The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-10-18


streets, muddy with men and women
drinking it all in and loving it all
Yes, loved il because of the souls
saw / knew 1 had found my work
One night l went home and said to my
wife: Darling, have given myself,
have given YOU and our children, to
the service of those sick souls She
smiled and took my hand, and we knelt
together. That was the first meeting
OF the Salvation Army
His tired ewes. their cunning half
eurtained by great dropping lids, blaz-
ed with blue flame as he spoke. His
voice, remnant of departing thun-
der. Tumbled like a distant storm IN
summer. But all is winter now with
this old soldier of salvation-all save
the spirit. The tousled hair and
streaming beard which frame his huge
Semitic faee-Jhey are the boar frost
of nine and seventy years. That
enormous hooked nose is the beak of
an eagle, a man-eagle long since stated
with the sublimities of the thin upper
strata and swOoping down to snatch
broken bodies and seOrched souls from
the ash-heaps of humanity. Tall,
spare. unsteady, his is the body of
DOTe's Don QuixOte with the head of
Ezekiel set upon its stopped shoulders.
Did he claim reinearnatiOn, he might
call himself Ezekiel. There is much
likeness. He is somewhat the fierce
benefaetor. His cry is Ezekiel s
Work and Hope! He knows all filth,
all grief, all horrors, yet he sees the
sunrise. Surrounded by dust of defeat
and degradation, smoke of sin, fog of
falseness, and clouds of crime, he has
shown men a patch of Christ's clear
morning sky on the horizon of hope
lessness, as he marched on through the
wide world dragging them out of dark
ness and death into light and life.
Had he chosen the flowing robe and
mystery of speech, he might have
duplicated the magic of MahOmet. He
is as sure of his prOvidential mission.
Who knows but this possibility con-
fronted him in his Methodist pulpit
fifty years agOi He was only fifteen
when he heard an echo of that voice
which smOte Paul on the road to
Damascus. Even then he preached as
if possessed. William Booth was pos
sessed.
He hungered for hell. He thirsted
for the dregs. A little while he wait
ed. He had enough of routine reli-
giOn to breed the hope that these
would come to satisfy his longing
Waiting, he worked and thought. One
day it came to him that Christ
''sought' men when here He, too,
would 'seek' them, but not in the
highways. He would track them into
the -swamps and sink holes. the dump
heaps. For this he led his little family
to London in 1861. For this he haunt
ed the nearest approach to hell on
earth-that East Side. For this he
knelt with his wife, woman of blest
memory everywhere. He always lifts
his ewes when he calls her name, as if
speaking to her.
Mind you, he was not failure, seek
ing fresh soil in which to thrive. His
fame as an evangelist was high and
fixed. He could have got a comfort
able living from any Conference. He
was a sehemer, planning a factory
where waste material could be utilized
and saved.
In disused burying-ground on
Mile-E End Road he pitched an old tent
The sentimental will see in this a sign
of resurrection from the dead. He
chose the place because he could get
no other. The tent was his taber-
naele. He called it the "'Christian
Mission crowd of poor White
chapelers drifted into the place the
first night he preached, led by eurios-
ity. The East Side had never seen
such congregation, nor London,
nor the world, for that. 1t was just
4 mess of wreekage east up by the
waves of what we must call Life be-
cause of breath and heartbeats. He
talked TO them as such. He told them
the old. old story stripped to the quick
of its layers of theology. He wOrded
his message to fit their meager knOwl
edge. Some slept through it all; some
sneeTed and sniekered; others listened.
A harlOt or two and drunkard cried ,
for shame at their SHINING and then
for JOY at their saving, and thus end |
ed the second meeting of what was yet
to sweep over seas as the Salvation
Army. William Booth went home tired !
but happier than he had ever been. !
He had won from the Devil at the first
throw.
He seized the spoils of this skirmish. |
They not only went to work with him, J
but he went to work through them. In
their needs he saw the needs of their
kind. He saw how the ears of the !
Devil had grown stony to sounds of
church bells which sifted into that part
Of London. He would go at the Devil !
with drums. and he did.
And the godly world that had some !
how neglected this human offal shifted
in its high seats and frowned. Then, !
when bands of his people went through |
the streets singing about Jesus of Naz- |
areth to the tunes of "Sally in Our !
Alley" and 1.-The Old Stone Jug
that cody world. which still held well |
aloof from the field, fumed at such !
saerilege. Its piOus responsibility was
outraged by this "charlatan. Spur !
geon let fly a shaft at this ''fanatic.'
saving his methods brought religion in |
10 contempt. Huxley joined the chorus /
of critics and dubbed his Christianity |
- corvbantic.'' Yet YOU see today, |
gathered together under the general ]
ship of this same William Booth. the J
biggest standing army in the world
only it doeSn t stand. 1t FORCES ahea !. .
fighting, and winning wherever IL
fights.
''In the last few years we have saw :