Regeneration / Being an Account of the Social Work of The Salvation Army in Great Britain

by H. Rider Haggard

Every one of the 3,000,000 meetings held annually, even in this country, depends upon the voluntary giving up of the time and effort of working-men and women who have in most cases to hurry from work to home, and from home to meeting-place, after a hard day's labour. Much the same may be said of the 450,000 meetings held annually on the Continent of Europe; with this difference, that our people there have mostly to begin work earlier in the day, and to conclude much later than is the case here. Their evening meetings, in conformity with the habits of the country concerned, must needs be begun, therefore, later, and conclude much later than similar gatherings in the United Kingdom.

A cursory glance through the seventy-four newspapers and periodicals published by the Army—generally weekly—in twenty-one languages, would show any one how variously our people everywhere are seeking to meet the different habits of life in each country, and how constantly new plans are being tried to attain the supreme object of all our multitudinous agencies—the arousing of men's attention to the claims of God and their ingathering to His Kingdom.

The original plan adopted in this country of going to the people by means of meetings and marches in the streets, is in many lands not legally permissible, while in others it is almost useless. Our leaders, therefore, have always to be finding out other means of attaining the same end. This has resulted in very great gains of liberty in several ways. On the Continent, for example, though it is not possible to get a general permission to hold open-air meetings in the streets, it is becoming more and more usual to let our people hold such gatherings in the large pleasure-grounds, provided within or on the outskirts both of the great cities and the lesser towns. In some cases the announcements of further meetings, made somewhat after the style of the public crier, develops into a series of short open-air addresses. In other cases, conspicuously in Italy, where our work is only as yet in its infancy—the sale of our paper, both by individual hawkers and by groups of comrades singing the songs it contains in marketplaces, largely makes up for the want of the more regularized open-air work.

And in the courts of the great blocks of buildings which abound in cities like Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and elsewhere, meetings are held which are really often more effective in impressing whole families of various classes than any of our open-air proceedings in countries like England and the United States.

But everywhere the Army seeks especially, though not by any means exclusively, for those who are to be found frequenting the public-houses, cafes, beer gardens, dives, saloons, and other drinking-places of the world. In all countries our people sell our papers amidst these crowds, as well as at the doors of the theatres and other places of amusement, and the mere offer of these papers, now that their unflinching character as to God and goodness is well known, constitutes an act of war, a submission to which in so many million cases is no slight evidence of confidence among the masses of the people in our sincerity, and, so far, a sign of our success.

But 'The War Cry' seller is in the countries of more scattered population, such as Switzerland, some of the colonies, and large parts of India, much more than is the case in the big cities, the representative of every form of helpfulness. He, or she, not merely offers the paper for sale to those who have neither opportunity nor inclination to attend religious services of any kind, but enters himself where no paper ever comes, holds little meetings with groups of those who have never prayed, heartens those who are sinking down under pressure of calamity, visits the sick-room of the friendless, and often becomes the intermediary of the suffering and destitute and those who can help them in their dismal necessities.

Of the persistent hopefulness with which our people everywhere go to the apparently abandoned, I will only say that it constitutes a store of moral and material help, not only for those people themselves, but for all who become acquainted with it, the value of which in the present it is difficult to exaggerate, and the influence of which on the future it is equally difficult to over-estimate.

While leaving the utmost possible freedom for initiative to our leaders, we are seeking everywhere to solidify and regularize every effort that has once been shown to be of any practical use. Any one amongst us, down to the youngest and poorest in any part of the world, may do a new thing next week which will prove a blessing to his fellows, and some one will be on the watch to see that that good thing, once done, be repeated, and, so far as may be, kept up in perpetuity.

Where special classes of needs exist, we must of course employ special agencies. The vitality and adaptability of the Army in the presence of new opportunities is one of the happy auguries for the future. While all that is virile and forceful in it increases, there is less and less of the rigid and formal.

Fourteen or fifteen years ago some Officers were set apart to visit the Lapps who range over all the Territories to the north of Scandinavia. This meant at first only months of solitary travelling during the summer, and no little suffering in the winter, with little apparent result. But gradually a system of meetings was established, the people's confidence was gained, and at length it has been found possible to group together various centres of regular activity amongst these interesting but little-known people, and now experienced leaders will see both to the permanence of all that has already been begun, and to the further extension of the work.