Facts about the Salvation army

Preface

It was while employed as a writer of special articles on the Chicago Tribune, in September of 1888, that I came to have this unique experience with the Salvation Army. I was at the office late one night spinning out "copy," when the managing editor strolled into the room where I was writing and remarked casually: " I think I have something for you to do." I looked up to receive instructions for a new assignment. A newspaper reporter is a person not easily astonished, but I defied all professional etiquette on that point by dropping my pencil and jumping to my feet when this startling question was asked:

"How would you like to join the Salvation Army?"

After 1 had got my breath and had had a chance to reflect on the merits of the proposition, I was forced to admit that personally I did not like it at all. I had seen these little bands of self-styled " Soldiers of the Lord" at a distance, attended one of their meetings in a spirit of curiosity, and knew in what estimation they were held by the public — a class of fanatics, bizarre and picturesque, and exciting only wonder and ridicule. All this made me shrink mentally and physically from identifying

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myself, even for a few days and for a purpose, with the Salvation Army. There is not in me any of the material of which martyrs are made, and, in common with most Americans, I shrink from ridicule as from the surgeon's knife. For these reasons, during the first few days in the Army the ego was uppermost. My own sensations over each new experience were so keenly unique and humiliating that my faculties for every other purpose seemed paralyzed. It was exactly as if every thought and feeling were transformed into x^hysical impressions of a most distressing and painful nature.

This super- sensitiveness gradually wore away until I became able to separate my mind from self, and to study my companions and circumstances with the pleasure of a psychologist in a new mental and moral development; and this interest deepened into a recognition that my own and the popular idea of the Salvationists as a class, and the Salvation Army as an organization, was superficial. The beautiful life and character, the untiring zeal and complete devotion of Capt. Bertha Leyh first made the garb she wore and the mariner of her teaching seem insignificant. She ceased to be an isolated figure, and stepped naturally into history in line with those who have followed the heralds of new creeds in all ages. No matter what the cause, a rare courage is always required of its early advocates — sincerity, zeal, singleness and purity of purpose, and a scorn of worldly advantage; and these characteristics I found in as high degree among the Salvationists as we are taught to extol in the early Puritans. The Hon. J. Y. Farwell says in his lecture on " Chris-

PREFACE, tian Manliness" : iC There are some people who saythat the Salvation Army is after money. I tell you you can not hire people to kneel down in the street and pray; I heard a man speak there on the street, and I tell you he has got more Christian courage than all the crowd of us put together." He recognized that no amount of gain will reconcile a man to ridicule. If the accusation needed other refutation it might be found in the fact that if they are after money they would long ago have abandoned such an unprofitable calling. The commonest laborer enjoys more physical comforts than do they, and at least carries in the labor of his own hands a guarantee that his present and future wants may be supplied.

Not so these Salvationists. By the very terms of their contract with themselves and the organization they bind themselves to perpetual poverty, an absolute abandonment, of trust in each day to supply each day's frugal needs. Personal gifts shall not avail them in making provision for the future; they agree to engage in no warfare but this, and with only such compensation as they may gain, within a limit; all beyond that must be given up to extend and prosecute the work elsewhere. No one is responsible for their bodily welfare, not even those among whom they serve; they have poverty, scorn, and ostracism for their portion. They must be sincere or there would be nothing to sustain them; the whole of life for them is isolation in a purpose that must seem exalted enough to compensate for the lack of all else.

There have been too many creeds having strange practices that have overlived prejudice to make

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their methods of significance on that score. The drum and tambourine, the uniforms and official titles, are but a device— as General Booth himself says: ' ' God Almighty' s latest and grandest device to save the souls of men. They dispel the idea that religion is a melancholy thing. This paraphernalia, the drums and trumpets, are only a means to the great end of saving souls. We are not averse to finery when it has the same effect." In this is the keynote to all their theatrical effects. They are avowedly after a class of sinners not to be caught by sober dress and behavior, and the statistics of the east end of London already go to prove that their work is bearing the fruits announced in the prospectus. Stripped of the regimentals and military organization the Salvation Army differs in no particular from other evangelistic creeds, except in the one material difference that the tendency of all other creeds is upward in the grade of its converts, and toward permanence, respectability, and social and political importance. The Salvation Army's course is downward. They seek, avowedly, the low, the ignorant, the vile, the individual and not the society. They bind no convert to the support of the order, but let him take his goods and stores and increased usefulness and influence into other fields of labor, satisfied that he is "saved" even though other men profit by it and not they. Enough remain with them to recruit their ranks so the increase is steady.

It is inevitable that those who go among them to labor should be of the same class as their converts — ignorant, unskilled, incapable of more than one idea,

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often vulgar and intolerant. It is undeniable, too, that many who are received into the Army as officers are positively promoted socially as well as spiritually thereby, because they never before knew cleanliness and right living. Simplicity in dress and life and devotion to an exalted purpose are refining in their influences. Otherwise, it is impossible to conceive what some of these Salvationists must have been before conversion and dedication got in their revivifying work. But the leopard does not change its spots, so the most zealous soldiers of the Lord will be found to be shaky on the multiplication table, discourteous in manner and speech, and vulgar from habit and inheritance. Even the refinements of religion never fought with the laws of heredity and conquered in one generation, but compulsion from within works a gradual change to without until the semblance gives a hope of the real physical, mental, moral, and social regeneration of the individual for the upbuilding of- society and governments. The officers of the Army from this class see only the individual soul saved, but General Booth, and many others in higher authority, are of broad culture, and know that through the work of the Army, a new strata is being formed from the disintegrated refuse of lower social life. If the supply of material on which the Army works could be stopped, a definite calculation could be made on the number of centuries it would take the Salvationists to overlive their usefulness; but the ranks of poverty, ignorance, vulgarity, and vice are recruited as rapidly as there will be evangelists of every creed to go among them and show them the way to a truer life. There is room

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for the Salvation Army, and it bears internal evidence, in its vast and perfect organization, the complete dedication of its officers, and the unlimited field in which they hibor, that it has come to stay. It compels our recognition and deserves our consideration.

"Nora Marks."

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Chapter I

" Salvation Army. Monster demonstration. Marshal Ballington and Mrs. Booth will address the meeting to be held at Farwell Hall, Monday, September 24, at 8 o'clock p. m."

These were the words which arrested my attention one morning late in September of 1888 as I was rattling along on the North Side cable cars in the city of Chicago. They were displayed on a hnge poster in "yellow, red, and blue," Salvation colors, in letters so large that he who ran, or rode at lightning speed on the North Side "grip," might read and ponder over the message they conveyed.

I began to think — a cable car is very conducive to thinking of the spasmodic variety — but I doubt if anything practical would have resulted from this beginning if something else hadn't happened just then.

The cable stopped !

Some genius of this windy city by the big pond has invented a lame rhyme to lit just such occasions :

" Drop a nickel in the slot, And see the North Side cable stop."

It was only a nickel and I had simply dropped it in the automatically outstretched hand of a bland conductor, when the cable stopped with a jerk that pulled my embryo thought up by the roots. There we were, stranded in the middle of a long, muddy block, two miles from "down town," for the space of fifteen precious, striving, driving, rushing, moneymaking Chicago minutes.

It made me impatient. The face of a Board of Trade man opposite me fell two points in as many seconds; a shop-girl got up, looked out of the window at the drizzling rain, and then got off to trudge a weary way to her work. Time with her meant a fine, perhaps. A small boy kicked a hole in the upholstering of the seat, and a fat woman with a baby heaved a sigh and fell asleep in her corner.

As for me, I had an appointment, but I had learned to await that cable 1 s own sweet pleasure with what patience I might command. Furthermore, everything is grist that comes to my mill. It would be the first fifteen-minute stop of its kind if I found nothing to write about for the rapacious columns of the Tribune.

The material on this occasion didn't promise much. There was a leaden gray sky, a drizzle of rain, brick and stone rectangles on either side, the long and dingy "vista" of houses, reaching dismally into the future, as college graduates will have it, and that flaming poster. It was stuck up incongruously between a bill setting forth the attractions of a popular variety actress on one side, and an announcement of a horse race on the other. A bill-poster's boards are in the service of saint and sinner alike at so much a square foot.

Usually these announcements of where a soul may

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be gained or lost are equally uninteresting, but, having nothing else to do at that moment, I took to studying those bills.

Across the face of all the smaller type ran one word in blazing yellow letters — £ ; Hallelu j ah ! ' ' That meant rejoicing. Why so much of it for so very insignificant an event I But was it insignificant ? At least this display was indecorous. Any college of divines would have informed you so. Eegular ministers of orthodox creeds would announce the second advent in nonpareil under the patent medicine ads., if they published the fact at all; and here all theological precedent was thrown aside, and the coming of Marshal Ballington Booth to conduct a revival of interest in his Master was blazed along the highway.

' ; Is it well with your soul V ' startled the eye from below. A rather impertinent question, but it had a trick of waiting to be answered. ' ' Come and be saved!"' met the eye at the top. All over several square yards of space were words of admonition, invitation, and rejoicing in letters of blood and fire suggestive of one's fate if a refusal to listen and obey were persisted in. " Are you sanctified V' was the last sentence I caught as the cable very suddenly concluded to move on. Was I sanctified \ Not if I knew it. But were others ? We find it very easy to imagine saints and martyrs in days of old, but if it were suggested that giants live in these days also, the statement would probably provoke a smile. Xowadays we have no fanatics — men of one idea — nor saints who would die for the right. All the material for those sorts has been used up in making " cranks " — men who are fools for their pains. I wonder if always the beginnings of things have been seen only in retrospect ; if history is never significant until it is past.

A vision of the Christ coming up from Galilee arose in my mind — unheralded except of his prophets and of John the Baptist, whose message was scoffed at ; of Loyola and Luther and the first Crusaders — all scorned by their generation, and jeered, and followed to the grave by millions who thronged the later centuries. In retrospect their shadows are long ; the present always foreshortens our view of things too big for the landscape.

Perhaps that is why another vision I had was filled with insignificant figures — sad-looking women dressed in ungainly blue uniforms and hideous disfiguring bonnets ; men in natty blue regimentals, and all walking apart from the mob that smiled and passed on. In some distant future would these, too, loom up larger ?

I had paused for a moment at one of their street meetings ; saw them kneel in the dust to pray ; heard their slangy gospel songs and horrible cancans on tambourines ; their exhortations and warnings ; had smiled and passed on, my only conscious feeling for them being one of amused wonder such as I would have felt on seeing any other curiosity. The idea of questioning why they expressed themselves in their peculiar manner had never occurred to me before, but now I began to think. It was not for honors, glory, and emoluments in this world — they got none of these ; but poverty, scorn, and ostracism. Then it must be for some hope they had of the next life.

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Here was the beginning of something !

I almost jumped from my seat at this sudden view backward from the future. I knew a little history too well to be deceived. This was how all new creeds had sprung up ; bizarre, startling, unorthodox, in poverty, amid revilings, denunciation, and the vigorous resistance of prejudice, respectability, and of the authorities. Some of these reforms had died in the struggle, but the beginning of all of them had been the same. Those which had lived had, after a time, overtopped all opposers— and gathered them in. It didn't seem probable to me that the established order of things would be overturned for a new idea, just because new ideas all seem idiotic — when we grow accustomed to, and accept them, they are no longer new.

It is a sort of cowardice to refuse to explore a new creed. Why not take a voyage of discovery into it much as a navigator risks his life to find a northwest passage. Surely a new truth in experience is worth as much as a new way to China. All one has to do in either case is to believe it can be found, and that it will be worth the finding ; and, so you find it, the end justifies the means ; the world asks not if you did it in a ship or a balloon, so it gets the benefit.

I was coming on pretty fast toward the idea of joining the Salvation Army. It is true I am a church member in full and regular standing, but what availeth that unless there is a sense of being sanctified? We hear a great deal in the modern church about behaving ourselves on general principles, the beauty of right living, the regenerating influence of repentance, and the brotherhood of Christ, but not much of sanctification or eternal punishment. We have lost faith in the efficacy of these and in the reality of belief in them. Are they still among the practical experiences of life, and how far do they heal the ills of men % I wanted to be a Salvationist myself and prove, if not by experience, by observation, the reality of things intangible. Now how to do it.

There is one Scriptural injunction I have a remarkable felicity for obeying, and that is St. Paul's advice to be all things to all men. If one thinks so, it is just as easy to be a Salvationist, feel spiritually superior to those who revile, and beat up sinners to repentance with tambourines, as it is to sit in the seat of the scornful and mock — for the time being; only one mustn't stop at trifles.

It wasn't clear just how the scheme would work out, but as an initial step I determined to go to the meeting at Farwell Hall, at which Marshal Ballington Booth, the son of General Booth, and Lord High Executioner of the Almighty over the United States forces was to preside. This much I knew, but I was not prepared for the rest which followed and gradually unfolded to my understanding.

When I entered the vast hall where the meeting was being held on the evening of September 24, I found it crowded to suffocation. Fully five thousand people were present and were packed and jammed up to the very walls, but we managed, my escort and I, to get up near the platform where the Army of the Lord had mustered in full force. The ranks of men and women, in their straight and sombre

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- uniforms sitting erect in serried ranks, gave by their numbers a military aspect to the scene. The men were separated from the women, both in space and by the fact that a uniform, which lends them dignity in a body, invariably detracts from the beauty of women. Explain this if you can. A woman must be something distinct, individual, peculiar to herself; she loses the instant she makes herself in the tailor' s image of some other woman. Men, on the other hand, are never so attractive as when arrayed in the distinctive dress of an order and in the company of others similarly uniformed. On this occasion the women suffered by the contrast.

As they sat together in rows, stiff, angular, and swathed in the indistinct lines of their sad-looking garments, they were robbed of all that belongs to them by their right of womanhood and empire over men. The blue poke bonnets shadowed all their destiny. There was not a gleam of light about them anywhere but in the vivid line of scarlet across the dark fold of silk on their bonnets, bearing the talismanic words, ' ' Salvation Army, ' ' in letters of gold.

Mrs. Booth was speaking, and the Marshal loomed his lank length in the rear, like the ghost of Banquo at the feast. The vast audience listened with breathless attention to the little woman with the beautiful face and disfiguring dress as she poured out a stream of eloquence: " Salvation, save souls, the blood of the Lamb ' ' was the burden of it all, in one endless stream of repetition.

" I live in His service. This is all my concern, to bring precious souls to His bleeding feet," she said.

"Amen! " came from the depths of a blue bonnet.

" Hallelujah.!" responded a brother.

u Praise God!" backed up the Marshal.

"Amen to Jesus !" was the somewhat startling reponse of " Happy Harry," who is nothing if not theatrical. This saintly and impromptu scion sat in the front ranks on the platform, his face idiotically ecstatic, his hands working nervously, and punctuating the discourse vigorously with his exclamations. All those about him beamed on him in applause, a very injudicious proceedure, as it only encouraged him in antics that made everyone in the audience who had artistic perceptions long to tie him down and gag him.

"If you don't love Jesus where will you be when you die?"

Amid a breathless stillness Happy Harry responded, "In the soup."

Nods of approval ran through the ranks on the platform. Happy Harry had made a hit. He had put the thought of all in one comprehensive, popular phrase. The audience giggled and then listened for the next "break" from that fortunate young man.

My escort looked disgusted and wanted to go, but I gave him a reproving glance which caused him to open his eyes. I wanted to accustom his mind gradually to what was bound to happen next. Somehow I felt it in my bones that I was going to be converted, saved, sanctified by Mrs. Booth's eloquence; that I was going to identify myself with this Army of the Lord in which Happy Harry was such a shining adjutant, and the idea didn't agree with me.

" Come up and be saved ! Oh, your souls, your

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precious souls that Jesus died to save are being 1-o-s-t! Come, now He asks you. He is waiting. Come, come, come," said Mrs. Booth in one final appeal, and stood like an inspired figure, her dark garments falling about her, her face uplifted, while with a burst of song, a waving of handkerchiefs and volley of aniens the " monster demonstration " was all over.

The crowd began to pour out and my escort prepared to do the same, but I laid a detaining hand on him and informed him that I intended speaking with Mrs. Booth.

"Well, you look like it," he said, highly amused. He looked at me from the crown of my toque to the tip of my ties.

"To be sure ; you can't renounce the vanities unless you have some to renounce."

' ' Going to renounce ' em V ' contemptuously. ' 'All right; go ahead." *

He subsided against the wall and I pushed up to the front where a crowd of converts were waiting to shake hands with the spiritual grandees. This wouldn't do — to stand where I could reach their hands but never their ears — so I boldly stepped onto the platform and gradually percolated through to Mrs. Booth.

The ranks of soldiers moved back for me to pass them, staring in wonder at my impertinent little toque and stylish get-up. The men gave me military salutes. One of the girls touched my wrap furtively, and they whispered all about me.

" God bless you !" said one fervently.

Down below the platform a thousand people surged and swayed trying to shake hands with the distinguished guests of the evening. I stood back of them, not knowing just how to go about makingprofessions of faith, but once up there I knew I was in for it ; there was no going back ; the soldiers had closed up behind me, and those nearest were waiting eagerly to hear what I had to say. I felt as Columbus must have felt when he landed among the aborigines.

Mrs. Booth was doing duty with her hand at the same rate required of the "first lady of the land." This was surely some compensation for the hard work and harder living she had voluntarily assumed. When I stepped close to her she turned a beautiful, exultant, inspired face on me. It was clear, red and white, with dark shining eyes. Dark waving hair framed a white, full forehead, above which the blue poke bonnet was anything but a saintly setting. The dress was misshapen and awry on a figure that should have been trim, but the face was absolutely pure and holy, purged of all earthiness, and full of an enthusiasm beautiful to see in this dilettante age. I came under the spell of it myself and from that moment my curiosity in this unique people was tinged with respect and warm interest. So can I imagine the saints and fanatics of old dying for an idea which seemed to them good, absolutely deified by self-abnegation, with just such a look as Mrs. Booth wore.

' ' What is it dear child V ' she said, clasping my hand. She was not more than twenty -three herself, and younger with the youth of the spirit. I felt old and worn beside her.

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U I want to be like you," I stammered, and it was said not insincerely.

She smiled divinely, and then I saw that wonderful combination of spiritual exaltation and humility, that which acknowledges its own sinfulness and yet sets itself up as a standard for the guidance of others.

' ' Are you converted, sanctified \ Do you feel that you are saved V ;

' ' Yes, yes. It came so quickly while you talked. My life is so wasted in frivolous society. How can I become one of you V '

" God bless you !" she said. I was sorry she said it. It had the canting, ranting twang that deteriorated her saintship. "The Army of the Lord always wants recruits." Then she squeezed my hand, gave me a holy kiss between the eyes, and turning to a woman standing near, said fervently:

' ' Mrs. Evans, this is a new soul snatched from the burning; she wants to give herself to God."

" God bless you !"

" Praise Heaven !"

" Hallelujah!"

"Glory to Jesus," was pelted around me in a perfect hailstorm.

Mrs. Booth turned to the front and the clamorous hands, while I was taken possession of by Mrs. Evans, a sweet, pale-faced lady who had that peculiarly pure complexion seen only in those whose diet is simple and whose minds are serene and untroubled. She looked more like the early Quakers than a Salvationist, except for the consciously sanctified expression that made my own little sins rush over me with sudden and convincing force. But her assumption of superior holiness enabled me to lie as serenely as a May morning. If it had not been for this, her unsuspiciousness would have made me ashamed of my insincere professions.

" God bless you ! Do you want to join the Army ? Have you been saved V ' with a deprecatory squeeze of the hand as if to apologize for the question.

" Oh yes; I have belonged to a church for three years."

She looked commiseratingly at me and shook her head.

4 ' And your soul still in darkness and struggling toward the light V '

"Yes'm." What miserable pretenses ministers are anyhow. I had never seen one of them so sublimely contemptuous of established things as this pale little woman. I was consumed with admiration of her.

"Praise God!" she said, fervently, squeezing a jeweled ring into my unfortunate hand. " Can I join the Army ?"

" Your mother will blame us if you do," she said cautiously.

" But I can't be saved any other way; I had rather have my mother blame me than God."

That rebuked her. If she had been keen at repartee she would have quoted a certain commandment about honoring your father and mother.

" Bless Jesus ! So you will throw all earthly affections aside and cast yourself on Him % Praise the Lord !" #

" Amen. Glory to God !" said " Happy Harry,"

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who had got around our way and was beaming sanctification on me. He gave me a fraternal squeeze of the hand and made room for others.

" Well, come to see me at 452 Armitage avenue. I will be at home all the mornings of this week, and I will tell you about our Army of Salvation. May the Lord bless you and enable you to save many souls."

From those who had collected about us on the platform word had passed down the line that another soul had been saved from everlasting punishment, so I went through a fire of hand shakes and " God bless yous " until I stepped down to my escort, who was pulling fiercely at his mustache.

u Going to join the Army?" he asked, with a sneer. That's the way with the young men ; they have no reverence for things sacred. I treated his question with all the silent contempt it deserved. After all he had not caught the small section of glory and beatification from the face of Mrs. Booth, and so was not in a position to judge of my immense advantage.

The walk home was a quiet one. It included a stop long enough for a consultation with the powers that be on the best way to follow up my professions of sanctification by practical work in the Army.

The "Well done," as a comment on my evening' s work, found no echo in my own breast. It seemed exceedingly ill done. My conscience was not yet calloused, and a course of deception, a disagreeable incognito, to be kept up for a week or two, was anything but a cheering prospect. Already I was forbidden my usual haunts of j)leasure and usual methods of work. The world and its accustomed allurements were for me no more until this work were done. Already the shadow of it was over me. I felt committed to an unknown Salvationist mode of life, method of speech, and cast of thought.