ey the lawful
orders of the Officers, and never on any consideration to oppose the
interests of The Salvation Army. The last part, the promissory part, is
made much stricter in the case of Candidates for the position of
Officer; these solemnly promise not only to obey The General, but to
report any case they may observe in others of 'neglect or variation from
his orders and directions.' Membership of the Organisation thus depends
on absolute obedience, and on a profession of faith in Salvation in the
definite sense formulated in the Articles of War. The two are
inseparably conjoined. When we reflect upon what human nature is, in the
class from which so many of the members of The Army have been drawn,
when we think how difficult it is to reconcile the hand-to-mouth
existence of the casual labourer with any high standard of conduct, let
alone of religion, General Booth's success, partial though it has been,
is an astonishing fact. It implies a prodigious strength of character,
and a genius for seeing what would appeal to large numbers of humble
folk.

"Will that success continue now that General Booth is dead? Everywhere
we hear that The Army is not bringing in Recruits as fast as of old. Its
novelty has worn off; its uniforms are no longer impressive; its street
services, though they provoke no opposition, do not seem to attract the
wastrel and the 'rough' as they did at first. We can readily believe
that the work goes on more or less as before; but the gatherings, we
suspect, are mostly composed of those who have long frequented them and
of a certain number of new members drawn rather from existing sects than
from persons till now untouched by religion. Then, with regard to the
other side of The Army's work, the Social Schemes outlined in _In
Darkest England_ have met with only moderate success, as all cool
observers foretold in 1890. They have, at least, provided no panacea for
poverty. Probably Mr. Booth felt this during the last years of his life;
but he has been spared the sight of the still further decline of his
projects, which to most of us seems inevitable. Of course, some persons
are more confident: they argue that Napoleon's system did not disappear
after Waterloo, nor Wesley's system with the death of its founder, and
that the Roman Catholic Church is as strong as ever, though Pope after
Pope disappears. That is true, but for the very reason that these
systems were elaborate organisations, based on the facts