And who that heard him on one of those Congresses, in which a great company of his Officers and Soldiers felt themselves to be feasting on heavenly manna for days together, could imagine his writing the week after:--
"If ever I felt my full agreement with my Lord's definition of service as expressed in the parable, I do to-day. After all, I am a poor, unprofitable servant, and I have lost no little sleep since Friday night in criticising regretfully and condemning my share of the wonderful Congress that has certainly taken a large part of the world by storm. Nevertheless, I thank God from the bottom of my heart for the part I have been allowed to have in the matter."
Amongst the incidents of all touring, but especially of motoring, are storms such as the one The General thus triumphed over:--
"We are still rushing on. I had five Meetings yesterday, Friday, and an hour's ride through the most blinding storm I ever encountered. Two of our cars broke down, gave up, and retreated to the nearest town for the night; another got through in a damaged condition, and three with difficulty arrived at our destination. However, we who did get in, were rewarded with a big audience and a big reception. It was very wonderful. I am now reckoning on the closing Meeting which takes place on Wednesday afternoon.
"Everybody continues to bless me and speak well of me. Is it not a little surprising, and, viewed from the Master's Standpoint, a little dangerous? You must keep on praying that my faith fail not. Abundance of trying things await me. I must wait for my rest 'until the Morning.' God bless you!"
Well may a man sometimes long for rest who has experiences like the following:--
"I nearly killed myself on Saturday and Sunday at Birmingham. For some cause or other both throat and head got wrong, and it was with difficulty I could frame my sentences or pronounce my words, and yet I had to meet the great opportunity that was presented. I am paying the price to-day in weariness extreme. There is hardly a bone in my body that does not ache, or a nerve that does not seem overstrung.
"But I shall rally and be myself again; indeed, I must, for things of vast importance have to be attended to before the day is out. Our exchequer is empty, and I have to prepare for my autumn Campaign in Holland, Germany, Italy, etc."
"A mile or two after Penzance, the chauffeur turned to General Booth, and 'Now she's waking up!' he said, with a satisfied sigh, as the great car began to hurry through the open lanes.
"The General nodded his head meditatively. 'Yes,' he said, in his beard, 'people have to wake up before they begin to move. England wants waking up; I'm trying to wake her up myself, just a little, and then we shall move.'
"I asked him what he made of our national apathy.
"He shook his head. 'I don't know how it is," he said, 'but people are somehow afraid to examine themselves, afraid to see facts as facts. There is a spirit in England which is worse than opposition to religion; it's a spirit of--of--of detachment, of separation, a spirit which says, "I don't want you, I can do without you; and so long as you leave me alone I shan't interfere with you." It's a kind of slackness. They want waking up. They want rousing. They want a good shaking. It seems as if they have fallen into a deep slumber--opium-eaters!'
"He is setting out to rouse England once again, make one great final effort for the future of humanity. The future of humanity, he believes, can only be secured by 'conversion.'
"Look at him in his car! There he sits, with a light-coloured overcoat buttoned round his neck, a grey forage cap pressed over his ears, his hands in his pockets, his eyes looking straight ahead, and his lips biting at his beard--an old, old man in the newest of motor-cars.
"Through lanes where Wesley rode his horse, poring over a book as he went, General Booth flies in his beflagged car--on the same errand. These two men, so dissimilar in nature, so opposed in temperament, and separated by nearly two hundred years, the one on horseback, the other in a motor-car, sought and are seeking the same elusive end--the betterment of humanity.
"One feels as one rides along our country roads with General Booth the enormous force of simple Christianity in this work of evolution. One sees why Wesley succeeded, and why The Salvation Army is succeeding.
"'We make too much of sin,' says evolution. 'We don't make half enough of sin!' cries The General. Politicians and men of science seem like scene-shifters in the drama of life, and religion stands out clear and distinct as the only actor.
"'People have taken to The Salvation Army because it's so kind to poor people,' General Booth tells me; 'they know I love the poor, they know I weep bitterly for all the hunger and nakedness and sorrow in the world. People know I'm sincere. That's it! They know The Salvation Army is sincere, that it's doing kind actions, and helping those whom nobody else will help or can help. That's what makes us popular. Sympathy.'
"But the secret of The General is not humaneness. His secret is the reality with which he invests sin. Hear him talk about sin, and you realise the man's spell.
"At one moment he is full of humour and robust talk, a genial, merry, shrewd-eyed old gentleman; at the next--at the mention of real sin--his brows contract, his eyes flash, and his tongue hisses out such hatred and contempt and detestation as no sybarite could find on the tip of his tongue for anything superlatively coarse or ill-flavoured.
"'Sin!' he cries to me. 'Sin is a real thing--a damnable thing! I don't care what science calls it, or what some of the pulpits are calling it. I know what it is. Sin is devilish. It is sin and only sin which is stopping progress. It is sin and only sin which prevents the world from being happy. Sin! Go into the slums of the great cities--pick up little girls of six years of age sold into infamy by their parents; look at the drunken mother murdering her child, the father strapping his cripple son--sin!--that's what I call sin; something beastly and filthy and devilish and nasty--nasty, dreadfully nasty.'
"As you listen and as you realise that The Salvation Army contains numberless men changed in the twinkling of an eye from lives of such sin as this to lives of beneficent activity, you begin to feel that General Booth, right or wrong, has at least hit upon one of the most effective ways for helping evolution.
"He makes sin as real to the individual as only the mystics can imagine for themselves. Perhaps humanity likes to be told how black it is, how far it is from the perfectness after which Nature is blundering and staggering. I know not; but it is manifest that when this grim old man, with the ivory face, the black, flashing eyes, the tangle of white hair and the tangle of beard, leans over the rostrum and calls sin 'beastly' and 'devilish' and 'nasty' the people sit as white and spellbound as the patient of the hypnotist.
"It is a different General Booth whom the villagers flock to see as he drives, smiling and genial, through Cornish villages, whom the band plays into towns, and whom mayors and councillors receive with honour. But the reason of this honour and this popularity is the fact that he is a force, a living, breathing power who has made sin real to the world and has awakened the religious consciousness in thousands of human beings."
William Booth was always very wide awake to the discouraging emptiness of mere demonstrations, and never expressed himself more contemptuously with regard to them than when he thought that any of his Officers, in the midst of some grand display, which was attracting unusual attention, seemed to be likely to be satisfied with the show of what had been done, instead of pressing forward to greater things.
Yet he saw that, in presence of the continual and enthralling exhibitions of the world, there was absolute need for such manifestations of united force as might encourage every little handful, usually toiling out of sight, and convince the world that we were determined fully to overcome all its attractions.
There had been before his time large demonstrations in favour of teetotalism, and in some parts of the country the Sunday Schools were accustomed annually to make displays of more or less fashionably-dressed children and teachers. But The General was alone in his own country and time in organising any such public demonstrations in honour of Christ, and of total abstinence from sin and from worldly-mindedness.
How perfectly The General could always distinguish between the enjoyment of demonstration and of real fighting, was strikingly manifested on one of our great Crystal Palace days. Looking down from the balcony upon the vast display, when some 50,000 Salvationists were taking part in various celebrations, he noticed a comparatively small ring of our converted military and naval men kneeling together on the grass, evidently within hearing of one of the band-stands upon which one Band after another was playing, according to programme.