Salvation Syrup; Or, Light On Darkest England. Foote George William

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СКАЧАТЬ are helping to promote the development of a vast body of religious fanatics, under the despotic control of a single man, who will not scruple, when it serves his purpose to, use his voluntary slaves, for political as well as social objects. For General Booth has his own notions – crude as many of them are – and it is not in human nature to refrain from using power for the realisation of one’s ideas. And Pope Booth is more absolute than Pope Pecci. The Vicar of Christ at Rome is unable to move without his Holy Council of Cardinals; but the Vicar of Christ in Queen Victoria-street, London, is the unchecked and irresponsible ruler of the whole Salvation Army.

      General Booth’s success as an organiser is great, though he has had a comparatively easy task in organising sheep. Now, however, he proposes to deal with the goats. Some of his scanty leisure has been devoted to studying the social question, and as the interest in the Army’s old methods is obviously declining, he proposes to raise a million of money, and reform that part of the population which John Bright called “the residuum.” In other words, the wily old General has launched a new boom.

      Plaudits are heard on nearly every side. The religious bodies give him the homage of fear. They shout approval because they dare not show hostility. Next come the mob of cheap philanthropists. This consists of rich ladies and gentleman, who feel twinges of remorse at living sumptuously while others are starving, and who are ready to pay conscience-money to any social charlatan. When they have written out a cheque they feel relieved. “On with the dance, let joy be unconfined.” But it is not thus that the spectre of poverty and misery will be laid.

      Evil is wrought by want of thought,

      As well as by want of heart.

      If the so-called lower classes are to be elevated, the so-called upper classes will find they will have to do some thinking. Social knots cannot be cut, they must be untied. The Sphinx says you must read her riddle. All the money-bags in the world will never smooth her terrible brow.

      General Booth's scheme of social salvation is before the world in the form of a book. Let us examine the prophecy of this would-be Moses of the serfs of poverty and degradation.

      An ordinary author would sign himself “William Booth,” but this one is “General” even on a title-page. In Darkest England is an obvious plagiarism on Stanley, and The Way Out is suggested by his long travel through the awful Central African forest.

      In the preface General Booth acknowledges the “valuable literary help” of a “friend of the poor, who, though not in any way connected with the Salvation Army, has the deepest sympathy with its aims, and is to a large extent in harmony with its principles.” The friend is Mr. Stead. This gentleman has “written up” the scheme in the manner of “the born journalist,” that is, in the fashion of the Modern Babylon” and the adventures of Eliza Armstrong. He contributes the descriptions, the gush, the hysterics, the sentences crowded with adjectives and adverbs. Sometimes he writes a whole chapter, unless our literary scent misleads us; sometimes he interpolates the General, and sometimes the General interpolates Stead. One result of this twofold authorship is that the book is twice as big as it should be; another result is that it often contradicts itself. For instance, the General states in the preface that he has known “thousands, nay, I can say tens of thousands,” who have proved the value of spiritual means of reformation, having “with little or no temporal assistance, come out of the darkest depths of destitution, vice, and crime, to be happy and honest citizens and true sons and servants of God.” Elsewhere (p. 243) he speaks of them as “multitudes.” Yet in the very next paragraph of the preface Mr. Stead (if we mistake not) breaks in with the assertion that “the rescued are appallingly few,” a mere “ghastly minority.”

      This little contradiction may throw light on the rumor that Booth has been urged into this scheme of temporal salvation. Once upon a time he was down on “Commissioner” Smith, whose tendencies in this direction were obtrusive; and how long is it since he wrote in the new Rules and Regulations, that the members of the Salvation Army had nothing to do with the world, its politics, its business, or its pleasures? The hand is the hand of Booth, but the voice seems the voice of Stead.

      Here is another contradiction, and this time a vital one. The General curls his upper lip (p. 18) at those “anti-Christian economists who hold that it is an offence against the doctrine of the survival of the fittest to try to save the weakest from going to the wall, and who believe that when once a man is down the supreme duty of a self-regarding Society is to jump upon him.” Without dwelling on the fact that this is a shocking and perfectly gratuitous libel, probably meant to pander to Christian prejudices, we content ourselves with drawing attention to a contradictory declaration (p. 44) that “In the struggle for life the weakest will go to the wall, and there are so many weak. The fittest, in tooth and claw, will survive. All that we can do is to soften the lot of the unfit and make their suffering less horrible than it is at present. No amount of assistance will give a jellyfish a backbone. No outside propping will make some men stand erect.” Thus the General, or Mr. Stead, joins hands with the “anti-Christian economists” in the doctrine that it is useless to try to save the weakest from going to the wall. Of course he does not endorse the policy of jumping on them, but that policy is merely a production of his own pious imagination.

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      Anecdotes of Methodism.

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Anecdotes of Methodism.

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