GENERAL BOOTH
for the army, headquarters. All these grew under his direction and skill: and they sprang up everywhere to meet the needs of a new church, a church universal, that did not invite proselytes, but sought out the victims of woe and disaster and vice, and converted them, not to be members of a new church or soldiers of a non-militant crusading army, but to see themselves in their true relation as children of God.
General Booth gathered the unfit into his army, not to poison their minds against the fit, as the godless and cruel self-appointed leaders of the "proletariat" have done, but, on the contrary, to make them fit companions for those whose lot has been cast in pleasanter places. With the example and the sayings of his Master always in his mind, he realized the enormous importance of the command, "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's." He well knew that without Cæsar's aid his work would soon come to an end among the penniless unfit, and he was much too wise, and I may say too godly, to give a moment's notice to the vapourings of foolish men whose prime doctrine is a denial of Christ and the elimination of God from the affairs of life.
General Booth was not a visionary, and he was not a social reformer. He was an evangelist of the old-fashioned type, as vigorous as Saint Peter, and as wise as Saint Paul. Woe unto the Salvation Army should one of its leaders become a social reformer!
The work of General Booth had the effect of a leaven in that part of society which had fallen into want and despondency. It is only necessary to ask the question, What would have been the state of England if this leaven had not been introduced? to realize the enormous good that
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