us revival might not the same
argument of offended culture and decorous holiness be employed? And
where would the lower masses of men be to-day if Religion had not
stooped out of her celestial heights--from the first chapters of
Christendom until the last--to the intellectual and moral levels of the
poor and lowly? In the sheet, knit at four corners, and lowered out of
Heaven, there was nothing common or unclean. If, as is practically
certain, General Booth, by the vast association which he founded and
organised, touched with the sense of higher and immortal things
countless humble and unenlightened souls; if, in his way, and in their
way, he brought home to them the love and power of Heaven, and the duty
and destiny of men, then it is not for refined persons who keep aloof
from such vulgar tasks to mock at the life and deeds of this remarkable
man. The particulars which we give elsewhere of his career show how,
like Wesley, Whitefield, and Spurgeon, in this country, and like
Savonarola, Peter the Hermit, and the Safi mystics abroad, William
Booth, the builder's son of Nottingham, was obviously set apart, and
summoned by time, temperament, and circumstances for the labours of his
life. Like Luther, his answer to all objections--worldly or
unworldly--would always have been, 'I can no other'. Meeting in Miss
Catherine Mumford the wife who exactly suited him, and reinforced by
many children, all brought up in the temper and vocation of their
parents, The General made his family a sort of Headquarters' Staff of
The Salvation Army, and celebrated his household marriages or bewept his
domestic bereavements with all the eclat and effect of oecumenical
events. We saw him buy up and turn into stations for his troops such
places as the 'Eagle Tavern' and 'Grecian Theatre,' overcome popular
rioting at Bath, Guilford, Eastbourne, and elsewhere; fill the United
Kingdom with his _War Cry_ and his fighting centres, and invade all
Europe, and even the Far East. At home he plunged, insatiable of moral
and social conquests, into his crusade for 'Darkest England,' being
powerful enough to raise in less than a month as much as all England and
the Colonies contributed for the Gordon College at Khartoum in response
to another victorious general. For General Booth certainly ended by
being victorious. If the evangelical creed he inculcated was rude,
crude, and unideal, it was serious, sincere, and stimulating. He waged
war against the Devil, as