SOMETHING BETTER.
"One way only is contemptible and accursed—that is, to make it a mere excuse for envy, malice and depreciation.
"He that heareth, let him hear; and he that forbeareth, let him forbear; but God shall be the judge between us, and His voice says in Scripture: 'If thou forbear to deliver them that are bound unto death, and those who are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, "Behold," we knew it not, doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it, and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not He know it, and shall not He render to every man according to his work?'"
Archdeacon Sinclair wishes the scheme success.
Speaking at Bromley, Kent, on Friday night, in connection with the
Canterbury diocese, of the Church of England Temperance Society,
Archdeacon Sinclair referred to General Booth's scheme. He wished very
great success to that courageous and large scheme.
The Rev. Brooke Lambert defends the scheme in the "Times."
There is much that is not new in the scheme. General Booth allows that much. But there are two factors in his scheme which, if not new, at least acquire a new prominence. These two factors are help and hope. Society drops these two h's. For help it substitutes money-giving, and as for hope for the disreputable, it has none. The personal contact of General Booth's workers, of his 10,000 officers, is an essential feature of the scheme. They take the man or the woman as they enter the shelter, and prevent it from becoming a means of dissemination of crime, of filth, of disease. They stand by the new-fledged proselyte to work, to encourage perseverance. They follow him to the country colony, the abomination of desolation to one who has walked the London pavements and found his heaven in the gin-palace and the music-hall, to stimulate effort. They accompany him to the colony to remind him that true freedom is not licence, that the conditions of success are a change of mind and not of climate. But for them, one might doubt whether the hope General Booth conceives for the "submerged tenth" would be hope at all in their eyes. Nothing so difficult as to persuade the Londoner to go into the country, and the emigrant to keep to work away from the congenial interludes of town pleasure. But once create this hope (and persistent reiteration can do much when the agent is a kindly man or woman) and you have introduced a new element into the life of the wastrel. Our prison system, growing in harshness, failed utterly to deter; with the reformatory system, based on the principle of making it to a man's interest to behave well within the walls, a new era dawned on criminal legislation. It is for these reasons that I look with deep interest on General Booth's experiment. Do not let us say, "The experiment has been tried before; it is useless to attempt it again." I believe there is enough of novelty in General Booth's scheme to justify a hope of success. But for past failures I can but say that people do not regard failure as a ground for inaction when their interest is deeply involved. When I was a boy, some 45 years ago, I saw at the old Polytechnic experiments in electricity: the electric light, the electric cautery, &c. For years I expected to see them introduced into the work-day world. Now, at last, they are coming into use, but I do not think the shares stand at a very high premium. None the less electricity will one day be of universal use. That is what experiment in spite of failure has done; that is what we ought to do in social matters. When all is done, the result will be comparatively small when compared with our aspirations, but it will create, as all good work does, new outlets for effort, new objects for hope.
BROOKE LAMBERT.
The Vicarage, Greenwich, Nov. 19.
Dr. Parker approves the General's Scheme.