“Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.”
This, you see, is Religious Socialism. It proclaims the spiritual equality of all men. The spiritual equality, let us notice; it will have nothing to do with the social equality. “My kingdom is not of this world.... Give unto Cæsar the things which be Cæsar’s, and to God the things which be God’s.” “Honour all men,” says Peter, “love the brotherhood, fear God, honour the king.” And more: Religious Socialism has a tendency to be careless of the dogmas of the creeds. “Is the Army hostile,” asks Mr. Booth, “to the existing evangelical denominations? Just the contrary. Numbers of its converts go to swell the membership of the churches. More than 400 persons, converted and trained in its ranks, have been engaged by other different religious organisations as Evangelists, Ministers,” etc., etc., etc. We notice that he says “evangelical denominations?” The Catholics, of course, from (who shall I say?) Augustine to Pascal and Newman, are poor belated idolaters, only slightly better than the heathen. This, you see, is where Mr. Booth, like Mr. Spurgeon and the rest, so pleasantly shows us what nonsense an earnest short-sighted man is capable of believing and brandishing about the world with a godless blatancy. Personally, I cannot make myself angry with any of them for it. For what would an earnest man be without his faults? without, as D’Israeli puts it, a single redeeming vice?
In Melbourne there is a tendency now to let the Salvation Army have its own way unmolested with the criminals and the prostitutes. “It can’t do any harm,” people say, “and it may do good, and really, you know, the—the Social Evil wants looking to.” Nay, more: having made this nice expression “Social Evil,” we are at last plucking up courage to acknowledge that it exists, and that it is not necessarily a sign of filthy-mindedness to wish to discuss it. We speak of it now in papers which come under the eye of those dear creatures about whose stainless purity of mind we are all so anxious (even that Puritanic print, the Melbourne Bulletin is anxious, and the Sydney Bulletin, also, for all I know to the contrary)—“our wives and daughters.” Why, possibly there are those among us who will live to see the day when the expression “fearful sinner,” as applied to some poor girl driven out into the miseries of the streets, will be confined to the utterance of our good friends of the Scotch Presbytery, and other few such like. Then, it will be amusing: at present, it is only detestable.
VII.
Now let us go to the Barracks of the Prison Brigade, and see what has to be seen there. The officials (all, I believe, old criminals) and the men that they have just got hold of, are gathered for a sort of home service. Man after man, boy after boy, rises to give his “experience.” The “experiences” can be pretty easily imagined. Then there are hymns, choruses, addresses by the higher officials present. All, or almost all here, there is no doubt of it, are “terribly in earnest.” The interruptions, “Hallelujah,” “Praise God,” and so on, are all earnest. One boy with a maimed face gets up and says: “I was miserable in the streets, I’m very happy now. God bless the Major,” and sits down again. For me, I confess that, over and over again, I have not known whether to answer the word and acts of these men, or shall I say children, with smiles or tears. Now and then I have answered them with both.
Afterwards we are shown the bedrooms, observing that we do not want to see them. I have seen many bedrooms that were delightful, and many keepers thereof whose hearts were as clean and hard as the floors. Also I have seen bedrooms that were poor and crowded, and the keepers thereof whose hearts were as rich as love and as soft as pity. I prefer the latter, myself, if I must choose between them, but tastes of course are different. Then the boy with the maimed face is brought in, to tell his tale and show his wounded leg. The People like you to look at their wounds and sores and casualties generally. It is painful. It is like the young ladies of the Middle-class who like you to look at their drawings and paintings, or listen to their playing and singing. I do not know which habit is the more painful of the two—perhaps, on the whole, the latter. The first only hurts my senses: the second hurts my soul. It makes me lose hope in my ideas for the future of the Middle-class: it makes me think it is doomed to the hideousness of clap-trap for ever. It is like a visit to the sculpture at the Melbourne Public Library.
They show us the rooms and bring us the boy, you notice, in that practical English spirit which is intent on making it clear that their cry is proportionate to their wool, a fact of which we are not altogether ignorant. Hence our carelessness about more than a glance at the rooms, or a short talk with the boy with the maimed face. I think I could tell him as much about himself as he can tell me. I have known him many times before.
It is pleasing to notice here how much they insist on the new life, how comparatively little stress they lay on the “conversion,” on the being “saved.” Also, that the Salvationists know how to laugh. It is only men who keep their religion for a fine heavy diet on sunday who cannot pray at one moment and laugh at another. If my religion is a part of me, it is also clearly a part of my laughter.
Now let us go the rounds of the opium dens and brothels round about Little Bourke Street. We walk, my Salvationist and I, into any house that we wish. No one opposes us: only once in the whole evening are we spoken to other than respectfully. “You see,” says the mistress of the most facially contorted Chinee I have yet seen, “You see, the Salvationists helps the girls, that’s why we likes ’em!” Here we are in a den, a girl lying on one side of the bed (the Chinese beds are like large alcoves. In the middle is the opium-tray, containing the pipe, a lamp, etc.), a Chinee on the other, getting her pipe ready for her. We sit and chat with her. She tells us about herself simply enough, showing no signs of wishing to alter her condition. Then the other girl comes in, and we chat with her. My Salvationist recognises her: she was at Bella’s funeral. (Bella was a girl who fell down dead in the brothel opposite, and the Army buried her. All “the girls” about clubbed together, hired cabs, and went to the funeral.) “O yes,” says the girl to him, “you said the service for Bella.” She too tells us about herself simply enough. Her mother is at Ballarat.—“Does she know you’re here?”—“O yes, she knows.”—“Does she think you’re in service?”—“O no, she knows what I’m doing;” and so on. Presently I go into the other room and talk pigeon English with the remarkable spectacled Chinee, who is like a venerable old ape. Why will the English girls come and live with the Chinese? The answer is simple: the Chinese both pay them well and are kind to them. These girls are not bruised on the face and arms as most of the others are.