Regeneration Part 17

There are some 3,000,000 of these robbers in different parts of India.

They are only kept under anything like control at great cost for police and military supervision; but we are satisfied that, if reasonable support be given, a great proportion of them can be reclaimed from their present courses of idleness and crime, and in any case their children can be saved.

We have been able in India, perhaps more than in any other part of the world, to realize the international character of our work by linking together Officers from England, Germany, Holland, and the Scandinavian countries, as well as from America, in the one great object of helping the heathen peoples. But most of all we have rejoiced in being able to blend East and West, European Officers having often been placed under more experienced Indian comrades, as well as vice versa. The great common purpose dominating all sections of the Army, and the influences of the Spirit of G.o.d, have united men of different levels of intelligence, and knit them together in the same fellowship, without any unwise mingling of races. We have now 2,000 Officers in India, and that alone is a testimony of the highest significance to the success of our efforts, and to the possibilities which lie before us. But even more important in its bearing upon the future, in my estimation, is the wonderful ambition dominating our people there to reach every cla.s.s, but most of all to deal with the low caste, or outcast, as they are sometimes called. Many of our Indian Officers have followed in the steps of our pioneers in the country, and, consumed by an enthusiasm amounting to a pa.s.sion for their fellows, have literally sacrificed their lives in the ceaseless pressing forward of their work.

In America we have had to deal, perhaps, with the other extreme of human needs. Throughout Canada there is very little to be seen of poverty and wretchedness. In the United States the great cities begin indeed to have areas of vice and misery not to be surpa.s.sed in any of the older cities of the world. But everywhere we have found people who have become forgetful of G.o.d, neglectful of every higher duty, and abandoned to one or other form of selfishness. Our work in the United States especially has been confronted with difficulties peculiar to the country, its widespread populations and their cosmopolitan character being not the least of these. Nevertheless, we have now in the States and Canada nearly 4,000 Officers leading the work in 1,380 Corps and Societies, and 350 Social Inst.i.tutions. I ought to say that it has not been found easy to raise large numbers in many places, but of the generosity and devotion of those who have united themselves with us, and the immense amount of work which they accomplish for their fellows, it is impossible to speak too highly.

I look with confidence to the future in both these great countries.

Governments and local Authorities are beginning to grant us the facilities and help we need to deal effectually with their abandoned cla.s.ses, as well as to attack some other problems of a difficult nature. Within the last few years, we have placed in Canada more than 50,000 emigrants, chiefly from this country. Their characteristics, and their success in their new surroundings, have won for us the highest commendation of the Authorities concerned.

In the vast fields of South America, we have as yet only small forces, but we have established a good footing with the various populations, and have already received no inconsiderable help for our purely philanthropic work from several of the Governments. Our latest new extensions, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru, and Panama, seem to offer prospects of success, even greater than we have been able to record in the Argentine or Uruguay. Before your book is published, we shall probably have made a beginning also in both Bolivia and Brazil.

The South American Republics--chiefly populated by the descendants of the poorest cla.s.ses of Southern Europe--are professedly Roman Catholic. The influence of the priesthood, however, owing to various causes, seems to be on the wane, and a habit of abandoning all religious thought is much on the increase. But the realization that our people never attack any Church, or quibble about details of creed and ceremonial, has won their way to the hearts of many, and there can be no doubt that we have a great future amongst these peoples. In Peru the law does not allow any persons not of the Romish Church to offer prayer in public places, but when it was found that our Officers made no trouble of this, but managed all the same to hold open-air and theatre services very much in our usual style, great numbers of the people were astonished at the 'new religion,' and so many had soon begun to pray 'in private' that we have little doubt about the future of our work there.

In thinking of the future, I cannot overlook our plans of organization which have, I am persuaded, much to do with the proper maintenance and continuance of the work we have taken in hand.

While striving as much as possible to avoid red tape, or indeed any methods likely to hinder initiative and enterprise, we are careful to apply a systemization comprehensible to the most untrained minds, so that we may make every one feel a proper degree of responsibility, as well as guard them from mere emotionalism and spasmodic activity, accompanied as that kind of thing often is, by general neglect.

Thus no one can join the Army until after satisfying the local Officer and some resident of the place during a period of trial of the sincerity of his profession. He must then sign our Articles of War.

These Articles describe precisely our doctrines, our promise to abstain from intoxicants, worldly pleasures, and fashions, bad or unworthy language, or conduct, and unfairness to either employer or employe, as well as our purpose to help and benefit those around us.

(See Appendix B.)

Some local voluntary worker becomes responsible for setting each recruit a definite task in connexion with our efforts, and all are placed under the general oversight of their Captain. A Corps, which is the unit of our Organization, is organized under a Captain and Lieutenant who have been trained in the work they have to do as leaders. Corps are linked together into divisions under Officers, who, in addition to seeing that they regularly carry out their work, have the oversight of a considerable tract of country, with the duty of extending our operations within that area. In some countries a number of divisions are sometimes grouped into provinces with an Officer in charge of the whole province, and each country has its national headquarters under a Territorial Commissioner, all being under the lead of the International Headquarters in London.

No time is wasted in committee-ing or debating amongst us, and yet in all matters of finance and property there is such arrangement that several individuals are cognizant of every detail, and that no one person's fault or neglect shall necessarily involve permanent injury or loss. The central accounts in each country, including those in London, are under the care of public auditors; but we have also our own International Audit Department, whose representatives visit every headquarters from time to time, so as to make sure, not only that the accounts are kept on our approved system, but that all expenditure is rigidly criticized. All who really look into our financial methods are impressed by their economy and precision. The fact is that almost all our people have been well schooled in poverty. They have learned the value of pence.

All this seems to me to have great importance in connexion with estimates of our future. On the one hand we are ever seeking to impress on all our people the supreme need of G.o.d's spirit of love and life and freedom, without whose presence the most carefully managed system could not but speedily grow cold and useless. But at the same time, we insist that the service of G.o.d, however full of love and gladness, ought to be more precise, more regular, nay, more exacting than that of any inferior master.

II

As to your question whether we are generally making progress, I think I can say that, viewing the whole field of activity, and taking into account every aspect of the work, the Army is undoubtedly on the up-grade. Naturally progress is not so rapid in one country as another, nor is it always so marked in one period as in another in particular countries, nor is it always so evident in some departments of effort as in others; but speaking of the whole, there is, as indeed there has been from the very beginnings, steady advance.

In some countries, of course, there is more rapid development of our purely evangelistic propaganda, while in others our philanthropic agencies are more active. Progress in human affairs is generally tidal. It has been so with us. A period of great outward activity is sometimes followed by one of comparative rest, and in the same way the spirit of advance in one department sometimes pa.s.ses from that for a time to others. A period of great progress in all kinds of pioneer work, for example in Germany, is just now being followed there by one of consolidation and organization. A time of enormous advance in all our departments of charitable effort in the United States is now being succeeded by a wonderful manifestation of purely spiritual fervour and awakening.

In this, the old country, our very success has in some ways militated against our continued advance at the old rate of progress. Not only has much ground already been occupied, but innumerable agencies, modelled outwardly, at least, after those we first established, have sprung into existence, and are working on a field of effort which was at one time largely left to us. And yet during the last five years the Army has enormously strengthened its hold on the confidence of all cla.s.ses of the people here, increased its numbers, developed in a remarkable degree its internal organization, greatly added to its material resources, as well as maintained and extended its offering of men and money for the support of the work in heathen countries.

But even in places where we have appeared to be stagnant, in the sense of not undertaking any new aggressive activities, we are constantly making as a part of our regular warfare new captures from the enemy of souls, maintaining the care of congregations and people linked with us, working at full pressure our social machinery, training the children for future labour, raising up men and women to go out into the world as missionaries of one kind or another, and doing it all while carrying on vigorous efforts to bring to those who are most needy in every locality both material and spiritual support.

Like all aggressive movements, the Army is, of course, peculiarly subject to loss of one kind or another. That arising from the removals of its people alone const.i.tutes a serious item. Any one who knows anything of religious work amongst the working-cla.s.ses will understand how great a loss may be caused--even where the population is, generally speaking, increasing--by the removal of one or two zealous local leaders. But such losses are trifling compared with those which follow from some stoppage of employment when large numbers of workmen must either migrate or starve.

Similar results often occur from the change of leadership. The removal of our Officers from point to point, and even from country to country, is one of our most indispensable needs; but, of course, we have to pay for it, chiefly in the dislocation and discouragements and losses which it often necessarily entails.

So far from such variations being in any way discreditable to us, we think them one of the most valuable tests of the vitality and courage of our people, both Officers and Soldiers, that they fight on unflinchingly under such circ.u.mstances--fight on happily, to prove that while fluctuations of this character are very trying, they often also open the way both to the wider diffusion of our work elsewhere and to the breaking up of entirely new ground in the old centres.

In brief, it is with us at all times a real warfare wherein triumphs can only be secured at the cost of struggles that are very often painful and unpleasant. You cannot have the aggression, the advance, the captures of war without the change, the alarms, the cost, the wounds, the losses, which are inseparable from it.

A very striking and thoughtful description of some of the work done at one of our London Corps has recently been issued by a well-known writer. I refer to 'Broken Earthenware,' by Mr. Harold Begbie. No one can read the book without being impressed by the sense of personal insight which it reveals. But how few take in its main lesson, that the Army is in every place going on, not only with the recovery but with the development of broken men and women into more and more capable and efficient servants and rescuers of their fellows.

That this should be so is remarkable enough as applied to Westerners, broken by evil habits and more or less surrounded by wreckage, but how much more valuable when applied to the teeming populations of the East! There in so many cases there is no past of criminality or even of vice as we understand it to forget, but only an infancy of darkness and ignorance as to Christ and the liberty He brings.

Many of our best Indian Officers have been s.n.a.t.c.hed from one form or other of outrageous selfishness, but thousands of our people there are gradually emerging from what is really the prolonged childhood of a race to see and know how influential the light of G.o.d can make even them amongst their fellows. Ten years ago in j.a.pan a Salvationist Officer was a strange if not an unknown phenomenon, but with every increase of the Christian and Western influences in that country, every capable witness to Christ becomes, quite apart from any effort of his own, a much more noticed, consulted, and imitated example than he was before. In Korea, after a couple of years' effort, we have seen most striking results of our work, and have just sent, to work among their own people, our first twenty married Koreans, after a preliminary period of training for Officership. It is most difficult to realize the revolution involved in the whole outlook on life to men who have been looked upon as little more than serfs, without any prospect of influence in their country.

The same processes of inner and outer development which have made of the unknown English workman or workwoman of twenty years ago, the recognized servants of the community, welcomed everywhere by mayors and magistrates to help in the service of the poor, will, out of the clever Oriental, I believe, far more rapidly develop leaders in the new line of Christian improvement in every sphere of life. It is considerations such as these which make me say sometimes that the danger in the Army is not in the direction of magnifying, but rather of minimizing the influences that are carrying us upward and outward in every part of the world.

But in our own estimation there is another reason which perhaps equals all these for calculating upon a wider development of the Army's future influence. During the last twenty years we have been pressing forward amongst a very large number of Church and missionary efforts.

Our speakers have notoriously been amongst the most unlearned and ungrammatical, and therefore often despised, while so many thousands of university men were preaching and writing of Christ. But no one now disputes the fact that the old-fashioned proclamation of the doctrine of Jesus Christ as a Divine Saviour of the lost has largely gone out of fashion. The influence of the priest, of the clerk in holy orders, of the minister, has been so largely undermined that candidates for the ministry are becoming scarce in many Churches, just while we are seeing them arise in steadily increasing numbers from among the very people who know the Army and its work best, and who have most carefully observed the demands of sacrifice and labour it makes upon its leaders.

One cannot but rejoice when one hears ever and anon of some conference or congress at which various efforts are made to recover, at any rate, the appearance of a forward movement in the Churches. But the most serious fact of all, perhaps, is the mixture amongst these Christianizing plans, whether in one country or another, of the unbelieving leaven, so that it is possible for men to go forth as the emissaries of Christianity who have ceased to believe in the Divine nature of its Founder, and who look for success rather to schemes of education and of social and temporal improvement than to that new creation of man by G.o.d's power, wherein lies all our hope, as indeed it must be the hope of every true servant of Christ.

But I call attention to these facts not to reproach any Church. Far from it. I simply desire to point out one reason for thinking ourselves justified in antic.i.p.ating for the Army a future influence far beyond anything we have yet experienced.

Recent 'defences' of Christian revelation have, in our view, been far more seriously damaging than any attacks that have ever been made from the hostile camp. In the hope--a vain hope--of conciliating opposition, there has too often been a timid surrender of much that can alone give authority to Christian testimony. If Jesus Christ was not competent to decide the truth or untruth of the Divine revelation, which He fully and constantly endorsed as such, how absurd it is to suppose that any eulogies of His character can save Him from the just contempt of all fearless thinkers, no matter to what nationality they belong.

The Army finds itself already, and every year seems more and more likely to find itself, the only firm and unalterable witness to the truth of Christ and of His redeeming work in many neighbourhoods and districts, among them even some wide stretches of Christian territory.

And the times can only bring upon us, it seems to me, more and more the scrutiny of all who wish to know whether the declarations of the Scriptures as to G.o.d's work in men are or are not reliable. This, then, however melancholy the reflection may be--and to me it is in some aspects melancholy indeed--a.s.sures to us a future of far wider importance and influence than any we have dreamed of in the past.

Our strength, as your book eloquently shows, in dealing with the deepest sunken, the forgotten, the outcasts of society, the pariahs and lepers of modern life; has ever been our absolute certainty with regard to Christ's love and power to help them. How much greater must of necessity be the value and influence of our testimony where the very existence of Christ and His salvation becomes a matter of doubt and dispute! Here, at any rate, is one reason which leads me to believe that the Salvation Army has before it a future of the highest moment to the world.

III

In relation to other religious bodies, our position is marvellously altered from the time when they nearly all, if not quite all, denounced us.

I do not think that any of the Churches in any part of the world do this now, although no doubt individuals here and there are still bitterly hostile to us. In the United States and in many of the British Colonies the Churches welcome our help, and generally speak well of our work; and even many Roman Catholic leaders, as well as authorities of the Jewish faith, may be included in this statement. On the Continent there are signs that they are slowly turning the same way.

Now, I confidently expect a steady extension of this feeling towards us as the Churches come more and more to recognize that we not only do not attack them, but that we are actually auxiliaries to their forces, not only gaining our audiences and recruits from those who are outside their ministrations, but even serving them by doing work for their adherents which for a variety of reasons they find it very difficult, if not impossible, to accomplish themselves.

At the same time it would be a mistake to think that we have any desire to adopt any of their methods or ceremonials. We keep everywhere to our simple and non-ecclesiastical habits, and while we certainly have some very significant and impressive ceremonials of our own, the way our buildings are fitted, the style of our songs and music, and the character of our prayers and public talking are everywhere entirely distinctive, and are nowhere in any danger of coming into serious compet.i.tion with the worship adopted by the Churches.

Some of our leading Officers think that in one respect our relations to the Churches, their pastors, and people are unsatisfactory. In the United States it is customary for the clergy and leaders of every Church to treat our leaders with the most manifest sympathy and respect. But there is far too marked a contrast between that treatment and that which we receive in many other countries. There are, of course, splendid exceptions. Still few members of any Church are willing to be seen in active a.s.sociation with us.

I daresay this is very largely a question of cla.s.s or caste, and I am very far from making it a matter of complaint. We would, in fact, far rather that our people should be regarded as outcasts, than that they should be tempted to tone down the directness of their witness, or that they should come under the influence of those uncertainties and misgivings to which I have already made reference. Nevertheless, it is certainly no wish of ours that there should remain any distance between us and any true followers of Christ by whatever name they may be called. And so we keep firmly, even where it may seem difficult or impolitic to do so, to our original att.i.tude of entire friendliness with all those who name the Name of Christ.

I give a few figures bearing upon the present extent of our operations:--

Number of Countries and Colonies occupied by the Salvation Army 56 Languages in which the Work is carried on 33 Corps, Circles, and Societies of Salvationists 8,768 Number of persons wholly supported by and employed in Salvation Army Work 21,390 Of those, with Rank 16,220 Without Rank 5,170 Number of Training Colleges for Officers and workers 35 Providing accommodation for 1,866 SOCIAL OPERATIONS.-- Number of Inst.i.tutions 954 Number of Officers and Cadets employed 2,573 Number of Local Officers, voluntary and unpaid 60,260 NUMBER OF PERIODICALS 74 These Periodicals are published in twenty-one languages, and have a total circulation per issue of about one million copies.

APPENDIX B

THE SALVATION ARMY'S ARTICLES OF WAR

HAVING received with all my heart the salvation offered to me by the tender mercy of Jehovah, I do here and now publicly acknowledge G.o.d to be my Father and King, Jesus Christ to be my Saviour, and the Holy Spirit to be my Guide, Comforter, and Strength; and that I will, by His help, love, serve, worship, and obey this glorious G.o.d through time and through eternity,

BELIEVING solemnly that the Salvation Army has been raised up by G.o.d, and is sustained and directed by Him, I do here declare my full determination, by G.o.d's help, to be a true Soldier of the Army till I die.