George S. Railton

“ There is not an Officer here who has not called some souls from the dead. Not one. How many thousands--how many tens of thousands, in the aggregate, have the Officers present at this Congress raised from the graves of iniquity? Who can tell?
"Go, and do it again. Go, and look at them. Go, and compassionate them. Go, and represent Jesus Christ to them. Go, and prophesy to them. Go, and believe for them. And then shall bone come to bone, and there shall be a great noise, and a great Army shall stand up to live, and fight, and die for the living God. ”

“ Work is a good thing, my comrades. To be unemployed is generally counted an evil--any way, it is so in the case of a poor man; but it seems to me that the obligation to be engaged in some honourable and useful kind of labour is as truly devolved upon the rich as upon the poor, perhaps more so. Work is necessary to the well-being of men and women of every class, everywhere. To be voluntarily idle, in any rank or condition of life, is to be a curse to others and to be accursed yourself. ”

“ But none would deny that there is much to be learnt from The Salvation Army and from the earnest, strenuous, and resourceful personality of the man who made it. Let us hope that, if The Army as an Organisation should ultimately fade away, the great lesson of its even temporary success will not be forgotten: the lesson that any force which is to move mankind must regard man's nature as spiritual as well as material, and that the weak and humble, the poor and the 'submerged,' share in that double nature as much as those who spend their lives in the sunshine of worldly prosperity. ”

“ But, alas! the great multitude are like children. They require to see and hear God revealed before their very eyes in visible and practical form before they will believe. And to reach these crowds, God wants men and women to walk about the world so that those around, believers and unbelievers alike, shall see the form and hear the voice of the living God; people who shall be so like Him in spirit, and life, and character as to make the crowds feel as though the very shadow of God had crossed their path. ”

“ Yet against what new movement of spiritual awakening in the people--against what form of religious revival might not the same argument of offended culture and decorous holiness be employed? And where would the lower masses of men be to-day if Religion had not stooped out of her celestial heights--from the first chapters of Christendom until the last--to the intellectual and moral levels of the poor and lowly? ”

“ He knew that the centre of life is the heart. He saw that all efforts of statesmanship to alter the conditions of existence must be fruitless, or, at any rate, that the harvest must be in the far distant future of humanity, while the heart of man remains unchanged. He suspected the mere respectability which satisfies so many reformers. Even virtue seemed to him second-rate and perilous. He was not satisfied with abstention from sin, or with the change from slum to model lodging-house. ”

“ To-day we have the mournful duty of chronicling the passing of William Booth, the Head of that vast Organisation, the Salvation Army. The world has lost its greatest missionary evangelist, one of the supermen of the age. Almost every land on the face of the globe knows this pioneer and his Army, The Army which has waged such long, determined, and successful battle against the world's ramparts of sin and woe. Not one country, but fifty, will feel to-day a severe personal loss. ”

“ How was the ardent English lad who came to serve in a London shop during the week, and to do the work of a lay preacher on Sundays, to be fitted to form and lead a great Christian Order of devotees out of every nation, and to instruct and direct them in helping their fellow-men of every race in every necessity that could arise? To prepare a man merely to preach the Gospel a few years of service in that work might suffice; but then we should probably have seen a man merely interested in the numbers of his own audiences and the effect produced upon them by his own preaching. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perhaps we may say that men of action never look back. And so it was with General Booth. He might well have rested during these last few years in a large and grateful peace, counting his victories, measuring his achievement, and comparing the pulpit in Nottingham or the first wind-battered tent in East London with this innumerable Army of Salvation which all over the world has saved thousands of human beings from destruction. ”

“ There is the constraining love that yearns over darkness and cold and empty hearts. Big hearts are scarce.
"In an age of materialism and greed William Booth has stirred the world with a passion for the welfare of men. His trumpet-call has been like the silvery voice of bugles. His spirit will live, not only in lives made better by his presence, but in the temper of all the laws of the future."
We shall see from the welcomes given to him by great official personages, that these remarks do not in the least exaggerate the feeling created all over the country by the activities of The Army. ”

“ And yet all the time, with or without our choice, our own activities, and even our faults and neglects, have been helping other peoples, some of them born on our soil, to become our rivals in everything. Happily the multiplication of plans of intercourse is now merging the whole human race so much into one community that one may hope yet to see the dawn of that fraternity of peoples which may end the present prospects of wars unparalleled in the past. How very much William Booth has contributed to bring that universal brotherhood about this book may suffice to hint. ”

“ I am not pretending to say that I have worked harder, or practised more self-denial, or endured more hardships at any particular time of my life than have those around me; but I do want those who feel any interest in me to understand that faithfulness to God in the discharge of duty and the maintenance of a good conscience have cost me as severe a struggle as they can cost any Salvation Soldier in London, Berlin, Paris, New York, or Tokio to-day. ”

“ There are three factors against which the old General has had to fight all his life long--against well-meaning hesitation, against hard-hearted egoism, and against the idle indifference born of ignorance. And these three streams that have flowed against him in every part of the world have not been able to hold him back. To those who think he has only become an important man, and to those who measure a man's worth by the outer honours he gains, he became a man of importance when London made him a citizen and Oxford an honorary Doctor. ”

“ At a great Christian Conference the other day an eminent divine said that The Salvation Army believed in a 'perfect sinner,' but that he believed in a 'perfect Saviour.' This, I contend, was a separation of what God has joined together and which never ought to be put asunder. For, glory be to the Father, glory be to the Son, and glory be to the Holy Ghost, The Salvation Army believes, with its Lord, that a perfect Saviour can make a poor sinner into a perfect saint. ”

“ It is not necessary to dwell upon the dislike--we might, indeed, say the repulsion--felt by serious and elevated minds at the paraphernalia, the pious turmoil, the uproar and 'banalite' of much that has developed under the Banners of The Salvation Army. Prayers uttered like volley-firing, hymns roared to the roll of drums and the screaming of fifes, have been features of this remarkable revival which outraged many of the orthodox, and made even the judicious and indulgent ask whether any good could come out of such a Nazareth. ”

“ It was curious and pleasant to see gipsies salute The General from their wayside Bohemia on the road to Hindhead; it was delightful to see The General himself as he descended and spoke to the church school-children who hailed him by the wayside at Roke, in one of the most charming wayside spots on the journey. They stood with their teachers under the trees in the sunshine, little pictures of bloom and happiness. 'Now wouldn't you like to be running round the country on a motor?' he asked them straight away, and their answer come with hearty directness. ”

“ From time immemorial it has been customary to class philanthropists amongst the extraordinaries, the marvellous people--who do not pass muster in the common world--exceptions. Nobody thinks of measuring himself with them, for the battle of life belongs to the egotists--each one of whom fights for himself. He who fights for others is smilingly acknowledged by the well-disposed as a stranger in the world. The ordinary man of the street pitilessly calls him a fool, and the mass considers him unworthy of a second thought. ”

“ Scarcely could you find a country in the whole world where men and women are not now grieving for the death of General Booth. Among peoples of whom we have never heard, and in languages of which we do not know even the alphabet, this universal grief ascends to Heaven--perhaps the most universal grief ever known in the history of mankind. ”

“ Since that night, for it was near upon eleven o'clock when the happy change was realised, the business of my life has been not only to make a holy character but to live a life of loving activity in the service of God and man. I have ever felt that true religion consists not only in being holy myself, but in assisting my Crucified Lord in His work of saving men and women, making them into His Soldiers, keeping them faithful to death, and so getting them into Heaven. ”

“ Whom does it laud to the heavens in the pulpit, on the platform, and in the Press? Whose names does it describe the highest in its Temples of Fame, or hand down to posterity as examples for rich and poor, old and young alike, to follow? Is it the man who makes his own ease and enrichment his only aim in life, and who toils and spins for nothing higher than his own gratification? Nothing of the kind. It is the generous, self-sacrificing, disinterested being who uses himself up for the benefit of his fellows. ”

“ Few people have in themselves sufficient force of character, human or Divine, to keep them pushing ahead for any considerable length of time. Officers who when they first enter the Field are like flames of fire, will, if not looked after, get into ruts, and content themselves with holding so many Meetings, doing so many marches, raising the ordinary Corps funds, Meeting the ordinary expenditure, keeping the ordinary number of Soldiers on the Roll, and doing everything in the ordinary day, while the world, undisturbed, is going forward at express speed to Hell. ”

“ I would like before I die--it has been one of the choicest wishes of my soul--to be able to make The Salvation Army such a power for God and of such benefit to mankind that no wicked people can spoil it. ”

“ He knows that sin is the enemy of your peace, and must mean misery here and hereafter. For this reason among others, He wants to deliver you from it.
"You will remember that by the lips of Peter God told the Jews that He had raised up His Son Jesus, and sent Him to bless them by turning every one of them away from his iniquities. That applies to you, my comrades. You have heard it before; I tell it you again. Holiness is the royal road to peace, contentment, and joy for you. The love God bears you, therefore, makes Him ceaselessly long after your Holiness of heart and life. ”

“ When The General began to form his Army, it was ordinarily assumed as a settled principle that Open-Air Work could only be done in fine weather, and the theory is still existent in many quarters. As if the comfort and convenience of "the workers," and not the danger and misery of the people, were to fix the times of such effort!
"But the people will not come," is even now pleaded as an excuse for the omission or abandonment of any imaginable attempt to do good. ”

“ William Booth's life was one in storm and battle--a great man's life, the life of an unwearied fighter. Now the whole world bows before the great man and the great life which will live through all time, and go on bringing help to the suffering. ”

“ Booth to plunge into this human Niagara will appear ever greater. As we look nowadays at the world-wide result of their resolve so to do, despite all their consciousness of ignorance and unfitness for the task, we cannot but see in the whole matter the hand of God Himself, fulfilling His great promise: "Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, the prey of the terrible shall be delivered, for I will contend with them that contend with thee, and I will save thy children. And all flesh shall know that I the Lord am thy Saviour, and thy Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob." ”

“ What a valley of dry bones the world appears to the man whose eyes have been opened to see the truth of things. Verily, verily, it is one great cemetery crowded with men, women, and children dead in trespasses and sin. Look for a moment at this graveyard, in which the men around you may be said to lie with their hearts all dead and cold to Christ, and all that concerns their Salvation. Look at it. The men and women and children in your town are buried there. The men and women in your city, in your street. Nay, the very people who come to your Hall to hear you talk on a Sunday night are there. ”

“ Many have tried to do what William Booth did. Many men as earnestly and as tenderly have sought to waken drugged humanity and render the Kingdom of Heaven a reality. Many men have broken their hearts in the effort to save the Christian religion from the paralysis of formalism and the sleeping sickness of philosophy. It is not an easy thing to revivify a religion, nor a small thing to rescue many thousands of the human race from sin and misery. ”

“ In the history of the Social Work, nevertheless, there have been, as you will know, any number of shortcomings. We have not realised all our expectations, nor fulfilled all our dreams. It was not to be expected that we should. This is an imperfect world; the Movement has been imperfect, and the people who have carried it on have been imperfect also. Consequently, it is only natural that we have had imperfect results. ”