ars, whilst providing a most touching token of abiding affection for
lost friends, is, at the same time, a special declaration of faith and
hope, and yet obviates entirely the need for any peculiar dress "for the
occasion."

Every funeral thus becomes a very valuable opportunity for comforting
and strengthening the mourners, and for urging the unsaved to ensure an
eternal triumph. It would not be easy to compute the total of crowds
thus brought under the sound of the Gospel, in connexion with our
losses, every year.

Thus all these occasions for sadness have been turned into fountains of
joy, not merely to those most immediately concerned, but to the whole
community. We have not yet had time or opportunity, thank God!
sufficiently to redeem the grave and the cemetery from the scandal of
men-praising expenditure, for any sort of tombstone has generally been
too costly for our people. But the small, simple edge-stone which marks
the resting-place of "Catherine Booth, Mother of The Salvation Army,"
and which asks every passer-by, "Do you also follow Christ?" has set an
example, consistent with all our past and our eternal future.

Surely, the day will come when our General's teaching and practice in
this matter will help to lighten the burden of every bereaved family,
and make every cemetery the birthplace of crowds of souls. The music and
song with which we surround every deathbed and funeral, still too much
tinged sometimes with the follies of traditional show, have already been
used by God's Spirit to bring life and gladness to many a spiritually
dead soul.

Chapter XX

His Social Work

Most erroneously and unfairly it has been widely assumed that the great
work of The General was the establishment in the world of some Social
Institutions. Happily, we have got a verbatim report of an address to
his Social Officers gathered around him a year before his death in which
we have a complete statement as to the beginnings and principles of the
work, so that we can see exactly how he wished it to be regarded.

1. By the Social Work, I mean those operations of The Salvation
Army which have to do with the alleviation, or removal, of the
moral and temporal evils which cause so much of the misery of the
submerged classes, and which so greatly hinder their Salvation.

2. Our Social Operations, as thus defined, are the natural outcome
of Salvationism, or, I might say, of Christianity,