Salvation Syrup; Or, Light On Darkest England

SALVATION SYRUP; OR, LIGHT ON DARKEST ENGLAND
By
G. W. Foote
A REPLY TO GENERAL BOOTH
1891
Twenty years ago the Hallelujah Band spread itself far and wide, but soon spent itself like a straw fire. Then arose the Salvation Army, doing the same kind of work, and indulging in the same vagaries. These were imitations of the antics of the cruder forms of Methodism. Even the all-night meetings of the Whitechapel Salvationists, ten years ago, were faint copies of earlier Methodist gatherings, especially of those in Cornwall, which were described by the Rev. Richard Polwhele.(1) “At. St. Agnes,” said this writer, “the Society stays up the whole night, when girls of twelve and fourteen years of age ran about the streets, calling out that they are possessed.” At Probus “the preacher at a late hour of the night, after all but the higher classes left the room, would order the candles to be put out, and the saints fall down and kneel on their naked knees; when he would go round and thrust his hand under every knee to feel if it were bare.” The Salvationists never went so far as this. Freaks of such description are left, in this age, to the followers of King Solomon in the Brighton Glory Hole. But a friend of ours, who visited an all-night Salvation meeting at Whitechapel in 1882, told us that the light was very dim, the voices were low, cheeks came perilously close in prayer, and at one moment the proceedings threatened to develope into a thoroughgoing love-feast.
Anecdotes of Methodism.
As far as a more cultivated age would allow, the Salvation Army advertised and recruited itself by the familiar practices of what Professor Huxley calls “corybantic Christianity.” During the last six or seven years it has grown more decorous, but prior to that time its vulgarity was excessive. Its songs, its rowdy meetings, its coarse, imbecile language, its ludicrous street processions, were enough to furnish a Swift with fresh material for his indictment of mankind. The names of its officers, as reported in its journal, were curiosities to the student of human aberration. There was the “Hallelujah Fishmonger,” the “Blood-washed Miner,” the “Devil Dodger,” the “Devil Walloper,” and “Gypsy Sal.” Many of the worshippers of success who are now flocking around General Booth as a new Savior of Society, would be astonished if they were to turn over the old pages of the War Cry .