The Salvation Army Officer is the Man they Send for when they are Dying
The Probable Future of the Salvation Army
Those who have followed me during the three preceding addresses will, I think, almost anticipate the remarks I am about to make. I have not come here to give any glorified picture of what the Salvation Army is going to do, or to be, in the future. I have laid down the lines on which we purpose that it should run, and you will be able to form your own conclusions as to its probable future.
The most important thing to be done at present, is the clearing away of unfounded prejudice. There are few minds so open to conviction as not to experience great reluctance to receive new and startling ideas, especially if they contravene their preconceived notions; and especially is this true in respect to religious opinions. Religious prejudice is perhaps the most inveterate of all, and is most difficult to overcome. This has been the most formidable enemy to the work of the Salvation Army. Nevertheless, it is wonderful, in the short time of our history, to how great an extent prejudice has been broken down. It is perfectly astonishing the impression which this movement has made upon public opinion during the time it has existed, in comparison with the great revival movements of the past. There is nothing in Church history to compare with it. Of course the facilities for travel and spreading information are much greater than in bygone times. This work is now drawing towards it and impressing in its favour thousands of the most honest-hearted and devoted people in the world; and we don’t care about the opinions of any others. These are drawing near enough to see and judge for themselves; and this spirit of inquiry, we hope, will go on increasing until we shall see prejudice break down on every side. I can quite understand the feelings of conventionally-trained religious people when our measures first burst upon them, and I think we have had a great deal of patience for many years with objectors; but I do think, when people get the light and come and profess to be convinced, it is too bad for them to turn round upon us with old objections which we have answered 150 times. However, we must persevere with our measures as long as there is the necessity for them.
It is astonishing, considering how much we ought to be known by this time, what a great deal of prejudice we have had to contend with, personally. Of course Satan knows that everything depends on our being believed to be sincere, consecrated, disinterested people, and therefore he has done his utmost to start all manner of doubts, suspicions, and misrepresentations concerning us; and certainly he has found plenty of agents, mostly, alas! in the shape of professing Christians, ready to help in this evil work. Our antecedent history, our motives, our aims, our measures, and our teaching have been assailed in turn; but so far, thanks be unto God, He has stood by us, and convinced thousands of the honest-hearted, of our integrity and disinterestedness, confounding those who would not be convinced, and turning their weapons of slander and abuse back upon themselves. The Divine promise has been literally fulfilled in our experience, the more we have been evil spoken of and persecuted, the more has the spirit of glory and of God rested upon us, and everywhere, even in the thickest of the fight, God has given us the ear of the people, accompanying our testimony with the outpouring of His blessed Spirit, working signs and wonders equal to anything recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.
Notwithstanding all this, however, there is still much misunderstanding and prejudice abroad. I believe that many still think that my husband is an ambitious, designing man, who wants virtually to be another Pope, get a great deal of power, and be at the head of a great, world-wide movement. I do not wonder at persons with such notions hating him. I am sure I should, if I knew him to be actuated by any such motives; and no considerations should induce me to countenance or help him. But I am as sure of his integrity and singleness of eye in all his movements as I am of my own, and therefore I have no doubt about the Lord leading and inspiring him.
There is one thought, however, which I would suggest to those who have still doubts on this point. I would say, Examine the commencement of this work. Read its early history. If the General had been such a man as these doubters suspect, I ask, would he not have made his programme in some measure to match his ideas? would he not have laid his plans at once for a great and imposing movement? Whereas the facts are, that he left a happy and prosperous ministerial career (this is well known to thousands), gave up all that is commonly regarded as valuable in life, came out without any human encouragement or guarantees, and subsequently gave himself to labour amongst the neglected masses with no thought beyond that of a local work in the East of London, as is abundantly evident from our early records. We gave up home, income, every friend we had in the world, save my parents, with four little children under five years old, to trust only in God, as truly as Abraham did when he left his native land. We had no more idea than anybody in this audience of what God was going to do with us; but we both had the inward conviction (against which I had struggled for four years) that He wanted to use us to the masses in a way in which we could not be used in our denomination. After travelling for three years as an evangelist, during which time he saw many thousands united with the various Churches with which he laboured, my husband was led as by miracle to the East of London.
After a severe struggle with myself, I was led, I believe by the Holy Spirit, to sympathize with him in his yearnings over the East End poor, and consented for him to begin to work amongst them, though God only knows what it cost me in many particulars. I often think how little our criticizers know of what we have gone through in establishing this movement. Its early history is fortunately so far recorded as to present a triumphant contradiction to all sane minds of the absurd insinuations to which I have alluded. During the first ten years we were groping our way out of the conventionalism in which we had been trained, and often most reluctantly following the pillar of cloud by which God was leading us.
We tried committees, conferences, and all sorts of governments, showing how far we were (until God revealed it to us) from the grand military idea which is now proving such a wonderful power in organizing the converts for aggressive effort. We followed on, however, trusting to be led, because we knew that our eye was single; and now we can see the end of the Lord in His leadings, and are beginning to rejoice over the results. I ask any sane person, Does this look like the path of a man inspired by ambition and love of power? Does it not rather look marvellously like God’s way of making a new departure?—beginning with one man, as in the case of Luther, George Fox, and Wesley, inspiring him and leading him by a way he knew not, but using him to bring about a great spiritual revolution? I think so, and I believe in my inmost soul that my husband has been as truly raised up and led of God for this work as any of these were for theirs. God and time will prove it.
People say, “They have put their children into the movement too.” Yes, bless God! and if we had twenty, we would do so. But I stand here before God, and say that it is all from the same motive and for the same end—the seeking and saving of the lost. But I ask, How comes it to pass that these children all grow up with this one ambition and desire? Is this not the finger of God? Some of our critics don’t find it so easy to put their children where they want them to be! Could all the powers of earth give these young men and women the spirit of this work, apart from God? Some of you know the life of toil, self-sacrifice, and devotion this work entails. What could induce our children to embrace it without a single human inducement such as influences other young people the world over? As spirits are not finely touched but to fine issues, so surely God hath fashioned their souls for the work He wants them to do; and though all the mother in me often cries, “Spare them!” my soul magnifies the Lord, because He hath counted me worthy of such honour.
I wish some of our detractors could have been behind the door this morning, when my precious daughter should have started for Paris. Through an accumulation of disappointment and perplexity, some of it occasioned by the most cruel treatment of those who owe us nothing but gratitude and love, she broke down, and was utterly unable to go. If you could have seen the agony of nature that we all endured, you might comprehend that it is not so easy a thing after all to send your child to a foreign land, to bear the responsibility and anxiety and toil of propagating a real spiritual work amongst infidels and socialists, with all the malice and spleen of the Pharisees arrayed against you! Oh, what a comfort in such hours to be able to look up into that face that was marred more than any man’s, and say, “Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest I do this for Thee.” But to return to my point; I say, that when all this prejudice shall be removed, and when the honest and true come really to know us and what we are trying to do, I leave you to judge whether all the slanders of earth and hell will be able to keep back the flow of sympathy which will set in upon us from all parts of the world. When good and true men of wealth, who really care for the people, find out what we are doing, no power can prevent them helping us to roll this work on all over the world. We had an illustration of this by this morning’s post. A gentleman, unknown to us, has sent amidst the very hottest fire of slander, offering £500 to help us raise £2,000 more in two months’ time. (Applause.) Others write us their deepest sympathy, and send help from far and near. Thus is the Lord making the wrath of man to praise Him, and using our bitterest enemies to help forward our blessed work.
We have had to encounter much prejudice also against our teaching. At first many good people supposed that we preached the antinomian doctrines so popular in this age, making everything of faith, and little or nothing of good works. When they read our books, however, and find out that we teach the old-fashioned Gospel of repentance, faith, and holiness, not daring to separate what God has joined together, they write us from all quarters congratulating us on our resuscitation of Acts-of-Apostles teaching. On the doctrine of holiness, also, there has been much misunderstanding; but when people discover that we are teaching no sentimental sanctification, but practical holiness,—that we teach that a man cannot be right with God while he is doing wrong to men,—in short, that holiness means being saved from sin, saved to the uttermost, and filled with love to God and man,—they say, Well, that is scriptural, that must be right! No wonder that, in the confessedly low state of the Churches, this teaching has aroused much opposition; but we are thankful to know, as confessed on all hands, that it has been used to stir up the Churches and to provoke many to love and good works. This teaching, like that of our Lord and His apostles, has also won the testimony of the enemy himself to its divinity. A leading infidel paper said the other day, “That these Salvationists are fools and fanatics we admit, but that they are sincere we fully believe; and they appear to us to be more like the apostles than any people we are acquainted with.” I quote from memory, but these are as near as possible the words used. So you see the very infidels understand us better than the Pharisees. This all helps to break down prejudice amongst the common people, and prepares our way to their hearts; and when once they find out that we are disinterestedly working for their good, you can judge what will be the result.
Some one asks, What will be
The Army’s Future Effect on the Churches?
Well, I think we have a right to judge from its effects in the past. It has been publicly stated at several diocesan councils here and there, on Exeter Hall platform, and in many other places, by bishops, leading clergy, ministers, and leading laymen, that the effect of the Salvation Army on the Churches has been to stir them up to greater devotion, love, and zeal for the salvation of men. This is notorious the world over. The testimony of these men, summed up, is, that the Army has taught them many valuable lessons. Amongst others, “The universal compulsion of souls,” “Aggressive Christianity,”—having coined the very term,—“The employment of women,” “The utilization of the laity,” etc. And although each of these witnesses has his difficulties and objections, which it would be too wonderful if he had not, from an ecclesiastical standpoint, yet all agree in holding up the love and devotion and zeal of our soldiers for universal admiration and imitation! Surely, then, so far, the effect of the movement on the Churches has been good and healthy. We know for a positive fact that many Churches and organizations have gained large accessions of members through our work, and that their old members have been quickened and stirred up. Surely this is a good effect; and yet the poor Salvation Army has received evil for good at the hand of many an Alexander and Demetrius, and has met with more of-the spirit of the vulture than of the dove. Alas that it should be so!
However, it won’t do for people who are set to lead a revolution to be thin-skinned; therefore we go on, knowing that out of all this God will work His own gracious designs. One pastor went back to Paris from our Congress opening (which so offended some people), saying, The worship of the Salvation Army is destined to become the worship of the future! And at any rate, it is already working marvellous changes. He who leads us makes no mistakes, and we already begin to see the unfolding of His plans. Who can tell the influence of this one fact—the unlocking of woman’s lips in the service of her Lord? If the scribes were not blinded with the smoke, they would see the fulfilment of the prophecy of the last great ingathering of souls; but their not seeing it does not alter the fact that it is being fulfilled. We have now between four and five hundred women officers; and the great majority of them are successful soul-winners, in many cases whole populations feeling their influence. Think of the effect of this on the public opinion of the Churches and of the country! Here are agents for evangelizing the masses at home and the heathen abroad,—simple, earnest, devoted, successful, and inexpensive! Yes, thank God, we are teaching the Churches that others besides clergymen, ministers, deacons, and elders can be used for the salvation of men. The multitudes have too long been left to these. As a clergyman said to me the other day, “There are 35,000 souls in my parish, what can one do?” What indeed! Set the carpenters and washerwomen on to them, saved and filled with the Spirit! We are teaching the value of organizing these rough forces of the Lord’s Army, and sending them ahead as sappers and miners to prepare the way of the Lord; and we will go on teaching them, though they do abuse us between the lessons.
The Salvation Army has also taught some who are apt to learn the value of all nights of prayer, penitent forms, holiness meetings, and open-air marches, etc., etc. Thank God, we don’t want to get all the blessings; we want the Salvation Army to be like Samson’s foxes, going through the Churches with a fire-brand, setting every true Christian on fire. God is my witness; I should rejoice in such a result. If they will only get people saved, I don’t care very much what sort of creed or forms or ceremonies they adopt. As the General says, “If we make the man, the man will clothe himself. Get the man right, and he will get himself a house to live in; he will betake himself to the organization which best suits him.”
Another result of our influence, which is universally admitted, is a
Higher Standard of Christian Life
It is a marvellous thing, if we are wrong, that wherever we go the testimony of Christians who receive our teaching is, that they are quickened and blessed, and begin to live a new life. That is a curious effect of wrong teaching, is it not? Yet that is the universal testimony. Multitudes of Christians have abandoned the use of strong drink, who had taken it all their previous lives; others, the use of tobacco and similar indulgences. Perhaps some one may answer, “But you cannot prove the use of tobacco to be sinful.” That depends on a man’s light; but it must be a higher degree of devotion for a man to abandon it for the good of others, than to smoke for his own indulgence. Numbers of women have given up fashionable dressing, and now dress as simple Christian women ought. I say then, if, with so imperfect an organization, having had everything to learn, and so much to contend against, the Army has produced such a wonderful effect on the Churches, what may we not hope for with a more perfect system and an ever-increasing force? We have more than doubled our speed since Christmas, having taken out 260 officers since then, nearly all of whom are working prosperous corps in different parts of the country.
A very important item to be borne in mind in calculating the future of the Army, is the
Youth of its Officers
They are mostly under twenty-five years of age—young men and women full of fire and energy, numbers of them having sacrificed home, or friends, or situations, or offers of marriage, or something which constituted to them their earthly life! Think of the absorption and heroism such people are capable of, and what they are likely to become with three or four more years’ experience. We have already a wonderful development of talent and power all round. We got a letter the other day from Major Simmonds (formerly Clapham), of the Training Home, whom, some of you will remember, we sent to the Cape about two months ago.
She says: “You would hardly know me. I am nothing but skin and bone. I have been sick every day of the whole voyage.” Poor little thing! she was not very stout before. She goes on to say: “I am so thankful to be over it, and once more on dry land, and able to write you. And now for the war; we have begun already.” No moaning or groaning, no wishing herself home again; but “now for the war!” This is the spirit of our officers as a rule. You can see at a glance that we have only to go on multiplying such people sufficiently to be able to put a sufficient number of them down among the forces of the enemy, and we can once more turn the world upside down!
You say, It will never be accomplished. How do you know? Don’t tell me that the dispensation of the Spirit is going to end in this ignominious fashion. I don’t believe it. I believe that the fulness of the Gentiles has to come in, and the remnant of Israel too. My son was speaking the other day with one of the sons of Abraham; and he was perfectly delighted when he found out that we believed in the Old Testament as well as the New, that we had not abolished the moral law, and that we do not believe that Jesus Christ ever intended to abolish it, but brought us power to keep and love it. He was amazed to hear that we believed that God still loved Israel, and was longing to restore them and to unite all real saints, whether Jews or Gentiles, in one grand spiritual Israel, under one king, even the Son of David. How little we know of God’s purposes, or of how they are to be accomplished! Perhaps the theories of the scholars are as much at sea on this subject as the notions of the Jews were as to the coming and character of the Messiah. Let us work on in faith and hope, for who can tell what wonderful things are before us.
Another future effect of the Salvation Army, will be the opening of the prison doors to them that are bound. How do I know? Because we are—
Inspiring Hope
in the hopeless all over the world! Christians who have given up hope, in despair of being able to do anything for their fellow-men, are inspired afresh by our work. This was beautifully expressed by a French writer who visited our hall in Paris one night. He said: “The aspect of the work that struck me most was, that it was reassuring.” He said: “I had been hearing of the state of the public, and I had been thinking of the state of the Church, and I had been looking with despair of anybody being able to do anything for these people; but here I found a handful of men and women who were acting out their belief, and who believed in success, and at least it was reassuring.” Yes; and if you knew the numbers of letters we receive from all parts of the world, you would see this too. We had a letter only the other day from a gentleman in Persia, in which he tells us how he had been hearing and reading about the Salvation Army; and he says: “I am so impressed that it is this that we want here, and I am so sure you will come, that I have got thirty young men, teaching them to read, and getting them ready for you to make officers of.” It is the same with regard to Russia. A Russian count, a man of great experience in Christian work, said to me: “You might go for a thousand miles in Russia, and not find a cottage or a palace without a Bible, and you might go the same distance and not find one living Christian. It is the Salvation Army we want.” Yes; and, we doubt not, God will raise us up officers one day who will go to Russia.
Not only has the Army resuscitated hope in despairing Christians, but also among the poor, the lost, and the forlorn everywhere. This beautiful story reached us the other day: In a bad house, a wretched place somewhere, where the poor inmates were never allowed to go out of doors, but at certain times and under certain surveillance, there was a certain window with gratings where those poor girls could get a look at our soldiers as they passed; and one of them, who is since converted, says: “We used to rush to those gratings, and press our faces against them, and watch until we could see the last cap of the last soldier pass out of sight. We felt somehow or other that they were our hope, and were to be our deliverers.” Oh, yes! the very thieves and the harlots everywhere, though they persecute us, armed with the sayings of ministers and professors against us, yet in their souls they respect us; and
The Salvation Army Officer is the Man they Send for when they are Dying
They feel as those poor fellows at Lucknow did—they feel that we are the spiritual Campbells that are going to deliver them. We have resuscitated hope in them, thank God for that! I was hearing some of my daughter’s stories yesterday from Geneva, that were enough to make one weep tears of blood. The stories of poor lost ones, both men and women, who came to pour out their hearts’ histories to her; trodden down, hidden away, nobody caring anything about them, lost to hope. But when they found one with a heart of sympathy and love, they could go and pour out these stories. They looked, and longed for, the healing balm, the oil of consolation. They said: “Can I be saved? Do you think there is hope for such as I am?” Oh, yes; you poor Magdalenes and legion-possessed men, there is hope. The Salvation Army exists on purpose to save you. Hallelujah! we are coming.
“But what will it grow to?” I don’t know; but if it is of God, the bigger the better; and if not, you know the conclusion of the town clerk of Ephesus. We are so confident of the Divine leading in the past, that we feel able to abandon the future guidance of the Army to it also. They say, Well, but what about this one man government? I reply, that no other is possible with an Army; and it seems to me that we are just as safe with one man at the helm as with twenty, and far more likely to get the ship into port. Nearly all the folly that has been talked on this point is exploded by one consideration, namely, that this General assumes no jurisdiction over the conscience, whatever people may say to the contrary.
Nobody is bound either to join the Army or to stay in after they have joined. Nobody is unchristianized or anathematized merely for leaving it. Many who have left it are now happily working for God in other spheres, procured or rendered possible to them by our recommendation. In view of such facts it is simply ridiculous to talk about popery, the very essence of which is, No salvation outside its pale.
We consider that the moral tone of any organization is the only real guarantee for purity of government; and while the spirit of the Army remains what it is, it would not be possible for an untrue or double-minded man to retain the position of General for forty-eight hours! People little know the tremendous moral strain involved in such a work. An untrue man would sooner be in hell than be the General of the Salvation Army. Then add to this, that there is not, and never can be, any pecuniary temptation to such a man, and, for a long time to come at any rate, plenty of public abuse, and you will see how senseless are many of the fears expressed. But supposing the moral tone, that is the spirit, of the movement should degenerate, and it should become worldly and lifeless? I reply, It is so constituted, and so depends upon its spirit, having little intellect and no learning to depend upon, that it would simply go out, and need no governing at all! And the sooner the better, when it has ceased to live. We don’t want to create a form, capable of holding together when the spirit has departed; we would rather it were buried, as all corpses should be.
We only want it to serve God’s purpose, and so, you see, we shall be satisfied either way. We honestly tried committees and conferences, and they failed; and we know perfectly well that if we were to admit, say, half-a-dozen men into our cabinet to-day, there would be an end of our aggressiveness to-morrow. You see, God has trained us by a very peculiar discipline for this work; He has delivered us to a great extent from the trammels of conventionalism, and used us to make this movement out of the untaught masses. Where could we find a leader so well adapted as the man who has, under God, made it?
Let us go on serving our generation, leaving God to look after the next. At any rate, the present generation, so far as the masses are concerned, are not much benefited by the legislation of the Churches of bygone generations; and you know there are many very good men who contend that some of our most carefully constructed forms are only a burden and hindrance to true and live men. We do not intend this movement ever to settle down into a sect, if prayer and faith or prudence and foresight can prevent it. We desire that it should continue an ever-aggressive force, going to the regions beyond while there are any sinners left unsaved. And if we might choose its future, or rather, the future which we would like it to bring in, it should be one of universal peace and good-will to men, and all the praise, honour, and thanks-giving unto God!
In conclusion, we think a wonderful indication of the future is the growth of public interest in us; for we cannot utter a word now of any moment but it goes round the world. That too is testimony, and we rejoice in it, for I contend that it is something to get a notice about the Salvation Army into the Times and into the Daily News. It makes every publican, and every member of Parliament, and every lord and lady, from the Queen on the throne downwards, read it. They cannot for the life of them help noticing it, and they cannot prevent the ideas which the word salvation brings up in their minds. It is the most beautiful word on earth, the most beautiful word in heaven—salvation.
“Here you are again!” says a member of Parliament to his wife, “salvation again;” and he throws the paper to her. “What does this mean?” I contend that only raising the question may do a man good, and set him thinking. I contend that the fact that the public leading journals of this land have to report the progress, and proceedings, and persecutions, and sufferings of the Salvation Army, makes every man and woman in England begin to realize in some dim sort of way that they themselves have something to do with salvation after all, that they have got a soul, and that they will want to be saved one day! It is a wonderful achievement, to get something about God, and religion, and eternity into our public prints, where they have so long been shut out! And I must say that the secular press has done us a great deal more justice than the religious. All honour to them! I am bound to say, that in common honesty I hope the religious press will learn better by-and-by. If they don’t, they will be the sufferers, and not the Salvation Army.