefully on her pillow by the side of the bed that Betty has just left. This will never do. "Come, Lucy, wake up!" and she shakes her by the arm. Lucy opens her blue eyes, and blinks at her sleepily. "It isn't time to get up yet; it can't be," she murmurs. "Yes, it is. You've all got into fearfully lazy habits in this house. While I was with Grannie I always got up at half-past six." "Oh, dear!" sighs Lucy, ruefully. "Now, make haste. Those children are going to be _properly_ washed and combed before they go to school this morning; it's a disgrace to see them sometimes." "Well, I suppose it is," admits Lucy. "But aren't you dreadfully tired, Betty, after yesterday?" "If I am, I'm not going to let that stand in the way of doing my duty," answers Betty loftily. "Oh, dear!" sighs Lucy, feeling quite guilty because she would so much rather stay in bed one extra half-hour. But the stern resolution in Betty's face shows no signs of relenting, and she begins to dress. Betty splashes vigorously in the cold water, combs her hair back until not a single hair is out of place, and runs downstairs. Clara, the little maid-of-all-work, is sleepily laying the kitchen fire. Her dirty apron has a great "jag" all across the front, and her tumbled cap is set all askew on her mass of dusty-looking hair. "What, the fire not alight yet? Really, Clara, this is too bad. How can you expect to get through your day's work well when you begin it so badly! Now just get that kettle to boil as soon as possible, and I'll prepare the porridge and haddock. "And, Clara, your face is as smutty as anything. Why don't you wash it properly? And your hair's just dreadful." Clara tosses her head indignantly, and mutters something about "never having time for anything in this house." "There's plenty of time for everything; it's all because you manage so badly," says Betty severely. "Where's the porridge-pot? Not cleaned; how shameful! And here's the frying-pan with all the fat in it. How can you expect to be ready in time at this rate?" Clara mutters that "Everything would be right enough if some folks would let her alone." Betty takes no notice of this just now, for Lucy appearing at this moment, she orders her off upstairs to wash and dress the younger children. By dint of a great deal of most energetic bustling on Betty's part, and sulky help from Clara, the breakfast is actually ready by eight o'clock, and the boys and younger girls sent off to school in good time. Betty feels greatly elated. "What a difference already!" she thinks. And father, coming in for breakfast, she hurries down to the kitchen for his fish and tea. Returning with the tray, she meets her mother coming downstairs. "What, Betty, up already? I made sure you would like to lie in bed a bit and hurried down early on purpose." "_Hurried_ down, mother! Why, I've been up since half-past six, and just sent the children off to school." "Dear me. Is it really so late? I made sure the clock struck eight only a few minutes ago." "Half an hour, at least, mother," answers Betty, sharply. "You're going by the kitchen clock--that's always wrong, you know." "Everything _is_ in this house, it seems to me," snaps Betty, and she carries father's breakfast into the sitting-room. Mother follows her. "Where's your father? Why, you don't mean to say you've finished breakfast? Good gracious me, Betty, the idea of having the window open! What a shocking draught, enough to blow one away, and I've had the face-ache all this week. Shut it down directly!" "It's a lovely fresh morning for this place, and air's better than anything. Grannie always has _her_ windows open," answers Betty in quite a hard voice. "Oh, I daresay; the country's different, and your Grannie is one of the strongest people I ever saw." And Mrs. Langdale glances nervously at the window. "But, mother, the room was horribly stuffy, and Grannie says----" "How dare you set your Grannie up against me in this way? If that's all you learned by being with her you'd far better have stayed at home." "But _any_ doctor would tell you----" "Look here, Betty, unless you close that window at once I won't stay in the room!" cries Mrs. Langdale, red with anger. Betty's face flushes also, and she bangs the window down in a fury. "There! And anybody who knows anything will tell you that's thoroughly wrong!" she cries. Perhaps so, Betty. But is there nothing wrong about your method of trying to put the mistake right? * * * * * Betty sits down hopelessly. She has been home just a week now, and things have gone from bad to worse. She has tried hard--in her own fashion, of course--she has been up early every morning, and bustled about all day. Yet all her grand ideas have resulted in nothing. It seems to her, as she sits there on the shabby little sofa, surrounded with piles of unmended stockings, that the members of her family are determined to fight against any kind of improvement. "They won't have the windows wide open; they won't get up early, or try to be tidy," she thinks, and her heart grows sore and bitter as she remembers the fruitless struggles of the past two or three days. "What _is_ the use of trying when no one seems to care whether things are properly done or not?" She glances round the room. The carpet is worn and frayed; the book-shelves dusty, the curtains faded and torn. Her eyes rest on the piles of unmended stockings. They have been there more than a week already. "How horrid it all is--how perfectly horrid! Why can't mother see that the whole house is a regular disgrace, and the children too--with their dirty hands and rough hair, and rude, noisy ways? But they won't obey me, though I scold them ever so--and no wonder, with mother always ready to take their part, and tell me not to be hard on them! Of course, they go away and forget everything directly. If mother would only leave them to me, I'd _make_ them mind! "Eleven o'clock striking, and mother hasn't been down to the kitchen to arrange about the dinner yet! There'll be nothing ready for the children again when they come in from school; and Clara will just muddle through her work as usual. Oh, dear, how sick I am of the whole thing! "If I could only live with Grannie--or even go out all day, and earn my living like other girls. I'm quick at figures. If I could be a clerk in the City, or something; at least, I should be away from this muddle most of the day. I should be independent, too, and able to buy things for the house when I see they're wanted--and that would help father. Nobody really understands me here, except father. "Bob was cruel to speak to me as he did this morning; and what I said was perfectly true--his hands _did_ look as though he hadn't washed them for a week. It was my duty to tell him that, and he had no right to fly in a rage, and say I was nagging. Nagging, indeed! Just because I told him that it was disgraceful and disgusting for a big boy to go about with dirty hands! [Illustration: "They make a good heap, don't they?"] "A quarter past, and mother still over the newspaper--and she told me she wouldn't be ten minutes! It's too bad. I know just what will happen. There'll be nothing ready, and Clara will be sent out for some tinned salmon or something at the last minute. No, I won't have it!" And Betty jumps up, all aglow with anger, and running down the passage, flings open the little front parlour door. "Mother!"--very sharply--"don't you know how late it is?" Mrs. Langdale looks up rather vacantly. "Late? how can you say so? I'm sure I haven't been here over a quarter of an hour." "You've been here a whole hour, and if you don't make the pudding at once the children will have to do without altogether!" "How you do hurry and flurry one, Betty. Well, I'll see to it." Betty goes back to the sitting-room. "I suppose I must begin at something," she sighs wearily--"not that it makes much difference." Again her eyes fall on the stockings. Hours of hard work would not get rid of that hopeless pile. On the first evening after her return home, whilst as yet all her good resolutions were hot in her, she had mended and put away all father's socks; but since then there has seemed no time for anything. "I must mend all those stockings to-morrow," mother has said each night; but there the matter has ended. Shall she mend some now? or dust? or wash the curtains? or---- The door is flung open, and Clara comes in with a fresh armful of socks and stockings, barely dry from the kitchen. "Missis says I'm to put these with the rest," she giggles, in her irritating way. "They make a good heap, don't they?" That is the last straw. Betty waits until she is out of the room, and then gives way altogether. "I can't bear it--I just can't!" she whispers, tapping her foot on the floor. "Grannie didn't know what it would be like when she said all that about loving one's home. I must get away from it--I must!" The door opens again. "Oh, Betty, I just want you to--why, child, what is the matter? Are you going to be ill again?" "No, of course not!" Betty's heart had grown softer as she thought of her Grannie; but she hardens it directly she hears her mother's voice. "No, only everything's so horrid at home that I mean to ask father to let me learn typing." "Betty, how can you be so ungrateful! Just because things are a bit behindhand--and that through your being away so long! There, I didn't think it of you!" And Mrs. Langdale goes angrily out of the room. Betty had certainly not thought of it in this light. Indeed, she has been thinking of little lately, save how to get things done in her own way. "What could Grannie mean by talking as though I could become a real power for good in my home?" she thinks bitterly. "I've tried, and tried, and things only get worse and worse; and I've made Bob angry, and the children cross, and vexed mother besides. Grannie must have been wrong after all!" Was Grannie wrong? Or is it just possible there is still something wrong with Betty herself? CHAPTER IV BETTY'S BIRTHDAY "To-day is my birthday." That is Betty's first thought when she awakes next morning, and the remembrance soothes and pleases her. "Surely, Bob will not be cross with me to-day. Surely, father will smile when he kisses me, and mother will make a real effort to finish her work earlier. But Grannie's letter will be best of all--a long letter it is certain to be, and, perhaps, a box of sweet country flowers besides--those I brought from her little garden are all dead now." Betty's heart feels lighter than it has for some days past, and she runs downstairs quite briskly. How eagerly she listens for the postman's knock as she helps Clara prepare the breakfast! "Ah, he's in the street now--I can hear his 'rat-tats'--they're coming nearer. Now he's next door----" Alas, for poor Betty! The next knock is at the house on the other side. She darts upstairs. No, there is no letter on the door-mat; there is no letter coming to her at all! Grannie has forgotten the day. Betty could cry with disappointment and vexation. But this is only the beginning. Jennie, Pollie, and Harry never remember any birthdays save their own--she had expected nothing from them. But Lucy and Bob, it is hard indeed that _they_ should take no notice of this all-important day which makes her just fifteen years old. Worse still, Bob is in a thoroughly bad humour; and Lucy, having fallen asleep after Betty awakened her this morning, is ashamed of herself, and eats her breakfast in silence. Not a word does Betty say to remind them. She is longing intensely for a birthday greeting, but nothing would make her confess it. "I shouldn't have forgotten _their_ birthdays," she thinks bitterly. "I thought they didn't really care much about me, and this proves it." "You needn't look at me like that!" cries Bob sharply. "I shan't wash my hands any oftener for you, Miss Particular, in spite of all your naggings!" and he snatches up his cap, and clatters out of the room, banging the door after him. Soon after father comes in for his breakfast. Betty looks up eagerly. Alas! he also has forgotten. After this, mother's forgetfulness is not surprising. She, too, takes her breakfast almost in silence, and disappears into the kitchen rather earlier than usual. Betty's heart is very sore as she sets about her morning work. Her head aches, and she feels tired all over. She has just tidied the fireplace when mother enters. "The kitchen-range is smoking again, Betty. I'm not going to have any more of it, so I've sent Clara for the sweep." Betty is horrified. "Why, mother, there's no dinner cooked--not even a bit of pudding!" "Well, we'll have to make do with this fire--it can't be helped." This is too much. Betty knows what "having the sweep in" means. "Why couldn't you wait until to-morrow?" she breaks out angrily. "It's too bad--that it is! Isn't everything horrid enough already without this?" And she covers her face with her hands, and bursts into a passion of tears. "Why, Betty--Betty, for goodness' sake, don't--what can be the matter?" "It's my birthday!" cries Betty, "and you've all forgotten--and I _did_ think things would be better to-day, and now they'll be worse than ever!" "Your birthday, child? So it is, I declare! Well, I can't think how I came to forget it! If I'd thought now, I would have tidied up a bit--but there's so much to do in this house--just no end to it, and yet there's no peace, and everything in a muddle----" "It's all because no one _wants_ things to be better!" sobs Betty. "If you mean me, Betty, let me tell you you've no right to speak like that to your mother----" "I mean everybody! I just hate everything, _everything_!" cries Betty, stamping her foot, and sobbing so wildly that Mrs. Langdale is alarmed. She forgets her own grievance directly, in true motherly anxiety. "Come, come, Betty, don't give way like this; you've been working too hard, my dear; keeping too close to the house. Clara and I will manage the sweep; just put on your hat, and go for a walk." "I can't, my head aches dreadfully," sobs Betty. "Then you must lie down a bit. Come, come, you'll make yourself quite ill." Betty's head is aching so badly now that she can scarcely think. Presently, lying on her bed, she grows calmer. What a dreadful failure she has made of it all! She has fought and struggled all the week, only to meet defeat at the end. What would Grannie say? How rudely she spoke to mother just now--Grannie wouldn't approve of that. "But I couldn't help it, and I can't do anything to make things better, or the house nicer. The harder I try, the worse it all gets. I don't see any way out of it at all, but earning my own living, and letting them all go on as they like. I wonder what Grannie would say to such a plan? Well, I can't ask her, she's too far away; and, Oh, dear, dear, she's forgotten my birthday!" Worn out with crying and pain, presently Betty falls asleep. When she has slept for about an hour, a loud "rat-tat" at the street door awakens her. She jumps up. The postman! Of course, she had forgotten the twelve o'clock post. She flies downstairs, still dizzy with sleep. Mother and Clara have not heard the knock, they are busy in the kitchen. A letter and a parcel. Betty almost snatches them from the postman's hands, and scans them eagerly. Yes, it is Grannie's well-known hand-writing. How could she think dear Grannie would forget her! Betty hurries upstairs with her treasures. "A book--Grannie has sent me a book--that's just like Grannie; she knows I like reading better than anything." She strips off the brown paper with eager fingers. The book looks quite delightful; it is prettily bound, and nicely illustrated. Betty turns over the leaves rapidly, and her eyes fall on a picture that attracts her attention directly. By the open door of a rose-clad cottage stands a little maiden. She wears the quaint close cap and quilted petticoat of the olden time, and is eagerly looking at something which the dear old dame in front of her holds tightly clasped beneath the fingers of her right hand. Somehow, the cottage reminds Betty of Grannie's cottage. The old dame is certainly rather like Grannie, and the girl is, Oh, just about her own age! Did Grannie send the book because she also saw the resemblance? "I must find out," thinks Betty. "Mother doesn't want me--she said so--and my head still aches." So she lies down again, and begins to read, "The Talking-Bird: A Wonder-Tale." "It's a real lovely story; I can see that. I was rather afraid that a book from Grannie might be rather dry--she's so _very_ good." Poor Betty! She has a great deal to learn yet, that is evident. Really good people are not dull; books that are good and true can certainly never be "dry." Betty wants to be good, she wants to walk in the Narrow Way, and follow her Saviour faithfully; but it all seems such uphill work; doing one's duty is such a tiresome, wearisome business; trying to be good is such a dull, uninteresting affair. Her heart is still cold, you see; the fire of the Holy Spirit has not yet warmed it into loving life. So Betty begins to read. The rose-clad cottage looks sweet enough, but Betty soon finds that there is very little sweetness in the maiden's life. Poor Gerda's lot is a hard one. She is always at work. She must spin, and bake, and milk cows; yet her stepmother never seems pleased with her. Gerda's two brothers are out all day cutting wood in the great pine forests, but though she knits them warm stockings, and tries her best to cook them nice suppers, they never give her a smile, or a kiss, or a loving word. And Gerda says to herself:-- "It does not matter how I work, or what I do, I can never please anybody at all." Betty pauses a moment. "How very like _my_ experience!" she thinks. "Of course, I have to do different work--mend horrid stockings for Bob instead of knitting them, and sweep and dust instead of spinning; but the effect of it all is just the same, and Bob is exactly like that. I do all I can to please him. I always make the porridge myself, because he says it's 'lumpy' when Clara does it, but never a word of thanks do I get. Why, he couldn't even trouble to remember that to-day is my birthday, and I saved up for weeks and weeks to buy _him_ a nice present on his birthday! It's too bad!" "Before Gerda's father married again," Betty reads on, "she had been allowed to manage the house as she pleased" ("I wish I was"), "but now everything is changed. Gerda loved to rise with the sun, and scour the kitchen floor with white sand before breakfast, and polish all the brass pans until they shone like gold" ("I don't sand floors or polish pans, but that's just how I feel about getting my work done early"), "but her stepmother liked hot cakes for breakfast, and as she would not rise early enough to bake them herself, Gerda had to leave her work and cook cakes instead; and because no one seemed to care for her, or notice how hard she had to work, she grew more discontented, and fretful, and unhappy every day; and meantime all around her became more difficult and sad." "Oh, dear, that's exactly like me!" sighs Betty. Then she goes on to read how a strange little old woman, in a big red cloak, came to the cottage door one day. Her eyes were blue as the sky, and she carried a flat basket slung over one arm. "Gerda thought she had come to sell ribbons and pins, and turned to shut the door; but the old dame stopped her smilingly. 'I have come to _give_, and not to sell,' she said. "'You have been fretting, my child, and it's troubled you are, and sore and bitter you are feeling against those who fret you. Eh, my dear, I'll soon better that!' and her blue eyes seemed to dance with the knowledge of some happy secret. "But Gerda stood quite dumb with amazement. "Then the old dame raised her folded hand towards Gerda, and unclasped it a little. "'Oh, how sweet!' she cried. There, in the old woman's hand, nestled a tiny bird. Its feathers were red as the heart of a rose, and its eyes shone like diamonds. "'It is for you. My bird will stay with you as long as you need him, and smooth all the fret of your life away.' "Gerda stretched out eager hands towards the beautiful bird. 'Oh,' she cried, 'if that could only come true!' [Illustration: "'Oh, how sweet!' she cried."] "'It will come true, my child, if you do as I bid you. You must allow my bird to perch on your shoulder, and be with you wherever you go. He is a talking bird, and whenever you are tempted to give an angry answer, or speak a bitter word'--Gerda hung her head; alas! she knew that this would be very often--'you must let the bird speak for you. Only do this, and in a few months you will be the happiest girl in the world.' "'But what will people say?' stammered Gerda, quite bewildered. "'Directly my bird touches your shoulder he will become invisible; _you_ will feel him, but no one will see him; and when he speaks, his voice will be so like yours that no one can tell the difference. Your part is to keep down the angry words that rise to your lips. My sweet bird will do the rest,' and she kissed the bird's bright eyes, and placed him gently on Gerda's shoulder, and, behold! though she could feel the light fluttering of feathers against her cheek, she could see nothing." "What can be the meaning of this--what is the bird going to do?" thinks Betty, as she hastily turns the page. Betty has quite forgotten her headache, and reads on:-- "Just at that moment, Gerda saw her little pet kid jump quite over the wall of the yard where her father's fiercest watch-dog was chained. 'Oh, it will be killed!' she cried, and ran swiftly to the rescue. But when she returned with the kid in her arms, the old woman had gone. 'And I never thanked her! You tiresome creature--it was all your fault!' "That is what she began to say as she lifted her hand to beat the poor little kid, but at the same instant she felt the invisible bird fluttering at her cheek again, and, lo and behold! a voice--a voice exactly like her own, only much sweeter--struck in ere she could finish the sentence: 'Poor little kid, you knew no better, and I am sure the old woman will understand I did not mean to be ungrateful--she had such kind, wise eyes.' "Certainly the words were much wiser than those she meant to use herself." That is only the beginning. The story goes on to tell how Gerda's life is altered altogether through the gentle, loving words spoken by the bird in her stead; how her brothers grow to love her, and are never so happy as when they can give her pleasure, bringing her home all sorts of treasures at the end of their day's work. Lilies from the valley, wild strawberries from the hill, honey from the woodbee's nest; how her stepmother becomes kind and thoughtful, and her father calls her the sunshine of the home--and all this because the old dame gave her that wonderful speaking-bird! Betty reads to the end, and closes the book with a sigh. "What a pity such things can't be true! Now, if _I_ had a lovely rose-coloured bird who would perch on my shoulder, and always say exactly the right thing in my place when I felt cross, or stupid, how different everything would be! "Dear me, what nonsense I am talking! It's just a pretty child's story--that is all--and I can't imagine why Grannie sent it to me. I haven't read her letter yet. Dear old Grannie--_she_ didn't forget my birthday. It was unkind of the others; just too bad, after all I've done. Well, I'll see how they like it themselves. I certainly shan't worry much about presents for other people's birthdays, if they won't even take the trouble to remember mine!" Betty rises, and, taking Grannie's letter to the window, begins to read. What love there is in the very first words--what a warm birthday greeting! Betty's eyes grow misty as she reads, and she holds the page to her lips for a moment. "Grannie _really_ loves me," she murmurs. "It is a long letter. Ah, here is something about the book! Dear me, what can Grannie mean?" "'Has my Betty guessed the _name_ of Gerda's speaking-bird yet? Has she discovered the secret of the happiness that came to the little maiden of the story?' ("No, indeed; how could I?") 'Does Gerda's story fit my dear Betty's own case?' ("Part of it does, of course.") 'Yes, for my Betty has troubles and trials; my Betty is tempted to think her own life is very hard and dull; is tempted to give up trying; is perhaps thinking of getting rid of the worry and fret by turning away from it all, and going out to work for herself?' ("Now, how could Grannie have found that out? I'm sure _I_ never said a word about being a typist while I was with her!") "'The bird's name was _Love_, Betty. The wonderful change in Gerda's life was brought about by pure, unselfish love. "'In all this world there is no force so strong as love, Betty--true love; the love that suffereth long and is kind; love that seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked; love that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; the love that our Lord Jesus Christ gives to all those who truly love and follow Him.'" Love! Betty looks rather blank. Does Grannie mean that she isn't loving people enough? "'The little maiden in the story had been troubled and discontented, but after she listened to the voice of the Spirit of Love, and let it speak for her, all her trials vanished away. The story of Gerda's Bird is only a pretty tale, but, Betty, you are one of God's soldiers now, and the Spirit of Love has come to abide with you; to dwell in your heart, and speak to your soul. The Holy Spirit, dear, the Heavenly Dove; the Lord's best gift to you. "'Listen to it, Betty; let its voice speak for you. When sharp, unloving words rise to your lips, keep them fast closed until the Love within you can make itself heard. "'You want a happy home, my child; you long for the love of all those around you, but it is only by bringing the Lord into all your thoughts about your home, that it can be really happy--only by loving others very much that you can win true love in return.'" For a long time Betty stands by the window, thinking, thinking as she has never done before. "Is that _really_ the way out of it? Can love, and keeping one's temper, make all that difference? Of course, I know that Bob would like me better if I didn't scold when he is rough and careless; and I'm sure mother would rather I didn't worry her about the house being so untidy and badly managed. But then, if I _don't_ scold and worry, how can I get things into proper order?" Suddenly a bright thought, like a ray of pure light, darts into her mind--"Does Grannie mean me to work just as hard to make things nicer, but in a different way? To love everybody so much that I don't get cross when they seem careless and unreasonable? "Oh, have I been thinking too much of myself--of my own plans? Oh, dear Lord, help me, help me to seek the good of others, help me to suffer long and be kind; not to be easily provoked; help me to feel that my home and all within it are precious gifts from Thee!" CHAPTER V REAL TROUBLE Betty washes her face, brushes her hair, and runs downstairs; new courage thrilling her heart. "Yes, now, indeed, I will try what love can do! Now I really will keep my temper whatever happens; now love shall speak for me however aggravating things may be!" She feels so sure of herself; nevertheless, she has hardly been downstairs half a minute before she nearly slips into her old habits of irritation again. An ominous rumbling in the direction of the kitchen chimney announces that the sweep is still at work. The children's dinner-hour has nearly arrived, there is no dinner ready, and the sitting-room fire has not even been lighted. "What _was_ the use of telling me to go away and rest, and then forgetting all about the children's dinner in this way? It's too bad! I'd much rather have been without the rest altogether than be worried like this, and I shall just go and tell mother so--no, I won't." Betty stops short. Where are all the good resolutions she made not five minutes ago? Where is the Love she was to listen to, and learn from? "Mother has forgotten the dinner because she is doing all the horrid, dirty work of having the sweep herself, that I might rest. I won't say anything; no, I _won't_. I'll just run out and buy some fish, and cook it myself, without saying a word." She lights the fire, buys the fish, prepares and cooks it in her swift, methodical fashion, and has dinner quite ready just as Bob and the younger children troop in from school, and Lucy returns from her music-lesson. "Dinner ready?" cries Bob roughly, flinging his cap down on a chair. "Bob, how dare you do that? Hang your cap up in the hall, directly." "Oh, bother; I shall want it again in half a minute. Where's mother?" A wave of indignation sweeps over Betty at his careless answer. "Not one scrap of dinner shall you have, Bob, until your cap is hanging up in its proper place; take it out at once!" "Shan't; where's mother? I want my dinner. I don't want any of your nagging." Nagging--how Betty hates the word! Bob knows her dislike of it well enough, and always uses it when he means to be especially aggravating. He does so now, fully expecting her to begin scolding violently. But somehow her very dislike of the word reminds her of Grannie's letter, with its warning about troubles and trials. Is she nagging? has she failed already? Yet how rude Bob is--how wrong! No, she _will_ conquer; and she answers quite gently. "Bob, how can you expect the younger ones to behave properly if you set them a bad example? They all watch you," and she goes out to call her mother to dinner. The kitchen is in a truly dreadful state; table, chairs, and saucepans, all heaped together; a liberal sprinkling of soot over everything; mother, with a great smudge of soot across her face, Clara as grimy as a sweep herself. "Dinner? Why, I declare I forgot all about it! Can I come? Bless the child, of course not. Just look at the state that careless man has left everything in; it's disgraceful." "But, mother, dinner's all ready, and----" "Oh, that's all right; help the children, and I'll come when I can." Betty's feelings are all up in arms again. She has cooked the dinner herself, and mother won't even take the trouble to come and eat it--her birthday dinner, too! Again her indignation almost masters her. "You must come, mother. Bob's horridly cross." "Poor boy. Something has upset him at school, I expect. He's made to work much too hard over those lessons. Now, Clara, I've told you over and over again that I won't have the table scrubbed before the floor's swept. Take that pail away at once, and fetch the soft broom!" Betty sees that further interference will be equally hopeless, and goes upstairs, the spirit of rebellion surging in her heart. "So unnecessary, all this fuss and muddle; what possible good can 'Love' do to all this sort of thing?" Yet Love has already won one small victory for her. Bob would not have hung up his cap had she scolded for an hour. But she had answered his last unkind remark gently, and when she returns to the sitting-room the cap is gone. Nevertheless, as the day wears on, Betty feels more and more despondent. "I don't see how things could be worse," she thinks, "and I can't see how I can ever make them any better." The younger children are in bed now, and mother is trying to wash the soot from her hands and face in her own room. "Father will be late to-night; he will want his supper directly he comes home. Of course, it will be left to me to get it. I wonder what Lucy finds to do so perpetually in her own room? I've a good mind to tell her pretty plainly what I think of her selfish, unsociable ways, always going away by herself, and leaving me to attend to everything," and Betty sighs wearily, and, seating herself on the little sofa, begins to sort over the heap of unmended stockings. The next moment she is startled by a loud double knock at the street door. She jumps to her feet and stands listening. What can it be? Ah, now Clara is coming upstairs. She is always so slow. What is that? Clara screaming? Betty flies down the passage. "Oh, Oh, Oh!" shrieks Clara. "The master's killed, and they've brought him home in a cab!" "Killed? No, no, miss; don't be frightened. It's only a bad accident," says the cabman, reassuringly, as he catches sight of Betty's white face. "A bad accident! Father? Oh, what is it?" gasps Betty. "Smashed his knee-cap, miss." "Oh, is that all?" cries Betty. "All! Why, miss, that is the worst kind of accident. Like as not, he'll never put foot to ground again; he'd better by far have broken both his legs. Is there anyone in the house to help me get him in?" For a minute Betty's head seems to whirl round, and she cannot think. But with a great effort she steadies herself. "Bob, Bob!" she calls. Bob has come up, and is standing staring into the darkness beside her, Lucy's frightened face just behind him. "Bob, run in next door, and ask Mr. Baker to come as quickly as ever he can; we must have help. Father can't move. Lucy, go and tell mother." Bob darts off, and Betty goes down to the cab door. Father is lying back in the cab all huddled together; one leg held stiffly before him. "Is that my Betty?" he says feebly. "Don't be frightened, dear lass, I shall be right enough presently." But the dreadful look of pain on his face turns her quite sick. Mr. Baker comes, and father is got into the house; how, Betty never knows. Her heart aches to hear the deep groan that breaks from him when they lift him to the sofa. It is father who remembers the cabman, and bids Betty take the purse from his pocket, and pay the man. As she gently feels for it, her hand encounters an odd stocking from the unmended pile on which father is lying, and the thought darts through her mind, "Oh, to think I felt things like _that_ to be a trouble this morning!" Bob is off again to fetch the doctor. Mother is in the room now, weeping, and wringing her hands helplessly. Lucy stands trembling with terror, and perfectly useless. Only Betty seems to know what to do. Betty really loves her father, and her quick brain and skilful fingers are active in his service. Her love has made her forget herself entirely--for a time. It is her hands that arrange a pillow under the injured knee supporting it in such a manner that the pain is greatly lessened. It is she who opens the window to give him air, and brings a cup of hot milk to relieve his exhaustion. There is no thinking of herself just now, all her own little troubles are quite forgotten. Is there nothing she can do to make her father's pain easier? That one thought fills her heart. The doctor! Betty draws back, breathless with anxiety. Will father groan again when the doctor touches him? "Oh, dear Lord, do make the pain better!" she murmurs, with pale lips. It is the first time she has really prayed from her heart of hearts for anyone save herself. "I was hurrying along, and slipped upon a banana skin, falling with a crash to the pavement, and striking my knee smartly against the edge of the curb-stone," she hears father explain to the doctor. "Ah, 'more haste less speed' this time, with a vengeance, Mr. Langdale. It's a pity you weren't more careful." "It's my girl's birthday, and I had only just remembered it," murmurs father faintly. Oh, how poor Betty's conscience pricks her as she hears the words! "Hem! bad job; bad job. A pair of sharp scissors, my dear," and the doctor turns to Betty, who flies to get them. The doctor cuts away the clothing from the injured knee, and after a very brief examination declares that his patient must be taken to the hospital. "I will send an ambulance for you immediately, Mr. Langdale. There is no help for it, I am afraid," he says, and takes his leave. There is another dreadful interval of waiting. Mother continues to sob and rock herself to and fro. Bob takes up his stand by the window, on the look-out for the ambulance. He is truly sorry for father, yet, boy-like, feels all the painful importance of the position. But Betty holds her father's hand, with eyes brimful of pitying love. "Father, father," she whispers, "if I could only help you; if I could only bear some of the pain for you." A faint smile flickers into his face, and the set features relax a little. [Illustration: A pillow under the injured knee.] "I fear you will have to bear your share, my lass. The pain in my knee is nothing to having to leave you all to shift for yourselves. You must see Mr. Duncan, the landlord of the houses I collect rents for, the first thing to-morrow, and take him the rent-books. You'll find them all in my bag, and the money I've collected this week, too. I haven't got it all yet. Perhaps he'll do something for your mother while I'm laid by; I don't know. Oh, Betty, my girl, I must leave so much in your hands. Do all you can for your mother. Try your best to keep the home together." "Father, I'll try so hard. I'll do everything I can. I'll----" "Here's the ambulance, and there's a nurse and two men getting out," announces Bob from the window. Mrs. Langdale's sobs rise into screams, but Betty scarcely hears her; just now she has eyes and ears for her father alone. Skilful hands carry him to the ambulance, and this time no groan reaches Betty's straining ears, as she follows the party. "Go to your mother! She needs you, and I am in good hands. God bless you, dear child! God be with you and help you!" CHAPTER VI FOR FATHER'S SAKE Betty stands gazing at the ambulance, as it passes steadily out of sight, and a feeling of deep loneliness sweeps over her heart. No one loves her, no one understands her as father does, and now he has gone from her. "Ah! there I am, thinking about myself again--I _won't_ do it!" She rouses herself with a brave effort, and goes back into the house. A house full of noise and confusion just now. Mother sobbing loudly in the little sitting-room. Jennie and Pollie, awakened from sleep, shrieking themselves hoarse in their bedroom above. Clara helpless; Bob dazed-looking; Lucy tearful. Only Betty still manages to keep her wits about her. "Lucy, run upstairs and quiet the children--mother, mother, you mustn't upset yourself so--father will soon be better, I'm sure--such a nice, sweet nurse came to look after him. Come, mother, you're quite tired out; lie down on the sofa, and I'll make you a cup of tea." "Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?" moans Mrs. Langdale. "Father will soon be in less pain, and----" "But what shall _I_ do? Most likely he'll never be able to walk again. Mr. Duncan will get some one else to collect his rents and look after the houses, and we shall all starve." "Mother, you really must not worry about all that to-night. Father told me to go and see Mr. Duncan to-morrow, and perhaps he'll do something for us." "Mr. Duncan do anything? Why, he's as hard as flint, always grumbling at your father for not getting the last penny out of the tenants; _he_ do anything? Oh, no, no!" "Well, we don't know how it will be yet. Come, mother, I'm going to make you that cup of tea, and you must lie down while I get it." Betty makes the tea, and coaxes her mother into taking it, and presently persuades her to go to bed. It is very late by this time, the house is quiet, and Betty goes to bed herself. Now, at last, in the silence, she has time to think. This morning--was it really only this morning that she was so foolishly vexed because her birthday was not remembered? Did she really feel the sweep's visit a big trouble only a few hours ago? How small, how utterly insignificant her troubles have been up to now! And yet she has made so much of them, has felt herself so hardly used! For a long time she lies awake, turning it all over in her mind. "Father, dear, patient old father is tossing in pain and fever, and his worry is much worse than mine, for he must lie still and think, and I can be up and at work. It is so much harder to bear things when you can do nothing to make them better. Lord, show me what to do; show me how to work for our home--for father's sake." Somehow, soon after that prayer, Betty falls into a sound sleep, and does not awake until it is morning. When at length she opens her eyes, it is time to get up. For a moment she lies still enough, not remembering what has happened; then, with a rush, it all comes back to her, and she starts out of bed. Father, mother, children--what can she do for them all? Last night she had no answer to that question, but now a bright, a daring hope has flashed into her mind. Why shouldn't _she_ collect Mr. Duncan's rents, and keep his accounts whilst father is laid by? She wanted to go out to work for herself. Here is the chance of doing something much better, of working for father's sake, of lifting a great part of this heavy load from his heart! But can she do it--can she? Her heart sinks again. "Oh, will Mr. Duncan give me a trial?" Suddenly she remembers Grannie. "How sorry Grannie will be for this--Oh, if I were like Grannie how much easier it would be! Let me think, if Grannie was in my place, what would she do first?" The answer to that question is easy enough. "She would pray." Betty kneels by the bedside. She prays for her father, and then she prays for herself; prays that she may have strength given her, and wisdom, and courage, to do her work bravely and well. Mother is quite unfit for anything this morning. Lucy must give up her music-lesson to wait on her. The children are very fretful. Clara declares she is "too much upset to do her usual work, and it ought not to be expected of her." Only Betty is patient and gentle, striving to get through the usual duties. Love is leading her at last--love for her father. Just now no thought of self dims her memory of his suffering face. But for all that her heart beats very fast, when at last she knocks at Mr. Duncan's door, and her grand plan of carrying on a part of dear father's work suddenly appears quite hopeless. "I'm afraid it will make Mr. Duncan quite angry to propose such a thing. Had not I better just give him the money father collected, and say nothing about my idea after all?" Betty hesitates a moment, then-- "For father's sake--for father's sake," she murmurs to herself. The door is opened by a neat maid. Yes, Mr. Duncan is at home, will she please to give her name? Another minute and she is shown into a room, where an elderly gentleman is writing at a table. "The young person to see you, sir," announces the maid. The elderly gentleman looks up with a frown, and fixes a pair of hard grey eyes on her face. "Well, what's the meaning of this?" he says gruffly. "Where's your father?" Betty pauses a moment. "Where's your father? I want to see him particularly," repeats Mr. Duncan, still more angrily. Betty quakes inwardly; but her courage is of the kind that always rises at an emergency, and she explains what has happened in a clear business-like fashion. "Hem! accident indeed--pretty fix his accident has left me in," grumbles Mr. Duncan, when she has finished. "Have you the money with you?" Betty produces it. He counts it over. "Why, how's this? There's two pounds short!" "Father was to collect that to-day, sir; there's a note in his book saying which of the tenants haven't paid yet." "Hem! bad system. If they can't pay up to time, they ought to go. And what am I to do now, pray?" "Please, if you'll let me, I'll go round to the tenants in father's place," cries Betty, eagerly. "You? Why, what does a girl like you know about it?" "I'm good at accounts; and father has told me how it is done, and shown me the books--I help him with them sometimes. If you would _only_ let me try, sir--until father gets better----" "Oh, that's it, is it? _You_ want to take over my work!" and, rather to Betty's surprise, the hard old eyes give a little twinkle of amusement. "No--no, my girl, you don't understand; there's a great deal besides just collecting the money. Repairs to attend to; bad tenants to get rid of; new tenants to bargain with----" "But, sir," interrupts Betty, eagerly, "if you would only let me try to do the best I can until father comes out of the hospital--perhaps the repairs could wait--and I'd try _so_ hard; and--and we've nothing but a few pounds in the savings bank, and father said he thought you might do something----" "Oh, he did--did he? Very kind of him, I'm sure!" snaps Mr. Duncan, the hard, suspicious look returning to his face. Betty feels ready to burst into tears. "He thinks the very idea of employing me utterly absurd," she thinks, and turns to go. But hardly have her fingers touched the handle, before Mr. Duncan calls her back. "Don't be in such a hurry, young person. Your father is a great deal too soft with the tenants; but I believe he means well, and I'm sorry for his accident. Suppose you go round to the tenants who haven't paid this morning? It will be time enough to talk about your taking on the work when I see what you can do." She is to have a trial after all! The expression on Betty's face changes so quickly, that Mr. Duncan's eyes twinkle again. "Hem! you needn't look so pleased. I don't promise anything, mind--why, bless the girl, if she isn't off already! Well, if she takes after her father, I might do worse. Soft-hearted--a great deal too soft-hearted--but as honest as the day," and the old gentleman returns to his writing. Betty hurries home for her father's little rent-collecting bag; and then makes her way through the network of narrow streets, in the midst of which the houses owned by Mr. Duncan stand. Arriving at the long row, she looks round her in some dismay. [Illustration: "Rent?" cries the woman bitterly.] How small the houses are--how dirty! How narrow and wretched-looking the street! She consults her list, and knocks timidly at the door of the first number. No answer. She knocks again. A shuffling of feet follows, and presently a woman appears. She is haggard and old-looking, and the child in her arms is wailing pitifully. A second child clings to her skirt, and mother and children alike are wretchedly clad. "Rent?" cries the woman bitterly, in answer to Betty's timid request. "Pray, how do you suppose I'm to pay the rent, and my husband still on the drink? I told the agent it was no use calling, and if he wants to turn me out, he must!" And without giving Betty time to answer, she drags the children in, and slams the door. Betty has not the courage to knock again. What a glimpse of dull, hopeless misery the woman's face and voice have revealed to her! She passes on to the next house. The woman who answers this door is rather cleaner. "Called for the rent? But you're not the agent," she says, looking at Betty very suspiciously. Betty explains. "Hum! I don't like the look of it. How do I know it's all right? There, you needn't look so offended. If _you_ had had to work early and late, denying yourself your proper rest, and a bit of butter to your bread, to make up the rent, you'd be careful who you trusted it with, I can tell you." Betty shows the poor woman her father's collecting book, and after a while the rent is put grudgingly into her hands. Betty cannot bear to take it from the poor thing. It is a slow, miserable business, but before the morning is over Betty manages to get the greater part of the two pounds together. "Hem; short, as usual," is Mr. Duncan's discouraging remark, as he counts it over. Betty feels sick at heart. The morning's work has been quite a new experience. Occupied only with her own thoughts and plans, she has thought very little about other people's difficulties; and the miserable homes she has just seen have shocked and pained her deeply. Mr. Duncan weighs the money in his hand for a moment or two, as though considering. "Well, I can't be bothered just now with looking up anyone else. I suppose we'd better go on as we are--for the present. Here's the whole rent account-book; take it home, and let me know how much rent I've lost on the half-year. Good morning." So she is to take up part of father's work, after all! How glad dear father will be! CHAPTER VII DAY BY DAY For the first time in her life Betty is glad to be at home. The rooms seem more comfortable and airy than they have ever done before. "Oh, how thankful I am that I don't live in that horrid, narrow street, like those poor wretched-looking women and children!" she thinks. Even one morning's work among people so much worse off than herself has opened her eyes a little to the blessings she possesses in her home. Why, if father were only coming home as usual to-night, she could feel almost happy--_if_--ah! but father is not coming home; yet he will come some day, his life is in no danger. Oh, she will be brave for his sake, she will be true to the trust he has left in her hands! No dinner ready again; mother still quite incapable of attending to anything, and poor Betty thoroughly tired out with her anxious morning's work. Yet she is not even cross. No, the more trying and difficult things are, the greater the victory; and just now she feels braced up, heart and soul, for the fight. It is sometimes easier to be brave and unselfish in a time of real trouble, than to bear with patience and sweetness the little worries of everyday life. But Betty is on the right road now, she is doing great things; she is marching straight on; she is opening her heart to the Lord, and allowing His light to shine into its dark places, and there is hope that before the little, wearing everyday worries come back again, she may be strong enough to resist even them, and prove herself a true Soldier at last. She may fail though, and darken the light that God sends her! Well, we will hope for better things. So Betty bustles about, and has dinner ready as usual when the children come in. Not until they are all off to school again has she time to tell her mother of the morning's work. Mrs. Langdale is not at all encouraging. "Nice place to send a girl like you to. What is he going to pay you?" "I don't know yet, mother." "And you never thought of asking? You silly child! He'll take your work and give you nothing." "Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't do that, mother." But she looks rather blank at the idea. "Well, you'll see; and don't say I didn't warn you. When are you going to see Mr. Duncan again?" "To-morrow. I'm to make out an account of the rents to-night, and take it with me." Betty finds that this last is easier said than done. She pores over the books until her head aches. Presently Bob comes in. "Here, Betty, look sharp. I want a button sewn on my coat, and I can't find that new pair of boot-laces, and--why, just fancy sitting there reading like that! No wonder a fellow can never get anything done in this house--it's too bad!" "I'm not reading, I'm doing Mr. Duncan's accounts," says Betty quietly. The knowledge that she is working unselfishly for the good of her family is a grand help towards keeping her temper! Bob stares. "Rubbish!" he says. "Come and see, Bob. I'm to do part of father's work, and Oh, I do wish you could help me. I feel so stupid to-night, and there is so much to do." Bob melts at once. "Why, Bet, who would have thought of your doing such a thing? There, let me see--Ah, here we are! Now then----" But, alas! just as Bob is beginning to bring his brand-new ideas of correct book-keeping to bear on the problem before them, a violent outcry arises from Pollie, who, until now, has been playing fairly quietly with Jennie in the corner. "Harry, you bad, wicked boy!" she screams, "I'll pull all your hair out, that I will!" and she rushes at Harry like a little fury. Harry defends himself savagely, and Jennie, curled up on the floor, howls her loudest. "Be quiet, Jennie! Pollie and Harry, if you don't leave off fighting at once, I'll box your ears all round!" cries Bob, looking up angrily from his work. "Harry's sawn the leg off one of our dollies!" shrieks Pollie, "and he's a bad, bad, wicked boy!" [Illustration: Harry defends himself savagely.] "She asked me to," roars Harry; "her dollie had smashed its leg like father, and I was the doctor, and had to take it off." "He hadn't! He was to cure its bad leg, and now he's made it worse, and I'll pull his hair out for that, I will!" "I don't care about your old dolls and rubbish; but if you're not quiet this minute I'll knock all your heads together and give you something to cry for!" cries Bob, still more angrily, and he starts from his chair as though to execute his threat. But Betty lays her hand entreatingly on his arm. "Oh, Bob, don't; father wouldn't like it. He can't bear you to strike the children. Pollie, perhaps the doll can be mended; Harry didn't mean any harm. Harry, be quiet, you must not beat your little sister. Pollie, leave go, you naughty girl----" But Betty is powerless to stop the storm. Bob tries to separate Harry and Pollie, who are fighting desperately. Harry kicks at Bob, whereat the elder brother loses his temper altogether, and cuffs Harry vigorously on both sides of his head. Harry roars; Jennie and Pollie continue to shriek. Bob, his face flaming with wrath, drags each screaming, kicking child to the door, and flings it into the passage. Then he locks the door, and with flushed face and tumbled hair, though pretending to look quite unconcerned, goes on with the books, in spite of the yells from the passage outside. Betty is in despair. "Oh, Bob, how could you be so violent? If father had been at home you would not have behaved so----" "Look here, Betty, if you're going to begin that, you may take the books yourself and do them; I'm sick of the whole thing!" Betty is wise enough to make no answer to Bob's outburst. She leaves the room quietly, and, after some trouble, pacifies the children, and sees them all safely in bed. She feels thoroughly humiliated and miserable. The whole thing is such a keen disgrace; that _her_ brothers and sisters should behave so roughly and rudely! How untrained they all are--how badly brought up! No wonder father has grown so sad and old-looking of late. His old home--when he lived with Grannie--must have been very different. She returns to the accounts. Bob is still poring over them, but looks so savage that she is almost afraid to speak. He finishes the work in silence, answers her thanks with a grunt, and goes off with his head in the air, and both hands deep in his pockets. And Betty goes to bed herself, depressed indeed. But the next morning there is a short pencil-note from father. His knee is more comfortable, but the doctor fears it will be a long business. He is most anxious to hear what Mr. Duncan will do. Reading the note to mother, who is not up yet, makes Betty rather later than usual, and she runs straight to the kitchen to hurry on the breakfast. "Oh, Clara, the kettle not boiling yet, nor the porridge on--why, this is too bad! You are more behindhand than ever. Pray, how does this happen?" "Don't know," mutters Clara, sulkily. "But you ought to know. Come, make haste--a bundle of wood, quick! The children must leave in half an hour." Betty bustles about, and manages to get some sort of meal ready in time. Breakfast over, and the children gone to school, she returns to the kitchen. Things cannot be allowed to go on like this. She must talk to Clara. But what can she say? Clara is so used to scolding, that she cares nothing for it. No, she must try to reason with her; she must teach her to think. Wise Betty! Perplexed and troubled, she turns into the now deserted sitting-room for a few moments, and asks the Lord to help her. Then she goes back. "Clara," she begins, "I have to go out this morning to look after some of father's business. I shall have to go out a good deal, for the work must be done, and is not easy to do; indeed, I can't do it at all unless you help me." Clara opens her eyes very wide at this. "I see you wonder what I mean. You must help me by getting all your work nicely forward, and the dinner prepared before I get back. Now, just look at this kitchen; I don't believe it's been swept since the day before yesterday; has it, Clara?" Clara is silent; and begins biting the corner of her apron sulkily. "Why are you neglecting everything in this way? Come, answer me, Clara." "Don't know; I'm upset, I s'pose." "Well, what has upset you?" "Master's accident, of course. I wouldn't care a bit if it was some folks--serve them right! But master, who never speaks a cross word to anyone, and always asks after mother--that it should happen to him! It isn't fair! I don't see what is to prevent _any_ of us getting our legs broken if he is to be smashed up in this way; and I'm that upset, I can't seem to settle to anything." "But that is just what we've all got to learn to do--for father's sake. And, Clara, I think God has sent us this trouble because we have all been so careless and thankless in the past. You've never really cared to do your work properly, I'm afraid; you've never felt any real responsibility about it----" "Oh, how can you say that? I'm always at work, and never, never done!" "That's just because you never think about your work; you don't ever take the trouble to arrange it; and you don't care a bit about neatness or cleanliness." Clara raises the corner of the dirty apron from her mouth to her eyes. "What's the good?" she whimpers. "I should get in a muddle again directly; my work isn't anything _but_ muddle!" "But that's what it shouldn't be. You do your work as though you thought it wasn't worth doing at all." "Don't think about it at all," mutters Clara. "That's just it. My Grannie, she keeps her house as clean and tidy as a new pin, and yet always has time for everything. My Grannie says that all work is really beautiful if it is done for God. Did you never hear of the little servant who used to say she swept the floor for God, and cleaned the pots for God, too? God sees everything, you know. "Then, again, you're sorry for father's accident; but why don't you show you're sorry by doing your work in the way father would like? Untidy rooms and careless, slipshod ways worry him dreadfully. Now, wouldn't it be nice if we could get all the house in apple-pie order, and ourselves into nice, tidy ways, before he comes out of the hospital? What a smile of thanks he would give us all round! Come, isn't that something worth trying for?" "Hum! Don't see how it's going to be done," mutters Clara, looking round the untidy kitchen hopelessly. "We're just in a muddle everywhere." "We can't get straight all of a minute, of course. But what I want us to do is to make a beginning. Ah, there's ten o'clock striking! I must go to Mr. Duncan with the books. Now, you will try--won't you, Clara? You'll work for God, and to please father, and to help me; and, Clara," adds Betty, in a hurried whisper, "_do_ run upstairs and put your cap straight, and wash that great black smut from your face--it's right across your nose." CHAPTER VIII THE CAPTAIN Mr. Duncan offers to give Betty a third part of her father's usual earnings. The rent-collecting will occupy three long mornings in the week at least, and an hour or two of every evening must be spent over the books. The sights and sounds of the district she has to collect for trouble Betty dreadfully. Some of the women look utterly weary and down-trodden; others again are always scolding and quarrelling. Then the poor, sickly children--and occasional glimpses of rough, drink-sodden men--haunt her mind. She has over a hundred houses to collect for, and it takes her the whole of the three mornings to get through them all. How many stories of want and misery she has listened to before the week's work is over! "My husband has taken to the drink again." "My father was knocked down by a van and carried to the hospital." "The children have all got the measles." "Mother's taken bad with bronchitis." "My husband hasn't done a stroke of work for three weeks." Are all the stories true? Betty has no means of knowing. Sick at heart, she returns home and throws herself into a chair after each morning's work. A shabby, untidy room? Well, perhaps it is; but, Oh! how different from the homes she has just visited! How wrong she has been to grumble so in the past--how wicked to be discontented! One day she returns in a specially humble frame of mind. "My home could be made a really beautiful one if I only knew how to manage. But I don't. I'm very stupid, somehow. I try and try, but never seem to know what to do for the best. "Have I made any difference at all, since I came home from Grannie's? "Clara is a little better, perhaps--at least, her face is a shade cleaner; and I didn't notice more than two saucepans standing about, and--Oh! yes, the kettle was boiling this morning--I mustn't forget all that; but how rough the children are! How unreasonable Bob is at times! Two or three evenings he has stayed out quite late. Father wouldn't like that--I wonder where he goes? Then, there's Lucy; nothing in the home seems to interest her. I do think it very selfish of her to spend so much time in reading, especially just now. "When I first returned home, I thought everything was wrong; now I can see it isn't the home so much, it's the people in it. We're all spoiling it--and I'm helping to spoil it as well. "What grand thoughts I had about making everything right all at once, and what a little I seem likely to do!" All day Betty goes about her work in the same humble spirit, with a sense of failure strong upon her. The excitement of father's accident is over now; they have settled down into their old grooves again. True, Betty has much extra work to do, but all the glory of fighting grand difficulties has died out of her life again. Collecting rents is certainly a very depressing business; that is, in a poor, unthrifty neighbourhood. No, there is nothing splendid about it. "The house is as untidy as ever," she thinks, "and the younger children so rude and boisterous--and mother doesn't seem to care a bit." Lower sink Betty's spirits as the day wears on. Now, is the real time of trial; now, indeed, she needs all her courage and resolution. A letter from Grannie! Two letters--one to mother about father's accident, and a long loving letter of good counsel to herself. Betty carries her treasure away to her own room; a few sprigs of fresh lavender fall from between the folded pages as she opens it. How Grannie's rooms always smelt of lavender! Her eyes fill with tears at the memories the delicate scent recalls to her mind! "How lovingly Grannie's letter begins! Ah, she doesn't know what a failure I am making of everything!" thinks poor Betty. "What is this? What does Grannie say?" Betty gazes eagerly at the page. "Oh! how did she guess all this?" "I know, dear, that this is a time of real fighting," so the letter runs; "that every day brings its hard battle--the battle of standing firm against the worry and irritation of little things." Betty sighs. "Yes, and I feel sure that every day sees a hard-won victory, too." Betty shakes her head, and one big tear steals slowly down her cheek. "You have written very little about yourself lately, but I can see from your mother's letters, and from your own, too, that the Bird of Love is beginning to speak in your voice; that my dear Betty is letting the Lord Jesus rule in her heart. "You have much to learn yet, dear, and little to help you to learn it. Can you not go to The Army Meetings? I hear that Captain Janet Scott, a dear young friend of mine, has just gone in charge of the Corps in Duke Street. I have written to her about you. Do ask your mother's leave to go to the Meetings." "O Grannie, I should so love to go," murmurs Betty; "but I am afraid--I'm quite sure--mother would never let me, even if I asked her!" "Go on fighting bravely, dear; do not allow these little troubles to wear away your courage. Trust the Lord more and more. Lean on Him; fight in His strength, and a bright day of victory will dawn for you at last. Ah, Betty, it is dawning for you now! Already the true, unselfish love that will make you a happy girl is beginning to shine in your heart." "Oh! how _can_ she say that?" and the tears that sparkle in Betty's eyes now are tears of joy. "Can that really be true?" * * * * * "I knew mother wouldn't let me go to The Army Meetings--I was perfectly _sure_ of it!" exclaims Betty to herself the morning after Grannie's letter. Her eyes are heavy with trouble again, her heart sore with painful recollections. She has asked for permission, and been refused, and the words of mother's refusal have been hard to bear. "How can she be so unjust, so unreasonable?" thinks Betty, angrily, as she enters the crowded district where Mr. Duncan's property lies, for she is rent-collecting again. Grannie's letter had cheered her for awhile, but the talk with mother this morning has plunged her again into the depths of gloom. Just now everything seems dark and sad indeed. "Oh, dear, I've the same dreary round of calls to make, I suppose, the same unhappiness to see everywhere. "What a dreadful amount of trouble there is in this world, and there doesn't seem to be any way of making things better. No. 41. Oh, yes; the woman here has a tiny, tiny baby, and she's very weak and wretched, and there's a whole troop of dirty, rough-haired little children, with no one to look after them. I can't bear to knock--how can she pay anything? Well, I suppose I must." "Come in--the door is unbolted!" cries a cheery voice, in answer to her knock--a very different voice from that she had expected to hear. Betty steps reluctantly into the passage. "What is it you want, please?" says the voice again, from a room at the back. Betty explains her business wonderingly; the voice is so unlike the dull, hopeless tones with which she is usually greeted. "Oh, it's all right, Captain," says a second voice, far more feebly, "it's the young lady for the rent." "Do come in please, and excuse me just a moment, as I can't leave the child like this," cries the cheery voice. Whereat Betty steps to the door and peeps in. Round a big empty packing-case, placed in the centre of the room, the tenant's three children are gathered. The little boy, his face shining with cleanliness, and his usually tousled head smooth and glossy, is looking on, whilst a sweet-faced woman, in a blue serge dress and big apron, is washing one of his sisters in a large basin, with a plentiful supply of soap and water. On the floor sits a third child awaiting her turn; and on the bed in the corner lies the sick woman, her baby on her arm, and such a hopeful expression on her face that Betty scarcely recognises her. "Come in, miss," she says, "I've got a bit of rent for you this week, thanks to Captain helping my husband to some work. Here it is," and she pulls a few shillings, wrapped in a scrap of paper, from under her pillow. "Thank you, Mrs. Smith," says Betty. "That is the Captain, I suppose?" she adds, glancing towards the washing operations going on in the middle of the room. [Illustration: A plentiful supply of soap and water.] "Bless her! yes," answers Mrs. Smith, in a low voice. "And an angel from the Lord she's been to me, miss. Washed the children regular, tidied up, made my bit of gruel, given the children their dinners, and, what's better than all, she put fresh heart in me, miss, with her beautiful prayers and pleadings. Last week I felt that I wanted to give up and die. Oh, the Lord is good to send me such a friend!" "Come, come, Mrs. Smith, the Lord is always good to those who trust Him," interposes the Captain, who has overheard the last remark. Is this Captain Janet Scott--Grannie's friend? Betty must know, and stands waiting until the washing is finished, and the Captain puts on her bonnet to go. They pass out of the house together, but a sudden shyness has come over Betty, and she quite stammers as she says:-- "Please, are you Captain Janet Scott?" The Captain gives her a bright look. "Yes; and who are you--one of my Soldiers? I hoped so directly I saw you." "I am--that is, I'd like to be--only I'm afraid I mustn't," stammers Betty. "Mustn't be a Soldier? How's that, my child?" "I'm Betty Langdale. You know my Grannie--she lives near Moordale. She's a Salvationist, but mother won't let me be one. I've tried to persuade her only this morning to say yes, but it's no use." "Betty Langdale--of course! I'm so glad to see you, dear, and you can be a Soldier, even if the way is not yet open for you to be sworn-in. You can be the Lord's true Soldier, fighting His battles in His strength." "But mother says she will never let me go to the Meetings." "I am sorry, dear; but keep believing, and remember that Meetings alone do not make good Soldiers. God will help you to fight your battles at home. Fight against wrong wherever you see it. Keep very close to Jesus. Do all you can for those at home, and you can be a true Salvationist, although at present you may not join The Army." "But mother ought _not_ to stop me from attending the Meetings, ought she, Captain?" "My dear, it is not your place to judge your mother. Your whole thought should be to win her gently, to _prove_ to her your sincerity by your life. "It is only by keeping things in their places, you know, that we have a tidy house. It is only through giving each member of our family his or her true place that we can have a happy home. Keep true and patient, and God Himself will one day open the door for you. "Trust Him, commit your life into His hands, and He will undertake for you and make the crooked places smooth. "I have to call here, my child; but we shall meet again soon, and meantime God bless and help you every day." And with a bright smile and warm handshake, Captain Janet Scott goes on her way, leaving Betty with a heart filled with joy. It was surely God Himself who planned that she should meet the Captain in this unexpected way, God who had sent His own sweet messenger to Betty to give her this much-needed counsel and advice! CHAPTER IX A PLACE FOR EVERY ONE "Every one has a right place," thinks Betty, when her morning's work is done. "Yes, that sounds true enough, but how am I to manage in our house? I wish Captain had explained more about it. "Now, let me think--what is my right place? It is my place to be loving and thoughtful, to strive to help every one, that's what Grannie would say. Well, I am trying to do that. 'It is _not_ your place to judge your mother,' so said my dear Captain. Of course, it is not. I know that, and yet I suppose that is just what I was doing when I spoke so impatiently about her. Mother's place? Have I ever given mother her right place? Have I ever been really loving, really thoughtful for her, really obedient? "But, then, mother has such old-fashioned notions, and such unpunctual ways, and--no, I _won't_ go on; I mustn't think these thoughts--this isn't giving mother her true place, this isn't keeping to the spirit of Captain's words! "How sweet Captain is! Her big brown eyes are as clear and kind as Grannie's, and her voice is just the nicest I have ever heard. How I should love to be like her, to make all that difference when I went into a miserable house! Poor Mrs. Smith looked quite bright; and such a change in the children! If I could be an Officer, now, and go about making people happy, how delightful that would be!" Then, with a new and true humility that is only just beginning to make itself felt in her heart, she adds:-- "Ah! but I'm not good enough. I'm too impatient, too irritable. No, no, I haven't learnt yet to be a good Soldier--why, I haven't learnt yet how to make _one_ home happy. I must learn to serve with patience. I must conquer myself; then, perhaps, in the days to come, the Lord will open the way to me, and I, too, may go into sad homes as a messenger of peace and love." "Betty!" Mother's voice, calling querulously from the first-floor landing. Betty runs upstairs. Mother has a shawl round her shoulders, and looks very gloomy and upset. "Betty, can't you keep the children quiet? My head aches dreadfully, but it's quite useless to try and get any sleep with Jennie and Pollie stamping about just over one's head. I sent them up to the attic to be out of the way, and they've done nothing but quarrel ever since--tiresome little good-for-nothings!" "Oh, of course, they must come down at once, mother. Shall I send them out for a walk?" "No, indeed, they're so dreadfully rough, throwing stones and shouting themselves hoarse like a couple of street boys. I don't know what I've done, I'm sure, to have such troublesome children." Betty fetches her two younger sisters down from the attic, and sends them out to play in the small garden-yard at the back of the house. She has a great deal of difficulty, for they are both so headstrong and unruly that they will hardly obey at all. At last she persuades them to settle down to a game of horses, and goes back. But five minutes have barely elapsed when mother's voice is heard again. "Betty, what are those children doing? I declare their noise is making me quite ill!" Dismal shrieks from the back of the house confirm her words. Betty flies to a window and looks out. Pollie, screaming with terror, is flying from Jennie, who, with face distorted with passion, is darting after her--flourishing a big stick, and yelling like a mad girl. Betty's heart sinks at the sight. How shameful, how humiliating that her sisters should behave like this! How untaught and untrained they are! She runs out breathlessly. She seizes Jennie by the arm. Jennie kicks and screams furiously. "I will whip her, I will! She's a bad, wicked girl. She said she would stand still if I would let go of her arm, and then she ran away!" "'Cos she was going to put a big strap in my mouth, and drive me about," sobs Pollie, "and I won't have it, I won't!" and, relying on Betty's protection, she strikes at her sister in her turn. [Illustration: Pollie flying from Jennie.] "Pollie! Jennie! Oh, how can you behave so badly? You rude, naughty girls! Why, you're every bit as bad as the rough boys who play in the street. Aren't you ashamed to behave so wickedly? Don't you know that the Lord is very sorry when He sees little girls selfish, and rude, and passionate? You know quite well that poor mother's head is bad, and yet you make all this noise! Why don't you try to play quietly together?" "Nothing to play at," answers Jennie, sulkily. "I'm tired of games; and, besides, games are silly." "Then take your knitting, or hem one of the new dusters." "Shan't; it's holiday time, and I don't mean to do any work. If Pollie wasn't so silly I could play with her all right--screaming and making all that fuss about nothing." "Well, if you can't keep quiet, I shall have to put you to bed--now remember." But to herself Betty thinks, "Now, what would be the right thing to do for them? Teach them better, I suppose; teach them to be kind and gentle, teach them to be unselfish, to think less of themselves and more of others." The thought is still with her when she returns to her household duties. Suddenly a happy idea strikes her. "Ah! I remember how Grannie told me that when she was a girl she used to invite a number of her little school-friends to her cottage on half-holidays; each girl brought a small piece of work with her, a tiny petticoat to sew, a sock to knit, or what not; and they would sew and chat away happily for hours, fancying themselves a real sewing society. "The work was not for themselves--Oh, no! Twice every year all the little garments were collected and given to the poorer children of the village. Now, if these rough, headstrong sisters of mine would only do that! Is there nothing to make them follow dear Grannie's example?" All the rest of that day Betty is thinking over her plan, and at night, ere she goes to rest, she lays the whole matter before the Lord in very earnest prayer. She is beginning to understand something at last of the real strength, and comfort, and light, which follows all heart-felt prayer. Next morning she awakes with the determination strong within her of commencing that very day to win her little sisters to better things. The children's summer holidays are just beginning; now is the time to interest them, to teach and help them; to put higher thoughts into their minds, to give their hands unselfish work to do. It is a hot afternoon, Jennie and Pollie have been playing together aimlessly, breaking out now and again into noisy bursts of passion. They are too tired to play any more now, and hot and sulky besides. Betty calls them to her. "Jennie, Pollie, I want to talk to you about a new way of spending your holiday afternoons; a really beautiful way. Come into the garden, and I'll tell you all about it." The "garden" is only a back-yard, with one dusty tree leaning over the paling, and a few unhappy-looking flowers. How different from Grannie's garden, with its masses of sweet-scented, old-fashioned blossoms; its pure air and clear sunlight! Well, well, Betty must not think of that just now. At any rate, the air is fresher here than in the house. "Is it a new kind of game? Oh, Betty, do make haste and tell us!" "Listen, girls. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago there lived a dear, good woman--a _very_ good woman." "What was her name?" demands Pollie. "Dorcas. She lived in a little town by the seaside, in a country far away. Now in this town were many poor widows, who could not afford to buy clothes enough to keep them warm; and when Dorcas saw this she set to work, and cut out nice coats, and stitched away, and I daresay she called her neighbours in to help her, and very soon those poor widows had new garments all round. How grateful, how delighted they were! They couldn't say enough to show their thanks." "How do you know? Aren't you just making it up, Betty?" "No, indeed; we read about Dorcas, and the poor widows, and their coats, in the Bible itself. Now, why don't you two girls invite two or three of your school friends in one afternoon, and pretend to be Dorcas and her neighbours? I'll be Dorcas, if you like, and we'll make little garments for poor widows and fatherless children, and chat together, just as Dorcas and her friends did, hundreds and hundreds of years ago." "Who'll be the widows?" asked Jennie, much interested. "Oh, real widows and orphans; just like those Dorcas worked for. Then, perhaps, we could have tea out of doors, and I'll mix some of those nice buns which Grannie showed me how to make. We would drink our tea out of mugs, because, in the days when Dorcas lived, no one had cups and saucers." "Oh, that would be lovely!" cry the girls. "Who shall we ask to come, Betty?" adds Jennie alone. "Anyone you like--that is, any nice girl." "Millie and Ida Davis are both nice as nice. Then there's Flo----" "We mustn't have too many at first. Suppose we each invite one friend? I choose Minnie White for mine." "Oh, Minnie White's always so prim and proper; just because she's an Army girl; not a bit of fun in her." "You're quite wrong, Jennie. Minnie is as full of real fun as she can be. She doesn't like rough ways, and senseless jokes; but I only wish you looked one-half as happy as she does! Well, dears, choose the best and most unselfish girls you know; this is to be a very special kind of meeting, you see." "Oh, of course; _we_ don't want any nasty, horrid girls like Kitty and Lena!" "Now, Jennie, do you think that Dorcas would _ever_ have been put in the Bible, if she had talked like that about her friends? Why, girls, you'll spoil the whole thing if you don't try to be like her! You're going to copy her, aren't you?" "Course we are!" assents Pollie. Betty mixes the cakes that very evening. She is not a good cook--does not like cooking, in fact; but somehow she is feeling very happy. "The cakes must be as nice as I can make them. Ah! I must be sure to take a peep to-night into that book of father's, about God's brave Soldiers, in the far-off days when Dorcas really lived; then I shall be able to talk about it all to the girls to-morrow and interest them. "If I could only help Jennie and Pollie to understand; if I could really bring them nearer to the Lord; Oh, what a happy, what a truly blessed thing that would be!" The next afternoon is hot again, but there is shade in the dingy garden. A semicircle of chairs has been arranged, and Jennie and Pollie, looking unusually clean and tidy, with sweet-faced Minnie White, and Millie and Ida Davis, are industriously stitching away. It is a critical moment, for "Dorcas," that is, Betty, has just left them alone. "What horrid clumsy stitches you are putting in that handkerchief, Pollie," cries Jennie. "They're quite as good as yours!" snaps Pollie. "They're not!" "They are! I'm sure they are!" "Oh, dear, please don't!" pleads little Minnie White. "Jennie's stitches are the best, but then Pollie's are quite as good for her age. And we must all be very loving and kind, mustn't we? or we shouldn't be the least bit like Dorcas and her friends." Wise Betty to include little Minnie in her first back-yard meeting! "Oh, look, here's Betty, I mean Dorcas, with the tea! How good the cakes smell--how thirsty I am! Oh, isn't it just lovely to have it out here?" cry the girls. And Jennie and Pollie clap their hands too, and are as happy as the rest. CHAPTER X A QUARREL "It has been much easier than I thought," says Betty to herself, a week or two after her first back-yard meeting. The fourth has just been held, and the girls have taken to it wonderfully. "Jennie and Pollie are improving steadily. How blind I have been! They were naughty and rough just for want of some interest in life--for the need of something to do. Jennie has hemmed two little pinafores already, and Pollie one; and the other girls have all done well--especially Minnie White. Ah, Minnie is a darling, a true Junior Soldier! Her example is just splendid for my sisters, and I am glad to see they are getting quite fond of her. This was a good idea of mine. I must tell Captain Scott about it. How pleased she will be! I really am managing much better. I really am beginning to make home happy and nice. What's that? Seven o'clock, and the accounts not touched yet! Mr. Duncan does work me hard. Oh, how glad I shall be when dear father comes home again! His leg is really getting stronger now, that's one comfort. What a grand day it will be when he leaves the hospital!" Betty opens the account-books, and sighs as she looks down the long columns of figures. "I only wish Bob would help me as he did at first. Where does he spend his evenings? I must say I do think it selfish of him to be from home so much, considering everything. Why, I believe that's his knock now! Perhaps he means to help me this evening, after all." And she runs to open the door. "O Bob, do come and look over the accounts!" she begins; then, catching sight of a long black case in his hand, "Why, Bob, what have you there?" "Violin," says Bob, briefly, but with an air of great importance. "A violin! Dear me, what use can that be to you?" "I can learn to play like other people, I suppose?" answers Bob, tartly. "There, I haven't time to stand chattering! I am to try this violin to-night, and let the fellow it belongs to know if it suits me." "Let what fellow know? O Bob, you surely haven't promised to _buy_ that old fiddle?" "Old fiddle, indeed! Mind your own business, miss, and leave me to mind mine!" "I've enough to do, that's certain; and I suppose now you don't mean to help me with the accounts one bit?" Bob only replies to this with a kind of grunt, and turns into the little front parlour, where the family generally sit now that the weather has grown so much hotter. Betty follows, and sits down wearily to the account-books. Bob is evidently in an unreasonable frame of mind. Where did he get that violin? Has he promised to pay for it? If so, how will he obtain the money? Meantime, Bob unrolls a sheet of music, marked, "Exercises for the Violin," props it upright on the table with the help of a few books, draws the violin and bow from the case, and places the instrument in position under his chin with what he considers quite a professional air. Then he takes up the bow and draws it lightly across the strings. A horrible squeak is the result. Bob looks rather blank; Betty shudders. She has a keen ear for music, and such a discord gives her real pain. "Out of tune," mutters Bob, and he screws up one of the little pegs to tighten the string; then he tries again. Another squeak, louder and more utterly jarring than before. He repeats this process several times. Betty is tired and worried; she endures in silence for awhile, but suddenly her patience gives way altogether. "Bob, what _are_ you trying to do?" she cries sharply. "I am tuning the violin; can't you hear?" "Tuning! Why, you make a more abominable noise every time you touch it. What could have induced you to bring that wretched thing into the house?" "That's it, abuse a thing you don't understand! It's a very good violin, only the strings are a bit worn. Of course, if I decide to have it, I shall get new ones." "Worn--I should think they are! Look here, Bob, you don't mean to tell me that you're really going to buy that old thing?" "I told you before, that is none of your business. If I choose to buy it, I shall, so don't give advice when it isn't wanted." "But it _is_ my business!" cries Betty, now thoroughly roused. "Who is to pay for it, I should like to know? Haven't I to work for the money to live on?--am I not trying to work for it now? And instead of helping me, as you ought, you make my head whirl round with that horrid old fiddle!" Bob jumps up in a fury, and flings the violin into its case. "So this is the way a fellow is treated when he comes home to practise! It'll be long enough before I trouble you again, my lady, I can tell you! I've plenty of friends who understand music rather better than you do, and they tell me that I ought to learn, and would soon play very well. You used to say you wanted me to learn yourself. Now I see just how much your words are worth!" And he closes the case with a loud snap, and flings out of the room. In a moment Betty realises what she has done. She flies after him. "Bob--Bob--stay one minute--I----" The street door closes with a bang. Bob has gone. Betty stands there, her head in a whirl. How did the miserable quarrel arise? Just after she had been feeling so happy about her success with the girls, too. Oh, what a wretched, wretched ending to the day! Tired though she is, Betty cannot go to bed until Bob comes home. At last she hears his step, and flies to the door. "O Bob, I didn't mean----" she begins eagerly, directly she sees him. But he pushes past her without a word, and, running upstairs, shuts himself in his own room. Betty goes to her own room, too; but not to sleep. What can she do to make Bob understand how sorry she is for her hasty words, how much she wants to help him, how dearly she longs to win his confidence? She goes over the brief scene between them, sentence by sentence, as nearly as she can remember it. "Bob was certainly overbearing and unreasonable," she thinks, her anger reviving a little as she recalls his words. "Oh, but it was my place to help him to be better. I have promised to be the Lord's Soldier. I should have been wiser and stronger than he--and I wasn't, not one bit! I lost my temper. I made no effort to check myself." These are sad thoughts for poor Betty; but it is often through just such a sense of failure and shortcoming, through just such self-reproaches as hers to-night, that the Lord renews our strength. No spiritual blessing is so full of power as that which follows a time of humiliation. In distrusting ourselves we learn to put a more perfect trust in Him. Bob still wears an air of deep injury at breakfast next morning. He answers all Betty's rather timid remarks with "Yes" or "No," and seems even to take trouble to show that all confidence between them is at an end. Sick at heart, Betty starts out on her weary round of rent-collecting. Her sorrow is heavy upon her, and she walks with drooping head and unheeding eyes. "Bob is wrong to bear malice like this," she thinks. "If he won't listen to anything I have to say, how can I ever make things right between us again? Would it be right for me to go and ask his pardon? It is plain that unless I do something he means to have a grievance against me. Oh, dear, I just feel no heart for my work or anything while things are like this! Lord, do lift the burden, do show me what to do! Do help me to put a stop to the mischief my foolish words have caused." "The Captain!" Suddenly turning a corner, Betty's eyes fall upon a little group gathered round a doorstep not twenty yards away. Three or four shabby little children and Captain Janet Scott. The Captain talking to them, with all that tenderness and loving sympathy that they have never had from their own mothers, poor mites, and for which their baby hearts are craving; the children looking up into her face with eager eyes. The Captain! Just an accidental meeting in a dull and dirty street; but to Betty it is as though the Lord had sent one of His own bright angel-messengers straight from Heaven to help her! She runs towards her eagerly; the Captain looks up, and turns to greet her young friend with a welcoming smile. "Betty Langdale! My dear, I have been hoping every day to meet you." "O Captain, I am so miserable! I've been so foolish, so wicked; I've made a dreadful mistake, and I don't know how to put it right. Do, _do_ tell me what I ought to do!" Captain Scott takes the girl's trembling hand, and looks attentively at her pale face and the dark rings under her eyes. Then she kisses the shabby little children all round, promising to come again soon, and, turning again to Betty, slips her hand through the girl's arm, and begins to walk slowly up the street. "Tell me your trouble, dear. Perhaps it is not so bad as you suppose," she says, gently. "Oh, but it is!" and Betty pours out the sad little story of her quarrel and its consequences. She does not spare herself; as nearly as she can recollect she repeats her exact words. "You have been to the Lord about this, Betty?" asks the Captain, gravely. "Oh, yes, I've prayed and prayed, and sometimes it seems as though I ought to beg Bob's pardon; but then, you know, he should _not_ buy a violin just now, no matter how cheap it is--we can't afford _anything_, and he was wrong to worry me when I was doing the accounts, wasn't he?" "Certainly he seems to have acted rather selfishly and unreasonably. But, Betty, you must remember that he does not know this. If you really mean to help your brother, you will have to teach him to understand many things that are dark to him now. Then, too, dear, you must learn to put yourself in his place. He had evidently been dwelling a good deal on the thought that you would think it very clever of him to learn the violin. Boy-like, he had most likely forgotten the family troubles for the moment, and was trying to 'show off' before you. You had once said you wished him to learn, and no doubt he now thinks you very unkind and changeable because you discourage him." "But, Captain, just think--father in the hospital, all the accounts and rent-collecting to do, no money scarcely----" "Yes, yes, but Bob has not thought of all that. He has never heard the Lord's voice calling him. He lives in a world of his own. You must learn to get into his world, to read his thoughts, to make him feel that in you he has a real friend. Step by step, dear, you must lead him to his Saviour." "But he won't listen. He'll hardly answer when I speak!" "My dear, it is that very barrier between you which you must find a way to break down." "Oh, Captain! how? How _can_ I make Bob understand that I want to help him?" asks Betty almost despairingly. "Perhaps you could show some interest in his music. Do you play at all yourself?" "The piano--just a little." "And, evidently, you have a good ear. Couldn't you offer to show him how to get his violin in tune?" Betty shakes her head. "I'm afraid he's much too vexed to let me try. Oh, wait! I've thought of something. Couldn't I buy him a new violin-string? I believe one snapped just before we had that wretched quarrel. It would only cost a few pence, I should think." "Well, my child, I must leave all that to you. Do what you can to make up for your share in the dispute; only be sure to show Bob that he must not act selfishly; that he certainly ought to deny himself any amusement, however good in itself it may be, that would take money which is needed at home. "Speak quietly to him, dear. Remember the Lord's words: '_If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother._' "Ah! Betty, this is your first real attempt to lead some one you love to think of higher things. God grant you may become a real soul-winner one day! "Be very prayerful, very loving, very wise. Use all the faculties the Lord has given you, give your whole self to His service, and trust Him! God bless you! I shall pray for you and for your brother too," and Captain Janet clasps Betty's hand warmly and leaves her. What a change the Captain's words have wrought in Betty's thoughts! She is no longer conscious of a heavy burden, for all her heart is filled with courage and eager hopefulness. A soul-winner! Does Captain really think she may be that one day? Oh, how beautiful--how wonderful! A flood of joy, pure and sweet, rushes over her heart at the thought. Never, even with dear Grannie, even among the breezy moors, and blue hills, and clear skies of Grannie's home, has she felt a delight so intense. It is, indeed, as though she had caught a glimpse of Heaven. Ah! what does it matter though she does live in a dull, city street; though her days must be spent in common-place work? It is the Lord alone who can give true happiness, and to none who serve Him in spirit and in truth does He deny His gift. "Bob, is this the right kind of string? You wanted a new one, I know. The woman at the shop said it would most likely be the E string that required renewing." Bob, taken completely off his guard, looks up eagerly from his tea and bread and butter. "Yes, that's it; that's just what I----" He stops short, suddenly remembering his determination never to speak of his violin to Betty again. "It _is_ right? Now I call that fortunate," goes on Betty, quietly. "I expect you know how to put it in, don't you, Bob?" Bob melts still further at this. "Oh, yes; Mr. Wright, one of the teachers at my school, showed me how to put strings in. It's easy enough." "Ah! but I've heard father say that it's very difficult to get a violin in tune after fitting in a new string." Bob's face clouds over again; but Betty hastens to add, "Couldn't I help you a bit with the tuning? Couldn't I sound the notes on the piano while you screwed up the string--surely, that is the way people generally do tune violins?" "Yes; but----" "But what, Bob, dear?" "You've got those accounts to do, or something." "Oh, I've done for to-day. Come, I shall enjoy it, not the music, just yet, perhaps, but I should enjoy helping you, Bob." Bob makes no answer to this; but directly tea is finished he runs upstairs for the violin-case, and the brother and sister are soon seated together before the shabby little piano. For the next half-hour there is little heard between them, save--"Too sharp, Bob." "A little lower still." "I say, Betty, give us the octave of that note," and so on. At last the instrument is really in tune, and then the pair try an exercise together, with fairly good results. Bob is delighted. "Why, Betty, this is first-class! Mr. Wright said I ought to get some one to play with me." "I should just love to do it, Bob." There is a long pause. Betty feels she ought to say something more, but doesn't know how to begin. [Illustration: "A little lower still."] "I say, Betty"--Bob is speaking in quite a different tone of voice now--"I say, you didn't really think I meant to _buy_ the violin, did you?" "Why, Bob, didn't you say so?" "No; I said I'd take it if it suited me. Charlie Wright--my teacher's boy, you know--wanted to change it away for my old camera." "O Bob, I'm so glad--so very, very glad. Oh, why didn't you tell me before?" "I meant to; but you took a fellow up so." "Ah! I see just how it all happened. You must remember that I feel so anxious about every penny while father is away, and, Bob, I do want us all to think for one another, and--and"--Betty makes a great effort--"and try to live just as the Lord would have us live, Bob." Dead silence. Betty's heart beats rapidly. Then come the most unexpected words she has ever heard in her life. "You _do_ try." "Bob! O Bob, don't say that. I don't deserve it!" "Yes, you do, Betty. Do you think I haven't seen you trying? Come, come, old girl, don't cry." "No--no, Bob; only I'm so happy. I----" Betty cannot trust her voice just now to pronounce another word. CHAPTER XI FATHER AT HOME "Father coming home?" cries Betty, as Mrs. Langdale folds up the letter, from which she has just read an extract, "O mother, how beautiful, coming home the day after to-morrow!" "How jolly!" shouts Bob. "Three cheers for father!" "Jolly, jolly, three cheers!" echo the younger children; and mother says:-- "Well, it _is_ good news. Such a dreadful time it has been. I declare I've not felt quite myself one single minute since he went away. And, then, the money, too; not that he'll be well enough to go on with his work for months to come." To Betty, however, the one joyful fact is enough. "But to have father home again! It seems almost years since that night when he lay on the couch, so white and still. I say, mother, do let us give him a real welcome home--do let us make him see how glad we all are!" "Why, Betty, what a girl you are! You really should think before you speak. You know very well that we haven't a penny to spend on anything." "Of course, I know. But, mother, that isn't what I mean. Couldn't we _do_ something? For instance, I'm sure dear father likes to see things neat and nice. Couldn't we have a real big, spring-clean all over the house?" "A 'spring' clean in summer, you silly child!" "Well, you know what I mean. Let's have the curtains down, and the carpets up, and polish the furniture all over." "That's a jolly good idea of yours, Betty," cries Bob, enthusiastically. "And I tell you what, you've helped me ever so much lately, now I'll just turn round and help _you_. I'm off to get the small pincers from father's tool chest. Won't I have the carpets up in no time! If we all work together we shall soon get the job done." Betty gives her brother a grateful look, but mother says:-- "I don't think your father will care a bit whether the house is tidy or not. He has never said a word to me about the place all the years we've lived here." "Oh, but think! Coming straight from the hospital. We must make everything bright and cheerful. Poor father! Mother, do you feel well enough to wash and iron the curtains?" "Yes, I'll do them; and Clara must clean the windows. But, really, I don't see the use of all this fuss and upset." "I'll wash all the ornaments and clean the pictures," says quiet Lucy. "O Betty, may we darn up the holes in the chair-covers?" cry Jennie and Pollie, mindful of their work as Dorcas and her neighbours. "I'll black everybody's boots," volunteers Harry. There is a general laugh at this, but Bob calls out that he needs Harry's help with the stair-carpets immediately. So Betty has a houseful of volunteer helpers, and pretty difficult she finds it to manage them all. But she is blessed with a clear head, and, as every one is working for love, and really tries to do his or her best, a great deal of work is got through in the course of the day. Clara comes out splendidly. "Master coming home? O miss, that _is_ news! Brighten up the house? I should think we would brighten it up, just as neat as a new pin all over." What a topsy-turvy house it is all the rest of the day! Bob and Harry beating carpets in the back-yard as though their lives depended on it; Lucy perpetually polishing glass, and washing china. Jennie and Pollie busy with their needles; mother ironing in the kitchen; Clara sweeping, scrubbing, and black-leading; Betty all over the house, encouraging, directing, and doing a bit of everything by turns. Bread and cheese for dinner, and a cup of tea at tea-time, taken in the stuffy little kitchen. Yet not a single grumble from any one--even from Bob, who _is_ a trifle particular about his meals, as a general rule! How utterly tired out Betty is when at last she gets to bed! Tired out, but happier in her home than perhaps she has ever been before. Bustle, confusion, dust, hard work, yes; but brothers and sisters all helping each other, all working together, all eagerly looking forward to seeing dear father. The same thing goes on all the next day, but now the confusion is fast changing into order, and when the following morning arrives--the morning of the eventful day that is to see father's return--the house is cleaner and fresher than Betty ever remembers to have seen it. It is four o'clock in the afternoon. Bob, his hands in his pockets, is going from room to room, surveying his share in the work with great pride. Lucy is arranging a few cheap flowers in a glass, the children are all on tiptoe with excitement. Betty has gone to the hospital to fetch father home! "There they are, mother. Quick, here's father!" Father; crutches under his arms, one foot held away from the ground by a long sling passing over his shoulders; but father, for all that; his eyes shining with love, as his noisy boys and girls rush towards him, followed by Mrs. Langdale. "Gently, gently, young folks, or you'll tumble father right over." "Well, it's good to be at home again. Why, mother, how cosy everything looks. One needs to be away from home for a time, I suppose, just to find out how good it is!" "It was all Betty's doing," cries Bob. "We all worked at the cleaning-up, but she started it." Father sinks into the low couch. His leg is still very stiff and painful; but he smiles happily, and gazes all round with such a contented look in his kind eyes that even Mrs. Langdale is struck with it. "Well, I declare, I do believe you were right after all. Your father does seem quite pleased with everything, and I thought he never noticed how the house looked at all!" CHAPTER XII LUCY For some days after father's return Betty has eyes and ears for scarcely anyone else. To see his dear face, to listen to his dear voice, is such a true delight to her! Then, too, his presence relieves her from a great responsibility. True, he is much too lame, as yet, to collect the rents, or to call on Mr. Duncan; but he takes all those tiresome accounts off her hands at once. It is as though an actual weight had been lifted from her shoulders, for she has felt the anxiety of keeping Mr. Duncan's books a heavy burden indeed. But though Betty is deeply thankful to be rid of it all, she is beginning to realise how good this responsibility has been for her. "I used to make such a fuss over little things," she thinks. "Why, I was quite upset if the girls came in with torn frocks, and dirty faces, or Clara did not clean the kitchen properly; worse still, I used to behave quite rudely to mother if she forgot to arrange the dinner in good time, or made me close a window when I thought it ought to be open. How irritable, how unreasonable I was! How hasty and inconsiderate! "Ah! yes. I see now that God _had_ to send me all these worries; I couldn't learn how to bear little troubles, until I had been through big ones. Dear Captain said that in a happy home every one had his or her true place. It was certainly never my place to speak to mother as I used to do. "Yes, I believe mother has really loved me better than I deserved. Poor mother! Her life is much duller than mine; she has never had such a friend as my dear Captain Scott; she has never been in the country to stay with darling Grannie; she has just lived on at home, year after year. "Why, it wasn't until I spent that lovely time with Grannie that I saw how much nicer things could be made here, and now I really believe they _are_ nicer. I'm sure every one seems more cheerful lately. Jennie and Pollie have greatly improved; I'm so thankful to see that they have really taken little Minnie White as a close friend; she is a true Army Junior, and will do them a world of good. "Harry doesn't seem _quite_ so rough, and as for Bob, well, he's a perfect dear about those violin exercises now. I'm sure that half-hour we have together over the piano is one of the sweetest in the whole day; and, really, 'Exercise No. 4' is beginning to sound quite pretty. "The only person in the house I can't altogether make out is Lucy; she certainly isn't all a sister should be, somehow. She does her share of the work, I suppose; but I declare I know more of Bob's thoughts than I do of hers--she lives in a perfect world of her own. "She reads too much; I never knew such a girl for reading--always over some book or other. I mean to speak to her pretty plainly about that, directly I get an opportunity." Alas! opportunities for speaking "pretty plainly" come only too easily. The next day is washing day. Clara Jones's mother comes in to help; mother spends the whole day in the kitchen, and, of course, Betty has plenty to do. By dint of almost superhuman exertions, Betty manages to inspire Clara and her mother with a desire to get the work cleared up before tea, instead of dawdling over the tubs until late into the evening. Her efforts are successful; by half-past four they have actually finished, and Betty looks forward to a rest, and cup of tea. She will ask Lucy to make it directly. "Lucy!" she calls. No answer. "Where can that girl be? 'Lucy!' She must come--she ought to come; this is really too bad!" She runs upstairs, still calling, "Lucy, Lucy!" She peeps into every room; there is no Lucy to be found. At last a thought strikes her. "Surely she hasn't hidden herself away to read in the attic?" Betty's anger rises. Lucy is in the attic, sitting all huddled up in a chair, poring intently over a book; books, and pen and ink, on the floor beside her. "Lucy, what on earth are you doing here? And to-day, of all days! I've been searching the whole house to find you; we all want our tea, and you are calmly amusing yourself with a book!" "Tea? It isn't tea-time yet, is it?" stammers Lucy, her pale face flushing painfully red, as she pushes her book out of Betty's sight. "You know I always like tea early on washing-day," cries Betty, still more sharply, "and I must say, I do think it most selfish and thoughtless of you to go away by yourself like this, when we are all up to our eyes in work!" "I didn't know; I thought the washing was finished," says poor Lucy, her lip beginning to quiver. "That's nothing to do with it; we're all tired and want our tea; but you never gave that a thought; all you seem to care for is to get away by yourself to read some silly story-book. Such shocking waste of time! Such unsociable behaviour! I only hope you are not reading novels. I am sure it looks as though you come up here sometimes because you are afraid to let father and mother know what you are doing!" Lucy's head droops lower still, but she makes no answer. "Well, now, _is_ it a novel?" "No-o." "Then let me see it at once." "Betty, I'd rather you didn't; that is, not just now; some other day, perhaps----" "Oh, it doesn't make any difference; whatever it is, you've no business to waste your time in this way. Do, for goodness' sake, leave books alone for a while, and attend to your work!" That night Betty goes to sleep with an uneasy sense that the day has not been altogether well spent, in spite of the success of her washing schemes. Awakening, some hours later, with this uncomfortable feeling strong upon her, she begins to ask herself what has been wrong? Conscience soon tells her that she has been unkind to her sister. "I _did_ speak sharply, and I certainly felt very vexed; but, then, it was aggravating, and there is really too much to do in our house for that sort of thing. "Of course, I know that Lucy is not so old, or so strong, as I am; but she should have remembered how much I like an early cup of tea on washing-day, and----. What was that? Lucy, did you speak?" Betty breaks off her meditations hastily, and raises herself on her elbow. Is Lucy asleep on the pillow beside her--surely, she spoke just now? She is speaking, or, rather, muttering, in her sleep. How strange! Can she be ill? Then Betty remembers, with a faint thrill of alarm, that Lucy ate neither tea nor supper; and, when mother asked the reason, she said her head ached. For a long while she lies awake, listening to her sister's uneasy whisperings. "Oh," she thinks, "why was I so unkind to her--suppose she should be really ill?" Lucy is really ill. After a troubled night of feverish dreaming, she awakes to a consciousness of great pain and stiffness in all her limbs. A doctor is sent for; her parents' worst fears are realised, Lucy is stricken down with rheumatic fever. She is very quiet and patient, and tries hard not to complain. Her mother nurses her, relieved by Betty now and then. Love has taught Mrs. Langdale to be a good nurse; love makes her forget her own small illnesses and worries, and think only of her poor little daughter's suffering. The remembrance of her unkind words gives Betty bitter pain. Lucy was ill when she scolded her. Oh, if she had known! After a while, as Lucy grows better, Betty begins to excuse herself again. "She _did_ read too much; I was right in that, and reading is waste of time--only I wish I hadn't been so cross with her." Slowly the pain grows less, slowly the fever cools; but, alas! for poor Lucy, the doctor says he fears that this illness will leave lasting bad effects behind it; that, though she will soon be fairly well, she will never be quite as strong again as she has been. One afternoon, Betty is sitting with her sister, while Mrs. Langdale rests. Lucy has just finished her basin of bread and milk, and Betty thinks she is asleep, until she hears her sigh softly to herself, and then make a restless movement on her pillow. Betty is at her side in an instant. "Do you want anything, Lucy?" "No, thank you, Betty," she says, in her weak, patient voice. But Betty sees that two large tears are rolling down her cheeks. "O Lucy, you mustn't fret, that's ever so bad for you, and, besides, you're getting well so fast. Shall I read to you? You were very interested in some book just before you were taken ill--tell me where to find it." "No, no, Betty, not that book; it's of--no--use--now." Lucy's lips quiver so painfully, that she can hardly pronounce the words, and she buries her face in her pillow. "Lucy, don't! Oh, please, don't! I was horrid to you that day, and I've been sorry ever since. Do let me read, if it's only to make up a little." [Illustration: Her arm around her sister's neck.] "But, Betty, it's of no use. I can never, never, never do it now. I heard the doctor tell mother this morning that I should always have to be careful, or I should be just as bad again, and--and--it's only really strong people who can do--what I wanted to do." Lucy's voice dies away into such a faint whisper that her sister can only just catch the last words. "Do what?" asks Betty, in great surprise. Then, suddenly, an idea strikes her. "Ah! Lucy, were you studying for something all the time--not just reading to amuse yourself--were you learning about some work you wished to do?" "Yes, Betty." "And all these months I have never thought of that. Oh, what was it? Come, tell me, Lucy, dear." "I--I wanted to go to the poor heathen women in India, some day, you know. I had read how they suffered, and--and it seemed that God was telling me to go. So I got all the books I could about India--to be ready when the time came--and I read, and read, and even began to learn their language." "Why, Lucy, how _could_ you do that?" exclaims Betty, in the greatest astonishment. "My music teacher's elder sister came home from India a little while ago, and she told me what books to get from the Library." "And you did all this, and I never guessed. How stupid--how blind I have been!" "No--no, Betty. I ought to have confided in you; but, somehow, I couldn't speak of it. I felt it too much, and now it is all at an end," and her sobs break out afresh. But Betty leans over the bed, and lovingly draws her arm around her sister's neck. "O Lucy, I feel that you forgive me for my unkindness, but I cannot forgive myself. When shall I get out of the habit of judging too hastily? I can see quite well now that you couldn't tell me your plans, because I was always so full of my own affairs." "Betty, Betty, that wasn't the reason. You work so hard for all of us--how could I bother you with my hopes and fears?" "Ah, Lucy! I never met anyone with so much to do, or so many folks to care for as my dear Captain. Yet no one thinks _her_ too busy to listen to their troubles. I must learn to be more like her--to empty my heart of self--then, dear, you will never hesitate to tell me everything." CHAPTER XIII COMRADES "Clara, what _is_ the matter with you? You seem to be always fretting about something lately. Now I really must know. Is there anything wrong at your home?" "No--o," comes in muffled tones from Clara. She has her head turned away, and takes care Betty shall not catch a glimpse of her face. Betty steps quickly across the kitchen, and lays a hand on the girl's shoulder. It quivers under her touch; yes, Clara is certainly crying. "Clara, you must tell me what it is. I can't have you going about the house with this miserable face--just when you were beginning to get on so much better, too." "Beginning to get on better! O miss that's just where it is!" cries Clara, with a sudden burst of tears. "I _can't_ get on better. I try and try, and make no end of good resolutions--cart-loads of them--and then I go and break them all again directly. Seems as though my head was no better than a sieve--I can't remember; it's of no use--Oh, Oh, Oh!" "Clara, Clara, don't, there's a dear girl. And you have been doing better--ever so much; father was saying so to me only yesterday." "But you don't know how hard it is--you don't know how dreadfully I forget; and then I think, 'Oh, what's the use of trying? I'd far better give it all up, and just muddle along as I used to do.'" But Betty thinks, "Ah, that's just how it used to be with me, before I went to Grannie's, before I went to The Army Meetings near Grannie's home, and gave my heart to God. I have felt like that sometimes since; but only for a little while, for the Lord has always helped me through the bad times. It is only the Lord who _can_ help us through. I ought to tell Clara that--I _must_ tell her!" There is a moment's pause. Betty is nervous, and doesn't know how to begin. She makes an effort. "Clara," she says softly. "Clara, have you ever tried to understand those words in the Bible, '_Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee_'?" Clara looks up suddenly; her eyes round with wonder. "Why, Miss Betty, whatever do you mean?" Betty makes a greater effort. "I used to feel as you do," she says. "I used to find I couldn't keep the good resolutions I made; I used to fall into dreadful fits of hopelessness, of wanting to give up trying any more; and then I went to Grannie's--my Grannie is a Salvationist, you know--and she took me to The Army Meetings. And one night, all of a sudden, I saw quite clearly how wrong I had been. I had been trying to live a good life, trusting in my own strength; and no one can do that. It is only by coming to the Lord Jesus that we can be truly good; for it is only Jesus who can wash our sins away, and change our hearts, and make us like Himself." There is another silence. Clara has taken up a corner of her apron, and is picking at it industriously. "You think, miss," she says, nervously, after a while, "that--that if I went to The Army Meetings I might find it easier to do right?" "I'm quite sure of it, Clara! O Clara, pray for a changed heart, ask for it, claim it! With the Lord for your Saviour, you'll soon conquer all the little difficulties that distress you now." Betty is nervous no longer. She has broken the ice and her words flow freely. "And, Clara, salvation gives you such a lovely kind of happiness--I can't explain it--but very often you'll feel just the happiest girl in the whole world. How can people help being happy when they know they are on the Lord's side, when they know that He saves them, and loves them, and will take them to live with Him at last? "There--there, I must go now, Lucy needs her dinner; but, Oh! Clara, do think of what I've said; do pray about it; do ask the Lord to show you what to do." * * * * * "She--she knows _you_, miss," says Clara softly. Betty looks up from the toast she is making for Lucy's tea. Some time has passed, and Lucy is almost well again, but Betty insists on waiting upon her as much as ever. "Who knows me?" she asks. "What are you talking about, Clara?" "The--the Captain," answers Clara, shyly. A light breaks over Betty's mind. "You mean my dear Captain! I'm so glad--so very glad--and so you're going to the Meetings regularly?" "Yes, miss." "Isn't Captain Scott sweet; isn't she just like one of the Lord's own angel messengers!" cries Betty enthusiastically. "Yes, miss." "And she's helped you already, Clara; you're feeling ever so much happier--I can tell that by your voice." Clara turns slowly round, and points to an Army shield of silver, showing white against her dark dress. What a changed Clara! The tousled hair is smooth enough now under the neat cap, the dress is tidy, the apron clean. But it is not at hair or at dress that Betty is looking, not even at the shield-brooch. No, it is on the smiling face that Betty fixes her eyes. For the old, sullen, discontented expression has gone, and the plain little face is so bright with joy and triumph that it is sweet to look upon. [Illustration: What a changed Clara!] "Clara!" she cries, and drops the toast, and throws her arms round the little servant's neck. "So we're both Soldiers now--we're comrades," she whispers. "Ah, you know now just the difference salvation can make--don't you, Clara?" "Oh, yes, miss indeed I do!" "God bless you, Clara!" "God bless you, miss! it was all through you," whispers Clara, shyly. CHAPTER XIV BETTY'S BIRTHDAY ONCE MORE Betty's birthday has come round once more. Autumn and winter have passed since Lucy's illness, and Clara's conversion. Save for a slight limp, father's knee is well again, and Bob's progress with his music is quite wonderful. But the most wonderful thing that has taken place in the whole year, is the change in Betty herself. She _was_ one of the most discontented girls to be found anywhere, now she is one of the happiest. Directly she wakes up this morning she sees that her room is full of bright spring sunshine, and straightway begins planning a little treat for her brothers and sisters. "Jennie and Pollie have a half-holiday to-day. How fortunate! We'll all go out together this afternoon. A walk in the park among the spring flowers would be just the thing for Lucy. If I could only get mother to come too----" "Many happy returns of your birthday, my dear, dear Betty!" Lucy's arms are suddenly flung round her neck, Lucy's lips pressed to her cheek. Her birthday! In her planning for other people's pleasure Betty had actually forgotten the day altogether. It is delightful that Lucy has remembered it, though; and with a little laugh of genuine joy Betty returns her sister's kiss, and then devotes herself to the business of dressing. Betty rather makes a point of being the first downstairs in the morning; then she is sure that father's breakfast is just as he likes it, and the children's porridge properly made. But this morning, as she passes Bob's door, she notices that the room is empty. Bob up already! Mother's room-door standing wide. Are they _all_ up before her? Oh, she must have mistaken the time! No, seven o'clock is only just striking. What can it be? She hurries downstairs, and now Lucy is close behind her. Yes, they _are_ all up. The sitting-room is full of people. Father, mother, Bob, Harry, Jennie, Pollie, even Clara! For one instant Betty stares at them in utter bewilderment, and then they all make a rush at her, and she understands. "Many happy returns of the day! Many happy returns of the day!" and father and mother are kissing her, and the boys have hold of her hands, and the younger children are shouting and dancing wildly about her. Surprise and delight quite take Betty's breath away; indeed it is not until they all draw back a little, and begin holding up various pretty gifts, that she can find a voice to utter a single word. Even then she can only gasp out:-- "Father, mother--Oh, to think you should all remember my birthday like this! I shall never forget this morning--never!" and there are tears of love and joy in her eyes. "_I_ shall never forget how bravely my lass took over my work while I was laid up in the hospital," says father, proudly, as he fills her arms with flowers. "_I_ shall never forget how patiently and unselfishly my little daughter works in the home," whispers mother. "I'm not the sort of fellow to forget a good sister when I've got one, I should hope," says Bob, in his manliest voice. "Look, Betty, I've got you a little present; it isn't half bad, though, is it?" and Bob pulls out a showy photo-frame for which he has been saving up his pocket-money for some months past. "Betty, Betty, we've hemmed you four handkerchiefs--and, Oh, we've had such a trouble to get them done without letting you know!" cry Pollie and Jennie. Even Harry has bought her a bag of chocolates; and here is poor little Clara, with a pair of mittens knitted by herself. "Do take them, miss--please. You said we were comrades, you know, and your hands do get so cold sometimes." So they surround her with birthday gifts, and warm, loving looks; and Betty's heart is full of joy--almost too full to let her speak. Last year Betty thought of little save herself--of her own woes, her own difficulties, and her birthday was almost forgotten. This year she thinks for others, she forgets herself. Betty--what would they do without dear Betty? There is no fear that her birthday will be forgotten any more by any of them! [Illustration: Betty thanks Him with a grateful heart.] Of course, Grannie's letter and parcel arrive by the next post. Betty manages to steal away to her room for a few moments to read the letter all alone. After a loving greeting, Grannie writes:-- "Last year I was anxious about you, my Betty; last year I sent you that little story of the Love-bird, hoping that it might open your eyes to the power love should be in the home. I knew that the light had come into your heart, but I feared that it had not yet found its way into all the corners and crooks of your character. You could not be happy, you could not really help those at home, whilst one little spot of darkness remained. No, you could never _live_ the love we spoke about the morning you left me, until your heart was all pure love. For, Betty, my dear, I know well that your life is full of many trials. "And now I am anxious no longer. With what a thankful heart I write the words! Yes, now indeed, I see that the Lord Jesus Christ reigns alone in your heart; now I know that you are happy, and making those around you happy also. Thank the Lord, Betty, for the blessing He is sending on your work in your home!" And Betty does thank Him with a grateful heart. She feels indeed like the Psalmist, that her cup runs over with blessings; her home seems to be now most beautiful. "Betty, what would you like best in all the world--that is, of all the things I could give you?" whispers mother that night. Betty knows the answer to that question well enough. "To--to be allowed to go to The Army Meetings," she says, in a husky voice, her heart beating thickly. "I thought so. Well, father and I have decided to let you go, if you still really wish it." "You'll let me go? Oh, mother--mother!" and Betty's hands are tightly clasped about her mother's neck. THE END BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE By COMMISSIONER MILDRED DUFF =The Life of Jesus.= A quarto picture book with a lesson for every Sunday in the year. Cloth and Picture Boards. =Samuel and David.= Companion to above. Cloth and Picture Boards. =Toddlers.= A book for the Tinies. Cloth and Paper Boards. =Rude Rosa.= A Story for Girls. Cloth. =Rosa's Resolve.= A Sequel to above. Cloth. =Novelties, and How to Make Them.= Cloth. By COMMISSIONER MILDRED DUFF and NOEL HOPE Cloth =Where Moses Went to School; or, Scenes in Ancient Egypt.= =Where Moses Learnt to Rule; or, Scenes in the Wilderness.= =Hezekiah the King; or, The City Defended by God.= =Esther, the Queen; or, Life in Ancient Palace of Shushan.= =Daniel, the Prophet; or, The Boy with a Purpose.= =The Bible in its Making: The most wonderful Book in the World.= =Mart, The Mill Girl.= A Story for Girls. =Fenella's Fetters; or, Unseen Chains.= The Story of a Wayward Girl. =The Lawson Girls; or, Tinder and Flint.= The interesting history of the inmates of Laburnum Cottage. =Jolly, the Joker.= A Life-Saving Scout Story. =Gertie, a Life-Saving Guard.= =Keziah in Search of a Friend.= A Story for Girls. =Out of the Straight.= A Workshop Story. Paper Boards. =The Don't-Know Family.= A Tale for Everybody. =A New Tommy-Don't-Know.= A Sequel to above. =Jack and His Friends.= A Tale of Cat and Dog Life. =Face it Out; or, Straight Roads are the Shortest.= A Story for Boys. =Crotchets and Quavers; or, The Making of the Brixwell Young People's Band.= A Book for young Band Members. =Betty's Battles.= An Everyday Story. =Jabez the Unlucky.= A Tale of the Jungle. * * * * * =The Little Slave Girl.= Told by Mammy Sara herself to the writer. By EILEEN DOUGLAS. Paper Boards. THE WARRIORS' LIBRARY Full Cloth, 1s. 6d. Half Cloth, 1s. No. 1. =Catherine Booth: A Sketch.= A brief Life-Story of The Army Mother. By Commissioner DUFF. " 2. =A School of the Prophets.= A Sketch of Training College Life. By a Scholar. " 3. =Our War in South Africa.= Our early work on the Dark Continent. By Commissioner RAILTON. " 4. =The Warrior's Daily Portion. No. I.= Extracts from the Founder's Writings, arranged for one month. By Brigadier EILEEN DOUGLAS. " 5. =The Way of Holiness.= How to obtain Full Salvation. By Colonel BRENGLE, D.D. " 6. =Kingdom-Makers in Shelter, Street, and Slum.= Describing the work of our Slum Officers amongst the poor. By MARGARET ALLEN. " 7. =Three Coronations.= Sketches of the Lives of Major Deva Vadivu, Staff-Captain Stabb, and Mrs. Major Smith. By Commissioner DUFF. " 8. =The Life and Work of Father Oberlin.= The Sanctified Pastor of Alsace. By Commissioner OLIPHANT. " 9. =Farmer Abbott.= An Old-time Soul-winner. By MARGARET ALLEN. " 10. =The Warrior's Daily Portion. No. II.= A Companion to No. 4 of this Series. By Brigadier EILEEN DOUGLAS. " 11. =Hedwig von Haartman.= The Life of our Finnish Pioneer. By Commissioner DUFF. " 12. =Gerhard Tersteegen.= The Life of a Singing Soul-winner. By Commissioner OLIPHANT. " 13. =Colonel Weerasooriya.= The Life of a prominent Singalese Warrior. By Commissioner BOOTH TUCKER. " 14. =Bernard of Clairvaux.= The Abbot with a passion for God. By MARGARET ALLEN. " 15. =Harvests of the East.= Bird's-eye Views of Work in Eastern Lands. By MARGARET ALLEN. " 16. =A Kindled Flame.= Story of Hilda--a Princess who gave herself to God. By MARGARET ALLEN. " 17. =Elizabeth Fry.= The Quaker Friend of Prisoners. By Brigadier EILEEN DOUGLAS. " 18. =Children of India.= Vividly illustrating Child-life in India. By HAROLD BEGBIE. Full list with prices on application to SALVATIONIST PUBLISHING & SUPPLIES, LIMITED 117, 119 & 121 Judd Street, King's Cross, London, W.C. 1 * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Added missing words: "the bed" page 20 (Lucy is sleeping peacefully on her pillow by the side of the bed that Betty has just left.) 
3790	----	MAJOR BARBARA BERNARD SHAW ACT I It is after dinner on a January night, in the library in Lady Britomart Undershaft's house in Wilton Crescent. A large and comfortable settee is in the middle of the room, upholstered in dark leather. A person sitting on it [it is vacant at present] would have, on his right, Lady Britomart's writing table, with the lady herself busy at it; a smaller writing table behind him on his left; the door behind him on Lady Britomart's side; and a window with a window seat directly on his left. Near the window is an armchair. Lady Britomart is a woman of fifty or thereabouts, well dressed and yet careless of her dress, well bred and quite reckless of her breeding, well mannered and yet appallingly outspoken and indifferent to the opinion of her interlocutory, amiable and yet peremptory, arbitrary, and high-tempered to the last bearable degree, and withal a very typical managing matron of the upper class, treated as a naughty child until she grew into a scolding mother, and finally settling down with plenty of practical ability and worldly experience, limited in the oddest way with domestic and class limitations, conceiving the universe exactly as if it were a large house in Wilton Crescent, though handling her corner of it very effectively on that assumption, and being quite enlightened and liberal as to the books in the library, the pictures on the walls, the music in the portfolios, and the articles in the papers. Her son, Stephen, comes in. He is a gravely correct young man under 25, taking himself very seriously, but still in some awe of his mother, from childish habit and bachelor shyness rather than from any weakness of character. STEPHEN. What's the matter? LADY BRITOMART. Presently, Stephen. Stephen submissively walks to the settee and sits down. He takes up The Speaker. LADY BRITOMART. Don't begin to read, Stephen. I shall require all your attention. STEPHEN. It was only while I was waiting-- LADY BRITOMART. Don't make excuses, Stephen. [He puts down The Speaker]. Now! [She finishes her writing; rises; and comes to the settee]. I have not kept you waiting very long, I think. STEPHEN. Not at all, mother. LADY BRITOMART. Bring me my cushion. [He takes the cushion from the chair at the desk and arranges it for her as she sits down on the settee]. Sit down. [He sits down and fingers his tie nervously]. Don't fiddle with your tie, Stephen: there is nothing the matter with it. STEPHEN. I beg your pardon. [He fiddles with his watch chain instead]. LADY BRITOMART. Now are you attending to me, Stephen? STEPHEN. Of course, mother. LADY BRITOMART. No: it's not of course. I want something much more than your everyday matter-of-course attention. I am going to speak to you very seriously, Stephen. I wish you would let that chain alone. STEPHEN [hastily relinquishing the chain] Have I done anything to annoy you, mother? If so, it was quite unintentional. LADY BRITOMART [astonished] Nonsense! [With some remorse] My poor boy, did you think I was angry with you? STEPHEN. What is it, then, mother? You are making me very uneasy. LADY BRITOMART [squaring herself at him rather aggressively] Stephen: may I ask how soon you intend to realize that you are a grown-up man, and that I am only a woman? STEPHEN [amazed] Only a-- LADY BRITOMART. Don't repeat my words, please: It is a most aggravating habit. You must learn to face life seriously, Stephen. I really cannot bear the whole burden of our family affairs any longer. You must advise me: you must assume the responsibility. STEPHEN. I! LADY BRITOMART. Yes, you, of course. You were 24 last June. You've been at Harrow and Cambridge. You've been to India and Japan. You must know a lot of things now; unless you have wasted your time most scandalously. Well, advise me. STEPHEN [much perplexed] You know I have never interfered in the household-- LADY BRITOMART. No: I should think not. I don't want you to order the dinner. STEPHEN. I mean in our family affairs. LADY BRITOMART. Well, you must interfere now; for they are getting quite beyond me. STEPHEN [troubled] I have thought sometimes that perhaps I ought; but really, mother, I know so little about them; and what I do know is so painful--it is so impossible to mention some things to you--[he stops, ashamed]. LADY BRITOMART. I suppose you mean your father. STEPHEN [almost inaudibly] Yes. LADY BRITOMART. My dear: we can't go on all our lives not mentioning him. Of course you were quite right not to open the subject until I asked you to; but you are old enough now to be taken into my confidence, and to help me to deal with him about the girls. STEPHEN. But the girls are all right. They are engaged. LADY BRITOMART [complacently] Yes: I have made a very good match for Sarah. Charles Lomax will be a millionaire at 35. But that is ten years ahead; and in the meantime his trustees cannot under the terms of his father's will allow him more than 800 pounds a year. STEPHEN. But the will says also that if he increases his income by his own exertions, they may double the increase. LADY BRITOMART. Charles Lomax's exertions are much more likely to decrease his income than to increase it. Sarah will have to find at least another 800 pounds a year for the next ten years; and even then they will be as poor as church mice. And what about Barbara? I thought Barbara was going to make the most brilliant career of all of you. And what does she do? Joins the Salvation Army; discharges her maid; lives on a pound a week; and walks in one evening with a professor of Greek whom she has picked up in the street, and who pretends to be a Salvationist, and actually plays the big drum for her in public because he has fallen head over ears in love with her. STEPHEN. I was certainly rather taken aback when I heard they were engaged. Cusins is a very nice fellow, certainly: nobody would ever guess that he was born in Australia; but-- LADY BRITOMART. Oh, Adolphus Cusins will make a very good husband. After all, nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentleman. And my family, thank Heaven, is not a pig-headed Tory one. We are Whigs, and believe in liberty. Let snobbish people say what they please: Barbara shall marry, not the man they like, but the man I like. STEPHEN. Of course I was thinking only of his income. However, he is not likely to be extravagant. LADY BRITOMART. Don't be too sure of that, Stephen. I know your quiet, simple, refined, poetic people like Adolphus--quite content with the best of everything! They cost more than your extravagant people, who are always as mean as they are second rate. No: Barbara will need at least 2000 pounds a year. You see it means two additional households. Besides, my dear, you must marry soon. I don't approve of the present fashion of philandering bachelors and late marriages; and I am trying to arrange something for you. STEPHEN. It's very good of you, mother; but perhaps I had better arrange that for myself. LADY BRITOMART. Nonsense! you are much too young to begin matchmaking: you would be taken in by some pretty little nobody. Of course I don't mean that you are not to be consulted: you know that as well as I do. [Stephen closes his lips and is silent]. Now don't sulk, Stephen. STEPHEN. I am not sulking, mother. What has all this got to do with--with--with my father? LADY BRITOMART. My dear Stephen: where is the money to come from? It is easy enough for you and the other children to live on my income as long as we are in the same house; but I can't keep four families in four separate houses. You know how poor my father is: he has barely seven thousand a year now; and really, if he were not the Earl of Stevenage, he would have to give up society. He can do nothing for us: he says, naturally enough, that it is absurd that he should be asked to provide for the children of a man who is rolling in money. You see, Stephen, your father must be fabulously wealthy, because there is always a war going on somewhere. STEPHEN. You need not remind me of that, mother. I have hardly ever opened a newspaper in my life without seeing our name in it. The Undershaft torpedo! The Undershaft quick firers! The Undershaft ten inch! the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun! the Undershaft submarine! and now the Undershaft aerial battleship! At Harrow they called me the Woolwich Infant. At Cambridge it was the same. A little brute at King's who was always trying to get up revivals, spoilt my Bible--your first birthday present to me--by writing under my name, "Son and heir to Undershaft and Lazarus, Death and Destruction Dealers: address, Christendom and Judea." But that was not so bad as the way I was kowtowed to everywhere because my father was making millions by selling cannons. LADY BRITOMART. It is not only the cannons, but the war loans that Lazarus arranges under cover of giving credit for the cannons. You know, Stephen, it's perfectly scandalous. Those two men, Andrew Undershaft and Lazarus, positively have Europe under their thumbs. That is why your father is able to behave as he does. He is above the law. Do you think Bismarck or Gladstone or Disraeli could have openly defied every social and moral obligation all their lives as your father has? They simply wouldn't have dared. I asked Gladstone to take it up. I asked The Times to take it up. I asked the Lord Chamberlain to take it up. But it was just like asking them to declare war on the Sultan. They WOULDN'T. They said they couldn't touch him. I believe they were afraid. STEPHEN. What could they do? He does not actually break the law. LADY BRITOMART. Not break the law! He is always breaking the law. He broke the law when he was born: his parents were not married. STEPHEN. Mother! Is that true? LADY BRITOMART. Of course it's true: that was why we separated. STEPHEN. He married without letting you know this! LADY BRITOMART [rather taken aback by this inference] Oh no. To do Andrew justice, that was not the sort of thing he did. Besides, you know the Undershaft motto: Unashamed. Everybody knew. STEPHEN. But you said that was why you separated. LADY BRITOMART. Yes, because he was not content with being a foundling himself: he wanted to disinherit you for another foundling. That was what I couldn't stand. STEPHEN [ashamed] Do you mean for--for--for-- LADY BRITOMART. Don't stammer, Stephen. Speak distinctly. STEPHEN. But this is so frightful to me, mother. To have to speak to you about such things! LADY BRITOMART. It's not pleasant for me, either, especially if you are still so childish that you must make it worse by a display of embarrassment. It is only in the middle classes, Stephen, that people get into a state of dumb helpless horror when they find that there are wicked people in the world. In our class, we have to decide what is to be done with wicked people; and nothing should disturb our self possession. Now ask your question properly. STEPHEN. Mother: you have no consideration for me. For Heaven's sake either treat me as a child, as you always do, and tell me nothing at all; or tell me everything and let me take it as best I can. LADY BRITOMART. Treat you as a child! What do you mean? It is most unkind and ungrateful of you to say such a thing. You know I have never treated any of you as children. I have always made you my companions and friends, and allowed you perfect freedom to do and say whatever you liked, so long as you liked what I could approve of. STEPHEN [desperately] I daresay we have been the very imperfect children of a very perfect mother; but I do beg you to let me alone for once, and tell me about this horrible business of my father wanting to set me aside for another son. LADY BRITOMART [amazed] Another son! I never said anything of the kind. I never dreamt of such a thing. This is what comes of interrupting me. STEPHEN. But you said-- LADY BRITOMART [cutting him short] Now be a good boy, Stephen, and listen to me patiently. The Undershafts are descended from a foundling in the parish of St. Andrew Undershaft in the city. That was long ago, in the reign of James the First. Well, this foundling was adopted by an armorer and gun-maker. In the course of time the foundling succeeded to the business; and from some notion of gratitude, or some vow or something, he adopted another foundling, and left the business to him. And that foundling did the same. Ever since that, the cannon business has always been left to an adopted foundling named Andrew Undershaft. STEPHEN. But did they never marry? Were there no legitimate sons? LADY BRITOMART. Oh yes: they married just as your father did; and they were rich enough to buy land for their own children and leave them well provided for. But they always adopted and trained some foundling to succeed them in the business; and of course they always quarrelled with their wives furiously over it. Your father was adopted in that way; and he pretends to consider himself bound to keep up the tradition and adopt somebody to leave the business to. Of course I was not going to stand that. There may have been some reason for it when the Undershafts could only marry women in their own class, whose sons were not fit to govern great estates. But there could be no excuse for passing over my son. STEPHEN [dubiously] I am afraid I should make a poor hand of managing a cannon foundry. LADY BRITOMART. Nonsense! you could easily get a manager and pay him a salary. STEPHEN. My father evidently had no great opinion of my capacity. LADY BRITOMART. Stuff, child! you were only a baby: it had nothing to do with your capacity. Andrew did it on principle, just as he did every perverse and wicked thing on principle. When my father remonstrated, Andrew actually told him to his face that history tells us of only two successful institutions: one the Undershaft firm, and the other the Roman Empire under the Antonines. That was because the Antonine emperors all adopted their successors. Such rubbish! The Stevenages are as good as the Antonines, I hope; and you are a Stevenage. But that was Andrew all over. There you have the man! Always clever and unanswerable when he was defending nonsense and wickedness: always awkward and sullen when he had to behave sensibly and decently! STEPHEN. Then it was on my account that your home life was broken up, mother. I am sorry. LADY BRITOMART. Well, dear, there were other differences. I really cannot bear an immoral man. I am not a Pharisee, I hope; and I should not have minded his merely doing wrong things: we are none of us perfect. But your father didn't exactly do wrong things: he said them and thought them: that was what was so dreadful. He really had a sort of religion of wrongness just as one doesn't mind men practising immorality so long as they own that they are in the wrong by preaching morality; so I couldn't forgive Andrew for preaching immorality while he practised morality. You would all have grown up without principles, without any knowledge of right and wrong, if he had been in the house. You know, my dear, your father was a very attractive man in some ways. Children did not dislike him; and he took advantage of it to put the wickedest ideas into their heads, and make them quite unmanageable. I did not dislike him myself: very far from it; but nothing can bridge over moral disagreement. STEPHEN. All this simply bewilders me, mother. People may differ about matters of opinion, or even about religion; but how can they differ about right and wrong? Right is right; and wrong is wrong; and if a man cannot distinguish them properly, he is either a fool or a rascal: that's all. LADY BRITOMART [touched] That's my own boy [she pats his cheek]! Your father never could answer that: he used to laugh and get out of it under cover of some affectionate nonsense. And now that you understand the situation, what do you advise me to do? STEPHEN. Well, what can you do? LADY BRITOMART. I must get the money somehow. STEPHEN. We cannot take money from him. I had rather go and live in some cheap place like Bedford Square or even Hampstead than take a farthing of his money. LADY BRITOMART. But after all, Stephen, our present income comes from Andrew. STEPHEN [shocked] I never knew that. LADY BRITOMART. Well, you surely didn't suppose your grandfather had anything to give me. The Stevenages could not do everything for you. We gave you social position. Andrew had to contribute something. He had a very good bargain, I think. STEPHEN [bitterly] We are utterly dependent on him and his cannons, then! LADY BRITOMART. Certainly not: the money is settled. But he provided it. So you see it is not a question of taking money from him or not: it is simply a question of how much. I don't want any more for myself. STEPHEN. Nor do I. LADY BRITOMART. But Sarah does; and Barbara does. That is, Charles Lomax and Adolphus Cusins will cost them more. So I must put my pride in my pocket and ask for it, I suppose. That is your advice, Stephen, is it not? STEPHEN. No. LADY BRITOMART [sharply] Stephen! STEPHEN. Of course if you are determined-- LADY BRITOMART. I am not determined: I ask your advice; and I am waiting for it. I will not have all the responsibility thrown on my shoulders. STEPHEN [obstinately] I would die sooner than ask him for another penny. LADY BRITOMART [resignedly] You mean that I must ask him. Very well, Stephen: It shall be as you wish. You will be glad to know that your grandfather concurs. But he thinks I ought to ask Andrew to come here and see the girls. After all, he must have some natural affection for them. STEPHEN. Ask him here!!! LADY BRITOMART. Do not repeat my words, Stephen. Where else can I ask him? STEPHEN. I never expected you to ask him at all. LADY BRITOMART. Now don't tease, Stephen. Come! you see that it is necessary that he should pay us a visit, don't you? STEPHEN [reluctantly] I suppose so, if the girls cannot do without his money. LADY BRITOMART. Thank you, Stephen: I knew you would give me the right advice when it was properly explained to you. I have asked your father to come this evening. [Stephen bounds from his seat] Don't jump, Stephen: it fidgets me. STEPHEN [in utter consternation] Do you mean to say that my father is coming here to-night--that he may be here at any moment? LADY BRITOMART [looking at her watch] I said nine. [He gasps. She rises]. Ring the bell, please. [Stephen goes to the smaller writing table; presses a button on it; and sits at it with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, outwitted and overwhelmed]. It is ten minutes to nine yet; and I have to prepare the girls. I asked Charles Lomax and Adolphus to dinner on purpose that they might be here. Andrew had better see them in case he should cherish any delusions as to their being capable of supporting their wives. [The butler enters: Lady Britomart goes behind the settee to speak to him]. Morrison: go up to the drawingroom and tell everybody to come down here at once. [Morrison withdraws. Lady Britomart turns to Stephen]. Now remember, Stephen, I shall need all your countenance and authority. [He rises and tries to recover some vestige of these attributes]. Give me a chair, dear. [He pushes a chair forward from the wall to where she stands, near the smaller writing table. She sits down; and he goes to the armchair, into which he throws himself]. I don't know how Barbara will take it. Ever since they made her a major in the Salvation Army she has developed a propensity to have her own way and order people about which quite cows me sometimes. It's not ladylike: I'm sure I don't know where she picked it up. Anyhow, Barbara shan't bully me; but still it's just as well that your father should be here before she has time to refuse to meet him or make a fuss. Don't look nervous, Stephen, it will only encourage Barbara to make difficulties. I am nervous enough, goodness knows; but I don't show it. Sarah and Barbara come in with their respective young men, Charles Lomax and Adolphus Cusins. Sarah is slender, bored, and mundane. Barbara is robuster, jollier, much more energetic. Sarah is fashionably dressed: Barbara is in Salvation Army uniform. Lomax, a young man about town, is like many other young men about town. He is affected with a frivolous sense of humor which plunges him at the most inopportune moments into paroxysms of imperfectly suppressed laughter. Cusins is a spectacled student, slight, thin haired, and sweet voiced, with a more complex form of Lomax's complaint. His sense of humor is intellectual and subtle, and is complicated by an appalling temper. The lifelong struggle of a benevolent temperament and a high conscience against impulses of inhuman ridicule and fierce impatience has set up a chronic strain which has visibly wrecked his constitution. He is a most implacable, determined, tenacious, intolerant person who by mere force of character presents himself as--and indeed actually is--considerate, gentle, explanatory, even mild and apologetic, capable possibly of murder, but not of cruelty or coarseness. By the operation of some instinct which is not merciful enough to blind him with the illusions of love, he is obstinately bent on marrying Barbara. Lomax likes Sarah and thinks it will be rather a lark to marry her. Consequently he has not attempted to resist Lady Britomart's arrangements to that end. All four look as if they had been having a good deal of fun in the drawingroom. The girls enter first, leaving the swains outside. Sarah comes to the settee. Barbara comes in after her and stops at the door. BARBARA. Are Cholly and Dolly to come in? LADY BRITOMART [forcibly] Barbara: I will not have Charles called Cholly: the vulgarity of it positively makes me ill. BARBARA. It's all right, mother. Cholly is quite correct nowadays. Are they to come in? LADY BRITOMART. Yes, if they will behave themselves. BARBARA [through the door] Come in, Dolly, and behave yourself. Barbara comes to her mother's writing table. Cusins enters smiling, and wanders towards Lady Britomart. SARAH [calling] Come in, Cholly. [Lomax enters, controlling his features very imperfectly, and places himself vaguely between Sarah and Barbara]. LADY BRITOMART [peremptorily] Sit down, all of you. [They sit. Cusins crosses to the window and seats himself there. Lomax takes a chair. Barbara sits at the writing table and Sarah on the settee]. I don't in the least know what you are laughing at, Adolphus. I am surprised at you, though I expected nothing better from Charles Lomax. CUSINS [in a remarkably gentle voice] Barbara has been trying to teach me the West Ham Salvation March. LADY BRITOMART. I see nothing to laugh at in that; nor should you if you are really converted. CUSINS [sweetly] You were not present. It was really funny, I believe. LOMAX. Ripping. LADY BRITOMART. Be quiet, Charles. Now listen to me, children. Your father is coming here this evening. [General stupefaction]. LOMAX [remonstrating] Oh I say! LADY BRITOMART. You are not called on to say anything, Charles. SARAH. Are you serious, mother? LADY BRITOMART. Of course I am serious. It is on your account, Sarah, and also on Charles's. [Silence. Charles looks painfully unworthy]. I hope you are not going to object, Barbara. BARBARA. I! why should I? My father has a soul to be saved like anybody else. He's quite welcome as far as I am concerned. LOMAX [still remonstrant] But really, don't you know! Oh I say! LADY BRITOMART [frigidly] What do you wish to convey, Charles? LOMAX. Well, you must admit that this is a bit thick. LADY BRITOMART [turning with ominous suavity to Cusins] Adolphus: you are a professor of Greek. Can you translate Charles Lomax's remarks into reputable English for us? CUSINS [cautiously] If I may say so, Lady Brit, I think Charles has rather happily expressed what we all feel. Homer, speaking of Autolycus, uses the same phrase. LOMAX [handsomely] Not that I mind, you know, if Sarah don't. LADY BRITOMART [crushingly] Thank you. Have I your permission, Adolphus, to invite my own husband to my own house? CUSINS [gallantly] You have my unhesitating support in everything you do. LADY BRITOMART. Sarah: have you nothing to say? SARAH. Do you mean that he is coming regularly to live here? LADY BRITOMART. Certainly not. The spare room is ready for him if he likes to stay for a day or two and see a little more of you; but there are limits. SARAH. Well, he can't eat us, I suppose. I don't mind. LOMAX [chuckling] I wonder how the old man will take it. LADY BRITOMART. Much as the old woman will, no doubt, Charles. LOMAX [abashed] I didn't mean--at least-- LADY BRITOMART. You didn't think, Charles. You never do; and the result is, you never mean anything. And now please attend to me, children. Your father will be quite a stranger to us. LOMAX. I suppose he hasn't seen Sarah since she was a little kid. LADY BRITOMART. Not since she was a little kid, Charles, as you express it with that elegance of diction and refinement of thought that seem never to desert you. Accordingly--er-- [impatiently] Now I have forgotten what I was going to say. That comes of your provoking me to be sarcastic, Charles. Adolphus: will you kindly tell me where I was. CUSINS [sweetly] You were saying that as Mr Undershaft has not seen his children since they were babies, he will form his opinion of the way you have brought them up from their behavior to-night, and that therefore you wish us all to be particularly careful to conduct ourselves well, especially Charles. LOMAX. Look here: Lady Brit didn't say that. LADY BRITOMART [vehemently] I did, Charles. Adolphus's recollection is perfectly correct. It is most important that you should be good; and I do beg you for once not to pair off into opposite corners and giggle and whisper while I am speaking to your father. BARBARA. All right, mother. We'll do you credit. LADY BRITOMART. Remember, Charles, that Sarah will want to feel proud of you instead of ashamed of you. LOMAX. Oh I say! There's nothing to be exactly proud of, don't you know. LADY BRITOMART. Well, try and look as if there was. Morrison, pale and dismayed, breaks into the room in unconcealed disorder. MORRISON. Might I speak a word to you, my lady? LADY BRITOMART. Nonsense! Show him up. MORRISON. Yes, my lady. [He goes]. LOMAX. Does Morrison know who he is? LADY BRITOMART. Of course. Morrison has always been with us. LOMAX. It must be a regular corker for him, don't you know. LADY BRITOMART. Is this a moment to get on my nerves, Charles, with your outrageous expressions? LOMAX. But this is something out of the ordinary, really-- MORRISON [at the door] The--er--Mr Undershaft. [He retreats in confusion]. Andrew Undershaft comes in. All rise. Lady Britomart meets him in the middle of the room behind the settee. Andrew is, on the surface, a stoutish, easygoing elderly man, with kindly patient manners, and an engaging simplicity of character. But he has a watchful, deliberate, waiting, listening face, and formidable reserves of power, both bodily and mental, in his capacious chest and long head. His gentleness is partly that of a strong man who has learnt by experience that his natural grip hurts ordinary people unless he handles them very carefully, and partly the mellowness of age and success. He is also a little shy in his present very delicate situation. LADY BRITOMART. Good evening, Andrew. UNDERSHAFT. How d'ye do, my dear. LADY BRITOMART. You look a good deal older. UNDERSHAFT [apologetically] I AM somewhat older. [With a touch of courtship] Time has stood still with you. LADY BRITOMART [promptly] Rubbish! This is your family. UNDERSHAFT [surprised] Is it so large? I am sorry to say my memory is failing very badly in some things. [He offers his hand with paternal kindness to Lomax]. LOMAX [jerkily shaking his hand] Ahdedoo. UNDERSHAFT. I can see you are my eldest. I am very glad to meet you again, my boy. LOMAX [remonstrating] No but look here don't you know--[Overcome] Oh I say! LADY BRITOMART [recovering from momentary speechlessness] Andrew: do you mean to say that you don't remember how many children you have? UNDERSHAFT. Well, I am afraid I--. They have grown so much--er. Am I making any ridiculous mistake? I may as well confess: I recollect only one son. But so many things have happened since, of course--er-- LADY BRITOMART [decisively] Andrew: you are talking nonsense. Of course you have only one son. UNDERSHAFT. Perhaps you will be good enough to introduce me, my dear. LADY BRITOMART. That is Charles Lomax, who is engaged to Sarah. UNDERSHAFT. My dear sir, I beg your pardon. LOMAX. Not at all. Delighted, I assure you. LADY BRITOMART. This is Stephen. UNDERSHAFT [bowing] Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr Stephen. Then [going to Cusins] you must be my son. [Taking Cusins' hands in his] How are you, my young friend? [To Lady Britomart] He is very like you, my love. CUSINS. You flatter me, Mr Undershaft. My name is Cusins: engaged to Barbara. [Very explicitly] That is Major Barbara Undershaft, of the Salvation Army. That is Sarah, your second daughter. This is Stephen Undershaft, your son. UNDERSHAFT. My dear Stephen, I beg your pardon. STEPHEN. Not at all. UNDERSHAFT. Mr Cusins: I am much indebted to you for explaining so precisely. [Turning to Sarah] Barbara, my dear-- SARAH [prompting him] Sarah. UNDERSHAFT. Sarah, of course. [They shake hands. He goes over to Barbara] Barbara--I am right this time, I hope. BARBARA. Quite right. [They shake hands]. LADY BRITOMART [resuming command] Sit down, all of you. Sit down, Andrew. [She comes forward and sits on the settle. Cusins also brings his chair forward on her left. Barbara and Stephen resume their seats. Lomax gives his chair to Sarah and goes for another]. UNDERSHAFT. Thank you, my love. LOMAX [conversationally, as he brings a chair forward between the writing table and the settee, and offers it to Undershaft] Takes you some time to find out exactly where you are, don't it? UNDERSHAFT [accepting the chair] That is not what embarrasses me, Mr Lomax. My difficulty is that if I play the part of a father, I shall produce the effect of an intrusive stranger; and if I play the part of a discreet stranger, I may appear a callous father. LADY BRITOMART. There is no need for you to play any part at all, Andrew. You had much better be sincere and natural. UNDERSHAFT [submissively] Yes, my dear: I daresay that will be best. [Making himself comfortable] Well, here I am. Now what can I do for you all? LADY BRITOMART. You need not do anything, Andrew. You are one of the family. You can sit with us and enjoy yourself. Lomax's too long suppressed mirth explodes in agonized neighings. LADY BRITOMART [outraged] Charles Lomax: if you can behave yourself, behave yourself. If not, leave the room. LOMAX. I'm awfully sorry, Lady Brit; but really, you know, upon my soul! [He sits on the settee between Lady Britomart and Undershaft, quite overcome]. BARBARA. Why don't you laugh if you want to, Cholly? It's good for your inside. LADY BRITOMART. Barbara: you have had the education of a lady. Please let your father see that; and don't talk like a street girl. UNDERSHAFT. Never mind me, my dear. As you know, I am not a gentleman; and I was never educated. LOMAX [encouragingly] Nobody'd know it, I assure you. You look all right, you know. CUSINS. Let me advise you to study Greek, Mr Undershaft. Greek scholars are privileged men. Few of them know Greek; and none of them know anything else; but their position is unchallengeable. Other languages are the qualifications of waiters and commercial travellers: Greek is to a man of position what the hallmark is to silver. BARBARA. Dolly: don't be insincere. Cholly: fetch your concertina and play something for us. LOMAX [doubtfully to Undershaft] Perhaps that sort of thing isn't in your line, eh? UNDERSHAFT. I am particularly fond of music. LOMAX [delighted] Are you? Then I'll get it. [He goes upstairs for the instrument]. UNDERSHAFT. Do you play, Barbara? BARBARA. Only the tambourine. But Cholly's teaching me the concertina. UNDERSHAFT. Is Cholly also a member of the Salvation Army? BARBARA. No: he says it's bad form to be a dissenter. But I don't despair of Cholly. I made him come yesterday to a meeting at the dock gates, and take the collection in his hat. LADY BRITOMART. It is not my doing, Andrew. Barbara is old enough to take her own way. She has no father to advise her. BARBARA. Oh yes she has. There are no orphans in the Salvation Army. UNDERSHAFT. Your father there has a great many children and plenty of experience, eh? BARBARA [looking at him with quick interest and nodding] Just so. How did you come to understand that? [Lomax is heard at the door trying the concertina]. LADY BRITOMART. Come in, Charles. Play us something at once. LOMAX. Righto! [He sits down in his former place, and preludes]. UNDERSHAFT. One moment, Mr Lomax. I am rather interested in the Salvation Army. Its motto might be my own: Blood and Fire. LOMAX [shocked] But not your sort of blood and fire, you know. UNDERSHAFT. My sort of blood cleanses: my sort of fire purifies. BARBARA. So do ours. Come down to-morrow to my shelter--the West Ham shelter--and see what we're doing. We're going to march to a great meeting in the Assembly Hall at Mile End. Come and see the shelter and then march with us: it will do you a lot of good. Can you play anything? UNDERSHAFT. In my youth I earned pennies, and even shillings occasionally, in the streets and in public house parlors by my natural talent for stepdancing. Later on, I became a member of the Undershaft orchestral society, and performed passably on the tenor trombone. LOMAX [scandalized] Oh I say! BARBARA. Many a sinner has played himself into heaven on the trombone, thanks to the Army. LOMAX [to Barbara, still rather shocked] Yes; but what about the cannon business, don't you know? [To Undershaft] Getting into heaven is not exactly in your line, is it? LADY BRITOMART. Charles!!! LOMAX. Well; but it stands to reason, don't it? The cannon business may be necessary and all that: we can't get on without cannons; but it isn't right, you know. On the other hand, there may be a certain amount of tosh about the Salvation Army--I belong to the Established Church myself--but still you can't deny that it's religion; and you can't go against religion, can you? At least unless you're downright immoral, don't you know. UNDERSHAFT. You hardly appreciate my position, Mr Lomax-- LOMAX [hastily] I'm not saying anything against you personally, you know. UNDERSHAFT. Quite so, quite so. But consider for a moment. Here I am, a manufacturer of mutilation and murder. I find myself in a specially amiable humor just now because, this morning, down at the foundry, we blew twenty-seven dummy soldiers into fragments with a gun which formerly destroyed only thirteen. LOMAX [leniently] Well, the more destructive war becomes, the sooner it will be abolished, eh? UNDERSHAFT. Not at all. The more destructive war becomes the more fascinating we find it. No, Mr Lomax, I am obliged to you for making the usual excuse for my trade; but I am not ashamed of it. I am not one of those men who keep their morals and their business in watertight compartments. All the spare money my trade rivals spend on hospitals, cathedrals and other receptacles for conscience money, I devote to experiments and researches in improved methods of destroying life and property. I have always done so; and I always shall. Therefore your Christmas card moralities of peace on earth and goodwill among men are of no use to me. Your Christianity, which enjoins you to resist not evil, and to turn the other cheek, would make me a bankrupt. My morality--my religion--must have a place for cannons and torpedoes in it. STEPHEN [coldly--almost sullenly] You speak as if there were half a dozen moralities and religions to choose from, instead of one true morality and one true religion. UNDERSHAFT. For me there is only one true morality; but it might not fit you, as you do not manufacture aerial battleships. There is only one true morality for every man; but every man has not the same true morality. LOMAX [overtaxed] Would you mind saying that again? I didn't quite follow it. CUSINS. It's quite simple. As Euripides says, one man's meat is another man's poison morally as well as physically. UNDERSHAFT. Precisely. LOMAX. Oh, that. Yes, yes, yes. True. True. STEPHEN. In other words, some men are honest and some are scoundrels. BARBARA. Bosh. There are no scoundrels. UNDERSHAFT. Indeed? Are there any good men? BARBARA. No. Not one. There are neither good men nor scoundrels: there are just children of one Father; and the sooner they stop calling one another names the better. You needn't talk to me: I know them. I've had scores of them through my hands: scoundrels, criminals, infidels, philanthropists, missionaries, county councillors, all sorts. They're all just the same sort of sinner; and there's the same salvation ready for them all. UNDERSHAFT. May I ask have you ever saved a maker of cannons? BARBARA. No. Will you let me try? UNDERSHAFT. Well, I will make a bargain with you. If I go to see you to-morrow in your Salvation Shelter, will you come the day after to see me in my cannon works? BARBARA. Take care. It may end in your giving up the cannons for the sake of the Salvation Army. UNDERSHAFT. Are you sure it will not end in your giving up the Salvation Army for the sake of the cannons? BARBARA. I will take my chance of that. UNDERSHAFT. And I will take my chance of the other. [They shake hands on it]. Where is your shelter? BARBARA. In West Ham. At the sign of the cross. Ask anybody in Canning Town. Where are your works? UNDERSHAFT. In Perivale St Andrews. At the sign of the sword. Ask anybody in Europe. LOMAX. Hadn't I better play something? BARBARA. Yes. Give us Onward, Christian Soldiers. LOMAX. Well, that's rather a strong order to begin with, don't you know. Suppose I sing Thou'rt passing hence, my brother. It's much the same tune. BARBARA. It's too melancholy. You get saved, Cholly; and you'll pass hence, my brother, without making such a fuss about it. LADY BRITOMART. Really, Barbara, you go on as if religion were a pleasant subject. Do have some sense of propriety. UNDERSHAFT. I do not find it an unpleasant subject, my dear. It is the only one that capable people really care for. LADY BRITOMART [looking at her watch] Well, if you are determined to have it, I insist on having it in a proper and respectable way. Charles: ring for prayers. [General amazement. Stephen rises in dismay]. LOMAX [rising] Oh I say! UNDERSHAFT [rising] I am afraid I must be going. LADY BRITOMART. You cannot go now, Andrew: it would be most improper. Sit down. What will the servants think? UNDERSHAFT. My dear: I have conscientious scruples. May I suggest a compromise? If Barbara will conduct a little service in the drawingroom, with Mr Lomax as organist, I will attend it willingly. I will even take part, if a trombone can be procured. LADY BRITOMART. Don't mock, Andrew. UNDERSHAFT [shocked--to Barbara] You don't think I am mocking, my love, I hope. BARBARA. No, of course not; and it wouldn't matter if you were: half the Army came to their first meeting for a lark. [Rising] Come along. Come, Dolly. Come, Cholly. [She goes out with Undershaft, who opens the door for her. Cusins rises]. LADY BRITOMART. I will not be disobeyed by everybody. Adolphus: sit down. Charles: you may go. You are not fit for prayers: you cannot keep your countenance. LOMAX. Oh I say! [He goes out]. LADY BRITOMART [continuing] But you, Adolphus, can behave yourself if you choose to. I insist on your staying. CUSINS. My dear Lady Brit: there are things in the family prayer book that I couldn't bear to hear you say. LADY BRITOMART. What things, pray? CUSINS. Well, you would have to say before all the servants that we have done things we ought not to have done, and left undone things we ought to have done, and that there is no health in us. I cannot bear to hear you doing yourself such an unjustice, and Barbara such an injustice. As for myself, I flatly deny it: I have done my best. I shouldn't dare to marry Barbara--I couldn't look you in the face--if it were true. So I must go to the drawingroom. LADY BRITOMART [offended] Well, go. [He starts for the door]. And remember this, Adolphus [he turns to listen]: I have a very strong suspicion that you went to the Salvation Army to worship Barbara and nothing else. And I quite appreciate the very clever way in which you systematically humbug me. I have found you out. Take care Barbara doesn't. That's all. CUSINS [with unruffled sweetness] Don't tell on me. [He goes out]. LADY BRITOMART. Sarah: if you want to go, go. Anything's better than to sit there as if you wished you were a thousand miles away. SARAH [languidly] Very well, mamma. [She goes]. Lady Britomart, with a sudden flounce, gives way to a little gust of tears. STEPHEN [going to her] Mother: what's the matter? LADY BRITOMART [swishing away her tears with her handkerchief] Nothing. Foolishness. You can go with him, too, if you like, and leave me with the servants. STEPHEN. Oh, you mustn't think that, mother. I--I don't like him. LADY BRITOMART. The others do. That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and steals their affection from her. STEPHEN. He has not stolen our affection from you. It is only curiosity. LADY BRITOMART [violently] I won't be consoled, Stephen. There is nothing the matter with me. [She rises and goes towards the door]. STEPHEN. Where are you going, mother? LADY BRITOMART. To the drawingroom, of course. [She goes out. Onward, Christian Soldiers, on the concertina, with tambourine accompaniment, is heard when the door opens]. Are you coming, Stephen? STEPHEN. No. Certainly not. [She goes. He sits down on the settee, with compressed lips and an expression of strong dislike]. ACT II The yard of the West Ham shelter of the Salvation Army is a cold place on a January morning. The building itself, an old warehouse, is newly whitewashed. Its gabled end projects into the yard in the middle, with a door on the ground floor, and another in the loft above it without any balcony or ladder, but with a pulley rigged over it for hoisting sacks. Those who come from this central gable end into the yard have the gateway leading to the street on their left, with a stone horse-trough just beyond it, and, on the right, a penthouse shielding a table from the weather. There are forms at the table; and on them are seated a man and a woman, both much down on their luck, finishing a meal of bread [one thick slice each, with margarine and golden syrup] and diluted milk. The man, a workman out of employment, is young, agile, a talker, a poser, sharp enough to be capable of anything in reason except honesty or altruistic considerations of any kind. The woman is a commonplace old bundle of poverty and hard-worn humanity. She looks sixty and probably is forty-five. If they were rich people, gloved and muffed and well wrapped up in furs and overcoats, they would be numbed and miserable; for it is a grindingly cold, raw, January day; and a glance at the background of grimy warehouses and leaden sky visible over the whitewashed walls of the yard would drive any idle rich person straight to the Mediterranean. But these two, being no more troubled with visions of the Mediterranean than of the moon, and being compelled to keep more of their clothes in the pawnshop, and less on their persons, in winter than in summer, are not depressed by the cold: rather are they stung into vivacity, to which their meal has just now given an almost jolly turn. The man takes a pull at his mug, and then gets up and moves about the yard with his hands deep in his pockets, occasionally breaking into a stepdance. THE WOMAN. Feel better otter your meal, sir? THE MAN. No. Call that a meal! Good enough for you, props; but wot is it to me, an intelligent workin man. THE WOMAN. Workin man! Wot are you? THE MAN. Painter. THE WOMAN [sceptically] Yus, I dessay. THE MAN. Yus, you dessay! I know. Every loafer that can't do nothink calls isself a painter. Well, I'm a real painter: grainer, finisher, thirty-eight bob a week when I can get it. THE WOMAN. Then why don't you go and get it? THE MAN. I'll tell you why. Fust: I'm intelligent--fffff! it's rotten cold here [he dances a step or two]--yes: intelligent beyond the station o life into which it has pleased the capitalists to call me; and they don't like a man that sees through em. Second, an intelligent bein needs a doo share of appiness; so I drink somethink cruel when I get the chawnce. Third, I stand by my class and do as little as I can so's to leave arf the job for me fellow workers. Fourth, I'm fly enough to know wots inside the law and wots outside it; and inside it I do as the capitalists do: pinch wot I can lay me ands on. In a proper state of society I am sober, industrious and honest: in Rome, so to speak, I do as the Romans do. Wots the consequence? When trade is bad--and it's rotten bad just now--and the employers az to sack arf their men, they generally start on me. THE WOMAN. What's your name? THE MAN. Price. Bronterre O'Brien Price. Usually called Snobby Price, for short. THE WOMAN. Snobby's a carpenter, ain't it? You said you was a painter. PRICE. Not that kind of snob, but the genteel sort. I'm too uppish, owing to my intelligence, and my father being a Chartist and a reading, thinking man: a stationer, too. I'm none of your common hewers of wood and drawers of water; and don't you forget it. [He returns to his seat at the table, and takes up his mug]. Wots YOUR name? THE WOMAN. Rummy Mitchens, sir. PRICE [quaffing the remains of his milk to her] Your elth, Miss Mitchens. RUMMY [correcting him] Missis Mitchens. PRICE. Wot! Oh Rummy, Rummy! Respectable married woman, Rummy, gittin rescued by the Salvation Army by pretendin to be a bad un. Same old game! RUMMY. What am I to do? I can't starve. Them Salvation lasses is dear good girls; but the better you are, the worse they likes to think you were before they rescued you. Why shouldn't they av a bit o credit, poor loves? They're worn to rags by their work. And where would they get the money to rescue us if we was to let on we're no worse than other people? You know what ladies and gentlemen are. PRICE. Thievin swine! Wish I ad their job, Rummy, all the same. Wot does Rummy stand for? Pet name props? RUMMY. Short for Romola. PRICE. For wot!? RUMMY. Romola. It was out of a new book. Somebody me mother wanted me to grow up like. PRICE. We're companions in misfortune, Rummy. Both on us got names that nobody cawnt pronounce. Consequently I'm Snobby and you're Rummy because Bill and Sally wasn't good enough for our parents. Such is life! RUMMY. Who saved you, Mr. Price? Was it Major Barbara? PRICE. No: I come here on my own. I'm goin to be Bronterre O'Brien Price, the converted painter. I know wot they like. I'll tell em how I blasphemed and gambled and wopped my poor old mother-- RUMMY [shocked] Used you to beat your mother? PRICE. Not likely. She used to beat me. No matter: you come and listen to the converted painter, and you'll hear how she was a pious woman that taught me me prayers at er knee, an how I used to come home drunk and drag her out o bed be er snow white airs, an lam into er with the poker. RUMMY. That's what's so unfair to us women. Your confessions is just as big lies as ours: you don't tell what you really done no more than us; but you men can tell your lies right out at the meetins and be made much of for it; while the sort o confessions we az to make az to be wispered to one lady at a time. It ain't right, spite of all their piety. PRICE. Right! Do you spose the Army'd be allowed if it went and did right? Not much. It combs our air and makes us good little blokes to be robbed and put upon. But I'll play the game as good as any of em. I'll see somebody struck by lightnin, or hear a voice sayin "Snobby Price: where will you spend eternity?" I'll ave a time of it, I tell you. RUMMY. You won't be let drink, though. PRICE. I'll take it out in gorspellin, then. I don't want to drink if I can get fun enough any other way. Jenny Hill, a pale, overwrought, pretty Salvation lass of 18, comes in through the yard gate, leading Peter Shirley, a half hardened, half worn-out elderly man, weak with hunger. JENNY [supporting him] Come! pluck up. I'll get you something to eat. You'll be all right then. PRICE [rising and hurrying officiously to take the old man off Jenny's hands] Poor old man! Cheer up, brother: you'll find rest and peace and appiness ere. Hurry up with the food, miss: e's fair done. [Jenny hurries into the shelter]. Ere, buck up, daddy! She's fetchin y'a thick slice o breadn treacle, an a mug o skyblue. [He seats him at the corner of the table]. RUMMY [gaily] Keep up your old art! Never say die! SHIRLEY. I'm not an old man. I'm ony 46. I'm as good as ever I was. The grey patch come in my hair before I was thirty. All it wants is three pennorth o hair dye: am I to be turned on the streets to starve for it? Holy God! I've worked ten to twelve hours a day since I was thirteen, and paid my way all through; and now am I to be thrown into the gutter and my job given to a young man that can do it no better than me because I've black hair that goes white at the first change? PRICE [cheerfully] No good jawrin about it. You're ony a jumped-up, jerked-off, orspittle-turned-out incurable of an ole workin man: who cares about you? Eh? Make the thievin swine give you a meal: they've stole many a one from you. Get a bit o your own back. [Jenny returns with the usual meal]. There you are, brother. Awsk a blessin an tuck that into you. SHIRLEY [looking at it ravenously but not touching it, and crying like a child] I never took anything before. JENNY [petting him] Come, come! the Lord sends it to you: he wasn't above taking bread from his friends; and why should you be? Besides, when we find you a job you can pay us for it if you like. SHIRLEY [eagerly] Yes, yes: that's true. I can pay you back: it's only a loan. [Shivering] Oh Lord! oh Lord! [He turns to the table and attacks the meal ravenously]. JENNY. Well, Rummy, are you more comfortable now? RUMMY. God bless you, lovey! You've fed my body and saved my soul, haven't you? [Jenny, touched, kisses her] Sit down and rest a bit: you must be ready to drop. JENNY. I've been going hard since morning. But there's more work than we can do. I mustn't stop. RUMMY. Try a prayer for just two minutes. You'll work all the better after. JENNY [her eyes lighting up] Oh isn't it wonderful how a few minutes prayer revives you! I was quite lightheaded at twelve o'clock, I was so tired; but Major Barbara just sent me to pray for five minutes; and I was able to go on as if I had only just begun. [To Price] Did you have a piece of bread? PAIGE [with unction] Yes, miss; but I've got the piece that I value more; and that's the peace that passeth hall hannerstennin. RUMMY [fervently] Glory Hallelujah! Bill Walker, a rough customer of about 25, appears at the yard gate and looks malevolently at Jenny. JENNY. That makes me so happy. When you say that, I feel wicked for loitering here. I must get to work again. She is hurrying to the shelter, when the new-comer moves quickly up to the door and intercepts her. His manner is so threatening that she retreats as he comes at her truculently, driving her down the yard. BILL. I know you. You're the one that took away my girl. You're the one that set er agen me. Well, I'm goin to av er out. Not that I care a curse for her or you: see? But I'll let er know; and I'll let you know. I'm goin to give er a doin that'll teach er to cut away from me. Now in with you and tell er to come out afore I come in and kick er out. Tell er Bill Walker wants er. She'll know what that means; and if she keeps me waitin it'll be worse. You stop to jaw back at me; and I'll start on you: d'ye hear? There's your way. In you go. [He takes her by the arm and slings her towards the door of the shelter. She falls on her hand and knee. Rummy helps her up again]. PRICE [rising, and venturing irresolutely towards Bill]. Easy there, mate. She ain't doin you no arm. BILL. Who are you callin mate? [Standing over him threateningly]. You're goin to stand up for her, are you? Put up your ands. RUMMY [running indignantly to him to scold him]. Oh, you great brute-- [He instantly swings his left hand back against her face. She screams and reels back to the trough, where she sits down, covering her bruised face with her hands and rocking and moaning with pain]. JENNY [going to her]. Oh God forgive you! How could you strike an old woman like that? BILL [seizing her by the hair so violently that she also screams, and tearing her away from the old woman]. You Gawd forgive me again and I'll Gawd forgive you one on the jaw that'll stop you prayin for a week. [Holding her and turning fiercely on Price]. Av you anything to say agen it? Eh? PRICE [intimidated]. No, matey: she ain't anything to do with me. BILL. Good job for you! I'd put two meals into you and fight you with one finger after, you starved cur. [To Jenny] Now are you goin to fetch out Mog Habbijam; or am I to knock your face off you and fetch her myself? JENNY [writhing in his grasp] Oh please someone go in and tell Major Barbara--[she screams again as he wrenches her head down; and Price and Rummy, flee into the shelter]. BILL. You want to go in and tell your Major of me, do you? JENNY. Oh please don't drag my hair. Let me go. BILL. Do you or don't you? [She stifles a scream]. Yes or no. JENNY. God give me strength-- BILL [striking her with his fist in the face] Go and show her that, and tell her if she wants one like it to come and interfere with me. [Jenny, crying with pain, goes into the shed. He goes to the form and addresses the old man]. Here: finish your mess; and get out o my way. SHIRLEY [springing up and facing him fiercely, with the mug in his hand] You take a liberty with me, and I'll smash you over the face with the mug and cut your eye out. Ain't you satisfied--young whelps like you--with takin the bread out o the mouths of your elders that have brought you up and slaved for you, but you must come shovin and cheekin and bullyin in here, where the bread o charity is sickenin in our stummicks? BILL [contemptuously, but backing a little] Wot good are you, you old palsy mug? Wot good are you? SHIRLEY. As good as you and better. I'll do a day's work agen you or any fat young soaker of your age. Go and take my job at Horrockses, where I worked for ten year. They want young men there: they can't afford to keep men over forty-five. They're very sorry--give you a character and happy to help you to get anything suited to your years--sure a steady man won't be long out of a job. Well, let em try you. They'll find the differ. What do you know? Not as much as how to beeyave yourself--layin your dirty fist across the mouth of a respectable woman! BILL. Don't provoke me to lay it acrost yours: d'ye hear? SHIRLEY [with blighting contempt] Yes: you like an old man to hit, don't you, when you've finished with the women. I ain't seen you hit a young one yet. BILL [stung] You lie, you old soupkitchener, you. There was a young man here. Did I offer to hit him or did I not? SHIRLEY. Was he starvin or was he not? Was he a man or only a crosseyed thief an a loafer? Would you hit my son-in-law's brother? BILL. Who's he? SHIRLEY. Todger Fairmile o Balls Pond. Him that won 20 pounds off the Japanese wrastler at the music hall by standin out 17 minutes 4 seconds agen him. BILL [sullenly] I'm no music hall wrastler. Can he box? SHIRLEY. Yes: an you can't. BILL. Wot! I can't, can't I? Wot's that you say [threatening him]? SHIRLEY [not budging an inch] Will you box Todger Fairmile if I put him on to you? Say the word. BILL. [subsiding with a slouch] I'll stand up to any man alive, if he was ten Todger Fairmiles. But I don't set up to be a perfessional. SHIRLEY [looking down on him with unfathomable disdain] YOU box! Slap an old woman with the back o your hand! You hadn't even the sense to hit her where a magistrate couldn't see the mark of it, you silly young lump of conceit and ignorance. Hit a girl in the jaw and ony make her cry! If Todger Fairmile'd done it, she wouldn't a got up inside o ten minutes, no more than you would if he got on to you. Yah! I'd set about you myself if I had a week's feedin in me instead o two months starvation. [He returns to the table to finish his meal]. BILL [following him and stooping over him to drive the taunt in] You lie! you have the bread and treacle in you that you come here to beg. SHIRLEY [bursting into tears] Oh God! it's true: I'm only an old pauper on the scrap heap. [Furiously] But you'll come to it yourself; and then you'll know. You'll come to it sooner than a teetotaller like me, fillin yourself with gin at this hour o the mornin! BILL. I'm no gin drinker, you old liar; but when I want to give my girl a bloomin good idin I like to av a bit o devil in me: see? An here I am, talkin to a rotten old blighter like you sted o givin her wot for. [Working himself into a rage] I'm goin in there to fetch her out. [He makes vengefully for the shelter door]. SHIRLEY. You're goin to the station on a stretcher, more likely; and they'll take the gin and the devil out of you there when they get you inside. You mind what you're about: the major here is the Earl o Stevenage's granddaughter. BILL [checked] Garn! SHIRLEY. You'll see. BILL [his resolution oozing] Well, I ain't done nothin to er. SHIRLEY. Spose she said you did! who'd believe you? BILL [very uneasy, skulking back to the corner of the penthouse] Gawd! There's no jastice in this country. To think wot them people can do! I'm as good as er. SHIRLEY. Tell her so. It's just what a fool like you would do. Barbara, brisk and businesslike, comes from the shelter with a note book, and addresses herself to Shirley. Bill, cowed, sits down in the corner on a form, and turns his back on them. BARBARA. Good morning. SHIRLEY [standing up and taking off his hat] Good morning, miss. BARBARA. Sit down: make yourself at home. [He hesitates; but she puts a friendly hand on his shoulder and makes him obey]. Now then! since you've made friends with us, we want to know all about you. Names and addresses and trades. SHIRLEY. Peter Shirley. Fitter. Chucked out two months ago because I was too old. BARBARA [not at all surprised] You'd pass still. Why didn't you dye your hair? SHIRLEY. I did. Me age come out at a coroner's inquest on me daughter. BARBARA. Steady? SHIRLEY. Teetotaller. Never out of a job before. Good worker. And sent to the knockers like an old horse! BARBARA. No matter: if you did your part God will do his. SHIRLEY [suddenly stubborn] My religion's no concern of anybody but myself. BARBARA [guessing] I know. Secularist? SHIRLEY [hotly] Did I offer to deny it? BARBARA. Why should you? My own father's a Secularist, I think. Our Father--yours and mine--fulfils himself in many ways; and I daresay he knew what he was about when he made a Secularist of you. So buck up, Peter! we can always find a job for a steady man like you. [Shirley, disarmed, touches his hat. She turns from him to Bill]. What's your name? BILL [insolently] Wot's that to you? BARBARA [calmly making a note] Afraid to give his name. Any trade? BILL. Who's afraid to give his name? [Doggedly, with a sense of heroically defying the House of Lords in the person of Lord Stevenage] If you want to bring a charge agen me, bring it. [She waits, unruffled]. My name's Bill Walker. BARBARA [as if the name were familiar: trying to remember how] Bill Walker? [Recollecting] Oh, I know: you're the man that Jenny Hill was praying for inside just now. [She enters his name in her note book]. BILL. Who's Jenny Hill? And what call has she to pray for me? BARBARA. I don't know. Perhaps it was you that cut her lip. BILL [defiantly] Yes, it was me that cut her lip. I ain't afraid o you. BARBARA. How could you be, since you're not afraid of God? You're a brave man, Mr. Walker. It takes some pluck to do our work here; but none of us dare lift our hand against a girl like that, for fear of her father in heaven. BILL [sullenly] I want none o your cantin jaw. I suppose you think I come here to beg from you, like this damaged lot here. Not me. I don't want your bread and scrape and catlap. I don't believe in your Gawd, no more than you do yourself. BARBARA [sunnily apologetic and ladylike, as on a new footing with him] Oh, I beg your pardon for putting your name down, Mr. Walker. I didn't understand. I'll strike it out. BILL [taking this as a slight, and deeply wounded by it] Eah! you let my name alone. Ain't it good enough to be in your book? BARBARA [considering] Well, you see, there's no use putting down your name unless I can do something for you, is there? What's your trade? BILL [still smarting] That's no concern o yours. BARBARA. Just so. [very businesslike] I'll put you down as [writing] the man who--struck--poor little Jenny Hill--in the mouth. BILL [rising threateningly] See here. I've ad enough o this. BARBARA [quite sunny and fearless] What did you come to us for? BILL. I come for my girl, see? I come to take her out o this and to break er jaws for her. BARBARA [complacently] You see I was right about your trade. [Bill, on the point of retorting furiously, finds himself, to his great shame and terror, in danger of crying instead. He sits down again suddenly]. What's her name? BILL [dogged] Er name's Mog Abbijam: thats wot her name is. BARBARA. Oh, she's gone to Canning Town, to our barracks there. BILL [fortified by his resentment of Mog's perfidy] is she? [Vindictively] Then I'm goin to Kennintahn arter her. [He crosses to the gate; hesitates; finally comes back at Barbara]. Are you lyin to me to get shut o me? BARBARA. I don't want to get shut of you. I want to keep you here and save your soul. You'd better stay: you're going to have a bad time today, Bill. BILL. Who's goin to give it to me? You, props. BARBARA. Someone you don't believe in. But you'll be glad afterwards. BILL [slinking off] I'll go to Kennintahn to be out o the reach o your tongue. [Suddenly turning on her with intense malice] And if I don't find Mog there, I'll come back and do two years for you, selp me Gawd if I don't! BARBARA [a shade kindlier, if possible] It's no use, Bill. She's got another bloke. BILL. Wot! BARBARA. One of her own converts. He fell in love with her when he saw her with her soul saved, and her face clean, and her hair washed. BILL [surprised] Wottud she wash it for, the carroty slut? It's red. BARBARA. It's quite lovely now, because she wears a new look in her eyes with it. It's a pity you're too late. The new bloke has put your nose out of joint, Bill. BILL. I'll put his nose out o joint for him. Not that I care a curse for her, mind that. But I'll teach her to drop me as if I was dirt. And I'll teach him to meddle with my Judy. Wots iz bleedin name? BARBARA. Sergeant Todger Fairmile. SHIRLEY [rising with grim joy] I'll go with him, miss. I want to see them two meet. I'll take him to the infirmary when it's over. BILL [to Shirley, with undissembled misgiving] Is that im you was speakin on? SHIRLEY. That's him. BILL. Im that wrastled in the music all? SHIRLEY. The competitions at the National Sportin Club was worth nigh a hundred a year to him. He's gev em up now for religion; so he's a bit fresh for want of the exercise he was accustomed to. He'll be glad to see you. Come along. BILL. Wots is weight? SHIRLEY. Thirteen four. [Bill's last hope expires]. BARBARA. Go and talk to him, Bill. He'll convert you. SHIRLEY. He'll convert your head into a mashed potato. BILL [sullenly] I ain't afraid of him. I ain't afraid of ennybody. But he can lick me. She's done me. [He sits down moodily on the edge of the horse trough]. SHIRLEY. You ain't goin. I thought not. [He resumes his seat]. BARBARA [calling] Jenny! JENNY [appearing at the shelter door with a plaster on the corner of her mouth] Yes, Major. BARBARA. Send Rummy Mitchens out to clear away here. JENNY. I think she's afraid. BARBARA [her resemblance to her mother flashing out for a moment] Nonsense! she must do as she's told. JENNY [calling into the shelter] Rummy: the Major says you must come. Jenny comes to Barbara, purposely keeping on the side next Bill, lest he should suppose that she shrank from him or bore malice. BARBARA. Poor little Jenny! Are you tired? [Looking at the wounded cheek] Does it hurt? JENNY. No: it's all right now. It was nothing. BARBARA [critically] It was as hard as he could hit, I expect. Poor Bill! You don't feel angry with him, do you? JENNY. Oh no, no, no: indeed I don't, Major, bless his poor heart! [Barbara kisses her; and she runs away merrily into the shelter. Bill writhes with an agonizing return of his new and alarming symptoms, but says nothing. Rummy Mitchens comes from the shelter]. BARBARA [going to meet Rummy] Now Rummy, bustle. Take in those mugs and plates to be washed; and throw the crumbs about for the birds. Rummy takes the three plates and mugs; but Shirley takes back his mug from her, as there it still come milk left in it. RUMMY. There ain't any crumbs. This ain't a time to waste good bread on birds. PRICE [appearing at the shelter door] Gentleman come to see the shelter, Major. Says he's your father. BARBARA. All right. Coming. [Snobby goes back into the shelter, followed by Barbara]. RUMMY [stealing across to Bill and addressing him in a subdued voice, but with intense conviction] I'd av the lor of you, you flat eared pignosed potwalloper, if she'd let me. You're no gentleman, to hit a lady in the face. [Bill, with greater things moving in him, takes no notice]. SHIRLEY [following her] Here! in with you and don't get yourself into more trouble by talking. RUMMY [with hauteur] I ain't ad the pleasure o being hintroduced to you, as I can remember. [She goes into the shelter with the plates]. BILL [savagely] Don't you talk to me, d'ye hear. You lea me alone, or I'll do you a mischief. I'm not dirt under your feet, anyway. SHIRLEY [calmly] Don't you be afeerd. You ain't such prime company that you need expect to be sought after. [He is about to go into the shelter when Barbara comes out, with Undershaft on her right]. BARBARA. Oh there you are, Mr Shirley! [Between them] This is my father: I told you he was a Secularist, didn't I? Perhaps you'll be able to comfort one another. UNDERSHAFT [startled] A Secularist! Not the least in the world: on the contrary, a confirmed mystic. BARBARA. Sorry, I'm sure. By the way, papa, what is your religion--in case I have to introduce you again? UNDERSHAFT. My religion? Well, my dear, I am a Millionaire. That is my religion. BARBARA. Then I'm afraid you and Mr Shirley wont be able to comfort one another after all. You're not a Millionaire, are you, Peter? SHIRLEY. No; and proud of it. UNDERSHAFT [gravely] Poverty, my friend, is not a thing to be proud of. SHIRLEY [angrily] Who made your millions for you? Me and my like. What's kep us poor? Keepin you rich. I wouldn't have your conscience, not for all your income. UNDERSHAFT. I wouldn't have your income, not for all your conscience, Mr Shirley. [He goes to the penthouse and sits down on a form]. BARBARA [stopping Shirley adroitly as he is about to retort] You wouldn't think he was my father, would you, Peter? Will you go into the shelter and lend the lasses a hand for a while: we're worked off our feet. SHIRLEY [bitterly] Yes: I'm in their debt for a meal, ain't I? BARBARA. Oh, not because you're in their debt; but for love of them, Peter, for love of them. [He cannot understand, and is rather scandalized]. There! Don't stare at me. In with you; and give that conscience of yours a holiday [bustling him into the shelter]. SHIRLEY [as he goes in] Ah! it's a pity you never was trained to use your reason, miss. You'd have been a very taking lecturer on Secularism. Barbara turns to her father. UNDERSHAFT. Never mind me, my dear. Go about your work; and let me watch it for a while. BARBARA. All right. UNDERSHAFT. For instance, what's the matter with that out-patient over there? BARBARA [looking at Bill, whose attitude has never changed, and whose expression of brooding wrath has deepened] Oh, we shall cure him in no time. Just watch. [She goes over to Bill and waits. He glances up at her and casts his eyes down again, uneasy, but grimmer than ever]. It would be nice to just stamp on Mog Habbijam's face, wouldn't it, Bill? BILL [starting up from the trough in consternation] It's a lie: I never said so. [She shakes her head]. Who told you wot was in my mind? BARBARA. Only your new friend. BILL. Wot new friend? BARBARA. The devil, Bill. When he gets round people they get miserable, just like you. HILL [with a heartbreaking attempt at devil-may-care cheerfulness] I ain't miserable. [He sits down again, and stretches his legs in an attempt to seem indifferent]. BARBARA. Well, if you're happy, why don't you look happy, as we do? BILL [his legs curling back in spite of him] I'm appy enough, I tell you. Why don't you lea me alown? Wot av I done to you? I ain't smashed your face, av I? BARBARA [softly: wooing his soul] It's not me that's getting at you, Bill. BILL. Who else is it? BARBARA. Somebody that doesn't intend you to smash women's faces, I suppose. Somebody or something that wants to make a man of you. BILL [blustering] Make a man o ME! Ain't I a man? eh? ain't I a man? Who sez I'm not a man? BARBARA. There's a man in you somewhere, I suppose. But why did he let you hit poor little Jenny Hill? That wasn't very manly of him, was it? BILL [tormented] Av done with it, I tell you. Chock it. I'm sick of your Jenny Ill and er silly little face. BARBARA. Then why do you keep thinking about it? Why does it keep coming up against you in your mind? You're not getting converted, are you? BILL [with conviction] Not ME. Not likely. Not arf. BARBARA. That's right, Bill. Hold out against it. Put out your strength. Don't let's get you cheap. Todger Fairmile said he wrestled for three nights against his Salvation harder than he ever wrestled with the Jap at the music hall. He gave in to the Jap when his arm was going to break. But he didn't give in to his salvation until his heart was going to break. Perhaps you'll escape that. You haven't any heart, have you? BILL. Wot dye mean? Wy ain't I got a art the same as ennybody else? BARBARA. A man with a heart wouldn't have bashed poor little Jenny's face, would he? BILL [almost crying] Ow, will you lea me alown? Av I ever offered to meddle with you, that you come noggin and provowkin me lawk this? [He writhes convulsively from his eyes to his toes]. BARBARA [with a steady soothing hand on his arm and a gentle voice that never lets him go] It's your soul that's hurting you, Bill, and not me. We've been through it all ourselves. Come with us, Bill. [He looks wildly round]. To brave manhood on earth and eternal glory in heaven. [He is on the point of breaking down]. Come. [A drum is heard in the shelter; and Bill, with a gasp, escapes from the spell as Barbara turns quickly. Adolphus enters from the shelter with a big drum]. Oh! there you are, Dolly. Let me introduce a new friend of mine, Mr Bill Walker. This is my bloke, Bill: Mr Cusins. [Cusins salutes with his drumstick]. BILL. Goin to marry im? BARBARA. Yes. BILL [fervently] Gawd elp im! Gawd elp im! BARBARA. Why? Do you think he won't be happy with me? BILL. I've only ad to stand it for a mornin: e'll av to stand it for a lifetime. CUSINS. That is a frightful reflection, Mr Walker. But I can't tear myself away from her. BILL. Well, I can. [To Barbara] Eah! do you know where I'm goin to, and wot I'm goin to do? BARBARA. Yes: you're going to heaven; and you're coming back here before the week's out to tell me so. BILL. You lie. I'm goin to Kennintahn, to spit in Todger Fairmile's eye. I bashed Jenny Ill's face; and now I'll get me own face bashed and come back and show it to er. E'll it me ardern I it er. That'll make us square. [To Adolphus] Is that fair or is it not? You're a genlmn: you oughter know. BARBARA. Two black eyes wont make one white one, Bill. BILL. I didn't ast you. Cawn't you never keep your mahth shut? I ast the genlmn. CUSINS [reflectively] Yes: I think you're right, Mr Walker. Yes: I should do it. It's curious: it's exactly what an ancient Greek would have done. BARBARA. But what good will it do? CUSINS. Well, it will give Mr Fairmile some exercise; and it will satisfy Mr Walker's soul. BILL. Rot! there ain't no sach a thing as a soul. Ah kin you tell wether I've a soul or not? You never seen it. BARBARA. I've seen it hurting you when you went against it. BILL [with compressed aggravation] If you was my girl and took the word out o me mahth lawk thet, I'd give you suthink you'd feel urtin, so I would. [To Adolphus] You take my tip, mate. Stop er jawr; or you'll die afore your time. [With intense expression] Wore aht: thets wot you'll be: wore aht. [He goes away through the gate]. CUSINS [looking after him] I wonder! BARBARA. Dolly! [indignant, in her mother's manner]. CUSINS. Yes, my dear, it's very wearing to be in love with you. If it lasts, I quite think I shall die young. BARBARA. Should you mind? CUSINS. Not at all. [He is suddenly softened, and kisses her over the drum, evidently not for the first time, as people cannot kiss over a big drum without practice. Undershaft coughs]. BARBARA. It's all right, papa, we've not forgotten you. Dolly: explain the place to papa: I haven't time. [She goes busily into the shelter]. Undershaft and Adolpbus now have the yard to themselves. Undershaft, seated on a form, and still keenly attentive, looks hard at Adolphus. Adolphus looks hard at him. UNDERSHAFT. I fancy you guess something of what is in my mind, Mr Cusins. [Cusins flourishes his drumsticks as if in the art of beating a lively rataplan, but makes no sound]. Exactly so. But suppose Barbara finds you out! CUSINS. You know, I do not admit that I am imposing on Barbara. I am quite genuinely interested in the views of the Salvation Army. The fact is, I am a sort of collector of religions; and the curious thing is that I find I can believe them all. By the way, have you any religion? UNDERSHAFT. Yes. CUSINS. Anything out of the common? UNDERSHAFT. Only that there are two things necessary to Salvation. CUSINS [disappointed, but polite] Ah, the Church Catechism. Charles Lomax also belongs to the Established Church. UNDERSHAFT. The two things are-- CUSINS. Baptism and-- UNDERSHAFT. No. Money and gunpowder. CUSINS [surprised, but interested] That is the general opinion of our governing classes. The novelty is in hearing any man confess it. UNDERSHAFT. Just so. CUSINS. Excuse me: is there any place in your religion for honor, justice, truth, love, mercy and so forth? UNDERSHAFT. Yes: they are the graces and luxuries of a rich, strong, and safe life. CUSINS. Suppose one is forced to choose between them and money or gunpowder? UNDERSHAFT. Choose money and gunpowder; for without enough of both you cannot afford the others. CUSINS. That is your religion? UNDERSHAFT. Yes. The cadence of this reply makes a full close in the conversation. Cusins twists his face dubiously and contemplates Undershaft. Undershaft contemplates him. CUSINS. Barbara won't stand that. You will have to choose between your religion and Barbara. UNDERSHAFT. So will you, my friend. She will find out that that drum of yours is hollow. CUSINS. Father Undershaft: you are mistaken: I am a sincere Salvationist. You do not understand the Salvation Army. It is the army of joy, of love, of courage: it has banished the fear and remorse and despair of the old hellridden evangelical sects: it marches to fight the devil with trumpet and drum, with music and dancing, with banner and palm, as becomes a sally from heaven by its happy garrison. It picks the waster out of the public house and makes a man of him: it finds a worm wriggling in a back kitchen, and lo! a woman! Men and women of rank too, sons and daughters of the Highest. It takes the poor professor of Greek, the most artificial and self-suppressed of human creatures, from his meal of roots, and lets loose the rhapsodist in him; reveals the true worship of Dionysos to him; sends him down the public street drumming dithyrambs [he plays a thundering flourish on the drum]. UNDERSHAFT. You will alarm the shelter. CUSINS. Oh, they are accustomed to these sudden ecstasies of piety. However, if the drum worries you-- [he pockets the drumsticks; unhooks the drum; and stands it on the ground opposite the gateway]. UNDERSHAFT. Thank you. CUSINS. You remember what Euripides says about your money and gunpowder? UNDERSHAFT. No. CUSINS [declaiming] One and another In money and guns may outpass his brother; And men in their millions float and flow And seethe with a million hopes as leaven; And they win their will; or they miss their will; And their hopes are dead or are pined for still: But whoe'er can know As the long days go That to live is happy, has found his heaven. My translation: what do you think of it? UNDERSHAFT. I think, my friend, that if you wish to know, as the long days go, that to live is happy, you must first acquire money enough for a decent life, and power enough to be your own master. CUSINS. You are damnably discouraging. [He resumes his declamation]. Is it so hard a thing to see That the spirit of God--whate'er it be-- The Law that abides and changes not, ages long, The Eternal and Nature-born: these things be strong. What else is Wisdom? What of Man's endeavor, Or God's high grace so lovely and so great? To stand from fear set free? to breathe and wait? To hold a hand uplifted over Fate? And shall not Barbara be loved for ever? UNDERSHAFT. Euripides mentions Barbara, does he? CUSINS. It is a fair translation. The word means Loveliness. UNDERSHAFT. May I ask--as Barbara's father--how much a year she is to be loved for ever on? CUSINS. As Barbara's father, that is more your affair than mine. I can feed her by teaching Greek: that is about all. UNDERSHAFT. Do you consider it a good match for her? CUSINS [with polite obstinacy] Mr Undershaft: I am in many ways a weak, timid, ineffectual person; and my health is far from satisfactory. But whenever I feel that I must have anything, I get it, sooner or later. I feel that way about Barbara. I don't like marriage: I feel intensely afraid of it; and I don't know what I shall do with Barbara or what she will do with me. But I feel that I and nobody else must marry her. Please regard that as settled.--Not that I wish to be arbitrary; but why should I waste your time in discussing what is inevitable? UNDERSHAFT. You mean that you will stick at nothing not even the conversion of the Salvation Army to the worship of Dionysos. CUSINS. The business of the Salvation Army is to save, not to wrangle about the name of the pathfinder. Dionysos or another: what does it matter? UNDERSHAFT [rising and approaching him] Professor Cusins you are a young man after my own heart. CUSINS. Mr Undershaft: you are, as far as I am able to gather, a most infernal old rascal; but you appeal very strongly to my sense of ironic humor. Undershaft mutely offers his hand. They shake. UNDERSHAFT [suddenly concentrating himself] And now to business. CUSINS. Pardon me. We were discussing religion. Why go back to such an uninteresting and unimportant subject as business? UNDERSHAFT. Religion is our business at present, because it is through religion alone that we can win Barbara. CUSINS. Have you, too, fallen in love with Barbara? UNDERSHAFT. Yes, with a father's love. CUSINS. A father's love for a grown-up daughter is the most dangerous of all infatuations. I apologize for mentioning my own pale, coy, mistrustful fancy in the same breath with it. UNDERSHAFT. Keep to the point. We have to win her; and we are neither of us Methodists. CUSINS. That doesn't matter. The power Barbara wields here--the power that wields Barbara herself--is not Calvinism, not Presbyterianism, not Methodism-- UNDERSHAFT. Not Greek Paganism either, eh? CUSINS. I admit that. Barbara is quite original in her religion. UNDERSHAFT [triumphantly] Aha! Barbara Undershaft would be. Her inspiration comes from within herself. CUSINS. How do you suppose it got there? UNDERSHAFT [in towering excitement] It is the Undershaft inheritance. I shall hand on my torch to my daughter. She shall make my converts and preach my gospel. CUSINS. What! Money and gunpowder! UNDERSHAFT. Yes, money and gunpowder; freedom and power; command of life and command of death. CUSINS [urbanely: trying to bring him down to earth] This is extremely interesting, Mr Undershaft. Of course you know that you are mad. UNDERSHAFT [with redoubled force] And you? CUSINS. Oh, mad as a hatter. You are welcome to my secret since I have discovered yours. But I am astonished. Can a madman make cannons? UNDERSHAFT. Would anyone else than a madman make them? And now [with surging energy] question for question. Can a sane man translate Euripides? CUSINS. No. UNDERSHAFT [reining him by the shoulder] Can a sane woman make a man of a waster or a woman of a worm? CUSINS [reeling before the storm] Father Colossus--Mammoth Millionaire-- UNDERSHAFT [pressing him] Are there two mad people or three in this Salvation shelter to-day? CUSINS. You mean Barbara is as mad as we are! UNDERSHAFT [pushing him lightly off and resuming his equanimity suddenly and completely] Pooh, Professor! let us call things by their proper names. I am a millionaire; you are a poet; Barbara is a savior of souls. What have we three to do with the common mob of slaves and idolaters? [He sits down again with a shrug of contempt for the mob]. CUSINS. Take care! Barbara is in love with the common people. So am I. Have you never felt the romance of that love? UNDERSHAFT [cold and sardonic] Have you ever been in love with Poverty, like St Francis? Have you ever been in love with Dirt, like St Simeon? Have you ever been in love with disease and suffering, like our nurses and philanthropists? Such passions are not virtues, but the most unnatural of all the vices. This love of the common people may please an earl's granddaughter and a university professor; but I have been a common man and a poor man; and it has no romance for me. Leave it to the poor to pretend that poverty is a blessing: leave it to the coward to make a religion of his cowardice by preaching humility: we know better than that. We three must stand together above the common people: how else can we help their children to climb up beside us? Barbara must belong to us, not to the Salvation Army. CUSINS. Well, I can only say that if you think you will get her away from the Salvation Army by talking to her as you have been talking to me, you don't know Barbara. UNDERSHAFT. My friend: I never ask for what I can buy. CUSINS [in a white fury] Do I understand you to imply that you can buy Barbara? UNDERSHAFT. No; but I can buy the Salvation Army. CUSINS. Quite impossible. UNDERSHAFT. You shall see. All religious organizations exist by selling themselves to the rich. CUSINS. Not the Army. That is the Church of the poor. UNDERSHAFT. All the more reason for buying it. CUSINS. I don't think you quite know what the Army does for the poor. UNDERSHAFT. Oh yes I do. It draws their teeth: that is enough for me--as a man of business-- CUSINS. Nonsense! It makes them sober-- UNDERSHAFT. I prefer sober workmen. The profits are larger. CUSINS. --honest-- UNDERSHAFT. Honest workmen are the most economical. CUSINS. --attached to their homes-- UNDERSHAFT. So much the better: they will put up with anything sooner than change their shop. CUSINS. --happy-- UNDERSHAFT. An invaluable safeguard against revolution. CUSINS. --unselfish-- UNDERSHAFT. Indifferent to their own interests, which suits me exactly. CUSINS. --with their thoughts on heavenly things-- UNDERSHAFT [rising] And not on Trade Unionism nor Socialism. Excellent. CUSINS [revolted] You really are an infernal old rascal. UNDERSHAFT [indicating Peter Shirley, who has just came from the shelter and strolled dejectedly down the yard between them] And this is an honest man! SHIRLEY. Yes; and what av I got by it? [he passes on bitterly and sits on the form, in the corner of the penthouse]. Snobby Price, beaming sanctimoniously, and Jenny Hill, with a tambourine full of coppers, come from the shelter and go to the drum, on which Jenny begins to count the money. UNDERSHAFT [replying to Shirley] Oh, your employers must have got a good deal by it from first to last. [He sits on the table, with one foot on the side form. Cusins, overwhelmed, sits down on the same form nearer the shelter. Barbara comes from the shelter to the middle of the yard. She is excited and a little overwrought]. BARBARA. We've just had a splendid experience meeting at the other gate in Cripps's lane. I've hardly ever seen them so much moved as they were by your confession, Mr Price. PRICE. I could almost be glad of my past wickedness if I could believe that it would elp to keep hathers stright. BARBARA. So it will, Snobby. How much, Jenny? JENNY. Four and tenpence, Major. BARBARA. Oh Snobby, if you had given your poor mother just one more kick, we should have got the whole five shillings! PRICE. If she heard you say that, miss, she'd be sorry I didn't. But I'm glad. Oh what a joy it will be to her when she hears I'm saved! UNDERSHAFT. Shall I contribute the odd twopence, Barbara? The millionaire's mite, eh? [He takes a couple of pennies from his pocket.] BARBARA. How did you make that twopence? UNDERSHAFT. As usual. By selling cannons, torpedoes, submarines, and my new patent Grand Duke hand grenade. BARBARA. Put it back in your pocket. You can't buy your Salvation here for twopence: you must work it out. UNDERSHAFT. Is twopence not enough? I can afford a little more, if you press me. BARBARA. Two million millions would not be enough. There is bad blood on your hands; and nothing but good blood can cleanse them. Money is no use. Take it away. [She turns to Cusins]. Dolly: you must write another letter for me to the papers. [He makes a wry face]. Yes: I know you don't like it; but it must be done. The starvation this winter is beating us: everybody is unemployed. The General says we must close this shelter if we cant get more money. I force the collections at the meetings until I am ashamed, don't I, Snobby? PRICE. It's a fair treat to see you work it, miss. The way you got them up from three-and-six to four-and-ten with that hymn, penny by penny and verse by verse, was a caution. Not a Cheap Jack on Mile End Waste could touch you at it. BARBARA. Yes; but I wish we could do without it. I am getting at last to think more of the collection than of the people's souls. And what are those hatfuls of pence and halfpence? We want thousands! tens of thousands! hundreds of thousands! I want to convert people, not to be always begging for the Army in a way I'd die sooner than beg for myself. UNDERSHAFT [in profound irony] Genuine unselfishness is capable of anything, my dear. BARBARA [unsuspectingly, as she turns away to take the money from the drum and put it in a cash bag she carries] Yes, isn't it? [Undershaft looks sardonically at Cusins]. CUSINS [aside to Undershaft] Mephistopheles! Machiavelli! BARBARA [tears coming into her eyes as she ties the bag and pockets it] How are we to feed them? I can't talk religion to a man with bodily hunger in his eyes. [Almost breaking down] It's frightful. JENNY [running to her] Major, dear-- BARBARA [rebounding] No: don't comfort me. It will be all right. We shall get the money. UNDERSHAFT. How? JENNY. By praying for it, of course. Mrs Baines says she prayed for it last night; and she has never prayed for it in vain: never once. [She goes to the gate and looks out into the street]. BARBARA [who has dried her eyes and regained her composure] By the way, dad, Mrs Baines has come to march with us to our big meeting this afternoon; and she is very anxious to meet you, for some reason or other. Perhaps she'll convert you. UNDERSHAFT. I shall be delighted, my dear. JENNY [at the gate: excitedly] Major! Major! Here's that man back again. BARBARA. What man? JENNY. The man that hit me. Oh, I hope he's coming back to join us. Bill Walker, with frost on his jacket, comes through the gate, his hands deep in his pockets and his chin sunk between his shoulders, like a cleaned-out gambler. He halts between Barbara and the drum. BARBARA. Hullo, Bill! Back already! BILL [nagging at her] Bin talkin ever sense, av you? BARBARA. Pretty nearly. Well, has Todger paid you out for poor Jenny's jaw? BILL. NO he ain't. BARBARA. I thought your jacket looked a bit snowy. BILL. So it is snowy. You want to know where the snow come from, don't you? BARBARA. Yes. BILL. Well, it come from off the ground in Parkinses Corner in Kennintahn. It got rubbed off be my shoulders see? BARBARA. Pity you didn't rub some off with your knees, Bill! That would have done you a lot of good. BILL [with your mirthless humor] I was saving another man's knees at the time. E was kneelin on my ed, so e was. JENNY. Who was kneeling on your head? BILL. Todger was. E was prayin for me: prayin comfortable with me as a carpet. So was Mog. So was the ole bloomin meetin. Mog she sez "O Lord break is stubborn spirit; but don't urt is dear art." That was wot she said. "Don't urt is dear art"! An er bloke--thirteen stun four!--kneelin wiv all is weight on me. Funny, ain't it? JENNY. Oh no. We're so sorry, Mr Walker. BARBARA [enjoying it frankly] Nonsense! of course it's funny. Served you right, Bill! You must have done something to him first. BILL [doggedly] I did wot I said I'd do. I spit in is eye. E looks up at the sky and sez, "O that I should be fahnd worthy to be spit upon for the gospel's sake!" a sez; an Mog sez "Glory Allelloolier!"; an then a called me Brother, an dahned me as if I was a kid and a was me mother washin me a Setterda nawt. I adn't just no show wiv im at all. Arf the street prayed; an the tother arf larfed fit to split theirselves. [To Barbara] There! are you settisfawd nah? BARBARA [her eyes dancing] Wish I'd been there, Bill. BILL. Yes: you'd a got in a hextra bit o talk on me, wouldn't you? JENNY. I'm so sorry, Mr. Walker. BILL [fiercely] Don't you go bein sorry for me: you've no call. Listen ere. I broke your jawr. JENNY. No, it didn't hurt me: indeed it didn't, except for a moment. It was only that I was frightened. BILL. I don't want to be forgive be you, or be ennybody. Wot I did I'll pay for. I tried to get me own jawr broke to settisfaw you-- JENNY [distressed] Oh no-- BILL [impatiently] Tell y'I did: cawn't you listen to wot's bein told you? All I got be it was bein made a sight of in the public street for me pains. Well, if I cawn't settisfaw you one way, I can another. Listen ere! I ad two quid saved agen the frost; an I've a pahnd of it left. A mate n mine last week ad words with the Judy e's goin to marry. E give er wot-for; an e's bin fined fifteen bob. E ad a right to it er because they was goin to be marrid; but I adn't no right to it you; so put anather fawv bob on an call it a pahnd's worth. [He produces a sovereign]. Ere's the money. Take it; and let's av no more o your forgivin an prayin and your Major jawrin me. Let wot I done be done and paid for; and let there be a end of it. JENNY. Oh, I couldn't take it, Mr. Walker. But if you would give a shilling or two to poor Rummy Mitchens! you really did hurt her; and she's old. BILL [contemptuously] Not likely. I'd give her anather as soon as look at er. Let her av the lawr o me as she threatened! She ain't forgiven me: not mach. Wot I done to er is not on me mawnd--wot she [indicating Barbara] might call on me conscience--no more than stickin a pig. It's this Christian game o yours that I won't av played agen me: this bloomin forgivin an noggin an jawrin that makes a man that sore that iz lawf's a burdn to im. I won't av it, I tell you; so take your money and stop throwin your silly bashed face hup agen me. JENNY. Major: may I take a little of it for the Army? BARBARA. No: the Army is not to be bought. We want your soul, Bill; and we'll take nothing less. BILL [bitterly] I know. It ain't enough. Me an me few shillins is not good enough for you. You're a earl's grendorter, you are. Nothin less than a underd pahnd for you. UNDERSHAFT. Come, Barbara! you could do a great deal of good with a hundred pounds. If you will set this gentleman's mind at ease by taking his pound, I will give the other ninety-nine [Bill, astounded by such opulence, instinctively touches his cap]. BARBARA. Oh, you're too extravagant, papa. Bill offers twenty pieces of silver. All you need offer is the other ten. That will make the standard price to buy anybody who's for sale. I'm not; and the Army's not. [To Bill] You'll never have another quiet moment, Bill, until you come round to us. You can't stand out against your salvation. BILL [sullenly] I cawn't stend aht agen music all wrastlers and artful tongued women. I've offered to pay. I can do no more. Take it or leave it. There it is. [He throws the sovereign on the drum, and sits down on the horse-trough. The coin fascinates Snobby Price, who takes an early opportunity of dropping his cap on it]. Mrs Baines comes from the shelter. She is dressed as a Salvation Army Commissioner. She is an earnest looking woman of about 40, with a caressing, urgent voice, and an appealing manner. BARBARA. This is my father, Mrs Baines. [Undershaft comes from the table, taking his hat off with marked civility]. Try what you can do with him. He won't listen to me, because he remembers what a fool I was when I was a baby. [She leaves them together and chats with Jenny]. MRS BAINES. Have you been shown over the shelter, Mr Undershaft? You know the work we're doing, of course. UNDERSHAFT [very civilly] The whole nation knows it, Mrs Baines. MRS BAINES. No, Sir: the whole nation does not know it, or we should not be crippled as we are for want of money to carry our work through the length and breadth of the land. Let me tell you that there would have been rioting this winter in London but for us. UNDERSHAFT. You really think so? MRS BAINES. I know it. I remember 1886, when you rich gentlemen hardened your hearts against the cry of the poor. They broke the windows of your clubs in Pall Mall. UNDERSHAFT [gleaming with approval of their method] And the Mansion House Fund went up next day from thirty thousand pounds to seventy-nine thousand! I remember quite well. MRS BAINES. Well, won't you help me to get at the people? They won't break windows then. Come here, Price. Let me show you to this gentleman [Price comes to be inspected]. Do you remember the window breaking? PRICE. My ole father thought it was the revolution, ma'am. MRS BAINES. Would you break windows now? PRICE. Oh no ma'm. The windows of eaven av bin opened to me. I know now that the rich man is a sinner like myself. RUMMY [appearing above at the loft door] Snobby Price! SNOBBY. Wot is it? RUMMY. Your mother's askin for you at the other gate in Crippses Lane. She's heard about your confession [Price turns pale]. MRS BAINES. Go, Mr. Price; and pray with her. JENNY. You can go through the shelter, Snobby. PRICE [to Mrs Baines] I couldn't face her now; ma'am, with all the weight of my sins fresh on me. Tell her she'll find her son at ome, waitin for her in prayer. [He skulks off through the gate, incidentally stealing the sovereign on his way out by picking up his cap from the drum]. MRS BAINES [with swimming eyes] You see how we take the anger and the bitterness against you out of their hearts, Mr Undershaft. UNDERSHAFT. It is certainly most convenient and gratifying to all large employers of labor, Mrs Baines. MRS BAINES. Barbara: Jenny: I have good news: most wonderful news. [Jenny runs to her]. My prayers have been answered. I told you they would, Jenny, didn't I? JENNY. Yes, yes. BARBARA [moving nearer to the drum] Have we got money enough to keep the shelter open? MRS BAINES. I hope we shall have enough to keep all the shelters open. Lord Saxmundham has promised us five thousand pounds-- BARBARA. Hooray! JENNY. Glory! MRS BAINES. --if-- BARBARA. "If!" If what? MRS BAINES. If five other gentlemen will give a thousand each to make it up to ten thousand. BARBARA. Who is Lord Saxmundham? I never heard of him. UNDERSHAFT [who has pricked up his ears at the peer's name, and is now watching Barbara curiously] A new creation, my dear. You have heard of Sir Horace Bodger? BARBARA. Bodger! Do you mean the distiller? Bodger's whisky! UNDERSHAFT. That is the man. He is one of the greatest of our public benefactors. He restored the cathedral at Hakington. They made him a baronet for that. He gave half a million to the funds of his party: they made him a baron for that. SHIRLEY. What will they give him for the five thousand? UNDERSHAFT. There is nothing left to give him. So the five thousand, I should think, is to save his soul. MRS BAINES. Heaven grant it may! Oh Mr. Undershaft, you have some very rich friends. Can't you help us towards the other five thousand? We are going to hold a great meeting this afternoon at the Assembly Hall in the Mile End Road. If I could only announce that one gentleman had come forward to support Lord Saxmundham, others would follow. Don't you know somebody? Couldn't you? Wouldn't you? [her eyes fill with tears] oh, think of those poor people, Mr Undershaft: think of how much it means to them, and how little to a great man like you. UNDERSHAFT [sardonically gallant] Mrs Baines: you are irresistible. I can't disappoint you; and I can't deny myself the satisfaction of making Bodger pay up. You shall have your five thousand pounds. MRS BAINES. Thank God! UNDERSHAFT. You don't thank me? MRS BAINES. Oh sir, don't try to be cynical: don't be ashamed of being a good man. The Lord will bless you abundantly; and our prayers will be like a strong fortification round you all the days of your life. [With a touch of caution] You will let me have the cheque to show at the meeting, won't you? Jenny: go in and fetch a pen and ink. [Jenny runs to the shelter door]. UNDERSHAFT. Do not disturb Miss Hill: I have a fountain pen. [Jenny halts. He sits at the table and writes the cheque. Cusins rises to make more room for him. They all watch him silently]. BILL [cynically, aside to Barbara, his voice and accent horribly debased] Wot prawce Selvytion nah? BARBARA. Stop. [Undershaft stops writing: they all turn to her in surprise]. Mrs Baines: are you really going to take this money? MRS BAINES [astonished] Why not, dear? BARBARA. Why not! Do you know what my father is? Have you forgotten that Lord Saxmundham is Bodger the whisky man? Do you remember how we implored the County Council to stop him from writing Bodger's Whisky in letters of fire against the sky; so that the poor drinkruined creatures on the embankment could not wake up from their snatches of sleep without being reminded of their deadly thirst by that wicked sky sign? Do you know that the worst thing I have had to fight here is not the devil, but Bodger, Bodger, Bodger, with his whisky, his distilleries, and his tied houses? Are you going to make our shelter another tied house for him, and ask me to keep it? BILL. Rotten drunken whisky it is too. MRS BAINES. Dear Barbara: Lord Saxmundham has a soul to be saved like any of us. If heaven has found the way to make a good use of his money, are we to set ourselves up against the answer to our prayers? BARBARA. I know he has a soul to be saved. Let him come down here; and I'll do my best to help him to his salvation. But he wants to send his cheque down to buy us, and go on being as wicked as ever. UNDERSHAFT [with a reasonableness which Cusins alone perceives to be ironical] My dear Barbara: alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick-- BARBARA. It does nothing of the sort. UNDERSHAFT. Well, it assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning. Is it Bodger's fault that this inestimable gift is deplorably abused by less than one per cent of the poor? [He turns again to the table; signs the cheque; and crosses it]. MRS BAINES. Barbara: will there be less drinking or more if all those poor souls we are saving come to-morrow and find the doors of our shelters shut in their faces? Lord Saxmundham gives us the money to stop drinking--to take his own business from him. CUSINS [impishly] Pure self-sacrifice on Bodger's part, clearly! Bless dear Bodger! [Barbara almost breaks down as Adolpbus, too, fails her]. UNDERSHAFT [tearing out the cheque and pocketing the book as he rises and goes past Cusins to Mrs Baines] I also, Mrs Baines, may claim a little disinterestedness. Think of my business! think of the widows and orphans! the men and lads torn to pieces with shrapnel and poisoned with lyddite [Mrs Baines shrinks; but he goes on remorselessly]! the oceans of blood, not one drop of which is shed in a really just cause! the ravaged crops! the peaceful peasants forced, women and men, to till their fields under the fire of opposing armies on pain of starvation! the bad blood of the fierce little cowards at home who egg on others to fight for the gratification of their national vanity! All this makes money for me: I am never richer, never busier than when the papers are full of it. Well, it is your work to preach peace on earth and goodwill to men. [Mrs Baines's face lights up again]. Every convert you make is a vote against war. [Her lips move in prayer]. Yet I give you this money to help you to hasten my own commercial ruin. [He gives her the cheque]. CUSINS [mounting the form in an ecstasy of mischief] The millennium will be inaugurated by the unselfishness of Undershaft and Bodger. Oh be joyful! [He takes the drumsticks from his pockets and flourishes them]. MRS BAINES [taking the cheque] The longer I live the more proof I see that there is an Infinite Goodness that turns everything to the work of salvation sooner or later. Who would have thought that any good could have come out of war and drink? And yet their profits are brought today to the feet of salvation to do its blessed work. [She is affected to tears]. JENNY [running to Mrs Baines and throwing her arms round her] Oh dear! how blessed, how glorious it all is! CUSINS [in a convulsion of irony] Let us seize this unspeakable moment. Let us march to the great meeting at once. Excuse me just an instant. [He rushes into the shelter. Jenny takes her tambourine from the drum head]. MRS BAINES. Mr Undershaft: have you ever seen a thousand people fall on their knees with one impulse and pray? Come with us to the meeting. Barbara shall tell them that the Army is saved, and saved through you. CUSINS [returning impetuously from the shelter with a flag and a trombone, and coming between Mrs Baines and Undershaft] You shall carry the flag down the first street, Mrs Baines [he gives her the flag]. Mr Undershaft is a gifted trombonist: he shall intone an Olympian diapason to the West Ham Salvation March. [Aside to Undershaft, as he forces the trombone on him] Blow, Machiavelli, blow. UNDERSHAFT [aside to him, as he takes the trombone] The trumpet in Zion! [Cusins rushes to the drum, which he takes up and puts on. Undershaft continues, aloud] I will do my best. I could vamp a bass if I knew the tune. CUSINS. It is a wedding chorus from one of Donizetti's operas; but we have converted it. We convert everything to good here, including Bodger. You remember the chorus. "For thee immense rejoicing--immenso giubilo--immenso giubilo." [With drum obbligato] Rum tum ti tum tum, tum tum ti ta-- BARBARA. Dolly: you are breaking my heart. CUSINS. What is a broken heart more or less here? Dionysos Undershaft has descended. I am possessed. MRS BAINES. Come, Barbara: I must have my dear Major to carry the flag with me. JENNY. Yes, yes, Major darling. CUSINS [snatches the tambourine out of Jenny's hand and mutely offers it to Barbara]. BARBARA [coming forward a little as she puts the offer behind her with a shudder, whilst Cusins recklessly tosses the tambourine back to Jenny and goes to the gate] I can't come. JENNY. Not come! MRS BAINES [with tears in her eyes] Barbara: do you think I am wrong to take the money? BARBARA [impulsively going to her and kissing her] No, no: God help you, dear, you must: you are saving the Army. Go; and may you have a great meeting! JENNY. But arn't you coming? BARBARA. No. [She begins taking off the silver brooch from her collar]. MRS BAINES. Barbara: what are you doing? JENNY. Why are you taking your badge off? You can't be going to leave us, Major. BARBARA [quietly] Father: come here. UNDERSHAFT [coming to her] My dear! [Seeing that she is going to pin the badge on his collar, he retreats to the penthouse in some alarm]. BARBARA [following him] Don't be frightened. [She pins the badge on and steps back towards the table, showing him to the others] There! It's not much for 5000 pounds is it? MRS BAINES. Barbara: if you won't come and pray with us, promise me you will pray for us. BARBARA. I can't pray now. Perhaps I shall never pray again. MRS BAINES. Barbara! JENNY. Major! BARBARA [almost delirious] I can't bear any more. Quick march! CUSINS [calling to the procession in the street outside] Off we go. Play up, there! Immenso giubilo. [He gives the time with his drum; and the band strikes up the march, which rapidly becomes more distant as the procession moves briskly away]. MRS BAINES. I must go, dear. You're overworked: you will be all right tomorrow. We'll never lose you. Now Jenny: step out with the old flag. Blood and Fire! [She marches out through the gate with her flag]. JENNY. Glory Hallelujah! [flourishing her tambourine and marching]. UNDERSHAFT [to Cusins, as he marches out past him easing the slide of his trombone] "My ducats and my daughter"! CUSINS [following him out] Money and gunpowder! BARBARA. Drunkenness and Murder! My God: why hast thou forsaken me? She sinks on the form with her face buried in her hands. The march passes away into silence. Bill Walker steals across to her. BILL [taunting] Wot prawce Selvytion nah? SHIRLEY. Don't you hit her when she's down. BILL. She it me wen aw wiz dahn. Waw shouldn't I git a bit o me own back? BARBARA [raising her head] I didn't take your money, Bill. [She crosses the yard to the gate and turns her back on the two men to hide her face from them]. BILL [sneering after her] Naow, it warn't enough for you. [Turning to the drum, he misses the money]. Ellow! If you ain't took it summun else az. Were's it gorn? Blame me if Jenny Ill didn't take it arter all! RUMMY [screaming at him from the loft] You lie, you dirty blackguard! Snobby Price pinched it off the drum wen e took ap iz cap. I was ap ere all the time an see im do it. BILL. Wot! Stowl maw money! Waw didn't you call thief on him, you silly old mucker you? RUMMY. To serve you aht for ittin me acrost the face. It's cost y'pahnd, that az. [Raising a paean of squalid triumph] I done you. I'm even with you. I've ad it aht o y--. [Bill snatches up Shirley's mug and hurls it at her. She slams the loft door and vanishes. The mug smashes against the door and falls in fragments]. BILL [beginning to chuckle] Tell us, ole man, wot o'clock this morrun was it wen im as they call Snobby Prawce was sived? BARBARA [turning to him more composedly, and with unspoiled sweetness] About half past twelve, Bill. And he pinched your pound at a quarter to two. I know. Well, you can't afford to lose it. I'll send it to you. BILL [his voice and accent suddenly improving] Not if I was to starve for it. I ain't to be bought. SHIRLEY. Ain't you? You'd sell yourself to the devil for a pint o beer; ony there ain't no devil to make the offer. BILL [unshamed] So I would, mate, and often av, cheerful. But she cawn't buy me. [Approaching Barbara] You wanted my soul, did you? Well, you ain't got it. BARBARA. I nearly got it, Bill. But we've sold it back to you for ten thousand pounds. SHIRLEY. And dear at the money! BARBARA. No, Peter: it was worth more than money. BILL [salvationproof] It's no good: you cawn't get rahnd me nah. I don't blieve in it; and I've seen today that I was right. [Going] So long, old soupkitchener! Ta, ta, Major Earl's Grendorter! [Turning at the gate] Wot prawce Selvytion nah? Snobby Prawce! Ha! ha! BARBARA [offering her hand] Goodbye, Bill. BILL [taken aback, half plucks his cap off then shoves it on again defiantly] Git aht. [Barbara drops her hand, discouraged. He has a twinge of remorse]. But thet's aw rawt, you knaow. Nathink pasnl. Naow mellice. So long, Judy. [He goes]. BARBARA. No malice. So long, Bill. SHIRLEY [shaking his head] You make too much of him, miss, in your innocence. BARBARA [going to him] Peter: I'm like you now. Cleaned out, and lost my job. SHIRLEY. You've youth an hope. That's two better than me. That's hope for you. BARBARA. I'll get you a job, Peter, the youth will have to be enough for me. [She counts her money]. I have just enough left for two teas at Lockharts, a Rowton doss for you, and my tram and bus home. [He frowns and rises with offended pride. She takes his arm]. Don't be proud, Peter: it's sharing between friends. And promise me you'll talk to me and not let me cry. [She draws him towards the gate]. SHIRLEY. Well, I'm not accustomed to talk to the like of you-- BARBARA [urgently] Yes, yes: you must talk to me. Tell me about Tom Paine's books and Bradlaugh's lectures. Come along. SHIRLEY. Ah, if you would only read Tom Paine in the proper spirit, miss! [They go out through the gate together]. ACT III Next day after lunch Lady Britomart is writing in the library in Wilton Crescent. Sarah is reading in the armchair near the window. Barbara, in ordinary dresss, pale and brooding, is on the settee. Charley Lomax enters. Coming forward between the settee and the writing table, he starts on seeing Barbara fashionably attired and in low spirits. LOMAX. You've left off your uniform! Barbara says nothing; but an expression of pain passes over her face. LADY BRITOMART [warning him in low tones to be careful] Charles! LOMAX [much concerned, sitting down sympathetically on the settee beside Barbara] I'm awfully sorry, Barbara. You know I helped you all I could with the concertina and so forth. [Momentously] Still, I have never shut my eyes to the fact that there is a certain amount of tosh about the Salvation Army. Now the claims of the Church of England-- LADY BRITOMART. That's enough, Charles. Speak of something suited to your mental capacity. LOMAX. But surely the Church of England is suited to all our capacities. BARBARA [pressing his hand] Thank you for your sympathy, Cholly. Now go and spoon with Sarah. LOMAX [rising and going to Sarah] How is my ownest today? SARAH. I wish you wouldn't tell Cholly to do things, Barbara. He always comes straight and does them. Cholly: we're going to the works at Perivale St. Andrews this afternoon. LOMAX. What works? SARAH. The cannon works. LOMAX. What! Your governor's shop! SARAH. Yes. LOMAX. Oh I say! Cusins enters in poor condition. He also starts visibly when he sees Barbara without her uniform. BARBARA. I expected you this morning, Dolly. Didn't you guess that? CUSINS [sitting down beside her] I'm sorry. I have only just breakfasted. SARAH. But we've just finished lunch. BARBARA. Have you had one of your bad nights? CUSINS. No: I had rather a good night: in fact, one of the most remarkable nights I have ever passed. BARBARA. The meeting? CUSINS. No: after the meeting. LADY BRITOMART. You should have gone to bed after the meeting. What were you doing? CUSINS. Drinking. LADY BRITOMART. }{ Adolphus! SARAH. }{ Dolly! BARBARA. }{ Dolly! LOMAX. }{ Oh I say! LADY BRITOMART. What were you drinking, may I ask? CUSINS. A most devilish kind of Spanish burgundy, warranted free from added alcohol: a Temperance burgundy in fact. Its richness in natural alcohol made any addition superfluous. BARBARA. Are you joking, Dolly? CUSINS [patiently] No. I have been making a night of it with the nominal head of this household: that is all. LADY BRITOMART. Andrew made you drunk! CUSINS. No: he only provided the wine. I think it was Dionysos who made me drunk. [To Barbara] I told you I was possessed. LADY BRITOMART. You're not sober yet. Go home to bed at once. CUSINS. I have never before ventured to reproach you, Lady Brit; but how could you marry the Prince of Darkness? LADY BRITOMART. It was much more excusable to marry him than to get drunk with him. That is a new accomplishment of Andrew's, by the way. He usen't to drink. CUSINS. He doesn't now. He only sat there and completed the wreck of my moral basis, the rout of my convictions, the purchase of my soul. He cares for you, Barbara. That is what makes him so dangerous to me. BARBARA. That has nothing to do with it, Dolly. There are larger loves and diviner dreams than the fireside ones. You know that, don't you? CUSINS. Yes: that is our understanding. I know it. I hold to it. Unless he can win me on that holier ground he may amuse me for a while; but he can get no deeper hold, strong as he is. BARBARA. Keep to that; and the end will be right. Now tell me what happened at the meeting? CUSINS. It was an amazing meeting. Mrs Baines almost died of emotion. Jenny Hill went stark mad with hysteria. The Prince of Darkness played his trombone like a madman: its brazen roarings were like the laughter of the damned. 117 conversions took place then and there. They prayed with the most touching sincerity and gratitude for Bodger, and for the anonymous donor of the 5000 pounds. Your father would not let his name be given. LOMAX. That was rather fine of the old man, you know. Most chaps would have wanted the advertisement. CUSINS. He said all the charitable institutions would be down on him like kites on a battle field if he gave his name. LADY BRITOMART. That's Andrew all over. He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it. CUSINS. He convinced me that I have all my life been doing improper things for proper reasons. LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus: now that Barbara has left the Salvation Army, you had better leave it too. I will not have you playing that drum in the streets. CUSINS. Your orders are already obeyed, Lady Brit. BARBARA. Dolly: were you ever really in earnest about it? Would you have joined if you had never seen me? CUSINS [disingenuously] Well--er--well, possibly, as a collector of religions-- LOMAX [cunningly] Not as a drummer, though, you know. You are a very clearheaded brainy chap, Cholly; and it must have been apparent to you that there is a certain amount of tosh about-- LADY BRITOMART. Charles: if you must drivel, drivel like a grown-up man and not like a schoolboy. LOMAX [out of countenance] Well, drivel is drivel, don't you know, whatever a man's age. LADY BRITOMART. In good society in England, Charles, men drivel at all ages by repeating silly formulas with an air of wisdom. Schoolboys make their own formulas out of slang, like you. When they reach your age, and get political private secretaryships and things of that sort, they drop slang and get their formulas out of The Spectator or The Times. You had better confine yourself to The Times. You will find that there is a certain amount of tosh about The Times; but at least its language is reputable. LOMAX [overwhelmed] You are so awfully strong-minded, Lady Brit-- LADY BRITOMART. Rubbish! [Morrison comes in]. What is it? MORRISON. If you please, my lady, Mr Undershaft has just drove up to the door. LADY BRITOMART. Well, let him in. [Morrison hesitates]. What's the matter with you? MORRISON. Shall I announce him, my lady; or is he at home here, so to speak, my lady? LADY BRITOMART. Announce him. MORRISON. Thank you, my lady. You won't mind my asking, I hope. The occasion is in a manner of speaking new to me. LADY BRITOMART. Quite right. Go and let him in. MORRISON. Thank you, my lady. [He withdraws]. LADY BRITOMART. Children: go and get ready. [Sarah and Barbara go upstairs for their out-of-door wrap]. Charles: go and tell Stephen to come down here in five minutes: you will find him in the drawing room. [Charles goes]. Adolphus: tell them to send round the carriage in about fifteen minutes. [Adolphus goes]. MORRISON [at the door] Mr Undershaft. Undershaft comes in. Morrison goes out. UNDERSHAFT. Alone! How fortunate! LADY BRITOMART [rising] Don't be sentimental, Andrew. Sit down. [She sits on the settee: he sits beside her, on her left. She comes to the point before he has time to breathe]. Sarah must have 800 pounds a year until Charles Lomax comes into his property. Barbara will need more, and need it permanently, because Adolphus hasn't any property. UNDERSHAFT [resignedly] Yes, my dear: I will see to it. Anything else? for yourself, for instance? LADY BRITOMART. I want to talk to you about Stephen. UNDERSHAFT [rather wearily] Don't, my dear. Stephen doesn't interest me. LADY BRITOMART. He does interest me. He is our son. UNDERSHAFT. Do you really think so? He has induced us to bring him into the world; but he chose his parents very incongruously, I think. I see nothing of myself in him, and less of you. LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: Stephen is an excellent son, and a most steady, capable, highminded young man. YOU are simply trying to find an excuse for disinheriting him. UNDERSHAFT. My dear Biddy: the Undershaft tradition disinherits him. It would be dishonest of me to leave the cannon foundry to my son. LADY BRITOMART. It would be most unnatural and improper of you to leave it to anyone else, Andrew. Do you suppose this wicked and immoral tradition can be kept up for ever? Do you pretend that Stephen could not carry on the foundry just as well as all the other sons of the big business houses? UNDERSHAFT. Yes: he could learn the office routine without understanding the business, like all the other sons; and the firm would go on by its own momentum until the real Undershaft--probably an Italian or a German--would invent a new method and cut him out. LADY BRITOMART. There is nothing that any Italian or German could do that Stephen could not do. And Stephen at least has breeding. UNDERSHAFT. The son of a foundling! nonsense! LADY BRITOMART. My son, Andrew! And even you may have good blood in your veins for all you know. UNDERSHAFT. True. Probably I have. That is another argument in favor of a foundling. LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: don't be aggravating. And don't be wicked. At present you are both. UNDERSHAFT. This conversation is part of the Undershaft tradition, Biddy. Every Undershaft's wife has treated him to it ever since the house was founded. It is mere waste of breath. If the tradition be ever broken it will be for an abler man than Stephen. LADY BRITOMART [pouting] Then go away. UNDERSHAFT [deprecatory] Go away! LADY BRITOMART. Yes: go away. If you will do nothing for Stephen, you are not wanted here. Go to your foundling, whoever he is; and look after him. UNDERSHAFT. The fact is, Biddy-- LADY BRITOMART. Don't call me Biddy. I don't call you Andy. UNDERSHAFT. I will not call my wife Britomart: it is not good sense. Seriously, my love, the Undershaft tradition has landed me in a difficulty. I am getting on in years; and my partner Lazarus has at last made a stand and insisted that the succession must be settled one way or the other; and of course he is quite right. You see, I haven't found a fit successor yet. LADY BRITOMART [obstinately] There is Stephen. UNDERSHAFT. That's just it: all the foundlings I can find are exactly like Stephen. LADY BRITOMART. Andrew!! UNDERSHAFT. I want a man with no relations and no schooling: that is, a man who would be out of the running altogether if he were not a strong man. And I can't find him. Every blessed foundling nowadays is snapped up in his infancy by Barnardo homes, or School Board officers, or Boards of Guardians; and if he shows the least ability, he is fastened on by schoolmasters; trained to win scholarships like a racehorse; crammed with secondhand ideas; drilled and disciplined in docility and what they call good taste; and lamed for life so that he is fit for nothing but teaching. If you want to keep the foundry in the family, you had better find an eligible foundling and marry him to Barbara. LADY BRITOMART. Ah! Barbara! Your pet! You would sacrifice Stephen to Barbara. UNDERSHAFT. Cheerfully. And you, my dear, would boil Barbara to make soup for Stephen. LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: this is not a question of our likings and dislikings: it is a question of duty. It is your duty to make Stephen your successor. UNDERSHAFT. Just as much as it is your duty to submit to your husband. Come, Biddy! these tricks of the governing class are of no use with me. I am one of the governing class myself; and it is waste of time giving tracts to a missionary. I have the power in this matter; and I am not to be humbugged into using it for your purposes. LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: you can talk my head off; but you can't change wrong into right. And your tie is all on one side. Put it straight. UNDERSHAFT [disconcerted] It won't stay unless it's pinned [he fumbles at it with childish grimaces]-- Stephen comes in. STEPHEN [at the door] I beg your pardon [about to retire]. LADY BRITOMART. No: come in, Stephen. [Stephen comes forward to his mother's writing table.] UNDERSHAFT [not very cordially] Good afternoon. STEPHEN [coldly] Good afternoon. UNDERSHAFT [to Lady Britomart] He knows all about the tradition, I suppose? LADY BRITOMART. Yes. [To Stephen] It is what I told you last night, Stephen. UNDERSHAFT [sulkily] I understand you want to come into the cannon business. STEPHEN. _I_ go into trade! Certainly not. UNDERSHAFT [opening his eyes, greatly eased in mind and manner] Oh! in that case--! LADY BRITOMART. Cannons are not trade, Stephen. They are enterprise. STEPHEN. I have no intention of becoming a man of business in any sense. I have no capacity for business and no taste for it. I intend to devote myself to politics. UNDERSHAFT [rising] My dear boy: this is an immense relief to me. And I trust it may prove an equally good thing for the country. I was afraid you would consider yourself disparaged and slighted. [He moves towards Stephen as if to shake hands with him]. LADY BRITOMART [rising and interposing] Stephen: I cannot allow you to throw away an enormous property like this. STEPHEN [stiffly] Mother: there must be an end of treating me as a child, if you please. [Lady Britomart recoils, deeply wounded by his tone]. Until last night I did not take your attitude seriously, because I did not think you meant it seriously. But I find now that you left me in the dark as to matters which you should have explained to me years ago. I am extremely hurt and offended. Any further discussion of my intentions had better take place with my father, as between one man and another. LADY BRITOMART. Stephen! [She sits down again; and her eyes fill with tears]. UNDERSHAFT [with grave compassion] You see, my dear, it is only the big men who can be treated as children. STEPHEN. I am sorry, mother, that you have forced me-- UNDERSHAFT [stopping him] Yes, yes, yes, yes: that's all right, Stephen. She wont interfere with you any more: your independence is achieved: you have won your latchkey. Don't rub it in; and above all, don't apologize. [He resumes his seat]. Now what about your future, as between one man and another--I beg your pardon, Biddy: as between two men and a woman. LADY BRITOMART [who has pulled herself together strongly] I quite understand, Stephen. By all means go your own way if you feel strong enough. [Stephen sits down magisterially in the chair at the writing table with an air of affirming his majority]. UNDERSHAFT. It is settled that you do not ask for the succession to the cannon business. STEPHEN. I hope it is settled that I repudiate the cannon business. UNDERSHAFT. Come, come! Don't be so devilishly sulky: it's boyish. Freedom should be generous. Besides, I owe you a fair start in life in exchange for disinheriting you. You can't become prime minister all at once. Haven't you a turn for something? What about literature, art and so forth? STEPHEN. I have nothing of the artist about me, either in faculty or character, thank Heaven! UNDERSHAFT. A philosopher, perhaps? Eh? STEPHEN. I make no such ridiculous pretension. UNDERSHAFT. Just so. Well, there is the army, the navy, the Church, the Bar. The Bar requires some ability. What about the Bar? STEPHEN. I have not studied law. And I am afraid I have not the necessary push--I believe that is the name barristers give to their vulgarity--for success in pleading. UNDERSHAFT. Rather a difficult case, Stephen. Hardly anything left but the stage, is there? [Stephen makes an impatient movement]. Well, come! is there anything you know or care for? STEPHEN [rising and looking at him steadily] I know the difference between right and wrong. UNDERSHAFT [hugely tickled] You don't say so! What! no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists: the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you're a genius, master of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too! STEPHEN [keeping his temper with difficulty] You are pleased to be facetious. I pretend to nothing more than any honorable English gentleman claims as his birthright [he sits down angrily]. UNDERSHAFT. Oh, that's everybody's birthright. Look at poor little Jenny Hill, the Salvation lassie! she would think you were laughing at her if you asked her to stand up in the street and teach grammar or geography or mathematics or even drawingroom dancing; but it never occurs to her to doubt that she can teach morals and religion. You are all alike, you respectable people. You can't tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter; but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren't handle high explosives; but you're all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! what a world! LADY BRITOMART [uneasily] What do you think he had better do, Andrew? UNDERSHAFT. Oh, just what he wants to do. He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career. Get him a private secretaryship to someone who can get him an Under Secretaryship; and then leave him alone. He will find his natural and proper place in the end on the Treasury bench. STEPHEN [springing up again] I am sorry, sir, that you force me to forget the respect due to you as my father. I am an Englishman; and I will not hear the Government of my country insulted. [He thrusts his hands in his pockets, and walks angrily across to the window]. UNDERSHAFT [with a touch of brutality] The government of your country! _I_ am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays US. You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it doesn't. You will find out that trade requires certain measures when we have decided on those measures. When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is a national need. When other people want something to keep my dividends down, you will call out the police and military. And in return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman. Government of your country! Be off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. _I_ am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune. STEPHEN [actually smiling, and putting his hand on his father's shoulder with indulgent patronage] Really, my dear father, it is impossible to be angry with you. You don't know how absurd all this sounds to ME. You are very properly proud of having been industrious enough to make money; and it is greatly to your credit that you have made so much of it. But it has kept you in circles where you are valued for your money and deferred to for it, instead of in the doubtless very oldfashioned and behind-the-times public school and university where I formed my habits of mind. It is natural for you to think that money governs England; but you must allow me to think I know better. UNDERSHAFT. And what does govern England, pray? STEPHEN. Character, father, character. UNDERSHAFT. Whose character? Yours or mine? STEPHEN. Neither yours nor mine, father, but the best elements in the English national character. UNDERSHAFT. Stephen: I've found your profession for you. You're a born journalist. I'll start you with a hightoned weekly review. There! Stephen goes to the smaller writing table and busies himself with his letters. Sarah, Barbara, Lomax, and Cusins come in ready for walking. Barbara crosses the room to the window and looks out. Cusins drifts amiably to the armchair, and Lomax remains near the door, whilst Sarah comes to her mother. SARAH. Go and get ready, mamma: the carriage is waiting. [Lady Britomart leaves the room.] UNDERSHAFT [to Sarah] Good day, my dear. Good afternoon, Mr. Lomax. LOMAX [vaguely] Ahdedoo. UNDERSHAFT [to Cusins] quite well after last night, Euripides, eh? CUSINS. As well as can be expected. UNDERSHAFT. That's right. [To Barbara] So you are coming to see my death and devastation factory, Barbara? BARBARA [at the window] You came yesterday to see my salvation factory. I promised you a return visit. LOMAX [coming forward between Sarah and Undershaft] You'll find it awfully interesting. I've been through the Woolwich Arsenal; and it gives you a ripping feeling of security, you know, to think of the lot of beggars we could kill if it came to fighting. [To Undershaft, with sudden solemnity] Still, it must be rather an awful reflection for you, from the religious point of view as it were. You're getting on, you know, and all that. SARAH. You don't mind Cholly's imbecility, papa, do you? LOMAX [much taken aback] Oh I say! UNDERSHAFT. Mr Lomax looks at the matter in a very proper spirit, my dear. LOMAX. Just so. That's all I meant, I assure you. SARAH. Are you coming, Stephen? STEPHEN. Well, I am rather busy--er-- [Magnanimously] Oh well, yes: I'll come. That is, if there is room for me. UNDERSHAFT. I can take two with me in a little motor I am experimenting with for field use. You won't mind its being rather unfashionable. It's not painted yet; but it's bullet proof. LOMAX [appalled at the prospect of confronting Wilton Crescent in an unpainted motor] Oh I say! SARAH. The carriage for me, thank you. Barbara doesn't mind what she's seen in. LOMAX. I say, Dolly old chap: do you really mind the car being a guy? Because of course if you do I'll go in it. Still-- CUSINS. I prefer it. LOMAX. Thanks awfully, old man. Come, Sarah. [He hurries out to secure his seat in the carriage. Sarah follows him]. CUSINS. [moodily walking across to Lady Britomart's writing table] Why are we two coming to this Works Department of Hell? that is what I ask myself. BARBARA. I have always thought of it as a sort of pit where lost creatures with blackened faces stirred up smoky fires and were driven and tormented by my father? Is it like that, dad? UNDERSHAFT [scandalized] My dear! It is a spotlessly clean and beautiful hillside town. CUSINS. With a Methodist chapel? Oh do say there's a Methodist chapel. UNDERSHAFT. There are two: a primitive one and a sophisticated one. There is even an Ethical Society; but it is not much patronized, as my men are all strongly religious. In the High Explosives Sheds they object to the presence of Agnostics as unsafe. CUSINS. And yet they don't object to you! BARBARA. Do they obey all your orders? UNDERSHAFT. I never give them any orders. When I speak to one of them it is "Well, Jones, is the baby doing well? and has Mrs Jones made a good recovery?" "Nicely, thank you, sir." And that's all. CUSINS. But Jones has to be kept in order. How do you maintain discipline among your men? UNDERSHAFT. I don't. They do. You see, the one thing Jones won't stand is any rebellion from the man under him, or any assertion of social equality between the wife of the man with 4 shillings a week less than himself and Mrs Jones! Of course they all rebel against me, theoretically. Practically, every man of them keeps the man just below him in his place. I never meddle with them. I never bully them. I don't even bully Lazarus. I say that certain things are to be done; but I don't order anybody to do them. I don't say, mind you, that there is no ordering about and snubbing and even bullying. The men snub the boys and order them about; the carmen snub the sweepers; the artisans snub the unskilled laborers; the foremen drive and bully both the laborers and artisans; the assistant engineers find fault with the foremen; the chief engineers drop on the assistants; the departmental managers worry the chiefs; and the clerks have tall hats and hymnbooks and keep up the social tone by refusing to associate on equal terms with anybody. The result is a colossal profit, which comes to me. CUSINS [revolted] You really are a--well, what I was saying yesterday. BARBARA. What was he saying yesterday? UNDERSHAFT. Never mind, my dear. He thinks I have made you unhappy. Have I? BARBARA. Do you think I can be happy in this vulgar silly dress? I! who have worn the uniform. Do you understand what you have done to me? Yesterday I had a man's soul in my hand. I set him in the way of life with his face to salvation. But when we took your money he turned back to drunkenness and derision. [With intense conviction] I will never forgive you that. If I had a child, and you destroyed its body with your explosives--if you murdered Dolly with your horrible guns--I could forgive you if my forgiveness would open the gates of heaven to you. But to take a human soul from me, and turn it into the soul of a wolf! that is worse than any murder. UNDERSHAFT. Does my daughter despair so easily? Can you strike a man to the heart and leave no mark on him? BARBARA [her face lighting up] Oh, you are right: he can never be lost now: where was my faith? CUSINS. Oh, clever clever devil! BARBARA. You may be a devil; but God speaks through you sometimes. [She takes her father's hands and kisses them]. You have given me back my happiness: I feel it deep down now, though my spirit is troubled. UNDERSHAFT. You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something. BARBARA. Well, take me to the factory of death, and let me learn something more. There must be some truth or other behind all this frightful irony. Come, Dolly. [She goes out]. CUSINS. My guardian angel! [To Undershaft] Avaunt! [He follows Barbara]. STEPHEN [quietly, at the writing table] You must not mind Cusins, father. He is a very amiable good fellow; but he is a Greek scholar and naturally a little eccentric. UNDERSHAFT. Ah, quite so. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. [He goes out]. Stephen smiles patronizingly; buttons his coat responsibly; and crosses the room to the door. Lady Britomart, dressed for out-of-doors, opens it before he reaches it. She looks round far the others; looks at Stephen; and turns to go without a word. STEPHEN [embarrassed] Mother-- LADY BRITOMART. Don't be apologetic, Stephen. And don't forget that you have outgrown your mother. [She goes out]. Perivale St Andrews lies between two Middlesex hills, half climbing the northern one. It is an almost smokeless town of white walls, roofs of narrow green slates or red tiles, tall trees, domes, campaniles, and slender chimney shafts, beautifully situated and beautiful in itself. The best view of it is obtained from the crest of a slope about half a mile to the east, where the high explosives are dealt with. The foundry lies hidden in the depths between, the tops of its chimneys sprouting like huge skittles into the middle distance. Across the crest runs a platform of concrete, with a parapet which suggests a fortification, because there is a huge cannon of the obsolete Woolwich Infant pattern peering across it at the town. The cannon is mounted on an experimental gun carriage: possibly the original model of the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun alluded to by Stephen. The parapet has a high step inside which serves as a seat. Barbara is leaning over the parapet, looking towards the town. On her right is the cannon; on her left the end of a shed raised on piles, with a ladder of three or four steps up to the door, which opens outwards and has a little wooden landing at the threshold, with a fire bucket in the corner of the landing. The parapet stops short of the shed, leaving a gap which is the beginning of the path down the hill through the foundry to the town. Behind the cannon is a trolley carrying a huge conical bombshell, with a red band painted on it. Further from the parapet, on the same side, is a deck chair, near the door of an office, which, like the sheds, is of the lightest possible construction. Cusins arrives by the path from the town. BARBARA. Well? CUSINS. Not a ray of hope. Everything perfect, wonderful, real. It only needs a cathedral to be a heavenly city instead of a hellish one. BARBARA. Have you found out whether they have done anything for old Peter Shirley. CUSINS. They have found him a job as gatekeeper and timekeeper. He's frightfully miserable. He calls the timekeeping brainwork, and says he isn't used to it; and his gate lodge is so splendid that he's ashamed to use the rooms, and skulks in the scullery. BARBARA. Poor Peter! Stephen arrives from the town. He carries a fieldglass. STEPHEN [enthusiastically] Have you two seen the place? Why did you leave us? CUSINS. I wanted to see everything I was not intended to see; and Barbara wanted to make the men talk. STEPHEN. Have you found anything discreditable? CUSINS. No. They call him Dandy Andy and are proud of his being a cunning old rascal; but it's all horribly, frightfully, immorally, unanswerably perfect. Sarah arrives. SARAH. Heavens! what a place! [She crosses to the trolley]. Did you see the nursing home!? [She sits down on the shell]. STEPHEN. Did you see the libraries and schools!? SARAH. Did you see the ballroom and the banqueting chamber in the Town Hall!? STEPHEN. Have you gone into the insurance fund, the pension fund, the building society, the various applications of co-operation!? Undershaft comes from the office, with a sheaf of telegrams in his hands. UNDERSHAFT. Well, have you seen everything? I'm sorry I was called away. [Indicating the telegrams] News from Manchuria. STEPHEN. Good news, I hope. UNDERSHAFT. Very. STEPHEN. Another Japanese victory? UNDERSHAFT. Oh, I don't know. Which side wins does not concern us here. No: the good news is that the aerial battleship is a tremendous success. At the first trial it has wiped out a fort with three hundred soldiers in it. CUSINS [from the platform] Dummy soldiers? UNDERSHAFT. No: the real thing. [Cusins and Barbara exchange glances. Then Cusins sits on the step and buries his face in his hands. Barbara gravely lays her hand on his shoulder, and he looks up at her in a sort of whimsical desperation]. Well, Stephen, what do you think of the place? STEPHEN. Oh, magnificent. A perfect triumph of organization. Frankly, my dear father, I have been a fool: I had no idea of what it all meant--of the wonderful forethought, the power of organization, the administrative capacity, the financial genius, the colossal capital it represents. I have been repeating to myself as I came through your streets "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than War." I have only one misgiving about it all. UNDERSHAFT. Out with it. STEPHEN. Well, I cannot help thinking that all this provision for every want of your workmen may sap their independence and weaken their sense of responsibility. And greatly as we enjoyed our tea at that splendid restaurant--how they gave us all that luxury and cake and jam and cream for threepence I really cannot imagine!--still you must remember that restaurants break up home life. Look at the continent, for instance! Are you sure so much pampering is really good for the men's characters? UNDERSHAFT. Well you see, my dear boy, when you are organizing civilization you have to make up your mind whether trouble and anxiety are good things or not. If you decide that they are, then, I take it, you simply don't organize civilization; and there you are, with trouble and anxiety enough to make us all angels! But if you decide the other way, you may as well go through with it. However, Stephen, our characters are safe here. A sufficient dose of anxiety is always provided by the fact that we may be blown to smithereens at any moment. SARAH. By the way, papa, where do you make the explosives? UNDERSHAFT. In separate little sheds, like that one. When one of them blows up, it costs very little; and only the people quite close to it are killed. Stephen, who is quite close to it, looks at it rather scaredly, and moves away quickly to the cannon. At the same moment the door of the shed is thrown abruptly open; and a foreman in overalls and list slippers comes out on the little landing and holds the door open for Lomax, who appears in the doorway. LOMAX [with studied coolness] My good fellow: you needn't get into a state of nerves. Nothing's going to happen to you; and I suppose it wouldn't be the end of the world if anything did. A little bit of British pluck is what you want, old chap. [He descends and strolls across to Sarah]. UNDERSHAFT [to the foreman] Anything wrong, Bilton? BILTON [with ironic calm] Gentleman walked into the high explosives shed and lit a cigaret, sir: that's all. UNDERSHAFT. Ah, quite so. [To Lomax] Do you happen to remember what you did with the match? LOMAX. Oh come! I'm not a fool. I took jolly good care to blow it out before I chucked it away. BILTON. The top of it was red hot inside, sir. LOMAX. Well, suppose it was! I didn't chuck it into any of your messes. UNDERSHAFT. Think no more of it, Mr Lomax. By the way, would you mind lending me your matches? LOMAX [offering his box] Certainly. UNDERSHAFT. Thanks. [He pockets the matches]. LOMAX [lecturing to the company generally] You know, these high explosives don't go off like gunpowder, except when they're in a gun. When they're spread loose, you can put a match to them without the least risk: they just burn quietly like a bit of paper. [Warming to the scientific interest of the subject] Did you know that Undershaft? Have you ever tried? UNDERSHAFT. Not on a large scale, Mr Lomax. Bilton will give you a sample of gun cotton when you are leaving if you ask him. You can experiment with it at home. [Bilton looks puzzled]. SARAH. Bilton will do nothing of the sort, papa. I suppose it's your business to blow up the Russians and Japs; but you might really stop short of blowing up poor Cholly. [Bilton gives it up and retires into the shed]. LOMAX. My ownest, there is no danger. [He sits beside her on the shell]. Lady Britomart arrives from the town with a bouquet. LADY BRITOMART [coming impetuously between Undershaft and the deck chair] Andrew: you shouldn't have let me see this place. UNDERSHAFT. Why, my dear? LADY BRITOMART. Never mind why: you shouldn't have: that's all. To think of all that [indicating the town] being yours! and that you have kept it to yourself all these years! UNDERSHAFT. It does not belong to me. I belong to it. It is the Undershaft inheritance. LADY BRITOMART. It is not. Your ridiculous cannons and that noisy banging foundry may be the Undershaft inheritance; but all that plate and linen, all that furniture and those houses and orchards and gardens belong to us. They belong to me: they are not a man's business. I won't give them up. You must be out of your senses to throw them all away; and if you persist in such folly, I will call in a doctor. UNDERSHAFT [stooping to smell the bouquet] Where did you get the flowers, my dear? LADY BRITOMART. Your men presented them to me in your William Morris Labor Church. CUSINS [springing up] Oh! It needed only that. A Labor Church! LADY BRITOMART. Yes, with Morris's words in mosaic letters ten feet high round the dome. NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH TO BE ANOTHER MAN'S MASTER. The cynicism of it! UNDERSHAFT. It shocked the men at first, I am afraid. But now they take no more notice of it than of the ten commandments in church. LADY BRITOMART. Andrew: you are trying to put me off the subject of the inheritance by profane jokes. Well, you shan't. I don't ask it any longer for Stephen: he has inherited far too much of your perversity to be fit for it. But Barbara has rights as well as Stephen. Why should not Adolphus succeed to the inheritance? I could manage the town for him; and he can look after the cannons, if they are really necessary. UNDERSHAFT. I should ask nothing better if Adolphus were a foundling. He is exactly the sort of new blood that is wanted in English business. But he's not a foundling; and there's an end of it. CUSINS [diplomatically] Not quite. [They all turn and stare at him. He comes from the platform past the shed to Undershaft]. I think--Mind! I am not committing myself in any way as to my future course--but I think the foundling difficulty can be got over. UNDERSHAFT. What do you mean? CUSINS. Well, I have something to say which is in the nature of a confession. SARAH. } LADY BRITOMART. } Confession! BARBARA. } STEPHEN. } LOMAX. Oh I say! CUSINS. Yes, a confession. Listen, all. Until I met Barbara I thought myself in the main an honorable, truthful man, because I wanted the approval of my conscience more than I wanted anything else. But the moment I saw Barbara, I wanted her far more than the approval of my conscience. LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus! CUSINS. It is true. You accused me yourself, Lady Brit, of joining the Army to worship Barbara; and so I did. She bought my soul like a flower at a street corner; but she bought it for herself. UNDERSHAFT. What! Not for Dionysos or another? CUSINS. Dionysos and all the others are in herself. I adored what was divine in her, and was therefore a true worshipper. But I was romantic about her too. I thought she was a woman of the people, and that a marriage with a professor of Greek would be far beyond the wildest social ambitions of her rank. LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus!! LOMAX. Oh I say!!! CUSINS. When I learnt the horrible truth-- LADY BRITOMART. What do you mean by the horrible truth, pray? CUSINS. That she was enormously rich; that her grandfather was an earl; that her father was the Prince of Darkness-- UNDERSHAFT. Chut! CUSINS.--and that I was only an adventurer trying to catch a rich wife, then I stooped to deceive about my birth. LADY BRITOMART. Your birth! Now Adolphus, don't dare to make up a wicked story for the sake of these wretched cannons. Remember: I have seen photographs of your parents; and the Agent General for South Western Australia knows them personally and has assured me that they are most respectable married people. CUSINS. So they are in Australia; but here they are outcasts. Their marriage is legal in Australia, but not in England. My mother is my father's deceased wife's sister; and in this island I am consequently a foundling. [Sensation]. Is the subterfuge good enough, Machiavelli? UNDERSHAFT [thoughtfully] Biddy: this may be a way out of the difficulty. LADY BRITOMART. Stuff! A man can't make cannons any the better for being his own cousin instead of his proper self [she sits down in the deck chair with a bounce that expresses her downright contempt for their casuistry.] UNDERSHAFT [to Cusins] You are an educated man. That is against the tradition. CUSINS. Once in ten thousand times it happens that the schoolboy is a born master of what they try to teach him. Greek has not destroyed my mind: it has nourished it. Besides, I did not learn it at an English public school. UNDERSHAFT. Hm! Well, I cannot afford to be too particular: you have cornered the foundling market. Let it pass. You are eligible, Euripides: you are eligible. BARBARA [coming from the platform and interposing between Cusins and Undershaft] Dolly: yesterday morning, when Stephen told us all about the tradition, you became very silent; and you have been strange and excited ever since. Were you thinking of your birth then? CUSINS. When the finger of Destiny suddenly points at a man in the middle of his breakfast, it makes him thoughtful. [Barbara turns away sadly and stands near her mother, listening perturbedly]. UNDERSHAFT. Aha! You have had your eye on the business, my young friend, have you? CUSINS. Take care! There is an abyss of moral horror between me and your accursed aerial battleships. UNDERSHAFT. Never mind the abyss for the present. Let us settle the practical details and leave your final decision open. You know that you will have to change your name. Do you object to that? CUSINS. Would any man named Adolphus--any man called Dolly!--object to be called something else? UNDERSHAFT. Good. Now, as to money! I propose to treat you handsomely from the beginning. You shall start at a thousand a year. CUSINS. [with sudden heat, his spectacles twinkling with mischief] A thousand! You dare offer a miserable thousand to the son-in-law of a millionaire! No, by Heavens, Machiavelli! you shall not cheat me. You cannot do without me; and I can do without you. I must have two thousand five hundred a year for two years. At the end of that time, if I am a failure, I go. But if I am a success, and stay on, you must give me the other five thousand. UNDERSHAFT. What other five thousand? CUSINS. To make the two years up to five thousand a year. The two thousand five hundred is only half pay in case I should turn out a failure. The third year I must have ten per cent on the profits. UNDERSHAFT [taken aback] Ten per cent! Why, man, do you know what my profits are? CUSINS. Enormous, I hope: otherwise I shall require twenty-five per cent. UNDERSHAFT. But, Mr Cusins, this is a serious matter of business. You are not bringing any capital into the concern. CUSINS. What! no capital! Is my mastery of Greek no capital? Is my access to the subtlest thought, the loftiest poetry yet attained by humanity, no capital? my character! my intellect! my life! my career! what Barbara calls my soul! are these no capital? Say another word; and I double my salary. UNDERSHAFT. Be reasonable-- CUSINS [peremptorily] Mr Undershaft: you have my terms. Take them or leave them. UNDERSHAFT [recovering himself] Very well. I note your terms; and I offer you half. CUSINS [disgusted] Half! UNDERSHAFT [firmly] Half. CUSINS. You call yourself a gentleman; and you offer me half!! UNDERSHAFT. I do not call myself a gentleman; but I offer you half. CUSINS. This to your future partner! your successor! your son-in-law! BARBARA. You are selling your own soul, Dolly, not mine. Leave me out of the bargain, please. UNDERSHAFT. Come! I will go a step further for Barbara's sake. I will give you three fifths; but that is my last word. CUSINS. Done! LOMAX. Done in the eye. Why, _I_ only get eight hundred, you know. CUSINS. By the way, Mac, I am a classical scholar, not an arithmetical one. Is three fifths more than half or less? UNDERSHAFT. More, of course. CUSINS. I would have taken two hundred and fifty. How you can succeed in business when you are willing to pay all that money to a University don who is obviously not worth a junior clerk's wages!--well! What will Lazarus say? UNDERSHAFT. Lazarus is a gentle romantic Jew who cares for nothing but string quartets and stalls at fashionable theatres. He will get the credit of your rapacity in money matters, as he has hitherto had the credit of mine. You are a shark of the first order, Euripides. So much the better for the firm! BARBARA. Is the bargain closed, Dolly? Does your soul belong to him now? CUSINS. No: the price is settled: that is all. The real tug of war is still to come. What about the moral question? LADY BRITOMART. There is no moral question in the matter at all, Adolphus. You must simply sell cannons and weapons to people whose cause is right and just, and refuse them to foreigners and criminals. UNDERSHAFT [determinedly] No: none of that. You must keep the true faith of an Armorer, or you don't come in here. CUSINS. What on earth is the true faith of an Armorer? UNDERSHAFT. To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or principles: to aristocrat and republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist, to Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man white man and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes. The first Undershaft wrote up in his shop IF GOD GAVE THE HAND, LET NOT MAN WITHHOLD THE SWORD. The second wrote up ALL HAVE THE RIGHT TO FIGHT: NONE HAVE THE RIGHT TO JUDGE. The third wrote up TO MAN THE WEAPON: TO HEAVEN THE VICTORY. The fourth had no literary turn; so he did not write up anything; but he sold cannons to Napoleon under the nose of George the Third. The fifth wrote up PEACE SHALL NOT PREVAIL SAVE WITH A SWORD IN HER HAND. The sixth, my master, was the best of all. He wrote up NOTHING IS EVER DONE IN THIS WORLD UNTIL MEN ARE PREPARED TO KILL ONE ANOTHER IF IT IS NOT DONE. After that, there was nothing left for the seventh to say. So he wrote up, simply, UNASHAMED. CUSINS. My good Machiavelli, I shall certainly write something up on the wall; only, as I shall write it in Greek, you won't be able to read it. But as to your Armorer's faith, if I take my neck out of the noose of my own morality I am not going to put it into the noose of yours. I shall sell cannons to whom I please and refuse them to whom I please. So there! UNDERSHAFT. From the moment when you become Andrew Undershaft, you will never do as you please again. Don't come here lusting for power, young man. CUSINS. If power were my aim I should not come here for it. YOU have no power. UNDERSHAFT. None of my own, certainly. CUSINS. I have more power than you, more will. You do not drive this place: it drives you. And what drives the place? UNDERSHAFT [enigmatically] A will of which I am a part. BARBARA [startled] Father! Do you know what you are saying; or are you laying a snare for my soul? CUSINS. Don't listen to his metaphysics, Barbara. The place is driven by the most rascally part of society, the money hunters, the pleasure hunters, the military promotion hunters; and he is their slave. UNDERSHAFT. Not necessarily. Remember the Armorer's Faith. I will take an order from a good man as cheerfully as from a bad one. If you good people prefer preaching and shirking to buying my weapons and fighting the rascals, don't blame me. I can make cannons: I cannot make courage and conviction. Bah! You tire me, Euripides, with your morality mongering. Ask Barbara: SHE understands. [He suddenly takes Barbara's hands, and looks powerfully into her eyes]. Tell him, my love, what power really means. BARBARA [hypnotized] Before I joined the Salvation Army, I was in my own power; and the consequence was that I never knew what to do with myself. When I joined it, I had not time enough for all the things I had to do. UNDERSHAFT [approvingly] Just so. And why was that, do you suppose? BARBARA. Yesterday I should have said, because I was in the power of God. [She resumes her self-possession, withdrawing her hands from his with a power equal to his own]. But you came and showed me that I was in the power of Bodger and Undershaft. Today I feel--oh! how can I put it into words? Sarah: do you remember the earthquake at Cannes, when we were little children?--how little the surprise of the first shock mattered compared to the dread and horror of waiting for the second? That is how I feel in this place today. I stood on the rock I thought eternal; and without a word of warning it reeled and crumbled under me. I was safe with an infinite wisdom watching me, an army marching to Salvation with me; and in a moment, at a stroke of your pen in a cheque book, I stood alone; and the heavens were empty. That was the first shock of the earthquake: I am waiting for the second. UNDERSHAFT. Come, come, my daughter! Don't make too much of your little tinpot tragedy. What do we do here when we spend years of work and thought and thousands of pounds of solid cash on a new gun or an aerial battleship that turns out just a hairsbreadth wrong after all? Scrap it. Scrap it without wasting another hour or another pound on it. Well, you have made for yourself something that you call a morality or a religion or what not. It doesn't fit the facts. Well, scrap it. Scrap it and get one that does fit. That is what is wrong with the world at present. It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it won't scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions and its old political constitutions. What's the result? In machinery it does very well; but in morals and religion and politics it is working at a loss that brings it nearer bankruptcy every year. Don't persist in that folly. If your old religion broke down yesterday, get a newer and a better one for tomorrow. BARBARA. Oh how gladly I would take a better one to my soul! But you offer me a worse one. [Turning on him with sudden vehemence]. Justify yourself: show me some light through the darkness of this dreadful place, with its beautifully clean workshops, and respectable workmen, and model homes. UNDERSHAFT. Cleanliness and respectability do not need justification, Barbara: they justify themselves. I see no darkness here, no dreadfulness. In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage. BARBARA. And their souls? UNDERSHAFT. I save their souls just as I saved yours. BARBARA [revolted] You saved my soul! What do you mean? UNDERSHAFT. I fed you and clothed you and housed you. I took care that you should have money enough to live handsomely--more than enough; so that you could be wasteful, careless, generous. That saved your soul from the seven deadly sins. BARBARA [bewildered] The seven deadly sins! UNDERSHAFT. Yes, the deadly seven. [Counting on his fingers] Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted. I lifted them from your spirit. I enabled Barbara to become Major Barbara; and I saved her from the crime of poverty. CUSINS. Do you call poverty a crime? UNDERSHAFT. The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty. Pah! [turning on Barbara] you talk of your half-saved ruffian in West Ham: you accuse me of dragging his soul back to perdition. Well, bring him to me here; and I will drag his soul back again to salvation for you. Not by words and dreams; but by thirty-eight shillings a week, a sound house in a handsome street, and a permanent job. In three weeks he will have a fancy waistcoat; in three months a tall hat and a chapel sitting; before the end of the year he will shake hands with a duchess at a Primrose League meeting, and join the Conservative Party. BARBARA. And will he be the better for that? UNDERSHAFT. You know he will. Don't be a hypocrite, Barbara. He will be better fed, better housed, better clothed, better behaved; and his children will be pounds heavier and bigger. That will be better than an American cloth mattress in a shelter, chopping firewood, eating bread and treacle, and being forced to kneel down from time to time to thank heaven for it: knee drill, I think you call it. It is cheap work converting starving men with a Bible in one hand and a slice of bread in the other. I will undertake to convert West Ham to Mahometanism on the same terms. Try your hand on my men: their souls are hungry because their bodies are full. BARBARA. And leave the east end to starve? UNDERSHAFT [his energetic tone dropping into one of bitter and brooding remembrance] I was an east ender. I moralized and starved until one day I swore that I would be a fullfed free man at all costs--that nothing should stop me except a bullet, neither reason nor morals nor the lives of other men. I said "Thou shalt starve ere I starve"; and with that word I became free and great. I was a dangerous man until I had my will: now I am a useful, beneficent, kindly person. That is the history of most self-made millionaires, I fancy. When it is the history of every Englishman we shall have an England worth living in. LADY BRITOMART. Stop making speeches, Andrew. This is not the place for them. UNDERSHAFT [punctured] My dear: I have no other means of conveying my ideas. LADY BRITOMART. Your ideas are nonsense. You got oil because you were selfish and unscrupulous. UNDERSHAFT. Not at all. I had the strongest scruples about poverty and starvation. Your moralists are quite unscrupulous about both: they make virtues of them. I had rather be a thief than a pauper. I had rather be a murderer than a slave. I don't want to be either; but if you force the alternative on me, then, by Heaven, I'll choose the braver and more moral one. I hate poverty and slavery worse than any other crimes whatsoever. And let me tell you this. Poverty and slavery have stood up for centuries to your sermons and leading articles: they will not stand up to my machine guns. Don't preach at them: don't reason with them. Kill them. BARBARA. Killing. Is that your remedy for everything? UNDERSHAFT. It is the final test of conviction, the only lever strong enough to overturn a social system, the only way of saying Must. Let six hundred and seventy fools loose in the street; and three policemen can scatter them. But huddle them together in a certain house in Westminster; and let them go through certain ceremonies and call themselves certain names until at last they get the courage to kill; and your six hundred and seventy fools become a government. Your pious mob fills up ballot papers and imagines it is governing its masters; but the ballot paper that really governs is the paper that has a bullet wrapped up in it. CUSINS. That is perhaps why, like most intelligent people, I never vote. UNDERSHAFT Vote! Bah! When you vote, you only change the names of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders and set up new. Is that historically true, Mr Learned Man, or is it not? CUSINS. It is historically true. I loathe having to admit it. I repudiate your sentiments. I abhor your nature. I defy you in every possible way. Still, it is true. But it ought not to be true. UNDERSHAFT. Ought, ought, ought, ought, ought! Are you going to spend your life saying ought, like the rest of our moralists? Turn your oughts into shalls, man. Come and make explosives with me. Whatever can blow men up can blow society up. The history of the world is the history of those who had courage enough to embrace this truth. Have you the courage to embrace it, Barbara? LADY BRITOMART. Barbara, I positively forbid you to listen to your father's abominable wickedness. And you, Adolphus, ought to know better than to go about saying that wrong things are true. What does it matter whether they are true if they are wrong? UNDERSHAFT. What does it matter whether they are wrong if they are true? LADY BRITOMART [rising] Children: come home instantly. Andrew: I am exceedingly sorry I allowed you to call on us. You are wickeder than ever. Come at once. BARBARA [shaking her head] It's no use running away from wicked people, mamma. LADY BRITOMART. It is every use. It shows your disapprobation of them. BARBARA. It does not save them. LADY BRITOMART. I can see that you are going to disobey me. Sarah: are you coming home or are you not? SARAH. I daresay it's very wicked of papa to make cannons; but I don't think I shall cut him on that account. LOMAX [pouring oil on the troubled waters] The fact is, you know, there is a certain amount of tosh about this notion of wickedness. It doesn't work. You must look at facts. Not that I would say a word in favor of anything wrong; but then, you see, all sorts of chaps are always doing all sorts of things; and we have to fit them in somehow, don't you know. What I mean is that you can't go cutting everybody; and that's about what it comes to. [Their rapt attention to his eloquence makes him nervous] Perhaps I don't make myself clear. LADY BRITOMART. You are lucidity itself, Charles. Because Andrew is successful and has plenty of money to give to Sarah, you will flatter him and encourage him in his wickedness. LOMAX [unruffled] Well, where the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered, don't you know. [To Undershaft] Eh? What? UNDERSHAFT. Precisely. By the way, may I call you Charles? LOMAX. Delighted. Cholly is the usual ticket. UNDERSHAFT [to Lady Britomart] Biddy-- LADY BRITOMART [violently] Don't dare call me Biddy. Charles Lomax: you are a fool. Adolphus Cusins: you are a Jesuit. Stephen: you are a prig. Barbara: you are a lunatic. Andrew: you are a vulgar tradesman. Now you all know my opinion; and my conscience is clear, at all events [she sits down again with a vehemence that almost wrecks the chair]. UNDERSHAFT. My dear, you are the incarnation of morality. [She snorts]. Your conscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody names. Come, Euripides! it is getting late; and we all want to get home. Make up your mind. CUSINS. Understand this, you old demon-- LADY BRITOMART. Adolphus! UNDERSHAFT. Let him alone, Biddy. Proceed, Euripides. CUSINS. You have me in a horrible dilemma. I want Barbara. UNDERSHAFT. Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another. BARBARA. Quite true, Dolly. CUSINS. I also want to avoid being a rascal. UNDERSHAFT [with biting contempt] You lust for personal righteousness, for self-approval, for what you call a good conscience, for what Barbara calls salvation, for what I call patronizing people who are not so lucky as yourself. CUSINS. I do not: all the poet in me recoils from being a good man. But there are things in me that I must reckon with: pity-- UNDERSHAFT. Pity! The scavenger of misery. CUSINS. Well, love. UNDERSHAFT. I know. You love the needy and the outcast: you love the oppressed races, the negro, the Indian ryot, the Pole, the Irishman. Do you love the Japanese? Do you love the Germans? Do you love the English? CUSINS. No. Every true Englishman detests the English. We are the wickedest nation on earth; and our success is a moral horror. UNDERSHAFT. That is what comes of your gospel of love, is it? CUSINS. May I not love even my father-in-law? UNDERSHAFT. Who wants your love, man? By what right do you take the liberty of offering it to me? I will have your due heed and respect, or I will kill you. But your love! Damn your impertinence! CUSINS [grinning] I may not be able to control my affections, Mac. UNDERSHAFT. You are fencing, Euripides. You are weakening: your grip is slipping. Come! try your last weapon. Pity and love have broken in your hand: forgiveness is still left. CUSINS. No: forgiveness is a beggar's refuge. I am with you there: we must pay our debts. UNDERSHAFT. Well said. Come! you will suit me. Remember the words of Plato. CUSINS [starting] Plato! You dare quote Plato to me! UNDERSHAFT. Plato says, my friend, that society cannot be saved until either the Professors of Greek take to making gunpowder, or else the makers of gunpowder become Professors of Greek. CUSINS. Oh, tempter, cunning tempter! UNDERSHAFT. Come! choose, man, choose. CUSINS. But perhaps Barbara will not marry me if I make the wrong choice. BARBARA. Perhaps not. CUSINS [desperately perplexed] You hear-- BARBARA. Father: do you love nobody? UNDERSHAFT. I love my best friend. LADY BRITOMART. And who is that, pray? UNDERSHAFT. My bravest enemy. That is the man who keeps me up to the mark. CUSINS. You know, the creature is really a sort of poet in his way. Suppose he is a great man, after all! UNDERSHAFT. Suppose you stop talking and make up your mind, my young friend. CUSINS. But you are driving me against my nature. I hate war. UNDERSHAFT. Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated. Dare you make war on war? Here are the means: my friend Mr Lomax is sitting on them. LOMAX [springing up] Oh I say! You don't mean that this thing is loaded, do you? My ownest: come off it. SARAH [sitting placidly on the shell] If I am to be blown up, the more thoroughly it is done the better. Don't fuss, Cholly. LOMAX [to Undershaft, strongly remonstrant] Your own daughter, you know. UNDERSHAFT. So I see. [To Cusins] Well, my friend, may we expect you here at six tomorrow morning? CUSINS [firmly] Not on any account. I will see the whole establishment blown up with its own dynamite before I will get up at five. My hours are healthy, rational hours eleven to five. UNDERSHAFT. Come when you please: before a week you will come at six and stay until I turn you out for the sake of your health. [Calling] Bilton! [He turns to Lady Britomart, who rises]. My dear: let us leave these two young people to themselves for a moment. [Bilton comes from the shed]. I am going to take you through the gun cotton shed. BILTON [barring the way] You can't take anything explosive in here, Sir. LADY BRITOMART. What do you mean? Are you alluding to me? BILTON [unmoved] No, ma'am. Mr Undershaft has the other gentleman's matches in his pocket. LADY BRITOMART [abruptly] Oh! I beg your pardon. [She goes into the shed]. UNDERSHAFT. Quite right, Bilton, quite right: here you are. [He gives Bilton the box of matches]. Come, Stephen. Come, Charles. Bring Sarah. [He passes into the shed]. Bilton opens the box and deliberately drops the matches into the fire-bucket. LOMAX. Oh I say! [Bilton stolidly hands him the empty box]. Infernal nonsense! Pure scientific ignorance! [He goes in]. SARAH. Am I all right, Bilton? BILTON. You'll have to put on list slippers, miss: that's all. We've got em inside. [She goes in]. STEPHEN [very seriously to Cusins] Dolly, old fellow, think. Think before you decide. Do you feel that you are a sufficiently practical man? It is a huge undertaking, an enormous responsibility. All this mass of business will be Greek to you. CUSINS. Oh, I think it will be much less difficult than Greek. STEPHEN. Well, I just want to say this before I leave you to yourselves. Don't let anything I have said about right and wrong prejudice you against this great chance in life. I have satisfied myself that the business is one of the highest character and a credit to our country. [Emotionally] I am very proud of my father. I-- [Unable to proceed, he presses Cusins' hand and goes hastily into the shed, followed by Bilton]. Barbara and Cusins, left alone together, look at one another silently. CUSINS. Barbara: I am going to accept this offer. BARBARA. I thought you would. CUSINS. You understand, don't you, that I had to decide without consulting you. If I had thrown the burden of the choice on you, you would sooner or later have despised me for it. BARBARA. Yes: I did not want you to sell your soul for me any more than for this inheritance. CUSINS. It is not the sale of my soul that troubles me: I have sold it too often to care about that. I have sold it for a professorship. I have sold it for an income. I have sold it to escape being imprisoned for refusing to pay taxes for hangmen's ropes and unjust wars and things that I abhor. What is all human conduct but the daily and hourly sale of our souls for trifles? What I am now selling it for is neither money nor position nor comfort, but for reality and for power. BARBARA. You know that you will have no power, and that he has none. CUSINS. I know. It is not for myself alone. I want to make power for the world. BARBARA. I want to make power for the world too; but it must be spiritual power. CUSINS. I think all power is spiritual: these cannons will not go off by themselves. I have tried to make spiritual power by teaching Greek. But the world can never be really touched by a dead language and a dead civilization. The people must have power; and the people cannot have Greek. Now the power that is made here can be wielded by all men. BARBARA. Power to burn women's houses down and kill their sons and tear their husbands to pieces. CUSINS. You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes. This power which only tears men's bodies to pieces has never been so horribly abused as the intellectual power, the imaginative power, the poetic, religious power that can enslave men's souls. As a teacher of Greek I gave the intellectual man weapons against the common man. I now want to give the common man weapons against the intellectual man. I love the common people. I want to arm them against the lawyer, the doctor, the priest, the literary man, the professor, the artist, and the politician, who, once in authority, are the most dangerous, disastrous, and tyrannical of all the fools, rascals, and impostors. I want a democratic power strong enough to force the intellectual oligarchy to use its genius for the general good or else perish. BARBARA. Is there no higher power than that [pointing to the shell]? CUSINS. Yes: but that power can destroy the higher powers just as a tiger can destroy a man: therefore man must master that power first. I admitted this when the Turks and Greeks were last at war. My best pupil went out to fight for Hellas. My parting gift to him was not a copy of Plato's Republic, but a revolver and a hundred Undershaft cartridges. The blood of every Turk he shot--if he shot any--is on my head as well as on Undershaft's. That act committed me to this place for ever. Your father's challenge has beaten me. Dare I make war on war? I dare. I must. I will. And now, is it all over between us? BARBARA [touched by his evident dread of her answer] Silly baby Dolly! How could it be? CUSINS [overjoyed] Then you--you--you-- Oh for my drum! [He flourishes imaginary drumsticks]. BARBARA [angered by his levity] Take care, Dolly, take care. Oh, if only I could get away from you and from father and from it all! if I could have the wings of a dove and fly away to heaven! CUSINS. And leave me! BARBARA. Yes, you, and all the other naughty mischievous children of men. But I can't. I was happy in the Salvation Army for a moment. I escaped from the world into a paradise of enthusiasm and prayer and soul saving; but the moment our money ran short, it all came back to Bodger: it was he who saved our people: he, and the Prince of Darkness, my papa. Undershaft and Bodger: their hands stretch everywhere: when we feed a starving fellow creature, it is with their bread, because there is no other bread; when we tend the sick, it is in the hospitals they endow; if we turn from the churches they build, we must kneel on the stones of the streets they pave. As long as that lasts, there is no getting away from them. Turning our backs on Bodger and Undershaft is turning our backs on life. CUSINS. I thought you were determined to turn your back on the wicked side of life. BARBARA. There is no wicked side: life is all one. And I never wanted to shirk my share in whatever evil must be endured, whether it be sin or suffering. I wish I could cure you of middle-class ideas, Dolly. CUSINS [gasping] Middle cl--! A snub! A social snub to ME! from the daughter of a foundling! BARBARA. That is why I have no class, Dolly: I come straight out of the heart of the whole people. If I were middle-class I should turn my back on my father's business; and we should both live in an artistic drawingroom, with you reading the reviews in one corner, and I in the other at the piano, playing Schumann: both very superior persons, and neither of us a bit of use. Sooner than that, I would sweep out the guncotton shed, or be one of Bodger's barmaids. Do you know what would have happened if you had refused papa's offer? CUSINS. I wonder! BARBARA. I should have given you up and married the man who accepted it. After all, my dear old mother has more sense than any of you. I felt like her when I saw this place--felt that I must have it--that never, never, never could I let it go; only she thought it was the houses and the kitchen ranges and the linen and china, when it was really all the human souls to be saved: not weak souls in starved bodies, crying with gratitude or a scrap of bread and treacle, but fullfed, quarrelsome, snobbish, uppish creatures, all standing on their little rights and dignities, and thinking that my father ought to be greatly obliged to them for making so much money for him--and so he ought. That is where salvation is really wanted. My father shall never throw it in my teeth again that my converts were bribed with bread. [She is transfigured]. I have got rid of the bribe of bread. I have got rid of the bribe of heaven. Let God's work be done for its own sake: the work he had to create us to do because it cannot be done by living men and women. When I die, let him be in my debt, not I in his; and let me forgive him as becomes a woman of my rank. CUSINS. Then the way of life lies through the factory of death? BARBARA. Yes, through the raising of hell to heaven and of man to God, through the unveiling of an eternal light in the Valley of The Shadow. [Seizing him with both hands] Oh, did you think my courage would never come back? did you believe that I was a deserter? that I, who have stood in the streets, and taken my people to my heart, and talked of the holiest and greatest things with them, could ever turn back and chatter foolishly to fashionable people about nothing in a drawingroom? Never, never, never, never: Major Barbara will die with the colors. Oh! and I have my dear little Dolly boy still; and he has found me my place and my work. Glory Hallelujah! [She kisses him]. CUSINS. My dearest: consider my delicate health. I cannot stand as much happiness as you can. BARBARA. Yes: it is not easy work being in love with me, is it? But it's good for you. [She runs to the shed, and calls, childlike] Mamma! Mamma! [Bilton comes out of the shed, followed by Undershaft]. I want Mamma. UNDERSHAFT. She is taking off her list slippers, dear. [He passes on to Cusins]. Well? What does she say? CUSINS. She has gone right up into the skies. LADY BRITOMART [coming from the shed and stopping on the steps, obstructing Sarah, who follows with Lomax. Barbara clutches like a baby at her mother's skirt]. Barbara: when will you learn to be independent and to act and think for yourself? I know as well as possible what that cry of "Mamma, Mamma," means. Always running to me! SARAH [touching Lady Britomart's ribs with her finger tips and imitating a bicycle horn] Pip! Pip! LADY BRITOMART [highly indignant] How dare you say Pip! pip! to me, Sarah? You are both very naughty children. What do you want, Barbara? BARBARA. I want a house in the village to live in with Dolly. [Dragging at the skirt] Come and tell me which one to take. UNDERSHAFT [to Cusins] Six o'clock tomorrow morning, my young friend. 
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7125	----	CATHERINE BOOTH A SKETCH _Reprinted from The Warriors' Library_ BY COLONEL MILDRED DUFF WITH A PREFACE BY GENERAL BRAMWELL BOOTH PREFACE Colonel Duff has, at my request, written the following very interesting and touching account of my dear Mother; and she has done so in the hope that those who read it will be helped to follow in the footsteps of that wonderful servant of God. But how can they do so? Was not Mrs. Booth, you ask, an exceptional woman? Had she not great gifts and very remarkable powers, and was she not trained in a very special way to do the work to which God called her? How, then, can ordinary people follow in her steps? Let me tell you. Mrs. Booth walked with God. When she was only a timid girl, helping her mother in the household, she continually sought after Him; and when, in later years, she became known by multitudes, and was written of in the newspapers, and greatly beloved by the good in many lands, there was no difference in her life in that matter. She was not content with being Mrs. General Booth of The Salvation Army, and with being looked upon as a great and good woman, giving her life to bless others. No! she listened daily for God's voice in her own heart, sought after His will, and leaned continually for strength and grace upon her Saviour. You can be like her in that. Mrs. Booth was a soul-winner. A little while before her spirit passed into the presence of God, and when she knew that death was quite near to her, she said: 'Tell the Soldiers that the great consolation for a Salvationist on his dying bed is to feel that he has been a soul-winner.' Wherever she went--in the houses of strangers as well as of friends, in the Meetings, great and small, when she was welcomed and when she was not, whether alone or with others--she laboured to lead souls to Christ. I have known her at one time spend as much trouble to win one as at another time to win fifty. You can follow her example in that. Mrs. Booth always declared herself and took sides with right. Whatever was happening around her, people always knew which side she was on. She spoke out for the right, the good, and the true, even when doing so involved very disagreeable experiences and the bearing of much unkindness. She hated the spirit which can look on at what is wicked and false or cruel, and say, 'Oh, that is not my affair!' You can follow her example in this also. Mrs. Booth laboured all her life to improve her gifts. She thought; she prayed; she worked; she read--above all, she read her Bible. It was her companion as a child, as a young follower of Christ, and then as a Leader in The Army. Those miserable words which some of us hear so often about some bad or unfinished work--'Oh, that will do'--were seldom heard from her lips. She was always striving, striving, striving to do better, and yet better, and again better still. All this also you can do. Mrs. Booth was full of sympathy. No one who was in need or in sorrow, or who was suffering, could meet her without finding out that, she was in sympathy with them. Her heart was tender with the love of Christ, and so she was deeply touched by the sin and sorrow around her just as He was. Even the miseries of the dumb animals moved her to efforts on their behalf. This sympathy made Mrs. Booth quick to see and appreciate the toil and self-denial of others, and ever grateful for any kindness shown to her or to The Army or to those in need of any kind. The very humblest and youngest of those who read this little book can be like her in all this. Mrs. Booth endured to the end. She never turned back. She was faithful. Her life and work would have been spoilt if she had given up the fight. She was often sorely tempted. She was slandered and misrepresented by enemies, betrayed by false friends, and often deeply wounded by those who professed to love her, though they deserted the Flag. But she held fast. You can be like her in that. You may make many mistakes, suffer many defeats, but you can still keep going on, and it is to those who go on to the very end, whether in weakness or in strength, that Jesus will give the crown of life. Mrs. Booth trusted with all her heart in the love and sacrifice of her Saviour. These were her hope and her strength. When at the height of her influence and popularity she delighted in that wonderful song which we still so often sing:-- I love Thee because Thou hast first loved me, And purchased my pardon when nailed to the tree; and when, amid much suffering, she lay dying, we often sang together with her:-- Victory for me! Through the Blood of Christ my Saviour; Victory for me! Through the precious Blood. This was her victory. You can follow her in the faith that won it. Will you? BRAMWELL BOOTH. _International Headquarters._ CONTENTS PREFACE I. CHILDHOOD II. CONVERSION AND SOUL STRUGGLES III. A THREE-YEARS ENGAGEMENT IV. A LIFE OF SACRIFICE V. THE SPEAKER VI. THE MOTHER VII. THE WORKER VIII. GOODNESS IX. LOVE X. THE WARRIOR XI. LAST DAYS XII. DATES IN MRS. BOOTH'S LIFE CATHERINE BOOTH: A SKETCH I CHILDHOOD 'Parents who love God best will not allow their children to learn anything which could not be pressed into His service.'--MRS. BOOTH. The Mother of The Salvation Army was born at Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, on January 17, 1829, and God gave to her the very best gift He can give to any child--a good and holy mother. Katie Mumford, as she was then called, had no sister to play with, and of her four brothers only one lived to be a man. But her dear mother more than made up for every lack, and from her lips the little girl learned those blessed lessons which, in her turn, she has taught to us. One lesson which Mrs. Mumford early taught her daughter was that our bodies will not live for ever. She took Katie to see the body of her infant brother who had just died; and, though she was not more than two years old at the time, Katie never forgot that first lesson. Spiritual things were even then real to her, just because they were so real to her mother. Heaven was home to her, and Jesus her best Friend, ever near to help and guide her. Truthfulness was a second of those early lessons which remained with our Army Mother all her life. She was but four years old when Mrs. Mumford found her one evening sobbing bitterly in her little cot long after she should have been asleep. She had told a falsehood, and conscience would not let her rest. When she had sobbed out her confession, her mother talked and prayed with her, and at last left her, happy in the assurance that she was forgiven by her Heavenly Father. After this you will not be surprised to hear that another lesson early taught to Katie by her mother was to love her Bible. She could read nicely when she was but five years old, and she loved to stand by her mother's side, and read the Bible stories aloud, with just a little help over the very long words. And this love for God's Word grew deeper every year, so that by the time she was twelve years old she had read it through eight times. In later years people often wondered how it was that Mrs. Booth knew her Bible so well, and could so quickly answer their difficulties and objections in Bible words. Much of the secret lay in this early training, and in the hours she spent in Bible study later on, when she had reached the age of some of our younger Corps Cadets. I wish we could have seen her in those days. She had very dark hair, which curled naturally; black, flashing eyes, and such a warm heart, and strong, impetuous nature that she could do nothing by halves. Whatever it was, work or play, her whole soul had to be in it. Since she was not at all strong, and had few girl friends, Katie did not play rough or noisy games, but her love for her dolls made her quite a little mother to them. She treated them almost like real children, and would sew and toil, and never rest till she felt she had in every way done her duty to them. She loved animals, too, especially dogs and horses, and could not bear to see any one ill-treat them. Oh, how she suffered one day, watching some poor sheep driven down the road! She watched the man beat them--she could not stop him; and at last she tore home, and flung herself down almost choking and speechless with indignation and distress. Her mother did not check Katie for feeling so keenly. She encouraged her; for she knew that a hard, indifferent child, who can see suffering and not care or be distressed over it, would make a hard woman; and she wanted her Katie to be full of love and tenderness for all, and especially for those needing help. When Catherine was twelve years old she became very interested in the drink question. She wrote letters about it, and sent them to different newspapers, for there was no 'War Cry' nor 'Young Soldier' in those days; and she also became the secretary of what was then called a Juvenile Temperance Society, and did all she could to get boys and girls to promise never to touch the drink. Katie was also, like many of you, much interested in the heathen. She would go round to all her friends collecting money to pay for preachers to be sent to them; and in order to get more money she would deny herself sugar and other small luxuries. No one told Katie to do this; but you see our Army Mother herself taught us, by her example when only a child, to keep our great Self-Denial Week. Of course, most of Katie's time was taken up with her lessons, and, as she loved to learn and study, they were no hardship to her. For two years she went to a boarding-school, and here her companions soon found out how straight and truthful she was. 'You'll never get _her_ to tell a lie,' the girls said, 'nor even to exaggerate, so it's no use trying.' Every one knew also that Katie felt for the backward girls and those who were slow and dull. She wanted them to succeed, and would help them between school hours. That was her joy, you see--to help and care for others; whether at school or at home she was the same. But you must not think that Catherine was perfect. Oh, no, indeed! Sometimes her schoolmates would tease her because she was so quiet, and liked to read better than to play; and at such times, instead of being patient, she would flare up into a passion, and say harsh, angry words. When the storm was over she would be, however, Oh! so sorry, and would beg her schoolfellows to forgive her. When Katie had been at school two years, God sent her a very great trial. Instead of being able to go on learning and keeping up with the other girls, she had to return home, and for three long years to lie nearly all the time on her back, often suffering very much. She had a serious spinal complaint, and her friends sometimes doubted whether she would ever walk again. You wonder what she did in those three years? I will tell you. When the pain would permit it, she would knit and sew. She could not, of course, hold heavy needlework; but little things, like babies' socks and hoods, pin-cushions, and so forth, she would make most beautifully, and then they would be sold to help on the work of God. Besides her sewing, Katie read a great deal. First, as I have already told you, she read her Bible, and learnt to know God's thoughts about the world and sin, and His wishes for His people. For seven months at one time Catherine had to lie on her face on a special sort of couch made on purpose for her; but she invented a contrivance by which, even then, she could read her Bible, though still remaining in the position that the doctors wished. Then, too, she would read good books--explanations of the Bible, about Holiness, soul-saving, lives of those who have lived and worked for God, and so on. When she had read a chapter she would shut the book, and write down as much as she could remember of it. This helped her to think clearly and to remember what she read, and also to put her thoughts into words. But she never wasted her time reading stories and novels. Later on in her life she said she was so thankful for this, for she thought that novels and silly story books made people discontented with their own homes and duties, and put wrong, hurtful ideas into their minds. Let us recollect and follow our Army Mother's example here, and not waste time on stories which are not true. We, if we had known Katie Mumford in those three years of pain and weariness, should have pitied her very much. We might have been tempted to feel that God was hard in not letting her be strong like other girls; but we now see that all the time He was fitting her for the wonderful future before her; and when she became Mrs. Booth, the great preacher, she herself understood this. 'Being so much alone in my youth,' she said, 'and so thrown on my own thoughts and on those expressed in books, has been very helpful to me. Had I been given to gossip, and had there been people for me to gossip with, I should certainly never have accomplished what I did.' So, you see, God was all the time giving her the very best training He could, and teaching her, as she lay there alone on her bed, what she never could have learned in the ordinary way. And He will train you, too, in the very best way for your future, if you will but determine to trust and serve Him as did Catherine Mumford. II CONVERSION AND SOUL STRUGGLES 'No soul was ever yet saved who was too idle to seek.'--MRS. BOOTH. Perhaps you, the Corps Cadet, for whom I am especially writing this little book, have been tempted to break your vows by becoming engaged to some one who does not want to be an Officer. And you think, perhaps, that no one understands your feelings. You will be surprised, then, to know that our Army Mother had just such a battle to fight when she was a girl. She had a cousin, a little older than herself, who was tall and very clever. He came with his parents to stay in her home, and Katie had not seen him since they were young children. He quickly grew very fond of his cousin, and Catherine found how nice it was to have some one to give her presents and to love her as he did. At last he begged her to promise that by and by she would be engaged to him. Now Katie was very perplexed. On the one hand she loved her cousin, and did not want to grieve him, and yet in her heart she knew he was not truly given up to God, and would not help her in her soul. 'Go to the Meeting with you, Katie?' he used to say. 'Of course, I'll go anywhere to please you.' But then, while she was trying to get a blessing, he would be scratching little pictures on the back of the seat to make her laugh. Perhaps you can guess the struggle it was for Katie to decide what her answer should be. 'If you will only say "yes," and be engaged to him, I am sure you will be able to help him, and very likely get him properly saved,' the Devil would whisper. 'Break it off now, Katie; do not go another step; you know God cannot smile on it.' That was how her conscience spoke. At last, one day as she was truly praying and seeking for light, she read the verse in 2 Corinthians vi. 14: 'Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.' It came to her as the voice of God. 'I will do it, Lord,' she said, after a long struggle; and she sat down, and wrote her cousin a letter, telling him just why she could never be engaged to him, and breaking it all off for ever. Then she turned back to her home duties, and did not re-open the question. And did our Army Mother in after years regret that she had acted like this? No, indeed; she has told us that she saw plainly later on that, if just then she had chosen to follow her own feelings and wishes, instead of obeying God's command, all her life would have been altered, and she would never have done the glorious work He had planned for her. It was a hard battle at the time, and cost her many tears; but it was worth it, ten thousand times over, as we can all see to-day. Very soon after this victory Catherine became really converted. 'What!' you say. 'Was she not converted before this?' No. All her life she had, like many children trained to-day in Salvationist homes, felt God's Holy Spirit striving with her. Sometimes, when quite a little girl, her mother would find her crying because she felt how she had sinned against God. But when she was about fifteen she longed to know that she was really saved. 'Don't be silly,' said the Devil in her heart. 'You have been as good as saved all your life. You have always wanted to do right. How can you expect such a sudden change as if you were a great big drunkard? It's absurd.' 'But my _heart_ is as bad as the heart of a big sinner,' cried poor Katie in an agony of fear. 'I have been as bad inside, if not in my outward actions and words.' And then she took hold of God in faith. 'Lord, I must be converted. I cannot rest till Thou hast changed my whole nature; do for me what Thou dost do, for the thieves and drunkards.' But for six weeks it seemed as if God did not hear her cry. She grew more and more unhappy. All her past sins rose before her: those bursts of temper when she was at school, those wrong thoughts and feelings. Yes, the Bible was true when it said: 'The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.' Katie argued, too, like this: 'I cannot recollect any time or place where I claimed Salvation and the forgiveness of my sins; if God _has_ saved me, He would surely have made me certain of it. Anyway, I must and will know it. I must have the assurance that I am God's child.' Unable to rest, she would pace her room till two o'clock in the morning, and would lie down at last, with her Bible and hymn-book under her pillow, praying that God would Himself tell her that her sins were forgiven. At last, one morning, as she woke, she opened her hymn-book, and read these words:-- My God, I am Thine, What a comfort divine, What a blessing to know that my Jesus is mine. Now she had read and sung these lines scores of times before, but they came this morning with a new power to her soul. 'I am Thine!' 'My Jesus is mine!' she exclaimed. 'Lord, it is true!--I do believe it! My sins are forgiven. I belong to Thee!' and her whole soul was filled with light and joy. She now possessed what she had been seeking all these weeks--the assurance of Salvation! And then what do you think she did? She threw on a wrapper, and, without waiting to dress, hurried across to her mother's room, and tapped at the door. 'Come in,' said her mother's voice; and Katie, her face shining with joy, burst into the room. 'Mamma, mamma, I am a child of God! My sins are forgiven--Jesus is my Saviour!' she cried, flinging herself into her mother's arms. And this was the same Katie, who had been so shy and backward that she had never before dared to speak about her spiritual anxieties, even to her mother! Ah! what a change real conversion, or change of heart, had made. For the next six months Katie was so happy that she felt as if she were walking on air. 'I used to tremble,' she tells us, 'and even long to die, lest I should back-slide or lose the sense of God's favour.' But as time went on she learned, as we all have to do, to walk by faith, not by sight, and to serve and follow the Saviour whether she had happy feelings or not. But you must not suppose, because Katie had the assurance of Salvation, that therefore she had no more fighting. No--indeed, her fighting days had only just begun. One of her great difficulties, which many Corps Cadets will understand, was that she felt so nervous about doing anything in public. No one, of course, asked her to speak--such a thing was never dreamed of; but the lady who took the Bible Class which she attended regularly would now and then ask her to pray. 'Miss Mumford will pray,' the lady would say, when they were all kneeling together. But Katie was too shy to begin, and sometimes they would wait for several minutes before she had courage to say a few words. 'Don't ask me to pray again,' she said one day to her leader; 'the excitement and agitation make me quite ill.' 'I can't help that,' was the very wise answer; 'you must break through your timidity; for otherwise you will be of no use to God.' And did Katie persevere? Yes, indeed, she did. Here is an entry made some time later in the diary that she kept, which shows you how very much her experience was like yours:-- 'I have not been blessed so much for weeks as I was to-night. I prayed aloud. The cross was great, but so was the reward. My heart beat violently, but I felt some liberty.' Though Catherine's spine difficulty was better, she was still very delicate, and at the age of eighteen every one felt sure she was going into a decline. But, sick or well, her soul grew stronger, and her desire to please and serve God better increased every day. 'I do love Thee,' she wrote in the same little diary, 'but I want to love Thee more.' It was not till many years later that Catherine received the blessing of a clean heart; but even now she had begun to desire and long for it. She also writes at this time: 'I see that this Full Salvation is very necessary if I am to glorify God below, and find my way to Heaven. I want a _clean_ heart. Lord, take me and seal me.' Some people, even after they are converted, are too proud to own themselves wrong, or to confess when they have sinned. Catherine was not of that sort. In one of her letters to her mother she ends with these words:-- 'Pray for me, dear mother, and believe me, with all my faults and besetments, your loving child.' Her hunger after a holy life was real and practical. She knew she must learn to live by method--that is, doing right, whether she liked it or not--and not by feelings, if she was to be of use in the world. So at the end of the year she wrote some new resolutions; and as they may be of help to you, I will copy them for you just as she put them down:-- 'I have been writing a few daily rules for the coming year, which I hope will prove a blessing to me, by the grace of God. I have got a paper of printed rules also, which I intend to read once a week. May the Lord help me to keep to them! But, above all, I am determined to search the Scriptures more attentively, for in them I have eternal life. I have read my Bible through twice during the past sixteen months, but I must read it with more prayer for light and understanding. Oh, may it be my meat and drink! May I meditate on it day and night! And then I shall bring forth fruit in season; my leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever I do shall prosper.' She had also her own private ways of denying herself, not for the sake of earning money or praise by it, but simply because she felt it was right. One of these rules was to do without dinner, and butter at breakfast, once in the week, because she felt it helped her in her soul. I cannot end this chapter without telling you of the one great sorrow which darkened all her early years. Some of you, I know, will enter into her feelings so well. Her father, at one time saved and earnest about the souls of others, had grown cold and backslidden, and now never even went near a Meeting. You can fancy what agony this was to both Mrs. Mumford and her daughter. They prayed and wept in vain--he only seemed to get more indifferent. Catherine would sometimes write her feelings and her sorrow in her diary, and there we read:-- 'I sometimes get into an agony of feeling while praying for my dear father. Oh, my Lord, answer prayer, and bring him back to Thyself! Never let that tongue which once delighted in praising Thee, and in showing others Thy willingness to save, be engaged in uttering the lamentations of the lost! Oh, awful thought! Lord, have mercy! Save, Oh! save him in any way Thou seest best, though it be ever so painful. If by removing me Thou canst do this, cut short Thy work, and take me Home. Let me be bold to speak in Thy name. Oh, give me true courage and liberty, and when I write to him, bless what I say to the good of his soul!' For many years this prayer of Catherine's was not answered; but she held on, as you must do for those you love, in faith and prayer; and at last she had the unspeakable joy of seeing her dear father come back to God through one of her own Meetings which he had attended. His last years were full of peace, and were spent in serving God and rejoicing in His Salvation. III A THREE-YEARS ENGAGEMENT 'What a need there is for effort and energy; or real religion and common sense!'--MRS. BOOTH. One Sunday, when Catherine and her mother went to the Meeting as usual, they found a 'Special' there, taking the services. He was quite different from the other Specials, and Catherine could not help noticing him with extra interest. He spoke to the people's hearts, and was not so much occupied in preaching a good sermon as in getting some one converted. But he did preach a very good sermon for all that, and chose this verse as his text--'This is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.' A few days later Catherine and her mother were spending the evening with a friend, when the very same preacher came in, and was introduced to them as the Rev. William Booth. Catherine knew they had one subject in common--love for souls; but before the evening ended she discovered that the young minister was quite as earnest as she was herself in fighting the Drink curse and all that was connected with it. A few Sundays later Mr. Booth preached again in the same building, this time as the minister, or, as we should say, 'Officer in charge,' and no longer as a Special. And now you will guess that the two often met, and that, because they had so many interests in common, they soon learned to know each other well, till respect grew into friendship, and friendship into love. Catherine was at this time twenty-two years old, and Mr. Booth was three months younger; but, though you would have said they were old enough to know their own minds, they did nothing hastily, and would enter into no engagement till they were quite sure of God's Will in the matter. Had Catherine ever before thought of the day when she would get married? you, perhaps, ask. Oh, yes, indeed, and when but a girl of sixteen--directly, in fact, after she was saved--she settled in her own heart what sort of a man her future husband must be. First, she decided, he must be truly converted, and a total abstainer, not to please her, but from his own choice. Then he must be a man of sense, or she could never respect him; and, if they were to be happy, they must feel and think alike on all important matters. Ah, if our women-Soldiers and Cadets to-day would but follow our Army Mother's example, there would be fewer unhappy marriages and wrecked lives! But in her secret heart Catherine had also, girl-like, some ideas about the sort of man she would like to marry, if she might choose. He should be a minister--that was the nearest she could get to an Officer in those days; William was a name she particularly liked, and--if only he might be tall and dark! If you had been there when Katie Mumford first listened to his preaching you would have seen that he was 'tall and dark' indeed. But though William Booth loved Catherine with a deep and holy love, which increased each time they met, yet he was very poor, and he wondered if he ought, under the circumstances, to ask her to share his lot. He wrote a letter to her, telling her how perplexed and troubled he was, and her answer shows us that, right from the very earliest days, before they were even engaged, her one desire was that his soul should prosper. 'My dear friend,' she begins ... 'The thought that I should cause you any suffering or increase your perplexity is almost unbearable. I am tempted to wish that we had never seen each other. Do try to forget me, as far as the remembrance would injure your usefulness or spoil your peace. If I have no alternative but to oppose the Will of God, or trample on the desolations of my own heart, _my choice is made_. "Thy will be done" is my constant cry. I care not for myself; but Oh, if I cause you to err, I shall never be happy again.' It was not the fear of poverty that frightened her, for a few days later she says:-- 'I fear you did not fully understand my difficulty. It was not circumstances. I thought I had assured you that a bright prospect would not allure me, nor a dark one affright me, if only we are _one in heart_. My only reason for wishing to defer the engagement was that _you_ might feel satisfied in your mind that the step is right.... If you are convinced on this point, let circumstances go, and let us be one, come what may.' This is exactly what they did, and after meeting, and together consecrating their lives to God, they solemnly pledged themselves to each other. And now began a three-years' engagement, in which, though often for long months at a time they never met, they remained true to each other and to God, in thought and word and deed. Many of the beautiful letters that our Army Mother wrote to The General at this time, I am glad to tell you, have been kept, and we will look together at some of the ways in which she tried to help and cheer him. In the first letter after their engagement she ends with these words:-- 'The more you lead me up to Christ in all things, the more highly shall I esteem you; and if it be possible to love you more than I do now, the more shall I love you. You are always present in my thoughts.' Now you must not think that, even in these early days, our General had a very easy life. He was often much perplexed and troubled, longing above all to do God's Will for the Salvation of the people, and yet not quite sure what that Will was. At these times Catherine was of untold help to him. Once he was very unsettled--not certain whether he should remain away in the North of England, or accept a place in London, where the two could often meet. Most girls would have said, 'Oh, come, then we shall be near to each other'; but you will see that her advice to him is just as suitable for you when you are not certain of your duty--that she does not consider her own feelings at all. 'I wish,' she writes, 'you prayed more and talked less about the matter. Try it, and be determined to get clear and settled views as to your course. Leave your heart before God, and get satisfied in His sight, and then do it, be it what it may. I cannot bear the idea of your being unhappy. Pray do in this as you feel in your soul it will be right. My conscience is no standard for yours.' Then she adds, lower down:-- 'Oh, if you come to London, let us be determined to reap a blessed harvest. Let our fellowship be sanctified to our souls' everlasting good. My mind is made up to do my part towards it. I hope to be firm as a rock on some points. The Lord help me. We must aim to improve each other's mind and character. Let us pray for grace to do it in the best way and to the fullest extent possible.' 'Anyway,' she says, a day or two later--and ever remember her words when outside things try and distress you--'don't let the controversy hurt your soul. Live near to God by prayer.... You believe He answers prayer. Then take courage. Just fall down at His feet, and open your very soul before Him, and throw yourself right into His arms. Tell Him that if you are wrong you only wait to be set right, and, be the path rough or smooth, you will walk in it. 'Oh, you must live close to God! If you are a greater distance from Him than you were, just stop the whirl of outward things, or rather leave it, and shut yourself up with Him till all is clear and bright upwards. Do, there's a dear. Oh, how much we lose by not coming to the point. Now, at once, realize your union with Christ, and trust Him to lead you through this perplexity. Bless you. Excuse this advice. I am anxious for your soul. Look up. If God hears my prayers, He must guide you--He will guide you.' In these early days our General was tempted, as some of us are tempted to-day, to feel nervous and shy when talking before large crowds, and where the people were better dressed and better off than usual. He wrote his feelings to Catherine, and she sends him back her wise advice and help. 'I am sorry for this,' she says, 'and am persuaded it is the fear of man which shackles you. Do not give place to this feeling. Remember you are _the_ Lord's servant, and if you are a faithful one it will be a small matter with you to be judged of man's judgment. Let nothing be wanting beforehand to make what you say helpful, but when you are before the people try to think only of your own responsibility to Him who hath sent you.' Again, later, she writes:-- 'Try and cast off the fear of man. Fix your eyes simply on the glory of God, and care not for frown or praise of man. Rest not till your soul is fully alive to God.' How truly she herself carried this out in her own Meetings you will hear later on. Miss Mumford was very anxious that The General should improve himself with plenty of hard work. She saw what he might become, and she also knew that unless he did _his_ part all those wonderful powers which God had lent to him would be thrown away. 'Do assure me,' she writes, 'my own dear William, that no want of energy or effort on your part shall hinder the improvement of those talents God has given you.' So that, with his constant travelling and preaching, he might get time to read and think and learn, she suggested a little plan to him in his billets. 'Could you not,' she says, 'provide yourself with a small leather bag or case, large enough to hold your Bible and any other book you might require--pens, ink, paper and a candle? And, presuming that you generally have a room to yourself, could you not rise by six o'clock every morning, and convert your bedroom into a study till breakfast time?... I hope, my dearest love, you will consider this plan, and keep to it, if possible, as a general practice. Don't let little difficulties prevent your carrying it out.' You must remember that at this time neither Catherine nor Mr. Booth ever dreamed of the wonderful work they were to be called to do. He was then preaching and getting souls saved, mostly in country places, and had many a 'hard go,' but _that_ was no reason why he should not improve. Did The General like this advice and counsel? Or did he feel, as some men do to-day, that women cannot judge nor understand such things? Ah! he was wise, and only too glad to have all the help that Catherine could give him. In fact, he often wrote begging her to help him more. The outlines for addresses which she sent him weekly he valued and used, as this letter shows:-- 'I have,' he writes, 'just taken hold of that sketch you sent me on "Be not deceived," and am about to make a full sermon on it. I like it much. It is admirable. 'I want a sermon on the Flood, one on Jonah, and one on the Judgment. Send me some bare thoughts, some clear, startling outlines. We must have that kind of truth which will move sinners.' But if Catherine Mumford was anxious about the mind and work of her future husband, much more was she anxious about his soul. To her, there could be no true love without faithfulness, and where she felt it necessary, she cautioned him in the truest and tenderest way:-- 'You have special need,' she writes, 'for watchfulness and for much private intercourse with God. 'My dearest love, beware how you indulge that dangerous element of character, ambition. Misdirected, it will be everlasting ruin to yourself, and perhaps to me also. Oh, my love, let nothing earthly excite it; let not the wish to be great fire it. Fix it on the Throne of the Eternal, and let it find the realization of its loftiest aspirations in the promotion of His glory, and it shall be consummated with the richest enjoyments and brightest glories of God's own Heaven.' You wonder, perhaps, if Catherine ever wrote 'love letters,' as we call them. She never wrote the foolish and sentimental letters which say a great deal, and mean very little; but she was able to put her great love into words strong, intense, and full of tenderness. 'Do I remember?' she asks in one letter. 'Yes, I remember all--all that has bound us together. All the bright and happy, as well as the clouded and sorrowful times of our fellowship. Nothing relating to you can time or place erase from my memory. Your words, your looks, your actions, even the most trivial and incidental, come up before me as fresh as life. If I meet a child called William, I am more interested in him than in any other. Bless you. Keep your spirits up, and hope much for the future. God lives and loves us, and we shall be one in Him, loving each other as Christ loved us.' William Booth and Catherine Mumford were married in London, on June 15, 1855; and here are a few lines from the last letter she wrote to him before the engagement was ended, and the long thirty-five years of happy married life began:-- 'I long to see you. Your letters do not satisfy the yearnings of my heart. Perhaps they ought to. I wish it were differently constituted. I might be much happier. But it _will_ be extravagant and enthusiastic in spite of all my schooling. If I ever get to Heaven, what rapture shall I know! No, there is no fear of our loving each other too much. How can we love each other more than Christ has loved us? And this is the standard He has given us. What a precious thing is the religion of Jesus! It makes our first duties our highest happiness. It has the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come. We will spend all our energies in trying to persuade men to receive and practise it.' How wonderfully she carried this intention into practice, and, together with The General, lived every moment 'publishing the Sinner's Friend,' you shall read later on. IV A LIFE OF SACRIFICE 'Since I came to the crucifixion of myself, I have not cared much what men might say of me.'--MRS. BOOTH. At the time when our Army Mother married The General's work was, as we have seen, that of an 'Evangelist' or 'Travelling Minister.' He would stay in a town for some weeks or months, as the case might be, preaching and holding Meetings, and getting people saved, both in the town itself and the places round. It was a blessed and useful life, but very wearying; and we can fancy how trying it must have been for Mrs. Booth after her marriage not to have any home of her own, but to billet first in one stranger's house, and then in another's. But she did not complain, though we see what it cost her by a letter she writes to her mother, telling the good news that they are to live in lodgings while at Sheffield:-- 'You cannot think,' she writes, 'with what joy I look forward to being to ourselves once more. For though I get literally oppressed with kindness, I must say I would prefer a home where we could sit down together at our own little table, myself the mistress, and my husband the only guest. But the work of God so abundantly prospers that I dare not repine, or else I feel this constant packing and unpacking and staying amongst strangers to be a great burden, especially while so weak and poorly. But then I have many mercies and advantages. My precious William is all I desire, and without this what would the most splendid home be but a glittering bauble?' For several years Mrs. Booth travelled in this way from place to place, helping, cheering, and encouraging her husband in his soul-saving campaigns. She felt her duty lay here, and even when she had a little son to care for, she was unwilling to settle down. Writing to her mother, who urged her to leave off this trying life; or, at any rate, to hand the baby over to her, she says:-- 'My objection to leaving William gets stronger as I see the need he has of my presence, care, and sympathy; neither is he willing for it himself. Nor can I make up my mind to parting with Willie.' Mrs. Booth's object was to be a help to her husband--not a hindrance; to push him forward in his soul-saving work--not to hold him back; and therefore, instead of rejoicing, as most wives and mothers would have done, when a settled home and work were offered him, she was doubtful. 'Personally considered,' she writes to her mother, 'I care nothing about it. I feel that a good rest in one place will be a boon to us. Anyhow, if God wills him to be an Evangelist, He will open the way. I find that I love the work itself far more than I thought I did, and I am willing to risk something for it.' After this came several years of great conflict and struggle. The Conference (or, as we would say, Headquarters) under whom The General worked did not wish him to continue the great Salvation Campaigns for which God had so marvellously fitted him. They wanted him to 'settle down,' and spend perhaps several years in one place like ordinary ministers. To please those who were over him he did this, and spent four years in one town. But though God blessed his efforts, The General was convinced that he was called to greater things. He loved the sinners; wherever he went crowds flocked to hear him, and the vilest were converted. Was it God's will, therefore, that he should sacrifice the work his soul loved, and 'settle down' into an ordinary life, helping and reaching only the people of one small city? This question our Army Mother helped him to decide. Try to picture her position. She had by this time a family of little children, and her health was very delicate. By counselling The General to 'settle down,' as his friends wished him to do, she would have a nice home, a comfortable income, and, above all, the constant presence of her husband, who would no longer need to leave her on his long soul-saving tours. By refusing the position offered, and choosing instead to take up the 'evangelistic life' again, The General turned his back on salary, home, and work, and went out into the world, with his wife and four children, friendless and alone. Do you wonder that the struggle was a severe one? 'Pray for me,' she wrote to her mother, when the question was about to be settled. 'I have many a conflict in regard to the proposed new departure; not as to our support--I feel as though I can trust the Lord implicitly for all that; but the Devil tells me I shall never be able to endure the loneliness and separation of the life. He draws many a picture of most dark and melancholy shade. But I cling to the promise, "No man hath forsaken," etc., and, having sworn to my own hurt, may I stand fast. I have told William that if he takes the step, and it should bring me to the workhouse, I would never say one upbraiding word. No. To blame him for making such a sacrifice for God and conscience' sake would be worse than wicked. So, whatever be the result, I shall make up my mind to endure it patiently, looking to the Lord for grace and strength.' But if it was difficult for Mrs. Booth, the path was equally dark and hard for The General. 'William hesitates,' she writes a few weeks later. 'He thinks of me and the children, and I appreciate his love and care. But I tell him that God will provide, if he will only go straight on in the path of duty. It is strange that I, who always used to shrink from the sacrifice, should be the first in making it. But when I made the surrender I did it whole-heartedly, and ever since I have been like another being. Oh, pray for us yet more and more! We have no money coming in from any quarter now. Nor has William any invitations at present. The time is unfavourable. I am much tempted to feel it hard that God has not cleared our path more satisfactorily. But I will not "charge God foolishly." I know that His way is often in the whirlwind, and He rides upon the storm: I will try to possess my soul in patience, and to wait on Him.' Sometimes you have heard your Officers talking in a Meeting, and telling the people that, if they will but step out in faith, and do right, God will open up the way for them. The example of our General and Army Mother has taught us this lesson, for few ever took a step of faith into greater darkness and difficulty than they did at this time. 'My dearest,' writes Mrs. Booth to her mother, 'is starting for London. Pray for him. He is much harassed. But I have promised to keep a brave heart. At times it appears to me that God may have something very glorious in store for us, and when He has tried us He will bring us forth as gold. It will not be the first time I have taken a leap in the dark, humanly speaking, for conscience' sake.' It was, indeed, a 'leap in the dark': to break up their little home in the North, and, travelling by boat, to save expense, to bring their four children to Mrs. Mumford's house in London. There they separated: the father and mother went to Cornwall, to hold a Salvation campaign in a little chapel that had been lent to them, and the children remained behind. Of the marvellous way in which God blessed the Cornish work, I cannot stop to tell you. Mrs. Booth's name as a preacher was by this time becoming as widely known as that of her husband; and they went from one place to another, at first together, and then, afterwards, separately, so as to be able to do more good, for four long years. Whenever possible, our Army Mother took her children with her: she never left them to others when she could help it, and later on I shall tell you what a devoted and tender mother she was; but the strain of those four long years no one will ever know. I want you to see the dark as well as the bright side of her wonderful life; and here is part of a letter to her mother, written at that time:-- 'I feel dreadfully unsettled at present. I don't like this mode of living at all. William has now been away from home, except on Friday and Saturday, for twelve weeks. I long to get fixed together again once more. The going backwards and forwards and being in other people's houses does not suit William. Nor do I like leaving home for the Sabbaths. I am much tempted to look gloomily towards the future. But "my heart is fixed." "I will trust, and not be afraid."' Then again, a little later on:-- 'Pray for me. I sometimes feel as though I had taken a path which is too hard for me, and duties too heavy for me to perform; but it is my privilege to say, and to feel, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."' Once again she says:-- 'Well, the Lord help us to be faithful to our convictions, even in the dark and cloudy day! I have felt it hard work to do so lately. Many a time have I longed to be where the weary are at rest. 'Well, we must labour and wait a little longer; it may be that the clouds will break, and surround us with sunshine. Anyway, God lives above the clouds, and He will direct our path.' The General and Mrs. Booth were holding Salvation services in London when our Army Mother was called to make a fresh sacrifice, never dreaming of the wonderful results that would spring from it. You shall read about it in her own words, spoken many years afterwards:-- 'I remember well,' she says, 'when The General decided at last to give up the evangelistic life and to devote himself to the Salvation of the East-Enders. He had come home from a Meeting one night, tired out, as usual. It was between eleven and twelve o'clock. Flinging himself into an easy chair, he said to me, "O Kate, as I passed by the doors of the flaming gin-palaces to-night I seemed to hear a voice sounding in my ears, 'Where can you go and find such heathen as these, and where is there so great a need for your labours?' And I felt as though I ought at every cost to stop and preach to these East-End crowds." 'I remember the emotion that this produced in my soul. I sat gazing into the fire, and the Devil whispered to me, "This means another new departure--another start in life." 'The question of our support I saw at once to be a serious difficulty. Hitherto we had been able to meet our expenses by the collections which we had made from our respectable audiences. But it was impossible to suppose that we could do so among the poverty-stricken East-Enders. We did not then see things as we do to-day. We were afraid even to ask for a collection among the East London crowds. 'Nevertheless, I did not answer discouragingly. After a moment's pause for thought and prayer, I answered, "Well, if you feel you ought to stay, stay. We have trusted the Lord once for our support, and we can trust Him again."' Mrs. Booth, when she answered like this, had no idea of all that was to follow. She never dreamt that, from The General's standing alone in Whitechapel, a mighty wave of Salvation would sweep over the earth, nor that God was about to raise up an Army of which she and The General were to be the leaders. But, as always before, she willingly agreed to whatever would be for God's glory and the Salvation of souls; and we all know to-day how, from that little Whitechapel beginning, grew the Christian Mission, and how, at last, the Christian Mission became The Salvation Army. Do not think, however, that our dear Army Mother's consecration stopped here! No, indeed. One by one, as they became old enough, she gave up her children to the Work, and we shall never know all we owe as an Army to her beautiful spirit of devotion and sacrifice. Let us stand together by her open grave in the autumn twilight. Her twenty-six years of fight and toil in The Salvation Army are over now, her spirit has been summoned Home. Listen. The Army Founder himself is the speaker. He is recalling the forty years which he and our dear Army Mother had trod together, and his words sum up better than any other words could do what she was to our Leader:-- 'If you had had a tree,' he said, speaking to the vast crowd that stood round the grave, 'that had grown up in your garden, under your window, which for forty years had been your shadow from the burning sun, whose flowers had been the adornment and beauty of your life, whose fruit had been almost the stay of your existence, and the gardener had come along and swung his glittering axe and cut it down before your eyes, I think you would feel as though you had a blank--it might not be a big one--but a little blank in your life. 'If you had had a servant who for all this long time had served you without fee or reward, who had administered, for very love, to your health and comfort, and who suddenly passed away, you would miss that servant. 'If you had had a counsellor who, in hours--continually occurring--of perplexity and amazement, had ever advised you, and seldom advised wrong; whose advice you had followed, and seldom had reason to regret it; and the counsellor, while you were in the same intricate mazes of your existence, had passed away, you would miss that counsellor. 'If you had had a friend who had understood your very nature, the rise and fall of your feelings, the bent of your thoughts, and the purpose of your existence; a friend whose communion had ever been pleasant--the most pleasant of all other friends--to whom you had ever turned with satisfaction, and your friend had been taken away, you would feel some sorrow at the loss. 'If you had had a mother for your children who had cradled and nursed and trained them for the service of the living God, in which you most delighted--a mother, indeed, who had never ceased to bear their sorrows on her heart, and who had been ever willing to pour forth that heart's blood in order to nourish them, and that darling mother had been taken from your side, you would feel it a sorrow. 'If you had had a wife, a sweet love of a wife, who for forty years had never given you real cause for grief; a wife who had stood with you, side by side, in the battle's front, who had been a comrade to you, ever willing to interpose herself between you and the enemy, and ever the strongest when the battle was fiercest, and your beloved one had fallen before your eyes, I am sure there would be some excuse for your sorrow. 'Well, my comrades, you can roll all these qualities into one personality, and what would be lost in all I have lost in one. There has been taken away from me the light of my eyes, the inspiration of my soul, and we are about to lay all that remains of her in the grave. I have been looking right at the bottom of it here, and calculating how soon they may bring and lay me alongside of her, and my cry to God has been that every remaining hour of my life may make me readier to come and join her in death, to go and embrace her in life in the Eternal City.' V THE SPEAKER 'I will never speak to sinners so that one man or woman in my audience can stand up and say, "You might have warned me more faithfully, spoken more plainly than you did." I would rather die than that should be the case.'--MRS. BOOTH. No one must think that Mrs. Booth became a great speaker all in a moment, or by any 'royal road.' She started when about eighteen, as many a Corps Cadet has since done, by just taking a class or Company on Sundays, never dreaming of doing more. An elder girls' Company was given to her; and she had fifteen girls to teach, whose ages varied from twelve to nineteen. Two half-days she spent every week in preparing for her Company, and in trying to make each lesson end in a practical way, so as to do them real good. Then on Sunday, when the rest of the children had been dismissed, Miss Mumford would beg to be given the key of the room and would remain behind, holding a little Prayer Meeting with her girls. Sometimes they would stay on for an hour and a half, and many by this means became truly converted. Often with so much praying and singing Catherine quite lost her voice before the end of the Meeting; but, so long as souls were saved, she did not mind that. Soon after her marriage Mrs. Booth took another class of this same kind, and also a little sort of Sergeants' Meeting, and then--for you see our Army Mother was led on, just as you or I may be, step by step--she gave a short talk to the Band of Hope children (something like our Band of Love of today) on the evils of drink. 'Oh, how I wish,' she wrote to her father, 'that I had started speaking years ago!' A little later on Mr. and Mrs. Booth moved to Gateshead, and there the people were very much surprised to hear their minister's wife pray aloud when her husband had done speaking; for in those days very few women thought of praying, much less of speaking, in public. 'Since you can pray so beautifully, will you come and talk to us on our special Prayer-Meeting night?' some of the people asked. But Mrs. Booth was horrified. 'Of course, I said "No,"' she wrote. 'I don't know what they can be thinking of.' Just at this time an argument began in one of the newspapers as to whether women had the right to speak for God or not. Mrs. Booth wrote an answer to this question you can read it for yourself in her book, 'Practical Religion'--and she showed from God's Word, that women have the same right to help to get people saved that the men have. The little pamphlet was already printed and being widely read, and our Army Mother lay alone in her room very ill, when the thought flashed into her soul, 'You have been helping other women to preach and to speak for God. What about yourself?' 'Oh, no, Lord, not me; I can't. I am, as Thou knowest, the most timid and bashful disciple ever saved by grace.' That was her answer. Then the Lord took her back to the days when she first gave herself to Him, at the age of fifteen. He showed her that all the way along this one thing had hindered and stopped her from 'being the blessing or from getting the blessing He intended.' 'Lord,' she cried, 'if Thou wilt come back to me as in the old days, I will obey, though I die in the attempt.' But at the moment God seemed not to answer her cry, and when she was well again all went on as before. Three months later Mrs. Booth was quietly sitting one Sunday morning in chapel with her eldest boy, when a very wonderful thing happened. You shall read about it in her own words:-- 'I felt much depressed in mind,' she says, 'and was not expecting anything particular, but as the testimonies proceeded I felt the Holy Spirit come upon me. It seemed as if a voice said to me: "Now, if you were to go and testify, you know I would bless it to your own soul as well as to the people!" I gasped again, and said in my heart: "Yes, Lord, I believe Thou wouldst, but I cannot do it!" I had forgotten my vow. 'A moment afterwards there flashed across my mind the memory of the time when I had promised the Lord that I would obey Him at all costs. And then the voice seemed to ask me if this was consistent with that promise. I almost jumped up and said, "No, Lord, it is the old thing over again. But I cannot do it!" I felt as though I would sooner die than speak. And then the Devil said, "Besides, you are not prepared. You will look like a fool, and will have nothing to say." He made a mistake. He overreached himself for once. It was this word that settled it. "Ah!" I said, "this is just the point. I have never yet been willing to be a fool for Christ. Now I will be one!" 'Without stopping another moment, I rose up from my seat and walked down the aisle. My dear husband thought something had happened to me, and so did the people. We had been there two years, and they knew my timid, bashful nature. He stepped down, and asked me, "What is the matter, my dear?" I replied, "I want to say a word!" He was so taken by surprise that he could only say, "My dear wife wishes to speak!" and sat down. For years he had been trying to persuade me to do it. Only that very week he had wanted me to go and address a little Cottage Meeting of some twenty working people, but I had refused. 'I stood--God only knows how--and if any mortal ever did hang on the arm of Omnipotence, I did. I just stood and told the people how it had come about. I confessed, as I think everybody should who has been in the wrong and has misrepresented the religion of Jesus Christ. I said, "I dare say many of you have been looking upon me as a very devoted woman, and one who has been living faithfully to God. But I have come to realize that I have been disobeying Him, and thus brought darkness and leanness into my soul. I have promised the Lord to do so no longer, and have come to tell you that henceforth I will be obedient to the holy vision." 'There was more weeping, they said, in the chapel that day than on any previous occasion. Many dated a renewal in righteousness from that very moment, and began a life of devotion and consecration to God. 'Now I might have "talked good" to them till now. That honest confession did what twenty years of preaching could not have accomplished.' After this wonderful victory Mrs. Booth never again drew back. The same night she spoke once more, with even greater power than in the morning, and before long invitations came pouring in from all parts, for wherever she went souls were saved and people sanctified. But it cost her a great deal to preach like this. She writes of one Meeting held soon after:-- 'I got on very well, and had three beautiful cases, but I cannot tell you how I felt all day about it. I could neither eat nor sleep. I never was in such a state, and when I saw the people, I felt like melting away. However, I got through.' Even to the last, when she was known all round the world as one of the greatest women-preachers of the day, she never spoke without feeling deeply the responsibility and importance of her work, nor without having prepared carefully beforehand what she wanted to say. It was very difficult for her, with four little children, the eldest only four years and three months old, to get enough time and quiet. We should have said it was impossible, for she was not well off, and could not afford to put her sewing out, or to have many servants to work for her; but she says:-- 'God forced me to begin to think and work, and He gave me grace and strength to do it. Many a time while I was nursing my baby I was thinking of what I should say next Sunday, and between times I noted down with a pencil the thoughts as they struck me. Then I would appear with an outline scratched in pencil, trusting in the Lord to give me the power of His Holy Spirit; and from the day I began He has never allowed me to open my mouth without giving me signs of His presence and blessing.' The two books she always used in getting ready for her Meetings were her Bible and Concordance. In later years she taught her children how to prepare for their Meetings, and some of the advice she gives is very helpful to Corps Cadets. '"Jesus wept,"' she writes to her eldest girl, who was then fourteen, 'would be a nice subject for you at one of your little Meetings. And you could find some texts to show how David wept, and Daniel, and Jeremiah, etc., if you like it. But don't take it because _I_ say so--you must ask the Lord for your subjects.' Later on, however, as The Salvation Army grew, Mrs. Booth felt that, though it was just as necessary to prepare, yet to speak from notes was often not helpful to either the Officer or the people, so she writes to one of her sons:-- 'Get out of them! They don't fit our work. When you get on, you don't want them; and when you don't, they are no good. At first, if your memory won't serve you, just jot on a small bit of paper the size of a ticket your main divisions in large writing, but no more. Like this:-- 'Day of wrath is come. '1. God's wrath. '2. Just wrath. '3. Uttermost wrath. '4. Eternal wrath.' On the platform Mrs. Booth's manner was as simple and natural as when by her own fireside; anything 'put on' or affected she hated. 'If I were asked,' she says, 'to put into one word what I consider to be the greatest hindrance to the success of Divine truth, even when spoken by sincere and real people, I should say _stiffness_. Simplicity is indispensable to success, _naturalness_ in putting the truth. It seems as if people, the moment they come to religion, put on a different tone, a different look and manner--in short, become unnatural.' But Mrs. Booth not only prepared for her Meetings by thought and study, but she prepared most of all by prayer. 'Oh, if we could,' she writes, 'get more of the spirit of prayer into those who love God! Few understand it at all. 'I always find an exact proportion in the results to the spirit of intercession I have had beforehand. That is why I like to be alone in lodgings.' Before her Meeting she would wrestle and plead with God for hours, in tears and agony, and then would face her congregation overflowing with love and faith. 'Pray for me,' she writes during her marvellous Portsmouth campaign. 'No one knows how I feel. I think I never realized my responsibility as I did on Sunday night. I felt really awful before rising to speak. The sight almost overwhelmed me. With its two galleries, its dome-like roof and vast proportions, when crammed with people, the building presents a most imposing appearance. The top gallery is ten or twelve seats deep in front, and it was full of men. Such a sight as I have never seen on any previous occasion. Oh, how I _yearned_ over them! I felt as if it would be a small thing to die _there and then_, if that would have brought them to Jesus.' Nothing short of men and women getting converted satisfied her. 'They say,' she writes of another campaign, 'the sinners here will "_bide some bringing down_." Well, the Lord can do it. They tell me, too, that I am immensely popular with the people. But _that_ is no comfort unless they will be saved.' She laboured to get the truth home to the hearts of her listeners, and that is why her talking was so blessed. 'God made you responsible,' she said, 'not for delivering the truth, but for GETTING IT IN--getting it home, fixing it in the conscience as a red-hot iron, as a bolt, straight from His throne; and He has given you also the _power to do it_; and if you do not do it, _blood_ will be on your skirts. Oh, this genteel way of putting the truth! How God hates it! "If you please, dear friends, will you listen? If you please, will you be converted? Will you come to Jesus? Shall we read just this, that, and the other?" No more like apostolic preaching than darkness is like light.' How can I show you some of the marvellous results of her preaching? In every part of our land her influence and words made themselves felt; the largest buildings were crowded with all classes of society, and glorious cases of conversion and sanctification crowned her labours everywhere. A lady who was at some of her women's Meetings at Lye, near Birmingham, tells us:-- 'The women left their work, and in all sorts of odd costumes flocked to the Meetings, some with bonnets, some with shawls fastened over their head, others with little children clinging to their necks. All, with eager, inquiring faces, took their seats and listened to the gracious words which fell from the lips of dear Mrs. Booth. And when the invitation was given, what a scene ensued! It baffles all description. Crowding, weeping, rushing to the penitent-form came convicted sinners and repentant backsliders. When the form was filled the penitents dropped upon their knees in the aisles or in their seats, so that it was difficult to move about.' When holding some Meetings in a Rotherhithe chapel (for The Army was only just beginning its work, and our Army Mother took Meetings in different churches and chapels up and down the land), the victories were just as glorious, and one of her Converts says:-- 'There were many remarkable cases of conversion at these Meetings. Amongst others there were the two daughters of a publican. When one sister was saved the other went to hear Mrs. Booth on purpose to ridicule the services. But she was seized with such an agonizing realization of her sins that she came down from the top of the gallery to the penitent-form, crying out aloud, "I must come! I must come!" Soon after their father gave up the public-house, and they afterwards became members of Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle. 'I have seen as many as thirty persons seeking Salvation in a single Meeting, and some years afterwards, when I looked at the register of our chapel, I found about one hundred names of those who had professed to be converted at this time.' Our Army Mother, too, was equally straight and fearless with the rich when, later on, they also came in crowds to hear her. She had but one message and one gospel for all alike. She says, 'By God's help I will not regard the person of man, but will plainly and fearlessly declare the truth, come what may.' God honoured this spirit, and her Meetings in the West-End of London, where the great and rich live, were some of the most glorious of her life. Of one such she writes:-- 'The Lord has very graciously stood by me, and given me much precious fruit. Last Sunday we had the Hall crowded, and a large proportion of gentlemen. The Lord was there in power, and twenty-one came forward--some for Salvation and some for purity. Several were most blessed cases of full surrender. We did not get away till nearly six, and we began at three. Everybody is amazed at this for the West-End! The audience is very select, we never having published a bill. Pray much, dear friend, that God may do a deep and permanent work in this Babylon. It seems as though He gave me words of fire for them, and they sat spellbound.' You say you wish you had heard her speak? Indeed, we all wish you had: you could never have forgotten it. But several of her addresses were taken down in shorthand at the time, and are reprinted in her books, so you can get and read them; and they will bless and teach you as they have taught thousands before you. VI THE MOTHER 'A lady once said to me, "How have you managed to get your children converted so early?" "Oh," I said, "I have been beforehand with the Devil."'--MRS. BOOTH. I have already told you how Mrs. Booth had the true mother spirit when but a little child, loving and tending her dolls as if they had been real babies; you will, therefore, guess that with her own children she was the best and most careful of mothers. She began early to train them in the right way, and never left them unless forced to do so. 'I cannot part with Willie,' she writes to her mother, who offered to free Mrs. Booth by taking charge of the baby for her; 'first, because I know the child's affections could not but be weaned from us; and secondly, because the next year will be the most important of his life with reference to managing his will; and in this I cannot but distrust you. I know, my darling mother, you could not wage war with his self-will so resolutely as to subdue it. And then my child would be ruined, for he must be taught implicit, uncompromising obedience.' But long before writing this she had already claimed her boy for God and His war. 'I had from the first,' she says, 'definite longings over Bramwell, and lifted him up to God as soon as I had strength to do so, especially desiring he should be a teacher of Holiness.' These prayers began to be answered very early. The boy had a truthful and conscientious nature. Never, his mother says, does she remember his telling her a lie. But, for all that, he needed, as do all children, training and teaching, and Mrs. Booth was too wise not to be firm. She writes therefore: 'I believe he will be a thoroughly noble lad, if I can preserve him from all evil influence. The Lord help me! I have had to whip him twice lately severely for disobedience, and it has cost me some tears. But it has done him good, and I am reaping the reward already of my self-sacrifice. The Lord help me to be faithful and firm as a rock in the path of duty towards my children!' We know how practical our Army Mother always was; sentimental pity without help she despised. When her little son, therefore, saw and pitied a small boy with shoeless feet, his mother quickly reminded him of his little money-box. 'Would you rather keep the money for barley-sugar, Willie, or give it to the poor boy?' she asked. 'Give it to the boy,' he said at once, and so learnt his first lesson in self-denial. When the boy was seven years old he was converted, to his mother's deepest joy. Some time before she had talked to him in a Meeting, and urged him to get saved. The boy sat still and said nothing. 'Willie, I insist,' said his mother at last. 'You must answer me. Will you give your heart to God or not? Yes or no?' Willie looked up in her face steadily and answered back 'No.' Mrs. Booth said no more just then, but held on in faith and prayer, and some months later, to her unutterable thankfulness, she found him squeezed in among a number of other children at the penitent-form. He had, unasked, made his way there, and was weeping and confessing his sins with all his heart. Needless to say, he was faithfully dealt with, and the boy, now our beloved General, dates his conversion from that moment. A little later Mrs. Booth wrote of him:-- 'Willie has begun to serve God, of course as a child, but still, I trust, taught of the Spirit. I feel a great increase of responsibility with respect to him. Oh! to cherish the tender plant of grace aright. Lord help!' And as with the eldest so with the other seven. One by one they gave their hearts to the Lord as soon as they grew old enough to do so. 'She used to gather us round her,' says one of her daughters,' and pray with us. I wore then a low frock, and her hot tears would often drop upon my neck, sending a thrill through me which I can never forget.' She would pray again and again that she might lay them in their graves rather than she should see them grow up wicked. Mrs. Booth was very particular about the way in which her children were dressed. Of course, there was no uniform in those days, but The Army spirit was already in The Army Mother, and she would not have any finery or show, either for herself or her children. 'Accept,' she writes to her mother, 'my warm thanks for the little frock you sent. There is only one difficulty--it is too smart. We must set an example in this direction. I feel no temptation now to decorate myself, but I cannot say the same about the children; and yet, Oh, I see I must be decided. Besides, I find it would be dangerous for their own sakes. The seed of vanity is too deeply sown in their young hearts for me to dare to cultivate it.' Even in her early days Mrs. Booth felt how wrong it was to spend time and money over dress:-- 'I remember feeling condemned,' she says, 'when quite a child, not more than eight years old, at having to wear a lace tippet such as was fashionable in those days. From a worldly point of view it would have been considered, no doubt, very neat and consistent. But on several occasions I had good crying fits over it. Not only did I instinctively feel it to be immodest, because people could see through it, but I thought it was not such as a Christian child should wear.' In everything to do with her home Mrs. Booth was a most practical and careful mother. She hated waste and luxury, but her children were always properly dressed and fed and cared for, and never lacked what was necessary for them. Ladies who had been blessed by her words came to consult her about their souls, and to their surprise found the great preacher, not shut away in her study, but hard at work perhaps ironing the baby's pinafores, or cutting out a pair of trousers for one of her boys! 'I must try,' she said, when she began to live this two-fold life, 'to do all in the kitchen as well as in the pulpit to the glory of God. The Lord help me.' He did help her, and it was this practical mother-spirit at home which gave her so much force and power on the platform. As the children grew older, they were more away from her side, and her letters to them are suitable, not only to her actual sons and daughters, but to her spiritual grandchildren who will read this little book. Therefore I am going to give you some extracts, which you may take as though written by our Army Mother straight to your own heart. To one of her boys at school she wrote:-- 'I do hope you are industrious, and do not lose time in play and inattention. Remember Satan steals his marches on us by _littles_--a minute now, and a minute then. Be on the look out, and don't be cheated by him! 'All your little trials will soon be over, so far as school life is concerned; and every one of them, if borne with patience, will make you a wiser and better man. Never forget my advice about not listening to _secrets_! Don't hear anything that needs to be whispered--it is sure to be bad. Choose the boys to be your companions who most love and fear God, and pray together when you can, and help each other.' Here is a very beautiful letter written when one of her children desired to go in for some higher education, which Mrs. Booth feared might spoil the soul life:-- 'I do so want you and all my children to live supremely for God. I do so deeply deplore my own failure compared with what my life might have been, and I feel as if I could die to save you from making a mistake. Perhaps you say, "You don't want me, then, to learn any more?" Yes, I do, a great deal more; but of the right kind, in the right way, and for a right purpose, even the _highest good of your race_. I would like you to learn to put your thoughts together well, to think logically and clearly, to speak powerfully--that is, with good but simple language--and to write clearly and well.' Just the wish we have now for all our Young People! Early in their childhood the elder children were taught to be responsible for the younger, and when at school they were given places of trust as monitors, and so on. As if knowing the responsibilities they would by and by be called to fill in our ranks, Mrs. Booth gives them some wise counsel:-- 'I hope,' she says to one who has been left in charge of the other children, 'you will show yourself to be a true son of your mother, and a consistent disciple of the Lord. Very much depends on you as to the ease and comfort of managing the little ones. Do all you can. Be forbearing where only your own feelings or comfort are concerned, and don't raise unnecessary difficulties; but where their obedience to us or their health is at stake, be firm in trying to put them right.' 'I am pleased,' she says to one of the boys who has been in charge of others at school, 'that Mr. W. puts such confidence in you; but do not be puffed up by it. Remember how weak you are, and ask the Lord to save you from conceit and self-sufficiency. Try to be fair and just in all dealings with the boys--i.e., do not be hard on a boy whom you may not happen to like so well as another; but be fair, and treat all alike when left in charge.' Again, she warns one of them against extremes, even in well doing: 'You are under a mistake to suppose that sacrificing your recreation-time will help you in the end. It will not. Cramming the mind acts just in the same way as cramming the stomach. It is what you digest well that benefits you, not what you cram in. So many hours spent in study, and then relaxation and walking, will do your mind much more good than "all work, and no play." Now mark this. Do not be looking so much at what you _have_ to do as to what you are _doing_. Leave the future (you may spend it in Heaven), and go steadily on doing to-day's work in to-day's hours, with recreation in between to shake the seed in. One step well and firmly taken is better than two with a slip backwards. Poor human nature seems as though it must go to extremes--either all or none, too much or too little, idleness or being killed with work! May the Lord show you the happy medium.' 'I was sorry about the cause of the accident. I don't like that way of doing things in fun! Though it was very wrong and wicked of the boy to throw the brick, yet it would have been better to let him look at the guinea-pigs being fed, and thus have pleased him. There was no harm in what he wanted to do. You should watch against a hectoring spirit, and mind the difference between a sacrifice of truth and principle, and one only of self-importance or of mere feeling. If a boy wants you to do wrong, then be firm as a rock and brave for God and goodness.' 'Mind your soul,' she says at another time. 'Do not let your thoughts get so absorbed, even in study, as to lead you to forget your Bible and to neglect prayer.' Later, again, as a wise mother she warns them in the tenderest way against their special temptations. Against lightness:-- 'Be watchful against levity. C. is a good, devoted fellow, but naturally an incorrigible joker. It may not hurt him much, because it is his nature; but it will hurt you if you give way to it. It hurts nearly everybody. Watch! Don't descend to buffoonery. While you become all things to win some, don't forfeit your natural self-respect and the dignity of your position as a servant of Christ.' Against too much talk:-- 'The Spirit is teaching you this--is showing you that you must be more silent. The tongue is one of the greatest enemies to grace (James iii. 5-13). Strive to obey these teachings of God. Yield yourself up to obey; and though you sometimes fail and slip, do not be discouraged, but yield yourself up again and again, and plead more fervently with God to keep you. Fourteen years ago you were learning to walk, and in the process you got many a tumble. But now you can not only walk yourself, but teach others. So, spiritually, if you will only let God lead you, He will perfect that which is lacking in you.' But it was not at first easy for the mother-spirit in Mrs. Booth to allow her delicate girls of fourteen or fifteen to undertake a public life, and to speak and sing at the street corners, surrounded by a rough, low crowd. Such a thing was unheard-of in those days. Once, hearing that her daughter Catherine had spoken in the open air to a large crowd, Mrs. Booth objected, as other mothers have since objected: the girl was too young as yet--she must wait awhile. But her eldest son, looking at his mother in the tenderest and most solemn way, said, 'Mamma, dear, you will have to settle this question with God; for Katie is as surely called and inspired by Him for the particular work as you are yourself.' Mrs. Booth said no more. She took this as the voice of God, and gave her girl up to the marvellous work which God had called her to do. Later she writes of her to a friend:-- 'Join me in praying that she may be kept humble and simple, and that all that the Lord has given her may be used for Him.' 'I see,' she says, writing at this same time to her daughter, 'what a glorious, blessed, useful life you may live; but I also see your danger, and I pray for you that you may be enabled to cast aside the world in every form, to look down upon its opinions, and to despise its spirit, maxims, and fashions.' Later on, again, came the days when the boys had to choose, as you have to do, how they would spend their lives. Mrs. Booth might be writing to a Corps Cadet of to-day when, in a letter to one of her sons, she says:-- 'I hope the Lord will make you so miserable everywhere and at everything else that you will be _compelled_ to preach! Oh, my boy, the Lord wants such as you--_just such_--to go out amongst the people, seeking nothing but the things that are Jesus Christ's! You are free to do it; able by His grace; born to do it, with splendid opportunities. Will you not rise to your destiny? "Have courage, and be strong, and I (the I Am) will be with thee." "Get thee out, and I will go with thee." Dare you not take hold of the arm that holds the world and all things up? And if you do, can you fail? The Lord gird you with His strength, and make your brow brass, and your tongue as a flame of fire. You _must preach_!' To another of her boys she writes:-- 'You may, perhaps, be wanted to stand and do battle for the Lord. Surely you will not sell your birthright? The Lord help you! Take hold of David's God. Hold your head up, keep your shoulders back, and go forward.' Again:-- 'This is what the world wants: men of one idea--that of getting people saved. There are plenty of men of one idea--that of _gold_-getting. They make no secret of it; they are of a worldly spirit. Now we want men who are set on soul-saving, who are not ashamed to let everybody know it--men of a Christ-like spirit. There need be no mistake or mystery about it. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Paul and every other man of like spirit has had his fruits, and will have to the end of time. It is "Not by might, nor by power, but by _My Spirit_, saith the Lord of Hosts."' With one of her daughters she reasons and pleads:-- 'Oh, it seems to me that if I were in your place--young, no cares or anxieties, with such a start, such influence, and such a prospect--I should not be able to contain myself for joy! I should, indeed, aspire to be the "bride of the Lamb," and to follow Him in conflict for the Salvation of poor, lost, miserable man. I pray the Lord to show it to you, and so to enamour you of Himself, that you may see and feel it to be your chief joy to win them for Him. I say I pray for this--yes, I groan for it, with groanings that cannot be uttered; and if ever you tell me it is so, I shall be overjoyed. 'I don't want you to make any vows (unless, indeed, the Spirit leads you to do so); but I want you to set your mind and heart on winning souls, and to leave everything else with the Lord. When you do this you will be happy--Oh, so happy! Your soul will then find perfect rest. The Lord grant it to you, my dear child.' She made all her children feel that the only reward they could give her for her ceaseless toil and labour on their behalf was that they should give themselves to the War:-- 'I hope, my dear boy, that, whatever sense of obligation or gratitude you have towards me, you will try to return it by resolutely resisting all temptation to evil, and by fitting yourself to your utmost to be useful to your fellow-men. I ask from you, as I asked from God, no other reward. If I know my own heart, I would rather that you should work for the Salvation of souls, making bad hearts good, and miserable homes happy, and preparing joy and gladness for men at the Judgment bar, if you only get bread and cheese all your life, than that you should fill any other capacity with £10,000 per year.' To one of her children, when tempted to be over-anxious, she writes:-- 'Keep your mind quiet. Lean back on God, and don't worry. It is His affair, and if you have done what you could, that is enough. Alas! how little we have of the faith that can "stand still, and see the Salvation of God." What would you do if you were put in custody for two years, like Paul was? And yet that imprisonment at Rome sent the Gospel far and wide! God's ways are not our ways. He takes in the whole field at once, and does the best He can for the entire world. Human wisdom never has been able at the time to comprehend His plans, but years after it has often seen their wisdom. Let us learn to trust in the dark--to stand still.' To another, tried and discouraged at the start of his public life:-- 'I have only a minute or two; but, lest you should think I don't sympathize with you, I send you a line. You ask, did I ever feel so? Yes, I think just as bad as any mortal _could_ feel--_empty_, inside and out, as though I had nothing human or Divine to aid me, as if all Hell were let loose upon me. But I have generally felt _the worse before the best results_, which proves it was Satanic opposition. And it has been the same with many of God's most honoured instruments. I believe nearly all who are truly called of God to special usefulness pass through this buffeting. 'It stands to sense, if there is a Devil, that he should desperately withstand those whom he sees are going to be used of God. Supposing _you_ were the Devil, and had set your heart on circumventing God, how would you do it but by opposing those who were bent on building up His Kingdom? He hopes to drive us from the field by blood and fire and vapour of smoke. But our Captain fought and won the battle for us, and we have only to hold on long enough, and victory is sure. "Courage!" your Captain cries. "Only be thou strong, and of good courage, and I will be with thee, and teach thee what to say." '"He hath chosen the weak things." He has not _made shift with them_--taken them because there were no others. No! He hath _chosen_ them. Will He ever forsake them, and thus make Himself a laughing-stock for Hell? Never! Will He ever let the Devil say, "Ah, ah! He chose this weak one, and then let him fail"? No, no, no!' On the important question of courtship, she writes:-- 'The Devil sets such innocent-looking traps--_spiritual traps_--to catch young people! Ah, he is a serpent still! Beware of his devices, and always cry to God for wisdom and strength of will to put down all foolish tampering. You are born for greater things. God may want you to be a leader in some vast continent, and you will want a companion and a counsellor--a "helpmeet." The original word means "_a help corresponding to his dignity_" This is the meaning given by the best expositors. Oh, what wisdom there is even in the _words_ which God has chosen to express His ideas! "Corresponding to his dignity!" Yes, and no man ever takes one below this mark who does not suffer for it; and, worse still, generations yet unborn have to suffer also. Mind what God says, and keep yourself till that one comes. 'A wrong step on this point, and you are undone. Oh, the misery of an unsuitable match! It is beyond description. I could tell you tales of woe that are now being enacted. But I must wait till we meet. 'I have seen too much of life, and know too much of human nature, to have much confidence in promises given under such circumstances. For my own part, I made up my mind when I was but sixteen that I would not have a man, though a Christian, who should offer to become even an abstainer for my sake. I felt that such a promise would not afford me ground for confidence afterwards. And do not we see enough all round us to show that unless people adopt things on principle, because they see it to be right, they soon change? Look at the folks who promise to give up tobacco and dress, for the sake of getting into berths; how soon it evaporates! No, my lad, wait a bit. "Couldst thou not watch with Me one hour?" Jesus lived a single life for your sake all the way through. Can you not live so till He finds you one after His own heart? I feel sure He will. Pray about it in faith. I am doing so; and God will answer. But Oh, don't run before Him! Wait on the Lord. 'A little longer and you will be saying, "Oh, how glad I am I waited! I have now found a treasure indeed!" When God's time and person are come, He will bring you together. How delighted and satisfied Isaac must have felt when the servant told him the way God led him (Genesis xxiv.).' When standing by her grave The General said she was _The Army Mother_. He said the truth. One of her early promises, given to her as a girl, when she only saw its greatness and hid it away in her heart as too sacred to be spoken of, and almost too wonderful ever to be accomplished, were the words: 'I will make thee a mother of nations.' When called to send her children abroad, she paid to the full the heavy price; but she also saw the glorious outcome, and from her death-bed sent tenderest messages to those of distant lands and far-off nations who owned her as their Army Mother. VII THE WORKER 'What the Lord wants is, that you shall go about the business to which He sets you, not asking for an easy post, nor grumbling at a hard one.'--MRS. BOOTH. If she had not been a worker, our Army Mother would have done little with her life. The wonderful call which came to her, her great gifts, the zeal and love which filled her heart, would all have been useless had she not been willing to work, and to work hard, and to work every day. Stop and think about this. No life accomplishes anything unless it is full of hard work--often work accompanied by much drudgery, whether it is the life of a king or of a poor man. Mrs. Booth has set us all an example in this, for she would work ceaselessly with head or hands or heart, as long as ever her health allowed her to do so. Laziness and idleness of all kinds she detested; nor could she tolerate a lazy person in her service. She worked first of all in her home. When she spent a morning in her kitchen, the work there was perfectly done. The dinner was ready at the right time, properly cooked, good and wholesome. She allowed no waste and no extravagance. Her bread was light and beautifully baked, and when she had finished her morning's work her kitchen was as neat as when she began. She finished everything, and put it straight as she went along. It was the same with the children. She was alike nurse and doctor, dressmaker and tailor; she made and mended, washed and ironed for her boys and girls during their early years, and herself attended to every smallest detail of their lives. Strangers who asked where Mrs. Booth bought her children's things, so that they could go to the same shop, could scarcely believe the reply: 'Mamma makes all our clothes herself'--so beautifully were they cut and finished. And when the little garments were of no further service to her, she would alter and mend them once again, and give them away. Her baby-clothes, when the last daughter had outgrown them, were given to a member of the Mission for his child. He will never forget taking the little bundle home to his wife and turning over the tiny things. 'I had often heard Mrs. Booth preach,' he said, 'but those baby-clothes preached a louder sermon to me and my wife than ever her words had done. They were all darned and mended and patched, and the work--but, there, I never saw such stitches! And as we looked, and knew the hours of toil she must have put into them, rather than throw them away, as many another would have done--well, I tell you I listened to her next sermon as I had never listened before.' And this same diligent, tireless spirit was with her to the last. When on her deathbed, able only to use her left hand, and propped up by pillows, she devised a little frame on which, painfully, stitch by stitch, she could work a last token of love for The General. When her hands were folded still in death, I saw those slippers. They were beautifully embroidered, one with the words, 'He will keep the feet of His Saints'; and the other with the sure and certain hope which lay beyond the parting, 'Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem'--a fitting and sacred service with which to close her many years of toil and labour for others. But our Army Mother had another way of working in her home--that is, she worked over others. If a girl wished to learn, Mrs. Booth would take endless trouble in showing her the best way to wash or iron, or clean a grate, or do whatever the work on hand might be. She instructed her servants, explaining to them the reason for doing their duties in a certain way, teaching them forethought and common sense, and dealing faithfully with them over all their failures. 'Better,' she said, in one of her addresses--and she lived it out in her own home--'better take a girl whom you have to teach how to wash a child's face, or to stitch a button on, if she is true and sincere, than have one ever so clever, who will teach your children to lie and deceive.' She worked, too, over the cases of need and poverty which were often at her door. Not content, like so many, with giving a few coppers to a beggar, or some broken food, she would inquire into the _cause_ of the distress; and then, if the need seemed genuine, she would help, either by getting the father work, or by having the home visited and suitable relief given after the true condition of things had been found out. And this was only a little of the homework with which her hands were ever full. Of her ceaseless care over her children's mind and soul training I have told you elsewhere. But of her public work perhaps the most exhausting was that which resulted from her Meetings. For she could not rest content with the most careful preparation beforehand, nor with pouring out her whole soul upon the people during the forty or fifty minutes that her address lasted. At the close of the Meeting, whenever her health allowed it, she would labour and toil, often for two hours and more, dealing herself with the penitents, meeting their difficulties, one by one, and was unwilling to leave them until, as far as possible, all had claimed and received the blessing they sought. The next day, too, she would follow up any special case with a long personal letter from her own pen, or she would arrange another interview, or in some way keep in close, actual touch with the struggling soul, until the step of obedience had been taken, and he or she was fairly started on the Narrow Way. And it was this careful, earnest, patient after-work which gave such glorious harvests to her soul-saving campaigns. Labour and trouble were a joy to her, if she could but help one sincere, seeking soul into the light. But remember this: while she so toiled over all who came to her for advice and guidance, she never repeated nor passed on to others their confidences. If she had done so, people would soon have left off corning to her; they would have said, 'We cannot trust her.' She was, as you know, a mighty speaker; but about other people's affairs she was entirely silent--as you must learn to be if you wish to be of any service to God or man. And Mrs. Booth strove constantly to teach all who were around her to work as she did. 'You have begun well enough--now carry it through,' she would say again and again to her children, and whether it was a doll's frock, or an article for 'The War Cry,' or a series of Meetings, it was always the same. Unfinished, half-done work she detested with all her soul. 'If a thing is worth beginning at all, then it is worth finishing,' she would say; and this great principle followed her through her life in small things as in great. This was the reason that, on her deathbed, she could say, turning to the Chief of the Staff, 'I have no vain regrets about the past. As far as my strength allowed, I have finished the work I had to do as I went along; and now I leave it, all imperfect as it has been, in His hands.' Perhaps, by nature, you are not a worker. But what you are not by nature, you can become by grace. God can teach you to love work. And as you work, you will, like our dear Army Mother, learn better and better how to work; and your life, whenever God calls you to lay it down, shall be like hers, not unfinished, but complete. VIII GOODNESS 'I see more than ever that the religion which is pleasing to God consists in doing and enduring His will, rather than in good sentiments and feelings. The Lord help us to endure as seeing Him who is invisible.'--MRS. BOOTH. When our first General stood on that October evening by the grave of his beloved wife, and spoke to us with a breaking heart of our Army Mother, he unfolded to us the three great qualities which made her character so beautiful. First, and foremost, she was good; secondly, she was love; and, thirdly, she was a Warrior. Let us, following The General's outline, look at these three leading qualities in her life. 'First,' he said, 'she was _good_. She was washed in the Blood of the Lamb. To the last moment her cry was "a sinner saved by grace." She was a thorough hater of shams, hypocrisies, and make-believes. Her goodness was of a practical sort. "By their fruits ye shall know them" was a text she often quoted, and one by which she was always willing to be judged.' It is of this 'goodness of a practical sort' that I want first to tell you, before we consider that soul goodness which made her life so holy. Mrs. Booth could not imagine any goodness apart from industry. As we have already seen, she considered it a sin to waste precious time. Any one who was lazy she could not endure, and when one such offered for the work she wrote of him:-- 'I do hope you will not throw a lot of money away in trying H------, just for want of courage to tell him at once that he will not do, because I am sure that it will be thrown away. It is the _nature_ of the man that is at fault, and not his _circumstances_. He is a _drone_, and nothing, no change of place or position, can ever make him into a bee. He never ought to have left his trade; he never _would_ have done so if he had thought soul-saving was harder work!' Extravagance and waste of every kind she abhorred, and had she not been so careful in planning and arranging, her time and money would again and again have run short. The sewing, mending, and housekeeping needed for a family of little children when means are scarce would have been burden enough for most mothers. But besides this came her own letter-writing, preparing for her Meetings, and also the hours she spent consulting and advising The General, whose voice, 'Here, Kate,' would call her from the nursery or kitchen to help him decide some important question. Again, it was impossible to talk to Mrs. Booth, even for five minutes, without finding how true and sincere she was. To please no one would she keep back the truth, or appear different from her real self. 'I believe,' she writes, when quite a young woman, 'honesty to be the best policy, and I shall act upon it. Let me have truth, if it shakes the foundation of the earth.' She was sincere and faithful in every part of her nature: faithful with her own soul and in dealing with the souls of others. Great or small, rich or poor, she made no difference, and never held back from reproving sin when it was needful. 'I see more than ever,' she said, 'the need of making righteous people true in their _inward parts_. Let us be more thorough than ever with souls under conviction. Let us not be afraid to wound too deeply. Thousands of professors have never been truly convinced of sin, much less truly converted. Sin to them is _being found out_!' Though all through her life our Army Mother hungered and thirsted to know God better, and to serve Him more perfectly, yet it was not till some time after her marriage that she received the blessing of a clean heart. Of the struggle and conflict which she went through, before the blessing of Holiness became hers, she shall tell you in her own words:-- 'I had been earnestly seeking all the week to know Jesus as an all-sufficient Saviour dwelling in my heart, and thus cleansing it every moment of all sin; but on Thursday and Friday I laid aside almost everything else, and spent the chief part of the day in reading and prayer, and trying to believe for it. On Thursday afternoon at tea-time I was well-nigh discouraged, and felt my old visitant, irritability, and the Devil told me I should never get it, and so I might as well give it up at once. However, I know him of old as a liar and the father of lies, and pressed on, cast down, yet not destroyed. 'On Friday morning God gave me two precious passages. First, "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Oh, how sweet it sounded to my poor, weary, sin-stricken soul! I almost dared to believe that He did give me rest from inbred sin--the rest of perfect Holiness. But I staggered at the promise through unbelief, and therefore failed to enter in. The second passage consisted of those thrice-blessed words, "Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption." But again unbelief hindered me, although I felt as if getting gradually nearer. 'I struggled through the day until a little after six in the evening, when William joined me in prayer. We had a blessed season. While he was saying, "Lord, we open our hearts to receive Thee," that word was spoken to my soul, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My voice, and open unto Me, I will come in, and sup with him." I felt sure He had long been knocking, and Oh, how I yearned to receive Him as a perfect Saviour! But Oh, the inveterate habit of unbelief! How wonderful that God should have borne so long with me! When we got up from our knees, I lay on the sofa, exhausted with the excitement and effort of the day. William said, "Don't you lay all on the altar?" I replied, "I am sure I do!" Then he said, "And isn't the altar holy?" I replied in the language of the Holy Ghost, "The altar is most holy, and whatsoever toucheth it is holy." Then, said he, "Are you not holy?" I replied with my heart full of emotion and with some faith, "Oh, I think I am!" Immediately the word was given me to confirm my faith. "Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken unto you." And I took hold--true, with a trembling hand, and not unmolested by the tempter, but I held fast the beginning of my confidence, and it grew stronger, and from that moment I have dared to reckon myself dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God through Jesus Christ my Lord. 'I did not feel much rapturous joy, but perfect peace, the sweet rest which Jesus promised to the heavy laden. I have understood the Apostle's meaning when he says, "We who believe do enter into rest." This is just descriptive of my state at present. Not that I am not tempted, but I am allowed to know the Devil when he approaches me, and I look to my Deliverer Jesus, and He still gives me rest. Two or three very trying things occurred on Saturday, which at another time would have excited impatience, but I was kept by the power of God through faith unto full Salvation. 'And now what shall I say? "Unto Him who has washed me in His own Blood be glory and dominion for ever and ever," and all within me says "Amen!" Oh! I cannot describe, I have no words to set forth the sense I have of my own utter unworthiness. Satan has met me frequently with my peculiarly aggravated sins, and I have admitted it all. But then I have said, the Lord has not made my sanctification to depend in any measure on my own worthiness or unworthiness, but on the worthiness of my Saviour. He came to seek and to save "that which was lost." "Where sin hath abounded, grace doth much more abound"' How wonderfully in after years Mrs. Booth explained and led others into this same blessing, we know. Was not, then, the long struggle and agony on her own behalf worth it? Yes, indeed, and it will be so with you when you get this glorious blessing in your soul. You will have noticed how in struggling for Holiness Mrs. Booth had to fight unbelief. This determination to trust God fully marked her out as strong in faith. She had this marvellous faith because she obeyed and struggled to throw herself on the Lord; but faith was not _natural_ to her any more than it is to you or me. Often money was short, and she hardly knew how she would be able to feed and clothe her family: this was a sore trial of her faith. On one such occasion she wrote to her mother:-- 'We have not at present received as much as our travelling expenses and house rent. I feel a good deal perplexed, and am sometimes tempted to mistrust the Lord. But I will not allow it. Our Father knows!' Later on we get a sight of her own experience in one of her letters, when she said:-- 'I am much tried just now by perplexities of every kind; uncertainty, from a human standpoint, hedges me in on every side. Satan says it is useless trying to steer straight through such a labyrinth; but I am determined to hold on to the promises, come what will. My God is the living God. He sees me, knows me, loves me, cares for me, wants to have me with Him in Glory, as much as He did Abraham, or Paul, or John. If this be true, what have I to fear?' And again:-- '"Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the Salvation of God?" This is a precious word. It has kept my soul alive many a time when Satan has almost overthrown me. "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to thee. Never mind whether anybody else can or cannot. If others are too strong to let Me carry them, if thou art weak enough to throw up all self-effort, and trust Me with thy whole weight, I will carry thee, and thou shalt glorify Me." I know this is the way. Hence the babes go in with the simple and the great sinners, while the reasoners, and the strong, and the proud, and the fearful are shut out.' Again, to one who was cast down, and tempted to be discouraged because of his failings, she writes:-- 'It is well to see them, for how can we take hold of Jesus to mend what we don't see? It is best to know ourselves, but we Salvationists are in danger of erring on the other side. We look too much at ourselves apart from Him who is or would be our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Faith in Him as your keeper will do more in five minutes than years of conflict without it.' Once, in another letter, she gives us a beautiful bit of her own soul's experience on this subject:-- 'I had such a view of His love and faithfulness on the journey from Wellingborough, that I thought I would never doubt again about anything. I had the carriage to myself, and such a precious season with the Lord, that the time seemed to fly. As the lightning gleamed around I felt ready to shout, "The chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof." Oh, how precious it is when we see as well as believe, but yet more blessed to believe and not see! Lord, work this determined, obstinate, blind, unquestioning, unanswering faith in me and my beloved friend, and let us two dare to trust Thee in the midst of our peculiar trials. As I looked at the waving fields, and grazing sheep, the flashing sky, a Voice said in my soul, "Of what oughtest thou to be afraid? Am I not God? Cannot I supply thy little, tiny needs?" My heart replied, "It is enough, Lord; I will trust Thee, forgive my unbelief."' IX LOVE The truest love must ever seek the highest good of its object; sometimes even with forgetfulness of important smaller advantages.'--MRS. BOOTH. The second great quality in Mrs. Booth's character, as given by the first General, was her love. 'She was _love_,' he says. 'Her whole soul was full of tender, deep compassion. Oh, how she loved, how she pitied the suffering poor! How she longed to put her arms round the sorrowful, and help them!' 'How,' asked Mrs. Booth once, 'are we to put heart into people? Even grace seems to fail to do so in many instances. I think it needs mothers to do this from infancy upwards.' You will recollect that Mrs. Mumford fostered this 'heart' and love in her little girl; and you will remember how keenly Katie felt, blazing up into wrath at any story of wrong or injury, and ready to sacrifice her life for those she loved. This spirit grew with her. She could not help caring and struggling to help all who needed her. The General often told her in later years that she was killing herself by carrying every one's burdens. Then she would try to leave off for a little, but her heart was too strong, and she could not hold it back. When but a child, running down the road with her hoop and stick, she saw a drunkard being dragged off to prison by a policeman. All the people were jeering and mocking at the poor friendless wretch. Instantly Katie's pity and love fired up. She dashed across the street, and marched along close by the man's side, so that he might feel that at least one little heart cared for him, and wanted to help him. To the end of her life she carried this deep, tender pity wherever she went. She loved the poor. 'With all their faults,' she said, 'they have larger hearts than the rich'; and she loved them for it. Where any one had a warm heart, she could forgive and overlook many mistakes; but with cold, narrow, 'fishy' souls, she had neither sympathy nor patience. Our Army Mother's help was practical. She did not only give money or pity, but she--so to speak--rolled up her sleeves and helped the suffering herself. Every sort of suffering and need appealed to her. If an animal was wounded or in pain, she stopped, and herself relieved it as best she could; and to the last, if she saw a horse or any creature being ill-treated, she would not hesitate to rush out and stop the driver, or in some way force him to leave off his cruelty. She was not only kind and helpful to those she liked, but every living thing that suffered had a claim upon her, and the greater the need the more tender and ready was her help. Mrs. Booth was a people's woman, and she was never weary of scheming and planning how to help the poor in the most practical way. 'When I see people going wrong,' she said, when but a girl of twelve, 'I must tell the poor things how to manage.' Dirt and sin, and drink and misery, could not quench this love; it was a part of her very nature. Long, long before Slum Sisters were ever thought of, Mrs. Booth did their work herself, just because she so loved the poor, and longed to help them. You shall read the story in her own words:-- 'I remember in one case finding a poor woman lying on a heap of rags. She had just given birth to twins, and there was nobody of any sort to wait upon her. I can never forget the desolation of that room. By her side was a crust of bread and a small lump of lard. "I fancied a bit o' bootter (butter)," the woman remarked apologetically, noticing my eye fall upon the scanty meal, "and my mon, he'd do owt for me he could, bless'm--he couldna git me iny bootter, so he fitcht me this bit o' lard. Have _you_ iver tried lard isted o' bootter? It's _rare good_!" said the poor creature, making me wish I had taken lard for "bootter" all my life, that I might have been the better able to minister to her needs. However, I was soon busy trying to make her a little more comfortable. The babies I washed in a broken pie-dish, the nearest approach to a tub that I could find. And the gratitude of those large eyes, that gazed upon me from out of that wan and shrunken face, can never fade from my memory.' Before public Meetings took up so much of her time, she delighted in this house-to-house visiting, and went especially for the drunkards, over whom God gave her a wonderful power. 'I used to visit in the evenings,' she says, 'because it was the only part of the day in which I could get away; and, besides, I should not have found the men at home at any other time. I used to ask one drunkard's wife where another lived. They always knew. After getting hold of eight or ten in this way, and getting them to sign the pledge, I used to arrange Cottage Meetings for them, and try to get them saved. They used to let me talk to them in homes where there was not a stick of furniture, and nothing to sit down upon.' In this way our Army Mother sought and cared for the drunkards long before Drunkards' Brigades were dreamt of. When, at a later time in her life, she first heard of the wicked and cruel way in which young girls are trapped and drawn into sin, Mrs. Booth's soul was filled with a whirlwind of holy indignation. 'I feel as though I could not rest, but as though I must go and ferret out these monsters myself,' she wrote. 'Almost everybody, notwithstanding the indignation, seems so content with talking. Nobody appears willing to take the responsibility of doing or risking anything. Oh, what a state the world has got into!' But, deep and practical as was her love in earthly things, her passion for lifting and leading souls into Salvation and Holiness was a thousand times more intense. 'If we only realized, as we ought, the value of souls, we should not live long under it,' she said; and she herself realized it fully enough to make her fight on ceaselessly in spite of intense weakness. 'If it were not for eternity,' she often sighed, 'I should soon give up this life.' It was love for souls which made her go from town to town, care-worn, weary, often quite unfit to meet the immense congregations which came to hear her. It was love for souls which kept her sitting for hours at her writing-table, when she should have been resting, trying to help those who turned to her for counsel and direction from every part of the globe. It was love for souls which gave her many a sleepless night, and chained her to her knees, weeping and pleading, agonizing with God on behalf of the people she was to face the next day. And this love for souls grew even stronger as death came near. 'Eva,' she exclaimed to one of her daughters, as she lay racked with agonizing pain, 'don't you forget that man with the handcuffs on. Find him. Go to Lancaster Jail; let somebody go with you, and find that man. Tell him that your mother, when she was dying, prayed for him, and that she had a feeling in her heart that God would save him; and tell him, hard as the ten years of imprisonment may be, it will be easier with Christ than it would be without Him.' She was lying between earth and Heaven, thinking of the joy and peace awaiting her, when it seemed as if she saw the dark face of a heathen woman, and heard the cry, 'Won't you help us?' The old love for perishing souls woke again directly, and she cried, 'Oh, yes, Lord, I will go anywhere to help poor struggling people. I would go on an errand to Hell, if the Lord would promise me that the Devil should not keep me there.' In one of these last days she sent a dying message to the Officers. 'Tell them,' she said, 'that the only consolation for a Salvationist on his death-bed is to have been a soul-winner. After all my labours I feel I have come far short of the prize of my high calling. Beseech them to redeem their time, for we can do but little at the best.' A little maid who was a Candidate came into Mrs. Booth's sick-room once as she was speaking, and she called her to her bedside, giving her warning and counsel which every Corps Cadet can take as though spoken to herself:-- 'You will be finished with the dishes soon,' she said, 'and you are going to be a Cadet. I have been very pleased with you while you have been here, because you have worked out of sight with a good will, and I think you will make a brave Officer. You will promise me, will you?' she said, as she laid her trembling hand on the girl's head. 'Yes,' was the reply, 'I will,' amid stifled sobs. 'Give me a kiss, then,' said Mrs. Booth. 'Promise me that you will never get spoiled by any unfaithful Officer. If you ever get mixed up with such, do not hide it from Headquarters, but let them know about it, and they will soon move the false away from you. I shan't be here; but, Oh! may God help them to get rid of the wrong. Discernment of spirits! Oh, why should we not have that gift back? It is very necessary.' Mrs. Booth's whole heart was wrapped up in the spread of The Army, and she was never more of a warrior than when fighting its battles. And The Army needed some one to stand up for it in those days. We who live to-day can hardly fancy the fierce, bitter persecution the early-day Salvationists had to fight through. Now, even those who dislike and despise us are forced to admit that 'The Army does a great deal of good'; but then it was different, and again and again, both by speech and writing, Mrs. Booth had to defend and stand up for our methods. 'I would not,' she says, after she had spoken too plainly for some rich people who were offended at her words, 'sit down and listen to their abuse of The Salvation Army for all their money. But I did not say a word that I would object to have published upon the housetops. Such, however, is often the spirit of the rich. They think that one must sit and hear whatever they may choose to say, and hold one's breath, because of their money! But, no, I will never be dumb before a golden idol!' She loved the Uniform: she herself planned that worn by Army women, and always wore her own, rejoicing to be able to give to our people a way of escape from the fashions and extravagances of the world. She loved the Flag, and was true to its beautiful meaning. She loved to present Colours to the newly-opened Corps, or to parties of Officers going abroad; and when, shortly before she passed away, she changed her room, she begged that the dear Army Flag might be brought in and hung above her bed. 'There,' said The General, 'the Colours are over you now, my darling.' And she clasped them fondly with her left hand, and traced the motto--'Blood and Fire.' 'Yes,' she said, 'Blood and Fire; that is just what my life has been--a constant and severe fight.' 'It ought to be "Blood and Fire and Victory,"' said The General. 'I'll fight on till I get it,' she answered. 'I won't give in. Next time I see them I shall be above the pain and sorrow for ever.' But, though at the last she longed to be at rest, it was not easy for her great mother's heart to unloose itself from those she loved, and from the thousands in all lands who looked to her as to a mother. If you have learnt to love very deeply you will also have to suffer, and her very love made the parting so difficult. 'Oh,' she exclaimed, when speaking of leaving The General and her children, 'mine is such a heart! it seems as if it had got roots all round the world clutching on to one and another, and that it will not let them go! And yet You can take care of them, Lord, better than I could. I do, I do believe! O Eternal Father, Shepherd of the sheep, do Thou look after my little flock!' 'Amen,' we who read these lines may say; adding to her prayer, 'And give us that same heart and love which made her life of such mighty power.' X THE WARRIOR 'Fighting is hard work, whatever sort of fighting it is. You cannot fight without wounds of body, heart, or soul.'--MRS. BOOTH. 'Lastly,' said The General in that same beautiful tribute to our Army Mother that I have already quoted from,' she was a _warrior_. She liked the fight. She was not one who said to others, "Go," but "Here, let _me_ go"; and when there was the necessity she said, "I _will_ go!" I never knew her flinch until her poor body compelled her to lie on one side.' Our Army Mother was, indeed, before all things a warrior; she fought bravely and unceasingly her whole life through. In thought and purpose she was independent, and dared to stand out for what she felt right. Cowardice, in her opinion, was one of the commonest and most subtle sins of the day, and she had no patience with those who dared not say 'No,' and feared to stand alone. She thought for herself, and though always eager to hear and learn as much as possible from others, yet she was not carried away by their opinions, but carefully weighed and considered their arguments, and then formed her own judgments. Mrs. Booth strove earnestly for doctrine. 'Let us take care,' she said, in The Army's early days, 'what Gospel we preach. Let us mind our doctrine.' And again:-- 'We must stick to the form of sound words, for there is more in it than appears on the surface. "Glory be to the Father, to the Son, and the Holy Ghost," was the theology of our forefathers, and I am suspicious of all attempts to mend it.' And once more:-- 'Let us beware of wrong doctrine, come through whomsoever it may. Holy men make sad mistakes. "Well, but," say some, "is not a person who holds wrong views with a right heart better than a person with right views and a wrong heart?" Yes, so far as his personal state before God is concerned, but not in his influence on man. My charity must extend to those likely to be deceived or ruined by his doctrines as well as to him.' Mrs. Booth's whole life was a continual fight against sin--sin of all kinds. Whether her Meeting was held for the very lowest and roughest, or whether rows of clergy and lawyers, and lords and ladies sat to listen, it made no difference to her. She attacked sin, and went straight at the very heart-sins of the people in front of her. 'We need great grace,' she says in the midst of her wonderful West-End campaign, where even princes and princesses came to hear her. 'I think the Lord never enabled me to be more plain and faithful. As a lady in high circles said to me, "We never heard this sort of Gospel before." No, poor things, they are sadly deceived.' Drink, too, was another evil which Mrs. Booth fought against during the whole of her life. She began, as you remember, when a girl by being secretary of the 'Band of Love' of those days. In the early days of their engagement The General was strongly advised to take a little wine for the sake of his health. Our Army Mother wrote him a long letter, showing him how false and foolish such advice was, and ending with:-- 'I have had it recommended to me scores of times, but I am fully and for ever settled on the physical side of the question. [Footnote: That means taking it for the sake of health.--ED.] 'It is a subject on which I am most anxious you should be thorough. I have far more hope for your health _because_ you abstain, than I should if you took wine. Flee the detestable thing as you would a serpent; be a teetotaller in principle and practice.' Though, as we have seen, full of boundless faith and pity for the drunkard, Mrs. Booth attacked the makers and sellers of drink unmercifully. She says, on one occasion:-- 'By your peace of conscience on a dying bed; by the eternal destinies of your children, by your care for never-dying souls; by the love you owe your Saviour, I beseech you _banish the drink_. 'Tell me no more of charity towards brewers, distillers, and publicans. Your false charity to these has already consigned millions to an untimely Hell!... Arise, Christians, arise, and fight this foe! You and you alone are able, for your God will fight for you!' Another thing for which our Army Mother fought, and which to-day we owe in great measure to her efforts, is the position to which women have been lifted as speakers and teachers in God's work. She first, as we have seen, opened the way herself; and then she left it open, encouraging and helping tens of thousands of simple, holy women all round the world to follow in her steps. She had a tough battle to wage. All classes wrote and spoke against women being allowed to stand and speak for God in the open air or in public halls; but, strong in faith and courage, convinced that she had Divine authority for what she did, our Army Mother fought on, arguing, writing, preaching on the matter. Now to-day there is scarcely a land where The Army bonnet is not known and loved, nor where Army women cannot gain a crowd of respectful listeners. Now I am going to show you some of the hindrances in spite of which our Army Mother fought on. The first of these hindrances was the burden which God allowed Mrs. Booth to carry all through her life--a weak and suffering body. She said, when her life was drawing to its close, that suffering seemed to have been her special lot, and that she could scarcely remember a day in her life when she had been wholly free from pain. 'I don't care about my body,' she exclaimed when lying in her last illness. 'It has been a poor old troublesome affair. I shall be glad for it to be sealed up. It is time it was. Oh, I have dragged it wearily about.' Most women suffering as she did, with a weak spine, heart disease, and over-strained nerves, would have lived the life of an invalid. But the warrior spirit within forced her body along. Scores of times she has gone from her bed to the Meeting, and then, exhausted and fainting with the effort, has had to be almost carried home. But she had done her work, and sent the arrow of conviction into hundreds of hearts. Writing after one special strain of work and anxiety, she says:-- 'The excitement made me worse than I have been for two years. My heart was really alarming, and for two days I could hardly bear any clothes to touch me. This has disheartened me again as to my condition. But God reigns, and He will keep me alive as long as He needs me.' Another of her hindrances, and one which was almost more difficult to overcome than weakness of body, was depression. I wonder if you know what that is? If so, it will help you to realize that Mrs. Booth had to fight it also. The Devil seemed allowed to try and test her faith to the uttermost, and at times to blot out all peace and glory from her soul. During one such time of darkness she writes:-- 'I know I ought not, of all saints, or sinners either, to be depressed. I know it dishonours my Lord, grieves His Spirit, and injures me greatly; and I would fain hide from everybody to prevent their seeing it. But I cannot help it. I have struggled hard, more than any one knows, for a long time against it. Sometimes I have literally held myself, head and heart and hand, and waited for the floods to pass over me.' But our Army Mother did not give up working for God, and sit down in despair, because she was thus tried. One day, just before leaving for a great West-End Meeting, in which God made her words as a sharp two-edged sword, she wrote this to one of her children:-- 'I have been very much depressed since you left--more so than usual. It is of no use reasoning with myself when these fits of despondency are on me. I must hold on and fight my passage through; and when I get to Heaven the light and joy will be all the greater. If I dared give up working I should do so a hundred times over; but I _dare_ not.' Another and constant hindrance which our Army Mother had to fight for the greater part of her life was poverty. It was so difficult, many times, to make two ends meet. She had, during many years of her life, no regular money coming in on which to depend, and during that time it was a constant struggle to have her children properly cared for and give them the needed education. But most of all did our Army Mother show herself a warrior in her own Salvation campaigns. In those early days there were no praying Soldiers and Sergeants to be had to deal with the penitents--no one, either, to lead her singing, scarcely even to keep the doors or take up the collection. She would arrive in a town absolutely alone. A hall had been taken in which she was to speak, and she would hire a tiny lodging, or stay in whatever home would receive her, and set to work. We can scarcely understand the loneliness of her position. Here was a proof of her mighty faith in God. She began these solitary campaigns when her sixth child was but a few weeks old, and God most wonderfully owned her labours. At one place she saw one hundred grown-up people and two hundred children come to her penitent-form in six days. But it was a fearful battle. 'I have a comfortable little cot to stay in,' she writes to her mother from one such battle-field, 'very small and humble; but it is clean and quiet; and when I feel nervous no one knows the value of quietness. I have felt it hard work lately. Many a time have I longed to be where the weary are at rest.' At Margate, some years later, she commenced her Meetings without knowing a single person in the place. For some weeks she had not even a helper in the Prayer Meetings, nor one who would give out a song for her. Mrs. Booth could not sing herself, and there was often an awkward pause before any one would be willing to pitch her tune. 'If only,' she said when The Army was fairly on its feet, 'I had been able to command a dozen reliable people such as I could have anywhere now, I think I could have done almost anything.' Even more wonderful was her experience at Brighton. The Dome, a great building holding three thousand people, had been taken for her Meetings. 'I can never forget my feelings,' says this Soldier-saint, 'as I stood upon the platform and looked upon the people, realizing that among them all there was no one to help me. When I commenced the Prayer Meeting, for which I should think quite nine hundred remained, Satan said to me, as I came down from the platform according to my custom, "You will never ask such people as these to come and kneel down here? You will only make a fool of yourself if you do." I felt stunned for a moment; but I answered, "Yes, I shall. I shall not make it any easier for them than for the others. If they do not realize their sins enough to be willing to come and kneel here, they will not be of much use to the kingdom."' The Lord set His seal upon Mrs. Booth's faith and courage, for the first to volunteer were two old gentlemen, both over seventy years of age; and she had ten or twelve at the mercy-seat before the Meeting ended. Writing from Portsmouth, she tells the same story of loneliness and victory:-- 'You say, "How do you get on personally?" Oh, I never was so hampered for help in every way in all my life! The most able man I have keeps a milliner's shop, and the one that opens for me generally is an overseer; so their attention is divided and the time limited. Pray for me. I never needed your prayers so much. This is a dreadfully wicked place.' Yet during the seventeen weeks of her stay some six hundred names were taken, many of them wonderful trophies of God's mercy. Having lived such a warrior's life, you think, very likely, that the death-bed experience of our Army Mother would be all peace and glory. But no. Right down into the Valley she needed to use the Sword of the Spirit and the Shield of Faith, for to the last Satan was allowed to test and try her. But she fought on! 'One of my hardest lessons,' she said in her last hours, 'has been the difference between faith and realization; and if I have had to conquer all through life by naked faith, I can only expect it to be the same now. All our enemies have to be conquered by _faith_, not realization; and is it not so with the last enemy, death? Yes, if it please the Lord that I should go down into the dark valley without any realization, simply knowing that I am His, and He is mine, I am quite willing--I accept it.' This is the faith that made our Army Mother and all the Bible saints such conquerors. It is the secret of their victory--the faith without which it is impossible to please God, and for which we all need to pray, 'Lord, increase our faith.' XI LAST DAYS 'As I look back on life I do not remember the houses I have lived in, the people that I have known, the things of passing interest at the moment. They are all gone. There is nothing stands out before my mind as of any consequence, but the work I have done for God and Eternity.'--MRS. BOOTH. If The General and those who loved our Army Mother best had been able to choose for her, they would most likely have said: 'Let her live and fight and work on, up to within a few days of her promotion to Glory. Let the call come quickly and painlessly, as it has come to others in our ranks.' But the Lord, who loved her more than we did, saw fit to send to her two and a half years of ever-increasing weariness and suffering. For long months she lay on the very bank of the River, longing for the messenger of Death to carry her across. Those who loved her could not tell why the Lord sent her this last fiery trial; they could only bow with her, and say, 'Thy will be done.' It was in February, 1888, that Mrs. Booth, who was anxious about her health, went to consult a great doctor and get his opinion. She was alone, for no one had thought her illness was so serious. She asked him to tell her the truth--all through her life, as you know, she wanted the truth; and after a little hesitation he told her. The truth was the saddest that she could hear. That dreadful illness--cancer--through which she had so tenderly nursed her own dear mother, had come to her, and in the doctor's opinion she had much suffering to pass through, and only two or, at the most, three years longer to live. Mrs. Booth listened calmly, thanked the doctor, and then, getting once more into the cab, drove home all alone. It was a dark journey. The War needed her. The General needed her. Her children needed her. And yet the sentence of Death had been passed upon her, and she must soon leave them all. What did she do? I think you can guess. She knelt down in the cab, and in prayer committed to God, in a new and deeper way than ever before, her own body, and her dear ones and the work He had given her to do. At last the cab stopped before her own door, and The General came out to meet her. 'I shall never forget that meeting in this world, or the next,' he says. 'I had been watching for the cab, and had run out to meet her and help her up the steps. She tried to smile on me through her tears; but, drawing me into the room, soon told me, bit by bit, what the doctor had said. I sat down speechless. She rose from her seat, and came and knelt beside me, saying: "Do you know what was my first thought? That I should not be there to nurse you in your last hour." 'I was stunned. I felt as if the whole world were coming to a standstill. Opposite me, on the wall, was a picture of Christ on the cross. I thought I could understand it then, as never before. She talked to me like an angel; she talked as she had never talked before. I could say little or nothing. I could only kneel with her and try to pray. That very same night The General was to leave London for some great Meetings in Holland, and Mrs. Booth would not hear of his changing his plans and remaining with her. 'The War must go on' was her thought, even when all her family stood stunned and heart-broken around her, unwilling to leave her even for a moment. Two years later, when but a few more days of suffering remained to her, a last message from her lips reached us as Self-Denial Week began. 'The War must go on' was one of its sentences. 'The War must go on' had been as her motto, lived out in all the long, long months that lay between. Instead of immediately laying aside her work, when the doctors gave their dreadful judgment, and beginning to think only of herself, she went on with it as long as her increasing weakness allowed. But step by step the disease grew worse. First she was forced to give up Meetings and public work. Then it became impossible for her to use her right hand, and she was therefore obliged to give up her correspondence, though she still continued to dictate her letters, and learnt also to write with her left hand. Soon her daily drives became too tiring, and by and by she went out of the house into the little garden for the last time; and then for the concluding twelve months of her life she was a prisoner in her room, lying in constant suffering. But during these long months the greatest joy and relief that could come to her was to hear of some fresh victory or triumph for the Kingdom of Jesus. Her interest in The Army and her love for the people were as keen as ever, and War Councils were held and new developments planned in her chamber, and much of The General's Darkest England Scheme for the poor and outcast was thought out and decided upon beside her sick bed. Again and again, too, Mrs. Booth would receive deputations of Officers of different classes and from various countries in which The Army was at work, who came to Clacton-on-Sea, where the last fifteen months of her life were spent, to listen to her words of advice and inspiration. There were no Corps Cadets in those days; but our Army Mother left some specially beautiful words about the Juniors, to which I must refer. When she was told by the Officer then in charge of our Junior Work in England that the children loved and prayed continually for her, she smiled. 'The thought of the little ones,' says some one who was there, 'brought our beloved Army Mother wholly out of herself and her pain and weariness.' 'A very choice branch of the work,' she said. 'I have often told Emma that I hoped when I was too old for public work God would let me end where I began--with the children. But it seems that it is not to be so.' 'Give the children,' she went on, in reply to the messages they had sent, 'my dear love, and tell them that if there had been a Salvation Army when I was ten I should have been a Soldier then, as I am to-day. Never allow yourself to be discouraged in your work. I know you must meet with many discouragements; but I am sure the Spirit of God works mightily on little children long before grown people think they are able to understand.' Again and again during that last year of awful suffering it seemed as if Mrs. Booth were about to leave us; but then she would revive, and come back to endure more weeks and months of agony. But at last, on October 4, 1890, all could see that she was on the brink of the River, and even those who loved her the most tenderly could not wish to hold her back. 'O Emma, let me go, darling,' she whispered; and hearing the reply, 'Yes, we will, we will,' she said, 'Now! Yes, Lord, come, Oh, come!' The singing of The Army songs seemed to comfort her; and once she raised her suffering arm, and pointed to the text, '_My grace is sufficient for thee_,' which hung on the wall. It was lifted down and placed at the foot of her bed, so that her eyes could often rest on it during those last hours. 'Soon after noon,' says the present General, 'I felt that the deepening darkness of the Valley was closing around my dear mother, and a little later I took my last farewell. Her lips moved, and she gave me one look of unspeakable tenderness and trust which will live with me for ever. Again we sang:-- My mistakes His free grace doth cover, My sins He doth wash away; These feet which shrink and falter Shall enter the Gates of Day. And, holding her hand, The General gave her up to God. It was a solemn and wonderful scene.' The Chief of the Staff and Mrs. Bramwell Booth, Mrs. Booth-Tucker, and the Commander, and her three daughters, Marian, Eva, and Lucy, knelt round the bed, upon which were placed photographs of the other members of her family who were unavoidably absent. Near to her stood her faithful nurse, Captain Carr, and others of the household, the dear General bowing over his beloved wife and companion in life's long strife, and giving her up to the keeping of the Father. One by one the members of the family tenderly embraced her; then a gleam of recognition passed over the brightening countenance as The General bent over her. Their eyes met---the last kiss of love on earth, the last word till the Morning, and without a movement the breathing gently ceased, and a warrior laid down her sword to receive her crown. * * * * * You may have heard of those wonderful days from Tuesday morning till Sunday night, when the coffin containing the precious remains of our Army Mother lay at the Congress Hall, Clapton, and when more than fifty thousand people came to have a last look at her dear face. A piece of glass had been let into the plain oak coffin. It was just large enough to show the head and shoulders, and she lay as if in a sweet sleep. You wonder if many came merely from curiosity. Some did, of course, but most of the people came because her life and example and words had been so blessed to their souls; and they came as they would come to look at the dead face of their own mother. It was the most wonderful tribute to a woman's life and words that London had ever seen. For all kinds of people came--rich and poor, good and bad, people of many different religions, and many with no religion at all. Working men came in their dinner-hour, with their tools on their backs and tears in their eyes; mothers lifted up their little children to look at the one who had taught them the way of life; and, best of all, by the side of her coffin knelt many a wanderer and backslider to give themselves afresh to God. More than one poor girl went direct from the Congress Hall to the Rescue Homes, to begin to live 'as she would have wished'; and the Cadets on guard were all the time dealing with drunkards and helping those who desired to begin from thenceforth to live a new and different life. Even to-day, twenty-four years later, we often meet those who date their conversion, or their first step in the Narrow Way, from their look at that face lying in its simple coffin. One of Mrs. Booth's own grandchildren, Mary, the present General's second daughter, looks back to that scene as the time when God in an unmistakable manner sealed her as His. She was only five years old as she knelt by the coffin, but nevertheless she decided there, in her childish consecration, like Ruth of old, that 'Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God'; and in the spirit of this consecration she lives to-day. * * * * * In order that some of the crowds who wished to share in the funeral service might be present, the largest hall in London, the Olympia, was taken. Twenty-six thousand people filled it; and though it was, of course, impossible for them all to hear, they followed the service given on printed papers with reverent sympathy. The coffin was carried down the immense hall by Officers; The General and his family followed. Those who arranged for this last mighty gathering remembered that Mrs. Booth, when with us, was never happy to leave a Meeting unless it had been brought to a point, and something definite had been done; and therefore, when the songs and prayers and readings were over, the huge crowd was asked to kneel and make a solemn covenant with God. It was a beautiful covenant, and ended with these words:-- 'And now, in this solemn hour, and in the presence of death, I come again to Thy footstool, and make this covenant with Thee.' Then all who had made the covenant from their hearts rose and sang together:-- Just as I am Thou dost receive, Dost welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve, Because Thy promise I believe, O Lamb of God, I come! It was just such an ending to the wonderful service as our Army Mother would have chosen had she been still on earth with us. * * * * * The next morning was dry and bright. 'I shall ask God to give you a fine day for my funeral, Emma, so that you mayn't take cold,' our Army Mother had said, for she was ever thoughtful for others; and her prayer was answered, for though the white mist crept up from the river to the Embankment, where the procession was forming up, there was no rain nor wind. Tens of thousands of our dear Soldiers would gladly have sacrificed a day's work in order to follow in the funeral procession of one they so dearly loved; but, so as not to gather too large a crowd, only Officers were allowed in the march, which passed through countless throngs of people from International Headquarters to Abney Park Cemetery, a distance of about five miles. All along the route the crowds stood in dense masses, and roofs, windows, and every nook and corner were packed with human beings. Nothing had been seen like it, said the police, since the Duke of Wellington's funeral, forty years before. It was a wonderful march. I wish you could have seen it! Sometimes it seemed as if every one was weeping; and when the open hearse, with its plain oak coffin, crowned by The Army bonnet and well-worn Bible, passed, all heads were bared, all voices hushed, and tears filled all eyes. The General, standing alone in his open carriage all along the long, sad way, must have felt that he had the people's sympathy and love with him in his grief, for scores of heartfelt 'God bless you's!' came from lips that are unused to such words. And at last the yellow evening sun shone out as the great procession reached the gates of Abney Park Cemetery and wound towards the open grave. Only a part of the mighty throng could hear The General's beautiful words, so strong and yet so tender, from which I have already quoted, but all joined in the song, 'Rock of Ages,' which seemed to roll up to the heavens themselves. Several leading Officers and members of The General's own family prayed and spoke, wonderfully upheld in spite of their deep grief and the strain of the last days. And then by the open grave the present General led all hearts to make a fresh consecration, the whole assembly promising, with God's help, that they would be 'Faithful to Thee, faithful to one another, and faithful to a dying world, till we meet our beloved Mother in the Morning. Amen.' * * * * * If ever you are in Abney Park Cemetery you should visit her grave. It is very simple. Around the little piece of earth runs a grey stone, with these words carved on it:-- CATHERINE BOOTH, MOTHER OF THE SALVATION ARMY More than Conqueror, through Him that loved us, and gave Himself for all the world and for you. Do you also follow Christ? and above are two small beds of flowers. Do many people go to see it? you wonder. Oh, yes. All round it a path is worn in the grass, made by the tread of many feet; for mothers bring their boys and girls to see it, and tell them what a mother she was, and men and women of all creeds and races pause beside it, and remember. Many Officers, too--from distant lands, and speaking strange tongues you could not understand--come to The Army Mother's grave when they visit our shores. For she was their Mother as well as ours, they say. They kneel beside the stone, and spell out the name, and then they consecrate themselves afresh to God and the needs of the heathen lands, and they claim His grace to follow in her steps. For our Army Mother is not dead. True, her body lies in the quiet grave at Abney Park, and her spirit is in Heaven; but her life and influence still live among us, her words are treasured, and our greatest prayer and desire for the girls and wives and mothers in our ranks is that they may live to be worthy daughters of Catherine Booth. DATES IN MRS. BOOTH'S LIFE 1829. January 17th. Catherine Mumford born at Ashbourne, Derby. 1829. April 10th. William Booth born at Nottingham. 1843. Catherine has to leave school owing to severe illness. 1844. Refuses to be engaged to her cousin. 1845. Is converted. 1846. Seems likely to go into consumption. 1850. Takes Sunday class of elder girls. 1851. June. Miss Mumford hears Mr. Booth preach; later meets him at a friend's house. 1852. May 15th. They are engaged to be married. 1855. June 16th. The wedding. 1857. Mrs. Booth speaks to a children's meeting on Temperance. 1859. She starts work among drunkards. She writes her first pamphlet on woman's right to preach. 1860. Mrs. Booth speaks for the first time in public. 1861. Mr. and Mrs. Booth break up their home in the north, and come to London, choosing an evangelistic life. 1864. Mrs. Booth begins to hold Evangelistic campaigns apart from her husband. 1864. July. East End Mission begun. 1868. First Headquarters established. 1869. Mrs. Booth's wonderful Brighton campaign. 1870. East London Mission becomes the 'Christian Mission.' 1871. Mrs. Booth publishes her first book. 1877. Christian Mission becomes 'The Salvation Army.' 1878. The uniform is chosen. 1886. First Self-Denial Week. 1888. February. Mrs. Booth learns that she is suffering from cancer. 1888. June 21st. Mrs. Booth speaks in public for the last time (at the City Temple). 1889. August. She goes to Clacton-on-Sea. 1890. October 4th. Mrs. Booth is promoted to Glory. 1890. October 6th. Her body brought to Congress Hall, Clapton. 1890. October 11th. Funeral at Abney Park. 
7039	----	THE ANGEL ADJUTANT OF "Twice Born Men" by MINNIE L. CARPENTER INTRODUCTION BY GENERAL BRAMWELL BOOTH FOREWORD BY COMMANDER EVANGELINE BOOTH Introductory Note There is surely little need for me to commend this so intimate and living picture of Staff-Captain Kate Lee. It speaks for itself in speaking of one whose fine character and ceaseless labour were of singular charm and amazing fruitfulness. The Salvation Army has been happy in its Women Officers. The lessons of experience undoubtedly teach us that they are fully qualified for all the work of the ministry of Christ. Long denied the right of public testimony as well as the opportunity to proclaim the truth of the Saviour's mission, women have in the history of our Movement fully proved that they may be as effective, as acceptable, and as successful as their brethren, both as teachers and rulers in the Kingdom of Christ on earth. The extraordinary theory that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are confined to those who have taken part in a certain ecclesiastical ceremonial, narrow and mistaken as it may be, is surely a mild and simple form of error, compared with the appalling notion that those gifts are confined to men, and are to be for ever withheld from the other half of the human family. The Churches of the world seem at length prepared to debate within themselves whether they should venture to follow our example, and give to woman a place worthy of her gifts in their various plans of campaign. Perhaps the brief story of this life may help some of them a step forward. Kate Lee was an unfaltering believer in the power of God to save from the power of sin. This was really her secret. That faith dominated her own frail and often sick body with its nights of sleeplessness--its days of pain. It conquered the worst in the worst of men whom she encountered in her work of mercy. It won a multitude of souls to believe in her and in her message, and then to believe in her Saviour. It was ever greater than her circumstances. It was greater than herself. It makes her life, and this story of it, wonderful for us who remain. And Kate Lee was a Salvationist; that is, she was seized with what we sometimes call the spirit of The Army--that union of holy love and fiery zeal and practical common sense which, by the power of Christ, produces wherever it is found the fruits of Salvation in the bodies and souls of those who are without. And I feel no sort of doubt that to any woman, having the opportunity to do so, and to whom she could speak to-day, she would say--'Do as I have done.' I do not mean by that that every sincere woman is bound to become a Salvation Army Officer, or is called forthwith to go to the ends of the earth as a member of our Missionary Forces. But I do mean that Christian women everywhere have a part to play in the great Ministry of Conversion--in the glorious Mission of the Apostles of every age, for the evangelization of the world. It behooves them to see that they play their part. Bramwell Booth, _General_. Foreword The story of "The Angel Adjutant" is sure to continue its very exceptional and wonderfully inspirational work wherever and by whomsoever read, and consequently I am specially glad to know that an American edition is about to be published. Seldom has a living spirit pulsated through biographical pages as it does throughout the simple account here given. Yet it is not merely the spirit of Kate Lee, who surely lives again in these folios--the simple, unsophisticated, devoted daughter of the Salvation Army, but this book throbs with that life which is begotten and sustained and empowered by the Holy Spirit. He was graciously and solely responsible for the constant stream of helpfulness that all who knew her witness as having resulted from a consecration made by a girl in her teens. And how beautifully enshrined in this life was the soul of the Movement of which she was such a worthy unit. The description, while being a faithful portrayal of a very real person, can still be regarded as typical of a great host of blessed women whose supreme joy in life is found in having associated themselves in holy bonds of service such as their loved, and now glorified comrade, the subject of these memoirs, rendered mankind. While such as Kate Lee lives, the Salvation Army's position as a saving force is secure. Evangeline Booth, _Commander U.S._ _New York, 1922._ CONTENTS I. THE VALUE OF THE ONE II. CHOOSING HER COURSE III. WOMAN'S POSITION IN THE ARMY IV. EARLY BATTLES V. A CORPS COMMANDER VI. SPECIAL EFFORTS VII. THE MOTHERING HEART VIII. A BREAK TO CANADA IX. IN THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE X. 'THE ANGEL ADJUTANT' XI. COMRADES AND FRIENDS XII. TROPHIES OF GRACE XIII. KATE LEE'S SECRET XIV. OFF DUTY XV. AT HER DESK XVI. UNEXPECTED ORDERS I THE VALUE OF THE ONE Lucy Lee laid her head on her pillow and, looking through the silence and darkness, smiled up to God. She had won her first soul for Him, and now made her offering. The capture was not a drunkard, nor an outcast--many of whom, in years to come, she was to wrestle over and deliver--but her own sister, whose golden hair lay over the pillow beside her, and whose regular breathing told that she was fast asleep. Nothing did Lucy imagine of the blessing to thousands of souls that was to flow from that night's work. She was happy in the consciousness that she had been faithful to the heavenly vision, and that now she and her sister were one in the experience of Salvation. How Lucy loved her! Her mind ran back over the thirteen years since a baby sister came into her life. She remembered the rapture she felt, when sitting upon her mother's bed, the nurse placed the baby in her arms. She was five years old then, and soon her small arms ached and her legs were cramped, but again and again she pleaded to hold her treasure just a little longer. She had been allowed to name the baby, and had called her Kate. What a frail, sweet little child she had grown! When Kate was six years old their father died. Lucy recalled moving from their nice house in Hornsey Rise--a suburb of nearer London--to a smaller home; her start at business; and then, the great event that changed the course of life for both the girls. One Sunday evening, after her mother and Kate had gone to chapel, Lucy had been keeping her brother company in the front room, when a burst of song in the street drew her to the window, and she saw a small procession of about twenty people go singing down the road, the leader waving an umbrella. Not staying to consider, she put on her hat and followed the march. It turned into a hall, which was already full of people, but Lucy slipped in at the back and stood. The meeting began with 'There is a Fountain filled with Blood.' The girl was fascinated with the message given in song and testimony, until, suddenly remembering that her mother would have returned home and be anxious at her absence, she hurried away. During the following week her mind was full of the strange street-singers. She made inquiries about them, and heard that they were Salvationists; 'good people, but very queer.' In her heart, the words-- I do believe, I will believe That Jesus died for me; That on the cross He shed His Blood, From sin to set me free! sang themselves over and over and over again. The following Sunday evening she heard the singing in another street, and straightway started for the Salvationists' hall, arriving in time to get a front seat. The message proclaimed the Sunday before rang out again: 'All have sinned; for all Jesus died, and through Him there is salvation for every one who repents of sin and believes on Him.' To Lucy Lee it seemed that she was the only one to whom the message was directed; and, hearing the invitation for any who wished to find salvation to come forward and kneel at the penitent-form, she at once responded. Very soon her eager, seeking heart found the Saviour, and she hastened home to tell her mother the good news. Mrs. Lee had suffered many sorrows, and Lucy, although only in her teens, was a comfort who had never failed her. She was not pleased that her daughter was inclined to follow such extremists as the Salvationists evidently were; but when the girl said, 'Mother, they are thoroughly good, sincere people, you need have no fear of my going amongst them,' Mrs. Lee became reassured that all was well, and unwilling to raise needless contentions, held her peace. After a while Lucy begged permission of her mother that Kate might accompany her to a Sunday night meeting. Gaining her wish, the occasion proved to be something of an undertaking. The work was prospering, converts were increasing in numbers at the corps, and the roughs were moved to boisterous opposition. Kate was bewildered by the enthusiasm of the Salvationists, and the wild ways of the roughs, whilst Lucy was terrified for the white ribbon on her sister's hat. This must be screened at all costs, for if the little mother had received any hint of mud-throwing and pushing, Kate would have paid her last visit to The Army, and Lucy was praying for her salvation. So, like a mother hen with wings outstretched, Lucy screened Kate's hat with her arms and took her home in good order, though a little frightened and not over anxious to go to The Salvation Army again. Lucy soon became a valiant soldier. Her religion was real. She not only believed; she felt deeply, and longed to witness for God. When called to the front to sing, she generally chose the song, I have given up all for Jesus, This vain world is naught to me, All its pleasures are forgotten In remembering Calvary. Though my friends despise, forsake me, And on me the world looks cold, I've a Friend who will stand by me When the Pearly Gates unfold. Life's morn will soon be waning, And the evening bells will toll; But my heart will know no sadness When the Pearly Gates unfold. Over and over again she sang this song, with the tears running down her face. It always carried a message to souls. As she became braver she spoke to the girls who came forward to the penitent-form. Lucy longed to know that her own little sister was saved; but somehow, when she left the hall, courage to speak of spiritual matters forsook her. Six months passed away, and she had not spoken to Kate about her soul. At home, she endeavoured to live for Jesus; she sang Army songs whenever she was in the house; but to speak to her dear ones about their souls seemed impossible. She had 'lock-jaw' at the very thought. The Saviour's face had seemed every day to shine upon Lucy; but now a cloud was coming between, and she knew the reason. One evening, Mrs. Lee having some business which took her from home, the sisters were left alone. 'Lord, this is my chance; help me to make the most of it,' Lucy prayed. The gas was lit, the fire cosy, and Lucy went to the piano and began to play and sing. She chose all the solemn, convicting songs she could think of, such as-- You'll see the Great White Throne, And stand before it all alone. Kate had betaken herself to her favourite place, the hearthrug. She was silent until Lucy had reached the middle verse of 'Almost persuaded,' which she sang with due impressiveness. Then a sorrowful little voice quavered:-- 'I'm so lonely. I thought we were going to have _such_ a nice time.' Lucy at once got up. 'Are you, dearie? Would you like some supper?' 'No, I don't want anything; I'm lonely and miserable,' quavered Kate. 'Well, then, we'll go up to bed.' Once in their room Lucy continued: 'I don't think we want a light, do we?' And sitting on the bed, her heart beating until her voice was uncertain, she put her arm round Kate's waist, and began, 'Katie, dear, I've been wanting to have a special talk with you for a long time. You know I was saved six months ago, and I have been praying for you to be saved, too, but I've found it hard to talk to you about it. I'm so glad we're alone to-night.' 'Didn't you _know_ I wanted you to talk to me? Haven't you heard me crying every night in bed? I _do_ want to be saved,' and Kate burst into tears. 'Darling, I _didn't_ know. I've been stupid and shy; but I'm sorry. You can be saved _just now_. We'll kneel down right here,' said Lucy. The sisters knelt beside their bed, and Lucy led Kate step by step into the Kingdom of God. She knew she was a sinner? 'Oh, _yes_,' sobbed Kate. She was sorry for her sins? 'Yes.' She would give them up? _every one?_ and would live henceforth only for God? 'Yes!' Then Jesus was saying, 'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest.' Did Kate believe it? 'Yes!' Then we'll sing together the words I sang the night I was saved, 'I do believe, I will believe that Jesus died for me.' Together the sisters sang the chorus, just as if they were in a meeting; then they both prayed, and kissed one another, and got into bed. Lucy went over it all, and praised the Lord for giving her the joys of salvation, first to herself, and now to the one she loved best in all the world, and so fell asleep. Surely the angels looked down that night and smiled upon the sisters, the elder destined to be a patient, plodding, burden-bearer in the heavenly warfare, and the younger a great warrior in the Kingdom of Heaven, one of the saints and most successful field officers of the great Salvation Army. II CHOOSING HER COURSE From babyhood Kate Lee had been a delicate little mortal; she was so timid that even the visits of relatives to her home were a kind of torture to her, and she would hide in any corner rather than come forward and entertain or be entertained. Her delicacy inclined her to selfishness, and her timidity to reserve and aloofness. She bid fair to grow up an insular, somewhat unlovable woman; but child though she was, conversion meant a radical change in character and purpose. She realized at once that as a follower of Jesus she might not live to please herself. She became interested in other people, their well-being and sorrows and needs. Then the joy of the Lord became her strength. It was so glorious to know that her soul was saved from sin; that she was at peace with God; that He had promised to be with her, and guide her, and help her through life, and give her Heaven at last. And this promise was for all the world; but people were still sinful and sad. Surely they did not know about Salvation. She must tell them! Straightway she wanted to wear an Army bonnet, so as to silently witness for Jesus as she walked the streets. But opposition against Salvationists was strong in those days, and Mrs. Lee was fearful lest Kate should be roughly handled going to and from the meetings. In the matter of uniform, she had to content herself with a badge of Army ribbon. This she wore on her dress to school, and drew upon herself the ire of uncouth lads who noticed it; some even pelted her with mud. She used to remain behind after school hours to talk to her schoolmates about Salvation; some she won, but others resented her message. Invited to the birthday party of a school friend, she went, wearing as usual her Army badge. During the evening this was torn from her breast. Kate's eyes began to be opened concerning the attitude of the world towards Christ. She found that most people did not want to know of His will, much less do it, and that if she intended to devote her life to seek and to save souls she must be prepared to suffer with her Lord. Far from repelling her, the challenge called up the reserves of love and courage that until now had lain dormant in her spirit, and once and for all she took sides with Christ. The shy little recruit, with eyes as blue as the sky, golden curls reaching to her waist, and a complexion like pink rose petals, sang her testimony in the meetings until she gained courage to speak. She was ever planning ways by which she could direct people's thoughts toward God, and to arouse them to a sense of their spiritual state. An ingenious method she hit upon was to write carefully-worded little letters to the postmen and drop them into various pillar-boxes. The family removed to Hornsey, and soon afterwards Lucy heard the 'call' to officership in The Salvation Army. This was the first real trial Mrs. Lee had felt in connexion with her daughters' association with The Army. Though herself anything but a woman of war, she had not interfered with their choice of religion, for they were 'such good girls.' But to break her home circle was not in her reckoning. It was a pain that went deeper than the parting which caused tears to sting Lucy's face as, on a snowy New Year's day, she said good-bye to mother and sister and left home for the Training Garrison; but in her heart rang the words, 'If any man love father or mother more than Me, he is not worthy of Me.' She must put God's call first, and trust Him to bring all right. Kate's health remained frail, but her spirit grew stronger and stronger. Whenever able, she hied off to The Army hall, carrying her tambourine in a little green baize bag, and, as often as not, a bundle of 'War Crys' under her arm. In the Army papers she saw a powerful means of spreading Salvation, and she became a fearless Herald. [Footnote: One of a voluntary brigade of regular sellers.] There are comrades at Wood Green who recall how on Wednesday nights Kate would go to the hall, fold a large bundle of 'War Crys,' and sally forth to the streets to sell them. The first time she ventured out on this service she saw a great, drunken navvy lounging against the door of a public-house. Mustering all her courage, the girl advanced and offered the paper to the drunkard. She felt she had scored quite a victory when the navvy bought a copy. By degrees she became braver, and would even go into the saloons to sell the periodicals. Then, noticing how the newsboys boarded buses with their papers, she thought that in the Lord's service she should be as eager and enterprising as they, and she became quite agile, running up and down the iron steps as she joined the buses and offered her papers for sale to the passengers. Veteran soldiers also recall Kate's spiritual, earnest face, as she sat in side seats--known as 'the boxes'--at the Wood Green hall, whence she could study the congregation. As she recognized how people fell under conviction of sin during the progress of the meetings, she felt that she might help girls of her own age, who 'didn't look saved,' if she sat beside them in the hall, and spoke to them when the prayer meeting was begun. She was still shy, still nervous, but she suffered no excuse for herself when the heavenly vision made clear a path of duty. In later years, a corps cadet asked her if, in those days, she never said 'I can't.' 'Yes,' she replied, _'I often said "I can't, but I MUST,"'_ and so she conquered. To wear full Army uniform was still the desire of Kate's heart. When she needed a new dress, she prevailed upon her mother to let it be a blue one, and by dint of great perseverance she made a uniform herself. Now, if she might but have the bonnet! Lucy had passed through the Training Garrison, and was now an officer in the Field. A great Salvation demonstration was held at that time at the Alexandra Palace, and Lucy, with her captain, came to London for the important event. The mother and sisters met in the ground of the Palace. Lucy's eyes were sparkling with quite extraordinary delight, and, needing a wash and brush up, she asked her mother to excuse Kate, and the girls slipped away. 'Guess what I've got for you, little dear,' Lucy exclaimed when they were alone. Kate laughed, but shook her head. Then, from a box, the elder sister drew a small Army bonnet. 'Oh!' gasped Kate, 'where did you get it?' 'I've been saving and saving for it, and at last here it is; and you're going to wear it right off.' Kate's hat was transferred to the box and the bonnet tried on. 'Darling, you look lovely; now come to mother,' cried Lucy. Kate's face was pink with pleasure, and her eyes shining with anticipation when the girls returned to Mrs. Lee. She looked a moment in surprise, then her eyes filled with tears. There was a beauty not of this earth about the child. She would not mar it. Kate might wear the bonnet. And thus it was that the mother, herself unreached with revelation, and untouched by inspiration, followed slowly but surely in her daughters' steps. Whilst Lucy was stationed at Folkestone it was a great joy to the sisters when it was arranged for Kate to visit her. To work amongst the people all day long, get them to the meetings at night, and 'land' them at the mercy-seat, seemed to Kate service that the angels might envy. One day she begged to be allowed to 'visit' [Footnote: Visiting the people in their homes--usually from house to house.] as her sister and the captain did. The captain consented somewhat reluctantly, but afterwards doubted the wisdom of allowing this child of fifteen to go alone into all manner of houses. Seeing Kate enter the home of a drunken sweep, she stepped along to the door and listened. Kate was dealing with the man as earnestly and directly, if not as skilfully, as she herself could have done. She smiled and turned away. When Kate had visited her street of houses, she returned to the quarters radiant. The sweep had promised to come to the meetings, and, 'Just look what he gave me for tea,' she announced triumphantly, and produced a currant loaf, a luxury in those days. A kind-hearted woman soldier, touched by Kate's delicate appearance, felt that the child needed the air of the hills, and abundant nourishment, and begged Lucy to allow her to take Kate to her home. Lucy, ever alive to Kate's welfare, joyfully sent her off, and the child spent several health-giving months in the country. To help her happily to occupy her time, the good friend bought Kate a cheap concertina. By the hour she would sit in the sunshine, mastering the keyboard, and soon she could play simple Army tunes. How richly our Heavenly Father blesses the gifts of love! All unconsciously, the good soldier was preparing the Angel Adjutant of the future to win the hopeless and despairing of many great cities for God. Kate had an extraordinary love for music. Her ambition had once been to make music her profession; but after her conversion she realized that there were higher things to live for than a successful career, and lest music should be a snare to her, she gave it up. This determination to allow nothing to interfere with her entire devotion to the will and service of God was a sure foundation for her spiritual life, but as she grew in the knowledge of God she realized that every gift may be consecrated to God's service. She worked at the piano again; now she wrestled with the concertina, then tackled the banjo. Later they all became useful aids to her in her work amongst the people. Soon after Kate's return home from the country she wrote to Lucy telling her privately that for the upkeep of the home it was necessary that she should seek employment. This prospect caused Lucy much anxiety. Her own experience of earning her living in so seemingly irreproachable a business as photography returned to her with horror. The manager of the firm for which she had worked had been a dissolute man. Much of his conversation in the presence of the girl employees was incomprehensible to Lucy, who did her work faithfully, was pleasant and obliging, but lived her life largely apart from the others. Her later experience in moving amongst the people had enlarged her knowledge of life, and now she realized that, as a certain white flower with smooth petals remains unspotted at the mouth of coal pits, so by the innocency of her mind and the purity of her spirit, she had been preserved from dangers worse than death. The thought of Kate in such company was intolerable. With her usual motherliness towards her sister, she replied, 'On no account must you take a situation without my approval. Surely, there must be some godly place in London for you. I am going to pray hard that the Lord, will direct you to it, and you must wait till the right thing turns up.' While Lucy was praying 'hard,' a representative of The Army Outfit Department visited her corps. He carried uniforms and books, set up a stall, and sold his goods before and after the meetings. Lucy knew little about the Outfit Department, but she was inspired with an idea. People must be needed to make the uniforms, she mused, and to sell the books, keep the accounts, and write letters. Why should not Kate be employed by The Army? She made inquiries of the salesman and was encouraged to write to Headquarters. God had heard Lucy's prayer, and in a little while her sister found herself installed as a clerk at the Outfit Department at Clerkenwell. Kate realized that a knowledge of shorthand would be to her advantage, and, obtaining the necessary books, she began to study, rising in the bright summer mornings at four o'clock and plodding her way along in spare minutes until she attained a speed of the coveted 'hundred.' So reliable was she found to be, that before long she received the title of lieutenant. She was very happy. All her time was now occupied in work for the Kingdom of Heaven; indirectly by day on correspondence and accounts, at night at the corps, she sought for souls, and she was ever a comfort to her mother. So matters might have continued until to-day; indeed, one comrade of those years, a godly woman, 'content to fill a little space if God be glorified,' still continues in the hidden but important duty of getting out uniform for the Salvationists. But deep in the silence of her soul Kate heard the call of God to leave this quiet post and seek the lost. Humanly speaking, there seemed to be every reason why she should not embark upon the life of a field officer. When Kate mentioned her call to her mother, the little woman was overcome with sorrow and apprehension. She had become reconciled to Lucy's absence, and even took pleasure in her work, but to part with her 'ewe lamb,' to allow her to leave the shelter of her love and care and pour out her life in Army field service, was more than her faith could accept. She consulted the family doctor; he shook his head and declared that six months of such a life would kill her daughter. Not one single voice was raised to encourage Kate Lee in obeying the Divine call. Even Lucy thought she was going 'before the time.' The soldiers of the corps expected her health would fail. Colonel Laurie, under whom she worked in the Outfit Department, says, 'She was a thoroughly good girl, conscientious and faithful in her work, but quiet and very frail. When she told me of her call, I would not discourage her faith, but I hoped she was not mistaken. The thought that she would ever become a spiritual leader in The Army never once occurred to me.' Mrs. Lieut.-Colonel Moore, then Sister Stitt, Kate's friend in the home corps, with many misgivings watched her go away. 'The home arrangements seemed so sensible; this fresh undertaking and her breaking away, so foolish! She was so good, always loving holiness, always sweet and unselfish, but terribly shy; and the idea of her roughing it, or becoming anything more than a behind-the-scenes officer, seemed impossible,' said Mrs. Moore in passing on some reminiscences of her friend. The day of farewell arrived, and with aching heart, conscious only of obeying the heavenly vision, Kate exchanged her title of lieutenant for that of cadet, took leave of her mother, and crossed London to the Training Garrison at Clapton. General Bramwell Booth writes of this step, 'Her beginning was a great act of faith. She put her hand in her Master's hand, and went out on the great adventure of Salvation Army life--stepping on to the waters with much tremulousness and many questions--but her faith carried her through.' In those days the cadets were trained in small groups placed at certain corps, and to the Chalk Farm Garrison, under Ensign, now Brigadier, Elizabeth Thomas, Kate was appointed. The brigadier, who has now retired from active service, delights to look back upon those days of rough fighting which tested the mettle of cadets, some thirty years ago. She says:-- When Kate came to me she was a sweet, fragile girl of about twenty. There was a look of indescribable tenderness about her, and a faraway look in her eyes. She might have been a sentimentalist, but there was no room for dreaming in that fight. From the first Kate showed an appreciation of her calling and a spirit that was determined to go through to the end. I have seen her lips quiver before we set out upon some bombardment, but her eyes were steadfast. She never refused a duty, nor failed in a charge. Every ounce of her was devoted to the work of the moment and to her own improvement for the future. She gave herself to every duty as it arose--boot-blacking, scrubbing, or scullery work--as readily as to her field training. At one and the same time I had two cadets of exceptional promise--Kathleen Harrington and Kate Lee. Kathleen Barrington was a beautiful Irish girl, well educated, and from a home of wealth. She was full of enthusiasm, dash, and courage, and possessed a deep spiritual experience. Kate was not brilliant, and had merely an elementary education, but she was gentle and calm and refined by the grace of God, which seemed to permeate her whole nature. These two girls were kindred spirits. They were one in purpose, in outlook, and consecration. They delighted in each other's company; and yet, so that there should be nothing that savoured of a clique in the Garrison, they devoted themselves to the other cadets, particularly linking up with those who were dull or timid and indulging their friendship only on occasions when the sign of preference for each other's company would excite no jealousy. Kathleen Harrington, after a brief service as a single officer and then as an officer's wife, her life beginning to fulfil its brimming promise, radiant with happiness and victory, was promoted to Higher Service, while Kate Lee was left to wage warfare on earth. Brigadier Thomas continues:-- There were about twenty-four girls at the Garrison. By 9:30, the work of the house was finished. From then till dinner hour, we had school, studying the Bible, the F.O., [Footnote: Orders and Regulations for Field Officers.] D.D., [Footnote: Doctrine of The Army.] and 'Why and Wherefore'. [Footnote: A book explanatory of Salvation Army terms and works.] After dinner the cadets set out for field training. These exercises included house-to-house visitation, open-air meetings, and 'War Cry' selling in the streets and the saloons. In our open-air meetings we were continually moved on by the police, but we aimed to deliver some definite message at each stand, and so to make our moving-on an occasion to reach more listeners. Those were rough days. We had all our band instruments smashed and the windows of our Garrison as well, and one man, madly infuriated against us, heated a poker red hot and threw it into the hall amongst the congregation. We lived in danger to limb and life, but had the overshadowing presence of God with us. Not every cadet who entered training had the grit to go through with it. Once, during her afternoon home, Kate sprained her ankle, but persuaded her mother to get a cab for her so that she might return to the Garrison the same night. 'Why did you not remain at home to-night?' an officer asked her, as Kate hopped into the Garrison. 'I was afraid you would think I had run away,' she laughed, 'and I did not wish you to have that worry.' Brigadier Thomas tells us:-- In house-to-house visitation I would take the cadets in turn, speak with the people on their door-steps, and, if possible, get into their houses and point them to God. Kate gloried in this. She was a most successful visitor. Saloon 'raiding' was, perhaps, our most difficult work. We used 'The War Cry' as a means of entrance and introduction. Going into the bar we offered the paper for sale and suggested singing one of the songs it contained. Conversation with the men and women followed, and before leaving we would pray. Often we were thrown out of the bars, and often, as we prayed, beer was dashed into our faces or over us, and on reaching the Garrison we would need to wash our clothes to remove the bar-room filth. 'Trench mud' we might have called it, had the war been on in those days. But the trial hardest of all to endure was the horrible talk of those dens of sin. Before leaving the Garrison we used to kneel and ask the Lord to sanctify our ears, and surely that was not the least of the prayers that He answered for us. Our souls were entirely delivered from that paralysing horror that the hearing of such profanity at first produced upon our minds, and we were kept in purity and simplicity as though such vileness had never been heard. The only duty which Kate Lee really shrank from was to take up a collection for the maintenance of the Garrison. This was called the 'Bread and Butter Box'; and the Cadets took turns to stand at the hall door after each meeting, hold the box and shake it. Kate heartily disliked this, but it was part of her duty, and she did it with a smile that brought success. In after years she became a wonderful woman, but in those early days she held the secret that made her wonderful. She walked with God. When the cadets had leisure time, the majority would engage in innocent chat of one kind and another; but you would find Kate a little withdrawn from the others, with her Bible. Yet there was nothing censorious about her. She was quick with a smile and an answer to any remark from the other cadets; but there she was, already her life was hid with 'Christ in God.' Captain Lucy rejoiced over her sister with trembling. She understood Kate's willing, eager spirit, and the more she thought about her, the less did she believe her to be strong enough to take the position of an officer on field duty. So Lucy began to pray, and soon she felt inspired to act. Writing to Miss Evangeline Booth, then the Field Commissioner in London, she explained her fears for Kate, and asked if, for a year or two, her sister might be stationed with her. The Commander was quick to see the wisdom of the suggestion, and after a few weeks Captain Lucy received orders for Penarth, in Wales, with Kate as her lieutenant. Her way lay through London, and she knocked at the home door one night. A quick, light step flew to answer it. 'My captain!' cried Kate. 'My lieutenant!' cried Lucy, as they clasped one another. Happy tears glistened in their eyes as they held each other at arms' length to get a good view of each other in the full glory of their respective uniforms, and in the eyes of the little mother, who, learning to walk by faith, was finding the joy as well as the pain of sacrificing her treasures upon the altar of Christ. III WOMAN'S POSITION IN THE ARMY We write in a matter-of-fact way that Captain Lucy and Lieutenant Kate Lee received an appointment to this or that corps, and the statement is received as it was written--without surprise or reflection. But, in truth, behind such a sentence lies one of the most notable achievements of The Salvation Army as a world force--the right to public service for women. Looking over the fifty-five years of the life of The Army, and further back still, we can trace clearly the guiding hand of God in the formation and direction of this instrument of His choosing. When, in the order of Divine providence, William Booth was chosen to be Founder of the Salvation Army, by strange, devious, suffering ways, God led him, chastened him, disciplined him in preparation for his great work. At the same time, Catherine Mumford, by the hand of God, was being fitted to be the Mother of The Salvation Army. She was a delicate, retiring, but highly intelligent young woman of twenty-four years of age, when she heard her minister, in the course of a sermon, give expression to the view that women were mentally and morally inferior to men. At this suggestion Catherine Mumford felt a strong native resentment rise within her. Until that hour she had held the view that God had made men and women equal in gifts of mind and heart; now she made a thorough study of the subject in the light of the Word of God and of history, and as a result she formed a reasoned opinion from which she never swerved. In a letter, remarkable for its logic and its command of vigorous English, she set forth her views to her pastor. She admitted that prejudice and custom had relegated woman to positions inferior to those occupied by men; but argued that, given similar advantages of education and opportunity, woman is man's equal, fitted to be his partner, and able, with great advantage to enter with him into all serious and practical counsels for the benefit of the race. In championing the cause of her sex, Catherine Mumford found she had to take the field almost alone. Even William Booth, to whom she was then engaged, did not share her views. Mr. Booth believed that while woman carried the palm in point of affection, man was her superior in regard to intellect. Miss Mumford would not admit this for a moment; and by degrees, chiefly by the charming power of her own personality and also by argument, she wholly carried her beloved to her view-point. In the 'Life of Catherine Booth,' by Commissioner Booth-Tucker, we find records of the young husband, soon after their marriage, urging his wife to lecture on various subjects. The next move along the track which all unconsciously Mrs. Booth was blazing for a host of women to tread, publishing the Salvation of God, was in defence of Mrs. Phoebe Palmer, a consecrated American evangelist who, in company with her husband, was conducting powerful mission services in England. Mrs. Palmer's ministry, notwithstanding the fact that it was more honoured of God in the conversion of souls than that of her husband, excited a vigorous attack from a clergyman of a large church in Sunderland. In Catherine Booth's breast again flamed that powerful resentment she had felt on the occasion previously mentioned. She wrote her mother saying that for the first time in her life she felt like taking the platform in order to answer the false views propounded concerning female ministry. Instead, she wrote a well-reasoned and convincing paper on woman's right to preach--a pamphlet of some thirty-two pages. By this time her husband was so entirely with her in this matter that he encouraged her to make her defence. And we find Mr. Booth copying the pamphlet from his wife's manuscript and preparing it for the press. But while Mrs. Booth was the most powerful advocate in England of woman's right to preach, she herself had never attempted to speak in public. At last there came a day when she realized that her silence was not consistent with her profession and at great personal sacrifice she broke the bonds of timidity and publicly witnessed for her Lord. The following is an account from Mrs. Booth's own lips of her experience given in a public meeting twenty years after she began to speak: Perhaps some of you would hardly credit that I was one of the most timid and bashful disciples the Lord Jesus ever saved. But for four or five months before I commenced speaking the controversy had been signally roused in my soul, and I passed through some severe heart-searchings. During a season of sickness, it seemed one day as if the Lord revealed it all to me by His Spirit. I had no vision, but a revelation to my mind. He seemed to take me back to the time when I was fifteen or sixteen, when I first fully gave my heart to Him. He showed me that all the bitter way this one thing had been the fly in the pot of ointment, preventing me from realizing what I otherwise should have done. And then I remember prostrating myself upon my face before the Lord, and promising Him there in the sick room, 'Lord, if Thou wilt return unto me as in the days of old, and revisit me with those urgings of the Spirit, which I used to have, I will obey, if I die in the attempt.' However, the Lord did not revisit me immediately. But He permitted me to recover, and to resume my usual duties. About three months afterward I went to the chapel of which my husband was a minister, and he had an extraordinary service there. Even then he was always trying something new to get at the outside people. For this Sunday he had arranged with the leaders that the chapel should be closed, and a great out-door Service held at a place called Windmill Hills. It so happened, however, that the weather was too tempestous for carrying out this design, and hence the doors were thrown open and the meeting was held in the chapel. In spite of the stormy weather about 1,000 persons were present, including a number of preachers and outside friends. I was, as usual, in the minister's pew with my eldest boy, then four years old. I felt much depressed in mind, and was not expecting anything particular; but as the testimonies proceeded I felt the Holy Spirit come upon me. You alone who have experienced it can tell what it means. It cannot be described. I felt it to the extremity of my hands and feet. It seemed as if a Voice said to me, 'Now if you were to go and testify, you know I would bless it to your own soul, as well as to the people!' I gasped again, and said in my heart, 'Yes, Lord, I believe Thou wouldst, but I cannot do it!' I had forgotten my vow. It did not occur to me at all. A moment afterward there flashed across my mind the memory of the bedroom visitation, when I had promised the Lord that I would obey Him at all costs. And then the Voice seemed to ask me if this was consistent with that promise. I almost jumped up, and said, 'No, Lord, it is the old thing over again. But I cannot do it!' I felt as though I would sooner die than speak. And then the devil said, 'Besides, you are not prepared. You will look like a fool, and will have nothing to say.' He made a mistake. He over-reached himself for once. It was this word that settled it. 'Ah!' I said, 'this is just the point. I have never yet been willing to be a fool for Christ. Now I will be one.' Without stopping another moment I rose up from my seat and walked down the aisle. My dear husband was just going to conclude. He thought something had happened to me, and so did the people. We had been there two years, and they knew my timid, bashful nature. He stepped down and asked me, 'What is the matter, my dear?' I replied, 'I want to say a word.' He was so taken by surprise that he could only say, 'My dear wife wishes to speak,' and sat down. For years he had been trying to persuade me to do it. Only that very week he had wanted me to go and address a little Cottage Meeting of some twenty working people, but I had refused. I stood--God only knows how--and if any mortal did ever hang on the arm of Omnipotence, I did. I felt as if I were clinging to some human arm; but it was a Divine one which held me up. I just stood, and told the people how it had come about. I confessed, as I think everybody should who has been in the wrong, and has misrepresented the religion of Jesus Christ. I said, 'I dare say many of you have been looking upon me as a very devoted woman, and one who has been living faithfully to God. But I have come to realize that I have been disobeying Him, and thus have brought darkness and leanness into my soul. I have promised the Lord to do so no longer, and have come to tell you that henceforth I will be obedient to the holy vision.' There was more weeping, they said, in the chapel that day than on any previous occasion. Many dated a renewal in righteousness from that very moment, and began a life of devotion and consecration to God. Now I might have 'talked good' to them till now. That honest confession did what twenty years of preaching could not have accomplished. But, oh, how little did I realize how much was then involved! I never imagined the life of publicity and trial that it would lead me to, for I was never allowed to have another quiet Sabbath when I was well enough to stand and speak. All I did was to take the first step. I could not see in advance. But the Lord, as He always does when His people are honest with Him and obedient, opened the windows of Heaven, and poured out such a blessing that there was not room to receive it. From that morning Mrs. Booth continued to respond to the call to proclaim Salvation, until she came to be regarded as one of the most powerful preachers of her day. Her service was not unattended with sorrow. For many years this shrinking woman had to face fires of criticism and blizzards of scorn; but she persevered. Not only within the ranks of The Salvation Army has Mrs. Booth's brave example borne a harvest of blessing, but in all walks of public life women now stand in the gates as co-workers with men in every righteous cause; sometimes they raise their voice for truth and equity where no other voice is heard. When the Christian Mission began to take form, William Booth had no particular intentions as to the kind of helpers he was to have--either male or female. Female ministry evolved as a part of its service, as indeed the whole Salvation Army evolved, without premeditation or plan, indeed, as it is said of the Kingdom of God, 'without observation.' To Mr. Booth's early meetings in the East End of London came a godly man and his wife to assist him with their sympathy. The woman was so shy as to be unable to pray aloud. She was in deep sorrow over the death of her two children. Later, when attending a holiness meeting, conducted in an old wood shed in Bethnal Green, this woman, Mrs. Collingridge, yielded herself entirely to God for His service. She knelt, a timid, broken woman, making the sincere offering of herself to God, and rose from her knees delivered from all fear and inspired with a message to the people. From that day, with the arresting power of a prophetess, she proclaimed the Saviour's love and power. She could command a crowd of the wildest roughs in the open-air, or hold breathless a great theatre audience. She specially excelled in visiting the converts and others; so blessed was she in this work that Mr. Booth asked her to become the first paid woman member of the Mission. Commissioner Railton tells of Mrs. Collingridge in his 'Twenty-one Years Salvation Army.' He writes, 'It was no longing for publicity or notoriety that attracted her, for one hears not so much of her public work, blessed and glorious as that was, as the victories she won from garret to garret, from door to door, as she pressed on, resolved never, to the last hour, to give up a victim of sin.' Worn out with loving and seeking souls, this--after The Army Mother--the first woman officer of The Salvation Army was promoted to glory, triumphing in God to her last breath. Mrs. Collingridge was the forerunner of such spirits as Kate Lee. She raised up and trained a band of brave women fighters; these women were used with remarkable success in the growing Mission. William Booth was hard put to find sufficient evangelists for the rapidly increasing stations about London and in the Provinces. God had signally blessed the Women's Band as visitors and exhorters, and William Booth saw in them qualities that caused him to believe that, given opportuity, woman would excel as a leader--a commander. Necessity urged the experiment. The first woman chosen for this purpose was Annie Davis, who later, as Mrs. Commissioner Ridsdel, after most distinguished service as a soul-winner, was promoted to glory. A quiet girl from a village, she had been converted in the old hall used by the Mission under the Railway Arch at Bethnal Green. From the first it was evident that the power of God rested upon her. Annie Davis was placed in charge of the small Christian Mission Society in Barking. At the end of her term of office she left a flourishing work. She had managed her committee, successfully led her people, paid her way, and left a balance in hand. The fact had been demonstrated that a woman was as capable of filling the position of an evangelist as a man. Kate Watts (now Mrs. Colonel Josiah Taylor) was then sent in charge of the Mission Work at Merthyr, in Wales, where she was used by God in the salvation of hundreds of souls--and Mrs. Reynolds 'opened fire' at Coventry. To Captain Reynolds was presented, on behalf of the Coventry Corps, the first Flag of The Salvation Army. The Hallelujah Lass became an indispensable part of The Salvation Army. No effort was made to set these women in one common mould and turn them out replicas of the first. Indeed their naturalness, the very differences in disposition and method added to their usefulness. In great contrast to the women already mentioned, was the type of whom 'Happy Eliza' was a specimen. Rough and ready and entirely fearless, she knew how to capture the most indifferent crowds. At one corps where ordinary methods had failed to secure the people, she marched through the streets with streamers floating from her hair, and on her back a placard bearing the words 'I'm Happy Eliza.' The denizens of public-houses and the slums flocked to the hall to hear a preacher who evidently understood them. At another place where a theatre was to be opened as a Salvation Army hall, she advertised the meetings by hiring a cab. On the box a man beat a drum, inside two or three others played brass instruments, while Happy Eliza took up her position on the luggage on the top, and drove through the streets alternately playing a fiddle and distributing handbills announcing the coming meetings. Another indomitable was Chinee Smith. Trampled on by a Lancashire mob, her bonnet torn from her head, her shoes from her feet, she marched in her stockings through the streets to the hall, her hair streaming down her back. Taking her place on the platform she led the meeting as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The hall was packed and souls sought salvation. The Army's Founder began to recognize that almost limitless possibilities lay in these women. Since they could attract and win sinners to Christ, could command the people of their corps with acceptance, why should they not be placed in charge of Divisions? He saw no reason. Captain Reynolds was promoted to the rank of major, and placed in charge of The Salvation Army work in Ireland, and the decision was fully justified by the blessed results which followed. Thus, in a perfectly natural way, without design, woman's position in The Salvation Army was established. To-day, there is no rank or position in its ranks which a woman may not occupy, including even that of General. As may be supposed, the greater number of women officers marry officers, and therefore, as a rule, merge their activities into their husband's work. This being the case, not so many women occupy leading positions as men. Nevertheless, women are to be found holding the highest rank and occupying leading positions in every phase of Army warfare. As Territorial Commander, Mrs. General Booth was for several years responsible for The Army's work in Great Britain and Ireland; Commander Evangeline Booth for that of the United States; Commissioner Lucy Booth-Hellberg for Norway; Commissioner Adelaide Cox has direction of the Women's Social Work in Great Britain. Commissioner Mildred Duff is editor of The Salvation Army literature for Young People. Commissioner Hannah Ouchterlony pioneered our work in her native land, Sweden, and now in a cloudless eventide looks with joy upon a glorious work, the foundations of which she laid in the face of fierce opposition. Lieut.-Commissioner Clara Case represents The Salvation Army woman missionary, having just retired from active service after twenty-seven years in India, during the greater part of which time she commanded the work in Southern India. Lieut-Colonel Catherine Booth, as International Secretary at Headquarters, is the General's representative for Salvation Army work in European countries. There are women Divisional Commanders, financiers, training officers, editors, teachers, and social, medical and nursing officers; and, by no means least, a host of efficient and devoted Corps Commanders of which Kate Lee was so worthy a representative. Upon the woman officer of The Army rests no less responsibility than that carried by a man occupying a similar position, and she is expected to 'deliver the goods' as her male comrade in like circumstances would be required to do. And she does it. The Salvation Army affords an unrivalled field of usefulness to young women who wish to devote their lives to the service of God. No organization offers a wider, if so wide a door. As one of its songs has it, 'There's a place in The Army for all': for the educated and cultured, whose hearts are free from selfishness and fired with holy passion to seek and save the lost, and equally for the young woman of moderate gifts and elementary education, whose heart is also pure and whose soul is illuminated by Divine love. The Army is by no means 'a happy hunting ground' for faddists or sentimentalists who think religious service consists in 'sailing round' singing songs, and whispering sweet nothings or shouting declarations. It is an Army out to fight another army; to wrestle; to conquer; to take prisoners, and to establish and govern territories. The Salvation fight demands the best a man and woman can give of heart and mind, of sacrifice and service. But, as one exuberant Salvationist has expressed, 'There's stacks of fun in The Army!' There are excitement, adventure, tragedy, and comedy, joy and sorrow, the like of which is found in few, if any other callings. Men and women who have gone out of its ranks or its commands, weary of the endless sacrifice and strain its service entails, and who are to-day well placed and full of the good things of this life, still sigh at the remembrance of the days of their warfare, and declare that the joy of a Salvation Army officer's life is without compare in spiritual work. The spirit of comradeship which exists between superior and junior officers is a real and beautiful thing. While Kate Lee as a girl captain was wrestling with the problems of her first corps in the villages of England, the writer of her memoir, then also a girl captain, was leading a village corps in her native Australian mountains. Since Kate cannot tell of the kindness of her Divisional Commanders, I may, for the sake of illustration, be permitted to mention my own experience in this relation, incidentally also showing The Army spirit in operation at the other end of the world from The Army hub. At that time I was stationed at a mining township eighty miles from a railway. The distances between towns in that part of Australia being so great, my Divisional Commander, Major Jonah Evans, now retired, was able to visit my corps only once during my term of nine months there, but he kept in constant touch with his young officers by correspondence. Next to my mother's weekly letter, I looked forward to one from my Divisional Commander. In my weekly dispatch I gave him a full account of everything that concerned my corps, which he was patient enough to read and to reply to carefully, giving such advice as he thought would help me in my work. Also, occasionally, a letter would arrive from his late sweet wife, who, as Captain Helen Morrell, had seen remarkable revivals amongst the Welsh miners. Passing on to city corps, where conditions were entirely different and responsibilities pressed heavily, Major William Hunter, now in Heaven, was my true friend as well as an able leader. The help and direction which such experienced officers are able to give to young men and women who are full of earnestness and desire to reach and bless the souls of the people, minimize the weight of responsibility sometimes thrown upon young shoulders. Thirty years ago, when Kate Lee began her career as a field officer, The Army had not reached that place in public esteem which it enjoys to-day. The worst days of rioting and persecution had passed, and right of public speech in the streets had been gained in many countries after a long struggle. But The Army was still regarded as something of a nuisance by the majority of educated people, a good thing for the very worst by a few, with indifference or hostility by the mass. To wear the uniform was to bring upon one contumely, often persecution. Salvation Army officers were sometimes perhaps ill fed and poorly clad; nevertheless, because of the opportunity their position afforded to seek and find the lost, Kate Lee counted herself blessed above millions when she sewed the insignia of a lieutenant upon her collar. IV EARLY BATTLES Six months of joyous service amongst the Welsh miners was cut short by a telegram announcing to the sisters the serious illness of Mrs. Lee. Taking the news to their Divisional Commander, they were instructed to Headquarters. It was found that the illness was due to shock. The income from investments of the little estate left by Mr. Lee had dwindled; it now had disappeared altogether. Captain Lucy faced the matter with her usual practical decision. 'Mother, darling, there are two ways out. Either I must come home and work and care for you, or you must come with us. If Headquarters would agree to you accompanying us from corps to corps, would you be willing to break up the home and come?' By this time Mrs. Lee had become possessed by what is known amongst Salvationists as 'The Army Spirit.' She loved this wonderful Army which cared for, and sought and found the lost. She would not have her girls come out of the fight. 'I cannot preach, Lucy, but maybe there is some niche I could fill. I would like to come,' she said. So it was arranged, and shortly the little household, was transferred to Norwich. How happy they were! Captain and Lieutenant Lee, busy from morn till night, week in and week out, seeking the souls of the people. The mother in the little quarters, sitting with her work-basket beside the window, giving a smile to passers-by, and welcoming her daughters as they came to meals, always bringing with them some new tale of joy, of sorrow, of fighting, of victory or defeat. The little mother truly found her niche. Soldiers and adherents came to reckon upon her gentle patient influence, and her "never-mind-me" spirit was a constant sermon. She could sympathize and she could pray, and she sewed unceasingly for the annual sales of work, making useful articles out of the smallest and oddest remnants. She found supreme happiness in her Army warfare. While Captain Lucy shielded Lieutenant Kate, she also gave her a practical training. At Norwich they saw a great work amongst the worst characters of the city; many drunkards were transformed by the grace of God. One of the number, a soldier of the corps to-day, sends his grateful tribute to Lieutenant Kate's persistence in holding up his tottering steps until they grew steady upon the heavenly way. The sisters had the joy of erecting a citadel in the Bull's Close. At King's Lynn, visitation of the homes of the people was a specialty of their work. It is to be regretted that neither Lucy nor Kate Lee kept a journal. They were too busy seeking the lost, and after finding them and rejoicing over them were too weary to record their experiences, interesting and profitable as they would have been for us to read about. Their official diaries furnish little more than entries of meetings conducted and other duties performed. The only preserved reminiscence of their work is found in an 'All the World' of 1895. Commissioner Duff, then editor of that journal, beguiled Captain Lucy into chatting about her work at King's Lynn covering three days, and used the conversation as an unconscious answer to the oft-repeated taunt thrown at our officers in those days 'Go and work.' The following are extracts:-- _Friday_. Back from London at five. So pleased to find lieutenant waiting for me on the platform, with a smile. Tea ready at home. While telling her about my London trip, the man brought my box. Paying him, he said, 'I always listen to your Open-Air on a Sunday; but I have one thing against you, you are so down on the drink.' My chance! So I let him have it straight for ten minutes, when he gave me a penny for the collection, shook hands, and went off. On the way to 7 o'clock converts' meeting, took Mrs. ---- to see doctor. She was nervous at going alone. New converts turned up well. Brother ---- very bright. Soon after he got saved he painted his door to help to make his home nice, and the old women of the street came and smeared their dirty hands over it, to hear him swear. But the Lord kept him, and all the street believes in him to-day. And old Dad who cries when he talks, he feels so grateful to God for saving him. When on our knees with our eyes shut, singing, Brother ----, two months saved, came over to me and said softly 'I'm afraid I'm slipping back, Captain.' Poor lad, his home is nearly unendurable. His mother said she would sooner see him dead than a Salvationist. We all prayed, sang, and I believed for him, and he got beautifully right. Read and explained Isaiah liv., 'No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper!' We all marched into the holiness meeting at 8 o'clock. Some glorious testimonies. Closed with united consecration at 9:15, and met bandsmen to appoint new bandmaster. I was not quite sure as to how they would take the appointment; but went in and got them all on their knees, took up the holiness meeting chorus, 'I'll be, Lord, I'll be what You want me to be,' and prayed. When on our feet again, I started off at once and got through without any hitch or word of dissent, finishing up most successfully. Praise God for this! Ran home to join the lieutenant and the treasurer and the secretary who were finishing the cartridges, [Footnote: Small envelopes in which Salvationists make their weekly gift for the maintenance of the work.] and we started on the books. Money well up this week; over thirty shillings to meet the gas bill. Hallelujah! _Saturday_. Breakfast as usual, at eight, and prayers. Then we started our weekly clean-up. I take upstairs; lieutenant down. People have got to know that Saturday is our day home, and come to see us. Had good spell of work. Then a poor woman and her daughter in great distress called; advised that they should go to law, and make the child's father support it. They are doing this. When I went with them to see the solicitor, he seemed to think they would succeed. Talked matter over with them, then had to leave lieutenant to finish with them, as Bandsman ---- came. Misunderstanding with comrade. Hot-tempered; feels he has disgraced himself; better give in instrument. Long talk with him. Showed him his duty was to admit his wrong, and ask forgiveness. At last willing to do so; prayed the Lord's help and grace; took back instrument and went off happy. Dinner ready, then off to funeral, fixed for 2:30. Dear little Nellie! Glad I was able to be with her the last night. Had run in for a minute from open-air. Stayed till 5:30 in the morning. She was all night dying. Mother too overcome to be able to be with her. It was Nellie's wish I should bury her. Band turned up; nice meeting at house, then marched to the cemetery; hundreds there. All assembled in chapel; I in pulpit. A child's funeral seems a marvellous opportunity. Many in tears. Lord, make the impression lasting! Thankful I got quiet time in the train yesterday to prepare for Sunday. I've had no time since. Before open-air went to see Mrs. ----. Saturday is a specially trying day. Husband drinks heavily. So cruel to her. Found her very depressed. Tries to keep her home nice, but he makes it very hard. 'Been wondering to-day if God does hear my prayer. My husband only seems to get worse; the devil has been tempting me all day to give up.' Read to her promise in Isaiah li., 'I am He that comforteth you.' Seemed too depressed to grasp it. 'It is _for you_' I said, and took her hand. Got down on my knees and prayed. She began to cry. 'I've been doubting and despairing all day,' she said; 'but if He'll forgive me, I will trust my Saviour.' Bless her. Hurried on; just in time for open-air. Very good meeting inside. All going on well, except ----. What _can_ we do for him? Cost us more tears, and time, and prayers than all the rest put together. He seemed so satisfactory, then he backslid and came into the meeting drunk. Lieutenant could not let him go back. Brought him from the saloon, and now there he is in the back seat, all rags and misery. Too drunk to do anything but cry. He has lost the place we got him. Pawned his things. People laugh at us for our attempts; but we can't give him up. That lost sheep, 'until He findeth it,' is my watchword for him. _Sunday_. Nice number at knee-drill. On march from open-air, great excitement. The cry was raised in one of the narrow streets, 'Runaway horse!' I was terrified for the children, but the lads made a line across the street, and the color-sergeant put the pole of the flag crosswise, barring the way; so we stopped the horse, and no one was hurt. A helpful time, I think, in the holiness meeting. Read from Exodus xxxv., showing how the people listened and obeyed God's word. After the meeting, saw the soldiers, who were on outpost duty, going off in the best of spirits. Stopped to speak to Sister ---- who is anxious about her son. Got home at one o'clock. Before dinner was finished some one came to fetch us, from the next street, to see a man who was dying, and who, in his delirium, was screaming for the captain. Found him in a dreadful state. At first I tried to soothe him. Soon I saw that he must speak. He had sat for years in the meetings, knowing what he ought to do, and never doing it. 'You've pleaded with me so often, and others have too,' he began, 'and I've always put off deciding. I have asked God to forgive me. Will you forgive me, too?' Prayed with him, and left him quieter. Went on to the hall in time for the Junior meeting. Most touching time. The children knew and loved little Nellie. When after the Company Lesson, [Footnote: Sunday School Bible Lesson.] I spoke to them of her beautiful life, they all cried, and we had a little dedication meeting, giving ourselves to God to live like Nellie, and claiming His power for help. Afternoon free-and-easy. Hall just on full, but could not keep the meeting on as we had the memorial service. A funeral march is a sermon in itself. The indoor meeting was very solemn. Lieutenant read. She is coming on well. What a comfort she is to me. I don't know how I should have got on here if we had not been so united. She is devotion itself. The Lord gave us four souls. Two of them, unsaved relations of Nellie's. It seemed the seal of Heaven upon her beautiful life. Oh! there is nothing like seeing souls saved! Said to lieutenant, as we crept home--and we feel we may have the luxury of being tired out on a Sunday night--that next to being an angel, there is no position in the world like being a field captain. After King's Lynn, Captain and Lieutenant Lee were appointed to Great Yarmouth. Here, an illness broke up the little household. During an epidemic of influenza, Kate was laid low, and before she had recovered, Lucy became ill. But the Chief of the Staff [Footnote: Now General Bramwell Booth.] was coming to Yarmouth; that was to be a great event. Lucy had taken the Drill Hall for the occasion, and would not rest until she had completed the arrangements for the campaign. The Chief had stirring meetings, with great crowds and many converts, but the captain lay at the quarters struggling with pneumonia. To this day Lucy cherishes the memory of The General's visit to her bedside, where he commended her valiant service and prayed that she would be spared to the War. After her mother had nursed her through the illness she remained delicate, and in order to relieve her from open-air duties and assist in re-establishing her health, Headquarters appointed the captain to office work. The small family did not reunite, Mrs. Lee remaining with Lucy, until years later she was promoted to glory. This break was the Lord's way of thrusting Kate forth to take responsibilities of her own. Her health was now fairly robust, and her experience of life much broader. Promoted to the rank of captain, she went to take charge of her first corps, and we have fortunately her own account of her reception. Some years before her promotion to glory, during a rather long period of sick furlough, the General wished Kate to prepare reminiscences of her field experience. To speak of herself or her work, was ever the most difficult of orders for Kate to obey, but she meant to try. Amongst her papers was found a single sheet on which she had written headings for a series of reminiscences. A further hunt discovered two sketches which she had intended for publication anonymously. One of these is here given in full: THE WRONG CLOTHES. The captain was going to take charge of her first corps, and as the train sped along her heart beat faster as each stop brought her nearer her destination. Would anyone be there to meet her? What was the town like? And the people? Above everything else, what about the lieutenant? These were the thoughts that came racing through her brain as the train dashed along. The train slowed down. A porter's voice announced the station, and she looked but of the window for a Salvation welcome, but no friendly face was there. Leaving her baggage, except for her handbag, at the station, she trudged off to find the quarters. There was no welcome there. After securing the key from a neighbour she entered the dwelling. Fortunately, there was sufficient tea in the caddy to make the longed-for cup, and with the lunch that had been forgotten on the exciting journey, she refreshed herself. There was no letter; no news of the lieutenant, and the indifferent neighbour could only say that she had been asked to hold the key until the new captain arrived. The time for the meeting drew near, but no Salvationist called, and a feeling of strangeness and loneliness came upon the captain. Falling on her knees, she called upon God to help her. The realization of His Presence, the prospect of having a little corps of her very own, enabled her to smile at her fears, and to sally forth to seek The Army hall. At last it was discovered. Such a tiny place! A small burying ground surrounded it, giving it a dismal appearance. The door was closed, so the captain went and inquired for the key, and was informed that the hall would be opened in time for the meeting. After waiting for some time, a girl appeared, and, in a sullen way, opened the door. 'If only the lieutenant were here,' the captain thought. By 8:30 two lads and a few children had mustered. Her first meeting in her own corps was one of the most difficult she had conducted. There was a strange something, a mysterious atmosphere which she could not understand. The last train did not bring the lieutenant, and the captain, committing herself to God, decided she must make the best of the circumstances. She had no desire for supper and went to bed. Awakened next morning by a stream of beautiful sunshine, she realized where she was, and the dreariness and coldness of the past night's experiences returned. 'If only the lieutenant were here,' again she sighed. 'If--but this will not do,' she cried aloud, 'I must not let the first little struggle discourage me. Perhaps I was cold and tired last night, and perhaps the people did not really expect me--or perhaps--! Anyway, I am going to do my very best for God and souls here.' Looking up to her Heavenly Father, she sought strength for the day. She made a scanty breakfast, then set about, righting the quarters. Her box had arrived, and from it she took her knick-knacks; a few cheery texts for the wall, and her beloved books, helped to make the place look homelike. Then she scanned the visitation book, making a plan for the afternoon. That first visitation was a trying experience. 'How strange and cold these people seem to be!' There was no answer to her knock from two or three houses. Everybody appeared to be out. At the next house she was sure she heard a sound that indicated that some one was at home, so she knocked with a determination that secured an answer. An upstairs window was thrown open. 'What do you want?' snarled an angry voice. 'Does Mrs. S---- live here?' 'Yes, what do you want with her?' 'I'm the new captain, and I've come to see her, is she at home?' 'I'm Mrs. S----, but I'm too busy to come down. Good-day!' The captain turned away, sick at heart, but determined to have another fry. Still, that afternoon was a very disappointing one, and she brought it to a finish with another visit to the station to inquire if there was a likely train that might bring the lieutenant. At night she went alone again to the hall, opened the door, but waited in vain for even the sullen girl and the little children. On returning to the quarters, she found a letter awaiting her from the Divisional Commander regretting that the lieutenant was ill, and could not join her for at least a month. 'A month alone in this cold atmosphere!' It seemed an endless age to anticipate, but now she faced the worst, and was determined to fight through to victory. Saturday night found her at the open-air stand, waiting and hoping that some one would turn up, when to her relief, she espied a brass instrument glistening in the distance, and she rejoiced to greet her first bandsman. He approached in an indifferent way, but she was becoming more used to the 'cold climate.' When other bandsmen appeared she felt that, in spite of the stiffness, she loved her corps already. She would have been quite happy had the lieutenant been there, but to walk in front of that band without the satisfaction of knowing there was one sister in the rear, _was_ a trial. She put her best into the meetings; gave the address that had been prepared with tears and care, but her words seemed to fall flat. The prayer-meeting was hard and no souls came to the mercy-seat. At the end of that first week-end, she exclaimed to a local officer her surprise that no sisters attended the open-air meetings, and that everybody seemed strange. 'Oh, so you don't understand?' he said. 'You have got on the wrong clothes!' 'What do you mean?' the captain inquired. 'Well, we are all disappointed. We wanted men officers. You have got on the wrong clothes.' The captain did not reply, but determined that she would make those soldiers want her before she concluded her stay amongst them. She had a difficult task, the people were clannish, and their prejudice was not easily overcome. Her first move was to arrange a social cup of tea. She prepared a dainty little spread, although the funds were low, for she did the baking herself. Every soldier was invited personally, and she felt rewarded when twenty-five out of her fifty soldiers responded. The little venture seemed to break the ice, and this first sign of success was followed by a tea for sisters only, and the disappointed sisters became quite reconciled to their girl captain. The long month at last came to an end. With great happiness the captain welcomed her lieutenant. A bright fire was in the grate, the kettle singing on the hob, as over their first cup of tea they rejoiced that love had conquered. In the lieutenant's welcome meeting, the break came, when a number of soldiers reconsecrated themselves to God. On the following Sunday night, the address was cut short by a woman rushing to the penitent-form, followed by several others. The soldiers were stirred, and the fires of love and enthusiasm burnt up the smallness and prejudice. Their cup ran over when they saw a poor drunkard of their town changed by the power of God. Prejudice is a difficult thing to overcome. It starves the soul and withholds the blessing of God; but the fire of love can overcome it and enable one to triumph even over the ban of 'wrong clothes.' After commanding three corps, giving to the people of each town her best service, a sharp attack of pneumonia carried Captain Lee away from corps work, and for a time it seemed that a constitutional bronchial weakness, now aggravated, would bring her regular public work to an early termination. A term in the Naval and Military Department at Headquarters in London introduced Kate to a new sphere of Army service. Hitherto, her vision of the Salvation battlefield had been limited to the particular corps at which she soldiered or commanded, but contact with men who went to the ends of the earth and found The Army at almost every port, blessing them in soul and body, lifted her horizon until it became world-wide. Kate Lee began to realize the greatness of the organization to which she belonged. A breakdown in the Naval and Military Home at Chatham placed Captain Kate in charge of that institution, with full responsibility for the catering, house-keeping, and meetings, and the visitation of ships in the harbour. A sister Salvationist writes:-- When first I saw her at the Naval and Military Home, I was impressed by her innocence, youth, and fragile appearance. For such a girl to bear the responsibility of so large an institution, was a marvel in my eyes. With one or two other comrades I used to accompany her to the ships in the Medway, to sing to the men. When a good crowd had gathered on the deck, Captain Kate would speak to them and invite them to come to The Army Home when they were ashore. The Home was packed out. She conducted bright meetings, and many soldiers and sailors were converted. Despite her youth, the men looked to her as an elder sister; gave into her keeping their bank-books and money, and sought her advice in their difficulties. So greatly did the Home succeed during the captain's stay, that she had the pleasure of seeking for a site on which now stands the Home which does such excellent service in Chatham to-day. With health fully restored, the call of the field was insistent, and Captain Lee begged to be allowed to take a corps again. She was appointed to Whitstable, Kent, and for the next fourteen years she poured out her life as a ceaseless offering for the souls of the people in town and city, in various parts of the United Kingdom. V A CORPS COMMANDER A casual view of the work of a Salvation Army field officer might suggest that for such a position few qualities other than enthusiasm and some ability for public speaking are necessary. Such an idea is as wide of the mark as may be. A field officer of The Army has the honour to be chosen for service similar to that William Booth undertook when he first turned to the unchurched masses of the East End of London. To him is committed the spiritual responsibility for the town or part of the town in which he is stationed. He is there to preach in the streets to the people who will not go to places of worship, and by every lawful means to compel them to his hall for help at closer range. He is there to visit the sick, to seek out the drunkard, to visit the police court, to encourage, and lift, and lift again the weak and stumbling. He is there to answer letters from anxious parents, to hunt up straying sons and daughters, to rebuke sin; in outbreaks of infectious disease and catastrophies to administer comfort and help to the sorrowing and bereaved; to instruct the children; to shepherd and inspire the band of Salvationists already attached to his corps; to raise money for the furtherance of The Army work. Indeed, nothing which affects the well-being of the populace lies outside the sphere of the officer of The Salvation Army. All corps are not the same. There is the city corps, with its hundreds of soldiers; an efficient brass band and songster brigade, home league, young people's work, and various other departments. The business man finds that the hustle, the high rent, floating population and the keen competition of the city necessitates extraordinary care and daring to ensure success. The same applies to our officers in charge of city corps. There is the sea-side corps, with its thousands of visitors and 'trippers' whom The Army officer seeks to reach and bless. There is the suburban corps, with its settled residential population. There are corps in industrial centres with features peculiar to them; and the village corps, where long distances are covered by the officers in their efforts to reach the scattered population. Each corps presents to the field officer special problems as well as special opportunities. To be a field officer as near perfection as possible, was the ambition of Kate Lee's life. In this calling she believed she could best serve God and win souls from sin to righteousness. She began as a lieutenant, receiving twelve shillings per week and her furnished quarters, and when an adjutant at the height of her success, not only as a soul-winner, but as an organizer and manager of unusual ability, who in commercial or civil life could have commanded a large salary, she received a guinea (about $5.00 at normal exchange) a week and her quarters. [Footnote: These figures relate to the pre-war scale of allowances.] Kate Lee laid up her treasure in heaven. As a Corps-Commander, she saw service in every kind of corps. Beginning amongst the villages, with tiny hall and a handful of people to care for, by sheer merit, she rose to command the most important corps in the British Territory. She laid good foundation for a successful career. For the direction of field officers, The Army Founder wrote a book of Orders and Regulations known in The Army as "The F.O." It is a volume of some six hundred pages packed from cover to cover with matter as interesting as it is logical and practical. Every phase of the officer's life and service is therein dealt with. An officer might be located on Easter Island, separated from all oversight, and if he consulted his 'F.O.,' and commanded his corps according to its advice and directions, he would surely build The Salvation Army in miniature. So entirely had Kate Lee assimilated William Booth's spirit and adopted his methods in relation to her work, that she might well have been his own daughter. She lived the 'F.O.' in relation to her own soul, her lieutenant, her soldiers, every section of her corps; to the backsliders, to the great masses of the ungodly, to the civic authorities, to the churches, to her comrades and superior officers. And she succeeded wonderfully. Adjutant Lee set to work in a methodical, practical way. On taking charge of a corps, she first consulted "The Soldiers' Roll" in order to ascertain the size and condition of her charge as a fighting force; next she examined the cashbooks in order to find out her financial responsibilities. Lastly she took steps to gain an accurate idea of the condition of the town, morally and spiritually. Says the treasurer of one of her corps:-- Soon after she arrived here she gave me a list of questions, including, 'How many saloons in the town? How many houses of ill fame? How many places of worship? What proportion of people go to church? When she compared these figures with the population she was able to estimate the grip of evil on the town, and the efforts made by the people of God to combat it. She reckoned all the godless people of the town were her concern, and laid her plans accordingly. She called upon the police, the civic authorities, and the ministers, intimating that she was there for the good of the city, and asked to be allowed to co-operate with them. It was not long before the governing people realized that an uncommon force for righteousness had come among them. Says another of her local officers, 'Our city had never been so conscious of the presence of The Salvation Army as a regenerating force in its midst, as during her stay.' Her ministering spirit played like a flame upon every section of the corps until the whole organization pulsated with life. Every evening of the week the citadel was ablaze with light and humming with activity, the soldiers unwilling to stay away one night for fear of missing a good thing. In order to promote a spirit of prayer in a corps, the Adjutant's plan was to form a prayer league. She chose the most spiritual amongst her soldiers and adherents, and pledged them to spend a portion of each day in prayer for an outpouring of the Spirit of God upon the corps and town. These comrades became a great strength in the battles for souls which developed. At some of her corps a few of these comrades remained in a room praying during the whole of the service on Sunday night; and when the prayer meeting began, they quietly made their way to either side of the penitent-form; their earnest pleading for the unsaved having much to do with the victories gained. Others were formed into a "Fishing Brigade." [Footnote: Salvationists selected to speak personally with those likely to be brought to decision for Christ.] These were posted about the hall, and, at a given signal in the prayer meeting, moved amongst the unsaved and urged them to decision. Soldier-making was Adjutant Lee's object. A full penitent-form meant little to her unless the kneeling penitents became fighters for God. To this end she visited, and 'nursed' and trained and commanded--and with good results. But while she had a keen eye for the new recruit, she mourned and battled for the deserters. She had taken to her heart the Old General's counsel on this score, part of which reads:-- The Field Officer must watch against heart backsliding. When soldiers drop off from knee-drill; when they are not found in the ranks in bad weather; when they no longer remain to the prayer meetings; when they come only now and then to the week-night services; and when they cease to testify as frequently, heartily, and definitely as in former days, the F.O. should conclude there is something wrong; decay has commenced. He should deal with such at once, and give them no rest. No officer should refuse to seek the restoration of a backslider because of the disgrace he has brought upon the corps by his falling into old ways; old habits of drunkenness or uncleanness, fighting or thieving, or any other vulgar form of sin. The F.O. should consider the shame of the man himself, if he is permanently left to rot in the ditch of corruption, and the sorrows that burden the heart of His Master, for one for whom He has given His precious Blood. Heart backsliders or open backsliders were all the same to her--deserters to be followed down and brought back to loyal service. One tells that he had been away from the fight for six years. She heard of him by a casual remark one comrade made to another, got his address and surprised his home by a visit. 'After that,' says this comrade, 'she slipped into our house for a few minutes every day until she won us back to God and The Army. Sometimes she might not even sit down; just kneel a moment and pray with us. At other times she merely put her head round the door and smiled; said, "God bless you," and was gone. Her loving interest broke us down, and we hungered to get back into the fight.' Another comrade had fought so successful a fight that the devil thought it worth while to centre his heavy guns upon him; he was so smashed spiritually that he seemed past mending. But not to Kate Lee's faith. She prayed over him, believed for him, refused to give up his soul as lost until at length he again began to hope in God for deliverance. He was fully restored and became a devoted bandmaster. Some backsliders who withstood her pleadings in life were brought home by her death. 'The last time I saw her,' said an old man with broken voice, 'she held an open-air service in our street, came into my house, wept over me and prayed for me. I used to serve under her. When she died----.' He is fighting the good fight now as in his best days. The bandsmen of The Army are a remarkable body of men. They are all converted, many from lives of desperate sin. Others have grown up in The Army; almost all have learned what they know of music in the ranks. Twenty years ago, the latter remark might have been received with a smile. Not so to-day, for while the object of Salvation Army music is the same as when it was first admitted as an auxiliary in our efforts to attract the unsaved, it has passed from the crudeness of its beginnings to a high standard of excellence. The bands of The Salvation Army now rank amongst the best in the world, and are an appreciated institution in most towns and villages. The bandsmen, who find their own uniforms and receive neither fee nor reward for their services, devote much of their leisure to Salvation Army service. They carry the message of salvation by music and song into city streets and slums, into the lanes of the country; to hospitals and asylums, and, besides, lead the singing in The Army citadels. As might be expected amongst a body of clean-living, energetic men, there are occasions when matters of contention arise which require careful handling. More than once Kate Lee 'scented' trouble in her bands and resorted to a night of prayer, as a preparation for dealing with the problem. She would come from her little sanctuary, clothed with such meekness, tact, and strength that never once did she fail to stem the difficulty and to hold the men to the highest ideals of Salvationism. If a whole band were affected, she saw the men one by one before she met them together. At one corps where the inclination to worldly amusement threatened serious loss, the Adjutant held a meeting which lasted until midnight. Lovingly, faithfully, firmly, she reminded the men of the high purposes of The Salvation Army, the condition of the world in relation to God, the spiritual danger of mixing with the ungodly in their amusement. Quietly, the men viewed the matter in the light of eternity and made their choice. It was according to the Adjutant's standards. Not, as she was careful to explain, because they were hers as the commanding officer, but because they were standards of The Army, based upon the changeless principles of the Kingdom that is not of this world. She found, as many another servant of God has found, that, 'Strongly-formed purposes can be changed and men's hearts influenced by prayer alone, and that surrenders made and principles accepted at such a time make for the permanent change of character.' The wives of Salvation Army bandsmen make their sacrifices. Sunday is seldom a rest-day for Salvationists. Bandsmen are required to be present at six engagements, three out-door and three in. Their wives see to the children and the meals and send their husbands to their God-given labours. They were not forgotten by the Adjutant. She took a delight in preparing a pretty tea for them at her quarters, and inviting them to a little party all of their own. Serving them herself, she spent an evening of music and song amongst them, speaking words in appreciation and gratitude of their unselfish service, and making them feel that their part in the War was well worth while. There are few rich people in The Salvation Army. Soldiers and adherents are trained to give according to their ability towards the upkeep of their respective corps; but when the best that may be is done in this direction, there is, in most cases, a considerable deficit remaining which must be met by public contribution. As an example of the financial responsibilities which Kate Lee successfully discharged, the Brighton Congress Hall might be taken. Here the expenses for the year ran into some four thousand dollars. The Adjutant desired to give all her time to 'pulling sinners out of the fire.' But there was the rent; the upkeep of a great hall and her quarters, fire and lighting, printing, advertising, in addition to the modest allowance for herself and her two lieutenants. To cope with such problems, Kate Lee brought the qualities of prayer and plan. 'A model of method,' is how her treasurer here describes her. 'She ascertained the full extent of her liabilities, and probable income, and laid plans to meet the obligations with the least possible hindrance to spiritual effort.' She never allowed lack of money to hinder her in a forward movement. Going to the charge of another large corps, she had decided upon an immediate campaign for souls. But awaiting her was a debt of five hundred dollars! However, in her Welcome meeting, she committed herself to the spiritual campaign, and enlisted the soldiers' interest. The following morning she received a letter of welcome from her Divisional Commander, who incidentally informed her that the Division was financially in rather difficult circumstances, and that he was looking to her to assist him by reducing the debt on the corps as soon as possible. She was seized with the temptation, for a moment, to attack and dispose of the debt at once, but convinced that her first decision to be of God, she committed the money matter to Him, and began to organize the corps for a revival. The month's effort was to include house-to-house visitation, the 'bombardment' of saloons, and a Sunday Salvation campaign in a theatre. Her faith was tried; money was difficult to raise, and as she went forward with her plans for soul-winning her liabilities increased. 'The theatre will be a fizzle, and you will have a big deficit there,' discouraged the Tempter. But Kate would not be moved from her purpose. The special Sunday proved to be a day of victory. At night, two notorious characters knelt at the penitent-form in addition to a number of promising young people. The expenses were met, and the soldiers enthused. The following morning, as the Adjutant was seeing a visitor off at the railway station, a gentleman accosted her cheerfully, 'Adjutant, I have some encouraging news for you,' he said. 'A friend of mine was present at the theatre last night, and he was so impressed with what he saw and heard that he intends to give you two hundred and fifty dollars!' 'Oh, praise the Lord!' responded the Adjutant. When she met her soldiers with the news, and showed them how God was honouring faith and obedience, they united forthwith to wipe out the debt. In came promises of different amounts. Ten days later the debt had vanished and a glorious work of soul-saving went forward. Kate Lee's lieutenants have lively memories of her methods and enthusiasm in conducting the annual Self-Denial Appeals. Says one:-- The first "S.-D." I was with her, she said to me one morning, 'Now, dear, I must get this all planned out and see my target on paper before I meet the corps. I'm going upstairs, and I don't want to see anyone or be disturbed for anything.' Dinner time came, and I wondered what to do, and thought I had better take her dinner to her. When I appeared at her door with the tray, she laughed heartily with and at me, carried the tray down and we had dinner together. After the scheme was launched she kept in touch with the whole corps, encouraging and holding each up to his or her share in the effort, until it finished successfully. She had settled ideas about personal self-denial. Another of her lieutenants tells that, during one Self-Denial week, a friend, thinking that the officers might be depriving themselves of nourishing food, left a basket packed with fresh goodies on the doorstep. The Adjutant smiled, sold the goods and the basket, and put the money to the fund. The soldiers who fought under Kate Lee revere her memory. Volumes of tributes to their love and appreciation of her spirit, her ability and service, could be given. 'What I thought she was when she came to us, I was sure she was when she left.' A testimony from a village comrade all unconscious probably of its full significance! 'Like a specialist she was; always a queue of people waiting to see her after the meetings,' says one of her city hall-keepers. 'What did they want? Spiritual help, guidance, advice, about all manner of things; they knew her heart was big enough to take in all the troubles they could bring, and they never thought that her body might crack up.' Another recalls her love for the Colours, and her loyalty to the standards of her General. 'My, but she loved the Flag! Once the colour-sergeant was away, and it was suggested we should go to the open-air meeting without the Flag. "Oh, no! The General wouldn't like to see the march without the Flag," she said; so a sister carried it.' The following sidelights are contributed by a sister soldier of keen observation and sweet spirit. 'When the Adjutant died, I felt I had lost a dear and close relative, though as a matter of fact I had never caught much more than glimpses of her. My husband was one of her local officers and she frequently came to our home, but she did her business and went, never remaining even for a cup of tea unless it were poured out and she could take it without waiting. The most time I spent with her was once when she returned to conduct some special services here, and was billetted with us. 'She was too full of her mission to make friends for herself, but although so busy she did not rush. She never had too many irons in the fire to listen to a sorrow; and the few moments she could spare you knew were all your own.' This characteristic is laid away in scores of hearts like a sweet perfume which gives out fragrance every time it is stirred. "She took time, she always took time to listen," whispered one of her converts looking into my face with an adoring love in her eyes that was almost anguish. The story of her wonderful deliverance, more full of romance and tragedy than any novel, may not appear here for obvious reasons. Continuing this soldier says, 'She seemed to put the work of two lives into one. Such a brisk walk she had! People pulled themselves to attention and things began to move faster whenever she came on the scene. "This is quite a feminine little bit"--I never saw her look into a shop window! She had not time for even the innocent interests of most good women. 'She lived in the spirit of the command, "Be pitiful, be courteous." The graciousness of her spirit always reminded me of Christ. She did not seem to understand the meaning of sarcasm. 'Her health was very frail. Whilst stationed here, she was often fighting bronchitis, but she never spoke of herself. Never even said she was tired. There was not a trace of self-pity or self-love about her.' From many sources one hears of this continual fight with and triumph over physical weakness. A woman hall-keeper tells, 'One evening I caught her creeping like an old woman, through the dimly lighted hall, bent almost double with bronchitis. "Oh, Adjutant," I cried, "you're ill. You should go home to bed." When she knew I had seen her, she steadied herself to take breath, smiled sternly, then waved me off, and presently walked briskly into her converts' meeting.' A lieutenant tells, 'Sometimes in the morning she looked so ill and old, and I would beg of her to let me take her breakfast to bed. But she would laugh and say, "What's the good of giving way to feelings? I'll be all right when I warm up to work." Though ever a spartan to herself she was always tender in her treatment of others.' The following extracts from an article by the late Mrs. Colonel Ewens appeared in 'The Officer' under the title of 'My Ideal Field Officer.' It indicates the high esteem in which Adjutant Lee's Divisional Commanders held her:-- For some years now, a woman Officer who is still in the field, has been the living embodiment of my 'Ideal Field Officer.' I was conducting a Junior meeting at her corps when the bandmaster stepped into a side room for his instrument. I prepared to accompany him to the open-air meeting and casually remarked that the officers had gone on. 'You may trust our captain; I have never known her late,' was the rejoinder. Continuing he said:-- I have been in The Army for twenty years, but have never had such an eye-opener in all my experience. I tell you if ever I have felt ashamed of myself and my performances, it has been since this officer came. She's the right woman in the right place, there's no doubt about it. She can 'sit on' a fellow without crushing the life out of him. The whole band is changed. She's just got our chaps, the thirty of them; and she's as true and straight as a die. The beauty of her life and example beats all we have ever had. Makes you feel you must be good whether you will or not.' This was intensely interesting to me, coming as it did so spontaneously from a man not at all in the habit of praising his Officers. After our conversation, I began to study the character and work of that unobtrusive woman. I consider her success mainly attributable to her strict adherence to the godly principles which rule her life, and to the careful cultivation of certain useful qualifications which are within the reach of all. Three words sum them up, consecration, concentration, conservation. Every power of her being, every treasure of her heart, every hour of her time is at the service of God and humanity. My 'Ideal F.O.' is a God-possessed woman absorbed with a passion for soul-saving which nothing can quench. She has so schooled herself that she now possesses the ability to focus every power of mind, body, and soul on the object of the moment, whether it is saving a drunkard, clearing a debt, settling a dispute, or leading a meeting. There is complete abandonment but very little wreckage in her work. She conserves her energies in fitness, her soul in tenderness, her people in love, and the interests of The Army in loyalty. Consequently, her work wears well. The feature which impressed me most in my F.O. was her faith, her indomitable faith in God, faith for the very worst, faith in the midst of darkness, tireless, persistent, fruitful, wondrous in its effect upon others. She literally accepts no defeat. Her convictions are strong, her brain fertile, and when failure appears imminent, her tactics are changed and seeming defeat turned into victory. The shepherd spirit is characteristic of her. Watching and caring for souls seems part of her being. Hence visitation is a joy to her. The bright cheeriness of her manner, and her loving compassionate heart, ensure a welcome everywhere; and whilst she weeps over the wanderer, and spares no pains to win him back, she is inexorable where wrong is concerned. Sin must be confessed and forsaken. Wrong-doing must be righted, reparation must be made. More time and prayer are spent by this particular officer on personal dealing than on any other aspect of her work. No wrong thing is ever winked at, be it in the wealthiest or the poorest; in the heart, the habit, or the home. The fierce light of the Judgment is brought to bear so powerfully upon evil that the wrongdoer must either give in to God or give up his profession. Her soldiers and people regard their Officer with deep respect and affection. She is as accessible to the youngest child as to the eldest soldier, yet is over familiar with none. For her platform she studies much, often alas! far into the night, when she has sent her lieutenants to rest. She is not what is termed a brilliant speaker, but her matter is arresting, convincing, converting. To her lieutenants she is a charming companion, a wise leader. In her home she is a model of cleanliness and good management. The business side of a woman's work is often, I have heard, the weak point; but as a Commanding Officer my Ideal possesses a large capacity for business and relish for it, to which, as a lieutenant, she was a stranger. She shoulders financial burdens with a loyal courage, and carries them through successfully. Her writing table is the index to her brain, and bears the stamp of order upon it. You cannot surprise her with an outstanding liability. She has her hand on everything in a corps in a remarkably short time. The yearly expenditure is calculated, the ordinary resources discovered, special efforts estimated, the deficit boldly faced; then prayer, faith, and extraordinary effort are brought to bear upon meeting it. She runs all her financial efforts on the budget principle. On corps organization and oversight, she is equally systematic and comprehensive. You will find the individuality of my Ideal wherever you touch the corps; converts, backsliders, seniors, juniors, young people, home league, boys' band, swimming club, corps cadet, company guards, 'War Crys,' songsters. In fact, there is no activity in the corps over which she does not exert a personal influence and directorship, though far from desiring to do everything herself. Her lieutenants share her confidence, and work to the full. She never acts without the co-operation of her locals, where it is at all possible to secure it. She values their judgment, and fully appreciates their toil. She has a duty ready for the youngest soldier and convert, and an encouraging word of approval for all. Alert to avail herself of every possible means to improve her corps, amenable to reason, correct in her judgment, strong in discipline, humble as a child. In the estimation of her two Generals, Kate Lee won a chief place. It was an honour that she held dearer than any badge, that once when chosen to represent the Field Officers to The Founder, the aged white-haired Leader stooped and kissed her as a daughter before her comrades. Writes General Bramwell Booth:-- It was as a Corps Officer that she shone, excelled, and won her great victories. She showed us afresh, if we only have eyes to see, how great that position may be. Christ took hold of her whole being and transformed her. He was united in His Spirit with her strong, loving, dutiful soul. The meekness of Jesus was found in her, side by side with a Divine passion for the lost. She was at first one of the most unlikely people to take the place she ultimately took. Timid, retiring, having little confidence in herself, and quite unconscious of possessing any special gifts, she rose up, and did more actual work than is sometimes done by half a dozen of her sister-officers put together. The lost and the ruined and the broken-hearted, the vicious and desperate, and those who are ready to go down to the pit were her special delight. From town to town she went, consorting with them, hunting them up, weeping over them, praying for them, stretching out her hands to them; yes, and sometimes literally pulling them out of the fire. It is extraordinary how officers of this type are remembered in different towns by different aspects of their work and character. In one town it is one thing, in another town it is another. It was so with Kate Lee. In one place she is spoken of as the great befriender of the broken and outcast. In another as 'the one who helped us when we were starving.' In another as one of the few decent people who were ever seen during the midnight hours in the dark places. In another as making the open-air marches radiate light and music and Salvation. In another as being like a spiritual dredger, dragging the very gutters for lost souls. And yet in all she would never speak of what she had done if she could help it. She was one of those who could say with Paul, '_I laboured more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me_.' VI SPECIAL EFFORTS Certain enterprising business firms find it worth while to pay large salaries to servants whose sole duty it is to think out fresh ideas, the working of which will bring success to their house. Kate Lee's mind was consecrated to get out of it every idea possible for the success of her campaigns. She had no leisure to devote exclusively to planning, but morn, noon, and night, while about her other work, walking here, pedalling her bicycle there, her eyes were wide open and her mind alert as she devised methods by which she might attract the ungodly to listen to her message, which, if obeyed by all, would turn this earth into a Paradise. Nothing vexed her more than for the Lord's people to be content to make shift with poor tools and conditions in His service, while the devil's agents aim at getting the best to be had. Her patience was sorely tried when Salvationists thought their well-equipped hall too good for drunkards' raids, and none the less when soldiers considered any poor shop good enough for the Army hall. When she took charge of Hythe, the corps fought its battles in a miserable little barn known as 'The Tar-Tub,' located in a back lane. How could she hope to get crowds of people into that place? She simply would not suffer the indignity. There was land to be had, money in the place, and sympathy. A proper hall there must be! She secured the ground, and the season being summer, she hired a large tent and erected it on the vacant spot. Then she organized a campaign with features to attract not only the townspeople but summer visitors. Night after night the tent was crowded. Meanwhile, she stirred the town in raising funds for the erection of the hall, and before long the necessary proportion of money was in hand. The tent was replaced by building materials and Hythe turned out for the block-laying, an event which by this time had become of public interest. Farewell orders came before the citadel was opened, but Kate Lee was always ready to cheerfully drop a work she had set going and take up the next thing. At Ashford she was ashamed of the miscellaneous collection of band instruments. A special effort enabled her to leave there a band with a set of plated instruments. At Sunderland, hard by the hall, a tavern boasted a brilliant front light. The devil should not lure men to destruction with a brighter light than that by which she showed the way to Heaven! Soon, therefore, a competing light blazed before the citadel. The entrance to 'Norland Castle, The Army's hall at Shepherd's Bush, London, was a miserable affair. Two sets of narrow steps led to two doors. It was a considerable scheme to clear the whole front, erect a flight of solid concrete steps and replace the brick wall by an iron railing, but she saw it through. At this corps she installed a new lighting apparatus, at that laid linoleum in the aisles, at another curtains to reduce the size of the hall for week-night meetings. Always some improvement. She loved to build a new penitent-form, which ran the whole width of the platform--with suitable carpet in front of it from end to end--and above it, in gold letters, some such message as, 'At the Cross there's room.' She greatly rejoiced on the night that one such mercy-seat was thrown open, for a great sinner bedewed it with tears as he confessed his sins to God, and rose up, a new creature, to fight a good fight in that corps. But what was the good of a decent hall, clean, well lighted and warm, if the people remained outside? Get the people she must, and having got them once, she would make them want to come again. Go where you will, at the mention of her 'special efforts' there is a visible stirring amongst her erstwhile soldiers. It is amusing to watch different types of people as they prepare to describe her demonstrations. A villager shakes his head, looks solemn, clears his throat, and begins, 'Never seed the like of her and her ways!' The eyes of keen business men contract and smile; then they remark, half apologetically for their enthusiasm, 'Really, they were wonderful affairs. The Adjutant was quite a marvel in the conception of a big thing and the ability to carry it out.' As for the general rank and file, they bubble and burst with joyful acclamation at the recollection of red letter days in Salvation festivity. The Adjutant turned to account every holy day and holiday. She laid herself out to make Christmas a joy-day for the lonely and poor. At Norland Castle, for instance, she provided dinner for some two hundred old people of the district. The afternoon was devoted to a children's party, the old people being allowed to remain as delighted spectators of the children's games and fun. For the night meeting the platform was decorated, the lights lowered, and a living representation showed the shepherds feeding their flocks at Bethlehem, and the angel choir proclaiming 'Peace on earth and goodwill to men.' By song, music, recitation, and appeal, the Adjutant made the Christmas message ring clear, and she closed the day pointing souls made tender by human loving-kindness, to the Prince of Peace. Harvest Festival was, perhaps, her chief demonstration of the year. She used this occasion to impress The Army upon the whole town. The largest hall available was taken--such as at Coventry, the Drill Hall holding five thousand people. A long report from the local paper describes the appearance of this building converted into a rural scene. There was a farmhouse large enough for habitation, a windmill in motion, and a realistic farmyard containing sheep, pigs, rabbits, ducks, and fowls. A sower sowed the seed; there was standing corn. This was reaped, and the grain thrashed, ground, and baked on the spot. All manner of farm implements were on view, and great collections of fruit, vegetables, and flowers. Spectacular processions considerably helped these demonstrations. One night, the corps turned out representing a great harvest home with a wagon of hay, and the soldiers attired as farm labourers, carrying forks, rakes, and sickles, Chinese lanterns on sticks, and transparent signs. Another night the Adjutant had as many as seven lorries carrying representations of different phases of Army work. Wherever these harvest festivals were held, the town was stirred; and thousands of people attended the meetings. They were convinced of the possibility of joy in religion, and also, they were brought face to face with eternal truths. They saw the way of Salvation in object lesson; the Bread of Life contrasted with the husks of the world; listened to an interpretation of the Parable of the Sower; were reminded that 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap'; in the story of Ruth recognized the wisdom of choosing Christ rather than the world, and also the beauty of unselfish service. Many were brought to consider the work of the reaper, Death, and to seek Salvation. Such a demonstration entailed, as might be expected, an enormous amount of work, but the Adjutant's skill in enlisting co-workers and enthusing them with her own desire, succeeded in making them toil till midnight with delight. A master carpenter recalls, 'Before the festival she had me there, working every night for a week'; a master baker, that he carted flour and utensils to the hall, where his staff, in full bake-house regalia, made bread and baked it on the spot. The Adjutant delighted to bring The Army's missionary work before the people. At several corps she converted her hall into an Indian village, the soldiers into Oriental villagers and invited missionary officers to explain our work amongst the peoples of the East. One of her city treasurers recalls the cleverness by which she engineered her plans, and got all that was needed for such a demonstration. 'Passing the shop of a taxidermist, the Adjutant noticed a fine stuffed tiger in the window. Turning into the shop, she asked to see the owner, and told him what was in her mind. Could he advise her? He was interested, very. He had several Indian jungle animals, which he would gladly lend. And he knew people who had fine Indian sceneries; he would speak to them and to others who had Indian costumes. 'The plan materialized surprisingly. She had the village, with the inevitable well; the women, with their water-pots, and the children playing about. The jungle adjoining was eerie with wild animals. There were tea-gardens with palms, an exhibition of Indian wares, and the soldiers of the corps moved about as Indian villagers. 'It was a most extraordinary affair. The campaign was well announced, and for three days the hall was packed. The missionary officers spoke, and our work in the East became a wonderful thing not only in the eyes of our own people, young and old, but of the outsiders as well. Fresh people heard the message of Salvation, and the heavy corps debt was cleared.' For Bank Holidays the Adjutant provided counter attractions for her lively young people and converts, that they might feel no temptation towards the pleasures of the world, arranging a pleasant corps gathering in the afternoon and a tea at night. Sharing the old General's belief that it is right to consecrate the gifts of sinners to the service of Christ's Kingdom, she roped in strange helpers. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing she did in this way was connected with the erection of a band rotunda for a Bank Holiday 'go.' Inspired with the idea that barrels would serve the purpose, she hied her to the brewery and interviewed the manager. A few days later, there was the unusual sight of a brewer's dray drawing into the yard of the Salvation Army citadel and discharging a load of hogsheads. These were rolled into position, covered with red cloth, and on them, the bandsmen--many of them delivered from the curse of the beer--mounted and played music for the deliverance of others. But Kate Lee never bowed to the world in order to receive its favours. The brewer knew full well that this gentle woman was an avowed enemy of his trade; but she was not his enemy, for she cared for his soul as for those of all sinners. Adjutant Lee never allowed efforts that might be called secular to interfere with the spiritual work of her corps. To her they were as spiritual as any other effort. We are told of her calling her chief local officers together on one occasion to discuss some special corps liability. 'She told us of her intention to run an Indian Exhibition, laid the plans before us, and then prayed. That census meeting was turned into one of the most powerful prayer meetings I can remember. The lieutenant told me afterwards that the Adjutant had spent the previous night in prayer about this effort.' At another corps she borrowed several firemen's helmets to be used in the Sunday's meetings, presumably to draw attention to sin as a fire, a destroyer. She impressed upon the brothers who were to wear the helmets, that unless the effort were made earnestly, it would be a farce. The men so entered into her spirit that they remained at the hall after the afternoon meeting in fasting and prayer, so that the message might go forth at night with power. At Coventry she was faced with an unusual difficulty. The hall was altogether too small to receive the crowds that swept down with the band from the Sunday night open-air service. For people to wish to attend an Army meeting and to be turned away was unthinkable to Kate Lee. She must secure a larger hall. But how? In Coventry every theatre and picture-palace was in full swing Sundays as well as week-days. The only hall available for the winter months was the Public Baths, and this was required for many purposes. 'The committee can't let you have it,' she was told. 'Well, God can, and I will pray,' she replied. The treasurer remembers how she spent the time in prayer while the committee met to discuss The Army's request. To the surprise of many, the Baths were leased to The Army for Sunday evenings during the winter. The experiment proved a success as far as reaching the people went, but the expenses were heavy. All but two days of the last three months had expired, and the Adjutant had not got the money in hand to meet the rent bill. She had often lifted her heart to God about the matter, but as the days for settling the account drew near, she gave herself up to definite prayer. The lieutenant tells us that while actually on her knees, praying, a letter containing a note for ten pounds (fifty dollars) was pushed through the letter-box. At many a corps the Adjutant conducted midnight raids for drunkards with great success. Amongst her papers was found the description, which she had prepared at The General's request, of one of these raids, but wished it to be published anonymously. 'I am afraid it is a mistake to have a midnight raid here,' nervously suggested a soldier of a popular corps of ----, a sunny seaside resort, that was patronized by a good class of visitor, and a 'better class' congregation attended The Army hall. The Adjutant believed in the doctrine of her beloved Founder, and had said to her soldiers, 'We must go for souls, and go for the worst;' but the idea of filling the beautiful hall with drunken scallywags horrified not a few of the respectable Salvationists. Nevertheless, the need was pleaded, the interest of the band enlisted; a notorious character, saved from a life of sin, was coming from another corps to give his story; a startling bill inviting all to come, drunk or sober; a livener provided free, was well distributed by a band of scouts who had caught the spirit of the effort. Drunkards were visited and invited to the meeting. The band was ready to start, and the Captain prayed God's help as they went out to seek the lost. Even in that fashionable resort were to be found haunts of sin and misery. Slumdom was stirred that midnight as the cheery music peeled forth; the boozer laid down his glass and rushed to the door of the saloon to see what could be happening at such an hour. As he rolled out on to the sidewalk, he found his arms entwined in that of one of the scouts who followed the march and mingled with the crowd. The soldiers forgot their fear, their souls stirred in the glory of a desperate attack upon sin, and even the bandsmen as they played their instruments, were observed arming sundry drunks along to the hall. What a motley crew was gathered in! One to thrill the heart of every true Salvationist; just the people that The Army exists to save. Five or six hundred men and women drawn from the saloon, brought under the influence of the Gospel, even for one hour, is an achievement not to be despised. What could one do with such a crowd in all stages of intoxication? some might query. Picture the scene. A livener, a cup of coffee and cake, is supplied. Music and song peal forth to drown drunken brawls. Presently there is a lull, the men are becoming sobered and are called to attention. A sister sings sweetly of mother and God. The name of an ex-drunkard is mentioned, and the crowd cheers as he stands forth to testify. He tells how drink cursed his life, and how God has changed him. A hush steals over the meeting as the Adjutant rises with God's Word in hand, and calls for reverence if only for seven minutes! A great giant of a man, standing up, waves his heavy first and declares, 'I'll fling out the first man that speaks; listen to the Captain!' How they listened! Now there is a move, a man is pushing his way through his mates; he throws himself at the penitent-form and crys, 'O God, make me like Bill!' He had looked upon his old mate; listened to his testimony, and realized the wonderful change, a living miracle! He did not understand; the meaning of conversion was as foreign to him as to a heathen, but he wanted that something to happen to him that had happened to his mate Bill. Not all of those twelve or fifteen drunkards who knelt at the penitent-form were really converted. Some found Christ. They were changed on the spot; they knelt down dazed with drink, and got up sober, praising God. The others merely took a step in the right direction. Some one has said that we are born with our backs to God, and our faces towards sin. Coming to the penitent-form, to some of those men, meant a turning of the back on the old life of sin and drink. They were too dazed with drink to understand more than, a longing after something better; but that longing was cherished; the man was followed to his home, watched over when the old craving came upon him, and taught how to seek and find God. In a little room at the hall, a crowd of converts met week by week. The A B C of Salvation was explained to them; again and again the weak and ignorant were taught to pray and seek until the light of God dawned upon the darkened mind. 'How we loved our Muvver's meetings,' exclaimed an ex-criminal to a listener, who smiled at the new kind of Mother's meetings. He valued the words of his spiritual mother, and this converts' meeting was to him the meeting of the week. Eagerly the soldiers looked forward to the next midnight raid. How rewarded they felt as they looked upon some of the converts won during the first raid, donned in cap or bonnet, leading their mates to God. 'Adjutant Lee must have worked you very hard,' I remarked to the old keeper of the Congress Hall, Brighton. 'The hall must have been very dirty after a drunkards' raid, and when it did not finish till one o'clock, how did you get ready for Sunday's meetings?' The sweet spirited old man smiled and replied, 'The hall did get dirty, and it did take some time to sweep up the sawdust and make things fresh for knee-drill, but I just went on till it was finished. Yes, I got tired. But no, I never grudged the work, thank God. I was _glad_ to help the Adjutant, bless her! in my little way. To keep the hall in order, and to go on the door humouring the rowdy ones, not keeping anyone out, that was my work for the Adjutant, and I rejoiced to do it. And she was very thoughtful. When, after big demonstrations, the hall wanted extra cleaning, she would organize a scrubbing brigade of about twenty brothers and sisters, who would bring their own buckets and brushes, and she led them herself.' Not content with directing extraordinary campaigns, there were special personal efforts which Kate Lee made to get in touch with the people. One of these was Saturday night visitation of the saloons. After the meeting--with her lieutenant or, at corps where there were suitable helpers, having sent the lieutenant home to get to bed early in preparation for the heavy strain of Sunday--until closing hours, she sought the souls of the drunkards. A white-haired veteran soldier, himself a liberated drink-slave, tells of the Adjutant's saloon visitation:-- I knew the run of these places from sad experience, and asked her, the first time we set out, 'Where shall we go, Adjutant: to the respectable, or the rough?' 'The rough,' she replied. She would sing to the men, then kneel on those dirty floors and pray for the poor drunkards, and she would put in a word too, for the owner and his wife, asking the Lord to help them to find a better job. She could get in almost anywhere the first time round; after that she generally had to keep to the bar. The owners recognized in her a power against the trade. Sometimes men would be rude to her, but she smiled on as though she had not heard a rough remark. We would go from place to place till half-past twelve. When the houses were emptying the men were quarrelsome, and we encountered many a fight. She had no fear at all; would go right into a fight and stop it. After that midnight work, she would be at knee-drill next morning and often passed me a little note giving the name and address of some drunkard she had got in conversation with and wanted me to follow up. The old man's eyes smiled, and he looked far away with an expression of wonder and reverence which I have noticed in many a faithful armour-bearer of Kate Lee, as they recalled her fight. Colonel Stanley Ewens, at one time Kate Lee's Divisional Commander, felt that this Saturday night work was too taxing for her frail body, and suggested that she entrust it to others. The Colonel says:-- I found that I had touched a vital spot. The Adjutant replied, 'You must please allow me to continue this work; some of my best trophies have been won for God as a result of my Saturday night visitations. It gives me an opportunity of getting to know the very worst sinners and following them up in their homes.' This was better understood when the following incident was told me concerning a convert in this very town. A desperate character was met by the Adjutant every Saturday night in the same bar. She offered 'The War Cry' as a means to get into conversation with him, and finding out where he lived, asked permission to visit him. One morning at 5:30, whilst washing himself in preparation for his work, he heard some one knocking at the door. It was the Adjutant and her lieutenant who had called to see him and his wife. 'Come in, sisters,' the man said as he opened the door. It was a wretched home. The officers sat on boxes. The drunkard's wife asked in a friendly way if they would have a cup of tea, and replying in the affirmative, were served with strong tea, in galley-pots. It was only a short visit, but it left its mark for eternity. This man and his wife were induced to attend the meetings and led to the Saviour. One means to attract crowds to her halls, which she had used with success at many corps, was to dress in rags, and march at the head of the band. Amongst her people this recollection is spoken of with a kind of awe. 'To think that that lovely, pure woman should soil her face, pull her hair about, put on dirty torn clothes, broken boots, and make herself appear a sister of shame! She asked me to keep her company; and, really, I did not like to walk down the street with her,' says a sister local officer of one corps. Arriving at the hall the Adjutant would lead the meeting, still in her ignominious garb, and preach about sin; how it blighted and defiled the lives of millions of men and women; how it made life here wretched, and would land the soul in hell hereafter; then she would tell of the remedy, the glorious Salvation of Jesus. An officer writes that she was a little girl of eleven when the Adjutant dressed in rags at her corps. The effect upon her mind was to make her hate sin with such a horror, that right then and there she determined to give her life to seek sinners. But some of the Adjutant's soldiers could not see past the shame of their beautiful officer, thus making a spectacle of herself. 'It made me cry to look at her,' said one sergeant-major. 'It fair upset me; I told her never to do that again; I could not abear to see it,' confessed another. The Adjutant carried out her part with apparently unconscious calm, and it never occurred to these worthies that their officer thus made herself of 'no reputation' at great personal cost. The Brighton Congress Hall holds three thousand people. How to break in upon that city, catch the eye of the crowds, and fill her great building, caused the Adjutant much concern. She tried many means with only partial success. 'I feel I should dress in rags again, and I simply cannot do it,' she confided to her lieutenant. For several days she seemed absorbed and oppressed; then she betook herself to the little attic and shut herself away with God. On the evening of the second day she came down calm and triumphant, and the announcement was made that on the following Sunday she would dress in rags. Sunday evening arrived and as she passed down the street to the open-air stand, people stared and gave her a wide berth. But the crowds were captured, and a full penitent-form was the result; no one but her lieutenant had any idea of the abnegation her service had cost. Did Kate Lee never wish to escape from this endless strain upon body and soul? This constant spinning from out of her own heart and mind a web of love in which to capture wandering souls? I cannot find one person to whom she ever gave such an indication. She cast her burden upon the Lord; she drew her strength from hidden streams; she gloried in having a life to offer to the Holy War. We are indebted to Ensign Cutts, her last lieutenant, for a glimpse of Kate when the doctor ordered her off the battlefield to an operating theatre:-- A telegram announced her immediate return to her corps to say farewell. I met her at the station; such a pained, disappointed face greeted me, "O Leff, I feel this is the end of my Field days," she exclaimed. 'But she threw off her sorrow, took farewell of her people, like the leader she was, and together we went to London. That night she spent in prayer, and in the morning she was calm and her face bright. "I have really got the victory," she told me. "His will be done. If He allows me to return to the fight, that will be glorious. If not, His will is best." VII THE MOTHERING HEART One of the joys of Kate Lee's later years was to have with her, from time to time, her little namesake niece. Sometimes in the midst of a great campaign the hunger of heart to have a child in the house overcame her, and she would prevail upon her brother and his wife to allow Katie to come to her. The fair, timid child had much of her own appearance and disposition, and the Adjutant yearned to train her to take her place in the War. Here and there we get glimpses of her mothering love for the little one. A comrade officer tells that once boarding a boat travelling north, she found Adjutant Lee and her little niece were passengers by the same boat; but Kate, having arrived late, had no berth. All berths had been taken but one, which meant that the child had a bed, but her aunt had not. Immediately the officer placed her berth at the Adjutant's disposal, saying she preferred to sleep on deck. Kate was distressed, she would not accept favours for herself, but for the sake of the timid little one to whom a sea journey was a new experience, she was grateful for her comrade's thoughtfulness. 'I am sure,' says her comrade,' that I slept better than she did. She came up at midnight to see if I were comfortable, and at dawn I was awakened by a gentle face bending over me and the words, "Have you taken _no_ hurt by sleeping here? I am so distressed to have taken your bed." The Adjutant's appreciation of any service rendered her was so sincere that it more than compensated for any inconvenience incurred in serving her. We were only a few hours on the boat, but the Adjutant's gracious spirit and pure, refined face made many of the passengers inquire, "Who is that beautiful woman?"' A little maid, whom the Adjutant engaged to help her in the house at one corps, tells how she trained her to care for little Katie. She was intensely anxious concerning the little one's health, and careful that the maid should speak gently and correctly, that she might be safely imitated. For the sake of the lost, Kate Lee voluntarily laid aside her own hopes of marriage and motherhood. Detached and in a sense lofty in her walk amongst her comrades, still there were those who had coveted her as a continual comrade in the war, and had made their plea. Once she almost yielded, but pity for the unsaved prevailed over the most human inclinations of a woman's heart. She was not sure that she would be as free to seek and win souls if she married. Her lover waited in hope for years, but Kate Lee became increasingly certain that it was God's will for her to remain as she was. This matter once settled, she felt in a very sacred way, Chosen for His holy pleasure, Sealed to be His special treasure. It was indeed a rash individual who trespassed upon the privacy of that consecration, and dared to rally the Adjutant on the subject of marriage. Upon such a one she turned eyes in which there was neither anger nor amusement, but which regarded the trespasser in silence until he felt like a clumsy boy, who, unaware, had stumbled into the presence of a queen. Then, to relieve his embarrassment, in perfect sweetness the Adjutant changed the subject. The fountain of love and tenderness that might have blessed husband and children, was not sealed, else it had turned bitter. It flowed without restraint and increased as it flowed, until it became a river, carrying life and refreshment to thousands. 'Aye, she was more to me than my own mother.' said a North-Country woman, who, in the rush of industrial life, had missed a certain tender touch until she met Adjutant Lee. 'Never nobody mothered me like her,' declared a grey-headed man saved from great depths, whose tottering steps she taught to walk the way to Heaven steadily. It is the lower type of mother-love that limits itself in affection and care for her own offspring alone; true mother-love takes to its heart all young and weak and wayward creatures. In this Kate Lee showed the true spirit of motherhood. Her own converts she nursed tenderly and guarded with unremitting care; but none the less the converts, the weak souls, and the young people she found at any corps upon taking charge. A prominent local officer tells with gratitude how she helped him in the days of his spiritual infancy. His conversation illustrates, incidentally, the wonderful influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart, independent of any human agency except prayer. William Bailey, unutterably wretched in mind, dark and sinful in soul, stood on the curb of a London street, and longed for some power that would change him and make him decent and happy. At the same moment The Army march swept past and the thought stole into his mind, 'If a man joins The Salvation Army, he becomes clean in mind, and talk, and action.' He went to his bachelor rooms, knelt down, and prayed to be made like a Salvationist. He felt changed on the spot. The craving for strong drink and desire to gamble or swear was clean swept out of him. The following night he went to The Army Hall. Adjutant Lee was being welcomed as commanding officer. During the prayer meeting she went down amongst the congregation and spoke to this man. 'Are you saved, my friend?' she asked. 'I believe I am, but I want to join The Army,' he replied. He was totally ignorant regarding religion, and this gentle woman adopted this newborn soul, and from that night nursed him to spiritual manhood. Bailey was a reservist--and a few weeks after his conversion his pay was due. Pay-day had always meant a spree, and Bailey was afraid. 'What shall I do, Adjutant?' he asked. 'Go to the office in an Army cap and jersey,' she replied. Obediently he went to headquarters on Saturday and brought home these articles of uniform. He put them on, and many a strong man will understand the cold shivers that Bailey felt when he got into the street. He wanted to go to the "open-air" by back ways, but that would not please the Adjutant. Manfully he started down the main street, and presently came face to face with an old service comrade, hilariously the worse for drink. The sight of Bill Bailey in the uniform of another Army was too much for the merry 'drunk.' He made straight for his old mate, embraced him, exchanged hats, and arm in arm they marched to the open-air meeting. Taking in the situation at a glance, the Adjutant beamingly greeted the queer couple. 'Here's my friend, Bill Bailey. He will give his testimony in his new jersey,' she announced; and Bailey was committed to his first open-air witness for Christ. On Monday, with his uniform as his safeguard, he drew his pay, and not one of his mates suggested a drink. The Adjutant next suggested that Bailey did not wear _proper_ uniform. Tan boots and light trousers didn't _really_ go with the red shirt. Of course not. Bailey would be a real soldier; he ordered a regulation Army suit. The convert went steadily forward. He married an Army sister, and has a happy home. He has filled the position of young people's worker, bandsman, assistant sergeant-major, and is now assistant treasurer. 'It's through her I am what I am. Ignorant, rough man I was, with the merest flicker of spiritual life; but she cared for my soul, and was so patiently loving that she led me to know God.' Bailey was afflicted with a stammer when he was converted. Of this, he says, 'She talked to me so calm and quiet. "Go slow, now," she'd say, "Count." She would insist upon my giving my testimony, and if she saw I was going to be fairly stuck, she'd shout. "Glory! Hallelujah!" and beam on me with that lovely smile of hers; and by that time I'd got my next word.' The first baby words were not sweeter to mother ears than the first testimony of Adjutant Lee's converts to her. One drunkard, so great a terror to his town that even the magistrate confessed that he used to cross the street rather than meet him, had been wonderfully delivered from sin. When called upon to give his first testimony, he said, 'I fank God He's kept me this day wifout drink. I fank God He's kept me this day wifout smoking. I fank God He's kept me this day wifout swearing overmuch.' Marvellous change! The Adjutant beamed upon him, rejoiced over him, and the following night had further cause for gladness, when he declared, 'I fank God He's kept me from swearing altogever.' A woman soldier's face quivers with emotion yet smiles as she tells:-- I was rather a problem when Adjutant Lee came to our corps. Mother died when I was fourteen, and I was left to bring up four brothers. You may be sure I had to hold my own with them, and I became obstinate and had a flippant manner which covered many a better feeling. I was a great trial to the lieutenant, who had no patience with my nonsense, but the Adjutant was never cross with me. One night, after a meeting, she took my arm and led me off for a walk. We walked miles. She talked to me about my flippant ways and sharp tongue. Said I did things that were not worthy of me; told me that I should be my real self, and not put on foolish airs. I stood that, though feeling bad; but then she cried, and said I would break her heart if I did not change. Here was the mother-touch the starved, warped spirit was needing. After that, the graces of gentleness and sweetness began to appear. There was nothing that concerned her people's well-being that Kate Lee regarded as outside of her province. A certain sergeant-major, who had reached middle life and was still single, was reported to have become engaged to be married, and not to a Salvationist. This man was a wonderful trophy of grace. One of a family of fourteen, all drinking people, after he was converted it was six years before he was able to go to his home in his uniform. Often to escape the godless ways and contentions indoors, he had gone into the stable where he could pray in peace, and slept with his horses. But things were not so difficult now, and all the town respected the Army sergeant-major. The Adjutant knew that many a soul who has climbed with safety a rough up-hill path has slipped on a smooth dead level, and that many a man has fallen from grace through choosing a wrong wife. Somewhat anxiously she interviewed her local officer. 'You needn't be afeared for me, Adjutant. I prayed and waited until the right person came my way,' declared the sergeant-major. Then the Adjutant sought the bride-elect. Gentle probing discovered a true Christian, and after a heart-to-heart talk, the Adjutant left her with an enlarged vision of her responsibility regarding the soul of the husband-to-be. Mrs. Sergeant-Major of to-day, a wise little woman, with a heart of gold, tells how she summed everything up and felt it to be her duty, as now it is her joy, to share to the fullest extent her husband's work. Over young people of strong impulses and unformed judgments Kate Lee exerted a remarkable influence. A bandmaster tells of her patience and tact with his obstinate ways in days long gone by. She felt there was good under the headstrong nature, and never met his 'pig-headedness' with harsh dealing, but taxed herself to make a reasoned appeal to the best that was in him. It was the mother hand upon the lad, and its influence is with the man to-day. At one corps a gang of factory lads endeavoured to annoy the officers by hammering at the quarters' door and running away. The Adjutant sought them out, and one by one they were converted. They became energetic soldiers. At Brighton corps there were at that time about fifty young women in the Young People's Legion. They were an undisciplined, rather unlovely lot. In her work for them, the Adjutant had the co-operation of a godly comrade who was entirely of her leader's spirit. Her home became an unofficial receiving and training home for these girls when they fell on difficult ways. 'Could you possibly manage to do with her, poor child? No mother, no encouragement nor help! How can we expect her to do well till we get her fairly on her feet?' the Adjutant would plead. And the good woman would open her home again and again. Many a girl, having received such help is saved to-day, doing well in a situation, or happily married. Should one be having an unhappy time at home, the Adjutant visited her people. Sometimes she discovered hardness of heart and cruelty wrecking the young life; sometimes fault on both sides. Then she acted as mediator and healer of the breach. She taught the girls to make and mend their clothes; when ill, she got them to a hospital. Always she made them feel she loved them and believed for them to be good. Her work amongst these girls would not have been unworthy of a sole responsibility, but it was one of her least noticed efforts at that corps. Says a soldier saved from terrible sin:-- She was just like a mother. I would go and ask her advice when I had done anything wrong. She never scolded me, but would look serious and say, 'Well, you know you ought not to have done that.' And somehow, in a minute, I could see what I ought to have done, and would promise to try to do better. How could you help getting on when all the while she was smiling on you, giving you some work to do, and believing you to be good. Her mothering love for souls sharpened her really wonderful faculty for remembering faces. Years after she had left a corps, if she met a comrade or friend, her face would light with recognition, and she would greet the person by name. The pleasure this afforded is mentioned all over the country. Motherlike, she could not bear to feel that at night the door was shut upon any wandering child, and her sergeant-majors tell, 'No poor fellow who came to the penitent-form went without a bed. She kept bed tickets for emergencies. She might give away a good number to people who did not deserve help, but she would rather do that than fail one who did.' 'It's because of all she taught me, and the nice way she taught me, that I have been able to take such good places,' says a little maid, with quivering lips and shining eyes. One motherless girl followed her from corps to corps for years, taking a situation in the town where she was stationed so that she might catch her smile now and again, and hear a few words of mother love. Married women's eyes fill with tears as they recall her tenderness in sorrow and her wisdom in difficulties. How she took a poor little widow, distracted by sudden bereavement, and nursed and soothed her. How 'she stayed up all night with me when my sister died.' How 'she buried my mother and was so kind I can never forget her.' How 'she helped me to nurse sonny, when no one else dared come near.' Women old enough to be her mother felt the pleasure of childhood when the Adjutant, revisiting an old corps and finding them doing the same faithful work as during her term, would beam upon them and remark,' Still at it, you dears!' 'She got me the job I've been in this fourteen years,' says an ex-drunkard. 'I had worked my way along after I was saved; then I heard of a good job becoming vacant, and I asked her if she would mind saying a word for me. She was up and away before breakfast next morning, interviewed the manager, and got me the job. Like a mother she said, with her nice smile, "Now, don't you let me down!" And I haven't.' Kate Lee oozed motherliness-that love that is capable, wise, patient, tender-the love that never fails! One of the sweetest fruits in her spiritual children is that after she had left them they continued to perform the services she loved. One man, saved from nameless sins, slow to speech, and clouded in intellect, would spend his money on Testaments, and 'War Crys,' and walk miles to visit gipsy camps to read and pray with these wanderers, and other isolated people. He knew that 'mother,' as this middle-aged man always called the Adjutant, would be pleased. When Kate Lee received farewell orders from a corps, she suffered as a mother does in leaving her family. Her eyes hungered as they rested upon the men and women whom, with great travail of spirit, she had brought into the Kingdom of Grace. She had striven to teach them the ways of life, but they were not strong, and temptations were many. Laying hold of godly comrades of the corps, she would plead with them to continue to care for these children in the Lord, after she had left them. And her heart often wandered back. She knew that no voice sounded to them just as hers did. There were, perhaps, thirty or forty trophies of grace, who now and again received a letter of encouragement in her swift, legible handwriting. Just a few words fresh as the dew, bright as the sunshine, with her voice ringing in them, pointing these souls, uplifted from the depths, to God, and holding them up to the standards she had raised. When, during the war, the men of England were scattered over the world's battlefields, no mother suffered more anxiety for her sons than did Kate Lee for her sons in the Gospel. Separated, as many of them were, from Army meetings and helpful influences, and surrounded by sin and temptation, her letters came like angel messages. No one knows how many she kept in touch with, but from unlikely sources up and down the country, one hears, 'she was the only one who wrote to me.' For the 'Twice Born Men' she felt a special solicitude. To the 'Criminal' at the front in France, she wrote every week, sending him 'The War Cry,' and occasionally a parcel. An early one contained an Army jersey. 'Wear it, Joe, and always live up to it,' she had written. He wore it till it dropped to pieces, and then cut out the crest and brought it home. One can understand how her thoughtful love helped that trophy of grace, when, coming half-frozen out of the trenches, he refused the hot tea he craved for, because it contained rum. For the 'Copper Basher,' away at the Dardanelles, separated from every Salvation Army comrade, she prayed especially. She wrote him regularly. Once, motherlike, she inquired if there were anything he would like her to send him. Tommy is a contented soul; the only thing he could think of was a luminous watch. Kate Lee managed to send him one, and as in the darkness of night the shining figures spoke to Tommy, so Kate Lee's faith and love made the Saviour's face to shine for him in the darkest hour. She rejoiced exceedingly that not only did Tommy refuse to sin, but that he let his light shine before his buddies. In the evenings when they would be drinking, swearing, and singing wild songs, Tommy would bring out his Bible to read his portion before 'turning in.' Sometimes, small men jeered at the man, who, before conversion, they might well have feared; another time they would say, 'Old Tommy'll read to us to-night.' He would read aloud and pray, then 'turning in' would say, 'Good-night, chaps. Now Tommy'll go to sleep.' And he was left in peace. The Memorial Service of Kate Lee was being conducted at one of the great corps the Adjutant had commanded, and one of her trophies was called upon to give his testimony. The man stood upon the platform, from whence he had heard his spiritual mother invite him to Jesus. It all came back, his sinfulness and misery; her winsomeness; her wonderful faith; her patience; her rejoicing through all the years since his conversion. He could not speak. The man stood and wept; his tears the greatest tribute he could pay to the woman who had mothered his soul to God. When days are no more, and the things of this life are judged, one thinks to see a radiant spirit before the Throne of God, surrounded by a band of Blood-washed ones, and to hear Kate Lee say, with joy, to her Lord, 'The children whom Thou gavest me.' In nothing did her motherliness show itself more beautifully than in the patient love that refused to abandon the most hopeless objects of her efforts, even though they shamed her and caused her sore distress. The love of many a parent for a prodigal child is quenched when son or daughter brings shame upon the family. But Kate Lee's love was deeper and stronger than shame. One comrade tells of her, that finding one of her converts backslidden, and drinking in a public-house, she sat beside him while he drank of the cup of his destruction, then took him home. A lieutenant speaks of a criminal whose soul Kate Lee wrestled for; after giving good promise, he broke into sin again and got into jail. She went to meet him at the gates upon his discharge, and brought him home to breakfast. He gave her his prison loaf; and she kept that loaf of bread--that slight evidence of gratitude--for quite a long time. But--for our encouragement be it recorded--she did not always succeed in delivering the prey from the terrible. One notorious sinner, the terror of a certain city, she tried hard to win, but without success. Meeting him one day in the principal street, she took him into a restaurant and ordered dinner for two. The landlord called her aside, and inquired anxiously if she knew the character of her companion. 'Oh, yes,' she replied; 'one of my friends whom I am hoping to help.' Another time she met this man in the street, mad drunk. A sister-soldier was with her; Kate took the man's arms, piloted him to the sister's home; had a great pot of tea prepared, and made him drink cup after cup in quick succession. He wanted to fight, to smash the furniture; but she soothed him, and saved him from the lock-up. This man steadied considerably, but would not entirely renounce his sin. He still drinks; but when he meets Kate Lee's old friends, he speaks about that 'heavenly woman,' and declares he'll meet her in Heaven. Only one instance can I discover when the Adjutant gave expression to the least discouragement concerning weak, wobbling converts. This was when she remarked to a beloved comrade who helped her to wrestle for the most hopeless, 'Shall we ever get to an end of it? Oh, that the Lord would take them Home!' VIII A BREAK TO CANADA Army Officers verily believe in the aphorism that change of work is as good as a rest. When heavy campaigning at one corps had over-wearied Adjutant Lee, and it was suggested that she might conduct a party of emigrants to Canada, she hailed the opportunity with the joy of a child. To cross the ocean; to see something of the great Dominion; passing over thousands of miles of prairie, mountain, and river, and coming in touch with the throbbing cities of that great country, and all the while to be about her Master's business, was pure delight in prospect. Captain Winifred Leal, who was at that time engaged in the Emigration Department, and had to do with the party which was committed to Adjutant Lee's charge, furnishes some reminiscences of the impression which she made upon herself, and also upon the officers of the boat upon which the party sailed. She writes:-- At that time these parties were crossing the Atlantic weekly, and sometimes three times a week. In advance of each sailing, full particulars were mailed to The Salvation Army officers who were responsible for meeting the boat at the port of landing, and also to The Salvation Army officers at the various centres throughout the Dominion, at which individual settlers were to arrive for distribution in outlying districts. Thus, no responsibility with regard to placing the newcomers upon arrival rested with the conductor, whose work it was to be spiritual adviser and friend to each member and unifier of the party as a whole, during the voyage. Whilst crossing the bridge that spans the distance between the known and unknown, hearts are tender. The mind, too, takes stock of the failures, mistakes, and successes of the past; fresh resolutions are made. It is a time propitious for the re-birth of souls. The Angel Adjutant said she felt it to be so. Her party was an interesting one: wives and children joining husbands and fathers, who had set sail, with The Army's help, some months previously; single women and widows going to domestic service; parents whose married children in the Dominion offered them a home with them; and not the least interesting, a party of Scotch boys, aged from fourteen to seventeen. (These boys were orphans. In Edinburgh and Glasgow they had started to earn their living in the streets. Under The Army's wing they were now to be placed on Canadian farms.) It fell to me to introduce Adjutant Lee to the members of her party, and her sympathy went out to each one of them. The Adjutant was undoubtedly nervous of her powers, when embarking upon an enterprise so new as this, and she asked if I could not accompany the sailing from Glasgow to Liverpool. A period of about twenty-four hours, as near as I can remember, was involved in the interval of embarking at Glasgow and setting sail from Liverpool. This was arranged, and three vivid impressions of this remarkable woman, whom I had not met previously, remain with me. The first sitting of third-class passengers were seated around the table in the dining-room for their substantial meal, special tables having been allocated to the hundred or more members of the party under Salvation Army guidance. Adjutant Lee, who was standing by the tables, managed in a natural manner, and without any preliminary fuss to get the entire party on to their feet, singing, We thank Thee, Lord, for this our food, But more because of Jesus' blood; Let manna to our souls be given, The Bread of Life sent down from Heaven. Few, if any, of the party were Salvationists, but the singing was hearty, stewards and stewardesses looking on approvingly. During the evening the Adjutant appeared in her bonnet, with her concertina, on the third-class upper deck. She began to play an appealing Salvation Army song. Several hundred passengers gathered round and settled into a singsong. Before long this drifted most naturally--or rather, was ably piloted--into a pulsing meeting with the accompaniment of testimony, a solo from a young man, and an earnest, direct appeal to seek Salvation from the leader of ceremonies, who now seemed not so much completely at home as entirely oblivious of herself. Her eyes travelled searchingly from face to face, and all listened eagerly. Third and second-class accommodation being fully booked up, the steamship company found it most convenient to give the Adjutant a berth in the first class. When the bugle sounded at seven o'clock for dinner, we were in the midst of an argument. The Adjutant declared that she must go to dinner in her bonnet; she must at once show who and what she was. I replied that if she so chose, she could have breakfast, lunch, and tea, in her bonnet, but that it would be much better to appear at dinner inconspicuously bareheaded. My argument prevailed, though she declared she would be much more comfortable in the beloved bonnet. At the close of dinner the passengers at our table presented the Adjutant with their choice buttonholes, so that she was able at once to take a bouquet of roses and carnations to her third-class passengers. I left the ship next morning at Liverpool, feeling that it would have been interesting to have accompanied the Adjutant throughout the journey. About a year later I happened to cross on the _Hesperian_ in charge of a party. Many Salvation Army conductors had crossed and re-crossed in that vessel since the journey of Adjutant Lee, but from the ship's officials, chief stewards and stewardesses, one name was mentioned persistently to me. There were many inquiries as to when Adjutant Lee was likely to cross again. The effect of her influence upon the party actually under her care must have been very blessed. I was not privileged to see anything further of that. But amongst those who dwelt in the deep on that ship, it was apparent that her coming had left a streak of Salvation love and light. Landing at Quebec, the Adjutant proceeded to Winnipeg with her party. A private tourist car was provided, and the train journey occupied four days and nights, and carried the party through wonderful scenery. Delivering her charges, her work completed, the Adjutant gave herself up to a week or two of pure enjoyment. She was entertained at The Army Lodge for young women immigrants in Winnipeg, and from this base, visited all The Army institutions in the city. She was specially interested in the juvenile court attached to the detention home for young offenders, a government institution officered by The Salvation Army. The splendid Grace Maternity Hospital was another centre of Army work which delighted the English visitor. Over the border into the United States went Kate Lee, and in Chicago saw The Army at work in the self-same way as elsewhere. A Sunday evening visit to the prison court cells was a memorable experience. Standing where she and her companions could command several cells, they were able to speak to the prisoners who awaited trial next day. Some of the listeners were white, others coloured. Several of them in the private conversations which followed, expressed a desire for Salvation. One woman, whose curse had been drink, knelt with tears, and sought deliverance, as the Adjutant pointed her to God. Back in Canada, the Adjutant plunged into a programme of meetings and the visitation of Army institutions and the prisons. Her fame as a specialist in dealing with criminals gave her an entrance and a welcome to Canadian jails. She visited the Dovercourt Prison, and conducted a meeting with two hundred long-sentence prisoners. She told of men she had known to be delivered from desperate sin, when in penitence they cried to God; and at the conclusion twenty men raised their hands as an evidence of their desire, then and there to seek Salvation. The Governor of the short-sentence prisoners sent the Adjutant an invitation, and she held two meetings at the prison with the women and with the men the day she was leaving the city. Kate Lee was struck with the Canadian prison system, and the evident aim of the whole treatment to uplift those under detention, and give them a chance of better things. She longed that the free opportunity for Army officers to help the prisoners might be extended to her own country. A visit to Niagara was included in 'the time of her life,' as she described her overseas trip to her sister. Niagara, that mighty manifestation of natural force with its limitless possibilities in the service of man, when captured and controlled, impressed her deeply, for in her jottings book are found some vigorous notes on the harnessing of Niagara. Still, it was on the souls saved in the prisons that she dwelt as her special delight. IX IN THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE Kate Lee's local officers speak of her in relation to that particular section of the corps to which they were attached during her stay amongst them, and laugh as they recall how hard she worked them. The treasurers and secretaries tell of her cleverness in financial affairs. The sergeant-majors chuckle and still marvel over her capacity for work and getting others to work; the bandsmen are enthusiastic over her ability to manage them; the ward sergeants of her working of the ward system; the recruiting sergeants over her care for the converts; the publication sergeants over her interest in the papers and magazines; the young people's workers remember with gratitude her love for the coming Army. But there is one work which all local officers and also the soldiers unite in recalling with wonder and warm appreciation--her visitation. To get amongst the people in their homes, to share in their joys and sorrows, to understand something of their sins! This, Kate Lee believed was the key to their souls. Like the Apostles she visited 'from house to house.' To make this possible, with the many other claims of her commands, her life was subjected to stern discipline and governed by method. She rose at seven, breakfasted at eight; an hour was devoted to prayer and study, an hour to business, and by ten o'clock, she and her lieutenant left the house to visit. It would have been a mutual pleasure for the officers to have gone together, but as one lieutenant tells us, 'The Adjutant said, "We must sacrifice our feelings, dear, in order to cover more ground."' So both went separate ways, the lieutenant returning to the quarters at twelve o'clock to have dinner ready by one. After dinner, they set out again, visiting until six o'clock, and even then, visiting was not entirely ruled out. Whenever a call came or a need arose, Kate Lee responded and when wrestling for a soul she took no account of time. Lieut.-Colonel Thomas says:-- Some years ago I visited Adjutant Lee's corps to conduct a campaign. We had just finished the Saturday night's meeting when a little woman pushing a perambulator with two children in it, ran into the hall, asking for the Adjutant. Her husband was at home in delirium tremens, threatening terrible things. The Adjutant went back with her, soothed the poor madman, got him to bed, and sat with him until the early morning. Soon afterwards that man was soundly converted, and is to-day an Army bandsman, while the elder child who was wheeled in the perambulator, is a corps cadet. Stories abound of her early morning visits to pray with converts before they faced the world. To catch the factory hands at Reading she would be at their home by six o'clock. To earlier workers she has called as early as half-past five. A ship-owner in Sunderland had read of the Angel Adjutant, and afterwards attended her meetings. He was not impressed by her conversational powers nor her platform gifts, and often questioned in his mind where the secret of her influence upon desperate characters could be. One Monday morning, he had cause to go to his office early, and tells how he met Adjutant Lee in the street. 'Out so early, and on a Monday morning, Adjutant?' he remarked pleasantly. 'I would have thought you needed rest after your heavy Sunday.' The Adjutant smiled, and hesitated. The gentleman continued, 'May I ask why are you out so early?' She replied, 'Well, last night we had two remarkable cases seeking Salvation, and when ungodly men are broken up and come to the penitent-form, that is only the commencement of the work. I have been down to these men's homes to pray with them and see them safely into the works.' Says this friend, 'Then I understood the secret of her power. It was the same love that took Christ to the Cross to save sinners, working in this woman to the same end. I no longer wondered at her success.' Brigadier Southall, of Canada, relates an incident connected with a Sunday's meetings, which he conducted at one of the Adjutant's corps, which illustrates her midnight visitation. Having heard something of her work, I looked forward to the day with anticipation. We had good crowds, and there were a few seekers at night, but no thrilling incident occurred during the day. However, after Sunday night's meeting a young man who had come to the penitent-form, hesitated about leaving the hall. When Adjutant Lee spoke to him, he told her he was afraid to go to his home, from which he had been absent some time. He confessed to having robbed his parents on two previous occasions, and his father had told him never to come back again. The Adjutant determined to accompany him home. Arriving there she knocked, and in reply a voice from an upstairs window inquired her business. She explained that she had come upon an important matter, to which the reply came that as the family had retired, would she not indicate her business without bringing them downstairs? She replied that she must speak with them quietly. She kept the young fellow out of sight when the door was opened a few inches. By tactful moves, Kate Lee got into the hall, and told of the son's confession and his desire to live a new life. This produced a storm of protest. They could not trust him any more. The Adjutant pressed upon the mother the precious quality of forgiveness, and the necessity of exercising it if we would desire the love of God extended to us. She gained her way. At about two o'clock in the morning, the whole family professed to accept the mercy of God, and the erring boy was received again into the home. One of the Adjutant's special visitations was to the police station on Saturday night. Her friends the police were glad to see her, and willingly allowed her to interview the detained prisoners, with whom she prayed and left a copy of 'The War Cry,' for Sunday's reading. At least one soul was led to God by this means. 'When she got her sleep, I do not know,' says a faithful armour-bearer at one corps. From her various corps come stories of her sick visiting. Here, a child at the gates of death; there a bedridden old man, whose room she tidied and breakfast she prepared. Again, a drunken woman, whose body she nursed to health, while she brought her soul to the Great Physician. An outside friend tells that once entering a barber's shop he found the topic of conversation to be The Salvation Army, which was coming in for a drubbing. 'Wait a minute,' broke in a rough workman; 'You don't say a word against The Salvation Army while I'm about. This Adjutant Lee is a dear soul. We were in an awful hole at our place. Missis and the youngsters all ill at the same time, and this Adjutant heard about us; didn't know a thing of us except we were in need, and she came in and nursed them all well.' For her soldiers who were in health, spiritually and physically, the Adjutant had little time to spare; none for tea-drinking and social calls. She expected her soldiers to practise self-denial as she did. One soldier, feeling rather deprived on this account said, 'Must I go on the booze to get a little of your attention?' Searching her face carefully, the Adjutant replied, 'You are all right, my dear; you must spare me for those who need me.' She expected to be guided to souls who needed help, and was, as the following incident shows. Two local officers moved, with their family, from a distant corps to London where they had undertaken heavy business responsibilities. The wife was tired and anxious, and felt that now they had slipped out of a corps where they had seemed indispensable, it would be better for them to remain undiscovered. She had, in fact, decided to withdraw from the fight. When visiting, the Adjutant stumbled upon them, muddled and tired, as they sat amongst their packing cases. Her radiant face and gracious spirit soon drew out of the little woman the confession she had meant to hide. 'When I came in,' says the husband, 'there was the Adjutant sitting on one of the boxes chatting so happily, she had mother feeling she was needed as much as ever, and simply _must_ be in the fight. She came just at the right moment, and we have never looked back again; that is more than ten years ago.' The Adjutant, in order to get about quickly, used a bicycle. One of her local officers says, 'She almost lived on her wheel, and when she heard of the motor attachment she wrote and asked me to inquire about one for her so that she might go faster.' A comrade tells that when Kate Lee was stationed in the country, she went one day to see her, unexpectedly. 'I met her carrying a large basket, and on inquiry found that it contained the proverbial loaves and fishes, which she was taking to one of her converts who was out of work. She made sure that the family had their dinner, then started the husband off to sell the fish.' Amongst the sinners in those terrible places, where respectable people and officers of the law are unsafe, the Adjutant's figure and face were most familiar. When after her death, Kate Lee's photo appeared in 'The War Cry,' the call came from many of these haunts, 'Get me that Angel's picture, we want it down here.' She won some of her gems in those quarters. From one locality she persuaded three women to go to one of our Homes and none returned to their evil ways. Her visitation was often discouraging. A lieutenant tells that the Adjutant spent much time and effort upon a man and his wife who were very wicked and in wretched circumstances. They lived in apartments. The Adjutant visited them persistently, but they seemed to become more and more hardened in sin, and she did not have the joy of seeing them converted. She grieved much and was tempted to wonder whether the time spent had been wasted. One day she was asked to visit a man in the room next to that occupied by this couple. He told the Adjutant that he had looked forward to her visits next door, and always placed his ear near to the wall so as to hear her pray. Through her prayers he had sought and found salvation. Dr. Carse, of Sunderland, says:-- I met Kate Lee in all kinds of houses, and at all hours of the day and of the night, and she was always on the one mission--seeking souls. One morning, at half-past two, I was coming out of one of the worst slums in Sunderland, and met the Adjutant and her lieutenant. They were radiant. The Adjutant had gone to settle a family brawl; had reconciled husband and wife, got them converted, and broken their whisky bottles in the gutter. I met her also in the houses of the rich, and they would have kept her there, but she never stayed after she had finished her Master's business. But Kate did not attempt to encompass the fruitful work of visitation merely with her lieutenant's assistance; she organized a band of visitors at her corps, generally godly, married women, who were timid of public service. They met at the hall one or two afternoons each week, and went two and two to certain districts. The Adjutant and her lieutenant initiated these comrades into the way of getting into the homes of the people. At an appointed hour they returned to the hall and reported any special case of sickness or sorrow to the officers, who followed it up. This method was a great feeder to the corps meetings, and provided an outlet for the awakened spiritual energies of some Salvationists who hitherto had been soldiers in name only. She hungered for souls, she sought them everywhere. One morning, scanning the daily paper to see if there were some call for help in its pages, she noticed the case of a man awaiting trial for a serious offence. She remarked to her lieutenant, 'I must try to help that man.' Straightway she prayed, then wrote the governor of the jail asking permission to visit the prisoner. This was granted, but the Adjutant was not allowed to see him alone. She was conducted to a triple cage; a warder occupied one compartment; the prisoner another; Kate Lee the third. As she gazed at the man through the bars, to introduce herself to him, and so to establish friendly contact and to reach his soul, seemed impossible. She spoke to him for a considerable time and prayed, but the face before her was like a sphinx, and he did not answer a word. Kate Lee came away from the prison with a sad heart, feeling that she had accomplished nothing. At the trial, the man was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment. The Adjutant continued to pray for the convict, and at last, to her great joy, she received a letter from him. The prisoner told her that on returning to his cell, he had thought over all she had said to him; not only had conviction of sin come to his soul, but hope. He had asked God to forgive the past and to give him a new heart. God had answered his prayer. Good conduct shortened the criminal's sentence, and Kate Lee saw him discharged, placed him in the care of The Army, and after a term at the Land Colony at Hadleigh, in Essex, he was restored to his friends. Until the end of her life, this man corresponded with the Adjutant, whom he always addressed as 'Dear Mother.' If staying for a night at a house, the Adjutant endeavoured to leave some blessing behind her, and the Spirit of God, resting upon quite commonplace words and actions, made them beautiful and blessed to the receivers. One woman writes, 'She billeted with me when my husband and son were soldiering. It was such a cheer to have her presence in the home. She wrote in a book for me her name, and "Be true to the Flag." I treasure this very much.' In another and different kind of home where she was the guest for a night, the daughter of the house, a bright, talented girl, given up to worldliness, accompanied the Adjutant to her room to make sure that all her needs were supplied. They fell into conversation about spiritual matters and talked on till the small morning hours, then knelt in prayer, and the girl gave herself to God. 'She used to call to see us, but try as we would we could never persuade her to rest for even one hour in our home,' writes a girl from another home of comfort. With her voice trembling with love and emotion, a woman soldier told me the following incident:-- When the Adjutant was stationed here, I was living away from home at service, but coming back for a holiday, I found my father ill, and stayed to nurse him. One evening I had a feeling I should bring the Adjutant to him. He was a man who went to no place of worship and made no profession of religion. I went to the officers' quarters, and the lieutenant said that the Adjutant had gone out of town for a meeting; she did not know what time she would return. The feeling that I must get her that night grew on me, and I walked about the streets until I saw her coming home. It was nearly midnight, and I caught sight of her face in the light of a street lamp. She looked like a ghost, so tired and white, and I shouldn't have had the heart to ask her to start out again, but for the strong feeling that had come to me. 'Certainly I will come,' she said brightly. Well, she came and talked to father, told him the way of Salvation, prayed with him, and he prayed, and she left him at peace with God, and happy. An hour after she had gone, he became unconscious and never regained his senses. He died that morning. Just caught his soul in the nick of time, she did. That's the big thing about Adjutant Lee that stands out for mother and me, but I couldn't begin to tell you all the little things she did. _Aye, but she bothered about us, she did_. I never knew the like. The year that Kate Lee was born, the artist Dietrich gave to the world a picture, which, if not destined to become one of the immortals of religious art, has about it an irresistible charm for the ordinary eye. The Saviour stands with outstretched arms saying, 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.' About Him are gathered people representing almost every condition of need and woe. The charm lies not so much in the central figure as in the adoring love of the sorrowing and the sick for the One who loves them; little children cuddle about His robe in utter contentment; a weary mother with babe at her breast, has brought her sick daughter; husband has carried a crippled wife; a woman 'that was lost' bends at the Saviour's feet in an agony of repentance; an aged, blind man is led by his daughter; a maniac, whose tortured soul looks out of haggard eyes, frames a prayer with clasped hands. When in a remote city, I first saw a print of this picture, a line from James Russell Lowell--'His Throne is with the outcast and the weak'--seemed its best title. But as I look at it to-day, all the sorrowful, needy people who have spoken to me of Kate Lee, seem to gather around that picture and I seem to hear the words, 'Aye, but He bothered about us,' and there comes to my heart a realization of the triumph of Jesus in this servant of His, who grew to be so like her Master. Surely the world is heart-sick for such souls great in compassion, self-forgetful, and triumphant in faith as was Kate Lee. X 'THE ANGEL ADJUTANT' Kate Lee had been a Salvation Army Field Officer for fifteen years, when suddenly she became famous. In gathering material for the writing of 'Twice Born Men,' Harold Begbie had been no less impressed by the sweetness and wisdom of the woman who had won from sin to righteousness several of the notable characters with whom the book deals, than he was with the miracle of their conversion. Throughout the book we catch glimpses of Kate Lee-her loveliness of character, her guileless wisdom, and her strength of purpose-as Mr. Begbie saw her. Vividly describing Shepherd's Bush, the locality in which the Norland Castle corps operates, Mr. Begbie pictures the incessant, roaring traffic of the main roads, the ceaseless procession of humanity on the pavements, the exhibition of wealth and extravagance in the shops-almost frightening to those who know of the terrible destitution which exists only a stone's throw distant--the crowded street markets of the poor, the shabby residential streets, and continues:-- One turns out of the respectable streets where the children are playing cricket, cherry-bobs, hopscotch, hoops, and cards, and suddenly finds himself in streets miserable and evil beyond description. These are streets of once decent two-storied villas, now lodging-houses. The very atmosphere is different. One is conscious first of dejection, then of some hideous and abysmal degradation. It is not only the people who make this impression on one's mind, but the houses themselves. Dear God, the very houses seem accursed! The bricks are crusted, and in a dull fashion shiny with grime; the doors, window-frames, and railings are dark with dirt only disturbed by fresh accretions; the flights of steps leading up to the front doors, under their foul porches, are worn, broken, and greasy; the doors and windows in the reeking basements have been smashed up in nearly every case for firewood. Here and there a rod is missing from the iron railings--it has been twisted out and used as a weapon. In these streets on a summer evening you find the flight of steps occupied by the lodgers, and the pavements and road-ways swarming with their children. The men are thieves, begging-letter writers, pickpockets, bookmakers' touts, totters (rag and bone men), and trouncers (men paid by costermongers to shout their wares), and bullies. The women add to their common degradation--which may be imagined--the art of the pickpocket, the beggar, the shoplifter, and the bully.... If you could see these bareheaded women, with their hanging hair, their ferocious eyes, their brutal mouths; if you could see them there, half dressed, and that in a draggle-tailed slovenliness incomparably horrible; and if you could hear their appalling language loading their hoarse voices, and from their phrases receive into your mind some impression of their modes of thought, you would say that human nature in the earliest and most barbarous of its evolutionary changes had never, could never, have been like this. Concerning the men, one thing only need be said.... There was cunning in their faces, there was every expression of ... underhand craft, but they looked and lowered their eyes.... They seemed to me 'consciously wrong, inferior, and unhappy.' But more than by anything concerning the men and women of this neighbourhood, one is impressed by the swarm of dreggy children playing their poor little pavement games in the shadow of these lodging-houses. Some--can it be believed?--are decently clothed and look as if they are sometimes washed.... The mass of these children, above five or six years of age, are terribly neglected. I have never seen children more dirty, more foully clothed, more dejected looking.... I saw many children with sores and boils; I saw some children whose eyes looked out at me from a face that was nothing but a scab. A mortuary chapel has had to be built for this neighbourhood. The rooms of the houses are so crowded that directly a person dies the body must be moved. Mr. Begbie now introduces Kate Lee:-- Into these streets come day after day, and every Sunday, the little, vigorous corps of The Salvation Army, stationed in this quarter of London. The Adjutant of the corps some years ago was a beautiful and delicate girl. She prayed at the bedside of dying men and women in these lodging-houses. She taught children to pray. She went into public-houses and persuaded the violent blackguards of the town to come away; she pleaded with the most desperate women at street corners; she preached in the open streets on Sundays; she stood guard over the doors of men, mad for drink, and refused to let them out. On one occasion this little woman was walking home through evil streets after midnight, when a drunken man asked her if he might travel by her side. After going some way the man said, 'No, you aren't afraid,' and then he mumbled to himself, 'Never insults the likes of you, because you cares for the likes of us.' It is to the work of this wonderful woman--so gracious, so modest, and so sweet--that one may trace the miracles whose histories are contained in the following pages. The energy, resolution, and splendid cheerfulness of the present corps, some of them her own converts, may likewise be traced through her influence. She has left in these foul streets the fragrance of her personality, a fragrance of the lilies of a pure soul. 'Ah,' exclaims an old jail-bird, showing me the photograph of this woman, 'If anybody goes to Heaven, it will be that there little Angel of God.' They call her the 'Angel Adjutant.' We see the Angel Adjutant again in the book, visiting the 'Puncher' at his work; braving the abominations of 'O.B.D.'s' den, as she made friends with that sodden drink slave and his wife, piloting him to the hall and mothering the first signs of grace in his stupefied soul. We see her mothering the 'Criminal,' weeping over the fall of 'Rags and Bones,' endeavouring to hold the 'Failure' to his moral and spiritual obligations, and, despite his falls, refusing to give him up. 'That man, Mr. Begbie, is wonderful. He's got those men's very images on paper,' says one of Kate Lee's converts, referring to the 'Twice Born Men' characters. None the less truly did he get Kate Lee's photograph on paper, and sent it round the world for all to see, and for thinking people to admire, to wonder over, to praise and give thanks for. 'Twice Born Men' was a great success. Its first edition was immediately absorbed, while its present edition is the twenty-seventh, and its English circulation has reached over a quarter of a million copies. It has had, likewise, an enormous sale in the United States and Canada. It has been translated into French, German, and Swedish. Few books of its time appealed to so widely differing minds and classes. The professor of psychology, the theologian, the prize-fighter, Christian mother, the school-boy, in common interest bent their heads over its pages. The Press discussed it from many aspects in a chorus of favour. 'The Angel Adjutant' became an entity whom people all over the world desired to know. After she had been thus discovered to the world, wherever she went she was received with honour. Churches besieged her with invitations to occupy their pulpits. Civic authorities paid deference to this spiritual and moral specialist. How did the glare of the limelight affect Kate Lee? A comrade who knew more of her inner life than almost any other, lets in a sidelight upon her association with 'Twice Born Men.' Her experiences in connexion with the book were not entirely sweet. She felt the sting of jealousy, that hurtful thing which, while uncleansed human nature is what it is, will continue to inflict wounds upon those chosen for honour, but Kate Lee bore it with meekness and in silence. 'It is not easy to bear success,' she said on this subject. 'When I have been lifted up, it has meant a cross rather than a throne for me.' It is not easy for a noble soul to bear a representative honour, unless it is patent to all that it _is_ representative and not personal. No one realized more fully than Kate Lee that other women officers had worked and are working amongst the masses just as she worked, actuated by the same spirit as moved her, and achieving the same results as those in which she rejoiced. She would rather that another than herself had been thrown upon the world's screen to illustrate the work. A few weeks before she died, she spoke of this to her old friend, Brigadier Elizabeth Thomas, adding, 'Whenever "Twice Born Men" is mentioned, I want to run and hide my head.' But while she felt all this, her keen sense of true values withheld her from putting a trumpet to her lips and declaring it. Rather, with that Christlike modesty and dignity that characterized all her public service, she entered every door that publicity opened to her and gave her message. She occupied many important pulpits, filling great churches with interested and sympathetic congregations. As ever she was about her Father's business. Far from attracting attention to herself, she brushed aside preliminaries, and got directly to her subject. For the title of her lecture, she did not always choose 'The Terrible Ten' or 'Modern Miracles' or 'Twice Born Men'; sometimes she gave a plain Salvation address, or a simple call to professing Christians to live the life of Christ. One lady who heard her, tells how on one occasion she held a great congregation in the hollow of her hand. Tears had flowed; heads were shaking in depreciation or nodding approvingly, as she pictured the sorrows and the sins of the poor, and God's power to save them to the uttermost. Then she 'turned her guns' upon her hearers. How did _they_ stand before God in relation to sin? 'Society is often a cloak for sin that is terribly present in the heart. The law deals with sin that is _found out_: God deals with it as it is in the soul. You and I are each going to the bar of God to be judged _as we are_. How is it with your soul?' A strange silence came upon that select audience, as the people pondered straighter and more personal questions than they were accustomed to hear addressed to them. A lieutenant tells of a railroad incident, which reveals how truly Kate Lee loved to be unknown, and how she would screen herself from praise, when to accept it could serve no definite end. She says:-- We were returning from some Councils, and a clergyman got into our compartment. He was very friendly, and in conversation we found him enthusiastic over 'Twice Born Men.' He said how he would count it an honour to meet the 'Angel Adjutant,' and express to her his thanks for the help he had received by her example. I felt so proud of her, and wanted to tell the clergyman that the 'Angel Adjutant' was my Captain; but catching a warning glance from her, I had to keep quiet. A few hours after he heard of Kate Lee's death, Harold Begbie penned the following tribute to her memory:-- There seems to me something in the death of Kate Lee at this moment which has a mystical significance. The world has just received 'The Life of William Booth,' and is making up its mind what to think of him. His son, Bramwell, with a courage which is part of his religion, allowed the biographer of William Booth to write freely what he believed to be the truth, and the whole truth, of the great Founder of The Salvation Army. There in that book for all men to behold, in the very habit of his daily life, stands William Booth, revivalist, social reformer, colonizer, organizer, husband, father, and man. And now there ascends into the glory of God one of the most radiant spirits that ever blessed the darkest places of the earth with a light truly from Heaven, little Kate Lee, the Angel Adjutant of Notting Dale; the saint of the worst men that ever lived, the adored angel of souls once as foul and brutal and besotted with iniquity as ever corrupted human life, and but for William Booth she herself might have perished. I am one of those who cannot think of William Booth as a saint. His wonder for me, and his greatness, lies in the fact that he made saints; this turbulent and tremendous power, this unresting energy, he made saints; that is to say, he made the most beautiful and gentle thing that can exist in human life, the spirit that loves the worst; that descends with joy into the pit of pollution; that is happier there than in the abodes of the sanctified; that is wholly content to be unknown and unheard of; that can save the worst and transfigure the most hideous, and itself remain utterly unspotted by the world. I was far away in the dales of Yorkshire when I heard of Kate Lee's death. My first feeling was one of gladness, for I loved to know she was beyond the touch of pain. Then I fell into a fit of sorrow. _Why had I not made this miracle of William Booth more real in the biography?_ Is there anything in life so important, or anything at this moment of the world's history that calls so urgently for proclamation, as the miracle of conversion? Kate Lee seemed to be at my side. I saw the harassed statesmen of the nations attempting to piece together the broken pieces of this war-shattered world, and they seemed to me no greater figures than children playing with the parts of a world which they themselves had taken apart. And Kate Lee seemed to say, 'There is no hope for the world, no hope at all, but the changed heart. Until men love God, they will never love each other. And until they love each other there will be poverty and crime, revolutions and wars.' Her life goes on in the lives of others. She is immortal here upon earth. For ever and ever some men and women will be better because in her lifetime she made other people good who were bad, happy who were unhappy. But I would that her spirit could penetrate into the whole life of humanity. How modest she was, how unassuming, and how tranquil! She had seen the most evil depth of the human heart, and yet she believed, with a smile of unclouded gladness, that the human heart is of God. She loved the worst people in the world. She was tender and patient with the most stupid and dull. She never despaired of any soul that looked at her with eyes of hunger. The Pharisee might turn away with disgust, the judge might condemn, science might pronounce the case hopeless; she smiled and waited, waited at the prison door, waited in the pit of abomination, waited at the hard heart. And while she waited she prayed, quietly, and calmly; and while she prayed so great was the love of God in her heart, she smiled. There is no hope for the world until the love that was in Kate Lee is in us. Let every Salvationist assure himself with every day of life that his work lies only with the unhappy, the foul, the horrible, the repulsive. To this end came William Booth preaching in the slums and alleys of great cities, and on this mission of his went Kate Lee with a song in her heart and a smile on her lips. I never looked into human face so full of the love of God, so shining with love of humanity, as the face of this 'Angel Adjutant.' During the week of the announcement of Kate Lee's death, her name was upon the lips of millions of people. Newspapers throughout the country published her photograph and told of how she sought the lost. In the saloons around London the topic of conversation was the loveliness of the 'Angel Adjutant.' Almost wherever Salvationists appeared, people sympathized with them in the loss of so brave an officer as Kate Lee. Beyond the seas, illustrated journals carried the picture of her pure face and the story of her love and devotion to her Saviour and the sinful, and mothers gave thanks for her life and prayed that their daughters might have her spirit. Her casket was borne through streets lined with thousands of silent, reverent spectators and carried to the grave by men once deep-dyed in sin, now cleansed and ennobled by the Salvation she had proclaimed. To queens has less honour been shown than to this girl who was born in crowded Hornsey, who lived a life of toil and struggle, and died penniless. Why? Because the human heart, despite its crookedness and failings, recognizes that love is the greatest thing in the world, and pays tribute accordingly. XI COMRADES AND FRIENDS Perhaps no class of people voluntarily work harder or longer hours than Salvationists. When the ordinary worker quits toil for recreation, the Salvationist drops his tools to work at his religion, and for no reward in this life. But for all that, the Salvationist has his compensations. The most precious thing about The Army, he will tell you, is its comradeship. The uniform of the military means something of fellowship on service, nothing on leave; but the Salvationist is always on service, and the sign of cap, bonnet, or even the small Salvation Army brooch or tri-coloured ribbon, serves as an introduction, which includes a welcome, when Salvationists meet in any clime or country. The uniform stands for the acceptance of certain convictions, principles, and consecration to one purpose in life, which knows no barrier of nation, colour, nor class. Salvationists are comrades of a single purpose, the bringing of all men to knowledge of God. Mr. Harold Begbie describes this bond of comradeship which he found illustrated in a prayer meeting which he attended amongst Salvationists in India. He writes:-- Those Officers represented many nations. Among them were a Brahmin, a Singalese, Malayali, a Tamil, a German, a Norwegian, a Swede, an Australian, an Englishman, and a Scot. All were praying. The voices of those various nationalities rose into the air as a cry inspired by love for a sinful world, with a compassion and a longing, uttered for the need of a common humanity, and all those separate voices and different words rose in a perfect unity like the prayer of a single family under a father's roof. Constitutionally Kate Lee was not dependent; she did not know what it was to hunger for society; to pine for a 'yarn'; to ache with desire to discuss with a chum small talk of The Army. The passion of her life swept her beyond such things and the springs of her refreshment ran deep. Her business was to seek and to save that which was lost--to shepherd the sheep--and these she sought with a love that never wavered. Nevertheless, fellowship with her comrades was one of her chief joys. She delighted in Officers' Councils where all were bent upon seeking guidance for the furtherance of the Salvation War. Whenever she was thrown into the company of her comrades her heart was at once at leisure from itself, and she sought and found pleasant and profitable point for contact. She felt herself to be a poor conversationalist, and her success in fellowship lay in drawing out the interests of others. She was a good listener, rather than an entertainer. Humility was one of her greatest charms and she had no hesitation in confessing her limitations. 'I enjoy the fun, but I can't make it; do help me,' she said to a comrade, when once she found herself responsible for guiding the conversation of a party of officers. Tributes come from comrades of all ranks, from the shy lieutenant, to the veteran commissioner, telling of the sweetness of her communion in comradeship. But so great was the pressure upon her life, that during any period of respite from her work, she longed, not for change or entertainment, but rest. One cannot talk with Kate Lee's people without discovering that they regarded her as a person apart from all others. She would drink tea in a hovel with outcasts, or lead a volunteer brigade in scrubbing her halls; handle hammer and nails as a man; collect produce for the harvest festival with a donkey-cart, and perform a hundred and one other 'unladylike' offices. But about her was an atmosphere of intrinsic superiority, that the most untaught felt and appreciated. Amongst the most rough and ready people she is never mentioned with familiarity; but one constantly hears references to 'that heavenly woman,' 'an angel if ever there was one,' and 'that lovely lady'; also mention of 'her private means!' Incidentally, a pathetic interest attaches to the illusion of 'her private means,' for, except for her small Army allowance, Kate Lee had no private funds. Reserve and independence are characteristics of the Lee family, and are, despite warm affection, observed within their tiny family circle. When the mother joined her Officer daughters in their home, Lucy and Kate realized that if she were aware of the smallness of their allowance, she would feel that a third person could not share it without causing strain, and such knowledge would be a continual sorrow to her. So they never enlightened her, and during the years spent together, they endeavoured, by touching little self-denials, to keep their table and wardrobe as in the home days. So the little mother lived in peace, and died, and never guessed the truth. It was a good training for Kate, and later in life few women could get more value out of money than she. Her uniforms were turned, mended, and worn to the last. Her single indulgence was books, and these were few and well chosen. By dint of the habit of constant watchfulness over her purse, and the blessing of God, her little store became like the widow's cruse of oil, and she gave her tenth and more to the Lord's work. But it was the graciousness with which she gave that made her gifts appear large in the estimation of those who received. While Kate was received and made much of by high and low alike, she made no pretence of being well born or well educated; nor did she assume airs. She was a perfectly natural woman, who, realizing that she was a daughter of the Heavenly King, sought to rightly represent Him. Nothing rough, mean, nor trivial would become a member of the heavenly household; but joy, peace, gentleness, kindness, goodness--the graces of the Spirit should be seen in her. And they were. The consciousness of her heavenly relationship also gave her a dignity that held itself graciously in any company, and with gentle, unafraid eyes, she met the gaze of all. Kate believed that if we 'walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with the other,' and from a heart free from selfishness and guile, she looked out upon her neighbours, asking for nothing but to understand and bless them, and be blessed. The hearts of all but those who hate and reject the good, rose to salute her, and called her friend. Of those who loved her and whom she loved there is no count; but here and there upon the fields where she fought, there are some to whom her soul clave in a particular way. In and out of the homes of the rich she went, bearing sunshine and gathering gold wherewith to push her campaign; but she had no time to make friendships there. A certain leisureliness is inseparable from the life of the well-to-do; time to talk; to be interested in a variety of subjects; to be amused; time even to eat and rest in correct form. With Kate, life was terribly real. On every side her eyes saw men, women, and little children weighed down with sin and sorrow, and her soul joined in the consecration of the great soul who wrote:-- My every sacred moment spend. In publishing the sinner's Friend. Thus, while many rich friends opened their beautiful homes to her, placed their cars at her disposal, and begged for her company, she passed on her way with a smile that was wholly free from censoriousness. And there may have been another reason. In her nature was a deep love for the beautiful, the harmonious. Maybe she recognized in the good things of life a temptation which she needed to hold at arm's-length, if all her spikenard were to be poured out for her Lord. In any case, it was to Bethany-like households, where, as a rule, the occupants did their own serving, but were rich in love and in full sympathy with her spirit and purpose, that she tarried to gain strength or refreshment. One of these friends, Mrs. Taylorson, is a bedridden saint, a remarkable woman in her ninetieth year, of charming countenance, keen, vigorous intellect, great heart and spiritual vision. In the school of affliction and discipline she had sought and found the blessing of Full Salvation, and though a prisoner in her home, her interests are wide, and her influence, by the ministry of prayer, great. Hearing of Adjutant Lee's arrival in the town, she sent for her, and from their first meeting this aged saint rightly estimated the beauty and greatness of the Adjutant's soul, and felt there was a part she could play in her campaign. Mrs. Taylorson says:-- I realized that my ministry to her was to look after her bodily welfare. I took to my bed whilst she was stationed here: and living quite near to me, she would often slip in for a few moments. Her sweet face would come round the door like a ray of sunshine. She would give me a warm kiss, tell me the latest news --this case or that problem to pray over--then she was off again. But I saw to it that my maid always had something nourishing on hand to help that dear, worn body. How my maid loved her! The Adjutant's influence so led her into touch with Christ, that life became changed for her. Oh, how Kate Lee worked! Far beyond her strength. Often, after her quest for souls, she would pass this house at two o'clock in the morning. When I would remonstrate with her, she would reply, 'Oh, but I had such a _case_ last night.' Then she would relate to me the story. Once, kneeling by my bed, she said, 'Granny, last night I was afraid for the first time. Oh, this place, this place! The sin, the sin is terrible!' And she described to me the horrors of iniquity she had seen in our town. The transparent hands were tensely clasped; the strong alert features relaxed into contemplation, and my eyes lifted from the face of the aged saint to the wall beside her bed where hung a motto, 'Prayer brings victory.' It was easy to realize how Kate Lee had gathered strength for the fight in that little sanctuary of faith and hope, and love, with the practical addition of a strengthening cup, 'always ready, that the Adjutant might not be hindered.' Kate met her beloved old friend only once after her term of three years at Sunderland. When leaving London to spend a week there, she received a wire from her old lieutenant, then on duty amongst the troops in France, 'Coming on leave; want to spend week-end with you,' to which she replied, 'Going to Granny's. Come.' It was a happy party that gathered in that old home. The joys of reunion were still fresh, when in the doorway another figure appeared--Lucy Lee, also home on leave from France. Heaven seemed to come down to earth for those four women. Three from the rush of the battle, bubbling over with stories of the Holy War, the fourth--her faculties fresh as those of the youngest--delighting to linger on the brink of eternity, that she might hold up the hands of these, her adopted daughters in battles for God and souls. Perched on the crest of a hill overlooking a seashore town, is a tiny cottage--two rooms up and two down. There are flowers in the windows and garden, and within, simplicity and sweet homeliness. The dwellers there are an old pensioner and his daughter. The daughter, a semi-invalid, keeps house. Her face is calm as a lake resting in the sunshine; her eyes blue as the sky on a spring day, and her voice musical and soothing as rippling water. Almost twenty years ago, Kate Lee conducted a battle for souls in the little town nestling below the hill. The suffering woman listened to her call to arms, at first from a distance. By degrees the full meaning of the officer's life dawned upon her; she knew she could never be a leader; but she could, perhaps, be an armour-bearer; so she came nearer, and nearer, till she took a place at Captain Kate's side, ready to perform any service possible. A sufferer who triumphed had a peculiar charm for Kate Lee. This woman, caught in the furnace of affliction, had yielded herself to the fire, and found the Son of God keep company with her there, and she grew like Him. When nerves were tingling, and body and soul were weary with sins and sorrows of the world, to no place did Kate turn her steps more readily than to the tiny house on the hill. 'Why can you love to come here? I have so little to offer you. Rich people would love to have you, and give you what I cannot,' said her friend. 'And you can and do give me what no money in the world could buy: understanding, and love, and rest.' On a sunny day, Kate would take a rug and a cushion, a book or some sewing, and her friend would accompany her to a little knoll, a stone's throw from the house, which commanded a sea view for many miles. And there, mostly in silence, she would sit, and sun and rest for a day or two, and then hie back to the fight. A mother with a child in an invalid chair, followed The Army march many a Sunday night during one summer. The band charmed the child, the sweet face of the officer soothed and strengthened the mother. One night, mother and child ventured into the meeting. At the conclusion of the first service, Adjutant Lee was shaking hands with the people as they left the hall, and urging them to return, and she beamed on the mother and child, and later, visited their home. A typical home of millions of working people, but true love reigned there, and made it a more pleasant place than many a mansion. The mother had spinal disease and her child seemed to have been born only to die. Doctor and friends had striven in vain to unlock the bands of mother love, and let the little suffering life escape, but the mother refused. If love and ceaseless care could make a child live, he should live. Mother and child nestled under the protection of a great, loving husband and father. The coming of the Adjutant to that home was like the visit of an angel; but she gathered as she gave, for the soothing atmosphere of those tiny rooms fell upon her spirit like dew. As well as love there was music. The father sat at the organ, and as he played and sang, his strong, tender spirit seemed to ring through the hymns. 'Just one verse!' the Adjutant would say, as she dropped in to give five minutes' cheer. The Adjutant lay ill in her quarters. Bronchitis had, as usual, laid her low during a foggy week. She had sent her lieutenant out on a round of work, and, feverish and weak, gave herself up to rest. There was a movement on the stairs and a face appeared at the bedroom door. It was little invalid mother. 'How _did_ you get here?' the Adjutant asked. 'Through a window, and you'll not talk. Just eat this bit of steamed fish.' Every day, until the Adjutant was able to be about her Master's business again, the little woman ministered to her with tender, joyful love. 'Would you mind letting me look at your back?' she asked the little mother, when she had come to be regarded as the dearest friend of the small family. She looked, and her eyes filled with tears. For a woman with such a back, to work, as this mother worked, to watch and wait and refuse to give up hope for love of her child, this was love indeed. Kate Lee would love sin-sick souls in this way. 'Thank you,' she said simply, 'you have inspired me.' During her stay the little boy, then six years of age, definitely yielded his heart and life to the Saviour. When he was fourteen he begged to be allowed to join The Army Young People's Band. 'Impossible,' said the doctor. 'But, doctor, you know how he has lived in spite of many contrary opinions, and we wish him to devote his life to The Army,' pleaded the mother. A tall lad with purposeful face, playing in an Army band, is a joy to his Salvationist parents who carry in their hearts the faith of Kate Lee, that one day their son shall be an Army Officer. Such were a very few of the friends of Kate Lee. Many, because of their great love for her, and conscious of her love for them, will, perhaps, feel a touch of disappointment that they are not included in the number, but the pages of our book will not stretch. As I think of them all, as I have seen them in their homes, and know of the many I have not been able to meet--I am reminded of strangely similar company, fishermen, clerks, and a company of humble, holy women who ministered to Kate Lee's Lord and Master in the days of His flesh. XII TROPHIES OF GRACE Many volumes would be needed to contain the story of all the souls who found deliverance from sin, sorrow and terror by the message of Kate Lee, but her memoir would be sadly incomplete without, at least, a few sketches which illustrate the courage, the faith, and the love with which she sought and won and held souls who, unless such love, and faith, and courage had been expended upon them, would have died in their sin. The following stories are true, but they do not profess to be vivid. Few of us would care for a passport-photograph of ourselves to be given to the world as a true likeness, and when giving word-pictures of souls who are still fighting their way to Heaven 'midst many enemies and dangers, there is surely need of a kindly 're-touching!' Scars which sin has made are wisely unnoticed; sins of the past best forgotten; there are conditions of strange and fierce trial in the lives of some which, if told, would magnify the triumph of grace, but should, for obvious reasons, remain unmentioned. It was a great change for Kate Lee when, after her command of Norland Castle, she was appointed to Reading, a prosperous county town in charming surroundings. In its best business part stands a fine Army hall. It was faultlessly kept, and attended by a most respectable congregation. After her heavy term in the slums of London, it might reasonably be expected that she would take things quietly in a provincial corps and recuperate her spent strength. But Kate Lee could no more settle down to enjoy a pleasant time amongst pleasant people than could her old General during his field days. She by no means despised her 'nice' people, but she hungered for those without the camp. 'Are there none of our sort in Reading?' she inquired of the local officers. To be sure there were Silver and Coley Streets; _they_ were bad enough for anything. Too true. Kate Lee found in that small area drunkenness, cruelty, misery, hideous sin--a match for anything in Shepherd's Bush. She began with the children. Poor, ragged, neglected little souls they were; not because of want, but because of the sin of their parents. The Adjutant rented a small hall in Coley Street, and to it invited the children; they came in swarms. She made music for them with her concertina and banjo; sang to them; chatted with them; laughed with them; patted them. One of the first songs she taught them was, 'Let the blessed sunshine in.' Straightway they took her to their hearts and called her 'The Sunshine Lady.' She worked week after week amongst them. As well as telling them about the Saviour who wanted to make their lives good and happy, she drilled them, and after a while, announced a surprise to the parent corps. She would show them what her Coley Street children could do. She marched them up to the citadel, where they gave a programme of songs, drills, and recitations. What parents are not pleased when some one charmingly loves and makes a fuss of their children? Certainly, Silver and Coley Street parents were gratified. One little group of youngsters begged the Adjutant to come and see their grandfather who was dying. She found a dear old Christian, living with his daughter and son-in-law, the latter a terrible drunkard. The Adjutant visited the old man until he died, comforted him, and promised by the help of God, to win his son-in-law. It seemed like attempting the impossible, but with God on her side nothing was impossible with Kate Lee. Shepherd's mother died when he was six weeks old; later his father died a drunkard. At five years of age wee boy Shepherd was carried home drunk, for men had stood him on a bench in the tap room and 'filled him up with beer.' He drank for forty years. During a brief, steady bout, he had married a decent girl, who, not knowing his character, was carried away by the smart appearance of a handsome soldier in the glory of red coat and gleaming buttons. Once married, habit reasserted itself as the years stole on. Shepherd broke up his home, beat his wife, and terrified his children. His good wages went to the saloon-keeper's till while his family starved and went in rags. He had not been in a place of worship since the day of his marriage until, in an effort towards decency, in acknowledgment of Adjutant Lee's kindness, he attended the memorial service of his father-in-law. Kate Lee threw her net, but never was fish more wary, more determined not to be caught, than Shepherd. For months she followed him. 'Where's father?' she would ask the children. 'In the "Blue Lion,"' they would reply, and into the 'Blue Lion' the Adjutant would go and visit him there. She waylaid him on his way home from work. She took the corps into the plot of garden in front of his house on Sunday afternoons and held meetings there. 'She fair terrified me,' says Shepherd, now. He was furious with her and determined to insult her, but when he met those blue eyes that knew no fear, brimming with love for his soul, and heard her ringing inquiry, 'And how's Brother Shepherd to-day?' angry words died on his lips, and he sought refuge in escape. At last, word went round the Coley district that the 'Sunshine Lady' was leaving Reading. Shepherd would soon be free from this bothering, interfering woman. But strangely enough, he did not feel relieved. Upon his heart had settled a load heavier than lead. He felt unutterably oppressed and miserable. He _must_ see that Adjutant once more. He went to her farewell meeting. As she shook his hand, and looked into his soul to make her last appeal, his heart broke. He had loved sin greedily, but now it appeared hateful to him. If only he could be free from it! Down at the penitent-form he cast himself asking God to make him a new creature. He rose, feeling strangely, wonderfully light and free, sweet and clean in spirit. He was delivered from all desire to sin. Arriving at home, for the first time in his life he wanted to kneel at his bedside and 'say his prayers.' Kate Lee had won him to God. Now she must leave him. Years later, when visiting Reading, she met Shepherd, a bandsman in full uniform, beating the drum in Silver Street. Tears of joy ran down her face at the sight. Shepherd has proved to his own happiness and to the satisfaction of the town that 'the blessing of the Lord maketh rich and addeth no sorrow.' By the grace of God he has never slipped. At the time of his conversion he had no clothes but those he stood in. When he left Coley Street, all his furniture went on a push-cart. Recently he moved house, and needed two vans. He is foreman at his place of employment. His wife sought salvation two weeks after he was saved, and of his family, five out of the seven children are Salvationists. His home is a joyous place. He loves to entertain, to take people home on a Sunday afternoon, and have a happy time with singing, reading God's Word, and prayer. Then off to the open-air meeting, where he delights to witness to God's wonder-working power! Saturday night, when his workmates gather round The Army ring, and in Coley Street, are his favourite open-air meetings. Shepherd is a happy man. His healthy face beams with goodwill to men and gratitude to God. His eyes grow moist, but they still shine, when he speaks of Kate Lee. 'Aye, bless her heart! I'm going to frame that picture of her that came out in "The War Cry,"' he exclaims with a deep, ringing voice. 'I look upon her as my mother--a real mother to my soul she was.' In the streets of Reading almost any day, an old man may be seen pushing a tinker's barrow. The small carriage is gay with yellow, red, and blue paint and bright with polished brass, and on a conspicuous place appear the words, 'Where will you spend Eternity?' The barrow-man has a pleasant, bearded face, and steady-gazing, merry, eyes, with a cheerful nod and word for every one; he steps in and out of gardens, mending kettles, sharpening knives, and doing other handy jobs for housewives. 'Mr. Wellman, of The Salvation Army,' an established resident would inform an inquirer. Thirteen years ago, Wellman was one of the most wretched men in Reading. Drink had brought him, with his wife and family, to a common lodging-house, and there they herded, sometimes as many as twelve men, women, and children in one room, eating, drinking, sleeping, cursing. A son of Christian parents, Wellman was a decent youth, but in his early married life he began to go down-hill and long before Adjutant Lee took charge of the corps at Reading, had reached the dead level of misery, degradation, and hopelessness. He had turned his back upon God; he feared Him, dreaded Him, longed to escape from His presence, but the Heavenly Father did not forsake him. His mother had died, he was filled with sorrow and remorse, when one Sunday evening The Army band halted before the lodging-house. Wellman was in the yard lounging against the wall when the drum tapped. He walked through the passage and gazed at The Army. Kate Lee was leading the meeting. She looked at him and smiled. There was a world of power in that look; interest, kindness, gentleness, sorrow for sin. Wellman listened with apparent indifference to the meeting, and the march moved off. He had heard the Army drum hundreds of times before in Reading, but while it called to every one to remember God, its message had never reached him; but the look on that woman's face did. For the first time he followed the march, and, arriving at the hall, was invited inside. The place was already full, but a wise-hearted orderly piloted Wellman to a front seat. He has no remembrance of the message of the meeting; but he saw himself; his loathsome condition; his sin to God and man; his failure in life. At the invitation he went forward to the penitent-form and asked God to take away his sin; he rose from his knees believing that he was saved. How wonderful is the work of God! Wellman came into the hall dirty, unkempt in body and soul. For years he had given no thought to his appearance, cared nothing for the contempt of respectable people. Now he fled to the lodging-house, ashamed to be seen. The next morning the Adjutant called to see him. He had broken up eight homes, and for years had felt no wish for so troublesome a possession, but now he longed to get out of that hovel and to have a decent place to which he could invite this 'angel woman.' The Adjutant smiled upon him, told him he had only to follow God and things would soon improve. She fostered the desire to make home again with his family and his own bits of furniture about him, and helped him to get rooms. During Wellman's years of sinning, whenever he had seen the word God in print, he had dropped the paper or book as though it were hot; now he opened his mother's Bible and found it to be a library of delight; and his spare time, between work and the meetings, was spent in reading it for sheer pleasure. The desire for strong drink had been swept out of him by one touch of the Holy Spirit, but his love of tobacco was even stronger than of beer. No one spoke to him about giving up smoking, but from the day of his conversion he felt ashamed of the habit and only smoked in the house. The heavenly vision growing stronger he determined to have nothing in his life about which he had any doubt, and he thus reasoned with himself, 'If God can cure me of the drink, He can cure me of the pipe.' From that day he had no desire for tobacco. Wellman's business increased, and the Adjutant was interested in his barrow which had taken on a gay appearance in The Army colours. Pointing to a clear space she remarked, 'Wouldn't a message go well there?' ''Twould, Adjutant; what one would do?' She thought, 'I think, "Where will you spend Eternity?" would be a good one,' she replied. So Wellman had the words painted on his barrow. His quiet eyes smile as he says, 'Her text shall preach in Reading while ever I can push the barrow. It gives me no end of chances to speak to people. Some ladies on bicycles stopped me one day and said, "What is the meaning of those words?" "It means that you're going to die, and are you ready for what comes after?" I told them. Some have said, "What have you got that rubbish on there for?" Then I tell them what Salvation has done for my life. But most people know me now, and look for a little word.' He is now Sergeant Wellman at the corps, in full Army uniform, and does useful work as doorkeeper and orderly, always on the watch to welcome poor souls such as he was. He has had his share of trials since he was converted. Bronchitis and asthma often keep him a prisoner and make work slack. 'I don't have to look for troubles, they come trooping along, but grace keeps them company,' he says joyfully. Then a shade of sadness steals into his voice as he continues, wistfully, 'What was I doing to miss all those years? Wretched, terrible years, mind always brooding, never happy, never at rest!' It is often more difficult to rescue a sinful married woman than a man. A man as soon as he is converted goes to work, and during the day remains under some sort of discipline and restraint; whereas the very privileges of a married woman's position often become hindrances in the way of her Salvation. No one can compel her to work, and undesirable neighbours may visit her and tempt her to sin. Adjutant Lee never relaxed hope or effort because success was difficult of realization. There are bright stars in her crown of jewels whom she discovered in the depths; but after a woman has been restored to her family, the past forgiven and laid aside, her dear ones are naturally unwilling for the past to be recorded, and in this book we must content ourselves with a very slight sketch of one who has passed beyond the touch of pain. A married woman had worn out the patience of a loving family. So ruinous to the happiness and well-being was her presence in the home, that when at last she went away her nearest made no effort to bring her back. The Adjutant found her in the depths of sin, and determined, by the grace of God, that she should be saved. This was one of the most difficult cases she ever undertook. The woman had lost hope and will power, and it took love that would not let go, and faith that would not accept defeat, before the desire to rise again stole into the poor heart made captive of the devil. At last the Adjutant persuaded her to attend the meetings and there she found deliverance. After a few weeks Kate Lee got in touch with the husband in a distant town, but his family had suffered too much at their mother's hands for him readily to consent to his wife's return. Yet he was not a hard-hearted man, and upon the suggestion of a reconciliation, if, for six months, his wife proved herself to be indeed a changed woman, he consented. During that trying probation the Adjutant mothered this soul, who, with tottering steps, had turned her face homeward, and she won through. At the end of the allotted time a letter brought the husband to a meeting-place. He looked apprehensive, but meeting the wistful eyes of a well-dressed, comely woman, he saw once again the wife he loved and the mother his children loved. That day he bore her off to the expectant but anxious home. With beating hearts, the daughters waited the arrival, but it was not the abandoned drunkard who had spoilt their home, and horrified and frightened them, who stood on the doorstep with father. It was just mother. Home was really home once more. Mother at the head of the table, mother's hand here, there, upon everything. Then she became ill. Months of agony followed. The doctor ordered stimulants; these were refused to the end. Slowly the delivered soul slipped down death's river; then, as it met the sea of eternity, she looked up. 'All's well!' she said, and crossed the bar. It was through the house-to-house canvass of a Salvation Army Assurance Agent that Adjutant Lee came into contact with the Parrot family at Brighton. They lived in a poor enough street and house; but thinking people who live close to the working classes know that pounds a week which should go into the homes frequently find their way to the saloon-keeper's till. 'The only saving I want to think about is to get my husband saved from the drink,' Mrs. Parrot had told the agent, and, like a wise man, he reported the incident to Kate Lee. It was Sunday morning. There was a tap at the door; a little child appeared, took one look at the pure, radiant face there, and disappeared saying aloud to his mother, 'There's a Salvation Army lady at the door, mother, and I don't think you ought to send her away.' Kate Lee heard the words, and uninvited, slipped into the passage. Meeting the mother, she said gently, 'If I have a welcome from the child, I am sure of one from you.' That morning the strings of Mrs. Parrot's harp of hope were reduced to one. A brave-hearted girl, she had started married life determined to fill it with music, despite the prophecies that she was a fool to marry Parrot. But the strings of her harp broke one by one, and this morning there was no song in her heart; she could see no star in the heavy sky. She was a fine type of the working woman; had been servant in a good family, and had had a godly Sunday School teacher who had taught her the reality of God and the efficacy of prayer. Through all the wretched, terrible years of her married life, she had prayed and hoped for deliverance from the earthly hell in which she and her children lived. The week before Adjutant Lee's visit she had in desperation gone to a spiritual leader and implored him to try and reform her husband, and had received the extraordinary reply, 'Well, you must bear with this little habit. I may tell you I have the same weakness myself.' Little habit indeed! It had lost Parrot two businesses. Now he pushed a barrow, hawking anything he had money to buy; generally the proceeds went in drink, his family starved and lived in terror of him, and his wife, the soul of respectability, could not keep the family decent. A year ago, her patience completely worn out, she had told him not to come home any more. This was the last straw to Parrot's own wretchedness. He went to a chemist, purchased some oxalic acid, dropped it into a pint of beer and drank it; stumbling into the street, overcome by pain and gasping for breath, he fell to the ground. The police picked him up, took him to the hospital and his life was saved. When he had sufficiently recovered to go before the magistrate, he was sent to jail for a week; while in there, he made desperate resolves that he would do better; but once released, life went on as before. Mrs. Parrot lifted her eyes to the Adjutant's face. Was God going to help her after all? The Adjutant invited her to the meetings. She frankly said her husband had no clothes to wear. 'Where was he?' 'Upstairs in bed.' The Adjutant asked if she might go up and see him. Mrs. Parrot thought she had better go and inquire. A Salvation Army woman wanted to come up to his bedroom and see him lying drunk in bed! The impudence! He would show her out of this British workman's home quicker than she had come in. Lunging into his rough clothes, and staggering down the stairs, with muttering lips and angry eyes, came Parrot. He found Kate Lee talking with his children. She looked up at him with a smile and said, 'They told me I was coming to a drunkard's home, but these don't look like a drunkard's children. The dears!' Parrot was struck dumb and stood with a strangely-working face and a peculiar tearing at his throat staring at this fair, fragile woman. 'I want you to come to our meeting to-night,' continued the Adjutant. 'Mrs. Parrot tells me you haven't any good clothes; but I'll have a full suit ready for you in time, and shall expect you there.' She prayed and was gone. This was the first vision of Divine love that Parrot had ever seen. Born in a beer shop, fighting and quarrelling from childhood, his life had been a hideous, hopeless failure. Hell he understood--felt; but such words as God, Heaven, Love, had meant nothing to him at all. Now they did. Love seemed to shine all over that woman. Angels' wings never looked lovelier to human eyes than the Army blue of Adjutant Kate's uniform looked to Parrot. By-and-by a parcel arrived. It contained shirt, trousers, coat and vest, socks and boots, collar, tie, and even a handkerchief. Parrot handled them with wonder. He had never worn such clothes--the Adjutant had begged them from a gentleman. He put them on, and walked up and down the back yard. How good it felt to be well dressed--to look respectable. Meeting time arrived and, piloted by his wondering wife, Parrot went to the hall. 'Let's go up out of the draught,' diplomatized Mrs. Parrot, and edged her man as near to the front as possible. Kate Lee gloried in God that night. She told of His boundless love, His seeking--seeking to find, and make good and happy, every soul of man. Parrot and his wife knelt at the penitent-form. Next morning Parrot felt desperately ill, but the craving for strong drink had gone. He must face life in earnest and see about providing for the family. He must have something to sell. Mrs. Parrot remembered a kind-hearted man who had promised, that if ever her husband tried to do better, that he would help him. Parrot walked several miles to find this man, who trusted him with a dollar's worth of fish. The spiritual life in this new convert was very feeble. Parrot felt comfortable in his mind, and happy to believe that angels still walked this earth, and that one had come his way. An ambition had come into his weak, undisciplined will to make a decent home for his wife and children. He would have been content to have let things rest there. But Kate Lee bore down upon him, not only with smiles, but commands. He must fight for God. He must tell all his townspeople of his conversion. Parrot was terrified, but there was no escape. When the Adjutant arrived with the band to carry him off, he slipped out of the back door, but there he was met by the wisest of recruiting sergeants, a man who understood men and loved them. Trembling in every limb, Parrot was marched off to The Army Hall, and sat by the Adjutant on the platform. In an open-air meeting in his own street, an Army cap was placed on his head. There could be no turning back. He was literally carried up the Delectable Mountains and shown higher views of life; and, seeing them, he desired them. To-day, he is proud of his Salvation Army family, and of his good wife, who is the neighbours' friend, helping them in trouble, comforting them in bereavement, praying with them in distress. When The General called for homes for the destitute Austrian children, the Parrot household was the first in the corps to open their door. Mrs. Parrot has a prosperous business, as also have two of their sons, and Parrot is in steady work. He is grateful for temporal mercies, but no words can express the gratitude of this man and his wife for the miracle of Salvation, the deliverance from sin, the love for the things of God, which has come to their home and their hearts by the grace of God, brought to them by the love that feared no insult, no violence; the faith that would not be disappointed, of Kate Lee. XIII KATE LEE'S SECRET Of Kate Lee General Bramwell Booth writes, 'She was one of those conquering souls who seldom look like a conqueror. She presented an extraordinary contrast. She was weak, and yet she was strong. She was poor, and yet she was one of the richest. She was intensely human, with many of the most marked limitations which belong to the human, and yet she was in an extraordinary degree spiritual, yes, even divine.' These contrasts were clear to all and puzzling to many. Not a few people both in and outside the ranks of The Army have asked the question, 'Wherein lay the secret of Kate Lee's success?' One person, accustomed only to surface views, gave answer, 'It is that she always aims to win trophies.' Let any one determine to gain distinction for himself by lifting from the mire of sin souls robbed by the devil of hope and will power, and even desire for deliverance; let them essay to bring back from the far country wanderers sunk to the level of the brute; let them attempt to break bands of habit forged by the devil, or to deliver the prey from the terrible one. He will discover the impossibility of his enterprise if not his folly. Desire to win spiritual battles in order to gain personal reputation is age-old. From the day that Simon the sorcerer offered Peter money in exchange for miracle-working power, the exercise of which would have placed him upon a pedestal above his fellows, the rebuke has rung out, 'Thy heart is not right in the sight of God.' Shortly before Jesus left His little band of disciples, with the charge to preach the Gospel to every creature, He spoke with them on the subject of spiritual fruitfulness. He assured them that, 'Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit,' and in one sentence He made clear the secret of spiritual success. He said, 'He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without Me ye can do nothing.' The failure of the Church of Christ to extend His Kingdom upon earth by great sweeping victories, lies in the imperfect apprehension or the neglect of this declaration. Tens of thousands of professing Christians do not abide in Christ; consequently, He cannot satisfy their soul. The cares and pleasures of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, occupy them as they do the ungodly; for their pleasures they turn to the world. A smaller section have faith in Christ, and realize the joys of Salvation, and comfort of His presence, but they do not yield themselves to Him for service. A smaller section dedicate themselves to His service, but rush to work for God without receiving directions from Him, with the result that much effort is wasted. If every consecrated soul would pay heed to Christ's direction, how gloriously would His Kingdom extend! Not that the battle would ever become an easy one. The powers of evil against which we fight are second only in strength to those of righteousness and light. In conflict between these powers there will always be the sacrifices of war to reckon upon, the spade work, the tunnelling, the weariness; surprises of the enemy, rushed advances, sick and wounded to care for, and captured territory to be occupied, organized, and governed, before the final victory. Kate Lee was one of the company that dwell in God. It is difficult to write of her secret soul life; for, keeping no journal she made no record of the dealings between her soul and her Beloved; no fights and victories over the powers of evil, no story of following the heavenly vision, nor does her very scrappy correspondence contain out-pourings of spiritual experience. Her life was a lovely epistle of week-day holiness for all to read, but it was the outward sign of an inward experience. Locked in a private box, a "Covenant" was found after her death which is as a key to the inner sanctuary in which her life was lived with Christ in God. It reads as follows:-- COVENANT _Solemnly entered into, January, 1897; Renewed, January, 1918_ TO MY PRECIOUS LORD AND MASTER In the first moments of this year I present myself to Thee in the deepest humiliation of soul, sensible of my utter unworthiness. I desire nothing in the world so much as to be Thine, and with the utmost solemnity, surrender myself fully unto Thee. I declare Thee, O Lord, this day, to be my God, and myself to be Thine own child. Hear, O Thou God of Heaven, and record it in Thy Book of Remembrance, that I am Thine, only Thine. From this first day of January do I solemnly renounce all that has had dominion over me, and every sin, and every lust, and in Thy name, set myself in eternal opposition to the powers of hell. The whole frame of my nature, all the faculties of my mind, all the members of my body would I present to Thee this day, as a living sacrifice. I consecrate myself to Thee; all my worldly possessions; and I pray Thee to give me the strength and courage to exert for Thy glory all the influence I may have over others. Receive and wash me. Forgive all past failings, clothe me with Thy perfect righteousness, and sanctify me throughout by the power of Thy Spirit. Help me that I may never withdraw in any point from this renewal of my consecration and covenant. Help me to live in the spirit of real consecration and crucifixion; and should I fail in carrying out this covenant in all points as I ought, then, dear Lord, forgive and lead me to perfection. In Thy strength I promise to be true till death. Until then, keep, guide, and direct me. Remember, dear Lord, this covenant when I am about to pass away; and should I then be incapable of recollecting it, look with pity on Thy dying child. Put strength and confidence into my departing spirit, and receive it to the embrace of Thy everlasting love. For Jesus Christ's sake. May this petition be granted. (Signed) KATE LEE. _Renewed, January 1st, 1920_ Another valuable document traces for us Kate Lee's seeking after sanctification. After having lived in the enjoyment of this blessing for nearly thirty years, she was asked by the editor of 'The Officer' to write her experience. The following article appeared in that magazine three years ago:-- Soon after I was converted I realized a great need in my heart. I had turned my back on the old life, and my face was toward God. I had started to travel the upward way. For the first few weeks I went with a rush, the joy of the new life within buoyed me up. I felt as though I was walking on air. I did not feel any strain of the upward tread. But soon I began to feel the tension of the daily struggle, the weary march. There were obstacles in that way that impeded my progress. My circumstances were against me, and the influences surrounding me had a tendency to draw me from Christ. I began to stumble and fall. The tempter was soon at my side suggesting, 'You're not converted; it's all a delusion; you would not feel as you do; you would not fail as you have done, if you were really a child of God. Give it up, it's no use trying,' he argued. And, worst of all, I knew sin still existed in my heart. How often passion had broken my peace. How many times bitterness and evil had manifested itself in my nature. Was I mistaken? Had I ever been converted? Was it all a delusion? Just then God in His love and pity came to my heart; gave me a revelation. He not only showed me myself and my sin, but showed me my need. I needed something, and as I sat in a holiness meeting I realized that need was sanctification. For months the word sanctification was to me a heavy burden; a torture. I could not really grasp its meaning. I read and re-read the theory of sanctification, going from one authority on the subject to another, only to turn away still more puzzled. I then set myself to seek publicly and was several times found at the holiness table, pleading for the blessing that I failed to understand. Again and again I came to the altar, and, as far as I understood, laid my all there. But as soon as the test came, without realizing that I did it, I took from off the altar the sin I had laid there, or the gifts that I had surrendered to God. This is where I failed many times, and during my officership I have found scores of other souls who have failed on this very point. They come sincerely to the altar, definitely laying their gift there, a living sacrifice; but when the knife is felt, the realization of the dying comes upon them as they feel the hurt and understand fully what it means, they shrink and draw back. Abram's experience, related in Genesis xv., has been a great help to me. He had to wait for the fire. He prayed all day, even until eventide, and then the birds of prey came down; but he stood by the sacrifice and drove them off. Then the fire came and consumed the sacrifice. That was just the point to which I had to get. I had laid my all on the altar, but then I had to wait for the fire. Meanwhile, the birds of doubt, fear, and discouragement came flying around. I had to get up again and again to drive them off, and hold on to God. Fresh light came; a new path opened up. The laying of self on the altar meant following God fully and showing my colours everywhere. Could I do it? It was hard to die to self, and say, 'Yes, Lord.' But as I said it, I felt I was accepted, and afterwards, when I carried out that vow, joy flooded my soul and I realized that the Spirit of the Lord was upon me. The desire to sin was removed, and my heart yearned to be kept pure and clean. I have found the need of great watchfulness, and have needed much prayer to keep my soul in touch with God and on fire for precious souls. Although I realized, after I was sanctified, that I was over sin and no longer under the power of sin, and that I was cleansed from the desire to sin, yet in his subtlety the devil has come again and again and striven to bring me down. Sometimes he has come as an angel of light, so that I have been led to the very verge of sin, tempted to indulge in what seemed at the moment harmless, perhaps because others, who professed as much as I did, indulged in it too. Tempted to shrink from the sacrifice that a separated life must mean; tempted to give way to the flesh, one's natural desires and inclinations, I have even allowed the devil to take me to the edge of a great spiritual precipice, but God, in His mercy, has flashed His wonderful light upon my path in time to show me where I was, and what would be the outcome if I yielded to the temptation. Oh, how it caused me to pray and seek strength which enabled me to overcome! Prayer has been my source of help, when burdens have pressed so heavily upon me that they threatened to crush my spirit; when disappointments, misrepresentations almost overwhelmed me, prayer has brought strength and comfort, a courage that could face a world of bitterness and scorn. I have proved that prayer will enable me to retain the substance of holiness. Prayer enables me to retain a passion for souls; keep it burning in hours of disappointment and failure, indifference and hardness, when men and devils rise in power against me. One must tread the path of holiness carefully, with a watchful eye and ear always open to His voice, and a spirit ever ready to obey. But it is a wonderful way, a way of purity, where the soul can see God, even in the struggles of life. A way of joy; the deepest of joys. The realization of His smile enables me to live independent of all the joys of the world and to rejoice in the hour of sorrow. A way of power; when the channel is clear He works through it and accomplishes His will. A personal experience of Full Salvation was the secret of Kate Lee's success. This life was not spasmodic. She did not pass in and out of the holy place, or step on and off the highway of holiness. She dwelt there. That does not imply that never during those thirty years was she overcome by Satan. Once, into a deep sorrow was poured the bitterness of gall through the wickedness of another. The enemy came in like a flood, threatening to overwhelm and root up many precious things, but the Spirit of the Lord was there to lift up a standard against him. 'If ye forgive not your enemies, neither will your Father forgive you,' was the word that came to her heart. She closed her lips, hushed her sobs, crept to the feet of her Lord, where are ever the print of cruel nails, to remind His children of His sufferings and His forgiveness. 'I was wrong,' she said, 'very wrong. I must forgive, I _do_ forgive'; and to the close of her life she lavished love upon one who had sore wounded her. 'If we sin we have an Advocate.' She laid her case in His hands, and left it there. The officers who served as lieutenants with Kate Lee give us glimpses of the life she lived in the privacy of her quarters. We may stand at the door of the sanctuary where she met with God and learn a little. Says one of her lieutenants, 'It seemed to me that she prayed without ceasing. Her life was one continual looking to God. She prayed upon rising. We prayed together after breakfast; later, she went to her room for an hour's private prayer and study; for special undertakings or emergencies she had special seasons of waiting upon God.' How much there was to pray for. Her own soul and that of her lieutenant, that they might be kept in touch with God. Her corps, every department of it; the local officers, the band, the songsters, the home league; the soldiers and converts; the town, with its sin and indifference to the claims of Christ, the finance. Then, hers was not a small soul. She loved the whole wonderful Salvation Army of which she was a unit, and her leaders and comrades in all lands were remembered at the Throne of God. It was a great strength to her to feel that she lived in the atmosphere of prayer. When in the midst of a specially heavy battle for souls, she would write to comrades she knew had power in prayer and beg them specially to help her to fight through to victory. Very real were the powers of darkness and evil against which this frail little woman set herself; sometimes they pressed her sore. She felt something of the sorrows and travail of soul of her Saviour, of whom it is written, 'And being in an agony, He prayed.' At times she suffered from depressions so heavy that they prostrated her. The lieutenant says, 'At these times, all I could do was to let her feel that I was carrying on, whilst she sought her chief remedy, prayer. By and by, she would come from her room, strengthened and peaceful, ready again for the fight.' Writes another of her helpers:-- She was a wonderful officer in public, but I love best to remember how she conquered in her own private life. When we remember how she attacked the devil's kingdom, we can well believe that he did not leave her unmolested. She had her full share of difficulties, hardnesses, disappointments, and physical weakness; but, whatever her feelings were, she rose above them, and went on with her work. In her office, over the fireplace, hung a large picture of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. On her writing table was the same picture, but small; so, if she lifted her eyes from her writing, she was reminded of Him whom she loved with her whole heart. As He conquered by prayer, so did she. One morning, one of the local officers called to see her. When I went to her room to fetch her, her eyes were red with weeping. 'Dear, I can't go down like this,' she said; 'will you see to the business for me?' She had been pleading--agonizing with God. She was very sweet to me. I can see her smile now as she first welcomed me to the quarters. I was very timid and helpless in public work when I became her lieutenant, but she made me feel that her responsibility was to make me a worthy officer. She said, 'I could get others to do the house-work; you are to be my comrade in the fight.' She took me fully into her confidence, consulted me about corps organization, difficulties, special efforts, everything! She would tell me all her plans and then ask for mine. The first time she insisted upon my taking the Sunday night address, in spite of having laboriously prepared, I was so nervous that I stopped, fairly played out, in the middle of my talk, but she got up and encouraged me, and asked the comrades to pray. She helped me so much that to give a Bible address is not a difficulty now. I learned to forget myself. Had she a weakness? Well, it may seem much to say it, but though I lived with her so long, I cannot think of one; she was an all-round conqueror. Writes still another lieutenant:-- How I love her memory! My Bible was her parting gift to me, and in it she marked the text: 'In all thy way acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.' She passed on to me the method that governed her own life. In nothing did Kate Lee show her likeness to her Lord more than in her practical unselfishness. He wanted nothing from the world. He came to give Himself to save it. It was so with her. A woman so popular could have drawn to herself the homage and service of the crowd; but here she stood aloof. She welcomed, indeed she sought, gifts and service for the work of The Army and the poor, but she wanted nothing for herself. When she and her lieutenant were so pressed with work that they scarcely had time to eat their food, her eye would rove over the corps, and she would select a girl whom she felt had a true appreciation of the Kingdom of God, and ask her if she would like to come to the quarters to help with the house-work, so that the officers might be freer for soul-saving. Many a girl counts it the honour of her life to have shared that saintly woman's home, sat at her table, joined in the prayers, and done the work of the house. The Adjutant and lieutenant paid her out of their small allowance. To her soldiers, Kate Lee delighted to preach the doctrine of Full Salvation from sin, and greatly she rejoiced over those who entered into this glorious experience of freedom and power. One comrade, who had been a Salvationist for twenty-seven years, a white-haired, sweet-spirited man, enjoyed his religion in the corps, but was little more than a cypher as a soldier. In a holiness meeting, while the Adjutant spoke from the text, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord,' the old soldier saw in a moment of revelation, that if he were thoroughly yielded to God and obedient to the heavenly vision, the Holy Spirit would cleanse him from sin, and, despite his lack of personality, and very ordinary qualities, would empower him for service. He went forward to the holiness table, seeking this experience. Attached to the corps was a young men's Bible class languishing for want of a leader. A few evenings after his consecration, the Adjutant told this comrade that she wished him to take over the class. The habit of years strong upon him, he began to plead his unfitness; but inwardly reminded of his covenant with God, went away to pray and returned to say he was ready for service. He laid hold upon those lads. Many young men, as officers, soldiers, and bandsmen, bless the day that Brother Fenwick claimed them for God. They are the fruit of his service. The Adjutant was as watchful to help souls convicted of the need of a clean heart as to capture the unsaved. A sister writes:-- I am indebted to Kate Lee for leading me into the blessing of entire sanctification. Attending a tent campaign she had inaugurated, after her address setting forth the experience of holiness, she asked those in the congregation who were living up to that standard to rise. Condemnation filled my soul. I arose, but only to slip out of the tent by a far door. The Adjutant noticed the move, and met me as I was making my escape. Then she laboured until I knelt in full surrender, yielding my all to God. One of my chief difficulties was to wear Army uniform, but that was included in my consecration, and from the putting on of my first Army bonnet, nearly twenty years ago, I have been proud to witness for Christ in this way. As a spiritual surgeon with skill in diagnosis, Kate Lee excelled. A sergeant-major of great devotion and good cheer fell into deep spiritual depression. No amount of pulling himself together or shaking free of the dumps, availed anything. He became as miserable as when first convicted of sin. 'But why?' he asked himself the question over and over. 'I love God with all my heart; I am fully consecrated to His service; then what is amiss?' No reply. To a Watch-Night service this man came, under a vow not to leave his knees until he discovered the reason of this cloud and obtained deliverance. During the meeting, he, the chief local officer of the corps, made confession before his comrades and knelt at the holiness table. The Adjutant sought to discover his difficulty. 'Sergeant-Major, have you a grudge against any person? Now, think carefully.' The man was silent, searching his heart. Presently he replied, 'You have found the spot.' Years before, a man had deceived him in a matter of business, thereby bringing much trial into his home. By dogged, hard work, the material loss had been overtaken, and the affair forgotten. But there it lay in his heart. The remembrance of the man's name brought with it feelings of resentment and contempt. 'Lord, forgive me for my hardness of heart toward that man as I now forgive him,' he cried. 'Cleanse my soul from every stain of sin and fill me with perfect love.' In an instant the cloud lifted from his soul, and his heart was filled with singing. That was a remarkable Watch-Night service. Other battles were fought and won, and not until two o'clock on New Year's morning did the meeting close, with a final burst of praise, and with renewed consecration to fight for souls during the coming year. Dr. Garfield Carse, of Sunderland, became a soldier of the Sunderland corps, and entered upon his medical career there, during the Adjutant's term. He says:-- Adjutant Lee was a great advocate of holiness. She preached the doctrine and lived the life. That was the key to her success. Her theme expressed in many ways was, 'Put off the old man, and put on Jesus Christ. Live so that your life reminds people of His life.' She was a great spiritual help to me; understanding the claims of a busy man, she would drop into my surgery and say, 'I have come to visit you for five minutes.' She would read from the Bible, a few choice verses that had refreshed her own soul that day, and then would kneel and pray for me that I might represent Christ in my particular sphere. She was a great woman! An old local officer illustrates her meekness, when as a young officer she was impulsive and arrived at quick conclusions on incomplete evidence. 'She believed I had done a wrong, and wanted me to ask forgiveness of people who were themselves in the wrong, but made a fair showing. I said, 'No,' and kept to it. She did not turn bitter towards me, nor 'turn me down,' but was kind and sorry. By and by she saw she had been mistaken in her judgment, and said sweetly, 'Ah, yes, I see I was wrong that time.' Says another, 'What I thought she was when she came to us, I was sure that she was when she went away.' Kate Lee had a settled conviction that 'the servant of the Lord must not strive.' A comrade says:-- If misunderstood, she would not justify herself, even in a way that seemed wise to me. She would not attempt to hold her own. She would stand up for others or for principle; but for herself, she trusted the Lord to bring forth her righteousness as the light, and her judgment as the noonday. She would say, 'It doesn't pay to contend for self, dear. It ruffles one's spirit and lessens one's influence. We must stoop to conquer.' I was impetuous and hot before I knew her, but her life taught me the meaning of the beatitude, 'Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.' During the last year of her life, Satan gathered his forces for a last onslaught upon Kate Lee's soul. She was stationed at the International Training Garrison in London, and her health continuing to be frail, a change was thought to be desirable for her. Therefore, she was appointed to take charge of the Home of Rest for Officers at Ramsgate. Only once before had she found it difficult to trust God concerning an appointment. As to her health, she was quite prepared to die at her post, but to leave the work of training those cadets for the field-work which she understood so well and loved with such a passion--could it be the will of God? For some weeks the clear shining of her faith and joy suffered an eclipse. She maintained a calm exterior, but, in sore spiritual distress, sent for an old, trusted comrade to come and see her. This officer tells of a very sacred interview:-- When it was convenient for us to have a quiet time in her room, she turned upon me a face marked with intense suffering. She said, 'I cannot feel this is God's will, and so I cannot be happy. I have never felt like this before in all my experience.' 'But, Katy, what have we always preached? Don't we still believe that a soul, really committed to God, cannot be moved, cannot be hurt, except by His permission? He knows you are here. If, to give up the thing you love best in life, is His test for you, can't you trust Him and not take it from man, but from Him, and say, "Thy will be done"?' Much searching communion passed between the sister-comrades, and at last in answer to the question, 'Can you not just now take life from God, just as you have done for thirty years?' Kate replied with decision, 'Why, of course I can, and _I will_.' Then the comrades rejoiced together, knelt in prayer, and when they rose, peace had returned to Kate's heart and shone out of her eyes. 'She looked ten years younger,' says her comrade. 'I had an appointment to keep and she some shopping to do. She took a basket on her arm and tripped down the street with me as gaily as the girl she was when I first knew her.' Shortly orders came to proceed to Headquarters. She was needed for training work in another part of the world. Then, sudden, unexpected illness brought her face to face with eternity. After the doctor who gave the verdict had departed, the little maid went to Kate Lee's room to see if she needed anything and found her in tears. 'Leave me a little while,' she said. Alone with her Lord, Kate Lee realized many things. There was no mistake. Gently her Heavenly Father had been loosening her hold on the sword here, in preparation for higher service. This last trial of faith had been allowed that she might know at the end of her career, as at the beginnings of her service, that she chose the will of God before her own way. By-and-by the little maid, with leaden sorrow dragging at her heart, crept back to the Staff-Captain's door. She started as she met Kate's gaze. It was full of unutterable peace and joy. She smiled and stretched out her hands. 'It is all well. God's will is peace,' she said. From that time until the end, only a few days later, except for the heat of the furnace of suffering, Satan's fiery darts missed the mark. Kate had faced and overcome the last attack of the enemy. She won through to the end. XIV OFF DUTY The Regulations of The Salvation Army provide for its officers to have, under ordinary circumstances, from two to three weeks' furlough yearly. This respite from strain upon body and soul which the work involves is brief enough; it is due to their work, and it is expected that officers should make the most of it. To assist them, the authorities have instituted Homes of Rest at pleasant seaside resorts; at these institutions, for a very moderate charge, under good conditions and healthful surroundings, a thorough rest may be enjoyed. But officers are perfectly free to make their own arrangements if they so desire. How did Kate Lee take her holidays? What spirit moved her when the pressure of responsibility for her particular charge was removed; when professionalism was, for the moment, dropped? 'Tell me about her holidays?' I asked of an old lieutenant. She replied: 'I never knew Adjutant Lee take a holiday in the usual sense of the word. If she furloughed in London, much of her time was spent in visiting her converts; if at the seaside, her Bible notes accompanied her thither, to be revised. A few years ago she and I spent a few days together in the country. For months the Adjutant had been working at very high pressure; she was too tired to read or write, but not too tired to meditate upon God and His goodness. Those five days are a precious memory to me because of the interchange of thought we enjoyed.' So that officers may take their brief furlough without attracting attention to themselves, or receiving unlimited calls for service, they lay aside their uniform. The only 'private' clothing that Kate allowed herself were two or three white blouses, a panama hat for summer, and a blue felt for winter. These she wore, with her uniform blue serge skirt and 'three-quarter' jacket. When on holiday, she often travelled in her uniform so as to have more opportunities for blessing the people. 'Tell me about Kate's holidays,' I asked, still curious of Commandant Lucy Lee. Into her eyes stole a faraway look, and after some hesitation, came vague answers. 'Well,' she began, 'last year we had our holiday together, preparing the Home of Rest at Ramsgate; the year before, Kate came to me in France. We had a lovely time visiting the hospitals and camps together; but, of course, it was not exactly a rest. And the year before that we spent them fixing up this little home. We did enjoy that. And the year before that?----' Something else unsatisfactory to my way of thinking. 'But tell about a nice restful holiday at the seaside, or in the country where, out in the open, Kate just unwound and was refreshed for her work.' 'Well'--Lucy half closed her eyes and smiled wistfully--'somehow there always seemed something to prevent plans like that. So long as we could be together and have a quiet time, we were perfectly happy.' Until the end of her life, a certain insularity clung to Kate Lee. She gloried to fight in a crowd, but she could not rest with a crowd. When set free from duty, all she longed for was some quiet corner with the protecting love of her sister--that love which perfectly understands and makes no demands--filling the days with tenderness. As her sister suggests, something generally turned up that made arrangements for real rest and change difficult to arrange. On the face of things, we might judge that in this particular Kate Lee's usual common sense and good management failed her; but to one who has seen behind the scenes, into the hidden life of this remarkable woman, it would appear, rather, that in the matter of rest, as in other affairs touching her temporal happiness, God shut her up to Himself and taught her, first for her own joy, and then through her life taught others the possibility of having nothing, and yet possessing all things. During one furlough, Kate determined to feel for herself the conditions of the very poor. To this end she spent a night amongst the women who frequent our Women's Shelter in the East End of London. Dressing in rags, she went to the door, paid her pence for a bed, passed into the long dormitory and, flattering herself that she was so well got up that she would not attract attention, sat down beside her bunk. But soon she discovered that she was the centre of discussion. 'Poor thing, she's not used to this,' mumbled an old woman, steadily surveying her. Presently another, remarking that she would need some supper, offered her a mug of tea; another, a piece of bread. She accepted the bread, but said she was not thirsty, only tired, and would go to bed. She proceeded to lie down with her clothes on. Now the women were sure she had never been there before. 'Oo ever 'eard tell of agoing to bed wif close on?' they remarked in loud whispers. But seeing the poor, tired thing would not be advised, they pitied her, told her the most comfortable way to lie, and left her alone. The details of that long night remained clear in the Adjutant's memory. The miserable seared days of these women were echoed in their sleep. Groans; curses; snatches of song; angry or weary talk, with heavy breathing troubled the night. Oh, the sorrows that follow in the wake of sin; it pressed upon Kate Lee's heart until it felt like breaking. With the first streak of dawn she rose, and noiselessly stealing out, escaped into the street. She felt cold and sick. Standing at a corner, she hailed a bus. The driver gave her a glance and drove on. She hailed another and another, but none would stop. They did not want to carry such as she. At last she managed to board a street car, and the passengers eyed her as she crouched in a corner. She knew, perhaps for the first time, what it really meant to be poor, and hungry, and despised. From that morning she believed that the very poor suffer more in spirit than in body, and she used her experience powerfully to plead their cause. One of her furloughs was spent in Sunderland. That visit is still the talk of the corps; it seemed that in those few days she laid a hand of love upon all. And how full was Kate's heart of grateful joy when she turned homeward. One of her most wonderful trophies, after fighting a splendid fight for years, had slipped back into the depths of sin. She found him desperately ill and wretched; drew him back to the Saviour; saw him restored and comforted, and held his hands as he waded the river of death, till his spirit reached the other side. Then she buried his mortal remains. Her longer furloughs, those occasioned by illness, found her the same loving, watchful, ministering spirit, as when in health. After the operation, which followed her farewell from the field, she spent a few days in hospital. Suffering much, and unable to sleep, still she noticed that one of the nurses wore a sad expression. Waiting until she came to attend to her at midnight, she engaged her in conversation, and, spiritual specialist that she was, got to the root of the nurse's trouble. She had lost faith and her life was sadly clouded. At midnight. while others slept, in that palace of pain, Kate led her nurse to the Saviour. Later, at the Officers Nursing Home at Highbury, London, she shared a room with an officer from India, and delighted in this unexpected way to come in closer touch with our missionary work. As health returned, the two officers talked India to their hearts' content. The major from the East confided her fears, that the little girls of the Industrial Home she had just left would miss their Christmas this year. 'Do not worry about it, they shall have their dollies,' replied the Adjutant. As soon as she was able to write, she sent letters to many friends, begging for dressed dolls in time to reach India by Christmas. Fifty dollies take some getting, and the number was still incomplete when the Adjutant arrived at the Bexhill Home of Rest. An officer who was resting in the Home writes:-- She was just a shadow, sweet, mostly silent, with a cheerful, heartening smile. The officers saw in her the visible proof that unrestrained service pays; that God gives good recompense for all that is done for Him. The Adjutant's quiet enthusiasm roped in ready assistance, and in good time, the dollies, beautifully dressed and packed, with additional tiny surprises were ready. She could well have been excused from such spending of time and effort, but it never dawned on Kate Lee that she needed to be excused. She gave all the time without effort, without knowing that she gave; to her it was just life. To those officer-comrades who assisted her, however, she was all gratitude. It was so splendid, she said, that they, being weary, should volunteer to do this sewing for the little Indian girls. She only saw their work, she never glimpsed her own, so utterly unselfish was her spirit. The Adjutant had hoped that her retirement from the battle's front might only be for a short time; but the nasal trouble was deep-seated, and her general health was affected. She needed a course of surgical treatment, and it was arranged for her to rest in London. Her experience somewhat resembled that of the apostle Philip, when he was caught up from the joys of a revival and set down in a desert. It was an experience difficult to understand, for her to retire, sick and wounded, to the rear, when there was so much to be done at the front of the battle, so much that she might do. But we have seen how she had fought the battle out, and she entered 'the desert,' her heart at peace with God, ready to accept any small opportunities for service that might come her way. She was too frail to attend meetings, but she took up her pen, and having leisure for the first time in her Army career, revelled in the opportunity of writing for our periodicals. Each paper received helpful contributions. In a brief article which appeared anonymously in 'The Young Soldier' we catch a glimpse of her happy spirit at this time:-- Sometimes I go to visit men who are in jail, and try to make them see that Jesus cares for them though they have done wrong. Then they talk to me. Some have told me about the mice in their cells. When they feel lonely, the prisoners are glad to have the company of even a little mouse. I am a prisoner just now, although I am not made to stay in a cell; but when an Army officer is shut away from all the poor people she loves and wants to help, it seems very much like being in a prison; but I have some little friends who come to cheer me. At least, I think they look upon me as their friend, for they come to my window and peep in at me so knowingly. Then I open the window very gently and they wait until I put some scraps from my plate on the sill, and then they have such a feast. One of my little sparrow friends is partly blind. He only seems able to see out of one eye. I guess he has been in some fight and got the worst of it. It seems very bad for a bird to fight and have to suffer; but then he did not know any better, and perhaps he was fighting an enemy bird who tried to hurt his family. One day, when I was watching my sparrow friends on the sill, to my surprise I saw a little mouse pop out of the ivy which hangs round my window. Very quickly he picked up a piece of fat that I had put there for the sparrows, and then ran off so fast; and, what do you think? he brought another little mouse with him. Now they come along about the same time each evening, just when the birds are having their supper. I know that mice like to sip milk, and once I dropped just a little milk on the window-sill for them. Oh, how they enjoyed it! You would have laughed to see what they did after that; they sat up, and rubbing their wet hands together, made what looked like a soapy lather, and washed their faces. Some small children make a fuss if only their lips are washed after a meal; they do not seem to care how sticky they are; but my mice do, they like to be clean and tidy. God's tiny creatures teach us many lessons, and if you little ones are wise you will try, as great King Solomon advised, to learn something from them all. The daughter of the house in which Kate Lee had taken rooms, attracted her. Commandant Lucy Lee lent the girl the two volumes of 'Catherine Booth: the Life of The Army Mother,' which she read with delight. In the loving, eager spirit of this school girl, Ina, Kate detected something which reminded her of her own early longings. All her spiritual mother-love went out to Ina, and she led her into the Kingdom of God, and then step by step along the way of the Cross and the highway of holiness. It was some time before permission was gained for the new convert to become a Salvationist, but gradually the parents began to recognize the beauty of a life wholly yielded to God, and became willing for their daughter to go Kate Lee's way, and all the way. Kate did not make things easy for this new recruit. When she saw the spiritual light burning brightly in her soul, and the heavenly vision leading Ina to visit the saloons, she encouraged her, and frail though she herself was, she introduced her to the best way of doing this work. An anonymous article written to 'The Warrior' shows how this corps cadet learned to fight:-- Ina's heart was filled with a great longing. She was tired, yet not satisfied, at the end of a busy Sunday. Going to and from the meetings, teaching a company of Juniors, seeking souls in the prayer meetings, and yet how little she seemed to be doing when the need was so great. Then a voice said, 'Go to the saloons, and try and win some poor drink-slave for Jesus.' How could she obey? She had never darkened the doors of such places. Brought up in a sheltered home, she had never seen the sad effects of drink, nor all the miseries that follow in its train. But the call had come, and months ago she had promised to follow where Jesus led. Securing a bundle of 'War Crys,' Ina started off, trembling at the thought of her venture. As she reached the first drink-shop with its startling sign, 'The Tiger,' the idea of entering it seemed to her agitated mind as impossible as to attack such a ferocious beast. The suggestion of leaving such a task for an older and more experienced comrade was natural; but no, the call had come; there must be no retreat. So with a prayer for wisdom and strength, she stumbled through the darkened entrance, and as the door swung open, a blaze of light dazzled her eyes. Such a sight met her fearful gaze! Men drinking, women huddled together supping the stuff that is cursing the homes and blighting the lives of little children. The whole atmosphere was repelling. The tobacco smoke, the sickly smell of beer, and the coarse jests that fell upon her ears; but her spirit rose to the attack in the name of the Lord, as the boy David of the Bible had faced the giant. There was a sudden hush as the crowd looked at this uniformed girl in an out-of-the-way district, and the murmur went round, 'Salvation Army.' 'Yes,' said the corps cadet, 'and I have come to ask you to buy a "War Cry."' 'We don't want war, Miss; we've had too much already.' 'Yes,' answered the cadet, 'but the outcome of the Salvation War means an everlasting peace.' The word peace seemed to change the atmosphere. 'We know you're all right,' a voice answered. 'You mean well. Here's a penny, miss.' And then another, and yet other hands were stretched out for a paper. Whilst she was handing round the papers, Ina's heart was going up to the Lord in prayer that each might be the means of blessing, and even directing some soul into the way of life. Then with a kindly smile and a hearty 'God bless you,' she passed out and into another bar. Here sat a military man drinking with his wife. 'Will you buy a "War Cry"'? she asked. 'No,' came the rough answer. Then turning to the wife, an appeal was made. In a nervous, confused way the woman bent her head low, and sought for a penny for the paper. The husband seemed touched by his wife's action which may have called to mind their better days. 'Well, miss, I couldn't buy a "War Cry," as I like my beer, and I don't want to be a hypocrite.' But the cadet told him he could read a 'War Cry' even if he did like his beer, but she prayed in her heart that it might be the means of making him hate his beer. The man and woman read interest and love in the young face, and as she left the place, with a 'Good-night, and God bless you,' the words echoed after her. Crossing the road with renewed energy, she was soon within the doors of 'The Little Bear,' which was known as one of the roughest houses of that quarter. Sitting in the corner was an old man whom she asked to buy a 'War Cry.' 'Yes,' he answered warmly, 'after what you did after the air raid last week, I should think I would.' Sitting huddled in another corner was a poor, wretched 'drunk,' ragged, dirty, and woe-begone. Seeing the Salvationist, and before she had opportunity of offering him a 'War Cry,' he held out a penny saying, 'Here, give us one; I like you people.' Before she left he was made to feel that The Army loved such as he--and who knows the result of that word? 'The Lion' had still to be attacked, but Ina had the value of her experience in 'The Tiger' and 'The Bear,' and no longer trembled. It was not all smooth sailing. We are not told if the lions in Daniel's den lay down perfectly still, or whether some came close to him, sniffing and snarling; but we are told that they were powerless to hurt God's child. Even in this vile place the devil could only go 'so far.' His servants seemed forced to give respect to God's messenger in spite of themselves. The saloon-keeper's wife appeared on the scene and bought a 'Young Soldier.' Ina was quick to enrol her as a customer, and now, week by week, 'The Young Soldier' is handed to her little daughter with the prayer that her father and mother may be led to God. As Ina enters the saloon bar there is a respectful hush and the little missionary is able to sow the seed. A soldier is accosted who is on leave from the trenches. He tells of his troubles, of that terrible battle when he felt his need of God. Before she leaves him a tear is seen, as he promises to seek God. Many such incidents are happening week by week as she goes on her round. Only eternity will reveal the outcome of such efforts. Is there another corps cadet who should take up this work? Corps Cadet Ina writes of the influence of her spiritual mother upon her life:-- After I had become a Salvationist and longed to work as she had worked, she accompanied me to teach me the art of successful 'saloon-raiding.' She made several bar frequenters special cases. Sometimes she got them to give her their names, and these went on our special prayer list. We had cases in the saloons as well as the bar. If she could induce them to give their addresses, she would take me with her to visit them in their homes, or would keep in touch with them by writing. We had several conversions. As we walked from one place to another, she would impress upon me the importance of keeping in the spirit. 'It is not merely selling "The War Cry,"' she would say; 'it is the grand opportunity of dropping words for God.' As we see this warrior broken in health, undergoing continual treatment of a very painful nature, yet week by week accompanying the corps cadet to saloons in a district outlying the ordinary activities of an Army corps, we realize the truth of The General's words:-- Her appetite grew by what it fed on. She loved sinners from the beginning, but she went on until she could not live without them. She was insatiable. Her soul could not be satisfied in any other way. She was always working for souls, seeking souls, knocking at the doors of mercy for souls, loving souls. The corps cadet continues:-- I thank God for sending her into my life. For years she was The Salvation Army to me, all I knew of it; and years before I was permitted to go to a Salvation Army meeting, I had determined that God and The Army would have all my life. Her life was wonderful. Even though ill and on rest she had a plan for every hour of the day. Sometimes she would visit the people. If they disappointed her she would try the harder to win them. She was always hunting round to help families in need. She spent a great deal of time in writing, and when I would persuade her to leave her desk and come for a walk, she would give me what she termed, 'Field Drill.' Oh, those talks; how I treasure the memory of them! On one of the last occasions she said to me, 'The sins of the world will do one of three things for you; they will either harden your heart, or break it, or soften it. _I want you to have a soft, tender heart_.' Sometimes she would commend me; but, as a true friend, she would also reprimand me when I needed it, yet always in love, showing me where I might be better. She taught me how to study the Bible, and infused into my heart some of her love for it. 'I mean to make the Bible my one book. It is one of my New Year's resolutions,' she told me at the beginning of this year, and at the same time mentioned a new idea which would make study of the Word of God more easy. She taught me by example, as well as by what she said, to conquer by prayer. When she was not writing articles or revising subject notes, she wrote letters to those she had been the means of blessing. Beautiful letters they were; sometimes she delighted me by dictating them and letting me type them for her. Although she found her long periods of rest trying because of her great love for souls, she maintained a bright, beautiful spirit, and had a smile whenever one saw her. She compared her last few years to a long dark tunnel, and just before she died, when anticipating her new appointment, she said, 'I really believe I'm coming to the end of it at last.' Surely one of the most beautiful pictures in Kate Lee's life is here. Ill, in a sense alone and amongst strangers, yet triumphant, filling the days with any little services that came to her hand, performing them as faithfully as she had performed her field duties in the glare of the limelight, and seeking to bring into one young life the spirit that would give to the world a warrior after her own heart, against the day that her own feet could no longer be swift and beautiful for God. XV AT HER DESK In John Wesley's house in the City Road, London, is a small room which was built expressly to be the prayer-chamber of the Founder of Methodism. When I entered the small sitting-room of one of Kate Lee's field quarters, I was conscious of feelings of reverence similar to those which possessed me in Wesley's prayer-room. There she had wrestled and prayed, planned and studied, written and interviewed callers who sought her help. It was holy ground. The sitting-room of the little home which she enjoyed for the last two or three years of her life, was a reflex of her character in modesty, simplicity, and usableness. A soft green paper covered the walls, dark lino the floor, a rug or two here and there; a writing-desk, book-case, a cottage piano, a couple of easy chairs, and a couch completed the furniture. On the walls and mantleshelf were Army photos, a print of Christ at prayer; a few treasures, 'with a meaning' (her sister explains), picked up here and there as mementoes of her furloughs; a small French bronze of Jesus carrying His cross; a petrified bird's nest, which has served as an object lesson in children's meetings, and so on. This quiet room was the dearest of retreats to Kate Lee. Here, with her sister, who anticipated her every wish and lavished love upon her, she shut the door upon the world with its turmoils, and gave herself up to study and rest. Her books were her greatest treasures. In them she enjoyed the company of the greatest and best of souls, who believed as she believed, fought for the things she counted worth while, and triumphed as she was endeavouring to triumph. Her bookshelf contained, perhaps, one hundred volumes in all; chosen, as were all her small possessions, with an eye to the highest values. A notebook furnishes a list of the books she read during her field service; they included The Founder's and The Army Mother's works, Finney's 'Revivals,' many biographies, Meyer's 'Bible Characters,' and more thoughtful studies such as Butler's 'Analogy.' How she had managed time for reading during those busy, rushed days, is revealed in a reply to a young officer who had consulted her on self-improvement. She wrote, 'I trained myself to read one chapter of some good book every day.' To sit at the desk where Kate Lee had worked, open its drawers and draw out the contents, was to discover on everything the stamp of the principles which had governed her life. Everything was in perfect order. Here is her diary, a memorandum of coming events and engagements fulfilled; and her accounts. Here a locked box; in it a tiny leather bag, holding the balance of her 'Lord's money,' with a reference to her diary for the exact amount due; also the covenant mentioned elsewhere. A much-worn 'Where Is It?' contains a record, with shorthand remarks, of every address she had delivered, in alphabetical order of the place where she had spoken. She commenced these entries at her second corps, nearly thirty years earlier, and by reference, could ascertain in a few minutes the addresses or lectures she had given on Holiness, Salvation, Social, or other subjects, whether in Sunderland, Brighton, Croydon, Thetford, or elsewhere. For her there was no unpleasant wondering as to whether she might repeat her subject on a return visit anywhere. Kate had a peculiar shyness and reserve regarding her subject-notes. They were sacred to her; she had received them on her knees 'in the mount,' often in loneliness and tears. Commandant Lucy drew out from her sister's desk three half-leather, locked volumes. She handled them gently, smiled and hesitated a moment, 'No one but Kate has ever opened these,' she said. 'Sometimes I used to tease her, and pretend to take one up, but no, until the end that was not allowed.' A key was inserted in one of the books, and it fell open. Treasure trove indeed! Six hundred pages of most carefully prepared subject-notes and illustrations on every imaginable topic that might appeal to the soul. Every page an example of method, care, and good taste. Under bold, red headings, in her shapely, flowing hand, the various subjects are classified, and set out. The second volume is similar; the third is only half filled, and turning to the end it seems as though she anticipated that this was to be her last book, for there are personal notes and entries on the chief events of her life. The latter begins, 'Born August 3, 1872; born again September 17, 1885. First bonnet, Alexandra Palace, 1887; Trade Headquarters, November 20, 1889. Commissioned Lieutenant, June 20, 1890. Chalk Farm Training Garrison, June 19, 1892.' Then follow her appointments till the last, which appears in pencil, when she was 'Awaiting appointment.' There are mottoes she chose on New Year's Day for many years. Among the number are 'Keep thy Soul Diligently'; 'Deal Courageously and Deal with the Ones '; 'Obey, Bear, Seek'; 'Stand by the Flag.' The first of the subject-notes in the last of the volumes deals with Barabbas. One sees him in the dungeon, a thief, a terror. There is a picture of the world in his day. He is called to die. Christ appears. Christ dies for Barabbas. The next notes are on 'Life. How to view it. The Servant; the Mistress; the Workman; the Master; the Soldier; the Sergeant; the Local Officer; the Officer.' Ezekiel seemed to have gripped the Adjutant's imagination during the last year of her life; she had prepared several powerful addresses from his prophecies. 'Paradise Lost' and 'Paradise Regained' provides thought for several closely-packed pages. Then follow a series of addresses to young people on Good Behaviour. I. At Home. II. In the Street. III. In The Salvation Army Citadel. IV. Toward the Opposite Sex. V. On Tobacco. VI. Reading. There are comprehensive notes on Christianity. Notes of a Session at the College for Staff Officers. Twenty closely written pages on the Bible. How written? Why so called? Written by whom? Notes on each book. Translations, etc. Madam Guyon on prayer. Many pages on 'Preaching' being expressions from master preachers, showing how to capture the souls of men. To fill over one thousand pages with careful, close writing, took time. But Kate Lee did no fancy work; she never gossiped; she kept no pets; she did not even 'garden'; she seldom went for a walk except on a mission. She cared only for those things that would forward the Kingdom of God, and while some played with shells and made sand castles that a day's tide swept away, she delved in the King's mines, finding precious things wherewith to serve the Holy War. Kate gathered in order to give out again. Her gift of expression was small at the beginning, but she so stirred it up and improved it, that, with increasing ease, she was able by both spoken and written word to express her thoughts in simple, direct English that reached hearts. The knowledge grew upon her that she would not always be able for public work, and she determined to prepare herself to appeal to souls by her pen. In her last letter to her sister, she wrote:-- There are one or two things I would like you to see to for me. In the cupboard, under my writing-desk, you will find some articles I have written. No. 1. 'Temples of Fire.' It is a subject that has been upon my soul for a long time. I did not offer this series for publication as I intended to shape it up again. I hardly know if the articles will be considered worth accepting; but if something could be done with them, I should be glad. There is another series I was trying to write on 'The Master's Locals.' You will also find, 'The Story of Jesus,' and 'Thoughts about the Cross,' and several other little articles. I am afraid none of them are up to the mark, but if anything could be done with them to help souls, I should rejoice. These manuscripts show how she spared herself no pains to prepare a message. Over and over again she would draft a sentence, a page, or an article until she felt the message to be arresting. Then she sent it forth with much love and prayer. When it appeared in print--often anonymously--sometimes under her name or initials, she delighted and wondered that God gave to her the broad platform of The Army publications. The following articles, both of which appeared in 'The War Cry,' indicate something of the fresh, crisp heart messages that she gave to saint and sinner from her platform. When pressed by editors of The Army publications for an article, she took some hours from her sleep in order to prepare them for the press. Kate did not speak from notes. She had in her Bible a few headings on a sheet of paper, but having prepared her subject with great prayerfulness, after reading the Scriptures she left the reading desk, and in the simplicity and earnestness of her pure soul, freely gave out her message. A GLORIOUS CLEANSING _'Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean'_ (Matthew viii. 2) The story of the leper is, to my mind, one of the most wonderful stories in the Bible, as it so forcibly illustrates how God looks upon and deals with sin. Leprosy was in the days of Christ an acknowledged type of sin, and we see in the condition of the leper a picture of its utter loathsomeness. I fancy I see the poor fellow outside the city gate--cut off from his home and friends. But they do not forget him, and each morning some loved one--a mother, perhaps--at an early hour comes to the gate and there places a little basket of provisions sufficient for his needs of the day. Then she goes away, and from a distance watches the poor creature draw near, and take the much-needed food. One morning the basket must, I fancy, have contained, in addition to the food, a message which, as the poor leper reads, brings a ray of hope into his wretched, weary life. The note tells of Jesus, the wonderful Christ, who is going about healing all kinds of incurable diseases, and even raising the dead to life. 'Oh, if only _you_ could _see_ Him! If only you could get near enough to Jesus, there might be a chance for you, my poor boy!' his mother may have written. As he reads, his poor face brightens as he murmurs to himself, 'Yes, I will try, I will risk all; I will chance the consequences.' Let us look at him a moment. Here is vileness indeed, a very type of impurity; and here we see how sin looks in the eyes of God. His limbs swollen, his hair white, tumours appear on his jaws, his breath noisome, and his whole person fitted to inspire loathing. Leprosy is infectious and of slow progress. It begins within the body, and throws out a moisture which corrupts the outside, and covers it with a kind of white scale. It is said that the body becomes so hot that a fresh apple held but an hour in the hand will be withered and wrinkled. The parts of the body infected become insensible, and in time fall off. The leper is conscious that he is vile. He wears the leper's garment, and day by day from his lips comes the mournful cry, 'Unclean, unclean!' Then, the leper is not only conscious of his vileness, and acknowledges it, but he despairs of cleansing. He knows that unless some Supreme Power intervenes death will ensue. It was, perhaps, his desperate condition which led this leper, of whom we speak, to break, with heroic courage, through the ceremonial law, and to expose himself to the risk of being stoned to death that he might cast himself at the Saviour's feet. See him venturing through the gate into the city to find Jesus. And when at last he approaches the place where he expected to see Jesus, he discovers to his great disappointment that the Lord has gone up the mountain side. I fancy I see the leper crouching, waiting, and watching for Jesus. At last, that wonderful Form appears, and comes down the mountain with a great crowd following. How can he get to Jesus? is the leper's first thought. With a dash and the cry,' Unclean!' which causes the crowd to make way and shrink back in horror, he rushes forward and prostrates himself at the feet of Jesus. 'Lord, if Thou wilt,' he cries, 'Thou canst make me clean.' Here we see the vast difference between curiosity and need. The crowd follow out of curiosity. The leper flings himself in abandon at Jesus' feet because of his need. _Need_ alone will make a man really come to Jesus. The soul that feels its need, and realizes its sin, will make an effort--a dash to get to God. Listen to the leper's prayer! 'Lord.' He owns Jesus as his Lord. He makes a complete, unconditional, and unreserved surrender, and feels his helplessness! Only God can save him! That is the way to come to Jesus! His was a model prayer--simple, short, direct. It was grounded in a glorious faith in the power of Christ to heal; a prayer that did not limit God; believed, indeed, that with Him nothing was impossible. It is well to recollect that God has never failed with a case yet. Those who have wandered the farthest away from Him, those who have sunk the lowest, He can restore, and will never turn His ear from a prayer fashioned like that of the leper's. I fancy I see the breathless crowd shrinking back in horror! I fancy, too, that I hear those clear, beautiful words ring forth: 'I will; be thou clean.' But Jesus not only speaks; to the astonishment of the crowd, He puts forth His hand and _touches_ the leper. That touch may have been a violation of the letter of the law, but not of the spirit. Jesus knew His touch would give healing to the leper, and not pollution to Himself. At the cry of the leper, Jesus touched him immediately, true figure of God's readiness to forgive and cleanse sin. Jesus is the same to-day. He deals with sin and the sinner in the same way. If you will come in the same spirit as the leper, His hand will be immediately stretched forth to save. When Jesus touched the leper I can picture the crowd drawing nearer. They watch the wonderful change take place. A flush passes over the leper's pale face, the despairing look gives way to an overwhelming look of joy. The cringing stoop and feeble gait change to an upright attitude and a firm tread. See him going to show himself to the priest. He is commanded to 'tell no one,' but as he goes he meets an old friend. The temptation is too great; he tells him what has happened, and then another and another. He cannot keep the truth in, but blazes it abroad. Oh! If you would find Christ you must push through the difficulties and the hindrances that would keep you away from Him. If, in the spirit of the leper, you come as you are, conscious of your sin, confessing it with faith in God's power to cleanse you, you will hear the selfsame words from those gracious lips: 'I will; be thou clean,' and immediately your leprosy, your sin, will leave you. I see the new creation rise, I hear the speaking Blood; It speaks! Polluted nature dies, Sinks 'neath the cleansing Flood. The cleansing Stream I see, I see, I plunge, and, Oh it cleanseth me! Oh, praise the Lord, it cleanseth me! It cleanseth me, yes, cleanseth me! * * * * * HARVESTS: JOY AND SORROW _'The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few'_ (Matthew ix. 37) As we read these words of the Master we fancy we can see His benign and majestic Presence as He stops and, turning round, looks not upon the beautiful harvest fields, with waving corn, but upon the vast field of the world, with its teeming masses of humanity. So many are ready to look upon the cornfields of gain, to look for something to fill their baskets and store, but hearts like the Master's are wanted that see the great harvest fields of humanity, all ripe and ready to be gathered in. Hearts are wanted that will not only go out in sentimental sympathy, but that will give a helping hand, where it is required, leaving the fields of gain, and toiling for love amidst human need. There seem to be two thoughts in the mind of the Master. As He speaks He strikes two notes--one of joy, and one of sorrow. A plentiful harvest always brings joy. Another harvest of the earth is being gathered, and as I write I am looking upon the golden cornfields, and see the men all busily engaged. Thank God for plenty! Do we praise God sufficiently for His mercies? Do we always value them? Sometimes we do not fully appreciate them until they are withdrawn. It seems to me that if the Master walked our crowded cities, He would repeat again those words, 'Truly the harvest is plenteous.' Plenty to reap; only labourers are wanted to go out. The masses are still there; the need is for some one to go to the masses. Then the note of sorrow seems to drown and spoil the note of joy. 'The harvest is plenteous'--rejoice! 'But the labourers are few'--cause for sorrow. The masses are there--the opportunity--but so few to take hold of it. Corn to be gathered in, but few reapers. The harvest was plenteous in the time of Christ, but it is even more so now. The people are waiting for us, they expect us and look to us, who are the followers of Christ, to go to their help! Oh, the open doors! Was the door of the public ear ever more ready to listen to us than at the present time? Those who once turned a deaf ear, and did not believe in us, now say, 'Yes, you are right. You have got the right thing, and are doing the right thing.' Were people ever more ready to open their doors to us than they are now? How they appreciate the visit of the Salvationist! The doors, too, of the workhouses, the prisons, the hospitals are opening more widely to us. Yes, the people are ready to open their hearts to us. The poor drunkard, as he rolls from one side of the road to the other, exclaims when he sees a Salvationist, 'God--bless--General--Booth!' The masses may not always rush as excitedly after us as they once did --there are so many counter-attractions now--but they are there. We must go to them; they need us. I have heard the story of a little boy who lost his mother, and was found lying upon her grave weeping and praying. Some one who had felt moved to do something for the motherless boy discovered him in this position. 'Jesus has sent me to you!' said the lady. 'I am going to love you as my own little boy.' 'Oh,' he said, through his tears as he looked up as though he had been expecting her, 'so Jesus has sent you! You have been a long time coming though, haven't you?' Do the sinners and drunkards feel we are a long time coming, because the labourers are too few, and you have kept back from becoming one? Above the note of joy, above the plentiful harvest, rings out so loudly the note of sorrow--'But the labourers are few!' How few in comparison to the masses! So few labourers who will put off the coat of formality, who will pull up the sleeve of ease! Few who will work by the sweat of their brow and make a sacrifice for souls! Sacrifice is needed in God's service to-day as much as ever, and never was there a more urgent call for men and women who, like our precious General, can say, 'I am never out of it; I sleep in it; I shall die in it.' Nothing worth anything can be accomplished without sacrifice. How many are there in God's service who merely look on? More are wanted who will work. The success of The Army has been because of its willingness to come down to the level of the people--to strive to save them. A reckless dying to self is what is needed. Was it not dying made the harvest? The dying is part of the success. The grain was dropped into the ground, and died before it could spring forth and produce living results. There must be the dying to sin, and to self, and self-interests. Men and women of heart are wanted--men and women, who in seeking souls will give themselves up in the spirit of the champion aviator who said, 'If I had not succeeded I should not have been here. I was determined to win, or die in the attempt.' Labourers are wanted who will dig right deep down into the heart of sorrow, and find those desires and longings after purity and goodness which even the heart itself scarcely realizes are there. In the man of the world, though one would hardly believe it as one sees the cynical look and sneer and hears him say, 'I don't want your church--your Army!' there is underneath, in spite of his apparent indifference, a longing after God and a disgust of the world. Men and women are wanted to grapple with the vast harvest--this great opportunity--and to gather in God's sheaves. Oh, to leave the world of vice and folly as naked as the earth is after the harvest! Empty public-houses! Empty gambling dens! Empty abodes of impurity! Empty slums! Empty all places where God is not! But thanksgiving in the home; the House of God filled with rejoicing people, telling out of hearts of gladness that labourers came into the fields of sin and gathered them in. Many letters, folded and handled until almost worn to pieces, but treasured above gold, lie before me. They are addressed to Kate Lee's spiritual children, to the sick, the discouraged, or those living far from an Army hall and rarely able to get to the meetings. These letters are short, often mere notes of one page, rarely running into more than two or three folios; and they are not clever. Kate had little imagination in her make up; she did not see pictures wherever her eyes lit, and never had time to give to studied composition. The value of these letters to us is that any ordinary girl, anyone with a heart 'at leisure from itself' could write such letters. Over and over again in The Army Founder's life we find him saying, 'It is _heart_ work we want. HEART work.' It is because Kate Lee's letters came from a heart full of love that they reached hearts and never failed to bless them. She had a delightful way of remembering the anniversary of some of her trophies' conversion. She called them birthdays. Here is a little scrap to a man battling bravely against ill health and other adversities:-- I am enclosing a Money Order for five shillings so that you can get some little thing for yourself or your wife. Just a little birthday gift for _your twelfth birthday_. God bless you! Keep near to Jesus and do all in your power to lead those around you to Him. Praise Him that He has kept you all these years. He is a wonderful Saviour and worthy of our praise. No work of art was so beautiful in the eyes of Kate Lee as the photographs of men and women to whom God had given 'beauty for ashes.' She writes to one:-- The photo is lovely--I am proud of you. It gives me real joy to hear that you are still wheeling your barrow around and reminding souls of Eternity. Give my love to your precious wife. To a man just lifted from a pit of sin, and whose feet still tottered, she wrote:-- I cannot call and see you as I am away until Friday night Then I shall look for you at the meeting. I have asked a comrade or so to call and see you. I am praying much for you. Hold on to God, and He will prosper you and bless you, and soon, if you only serve Him with all your heart, things will be so different with you and your dear family. To one in deep bereavement:-- I wish I had been home when the letter came so that I could have sent you word by the next post. In these trying hours I rejoice that you are fully the Lord's, and can trust Him. We cannot understand why sorrow and bereavement should touch us, but God allows it in love. She regarded the 'funniosities' of people with a large indulgence. One old comrade who had put on the uniform during her command at his corps, believed that no one could buy a jersey and cap so well as 'the dear Adjutant,' so wherever she was, he sent to her when he needed new uniform. Her Christmas remembrances did not take the form of considerable presents to special friends or comrades who might remember her in return. Rather, her love overflowed in a flood of loving messages. Calendars, leaflets, cards costing only a penny or two, with just a word of greeting, flew in all directions, carrying the remembrance of her smile, her voice, and her faith and prayer that her comrades and friends would press on through sacrifice and service to victory. But it would seem that the letters she most loved to write were to young officers and those who wished to become officers. She counselled one: 'Seek God with all your heart. If you will pay the price of letting Him have all His way, He will fill you with a passion for souls.' To a young captain she wrote a few weeks before her promotion to Glory:-- There is nothing in the world like soul-winning. If you will only give up yourself wholly to it, and let God fit you for it, He, who is no respecter of persons, can do for you as much as for any other soul whom He has called. I have found one of the greatest helps to soul-winning, next to Bible study and prayer, is the reading of helpful books. I know that the officer who does her duty to the people has little free time, but I used to make myself spend a certain time each day in study, and kept a note book to make notes of any paragraph that impressed me so that I would not forget the thoughts which inspired me. Have you read 'Tongues of Fire,' by William Arthur; S. D. Gordon's 'Quiet Talks on Prayer'? To read such books on your knees, drinking in the wonderful truths they set forth, would help you towards the realization of all your desires. Kate Lee loved girls in their teens, and they were much drawn to her. Some officers who excel in helping the rag-tag class of young people, as Kate Lee did, fight shy of those of refined training and better education. This may possibly arise from a dread lest these keen young folk may take their soundings and soon 'touch bottom' in many directions. Kate feared nothing. Common-sense, an even balance, and true love count most with the young, and of these qualities she had abundance. Major Mary Booth says:-- Dear Angel Adjutant! How I loved her! Miriam and I, when we were in our early teens, did several week-ends for her and I was much impressed by her love for the poor. Her zeal, and the influence of it, remains with me to-day. After the meetings were over, Miriam and I, when taking supper with the Adjutant, often stayed till one o'clock in the morning, listening to her tales of the poor drunkards. I remember specially one night, she tried to drag us to bed, but we finished by getting her to sit down on the stairs and tell us some more of her thrilling experiences. The following extracts from letters show her winsome way of helping them to aim at the best things:-- I have started a series of articles on the 'Five Senses,' and felt you would like to help me. Will you keep your eyes open for illustrations bearing on the subject, spiritual or otherwise, and pass them on to me. I have the subject in my mind and keep finding fresh material for it; if you will help me, you will have a share in the outcome by and by, if the idea develops satisfactorily. From another letter:-- I am sending you 'The Life of The General.' It is only a cheap copy, but I saw it on the bookstall last night, and thought you would like to have it. It is so wonderful to see how God raised him up and used him as His instrument. It shows what wonderful things God can do when one is fully yielded to Him, and what responsibility rests upon us each. If William Booth had held back, we see what he would have missed, and his great work would have been left undone. Still another:-- I am feeling concerned about you. You must not let yourself get down. Nerves can be conquered, and you know where to get strength to rise above them. I am praying for you and believe God will do great things for you. Do not be surprised that training is necessary and that the training comes in the way we should prefer not. Then she turns the girl's thoughts away from herself and concludes with, 'Pray for me.' XVI UNEXPECTED ORDERS Kate Lee's last five years were as the life of a bird with a broken wing. She struggled hard to do as she had ever done, but again and again had to admit that her strength had failed. Following the operation which closed her work on the field, she spent a year under drastic and painful surgical treatment. When sufficient strength was recovered to enable her to undertake an appointment under the eye of her doctor, she was promoted to the rank of Staff-Captain and saw two brief periods of service at the International Training Garrison in London, and a few months in the Candidates' Department at Headquarters. Then another breakdown, and another year's furlough. Her health again improving, to her great delight the Staff-Captain was re-appointed to the Training Garrison, this time as Secretary of Field Training. Twelve months of golden service followed. She revelled in her work amongst the women cadets, who, under her holy, gracious influence, were trained in the arts of service on the field. She had a remarkable influence upon the cadets. They knew her record, and accepted her because of that; but coming close up to her they rejoiced in her as a teacher and a leader because of what they found her to be. The cadets delighted in her classes. She made the field work appear to be the most glorious calling on earth. She inspired the weakest girl with hope that she might rise and excel if she would be at pains to grip herself and make the most of the talents and opportunities God had given her. She held herself up as an example of what God can do with a timid girl who was so entirely yielded to Him as never to say 'I can't.' The air raids on London were very severe during that twelve months. One Saturday night, Leyton suffered terribly, and on Sunday morning, Staff-Captain Lee with a detachment of cadets arrived to minister to the needs of the terrified, and in many cases, homeless people. The police at once gave them right-of-way in the distressed area. There were lodgings to arrange for people whose homes were in ruins, letters and messages to send to anxious relatives, terrified little children and the elder people to comfort and provide food for. The Staff-Captain was in her glory. Her cheerful face, ringing voice, and capable management had a remarkably soothing and steadying effect upon the distressed people, while the cadets revelled in the service she set them to perform. To be included in a campaign led by Staff-Captain Lee was a great delight to the cadets chosen for this privilege. This the twelve sergeants [Footnote: Probation Officers selected to assist in the work of Training.] enjoyed in the recess between the sessions. Southend, during holiday season, was the place chosen for the attack. House-to-house visitation, open-air 'bombardments' among the holiday crowds, and great meetings in the citadel were included in the attack. The first to lead the way of eighty seekers for pardon or purity was a little child, unaccustomed to Salvation Army meetings. Dressed in white, with wistful, earnest face, the little one had listened to the Staff-Captain's message, and when the invitation was given she came forward, looking up to the platform with inquiring, wondering eyes. Then at the penitent-form the Staff-Captain pointed the little one to Jesus. She loved to rescue the drunkard and criminal from the pit of sin, but to lead a little child to the Saviour was the dearest joy of all to Kate Lee. The following day she visited the child in her home; her parents both sought the Lord and became Salvation soldiers. The Staff-Captain's example amongst the cadets was more powerful than her word. One tells of a week-end visit to Shepherd's Bush with a brigade, and one of her local officers asking if she couldn't spare half a day to visit his home, to which she replied, 'You know me better than to think that is in my line.' She was away with her cadets by eight-thirty next morning. Many are the loving, tender memories of the cadets she trained. Those who, by reason of long distance or for other reasons, could not go home for Christmas, reckoned they were privileged to remain at the garrison because of the tender love Staff-Captain Lee expended on them, whom she feared might feel lonely and deprived at the Christmas season. After recess came a transfer for a few months to The Army's Holiday Home at Ramsgate, where it was hoped that the good air and freedom from heavy responsibility would re-establish her health. The officers to whose comfort she ministered during the holiday months, recall sweet memories of her influence. One says:-- She was wonderfully gentle in spirit. But about her was a strength and authority that made one feel all the while the presence of a superior soul; that one must be at his best in her company. In guiding the conversation at the table she showed a winsome discretion; pleasant, bright topics were the order; she enjoyed wholesome fun and encouraged it, but unkind criticism and sarcasm could not live under her eyes. Another writes of her sweetness to the little children who stayed in the Home; how they remembered the stories she told them, and her quaint little grace before meals, which they adopted for home use. Receiving word to return to London and prepare for a foreign appointment, she came on wings of joy. Her doctor gave her a reassuring report, and to her friends she sent notes of pure happiness, telling that at last after six years of hoping against hope, her doctor had given her a clean 'bill of health' and she was well enough for service in any part of the world. She had not the strength of former days for field work, but somewhere in America, Australia, or Canada, she was to be appointed to training work. How she would love the girls committed to her charge. How she would pray over them, travail in spirit for them, until she saw the passion of Christ born in them, and they go out to do the work that had been her delight. Her face glowed with joy; her eyes sparkled; her feet skipped; her hand gripped as she told her comrades, 'I'm good for ten years yet.' She went to her dressmaker with the palpitating joy of a bride-elect. She sorted her papers; tore from their mounts and rolled the photos of her field associations; chose a few of her favourite pictures and packed them. All was ready, and waiting orders she spent the days at her desk, or visiting her spiritual children. She appeared to be so well. Then, bronchitis, which foggy weather always induced, laid her up for some days. Her sister Lucy watched her with a strange misgiving at her heart. Kate had always been of an independent disposition, had despised breakfast in bed, but for a week or two she accepted this indulgence without resistance. The least noise pained her, and the loving, mother-sister crept about in soft slippers, pondering things in her heart but saying nothing, until one morning she declared, 'Little dear, I think it's more than a bottle of bronchitis medicine you need; I'm going to ask the doctor to call.' Kate was resting somewhat listlessly, but at that word she rose, the commander in every tone of her voice. 'Indeed, no! I'm not very grand this morning, but not that. If you're late for the office, of course you must give a reason, and no idea that I'm not fit must get around.' 'But----' persisted Lucy. 'Well, you can go to-night if you still feel so,' compromised Kate, and smiled her sister away. The following day the doctor called, and gave an opinion that hastened a specialist to the tiny cottage. He was a kind man and shrank from giving a verdict that meant a full stop to this precious life. An immediate operation was the only hope to save life, and this was arranged. From the first, Kate Lee felt she was going "Home." She wrote to a special friend, 'I have my appointment; very different from what I expected; but all's well. I am in His will.' The comrade hastened to her to learn the news, 'Where are you going?' she asked. 'To another country altogether--to Heaven,' she replied. There was a wondrous peacefulness about the little home as those two gentle women made preparations for the hospital. Kate's last day at home was spent chatting with her sister, writing letters settling personal affairs, and resting. Down to the very brink of the River she wrestled for souls. The last letter she wrote that day was to Lieut.-Colonel Mary Bennett, of the Women's Social Work, in London, whose interests she had enlisted in a woman addicted to drugs. She writes, 'I am feeling concerned about her. I meant to do my part fully in helping you, and am grieved to fail you in this way.' Then she mentions her sudden illness and continues on the subject of self-denial (Self-Denial Week was to begin the following Saturday),' I was trying to give you a little surprise, and, as I have no special target this year, felt I would like to do a little for your home. As this has come it will not be much I am afraid, but I have three pounds for you which we have both collected. My sister will bring it over.' Her personal Self-Denial gift had gone to give another corps a lift. She was full of hope that the corps were having a good Sunday. The morning of her last day at home, the corps cadet whom she had come to call 'my little Leff,' was with her. She writes:-- I will never forget that talk; she went over the names of her dear, saved drunkards, one by one, giving me messages for some I would see. She urged me to continue praying for them, if the Lord called her Home. She said it would be a luxury to slip away; then, sitting up in bed and looking right into my face, she said, 'Little Leff, _those are the people I want you to live for. You do, and you will love them, won't you?_' With the tears running down my face, I promised that I would do so. A few days under observation at the Mildmay Hospital, to which she was admitted and cared for with much tenderness not only for Christ's sake, as is the purpose of that excellent institution towards sufferers, but for her work's sake, then came the operation. The warrior spirit entered into fires of suffering that she had not hitherto felt; but while the flesh shrank, her faith triumphed. Her sister, who had hovered about her bed during the week, spent the Sunday with her. Even then, those women held themselves at attention at the call to service, and, at the request of the Sister of the ward Kate occupied before the operation, Commandant Lucy left her sister's side and conducted a service with the patients. Kate felt that she had not much longer to live, and reaching for her writing pad and pen, she wrote a last message of love for her sister and brother. Her sister found the letters in her blotter after Kate had 'gone home.' To her she wrote:-- I am writing this line in case I do not see your dear face again, as I want you to have a last message of love. It will not be long until we meet again, and you can think of me watching for you. I do not want to leave you all alone, but the thought that to-morrow I may see His face thrills my soul, and it would be easy to slip away. I am very tired, but I want to finish my course, and am quite willing to face the struggle again if it is His will.... Now, my own treasure, I cannot write more, but must say one great big thank you for all you have done for me, and for all the love you have lavished upon me. The next morning when Lucy saw Kate again, she was sure that soon her precious sister would see the King in His beauty. What the separation would mean to her no one would fully know; but, as ever, forgetful of herself, she sat beside her, smiled and said brightly, 'Little love, if you see mother before I do, tell her I'm coming.' Back came Kate's ready smile, and she replied, 'Rather!' so naturally that for a moment it seemed impossible that she was on the borderland of earth. But soon the brave spirit became troubled. 'What is it, little love?' asked Lucy. 'Oh, the people, the people! _I haven't the heart to send them away_.' moaned Kate. Her mind was wandering, and the ruling passion of her life, in death was strong upon her. She was out amongst the crowds, seeing their sins and their sorrows, and their needs, and in a dim way was conscious that she no longer had power to serve them. 'Darling, do not worry any more; you have loved them and sought them all these years, and now you're going to rest,' said Lucy. The words reached her ears, but she shook her head, _'I haven't the heart to send them away,'_ she moaned. Faithful, brave little follower of The Army's Founder, in life; even to her deathbed there came an echo from his. In his blindness, William Booth had mourned to his daughter, 'Oh, the sins, the sins of the people!' He went into eternity, sighing for the sins and sorrows of the world. But further back than the human, we can trace this spirit. The Saviour, looking upon a multitude of needy souls, is saying, _'I have compassion on the multitude; I cannot send them away.'_ William Booth caught the spirit of Christ; he lived it; breathed it into thousands of his followers, of whom there has not fought and triumphed in life and death a truer saint and soldier than Kate Lee, the Angel Adjutant. We conclude this sketch of her career with some words of General Bramwell Booth: 'I pray that many of those who knew her, and of those who did not know her,' he says, 'may be stirred up by the testimony of her life and death to walk in the same path, and so glorify God and bless their fellows.' 
30295	----	THE SOCIAL WORK OF THE SALVATION ARMY BY EDWIN GIFFORD LAMB, A.B. Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Political Science Columbia University New York 1909 COPYRIGHT, 1909 BY EDWIN GIFFORD LAMB PREFACE. I use the word "Social" in the title of this work to suggest that, save in an auxiliary way, I am not attempting to describe the religious features of the organization. Such a field of investigation would prove a very profitable and interesting one, but it is a field, which, for the sake of clearness and impartial study, should be kept separate. The organization itself recognizes the primary division. Commander Booth-Tucker, the leader of the Army in the United States from 1896 to 1904, says, "The Salvation Army is the evolution of two great ideas: first, that of reaching with the gospel of salvation the masses who are outside the pale of ordinary church influence, and second, that of caring for their temporal as well as spiritual interests."[1] I have secured very little data from books, as there is but little authentic literature on the subject. Primarily, the data for this treatise were taken from personal observation. In pursuing the subject I have visited Salvation Army social institutions of every description. In addition to visiting the larger cities of the United States and the three Army colonies, situated in Ohio, Colorado and California, respectively, I have investigated the work in London, where the Army had its origin, and at the farm colony in Hadleigh, on the river Thames, some thirty miles from London. I have slept in the hotels, worked in the industrial homes, wandered over the farm colonies, and mingled with the inmates of other types of Army institutions. Nov., 1909. E. G. L. FOOTNOTES: [1] Pamphlet "The Salvation Army in the United States." TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE. Preface 5 Introduction 7-15 CHAPTER I The Salvation Army Industrial Department 16-62 CHAPTER II The Salvation Army Hotels and Lodging Houses 63-98 CHAPTER III The Farm Colonies of the Salvation Army 99-116 CHAPTER IV The Salvation Army Slum Department 117-121 CHAPTER V The Salvation Army Rescue Department 122-126 CHAPTER VI Some Minor Features of the Salvation Army Social Work 127-131 CHAPTER VII Conclusion 132-139 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. The Salvation Army was founded by William Booth in London, England, in 1865. Previous to this time Mr. Booth had been a successful clergyman in the Methodist Church, and had become widely known throughout England as a revivalist. As time passed, he had become more and more interested in the condition of the un-churched masses, and as his church did not approve of his taking up work among the masses in connection with it as an organization, he had, in 1861, separated from the Methodists. With little support, he established in London what was known as The Christian Mission. From the first, numbers of converts were made, and soon several missions were established in London, and other cities of England. From the first, too, the agency of women was an important feature. Especially was this true in visitation among the lower classes. In regard to the foundation of the Army itself and in connection with its earlier successes, much credit must be given to Mrs. Booth, the wife of William Booth. She became as noted a speaker and revivalist as her husband, and together, they made plans for the movement. Unfortunately she died of cancer in 1890. Through these early years of the movement its management, almost unconsciously, developed along lines that were military in form. At first the title of "Captain" was used among the sailors and fishermen to designate the local leader of the company, and then it was extended wherever, among the rough element, the "Mr." or "Rev." would seem out of place. The usage and the spirit accompanying it soon spread, and by the year 1879 military methods and titles were officially added. The Rev. Wm. Booth, who, up to this time, had been known as "Superintendent of the Christian Mission," became "General" Booth, and the "Mission" became the "Salvation Army."[2] This addition of military methods seems to have accelerated the movement by favoring efficient and systematic control. Soon after this time, we find, the organization had spread to the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Scandinavia, Germany and Italy. Then missionary work was taken up in India, and later on, in Africa, Java and Japan. At the present time (1908), according to its reports, the Army occupies fifty-two different countries and colonies. In no country has its rate of progress been more remarkable than in the United States, where in point of numbers, the local organization now ranks second only to that of Great Britain.[3] Along with the rapid growth went a differentiation almost as rapid and unique as the growth itself. In fact, both reacted on each other. The work was separated first into three main departments, viz.: Spiritual, Social and Trade. It will be necessary to make a brief statement of this differentiation in detail. In the Spiritual Department we have the extension of the original idea, that of converting the people. Corps, as the different religious groups were called, sprang up and multiplied until even the smaller towns were occupied. Converts were added by hundreds and thousands. Large numbers of the brightest and best of these converts were utilized in extending the work still further, and after undergoing a brief training, were sent out, some to aid the movement in the mother country, others to begin the work in different parts of Europe and in America, and still others as missionaries to all parts of the world. Meanwhile, the work in each local organization or Corps, became systematized, and the Corps were united into Sections or Divisions, the Divisions into larger districts called Provinces, and the Provinces into Commands, which for the most part controlled the territory of an entire country. Each of these divisions from the Corps to the Command, was delegated to an officer who had sole charge, and who was responsible to the officer above him. For example, the United States, at present, is divided into two Commands; the first extending from New York to Chicago; the second from Chicago to the Pacific Coast. The first Command has six Provinces; the second, four. Each Province has from three to nine Divisions, and each Division contains a number of Corps. Thus, while each Corps is complete in itself, the general administration is very highly centralized; so much so, that an order from General Booth at the National Headquarters, London, England, must be obeyed by every Corps in the world. While the organization of the Spiritual Department was taking place in this manner, the Social Work was assuming large proportions, and differentiating itself. Visitation in the lower parts of the cities was organized into a regular department of Slum Work, called the Slum Department, with a specialized corps of officers. Work among fallen women was instituted as the Rescue Department, with its rescue homes and trained workers. The establishment of hotels and lunch counters for both men and women became finally what is now the Social Department. The wood yards and small factories, together with the salvage depots and cheap stores, were organized into the Industrial Department. Work among the children resulted in the establishment of kindergartens and orphanages. The colonization enterprise took root, and was divided into the industrial colonies and farm colonies. Thus, we have here a differentiation of the original Social Department into six distinct divisions, which we shall consider separately in this treatise. As these lines of work advanced, although each had its special group of workers, it was natural that the work should follow the administrative system of Commands, Provinces, Divisions and Corps, which had already been marked out in the Spiritual Department. The third primary division, that of trade, has had some interesting developments. There is, for example, the trade carried on in articles necessary to the members of the Army themselves, and which they cannot conveniently obtain in the open market, such as uniforms, badges, books and musical instruments. The Reliance Trading Company, for instance, was incorporated in 1902, under the laws of the State of New Jersey. This company owns and publishes the "War Cry," the official gazette of the Army in the United States; does the printing for the various departments of the Army; manufactures fountain pens; makes uniforms, bonnets and hats for the Army members; conducts an Insurance Department, and carries on other business enterprises.[4] There is, too, the trade in the products of the various factories and industries connected with the relief work of the Army. For example, the Salvation Army Industrial Homes Company, incorporated in New Jersey, has greatly facilitated the industrial work in the United States. There have been companies formed and organized as building societies, insurance companies, and a Salvation Army Bank. In all these companies the Salvation Army, through its officers, always has control, although it invites and seeks investments from the public. The following extract, taken from a prospectus sent out by the Salvation Army Industrial Homes Company, illustrates the point: "The Charter of our Industrial Homes Co. has been prepared by Messrs. Jas. B. Dill & Co., the eminent corporation lawyers, who have kindly given us the full benefit of their skill and experience, at a fairly nominal charge. The capital consists of $500,000.00, divided into 50,000 shares, of the par value of $10.00 each, of which 25,000 are in 6% cumulative preferred stock and 25,000 in common stock. Only the preferred shares are offered to the public, and bear interest at 6%, which is guaranteed by the Army. The common shares are held by the Army, with a view to retaining the control of the company, and the entire profits, over and above the interest on the preferred stock, are thus devoted to the charitable and religious work of the Army, and help us to continually expand and enlarge our homes." ... "We shall be happy to supply any information or answer any questions as to the financial standing of the Salvation Army. For our spiritual and social operations in the United States, we have now an annual income of nearly $2,000,000.00, while the value of our real estate holdings in this country amount to about $1,500,000. Hence, it will be seen that in guaranteeing the interest upon these preferred shares, amounting in all to only $15,000.00, we are abundantly able to insure the regular payment of the same apart, altogether, from the income of our industrial homes." As a result of this rapid growth along the three lines described, the movement everywhere forced itself upon public recognition. The publication of its weekly organ, the "War Cry," in many different languages and countries aided its growth. Other magazines of higher class and better quality were issued. At the same time, the public press investigated the organization, and for a long time criticised it harshly. In fact, during all this time, while so successful, the Army suffered much persecution. The crowds of people composed of those whom it was seeking to benefit, seemed often to be its worst enemies, and then, to make matters more difficult, the police, we are told, instead of furnishing protection, often, themselves, joined in the persecution. There were many instances, in this early period, where the enthusiastic reformers were ill treated and even fatally injured. There was, however, some reason for all this persecution. A movement so sudden and apparently so contrary to existing institutions, needed time for its real principle to become known. The external manifestation seemed to consist of nothing but defiant disregard of established religious custom and ceremonial. Thus, while the vital principle of love for humanity was working its way into individual lives and attracting them to the ranks of the organization, the world at large openly showed its antagonism. Gradually, however, the sense of public opposition and antagonism grew less. Gradually the knowledge that, behind the superficial emotionalism, were depths of disinterested sympathy for fellow men and women worked itself into the public mind. Attacks on Army groups on street corners became less frequent, and when they did occur, were suppressed by the police. The press ceased its bitter criticism. It was about this time that renewed and increased attention was focused on the new movement by the publication in 1890 of General Booth's famous book, "In Darkest England, and the Way Out." In some ways the book served to mark a new epoch in the development of that part of practical sociology which concerns itself with the direct betterment of the lower class of society. The old method of dealing with the poor is ably described by Ruskin, when he says: "We make our relief either so insulting to them, or so painful that they rather die than take it at our hands; or, for third alternative, we leave them so untaught and foolish, that they starve like brute creatures, wild and dumb, not knowing what to do, or what to ask."[5] This was a point of view which in its relation to the degraded elements of society was an expression of sympathy rather than of harsh criticism and mistrust. Although it had been set forth by others previously, it had never before forced itself so strongly on the public. In addition, the daring statements and bold theories, given utterance in "Darkest England," served to surprise all schools of reform. The public consciousness had never before faced the problem in such a way. It was aroused, and began to ask questions. The book ran through edition after edition. It was printed in a cheap form and within a short time was circulated all over the civilized world. In his "scheme" General Booth laid down seven fundamental principles, which he claimed were essential to success. They were as follows: 1. The first principle that must be bore in mind, as governing every scheme that may be put forward, is that it must change the man, when it is his character and conduct which constitute the reasons for his failure in the battle of life. 2. The remedy, to be effectual, must change the circumstances of the individual, when they are the cause of his wretched condition, and lie beyond his control. 3. Any remedy worthy of consideration must be on a scale commensurate with the evil with which it proposes to deal. 4. Not only must the scheme be large enough, but it must be permanent. 5. But while it must be permanent, it must be made practicable. 6. The indirect features of the scheme must not be such as to produce injury to the persons whom we seek to benefit. 7. While assisting one class of the community, it must not seriously interfere with the interests of another.[6] General Booth's personal attitude, also, is well worth noting. In the preface of his book he makes the following statement: "I do not claim that my scheme is either perfect in its details, or complete in the sense of being adequate to combat all forms of gigantic evils, against which it is, in the main, directed. Like other human things, it must be perfected through suffering; but it is a sincere endeavor to do something, and to do it on principles, which can be instantly applied and universally developed."[7] And again, in view of some of the manifestations of the organization as we see it, the following is interesting, as coming from its founder. He says: "But one of the grimmest social problems of our time should be sternly faced, not with a view to the generation of profitless emotions, but with a view to its solution."[8] Upon the publication of this book there arose a division of opinion in regard to the scheme which was set forth. On the one hand, numbers of noted philanthropists aided General Booth with money and moral support. On the other hand, there was opposition from a certain class of reformers, headed by that eminent scientist, Thomas Huxley. This opposition, however, did not so much attack the principles advocated, as the agency for their application, namely, the Salvation Army, itself, characterized in Huxley's words as "Autocratic socialism, masked by its theological exterior."[9] From that time to the present many thoughtful men have continued this opposition to the Army as an agent of social service. Further on we shall consider the validity and strength of their arguments. At that time the press on all sides took up the controversy, and it was finally decided to appoint a committee of investigation to thoroughly examine the Army's methods and institutions and publish a report. This committee was composed of some of the leading business and public men of England, headed by Sir Wilfred Lawson. They examined the books of the Army and studied the system and methods of the movement. They reported that all was entirely satisfactory and not only so, but that the movement and work was worthy of commendation.[10] The report of this Committee, together with a demonstration of the work already accomplished, served to silence the critics to some extent, and public favor began to turn toward the movement. Since that period the Army has had, generally speaking, the support of the press and many of the leading men throughout the world, a support which it has not been slow to recognize, or to utilize. For instance, about this time, we find the following appeal issued through the English press: "From personal witness or credible report of what General Booth has done with the funds entrusted to him for the Social Scheme which he laid before the country eighteen months ago, we think it would be a serious evil if the great task which he has undertaken should be crippled by lack of help during the next four months. We therefore venture to recommend his work to the generous support of all, who feel the necessity for some serious and concentrated effort to grapple with the needs of the most wretched and destitute, who have so long been the despair of our legislation and our philanthropy." This appeal was signed by the Earl of Aberdeen, who was then Governor-General of Canada, and fifteen other men and women of international reputation. As an example of the attitude of the press, we find the London Daily Telegraph, in the midst of a long editorial entitled, "The General's Triumph," saying, "There is no question about it, the General has become popular. He has justified himself by results. We are told he has not shown the way out, but few have done so much to let the light in, and to bring with it life and healing."[11] Since the publication of "In Darkest England" in 1890, the social work of the Army has been extended, and has grown very rapidly.[12] In connection with this rapid growth, the social phase of the movement has tended to eclipse the spiritual in the public eye. The Army has taken advantage of this to advertise its advancement along all lines, and there is reason for believing that the public support of the whole movement, both social and spiritual, at the present time, is largely due to this advertising.[13] In any case, the social work of the Army is a movement large enough to justify the interest of the public, and the extensive study of every student of practical social economy. FOOTNOTES: [2] "Social Relief Work of the Salvation Army in the U. S.," p. 5. [3] "Life of William Booth," p. 57. [4] "Social Relief Work of the S. A. in the U. S." [5] "Sesame and Lillies," p. 101. Cf. also "The New Movement in Charity," Am. Jour. Soc. III, p. 596. [6] "In Darkest England," pp. 85-87. [7] _Ibid._, preface. [8] _Ibid._, p. 15. [9] "Social Diseases and Worse Remedies." [10] "The committee of 1902 which inquired into certain aspects of the Darkest England Scheme two years after its initiation, were careful to state that they did not enter upon any consideration of the many economic questions affecting the maintenance of the system sought to be carried out." (The Salvation Army and the Public, p. 121.) [11] "London Daily Telegraph," July 6, 1904. [12] In fifteen years, from 1890 to 1905, the social work grew from a few small scattered institutions, to 687 institutions, many of which alone would have greater accommodation than the total in 1890. [13] See "The S. A. and the Public," ch. 3. CHAPTER I. THE SALVATION ARMY INDUSTRIAL DEPARTMENT. Originally the work now known as the Industrial Work was handled with and under the same management as the Social Work, but as the movement grew, the Industrial Work branched out and finally became separate in operation and management, the name "Social Department" being retained for the hotel work only. The Industrial Department itself may be divided into three sections, all under the same management. These are The Industrial Home, The Industrial Store and The Industrial Colony. The object of the work embraced in these three divisions as stated in the prospectus sent out by the Army two years ago is: "One of the most difficult problems that has confronted the Salvation Army has been the finding of employment for out-of-works and human derelicts in our cities. A system has been gradually organized by which this human waste is employed in collecting the material waste of the city. This latter has been sorted, sifted and sold, and temporary employment thus afforded to thousands of stranded persons, who have thus been tided over periods of distress, relieved of immediate suffering, saved from the stigma of paupers, assured of human sympathy, and given a new start in life."[14] After a careful review of the various divisions of this work, above mentioned, we shall consider whether the object is being attained, and of what value the work done is to society. In the formation of the Industrial Home the ideal building and situation cannot always be secured; hence there are differences in the planning and disposition of the different homes. The general plan, however, is to have a three or four-story building fitted up as follows: On the ground floor is a space where the wagons filled with waste materials can unload, a large room where furniture can be repaired and stored (unless this is done in the basement below), an office, and another large room to be used for a retail store. On the second floor is the sorting room, and adjoining or connected with it is the baling room, where such stuff as paper, rags and excelsior is pressed, ready to be taken away. On this floor, too, is to be found the kitchen, the dining room and the reading room. On the third floor are situated the dormitories and sleeping rooms. This plan is often varied. Sometimes there is a basement and only one or two stories above. Sometimes, as in the Forty-eighth Street home in New York, there are six or seven stories, and sometimes, as in one home in Chicago, the sleeping and living quarters of the men are entirely separate from the warehouse where they work, possibly some blocks away. The kitchen is nearly always found to be large and furnished with a good range and other facilities. The dining room contains long, plain tables, set so that the men can sit on both sides. The dishes are of thick, strong ware. The food is plain but good. Everything from the floor to the dishes is usually clean. The sleeping rooms are of two kinds, individual rooms and dormitories. Those men who are of a better rank, that is, those who have been working long, or who are doing a higher grade of work, and those who have "boss" positions, occupy the separate rooms; while the general class of workers sleep in the dormitories. When it comes to the question of pure air, considerable difficulty arises. Some of the separate rooms have no outside window, though the partitions between the rooms rise only to a certain height, thus giving common air to the whole floor. Even where good ventilation facilities exist, it seems difficult to make the men keep the windows open. As regards ventilation, however, the industrial homes are, as a rule, better than the lower class workingman's hotels, and are improving in this respect. The beds are iron, single beds. The bed clothing and the rooms themselves are clean and fumigated regularly. A reading room is also provided where daily papers and popular magazines are kept, and where the men may write. In some cases, a smoking room adjoins. Meetings of a devotional character, to which the men may come or not as they see fit, are often held in the reading room. The support that renders the industrial home possible is the waste product of the city. This material is rubbish of all kinds imaginable. In connection with each industrial plant are kept a number of horses and wagons, mostly one-horse wagons. Each driver of a wagon has a definite route to cover regularly. Passing over his route, he collects everything of which people are glad to be rid. Waste paper, old clothes, old furniture, and the like, are the principal articles he collects. Many good people, persuaded of the good work the Army is doing, save up their store of odds and ends until the Army wagon shall call, often giving things away which they would not have thrown away or given any one else, unless it would be to sell them to an old-clothes man. The driver returns with his load to the warehouse. From his wagon the material is conveyed by means of an elevator to the sorting room in the second story, whence the greater quantity goes at once to the baling machine in the form of waste paper. Any articles that may be of use, such as shoes, clothing of any kind, books, crockery-ware, bottles, pots, kettles, etc., are placed in their respective bins and finally, repaired, find their way to the retail store. Heavy articles, such as stoves and furniture, do not go up in the elevator, but are retained on the first floor, where they go, first to the repairing and storage room, and then out to the stores. The paper and rags, when baled, are sold to the nearest paper mill for a good price. Some idea of the amount of this class of material may be gained from the fact that the average amount of paper sold by the Industrial Department in the United States is about 2,500 tons per month. In England and other countries this work has not assumed such large proportions, but there is some difference between the workings of the industrial plant in the City of London and in New York. For instance, at the Salvation Army plant on Hanbury Street, Whitechapel, London, we found, in 1906, a planing mill, a paint and furniture shop, a mattress factory, and a sawmill and cabinet shop. This place had employment for ninety men, of whom twelve were regularly employed and the remainder were transients. The regular employees were paid at a union rate of wages. The men of this industrial plant lived some distance away on Quaker Street, having possession of part of the Salvation Army shelter or hotel there, the total accommodation of which was two hundred and forty. Again, in a different part of the city, over near Deptford, was a wood yard with good machinery, run by electricity, which employed anywhere from sixty to seventy men making kindling wood. On the other hand, at the "Spa Road Elevator," was a plant almost identical with the industrial plants in the United States, where were shipped out an average of 100 pounds of paper every week and several tons of rags in addition, and where was accommodation for some two hundred men. Branching out from the main industrial plant are nearly always to be found large stores. These are Salvation Army retail stores. These stores are found in the poorest sections of the city, and are patronized by the poorest class. Articles of all descriptions may be purchased here at a very low figure. In each store is a furniture department; a clothing department for men, women and children; a toy department; a department for stoves, pots, etc., and sometimes other departments varying with the size of the store. It is possible, thus, for a poor family moving into the neighborhood to completely furnish themselves and their home from Salvation Army stores at a cost of often less than one-half of what they would pay elsewhere. Each store has a definite connection with the central industrial plant, from which it receives its supplies, its workers and its government, for the stores are merely branches of the central work, and all are under the same general management. An interesting feature lies in an examination of the labor which is employed. From the cases given at the end of the chapter, it will be seen that it consists of all kinds, classes and nationalities, who, through their own recklessness, or by unfortunate circumstances, have fallen into want. A man willing to work comes to the Army in want of food and shelter, and the Army happens to have accommodation for him. He may go to one of the men's hotels or to the industrial home, or to the central agency of the Army. In any case he will probably be interviewed by an officer specially detailed for the purpose, who will be able to decide in short time what his needs are, and what can be done for him. He may be sent out at once to take some position secured through the employment bureau; he may be sent to the hotel with the understanding that, after being fed and cared for, he will be given an opportunity to pay for it in work; or he may be sent straight to the industrial home. In any case, if possible, he is put to work. He may be in a weak condition physically or mentally, or both, but even then, he can often do something; such, for example, as picking over paper and rags in the sorting room. Meanwhile, he is being fed and housed. If he means well and works earnestly, he is soon able to do some other grade of work. He may have had technical knowledge which will help him. In a few days, possibly, a call is made to the employment bureau, which is maintained in conjunction with each home or group of homes, for a man to fill some position. If suitable, this man may be sent out to take it. On the other hand, he may be retained in the home and employed permanently as a driver on one of the wagons, or as overseer and instructor in one of the rooms, or he may be sent out as assistant to one of the stores, and, in time, he may be given charge of a store. When the men first come to the home, they receive board and clothing and some remuneration, although very slight. If they continue to work at the home, they are paid wages ranging from $1.00 per week up to $4.00 or $5.00 per week, besides board and lodging in the United States, and from 1s. to 9s. in England. When a man is able, but is lazy and not willing to work, he is turned out. It is well known to those who have studied the question, that there are a large number of such men, but this class does not apply for help as often as it might to the Army, as it soon learns the uselessness of so doing. The officers become quite adept in seeing these men in their true colors. On the other hand, if a man drops into bad habits and goes off on a spree after he has been helped, he will be taken in again afterwards, and this is continued within reason. Much of the labor employed is a surface and floating population, the result of season and periodic work in connection with so many of our industries, and the men are just tided over a hard time in their experiences. This class is larger sometimes than at others, but is always in evidence. Another class, however, consists of the men who have fallen through their own recklessness and bad habits. Some of these men are sent out to positions which they fill creditably, and finally rise as high or higher than they were before. Naturally, the Army makes as much as possible out of these cases for the purpose of advertisement. Owing to evident difficulties, it is impossible to ascertain just what percentage there is of this class among the total number helped, or what percentage of this class itself is successfully aided. The industrial work itself, as a paying business, is developing so fast that a constantly increasing number of men are permanently retained and used as regular employees, being paid regular wages. When we come to the industrial colony, we find it entirely different from the farm colony, where families are sent to settle upon the land in tracts of say twenty acres per family. The industrial colony is managed like a large farm with many laborers, all under one central head. The original idea was to graduate men from the city plants to the industrial colonies and thence to the farm colonies, but the Army has had difficulty in maintaining its colonies at all, and, as a result, no regular system has been followed. A large proportion of the men on the industrial colony are single, whereas, as will be seen, families are needed for the farm colonies. Again, many of these men are not the kind who will succeed on the farm colony. Sometimes, too, they have not been through the city plant, and sometimes they are men sent directly from the city to get them out of temptations which are too strong for them. The best example of an industrial colony is the one at Hadleigh, about thirty miles from London, England. This colony has an area of about 3,000 acres. One thousand acres is almost useless now; and when taken by the Army in 1890, the whole consisted of almost worthless land, some of which, as a result of constant labor and fertilization, has been transformed into reasonably good land. A great draw-back and a great expense has been the lack of water, now partially supplied by two artesian wells, the cheaper of which cost over $20,000.00.[15] The population varies from 300 to 700.[16] In 1898, 775 men were admitted to the colony. Out of this number, 193 left after a short residence before they could be influenced for good; 47 were discharged as incorrigible, and 309 graduated, obtaining situations or being restored to their friends.[17] There are three classes received at the colony: 1. Those sent by the Army agencies. 2. Those sent by poor law authorities who pay from 5s. to 10s. per week for periods of from three to twelve months for their maintenance. 3. Special cases sent by philanthropic societies, or by relatives or others.[18] Another division is made into four classes, thus: 1. Those coming and passing off in a month, not being regular colonists. 2. Those averaging nine months on the colony, and called colonists. 3. Picked men from the second class, who are made employees. 4. Employees hired in the neighborhood for specific purposes.[19] The proportion of each, according to either specification, is such a variable quantity that nothing can be determined satisfactorily. According to one officer's statement, about one in every five is considered an employee.[20] In the winter of 1903-4, 209 men were sent to Hadleigh and supported there by a special fund, called "The Mansion House Fund for the Relief of the London Unemployed."[21] Out of the class sent by the Army agencies to the colony, a certain number are sent out as emigrants to Canada. For instance, in 1905, 41 were sent out, and in 1906, 58. The party of 58 was composed of five Irishmen, one Welshman, three Scotchmen, and forty-nine Englishmen. These men go to work on different farms in Canada, and some sent out in previous years now have homesteads there. In the colony there are five departments, viz.: the market garden, the brick-making department, the dairy department together with the piggery, the poultry department, and the Inebriate's Home. There is also a store which has an income of $1,000.00 a month. The market garden is one of the best industries, most of the produce being sold in the town of Southend, four miles distant. In the busy season, as many as 100 workers are found in this department. There are four large conservatories, especially for tomatoes and flowers. A good many potatoes are raised, and there is a good deal of land in berries and orchard. There are three brick-yards with the latest improved kilns and machinery. These yards have been a very heavy expense and have not been satisfactory. For instance, in 1898, the year's sale of bricks amounted to £4717, while the expenditure of this department was £5563, this latter sum including the expense of repairing the drying fields, which that year were injured by a flood.[22] In the dairy department about twenty-five head of cattle provide the colony with milk and butter, while sometimes milk is sold at Southend. In the piggery the number of hogs runs from 200 to 500. The poultry department is given over to prize poultry breeding and has been successful in winning some noted prizes. The Inebriate's Home is licensed for twenty male inebriates who are charged from 25s. to 30s. per week. Between 60% and 70% are stated to be reclaimed after an average period of eight months' treatment. In addition to these departments it might be noted that there is a school on the colony with an attendance of 100, some of whom come from outside the colony, and a good sized hall, seating about 400, where gatherings are held for social and religious purposes. For the feeding and lodging of the colonists, large preparations are made. They are graded according to their position in the colony, and an opportunity is given them to rise from the lower to the higher grades. The superintendent stated that this plan was found useful in stimulating ambition. There are two dormitories, both clean and well-kept, but the higher grade with better bedding and surroundings than the lower. This grading system is also maintained in the dining room, the higher grade of colonists being served with better food than the lower. Everything around the buildings is well-kept and orderly, and the general moral atmosphere of the colony seems to be healthful and up-lifting. The industrial colony at Ft. Herrick, near Cleveland, Ohio, differs in many ways from the one at Hadleigh, and doubtless has been instrumental in aiding a good number of outcast and fallen men, but it has been such a burden financially, and such an unsolved problem in many ways, that it may be considered a failure. The reason for its failure is not so much bad management as lack of foresight on the part of those choosing the site. The site is in no sense suitable for a colony, the soil being unfit for intensive farming. Probably the best work done there has been the reformation of drunkards, a work in which, according to reports, the colony has been eminently successful.[23] Coming now to the management of the Industrial Department in the United States, we find that it is an up-to-date business enterprise. The department is controlled by a corporation called "The Salvation Army Industrial Homes Co." already referred to in our introduction.[24] The management of the company is in the hands of the Army.[25] Under this central authority, we find the United States divided into three districts; the eastern district, with headquarters at New York; the central district with headquarters at Cleveland, and the western district with headquarters at Chicago. Each one of these districts has at its head a social secretary, and under him are the different officers in charge of the respective plants. Generally speaking, each local officer is supreme in his individual plant. He can adopt methods and means to suit the environment of his district, provided always that his methods mean success. There are no iron-clad rules to hold him in check beyond a system of bookkeeping and of making out detailed reports, which must be sent to headquarters. When about to engage in some new venture, however, such as securing a new location for his plant, opening up a store, or renting or purchasing new property, he must refer the project to his superior officer, before undertaking it. The local officer in charge has trusted employees under him, such as a warehouse boss, a kitchen boss, and stable boss, etc., each of whom is responsible to the officer for his department. Although present to some extent in other countries the special field of the industrial work is the United States. The growth in this country during the recent years has been great. In 1896 there were no regular industrial homes; in 1904 there were 49 industrial institutions, and in control of these 49 institutions, there were 70 Army officers and 820 regular employees. The accommodation was about 1,100. During one month there were 225 cases that were considered unsatisfactory. There were 239 horses and wagons in daily use. About 1,000 tons of paper were baled and sold per month. Contrast this with the year 1907. In this year there were 84 officers engaged in these institutions and over 1,200 regular employees. There was accommodation for 1,651 men. The unsatisfactory cases for the year amounted to 1,389. There were 460 horses and wagons in daily use. An average of 2,500 tons of paper was sold each month. 16,875 men were placed in outside positions during the year. No large city in the United States is without this industrial work, and it is to be expected that, within a few years, there will be no city in the country with a population of 100,000 that does not have an industrial home, and that many cities with a smaller population will have one also. Already there are several cities with a population of less than 50,000 that have promising industrial plants. In London, the growth has not been so rapid, and the industrial institutions are run at a loss to the Army, but there are about eight industrial plants in that city, and others are to be found in other large cities of England. We come now to the question of the value of the Salvation Army industrial work to society. From the preceding brief outline of the methods, material, labor, management and extent of the industrial work, it will be seen that it is a movement, unrestricted in scope, with an unlimited field of development as an economic enterprise. In certain fields where the Army is active, its work is considered of little or no value; but as a result of our investigation into this particular field, the conclusion is reached that, with the exception of the industrial colonies, it is a practical, social work, of value to society. We make an exception of the industrial colonies because we do not consider that the two experiments already tried by the Army justify their own continuance or the starting of other similar colonies. The reference here is to Fort Herrick in Ohio, and the Hadleigh Colony, near London. These colonies have necessitated a continual sinking of funds contributed by the charitable public, and the return does not justify their expense. The Army should realize this, and admit the fact, instead of drawing wool over the eyes of the ignorant public by the constant reiteration of "the great work done at Hadleigh and Fort Herrick." It looks as though the organization was afraid that the infallibility and sanctity of General Booth's pet scheme would be seriously impaired, if the public should discover that any part of that scheme was a mistake and an unfortunate experiment, and that, for this reason, it has continued to expend much money on it, which might have been turned to better advantage in connection with other parts of General Booth's plan. These colonies are object lessons showing what is unwise to attempt, rather than what can be done. The Army has no need to be ashamed of having made a mistake, and its usefulness along other lines is sufficient to maintain its reputation in spite of the failure of its industrial colonies. There is no need of the industrial colony anyway. The object in view is either to tide workless men over a period of hard times and misfortune, or to restore manhood where evil habits and recklessness have destroyed it, and this can be done and is being done by means of the city industrial work without the aid of the colony. As regards the work of reforming the inebriate, in which the industrial colonies have had some success, that could be carried on without the great expense of a regular colony. The moral field of the city industrial work derives support from the relation of its management to the spiritual work and influence of the Army. The influence and spirit of the whole organization runs to a certain extent through every branch of its varied developments. This influence cannot be described by comparative means. The spirit, somewhat unique in itself, runs through everything, a spirit which is a mixture and blending of love, gratitude, service and patience. While we think that, in the tendency of this branch to become a business enterprise, there is a considerable decrease in the influence just described, it still has great power. The officers and employees now engaged in this work were themselves not long since outcasts in society. Many of them had despaired of ever making a success of life and were simply drifting. But a helping hand had been stretched out to them, hope had been imparted and new ideals had been placed before them. They might even yet be men, wear decent clothes, stand up straight and look their fellow men in the eye! What wonder that the decent clothes to which they looked forward turned out to be the uniform of the organization which had picked them up from the gutter! What wonder they felt an eternal debt of gratitude toward that organization! While this is not a true expression of their attitude in every case, and while there are some who hold their positions simply because they can get no better, loyalty to the work exists in enough instances to create a distinct moral atmosphere. The men wish to make a success of their new work; they wish to see the Army advance, and to do this they feel that it is essential that the same moral influence which enabled them to become men should be continued. This influence moves almost unconsciously among the industrial plants. For instance, we do not find here the tendency to obscenity which we find in any ordinary factory or workshop. Environment in these plants is all-powerful as an uplifting condition. Cleanliness is encouraged in the dormitory and kitchen. Respectful attention is paid at meals while grace is being said. The reading room is frequented, while the occasional meetings held are sometimes well attended and sometimes not, according to the attraction. The emotional religious element is a great deal in evidence, though not so much as in other departments of the Army. In any case, the element of hope and ambition, which often arises within these social outcasts, making them men once more, is to be considered a great moral asset. The moral influence is due more to the personality of those in charge than to anything else. A large number of the managers have served in connection with the Army's spiritual work and have the desire, as they would tell you, to see every man under them "saved," not only in a moral and social sense, but "saved" in accordance with the Army's special significance of that term.[26] While the Army's special idea of salvation may have no value in itself, still if the emotional element assists in the moral and social salvation of individuals, we have no reason for not tolerating it unless it has evil effects of real importance. Such effects, however, tend to decrease, as the movement advances, and the education and enlightenment of the masses increase. From an economic point of view, we believe that the work of the Industrial Department has been successful. We have seen that large numbers of men, who are out of work, are taken in by this department and kept for a number of weeks or months, and that, during this time, besides making their own support, and gaining in efficiency, in many cases, they are able to return to a more important part in production. Let us see what this means. While these men are out of work, they are not producing anything. They are idle, and thus a loss to the community. In addition, they are fast losing any potential ability for production, which they have had. But they now become producers, a gain to the community, and their potential ability for production is at least conserved if not increased. Secondly, out-of-work men are a burden on the community. While they continue to live without employment, they must be supported in some way or other by private or public charity, and they form a great item of expense to the community. But in the hands of the Industrial Department, they cease being an expense to the public and become to some extent a gain. Thirdly, some of these men are in danger of becoming members of pseudo-social and anti-social classes; it is from them that the pauper and criminal classes gain recruits. But through the elevating environment of this branch of the Army's work, their character is affected, and they are raised to a higher level. In this way then, in successful cases, the worthless men become workmen. Worthless men are changed into economic assets. The dependents become independent. Working by means of the laws of environment and association, the Army elevates the degenerate from a pseudo-social and anti-social class to a higher level and to social position. Where individuality was lost, independence of character reasserts itself. Let us consider in detail some of the advantages connected with this form of practical philanthropy. One advantage is, that once started, the work continues and increases without further expenditure on the part of the charitably disposed public beyond the giving away of things for which they have no further use. This is so because the Army here in its work becomes an efficient producer and creates articles which have market value. Leaving all charity alone, the work is paying and more than self-supporting, and thus in a short time will be reimbursed with all the money which was necessary to initiate it. In nearly every city in which the work was started, rented property soon gives place to property owned by the Army and poor ill-suited buildings, to up-to-date structures built for the purpose. An example of this is to be found in the history of the 48th Street Industrial Home in New York City which is briefly described, in the examples given at the end of this chapter.[27] That the entire work has grown self-supporting in the United States is shown by the fact that last year, 1907, there was a net gain of $21,000, after the interest on the loans and investments had been paid. If a home does not show signs of being successful financially, its location will be changed or it will be discontinued.[28] Another advantage lies in the fact that men who were socially dependent are made self-supporting. We should place emphasis on the effect on the man himself as well as on the community. We saw how these men were given to understand that they were earning their own livelihood and were not recipients of charity, and how they were encouraged by the receipt of wages, to be increased as their productiveness increased. The relief given is true relief in that the man earns it himself and realizes this fact, and because, along with this realization, comes a return of manhood and independence. Of course if men have lost all manhood and have no desire to be independent, but simply to live as easily as possible on what may be given them, the above is not the result; but few such get into the industrial homes, as they know better and have no wish to work as these men do, and if they get in temporarily, they are soon sorted out. Thus it cannot be said of these homes as is said of many institutions, that they pauperize men in place of helping them. The institution that makes men work for everything they get and provides some sort of channel for their ambition, maintaining itself meanwhile as a paying concern, is not pauperizing in its tendency. Still another advantage of this work is found in the saving of the community's funds. Of late years, more and more, the principle has been advanced and brought before the public, that the starving and unemployed are to be cared for in some way, and we are willing to tax ourselves to provide for this. As far back as the census of 1890, we find that the United States spent annually $40,000,000 in charities and over $12,000,000 in penal and reformatory institutions. Probably the total expenditure for these two objects to-day would be nearer $60,000,000 annually. What percentage of this $60,000,000 would go to the class of people aided by the Army industrial work would be hard to ascertain or approximate, but there is room for a great extension of this kind of work, and the Army's efforts are most suggestive. In some of the European countries, especially Germany, many helpful experiments along this line are in progress, but conditions in the United States are vastly different. In any case social economists are agreed that vast sums are spent annually in our country to little or no purpose from the point of view of social relief. In the year 1907, 8,696 men were cared for in the United States industrial homes of the Army. This means just that amount of saving to the nation that it would have cost the regular municipal and state charities to have dealt with these 8,696 men, since these men were aided by a self-supporting organization and paid for their own support. This work, then, if carried far enough, would effect quite a saving of taxes. But along with advantages there may be disadvantages. Some objections have been raised to this branch of the Army's work. For instance, it is stated that industries entered into by the Army tend to hurt economic conditions with regard to both wages and prices.[29] With regard to wages it is urged that the Army will keep for its industries, workers in constraint of one kind or another, paying them a lower wage than the same workers could procure outside, and thus lowering the wages in the respective industries. We do not consider this objection a strong one. Let us forget for the present the philanthropic side of the industrial work, and look on it as a distinctly economic enterprise, as a factor of production. We think it quite likely that a manager, anxious above everything else to make his institution a financial success, would make an endeavor to keep as long as possible, and at as low wages as possible, men who could receive more on the outside. He might even try to retain men for whom he could secure better positions through the employment bureau, if he needed their services, and times were so good that no other applicant offered to take their place, but this he could not succeed in doing to any serious extent; for, in the first place, the restraint exercised over the men is very slight, and secondly, if the men could secure better wages, it would not be long before they found it out and left the home voluntarily. It would be just the same as in any industry in which most of the workers are ignorant. They would remain under low wages just as long as their ignorance and lack of initiative would allow, but sooner or later the relatively able man would seek the best wage. Hence the able man would seek the best wage, and his place would be taken by one, possibly morally and physically unable to procure any wage, or, in other words, belonging to the unemployable class. If it should come to the point of the Army's hiring able men to carry on the work without aiding the outcasts, it must compete in the market for them and pay the market price. The only real danger would lie in the Army's industrial work securing a strong enough position in some industry to be able to dictate terms to labor in an industry, but this is so unlikely as to be almost irrelevant and even in such an almost inconceivable case, the danger would be only temporary. Labor would still be able to drift sufficiently to another agency, not controlled by the Army and thus bring up wages again. This is the more true in that any industry, in which the Army engages, must of necessity be one in which unskilled labor is competent.[30] In addition to this, from personal investigation, we can state that a large part of the labor employed in these plants of the Army is at any rate temporarily inefficient labor and would not have much chance in securing employment elsewhere. Finally, though considered a charitable work, this branch of the army is, as already stated, a corporation, a business enterprise financed by investors who receive interest on their investments; hence, to the same extent that it is a financial enterprise, like other such enterprises, it will be governed by the rate of wages.[31] Another objection has been raised by critics, to the effect that the Army, through its industry, enters into competition with existing firms and companies to the harm of the latter.[32] For instance they urge that in the case of those engaged in second-hand goods and salvage, who are able to make a profit by buying their material, the army enters into an unfair competition, when it takes such material, given in charity, and sells at a lower figure. In so far as the army does undersell others this objection is valid, and we have no doubt that in some cases such is the truth. Doubtless some individuals and firms have been hurt in their business by this under-selling. For instance, in Chicago, the Army has nine retail stores situated in the poorer districts, doing a big business in second hand goods. In addition to those goods it sends into the retail trade, it sells hundreds of tons of paper and rags annually. This must have some effect on others engaged in this business. However, the Army itself sometimes pays for its material and does not often undersell.[33] But there is another side to this question of underselling. Naturally the tendency is to get as much as possible for its goods, and provided there is a market, the army would seek to obtain just as much as any one else in the business. It now falls back on a question of supply and demand. The only way in which the price would be lowered by the Salvation Army would be by an increase of supply. Doubtless the supply of these goods is increased by the thorough work of the Army agents, and, to such an extent, its entrance into this field would tend to lower prices. However, in the leading salvage industries of the army, the increase in supply does no more than offset the increase in demand. The amount of displacement of the salvage and allied industries due to the competition of the army at present would not seem to be much, although of course it is difficult to get any exact figures along this line. Looking at the Salvation Army retail store as a form of relief, another question arises as to whether the opportunity given to the residents of the district to get things at the Salvation Army's store cheaper than elsewhere interferes with the standard of living. By the standard of living we mean the scale or measure of comfort and satisfaction which a person or a community of persons regards as indispensable to happiness.[34] This would differ in the case of different persons and classes and communities, but progress demands that the standard should never be lowered, but should always be raised, in accord with increasing enlightenment and education. "It is only," says Dr. Devine, "when individuals or individual families for personal or exceptional or temporary reasons fall below the standard, that charitable assistance can effectively intervene. In other words, as has been pointed out in other connections, the relieving policy cannot be made to raise the general standard of living, but it should be so established as not to depress it"[35]. Here, then, the point is, whether those who are otherwise able to come up to the standard of living in a given community take advantage of this form of charity, or whether the customers of the Salvation Army's stores are living below that standard. To just the extent that the former is true, this part of the work would be pauperizing and retrogressive, but we do not consider the former to be true. Naturally, we have no statistics on this point, but speaking from general observation, we should say that the customers of these stores are needy poor, who are living below the standard, and hence, the store is a boon to them in aiding them toward a realization of that standard. Let us now sum up our conclusions regarding the industrial work of the Army. Regarding the industrial colonies, we would say that, while doubtless responsible for good and reformation in certain cases, nevertheless, owing to their cost of maintenance and the fact that the work can be done without them, they are not a practical form of charity deserving the intelligent support of the public. Regarding the city industrial work, including the employment, amid a good environment, of men out of work, including also the turning of much otherwise waste matter into an economic good, and the assistance of deserving poor by means of second-hand stores, we would say that it is commendable and deserving of support. This latter conclusion is made in spite of three objections: first, that there is a tendency to lower wages, which objection we do not consider as important for reasons given; second, that underselling of certain commodities by the Army takes place, which objection we admit to a limited extent, and third, that the standard of living is interfered with, which objection we do not consider valid. Examples of Men in the Army Industrial Homes. These examples were collected by Mr. Jas. Ward at the two industrial homes situated on West 19th Street and West 48th Street, New York City, during the months of March and April, 1908. Mr. Ward worked right with the men whose cases are given here, and slept in the homes, thus being with them night and day. The home on West 19th Street was an old milk depot rented temporarily by the Army to aid the unemployed during the winter, and had accommodation for two hundred men. Everything was very crude. The men slept on the floor, some without blankets. They were required to work from three to five hours every day, and during the rest of the day, they were allowed to go out and seek for work. The best of these men were drafted out to fill the vacancies in the regular industrial homes of the Army as they occurred. On the other hand, the home on West 48th Street was and is one of the Army's best homes, built for the purpose by the Army in 1907, at a cost of $130,000.00. Everything here is arranged for comfort and cleanliness. The dormitory is of the best, with good ventilation and other sanitary conditions. It is a seven-story building, and has accommodation for one hundred and seventy-five men. Twenty-two wagons are sent out from this home every day. In every way it is a contrast with the West 19th Street home, hence the examples will show some difference, according to which home they refer. No. 1. Born in Ireland. Thirty-eight years old. Single. Had no trade. Had worked on a farm in Ireland. Had been in this country fourteen years and had worked somewhat on a farm in this country. Had been out of work two months. Lost his position through an accident and spent three weeks in the hospital. Had since been in the Army Industrial Home for five weeks, and was growing stronger. His appearance was very good. No. 2. Born in France. Thirty-five years old. Single. Had people in France but never heard from them. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. Worked on a farm a little in France. In this country fifteen years. Several charitable societies had helped him and he had been in the Industrial Home eight days. The Army gave him clothing and shoes. He looked like a drinking man, but otherwise capable. No. 3. Born in Italy. Thirty years old. Married. Had wife in Italy. Left there two years ago, and said he was going to send for his wife when he got the money. He had worked on a farm in Italy, and had worked at different trades in this country. Had been out of work nine weeks. Had been in the Industrial Home two days. Spoke good English. Looked dirty and without much intelligence. No. 4. Born in South Carolina. Twenty-three years old. Single. Trade of a plumber. Left his people five months ago and came to New York. Soon spent his money and could find no work. Had been in the Industrial Home three weeks. Said he was going home as soon as he could get the money. Never worked on a farm. Looked capable. No. 5. Born in Germany. Forty-two years old. Single. Had been in this country twenty-five years and had followed the water nearly all the time. Got in a fight on the Bowery six months ago and spent five months in jail. Since coming out, he had had odd jobs, and had been in the Industrial Home about two weeks. Looked shiftless and dissipated. No. 6. Born in Denver, Colo. American parents. Twenty-six years old. Single. Had people in Philadelphia who did not help him. Machinist by trade. Belonged to the union in Philadelphia. Out of work ten weeks. Said he had $100.00 but it did not last long. Had been in the Industrial Home two days and expected work shortly. Appearance was very good. No. 7. Born in Ireland. Forty years old. Married. Had left his family. Had no trade. In this country eight years. Never worked in the country. Out of work all winter. Spent three weeks in the hospital. Said he had consumption. Had been in the Industrial Home four days. Looked very feeble but not dissipated. No. 8. Born in New York. American parents. Twenty-six years old. Single. People lived in New York, but he had not lived with them for three years. Had no trade. Had travelled a little. Said he did not like hard work. Had been in the Industrial Home two weeks. The Army gave him clothing and shoes. Said the missions helped him. Expected to wander West when the weather got warm. Looked like a tramp. Never worked in the country. No. 9. Born in San Francisco. German parents. Fifty-eight years old. Single. Had no trade. Said he had beaten his way all around the world. Had not worked all winter. In the Industrial Home ten days. Looked shiftless and dissipated. Never worked in the country. No. 10. Born in Maine. English parents. Twenty-four years old. Single. Had people in Maine with whom he quarreled. Had no trade. Out of work for four months. In the Industrial Home one week. Never worked on a farm, but had worked in the woods. Did not drink. Looked like a capable man. No. 11. Born in Philadelphia. Irish parents. Twenty-six years old. Single. People in Philadelphia who helped him sometimes. Had no trade. Had wandered a good deal. Out of work three months. Said he drank whenever he could get liquor. Expected to go home shortly. Had been in the Industrial Home three days. Looked very shiftless and dissipated. No. 12. Born in Ireland. Forty-two years old. Single. Had two sisters in Brooklyn who were poor. In this country eighteen years. Had no regular trade but worked in hotels as porter. Out of work five months. Worked on a farm a good deal in Ireland. Looked like a vagrant. No. 13. Born in New York. American parents. Twenty-two years old. Single. Said he was a truck driver. Had been out of work one month. Drank sometimes. Had been in the Industrial Home four days. Expected to leave New York as soon as the weather became warmer. Looked very wild. No. 14. Born in Vermont. Mother Irish. Father German. Thirty-two years old. Single. He wrote to his people but they did not help him. Had travelled around a good deal. Had no trade. Said he "got saved" in a mission and they kept him all winter. He said every time he got down, he went to the missions and stayed as long as he could. Had been in the Industrial Home nine days. Had worked on a farm a little. Looked like a vagrant. No. 15. Born in London. Twenty-two years old. Single. Seaman by trade. Left his boat one month ago in New York and had done nothing since. Had been in the Industrial Home two weeks and hoped to work his way back to England shortly. His appearance was very good. No. 16. Born in New York. American parents. About thirty-five years old. Single. Brick-layer by trade. Did not belong to the union. Out of work four months. Said he had been to every city in the United States and had travelled on freight trains quite often. Looked like a tramp. No. 17. Born in Reading, Penna. American parents. Forty years old. Married. Wife dead. One child living with his sister in Pennsylvania. Carpenter by trade. Did not belong to the union. Had been out of work all winter. All his tools were in pawn. The Army had been helping him at times. Said he had to leave his child on account of not working. He looked like a very hard drinker. Had never worked in the country. No. 18. Born in Albany, N. Y. American parents. Thirty-five years old. Single. Quarrelled with his people. Had not been home for ten years. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. The missions and the Army had helped him a good deal. Had been in the Industrial Home three days. Never worked in the country. Looked dissipated. No. 19. Born in Ireland. Thirty years old. Single. Had people in Ireland who were poor. Came to this country eleven years ago. Had no trade. Out of work two months. Expected a position in Brooklyn the following week. Said he had $60.00 in the bank but lost his book and had to wait to get his money. Had been in the Industrial Home two days. His appearance was good. No. 20. Born in Jersey City. Italian parents. Twenty-five years old. Single. Quarrelled with his people. Said he had a step-mother and could not get along with her. Had been in New York five years working at everything. Had no trade. Out of work five months. Had saved some money, but it was all gone. Never worked in the country. In the Industrial Home five days. Said this was the first time he was ever down. Looked like a hopeful case. No. 21. Born in Philadelphia. Irish parents. Thirty-two years old. Married. His wife was working and had paid his board all winter, until he came to New York two weeks before on a freight train. Had been in the Industrial Home since, and expected to return to his wife. Carpet-weaver by trade and belonged to the union. Said he drank sometimes, but he looked like a hard drinker. Otherwise very good. No. 22. Born in Brooklyn. American parents. Thirty years old. Single. People lived in Brooklyn, but they did not have anything to do with him. Piano-finisher by trade. Did not belong to the union. Was in the army one year and deserted. Out of work three months. Came to New York two months ago. Spent all his money, $50.00, in two days. Had been in the Industrial Home two weeks. Said he was going to reform and get a steady job. Looked like a hard drinker but otherwise capable. No. 23. Born in Scranton, Penna. German parents. Fifty years old. Single. Had one sister and one brother at home, but he did not write them. Had no trade. Had travelled all over the United States. Seemed to know a mission in every city. Never worked in the country. Had been in the Industrial Home some time, and said they made him work too hard. Looked like a vagrant. No. 24. Born in Springfield, Mass. American parents. Forty years old. Single. Had no trade. Had not worked for over a year. Had been in jail several times for riding freights. Never worked in the country. The missions and the Army had helped him this winter. Looked like a dissipated character. No. 25. Born in Germany. Twenty-five years old. Had people in Germany who were poor. Left home eight months ago and came to New York, with a little money. Had not worked since he left home. He spoke broken English. Had no trade. Did not drink much. Had been in the Industrial Home some time. Looked intelligent and capable. Never worked in the country. No. 26. Born in Ireland. Forty-five years old. Single. Had no trade. Had been in this country twenty years. Worked a good deal on a farm. Had wandered a good deal. He said the Army were good people and had helped him in different cities. Had been out of work two months. Looked shiftless. No. 27. Born in Greenwich, Conn. American parents. Twenty-seven years old. Single. Used to be in business with his father as a plumber in Greenwich, but quarrelled and had not been home for six years. Never worked on a farm. Looked intelligent but very wild. Said he could have anything he wanted at home, if he would leave the drink alone. No. 28. Born in Boston, Mass. Scotch parents. Fifty-three years old. Married. Divorced seven years ago. Brass-moulder by trade. Had belonged to the union but lost his membership through non-payment of dues. Out of work three months. He drank a good deal, but looked capable. Never worked in the country. No. 29. Born in Cleveland, O. American parents. Twenty-seven years old. Single. Had no regular trade. Made a business of following fairs as a fakir. Never worked in the country. Said the missions and the Army had helped him a good deal this winter. He also spent several nights in the city lodging house. Looked capable but a little dissipated. No. 30. Born in Yonkers, N. Y. American parents. Thirty-six years old. Single. Had no trade. Had not worked all winter. Was in the Industrial Home for the fourth time this winter. The missions had helped him. Never worked in the country. Looked like a vagrant. No. 31. Born in Germany. Forty years old. Single. Had no trade. Out of work two months. The Army gave him clothing. Had been in the Industrial Home several days. Never stayed in one place very long. Never worked in the country. Looked like a vagrant. No. 32. Born in New York. American parents. Thirty-five years old. Single. Had no people, except one brother who was in the West. Had no trade. Out of work four months. Had been in the Industrial Home one week. Never worked in the country. Said when he had money he gambled and played the races. Looked intelligent and capable. No. 33. Born in Ireland. Forty five years old. Married. Evidently had left his family. Had no regular trade. Had followed the water a good deal and worked along the docks. Had nothing steady for three months. Was in the Industrial Home for the second time this winter. Worked in the country about two years. Said when the weather got warm he was going to the country. Looked ignorant and dissipated. No. 34. Born in New York. American parents. Thirty years old. Single. Trade of a shoe-maker, but he had not worked at it for nearly two years. Out of work three months. Worked in the country a little. Appearance very good. No. 35. Born in Philadelphia. American parents. Forty years old. Married. Had buried his wife and three children. Had no trade but followed the circus as laborer. Never worked in the country. Had had no steady work for a year. The Army had been helping him for a month. He said he went on the drunk sometimes. Looked intelligent but in feeble health. No. 36. Born in Hungary. Twenty-nine years old. Single. Had people at home but did not write often. In this country eight years. Talked good English. Had no trade. Worked on a farm a good deal in Hungary. Had been in the Industrial Home four days. Looked very hopeful. No. 37. Born in Pittsfield, Mass. American parents. Twenty-one years old. Single. Had no trade. Had been in the Industrial Home three months. Was a trusted worker and received $2.50 a week, for driving one of the Army wagons. Never worked in the country. Looked like a respectable man. No. 38. Born in Ireland. Fifty-years old. Single. In this country twenty years. Had no trade. Had travelled around the world. Had been in the Industrial Home one month. Said he used to drink, but would never do it again. He was gray-haired and feeble. Never worked in the country. No. 39. Born in Ireland. Fifty-five years old. Single. Had no trade but followed the water a good deal. Out of work five months. Had been in the Industrial Home three weeks. Said the Army had helped him before. Looked like a vagrant. No. 40. Born in New York. Irish parents. Twenty-eight years old. Single. People lived in New York, but he had not lived home for several years. Quarrelled with his people because of drink. Had no trade. Worked one season in the country. Had been out of work two months. In the Industrial Home two weeks. The Army had fitted him out with clothing. Looked capable but dissipated. No. 41. Born in Germany. Thirty-seven years old. Married. Would not say anything about his family. In this country eleven years. Had no trade but followed the water as cook or waiter. Had been out of work all winter. The German Aid Society had helped him. Never worked in the country. Looked dissipated. No. 42. Born in England. Sixty-five years old. Married. Wife dead. Five children living, but they did not help him. Came to this country forty years ago. Bricklayer by trade. Belonged to the union, but said they did not help him. Had been out of work five months. Had been in the Industrial Home several times this winter. Looked old, gray-haired and feeble. No. 43. Born in New York. American parents. Twenty-five years old. Single. Had no trade. Quarrelled with his people three years ago and had not been home since. Never worked in the country. Had been in the Industrial Home four days. Looked quite capable. No. 44. Born in Germany. Twenty-nine years old. Single. Had people in Long Island who were poor. Had no trade, but followed the water a good deal. Out of work four months. In the Industrial Home five weeks. The Army gave him clothes. Said he drank a good deal. Never worked in the country. Looked intelligent but dissipated. No. 45. Born in Paterson, N. J. German parents. Twenty-five years old. Had people in Paterson but was ashamed to write to them. Had no trade. Had been in the Industrial Home two months. Looked bright and capable. No. 46. Born in Trenton, N. J. Irish parents. Twenty-two years old. Single. Had no trade. Had been out of work three months. In the Industrial Home three weeks. Expected money from home shortly. Never worked in the country. Said he drank a little. His appearance was very good. No. 47. Born in Stanwich, Conn. American parents. Twenty-six years old. Single. Had people who were poor. Had no trade. Was brought up on a farm. Came to New York one year ago after a trip through the West. Expected to go back to the country as soon as the weather got warmer. Had been in the Industrial Home ten days. Looked stupid but otherwise capable. No. 48. Born in Vermont. American parents. Forty-five years old. Single. Was a tool-maker by trade. Did not belong to the union. Had been out of work three months. Had been in the Industrial Home one month. Said the Army were good people. Appearance was good but somewhat dissipated. Never worked in the country. No. 49. Born in Seattle, Washington. Swedish parents. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Had no trade. Out of work two months. In the Industrial Home three weeks. Did not drink. Appearance was good. Never worked in the country. No. 50. Born in Ireland. Forty years old. Married. Separated from his wife. In this country fifteen years. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. The Army and the missions had helped him several times. Never worked in the country. Looked shiftless and dissipated. No. 51. Born in Scotland. Fifty years old. Single. Had no trade. Had wandered round a lot. Out of work five months. The Scotch Aid Society helped him a good deal this winter. Said he liked to drink. Never worked in the country. Looked like a tramp. No. 52. Born in Cleveland, O. American parents. Twenty-eight years old. Married. His wife was living in Cleveland. He left her because of a quarrel. Tool-maker by trade. Did not belong to the Union. Out of work four months. In the Industrial Home one week. Never worked in the country. Looked efficient and capable. No. 53. Born in Brooklyn. Irish parents. Fifty years old. Evidently married. Did not wish to talk about it. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. Had received help from the missions and the Army. Drank heavily. Appearance very poor. Never worked in the country. No. 54. Born in Boston, Mass. English parents. Twenty-five years old. Single. Had people in Boston, who did not help him. Had no trade. Out of work three months. In the Industrial Home two days. Said he drank sometimes. Never worked in the country. His appearance was very good. No. 55. Born in South America. German parents. Twenty years old. Single. Had no trade. Came from South America by working on a boat. Left it two months ago in New York, and had done nothing since. In the Industrial Home three weeks. Never worked in the country. Expected to go back on the boat shortly. Looked like a runaway boy and was bright and attractive. No. 56. Born in Long Island. American parents. Fifty years old. Single. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. Had rheumatism and could not do much work. The Army had helped him a good deal, but he expected to go to the hospital. Never worked in the country. No. 57. Born in Italy. Thirty years old. Single. Had people in Italy, who were poor. In this country twelve years. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. In the Industrial Home seven days. Said that this was the first time he had ever been out of money. Worked in the country somewhat in Italy. Looked stupid and inefficient. No. 58. Born in Cuba. Father American, mother Cuban. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Had people living in Panama who did not help him. Had no trade. He travelled a good deal. Came from the West two weeks ago. Got out of money, and had been in the Industrial Home one week. Looked like a promising case. No. 59. Born in Pittsfield, Mass. Irish parents. Fifty-five years old. Single. Had no trade, but followed the water somewhat. Had been out of work five months. In the Industrial Home two weeks. Never worked in the country. His face showed a very hard life. He was gray-haired and feeble. No. 60. Born in Scranton, Penna. American parents. Twenty-two years old. Single. His people were living in Scranton, but he was ashamed to write to them. Had no trade. Out of work eight weeks. In the Industrial Home one week. Never worked in the country. Looked very wild, but otherwise capable. No. 61. Born in New York. German parents. Thirty years old. Single. Two sisters lived in New York, but did not help him because he drank too much. Had no trade. Had had no steady work all winter. Looked dissipated. Never worked in the country. No. 62. Born in Ireland. Fifty years old. Married. Wife dead. No children. Had no trade. Out of work three months. Had been in the Industrial Home one month. Never worked in the country. Looked like a hard drinker. No. 63. Born in Chicago. American parents. Twenty-four years old. Single. People in Chicago helped him sometimes. Had no trade. Had been working in the Industrial Home in the kitchen all winter at $1.00 per week. The Army had fitted him up, and he looked very respectable. No. 64. Born in Germany. About forty years old. Single. No people living. Followed the water. Out of work two months. In the Industrial Home three weeks. The Army gave him clothes. He looked like a hard drinker, but otherwise capable. Never worked in the country. No. 65. Born in Cambridge, Mass. Irish parents. Forty-eight years old. Single. Had no trade. Had travelled all over the country. Had been out of work four months, and had been in the Industrial Home two days. Never worked in the country. Looked like a hard drinker. No. 66. Born in Lynn, Mass. American parents. About fifty years old. Single. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. Had travelled widely and beaten his way on freight trains. In the Industrial Home three times this winter. Never worked in the country. Looked shiftless. No. 67. Born in New York. Irish parents. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Quarrelled with his people. A rigger by trade. Did not belong to the Union. Out of work six weeks. In the Industrial Home ten days. Said he drank a little. Looked capable. Never worked in the country. No. 68. Born in Germany. About thirty years old. Single. People in Germany did not help him. Waiter by trade. In the Industrial Home two weeks. Had no steady work all Winter. Never worked in the country. Expected a position in a few days. Looked stupid, but otherwise capable. No. 69. Born in Philadelphia. Hungarian parents. Thirty-five years old. Single. People dead. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. Different charitable organizations had helped him. Had been in the Industrial Home one week. Did not like to work. Worked in the country a little. Looked shiftless. No. 70. Born in Jersey City. Irish parents. Fifty-five years old. Married. Wife dead. Had no trade. Had travelled a good deal. Out of work all winter. Had been in the Industrial Home six weeks. The Army fitted him out with clothing. He said he was not going to drink any more, and looked intelligent, but was getting old. Never worked in the country. No. 71. Born in Germany. Twenty-six years old. Single. In this country six years. Had people in Germany, and he expected help from them. Machinist by trade. Did not belong to the Union. Out of work four months. In the Industrial Home two days. Looked like a wild youth. Never worked in the country. No. 72. Born in Ireland. Forty-five years old. Single. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. Drank heavily. Worked in the country two years. Had wandered all over the States. Looked like a vagrant. No. 73. Born in New York. American parents. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. In the Industrial Home four days. Army gave him clothes. The missions had helped him. Never worked in the country. Looked capable. No. 74. Born in Scotland. Forty-one years old. Single. Had no trade. Out of work four months. In the Industrial Home three days. Admitted that he drank heavily. Never worked in the country. Looked like a tramp. No. 75. Born in Chicago. American parents. Twenty-two years old. Single. People in Chicago were poor. Left home two months ago and came to New York. Spent all his money. The Army took him in, and for six weeks he had been in the Home. He wrote home. Expected to get work shortly. Looked bright and respectable. No. 76. Born in Boston, Mass. Irish parents. Twenty-four years old. Single. Had no trade. Had wandered a good deal. Never worked in the country. Had been in the Industrial Home one week. Did not like to work. Looked like a tramp. No. 77. Born in Germany. Forty years old. Married. Wife lived in Germany with two children. Had been in this country four years and expected his wife next summer. Plumber by trade. Did not belong to the Union. Out of work two months. In the Industrial Home one week, after a very hard struggle around the streets. Said he drank a little. Appearance was very good. No. 78. Born in Washington, D. C. Forty-five years old. Single. Had no people. Had no trade. Belonged to the United States Army six years. Out of work all winter. In the Industrial Home three weeks. Worked in the country a good deal. Looked shiftless. No. 79. Born in Ireland. Thirty-five years old. Single. Hod carrier by trade. Belonged to the Union. Out of work five months. In the Industrial Home four days. Looked capable and efficient. Never worked in the country. No. 80. Born in Germany. Fifty-two years old. Married. Wife dead. Followed the water most of the time. Out of work all winter. In the Industrial Home three days. Appearance very poor. Never worked in the country. No. 81. Born in New York. Twenty-eight years old. Single. People lived in New York, but did not help him. Out of work all winter. Had no trade. Had been in the Industrial Home one month. Looked like a dissipated character. Never worked in the country. No. 82. Born in Boston, Mass. Swedish parents. Thirty years old. Single. Iron worker by trade. Did not belong to the Union. Had been out of work five months. Had been in the Industrial Home five weeks. Never worked in the country. He drank a good deal, but looked capable. No. 83. Born in England. Eighteen years old. Single. In this country two years. Had no trade. Out of work one month. Had been in the Industrial Home three weeks. Had secured a position on a ship going to England, starting in three days. Looked like a straight-forward boy. No. 84. Born in Albany, N. Y. American parents. Twenty-four years old. Single. Had no trade. Joined the navy two years ago. Deserted, was captured and spent one year in jail. Had been out three months and had not worked since. Had been in the Industrial Home one month. Appearance was good. Never worked in the country. No. 85. Born in Ireland. Fifty years old. Single. Had no trade. Had wandered all around the world. Out of work all winter. In the Industrial Home two or three times. Said he worked one year on a farm. He was crippled and looked feeble. No. 86. Born in Germany. Twenty-five years old. Single. People in Germany, but he did not write home. Had no trade. In this country five years. Out of work two months. Never worked in the country. Had been in the Industrial Home one day. Seemed to lack ambition. No. 87. Born in Denver, Colo. Irish parents. Fifty-five years old. Married. Separated from his wife five years ago. Painter by trade. Did not belong to the Union. Out of work all winter. In the Industrial Home three weeks. Appearance was very poor. Never worked in the country. No. 88. Born in Sweden. Twenty-two years old. Single. People at home sent him money sometimes. He said he had also sent money home. Had no trade. Out of work three months. In the Industrial Home four days. Used to work in the country in Sweden. In this country three years. Looked capable. No. 89. Born in Dublin, Ireland. Thirty-one years old. Single. In this country two years. Had no trade. Out of work ten weeks. In the Industrial Home three weeks. Worked in the country for a few months. Appearance was very good. No. 90. Born in New York. American parents. Twenty-five years old. Single. Had people in New York, but had nothing to do with them. He wandered a lot. Had no trade. Never worked in the country. Out of work all winter. The Army and missions had helped him. In the Industrial Home three days. Looked like a vagrant. No. 91. Born in Germany. Forty years old. Single. Had no people. Followed the water most of the time. Out of work seven months. Was in the German Hospital three months with hip disease. He was still crippled and could not work well. Had been in the Industrial Home three weeks. Looked very feeble. Never worked in the country. No. 92. Born in Washington, D. C. American parents. Twenty-six years old. Single. Was in the navy five years. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. In the Industrial Home three days. Never worked in the country. Acted very queerly and evidently had weak mind. No. 93. Born in New York. American parents. Thirty years old. Single. Carpenter by trade. Out of work four months. In the Industrial Home six weeks. The Army gave him clothing. Never worked in the country. Used to drink heavily. Looked capable. No. 94. Born in England. Twenty-four years old. Single. Had people in England, and he wrote home sometimes. Had no trade. Out of work three months. In the Industrial Home five weeks. Worked in the country one summer. Had been in this country three years. Did not drink. Looked very intelligent and capable. No. 95. Born in Providence, R. I. Irish parents. Forty-five years old. Single. Had no trade. Had beaten his way all through the country. Never worked in the country. The Army had helped him a good deal. Had been in the Home three months and said he had not taken a drink during that time. He looked bright and responsible, but showed the signs of a hard life. No. 96. Born in Ireland. Thirty years old. Single. People lived in Ireland. In this country four years. Never wrote home. Had no trade. Worked in the country one year. In the Industrial Home two weeks. Appearance was good but dissipated. No. 97. Born in Trenton, N. J. American parents. Twenty-five years old. Single. Followed the water a good deal. Out of work all winter. Had been in the Industrial Home eight weeks. Never worked in the country. Looked capable. No. 98. Born in Brooklyn. American parents. Twenty-six years old. Single. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. In the Industrial Home two weeks. Army gave him clothing. He looked intelligent and capable. Never worked in the country. No. 99. Born in Germany. Forty-five years old. People lived in Germany, but he did not write home. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. He travelled round a good deal and drank heavily. Had worked a good deal in the country. Had been in the Industrial Home four months, and said he was going to reform. Looked like a hopeful case. No. 100. Born in Portland, Oregon. American parents. Twenty-six years old. Single. Had no trade. Had travelled a good deal. Out of work all winter. In the Industrial Home three months. Expected money from home soon, and expected to go West. Said he had worked on a farm a good deal. Looked stupid but otherwise capable. No. 101. Born in Vermont. American parents. Thirty years old. Single. Carpenter by trade. Belonged to the Union. Out of work all winter. In the Industrial Home one week. Never worked in the country. The missions had helped him a good deal this winter. Looked capable. No. 102. Born in Boston, Mass. Irish parents. Fifty-two years old. Single. People all dead. Had no trade. Out of work four months. In the Industrial Home three weeks. Said he had ruined his life through drink. Was in the hospital two months this winter. He never worked in the country. He was crippled and could not work much. No. 103. Born in Chicago. American parents. Twenty-five years old. Single. Had people in Chicago, but ran away four years ago. Had no trade. Out of work three months. In the Industrial Home two months. Never worked in the country. Looked like a hopeful case. No. 104. Born in Cincinnati, O. American parents. Thirty-five years old. Single. Had no trade. Had wandered a good deal. Never worked in the country. In the Industrial Home two weeks. Appearance was good but dissipated. No. 105. Born in New York. Irish parents. Twenty-five years old. Single. Had people in New York, but they were unable to help him. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. Had been in the Industrial Home five weeks. Never worked in the country. Said he drank a little. Appearance was very good. No. 106. Born in Chicago. American parents. Twenty-five years old. Single. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. In the Industrial Home three months. Never worked in the country. The Army had helped him to become respectable, he said. Looked capable. No. 107. Born in Ireland. Forty-eight years old. Single. People dead. Had no trade. Out of work two months. Had wandered a lot. In the Industrial Home three weeks. Had worked in the country somewhat. Looked dissipated. No. 108. Born in St. Louis, Mo. American parents. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Had no trade. Out of work three months. The Army gave him clothes and he had been in the Industrial Home two months. Never worked in the country. Looked inefficient. No. 109. Born in Sweden. Forty years old. Single. Had people in Sweden. Had no trade. Out of work all winter. Had been in Industrial Home three months. Army gave him clothing. Did not drink. Looked capable and efficient. Never worked in the country. Some Facts Brought Out in the 109 Industrial Examples.[36] Nationality. No. Percentage. American parentage 41 .376 Irish parentage 30 .276 German parentage 18 .165 English and Scotch parentage 9 .083 Italian parentage 3 .027 Swedish parentage 3 .027 Other countries, parentage 5 .046 Married 17 .156 Single 92 .844 Worked a little in country 16 .146 Worked considerably in country 7 .064 Men with regular trades 31 .289 Union men 6 .055 Men who looked efficient 38 .349 Men who looked semi-efficient 21 .193 Men who looked inefficient 50 .458 Ages. 15-20 2 .018 20-30 55 .504 30-40 23 .212 40-50 20 .183 50-60 8 .074 60-70 1 .009 Length of time out of work. Less than 1 month 8 .073 More than 1 month 17 .156 More than 2 months 16 .146 More than 3 months.[37] 68 .625 FOOTNOTES: [14] "Prospectus of the Salvation Army Industrial Homes Company." [15] "The Poor and the Land," p. 130. [16] Haggard places it at 500 in 1905; at the time of my visit, May, 1906, it was about 300. [17] "Hadleigh," p. 52. [18] "The Poor and the Land," p. 127. [19] "The S. A. and the Public," pp. 113-114. [20] _Ibid._, p. 114. [21] _Ibid._, p. 105. [22] "Hadleigh," p. 56. [23] Apparently no definite data are obtainable regarding these men since the time of treatment. [24] Introduction, p. 10. [25] For instance, the president, vice-president and secretary and treasurer are all Army officers of high standing. [26] The following extract is taken from the Salvation Army Social Gazette of February 5, 1908: "Whether the Officer of the Salvation Army takes charge of the industrial home to manage it in the interests of the concern, or whether he takes charge of the corps, the one great purpose of his whole life is to proclaim salvation to all with whom he comes in contact." [27] See p. 36. [28] We think that this would probably be done, even though the presence of the home in the particular locality was a great boon to the poor, and although this would be contrary to the principles of the organization, so strong is the idea which the company has of financial success. This further strengthens the idea that the movement is drifting from its original purpose of uplifting the down-fallen humanity to the purpose of perpetuating and extending itself as an economic enterprise. [29] See "The S. A. and the Public," pp. 121 to 130. [30] A typical industry instanced to support this objection was the manufacture of fire wood. See "The S. A. and the Public," p. 124. [31] The criticism here of course would be that, to the extent that the army applies donations from the public to this industrial work, to that extent it has an advantage over another business enterprise and differs from it just to that extent in which it secures capital on which it need pay no interest or return. To what extent this is done, we have been unable to ascertain, but the Army is paying interest to investors who furnish money to carry on this work. This point is dealt with somewhat in the next paragraph. [32] See "The S. A. and the Public," pp. 122 to 127. Also "The Social Relief Work of the S. A.," pp. 11 and 12. [33] Several leading officers have stated that they never undersell paper or rags, the largest part of their business, and that the only underselling done by them is in the retail store and that this is slight. They justify themselves by the fact that the regular second-hand men are tricksters and will rob the poor of their money, in most cases carrying on a pawn shop, which the Army never does. [34] See Seager, "Introduction to Economics," p. 234. [35] See "Principles of Relief," p. 35. [36] To show the difference in the grade of the men at the Industrial Homes and those at the Hotels, I have given separate tables for each. The combined tables showing certain characteristics of the class of men in general with which the Army deals will be found at the end of Chapter IV. [37] This number includes all the inefficient men and the men who are steadily working in the Industrial Home. CHAPTER II. THE SALVATION ARMY HOTELS AND LODGING HOUSES. In a study of environment and its effects on the lowest classes of our great cities, the cheap lodging house affords a favorable field. Here we have crowding, unsanitary conditions, immoral atmosphere, and all the attendant evils. A good description of such lodging houses in New York City has been given by Jacob Riis, in the following words: "In the caravansaries that line Chatham Street and the Bowery, harboring nightly a population as large as that of many a thriving town, a home-made article of tramp and thief is turned out that is attracting the increasing attention of the police, and offers a field for the missionary's labors, besides which most others seem of slight consequence"[38]. The cheap lodging houses of London and other great cities are similar in their environment and effects. This field was early entered by the Army. It was necessary that a very low rate of cost for the individual concerned be maintained because of competition with the lodging houses already existing, and because of the size of the prospective lodger's purse. The first experiments were tried in London. There, at first, the primary aim was to aid the needy and destitute, but later the Army entered into a competition with the existing lodging houses and paid more attention to the element of environment. It was soon definitely proved that such a work could be carried on to advantage, that shelter amid beneficial surroundings, could be provided to those almost destitute, and that the work could be self-supporting. Since then this work has extended to nearly all the larger cities of Europe and America, but it is of greatest extent in England and the United States. Along with this growth there has been differentiation. The hotels have been graded to suit the requirements of the different classes to which they appeal: the almost destitute class, and those who have steady employment. Hence, besides treating of conditions common to both, we shall describe special features of two grades of both men's and women's hotels.[39] The location for a men's hotel must be determined partly by its propinquity to the class of men which it is seeking to attract and partly for facilities for ventilation, cleanliness and general sanitary conditions. These last features are of the greatest importance in this work. Led by the real need of the case, and working with regard to its reputation, the Army has, in this respect, shown a great advance over the general cheap lodging houses. Still, there is room for improvement in the Army hotels.[40] One great difficulty lies in the lodgers, many of whom are so habituated to uncleanliness in general, that it is with great reluctance on their part that they are induced to cleanliness. Especially in the lower class hotels is this true where the rough, brutal element finds its way. Another difficulty lies in the fact that the Army frequently takes old buildings and turns them into hotels, when they are not suitable for the purpose. A favorable tendency to overcome this, however, lies in the Army's desire to put up new buildings fitted for hotels, and this is being done in many cities. In both the higher and the lower class men's hotels, the general plan is to have two or three grades of sleeping apartments. The first grade is in the form of dormitories, where each dormitory will contain from ten to fifty beds in the smaller hotels, and from fifty to one hundred and even two hundred beds in the larger.[41] For a bed in one of these dormitories, 10c and 15c per night is charged in the United States, and in England 2d up. This includes the use of a locker beside the bed, with sometimes a nightgown, and sometimes a bath. The second grade of lodging is in individual rooms, partitioned off, but inside rooms, for which the charge is 15c in the United States, and 4d to 6d in England. Then finally we have the third grade of lodging, which consists of individual rooms which have outside windows, and for which the price varies from 20c to 50c per night according to situation and furnishing.[42] Sometimes the three grades of lodging are found on the same floor, a part of the floor being dormitory, and a part partitioned off into rooms, the partitions running up to a height of eight or nine feet. This method of partitioning off the rooms is almost universal. It is cheap and to some extent sanitary, since by means of windows at either end of the building a continual current of air can be maintained all over the floor. In most of the higher class hotels one floor is given up to dormitories and another to individual rooms, while the majority of lower class hotels consist entirely of dormitories. Hotels are of all sizes, and run from one floor up to eight or ten. The beds found in the Army hotels are iron, with mattresses usually covered with American cloth or some form of leather, but sometimes with strong canvas.[43] Each bed is provided with pillow, sheets, a coverlid, and sometimes an additional counterpane. The individual rooms, in addition to having better beds, contain a looking glass, a chair, a small table, and other furnishings according to the price of the room. In most cases washing facilities are only found in the lavatory, common to the whole floor. Comparative cleanliness is enforced at all grades of hotels. Baths are sometimes made compulsory, though often this rule cannot be rigidly enforced. Usually each floor is provided with bath tubs and shower baths. Nearly every hotel has a fumigating room, an air tight apartment filled with racks, upon which clothing is hung. If a man's appearance or clothing looks suspicious in any way, his clothes are placed in a sack with a number corresponding to the number of his bed or room, and hung in the fumigating room over night. Early the next morning his clothes will be returned to him. The dormitories and rooms themselves, every few days, receive a fumigating and cleaning. Thus, except in very rare cases, no fault can be found with the cleanliness of the Army hotels. We hardly ever visited any of them without coming into contact with the scent of fumigation, or finding some individual working with mop and broom. The above description, except where stated differently, fits both classes of men's hotels. The higher class, intended for transients of the better class of poor and for workmen with steady employment, has some distinctive features. In addition to better equipment along the line of furnishings, lavatories, etc., this class of hotels necessarily has a better social environment than the other. For instance, there are many lower class hotels where the reading room is dark, poorly furnished, without attractive reading matter, and where it serves as smoking room as well as reading room. While this might be improved, yet so low are the occupants that such improvement would not be appreciated. But when we come to the higher grade hotels, we find a difference. Take, for example, the Army Hotel in the city of Cleveland, O., on the corner of Eagle and Erie Streets. This corner building was built by the Army to answer its purpose, at a cost of $100,000.00. There are no dormitories in the building. The three upper floors are given over to the hotel, which comprises 130 rooms, each room being steam heated and electric lighted, and each floor being reached by elevators. Bathing facilities and sanitary arrangements are first class. A comfortable reading room and lounging room is provided for general use, where there are popular magazines, daily papers and writing conveniences. As another example, about the highest grade Army institution of this class is found in Boston, and is called "The People's Palace." It is a large, five-story, corner building, built by the Army for the purpose. In this institution the social environment is especially emphasized. There is a reading room, a smoking room, one or more social parlors, a gymnasium with a swimming tank, and an auditorium with a seating capacity of 600. The whole building, with its 287 single rooms, besides the above advantages, is equipped with steam heat, electric service and other modern conveniences. A special fee of 25c is charged for the use of the gymnasium and swimming tank, but the other advantages are free to lodgers. In this way, it is seen that the higher class hotels have more opportunity for a good social environment and for social work. We think that the addition of certain features, such as men's clubs, smokers, popular lectures, etc., would be of great advantage to this class of institutions. To overcome the difficulty of a transient population, however, would require considerable ingenuity.[44] Along the line of religious environment we find the hotels differ a great deal. In London there seems to be a strong influence of this kind, most of the hotels of both classes holding gospel meetings frequently. For instance, at the Quaker Street Elevator Home, which is partly a hotel and partly an industrial home, meetings are held nearly every night with good attendance, and at the Burne Street Hotel well attended meetings are held every night except Wednesdays and Saturdays, these nights being given over to the men for washing their clothes. But in the United States we find, as a rule, that the Salvation Army hotels are run with very little religious influence. In a few cases, meetings are held regularly, but more often no provision is made for them. Meetings are generally in progress somewhere in the neighborhood at the regular Army corps, and the men are left to attend these meetings if they wish. Generally they are willing to take advantage of the hotel, but do not care for the sentimental form of religion preached by the Army. Hence, in most of the hotels, we find the religious influence limited to the texts on the walls, and to the attitude of the employees, who are not always Salvationists or converted men. Some hotels of both classes are fitted with a kitchen and lunch counter. This is nearly always the case in London, where the hotels have a counter, over which the food is sold, and then taken to a seat by the purchaser. In several cases the counter is divided so that it opens into different rooms, and there are two grades of prices, the lower price being paid for food somewhat damaged and stale.[45] We need not dwell long on the subject of the women's hotels, as that does not form an important part of the Army's work. The women's hotels, even more than the men's, have tended to fall into two classes. There is a great difference between the hotel for women who are almost destitute, and the hotel for respectable working girls, who have positions as clerks and stenographers, and who happen to have no home of their own. A typical hotel of the former class is situated near the Dearborn Street Railway Depot in Chicago. It consists of three floors, and has accommodation for fifty girls or women. The woman officer in charge lives here herself, and seeks to have an environment as homelike as possible. She states, however, that occasionally the women come in noisily and are troublesome. There is a great difference between one woman and another, and she wishes she had one floor with better accommodation than the rest for the better element among them. The price paid per bed at this hotel is 10 cents. A good example of this class of hotel in England, is the one situated on Hanbury Street, Whitechapel, London, where there are three floors, two upper floors given over to dormitories containing 276 beds in all, and the ground floor containing a dining room, kitchen, small hall, and office. Here, women are turned away quite often because of lack of room. 2d. is charged for a bed, and for food a scale of prices, such as tea, 1/2d.--soup, 1/2d.--bread, 1/2d.--etc. There are nine officers working here, and nine other workers, six of the latter receiving 3s. per week, and three receiving 1s. per week. With the higher class hotels for women, the Army has not had much success. This is easily understood, as the respectable girl does not like to be connected with a hotel run by an organization which is prominent for its slum and rescue work. These hotels charge a higher rate for rooms and are situated in a good quarter of the city.[46] They are frequented by shop girls, bookkeepers, clerks and stenographers. Apparently, no great religious pressure is brought to bear on the girls and women, but this would probably depend on the officer in charge. The growth of the Hotel Department of the Army's work, like that of the Industrial Department, has, of recent years, been great. Soon after the publication in 1890 of General Booth's book, "Darkest England," the hotel work was started in England, and its progress has been rapid. In the United States at first the work did not make much headway. When Commander Booth-Tucker came to take charge in 1896, there were three small men's hotels situated in the cities of Buffalo, San Francisco, and Seattle. At the present time, nearly every large city in England and the United States has one or more of these hotels, the latter country having 71 men's hotels and 4 women's hotels, with a total accommodation of 8,688. The tendency now is toward fewer of the lower class hotels, and more of the higher class; in other words, toward fewer hotels where beds can be had for 10c and 15c, and more where they will cost 20c and 25c. The Army gives as its reason for this the fact that the cheaper hotel cannot be maintained in a wholesome manner and be self-supporting.[47] Similar to the Industrial Department in its management, the Hotel Department has its divisions, its graded officers with their various responsibilities, and its head officer in charge at the national headquarters. In the United States, however, unlike the Industrial Department, the Hotel Department has no separate financial company, in the form of a corporation, behind it. In some instances, deserving men are given bed tickets and meal tickets free, by officers detailed for the purpose, and, to that extent the hotels are a charity. This is done with due discretion and does not make an appreciable difference. The amount of charity indulged in by the Army in this way is, however, probably responsible for the fact that in 1907, there was a loss to the Army in this department of $4,500.00, not a very large amount, considering the number of hotels concerned. Coming to the value of the Army hotels from the point of view of the social economist, care must be taken to discriminate between their commercial and their philanthropic aspects. The public has a mistaken idea of the work carried on by this branch of the Army. Many people have an idea that thousands of homeless, starving men and women are nightly taken care of in these Army hotels. Putting aside the question whether such would be good relief policy or not, the statement itself is not true. In a majority of cases the man or woman in order to gain admittance must have the price, and in many instances, that price will also admit them to the regular cheap lodging house outside of the Army. We are not finding fault with the system of charging, since from the point of view of true relief, provided that bona-fide, destitute cases are not left without help, the price should be required, as it would be a great evil to throw open the hotels to the crowds of regular beggars and social parasites who constantly throng any institution supposed to be charitable; but since the Army hotel movement claims to be a self-supporting business, it is not to be regarded as different from any other lodging business, except in those points in which it excels the other. With this caution we believe that we still can distinguish two lines along which credit is to be given the Army. The first is the environment which the Army has created for its guests. It is not necessary here to show what a great factor environment is in this case, but simply to emphasize its importance. From our description of the Army hotel, it is seen that, with certain exceptions, the Army maintains cleanliness, cheerfulness, and a homelike atmosphere around its lodging houses.[48] In this important respect then, the Army hotel is to be commended. Secondly, the Army has indirectly, by its competition with the ordinary cheap lodging houses, led them to adopt improvement for purely commercial reasons. If a man has only ten cents, he is going to invest that ten cents to the best advantage, and the old time lodging houses have found it necessary to improve their conditions in order to meet the competition of the Army. For this too, credit is to be given the latter. In addition the competition reacts on the Army and tends to make it keep up its own standard. In order more clearly to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of cheap lodging houses, whether Army hotels or not, it would be well here to consider objections to their existence. Three objections have been raised to all cheap lodging houses in general. 1. That they herd together a low class of vagrants and vicious characters. 2. That their cheapness lowers the standard of living. 3. That they encourage the youth of the country to come to the city and live in comparative idleness.[49] No one who has looked into the matter has any doubt about the accuracy of the first objection. One glance at the faces of a group of men in the smoking room of any such hotel reveals many of the low, bestial, criminal type; many victims of dissipation and many who have acquired a dislike for work of any sort. This harboring of the vicious element is also true of the Army hotels of the lower class, but it is in company with this element that we find the men for whom more or less can be done.[50] The second objection must be considered more carefully. To repeat the definition of the standard of living which was discussed in connection with the Industrial Department, it is the scale or measure of comfort and satisfaction, which a person or community of persons, regards as indispensable to happiness. Now the question is whether these cheap lodging houses lower this standard; whether their existence results in a tendency to live with less effort and less ambition, and thus renders men and women less productive and less proficient. This question must be separated into a question regarding the community as a whole, and a question regarding the individual. As regards the standard of living of any single community, the answer would be that the standard is not appreciably lowered by this hotel system, since the occupants are mostly single men wandering around, and the standard of living of the community is more concerned with the maintenance of homes in its midst, than of transients. This, however, brings in the further question as to whether the cheap living made possible by the lodging houses leads to the breaking up of homes, since if it does so, it would bear decidedly on the standard of living. We would answer this second question in the negative, because life in the cheap hotel is not such a desirable thing as to lead to the breaking up of homes. A man has already left home and is already reduced in circumstances, before the fact of such cheap living as the hotels and cheap restaurants of the Bowery in New York, or of Whitechapel in London, ever comes to him as an advantage. But, on the other hand, when it comes to the individual concerned, we think that the standard is lowered and that in many cases the objection holds good. For instance, take a man with a regular trade, say bricklaying or carpentering. He is thrown out of work and gradually drifts down to the cheap hotel. For months, possibly, he strives in vain to get work at his trade. He exists, however, by means of odd jobs picked up at random; he becomes shiftless; the life which consists of so much "hanging around" and loafing, decreases his efficiency, and, in this way, his standard is lowered. At the same time his character is affected, and even if no worse development takes place, he loses ambition, and that lowers his standard. Hence, in conclusion, we would say that the objection that the hotel movement of the Army leads to a lowering of a standard of living has no place as regards the community, but is sustained as regards individuals. The third objection that the country youth are induced by this cheap living to leave for the city is not a strong one and needs but short notice. Some of the most successful men of our cities come from the country, but very few of the lower and pauper classes. This has been shown by the investigations of Mr. Fox in England, and by our own investigations in the United States.[51] The consideration of these objections leads us to a closer examination of the class of men frequenting the hotels of the Army. The men's work being so much larger, let us look at the occupants of the men's hotels. Here we must separate the comparatively few hotels of the higher class, which, charging higher prices and harboring the working man, have a different environment from the others. In these, the higher class, we see a competition with the ordinary boarding and lodging houses which single men frequent, a competition which, owing to the more healthful social environment of the Army hotel, is to be welcomed and approved of as a preventive of vice and degradation. The latter is often the result of crowded, uncleanly, workingmen's lodgings, which drive their occupants to the saloon. But the majority of the Army hotels are filled with the lowest class of men, out of any steady employment. This class is composed for the most part and under present conditions, of men who are almost helpless cases.[52] Conditions can be conceived which would result in the betterment of a certain percentage of these, but a large number would always be hopeless. Many have been given their chances and have thrown them away; some have had no chances, and some could not use them if they had. Many are physical and moral wrecks. In their faces you see no ambition. They simply exist as do animals. For such, except in unusual cases, there is no remedy. Do all you can for them, and they will slide back again; give them work, and if they are willing to take it at all, they soon lose their positions. Some belong to the pseudo-social class and are mere parasites feeding on society. Others are anti-social, bitter and criminal.[53] These men are not those with which the Army is successful, in its industrial institutions, although many of them have been tried. They secure their ten cents or fifteen cents for a bed in a cheap hotel by any means which comes along. They form a class, which especially in the older countries of Europe and increasingly in the new world, presents a problem that is the great puzzle of the statesman and the social economist alike. The present tendency of the Army already mentioned to have fewer of the lower class, cheap hotels and more of the higher class brings up some important considerations. There are three points which come up for particular notice here. First, as has already been stated, the present tendency of the Army is to have fewer of the lower class or cheap hotels and more of the higher class. One reason for this is that, although the Army's competition has in many instances forced the ordinary cheap hotels to better their equipment, still, in the long run, the Army cannot successfully compete with the ordinary low class hotel and maintain an equally good or better environment, without having its hotel work subsidized by the public. The men whom we have just described do not appreciate better surroundings sufficiently to pay fifteen cents for a bed at the Army hotel, when they can get one for ten cents at another place around the corner. Secondly, as the Army extends its work, there is the ever present tendency of any organization to become an end in itself. Hence the Army tends to forsake its field of the lower class for the field of the working class for financial reasons. If it can carry on a hotel which appeals to a higher class of working men who are willing to pay $1.50 upwards per week for a separated room such as has been described, they may do better financially than with a dormitory whose beds are held at ten cents. This second point of consideration leads us to a third, and that is, what is to become of this lower class of vagrants and unemployables. This discussion hardly comes in the scope of this book, but we might suggest in passing that the cheap, lower class of hotels with which the Army has entered into competition should not be allowed to continue as at present. In case of the failure to provide competition, the city itself should provide a successful competition under good environment, or should take measures for the segregation of the vicious elements of the population from the merely weak, aged and unfortunate.[54] On the other hand, among the occupants of these hotels a certain number are men for whom there is hope; some victims of misfortune; others degraded by dissipation and recklessness, but not entirely demoralized. With these the Army can deal successfully in its industrial homes, and some of them can regain a foothold without aid. For these men the Army hotel is certainly a boon.[55] A man who has not lost ambition and who can gather a few cents a day to sustain him, until some temporary difficulty is past is glad to take advantage of such an institution. Finally, regarding this class as a whole, something must be done with them, and it is necessary for those who find fault with their congregation in the Army hotels, to point out a better way of caring for them. As long as they exist, they will tend to congregate somewhere, and until some better solution is offered, we might as well take what is at hand, and if it is the Army hotel, hold that institution to its best efforts and its best environment. To sum up, then, our conclusions of this part of the Army's work, we find that the hotels are commercial enterprises, with, as a rule, an environment superior to the regular cheap hotels of the same price, and that although there is an objection to the congregation of the vicious and vagrant along with the unfortunate, and although there may be a tendency to lower the standard of living of these people, individually considered, yet there is a justification for the existence of these hotels, as something must be done with this class of people, and this is the best solution offered, inasmuch as a certain percentage of this class is really aided and tided over temporary difficulty. At the same time, there remains the need of the segregation of the class concerned, with a more scientific, practical, individual treatment. Better work can be done along this line. EXAMPLES OF SALVATION ARMY HOTEL LODGERS. A collection of 76 cases made on seventeen different evenings during the months of March and April, 1908, at two of the Salvation Army hotels, both situated on the Bowery in New York City, one being a lower class hotel and the other a combination of lower and higher class. These cases were collected at first hand by the author and a friend of the author, Mr. James Ward, both of whom mingled among the men in the disguise of working men. In this way the facts were gained without much difficulty, with the exception of information regarding the family of the man concerned. Sometimes, therefore, this latter information is lacking. No. 1. Born in New York City of Irish parentage. Twenty-five years old. Single. Had no home and did not know whether or not his people were living. Only trade was that of hotel porter but had done other things. Had worked a little in the country. Had had no steady work for three months. Walked the streets the previous night and had had coffee and rolls on the "bread line." Received a bed that night through charity. Did not appear dissipated but showed lack of ambition. No. 2. Born in Ireland. About thirty years old. Single. Did not know about his people as he did not write home. Had been in New York seven years. Worked as stableman most of the time but had been out of steady work for six weeks. Never worked in the country. Appeared dissipated and inefficient. No. 3. Born in Pittsburg of American parents. About forty years old. Single. Had a brother, he thought, in Pittsburg but no other relatives alive. Had no regular trade. Had travelled a good deal in the United States but never west of Chicago. Had done odd jobs in the country. Evidently a tramp. Looked stupid and incapable. No. 4. Born in Germany. About twenty-three years old. Single. Wrote to his people sometimes, but they were poor. Trade, a waiter. Had worked in New York for five years. Had had no steady work for over two months. Had a little money saved but that was nearly gone. Expected to go to Albany the next day to work. Never worked in the country. Appeared to be a capable, steady man. No. 5. Born in Scotland. Fifty-three years old. Single. People all dead except a married sister. Regular trade, a boiler-maker. In this country most of the time for thirty-five years. Had travelled all around the world. Never worked in the country. Had no steady work all winter, but obtained work for one or two days every week and thus paid his way at the hotel. Said he lived up to his salary when working steadily. Is growing old. Sometimes went on a "spree" when he had money. Looked like a hard-working, efficient man. No. 6. Born in Ireland. About forty years old. Had married and separated from his wife. Trade was brick-laying, but he was not a union man. Never worked in the country. Came to New York at eighteen and had been there most of the time since. Claimed to be a Mason, and said that he expected help from a friend. Had been out of work all winter but worked occasionally around saloons and nearly always had the price of a bed. Admitted drinking heavily. Looked dissipated. No. 7. Born in Buffalo of American parents. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Waiter by trade. Parents were dead. Had two brothers but did not know where. Had worked a little in the country but knew nothing of farming. Had worked as waiter in New York for three years. Got into a fight three weeks before and had his face disfigured. As a result lost his job. Walked the streets two nights last week. Got coffee and rolls on the "bread line." Worked in a stable yesterday and made $1.00. Appeared somewhat dissipated but intelligent. No. 8. Born in New York City. Father German. Mother Scotch. Thirty-two years old. Single. His father lived somewhere in New York, and he expected to get work shortly and live with him. Trade was a machinist. Had mostly worked at bicycle repairing. Had travelled a good deal but never worked on a farm. Went to Philadelphia this Winter and lost position. Worked three days in a woodyard for board and lodging. Later had himself committed to jail for one month. Came back to New York last week. Did not appear dissipated, but looked bright and efficient. No. 9. Born in Lawrence, Mass., of American parents. About twenty-two years old. Single. Worked since a boy in Lawrence in the woolen mills until he lost position six weeks previously. Always lived with his people. Had never been hungry or without a bed. Came to New York two weeks previously but had done nothing since. Had just money enough left to go home, where he expected to obtain work again shortly. Looked thoroughly capable and reliable. Nos. 10 and 11. Two brothers born in New York of Irish parentage. Aged twenty-eight and thirty-one respectively. Both single. Parents dead. Had trade of awning makers, with plenty of work in summer but none in winter. Had never worked in the country. Had been living by means of odd jobs and charity all winter. Had received help from a mission and the Salvation Army. Quite often walked the streets all night and got coffee and rolls on the "bread line." Appeared shiftless and showed lack of initiative and intelligence. No. 12. Born in New York City of Irish parents. Twenty-six years old. Single. Did not know where his folks were. His mother was dead. Worked sometimes as a truck driver. Had worked at farm work in New Jersey. Had travelled a good deal. Had received help from charities in different cities. Got caught once riding a freight train through Philadelphia and spent ten days in jail for the offense. Said he drank when he got the chance. Now worked around the Army Hotel and received in return his bed and one meal ticket a day. Expected to leave the city as soon as the weather got warmer. Evidently a kind of tramp with a tendency to become worse. Looked wild and unreliable. No. 13. Born in Watertown, N. Y., of American parents. About thirty years old. Single. Had lost track of his people. Worked as steward on ship running to New Orleans. Was laid off three months ago. Expected to get position as steward again in the spring. Had walked the streets quite often, not being able to secure a bed. Had received help from several charities, including the Army. Looked dissipated and unreliable. Had never worked in the country. No. 14. Born in England. Came to this country when sixteen. People all dead. Thirty-two years old. Single. Never worked in the country. Regular trade was that of a painter but was not a Union man. Got odd jobs from time to time in paint shops. Made fifty cents the previous day. Had had no steady work for three months. Had forty dollars saved when he left his last steady job. Spent twenty dollars on a "drunk," and the rest had gone since. Appeared capable and fairly intelligent. No. 15. Born in Germany. Had come to this country with his people when young. His people all dead except a sister who was married and lived in Chicago. Single. About thirty-five years of age. Had no regular trade. Had worked as laborer in both country and city. Said that the city was best in Winter and the country in Summer. Expected to leave for the country as soon as the weather grew warm. Appeared lazy and inefficient. Had been aided by the Army. Evidently a tramp. No. 16. Born in Pittsfield, Mass., of American parents. Twenty-four years of age. Single. Ran away from home at seventeen. Did not know where his people were. Had no trade. Had worked at everything. Was in the navy for four years and afterward followed the water for several years working mostly as fireman. Never worked in the country. Had been out of steady work for six months. Secured lodging through charity but often spent the night on the streets. Said he drank when he could get it. Looked dissipated and demoralized. No. 17. Born in New York City of German parents. About thirty years old. Married but had left his wife. Had no regular trade. Had worked as waiter, porter and liveryman. Made fifty cents yesterday but spent forty for whiskey. Secured coffee and rolls on the "bread line." Had worked a little in the country. Appeared shiftless. No. 18. Born in Germany. Twenty-two years of age. Single. Wrote to his people sometimes. Always followed the water. Had sailed from different points to China and the Philippines. Drank and lost his boat. Made his way to New York where he had been out of work for two months. Wrote home for money which he expected shortly. Sold some of his clothing to get a bed. Was trying to get work on a boat. Never worked in the country. Looked wild and dissipated. No. 19. Born in Boston, Mass., of Irish parents. Twenty-five years of age. Single. Worked in machine shop when a boy and then joined the navy. After the navy experience he had worked both on water and on land. Had beaten his way on freight trains to different parts of the United States. Said he often got help from missions. Often slept in the parks in summer. Had been in jail several times. The last time for four months for stealing. Got out in August and had done odd jobs since. Had been several times in the Army hotel and several times in the City Lodging House. Had worked for a day or so in the country but did not know farming. Looked shiftless and demoralized. No. 20. Born in Binghamton, N. Y., of American parents. About thirty-five years of age. Single. Trade was lasting shoes in a shoe factory. Had worked in different cities but never in the country. Came to New York three months ago, as his factory had laid off a large number of hands. Had done odd jobs since. Walked the streets three nights the previous week and got coffee and rolls on the "bread line." Got a bed for the night this time through charity. Expected to get work in a factory when the weather became warmer. Drank occasionally but not often. Looked competent and of average intelligence. No. 21. Born in Ireland. Twenty-four years old. Single. Left home and had been in America one year. Worked in New York as waiter and lost his position three weeks previous to interview. Had some money saved but drank and lost it all on the Bowery. Walked the streets for one week and frequented the "bread line." Had a position, now, waiting on table during the dinner hour. Used to work on a farm in Ireland, and said that as soon as the weather got warm he would go to the country and look for work. Looked somewhat dissipated but hopeful. No. 22. Born in Brooklyn, N. Y. Twenty-six years old. Single. Had no trade. Had lost track of his people. Had travelled a good deal by means of freight trains and had been in several jails for vagrancy. Had never worked in the country. Said when he could get money, he spent it in drink. Secured a bed that night through an acquaintance. Looked like a confirmed tramp and vagrant. No. 23. Born in Hartford, Conn., of American parents. Twenty-one years old. Single. Parents dead. Had a married sister living in New Jersey, but he did not wish her to know that he was out of work. Had been working for years as a carpenter's assistant and hoped to become a full-fledged carpenter shortly. Had never worked in the country. Had been out of work for three months. Spent his money in a vain trip to Philadelphia and back looking for work. Had been doing odd jobs but had often gone hungry. Did not like to ask for charity. Expected to work as soon as the contractors began the spring building. Did not drink. Looked intelligent, bright, and was a very hopeful case. Went through the grammar school. No. 24. Born in Boston of Irish parents. Fifty years old. Single. Had no people living. Trade was a hardwood finisher. Never worked in the country. Got out of work two months ago. Left Boston then and came to New York. Had a little money, but it was almost gone. Was crippled but could still work. Drank some. He was gray-haired and looked older than he was. No. 25. Born in Ireland. About sixty years old. Had been married, but his wife was dead, and he had no known relatives. Had been a seaman a good deal but had no regular trade. He worked on a farm two months in the West. Had travelled a good deal. He worked occasionally around the docks and made just enough to maintain himself. When he had money, he spent it rashly. Looked like a hard drinker. No. 26. Born in Boston of American parents. Fifty-seven years old. Single. Had no people. His trade was ship's cook. He had never worked in the country. Said that he was too old to get a position. He secured a bed that night through the kindness of a friend, also out of work. Had wandered around a great deal. He did not look dissipated but he was gray-haired and very feeble. No. 27. Born in Philadelphia of German parents. About forty years old. Single. Trade was that of a sign-painter. Said he had worked mostly in Philadelphia and New York, and that he could get plenty of work, but kept losing his positions through drink. Had never worked in the country. Said he had people in Philadelphia but he did not write to them. Looked dissipated. No. 28. Born near Lynn, Mass., of American parents. Twenty years old. Single. Had no trade, but worked as dish-washer or at anything he could get. Said that he could run an engine and had been working on a boat in New York harbor but had to leave three weeks ago, on account of sickness. Was trying to get into a hospital. Money nearly gone. Was born and brought up on a farm but ran away nearly three years ago and did not want to go back, though his father and mother were living. Said he spent his money freely when he had it. He did not look dissipated but appeared to be a consumptive. No. 29. Born in New York City of Irish parents. About thirty-five years old. Single. Had no trade but had worked for years as driver on a horse-car. Got out of work four months ago and had no prospect of any. Got a small job cleaning out a saloon the previous day. Often walked the streets all night and went to the "bread line." Did not look very dissipated but evidently had no ambition. Did not know where his people were. Never worked in the country. No. 30. Born in Ireland. Sixteen years old. Single. Did not write home. Had trade of a cook and had been out of work for two weeks. Then had $100.00 and lost it all "on a drunk." Never worked in the country. Had walked the streets three nights the past week. Was going to New Jersey to look for work. Looked dissipated but otherwise capable. No. 31. Born in Scotland. Fifty-five years old. Married in Scotland and came with family to this country twenty-five years ago. Had no trade. Worked at anything he could get. Wife dead. Two children living, unable to help him. Had travelled widely. Obtained a steady job the previous month. Held it two weeks, then went "on a drunk." Still had enough money saved to keep him two weeks. Said that if he did not get work before then, he would leave New York. He knew a little about farm work in Scotland. Looked like a hard drinker. No. 32. Born in New York City of Irish parents. Sixty years old. Single. People all dead. Had no regular trade but had followed the water. Never worked in the country. Had some cousins in New York who helped him out a little. He looked dissipated and feeble. No. 33. Born in Philadelphia. American parents. Forty-three years old. Single. Salesman. Had been out of work all winter after losing a position through drink. Had received help from several aid societies and missions this winter. Had walked the streets a good many nights. Said he never worked in the country. Looked dissipated and unreliable. No. 34. Born in South Carolina. American parents. Twenty years old. Single. Did not write home. Said he ran away and his people were angry. Had no trade. Never worked in the country. Had walked the streets two nights this week. Looked intelligent but wild. No. 35. Born in Newark, N. J., English parents. Twenty-six years old. Single. Had no trade but worked as a janitor. Was in the navy for three years and had travelled widely. Had been out of work one month. Never worked in the country. Said he worked for a while and then "went off on a drunk." His people in Newark sent him money once in a while. Looked dissipated. No. 36. Born in Ireland. Thirty-eight years old. Single. When seven years old came to America with his people. Had two brothers and one sister in Schenectady, N. Y. Parents dead. His people did not aid him as he drank so much. Never worked in the country. Got an odd job now and then. Looked like a hard drinker. No. 37. Born in England. Thirty-six years old. Single. Came to America with his people when twelve years old. Went to Fall River, Mass., where his people lived. Ran away from home at eighteen and had followed the water since. Never worked in the country. Was paid off last Saturday. Went on a drunk on the Bowery and lost his money and his job. Walked the streets two nights, but received help from his people. Looked a little dissipated but capable. No. 39. Born in Yonkers, N. Y. American parents. Forty years old. Single. Father lived in Yonkers but was unable to help him. Plumber by trade. Did not belong to the Union. Was out of work for one month the past winter, but now had a job and was renting a room in the Army hotel. Never worked in the country. Looked like a hard drinker, but otherwise capable. No. 40. Born in New Haven, Conn. American parents. Twenty-five years old. Single. Relatives in New Haven poor. Was a telegraph operator and worked at that trade for two years, but lost position on account of bad health. Had worked on a farm quite a little, and said as soon as the weather got warmer he was going to the country. He now had a room at the Army hotel but his money was nearly gone. Looked intelligent and capable. No. 41. Born in New York City. American parents. Twenty-four years old. Single. Did not know where his relatives were. Had trade as truck driver, and since losing a steady job two months previously had worked at odd jobs about the docks. Spent two days at an Army Industrial Home and was now at the Army Hotel. He looked like a hard drinker. Never worked in the country. No. 42. Born in Scotland. Twenty-three years old. Single. Relatives lived in Scotland and sent him a little money sometimes. Had no regular trade. Had worked on the water a good deal. Came to New York two years previously, and had no steady work since. Had been nine months in the hospital from which he had been discharged two weeks. Expected to return to the hospital. Looked like a very sick man, but not dissipated. No. 43. Born in New York City. American parents. Twenty-eight years old. Single. No people alive. Had no trade. Had travelled around the world and never worked when he could help it. Never worked in the country. Looked like a regular tramp and hard drinker. No. 44. Born in Newark, N. J. French parents. Twenty-four years old. Single. Had two sisters in Brooklyn. Had no regular trade but had been working for three weeks in a grocery store and thus had a room in the Army Hotel. Never worked in the country. Looked capable and intelligent. No. 45. Born in Brooklyn. American parents. Twenty-four years old. Single. Had people in Brooklyn who were helping him. Had no trade but had worked all his life at odd jobs. Could not work steadily because of bad habits. Never worked in the country. Looked like a hard drinker. No. 46. Born in Jersey City. Irish parents. Thirty-five years old. Single. Was a painter by trade but did not belong to the Union. Had been out of work three months. Some friends gave him clothes and a little money. Looked intelligent but dissipated. No. 47. Born in Brooklyn. Irish parents. Thirty years old. Single. Had no trade. Worked on a farm in Long Island and hoped to go to the country shortly. Had had no steady work the past Winter. Had been in the Army Industrial Home six times during the Winter. Looked shiftless and dissipated. No. 48. Born in Lowell, Mass. Italian parents. Twenty years old. Single. People lived in Lowell. Had no trade. Never worked in the country. Came to New York two weeks previously with a little money, but this was soon spent and he had walked the streets two nights. Entered the Army Hotel through charity. Had written home for money and expected to return there. His appearance was very good. No. 49. Born in New York. American parents. Forty years old. Married. Separated from his wife three months ago because of his drinking. Had no trade. Never worked in the country. Had been out of work three months. Picked up odd jobs now and then, and thus secured a bed. Looked like a hard drinker. No. 50. Born in Germany. Seventeen years old. Single. Had people in Germany who were unable to help him. Had been in this country nine months. Said he was on a farm in New York State but ran away. The Salvation Army was keeping him, and he worked a little around the Hotel. Looked like a promising boy but rather wild. No. 51. Born in Denver, Col. American parents. Twenty-three years old. Single. Had people at home who sent him money now and then. Was an iron-worker. Belonged to the Union, but said the Union had not helped him any. Had been out of work some time. Never worked in the country. Had travelled a good deal in the United States. Looked bright and promising. No. 52. Born in Davenport, Washington. Twenty-four years old. Single. Had people at home where he had sent for money. Had travelled widely. Came to New York five weeks ago from Panama where he had been working for eight months. Had to leave on account of sickness. Had $100.00 when he came to New York but spent nearly all on doctors bills. Still had a little left. Said he had worked a good deal on a farm. Looked capable and intelligent. No. 53. American, born in New York. Thirty years old. Single. People dead. Bartender. Did not belong to the Union. Was out of work for one month until two weeks previous to interview, when he got a job as bartender. Was still working and had a room at the Army Hotel. Said he would be all right it he could leave drink alone. He never worked in the country. No. 54. Born in New York. Irish parents. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Had quarrelled with his people who lived in New York. Painter by trade. Lost his membership in the Union because he did not pay his dues. Had had no steady work for a year, but had wandered all over the country doing very little work, but receiving aid from charitable societies. Said he liked the warm weather, so that he could sleep in the parks. Looked shiftless and a typical tramp. No. 55. Born in Norway. About thirty years old. Single. Had people in Norway who did not help him. Came to New York from his native land two months previously. A carpenter by trade. Was working in Jersey and lost position two weeks previously. Had money in his pocket and was evidently wise enough to keep it. Conversed in broken English. Said he worked in the country in Norway. Looked like a capable man. No. 56. Born in Scotland. Forty-five years old. Single. Came to this country with his people when he was nine years old. People had since died. Bookkeeper by trade. Had been out of work all Winter. The Scotch Aid Society was keeping him, giving him bed and meal tickets. Said he had received help from four different missions in New York. Looked incapable and shiftless. Never worked in the country. No. 57. Born in Jersey City. American parents. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Had no trade. Did not work if he could help it. Came here from the West by means of freight trains. Never worked in the country. Looked like a regular tramp. No. 58. Born in Chicago. Single. Thirty-years old. Had friends in Chicago who sent him a little money. Had no trade. Never did hard work. Got odd jobs and received aid from missions. Said he was a Christian and liked to attend meetings. Had a room in the Army Hotel. Said he had been staying there off and on for two years. Looked stupid and incapable. No. 59. Born in Denver, Col. Fifty years old. Single. Plumber by trade. Belonged to the Union but left eight months previously and had not paid his dues since. Was in business for himself at one time, but lost it through drink. Said he got help from the missions whenever he could. Never worked in the country. Hoped to go West again shortly. Looked feeble and dissipated. No. 60. American. Born in Springfield, Mass. Fifty-five years old. Single. Said his people in Springfield were wealthy but would have nothing to do with him. Had no trade. In New York all Winter. Had walked the streets a good many nights. Never worked in the country. Charity Organization Society had helped him, besides other organizations. Said he had consumption. Looked very weak and dissipated. No. 61. Born in America. Jewish parents. Twenty-six years old. Single. Stone-cutter by trade. Said he worked at the Insurance business at times. Had been out of work nearly two months. Never worked in the country. Looked bright and capable. No. 62. Born in Cleveland, Ohio. American parents. Twenty-six years old. Single. People lived in Cleveland, but did not help him. Had worked on a farm nearly all his life. Left the farm two years previously and had wandered most of the time since. He expected to be sent to the country by the Bowery Mission shortly. Looked shiftless but not dissipated. No. 63. Born in New York. American parents. About fifty years old. Married. Said his people were dead. Had no regular trade. Did office work, but was nearly always out of work. Said he was a Christian. He evidently followed the missions and "got saved" every time he needed help. Never worked in the country. Looked shiftless and inefficient. No. 64. Born in Brooklyn. English parents. Thirty years old. Married. Quarrelled with his wife five years previously and left her. Painter by trade. Did not belong to the Union. Had not worked all Winter. Said he had been all around the world and had beaten his way wherever he went. Had been in jail several times, for vagrancy and drunkness. Never worked in the country. Looked like a tramp. No. 65. Born in Maine. American parents. Twenty-four years old. Single. Had people in Maine from whom he expected help. Barber by trade. Came to New York three weeks previously. Met some friends on the Bowery and lost all his money. The Army was helping him. He had worked somewhat in the country. Looked very stupid. No. 66. Born in Scotland. About sixty years old. Single. Had no people. Had no trade. In this country for forty years. Out of work all Winter. The Scotch Aid Society had been keeping him now for three weeks. He never worked in the country. He looked like a regular vagrant. No. 67. Born in Boston. American parents. Twenty-four years old. Single. A waiter. Had wandered a good deal, and beaten his way by freight trains. Came to New York from the West one month previously. Had not worked since, but had been aided by the missions and the Army. Evidently did not like to work. No. 68. Born in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. Irish parents. About thirty-two years old. Single. Had no trade. Came to New York two weeks previously with some money which he got from his people. He had sent home for more. Worked somewhere in the country. Said he drank periodically and did not like to work steadily. Looked very shiftless. No. 69. Born in Ireland. Twenty-eight years old. Single. Had lost track of his people. Had been in this country eight years. Had no trade. Had had no steady work all Winter. Drank a good deal. Never worked in the country. Looked very wild. No. 70. Born in New Orleans. Spanish parents. About twenty years old. Single. Left home two years ago and took to life on the water. Left the boat in New York one month previously and had not worked since. Said he liked to sail and see the world. His people lived in New Orleans, and he expected help from them. Never worked in the country. Looked capable. No. 71. Born in New York. American parents. About thirty years old. Single. Had trade as a bartender. Belonged to the Union. Lost a steady job through drink three weeks ago. Was now working four hours a day. Had a room in the Army Hotel. Said he was going to change his line of business because he drank too much. His appearance was good. Never worked in the country. No. 72. Born in Germany. Looked like a Jew. About twenty-five years old. Single. Had no trade. Had been out of work three months. Was now selling old clothing and other things around the Army Hotel. Never worked in the country. Evidently lazy and incapable. No. 73. Born in Illinois. American parents. About twenty-eight years old. Single. Ran away from home and was ashamed to go back. Had no trade but had worked a good deal as cook on board ship. Had been out of work six weeks. Said he was sick and had about $200.00, but it did not last long. He was working round the Army Hotel a little every day, for which he got his bed and one meal ticket. Never worked in the country. Said he was going to join the navy. Looked bright and capable. No. 74. Born in Lithuania. Twenty-three years old. Single. People at home were poor. Had no trade. In New York three years. Out of work two months. Obtained clothes in various ways and sold them. Was not dissipated, but looked lazy. Never worked in the country. No. 75. Born in Yonkers, N. Y. American parents. About sixty-five years old. Single. Was an old sailor but had not been to sea for over a year. Was working two days a week as janitor. Said he had been a hard drinker in the past, but he did not drink much now. He looked aged, but still capable. Never worked in the country. No. 76. Born in Boston. Irish parents. About twenty-five years old. Single. Had no trade. People did not recognize him. Had travelled all over the country. Had been in jail twice. Never worked in the country. Looked like a tramp. SOME FACTS BROUGHT OUT IN THE 76 HOTEL EXAMPLES. Nationality. No. Percentage. American parentage 35 .461 Irish parentage 20 .263 English and Scotch parentage 9 .119 German parentage 8 .105 Other countries 4 .052 Married men 7 .095 Single men 69 .905 Worked a little in country 13 .169 Worked considerably in country 5 .065 Men with regular trades 26 .342[56] Union men 4 .052 Men who looked efficient 15 .197 Men who looked semi-efficient 14 .184 Men who looked inefficient 47 .619 Ages. 15-20 4 .052 20-30 42 .553 30-40 16 .211 40-50 6 .079 50-60 7 .092 60-70 1 .013 Length of time out of work. Less than 1 mo. 12 .157 More than 1 mo. 13 .171 More than 2 mos. 11 .145 More than 3 mos. 40 .527 FACTS BROUGHT OUT IN THE 109 INDUSTRIAL EXAMPLES AND THE 76 HOTEL EXAMPLES COMBINED. Nationality. No. Percentage. American parentage 76 .411 Irish parentage 50 .270 German parentage 26 .141 English and Scotch parentage 18 .098 Italian parentage 4 .022 Swedish parentage 4 .038 Other countries, parentage 7 .20 Married men 24 .149 Single men 161 .851 Worked a little in country 29 .156 Worked considerably in country 12 .016 Men with regular trades 57 .309 Union men 10 .054 Men who looked efficient 53 .287 Men who looked semi-efficient 35 .189 Men who looked inefficient 97 .524 Ages. 15-20 6 .032 20-30 97 .525 30-40 39 .210 40-50 26 .140 50-60 50 .082 60-70 2 .011 Length of time out of work. Less than 1 mo. 20 .108 More than 1 mo. 30 .163 More than 2 mos. 27 .145 More than 3 mos. 108 .584 FOOTNOTES: [38] "How the Other Half Lives," p. 38. [39] This differentiation is more pronounced in the United States, since the work has been extended here more than in other countries. [40] For adverse criticism see "The Social Relief Work of the S. A.," p. 9. [41] At the Burne St. Shelter, the largest in London, one large dormitory has 288 beds and another 265. [42] For rooms, special rates are given by the week; from some of the examples given at the end of this chapter, it will be seen that these are occupied by men with partial or poorly paid employment. [43] In London, the Army has a mattress factory which supplies its institutions. [44] More headway is being made in this direction in the Industrial Homes where the population is more permanent. We found in one home in Chicago that the men were organized in the form of a club, and enjoyed social meetings together. Also, at the largest Industrial Home in London, called "The Spa Road Elevator," we found a regular cricket club organized which played cricket games with other clubs. [45] Good examples of this are to be found in the Middlesex Street Hotel and the Burne Street Hotel, London. The former hotel is regularly provided, by a large baker firm, with food, which is one day stale, for a very low figure. [46] The higher class hotel for women is to be found in Los Angeles and Boston. [47] From an interview with a leading officer. [48] These exceptions are certain of the lower class hotels where attempts along this line seem to fail. [49] See "How the Other Half Lives," Ch. VIII. See also "Social Relief Work of the S. A.," p. 10. [50] See examples given at the end of this chapter, p. 77. [51] See the tables, pp. 97 and 98, showing percentages of these men who had come from the country. For the work of Mr. Fox see p. 113. [52] See examples of these men, p. 77 fl. [53] See Giddings' "Principles of Sociology," p. 127. [54] Some light may be thrown on this subject by a perusal of Mr. W. H. Dawson's book entitled "The German Workman," although conditions are evidently vastly different in this country and England from what they are in Germany. [55] See examples numbered 4. 5. 9. 23 and others, on p. 78 and fl. [56] While this percentage is larger than that in the Industrial Homes (see p. 62), 62 per cent. of the examples in the Hotels having regular trades were dissipated, mostly victims of drink, as against 19 per cent. in the Industrial examples. CHAPTER III. THE FARM COLONIES OF THE SALVATION ARMY. So many times has the cry been raised "back to the land!", so optimistic have so many reformers become over the hope that the population could be diverted from the city to the country, and so loudly have certain enthusiasts prophesied a surely successful issue to colonizing enterprises, that the Salvation Army colonies form a very interesting and profitable field of investigation. What is needed is an experiment that will prove or disprove the prophesied success of taking the people back to the land. Once that is proved, with the great Northwest of America almost untouched, with immense tracts of good land in Africa and other continents, and with the United States about to open up millions of acres of land, made fertile by means of irrigation, we shall be ready to act and get rid of the surplus city population. But first we must have the proof, and the question before us is whether the Salvation Army has sufficiently proved the case. The matter was agitated before the English Government to such an extent in 1905 that the Rhodes Trustees, contributing sufficient funds to cover the expense, the Secretary of State for the Colonies nominated Mr. Rider Haggard, the novelist, to visit the United States and inspect the three Salvation Army colonies there, to make a report on the same, and to include in this report any practical suggestions which might occur to him. The following words were used in the letter of commission: "It appears to the Secretary of State that if these experiments are found to be successful, some analogous system might to great advantage be applied in transferring the urban population of the United Kingdom to different parts of the United Kingdom."[57] Mr. Haggard visited the three colonies in the United States, and made a report to the English Government, favoring strongly the movement, and recommending that the Government take it up, provide the capital and utilize all ready existing organizations, such as the Salvation Army, in carrying out its scheme. The matter was referred by the Government to the Departmental Committee, who, after reviewing it and looking into the question in 1906, issued a long report in which they discountenanced Mr. Haggard's scheme on the ground that: 1. It was better for settlers from England to be scattered about with experienced farmers as neighbors than to be placed in a number together. 2. The Salvation Army or any similar organization was not a desirable management for a colony dependent on money advanced by the Imperial Government. 3. That Ft. Romie and Ft. Amity, the American farm colonies of the Salvation Army, were not precedents upon which a large scheme of colonization could be based.[58] The Committee gave reasons for arriving at the above conclusions, into which, for the present, we need not enter, but their conclusions are suggestive, and may be borne in mind while we make our study of the subject. Gen. Booth, in his plans as outlined in "Darkest England," provided for three main divisions of the work for the unemployed poor, viz., the City Colony, the Country Colony and the Over-sea Colony, signifying by these terms the City Industrial Work, the Country Industrial Colony, and the Farm Colony.[59] The last named was to be on a larger scale on some Colonial territory of England. This division has tended to persist in the United States, and this country has been the field for special experiments along this line. There are three Colonies in the United States: Fort Herrick, situated near Cleveland, Ohio; Fort Amity, situated in Southeast Colorado, and Ft. Romie, which is located at Soledad in the Salinas Valley, California. At first there was no differentiation between these Colonies, but latterly, the Colony at Ft. Herrick, the smallest of the three, has been managed as an Industrial Colony, and the other two have continued as regular Farm Colonies. The plan of "Commander" Booth-Tucker, in charge of the Salvation Army in the United States from 1896 until 1904, and the originator of these Colonies, was, in brief, as he states it, to take the waste labor in families, and place it upon the waste land by means of waste capital, and thereby to convert this trinity of waste into a unity of production.[60] His waste labor was the family struggling in the crowded city; his waste land, the large tracts of public land about to be opened up by irrigation; and his waste capital, if such a term can be used, was the capital lying idle, or at least, making 2-1/2 or 3 per cent., when according to his estimate, it could yield 5 per cent. The principles which he laid down were as follows: 1. There must be sufficiency of capital. 2. The land must be carefully selected and laid out. 3. The colonists must be well selected. 4. There must be able supervision. 5. The principle of home ownership must be followed. 6. God must be recognized. From our investigations at Ft. Romie and Ft. Amity, we arrived at the conclusion that No. 4 and No. 6 were the only ones thoroughly carried out; that there was a weakness in the amount of capital (Prin. No. 1); that an unfortunate selection of land was made (Prin. No. 2); that the successful colonists did not entirely represent the class from which we should wish them to be taken (Prin. No. 3); and that ownership gave way largely to a system of renting-out by the Army (Prin. No. 5). For verification of this, see the typical cases at the end of the chapter. Commander Booth-Tucker advanced the argument, which is sound, to the effect that, when entire families were taken from the city and placed on the land, the tendency to return to the city would be overcome. It has been the experience of philanthropists, that when single men and women were transferred from the city to the country, they always tended to return, the reason being due to an acquired fondness of the individual for intimate association with his fellows,[61] but when a man has his wife and children, together with a plot of land and a home which he may call his own, the attraction toward the city is overcome, by a stronger one which keeps him where he is. Of course, this would answer for the one generation only. Leaving out the small colony at Ft. Herrick, Ohio, which was changed to an Industrial Colony, and which is considered in the chapter on the Industrial Work, let us examine more closely the Farm Colonies at Ft. Amity, Col., and Ft. Romie, Cal. The larger enterprise was set on foot in Colorado, in 1898, where a tract of 2,000 acres was secured at a cost of $46,000.00. In this year, fourteen families were brought from Chicago and placed on the bare, unimproved prairie, where, however, there was abundant water supply carried by a large irrigation company. These colonists were all family men with two exceptions, and nine of the heads of families had either been on farms or had worked on farms in the past.[62] They were in narrow circumstances financially, and the transportation expenses of all except one of these families were paid by the Army. With this migration as a basis, the number of colonists was greatly increased by families from different cities and also from the surrounding country, until in 1905, there were thirty-eight families. Several were brought to the Colony as experienced men to act as pace-setters for the others.[63] Some came with a small amount of capital. Owing to the fact that the land was covered by a heavy sod which needed considerable working, no crops were raised the first year, and only fair crops the second. During the first year, the colonists were supported by cash loans which were charged against them. After the first two years, crops were good[64], and the outlook was promising, in spite of certain insect pests, but after about seven years a great difficulty showed itself. The land on which the Colony was located was alkali land, and bottom land, without any drainage. The result of constant irrigation was that the alkali rose to the surface in larger and larger quantities, until no good crop could be raised. The only salvation was to drain the land and thus rid it of the blighting alkali. This meant an expense of from $30.00 to $40.00 an acre. At the present time draining is being rapidly pushed forward and is proving very beneficial, but it can be easily seen what a discouragement the alkali has proved to the colonists, and what an additional expense is laid upon them and the Colony; an expense which it will take years of good crops to overcome.[65] Up to 1905, about eighteen families, not satisfied with the results obtained, had moved away, and their places had been filled by others. A very few of the departing families moved because of ill-health; some thought that they could do better elsewhere as farmers; some even had considerable money as a result of their holdings in the Colony[66]. Since 1905, there has been a good deal of changing, and at present a large part of the Colony land is rented out by the Army to settlers; some being from the country, and some from the city[67]. A small number of the old pioneer colonists still remain and have done well with their holdings in spite of all difficulties.[68] The Army stated in 1905, that the financial standing of this Colony showed a net loss to the Army of $23,111.50, and a gain to the colonists of $37,943.77. It considered its loss a cheap price for the experience gained, but thought that it had erred in giving the colonists too liberal terms.[69] By this time the loss to the Army is considerably greater, owing to the increased expense of drainage.[70] At the present time (January, 1908), the population of this Colony is about 200. Nearly all the land is occupied in one way or another, either by colonists who own, or partially own, their land, or by renters, who are also called colonists. Several homes are vacant, but it is expected that they will be filled by renters before the Spring season opens. The little village consists of several stores, a blacksmith shop, a substantial railroad depot, a post office, a small hotel and a school house. A good many of the homes are built of stone, quarried on the Colony, and present a good appearance. Up on the higher land is situated a large stone structure, built by the colonists at an expense to the Army of $18,000.00, and first used as an orphanage, then as a sanitorium, and now abandoned. Irrigation ditches with a good flow of water are in evidence, and preparations for draining the land are under way. That this is necessary is forced upon us by the many white patches scattered here and there where the water, having evaporated, has left the destructive alkali salt on the surface of the ground. When we come to consider the other Farm Colony, Ft. Romie, situated at Soledad, Cal., in the beautiful Salinas Valley, we receive a more favorable impression, although we find that the Colony here has had many difficulties with which to contend. The Colony is smaller than that at Ft. Amity, but the land is better. The original 500 acres has been increased by the addition of a lease of 150 acres with the option of buying. In the year 1898, eighteen families were taken from the poor of San Francisco and placed upon the Colony, but unforeseen conditions prevailed, and, as a result, but one of these families remains to-day.[71] The great mistake was made of settling colonists upon land which needed irrigation, before that irrigation was provided. This mistake was brought out the more vividly, in that the three first years of the Colony's existence were years of drought, bringing evil to most parts of the State, and especially to that land which, like the Colony land, only received a slight rain-fall at best. The result of the first years of this experiment, then, was an abandoning of the land by the colonists, and a loss to the Army of $27,000.00. The experiment was continued, however, but with very different conditions. An excellent irrigation system was established, and a new lot of settlers brought to the Colony; not, this time, from the city, but from the surrounding country. These people were poor, but accustomed to the land. The result, as might be expected this time, was more favorable. It was stated in 1905 that no colonists had left since 1901.[72] In May, 1903, there were nineteen families ranged according to nationality as follows:--Thirteen American; Two Scandinavian; One Finn; One German-Swiss; One Dutch and one Italian. There are now twenty-five families, and about one hundred and forty-five persons on the Colony. The nucleus of a town is to be seen with two or three stores, a blacksmith shop, and a good sized Town Hall. Near the Colony is a school house with an attendance of about fifty children, most of them being colonists' children. An irrigation plant has been established and is now owned and worked by the colonists, formed in a joint-stock company. The colonists raise beets, potatoes, alfalfa, fruits of different kinds, and stock. A large part of their income is derived from the dairying industry. They ship their cream to a creamery at Salinas, about twenty-five miles distant. Much could be said about the healthy appearance and happy life of the members of this Colony, but as they have not been brought from the unhealthy, squalid misery of the city, this is not of so much interest. The women work in the vegetable gardens and with the stock, as well as in the home; and the older children help their parents. Along the lines of co-operation, in both colonies there are interesting features. At stated intervals, the colonists meet in the form of a Farmers' Club, and discuss questions relative to the success of their individual farms and to the Colony as a whole. They also have lecturers come from a distance to address them on the latest phases of horticulture, agriculture, fertilization and irrigation. The colonists also embark in business enterprises like the stock company formed in the California Colony for the control and management of the irrigation plant. In this plant, one of the colonists is engineer, and another the superintendent of water supply. Another important institution of this same Colony is the Rochdale store, which does most of the retail business in the Colony. This store, in its management and organization, follows the co-operative Rochdale system, which has attained strength in England and is growing in the United States. The store is incorporated in the State of California as a co-operative corporation, and holds a membership in the State Rochdale Wholesale Co. It has already extended beyond the limits of the Colony and counts among its members others than colonists. The colonists also take active interest in local affairs of all kinds. In one colony, the rural mail carrier is a colonist, and the school teacher the wife of a colonist. At Ft. Amity, a colonist is now sheriff of the County for the second time. Social and religious life is also fostered in the Colonies. A variety of religious sects is represented, and no compulsion is exercised towards any one of them. At Ft. Romie the Army has an organized corps, which holds meetings once in the week and once on Sunday, also having a Sunday school for the children. At Ft. Amity similar conditions prevail. On both colonies a good moral influence is found and there are no evil surroundings; hence in neither colony is there a local officer of the law. In the contract which every colonist signs on taking his land there is a temperance clause to this effect: "And party of the second part hereby agrees to and with party of the first part that, in consideration of the benefits derived from this contract, he will not bargain, sell, barter or trade upon said land any intoxicating liquors, or otherwise dispose of as beverages any intoxicants, at any place upon said premises or any part thereof, or permit the selling of the same, or any illegal traffic or any act or acts prohibited by law." The same clause goes on to provide for the return of the land to the Army in case of its being violated. From this brief description it is seen that much of the success of these colonies must rest on the management. The manager must be large-hearted and broad-minded. He must be supervisor, instructor, moderator, counsellor and friend. The Army has been very fortunate in placing fit men in these positions, and if in other things it had been equally fortunate, its colonies would have made a better showing. As regards the financial methods of the Army in dealing with the colonists, the following extract from a memorandum of information issued by the Ft. Romie Colony, California, gives typical information. 1. Land: Twenty acres of land are sold to each colonist. The price of unimproved land at this date, 1904, is $100.00 per acre. This price, however, is liable to be increased at any time.[73] 2. Buildings: Houses, barns and other buildings are constructed by the colonists. Materials are furnished in quantities by the Army according to the size of the colonist's family, somewhat after the following schedule. For a family with one or two small children, a two-room house, about 14�24 outside measurement, for which we appropriate not over $125.00. This is to include a small barn or shed for horses, cows, etc. For a family with three or four small children, a three-room house about 18�24, costing with barn, etc., not over $175.00. For a larger family, perhaps a four or five-room house, limiting the appropriation for the same to $225.00. Colonists can suit themselves as to the style of the house, but must satisfy the manager that it can be erected within the limits of the appropriation named. The colonist can add to the size of the house as he gets on his financial feet. 3. Terms: On land breaking and other permanent land improvements, the colonists are given 20 years' time. The principal and interest are payable in installments each year. 4. Outfit: To colonists unable to purchase them, the Army furnishes the necessary implements and stock, consisting of the following: Team of horses, cow, hogs, chicken, seed, etc., secured by chattel mortgage. The interest on outfit and loans is fixed at 6 per cent. It is expected that the principal and interest will be repaid in installments each year. All outfits and loans are to be repaid within five years.[74] We have briefly outlined the most prominent features of the Farm Colonies, but the final questions now arise, is the movement sound; what does it signify, and what development does the future hold for it? For one thing we must not be led astray by the statements of the Army. The continued existence of the colonies, in the face of great difficulties, through the term of eight or nine years they have been carried on, is not in itself an argument for the soundness of the movement. From ocean to ocean and throughout the world, the Army has advertised its success in colonizing enterprises, and hence it had a set purpose in maintaining and continuing its colonies, even though they should be failures from our point of view, and even though they should not fulfil the purpose originally intended by the Army itself. As has been remarked with regard to the industrial colonies, so here, we would emphasize the fact that the Army has no need to fear acknowledgement that the colonies have not been successful, because it has other credit upon which to depend for its reputation for usefulness. After looking at it from all sides, we come to the conclusion that the two experiments considered in these pages do not justify an extension of this work. This conclusion is based on several reasons: 1. Many of the successful colonists are not men who needed help the most, and many are not from the City at all. 2. The colonies have been, and are, an undue expense to the organization. 3. The same amount of energy and money would be more beneficial to the unemployed if used along other lines. 4. The principles advanced as essential by the originators of the movement were only partially carried out.[75] Our first reason is based partly on personal investigation, and partly on the statements of the Army itself.[76] There are, as will be seen from examples given, certain places where families from the city without previous experience have made a success of the colonies, but these are greatly in the minority[77]. If, in the case of the California Colony at Fort Romie, when seventeen out of the original number of families taken from the city, left on account of the lack of water, the next group of settlers had again been chosen from the city, after water had been secured, a more conclusive experiment would have resulted, but instead, the second group were, "farmers by profession."[78] This looks as though the Army itself at that time doubted the ability of the city families to succeed on the land. At any rate, the fact that the majority of the families at the present time on the colonies are not from the city at all, shows that, as an experiment of removing the surplus population of the city to the country, the colonies are a failure. But further, when we take the minority, the families now in the colonies who came from the city, we find that, in most cases, they are not people who needed help the most, and those who have succeeded on the colonies, have succeeded because of elements in their character which would have led them to succeed in the long run anywhere, with favorable environment. In this case then, the only advantage in taking these people from the city was to leave more room there for somebody else, and this is not much of an advantage, since that "somebody else" is quite likely to come from the country to the city, and thus not be one of the city's submerged ones at all. Again, if, as we have just stated, men succeed in the country because of the same elements of character which would lead them to succeed anywhere, then the reason for their failing to succeed in the city would lie in an unfavorable environment, and to change their environment, it is not necessary to carry on a system of paternalistic colonies. This leads us to the question of assisted emigration, which we will discuss in connection with our third objection to the colonies. As regards the second reason, that of undue expense, Mr. Haggard in 1905, found a loss to the Army of $50,000. While, since that time, in the case of the California Colony, there has been no further loss, yet in the case of the colony in Colorado, there has been much expenditure which should be added to the original loss. The Army states that it has been too liberal in its dealings with its colonists, but we note that, in spite of its liberality, there has been a constant tendency for the colonists to leave, hoping to do better elsewhere.[79] The Army might reply that this is no argument, and that the fact that they were able to leave with funds on hand was in itself a proof of liberality on the Army's part, but to prove the success of its experiment, it must show that those who have left have done better elsewhere, and not drifted back once more to the city. The Army might further state that in future a better selection of land might be made, and that other unfavorable things might be avoided, but we are dealing here with these two colonies and not future experiments. As regards such, there would always be unforeseen difficulties of every kind.[80] Coming to the third reason for our conclusion, the reason that money might be expended in other ways with greater advantage to the unemployed, and with greater relief to the congestion of cities, we refer again to the recommendations of the Departmental Committee appointed by the English government to consider Commissioner Haggard's report.[81] In their report they recommend a system of emigration from the city to the English possessions, such as Canada, aided by the government, in preference to the system of colonization. With this we agree. A man once transported from the city and then thrown on his own resources in a favorable rural environment, will be more likely to succeed than a man who is taken out with a number of others to form a colony. The man left to his own resources will rise to the occasion, as so many have done in both Canada and the United States, who have migrated from city to country and made successful farmers and citizens, while, on the other hand, the man who feels dependent on an organization, which is responsible to the public for his success, and its own, will blame it for his own lack of efficiency. The Army itself claims a successful work done along the lines of emigration. In 1905, through the agency of the Army, 2,500 men were sent out from London to Canada. This number has since increased every year until in 1907 over 15,000 men were sent out. Many other emigration societies have been very successful in this work.[82] The emigrants sent out with some assistance, in many cases, gain new ambitions in life and make pronounced successes on the new soil. As regards the cost, the following quotation may be submitted. "The cost of emigration to Canada from England does not amount to more than £10 a head, and some of the societies, especially those maintained by women, seem to be successful in securing repayment of at least a part of the money advanced. In other words, $300,000.00, which Mr. Rider Haggard assumes as a necessary sum for forming a colony of 1,500 families, would enable at least 6,000 families to go out as emigrants."[83] With regard to conditions in the large cities of the United States and other countries, we believe that the same arguments would apply, and that, in every case, assisted emigration will be found far more feasible and beneficial than any system of colonization. Again, for reasons already given, in addition to there being six thousand families aided by emigration, for the same sum as fifteen hundred families could be by colonization, the relief given would be far preferable. In other words, emigration has been proved successful, while colonization has not. Coming back to the conclusions reached by Mr. Haggard on his recommendations to the English government: Mr. Haggard, after stating that the two experiments, outside of a slight failure of finance, seemed to him to be eminently successful, says that, given certain requisites, "It will, I consider, be strange if success is not attained even in the case of poor persons taken from the cities, provided that they are suited in character, the victims of misfortune and circumstances rather than of vice, having had some acquaintance or connection with the land in their past life, and having also an earnest desire to raise themselves and their children in the world." Now two of the "requisites" he mentions are, "that the land should be cheap as well as suitable" and "that markets also with accessibility and convenience of location should be borne in mind," two rather difficult requisites to be found together. Again, in the above quotation he lays down other provisos; among these being one that the people selected should have had some acquaintance or connection with the land in their past lives, a rather indefinite proviso in itself, but, from a list of poor men out of work or in irregular or casual employment in London and the other large cities in England in 1901 and 1906, compiled by Mr. Wilson Fox, we find that out of a total of 8,793 such men, ninety per cent were town born.[84] We also find in New York City in the spring of 1908, that out of a total of 185 destitute men, about eighty per cent were town born.[85] That then leaves ten per cent in the case of England and twenty per cent in the case of New York City from which to select or choose the ones needed for a colonizing enterprise. Mr. Fox has also shown in his investigations: 1. That the countrymen who migrate to London are mainly the best youth of the villages. 2. That the incomers usually get the pick of the posts, especially outdoor trades. 3. Country immigrants do not to any considerable extent directly recruit the town unemployed who are, in the main, the sediment deposited at the bottom of the scale, as the physique and power of application of the town population tends to deteriorate.[86] The conclusion is then, that it would be difficult to get the men according to Mr. Haggard's requirements, and difficult to get the land according to his requirements, and even if such were obtained, for reasons already stated there is no justification for a large colonizing enterprise in the two experiments described in this chapter. Examples of Colonists taken from Ft. Amity by the author in January, 1908. No. 1. Elderly man. Widower. Had three grown-up children in the Colony at various times. Had one son a colonist with farm of his own. Was not a Salvationist. Came from Chicago where he was a tailor. Had a farm near the railroad depot which he considered valuable. Had two small houses. Rented one. Raised alfalfa. Was sole agent for a coal company. Claimed he made $1,500.00 last year, mostly in the coal business. Said draining now being done on the Colony was very expensive. Considered the Colony a good thing. No. 2. Middle aged man. Married. One child. Had experience in the country before coming to the Colony. Had forty acres of Colony land which he had rented, and which he wished to sell at $106.00 per acre. Had mostly worked for the railroad in the station office. Wished to leave the Colony. Said he could not raise a vegetable garden owing to alkali and insect pests. No. 3. A new man. About thirty years old. One year out from Chicago, where he worked at different trades. Had wife and one child. Rented a house on the Colony and worked in one of the Colony stores. Had no money saved and saw no immediate chance of betterment. Liked the country better than the city, because his wife had better health. No. 4. Young married man. No children. Son of a Colonist and married to a daughter of a Colonist, whose father was sheriff of the County. Had good looking cottage and barns. Was doing well. No. 5. About fifty years old. Salvation Army officer. In the Colony six years. Had son twenty-one, and together they worked a farm of sixty acres. He owned twenty and rented forty. His life was despaired of by the doctors, but he was enjoying good health at time of interview. Doing well financially. No. 6. About forty-five. Original Colonist. Married. Had four children. Came from Chicago, where he was a carpenter. Owned land in the Colony which he rented out. Ran a hardware store in the Colony and was partner in the Colony bank. Had property valued at $5,000.00. Had no capital when he came to the Colony. No. 7. About forty-eight years old. Original Colonist. Married and had nine children. Was railroad clerk in Chicago at $12.00 per week. Owned a corner lot on the town site where he ran a grocery store. Had property in Chicago worth $1,000.00 when he came to the Colony. Was worth $8,000.00 at time of interview. No. 8. A farmer, from surrounding country, induced by Colony management to invest in Colony land and tract as a "pace-setter" to the other colonists. Thus secured forty acres at $70.00 per acre. Had introduced the sheep industry. Bought up young lambs in Mexico, fattened them, and sold at a profit. Had been two years on the Colony. Made $5,000.00 net, per year. Had four thousand sheep. No. 9. Middle aged man. Married. Original colonist. Was expressman in Chicago, but previous to coming to the Colony had to leave family and go to work in the woods while the wife worked. Had taken out a government homestead outside of the Colony. Gave up his holdings on the Colony and was working as farm boss for a neighboring farmer while his wife ran a boarding house. No. 10. Scotchman. About fifty years old. Married. Had five children. In the Colony for six years. Arrived there with $25.00. Was carpenter in Chicago. Was worth $1,000.00 when interviewed. Was arranging to sell his holdings and go away, as he thought he could do better elsewhere. No. 11. About forty-five years old. Belonged to the Army. Married. One child. Came from Baltimore, Md., where he worked as a teamster. The Army paid family's fare to the Colony. Made a failure of his holding on the Colony and was making a bare living by running the Colony hotel and doing teaming. His failure was due to alkali and insect pests. His wife was sick before coming, but became better and was evidently the more efficient member of the partnership. No. 12. Thirty-five years old. Married. Two children. Brother of Army officer and son of example No. 1. In the Colony eight years. Used to be street-car conductor in Chicago. Gave up one holding in the Colony on account of alkali and took another, where he was doing well at time of interview. No. 13. About forty years old. Married. Came from the country. Rented a house on the Colony and worked as a section-hand on the railroad. FOOTNOTES: [57] "The Poor and the Land." Introduction, p. VI. [58] "Report of Departmental Committee," pp. 8, 9, 10. [59] "William Booth," p. 83. [60] "The S. A. in the U. S.," p. 15. [61] See Giddings' "Principles of Sociology," p. 291. [62] "The Poor and the Land," p. 75. [63] See example No. 8 at the end of the chapter, p. 115. [64] About this time, Mr. Curtis, describing the colony in the Chicago Record, said "There is no neater group of houses in Colorado, and no more contented community in the world. Nearly every one has written to friends urging them to join the next colony that comes out, and thus I judge they are enthusiastic over their success and the pleasures they enjoy." [65] See principle No. 2, p. 101. [66] "The Poor and the Land," p. 78. [67] See principle No. 5, p. 101. [68] See several examples at the end of this chapter, p. 137. [69] "The Poor and the Land," p. 82. [70] See principle No. 1, p. 101. [71] "The Poor and the Land," p. 39. [72] See Pamphlet, "Review of Salvation Army Land Colony in California." [73] The price of land at Ft. Amity would be different, and there, too, the Army sometimes rents to the colonists an additional acreage. [74] "Memorandum of Information Respecting the Salvation Army Colony at Ft. Romie, California." [75] For these principles see p. 101 of this chapter. [76] See "The Poor and the Land," p. 40 and fl. [77] See examples at end of chapter. [78] See "The Poor and the Land," p. 47. [79] See the "Poor and the Land," p. 82. [80] See "Report of Departmental Committee," p. 14 and fl. [81] _Ibid._ [82] Mr. John Manson in his book "The Salvation Army and the Public," p. 133 and following, states that in this work the Army has merely acted the part of a business agency. We think that he has ground for this statement, but we also think that the Army would be far more useful along these lines than an ordinary business agency. [83] See Report of Departmental Committee, p. 6. [84] See Report of Departmental Committee, p. 3. [85] See tables p. 98 of this book. [86] See Report of Departmental Committee, p. 30. CHAPTER IV. THE SALVATION ARMY SLUM DEPARTMENT. So much has been written on the question of the slums in the past few years; so many settlements, evening recreation centers, summer playgrounds, clubs, visiting nurses' associations, and kindergarten associations have been organized; so much has been done by tenement house commissions and tenement laws; so many churches have turned from their original efforts to the slums; that we wonder why so little is heard of what the Army, the organization supposed especially to represent the poor, is doing in this direction. To tell the truth, if we go down into the slums, either those of Deptford, Whitechapel, or of Westminster, in London; or those of the Jewish, the Italian, the Negro, or the Irish quarters in New York, or those of the Slav or Jewish quarters in Chicago, expecting to find there the work of the Army much in evidence, we shall be disappointed. What slum work is done by the Army in these densely populated corners is done with love and earnest hearts, with sacrifice and the best of intentions; but apparently it does not bear fruit in the same proportion as does the work of the settlement, whether church settlement or secular, or in the same proportion as many of the kindergartens, summer playgrounds and evening recreation centers. Nevertheless, the slum post of the Army is doing valuable work and should be supported. A sweeping tenement house reform can do more than any number of settlements; a settlement can do more than the Army slum post; but neither the tenement reform nor the settlement does the work that a slum post does. Probably the work done by other organizations most nearly allied to that of the Army slum post is that done by the various organizations of church deaconesses, which have been growing rapidly in late years, in which women are employed by the churches to visit the poor in their homes, and nurse the sick, besides other duties. If we depend or count largely on the Army slum work to reform the slums, we shall be disappointed in learning that, after years of successful growth in the Industrial and Social Departments, the Army has but twenty slum posts in the United States[87], some of these being very small, and that it has no large number in other countries. Such as it is, the work is well worth while. But let us examine its origin, present status and the reason for its relatively small growth. In the beginning of the Army movement, Mrs. Booth, the late wife of General Booth, supplemented her husband's work by a personal visitation of the people in their homes. She proved the utility of this work and also its place among the works of women. From her early efforts has sprung the more widely organized department of slum work. The slum work may be divided into three divisions: visitation work, the slum nursery, and the maintenance of the slum post. Wearing a humbler garb, even, than the regular Army uniform, the lassies start out on their daily tours of visitation. They take care of the sick, and at the same time, they clean the home and put everything in order. Often they come upon cases of need and of want, and then they provide the little necessaries: a sack of coal, a supply of food, or some needed clothing. They take the children from the worn-out woman and amuse and instruct them, while the mother does her work; and, wherever they go, although most plainly dressed, they are clean and neat, and they strive to make everything else clean and neat. While this visitation work is going on, another most urgent need is being supplied by the slum nursery. Here the mother can leave her children in the morning, when she goes to her work, and find them safely waiting for her in the evening, clean and happy. A charge of five cents per day is made to cover the expense of feeding the children. During the day they are well cared for, the younger ones properly nursed, and the older ones taught simple little kindergarten games and songs. Sometimes children are brought here and never called for again, in which case the Army lassies in charge must find some permanent home for them, but this does not often happen, as the mothers of the children are usually known by the Army workers. At the slum nursery in Cincinnati there is also a free clinic, where sick women and children go for treatment. Two of the most efficient physicians of the city furnish free aid, and the medicines necessary are provided. In addition to the visitation work and the nursery, the maintenance of the slum post means the keeping of slum quarters and a slum hall. The "quarters" are the two or more rooms where the lassies live, and they are located where most can be accomplished in the way of example and influence. The hall is for the carrying on of slum meetings, for these are regularly held. In these meetings the roughest crowd of men, women and children is awed into respect and reverence by the simple slum lassies with their songs and music. Again, in this little hall, the children of the neighborhood are gathered in a Sunday School and taught by the slum officers. It is a most interesting spectacle to watch these children. Many different nationalities are represented, the dark races and the light. As children, these nationalities mingle together more freely than in adult life. A special aspect of the slum post is the distribution of charitable relief to the needy. It is specially situated, and has advantages for this purpose; hence it becomes the distributing depot for bread, soup and coal in winter, and ice in summer. For instance, from one slum post in New York during the winter of 1907-8, 2,800 loaves of bread were given out in one week, and for some months, an average of from 300 to 1,000 loaves, besides an average of two tons of coal per week. Some of this, naturally, would go to the undeserving, but the slum officers, as a rule, know the people of their immediate neighborhood, and can exercise due discretion. The failure of the Army slum work to increase in the same proportion as its other branches of the social work, and its non-existence in many quarters of our cities where it is most needed, is due to two causes. One is the fact that the Army slum post, more than the Army industrial home or the Army hotel, is a religious institution, and is continually advertising and pressing on the public its peculiar doctrines. The slum officers are imbued with the idea that personal salvation according to the doctrines of the Army is the all-essential need. They would not be engaged in this work themselves were it not for the hold these doctrines have upon them. The slum post holds its regular meetings, exhorting its hearers to get "saved," in its own original way. At Sunday School, the children are taught that certain things are wrong and sinful, and these very things are common-place in their own homes though, possibly some of them of not much detriment. But, in a community almost entirely Catholic or Jewish, such aggressive evangelism is not likely to increase the influence of its advocates. Many settlements have learned with grief, this very same lesson. Another reason for the lack of success is the mental calibre of those engaged in the work. However, the devotion and self-sacrifice of the Army slum sisters is one of the most touching and sublime elements of the slums, and it is all the more touching when it is to some extent misdirected and misplaced. To see the tact, patience and perseverance of these "Slum Angels" as they are often called, is a divine object lesson in itself, and much of their work is not done in vain, as many would testify. A useful experiment is under way at one former slum post, 94 Cherry Street, New York City. In place of the old building formerly rented by the Army here and used as a slum post, the Army has built a commodious six-story building, which it calls a settlement. One floor is given to a hall and parlor. Two floors are given over to rooms to be used as class, club and kindergarten rooms. One floor is fitted up with a dining room and kitchen, and another with a large dormitory and living room, to be used as a Girls' Home. On the roof, preparations are under way for a roof garden and play-ground, while washing facilities are provided in the basement, where poor mothers can bring their clothes and wash them. Already the New York Kindergarten Association has two kindergartners busy here. Two sewing classes, averaging thirty-five members, are organized. Mother's meetings are held, and a regular Army Corps is organized, consisting of sixty members. This settlement may prove an auspicious advance of the Army along these lines. To sum up, the Army Slum Department is doing valuable work in the slums, tending the sick, exercising and bringing out some of the better traits of humanity, and offering relief in times of need; but it suffers from an over-desire to spread its own peculiar doctrines of salvation, and from the lack of grasping the whole situation which is characteristic of its workers. FOOTNOTES: [87] This number has continued the same for five years. CHAPTER V. THE SALVATION ARMY RESCUE DEPARTMENT. In the United States and Great Britain, the question of the social evil has never been thoroughly investigated and faced systematically as a whole. In some of the large cities in the United States, notably in Chicago and New York, the question has been taken up in various ways by different reform societies. Probably the best investigation made thus far has been the work of the Committee of Fifteen, in New York City, which issued its report in the year 1902, but the problem does not appear to have been faced by us as a nation as it might have been. Other countries, especially France, have paid a great deal of attention to this form of vice. Nearly every phase of the question has been examined by some French investigator and reported on, but when we look for reports or investigations on the part of American or English students, we find very little of value. As regards the United States, all attempts at reaching a true estimate of the extent of this evil have failed. Apparently, there is no way of obtaining such information. We have seen estimates regarding some of the cities in past years, and such estimates are given as 40,000 prostitutes for New York City,[88] 30,000 for Chicago and 35,000 for San Francisco. But these figures have evidently been derived in a very unscientific way. The evil is probably worse in the Western states than in the Eastern, but we are not satisfied of the accuracy of such estimates as 35,000 for San Francisco and only 30,000 for Chicago. The work known as the Rescue Work of the Salvation Army is, to a certain extent, related to the Slum Work. The slum officers can often work hand-in-hand with the Rescue officers, inasmuch as their field is often on the same or adjoining territory. At the same time, it is essential that the Rescue officer be more highly specialized than the slum worker. During the past few years the percentage of successful cases of reform brought about by the Army Rescue Homes has reached as high as 80 or 85%, according to the Army's statistics. They, however, are unable to keep in touch with all the girls sent out, and hence this percentage would not be final, but even allowing 25% off for failures not known to the Army, it is doubtful if there is any other reform agency along this line which is as successful as is this force of trained rescue workers.[89] In the United States this force works in conjunction with twenty-two Rescue Homes scattered throughout the States. These homes are especially fitted for the work, some having been built for the purpose. There are work rooms for the girls, where they can do sewing and laundry work. There is a reading room and sitting room, dining room, and different dormitories and sleeping apartments. Then special facilities are provided for the care of babies in the way of proper nurseries. There are two ways in which these girls come under the influence of the Homes and Rescue workers: either the girls come voluntarily to the Homes, expressing their desire to leave this form of life for a better one, or they are brought to the Home by the direct influence and touch of the Rescue officer. These Rescue officers make regular tours through the districts where the girls are to be found. They watch their opportunities, and whenever they think it wise, they speak to the girls personally. When this is not possible, they make an advance by way of literature. One method is to open up a conversation by means of a little card, upon which is printed the address of the Rescue Home, and the offer of help to any girl who is in trouble of any sort. Some of the officers tell us that they get to know the faces of the girls through their regular tours, and whenever a new girl comes they are able to recognize her at once, both by her features and her actions. In this way there have been some instances of real prevention without the need of any curative means whatever; instances where young girls have been rescued from the very brink of their evil fate. One way of reaching the girls is visitation and nursing when they are sick. Another way is through the police courts. In some of the latter a woman Army officer is in regular attendance, and the judge frequently hands certain cases over to her charge. Many of the girls received into the Home have had no practical training in life; many, very little moral training, and in the case of those who have had good training in earlier years, the life they have been leading has so undermined their old ideals, that the training must be repeated. Hence, the aim of the Home is two-fold. First, the aim is to lay a strong foundation morally. When the girls reach the Home, in most cases they are already penitent, and ready for a change, but to make such a complete change as is necessary to lead them back to a normal life means the individual revolution of desire and interest. Here is where the importance of the moral influence of the Home is realized. Step by step the girl is led on by the simple teaching of Christian and social ideals, until in reality she is a changed individual. Often she looks back on her past life with such repugnance and shrinking, that her only desire becomes that of doing something to retrieve her past, and she becomes an active agent in the betterment of the conditions of other girls around her. Meanwhile, the second aim of the Rescue Home is being realized. The girls are taught the means of practical livelihood. They are instructed in cooking, the care of the kitchen and nursery, and general housekeeping. Sewing is made a prominent feature, and in every Home a laundry is maintained, where the girls do their own washing and sometimes outside washing. In some Homes the fund realized from the laundry and from the sale of clothing made by the girls is quite a help toward defraying the general expenses. Again, at some of the Homes, such work as book binding and chicken raising has been successfully carried on. Independence is encouraged, and as soon as possible the girl is made to feel that, by aiding in the work of the Home, she can help meet the expense which she caused. To the girl who has possibly never done sewing, never known anything about proper cooking or the care of a home, there is much that is new in this training, and, on the other hand, great patience is required on the part of her instructors. A fit of anger or despondency, and in a very short time she has left the Home and its care, and returned to her old life. Some do this even more than once and again return, having, upon reflection, realized the force of its love and shelter. Others, of course, leave and never return, but a large number are sent back to their own homes or out to fill situations of various kinds. A great difference is found between one girl and another, due to the different status of life and surroundings from which they originally fell; hence, some girls are reformed with greater ease and in a shorter time than are others. The average time that a girl is retained in the Home is about four months. The Army aims at keeping in touch with them afterwards. "Personally," says one of the leading Rescue officers writing on this point, "I attach by far the greatest importance to the work done with our girls after they leave the Home. If we ceased our care for them when they went out to service, we should have, I fear, many failures. I have by my elbow, as I write to you, a current record of 120 girls, not picked out but taken just as they come, which tells just where each one is, what she is doing, what was her spiritual condition when last seen or heard from, what day visited, etc. That list is taken from a record kept of every girl who passes through our hands. On one page is her previous life story; on the other, her career after leaving the Home. It is the most important record we keep."[90] Along with other departments of social service in the Army, this department has been considerably extended during the past few years. Figures are at hand for the United States only. In 1896 there were five Rescue Homes with a total accommodation for 100 girls, and there were, in the Rescue Work, 24 officers. In 1904 we found twenty-two homes, with a total accommodation for 500 girls, and there were 110 specialized officers engaged in the Rescue Work. During the eight years prior to 1907 15,000 girls were helped.[91] Speaking of the year 1903-4, Commander Booth-Tucker says: "More than 1,800 girls passed through the homes during the year, and of these 93% were satisfactory cases, being restored to lives of virtue, while some 500 babies were cared for."[92] During the past few years, also, some valuable properties have been acquired for the purposes of Rescue Homes. Among these are two Homes in Philadelphia worth $20,000.00; the Home in Manhattan, New York City, valued at $35,000.00; the Home in Buffalo, costing nearly $40,000.00; the Home in Los Angeles, worth more than $15,000.00, and others. In conclusion it may be said that although this great social question presents almost overwhelming problems for solution, yet there is no agency that deals with the evil in a curative way so successfully, and on such a scale, as does the Rescue Department of the Army. One difficulty of the work is that, while so many departments of the Army work are self-supporting, this work cannot be made so. Another difficulty is the lack of those who are willing to sacrifice their lives to such noble effort. Mrs. Catherine Higgins, former Secretary for this department, in her report, said that she had a great need of 100 more workers, and that she could use many times that number in the furtherance of the work. While it is rather the part of society to strike at the very causes of this social evil and root it out entirely, still, such successful combating with the evil itself, right on the battle-field of flagrant vice, should receive the hearty support of all. FOOTNOTES: [88] Mentioned in Josiah Strong's Social Progress, 1906, p. 243. [89] In Great Britain in 1903, the proportion of re-admissions in the Rescue Homes was about one in seven. In that year, about one-sixth of the new cases were unsatisfactory. (The S. A. and the Public, p. 131.) [90] "Social Service in the Salvation Army," p. 71. [91] Pamphlet "S. A. in the U. S." [92] _Ibid._, p. 26. CHAPTER VI. SOME MINOR FEATURES OF THE SALVATION ARMY SOCIAL WORK. There are a number of features of the Salvation Army Social Work, which for the sake of brevity we shall group together in one final chapter. These are, (1): Christmas dinners, (2): prison work, (3): the employment bureau, and (4): work among the children. Taking up the subject of Christmas dinners, we find here what seems to be an advertising scheme more than a systematic form of relief. Sentiment, doubtless, has its place, even with the masses, and yet, in this great winter feast, there is more sentiment than there is real practical good accomplished. To the quiet, calculating student the question arises whether it would not be far better to utilize the vast amount of energy and financial outlay, which it gives to gorging the multitude for one day, in a better and more lasting way; the question whether there is not, in these Christmas feasts, a likeness to the old time feast of pagan Rome. In every city of any size throughout the country the pots and kettles on the street corner are familiar objects. At each Corps or other location of the Army, tickets are given out entitling the bearer to a Christmas dinner, or, in certain cases, to a basket with a dinner for a family. A good deal of trickery is indulged in by the professional beggars, by means of which it often happens that several dinners go to the same person. And yet, as we have watched those 5,000 baskets containing food for 25,000 persons go out, to bring cheer and comfort to the hungry in their homes, and as we have gazed on that vast banquet of 3,000 guests seated at one sitting, we could not but feel glad that these poor brothers and sisters of ours might realize the force of human sympathy for once in the year at least.[93] Another minor feature of the Salvation Army work is the prison work. The majority of the jails, local, county and state, are visited at intervals by certain members of the Army set aside for that purpose in each community. In one State's prison there is a regularly organized corps of Salvation Army soldiers, who are all prisoners, some of them for a life term. In most prisons the Army provides literature, sees to the correspondence of the prisoners and holds meetings with them. But it is not so much the work with the prisoners in the jail that counts, as it is the influence gained over them, which leads them to come to the Army and make a new start in life when they get out. Many who find themselves behind the prison bars are not to be classed as regular criminals. A man is often classed as a criminal who is a victim of misfortune only, and has no inherent criminal instincts. It is with the criminal "by occasion," as Lombroso puts it,[94] that much successful work can be done in the way of reform. The Army has a regular organization known as the Prison Gate League. When a prisoner is discharged he is met by one of this league and invited to go to work at one of the Army's institutions. After being influenced and helped in this institution for a certain length of time, if he seems to justify it, he is sent out to work in some position. There are no definite statistics recorded of those of this class who have been permanently bettered. Still another minor feature is the employment bureau system. While mentioned here as merely one of a group of minor features, this system is one of great importance to the industrial world. It is being taken into consideration in many places by thoughtful men, and there is promise of its assuming national, if not international proportions. The general term, employment bureau, serves to bring to our recollection the accompanying evils of the contract wage system and industrial slavery, against which there has been agitation in the past, but it is because of these accompaniments that the importance arises of securing a system which shall be free from them. In Germany considerable work has been done along these lines, municipalities and provinces have taken up the work, and an all-round effort is being made to place labor in the right position for work at the proper time.[95] New York City is to-day swarming with many agencies, which are conducted by men and women, who may rightly be classed as extortioners. In spite of the rigid rules on the subject, the ignorance and poverty of their victims makes evasion of the law comparatively easy. Jacob A. Riis, speaking of this subject, says: "It is estimated that New York spends in public and private charity every year around eight millions. A small part of this sum intelligently invested in a great labor bureau that would bring the seeker of work and the man with work together, under auspices offering some degree of mutual security, would certainly repay the amount of the investment in the saving of much capital now much worse than wasted, and would be prolific of the best results."[96] In regard to the work of the Army in this field every large city contains an employment bureau conducted by it and maintained for the free use of the unemployed. Some of the men, who secure positions have been in one of its own institutions, and the Army workers know whether or not to recommend them for a certain position. Outside of giving men work in its own institutions, the Army, during the year 1907, found employment for 55,621 persons in the United States alone. Contrary to expectation, the children's work of the Army has not attained a magnitude in proportion to the other lines of work which have been developed. This may be accounted for in part by the fact that there are more institutions open for children to which the Army can turn for help than there are institutions of other types. Thus, while the Army can often get a child taken into some orphanage already existing, either public or private, in the case of the drunkard, the unemployed or the fallen woman, the Army finds it necessary to furnish its own institutions. Again, the Army states that wherever possible, some friend is found who is willing to adopt a child. Of course, this is far preferable to placing the child in some institution, inasmuch as adoption restores the home in a real sense. The work among the children may be divided into temporary work and permanent work. By temporary work we do not mean work that is superficial, for it may be the most permanent and lasting in its results, but we mean work that is undertaken which influences the children for a limited amount of time only. The slum nursery or kindergarten is of this type, but as we have already described it in connection with the Slum Department, it needs only mention here. Another line of temporary work is the Sunday School work of the Army, but that comes under the religious work and not the social. An important line of temporary work, however, is the summer outing for the poor children. In each of our large cities these excursions for the poor children have been carried out on a large scale. Arrangements are made with a railroad or a steamboat company; the children are collected, hundreds at a time, and cared for by parties of Salvationists, they are taken out to the country for the day. Children who have never seen the country, and who do not know what a tree, a green hill, or the running water looks like, are thus given an entirely new outlook upon the world, and a lasting impression is made on their minds. In Kansas City, this line of work has been developed still further. One of the large parks has been handed over to the Army by the city authorities, and in it has been established a summer camp. Tents are pitched on the grass under the trees, and poor families are brought out here for a week at a time. In this way hundreds of families have experienced a little of summer vacation who otherwise would never have left their slum dwellings. The permanent handling of the children as opposed to the temporary, begins with the Maternity Homes which are managed in connection with the Rescue Homes, and continues on through the Orphanages. The children cared for in this permanent way are the babies from the Maternity Homes and orphans. From this it must not be supposed, with regard to the Maternity Homes, that there is any intentional separation or even a suggested separation of the child from the mother, but in many cases, after a time, a partial separation is necessary. The mother is influenced and taught to care for and love her offspring, but after spending some months in the Home, she may take a situation of some sort, often as a domestic servant, and here she cannot take her baby. Hence, in such cases, the mother is expected to visit her child frequently, and to provide for its support. The other class of children dealt with in a permanent way are those who are picked up from the street, or who otherwise fall into the hands of the Army, often after being deserted by their parents. While Orphanages, as already stated, are not an important item in the Army's work, there are several in England and four in the United States. For the situation of an Orphanage, a country location is sought. For instance, one near New York City is located on a beautiful piece of property at Spring Valley. Another is at Rutherford, N. J. One of the largest is situated near San Francisco, California, and one of the latest additions for this purpose has been the securing of a fine piece of property at Lytton Springs, Cal. In all, there is accommodation for two hundred and twenty-five children in the United States. FOOTNOTES: [93] The author refers here to the annual Christmas dinner given in New York. [94] "The Criminal," p. 208. [95] "The German Workman," ch. XVII [96] "How the Other Half Lives," p. 253. CHAPTER VII. CONCLUSION. We have now covered the work of the Salvation Army social movement in its different branches. We have described the work, the extent and the management of each department. We have also considered the criticisms and objections to which each department is open, and we have attempted to estimate the value of each department to society. We have arrived at the conclusion that the work of the Industrial Department, leaving out the Industrial Colony, is a practical, deserving and successful effort to put unfortunate men once more on their feet, at no expense to the public, saving a slight embarrassment to those already engaged in the salvage and second hand business; that the Army lodging house is the best so far offered for the housing of the lower homeless class, although not entirely satisfactory; that the Slum Work is good, but limited in its scope, owing to the religious sentiment attached, and the mental inferiority of its workers; that the Rescue Work is about the best of its kind; and that good work is being done in other directions, such as the prison work, the employment bureaux and the children's work. On the other hand, we have found that the two Industrial Colonies and three Farm Colonies are not successful enough to warrant any additional expenditure on them or on any new colonies. This is due to the fact that the class most needing help in the cities is not the class to succeed on the land, and to the fact that men are more successful as pioneers on the land, when they are scattered and left to rely on themselves, having experienced farmers as neighbors, than when they are grouped closely together in one colony. Also there is nothing in favor of heavy expenditure for Christmas dinners, since the same amount of money can be put to better advantage in other ways. But, having reached these conclusions regarding the separate departments of the Army social work, what about the movement as a whole? The critics have advanced a good many objections against the Army. Some of these objections relating to special departments and not to the Army as a whole, we have already dealt with in our discussion of those separate departments. There remain six principal objections: 1. That the organization is narrow and not willing to cooperate with other organizations. 2. That the highly centralized military form of government is likely to lead to disastrous consequences. 3. That the Army, in its financial dealings, does not take the public sufficiently into its confidence. 4. That the Army collects funds, on the strength of its social work, and applies these funds to religious propaganda. 5. That there is a lack of accuracy in its reports of work accomplished. 6. That the Army, as an organization, has become more of an end in itself, than a means to an end. Regarding the first objection, the narrowness and lack of cooperation, we think there is a good deal of truth in it. The Army has made a great success as an organization, and the work of its founder and his assistants is one of the most remarkable achievements of the age. Things apparently impossible have been accomplished, and obstacles apparently unsurmountable have been overcome. The result is a self-confidence and assurance, amounting in many cases to bigotry. The members of the organization look upon it as especially favored by God, and as above any other organization. Hence, we find many of the leaders far from humble in their bearings, whatever their profession may be, and entirely uninclined to cooperate with other organizations. This fact has been brought to the foreground of late years in England and America by a certain amount of antagonism between the Army and the Charity Organization Society, the Army claiming that it can do its work along its own lines and get along without any alliance with the Society, and the latter claiming that much economy would result if the Army would unite its efforts along social lines with the Charity Organization Society. The controversy cannot be discussed here, but it seems a pity that some sort of union cannot be entered into in which both organizations would be represented in a manner satisfactory to both. One great difficulty, evidently, is the religious element in the social work of the Army, which tends to prejudice the Charity Organization Society in some degree against the Army, and tends to keep the Army aloof from any organization considered secular. However, we find many leading officers in both organizations with friendly feeling, and there is hope that the time will come, when the controversy will be at an end. Coming to the second objection, that the highly centralized military form of government of the Army is likely to lead to disastrous consequences, we think that, if continued, this form of government must indeed lead to disaster. It is evident that this might happen in different ways. In an organization held together by one man or by one idea, disintegration would tend to take place in the one case by the failure or death of the leader, and in the other case by the expansion of the idea. The Army is held together by both the man and the idea, and we need not turn away from its own history to get examples of this disintegration in both ways. Take the first bond of union, the man of striking, hypnotic personality. Since the very inception of the movement, time after time, men who have gained influence in the Army, have separated from its ranks and started a movement of their own of more or less formidable dimensions. The instance most applicable here is that of the division which took place a few years ago in the United States. At that time the Army in this country had been very successful under the leadership of one of General Booth's sons, Ballington Booth and his wife, Maud, the latter especially being a most attractive and talented personality and gifted, persuasive speaker. Mr. and Mrs. Ballington Booth were flattered by attention from all sides, and by the worship of the soldiers and officers under them. Orders came from General William Booth, commanding them to give up their leadership in the United States and take control of some other country. But they had no idea of giving up their position in this country, and, elated by success, confidently announced their leadership of a new movement, the Volunteers of America, which is still in existence. While the other element, that of the expansion of the idea, showed itself at this time in a revolt against the narrow, despotic methods of General William Booth, the main element in this division was that of personality. Taking up the second bond of union, that of the central, controlling idea and purpose, we find the whole movement at the present time is tending to disintegrate through the expansion of this idea. This is shown by the continual departure of men from the ranks of the Army, who see that its methods and machinery are too cramped for their efforts, and also by the different attitude of the remaining members towards the movement itself and its leader General William Booth. It is possible, however, that there will gradually be effected a change in the form of government of the army which will allow for enlargement and differentiation within the movement itself. General Booth, the sole head of the movement, cannot live much longer, and at his death, changes already threatening will demand attention. He has maintained a remarkable control over his world-wide following, in spite of numerous outbreaks and dangerous splits, and has legally arranged with great care, we are told, the succession to follow him. But that there will ever be a second General Booth, or that there could be a series of General Booths, able to hold the organization as he has, is incredible. We have talked with leading officers of his Army on this subject and find that they too, are looking for changes. The fact that the social work is having such a remarkable growth, while the spiritual work is apparently unable to hold its own, is in itself a feature demanding a change. The Army of industrial and social officers and employees will not be bound by the same ties to the General as his former Army of spiritual officers and soldiers. The latter were possessed with an emotional, fanatical enthusiasm which blinded them to everything save the service of their much adored General. The former have a different outlook on life. They are the new Army, a result of tendencies inherent in the growth of the movement. They look at humanity and individuals from other standpoints than that of the salvation of the soul. The material side of society, with its institutions of business, and practical forms of charitable relief, occupies a large amount of their attention. This has already led to considerable differentiation of government and control. Take, for example, the corporation, "The Industrial Homes Company" controlling eighty-four industrial institutions in the United States, and managed by a board of directors in New York City. This example is opening the way toward a future government by a board of some sort for other departments of the Army, and in time for the spiritual department, and then the further step of representation of members on these boards will not be far distant. At any rate we see reason for hoping that, while other improvements are taking place, the government of the Army will not be a handicap to the movement. By the third objection, that the Army in its financial dealings does not take the public sufficiently into its confidence, is meant that complete records of detailed expenditure are not issued. The public provides for a large part of the income of the Army, and it has a right to know just how and where that income is spent. The man and woman who is being continually confronted by a lassie on the street with a little box for the receipt of contributions, after contributing again and again, is likely to ask the question, just where is this money going; and it would be of advantage to the Army itself, if it would issue a more definite statement of the use to which it puts public money. Some people are satisfied with the general report that "the Army is doing good," but there are many who would contribute more largely, if they knew directly for what they were contributing. In reply to this criticism, the Army states that it deposits regularly with the state authorities a statement showing the disposition and state of the finances of its corporations, such as "The Reliance Trading Company" and "The Salvation Army Industrial Homes Company." The Army also issues every year a balance sheet which shows its assets and liabilities on a large scale. But this is not sufficient. The ordinary person can receive no light from either the statement deposited with the state authorities or the yearly balance sheet published by the Army. In fact, although the Army uses the services of an expert accountant in getting out this balance sheet, for all that the public knows, it may be using the funds entrusted to it in any way it wishes. This should be remedied by a regular statement, clearly revealing the disposition of every cent donated. A discussion of the preceding objection leads us to the fourth objection, that the Army collects funds on the strength of its social work, and applies these funds to the carrying on of its religious propaganda.[97] The Army denies this, but admits that there is a good deal of money collected for the general work, there being no specific object implied when it is collected, other than a statement of the various departments in which the Army is working, and of their extent. Of course, the social work comes in for strong presentation on the statement, but the money not being collected for any one object, the Army is at liberty to apply it to any branch of its work whether spiritual or social. This again shows the need of greater definiteness and accuracy in the Army's report to the public. A fifth objection is the lack of accuracy shown by the Army in its reports of work accomplished.[98] This has special reference to the statistics published by the Army, and is a good criticism. At different times and in different parts of the world, statistics are given out, which seems to emanate from no one authority, which are often contradictory, and which create confusion in the mind of the person wishing to get at the facts. As a result of a good deal of recent criticism on this point, all future statistics of the Army in the United States are to come from one point only, are to be in charge of an expert, and no publication of statistics is to be allowed without the consent of the National Headquarters. The sixth and last objection is a very important one and one which has been seen in the history of organizations without number, viz: that the organization tends to become an end in itself, instead of a means to an end. This objection is also allied to a former one regarding a lack of cooperation on the part of the Army with other organizations. More and more an organization, formed as is the Army, feels complete in itself, and works continually for its own interests and its own glory. In a large number of instances the objective point that was once humanity and the glory of God tends to become the advancement of the Army. While feeling that this objection is a serious one, it still cannot be considered as anything but unavoidable, considering the government and general character of the movement. If it were possible for the Army to be governed locally, and to some extent, nationally by boards, a part of whose membership represented the public, we believe that the tendency to advance its own interest would be diminished. Study out the workings and control of this organization, and it is found a machine, ever seeking to increase its power and field of work. If this machine could be controlled to some extent by the public which feeds it, it might be kept as a useful servant, but otherwise, in spite of the great service which it does society to-day, the tendency to get away from its object and to become an object itself, will be more and more dangerous. In conclusion, then, we find that these objections advanced by the critics are not without foundation, and while some may be more tendencies than actualities, it lies with the organization to guard itself from them. We have found the Army an efficient worker along several lines, and society owes it a considerable debt for past service and lessons learned from it. Hence it would be a great pity for its efficiency as a great public servant to be lessened by a lack of publicity regarding its finance, or by a narrow, self-centered policy, or by a too centralized form of government. Some of the Army leaders are men of great hearts and strong minds, and it is to be hoped that, whenever in the future, the opportunity offers to make a beneficial change of policy in its duty toward the public or toward its sister organizations engaged in charitable work or in its own internal administration, that these leaders will stand firmly for what they believe, and demand the necessary change. FOOTNOTES: [97] See the "S. A. and the Public," Ch. 5. [98] See the "Social Relief Work of the S. A.," p. 4. BIBLIOGRAPHY. American Journal of Sociology, Volume III. Besant, Sir Walter, The Farm and the City, Contemporary Review, 72-792. Booth, Bramwell, I. A Day with the Salvation Army, S. A. Press, London, 1904. II. Illustrated Interviews, S. A. Press, London, 1905. Booth, Charles, Life and Labor of the People, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1899. Booth, Commander Eva, Where Shadows Lengthen, S. A. Press, New York, 1906. Booth, Florence E. A Peep into My Letter Bag, S. A. Press, London, 1905. Booth, William, I. In Darkest England, and the Way Out, S. A. Press, London, 1890. II. Social Service in the Salvation Army, S. A. Press, London, 1903. III. The Doctrines of the Salvation Army, S. A. Press, London. IV. The Why and Wherefore of the Rules and Regulations of the Salvation Army, S. A. Press, London. V. Orders and Regulations for Field Officers, S. A. Press, London. Booth-Tucker, Commander, I. William Booth, Life of S. A. Press, New York, 1898. II. The Salvation Army in the United States, S. A. Press, New York, 1899. III. Social Relief Work of the Salvation Army in the United States, S. A. Press, New York, 1900. IV. Our Future Pauper Policy in America, S. A. Press, New York, 1898. V. Prairie Homes for City Poor, S. A. Press, New York, 1899. VI. A Review of the Salvation Army Land Colony in California, S. A. Press, New York, 1903. Coates, Thomas F. G. The Prophet of the Poor, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1906. Dawson, William Harbutt, The German Workman, Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York, 1906. Devine, Edward T., The Principles of Relief, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1905. Hadleigh, The Salvation Army Colony, S. A. Press, London, 1904. Haggard, H. Rider, The Poor and the Land, Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1905. Higgins, Mrs. Catherine, Love's Laborings in Sorrow's Soil, S. A. Press, New York, 1904. Huxley, T. H., Social Diseases and Worse Remedies, The Macmillan Co., New York, 1891. Manson, John, The Salvation Army and the Public, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1906. Precipices: A Sketch of Salvation Army Social Work, S. A. Press, London, 1904. Report of Committee of Fifteen, The Social Evil, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1902. Report of the Departmental Committee, Appointed to Consider Mr. Rider Haggard's Report on Agricultural Settlements in British Colonies. Wyman & Sons, London, 1906. Riis, Jacob A., I. How the Other Half Lives, Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York, 1902. II. The Children of the Poor, Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York, 1902. III. A Ten Years' War, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., New York, 1900. IV. The Peril and Preservation of the Home, Geo. W. Jacobs' & Co., Philadelphia, 1903. Ruskin, John, Sesame and Lillies, Donohue, Hernneberry and Co., Chicago. Seager, Henry Rogers, Introduction to Economics, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1908. Selected Papers on the Social Work of the Salvation Army, S. A. Press, London, 1907. Solenberger, Edwin D., The Social Relief Work of the Salvation Army, Byron & Willard Co., Minneapolis, 1906. Swan, Annie S., The Outsiders, S. A. Press, London, 1905. Warner, Amos G., American Charities, T. J. Crowell & Co., New York, 1894. VITA. The author of this dissertation, Edwin Gifford Lamb, was born in London, England, December 22, 1878. He attended private schools in that city and then spent three years in Northwestern Canada without schooling. After this he went to California where he prepared for college in the preparatory department of the University of the Pacific. He became a citizen of the United States as soon as eligible and graduated from Leland Stanford Junior University in 1904, with the degree of A. B. In the year 1904-'05, he was a student at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University. During the year 1905-'06, he held a scholarship in Sociology at Columbia University. At this institution he studied under Professors F. H. Giddings, John B. Clark, H. R. Seager, H. L. Moore, J. Dewey, F. J. E. Woodbridge and W. P. Montague. Since that time he has been an instructor in the Harström School, Norwalk, Connecticut. Transcriber's Note: Inconsistent hyphenation and capitalization have been left as in the original text. The same is true for inconsistent abbreviations for U. S. states and inconsistent placement of footnote markers. CHAP. III. (in the original text) has been changed to CHAPTER III. for consistency. Punctuation has been standardized. Spelling mistakes have been corrected, except for the items listed below, which have not been changed. The book seems to use fl., rather than ff., as an abbreviation that refers to the pages following a number. This book refers twice to the title "Sesame and Lillies." In other sources, that title is sometimes spelled as "Sesame and Lilies." On the list of "Examples of Salvation Army Hotel Lodgers," under No. 3, the city name Pittsburgh is misspelled as Pittsburg in the original text.