MR. Hl7XLEY AND GENERAL BOOTH.
THE position taken up by Mr. Huxley in the first part of his able letter of Saturday against General Booth is rather a weak one. He says the Salvation Army was better managed by a Committee ; that it caught, in Canada, for example, a certain rough class, tamed them, and distributed them among existing religious denominations, proselytism for its own benefit being, indeed, discouraged. It occupied, in fact, the position of a recruiting agency for the various religious bodies. " The meetings were crowded, people pro- fessed conversion by the score, the public liberally supplied the means to carry on the work in their respective com- munities; therefore, every corps was wholly self-supporting ; its officers were properly, if not luxuriously, cared for ; the local expenditure was amply provided, and under the super- vision of the secretary, a local member, and the officer in charge, the funds were disbursed in the towns where they were collected, and the spirit of satisfaction and confidence was mutual all around." These are not Mr. Huxley's words, but those of Mr. Britnell, of Toronto, the informant upon whom he relies ; and Mr. Britnell then proceeds to draw the contrast. As the movement spread, General Booth assumed all power ; all important posts were filled by members of his family ; the financial arrangements were carried on by "a system of infla- tion and extravagance ; " and independence was crashed out of the officers. " What is the result of all this In the first place, whilst material prosperity has undoubtedly been attained, spirituality has been quenched, and, as an evangelical agency,
the Army has become almost a dead-letter In 75 per cent. of its stations, its officers suffer need and privation, chiefly on account of the heavy taxation that is placed upon them to maintain an imposing head-quarters and a large
ornamental staff Officers or soldiers who may con- scientiously leave the service or the ranks are looked upon
and often denounced publicly as backsliders Means of the most despicable description have been resorted to in order to starve them back to the service (p. 8) In its inner workings the Army system is identical with Jesuitism."
General Booth, if he knows his business, which he probably does, and ecclesiastical history, which he probably does not, would meet the whole of that attack—even if it has not, as now alleged, been strengthened by interpolations—by the simple defence that it is all praise. He would say that the object of his organisation was not to make its officers content, but to do work; that he had by his intervention prevented a decline into comfortable apathy; that he had reintroduced the habits of poverty and implicit obedience; and that, in fact, his inter- vention in Canada had all the effect of one of those terrible "visitations" by which the early founders of ecclesiastical corporations—St. Bernard, for example—habitually purified the monasteries, and brought their inhabitants straight up to the collar again. Granting the object, which is the institution of a strictly controlled Protestant Order of Preaching Mendicants, to be a good and adequate one, what in the world does the discomfort of the officers signify, or the fact that the General does not think many of them so amenable to authority as his own family ? or of what consequence is it whether " collections " are or are not spent in the locality where they are made P General Booth, it is admitted, succeeds in keeping his new instrument bright for use ; and he may reasonably, from his point of view, think that a great deal more important than any of the discomforts or supersession& against which individuals murmur, and against which also they have a perfect remedy : they can all go. They are bound by no vows ; their pay is very small, often the barest maintenance ; and the Army has not yet reached such a position in general opinion that to quit its ranks implies either a desire for a looser life, or caprice so inexcusable as to justify a charge of moral weakness. We dare say hard things are said within the Army itself ; but if there is adequate reason for going, they can be borne very easily. Much harder things are said—not to speak of harder blows struck—when a unionist workman quits his Union, and announces his intention of working thenceforward according to his own lights. We can see nothing in this charge as yet, except that the General, who has never concealed his absolutism, remains absolute. He is making, we incline to believe, the foolish blunder of many of the Popes, of Napoleon I., and of the present Persian dynasty, and preferring rela- tionship to himself before every other claim to advancement in the Army; but that is a blunder of administration which will soon avenge itself. The hereditary generalship of a Proselytising Order —and the Salvation Army is either that, or a mob of Christians with a vulgar ritual—is impossible, and the permanent monopoly of administrative power by a single family always ends in the ruin, first of the administration, and then of the monopolising family.
Nor do we see very much in the second charge against General Booth of accumulating wealth for his Army. The temptation to do it is very great. Every ecclesiastical -corporation desires wealth to extend its influence—which, ex hypothesi, is good work—to pay its agents, to construct buildings, and to meet unforeseen demands, such, for instance, in the case of the Salvation Army, as never-ending petty law- suits. It may be better to provide for such things by going round with the hat week by week, or accepting " guarantees " from over-powerful deacons ; but the ancient Episcopal Churches and the self-respecting Presbyterian bodies will not do it ; and there never was an ecclesiastical leader yet, or a philanthropist either, who did not desire for his favourite organisation a property, or a " grant," or, at all events, a sustentation fund. Some degree of independence of sub- scriptions is almost necessary to effective organisation. General Booth does nothing in this respect that the Churches of Scotland and the hospitals of London do not do ; and he cannot be attacked on that ground, except as regards his claim to be the Army's sole trustee,—that is, on the old ground that he is absolute. The Army will suffer for that some day, because he is irreplaceable except by election, for which he has provided no machinery—he should create a Conclave, but probably will not, because each member, to be of any use, must have a life-seat—but at present nothing can upon this point be more above-board than the General's language. He never softens his autocracy, never even says " we," never talks of colleagues, never, above all, resorts to the dirty expedient of placing a nominee committee between himself and the sub- scribing public. If anything is wrong anywhere, he is, by his -own confession, responsible ; and we should not at all wonder if his legal responsibility to the individual subscriber was indefinitely more stringent than anybody but Chancery lawyers imagine. Certainly, if he stole the money, or employed it, say, in a speculation in gold-reefs for his own advantage, the Court would have something to say to him of a very peremptory kind.
Mr. Huxley's third charge, however, is of a widely different sort. It goes straight to the root of things, and if justified, is a fair reason for not trusting General Booth with another shilling, and for depriving him of the power of which he confesses himself unworthy. It is, in fact, nearly the gravest possible moral charge, and is contained in the following words, con- densing a statement by S. H. Hodges, formerly private secretary to the General :—" I recommend," writes Mr. Huxley, "potential contributors to Mr. Booth's wealth to study this little work also. I have learned a great deal from it. Among other interesting novelties, it tells me that Mr. Booth has dis- covered the necessity of a third step or blessing, in the work of Salvation.' He said to me one day : " Hodges, you have only two barrels to your gun ; I have three."' (p. 31.) And if Mr. Hodges's description of this third barrel is correct- ' giving up your conscience' and ' for God and the Army, stooping to do things which even honourable worldly men would not consent to do' (p. 32)—it is surely calculated to bring down a good many things, the first principles of morality among them." Mr. Huxley proceeds to give an instance in which, as we understand his letter, he sees evidence that General Booth availed himself of his religious position to deceive Mr. Justice Kay by a false affidavit ; but, considering the way affidavits are drawn up, it is not conclusive. The general charge, however, is plain, and is, we think, the only one which urgently calls for a full denial. Does General Booth consciously hold that he is released from the moral law, and may do evil in order that good may come? If he does, then he is unfit to be the head of any religious organisation whatever, and especially ought not to be entrusted with a great experiment in philanthropy ; but then, does he ? We can hardly believe it, and certainly do not believe it on the evidence as yet produced. All men of his governing temper are apt to despise small scruples ; to hold that they have some sort of authority to stretch the law ; and, above all, to doubt whether great affairs can be success- fully carried on under the burden of a too rigid adherence to the truth. Their temptation is either to evade it, or to believe willingly what they want to believe, and hold that for the time being to be the truth. It is undeniable, too, that in the minds of many Calvinists there is an attraction towards Antinomian ideas, though in the last forty years the sect so called has almost entirely died away. And it is also true that there is probably no Church in the world in which the evil theory called " Perfection" has not momentarily appeared, disap- peared, and left behind it a quantity of household or other rain. General Booth is not, however, the stamp of man to be carried away by a theory like Perfection, or a bit of thin logic like Antinomianism—logic which has absolutely no meaning, unless the mind of the believer and the mind of Christ have become identical, and then can have no consequences—and we imagine his claim to be above law was an obiter dictum uttered under some strong excitement, and intended only to indicate an extreme readiness for self-sacrifice. He would be dishonour- able, if that were possible, rather than see the cause of Christ defeated. At the same time, we hope he will state frankly what his individual opinion really is, and so remove a doubt which Mr. Huxley's letter will unquestionably breed, and which will, if undispelled, filter down at least as low as the class which sends him such a profusion of cheques, that many other deserving charities are temporarily starved.
May we be permitted to remark to reporters that in printing " General " Booth's title, the quotation-marks are a mistake P They are right for the " Majors," " Captains," and so on, but not right for the General. Throughout Europe the word " General" has two accepted and widely different meanings,— one implying military rank high enough for its wearer to com- mand a division ; but the other implying that its wearer is recognised by an ecclesiastical society as its executive head. The idea current in England that the head of the Jesuits is the only General in the Roman executive terminology, is quite erroneous. There is also a General of the Dominicans, and of the Franciscans, and possibly of other Orders.
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