This, after all, is the whole thesis
of Salvationism, and if General Booth wavered here the Army would be
scattered to the winds. As for his definitions of light and darkness, at
this stage of the world's journey we need not be too nice in our
acceptance of them.
But there remains the important question of Salvation Army methods.
It seems to me that here a change is desirable, not a radical change,
for many of those methods are admirable enough, particularly those of
which the public too seldom hears, but a change all the same, and one
deep enough to create fresh sympathy for this devoted movement of
evangelical Christianity.
I think it is time to stop praying and preaching at street corners, to
mitigate the more brazen sounds of the Army band, and to discountenance
all colloquialisms in Salvationist propaganda. I do not wish, God
forbid, to make the Army respectable; I wish it to remain exactly where
it is--but with a greater quietness and a deeper, more personal sympathy
in its appeal to the sad and the sorrowful.
General Booth is not the man to make these changes, but his wife is a
woman who might. In any case they will be made. Time will bring them
about. Then it will be seen, I think, that the Salvation Army is one of
the most powerful agencies in the world for spreading the good news of
personal religion among the depressed millions of the human race.
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