To return to the meeting, which is not yet concluded.—When the testimonies are all given, those who feel that they have been leading a life of sin are exhorted to come forward and profess. The hall empties. Ten or twelve, men and women, young men and girls, come forward and kneel down at a bench in front of the platform. Some are inclined to be hysterical. The Salvationists, men and women, come and talk to them, leaning against them, their arms round their shoulders, exhorting and encouraging. This, you see, is Religious Socialism. No one can love Jesus, “the divine Communist” (as Heine calls him), with impunity. If you love, and to love is to know, Jesus, you must get others to love and to know him, and your desire to get others fills you with the same yearning love for them that Jesus has for you: “O dear people, I could die for you, if you would only come to him!”
Then, when no more will come forward, the service concludes with each of those who is “saved,” speaking before them all—saying what has come to him to make him repent, and expressing his firm determination to lead a better life. The first step has now been taken—the man by his public confession is compromised. He cannot now so easily fall back. He is known to his fellows, who will exhort and encourage him. He has every incentive to date a new life from to-day, not to put it off over and over again to “to-morrow.”
What, is all this, then, a trap? Yes, if you care to call it so. Men, to whom the “saved” and the “unsaved” life, the bliss of heaven and the anguish of hell, is a passionate reality, speak of it passionately to the ignorant or the careless, and then (like true guilefully guileless religionists) take advantage of the moment of realization which they have aroused in a soul, to compromise that soul before the world to lead a new life of continual realization. You see, these Salvationists are of the men and women of the People and they know the men and women, not only of the People, but of each and every class of us: they know how frail is unaided resolution, and they act on their knowledge. Do not think, though, that they believe that weakness of will is to be found only among the People. Far from it! They attack Respectability, they attack the hypocrisy of the Middle-class, as fearlessly as they attack the open sin of the People. Our good clergymen and ministers, for whom I have, in many respects, so much admiration, are afraid to attack the Middle-class: the Middle-class is the payer of pew-rents. Alas, alas, ye cannot serve God and Mammon! It is really a great nuisance; but ye cannot! Now these Salvationists do not happen to have pews: so they need not stand hat in hand before Respectability. They can say boldly that the Publican is as good as the Pharisee: that hypocrisy is no better, if it is not far worse, than open sin. Look, to it, my in-so-many-respects-admirable clergymen and ministers, you are not masters here but pupils!
V.
I am not going to discuss the question of Salvationist ritual. Brass bands and concertinas give but a poor idea of “the beauty of holiness:” a dissenting chapel does the same. Banners and handkerchiefs and so on are apt to be tawdry: so are dressed statues, standards, incense, and the rest. But who, considering the hideousness of Protestantism and the tawdriness of Catholicism, would therefore call Protestantism hideous and Catholicism tawdry? Certainly not I who am so sincere an admirer of them both. Neither, then, considering what we hear called the Christy-Minstrelism and Music-Hallism of the Salvation Army, must we think that, when we have called their meetings Christy Minstrels or Music Halls, we have quite disposed of them. Alas, my dear Middle-class, cannot you see that the People is what you, who govern the People, have made it? Might I, a humble unit of your millions, suggest to you that it is just because, what you call, your Upper Ten Thousand is hideous that you are more hideous? and that it is just because you, my dear Middle-class, are more hideous that the People is most hideous? Will it be many ages, I wonder, before you can be got to see this?—to see that you had better take the mote out of your own eye before you are so enthusiastic about taking the beams out of the eyes of your neighbours?
If, however, anyone wants to see what Mr. Booth himself has to say in defence of his “Colours, Bands of Music, Processions, and other sensational methods employed” (as he says), I would refer him to a little penny pamphlet called “All about the Salvation Army,” which can be got at the Salvation Army Head-quarters in Russell Street. For myself, I have nothing to do with this side of the question: I profess that I consider most church-bells are as bad as most brass-bands, and am profoundly indifferent as to whether they are, as Mr. Booth would like to know, “unscriptural” or not. I am of opinion that the admirers of church-bells and brass-bands had better fight it out among themselves.
I have as good as said that what makes the outer strength of the Salvationists is their realization of Jesus as liver and lover. Love, yearning love, is undoubtedly the chief characteristic of Jesus. But, just as the sun gives forth not only heat but light, so did he. His life was love: his death was peace. “My peace I leave with you.” And it is just here, just in their realization of “the mildness and sweet reasonableness” of Jesus that the Salvationists are apt to be lacking: and it is just here that the Church of England more than any other Christian sect is, as it seems to me, so strong. The Hymns Ancient and Modern are, on the whole, the best song-book extant of this “mildness and sweet reasonableness.” We must not, however, think that this demand for the peace as well as the love of Jesus is not recognised by the Salvationists: it is, but I cannot think that it is recognised adequately. As soon as a man is “saved” and has “professed,” there are open to him, what they call, the Holiness Meetings. These are the answer to the demand for peace. But they differ only particularly from the other meetings. They are smaller, and hence quieter, than the others; but there is, so to speak, too much heat and too little light in them. Here is the weak point in the Salvationist movement, just as it is the strong point in (I always take the best example our Christianity can give us) the Church of England. Here it is the turn of the Salvationists to be not masters, but pupils. Let us hope that they will see this, and not only teach, but also (which is so much more difficult) be ready to learn from, us.
VI.
There are still two parts of the work of the Salvationists to consider—their work with the inmates of the prisons, and their work with the inmates of the brothels. Here again we have everything to learn from them, from them the true disciples of “the divine Communist.” The former work they have made a speciality of, and they are rapidly making the latter. I doubt very much that our churches and chapels (I am not speaking now of the Catholics, whose work is almost exclusively among the Irish, and the Irish are of a race that, save in the matter of agrarian crime and a curious cruelty to dumb animals, is truly admirable for the honesty of its men and the chastity of its women): I doubt very much, I say, that our churches and chapels will ever get much at either the criminals or the prostitutes. Our clergymen, who are so gentlemanly, and our ministers who are so respectable, can neither speak nor understand much the language of the People, the language of the heart. The clergymen are shocked by the foulness, the ministers by the ferocity, of the People. Both feel that they are condescending—the one from the height of refinement, the other from the height of righteousness. The people has no love for condescension of this sort. There are few words that stink more in its nostrils than that of charity, and indeed charity, when it means a gift from a superior to an inferior, is hateful enough. It is a popular delusion with the “charitable” that street beggars and the inmates of the workhouses are the People. Far otherwise is it, O “charitable” ones: these are not independent animals, they are parasites: they are (if you will pardon me saying so) your spiritual lice; so please make the best of them, since it is not only on account of, but on, you that they live.
Well, now, wherein is it that these fanatical ignorant Salvationists do get at the People? One of them answers us at once: “No one’s too wicked for Jesus, and so no one’s too wicked for me who am the simple follower of Jesus. If he could do with publicans and harlots, why cannot I?” They say, as Walt Whitman says to “a common prostitute,”