ist work, in accordance with the views which they hold upon
this alternative. As regards his social labours, his passionate efforts
to help the 'submerged tenth,' his widespread helpfulness of the poor,
his shelters and refuges, the feeling must and will be almost universal
that he was an energetic and warm-hearted benefactor of his kind, who
wrought much good to his times, and helped others to do it, and who had
what Sir John Seeley called the 'enthusiasm of humanity' in very
honourable, if noisy and demonstrative, form. But, since The General
mingled all this with a cult--a distinct theological teaching, a theory
of the Divine government and destiny of mankind which was in external
form, as Huxley styled it, 'Corybantic'--the question does and must
arise whether religion of the Salvationist school does good or harm to
the human natures which it addresses. It is not necessary to dwell upon
the dislike--we might, indeed, say the repulsion--felt by serious and
elevated minds at the paraphernalia, the pious turmoil, the uproar and
'banalite' of much that has developed under the Banners of The Salvation
Army. Prayers uttered like volley-firing, hymns roared to the roll of
drums and the screaming of fifes, have been features of this remarkable
revival which outraged many of the orthodox, and made even the judicious
and indulgent ask whether any good could come out of such a Nazareth.
Nobody gave utterance to this feeling with greater moderation or
kindliness than Cardinal Manning, when, while confessing that the need
of spiritual awakening among the English poor was only too well proved
by the success of General Booth--that the moral and religious state of
East London could alone have rendered possible The Salvation Army--his
Eminence added these grave sentences: 'Low words generate low thoughts;
words without reverence destroy the veneration of the human mind. When a
man ceases to venerate he ceases to worship. Extravagance, exaggeration,
and coarseness are dangers incident to all popular teachers, and these
things pass easily into a strain which shocks the moral sense and
deadens the instinct of piety. Familiarity with God in men of chastened
mind produces a more profound veneration; in unchastened minds it runs
easily into an irreverence which borders upon impiety. Even the Seraphim
cover their faces in the Divine Presence.'

"Yet against what new movement of spiritual awakening in the
people--against what form of religio