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Debating with the Dead:
William Gladstone reads Catherine Booth
by Tom Aitken
Let me
remind you of - or acquaint you for the first time - with the
situation as I left it last year. Shortly before Christmas
1890, William Booth, General of the Salvation Army, arrived at
Hawarden to visit Mr Gladstone. Booth had himself proposed the
visit, saying that it was possible for him to call in on his
way back to London from Keighly. (Perhaps I should add that he
was travelling by train.) Booth had recently published a book,
In Darkest England and the Way Out, and he had enclosed a copy
of it, hoping that Gladstone would read it and, carried away
by the arguments therein, subscribe to a scheme whereby the
submerged tenth of British society, a prey to drink and other
forms of degradation in the industrial cities of the period,
could be taken by stages from city rescue centres in the
cities to farm colonies in the countryside and thence to the
no doubt eagerly receptive colonies of the rampant British
Empire--Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand where,
given the passage of time and the civilizing influence of
useful work and the Christian faith, they would in due course
become farmers and players of cricket and rugby and whence
they would return to teach the decadent sinners of the old
world a lesson or two. I jest, mildly, as you will appreciate
but Booth was in earnest and, having founded the Salvation
Army as, originally, the Christian Mission, in 1865, had found
himself will-nilly in charge of a world-wide movement which
had persuaded people from an amazing variety of races and
cultures that he was on to something that would help them get
a grip on their social problems and perhaps on their spiritual
ones as well.
Gladstone and Booth conversed for a considerable time before
Catherine Gladstone intervened to give Booth a late lunch and
send him back to London. Gladstone had, with the evasive skill
for which he was so much admired by his opponents, avoided
committing himself to any sort of financial assistance. He
succeeded in quizzing Booth very thoroughly while giving away,
in all senses of the phrase, very little himself. He asked
Booth to send him a short book giving an account of the
Salvation Army's aims and methods.
Booth, however, was a practised exploiter of the great and the
good. Back in London he wrote an account of the conversation,
which he published as a pamphlet. He had sent a typescript to
Gladstone, who allowed him to proceed while making it clear
that he expected not to have to engage in any further
correspondence on the matter. If the pamphlet came as
something of a shock to the ageing politician, the response to
his request for "a short book" may have been another: a
package of 17 books arrived by post, some of them anything but
short. Some of these survive in the libraries here and in the
castle across the road, mostly, as far as I have been able to
judge, untouched.
One, however, did hit the spot and Gladstone read it and
annotated it in his characteristic way. It was by Booth's
wife, Catherine Mumford Booth--who had died of horrific breast
cancer not long before Booth and Gladstone met. It was a trim
92 pages long. Entitled The Salvation Army in Relation to the
Church and State, it consisted of the texts of lectures
delivered on successive Tuesday afternoons in March 1883, to
an audience of miscellaneous clergy in the Cannon Street Hotel
in the City of London. These, "with additions", were published
by the Salvation Army for a wider audience in 1889. Mrs Booth
had given a number of such series of lectures for interested
listeners and these, together with sermons in fashionable
quarters such as Kensington and St John's Wood and other
speaking engagements, were a necessary source of additional
income for the organization that she and her husband led, in
the early decades of its growth. Mrs Booth was better educated
and more widely read than her husband, but would have been the
first to recognize that they played different, but
complementary roles. He may have been a better rouser of the
masses--the Booth's would have deplored the term
"rabble-rouser" on a number of grounds--but she provided the
still, small voice of reasoned argument. Both, however, were
convinced of the reality of such horrid forces and
possibilities as sin, hell and damnation. But we can scarcely
imagine William Booth speaking for more than a few minutes on
such an academic sounding topic as The Salvation Army in
Relation to Church and State.
My purpose in this paper is to examine what Mrs Booth said and
chart the posthumous discussion, so to speak, which Gladstone,
through the medium of his marginal annotations, conducted with
her.
Catherine Booth had, she says, two objectives in first
delivering, then publishing these lectures. The first was to
"convey not only the earnest convictions of my own mind, but
also those of my husband and those most closely associated
with him in the direction of the Army..." The second was to
"counteract the gross misrepresentations and monstrous
assertions now being so vigorously circulated by many who
should be better employed..."[1]
Mrs Booth's first lecture, delivered on Tuesday 13 March 1883,
began with a survey of the parlous state of the nation. The
army's "special sphere", she said, was the "dangerous
classes... the ruffianly element..." Chaos and revolution
loomed. An attempt to blow up a government office, the
subsequent escape of the perpetrators and the continuing
discovery of other plots made it clear that something must be
done. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Be that as it may, mere
expansion of the police force was not, she asserted, enough.
The vast mass of the population, untouched by civilization or
Christianity, was at the mercy of infidels and socialists.
Agitators in France, Germany, Spain and the United States
openly advocated and arranged for the destruction of public
property and of life. Even the Nihilists in Russia--who
usually, after all, concentrated on the destruction of just
one family--were perhaps no more threatening in their country
than the native-born article was in England. The amazing thing
was that the genteel classes failed to recognize the true
state of affairs.[2]
Throughout this preamble Mrs Booth clearly attributes the
threat of this horrendous mob to the twin evils of their
godlessness and to the drink trade, and when she turns her
attention to the more abstract question of The Salvation Army
and the State, she lists a series of advantages that the State
derived from the Army's work in converting individual members
of this submerged, drink-sodden, foul-mouthed, contemptuous
mass. First, the Army created respect for law by refining the
individual conscience. As things were, she asserted, people
submitted to the law--when they did--only under threat of
punishment. Conversion would bring them to understand the
desirability of good order and to work for rather than against
it.[3] It would reduce the necessity for and therefore the
expense of, jail accommodation.[4]
The section of society most responsible for this godlessness
was actually not the masses themselves but the polite middle
classes. They were obstinately and foolishly blind to the fact
of the numbers of people untouched by God, conscience or
respect for law. Partly this was through a lack of concern for
their fellow men, partly because of an inadequate
understanding and practice of the Christian beliefs that they
claimed to embrace. But for everyone, repentance and the fear
of God are the only way in which men can learn to respect
other men. Until lately, Catherine Booth argues, this respect
was ingrained in the majority of people. People might argue
that it was ingrained by superstitious means--but such useful
superstition was preferable, in her opinion, to the total
disregard for orderliness which currently obtained.[5]
The Salvation Army--she continues (while I leap aboard a
passing summary)--taught the Universal Brotherhood of Man,
Better Morality, Self Improvement, Better Social Conditions
and Regeneration of Parents (as well as the rescue of that
great threat to domestic stability, Fallen Women) in order to
Save the Children. And, it taught its converts, the ranks of
the saved, how to be good and reliable labourers.[6]
Until this point in the discussion, Gladstone's marginal
pencil has remained inactive. Now, on page 24, it springs into
action. What rouses him, following Catherine's reflections on
her "sad and awful" realization that the masses wanted nothing
to do with "quiet and genteel" methods of rescue, is this
statement:
"Bishops, clergy, ministers, philanthropists, are forced to
confess themselves powerless to reach them." This looks as if
it is the moment when Gladstone stopped merely skimming and
decided that Mrs Booth was worth of an attentive reading,
since he puts a vertical line in the margin to indicate
interest and a v, indicating approval. Thus, writer and reader
end the first chapter in agreement. Gladstone, thinking back
to his own rescue work, may have had some fellow feeling with
Catherine's Booth's further statement that ":common sense and
Christian charity alike say, Send them such instrumentalities
as they will and can appreciate. Stoop as low as you lawfully
can to pick them up, rather than let them wax worse and worse
while you are standing on your dignity."[7]
However, a very few lines later, at the beginning of
Catherine's second lecture, on the Salvation Army and the
Church, delivered the following Tuesday, 20 March 1883,
Gladstone's pencil interjects his Italian expression of
reservation, ma (but). Given that he had approved her
statement that church leaders among others, had confessed
their inability to reach and engage the masses it seems
surprising that he has reservations about a statement which no
doubt struck Mrs Booth as a simple corollary of that one,
about "the terrible fact, ascertained by carefully taken
statistics, that prior to the commencement of our operations,
ninety per cent of these masses never entered church, chapel,
or mission hall."[8] It's not altogether clear what it is that
gives him pause.
Was he suggesting that the statistics were wrong, or that Mrs
Booth was misquoting or misunderstanding them? Was he wanting
to say, Surely the situation is not quite so bad? Or was he
feeling that Mrs Booth was inclined to take The Salvation
Army's sincere wish for increased church attendance as a
result of its work as an achieved statistical fact. The
evidence for this last interpretation is slightly
contradictory. Against it is the fact that in his own
selective index at the end of the book, he does not list this
page under his entry "statistics". That could be a simple
omission. On the opposing side of the question we must note
other indexed marginal notes under an entry that is a little
difficult to read but which I take to be "Their [i.e.] the
Salvation Army's superiority" (according, if I understand him,
to their own judgement).
Among these, page 31 elicits 3 Xs indicating disapproval,
equally spaced through the following passage:
":we have also raised a force of men and women who are now
WORKING IT OUT, to an extent that no people preceding us, so
far as Church history shows, have ever conceived of--a people
who have had a more comprehensive idea of their
responsibility, both as individuals and as an organization,
than ever existed in the world before. There have existed
exceptional men, many, thank God; but as an organization there
is no record since the days of Apostles of a body that has so
encompassed the Divine idea, all its members being taught to
make all the other objects and aims of life subservient to the
one grand purpose of preaching the gospel to every creature,
and striving to win every soul with whom they come in contact
to its salvation."[9]
Gladstone may well have thought, in effect, What about the
Wesleyans? Mrs Booth might have replied that her husband had
left the Methodist New Connection precisely because he though
them insufficiently instant and constant for the kingdom.
However, there two other markings--one indexed under "their
superiority", one not--in which Mrs Booth extols her own
organization and, far from drawing Gladstone's reproof,
elicits his approval. The first reads, apropos the
Salvationist's early searches for a way of seeking out and
saving the lowest of the low, as follows:
"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."[10]
The second of these further utterances praising Salvationist
innovations, comes from a "pastor" who "went back to Paris
from our Congress opening (which [she notes in passing] so
offended some people), saying, The worship of the Salvation
Army [i.e. its absence of liturgy] is destined to become the
worship of the future."[11]
It is probably significant that Gladstone found far more to
annotate in Catherine's lecture on the Salvation Army and the
Churches than he did in the first on the Salvation Army and
the State. The two lectures were probably assumed by Catherine
to employ exactly the same approach, but actually differ
considerably. In the first, the State as such is presented
merely as an institution that is despised and ignored by some
of its members and insufficiently defended by others. In the
second, the Church is seen as an entity that is in large part
hostile to the Salvation Army. Therefore, although Catherine
primary assertion is that (in italics) "We are not hostile to
the Churches", much of it consists of complaint the churches
are often critical of the Salvation Army. There is, however, a
certain waspishness in her tone, neatly encapsulated in a
statement that Gladstone does not annotate: "No, we do not
attack either organizations or individuals. All we find fault
with is SIN; but if some people in the in the Churches find
that the cap fits, we cannot help it." But he does mark as
interesting the second sentence of what follows: "It is one of
our most emphatic instructions to our officers [that]: "It is
not your business to go and find fault with other people.
Rejoice in all the good done, by whomsoever it is done."[12]
Her second italicized headline is: "Neither are we indifferent
to the opinion or sympathy of the Churches. "We desire and
value: the sympathy and prayer and assistance of all good
men." Gladstone approves what follows: "We care very little
about creeds. God has shown us that all forms are very much
alike, when the spirit has gone out of them.
"We believe that God cares very little about our sectarian
differences and divisions. The great main thing is the love of
God and the service of humanity; and when we find people
actuated by this motive, we love them by whatever name they
are called."[13]
Her third point--not italicized--is that they--church and
state----share the great fundamental doctrines of
Christianity. Gladstone finds her summary of those doctrines
interesting: ":the Fall, the universal call to Repentance,
Justification by Faith through Jesus Christ, a life of
obedience, Heaven and Hell."[14]
Catherine, however, does not hesitate to declare the main
difference between the Army and the rest: that difference lies
in its aggressiveness. What follows from that, however,
attracts the triple-barreled Gladstonian row of crosses I have
already mentioned. She asserts there has never been, since
Apostolic times, any organization "that has so compassed the
Divine idea" to bring all men to salvation.[15] You can almost
hear Gladstone asking, in Gilbert's words. To Sullivan''s
music, "What, never?"
However, she quickly regains Gladstone's approbation by her
assertion that she and her husband were not driven to plumb
the "moral cesspools of the country" by lack of success in
ordinary pastoral work. "Our path," she writes, "embraced all
the comforts and prospect of a successful ministerial career;
but as by miracle (I cannot account for it in any other way)
we were led into this particular description of work."
Had Catherine been minded to anticipate the judgement of some
later historians she might have added that part of that
inspiration came from William Booth's disinclination to
recognize any controlling power other than his own--God (and
possibly Catherine herself) always excepted. It should I think
be added, as Catherine goes on to suggest, that in meeting the
fighting, dog-fancying, heavy drinking, child-neglecting and
wife-beating reprobate Bills, Bobs and Jacks of the East End,
Booth encountered an aggression which in some ways resembled,
and certainly stimulated his own, producing in time a movement
that grew of its own aggressive and expansive force.[16]
Like Gladstone himself, I take a breather at this point to
notice an piece of anecdotal evidence, adduced by Catherine,
which clearly appealed to that side of Gladstone which enjoyed
popular theatrical knockabout comedies. Catherine is
discussing some of the officers who were created from members
of the toughs of London's East End. One of these was "once a
poor rag-picker, a woman who was rescued from drink and
depravity, though a woman of good natural ability: [W]hen her
husband was worsted in a fight, he used to hand over his
opponent to her, and she could manage him. Gladstone finds
this both interesting and worthy of approval.
We return from this comic vignette to the related serious
topic; the need for aggressive Christianity. ":will anything
less", Catherine writes, "than this determined hand-to-hand
fight with evil serve to stem the tide of sin and
demoralization which threatens our national life? What a long
time the Church has been singing--I don't want to reflect on
anybody we have to remember that she was talking to an
audience of clerics--but how long has the Church been
singing:--
"Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to war, With the Cross
of Jesus Going on before"? How long have we been singing: -
"Am I a soldier of the Cross?" And yet how little hand-to-hand
fighting with sin and the devil![17]
Gladstone draws a line alongside this final exclamation. At a
first reading it is perhaps surprising that he marks nothing
in Catherine's almost immediately following passage, which
might, I would have thought, attracted his attention, for or
against:
"A further difference between us and the majority of the
Churches is, the resuscitation of the SUPERNATURAL, of the
DIVINE. Here, I think, is our real power. We do not
under-estimate intellect. God forbid. We have developed, as
somebody said the other day, a large amount of intellectual
power amongst the masses; because, you see, God's gifts are
far more generously and impartially distributed than we are
apt to imagine. Polish is not power; education is not
intellect. We have found that out in the Salvation Army if we
had not done so before. Nevertheless, ours is not a religion
of of intellect, of culture, of refinement, of creeds, or of
ceremony or forms. We attach very little importance to any of
these in themselves. We gladly take hold of some of these, and
use them as mediums through which to convey the living energy
of the Spirit; but the POWER IS IN THE LIFE, not in the form:
The vital point is the life--the spirit. We have resuscitated
this old-fashioned religion. We defy infidels to account on
natural principles for the results we have to show:"[18]
There has been no response from the great interlocutor as yet,
and there is nothing for some sentences to come. Then, perhaps
by employing theological terminology--which is not without its
irony--she earns a tick and a line in the margin:
"I receive many letters from people after reading our books,
congratulating us that we do not teach the Antinomian
doctrines of a great deal of the evangelistic teaching of this
day, that we don't preach the "only believe gospel," but that
we preach repentance towards God, as well as faith in Jesus
Christ, and a life of OBEDIENCE TO GOD and that, without this,
mere theories and creeds will only sink people lower into
perdition:"[19]
He finds a further statement one step up in interest from
this: a remark attributed to an MP:
"If it were only for the material benefits you are conferring
by the reformation of all these drunkards and blackguards,
bringing them back to useful occupations and to the position
of reliable citizens, you deserve well of your
generation."[20] The lecture is rounded off with the assertion
that Salvation Army is ONE IN AIM with the Churches--"the
enlightenment and salvation and exaltation of the people"--but
also puts in a plea of help in return for the help which the
Salvation Army has rendered the Churches, a plea which
interests Gladstone: It is one of the disadvantages under
which we have laboured, that as our people get more refined
and prosperous, many of them go off to the Churches, leaving
us to struggle on with the masses beneath; and these are the
people who could most help us with funds. Therefore we feel we
have a double claim upon the sympathy of Christians. As they
get so much help from us, they ought to help us roll the
chariot on ahead and do the pioneering and scavenging."[21]
(Gladstone was clearly struck by this last phrase, because he
indexes it.)
Mrs Booth was not among those who regard business and the
profit motive as evil in themselves. In her third lecture,
Business Principles in Religion, Illustrated by the Working of
the Salvation Army she comes close to paraphrasing Dr Johnson
to the effect that No man but a blockhead ever worked except
for money. Provided that such men strove righteously for
profit--and, better still, gave some of it to the Salvation
Army--she found no fault in them. What she prefers to say is
that Christians should look for results from their labours.
"We cannot see", she asserts, why religious establishments
should be kept going without reference to the results"--and
just in case what she means by this has been misapprehended,
she spells it out: the Church should not be content to labour
over a static number of souls, but should continue to make
"appreciable aggression upon the territory of the enemy
outside". In other words, souls must be won. Once again, she
doesn't want to reflect on anybody, but "Christians of this
generation "do not act on this principle" They "lose the end
in the means", they (and this is where Gladstone gives her a
double line for interest, "they rest in the labour without
looking for adequate profits." There must be hard work applied
to definite ideas of aims and ends, commonsense must be
applied, and the warfare for the salvation of mankind must be
conducted without sentimentality and "with at least as much
care, sagacity and persistency as men bestow on earthly
enterprises for gain or glory". [22]
So far so good, but then, so far as Gladstone is concerned,
Catherine goes too far, drawing an admonitory "ma". She
writes: "Jesus Christ and His apostles left us free as air as
to modes and measures, that we may provide that kind of
organization most suited to the necessities of the age. There
is not a bit of "red-tapism" in the whole of the New
Testament." I don't want to bore you with second guesses as to
Gladstone's perturbation, but perhaps I should remind you that
there is at least one procedural instruction in the New
Testament: "Do this in remembrance of me", an injunction the
Salvation Army agreed to follow only in an idiosyncratic way
not recognized by most of the rest of the Church.
However, the common sense of Mrs Booth's argument soon
banishes any sense Gladstone may have had that the intentions
of Jesus were being ignored or slighted; a double line and a v
greet her suggestion that the people she wants to save may
legitimately be induced to pay attention by "some novel or
startling announcement, so that [i.e. so long as] the terms
are innocent. What does it signify that they are strange an
unconventional? Look at the sagacity of worldly men in
advertising; think of the size and cost of their bills. Why do
they go to such expense and trouble? Because they know that,
in the rush and drive of this age, little unostentatious
notices will not be looked at. Why should we be content with
such for our Master's business...? We have numbers in our
ranks today who were enticed out of the public house by our
music and processions. Does it signify how we get hold of such
men as laid the dynamite in the Government offices if we do
get hold of them? (Gladstone's pencil comes out again to show
his interest.)[23]
He objects again, however, when she comes back to a version,
perhaps more highly coloured than hitherto, of one of her
frequent awful warnings: "I often think how the higher classes
will curse their fastidiousness when their MANSIONS ARE
BURNING ABOUT THEIR EARS! How they will wish then that they
had helped the Salvation Army."[24] Has he tired of this
point? Does he find it crudely exaggerated? Does he think the
enlightened self-interest of these mansion-owning classes will
have kicked in before the torches are lit? Does he--heaven
forfend--begin to suppose that this sounds like incitement to
riot?
He makes two further marginal interventions, both positive.
The first is a little illegible, but I think it is
NB--alongside an assertion that "some of the huge forms and
cumbrous organizations handed down to us only hamper good and
true men. The second, concerns a matter which may make it seem
that for some critics any stick was good enough to take a
swipe at the Salvation Army; she defends the taking out of
mortgages to finance building of additional halls for
evangelical work, asking--Gladstone clearly thinks
reasonably--"Are there not mortgages on half the chapel
property in the land?"[25]
So we pass to the fourth and final lecture: The Probable
Future of the Salvation Army. This begins by reiterating
Catherine's need and purpose to do away with unfounded
prejudice--and an immediate counter-claim that in fact there
is nothing in Church history to compare with the speed and
extent to which prejudice has been broken down, by comparison
with the great revival movements of the past. Gladstone at
various other points has queried this repeated claim of
uniqueness in The Salvation Army's history of, at the time of
publication, not quite 30 years. But Mrs Booth exhibits some
degree of historical awareness, immediately conceding that,
"the facilities for travel and spreading information are much
greater than in bygone times". She might, of course, have
pointed out that facilities for spreading misinformation were
equally enlarged. It is perhaps time for me to come clean and
admit that I think her repeated theme of persecution is not by
any means mere paranoia any more than is her idea that many of
the culprits were people who professed to be Christians.
Gladstone's first annotation in this chapter, is a line and a
v--indicating, if I may remind you, both interest and
approval--alongside this statement: "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."[26]
This is, of course, a more complicated question than she is
willing - naturally - to concede. She felt that she was doing
the will of God; therefore, Christians who criticized her work
must be doing the work of the devil. It is, I assume, equally
the case that when T.H. Huxley contrived to extract the number
666 from the letters making up the name William Booth, he was
doing much the same thing in reverse. It is also the case that
Mrs Booth was unable to conceive any possibility of good in
alcohol and therefore assumed that anyone who "used" it--as
her puritan descendents say now--was wickedly self-indulgent
and weak-willed, she was bound to be at odds with the
Victorian religious establishment. But her experience of
out-of-control drinking was, both in her childhood and from
observation in her adult years, such as to make us at least
understand her point of view.
Some of her other reiterated claims noticed by Gladstone need
critical attention. The statement that her husband had "left a
prosperous and happy ministerial career" trusting in God to
look after himself, her and their four children under the age
of five is at least partly a simplification. Had she qualified
her assertion by saying, "what might seem to others to be"
prosperous and happy, she would have been nearer the mark. She
uses the statement here to suggest that, had he really been
driven by an insensate yet coldly calculated ambition to be a
kind of Protestant pope, he wouldn't have started by throwing
over what he had and leaping headlong into the stormy sea of
faith. All any of this means, I suppose is that we can
contrive to find, as happens to suit us, simple or complex
explanations to fit the facts of any case. But on her side of
the argument, the fact remains that although, after the first
heady days, he was never particularly content with his lot on
the Methodist circuit, William Booth did take an enormous risk
when he abandoned the Methodist New Connection for mission
work in the Mile End Road. Simply because he was subsequently
to become the sort of person who could invite himself to tea
with kings, queens, prime ministers and governors general, to
say nothing of Presidents, and who later still would be hailed
by so sceptical an onlooker as Roy Hattersley as one entitled
to be called an Eminent Victorian, we are not obliged to
suppose that this was what he intended all along. He may have
had the air of an Old Testament prophet, but he was not as far
sighted as all that. (Gladstone, I must add, was apparently
happy with Mrs Booth's view about her husband's "happy and
prosperous ministerial career", awarding it a line and a v.)
[27]
We are drawing towards an end. As I have noted already,
Gladstone commends Catherine's delight in the "grand military
idea" that she believed had made The Salvation Army uniquely
effective. He is very interested by her enconium of her
children, who have embraced 'the life of toil, self-sacrifice
and devotion: 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.' Other points to which he
awards lines and, mostly, vs, in her peroration are: the
assertion that faith must go hand in hand with good works; the
Army's innovations in its manner of worship; the huge impact
of its numerous women officers; the good effects that she says
the Army has had upon the churches; and her claim that thieves
and harlots SEND FOR THE SALVATION ARMY OFFICER WHEN THEY ARE
DYING.
Catherine Booth's concluding paragraphs are directly concerned
with the Army's possible future. Gladstone particularly
notices, again often with vs: her defence of its one-man
government; its acceptance of the fact (contrasted with
"popery") that its members are not condemned leave it for
other churches; her view that, should the Army ever lose its
true spirit it should die at once rather than linger uselessly
on; and that it should never settle down into a sect "if
prayer and faith or prudence and foresight can prevent it".
There is an appendix addressing a topical controversy, which I
will not discuss here. I will, however, mention that this
document of five-and-half-pages is awarded five ticks. Not
bad! I conclude by quoting the conclusion of the lectures
themselves, a passage Gladstone marks as interesting, and make
two short general comments of my own. Here are Catherine
Booth's last five sentences:
"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."
Reading the lectures through and relating them to Gladstone's
annotations, I think it is possible to detect generally a
rising level of enthusiasm in his response. As I have recorded
there are three "ma"s and three admonitory crosses. After page
55 (of 92) he indicates no further reservations.
And, thinking both of the meeting between the two grand old
Williams which I discussed in this place last year and of
Gladstone's posthumous communion with Booth's
promoted-to-glory wife and colleage (another grand old
Catherine) via a book published only 18 months before her
horribly painful death, something else strikes me--a strong
feeling that Gladstone, whatever he may have thought of the
Salvation Army's theology and methods, recognized and approved
in the Booths something of his own determination to keep on
fighting for what he believed in until he was removed from the
scene.
Thank you.
[1] CB, pp. iii-iv.
[2] CB, pp. 1-3
[3] CB, pp. 7-9
[4] CB, p. 24
[5] CB, pp. 9-11
[6] CB, pp. 11-24
[7] CB, p. 25
[8] CB, p. 27
[9] CB, pp. 31-32
[10] CB, p. 68
[11] The first International Congress took place in 1884,
which suggests
that this reference may have been on of the "additions" made
to the lectures
at the time of publication. Some press comment suggested that
the Congress
may have been staged in order to distract public attention
from the Maiden
Tribute scandal, when Bramwell Booth, William and Catherine's
eldest son,
was persuaded by W.T. Stead, the crusading editor and
originator of the
phrase, to help him abduct a girl in order to show how easy it
was for the
trade in infant prostitution to flourish in London at the
time. Stead went
to jail, but Bramwell Booth was acquitted.
[12] CB, pp. 27-28
[13] CB, pp. 28-29
[14] CB, p. 29
[15] CB p. 30
[16] CB, pp. 31-33
[17] CB, p. 38
[18] CB, pp. 38-39
[19] CB, pp. 39-40
[20] CB, pp. 39-41
[21] CB, pp. 40 & 44.
[22] CB, pp. 47-50
[23] CB pp. 52-53
[24] CB p. 55
[25] CB, pp. 56 & 61
[26] CB, pp. 63-65
[27] CB, p. 67
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