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The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of the Salvation Army. George S. Railton
Читать онлайн.Название The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, Founder of the Salvation Army
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isbn 4057664629807
Автор произведения George S. Railton
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
How few of The General's critics, who sneered at his Meetings as though they were mere scenes of "passing excitement" had any idea of the profound teaching he gave his people! The then editor of "The Christian," who took the trouble to visit them, as well as to converse with The General at length, with remarkable prescience wrote, as early as 1871, in his preface to The General's first important publication, "How to Reach the Masses with the Gospel":--
"The following pages tell a fragment of the story of as wonderful a work, of its kind, as this generation has seen. No doubt it is open to the same kind of criticism as the sculptor's chisel might award to the excavator's pick; but I do not hesitate to believe that for every essential Christian virtue--faith, zeal, self-denial, love, prayer, and the like--numbers of the Converts of this Mission will bear not unfavourable comparison with the choicest members of the most cultivated Churches.
"There is not in this kingdom an agency which more demands the hearty and liberal support of the Church of Christ. In the East of London are crowded and condensed a large proportion of the poorer labouring population of London. The ruined, the unfortunate, the depraved, the feeble ones, outrun in the race of life, gravitate thither and jostle one another in the daily struggle for bread; thousands remain on the edge of starvation from day to day, and the bulk of these teeming multitudes are as careless of eternity as the heathen, and far more uncared for by the great majority of the professed people of God. Mr. Booth's operations are unparalleled in extent, unsectarian in character, a standing rebuke to the apathy of Christians, and a witness of the willingness of God to show His work unto His servants and to establish the work of their hands upon them."
From the beginning, The General had taught his people to come together for an hour's prayer early each Sunday morning, and to delight in prayer at all times, looking ever to God to deliver them personally from "all evil" and to "make and keep them pure within." These phrases were familiar to all English people; but that their real meaning might not only be taken in but kept ever before his people The General had established two weekly Holiness Meetings in the Mission Halls, one on Sunday morning and the other on Friday evening. These practices, kept up wherever The Army has gone all these forty-five years, have resulted in the cultivation of ideals far above those usual even in the most refined Christian circles.
Nothing has more astonished me, amongst all the torrents of eulogy passed upon The General and his Army since his death, than the almost invariable silence amongst Christian as well as secular papers about these Holiness Meetings, and that teaching of Holiness which were the root and secret of all the success of The Army.
Any capable schoolmaster might compile volumes of rules; but how to get them obeyed is the question. How could it be possible to settle every question of who shall be the greatest in an Army formed largely of the most independent and unruly elements, if there were no superhuman power that could destroy the foundations of envy and ill-feeling, and fill hearts, once wide apart, with the humble love that can prefer others' honour before one's own?
The organisation of The Army has been, and is, in all countries a steady, careful development. But it has only been made possible by the continual maintenance of a complete confidence in God for the needed supplies of wisdom and grace to enable each to submit to others for Christ's sake, to bear and forbear for the good of the whole Army, seeking ever to learn to do better, and yet being willing to be forgotten, and even to be undervalued, misunderstood, and ill-treated by a hasty or unjust superior, for Christ's sake.
General Booth, himself, did not always appear the most patient and kindly of leaders. He would have been the first to admit how he wounded tender hearts, and, perhaps, even repulsed some who could have been of greater helpfulness to him had he been able to endure more patiently their slowness and timidity.
But, conscious as he was of his own defects, he especially rejoiced when his son and successor began to shine as a Holiness teacher, whose weekly Meetings at Whitechapel became a power that was felt all over the world.
The teaching and enjoyment of this great blessing, with all the deliverance from self-seeking and pride which it brings, has made it possible to go on imposing more and more of regulation and discipline on all sorts of men and women without either souring their spirit or transforming The Army's system into mere machinery. The Army will go on to carry out its Founder's purpose better and better the more it learns how to sit constantly at the feet of the one great Master.
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