rly have sought to waken drugged humanity and render the Kingdom of
Heaven a reality. Many men have broken their hearts in the effort to
save the Christian religion from the paralysis of formalism and the
sleeping sickness of philosophy. It is not an easy thing to revivify a
religion, nor a small thing to rescue many thousands of the human race
from sin and misery.

"Let us be generous and acknowledge, now that it is too late to cheer
his heart, that General Booth accomplished a work quite wonderful and
quite splendid, a work unique in the records of the human race. Let us
be frank and say that we ourselves could have done nothing like it. Let
us forget our intellectual superiority, and, instead of criticising,
endeavour to see as it stands before us, and as it really is, the
immense marvel of his achievement. Our canons of taste, our notions of
propriety, will change and cease to be. The saved souls of humanity will
persist for ever.

"I remember very well my first impression of General Booth. I was young;
I knew little of the sorrow of existence; I was perfectly satisfied with
the traditions I had inherited from my ancestors; I was disposed to
regard originality as affectation, and great earnestness as a sign of
fanaticism. In this mood I sat and talked with General Booth, measured
him, judged him, and had the audacity to express in print my opinion
about him--my opinion of this huge giant, this Moses of modern times. He
offended me. The tone of his voice grated on my ears. His manner to a
servant who waited upon him seemed harsh and irritable. I found it
impossible to believe that his acquaintance with spirituality was either
intimate or real. Saints ought to be gentlemen. He seemed to me a vulgar
old man, a clumsy old humourist, an intolerant, fanatical, one idea'd
Hebraist.

"Later in my life I met him on several occasions, and at each meeting
with him I saw something fresh to admire, something new to love. I think
that he himself altered as life advanced; but the main change, of
course, was in myself--I was able to see him with truer vision, because
I was less sure of my own value to the cosmos, and more interested to
discover the value of other men. And I was learning to know the sorrows
of the world.

"There is one very common illusion concerning General Booth. The vulgar
sneers are forgotten; the scandalous slander that he was a self-seeking
charlatan is now ashamed to utter itself except in vile quarters;