For
even at this present time the lasting work of the Salvationist, the work
which makes him so noble and so useful a figure in the modern world, is
not accomplished by pageantry and tub-thumping, but by the intimate,
often most beautiful, and very little known work of its slum officers,
particularly the women.
Finally, concerning the General, he is in himself a telling witness to
one of the mysterious powers of the Christian religion. For he is surely
by temperament one of the most unstable of minds, and yet by the power
of religion he has become a coherent personality of almost rigid
singleness of purpose. In conversation with him one cannot help feeling
that he is jumpy and excitable; every movement of his extremely mobile
face suggests a soul of gutta-percha stretched in all directions by the
movements of his brain, and twitching with every thought that crosses
his mind; but at the same time one is aware in him of a power which is
never deflected by a hair's breadth from the path of a single purpose,
and which holds him together with a strength that may be weakened but
that can never be broken.
His supreme value for the student of religion is to be found in the
explanation of this unifying power. In spite of intellectual
shortcomings which might seem almost to exclude him from the serious
attention of educated people, he stands out with a marked emphasis from
the company of far abler men by reason of this power--this sense of
unusual vigour and abnormal concentration of strength.
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